To: CELTIC-L@LISTSERV.HEA.IE Subject: Re: heaven and hell (fwd)
[musings to follow]
Sender: "CELTIC-L - The Celtic Culture List," CELTIC-L@listserv.hea.ie
>>Heaven is where
>>Hell is where
[RUDRA/TFN piece begins:]
---Seems to me that an
infamous quote from that thin-skinned rhu-barbaroi, Adolph Hitler, has to do
with the power of radio, then a new addition to technology, being "wickedly
great," in that by *its* constant pounding of rhyming, simplistic phrases into
the public consciousness,Heaven itself can be seen as the most sordid place...,
and, the mucky and murky dissemblance "offered" instead, despite the "ever
widening gyre" nature of *distortions*, made to seem a panacea towards
which the fear torched nostrils of group-ego! madly stampede...
---About this *raven* business, too, something is amiss. Shakespeare's
description of the "insatiate cormorant" seems a good start. As one made
"sensitive" to the "feminine mystique" during my college dating socialization
days, then having a look at Robert Bly's "Wild Man" consciousness explorations,
What seems to me lacking is the dual nature of *mythos* as a "tool" of analysis...
---Ah for a real Seanchaidhe of olde to interpret the Ogham character
Huath, the symbol of a raven "maddened" into the terrible destructive frenzy of a pack of wolves...
--Perhaps a clue exists in the purple-mantled sorceress enchantment of Cu
Chu Lainn, "making his will so ill." As in that statue, The Dying Gaul,
Cu Chu Lainn was propped, back to a stone, upright when waylaid by those
clever enough to know not only his destiny but too his devotion to duty being
infallible to the point of his possible demise. Contrary to the assertion of
"another" not quite right, Cu Chu Lainn never bedded the Morrigu; his
mish-take! was to be seduced by Maeve of the Poisoned Cups while a youth
and, thus, a pardonable matter not having too much of a lingering stain. This
opposites at- one-ment nature loosing the moors of "what is known" caused
him, like others being trained in the art of "warrior vision seeking" by
Scathach et al, to encounter the "plain of ill luck."
--The Morrigu's appearance in his life was one such incident. Abed and asleep in comfort with his wife Emer, one day Cu Chu Lainn heard a cry "so terrible and fearful" that he was awakened with "full-eyed instincts." Outside
a loutish overgrown goon stood next to a chariot drawn by a one-legged horse.
At the helm was the Morrigu, claiming to be a "female satirist," and, knowing
Cu Chu Lainn's reknown in said matter, boasting that she'd won a bonny cow in
tow as a prize for one of her poems. Rather than read the poem as he requests
she insults him and baits him into one of his "warrior paroxysms," another
matter of renown. When she springs to the tree as a raven, he realizes the
reason he's on-guard--she's the Morrigu on a scouting mission. Next she tries
the "guilt trip" approach--knowing, too, his passion for Justice--claiming most
falsely, that he's "done" something that will bring him ill luck!, and that,
in one year's time, she'll be the eel that ensnares his feet at a ford while
he's fighting for his life and has no time for foolery...(Summarized from Tain
bo Regamna in Eleanor Hull's The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature,
(London, 1898) with mine own commentary.) ,
Now, Cu Chu Lainn is no "foolish little boy" where women are concerned; as
Moyra Caldecott, in Women in Celtic Myth, (Destiny Books, Vermont, 1988,
1992), points out. Besides the devotion of his wife, Emer, Cu Chu Lainn earned
that of Queen Cathrach Catuchenn of Spain, who abandoned her throne to come
and be one of his "woman warriors," dying nobly in battle. Blanad sought his
help from an imprisioning marriage. Fand the Sidh was enchanted with his
Fenian physique. So, Maeve, Aoife, the rival of Scathach, and the weakening
spells of Macha, perhaps could be said to have been "jealous" when stirring up
agent provacateurs like Calatin's one-eyed triplets (whom Cu Chu Lainn had
made fatherless in battle) to froth with resentment and make attempts at murder
most foul...
---And one might say that Cu Chu Lainn, in all his youthful good looks and "easy ways" with women, was being given 'knowledge" of the nature of female! in the same way that Jungian scholars like James Hillman have described the archetypal mythos of male as puer/senex. The dichotomy used
to describe the failure of men to maturate, in that the "eternal Peter Pan," declining the challenge of being male by the default of "avoidance," becomes the frustrated cynic bitterly destroying the spring of young men rather than assisting the initiations of youth as a tribal elder.
---Forgive yet another typical Rudra digression but I'm afraid that, as an Homeric scholar and lover of saturae, the hodgepodge of personal banter and brutal satire made popular by, say, Ennius, The Father of Latin Poetry, I
have to report this matter to be too deeply engrained. From The Great Mother, by Erich Neumann (Bollingen Series XLVII, 1991 ed.): "...the Terrible Female is a symbol for the unconscious. And the dark side of the Terrible Mother takes the form of monsters, whether in Egypt of India, Mexico or
Etruria, Bali or Rome. In the myths and tales of all peoples, ages, and countries--and even in the nightmares of our own nights--witches and vampires, ghouls and specters, assail us, all terrifyingly alike...Thus the womb of the earth becomes the deadly devouring maw of the underworld, and beside the
fecundated womb and the protecting cave of earth and mountain gapes the abyss of hell, the dark note of the depths, the devouring womb of the grave and of death, of darkness without light, of nothingness." (p. 148-9)
"It is in India that the experience of the Terrible Mother has been given its most grandiose form as Kali, 'dark, devouring time, the bone-wreathed Lady of the place of skulls.'...But all this--and it should not be forgotten--is an
image not only of the Feminine but particularly and specifically of the Maternal. For in a profound way life and birth are always bound up with death and destruction. That is why this Terrible Mother is 'Great,' and this name is also given to Ta-urt, the gravid monster, which is hippopotamus and crocodile, lioness and woman, in one. She too is deadly and protective. There is a
frightening likeness to Hathor, the good cow goddess..."(Ibid, at 150).
---Here we have the crux of the connundrum. The Morrigu is the emblem of sterility!. Her interest in Cu Chu Lainn, the Irish Heracles (Pride of Hera, the Brown Silken Doe-Eyes Misting with Tears), is merely predatory. Another
encounter with Cu Chu Lainn has her posing as an old hag milking a magical three-teated cow to offer the dusty and wearied warrior milk, knowing that for the "simple act of kindness" he will bless her--which he does, healing her blindness, one of the unfortunate side effects of power-mongering
sorcery--her hoping further for his Light of Foresight! a deceit which came to naught. Morrigu is thus like what Neumann depicts as "the Monster wielding the Terrible Knife," from the Papyrus of Nu, Egypt, akin, in my interpretation, to the female equivalent of Cerberus the Three-Headed Yet No-Brained Hangdog of what may be seen as the Hell Bardo. She guards the Underworld Gates with her
long snake-tongue rigidly clamped in a crocodile snout face frozen with a Cheshire Cat! like *grin*, her breasts dangling like missle torpedos, most useless, from the body all furry, Kundrie-like with clunky, dinosaur thighs.
---Whereas in the Native American myth the hero's challenge is to "break the teeth" from the vagina of such a one existing in spiritual degradation, and thereby make her whole as a woman again whose wisdom has earned respect, in this case nothing will do.
--One might add Lamia, daughter of Belus, allegedly of Zeus, the Libyan "Neith," Love-and-Battle goddess, to this pantheon. Instead of the noble Athene, shining forth with wisdom, one gets lamyros ("gluttonous") and laimos
("gullet"), a creature reduced to an ugly, Gorgon countenance by her sadomasochistic delight in the sodomistic suffering of others (akin to Boudicea and her Count Dracula-like, "Vlad the Gay Impaler," use of wooden staves to slowly kill her female enemies), especially children, for being of youth and
innocence. Allegedly part of the Empusae, a female cult that seduced men and sucked their blood as they slept, these females, like the Amazons of the Libyan Gulf of Sirte and their "sisters" now being found as remains in Eurasia, really
existed. As Plutarch and others have noted, they were indeed really dangerous,too, for the Taurian Artemis of Crimea and her Black Sea Kult of Hecate, armed priestesses formed to "avenge" that Mummer-no-king Agememnon's sacrificing of his own daughter as "penance" for his own "mish-takes," became the
buccanneering terrors of the high seas for a period of time, the savage throat-slitting and drinking of male blood--especially that of exceptionally handsome boys of noble birth, they tossed the females to their dirty tricks male minions--frightening even no-nonsence types like the Roman Consul Pompey (50 or so B.C.), taking the path of Theseus his forebearer, who ended the
cults of ritual sodomizing and prostitution of virgin girls at Crete with Phonos hekonsios, "justifiable homicide."
---To return to the opening image of Cu Chu Lainn, propped against the stone, metaphorically laid low...And the statue, in Paris, I believe, whose image might be seen in the way W.B. Yeats described the presence of Cu Chu Lainn's statue in the Post Office, prior to the Easter Rebellions...
---About this "plain of ill luck" I wrote a haiku years ago, attempting to divine my next move..., having had enough of the Manhattan "sphere of influence" of journalism and editing...
...Written after facing my grief at financial ruin for having invested four hard-working months investigating toxic waste dumpers operating a color-of-law 14-state ring using garbage haulers outta New Jersey and come to naught...The
world-weary heaviness even while walking through a country field and woods in the midst of a blizzard finally light-en-ing! as I turned to guage my direction, having no landmarks in the fierce snow, and watched the tracks of my feet fill with snowflakes newly crystaline with color...
---As Joseph Campbell commented of Cu Chu Lainn on this metaphysical plain(Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII, 1973 ed.):"To a man not led astray from himself by sentiments stemming from the surfaces of what he
sees, but courageously responding to the dynamics of his own nature--to a man who is, as Nietzsche phrases it, 'a wheel rolling of itself'--difficulties melt and the unpredictable highway opens as he goes." (p. 345)
......To close I'll give you the vision of Cu Chu Lainn triumphant even when, dying of too many wounds, he strapped himself upright to yet another stone (as before) to remain eternally vigilant, not noticing, beyond care even, when the
Morrigu indeed returned to gorge on his gaping shoulder and croak in his face...
To those not addicted to the "lust of terrorism"--in the way that , why yes, The Iliad is about wrath, as announced in plain words right in the beginning, but one must mine deeper to see that the Greek phrase of "put an
end to one's wrath" is the true metaphor--the notion of war does nothing but weary one. Calling to mind this greater paradeigmata , view then the vision at the stone our temporarily immobilized Cu Chu Lainn finally receives for his
troubles of seeking the War Chariot of Vision, as Scathach told him he must do: From the fiery prison of his physical body, wracked with a mysterious fever wasting his energy, a fiercely shining star-gazer1 of a black steed, the right one of his battle chariot, breaks free and takes flight...the flames fading
into cool heavenly expanse...where a light horse, mottled with grey, his left warhorse, is met and joined into service by Loeg, the charioteer...As the view of a world beset with fiery red and yellow flareups curves below, a young Cu Chu Lainn, in his dream trace seeing the emptiness of black space all around, feels the pangs of fear in his stomach and does not want to get into the
chariot as the toughened-with-Time Druid Loeg, impatient, scorn forming in displeasure at his mouth, insists he do...Yet he does, all becoming a bolt of Heavenly Lightening, descending in deep peace to the chaos, once again...
rudra
laboremus,
--When Mara the Malign, the false idol of craving and desire for death, tempts Buddha in the "visit to Brahma" parable, Buddha hears out the argument, buzzing like a fly in his ear, that he is not personally of God and will certainly not discover another higher liberation, try as you will.
To the Malign One the Buddha speaks thus: Abandon your Hope...
Brahma rescues the sutra with which Mara had weaved diabolical intrigue, and repeats: "I, O Worthy One,[Buddha, indeed] hold as eternal that which is truly eternal, as persistent, as perennial, as indissoluble, as immutable that which is truly so...Buddha, through grace, is thus granted by heaven that extraordinary strength beyond knowledge, concept or words, *viraya*, a "superior and powerful energy," with regards to ordinary mortal abilities, a supreme quality working the miracle of "liberation of the will by means of the will."
"If there is a lonesome tall pine tree standing, the forest has not ended..."
Date: 20 Dec 1996 18:51:28 -0000
From:t.f. noonan;tfnoonan@hotmail.com
From: Rudra Mac Chumaill; forasnai@hotmail.com
To: CELTIC-L@LISTSERV.HEA.IE
>Cc: tfnoonan@hotmail.com
>Subject: Re: Thank You
>
>>Subject: Re: ...from the *hidden* treasures trove...
>>Comments: To: "CELTIC-L - The Celtic Culture List."
>>On Sun, 8 Dec 1996, Rudra Mac Cuhmaill wrote:
Thou son of Mary of Paschal feat,/ Thou Son of Mary of death's defeat,/Thou Son of Mary of grace replete,/ Who wast and art, shall be so/ With the ebb and flow/ Who wast and art, shall be so/ With the ebb and flow.
laboremus, Rudra Mac Chumaill
>>Rudra,
*****You are most welcome,and, thank you, for your posting of that wonderful poem about Galway Kinnell's mother, most rake leaves Zen-like in the "epiphany" they shared. In case you missed my posting of mine own poem,Soaking, as Thomas Francis Noonan, indeed one and the same,I'd be happy to send along...As I found the Scottish book about Highlander Poems after I wrote Soaking with a gentler bow of my head to the Land of Vales and Glens (the Highwayman! business to me one of those more ignoble periods that, ala "gangstas," seems too wildly popular, somehow)...
.....Our friend Shae put a posting on of a website that I found highly interesting on mythology, of the sort that one would think those of a bardic/filead interest would appreciate better. Great sources--John Rhys, whose work I love--one verse he cites, "vale of the bee," has a "cutty black sow" that the website owner--
http://www.cadvision.com/hooker-
perron/index.htm
John Hooker, describes as "the forces of darkness" opposed by Diarmait, a legacy of a Druid from the Tuatha de Danaan, and one of Finn Mac Cool's warriors. Too he has a description of white-robed Druids using mistletoe, with the semen-like white fluid, for healing fertility, a spiritual opposition to the rampaging "black cutty sow" and curved tusks of the boar, which Hooker compares to the "sickle of Cronos" used by that miscreant to castrate his own father in classical Greek mythology, causing Zeus, the Heavenly Father, to banish Cronos as Lord of Hades, described most perfectly by Dante in The Inferno as a place of cold, ghastly winds, a neo-plutocracy with sterile piles of gold and silver, after which Cronos' favorite minion,
Cerberus-the-Three-headed-Hangdog, craves most mightily--though his huge, claw-like feet are frozen in the Waters of Sorrow, his Luciferean-ego orders! his pteradoctyl-like lizard wings to beat harder!, as the rage fills his beady, crocodile-like narrow eyes...
.....Hooker quotes Rhys citing a second-century Celtic Chieftain in Brittainy, where the Roman historian Lucian is doing his research, as the Celt explains how the Celtic deity Ognios, personifying the noble nature of speech, was
represented by Heracles rather than Hermes:
--"Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much
troubled by it [showing the Celtic God Ognios, with his war-stave, quiver of
arrows and bow...] We Celts are of the opinion that Heracles himself performed
everything by the power of his words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of
his compulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons are his utterances
which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind: and you too say that
words have swift wings..."
best,
Date: 28 Jan 1997 19:43:32 -0000
From: "Rudra Mac Chumaill" ;forasnai@hotmail.com
From: Bette Tomlinson
>Bette
>
>>the poets are Welsh,
>>the writers Irish,
>>the politicians Manx,
>>the chefs (NOT cooks) are Breton,
>>the engineers Scottish,
>>the miners Cornish,
>>and its all organised by the High Council of the Celtic Union...
>>
>>the cooks (NOT chefs) are English,
>>the politicians French,
>>the engineers English,
>>the miners English,
>>the poets dead,
>>the writers in chains,
>>and its all organised by some obscure EC commission...
***Most beautiful indeed...One matter, not to make light of the political wit evidenced, is the notion, as Herbert Marcuse noted, that whoever controls the
words rules the world...Most specifically I had in mind the comment by Sister
Mary Fustilug and HER Scythe of Cronos about "Heaven and Hell" needing a
proper spin-doctoring as to become "politically correct"...
Coyote nipping at your heels...
Footprints lost in snow
Rudra Mac Chumaill [a.k.a. Thomas Francis Noonan]
Samyutta-nikaya, (an ancient Pali:Vedic text), vol's 1.4,5
Olde Tibetan Saying
To: forasnai@hotmail.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: Thank You
From forasnai@hotmail.com Tue Dec 17 14:19:06 1996
Date: 17 Dec 1996 18:41:45 -0000
Then pourest thy grace, refreshing shower,/ Upon men in grief andduress hour,/ Upon men in straits and danger power,/ Without cease or start to show/ Without cease or start to show.
(451 "South Vist," p. 10)
Thank you for posting these beautiful poems. Bette
Bette , Eilis Brighid,
rudra/tom, Thomas Francis Noonan, SAKYA LAMA
Back to Rudra's Main Page