About Me

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As an author inspired by the aesthetic of virtue drawn from the many esoteric works I experience and research,I seek wisdom, truth and the light that emanates from all things born of the great void... a lover of life, gnosis and my Clan Family - The People of Goda, of the Clan of Tubal Cain www.clanoftubalcain.org.uk.

Monday 27 June 2011

Kali-Ma

 KALI-MA

Kali  is the divine qutub; erect upon the inert corpse of Shiva, She generates the impulse of life, of the manifest moment; Mother of the gods. Consort of Lord Shiva, who dances the Universe into being. Order from Chaos.

The universe descends from the eternal void, the infernal Absu. 1

 

“Kali, also known as Kalika, is the Hindu goddess associated with eternal energy. The name Kali means "black" but has, by folk etymology, come to mean "force of time (kala)." Kali is today considered the goddess of time and change. Although sometimes presented as dark and violent, her earliest incarnation as a figure of annihilation still has some influence. More complex Tantric beliefs sometimes extend her role so far as to be the "ultimate reality" or Brahman. She is also revered as Bhavatarini (literally "redeemer of the universe").”2



Why is Mother Kali so radiantly black?
Because she is so powerful,
that even mentioning her name destroys delusion.
Because she is so beautiful,
Lord Shiva, Conqueror of death,
lies blissfully vanquished,
beneath the red soled feet.
There are subtle hues of blackness,
But her bright complexion
is the mystery that is utterly black,
overwhelmingly black, wonderfully black.
When she awakens in the lotus shrine
within the heart's secret cave,
her blackness becomes the mystic illumination
that causes the twelve petal blossom there
to glow more intensely than golden embers.
Her lovely form is the incomparable
Kali- black blacker than the King of Death.
Whoever gazes upon this radiant blackness falls eternally in love
and feels no attraction to any other,
discovering everywhere only her.
This poet sighs deeply,
"Where is this brilliant lady, this black light beyond luminosity?
Though I have never seen her, simply hearing her name,
the mind becomes absorbed completely in her astonishing reality.
Om Kali! Om Kali! Om Kali!3



O longing mind,
consecrate your being to pure love.
Turn every thought to Goddess Tara.
She will bear you tenderly across the raging sea
of separation and individuality.
Be utterly dedicated to her reality.
Cry aloud Ma Kali, Ma Kali.
Know that she can clarify
the inconceivable maze of relativity.
To hope for assistance and guidance through this world
from wealth, relatives, and religious rites
provides no profound solution.
Have you forgotten that everyone is lost?
Where are you now? Why are you travelling?
This cosmos is the strange theatre where souls act,
wearing various costumes and disguises.
This intricate play of transparent energy
is initiated, sustained, and dissolved by Kali,
who is the dream power of Absolute Reality.
At this very moment, you are resting
on the vast lap of Mother's cosmic dream
that you misperceive
as the narrow prison of suffering.
Why abandon the kingdom of awareness
to obsession with self and disdain for others,
to hollow passion and abject clinging?
You are creating a disease without a remedy.
The brief day of your earthly life is almost over.
Meditate now on beautiful Black Tara.
She is seated upon the jewel island of essence
in the transparent sea of ultimacy.
This poet sings drunkenly:
"Tara! Tara! Tara!
Your name is ambrosia.
May all beings enter the secret sanctuary
through this name,
tasting your unique sweetness,
self-luminous awareness."4




NOTES: 1 - shani oates
              2 - ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com
            3.- Ramprasad Sen 
Version by: Lex Hixon From Mother of the Universe "Visions of the Goddess and Tantric Hymns of Enlightenment"
           4. - by: Ramprasad Sen
Version: Lex Hixon from "Mother of the Universe"

      
Images:


    

Thursday 16 June 2011

FREYA



The songs I know    that king's wives know not,
Nor men that are sons of me;
The first is called help,    and help it can bring thee
In sorrow and pain and sickness.

A second I know,    that men shall need
Who leechcraft long to use.
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

A third I know,     if great is my need
Of fetters to hold my foe;
Blunt do I make    mine enemy's blade,
Nor bites his sword or staff.

A fourth I know,    if men shall fasten
Bonds to my bended legs;
So great is the charm    that forth I may go,
The fetters spring from my feet,
Broken the bonds from my hands.


A fifth I know,    if I see from afar
An arrow fly 'gainst the folk;
If flies not so swift    that I stop it not,
If ever my eyes behold it.

A sixth I know,    if harm one seeks
With a sapling's roots to send me;
The hero himself    who wreaks his hate
Shall taste the ill ere I.

A seventh I know,    if I see in flames
The hall o'er my comrades' heads;
It burns not so wide    that I will not quench it,
I know that song to sing.

An eighth I know,    that is to all
Of greatest good to learn;
When hatred grows    among heroes' sons,
I soon can set it right.


A ninth I know,    if need there comes
To shelter my ship on the flood;
The wind I calm    upon the waves,
And the sea I put to sleep.

A tenth I know,    what time I see
House-riders flying on high;
So can I work    that wildly they go,
Showing their true shapes,
Hence to their own homes.

An eleventh I know,    if needs I must lead
To the fight my long-loved friends;
I sing in the shields,     and in strength they go
Whole to the field of fight,
Whole from the field of fight,
And whole they come thence home.

A twelfth I know,    if high on a tree
I see a hanged man swing;
So do I write    and colour the runes
That forth he fares,
And to me talks.

A thirteenth I know,    if a thane full young
With water I sprinkle well;
He shall not fall,    though he fares mid the host,
Nor sink beneath the swords.

A fourteenth I know,    if fain I would name
To men the mighty gods;
All know I well    of the gods and elves,--
Few be the fools know this.

A fifteenth I know,    that before the doors
Of Delling sang Thjothrorir the dwarf;
Might he sang for the gods,    and glory for elves,
And wisdom for Hroptatyr wise.



A sixteenth I know,    if I seek delight
To win from a maiden wise;
The mind I turn    of the white-armed maid,
And thus change all her thoughts.

A seventeenth I know,    so that seldom shall go
A maiden young from me;
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

An eighteenth I know,    that ne'er will I tell
To maiden or wife of man,--
The best is what none    but one's self doth know,
So comes the end of the songs,--
Save only to her    in whose arms I lie,
Or else my sister is.

Images:

Wednesday 1 June 2011

Pale Shadows

A DIALOGUE OF SELF AND SOUL

I [My Soul] I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
(1)

                                  

 I[My Self]. The consecrates blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady's dress and round
The wooden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn.

(2)
 
  I[My Soul.] Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect is wandering
To this and that and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

(3)



 I [My self.] Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery --
Heart's purple -- and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier's right
A charter to commit the crime once more.

(4)

 
 
I [My Soul.] Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
I{Is} from the I{Ought,} or I{knower} from the I{Known -- }
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

(5)




 I [My Self.] A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies? --
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blessed.


 
(6)

All paintings copyright of John Caple. facebook.com/john.caple courtesy of the John Martin Gallery, London

Poem by William Butler Yeats.