Brinley Rees and Alwyn Rees.
Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales.
New York: Thames and Hudson, 1961; repr. 1989.
ISBN 0500270392
The Corn King and the Spring Queen
by Naomi Mitchison (first published in the 1930s and republished many times since). A true classic in every sense of the word.
• .:. • The • Minoan bull-dance • the rosette (cocarde) • and its survival as • the Course Camarguaise • : http://lnk.ms/09wjmPosted at 8:17 PM Aug 20 view more
About me: Favourite poets: Seamus Heaney, Yeats, Geoffrey Chaucer, Catullus, Cleopatra (of New Crete), Robert Graves, Sally Purcell, U.A. Fanthorpe, Robin Williamson, Taliesin, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Ramprasad Sen, Isaac Luria, Ibn al Arabi, Mesomedes of Crete, Rumi, Virgil, Kathleen Raine, Grace Nichols, Aleah Sato, Agnes Meadows, Geraldine Green, Larissa Shmailo, Adam Horovitz, Frances Horovitz.
(no particular order)
This list is an "off the top of my head" attempt. It should expand and deepen in time as I begin to gather my wits. (See the profile photo to witness the gathering of wits.)
Most of the poets in the list above could be said to have some grounding in the Classics and whose works contain mythic or symbolic elements. Together we speak a lost language, perhaps for a generation yet to come.
Who I'd like to meet:
kindred spirit - potnios theron - other cat-herds & deer-herds - and any other surviving mythagos.
The purpose:
This space will probably not contain any content of mine other than in the form of comments, reviews and perhaps some recommendations. The blog will be the pinnacle focus. It will include links and offline references in order to help others to rediscover works which might otherwise be lost.
This is perhaps a quest for mythic and mythopoetic integrity. The expanding company of friends is being brought together for mutual benefit and to make it easier for any who discover this space and to follow the links to other spaces and resources in this MySpace matmos as well as to discover each other.
All choices are being made with care, I can promise you that. It is my profound hope that from this new alliances will be formed and new works made possible and that older works which deserve to be remembered are recovered.
If we lose our contact with the primordial will we begin to lose our humanity and our connection to each other?
Mass-media entertainment seems intent on turning us all into sociopaths. Could we deepen our perceptions by the replacement of stereotypes with collective archetypes? This is one path that has been followed for millenia.
Robert Graves stated on several occasions that he was writing for poets. Perhaps that is what this space will be about - but poetry in its widest sense - comprising all of the arts inspired by "the one Muse who variously haunts this island Earth".
from "The Life of Symbols"
edited by Mary Le Cron Foster and Lucy Jayne Botscharow
(pp.84-85)
_______
If we examine language, we discover that no linguistic symbol stands alone. All are integrated into a temporal-spatial system of relationships. In order to have a real understanding of a part it is necessary to have some grasp of the whole. The sounds of language are only meaningful if integrated into words. Words are only meaningful if integrated into sentences. Sentences have no meaning unless integrated into some larger context, which may be verbal, environmental, or a combination of these. This is equally true of other symbolic systems. All symbols are integrated into larger structures.
The trance susceptible shaman and the initiated antelope-priest are not unsophisticated in the wisdom of the world, nor unskilled in the principle of communication by analogy.
The metaphors by which they live, and through which they operate, have been brooded upon, searched, and discussed for centuries -even millenia; they have served whole societies, furthermore, as the mainstays of thought and life.
The culture patterns have been shaped to them.
The youth have been educated, the aged rendered wise, through the study, experience and understanding of their effective initiatory forms.
For they actually touch and bring into play the vital energies of the whole human psyche.
They link the unconscious to the fields of practical action, not irrationally, in the manner of a neurotic projection, but in such fashion to permit a mature and sobering, practical comprehension of the fact-world to play back, as a stern control, into the realms of infantile wish and fear.
The wild geese are returning to the marshland of the Neckar. At night I hear them crying, when flying over my place, and at dusk and dawn I rejoice seeing them flying.
May your spirit and your heart be always light like the flight of the birds! All my greetings, best wishes, love and blessings go out to you!
Tecat caínfinn, corra, faílinn; fos-cain cúan; ní céol ndogra cerca odra a fráech rúad.
Winter is here, heavy with a love as cold as snow. And you? Where are you? Do you suffer at all? Do you miss us at all? Do you think of us sometimes and want to reach again, but are afraid, of us, of time, of yourself? And if you are , why? When we have only love to give you, like the moon as only silvered light. How can this not be enough?
I find you day to day in the small miracles that bless my life. I miss you so much right now that it hurts immensely. Will I ever stop missing you? Will the pain ever go away? Why do I love you so much, I wonder as my tears wet my hands.
Where are you and why have you left?
Know I will be here for all eternity until our souls meet again.
May The Great Goddess bless you and keep you safe.
A few days before your absence struck, you had prayed for me to find another furry creature to love. Of course, we were both thinking of another cat to fill the void left by Teddy's death. Little did we know your prayer would be answered in the form of love personified as a blond puppy I named Nacho whose wet nose and wiggly tail greet me with the kind of love only Dogs know how to express. Nacho has learned to ride in the little net I have under my chair. He's the blessing you prayed for and I thank you for that. Know I love you ALWAYS and I miss you more than words can ever tell.
Today, the first frost and its offerings of seasonal mourning bloomed in the shade...I think of you of course...And thank you for all you have given. Bright blessings.
I miss you!!! I miss you so much. I've been feeling your presence so closely that I can't help but think something is going on in your life. Whatever it is, please know you are so very loved.
May The Great Goddess hold you close and guide you always.
Thank you most kindly for your comments about my poem. I really appreciate it. Hope you are having a beautiful Sunday. Here's to a glorious week ahead!! ~SMB
This is the wall of Heidengraben where it is overgrown with wood. Not far from this place, there's still a spring today.
I wish you would always find refreshment like having been drinking from the Blessed Lord's spring.
I am very glad to have you as a friend, and for you being you. My world would be a great deal more unfriendly if I could not run this inspiring and educating correspondence with you.which I enjoy very mucH!
The Blessing of the Goddess and the Blessed Lord, and all powers be always with you!
This is how Dafydd ap Gwilym called the pools in the bog land, beautiful places- the picture shows what Gwyn’s fishponds look like at my place at this time. It 's not rightly heather or thyme flashing red, but it recalls the same maessage by the colour )
This one is hanging over me , when I sit writing in my garden.
I wish it was the Druid Tree from the forest of Dubhros, grown out of a berry from the Land of the Ever-Living Ones: Then I would make sure not only to send a picture J
But as it is take my wish and all the best for a nice weekend!
