Crowley's Hymn to Pan

Listening to the Thelemite podcast made me go and look up one of Crowley's milder sex poems, Hymn to Pan. My favorite lines are: Come with flute and come with pipe/Am I not ripe ?

Hymn to Pan

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man ! My man !
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan ! Io Pan .
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady !
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and styrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Coem with Apollo in bridal dress
(Spheperdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon, of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of of the amber fount !
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantoness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain -come over the sea,
(Io Pan ! Io Pan !)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man ! my man !
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill !
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring !
Come with flute and come with pipe !
Am I not ripe ?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan ! Io Pan !
Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Iam awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan ! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan ! Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan !
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold , I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end.
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan ! Io Pan !

What CAN'T You Find On The Internets?

Wow, even the Thelamites are into podcasting! Uncle Aelister would have approved, I think, in his own crochety way.

Beltane, Beltane, Beltane!

The BBC has a nice, albeit kind of dry, article on Beltane that stresses the fire-festival aspect of my favorite holiday.

Sunday (Almost) Akhmatova Blogging

"You, Who Was Born..."

1956

You, who was born for poetry's creation,
Do not repeat the sayings of the ancients.
Though, maybe, our Poetry, itself,
Is just a single beautiful citation.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, July, 2002
Edited by Tatiana Piotroff, September, 2002

*****************

I took last week off from Akhmatova. I'm reading her and thinking about her, but she's still not really communicating with me. And, yet, Russians adored her. Her latest biography, which I'm longing to read, is called Anna of all the Russias. So I know there must be more there than I'm getting.

A poetess only has one tool -- her language. And Akhmatova's tool was Russian, which I don't speak. But I love the sound of it. You know how some languages just SOUND sexy? For some people, that's French or Italian. For me, it's Russian. I love even the way that the names sound. And, as I've said before, I don't believe Akhmatova translates well.

The translation above is a good example. I can imagine what she was trying to get across, perhaps to a poet with whom she was in love. But it hurts. Why is it "you who was" rather than "you who were"? I'm sure the translator picked the one word over the other for a reason, but it simply sounds so awkward to my ear that I lose the romantic sense of the poem -- a poetess to whom poetry is the highest value, speaking to a lover as one born to create poetry -- due to the dissonance of the words.

I do like "a single beautiful citation." That works and, Bluebooker extraordinaire that I am, I've actually seen and appreciated beautiful citations. It's an art, like poetry. And I can understand why, to one who loves capital-P-Poetry, being a mere citation would seem as if it were, somehow, not enough. Ah, Anna. Am I going to get to appreciate you or will I have to give up, defeated?

A poetess only has her language to wield as a tool. Anna may have wielded Russian so well that only a speaker of Russian can love her the way that I love Mary Oliver, or Dorothy Parker, or Adrienne Rich. We'll see.

Happy Motherfucking Earth Day!

So, it's finally here! All the Earth Day gifts are heaped under the Earth Day tree, while all the old familiar Earth Day songs play softly in the background. In just a little while, the children will wake up and gather round to hear the Earth Day story, unwrap their Earth Day gifts, and look inside their Earth Day baskets to see what Gaia brought them. Then, the whole family, all three or four generations, will head off to church, or temple, or synagogue, or grove and give thanks for our lovely Earth on Earth Day. Finally, everyone will head to Grandma's for the traditional Earth Day feast, followed by naps, football, and lots of happy family time together. Truth to be told, you're almost glad that all the fuss is over. Earth Day ads have been on the radio and tv for months and it seems as if every year, Earth Day gets more and more commercialized and we move farther away from the true meaning of Earth Day.

What? You're kidding?!?! You didn't even know that today's Earth Day? You're not even sure what Earth Day is or what it's for or what you're supposed to do on Earth Day?!?!?! All you have is a vague notion that it's some hippie-dippy tree-hugging relic from the 1970s?!? How could that be? Goddess knows, if ever there were a planet in need of some attention, it's our current Earth. So how did Earth Day turn into a nothing, a non-event, a minor opportunity for politicians to give speeches in the few remaining national parks (after their aides find the one or two vistas not marred by oil wells or old-growth logging -- thanks George Bush, you motherfucker!) about how "Every day is Earth Day!"?????

Well, I suppose there are a number of reasons. But the main one is that holidays in America are only real if someone can make some money off of them. We celebrate Secretary's Day with more consistency than Earth Day because the card companies, florists, and restaurants make money from Secretary's Day -- a holiday that they pretty much invented over the past 20 years or so. Valentine's Day, ditto, although its history goes back a bit farther. Mother's Day, ditto and add the phone companies. Memorial Day makes money for the beach resorts and beer companies and charcoal sellers. And gas stations. Thanksgiving and xmas speak for themselves as orgies of spending and consumption. But Earth Day? I guess the nurseries and environmental clean-up folks aren't too bright because no one seems to make much money off of Earth Day. Hence, it's pretty much gone the way of Arbor Day.

Like so much of what happened back in the early 70s concerning energy and the environment, Earth Day represents, in many ways, a huge lost opportunity. As gas approaches $90 barrel, we can't help but wish that some of Jimmy Carter's energy initiatives, both conservation and development, hadn't been allowed to languish for the past 30 years. Too bad we didn't spend that time getting ourselves off oil and preventing global warming. Too bad we didn't clean up the air, and our water, and our food supply while we had cheap energy to do it with. Too bad we didn't take rational, painless steps to control population such as providing accurate sex education, free safe birth control, and incentives to limit reproduction. As our planet reaches the tipping point in terms of environmental catastrophe, I can't help but wish that the promise of Earth Day had been realized rather than relegated to the junk heap of third-rate holidays.

I was recently re-reading one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

I suppose the question that she asks is the most important question that can be asked here at the beginning of the 21st Century: Do you love this world? If you do, how will you show your love? Here's an easy thing to do. Go order some free trees. (OK, you have to pay for the shipping, but the trees are free). Plant them. If you live in an apartment or condo, plant them in a near-by abandoned lot or park or in a friend's yard. Commit guerrila actions and plant them along highways or beside parking lots. Mother Earth needs more trees.

Beltane

>

Well some over-ambitious fool ordered about 50 coleus plants which showed up today, even though I'm still trying to plant a bunch of mint seedlings and hollyhock seedlings that I grew. Oh, and all three moonflower seedlings and some morning glory seedlings. The parsley and lime balm are so far along that they could stand to be cut back, but Goddess knows when I'd find time to cook anything with them since I need to plant like a maniac between now and when the rain (please, Goddess!) starts tomorrow afternoon. I need to get the seedlings planted and off the screen porch so I can clean the screen porch for Beltane.

I adore Beltane. For many witches, Samhein (that's Halloween for those of you unused to the Wiccan vocabulary) is sort of THE high holy day of the Wiccan calendar, but for me, it's always been Beltane. By Beltane, (May 1st) it's really and truly Spring. There are, here in Zone 7 (aka, Arlington, Virginia), azaleas, and violets, and Solomon's Seal blooming. The peonies aren't blooming yet, but they're back up above the ground, promising to make love to the ants very, very soon. Ditto the iris, and I planted loads and loads of black ones (merci, GWPDA!) last fall and it looks as if they all made it through the winter. Merci, also, to the squirrels, who didn't eat them, even though this was a very lean (aka acorn-scarce) winter for them. My lawn looks, if I say so myself, like the softest green carpet you ever saw and all you want to do when you see it is to pull everything off your feet and let your feet and the grass make love to each other.

Beltane is when the ancient Pagans built the Beltane fires on the hills and danced the maypole and ran off into the meadows and woods to perform the Great Rite. The Great Rite is sympathetic magic at its best: Look Mother Earth! We're procreating and being fertile and mixing it up like mad! You do the same, OK?? Babies born in January, Beltane-got, were considered lucky.

Of course, the xians tried to appropriate Beltane, making May Day a feast of Mary. I can remember as a child being fascinated with the altar we set up in our living room to Mary in May and the fresh flowers we picked every day for the plaster statue of Mary, bare foot on a snake. I suppose it's no surprise that as an adult I keep an altar to the Goddess, primarily in the form of Hecate, in my home. The Soviets tried to appropriate May Day from the xians, making it a Worker's Holiday and using it to parade their military might. But, in the end, the Goddess gets back her own. From April 30th through May 1st, Pagans all over the world, including my little circle of women, will celebrate Beltane.

We'll worship Venus, and Aphrodite, and Isis, and Amateresu, and Yemaya, and other Goddesses of love, beauty, sex, sensuality. We'll light the Beltane fire, weave crowns of roses, and lilies, and carnations, and lilacs, throw offerings to the Beltane fire, drink pink champagne, eat lovely food, and dance until we're exhausted. And then . . . .

Appropriate, isn't it, that Beltane comes just after Earth Day? I'll have a bit more to say about Earth Day in the next couple of days.

A Tale of Two Georges

Would George stand for this abuse of power?

God Hates Assholes, But Loves Faeries at a Revival!

As usual, Anne Johnson rocks, while Fred Phelps sucks the big wazoo.

Some Good News About Breast Cancer Treatment

Today's WaPo reports that raloxifene prevents breast cancer in post-menopausal women as well at Tamoxifen, but without some of Tamoxifen's side effects. Good for osteoporosis, as well.

Addressing Global Warming, One Investment Dollar At A Time

From today's EEI newsletter, it's clear that:

SOME PEOPLE GET IT

AES to Invest $1 Billion in Alternative Energy Over Next Three Years

AES plans to invest about $1 billion into its alternative energy business over the next three years, with half of that going into wind-generated power, the Washington Post reported today. William Luraschi, AES executive VP of business development, was quoted by the Post as saying: "Energy consumption is growing and we don't see that changing. Traditional ways of meeting that are not going to be sufficient."

Dow Jones Newswires wrote that AES "said it intends to expand its existing alternative energy businesses in wind power generation, biomass and the development of liquefied natural gas."

The company has earmarked $250 million for "projects that would take advantage of new international regulations on the emission of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol and the European Union's emission trading system."

Wrote the Post: "In 2008, most countries will be required to keep their greenhouse emissions at or below certain ceilings. Companies unable to meet those standards will have to pay penalties or buy credits from companies that have them to sell. AES plans to develop projects that will generate credits to sell, either by reducing emissions at existing plants or by nurturing agricultural or forestry projects considered beneficial for the environment."

AES also has entered strategic partnerships with Los Alamos National Laboratory and XL TechGroup to develop new alternative-energy technologies, according to an AES news release.
Washington Post , April 18; AES news release , Dow Jones Newswires , April 17.

AND SOME PEOPLE DON'T

Newspaper: Media Needs to Relax on Climate Change Issue

In an editorial published in Investor's Business Daily, the newspaper pointed out that not too long ago, the media was reporting on global cooling, not warming. Wrote the newspaper: "The earth warms. The earth cools. Al Gore and his media friends should just chill."

For example, the editorial stated that the New York Times reported Sept. 14, 1975, that global cooling "may mark the return to another ice age" that "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable," and the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950," the editorial pointed out.
Investor's Business Daily, editorial , April 17.

Oh, Opus Dei, I Know What You Should Do! You Should Bite Me

Via Witchvox, Yahoo reports that Opus Dei has their thorn-encrusted garters in a twist over the way that the movie The Da Vinci Code portrays the whack-job fundie Catholic group. They're demanding a disclaimer at the beginning of the film as a "sign of respect." Where the fuck do these people get off? Dudes, you're crazy and your leader is a gay, Hitler-Youth, vampire. No one respects you.

How Not To Take A Deposition

My son suggests they might want to start awarding CLEs for viewing this.

Yeah, Good Luck With That, Wal-Morons

Wal-Mart wants media to focus on customer

By MarketWatch
Last Update: 4/14/2006 5:00:09 PM
MARKETWATCH FRONT PAGE

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Executives at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., facing a rising chorus of criticism about labor practices and efforts to move into banking, will try to shift the focus to customers this week when they make a series of presentations to the media.

Where Are The April Showers That Will Bring May Flowers?

Somehow, in Spring, I never manage to get everything done, even though I work all day. Today I mowed the front yard with my new electric mower -- well I mowed part of the front yard. Apparently you have to charge this mower all the way up and then run it all the way down a few times before it gets "fully" charged and can actually mow the 1/3 acre advertised. The good news is that the lawn looks nice, much neater than when I use my rotary mower. The bad news is that this mower is a LOT heavier than my little tin rotary mower. Hopefully, tomorrow, I can get the rest of the yard mowed.

I planted French Tarragon and Pineapple Sage and I watered the herb bed, which meant digging the hose out of the shed and hooking it up. That led to a partial clean-up inside the shed, but there's more to do. I picked up lots of sticks in the back yard and watered the woodland garden, the azaleas, the roses, and the lilacs. Used the watering can to water the foxglove and hollyhock in the front bed. Goddess, I wish we'd get some rain.

But I've still got aramasias and mint seedlings and black violet seedlings to plant and mulching to do.

WaPo, I know what you should do. You should bite me.

Oh my fucking god, it's a bunch of angry spittle-crazed leftists! And they smoke cigarettes! Run for your lives!. Those dumb motherfucking cocksuckers left out "shrill"! Don't they know that when you're discrediting liberals you have to use the word "shrill"? Their laziness makes me angry!

Women's Economic Power

Via Witchvox, Here's an interesting article from the Economist on women's growing economic power.

The Economist makes a couple of interesting points:

* Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the employment of extra women has not only added more to GDP than new jobs for men but has also chipped in more than either capital investment or increased productivity. Carve up the world's economic growth a different way and another surprising conclusion emerges: over the past decade or so, the increased employment of women in developed economies has contributed much more to global growth than China has.

*Surveys suggest that women make perhaps 80% of consumers' buying decisions—from health care and homes to furniture and food." Eighty percent? Jesus Christ dancing naked under the moon and tattooed w/ blue woad! Can you imagine what we could do with that power if we ever harnessed it and decided to work together? Kali on cocaine!

*At school, girls consistently get better grades, and in most developed countries well over half of all university degrees are now being awarded to women. In America 140 women enrol in higher education each year for every 100 men; in Sweden the number is as high as 150. (There are, however, only 90 female Japanese students for every 100 males.)

In years to come better educated women will take more of the top jobs"

*"[A] study by Catalyst, a consultancy, found that American companies with more women in senior management jobs earned a higher return on equity than those with fewer women at the top. This might be because mixed teams of men and women are better than single-sex groups at solving problems and spotting external threats. Studies have also suggested that women are often better than men at building teams and communicating.

To make men feel even worse, researchers have also concluded that women make better investors than they do.:


For years, my checks have borne the imprint "Feminist Money."

Nice, But Not the Point

The BBC is reporting that "Foetuses cannot feel pain because it requires mental development that only occurs outside the womb, says a report in the British Medical Journal.". It reminds me of the question someone asked about lobsters: do they feel pain when thrown alive into boiling water? Someone answered that they feel all the pain that a lobster can feel. I've got no idea what human foetuses can or can't feel. It's an irrelevant question. No one, and that includes the most adorable, sensitive foetus ever, has a rigth to keep living inside my body unless I want it to live inside my body. I'd hope than an abortion wouldn't cause it pain. But that's an irrelevant question.

The doctor doing the research seems to agree with me. BBC reports that, "Avoiding a discussion of foetal pain with women requesting abortions is not misguided paternalism but a sound policy based on good evidence that foetuses cannot experience pain."

And he said giving foetuses painkilling drugs - which would have to be given through the placenta - involved procedures which may expose the woman to unnecessary risks and distress."

Look, I have a grandson who's less than two months old. i adore babies. I show up at my son and daughter-in-law's house just to hold my grandson, sing to him, and smell him even while he sleeps. But until he was born, it was completely up to my daughter-in-law whether or not to continue to carry him. if she'd wanted an abortion, I'd have supported her 100%. I wish wingnuts could get this through their heads.

Mark, Come On. You Did Better as Governor and You Can Do Better Now.

I like Mark Warner, but as many others have noted, we've heard all we need to hear about how Democrats need [insert you favorite: a plan, a vision, to lead, blah, blah, blah]. If Mark thinks the Democrats need a plan, he should LAY OUT HIS FREAKING PLAN. OK, rant off. Go listen to his otherwise very nice soundbite.

Investing and Living On and Off the Grid

A couple of interesting items from today's EEI newsletter.

First, EEI reports: "Venture Capital Now Backing ‘Green’ Technologies in Energy Sector

The Associated Press examined the viability of the green technology industry and found that venture capitalists now are backing the sector fully. Wrote the AP: "North American venture capitalists invested more than $1.6 billion in clean-tech companies last year, a 35 percent increase over 2004, according to a report by the Cleantech Venture Network."

Network Senior VP Craig Cuddebach was quoted as saying: "It's a strong area for venture capital. It's no longer a choice between whether you will be clean or profitable."

Wrote the AP: "As prices of more traditional energy sources continue to rise, the global market for clean energy sources such as biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and solar and wind energy rose to $40 billion last year, and is expected to increase to $167 billion by 2015, according to a report released last month by Clean Edge Inc., a Bay Area marketing firm."

The AP also reported that Vinod Khosla, a Kleiner Perkins associate who recently has launched a venture capital firm, "is financing a California ballot initiative that would increase taxes on oil companies to fund alternative energy."
Associated Press via the Contra Costa, Calif., Times , April 12."

No boom lasts forever, but now sounds like a very good time to get in on this boom and ride it for a couple of years. I'm no financial guru, for sure. But clean energy is good business, not the economy-buster that the oil companies and their bought-and-paid-for politicians have tried to tell us it would be.

EEI also reports that: "Grid-Connected Renewable-Powered Homes Gaining on Off-Grid Homes
Households utilizing renewable energy to supply electricity are no longer confined to the traditional off-grid homes, the USA Today reported today. Instead, while off-grid homes still account for a large share of the renewable energy-powered homes, more and more grid-connected homes also are adding solar or wind energy systems.

States are making such ventures more feasible, with 17 states now offering rebates on solar and wind energy system purchases, compared with just three in 2000. Wrote the newspaper: "Despite a hodgepodge of state laws, the trend points up a budding grass-roots movement to displace at least some of the nation's power generation from pollution-belching plants to small, clean neighborhood nodes. That eases strains on transmission lines."

Off-grid homes number 180,000, with the number rising 33 percent each year over the past decade. Wrote the newspaper: "These days, a growing number of off-gridders could link up fairly cheaply but prefer to be untethered for myriad reasons, including rising electricity rates, a desire to cut power plant pollution and concerns about blackouts or terrorism."
USA Today , April 13."

See above re: green energy and good business. Some smart young person is going to become THE contractor to go to for solar panels and other green remodeling in your state. She'll likely make a bundle.

Grrrrrr!

So I'm about two or three years away, finance wise, from doing the landscaping that I knew I'd have to do when I bought this house. My backyard has a terrible awkward slope that will need to be fixed w/ retaining walls and I need to enclose the garden, if not with the (expensive) brick walls that I long for, at least with some very solid, very high fences that I can cover with vines. Need private space for the witches to dance and do ritual, you know.

But this am I'm out on the screen porch and something happened that never happens. My neighbors (and I use that term loosely since I've lived here two and a half years and met everyone else for blocks around but never met this couple) from directly behind me were OUT IN THEIR BACK YARD. With two guys with big scrolls in their hands. Contractors. Architects. So, being a nosy witch, I stretched my ears out and listened to what they were saying. Garage. Grading. Lots of grading.

Shit. Fuck. Damn. Going to need those fences sooner rather than later. Up until now, these folks have never been out in their yard. They do nothing to take care of it or to garden, but there's a big apple tree and some shrubs that harbor wildlife so I've kind of enjoyed it. Now, they're going to tear things up, build shit, and generally make a mess and noise all summer long. Shit. Fuck. Damn.