Muad'Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation.
-Frank Herbert, Dune
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT DIE
The seasons had beleaguered Evan Thane
With many a ravenous yearly trumpeting,
Pinched his defenses into crookedness,
And triumphed at the corners of his flesh,
And yet he would not tumble. Beards had wagged
Upon the lurking pestilence of humors
Pent in the damps to gnaw an old man's bones,
But no beards wagged for frosty Evan Thane.
He said he was no rotten Jericho
To shake for village prophets' reputations,
And scorned the bench where others whittled out
Their easy days with amiable discourse
Of usual death, -- until at last they died.
Grimly he watched them coward it away;
Glowered contempt beneath the funereal cedars
Scarce long enough to hear the falling clods
Rattle the wood, --then lashed his horse and fled,
Like one who leaves a shameful battlefield.
And never on any day of rain or cold
Dared villager ask of Evan Thane his health,
Implying thus that human flesh may fail.
They saw the bright uplifted head advance
Most casually where others bent and ducked;
They dreaded bitter dartings from his eye,
The old flesh reddening, the pursing lips
Spitting staccato vengeance through his beard,
And kept their tongues to whisper after him.
His house, like him, an aged careful watchman,
Blinked wary windows over Hunter's Knob,
Eyes for his every acre. None could buy
A foot of land from Evan. But he kept
One window, even by night, with lamp awake
Against the shade that throttled all men's throats.
He would not tell how swiftly years moved now --
Days like a silver flash cleaving the sky,
Nights but a rested sough of dark and stars --
But from his viny porch, as from a tower,
He peered out on the world's processional,
The clack of new machines, the pageantry
Of glittering strange dress and stranger speech.
He crackled his morning paper fervently
And clung on fast to the frayed edge of time,
Not crustily, but carefully, awake
Against the seasons' annual battering
And maladies that steal an old man's youth.
For still he would not die. He strode the hills
As if he would re-teem them from his life,
And kept within his heart the natural fire
To fill the air with blooms and sudden May.
And so one day the newcome Parson met him,
Bracing a corner of sky near a mended fence
And asked the forbidden question of the sage.
The Parson had not seen an aged man
Who could grow tall upon a passing breath,
Tower like granite (so he said) and flush
Like a ravaged cliff stung into scarlet spring.
He saw the white hair shaken indignantly
And heard quick speech, sibyllic fragments flung
From some strange inner might that was the man
The Parson set it down, or afterwards
He strove to, but he found it measureless
In notebooks, sermons, prayers, and flexless things.
The insurgent splendor of an ancient joy
Bereft the hills of death, and Evan stood
Apostle to their rapture, crying, "No!
I will not die...."
Then Parson knew that death was not a friend
To this old man who hailed the growing corn,
Germinant, like its grains, --in love with time
Because it gave expectancy of dawns
And fervor for to-morrow and live hope
That something might be better than before.
The hill-top was all blazed with noise of worlds,
A whirling scroll of kingdoms, cities, islands,
Seeded like fields with fates men might behold;
Of rivers dredged, that swift gray ships might bring
Cargoes to lands that never knew the sea;
Of marble buildings, yet unreared, and streets
Made newly splendid for such folk as hear
Music yet to be thought and songs unwritten;
Of islands fabulous at last disclosing
Secrets of buried tongues, old monuments;
Young heroes and fair women not yet born;
Tales unprinted, and ways of coming men
Plying the tangled threads of world desire
To some dim ever far-off unity.
Whether he heard or thought such things as these
The Parson could not say. He seemed to wake
Alone upon the hill-top, wondering,
Questioning what old Evan told him there.
The lizards flicked along the rotting fence;
A blue-jay rasped a call across the field;
And at his feet the ants ran back and forth.
Then evening made the distant hills more blue
With shadow, and he sought the weed-fringed road.
He saw the cornstalks withered by the sun
And a hawk, first prowler, swooping in a field
With deathly skill, so that he pondered much
Upon the Resurrection and the Life,
Hearing forever, like a trumpet-song --
"I must not die."...And so came dreaming home.
His lamp burned late that night. At one o'clock
He swept the futile papers from his desk
And girded up his soul to look at stars.
But there were none. Impenetrably dull,
The firmament was cloud, unanswering,
Except that high on Hunter's Knob one lamp
Marked Evan's yellow star against the night,
Giving back answer to his lonely question.
The morrow was the Sabbath. So he preached
Most on the Resurrection and the Life,
And preached for one wild face of all the faces,
Evan Thane's who said he would not die.
-Donald Davidson
from An Outland Piper. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1924.
With many a ravenous yearly trumpeting,
Pinched his defenses into crookedness,
And triumphed at the corners of his flesh,
And yet he would not tumble. Beards had wagged
Upon the lurking pestilence of humors
Pent in the damps to gnaw an old man's bones,
But no beards wagged for frosty Evan Thane.
He said he was no rotten Jericho
To shake for village prophets' reputations,
And scorned the bench where others whittled out
Their easy days with amiable discourse
Of usual death, -- until at last they died.
Grimly he watched them coward it away;
Glowered contempt beneath the funereal cedars
Scarce long enough to hear the falling clods
Rattle the wood, --then lashed his horse and fled,
Like one who leaves a shameful battlefield.
And never on any day of rain or cold
Dared villager ask of Evan Thane his health,
Implying thus that human flesh may fail.
They saw the bright uplifted head advance
Most casually where others bent and ducked;
They dreaded bitter dartings from his eye,
The old flesh reddening, the pursing lips
Spitting staccato vengeance through his beard,
And kept their tongues to whisper after him.
His house, like him, an aged careful watchman,
Blinked wary windows over Hunter's Knob,
Eyes for his every acre. None could buy
A foot of land from Evan. But he kept
One window, even by night, with lamp awake
Against the shade that throttled all men's throats.
He would not tell how swiftly years moved now --
Days like a silver flash cleaving the sky,
Nights but a rested sough of dark and stars --
But from his viny porch, as from a tower,
He peered out on the world's processional,
The clack of new machines, the pageantry
Of glittering strange dress and stranger speech.
He crackled his morning paper fervently
And clung on fast to the frayed edge of time,
Not crustily, but carefully, awake
Against the seasons' annual battering
And maladies that steal an old man's youth.
For still he would not die. He strode the hills
As if he would re-teem them from his life,
And kept within his heart the natural fire
To fill the air with blooms and sudden May.
And so one day the newcome Parson met him,
Bracing a corner of sky near a mended fence
And asked the forbidden question of the sage.
The Parson had not seen an aged man
Who could grow tall upon a passing breath,
Tower like granite (so he said) and flush
Like a ravaged cliff stung into scarlet spring.
He saw the white hair shaken indignantly
And heard quick speech, sibyllic fragments flung
From some strange inner might that was the man
The Parson set it down, or afterwards
He strove to, but he found it measureless
In notebooks, sermons, prayers, and flexless things.
The insurgent splendor of an ancient joy
Bereft the hills of death, and Evan stood
Apostle to their rapture, crying, "No!
I will not die...."
Then Parson knew that death was not a friend
To this old man who hailed the growing corn,
Germinant, like its grains, --in love with time
Because it gave expectancy of dawns
And fervor for to-morrow and live hope
That something might be better than before.
The hill-top was all blazed with noise of worlds,
A whirling scroll of kingdoms, cities, islands,
Seeded like fields with fates men might behold;
Of rivers dredged, that swift gray ships might bring
Cargoes to lands that never knew the sea;
Of marble buildings, yet unreared, and streets
Made newly splendid for such folk as hear
Music yet to be thought and songs unwritten;
Of islands fabulous at last disclosing
Secrets of buried tongues, old monuments;
Young heroes and fair women not yet born;
Tales unprinted, and ways of coming men
Plying the tangled threads of world desire
To some dim ever far-off unity.
Whether he heard or thought such things as these
The Parson could not say. He seemed to wake
Alone upon the hill-top, wondering,
Questioning what old Evan told him there.
The lizards flicked along the rotting fence;
A blue-jay rasped a call across the field;
And at his feet the ants ran back and forth.
Then evening made the distant hills more blue
With shadow, and he sought the weed-fringed road.
He saw the cornstalks withered by the sun
And a hawk, first prowler, swooping in a field
With deathly skill, so that he pondered much
Upon the Resurrection and the Life,
Hearing forever, like a trumpet-song --
"I must not die."...And so came dreaming home.
His lamp burned late that night. At one o'clock
He swept the futile papers from his desk
And girded up his soul to look at stars.
But there were none. Impenetrably dull,
The firmament was cloud, unanswering,
Except that high on Hunter's Knob one lamp
Marked Evan's yellow star against the night,
Giving back answer to his lonely question.
The morrow was the Sabbath. So he preached
Most on the Resurrection and the Life,
And preached for one wild face of all the faces,
Evan Thane's who said he would not die.
-Donald Davidson
from An Outland Piper. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1924.
Friday, April 1, 2011
2 - Bacatus - The Magician
Trump: 2 - Bacatus - The Magician
-initiatic axiom
----
The creator of the natural or sensible universe is a wielder of "illusion." It is in the stead of this god that magicians act when working their wills upon the natural universe to cause changes to occur according to their wills...
The original meaning of this image was probably that of the magician, the primeval creator of the world according to will.
-Stephen E. Flowers, The Magian Tarok, 47-48
------
By means of willed performative or operative acts/speech the operator/magician (subject) is able to manipulate, or to participate in a complex of symbols which have an analytical ("sympathetic") connection to the indirect object of these acts. Because of the psycho-cosmological and social frame of reference for such operative acts ascribes a grammatically subjective nature t this indirect object of the action, it is considered a partner in a phenomenologically communicative process, and it in turn becomes the subject/agent of an action of which the magician or some other person(s) or thing(s) become the object...
[Magic is] a technique by which the human being is able, by the power of volition, to affect events in subjective and/or objective reality.
-Stephen E. Flowers, Runes and Magic, 14-15
------------------
¨There are three types of knowledge, Luke. First, there is knowledge acquired through experience, as in the case of the craftsman. Secondly, there is knowledge acquired through study, as in the case of the scholar. Finally there is knowledge acquired through initiation, and this is the special province of the Jedi Order.
Initiation does not teach you to know or do anything in particular. It is rather a process of awakening certain latent sensitivities within rare individuals. These sensitivities enable the Jedi to see situations and events around him with a clarity and objectivity unknown to non-Jedis. Thus he is able to impress his Will upon situations in a manner that is as effective as it is subtle. This Jedi characteristic, mysterious as it is to others, has resulted in our being suspect to those in positions of social power...
Now, the knowledge of the Jedi requires two factors. The initiation process is one factor; it is the deliberate sensitizing of the individual to the abilities that lie within his-or her- consciousness. This initiation may be encouraged and to some extent guided by others, but it is essentially a poersonal, private experience. Hence at the Citadel of the Jedi we never spoke of ´training´ Jedi - but rather of recognizing their respective levels of initiation.
...The other factor is the raw material. We have found that not everyone can respond to initiation, or respond to it at comparable levels. Nor is the capacity for initiation tied to the ability to acquire knowledge of the other two kinds, though of course a Jedi with such knowledge is all the more effective. In certain individuals - beings of all species throughout the galaxy - there is...the ´Force´, as we generally call it. It is the raw material, that, when refined through initiation, enables the Jedi to effect change in accordance with his Will...
The Jedi´s commitment is to change as something desirable in itself...but of course there are value judgments involved. There is nothing to be gained by influencing a peaceful, progressive society to disintegrate into war, for example. But a peaceful society which fails to progress may benefit in the long run from a destabilizing shock. The art of the Jedi lies in the ability to estimate when and if a change in the existing situation will stimulate positive evolution.
The strength of the Jedi lay in their ability to set processes in motion, not necessarily to force those same processes to conclusion...
Michael Aquino, The Dark Side, 47-8
-----------
There is a twofold reason that we want to retain the term "magic."
First of all, we want to emphasize the character of an experimental science and technique that is essential to the initiatic path in general and which distinguishes magic from everything that is mysticism, mediumism, and the like. In passing, we may note that in the body of positive religions the magical component is present in everything that is ritual with a definite and objective character, as opposed to the purely subjective and psychological domain of faith, sentiments, and states of mind.
The second reason is that despite all its counterfeits and fairy-tale adaptations, the figure of the magus retains in a highly visible way the ideal of spiritual virility, which is most essential for the higher type of the initiate or adept. The magus has always called to mind the ideal of a dominating superiority.
-Julius Evola, from Introduction to Magic, 258-9
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
beware the Ides of March...
Trump: 1 - Apis - The Fool
"You remember the story John use to tell us about the three chinamen playing Fantan? This guy runs up to them and says, "Hey, the world's coming to an end!" and the first one says, "Well, I best go to the mission and pray," and the second one says, "Well, hell, I'm gonna go and buy me a case of Mezcal and six whores," and the third one says "Well, I'm gonna finish the game."
"I shall finish the game, Doc."
-William H. Bonney, from Young Guns II
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Inversion of Ghibellinism
In the so-called sect of Bavaria's Illuminati we find a typical example of the overturning of tendencies that I have previously described. This can be seen in the change of meaning undergone by the term Enlightenment. Originally the term referred to suprarational, spiritual illumination; slowly but inexorably, it became synonymous with rationalism, with the theory of "natural light," and with antitradition. We may speak, in regard to it, of a counterfeited subversive use of the right belonging to the initiate alone. The initiate, if truly such, may regard himself to be above the contingent historical forms of a particular tradition; denounce its limitations (if he received the mandate to do so) and place himself above their authority; reject dogmas, because he possesses something higher, namely, a transcendent knowledge that he regards as the ultimate authority; and finally claim for himself the dignity of a free being, because he has freed himself from the bonds of the merely human, inferior nature. To this effect the "free ones" constitute a community of equals, which may be regarded as a true confraternity.
Therefore, if we materialize, secularize, and democratize these aspects of the initiatory right and translate them into individualistic terms, what we have are the fundamental principles of the modern subversive and revolutionary ideologies. The light of mere human reason replaces the illumination, giving rise to the havoc brought about by "free inquiry" and secular criticism. The supernatural is banned or confused with nature. Freedom and equality are illegitimately claimed by the individual who is "conscious of his dignity" (though he is not conscious of being enslaved to his empirical self) and who now arises against any form of established authority, vainly setting himself up as his own ultimate reason for being. I say "vainly" because in the inexorable unfolding of the various phases of modern decadence, individualism has been only a short-lived mirage and a misleading intoxication; the collective and irrational element in the age of the masses and of technology has rapidly overcome the emancipated "individual" who is without roots and without traditions.
166-7
-----
...the initiate who knocks down the Temple's columns and steps over the cross, being admitted, after this, to the Mystery of the ascending and descending stairs with seven steps, must swear revenge and ritually actualize this oath by striking with a dagger the Crown and the Tiara, which are the symbols of the traditional double power, namely, of the regal and pontifical authority. All of this properly conveys the meaning of what Freemasonry, as an occult force of global subversion, has precipitated in the modern world, from the preparation for the French Revolution and the establishment of the American democracy to the revolutions of 1848, World War I, the Turkish revolution, the Spanish revolution, and other analogous events. While in the cycle of the Grail the initiatory realization was conceived in such a way as to be connected with the goal of resurrecting the king, in the abovementioned ritual we have exactly the opposite, namely, the counterfeit of an initiation that is tied to the oath (sometimes expressed with the formula "Victory or Death!) of striking or overturning any authority from above.
In any event, the reason behind these consideratins is to indicate the point where the "legacy of the Grail" and of analogous initiatory traditions stops and where, with the exception of the survival of a few surviving names and symbols, we can no longer detect any legitimate filiation from them. In the specific case of modern Freemasonry the following factors would make it appear as a typical example of a pseudoinitiatory organization: its confused syncretism; the artificiality of most of its hierarchy's degrees (something that even a layman would notice); and the banality of the moralistic, social, rationalistic, and modern exegesis applied to various borrowed elements that have an authentic esoteric character. And yet, considering the "efficient direction" of that organization in reference to the previously mentioned elements and to its revolutionary activity, one cannot help feeling that he is confronting a force that, on the spiritual plane, acts against the spirit itself: a dark force of antitradition and counterinitiation. In that case it is possible that its rites are more harmful than one may think, and that those who partake of it, without realizing it, establish contact with this force, which cannot be grasped by ordinary consciousness.
171-2
------
In its essence, Ghibellinism has been nothing less than a form of the reappearance of the sacred and spiritual ideal of the authority befitting a leader of a traditional political organization. Thus it is exactly the opposite of everything that is "secular," and of everything that is political and governmental in the modern, degenerate sense of the word.
One may wonder what is the point of shedding light on this essence of Ghibellinism, the Grail's kingdom, and Templarism, other than to reestablish the truth before the previously mentioned misunderstandings and counterfeits. The answer to this question must remain undetermined. Already in the arena of ideas, the character of the dominating culture is such that most people could not even imagine what the issue at stake is. After all, only a small minority could understand that just as the ascetic-monastic orders played a fundamental role during the material and moral chaos that brought about the collapse of the Roman Empire, likewise an order following in the footsteps of Templarism would have a decisive role in a world such as the modern one, which displays forms of greater dissolution and inner collapse than the previous period. The Grail retains the meaning of a symbol in which the antithesis between "priest" and "warrior" is overcome, but also retains the modern equivalent of this antithesis, that is to say, materialized, telluric, and titanic, or better yet, Luciferian forms of the will to power on the one hand, and the lunar forms of the surviving devotional religion and of confused mystical and neospiritualist impulses toward the supernatural and what is not ordinary.
If we just consider the individual and some people, the symbol always retains an intrinsic value, which is indicative for a given type of inner formation. But to go from this to the notion of an order, of a modern Templarism, and to believe that even if it were to come to be, it would be able to exercise an influence directly and sensibly on the general historical forces that are dominant today - that is hasty. Even the Rosicrucians (the real Rosicrucians), back in the eighteenth century, regarded this attempt as vain. Moreover, even those who have received the "sword" must wait for the right time to wield it, the right moment being only that in which forces, the power of which is still unknown owing to an intrinsic determinism, will encounter a real limit and the cycle will end. The right moment will be that in which, even before the most extreme existential situations, a desperate defense instinct rising from the deepest recesses (I almost said, from the memoire de sangc) will eventually regalvanize and give strength to myths and ideas connected to the legacy of better times. I believe that before this happens, a possible Templarism may play only an inner defensive role, in relation to the task of protecting the symbolic, yet not merely symbolic, "solar stronghold."
This will clarify the ultimate meaning of a serious and committed study of the witnesses and of the motifs of the Templar saga and of higher Ghibellinism. To understand and to live by these motifs means to enter into a dimension of suprahistorical realities and, in this way, to gradually reach the certainty that the invisible and inviolable center, the king who must awake, and the avenging and restorating hero are not mere fancies of a dead and romantic past, but rather the truth of those who, today, alone may legitimately be said to be alive.
174-5
-Julius Evola. The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit. Inner
Traditions. Rochester, Vermont: 1997.
Therefore, if we materialize, secularize, and democratize these aspects of the initiatory right and translate them into individualistic terms, what we have are the fundamental principles of the modern subversive and revolutionary ideologies. The light of mere human reason replaces the illumination, giving rise to the havoc brought about by "free inquiry" and secular criticism. The supernatural is banned or confused with nature. Freedom and equality are illegitimately claimed by the individual who is "conscious of his dignity" (though he is not conscious of being enslaved to his empirical self) and who now arises against any form of established authority, vainly setting himself up as his own ultimate reason for being. I say "vainly" because in the inexorable unfolding of the various phases of modern decadence, individualism has been only a short-lived mirage and a misleading intoxication; the collective and irrational element in the age of the masses and of technology has rapidly overcome the emancipated "individual" who is without roots and without traditions.
166-7
-----
...the initiate who knocks down the Temple's columns and steps over the cross, being admitted, after this, to the Mystery of the ascending and descending stairs with seven steps, must swear revenge and ritually actualize this oath by striking with a dagger the Crown and the Tiara, which are the symbols of the traditional double power, namely, of the regal and pontifical authority. All of this properly conveys the meaning of what Freemasonry, as an occult force of global subversion, has precipitated in the modern world, from the preparation for the French Revolution and the establishment of the American democracy to the revolutions of 1848, World War I, the Turkish revolution, the Spanish revolution, and other analogous events. While in the cycle of the Grail the initiatory realization was conceived in such a way as to be connected with the goal of resurrecting the king, in the abovementioned ritual we have exactly the opposite, namely, the counterfeit of an initiation that is tied to the oath (sometimes expressed with the formula "Victory or Death!) of striking or overturning any authority from above.
In any event, the reason behind these consideratins is to indicate the point where the "legacy of the Grail" and of analogous initiatory traditions stops and where, with the exception of the survival of a few surviving names and symbols, we can no longer detect any legitimate filiation from them. In the specific case of modern Freemasonry the following factors would make it appear as a typical example of a pseudoinitiatory organization: its confused syncretism; the artificiality of most of its hierarchy's degrees (something that even a layman would notice); and the banality of the moralistic, social, rationalistic, and modern exegesis applied to various borrowed elements that have an authentic esoteric character. And yet, considering the "efficient direction" of that organization in reference to the previously mentioned elements and to its revolutionary activity, one cannot help feeling that he is confronting a force that, on the spiritual plane, acts against the spirit itself: a dark force of antitradition and counterinitiation. In that case it is possible that its rites are more harmful than one may think, and that those who partake of it, without realizing it, establish contact with this force, which cannot be grasped by ordinary consciousness.
171-2
------
In its essence, Ghibellinism has been nothing less than a form of the reappearance of the sacred and spiritual ideal of the authority befitting a leader of a traditional political organization. Thus it is exactly the opposite of everything that is "secular," and of everything that is political and governmental in the modern, degenerate sense of the word.
One may wonder what is the point of shedding light on this essence of Ghibellinism, the Grail's kingdom, and Templarism, other than to reestablish the truth before the previously mentioned misunderstandings and counterfeits. The answer to this question must remain undetermined. Already in the arena of ideas, the character of the dominating culture is such that most people could not even imagine what the issue at stake is. After all, only a small minority could understand that just as the ascetic-monastic orders played a fundamental role during the material and moral chaos that brought about the collapse of the Roman Empire, likewise an order following in the footsteps of Templarism would have a decisive role in a world such as the modern one, which displays forms of greater dissolution and inner collapse than the previous period. The Grail retains the meaning of a symbol in which the antithesis between "priest" and "warrior" is overcome, but also retains the modern equivalent of this antithesis, that is to say, materialized, telluric, and titanic, or better yet, Luciferian forms of the will to power on the one hand, and the lunar forms of the surviving devotional religion and of confused mystical and neospiritualist impulses toward the supernatural and what is not ordinary.
If we just consider the individual and some people, the symbol always retains an intrinsic value, which is indicative for a given type of inner formation. But to go from this to the notion of an order, of a modern Templarism, and to believe that even if it were to come to be, it would be able to exercise an influence directly and sensibly on the general historical forces that are dominant today - that is hasty. Even the Rosicrucians (the real Rosicrucians), back in the eighteenth century, regarded this attempt as vain. Moreover, even those who have received the "sword" must wait for the right time to wield it, the right moment being only that in which forces, the power of which is still unknown owing to an intrinsic determinism, will encounter a real limit and the cycle will end. The right moment will be that in which, even before the most extreme existential situations, a desperate defense instinct rising from the deepest recesses (I almost said, from the memoire de sangc) will eventually regalvanize and give strength to myths and ideas connected to the legacy of better times. I believe that before this happens, a possible Templarism may play only an inner defensive role, in relation to the task of protecting the symbolic, yet not merely symbolic, "solar stronghold."
This will clarify the ultimate meaning of a serious and committed study of the witnesses and of the motifs of the Templar saga and of higher Ghibellinism. To understand and to live by these motifs means to enter into a dimension of suprahistorical realities and, in this way, to gradually reach the certainty that the invisible and inviolable center, the king who must awake, and the avenging and restorating hero are not mere fancies of a dead and romantic past, but rather the truth of those who, today, alone may legitimately be said to be alive.
174-5
-Julius Evola. The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit. Inner
Traditions. Rochester, Vermont: 1997.
Friday, January 7, 2011
FOLLOWING THE TIGER
When I was weary of toiling
I put on a beggar's clothes,
Borrowed a lute of the tinker,
And garnished my cap with a rose,
Left all the lands behind me
Far as ever I could
And followed the track of the Tiger
Into the thick of the wood.
For the feet of the Tiger pass
Where no man ever has trod.
The lair of the Tiger is blessed.
Its place is the place of God.
The stars turned softly in heaven;
The moon was a horn of dew.
The grasses trembled in music
On paths that the wild things knew.
I walked in the ways of the Tiger, --
I, with a rose and a lute,
But I feared not the fangs of the Tiger
Nor shrank at the white owl's hoot.
For the feet of the Tiger pass
Where evil never has trod.
The ways of the Tiger are blessed.
His home is the home of God.
I heard a sweet bell in the forest
When faint leaves whispered of dark,
Followed, and found in the woodland
A chimney, a smoke, a spark.
And I thought: Is he at the fireside,
Tiger's master and mine,
Warming his feet at the coals,
Nodding over his wine?
For the feet of the Tiger rest
Where harm's foot never has trod.
He has gone in the walks of peace.
His looks are lifted to God.
I knocked, for the door was mute,
And who should be waiting there
But the long-lost Queen of the Faeries,
Braiding her golden hair.
The Faery smiled down from the window
And opened the casement bars.
She loosened her hair in the shadow
And shook out a million stars.
And I thought: Oh, the claws of the Tiger
Are sheathed, and the Peace of God
Rests on this house, and beauty
Walks where the Tiger has trod.
And then was the latchstring lifted.
There were the lovely three, --
God, and the Queen, and the Tiger,
And God's hand welcomed me.
The Tiger slept on the hearthstone.
The Faery gave me her ring.
My rose began to blossom;
My lute began to sing.
It sang how the ways of the Tiger
Led me to beauty and God,
To the door of the hut of the Faery
By paths men never had trod.
-Donald Davidson
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