Poem: For Mercury

I have it in mind to write seven planetary odes— hymns for the seven classical planets of the ancient world, and the principal divine forces of the “seven heavens” as laid out in classical Hellenistic/Roman philosophy, and as later used by Medieval Christians, and as later used by Renaissance humanists.

Today being Wednesday, the hymn in question is for Mercury:

Hermes, approach, and sweet communion lend,
Lord of intellect, most keenly applied:
Increase of prudence and memory lend;
Make my knowledge and talents deified.
For you are like the “flying squads” of old—
Joining memory and foresight as one,
And harnessing reason enyoked with will.
With such tricks, you defeated Argus bold,
And wooed sacred cows away from the Sun.

Son of Maia, with wingéd feet you fly —
Observing markets and studying games;
Thou source of gain, by means both fair and sly;
Lover of all peoples, shaper of names —
physicians call your wisdom to their wards;
Bankers grow rich by your interested gaze;
While politicians speak sweet oration
When you assist them. Happy sing the bards
And alchemists, also, explain your praise—
For you put words to imagination.

Knowledge and intellect, like twining snakes
Circled ’round the staff of the well-trained mind,
Combined, speak wisdom in human phrases;
And thus, the quicksilver power awakes:
The skillful use of symbols men defined—
Inventor of tongues, we sing your praises!
Angel of Jove and pyschopomp of peace,
Bringer of celestial arts to earth,
Bless your converts with intellect’s increase,
Graceful speech, and true knowledge of our worth.

I can’t even begin to explain how hard it was to write this. Three drafts. Usually it’s one, and done. First, I wrote a draft on the way to the airport. I was dissatisfied. Ugly in places. Hard to revise. Have to fix. That was draft one.

Second draft, in the air from Quito to Miami. What if I took these lines at the end and put them first? That means rewriting the whole middle verse, though. What if I rewrite this quartet of lines here, and cut and paste some of the other sections? That’s better. And that was draft two.

Draft three, here in the airport, waiting for the flight to New York. Gaah. I don’t like the way these pieces stack together. What if I put this sextet of lines with this quartet? What if I move this quartet to the end? No, what if I delete this whole quatrain, and rewrite these four lines, and move them to this place…? And this completes draft three.

Mister Mercury, you are a lot harsher and more annoying about rewrites than most of the others. I hope you’re satisfied, at least for now.

Poem: For Mars

I have it in mind to write seven planetary odes— hymns for the seven classical planets of the ancient world, and the principal divine forces of the “seven heavens” as laid out in classical Hellenistic/Roman philosophy, and as later used by Medieval Christians, and as later used by Renaissance humanists.

Today being Tuesday, the hymn in question is for Mars.

Hear, valiant Mars, and doff thy red-plumed helm,
Sheath your swordfor now, and lay down your spear,
For lately do your actions overwhelm
So many, and still more are ruled by fear.
Yet justice bound with mercy make the law,
And chaos must be sheathed upon the hip,
As armor must be laid aside at times —
For man’s love of war oft becomes a flaw
When militant hands claim too strong a grip
Upon our spirits: See violence’s crimes

Of wrath with stern and unforgiving eye,
But bend our hearts to love justice and truth,
To honor bravery — AND the infant’s cry —
To dread making soldiers from gentle youth.
Yet give us knowledge to know when to fight,
And hearten us with courage as we need.
Give us good allies in thhe wars to come,
And help us be supplied with weapons bright.
Yet help us care for those who ache and bleed,
And grant peace without grudge when war is done.

Mars, you are lord of the field of battle,
And every conflict stirs you with delight.
Yet temper wrath, as smith works metal,
Nor arm us with the lie that might makes right.
You used to revel in revenge and rage,
And gleefully enjoyed men’s screams of pain,
The sack of cities, and blood in the dust.
Boisterous Mars, grow wiser in your age,
And from the war-god’s prideful boast refrain:
Give us courage — but let our weapons rust.

Venus (for Fridays) and Sun (for Sundays) are already done.

Poem: for the Pleiades

Yesterday there was a window in traditional astrology for working with the Pleiades, a group of fixed stars on the back of Taurus the bull. I wrote a poem for the occasion, but due to the technical challenges of posting from Quito, I think it got lost in interneticization. Here it is again:

Hail to you, Alcyone and Pleiades,
Gatherers of spirits, keepers of gales,
Who know and reveal secret vanities,
Who awaken the eyes, and drive out their ills:
You ride on the back of heaven’s great bull!
You help us to know of all hidden thought;
You open to light and drive out the dull
And by your actions are connections wrought
Between living realms and all the dead.
Lighten my work, mighty, knowing maidens
Open up my eyes and open up my head,
That I may relieve any old burdens,
And more — come to know the music of spheres,
Which lightens the heart of any that hears.

Poem: For Venus

I’ve been saying the orphic hymns as translated by Thomas Taylor on a weekly cycle now for a few months. And I’ve decided that part of my work this April will be to write new hymns for the days of the week. Today is Friday, dedicated to Venus — so here’s that hymn.

Venus, illustrious queen of heaven
Lady of love and radiant beauty:
Crafty, artful, necessity’s mother,
Whose jewels with words of love are graven,
To whom pleasures’ acts are happy duty,
At whose banquets we feed one another:
You join all life in harmony divine,
And even savage powers bend the knee
And pour rich libations of hearty wine
In praise of your renowned divinity.

All forms of desire, beneath your eye,
Flourish and prosper like laughing ladies
Dancing as sea-foam curls around their toes.
Tears of parting lovers, an infant’s cry
For mother, food the happy cook readies —
These are love’s emblems, as everyone knows;
And whether at home or in foreign lands,
In candlelit bedrooms or public shrines,
Both married and lonely raise praying hands
In praise or your grace and grand designs.

For nowhere on Earth can be found a clan
That does not hope for solemn connection;,
Though rarely do you dole out love by plan,
And neither, quite, by random selection,
That union of hearts and minds and kisses.
Venus draw near, and to my prayer incline:
Send honest love, and familial prize,
Nature’s fertility, and such blisses.
Thus exalted as heaven’s queen you shine,
And in the temples of all lovers’ eyes.

8/30 for April.

Poem: for greenleaf

This is 6/30 even though its the 10th of April. Got to catch up!

For some years now, around this part of spring,
I wake in terror: this year may be first
that oaks fail to leaf. It’s only my thing —
This continuing terror that the worst
will happen, that we’ll drown in our black breath
while the fungi and insects eat the trees.
It’s a nameable dread of a choking death:
an end to the squirrels, the wrens and bees.
That’s what is meant by Ragnarok, I think:
The doom of Yggsadrill and rooted lands…
For a leaf is only one sacred link
In chains forged of wings, paws, seeds, spores, and hands.
Not this year, Fenris: let the apple bloom,
Else let me die before sweet maples’ doom.

Poem: For the Sun’s Exaltation

Thanks to Christopher Warnock, I know that Friday the Sun will be in its astrological exaltation, at Aries 18-19 degrees. There’s a whole bunch of ceremonial instructions appropriate to the day, and for the image of the talisman — something about a dancing woman with staff and various symbols around her… You can look it up on his site. For myself, I’m working on one of the most complicated sketches I’ve done to date. I have to admit, I’m not sure it will be worthwhile when it’s done. The learning is important, sure, but sometimes the product is important too. Both, in this case.

In the meantime, though, I have to write poetry for the day, too. And I have a particular poem in mind for this, an invocational ode for the Sun’s exaltation. But they’re harder to write. So I began early, and I’ll finish it during the local time window on Friday, which for me is local solar noon. Thanks to Freeman Preson, I know this is 12:38-12:55 pm for me, but it may be different for you.

[update: I've been reminded that April 8 is the day that the Sun is actually in its Exaltation... But that there is not a suitable hour of the Sun on Monday, April 8. So you can use this on Monday or Friday just before 1pm local time, wherever you may be.]

Hail to you, great Sun, in Exaltation!
Prince of planets, agile and clad in grace!
You stand in beauty, lord of Creation,
And every world around you keeps its place:
You are Lord and we but followers are —
Intemperate when you are in a rage,
Yet calm when you stoop to ripening grapes;
firey when you set forth in Dawn’s car,
weary as you approach old Twilight’s cage:
Thus has it been since our fathers were apes,

And spirit had not deigned to touch mortal!
Great Eye of Nature and the Seasons’ King —
Dancing lady supreme in your power —
As your chariot passes this portal,
And all your supplicants your praises sing:
Cause all our works to sprout and then flower.
Drive us on like your own coursers of flame,
To work with majesty, power and skill —
To mirror below, your own Ageless Name,
With deeds of illumined unwearied will.

Let those who empower our work this day,
And meet you, Sun, with our own best deeds—
Cause kings and princes to kneel at our doors!
Propitious bless our works with gracious ray,
Make fortunate our quests for wants and needs,
And guide us through rough seas to golden shores!
Mighty are your works, Source of Ageless Light,
Giver of justice and the good one’s guide:
The life of all living grows in your sight,
and none can match your celestial ride.

I may make some changes between now and Friday, but I think that’s the core of it. Altering poetry with both rhyme and metrical schemes is always hard, but it’s sometimes worth future editing.

4/30

Poem 3/30: Inviting A Muse

I sat in the Design Lab with a colleague today to write today’s poem.  She produced an incredible poem — all about money, and counting, and busyness at school… and it ended with an absolutely incredible triple of lines about the magnificence of spring, just outside the drawn window blinds.  Amazing.

Here’s my entry for the day:

No matter how this month turns out for verse,
whether I write immortal lines or trash,
at least I will have gone from none to worse,
and shifted my heart from frightened to brash.
Critics may deride me with all their darts;
friends may cry, “a poet?!?” and turn away
from my rough lines, these fragmentary starts —
for moonlit praise turns ash by break of day.
Yet some muse may waken to siren song,
and turn golden ear for these words of tin.
Though silent at first, her edits, ere long
she’ll speak back to me.  My task, then, through din
of weary chores that grind me day to night,
is to heed her call.  And until then — write.

There’s a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert that I quite admire (although I know there’s some controversy regarding TED these days [thanks, Gordon]), in which she says that imagining a muse outside of herself gave her courage to write… and then she cites classical and Renaissance ideals of having a genius or guardian spirit rather than being a genius.  It’s a useful distinction, I find… but as I indicate in the last few lines, it’s still important to do the work.  The muse doesn’t show up casually if you’re not prepared to do the work.  It’s Maker Time vs. Management Time, again.  We have to give the muse — whichever muse we work with — at least some Maker Time to be successful; it can’t be all Manager time, because that’s not how muses work.

3/30

Poem: Welcome, April

Thirty poems in thirty days? It’s one of the traditional April challenges, given that here in America, it’s national poetry month.  I’ve been out of the poetry-writing game for a long time, but I figured, it’s time to play.  I don’t guarantee a complete poem every day, but I intend to try.

Welcome, April, with your typical flair,
frigid dawns and atypical thunder.
Broad clouds scudding like clipper ships in air
mounted in the west like Witchcraft’s blunder,
then jibed and tacked until they ruled the East.
Then Boom! came lightning, and royal fanfare blared,
heralding the arrival of the Beast —
the Ram his half-course run. What can be dared
in this pilgrim season?  Men seek strange strands,
and far hallows, filling buckets like fools —
temples and monuments in sundry lands,
mountaintops wreathed in mist and holy pools:
When more days pass, another course they’ll steer,
and all will be bullish on the sow’s ear.

I had hoped to use this poem to work with some of the tropes about April, and commemorate the first thunderstorm of the season, which rolled over the school in due and ancient form right near the end of my last-period class today.

Growing in Power and Strength

11th Mansion of the Moon
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Rufus Opus has a post today about how to become a living god. (There’s also a pretty good one about how … ahem… stuff usually works out.).

I don’t know about the living god stuff, but I do know how to grow in power and strength. It’s one of those incredible, powerful secrets that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and a bunch of other great leaders have known over the years, and used to great advantage. It’s also one of those things that you can shout from the rooftops, even though it’s a secret, and no one at all will stop what they’re doing because it’s so fundamentally obvious:

To grow in power and strength, stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do work.

See how easy it is? See how amazing one of the great secrets of the universe is? And I’ve just revealed it to you, for free.

Big deal, I hear you muttering. As a student of mine says, “That’s so obvi, it’s hardly worth saying.”

But it is. It needs to be said over and over and over. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It needs to be turned into an Internet meme with cats. It needs to be a song by Bryan Jackson and Julie Beman played on the Six Nations Voyageur and featured on NPR and Fox News.

Consider that last month, when I drew this image of the 11th Mansion of the Moon last, it looked like this:

Whiteboard Mansion 11

Craptastic, right? I mean, whiteboard marker in six minutes in front of a dozen sixth graders is likely to be bad. Whatevs, as the kids would say. But when they see this, they’ll be like, “Wow, that’s totally cray-cray (crazy-crazy).”

But the secret is to find what works, and keep doing that. In this case, what works is doing pencil sketches and combining tutorials from dragoart.com — one on drawing lions, and one on drawing knights on horseback. Is it perfect? No. Is it a lot better than the first bit of half-assery I did? Yes.

And further on in the article, here’s the time before that, using the iPad app Paper by Fifty-three.

Look, nobody gets awesome at anything the first time out. Write a sonnet. Right now. I’ll wait. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s a rhyming poem of fourteen lines, with ten syllables in a line and a rhyming pattern in the last syllables of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Write one now, go ahead. I’ll be here when you’re done.

Done? No? Keep writing.

Done now? Ok, your sonnet. It’s terrible, unless you’re already an awesome poet. But it’s a sonnet, and that makes you stronger and more powerful than anyone who hasn’t written a sonnet, or drawn a Mansion of the Moon, or learned the names of six constellations.

Write another sonnet. I’ll wait.  In fact, I’ll write one while you write one, in honor of Neciel:

Digital Mansion 11

Greetings, Neciel, al-Zubrah’s angel,
prince of mastery, charisma and awe:
help us to grow strong in learning’s tangle,
acquiring power through Nature’s law —
Keep doing what works, avoid what doesn’t,
work through apprenticeship to mastery.
No skillfulness appears without comment,
adept-ship comes not by half-assery.
Help us ride the lion of our passions,
to steer it by the ear and seek the ring.
Help our creations guide future fashions,
help our work become the next big thing.
For in these lines of praise declared to you,
may my works become empowered and new.

Done with your sonnet? Not as bad as the first one, was it? You’re already discovering that you know the secret, intimately, already — Stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do.

Learning to do these things will earn you admiration from women and men, boys and girls. It will raise you in the eyes of your subordinates and in the estimation of your overseers. It will lend you grace and power. It will grow your power as a wizard and a teacher, and it will prove to you — over and over and over again — the value of this secret, which is more reliable than the Law of Attraction, or the Core Common Standards, or the Four Agreements, or all the re-readings of the occult Philosophies of Picatrix and John Dewey combined which you may choose to subject yourself to.

It is the Golden Chain of Homer, and the Dry Work of Alchemy, and the Hero’s Quest. Make it your New Year’s Resolution:

Stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do work.

Happy New Year.

---

Via Flickr:
The eleventh mansion is complicated. Sometimes I show the lion from the side. This time, it’s sort of a 3/4 view. Doesn’t matter — I usually get the proportions wrong between the human and animal bodies. And the human here looks more like a Playmobil figure than a true warrior. The forest background is complicated, too.

On the other hand, even with these challenges I think the drawing shows promise.

From a magical perspective, of course, each time I draw this picture or a version of this picture, the power inherent in the image will grow; from an artistic perspective, the quality of my efforts will get better, and the quality of the drawing’s proportions and imagery will improve the more times I try to draw it. In both cases, frequent repetition will empower me in ways that are difficult to explain — but just as drawing is thinking, ritualizing is thinking. There’s a creative confidence that comes from frequent application of the energies of each image — and from that energy and confident application of skill comes greater power. So does the work improve and grow.

Travel, Interrupted. With Friends.

I’m working on the Ninth Mansion of the Moon image, called Al-Tarf after beta Cancri.  It’s… ahem… an image of some delicacy, because it’s a man covering his eyes and wanting his genitals.  I suppose I could draw or photograph a Ken doll.  But a different image both suggested and presented itself, so I’m working on that. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s going to appear here.  Lines have to be drawn somewhere.

Plus, it’s an image for “causing discord among men” and causing trouble in travel and limiting harvests.  So I’ve interrupted myself several times in the drawing of it, to consider whether it’s a good idea to finish it. And now, I’m stuck in Atlanta at the airport.

The modern American teacher, typically a modernist and a materialist and a rationalist (no matter what church they belong to or what god or gods they believe in), is likely to regard this as unlucky coincidence.   I mean, here I am stuck in an airport, and it’s no big deal — travel at the holidays, this time of year, is likely to be complicated.  It’s winter — weather incidents are likely to get in the way.

Nonetheless, here I am under a full moon, on the day that the Moon is in the Ninth Mansion of Al-Tarf, and the number of people who are showing up at the gate to fly back “home” who I know is growing and growing.  There’s a whole family that lives just up the hill from my lady, and a guy I know from a festival in eastern New York called SpiritFire.  I have this feeling that others I know will be showing up shortly to take this same “last flight from Atlanta” to get back to New England. Astonishing.

And part of me wonders if part of it is that Barbiel, the angel of the ninth mansion, wants his/her image finished and opened to the world?  Is that why we’re all here?  It’s a lot of odd coincidences piling up on top of one another.  Folks from my magical life all appear at the same gate at the same airport?

Of course a typical American teacher — from a rationalist, materialist, modernist viewpoint — would insist that this is ridiculous.  Angels are not particularly supposed to be in American public schools at the very least, and how would drawing a picture of Barbiel’s image and reciting a prayer or declaration on his behalf get me home any sooner? Would publishing his image make it easier or harder for me to get home?  Would it have any effect at all?  Again, the rationalist, materialist, modernist teacher in me would say, no, of course not.  

Am I always those things, though?  No, not really. Not so much.  I’m mindful that we know more than we realize, and that we affect more than we realize.  There’s more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  And so it’s an easy matter to resolve.   If Barbiel wants his image revealed to the world, he’s going to have to wait — holdign me up is not going to get me to give out a tool for causing discord among men or causing infirmity.

But let me release a different kind of tool to the world, a poem.  Let me unlock my word hoard, and remind Barbiel that we mortals are not utterly powerless to the machinations of the spirit realms.

Hail, al-Tarf’s Barbiel, honest and sure,
who of twenty-eight mansions rules the ninth.
Give me strength, infirmity to endure,
and help me through a long journey day’s length.
You halt winnowers on the threshing floor,
and hinder travelers at the portal,
and strand the ships on sandbars far from shore,
while warning the youthful that they’re mortal.
“Prince of unpleasant truths” thy epithet,
while Heaven’s Cancer defines thy mansion:
Leave us untouched, and now kindly forget
to gift us with trials of your invention.
Distance me from men of malignant will,
and go on thy way without doing ill.

They’ve just announced the gate for my flight, and we’ll see whether Barbiel lets me go home.  But let me ask this of myself and my readers, O materialist, rationalist, modernists that we are… IF I do get home, is it because Barbiel helped me?  Or that my poem hindered him? Or that he’s punishing me for my audacity?  Or that his power is waning now that his time is ending and the next mansion is beginning?

OR… is it just that the weather cleared up and the airline got their act together, and so on?

These matters are not cut and dried.  They are not settled, though we believe them so.  When we take on an alternate mindset, like “magic is real and there are spirits that work in the world,” we start encountering murky but consequential evidence that this is on.  When we take on a materialist mindset, and adopt the idea that this physical body of meat and minerals is all that there is, we encounter murky but consequential evidence that this is so. When we perform experiments to determine if there are spirit-beings, like writing these poems, and determine their results— we encounter evidence that they exist and that they can be persuaded or guided or governed.  When we deny their existence, we likewise encounter evidence that they are not real, and that travel delays and weather challenges are just part of the ordinary circumstances and difficulties of travel.  Welcome to the world. Life is hard.  Oh well, get used to it.

As Yann Martel pointed out in The Life of Pi, though, the world benefits from a degree of magical thinking from us.  We reënchant the world, in some sense, by believing in it and making it so.  My life is enriched and beautified by writing poetry in praise of an angel that most people in this airport would be hard-pressed to believe exists — “an angel who acts to hinder travelers and cause infirmities?  Isn’t that a bit much for a God who is absolutely just?”

And yet, in writing this poem, haven’t I enriched your life?  Haven’t I done what I could to bring my companions and colleagues and fellow travelers closer to home?  Haven’t I done my best to enchant the world so that they arrive at their intended destination?  Let us hope so.

Barbiel, may you prosper our way by forgetting about us for now.