Rider Beatles: The Fool's Journey

YouTube Beatles Tarot: The Major Arcana

The Fool - Hello, Goodbye ("You ask 'Why?,' and I say 'I don't know'")

The Magician - Hey Jude ("The movement you need is on your shoulder")

The High Priestess - Let It Be ("Mother Mary comes to me")

Empress - Lady Madonna ("Baby at your breast, wonder how you manage to feed the rest")

Emperor - I Am the Walrus ("I am he as you are he as you are me")

The Hierophant - Fool on the Hill ("The eyes in his head see the world spinning round")

The Lovers - Here, There and Everywhere ("Knowing that love is to share")

The Chariot - Yellow Submarine ("We sailed on to the sun till we found the sea of green")

Strength - Ballad Of John and Yoko ("We looked just like two gurus in drag")

The Hermit - Eleanor Rigby ("When there's nobody there what does he care?")

The Wheel of Fortune - Blackbird ("Fly into the light of a dark, black night")

Justice - All You Need is Love ("There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be")

The Hanged Man - Nowhere Man ("He's as blind as he can be")

Death - The Long and Winding Road ("You left me standing here a long, long time ago")

Temperance - While My Guitar Gently Weeps ("We must surely be learning")

The Devil - Revolution ("Better free your mind instead")

The Tower - She's Leaving Home ("Daddy, our baby's gone")

The Stars - Across the Universe ("Limitless undying love which calls me like a million suns")

The Moon - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ("Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone")

The Sun - Here Comes the Sun ("Sun, sun, sun, here it comes")

Judgement - Yesterday ("I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday")

The World - Imagine ("And the world will live as one")

Rider Saturday Night

YouTube Classic Rock Playlist: The Major Arcana

The Fool  Jzero - Cat Stevens ("What kind of Fool is he? No need to guess")

The Magician  Magic Man - Heart ("Never think of never let this spell last forever") 

The High Priestess  Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac ("She's like a cat in the dark and then she is the darkness")

The Empress  Crazy He Calls Me - Aretha Franklin ("The impossible will take a little while")

The Emperor  Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters ("That represent man")

The Hierophant  Father and Son - Cat Stevens ("From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen")

The Lovers  The First Time - Roberta Flack ("I knew our joy would fill the earth and last 'til the end of time")

The Chariot  The Horses - Rickie Lee Jones ("See them trying every way they know how to make their spirit fly")

Strength   Hit Me with Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar ("I'll get right back on my feet again")

The Hermit  The Man Who Sold the World - Nirvana ("He said I was his friend, which came as a surprise")

The Wheel of Fortune  Do It Again - Steely Dan ("Wheel turnin' 'round and 'round")

Justice  Tramp the Dirt Down - Elvis Costello ("Try telling him the subtle difference between Justice and contempt")

The Hanged Man  Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads ("How did I get here?)

Death  Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult ("She ran to him")

Temperance  Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen ("When it's your brother sometimes you look the other way")

The Devil  Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones ("I'm in need of some restraint")

The Tower  O Sailor - Fiona Apple ("Giving me eyes to view it as it goes by the boards")

The Stars  Over the Rainbow - Eva Cassidy ("The dreams that you dare to dream really do come true")

The Moon  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Linda Ronstadt ("Close enough to touch, but careful if you try")

The Sun  Sitting in the Midday Sun - The Kinks ("But who needs a job when it's sunny?")

Judgement  Redemption Song - Bob Marley ("All I ever have, redemption songs")

The World  Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel ("All you do is call me, I'll be anything you need")

Buddhist India by L. W. Rhys David LL.D., Ph.D

Rider 5 (1903): A deep, contrarian look at India's spiritual history.

Renegade scholars are usually the most productive ones. They dare to pierce the hard shell of existing paradigms to get to the sweet fruit within. Professor David (and his cited wife) is defiantly of this breed. The number of common assumptions about India they convincingly shatter is staggering. 

Here is one reader's top ten:

1. India’s Caste system is not an ancient practice but a European import (derived from a Portuguese word) to organize India after the 4th century Aryan invasion
2. The priestly Brahmin class were not of high birth or rank before aligning with the Aryans along the lines of the European Emperor/Priest model
3. India didn’t lack written languages before Buddhism, but chose to require spiritual wisdom to be transmitted orally and memorized by the elect
4. The need to more widely share Gautama Buddha’s teachings created the language – Pali – in which it was written
5. The “wisdom tree” under which the Buddha received enlightenment almost certainly didn’t exist, but was added later for the early followers who worshipped the wishing tree with roots in heaven as their central practice
6. Stupas, the domed, iconically Buddhist memorial temples for Buddha, predate Buddhism by centuries, in fact, the only domed bricked structures in India during those times were burial memorials for thinkers who propounded fresh solutions to the problems of life
7. Sanskrit was an artificial language deliberately created to replace – and erase – the vernaculars (“The living language was completely overshadowed by the artificial substitute”)
8. The Buddha pre-Nirvana was a self-torturer (tapasa) as his social role – akin to a Catholic penitent
9. There is no distinction, historically, between Northern (Mahayana) and Southern (Thereyana) Buddhism; Ceylon was simply the last place left untouched by the Brahmin Hindu takeover (“It is only in Ceylon that we have documents sufficient to follow the continuous development of a vernacular that has been able to hold its own against the depressing influence of the dead language used in the schools.”)
10. Buddhists were, in words of Rev. W. T. Wilkins: “so ruthlessly persecuted that all were either slain, exiled, or made to change their faith. There is scarcely a case on record where a religious persecution was so successfully carried out as that by which Buddhism was driven out of India.”

As shocking as, well, all of these sound, Dr. David’s scholarship is utterly convincing. Part justice, part detective, part philologist, he provides if anything too much evidence – certainly a lot more than our skeptical modern age seems to require. He doesn’t even pause in his relentless assault of logic, record, artifact and anecdote to reflect on the implications, spiritual or secular, of such a vast miscomprehension of India’s history. His real quest is to unearth the mystery of the Pali language, an elegant and sophisticated written language that seems only to exist in the teachings of Buddha and his followers.

What’s surprising is how the founder of the Pali Text Society in London doesn’t need to spend much time on an issue that still perplexes the experts. Did Pali come from the North or South? What was it based on? Why was it used for Buddha’s teachings? Why – like so many ancient religious languages – did it disappear? Conventional scholarship is confounded to this day on every single point. But the professor can barely be bothered with these questions. To him the conclusion is simple and logical: Pali was largely the vernacular at hand when it became apparent they had to preserve Buddha’s words in writing. I would argue that the key to this leap into language, as it were, was that Siddhartha Buddha had transitioned sacred knowledge to poetry, and, as such, it needed to be preserved by not just the holy men and women. As to why it “disappeared,” many languages disappeared with the Aryan conquest and its tyranny of Sanskrit - yawn, next question.

But I’ll let Dr. David explain, with three quotes in his inimitable style, what he finds interesting:

“[On the pre-Hindu and -Buddhist beliefs of India] The record of Indian folklore and poetry from the earliest times indicate it involved palmistry, divination of all sorts, auguries drawn from the celestial phenomena and from marks on cloth gnawed by mice, prognostications by interpretation of dreams, oblations of various sorts to Agni (who conferred immortality) and other earlier variants of the Hindu god pantheon, ghost summoning, snake charming, using similar arts on other beasts and birds, astrology, the power of prophecy, incantations, oracles, consulting gods through a girl possessed or by means of mirrors, worshipping the Great One, invoking Siri (the goddess of Luck [before she was turned into the consort of Vishnu]), invoking spells and charms to cause virility or impotence, discovering and consecrating sites, tree (dryad) worship, worship of Nagas (Siren-serpents) and cobras who lived in their ordinary shape like mermen and mermaids beneath the waters in great luxury and wealth.”

“The brahmins had become the sole arbiters in law and social institutions. Their theory of castes had been admitted, and to their own castes was accorded an unquestioned supremacy. Their claim to the exclusive right to teach was practically acknowledged. Of those rajputs who had disputed their authority, the Buddhists and Jains were both reduced to feeble minorities, and the rest had become mostly subservient. All philosophy, except their own pantheistic theosophy, had been driven out of the field. But Vedic rights and Vedic divinities, the Vedic language and Vedic theology, had also gone under in the struggle. The gods of the people received now the homage of the people. Their literature had had to be recast to suit the new worship, to gain the favour and support of those who did not reverence and worship the Vedic gods. And all sense of history had been lost in the necessity of garbling the story of the past so as to make it tally with their own pretensions.”

“The Aryan invasion divided all the world, as they knew it, into four social grades, called Colours (Vanna). At the head were the Kshatriyas, the nobles who claimed descent from the leaders of the Aryan tribes in their invasion of the continent. They were most particular as to the purity of their descent through seven generations, both on the father’s and the mother’s side; and are described as “fair in colour, fine in presence, stately to behold.” Then came the brahmins, claiming descent from the sacrificing priests, and though the majority of them followed then other pursuits, they were equally with the nobles distinguished by clear complexion. Below these were the peasantry, the people, the Vaisyas or Vessas. And last of all came the Sudras, which included the bulk of the people of non-Aryan descent, who worked for hire, were engaged in handicraft or service, and were darker in colour. In a general way this classification corresponded to the actual facts of life. But there were insensible gradations within the borders of each of the four Colours, and the borders themselves were both variable and undefined. None of this was established yet however in Buddha’s time. Not only were castes eating together and intermarriage between tribes accepted, but poor men could become nobles, and the “low born” could become brahmins. We have numerous instances even in the later priestly books which are otherwise under the spell of the caste theory of kings becoming potters, brahmins as hunters and trappers, nobles stepping down in class to become priests.“

From the Poet Tree record: The Stupas at Ku Tho Daw

Clues to Character: Being a Complete Text-Book of the Laws of Scientific Physiognomy and Graphology by R. Dimsdale Stocker

Rider 4 (1903): A scientific guide to the ancient art of face reading

Appearances are all we have to make judgements. Even supernatural beings cannot be divested of shape. We even speak of projecting thought-forms, and any author or artist is aware that he has to conjure up, before his "mind's eye," the appearance or shape of his plot or picture or composition before it manifests in form. Businessmen who direct large numbers of employees might pride themselves on being quickly able to judge human character -- yet when questioned how they do it, few can tell. If one could only be brought to a realizing sense of how one can read human nature from its only visible sign – the face – he could thereafter do so with celerity, precision and ease.

For the form of appearance breaks down into essential forms, ideals. The sphere, for example, pertains to the primal stage of development, and is the receptive, sustaining form that preserves and will supply the foundation for subsequent stages of development. The second stage – that of the curve – suggests fixing of arched brows, convex eyes, oval cheeks – the muscles now come into play, and thus locomotion,  imitation, emotion, the play of the will, power, self-control and also the passions now expressed through the muscular system. As the atmospheric wave motions get more circular and the gestures more finely rounded, we get music, speech, the realization of art. And with curves develop lines and then angles, the mouth and brow, the exact, habitual and structured mode of linear thought – forming squares and cubes through mental analysis rather than natural appearance.

These different shapes become dominant in individuals and form temperaments. The Eastern temperaments are Tamas/Kapha- inactive, receptive and soft – corresponding with a sphere; Rajas/Pitta – active, ambitious, passionate – a curve; Sattva/Vata – transactive, responsive, mental – the line. In the Western traditions there are four temperaments or humours: Sanguine – representing the element of air heated and in motion -  fully open and engaged in experience – corresponding with the curve; Phlegmatic – cold and moist as the element of water – receptive of energy and emotion – like a circle that ripples ever outward; Melancholic – cold and dry as the element of earth - - mentally acute, prone to pessimism, highly sensitive to surroundings -- corresponding with the line; Choleric – warm and dry as the element of fire -  strong-willed, ambitious, energetic, hot tempered – corresponding with the cone or connection of focal point with base.

The science of physiognomy applies precision to the signs of these temperaments in physical appearance, having developed methods of handwriting analysis, phrenology, palm and face reading over centuries of observing patterns. Scientists and mathematicians show a good rectangular type of face, for example, while in artists of all kinds muscles dominate the bone structure. There is the clerical chin, the lawyer's chin, the actor's chin, the musician's chin. A depression in the chin indicates susceptibility to flattery. Relatively long fingers imply mental activity, love of perfection and finish, keen critical faculty and inclination to dwell upon trifles, accustomed to have things “just so." Comparatively short fingers, on the contrary, belong to persons who abhor "hair-splitting," have less power of discrimination, less sensibility, and more impulse and instinct than judgment or calculation. And, when the palm and the fingers are of about the same length, we have the "balanced" mind.

Students of face reading should note three rules when examining someone: Length = Intensity; Width = Permanence; Sharpness  = Excitability. Fullness of the eye, for example, indicates a greater capacity to receive light for vision (like a deer, cat or owl). Large-eyed people are impressible, sensitive, liable to be controlled by their feelings, but can accumulate knowledge by seeing, retain knowledge thus gained, and have a more developed organ of language. Prominent, projecting eyes are quicker in receiving impacts from surrounding objects than those which are deeply set and overhung by the brows; yet, by reason of the comparative length of the passage of the nerves to the brain, their perceptions will be less keen, discerning, reliable, definite, accurate and permanent. The better protected the eyeball is by the lids, the less visionary, uncertain and impressionable the subject will be. The eyes of occultists, those who are interested in the unseen and mysterious laws and forces of nature, will be found to be, as a rule, large, and set well back under the brow, brilliant in colour when their owner is gifted with magnetic or mesmeric influence. During the exercise of their gifts, the eyeballs of clairvoyants turn upward and inward. Materialists ' eyes will be seen to be smaller, as a general rule, less luminous.

There are dull and transparent eyes, far-sighted and squinty, weeping, laughing, penetrating, restless, distraught eyes. Black-eyed persons are most liable to be jealous and have great power of physical endurance. Grey-eyed persons are lively, resolute, quick tempered, and anxious for notoriety. Blue-eyed persons are full of soul and are truthful, affectionate and confiding, fond of change and progress. Hazel-eyed persons are fickle, sharp-witted, impatient yet shrewd. The lines around the eyes can indicate subterfuge, resentment, love of amusement. Parallel lines along the upper part of the forehead can indicate wisdom, judgement and mercy. Wavy wrinkles that descend to a point in the centre of the brow, on the other hand, indicate genius, eccentricity, or insanity.

Eyes have a language of their own, that saves much talking. The eye is the greatest photographic establishment in the world. We have only to open our eyes and a durable likeness is taken as quick as a flash of lightning. Indeed, it is quite possible to sketch in outline the entire character from an inspection of that one distinguishing trait alone, as the careful student will discover.

From the Poet Tree record: Onion

The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis

Rider 3 (1902): Selected writings of a bestselling American author for a UK edition.

Inspired in 1843, at age 17, by an itinerant phrenologist and mesmerist, named Grimes, who lectured in Poughkeepsie on Animal Magnetism, Andrew Jackson Davis developed the central Spiritualist doctrine concerning the world beyond before the Rochester Knockings inaugurated modern Spiritualism. This spirit medium saw a thousand voices, a thousand mediums coming from the sphere he first entered, attesting to its general truth. His first book of revelations, The Principles of Nature, dictated by him under the "magnetic" influence, passed through at least forty-four American editions. The popular appeal of the Poughkeepsie seer marked an epoch of vast public interest in voices from the other side and what they had to say, with a doctrine that cast out all fear concerning the life to come. His Harmonial Philosophy, in a word, was that the world beyond is as natural as this world of ours; that it is neither the heaven nor hell of official Christianity; that it is simply this world spiritualised, and that men and women in their psychic bodies are as men and women here in the bodies of flesh, but working with the universal laws of love, abundance and order they are closer to, in alignment with higher spiritual beings – helpers innumerable – who oversee the welfare of all – earthly and stellar – in the perfect workings of what Swedenborg called the “one man God.” His followers were legion, but no one of them spoke as he did of a rainbow-belt among the star-clouds of the Milky Way as the world of disembodied souls. No one expressed any special view or concern about humanities of other planets and whether they proceed at death to that Second Sphere which receives souls from earth. No one created such a joyful account of order and love as the essence of the universe, with his Stellar Key to The Summer Land, whose celestial rivers he claims to have seen, an exalted academy of powerful spirits whose mission is the unification of mankind.

Now, the collected writings of Andrew Jackson Davis fill twenty-seven volumes, recording every conversation between magnetizer and scribe. On account of the position which he has occupied for a period of seventy years in a movement which numbers at this day many thousands of adherents in Great Britain and the Colonies alone, it has seemed to the present editor that it would be serviceable to them and others to present — in the form of a digest — the essential parts of his doctrine, philosophy and testimony to the world of spirits and the natural law therein. The result of that undertaking is offered in this volume. It is instructive to this editor, in the process of condensation, to encounter all the ways his Great Fountain of existence indwells physical structures with Divine Administration of harmonious and loving intention. “The Architect's Divine Idea is alone immortal, not the house which He builds,” he reminds the materialist. It was also very curious, in conclusion, to note the various points at which the Harmonial Philosophy of Davis is in quite unconscious harmony with the Hermetic Science, of which the editor claims to be a student, as also with the later theory of evolution. A few instances belonging to the first case have been cited in the notes, the most striking of all being his theory of a universal fluid, which corresponds to the Astral Light of the Martinists and to the Kabalistic so-called "light of glory." These analogies could have been traced further, but it exceeded the present undertaking, which appeals to a class of minds whose acquaintance with occult lore cannot be presupposed.

--

“Earth is too limited, and its materiality is too obvious for the soul. The human mind begins by taking a literal view of everything — whether spiritual or material. Its first apprehensions are confined strictly to the apparent, but wisdom, rising on wings of ideal forms or symbolism, penetrates to that which lives within, and so judges, not from appearances, but with a righteous judgment, or from the core to the outward. So does it render a true verdict concerning that which is interior, spiritual, eternal. For the human spirit is framed for perception and enjoyment of heavenly realities. It longs for its native eternity. All love of the beautiful, all aspirations for the fulness of truth, all yearning after purity attest the immortal existence in store for the spirit and to which, by virtue of origin and essence, it is indissolubly allied. All elements of our spirit are the property of the Summer Land to come, but men seek beauty primarily in order to invest this earthly existence with imperishable characteristics inseparable from our true home. The power of the soul to anticipate realities belonging to the Land of Spirit is so perfect that on its arrival there a sense of familiarity steals over the mind, as though it had many times before witnessed the same scene.”

“The true nature of causation must be regarded as the fundamental problem of science, for we can never know anything but causes and effects. Idealism and materialism are identical on this point. Both take it for granted that all Nature is but a dream-show, where phenomena are interlinked only by the bond of antecedent and consequent. But causation resides in mind, matter can never be a cause, and every phenomenon is the effect of intellectual force exerted by pure volition. All manifest substances are expressions of an interior productive cause, which is the spiritual essence. It was impossible for matter to exist without a principle of inherent production; in order that matter might pass from the formless to the state of forms there was action necessary on the part of the great vortex of Celestial Intelligence. Matter was developed as an external negative to the Positive Power within it; and thus positive and negative were established in matter. Thus was inaugurated the law of universal motion.”

“It has been said that the earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the past but that air and heaven are of futurity. The Harmonial Philosophy — recognizing in our soul’s immortality the application of Truth with Harmonial Love — is the closing form of the present cycle of destiny. In the opening future of this planet, it will shape and sway the interests of humanity. Its fontal inspiration and aurelian centre of attraction is the perfect love of all wisdom — meaning by wisdom the sum total of impersonal and eternal principles.”

From the Poet Tree record: Hiking to Sirius Through the White Tanks

Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature by Arthur Machen

Rider 2 (1902): A decadent book of aesthetics from a master horror writer. 

How does it happen that the English are both the greatest poets and the greatest tradesmen of the modern world? Superficially, it seems that keeping shops and making poetry are incompatibles, and Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, should have come from Provence or Sicily. But if we trace back the trading instinct to the love of a risk – the desire for the unknown – the antinomy disappears, and it will become perfectly natural that the race which has gone to the world’s end with its merchandise, has penetrated so gloriously into the further regions of poetry. It’s the English desire of wandering, of “going on and on” in the manner of a knight-errant or a fairy tale hero. Of running away from the mapped and charted road, to the word of the enigma, out of the ancient eternal desire for the unknown world, in perpetual readiness for a drowned Atlantis deep beneath the waves, of a haunted quire where a flickering light burns before the veil.

Art should exist to portray those unknown spheres of the infinite and ourselves. All the arts being glorious, the art of literature is in particular the most glorious of all, because it is the most natural to man, to mark the permanent in sign, as dinner customs, for example, are artificial, constantly shifting in taste and style so that later ages cannot decipher them. The most perfect form of literature is, no doubt, lyrical poetry, which is, one might say, almost pure Idea, simple incantation, without any description of the circumstance or occasion, with scarcely an alloy of artifice, expressed in magic words, in the voice of music. A perfect lyric is almost pure soul, a spirit with the luminous body of melody. And what is exquisite lyric poetry but the cry of the emotions, set to music? It is the sole media by which the very highest truth can be conveyed, in the language of symbols. Poe suggests, for this, the old figure of the Shadowy Companion, unknown or half-known who walks beside each one of us all our days, though his feet are in the Other World, treading a path parallel but different from our own; I think that it is he who whispers to us his ineffable secrets in an unknown tongue, which we clumsily endeavor to set down in mortal language.

From the Poet Tree record: Howl. Again.

Flaxius, or Leaves from the Life of an Immortal by Charles Godfrey Leland

The first Wm Rider & Son book (1902) is a boisterous and poetic picaresque of mystic lovers who meet in the strangest guises: 

In his pink infancy Flaxius the Neophyte, a high magic priest sorcerer, met a girl he recognized as a magia, who said, “Who knows what the Gods know? They do not even know what they know themselves.” She was of the beautiful Fylgia who flit over the ocean after the heroes they protect, as they, the fairy race, are protected by Thana, dancing in lucent rings for Diana, chaste goddess of the moon. To live as her divine twin ray destines him for immortality, that in seeing ex nihilo through her magic wand, he may see his own mastery of matter: “To live on earth or in heaven, amid ghosts or gods, would in the end be all one and the same; you would note it all with curious observation, and the same unchanged in every age,” she said. “My destiny! What can one do with such a man?” She wove the eternal law of the Aesir, ruled by Silvani, fauns, dusii, the Fata and satyrs, the mystic magian and her undying one (“an aspirant for immortality”) as they share their Gospel of the Distaff through Romany, first cousin to Hindi, who came from the North, to learn, these twins, of those ancient people, whose vast civilizations have been dematerialized.  A flask of Rhenish, some Rosicrucian cookery and the calling of the singers of the Mahabarata and Kalidasa brought the Rosengarten, the airs of Loki and Svanttowit, Teuston, Vith, Busteric, Chrodo, Swackenhammer, Irminsul, Hela, Hellwolf, Zernebock (who the Saxon witches adopted as their black god Cerneboh). For it turns out all material is haunted by the fairies, as in streams by the Naiades, who have by natural affinity a passionate love for poetry, and all that is rare and beautiful, wild or strange, be it in what form it may, singing sweet ritournelles of violets over grey and ancient graves. And they are distorted by the material world as well, to turn chance into mischief, become lemur or lamia, nixey, Flibbertigibbet, implet, browny, ouphe, pigwiggin, duergar, faunus, fire-maid, ganders of Mother Goose the goblin. “In this life even the spirits mimic man,” said Countess von Hoya, in her lecture on Emperor Titus. “By Freia – I mean the Holy Virgin!” said Aeolfric Adelwit, grandson of Ulf the Dane, with one eye closed, the sign by which the initiated of all grades recognize one another, and one generally used by Mahatmas and others in the Karma business—as it was by the augurs of yore—when true believers were present. Flaxius imagined himself mounted on the best steed in Northumbria, and remembered he had grappled once with mighty Solomon, and cast him from his throne, and then in turn was fettered heavily and made to work on the great temple of Jerusalem. The full golden Syrian moon shone o’er Florence, the romantic and occult city, charmingly haunted, as he asked his twin: “Tell me truly, and swear by thy great ancestress Diana, the mother of the Spirits of the Night, and her sister-daughter Herodias, and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and her eternal shadow Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into the ear of the Ox, what is it that makes a man? Is it his soul or his body?” ”Master of the old Etruscan hidden lore! It is his soul,” his Lombard bride replied. “And is it not the perfume of the rose its soul, that which breathes its life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men? Is not the voice in song or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit ever true?” So Flaxius, court factotum, reported to know everything from the works of Moloch the Pismirist up to those of God, was called to Caesar: ”Salve adepte! For mastering the lore of the Etruscan, as I read by the Concordia,” by which he meant he knew how to harvest electricity at will from the air. So surprised at the end of this he was to meet his bride in Hades, but she replied: “Dear one, thou hast too much modesty to declare thyself fit for heaven, and too much pride to allow thou wert fit for the lower regions. Therefore didst thou elect to remain on earth to study and master its problems as thoroughly as it was in thee to do so maintaining that of the few magians who like thyself had mastered immortality, too few prepared themselves, as they should do by studying the rudiments.” But, “ah,” she added, “eternity is long. Be thankful that thou wilt depart as soon as thou shalt have learned the mystery, for verily with thy love and knowledge of the beautiful in art it had also gone hard with thee.” “Yes,” replied Flaxius, “it is generally lost sight of in church histories that those who make the best martyrs are also best martyring others. All the great ones saw hell and raised it after their particular style to earth, and no one interfered … to thy realm and to thy mystic spouse!” He rose his creaming Jacqueline can, or goblet, arrectic auribus, graving every word which he heard on the tablet of his soul, even as Alba seated on a Greek tabouret at a little distance was doing on a leaf of ivory with her stylus [tho, he notes, the witches of Tuscany know her as Bellaria, the spirit of the pen, to be invoked by all who write]. “Now this is hell,” his Holy Crow replied, “and if thou wouldst know what the word really means, a place where everyone entering is supplied with the world he desires, with corresponding scenes and companions – he himself unconsciously drawing them all from memory and imagination. But note – for it is an important point—that they believe it all to be real, and in a certain sense it is so, for they have given to them the power, which science will some day give to man on earth, of perfect synthesis by volition – that is of drawing out the elements of will from the prima materia or materializing unseen elements, or conceptions.” “I understand,” said Flaxius, “Gods in a small way. Demiurges. Make things!” “They think so,” laughed his Pluto, “All here believe that what they saw on earth or see here is real. What is real is unchangeable and eternal. Who lives in Evolution, as all do on earth or in matter, lives in the Transient. It is when they realize by mere satiety the unreality of things that their punishment comes – that of despair.” “Oh, there is nothing here so wonderful as thou art.” Now be she fairy or sorceress or ghost-devil or a peeress, a woman is always a woman, and the Lady Adelinde, a fairy Amal-Alruna ancestress, infused her very best sorcery – the kind formerly conserved for kings—and invited Flaxius to rest himself beside her on the throne.  For every soul is damned as soon as it is clogged and stops working, like a bee that wished itself into eternal honey. Adelinde cried on, to have finally found the man who could resist her spell and conquer her, thus ending the spell. “Now I know thee, Flaxius, Elijah, Helios, the sun” she cried, “Cicisti, thou hast conquered! The last link of the chain which has bound me for centuries to earth is broken. And even in the hour in which we meet, beloved master, and in the instant of our love, because it is our love, and I am conquered, I leave thee for the better life beyond! But Ah! To have remained with thee, I would have gladly endured this ghostly existence, which has become a torment. All this is ended. The peasant benighted will no longer see strange lights flickering over the ancient ruin, the enchantment has departed, and the spell of golden glory and glamour will no longer shine at midnight in these halls, the wanderer will no longer behold the elfin array, nor be enchanted by their queen. Sound for the last time my fairy music – We shall meet again soon, O Master, in a better life – such as thou hast chosen – a purer, more idealized existence.” “Now,” he said after a pause, “if I wished to preach a new faith to mankind, Adelinde has given me the text. He who has mastered this in every sense lives in a fairy-land while here on earth, yet they are few who ever master it, the religion where we worship the Creative Force in one another.” In the future hypnotists will entertain the masses, much the way, he concluded, Egyptian Chaldean and Etruscan priests did before it lingered in broken fragments among witches and sorcerers. The Fairy Albinia was beside him again. “None ever yet beheld a perfect rose, yet seeing many roses, we infer what a true rose may be,” he philosophized. “And so the form takes the place of truth, yet still a form is indispensable.” “In forms we live,” replied Flaxius slowly, “Therefore the Egyptians typified the Holy Ghost, or the all-pervading Spirit of Life, as a serpent which annually casts its skin and is renewed in brighter hues.” “And man must have a form to worship or incarnate the Power which he adores.” “Ay, and it is to that I shall come, as the Hebrews worshipped God in a fixed law, incarnate in a Book.” “All men who love live in a fairy-land, and all who will may aye remain in it, if they will make their love the law of life, believing truly that they are divine.” “So have I loved thee, O my golden one, since the old days of the Etruscan age, so shall I love thee through eternity; while different, we were yet ever one in truth, and ever nearing as the time went on. I know that heaven is in love and thee.” Then the spirit of the dream of olden time came over them and hid them from sight, and when it vanished both of them were gone.

From the Poet Tree records: Cupid to Psyche