Liber Novus

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Brahma

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1856 [1857]

A Day at the Races

I've created my own calendar.  I've actually created two, but I'll just talk about the one.  It's predominately a solar event-oriented calendar with the four solar events (the two solstices and the two equinoxes) as its main festivals.  The idea for it came during a class on literary criticism when I was bored.  I remembered that the Egyptians had considered the sun to be a different god depending on its position in the sky.  When rising, the sun was Khepri.  At noon, it was Ra.  At sunset, it was Atum.  I decided to apply this to the year as a whole.  The year can be divided in two, a light part and a dark part.  The dark of the year is the period between the Autumnal and the Vernal Equinoxes when the nights are longer than the days.  The light part then occurs between the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes when the days are longer than the nights.  The sunrise of the year is then the Vernal Equinox, the beginning of the light.  So this is associated with the god Khepri.  The noon of the year is obviously the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, and therefore associated with the god Ra.  And the sunset is the Autumnal Equinox, associated with the god Atum.  Which just leaves midnight, the Winter Solstice.  Keeping with the sun god theme, this can be associated with Amun.  Amun was considered the hidden sun, the sun at night.  Other associations are possible here, such as Horus as a child, but Amun keeps the pattern better.

The other four festivals are nature festivals that I've also associated with other gods.  Beltaine I've associated with Horus (as a man, not a child), Imolg with Min, Lughnasadh with Set, and Sahmain with Osiris.  Of course, these are all the sabbats of the Wiccan/Neopagan calendar, but their origins are very ancient (Christianity: The Origins of a Pagan Religion by Philippe Walter, to cite just one source offhand).  

Also, the sun is Horakhty during the twelve hours of the day (Horus of the Two Horizons) and Khnum (the Ba of Ra) during its twelve hours of the night (according to the Amduat).  By the way, Khnum is an old creator god, originally pictured with a bulls head, who became identified as Ra's Ba and was given a ram's head.  This is because the Egyptians never met a pun they didn't like.  The Egyptian word for ram was also ba, because, well, baaaaaaaaaaaaaa. 

Yes, this does take the Egyptian gods out of their context, and some people might object to that.  However, even in ancient Egypt, gods changed context all the time, as with Khnum.  I'm not doing anything that every ancient culture didn't do.  I've researched each god (and continue to do so), and I think each placement is appropriate to the symbolism of that god.

I'm still working on developing this calendar.  The other one's on hold for the moment, though I'll get back to it.

A Night at the Opera

I've recently become an opera fan.  I never used to like the opera until earlier this year when I went to see one for the hell of hit.  Seeing an opera is a whole different experience than just listening to it.  But where did I see an opera, you ask?  Chicago?  I could've gone into Chicago and seen one, but actually I saw a live broadcast (well, the encore anyway) at my local movie theater from The Met.  They transmit some of their operas to six of the seven continents (I'm sure that the scientists on Antarctica are sorry they're missing out).  I've even gotten my friend Ken interested.  We have so far gone on two of the gayest "man-dates" that two straight men can go on with the possible exception of going to see The Wiz.  That would be THE gayest.  Apropos of nothing, my friend Mike knows the entire score to The Wiz by heart.  Just thought I'd mention that.

Baby's First Villanelle

I've been experimenting with poetic forms and wrote my first villanelle last night.  It's definitely not going to revolutionize the poetic field, but it does fulfill all the requirements of the form.  In trying to think of what to write, I immediately went to Shakespeare, the patron saint of the English language.  I'm provisionally calling it "Modern Trickster."

I am that merry wanderer of the night;

I dance and laugh and shout and sing

more than Puck ever did at his height.

I wield an awesome might

yet am as fragile as a hummingbird's wing.

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

Long I gaze at any thrilling sight

and raise my voice and let it ring

more than Puck ever did at his height.

I don't give a damn about wrong or right.

To me the same is a worker or a king.

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I'm always ready for a fight

and long to give a head a ping

more than Puck ever did at his height.

I am the whiskey with the bite

that lights the fire that makes souls zing.

I am that merry wanderer of the night

more than Puck ever was at his height.

Thoughts of Death

This post is appropriate to the season.  Fall is the time when everything dies, and Halloween is the time when the veil between life and death is the thinnest and the dead may return (hopefully not as zombies).  It's the only time of the year when it's socially acceptable  to put up images of skulls, skeletons, and other morbid things.

Which got me thinking: what can we know about what happens after death?  And my answer is: nothing.  Once our bodies die, once our brains die, all our knowledge ceases.  Everything we can know comes from our experiences, and all our experiences are created by our brain.  Everthing.  It's all chemical and electrical processes.  When your brain's dead, you can know nothing and experience nothing.  Near-death experiences, you say?  I can wire your brain up and cause you to have one just by stimulating parts of your brain.  I can inject you with a drug called DMT (I think) that will cause you to experience alien abduction even though you're in a bed in a lab being watched by doctors all the time.  Any experience, whether "real" or not, is a function of your brain.

Now let me tell you a lie.  Let me tell you that there are two types of knowledge which we'll call lower and higher.  The lower knowledge I've just described.  We'll use it's Latin name, scientia.  On the Tree of Life, it's represented by Malkuth (the Kingdom), the tenth and final Sephirot.  It's also called Shekinah, the Presence.  In one version of the Tree, it takes two forms.  It takes the familiar form with Malkuth at the bottom.  There's an earlier form, however, with no Malkuth.  Instead, more towards the top, there's a Sephirot called Daath.  Daath represents the higher knowledge.  I prefer to use the Greek word gnosis for this.  This knowledge isn't dependent on experience; technically, you can't experience it.  It's beyond all experience and knowledge (scientia).  It's the great dilemma of every single mystical system I care to name how to experience that which cannot be experienced.  I said this was a lie, didn't I?  It's a lie because words can't explain what brain can't know.  The paradox is that all mystical systems try to explain it anyway in order to get its followers to experience it.  That's right, the it that can't be experienced.  Or even talked about.  Yet it is on both counts.

On this Tree, Daath falls and becomes Malkuth.  In a sense, this represents the formation of the ego.  An infant doesn't conceive of itself as a separate being.  The ego is the mental construct that allows us to think of ourselves as a separate and independent being apart from everything else.  The knowledge of ourselves as everything is lost (so to speak, since its not really knowledge at all) and the knowledge of ourselves as ourselves begins.  I was watching the movie Excalibur recently, and Merlin expressed the same thing I'm saying.  He talked about an earlier time when everything was one.  During this time, the sword of power was forged.  My friends asked how a sword could be forged during a time of oneness and peace.  My response was that it's forging probably ended the time of oneness.  The sword can be a representation of the ego.  In some mythology, the sword is forged, broken, and re-forged (as happens in Excalibur).  This can represent the initial formation of the ego, its disillusionment that it's really separate (or even real), leading to its destruction and re-formation.  The re-formed ego realizes it's an illusion, but a necessary one.

Rene Descartes obsession with proving his existence began in childhood.  Freud was so right.

Young Descartes one day said, "Mother,

my enemy is my new little brother.

He's created an illusion

as part of your delusion

that only he exists and no other."