Chapter 5
The Nistarim
"He who does not love the organ-man has no bowels for humanity, no taste for music, no soul for poetry. The man himself is a man and a brother; and as to his instrument, what sings the poet, the same who bade the Nine descend?
'When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear,
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire,
And angels lean from Heaven to hear.' "
-Charles Dickens: All the Years Round, June 11, 1864
In a world the shape of enormous endings and beginnings, rises many stories high a skyscraper of a Tale
whose depths lie in an unfathomed dark Almandal, where history's handmaid beheld its reflection.
The angels of these altitudes have differing offices, offices such as the will to be taught, the delight in that which is wanted, the pursuit of that in which delight is found, the ability to grasp what was pursued, the ability to remember what was grasped, the act of finding similarities to that which is remembered, the ability to judge that which was found, to select that which was judged and, finally, the eloquent presentation of that which was selected. These offices are not numbered, their officiants know where they're needed.
In a world the size of a bottomless handmirror, Madimi sat in a chamber before her own speculum,
sporadically channel-surfing on a black roundtop notebook resembling a modified Revo-Round, glimmerswitching from one nodal point to another in time, flitting across the dial of historical vignettes in an ever watching vigil, listening to Atlantis, by Sun Ra and his Arkestra; an unedited graphic novel lay neglected on her lap featuring Spider Jerusalem doing a Ulysses on a looming cyclopean GeoEye. Max Headroom screensaver set on endless improv, mourning; dormant like an urgent tulip, green fuse lit for Spring.
Rising to light the room with candles, she was expecting company. And darkness.
Epochs surged by leaving strange whispering tracers, dust devils caught in her flatlined book of hours.
Screen readout:
Year: 1882
November 18, Transit of Venus Solar Storm
Year: 1903
November 1, Solar Storm
Year: 1921
May 13, New York Railroad Solar Storm
Year: 1940
March 25, Easter Solar Storm
Year: 1956
February 24, Acheron submarine Solar storm
Year: 1989
March 13: solar storm collapsing the Hydro-Québec power grid. Millions of people in darkness; areas in the northeast U.S. and Sweden lose power, aurorae visible as far south as Texas.
In the middle of a magical supply warehouse, huddled on the floor, holding one another as wisps of smoke escape upwards, Eiderdown and Cricket cry, shuddering over the prostrate form of Aldina.
October 9: concert- Warlocks performing a song, Dark Star at Hampton Coliseum in
Hampton, Virginia. Cricket and Aldina, arms around a prominently pregnant Eiderdown dancing a Woodstock sungrope neath a mirrorball explosion of galaxies.
December 23: Eiderdown in labour, keening and howling; sweat pouring from her face as the bitter weather pummeled the window outside, tiny white mittens gone berserk like winter moths drawn to unearthly light. Cricket and Aldina held her and coaxed her with soothing encouragements. The moment came. Triplets. Identical triskelion blue eyes that do not cry. The infants seemed instead to be singing to one another.
Year: 1789
Furtwangen Germany
An aged Uhrenträger, veering from discourse with a gaggle of motley minstrels concerning the design of their certainly singular Schwarzwälder uhr, slapped his forehead in epiphany.
"Die Mädchen waren fortgesprungen, aber der Bär rief ihnen nach:
weisse rose für schneeweisschenWeihnachtssternrote Rose ür Rosenrot"Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot
fürchtet euch nicht, wartet, ich will mit euch gehen."
Da erkannten sie seine Stimme und blieben stehen
und als der Bär bei ihnen war, fiel plötzlich die Bärenhaut ab
und er stand da als ein schöner Mann und war ganz in Gold gekleidet.
"Ich bin eines Königs Sohn" sprach er, "und war von dem gottlosen Zwerg
der mir meine Schätze gestohlen hatte, verwünscht
als ein wilder Bär in dem Walde zu laufen, bis ich durch seinen Tod erlöst würde.
Jetzt hat er seine wohlverdiente Strafe empfangen."
Year: 1942
June 2:
"The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We
all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum."
-Reinhard Heydrich, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (Party Number 544916)
Reich "Protector" of Bohemia and Moravia.
Beside her, a bear bereaved with one trap-maimed foot explained: "that machine kills fascists."
The bear had left a crooked corridor of wreckage and destruction as it sought the boy,
looming in his knowledge before Aidan ever saw it. Primordial phantom, it spread through his dreams, apotheosis of an indomitable anachronism; epitome of the abyss. It cast a gargantuan shadow all the way to the edge, too big for the dogs to drag it over, chthonic; monstrous as apocalypse.
Repousse mistletoe's rune-lit embers smoldered on the lid as he replaced his gold mirror-locket safely within the pocket hidden in fur.
She had reached across dimensions for him, defying the veil. Now he came to her, without weapon, watch, or compass; their mirrors drew them, the attraction magnetizing their souls.
Her voice rough with worn lament, Madimi looked at him.
"Science dwelleth in me, the heavens and depths oppress me,
for they covet and desire it with infinite appetite.
Few or none that are earthly have embraced me
for shadowed am I with the circle of your sun."
"Madimi, your company's a harmony of many cymbals and
the honeytrap of your tongue sweeter than health itself."
While his head lay in her lap, Madimi's fingers curled in his thick tangled fur.
Year: 1564
"Terrestre quoddam corpus, Monas haec nostra Hieroglyphica, in Centro Centri, Latens, possidet: Quod Qua sit ACTUANDUM divina Potentia, sine Verbis, Ipsa docet: Cui jam ACTUATO, Lunaris & Solaris est (Matrimonio perpetuo)COPULANDA, Influentia Gonetica:Licet, ante, in Caelo vel alibi, fuere ab EODEM Corpore SEPARATISSMae. Hac (Dei Nutu) facta Gamaaea, (Quam, Parisienibus, sum ... interpretatus: id est, Matrimonii Terram: sive Influentialis Conjugii, Terrestre Signum)Super suam Nativam Terram, Eadem, ulterius Nutriri non potest, vel Irrigari, quam ad QUARTAM magnam vereque Metaphysicam Revolutionem Completam. Quo finito Progresso: qui aluit, in METAMORPHOSIM Primus Ipse abibit: Rarissimeque, post, Mortalium conspicietur oculis. Haec, O Rex Optime, Vera est, toties decantata (& sine Scelere) MAGORUM INVISIBILITAS: Qua (ut Posteri omnes satebuntur Magi)nostra est MONADIS concessa Theoriis."
- John Dee: Monas Hieroglyphica
['This our hieroglyphic monad possesses, hidden away in its innermost centre, a corporeal body. The Monad teaches without words, by what divine force that corporeal body should be actualized and united to the generative lunar and solar currents... At the conclusion of this mandala's initiation, the adept will undergo a metamorphosis and afterward very rarely be held my mortal eye.']
Year: 1604
October 9
A very large and bight twinkling star ignited for the first time in the 'constellation serpentari'. It appeared in the highest heaven and firmament, among other fixed stars, and not like other comets, low among the planets, and much less below the moon or in the element of the air...
Jupiter was in conjunction with Saturn, this conjunction took place in the same part of the sky every 800 years. In December 1603 there was to be a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn in Sagittarius, which to astrologers was one of the points of the Fiery Trigon. In the autumn of 1604, when Jupiter and Saturn were still in the Fiery Trigon, and not far apart, Mars was to come, and be in conjunction with Saturn on September 26, and with Jupiter on Oct. 9. Thus in early October 1604 Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would be at the vertices of a triangle, forming a fiery triangle in the Fiery Trigon. A conjunction in the Fiery Trigon presaged great things; a fiery triangle there was surpassed, as an omen, only by a comet..."
-Johannes Kepler : Bericht von einem ungewöhnlichen Neuen Stern, 1604
Year: 1615
Confessio Fraternitatis:
"Thus, we, oh mortals, must make it known that God hath concluded to send the World before its end, which preferently thereupon shall ensue, such a Truth, Light and Glory as Adam had, and which was expelled along with him from Paradise for the purpose of alleviating human misery.
In the future, when (as we trust they will) all these things will have been removed, we will be presented with a perpetual unchanging directive; and although we owe this to those who worked on it, the Great Work, in its fullness, will be the product of this blessed crucial time.
With a view to His Will, God has already sent ahead his Messengers, Stars appearing in Serpentarius and Cygnus. In their capacity of truely great Tokens of His mighty Will these can teach us how He would subjugate human intelligence to His secret law once everything that is to be discovered will have been combined; the Book of Nature will then be open to all and unveiled, although but few can read it in full, let alone understand it.
Just as in the human head there are two organs for hearing and seeing, two for smelling and one for speaking and just as it would have been in vain to demand speaking of the ears or hearing of the eyes, so have there been times that have seen, others that have heard and yet others that have smelled. What remains is that soon, in a time that is coming rapidly nearer, the tongue too will be given due honour, so that what has once been seen, heard and smelled, can be brought into words at last when the World will have slept off the flush from drinking of its toxic, stupefying beaker, and early in the morning it can meet the rising Sun, with an open heart, bareheaded and barefooted, happily and jubilating. In the same way as God has put about Characters and His Alphabet through the Holy Scripures, so has He carved these distinctly in Heaven, Earth and Animals when the miraculous work of Creation was done, so that just as the astronomer foresees eclipses, we can predict the obfuscations of the church and the duration thereof long in advance. From such characters we derive all of our Magic and based on these we have formed us a new language which at the same time expresses the essence of things; therefore it would be no wonder if we could express ourselves only less refinedly in other languages and in this Latin. For we do know of these languages that they are not familiar to the language of Adam and Enoch, but have been desecrated by Babel's confusion of tongues."
year: 1616
Virga Aurea of James Bonaventure Hepburn published at Rome.
A garland of seventy-two praises in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, Etruscan, Assyrian, Armenian, Gothic, Scythian, Scottish, Hibernian, Coptic and Chaldaic, Mystical, the Noachic, the Adamean, the Solomonic, the Mosaic, the Seraphic, the Angelical, and the Supercelestial its mandorla surrounded by flowers and symbols, adorned with an inscribed ribbon:
'Humbly I place and fasten this votive picture at the feet of the Most Blessed Virgin. After much midnight striving, may I make pledge of my soul, yearning and striving long years after the Blessed Virgin, to the success of the Rule in which we are blessed, and to its long and eternal fruitfulness.'
Her severed bough knew the appearance of truth, subdued serpents, crosses hell, either bars or opens, and drew essence forth from the stone.
Year: 1994
June 22:
Listening with Eiderdown and Aldina to the novelty of a live in the studio radio station's broadcast emanating from Tweezerville, Indiana via the internet featuring the sky-grazing music of the Octave Doctors; Cricket began accompanying their two aethereal vocalists with overtone harmonic singing she had learned as a child. Three towheaded children who should have been in bed appeared before the startled Cricket.
Iridi looked up at her with enormous eyes and said: "teach us that".
Year: 1995
May 14th: Cerberus traces the location of Eiderdown et al. deploying an assault unit which ambushes and attempts their abduction. From out of nowhere a warrior circus of Skomorkhi intervene, with their unicorn and guns; vanishing with Eiderdown, her two friends and her three five-year old daughters. Very Tarantino, thinks Madimi. Outrageous weapons.
Porlock business. Same old shillelagh, blood and thunders.
That night, there was a bedtime tale bonanza in order to settle the children's terrors.
In order to put their ordeal in perspective, Eiderdown chose from her great grimoire of magic's inexplicable deeds that stupendous account of wonder surpassing all others amongst the uncanny savants of enchantment. Nestling her girls in an oasis of fat, irresistable pillows she began to unravel for them the tale that told of the Theft of the Peach. What? You do not know of the most fabled feat whispered of among wizards, deliberated between thaumaturge and fakir, sorceress and sage?
Listen my downy ducklings, I will tell all.
It was winter in the great valley and the fields beneath the towering mountains were covered in snow. A flock of cranes had refused their last chance to fly to warmer grounds before the cold, cold season settled upon them. A shepherdess and her daughter were returning their herd to their village some distance further, when they came upon the graceful flock. The great birds, when they saw them, rejoiced for they were sure the woman would share something to eat. But the mother and daughter were poor, and quite hungry themselves.
whose depths lie in an unfathomed dark Almandal, where history's handmaid beheld its reflection.
The angels of these altitudes have differing offices, offices such as the will to be taught, the delight in that which is wanted, the pursuit of that in which delight is found, the ability to grasp what was pursued, the ability to remember what was grasped, the act of finding similarities to that which is remembered, the ability to judge that which was found, to select that which was judged and, finally, the eloquent presentation of that which was selected. These offices are not numbered, their officiants know where they're needed.
In a world the size of a bottomless handmirror, Madimi sat in a chamber before her own speculum,
sporadically channel-surfing on a black roundtop notebook resembling a modified Revo-Round, glimmerswitching from one nodal point to another in time, flitting across the dial of historical vignettes in an ever watching vigil, listening to Atlantis, by Sun Ra and his Arkestra; an unedited graphic novel lay neglected on her lap featuring Spider Jerusalem doing a Ulysses on a looming cyclopean GeoEye. Max Headroom screensaver set on endless improv, mourning; dormant like an urgent tulip, green fuse lit for Spring.
Rising to light the room with candles, she was expecting company. And darkness.
Epochs surged by leaving strange whispering tracers, dust devils caught in her flatlined book of hours.
Screen readout:
Year: 1882
November 18, Transit of Venus Solar Storm
Year: 1903
November 1, Solar Storm
Year: 1921
May 13, New York Railroad Solar Storm
Year: 1940
March 25, Easter Solar Storm
Year: 1956
February 24, Acheron submarine Solar storm
Year: 1989
March 13: solar storm collapsing the Hydro-Québec power grid. Millions of people in darkness; areas in the northeast U.S. and Sweden lose power, aurorae visible as far south as Texas.
In the middle of a magical supply warehouse, huddled on the floor, holding one another as wisps of smoke escape upwards, Eiderdown and Cricket cry, shuddering over the prostrate form of Aldina.
October 9: concert- Warlocks performing a song, Dark Star at Hampton Coliseum in
Hampton, Virginia. Cricket and Aldina, arms around a prominently pregnant Eiderdown dancing a Woodstock sungrope neath a mirrorball explosion of galaxies.
December 23: Eiderdown in labour, keening and howling; sweat pouring from her face as the bitter weather pummeled the window outside, tiny white mittens gone berserk like winter moths drawn to unearthly light. Cricket and Aldina held her and coaxed her with soothing encouragements. The moment came. Triplets. Identical triskelion blue eyes that do not cry. The infants seemed instead to be singing to one another.
Year: 1789
Furtwangen Germany
An aged Uhrenträger, veering from discourse with a gaggle of motley minstrels concerning the design of their certainly singular Schwarzwälder uhr, slapped his forehead in epiphany.
"Die Mädchen waren fortgesprungen, aber der Bär rief ihnen nach:
weisse rose für schneeweisschenWeihnachtssternrote Rose ür Rosenrot"Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot
fürchtet euch nicht, wartet, ich will mit euch gehen."
Da erkannten sie seine Stimme und blieben stehen
und als der Bär bei ihnen war, fiel plötzlich die Bärenhaut ab
und er stand da als ein schöner Mann und war ganz in Gold gekleidet.
"Ich bin eines Königs Sohn" sprach er, "und war von dem gottlosen Zwerg
der mir meine Schätze gestohlen hatte, verwünscht
als ein wilder Bär in dem Walde zu laufen, bis ich durch seinen Tod erlöst würde.
Jetzt hat er seine wohlverdiente Strafe empfangen."
Year: 1942
June 2:
"The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We
all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum."
-Reinhard Heydrich, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (Party Number 544916)
Reich "Protector" of Bohemia and Moravia.
Beside her, a bear bereaved with one trap-maimed foot explained: "that machine kills fascists."
The bear had left a crooked corridor of wreckage and destruction as it sought the boy,
looming in his knowledge before Aidan ever saw it. Primordial phantom, it spread through his dreams, apotheosis of an indomitable anachronism; epitome of the abyss. It cast a gargantuan shadow all the way to the edge, too big for the dogs to drag it over, chthonic; monstrous as apocalypse.
Repousse mistletoe's rune-lit embers smoldered on the lid as he replaced his gold mirror-locket safely within the pocket hidden in fur.
She had reached across dimensions for him, defying the veil. Now he came to her, without weapon, watch, or compass; their mirrors drew them, the attraction magnetizing their souls.
Her voice rough with worn lament, Madimi looked at him.
"Science dwelleth in me, the heavens and depths oppress me,
for they covet and desire it with infinite appetite.
Few or none that are earthly have embraced me
for shadowed am I with the circle of your sun."
"Madimi, your company's a harmony of many cymbals and
the honeytrap of your tongue sweeter than health itself."
While his head lay in her lap, Madimi's fingers curled in his thick tangled fur.
Year: 1564
"Terrestre quoddam corpus, Monas haec nostra Hieroglyphica, in Centro Centri, Latens, possidet: Quod Qua sit ACTUANDUM divina Potentia, sine Verbis, Ipsa docet: Cui jam ACTUATO, Lunaris & Solaris est (Matrimonio perpetuo)COPULANDA, Influentia Gonetica:Licet, ante, in Caelo vel alibi, fuere ab EODEM Corpore SEPARATISSMae. Hac (Dei Nutu) facta Gamaaea, (Quam, Parisienibus, sum ... interpretatus: id est, Matrimonii Terram: sive Influentialis Conjugii, Terrestre Signum)Super suam Nativam Terram, Eadem, ulterius Nutriri non potest, vel Irrigari, quam ad QUARTAM magnam vereque Metaphysicam Revolutionem Completam. Quo finito Progresso: qui aluit, in METAMORPHOSIM Primus Ipse abibit: Rarissimeque, post, Mortalium conspicietur oculis. Haec, O Rex Optime, Vera est, toties decantata (& sine Scelere) MAGORUM INVISIBILITAS: Qua (ut Posteri omnes satebuntur Magi)nostra est MONADIS concessa Theoriis."
- John Dee: Monas Hieroglyphica
['This our hieroglyphic monad possesses, hidden away in its innermost centre, a corporeal body. The Monad teaches without words, by what divine force that corporeal body should be actualized and united to the generative lunar and solar currents... At the conclusion of this mandala's initiation, the adept will undergo a metamorphosis and afterward very rarely be held my mortal eye.']
Year: 1604
October 9
A very large and bight twinkling star ignited for the first time in the 'constellation serpentari'. It appeared in the highest heaven and firmament, among other fixed stars, and not like other comets, low among the planets, and much less below the moon or in the element of the air...
Jupiter was in conjunction with Saturn, this conjunction took place in the same part of the sky every 800 years. In December 1603 there was to be a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn in Sagittarius, which to astrologers was one of the points of the Fiery Trigon. In the autumn of 1604, when Jupiter and Saturn were still in the Fiery Trigon, and not far apart, Mars was to come, and be in conjunction with Saturn on September 26, and with Jupiter on Oct. 9. Thus in early October 1604 Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would be at the vertices of a triangle, forming a fiery triangle in the Fiery Trigon. A conjunction in the Fiery Trigon presaged great things; a fiery triangle there was surpassed, as an omen, only by a comet..."
-Johannes Kepler : Bericht von einem ungewöhnlichen Neuen Stern, 1604
Year: 1615
Confessio Fraternitatis:
"Thus, we, oh mortals, must make it known that God hath concluded to send the World before its end, which preferently thereupon shall ensue, such a Truth, Light and Glory as Adam had, and which was expelled along with him from Paradise for the purpose of alleviating human misery.
In the future, when (as we trust they will) all these things will have been removed, we will be presented with a perpetual unchanging directive; and although we owe this to those who worked on it, the Great Work, in its fullness, will be the product of this blessed crucial time.
With a view to His Will, God has already sent ahead his Messengers, Stars appearing in Serpentarius and Cygnus. In their capacity of truely great Tokens of His mighty Will these can teach us how He would subjugate human intelligence to His secret law once everything that is to be discovered will have been combined; the Book of Nature will then be open to all and unveiled, although but few can read it in full, let alone understand it.
Just as in the human head there are two organs for hearing and seeing, two for smelling and one for speaking and just as it would have been in vain to demand speaking of the ears or hearing of the eyes, so have there been times that have seen, others that have heard and yet others that have smelled. What remains is that soon, in a time that is coming rapidly nearer, the tongue too will be given due honour, so that what has once been seen, heard and smelled, can be brought into words at last when the World will have slept off the flush from drinking of its toxic, stupefying beaker, and early in the morning it can meet the rising Sun, with an open heart, bareheaded and barefooted, happily and jubilating. In the same way as God has put about Characters and His Alphabet through the Holy Scripures, so has He carved these distinctly in Heaven, Earth and Animals when the miraculous work of Creation was done, so that just as the astronomer foresees eclipses, we can predict the obfuscations of the church and the duration thereof long in advance. From such characters we derive all of our Magic and based on these we have formed us a new language which at the same time expresses the essence of things; therefore it would be no wonder if we could express ourselves only less refinedly in other languages and in this Latin. For we do know of these languages that they are not familiar to the language of Adam and Enoch, but have been desecrated by Babel's confusion of tongues."
year: 1616
Virga Aurea of James Bonaventure Hepburn published at Rome.
A garland of seventy-two praises in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, Etruscan, Assyrian, Armenian, Gothic, Scythian, Scottish, Hibernian, Coptic and Chaldaic, Mystical, the Noachic, the Adamean, the Solomonic, the Mosaic, the Seraphic, the Angelical, and the Supercelestial its mandorla surrounded by flowers and symbols, adorned with an inscribed ribbon:
'Humbly I place and fasten this votive picture at the feet of the Most Blessed Virgin. After much midnight striving, may I make pledge of my soul, yearning and striving long years after the Blessed Virgin, to the success of the Rule in which we are blessed, and to its long and eternal fruitfulness.'
Her severed bough knew the appearance of truth, subdued serpents, crosses hell, either bars or opens, and drew essence forth from the stone.
Year: 1994
June 22:
Listening with Eiderdown and Aldina to the novelty of a live in the studio radio station's broadcast emanating from Tweezerville, Indiana via the internet featuring the sky-grazing music of the Octave Doctors; Cricket began accompanying their two aethereal vocalists with overtone harmonic singing she had learned as a child. Three towheaded children who should have been in bed appeared before the startled Cricket.
Iridi looked up at her with enormous eyes and said: "teach us that".
Year: 1995
May 14th: Cerberus traces the location of Eiderdown et al. deploying an assault unit which ambushes and attempts their abduction. From out of nowhere a warrior circus of Skomorkhi intervene, with their unicorn and guns; vanishing with Eiderdown, her two friends and her three five-year old daughters. Very Tarantino, thinks Madimi. Outrageous weapons.
Porlock business. Same old shillelagh, blood and thunders.
That night, there was a bedtime tale bonanza in order to settle the children's terrors.
In order to put their ordeal in perspective, Eiderdown chose from her great grimoire of magic's inexplicable deeds that stupendous account of wonder surpassing all others amongst the uncanny savants of enchantment. Nestling her girls in an oasis of fat, irresistable pillows she began to unravel for them the tale that told of the Theft of the Peach. What? You do not know of the most fabled feat whispered of among wizards, deliberated between thaumaturge and fakir, sorceress and sage?
Listen my downy ducklings, I will tell all.
It was winter in the great valley and the fields beneath the towering mountains were covered in snow. A flock of cranes had refused their last chance to fly to warmer grounds before the cold, cold season settled upon them. A shepherdess and her daughter were returning their herd to their village some distance further, when they came upon the graceful flock. The great birds, when they saw them, rejoiced for they were sure the woman would share something to eat. But the mother and daughter were poor, and quite hungry themselves.
One magnificent crane stepped forward and stretching her wings in greeting, spoke.
"My people will not survive the winter on gifts from the small pockets of hungry folk. I will make you a proposition.
The Queen of Heaven has an immortal peach tree. The nectar of a single of its peaches will keep us all alive til Spring.
Take your longest rope and put its end in my beak. I will fly with it up until I reach the cloud palace orchard of the Queen of Heaven. Your daughter is strong and small enough to climb to the top. She must climb into the tree and whisper her name to the peach or it will not detach from the bough. Then must she toss below the peach before she slides back down. In exchange for this great favor, I will teach you the secrets of our magic."
The Queen of Heaven has an immortal peach tree. The nectar of a single of its peaches will keep us all alive til Spring.
Take your longest rope and put its end in my beak. I will fly with it up until I reach the cloud palace orchard of the Queen of Heaven. Your daughter is strong and small enough to climb to the top. She must climb into the tree and whisper her name to the peach or it will not detach from the bough. Then must she toss below the peach before she slides back down. In exchange for this great favor, I will teach you the secrets of our magic."
Her mother was uneasy, sensing unknown danger, but the brave little girl was willing to help the elegant crane people.
The way she flew up the rope after the crane led the way seemed as effortless as thread flying from the spindle of Necessity herself.
Soon, she disappeared among the clouds. Anxious moments passed. The remaining flock fidgeted restless around the tense mother.
Eventually, a whistling in the sky grew louder and louder and an enormous peach, glistening with crystalline cold juices landed plop! atop a tussock. Relieved, the flock circled around and around admiring this amazing treasure and feasted upon it ceremoniously taking turns until all that was left was a shimmering peach pit!
Suddenly, another sound came through the air towards them. At first, they thought it another peach as it landed with a sickening thud. But no! In absolute horror the mother realized it was her daughter's head! She shreiked, the cranes shrieked and the earth itself shuddered. Arms and legs and the bloody rest of her followed.
Taking off her cloak, the mother's mind went numb as she gathered and wrapped her daughter's limbs together in the large thick cloak.
She wept. The flock mourned. The earth grieved.
A speck appeared in the sky and gradually floating larger, fluttering its way from a very great distance down, down to land next them in the field. It was the speaking crane returned from her voyage to Heaven.
The woman, looking up from her remorse, met the eyes of the crane.
She wept. The flock mourned. The earth grieved.
A speck appeared in the sky and gradually floating larger, fluttering its way from a very great distance down, down to land next them in the field. It was the speaking crane returned from her voyage to Heaven.
The woman, looking up from her remorse, met the eyes of the crane.
"You have helped our flock in our dire need, now I will help you." It took the shimmering peach pit from the ground in the scissors of its beak and placing it in the palm of the mother's hand, told her, "this kernel holds the name you gave her at birth, plant it with care at home and it will bring you great wealth. The Queen of Heaven gives her now a new name. And whispering into the bundle, the crane stepped back. Movement stirred beneath the travelworn cloak as it slipped away to reveal the daughter yawning, stretching her arms, and with a puzzled look she said "I have just had the strangest dream..."
From that time to this, Lady Cloud Walker has come on glorious wings to their descendants to teach these daughters the magical ways of Heaven.
Year: 2012
December, the Koreion
With their strong arms surrounding the beast, the Foolproof skomorokhi then, gate-wrecking unconquerable sons of thunder-thrashing bolts, descended one final time into the antarala realm of Cerberus, umbilicus maris according to the old geographers, 'gurges mirabilis omnium totius orbis terrarum celeberrimus et maximus' and brought the remaining captives back to the upper world after freeing them from their bonds. Wrapping the hounds in chains they carried them away in exhibition for inscrutable heaven.
Queen Cora comes, bringing the Cailleach girls a flask holding the hieroglyph of water from the tabernacle nave centered in the primeval grinding mill-wheel of Corryvreckan's walls.
River run round the circuit placid opacity of the almandal inaudible sizzle of hourglass sands shifting endless across the vast empty void, dark as the desert between stars. Tsunami.
To think they could lay him in cold ground
sing 'a-down a-down,' and call you him 'a-down-a'.
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-
Fared you well, my dove?
Who can Kore from those lips now divide,
Whose kisses tell of Adonis died?
To Kore, e'en now his breath is fled,
Their kisses read reawake the dead.
Intimate communion in the mass of the cataracts, consultation with the noise of many waters.
Assistence, elation and a taste of redemption.
...He sung, and hell consented
To hear the Poet's pray'r;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious?
Tho' fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.
-Alexander Pope: Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1713
From that time to this, Lady Cloud Walker has come on glorious wings to their descendants to teach these daughters the magical ways of Heaven.
Year: 2012
December, the Koreion
With their strong arms surrounding the beast, the Foolproof skomorokhi then, gate-wrecking unconquerable sons of thunder-thrashing bolts, descended one final time into the antarala realm of Cerberus, umbilicus maris according to the old geographers, 'gurges mirabilis omnium totius orbis terrarum celeberrimus et maximus' and brought the remaining captives back to the upper world after freeing them from their bonds. Wrapping the hounds in chains they carried them away in exhibition for inscrutable heaven.
Queen Cora comes, bringing the Cailleach girls a flask holding the hieroglyph of water from the tabernacle nave centered in the primeval grinding mill-wheel of Corryvreckan's walls.
River run round the circuit placid opacity of the almandal inaudible sizzle of hourglass sands shifting endless across the vast empty void, dark as the desert between stars. Tsunami.
To think they could lay him in cold ground
sing 'a-down a-down,' and call you him 'a-down-a'.
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-
Fared you well, my dove?
Who can Kore from those lips now divide,
Whose kisses tell of Adonis died?
To Kore, e'en now his breath is fled,
Their kisses read reawake the dead.
Intimate communion in the mass of the cataracts, consultation with the noise of many waters.
Assistence, elation and a taste of redemption.
...He sung, and hell consented
To hear the Poet's pray'r;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious?
Tho' fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.
-Alexander Pope: Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1713
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