"... he showed me a copper door in the pavement, saying, "Here, if you please, we may go further down." We descended the steps, where it was exceeding dark, but the Page immediately opened a little chest in which stood a small ever-burning taper, wherefrom he kindled one of the many torches that lay by. I was mightily terrified ...
...Herewith I espied a rich bed ready made, hung about with curious curtains, one of which he drew, and I saw the Lady Venus stark naked...
... "Now, behold," said the Page, "when the tree shall be quite melted down, then shall Lady Venus awake and be the mother of a King."
   -The Hermetic Romance: or The Chymical Wedding. Written in High Dutch by Christian Rosencreutz. Translated by E. Foxcroft

"No sooner than she had thus given me her blessing by sprinkling and annointing me with sea-dew than I immediately found my mind clarified and my intelligence returning."
  -Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, translated by Joscelyn Godwin

"Love rules the world, and typical of man's intensest, holiest love, I, Etidorhpa, stand the Soul of Love Supreme."
   -John Uri Lloyd: Etidorhpa

"Everything comes from you; you have yoked the world and you control all three realms.
You give birth to all, to everything in heaven, upon fruitful earth,
And in the depths of the sea..."
   - from Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, translation by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

"'Tis thine the world with harmony to join, for all things spring from thee, O pow'r divine."
     - - from Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, translation by Thomas Taylor

"The highest wisdom is to know nothing."
  -Brother Christian Rosenkreutz, Knight of the Golden Stone A.D. 1459.

To Aphrodite

            I.

Sublime Disquiet

O, that the shade of life should slip
flower fall, rainbow rip
that tide should turn from shore the ship
Beauty's ebb from truth
destiny erased from youth, and afterall
the all in all, aloof

far from certain, the sure revertin'
garbed behind a curtain
confounded by barbaric emblems and
bardic symbol, bounded
was it but a curse cast on current everturnings
whose high sign She sought
in the Library of Anthropological Yearnings?

entropy itself but ebb
eludes securing final debt
this
unlettr'd headstone on deluge swept
alone
for Her teargas lingerie I wept

                     II

               Undermind

Which of the muses would admit a claim?
fool's gold/false unicorn
priz'd from torpid ores
this silence unsought.
Amateur. Pallbearer.
Let these lines be
undermined

Daughter of the skyfallen father
sire scythed
the Celestial Ocean's
Cytherean meerschaum
unmanned & holy
imbue the bone in water
the ardour'd sustenance of your star

To cavort with Her verses
I've fallen
coffin clothed
sewn Her oats
into my apron
and drawn the rapture in Her sinews
through odes not mine alone to moan

Mount me, She demanded
untapped veins
shaft unshook
sleeping slopes
never reaching the peak/peek

intervene
sure & supple star froth'd lips
rhyme w/in the chalice grips
while wave on waving furrow laps
here may all recollection lapse

                III

            Ourania

there's a tremor in the blood
a seismic etching
whispering portents
a calligraphy of subtleties
to thirst after finer things

Thee unguttered cup!
Your April'd slipper of lilac dew infused
old undone dandelion sun
rejuvenate! resume pellucid overview

willow-the-whips
that I should violate my rhyme
with useless cant
wont to work my will & why not
swoon neath
my apostrophe

the trope of Love's apostle
no swollen apostate
proctored!
gibbous Thee gland
of delight
illume

-John Meador, Beltane 2014

C’est le bon Pan, le grand pasteur (....) Le temps
concorde avec cette interprétation qui est la mienne, car ce Pan très bon,
très grand, notre unique sauveur, mourut près de Jérusalem, sous le règne
de Tibère César à Rome.
-Rabelais, 1532: Gargantua & Pantagruel; Quart Livre

For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce,  
And little them served for their mayntenaunce.  
The shepheards God so wel them guided,  
That of nought they were unprovided,  
Butter enough, honye, milke, and whay,          
And their flockes fleeces, them to araye.
[Great Pan is Christ, the very God of all shepheards, which calleth himselfe the greate and good shepherd. The name is most rightly (me thinkes) applyed to him, for Pan signifieth all, or omnipotent, which is onely the Lord Jesus.]
 -Edmund Spenser 1579: The Shepheardes Calender; ÆGLOGA QUINTA Maye

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn
It was the crest ere you were born:
Thy father’s father wore it,
And thy father bore it:
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
‘Tis not a thing to laugh to scorn.
-Shakespeare, 1599: As You Like It: Act 4, Scene 2

Pan's Rhyton
                                (for A.G.)

Cherub smoke surrounding
lips put to the pipe
wanton shade, charged air
stag breath, beechnut
honeycombing hair
where horn would curl unfashioned
rampant with newborn needs
wandering neath willow
willful for the reeds

Dreadful festive frantic power
force, pheromone & fur
revel in the fingering of figures
& kiss of embouchure

Syrinx serene
ninny haunched old urgings lean
molesting unforgotten Dream
tripping tongues of dogma
to stutter sermons in the stream
By the ambrosial beard of brine & honey mingled!
sweet release & escapade!
shivering cape of sparrows
share prayers & passion's played

Whistling past the Rune
whose veins would poet trace
nymph-sweat alphabet
beneath the shadow of the thrill
the threat
prance cross palimpsest
Echo's thine
O, Thrice Blest!

Wild, the refuge
of rough read Pan's
hours & season's endless dance
stamping hoof at the edge of Dawn
Now's At Last!
All woe, be gone!
5/1/12