classes ::: adjective, verb,
children :::
branches ::: incarnate, incarnateword.in

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:incarnate
word class:adjective
word class:verb

see also :::

questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or
join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers



now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Bhakti-Yoga
Guru_Bhakti_Yoga
Heart_of_Matter
Hymn_of_the_Universe
Know_Yourself
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Life_without_Death
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
My_Burning_Heart
Savitri
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Golden_Bough
The_Heros_Journey
The_Imitation_of_Christ
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
Toward_the_Future
Writings_In_Bengali_and_Sanskrit

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.06_-_Incarnate_Teachers_and_Incarnation
1.07_-_Incarnate_Human_Gods

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
00.03_-_Upanishadic_Symbolism
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
01.02_-_Natures_Own_Yoga
01.04_-_The_Secret_Knowledge
01.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Spirits_Freedom_and_Greatness
01.06_-_On_Communism
0_1952-08-02
0_1958-11-22
0_1960-10-25
0_1961-03-11
0_1961-04-12
0_1961-06-24
0_1961-06-27
0_1961-07-28
0_1961-08-02
0_1961-11-05
0_1961-11-07
0_1961-12-20
0_1962-06-02
0_1962-06-27
0_1962-06-30
0_1962-07-25
0_1962-09-22
0_1963-06-03
0_1963-08-10
0_1963-10-19
0_1966-11-03
0_1967-04-19
0_1967-10-04
0_1968-01-12
0_1969-01-04
0_1969-05-31
0_1971-03-17
0_1972-01-30
0_1972-02-22
0_1972-03-08
0_1972-08-02
02.01_-_Our_Ideal
02.02_-_Lines_of_the_Descent_of_Consciousness
02.02_-_The_Kingdom_of_Subtle_Matter
02.03_-_An_Aspect_of_Emergent_Evolution
02.05_-_The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life
02.06_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Greater_Life
02.11_-_Hymn_to_Darkness
02.13_-_Rabindranath_and_Sri_Aurobindo
03.03_-_The_House_of_the_Spirit_and_the_New_Creation
03.04_-_The_Vision_and_the_Boon
03.05_-_The_Spiritual_Genius_of_India
03.07_-_Some_Thoughts_on_the_Unthinkable
04.01_-_The_Divine_Man
04.02_-_The_Growth_of_the_Flame
04.05_-_The_Immortal_Nation
04.06_-_To_Be_or_Not_to_Be
04.09_-_To_the_Heights-I_(Mahasarswati)
04.10_-_To_the_Heights-X
04.25_-_To_the_Heights-XXV
05.02_-_Gods_Labour
05.02_-_Satyavan
05.04_-_Of_Beauty_and_Ananda
05.05_-_Man_the_Prototype
05.05_-_Of_Some_Supreme_Mysteries
05.12_-_The_Soul_and_its_Journey
05.14_-_The_Sanctity_of_the_Individual
06.02_-_The_Way_of_Fate_and_the_Problem_of_Pain
06.24_-_When_Imperfection_is_Greater_Than_Perfection
06.31_-_Identification_of_Consciousness
06.36_-_The_Mother_on_Herself
07.03_-_The_Entry_into_the_Inner_Countries
07.04_-_The_Triple_Soul-Forces
07.32_-_The_Yogic_Centres
07.36_-_The_Body_and_the_Psychic
07.37_-_The_Psychic_Being,_Some_Mysteries
07.42_-_The_Nature_and_Destiny_of_Art
09.03_-_The_Psychic_Being
09.05_-_The_Story_of_Love
10.01_-_Cycles_of_Creation
10.02_-_Beyond_Vedanta
10.03_-_The_Debate_of_Love_and_Death
10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real
1.00b_-_Introduction
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_Tara_the_Divine
10.24_-_Savitri
1.02_-_IN_THE_COMPANY_OF_DEVOTEES
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_Priestly_Kings
1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS
1.02_-_The_Development_of_Sri_Aurobindos_Thought
1.02_-_The_Divine_Teacher
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.02_-_The_Stages_of_Initiation
10.36_-_Cling_to_Truth
10.37_-_The_Golden_Bridge
1.03_-_A_Parable
1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP
1.03_-_Fire_in_the_Earth
1.03_-_PERSONALITY,_SANCTITY,_DIVINE_INCARNATION
1.03_-_Supernatural_Aid
1.03_-_The_Gods,_Superior_Beings_and_Adverse_Forces
1.03_-_The_Sephiros
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.04_-_The_Praise
1.04_-_What_Arjuna_Saw_-_the_Dark_Side_of_the_Force
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_Prayer
1.05_-_Qualifications_of_the_Aspirant_and_the_Teacher
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_The_Magical_Control_of_the_Weather
1.05_-_THE_MASTER_AND_KESHAB
1.05_-_Work_and_Teaching
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_Incarnate_Teachers_and_Incarnation
1.06_-_Quieting_the_Vital
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.07_-_A_Song_of_Longing_for_Tara,_the_Infallible
1.07_-_Bridge_across_the_Afterlife
1.07_-_Incarnate_Human_Gods
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.07_-_The_Fire_of_the_New_World
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.07_-_The_Psychic_Center
1.08_-_RELIGION_AND_TEMPERAMENT
1.08_-_The_Change_of_Vision
1.08_-_The_Four_Austerities_and_the_Four_Liberations
1.08_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY_CELEBRATION_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.09_-_The_Greater_Self
1.09_-_The_Secret_Chiefs
1.09_-_The_Worship_of_Trees
11.01_-_The_Eternal_Day__The_Souls_Choice_and_the_Supreme_Consummation
1.10_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES_(II)
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
11.15_-_Sri_Aurobindo
1.11_-_GOOD_AND_EVIL
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_God_Departs
1.12_-_THE_FESTIVAL_AT_PNIHTI
1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.12_-_TIME_AND_ETERNITY
1.13_-_Gnostic_Symbols_of_the_Self
1.13_-_SALVATION,_DELIVERANCE,_ENLIGHTENMENT
1.13_-_THE_MASTER_AND_M.
1.13_-_Under_the_Auspices_of_the_Gods
1.14_-_IMMORTALITY_AND_SURVIVAL
1.14_-_INSTRUCTION_TO_VAISHNAVS_AND_BRHMOS
1.14_-_The_Principle_of_Divine_Works
1.14_-_The_Secret
1.14_-_The_Succesion_to_the_Kingdom_in_Ancient_Latium
1.14_-_The_Victory_Over_Death
1.15_-_In_the_Domain_of_the_Spirit_Beings
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.16_-_Advantages_and_Disadvantages_of_Evocational_Magic
1.16_-_Dianus_and_Diana
1.16_-_PRAYER
1.16_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.17_-_M._AT_DAKSHINEWAR
1.17_-_The_Burden_of_Royalty
1.17_-_The_Divine_Birth_and_Divine_Works
1.19_-_GOD_IS_NOT_MOCKED
1.21_-_A_DAY_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.21_-_The_Spiritual_Aim_and_Life
1.22_-_THE_END_OF_THE_SPECIES
1.23_-_FESTIVAL_AT_SURENDRAS_HOUSE
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.24_-_PUNDIT_SHASHADHAR
1.24_-_The_Killing_of_the_Divine_King
1.25_-_SPIRITUAL_EXERCISES
1.26_-_FESTIVAL_AT_ADHARS_HOUSE
1.27_-_Succession_to_the_Soul
1.28_-_The_Killing_of_the_Tree-Spirit
1.300_-_1.400_Talks
1.37_-_Death_-_Fear_-_Magical_Memory
1.400_-_1.450_Talks
1.439
1.43_-_The_Holy_Guardian_Angel_is_not_the_Higher_Self_but_an_Objective_Individual
1.450_-_1.500_Talks
1.47_-_Lityerses
1.47_-_Reincarnation
15.04_-_The_Mother_Abides
1.52_-_Killing_the_Divine_Animal
1.53_-_The_Propitation_of_Wild_Animals_By_Hunters
1.58_-_Do_Angels_Ever_Cut_Themselves_Shaving?
1.58_-_Human_Scapegoats_in_Classical_Antiquity
1.59_-_Killing_the_God_in_Mexico
1.67_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Custom
17.11_-_A_Prayer
1.75_-_The_AA_and_the_Planet
1929-05-12_-_Beings_of_vital_world_(vampires)_-_Money_power_and_vital_beings_-_Capacity_for_manifestation_of_will_-_Entry_into_vital_world_-_Body,_a_protection_-_Individuality_and_the_vital_world
1929-06-02_-__Divine_love_and_its_manifestation_-_Part_of_the_vital_being_in_Divine_love
1951-03-08_-_Silencing_the_mind_-_changing_the_nature_-_Reincarnation-_choice_-_Psychic,_higher_beings_gods_incarnating_-_Incarnation_of_vital_beings_-_the_Lord_of_Falsehood_-_Hitler_-_Possession_and_madness
1951-03-29_-_The_Great_Vehicle_and_The_Little_Vehicle_-_Choosing_ones_family,_country_-_The_vital_being_distorted_-_atavism_-_Sincerity_-_changing_ones_character
1951-04-12_-_Japan,_its_art,_landscapes,_life,_etc_-_Fairy-lore_of_Japan_-_Culture-_its_spiral_movement_-_Indian_and_European-_the_spiritual_life_-_Art_and_Truth
1953-08-19
1953-09-16
1953-10-14
1953-10-21
1953-10-28
1953-11-25
1953-12-30
1954-06-16_-_Influences,_Divine_and_other_-_Adverse_forces_-_The_four_great_Asuras_-_Aspiration_arranges_circumstances_-_Wanting_only_the_Divine
1954-08-11_-_Division_and_creation_-_The_gods_and_human_formations_-_People_carry_their_desires_around_them
1954-11-03_-_Body_opening_to_the_Divine_-_Concentration_in_the_heart_-_The_army_of_the_Divine_-_The_knot_of_the_ego_-Streng_thening_ones_will
1954-12-22_-_Possession_by_hostile_forces_-_Purity_and_morality_-_Faith_in_the_final_success_-Drawing_back_from_the_path
1955-03-09_-_Psychic_directly_contacted_through_the_physical_-_Transforming_egoistic_movements_-_Work_of_the_psychic_being_-_Contacting_the_psychic_and_the_Divine_-_Experiences_of_different_kinds_-_Attacks_of_adverse_forces
1955-03-23_-_Procedure_for_rejection_and_transformation_-_Learning_by_heart,_true_understanding_-_Vibrations,_movements_of_the_species_-_A_cat_and_a_Russian_peasant_woman_-_A_cat_doing_yoga
1955-05-18_-_The_Problem_of_Woman_-_Men_and_women_-_The_Supreme_Mother,_the_new_creation_-_Gods_and_goddesses_-_A_story_of_Creation,_earth_-_Psychic_being_only_on_earth,_beings_everywhere_-_Going_to_other_worlds_by_occult_means
1955-10-12_-_The_problem_of_transformation_-_Evolution,_man_and_superman_-_Awakening_need_of_a_higher_good_-_Sri_Aurobindo_and_earths_history_-_Setting_foot_on_the_new_path_-_The_true_reality_of_the_universe_-_the_new_race_-_...
1955-11-02_-_The_first_movement_in_Yoga_-_Interiorisation,_finding_ones_soul_-_The_Vedic_Age_-_An_incident_about_Vivekananda_-_The_imaged_language_of_the_Vedas_-_The_Vedic_Rishis,_involutionary_beings_-_Involution_and_evolution
1955-11-16_-_The_significance_of_numbers_-_Numbers,_astrology,_true_knowledge_-_Divines_Love_flowers_for_Kali_puja_-_Desire,_aspiration_and_progress_-_Determining_ones_approach_to_the_Divine_-_Liberation_is_obtained_through_austerities_-_...
1956-01-18_-_Two_sides_of_individual_work_-_Cheerfulness_-_chosen_vessel_of_the_Divine_-_Aspiration,_consciousness,_of_plants,_of_children_-_Being_chosen_by_the_Divine_-_True_hierarchy_-_Perfect_relation_with_the_Divine_-_India_free_in_1915
1956-01-25_-_The_divine_way_of_life_-_Divine,_Overmind,_Supermind_-_Material_body__for_discovery_of_the_Divine_-_Five_psychological_perfections
1956-06-27_-_Birth,_entry_of_soul_into_body_-_Formation_of_the_supramental_world_-_Aspiration_for_progress_-_Bad_thoughts_-_Cerebral_filter_-_Progress_and_resistance
1956-07-04_-_Aspiration_when_one_sees_a_shooting_star_-_Preparing_the_bodyn_making_it_understand_-_Getting_rid_of_pain_and_suffering_-_Psychic_light
1956-07-18_-_Unlived_dreams_-_Radha-consciousness_-_Separation_and_identification_-_Ananda_of_identity_and_Ananda_of_union_-_Sincerity,_meditation_and_prayer_-_Enemies_of_the_Divine_-_The_universe_is_progressive
1956-09-26_-_Soul_of_desire_-_Openness,_harmony_with_Nature_-_Communion_with_divine_Presence_-_Individuality,_difficulties,_soul_of_desire_-_personal_contact_with_the_Mother_-_Inner_receptivity_-_Bad_thoughts_before_the_Mother
1956-10-03_-_The_Mothers_different_ways_of_speaking_-_new_manifestation_-_new_element,_possibilities_-_child_prodigies_-_Laws_of_Nature,_supramental_-_Logic_of_the_unforeseen_-_Creative_writers,_hands_of_musicians_-_Prodigious_children,_men
1956-10-24_-_Taking_a_new_body_-_Different_cases_of_incarnation_-_Departure_of_soul_from_body
1957-07-10_-_A_new_world_is_born_-_Overmind_creation_dissolved
1957-10-02_-_The_Mind_of_Light_-_Statues_of_the_Buddha_-_Burden_of_the_past
1958_11_28
1970_01_17
1f.lovecraft_-_In_the_Vault
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Whisperer_in_Darkness
1.jda_-_When_he_quickens_all_things_(from_The_Gitagovinda)
1.jt_-_Love-_infusing_with_light_all_who_share_Your_splendor_(from_In_Praise_of_Divine_Love)
1.mah_-_I_am_the_One_Whom_I_Love
1.mah_-_I_am_the_One_whom_I_love
1.pbs_-_Alastor_-_or,_the_Spirit_of_Solitude
1.pbs_-_Epipsychidion
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_VII.
1.rmpsd_-_Kulakundalini,_Goddess_Full_of_Brahman,_Tara
1.rmpsd_-_Who_is_that_Syama_woman
1.rwe_-_Threnody
1.whitman_-_City_Of_Ships
1.whitman_-_Salut_Au_Monde
20.01_-_Charyapada_-_Old_Bengali_Mystic_Poems
20.02_-_The_Golden_Journey
2.01_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE
2.01_-_The_Temple
2.01_-_The_Two_Natures
2.02_-_Meeting_With_the_Goddess
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS
2.05_-_VISIT_TO_THE_SINTHI_BRAMO_SAMAJ
2.08_-_On_Non-Violence
2.0_-_Reincarnation_and_Karma
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.10_-_THE_MASTER_AND_NARENDRA
2.11_-_The_Guru
2.11_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_IN_CALCUTTA
2.12_-_THE_MASTERS_REMINISCENCES
2.13_-_THE_MASTER_AT_THE_HOUSES_OF_BALARM_AND_GIRISH
2.14_-_AT_RAMS_HOUSE
2.15_-_On_the_Gods_and_Asuras
2.16_-_The_15th_of_August
2.16_-_VISIT_TO_NANDA_BOSES_HOUSE
2.1.7.07_-_On_the_Verse_and_Structure_of_the_Poem
2.17_-_THE_MASTER_ON_HIMSELF_AND_HIS_EXPERIENCES
2.18_-_SRI_RAMAKRISHNA_AT_SYAMPUKUR
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.19_-_THE_MASTER_AND_DR._SARKAR
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness
2.21_-_1940
23.09_-_Observations_I
30.01_-_World-Literature
30.17_-_Rabindranath,_Traveller_of_the_Infinite
3.01_-_Forms_of_Rebirth
3.02_-_SOL
3.04_-_The_Spirit_in_Spirit-Land_after_Death
3.05_-_The_Physical_World_and_its_Connection_with_the_Soul_and_Spirit-Lands
3.07_-_The_Formula_of_the_Holy_Grail
31.03_-_The_Trinity_of_Bengal
31.05_-_Vivekananda
3.11_-_Of_Our_Lady_Babalon
3.11_-_Spells
3.14_-_Of_the_Consecrations
3.16.1_-_Of_the_Oath
3.2.03_-_Conservation_and_Progress
3.2.06_-_The_Adwaita_of_Shankaracharya
32.12_-_The_Evolutionary_Imperative
33.17_-_Two_Great_Wars
3-5_Full_Circle
3.7.1.01_-_Rebirth
3.7.1.02_-_The_Reincarnating_Soul
38.03_-_Mute
38.05_-_Living_Matter
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_Autobiographical_Evidence
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.02_-_GOLD_AND_SPIRIT
4.02_-_Humanity_in_Progress
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.04_-_In_the_Total_Christ
4.2.04_-_Epiphany
4.2_-_Karma
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.03_-_ADAM_AS_THE_FIRST_ADEPT
5.1.01.2_-_The_Book_of_the_Statesman
5.1.01.5_-_The_Book_of_Achilles
5.1.03_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_Hostile_Beings
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
6.10_-_THE_SELF_AND_THE_BOUNDS_OF_KNOWLEDGE
7.2.06_-_Rose_of_God
7.5.29_-_The_Universal_Incarnation
7_-_Yoga_of_Sri_Aurobindo
A_God's_Labour
Appendix_4_-_Priest_Spells
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BOOK_XVIII._-_A_parallel_history_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_from_the_time_of_Abraham_to_the_end_of_the_world
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Concerning_Virtue.
ENNEAD_03.09_-_Fragments_About_the_Soul,_the_Intelligence,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.08_-_Of_the_Descent_of_the_Soul_Into_the_Body.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
Guru_Granth_Sahib_first_part
I._THE_ATTRACTIVE_POWER_OF_GOD
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
LUX.05_-_AUGOEIDES
LUX.07_-_ENCHANTMENT
r1912_02_08
r1914_04_16
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Talks_125-150
Talks_151-175
Talks_600-652
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Egg
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Riddle_of_this_World

PRIMARY CLASS

website
SIMILAR TITLES
incarnate
incarnateword.in

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

incarnate ::: adj. 1. Embodied in flesh; given a bodily, esp. a human, form. 2. Personified or typified, as a quality or idea. v. 3. Invested with bodily nature and form. 4. To realize in action or fact; actualize. incarnated, incarnating.

incarnate ::: a. --> Not in the flesh; spiritual.
Invested with flesh; embodied in a human nature and form; united with, or having, a human body.
Flesh-colored; rosy; red. ::: v. t. --> To clothe with flesh; to embody in flesh; to invest,


incarnated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Incarnate

incarnate dual Power

incarnate ::: the One embodied in flesh. Incarnate"s.

Incarnate: Living in a physical body.


TERMS ANYWHERE

“According to the Occult teachings, however, Siddhas are the Nirmanakayas or the ‘spirits’ (in the sense of an individual, or conscious spirit) of great sages from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily incarnate in mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its upward progress. Hence their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers” (SD 2:636n). In this sense siddhas may be applied to the highest class of manasaputras who incarnated in the first but best prepared human protoplasts in the early part of the third root-race in order to bring mind to nascent mankind.

Agnishvatta(s) ::: (Sanskrit) ::: A compound of two words: agni, "fire"; shvatta, "tasted" or "sweetened," from svad, verb-rootmeaning "to taste" or "to sweeten." Therefore, literally one who has been delighted or sweetened by fire.A class of pitris: our solar ancestors as contrasted with the barhishads, our lunar ancestors.The kumaras, agnishvattas, and manasaputras are three groups or aspects of the same beings: thekumaras represent the aspect of original spiritual purity untouched by gross elements of matter. Theagnishvattas represent the aspect of their connection with the sun or solar spiritual fire. Having tasted orbeen "sweetened" by the spiritual fire -- the fire of intellectuality and spirituality -- they have beenpurified thereby. The manasaputras represent the aspect of intellectuality -- the functions of higherintellect.The agnishvattas and manasaputras are two names for the same class or host of beings, and set forth orsignify or represent two different aspects or activities of this one class of beings. Thus, for instance, aman may be said to be a kumara in his spiritual parts, an agnishvatta in his buddhic-manasic parts, and amanasaputra in his purely manasic aspect. Other beings could be called kumaras in their highest aspects,as for instance the beasts, but they are not imbodied agnishvattas or manasaputras.The agnishvattas are the solar spiritual-intellectual parts of us, and therefore are our inner teachers. Inpreceding manvantaras, they had completed their evolution in the realms of physical matter, and whenthe evolution of lower beings had brought these latter to the proper state, the agnishvattas came to therescue of these who had only the physical "creative fire," thus inspiring and enlightening these lowerlunar pitris with spiritual and intellectual energies or "fires."When this earth's planetary chain shall have reached the end of its seventh round, we, as then havingcompleted the evolutionary course for this planetary chain, will leave this planetary chain asdhyan-chohans, agnishvattas; but the others now trailing along behind us -- the present beasts -- will bethe lunar pitris of the next planetary chain to come.While it is correct to say that these three names appertain to the same class of beings, nevertheless eachname has its own significance in the occult teaching, which is why the three names are used with threedistinct meanings. Imagine an unconscious god-spark beginning its evolution in any one solar ormaha-manvantara. We may call it a kumara, a being of original spiritual purity, but with a destinythrough karmic evolution connected with the realms of matter.At the other end of the line, at the consummation of the evolution in this maha-manvantara, when theevolving entity has become a fully self-conscious god or divinity, its proper appellation then isagnishvatta, for it has been "sweetened" or purified by means of the working through it of the spiritualfires inherent in itself.Now then, when such an agnishvatta assumes the role of a bringer of mind or of intellectual light to alunar pitri which it overshadows and in which a ray from it incarnates, it then, although in its own realman agnishvatta, functions as a manasaputra or child of mind or mahat. A brief analysis of the compoundelements of these three names may be useful.Kumara is from ku meaning "with difficulty" and mara meaning "mortal." The significance of the wordtherefore can be paraphrased as "mortal with difficulty," and the meaning usually given to it by Sanskritscholars as "easily dying" is wholly exoteric and amusing, and doubtless arose from the fact that kumarais a word frequently used for child or boy, everybody knowing that young children "die easily." The ideatherefore is that purely spiritual beings, although ultimately destined by evolution to pass through therealms of matter, become mortal, i.e., material, only with difficulty.Agnishvatta has the meaning stated above, "delighted" or "pleased" or "sweetened," i.e., "purified" byfire -- which we may render in two ways: either as the fire of suffering and pain in material existenceproducing great fiber and strength of character, i.e., spirituality; or, perhaps still better from thestandpoint of occultism, as signifying an entity or entities who have become one in essence throughevolution with the aethery fire of spirit.Manasaputra is a compound of two words: manasa, "mental" or "intellectual," from the word manas,"mind," and putra, "son" or "child," therefore a child of the cosmic mind -- a "mind-born son" as H. P.Blavatsky phrases it. (See also Pitris, Lunar Pitris)

  “a human being, has reached the state where his ego becomes conscious, fully so, of its inner divinity, becomes clothed with the buddhic ray; where, so to say, the personal man has put on the garments of inner immortality in actuality, on this earth, here and now — that man is a Bodhisattva. His higher principles have nearly reached Nirvana. When they do so finally, such a man is a Buddha, a human Buddha, a Manushya-Buddha. Obviously, if such a Bodhisattva were to reincarnate, in the next incarnation or in a very few future incarnations thereafter, he would be a Manushya-Buddha. A Buddha, in the esoteric teaching, is one whose higher principles can learn nothing more. They have reached Nirvana and remain there; but the spiritually awakened personal man, the Bodhisattva, the person made semi-divine to use popular language, instead of choosing his reward in the Nirvana of a less degree, remains on earth out of pity and compassion for inferior beings, and becomes what is called a Nirmanakaya . . . a Bodhisattva is the representative on earth of a Dhyani-Buddha or Celestial Buddha — in other words one who has become an incarnation or expression of his own Divine Monad” (OG 19).

Ajita (Sanskrit) Ajita [from a not + the verbal root ji to conquer, triumph] The invisible, unsurpassed; in the Vayu-Purana, the highest of twelve gods, named jayas, who were created by Brahma to aid him at the beginning of the manvantara. But because they neglected his directives, Brahma “cursed” them to be born in each succeeding manvantara until the seventh, the Vaivasvata-manvantara (cf VP 1:15; n2, p. 26). These twelve jayas are the Hindu equivalent of the twelve great gods of Greco-Roman mythology. Because of their all-permeant character, on a lower scale these divinities are identical with the manasa, the jnana-devas, the rudras, and other classes of manifested deities. In these lower manifestations of their functions, they are identical with those dhyani-chohanic groups which “refuse to incarnate,” spoken of in The Secret Doctrine.

Also the name of a legendary muni and physician, born in Panchanada, Kashmir, said to have been the physician of Indo-Scythian King Kanishka (1st or 2nd century). Once Sesha, the King of the Serpents, visiting the earth, found only sickness and suffering everywhere. Being the recipient from a divine source of the Ayur Veda and having knowledge of all cures, he became filled with pity and determined to incarnate as the son of a muni in order to alleviate the ills of mankind. Named Charaka, as he had come to the earth as a wanderer, he then composed a new work on medicine based on the older works of Agnivesa. He is commonly accepted as an avatara of the Serpent Sesha, “an embodiment of divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the ‘Serpent’ race, is synonymous with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the pralayas. Ananta is the ‘endless’ and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha” (TG 78).

Although Angra-Mainyu and his host of evil forces, personalized in the Avesta as daevas, seem to have their way in the world, the day will come when they shall be overcome by Ahura-Mazda — when the shining one shall send his Holy Word to incarnate in Sosiosh (Saoshyant), then shall he conquer Angra-Mainyu, bringing about the regeneration of the world. See also Ahriman; Ahura; Ahura-Mazda.

Amal: “This strikes me as a reference by Sri Aurobindo to himself and the Mother. The Mother may not have arrived in Pondicherry when this line was written but Sri Aurobindo must have known that the Divine Shakti incarnate was needed to be on earth for the fullness of his work.”

Amanasa (Sanskrit) Amānasa [from a not + mānasa from manas mind from the verbal root man to think, perceive, reflect upon] Without mind, want of perception or intellect; applied to the early races of humanity before the manasaputras (sons of mind) had incarnated in them and effected the enlightening of manas (mind).

PLANETARY HIERARCHY The individuals of the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms constitute the hierarchy of our planet, which has acquired atomic consciousness in the planetary worlds 46 and 45 as well as 44 and 43.

The hierarchy is divided into seven departments, each of which works with its specialized energy that functions in accordance with the systemic law of periodicity.

The hierarchy supervises evolution in the lower kingdoms, taking an especial interest in those at the stage of humanity who with onepointed purpose seek to acquire the twelve essential qualities in order the better to serve life. K 1.38.1ff

About 21 million years ago, the planetary government transferred to our planet individuals who were given the special mission of supervising the development of human consciousness.
Members of this planetary hierarchy incarnated in mankind. (K 3.1.4)


Apap or Apep (Egyptian) Āpep Apophis (Greek) The serpent of evil, generally denoting matter in its lower reaches of differentiation from spirit; the slayer of every soul too loosely linked to its immortal spirit. Typhon, having slain Osiris, incarnates in Apap and seeks to kill Horus (the personal ego), but is slain by Horus through the power of Horus’ father Osiris, the buddhic principle. It is also the serpent which is slain by the sun god Ra. The combat is another aspect of the myth of the battle between Horus and Set, these deities representing cosmic and physical light and cosmic and physical darkness respectively. “Apap is called ‘the devourer of the Souls,’ and truly, since Apap symbolizes the animal body, as matter left soulless and to itself. Osiris, being, like all the other Solar gods, a type of the Higher Ego (Christos), Horus (his son) is the lower Manas or the personal Ego. On many a monument one can see Horus, helped by a number of dog-headed gods armed with crosses and spears, killing Apap” (TG 26).

Apis (Greek) Hap (Egyptian) Ḥap. The sacred bull of Memphis into which Osiris was thought to incarnate. Classical Greek authors all mention the veneration with which the Egyptians regarded the bull, Manetho stating that it was under Ka-kau (2nd dynasty) that Apis was appointed a god. The Egyptians believed that after the death of a sacred animal, on reaching 28 years (the age Osiris was killed by Typhon), the soul of Apis joined Osiris, forming the dual god Asar-Hapi (Osiris-Apis), which the Greeks in the Ptolemaic period renamed Serapis. “As in the exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites the soul of every defunct person — from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull Apis — became an Osiris, was Osirified . . .” (SD 1:135).

Ascension Warrior, the: (metaplot) Mysterious figure who claimed to have been a reincarnated member of the First Cabal – its Great Betrayer. Having survived Gilgul, the Warrior declared vendettas against both the Traditions and Technocracy, leading to assaults on several Horizon Realms and Constructs as well as Horizon itself. Though eventually declared an imposter, this Ascension Warrior caused catastrophic setbacks for the Traditions as a whole. (See Doissetep, Fragile Path, Horizon, Porthos.)

Astral light: In occult terminology, the name of a universal living element which is described as an element and a power at the same time and containing the character of all things. It is said to be the storehouse of memory for the Macrocosm, the contents of which may be reimbodied and reincarnated—and at the same time the storehouse of the memory of man’s Microcosm, into which he delves to recollect past happenings. While it exists uniformly all throughout the universe its density and activity are increased around certain objects, in particular around the human brain and spinal cord; it is the medium through which thought is transmitted, and its presence around man’s nerve cells and conduits enables human beings to perceive impressions on the astral aura and thus to “read by the astral light”—the akashic reading, scientifically called clairvoyance.

ASTROLOGY, ESOTERIC The knowledge of the relations of our solar system and our planet to other solar systems, of the exchange of interstellar and interplanetary energies, once was one of the most important sciences in mankind's possession. The people that got farthest in this respect were the Chaldeans of some 30 000 years ago. Fortunately, we can look forward to the time when the individuals who acquired this knowledge in Chaldea will incarnate again and once more present mankind with the esoteric &

Athena (Greek) Daughter of Metis (wisdom, wise counsel) and Zeus, said to have sprung fully-formed from her father’s head; with Zeus and Apollo one of a divine triad. Famed for wise counsel both in peace and war, Athena was the strategist, as Homer portrays her in the Iliad. As patron deity of Athens, she was the genius of statesmanship and civic policy. Certain archaic monuments show Athena assisting Prometheus (the intellectual fire-bringer) in shaping the first human body from the plastic stuff of earth. It is equally significant that she was connected with Apollo, the god of the seers and the sun personified, in producing climatic changes due to the shifting of the poles. Athena is to be found, variously named, in every theogony, as one of the kabeiria, those mighty beings “of both sexes, as also terrestrial, celestial and kosmic,” who when incarnated as initiate-teachers or kings, “were also, in the beginning of times, the rulers of mankind,” giving “the first impulse to civilizations” and directing “the mind with which they had endued men to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences” (SD 2:363-4).

At the end of the third round, there were forerunning monads who were already human in nature and characteristic, and who were leading the way towards the true humanity of the fourth round, and therefore were the guides of the less progressed human monads when it became the latter’s turn to incarnate during the fourth round. These advance-guard monads are sometimes termed the Sons of Yoga. As intellectual and moral responsibility appears in the evolving human monads only when mind enters the picture — which occurred for the majority of the human monads only during the third root-race of the fourth round — during the third round few monads had reached the stage of true intellectual and moral responsibility; and during the second round even these forerunners were themselves unfolding the powers and responsibilities of mind and of choice. During the third round: “He had now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture . . . and he becomes a more rational being — through still more an ape than a Deva man” (ML 87-8) — that is, manas (mind) was not yet functioning. Thus while the third-round forerunners may be considered truly human, the great bulk of the human kingdom was still but in the elemental stages of intellectual and moral responsibility. Mind was only just beginning to show itself, and hence the humans were rather cunning than intellectual, instinctual rather than spiritual.

.Bali2 ::: a daitya or Titan subdued by Vis.n.u in his fifth avatara, at the first stage of fully human evolution, when he incarnated in "man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence"; Bali is associated in the Record of Yoga with obstinacy of the will (hat.ha) as a quality needed in the complete psychological state.

BARBARISM, STAGE OF The first or lowest of man&

Barhishad (Sanskrit) Barhiṣad [from barhiṣ sacred kusa grass, fire + the verbal root sad to sit] Mystically, those who attend to or who are engrossed in domestic affairs, material or merely pragmatical concerns; those pitris (fathers, ancestors) who evolved the human astral-physical form. These lunar ancestors — seven or ten classes — evolved forth their astral bodies or chhayas (shadows), thus forming the first astral-physical races of humanity in which the higher classes of pitris, the agnishvattas, incarnated, thus making out of a relatively intellectually senseless mankind, true thinking human beings.

BCPL ::: (language) (Basic CPL) A British systems language developed by Richards in 1969 and descended from CPL (Combined Programming Language). BCPL is command' and functions: 'Let foo(bar) = expression'. 'Valof $(..Resultis..$)' causes a compound command to produce a value. Parameters are call-by-value.Program segments communicate via the global vector where system and user variables are stored in fixed numerical locations in a single array.The first BCPL compiler was written in AED. BCPL was used to implement the TRIPOS operating system, which was subsequently reincarnated as AmigaDOS.[BCPL - The Language and its Compiler, Martin Richards & Colin Whitby-Stevens, Cambridge U Press 1979].See OCODE, INTCODE.Oxford BCPL differed slightly: Test-Ifso-Ifnot, and section brackets in place of $( $).The original INTCODE interpreter for BCPL is available for Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS .A BCPL compiler bootstrap kit with an INTCODE interpreter in C was written by Ken Yap . (1995-03-26)

BCPL "language" (Basic CPL) A British systems language developed by Richards in 1969 and descended from {CPL} (Combined Programming Language). BCPL is low-level, typeless and block-structured, and provides only one-dimensional {arrays}. Case is not significant, but conventionally reserved words begin with a capital. Flow control constructs include: If-Then, Test-Then-Else, Unless-Do, While-Do, Until-Do, Repeat, Repeatwhile, Repeatuntil, For-to-By-Do, Loop, Break and Switchon-Into-Case-Default-Endcase. BCPL has conditional expressions, pointers, and manifest constants. It has both procedures: 'Let foo(bar) Be command' and functions: 'Let foo(bar) = expression'. 'Valof $(..Resultis..$)' causes a compound command to produce a value. Parameters are {call-by-value}. Program segments communicate via the global vector where system and user variables are stored in fixed numerical locations in a single array. The first BCPL {compiler} was written in {AED}. BCPL was used to implement the {TRIPOS} {operating system}, which was subsequently reincarnated as {AmigaDOS}. ["BCPL - The Language and its Compiler", Martin Richards & Colin Whitby-Stevens, Cambridge U Press 1979]. See {OCODE}, {INTCODE}. Oxford BCPL differed slightly: Test-Ifso-Ifnot, and section brackets in place of $( $). The original {INTCODE} {interpreter} for BCPL is available for {Amiga}, {Unix}, {MS-DOS} {(ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/amiga/programming/languages/BCPL/)}. A BCPL compiler {bootstrap} kit with an {INTCODE} {interpreter} in {C} was written by Ken Yap "ken@syd.dit.csiro.au". (1995-03-26)

incarnate ::: adj. 1. Embodied in flesh; given a bodily, esp. a human, form. 2. Personified or typified, as a quality or idea. v. 3. Invested with bodily nature and form. 4. To realize in action or fact; actualize. incarnated, incarnating.

incarnate ::: a. --> Not in the flesh; spiritual.
Invested with flesh; embodied in a human nature and form; united with, or having, a human body.
Flesh-colored; rosy; red. ::: v. t. --> To clothe with flesh; to embody in flesh; to invest,


incarnated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Incarnate

incarnate dual Power

incarnate ::: the One embodied in flesh. Incarnate"s.

Black Hats. (C. heimao 黑帽). A popular designation in both European languages and Chinese for the KARMA PA lineage of incarnate lamas in the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD subsect of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Because of his black crown, the Karma pa is sometimes called the "black hat" (zhwa nag) lama. In the nineteenth century, a Western misunderstanding of this term led to the presumption that there was a "Black Hat" sect of Tibetan Buddhism, a mistake that persists in some accounts of Tibetan Buddhism. The Western and Chinese division of major Tibetan sects into YELLOW HATS, RED HATS, and Black Hats has no corollary in Tibetan Buddhism and should be avoided.

bla ma. (lama). A Tibetan term of uncertain derivation, used to translate the Sanskrit word GURU, or "teacher." According to traditional paranomastic glosses, it means "none higher" and "high mother." Outside of Tibet, it is sometimes assumed that any Tibetan monk is a lama, but this is not the case. This misconception is reflected in the Chinese term lama jiao, or "teachings of the lama," the source of the European misnomer for Tibetan Buddhism, "Lamaism." Within Tibetan Buddhism, the term may be applied to any religious teacher, especially one's own teacher, regardless of whether the teacher is a monk or a layperson. In common Tibetan parlance, bla ma usually denotes an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU).

Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan. (Losang Chokyi Gyaltsen) (1570-1662). A Tibetan Buddhist scholar and incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU), revered as the first or the fourth PAn CHEN LAMA; he was the first to receive the title. He entered BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery at age seventeen and in 1601 ascended the throne as the monastery's abbot. He also later served as abbot of 'BRAS SPUNGS and SE RA. He lived during a formative period in Tibetan history that saw the rise to power of the DALAI LAMA institution and the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government, and the demise of the political power of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect and their Gtsang patrons. Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan was instrumental in forging alliances between the emerging DGE LUGS sect and powerful families associated with the RNYING MA sect. He discovered and served as tutor to the fifth Dalai Lama, NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, who recognized Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan's achievements and conferred on him the title pandita chen po, or "great scholar," from which the name Pan chen Lama is derived. Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtsan is traditionally viewed as the fourth such master, with the first three prelates recognized posthumously as the previous incarnations, beginning with the Dge lugs founder TSONG KHA PA's disciple MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG. For this reason, Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan is also sometimes considered the fourth Pan chen Lama.

Bodhisattva(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word: literally "he whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhi)." Asexplained exoterically, a bodhisattva means one who in another incarnation or in a few more incarnationswill become a buddha. A bodhisattva from the standpoint of the occult teachings is more than that. Whena man, a human being, has reached the state where his ego becomes conscious, fully so, of its innerdivinity, becomes clothed with the buddhic ray -- where, so to say, the personal man has put on thegarments of inner immortality in actuality, on this earth, here and now -- that man is a bodhisattva. Hishigher principles have nearly reached nirvana. When they do so finally, such a man is a buddha, a humanbuddha, a manushya-buddha. Obviously, if such a bodhisattva were to reincarnate, in the next incarnationor in a very few future incarnations thereafter, he would be a manushya-buddha. A buddha, in theesoteric teaching, is one whose higher principles can learn nothing more. They have reached nirvana andremain there; but the spiritually awakened personal man, the bodhisattva, the person made semi-divine touse popular language, instead of choosing his reward in the nirvana of a less degree, remains on earth outof pity and compassion for inferior beings, and becomes what is called a nirmanakaya. In a very mysticalpart of the esoteric philosophy, a bodhisattva is the representative on earth of a dhyani-buddha orcelestial buddha -- in other words, one who has become an incarnation or expression of his own divinemonad.

'Bri gung bka' brgyud. (Drigung Kagyü). A subsect of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism, counted among the "four major and eight minor Bka' brgyud subsects" (BKA' BRGYUD CHE BZHI CHUNG BRGYAD). The lineage stems from the twelfth-century meditation master 'JIG RTEN GSUM MGON, who founded the sects seat at 'BRI GUNG MTHIL monastery in 1179, from which the lineage derives its name. Although the 'Bri gung bka' brgyud wielded political power at times during the thirteenth century, members of the tradition are primarily renowned as great meditators. The sect established prominent retreat centers around Mount KAILASA in western Tibet and LA PHYI in the south. It has remained an active Bka' brgyud subsect under the guidance of its principal reincarnate teachers, the Che tshang and Chung tshang lamas. The former has established an exile seat in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh in northern India, with numerous affiliated centers in India, Nepal, and the West, while the latter remains in Tibet.

'Brug chen incarnations. (Drukchen). An important "incarnate lama" (SPRUL SKU) lineage of Tibetan masters, esteemed as prominent teachers of the 'BRUG PA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The recognized line began in the fifteenth century, although the first embodiment is held to be GTSANG PA RGYA RAS YE SHES RDO RJE who lived several centuries earlier. Perhaps most famous among the 'Brug chen incarnations was the fourth, PADMA DKAR PO, an exceptional scholar and prolific author and historian. The current 'Brug chen incarnation established a residence in India following the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The lineage includes:

Bull, Bull Worship The bull has been worshiped as a symbol of generative creation in its celestial or cosmic aspect — in contrast with the terrestrial and human aspect represented by the ram and sometimes the lamb. Generally the bull or cow was used as a symbol of the moon cosmogonically, although occasionally associated with solar deities. Sometimes a white bull is represented, as seen in the Egyptian Apis, who legendarily is Osiris “incarnate” in that form; with the Hindus the white bull Nandi was associated with Siva. However, the significance of the ram is terrestrial, usually phallic, and lunar in the productive sense. Thus the bull represents cosmic evolutionary power, while the ram symbolizes the terrestrial generative powers. The sacred bulls did not necessarily represent male animals, but were mystically considered to be hermaphrodite or even sexless: thus the Egyptian bull, Apis, was depicted as being hermaphrodite, which showed his cosmic character.

Bur khan—in Manicheanism, an incarnate

CAUSAL ENVELOPE The monad&

Cerinthus (flourished 1st century) Gnostic, probably Syrian, credited with Egyptian training by Hippolytus, he taught that the world was made, not by the Supreme but by angels, “one of whom gave law to the Jews, which was not perfect, and that only a particular gospel of Matthew was of use in the New Testament” (BdeZ in BCW 14:516). He taught that “the world and Jehovah having fallen off from virtue and primitive dignity, the Supreme permitted one of his glorious Aeons, whose name was the ‘Anointed’ (Christ) to incarnate in the man Jesus” (BCW 14:372n) who was born a son of Joseph and Mary like any other mortal until Christos descended upon him, left him before his death, and returned personating him after his death (BCW 13:55; SD 2:508).

Chos kyi 'byung gnas. (Chokyi Jungne) (1700-1774). Tibetan Buddhist scholar recognized as the eighth TAI SI TU incarnation, remembered for his wide learning and his editorial work on the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He traveled extensively throughout his life, maintaining strong relationships with the ruling elite of eastern Tibet and the Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley. Born in the eastern Tibetan region of SDE DGE, Chos kyi 'byung gnas was recognized as a reincarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) by the eighth ZHWA DMAR, from whom he received his first vows. He would go on to study with KAḤ THOG Rigs 'dzin Tshe dbang nor bu (1698-1755), from whom he learned about GZHAN STONG ("other emptiness"). At the age of twenty-one, he accompanied several important Bka' brgyud hierarchs, the Zhwa dmar and the twelfth KARMA PA, to Kathmandu, a journey that was to have a profound impact on the young Si tu's life. He returned to eastern Tibet in 1724, where he was received favorably by the king of Sde dge, Bstan pa tshe ring (Tenpa Tsering, 1678-1738). Under the latter's patronage, Chos kyi 'byung gnas founded DPAL SPUNGS monastery in 1727, which became the new seat for the Si tu lineage (they are sometimes called the Dpal spungs si tu). Between the years 1731 and 1733, he undertook the monumental task of editing and correcting a new redaction of the BKA' 'GYUR section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, to be published at the printing house of Sde dge. Although in his day Tibetan knowledge of Indian linguistic traditions had waned, Chos kyi 'byung gnas devoted much of his later life to the study of Sanskrit grammar and literature, which he had first studied with Newar panditas during his time in Kathmandu. He sought out new Sanskrit manuscripts in order to establish more precise translations of Sanskrit works already translated in the Tibetan canon; he is esteemed in Tibet for his knowledge of Sanskrit grammar. In addition to his prolific scholarly work, Chos kyi 'byung gnas was an accomplished painter as well as a gifted physician, much sought after by the aristocracy of eastern Tibet. In 1748, he visited Nepal once again, where he translated the SvayambhupurAna, the legends concerning the SVAYAMBHu STuPA, into Tibetan. He was received amicably by the rulers JayaprakAsamalla (1736-1768) of Kathmandu, Ranajitamalla (1722-1769) of what is now Bhaktapur, and PṛthvīnArAyana sAha, who would unify the Kathmandu Valley under Gorkhali rule several decades later. Chos kyi 'byung gnas' collected writings cover a vast range of subjects including lengthy and detailed diaries and an important history of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect coauthored by his disciple Be lo Tshe dbang kun khyab (Belo Tsewang Kunkyap, b. 1718). He is retrospectively identified as an originator of what would become known as Khams RIS MED movement, which gained momentum in early nineteenth century Sde dge.

Chrestes, Chrestos, Chrestians (Greek) chrestos. Applied by the Greeks as a title of respect equivalent to “the worthy.” Chrestes meant an interpreter of oracles. In the language of the Mysteries, a chrestos was a candidate or neophyte, and a christos (anointed) was an initiate. Christ is a mystical expression for the human inner god, while chrest is the good but as yet unregenerated nature; using here the language of the Mysteries, Christ may be likened to Dionysos, Osiris, or Krishna, who will deliver the suffering Chrest, mankind or Prometheus, in its trial. It is Christos that incarnates in Chrestos. These usages were taken over by the Gnostic schools out of which Christianity largely sprang, and there is abundant evidence to be found among the early Christian writers and the Gnostics themselves that the adherents originally called themselves Chrestians.

Chyuta (Sanskrit) Cyuta [from the verbal root cyu to move to and fro, fall, fade] The fallen; “the Dhyanis who incarnate in the human forms of the Third Root-Race and endow them with intellect (Manas) are called the chyuta, for they fall into generation” (SD 2:47n). See also ACHYUTA

CLAN Group of monads that are at the same stage of development and incarnate together. (K 1.34.10, 5.5.1)

Crucifixion The Christian doctrine of the crucifixion contains at least three elements: 1) the ancient method of execution, in use among the Romans, of fastening the victim to a tree, post, or cross; 2) the rite used in initiation; and 3) the emblem of the god in man becoming incarnate. In the initiation ceremony, which not only represented but in ancient times was the culminating event in a person’s regeneration, the candidate was laid bound upon a cruciform couch, which symbolized the matter to which his consciousness is bound, while the ego-soul was liberated to experience other realms of being.

Curetes (Greek) Kouretes. The priests in the Mysteries of Rhea Cybele in Crete, and in Classical mythology daemons or demigods to whom Cybele entrusted the infant Zeus. Identified with the kabiri, who belong to the septenary creative groups of dhyan-chohans which incarnated in the elect of the third and fourth root-races — Zeus is said to be the god of the fourth race (SD 2:360, 766, 776).

Dactyli, Dactyls (Greek) [from daktylos finger] Fingers; in Greek mythology, the smith said to have first discovered and worked copper and iron, and to have introduced music and rhythm into Greece. Also a name for the Phrygian Hierophants of Rhea Cybele, said to be magicians, exorcists, and healers. Five or ten in number, as the number of the fingers, they have been identified with the Corybantes — priests of Atys, the youth beloved by Cybele — with the Curetes, Telchines, and others, all of which have also been connected with the kabiri. But the kabiri were the manus, rishis, and dhyani-chohans who incarnated in the elect of the third root-race and earliest part of the fourth root-race. Since the structure of the higher planes is reflected in the lower, all these names can also stand for terrestrial powers and their hierophants, according to the rites peculiar to various countries. They have been connected with the Pelasgian masonry (SD 2:345); but, like the cyclopes they were masons in more senses than one.

Dakini (Sanskrit) Ḍākinī Female demons, vampires, and blood-drinkers, feeding on human flesh, attendant upon Kali, the consort of Siva; a type of evil elemental. Outside of mythologic explanations, the dakinis may be said to be one type of advanced elemental beings. “But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were hitherto semi-divine Beings, self-imprisoned in bodies which were human only in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto themselves wives who were entirely human and fair to look at, but in whom lower, more material, though sidereal, beings had incarnated. These beings in female forms (Lilith is the prototype of these in the Jewish traditions) are called in the esoteric accounts ‘Khado’ (Dakini, in Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the chief of these Liliths, Sangye Khado (Buddha Dakini, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of ‘walking in the air,’ and the greatest kindness to mortals; but no mind — only animal instinct” (SD 2:284-5). See also LILITH

Dalai Lama. (T. DA la'i bla ma). An honorific title given to members of a prominent Tibetan incarnation (SPRUL SKU) lineage belonging to the DGE LUGS sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lamas are traditionally revered as earthly manifestations of AVALOKITEsVARA, the BODHISATTVA of compassion and protector of Tibet. Although the term has become widely known outside the region, Tibetans most frequently refer to the Dalai Lama as Rgyal ba rin po che (Gyalwa Rinpoche) "Precious Conqueror," Sku mdun (Kundun) "The Presence," or Yid bzhin nor bu (Yishin Norbu) "Wish-fulfilling Gem." The name originated during the sixteenth century when ALTAN KHAN, ruler of the Tümed Mongols, bestowed the title on the Dge lugs teacher BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO by translating the prelate's name rgya mtsho ("ocean") into Mongolian as dalai. The name thus approximately means "ocean teacher." It is not the case, as is often reported, that the Dalai Lamas are so named because their wisdom is as vast as the ocean. After Bsod nams rgya mtsho, all subsequent incarnations have rgya mtsho as the second component of their name. At the time of his meeting with the Altan Khan, Bsod nams rgya mtsho was already a recognized incarnate lama of the Dge lugs. Bsod nams rgya mtsho became the third Dalai Lama and two of his previous incarnations were posthumously recognized as the first and second holders of the lineage. From that time onward, successive incarnations have all been known as the Dalai Lama. Although writings outside Tibet often describe the Dalai Lama as the head of the Dge lugs sect, that position is held by a figure called the DGA' LDAN KHRI PA, the "Throneholder of Ganden Monastery." The fourteen Dalai Lamas are:

Đạo Hạnh. (道行) (died 1117). Vietnamese monk, popularly known as Từ Đạo Hạnh; CHAN master and thaumaturge, whose miraculous exploits have captured the imagination of Vietnamese Buddhists for centuries. His personal name was Từ Lộ. The Thièn Uyẻn Tập Anh relates that as a young man he was a free spirit who harbored great aspirations. He befriended people of various social backgrounds and was a serious student, passing the royal examination for tăng quan (monk officers). After his father was killed by a sorcerer, Đạo Hạnh went to Mount Từ Sơn to live in seclusion and devoted himself to chanting the "Great Compassion" DHARAnĪ (see DABEI ZHOU) daily. After chanting it 108,000 times, he gained magical powers and avenged his father's death. He later began to wander to various Buddhist monasteries in search of enlightenment; eventually, under the guidance of Sùng Phạm (1004-1087), he gained realization. He is said to have tamed mountain snakes and wild beasts, burned his finger to pray for rain, and blessed water with mantras to cure disease. It is believed that Đạo Hạnh used his magical powers to reincarnate himself as the son of King Lý Nhan Tông (r. 1072-1127) and was eventually enthroned as King Lý Thàn Tông (r. 1128-1138). In northern Vietnam, the story of Đạo Hạnh is still reenacted during festivals.

Dattatraya (Sanskrit) Dattātreya The universal lord; popularly, “the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, incarnate in an Avatara — of course as a triple essence. The esoteric, and true meaning is the adept’s own trinity of body, soul, and spirit; the three being all realized by him as real, existent, and potential. By Yoga training, the body becomes pure as a crystal casket, the soul purged of all its grossness, and the spirit which, before the beginning of his course of self-purification and development, was to him but a dream, has now become a reality — the man has become a demi-god” (BCW 2:160).

Devaki (Sanskrit) Devakī The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her brother, King Kansa, for fear of the fulfillment of a prophecy that a son of hers would dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict watch kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy spirit, and thus gave birth to that god’s avatara, Krishna as the incarnated ray of the Logos.

Dga' ldan khri pa. (Ganden Tripa). In Tibetan, lit. "Holder of the Dga' ldan Throne"; title of the head of the DGE LUGS sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who is regarded as the successor of TSONG KHA PA. The first two Dga' ldan khri pas were Tsong kha pa's disciples; the first was RGYAL TSHAB DAR MA RIN CHEN and the second was MKAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG. Together with Tsong kha pa, they are traditionally considered to be the founders of the Dge lugs sect. The fifteenth Dga' ldan khri pa Pan chen Bsod nams grags pa (Panchen Sonam Drakpa) (1478-1554) is known for his role during the terms of the third and fourth DALAI LAMAs. At present, the Dga' ldan khri pa is selected by the Dalai Lama from a group of candidates who have already served in a number of specific positions in the major Dge lugs monasteries and tantric colleges; the term of office is generally seven years. It is not the case, as is often imagined, that the Dalai Lama is the head of the Dge lugs sect, or that the Dga' ldan khri pa is necessarily an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU). According to the traditional system of selection, the monk who became the Dga' ldan khri pa had to rise through several ranks of the Dge lugs sect. First, he completed the prescribed course of study in one of the three GDAN SA (the major Dge lug monasteries in the LHA SA area) and achieved the highest degree in the Dge lugs academy, that of DGE BSHES lha ram pa. He then entered one of the two Dge lugs tantric colleges in Lha sa (see RGYUD STOD and RGYUD SMAD) and became a dge bshes sngags ram pa (ngakrampa). Only a dge bshes sngags ram pa could become a dge skos (geko) (disciplinarian) of a tantric college. Rgyud stod and Rgyud smad chose three disciplinarians each year, and the bla ma dbu mdzad (lama umdze), literally "leader of the chant," i.e., vice abbot, was chosen from among the former dge skos and served for three years. Following that period, he became the abbot (mkhan po) of his tantric college for three years. The senior-most former abbot (mkhan zur) received the title Byang rtse chos rje, if he attended Rgyud smad, and Shar rtse chos rje if he attended Rgyud stod. (Byang rtse and Shar rtse are two colleges of Dga' ldan monastery.) Since the time of the eighth Dga' ldan khri pa these two alternated in the position of Dga' ldan khri pa. To date there have been 102 Dga' ldan khri pas.

Dge lugs. (Geluk). In Tibetan, lit. "System of Virtue"; one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism (see also BKA' BRYUD, SA SKYA, RNYING MA). Originating among the disciples of TSONG KHA PA, it was originally referred to as the Dga' ldan pa'i lugs (abbreviated as Dga' lugs) "the system of those from Dga' ldan Mountain," where Tsong kha pa, with the patronage of the powerful Phag mo gru family, founded Ri bo DGA' LDAN monastery in 1409. (The name Dge lugs may have originally been an abbreviation of Dga' ldan pa'i lugs.) Within a few years of the founding of Dga' ldan, two followers of Tsong kha pa, 'JAM DBYANGS CHOS RJE BKRA SHIS DPAL LDAN and Byams chen chos rje Shākya ye shes (1354-1435), founded 'BRAS SPUNGS (1416) and SE RA (1419) monasteries, respectively, apparently at Tsong kha pa's urging. These three monasteries developed into the institutional center of Dge lugs power and influence; Tsong kha pa with his two most prominent followers, RGYAL TSHAB DARMA RIN CHEN (called Rgyal tshab rje) and MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG PO (called Mkhas grub rje)-both important scholars in their own right-became the cultic center, called rje yab sras gsum ("the lord and his two spiritual sons"). BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery, the fourth great Dge lugs monastery, was founded in Gzhis ka rtse (Shigatse) in 1447 by another of Tsong kha pa's followers, the scholarly and politically astute DGE 'DUN GRUB, providing a basis for Dge lugs power in the west. Dge 'dun grub was posthumously recognized as the first DALAI LAMA. The fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO and BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, with the help of the Mongols, established the Dge lugs as the largest and most powerful Buddhist sect in Tibet. After the founding of the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government in 1642, the Dalai Lama was invested with temporal power, making the Dge lugs the de facto ruling party and bringing an end to the political instability that accompanied the rise of the sect during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan became abbot of Bkra shis lhun po and began the lineage of powerful PAn CHEN BLA MAS, after the Dalai Lamas, the second most powerful lineage of Dge lugs incarnate lamas (see SPRUL SKU). The influence of the Dge lugs sect over Tibet was based on an elaborate system of regional monasteries with ties to the four central Dge lugs monasteries; the two largest of the regional monasteries, BLA BRANG BKRA SHIS DKYIL and SKU 'BUM in A mdo, rivaled the central monasteries in size and stature. The sect is known for its scholastic curriculum, and for a rigorous examination system that culminates in the rank of DGE BSHES, providing a steady stream of abbots and incarnate lamas to administer the system in collaboration with the aristocratic elite under the oversight of the Dga' ldan pho brang government. In its rise to power, the Dge lugs incorporated doctrines and monasteries that were earlier separate and distinct traditions.

Dpa' bo incarnations. (Pawo). A lineage of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), members of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism and traditionally responsible for the propitiation of the sect's protector deities. The second incarnation, DPA' BO GTSUG LAG 'PHRENG BA, was a renowned scholar and historian. The incarnation line includes:

Dpal sprul Rin po che. (Patrul Rinpoche) (1808-1887). One of the most important teachers of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism during the nineteenth century, famous for his great humility and simple lifestyle. Recognized as an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) while a child, Dpal sprul Rin po che trained under the great ascetic 'Jigs med rgyal ba'i myu gu (Jigme Gyalwe Nyugu), himself a disciple of the renowned treasure revealer (GTER STON) 'JIGS MED GLING PA, from whom he received instructions on the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG, "Heart Essence of the Great Expanse." He later studied with many other great masters, including MDO MKHYEN RTSE YE SHES RDO RJE, mind emanation (thugs sprul) of 'Jigs med gling pa. Although he established himself as one of the foremost scholars of his time, Dpal sprul Rin po che emulated the renunciate lifestyle of his masters, wandering from place to place with few possessions, often in the guise of an ordinary beggar. He was known for his exceptional kindness, treating both king and pauper with equal compassion. The author of numerous commentaries and treatises on Buddhist philosophy and doctrine, he is perhaps best known for his KUN BZANG BLA MA'I ZHAL LUNG ("Words of My Perfect Teacher"), an explanation of the preliminary practices of the klong chen snying thig. Together with other great lamas of eastern Tibet, Dpal sprul Rin po che was also an active participant in the so-called RIS MED (nonsectarian) movement, which sought to cut through the rampant sectarian controversies of the time. According to one account, when asked what religious affiliation he maintained, Dpal sprul Rinpoche famously remarked that he was only a follower of the Buddha. He is also known as Rdza Dpal sprul (Dza Patrul) and O rgyan 'jigs med chos kyi dbang po.

dual Power, the incarnate

Each one of the trikaya (three bodies or vehicles) — the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya — has its respective place and function on and in the three highest of the buddhakshetra: the dharmakaya is the luminous or spiritual body or vehicle in which the dhyani-buddha lives and works on the first and highest buddhakshetra; the dhyani-bodhisattva similarly lives and works in the spiritual-intellectual body or vehicle called the sambhogakaya, on the second of the buddhakshetras; while the manushya-buddha, when working in the third buddhakshetras, does so in his nirmanakaya vesture or robe, vehicle, or body. The lowest buddhakshetra is the one in which the human buddha is found clothed in his body of flesh as an incarnate being.

Egg-born The earlier divisions of the third root-race, which produced their offspring from eggs — a method which may still be said to exist in humans today, as well as among the animals. This race and its method of reproduction was the logical outcome of the so-called “sweat-born” of the later second and earliest third root-race. The human race from its beginnings on globe D passed through different modes of reproduction which again depended upon the physiological characteristics of the various phases through which humanity progressed from ethereal through astral into physical types. At first humanity was sexless and then, through various phases of seeding, budding, and egg-bearing, became androgynous, its offspring as time passed appearing with one or the other sex predominating, and finally during the latter third root-race appeared distinct males and females from birth as at present. The higher intellectual dhyanis (manasas, sons of wisdom) would not incarnate in the earliest forms, nor even in the bodies of the early egg-born. The first half of the egg-born race was therefore mortal in its lower or personal aspects, there being as yet no personal ego to survive; the inner monadic fires were there, but with no proper vehicle into which to pour their flames. The second half became intellectually immortal at will and spiritually immortal by reason of the development and incarnation of the fifth or manas principle through the agency of the informing manasas. In the days of Lemuria, the middle and later third root-race, the egg-born are to be referred not only to the physiological processes of reproduction then current, but to the seven dhyani-chohanic classes who incarnated in the “seven Elect” of the third root-race. See also ROOT-RACE, THIRD

embody ::: 1. To invest (a spiritual entity) with a body or with bodily form; render incarnate; make corporeal. 2. To give a tangible, bodily, or concrete form to (an abstract concept) or to be an example of or express (an idea, principle, etc. embodies, embodied, embodying, self-embodying.

Esoteric Doctrine ::: The body of mystical and sacred teachings reserved for students of high and worthy character. This bodyof teachings has been known and studied by highly evolved individuals in all ages. The esoteric doctrineis the common property of mankind, and it has always been thus. In all the various great religions andphilosophies of the world, the student will find fundamental principles in each which, when placed sideby side and critically examined, are easily discovered to be identic. Every one of such fundamentalprinciples is in every great world religion or world philosophy; hence the aggregate of these worldreligions or world philosophies contains the entirety of the esoteric doctrine, but usually expressed inexoteric form.However, no one of these world religions or world philosophies gives in clear and explicit shape or formthe entirety of the body of teachings which are at its heart; some religions emphasize one or more of suchfundamental principles; another religion or philosophy will emphasize others of these principles; in eithercase others again of the principles remaining in the background. This readily accounts for the fact that thevarious world religions and world philosophies vary among themselves and often, to the unreflectingmind, superficially seem to have little in common, and perhaps even to be contradictory. The cause ofthis is the varying manner in which each such religion or philosophy has been given to the world, theform that each took having been best for the period in which it was promulgated. Each such religion orphilosophy, having its own racial sphere and period of time, represents the various human minds whohave developed it or who, so to say, have translated it to the world in this or in that particularpromulgation.These manners or mannerisms of exoteric thinking we may discard if we wish; but it is the fundamentalprinciples behind every great religion or great philosophy which in their aggregate are the universalesoteric doctrine. In this universal esoteric doctrine lies the mystery-field of each great religion orphilosophy -- this mystery-teaching being always reserved for the initiates. The esoteric philosophy ordoctrine has been held from time immemorial in the guardianship of great men, exalted seers and sages,who from time to time promulgate it, or rather portions of it, to the world when the spiritual andintellectual need for so doing arises. The origins of the esoteric doctrine are found in themystery-teachings of beings from other and spiritual spheres, who incarnated in the early humanity of thethird root-race of this fourth round of our globe, and taught the then intellectually nascent mankind thenecessary certain fundamental principles or truths regarding the universe and the nature of the worldsurrounding us.

ESOTERIC HISTORY BEFORE 1875 Members of this planetary hierarchy incarnated in mankind, eventually to make up what in the esoteric history has been called the &

ESSENTIAL SELF, 46-SELF Monad having envelope and self-consciousness in the essential world of the planet (46). The essential self has centred itself in the second triad essential atom and is a member of the fifth natural kingdom.

The 46-self is omniscient in the worlds 46-49.

As an essential self, the individual has to acquire by himself through his own research complete knowledge of everything of importance in the human worlds (47-49).

Essential monads form a collective being of their own having a common total consciousness.

The essential self does not need to incarnate further, since he has no more to learn in the kingdom of man. He often does incarnate, however, in order by all means and by personal contact to help those preparing for their entrance into this higher kingdom. K 1.35.8, 10ff


Every avatara repeats in the small the primordial history of the cosmic Logos: the divinity sacrificing itself for the sake of all the hierarchies within it. This is the sacrifice which took place “before the beginning of the world,” the core of the mythologic story of the Christos, the Logos or cosmic Word incarnate as man.

Every incarnate buddha lives and works in the fourth or lowest buddhakshetra, as Gautama Buddha did; but at the same time, and more particularly when he has laid aside the physical body, he can live and work at will in the next higher buddhakshetra as a nirmanakaya; again as a dhyani-bodhisattva in his higher intermediate spiritual-psychological principle, he can at will function in the next higher buddhakshetra; while last, the dhyani-buddha within him lives and does its own sublime labor on the highest buddhakshetras as a dhyani-buddha. Here lies the true explanation of the many apparently conflicting statements made about the various kinds of buddhas and their various duties or functions, as found in the Buddhist scriptures, especially in the Mahayana writings of Central and Northern Asia.

Exoterically the Dalai Lama is often regarded as an incarnation of Chenresi, as a popular legend says that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapani-Chenresi emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas — the Dalai and Tashi Lamas. Esoterically he is called Bodhisattva Chenresi Vanchug (the powerful and all-seeing). Chenresi or Avalokitesvara “is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men” (ibid.). In China, Chenresi becomes the great goddess of mercy, Kwan-yin, represented by a female figure bearing a child in her arms.

Fifth Rounders Human monads who, though incarnate among us in this present fourth round, are psychically, mentally, and spiritually at the stage which humanity as a whole will reach in the fifth round. The life-waves which pass around the planetary chains are not rigid and fixed as wholes so as to bind all individuals to perfect conformity with group evolution; so it is possible for certain individual monads to outstrip the mass of the life-wave in their own development, somewhat as a few drops of rain may precede a coming monsoon. These forerunners of the life-wave as individuals through their various incarnations finish the fourth round and inwardly, although not in physical bodies, undergo the experiences which the life-wave as a whole will undertake during the course of the fifth round. Thus because they have experienced at least part of the fifth round conditions, and are developed by it in this fourth round, these individuals are called fifth rounders.

Flame, the incarnate

From the hierarchy of compassion, the light-side of nature as contrasted with the matter-side, came these semi-divine manasaputras who incarnated in the quasi-senseless, intellectually dormant human race at about the midpoint of the third root-race of this fourth round. By their own spiritual-intellectual fire and flame they quickened the latent mental fires in infant humanity stimulating the thought principle, just as parents teach a little child to think, quickening its mind, by means of books, by precept, by example, and by words. It is the most simple thing to do and yet a glorious achievement. It shows how inferior beings are protected and guided by higher beings, or dhyani-chohans, just as a child is watched, loved, and guided by its parents. Mind was quickened in mankind by the manasaputras, but there was already latent mind in man — unevoked; it required the coming of the superior developed mind, a part of the latter’s own flame to the wick of the unlighted candle, to set the unlighted candlewick aflame in its turn; but it could not be set aflame unless mind were already latent there.

Gilgul: The rite of destroying an Avatar as well as a mage’s ability to do magic or to reincarnate.

God-man Mankind after the change in the third root-race when animal humanity became incarnate devas because of the overshadowing incarnations of the manasaputras. Also manas (mind) in alliance with atma-buddhi, as contrasted with manas in alliance with the lower principles — the latter being simply and merely human. Sometimes used to describe the avataras appearing in the human race at periodic intervals, or again to describe buddhas or other spiritual-human beings.

gods "the necessary static elements, ::: Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending levels, the highest goal"; in later Hinduism, the Preserver of the world, one of the "three Powers and Personalities . of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Śiva or Rudra2, the Destroyer; also regarded as the Lord himself (isvara) who incarnates in the avataras, and the one deva of whom all the gods are manifestations; in the Record of Yoga, usually a subordinate aspect of Kr.s.n.a, sometimes identified with Pradyumna as the personality of the fourfold isvara whose sakti is Mahalaks.mi.Vis Visnu-Narayana

goodness who became incarnate and visited the

Great Betrayer, the: (metaplot) Heylel Teomim Thoabath (“The Abomination”), Solificati representative with the First Cabal; betrayed the Cabal, supposedly to reveal the Council’s innate vulnerability to corruption. The Ascension Warrior claimed to be Heylel reincarnated; truth of that claim remains unknown.

grilf ::: Girl-friend.Like newsfroup and filk, a typo incarnated as a new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1992.[Jargon File] (1995-01-31)

grilf Girl-friend. Like {newsfroup} and {filk}, a typo incarnated as a new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1992. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-31)

Haryasva (Sanskrit) Haryaśva [from hari bay + aśva horse] Bay horse; a name applied both to Indra and Siva. In the Harivansa, the Haryasavas are represented as the five or ten thousand sons of the patriarch Daksha, born for the purpose of peopling the earth, but the rishi Narada persuaded them to remain celibates; after which they dispersed themselves through the regions and did not return. This means “that they had all incarnated in mortals. The name is given to natural born mystics and celibates, who are said to be incarnations of the ‘Haryaswas’ ” (TG 136).

  “Hence, when any one of the cells forming part of such early human bodies freed itself from the psychical and physical control that then existed, it was enabled to follow, and instinctively did follow, the path of self-expression. But in our days when the psychical and physical dominance of the human incarnated entity over the human cells composing the human body is so strong, and because the cells have largely lost their power to individual self-expression through the biologic habit of subjecting to that overlordship of the human entity, such an individualized career of a cell in self-development is a virtual impossibility. . . .

honji suijaku. (本地垂迹). In Japanese, "manifestation from the original state"; an indigenous Japanese explanation of the way in which the imported religion of Buddhism interacted with local religious cults. In this interpretation, an originally Indian buddha, BODHISATTVA, or divinity (the "original ground," or "state"; J. honji) could manifest or incarnate in the form of a local Japanese deity (KAMI) or its icon, which was then designated the "trace it dropped" (J. suijaku). The notion of honji suijaku was derived from the earlier Buddhist doctrine of multiple buddha bodies (BUDDHAKĀYA), especially the so-called transformation body (NIRMĀnAKĀYA). The honji suijaku doctrine thus facilitated the systematic incorporation of local deities within Buddhism, speeding the localization of Buddhism within the religious culture of Japan. A movement forcefully to separate from Buddhism the local deities, now known collectively as SHINTo, occurred during the Meiji period (see HAIBUTSU KISHAKU). See also SHINBUTSU SHuGo.

humanify ::: v. t. --> To make human; to invest with a human personality; to incarnate.

hutuktu. (T. ho thug thu). The Mongolian translation of "noble" (ĀRYA), used in Mongolia as a title for high lamas, especially incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU).

In Buddhist works four degrees of training, in these cases equivalent to initiation, are given: 1) srotapatti (he who has entered the stream), one who has commenced the task of transmuting the forces of his nature to the purposes of his higher self; 2) sakridagamin (he who comes once more), one who will be reborn on earth only once again before reaching the lower degrees of nirvana; 3) anagamin (he who does not come), one who will no longer be reincarnated anymore, unless the choice be made to remain on earth in order to help humanity; and 4) arhat or arhan (the worthy one), one who at will can and does experience nirvana even during his life on earth.

Incarnate: Living in a physical body.

incarnating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Incarnate

INCARNATION, ENVELOPES OF Man&

incarnation ::: n. --> The act of clothing with flesh, or the state of being so clothed; the act of taking, or being manifested in, a human body and nature.
The union of the second person of the Godhead with manhood in Christ.
An incarnate form; a personification; a manifestation; a reduction to apparent from; a striking exemplification in person or act.


inflesh ::: v. t. --> To incarnate.

Intermediate Nature ::: To speak of man as a trichotomy, or as having a division into three parts -- as in the Christian NewTestament: a "natural" body, a psychical body, and a spiritual body -- is a convenient expression, but itby no means sets forth in detail the entire economy of man's inner being.Following then this trichotomy, there is first the divinespiritual element in the human constitution whichis man's own individual inner god; second, the soul or human monad, which is his human egoic self, hisintermediate or psychical or second nature; third, all the composite lower part of him which althoughcomprising several sheaths may be conveniently grouped under the one term vehicle or body. Gods,monads, and atoms collectively in nature are copied in the essential trichotomy of man, as spirit, soul,and body, and hence the latter is another way of saying man's divine-spiritual, intermediate soul, andastral-physical parts.It is the intermediate nature, offspring of the divine spark, which enshrines the ray from the divine spark,its spiritual sun so to say, and steps it down into the ordinary mentality of man. It is this intermediatenature which reincarnates. The divine-spiritual part of man does not reincarnate, for this part of man hasno need of learning the lessons that physical life can give: it is far above them all. But it is theintermediate part functioning through the various garments or sheaths of the inner man -- these garmentsmay be called astral or ethereal -- which in this manner can reach down to and touch our earthly plane;and the physical body is the garment of flesh in touch with the physical world.The intermediate nature is commonly called the human soul. It is an imperfect thing, and is that whichcomes back into incarnation, because it is drawn to this earth by attraction. It learns much needed lessonshere, in this sphere of the universal life. (See also Principles of Man)

In the earlier third root-races, the Sons of Wisdom produced by kriyasakti a progeny called the Sons of Ad, Sons of the Fire-mist, or Sons of Will and Yoga. This was not a race, but “at first a wondrous Being, called the ‘Initiator,’ and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. ‘Set apart’ in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, ‘Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras’ — to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle” (SD 1:207). This Wondrous Being, who descended in the early part of the Third Age, is the tree from which have come the great historically known sages and hierophants, and it holds spiritual sway over the initiated adepts. “He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross, nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not know . . .? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the great sacrifice” (SD 1:208).

In theosophical literature Bharata has also been applied to an ancient sacred land. “ ‘Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-Varsha!’ exclaim the incarnated gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bharata is India, but in this case it symbolized the chosen land in those days, and was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dwipa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence; the land of initiation and of divine knowledge” (SD 2:369).

In theosophy evolution is unfolding or emanational development from within outwards of the incarnating monads; and the bodies in which these monads incarnate are the least important part of the matter. The bodies slowly follow, in improving sensitivity and relatively continuous perfection of the nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord, the unfolding impulses from within, which thus guide these bodies to greater degrees of perfection. As the egos or monads unfold from themselves the latent powers of spirit and mind, as well as of the psychological nature, the bodies feel the inner and compelling urges and impulses, and very slowly through the ages conform to become vehicles fitted to express the inner fires.

In the theosophical scheme of rounds and races, the fifth manvantara of the Puranas refers to the first half or descending arc of the third round of our present planetary chain, and the fifth manu, Raivata, to the root-manu of this third round; further, the passage of the life-waves through each round of all the globes of the planetary chain — i.e. from globe A to globe G — consists of two “manvantaras,” and thus it is that the first half or descending arc of the third round is the fifth of these manvantaras. Moreover, just as in the third root-race on this globe in our present fourth round the manasaputras incarnated in the then relatively intellectually senseless humanity to awaken its self-conscious mind, so in their own way and on their own planes did the abhutarajasas act. In the descending arc of the third round they played the same part, albeit in a more diffuse and less active way, that they later did in the early part of the third root-race of the fourth round on this globe, when the human vehicles were evolutionally ready for a more intensive incarnation.

“In the Vendidad the Daevas are called ‘evil-doing,’ and shown to rush away ‘into the depths of the world of hell,’ or matter. . . . This is an allegory showing the Devas compelled to incarnate, once that they have separated themselves from their parent essence, or, in other words, after the unit had become a multiple, after differentiation and manifestation” (SD 2:516). In another sense, Blavatsky interprets the daevas as referring to the Atlantean giants (SD 2:772).

It is the intermediate nature, our human portion, which reincarnates: it is a ray of the spiritual part or upper duad, and by repeated incarnations, through unfolding of the latent spirituality within itself, it finally “ascends” to reach the status of its parent, the upper duad. Hence, the intermediate nature is often referred to as the human soul.

Jehovah-Tzabaoth, -Tsebaoth, or -Sabbaoth The seventh Sephirah of the superior septenary, identified with Netsah (triumph), who “esoterically . . . corresponds with Haniel (human physical life), the androgyne Elohim, with Venus-Lucifer and Baal, and finally with the Letter Vau or Microprosopus, the Logos. All these belong to the formative world” — also with Siva, Saturn, and the angel Michael or Mikael; “Mikael and his angels, or Jehovah-Tzabaoth (the ‘Host’) who refused to create as the seven passionless, mind-born, sons of Brahma did, because they aspire to incarnate as men in order to become higher than the gods — fight the Dragon [of esoteric wisdom], conquer him, and the child of matter is born” (BCW 8:148). See also TSEBA’OTH (SD 1:459)

Jehovists one of the two main trends of ancient Jewish religious thought, the other being the Elohists. “The portions belonging to these respectively are so blended together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often all external characteristics are lost. Yet it is also known that the two schools were antagonistic; that the one taught esoteric, the other exoteric, or theological doctrines; that the one, the Elohists, were Seers (Roeh), whereas the other, the Jehovists, were prophets (Nabi), and that the latter — who later became Rabbis — were generally only nominally prophets by virtue of their official position, . . . That, again, the Elohists meant by ‘Elohim’ ‘forces,’ identifying their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God externally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol — a number of them secretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature, and synthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all Creation; and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowing glory of the animal creation, instead of his being the head of all the sensible beings on earth” (BCW 14:183-4). David is said to have introduced this worship in Judea after living among the Tyrians and Philistines where such rites and beliefs were common: “David knew nothing of Moses, it seems, and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship, it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as that of one of the many [Kabeirean] gods of the neighbouring nations — a tutelary deity of his own [hebrew characters]to whom he had given the preference, and chosen among ‘all other [Kabeiri] gods,” (IU 2:45). Blavatsky holds that the Jehovists altered the Mosaic texts. ( )

Kaḥ thog Si tu. A line of Tibetan SPRUL SKU (incarnate lamas) at KAḤ THOG monastery, an important RNYING MA monastery in Khams, eastern Tibet; they are accepted to be the reincarnations of the erudite and accomplished eighth Si tu, CHOS KYI 'BYUNG GNAS, the great scholar of DPAL SPUNGS, himself the eighth TAI SI TU incarnation. The third Kaḥ thog Si tu was a nephew of 'JAM DBYANGS MKHYEN BRTSE DBANG PO, one of the leading figures in the so-called nonsectarian (RIS MED) movement of the nineteenth century and the main teacher of 'JAM DBYANGS MKHYEN BRTSE CHOS KYI BLO GROS, the teacher of many of the twentieth-century's greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters.

Karest (Egyptian) Karest. Mummy; Massey identifies it with Christ: “the author of the Christian name is the Mummy-Christ of Egypt, called the Karest, which was a type of the immortal spirit in man, the Christ within (as Paul has it), the divine offspring incarnated, the Logos, the Word of Truth, the Makheru of Egypt. It did not originate as a mere type! The preserved mummy was the dead body of any one that was Karest, or mummified, to be kept by the living; and, through constant repetition, this became a type of the resurrection from (not of!) the dead” (quoted BCW 188n). Blavatsky comments that this interpretation is too materialistic. (BCW 8: 197-200, 203)

Karma Bka' brgyud. (Karma Kagyü). One of four major subsects of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Also known as the Karma kaM tshang, it dates to the first KARMA PA, DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA. Headed by a lineage of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), who each hold the title of Karma pa, the sect held great political power from the late fourteenth through the early seventeenth century, until the ascendancy of the DGE LUGS at the time of the fifth DALAI LAMA. It continues to be strong in exile. The Karma bka' brgyud is known for its equal emphasis on study and practice, and in the realm of practice, on MAHĀMUDRĀ. Because of the black crown worn by the Karma pa, the sect is sometimes mistakenly referred to in the West as the "BLACK HATS." For a detailed history, see KARMA PA.

Karma pa. In Tibetan, a title given to the incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) identified at birth in each generation as the head of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD subsect of the BKA' RGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is commonly etymologized as "man of [enlightened] action." In the history of Tibetan Buddhism, the lineage of the Karma pas is considered to be the first to institutionalize its succession of incarnate lamas, a practice later adopted by the other sects. According to tradition, at the time of his death, each Karma pa composes a letter that specifies the date and location of his next incarnation. This letter is given to a close disciple, who then reveals its contents upon the death of the Karma pa, with the information in the letter used to locate the child who has been born as the next Karma pa. Among the most famous and sacred possessions of the Karma pa is a black crown, said to be made from the hair of one hundred thousand dĀKINĪS. The actual crown is said to be invisible to persons lacking sufficient merit. However, during the Ming dynasty, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402-1424) presented the fifth Karma pa with a visible physical replica of the crown. The replica itself is said to have great power; the "black hat ceremony," in which the Karma pa dons the crown, is among the most important in the sect. In the ceremony, the Karma pa holds the hat upon his head; otherwise, it is said, it will fly off into space. It is also said that those who see the crown will be liberated from rebirth. Due to the importance of the crown, the Karma pas are sometimes called the "black crowned" (zhwa nag). In the nineteenth century, a Western misunderstanding of this term led to the identification of a sect of Tibetan Buddhism called the "BLACK HATS," a mistake that persists in some accounts of Tibetan Buddhism. Like the DALAI LAMAs, the Karma pas are considered to be emanations of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. Also like the Dalai Lamas, the Karma pas have been among the most important and revered religious figures in the history of Tibet; they include many great scholars and yogins. Some have also had political power, at times leading to conflicts, sometimes polemical, and sometimes military, with the DGE LUGS PA. Although the main seat of the Karma pas was MTSHUR PHU Monastery in central Tibet, the Karma pas tended to travel widely. Their importance and influence extended throughout the Tibetan cultural domain, including China. The lineage includes:

Khams sprul incarnations. (Kamtrül). A revered Tibetan lineage of incarnate masters (SPRUL SKU) belonging to the 'BRUG PA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The fourth, Bstan 'dzin chos kyi nyi ma (Tendzin Chokyi Nyima, 1730-1780), composed an important description of the sacred sites of the Kathmandu Valley. The lineage includes

Krishna (Sanskrit) Kṛṣṇa Black, dark, dark blue; the most celebrated and eighth avatara of Vishnu. Hindus consider him their savior, and he is worshiped as the most popular of their gods. Krishna was born some 5000 years ago, the incarnated human spiritual power that closed the dvapara yuga — his death in 3102 BC marked the beginning of kali yuga. He was the son of Devaki and the nephew of Kansa, who parallels King Herod.

“Like all other Hierarchies, on the highest plane they are arupa, i.e., formless, bodiless, without any substance, mere breaths. On the second plane, they first approach to Rupa, or form. On the third, they become Manasa-putras, those who became incarnated in men. With every plane they reach they are called by different names . . .” (TBL 17, 20-21).

LINK: https://incarnateword.in/dict/mppandit

LINK:https://incarnateword.in/dict/mppandit

Lo chen sprul sku. (Lochen tulku). A Tibetan title for the lineage of incarnations of the famed eleventh-century translator RIN CHEN BZANG PO, the main line of incarnate lamas at BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery after that of the PAn CHEN LAMA. The appellation is short for lo tsā ba chen po, "great translator" (see LO TSĀ BA).

Manasa-dhyanis (Sanskrit) Mānasa-dhyāni-s [from mānasa mental, intelligent from manas mind + dhyāni-s class of pitris from dhyāni meditation] The agnishvatta pitris, the givers of manas (mind) and intellectual consciousness to man; those solar and lunar pitris or dhyanis who incarnated by irradiation from themselves in the mentally senseless forms of semi-ethereal flesh of third root-race mankind. In the Puranas, considered the highest of the pitris (fathers of mankind). The agnishvattas or manasa-dhyanis are intimately connected evolutionally and in occult cosmology with the sun, and are hence often called the solar ancestors of mankind. They are, in fact, one of the several classes of monads springing directly from mahat who provided man with his intellect, mind, and sense of individual moral responsibility.

Manasaputra(s)(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound word: manas, "mind," putra, "son" -- "sons of mind." The teaching is thatthere exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky sometimes called the Hierarchy of Mercyor of Pity. This is the light side of nature as contrasted with its matter side or shadow side, its night side.It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came those semi-divine entities at about the middle periodof the third root-race of this round, who incarnated in the semi-conscious, quasi-senseless men of thatperiod. These advanced entities are otherwise known as the solar lhas as the Tibetans call them, the solarspirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third root-race thus sacrificedthemselves in order to give us intellectual light -- incarnating in those senseless psychophysical shells inorder to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we thenwere. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spiritray that we do; yet we, more strictlyspeaking, were those halfunconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire oftheir own being. This, our "awakening," was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of themanasaputras, or the sons of mind or light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should havecontinued our evolution by merely "natural" causes, but it would have been slow almost beyondcomprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, theirimmense love, though, indeed, acting under karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves,gave us light and comprehension and understanding. From that time we ourselves became "sons of thegods," the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibilitybecame ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful,leading us inwards back to our spiritual home.The manasaputras are our higher natures and, paradoxical as it is, are more largely evolved beings thanwe are. They were the spiritual entities who "quickened" our personal egos, which were thus evolved intoself-consciousness, relatively small though that yet be. One, and yet many! As you can light an infinitenumber of candles from one lighted candle, so from a spark of consciousness can you quicken andenliven innumerable other consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep or latent in the life-atoms.These manasaputras, children of mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened in us themanas-manas of our manas septenary, because they themselves are typically manasic in their essentialcharacteristic or svabhava. Their own essential or manasic vibrations, so to say, could cause that essenceof manas in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a musical note will causesympathetic response in something like it, a similar note in other things. (See also Agnishvattas)

Manas-sutratman (Sanskrit) Manas-sūtrātman [from manas mind + sūtrātman thread-self] The manasic or reincarnating ego, which reincarnates in earth-life after earth-life.

Ma ni bka' 'bum. In Tibetan, "One Hundred Thousand Pronouncements [Regarding] Mani"; a heterogenious compilation of texts traditionally attributed to the Tibetan king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO. This large collection of works, usually published in two massive volumes, is generally understood as a treasure text (GTER MA), said to have been revealed by three individuals during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the SIDDHA Gngos grub (Ngodrup), the famed treasure revealer (GTER STON) NYANG RAL NYI MA 'OD ZER, and Shākya 'Od-a disciple in the Nyang ral lineage sometimes known as Shākya bzang po (Shākya Sangpo). The texts are organized into three parts or cycles (skor): (1) "The cycle of SuTRAs" (mdo skor), containing many legendary accounts of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA and Srong btsan sgam po; (2) "the cycle of sādhanas" (sgrub skor), containing various meditation manuals (SĀDHANA) based on different aspects of Avalokitesvara; and (3) "the cycle of precepts" (zhal gdams kyi skor), a miscellany of texts, many of which relate to the bodhisattva of great compassion. The remaining texts are sometimes referred to as "the cycle of the disclosure of the hidden" (gab pa mngon phyung gi skor). The title of the collection refers to the famed six-syllable MANTRA of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM. The texts are an important early source for many of Tibet's key legends: the activities of Srong btsan sgam po, including the founding of the JO KHANG temple, and the status of Avalokitesvara as the special protector of Tibet and the Tibetan people, incarnated in the person of Srong btsan sgam po himself. The Ma ni bka' 'bum also includes an account of a set of four statues (three or five according to some sources) in a form of AVALOKITEsVARA (called the "Four Brother Statues of Avalokitesvara") said to have spontaneously arisen by miraculous means from the trunk of single sandalwood tree. According to the Tibetan text, the Tibetan king Srong bstan sgam po dispatched a monk named Akarasīla to southern Nepal, where he discovered the four images in the midst of a large sandalwood grove. Akarasīla then "invited" the statues to reside in various locations in order to dispel misery and strife and serve as the basis for religious practice. These statues are considered some of the most sacred Buddhist images in Nepal and Tibet. In their most common reckoning, the four brothers are: (1) the white MATSYENDRANĀTH in Jana Bāhāl, Kathmandu, Nepal; (2) the red Matsyendranāth in nearby Patan; (3) the Ārya Lokesvara in the PO TA LA Palace, LHA SA; (4) and the 'PHAGS PA WA TI in SKYID GRONG, southern Tibet (a part of which is now in possession of the Dalai Lama in exile). Sometimes a fifth image is included: the Minanāth in Patan.

MANKIND, GENERAL DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE OF The stage at which the majority of presently incarnated people are found. Where their feeling life is concerned, they are still found in the spheres of repulsive emotionality. At that stage, reason is of secondary importance, often a difficult source of unrest. These people take their feelings to be their true being. (K 5.45.11)

Man ::: Man is in his essence a spark of the central kosmic spiritual fire. Man being an inseparable part of theuniverse of which he is the child -- the organism of graded consciousness and substance which thehuman constitution contains or rather is -- is a copy of the graded organism of consciousnesses andsubstances of the universe in its various planes of being, inner and outer, especially inner as being by farthe more important and larger, because causal.Human beings are one class of "young gods" incarnated in bodies of flesh at the present stage of theirown particular evolutionary journey. The human stage of evolution is about halfway between theundeveloped life-atom and the fully developed kosmic spirit or god.From another point of view, man is a sheaf or bundle of forces or energies. Force and matter, or spiritand substance being fundamentally one, hence, man is de facto a sheaf or bundle of matters of variousand differing grades of ethereality, or of substantiality; and so are all other entities and thingseverywhere.Man's nature, and the nature of the universe likewise, of which man is a reflection or microcosm or "littleworld," is composite of seven stages or grades or degrees of ethereality or of substantiality; or,kosmically speaking, of three generally inclusive degrees: gods, monads, and atoms. And so far as man isconcerned, we may take the New Testament division of the Christians, which gives the same triformconception of man, that he is composed of spirit, soul, body -- remembering, however, that all these threewords are generalizing terms.Man stands at the midway point of the evolutionary ladder of life: below him are the hosts of beings lessthan he is; above him are other hosts greater than he is only because older in experience, riper in wisdom,stronger in spiritual and in intellectual fiber and power. And these beings are such as they are because ofthe evolutionary unfoldment of the inherent faculties and powers immanent in the individuality of theinner god -- the ever-living, inner, individualized spirit.Man, then, like everything else -- entity or what is called "thing" -- is, to use the modern terminology ofphilosophical scientists, an "event," that is to say, the expression of a central consciousness-center ormonad passing through one or another particular phase of its long, long pilgrimage over and throughinfinity, and through eternity. This, therefore, is the reason why the theosophist often speaks of themonadic consciousness-center as the pilgrim of eternity.Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential upadhis or bases: first, the monadic ordivine-spiritual; second, that which is supplied by the Lords of Light, the so-called manasa-dhyanis,meaning the intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that makes man Man; and thethird upadhi we may call the vital-astral-physical.These three bases spring from three different lines of evolution, from three different and separatehierarchies of being. This is the reason why man is composite. He is not one sole and unmixed entity; heis a composite entity, a "thing" built up of various elements, and hence his principles are to a certainextent separable. Any one of these three bases can be temporarily separated from the two others withoutbringing about the death of the man physically. But the elements that go to form any one of these basescannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution or inner dissolution.These three lines of evolution, these three aspects or qualities of man, come from three differenthierarchies or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The lowest comes from thevital-astral-physical earth, ultimately from the moon, our cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasicor intellectualintuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the monad of monads, the supreme flower oracme, or rather the supreme seed of the universal hierarchy which forms our kosmical universe oruniversal kosmos.

MAN&

Metempsychosis: The doctrine that the soul occupies another body after the death of the gross body. While the classical concept of metempsychosis includes the belief that the soul dwelling in a human may later occupy an animal body, too, occultists hold that the soul occupying a human body can be reincarnated in another human body only, and deny that the soul can migrate into a physical body on a lower scale of physical evolution.

Mindless In theosophy most commonly applied to entities which are not yet endowed with human self-conscious mind; applied to the first, second, and first half of the third root-races, but especially to the humanity of the early part of the third root-race, in which mindless vehicles some of the manasaputras incarnated. The term also applies to those of the third root-race who begat by miscegenation with animals the earlier simians, from which later, and from another more or less mindless miscegenation, sprang the anthropoids. It is also applied to animals in general as contrasted with human beings, because animals have not yet developed self-conscious possession of mind, but only the germs of it.

Mtshur phu rgyal tshab incarnations. (Tsurpu Gyaltsap). A line of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU) of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism, entrusted as the regents of MTSHUR PHU monastery and traditionally close to the KARMA PAs. The lineage includes:

Muni (Sanskrit) Muni [from the verbal root man to think] An ascetic, monk, devotee, hermit (especially one who has taken a vow of silence); a person who has attained union with his inner divinity by means of aspiration, so that filled with inspiration as he is, and guided by the inner spiritual monitor, he is said to attain more or less fully the status of an incarnate divinity on earth. With the Sanskrit expression hridayeshu sthitah (abiding in the hearts), the phrase has direct reference to the Silent Watcher of our planetary chain, who is in a sense the spiritual and mystical parent of the higher part of the human constitution.

Myalba (Tibetan) dmyal ba (nyal-wa) Northern Buddhist name for our earth, which they considered a hell for those whose karma it is to reincarnate on it for the purgation of suffering and experience. Exoterically, Myalba is usually translated and is looked upon as one of the hells. Equivalent to the Sanskrit naraka or avichi.

Narasimha: A fierce manifestation of Vishnu in the form of a man-lion in which the Lord incarnated to kill Hiranyakasipu.

of Evil, the Devil incarnate.

One thus released or freed is called a jivanmukta (freed monad), which is never again during that manvantara subject to the qualities of either matter or karma. But if these beings choose, for the sake of doing good in the world, they may incarnate on earth as nirmanakayas. See also ABSOLUTE

Oracle A divine saying, or the place or means by which a divine message is communicated. The soul, according to Plato, has a certain innate prophetic power. The person in whom this power is fully manifest needs no means of communication; in some it may be manifest temporarily and under certain conditions. In the Greek Heroic ages, deities spoke or appeared directly to man, as we see in Homer. Later, indirect means of communication were used, which may be classed under the general name of oracular. In some cases the intervention of a seer was employed, as in the Sibyllae of Rome and the Pythian seeress of Delphi. Sometimes the “spirits” of the dead were consulted, as in the case of Saul and the wise woman of Endor, and Aeneas and Anchises. The earth and the chthonic deities played an important part: at Delphi, though Apollo was consulted, yet the priestess was entranced, as alleged, through the influence of vapors from the earth; sometimes descent into subterranean caves was necessary, and the inquirer might have to undergo experiences analogous to those of one who dies, as in initiation. Again, it was often customary for the inquirer to sleep in a sacred place to obtain in a dream a revelation from the presiding deity. Or the message might be conveyed by some sign requiring the skill of a diviner for its interpretation, but this comes under the head of divination and omens. The whole purpose was to supplement the intelligence of the incarnate man by appealing to truly spiritual intelligences.

Originally they were seven cosmic gods, for in the days of Lemuria there were seven egg-born dioscuri or dhyani-chohans (agnishvatta-kumaras), who incarnated in the seven elect of the third root-race. These are identified with corybantes, curetes, dii magni, titans, etc. (SD 2:360-2). Later they were made into three and four, as male and female, the four being the four kabiri usually enumerated; and finally restricted, as were also the kabiri, to two.

Pan chen Lama. A Tibetan title given to members of an important line of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), commonly identified as second in stature in Tibet after the DALAI LAMAs. Their seat is BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery in Gtsang in western Tibet. Pan chen is a common abbreviation for the mixed Sanskrit and Tibetan appellation "pandita chen po" (literally "great scholar"), and is an honorific title granted to scholars of great achievement. It was also used as an epithet for the abbot of Bkra shis lhun po monastery, beginning with its founder and first abbot DGE 'DUN GRUB. The fifth Dalai Lama gave the abbacy of Bkra shis lhun po to his tutor, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN. As abbot of the monastery, he was called Pan chen, but he came to receive the distinctive title "Pan chen Lama" when the fifth Dalai Lama announced that, upon his teacher's death, his teacher would reappear as an identifiable child-successor. Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan thus had conferred on him the title "Pan chen Lama." The Pan chen Lama is considered the human incarnation of the buddha AMITĀBHA, while the Dalai Lama is considered the human incarnation of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan is traditionally viewed as the fourth member of the lineage, with his previous incarnations recognized posthumously, beginning with TSONG KHA PA's disciple MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG PO. For this reason, there is some confusion in the numbering of the lamas of the lineage; Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan is sometimes referred to as the fourth Pan chen Lama, but more commonly in Tibetan sources as the first. Blo bzang dpal ldan ye shes is sometimes referred to as the sixth Pan chen Lama, but more commonly in Tibetan sources as the third. (In the discussion below, the higher numerical designation will be employed, since it is used in the contemporary controversy over the identity of the Pan chen Lama.) The fifth Dalai Lama apparently hoped that the Dalai Lama and Pan chen Lama could alternate as teacher and student in lifetime after lifetime. This plan required, however, that each live a long life, which was not to be the case. Subsequent incarnations were recognized and installed at Bkra shis lhun po and eventually grew to wield considerable religious and political power, at times rivaling that of the Dalai Lama himself. This was particularly true in the nineteenth century, when few Dalai Lamas reached their majority. The sixth Pan chen Lama, Blo bzang dpal ldan ye shes (Losang Palden Yeshe, 1738-1780), was a skilled politician who secured Tibet's first relationship with a European power when he befriended George Bogle, British emissary to the East India Company under Warren Hastings. The ninth Pan chen Lama (1883-1937) did not enjoy close relations with the thirteenth Dalai Lama; the Dalai Lama felt that the Pan chen Lama was too close to both the British and the Chinese. They also disagreed over what taxes the Pan chen Lama owed the LHA SA government. The Pan chen Lama went to China in 1925, and his supporters became aligned with the nationalist Guomindang party. While in China, he gave teachings and performed rituals, including some intended to repulse the Japanese invaders then on the Chinese mainland. After the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, he served in an advisory capacity in the search for the fourteenth Dalai Lama and died shortly thereafter, while en route back to Tibet. His successor, the tenth Pan chen Lama 'Phrin las lhun grub chos kyi rgyal mtshan (Trinle Lhündrup Chokyi Gyaltsen, 1938-1989) was selected by the Chinese, with the Lha sa government providing only tacit support. He was drawn into the official Chinese administration as a representative of the Communist party and remained in China when the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959. In 1964, he was arrested and imprisoned for his outspoken opposition to the Communist party's harsh policies in Tibet, and was subjected to public humiliation and physical abuse. After fourteen years in prison, he was released in 1978, and played a key role in fostering the cultural reconstruction that helped to reestablish religious life in Tibet. Despite his role in the Communist administration, many Tibetans continue to view his life as a heroic struggle for the cause of liberalization in Tibet. His death led to the recognition of two child incarnations: one, Dge 'dun chos kyi nyi ma (Gendün Chokyi Nyima, b. 1989), chosen by the fourteenth Dalai Lama in exile and favored by the majority of Tibetan people, and another, Rgyal mtshan nor bu (b. 1990), installed by the Chinese government. The disappearance of the Dalai Lama's candidate in China has led to a significant increase in tension between the two factions. The lineage of Pan chen Lamas includes:

Papapurusha (Sanskrit) Pāpapuruṣa [from pāpa wicked, sinful + puruṣa man] A wicked man; used as a personification of all sin, or the type of a sinner. Esoterically “one who is reborn, or reincarnated from the state of Avitchi — hence ‘Soulless’ ” (TG 248). See also SOULLESS BEINGS

Personality ::: Theosophists draw a clear and sharp distinction, not of essence but of quality, between personality andindividuality. Personality comes from the Latin word persona, which means a mask, through which theactor, the spiritual individuality, speaks. The personality is all the lower man: all the psychical and astraland physical impulses and thoughts and tendencies, and what not. It is the reflection in matter of theindividuality; but being a material thing it can lead us downwards, although it is in essence a reflection ofthe highest. Freeing ourselves from the domination of the person, the mask, the veil, through which theindividuality acts, then we show forth all the spiritual and so-called superhuman qualities; and this willhappen in the future, in the far distant aeons of the future, when every human being shall have become abuddha, a christ. Such is the destiny of the human race.In occultism the distinction between the personality and the immortal individuality is that drawn betweenthe lower quaternary or four lower principles of the human constitution and the three higher principles ofthe constitution or higher triad. The higher triad is the individuality; the personality is the lowerquaternary. The combination of these two into a unity during a lifetime on earth produces what we nowcall the human being. The personality comprises within its range all the characteristics and memories andimpulses and karmic attributes of one physical life; whereas the individuality is the aeonic ego,imperishable and deathless for the period of a solar manvantara. It is the individuality through its ray orhuman astral-vital monad which reincarnates time after time and thus clothes itself in one personalityafter another personality.

Preexistence Existence in a former state: the soul may preexist the body; Christ preexisted as divinity before incarnation. The doctrine of the preexistence of the soul was once part of Christianity, being held as early as the 2nd century and including Justin Martyr, Origen, and many other then eminent Christians among its adherents; but it was formally condemned and anathematized by the Home-Synod held under Mennas at Constantinople around the year 540. The early Christian doctrine was that God emanated all souls of men, but afterwards incarnated them repetitively on earth as a punishment and probation.

Preexistence ::: This term means that the human soul did not first come into being or existence with its present birth onearth; in other words, that it preexisted before it was born on earth.This doctrine of preexistence is by no means typically theosophical, for it likewise was a part of the earlyteachings of Christianity, as is evidenced in the writings that remain to us of Origen, the greatAlexandrian Church Father, and of his school. The theosophical student should be very careful indistinguishing the technical meanings that pertain to several words which in popular and mistaken usageare often employed interchangeably, as for example preexistence, metempsychosis, transmigration,reincarnation, reimbodiment, rebirth, metensomatosis, palingenesis. Each one of these words has aspecific meaning typically its own, and describes or sets forth one phase of the destiny of a reimbodyingand migrating entity. In popular usage, several of these words are used as synonyms, and this usage iswrong. Preexistence, for instance, does not necessarily signify the transmigration of an entity from planeto plane nor, indeed, does it signify as does reincarnation that a migrating monad reinfleshes orreincarnates itself through its ray on earth. Preexistence signifies only that a soul, be it human or other,preexisted before its birth on earth.The doctrine of the great Origen, as found in his works that remain to us, was that the human soulpreexisted in the spiritual world, or within the influence or range of the divine essence or "God," before itbegan a series of reincarnations on earth. It is obvious that Origen's manner of expressing his views is amore or less faithful but distorted reflection of the teaching of the esoteric philosophy. The teaching ofpreexistence as outlined by Origen and his school and followers, with others of his mysticalquasi-theosophical doctrines, was formally condemned and anathematized at the Home Synod held underMennas at Constantinople about 543 of the Christian era. Thus passed out of orthodox Christian theologyas a "newly discovered heresy" what was a most important and mystical body of teaching of the earlycenturies of the new Christian religion -- to the latter's great loss, spiritual and intellectual. The doctrinesof Origen and his school may be said to have formed an important part of original Christian theosophy, aform of universal theosophy of Christianized character. (See under their respective heads the variouscorrelated doctrines mentioned above.)

Primeval self-conscious humanity — not savage by any means, however much it may have needed spiritual guidance — was watched over and protected by divine instructors, and among the arts taught by these great beings, architecture had a prominent place: “No man descended from a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas of the third root race, who handed their knowledge from one generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion. . . . It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe which were found ‘Cyclopean in origin’ by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the ‘Sons of God,’ justly called ‘The Builders’ ” (SD 1:208-9n).

Rabten, Geshe. (1920-1986). A Tibetan monk-scholar of the DGE LUGS sect who played an important role in the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. He was born into a farming family approximately fifty miles south of Dar rgyas (Dargye) monastery in the Tre hor region of Khams. At the age of seventeen Geshe Rabten began his studies at SE RA monastery in LHA SA; he later became the teacher of the five-year-old incarnate lama Dgon gsar rin po che (Gonsar Rinpoche), who would remain his close disciple throughout Geshe Rabten's life. Geshe Rabten and Dgon gsar followed the DALAI LAMA into exile where he received his DGE BSHES lha ram pa degree in 1963 at the age of forty-three. He attracted many students, was appointed religious assistant (mtshan zhabs) to the DALAI LAMA, and began to teach Western students in 1969. He started Tharpa Choling Center of Higher Tibetan Studies near Lausanne, Switzerland, later in 1977. His full name is Dge bshes Rta mgrin rab brtan (Geshe Tamdin Rabten).

Rang 'byung rdo rje. (Rangjung Dorje) (1284-1339). A Tibetan Buddhist master recognized as the third KARMA PA, renowned for his erudition and his knowledge of practice traditions based on both new translation (GSAR MA) and old translation (RNYING MA) tantras. He was born either in the Skyid rong Valley or in the western Tibetan region of Ding ri and, according to traditional sources, as a child, was known for his exceptional perspicacity. The DEB THER SNGON PO ("Blue Annals") records that as a five-year-old boy, he met O RGYAN PA RIN CHEN DPAL, his principal guru, who recognized the young boy as the reincarnation of his teacher KARMA PAKSHI when the child climbed up on a high seat that had been prepared for O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal and declared himself to have been Karma Pakshi in his previous life (this was before the institution of incarnate lamas was established in Tibet). Rang 'byung rdo rje trained first at MTSHUR PHU monastery. He also studied with teachers from GSANG PHU and JO NANG. His collected works include explanations of the major YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA treatises and commentaries and rituals based on the CAKRASAMVARA, HEVAJRA, GUHYASAMĀJA, and KĀLACAKRA tantras. According to his traditional biographies, while in retreat, he had a vision of VIMALAMITRA and PADMASAMBHAVA in which he received the complete transmission of the Rnying ma tantras. He received instructions on the RDZOGS CHEN doctrine from Rig 'dzin Gzhon nu rgyal po, and wrote short works on rdzogs chen. He also discovered a treasure text (GTER MA), known as the Karma snying thig. He was a renowned poet and wrote important works on GCOD practice. The third Karma pa was also a skilled physician and astrologer. He developed a new system of astrology known as Mtshur rtsi, or "Mtshur phu astrology," on the basis of which a new Tibetan calendar was formulated and promulgated at Mtshur phu monastery. In 1331, he was summoned to the court of the Yuan emperor Tugh Temür, but stopped enroute when he correctly interpreted portents that the emperor had died. He later traveled to the Mongol capital of Daidu (modern Beijing) during the reign of Togon Temür, for whom he procured an elixir of long life. After returning to Tibet, he was summoned once again to the Mongol capital, where he passed away while meditating in a three-dimensional CakrasaMvara MAndALA. Rang 'byung rdo rje's writings include the influential tantric work Zab mo nang don ("Profound Inner Meaning"). It is said that his image appeared in the full moon on the evening of his death, and illustrations of the third Karma pa often portray him seated amid a lunar disk.

Rang 'byung rig pa'i rdo rje. (Rangjung Rikpe Dorje) (1924-1981). A renowned and influential Tibetan Buddhist master, recognized as the sixteenth Karma pa, principal leader of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in 1924 in the SDE DGE area of Khams, eastern Tibet, to an aristocratic family, and was recognized as the incarnation of the fifteenth Karma pa by the eleventh TAI SI TU. At the age of eight, the Karma pa was enthroned by the Tai Si tu at DPAL SPUNGS monastery in Khams. Soon after, he went to MTSHUR PHU monastery in central Tibet, where he undertook his studies. In his early years, he received many important Bka' brgyud, SA SKYA, and RNYING MA teachings from eminent masters of the time. In his teenage years, the Karma pa divided his time between Mtshur phu and Dpal spungs monasteries, settling at Mtshur phu at the age of eighteen for several years of retreat. In 1947, the Karma pa took his first long pilgrimage and visited the holy sites of India, Nepal, and Sikkim. In 1954, he accompanied the fourteenth DALAI LAMA to Beijing in attempts to find a peaceful agreement between the nations of China and Tibet. The next year, the Karma pa returned to Khams, where he sought to mediate conflicts between Tibetan militias and the Chinese military, which was beginning to establish a presence in Tibet. By the spring of 1959, the Karma pa decided that it would be better for the preservation of his tradition's religious heritage to leave his homeland and move into exile. After informing the Dalai Lama of his decision, the Karma pa left for Bhutan with an entourage of one hundred fifty laypeople, incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), and monks. He soon moved to Rumtek (Rum theg) monastery in Sikkim, which had been founded previously by the ninth Karma pa DBANG PHYUG RDO RJE. By 1966, the sixteenth Karma pa and his followers had restored Rumtek and formed a new seat in exile for the Karma Bka' brgyud sect. Rang 'byung rig pa'i rdo rje was renowned for his erudition in Buddhist philosophy as well as his mastery of meditation and his ability to work miracles. Beginning in 1974, the sixteenth Karma pa undertook numerous journeys to Europe and North America, where he founded several important Karma bka' brgyud study and meditation centers. During this time, he traveled widely, attracting a great number of Western disciples. In 1981, the sixteenth Karma pa passed away in a hospital near Chicago. His attending physician attested to the fact that the Karma pa's body remained warm for three days after being pronounced dead. Rang 'byung rig pa'i rdo rje was succeeded by the seventeenth Karma pa, O rgyan 'phrin las rdo rje (Orgyan Tinle Dorje).

Rdzogs chen incarnations. A lineage of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU) associated with RDZOG CHEN monastery. The first Rdzog chen incarnation, Rdzogs chen Padma rig 'dzin (Dzokchen Pema Rikdzin), founded the monastery at the behest of the fifth DALAI LAMA. The lineage comprises:

Red Hats. (C. hongmao 紅帽). A popular designation in both European languages and Chinese for the BKA' BRGYUD and sometimes the RNYING MA sects of Tibetan Buddhism, whose lamas do indeed wear red hats. Although the term ZHWA DMAR, or "Red Hat," is used to designate an important lineage of incarnate lamas within the KARMA BKA' RGYUD sect, the Western and Chinese division of major Tibetan Buddhist sects into the YELLOW HATS, Red Hats, and BLACK HATS has no corollary within the Tibetan tradition and should be avoided.

  “Referred to as an enigmatical personage by modern writers. Frederic II., King of Prussia, used to say of him that he was a man whom no one had ever been able to make out. Many are his ‘biographies,’ and each is wilder than the other. By some he was regarded as an incarnate god, by others as a clever Alsatian Jew. One thing is certain, Count de St. Germain — whatever his real patronymic may have been — had a right to his name and title, for he had bought a property called San Germano, in the Italian Tyrol, and paid the Pope for the title. He was uncommonly handsome, and his enormous erudition and linguistic capacities are undeniable, for he spoke English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Swedish, Danish, and many Slavonian and Oriental languages, with equal facility with a native. He was extremely wealthy, never received a sou from anyone — in fact never accepted a glass of water or broke bread with anyone — but made most extravagant presents of superb jewellery to all his friends, even to the royal families of Europe. His proficiency in music was marvellous; he played on every instrument, the violin being his favourite. ‘St. Germain rivalled Paganinni himself,’ was said of him by an octogenarian Belgian in 1835, after hearing the ‘Genoese maestro.’ ‘It is St. Germain resurrected who plays the violin in the body of an Italian Skeleton,’ exclaimed a Lithuanian baron who had heard both.

Reincarnation ::: An anglicized word of Latin derivation, meaning "reinfleshment," the coming again into a human bodyof an excarnate human soul. The repetitive reimbodiment of the reincarnating human ego in vehicles ofhuman flesh -- this being a special case of the general doctrine of reimbodiment. This general doctrine ofreimbodiment applies not solely to man, but to all centers of consciousness whatsoever, or to all monadswhatsoever -- wheresoever they may be on the evolutionary ladder of life, and whatsoever may be theirparticular developmental grade thereon.The meaning of this general doctrine is very simple indeed. It is as follows: everylife-consciousness-center, in other words, every monad or monadic essence, reincorporates itselfrepeatedly in various vehicles or bodies, to use the popular word. These bodies may be spiritual, or theymay be physical, or they may be of a nature intermediate between these two, i.e., ethereal. This rule ofnature, which applies to all monads without exception, takes place in all the different realms of thevisible and invisible universe, and on all its different planes, and in all its different worlds.There are eight words used in the theosophical philosophy in connection with reimbodiment, which arenot all synonymous, although some of these eight words have almost the same specific meaning. Theyare: preexistence, rebirth, reimbodiment, palingenesis, metensomatosis, metempsychosis, transmigration,reincarnation (see under each word for definition). Of these eight words, four only may be said to containthe four different basic ideas of the general doctrine of reimbodiment, and these four are preexistence,reimbodiment, metempsychosis, and transmigration.In no case is the word reincarnation identical with any of the other seven words, though of course it hasgrounds of strong similarity with them all, as for instance with preexistence, because obviously the entitypreexists before it reincarnates; and on the same grounds it is similar to rebirth, reimbodiment, andmetensomatosis.The meaning of the word reincarnation differs specifically from rebirth in this, that the latter word simplymeans rebirth in human bodies of flesh on this earth; while the former term also contains the implication,tacit if not expressed, of possible incarnations in flesh by entities which have finished their earthlypilgrimage or evolution, but who can and sometimes do return to this earth in order to incarnate for thepurpose of aiding their less evolved brothers.

reincarnation ::: Reincarnation A belief that we live more than one lifetime. Beliefs vary widely. Some are of the opinion that we always return as the same sex, while others believe it is a system of punishment and reward for actions in our current/previous incarnation(s). Many believe that we reincarnate to get a full range of every possible human experience to develop our souls.

rin po che. In Tibetan, lit. "of great value," hence "precious one"; most commonly an honorific added to the name of a Tibetan BLA MA (lama), which is also used as a term of respect for addressing and referring to one's own or another's lama or teacher. The term may be used for any lama, but the term is most commonly used for incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), in which case it is often affixed to the name of the lineage, for example, Rgyal ba rin po che (a common appellation of the DALAI LAMA), Pan chen rin po che (the PAn CHEN BLA MA), mkhan rin po che ("precious abbot"), and so on. In ordinary Tibetan parlance, to refer to someone as a rin po che means that he (rarely she) is a sprul sku (incarnate lama).

Rje btsun dam pa. (Jetsün Dampa). In Tibetan, "excellent lord," the Tibetan name of the Khalkha Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, the lineage of incarnate lamas who serve as head of the DGE LUGS sect in Mongolia, also known as Bogd Gegen. The lineage was established by the fifth DALAI LAMA, who, after his suppression of the JO NANG sect, declared that the renowned Jo nang scholar TĀRANĀTHA had been reborn in Mongolia, thus taking an important line of incarnations from a rival sect and transferring it to his own Dge lugs sect. The first Rje btsun dam pa was Blo bzang bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan (1635-1723), known in Mongolian as Bogdo Zanabazar or simply Zanabazar. He was the son of the Mongol prince Gombodorj, the Tosiyetu Khan, ruler of the Khan Uula district of Mongolia, and himself became the head of the Khalkha Mongols. He and the second Rje btsun dam pa lama were direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Zanabazar was ordained at the age of five and recognized as the incarnation of Tāranātha, this recognition confirmed by the fifth Dalai Lama and first PAn CHEN LAMA. He spent 1649-1651 in Tibet where he received initiations and teachings from the two Dge lugs hierarchs. Zanabazar is remembered especially as a great sculptor who produced many important bronze images. He was also a respected scholar and a favorite of the Manchu Chinese Kangxi emperor. During the Qing dynasty, the Rje btsun dam pa was selected from Tibet, perhaps in fear that a Mongol lama would become too powerful. During the Qing, it was said that the Qing emperor, the Dalai Lama, and the Rje btsun dam pa were incarnations of MANJUsRĪ, AVALOKITEsVARA, and VAJRAPĀnI, respectively. When northern Mongolia sought independence, the eighth Rje btsun dam pa (1869-1924) assumed the title of emperor of Mongolia, calling himself Boghda Khan (also "Bogd Khan"). He was the head of state until his death in 1924, after which the Communist government declared the end of the incarnation line. However, 'Jam dpal rnam grol chos kyi rgyal mtshan was recognized in LHA SA as the ninth Rje btsun dam pa; he fled into exile in India in 1959.

Rudra(s) (Sanskrit) Rudra-s [from the verbal root rud to weep] A class of monads or dhyani-chohans belonging to the upper worlds of nature, whether of our solar system or planetary chain; virtually identical to the higher manasaputras or kumaras who refuse to create, i.e., imbody themselves in the then unprepared human vehicles. Certain individuals from among the highest of the class, however, were among the very first to obey karmic law, and they incarnated in chosen human vehicles of the third root-race during this present fourth round. The rudras are therefore equivalent to the solar lhas or pitris as contrasted with the lower four classes of monads, the lunar pitris.

Rulers, Divine The nations of antiquity, such as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, had traditions of early racial divine rulers and spiritual dynasties which preceded their human kings. In the later races, these rulers stood for the dynasties of the gods, rishis, pitris, manus, etc., who are said in theosophy to have incarnated themselves in the third root-race on this globe during our present round, and to be born again and again as spiritual teachers in succeeding cycles for the instruction of nations, among whom they appear from time to time.

Sakkayaditthi (Pali) Sakkāyadiṭṭhi [from sakkāya individuality + diṭṭhi belief, theory; cf Sanskrit sat-kāya true individuality + dṛṣti appearance] The delusion of personality, rather than heresy of individuality, for in theosophical literature the individuality is that part of man which reincarnates again and again, clothing itself with one personality or imbodiment after another. As “the erroneous idea that ‘I am I,’ a man or a woman with a special name, instead of being an inseparable part of the whole” (TG 284), the term signifies the sense of separateness and personality, as opposed to the idea that man is an inseparable part of the universe throughout all the ranges of his composite constitution. It means that the personality of the imbodied man has the appearance, and thereby brings about the delusion that the merely personal man is the spiritual man.

Sankaracharya, Krishna, Lao-tzu, and Jesus were avataras in differing degrees, of somewhat differing structure. There was a divine ray which came down at the cyclic time of each of these incarnations, and the connecting link or the flame of mind was provided in each case by a member of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Krishna says, “I incarnate in period after period in order to destroy wickedness and reestablish righteousness” (BG ch 4, sl 8). Krishna here represents the Logos or logoic ray which “on our plane would be utterly helpless, inactive, and have no possible means of communication with us and our sphere, because that logoic ray lacks an intermediate and fully conscious vehicle or carrier, i.e., it lacks the intermediate or highly ethereal mechanism, the spiritual-human in us, which in ordinary man is but slightly active. An avatara takes place when a direct ray from the Logos enters into, fully inspires, and illuminates, a human being, through the intermediary of a bodhisattva who has incarnated in that human being, thereby supplying the fit, ready, and fully conscious intermediate vehicle or carrier” (Fund 276).

Sankhasura (Sanskrit) Śaṅkhāsura A daitya said in Hindu legend to have waged war against the gods and to have conquered them, upon which he stole the Vedas and hid them at the bottom of the sea, whence they were rescued by Vishnu in the form of a fish. There are also vague references in connection with one of the dvipas (Sankha-dvipa) and it is tempting to suppose that they are connected. Another Hindu legend mentions the killing of Sankhasura by Krishna — another instance of the way in which this avatara is placed in many different ages as the Krishna spirit in the world rather than as any incarnated avatara of that name: the death of Krishna is stated as having begun the kali yuga in 3102 BC, whereas Sankha-dvipa was one of the great islands of the Atlantean continental system of several million years ago.

Saptarshis (Sanskrit) Saptarṣi-s [from sapta seven + ṛṣi sage] Seven sages or rishis; the seven great planetary spirits intimately connected with the constellation Ursa Major. Their names are commonly given as Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, and Vasishtha. “By the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, ‘the four preceding Manus’ are the four classes of the originally arupa gods — the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing principles — same of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections” (SD 2:318n). The seven rishis are also said to mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary life cycle.

Sebek-Ra: The crocodile or dragon-headed deity of the dark dynasties of ancient Egypt. See Chapter 3. Ankh-f-n-Khonsu attempted a revival of his Cult in the XXVIth Dynasty, but it failed to become generally established. Now, in tbe New Aeon, another breakthrough of the Current has occurred through Aiwaz, who incarnated in The Master Therion.

Shaberon (Tibetan) zhabs dpad blon (shab-pe-lon) [from zhabs dpad lotus feet cf Sanskrit padmapada a title of respect + blon, blon po officer, minister] Exalted officer; often the head of a Tibetan monastery. The Shaberons are mentioned as occasionally possessing wonderful powers, but are not necessarily tulkus of the Buddha (as the Dalai Lama and Tashi Lama are generally believed to be). While the ordinary Lamaist and uninstructed Tibetan supposes these Buddha reincarnations to be those of Gautama Buddha, the instructed or initiated higher classes of the Tibetan hierarchy understand that in great men there is always a ray of the celestial buddha; and therefore that when these great men reincarnate, the buddha ray is likewise reimbodied.

Should the human personality be of a heavily gross and materialistic type so that very few spiritual impulses are gathered in after death by the higher triad, then this higher triad is reincarnated almost immediately because there was nothing in the life just lived to call for the devachan experience of the personality. There can be no devachan for the manasic personality unless this personality has had in the life just lived at least a modicum of spiritual thought, yearning, and impulse. It is the higher manas which experiences devachan because of the spiritual qualities inherent in this higher manas and to which it has given imperfect expression in the life just lived. It is in devachan that this higher manas has its field of spiritual-mental activity, where it receives its due compensation, its mead of reward, for all the spiritual disappointments, sufferings, and imperfect expressions which it had to bear during earth-life.

Shug gseb. (Shuksep). A Tibetan nunnery located south of LHA SA on a site originally sanctified by the great female adept MA GCIG LAB SGRON. The nunnery and its connected retreat center were established by GYER SGOM TSHUL KHRIM SENG GE, founder of the SHUG GSEB BKA' BRGYUD subsect of Tibetan Buddhism. Due to its close proximity to GANGS RI THOD DKAR, a favored retreat site of RNYING MA master KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS, the nunnery developed a close relationship with the Rnying ma sect from the fourteenth century onwards. The nunnery was home to an important female incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU), the Shug gseb Rje btsun ma (Shuksep Jetsunma).

Spirit-kings Incarnated devas or demigods become human, mentioned as a dynasty of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. These monads, manifesting as devas, assumed bodies to rule over the less evolved men of their own period; but because they descended into matter and therefore were manifesting as rupa beings, they had the possibility of falling into error or evil, as happened historically with more than one who took the left-hand path and corrupted their Atlantean subjects. The dynasty of the spirit-kings, like the general run of the Atlanteans, were divisible into those who followed the right-hand path, and those who followed the left-hand path. The former were called Sons of Light, and the latter Sons of the Shadow.

sprul sku. A Tibetan term often seen transcribed in English as "tulku"; it is the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit term NIRMĀnAKĀYA, the third of the three bodies of a buddha (TRIKĀYA), the "emanation body" that appears in the world for the benefit of sentient beings. Although the term retains this standard Buddhological meaning in Tibetan, sprul sku is used by extension to refer to an "incarnate lama," and the term is sometimes translated as such. It is not believed in every case that each incarnate lama is the emanation body of a buddha. However, the implication is that there is a difference in the processes whereby ordinary beings and incarnate lamas take birth in the world. For the former, rebirth is process over which one has no control, with a strong possibility that one's new life will be in the lower rebirth destinies (DURGATI) as an animal, hungry ghost, or hell denizen. The rebirth of an "emanation body" is instead considered to be a voluntary choice. The sprul sku are said to exercise control over their rebirth; a dying incarnation will often leave instructions for his disciples as to where to find his next rebirth. The practice of identifying children as the incarnations of deceased masters may date from as early as the eleventh or twelfth century. By the fifteenth century, all sects of Tibetan Buddhism had adopted the practice of identifying the successive rebirths of a great teacher, the most famous instance of which are the DALAI LAMAs. There were some three thousand lines of incarnation in Tibet (only several of whom are female). It was also the case that a single lama may have more than one incarnation; there were sometimes three, which were considered individual incarnations of the body, speech, and mind of the deceased master. The institution of the incarnate lama became a central component of Tibetan society, providing the means by which authority and charisma, both symbolic and material, was passed from one generation to another. The spread of Tibetan Buddhism can be traced by the increasingly large geographical areas in which incarnate lamas have been discovered. A variety of types and levels of sprul sku are identified. A mchog gi sprul sku (choki tulku) (UTTAMANIRMĀnAKĀYA) is a buddha, such as sĀKYAMUNI, who appears in the world with a body adorned with the major and minor marks of a MAHĀPURUsA. A skye ba'i sprul sku (kyewe tulku) (JANMANIRMĀnAKĀYA) is the appearance of a buddha in the form of an animal, human, or divinity. Tibetan incarnate lamas would fall into this category. Also in this category would be those cases in which a buddha appears as an inanimate object that provides benefit to sentient beings, such as a bridge across a river, a path, a tree, or a cooling breeze. A bzo bo sprul sku (sowo tulku) (sILPANIRMĀnAKĀYA) is an artisan or craftsman or a particular manifestation of artistic beauty that subdues the afflictions (KLEsA). Within the the large DGE LUGS PA monasteries, a monk with the title of tshogs chen sprul sku (tsokchen tulku, "great assembly tulku") is excused from performing regular assembly duties. In Tibetan, an incarnate lama is addressed and referred to as RIN PO CHE (precious one), although that term is also used for abbots and other holders of high ecclesiastical office; it may also be used for one's teacher, even if he or she is not an incarnate lama. The term BLA MA (lama) is typically used to refer to incarnations but is also used widely for a teacher.

Still another aspect of the tulku doctrine is illustrated by the case of Blavatsky. Where is she now? Blavatsky has not yet again reincarnated — she has not yet been born as a child — but she has at certain times, and for one certain individual, with that individual’s consent, organized as it were tulku for that individual. For the time being, therefore, we can say that Blavatsky has partially imbodied in that chosen individual for the purpose of special transmission. In all cases of tulku, they are incarnations or appearances. If Blavatsky, for instance, were to make tulku of a person for a month or a year, for the time being that person would be tulku, but when that particular work was done, the influence would be withdrawn and tulku would stop.

Sutratman(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word meaning "thread-self," the golden thread of individuality -- the stream ofself-consciousness -- on which all the substance-principles of man's constitution are strung, so to say, likepearls on a golden chain. The sutratman is the stream of consciousness-life running through all thevarious substance-principles of the constitution of the human entity -- or indeed of any other entity. Eachsuch pearl on the golden chain is one of the countless personalities which man uses during the course ofhis manvantara-long evolutionary progress. The sutratman, therefore, may be briefly said to be theimmortal or spiritual monadic ego, the individuality which incarnates in life after life, and therefore isrightly called the thread-self or fundamental self.It is this sutratman, this thread-self, this consciousness-stream, or rather stream of consciousness-life,which is the fundamental and individual selfhood of every entity, and which, reflected in and through theseveral intermediate vehicles or veils or sheaths or garments of the invisible constitution of man, or ofany other being in which a monad enshrouds itself, produces the egoic centers of self-consciousexistence. The sutratman, therefore, is rooted in the monad, the monadic essence.

Ta’aroa (Tahitian) The chief Tahitian god who broke out of the darkness within the cosmic egg. After living alone, he created a daughter with whom he made the manifested world. Later he fashioned man out of red earth, and then put him to sleep for ages — referring to the ages during which the mind principle had not yet awakened to conscious activity. During this sleep Ta’aroa extracted a bone from the man, and from this fashioned woman, a reference to the third root-race when the androgynous mankind separated into the present type of sexual humanity. The mental sleep of the third root-race mankind lasted from a number of minor time periods after the separation, and before mind really incarnated in the relatively mindless bodies. Whether the myths relating to the creation of man and woman are indigenous or imported from Christianity is debated.

Tai Si tu incarnations. An influential incarnation (SPRUL SKU) lineage in the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tai Si tu incarnations are traditionally venerated as emanations of the future buddha MAITREYA and, according to Tibetan sources, early members of the line include the Indian MAHĀSIDDHA dOMBĪ HERUKA and the Tibetans MAR PA CHOS KYI BLO GROS and TĀRANĀTHA. As one of the leading incarnate lamas of the Karma bka' brgyud, the Si tu incarnations traditionally maintained a close relationship with the KARMA PAs, the sect's spiritual leader; indeed, the two often alternated as guru and disciple. The first of the line, Chos kyi rgyal mtshan (Chokyi Gyaltsen, 1377-1448), trained under the fifth Karma pa and in 1407 received the honorary title from the Ming Emperor Yongle (r. 1403-1425). Perhaps most famous in the lineage is the eighth Si tu, CHOS KYI 'BYUNG GNAS, who is renowned for his erudition and literary accomplishments. The Tai Si tu lineage includes:

Tanha: In Buddhist terminology, the will to lead a separate, personal incarnate existence.

Tāranātha. (1575-1634). The appellation of Kun dga' snying po (Kunga Nyingpo), a Tibetan scholar affiliated with the JO NANG tradition. Tāranātha was an author of exceptional scope, writing on a vast range of philosophical and doctrinal topics. Born in Drong, he was a precocious child, famously declaring himself to be an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) at the age of one, an identification that was eventually confirmed. He was installed at Chos lung rtse monastery at the age of four. By age fifteen, he had studied many tantric cycles, becoming adept at both the six yogas of NĀROPA (NA RO CHOS DRUG) and MAHĀMUDRĀ. He also developed an interest in Indian languages; several of his translations of Sanskrit works are included in the Tibetan canon. Tāranātha had a strong interest in India throughout his life, not simply its ancient past but also its contemporary present, chronicling events of the Mughal period. He even declared that he and the Mughal emperor Jahangir were emanations of the same person. He also had a strong interest in the SIDDHA tradition and studied with many Buddhist and non-Buddhist YOGINs. At the age of sixteen, Tāranātha met his most influential Indian teacher, Buddhaguptanātha, who had traveled throughout the Buddhist world and studied directly with some of the last remaining members of the siddha tradition. Tāranātha surveyed the Indian siddha lineages in his BKA' BABS BDUN LDAN GYI RNAM THAR ("Biographies of the Seven Instruction Lineages"). His most famous work, informally called the RGYA GAR CHOS 'BYUNG ("History of Indian Buddhism"), is highly regarded by later Tibetan historians. Tāranātha was a great master of the KĀLACAKRATANTRA and its surrounding topics, writing extensively about them. He restored the STuPA built by the Jo nang founder DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN. Tāranātha saw Dol po pa in many visions and strongly promoted his teachings, writing in support of the GZHAN STONG view. In 1615, with the patronage of the rulers of Gtsang, he began work on JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING, northwest of Gzhis ka rtse (Shigatse) in central Tibet. It was completed in 1628. Renowned for its beautiful design and sumptuous artwork, the monastery would be his primary residence in the last years of his life. After his death, the fifth DALAI LAMA suppressed the Jo nang sect, converting the monastery into a DGE LUGS establishment. He also identified Tāranātha's incarnation in Mongolia as the first RJE BTSUN DAM PA, a line of incarnations who would serve as titular head of the Dge lugs sect in Mongolia until the twentieth century. The reasons for this identification are debated. The Dalai Lama claimed in one of his autobiographies that his mother had been the tantric consort of Tāranātha and that Tāranātha was his biological father. It was also the case that Tāranātha had been supported by the rulers of Gtsang, the opponents that the Dalai Lama's faction had defeated in the civil war that resulted in the Dalai Lama gaining political control over Tibet.

Taurus (The Bull): The second sign of the zodiac. Its symbol represents the head and horns of a bull. The sacred Apis was presumed to be the incarnation of the god Osiris—hence a symbol of a sepulchre or tomb. The Sun’s entry into Taurus was celebrated as a Feast of Maya (Maia)—our May Day—the Sun represented by a white bull with a golden disc between his horns, followed by a procession of virgins, exemplifying the fecundity of Nature in Spring. The Sun is in Taurus annually from April 21 to May 20. Astrologically it is in the second thirty-degree arc from the Spring Equinox, from 30° to 60° along the Ecliptic. It is the “fixed” quality of the element Earth, conferring external will power that, ordinarily passive, and negative, becomes obstinate and unbending when aroused. Negative, nocturnal, cold, dry and melancholy. Ruler: Venus. Exaltation: Moon. Detriment: Mars. Fall: Uranus. Symbolic interpretation. The head and horns of a bull; the sacred Apis in whom the god Osiris was incarnate; a sepulchre or tomb.

The adityas are the sustainers of the solar divine life which exists in all things, and in our present Vaivasvata manvantara they are the divine solar pitris (fathers) — not the lower or lunar pitris — which incarnated in early humanity. “The wise call our fathers Vasus; our paternal grandfathers Rudras, our paternal great grandfathers, Adityas . . . ” (Manu 3:284).

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

The “descent” of the manasaputras before the middle of the third root-race was only a partial descent, and even today they are not yet fully incarnated in us, they have not yet fully manifested their splendor within us because our minds are not yet fully evolved. The descent is still in progress and will continue until the very end of the fifth round. Even the titan-intellects of the human race have not yet fully expressed the powers of the manasaputra above and within them. These manasaputras are incarnating ever more and more, just as the growing child develops more mental power as each year passes. As man proceeds along the evolutionary pathway and unfolds his inner nature, he will bring forth his own latent manasaputra and in the next manvantara he will light the way for lesser entities.

The destiny which lies in the germ is the destiny which belongs to the spiritual entity in its various attributes behind that germ, and these attributes as a whole — in other words the svabhava of the entity — are born of that entity’s portion of free will leading it off into strange bypaths during the ages-long course of its evolutionary growth. The incarnate person, having the power of choice, can wander temporarily far astray from the path of his divine destiny, lured by the attractions of the lower planes of manifestation. This stirring up of karmic results which actually becomes Karma-Nemesis, that which cannot be avoided and must be worked out, is the beneficent but inexorable adjuster and restorer of harmony.

The first incarnation, 'Jigs med phrin las 'od zer (Jikme Tinle Öser), was born in the Rdo valley of Mgo log, in eastern Tibet, and for this reason was later known as Rdo grub chen, the "great adept (grub chen) of Rdo." Despite the fact that he was not recognized as an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) at a young age, his youth is described as having been filled with visionary experiences of his past lives. He spent his early life studying under numerous masters throughout eastern, central, and southern Tibet, although it was only at the age of forty-one that he met his principal GURU, 'Jigs med gling pa, from whom he received the entire RNYING MA transmissions of BKA' MA and GTER MA and by whom he was certified as the principal lineage holder of the klong chen snying thig tradition. His fame as a spiritual luminary spread and traveled widely among the great monastic communities of eastern Tibet, teaching many of the great Rnying ma masters of his day and establishing the monastic center of Yar klungs Padma bkod in eastern Tibet. The second incarnation, 'Jigs med phun tshogs 'byung gnas (Jikme Puntsok Jungne), was known for his ability to perform miraculous feats, and he continued many of the traditions of his predecessor. He also laid the foundations for what would later become the famed Rdo grub chen monastery. The third incarnation, 'Jigs med bstan pa'i nyi ma (Jikme Tenpe Nyima), was born into a prominent family in the Mgo log region of eastern Tibet: his father was Bdud 'joms gling pa (1835-1903), a famed treasure revealer (GTER STON), and his seven younger brothers were all recognized as incarnate lamas. He studied under many great Rnying ma masters, including DPAL SPRUL RIN PO CHE and 'JAM DBYANGS MKHYEN BRTSE DBANG PO. Two individuals were recognized as the fourth incarnation and were enthroned simultaneously at Rdo grub chen monastery in about 1930. They continued their education together until the age of twenty. The first, Rig 'dzin bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan, was imprisoned during the Chinese invasion of Tibet and died in a prison labor camp. In 1957, the second incarnation, Thub bstan phrin las dpal bzang, escaped into exile in Sikkim where he established a permanent residence. He later became a representative at the Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok and traveled widely throughout Europe and the United States.

The meanings of transmigration, metempsychosis, metensomatosis, the Hebrew gilgulim, etc., are not synonymous. Each one of these words has its own particular significance, although many of these different words overlap to a certain extent. Thus a being who reincarnates on earth — takes up a body of flesh — likewise transmigrates in the sense of passing over from one condition of life to another, followed by a third and yet others; and that during this process there is a certain change of the condition of the soul or migrating entity which is the particular meaning of metempsychosis; and furthermore, the assumption of a new physical body which is part of the meaning of reincarnation appears in the specific term metensomatosis, and yet again the phase of rebirth is likewise involved. Each one of these different terms, and others, sets forth one particular aspect of the destiny and adventures of the peregrinating entity.

The originating causes of sex are not rooted in the higher principles or elements of the human composite constitution. It is the effect of former thought-deposits, of emotional and mental tendencies and biases given way to in preceding lives on earth. The predominating and it may perhaps truly be said that the main cause of sex-change in incarnation is strong attraction to the opposite sex during the few — or in rare cases it may be a fairly large number — preceding lives on earth. This attraction, which is the instrumental cause of the tendencies and biases spoken of, arising out of thought and emotional energy, feminizes the life-atoms, or masculinizes them, as the individual case may be, and the natural consequence is incarnation in a body of the sex to which attraction leads. Thus a reincarnating ego may have several incarnations in bodies of one sex, and then incarnate in bodies of the opposite sex for a number of times in succeeding incarnations. How many times, therefore, a reincarnating ego may imbody in a male or a female body is not subject to any arbitrary rule but depends solely upon the karmic impulse laid aside in the treasury of psychomental experiences.

The Qabbalah likewise states that the tsurah produces as its reflection the neshamah, and that the latter is connected with its divine prototype by a vital thread of spiritual radiance, up which even the neshamah aspires to rise to perfect union with its prototype. The tsurah is the spiritual monad, including as it does the three highest principles, and because this monad is an emanative product from the all-encompassing cosmic divinity, it is the divine prototypal form or entity; next, the highest part of the tsurah or monad is the neshama or spirit, which clothes itself in ruah or buddhi-manas; which again clothes itself in the astral monad represented by nephesh; which in its turn incarnates in guph, or the material physical body. The Hebrew Qabbalah so frequently strives to clothe its thought from the vulgar vision by detailed — although usually correct — modification of essential ideas, that its real significant teaching is not always readily apparent.

These dhyani-buddhas furnished humankind with divine kings and leaders, who taught humanity the arts and sciences, and who “revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their vehicles of the lower Kingdoms — and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin — the great spiritual truths of the transcendental worlds” (SD 1:267).

The titans, in one respect, are fourth root-race giants, the Hindu daityas, who at one time obtain the sovereignty of earth and defeat the minor gods; they are thus fallen beings — Python, suras and asuras, corybantes, curetes, Dioscuri, anaktes, dii magni, idaei dactyli, lares, penates, manes, aletae, kabeirio, manus, rishis, and dhyani-chohans — who watched over and incarnated in the elect of the third and fourth root-races.

This condition of human consciousness differs from the devachanic state. As used above, akasic samadhi was applied to those individuals dying by accident who on earth had been of unusually pure character and life. It is a temporary condition, equivalent to an automatic reproduction in the victim’s consciousness of the beautiful and holy thoughts that the person had had during incarnated life; in fact, a sort of preliminary to the devachanic state. Such dream state immediately succeeds the first condition of absolute unconsciousness which the shock of death brings to all human beings, good, bad, or indifferent. In the above cases there is no conscious kama-lokic experience whatsoever, because the shock of death has brought about the paralysis of all the lower parts of the human constitution. Only adumbrations of the consciousness of the buddhi and atman, with the most spiritual portion of manas are then active (ML 131). In certain cases the condition of samadhi in the akasic portions of the human constitution may last until what would have been the natural life term on earth is completed; and then these individuals glide into the devachanic state.

Thrones An angelic group in the Christian celestial hierarchy, as outlined by the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Thrones rank third in the ninefold scheme, being preceded by the Seraphim and Cherubim; the second and intermediate triad is formed of Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; while the third triad is formed of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. This scheme was derived from Hebrew angelology, which comes from the Chaldean; although this Christian angelic scheme has been philosophically powerfully affected by Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean thought. “They who are called in Theology ‘the Thrones,’ and are the ‘Seat of God,’ must be the first incarnated men on Earth” (SD 2:80). The Zohar states that the Benei ’Elohim (sons of god) belong to the tenth subdivision of the Thrones. The ancient Syrians defined their world of Rulers similarly to the Chaldeans: the lowest world was the sublunary, our earth, ruled by Angels; then Mercury, Archangels; Venus, Principalities; Sun, Powers; Mars, Virtues; Jupiter, Dominions; and Saturn, Thrones.

Transmigration ::: This word is grossly misunderstood in the modern Occident, as also is the doctrine comprised under theold Greek word metempsychosis, both being modernly supposed to mean, through the commonmisunderstanding of the ancient literatures, that the human soul at some time after death migrates into thebeast realm and is reborn on earth in a beast body. The real meaning of this statement in ancient literaturerefers to the destiny of what theosophists call the life-atoms, but it has absolutely no reference to thedestiny of the human soul, as an entity.Theosophy accepts all aspects of the ancient teaching, but explains and interprets them. Our doctrine inthis respect unless, indeed, we are treating of the case of a "lost soul,"is "once a man, always a man." Thehuman soul can no more migrate over and incarnate in a beast body than can the psychical apparatus of abeast incarnate in human flesh. Why? Because in the former case, the beast vehicle offers to the humansoul no opening at all for the expression of the spiritual and intellectual and psychical powers andfaculties and tendencies which make a man human. Nor can the soul of the beast enter into a humanbody, because the impassable gulf of a psychical and intellectual nature, which separates the twokingdoms, prevents any such passage from the one up into another so much its superior in all respects. Inthe former case, there is no attraction for the man beastwards; and in the latter case there is theimpossibility of the imperfectly developed beast mind and beast soul finding a proper lodgment in whatto it is truly a godlike sphere which it simply cannot enter.Transmigration, however, has a specific meaning when the word is applied to the human soul: the livingentity migrates or passes over from one condition to another condition or state or plane, as the case maybe, whether these latter be in the invisible realms of nature or in the visible realms, and whether the stateor condition be high or low. The specific meaning of this word, therefore, implies nothing more than achange of state or of condition or of plane: a migrating of the living entity from one to the other, butalways in conditions or estates or habitudes appropriate and pertaining to its human dignity.In its application to the life-atoms, to which are to be referred the observations of the ancients withregard to the lower realms of nature, transmigration means briefly that the particular life-atoms, which intheir aggregate compose man's lower principles, at and following the change that men call death migrateor transmigrate or pass into other bodies to which these life-atoms are attracted by similarity ofdevelopment -- be these attractions high or low, and they are usually low, because their own evolutionarydevelopment is as a rule far from being advanced. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that theselife-atoms compose man's inner -- and outer -- vehicles or bodies, and that in consequence there arevarious grades or classes of these life-atoms, from the physical upwards (or inwards if you please) to theastral, purely vital, emotional, mental, and psychical.This is, in general terms, the meaning of transmigration. The word means no more than the specificsenses just outlined, and stops there. But the teaching concerning the destiny of the entity is continuedand developed in the doctrine pertaining to the word metempsychosis.

uncarnate ::: a. --> Not fleshy; specifically, not made flesh; not incarnate. ::: v. t. --> To divest of flesh.

Vajrapāni. (P. Vajirapāni; T. Phyag na rdo rje; C. Jingangshou pusa; J. Kongoshu bosatsu; K. Kŭmgangsu posal 金剛手菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Holder of the VAJRA"; an important bodhisattva in the MAHĀYĀNA and VAJRAYĀNA traditions, who appears in both peaceful and wrathful forms. In the Pāli suttas, he is a YAKsA (P. yakkha) guardian of the Buddha. It is said that whoever refuses three times to respond to a reasonable question from the Buddha would have his head split into pieces on the spot; carrying out this punishment was Vajrapāni's duty. In such circumstances, Vajrapāni, holding his cudgel, would be visible only to the Buddha and to the person who was refusing to answer the question; given the frightening vision, the person would inevitably then respond. Vajrapāni is sometimes said to be the wrathful form of sAKRA, who promised to offer the Buddha protection if the Buddha would teach the dharma; he thus accompanies the Buddha as a kind of bodyguard on his journeys to distant lands. Vajrapāni is commonly depicted in GANDHĀRA sculpture, flanking the Buddha and holding a cudgel. In the early Mahāyāna sutras, Vajrapāni is referred to as a yaksa servant of the bodhisattvas, as in the AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ. In the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA, he is called the "general of the yaksas" (yaksasenādhipati), and is praised as a protector of followers of the Buddha. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, AVALOKITEsVARA explains that one of the forms that he assumes to convert sentient beings is as Vajrapāni. In later Mahāyāna and early tantric Buddhism, Vajrapāni becomes a primary speaker in important sutras and tantras, as well as a principal protagonist in them, and comes to be listed as one of the "eight close sons" (*UPAPUTRA), the principal bodhisattvas. In the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, as leader of the vajra family (VAJRAKULA), he flanks sĀKYAMUNI in the MAndALA. In the SARVATATHĀGATATATTVASAMGRAHA, his transition from "general of the yaksas" to "the supreme lord of all tathāgatas" is played out through his subjugation of Mahesvara (siva). At the command of the buddha VAIROCANA, Vajrapāni suppresses all of the worldly divinities of the universe and brings them to the summit of Mount SUMERU, where they seek refuge in the three jewels (RATNATRAYA). Only Mahesvara refuses to submit to the uddha. Through Vajarpāni's recitation of a MANTRA, Mahesvara loses his life, only to be reincarnated in another world system, where he eventually achieves buddhahood. Vajrapāni's yaksa origins continue in his wrathful aspects, most common in Tibet, such as the three-eyed Canda Vajrapāni. It is in this form that he is part of a popular triad with Avalokitesvara and MANJUsRĪ known as the "protectors of the three families" (T. RIGS GSUM MGON PO). These three bodhisattvas are said to be the physical manifestation of the wisdom (MaNjusrī), compassion (Avalokitesvara), and power (Vajrapāni) of all the buddhas. Vajrapāni is also said to be the bodhisattva emanation of the buddha AKsOBHYA and the chief bodhisattva of the vajra family. He himself has numerous forms and emanations, including Mahābāla (who may have developed from his early attendant Vajrapurusa), Vajrasattva, Vajradhara, VajrahuMkāra, Ucchusma, Bhutadāmara, and Trailokyavijaya. Vajrapāni is closely related especially to VAJRADHARA, and indeed Vajradhara and Vajrapāni may have originally been two names for the same deity (the Chinese translations of the two deities' names are the same). Vajrapāni's MANTRA is oM vajrapāni huM phat. He is also known as Guhyakādhipati, or "Lord of the Secret." The secret (guhyaka) originally referred to a class of yaksas that he commanded, but expanded in meaning to include secret knowledge and mantras. Vajrapāni is the protector of mantras and those who recite them, and is sometimes identified as the bodhisattva responsible for the collection, recitation, and protection of the VIDYĀDHARAPItAKA.

Varahi ::: the sakti of Vis.n.u in his third avatara, when he incarnated Varahi as a mighty boar (Varaha) to raise the Earth from the depths of the ocean.

VISIBLE WORLD Molecular world, the three lower states of aggregation of the physical world (49:5-7).

The visible world can be said to be the special world of minerals as regards consciousness. (K 1.11.5)

Man&


Wheat Brought to earth by Lords of Wisdom from other spheres, as were all the grains, and indeed all plants and animals. Yet wheat is said not to be known in the wild state nor to have been developed from any grass. Plato speaks of inventors — gods and demigods incarnate in human beings — who appeared successively among the races of mankind after their divine rulers had departed, and discovered fire, wheat, and wine. The kabiri and also Isis are said to have brought wheat, as is Isis. In Egyptian symbology the Osirified defunct becomes Khem, who gleans the field of Aaru — i.e., “he gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice” (SD 1:221).

Wheel of life: (1) Samsara (q.v.)—(2) A wheel often depicted in Tibetan paintings, setting forth the basic beliefs in reincarnation found in Lamaism. The endless circumference of the wheel is symbolic of immortality; the three prominences of the hub symbolize the three great vices, ignorance, lust and anger, a lapse into which will make the wrongdoer reincarnate as an insect or other low life-form in his next life; the six spokes symbolize the six principle divisions of life and religion: the gods, the demigods, hell, the tortured souls, human beings, and animals.

  “when Globe A of the new chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is, that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human state of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each planet, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point — and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed — the ‘Door’ into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of ‘human’ Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round” (SD 1:173).

Will-born Used in The Secret Doctrine as equivalent to mind-born — referring specifically to those beings in the early third root-race “while it was yet in its state of purity” who were created by means of will power through kriyasakti by the Sons of Wisdom. This progeny is termed the Sons of Ad, Sons of the Fire-mist, or Sons of Will and Yoga. “It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous Being, called the ‘Initiator,’ and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. ‘Set apart’ in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, ‘Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras’ — to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle” (SD 1:207). Theosophy teaches that in future ages generation by means of will power through krisyasakti will again be the method of producing offspring.

world, and afterwards incarnate as one of the

Yatus, Yatudhanas (Sanskrit) Yātu-s, Yātudhāna-s A kind of spirit corresponding to the Greek daimon, one of the hierarchies of spiritual, semi-spiritual, and ethereal entities — among many other similar classes, such as the nagas, gandharvas, devas, rishis, apsarasas, and yakshas. In the human constitution, those elemental or semi-elemental beings which are instrumental in carrying out the mandates of the higher parts of man; in the solar system they perform a similar function of cosmic character. Along with the other classes, they are the “Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are gods and men — when incarnated in the nether world” (SD 2:211).

Youths English translations of the Sanskrit kumaras (virgins), applied mainly in ancient Hindu writings to spiritual, semi-spiritual, and occasionally ethereal beings, who follow evolutionary courses very different from those of present greatly materialized mankind, and who are looked upon as students of divine wisdom. Youths is applied to the dhyani-chohans, kumaras, or agnishvattas who “refused to incarnate.”

Zhe chen rab 'byams. (Shechen Rapjam). An important line of Tibetan incarnate lamas. The first Zhe chen rab 'byams, Bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan (Tenpe Gyaltsen, 1650-1709), was a disciple of the fifth DALAI LAMA, NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, and Padma rig 'dzin (Pema Rikdzin, 1625-1697)-the latter being the first RDZOGS CHEN INCARNATION and founder of RDZOGS CHEN monastery. The second Zhe chen rab 'byams, 'Gyur med kun bzang rnam rgyal (Gyurme Kunsang Namgyel, 1710-1769), founded Zhe chen monastery in 1735. Subsequent incarnations served as the abbots of Zhe chen monastery.



QUOTES [20 / 20 - 370 / 370]


KEYS (10k)

   7 Sri Ramakrishna
   6 Sri Aurobindo
   2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
   1 Sri Sarada Devi
   1 Saint Gregory Palamas
   1 Justin Martyr
   1 The Mother
   1 Swami Vivekananda

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   19 Frederick Lenz
   6 Sri Aurobindo
   6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
   4 Sri Ramakrishna
   4 Mahatma Gandhi
   4 Fernando Pessoa
   3 Wendell Berry
   3 Terry Pratchett
   3 Sherrilyn Kenyon
   3 Prince Philip
   3 Pope Benedict XVI
   3 Peter Rollins
   3 Oswald Chambers
   3 Friedrich Nietzsche
   3 Christopher Paolini
   2 William Shakespeare
   2 Tupac Shakur
   2 Thomas Hardy
   2 Snoop Dogg
   2 Sara Miles

1:The milk of Divine Love stems to us from God incarnate. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
2:All divinely inspired Scripture was written because of the Virgin who brought forth God incarnate. ~ Saint Gregory Palamas,
3:When a savior becomes incarnate, innumerable are the beings who find salvation by taking refuge in him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
4:God indeed is in all things; only his power is more or less manifest in them. God incarnate is divinity most manifest in the flesh. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
5:Only when men shall depend exclusively upon the Divine and upon nothing else will the incarnate god no longer need to die for them. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 1, 1951-1954,
6:When we say, "The Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God," this word "God" stands only for the incarnate Person of the Son ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.35.4ad3).,
7:A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
8:We have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. ~ Justin Martyr,
9:The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
10:Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone,
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,
11:Some word that could incarnate highest Truth
Leaped out from a chance tension of the soul, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,
12:The Blessed Virgin is said to have merited to bear the Lord of all, not because she merited God to be incarnate, but because she merited, from the grace given to her, that grade of purity and holiness, which suited her to be the Mother of God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.2.11ad3).,
13:O living power of the incarnate Word,
   All that the Spirit has dreamed thou canst create:
   Thou art the force by which I made the worlds,
   Thou art my vision and my will and voice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
14:God is love personified. He is apparent in everything. Everybody is being drawn to Him whether he knows it or not. The God of Love is to be worshiped & when we think Him to be Love Incarnate, seeing Him in all things & all things in Him, it is then that supreme Bhakti is attaine ~ Swami Vivekananda,
15:The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
   Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
   The superman shall wake in mortal man
   And manifest the hidden demigod
   Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
   Revealing the secret deity in the cave.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
16:In Malkus, the lowest of the Sephiros, the sphere of the physical world of matter, wherein incarnate the exiled Neschamos from the Divine Palace, there abides the Shechinah, the spiritual Presence of Ain Soph as a heritage to mankind and an ever-present reminder of spiritual verities. That is why there is written " Keser is in Malkus, and Malkus is in Keser, though after another manner The Zohar would imply that the real Shechinah, the real Divine Presence, is allocated to Binah whence it never descends, but that the Shechinah in Malkus is an eidolon or Daughter of the Great Supernal Mother. Isaac Myer suggests that : " It is considered by Qabalists as the executive energy or power of Binah, the Holy Spirit or the Upper Mother." ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegrantes,
17:And just as in the past each civilization was the vehicle of its own mythology, developing in character as its myth became progressively interpreted, analyzed, and elucidated by its leading minds, so in this modern world~where the application of science to the fields of practical life has now dissolved all cultural horizons, so that no separate civilization can ever develop again~each individual is the center of a mythology of his own, of which his own intelligible character is the Incarnate God, so to say, whom his empirically questing consciousness is to find. The aphorism of Delphi, 'Know thyself,' is the motto. And not Rome, not Mecca, not Jerusalem, Sinai, or Benares, but each and every 'thou' on earth is the center of this world, in the sense of that formula quoted from the twelfth-century Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers, of God as 'an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere.' ~ Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology,
18:7. The Meeting with the Goddess:The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed-whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace. ~ Joseph Campbell,
19:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
   They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
   Uplift the stature of the human clay
   Or slowly transmute it into heavens gold.
   He is the Good for which men fight and die,
   He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;
   He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;
   He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass
   Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade
   Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.
   He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame
   And the glad resignation of the saint
   And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time
   And the heros might wrestling with death and fate.
   He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
   And the calm autocracy of the sages rule.
   He is the high and solitary Thought
   Aloof above the ignorant multitude:
   He is the prophets voice, the sight of the seer.
   He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
   He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.
   He is the riches of the spiritual Vast
   Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;
   He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,
   He is infinity in a little space:
   He is immortality in the arms of death.
   These powers I am and at my call they come.
   Thus slowly I lift mans soul nearer the Light.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
20:A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
   Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
   My jewelled dreams of you.

I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
   Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
   The moods of infinity.

But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
   Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
   The roots were not deep enough.

He who would bring the heavens here
   Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
   And tread the dolorous way.

Coercing my godhead I have come down
   Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
   Twixt the gates of death and birth.

I have been digging deep and long
   Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
   A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
   To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
   Are my meed since the world began.

For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
   Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
   Enamoured of sorrow and sin.

The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
   And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
   His drama can endure.

All around is darkness and strife;
   For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
   Cast by the Undying Ones.

Man lights his little torches of hope
   That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
   An inn his pilgrimage.

The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
   The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
   Or a demon altar choose.

All that was found must again be sought,
   Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
   Through vistas of fruitless lives.

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
   And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
   And wrought the eternal will.

How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
   "Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
   Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.

"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
   And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
   And bound to life's iron doom?

"This earth is ours, a field of Night
   For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
   Or suffer a god's desires?

"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
   Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
   And the curb of his wide white peace."

But the god is there in my mortal breast
   Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
   For the nameless Immaculate.

A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
   Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
   And knock at the keyless gate."

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
   At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
   On the Dragon's outspread wings.

I left the surface gauds of mind
   And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
   To the nether mysteries.

I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
   And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
   And the inner reason of hell.

Above me the dragon murmurs moan
   And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
   I have walked in the bottomless pit.

On a desperate stair my feet have trod
   Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
   Into the human abyss.

He who I am was with me still;
   All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
   On my vast untroubled brow.

The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
   And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
   And glimmer from shore to shore.

Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
   And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
   The incarnate spirits yearn

Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
   Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
   Clarioning darkness' end.

A little more and the new life's doors
   Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
   In a great world bare and bright.

I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
   For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
   The living truth of you.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
2:The souls now incarnating are power souls. It is a dark age. To incarnate now one needs psychic self-defense. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
3:We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
4:Well, demonization itself can help ... to provide an alibi. You succumb to the Devil incarnate, and as a result you're not guilty yourself. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove
5:Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our spiritual, evolutionary pathway. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove
6:Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
7:A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove
8:The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove
9:If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I... daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother's heart; surely I too must be an accomplice in the crime. Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
10:I love hanging out with my friends and family. I really, really, really love articulating original thought. That's probably my core, my biggest buzz. Because then it makes me feel like I know why I was born. Reaching original thought, where I know that I'm perceiving something that only I have seen, and I need to incarnate that. That's it right there. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
11:I love hanging out with my friends and family. I really, really, really love articulating original thought. That's probably my core, my biggest buzz. Because then it makes me feel like I know why I was born. Reaching original thought, where I know that I'm perceiving something that only I have seen, and I need to incarnate that. That's it right there. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
12:I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
13:Was Christ God incarnate? Yes, of course, but so are we all. This in no way detracts from the divinity of Christ, who must have been a very advanced incarnation of God. And for those Christians who feel uncomfortable with the notion that we are all incarnations of God, and therefore brothers and sisters of Christ, let me quote John 14:12: “In all truth I tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, and will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:A bird is joy incarnate. ~ Myrtle Reed,
2:Culture is religion incarnate. ~ Charles Colson,
3:They were devils incarnate. ~ William Shakespeare,
4:Hitler is simply pure reason incarnate ~ Rudolf Hess,
5:The bright incarnate spirit of the Morn. ~ Alfred Austin,
6:Now my soul is incarnate in my country, ~ Adam Mickiewicz,
7:My mate. Death incarnate. Night triumphant. ~ Sarah J Maas,
8:Life is the spirit incarnate in time. ~ R Buckminster Fuller,
9:ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.  ~ Arthur Machen,
10:The Romans were the tonal incarnate, complete order. ~ Frederick Lenz,
11:God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us. ~ Eugenia Price,
12:But if used for retribution, magic is vengeance incarnate. ~ Terry Goodkind,
13:The human spirit is courage incarnate, overcoming the impossible. ~ Angel M B Chadwick,
14:I'm no syllogism incarnate, but my wife makes me look like Immanuel Kant. ~ Claudia Cardinale,
15:...a book, a real book, language incarnate, becomes a part of one's bodily life. ~ Wendell Berry,
16:Take yourself by the scruff of the neck and shake off your incarnate laziness. ~ Oswald Chambers,
17:As we kill nature, we are killing ourselves, and God incarnate as the world as well. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka,
18:Roy Keane is Damien, the devil incarnate off the film The Omen. He's evil. Even in training. ~ Ryan Giggs,
19:How do you explain to someone who thinks you're the devil incarnate, that you're really not? ~ John Corvino,
20:I’ve reached the point where tedium is a person, the incarnate fiction of my own company. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
21:Yo, I'm god incarnate. From the grimiest back blocks. Pazienza lyrical equivalent of Sasquatch ~ Vinnie Paz,
22:But if he can find your daughter, he can be the Evil Earth incarnate and you won’t give a damn. ~ N K Jemisin,
23:Et diabolus incarnate est. Et homo factus est./ Ve şeytan ete kemiğe büründü. Ve insan oluştu. ~ Arthur Machen,
24:Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. ~ John F Kennedy,
25:Anger emanated from her in waves and she looked like either the angel of death or the devil incarnate ~ K L Kreig,
26:Nefarious purposes translation: For disgusting demon sex and the birth of the Devil incarnate. Nice. ~ Elle Casey,
27:Clubs are all about winning. National teams, however, have an additional function: to incarnate the nation. ~ Simon Kuper,
28:God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days' wonder. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
29:The souls now incarnating are power souls. It is a dark age. To incarnate now one needs psychic self-defense. ~ Frederick Lenz,
30:The incarnate Word is with us, is still speaking, is present always, yet leaves no sign but everything that is. ~ Wendell Berry,
31:We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. ~ D H Lawrence,
32:Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am Fire and Life incarnate! Now and forever - I am PHOENIX! ~ Chris Claremont,
33:One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives. ~ Subhas Chandra Bose,
34:It is possible to see the intermediate state between lives as being in a way more important than incarnate existence. ~ Stanislav Grof,
35:Burning Woman is a powerful image. A role model. A metaphor. A warning. A source of power. She is Feminine power incarnate. ~ Lucy H Pearce,
36:Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
37:His tears and his spontaneous laughter are teachings within the teaching, reminding us of the incarnate dimension of wisdom. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
38:The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order... ~ Henry Miller,
39:A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
40:For a thick moment, he was convinced he’d found an angel. Then he remembered she was his captor, a rapist, the devil incarnate. ~ Pepper Winters,
41:We are part of an energy larger than ourselves, and we play roles in a cosmic fabric that outstrip our incarnate understanding. ~ Daniel Wallace,
42:What are all political and social institutions, but always a religion, which in realizing itself, becomes incarnate in the world? ~ Edgar Quinet,
43:The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do. ~ Angela Carter,
44:Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
45:Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
46:If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a day or two later. ~ Thomas Hardy,
47:In different lifetimes, you incarnate in different dimensional planes, let alone in different universes in the physical universe. ~ Frederick Lenz,
48:The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God. ~ Pope Francis,
49:-This young woman is an infernal abortion. She is Satan incarnate, for who is better to portray Satan than a rebellious woman? ~ Luis Alberto Urrea,
50:I clearly understand, first, that the real human being is a poet and, second, that [the tyrant] is the incarnate negation of a poet. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
51:The first sign that Karma was now in cahoots with the Devil Incarnate to ruin her existance should've been before sunrise and pre-coffee. ~ Kelly Moran,
52:I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only Son of God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
53:The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. ~ Christopher Paolini,
54:Well, demonization itself can help ... to provide an alibi. You succumb to the Devil incarnate, and as a result you're not guilty yourself. ~ Hannah Arendt,
55:He was, of course, a demon incarnate – or the shadow of a god. They called him Mir, which to these people meant ‘the world beneath the world. ~ Stephen King,
56:But names no longer meant anything. On Lunamere, everyone became a number in the end.
Deep in the belly of hell incarnate Valen became 377. ~ Sasha Alsberg,
57:The angels would become incarnate if they could, so that they might come to earth to imitate the example and virtues of the Son of God! ~ Saint Vincent de Paul,
58:Not a Saint!” Akasha proclaimed, in bricks. “This is the Tomb of God Incarnate!”
“Always did figure that sucker was dead," muttered Waites. ~ David James Duncan,
59:Two years away. To an Incarnate, it's nothing. But when you have people who care about you, who you're excited about, each day becomes significant. ~ Avery Williams,
60:Who needs to go the horror movies? Just go outside or turn on the TV. Buddha called it the "nightmare of the day." Welcome to incarnate experience. ~ Frederick Lenz,
61:Over the next hour and a half, I came to the conclusion that Emilia Rhodes was either the devil incarnate or the second coming of Coco Chanel. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes,
62:We are all incarnate Buddhas. We just have not realized it deeply. We have not moved the mind - what our friend Don Juan calls the assemblage point. ~ Frederick Lenz,
63:Finished?” “This time.” He looked at Sascha. “They’re calling you the Devil Incarnate.” Smile wide, Sascha dusted off her hands. “My work here is done. ~ Nalini Singh,
64:Some word that could incarnate highest Truth
Leaped out from a chance tension of the soul, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life,
65:It was undeniable, bright and massive. It was a rainbow, a unicorn, a million-dollar lottery ticket and happiness incarnate all rolled into one thing. ~ Mariana Zapata,
66:The best gift in the world, next to the Word incarnate, Jesus himself, is God’s written Word, and it will ignite your heart if you give it a chance. ~ Timothy J Keller,
67:We carry in our incarnate being the alphabet & the grammar of life, but this does not presuppose an achieved meaning either in us or in it. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
68:A skyscraper is the incarnate rebellion against the supposedly unattainable; against the mystery of altitude, against the otherworldliness of the cerulean. ~ Joseph Roth,
69:Only when men shall depend exclusively upon the Divine and upon nothing else will the incarnate god no longer need to die for them. ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 1, 1951-1954,
70:God became man that dehumanized men might become true men. We become true men in the community of the incarnate, the suffering and loving, the human God. ~ J rgen Moltmann,
71:The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. ~ John Shelby Spong,
72:The Incarnate Word has been spoken. It calls the soul back to its place of peace that cannot be disturbed and love that will never be disappointed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
73:Time. To an incarnate, it's nothing, it's insignificant. But when you have people who care about you, who you're excited about, each day becomes significant. ~ Avery Williams,
74:We do not have a choice between purity and violence but between different kinds of violence. Inasmuch as we are incarnate beings, violence is our lot. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
75:Oh! how amazing it is that people can talk so much about men's power and goodness, when if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate! ~ David Brainerd,
76:The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
77:He incarnates as a human being, as God-incarnate, and is accompanied by devotees [intimate companions]. This assuming of a human body is for the sake of the devotees. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
78:Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself. ~ Oswald Chambers,
79:Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone,
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,
80:The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
81:I’m not an answer,” she said. “I’m a question.” She might also be a message incarnate, a signal in the flesh, even if she hadn’t yet figured out what story she was supposed to tell. ~ Jeff VanderMeer,
82:You can’t know its mind, and you can’t control it. This creature is nothing but war incarnate. If you traffic with it, you bring war into your house, and violence down upon yourself. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi,
83:To act out truth—to correspond to what is—is ultimately to participate in the way and life of Jesus Christ, the one who is truth incarnate: the embodied word, wisdom, and love of God. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,
84:Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, gives us access to the Creator to reveal hidden things and invites us to seek out our sacred responsibility to perceive God’s unscripted presence here and now. ~ Peter Enns,
85:Indeed, in this ordinance, the whole of what Christianity means is expressed: one Lord Jesus Christ, incarnate, atoning, and triumphant as the sum and substance of the observance. Without ~ Thomas R Schreiner,
86:when rightly practiced, asceticism is the human component of the mysterious incarnate intimacy of human intention and divine grace which holds the only real hope of victory over attachment. Like ~ Gerald G May,
87:Humans are the lowest (least intelligent) of spirits and the highest (most intelligent) of animals. We are rational animals, incarnate minds, the smartest of animals and the stupidest of spirits: ~ Peter Kreeft,
88:Do you ever have those moments when you’re so angry that you grow calm? Like the bands of a hurricane are swirling inside your body but you’re the eye? You’re danger incarnate, but you don’t look it? ~ S M Reine,
89:Look: Christ on the Cross died of suffocation, but His only complaint was of thirst. If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It ~ Yann Martel,
90:Christ incarnate is the full revelation of God in the flesh. This truth is so important that no matter how religious you are, if you are without Christ, you are without God—an atheist (Eph. 2:12).13 ~ Tony Reinke,
91:intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible ~ Herman Melville,
92:But ironically, now having seen those qualities made incarnate, Lergen realized that the highest form of the Imperial Army's desires was simply another way to describe a monster. And it filled him with fear. ~ Carlo Zen,
93:Is what we profess in the Creed true, then?—“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God … [who] by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary”? The answer is an unequivocal yes. ~ Benedict XVI,
94:Is he a good boy? (Cherise) No, Mom, he’s Satan incarnate. In fact, once it’s over, we’re going to get liquored up and tattooed, then find some cheap hos and have a good time with his trust fund. (Nick) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
95:.” She looked down at him with eyes all but clouded over from pleasure. “You look like sin incarnate,” she said. “There’s a reason people keep sinning. Even when they know it’s wrong, it feels so very right. ~ Shana Galen,
96:But because Christ is both the incarnate and the crucified, and wills to be recognized as both equally, the proper reception of the historical heritage of antiquity is still an open task for the West. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
97:Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. ~ Oscar Wilde,
98:True holiness does not mean a flight from the world; rather, it lies in the effort to incarnate the Gospel in everyday life, in the family, at school and at work, and in social and political involvement. ~ Pope John Paul II,
99:In art, the Trinity is expressed in the Creative Idea, the Creative Energy, and the Creative Power—the first imagining of the work, then the making incarnate of the work, and third the meaning of the work. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,
100:Is he a good boy? (Cherise)
No, Mom, he’s Satan incarnate. In fact, once it’s over, we’re going to get liquored up and tattooed, then find some cheap hos and have a good time with his trust fund. (Nick) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
101:The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't. ~ Christopher Paolini,
102:The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t. ~ Christopher Paolini,
103:Just as the waste of time nourishes the hell of leisure, so technological wastes nourish the hell of war. Wastes which incarnate the secret violence of this society, uncoerced and non-degradable defecation. ~ Jean Baudrillard,
104:Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our spiritual, evolutionary pathway. ~ Louise Hay,
105:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. ~ Dan Simmons,
106:Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,
107:A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters. ~ Anthony de Mello,
108:He’s more than just a seventeen-year-old high school student with a penchant for trouble. He’s the fucking devil incarnate, come to tempt in the most distracting ways possible, and I’m not complaining about it one little bit. ~ Callie Hart,
109:No wonder so many women had succumbed to this man, had thrown away their reputations and their honor for him…had even, if rumor could be believed, threatened to kill themselves when he left them. He was sensuality incarnate. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
110:It’s almost impossible not to fall in love with Robert even when he’s acting like the devil incarnate, never mind when he’s being all tender and affectionate. A lesson for life: Beauty often causes people to overlook deeper flaws. ~ L H Cosway,
111:Eucharistic adoration is the greatest of actions. To adore is to share the life of Mary on earth when she adored the Word Incarnate in her virginal womb, when she adored Him in the Crib, on Calvary, in the divine Eucharist ~ Peter Julian Eymard,
112:The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
113:The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation. ~ Thomas Hardy,
114:In other words, the path to glory for God’s incarnate representative on earth was the path through suffering. The path to majesty was through meekness. The path to exaltation was through humility. The path to power was through weakness. ~ John Piper,
115:History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
116:Precisely who are you,Captain Sharpe?"
He looked into that beautiful, treacherous face and a sweep of lust rushed through him. "You want to know who I am? Well, I am the devil incarnate and you,my sweet, are about to pay the devil's due. ~ Kat Martin,
117:Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light does put in an appearance, they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20). ~ D A Carson,
118:Christ, by highest heaven adored. Christ, the everlasting Lord, Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity! Pleased as Man with man to dwell; Jesus, our Immanuel! ~ Charles Wesley,
119:She said several times that Malcollm was a fiend who was determined to destroy his children, and that I was the devil incarnate helping him. She hoped we would both rot in hell. (I thought devils and fiends might flourish there, actually.) ~ Dick Francis,
120:There he stood, tall, lethal, and silhouetted in the doorway.  He was holding a pistol and it was leveled directly at Ralph. In his eyes Gwyneth saw only darkness and a total absence of soul.  In his eyes, Gwyneth saw the devil incarnate. ~ Danelle Harmon,
121:The state is a force incarnate. Worse, it is the silly parading of force. It never seeks to prevail by persuasion. Whenever it thrusts its finger into anything it does so in the most unfriendly way. Its essence is command and compulsion. ~ Mikhail Bakunin,
122:I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they had nor could have sympathy with anything in me. ~ Charlotte Bronte,
123:I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they had nor could have sympathy with anything in me... ~ Charlotte Bront,
124:The vast majority of beings who incarnate on this planet are at the stage of their evolution where power is the dominant theme. They are learning about power. That is why we live in a world where there are so many wars and so much destruction. ~ Frederick Lenz,
125:I've often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don't know if I'm entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I'm part of the problem. ~ Martha Plimpton,
126:The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. ~ Henry Miller,
127:The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man. ~ Carl Jung,
128:For Christian faith, the death of God is not a question of his disappearance. On the contrary, it is one of the places where He is most fully present. Jesus is not Man standing in for God. He is a sign that God is incarnate in human frailty and futility. ~ James Carroll,
129:No man can deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him,” I replied: “it cost more to redeem their souls—it cost the blood of an incarnate God, perfect and sinless in Himself, to redeem us from the bondage of the evil one:—let Him plead for you. ~ Anne Bront,
130:Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them. ~ John Shelby Spong,
131:A vision washes over my mind. Elena’s innocent face, inches away from mine, her arms tight around my neck. Somewhere, a dragon is roaring, flecks of hot spittle twirling past in yellow clouds. The silhouette of a woman wavers in the haze—death incarnate. ~ Daniel H Wilson,
132:He is a man-beast, carnivore incarnate, motivated by carnal avarice and wearing only the mask of civility.

She could sip from that cup.

It is his presumption that deters her: his belief that he has already caught Maud in his paw. ~ Emmanuelle de Maupassant,
133:Not as common bread or as common drink do we receive these.....We have been taught that the food that has been Eucharistized by the word of prayer, that food which by assimilation nourishes our flesh and blood, is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus. ~ Justin Martyr,
134:O living power of the incarnate Word,
   All that the Spirit has dreamed thou canst create:
   Thou art the force by which I made the worlds,
   Thou art my vision and my will and voice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
135:I smiled. “You mean like a psychic imprint? I know your assistant director of the Preternatural Division, and I mean no disrespect, but I never got the feeling you believed in magic as an investigative tool.'

From the book 9 Incarnate - Caitlin Diggs Series ~ Gary Starta,
136:The two things cannot be separated. Truth must incarnate itself in reality; reality is empty without truth. If truth is the unfolding of meaning, this is the meaning of what we see to be real and not of an illusion or dream or phantom. This is how it is with us. ~ Jacques Ellul,
137:The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness. ~ Henri Nouwen,
138:Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art. ~ John F Kennedy,
139:Grace, lavished upon us by God and communicated through the Mystery of the Incarnate Word, is an absolutely free gift with which nature is healed, strengthened and assisted in pursuing the innate desire for happiness in the heart of every man and of every woman. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
140:It is not enough to say prayers: we must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. All of life, each act, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has but what one is. ~ Paul Evdokimov,
141:Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty. ~ Neil Gaiman,
142:His mother hesitated before she continued grilling him. “Is
he a good boy?”
“No, Mom, he’s Satan incarnate. In fact, once it’s over, we’re going to get liquored up and tattooed, then find some cheap hos and have a good time with his trust fund.”
Caleb laughed. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
143:The gospels do not relate the story of a misunderstood ethical teacher, a failed social revolutionary, a model of selfless humility, or even a heroic martyr; they reveal the Savior who is God incarnate, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
144:When you realize yourself as completely empty and devoid of all form... this is wisdom, When you realize yourself as the fullness of love overflowing itself without object... this is bliss, And when you are aware of yourself incarnate in the appearance of form... this is leela. ~ Eli Jaxon Bear,
145:Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the center of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelizing mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
146:...where conventional education deals with abstract and impersonal facts and theories, an education shaped by Christian spirituality draws us toward incarnate and personal truths...it is embodied in personal terms, the terms of one who said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. ~ Parker J Palmer,
147:to a recognizably Christian culture, like Shakespeare’s, Jesus Christ is the Logos incarnate, the Word made flesh. He exemplifies the good of having a body. In the long run, that is why Aquinas could baptize Aristotle and why the West could produce Shakespeare and Michelangelo. ~ William Shakespeare,
148:What could the Lord Jesus Christ have done for you more than he has? Then do not abuse his mercy, but let your time be spent in thinking and talking of the love of Jesus, who was incarnate for us, who was born of a woman, and made under the law, to redeem us from the wrath to come. ~ George Whitefield,
149:But this time, so far as I can tell, my mother has not made her husband her desire incarnate, though she does love him very much. And for his part, so far as I can tell, he doesn’t try to talk her out of her self-deprecation, nor does he abet it. He simply loves her. I am learning from him. ~ Maggie Nelson,
150:Gold is the root-essence of lead. It is considered an implicit component of all metals in greater or lesser degree, based on their density, much as the illuminated spiritual reality is considered implicit in the soul of each incarnate human, no matter how overlaid with vice and ignorance. ~ James Wasserman,
151:Some rumors said she was a demon from another world. Other rumors said she was death incarnate, someone to remind us of our misdeeds. But no one had said how beautiful she was. No one had mentioned her eyes. The ones that showed color only for a second. A hint of beauty in absolute blackness. ~ Shannon A Thompson,
152:Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
153:I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~ Annie Dillard,
154:The chief end of our life is to live in communion with God. To this end the Son of God became incarnate, in order to return us to this divine communion, which was lost by the fall into sin. Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we enter into communion with the Father and thus attain our purpose. ~ Theophan the Recluse,
155:Could We As Mortals
Could we as mortals but our end foresee,
How little in our minds the world would be;
Could we as spirits but this life renew,
And be again incarnate as we were,
How little might be done like what we do,
How little cared for that which now is most our care
~ Charles Harpur,
156:Who and what was Ayesha, nay, what is Ayesha? An incarnate essence, a materialised spirit of Nature the unforeseeing, the lovely, the cruel and the immortal; ensouled alone, redeemable only by Humanity and its piteous sacrifice? Say you! I have done with speculations who depart to solve these mysteries. ~ H Rider Haggard,
157:If literature matters today, it is chiefly because it seems to many conventional critics one of the few remaining places where, in a divided, fragmented world, a sense of universal value may still be incarnate; and where, in a sordidly material world, a rare glimpse of transcendence can still be attained. ~ Terry Eagleton,
158:Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
159:The message of the incarnate Christ is glorious indeed, but it must never be severed from the message of the indwelling Christ. He who came for us as a baby now dwells in us as the Lord of glory through His Spirit. That is His gift to us.
The indwelling Christ seeks one gift from you in return.
You. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,
160:Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
161:[The Devil] My dream is to become incarnate, but so that it's final, irrevocable, in some fat, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant's wife, and to believe everything she believes. My ideal is to go into a church and light a candle with a pure heart--by God, it's true. That would put and end to my sufferings. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
162:If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I...daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother's heart; surely I too must be an accomplice in the crime. Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? ~ Charles Spurgeon,
163:You can never argue anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, you cannot argue anyone anywhere. The only result of arguing is to prove to your own mind that you are right and the other fellow wrong. You cannot argue for truth; but immediately Incarnate Truth is presented, a want awakens in the soul which only God can meet. ~ Oswald Chambers,
164:The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
   Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
   The superman shall wake in mortal man
   And manifest the hidden demigod
   Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
   Revealing the secret deity in the cave.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
165:Even if [the Pope an incarnate devil], we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom... He who rebels against our Father is condemned to death, for that which we do to him we do to Christ: we honor Christ if we honor the Pope; we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the Pope. ~ Saint Catherine of Siena,
166:In post-Christendom, the church is that community of people who look to discover what God is actively doing in the world around them and then join themselves to that work. The church is that community of people gathered around Jesus Christ in order to participate in his life and incarnate it into the context where he has placed them. ~ Tim Keel,
167:Let's call this then, only half facetiously, a new patristic, in which the intellectual is charged with the task not only to denounce error and unmask illusions, and not only to incarnate the mechanisms of new practices of knowledge, but also, together with others in a process of co-research, to produce a new truth. -- Commonwealth, 118 ~ Michael Hardt,
168:People often say, 'Ah, ultimate fighting is so violent,' but it's rooted in martial arts. Martial arts incarnate respect. You can't walk into a dojo and say to your sensei, 'Hey, salut tabarnac!' After every one of my fights I go and shake the hand of my opponent. I don't need to hate the other fighter to fight him well. It's a sport. ~ Georges St Pierre,
169:God is indeed angry at everything that has so horribly spoiled his wonderful world. His gaze from the throne is a deep, inexpressible mixture of sorrow and anger. But the lamb’s anger is the utter rejection, by Love incarnate, of all that is unloving. The only people who should be afraid of it are those who are determined to resist the call of love. ~ Tom Wright,
170:We...find it hard to conceive of...of a consciousness whose power, intellect and capacity can be both infinite and capable of caring," we replied. "We find it hard to accept that there is an unknown thing set above us, to judge us, that we cannot judge in return. Such a concept is, it would appear to us, injustice incarnate, not redemption at all. ~ Kate Griffin,
171:Your perceptions are derived from your feelings and your ability to be yourself, to own and trust yourself, and to say what you feel, even when it may be diametrically opposed to everyone eles's opinion. You may be called the Devil Incarnate. You may feel like cow pies are being thrown at you. Sometimes that is part of being true to yourself. ~ Barbara Marciniak,
172:A Christian is one who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, loving us and dying for our redemption; and who is so affected by a sense of the love of this incarnate God as to be constrained to make the will of Christ the rule of his obedience, and the glory of Christ the great end for which he lives. ~ John Piper,
173:Legalizing pot would benefit society by first off having laws applicable to all, without those in control breaking the laws and making a mockery of our system. We need social justice. This requires laws equally applied to all. In addition, we could educate and rehabilitate the wrong doers. Not incarnate those misfortunate people for doubtful wrongs. ~ Steven Machat,
174:I love hanging out with my friends and family. I really, really, really love articulating original thought. That's probably my core, my biggest buzz. Because then it makes me feel like I know why I was born. Reaching original thought, where I know that I'm perceiving something that only I have seen, and I need to incarnate that. That's it right there. ~ Caroline Myss,
175:A Christian is one who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, loving us and dying for our redemption; and who is so affected by a sense of the love of this incarnate God as to be constrained to make the will of Christ the rule of his obedience, and the glory of Christ the great end for which He lives. ~ Charles Hodge,
176:We sometimes do not appreciate the magnitude of the problem here. How could the eternal Word of the eternal Father take on limits? How can infinitude and finitude marry? The doctrine of the Incarnation proclaims frankly and without embarrassment the most stupendous miracle that can be imagined. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity. ~ Douglas Wilson,
177:I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic. ~ Charlotte Bront,
178:Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest. ~ Gore Vidal,
179:I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. ~ Thomas Merton,
180:You know what they say about idle hands?”
Idle hands were the devil’s tools.
It might have done him more credit had he actually looked like that was a bad thing. She tried really hard not to think about his hands and the kind of sinning she assumed they got up to on a regular basis.
If she’d ever met anyone more like the devil incarnate, Joss couldn’t remember. ~ Amy Andrews,
181:Did you just call me a hottie? And Jax isn’t better looking than me. He’s just famous.”
Amanda let out a loud cackle of laughter.
“No brother dear, Jax Stone is hotness incarnate with or without the guitar and sexy as hell singing voice. You never stood a chance. He was what you call playing with the big dogs. This time you’re definitely playing within your league. ~ Abbi Glines,
182:I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. And now I was seeing the same thing with faith. It couldn't be about wrangling over the Bible to find justification for your convictions. Like politics, faith had to be about action. ~ Sara Miles,
183:sufferings and loveliness were imagined, not incarnate in a specific body. But as I got to know them, I started to see more clearly how the people who came to the pantry were like me: messed up, often prickly or difficult, yearning for friendship. I saw how they were hungry, the way I was. And then, I had a glimpse of them being like Jesus again: as God, made flesh and blood. ~ Sara Miles,
184:Cicero is dead! Cicero is born! The laughter has filled me, filled me so very completely. I am the laughter. I am the jester. The soul that has served as my constant companion for so long has breached the veil of the Void finally and forever. It is now in me. It is me. The world has seen the last of Cicero the man. Behold Cicero, Fool of Hearts - laughter incarnate! ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
185:To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth—deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl. ~ Leslye Walton,
186:You are free to choose the concept you will accept of yourself. Therefore, you possess the power of intervention, the power which enables you to alter the course of your future. The process of rising from your present concept to a higher concept of yourself is the means of all true progress. The higher concept is waiting for you to incarnate it in the world of experience. ~ Neville Goddard,
187:Thus, the direction of evolution is toward the maximization of goodness, especially if we maintain that the incarnation is the goal of evolution. If Jesus Christ is truly creator (as divine Word) and redeemer (as Word Incarnate) then what is created out of love is ultimately redeemed by love. The meaning of Christ is summed up in creation’s potential for self transcendent love. ~ Ilia Delio,
188:I'll find my father through words. I'll bring him back to life with words. I will build a cathedral of words. I'll create a country will my words. In my words I'll find the universe and i'll understand the eternal present through my words. In my words, I will find, I will end, I will become the words themselves, become words, words, words, I will incarnate words, words, words. ~ Arturo Arias,
189:There was the kind of silence there might have been on the day before Creation.
Adam stood smiling at the two of them, a small figure perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.
Crowley grabbed Aziraphale's arm. "You know what happened?" he hissed excitedly. "He was left alone! He grew up human! He's not Evil Incarnate or Good Incarnate, he's just...a human incarnate- ~ Neil Gaiman,
190:Once one has realized, following the great English literary visionaries William Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe, that sexual puritanism, political disciplinarianism, and abuse of the poor are the result of the refusal of true Christianity ... one is led to articulate a more incarnate, more participatory, more aesthetic, more erotic, more socialized, even a more 'Platonic' Christianity. ~ John Milbank,
191:If I had ever nurtured any notions of nobility, bravery, courage, dignity, or the like, these exalted qualities were embodied in the faces I saw. Clear-eyed, firm-jawed, virile, strong, and proud— they were the living embodiments of every red-blooded boy’s childhood fantasy of glorious manhood: heroism incarnate. That they were going to kill me seemed a thing of piddling consequence. ~ Stephen R Lawhead,
192:The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain? ~ Myrtle Reed,
193:By healing our internal divisions and fully accepting ourselves as we are, we learn to accept and empower our sexual core, and we learn to honor our unique expression of Masculine and Feminine gifts. We fully incarnate in our bodies, at home and at ease in a man's body or a woman's body. And we learn to love with complete abandon, as free men and women, without rules or roles or guarded hearts. ~ David Deida,
194:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. To be a true poet is to become God.    I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn! ~ Dan Simmons,
195:How one in the modern world views Jesus's miraculous actions is irrelevant. All that can be known is how the people of his time viewed them. And therein lies the historical evidence. For while debates raged within the early church over who Jesus was—a rabbi? the messiah? God incarnate?—there was never any debate, either among his followers or his detractors, about his role as an exorcist and miracle worker. ~ Reza Aslan,
196:Earthly contemplation means to the Christian, we have said, this above all: that behind all that we directly encounter the Face of the incarnate Logos becomes visible... Contemplation does not ignore the "historical Gethsemane," does not ignore the mystery of evil, guilt and its bloody atonement. The happiness of contemplation is a true happiness, indeed the supreme happiness; but it is founded upon sorrow. ~ Josef Pieper,
197:Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame ~ Allen Ginsberg,
198:In his incarnate life, when he becomes one with us, Jesus recapitulates, or relives, Israel’s (our) history. He becomes one of us. In fact, he becomes all of us in one divine-human being. Jesus is all Adam and Eve were designed to be, and more; he loves the Father absolutely and he loves himself absolutely and he loves others absolutely and he loves the world absolutely. He is the Oneness Story in one person. ~ Scot McKnight,
199:When he quickens all things To create bliss in the world, His soft black sinuous lotus limbs Begin the festival of love And beautiful cowherd girls wildly Wind him in their bodies. Friend, in spring young Hari plays Like erotic mood incarnate. [1994.jpg] -- from Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

~ Jayadeva, When he quickens all things (from The Gitagovinda)
,
200:I'd discovered that the sun equated happiness. Its bright and lovely existence was hope incarnate. It exposed the dark, brought forth the light and showed you that no matter how strong or oppressive the night was, that it was infinitely stronger, exponentially more substantial and just because you couldn't see it with your eyes, didn't mean it wasn't still with you. it was stalwart and constant. It was infinite. ~ Fisher Amelie,
201:Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know...And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation... The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world. ~ Joseph Campbell,
202:Christ is the expression of the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us. As the love and condescension of God makes Him the benefactor and helper and servant of all, so Jesus of necessity was the Incarnate Humility. And so He is still, in the midst of the throne, the meek and lowly Lamb of God. If ~ Andrew Murray,
203:On Earth, we really only deal with two types of angels: the angels, or guardian angels, who are closest to us, and the archangels, who are the managers of the guardian angels. Archangel Michael is a well-known example of an archangel. Guardian angels are assigned to each and every one of us at or before conception. As a soul getting ready to incarnate, you actually talk with your angels and set up a lot of your life. ~ Doreen Virtue,
204:To think that animals were once merely our dinner, or what we wore to dinner! Fifteen thousand years ago, certain wolves became domesticated and evolved into dogs. One thing led to another, and, notwithstanding some moments in history that dogs and cats would probably not want to bring up (like the time Pope Gregory IX declared cats to be the Devil incarnate), pets have gradually become cherished members of our families. ~ Anonymous,
205:A cloud of incense was rising on high; the people suddenly all bowed low; what could it mean? The truth flashed on him, fearfully yet sweetly; it was the Blessed Sacrament - it was the Lord Incarnate who was on the altar, who had come to visit and bless his people. It was the Great Presence, which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be - holy. ~ John Henry Newman,
206:I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God. ~ Wendell Berry,
207:A cloud of incense was rising on high; the people suddenly all bowed low; what could it mean? The truth flashed on him, fearfully yet sweetly; it was the Blessed Sacrament - it was the Lord Incarnate who was on the altar, who had come to visit and bless his people. It was the Great Presence, which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be - holy. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
208:Anything which is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
209:Television always carried me: be it at my beginnings in small series and telefilms, or through my success in Kasamh Se and Bade Acche Lagte Hain. Thanks to TV, I saw an incredible dream come true: I could incarnate good and bad people, share my joys and pains with the audience, but also be part of this incredible medium that can educate and entertain at the same time! And with new TV platforms, the journey has only just started. ~ Ram Kapoor,
210:It's not as if the New Testament writers came along and said, "The culmination of Old Testament books is more books, New Testament books." In some ways they thought instead of the culmination of Old Testament books being Christ himself, the word incarnate as the opening verses of Hebrews 1 put it. In the past God spoke to the fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son and the son is revelation. ~ D A Carson,
211:A. Salvation requires not only the forgiveness of sin but also justification. And justification, adequate to the situation in which lost mankind is, demands a righteousness such as belongs to no other than the incarnate Son of God, a righteousness undefiled and undefilable, a righteousness with divine property and quality (cf. Rom 1:17; 3:21-22; 10:3; 2Co 5:21; Phi 3:9). It is the righteousness of the obedience of Christ (Rom 5:19). ~ John Murray,
212:[Anything which] is a living thing and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
213:In my opinion what distinguishes the Bible from the other books is its sense of time. Its first concern is to establish a calendar. Then it traces a genealogy. It imposes rhythms, it orders, it operates, it does not abandon the earth where its destiny must be fulfilled and whose own destiny must be fulfilled by it. Its history will be that of men and not of idle gods. The whole spirit must become incarnate and explore the possible. ~ Adrienne Monnier,
214:He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions. ~ C S Lewis,
215:There is however difference between the theology of liberation and traditional theology, the latter being based primarily On the Word of God made incarnate in the Holy Scripture Liberation theology is of course also inspired by the Word, but its representatives are convinced that God also speaks to us in everyday events and that, for example, information obtained through the mass media can be a special way in which God speaks to us. ~ Ernesto Cardenal,
216:All religions, at one point or another in their evolution tried to proclaim their single, inerrant consistency. All religions even the most liberal, were tempted by the reactionary impulse to freeze faith in place. Because as Jesus teaches, it's easy to be threatened by the reality of the complicated, messy, syncretic, God-bearing truth that becomes incarnate among us and makes things new. We'd rather have a dead religion than a living God ~ Sarah Miles,
217:O most sacred, most loving heart of Jesus, thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and thou beatest for us still.... Thou art the heart of the Most High made man.... Thy Sacred Heart is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned for us. It ached for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us.... In worshipping thee I worship my incarnate God, my Emmanuel ~ John Henry Newman,
218:Hume wrote, ‘that we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different sensations, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.’ In some sense, he had been reduced to a ‘Humean’ being – I could not help thinking how fascinated Hume would have been at seeing in Jimmie his own philosophical ‘chimaera’ incarnate, a gruesome reduction of a man to mere disconnected, incoherent flux and change. ~ Oliver Sacks,
219:O most sacred, most loving heart of Jesus, thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and thou beatest for us still.... Thou art the heart of the Most High made man.... Thy Sacred Heart is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned for us. It ached for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us.... In worshipping thee I worship my incarnate God, my Emmanuel ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
220:Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate. ~ Jacques Barzun,
221:and ongoing embrace of his incarnate Son as perfectly righteous, to be honored accordingly, embraces us with him, for his sake, by virtue of what he has done for us. This, then, is the divinely devised method of our reconciliation, as Paul sets it forth.     THE MESSENGERS OF RECONCILIATION Paul speaks repeatedly of the messengers of this reconciliation. Observe the following statements: God . . . gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . entrusting ~ J I Packer,
222:Suit Guy takes the seat beside me and turns to me with a smile on his face. I take in that face for the first time and—

Holy effing shit!

Hotness incarnate is sitting next to me.

Actual pure male hotness. All men should have been made to look like this. Seriously.

He looks like Clark Kent without the glasses, which would mean he looks like Superman—the Henry Cavill version.

Superman in a suit.

Lord, help me. ~ Samantha Towle,
223:Love Came Down At Christmas
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love
Love
Love
Love
shall be our token,
shall be yours and love be mine,
to God and to all men,
for plea and gift and sign.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,
224:It was Mary who first adored the Incarnate Word. He was in her womb, and no one on earth knew of it. Oh! how well was our Lord served in Mary's virginal womb! Never has He found a ciborium, a golden vase more precious or purer than was Mary's womb! Mary's adoration was more pleasing to Him than that of all the Angels. The Lord 'hath set His tabernacle in the sun,' says the Psalmist. The sun is Mary's heart," and "Mary is the aurora of the beautiful Sun of Justice. ~ Peter Julian Eymard,
225:I'd discovered that the sun equated happiness. Its bright and lovely existence was hope incarnate. It exposed the dark, brought forth the light and showed you that no matter how strong or oppressive the night was, that it was infinitely stronger, exponentially more substantial and just because you couldn't see it with your eyes, didn't mean it wasn't still with you, that you couldn't feel it or that it wouldn't come back for you. It was stalwart and constant. It was infinite. ~ Fisher Amelie,
226:Perhaps, just perhaps, we can’t read singular verses or chapters in a vacuum; perhaps we can’t read letters written to specific people with specific situations in mind in a specific context and then apply them, broad-brush, to the whole of humanity or the church or even our own small selves. Perhaps we need wisdom, insight. We need the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we need Jesus as our best and clearest lens; we need all of Scripture, too. After all, Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. ~ Sarah Bessey,
227:And at that moment—at the peak of my high, at the peak of her greedy triumph—our eyes locked and we surged past every barrier—stranger and stranger, priest and penitent, Tyler and Poppy. We were simply male and female, as God had made us, Adam and Eve, in the most elemental and fundamental form. We were biology, we were creation incarnate, and I saw the moment she felt it too—that we were fused somehow. Irrevocably and undeniably fused together into something singular and whole. ~ Sierra Simone,
228:Christ is the model for creation so that, “what happened between God and the world in Christ points to the future of the cosmos. It is a future that involves the radical transformation of created reality through the unitive power of God’s love.”28  This universe, therefore, has a destiny; the world will not be destroyed. Rather, “it will be brought to the conclusion which God intends for it from the beginning, which is anticipated in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and glorified Christ. ~ Ilia Delio,
229:The kingdom arrived with Jesus; indeed, one might say that as Son of God incarnate, Jesus is the kingdom of God in person. His rule over Christians is regal in the full-blooded biblical sense, personal, direct, and absolute. His claims are the claims of God, overriding those of man. Yet his rule is not tyranny, for King Jesus is his people’s servant, their shepherd and champion, ordering all things for their protection and enrichment. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). ~ J I Packer,
230:Every inanimate object—every home, building, piece of furniture, and article of clothing—carries traces of the “energy” of the animate beings to which it has been exposed. The “energies” of those who made the object, who sold it, and those who previously owned it are impregnated into the spiritual fabric (spiritual body) of everything that exists. The spiritual body of the incarnate human being interacts with the spiritual energy field of its surroundings, both in terms of people and places. ~ Draja Mickaharic,
231:love affair, they’ll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person of the opposite sex, we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we’ll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that’s what marriage is. ~ Joseph Campbell,
232:I have watched Brock Lesnar for a really long time and I thought I knew how strong he was, I thought I knew how fast he was. Being in the ring with him, he is a completely different animal. He is a beast. They call him the Beast Incarnate and that is real. Whether you are in the Octagon with him trading fists, or in the ring trading German suplexes it is on another level. It was a pleasure and I am glad I got to be in the ring with him and i think I proved to the entire world I can hang with the guy. ~ Seth Rollins,
233:Was Christ God incarnate? Yes, of course, but so are we all. This in no way detracts from the divinity of Christ, who must have been a very advanced incarnation of God. And for those Christians who feel uncomfortable with the notion that we are all incarnations of God, and therefore brothers and sisters of Christ, let me quote John 14:12: “In all truth I tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, and will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father. ~ Bernard Haisch,
234:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. To be a true poet is to become God.    I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!” They shook their heads and smiled, and walked away. Great poets are rarely understood in their own day. The ~ Dan Simmons,
235:For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man. ~ Irenaeus of Lyons,
236:She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake’s. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils.The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her.It was a moment when a woman’s soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation. ~ Thomas Hardy,
237:We have seen, then, that a festival celebrating the resurrection of their several gods was annually held among the Pagans, before the time of Christ Jesus, and that it was almost universal. That it dates to a period of great antiquity is very certain. The adventures of these incarnate gods, exposed in their infancy, put to death, and rising again from the grave to life and immortality, were acted on the Deisuls and in the sacred theatres of the ancient Pagans, [226:3] just as the "Passion Play" is acted to-day. ~ Thomas William Doane,
238:The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth ~ Janny Wurts,
239:In the end, inerrancy is less about our conclusion about the Bible and more about our submission to the Bible. We do not stand above it in judgment, even when we give it a perfect grade. Instead, it stands above us in judgment. And, to His everlasting glory, it gives those in Christ a perfect grade, despite our pride, our folly, our disobedience. For we are in Him, who is the Word of God incarnate, without error, and without blemish. His Word can no more err than He, the Word, can err. We are in ourselves liars. He is in Himself true. ~ Anonymous,
240:It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but its not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness? ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
241:Just as the teaching of the Law and the prophets, being harbingers of the coming advent of the Logos in the flesh, guide our souls to Christ (cf. Gal. 3:24), so the glorified incarnate Logos of God is Himself a harbinger of His spiritual advent, leading our souls forward by His own teachings to receive His divine and manifest advent. He does this ceaselessly, by means of the virtues converting those found worthy from the flesh to the spirit. And He will do it at the end of the age, making manifest what has hitherto been hidden from men. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor,
242:Now we see again, under the blue heavens where the larks are singing in the hot April sky, why the Romans called the Etruscans vicious. Even in their palmy days the Romans were not exactly saints. But they thought they ought to be. They hated the phallus and the ark, because they wanted empire and dominion and, above all, riches: social gain. You cannot dance gaily to the double flute and at the same time conquer nations or rake in large sums of money. Delenda est Carthago. To the greedy man, everybody that is in the way of its greed is vice incarnate. ~ D H Lawrence,
243:[O]nly if the form of Christ can be lived out in the community of the church is the confession of the church true; only if Christ can be practiced is Jesus Lord. No matter how often the subsequent history of the church belied this confession, it is this presence within time of an eschatological and dvine peace, really incarnate in the person of Jesus and forever imparted to the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, that remains the very essence of the church's evangelical appeal to the world at large, and of the salvation it proclaims. (1-2) ~ David Bentley Hart,
244:The name given to the order of life which was to incarnate as human was Adam, which means species, type, or kind. Never for a moment does it infer a single individual. Adam, therefore, correctly means a mode of consciousness, a type with mind, as distinguished from the animal and vegetable kingdoms which do not possess individualized intelligence, and therefore are properly termed species. These lower kingdoms have a center of consciousness called a monad, whereas man has evolved his monad into and ego or a center of "I am-ness." ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible,
245:The full Christian experience, however, is not an individual experience which may be isolated from all else; it is, unconditionally, an experience within the context of the Church. It is 'a personal history which is imbedded in the greater history of the Church - a spiritual becoming which is incarnate and is lived within the Church's own process of becoming. It is the effort to develop what has been given, to discover what is hidden, the effort to attain to oneself by attaining, though the Church and within her, to the mystery of Christ, the Saviour'. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,
246:Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. ~ Sax Rohmer,
247:I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.’ A breeze swept across the airfield. Overhead, the assembled hosts rippled, like a mirage. There was the kind of silence there might have been on the day before Creation. Adam stood smiling at the two of them, a small figure perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell. Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s arm. ‘You know what happened?’ he hissed excitedly. ‘He was left alone! He grew up human! He’s not Evil Incarnate or Good Incarnate, he’s just … a human incarnate— ~ Terry Pratchett,
248:Thus the quintessentially “conservative” dogma of Christ’s divinity as the pre-incarnate eternal Logos is the basis for the quintessentially “liberal” hope that good pagans can go to Heaven. He is indeed the one and only Way, Truth, and Life, the only Savior. But when Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or even honest agnostics give their heart to truth and goodness; when they make the ultimate value and point and purpose and meaning and end of their lives that which God is, absolute truth and absolute goodness, they are in fact giving their heart to Jesus even though they do not know it. ~ Peter Kreeft,
249:She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation. ~ Thomas Hardy,
250:God’s glory, His tangible, manifest presence, will only be experienced to the degree we can recognize His sheer, fifteen-billion-volt goodness. Any area in which we have not seen that God is truly good – in the deepest, fullest, richest, realistic sense of the word – we will miss His glory. Moses prayed, “Now show me Your glory.” And the scriptures tell us that it was the “goodness” of God that passed in front of Him (Exod. 33:18-19). God’s glory is His goodness. His presence is goodness itself. Jesus Christ is pure pleasure incarnate. To miss His goodness is to experience a glory deficit. ~ John Crowder,
251:If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time. ... What happens in the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is something for which all religions of mankind have exressed longing, dimly sensed was coming, and as a rule even prefigured- the physical presence of the divine Logos made man, and the presence of his sacrificial death, in the midst of the congregation celebrating the mysteries. ~ Josef Pieper,
252:It reminded me of the sense I’d had then that our mortal lives were just incarnate metaphors, that we are stories being told about the living love that created us and sustains us. It made me wonder if maybe that was true of all history. Maybe all of history’s beauty and bloodshed was a story not about pleasure and pain and power but about humanity’s relationship with an unseen spirit of love. We yearned for that spirit but we feared and hated it, too, because when it shone its terrible light on us, we saw ourselves as we were, broken and shameful, far from what the spirit of love had made us. ~ Andrew Klavan,
253:For a nymphomaniac like myself, I suppose there could be no job more suitable than prostitution; it is my God-given destiny. No matter how violent a man might be, or how ugly, at the moment we're in the act I cannot help but love him. And what's more I'll grant his every wish, no matter how shameful. In fact, the more twisted my partner is, the more attracted I will be to him, because my ability to meet my lover's demands is the one way I can feel alive.
That is my virtue. It is also my biggest flaw. I can't deny a man. I'm like a vagina incarnate—female essence embodied. If I ever were to deny a man, I would stop being me. ~ Natsuo Kirino,
254:Later that year, the answer to whether or not to bring a child into a frightening century will be instantly clear to them, upon learning that Sabrina is pregnant—the answer being, Of course you do. A child is not just a child, but the future incarnate. Despair vanishes when there is truly something to hope for: a world for your child. You’ll do anything to assure there’ll be one. It may have colossal problems, but your baby is part of the solution, as will you be: there’s no more compelling reason to save the Earth than parents wanting to protect their offspring, one of whom may invent the miracle that changes all the odds. Two ~ Alan Weisman,
255:One thing led to another, and, notwithstanding some moments in history that dogs and cats would probably not want to bring up (like the time Pope Gregory IX declared cats to be the Devil incarnate), pets have gradually become cherished members of our families. According to “Citizen Canine,” a book by David Grimm, sixty-seven per cent of households in America have a cat or a dog (compared with forty-three per cent who have children), and eighty-three per cent of pet owners refer to themselves as their animal’s “mom” or “dad.” Seventy per cent celebrate the pet’s birthday. Animals are our best friends, our children, and our therapists. ~ Anonymous,
256:author class:Jacopone da Todi
Love, infusing with light all who share Your splendor, You teach us the true light Is not to be found in the light of this world. Light that enlightens, light that teaches, He who is not illumined by You Does not reach the fullness of love. Love, You give light To the intellect in darkness And illumine the Object of love. Love, Your ardor, Which enflames the heart, Unites it with the Incarnate One. [2229.jpg] -- from Jacopone da Todi: Lauds (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes

~ infusing with light all who share Your splendor (from In Praise of Divine Love)
,
257:Edward McDonald wrote that when God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn't release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And she puts it in the baby's mind, and then- God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life. ~ Marian Wright Edelman,
258:If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique. The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky,
259:Ah, you pitiful, pitiful creatures! Beautiful family! Nobler far than stupid men..." he cried softly to himself. What was he doing here with his arrow? Cornering these creatures? Armor--an armor to brag about! Save his dignity before that armor-maker because of a promise? Foolish...foolish! If the old man jeered at him, why should it matter anymore; a common suit of armor would do as well! Armor did not make a man, nor did it signify valor.

"Dumb creatures that you are, how magnificent! Sorrow, love--parental love incarnate! Were I that fox--what if Tokiko and Shigemori were trapped like this? Even the beast can rise above itself--could I as much? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa,
260:Who is that Syama woman standing on Bhava? All Her modesty gone, She plays with Him overturning sexual custom by being on top. Choked up, waves of bliss sweeping over Her, She hangs Her head and smiles -- Love incarnate! The Yamuna, the heavenly Ganges, and between them the honorable Sarasvati -- bathing at their confluence confers great merit. Here the new moon devours the blue moon, like wind extinguishing fire. Poet Ramprasad says, Brahman is merely the radiance of Brahmamayi. Stare at Her and all your sins and pains will vanish. [1770.jpg] -- from Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott

~ Ramprasad, Who is that Syama woman
,
261:You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry,
262:How many times do we hear: 'Come on, you Christians, be a little bit more normal, like other people, be reasonable!' This is real snake charmer's talk: 'Come on, just be like this, okay? A little bit more normal, don't be so rigid ...' But behind it is this: 'Don't come here with your stories, that God became man!' The Incarnation of the Word, that is the scandal behind all of this! We can do all the social work we want, and they will say: 'How great the Church is, it does such good social work." But if we say that we are doing it because those people are the flesh of Christ, then comes the scandal. And that is the truth, that is the revelation of Jesus: that presence of Jesus incarnate. ~ Pope Francis,
263:So the soul mate does make us feel complete, like finding the deeper understanding of ourselves...souls will choose to be with or marry others when incarnate. We go through countless experiences, and sometimes one soul outgrows the other one (which also imitates life when one person grows and his or her partner stays stagnant). Of course these two are still connected-it's just that one has evolved to a greater degree than the other half has. This doesn't mean that your soul mate stops watching out for you or loving you-you two will be close for eternity. So instead of looking for the one soul mate, enjoy all the wonderful people you know and love here and from other lives...and even on the Other Side. ~ Sylvia Browne,
264:Sonnet Xvii: Beauty's Pageant
What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
What glory of change by Nature's hand amass'd
Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?
Love's very vesture and elect disguise
Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
265:His name is...
Will it ever come to me? There is a grand lapse of memory that may be the only thing to save us from ultimate horror. Perhaps they know the truth who preach the passing of one life into another, vowing that between a certain death and certain birth there is an interval in which an old name is forgotten before a new one is learned. And to remember the name of a former life is to begin the backward slide into that great blackness in which all names have their source, becoming incarnate in a succession of bodies like numberless verses of an infinite scripture.
To find that you have had so many names is to lose claim to any one of them. To gain the memory of so many lives is to lose them all. ~ Thomas Ligotti,
266:Thus, I believe it is possible -- following Umberto Eco and others 10 -- to understand programming languages as the latest instance of a dream and set of technologies developed by mystics, alchemists, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. These languages do not just represent things, they also do things in the world. They are both symbolic and material in form. They are central to the disenchantment of the world and, simultaneously, the substrate for a "reenchantment of the world." 11 They are, to sacrilegiously misappropriate the lexicon of the Catholic Church, "the word incarnate." Programming languages melt the boundaries between science and religion because they are an unholy union of the two. ~ Anonymous,
267:The truth of history lies simultaneously in the substratum of created existence (since all beings are the willed realizations of God's love); in the fulfillment of the future of history (since God's love, in His will and its expressions - namely, created existence - is identifiable with the final communion of creation with the life of God); and in the incarnate Christ (since on God's part the personification of this loving will is the incarnate Christ). Whereby Christ becomes the "principle" and "end" of all things, the One who not only moves history from within its own unfolding but who also moves existence even from within the multiplicity of created things, toward the true being which is true life and true communion. ~ John D Zizioulas,
268: The Universal Incarnation
There is a wisdom like a brooding Sun,
A Bliss in the heart's crypt grown fiery white,
The heart of a world in which all hearts are one,
A Silence on the mountains of delight,
A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees;
A wide Compassion leans to embrace earth's pain;
A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man.

Our mind is a glimmering curtain of that Ray,
Our strength a parody of the Immortal's power,
Our joy a dreamer on the Eternal's way
Hunting the unseizable beauty of an hour.

Only on the heart's veiled door the word of flame
Is written, the secret and tremendous Name.

~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Universal Incarnation
,
269:The best example of the incarnate presence of Christ to withstand worldly power is Solzhenitsyn, the most distinguished contemporary Russian writer. [...] He realized that we can be free only if we are free in our souls; that a man in a prison camp who has learned to be free inside himself is freer than the freest man, whether in the so-called free world of the West or in the ideological Marxist world of the East.

One chapter in his second Gulag book is called 'The Ascent'. In that chapter he describes this process of illumination in a classic document of what it means to be liberated, to be free through Christ. St. Paul called it 'the glorious freedom of the children of God', the only authentic freedom that exists in this mortal life. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge,
270:...he was past youth, but had not reached
middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him,
and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking
young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning
him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had
hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.
I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,
gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in
masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither
had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have
shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is
bright but antipathetic. ~ Charlotte Bront,
271:While this method is interesting because it makes sin and salvation the principal theme and brings Christ the Redeemer into the foreground, yet it is neither a natural nor a logical method. God incarnate is only a single person of the Godhead; redemption is only one of the works of God; and sin is an anomaly in the universe, not an original and necessary fact. The christological method, therefore, is fractional. It does not cover the whole ground. It is preferable to construct theological science upon the Trinity—to begin with the trinal nature and existence of the Godhead and then come down to his acts in incarnation and redemption. It is not logical or natural to build a science upon one of its divisions. Christology is a division in theology. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd,
272:In Malkus, the lowest of the Sephiros, the sphere of the physical world of matter, wherein incarnate the exiled Neschamos from the Divine Palace, there abides the Shechinah, the spiritual Presence of Ain Soph as a heritage to mankind and an ever-present reminder of spiritual verities. That is why there is written “ Keser is in Malkus, and Malkus is in Keser, though after another manner The Zohar would imply that the real Shechinah, the real Divine Presence, is allocated to Binah whence it never descends, but that the Shechinah in Malkus is an eidolon or Daughter of the Great Supernal Mother. Isaac Myer suggests that : “ It is considered by Qabalists as the executive energy or power of Binah, the Holy Spirit or the Upper Mother.” ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegrantes,
273:Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light does put in an appearance, they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20). In fact, wherever it is true that the light shines in the darkness, it is also true that the darkness has not understood it (taking katelaben as in the NIV). Reading v. 5 this way anticipates the rejection theme that becomes explicit in vv. 10–11. Alternatively, even if katelaben means something like ‘did not overcome it’ (see Additional Note), it is quite possible that John, subtle writer that he is, wants his readers to see in the Word both the light of creation and the light of the redemption the Word brings in his incarnation. ~ D A Carson,
274:The new situation must be created, in which it is possible to believe on Jesus as God incarnate; that is the impossible situation in which everything is staked solely on the word of Jesus. Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learnt the meaning of faith. Before he can believe, the utterly impossible and ethically irresponsible situation on the waves of the sea must be displayed. The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
275:Since God knows created beings as the realizations of His will, it is not being itself but the ultimate will of God's love which unifies beings and points to the meaning of being. And precisely here is the role of the incarnation. The incarnate Christ is so identical to the ultimate will of God's love, that the meaning of created being and the purpose of history are simply the incarnate Christ. All things were made with Christ in mind, or rather at heart, and for this reason irrespective of the fall of man, the incarnation would have occurred. Christ, the incarnate Christ, is the truth, for he represents the ultimate unceasing will of the ecstatic love of God, who intends to lead created being into communion with His own life, to know Him and itself within this communion-event. ~ John D Zizioulas,
276:Our faith is a person; the gospel that we have to preach is a person; and go wherever we may, we have something solid and tangible to preach, for our gospel is a person. If you had asked the twelve Apostles in their day, ‘What do you believe in?’ they would not have stopped to go round about with a long sermon, but they would have pointed to their Master and they would have said, ‘We believe him.’ ‘But what are your doctrines?’ ‘There they stand incarnate.’ ‘But what is your practice?’ ‘There stands our practice. He is our example.’ ‘What then do you believe?’ Hear the glorious answer of the Apostle Paul, ‘We preach Christ crucified.’ Our creed, our body of divinity, our whole theology is summed up in the person of Christ Jesus." (Ray Ortlund blog, Christ Is Deeper Still) ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
277:Stop.” She covered her breast with her own hand. “That’s no’ a healer’s touch.”
His smile was sin incarnate. “Ye’ve the right of it there, lass. That’s a lover’s touch. And ye’ve had only the smallest bit of the pleasure, only a taste of what I would give ye an’ ye allow it.”
“No,” She scrambled to her feet to put some distance between them. “An’ ye try to take me, I’ll scratch yer eyes out, Rob MacLaren.”
“I’d not take ye. Not a step further than ye wish. I ken ye’re a virgin and wanting to stay that way,” he said earnestly. “But there’s great delight for a man in the giving of pleasure, ye see. And ways around a maidenhead that’ll leave ye still pure when we’re done.”
She’d forgotten to breathe as he spoke. Now she sucked in a quick breath.
“Shall I pleasure ye, Elspeth? ~ Connie Mason,
278:After a Retreat

What hast thou learnt today?
Hast thou sounded awful mysteries,
Hast pierced the veiled skies,
Climbed to the feet of God,
Trodden where saints have trod,
Fathomed the heights above?
Nay,
This only have I learnt, that God is love.


What hast thou heard today?
Hast heard the Angel-trumpets cry,
And rippling harps reply;
Heard from the Throne of flame
Whence God incarnate came
Some thund'rous message roll?
Nay,
This have I heard, His voice within my soul.


What hast thou felt today?
The pinions of the Angel guide
That standeth at thy side
In rapturous ardours beat
Glowing, from head to feet,
In ecstasy divine?
Nay,
This only have felt, Christ's hand in mine.
~ Robert Hugh Benson,
279:When one reads the Gospels rapidly, one after the other, again and again, one cannot but be struck by the towering figure of Jesus. Though they reflect the churches’ convictions, the Gospels are not about the churches’ convictions: they are about Jesus Christ. His excellence, his uniqueness, his authority, his compassion, his love, his wisdom, his holiness, all shine through passage after passage. What is important for the present discussion is to observe how these excellencies of Jesus are tied to the central biblical story-line, combining to create a whole worldview in which Jesus is the culmination of God’s redemptive promises, the highest disclosure of God himself, the Word incarnate; Jesus is the one who saves us from our sin, who inaugurates the kingdom, and who will one day consummate it. ~ D A Carson,
280:The movement of Eros spirituality is upward. Its essence, its drive, is the sinner finding God. The movement of Agape, by contrast, is downward. It is all about God finding the sinner. Eros spirituality is the kind of spirituality that arises from human nature, and it builds on the presumption that it can forge its own salvation. Agape arises in God, was incarnate in Christ, and reaches us through the work of the Holy Spirit opening lives to receive the gospel of Christ's saving death. In this understanding, salvation is given and never forged or manufactured. Eros is the projection of the human spirit into eternity, the immortalizing of its own impulses. Agape is the intrusion of eternity into the fabric of life, coming not from below, but from above. Eros is human love. Agape is divine love. Human ~ John Piper,
281:If one of the other persons be incarnated, there will be two sons in the Trinity, viz., the Son of God, who is the Son before the incarnation, and he also who, by the incarnation, will be the son of the virgin; and among the persons which ought always to be equal there will be an inequality as respects the dignity of birth. For the one born of God will have a nobler birth than he who is born of the virgin. Likewise, if the Father become incarnate, there will be two grandsons in the Trinity; for the Father, by assuming humanity, will be the grandson of the parents of the virgin, and the Word, though having nothing to do with man, will yet be the grandson of the virgin, since he will be the son of her son. But all these things are incongruous and do not pertain to the incarnation of the Word. ~ Anselm of Canterbury,
282:I have opened the pores of my being to breathe freely, and my stomach has no greed to possess of others. Reality, truth, life, are all around us and in us. One cannot escape life. To turn one's back is merely to face it; to close the eyes—the image is retained; the thought, or something more ominous, is ever present. Sleep has many depths and death is but a 'reparative becoming', for we are of eternity in time. Therefore, be willing to pay in the giving and taking without argument, and for him who cheats there is ultimate repayment, for where the morality of exchange ends, business would begin. Sin, however disguised or legalized is sin against self as much as against others. Thus emanates our great inferiority, the down-stepping to the point at which the predator must repay and incarnate as...?—as he deserves. ~ Anonymous,
283:Incarnate Devil
Incarnate devil in a talking snake,
The central plains of Asia in his garden,
In shaping-time the circle stung awake,
In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple,
And God walked there who was a fiddling warden
And played down pardon from the heavens' hill.
When we were strangers to the guided seas,
A handmade moon half holy in a cloud,
The wisemen tell me that the garden gods
Twined good and evil on an eastern tree;
And when the moon rose windily it was
Black as the beast and paler than the cross.
We in our Eden knew the secret guardian
In sacred waters that no frost could harden,
And in the mighty mornings of the earth;
Hell in a horn of sulphur and the cloven myth,
All heaven in the midnight of the sun,
A serpent fiddled in the shaping-time.
~ Dylan Thomas,
284:And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
285:So we would say in yoga that the subtle precedes the gross, or spirit precedes matter. But yoga says we must deal with the outer or most manifest first, i.e. legs, arms, spine, eyes, tongue, touch, in order to develop the sensitivity to move inward. This is why asana opens the whole spectrum of yoga’s possibilities. There can be no realization of existential, divine bliss without the support of the soul’s incarnate vehicle, the food-and-water-fed body, from bone to brain. If we can become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them. We all possess some awareness of ethical behavior, but in order to pursue yama and niyama at deeper levels, we must cultivate the mind. We need contentment, tranquility, dispassion, and unselfishness, qualities that have to be earned. It is asana that teaches us the physiology of these virtues. ~ B K S Iyengar,
286:Today we need small bands of people who take the gospel at face value, who realize what God is doing in our time, and who are living proof of what it means to be in the world but not of the world. These “base” communities or neighborhood churches should be small enough for intimacy, kindred enough for acceptance, and gentle enough for criticism. Gathered in the name of Jesus, the community empowers us to incarnate in our lives what we believe in our hearts and proclaim with our lips. Of course, we must not romanticize such groups. It is all too easy to envision a cozy, harmonious little fellowship where everyone is tuned in on the same wavelength, to love the dream of community more than the sin-scarred members who comprise it, to fantasize heroic deeds for the Lord, and to hear the applause in heaven and on earth as we shape an angelic Koinonia. ~ Brennan Manning,
287:We lived on 82nd Street and the Metropolitan Museum was my short cut to Central Park. I wrote:

"I go into the museum
and look at all the pictures on the walls.
Instead of feeling my own insignificance
I want to go straight home and paint."

A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe. This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent. When I hear a superb pianist, I can't wait to get to my own piano, and I play about as well now as I did when I was ten. A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write. This response on the part of any artist is the need to make incarnate the new awareness we have been granted through the genius of someone else. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
288:Every other person who is at the heart of any religion has had his or her beginning either in fancy or in fact. But nevertheless, there is a beginning. Jesus' birth in Bethlehem was a moment preceded by eternity. His being neither originated in time nor came about by the will of humanity. The Author of time, who lived in the eternal, was made incarnate in time that we might live with the eternal in view. In that sense, the message of Christ was not the introduction of a religion, but an introduction to truth about reality as God alone knows it. To deny Jesus' message while pursuing spirituality is to conjure an imaginary religion in an attempt to see heaven while sight is confined to the earth. That is precisely what Jesus challenged when he said, "I have come that [you] may have life" (John 10:10). His life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells death. ~ Ravi Zacharias,
289:Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alive within ourselves. That, I suppose, is the final mystery as well as the final power of words: That not even across great distances of time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate. And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth.
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words. ~ Frederick Buechner,
290:Including the Free French in the invasion force proved to be a grave mistake, because it made the conflict internecine. To the Vichy French, the Gaullists were ‘the Devil incarnate, the scapegoats for all the anger, resentment and weakness which had been lurking in the dark places of their consciences for a year’, a Free French officer believed.24 Wherever they were involved, the fighting was especially vicious. In the village of Khirbe in southern Lebanon a Free French officer was shot by Vichy forces in the back as he was returning to his own front line, having failed to persuade his countrymen to surrender. When, in another incident, a Free French officer on a motorcycle drew up beside a Vichy counterpart and invited him to join him against their common German enemy, the Vichy man drew his pistol and shot him dead. In a memoir, Jumbo Wilson called the invasion a ‘most unpleasant campaign’.25 ~ James Barr,
291:Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only
weird fauna of the coal-seams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metal-workers were elementals, serving the element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and worms to dead wood. The anima of mineral disintegration! ~ D H Lawrence,
292:The reason why Mary became His Mother and why He did not come sooner was that she alone, and no creature before her or after her, was the pure Vessel of Grace, promised by God to mankind as the Mother of the Incarnate Word, by the merits of whose Passion mankind was to be redeemed from its guilt. The Blessed Virgin was the one and only pure blossom of the human race, flowering in the fullness of time. All the children of God from the beginning of time who have striven after salvation contributed to her coming. She was the only pure gold of the whole earth. She alone was the pure immaculate flesh and blood of the whole human race, prepared and purified and ordained and consecrated through all the generations of her ancestors, guided, guarded, and fortified by the Law until she came forth as the fullness of Grace. She was pre-ordained in eternity and passed through time as the Mother of the Eternal. ~ Anne Catherine Emmerich,
293:The church maintained that having been founded by Christ, who was God incarnate, it alone, through its bishops, was the final and authoritative instrument of divine revelation. Allegiance to the church and obedience to its ordinances were the sole means to salvation. No salvation was therefore possible to anyone who remained outside the church — nulla salus extra ecclesiam. Likewise, Islam placed the main emphasis upon the Koran as the final revelation of God's will. Adherence to the teachings of the Koran, together with the recognition of Allah as God, and Mohammed as the greatest of prophets, constituted for the Moslems the sine qua non of salvation.

The Jews were not quite as emphatic as were the Christians and the Moslems in declaring the rest of mankind ineligible to salvation. Rabbinic teaching was inclined to concede that Gentiles, who were righteous or saintly, had a share in the world to come. ~ Mordecai Menahem Kaplan,
294:Contemplating the extinction of Christian communities, others might also be moved to consider profound issues of meaning, which recall the agonized dilemmas of Jewish thinkers seeking to reconcile the fact of the Holocaust with the existence of a just God. In the presence of such horrors, why did the skies not darken? One might even see the failure of churches as a potent argument against the truth of Christianity. If in fact the religion is true, if God intends his church to carry a message to the utmost ends of the earth, why would he ever allow that church to die? Is God silent, or nonexistent? Christians have always believed that God guides all earthly affairs. An ancient hymn prays to Christ as incarnate Wisdom: O come, Thou Wisdom from on high, Who orderest all things mightily. But did that mighty “ordering” include the annihilation of many of the world’s churches, the persecution or defection of their believers? ~ Philip Jenkins,
295:Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his fetters. If he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation. Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure. By deficient eyes she is reduced to inferior states; by evil eyes of ignorance, she is reduced to banality and ugliness. But she is redeemed by the eyes of understanding. The hero who can taker her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world. ~ Joseph Campbell,
296:Yet Jesus is not simply a good example. If that were all he was to us, his life would crush us with guilt, since no one could meditate on the Scripture as he does. He is, thank God, infinitely more than that. He is not just an exemplar within Scripture, he is the one to whom all the Scripture points, because the main message of the Bible is salvation by grace through Jesus (Luke 24:27, 44). The Bible is all about him. Moses wrote of him, and Abraham rejoiced to see his day (John 5:46, 8:56). The written Word and its law can be a delight because the incarnate Word came and died for us, securing pardon for our sins and shortcomings before God’s law. You can’t delight in the law of the Lord without understanding Jesus’ whole mission. Without him, the law is nothing but a curse, a condemnation, a witness against us (Gal 3:10–11). He obeyed the law fully for us (2 Cor 5:21), so now it is a delight to us, not an everlasting despair. ~ Timothy J Keller,
297:In an incomprehensible reversal of all righteous and pious thinking, God declares himself guilty to the world and thereby extinguishes the guilt of the world. God himself takes the humiliating path of reconciliation and thereby sets the world free. God wants to be guilty of our guilt and takes upon himself the punishment and suffering that this guilt brought to us. God stands in for godlessness, love stands in for hate, the Holy One for the sinner. Now there is no longer any godlessness, any hate, any sin that God has not taken upon himself, suffered, and atoned for. Now there is no more reality and no more world that is not reconciled with God and in peace. That is what God did in his beloved Son Jesus Christ. Ecce homo — see the incarnate God, the unfathomable mystery of the love of God for the world. God loves human beings. God loves the world—not ideal human beings but people as they are, not an ideal world but the real world. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
298:Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ’s miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not. ~ Dan Barker,
299:QUESTIONS
1. Is the doctrine of the Trinity revealed in the Old Testament? In the New Testament%
2. Is the God revealed in the Old Testament the Triune God? How can this be proved%
3. Cite an Old Testament text to prove that God is not a single person.
4. Cite a text which indicates that the Angel of Jehovah is Jehovah (God).
5. Cite a prophetic text which shows that God promised to send God incarnate.
6. Why did the apostles accept the "doctrine" of the Trinity?
7. What two essential elements of the doctrine of the Trinity are taught in the baptismal form of Matthew?
8. The Larger Catechism states that each of the three persons of the Godhead is seen to be God because Scripture attributes to each of them such names, attributes, works, and worship as are proper to God only. Can you cite Scripture references showing that the names, attributes, works, and worship proper to God are associated with each of the three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost)? ~ G I Williamson,
300:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity.

“To be a true poet is to become God.”

Well, Martin, old colleague, old chum, you’re carrying the cross and suffering the pangs, but are you any closer to becoming God? Or do you just feel like some poor idiot who’s had a three-meter javelin shoved through his belly, feeling cold steel where your liver used to be? It hurts, doesn’t it? I feel your hurt. I feel my hurt.

In the end, it doesn’t matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn’t matter a damn bit.

We’re no avatars, no sons of god or man. We’re only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. ~ Dan Simmons,
301:Theology God is triune, and the church is plural. Philosophy Groups are foundational for transformation. Practice We offer groups that   , move people to groups by   , etc. Theology Christ is the Word incarnate, and the Scripture is His special revelation to us. Philosophy The text must be heralded in all teaching environments. Practice We teach the Word to adults, students, and kids by       . Theology God became Man (incarnation) to rescue us. Philosophy We must step into our local context and serve. Practice We serve our local community by     . Theology Christ redeemed us for His own glory. Corporate worship must celebrate what Christ has done. Philosophy We sing songs that focus on His character and work, not ours. Practice We structure singing in our services by       . Theology Christ has made all believers priests. Philosophy All believers are qualified by God to serve the body of believers. Practice We challenge our people to serve in the following ways:       . ~ Matt Chandler,
302:as a man comes to know God in the unitive vision, he knows in that some moment, his own true Self. This intriguing fact is expressed most succinctly in a passage from the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana; in it, Rama, who represents the Godhead incarnate, asks his servant, Hanuman, “How do you regard me?” And Hanuman replies: dehabhavena daso’smi jivabhavena twadamshakah atmabhave twamevaham (When I identify with the body, I am Thy servant; When I identify with the soul, I am a part of Thee; But when I identify with the Self, I am truly Thee.)1 These three attitudes represent progressively subtler stages of self-identification: from the identification with the body, to identification with the soul, until, finally, one comes to know the Divine, and thereby one’s eternal Self. While each of these three relational attitudes finds expression as the prevailing attitude within various individual religious traditions, they are essentially representative of the viewpoint from these different stages of self-awareness. ~ Swami Abhayananda,
303:7. The Meeting with the Goddess:The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed-whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace. ~ Joseph Campbell,
304:As students in this earth school, some of us may be in the first grade, the sixth grade, or high school, but eventually, with enough education, we will all graduate and leave this school behind. And then there are other schools, higher dimensions or levels where we continue our spiritual progression. But until we all graduate, none of us does, for we are all one. We may come back voluntarily to help other people, or animals, or sentient beings to evolve. Or we may help out from the other side even if we do not incarnate in physical bodies, and there we will continue to work to assist those other souls with whom we have been connected for eons of time. Do not be concerned with how many millennia it takes you to complete your classes. If you are progressing to be a kinder, more loving, less selfish, less violent person, then you are moving in the right direction. The direction is more important than the speed. It makes no difference if this is your first lifetime or your last, or if you have many more to go. Only the end matters. Of ~ Brian L Weiss,
305:Later on we read what Krishna says, “Even those who worship other deities are really worshipping me” (note 31). It is God incarnate whom man is worshipping. Would God be angry if you called Him by the wrong name? He would be no God at all! Can’t you understand that whatever a man has in his own heart is God — even if he worships a stone? What of that! We will understand more clearly if we once get rid of the idea that religion consists in doctrines. One idea of religion has been that the whole world was born because Adam ate the apple, and there is no way of escape. Believe in Jesus Christ — in a certain man’s death! But in India there is quite a different idea. [There] religion means realisation, nothing else. It does not matter whether one approaches the destination in a carriage with four horses, in an electric car, or rolling on the ground. The goal is the same. For the [Christians] the problem is how to escape the wrath of the terrible God. For the Indians it is how to become what they really are, to regain their lost Selfhood. ... ~ Swami Vivekananda,
306:Another ideal runs ahead of us, a strange, tempting, dangerous ideal to which we should not wish to persuade anybody because we do not readily concede the right to it to anyone: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively - that is, not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance - with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine; for whom those supreme things that the people naturally accept as their value standards, signify danger, decay, debasement, or at least recreation, blindness, and temporary self-oblivion; the ideal of a human, superhuman well-being and benevolence that will often appear inhuman - for example, when it confronts all earthly seriousness so far, all solemnity in gesture, word, tone, eye, morality, and task so far, as if it were their most incarnate and involuntary parody - and in spite of all of this, it is perhaps only with that great seriousness really begins, that the real question mark is posed for the first time, that the destiny of the soul changes, the hand moves forward, the tragedy begins. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
307:A man will, by fasting, be delivered from the hopelessness of mere gourmandise. The secular, for all its goodness, does not defend itself very well against mindless and perpetual consumption. It cries out to be offered by abstinence as well as use; to be appreciated, not simply absorbed: Hunger remains the best sauce. Beyond that, though, it cries out to be lifted into a higher offering still. The real secret of fasting is not that it is a simple way to keep one's weight down, but that it is a mysterious way of lifting creation into the Supper of the Lamb. It is not a little excursion into fashionable shape, but a major entrance into the fasting, the agony, the passion by which the Incarnate Word restores all things to the goodness God finds in them. It is as much an act of prayer as prayer itself, and, in an affluent society, it may well be the most meaningful of all the practices of religion - the most likely point at which the salt can find its savor once again. Let a man fast in earnest, therefore. One way or another - here or hereafter - it will give him back his feasts. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
308:It is life, not the individual, that is conscienceless. The essential, therefore, is to understand the time for which one is born. He who does not sense and understand its most secret forces, who does not feel in himself something cognate that drives him forward on a path neither hedged nor defined by concepts, who believes in the surface, public opinion, large phrases and ideals of the day — he is not of the stature for its events. He is in their power, not they in his. Look not back to the past for measuring-rods! Still less sideways for some system or other! There are times, like our own present and the Gracchan age, in which there are two most deadly kinds of idealism, the reactionary and the democratic. The one believes in the reversibility of history, the other in a teleology of history. But it makes no difference to the inevitable failure with which both burden a nation over whose destiny they have power, whether it is to a memory or to a concept that they sacrifice it. The genuine statesman is incarnate history, its directedness expressed as individual will and its organic logic as character. ~ Oswald Spengler,
309:Atheism is an idea. Most often (thank God), it is an idea lived and told with blunt jumbo-crayon clumsiness. Some child of Christianity or Judaism dons an unbelieving Zorro costume and preens about the living room.

Behold, a dangerous thinker of thinks! A believer in free-from-any-and-all-goodness! Fear my brainy blade!

Put candy in their bucket. Act scared. Don't tell them that they're adorable. Atheism is not an idea we want fleshed out.

Atheism incarnate does happen in this reality narrative. But it doesn't rant about Islam's treatment of women as did the (often courageous) atheist Christopher Hitchens. It doesn't thunder words like evil and mean it (as Hitch so often did) when talking about oppressive communist regimes. His costume slipped all the time—and in many of his best moments.

Atheism incarnate is nihilism from follicle to toenail. It is morality merely as evolved herd survival instinct (non-bindng, of course, and as easy for us to outgrow as our feathers were). When Hitchens thundered, he stood in the boots of forefathers who knew that all thunder comes from on high. ~ N D Wilson,
310:The otherworldliness of the Christian life ought, Luther concluded, to be manifested in the very midst of the world, in the Christian community and in its daily life. Hence the Christian's task is to live out that life in terms of his secular calling. That is the way to die unto the world. The value of the secular calling for the Christian is that it provides an opporunity of living the Christian life with the support of God's grace, and of engaging more vigorously in the assault on the world and everything that it stands for. Luther did not return to the world because he had arrived at a more positive attitude towards it. Nor had he abandoned the eschatological expectation of early Christianity. He intended his action to expres a radical criticism and protest against the secularization of Chrisitanity which had taken place within monasticism. By recalling the Christians into the world he called them paradoxically out of it all the more. That was what Luther experienced in his own person. His call to men to return to the world was essentially a call to enter the visible Church of the incarnate Lord. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
311:I'll lean over your crib, lift your squalling form out, and sit in the rocking chair to nurse you. The word 'infant' is derived from the Latin word for 'unable to speak,' but you'll be perfectly capable of saying one thing: 'I suffer.,' and you'll do it tirelessly and without hesitation. I have to admire your utter commitment to that statement; when you cry, you'll become outrage incarnate, every fiber of your being employed in expressing that emotion. It's funny: when you're tranquil, you will seem to radiate light, and if someone were to paint a portrait of you like that, I'd insist they include the halo. But when you're unhappy, you will become a klaxon, built for radiating sound; a portrait of you then could simply be a fire alarm bell. At that stage of your life, there'll be no past or future for you; until I give you my breast, you'll have no memory of contentment in the past nor expectation of relief in the future. Once you begin nursing, everything will reverse, and all will be right with the world. NOW is the only moment you'll perceive; you'll live in the present tense. In many ways, it's an enviable state. ~ Ted Chiang,
312:I spent most of my time floating on an inflatable raft in the pristine Mediterranean waters, my big belly curving toward the sun, reading (incongruously) The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It rocked me to my core. Malcolm’s story opened a window onto a reality I had ignored. But the greatest revelation the book brought me was the possibility of profound human transformation. I was spellbound by his journey from the doped-up, numbers-running, woman-beating, street-hustling, pimping Malcolm Little to a proud, clean, literate, Muslim Malcolm X who taught that all white people were the Devil incarnate—to his final, spiritual transformation in Mecca. There he met white people from all over the world who received him as a brother, and he realized that “white,” as he had been using the word, didn’t mean skin color as much as it meant attitudes and actions some whites held toward non-whites—but that not all whites were racist. At the time of his murder, he was anything but the hatemonger portrayed in the American press. Somehow, through the horrors that had been his life, he had become a spiritual leader. How had this been possible? ~ Jane Fonda,
313:The Angel Flame
House in thy soul the flickerless lamp of love;
O way- lost dupe, relume the angel flame
In the wistful temple of dream: nurse in faith’s grove
The memorial rose of peace no thorn may shame.
Delivered from thy passions’ lurid gleams
And shadowing greeds, foes in the guise of friends,
Know: in the deep of hush the soul redeems:
She is the vanguard morn to darkness sends.
Her children in gloom, thy Motherland mourns and sighs,
Play Beauty’s flute like Krishna: thou art He.
If thou wilt wake- the world, a-quiver, shall rise
And mitred priests of love sing on with thee.
Hate never pays, though sorrows purify;
Be poised in thy Self of love – incarnate, free.
If love resign who shall reveal the sky?
Soul’s night is doom: her dawn – sure victory.
Be pledged to noble ways of the ancient Sun;
If lose thou must, let it be life – not love.
Shall clouds besiege thy star – dominion?
“Up! Time is fleeting!” – the bugle calls above!
[Translated by ~ Dilip Kumar Roy



, from the Hindu Song of the Poet Abul Hafiz
Jalandhari]
~ Dilip Kumar Roy,
314:Thus Jesus is a metaphor of God. Indeed, for us as Christians, he is the metaphor of God. Of course, he was also a real person. As metaphor of God, Jesus discloses what God is like. We see God through Jesus. We are accustomed to speaking of the death of Jesus as the “passion” of Jesus, and the stories of his death as the “passion narratives.” When we do so, we typically think of “passion” as meaning “suffering.” And it does mean that. But it has an additional meaning as well. The death of Jesus—his execution—was because of his passion for God and God’s justice. And because we see Jesus as the revelation of God, we see in his life and death the passion of God. He discloses both the character and passion of God. It is this figure who is also, for us as Christians, the Word of God, the Son of God, the Wisdom of God, the Light of the World. Now at the right hand of God, one with God, and the second person of the Trinity, he was in his historical life the character and passion of God incarnate. As a metaphor of God, he is the heart of God made flesh.21 Jesus is also a sacrament of God, a means through whom the Spirit of God becomes present. ~ Marcus J Borg,
315:So this is the Sierras, eh?” he said, looking out over the dark lake. “All that time growing up I never made it up here before.” “It’s the Range of Light,” I said, passing the joint back to him. “That’s what John Muir called it. I can see why. I’ve never seen light like I have out here. All the sunsets and sunrises against the mountains.” “You’re on a spirit walk, aren’t you?” Paco said, staring into the fire. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you could call it that.” “That’s what it is,” he said, looking at me intensely. He stood. “I’ve got something I want to give you.” He went to the back of the truck and returned with a T-shirt. He handed it to me and I held it up. On the front was a giant picture of Bob Marley, his dreadlocks surrounded by images of electric guitars and pre-Columbian effigies in profile. On the back was a picture of Haile Selassie, the man Rastafarians thought was God incarnate, rimmed by a red and green and gold swirl. “That is a sacred shirt,” Paco said as I studied it by the firelight. “I want you to have it because I can see that you walk with the spirits of the animals, with the spirits of the earth and the sky.” I nodded, silenced by emotion and the half-drunk ~ Cheryl Strayed,
316:So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.

And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious. ~ Miguel Serrano,
317:Who’d rather read, “The godly shall never suffer persecution”? Me. But we do. So did Christians in the time of the apostles. And they are suffering now—around the world, but especially under the lash of Islamic terrorism. Who, just a few years ago, could have imagined the so-called Islamic State—or ISIS, or ISIL, or Daesh, or whatever you want to call it—appearing on the scene and literally crucifying Christians, including children; or that they would brag about beheadings; or that they would be committing mass executions of Christians? That’s evil incarnate—but the big-dog media don’t like to talk about it, and neither do liberal politicians. And that’s only one strand of Islamic terrorism. There’s al Qaeda and there are other jihadist movements, all of which are dedicated to the extermination or subjugation of Christians. There’s a global war against Christianity in the name of Islam—and a lot of us don’t even know about it, because the lamestream media don’t think it’s newsworthy. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, challenge yourself to keep informed about the Jihadist threat. Pray for courage, pray for God’s protection of our country, pray for our leaders to defeat this death cult, and pray for threatened Christians around the world. ~ Sarah Palin,
318:What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters. ~ D H Lawrence,
319:I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world. summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.

I believe that health is wholeness. For many years I have returned again and again to the work of the English agriculturist SirAlbert Hovvard, who said, in The Soil and Health, that "the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man [is] one great subject."

I am moreover a Luddite, in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense. I am not "against technology" so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community.

I believe that the community-in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures-is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. ~ Wendell Berry,
320:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
   They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
   Uplift the stature of the human clay
   Or slowly transmute it into heavens gold.
   He is the Good for which men fight and die,
   He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;
   He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;
   He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass
   Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade
   Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.
   He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame
   And the glad resignation of the saint
   And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time
   And the heros might wrestling with death and fate.
   He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
   And the calm autocracy of the sages rule.
   He is the high and solitary Thought
   Aloof above the ignorant multitude:
   He is the prophets voice, the sight of the seer.
   He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
   He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.
   He is the riches of the spiritual Vast
   Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;
   He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,
   He is infinity in a little space:
   He is immortality in the arms of death.
   These powers I am and at my call they come.
   Thus slowly I lift mans soul nearer the Light.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,
321:Nora On The Pavement
As Nora on the pavement
Dances, and she entrances the grey hour
Into the laughing circle of her power,
The magic circle of her glances,
As Nora dances on the midnight pavement;
Petulant and bewildered,
Thronging desires and longing looks recur,
And memorably re-incarnate her,
As I remember that old longing,
A footlight fancy, petulant and bewildered;
There where the ballet circles,
See her, but ah! not free her from the race
Of glittering lines that link and interlace;
This colour now, now that, may be her,
In the bright web of those harmonious circles.
But what are these dance-measures,
Leaping and joyous, keeping time alone
With Life's capricious rhythm, and all her own,
Life's rhythm and hers, long sleeping,
That wakes, and knows not why, in these dance-measures?
It is the very Nora;
Child, and most blithe, and wild as any elf,
And innocently spendthrift of herself,
And guileless and most unbeguiled,
Herself at last, leaps free the very Nora.
It is the soul of Nora,
Living at last, and giving forth to the night,
Bird-like, the burden of its own delight,
All its desire, and all the joy of living,
In that blithe madness of the soul of Nora.
~ Arthur Symons,
322: Rose of God
Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,
Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!
Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,
Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being,
Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing!
Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower,
Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might,
Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night!
Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan,
Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire,
Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour's lyre!
Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme;
Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God like a blush of rapture on Eternity's face,
Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!
Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature's abyss:
Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude's kiss.

~ Sri Aurobindo, - Rose of God
,
323:Now it's serious. At last it's becoming serious. So I've grown older. Was I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I'm finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I'm at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don't know if there's destiny but there's a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town - the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We're representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone's game. I am ready. Now it's your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it's you. ~ Wim Wenders,
324:As Lord David Cecil has said: “The jargon of the philosophy of progress taught us to think that the savage and primitive state of man is behind us, we still talk of the present ‘return to barbarism.’ But barbarism is not behind us it is beneath us.” And in the same article he observes: “Christianity has compelled the mind of man, not because it is the most cheering view of human existence, but because it is the truest to the facts.” I think this is true; and it seems to me quite disastrous that the idea should have gotten about that Christianity is an other-worldly, unreal, idealistic kind of religion that suggest that if we are good we shall be happy—or if not, it will all be made up to us in the next existence. On the contrary, it is fiercely and even harshly realistic, insisting that the kingdom of heaven can never be attained in this would except by unceasing toil and struggle and vigilance: that, in fact, we cannot be good and cannot be happy, but that there are certain eternal achievements that make even happiness look like trash. It has been said, I think by Berdyaev, that nothing can prevent the human soul from preferring creativeness to happiness. In this lies man’s substantial likeness to the Divine Christ, who in this world suffers and creates continually, being incarnate in the bonds of matter. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,
325:Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He became Man even as we are men. In his humanity and his lowliness we recognize our own form. He has become like a man, so that men should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind. The “philanthropy” of God (Titus 3:4) revealed in the Incarnation is the ground of Christian love towards all on earth that bears the name of man. The form of Christ incarnate makes the Church into the Body of Christ. All the sorrows of mankind fall upon that form, and only through that form can they be borne. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
326:In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift. ~ Thomas Merton,
327:For Christmas Day
Hark, how all the welkin rings,
"Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconcil'd!"
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
"Christ the Lord is born to-day!"
Christ, by highest Heaven ador'd,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin's womb!
Veil'd in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail th' incarnate Deity!
Pleas'd as man with men to appear,
Jesus, our Immanuel here!
Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace,
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.
Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman's conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent's head.
Now display thy saving power,
Ruin'd nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
O, to all thyself impart,
Form'd in each believing heart.
~ Charles Wesley,
328:My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
329:Suggested By The Cover Of A Volume Of Keats's
Poems
Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign
To put upon the cover of this book?
Who heard thee singing in the distance dim,
The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood,
When the damp freshness of the morning earth
Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song?
Who followed over moss and twisted roots,
And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines
Where slanting sunbeams gleamed uncertainly,
While ever clearer came the dropping notes,
Until, at last, two widening trunks disclosed
Thee singing on a spray of branching beech,
Hidden, then seen; and always that same song
Of joyful sweetness, rapture incarnate,
Filled the hushed, rustling stillness of the wood?
We do not know what bird thou art. Perhaps
That fairy bird, fabled in island tale,
Who never sings but once, and then his song
Is of such fearful beauty that he dies
From sheer exuberance of melody.
For this they took thee, little bird, for this
They captured thee, tilting among the leaves,
And stamped thee for a symbol on this book.
For it contains a song surpassing thine,
Richer, more sweet, more poignant. And the poet
Who felt this burning beauty, and whose heart
Was full of loveliest things, sang all he knew
A little while, and then he died; too frail
To bear this untamed, passionate burst of song.
~ Amy Lowell,
330:White Dawn, That Tak'st The Heaven With Sweet
Surprise
White dawn, that tak'st the heaven with sweet surprise
of amorous artifice,
art thou the bearer of my perfect hour
divine, untrod,
from some forgotten window of Paradise
by mighty winds of God
blown down the world, before my haunted eyes
at length to flower?
Nay, virgin dawn, yet art thou all too known,
too crowded light
to take my boundless hour of flaming peace:
thou common dayspring cease;
and be there only night, the only night,
more than all other lone:
be the sole secret world
one rose unfurl'd,
and nought disturb its blossom'd peace intense,
that fills the living deep beyond all dreams of sense
enmesh'd in errorous multiplicity:
— let be
nought but her coming there:
what else were fair?
It asks no golden web, no censer-fire
to tell the dense incarnate mystery
where one delight is wed with one desire.
No leaves bestrow
that passage to the rose of all fulfill'd delight;
no silver trumpets blow
majestic rite,
but silence that is sigh'd from faery lands,
or wraps the feet of Beauty where she treads
dim fields of fading stars,
be round our meeting heads,
and seeking hands:
draw near, ye heavens, and be our chamber-bars;
and thou, maternal heart of holy night,
close watch, what hush'd and sacramental tide
91
a soul goes forth wide-eyed,
to meet the archangel-sword of loneliest delight
~ Christopher John Brennan,
331:Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to. ~ Herman Melville,
332:The Incarnate One
The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,
And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae.
I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,
Christ, man and creature in their inner day.
How could our race betray
The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake
Who chose this form and fashion for our sake?
The Word made flesh here is made word again
A word made word in flourish and arrogant crook.
See there King Calvin with his iron pen,
And God three angry letters in a book,
And there the logical hook
On which the Mystery is impaled and bent
Into an ideological argument.
There's better gospel in man's natural tongue,
And truer sight was theirs outside the Law
Who saw the far side of the Cross among
The archaic peoples in their ancient awe,
In ignorant wonder saw
The wooden cross-tree on the bare hillside,
Not knowing that there a God suffered and died.
The fleshless word, growing, will bring us down,
Pagan and Christian man alike will fall,
The auguries say, the white and black and brown,
The merry and the sad, theorist, lover, all
Invisibly will fall:
Abstract calamity, save for those who can
Build their cold empire on the abstract man.
A soft breeze stirs and all my thoughts are blown
Far out to sea and lost. Yet I know well
The bloodless word will battle for its own
Invisibly in brain and nerve and cell.
The generations tell
Their personal tale: the One has far to go
Past the mirages and the murdering snow.
29
~ Edwin Muir,
333:In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London.
Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” to anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces. ~ Emil M Cioran,
334:In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London.
Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” too anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces. ~ Emil M Cioran,
335:Liebestod
I who, conceived beneath another star,
Had been a prince and played with life, instead
Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far
From the fair things my faith has merited.
My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread
And those that make romance of poverty -Soldier, I shared the soldier's board and bed,
And Joy has been a thing more oft to me
Whispered by summer wind and summer sea
Than known incarnate in the hours it lies
All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.
I know not if in risking my best days
I shall leave utterly behind me here
This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways
And that no disappointment made less dear;
Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear
Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire,
Behind the mist Death only can make clear,
There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire,
Lies what shall ease my heart's immense desire:
There, where beyond the horror and the pain
Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.
Truth or delusion, be it as it may,
Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so,
That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day
When to the last assault our bugles blow:
Reckless of pain and peril we shall go,
Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare,
And we shall brave eternity as though
Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair -One waited in whose presence we would wear,
Even as a lover who would be well-seen,
Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.
42
~ Alan Seeger,
336:Nietzsche’s words that relate to this with respect to masks and the processes of life. He speaks of three stages in the life of the spirit incarnate in each of us. Three transformations of the spirit, he calls it. The first is that of the camel which gets down on its knees and asks, “Put a load on me.” That’s the period of these dear little children. This is the just-born life that has come in and is receiving the imprint of the society. The primary mask. “Put a load on me. Teach me what I must know to live in this society.” Once heavily loaded, the camel struggles to its feet and goes out into the desert — into the desert of the realization of its own individual nature. This must follow the reception of the culture good. It must not precede it. First is humility, and obedience, and the reception of the primary mask. Then comes the turning inward, which happens automatically in adolescence, to find your own inward life. Nietzsche calls this the transformation of the camel into a lion. Then the lion attacks a dragon; and the dragon’s name is Thou Shalt. The dragon is the concretization of all those imprints that the society has put upon you. The function of the lion is to kill the dragon Thou Shalt. On every scale is a “Thou Shalt,” some of them dating from 2000 b.c., others from this morning’s newspaper. And, when the dragon Thou Shalt has been killed — that is to say, when you have made the transition from simple obedience to authority over your own life — the third transformation is to that of being a child moving spontaneously out of the energy of its own center. Nietzsche calls it a wheel rolling out of its own center. ~ Joseph Campbell,
337:There are two ways to turn devils into angels: First, acknowledge things about them that you genuinely appreciate. Uncle Morty took you to the beach when you were a kid. Your mom still sends you money on your birthday. Your ex-wife is a good mother to your children. There must be something you sincerely appreciate about this person. Shift your attention from the mean and nasty things they have said or done to the kind and helpful things they have said or done—even if there are just a few or even only one. You have defined this person by their iniquities. You can just as easily—actually, more easily—define them by their redeeming qualities. It’s your movie. Change the script. Perhaps you are still arguing that the person who has hurt you has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She is evil incarnate, Rosemary’s baby conceived with Satan himself, poster child for the dark side of the Force, destined to wreak havoc and horror in the lives of everyone she touches. A nastier bitch never walked the earth. Got it. Let’s say all of this is true—the person who troubles you is a no-good, cheating, lying SOB. Now here’s the second devil-transformer. Consider: How has this person helped you to grow? What spiritual muscles have you developed that you would not have built if this person had been nicer to you? Have you learned to hold your power and self-esteem in the presence of attempted insult? Do you now speak your truth more quickly and directly? Are you now asking for what you want instead of passively deferring? Are you setting healthier boundaries? Have you deepened in patience and compassion? Do you make more self-honoring choices? There are many benefits you might have gained, or still might gain, from someone who challenges you. ~ Alan Cohen,
338:This is an enormous claim, but there is a certain logic to it. One of the most recent people to note this logic is Bono, the lead singer of U2, in a conversation with Michka Assayas: Assayas: Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that far-fetched? Bono: No, it’s not far-fetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: ‘I’m the Messiah.’ I’m saying: ‘I am God incarnate.’ And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the ‘M’ word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no, I know you’re expecting me to come back with an army and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he’s gonna keep saying this. So what you’re left with is either Christ was who He said He was – the Messiah – or a complete nutcase. I mean, we’re talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. . . . I’m not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilisation for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that’s far-fetched . . . Bono is describing how Jesus’ statements about himself force us all into an all-or-nothing choice. ~ Timothy J Keller,
339:Trash first. Then supplies.
Stepping forward, I kicked a pile of takeout containers to one side, wanting to clear a path to the cabinets so I could look for latex gloves. But then I stopped, stiffening, an odd scratching sound coming from the pile I’d just nudged with my foot.
Turning back to it, I crouched on the ground and lifted a greasy paper at the top of the mess. And that’s when I saw it.
A cockroach.
In Ireland.
A giant behemoth of a bug, the likes I’d only ever seen on nature programs about prehistoric insects.
Okay, perhaps I was overexaggerating its size. Perhaps not. Honestly, I didn’t get a chance to dwell on the matter, because the roach-shaped locust of Satan hopped onto my hand.
I screamed.
Obviously.
Jumping back and swatting at my hand, I screamed again. But evil incarnate had somehow crawled up and into the sleeve of my shirt. The sensation of its tiny, hairy legs skittering along my arm had me screaming a third time and I whipped off my shirt, tossing it to the other side of the room as though it was on fire.
“What the hell is going on?”
I spun toward the door, finding Ronan Fitzpatrick and Bryan Leech hovering at the entrance, their eyes darting around the room as though they were searching for a perpetrator. Meanwhile, I was frantically brushing my hands over my arms and torso. I felt the echo of that spawn of the devil’s touch all over my body.
“Cockroach!” I screeched. “Do you see it? Is it still on me?” I twisted back and forth, searching.
Bryan and Ronan were joined in the doorway by more team members, but I barely saw them in my panic.
God, I could still feel it.
I. Could. Still. Feel. It.
Now I knew what those hapless women felt like in horror movies when they realized the serial killer was still inside the house. ~ L H Cosway,
340:SALVATION BELONGS TO THE LORD! — JONAH 2:9 Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in . . . trespasses and sins,”1 and He it is who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever toward my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Whenever I sin, that is my own doing; but when I act correctly, that is wholly and completely of God. If I have resisted a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who lives in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I separated from the world? I am separated by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.”2 Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the bread that comes down from heaven? What is that bread but Jesus Christ Himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh supplies of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help comes from heaven’s hills: Without Jesus I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the ocean, let me learn this morning in my room: “Salvation belongs to the LORD. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
341:February 26 MORNING “Salvation is of the Lord.” — Jonah 2:9 SALVATION is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in trespasses and sins,” and it is He also who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation is of the Lord.” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever towards my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely. If I have repulsed a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.” Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul, and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh increase of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help cometh from heaven’s hills: without Jesus I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the great deep, let me learn this morning in my closet: “Salvation is of the Lord. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
342:The creative life! Ascension. Passing beyond oneself. Rocketing out into the blue, grasping at flying ladders, mounting, soaring, lifting the world up by the scalp, rousing the angels from their ethereal lairs, drowning in stellar depths, clinging to the tails of comets. Nietzsche had written of it ecstatically —and then swooned forward into the mirror to die in root and flower. «Stairs and contradictory stairs,» he wrote, and then suddenly there was no longer any bottom; the mind, like a splintered diamond, was pulverized by the hammer−blows of truth. There was a time when I acted as my father's keeper. I was left alone for long hours, cooped up in the little booth which we used as an office. While he was drinking with his cronies I was feeding from the bottle of creative life. My companions were the free spirits, the overlords of the soul. The young man sitting there in the mingy yellow light became completely unhinged; he lived in the crevices of great thoughts, crouched like a hermit in the barren folds of a lofty mountain range. From truth he passed to imagination and from imagination to invention. At this last portal, through which there is no return, fear beset him. To venture farther was to wander alone, to rely wholly upon oneself. The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying. Then arose the comforting thought of stopping at the brink, of setting down in words the mysteries of impulsion, compulsion, propulsion, of bathing the senses in human odors. To become utterly human, the compassionate fiend incarnate, the locksmith of the great door leading beyond and away and forever isolate.
Men founder like ships. Children also. There are children who settle to the bottom at the age of nine, carrying with them the secret of their betrayal. There are perfidious monsters who look at you with the bland, innocent eyes of youth; their crimes are unregistered, because we have no names for them. ~ Henry Miller,
343:Leffingwell
I—THE LURE
No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant,
For I shall never set my name to theirs
That now bespeak the very sons and heirs
Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant.
The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant,
And futile Seems the burden that he bears;
But are we sounding his forlorn affairs
Who brand him parasite and sycophant?
I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these;
And if he prove a rather sorry knight,
What quiverings in the distance of what light
May not have lured him with high promises,
And then gone down?—He may have been deceived;
He may have lied,—he did; and he believed.
II—THE QUICKSTEP
The dirge is over, the good work is done,
All as he would have had it, and we go;
And we who leave him say we do not know
How much is ended or how much begun.
So men have said before of many a one;
So men may say of us when Time shall throw
Such earth as may be needful to bestow
On you and me the covering hush we shun.
Well hated, better loved, he played and lost,
And left us; and we smile at his arrears;
And who are we to know what it all cost,
Or what we may have wrung from him, the buyer?
The pageant of his failure-laden years
Told ruin of high price. The place was higher.
III—REQUIESCAT
165
We never knew the sorrow or the pain
Within him, for he seemed as one asleep—
Until he faced us with a dying leap,
And with a blast of paramount, profane,
And vehement valediction did explain
To each of us, in words that we shall keep,
Why we were not to wonder or to weep,
Or ever dare to wish him back again.
He may be now an amiable shade,
With merry fellow-phantoms unafraid
Around him—but we do not ask. We know
That he would rise and haunt us horribly,
And be with us o’ nights of a certainty.
Did we not hear him when he told us so?
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,
344:Kulakundalini, Goddess Full of Brahman, Tara -- You are inside me. You are inside me, Ma in the muladhara, the sahasrara, and the wish-granting manipura. The Ganges flows to the left, the Yamuna to the right; in their midst streams the Sarasvati where Siva and Sakti shine. Meditating on You like this a ruby-red snake sleeping coiled around the Lord Self-Born a man is blessed. In each glorious lotus Muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura at the navel, anahata, and visuddha You incarnate as letters v to s, b to l, d to ph, k to th, sixteen vowels at the throat, and h and ks between the eyebrows. My teacher was firm with me; he told me to think of You like this in my body. Brahma and the four gods, and Dakini and her five saktis inhabit the ascending lotuses, supported underneath by an elephant, a crocodile, a ram, an antelope, and a second elephant. If you hold your breath you can know Her and hear the buzzing hum of a drunken bee. Earth, water, fire, and air dissolve immediately when you sound "yam," ram," "lam," "ham," and "haum." Then cast me a compassionate glance -- I keep being reborn! Your feet alone drip nectar. You are Sakti, cosmic sound, and Siva the dot in "Om" full of nectar like the moon. Who can cleave the One Self? Ritual worship, controversies over dualism and nondualism these don't bother me, for the Great Mistress of Time tramples Time. Once sleep is broken there's no more sleep, and the soul will be turned into Siva. Could one like this even if reborn drown anew in the senses? Liberation adores him like a daughter. Pierce the agna cakra; dispel the devotee's despair. Traveling past lotuses four, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, and two to the thousand-petaled flower at the top of the head the female swan unites with Her handsom amde in the residence of the Lord. Hearing Prasad's words, the yogi floats in a sea of bliss. [1770.jpg] -- from Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott

~ Ramprasad, Kulakundalini, Goddess Full of Brahman, Tara
,
345:Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?...

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
346: Epiphany
Immortal, moveless, calm, alone, august,
A silence throned, to just and to unjust
One Lord of still unutterable love,
I saw Him, Shiva, like a brooding dove
Close-winged upon her nest. The outcasts came,
The sinners gathered to that quiet flame,
The demons by the other sterner gods
Rejected from their luminous abodes
Gathered around the Refuge of the lost
Soft-smiling on that wild and grisly host.

All who were refugeless, wretched, unloved,
The wicked and the good together moved
Naturally to Him, the shelterer sweet,
And found their heaven at their Master's feet.

The vision changed and in its place there stood
A Terror red as lightning or as blood.

His strong right hand a javelin advanced
And as He shook it, earthquake stumbling danced
Across the hemisphere, ruin and plague
Rained out of heaven, disasters swift and vague
Neighboured, a marching multitude of ills.

His foot strode forward to oppress the hills,
And at the vision of His burning eyes
The hearts of men grew faint with dread surmise
Of sin and punishment. Their cry was loud,
"O master of the stormwind and the cloud,
Spare, Rudra, spare! Show us that other form
Auspicious, not incarnate wrath and storm."
The God of Force, the God of Love are one;
Not least He loves whom most He smites. Alone
Who towers above fear and plays with grief,
Defeat and death, inherits full relief
From blindness and beholds the single Form,
Love masking Terror, Peace supporting Storm.
279

280

Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907 - 1910
The Friend of Man helps him with life and death
Until he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,
Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.

He feels the joy of the immortal play;
He has the silence and the unflinching force,
He knows the oneness and the eternal course.

He too is Rudra and thunder and the Fire,
He Shiva and the white Light no shadows tire,
The Strength that rides abroad on Time's wide wings,
The Calm in the heart of all immortal things.

~ Sri Aurobindo, - Epiphany
,
347:Before she could say more, she looked up to find Cade towering over her. "Do you think they could do one song without us so I might have the pleasure of the next dance?" he asked formally. Lily looked startled and Whitaker frowned, but Anna had just arrived and offered shyly, "I'll play for you, Mrs. Brown. What would you like to hear?" It was settled. Feeling a quiver of excitement, Lily took Cade's hand and rose from the bench. "Do you know 'Molly Cotton-tail'?" It was an easy song, one every child learned, but great fun for dancing. Lily smiled at the child's eager nod. She would finally have a chance to try dancing. Lily's excitement was irresistible. Ignoring the fact that he would most likely get his head blown off for daring to lay a hand to a white woman, Cade led her out to join the dancers. Langton and his wife were there, and they joined the circle beside them. Cade hid his surprise as Maria haughtily joined them, towing one of Lily's farmhands behind her. Maria was a whore at heart, but she hadn't denied him her bed as many another had done before. Cade wouldn't begrudge this offer of friendship now. Unaware that a small cadre of friends and neighbors were forming a protective circle around them, Lily laughed and took Cade's hand as the music began. She had waited for this moment all her life, and she expected to enjoy it to the fullest. She no longer pictured a dream man to sweep her off her feet. She merely wanted to enjoy the music. Cade watched in amazement as Lily spread her wings and flew. She didn't need anyone's protection. The sheer delight on her face as she swung from arm to arm around the circle, her feet scarcely touching the floor, was enough to stop even the hardest heart from treading on her happiness. Cade almost half-believed that life had some meaning beyond mere existence as he watched her. He wouldn't need liquor if he could always feel that kind of joy, even secondhand. Lily collapsed, laughing, into his arms as the music ended. For a moment, Cade was supporting her slenderness against him while she recovered her breath. He had no right being aroused by innocence incarnate, but while Lily laughed, Cade burned. The ~ Patricia Rice,
348:Sîva
Mors Janua Vitae.
I am the God of the sensuous fire
That moulds all Nature in forms divine;
The symbols of death and of man’s desire,
The springs of change in the world, are mine;
The organs of birth and the circlet of bones,
And the light loves carved on the temple stones.
I am the lord of delights and pain,
Of the pest that killeth, of fruitful joys;
I rule the currents of heart and vein;
A touch gives passion, a look destroys;
In the heat and cold of my lightest breath
Is the might incarnate of Lust and Death.
If a thousand altars stream with blood
Of the victims slain by the chanting priest,
Is a great God lured by the savoury food?
I reck not of worship, or song, or feast;
But that millions perish, each hour that flies,
Is the mystic sign of my sacrifice.
Ye may plead and pray for the millions born;
They come like dew on the morning grass;
Your vows and vigils I hold in scorn,
The soul stays never, the stages pass;
All life is the play of the power that stirs
In the dance of my wanton worshippers.
And the strong swift river my shrine below
It runs, like man, its unending course
To the boundless sea from eternal snow;
Mine is the Fountain—and mine the Force
That spurs all nature to ceaseless strife;
And my image is Death at the gates of Life.
In many a legend and many a shape,
In the solemn grove and the crowded street,
I am the Slayer, whom none escape;
I am Death trod under a fair girl’s feet;
I govern the tides of the sentient sea
That ebbs and flows to eternity.
And the sum of the thought and the knowledge of man
Is the secret tale that my emblems tell;
Do ye seek God’s purpose, or trace his plan?
Ye may read your doom in my parable:
For the circle of life in its flower and its fall
Is the writing that runs on my temple wall.…
Let my temples fall, they are dark with age,
Let my idols break, they have stood their day;
On their deep hewn stones the primeval sage
Has figured the spells that endure alway;
My presence may vanish from river and grove,
But I rule for ever in Death and Love.
~ Alfred Comyn Lyall,
349:Christians have often been lamentably slow to grasp the profound secularity of the kingdom as it is proclaimed in the Gospels. Because Matthew (though not Mark or Luke) uses the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" - and perhaps because the greatest number of parables of the kingdom do indeed occur in Matthew - we have frequently succumbed to the temptation to place unwarranted importance on the word "heaven." In any case, we have too often given in to the temptation to picture the kingdom of heaven as if it were something that belonged more properly elsewhere than here. Worse yet, we have conceived of that elsewhere almost entirely in "heavenly" rather than in earthly terms. And all of that, mind you, directly in the face of Scripture's insistences to the contrary.
In the Old Testament, for example, the principal difference between the gods of the heathen and the God who, as Yahweh, manifested himself to Israel was that, while the pagan gods occupied themselves chiefly "up there" in the "council of the gods," Yahweh showed his power principally "down here" on the stage of history. The pagan deities may have had their several fiefdoms on earth - pint-size plots of tribal real estate, outside which they had no interest or dominion, and even inside which they behaved mostly like absentee landlords; but their real turf was in the sky, not on earth. Yahweh, however, claimed two distinctions. Even on their heavenly turf, he insisted, it was he and not they who were in charge. And when he came down to earth, he acted as if the whole place was his own backyard. In fact, it was precisely by his overcoming them on utterly earthly ground, in and through his chosen people, that he claimed to have beaten them even on their heavenly home court. What he did on earth was done in heaven, and vice versa, because he alone, as the One Yahweh, was the sole proprietor of both.
In the New Testament, that inseparability of heavenly concerns from earthly ones is, if anything, even more strenuously maintained. The kingdom Jesus proclaims is at hand, planted here, at work in this world. The Word sown is none other than God himself incarnate. By his death and resurrection at Jerusalem in A.D. 29, he reconciles everything, everywhere, to himself - whether they be things on earth or things in
heaven. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
350:Genie
He is love and the present because he has opened our house
to winter's foam and to the sound of summer,
He who purified all that we drink and tea;
He is the charm of passing places,
the incarnate delight of all things that abide.
He is affection and the future,
the strength and love that we,
standing surrounded by anger and weariness,
See passing in the storm-filled sky and in banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and rediscovered measure,
Reason, marvelous and unforeseen,
Eternity: beloved prime mover of the elements, of destinies.
We all know the terror of his yielding, and of ours:
Oh delight of our well-being, brilliance of our faculties,
selfish affection and passion for him, who loves us forever...
And we remember him, and he goes on his way...
And if Adoration departs, then it sounds, his promise sounds:
'Away with these ages and superstitions,
These couplings, these bodies of old!
All our age has submerged.' He will not go away,
will not come down again from some heave.
He will not fulfill the redemption of women's fury
nor the gaiety of men nor the rest of this sin:
For he is and he is loved, and so it is already done.
Oh, his breathing, the turn of his head when he runs:
Terrible speed of perfection in action and form!
Fecundity of spirit and vastness of the universe! His body!
Release so long desired, The splintering of grace before a new violence!
Oh, the sight, the sight of him!
All ancient genuflections, all sorrows are lifted as he passes.
The light of his day! All moving and sonorous
suffering dissolves in more intense music.
In his step there are vaster migrations than the old invasions were.
Oh, He and we! a pride more benevolent than charities lost.
Oh, world! and the shining song of new sorrows.
He has known us all and has loved us.
Let us discover how, this winter night, to hail him from cape to cape,
from the unquiet pole to the château,
from crowded cities to the empty coast,
61
from glance to glance, with our strength and our feelings exhausted,
To see him, and to send him once again away...
And beneath the tides and over high deserts of snow
To follow his image, his breathing, his body, the light of his day.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,
351:The Oleomargarine Man
Once-in the county of Marin,
Where milk is sold to purchase gin
Renowned for butter and renowned
For fourteen ounces to the pound
A bull stood watching every turn
Of Mr. Wilson with a churn,
As that deigning worthy stalked
About him, eying as he walked,
El Toro's sleek and silken hide,
His neck, his flank and all beside;
Thinking with secret joy: 'I'll spread
That mammal on a slice of bread!'
Soon Mr. Wilson's keen concern
To get the creature in his churn
Unhorsed his caution-made him blind
To the fell vigor of bullkind,
Till, filled with valor to the teeth,
He drew his dasher from its sheath
And bravely brandished it; the while
He smiled a dark, portentous smile;
A deep, sepulchral smile; a wide
And open smile, which, at his side,
The churn to copy vainly tried;
A smile so like the dawn of doom
That all the field was palled in gloom,
And all the trees within a mile,
As tribute to that awful smile,
Made haste, with loyalty discreet,
To fling their shadows at his feet.
Then rose his battle-cry: 'I'll spread
That mammal on a slice of bread!'
To such a night the day had turned
That Taurus dimly was discerned.
He wore so meek and grave an air
It seemed as if, engaged in prayer
This thunderbolt incarnate had
No thought of anything that's bad:
533
This concentrated earthquake stood
And gave his mind to being good.
Lightly and low he drew his breath
This magazine of sudden death!
All this the thrifty Wilson's glance
Took in, and, crying, 'Now's my chance!'
Upon the bull he sprang amain
To put him in his churn. Again
Rang out his battle-yell: 'I'll spread
That mammal on a slice of bread!'
Sing, Muse, that battle-royal-sing
The deeds that made the region ring,
The blows, the bellowing, the cries,
The dust that darkened all the skies,
The thunders of the contest, all
Nay, none of these things did befall.
A yell there was-a rush-no more:
El Toro, tranquil as before,
Still stood there basking in the sun,
Nor of his legs had shifted one
Stood there and conjured up his cud
And meekly munched it. Scenes of blood
Had little charm for him. His head
He merely nodded as he said:
'I've spread that butterman upon
A slice of Southern Oregon.'
~ Ambrose Bierce,
352:Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things— the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood. ~ Herman Melville,
353:The Great Improvisation
(Part Three, Scene Two)
. . . Listen to me, God, and you, Nature!
Here is music that is worthy of you, songs that are worthy of you.
I am master!
Master, I stretch out my hands!
I stretch them to the sky, I place my fingers on the stars.
They are my musical glasses, my armonica.
Now swiftly, now slowly
My spirit turns the stars.
Millions on millions of tones resound,
It is I who called them forth, I know them all;
I combine them, I separate them, I reunite them,
I weave them into rainbows, into chords, into strophes,
I scatter them in sounds and in ribbons of fire.
I raised my hands,
I held them high above the ridge of the world,
And the wheels of the armonica suddenly ceased to whirl.
I sing alone, I hear my songs
Long lingering like the breath of the wind,
They blow through all mankind,
They moan like pain,
They roar like the storm.
Tonelessly, the centuries accompany them; each sound resounds and burns,
Is in my ear, is in my eye,
As when the wind blows over the waves,
In its whistlings I hear its flight
And see it in its coat of cloud.
These songs are worthy of God, of Nature!
This is a mighty song, a creator-song.
This song is force and power,
This song is immortality!
I feel immortality, I create immortality,
And you, God, what more could you do?
See how I draw my thoughts out of myself,
I incarnate them,
They scatter across the skies,
16
They whirl, they sing, they shine,
Already far away, I feel them still,
Still feel their charm,
I feel their roundness in my hand,
I sense their movements in my mind:
I love you, my poetic children!
My thoughts! My stars!
My feelings! My storms!
Among you I am like a father in the midst of his family,
All of you are mine .
. . . Not from Eden's tree have I drawn this powerFrom the fruit of the knowledge of good and evilNot from books or tales that are told,
Not from the solution of problems,
Or the practice of magic.
Creator I was born:
I have drawn my powers from the source
From which you drew yours:
You did not search for your powers - you have them;
You do not fear to lose them and neither do I!
Was it you who gave me,
Or did I, like you, have to seize it,
This piercing and powerful eye:
When I raise my eyes toward the track of the clouds,
And hear the birds flying south on almost invisible wings,
Suddenly, only by willing, I hold them as in a net with my eyes;
The flock gives a cry of distress, but, till I release them,
Your winds cannot move them.
If I gaze at a comet with all the strength of my soul,
It cannot stir from the spot while my eyes are upon it
~ Adam Mickiewicz,
354:The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism.

Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics.

In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism.

Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order.

So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.

And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious. ~ Miguel Serrano,
355:Every ritual repetition of the cosmogony is preceded by a symbolic retrogression to Chaos. In order to be created anew, the old world must first be annihilated. The various rites performed in connection with the New Year can be put in two chief categories: (I) those that signify the return to Chaos (e.g., extinguishing fires, expelling 'evil' and sins, reversal of habitual behavior, orgies, return of the dead); (2) those that symbolize the cosmogony (e.g., lighting new fires, departure of the dead, repetition of the acts by which the Gods created the world, solemn prediction of the weather for the ensuing year). In the scenario of initiatory rites, 'death' corresponds to the temporary return to Chaos; hence it is the paradigmatic expression of the end of a mode of being the mode of ignorance and of the child's irresponsibility. Initiatory death provides the clean slate on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new man. We shall later describe the different modalities of birth to a new, spiritual life. But now we must note that this new life is conceived as the true human existence, for it is open to the values of spirit. What is understood by the generic term 'culture,' comprising all the values of spirit, is accessible only to those who have been initiated. Hence participation in spiritual life is made possible by virtue of the religious experiences released during initiation.

All the rites of rebirth or resurrection, and the symbols that they imply, indicate that the novice has attained to another mode of existence, inaccessible to those who have not undergone the initiatory ordeals, who have not tasted death. We must note this characteristic of the archaic mentality: the belief that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated-in the present instance, without the child's dying to childhood. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this obsession with beginnings, which, in sum, is the obsession with the absolute beginning, the cosmogony. For a thing to be well done, it must be done as it was done the first time. But the first time, the thing-this class of objects, this animal, this particular behavior-did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, this animal, this institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing.

Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in relation to what it prepares: birth to a higher mode of being. As we shall see farther on, initiatory death is often symbolized, for example, by darkness, by cosmic night, by the telluric womb, the hut, the belly of a monster. All these images express regression to a preformal state, to a latent mode of being (complementary to the precosmogonic Chaos), rather than total annihilation (in the sense in which, for example, a member of the modern societies conceives death). These images and symbols of ritual death are inextricably connected with germination, with embryology; they already indicate a new life in course of preparation. Obviously, as we shall show later, there are other valuations of initiatory death-for example, joining the company of the dead and the Ancestors. But here again we can discern the same symbolism of the beginning: the beginning of spiritual life, made possible in this case by a meeting with spirits.

For archaic thought, then, man is made-he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. But these masters apply what was revealed to them at the beginning of Time by the Supernatural Beings. They are only the representatives of those Beings; indeed, in many cases they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary to resemble a mythical model. ~ Mircea Eliade,
356:A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
   Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
   My jewelled dreams of you.

I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
   Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
   The moods of infinity.

But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
   Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
   The roots were not deep enough.

He who would bring the heavens here
   Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
   And tread the dolorous way.

Coercing my godhead I have come down
   Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
   Twixt the gates of death and birth.

I have been digging deep and long
   Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
   A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
   To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
   Are my meed since the world began.

For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
   Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
   Enamoured of sorrow and sin.

The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
   And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
   His drama can endure.

All around is darkness and strife;
   For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
   Cast by the Undying Ones.

Man lights his little torches of hope
   That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
   An inn his pilgrimage.

The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
   The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
   Or a demon altar choose.

All that was found must again be sought,
   Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
   Through vistas of fruitless lives.

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
   And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
   And wrought the eternal will.

How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
   "Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
   Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.

"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
   And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
   And bound to life's iron doom?

"This earth is ours, a field of Night
   For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
   Or suffer a god's desires?

"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
   Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
   And the curb of his wide white peace."

But the god is there in my mortal breast
   Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
   For the nameless Immaculate.

A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
   Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
   And knock at the keyless gate."

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
   At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
   On the Dragon's outspread wings.

I left the surface gauds of mind
   And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
   To the nether mysteries.

I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
   And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
   And the inner reason of hell.

Above me the dragon murmurs moan
   And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
   I have walked in the bottomless pit.

On a desperate stair my feet have trod
   Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
   Into the human abyss.

He who I am was with me still;
   All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
   On my vast untroubled brow.

The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
   And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
   And glimmer from shore to shore.

Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
   And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
   The incarnate spirits yearn

Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
   Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
   Clarioning darkness' end.

A little more and the new life's doors
   Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
   In a great world bare and bright.

I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
   For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
   The living truth of you.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534,
357:author class:Sri Aurobindo

A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.

I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.

But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.

He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.

Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.

I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began.

For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
Enamoured of sorrow and sin.

The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
His drama can endure.

All around is darkness and strife;
For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
Cast by the Undying Ones.

Man lights his little torches of hope
That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
An inn his pilgrimage.

The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose.

All that was found must again be sought,
Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
Through vistas of fruitless lives.

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.

How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.

"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
And bound to life's iron doom?

"This earth is ours, a field of Night
For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
Or suffer a god's desires?

"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
And the curb of his wide white peace."

But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.

A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.

I left the surface gauds of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.

I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.

Above me the dragon murmurs moan
And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
I have walked in the bottomless pit.

On a desperate stair my feet have trod
Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
Into the human abyss.

He who I am was with me still;
All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
On my vast untroubled brow.

The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
And glimmer from shore to shore.

Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn

Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness' end.

A little more and the new life's doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.

I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534

~ Sri Aurobindo, class:poem
,
358:The Last Battle Of The Cid
Low he lay upon his dying couch, the knight without a stain,
The unconquered Cid Campeadór, the bright breast-plate of Spain,
The incarnate honour of Castille, of Aragon and Navarre,
Very crown of Spanish chivalry, Rodrigo of Bivar!
Sick he lay, and grieved in spirit, for that Paynim dogs should dare
Camp around his knightly citadel, Valencia the fair!
For that he no more should face them, in his beauteous armour dight,
To whom God and Santiago aye gave victory in the fight.
Faintly rising o'er the ramparts came the murmur of the siege,
And he could but pray for Christendom, his country and his liege;
For his well-belovèd city, granite-girdled, pennon-starred,
And the royal wealth of treasure that its stately portals barred.
“Santiago, at whose altar I did watch mine armour bright,
And was girt with golden spur and brand, a consecrated knight!—
Santiago, by my vow redeemed at Compostela's shrine,
Let the Paynim life-blood only touch these blessed walls of mine!
“Santiago, warrior saintly, who with Don Fernando's host
Stormed and won the gates of Coimbra, guard my fortress on the coast!
Keep the holy leper's blessing, though the snow is on my hair;—
Strike the base-born unbelievers!—save Valencia the fair!”
Lo, a sudden cloud of glory filled his chamber as he prayed!
Lo, San Pedro stood beside him, all in shining robes arrayed!
“For thy love, Rodrigo Diaz, to Cardeña's house,” said he,
“I have offered intercessions, and the Lord hath answered me.
“Thou must die, O well-beloved!—thirty days, and thou must die!
Yet in death shall Santiago grant thee still a victory.
Thou shalt ride forth to the battle—Santiago shall be there—
For the Faith and Don Alfonso and Valencia the fair.”
Silence reigned within the chamber; none stood near the hero's bed;
All that dazzling flood of glory slowly, softly vanishèd.
He could only hear the murmur from the ramparts rise and fall;
He could only see the cross-bars stretching dimly on the wall.
206
In San Pedro's chapel lay the Cid, his eyes with rapture dim,
And proclaimed the wondrous favour that the Lord had granted him.
Then he parted from his vassals, and went humbly to confess;
And the warrior-bishop clothed his soul in its baptismal dress.
'Twas the holy day of Pentecost that saw Ruy Diaz die—
Evermore the spotless mirror of Castillian chivalry!
They, in whom his will was shrinèd, Alvar Fanez and his knights,
Stood to watch the hero vanquished who had won a thousand fights.
DoXimena, the faithful, with her tears bedewed his feet,
And anointed all his body with pure incense, rich and sweet.
Then in silence and in sorrow the twelve days of waiting fled;
And the warders on the ramparts dared not whisper, “He is dead.”
In the midnight, dark and quiet, fell the torches' lurid glare
On the palaces and portals of Valencia the fair;
And a solemn, slow procession, mounted all in royal state,
Like the spectre of an army, passed beneath the city gate.
In the van was borne the ensign, known and dreaded far and wide,
With four hundred noblest knights ranged proudly by its side.
Toward Castille and Cardeña were those haughty faces set,—
And that banner never more did crown Valencia's parapet.
Then came mules, with treasure laden, stepping softly on before,
Compassed round with knights in armour—to the full four hundred more.
Then a band of belted nobles, stern and silent; and amid
Their levelled lances, he of Bivar—the Campeadór—the Cid.
On his milk-white steed, Babieca, whom none else did e'er bestride,
Clad in all his princely trappings, did the lifeless warrior ride;
Girt with helm and spur and blazoned shield, and grasping in his hand
The bright crosslet of Tizona, his thrice-consecrated brand.
Geronymo and Gil Diaz held the slackened bridlerein—
His true bishop and true vassal—as they moved on to the plain;
And Ximena and her maidens, 'mid the torchlight weird and dim,
With six hundred knights in harness, followed slowly after him.
In the solemn hush and darkness, with no joyful clarion-cry,
207
And no clash and clank of weapons, riding all so silently;—
Thus they passed out from the city e'er the summer morning broke,
And were found arrayed for battle when the infidels awoke.
Great and mighty was the Moorish host, by thirty monarchs led,
But a greater was the army with Rodrigo at the head;
For, behold! came Santiago to the bloody battle-plain—
Santiago, with a hundred thousand warriors in his train.
Each in robe of shining whiteness, with a red cross on his breast,—
Each with fiery sword uplifted or with golden lance at rest;
Santiago, saintly leader, on a charger white as snow—
Sent to aid the Cid Campeadór in vanquishing the foe.
All the Paynims looked amazèd on the dreadful beauteous sight,
As the tender light of morning softly crept out from the night;
Then they harnessed them in silence, sternly grasping shield and spear,
And pressed on in serried column, full of wonder, full of fear.
There was one loud shock of battle, then they wildly turned to flee,
And the Cid and Santiago swept their hosts into the sea.
Twenty kings and twenty armies in that bloody fight were slain,
And were left, with upturned faces, stiff and stark upon the plain.
Fair and shining came the daylight, all in liquid summer sheen—
But no more was Santiago, or his white-robed warriors, seen;
Only one small train of nobles, riding on, with stately pace,
To San Pedro de Cardeña and the great Cid's resting-place.
By the altar in the chapel, where the monarch's throne doth stand,
Sat the dead Cid, robed in purple, with his good sword in his hand.
And again the Moorish ensign fluttered proudly in the air,
Lifted high above the ramparts of Valencia the fair.
~ Ada Cambridge,
359:The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break, and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him,
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day the south-wind searches
And finds young pines and budding birches,
But finds not the budding man;
Nature who lost him, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,
Oh, whither tend thy feet?
I had the right, few days ago,
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;
How have I forfeited the right?
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?
I hearken for thy household cheer,
O eloquent child!
Whose voice, an equal messenger,
Conveyed thy meaning mild.
What though the pains and joys
Whereof it spoke were toys
Fitting his age and ken;
Yet fairest dames and bearded men,
Who heard the sweet request
So gentle, wise, and grave,
Bended with joy to his behest,
And let the world's affairs go by,
Awhile to share his cordial game,
Or mend his wicker wagon frame,
Still plotting how their hungry ear
That winsome voice again might hear,
For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene
His early hope, his liberal mien,
Took counsel from his guiding eyes
To make this wisdom earthly wise.
Ah! vainly do these eyes recall
The school-march, each day's festival,
When every morn my bosom glowed
To watch the convoy on the road;
The babe in willow wagon closed,
With rolling eyes and face composed,
With children forward and behind,
Like Cupids studiously inclined,
And he, the Chieftain, paced beside,
The centre of the troop allied,
With sunny face of sweet repose,
To guard the babe from fancied foes,
The little Captain innocent
Took the eye with him as he went,
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played;
A music heard by thee alone
To works as noble led thee on.
Now love and pride, alas, in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood,
The kennel by the corded wood,
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall
Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall,
The ominous hole he dug in the sand,
And childhood's castles built or planned.
His daily haunts I well discern,
The poultry yard, the shed, the barn,
And every inch of garden ground
Paced by the blessed feet around,
From the road-side to the brook;
Whereinto he loved to look.
Step the meek birds where erst they ranged,
The wintry garden lies unchanged,
The brook into the stream runs on,
But the deep-eyed Boy is gone.

On that shaded day,
Dark with more clouds than tempests are,
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath
In bird-like heavings unto death,
Night came, and Nature had not thee,
I said, we are mates in misery.
The morrow dawned with needless glow,
Each snow-bird chirped, each fowl must crow,
Each tramper started, but the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,they were bound and still,
There's not a sparrow or a wren,
There's not a blade of autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend,
And tides of life and increase lend,
And every chick of every bird,
And weed and rock-moss is preferred.
O ostriches' forgetfulness!
O loss of larger in the less!
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host,
That loiters round the crystal coast,
Could stoop to heal that only child,
Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,
And keep the blossom of the earth,
Which all her harvests were not worth?
Not mine, I never called thee mine,
But nature's heir, if I repine,
And, seeing rashly torn and moved,
Not what I made, but what I loved.
Grow early old with grief that then
Must to the wastes of nature go,
'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope
For flattering planets seemed to say,
This child should ills of ages stay,
By wondrous tongue and guided pen
Bring the flown muses back to men.
Perchance, not he, but nature ailed,
The world, and not the infant failed,
It was not ripe yet, to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
Awhile his beauty their beauty tried,
They could not feed him, and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn
To wait an on to be born.
Ill day which made this beauty waste;
Plight broken, this high face defaced!
Some went and came about the dead,
And some in books of solace read,
Some to their friends the tidings say,
Some went to write, some went to pray,
One tarried here, there hurried one,
But their heart abode with none.
Covetous death bereaved us all
To aggrandize one funeral.
The eager Fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying,
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This is slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.

O child of Paradise!
Boy who made dear his father's home
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come;
I am too much bereft;
The world dishonored thou hast left;
O truths and natures costly lie;
O trusted, broken prophecy!
O richest fortune sourly crossed;
Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, Weepest thou?
Worthier cause for passion wild,
If I had not taken the child.
And deemest thou as those who pore
With aged eyes short way before?
Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost?
Taught he not thee, the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin,
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen nature's carnival,
The pure shall see, by their own will,
Which overflowing love shall fill,
'Tis not within the force of Fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight, where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table
As far as the incommunicable;
Taught thee each private sign to raise
Lit by the supersolar blaze.
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of nature's heart,
And though no muse can these impart,
Throb thine with nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.

I came to thee as to a friend,
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder;
That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art;
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With Prophet, Saviour, and head;
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary's Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel's Paragon:
And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest?
Would rushing life forget its laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?
High omens ask diviner guess,
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know, my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind,
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous whirling pool,
When frail Nature can no more,
Then the spirit strikes the hour,
My servant Death with solving rite
Pours finite into infinite.
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward stream too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou uncalled interrogate
Talker! the unreplying fate?
Nor see the Genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom.
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built, to last a season,
Masterpiece of love benign!
Fairer than expansive reason
Whose omen 'tis, and sign.
Wilt thou not ope this heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show,
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthened scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of heart that inly burned;
Saying, what is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye
Up to His style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold
Built He heaven stark and cold,
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass and scented weeds,
Or like a traveller's fleeting tent,
Or bow above the tempest pent,
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness,
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow;
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Threnody
,
360:SPIRIT
'I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there.
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
"Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man
Has said, There is no God."'

FAIRY
               'There is no God!
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;
Let every part depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls
In silent eloquence unfold its store
Of argument; infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;
The exterminable spirit it contains
Is Nature's only God; but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance.
             'The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of his worshippers,
Whose names and attributes and passions change,
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
For desolation's watchword; whether hosts
Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of his power divide
His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
In honor of his name; or, last and worst,
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house!

     'O Spirit! through the sense
By which thy inner nature was apprised
  Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
  And varied reminiscences have waked
     Tablets that never fade;
  All things have been imprinted there,
  The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,
  Even the unshapeliest lineaments
   Of wild and fleeting visions
     Have left a record there
     To testify of earth.

'These are my empire, for to me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep,
And fancy's thin creations to endow
With manner, being and reality;
Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreams
Of human error's dense and purblind faith
I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.
     Ahasuerus, rise!'

     A strange and woe-worn wight
   Arose beside the battlement,
     And stood unmoving there.
His inessential figure cast no shade
     Upon the golden floor;
His port and mien bore mark of many years,
And chronicles of untold ancientness
Were legible within his beamless eye;
   Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;
Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;
The wisdom of old age was mingled there
   With youth's primeval dauntlessness;
     And inexpressible woe,
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

SPIRIT
     'Is there a God?'

AHASUERUS
'Is there a God!ay, an almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice
Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged
To elevated daring, to one deed
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous pans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime
And confidant of the all-knowing one.
    These were Jehovah's words.

'"From an eternity of idleness
I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man;
I placed him in a paradise, and there
Planted the tree of evil, so that he
Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
Wherewith to sate its malice and to turn,
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
All misery to my fame. The race of men,
Chosen to my honor, with impunity
May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
Until with hardened feet their conquering troops
Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
And make my name be dreaded through the land.
Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,even all
Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge
(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God."

             'The murderer's brow
Quivered with horror.

             '"God omnipotent,
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away,
And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made
In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
Mercy becomes the powerfulbe but just!
O God! repent and save!"

             '"One way remains:
I will beget a son and he shall bear
The sins of all the world; he shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
The universal crime; so that the few
On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
As vessels to the honor of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice and save
Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die,
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;
These in a gulf of anguish and of flame
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
Even on their beds of torment where they howl,
My honor and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
Of purity, with radiant genius bright
Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?
Many are called, but few will I elect.
Do thou my bidding, Moses!"

            'Even the murderer's cheek
Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips
Scarce faintly uttered"O almighty one,
I tremble and obey!"

'O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,
Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard
Save by the rabble of his native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,
In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul
At length his mortal frame was led to death.
I stood beside him; on the torturing cross
No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;
And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed
The massacres and miseries which his name
Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,
"Go! go!" in mockery.
A smile of godlike malice reillumined
His fading lineaments. "I go," he cried,
"But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth
Eternally." The dampness of the grave
Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,
And long lay tranced upon the charmd soil.
When I awoke hell burned within my brain
Which staggered on its seat; for all around
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,
And in their various attitudes of death
My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls
Glared ghastily upon me.

              But my soul,
From sight and sense of the polluting woe
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
Resolved to wage unweariable war
With my almighty tyrant and to hurl
Defiance at his impotence to harm
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand,
That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,
Has crushed the earth to misery, and given
Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.
These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn
Of weak, unstable and precarious power,
Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;
So, when they turned but from the massacre
Of unoffending infidels to quench
Their thirst for ruin in the very blood
That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal
Froze every human feeling as the wife
Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,
Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;
And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood
Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,
Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;
Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,
No remnant of the exterminated faith
Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,
With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,
That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.

'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe
The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,
Confirming all unnatural impulses,
To sanctify their desolating deeds;
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun
On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
Of safe assassination, and all crime
Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord,
And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.

'Spirit! no year of my eventful being
Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
Which flows from God's own faith. I 've marked his slaves
With tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguile
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
With murder, feign to stretch the other out
For brotherhood and peace; and that they now
Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds
Are marked with all the narrowness and crime
That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,
Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,
Establishing the imperishable throne
Of truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vain
The unprevailing malice of my foe,
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,
Adds impotent eternities to pain,
Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast
To see the smiles of peace around them play,
To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.

'Thus have I stood,through a wild waste of years
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse
With stubborn and unalterable will,
Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame
Had scathd in the wilderness, to stand
A monument of fadeless ruin there;
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
  As in the sunlight's calm it spreads
  Its worn and withered arms on high
To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'

   The Fairy waved her wand;
   Ahasuerus fled
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,
   Flee from the morning beam;
   The matter of which dreams are made
   Not more endowed with actual life
   Than this phantasmal portraiture
   Of wandering human thought.
  


~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part VII.
,
361:Custer: Book Third
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds),
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
II
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
200
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot,
The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold!' the cry arose and ran
VI
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
201
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring-hate.
IX
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII
202
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
203
XVI
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
204
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
XXIII
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
205
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
206
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
XXX
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI
207
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth,'
Then shook his long locks in the face of death,
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
362: Book V: The Book of Achilles

Meanwhile grey from the Trojan gates Talthybius journeyed
Spurred by the secret thought of the Fates who change not nor falter.
Simois sighed round his wheels and Xanthus roared at his passing,
Troas god like a lion wroth and afraid; to meet him
Whistling the ocean breezes came and Ida regarded.
So with his haste in the wheels the herald oceanward driving
Came through the gold of the morn, oer the trampled green of the pastures
Back to the ships and the roar of the sea and the iron-hooped leaguer.
Wide to the left his circle he wrote where the tents of Achilles
Trooped like a flock of the sea-fowl pensive and still on the margin.
He past the outposts rapidly coursed to the fosse of the Argives.
In with a quavering cry to the encampment over the causeway
Bridging the moat of the ships Talthybius drove in his chariot
Out of the wide plains azure-roofed and the silence of Nature
Passing in to the murmur of men and the thick of the leaguer.
There to a thrall of the Hellene he cast his reins and with labour
Down from the high seat climbed of the war-car framed for the mighty.
Then betwixt tent-doors endless, vistaed streets of the canvas,
Slowly the old man toiled with his eager heart, and to meet him
Sauntering forth from his tent at the sound of the driving car-wheels
Strong Automedon came who was charioteer of Achilles.
Grey Talthybius, whence art thou coming? From Troya the ancient?
Or from a distant tent was thy speed and the King Agamemnon?
What in their armoured assembly counsel the kings of the Argives?
Not from the host but from Troy, Automedon, come I with tidings,
Nor have I mixed with the Greeks in their cohorts ranked by the Ocean,
Nor have I stood in their tents who are kings in sceptred Achaia,
But from Achilles sent to Achilles I bring back the message.
Tell me, then, what does Pelides, whether his strength he reposes
Soothed by the lyre or hearing the chanted deeds of the mighty
Or does he walk as he loves by the shore of the far-sounding waters?
And to the Argive herald grey Automedon answered:
Now from the meal he rests and Briseis lyres to him singing
One of the Ilian chants of old in the tongue of the Trojans.
Early, then, he has eaten, Automedon, early reposes?
Early the meat was broached on the spits, Talthybius, early
High on the sands or under the tents we have eaten and rested.
None knows the hour of the hunt, red, fierce, nor the prey he shall leap on,
All are like straining hounds; for Achilles shares not his counsels,
But on the ships, in the tents the talk has run like Peneus;
These upon Troy to be loosed and the hard-fighting wolf-brood of Priam,
These hope starkly with Argos embraced to have done with the Spartan,
Ending his brilliance in blood or to sport on the sands of the margent
Playing at bowls with the heads of the Cretan and crafty Odysseus.
Welcome were either or both; we shall move in the dances of Ares,
Quicken heart-beats dulled and limbs that are numb with reposing.
War we desire and no longer this ease by the drone of the waters.
So as they spoke, they beheld far-off the tent of Achilles
Splendid and spacious even as the hall of a high-crested chieftain,
Lofty, held by a hundred stakes to the Phrygian meadow.
Hung were its sides with memories bronze and trophies of armour,
Sword and spear and helmet and cuirass of fallen heroes
Slain by the hand of the mighty Achilles warring with Troya.
Teemed in its canvas rooms the plundered riches of Troas,
Craftsmans work and the wood well-carved and the ivory painted,
Work of bronze and work of gold and the dreams of the artist.
And in those tents of his pride, in the dreadful guard of the Hellene,
Noble boys and daughters of high-born Phrygians captive,
Borne from the joyless ruins that now were the sites of their childhood,
Served in the land of their sires the will of the Phthian Achilles.
There on a couch reclined in his beauty mighty and golden,
Loved by the Fates and doomed by them, spear of their will against Troya,
Peleus hero son by the foam-white child of the waters
Dreaming reposed and his death-giving hand hung lax oer the couch-side.
Near him dark-eyed Briseis, the fatal and beautiful captive,
Sang to the Grecian victor chants of the land of her fathers,
Sang the chant of Ilus, the tale of the glories of Troya.
Trojan boys and maidens sat near the singer and listened
Heart-delighted if with some tears; for easy are mortal
Hearts to be bent by Fate and soon we consent to our fortunes.
But in the doorway Automedon stood with the shadowy Argive
And at the ominous coming the voice of the singer faltered,
Faltering hushed like a thought melodious ceasing in heaven.
But from his couch the Peleid sprang and he cried to the herald.
Long hast thou lingered in Ilion, envoy, mute in the chambers
Golden of Priam old, while around thee darkened the counsels
Wavering blindly and fiercely of minds that revolt from compulsion,
Natures at war with the gods and their fortunes. Fain would I fathom
What were the thoughts of Deiphobus locked in that nature of iron
Now that he stands confronting his fate in the town of his fathers.
Peace dwells not in thy aspect. Sowst thou a seed then of ruin
Cast from the inflexible heart and the faltering tongue of Aeneas,
Or with the golden laugh of the tameless bright Alexander?
Grey Talthybius answered, Surely their doom has embraced them
Wrapping her locks round their ears and their eyes, lest they see and escape her,
Kissing their tongue with her fatal lips and dictating its answers.
Dire is the hope of their chiefs and fierce is the will of their commons.
Son of the Aeacids, spurned is thy offer. The pride of thy challenge
Rather we choose; it is nearer to Dardanus, King of the Hellenes.
Neither shall Helen captive be dragged to the feet of her husband,
Nor down the paths of peace revisit her fathers Eurotas.
Death and the fire may prevail on us, never our wills shall surrender
Lowering Priams heights and darkening Ilions splendours;
Not of such sires were we born, but of kings and of gods. Larissan,
Not with her gold Troy purchases safety but with her spear-point.
Stand with thy oath in the war-front, Achilles, call on thy helpers
Armed to descend from the calm of Olympian heights to thy succour
Hedging thy fame from defeat; for we all desire thee in battle,
Mighty to end thee or tame at last by the floods of the Xanthus.
So they reply; they are true to their death, they are constant for ruin.
Humbler answer hope not, O hero, from Penthesilea;
Insolent, warlike, regal and swift as herself is her message.
Sea of renown and of valour that fillest the world with thy rumour,
Speed of the battle incarnate, mortal image of Ares!
Terror and tawny delight like a lion one hunts or is hunted!
Dread of the world and my target, swift-footed glorious hero!
Thus have I imaged thee, son of Peleus, dreaming in countries
Far from thy knowledge, in mountains that never have rung to thy war-cry.
O, I have longed for thee, warrior! Therefore today by thy message
So was I seized with delight that my heart was hurt with its rapture,
Knowing today I shall gaze with my eyes on that which I imaged
Only in air of the mind or met in the paths of my dreaming.
Thus have I praised thee first with my speech; with my spear I would answer.
Yet for thy haughty scorn who deeming of me as some Hellene
Or as a woman weak of these plains fit but for the distaff,
Promisest capture in war and fame as thy slavegirl in Phthia,
Surely I think that death today will reply to that promise,
Now I will give thee my answer and warn thee ere we encounter.
Know me queen of a race that never was conquered in battle!
Know me armed with a spear that never has missed in the combat!
There where my car-wheels run, good fruit gets the husbandman after.
This thou knowest. Ajax has told thee, thy friend, in his dying.
Has not Meriones spirit come in thy dreams then to warn thee?
Didst thou not number the Argives once ere I came to the battle?
Number them now and measure the warrior Penthesilea.
Such am I then whom thy dreams have seen meek-browed in Larissa,
And in the battle behind me thunder the heroes Eoan,
Ranks whose feeblest can match with the vaunted chiefs of the Argives.
Never yet from the shock have they fled; if they turn from the foeman,
Always tis to return like death recircling on mortals.
Yet being such, having such for my armies, this do I promise:
I on the left of the Trojans war with my bright-armed numbers,
Thou on the Argive right come forth, Achilles, and meet me!
If thou canst drive us with rout into Troy, I will own thee for master,
Do thy utmost will and make thee more glorious than gods are
Serving thy couch in Phthia and drawing the jar from thy rivers.
Nay, if thou hast that strength, then hunt me, O hunter, and seize me,
If tis thy hope indeed that the sun can turn back from the Orient,
But if thou canst not, death of myself or thyself thou shalt capture.
Musing heard and was silent awhile the strength of Achilles,
Musing of Fate and the wills of men and the purpose of Heaven,
Then from his thoughts he broke and turned in his soul towards battle.
Well did I know what reply would come winged from the princes of Troya.
Prone are the hearts of heroes to wrath and to God-given blindness
When from their will they are thrust and harried by Fate and disaster:
Fierceness then is the armour of strength against grief and its yieldings.
So have the gods made man for their purpose, cunningly fashioned.
Once had defiance waked from my depths a far-striding fury,
Flaming for justice and vengeance, nor had it, satisfied, rested,
Sunk to its lair, till the insulter died torn or was kneeling for pardon.
Fierce was my heart in my youth and exulted in triumph and slaughter.
Now as I grow in my spirit like to my kin the immortals,
Joy more I find in saving and cherishing than in the carnage.
Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. Ripened, more widely
Opens my heart to the valour of man and the beauty of woman,
Works of the world and delight; the cup of my victory sweetens
Not with the joys of hate, but the human pride of the triumph.
Yet was the battle decreed for the means supreme of the mortal
Placed in a world where all things strive from the worm to the Titan.
So will I seize by the onset what peace from my soul would sequester,
So will I woo with the sword and with love the delight of my foeman,
Troy and Polyxena, beauty of Paris and glory of Priam.
This was the ancient wrestling, this was the spirit of warfare
Fit for the demigods. Soon in the city of gold and of marble,
There where Ilus sat and Tros, where Laomedon triumphed,
Peleus house shall reign, the Hellene sit where the Trojan
Thought himself deathless. Arise, Automedon! Out to the people!
Send forth the cry through the ships and the tents of the Myrmidon nation.
Let not a man be found then lingering when oer the causeway
Thunder my chariot-wheels, nor let any give back in the battle,
Good if he wills from me, till through the conquered gates of the foeman
Storming we herd in their remnants and press into Troy as with evening
Helios rushing sinks to the sea. But thou, Briseis,
Put by thy lyre, O girl; it shall gladden my heart in my triumph
Victor returned from Troy to listen pleased to thy singing,
Bearing a captive bound to my car-wheels Penthesilea,
Bearing my valours reward, Polyxena, daughter of Priam,
Won in despite of her city and brothers and spears of her kindred.
So by force it is best to take ones will and be mighty.
Joyful, Automedon ran through the drowsy camp of the Hellenes
Changing the hum of the tents as he raced into shoutings of battle;
For with the giant din of a nation triumphant arising
Hellas sprang from her irksome ease and mounted her war-car;
Donning her armour bright she rejoiced in the trumpets of battle.
But to the herald grey the Peleid turned and the old man
Shuddered under his gaze and shrank from the voice of the hero:
Thou to the tents of thy Kings, Talthybius, herald of Argos!
Stand in the Argive assembly, voice of the strength of Achilles.
Care not at all though the greatest and fiercest be wroth with thy message.
Deem not thyself, old man, as a body and flesh that is mortal,
Rather as living speech from the iron breast of the Hellene.
Thus shalt thou cry to the vanquished chiefs who fled from a woman,
Thus shalt thou speak my will to the brittle and fugitive legions:
Now Achilles turns towards Troya and fast-flowing Xanthus,
Now he leaps at the iron zone, the impregnable city.
Two were the forms of the Gods that oerhung the sails of Pelides
When with a doubtful word in his soul he came wind-helped from Hellas
Cleaving the Aegean deep towards the pine-crested vision of Ida.
Two are the Fates that stride with the hero counting his exploits.
Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,
Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnight
Treading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft.
Now will I weigh down that double beam of the Olympian balance
Claiming one of the equal Fates that stand robed for the fighter,
For to my last dire wrestle I go with the Archer of heaven,
And ere the morning gleam have awakened the eagles on Ida,
Troy shall lie prone or the earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But for whatever Fate I accept from the ageless Immortals,
Whether cold Hades dim or Indus waits for my coming
Pouring down vast to the sea with the noise of his numberless waters,
I with Zeus am enough. Your mortal aid I desire not,
Rushing to Troy like the eagle of Zeus when he flies towards the thunders,
Winged with might, the bird of the spaces, upbuoying his pinions.
Nor shall my spirit look back for the surge of your Danaan fighters,
Tramp of the Argive multitudes helping my lonely courage,
Neither the transient swell of the cry Achaian behind me
Seek, nor the far-speeding voice of Atrides guiding his legions.
Need has he none for a leader who himself is the soul of his action.
Zeus and his fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Rest, O wearied hosts; my arm shall win for you Troya,
Quelled when the stern Eoans break and Penthesilea
Lies like a flower in the dust at my feet. Yet if Ares desire you,
Come then and meet him once more mid the cry and the trampling! Assemble
Round the accustomed chiefs, round the old victorious wrestlers
Wearied strengths Deiphobus leaves you or sternest Aeneas.
But when my arm and my Fate have vanquished their gods and Apollo,
Brilliant with blood when we stand amid Ilions marble splendours,
Then let none seat deaf flame on the glory of Phrygias marbles
Or with his barbarous rapine shatter the chambers of sweetness
Slaying the work of the gods and the beauty the ages have lived for.
For he shall moan in the night remote from the earth and her greenness,
Spurred like a steed to its goal by my spear dug deep in his bosom;
Fast he shall fleet to the waters of wailing, the pleasureless pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured.
Seized and dishelmed and disgirdled of Apollonian ramparts,
Empty of wide-rolling wheels and the tramp of a turbulent people
Troy with her marble domes shall live for our nations in beauty
Hushed mid the trees and the corn and the pictured halls of the ancients,
Watching her image of dreams in the gliding waves of Scamander,
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Grecians.
So shalt thou warn the arrogant hearts of Achaias chieftains
Lest upon Greece an evil should fall and her princes should perish.
Herald, beware how thou soften my speech in the ears of thy nation
Sparing their pride and their hearts but dooming their lives to the death-stroke.
Even thy time-touched snows shall not shield thy days from my sword-edge.
Wroth the old mans heart, but he feared Achilles and slowly
Over the margin grey on the shore of the far-sounding ocean
Silent paced to the tents of the Greeks and the Argive assembly.
There on the sands while the scream of the tide as it dragged at the pebbles
Strove in vain with their droning roar, awaiting their chieftains
Each in his tribe and his people far down the margin Aegean
Argolis sons and Epirote spears and the isles and the southron,
Locris swarms and Messenes pikes and the strength of the Theban,
Hosts bright-armed, bright-eyed, bright-haired, time-hardened to Ares,
Stretched in harsh and brilliant lines with a glitter of spear-points
Far as the eye could toil. All Europe helmeted, armoured
Swarmed upon Asias coasts disgorged from her ships in their hundreds.
There in the wide-winged tent of the council that peered oer the margin,
High where the grass and the meadow-bloom failed on the sand-rifted sward-edge,
Pouring his argent voice Epeus spoke to the princes,
Rapid in battle and speech; and even as a boy in a courtyard
Tosses his ball in the air and changes his hands for the seizing
So he played with counsel and thought and rejoiced in his swiftness.
But now a nearing Fate he felt and his impulse was silenced.
Stilled were his thoughts by the message that speeds twixt our minds in their shadows
Dumb, unthought, unphrased, to us dark, but the caverns of Nature
Hear its cry when Gods moment changing our fate comes visored
Silently into our lives and the spirit too knows, for it watches.
Quiet he fell and all men turned to the face of the herald.
Mute and alone through the ranks of the seated and silent princes
Old Talthybius paced, nor paused till he stood at the midmost
Fronting that council of Kings and nearest to Locrian Ajax
And where Sthenelus sat and where sat the great Diomedes,
Chiefs of the South, but their love was small for the Kings of the Spartans.
There like one close to a refuge he lifted his high-chanting accents.
High was his voice like the winds when it whistles shrill oer a forest
Sole of all sounds at night, for the kite is at rest and the tiger
Sleeps from the hunt returned in the deepest hush of the jungle.
Hearken, O Kings of the world, to the lonely will of the Phthian!
One is the roar of the lion heard by the jungles hundreds,
One is the voice of the great and the many shall hear it inclining.
Lo, he has shaken his mane for the last great leap upon Troya
And when the eagles scream shall arise in the dawn over Ida,
Troy shall have fallen or earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But by whatever Fate he is claimed that waits for the mortal,
Whether the fast-closed hands above have kept for his morrows
Chill of the joyless shades or earth and her wooings of sunlight
Still shall detain his days with the doubtful meed of our virtues,
He and Zeus shall provide, not mortals. Chaff are mens armies
Threshed by the flails of Fate; tis the soul of the hero that conquers.
Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not on the cry of the legions
Founds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him.
Zeus and his Fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Prudence of men shall curb no more his god-given impulse.
He has no need of thy voice, O Atrides, guiding the legions,
He is the leader, his is the soul of magnificent emprise.
Rest, O ye sons of the Greeks, the Phthian shall conquer for Hellas!
Rest! expose not your hearts to the war-cry of Penthesilea.
Yet if the strength in you thirsts for the war-din, if Ares is hungry,
Meet him stark in the mellay urging Deiphobus coursers,
Guiding Aeneas spear; recover the souls of your fathers.
Bronze must his heart be who looks in the eyes of the implacable war-god!
But when his Fate has conquered their gods and slaughtered their heroes,
And in this marble Ilion forced to the tread of her foemen
Watched by the ancient domes you stand, by the timeless turrets,
Then let no chieftain garbed for the sacrifice lift against Troya,
Counselled of Ate, torch of the burning, hand of the plunder
Groping for gold but finding death in her opulent chambers.
For he shall moan in the night regretting the earth and her greenness,
Spurred by the spear in his arrogant breast like a steed to the gorges:
Fast he shall fleet to the flowerless meadows, the sorrowful pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured,
Slay not the work of the gods and the glory the ages have lived for.
Mute of the voice of her children, void of the roll of her war-cars
Timeless Troy leave solitary dreaming by ancient Scamander
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Phthian.
So Talthybius spoke and anger silenced the Argives.
Mute was the warlike assembly, silent Achaias princes.
Wrath and counsel strove in the hush for the voice of the speakers.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 5 - The Book of Achilles
,
363:Lohengrin
THE holy bell, untouched by human hands,
Clanged suddenly, and tolled with solemn knell.
Between the massive, blazoned temple-doors,
Thrown wide, to let the summer morning in,
Sir Lohengrin, the youngest of the knights,
Had paused to taste the sweetness of the air.
All sounds came up the mountain-side to him,
Softened to music,— noise of laboring men,
The cheerful cock-crow and the low of kine,
Bleating of sheep, and twittering of the birds,
Commingled into murmurous harmonies—
When harsh, and near, and clamorous tolled the bell.
He started, with his hand upon his sword;
His face, an instant since serene and fair,
And simple with the beauty of a boy,
Heroic, flushed, expectant all at once.
The lovely valley stretching out beneath
Was now a painted picture,— nothing more;
All music of the mountain or the vale
Rang meaningless to him who heard the bell.
'I stand upon the threshold, and am called,'
His clear, young voice shrilled gladly through the air,
And backward through the sounding corridors.
'And have ye heard the bell, my brother knights,
Untouched by human hands or winds of heaven?
It called me, yea, it called my very name!'
So, breathing still of morning, Lohengrin
Sprang 'midst the gathering circle of the knights,
Eager, exalted. 'Nay, it called us all:
It rang as it hath often rung before,—
Because the good cause, somewhere on the earth,
Requires a champion,' with a serious smile,
An older gravely answered. 'Where to go?
We know not, and we know not whom to serve.'
Then spake Sir Percivale, their holiest knight,
And father of the young Sir Lohengrin:
'All that to us seems old, familiar, stale,
106
Unto the boy is vision, miracle.
Cross him not, brethren, in his first desire.
I will dare swear the summons rang to him,
Not sternly solemn, as it tolled to us,
But gracious, sweet, and gay as marriage-bells.'
His pious hands above the young man's head
Wandered in blessing, lightly touching it,
As fondly as a mother. 'Lohengrin,
My son, farewell,— God send thee faith and strength.'
' God send me patience and humility,'
Murmured the boyish knight, from contrite heart,
With head downcast for those anointing hands.
Then raising suddenly wide, innocent eyes,—
'Father, my faith is boundless as God's love.'
Complete in glittering silver armor clad,
With silver maiden-shield, blank of device,
Sir Lohengrin rode down the Montsalvatsch,
With Percivale and Tristram, Frimutelle
And Eliduc, to speed him on his quest.
They fared in silence, for the elder knights
Were filled with grave misgivings, solemn thoughts
Of fate and sorrow, and they heard the bell
Tolling incessant; while Sir Lohengrin,
Buoyant with hope, and dreaming like a girl,
With wild blood dancing in his veins, had made
The journey down the mount unconsciously,
Surprised to find that he had reached the vale.
Distinct and bowered in green the mountain loomed,
Topped with the wondrous temple, with its cross
Smitten to splendor by the eastern sun.
Around them lay the valley beautiful,
Imparadised with flowers and light of June;
And through the valley flowed a willowy stream,
Golden and gray, at this delicious hour,
With purity and sunshine. Here the knights,
Irresolute, gave pause — which path to choose?
'God lead me right!' said meek Sir Lohengrin;
And as he spoke afar upon the stream,
He saw a shining swan approaching them.
Full-breasted, with the current it sailed down,
Dazzling in sun and shadow, air and wave,
107
With unseen movement, wings a little spread,
Their downy under-feathers fluttering,
Stirred by its stately progress; in its beak
It held a silver chain, and drew thereby
A dainty carven shallop after it,
Embossed with silver and with ivory.
'Lead ye my charger up the mount again,'
Cried Lohengrin, and leaped unto the ground,
'For I will trust my guidance to the swan.'
' Nay, hold, Sir Lohengrin,' said Eliduc,
' Thou hast not made provision for this quest.'
' God will provide,' the pious knight replied.
Then Percival: 'Be faithful to thy vows;
Bethink thee of thine oath when thou art asked
Thy mission in the temple, or thy race.
Farewell, farewell.' 'Farewell,' cried Lohengrin,
And sprang into the shallop as it passed,
And waved farewells unto his brother knights,
Until they saw the white and silver shine
Of boat and swan and armor less and less,
Till in the willowy distance they were lost.
Skirting the bases of the rolling hills,
He glided on the river hour by hour,
All through the endless summer day. At first
On either side the willows brushed his boat,
Then underneath their sweeping arch he passed,
Into a rich, enchanted wilderness,
Cool, full of mystic shadows and rare lights,
Wherein the very river changed its hue,
Reflecting tender shades of waving green,
And mossy undergrowth of grass and fern.
Here yellow lilies floated 'midst broad leaves,
Upon their reedy stalks, and far below,
Beneath the flags and rushes, coppery bream
Sedately sailed, and flickering perch, and dace
With silvery lustres caught the glancing rays
Of the June sun upon their mottled scales.
'Midst the close sedge the bright-eyed water-mouse
Nibbled its food, while overhead, its kin,
The squirrel, frisked among the trees. The air
Was full of life and sound of restless birds,
108
Darting with gayer tints of red and blue
And speckled plumage 'mid gray willow leaves,
And sober alders, and light-foliaged birch.
Unnumbered insects fluttered o'er the banks,
Some dimpling the smooth river's slippery floor,
Leaping from point to point. Then passed the knight
'Twixt broad fields basking in excess of light,
And girt around by range on range of hills,
Green, umber, purple, waving limitless,
Unto the radiant crystal of the sky.
Through unfamiliar solitudes the swan
Still led him, and he saw no living thing
Save creatures of the wood, no human face,
Nor sign of human dwelling. But he sailed,
Holding high thoughts and vowing valorous vows,
Filled with vast wonder and keen happiness,
At the world's very beauty, and his life
Opened in spacious vistas measureless,
As lovely as the stream that bore him on.
So dazzled was the boyish Lohengrin
By all the vital beauty of the real,
And the yet wilder beauty of his dreams,
That he had lost all sense of passing time,
And woke as from a trance of centuries,
To find himself within the heart of hills,
The river widened to an ample lake,
And the swan faring towards a narrow gorge,
That seemed to lead him to the sunset clouds.
Suffused with color were the extremest heights;
The river rippled in a glassy flood,
Glorying in the glory of the sky.
O what a moment for a man to take
Down with him in his memory to the grave!
Life at that hour appeared as infinite
As expectation, sacred, wonderful,
A vision and a privilege. The stream
Lessened to force its way through rocky walls,
Then swerved and flowed, a purple brook, through woods
Dewy with evening, sunless, odorous.
There Lohengrin, with eyes upon the stream,
Now brighter than the earth, saw, deep and clear,
The delicate splendor of the earliest star.
109
All night, too full of sweet expectancy,
Too reverent of the loveliness, for sleep,
He watched the rise and setting of the stars..
All things were new upon that magic day,
Suggesting nobler possibilities,
For a life passed in wise serenity,
Confided with sublimely simple faith
Unto the guidance of the higher will.
In the still heavens hung the large round moon,
White on the blue-black ripples glittering,
And rolled soft floods of slumberous, misty light
Over dim fields and colorless, huge hills.
But the pure swan still bore its burden on,
The ivory shallop and the silver knight,
Pale-faced in that white lustre, neither made
For any port, but seemed to float at will
Aimlessly in a strange, unpeopled land.
So passed the short fair night, and morning broke
Upon the river where it flowed through flats
Wide, fresh, and vague in gray, uncertain dawn,
With cool air sweet from leagues of dewy grass.
Then 'midst the flush and beauty of the east,
The risen sun made all the river flow,
Smitten with light, in gold and gray again.
Rightly he judged his voyage but begun,
When the swan loitered by low banks set thick
With cresses, and red berries, and sweet herbs,
That he might pluck and taste thereof; for these
Such wondrous vigor in his frame infused,
They seemed enchanted and ambrosial fruits.
Day waxed and waned and vanished many times,
And many suns still found him journeying;
But when the sixth night darkened hill and wold,
He seemed bewitched as by a wizard's spell,
By this slow, constant progress, and deep sleep
Possessed his spirit, and his head drooped low
On the hard pillow of his silver shield.
Unconscious he was borne through silent hours,
Nor wakened by the dawn of a new day,
But in his dreamless sleep he never lost
The sense of moving forward on a stream.
Now fared the swan through tilled and cultured lands,
110
Dappled with sheep and kine on pastures soft,
Sprinkled with trim and pleasant cottages,
With men and women working noiselessly,
As in a picture; nearer then they drew,
And sounds of rural labor, spoken words,
Sir Lohengrin might hear, but still he slept,
Nor saw the shining turrets of a town,
Gardens and castles, domes and cross-topped spires
Fair in the distance, and the flowing stream,
Cleaving its liquid path 'midst many men,
And glittering galleries filled with courtly folk,
Ranged for a tourney-show in open air.
Ah! what a miracle it seemed to these,—
The white bird bearing on the river's breast
That curious, sparkling shallop, and within
The knight in silver armor, with bared head,
And crisp hair blown about his angel face,
Asleep upon his shield! They gazed on him
As on the incarnate spirit of pure faith,
And as the very ministrant of God.
But one great damsel throned beside a king,
With coroneted head and white, wan face,
Flushed suddenly, and clasped her hands in prayer,
And raised large, lucid eyes in thanks to Heaven.
Then, in his dreamless slumber, Lohengrin,
Feeling the steady motion of the boat
Suddenly cease, awoke. Refreshed, alert,
He knew at once that he had reached his port,
And saw that peerless maiden thanking Heaven
For his own advent, and his heart leaped up
Into his throat, and love o'ermastered him.
After the blare of flourished trumpets died,
A herald thus proclaimed the tournament:
'Greetings and glory to the majesty
Of the imperial Henry. By his grace,
This tourney has been granted to the knight,
Frederick of Telramund, who claims the hand
Of Lady Elsie, Duchess of Brabant,
His ward, and stands prepared to prove in arms
His rights against all champions in the lists,
Whom his unwilling mistress may select.
Sir Frederick, Lord of Telramund, is here:
111
What champion will espouse the lady's cause?'
Sir Frederick, huge in stature and in bulk,
In gleaming armor terribly equipped,
Advanced defiant, as the herald ceased.
Then Lohengrin, with spear and shield in hand,
Sprang lightly, from his shallop, in the lists.
His beaver raised disclosed his ardent face,
His whole soul shining from inspired eyes.
With cast-back head, sun-smitten silver mail,
Quivering with spirit, light, and life, he stood,
And flung his gauntlet at Sir Frederick's feet,
Crying with shrill, clear voice that rang again,
'Sir Lohengrin adopts the lady's cause.'
Then these with shock of conflict couched their spears
In deadly combat; but their weapons clanged
Harmless against their mail impregnable,
Or else were nimbly foiled by dexterous shields.
Unequal and unjust it seemed at first,—
The slender boy matched with the warrior huge,
Who bore upon him with the skill and strength
Of a tried conqueror; but the stranger knight
Displayed such agile grace in parrying blows,
Such fiery valor dealing his own strokes,
That men looked on in wonder, and his foe
Was hardly put upon it for his life.
Thrice they gave praise, to breathe, and to prepare
For fiercer battle, and the galleries rang
With plaudits, and the names of both the knights.
And they, with spirits whetted by the strife,
Met for the fourth, last time, and fenced and struck,
And the keen lance of Lohengrin made way,
Between the meshes of Sir Frederick's mail,
Through cuirass and through jerkin, to the flesh,
With pain so sharp and sudden that he fell.
Then Henry threw his warder to the ground,
And cried the stranger knight had won the day;
And all the lesser voices, following his,
Called, ' Lohengrin—Sir Lohengrin hath won!'
He, flushed with victory, standing in the lists,
Deafened with clamor of his very name,
Reëchoed to the heavens, felt himself
Alone and alien, and would fain float back
112
Unto the temple, had he not recalled
The fair, great damsel throned beside the king.
But lo! the swan had vanished, and the boat
He fancied he descried a tiny star,
Glimmering in the shining distances.
'His Majesty would greet Sir Lohengrin;
And Lady Elsie, Duchess of Brabant,
Would thank him for his prowess.' Thus proclaimed
The herald, while the unknown knight was led
To the imperial throne. Then Elsie spake:
'Thou hast redeemed my life from misery;
How may I worthily reward or thank?
Be thou the nearest to our ducal throne,
The highest knight of Limburg and Brabant,
The greatest gentleman,— unless thy rank,
In truth, be suited to thine own deserts,
And thou, a prince, art called to higher aims.'
'Madam, my thanks are rather due to Fate,
For having chosen so poor an instrument
For such a noble end. A knight am I,
The champion of the helpless and oppressed,
Bound by fast vows to own no other name
Than Lohengrin, the Stranger, in this land,
And to depart when asked my race or rank.
Trusting in God I came, and, trusting Him,
I must remain, for all my fate hath changed,
All my desires and hopes, since I am here.'
So ended that great joust, and in the days
Thereafter Elsie and Sir Lohengrin,
United by a circumstance so strange,
Loved and were wedded. A more courteous duke,
A braver chevalier, Brabant ne'er saw.
Such grace breathed from his person and his deeds,
Such simple innocence and faith looked forth
From eyes well-nigh too beautiful for man,
That whom he met, departed as his friend.
But Elsie, bound to him by every bond
Of love and honor and vast gratitude,
Being of lesser faith and confidence,
Tortured herself with envious jealousies,
Misdoubting her own beauty, and her power
113
To win and to retain so great a heart.
Each year Sir Lohengrin proclaimed a joust
In memory of the tourney where he won
His lovely Duchess, and his lance prevailed
Against all lesser knights. When his twain sons,
Loyal and brave and gentle as their sire,
Had grown to stalwart men, and his one girl,
Eyed like himself and as his Duchess fair,
Floramie, grew to gracious maidenhood,
He gave a noble tourney, and o'erthrew
The terrible and potent Duke of Cleves.
'Ha!' sneered the Dame of Cleves, 'this Lohengrin
May be a knight adroit and valorous,
But who knows whence he sprang?' and lightly laughed,
Seeing the hot blood kindle Elsie's cheek.
That night Sir Lohengrin sought rest betimes,
By hours of crowded action quite forespent,
And found the Duchess Elsie on her couch,
Staining the silken broideries with her tears.
'Why dost thou weep?' he questioned tenderly,
Kissing her delicate hands, and parting back
Her heavy yellow hair from brow and face.
'The Duchess Anne of Cleves hath wounded me.'
'Sweet, am not I at hand to comfort thee?'
And he caressed her as an ailing child,
Until she smiled and slept. But the next night
He found her weeping, and he questioned her,
With the same answer, and again she slept;
Then the third night he asked her why she grieved
And she uprising, white, with eager eyes,
Cried, 'Lohengrin, my lord, my only love,
For our sons' sake, who know not whence they spring,
Our daughter who remains a virgin yet,
Let me not hear folk girding at thy race.
I know thy blood is royal, I have faith;
But tell me all, that I may publish it
Unto our dukedom.' Hurt and wondering,
He answered simply, 'I am Lohengrin,
Son to Sir Percivale, and ministrant
Within the holy temple of the Grail.
I would thy faith were greater, this is all.
Now must I bid farewell.' ' O Lohengrin,
114
What have I done?' She clung about his neck,
And moistened all his beard with streaming tears;
But he with one long kiss relaxed her arms
Calmly from his embrace, and stood alone.
' Blame not thy nature now with vain reproofs.
This also is our fate: in all things else.
We have submitted,—let us yield in this,
With no less grace now that God tries our hearts,
Than when He sent us victory and love.'
' Yea, go, — you never loved me,' faltered she;
' I will not blame my nature, but your own.
Through all our wedded years I doubted you;
Your eyes have never brightened meeting mine
As I have seen them in religious zeal,
Or in exalted hours of victory.'
A look of perfect weariness, unmixed
With wrath or grief, o'erspread the knight's pale face;
But with the pity that a god might show
Towards one with ills impossible to him,
He drew anear, caressing her, and sighed:
' Through all our wedded years you doubted me?
Poor child, poor child! and it has come to this.
Thank Heaven, I gave no cause for your mistrust,
Desiring never an ideal more fair
Of womanhood than was my chosen wife.'
She, broken, sobbing, leaned her delicate head
On his great shoulder, and remorseful cried,
' O loyal, honest, simple Lohengrin,
Thy wife has been unworthy: this is why
Thou sayest farewell in accents cold and strange,
With alien eyes that even now behold
Things fairer, better, than her mournful face.'
But he with large allowance answered her:
'If this be truth, it is because I feel
That I belong no more unto myself,
Neither to thee, for God withdraws my soul
Beyond all earthly passions unto Him.
Now that we know our doom, with serious calm,
Beside thee I will sit, till break of day,
Thus holding thy chill hand and tell thee all.
This will resign thee, for I cannot think
How any human soul that hath beheld
115
Life's compensations and its miracles,
Can fail to trust in what is yet to come.'
Then he began from that auroral hour
When he first heard the temple bell, and told
The wonder of the swan that came for him,
His journey down the stream, the tournament,
His strength unwonted, combating the knight
Who towered above him with superior force
Of flesh and sinew,— how he prayed through all,
Imploring God to let the just cause win,
Unconscious of the close-thronged galleries,
Feeling two eyes alone that burned his soul.
She knew the rest. Therewith he kissed her brow
And ended,—' Now the knights will take me back
Into the temple; all who keep their vows,
Are welcomed there again to peace and rest.
There will my years fall from me like a cloak,
And I will stand again at manhood's prime.
Then when all errors of the flesh are purged
From these I loved here, they may follow me,
Unto perpetual worship and to peace.'
She lay quite calm, and smiling heard his voice,
Already grown to her remote and changed,
And when he ceased, arose and gazed in awe
On his transfigured face and kissed his brow,
And understood, accepting all her fate.
Anon he called his children, and to these:
'Farewell, sweet Florance and dear Percivale;
Here is my horn, and here mine ancient sword,—
Guard them with care and win with them repute.
Here, Elsie, is the ring my mother gave,—
Part with it never; and thou, Floramie,
Take thou my love,—I have naught else to give;
Be of strong faith in him thou mean'st to wed.'
So these communed together, till the night
Died from the brightening skies, and in the east
The morning star hung in aerial rose,
And the blue deepened; while moist lawn and hedge
Breathed dewy freshness through the windows oped.
Then on the stream, that nigh the palace flowed,
A stainless swan approached them; in its beak
It held a silver chain, and drew thereby
116
A dainty, carven shallop after it,
Embossed with silver and with ivory.
Followed by waved farewells and streaming eyes,
Sir Lohengrin embarked and floated forth
Unto perpetual worship and to peace.
~ Emma Lazarus,
364:The Watch At Midnight
Dead stars, beneath the midnight's granite cope
and round your dungeon-gulf that blindly grope
and fall not, since no lower than any place
needs when the wing is dash'd and foil'd the face:
is this your shadow on the watcher's thought
imposed, or rather hath his anguish taught
the dumb and suffering dark to send you out,
reptile, the doubles of his lurking doubt,
in coasts of night that well might be supposed
the exiled hall of chaos late-deposed,
to haunt across this hour's desuetude,
immense, that whelms in monumental mood
the broad waste of his spirit, stonily
strewn with the wreck of his eternity?
The plumes of night, unfurl'd
and eyed with fire, are whirl'd
slowly above this watch, funereal:
the vast is wide, and yet
no way lies open; set
no bar, but the flat deep rises, a placid wall.
Some throne thou think'st to win
or pride of thy far kin;
this incomplete and dusty hour to achieve:
know that the hour is one,
eternally begun,
eternally deferr'd, thy grasp a Danaid sieve.
O weary realm, O height
the which exhausted flight
familiar finds, home of its prompting ill!
here, there, or there, or there,
even the same despair;
rest in thy place, O fool, the heart eludes thee still.
Rest — and a new abyss
suddenly yawns, of this
the moment sole, and yet the counterpart:
and thou must house it, thou,
within thy fleshy Now,
thyself the abyss that shrinks, the unbounded hermit-heart:
70
the mightier heart untold
whose paining depths enfold
all loneliness, all height, all vision'd shores;
and the abyss uncrown'd,
blank failure thro' each bound
from the consummate point thy broken hope implores.
The trees that thro' the tuneful morn had made
bride-dusk for beams that pierce the melting shade,
or thro' the opulent afternoon had stood
lordly, absorb'd in hieratic mood, —
now stricken with misgiving of the night
rise black and ominous, as who invite
some fearful coming whose foreblown wind shall bow,
convuls'd and shuddering, each dishevell'd brow:
the garden that had sparkled thro' its sheen
all day, a self-sufficing gem serene,
hiding in emerald depths the vision'd white
of limbs that follow their own clear delight,
exhales towards the inaccessible skies,
commencing, failing, broken, scents or sighs:
O mother, only,
where that thou hidest thee,
crown for the lonely brow,
bosom for the spent wanderer,
or balm for ache:
O mother,
nightly —
undiscoverable —
O heart too vast to find,
whelming our little desire:
we wander and fail —
But on the zenith, mass'd, a glittering throng,
the distant stars dropt a disdainful song:
They said, because their parcel-thought
might nor her shadowy vast embrace,
nor be refurl'd within that nought
which is the hid heart of all place,
they said: She is not anywhere!
have we not sought her and not seen?
71
nor is there found in earth or air
a sign to tell if she hath been!
— O fools and blind, not to have found!
is her desire not as your own?
stirs she not in the arms that round
a hopeless clasp, lone with the lone!
And the tense lips towards her bliss
in secret cells of anguish'd prayer
might know her in the broken kiss
she prompts nor, prompting, fails to share.
We drift from age to age nor waste
our strenuous song's exultant tone,
disdaining or to rest or haste:
because each place is still our throne.
The anguish'd doubt broods over Eden; night
hangs her rent banners thro' the viewless height;
trophies and glories whence a trouble streams
of lamentable valour in old dreams:
out of its blank the watcher's soul is stirr'd
to take unto itself some olden word:
O thou that achest, pulse o' the unwed vast,
now in the distant centre of my brain
dizzily narrow'd, now beyond the last
calm circle widening of the starry plain,
where, on the scatter'd edge of my surmise,
the twilit dreams fail off and rule is spent
vainly on vagrant bands the gulfs invite
to break away to the dark: they, backward sent,
tho' dumb, with dire infection in their eyes,
startle the central seat: — O pulse of night,
passing the hard throb of sun-smitten blood
when the noon-world is fused in fire and blent
with my then unattained hero-mood;
what will with me the imperious instinct
that hounds the gulfs together on that place
vanishing utterly out of mortal trace,
the citadel where I would seem distinct —
if not thou ween'st a vanity, my deep
unlighted still, the which thy refluent sweep
intolerably dilates, a tide that draws
72
with lunatic desire, distraught and fond,
to some dark moon of vastness, hung beyond
our little limits of familiar cause,
as tho' the tense and tortured voids should dash
ruining amorously together, a clash
portentous with some rose of thinnest flame,
secret, exhaled in the annull'd abyss,
that, with this soul, passes in that fell kiss
and to the soft-sprung flush all sanctity
surrenders, centring in the blossom'd Name,
as the dark wings of silence lovingly
hover above the adventurous song that fares
forth to the void and finds no lip that shares
its rapture, just the great wings spreading wide.
O mother thou or sister or my bride,
inevitable, whom this hour in me declares,
were thine of old such rhythmic pangs that bore
my shivering soul, wind-waif upon the shore
that is a wavering twilight, thence astray
beneath the empty plainness of the day?
me thy first want conceived to some dim end,
that my unwelcom'd love might henceward tend
to the dumb home that draws it in thy breast
and the veil'd couch of some divine incest,
where thou didst wait some hour of sharp delight
to wither up in splendour the stark night
and haggard shame that ceremented thy dearth,
with purest diamond-blaze, some overbirth
of the dark fire thy foresight did enmesh
within this hither and thither harried flesh?
Ay, yet obscurely stirs, a monstrous worm
in the rear cavern of my dazzled thought,
a memory that wavers, formless form
of superhuman nuptials, clasp'd and caught
unto the breast that is our loathed tomb:
then, issuing from the violated womb,
tremendous birth of dreadful prodigies
begotten on the apocalyptic skies:
one moment's hope, one thrill alone was given
of pinions beating up the parting heaven;
but straight thereon the spectral mirk was riven
73
by shapes of snaky horror, grisly jaw,
cold fear, and scaly fold, and endless maw.
What terror clutch'd me, even as ecstasy
smote dire across transfigured mystery?
and whose the sin that doom'd thee to disgrace,
to haunt the shapeless dark, a burning face,
eyes that would cling to mine and lips that seek
some baffled kiss, some word they may not speak,
condemn'd to yearn where the worn foam is hoar
and vain against the unshaken nightly shore.
Nightly thy tempting comes, when the dark breeze
scatters my thought among the unquiet trees
and sweeps it, with dead leaves, o'er widow'd lands
and kingdoms conquer'd by no human hands;
nightly thou wouldst exalt me in the deep,
crown'd with the morn that shines beyond our sleep,
nightly renew those nuptials, and re-win
virginity, and shed the doubtful sin:
but I am born into dividual life
and I have ta'en the woman for my wife,
a flowery pasture fenced and soft with streams,
fill'd with slow ease and fresh with eastern beams
of coolest silver on the sliding wave:
such refuge the derisive morning gave,
shaped featly in thy similitude, to attract
earthward the gusty soul thy temptings rack'd.
I sicken with the long unsatisfied
waiting: the sombre gulfs of night divide:
no dawn is shown that keeps its grace nor soon
degraded not to brutal fires of noon;
and heavy on my soul the tyrant lays
his hand, and dazzles with his common blaze
eyes that are fain, when evening brings the dew,
to cool them in the grasses: few, how few
are now the hours that thou mayst claim as thine!
— And shall I not take heart? if no divine
revealment star me with the diadem
hermetic, magian, alchemic gem,
shall I not feel the earth with firmer tread
if abdicating to the viewless dead
74
the invaluable round of nothingness?
Kingdom awaits me, homage, swords, liesse,
battle, broad fame in fable, song: shall I
confide all hope to scanty shapes that fly
in dreams, whom even if they be all I know
not, or fore-runners of the One? I go,
shaking them from my spirit, to rule and mould
in mine own shape the gods that shall be old.
— Nay, not thus lightly, heart the winds have mock'd!
wings of fierce winds that o'er the star-strown height
sweep, and adown the wide world-ways unlock'd
feign for thy trouble a last conclusive fight:
O heart wherethro' these insolent powers stray,
pass and repass, and thou dost foolish hold
aught else inspires them than their cynic play,
the aimless idle sport they plann'd of old
to while the waste hours of their tedious state
and shall pursue when thou art seal'd in dust,
thou latest toy, framed for this silly fate,
to watch their pastime turning, tremble and trust
some deathless gain for thee should issue of it
imblazed in stars on some thy kindred's brow;
O thou, all laughable for thy short wit,
not lightly thus shalt thou put off their slight
and steady thee to build in their despite
secure, some seat, and hold thy being safe,
joying in this at last that thou art thou,
distinct, no longer in wilful tides a waif:
O heart the winds have emptied of all clear
and natural impulse, O wasted brain
and spirit expent with straining from thy sphere,
turn thee to earth, if that be not a cheat,
and, childlike, lay thee in her torpid lap,
there to reflush these flaccid veins with sap
from spilth of sleep, where herbs of drowsy bane
spring in slow shade and death is sprinkled sweet,
with promis'd coolness dark — perchance a lure..
Thou sleep, at least, receive and wrap me sure
in midmost of thy softness, that no flare,
disastrous, from some rending of the veil,
nor dawn from springs beyond thy precincts, rare
75
with revelation, risen, or dewy-pale
exhaled from fields of death, disturb that full
absorption of robustness, and I wake
in placid large content, replete and dull,
fast-grown to earth, whom winds no longer shake.
Thick sleep, with error of the tangled wood,
and vapour from the evening marsh of sense,
and smoothness of the glide of Lethe, would
inaugurate his dullard innocence,
cool'd of his calenture, elaborate brute:
but, all deceitful of his craven hope,
the devious and covert ways of dream
shall lead him out upon no temper'd beam
or thick-grass'd ease, where herbs of soothing shoot
in asphodel, but on the shuddering scope
and the chill touch of endless distances
still thronging on the wingless soul that flees
along the self-pursuing path, to find
the naked night before it and behind.
What night is this, made denser, in his breast
or round him, suddenly or first confest
after its gradual thickening complete?
as tho' the mighty current, bearing fleet
the unresting stars, had here devolved its lees,
stagnant, contempt, on recreant destinies;
as tho' a settling of tremendous pens,
above the desolate dream, had shed immense
addition to the incumbence of despair
downward, across this crypt of stirless air,
from some henceforth infrangible attitude,
upon his breast, that knows no dawn renew'd,
builded enormously, each brazen stage,
with rigor of his hope in hopeless age
mummied, and look that turns his thew to stone:
even hers, that is his strangling sphinx, made known
with, on her breast, his fore-erected tomb,
engraven deep, the letters of his doom.
Terrible, if he will not have me else,
I lurk to seize and strangle, in the cells
where he hath made a dusk round his delight:
76
whether he woo the bride's incarnate bright
and natural rose to shimmer thro' the dense
of odour-motes whereby the brooding sense
flows forth beyond its aching bounds and lies,
full-brimm'd and sombre, around her clear disguise
that saturates the dusk with secret gold;
or the miraculous rose of Heaven to unfold
out from its heart of ruby fire and rain
unceasing drift of petals, and maintain
a tabernacle about the little hour
where his eternity hath phantom power:
and terrible I am moulded in the stone
that clamps for ever, rigid, stark, alone,
round nought but absence of the man he was,
some cell of that cold space against whose laws
he seeks a refuge in his inner deep
of love, and soften'd fire, and quicken'd sleep,
tho' knowing that I, the bride his sin dethroned
and exiled to the wastes that lie disown'd,
can bring that icy want even to the heart
of his most secret bliss, that he shall start
aghast, to see its burning centre fade
and know his hope, the impious, vain, unmade.
Lo now, beneath the watch of knitted boughs
he lies, close-folded to his newer spouse,
creature of morn, that hath ordain'd its fresh
dew and cool glimmer in her crystal flesh
sweetly be mix'd, with quicken'd breath of leaves
and the still charm the spotless dawning weaves.
But I have set my hand upon his soul
and moulded it to my unseen control;
and he hath slept within my shadowy hair
and guards a memory how in my far lair
the forces of tremendous passion stir:
my spectral face shall come between his eyes
and the soft face of her, my name shall rise,
unutter'd, in each thought that goes to her;
and in the quiet waters of her gaze
shall lurk a siren-lure that beckons him
down halls of death and sinful chambers dim:
he shall not know her nor her gentle ways
77
nor rest, content, by her sufficing source,
but, under stress of the veil'd stars, shall force
her simple bloom to perilous delight
adulterate with pain, some nameless night
stain'd with miasm of flesh become a tomb:
then baffled hope, some torch o' the blood to illume
and flush the jewel hid beyond all height,
and sombre rage that burst the holy bourne
of garden-joy, murdering innocence,
and the distraught desire to bring a kiss
unto the fleeting centre of the abyss,
discovering the eternal lack, shall spurn
even that sun-god's garden of pure sense,
not wisely wasted with insensate will.
I am his bride and was and shall be still,
tho' infamous as devil's dam, a fear
to wives that watch the cradle-side and hear
how I devour the newling flesh, and none
shall void my claim upon his latest son,
because the father fell beneath my harm,
not god invented late, nor anxious charm;
tho' with the chemic mind he holds in trust
to show me gem, he celebrate the dust;
dumb earth, in garb of borrow'd beauty dight
by the fond day that curtains him in light;
green pleasaunces, whose smiling would attest
his heart true-born of her untroubled breast
and leaves that beckon on the woodland ways
of the stream-side, where expectation strays
of water-brides, swift blight to them that see,
because the waters are to mirror me:—
of these his hunted thought, seeking retreat
in narrow light, and some sure bosom-heat
to cherish him, and friendly face of kin,
shall mould him fancied ancestors, to win
some certitude that he is in his home
rescued from any doom that bids him roam,
and him the blossom of the day presume,
unheeding that its roots are in my womb
nor song may breathe a magic unconfest
of the anterior silence of my breast:
78
but I shall lurk within the sightless stare
of his impassive idols, housing there
an unknown that allures and makes him fain
to perish for his creatures' fancied gain;
and they shall gaze and see not while his brood
befouls their stony presence with much blood,
their children's, and their captive enemies',
stretch'd out, exenterate, on those callous knees,
and, last, their own, ere some ill-fortuned field
drink all of it, since faith forbids them yield
and brings to learn in full, the fool's just trade,
the gratitude of gods themselves have made.
Last, since a pinch of dust may quench the eyes
that took the azure curve of stainless skies
and still the fiercest heart, he seeks to whelm
infinite yearning with a little realm,
beating together with ungentle hands,
enslaved, the trembling spawn of generous lands,
whom he shall force, a busy swarm, to raise,
last bulwarks of his whelming discontent,
heaven-threatening Babels, iron Ninevehs
square-thought with rigid will, a monument
of stony rage in high defiant stones
eternized with blasphemous intent,
and carve the mountain-cone to hide his bones,
a wonder to blank tribes of shrunken days:
but in that cave before his upstart gates
where elder night endures unshaken, waits
that foe of settled peace, the smiling sphinx,
or foul Echidna's mass'd insidious links,
reminding him that all is vanities;
and when, at last, o'er his nine roods he lies,
stretch'd in the sarcophage whereover grief
makes way before one huge gust of relief,
not the wing-blast of his vain shade shall drive
his wizen'd captives from their dungeon-hive,
and make a solitude about his bed;
nor the chill thought petrific his low head
exudes in rays of darkness, that beyond
this perturb'd sphere congeal, an orb of dread:
I, Lilith, on his tomb immensely throned,
79
with viewless face and viewless vans outspread;
in the wide waste of his unhallow'd work,
calm coils of fear, my serpent-brood shall lurk;
and I shall muse above the little dust
that was the flesh that held my word in trust.
Warrior and prince and poet, thou that fain
over some tract of lapsing years wouldst reign
nor know'st the crown that all thy wants confess
is Lilith's own, the round of nothingness:
warrior, whose witless game is but to feel
thyself authentic thro' the wielded steel
and give thy ghost assurance that thou art,
what aimless endless wars shall make thy heart
arena for the wheeling of their play!
king, that wast mighty in the easy way
of thy desire, what time these thews were young,
how bitter is the wisdom on thy tongue
in the late season, when a westering sun
shows thee thy work, that it is evil done!
O priest and poet, thou that makest God,
woe, when the path of thine illusion, trod
even to the end, reveals thee thy worn face,
eternal hermit of the unhallow'd place!
O man, the coward hope of thy despair
to be confounded with the driven air,
the grass that grows and knows not, the kind herds
that are not wrought with dreams nor any words,
to hollow out some refuge sunk as deep
as that was high thou hadst not sense to keep,
and here thy vexing shade to obliterate
ensuring that it rise not, soon or late,
thou knowing I claim thee whole when that thou art dead.
Go forth: be great, O nothing. I have said.
Thus in her hour of wrath, o'er Adam's head
Lilith, then first reveal'd, a name of dread,
thus in her hour of sorrow: and the rage,
that drove the giant-hunters in that age
since whelm'd beneath the weltering cataclysm,
was the mad flight from her instant abysm
and iron sadness and unsatisfied
80
despair of kings that by Euphrates' side
rein the wing'd steer or grasp the stony mane
of lions dared, if so they might obtain
surcease of lingering unnamed distress.
And if she kept the word forgetfulness
absorb'd, sole ear of sunken sleep, it is
to them that wander thro' Persepolis,
Ekbatan, or where else o'er arrow'd bricks
her snakes make the dry noise of trodden sticks,
known and well-known how that revolt was dash'd
and cruel keeps with lustral silence wash'd.
A name of dread reveal'd: and tho' forgot
in strenuous times to whom the lyre was not,
yet, when her hour awoke, the peoples heard
her coming and the winds no more deferr'd
that sweep along the expected day of wrath,
and rear'd the soaring aisles along her path
to house the massive gloom where she might dwell,
conjectured, hovering, impenetrable,
while o'er the mortal terror crouch'd beneath
the shuddering organ pour'd black wave of death;
when man withheld his hand from life, in fear
to find her, temptress, in the flesh most dear
or on the lowliest ways of simple peace —
vain-weening he that thus their feud might cease:
ay, and the cynic days that thought them blest
to know this earth a plunder-ground confest
and calm within them of the glutted beast
knew her, the emptiness that, when the feast
hath quench'd its lamps, makes, in the invaded hall,
stray'd steps, reverberated from the wall,
sound on the ear like some portentous stride,
companion's fixt, to mock our tread, beside,
nor near and show his apprehended guise
familiar, ease to our intended eyes.
Lilith, a name of dread: yet was her pain
and loving to her chosen ones not vain
hinted, who know what weight of gelid tears
afflicts the widow'd uplands of the spheres,
and whence the enrapturing breaths are sent that bring
a perfume of the secular flowering
81
of the far-bleeding rose of Paradise,
that mortal hearts in censer-fume arise
unto the heart that were an ardent peace,
and whence the sibyl-hints of song, that cease
in pale and thrilling silence, lest they wrong
her beauty, whose love bade live their fleeting throng,
even hers, who is the silence of our thought,
as he that sleeps in hush'd Valvins hath taught.
She is the night: all horror is of her
heap'd, shapeless, on the unclaim'd chaotic marsh
or huddled on the looming sepulchre
where the incult and scanty herb is harsh.
She is the night: all terror is of her
when the distemper'd dark begins to boil
with wavering face of larve and oily blur
of pallor on her suffocating coil.
Or majesty is hers, when marble gloom
supports her, calm, with glittering signs severe
and grandeur of metallic roof of doom,
far in the windows of our broken sphere.
Or she can be all pale, under no moon
or star, with veiling of the glamour cloud,
all pale, as were the fainting secret soon
to be exhaled, bride-robed in clinging shroud.
For she is night, and knows each wooing mood:
and her warm breasts are near in the charm'd air
of summer eve, and lovingly delude
the aching brow that craves their tender care.
The wooing night: all nuptials are of her;
and she the musky golden cloud that hangs
on maiden blood that burns, a boding stir
shot thro' with flashes of alluring pangs,
far off, in creeks that slept unvisited
or moved so smoothly that no ripple creas'd
their mirror'd slip of blue, till that sweet dread
melted the air and soft sighs stole, releas'd;
and she the shame of brides, veiling the white
of bosoms that for sharp fulfilment yearn;
she is the obscure centre of delight
and steals the kiss, the kiss she would return
82
deepen'd with all the abysm that under speech
moves shudderingly, or as that gulf is known
to set the astonied spouses each from each
across the futile sea of sighs, alone.
All mystery, and all love, beyond our ken,
she woos us, mournful till we find her fair:
and gods and stars and songs and souls of men
are the sparse jewels in her scatter'd hair.
This rose, the lips that kiss, and the young breast
they kindle, flush'd throughout its waking snows;
and this, that tremulous on the morning blows,
heart's youth some golden dew of dream hath blest;
auroras, grace and sooth! no tragic west
shed splendid the red anger of your close:
how soon within this wandering barrow grows
the canker'd heap of petals once caress'd!
Old odours of the rose are sickening; night,
hasten above the corpse of old delight,
if in decay the heart cherish some heat,
to breed new spice within the charnel-mould,
that eyes unseal'd with living dew may greet
the morning of the deathless rose of gold.
~ Christopher John Brennan,
365:VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V---,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ---

L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. ~Her own words.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

EPIPSYCHIDION.

Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.

Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The ruggd hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

High, spirit-wingd Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother!
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of thee.

Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a belovd light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And findalas! mine own infirmity.

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less aethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June
Amid the splendour-wingd stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soultoo deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
With the unintermitted blood, which there
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)
Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
And in the soul a wild odour is felt,
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt
Into the bosom of a frozen bud.
See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
With love and life and light and deity,
And motion which may change but cannot die;
An image of some bright Eternity;
A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love
Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;
A Vision like incarnate April, warning,
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy
Into his summer grave.

            Ah, woe is me!
What have I dared? where am I lifted? how
Shall I descend, and perish not? I know
That Love makes all things equal: I have heard
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship, blends itself with God.

Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Belovd! O too soon adored, by me!
For in the fields of Immortality
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A divine presence in a place divine;
Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
A shadow of that substance, from its birth;
But not as now:I love thee; yes, I feel
That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.
Weare we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar;
Such difference without discord, as can make
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake
As trembling leaves in a continuous air?

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.

Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not. In solitudes
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
And from the fountains, and the odours deep
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air;
And from the breezes whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer-birds,
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words
Of antique verse and high romance, -- in form,
Sound, colour -- in whatever checks that Storm
Which with the shattered present chokes the past;
And in that best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.--

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,
Passed, like a God throned on a wingd planet,
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'
Then I'Where?'--the world's echo answered 'where?'
And in that silence, and in my despair,
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
And murmured names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;
But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife,
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,
In which she might have masked herself from me.
There,One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers;
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came,
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
With ruins of unseasonable time.

In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fairbut beauty dies away:
Others were wisebut honeyed words betray:
And One was trueoh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,
Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed
As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
And warms not but illumines. Young and fair
As the descended Spirit of that sphere,
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night
From its own darkness, until all was bright
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,
She led me to a cave in that wild place,
And sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on me;
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:
For at her silver voice came Death and Life,
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,
And through the cavern without wings they flew,
And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.'
I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;
And how my soul was as a lampless sea,
And who was then its Tempest; and when She,
The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
The moving billows of my being fell
Into a death of ice, immovable;
And thenwhat earthquakes made it gape and split,
The white Moon smiling all the while on it,
These words conceal:If not, each word would be
The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!

At length, into the obscure Forest came
The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns
Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,
And from her presence life was radiated
Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;
So that her way was paved, and roofed above
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;
And music from her respiration spread
Like light,all other sounds were penetrated
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
So that the savage winds hung mute around;
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,
When light is changed to love, this glorious One
Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years -- that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,
This world of love, this me; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
The armies of the rainbow-wingd showers;
And, as those married lights, which from the towers
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
And all their many-mingled influence blend,
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway
Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild
Called Hope and Fearupon the heart are piled
Their offerings,of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.

               Lady mine,
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
Will be as of the trees of Paradise.

The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
The hour is come:the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinelsbut true Love never yet
Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.

               Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soulthey seem
Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The wingd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th'Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learnd imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude.
And I have fitted up some chambers there
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high Spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one:or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in Passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The wingd words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,
And say:'We are the masters of thy slave;
What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?"
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,
All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.'
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be blessed:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest,for I am Love's.
Epipsychidion was composed at Pisa, Jan., Feb., 1821, and published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C. & J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the Poetical Works, 1839, both edd.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion
,
366:The Ancient Banner
In boundless mercy, the Redeemer left,
The bosom of his Father, and assumed
A servant's form, though he had reigned a king,
In realms of glory, ere the worlds were made,
Or the creating words, 'Let there be light'
In heaven were uttered. But though veiled in flesh,
His Deity and his Omnipotence,
Were manifest in miracles. Disease
Fled at his bidding, and the buried dead
Rose from the sepulchre, reanimate,
At his command, or, on the passing bier
Sat upright, when he touched it. But he came,
Not for this only, but to introduce
A glorious dispensation, in the place
Of types and shadows of the Jewish code.
Upon the mount, and round Jerusalem,
He taught a purer, and a holier law,—
His everlasting Gospel, which is yet
To fill the earth with gladness; for all climes
Shall feel its influence, and shall own its power.
He came to suffer, as a sacrifice
Acceptable to God. The sins of all
Were laid upon Him, when in agony
He bowed upon the cross. The temple's veil
Was rent asunder, and the mighty rocks,
Trembled, as the incarnate Deity,
By his atoning blood, opened that door,
Through which the soul, can have communion with
Its great Creator; and when purified,
From all defilements, find acceptance too,
Where it can finally partake of all
The joys of His salvation.
But the pure Church he planted,—the pure Church
Which his apostles watered,—and for which,
The blood of countless martyrs freely flowed,
In Roman Amphitheatres,—on racks,—
And in the dungeon's gloom,—this blessed Church,
Which grew in suffering, when it overspread
Surrounding nations, lost its purity.
278
Its truth was hidden, and its light obscured
By gross corruption, and idolatry.
As things of worship, it had images,
And even painted canvas was adored.
It had a head and bishop, but this head
Was not the Saviour, but the Pope of Rome.
Religion was a traffic. Men defiled,
Professed to pardon sin, and even sell,
The joys of heaven for money,—and to raise
Souls out of darkness to eternal light,
For paltry silver lavished upon them.
And thus thick darkness, overspread the Church
As with a mantle.
At length the midnight of apostacy
Passed by, and in the horizon appeared,
Day dawning upon Christendom. The light,
Grew stronger, as the Reformation spread.
For Luther, and Melancthon, could not be
Silenced by papal bulls, nor by decrees
Of excommunication thundered forth
Out of the Vatican. And yet the light,
Of Luther's reformation, never reached
Beyond the morning's dawn. The noontide blaze
Of Truth's unclouded day, he never saw.
Yet after him, its rising sun displayed
More and more light upon the horizon.
Though thus enlightened, the professing Church,
Was far from many of the precious truths
Of the Redeemer's gospel; and as yet,
Owned not his Spirit's government therein.
But now the time approached, when he would pour
A larger measure of his light below;
And as he chose unlearned fishermen
To spread his gospel when first introduced,
So now he passed mere human learning by,
And chose an instrument, comparable
To the small stone the youthful David used,
To smite the champion who defied the Lord.
Apart from human dwellings, in a green
Rich pasturage of England, sat a youth,
Who seemed a shepherd, for around him there
A flock was feeding, and the sportive lambs
279
Gambolled amid the herbage. But his face
Bore evidence of sadness. On his knee
The sacred book lay open, upon which
The youth looked long and earnestly, and then,
Closing the book, gazed upward, in deep thought
This was the instrument by whom the Lord
Designed to spread a clearer light below
And fuller reformation. He appeared,
Like ancient Samuel, to be set apart
For the Lord's service from his very birth.
Even in early childhood, he refrained
From youthful follies, and his mind was turned
To things of highest moment. He was filled
With awful feelings, by the wickedness
He saw around him. As he grew in years,
Horror of sin grew stronger; and his mind
Became so clothed with sadness, and so full
Of soul-felt longings, for the healing streams
Of heavenly consolation, that he left
His earthly kindred, seeking quietude
In solitary places, where he read
The book of inspiration, and in prayer,
Sought heavenly counsel.
In this deep-proving season he was told,
Of priests, whose reputation had spread wide
For sanctity and wisdom; and from these
He sought for consolation,—but in vain.
One of these ministers became enraged,
Because the youth had inadvertently
Misstepped within his garden; and a priest
Of greater reputation, counselled him
To use tobacco, and sing holy psalms!
And the inquirer found a third to be
But as an empty, hollow cask at best.
Finding no help in man, the youthful Fox,
Turned to a higher and a holier source,
For light and knowledge. In his Saviour's school,
He sat a scholar, and was clearly shown
The deep corruption, that had overspread
Professing Christendom. And one by one,
The doctrines of the Gospel, were unveiled,
To the attentive student,—doctrines, which,
280
Though clearly written on the sacred page,
Had long been hidden, by the rubbish man's
Perversions and inventions heaped thereon.
He saw that colleges, could not confer,
A saving knowledge of the way of Truth,
Nor qualify a minister to preach
The everlasting Gospel; but that Christ,
Is the true Teacher, and that he alone
Has power to call, anoint, and qualify,
And send a Gospel minister to preach
Glad tidings of salvation. He was shown,
No outward building, made of wood and stone
Could be a holy place,—and that the Church—
The only true and living Church—must be
A holy people gathered to the Lord,
And to his teaching. He was clearly taught,
The nature of baptism, by which souls
Are purified and fitted for this Church;
That this was not, by being dipped into,
Or sprinkled with clear water, but it was
The one baptism of the Holy Ghost.
He saw the Supper was no outward food,
Made and administered by human hands,—
But the Lord's Table was within the heart;
Where in communion with him, holy bread
Was blessed and broken, and the heavenly wine,
Which cheers the fainting spirit, handed forth.
The Saviour showed him that all outward wars,
Are now forbidden,—that the warfare here,
Is to be waged within. Its weapons too,
Though mighty, even to the pulling down,
Of the strong holds of Satan, are yet all
The Spirit's weapons. He was shown, that oaths
Judicial or profane, are banished from
The Christian dispensation, which commands,
'Swear not at all.' He saw the compliments,—
Hat honour, and lip service of the world,
Sprang from pride's evil root, and were opposed
To the pure spirit of Christ's holy law.
And by His inward Light, was clearly seen
The perfect purity of heart and life
For which that Saviour calls, who never asked,
281
Things unattainable.
These truths and others, being thus revealed,
Fox was prepared and qualified to preach,
The unveiled Gospel, to the sons of men.
Clothed with divine authority, he went
Abroad through Britain, and proclaimed that Light,
Which Christ's illuminating Spirit sheds,
In the dark heart of man. Some heard of this,
Who seemed prepared and waiting, to receive
His Gospel message, and were turned to Him,
Whose Holy Spirit sealed it on their hearts.
And not a few of these, were called upon,
To take the message, and themselves declare
The way of Truth to others. But the Priests,
Carnal professors, and some magistrates,
Heard of the inward light, and purity,
With indignation, and they seized upon,
And thrust the Preacher within prison walls.
Not once alone, but often was he found,
Amid the very dregs of wickedness—
With robbers, and with blood-stained criminals,
Locked up in loathsome jails. And when abroad
Upon his Master's service, he was still
Reviled and buffeted, and spit upon.
But none of these things moved him, for within
He felt that soul-sustaining evidence,
Which bore his spirit high above the waves,
Of bitter persecution.
But now the time approached, for his release
From suffering and from labour. He had spent,
Long years in travel for the cause of Truth,—
Not all in Britain,—for he preached its light,
And power in Holland,—the West Indian isles,
And North America. Far through the wild,
And trackless wilderness, this faithful man,
Carried his Master's message; he lived,
To see Truth's banner fearlessly displayed
Upon both continents. He lived to see,
Pure hearted men and women gathered to
The inward teaching of the Saviour's will,—
Banded together in the covenant,
Of light and life. But his allotted work,
282
Was now accomplished, and his soul prepared,
For an inheritance with saints in light,
And with his loins all girded, he put off
His earthly shackles, triumphing in death,
That the Seed reigned, and Truth was over all!
Where the dark waters of the Delaware,
Roll onward to the ocean, sweeping by,
Primeval forests, where the red man still,
Built his rude wigwam, and the timid deer
Fled for concealment from the Indian's eye,
And the unerring arrow of his bow;
There, in the shadow of these ancient woods,
A sea-worn ship has anchored. On her deck,
Men of grave mien are gathered. One of whom,
Of noble figure, and quick searching eyes,
Surveys the scene, wrapt in the deepest thought.
And this is William Penn. He stands among,
Fellow believers, who have sought a home,
And place of refuge, in this wilderness.
Born of an ancient family, his sire
An English Admiral, the youthful Penn,
Might, with his talents, have soon ranked among
The proudest subjects of the British throne.
He chose the better part—to serve that King
Who is immortal and invisible.
While yet a student within college halls,
He heard Truth's message, and his heart was reached,
And fully owned it, though it came through one
Of that despised and persecuted class,
Called in derision Quakers. Thus convinced,
He left the college worship, to commune
In spirit with his Maker. And for this,
He was expelled from Oxford; and was soon
Maltreated by his father, who, enraged,
Because his only son, had turned away
From brilliant prospects, to pursue the path
Of self-denial, drove him harshly forth
From the paternal roof. But William Penn,
Had still a Father, who supported him,
With strength and courage to perform his will;
And he was called and qualified to preach,
And to bear witness of that blessed Light
283
Which shines within. He suffered in the cause,
His share of trial. He was dragged before
Judges and juries, and was shut within
The walls of prisons.
Looking abroad through England, he was filled
With deep commiseration, for the jails—
The loathsome, filthy jails—were crowded with
His brethren in the Truth. For their relief,
He sought the ear of royalty, and plead
Their cruel sufferings; and their innocence;
And thus became the instrument through which
Some prison doors were opened. But he sought
A place of refuge from oppression's power,
That Friends might worship the Creator there,
Free from imprisonment and penalties.
And such a place soon opened to his view,
Far in the Western Wilderness, beyond
The Atlantic's wave.
And here is William Penn, and here a band
Of weary emigrants, who now behold
The promised land before them; but it is
The Indian's country, and the Indian's home.
Penn had indeed, received a royal grant,
To occupy it; but a grant from one
Who had no rightful ownership therein;
He therefore buys it honestly from those
Whose claims are aboriginal, and just.
With these inhabitants, behold, he stands
Beneath an ancient elm, whose spreading limbs
O'erhang the Delaware. The forest chiefs
Sit in grave silence, while the pipe of peace
Goes round the circle. They have made a league
With faithful Onas—a perpetual league,
And treaty of true friendship, to endure
While the sun shines, and while the waters run.
And here was founded in the wilderness,
A refuge from oppression, where all creeds
Found toleration, and where truth and right
Were the foundation of its government,
And its protection. In that early day,
The infant colony sought no defence
But that of justice and of righteousness;
284
The only guarantees of peace on earth,
Because they ever breathe, good will to men.
His colony thus planted, William Penn
Sought his old field of labour, and again,
Both through the press and vocally, he plead
The right of conscience, and the rights of man;
And frequently, and forcibly he preached
Christ's universal and inshining Light.
His labour was incessant; and the cares,
And the perplexities connected with
His distant province, which he visited
A second time, bore heavily upon
His burdened spirit, which demanded rest;—
That rest was granted. In the midst of all
His labour and his trials, there was drawn
A veil, in mercy, round his active mind,
Which dimmed all outward things; but he still saw
The beauty and the loveliness of Truth,
And found sweet access to the Source of good.
And thus, shut out from the perplexities
And sorrows of the world, he was prepared
To hear the final summons, to put off
His tattered garments, and be clothed upon
With heavenly raiment.
Scotland, thou hadst a noble citizen,
In him of Ury! Born amid thy hills,
Though educated where enticing scenes,
Crowd giddy Paris, he rejected all
The world's allurements, and unlike the youth
Who talked with Jesus, Barclay turned away
From great possessions, and embraced the Truth.
He early dedicated all the powers
Of a well cultivated intellect
To the Redeemer and His holy cause.
He was a herald, to proclaim aloud,
Glad tidings of salvation; and his life
Preached a loud sermon by its purity.
Not only were his lips made eloquent,
By the live coal that touched them, but his pen,
Moved by a force from the same altar, poured
Light, truth, and wisdom. From it issued forth
The great Apology, which yet remains
285
One of the best expositors of Truth
That man has published, since that sacred book
Anciently written. Seekers are still led
By its direction, to that blessed Light,
And inward Teacher, who is Jesus Christ.
But now, this noble servant of the Lord,
Rests from his faithful labour, while his works
Yet follow him.
Early believers in the light of Truth,
Dwelt not at ease in Zion. They endured
Conflicts and trials, and imprisonments.
Even the humble Penington, whose mind
Seemed purged and purified from all the dross
Of human nature—who appeared as meek
And harmless as an infant—was compelled
To dwell in loathsome prisons. But he had,
Though in the midst of wickedness, sublime
And holy visions of the purity,
And the true nature of Christ's living Church.
While Edmundson, the faithful pioneer
Of Truth in Ireland, was compelled to drink
Deeply of suffering for the blessed cause.
Dragged from his home, half naked, by a mob
Who laid that home in ashes, he endured
Heart-rending cruelties. But all of these,
Stars of the morning, felt oppression's hand,
And some endured it to the closing scene.
Burroughs, a noble servant of the Lord,
Whose lips and pen were eloquent for Truth,
Drew his last breath in prison. Parnel, too,
A young and valiant soldier of the Lamb,
Died, a true martyr in a dungeon's gloom.
Howgill and Hubberthorn, both ministers
Of Christ's ordaining, were released from all
Their earthly trials within prison walls.
And beside these, there was a multitude
Of faithful men, and noble women too,
Who past from scenes of conflict, to the joys
Of the Redeemer's kingdom, within jails,
And some in dungeons. But amid it all,
Light spread in Britain, and a living Church
Was greatly multiplied. The tender minds,
286
Even of children, felt the power of Truth,
And showed the fruit and firmness it affords.
When persecution, rioted within
The town of Bristol, and all older Friends
Were locked in prison, little children met,
Within their place of worship, by themselves,
To offer praises, in the very place
From which their parents had been dragged to jail.
But let us turn from Britain, and look down,
Upon an inland sea whose swelling waves
Encircle Malta. There a cloudless sun,
In Eastern beauty, pours its light upon
The Inquisition. All without its walls
Seems calm and peaceful, let us look within.
There, stretched upon the floor, within a close,
Dark, narrow cell, inhaling from a crack
A breath of purer air, two women lie.
But who are these, and wherefore are they here?
These are two ministers of Christ, who left
Their homes in England, faithfully to bear,
The Saviour's message into eastern lands.
And here at Malta they were seized upon
By bigotted intolerance, and shut
Within this fearful engine of the Pope.
Priests and Inquisitor assail them here,
And urge the claims of popery. The rack,
And cruel deaths are threatened; and again
Sweet liberty is offered, as the price
Of their apostacy. All, all in vain!
For years these tender women have been thus,
Victims of cruelty. At times apart,
Confined in gloomy, solitary cells.
But all these efforts to convert them failed:
The Inquisition had not power enough
To shake their faith and confidence in Him,
Whose holy presence was seen anciently
To save his children from devouring flames;
He, from this furnace of affliction, brought
These persecuted women, who came forth
Out of the burning, with no smell of fire
Upon their garments, and again they trod,
Their native land rejoicing.
287
In Hungary, two ministers of Christ,
Were stretched upon the rack. Their tortured limbs
Were almost torn asunder, but no force
Could tear them from their Master, and they came
Out of the furnace, well refined gold.
Nor were these all who suffered for the cause
Of truth and righteousness, in foreign lands.
For at Mequinez and Algiers, some toiled,
And died in slavery. But nothing could
Discourage faithful messengers of Christ
From his required service. They were found
Preaching repentance where the Israelites
Once toiled in Egypt, and the ancient Nile
Still rolls its waters. And the holy light
Of the eternal Gospel was proclaimed,
Where its great Author had first published it—
Where the rich temple of King Solomon,
Stood in its ancient glory. Even there,
The haughty Musselmen, were told of Him,
The one great Prophet, who now speaks within.
For their refusing to participate
In carnal warfare, many early Friends,
Were made to suffer. On a ship of war
Equipped for battle, Richard Sellers bore,
With a meek, Christian spirit, cruelties
The most atrocious, for obeying Him
Who was his heavenly Captain, and by whom,
War is forbidden. Sellers would not touch,
The instruments of carnage, nor could all
The cruelties inflicted, move his soul
From a reliance on that holy Arm,
Which had sustained him in the midst of all
His complicated trials; and he gained
A peaceful, but a greater victory
Than that of battle, for he wearied out
Oppression, by his constancy, and left
A holy savor, with that vessel's crew.
But let us turn from persecuting scenes,
That stain the annals of the older world,
To young America, whose virgin shores
Offer a refuge from oppression's power.
Here lies a harbour in the noble bay
288
Of Massachusetts. Many little isles
Dot its expanding waters, and Nahant
Spreads its long beach and eminence beyond,
A barrier to the ocean. The whole scene,
Looks beautiful, in the clear northern air,
And loveliness of morning. On the heights
That overlook the harbour, there is seen
An infant settlement. Let us approach,
And anchor where the Puritans have sought,
For liberty of conscience. But there seems,
Disquietude in Boston. Men appear
Urged on by stormy passions, and some wear
A look of unrelenting bitterness.
But what is that now rising into view,
Where crowds are gathered on an eminence?
These are the Puritans. They now surround
A common gallows. On its platform, stands
A lovely woman in the simple garb
Worn by the early Quakers. Of the throng,
She only seems unmoved, although her blood
They madly thirst for.
The first professors of Christ's inward Light,
Who brought this message into Boston bay,
Were inoffensive women. They were searched
For signs of witchcraft, and their books were burned.
The captain who had brought them, was compelled
To carry them away. But others came,
Both men and women, zealous for the Truth.
These were received with varied cruelties—
By frequent whippings and imprisonments.
Law after law was made excluding them;
But all in vain, for still these faithful ones
Carried their Master's message undismayed
Among the Puritans, and still they found
Those who received it, and embraced the Truth,
And steadily maintained it, in the midst
Of whipping posts, and pillories, and jails!
A law was then enacted, by which all
The banished Quakers, who were found again
Within the province, were to suffer death.
But these, though ever ready to obey
All just enactments, when laws trespassed on
289
The rights of conscience, and on God's command,
Could never for a moment hesitate,
Which to obey.—And soon there stood upon
A scaffold of New England, faithful friends,
Who, in obeying Christ, offended man!
Of these was Mary Dyer, who exclaimed,
While passing to this instrument of death,
'No eye can witness, and no ear can hear,
No tongue can utter, nor heart understand
The incomes and refreshings from the Lord
Which now I feel.' And in the spirit which
These words a little pictured, Robinson,
Past to the presence of that Holy One
For whom he laboured, and in whom he died.
Then Stevenson, another faithful steward
And servant of the Lamb, was ushered from
Deep scenes of suffering into scenes of joy.
But Mary Dyer, who was all prepared,
To join these martyrs in their heavenward flight,
Was left a little longer upon earth.
But a few fleeting months had rolled away,
Ere this devoted woman felt constrained,
Again to go among the Puritans,
In Massachusetts, and in Boston too.
And here she stands! the second time, upon
A gallows of New England. No reprieve
Arrests her sentence now. But still she feels
The same sweet incomes, and refreshing streams
From the Lord's Holy Spirit. In the midst
Of that excited multitude, she seems
The most resigned and peaceful.—But the deed
Is now accomplished, and the scene is closed!
Among the faithful martyrs of the Lamb,
Gathered forever round His Holy Throne,
She doubtless wears a pure and spotless robe,
And bears the palm of victory.
The blood of Leddra was soon after shed,
Which closed the scene of martyrdom among
The early Quakers in this colony,
But not the scene of suffering. Women were
Dragged through its towns half-naked, tied to carts,
While the lash fell upon their unclothed backs,
290
And bloody streets, showed where they past along.
And such inhuman treatment was bestowed
On the first female minister of Christ,
Who preached the doctrine of his inward Light.
But in New England, there was really found
A refuge from oppression, justice reigned
Upon Rhode Island. In that early day,
The rights of conscience were held sacred there,
And persecution was a thing unknown.
A bright example, as a governor,
Was William Coddington. He loved the law—
The perfect law of righteousness—and strove
To govern by it; and all faithful Friends
Felt him a brother in the blessed Truth.
In North America, the Puritans
Stood not alone in efforts to prevent
The introduction and the spread of light.
The Dutch plantation of New Amsterdam,
Sustained a measure of the evil work.
The savage cruelties inflicted on
The faithful Hodgson, have few parallels
In any age or country; but the Lord
Was with His servant in the midst of all,
And healed his tortured and his mangled frame.
The early Friends were bright and shining stars,
For they reflected the clear holy light
The Sun of Righteousness bestowed on them.
They followed no deceiving, transient glare—
No ignis fatuus of bewildered minds;
They followed Jesus in the holiness
Of His unchanging Gospel. They endured
Stripes and imprisonment and pillories,
Torture and slavery and banishment,
And even death; but they would not forsake
Their Holy Leader, or His blessed cause.
Their patient suffering, and firm steadfastness,
Secured a rich inheritance for those
Who have succeeded them. Do these now feel
That firm devotion to the cause of Truth—That
singleheartedness their fathers felt?
Do they appreciate the price and worth
Of the great legacy and precious trust
291
Held for their children? The great cruelties
Borne by the fathers, have not been entailed
On their descendants, who now dwell at ease.
The world does not revile them. Do not some
Love it the more for this? and do they not
Make more alliance with it, and partake
More and more freely of its tempting baits,
Its fashions and its spirit? but are these
More pure and holy than they were of old,
When in the light of Truth, their fathers saw
That deep corruption overspread the world?
Other professors latterly have learned
To speak of Quakers with less bitterness
Than when the name reproachfully was cast
In ridicule upon them. Has not this
Drawn watchmen from the citadel of Truth?
Has it not opened doors that had been closed,
And should have been forever? And by these,
Has not an enemy been stealing in,
To spoil the goods of many; to assail,
And strive in secrecy to gather strength,
To overcome the citadel at last?
Is it not thought illiberal to refuse
Alliances with those who now profess
Respect and friendship? Must the Quaker then
Bow in the house of Rimmon, saying, Lord
Pardon in this thy servant? Do not some
Fail to resist encroachments, when they come
Clothed in enticing words, and wear the guise
Of charity and kindness, and are veiled,
Or sweetened to the taste, by courtesy?
But is a snare less certain, when concealed
By some enticing bait? or is a ball
Less sure and fatal, when it flies unheard,
Or, when the hand that sends it is unseen,
Or offers friendship? Did not Joab say,
'Art thou in health my brother?' and appeared
To kiss Amasa, while he thrust his sword
Into his life-blood? And when Jonas fled
From the Lord's service, and the stormy waves
Threatened the ship that bore him, was the cause
Not found within it? Was there not a calm
292
When he, whose disobedience to the Lord
Had raised the tempest, was no longer there?
Truth has a standard openly displayed,
Untorn—unsullied. Man indeed may change,
And may forsake it; but the Standard still
Remains immutable. May all who love
This Holy Banner, rally to it now!
May all whose dwellings are upon the sand,
Seek for a building on that living Rock,
Which stands forever;—for a storm has come—
A storm that tries foundations! Even now,
The flooding rains are falling, and the winds
Rapidly rising to a tempest, beat
Upon all dwellings. They alone can stand
Which have the Rock beneath them, and above
The Omnipresent and Omnipotent
Creator and Defender of His Church!
~ Anonymous Americas,
367:

Book II: The Book of the Statesman



Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe
Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball
Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid.
Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals.
All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens.
Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens,
Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures,
Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last time
Yearns to the beauty desired that again shall not wake to his kisses,
So over Ilion doomed leaned the yearning immense of the sunrise.
She like a wordless marble memory dreaming for ever
Lifted the gaze of her perishable immortality sunwards.
All her human past aspired in the clearness eternal,
Temples of Phryx and Dardanus touched with the gold of the morning,
Columns triumphant of Ilus, domes of their greatness enamoured,
Stones that intended to live; and her citadel climbed up to heaven
White like the soul of the Titan Laomedon claiming his kingdoms,
Watched with alarm by the gods as he came. Her bosom maternal
Thrilled to the steps of her sons and a murmur began in her high-roads.
Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,
Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats.
Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. The seller opened his shop and the craftsman
Bent oer his instruments handling the work he never would finish,
Busy as if their lives were for ever, today in its evening
Sure of tomorrow. The hammers clanged and the voice of the markets
Waking desired its daily rumour. Nor only the craftsman,
Only the hopes of the earth, but the hearts of her votaries kneeling
Came to her marble shrines and upraised to our helpers eternal
Missioned the prayer and the hymn or silent, subtly adoring
Ventured upwards in incense. Loud too the clash of the cymbals
Filled all the temples of Troy with the cry of our souls to the azure.
Prayers breathed in vain and a cry that fell back with Fate for its answer!
Children laughed in her doorways; joyous they played, by their mothers
Smiled on still, but their tender bodies unknowing awaited
Grecian spearpoints sharpened by Fate for their unripe bosoms,
Tasks of the slave in Greece. Like bees round their honey-filled dwellings
Murmuring swarmed to the well-heads the large-eyed daughters of Troya,
Deep-bosomed, limbed like the gods,glad faces of old that were sentient
Rapturous flowers of the soul, bright bodies that lived under darkness
Nobly massed of their locks like day under night made resplendent,
Daughters divine of the earth in the ages when heaven was our father.
They round Troys well-heads flowerlike satisfied morn with their beauty
Or in the river baring their knees to the embrace of the coolness
Dipped their white feet in the clutch of his streams, in the haste of Scamander,
Lingering this last time with laughter and talk of the day and the morrow
Leaned to the hurrying flood. All his swiftnesses raced down to meet them,
Crowding his channel with dancing billows and turbulent murmurs.
Xanthus primaeval met these waves of our life in its passing
Even as of old he had played with Troys ancient fair generations
Mingling his deathless voice with the laughter and joy of their ages,
Laughter of dawns that are dead and a joy that the earth has rejected.
Still his whispering trees remembered their bygone voices.
Hast thou forgotten, O river of Troy? Still, still we can hear them
Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.
Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes.
Over the stone-hewn steps for their limpid orient waters
Joyous they leaned and they knew not yet of the wells of Mycenae,
Drew not yet from Eurotas the jar for an alien master,
Mixed not Peneus yet with their tears. From the clasp of the current
Now in their groups they arose and dispersed through the streets and the byways,
Turned from the freedom of earth to the works and the joy of the hearthside,
Lightly they rose and returned through the lanes of the wind-haunted city
Swaying with rhythmical steps while the anklets jangled and murmured.
Silent temples saw them passing; you too, O houses
Built with such hopes by mortal man for his transient lodging;
Fragrant the gardens strewed on dark tresses their white-smiling jasmines
Dropped like a silent boon of purity soft from the branches:
Flowers by the wayside were budding, cries flew winged round the tree-tops.
Bright was the glory of life in Ilion city of Priam.
Thrice to the city the doom-blast published its solemn alarum;
Blast of the trumpets that call to assembly clamoured through Troya
Thrice and were still. From garden and highway, from palace and temple
Turned like a steed to the trumpet, rejoicing in war and ambition,
Gathered alert to the call the democracy hated of heaven.
First in their ranks upbearing their age as Atlas his heavens,
Eagle-crested, with hoary hair like the snow upon Ida,
Ilions senators paced, Antenor and wide-browed Anchises,
Athamas famous for ships and the war of the waters, Tryas
Still whose name was remembered by Oxus the orient river,
Astyoches and Ucalegon, dateless Pallachus, Aetor,
Aspetus who of the secrets divine knew all and was silent,
Ascanus, Iliones, Alcesiphron, Orus, Aretes.
Next from the citadel came with the voice of the heralds before him
Priam and Priams sons, Aeneas leonine striding,
Followed by the heart of a nation adoring her Penthesilea.
All that was noble in Troy attended the regal procession
Marching in front and behind and the tramp of their feet was a rhythm
Tuned to the arrogant fortunes of Ilion ruled by incarnate
Demigods, Ilus and Phryx and Dardanus, Tros of the conquests,
Tros and far-ruling Laomedon who to his souls strong labour
Drew down the sons of the skies and was served by the ageless immortals.
Into the agora vast and aspirant besieged by its columns
Bathed and anointed they came like gods in their beauty and grandeur.
Last like the roar of the winds came trampling the surge of the people.
Clamorous led by a force obscure to its ultimate fatal
Session of wrath the violent mighty democracy hastened;
Thousands of ardent lives with the heart yet unslain in their bosoms
Lifted to heaven the voice of man and his far-spreading rumour.
Singing the young men with banners marched in their joyous processions,
Trod in martial measure or dancing with lyrical paces
Chanted the glory of Troy and the wonderful deeds of their fathers.
Into the columned assembly where Ilus had gathered his people,
Thousands on thousands the tramp and the murmur poured; in their armoured
Glittering tribes they were ranked, an untameable high-hearted nation
Waiting the voice of its chiefs. Some gazed on the greatness of Priam
Ancient, remote from their days, the last of the gods who were passing,
Left like a soul uncompanioned in worlds where his strength shall not conquer:
Sole like a column gigantic alone on a desolate hill-side
Older than mortals he seemed and mightier. Many in anger
Aimed their hostile looks where calm though by heaven abandoned,
Left to his soul and his lucid mind and its thoughts unavailing,
Leading the age-chilled few whom the might of their hearts had not blinded,
Famous Antenor was seated, the fallen unpopular statesman,
Wisest of speakers in Troy but rejected, stoned and dishonoured.
Silent, aloof from the people he sat, a heart full of ruins.
Low was the rumour that swelled like the hum of the bees in a meadow
When with the thirst of the honey they swarm on the thyme and the linden,
Hundreds humming and flitting till all that place is a murmur.
Then from his seat like a tower arising Priam the monarch
Slowly erect in his vast tranquillity silenced the people:
Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten,
Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assembly.
So Olympus rises alone with his snows into heaven.
Crowned were his heights by the locks that swept like the mass of the snow-swathe
Clothing his giant shoulders; his eyes of deep meditation,
Eyes that beheld now the end and accepted it like the beginning
Gazed on the throng of the people as on a pomp that is painted:
Slowly he spoke like one who is far from the scenes where he sojourns.
Leader of Ilion, hero Deiphobus, thou who hast summoned
Troy in her people, arise; say wherefore thou callest us. Evil
Speak thou or good, thou canst speak that only: Necessity fashions
All that the unseen eye has beheld. Speak then to the Trojans;
Say on this dawn of her making what issue of death or of triumph
Fate in her suddenness puts to the unseeing, what summons to perish
Send to this nation men who revolt and gods who are hostile.
Rising Deiphobus spoke, in stature less than his father,
Less in his build, yet the mightiest man and tallest whom coursers
Bore or his feet to the fight since Ajax fell by the Xanthus.
People of Ilion, long have you fought with the gods and the Argives
Slaying and slain, but the years persist and the struggle is endless.
Fainting your helpers cease from the battle, the nations forsake you.
Asia weary of strenuous greatness, ease-enamoured
Suffers the foot of the Greek to tread on the beaches of Troas.
Yet have we striven for Troy and for Asia, men who desert us.
Not for ourselves alone have we fought, for our life of a moment!
Once if the Greeks were triumphant, once if their nations were marshalled
Under some far-seeing chief, Odysseus, Peleus, Achilles,
Not on the banks of Scamander and skirts of the azure Aegean
Fainting would cease the audacious emprise, the Titanic endeavour;
Tigris would flee from their tread and Indus be drunk by their coursers.
Now in these days when each sun goes marvelling down that Troy stands yet
Suffering, smiting, alive, though doomed to all eyes that behold her,
Flinging back Death from her walls and bronze to the shock and the clamour,
Driven by a thought that has risen in the dawn from the tents on the beaches
Grey Talthybius chariot waits in the Ilian portals,
Voice of the Hellene demigod challenges timeless Troya.
Thus has he said to us: Know you not Doom when she walks in your heavens?
Feelst thou not then thy set, O sun who illuminedst Nature?
Stripped of helpers you stand alone against Doom and Achilles,
Left by the earth that served you, by heaven that helped you rejected:
Death insists at your gates and the flame and the sword are impatient.
None can escape the wheel of the gods and its vast revolutions!
Fate demands the joy and pride of the earth for the Argive,
Asias wealth for the lust of the young barbarian nations.
City divine, whose fame overroofed like heaven the nations,
Sink eclipsed in the circle vast of my radiance; Troya,
Joined to my northern realms deliver the East to the Hellene;
Ilion, to Hellas be yoked; wide Asia, fringe thou Peneus.
Lay down golden Helen, a sacrifice lovely and priceless
Cast by your weakness and fall on immense Necessitys altar;
Yield to my longing Polyxena, Hecubas deep-bosomed daughter,
Her whom my heart desires. She shall leave with you peace and her healing
Joy of mornings secure and death repulsed from your hearthsides.
Yield these and live, else I leap on you, Fate in front, Hades behind me.
Bound to the gods by an oath I return not again from the battle
Till from high Ida my shadow extends to the Mede and Euphrates.
Let not your victories deceive you, steps that defeat has imagined;
Hear not the voice of your heroes; their fame is a trumpet in Hades:
Only they conquer while yet my horses champ free in their stables.
Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;
Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted.
High rings the Hellene challenge, earth waits for the Ilian answer.
Always mans Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;
Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then tis graven, tis granite.
Speak! by what gesture high shall the stern gods recognise Troya?
Sons of the ancients, race of the gods, inviolate city,
Firmer my spear shall I grasp or cast from my hand and for ever?
Search in your hearts if your fathers still dwell in them, children of Teucer.
So Deiphobus spoke and the nation heard him in silence,
Awed by the shadow vast of doom, indignant with Fortune.
Calm from his seat Antenor arose as a wrestler arises,
Tamer of beasts in the cage of the lions, eyeing the monsters
Brilliant, tawny of mane, and he knows if his courage waver,
Falter his eye or his nerve be surprised by the gods that are hostile,
Death will leap on him there in the crowded helpless arena.
Fearless Antenor arose, and a murmur swelled in the meeting
Cruel and threatening, hoarse like the voice of the sea upon boulders;
Hisses thrilled through the roar and one man cried to another,
Lo he will speak of peace who has swallowed the gold of Achaia!
Surely the people of Troy are eunuchs who suffer Antenor
Rising unharmed in the agora. Are there not stones in the city?
Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.
Calm like a god or a summit Antenor stood in the uproar.
But as he gazed on his soul came memory dimming the vision;
For he beheld his past and the agora crowded and cheering,
Passionate, full of delight while Antenor spoke to the people,
Troy that he loved and his fatherl and proud of her eloquent statesman.
Tears to his eyes came thick and he gripped at the staff he was holding.
Mounting his eyes met fully the tumult, mournful and thrilling,
Conquering mens hearts with a note of doom in its sorrowful sweetness.
People of Ilion, blood of my blood, O race of Antenor,
Once will I speak though you slay me; for who would shrink from destruction
Knowing that soon of his city and nation, his house and his dear ones
All that remains will be a couch of trampled ashes? Athene,
Slain today may I join the victorious souls of our fathers,
Not for the anguish be kept and the irremediable weeping.
Loud will I speak the word that the gods have breathed in my spirit,
Strive this last time to save the death-destined. Who are these clamour
Hear him not, gold of the Greeks bought his words and his throat is accursd?
Troy whom my counsels made great, hast thou heard this roar of their frenzy
Tearing thy ancient bosom? Is it thy voice, heaven-abandoned, my mother?
O my country, O my creatress, earth of my longings!
Earth where our fathers lie in their sacred ashes undying,
Memoried temples shelter the shrines of our gods and the altars
Pure where we worshipped, the beautiful children smile on us passing,
Women divine and the men of our nation! O land where our childhood
Played at a mothers feet mid the trees and the hills of our country,
Hoping our manhood toiled and our youth had its seekings for godhead,
Thou for our age keepst repose mid the love and the honour of kinsmen,
Silent our relics shall lie with the city guarding our ashes!
Earth who hast fostered our parents, earth who hast given us our offspring,
Soil that created our race where fed from the bosom of Nature
Happy our children shall dwell in the storied homes of their fathers,
Souls that our souls have stamped, sweet forms of ourselves when we perish!
Once even then have they seen thee in their hearts, or dreamed of thee ever
Who from thy spirit revolt and only thy name make an idol
Hating thy faithful sons and the cult of thy ancient ideal!
Wake, O my mother divine, remember thy gods and thy wisdom,
Silence the tongues that degrade thee, prophets profane of thy godhead.
Madmen, to think that a man who has offered his life for his country,
Served her with words and deeds and adored with victories and triumphs
Ever could think of enslaving her breast to the heel of a foeman!
Surely Antenors halls are empty, he begs from the stranger
Leading his sons and his childrens sons by the hand in the market
Showing his rags since his need is so bitter of gold from the Argives!
You who demand a reply when Laocoon lessens Antenor,
Hush then your feeble roar and your ear to the past and the distance
Turn. You fields that are famous for ever, reply for me calling,
Fields of the mighty mown by my swords edge, Chersonese conquered,
Thrace and her snows where we fought on the frozen streams and were victors
Then when they were unborn who are now your delight and your leaders.
Answer return, you columns of Ilus, here where my counsels
Made Troy mightier guiding her safe through the shocks of her foemen.
Gold! I have heaped it up high, I am rich with the spoils of your haters.
It was your fathers dead who gave me that wealth as my guerdon,
Now my reproach, your fathers who saw not the Greeks round their ramparts:
They were not cooped by an upstart race in the walls of Apollo,
Saw not Hector slain and Troilus dragged by his coursers.
Far over wrathful Jaxartes they rode; the shaken Achaian
Prostrate adored your strength who now shouts at your portals and conquers
Then when Antenor guided Troy, this old man, this traitor,
Not Laocoon, nay, not even Paris nor Hector.
But I have changed, I have grown a niggard of blood and of treasure,
Selfish, chilled as old men seem to the young and the headstrong,
Counselling safety and ease, not the ardour of noble decisions.
Come to my house and behold, my house that was filled once with voices.
Sons whom the high gods envied me crowded the halls that are silent.
Where are they now? They are dead, their voices are silent in Hades,
Fallen slaying the foe in a war between sin and the Furies.
Silent they went to the battle to die unmourned for their country,
Die as they knew in vain. Do I keep now the last ones remaining,
Sparing their blood that my house may endure? Is there any in Troya
Speeds to the front of the mellay outstripping the sons of Antenor?
Let him arise and speak and proclaim it and bid me be silent.
Heavy is this war that you love on my heart and I hold you as madmen
Doomed by the gods, abandoned by Pallas, by Hera afflicted.
Who would not hate to behold his work undone by the foolish?
Who would not weep if he saw Laocoon ruining Troya,
Paris doomed in his beauty, Aeneas slain by his valour?
Still you need to be taught that the high gods see and remember,
Dream that they care not if justice be done on the earth or oppression!
Happy to live, aspire while you violate man and the immortals!
Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none.
None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate.
All have been thrust from their heights, say the fools; we shall live and for ever.
We are the people at last, the children, the favourites; all things
Only to us are permitted. They too descend to the silence,
Death receives their hopes and the void their stirrings of action.
Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals.
I have conversed with the great who have gone, I have fought in their war-cars;
Tros I have seen, Laomedons hand has dwelt on my temples.
Now I behold Laocoon, now our greatest is Paris.
First when Phryx by the Hellespont reared to the cry of the ocean
Hewing her stones as vast as his thoughts his high-seated fortress,
Planned he a lair for a beast of prey, for a pantheress dire-souled
Crouched in the hills for her bound or self-gathered against the avenger?
Dardanus shepherded Asias coasts and her sapphire-girt islands.
Mild was his rule like the blessing of rain upon fields in the summer.
Gladly the harried coasts reposed confessing the Phrygian,
Caria, Lycias kings and the Paphlagon, strength of the Mysian;
Minos Crete recovered the sceptre of old Rhadamanthus.
Ilus and Tros had strength in the fight like a far-striding Titans:
Troy triumphant following the urge of their souls to the vastness,
Helmeted, crowned like a queen of the gods with the fates for her coursers
Rode through the driving sleet of the spears to Indus and Oxus.
Then twice over she conquered the vanquished, with peace as in battle;
There where discord had clashed, sweet Peace sat girded with plenty,
There where tyranny counted her blows, came the hands of a father.
Neither had Teucer a soul like your chiefs who refounded this nation.
Such was the antique and noble tradition of Troy in her founders,
Builders of power that endured; but it perishes lost to their offspring,
Trampled, scorned by an arrogant age, by a violent nation.
Strong Anchises trod it down trampling victorious onwards
Stern as his sword and hard as the silent bronze of his armour.
More than another I praise the man who is mighty and steadfast,
Even as Ida the mountain I praise, a refuge for lions;
But in the council I laud him not, he who a god for his kindred,
Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,
Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire
Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle
Careless more of their wills than the coursers yoked to his war-car.
Therefore they fought while they feared, but gladly abandon us falling.
Yet had they gathered to Teucer in the evil days of our nation.
Where are they now? Do they gather then to the dreaded Anchises?
Or has Aeneas helped with his counsels hateful to wisdom?
Hateful is this, abhorred of the gods, imagined by Ate
When against subjects murmuring discord and faction appointed
Scatter unblest gold, the heart of a people is poisoned,
Virtue pursued and baseness triumphs tongued like a harlot,
Brother against brother arrayed that the rule may endure of a stranger.
Yes, but it lasts! For its hour. The high gods watch in their silence,
Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater.
Hast thou then lasted, O Troy? Lo, the Greeks at thy gates and Achilles.
Dream, when Virtue departs, that Wisdom will linger, her sister!
Wisdom has turned from your hearts; shall Fortune dwell with the foolish?
Fatal oracles came to you great-tongued, vaunting of empires
Stretched from the risen sun to his rest in the occident waters,
Dreams of a city throned on the hills with her foot on the nations.
Meanwhile the sword was prepared for our breasts and the flame for our housetops.
Wake, awake, O my people! the fire-brand mounts up your doorsteps;
Gods who deceived to slay, press swords on your childrens bosoms.
See, O ye blind, ere death in pale countries open your eyelids!
Hear, O ye deaf, the sounds in your ears and the voices of evening!
Young men who vaunt in your strength! when the voice of this aged Antenor
Governed your fathers youth, all the Orient was joined to our banners.
Macedon leaned to the East and her princes yearned to the victor,
Scythians worshipped in Ilions shrines, the Phoenician trader
Bartered her tokens, Babylons wise men paused at our thresholds;
Fair-haired sons of the snows came rapt towards golden Troya
Drawn by the song and the glory. Strymon sang hymns unto Ida,
Hoarse Chalcidice, dim Chersonesus married their waters
Under the oerarching yoke of Troy twixt the term-posts of Ocean.
Meanwhile far through the world your fortunes led by my counsels
Followed their lure like women snared by a magical tempter:
High was their chant as they paced and it came from continents distant.
Turn now and hear! what voice approaches? what glitter of armies?
Loud upon Trojan beaches the tread and the murmur of Hellas!
Hark! tis the Achaians paean rings oer the Pergaman waters!
So wake the dreams of Aeneas; reaped is Laocoons harvest.
Artisans new of your destiny fashioned this far-spreading downfall,
Counsellors blind who scattered your strength to the hooves of the Scythian,
Barren victories, trophies of skin-clad Illyrian pastors.
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earths close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to grow by her seasons,
Order our works by her patience and limit our thought by her spaces.
But you had chiefs who were demigods, souls of an earth-scorning stature,
Minds that saw vaster than life and strengths that Gods hour could not limit!
These men seized upon Troy as the tool of their giant visions,
Dreaming of Africas suns and bright Hesperian orchards,
Carthage our mart and our feet on the sunset hills of the Latins.
Ilions hinds in the dream ploughed Libya, sowed Italys cornfields,
Troy stretched to Gades; even the gods and the Fates had grown Trojan.
So are the natures of men uplifted by Heaven in its satire.
Scorning the bit of the gods, despisers of justice and measure,
Zeus is denied and adored some shadow huge of their natures
Losing the shape of man in a dream that is splendid and monstrous.
Titans, vaunting they stride and the world resounds with their footsteps;
Titans, clanging they fall and the world is full of their ruin.
Children, you dreamed with them, heard the roar of the Atlantic breakers
Welcome your keels and the Isles of the Blest grew your wonderful gardens.
Lulled in the dream, you saw not the black-drifting march of the storm-rack,
Heard not the galloping wolves of the doom and the howl of their hunger.
Greece in her peril united her jarring clans; you suffered
Patient, preparing the north, the wisdom and silence of Peleus,
Atreus craft and the Argives gathered to King Agamemnon.
But there were prophecies, Pythian oracles, mutterings from Delphi.
How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,
Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?
Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin.
One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudence
Patient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight.
Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!
Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour.
If thou hadst bowed not thy mane, O Troy, to the child and the dreamer,
Hadst thou been faithful to Wisdom the counsellor seated and ancient,
Then would the hour not have dawned when Paris lingered in Sparta
Led by the goddess fatal and beautiful, white Aphrodite.
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy natures abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals!
Therefore the black deed was done and the hearth that welcomed was sullied.
Sin-called the Fury uplifted her tresses of gloom oer the nations
Maddening the earth with the scream of her blood-thirst, bowelless, stone-eyed,
Claiming her victims from God and bestriding the hate and the clamour.
Yet midst the stroke and the wail when mens eyes were blind with the blood-mist,
Still had the high gods mercy recalling Teucer and Ilus.
Just was the heart of their anger. Discord flaming from Ida,
Hundred-voiced glared from the ships through the camp of the victor Achaians,
Love to that discord added her flowerlike lips of Briseis;
Faltering lids of Polyxena conquered the strength of Pelides.
Vainly the gods who pity open the gates of salvation!
Vainly the winds of their mercy brea the on our fevered existence!
Man his passions prefers to the voice that guides from the heavens.
These too were here whom Hera had chosen to ruin this nation:
Charioteers cracking the whips of their speed on the paths of destruction,
Demigods they! they have come down from Heaven glad to that labour,
Deaf is the world with the fame of their wheels as they race down to Hades.
O that alone they could reach it! O that pity could soften
Harsh Necessitys dealings, sparing our innocent children,
Saving the Trojan women and aged from bonds and the sword-edge!
These had not sinned whom you slay in your madness! Ruthless, O mortals,
Must you be then to yourselves when the gods even faltering with pity
Turn from the grief that must come and the agony vast and the weeping?
Say not the road of escape sinks too low for your arrogant treading.
Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire.
Children, lie prone to their scourge, that your hearts may revive in their sunshine.
This is our lot! when the anger of heaven has passed then the mortal
Raises his head; soon he heals his heart and forgets he has suffered.
Yet if resurgence from weakness and shame were withheld from the creature,
Every fall without morrow, who then would counsel submission?
But since the height of mortal fortune ascending must stumble,
Fallen, again ascend, since death like birth is our portion,
Ripening, mowed, to be sown again like corn by the farmer,
Let us be patient still with the gods accepting their purpose.
Deem not defeat I welcome. Think not to Hellas submitting
Death of proud hope I would seal. Not this have I counselled, O nation,
But to be even as your high-crested forefa thers, greatest of mortals.
Troya of old enringed by the hooves of Cimmerian armies
Flamed to the heavens from her plains and her smoke-blackened citadel sheltered
Mutely the joyless rest of her sons and the wreck of her greatness.
Courage and wisdom survived in that fall and a stern-eyed prudence
Helped her to live; disguised from her mightiness Troy crouched waiting.
Teucer descended whose genius worked at this kingdom and nation,
Patient, scrupulous, wise, like a craftsman carefully toiling
Over a helmet or over a breastplate, testing it always,
Toiled in the eye of the Masters of all and had heed of its labour.
So in the end they would not release him like souls that are common;
They out of Ida sent into Ilion Pallas Athene;
Secret she came and he went with her into the luminous silence.
Teucers children after their sire completed his labour.
Now too, O people, front adversity self-gathered, silent.
Veil thyself, leonine mighty Ilion, hiding thy greatness!
Be as thy father Teucer; be as a cavern for lions;
Be as a Fate that crouches! Wordless and stern for your vengeance
Self-gathered work in the night and secrecy shrouding your bosoms.
Let not the dire heavens know of it; let not the foe seize a whisper!
Ripen the hour of your stroke, while your words drip sweeter than honey.
Sure am I, friends, you will turn from death at my voice, you will hear me!
Some day yet I shall gaze on the ruins of haughty Mycenae.
Is this not better than Ilion cast to the sword of her haters,
Is this not happier than Troya captured and wretchedly burning,
Time to await in his stride when the southern and northern Achaians
Gazing with dull distaste now over their severing isthmus
Hate-filled shall move to the shock by the spur of the gods in them driven,
Pelops march upon Attica, Thebes descend on the Spartan?
Then shall the hour now kept in heaven for us ripen to dawning,
Then shall Victory cry to our banners over the Ocean
Calling our sons with her voice immortal. Children of Ilus,
Then shall Troy rise in her strength and stride over Greece up to Gades.
So Antenor spoke and the mind of the hostile assembly
Moved and swayed with his words like the waters ruled by Poseidon.
Even as the billows rebellious lashed by the whips of the tempest
Curvet and rear their crests like the hooded wrath of a serpent,
Green-eyed under their cowls sublime,unwilling they journey,
Foam-bannered, hoarse-voiced, shepherded, forced by the wind to the margin
Meant for their rest and can turn not at all, though they rage, on their driver,
Last with a sullen applause and consenting lapse into thunder,
Where they were led all the while they sink down huge and astonished,
So in their souls that withstood and obeyed and hated the yielding,
Lashed by his censure, indignant, the Trojans moved towards his purpose:
Sometimes a roar arose, then only, weakened, rarer,
Angry murmurs swelled between sullen stretches of silence;
Last, a reluctant applause broke dull from the throats of the commons.
Silent raged in their hearts Laocoons following daunted;
Troubled the faction of Paris turned to the face of their leader.
He as yet rose not; careless he sat in his beauty and smiling,
Gazing with brilliant eyes at the sculptured pillars of Ilus.
Doubtful, swayed by Antenor, waited in silence the nation.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 2 - The Book of the Statesman
,
368:Earth, Ocean, Air, belovd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
If Spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses,have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred; then forgive
This boast, belovd brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favor now!

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favor my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love, until strange tears,
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmd night
To render up thy charge; and, though ne'er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,
Has shone within me, that serenely now
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre
Suspended in the solitary dome
Of some mysterious and deserted fane,
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
No human hands with pious reverence reared,
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:
A lovely youth,no mourning maiden decked
With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:
Gentle, and brave, and generous,no lorn bard
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.  
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had passed, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims
To love and wonder; he would linger long
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake
From his innocuous band his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.

His wandering step,
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk
Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,
Dark thiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
He lingered, poring on memorials
Of the world's youth: through the long burning day
Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole
From duties and repose to tend his steps,
Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
To speak her love, and watched his nightly sleep,
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home
Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
And o'er the arial mountains which pour down
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,
In joy and exultation held his way;
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,
Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched
His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veild maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire; wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
Her panting bosom:she drew back awhile,
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

Roused by the shock, he started from his trance
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled
The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
The spirit of sweet human love has sent
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!
Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever lost
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds
And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake
Lead only to a black and watery depth,
While death's blue vault with loathliest vapors hung,
Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;
The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
His brain even like despair.

While daylight held
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
With his still soul. At night the passion came,
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasped
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
Burn with the poison, and precipitates
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
O'er the wide ary wilderness: thus driven
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
Day after day, a weary waste of hours,
Bearing within his life the brooding care
That ever fed on its decaying flame.
And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering,
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone,
As in a furnace burning secretly,
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
Who ministered with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind,
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
In its career; the infant would conceal
His troubled visage in his mother's robe
In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
To remember their strange light in many a dream
Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught
By nature, would interpret half the woe
That wasted him, would call him with false names
Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand
At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
Of his departure from their father's door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
High over the immeasurable main.
His eyes pursued its flight:'Thou hast a home,
Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
And what am I that I should linger here,
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?' A gloomy smile
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around.
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
A little shallop floating near the shore
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
It had been long abandoned, for its sides
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky
Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.
Following his eager soul, the wanderer
Leaped in the boat; he spread his cloak aloft
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea
Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As one that in a silver vision floats
Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds
Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
Along the dark and ruffled waters fled
The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on,
With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
Through the white ridges of the chafd sea.
The waves arose. Higher and higher still
Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
With dark obliterating course, he sate:
As if their genii were the ministers
Appointed to conduct him to the light
Of those belovd eyes, the Poet sate,
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on;
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day;
Night followed, clad with stars. On every side
More horribly the multitudinous streams
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled
As if that frail and wasted human form
Had been an elemental god.

At midnight
The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
Among the stars like sunlight, and around
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves
Bursting and eddying irresistibly
Rage and resound forever.Who shall save?
The boat fled on,the boiling torrent drove,
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
And faster still, beyond all human speed,
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
The little boat was driven. A cavern there
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on
With unrelaxing speed.'Vision and Love!'
The Poet cried aloud, 'I have beheld
The path of thy departure. Sleep and death
Shall not divide us long.'

The boat pursued
The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone
At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,
Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell
Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound
That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass
Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;
Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,
Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
With alternating dash the gnarld roots
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
Reflecting yet distorting every cloud,
A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round,
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
Where through an opening of the rocky bank
The waters overflow, and a smooth spot
Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides
Is left, the boat paused shuddering.Shall it sink
Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress
Of that resistless gulf embosom it?
Now shall it fall?A wandering stream of wind
Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
And, lo! with gentle motion between banks
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark!
The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar
With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
A little space of green expanse, the cove
Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave
Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,
Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,
Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay
Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed
To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,
But on his heart its solitude returned,
And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid
In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame,
Had yet performed its ministry; it hung
Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods
Of night close over it.

The noonday sun  
Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,
Scooped in the dark base of their ary rocks,
Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever.
The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank,
Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark
And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar overarching frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang
Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs,
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
Make network of the dark blue light of day
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine
A soul-dissolving odor to invite
To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star,
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
Their own wan light through the reflected lines
Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
Of that still fountain; as the human heart,
Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
The motion of the leavesthe grass that sprung
Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
An unaccustomed presenceand the sound
Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
To stand beside himclothed in no bright robes
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;
But undulating woods, and silent well,
And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
Held commune with him, as if he and it
Were all that was; onlywhen his regard
Was raised by intense pensivenesstwo eyes,
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
To beckon him.

Obedient to the light
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
The windings of the dell. The rivulet,
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
Among the moss with hollow harmony
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
It danced, like childhood laughing as it went;
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
That overhung its quietness.'O stream!
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,
Thy searchless fountain and invisible course,
Have each their type in me; and the wide sky
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
Contains thy waters, as the universe
Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
I' the passing wind!'

Beside the grassy shore
Of the small stream he went; he did impress
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
Of fever, he did move; yet not like him
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
He must descend. With rapid steps he went
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
The forest's solemn canopies were changed
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but gnarld roots of ancient pines
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs:so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions. Calm he still pursued
The stream, that with a larger volume now
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
Fretted a path through its descending curves
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
In the light of evening, and its precipice
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems with its accumulated crags
To overhang the world; for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
In naked and severe simplicity,  
Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response at each pause
In most familiar cadence, with the howl,
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
Fell into that immeasurable void,
Scattering its waters to the passing winds.

Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine
And torrent were not all;one silent nook
Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
It overlooked in its serenity
The dark earth and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
And did embower with leaves forever green  
And berries dark the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor; and here
The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore
In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay,
Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,
Rivals the pride of summer. 'T is the haunt
Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude; one voice  
Alone inspired its echoes;even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
Of all the grace and beauty that endued
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
Commit the colors of that varying cheek,
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

The dim and hornd moon hung low, and poured
A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.O storm of death,
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night!  
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world! from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls
His brother Death! A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;  
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,
That paused within his passive being now,        
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine; upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses
The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,
The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear    
Marred his repose; the influxes of sense
And his own being, unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests; and still as the divided frame    
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With Nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still;
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It pausedit fluttered. But when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved  
An image silent, cold, and motionless,
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapor fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame
No sense, no motion, no divinity
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wandera bright stream
Once fed with many-voicd wavesa dream
Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever  
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders forever,  
Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things    
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,
Lifts still its solemn voice:but thou art fled
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shednot even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn).
Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab. In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth -- all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny, of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still thought them well grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.
This is neither the time nor the place to speak of the misfortunes that chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of 1815 an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute spasms. suddenly a complete change took place; and, though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.
As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. The river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of Thalaba, his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Winsdor to Crickdale. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest-scenery we find in the poem.
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude -- the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts -- give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.'

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor - or, the Spirit of Solitude
,
369:Custer
BOOK FIRST.
I.
ALL valor died not on the plains of Troy.
Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy
To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave
As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave.
Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man,
Dear to the heart of each American.
Sound forth his praise from sea to listening seaGreece her Achilles claimed, immortal Custer, we.
II.
Intrepid are earth's heroes now as when
The gods came down to measure strength with men.
Let danger threaten or let duty call,
And self surrenders to the needs of all;
Incurs vast perils, or, to save those dear,
Embraces death without one sigh or tear.
Life's martyrs still the endless drama play
Though no great Homer lives to chant their worth to-day.
III.
And if he chanted, who would list his songs,
So hurried now the world's gold-seeking throngs?
And yet shall silence mantle mighty deeds?
Awake, dear Muse, and sing though no ear heeds!
Extol the triumphs, and bemoan the end
Of that true hero, lover, son and friend
Whose faithful heart in his last choice was shownDeath with the comrades dear, refusing flight alone.
IV.
He who was born for battle and for strife
Like some caged eagle frets in peaceful life;
152
So Custer fretted when detained afar
From scenes of stirring action and of war.
And as the captive eagle in delight,
When freedom offers, plumes himself for flight
And soars away to thunder clouds on high,
With palpitating wings and wild exultant cry,
V.
So lion-hearted Custer sprang to arms,
And gloried in the conflict's loud alarms.
But one dark shadow marred his bounding joy;
And then the soldier vanished, and the boy,
The tender son, clung close, with sobbing breath,
To her from whom each parting was new death;
That mother who like goddesses of old,
Gave to the mighty Mars, three warriors brave and bold,
VI.
Yet who, unlike those martial dames of yore,
Grew pale and shuddered at the sight of gore.
A fragile being, born to grace the hearth,
Untroubled by the conflicts of the earth.
Some gentle dove who reared young eaglets, might,
In watching those bold birdlings take their flight,
Feel what that mother felt who saw her sons
Rush from her loving arms, to face death-dealing guns.
VII.
But ere thy lyre is strung to martial strains
Of wars which sent our hero o'er the plains,
To add the cypress to his laureled brow,
Be brave, my Muse, and darker truths avow.
Let Justice ask a preface to thy songs,
Before the Indian's crimes declare his wrongs;
Before effects, wherein all horrors blend,
Declare the shameful cause, precursor of the end.
VIII.
153
When first this soil the great Columbus trod,
He was less like the image of his God
Than those ingenuous souls, unspoiled by art,
Who lived so near to Mother Nature's heart;
Those simple children of the wood and wave,
As frank as trusting, and as true as brave;
Savage they were, when on some hostile raid
(For where is he so high, whom war does not degrade?) .
IX.
But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet,
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet;
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.
X.
And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian knows
His seeming benefactors are but foes.
His kinsmen kidnapped and his lands possessed,
The demon woke in that untutored breast.
Four hundred years have rolled upon their wayThe ruthless demon rules the red man to this day.
XI.
If, in the morning of success, that grand
Invincible discoverer of our land
Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate
To carry trophies to the proud and great;
If on our history's page there were no blot
Left by the cruel rapine of Cabot,
Of Verrazin, and Hudson, dare we claim
The Indian of the plains, to-day had been same?
154
XII.
For in this brief existence, not alone
Do our lives gather what our hands have sown,
But we reap, too, what others long ago
Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow.
Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls
Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls,
The history of nations yet to be;
Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from sea to sea,
XIII.
Or pave the way to peace. There is no past,
So deathless are events-results so vast.
And he who strives to make one act or hour
Stand separate and alone, needs first the power
To look upon the breaking wave and say,
'These drops were bosomed by a cloud to-day,
And those from far mid-ocean's crest were sent.'
So future, present, past, in one wide sea are blent.
BOOK SECOND.
I.
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II.
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
155
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III.
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV.
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
V.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI.
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
156
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII.
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on, ' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII.
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX.
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
X.
157
But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe, ' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI.
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam) .
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die, ' quoth he, ' mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII.
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII.
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
158
XIV.
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV.
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
XVI.
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII.
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
159
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII.
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here,
XIX.
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX.
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
160
XXI.
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII.
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII.
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV.
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
161
Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV.
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI.
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII.
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
162
XXVIII.
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX.
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX.
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI.
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
163
And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII.
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII.
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV.
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV.
164
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI.
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII.
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve,
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
165
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
XXXIX.
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII.
166
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII.
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV.
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
167
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI.
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII.
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
A row of six asterisks is on the page at this point
XLVIII.
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX.
168
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
L.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
169
The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII.
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV.
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV.
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI.
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
170
The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII.
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
LVIII.
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX.
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and, with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
171
Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX.
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI.
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep.
BOOK THIRD.
There is an interval of eight years between Books Second and Third.
I.
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) ,
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
172
II.
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III.
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
V.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot.
173
The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold! ' the cry arose and ran
VI.
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII.
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII.
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring- hate.
174
IX.
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
X.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI.
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII.
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
.Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
175
Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII.
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV.
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV.
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
176
XVI.
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII.
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX.
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
177
Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX.
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI.
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII.
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
178
XXIII.
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV.
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV.
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI.
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
179
Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII.
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
180
XXX.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI.
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII.
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth, '
Then shook his long locks in the face of death
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII.
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
181
He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
370:Tannhauser
The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight,
Sir Tannhauser of France, the greatest bard,
Inspired with heavenly visions, and endowed
With apprehension and rare utterance
Of noble music, fared in thoughtful wise
Across the Horsel meadows. Full of light,
And large repose, the peaceful valley lay,
In the late splendor of the afternoon,
And level sunbeams lit the serious face
Of the young knight, who journeyed to the west,
Towards the precipitous and rugged cliffs,
Scarred, grim, and torn with savage rifts and chasms,
That in the distance loomed as soft and fair
And purple as their shadows on the grass.
The tinkling chimes ran out athwart the air,
Proclaiming sunset, ushering evening in,
Although the sky yet glowed with yellow light.
The ploughboy, ere he led his cattle home,
In the near meadow, reverently knelt,
And doffed his cap, and duly crossed his breast,
Whispering his 'Ave Mary,' as he heard
The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight,
Unmindful of the sacred hour announced,
Disdainful or unconscious, held his course.
'Would that I also, like yon stupid wight,
Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!'
He murmured bitterly beneath his breath.
'Were I a pagan, riding to contend
For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal,
What fire of inspiration, would I sing
The praises of the gods! How may my lyre
Glorify these whose very life I doubt?
The world is governed by one cruel God,
Who brings a sword, not peace. A pallid Christ,
Unnatural, perfect, and a virgin cold,
They give us for a heaven of living gods,
Beautiful, loving, whose mere names were song;
207
A creed of suffering and despair, walled in
On every side by brazen boundaries,
That limit the soul's vision and her hope
To a red hell or and unpeopled heaven.
Yea, I am lost already,-even now
Am doomed to flaming torture for my thoughts.
O gods! O gods! where shall my soul find peace?'
He raised his wan face to the faded skies,
Now shadowing into twilight; no response
Came from their sunless heights; no miracle,
As in the ancient days of answering gods.
With a long, shuddering sigh he glanced to earth,
Finding himself among the Horsel cliffs.
Gray, sullen, gaunt, they towered on either side;
Scant shrubs sucked meagre life between the rifts
Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots
Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse
Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones,
Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared
Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed,
And an oppressive mystery enwrapped
The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser
Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side
The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense
Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause,
For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat,
Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought,
That nothing human scaled that haunted cliff.
The white thing seemed descending,-now a cloud
It looked, and now a rag of drifted mist,
Torn in the jagged gorge precipitous,
And now an apparition clad in white,
Shapely and real,-then he lost it quite,
Gazing on nothing with blank, foolish face.
As with wide eyes he stood, he was aware
Of a strange splendor at his very side,
A presence and a majesty so great,
That ere he saw, he felt it was divine.
He turned, and, leaping from his horse, fell prone,
In speechless adoration, on the earth,
Before the matchless goddess, who appeared
With no less freshness of immortal youth
208
Than when first risen from foam of Paphian seas.
He heard delicious strains of melody,
Such as his highest muse had ne'er attained,
Float in the air, while in the distance rang,
Harsh and discordant, jarring with those tones,
The gallop of his frightened horse's hoofs,
Clattering in sudden freedom down the pass.
A voice that made all music dissonance
Then thrilled through heart and flesh of that prone knight,
Triumphantly: 'The gods need but appear,
And their usurped thrones are theirs again!'
Then tenderly: 'Sweet knight, I pray thee, rise;
Worship me not, for I desire thy love.
Look on me, follow me, for I am fain
Of thy fair, human face.' He rose and looked,
Stirred by that heavenly flattery to the soul.
Her hair, unbraided and unfilleted,
Rained in a glittering shower to the ground,
And cast forth lustre. Round her zone was clasped
The scintillant cestus, stiff with flaming gold,
Thicker with restless gems than heaven with stars.
She might have flung the enchanted wonder forth;
Her eyes, her slightest gesture would suffice
To bind all men in blissful slavery.
She sprang upon the mountain's dangerous side,
With feet that left their print in flowers divine,Flushed amaryllis and blue hyacinth,
Impurpled amaranth and asphodel,
Dewy with nectar, and exhaling scents
Richer than all the roses of mid-June.
The knight sped after her, with wild eyes fixed
Upon her brightness, as she lightly leapt
From crag to crag, with flying auburn hair,
Like a gold cloud, that lured him ever on,
Higher and higher up the haunted cliff.
At last amidst a grove of pines she paused,
Until he reached her, breathing hard with haste,
Delight, and wonder. Then upon his hand
She placed her own, and all his blood at once
Tingled and hotly rushed to brow and cheek,
At the supreme caress; but the mere touch
Infused fresh life, and when she looked at him
209
With gracious tenderness, he felt himself
Strong suddenly to bear the blinding light
Of those great eyes. 'Dear knight,' she murmured low,
'For love of me, wilt thou accord this boon,To grace my weary home in banishment?'
His hungry eyes gave answer ere he spoke,
In tones abrupt that startled his own ears
With their strange harshness; but with thanks profuse
She guided him, still holding his cold hand
In her warm, dainty palm, unto a cave,
Whence a rare glory issued, and a smell
Of spice and roses, frankincense and balm.
They entering stood within a marble hall,
With straight, slim pillars, at whose farther end
The goddess led him to a spiral flight
Of stairs, descending always 'midst black gloom
Into the very bowels of the earth.
Down these, with fearful swiftness, they made way,
The knight's feet touching not the solid stair,
But sliding down as in a vexing dream,
Blind, feeling but that hand divine that still
Empowered him to walk on empty air.
Then he was dazzled by a sudden blaze,
In vast palace filled with reveling folk.
Cunningly pictured on the ivory walls
Were rolling hills, cool lakes, and boscage green,
And all the summer landscape's various pomp.
The precious canopy aloft was carved
In semblance of the pleached forest trees,
Enameled with the liveliest green, wherethrough
A light pierced, more resplendent than the day.
O'er the pale, polished jasper of the floor
Of burnished metal, fretted and embossed
With all the marvelous story of her birth
Painted in prodigal splendor of rich tincts,
And carved by heavenly artists,-crystal seas,
And long-haired Nereids in their pearly shells,
And all the wonder of her lucent limbs
Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne
She took her seat, the knight beside her still,
Singing on couches of fresh asphodel,
And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came
210
In glittering phalanx to adore their queen.
Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads,
Crested with living jewels, fanned the air
With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft.
Then with preluding low, a thousand harps,
And citherns, and strange nameless instruments,
Sent through the fragrant air sweet symphonies,
And the winged dancers waved in mazy rounds,
With changing lustres like a summer sea.
Fair boys, with charming yellow hair crisp-curled,
And frail, effeminate beauty, the knight saw,
But of strong, stalwart men like him were none.
He gazed thereon bewitched, until the hand
Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again
Upon his own, and roused him from his trance.
He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud
Auroral, flaming as at sunrising,
Arose from nothing, floating over them
In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist
Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed
In density and brightness, all the throng
Of festal dancers, less and less distinct,
Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream,
And vanished altogether; and these twain,
Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud,
Now with a glory inconceivable,
Vivid and conflagrant, looked each on each.
All hours came laden with their own delights
In that enchanted place, wherein Time
Knew no divisions harsh of night and day,
But light was always, and desire of sleep
Was satisfied at once with slumber soft,
Desire of food with magical repast,
By unseen hands on golden tables spread.
But these the knight accepted like a god,
All less was lost in that excess of joy,
The crowning marvel of her love for him,
Assuring him of his divinity.
Meanwhile remembrance of the earth appeared
Like the vague trouble of a transient dream,The doubt, the scruples, the remorse for thoughts
211
Beyond his own control, the constant thirst
For something fairer than his life, more real
Than airy revelations of his Muse.
Here was his soul's desire satisfied.
All nobler passions died; his lyre he flung
Recklessly forth, with vows to dedicate
His being to herself. She knew and seized
The moment of her mastery, and conveyed
The lyre beyond his sight and memory.
With blandishment divine she changed for him,
Each hour, her mood; a very woman now,
Fantastic, voluble, affectionate,
And jealous of the vague, unbodied air,
Exacting, penitent, and pacified,
All in a breath. And often she appeared
Majestic with celestial wrath, with eyes
That shot forth fire, and a heavy brow,
Portentous as the lowering front of heaven,
When the reverberant, sullen thunder rolls
Among the echoing clouds. Thus she denounced
Her ancient, fickle worshippers, who left
Her altars desecrate, her fires unfed,
Her name forgotten. 'But I reign, I reign!'
She would shrill forth, triumphant; 'yea, I reign.
Men name me not, but worship me unnamed,
Beauty and Love within their heart of hearts;
Not with bent knees and empty breath of words,
But with devoted sacrifice of lives.'
Then melting in a moment, she would weep
Ambrosial tears, pathetic, full of guile,
Accusing her own base ingratitude,
In craving worship, when she had his heart,
Her priceless knight, her peerless paladin,
Her Tannhauser; then, with an artful glance
Of lovely helplessness, entreated him
Not to desert her, like the faithless world,
For these unbeautiful and barbarous gods,
Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove,
Until he took from her the heavy curse
Of immortality. With closer vows,
The knight then sealed his worship and forswore
All other aims and deeds to serve her cause.
212
Thus passed unnoted seven barren years
Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth,
Undignified by any lofty thought
In his degraded mind, that sometime was
Endowed with noble capability.
From revelry to revelry he passed,
Craving more pungent pleasure momently,
And new intoxications, and each hour
The siren goddess answered his desires.
Once when she left him with a weary sense
Of utter lassitude, he sat alone,
And, raising listless eyes, he saw himself
In a great burnished mirror, wrought about
With cunning imagery of twisted vines.
He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes,
For his who in the flush of manhood rode
Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags
The flying temptress; and there fell on him
A horror of her beauty, a disgust
For his degenerate and corrupted life,
With irresistible, intense desire,
To feel the breath of heaven on his face.
Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods,
He saw, within the glass, behind him glide
The form of Venus. Certain of her power,
She had laid by, in fond security,
The enchanted cestus, and Sir Tannhauser,
With surfeited regard, beheld her now,
No fairer than the women of the earth,
Whom with serenity and health he left,
Duped by a lovely witch. Before he moved,
She knew her destiny; and when he turned,
He seemed to drop a mask, disclosing thus
An alien face, and eyes with vision true,
That for long time with glamour had been blind.
Hiding the hideous rage within her breast,
With girlish simpleness of folded hands,
Auroral blushes, and sweet, shamefast mien,
She spoke: 'Behold, my love, I have cast forth
All magic, blandishments and sorcery,
For I have dreamed a dream so terrible,
That I awoke to find my pillow stained
213
With tears as of real woe. I thought my belt,
By Vulcan wrought with matchless skill and power,
Was the sole bond between us; this being doffed,
I seemed to thee an old, unlovely crone,
Wrinkled by every year that I have seen.
Thou turnedst from me with a brutal sneer,
So that I woke with weeping. Then I rose,
And drew the glittering girdle from my zone,
Jealous thereof, yet full of fears, and said,
'If it be this he loves, then let him go!
I have no solace as a mortal hath,
No hope of change or death to comfort me
Through all eternity; yet he is free,
Though I could hold him fast with heavy chains,
Bound in perpetual imprisonment.'
Tell me my vision was a baseless dream;
See, I am kneeling, and kiss thy hands,In pity, look on me, before thy word
Condemns me to immortal misery!'
As she looked down, the infernal influence
Worked on his soul again; for she was fair
Beyond imagination, and her brow
Seemed luminous with high self-sacrifice.
He bent and kissed her head, warm, shining, soft,
With its close-curling gold, and love revived.
But ere he spoke, he heard the distant sound
Of one sweet, smitten lyre, and a gleam
Of violent anger flashed across the face
Upraised to his in feigned simplicity
And singleness of purpose. Then he sprang,
Well-nigh a god himself, with sudden strength
to vanquish and resist, beyond her reach,
Crying, 'My old Muse calls me, and I hear!
Thy fateful vision is no baseless dream;
I will be gone from this accursed hall!'
Then she, too, rose, dilating over him,
And sullen clouds veiled all her rosy limbs,
Unto her girdle, and her head appeared
Refulgent, and her voice rang wrathfully:
'Have I cajoled and flattered thee till now,
To lose thee thus! How wilt thou make escape?
214
ONCE BEING MINE THOU ART FOREVER MINE:
Yea, not my love, but my poor slave and fool.'
But he, with both hands pressed upon his eyes,
Against that blinding lustre, heeded not
Her thundered words, and cried in sharp despair,
'Help me, O Virgin Mary! and thereat,
The very bases of the hall gave way,
The roof was rived, the goddess disappeared,
And Tannhauser stood free upon the cliff,
Amidst the morning sunshine and fresh air.
Around him were the tumbled blocks and crags,
Huge ridges and sharp juts of flinty peaks,
Black caves, and masses of the grim, bald rock.
The ethereal, unfathomable sky,
Hung over him, the valley lay beneath,
Dotted with yellow hayricks, that exhaled
Sweet, healthy odors to the mountain-top.
He breathed intoxicate the infinite air,
And plucked the heather blossoms where they blew,
Reckless with light and dew, in crannies green,
And scarcely saw their darling bells for tears.
No sounds of labor reached him from the farms
And hamlets trim, nor from the furrowed glebe;
But a serene and sabbath stillness reigned,
Till broken by the faint, melodious chimes
Of the small village church that called to prayer.
He hurried down the rugged, scarped cliff,
And swung himself from shelving granite slopes
To narrow foot-holds, near wide-throated chasms,
Tearing against the sharp stones his bleeding hands,
With long hair flying from his dripping brow,
Uncovered head, and white, exalted face.
No memory had he of his smooth ascent,
No thought of fear upon those dreadful hills;
He only heard the bell, inviting him
To satisfy the craving of his heart,
For worship 'midst his fellow men. He reached
The beaten, dusty road, and passed thereon
The pious peasants faring towards the church,
And scarce refrained from greeting them like friends
Dearly beloved, after long absence met.
215
How more than fair the sunburnt wenches looked,
In their rough, homespun gowns and coifs demure,
After the beauty of bare, rosy limbs,
And odorous, loose hair! He noted not
Suspicious glances on his garb uncouth,
His air extravagant and face distraught,
With bursts of laughter from the red-cheeked boys,
And prudent crossings of the women's breasts.
He passed the flowering close about the church,
And trod the well worn-path, with throbbing heart,
The little heather-bell between his lips,
And his eyes fastened on the good green grass.
Thus entered he the sanctuary, lit
With frequent tapers, and with sunbeams stained
Through painted glass. How pure and innocent
The waiting congregation seemed to him,
Kneeling, or seated with calm brows upraised!
With faltering strength, he cowered down alone,
And held sincere communion with the Lord,
For one brief moment, in a sudden gush
Of blessed tears. The minister of God
Rose to invoke a blessing on his flock,
And then began the service,-not in words
To raise the lowly, and to heal the sick,
But an alien tongue, with phrases formed,
And meaningless observances. The knight,
Unmoved, yet thirsting for the simple word
That might have moved him, held his bitter thoughts,
But when in his own speech a new priest spake,
Looked up with hope revived, and heard the text:
'Go, preach the Gospel unto all the world.
He that believes and is baptized, is saved.
He that believeth not, is damned in hell!'
He sat with neck thrust forth and staring eyes;
The crowded congregation disappeared;
He felt alone in some black sea of hell,
While a great light smote one exalted face,
Vivid already with prophetic fire,
Whose fatal mouth now thundered forth his doom.
He longed in that void circle to cry out,
With one clear shriek, but sense and voice seemed bound,
And his parched tongue clave useless to his mouth.
216
As the last words resounded through the church,
And once again the pastor blessed his flock,
Who, serious and subdued, passed slowly down
The arrow aisle, none noted, near the wall,
A fallen man with face upon his knees,
A heap of huddled garments and loose hair,
Unconscious 'mid the rustling, murmurous stir,
'Midst light and rural smell of grass and flowers,
Let in athwart the doorway. One lone priest,
Darkening the altar lights, moved noiselessly,
Now with the yellow glow upon his face,
Now a black shadow gliding farther on,
Amidst the smooth, slim pillars of hewn ash.
But from the vacant aisles he heard at once
A hollow sigh, heaved from a depth profound.
Upholding his last light above his head,
And peering eagerly amidst the stalls,
He cried, 'Be blest who cometh in God's name.'
Then the gaunt form of Tannhauser arose.
'Father, I am a sinner, and I seek
Forgiveness and help, by whatso means
I can regain the joy of peace with God.'
'The Lord hath mercy on the penitent.
'Although thy sins be scarlet,' He hath said,
'Will I not make them white as wool?' Confess,
And I will shrive you.' Thus the good priest moved
Towards the remorseful knight and pressed his hand.
But shrinking down, he drew his fingers back
From the kind palm, and kissed the friar's feet.
'Thy pure hand is anointed, and can heal.
The cool, calm pressure brings back sanity,
And what serene, past joys! yet touch me not,
My contact is pollution,-hear, O hear,
While I disburden my charged soul.' He lay,
Casting about for words and strength to speak.
'O father, is there help for such a one,'
In tones of deep abasement he began,
'Who hath rebelled against the laws of God,
With pride no less presumptuous than his
Who lost thereby his rank in heaven?' 'My son,
There is atonement for all sins,-or slight
Or difficult, proportioned to the crime.
217
Though this may be the staining of thy hands
With blood of kinsmen or of fellow-men.'
'My hands are white,-my crime hath found no name,
This side of hell; yet though my heart-strings snap
To live it over, let me make the attempt.
I was a knight and bard, with such a gift
Of revelation that no hour of life
Lacked beauty and adornment, in myself
The seat and centre of all happiness.
What inspiration could my lofty Muse
Draw from those common and familiar themes,
Painted upon the windows and the walls
Of every church,-the mother and her child,
The miracle and mystery of the birth,
The death, the resurrection? Fool and blind!
That saw not symbols of eternal truth
In that grand tragedy and victory,
Significant and infinite as life.
What tortures did my skeptic soul endure,
At war against herself and all mankind!
The restless nights of feverish sleeplessness,
With balancing of reasons nicely weighed;
The dawn that brought no hope nor energy,
The blasphemous arraignment of the Lord,
Taxing His glorious divinity
With all the grief and folly of the world.
Then came relapses into abject fear,
And hollow prayer and praise from craven heart.
Before a sculptured Venus I would kneel,
Crown her with flowers, worship her, and cry,
'O large and noble type of our ideal,
At least my heart and prayer return to thee,
Amidst a faithless world of proselytes.
Madonna Mary, with her virgin lips,
And eyes that look perpetual reproach,
Insults and is a blasphemy on youth.
Is she to claim the worship of a man
Hot with the first rich flush of ripened life?'
Realities, like phantoms, glided by,
Unnoted 'midst the torment and delights
Of my conflicting spirit, and I doffed
the modest Christian weeds of charity
218
And fit humility, and steeled myself
In pagan panoply of stoicism
And self-sufficing pride. Yet constantly
I gained men's charmed attention and applause,
With the wild strains I smote from out my lyre,
To me the native language of my soul,
To them attractive and miraculous,
As all things whose solution and whose source
Remain a mystery. Then came suddenly
The summons to attend the gathering
Of minstrels at the Landgrave Hermann's court.
Resolved to publish there my pagan creed
In harmonies so high and beautiful
That all the world would share my zeal and faith,
I journeyed towards the haunted Horsel cliffs.
O God! how may I tell you how SHE came,
The temptress of a hundred centuries,
Yet fresh as April? She bewitched my sense,
Poisoned my judgment with sweet flatteries,
And for I may not guess how many years
Held me a captive in degrading bonds.
There is no sin of lust so lewd and foul,
Which I learned not in that alluring hell,
Until this morn, I snapped the ignoble tie,
By calling on the Mother of our Lord.
O for the power to stand again erect,
And look men in the eyes! What penitence,
What scourging of the flesh, what rigid fasts,
What terrible privations may suffice
To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?'
Ill-omened silence followed his appeal.
Patient and motionless he lay awhile,
Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force,
Confronting in his breathless vehemence,
With palpitating heart, the timid priest.
'Answer me, as you hope for a response,
One day, at the great judgment seat yourself.'
'I cannot answer,' said the timid priest,
'I have not understood.' 'Just God! is this
The curse Thou layest upon me? I outstrip
The sympathy and brotherhood of men,
So far removed is my experience
219
From their clean innocence. Inspire me,
Prompt me to words that bring me near to them!
Father,' in gentler accents he resumed,
'Thank Heaven at your every orison
That sin like mine you cannot apprehend.
More than the truth perchance I have confessed,
But I have sinned, and darkly,-this is true;
And I have suffered, and am suffering now.
Is there no help in your great Christian creed
Of liberal charity, for such a one?'
'My son,' the priest replied, 'your speech distraught
Hath quite bewildered me. I fain would hope
That Christ's large charity can reach your sin,
But I know naught. I cannot but believe
That the enchantress who first tempted you
Must be the Evil one,-your early doubt
Was the possession of your soul by him.
Travel across the mountain to the town,
The first cathedral town upon the road
That leads to Rome,-a sage and reverend priest,
The Bishop Adrian, bides there. Say you have come
From his leal servant, Friar Lodovick;
He hath vast lore and great authority,
And may absolve you freely of your sin.'
Over the rolling hills, through summer fields,
By noisy villages and lonely lanes,
Through glowing days, when all the landscape stretched
Shimmering in the heat, a pilgrim fared
Towards the cathedral town. Sir Tannhauser
Had donned the mournful sackcloth, girt his loins
With a coarse rope that ate into his flesh,
Muffled a cowl about his shaven head,
Hung a great leaden cross around his neck;
And bearing in his hands a knotty staff,
With swollen, sandaled feet he held his course.
He snatched scant rest at twilight or at dawn,
When his forced travel was least difficult.
But most he journeyed when the sky, o'ercast,
Uprolled its threatening clouds of dusky blue,
And angry thunder grumbled through the hills,
And earth grew dark at noonday, till the flash
220
Of the thin lightning through the wide sky leapt.
And tumbling showers scoured along the plain.
Then folk who saw the pilgrim penitent,
Drenched, weird, and hastening as as to some strange doom,
Swore that the wandering Jew had crossed their land,
And the Lord Christ had sent the deadly bolt
Harmless upon his cursed, immortal head.
At length the hill-side city's spires and roofs,
With all its western windows smitten red
By a rich sunset, and with massive towers
Of its cathedral overtopping all,
greeted his sight. Some weary paces more,
And as the twilight deepened in the streets,
He stood within the minster. How serene,
In sculptured calm of centuries, it seemed!
How cool and spacious all the dim-lit aisles,
Still hazy with fumes of frankincense!
The vesper had been said, yet here and there
A wrinkled beldam, or mourner veiled,
Or burly burgher on the cold floor knelt,
And still the organist, with wandering hands,
Drew from the keys mysterious melodies,
And filled the church with flying waifs of song,
That with ethereal beauty moved the soul
To a more tender prayer and gentler faith
Than choral anthems and the solemn mass.
A thousand memories, sweet to bitterness,
Rushed on the knight and filled his eyes with tears;
Youth's blamelessness and faith forever lost,
The love of his neglected lyre, his art,
Revived by these aerial harmonies.
He was unworthy now to touch the strings,
Too base to stir men's soul to ecstasy
And high resolves, as in the days agone;
And yet, with all his spirit's earnestness,
He yearned to feel the lyre between his hands,
To utter all the trouble of his life
Unto the Muse who understands and helps.
Outworn with travel, soothed to drowsiness
By dying music and sweet-scented air,
His limbs relaxed, and sleep possessed his frame.
Auroral light the eastern oriels touched,
221
When with delicious sense of rest he woke,
Amidst the cast and silent empty aisles.
'God's peace hath fallen upon me in this place;
This is my Bethel; here I feel again
A holy calm, if not of innocence,
Yet purest after that, the calm serene
Of expiation and forgiveness.'
He spake, and passed with staff and wallet forth
Through the tall portal to the open square,
And turning, paused to look upon the pile.
The northern front against the crystal sky
Loomed dark and heavy, full of sombre shade,
With each projecting buttress, carven cross,
Gable and mullion, tipped with laughing light
By the slant sunbeams of the risen morn.
The noisy swallows wheeled above their nests,
Builded in hidden nooks about the porch.
No human life was stirring in the square,
Save now and then a rumbling market-team,
Fresh from the fields and farms without the town.
He knelt upon the broad cathedral steps,
And kissed the moistened stone, while overhead
The circling swallows sang, and all around
The mighty city lay asleep and still.
To stranger's ears must yet again be made
The terrible confession; yet again
A deathly chill, with something worse than fear,
Seized the knight's heart, who knew his every word
Widened the gulf between his kind and him.
The Bishop sat with pomp of mitred head,
In pride of proven virtue, hearkening to all
With cold, official apathy, nor made
A sign of pity nor encouragement.
The friar understood the pilgrim's grief,
The language of his eyes; his speech alone
Was alien to these kind, untutored ears.
But this was truly to be misconstrued,
To tear each palpitating word alive
From out the depths of his remorseful soul,
And have it weighed with the precision cool
And the nice logic of a reasoning mind.
222
This spiritual Father judged his crime
As the mad mischief of a reckless boy,
That call for strict, immediate punishment.
But Tannhauser, who felt himself a man,
Though base, yet fallen through passions and rare gifts
Of an exuberant nature rankly rich,
And knew his weary head was growing gray
With a life's terrible experience,
Found his old sense of proper worth revive;
But modestly he ended: 'Yet I felt,
O holy Father, in the church, this morn,
A strange security, a peace serene,
As though e'en yet the Lord regarded me
With merciful compassion; yea, as though
Even so vile a worm as I might work
Mine own salvation, through repentant prayers.'
'Presumptuous man, it is no easy task
To expiate such sin; a space of prayer
That deprecates the anger of the Lord,
A pilgrimage through pleasant summer lands,
May not atone for years of impious lust;
Thy heart hath lied to thee in offering hope.'
'Is there no hope on earth?' the pilgrim sighed.
'None through thy penance,' said the saintly man.
'Yet there may be through mediation, help.
There is a man who by a blameless life
Hath won the right to intercede with God.
No sins of his own flesh hath he to purge,The Cardinal Filippo,-he abides,
Within the Holy City. Seek him out;
This is my only counsel,-through thyself
Can be no help and no forgiveness.'
How different from the buoyant joy of morn
Was this discouraged sense of lassitude,
The Bishop's words were ringing in his ears,
Measured and pitiless, and blent with these,
The memory of the goddess' last wild cry,'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE.'
Was it the truth, despite his penitence,
And the dedication of his thought to God,
That still some portion of himself was hers,
223
Some lust survived, some criminal regret,
For her corrupted love? He searched his heart:
All was remorse, religious and sincere,
And yet her dreadful curse still haunted him;
For all men shunned him, and denied him help,
Knowing at once in looking on his face,
Ploughed with deep lines and prematurely old,
That he had struggled with some deadly fiend,
And that he was no longer kin to them.
Just past the outskirts of the town, he stopped,
To strengthen will and courage to proceed.
The storm had broken o'er the sultry streets,
But now the lessening clouds were flying east,
And though the gentle shower still wet his face,
The west was cloudless while the sun went down,
And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth,
Against the opposite dull gray. There was
A beauty in the mingled storm and peace,
Beyond clear sunshine, as the vast, green fields
Basked in soft light, though glistening yet with rain.
The roar of all the town was now a buzz
Less than the insects' drowsy murmuring
That whirred their gauzy wings around his head.
The breeze that follows on the sunsetting
Was blowing whiffs of bruised and dripping grass
Into the heated city. But he stood,
Disconsolate with thoughts of fate and sin,
Still wrestling with his soul to win it back
From her who claimed it to eternity.
Then on the delicate air there came to him
The intonation of the minster bells,
Chiming the vespers, musical and faint.
He knew not what of dear and beautiful
There was in those familiar peals, that spake
Of his first boyhood and his innocence,
Leading him back, with gracious influence,
To pleasant thoughts and tender memories,
And last, recalling the fair hour of hope
He passed that morning in the church. Again,
The glad assurance of God's boundless love
Filled all his being, and he rose serene,
And journeyed forward with a calm content.
224
Southward he wended, and the landscape took
A warmer tone, the sky a richer light.
The gardens of the graceful, festooned with hops,
With their slight tendrils binding pole to pole,
Gave place to orchards and the trellised grape,
The hedges were enwreathed with trailing vines,
With clustering, shapely bunches, 'midst the growth
Of tangled greenery. The elm and ash
Less frequent grew than cactus, cypresses,
And golden-fruited or large-blossomed trees.
The far hills took the hue of the dove's breast,
Veiled in gray mist of olive groves. No more
He passed dark, moated strongholds of grim knights,
But terraces with marble-paven steps,
With fountains leaping in the sunny air,
And hanging gardens full of sumptuous bloom.
Then cloisters guarded by their dead gray walls,
Where now and then a golden globe of fruit
Or full-flushed flower peered out upon the road,
Nodding against the stone, and where he heard
Sometimes the voices of the chanting monks,
Sometimes the laugh of children at their play,
Amidst the quaint, old gardens. But these sights
Were in the suburbs of the wealthy towns.
For many a day through wildernesses rank,
Or marshy, feverous meadow-lands he fared,
The fierce sun smiting his close-muffled head;
Or 'midst the Alpine gorges faced the storm,
That drave adown the gullies melted snow
And clattering boulders from the mountain-tops.
At times, between the mountains and the sea
Fair prospects opened, with the boundless stretch
Of restless, tideless water by his side,
And their long wash upon the yellow sand.
Beneath this generous sky the country-folk
Could lead a freer life,-the fat, green fields
Offered rich pasturage, athwart the air
Rang tinkling cow-bells and the shepherds' pipes.
The knight met many a strolling troubadour,
Bearing his cithern, flute, or dulcimer;
And oft beneath some castle's balcony,
225
At night, he heard their mellow voices rise,
Blent with stringed instruments or tambourines,
Chanting some lay as natural as a bird's.
Then Nature stole with healthy influence
Into his thoughts; his love of beauty woke,
His Muse inspired dreams as in the past.
But after this came crueler remorse,
And he would tighten round his loins the rope,
And lie for hours beside some wayside cross,
And feel himself unworthy to enjoy
The splendid gift and privilege of life.
Then forth he hurried, spurred by his desire
To reach the City of the Seven Hills,
And gain his absolution. Some leagues more
Would bring him to the vast Campagna land,
When by a roadside well he paused to rest.
'T was noon, and reapers in the field hard by
Lay neath the trees upon the sun-scorched grass.
But from their midst one came towards the well,
Not trudging like a man forespent with toil,
But frisking like a child at holiday,
With light steps. The pilgrim watched him come,
And found him scarcely older than a child,
A large-mouthed earthen pitcher in his hand,
And a guitar upon his shoulder slung.
A wide straw hat threw all his face in shade,
But doffing this, to catch whatever breeze
Might stir among the branches, he disclosed
A charming head of rippled, auburn hair,
A frank, fair face, as lovely as a girls,
With great, soft eyes, as mild and grave as kine's.
Above his head he slipped the instrument,
And laid it with his hat upon the turf,
Lowered his pitcher down the well-head cool,
And drew it dripping upward, ere he saw
The watchful pilgrim, craving (as he thought)
The precious draught. 'Your pardon, holy sir,
Drink first,' he cried, 'before I take the jar
Unto my father in the reaping-field.'
Touched by the cordial kindness of the lad,
The pilgrim answered,-'Thanks, my thirst is quenched
From mine own palm.' The stranger deftly poised
226
The brimming pitcher on his head, and turned
Back to the reaping-folk, while Tannhauser
Looked after him across the sunny fields,
Clasping each hand about his waist to bear
The balanced pitcher; then, down glancing, found
The lad's guitar near by, and fell at once
To striking its tuned string with wandering hands,
And pensive eyes filled full of tender dreams.
'Yea, holy sir, it is a worthless thing,
And yet I love it, for I make it speak.'
The boy again stood by him and dispelled
His train of fantasies half sweet, half sad.
'That was not in my thought,' the knight replied.
'Its worth is more than rubies; whoso hath
The art to make this speak is raised thereby
Above all loneliness or grief or fear.'
More to himself than to the lad he spake,
Who, understanding not, stood doubtfully
At a loss for answer; but the knight went on:
'How came it in your hands, and who hath tuned
your voice to follow it.' 'I am unskilled,
Good father, but my mother smote its strings
To music rare.' Diverted from one theme,
Pleased with the winsome candor of the boy,
The knight encouraged him to confidence;
Then his own gift of minstrelsy revealed,
And told bright tales of his first wanderings,
When in lords' castles and kings' palaces
Men still made place for him, for in his land
The gift was rare and valued at its worth,
And brought great victory and sounding fame.
Thus, in retracing all his pleasant youth,
His suffering passed as though it had not been.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed the boy gave ear,
His fair face flushing with the sudden thoughts
That went and came,-then, as the pilgrim ceased,
Drew breath and spake: 'And where now is your lyre?'
The knight with both hands hid his changed, white face,
Crying aloud, 'Lost! lost! forever lost!'
Then, gathering strength, he bared his face again
Unto the frightened, wondering boy, and rose
With hasty fear. 'Ah, child, you bring me back
227
Unwitting to remembrance of my grief,
For which I donned eternal garb of woe;
And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour
Of healthy human intercourse and peace.
'T is not for me to tarry by the way.
Farewell!' The impetuous, remorseful boy,
Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance,
Fell at his feet and cried, 'Forgive my words,
Witless but innocent, and leave me not
Without a blessing.' Moved unutterably,
The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head,
And muttered, 'At this moment would to God
That I were worthy!' Then waved wasted hands
Over the youth in act of blessing him,
But faltered, 'Cleanse me through his innocence,
O heavenly Father!' and with quickening steps
Hastened away upon the road to Rome.
The noon was past, the reapers drew broad swaths
With scythes sun-smitten 'midst the ripened crop.
Thin shadows of the afternoon slept soft
On the green meadows as the knight passed forth.
He trudged amidst the sea of poisonous flowers
On the Campagna's undulating plain,
With Rome, the many-steepled, many-towered,
Before him regnant on her throne of hills.
A thick blue cloud of haze o'erhung the town,
But the fast-sinking sun struck fiery light
From shining crosses, roofs, and flashing domes.
Across his path an arching bridge of stone
Was raised above a shrunken yellow stream,
Hurrying with the light on every wave
Towards the great town and outward to the sea.
Upon the bridge's crest he paused, and leaned
Against the barrier, throwing back his cowl,
And gazed upon the dull, unlovely flood
That was the Tiber. Quaggy banks lay bare,
Muddy and miry, glittering in the sun,
And myriad insects hovered o'er the reeds,
Whose lithe, moist tips by listless airs were stirred.
When the low sun had dropped behind the hills,
He found himself within the streets of Rome,
228
Walking as in a sleep, where naught seemed real.
The chattering hubbub of the market-place
Was over now; but voices smote his ear
Of garrulous citizens who jostled past.
Loud cries, gay laughter, snatches of sweet song,
The tinkling fountains set in gardens cool
About the pillared palaces, and blent
With trickling of the conduits in the squares,
The noisy teams within the narrow streets,All these the stranger heard and did not hear,
While ringing bells pealed out above the town,
And calm gray twilight skies stretched over it.
Wide open stood the doors of every church,
And through the porches pressed a streaming throng.
Vague wonderment perplexed him, at the sight
Of broken columns raised to Jupiter
Beside the cross, immense cathedrals reared
Upon a dead faith's ruins; all the whirl
And eager bustle of the living town
Filling the storied streets, whose very stones
Were solemn monuments, and spake of death.
Although he wrestled with himself, the thought
Of that poor, past religion smote his heart
With a huge pity and deep sympathy,
Beyond the fervor which the Church inspired.
Where was the noble race who ruled the world,
Moulded of purest elements, and stuffed
With sternest virtues, every man a king,
Wearing the purple native in his heart?
These lounging beggars, stealthy monks and priests,
And womanish patricians filled their place.
Thus Tannhauser, still half an infidel,
Pagan through mind and Christian through the heart,
Fared thoughtfully with wandering, aimless steps,
Till in the dying glimmer of the day
He raised his eyes and found himself alone
Amid the ruined arches, broken shafts,
And huge arena of the Coliseum.
He did not see it as it was, dim-lit
By something less than day and more than night,
With wan reflections of the rising moon
Rather divined than seen on ivied walls,
229
And crumbled battlements, and topless columnsBut by the light of all the ancient days,
Ringed with keen eager faces, living eyes,
Fixed on the circus with a savage joy,
Where brandished swords flashed white, and human blood
Streamed o'er the thirsty dust, and Death was king.
He started, shuddering, and drew breath to see
The foul pit choked with weeds and tumbled stones,
The cross raised midmost, and the peaceful moon
Shining o'er all; and fell upon his knees,
Restored to faith in one wise, loving God.
Day followed day, and still he bode in Rome,
Waiting his audience with the Cardinal,
And from the gates, on pretext frivolous,
Passed daily forth,-his Eminency slept,Again, his Eminency was fatigued
By tedious sessions of the Papal court,
And thus the patient pilgrim was referred
Unto a later hour. At last the page
Bore him a missive with Filippo's seal,
That in his name commended Tannhauser
Unto the Pope. The worn, discouraged knight
Read the brief scroll, then sadly forth again,
Along the bosky alleys of the park,
Passed to the glare and noise of summer streets.
'Good God!' he muttered, 'Thou hast ears for all,
And sendest help and comfort; yet these men,
Thy saintly ministers, must deck themselves
With arrogance, and from their large delight
In all the beauty of the beauteous earth,
And peace of indolent, untempted souls,
Deny the hungry outcast a bare word.'
Yet even as he nourished bitter thoughts,
He felt a depth of clear serenity,
Unruffled in his heart beneath it all.
No outward object now had farther power
To wound him there, for the brooding o'er those deeps
Of vast contrition was boundless hope.
Yet not to leave a human chance untried,
He sought the absolution of the Pope.
In a great hall with airy galleries,
230
Thronged with high dignitaries of the Church,
He took his seat amidst the humblest friars.
Through open windows came sweet garden smells,
Bright morning light, and twittered song of birds.
Around the hall flashed gold and sunlit gems,
And splendid wealth of color,-white-stoled priests,
And scarlet cardinals, and bishops clad
In violet vestments,-while beneath the shade
Of the high gallery huddled dusky shapes,
With faded, travel-tattered, sombre smocks,
And shaven heads, and girdles of coarse hemp;
Some, pilgrims penitent like Tannhauser;
Some, devotees to kiss the sacred feet.
The brassy blare of trumpets smote the air,
Shrill pipes and horns with swelling clamor came,
And through the doorway's wide-stretched tapestries
Passed the Pope's trumpeters and mace-bearers,
His vergers bearing slender silver wands,
Then mitred bishops, red-clad cardinals,
The stalwart Papal Guard with halberds raised,
And then, with white head crowned with gold ingemmed,
The vicar of the lowly Galilean,
Holding his pastoral rod of smooth-hewn wood,
With censer swung before and peacock fans
Waved constantly by pages, either side.
Attended thus, they bore him to his throne,
And priests and laymen fell upon their knees.
Then, after pause of brief and silent prayer,
The pilgrims singly through the hall defiled,
To kiss the borders of the papal skirts,
Smiting their foreheads on the paven stone;
Some silent, abject, some accusing them
Of venial sins in accents of remorse,
Craving his grace, and passing pardoned forth.
Sir Tannhauser came last, no need for him
To cry 'Peccavi,' and crook suppliant knees.
His gray head rather crushed than bowed, his face
Livid and wasted, his deep thoughtful eyes,
His tall gaunt form in those unseemly weeds,
Spake more than eloquence. His hollow voice
Brake silence, saying, 'I am Tannhauser.
For seven years I lived apart from men,
231
Within the Venusberg.' A horror seized
The assembled folk; some turbulently rose;
Some clamored, 'From the presence cast him forth!'
But the knight never ceased his steady gaze
Upon the Pope. At last,-'I have not spoken
To be condemned,' he said, 'by such as these.
Thou, spiritual Father, answer me.
Look thou upon me with the eyes of Christ.
Can I through expiation gain my shrift,
And work mine own redemption?' 'Insolent man!'
Thundered the outraged Pope, 'is this the tone
Wherewith thou dost parade thy loathsome sin?
Down on thy knees, and wallow on the earth!
Nay, rather go! there is no ray of hope,
No gleam, through cycles of eternity,
For the redemption of a soul like thine.
Yea, sooner shall my pastoral rod branch forth
In leaf and blossom, and green shoots of spring,
Than Christ will pardon thee.' And as he spoke,
He struck the rod upon the floor with force
That gave it entrance 'twixt two loosened tiles,
So that it stood, fast-rooted and alone.
The knight saw naught, he only heard his judge
Ring forth his curses, and the court cry out
'Anathema!' and loud, and blent therewith,
Derisive laughter in the very hall,
And a wild voice that thrilled through flesh and heart:
'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!'
Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow,
Amidst the storm of voices, till they died,
And all was silence, save the reckless song
Of a young bird upon a twig without.
Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised,
And shrieked, ''T is false! I am no longer thine!'
And through the windows open to the park,
Rushed forth, beyond the sight and sound of men.
By church nor palace paused he, till he passed
All squares and streets, and crossed the bridge of stone,
And stood alone amidst the broad expanse
Of the Campagna, twinkling in the heat.
He knelt upon a knoll of turf, and snapped
232
The cord that held the cross about his neck,
And far from him the leaden burden flung.
'O God! I thank Thee, that my faith in Thee
Subsists at last, through all discouragements.
Between us must no type nor symbol stand,
No mediator, were he more divine
Than the incarnate Christ. All forms, all priests,
I part aside, and hold communion free
Beneath the empty sky of noon, with naught
Between my nothingness and thy high heavensSpirit with spirit. O, have mercy, God!
Cleanse me from lust and bitterness and pride,
Have mercy in accordance with my faith.'
Long time he lay upon the scorching grass,
With his face buried in the tangled weeds.
Ah! who can tell the struggles of his soul
Against its demons in that sacred hour,
The solitude, the anguish, the remorse?
When shadows long and thin lay on the ground,
Shivering with fever, helpless he arose,
But with a face divine, ineffable,
Such as we dream the face of Israel,
When the Lord's wrestling angel, at gray dawn,
Blessed him, and disappeared.
Upon the marsh,
All night, he wandered, striving to emerge
From the wild, pathless plain,-now limitless
And colorless beneath the risen moon;
Outstretching like a sea, with landmarks none,
Save broken aqueducts and parapets,
And ruined columns glinting 'neath the moon.
His dress was dank and clinging with the dew;
A thousand insects fluttered o'er his head,
With buzz and drone; unseen cicadas chirped
Among the long, rank grass, and far and near
The fire-flies flickered through the summer air.
Vague thoughts and gleams prophetic filled his brain.
'Ah, fool!' he mused, 'to look for help from men.
Had they the will to aid, they lack the power.
In mine own flesh and soul the sin had birth,
Through mine own anguish it must be atoned.
Our saviours are not saints and ministers,
233
But tear-strung women, children soft of heart,
Or fellow-sufferers, who, by some chance word,
Some glance of comfort, save us from despair.
These I have found, thank heaven! to strengthen trust
In mine own kind, when all the world grew dark.
Make me not proud in spirit, O my God!
Yea, in thy sight I am one mass of sin,
One black and foul corruption, yet I know
My frailty is exceeded by thy love.
Neither is this the slender straw of hope,
Whereto I, drowning, cling, but firm belief,
That fills my inmost soul with vast content.
As surely as the hollow faiths of old
Shriveled to dust before one ray of Truth,
So will these modern temples pass away,
Piled upon rotten doctrines, baseless forms,
And man will look in his own breast for help,
Yea, search for comfort his own inward reins,
Revere himself, and find the God within.
Patience and patience!' Through the sleepless night
He held such thoughts; at times before his eyes
Flashed glimpses of the Church that was to be,
Sublimely simple in the light serene
Of future ages; then the vision changed
To the Pope's hall, thronged with high priests, who hurled
Their curses on him. Staggering, he awoke
Unto the truth, and found himself alone,
Beneath the awful stars. When dawn's first chill
Crept though the shivering grass and heavy leaves,
Giddy and overcome, he fell and slept
Upon the dripping weeds, nor dreamed nor stirred,
Until the wide plain basked in noon's broad light.
He dragged his weary frame some paces more,
Unto a solitary herdsman's hut,
Which, in the vagueness of the moonlit night,
Was touched with lines of beauty, till it grew
Fair as the ruined works of ancient art,
Now squat and hideous with its wattled roof,
Decaying timbers, and loose door wide oped,
Half-fallen from the hinge. A drowsy man,
Bearded and burnt, in shepherd habit lay,
Stretched on the floor, slow-munching, half asleep,
234
His frugal fare; for thus, at blaze of noon,
The shepherds sought a shelter from the sun,
Leaving their vigilant dogs beside their flock.
The knight craved drink and bread, and with respect
For pilgrim weeds, the Roman herdsman stirred
His lazy length, and shared with him his meal.
Refreshed and calm, Sir Tannhauser passed forth,
Yearning with morbid fancy once again
To see the kind face of the minstrel boy
He met beside the well. At set of sun
He reached the place; the reaping-folk were gone,
The day's toil over, yet he took his seat.
A milking-girl with laden buckets full,
Came slowly from the pasture, paused and drank.
From a near cottage ran a ragged boy,
And filled his wooden pail, and to his home
Returned across the fields. A herdsman came,
And drank and gave his dog to drink, and passed,
Greeting the holy man who sat there still,
Awaiting. But his feeble pulse beat high
When he descried at last a youthful form,
Crossing the field, a pitcher on his head,
Advancing towards the well. Yea, this was he,
The same grave eyes, and open, girlish face.
But he saw not, amidst the landscape brown,
The knight's brown figure, who, to win his ear,
Asked the lad's name. 'My name is Salvator,
To serve you, sir,' he carelessly replied,
With eyes and hands intent upon his jar,
Brimming and bubbling. Then he cast one glance
Upon his questioner, and left the well,
Crying with keen and sudden sympathy,
'Good Father, pardon me, I knew you not.
Ah! you have travelled overmuch: your feet
Are grimed with mud and wet, your face is changed,
Your hands are dry with fever.' But the knight:
'Nay, as I look on thee, I think the Lord
Wills not that I should suffer any more.'
'Then you have suffered much,' sighed Salvator,
With wondering pity. 'You must come with me;
My father knows of you, I told him all.
A knight and minstrel who cast by his lyre,
235
His health and fame, to give himself to God,Yours is a life indeed to be desired!
If you will lie with us this night, our home
Will verily be blessed.' By kindness crushed,
Wandering in sense and words, the broken knight
Resisted naught, and let himself be led
To the boy's home. The outcast and accursed
Was welcomed now by kindly human hands;
Once more his blighted spirit was revived
By contact with refreshing innocence.
There, when the morning broke upon the world,
The humble hosts no longer knew their guest.
His fleshly weeds of sin forever doffed,
Tannhauser lay and smiled, for in the night
The angel came who brings eternal peace.
__________
Far into Wartburg, through all Italy,
In every town the Pope sent messengers,
Riding in furious haste; among them, one
Who bore a branch of dry wood burst in bloom;
The pastoral rod had borne green shoots of spring,
And leaf and blossom. God is merciful.
~ Emma Lazarus,

IN CHAPTERS [150/310]



  134 Integral Yoga
   34 Occultism
   29 Yoga
   22 Poetry
   18 Christianity
   16 Philosophy
   12 Psychology
   5 Science
   5 Fiction
   4 Theosophy
   2 Mythology
   2 Integral Theory
   2 Education
   1 Sufism
   1 Philsophy
   1 Buddhism
   1 Alchemy


   53 The Mother
   48 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   41 Sri Aurobindo
   32 Satprem
   28 Sri Ramakrishna
   15 James George Frazer
   12 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   10 Aldous Huxley
   8 George Van Vrekhem
   8 Carl Jung
   6 Aleister Crowley
   5 Plotinus
   4 Rudolf Steiner
   4 Jordan Peterson
   4 A B Purani
   3 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   3 Franz Bardon
   2 Walt Whitman
   2 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   2 Ramprasad
   2 Peter J Carroll
   2 Nirodbaran
   2 Mansur al-Hallaj
   2 Joseph Campbell
   2 H P Lovecraft


   27 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   15 The Golden Bough
   14 Savitri
   13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   10 The Perennial Philosophy
   8 Preparing for the Miraculous
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 Talks
   6 Questions And Answers 1956
   6 Questions And Answers 1953
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   6 Collected Poems
   6 Agenda Vol 02
   5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   5 Questions And Answers 1955
   5 On the Way to Supermanhood
   5 Hymn of the Universe
   5 Essays On The Gita
   4 Questions And Answers 1954
   4 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   4 Maps of Meaning
   4 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   4 Agenda Vol 13
   4 Agenda Vol 03
   3 Theosophy
   3 Shelley - Poems
   3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   3 Magick Without Tears
   3 Liber ABA
   3 Let Me Explain
   2 Whitman - Poems
   2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
   2 The Phenomenon of Man
   2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   2 The Future of Man
   2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   2 Record of Yoga
   2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   2 Lovecraft - Poems
   2 Liber Null
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   2 Bhakti-Yoga
   2 Aion
   2 Agenda Vol 10
   2 Agenda Vol 01
   2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   2 5.1.01 - Ilion


00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The biological process, described in what may seem to be crude and mediaeval terms, really reflects or echoes a more subtle and psychological process. The images used form perhaps part of the current popular notion about the matter, but the esoteric sense goes beyond the outer symbols. The sky seems to be the far and tenuous region where the soul rests and awaits its next birthit is the region of Soma, the own Home of Bliss and Immortality. Now when the time or call comes, the soul stirs and journeys down that is the Rain. Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contri bution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates.
   Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
  --
   Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
   The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as many gods as there are bodies or individual forms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary according to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
   According to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative force in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several forms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living form of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.
  --
   Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
   --- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
  --
   Purna was a lad of thirteen, whom Sri Ramakrishna described as an Isvarakoti, a soul born with special spiritual qualities. The Master said that Purna was the last of the group of brilliant devotees who, as he once had seen in a trance, would come to him for spiritual illumination. Purna said to Sri Ramakrishna during their second meeting, "You are God Himself incarnated in flesh and blood." Such words coming from a mere youngster proved of what stuff the boy was made.
   --- MAHIMACHARAN AND PRATAP HAZRA

01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
   For, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary consciousness Mind as developed in man is the highest instrument built up and organised by Nature through which the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of all principlesmana puvvangam dhamm1. The consciousness beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic element in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved, the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary cycle, a merging and an absorption into the static status that is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other extreme the Spirit in itself, Atman, Brahman, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without a first.

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Await the sound of the incarnate's voice
  To leap and bridge the chasms of Ignorance

01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Effaced themselves beneath the incarnate's tread.
  The dire velamen and the bottomless crypt

01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
   Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.

0 1952-08-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
  Only when men shall depend exclusively upon the Divine and upon nothing else will the incarnate god no longer need to die for them.2
    Note written by Mother in French.

0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This is how it works: the psychic being passes from one life to another, but there are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to work out2 to pass through a certain experience, to learn a certain thing, to develop a certain thing through a certain experience. And so in this life, in the life where the experience is to be made, it can happen (there may be more than one reason) that the soul does not come down accurately in the place it should have, some shift or other may occur, a set of contrary circumstancesthis happens sometimesand then the incarnation miscarries entirely and the soul leaves. But in other cases, the soul is simply placed in the impossibility of doing exactly what it wants and it finds itself swept away by unfortunate circumstances. Not only unfortunate from an objective standpoint, but unfortunate for its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much more difficult conditions.
   And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this many times, it creates a dreadful karma that can be repeated for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.

0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A similar memory has recurred several times under different circumstancesnot exactly the same scene and the same images, because it wasnt something I was seeing but A LIFE I was living. During a certain period, at any time, night or day, I would experience a particular state of trance in which I was rediscovering a life I had lived. I was fully conscious that this life had to do with the first flowering of the human form upon earth, the first human forms able to incarnate the divine being from above. This was the first time I could manifest in a particular terrestrial form (not a general life but an individual form); that is, for the first time, through the mentalization of this material substance, the junction between the higher Being and the lower being was made. I have lived that several times, and always in a similar setting and with quite a similar feeling of such joyous simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions. It was the blossoming of a joy of lifenothing but that; love and harmony prevailed: flowers, minerals, animals all got along together perfectly.
   Things began to go wrong only a LONG time afterwards, long after (but this is a personal impression), probably because certain mental crystallizations were necessary, inevitable, for the general evolution, so that the mind might prepare itself to move on to something else. That was when oh, it seems like a fall into a pitinto ugliness, darkness! Everything became so dark, so ugly, so difficult, so painful. Really really the sense of a fall.

0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   For instance, cats can very easily incarnate the vital force of a dead person. I have had two absolutely astounding experiences of this.
   The first was with a boy who was a Sanskritist and had wanted to come to India with us. He was the son of a French ambassadoran old, noble family. But he learned that his lungs were bad, and so he joined the Army; he enlisted as an officer, just at the start of the 1914 war. And he had the courage of those who no longer cling to life; when he received the order to advance on the enemy trenches (it was incredibly stupid, simply sending people to be slaughtered!), he didnt hesitate. He went. And he was hit between the two lines. For a long time, it was a no mans land; only after some days, when the other trench had been taken, could they go and collect the dead. All this came out in the newspapers AFTERWARDS. But on the day he was killed, of course, no one was aware of it.
  --
   The other story dates farther back. I was living in another house (we had the whole fifth floor), and once a week I used to hold meetings there with people interested in occultism they came to have me demonstrate or tell them about occult practices. There was a Swedish artist, a French lady and a young French boy, a student and a poet. His parents were decent country people who bled themselves white to pay for his life in Paris. This boy was very intelligent and a true artist, but he was depraved. (We knew about it, but it was his private life and none of our business.) One evening, when four or five of us were to meet, this boy didnt turn up, although he had said he would. We had our meeting anyway and didnt think much about itwe thought he must have been busy elsewhere. Around midnight, when the people were leaving, I open the door. A big black cat was sitting in the doorway and, in a single bound, it jumps on me, just like that, all curled up in a ball. So I calm it down, I look at itAh, the eyes! They were this boys eyes. (I no longer recall his name.) Right away (at the time we were all involved in occultism), we knew something had happened; he had been unable to come and the cat had incarnated his vital force.
   The next day, all the newspapers were full of a vile murder: a pimp had murdered this boyit was disgusting! Something utterly vile. And it had happened at the very moment he should have come the concierge had seen him going into the house with this pimp. What happened? Was it just for money or for something elsevice? Or what?

0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the history of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
   People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!

0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Theon was the first one to give me the idea that the earth is symbolic, representativesymbolic of concentrated universal action allowing divine forces to incarnate and work concretely. I learned all this from him.
   In this respect, you say somewhere that the gods too must incarnate to become fully conscious.
   Yes, because.
  --
   Except for Krishna. In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of Mother.8
   Yes, in fact I wanted to ask you what this realization of 1926 was.
  --
   After a while, I too began having meditations with people. I had begun a sort of overmental creation, to make each god descend into a beingthere was an extraordinary upward curve! Well, I was in contact with these beings and I told Krishna (because I was always seeing him around Sri Aurobindo), This is all very fine, but what I want now is a creation on earthyou must incarnate. He said Yes. Then I saw him I saw him with my own eyes (inner eyes, of course), join himself to Sri Aurobindo.
   Then I went into Sri Aurobindos room and told him, Heres what I have seen. Yes, I know! he replied (Mother laughs) Thats fine; I have decided to retire to my room, and you will take charge of the people. You take charge. (There were about thirty people at the time.) Then he called everyone together for one last meeting. He sat down, had me sit next to him, and said, I called you here to tell you that, as of today, I am withdrawing for purposes of sadhana, and Mother will now take charge of everyone; you should address yourselves to her; she will represent me and she will do all the work. (He hadnt mentioned this to me!Mother bursts into laughter)
   These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: Why, why, Why? He replied, It will be explained to you. I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her deatha person who received inspirations.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishnas adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.
   This was in 1926.

0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of Supermind, but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, new heavens and a new earth,1 which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didnt actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into. They used different words, another classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely developed, you seeindividualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it and so on, twelve times.
   I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called pathtisme,2 a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formlesshe sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme The Formless. (From this last stage one passed to the Formless there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unityunity in something that was the essence of Love; Love was a manifestation more dense, he would always say (there were all sorts of different densities); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unityperfect unity, identitywith no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.

0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
   Then everything vanished.

0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But this one [the tall white Being] is not of human origin; it was not formed in a human life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power. Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of Sri Aurobindos plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think its in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of its an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, its in Perseuswhen she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. Theres a description there that fits this Being quite well.3
   Besides, all the Greek gods are various aspects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way (turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4

0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But supposing one of those gods were to incarnate in the present world ... well, it wouldn't be much funhe would suffocate.
   Fun?... No, you see, they extend sufficiently beyond the limits of their bodies so as not to be suffocated.

0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So, when youre told become conscious of your psychic being, its for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide. Well, when I was a little child, this person (which wasnt a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but thats a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstancesits truly wonderful! I have seennot only for myself but for so many people who also had conscious psychic beings that everything is arranged with a view to not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call disastrous, are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.
   Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual powera luminous, conscious powerwhich has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, its trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power. Dont you feel a kind of luminous force?

0 1962-09-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In the middle of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo noted with prophetic force: The defeat of Germany could not of itself kill the spirit then incarnate in Germany; it may well lead merely to a new incarnation of it, perhaps in some other race or empire, and the whole battle would then have to be fought over again. So long as the old gods are alive, the breaking or depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.2 Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked Indias partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each others throats when the question of distribution of power arises. Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface. For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil.
   Ahimsa: nonviolence.

0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Another time, a fellow (there are some demented characters of that kind) had come from Australia: he was a teacher and had been given classes in the School. He started to preach unbelievable thingshe was God incarnate, you see! Until the day it began to be a pain in the neck. And he had declared he would stay here forever. People were annoyed, everyone was annoyed, they didnt know what to do. I was in my room here (it was three years ago, maybe four). I remember: I was sitting on my bed (at the time I used to work on my bed, over there), and I received a letter in which I was told in short, that it had become impossible, intolerable, that he could not be kept here. So I concentrated for a minute and Kali arrivedKali in her battling mood, a black, dancing Kali. I told her, Why dont you go on his head? (Laughing) She went and did her dance on his head the next day, he wrote he was leaving the Ashram. In this case, it was very clear: the day before, he had declared that he wouldnt budge, that he intended to stay here and continue his lessons, and that we would have to send him away forcibly for him to go (they had told me all this quite tearfully). Kalis dance convinced him he had better go!
   But all that, you see, its the play of the world. What is going on now is something else, altogether something else.

0 1967-04-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   "The sense of touch alone is fully developed (in the newborn). That allows it to remain in intimate contact with its mother and prolong the time of gestation, which is a period of intense development in the security of oneness. The least separation may cause an irreparable trauma, that 'fall on the head' which is the usual but abnormal condition of the newborn in civilized peoples. This is well-known to primitive peoples, where the mother keeps the naked child on her naked skin and never parts with it.... Until the other senses are specialized, it is chiefly through the surface of the skin that the child receives its education.... If one wants it to incarnate really, to be friends with matter, its body to become as intimate as its soul, one must invent for it a yoga of caresses and play." (It is worth noting that an attempt to put these alluring and specious theories into practice was to have catastrophic results, as we shall see later in the Agenda: the main effect of the said "caresses" is to attract into the child's body vital forces of a dark order, and "genii of sex" rather than anything else, are likely to be incarnated.)
   This is how Mother replied to the disciple who had sent her her study on the formation of the new child: "I have read your work with keen interestit deals with an important aspect of the problem. But a public presentation is impossible. Seeing and reading this, too many young girls would imagine they are destined to give birth to the 'solar child'that would be a disaster." Then Mother added: "In order to realize this work, one must have gone beyond all desire; and unfortunately, this is not generally the case as yet. Whereas ambition and vanity are rather widespread maladies."

0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And she is (is or will be, I dont know, that depends on the people she speaks to) the incarnation of You know that in the book The Mother, Sri Aurobindo said there was the Mothers aspect of Love, which hadnt yet incarnated because the world wasnt ready. And thats Y.7
   When you look at her you dont get that feeling.

0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Is it the supramental personality? Which will incarnate in all those who will have a supramental body?
   It was luminous, smiling, and so benevolent because of its POWER: I mean that generally, benevolence in the human being is something slightly weak, in the sense that it doesnt like battle, it doesnt like struggle but this wasnt like that at all! A benevolence that imposes itself (Mother brings her two fists down on the armrests of her chair).

0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So I told her that the whole artistic, athletic, even culinary organizations, and all others, are ready in the subtle physicalready to descend and incarnate-and I said, All that is needed is a little soil (gesture in the hollow of the hand), a little soil to let the plant grow. I said that to her, I am telling you because we have to find a little soil to let it grow. I dont know if she understood!
   (silence)

0 1971-03-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, but in itself it is the worst falsehood, because its impossibleits impossible: the world cannot disappear, you see. Thus, in itself it is Falsehood incarnate.
   (very long silence Mother sits looking)

0 1972-01-30, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world. Not only did he announce this manifestation, but he also partially incarnated the supramental force and gave us the example of what we must do to prepare ourselves for this manifestation. The best way for us is to study everything he told us, strive to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome all obstacles.
   Let us live for the new creation and we will become stronger and stronger, while remaining young and progressive.

0 1972-02-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A very strong impression that something new was manifesting in the world, and that all those who were ready and receptive could incarnate it.
   In a few days, probably, we will know what it was.

0 1972-03-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Note of February 22) "All day long on the 21st I had a strong feeling that it was everybody's birthday, and I felt an urge to say 'happy birthday' to everyone. A very strong impression that something new was manifesting in the world and that all those who were ready and receptive could incarnate it. In a few days, probably we will know what it was."
   ***

0 1972-08-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As in all tragedies in human History, there is not a particular person to blame. Humans only incarnate certain types of force or character they come, die, triumph and vanish but the forces remain and continue to animate millions and millions of unknown little humans here and there, who are silently responsible and the invisible actors in the drama. There is no one to put on trial hereexcept millions who are but ourselves. It would therefore be absurd to say that Pranab was the author, or the sole author, of that formation (Everywhere, there are wills that it [the body] should die! she said), but he certainly fostered it and transmitted it, and because he was physically present all the time, Mother had to brea the that horror constantly. Ultimately there remains this haunting question, the only one perhaps: Could it have been otherwise?
   ***

02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Here comes the second cardinal principle in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the reality, viz, that an inferior formulation of the Spirit, an involute on a lower plane is not essentially or truly, even in its outer and dynamic nature and character, a mere temporary or by-the-way reality, an epiphenomenon; its sole function is not simply to impede, diminish and obscure the real reality so that it has to be gradually rejected and eliminated on the way back to the source. As a matter of fact, an inferior formulation has a double function; in the line of descent it limits, obscures, deviates and in the end falsifies the higher reality; at the same time, however, it concretises, energises, incarnates what it obscures. But in the ascending line, that is to say, in the movement of reversal from the inferior to the superior, the movement need not be always that of disincarnation and dissolution, it may be that of purification and illumination and fulfilment. The analogy will not be, then, that of Matter being dematerialised into pure energy but that of Matter being transformed into a radiant substance, not losing itself in the process of radiation, being wholly made of the undying luminous stuff.
   Such a movement of transforming evolution is not merely a possibility or a probability: it is a fact of Nature. Indeed, natural evolution means nothing less than that. First of all, evolution means the reversibility of Nature; for, it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. We have said that the supreme truth and realitysat-cit-ananda, as it is calledmultiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and stages of a diminishing power of expression or an increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Supermind, the Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents,the farthest apparently from the original source, the movement turns round and seeks to go up the ladder through the same gradations it has traversed. But this process of reversal is not merely a resolution and dissolution, it is a process of greater fulfilment and synthetisation, of sublimation as well as of integration.
  --
   A mind that is not rigidly limited to the ratiocinative process, but has been remoulded in the light and rhythm of inspiration and intuition and revelation and other higher sources still beyond becomes at once a transfigured vessel, an apt instrument to incarnate and dynamise in the physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens, for example, in a poet or an artist. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in ills case is not annihilated or even kept in abeyance, but sublimated, undergoing a reorientation and reorganisation, acquiring a new magnitude. Even if there is a suspension of the ratiocinative faculty, it would not mean a suspension of the mental power in itself, but rather an enhancement in a new degree. The same may happen to the other parts and planes of human consciousness and existence.
   Of course, if one chooses, one can sidetrack these intervening ranges of consciousness between the Spirit and Matter, and strike something like a chord line between the two; but also one need not follow this bare straight ascetic line of ascension; one can pursue a wider, a circular or global movement which not only arrives but fulfils. The latter is Nature's method of activity, Nature being all reality. The exclusive line is meant for individuals, and even as such it has a value and sense in the global view, for this too is contri butory to the total urge and its total consummation.

02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This, then, is the nature of creation and its process. First, there is an Involution, a gradual foreshorteninga disintegration and concretisation, an exclusive concentration and self-oblivion of consciousness by which the various levels of diminishing consciousness are brought forth from the plenary light of the one supreme Spirit, all the levels down to the complete eclipse in the unconsciousness of the multiple and disintegrate Matter. Next, there is an Evolution, that is to say, embodiment in Matter of all these successive states, appearing one by one from the down most to the topmost; Matter incarnates, all other states contri bute to the incarnation and uphold it, the higher always transforming the lower in a new degree of consciousness.
   Creation, the universe in its activity, is thus not simply a meaningless play, a pointless fancy. It has a purpose, an end, a goal, a fulfilment, and it follows naturally a definite pattern of process. The goal is the concretisation, the materialisation (which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisation) of the Spirit and the spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals leading a divine life, individually and collectively here below.
  --
   Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human personality; as the consciousness in the human being rises higher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and higher a richer, wider, deeper personality. The first great conversion, the first turning of the human personality to a new mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally according to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its surface agents and vehicles is what is known as spiritual initiation. This may happen and it does happen even when man lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the possibility of growth and evolution and transformation of personality in higher and a higher spiritual degree through the upper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the Overmind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres, the fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff, the substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the upward drive within the developing and increasing psychic being itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and greater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated. The final coalescence of the fully and integrally developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from which it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment.
   The mystery of rebirth in the evolution of the human personality is nothing but the mystery of the developing psyche. At first this psyche or soul is truly a being: no bigger than the thumb it is the hardly audible still small voice. The experiences of lifesweet or bitter, happy or unhappy, good or bad, howsoever they may appear to the outward eye and perceptionall the dialectics of a terrestrial existence contri bute to the growth and development of the psychic consciousness. Each span of life means a special degree or mode of growth necessitated by the inner demand and drive of the divine Individual seated within the heart. The whole end in view of this secret soul is to move always towards and be united again with its Oversoul, its original and high archetype in the Divine Consciousness: the entire course of its earthly evolution is chalked out and patterned by the exact need of its growth. Whatever happens in each particular life, all the currents of all the lives converge and coalesce, and serve the psychic consciousness to swell in volume and intensity and be one with the Divine Consciousness. Or, in a different imagery, one can say that the multifarious experiences of various lives are as fuel to the Inner Firethis Psychic Agni which is just a spark or a thin tongue at the outset of the human evolutionary course; but with the addition of fuel from life to life this Fire flames up, indeed, becomes ultimately a conflagration that bums and purifies the entire outer vehicle and transforms it into radiant mattera fit receptacle, incarnation of the supernal Light. The mounting Fire (the consciousness-energy secreted in the earth-bound heart of Matter) finally flares up, discloses itself in its full amplitude and calls and attracts into it the incandescent supramental Solar Sphere which is the type and pattern it has to embody and express. This is the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of which the mystics all over the earth in all ages spoke and sangto which the Vedic Rishi refers when he declares:
  --
   We have spoken of four lines of Descent in the evolution and organisation of consciousness. There yet remains a fifth line. It is more occult. It is really the secret of secrets, the Supreme Secret. It is the descent of the Divine himself. The Divine, the supreme Person himself descends, not indirectly through emanations, projections, partial or lesser formulations, but directly in his own plenary self. He descends not as a disembodied force acting as a general movement, possessing, at the most, other objects and persons as its medium or instrument, but in an embodied form and in the fullness of his consciousness. The Indian word for Divine Incarnation, avatra, literally means he who has descended. The Divine comes down himself as a terrestrial being, on this material plane of ours, in order to raise the terrestrial and material Nature to a new status in her evolutionary courseeven so He incarnated as the Great Boar who, with his mighty tusk, lifted a solid mass of earth from out of the waters of the Deluge. It is his purpose to effect ascension of consciousness, a transmutation of being, to establish a truly New Order, a New Dharma, as it is termed dharmasamsthpanrthya. On the human level, he appears as a human person for two purposes. First of all, he shows, by example, how the ascension, the transmutation is to be effected, how a normal human being can rise from a lower status of consciousness to a higher one. The Divine is therefore known as the Lord of Yoga for Yoga is the means and method by which one consciously uplifts oneself, unites oneself with the Higher Reality. The embodied Divine is the ideal and pattern: he shows the path, himself walks the path and man can follow, if he chooses. The Biblical conception of the Son of GodGod made fleshas the intermediary between the human and the Divine, declaring, I am the Way and the Goal, expresses a very similar truth. The Divine takes a body for anotheroccultreason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changedchanged radically, that is to say, transformed by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status.
   The occult seers declare that we are today on the earth at such a crisis of evolution. Earth and Man and man's earthly life need to be radically transfigured. The trouble and turbulence, the chaos and confusion that are now overwhelming this earth, indicate the acute tension before the release, the dtente of a NEW MANIFESTATION.

02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The principle of Avatarhood stands justified in this scheme as a necessary and inevitable element in the terrestrial evolutionary movement. An Avatar embodies a new emergent property: he incarnates a new principle of being and consciousness, he manifestsunfolds from below or brings down from above upon eartha higher and deeper principle of organisation. He is the nucleus round which the new organisation crystallises. A Rama comes and human society attains a new status: against a mainly vitalistic and egoistic organisation whose defender and protagonist is Ravana, is set up an ideal of sattwic humanity. A Krishna appears and human consciousness is lifted, potentially at least, to a still higher level of spiritual possibility. The Avatar following, rather tracing, in his upward movement the central line of the evolutionary nisus, cuts a path, as it were, in the virgin forest of a realm of consciousness still unknown and foreign to human steps. As the Avatar presses and passes on, the way is cleared for other, ordinary human beings to come up and naturalise themselves in a new country promising a higher destiny which He discovers and conquers for them.
   Now at this point we reach the crux of the problem, the supreme secretrahasyam uttamamas the Gita would say. For the apex of the pyramid, the crown of evolution, the consummation of the central line of emergence would then be nothing less than the manifestation, the terrestrial incarnation of the Supreme Divine. The Deity thus fully emerged would embody the truth and play of creation in its widest scope and highest elevation; it would mean the utter fulfilment of human destiny and terrestrial Purpose.

02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Compelling, incarnate in a human form
  And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,

02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Some word that could incarnate highest Truth
  Leaped out from a chance tension of the soul,
  --
  Hold her incarnate in their daily acts
  And fill their thoughts with her inspired voice

02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A modern English poetRobert Graves -worships a White Goddess. But from the description he gives of the lady, she would appear to be more black than white; for she seems to be intimately connected with the affairs that is to say the mysteries of Hades and Hecate, underground worlds and midnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white sow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and lust in man.
   We in India have a dark god and a dark goddessKrishna and Kali. Krishna is dark, his is the deep blue of the sky. Kali is dark, hers is the blackness of the earthly night. The Vaishnava poet and saint sang:

02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   O friend, my country's friend, O voice incarnate, free,
   Of India's soul!1

03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
  Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.

03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
  The executor of the divine attempt

03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks, possessed almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising Sun, so fine and infallible an sthetic sensibility,not static or abstract, but of the dynamic kinduniformly successful in making out of their work-a-day life, even to its smallest accessories, a flawless object of art. It is a wonder to see in japan how, even an unlettered peasant, away in his rustic environment, chooses with unerring taste the site of his house, builds it to the best advantage, arranges everything about it in a faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the life of a Japanese is almost Art incarnate.
   Or take again the example of the British people. The practical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the business instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general diffusion, something that borders on the miraculous. Even their Shakespeare is reputed to have been very largely endowed with this national virtue. It is a faculty which has very little to do with calculation, or with much or close thinking, or with any laborious or subtle mental operationa quick or active mind is perhaps the last thing with which the British people can be accredited; this instinct of theirs is something spontaneous, almost aboriginal, moving with the sureness, the ruthlessness of nature's unconscious movements,it is a tact, native to the force that is life. It is this attribute which the Englishman draws from the collective genius of his race that marks him out from among all others; this is his forte, it is this which has created his nation and made it great and strong.
  --
   There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and the most popular names in Indian history are not names of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the gods, of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of the supreme realities beyond.
   The most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.

03.07 - Some Thoughts on the Unthinkable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Undivine means the obscure separativeness of the Ignorance, the darkness of Inferior Nature. The Divine, from his superior status, has cast himself down and is scattered and concretised as the ignorant creation, he has consented to be degraded and imbedded into Matter, in order to quicken Matter gradually, to illumine and transform it and invest it with the Divine's own glory. The whole dynamics of creation consists in the interaction of these two forces, one apparent and pragmatic and patent, the other behind and involved and latent. The elements and forces of the Ignorance, while they appear to move in the cycles of their inexorable Law, are gradually led by the stress of the involved Spirit, to evolve and change, and finally express and incarnate that which it now negates, that which is the Spirit unveiled in its pristine au thenticity.
   A day will come when it is the Divine that will reign upon earth, the Divine in his transcendent Delight and Knowledge and Power and Purity, and human life shall embody the Law of the Truth.

04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.
  Over her watched millennial influences

04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We may compare with profit perhaps in this regard the life of an individual person with that of a people or nation. Even as an individual has a soul beyond his body and mind, a spiritual personality behind his apparent name and form, a nation too has a soul apart from its political, economic and cultural life. As in the individual, in the aggregate too a spiritual principle seeks to express and incarnate itself. It is this immortal reality in the individual man that re incarnates in life after life surviving apparent death and disintegration. But only those individuals that live consciously a soul-life, express to some extent at least the soul's light in and through the external personality of a mind and body and vitality and maintain a true individuality and a strong and durable formation through the lives; otherwise, the soul is there no doubt, but in its own world, exerts only a very indirect influence and the rest of the personality, the dynamic members disintegrate and are taken up into the general earth atmosphere. Something of the same kind is likely to happen in the case of collective groups too. A nation like India that hitched her wagon of life to a star the supreme spiritual realityis bound to regain her life always through whatever calamities and catastrophes might befall her.
   One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths, in India's life history. They correspond roughly with the great racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists, what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the stone age, usually called proto-Dravidians, whose remnants are still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan avatar. One usually begins Indian history with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians the Tartars something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture and character. Psychologically the new leaven was brought in and injected by Gautama Buddha the un-Vedic Buddha the external invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and finally, most of all, from the British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own life-pattern and Weltanschauung. Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her mission in life. She is coming out of that ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life.
  --
   A nation, however, that has achieved something, created something, made a strong formation in the mental or in the vital world may die physically, but the formation, the creation, the achievement remains and continues to be alive in the terrestrial atmosphere, in the general consciousness of man. Ancient Greece is dead, Augustan Rome is gone, but the mind of light that Greece brought into play, the cast of social character that Rome established are among the permanent acquisitions of human culture and civilisation. They have gone into the making of the warp and woof of the standard human life today. Apart, however, from this general survival, could there be a reappearance of the very soul of a nation in another nation, in the same way as an individual soul re incarnates itself in another individual body? That question is asked, as sometimes it has been suggested, from certain significant and striking similarities, that ancient Greece incarnated in modern France and that there is a Roman stamp in the British nation. The possibility may not be altogether ruled out of court. But still it must be understood that the two phenomena are not quite identical, there is a difference in nature and kind. Rebirth in the sense of reincarnation is especially an individual phenomenon, the individual forming a divine centre, a focus of consciousness which the group is not; the group is more a field and a frame for the individual in spite of a conscious existence of its own.
   In any case, the revival or renaissance of a nationa collective consciousness and beingis quite possible, and the normal curve of lifebirth and growth and deathis not even for it the ineluctable destiny. For like the individual, the group too has that in it or the possibility of that in it which is akin, toan isotope of the soul or self, the immortal conscious being.

04.09 - To the Heights-I (Mahasarswati), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The incarnate Word
   Sri Aurobindo

04.10 - To the Heights-X, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The incarnate Word
   Sri Aurobindo

04.25 - To the Heights-XXV, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   is incarnated in this frail earthly vessel.
   A mighty secret is being wrought upon in the far depths -

05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Divine acts in three different ways in his three well-known aspects. As the transcendent Reality he is above and beyond creation, he is the Unmanifest, although he may hold within either involved or dissolved the entire manifestation. Next, he is the manifestation, the cosmic or the universal; he is one with creation, immanent in it, still its master and lord. Finally, he has an individual aspect: he is a Person with whom human beings can enter into relations of love and service. The Divine incarnate as a human being, is a special manifestation of the Individual Divine. Even then, as an embodied earthly person, he may act in a way characteristic of any of the three aspects. The Divine descended upon earth, as viewed by Sri Aurobindo, does not come in his transscendental aspect, fundamentally aloof and away, in his absolute power and consciousness, working miracles here; for transcendence can do nothing but that in the midst of conditions left as they are. Nor does he manifest himself only as his cosmic power and consciousness, imbedded in the creation and all-pervading, exercising his influence through the pressure of Universal Law, perhaps in a concentrated form, still working gradually, step by step, as though through a logical process, for the maintenance of the natural order and harmony, lokasagraha. God can be more than that, individualised in a special, even a human sense. His individual being can and does hold within itself his cosmic and transcendental self covertly in a way but overtly too in a singular manner at the same time. The humanised personality of the Divine with his special role and function is at the very centre of Sri Aurobindo's solution of the world enigma. The little poem A God's Labour in its short compass outlines and explains beautifully the grand Mystery.
   The usual idea of God (as the theists hold, for example) is that he is an infinite eternal impassible being, aloof from human toils and earthly turmoils, himself untouched by these and yet, in and through them, directing the world for an inscrutable purpose, unless it is for leaning towards it and stretching out the hand of Grace to those of the mortals who wish to come out of the nightmare of life, sever the coils of earthly existence. But the Divine in order to be and remain divine need not hold to his seat above and outside the creation, severely separated from his creatures. He can, on the contrary, become truly the ordinary man and labour as all others, yet maintaining his divinity and being conscious of it. After all, is not man, every human being, built in the same pattern, a composite of the earthly human element supported and infused by a secret divine element? However, God, the individual Divine, does become man, one of them and one with them. Only, his labour thereby increases manifold, hard and heavy, although for that very reason full of a bright rich multiple promise. The Divine's self-hurilanisation has for it a double purpose: (I) to show man by example how he can become what he truly is, how he can divinise himself: the Divine as man lives out the life of a sadhakawholly and completely; (2) to help concretely by his own force of consciousness the world and man in their endeavour for progress and evolution, to give the help wholly and completely from the innermost status of the self down to the most external physical body and the material field. This help again is a twofold function. The first is to make available, gather within easy reach, the high realisations, the spiritual treasures that are normally stored in a heaven somewhere else. The Divine Man brings down the divine attributes close to our earth, turns them from mere far possibilities into near probabilities, even imminent realities. They are made part and parcel, constituent elements of the earthly atmosphere, so that one has only to open one's mouth to brea the in, extend one's arms to seize and possess them: even to this opening and this gesture man is helped by the concrete touch and presence of the Divine. Further, the help and succour come in another way which is more intimate, more living and appealing to man.
  --
   The Divine incarnates, as an individual in the concrete material actuality, this double aspect of the utter truth and reality. There are, what may be called, intermediary incarnations, some representing powersaspects of the Divinein the higher mental or overmental levels of consciousness, others those of the inner heart, yet others again those of the dynamic vital consciousness. But the integral Divine, he who unites and reconciles in his body the highest height and the lowest depth, who has effectuated in him something like the "marriage of Heaven and Hell" is an event of the futureeven perhaps of the immediate future. The descent into hell is an image that has been made very familiar to man, but all its implications have not been sounded. For what we were made familiar with was more or less an image of hell, not hell itself, a region or experience in the vital (may be even in the mental): real hell is not the mass of desires or weaknesses of the flesh, not "living flesh", but dead Matter whose other name is Inconscience. In the older disciplines the central or key truth, the heart of reality where the higher and the lowerBrahman and Maya, the Absolute and the Contingency, the One and the Many, God and the Worldmet and united in harmony was bypassed: one shot from below right into the supreme Absolute; the matrix of truth-creation was ignored. Even so, at the other end, the reality of brute matter was not given sufficient weight, the spiritual light disdained to reach it (vijigupsate).
   The integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight, for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a foreign country; he comes to his own,only he seeks to rebuild it on another scale, the scale of unity and infinity, instead of the present scale of separativism and finiteness. He comes among men not simply because he is' moved by human miseries; he is no extra-terrestrial person, a bigger human being, but is himself this earth, this world, all these miseries; he is woven into the fabric of the universe, he is the warp and woof that constitute creation. It is not a mere movement of sympathy or benevolence that actuates him, it is a total and absolute identification that is the ground and motive of his activity. When he assumes the frame of mortality, it is not that something outside and totally incongruous is entering into him, it is part and parcel of himself, it is himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and self-illumination, self-discipline and selfrealisation. Also, the horrors of material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity, naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation, are encompassed in his human embodiment. It is the energy of his own consciousness that brought out or developed even this erring earth from within it: that same energy is now available, stored up in the individual formation, for the recreation of that earth. The advent and acceptance of material existence meant, as a kind of necessity in a given scheme of divine manifestation, the appearance and play of Evil, the negation of the very divinity. Absolute Consciousness brought forth absolute unconsciousness the inconscientbecause of its own self-pressure, a play of an increasingly exclusive concentration and rigid objectivisation. That same consciousness repeats its story in the individual incarnation: it plunges into the material life and matter and identifies itself with Evil. But it is then like a pressed or tightened spring; it works at its highest potential. In other words, the Divine in the body now works to divinise the body itself, to make of the negation a concrete affirmation. The inconscient will be embodied consciousness.
   The humanist said, Nothing human I reckon foreign to me," In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of the integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that obscure "gravitational" mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated bodyall and more and to the highest degreeinto a crucible as it were, and works out there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares also each other's burden in some way, for all are interconnected in lifeaction at one point has a reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary mortal would break under a greater pressure. It is the Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of earthly inconscience.
   Suffering, incapacity and death are, it is said, the wages of earthly life; but they are, in fact, reverse aspects of divine truths. Whatever is here below has its divine counterpart above. What appears as matter, inertia, static existence here below is the devolution of pure Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of what they really are.

05.02 - Satyavan, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In these great spirits now incarnate here
  Love brought down power out of eternity

05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The stress of Life is to reveal and incarnate more and more of the dynamic Divine, the creative Ananda of consciousness in its self-nature.
   The progress of art too consists in recording this march of the soul in its ever-growing consciousness and ever-deepening Ananda towards a higher incarnation of the Divine.

05.05 - Man the Prototype, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Indeed, all the luminaries of heaven have each its conscious personality, the planets, the moon and above all the great sun. It is not a fancy or idle imagination that made the astrologers ascribe definite influences to these heavenly bodies. In Hindu astrology, for example, they are considered as real persons, each with a definite form and character, a dhyna rpa. The so-called Nature-gods in the Vedas or in ancient mythology generally are in the same way not creations of mere poetic imagination: they are realities, more real in a sense than the real objects that represent and incarnate them.
   Not only so. Our limited mind and senses are accustomed to view and recognise individuals alone as persons. But there are group personalities too. Thus each species has a generic personality, a consciousness and an ideal or intrinsic form also: the individuals on the physical plane are its various incarnations, projections and formations. Old Plato was not so naive, as we of today are apt to believe, when he spoke of the real reality of general ideas. The attributes, qualities and functions of the generic personality are the source and pattern of what the individuals that form the group actually are. The group person is the king, he is also the body of the Dharma ruling the domain. Any change in the law of being of the group person is necessarily translated in a similar change in the nature and activity of the individuals of the species. What evolutionists describe as sudden variation or mutation and whose cause or genesis they are at a loss to trace, is precisely due to an occult change in the consciousness and will of the group soul.

05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   To go beyond all the dharmas of this threefold Lower Nature, attain to the Truth-Consciousness of the Fourth Status, incarnate in all that we are, know, will, feel and do the Law or Dharma of the Spirit and of the Spirit alone, is what we mean by Spirituality.
   ***

05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   First then there are the supreme divinities, aspects or own personalities of the Divine in his supreme status, the Super-mind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body.
   Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as a point of luminous consciousness-force. This soul, as it develops, we find, belongs to one or other of the fundamental type of divine personality, it is a lineal descendant, as it were, of one of the quaternary and its growth means growing into the nature of that particular godhead and its fulfilment means identification with that.

05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The truth of the personality is not to be found in its horizontal, but vertical dimension. The Existentialist speaks of the existence (standing out) of the human person as a transcendence. But real transcendence is not so much in coming out as in going up and beyond. To be outside oneself is not always to transcend oneself: to be above oneself is the real transcendence. Man is a true and free person only when he is lord of Prakriti, dominating and commanding Nature, when he is identified with Ishwara, the supreme Person, the Master, and becomes an incarnate will and consciousness of His. The soul in ignorance and in ignorant relation with others must rise and envisage its archetype in the Supreme Divine, as a free formulation of an Idea-Force of the Infinite.
   If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of the reality, the law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.

06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A retri bution smites the incarnate God.
  His love has paved the mortal's road to Heaven:

06.24 - When Imperfection is Greater Than Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Therefore the Mother says in her Prayers and Meditations that having gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify herself with ignorance and obscurity, so much so that even the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness the conscient and the inconscientwas for a time obliterated. Naturally, the inmost being in its inner self remained always calm, luminous, inviolable, but it put around itself this body of ordinary nature to meet its ordinary reactions and through them gradually to uplift and train it to manifest and incarnate the inmost divine.
   The gods are perfect; but it is said, they have to become men, come down upon earth and assume human proportions that is, imperfections,if they wish to progress further, attain still higher levels of consciousness. For, the gods are perfect each in his own limited and well-defined and therefore unchangeable type; but man means an aspiring soul, that is to say, infinityhis very imperfection is a sign and symbol of ever greater possibility; the fluidity of his nature means an opportunity.

06.31 - Identification of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Another instance will show another kind of identification. It is an experience to which I have often referred. I was seated, drawn in and meditating. I felt that my physical body was I dissolving or changing: it was becoming wider and wider, losing its human characters and taking gradually the shape of a globe. Arms, legs, head were no longer there: it became spherical, having exactly the form of the earth. I felt I had become the earth. I was the earth in form and substance and all terrestrial objects were in me, animals and people, living and moving in me, trees and plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate.
   But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere I or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree.

06.36 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And yet there is a compulsion. It is the secret pressure of one's own nature that drives it forward through all vicissitudes back again to its original source. When it is said that the Divine Grace can and should do all, it means nothing more and nothing less than that: the Divine Grace only accelerates the process of return and recognition. But on the side of the journeying element, the soul, there must be awakened a conscious collaboration, an initial consent and a constantly renewed adhesion. It is this that brings out, at least helps to establish outside on the physical level, the force that is already and has always been at work within and on the subtler and higher levels. That is the pattern of the play, the system of conditions under which the game is carried out. The Grace works and incarnates in and through a body of willing and conscious collaborators; these become themselves part and parcel of the Force that works.
   The truth I bring will manifest itself and will be embodied upon earth; for, it is the earth's and world's inevitable destiny. The question of time is not relevant. In one respect the truth which I say will be made manifest is already fully manifest, is already realised and established: there is no question of time there. It is in a consciousness timeless or eternally present. There is a process, a play of translation between that timeless poise and the poise in time that we know here below. The measure of that hiatus is very relative, relative to the consciousness that measures, long or short according to the yardstick each one brings. But that is not the essence of the problem: the essence is that the truth is there active, in the process of materialisation, only one should have the eye to see it and the soul to greet it.

07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Command was incarnate in his gesture and tone;
  Tradition's petrified wisdom carved his speech,

07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
  And the calm autocracy of the sage's rule.

07.32 - The Yogic Centres, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And yet it is not an impossibility. Not only is it not impossible, we have to make it possible. Not only so, man's destiny demands that it should be inevitable. If man is to be a transformed being, if he is to incarnate here below something of the Divine Reality, if his social life on earth is to be the expression of the light and harmony of the Spirit Consciousness, then he has to descend into these nether regions, break open the nethermost as he has done in regard to the uppermost and unite the two.
   Here is a curious story about man and his destiny. What is he, the normal man? He is a slave, a bond slave. He may have the illusion that he has ideas and movements, his own, he has even free scope to put them to execution. But it will not take long to discover that it is an illusion, a great deception. His plans do not mature, his efforts beat an iron wall. The more he observes and sees things squarely he finds that he is bound hand and foot. He is driven by forces and things over which he has no control whatsoever. He is a slave to circumstances; he is checked by the will of others. His own will has no power or scope; it is wholly ineffectual. He feels more and more a great burden pressing upon the back of the head bending it down, a heavy weight lies upon his shoulders. He somehow trudges on like a beast of burden. He has no free choice or will; his wishes and desires are not consulted. He is driven helplessly on.

07.36 - The Body and the Psychic, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   You must note here that when I speak of a formation entering into a living person, the formation does not mean the man himself who is dead, that is to say, his soul or psychic being. I say that it is only a special faculty which continues to remain in the earth atmosphere, even after the death of the man to whom the faculty belonged: it was so well developed, well formed that it continues to retain its independent identity. The soul, the true being of the man is no longer there; I have told you often that after death it goes away as soon as possible to the psychic world, its own world, for rest, assimilation and preparation. Not that it cannot happen otherwise. A soul incarnating as a great musician may incarnate again in or as a great musician, although I said in another connection that a soul usually prefers to vary, even to contrast and contradict its incarnations with each other. Take for example, the great violinist, Isai; he was a Belgian and the most marvellous violinist of his century. I knew him and I am sure he was an incarnation, at least, an emanation, of the soul that was the great Beethoven. It may not have been the whole psychic being that so re incarnated, but the soul in its musical capacity. He had the same appearance, the same head. When I saw him first appearing on the stage I was greatly surprised, I said to myself, he looks so like Beethoven, the very portrait of that great genius. And then he stood, the bow poised, one stroke and there were in it three or four notes only, but three or four supreme notes, full of power, greatness and grandeur; the entire hall was charged with an atmosphere marvellous and unique. I could recognise very well the musical genius of Beethoven behind. It may be possible here too the soul of Beethoven in its entirety the whole psychic beingwas not present; the central psychic might have been elsewhere gathering more modest, commonplace experiences, as a shoemaker, for example. But what was left and what manifested itself was something very characteristic of the great musician. He had disciplined his mental and vital being and even his physical being in view of his musical capacity and this formation remained firm and sought to re incarnate. The musical being was originally organised and fashioned around the psychic consciousness and therefore it acquired its peculiar power and its force of persistence, almost an immortality. Such formations, though not themselves the psychic being, have a psychic quality, are independent beings, possess their own life and seek their fulfilment by manifesting and incarnating themselves whenever the occasion presents itself.
   Can a Psychic Being take two bodies at the same time?
   The matter is not so simple. I have told you often that the psychic being is the result of an evolution, that is to say, it is the expression of the divine consciousness that has entered and spread itself into Matter and slowly raises Matter and develops it so that it may return to the Divine. The psychic being is formed progressively by the divine centre through many lives or incarnations. There comes a time when it attains a kind of perfection, the perfection of its growth and formation. It has then often an aspiration towards greater realisation, a further progress to manifest better or further the Divine. As the result of this pull, it generally draws towards itself a being of a higher order, from a higher plane, from the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, a being of involution who incarnates in the psychic being. These overmental entities are termed gods and divinities by men. Now when the fusion takes place, of a god into a psychic being, the latter naturally increases in stature and partakes of the nature of the god and acquires also the capacity to produce emanations; that is to say it throws out of itself a part which possesses an independent existence and can incarnate in others. In this way there may be not only two but several emanations or projections of the same original being. In other words, there may be a single psycho-divine origin but many personalities coming out of it. That is how it happens sometimes that different people feel a sort of affinity and even identity, and with reason, because they carry within them the same deity, out of which they, that is, their psychic being came. It is not the same thing as the doubling of the personality where in throwing oneself out of oneself one loses a portion, as when you cut a body into two: there are only two halves. Here the projection is a whole and independent personality. If you emanate a being out of you, you remain whole and entire without losing anything of yourself and the emanation too is a being whole and entire living its independent life.
   II

07.37 - The Psychic Being, Some Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There are two kinds of progress in the psychic and they are very different. One consists in its formation and building and organisation; for the psychic begins by being only a little divine spark hidden in the inner person and out of this spark comes and gradually develops an independent conscious person who has his own will and activity. As I say, the psychic being is originally like a spark from the divine consciousness: it grows into a conscious individuality through the experiences of successive lives. This progress then is like the progress of the growing child. It is a thing in formation and it remains so for a long time in most human beings. It is not a fully individualised being there, not fully conscious and master of itself; it needs many births, one after another, to build itself and become fully conscious. In the end, however, there does come a time when it is a completed personality, fully individualised, fully conscious of itself and its destiny. When such a psychic being incarnates in a human being, it makes a great difference. For the man is born free, so to say, he is not bound to his circumstances, his surroundings or his origin or atavism, like ordinary people. When he comes upon earth, he feels he has a work to do in the world, he has a mission to fulfil. To that extent then his cycle of progress is completed, that is to say, he has no more need to take birth in a body to make further progress. Till then rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is through reincarnation i.e. by taking up a new body that he progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being. But once it is fully formed, it is free either to take birth or not to do so at will. There then one kind of progress comes to an end. But if the fully formed being now wishes to become an instrument for the work of the Divine, if it chooses to be a worker upon earth to help in the fulfilment of the cosmic purpose of the Divine, instead of going away and resting in the psychic bliss of its own world, then he has to make a new kind of progress, a progress towards capacity to work, to organise and execute the work, to express and embody the will of the Divine. As long as the world continues, as long as he chooses to work for the Divine, he will continue to progress. But if he wishes to withdraw into the psychic world and gives up or refuses to work for the divine Plan, then he can remain in the static state beyond the range of progress. For, as I have said, progress exists only upon earth in the physical world. You cannot progress everywhere. In the psychic world there is a kind of blissful repose. You remain what and where you are without moving.
   Everything upon earth progresses, has to progress. All men, without exception, even those who have no sense of the psychic, whether they wish it or not, must progress. The psychic progresses in them in spite of themselves and they have to follow the curve of its growth and development. That is to say, man ascends in the scale of life and grows, grows exactly as a child does. In the process of growth there comes a time when one reaches the summit and one changes the direction or the plane of progress. At the outset there is the purely physical progress, like that of the child; then there comes the mental progress, later on the psychic progress and the spiritual progress, so that unless progress changes it direction, when it has reached its limit on a particular level, one has to come down the curve, that is to say, instead of progression there will be retrogression, which means in the end disintegration and decomposition. Precisely because in the purely physical world there cannot be a perpetual and constant progress, there is in this domain this curve of growth, apogee, decline and decomposition. All that does not advance must recede. This is exactly what happens in the domain of matter. Matter does not know how to progress indefinitely, it has not learnt it; so after a time it is tired of progressing or growing. Given this constitution, one cannot go beyond a limit. But there is in man side by side with his physical growth, a vital growth and a mental growth as well. The mental especially can progress long after the body has ceased to progress. The body does not grow; even when it is declining, the mind still can continue to grow, to rise to higher heights. There is a mental ascension contrariwise to the physical descent. But they who do Yoga, who become conscious of their psychic being and are identified with it, who live with its life, never cease to progress, they move upward till the last breath of their life; even when they die their progress does not stop. The body is on the decline, because it cannot keep pace with the inner march forward, it cannot transform itself and mould itself into the rhythm of the inner consciousness. The discrepancy increases so much between the two, that there is a snap at the end and that is death. However, on the purely spiritual level too there is no progress. The domain of the pure spirit means a static condition; there is no progressive movement there, for it is beyond the field of progress, beyond all manifestation. For when you are merged in the Spirit, you have come out of creation and there is no question of progress, or even of any movement.

07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In ancient times, in the great ages, in Greece, for example or even during the Italian Renaissance, particularly, however, in Greece and in Egypt, they erected buildings, constructed monuments for the sake of public utility. Their buildings were meant for the most part to be temples, sanctuaries to lodge their gods and deities. What they had in view was something total, whole and entire, beautiful and complete in itself. That was the purpose of architecture embodying the harmony of sweeping and majestic lines: sculpture was a part of architecture supplying details of expression and even painting came up to complete the expression: but the whole held together in a coordinated unity which was the monument itself. The sculpture was for the monument, the painting was for the monument; it was not that each was separate from the other and existed for itself and one did not know why it was there. In India, when a temple was being built, for example, what was aimed at was a total creation, all the parts combined to give effect to one end, to make a beautiful vesture for God, the one object of their adoration. All the great epochs of art were of this kind. But in modern times, in the latter part of the last century, Art' became a matter of business. A painting was done in order to be sold. You do your paintings, put each one in a frame and place them side by side or group them, that is, lump them together without much reason. The same with regard to sculpture. You make a statue and set it up anywhere without any connection whatsoever with the surroundings. It is always something foreign, extraneous in its setting, like a mushroom or a parasite. The thing in itself may not be quite ugly, but it is out of place, it is not part of an organic whole. We exhibit art today. Indeed, it is exhibitionism, it is the showing off of cleverness, talent, skill, virtuosity. A piece of architecture does not incarnate a living force as it used to do once upon a time. It is no longer the expression of an aspiration, of something that uplifts the spirit nor the expression of the magnificence of the Divine whose dwelling it is meant to be. You build houses here and there pell-mell or somehow juxtaposed without any coordinating idea governing them, without any relation to the environment where they are situated. When you enter a house, it is the same thing. A bit of painting here, a bit of sculpture there, some objects of art in one corner, a few others in another. Yes, it is an exhibition, a museum, a kaleidoscopic collection. It gives a shock to the truly sensitive artistic taste.
   I do not say that a museum is not necessary or useful. It is a good means of education, that is to say, getting information about what other people or other epochs did. It is an aid to the historic knowledge of things. But it is far from being artistic. A museum is not the place where art can find its highest or its true expression. There is an art which seeks to coordinate, integrate distinct, discrete, contrary objects. It is called decorative art. And in so far as this art is successful, we are a step forward even in these days towards true art.

09.03 - The Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But that has an end. There comes a moment when the being is fully built up fully individualised, fully master of itself and its destiny. When one such psychic being incarnates in a human body, it makes a great difference. This human being is, so to say, born free; he is not bound to circumstances or surroundings or heredity like ordinary human beings. He comes into the world and he has the impression that he has come purposely to accomplish something, he has a work to do, a mission to fulfil.
   From that point of view the progress of his growth has ended. That is to say, it is no longer necessary for him to be reborn in a body. Till then reincarnation was obligatory. For it is in the physical life and in the physical body that he grows little by little until he becomes a wholly conscious being. But once he is completely formed, he is free, in the sense that he can, at will, take a body or not take it.
   When a psychic being incarnates, it precipitates itself down into the inconscience, because the physical world and even a human consciousness, whatever it may be, are very unconscious in comparison with the psychic consciousness. It is as if it fell on its head and it is stunned. Generally, but for some rare exceptions, for a long time it knows nothing; it does not know where it is, what it does, nor why it is there, nothing. It is in a great difficulty to express itself, especially in a baby who has not a brain but only the embryo of a brain. So it is very rare for a child to show that it contains within itself an exceptional being. That happens, but generally it takes time.
   The psychic awakes slowly from its dazed condition and slowly it becomes aware that it is there for some reason and by choice. But the intensive mental education that one usually receives shuts out completely the psychic consciousness. Then a mass of circumstances, happenings of all kinds, emotions and sensations and various other things are needed to open the inner doors and to enable one to begin to rememberremember that one has come from another world, one has come for a very definite reason. If the psychic however had chanced to fall upon a little knowledge instead of falling into a world of ignorance, there could have been a quicker contact.

09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is this marvellous state that we wish to realise upon earth. It is this that will be able to transform the world, make of it a dwelling place worthy of the divine Presence. And then only Love, true and pure, will incarnate in a body that will no longer be a disguise or a veil. That is why no effort is too arduous, no austerity too rigorous to illumine, perfect, transform the physical substance so that it no more hides the Divine, when the Divine takes an external form through Love. For, then there will be freely manifested in the world that marvellous divine Kindness that can change life into a paradise of the sweetest delight.
   The Divine Love is there with all its intensity, with all its tremendous power. But most people do not feel anything. What they feel is exactly proportionate to what they are and what they are capable of receiving.

10.01 - Cycles of Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   At the present time the human consciousness in general has been so prepared and its dwelling and playfield the earth consciousness made ready to such a degree that it has been possible for the still secreted higher perfection to enter into the arena. The evolution, the growth has been a gradual expression and revelation of the light, the consciousness in a higher and higher degree of purity and potency through an encasement hard and resistant at first but gradually yielding to the impact of the higher status and even transforming itself so as to become its instrument and embodiment. We speak of the present situation, we are concerned with man and what he is to grow into or bring out of himself. Here also there seem to be stages or cycles of creation leading to the final achievement. The whole burden of the present endeavour is how to transcend, transform or modify the animalhood which is the basis of humanity even now and in and through which man is growing and seeking to manifest and incarnate his superior potencies. Man's supramental destiny means that he totally outgrows the animal, outgrows even his manhood in so far as it is merely human; for he has to incorporate the principle of the supramental which wholly transcends the mental.
   The first step in this momentous movement has been taken, the first act achieved, for the supramental is now here established in the earth's atmosphere and is already percolating into general human consciousness. It is no longer a far-off object residing away in its own home, its higher transcendent status, but a concrete reality as something like earth's own. It is at work in this material envelope, this animal encasing of humanity and is vigorously transforming, demolishing and building, preparing the new structure.

10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Therefore one more step has to be taken when the Divine Love will incarnate in its integral and absolute reality upon this physical earth in a concretely material frame.
   ***

10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I incarnate Wisdom in an earthly breast,
  I am his conquering and unslayable will.

10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And leave the path of my incarnate Force.
  Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask:

1.00b - Introduction, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Therefore only people endowed with exceptional faculties, a poor preferred minority seemed to be able to gain this sublime knowledge. Thus a great many of serious seekers of the truth had to go through piles of books just to catch one pearl of it now and again. The one, however, who is earnestly interested in his progress and does not pursue this sacred wisdom from sheer curiosity or else is yearning to satisfy his own lust, will find the right leader to initiate him in this book. No incarnate adept, however high his rank may be, can give the disciple more for his start than the present book does. If both the honest trainee and the attentive reader will find in this book all they have been searching for in vain all the years, then the book has fulfiled its purpose completely.
  The Author.

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  Here again we can trace the microcosmic correspondence: In the human being the centres are found on the mental plane from which originates the impulse for physical plane existence, or the will to incarnate; from thence they can be traced to the astral level, and eventually to the etheric levels, to the fourth ether, where they practically go through the same evolution that the planetary centres went through, and are instrumental in bringing about objectivity,being the force centres.
  The centres are formed entirely of streams of force, pouring down from the Ego, who transmits it from the Monad. In this we have the secret of the gradual vibratory quickening of the centres as the Ego first comes into control, or activity, and later (after initiation) the Monad, thus bringing about changes and increased vitality within these spheres of fire or of pure life force.
  --
  a. The Heavenly Men. The Heavenly Men, in Themselves, embody centres just as does a human being, and on Their Own plane these centres of force can be found. Again we need to recollect that these centres of force on cosmic levels, and in manifestation in the objective system, demonstrate as the great force centres of which any particular group of adepts and Their pupils are the exponents. Every group of Masters and all the human beings incarnate or discarnatewho are held within the periphery of Their consciousness are centres of force of some particular kind or quality. This is a fact generally recognised, but students should be urged to link up this fact with the information imparted on the centres of the human being, and see if much is not thereby learnt. These centres of force will demonstrate on etheric levels and on the subtler planes just as they do in a man, and they will be vivified as are the human centres by planetary kundalini, progressing in the desired triangles.
  Two hints can here be given for thoughtful consideration. In connection with one of the Heavenly Men (which one cannot at this juncture be pointed out) we have one triangle of force to be seen in the following three centres:

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  to incarnate. [The most ancient Vedanta] is the best previ-
  ous foundation of that which we seek now to rebuild and

1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  transcends this world, incarnated by the buddhas and
  bodhisattvas, can give us. Particularly, the activity of

10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Divine has lost itself in pulverising itself, scattering itself abroad. Immortality is thus entombed here below in death. The task of the incarnate Supreme Consciousness is to revive the death-bound divinity, to free the human consciousness in its earthly life from the obscurity of the material unconsciousness, re-install it in its original radiant status of the Divine Consciousness.
   Such is Savitri's mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. Savitri, the human embodiment was given only twelve months out of her earthly life and in that short space of time she had to do all the preparation. She knew her work from her very birth, she was conscious of her nature and the mission she was entrusted with. Now she is facing the crisis. Death is there standing in front. What is to be done, how is she to proceed? She was told she is to conquer Death, she is to establish immortal life upon mortal earth. The Divine Voice rings out:
  --
   Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.
   Here begins then the second stage of her mission,her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilation. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri:

1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Anyone and everyone cannot be a guru. A huge timber floats on the water and can carry animals as well. But a piece of worthless wood sinks, if a man sits on it, and drowns him. Therefore in every age God incarnates Himself as the guru, to teach humanity. Satchidananda alone is the guru.
  "What is knowledge? And what is the nature of this ego? 'God alone is the Doer, and none else' - that is knowledge. I am not the doer; I am a mere instrument in His hand.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  representation to incarnate themselves in dramatic form on the private stage of individual imagination.
  Much of the information derived from a story is actually already contained in episodic memory. In a sense,
  --
  personifications of subjective affective or emotional states or drives; as the incarnated form of subjective
  experience. The term personification, however, implies a voluntary act connotes the conscious use of
  --
  object, that simultaneously gives and takes away. The positive aspect of the unknown, incarnated as the
  many-breasted Greco-Roman Goddess Diana, or Artemis mistress of the animals is portrayed in Figure
  --
  the ever-resurrecting wheaten wafer), is the container of the incarnated spirit of the dying, reborn and
  redemptive deity. This body is ritually devoured that is, incorporated to aid the ritual participants in
  --
  into something limited but actual. He is manner incarnate, ruling all social interactions.
  Figure 42: Explored Territory as Orderly, Protective Father 353 presents the Great Father as wise King,

1.02 - Priestly Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own
  person, then he need appeal to no higher being; he, the savage,

1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  personal and defined reality of the Word incarnate, in which
  everything acquires consistence, appears and takes its place.
  --
  World in the Word incarnate: indirecdy, in the degree in which the
  heart of a collective Mankind increasingly turned inward upon it-

1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  place in history to incarnate. Moreover, it may be said that,
  because of their love for humanity and because of their ava-
  --
  ly incarnate a portion (amsha) of a particular god. On the
  6th of November he warned that his words should be un-
  --
  beginning to happen. I asked all those gods to incarnate, to
  identify themselves with a body [on earth]. Some of them
  --
  the humans and the incarnated gods, leading up to a world
  perhaps resembling Sri Krishnas goloka, in other words a
  --
  direct participation of the gods, some of them incarnated in
  terrestrial bodies, a new religion would have been found-

1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Avatar, his protagonist in an immense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known only to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct.
  India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Mahayana Buddhism teaches these same metaphysical doctrines in terms of the Three Bodies of Buddha the absolute Dharmakaya, known also as the Primordial Buddha, or Mind, or the Clear Light of the Void; the Sambhogakaya, corresponding to Isvara or the personal God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and finally the Nirmanakaya, the material body, in which the Logos is incarnated upon earth as a living, historical Buddha.
  Among the Sufis, Al Haqq, the Real, seems to be thought of as the abyss of Godhead underlying the personal Allah, while the Prophet is taken out of history and regarded as the incarnation of the Logos.
  --
  Coming as it does from a devout Catholic of the Counter-Reformation, this statement may seem somewhat startling. But we must remember that Olier (who was a man of saintly life and one of the most influential religious teachers of the seventeenth century) is speaking here about a state of consciousness, to which few people ever come. To those on the ordinary levels of being he recommends other modes of knowledge. One of his penitents, for example, was advised to read, as a corrective to St. John of the Cross and other exponents of pure mystical theology, St. Gertrudes revelations of the incarnate and even physiological aspects of the deity. In Oliers opinion, as in that of most directors of souls, whether Catholic or Indian, it was mere folly to recommend the worship of God-without-form to persons who are in a condition to understand only the personal and the incarnate aspects of the divine Ground. This is a perfectly sensible attitude, and we are justified in adopting a policy in accordance with itprovided always that we clearly remember that its adoption may be attended by certain spiritual dangers and disadvantages. The nature of these dangers and disadvantages will be illustrated and discussed in another section. For the present it will suffice to quote the warning words of Philo: He who thinks that God has any quality and is not the One, injures not God, but himself.
  Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.

1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
  [paragraph continues] This cannot be otherwise if ordinary language is used, for this language was created to suit physical conditions. Spiritual science describes that which, for clairvoyant organs, flows from the stone, as blue, or blue-red; and that which is felt as coming from the animal as red or red-yellow. In reality, colors of a spiritual kind are seen. The color proceeding the plant is green which little by little turns into a light ethereal pink. The plant is actually that product of nature which in higher worlds resembles, in certain respects, its constitution in the physical world. The same does not apply to the stone and the animal. It must now be clearly understood that the above-mentioned colors only represent the principal shades in the stone, plant and animal kingdom. In reality, all possible intermediate shades are present. Every stone, every plant, every animal has its own particular shade of color. In addition to these there are also the beings of the higher worlds who never incarnate physically, but who have their colors, often wonderful, often horrible. Indeed, the wealth of color in these higher worlds is immeasurably greater than in the physical world.
   p. 54

1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
  nally realized that I am truly the heir of the Buddha, born from the mouth of the Buddha, incarnated from the Dharma, and that I have inherited a part of the Buddha-Dharma.
  Then riputra, wanting to elaborate this meaning, spoke again in verse:

1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  many cases, they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary
  to resemble a mythical model.370
  --
  example, allows the individual who incarnates that profession opportunity for meaningful activity in a
  manner that supports or at least does not undermine the stability of the historically-determined structure
  --
  evolution of man. Cultural structure, incarnated intrapsychically, originates in creative action, imitation of
  such action, integration of action and imitated action constitutes adaptive action and representation of

1.03 - Fire in the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  forth incarnate.
  Through our thoughts and our human experi-
  --
  by right you are incarnate in the world, and we are
  all of us dependent upon you. But in fact you are

1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophyin Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos.
  When goodness grows weak,
  --
  In other words there must be imitation of Christ before there can be identification with the Father; and there must be essential identity or likeness between the human spirit and the God who is Spirit in order that the idea of imitating the earthly behaviour of the incarnate Godhead should ever cross anybodys mind. Christian theologians speak of the possibility of deification, but deny that there is identity of substance between spiritual Reality and the human spirit. In Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, as also among the Sufis, spirit and Spirit are held to be the same substance; Atman is Brahman; That art thou.
  When not enlightened, Buddhas are no other than ordinary beings; when there is enlightenment, ordinary beings at once turn into Buddhas.

1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  become depersonalized, incarnates, during the period of his epochal action, the
  dynamism of the culture process; "between himself as a fact and the other facts

1.03 - The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Only when men depend exclusively on the Divine and on nothing else, will it no longer be necessary for the incarnate god to die for them.
  2 August 1952

1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  In Malkus, the lowest of the Sephiros, the sphere of the physical world of matter, wherein incarnate the exiled
  Neschamos from the Divine Palace, there abides the

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  out a given wall, the more implicit its structure that is, the more it is incarnated in behavior and
  image, rather than explicit in word. Furthermore, the farther out the wall, the older the personality,
  --
  of the divine king, one incarnate in the successor, the other concealed in the bellies of his worshippers.
  The latter causes the society to become, through eating and drinking the same person, integrated into a
  --
  The group, history incarnate, is the embodiment of a specific mode of being designed to attain perfection,
  and contains the concrete expression of the goal of a people it is the objective and subjective realization
  --
  theologies or (rational) philosophies, can more easily incarnate and/or abstractly adopt or provisionally
  formulate different positions, with regards to the value of initial assumptions; can also verbalize the beliefs

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Where did she get all this energy from? Her body was frail, food and sleep were medically quite inadequate to copewith her super-abundant vitality. "Do you think I live on these frugal meals alone? One can draw any amount of energy from universal Nature," she once said. Here we are face to face with the Divine Energy, the Shakti incarnate. Like Sri Aurobindo with regard to his massive correspondence, she could say, "If for nothing else, at least for my interminable activity, I should be called an Avatar!"
  My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit shakti, she embodies, and that force she has given freely to the young ones as she had done to the older generation. It infiltrates everything that it comes in contact with; she leaves a part of her Divine Presence wherever she goes. She has said also she never forgets any person who has come in contact with her even for a moment! The person finds a place in her Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo said to me that with each one of us here she has her emanation. I believe that would be in some sense true for all those who have come in contact with her, and it would help them through life's strenuous and perilous journey.

1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  (and who later incarnated into him 12 ). The Gita formed an
  integral part of the foundation of his avataric realization
  --
  Brahman and that our souls have chosen to incarnate in
  this evolutionary universe. If it be true that the Self alone
  --
  and the body in which we are incarnated is also the Brah-
  man; instead of the search for escape, the appreciation of
  --
  saying that he incarnates as an Avatar yuge yuge, from age
  to age. 18
  --
  they had to fight the good fight as no incarnated beings be-
  fore them had done, for and this is essential the Avatar,
  --
  that the Avatar incarnates, yuge yuge, to create the possibil-
  ity of an evolutionary step forwards and to do battle with

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  terial means. A world which wants to incarnate into the
  [existing material] world. 25

1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  " Only One ", the " Unique One ", or the Real Self, which is the Undying Spiritual Pilgrim who incarnates from time to time " to take his pleasure among the living ", It is the quintessential point of consciousness making man identical with every other spark of divinity, and, at the same time, different with reference to his individual point of view.
  Some call it the Khabs, or the Star, of which it is written :
  --
  Manas, which, together with Atma-Buddhi, is the god of a high and noble rank, who incarnates in the brute forms of the early races of mankind in order to endow them with mind. The Manasaputras have both Solar and Mercurial connections. The Vedantists call this principle the Vijnana- mayakosa, the Sheath of Knowledge ; and its correspond- ing Chakra in the Yogas is the Yisuddhi, said to be located in the subtle body on the spine at a point opposite to the larynx.
  This trinity of the original spiritual Monad, its Creative vehicle, and Intuition, form a synthetic integral Unity which philosophically may be denominated the Transcen- dental Ego. It is a Unity in a unique manner, and its attri butes are summed up in the three Hindu hypostases, more true, perhaps, of the Sephiros than the parts of man, of Sat, Chit, Ananda ; Absolute Being, Wisdom, and Bliss.

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  himself, for Jesus the son of Mary represents the incarnate man,
  but his immediate predecessor is the second Christ, the son of

1.05 - Prayer, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  ble prolongations of your incarnate Being in the
  world of matter; I can preach only the mystery of

1.05 - Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  next chapter: 1.06 - incarnate Teachers and Incarnation

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  that living force, that eternally active, transcendent personality, intrapsychically incarnate; of that
  permanent aspect of man every man dedicated solely, vengefully to destruction, dissolution, suffering
  --
  rises above dogmatic adherence to realize the soul of the hero to incarnate that soul in every aspect
  of their day-to-day life.
  --
  the creative individual to mimic, consciously incarnate, the process of world-redemption itself.
  Law is a necessary precondition to salvation, so to speak; necessary, but insufficient. Law provides the
  --
  depression and anxiety, and only then as re-creation. The king is the son of God, in previously incarnated
  form, who loses his effectiveness in the course of time. Ritualistic primitive regicide is predicated upon the

1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  from and superior to man is supposed to become incarnate, for a
  longer or a shorter time, in a human body, manifesting his
  --
  the inspired or incarnate type of man-god. In it the human body is
  merely a frail earthly vessel filled with a divine and immortal

1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTEIR (to Keshab): "Look here. There is Vijay. Your quarrel seems like the fight between iva and Rama. iva was Rama's s guru. Though they fought with each other, yet they soon came to terms. But the grimaces of the ghosts, the followers of iva, and the gibberish of the monkeys, the followers of Rama, would not come to an end! (Loud laughter.) Such quarrels take place even among one's own kith and kin. Didn't Rama fight with His own sons, Lava and Kusa? Again, you must have noticed how a mother and daughter, living together and having the same spiritual end in view, observe their religious fast separately on Tuesdays, each on her own accountas if the welfare of the mother were different from the welfare of the daughter. But what benefits the one benefits the other. In like manner, you have a religious society, and Vijay thinks he must have one too. (Laughter.) But I think all these are necessary. While Sri Krishna, Himself God incarnate, played with the gopis at Vrindvan, trouble-makers like Jatila and Kutila appeared on the scene. You may ask why. The answer is that the play does not develop without trouble-makers. (All laugh.) There is no fun without Jatila and Kutila. (Loud laughter.)
  "Ramanuja upheld the doctrine of Qualified Non-dualism. But his guru was a pure non-dualist. They disagreed with each other and refuted each other's arguments. That always happens. Still, to the teacher the disciple is his own."

1.05 - Work and Teaching, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us with the proof that the thing can be done and the time is now to do it.
  ***
  --
  4) The experiences of the Divine Mother in her effort to adapt herself to the body she has taken and the ignorance and the falsity of the earth upon which she has incarnated.
  ***

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  characteristics from the worlds of the mind incarnated in
  the material unfolding of the terrestrial evolution.
  --
  man being is an incarnated soul, in other words the Divine
   incarnated to fulfil His purposes on Earth. This has always

1.06 - Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  object:1.06 - incarnate Teachers and Incarnation
  author class:Swami Vivekananda

1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  much as joy, deprivation as much as abundance, hatred as much as love, torture as much as ecstasy. It thrives in every case. This is because it is a Force, the same Force in pain as in pleasure. We are thus bluntly confronted with the absolute ambivalence of all the feelings that make up the niceties of our frontal personality. Every one of our feelings is the reverse of another; at any moment it may change into its "opposite": the disillusioned philanthropist (or, rather, the disillusioned vital in the philanthropist) becomes a pessimist, the zealous apostle retires to the desert, the staunch unbeliever becomes a sectarian, and the virtuous man is scandalized by all the things he does not dare to do. Here we uncover another feature of the surface vital: it is an incorrigible charlatan,71 a shameless impersonator. (We are not even sure that our own mother's death escapes its pleasure.) Each time we cry in disapproval or in pain (any crying at all), there is a monkey snickering in us. We all know this, yet we remain as sentimental as ever. To top it all, the vital excels in befogging everything. It is fog incarnate; it mistakes the force of its feelings for the force of truth, and substitutes for the heights a smoky volcano summit in the abyss.72
  Another observation, which follows from the first, becomes plainly apparent: that of the utter powerlessness of the vital to help others, or even simply to communicate with others, except when there is a meeting of egos. There is not a single vital vibration emanating from us, or relayed by us, that cannot immediately change into its opposite in the other person. We need only wish someone well for the corresponding ill feeling or resistance or opposite reaction to awaken automatically, as if it were being received at the same time as the other; the process seems as spontaneous and inevitable as a chemical reaction. Indeed, the vital does not seek to help, it always seeks to take, in every possible manner. All our feelings are tainted with grabbing. Our feeling of sadness any sadness at a friend's betrayal,

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,1 to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his godhead - in man2 and object and every creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt which imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of its offering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a physical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it by a certain cloak of ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive knowledge is also a limitation and a barrier. For there is, concealed behind individual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the mind cannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form of the Infinite which we can approach only through the ecstasy of the heart and the passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the call of the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the AllBeautiful, can only be seized and seize us through an occult love and yearning which in the end makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is that which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.
  As with individual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through sympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence and beneficence, love of mankind, love of creatures, the attraction of all the myriad forms and presences that surround us, by which mentally and emotionally man escapes from the first limits of his ego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for the universal Divine. Adoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda, - the surpassing love, the self-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent delight in the Transcendent which awaits us at the end of the path of Devotion, - has for its wider result a universal love for all beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the Divine, spiritually embrace in all forms the All-Beautiful. A universal delight in his endless manifestation flows through us, taking in its surge every form and movement, but not bound or stationary in any and always reaching out to a greater and more perfect expression. This universal love is liberative and dynamic for transformation; for the discord of forms and appearances ceases to affect the heart that has felt the one Truth behind them all and understood their perfect significance. The impartial equality of soul of the selfless worker and knower is transformed by the magic touch of divine Love into an all-embracing ecstasy and million-bodied beatitude. All things become bodies and all movements the playings of the divine Beloved in his infinite house of pleasure. Even pain is changed and in their reaction and even in their essence things painful alter; the forms of pain fall away, there are created in their place the forms of Ananda.
  --
   do only the works of Love and Knowledge and leave aside the works of will and power, possession and acquisition, production and fruitful expense of capacity, battle and victory and mastery, striking away from us the larger part of life because it seems to be made of the very stuff of desire and ego and therefore doomed to be a field of disharmony and mere conflict and disorder. For the division cannot really be made; or, if attempted, it must fail in its essential purpose, since it would isolate us from the total energies of the World-Power and sterilise an important part of integral Nature, just the one force in it that is a necessary instrument in any world-creative purpose. The Life-Force is an indispensable intermediary, the effectuating element in Nature here; mind needs its alliance if the works of mind are not to remain shining inner formations without a body; the spirit needs it to give an outer force and form to its manifested possibilities and arrive at a complete self-expression incarnated in Matter. If
  Life refuses the aid of its intermediary energy to the spirit's other workings or is itself refused, they are likely to be reduced for all the effect they can have here to a static seclusion or a golden impotence; or if anything is done, it will be a partial irradiation of our action more subjective than objective, modifying existence perhaps, but without force to change it. Yet if Life brings its forces to the spirit but unregenerate, a worse result may follow since it is likely to reduce the spiritual action of Love or

1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
  have a tulku system, it doesnt mean there are no bodhisattvas there. Likewise, just because someone is recognized as an incarnate doesnt mean that
  he or she is a bodhisattva. That person might have a great deal of positive

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  by meaning the Great Mother incarnated as the female part
  of the Avatar Sri Aurobindo-Mother. Before, the Avatar had
  --
  Gods; and as the incarnated Mother in the Yoga.164
  e l e v e n ta l k s

1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  object:1.07 - incarnate Human Gods
  author class:James George Frazer
  --
  VII. incarnate Human Gods
  THE INSTANCES which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the
  --
  Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in
  human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in
  --
  the reputation of being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little
  more than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends to
  --
  of gods who have been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate
  in living human beings, whether men or women. The persons in whom a
  --
  deity in human form. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society.
  The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case,
  --
  sometimes took up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god was
  much feared by all the people, including the king and the chiefs.
  --
  At Benares not many years ago a celebrated deity was incarnate in
  the person of a Hindoo gentleman who rejoiced in the euphonious name
  --
  the Phrygian claimed to be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his
  single person God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.
  --
  many sects have believed that Christ, nay God himself, is incarnate
  in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this
  --
  regions. A register of all the incarnate gods in the Chinese empire
  is kept in the _Li fan yiian_ or Colonial Office at Peking. The

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  No, that question arises from a self that knows too much, sees too much, feels too much. The consolations are gone; the skull will grin in at the banquet; it can no longer tranquilize itself with the trivial. From the depths, it cries out to gods no longer there, searches for a meaning not yet disclosed, still to be incarnated. Its very agony is worth a million happy magics and a thousand believing myths, and yet its only consolation is its unrelenting pain-a pain, a dread, an emptiness that feels beyond the comforts and distractions of the body, the persona, the ego, looks bravely into the face of the Void, and can no longer explain away either the Mystery or the Terror. It is a soul that is much too awake. It is a soul on the brink of the transpersonal.
  THE TRANSPERSONAL DOMAINS

1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  But what is this new consciousness that suddenly appeared in the year of grace 1969 of our evolution? (There may have been many other years of grace before, now buried under the rubble of the earth, and other human cycles that reached the point we have now reached and were destroyed perhaps for the very same reasons that threaten us today. Are we the topmost crest of the great evolutionary wave or simply the nth repetition of an attempt that has taken place many times before, here or in other universes?) This new consciousness may not be so new after all, but it became new for us and entered the field of practical realizations the very day we were able to establish a relation with it we should perhaps say renew the relation with it, because since the beginning of time, here or on other earths, it may be eternally the same eternal Thing with which we establish different relations according to our degree of preparation. What seemed remote and divine to the orangutan is fairly close and far less divine to us, but the godheads of the future remain to be claimed, and there will always be an ever more to incarnate. This ever more is the very meaning of evolution and the misunderstood God we pursue in an orangutan form, a religious or a scientific form; although if we did not baptize Him, He might be the better for it, and we too. But it is one and the same Thing, there, always there only, there are points of rupture among the species, moments of access to another state or another relation. It is quite evident that on its own a chameleon could not imagine (provided it does imagine) anything other than a superchameleon endowed with more lavish colors and more skillful predatory capabilities; similarly, a queen mole would enlarge its storehouse and tunnels which is what we are doing in our human way. What, then, is that vanishing point to something else, that moment of imagination when we emerge into an elsewhere that was always there, another thing that was the same thing, seen and appropriated differently?
  If we are to believe materialistic mechanics, nothing can come out of a system except what is already contained in it; we can only perfect what is there, in the little bubble. In a sense, they are right, but one may wonder if a perfected ass will ever yield anything other than an ass. It would seem that the closed system of the materialists is doomed to ultimate poverty, and that, by reducing everything to the degree of development of chromosomes and the perfection of gray matter, they have dedicated themselves to a supermechanization of the machine from which they started (machinery can only lead to machinery). But the ape, the mole and the chameleon do just that; they add and subtract; and our machinery is not fundamentally more advanced than theirs, even though it sends firecrackers to the moon. In short, we are some perfected protoplasm with greater swallowing capacity and smarter (?) tropisms, and soon we shall be able to calculate all that is required to produce biological Napoleons and test-tube Einsteins. All the same, our earth would hardly be a happier place with legions of blackboards and supergenerals, who would not know which way to turn they would set out to colonize other earths... and fill them with blackboards. There is no way out of it, by definition, since the system is closed, closed, closed.

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The Master said to Prankrishna with a smile: "Hazra is not a man to be trifled with. If one finds the big dargah here, then Hazra is the smaller dargah." All laughed at the Master's words. A certain gentleman, Navakumar by name, came to the door and stood there. At sight of the devotees he immediately left. "Oh! Egotism incarnate!" Sri Ramakrishna remarked.
  About half past nine in the morning Prankrishna took leave of the Master. Soon afterwards a minstrel sang some devotional songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The Master was listening to the songs when Kedr Chatterji, a householder devotee, entered the room clad in his office clothes. He was a man of devotional temperament and cherished the attitude of the gopis of Vrindvan. Words about God would make him weep.

1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Someone who experiences the revelation of his psychic being while listening to Beethoven might say: "Music, nothing but music is true and divine on this earth"; another, who feels his soul in the middle of the ocean's immensity, may make a religion of the open seas; still another will swear by his own prophet, his church, or his gospel. Each one builds his own structure around his own particular nugget of experience. But the psychic being is free, marvelously free of everything! It needs nothing to exist; it is Freedom incarnate, and it uses each of our greater or lesser pieces of music, our sublime or less sublime scriptures, simply to bore a hole in our armor in order to emerge into the open. It lends its power and its love, its joy, its light,
  and its irresistible open Truth to all our ideas, all our feelings and doctrines, because this is its only chance to manifest openly, its only means of expression. In return, these emotions, ideas and doctrines derive from it their self-assurance; they appropriate and enshroud it,

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The practical consequences of this doctrine are clear enough. The lower forms of religion, whether emotional, active or intellectual, are never to be accepted as final. True, each of them comes naturally to persons of a certain kind of constitution and temperament; but the dharma or duty of any given individual is not to remain complacently fixed in the imperfect religion that happens to suit him; it is rather to transcend it, not by impossibly denying the modes of thought, behaviour and feeling that are natural to him, but by making use of them, so that by means of nature he may pass beyond nature. Thus the introvert uses discrimination (in the Indian phrase), and so learns to distinguish the mental activities of the ego from the principial consciousness of the Self, which is akin to, or identical with, the divine Ground. The emotional extravert learns to hate his father and mother (in other words to give up his selfish attachment to the pleasures of indiscriminately loving and being loved), concentrates his devotion on the personal or incarnate aspect of God, and comes at last to love the Absolute Godhead by an act, no longer of feeling, but of will illuminated by knowledge. And finally there is that other kind of extravert, whose concern is not with the pleasures of giving or receiving affection, but with the satisfaction of his lust for power over things, events and persons. Using his own nature to transcend his own nature, he must follow the path laid down in the Bhagavad Gita for the bewildered Arjuna the path of work without attachment to the fruits of work, the path of what St. Franois de Sales calls holy indifference, the path that leads through the forgetting of self to the discovery of the Self.
  In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous. For example, many Protestant sects have insisted on the necessity, or at least the extreme desirability, of a violent conversion. But violent conversion, as Sheldon has pointed out, is a phenomenon confined almost exclusively to persons with a high degree of somatotonia. These persons are so intensely extraverted as to be quite unaware of what is happening in the lower levels of their minds. If for any reason their attention comes to be turned inwards, the resulting self-knowledge, because of its novelty and strangeness, presents itself with the force and quality of a revelation and their metanoia, or change of mind, is sudden and thrilling. This change may be to religion, or it may be to something else for example, to psycho-analysis. To insist upon the necessity of violent conversion as the only means to salvation is about as sensible as it would be to insist upon the necessity of having a large face, heavy bones and powerful muscles. To those naturally subject to this kind of emotional upheaval, the doctrine that makes salvation dependent on conversion gives a complacency that is quite fatal to spiritual growth, while those who are incapable of it are filled with a no less fatal despair. Other examples of inadequate theologies based upon psychological ignorance could easily be cited. One remembers, for instance, the sad case of Calvin, the cerebrotonic who took his own intellectual constructions so seriously that he lost all sense of reality, both human and spiritual. And then there is our liberal Protestantism, that predominantly viscerotonic heresy, which seems to have forgotten the very existence of the Father, Spirit and Logos and equates Christianity with an emotional attachment to Christs humanity or, (to use the currently popular phrase) the personality of Jesus, worshipped idolatrously as though there were no other God. Even within all-comprehensive Catholicism we constantly hear complaints of the ignorant and self-centred directors, who impose upon the souls under their charge a religious dharma wholly unsuited to their naturewith results which writers such as St. John of the Cross describe as wholly pernicious. We see, then, that it is natural for us to think of God as possessed of the qualities which our temperament tends to make us perceive in Him; but unless nature finds a way of transcending itself by means of itself, we are lost. In the last analysis Philo is quite right in saying that those who do not conceive God purely and simply as the One injure, not God of course, but themselves and, along with themselves, their fellows.

1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  This change of vision is not spectacular or immediate; it is produced by small drops of a new outlook one hardly knows is a new outlook. One walks right past it, perhaps not unlike the caveman who walks past a gold nugget, glances at it because it glitters, and throws it away. Gold? What use is gold? We have to walk by the same futile point again and again, which does glitter a little and has a special something about it, before we understand that gold is gold we have to invent gold; we have to invent the whole world and find what is already there. The difficulty is not in discovering hidden secrets but in discovering the visible, and that unsuspected gold in the midst of banality actually, there is no banality; there is only unconsciousness. There is an age-old habit of looking at the world in relation to our needs and with respect to ourselves, like the logger in the forest who sees rosewood and only rosewood. Some measure of eccentricity is necessary to make the discovery. And in the end we realize that that eccentricity is the first step to a truer centricity and the key to a whole new set of relations. Our forest becomes stocked with a variety of unknown trees, and everything is a discovery. We have also been biased by what we could call the visionary's tradition. It has always seemed that the privileged among men were the ones who had visions, who could see our everyday grayness in pink and green and blue, see apparitions and supernatural phenomena a sort of supercinema one enjoys free of charge in the privacy of one's own room by pressing the psychic button. And that is all very well, there's nothing to say, but experience shows that this sort of vision changes absolutely nothing. Tomorrow millions of men could be given the power of vision by a stroke of grace, and they would turn on their little psychic television again and again; they would see gods laden with gold (and perhaps a few hells more in accord with their natural affinities), flowers more magnificent than any rose (and a scattering of awesome serpents), flying or haloed beings (but devils imitate halos very well, they are more showy than the gods, they like tinsel), landscapes of dream, sumptuous fruits, crystal dwellings but in the end, after the hundredth time, they would be as bored as before and leap avidly at the six-o'clock news. Something is sorely wanting in all that supernatural fireworks. And, to tell the truth, that something is everything. If our natural does not become truer, no amount of supernatural will remedy it; if our inner dwelling is ugly, no miraculous crystal will ever brighten our day, no fruit will ever quench our thirst. Unless Paradise is established on earth, it will never be anywhere. For we take ourselves everywhere we go, even into death, and so long as this stupid second is not filled with heaven, no eternity will ever be lit with any star. The transmutation must take place in the body and in everyday life; otherwise no gold will ever glitter, here or anywhere else, for ages of ages. What matters is not to see in pink or green or gold, but to see the truth of the world, which is so much more marvelous than any paradise, artificial or not, because the earth, this very small earth among millions of planets, is the experimental site where the supreme Truth of all the worlds has chosen to incarnate in what seems to be its very contradiction, and, by virtue of this very contradiction, to become all-light in darkness, all-breadth in narrowness, immortality in death, and living plenitude in each atom at each instant.
  But we have to collaborate.

1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Nevertheless, even the Divine, when incarnate on earth, is subject to the same law of progress. His instrument of manifestation the physical being he has assumed, should be in a constant state of progress, and the law of his personal self-expression is in a way linked to the general law of earthly progress. Thus even the embodied god cannot be perfect on earth until men are ready to understand and accept perfection. That day will come when everything that is now done out of a sense of duty towards the Divine will be done out of love for Him. Progress will be a joy instead of being an effort and often even a struggle. Or, more exactly, progress will be made in joy, with the full adherence of the whole being, instead of by coercing the resistance of the ego, which entails great effort and sometimes even great suffering.
  In conclusion, I would say this: if you want your speech to express the truth and thus acquire the power of the Word, never think out beforeh and what you want to say, do not decide what is a good or bad thing to say, do not calculate the effect of what you are going to say. Be silent in mind and remain unwavering in the true attitude of constant aspiration towards the All-Wisdom, the All-Knowledge, the All-Consciousness. Then, if your aspiration is sincere, if it is not a veil for your ambition to do well and to succeed, if it is pure, spontaneous and integral, you will then be able to speak very simply, to say the words that ought to be said, neither more nor less, and they will have a creative power.
  --
  This is the marvellous state we want to realise on earth; it is this which will have the power to transform the world and make it a habitation worthy of the Divine Presence. Then will pure and true love be able to incarnate in a body that will no longer be a disguise and a veil for it. Many a time, in order to make the discipline easier and to create a closer and more easily perceptible intimacy, the Divine has sought, in his highest form of love, to assume a physical body similar in appearance to the human body; but each time, imprisoned within the gross forms of Matter, he was able to express only a caricature of himself. And in order to manifest in the fullness of his perfection he waits only for human beings to have made some indispensable progress in their consciousness and in their bodies; for the vulgarity of mans vanity and the stupidity of his conceit mistake the sublime divine love, when it expresses itself in a human form, for a sign of weakness and dependence and need.
  And yet man already knows, at first obscurely, but more and more clearly as he draws nearer to perfection, that love alone can put an end to the suffering of the world; only the ineffable joy of love in its essence can sweep away from the universe the burning pain of separation. For only in the ecstasy of the supreme union will creation discover its purpose and its fulfilment.
  --
  To avoid any misunderstanding, I must point out here that because of the exigencies of the language in which I am expressing myself, I am obliged to use the masculine gender whenever I mention the Divine. But in fact the reality of love I speak of is above and beyond all gender, masculine or feminine; and when it incarnates in a human body, it does so indifferently in the body of a man or a woman according to the needs of the work to be done.
  In summary, austerity in feelings consists then of giving up all emotional attachment, of whatever nature, whether for a person, for the family, for the country or anything else, in order to concentrate on an exclusive attachment for the Divine Reality. This concentration will culminate in an integral identification and will be instrumental to the supramental realisation upon earth.

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to Kedr): "Oh, don't you understand? He upholds the doctrine of the rishis of olden times. They once said to Rama: 'O Rama, we know You only as the son of Dasaratha. Let sages like Bharadvaja worship You as God incarnate. We want to realize Brahman, the Indivisible Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.' At these words Rama smiled and went away."
  KEDR: "Those rishis could not recognize Rama as an Incarnation of God. They must have been fools,"

1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  This all, this great all has been seen by sages in their visions and by a few rare poets and thinkers: All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, to the south of us and to the North of us and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.19 Thou art woman and thou art man also; Thou art the boy and girl, and Thou art yonder worn and aged man that walkest bending upon a staff.... Thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet eyed.20 Thou art That, O Swetaketu.21 This great all that is us has shined at the summit of human accomplishment, left a few hieroglyphic traces on the walls of Thebes, and nourished initiates here and there at times we have entered a white radiance above the worlds where, in a flash, we have dissolved the little self and emerged into a cosmic consciousness.... But none of that has changed the world. We still did not have the clue that would connect that vision to this earth and make a new world with a new look. Our truths remained fragile; the earth remained refractory and rightly so. Why should it obey the illuminations from above if that light does not affect its matter, if it itself does not see and it itself is not illuminated? In truth, wisdom is very wise and the earth's darkness is not a negation of the Spirit, any more than night is a negation of day; it is an expectation and a calling for light, and so long as we do not call the light here, why should it trouble itself to move from its summits? So long as we do not turn our nocturnal half toward its sun, why should it be filled with light? If we seek solar wholeness on the summits of the mind, we shall have wholeness there, in a lovely thought; if we seek it in the heart, we shall have it there, in a tender emotion if we seek it in matter at every instant, we shall have that same wholeness in matter and at every instant of matter. We have to know where we are looking. We cannot reasonably find the light where we are not looking. Then, perhaps, we shall realize that this earth was not so dark after all. It was our look that was dark, our want of being that brought about the want of things. The earth's resistance is our own resistance and the promise of a solid truth: an innumerable bursting of rainbows into incarnate myriads instead of an empty radiance on the heights of the Spirit.
  But the seeker of the new world has not pursued his quest in a straight line; he has not closed his doors, rejected matter, muffled his soul. He has taken his quest along wherever he went, on the boulevards and on the stairways, in the crowd and in the empty obscurity of millions of senseless gestures. He has pervaded all the wastelands with being, kindled his fire in all the vanities, and fed his need on the very inanity that stifled him. He was not a little one-pointed concentration that rose straight up to the heights and then fell asleep in the white peace of the spirit; he was this chaos and turmoil, this wandering back and forth, in nothing. He pulled all into his net the ups and downs, the blacks and less blacks and so-called whites, the falls and setbacks he held everything within his little circumference, with a fire at the center, a need for truth amid this chaos, a cry for help in this nothingness. He was a tangled course, an endless meandering of which he knew nothing, except that he carried his fire there his fire for nothing, for everything. He no longer even expected anything from anything; he was only like a mellowness of burning, as if that fire were the goal in itself, the being amid all this emptiness, the only presence in this enormous absence. It even ended up becoming a sort of quiet love, for nothing, for everything, here and there. And little by little, this nothingness was lit up; this emptiness was set afire by his look; this futility stirred with the same little warmth. And everything began to answer. The world came to life everywhere, but infinitesimal, microscopic: a powdering of little truths dancing here and there, in facts and gestures, in things and meetings it even seems as if they came to meet him. It was a strange multiplication, a kind of golden contagion.

1.09 - The Secret Chiefs, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  But are They then men, in the usual sense of the word? They may be incarnate or discarnate: it is a matter of Their convenience.
  Have They attained Their position by passing through all the grades of the AA?

1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  anthropomorphic beings or as actually incarnate in living men.
  First, then, trees or tree-spirits are believed to give rain and

11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "O living power of the incarnate Word,
  All that the Spirit has dreamed thou canst create:
  --
  "O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
  Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
  --
  The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
  Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.

1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Vishnu incarnated Himself as a sow in order to kill the demon Hiranyaksha. After killing the demon, the sow remained quite happy with her young ones. Forgetting her real nature, she was suckling them very contentedly. The gods in heaven could not persuade Vishnu to relinquish His sow's body and return to the celestial regions. He was absorbed in the happiness of His beast form. After consulting among themselves, the gods sent iva to the sow. iva asked the sow, 'Why have you forgotten yourself?' Vishnu replied through the sow's body, 'Why, I am quite happy here.' Thereupon with a stroke of his trident iva destroyed the sow's body, and Vishnu went back to heaven."
  Ramchandra Dutta

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  it would be incarnated in the progressive succession of the
  Avatars enabling and supporting the evolution. This Love
  --
  this Love, incarnated in the soul and in the Avatars, which
  in the course of the ages has brought movement and Life

11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We must understand however that there is divinity and divinity. There is a divinity that suffers, supports and transcends all that is existent. For it is the all-reality, all-consciousness, the ever-present and omnipresent Immutable behind the mutabilities of creation. That does not take part in the cosmic struggle, the universal urge of progress forward. Apart from the divinity that suffers, there is a divinity that shapesand is shaped at the same time, shapes from behind and is shaped itself in front. This dynamic Divine Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental Divine or the incarnate Divine Mother.
   In the inevitable course of evolution man is something that will be surpassed, not in the sense that he will be rejected and thrown out as an unnecessary element, like some of the prehistoric animals, no, he will still be at the head of earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into a divine creature.
  --
   That does not mean that the entire human race will wholly change over to the new life. All, without exception, are not expected to come up to the highest level of fulfilment. But that is not required, for the beginning at least. It is always the few pioneers, a select group of forerunners that form the foundation of a new creation A first snowball perhaps, but it moves and gathers others on the way and builds up larger and larger collectivities. At all crises of evolutionary cycles such beings inevitably appear, they are thrown up by Nature or they tome down from above and incarnate; especially it is so when Nature proposes to take a leap and not merely trudge and crawl.
   It is the fulfilment of Nature that has to happen and is happening, the fulfilment of the inferior Nature in and through the higher divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an enemy of the Spirit. But today the wheel seems to have turned full circle. The Spirit recognises the body as its counterpart and visible form, welcomes the body as its earthly figure and expression. The old antinomy has become obsolete, because the body too on its side recognises that it has not the structure and character that millennial ignorance gave it. The material particles that constitute the physical body are found to be after all not inert masses but quantas of energy, of luminous energy. The spiritual Light above demands nothing better for its earthly home.

1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Granted that the ground of the individual soul is akin to, or identical with, the divine Ground of all existence, and granted that this divine Ground is an ineffable Godhead that manifests itself as personal God or even as the incarnate Logos, what is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and last end of human life?
  The answers to these questions will be given to a great extent in the words of that most surprising product of the English eighteenth century, William Law. (How very odd our educational system is! Students of English literature are forced to read the graceful journalism of Steele and Addison, are expected to know all about the minor novels of Defoe and the tiny elegances of Matthew Prior. But they can pass all their examinations summa cum laude without having so much as looked into the writings of a man who was not only a master of English prose, but also one of the most interesting thinkers of his period and one of the most endearingly saintly figures in the whole history of Anglicanism.) Our current neglect of Law is yet another of the many indications that twentieth-century educators have ceased to be concerned with questions of ultimate truth or meaning and (apart from mere vocational training) are interested solely in the dissemination of a rootless and irrelevant culture, and the fostering of the solemn foolery of scholarship for scholarships sake.

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Avatar and the world-crisis in which he incarnates, are rare
  exceptions. This may be is the reason why Sri Aurobindo
  --
  formed in a human life. It is a being that has incarnated
  he has already incarnated and he was one of those who
  have presided over the present formation of [the Mothers]
  --
  necessity, incarnated in two bodies. The Mothers remark
  about the white warrior with the halberd, a figure of her own
  --
  1950 Shri Krishna was incarnated on Earth, without any-
  body being aware of it. (This may, moreover, be the reason

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  would in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living
  body who at its dissolution leaves it with full possession of his

1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The Darshan was on. A vast crowd had gathered. Unaware that it would be the last Darshan, some people were drawn in by an unknown force and later thought themselves specially blessed. There were others who missed it and nourished a lifelong regret. It was mooted at one time whether the Darshan should not be postponed, since it might cause a considerable strain and exhaustion leading to further aggravation of the disease; But the proposal was brushed aside out of compassion for the devotees. Everybody, even persons quite ill, was given permission. Everything went off well, the atmosphere was charged with a solemn silence. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were love and compassion incarnate; light, joy, peace, sweetness and strength emanated from them as from the sun and moon. After about two hour's an uneasy stir, a nervous tension was felt in the crowd. A whisper had gone round that the Master would like the Darshan to finish as soon as possible. Then in quick steps the long queue passed and everyone received the last memorable blessings from him.
  He came back to his room somewhat tired. It was about 5 p.m. He had eaten practically nothing the whole day. The first utterance he made was, "I am very hungry." We had never heard such a frank personal note from him before. The meal was quickly served by the Mother and taken in grave silence.

1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  (To Govinda) "Sometimes I say, 'Thou art verily I, and I am verily Thou.' Again I feel, 'Thou art Thou.' Then I do not find any trace of 'I'. It is akti alone that becomes flesh as God incarnate. According to one school of thought, Rma and Krishna are but two waves in the Ocean of Absolute Bliss and Consciousness.
  Seeing God in everything

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  There are ten or twenty, perhaps fifty, here or there, in one latitude or another, who yearn to till a truer plot of land, a small patch of man to grow a truer being within themselves, perhaps create together a laboratory of the superman, lay the first stone of the City of Truth on earth. They do not know, they do not know anything, except that they need something else and that there exists a Law of Harmony, a marvelous something of the Future seeking to be incarnated. They want to find the conditions of that incarnation, to lend themselves to the trial, to offer their substance for that living experiment. They know nothing except that everything must be different: in hearts, in gestures, in matter and the handling of matter. They are not seeking to create a new civilization, but another man; not a supercity among the millions of buildings of the world, but a listening post for the forces of the future, a supreme yantra of Truth, a conduit, a channel to try to capture and inscribe in matter a first note of the great Harmony, a first tangible sign of the new world. They do not pose as the champions of anything; they do not defend any liberty or attack any ism. They simply try together. They are the champions of their own pure little note, which is unlike the next person's and yet is everyone's note. They are no longer from a country, a family, a religion or a party; they belong to their own party, which is no one else's and yet is the party of the world, because what becomes true at one point becomes true for the whole world and brings the whole world together. They are from a family to be invented, from a country yet to be born. They do not try to correct others or anybody, to pour self-glorifying charities over the world, to cure the poor and the lepers; they try to cure the great poverty of smallness in themselves, the gray elf of the inner misery, to reclaim one single parcel of truth from themselves, one single ray of harmony. For if that Disease is cured in our own heart or a few hearts, the world will be that much lighter, and, through our clarity, the Law of Truth will better penetrate matter and radiate all around spontaneously. What liberation, what relief can a man who suffers in his own heart bring to the world? They do not work for themselves, though they are the primary ground of the experience, but as an offering, pure and simple, to that which they do not really know, but which shimmers at the edge of the world like the dawn of a new age. They are the prospectors of the new cycle. They have given themselves to the future, body and soul, the way one jumps into the fire, without a look back. They are the servants of the infinite in the finite, of the totality in the infinitesimal, of eternity in each second and each gesture. They create their heaven with each step and carve the new world out of the banality of the day. And they are not afraid of failure, for they have left behind the failures and success of the prison they live in the sole infallibility of a right little note.
  But these builders of the new world will have to be careful not to erect a new prison, be it an ideal and enlightened one. In fact, they will understand, and quickly that this City of Truth will not and cannot see the light of day until they themselves live totally in the Truth, and that that building site is first and foremost the site of their own transmutation. One does not deceive Truth.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is a cosmic consciousness, but with no loss of the individual. Instead of rejecting everything to soar to celestial heights, the seeker has patiently ascended each step of his being, so that the bottom remains linked to the top without any break. The overmind is the world of the gods, the source of inspiration of the great founders of religions. This is where all the religions we know were born; they all derive from an overmental experience in one of its countless aspects. For a religion or revelation, a spiritual experience, belongs to a certain plane; it does not come from God's thunders or from nowhere; those who incarnate the particular revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a mental plane.
  When consciousness rises to that plane, it no longer sees "point by point," but calmly in great masses.198 There is no longer the diffused light of the illumined mind or the isolated flashes of the intuitive mind, but, to quote the wonderful Vedic phrase, "an ocean of stable lightnings." The consciousness is no longer limited to the brief present moment or the narrow range of its visual field; it is unsealed, seeing in a single glance large extensions of space and time.199 The essential difference with other planes lies in the evenness, the almost complete uniformity of the light. In a particularly receptive illumined mind one would see, for example, a bluish background with sudden jets of light, intuitive flashes, or moving luminous eruptions, sometimes even great overmental downpours, but it would be a fluctuating play of light, nothing stable. This is the usual condition of the greatest poets we know; they attain a certain level of rhythm, a particular poetic luminousness, and from time to time they touch upon higher regions and return with those rare dazzling lines (or musical phrases) that are repeated generation after generation like an open sesame. The illumined mind is generally the base (an already very high base), and the overmind a divine kingdom one gains access to in moments of grace.

1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  But the God who comes so terribly as Time also exists timelessly as the Godhead, as Brahman, whose essence is Sat, Chit, Ananda, Being, Awareness, Bliss; and within and beyond mans time-tortured psyche is his spirit, uncreated and uncreatable, as Eckhart says, the Atman which is akin to or even identical with Brahman. The Gita, like all other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, justifies Gods ways to man by affirming and the affirmation is based upon observation and immediate experience that man can, if he so desires, die to his separate temporal selfness and so come to union with timeless Spirit. It affirms, too, that the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to assist human beings to achieve this union. This he does in three waysby teaching the true doctrine in a world blinded by voluntary ignorance; by inviting souls to a carnal love of his humanity, not indeed as an end in itself, but as the means to spiritual love-knowledge of Spirit; and finally by serving as a channel of grace.
  God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated sacrifice of the God-Man.

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  knowable essence of the incarnate God. But it is equally clear
  that they are hypostatized to a high degree: it is real water, and
  --
  the figure of the Anthropos, the incarnate God, who was then in
  the forefront of religious interest. He was, in Origen's words,

1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The false or at best imperfect salvations described in the Chandogya Upanishad are of three kinds. There is first the pseudo-salvation associated with the belief that matter is the ultimate Reality. Virochana, the demonic being who is the apotheosis of power-loving, extraverted somatotonia, finds it perfectly natural to identify himself with his body, and he goes back to the other Titans to seek a purely material salvation. incarnated in the present century, Virochana would have been an ardent Communist, Fascist or nationalist. Indra sees through material salvationism and is then offered dreamsalvation, deliverance out of bodily existence into the intermediate world between matter and spirit that fascinatingly odd and exciting psychic universe, out of which miracles and foreknowledge, spirit communications and extra-sensory perceptions make their startling irruptions into ordinary life. But this freer kind of individualized existence is still all too personal and ego-centric to satisfy a soul conscious of its own incompleteness and eager to be made whole. Indra accordingly goes further and is tempted to accept the undifferentiated consciousness of deep sleep, of false samadhi and quietistic trance, as the final deliverance. But he refuses, in Brahmanandas words, to mistake tamas for sattvas, sloth and sub-consciousness for poise and super-consciousness. And so, by discrimination, he comes to the realization of the Self, which is the enlightenment of the darkness that is ignorance and the deliverance from the mortal consequences of that ignorance.
  The illusory salvations, against which we are warned in the other extracts, are of a different kind. The emphasis here is upon idolatry and superstitionabove all the idolatrous worship of the analytical reason and its notions, and the superstitious belief in rites, dogmas and confessions of faith as being somehow magically efficacious in themselves. Many Christians, as Law implies, have been guilty of these idolatries and superstitions. For them, complete deliverance into union with the divine Ground is impossible, either in this world or posthumously. The best they can hope for is a meritorious but still egocentric life in the body and some sort of happy posthumous longevity, as the Chinese call it, some form of survival, paradisal perhaps, but still involved in time, separateness and multiplicity.

1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  In the same state he said, addressing the devotees: "That which is Brahman is verily akti. I address That, again, as the Mother. I call It Brahman when It is inactive, and akti when It creates, preserves, and destroys. It is like water, sometimes still and sometimes covered with waves. The Incarnation of God is a part of the lila of akti. The purpose of the Divine Incarnation is to teach man ecstatic love for God. The Incarnation is like the udder of the cow, the only place milk is to be got. God incarnates Himself as man. There is a great accumulation of divinity in an Incarnation, like the accumulation of fish in a deep hollow in a lake."
  Some of the devotees wondered, "Is Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, like Krishna, Chaitanya, and Christ?"

1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is nevertheless conceivable, in a nearer or rather evolutionary future, that one perfect overmental consciousness, or even several simultaneously, could incarnate on the earth. The less evolved human fraction rallying around these luminous centers would then be able to know a harmonious life and, to that extent, life would be changed;
  there would be a sort of unity. But it would be unity within a single luminous beam. Some would bask in the beam of pure Beauty, say,

1.14 - IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Good men spiritualize their bodies; bad men incarnate their souls.
  Benjamin Whichcote
  More precisely, good men spiritualize their mind-bodies; bad men incarnate and mentalize their spirits. The completely spiritualized mind-body is a Tathagata, who doesnt go anywhere when he dies, for the good reason that he is already, actually and consciously, where everyone has always potentially been without knowing. The person who has not, in this life, gone into Thusness, into the eternal principle of all states of being, goes at death into some particular state, either purgatorial or paradisal. In the Hindu scriptures and their commentaries several different kinds of posthumous salvation are distinguished. The thus-gone soul is completely delivered into complete union with the divine Ground; but it is also possible to achieve other kinds of mukti, or liberation, even while retaining a form of purified I-consciousness. The nature of any individuals deliverance after death depends upon three factors: the degree of holiness achieved by him while in the body, the particular aspect of the divine Reality to which he gave his primary allegiance, and the particular path he chose to follow. Similarly, in the Divine Comedy, Paradise has its various circles; but whereas in the oriental eschatologies the saved soul can go out of even sublimated individuality, out of survival even in some kind of celestial time, to a complete deliverance into the eternal, Dantes souls remain for ever where (after passing through the unmeritorious sufferings of purgatory) they find themselves as the result of their single incarnation in a body. Orthodox Christian doctrine does not admit the possibility, either in the posthumous state or in some other embodiment, of any further growth towards the ultimate perfection of a total union with the Godhead. But in the Hindu and Buddhist versions of the Perennial Philosophy the divine mercy is matched by the divine patience: both are infinite. For oriental theologians there is no eternal damnation; there are only purgatories and then an indefinite series of second chances to go forward towards not only mans, but the whole creations final endtotal reunion with the Ground of all being.
  Preoccupation with posthumous deliverance is not one of the means to such deliverance, and may easily, indeed, become an obstacle in the way of advance towards it. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that ardent spiritualists are more likely to be saved than those who have never attended a sance or familiarized themselves with the literature, speculative or evidential. My intention here is not to add to that literature, but rather to give the baldest summary of what has been written about the subject of survival within the various religious traditions.
  --
  Either one of these conceptions of survival is logically selfconsistent and can be made to save the appearances"in other words, to fit the odd and obscure facts of psychical research. The only personalities with which we have any direct acquaintance are incarnate beings, compounds of a body and some unknown x. But if x plus a body equals a personality, then, obviously, it is impossible for x minus a body to equal the same thing. The apparently personal entities which psychical research sometimes seems to discover can only be regarded as temporary pseudo-personalities compounded of x and the mediums body.
  These two conceptions are not mutually exclusive, and survival may be the joint product of a persistent consciousness and a modification of the psychic medium. If this is so, it is possible for a given human being to survive in more than one posthumous form. His soul the non-personal ground and principle of past and future personalitiesmay go marching on in one mode of being, while the traces left by his thoughts and volitions in the psychic medium may become the origin of new individualized existences, having quite other modes of being.

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Then, addressing the Divine Mother, he continued: "Shall I eat, O Mother? Or will You eat? O Mother, the very Embodiment of the Wine of Divine Bliss!" Did the Master look on himself as one with the Divine Mother? Had the Mother incarnated Herself as the Son to instruct mankind in the ways of God? Was this why the Master said, "I have eaten"?
  In that state of divine ecstasy Sri Ramakrishna saw the six centres in his body, and the Divine Mother dwelling in them. He sang a song to that effect.
  --
  Whenever I went to his house he would dance with joy at the sight of me. Rma said to Lakshmana, 'Brother, whenever you find people singing and dancing in the ecstasy of divine love, know for certain that I am there.' Chaitanya is an example of such ecstatic love. He laughed and wept and danced and sang in divine ecstasy. He was an Incarnation. God incarnated Himself through Chaitanya."
  Sri Ramakrishna sang a song describing the divine love of Chaitanya. Then Balarm's father, Mani Mallick, Beni Pl, and several other devotees took leave of the Master.

1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Purushottama which as yet is not developed, - we find it set forth clearly only much later in the eighteen chapters, - and therefore we have had to anticipate, at whatever cost of infidelity to the progressive method of the Gita's exposition, that central teaching. At present the Teacher simply gives a hint, merely adumbrates this supreme presence of the Purushottama and his relation to the immobile Self in whom it is our first business, our pressing spiritual need to find our poise of perfect peace and equality by attainment to the Brahmic condition. He speaks as yet not at all in set terms of the Purushottama, but of himself, - "I", Krishna, Narayana, the Avatar, the God in man who is also the Lord in the universe incarnated in the figure of the divine charioteer of Kurukshetra. "In the Self, then in
  Me," is the formula he gives, implying that the transcendence of the individual personality by seeing it as a "becoming" in the impersonal self-existent Being is simply a means of arriving at that great secret impersonal Personality, which is thus silent, calm and uplifted above Nature in the impersonal Being, but also present and active in Nature in all these million becomings.
  --
  Purushottama, seen here as the incarnate Narayana, Krishna, is therefore the key. Without it the withdrawal from the lower nature to the Brahmic condition leads necessarily to inaction of the liberated man, his indifference to the works of the world; with it the same withdrawal becomes a step by which the works of the world are taken up in the spirit, with the nature and in the freedom of the Divine. See the silent Brahman as the goal and the world with all its activities has to be forsaken; see God, the Divine, the Purushottama as the goal, superior to action yet its inner spiritual cause and object and original will, and the world with all its activities is conquered and possessed in a divine transcendence of the world. It can become instead of a prison-house an opulent kingdom, rajyam samr.ddham, which we have conquered for the spiritual life by slaying the limitation of the tyrant ego and overcoming the bondage of our gaoler desires and breaking the prison of our individualistic possession and enjoyment. The liberated universalised soul becomes svarat. samrat., self-ruler and emperor.
  The works of sacrifice are thus vindicated as a means of liberation and absolute spiritual perfection, samsiddhi. So

1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  There is a truth of Love behind evil. The nearer one draws to the infernal circles, the more one uncovers the great need in the depths of Evil and begins to understand that nothing can be healed without a corresponding intensity: a flame is kindled within, more and more powerful and warm beneath the suffocating pressure there is just Her, nothing but Her as if Love alone could confront the Night and persuade it of its luminous half. As if all that Shadow had been necessary so that Love might be born. In truth, the heart of every shadow, of every evil harbors the inverse mystery. And as each of us bears or harbors a special difficulty, at once the contradiction and the sign of our destiny, it may be that, similarly, the immense "faults" of the earth her sins and sufferings and the thousand gaping wounds of a pauper are the very sign of her destiny, and that someday she will incarnate perfect Love and Joy because she will have suffered all and understood all.
  As we progress, the superconscious line recedes upward and the subconscious line downward. Everything widens, everything is illuminated, but everything also closes in and converges around a sharp point of darkness, increasingly acute, crucial and pressing, as if we had turned for years and years for lifetimes around the same Problem without ever having truly touched it. Then, suddenly, it is right there, at the bottom of the hole, wriggling beneath the Light all the evil of the world within one point. The time of the Secret is drawing near. For the law of descent is not a law of oppression, sin, or fall, any more than it is a law of repentance or heavenward escape, but truly a Golden Law, an unfathomable Premeditation that draws us simultaneously upward and downward into the depths of the subconscient and inconscient, to that central point,241 that knot of life and death, shadow and light, where the Secret awaits us. The nearer we draw to the Summit, the more we touch the Depths.
  --
  Then, one day in 1910, at Chandernagore, a strange thing happened. . . . But before describing the experience that would change the course of our evolution, let us stop to take stock and briefly review the present human condition. It is really quite simple: we are stuck in Matter, imprisoned in the Black Egg that constrains us on all sides every second of the day. There are not a hundred ways of getting out of it, but only two: one is to fall asleep (to dream, to fly into ecstasy, or to meditate, but all are more or less lofty, conscious or divine gradations of sleep), and the other is to die. Sri Aurobindo's experience, however, provides a third possibility, allowing us to get out without flying into ecstasy or dying that is, to get out without actually getting out thereby reversing the course of man's spiritual evolution, since the goal is no longer only above or outside, but inside; and, in addition, opening the door of waking life to all the dreams, all the ecstasies, and especially to all the powers that can help us incarnate our dreams and transform the Black Egg into an open, clear and livable place. That day of 1910, in Chandernagore, Sri Aurobindo had reached the very depths, had broken through all the squalid layers upon which Life has grown like an inexplicable flower. There was only that Light above shining more and more intensely as he went down, bringing out all the impurities one after another under its keen ray, as if all that night were drawing in an ever greater amount of Light, as if the subconscious boundaries were receding farther and farther downward in an ever greater concentration the mirror image of the concentration above and leaving just that one wall of Shadow beneath that one Light. Then, suddenly, without warning, in the depths of this "unconscious" Matter and in the very cells of this body, Sri Aurobindo was thrust into the supreme Light, without trance, without loss of individuality, without cosmic dissolution, and with his eyes wide open:
  He broke into another Space and Time.245

1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  themselves deities incarnate, would be much facilitated if in their
  lifetime, as we have seen reason to think, they had actually laid

1.14 - The Victory Over Death, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  At first it is just a little flame in the mind, something groping about in search of a vaster inspiration, a greater truth, a purer knowledge, which soars, soars, and would as soon cut away all the weight of the world, the hindrances, the bonds and tangles of the earth. It soars and sometimes emerges, pure, sharp, upon summits of white light where everything is forever known and true but the earth, meanwhile, remains false; life and body remain in the dark conflict, and die and decay. So this white little flame begins to take in the heart. It yearns to love, to heal, to save. It gropes about in the dark, helps a fellowman, gives assistance, offers itself and sings a song that would like to embrace all, contain all, take all life into its heart. It is already a warmer and denser flame, but its minutes of illumination are like a pale and fragile firefly on an ocean of obscure life. It is constantly quenched, engulfed, swept under the wave and under our own waves of obscurity nothing is changed and life continues in its rut. So the seeker decides to drive this fire, this ardent truth, into his every moment and gesture, into his sleep and into his days, into his good and into his evil, into his whole life, so that everything may be purified, consumed by that fire so that something else may be born at last, a truer life, a truer being. He enters upon the path of the superman. And the fire continues to grow. It goes down and down the degrees of the being, plunges into the subconscious caves, dislodges the gray elf, dislodges the misery within, and burns more and more continuously, powerfully, as if stoked by the obscure pressure. It is already a body almost in our likeness, vermillion-red in color, already verging on gold. But it is still fluctuating and precarious; it lacks a fundamental base, a permanent foundation. So the seeker decides to drive this fire into his substance and body. He wants his own matter to reflect the Truth, to incarnate the Truth; he wants the outside to radiate as the inside. He enters upon the path of the supramental being. For, in truth, this growing self of fire, this ardent body which bears more and more resemblance to our divine archetype, our brother of light up above, and which seems to exceed us on all sides and even to radiate all around with an already orange vibration, is the very body that will form the supramental being. It is the next earthly substance, harder than the diamond and yet more fluid than the gas, said Sri Aurobindo.44 It is the spiritual condensation of the great Energy before it becomes matter.
  But how to induce this fire into our matter, how to effect the passage, or transfusion, of this dark and mortal body to that ardent and immortal one? The work is in progress; it is difficult to talk about. We will not really know how it is done until it is done. No one knows the country or the way to it since no one has ever gotten there. No one has ever made a supramental body! But it will be made, as inevitably as man and the ape and the millipede were already made in the great golden Seed of the world. This is the last adventure of the earth, or maybe the first of a more marvelous series on a new earth of truth. We do not know the secret; we only know in what direction to walk though knowing the direction is perhaps already knowing the secret, since it unfolds under our steps and is formed by walking it.

1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  Beings incarnate themselves from the astral world into the physical sphere of our planet, bordered by time and space, in order to work on their development, since the material laws of this plane put far more hindrances in front of every individual than is the case in the astral sphere. The impediments of the physical world streng then the spirit and enable it to grow more rapidly in its development than it would be possible in the astral world. Therefore the human beings of the astral world are urged to achieve re-incarnation in this world as soon as possible, and are ready to accept even the toughest conditions in order to be able to continue their spiritual development.
  Every man can reach perfection, for the evolution of the whole of mankind leads towards it. The spiritual guide designated to each individual by Divine Providence for his initiation into the astral world leads and controls the spiritual development of his protege and in many cases carries on with his commission after his protege has re- incarnated in the physical world. The magician should therefore try at the very beginning of his development to get into contact with his genius. How this is achieved has already been told in "Initiation into Hermetics". It sometimes happens that people who have already reached a high degree of perfection here on earth are able to continue their spiritual development in the astral world up to perfection, but these are selected by Divine

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yoga in its most physical sense, - there is another significance in which it can be taken, - and asks how the Sun-God, one of the first-born of beings, ancestor of the Solar dynasty, can have received the Yoga from the man Krishna who is only now born into the world. Krishna does not reply, as we might have expected him to have done, that it was as the Divine who is the source of all knowledge that he gave the Word to the Deva who is his form of knowledge, giver of all inner and outer light, - bhargah. savitur devasya yo no dhiyah. pracodayat; he accepts instead the opportunity which Arjuna gives him of declaring his concealed Godhead, a declaration for which he had prepared when he gave himself as the divine example for the worker who is not bound by his works, but which he has not yet quite explicitly made. He now openly announces himself as the incarnate
  Godhead, the Avatar.

1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  Sorcerers have often instigated mermaids to get hold of the bodies of beautiful girls of this world in the above mentioned manner in order to get into carnal contact with these undines, and have even married such beings. There was then no difference between a normal female and an incarnated undine, for the latter, in its carnal body, was subject to the same laws as all other human beings. It kept, however, the faculties and powers of the waterelement and made use of them in its human incarnation. The incarnated undine could also have children. But the most tragic fact about the matter was that she wanted the sorcerer to be absolutely loyal since she maintained a contact between her own physical body and the sorcerer's physical body. If the sorcerer wanted to have sexual intercourse with another woman he was in danger of having to atone for this with his life. In such a case the undine was also no longer able to remain in the physical world and was not able to get into further contacts. Soon after the death of the sorcerer who had become her lover or husb and she also died.
  After her death such a undine does not travel to the earth-zone like any other human being, but has to return to the water element and again lives there as undine.
  --
  If a magician is sent by Divine Providence to the earth-zone or into our physical world to fulfill a certain task as a human being, he starts longing for a sphere set above him. Should a magician, after having been allied to a genius in a certain zone, be incarnated in our physical world, then such a former alliance becomes obvious by the magician's special ability either in the field of hermetic science or in any other cultural field such as art, literature etc. This shows that the procedure is the same, no matter whether it is a positive or negative one, and a genuine magician will never be hindered in his development by any pact with a genius or an angel, but will advance in his development unimpeded. By an equal affection for all beings the magician will always remain conscious of his desire to become a perfect human being, created as the true image of God, and true divinity will be reflected in him. He is not influenced by any sphere, therefore he can reach true perfection, providing that no one element is prevailing within him and that he has been able to develop within himself the absolute equilibrium of all forces and powers and to maintain the standard of this development in future.
  The higher spheres are the place where it is decided whether a magician is willing to reach the highest perfection possible or likes to become a saint. A magician desirous of the highest degree of perfection may become the greatest and highest lord of creation, for he fully symbolises the true and complete image of God in all his aspects. A saint, however, remains under one aspect only and reaches perfection therein. He becomes a part of that aspect, and finally, when he has reached perfection in this aspect, he loses his individuality. The highest degree of perfection that man is ever able to reach is that of becoming a true sovereign, a true magician, thus actually representing a true and complete image of God, whereby he never loses or is forced to give up his individuality.

1.16 - Dianus and Diana, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  divine rank after death or even in life. incarnate human deities of
  this latter sort may be said to halt midway between the age of magic

1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  THE word prayer is applied to at least four distinct procedurespetition, intercession, adoration, contemplation. Petition is the asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion directed towards God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
  Psychologically, it is all but impossible for a human being to practise contemplation without preparing for it by some kind of adoration and without feeling the need to revert at more or less frequent intervals to intercession and some form at least of petition. On the other hand, it is both possible and easy to practise petition apart not only from contemplation, but also from adoration and, in rare cases of extreme and unmitigated egotism, even from intercession. Petitionary and intercessory prayer may be used and used, what is more, with what would ordinarily be regarded as successwithout any but the most perfunctory and superficial reference to God in any of his aspects. To acquire the knack of getting his petitions answered, a man does not have to know or love God, or even to know or love the image of God in his own mind. All that he requires is a burning sense of the importance of his own ego and its desires, coupled with a firm conviction that there exists, out there in the universe, something not himself which can be wheedled or dragooned into satisfying those desires. If I repeat My will be done, with the necessary degree of faith and persistency, the chances are that, sooner or later and somehow or other, I shall get what I want. Whether my will coincides with the will of God, and whether in getting what I want I shall get what is spiritually, morally or even materially good for me are questions which I cannot answer in advance. Only time and eternity will show. Meanwhile we shall be well advised to heed the warnings of folk-lore. Those anonymous realists who wrote the worlds fairy stories knew a great deal about wishes and their fulfilment. They knew, first of all, that in certain circumstances petitions actually get themselves answered; but they also knew that God is not the only answerer and that if one asks for something in the wrong spirit, it may in effect be given but given with a vengeance and not by a divine Giver. Getting what one wants by means of self-regarding petition is a form of hubris, which invites its condign and appropriate nemesis. Thus, the folk-lore of the North American Indian is full of stories about people who fast and pray egotistically, in order to get more than a reasonable man ought to have, and who, receiving what they ask for, thereby bring about their own downfall. From the other side of the world come all the tales of the men and women who make use of some kind of magic to get their petitions answeredalways with farcical or catastrophic consequence. Hardly ever do the Three Wishes of our traditional fairy lore lead to anything but a bad end for the successful wisher.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Chaitanya was Divine Love incarnate. He came down to earth to teach people how to love God. One achieves everything when one loves God. There is no need of hathayoga."
  Practice of Hathayoga

1.17 - M. AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "God sports in the world as man. He incarnates Himself as man-as in the case of Krishna, Rma, and Chaitanya. Once I said to Keshab: 'The greatest manifestation of God is in man. There are small holes in the balk of a field, where crabs and fish accumulate in the rainy season. If you want to find them you must seek them in the holes. If you seek God, you must seek Him in the Incarnations.'
  "The Divine Mother of the Universe manifests Herself through this three-and-a-half cubit man. There is a song that says:
  --
  "That is why God incarnates Himself as man and teaches people the path of devotion.
  He exhorts people to cultivate self-surrender to God. Following the path of devotion, one realizes everything through His grace both Knowledge and Supreme Wisdom.
  --
  "It is God alone who incarnates Himself as man to teach people the ways of love and knowledge. Well, what do you think of me?
  "Once my father went to Gaya. There Raghuvir said to him in a dream, 'I shall be born as your son.' Thereupon my father said to Him: 'O Lord, I am a poor brahmin. How shall I be able to serve You?' 'Don't worry about it', Raghuvir replied. 'It will be taken care of.'
  --
  God, incarnated as man, acts like a man
  "God, incarnating Himself as man, behave exactly like a man. That is why it is difficult to recognize an Incarnation. When God becomes man, He is exactly like man. He has the same hunger, thirst, disease, grief, and sometimes even fear. Rma was stricken with grief for Sita. Krishna carried on His head the shoes and wooden stool of His father Nanda.

1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  "manifest or incarnate deity," and he claims a general authority
  over the gods of Japan. For example, in an official decree of the
  year 646 the emperor is described as "the incarnate god who governs
  the universe."

1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Thus the popular and mythical account of the Krishna avatar is that the unrighteousness of the Kurus as incarnated
  170
  --
   in Duryodhana and his brothers became so great a burden to the earth that she had to call upon God to descend and lighten her load; accordingly Vishnu incarnated as Krishna, delivered the oppressed Pandavas and destroyed the unjust Kauravas. A similar account is given of the descent of the previous Vishnu avatars, of Rama to destroy the unrighteous oppression of Ravana, of Parashurama to destroy the unrighteous license of the military and princely caste, the Kshatriyas, of the dwarf Vamana to destroy the rule of the Titan Bali. But obviously the purely practical, ethical or social and political mission of the Avatar which is thus thrown into popular and mythical form, does not give a right account of the phenomenon of Avatarhood. It does not cover its spiritual sense, and if this outward utility were all, we should have to exclude Buddha and Christ whose mission was not at all to destroy evil-doers and deliver the good, but to bring to all men a new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. On the other hand, if we give to the word dharma only its religious sense, in which it means a law of religious and spiritual life, we shall indeed get to the kernel of the matter, but we shall be in danger of excluding a most important part of the work done by the Avatar. Always we see in the history of the divine incarnations the double work, and inevitably, because the Avatar takes up the workings of God in human life, the way of the divine Will and Wisdom in the world, and that always fulfils itself externally as well as internally, by inner progress in the soul and by an outer change in the life.
  The Avatar may descend as a great spiritual teacher and saviour, the Christ, the Buddha, but always his work leads, after he has finished his earthly manifestation, to a profound and powerful change not only in the ethical, but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race. He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of the divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth. It is indeed curious to note that the

1.19 - GOD IS NOT MOCKED, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  These three answers are not mutually incompatible. The parents are responsible for making the child what, by heredity and upbringing, he turns out to be. The soul or character incarnated in the child is of such a nature, owing to past behaviour, that it is forced to select those particular parents. And collaborating with the material and efficient causes is the final cause, the teleological pull from in front. This teleological pull is a pull from the divine Ground of things acting upon that part of the timeless now, which a finite mind must regard as the future. Men sin and their parents sin; but the works of God have to be manifested in every sentient being (either by exceptional ways, as in this case of supernormal healing, or in the ordinary course of events)have to be manifested again and again, with the infinite patience of eternity, until at last the creature makes itself fit for the perfect and consummate manifestation of unitive knowledge, of the state of not I, but God in me.
  Karma, according to the Hindus, never dispels ignorance, being under the same category with it. Knowledge alone dispels ignorance, just as light alone dispels darkness.

1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to Prankrishna): "But there is a greater manifestation of God in man. You may ask, 'How is it possible for God to be incarnated as a man who suffers from hunger, thirst, and the other traits of an embodied being, and perhaps also from disease and grief?' The reply is, 'Even Brahman weeps, entrapped in the snare of the five elements.'
  "Don't you know how Rma had to weep, stricken with grief for Sita? Further, it is said that the Lord incarnated Himself as a sow in order to kill the demon Hiranyaksha.
  Hiranyaksha was eventually killed, but God would not go back to His abode in heaven.
  --
  DEVOTEE: "That Chaitanya has been incarnated again in the present century of the Christian era, and that you are he."
  MASTER (absent-mindedly): "What of it? Can you tell me now how my arm can be cured? This arm is worrying me so much."

WORDNET



--- Overview of verb incarnate

The verb incarnate has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (1) incarnate ::: (make concrete and real)
2. incarnate, body forth, embody, substantiate ::: (represent in bodily form; "He embodies all that is evil wrong with the system"; "The painting substantiates the feelings of the artist")

--- Overview of adj incarnate

The adj incarnate has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (1) bodied, corporal, corporate, embodied, incarnate ::: (possessing or existing in bodily form; "what seemed corporal melted as breath into the wind"- Shakespeare; "an incarnate spirit"; "`corporate' is an archaic term")
2. incarnate ::: (invested with a bodily form especially of a human body; "a monarch...regarded as a god incarnate")





--- Similarity of adj incarnate

2 senses of incarnate                        

Sense 1
bodied, corporal, corporate, embodied, incarnate
   => corporeal (vs. incorporeal), material

Sense 2
incarnate
   => bodied (vs. unbodied)


--- Antonyms of adj incarnate

2 senses of incarnate                        

Sense 1
bodied, corporal, corporate, embodied, incarnate

INDIRECT (VIA corporeal) -> incorporeal, immaterial

Sense 2
incarnate

INDIRECT (VIA bodied) -> unbodied



--- Pertainyms of adj incarnate

2 senses of incarnate                        

Sense 1
bodied, corporal, corporate, embodied, incarnate

Sense 2
incarnate


--- Derived Forms of adj incarnate
                                    




IN WEBGEN [10000/126]

Wikipedia - Incarnate
Wikipedia - Institute of the Incarnate Word
Wikipedia - List of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episodes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime volumes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Reincarnate (album) -- album by Motionless in White
Wikipedia - Reincarnate
Wikipedia - That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime -- Japanese light novel series
Wikipedia - University of the Incarnate Word -- Private Catholic university in San Antonio, TX, US
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15813046-sin-incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1774923.The_Metaphor_of_God_Incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20440490-9-incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20710334-incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20949492-incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21331907-disincarnated
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218635.Incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/270666.The_Resurrection_of_God_Incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/362954.Evil_Incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36906155-the-reincarnated-giant
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8532424-love-reincarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8573642-incarnate
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8573642.Incarnate__Newsoul___1_
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/John_Hick#The_Metaphor_of_God_Incarnate.2C_1993
Integral World - The Avatar Project, How Virtual Reality is Ken Wilber's Subtle Realm Incarnated, David Lane
dedroidify.blogspot - reincarnated-aleister-crowley-movie
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlimeRimuruTempest
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/Incarnate
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/HarryPotterAndThe7ReincarnatedSpirits
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/Incarnate
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Incarnate
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LightNovel/IWasASwordWhenIReincarnated
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/IWasReincarnatedAsAMagicAcademy
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheReincarnatedVampireJustWantsToEnjoyHerNewLife
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReincarnateInAnotherWorld
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/DragonBallThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsYamcha
Mummies Alive! (1997 - 1998) - Four mummies with magical powers come to San Fransisco to protect a boy named Presley, who is the reincarnated of their Pharaoh from the various dangers that might befall him, chiefly an evil worlock named Scarab.
Mummies Alive (1997 - 1997) - Four Egyptian mummies have woken up in an exhibit in current day San Francisco to protect the 12 year old Presley. Presley is the reincarnation of the Egyptian prince Rapses who knew the secret to eternal life. The mummies chose to wake up because Rapses' arch nemesis has also reincarnated, the evil...
GeGeGe no Kitar (1968 - 2018) - focuses on the young Kitarthe last survivor of the Ghost Tribeand his adventures with other ghouls and strange creatures of Japanese mythology. Along with: the remains of his father, Medama-Oyaji (a mummified Ghost tribesman reincarnated to inhabit his old eyeball); Nezumi-Otoko (the rat-man); Ne...
Fluke(1995) - A man is reincarnated as a dog and attempts to find the family he left behind.
Made In Heaven(1987) - After being dumped by his girlfriend, a boy runs away to California. But he ends up in heaven because he dies after trying to help a family from drowning in a river. In heaven he'll meet a beautiful girl, who has never reincarnated before.
Audrey Rose(1977) - A stranger attempts to convince a happily married couple that their daughter is actually his daughter reincarnated.
Ascendance of a Bookworm ::: Honzuki no Gekokujou (original tit ::: TV-PG | 23min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | TV Series (2019- ) Episode Guide 27 episodes Ascendance of a Bookworm Poster Urano, a young Japanese soon-to-be librarian, dies in an earthquake. She is reincarnated in another world as a young girl named Mayne, but learns that books are scarce and only provided to ... S Stars: Reba Buhr, Yuka Iguchi, Lizzie Freeman
Chances Are (1989) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG | 1h 48min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance | 10 March 1989 (USA) -- A reincarnated man unknowingly falls in love with his own daughter from his previous life. Once he realizes this, he tries to end their relationship before angels erase his memory. Director: Emile Ardolino Writers:
Fluke (1995) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG | 1h 36min | Drama, Family, Fantasy | 2 June 1995 (USA) -- After a man dies in a car crash, he is reincarnated as a dog and attempts to reconnect with his family. Director: Carlo Carlei Writers: James Herbert (novel), Carlo Carlei (screenplay) | 1 more credit Stars:
Made in Heaven (1987) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG | 1h 43min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance | 6 November 1987 (USA) -- After being dumped by his girlfriend, a boy runs away to California. But he ends up in heaven because he dies after trying to help a family from drowning in a river. In heaven he'll meet a beautiful girl, who has never reincarnated before. Director: Alan Rudolph Writers:
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ::: TV-PG | 25min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (2018- ) Episode Guide 43 episodes That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Poster -- Lonely thirty-seven-year-old Mikami Satoru is stuck in a dead-end job, unhappy with his mundane life, but after dying at the hands of a robber, he awakens to a fresh start in a fantasy ... S Stars:
https://allods.fandom.com/wiki/Reincarnate
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/The_World's_Finest_Assassin_Gets_Reincarnated_in_Another_World_as_an_Aristocrat
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Justice_Incarnate
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Ancestral_Incarnate
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Cavern_of_the_Incarnate
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Cavern_of_the_Incarnate_(Morrowind)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Cavern_of_the_Incarnate_(Online)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Incarnate
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Failed_Incarnate
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnate_Aduri
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnate_Danaat
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnate_Danaat's_Scroll
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnate_Ranso
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Path_of_the_Incarnate
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Order_Incarnate
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnate
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Reincarnate
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Church_of_the_Incarnate_Soul
https://riseofincarnates.fandom.com/wiki/
https://tensura.fandom.com/wiki/That_Time_I_Got_Reincarnated_as_a_Slime
https://tensura.fandom.com/wiki/That_Time_I_Got_Reincarnated_as_a_Slime:_Lord_of_Tempest
Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. -- -- EMT Squared -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Josei -- Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. -- In the distant past, Miguel, the God of Destruction, was sealed inside the knight who ruled over light and darkness, Sturmhurt. Alongside the knight was Gestöber, who accompanied him through countless battles. In the present day, destiny causes them to reincarnate as Kabuto Hanadori and Seri Koyuki, two classmates. -- -- Their reunion should be a joyous moment, if not for the fact that these fantasied heroes are just products of Kabuto's delusions. As the fictional "Gestöber," Seri finds himself in various embarrassing situations due to Kabuto's antics that sometimes grow out of his control. Moreover, his classmate Utsugi Tsukimiya joins the fray with his absurdly accurate mind-reading abilities, slowly destroying Seri's social life. -- -- Seri tries hard to stay away from them, refusing to acknowledge their shenanigans, however with Kabuto's chuunibyou and Utsugi's unpredictability, he is only bound to be swept by the craziness coming his way. -- -- 40,259 6.65
Bungou to Alchemist: Shinpan no Haguruma -- -- OLM -- 13 eps -- Game -- Action Adventure Fantasy -- Bungou to Alchemist: Shinpan no Haguruma Bungou to Alchemist: Shinpan no Haguruma -- Famous writers throughout history find themselves being reincarnated by a mysterious, unseen entity known as the Alchemist. With their souls confined and bound to an expansive library, they are tasked by the Alchemist to jump into books to purify the pages of monsters called Taints. Along the way, they must also rescue and recruit fellow authors trapped within the very stories they themselves had written. -- -- Although the writers take on new and powerful forms for this endeavor, some still maintain a semblance of who they once were, while others struggle to remember their pasts and the works they had penned. Despite there being no apparent end to their grand mission, they remain committed to the cause in hope of resolving the mystery behind their collective resurrection as well as questions that have haunted their former lives. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 33,854 6.36
Chainsaw Man -- -- MAPPA -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Shounen -- Chainsaw Man Chainsaw Man -- Denji has a simple dream—to live a happy and peaceful life, spending time with a girl he likes. This is a far cry from reality, however, as Denji is forced by the yakuza into killing devils in order to pay off his crushing debts. Using his pet devil Pochita as a weapon, he is ready to do anything for a bit of cash. -- -- Unfortunately, he has outlived his usefulness and is murdered by a devil in contract with the yakuza. However, in an unexpected turn of events, Pochita merges with Denji's dead body and grants him the powers of a chainsaw devil. Now able to transform parts of his body into chainsaws, a revived Denji uses his new abilities to quickly and brutally dispatch his enemies. Catching the eye of the official devil hunters who arrive at the scene, he is offered work at the Public Safety Bureau as one of them. Now with the means to face even the toughest of enemies, Denji will stop at nothing to achieve his simple teenage dreams. -- -- TV - ??? ??, ???? -- 67,759 N/A -- -- Sousei no Aquarion -- -- Production Reed, Satelight -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Romance Super Power Supernatural Sci-Fi -- Sousei no Aquarion Sousei no Aquarion -- Once upon a time, a race known as the Shadow Angels attacked Earth to harvest the life force of all those who inhabited the planet. Thanks to some outrageous miracle, the Shadow Angels went dormant, and humanity was able to live another 12,000 years without fearing their presence. But 11 years after a catastrophe dubbed the Holy Genesis brought ruin to the Earth, the Shadow Angels were stirred from their slumber and resumed the attacks once more. -- -- To give humanity somewhat of a chance, an organization known as DEAVA was formed, and use of a robotic weapon named Aquarion has been authorized. In order for the Aquarion to be brought to full power, three pilots must combine their hearts, bodies, and souls into one—a feat few can hope to accomplish. Thus, the search for so-called 'Element Users' was prioritised, hoping to ensure humanity's future. -- -- Sousei no Aquarion follows the story of Apollo, a near-feral young man brought up in poverty, who is believed to be a legendary hero reincarnated. After his best friend is taken by the Shadow Angels, Apollo chooses to become an Aquarion pilot. Will he be able to turn the tides of the war, and free humanity from the threat of the Shadow Angels for once and for all? -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Apr 5, 2005 -- 67,664 7.11
Douluo Dalu -- -- Sparkly Key Animation Studio -- 26 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Historical Martial Arts Romance -- Douluo Dalu Douluo Dalu -- Tang San is one of Tang Sect martial art clan's most prestigious disciples and peerless in the use of hidden weapons. With high expectations, the sect's elders believe his future will be bright; yet Tang chooses to forsake this life at the cost of obtaining the sect's forbidden lore—an action punishable by death. Tang, now content with his ascension of knowledge, sees no reason to keep on living and jumps from Hell's Peak, but little did he know that that would not be the end of his existence. -- -- In Douluo Continent, the strong prevail and the weak perish. Each person possesses an innate spirit, some of which can be cultivated and strengthened, bestowing its user with various benefits. Those who were born with such spirits can become Spirit Masters, a profession regarded as one of the continent's most noble. -- -- Tang, reincarnated into this strange world, knows only the life of a blacksmith's son. At the age of six, he takes part in the Spirit Master ceremony, and discovers his spirit is Blue Silver Grass—supposedly the world's most useless spirit. In contrast, however, he possesses strong spirit power. Now, aided by the memories of his previous life as well, Tang's future as a Spirit Master is in no way bleak. -- -- ONA - Jan 20, 2018 -- 16,164 7.87
Honoo no Mirage -- -- Madhouse -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Historical Supernatural Drama Romance School Shounen Ai -- Honoo no Mirage Honoo no Mirage -- Takaya Ougi is just a typical high school guy who wants nothing more than to protect his best friend and live a normal life. Enter Nobutsuna Naoe, an older man who informs Takaya that he is in fact the reincarnation of Lord Kagetora. Naoe, himself a possessor, awakens Takaya's abilities to exorcise evil spirits and fight the Fuedal Underworld. While most possessors remember their former lives before being reincarnated, Takaya does not. Naoe is thankful for this, considering his passionate and abusive past with his Lord Kagetora. As Takaya improves his abilities, he also begins to remember what Naoe did because of his love for him. Meanwhile the dark forces of the Hojo and Fuma clans begin their attack as the Fuedal Underworld descends upon the living world. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- TV - Jan 7, 2002 -- 19,801 6.55
Honoo no Mirage -- -- Madhouse -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Historical Supernatural Drama Romance School Shounen Ai -- Honoo no Mirage Honoo no Mirage -- Takaya Ougi is just a typical high school guy who wants nothing more than to protect his best friend and live a normal life. Enter Nobutsuna Naoe, an older man who informs Takaya that he is in fact the reincarnation of Lord Kagetora. Naoe, himself a possessor, awakens Takaya's abilities to exorcise evil spirits and fight the Fuedal Underworld. While most possessors remember their former lives before being reincarnated, Takaya does not. Naoe is thankful for this, considering his passionate and abusive past with his Lord Kagetora. As Takaya improves his abilities, he also begins to remember what Naoe did because of his love for him. Meanwhile the dark forces of the Hojo and Fuma clans begin their attack as the Fuedal Underworld descends upon the living world. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- TV - Jan 7, 2002 -- 19,801 6.55
Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- -- Ajia-Do -- 14 eps -- Light novel -- Slice of Life Fantasy -- Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- Urano Motosu loves books and has an endless desire to read literature, no matter the subject. She almost fulfills her dream job of becoming a librarian before her life is ended in an accident. As she draws her last breath, she wishes to be able to read more books in her next life. -- -- As if fate was listening to her prayer, she wakes up reincarnated as Myne—a frail five-year-old girl living in a medieval era. What immediately comes to her mind is her passion. She tries to find something to read, only to become frustrated by the lack of books at her disposal. -- -- Without the printing press, books have to be written and copied by hand, making them very expensive; as such, only a few nobles can afford them—but this won't stop Myne. She will prove that her will to read is unbreakable, and if there are no books around, she will make them herself! -- -- 162,089 8.02
Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- -- Ajia-Do -- 14 eps -- Light novel -- Slice of Life Fantasy -- Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- Urano Motosu loves books and has an endless desire to read literature, no matter the subject. She almost fulfills her dream job of becoming a librarian before her life is ended in an accident. As she draws her last breath, she wishes to be able to read more books in her next life. -- -- As if fate was listening to her prayer, she wakes up reincarnated as Myne—a frail five-year-old girl living in a medieval era. What immediately comes to her mind is her passion. She tries to find something to read, only to become frustrated by the lack of books at her disposal. -- -- Without the printing press, books have to be written and copied by hand, making them very expensive; as such, only a few nobles can afford them—but this won't stop Myne. She will prove that her will to read is unbreakable, and if there are no books around, she will make them herself! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll -- 162,089 8.02
Huyao Xiao Hongniang -- -- Haoliners Animation League -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Historical Supernatural Romance -- Huyao Xiao Hongniang Huyao Xiao Hongniang -- True love never dies—even when it is between a human and a near-immortal youkai. Thankfully, fox spirit youkai have discovered a solution which allows a human to be reincarnated, and with the services of a Fox Spirit Matchmaker, eventually recall memories of their past life, so they can begin anew with their beloved youkai. -- -- Enter Bai Yuechu—a powerful human Taoist who desires freedom from the ruling Yi Qi Dao League—and Tushan Susu, a small and innocent fox spirit who dreams of becoming a renowned matchmaker, despite her reputation as a colossal screw-up. After Susu literally falls through the roof and into his life, Yuechu gets dragged into helping her bring together two separated lovers: prince Fan Yun Fei and his reincarnated lover, Li Xueyang. However, not everyone wants them to be reunited, including Xueyang herself. Thrown together by fate, Yuechu and Susu will discover who they truly are... and who they used to be. -- -- ONA - Jun 26, 2015 -- 35,427 7.22
Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou -- -- Gonzo -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Supernatural -- Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou -- A nonsense comical mystery. Harumi Kazuhito is a high school boy who loves books and is a fan of novelist Natsuno Kirihime. One day, he finds Kirihime writing at a cafe, about to be shot by a robber. He protects her from the attack but is killed instead. Through the supernatural power of a book-worm, he is reincarnated as a dachshund dog. Kazuhito (as a dog) writhes in a painful bookless life, when a sadistic woman carrying a pair of scissors offers him help. She is Kirihime herself. -- -- (Source: Dog and Scissors Wiki) -- 118,805 6.57
Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou -- -- Gonzo -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Supernatural -- Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou -- A nonsense comical mystery. Harumi Kazuhito is a high school boy who loves books and is a fan of novelist Natsuno Kirihime. One day, he finds Kirihime writing at a cafe, about to be shot by a robber. He protects her from the attack but is killed instead. Through the supernatural power of a book-worm, he is reincarnated as a dachshund dog. Kazuhito (as a dog) writhes in a painful bookless life, when a sadistic woman carrying a pair of scissors offers him help. She is Kirihime herself. -- -- (Source: Dog and Scissors Wiki) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 118,805 6.57
Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e -- -- MAPPA -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Drama Fantasy Military Shounen -- Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e -- With the initiation of the Patrian civil war came the creation of half-beast, half-human soldiers—a development of the outnumbered Northerners in a desperate attempt to counter the overwhelming Southern forces. Able to quickly dominate battlefields and achieve victory with ease, the soldiers' godlike abilities earned them the name "Incarnates." However, as the war raged on, the Incarnates encountered a problem involving the beasts inside them that they were unable to rectify by ordinary means. -- -- Once the war was over, mysteries and accounts of the Incarnates submitting to the misfortune of their war days surfaced. Aware of the horrors they faced during the war, Special Sergeant Major and former captain of the Incarnates Hank Henriette becomes a Beast Hunter—those who take the lives of Incarnates who have succumbed to the issues they experienced on the battlefields. -- -- After witnessing her father, a former Incarnate soldier, meet his end at the hands of one such Beast Hunter, Nancy Schaal Bancroft resolves to hunt the man who took her father's life. However, Nancy's eye-opening encounter with the Beast Hunter influences her to instead seek the reason behind her father's death and the Incarnates' problematic existence in society. -- -- 95,746 6.40
Kenja no Mago -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Comedy Magic Romance Fantasy -- Kenja no Mago Kenja no Mago -- In the kingdom of Earlshide, Merlin Walford was once regarded as a national hero, hailed for both his power and achievements. Preferring a quiet life however, he secludes himself deep in the rural woods, dedicating his time to raising an orphan that he saved. This orphan is Shin, a normal salaryman in modern-day Japan who was reincarnated into Merlin's world while still retaining his past memories. As the years pass, Shin displays unparalleled talent in both magic casting and martial arts, much to Merlin's constant amazement. -- -- On his 15th birthday however, it becomes apparent that Shin only developed his combat skills and nothing else, leaving him with blatant social awkwardness, a lack of common sense, and a middling sense of responsibility. As a result, Shin enrolls in the kingdom's Magic Academy to hone his skills and mature among other teenagers. However, living a normal life is impossible, as he is established as a local celebrity almost as soon as he arrives. -- -- Kenja no Mago follows Shin Walford's high school life in the capital as he makes new friends, learns about the world, and fights off the various forces of evil surrounding him and his city. -- -- 356,606 6.54
Kenja no Mago -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Comedy Magic Romance Fantasy -- Kenja no Mago Kenja no Mago -- In the kingdom of Earlshide, Merlin Walford was once regarded as a national hero, hailed for both his power and achievements. Preferring a quiet life however, he secludes himself deep in the rural woods, dedicating his time to raising an orphan that he saved. This orphan is Shin, a normal salaryman in modern-day Japan who was reincarnated into Merlin's world while still retaining his past memories. As the years pass, Shin displays unparalleled talent in both magic casting and martial arts, much to Merlin's constant amazement. -- -- On his 15th birthday however, it becomes apparent that Shin only developed his combat skills and nothing else, leaving him with blatant social awkwardness, a lack of common sense, and a middling sense of responsibility. As a result, Shin enrolls in the kingdom's Magic Academy to hone his skills and mature among other teenagers. However, living a normal life is impossible, as he is established as a local celebrity almost as soon as he arrives. -- -- Kenja no Mago follows Shin Walford's high school life in the capital as he makes new friends, learns about the world, and fights off the various forces of evil surrounding him and his city. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 356,606 6.54
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! -- -- Studio Deen -- 10 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy Magic Parody Supernatural -- Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! -- After dying a laughable and pathetic death on his way back from buying a game, high school student and recluse Kazuma Satou finds himself sitting before a beautiful but obnoxious goddess named Aqua. She provides the NEET with two options: continue on to heaven or reincarnate in every gamer's dream—a real fantasy world! Choosing to start a new life, Kazuma is quickly tasked with defeating a Demon King who is terrorizing villages. But before he goes, he can choose one item of any kind to aid him in his quest, and the future hero selects Aqua. But Kazuma has made a grave mistake—Aqua is completely useless! -- -- Unfortunately, their troubles don't end here; it turns out that living in such a world is far different from how it plays out in a game. Instead of going on a thrilling adventure, the duo must first work to pay for their living expenses. Indeed, their misfortunes have only just begun! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll, Discotek Media -- 1,372,961 8.15
Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? -- -- Millepensee -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Mystery Comedy Magic Fantasy -- Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? -- The day is as normal as it can be in high school as the students peacefully go about their everyday activities until an unprecedented catastrophe strikes the school, killing every person in its wake. Guided by what seems to be a miracle, a handful of students are fortunate enough to be reincarnated into another world as nobles, princes, and other kinds of people with prestigious backgrounds. -- -- One girl, however, is not so lucky. Being reborn as a spider of the weakest kind, she immediately experiences the hardships of her dire situation. Even so, she must press on to survive the numerous threats that endanger her life. Discovering that her new world has a system like that of an RPG, she tries her best to hunt prey and defeat monsters to level up and evolve. As she gradually grows stronger, she hopes one day her efforts will be rewarded, and that she will be granted a better life. -- -- 182,578 7.26
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Demons Magic Fantasy School -- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- In the distant past, a war between humans and demons brought about widespread chaos and bloodshed. To put an end to this seemingly endless conflict, Demon King Anos Voldigoad willingly sacrificed his life, hoping to be reborn in a peaceful future. -- -- In preparation for their king's return, the demon race created the Demon King Academy, an elite institution tasked with determining Anos' identity when he reawakens. He reincarnates two millennia later, but to his surprise, he soon learns that the level of magic in the world has drastically waned during his absence. Moreover, when he enrolls at the academy to reclaim his rightful title, he finds out that demonkind remembers him differently. His personality, his deeds, and even his legacy are all falsified—masked beneath the name of an impostor. This "lack" of common knowledge renders him the academy's outlier—a misfit never before seen in history. -- -- Despite these drawbacks, Anos remains unfazed. As he sets out to uncover those altering his glorious past, he takes it upon himself to make his descendants recognize that their ruler has finally returned. -- -- 402,347 7.33
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Demons Magic Fantasy School -- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- In the distant past, a war between humans and demons brought about widespread chaos and bloodshed. To put an end to this seemingly endless conflict, Demon King Anos Voldigoad willingly sacrificed his life, hoping to be reborn in a peaceful future. -- -- In preparation for their king's return, the demon race created the Demon King Academy, an elite institution tasked with determining Anos' identity when he reawakens. He reincarnates two millennia later, but to his surprise, he soon learns that the level of magic in the world has drastically waned during his absence. Moreover, when he enrolls at the academy to reclaim his rightful title, he finds out that demonkind remembers him differently. His personality, his deeds, and even his legacy are all falsified—masked beneath the name of an impostor. This "lack" of common knowledge renders him the academy's outlier—a misfit never before seen in history. -- -- Despite these drawbacks, Anos remains unfazed. As he sets out to uncover those altering his glorious past, he takes it upon himself to make his descendants recognize that their ruler has finally returned. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 402,347 7.33
Mo Dao Zu Shi -- -- B.CMAY PICTURES -- 15 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Mystery Historical Supernatural -- Mo Dao Zu Shi Mo Dao Zu Shi -- Xian: the state of immortality that all cultivators strive to achieve. However, there is a dark energy that lies underneath—the forbidden Mo Dao, or demonic path. Through an unfortunate series of tragedies, this is the path that cultivator Wei Wuxian experiments with during his teachings. His rise in power is accompanied by chaos and destruction, but his reign of terror comes to an abrupt end when the cultivation clans overpower him and he is killed by his closest ally. -- -- Thirteen years later, Wei Wuxian is reincarnated in the body of a lunatic and reunited with Lan Wangji, a former classmate of his. This marks the beginning of a supernatural mystery that plagues the clans and threatens to disrupt their everyday life. -- -- Mo Dao Zu Shi follows these two men on their mission to unravel the mysteries of the spiritual world. Fighting demons, ghosts, and even other cultivators, the two end up forming a bond that neither of them had ever expected. -- -- ONA - Jul 9, 2018 -- 140,492 8.49
Nezha Zhi Mo Tong Jiang Shi -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Other -- Action Comedy Drama Fantasy Historical -- Nezha Zhi Mo Tong Jiang Shi Nezha Zhi Mo Tong Jiang Shi -- From the heavenly object known as the Chaos Pearl, two elements are extracted: the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb. In an attempt to suppress their power, the Lord of Heaven sends the Spirit Pearl to Earth to reincarnate as Ne Zha, the third son of Li Jing, while the Demon Orb is scheduled to be destroyed by a lightning strike. However, because of a conspiracy by the Dragon King to steal the Spirit Pearl for his own son, Ne Zha is instead reincarnated with the Demon Orb. -- -- With no way to remove the cursed effects of the Demon Orb, Ne Zha is raised under the belief that he will become the great demon hunter the Spirit Pearl destined for him to be. Fighting against his chaotic and mischievous nature, Ne Zha must decide whether to accept his evil fate or repel against it to prove he is worthy of the future his parents foretold. -- -- Movie - Jul 26, 2019 -- 8,578 7.66
Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga -- -- Studio Signpost -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Historical Seinen -- Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga -- In the "one-of-a-kind samurai-general-reincarnated-as-a-canine comedy," Nobunaga perishes at Honnouji as in history, and reincarnates in modern-day Japan as a dog named Shinamon. Other Warring States era warlords such as Takeda Shingen eventually join him, also as dogs. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 15,554 6.55
Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei shiteshimatta... -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Harem Comedy Drama Romance Fantasy School Shoujo -- Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei shiteshimatta... Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei shiteshimatta... -- Most people would prefer being the protagonist of a world full of adventure, be it in a game or in another world. But, unfortunately, a certain girl is not so lucky. Regaining the memories of her past life, she realizes that she was reborn in the world of Fortune Lover—one of the games she used to play. -- -- Unfortunately, the character she was reincarnated into—Katarina Claes—is the game's main antagonist, who faces utter doom in every ending. Using her extensive knowledge of the game, she takes it upon herself to escape from the chains of this accursed destiny. -- -- However, this will not be an easy feat, especially since she needs to be cautious as to not set off death flags that may speed up the impending doom she is trying to avoid. Even so, to make a change that will affect the lives of everyone around her, she strives—not as the heroine—but as the villainess. -- -- 258,252 7.49
Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita -- -- Revoroot -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Fantasy -- Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita -- Suddenly dying from overwork, salarywoman Azusa Aizawa finds herself before an angel, who allows her to reincarnate into a new world as an immortal witch, where she spends her days killing slimes for money on an otherwise eternal vacation. But even the minimal experience points from slimes will add up after hundreds of years, and Azusa discovers that she accidentally reached the maximum level! Fearing that her strong abilities will attract work and force her back to a life of overexertion, she decides to hide her strength in order to preserve her peaceful lifestyle. -- -- Despite her efforts, tales of the max level "Witch of the Plateau" spread across the land, and a proud dragon named Raika shows up looking to test their strength against her. Even though Azusa defeats and befriends Raika, problems arise as both friends and foes come looking for the secluded witch. -- -- 116,142 7.31
Sousei no Aquarion -- -- Production Reed, Satelight -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Romance Super Power Supernatural Sci-Fi -- Sousei no Aquarion Sousei no Aquarion -- Once upon a time, a race known as the Shadow Angels attacked Earth to harvest the life force of all those who inhabited the planet. Thanks to some outrageous miracle, the Shadow Angels went dormant, and humanity was able to live another 12,000 years without fearing their presence. But 11 years after a catastrophe dubbed the Holy Genesis brought ruin to the Earth, the Shadow Angels were stirred from their slumber and resumed the attacks once more. -- -- To give humanity somewhat of a chance, an organization known as DEAVA was formed, and use of a robotic weapon named Aquarion has been authorized. In order for the Aquarion to be brought to full power, three pilots must combine their hearts, bodies, and souls into one—a feat few can hope to accomplish. Thus, the search for so-called 'Element Users' was prioritised, hoping to ensure humanity's future. -- -- Sousei no Aquarion follows the story of Apollo, a near-feral young man brought up in poverty, who is believed to be a legendary hero reincarnated. After his best friend is taken by the Shadow Angels, Apollo chooses to become an Aquarion pilot. Will he be able to turn the tides of the war, and free humanity from the threat of the Shadow Angels for once and for all? -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Apr 5, 2005 -- 67,664 7.11
Sousei no Aquarion -- -- Production Reed, Satelight -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Romance Super Power Supernatural Sci-Fi -- Sousei no Aquarion Sousei no Aquarion -- Once upon a time, a race known as the Shadow Angels attacked Earth to harvest the life force of all those who inhabited the planet. Thanks to some outrageous miracle, the Shadow Angels went dormant, and humanity was able to live another 12,000 years without fearing their presence. But 11 years after a catastrophe dubbed the Holy Genesis brought ruin to the Earth, the Shadow Angels were stirred from their slumber and resumed the attacks once more. -- -- To give humanity somewhat of a chance, an organization known as DEAVA was formed, and use of a robotic weapon named Aquarion has been authorized. In order for the Aquarion to be brought to full power, three pilots must combine their hearts, bodies, and souls into one—a feat few can hope to accomplish. Thus, the search for so-called 'Element Users' was prioritised, hoping to ensure humanity's future. -- -- Sousei no Aquarion follows the story of Apollo, a near-feral young man brought up in poverty, who is believed to be a legendary hero reincarnated. After his best friend is taken by the Shadow Angels, Apollo chooses to become an Aquarion pilot. Will he be able to turn the tides of the war, and free humanity from the threat of the Shadow Angels for once and for all? -- TV - Apr 5, 2005 -- 67,664 7.11
Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- -- 8bit -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Demons Magic Fantasy -- Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- Thirty-seven-year-old Satoru Mikami is a typical corporate worker, who is perfectly content with his monotonous lifestyle in Tokyo, other than failing to nail down a girlfriend even once throughout his life. In the midst of a casual encounter with his colleague, he falls victim to a random assailant on the streets and is stabbed. However, while succumbing to his injuries, a peculiar voice echoes in his mind, and recites a bunch of commands which the dying man cannot make sense of. -- -- When Satoru regains consciousness, he discovers that he has reincarnated as a goop of slime in an unfamiliar realm. In doing so, he acquires newfound skills—notably, the power to devour anything and mimic its appearance and abilities. He then stumbles upon the sealed Catastrophe-level monster "Storm Dragon" Veldora who had been sealed away for the past 300 years for devastating a town to ashes. Sympathetic to his predicament, Satoru befriends him, promising to assist in destroying the seal. In return, Veldora bestows upon him the name Rimuru Tempest to grant him divine protection. -- -- Now, liberated from the mundanities of his past life, Rimuru embarks on a fresh journey with a distinct goal in mind. As he grows accustomed to his new physique, his gooey antics ripple throughout the world, gradually altering his fate. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 823,286 8.08
Tensura Nikki: Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- -- 8bit -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Fantasy Shounen -- Tensura Nikki: Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken Tensura Nikki: Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- "Dear diary... I got reincarnated as a slime." -- -- Even in another world, lives aren't always on the line. There's plenty of work to be done, from feeding the community and forging the items the community needs; as well as plenty of play ...and hijinks throughout! Join Rimuru and friends as they kick back and enjoy their daily lives. -- -- (Source: Kodansha Comics) -- 134,409 7.60
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby (TV) -- -- P.A. Works -- 13 eps -- Game -- Comedy Slice of Life Sports -- Uma Musume: Pretty Derby (TV) Uma Musume: Pretty Derby (TV) -- Famous racehorses that have left behind worthy legacies, unique as they can be, are reincarnated as horse girls in a parallel world. In this life, they start their journey anew as they continue to race and perhaps relive the success they once lived through. -- -- Aspiring to become the best racehorse in Japan, a horse girl named Special Week moves to Tokyo to enroll in the Tracen Academy—an institution that nurtures horse girls like her to become better racers. There, Special Week witnesses the sophisticated running style of Silence Suzuka and is inspired to become a racer like her. Shortly after, Special Week finds herself recruited into Silence Suzuka's team, Spica. From there, she begins her path to the top—one lap at a time. -- -- 89,269 7.29
Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! -- -- Project No.9 -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Fantasy -- Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! -- Having stood out from others most of her life due to her exceptional character, Misato Kurihara has lived without neither the joy of having close friends nor the experience of having a regular life. However, after a sudden death, she was transported to a divine realm to be reincarnated—and granted one wish to top it off. Thinking about the ordinary life that she had always wanted, she wished to be born as a normal person, with abilities that are average for the world she will resurrect in. -- -- Reborn as Adele von Ascham—the daughter of a noble—she possesses magic powers completely exceeding what one would label average. Still desiring to carry out the life she wanted, she leaves her home and enrolls at a hunter school in a faraway kingdom using "Mile" as an alias. However, try as she might to hide her overpowering potential, attaining her goal will be difficult—especially when facing against the crazy situations that ensue! -- -- 116,130 6.84
Youjo Senki -- -- Nut -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Military Magic -- Youjo Senki Youjo Senki -- Tanya Degurechaff is a young soldier infamous for predatorial-like ruthlessness and an uncanny, tactical aptitude, earning her the nickname of the "Devil of the Rhine." Underneath her innocuous appearance, however, lies the soul of a man who challenged Being X, the self-proclaimed God, to a battle of wits—which resulted in him being reincarnated as a little girl into a world of magical warfare. Hellbent on defiance, Tanya resolves to ascend the ranks of her country's military as it slowly plunges into world war, with only Being X proving to be the strongest obstacle in recreating the peaceful life she once knew. But her perceptive actions and combat initiative have an unintended side effect: propelling the mighty Empire into becoming one of the most powerful nations in mankind's history. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll, Funimation -- 636,587 7.99
Abaddon Incarnate
Hong Kong Reincarnated New Lo Ting Archaeological Find
Incarnate (disambiguation)
Incarnate (film)
Incarnate (Killswitch Engage album)
Incarnate Word Academy
Incarnate Word Academy (Bel-Nor, Missouri)
Incarnate Word Cardinals
Institute of the Incarnate Word
List of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episodes
Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament
Preincarnate
Preincarnate (novel)
Raphimetopus incarnatella
Reincarnate (album)
Reincarnated
Reincarnated (album)
Reincarnated as a Sword
Reincarnated (film)
Reincarnated (TV series)
Renincarnated
Rhigognostis incarnatella
Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word
Sullivan Field (University of Incarnate Word)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
The Myth of God Incarnate
University of the Incarnate Word



convenience portal:
recent: Section Maps - index table - favorites
Savitri -- Savitri extended toc
Savitri Section Map -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
authors -- Crowley - Peterson - Borges - Wilber - Teresa - Aurobindo - Ramakrishna - Maharshi - Mother
places -- Garden - Inf. Art Gallery - Inf. Building - Inf. Library - Labyrinth - Library - School - Temple - Tower - Tower of MEM
powers -- Aspiration - Beauty - Concentration - Effort - Faith - Force - Grace - inspiration - Presence - Purity - Sincerity - surrender
difficulties -- cowardice - depres. - distract. - distress - dryness - evil - fear - forget - habits - impulse - incapacity - irritation - lost - mistakes - obscur. - problem - resist - sadness - self-deception - shame - sin - suffering
practices -- Lucid Dreaming - meditation - project - programming - Prayer - read Savitri - study
subjects -- CS - Cybernetics - Game Dev - Integral Theory - Integral Yoga - Kabbalah - Language - Philosophy - Poetry - Zen
6.01 books -- KC - ABA - Null - Savitri - SA O TAOC - SICP - The Gospel of SRK - TIC - The Library of Babel - TLD - TSOY - TTYODAS - TSZ - WOTM II
8 unsorted / add here -- Always - Everyday - Verbs


change css options:
change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding":
change "table font size":
last updated: 2022-05-01 17:20:49
114116 site hits