Congratulations on the wedding of Ayla Meador & Chris Dollar
day after Beltane and day before Wesak full moon

"Why do we think that Love is a magician?
 Because all the power of magic consists in love.
An act of magic is the attraction of one thing by another
 in accordance with a certain natural kinship.
The parts of this world,members of one living being,
 all originating from the same maker, are joined
 together in the communion of one another,
 assist each other to some extent,
 and suffer together when any one of them suffers. . . .
 In just this way the organs of this enormous living being-
all the bodies of the world joined together in like manner, borrow
and lend each other‘s natures. Common love grows out of common
kinship and common attraction is born of love.
This is true magic.
Acts of magic, therefore, are acts of nature and art is her handmaid.
Out of natural love all nature gets the name "magician.“
  -Marsilio Ficino: de Amore VI, 10  1469- Commentary on Plato's Symposium; 15th C.
 Italian philosopher

"In the conjunction of the two sexes, or, to speak more truly,
that fusion of them into one, which may be rightly named Eros, or Aphrodite,
or I both at once, there is a deeper meaning
than man can comprehend. It is a truth to be accepted as sure and evident
above all other truths, that by God, the Master of all generative power,
has been devised and bestowed upon all creatures this sacrament
of eternal reproduction,with all the affection, all the joy and gladness,
all the yearning and the heavenly love that are inherent in its being.
   - Hermes Trismegistos, Asclepius III -21
(Greek text written prior to the end of the third century AD)

“Passionate love is not peculiar to the human species,
 for it penetrates through all existing things — celestial, elemental,
vegetable, and mineral.”
 - Avicenna, 11th C. Persian philosopher

The secret of our Art is the union of man and woman.
 - The Book of Alze, a 16th C. German alchemical text

“The whole world is a marketplace for Love,
For naught that is, from Love remains remote.
The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love.
On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.
The earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars
The center of their orbit find in Love.
By Love are all bewildered, stupefied,
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.

From each, Love demands a mystic silence.
What do all seek so earnestly? ‘Tis Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,
In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,
For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find that the secret of them both is Love.”

~  Farid Ud Din Attar, 12th C Persian Poet:  Jawar al-Dhat, Kulliyat

"...to hear the thunder that rumbles in molecules, the mingling of prime & ultimate
substances..."
      -Italo Calvino: The Castle of Crossed Destinies, 1973

" The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not
nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau (in Egypt) ... plunged in a deep sleep
(the "Sleep of Siloam" it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and
even higher Egypt). He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights,
during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to confabulate with the "gods," descend into
Hades, Amenti, or Patala, (according to the country), and do works of charity to the
invisible beings, whether souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in
a temple crypt or subterranean cave. "
    -  The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky [[Vol. 2, Page]] 558

in memoriam
Daevid Allen
January 13, 1938 – March 13, 2015

The Sleep of Siloam

What temple is this? what home?
a wounded healer dreams
a house wherein once dwelled
a sleeper of Siloam

there
laid out on some board
sloping see\saw
precariously balanced
between this and
that
tipped teetering
Totter
upended, appended
head-down
no defamatory deposition this
vice versa!
this the curse overturned
Mr. Topsy Turvy
dancing mutatis mutandis
up the gangplank
that the soul ascend
to the undying star
where celestial barque sails

moonlit shaman
by silence trance-fixed
at your side satisfied
lays the longbow
sacrificed to fly
vision's arrow etched testament
buried|bourne in your breast
your hand grips now
to reveal
apprentice angling upward
his cry
this view from the quill

-J.M.
2/28/15-3/20/15

Jackpot

"So what is the the waste Land?  is the land where the myth is patterned by authority, not emergent of life;  where there is no poet's eye to see, no adventure to be lived, where all is set for all and forever: Utopia! Again, it is the land where poets languish and priestly spirits thrive, whose task it is only to repeat, enforce, and elucidate clichés."
--p.373

"The Waste Land, let us say then, is any world in which (to state the problem pedagogically) force and not love, indoctrination, not education, authority, not experience, prevail in the ordering of lives, and where the myths and rites enforced and received are consequently unrelated to the actual inward realizations, needs, and potentialities of those upon whom they are impressed."
    -Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology (Vol. IV of The Masks of God), p.388

"We are giving people a new identity and erasing the collective memory. We are rewriting the history books. Nothing was more important to our president than bringing peace to this war-torn country... peace, a lasting peace, that can only be achieved through strength, so in my first act as the new president, as the leader of this new government, of this new regime, we will begin immediately to deploy troops in the southern region. We will resume bombing in the jungle. There will be no more violence from the organized media. Real actual violence will take the place of manufactured violence. [FAST BUSY DIAL TONE] We will empty the prisons and we will build the football stadiums, and the evildoers from the prisons will be trampled by wild elephants, mauled by uncaged bears, and pecked to death by screaming eagles. [AIR RAID SIRENS BLARING] Furthermore, we will alert the rebel leaders that the negotiation's finished. There will be no more compromises, no more concessions, just complete and utter unequivocal surrender. We have learned a valuable lesson-- great nations do not fight small wars. There will be no more stupidity, no more mistakes. It's a new day. God help you all."

  -from the film: Masked & Anonymous ,2003 by Larry Charles & Bob Dylan

I see you've already forgotten...

"... 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

This Haunted Land

"When the last red man has become a myth among the white men, when your childrens' children think themselves alone in the field, upon the highway or in the silence paths of the woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities are silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land."
-Chief Seattle, 1786-1866

The Ghost of Sheremetyevo

"By Natalia Gevorkyan , Translated By John Amor
July 15, 2013Gazeta - Russia - Original Article (Russian)

Russian spy Anna Chapman: After a Chapman imposter tweeted a marriage proposal to Snowden last week, the global media found it worthy of headlines. But would the real Chapman turn down a starring role in 'The Ghost of Sheremetyevo'? As of today, we have had 53 days of Snowden. Boy, would Sydney Pollock be excited if he still lived. The script of a thriller is there to be had, and I'm sure it is already being written. We haven’t seen bugging like this since the war criminal Nazis. Isn't that so? I can’t remember another worldwide manhunt on this scale. If you try telling me the guy brought this on himself, I won’t put up much of an argument. But following this to its logical conclusion, I’m not sure where I stand toward him personally, less so toward what he has done.

 On May 20, he flies from Hawaii to Hong Kong; on June 23, to Moscow. Moscow of all places. It’s pure cinema: The Ghost of Sheremetyevo.One minute it’s the transit zone, the next it’s a capsule hotel, then ABC’s latest "secret location." Anna Chapman, heroically prepared to marry the guy, provides the obligatory touch of eroticism. Obviously this should be set at transit zone E, the newest and therefore best suited to filming, right there on the floor, no hotels or beds, just pure hardcore. His passport is revoked, Cuba is tense, and a couple of countries south of Cuba are deep in meditation. A number of brooding presidents demand a plane flying over Europe be brought down when they think he's on it. Western journalists are provided Cuban visas and take every flight from Moscow to Havana - just on the off-chance. Their colleagues monitor the paths of these flights, which suddenly deviate from the north so as to avoid U.S.-controlled airspace.

Meanwhile, Snowden remains on the neutral territory of Sheremtyevo, escorts Brad Pitt and meets Johnny Depp, and is now himself a star. Either of them, incidentally, could play him in the upcoming film. Our compassionate Russian gals feed the former foreign agent in the business class lounge, where there are showers and free Internet all night long. Russian leaders gives the former foreign agent an opportunity to meet and explain himself to Russia’s present-day foreign agents, whom it is now fashionable to call human rights activists. The latter, in their turn, demand that rather than creating competition in this already-crowded field, the former should be sent home, to a court, to prison. Snowden immediately seeks political asylum in five countries, and meanwhile, to the displeasure of many, is prepared to live in Russia, with or without Chapman. 

Here, documentation is prepared for his future life in Venezuela, where he will likely have to be transported on the president’s aircraft (one of them, at least), via an indirect, hard to track route.The intelligence services of a world struck dumb by Snowden, starting with Russia's, promptly uncover their dust-covered typewriters and go unequivocally offline, back to record keeping on paper. No more virtual toys, no more gadgets, and no more Internet-enabled phones, either. Just dependable, tried and true old stuff. Terrorists recruit the well-connected: dedicated, preferably dumb, and most importantly with no experience working with computers. There is no more e-mail, no more social or any other online networks, or Skype. The world changes before our eyes.

Snowden begins to enjoy buckwheat porridge and piroshki with cabbage. Bouts of epilepsy give way to attacks of panic. But he’s at his computer the whole time all the same. He keeps going, although he takes up smoking on the sly. He spends long Moscow nights dreaming of his native home in Maryland, hacking school, cherry blossoms, Hawaiian women, and a car ambling slowly behind him, and he knows what will happen next: A press conference in Washington D.C., and (for reasons that remain unclear) unencrypted files, which he transfers over and over again. Close by, behind a wall, on their own home turf, Russian intelligence officers sit reading information again and again extracted long ago from his computer. Far off in China, countless hours are spent at the same work by Chinese intelligence officers. And from time to time, they gently whisper in their own language: "what the fuck!

"Meanwhile, France has unearthed its own Big Brother with which it outright illegally monitors, if not the content of conversations, at least the details of conversations.Aaron Sorkin hurriedly writes and films one more episode for the new season of Newsroom, which starts literally the day after tomorrow, because he simply must delve into the Snowden affair. Barack Obama in his heart of hearts is just glad people have temporarily forgotten about Guantanamo.Vladimir Putin, with mixed joy and disgust, flies to his Sochi dacha, taking with him a package of pre-translated transcripts. He loathes traitors, but he adores top secret material. 

Robert Redford for the first time laments that age has taken its toll. Snowden’s lonesome girl shoots sandy landscapes, drinks cocktails with umbrellas and sends encoded SMS messages (as opposed to files). Microsoft justifies itself thus: yes, we gave away information, but only in accordance with court orders. Google and the rest quickly dismiss agents planted at the NSA who it knows by name. Life carries on, but will never be the same.

The Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing weird or wrong with doom. In fact, in a country of used car salesman, steered by bankers and drone pilots, doom is the only answer. Without doom we are truly lost as a nation. Doom is the final wake up from that awfully wonderful American Dream. And there is plenty of doom to go around for now, but if we aren’t careful, one day we’ll find that even doom isn’t free anymore. You don’t want to find yourself alone in a sweating basement, bashed by monster weather, burning your furniture for warmth and paying out the ass for doom, so take it while it’s still hanging from trees and full of seeds. You’ll thank yourself for making it too late before it becomes too late. “Another doom is possible”, and “Collectivize Doom” must not only the watchwords screamed from the mouths of Maoist hipsters, anarchists, rednecks and wackos of all breeds, but also from their extended families and their psychiatrists.

'poscere fata               45
tempus' ait; 'deus ecce deus!'
‘Are you slow with your vows and prayers, Aeneas of Troy, are you slow?’

'cessas in uota precesque,
Tros' ait 'Aenea? cessas? neque enim ante dehiscent
attonitae magna ora domus.'
‘The great lips of the House of Inspiration will not open without.’

                               -Virgil : The Aeneid Book VI

El Jaleo
                               for Ozma

Sibyl of the fortress fallen
to gain the light I sought
dark ran the dream duende
in whose footsteps she was caught

shadow-flame omega's mate
flowers forth from grief
not golden bough nor pearly gate
the bower of Love's belief

swept away our dance so brief
I thought it was a smile she gave
but it was the rose between her teeth

                        -J.M.

 3/27/13