LIZARD IN THE KITCHEN!

Staying in Westmeston Place, near Ditcling, there have been a number of surprising encounters of the animal kind. There was the Robin in the kitchen. There was the wallaby sighted by my landlady's daughters. The panther spotted by Dermot who lives next door. I shrink from mentioning the other kind of visitors who came to the kitchen looking for some nibbles. There was even the incident a few weeks back when an old man in Lewes high street called me over and told me:-

"I can't go back into my house because there is an enormous red snake in there."

I offered to tell the police, and then went and did so, to their surprise. I left my details and the address of the man with the snake, and they said they'd send someone round.

The next day the people I'm staying with in Westmeston told me there was a strange messsage for me on the answerphone. I pressed the button.

"Mr Glyn-Jones it's Lewes police station. We're calling to tell you that there wasn't an enormous red snake in the man's house."

I can understand why my house-colleagues would have found this a little strange. And the police hadn't really enlightened me as to why the old man had thought that there was an enormous snake in his house, although thoughts of Weston's Strong Vintage Organic Cider come to mind.

None of this, however, prepared me for the creature that crawled along the kitchen floor a couple of days ago in Westmeston Place.

"Oh my god! What is that!" cried Alina, one of the landlady's daughters.
I went over to have a look.

"It's a lizard!" I said, and suddenly the enormous red snake in the man's house in Lewes didn't seem so impossible after all. "That's the wierdest animal we've had in here yet!" Then I wondered if that sounded a bit rude.


I thought about the matter for a moment, not very clearly.
"Maybe it's a slow worm," I said. "They're actually snakes but they look like lizards."

I thought about it a bit more.

"Oh no, hang on, they're actually lizards but they look like snakes. They haven't got any legs."

This fellow, however, did have legs. What on Earth was he doing walking around the place in December?

"What shall we do with him?" asked Alina.

I responded by placing a bowl over him and said "First I'm going to finish my dinner."

I wondered whether the newly built swimming pool shed in the orchard at the end of the garden might be the safest place for a lizard to hole up during the night.

"What about the swimming pool shed?" Alina suggested, just after this thought.

"I was just thinking the same thing!" I said.

So after my dinner I took the little fellow down to the shed, although not without misgivings. What if he had a perfectly good home which he had been on his way back to before I put the bowl over him? And how would he find enough to eat and drink before he settled back into hypernation? Still, it seemed the only way forward.

Shortly after when I was back in the kitchen my landlady returned.

"It wasn't a newt?" she suggested when I informed her about the recent goings on.

A newt! Of course it was a newt!

"There are lots of newts in the pond," she added.

Yes indeed there were, and now I recalled Dermot telling me how at night after it has rained the newts go crawling around the fields. This was such a night - the grass all lovely and wet for a newt to go crawling around in.

Using my phone as a torch I hunted around the shed to try and find the poor little fellow who I had cut off from the moisture a newt loves and needs. But nowhere was he to be seen. I had another look the following day, and left the door open for an hour or so to give him a good chance of escape. Let's hope he's doing fine, and has found his way back to the pond.

THE MYSTERY CALENDAR

(click on above image to enlarge it)

EXTRACT FROM BOOK IN PROGRESS : "AMAZEMENT ARCADIA"

The Mystery Calendar : The Maiden and the Chariot Rider throughout the Year

Before we go any further, it will serve us well if we get clear on what Virgo and Bootes do throughout the year. I’ve taken the date of 600BC, and a latitude of 38°, that of Athens and so also close to that of Eleusis and indeed Sicily, the home of Daphnis and the place where Persephone goes down in some versions. These then were the figures I fed into my astronomy software. The main time of day that concerns us is evening; we want to know which constellations were revealed when the curtain of sunlight was drawn back after sunset and the stellar performance commenced. What was happening at dawn is also of significance at particular times. (For an idea of what the constellations do in the current period, add a month or so to each event.)

Let’s start in mid October, shortly after the time of the Eleusis Mysteries, and follow the year through to the next Mysteries. In October 600 BC Virgo was already set before sunset, and Bootes the Herdsman (and in the Eleusinian context the Ploughman?) was setting (ploughing?) on the western horizon. Virgo in fact remained absent from the evening skies from October through to February (the Maiden back with Hades during the Winter?), with Bootes also being partly set by sunset, and effectively completely so in Midwinter – “Dionysos descent into the Underworld” as in the Athenian festive calendar, and expressed in Dionysos’ visit to Hades in Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs, performed at the Lenaia festival in January.

But in March they were both, Virgo and Bootes, visible just after sunset, not in the West anymore but rising on the eastern horizon, just as nature warmed up and plant growth burgeoned. This was the time of the Anthesteria (28th of February), the festival in which the Athenians celebrated Dionysos’ return from the Underworld. So in Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe (Bootes the ideal shepherd and Virgo the virgin) “wait for the end of Winter as for a resurrection from Death).

From March through to June Bootes and Virgo were (and still are) seen higher and higher and further across the sky (from East to West) when the Sun-curtain went up in the evening, and Bootes actually reached the very top of the evening sky in June, “Daphnis at Heaven’s Gate” in Virgil’s Vth Eclogue (now in July).

The two constellations then began to get lower in July and August, i.e. as the Dog Days set in, Daphnis on the wane as in the First Idyll of Theokritus, and perhaps also Daphnis going down to the stream in the Virgil Eclogue. In August Virgo was only visible for a short time in the evening before she set in the west.

Then in September at sunset Virgo was setting with the Sun (going into the Underworld in the Golden Chariot as the Hymn to Demeter?), indeed the Sun was in Virgo, and at Dawn too the majority of Virgo was not yet risen. Only the stars Beta Virgo and Epsilon Virgo may have glimmered dimly through the pre-glow of Dawn, but not the bright star of Virgo, Spica. So at this time the Maiden was absent both in the morning and in the evening, and indeed all through the night – “The Disappearance of Persephone” during which Demeter searched in vain for her beloved daughter.

“Then for nine days queenly Demeter wandered
over the Earth with flaming torches in her hands.”

Some of Bootes was risen before Dawn at this time, but not yet his bright star, Arcturus.

By middle of September, however, bright Arcturus rose just before the Sun, as if heralding the immanent return of the Maiden.

“But when the tenth enlightening Dawn had come, Hecate, with a torch in her hands, met her, and spoke to her and told her news…”
“And the daughter of rich-haired Rhea answered her not, but sped swiftly with her, holding flaming torches in her hands. So they came to Helios, who is watchman of both gods and men, and stood in front of his horses.”
Then by the end of September, at last, Demeter’s wait was over as the bright star of Virgo, Spica, rose before the Sun, “The Return of the Maiden from the Underworld” celebrated by the initiates at Eleusis. The day of initiation at Eleusis was Boedromion 20, October 1st. And that brings us back to where we started.

“And Aidoneus, ruler over the dead, smiled grimly and obeyed the behest of Zeus the king. For he straightway urged wise Persephone, saying:”
"Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus….
And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother's sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her.


Being clear on this cycle will greatly help us in understanding the Greek agricultural Mysteries, both those of the Grape that we look at in this chapter, and those of the Grain that we shall look at in Chapter Four. For the full Athenian calendar with festival dates, see http://www.antonineimperium.org/athenian_calendar.htm

WOLSTONBURY / THE FLIGHT OF TALIESIN

Above: Wolstonbury Hill seen looking south, the hill I had in mind for The Flight of Taliesin : A Downland Chase, below.

The Flight of Taliesin : A Downland Chase

Following a request to give some info as to what this painting is about: during the story of Taliesin, the Welsh mythical/magical bard, he is chased by the witch/giantess Ceridwen, just after he has received his powers of inspiration from the liquor in the cauldron. He changes into a hare to run away swiftly, but she changes into a grey hound and takes up chase. This is repeated every Winter in the stars as Canis Major the Hound with bright Sirius for eye chases Lepus the Hare, located just below Orion. These are low constellations and so the chase can actually be seen running over the tops of hills of the southern horizon, such as the Downs. I live in Westmeston on Black Dog Hill from which the chase can be viewed over the high ridge of Ditchling Beacon, but in my painting the hill recalls nearby Wolstonbury, chosen because the dome shape echoes the curve traced in the sky by the constellations as they move from East to West. 

I've written a poem about this mythological episode: 

At first I was a normal lad like you
My gift was knowing how to make ale brew
The art of making liquor froth and foam
Then one day I wandered from my home
And met two witches round their cauldron seated
I showed how, without it being heated,
Liquor can be made to boil and rise
Seeing this the two showed great surprise
They turned to me and then began to ask
If I would do for them a certain task
They had to go and gather herbs of power
And to find a soothing yellow flower
While away they could not tend their brew
This simple task I then agreed to do
The purpose of the brew I’ll now explain
One of them, Ceredwen her name,
Had a crow-child, harsh upon on the eyes,
To compensate she thought she’d make him wise
Once imbibed the potion would impart
Great beauty to his words, and great art.
Ceredwen was clear as she could be
The contents of the cauldron weren’t for me
But while they were away the bubbling broth
Spat drops onto my thumb, which I licked off
At once an eloquence instilled my mind
And knowledge of a strong prophetic kind
Such that on returning they could see
What had occurred, and I was forced to flee
I changed into a hare and quickly raced
She, a black grey-hound, angrily chased
I dived, a darting fish, into a lake
And she an otter-bitch’s form did take
Then, a little bird, I rose in flight
She followed as a hawk of piercing sight
I saw a barn and flew in through the door
And there I saw a pile upon the floor
Of winnowed wheat for use in making beer
I quickly hatched a plan to disappear
I shrunk down to a grain of tiny size
And fell into the pile in this disguise
Ceredwen came in, a fire-red hen
She searched and searched until she found the grain
Now there was no place for me to hide
She gulped the grain down into her inside
As this seed I journeyed through the gloom
And found my way into the witch’s womb
Seeding myself there inside the hen
And in this chamber I was formed again
And so, grown from that little seed of corn,
I, of second mother, was reborn
A mother’s kindness cooled the witch’s wrath
Towards the one who’d drunk her magic broth
But still she would not raise me as her own
Into a leather bag I was now sewn
This bag she placed inside a little boat
There upon the river’s flow to float
In that darkness secrets I was shown
A wisdom without words was then made known
And just as I was running out of air
Suddenly, fair Elffin, you were there.

MASTERPIECES FROM THE TEFL WHITE BOARD vol 3

DOWNSPOEM & DOWNSPICS

DOWNSPOEM: Lines Composed Upon Recalling that Mammoths Actually Roamed the Slopes of the Downs, as did the Magdalenians (Cave-Painter Types)

This, too, is Arcadia

Where the Woolly Ganesh became the hills

Long-haired trumpeters sat down and said:

“We shall become this place;

It shall become us, dream us,

And we it.”

Mount Caburn, East Sussex, seen from the floodplain south of Lewes. One seems to see the upper profile of a mammoth, the long back, the hump of the head, the trunk extending off to the right.
Magdalenean Cave Painting from Roufignac, around 15,000 BC

A similar profile is presented by Wolstonbury Hill, further west along the Downs, (due North of Brighton) when seen looking west from Ditchling. For a beautiful but rather small photo of
this see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolstonbury_Hill


Mammoth piece in ivory, one of the oldest pieces of art ever found, about 35,000 years old.

MORE PAINTINGS (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Above: Sainte-Victoire Mountain : Leonine Guardian of Atlantis

Above: Aithiopika Book Ten : The Divine Interruption

Above: Taurokathapsia

NEW BULL LEAPER PAINTINGS

a close up of Camelopardalis from my painting: Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

a close up of Theagenes and the Bull of the Sun from my painting: Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

Mini Bull-Leaper Painting

My Painting Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

THE EDGE OF THE AMAZON

Poetic musing written a few weeks back in what must have been, oo, mid Octoberish, somewhat in the style, it now occurs to me, of Alex "Henry":-

Here on the edges of the Amazon the cacophany is not great

A distant squeak - 

A hedgehog?

- Is all the Sussex jungle manages, 

An outer ripple from an epicentre half a planet distant.

One tiny call is the sole vivfier of a landscape that answers with silence.

But the night is alive.

My lamp casts a soft golden glow upon the wall as I pen this diary entry of sorts,

And objects thickly strewn on my bedside table make a still life - 

They will not be ordered until well into tomorrow.

My laziness tonight is at least artistic,

My eye sharing the contentedness of my yoga-happy limbs.

I shall put down my pen,

Lamplight shall give way to candlelight,

Candlelight to darkness,

I shall sleep in comfort in this shelter of wood and tile bivouacked these several centuries since, 

In this quieter northern zone of the Amazon.

-   -   -

That's that one, then there is a short thing that I wrote in goodness knows what kind of a mood, and which, I now notice, has something of the turn, counterturn and stand structure of an Epode:-

X-Mass Soup

And so the fires return to the pubs,

Cheering my heart.

But what is this about X-Mas bookings?

With such notices they cast their stinking nets across Autumn

As if their subservience to competition has beaten all dignity from them.

Once, some intelligence brooding over the slow-evolving primordial sludge 

Found need of immense patience, 

Waiting amid the slow popping and slurping of the sleeping slime.

It seems sometimes that patience is needed still

For this prattle about Xmas is to me little more than a continuance 

Of that same-old tame-old popping and slurping

The belching of that old soup still not ready to assume a higher order.

But I shall feel better no doubt after I have had my dinner. 

Soup, I think.

More Masterpieces from the TEFL Whiteboard

Escape from Time's Labyrinth?

In the acknowledgements of her most recent book, Barbara Hand-Clow expressed her gratitude to me for helping her "understand about Theseus and Ariadne and the light in Galactic Centre." What did she mean by that? An article by myself on the subject was published in The Sedona Journal of Emmergence, but it is possible to give the outline in a concise manner, as in the following.

Arthur Koestler, in his insightful philosophical book The Act of Creation, noted that breakthrough ideas in science and art, in common with jokes, tend to come as the result of links being made between previously unlinked horizons of reference. Archimedes wanted to find a way to determine if an object was solid gold. He took a bath to relax, displaced his body's volume, 'bissociated' between this and the question on his mind, and the rest is history. It is in light of this that we can cast our minds across a certain mind-boggling curiosity. We were long told that black holes were hungry monsters swallowing all around them, and that they were prisons from which nothing could escape, not even fleet-footed light, hence "black". We were also told, in the hypothetical 'second conditional' tense, that if light could escape, it might do so in rather an interesting way, since time, relatively speaking, slows down as gravitational field increases. For example, in fact the field in a black hole is so strong that, some hypothesized, the light, if it could escape, might somehow do so 'before' it went in, somehow changing the past.June 2004 was noteworthy not only because Venus transited the Sun in the constellation of Taurus, but also because Stephen Hawking made known that hewas now of the opinion that superstrings inside a black hole might not be destroyed, but only tangled, and there was speculation that radiation emitted from black holes might contain some information about these superstringsinside.Then we take our metaphorical Archimedean bath, for meanwhile, in the Ancient World, Greek children are being told by their grandmothers about a dark stronghold called the Labyrinth from which no-one had ever escaped, and within which there was a hungry bull-headed monster called the Minotaur which swallowed everyone who went in. But, they were told, a certain hero called Theseus managed to find his way out again by following the path of an unravelled string that had been given him by a Minoan princess through the maze of passages.But the point where it gets really interesting is where we recall that Theseus' father placed certain tokens under a rock, saying that when the lad was strong enough to lift it and recover them he was to come to Athens with them to be recognised as the future king. He grew strong, managed the feat, retrieved the tokens, went to Athens and was recognised by them in a moment that was 'the happiest there had ever been in Athens.'Why is this so mind-boggling? Well, in human terms, how could it be proved that information had come from a future time? This could be achieved if theinformation was only available in that future time, such as information from future science, for example. In other words, were an ancient story to be shown to contain encoded information based on science that did not then exist, we might conclude that it had come from the future, and of course it would not be until that future time that it could be decoded. In precisely the same way, Theseus's father told his mother that their child could not be recognized until that future time when he was grown to manhood and the rock could be lifted and the tokens of recognition uncovered. How amazing to find this metaphor for timed-release tokens within the very same myth that has the black hole and superstring allegory.But there are more amazing tokens still. The hungry Minotaur, spiralling labyrinth and the super-string of Ariadne are just the start. Enter Plutarch.Plutarch was a Greek from the time when Hadrian was Roman emperor, and he was a high priest of Delphi, that sacred site of the Ancient World more famed than any other for receiving information from the future, and his essay on the Greek hero in his book Lives is a primary source for us of the Theseus myth. According to Plutarch the name Theseus is based on an etymological pun in Greek where it refers to both the 'Tokens Deposited' under the rockand also to his 'Acknowledgement' when he arrived in Athens. But that's not the half of it; this Delphic priest also noted, quoting Hesiod via Hereas,that there was a version of the story in which the princess with whom Theseus had escaped from Minos' realm was named 'Aegle', which means, simply, 'Light':-There are yet many other traditions about these things. Some relate that he fell in love with another:-"For Aegle's love was burning in his breast"; a verse which Hereas, the Megarian, says was formerly in the poet Hesiod's works, but put out by Pisistratus.So not only do we have the spiral prison, the hungry monster at the centre and the unravelling string, but we even have the escape of light.Then there is the black sail. It was a white one which was supposed to be flown on the return journey to signal success, but from the mainland a blackone was seen, just as those Ancient Greeks could not themselves possibly have decoded the story to reveal its light, since they knew nothing of blackholes or relativity, and just as back holes seem to be black in the sense of not letting even light escape.We, however, have, demonstrably, the scientific strength to lift the rock, but what on Earth are we to make of it all? How should we rethink our conception of time? And may we consider this some kind of validation of Delphi's oracular process, or more generally of the potentials of the intuitive faculty? Delphi itself features prominantly in the Theseus myth. His father had been to ask the oracle how he might have a child. By way of answer the Delphic priestess gave him a wine sack and told him not to open it until a different time. This can now be seen to represent the story itself, which would one day reveal its significance, but not until after a certain time.

Or will we prefer exclusively left-brain explanations for this, according to which the myth must have been given to the Greeks by E.T.s or technologically advanced Atlanteans or some such? Ask any archaeologist: Delphi was an oracle site, not a landing pad for alien craft, and no technological Atlantis has been found. An acknowledgement of intuition seems a great deal more sane to me, not least because this was how this extraordinary decoding of the myth occurred to me in the first place. I shall not, however, be asking the Athenians to crown me as their king.

HTP SONG

for pharaonic chronology and other key Jangleland links see Chronology of Jangleland Pharaohs

Such is the nature of the blog that posts get shoved down when new material is uploaded, so this is just a repeat to get the song link back to the top.

LISTEN WHILE YOU EXPLORE THE BLOG: The most recent version of the song Hathor In Tranquility with Papyrus can be found, thanks to the hosting of Andrew Cowper, at http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

LYRICS:

5-HoTeP

I have tasted satisfaction from my head down to my toes
Contentment like cows munching where the tall papyrus grows
My love her beauty’s like the flowers that grace the heavens’ lawns
Beauty like the goddess with the Sun between her horns

[This verse connects to the Egyptian conception of the Field of Satisfaction as the afterlife paradise of the West where the goddess Hathor was depicted as a bovine (with Sundisk between her horns) amongst the papyrus plants, just as the Egyptians observed cows munching contentedly in the papyrus marshes beside the Nile.)

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

[Hathor = Egyptian goddess of dance, joy, sensuality, and inhebriation. Not Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, (LSD) but Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus - HTP, which is both the written form of the Egyptian word for satisfaction/contentment, "Hotep", while also being the chemical name of the amino acid which is a precursor to the chemicals of satisfaction and relaxation, serotonin and melatonin. The Morning Star, Venus, encricles the Sun, Ra being the Egyptian Sungod and an essay later in this blog explains how quite probably Hathor was associated with this star of morning even before her assimilation with Venus-Aphrodite. See The Serpent Path Around the Sun ]

In Fields of Satisfaction where the grass is high as trees
Have you heard it whisper when it’s blowing in the breeze
Or seen the ibis wading where the blue green water flows
Down amongst the marshes where the tall papyrus grows?

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

HoTeP is a seed of joy held in the griffin’s claw
5-HoTeP is up for sale down in your local store
Hathor makes the milk of flowers and of the sycamore
And makes the jewelled dancers dance around the dancing floor

[The Griffin here is the African plant with Latin name Griffonia from which the chemical 5L-HTP is extracted. This is a potent form of HTP, one which is highly effective in entering the brain. Sold in high street health food stores.]

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

See their lightly stepping feet and hear the sistrum shake
Make jubilance at twilight for the Sun-encircling snake (encircling Ra)
Tonight we shall attain HoTeP just like the night before
Tasting satisfaction every eve forever more.

[Reference here to Hathor as goddess of dance. The sistrum was a rattle with metal disks attached as with a tamborine. It was sacred to the goddess Hathor, and she was oftern depicted holding it. Additionally, sistrums were often made decorated with the head of Hathor. "Make jubilance at twilight" comes from an Egyptian song sung at a festival of Hathor (see essay later in blog) The Sun-encircling snake is Hathor in her form of the Eye of Ra. Again, see essay later in blog.]

Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun

The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Hathor in the sky
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

[Reference here to the myth of the scarab god Kheper who pushes the Sun disk across the sky. You may recognize the deliberate musical Stones reference in the guitar riff: "You never listen to my advice..."]

Lotus blue, et Lavendarum
Valerian Passiflora
Salvia Griffonia Somniferum

(repeat ‘till fade)

[A Faux-Latin Gregorian chant, referencing various relaxing and euphoric plants, such a Egyptian Blue Lotus, Lavendar oil, Valerian root, Passion flower leaves, Salvia (sage - I'm thinking of Calry Sage oil, not "Salvia Divinorum"), Griffonia (source of L5-HTP), and Sominferum, used to denote the sleepiest kind of poppy but here used as a suffix for Griffonia, with the same meaning - "Sleepy Griffonia".]

JANGLOMETRY - ALL IS REVEALED !

The primary foundation of the British geodetic scheme is defined by the 2 by 1 rectangle with corners at East Point and West Point, the diagonal established by the landscaping of Burrowbridge Mump (minor Golden Section of line) and Glastonbury Tor, construction of Silbury Hill, of Dorchester Big Rings Henge&Cursus (Major Golden Section of line), Whiteleaf Chalk Cross and Barrows. The Pyramid Plan is established by the construction of Cerne Giant (Orion at end of Orion Shaft), the equivalent being (at the same position) in the northern pyramid, the massive Orion's-Belt henge+cursus trio of Thornborough; Wilmington Long Man ("Balance of Upper and Lower" line (lotus-upper and papyrus-lower staffs) due West to Cerne Giant, as with King's Chamber level height ratio), and the Slope Line is established by the Tump of Lewes, Pool Bar Cursus of Lewes floodplain - dead-straight reed-filled, ditch-bordered and exactly at G.P. angle, Landport Bottom ridge Orion-belt G.P angle-orientated tumuli trio Lewes, Woking tumuli, Marlow floodplain Orion-belt tumuli trio.

Phoenix Fire

The plans of Khufu’s chambers hide
Amid our British greenery.
The form is printed far and wide
Where slopes of gold on either side
Run down to meet the sea.
The Mansion of Osiris stands
Upon the Balance-of-the-Lands.
The Earthly and the Oceanic Powers
Are measured in the scales equally.
The Mansion stands amid the Field of Flowers
Enduring like the stars, eternally.

The Triangle Egyptian boasts
Harmonious geometry
Which spans the land from coast to coast
Invoking Beauty by the most
Aesthetic alchemy.
And I would like to build again
Not with stones but with my pen
That pyramid, from fragrant words of rhyme
By the poet’s deft technology
To stand in the collective human mind
Enduring like the stars, eternally.

In times of quiet contemplation
Neither pen nor book in hand
I like to let my meditation
Fly to sites around the nation
Beautifully planned
As a man in drugged inertia
Feeds his gaze on rugs of Persia
Peacefully observing the design
While phoenix-fire flickers in the hearth
So I let the eye within my mind
Journey out along some ancient path.

Come inside, drop gard’ning things
Unfurl the feathers of your mind
When teatime’s four o’clock bell rings
Sit you down and spread your wings
With your course aligned
At Khufu’s Angle ‘cross the southern Weald
Over Plumpton’s plain to Lewes town
Osiris’ road traverses many a field
Leading onward over vale and down.



Why the Great Pyramid? :-

Four Golden Rectangles, with diagonals. Cut along diagonals, stick together adjacent against adjacent, to make four faces Stick four faces together, add a suitable covering, et voila! The Great Pyramid. Arial photo of Great Pyramid - notice same line down middle is present, indicating these half-Golden Rectangle triangles.






So, the reason why the Great Pyramid is such a harmonious form is more readily apparent when considering the faces than the cross section, for these are derived directly from the Golden Rectangle.

Original Glastonbury Pyramid Stage

(Foundation of "Jangleland" is 2 by 1 Rectangle whose diagonal, from East Point to West Point, passes through Glastonbury, Silbury Hill, Dorchester on Thames)

Pharaoh of Pop : McCartney Set 2004 Pyramid Stage Glastonbury

HTP SONG / SCYRING BOWL INCIDENT

LISTEN WHILE YOU EXPLORE THE BLOG: The most recent version of the song Hathor In Tranquility with Papyrus can be found, thanks to the hosting of Andrew Cowper, at http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

Eye of Horus on an Egyptian Bracelet

SCRYING BOWL

While I'm sipping coffee outside a cafe in Burgess Hill, an inner nudge directs me to a nearby bookshop, and there I find a book about Egyptian magic. I open it and read about a spell for seeing the future by gazing into the swirling patterns of oil on the surface of water in a bowl.

Staying true to the original Egyptian papyrus, the spell requires the use of a copper bowl, and mentions that in the original papyrus text this bowl was also to be inscribed with an image of the god Anubis.

I decide it sounds like fun, and wander off to have a look in the local second hand shops for some kind of copper bowl. Ten minutes later, having handed over mere pennies to the shop assistant, I hold in my hand a small copper bowl inscribed with Egyptian lotus flowers, a Sphinx, three pyramids and a serpent. My feeling: delightfully spooked.

It can be seen, by cross-referencing various Egyptian sources, that the wounding that was called the injuring of the Eye of Horus has to do with the influx of agressive Sethian energies in the male adolescence, which could mean that the injuring of the testicles of Seth may represent male grumpiness when testosterone levels drop in later years.

The message then is that there is an optimum, healthy level of testosterone for a male, not too much, but not too little - both of which extremes can lead to agression and depression. How can we say that the story related to such matters? The Egyptians believed that children had intuitive mediumistic abilities. It is not only from Plutarch's essay on Isis and Osiris that we know this. It is an Egyptian text called the London-Leidon Papyrus that describes the method for seeing the future by 'scrying'. It involves looking into a bowl in which oil is floating on the surface, illuminated only by a candle, and with incense wafting about. The text says that the procedure is to be peformed by a young boy, accompanied by a priest. This is surely what is refered to in the story of the god Ra looking into the eyes of the young Horus to see the future. The London-Leidon Papyrus is from a date when one might suspect an influence from Greek oracular methods, which were certainly similar in nature, but the story of Ra telling the future by looking into the Eye of Horus dates from back in the Egyptian New Kingdom long before the rise of Classical Greece. In one sense then the scrying bowl itself is the Eye of Horus, akin to a crystal ball, and in the other sense the Eye represents the mediumistic abilities of the young boy who is not yet a man.

A key question then is how a man might recover the Sight, how Horus might heal his eye. In the Roman novel the protagonist recovers and has his vision of Isis after eating roses. In Egypt, in the original Mysteries, the flowers were surely those of the sacred Nile lotus. When planted in the ground in the Egyptian story Horus' eyes sprouted as lotus flowers.

The petals of the Egyptian lotus flower - which is actually a type of waterlily - are edible and are to be seen all over the place in the sacred art of the Egyptians. Herodotus describes their being eaten by the Egyptians in his Histories. The Egyptians made beautiful drinking chalices in the form of lotus flowers. The dried petals are available for purchase in the UK and can be infused slowly with wine which is then drunk.

From personal experience I can say that the result is a pleasant vibe, subtle but graceful. To say that the effect seems more aromatherapeutic than narcotic is certainly not to diminish its potency. Floral oils can have marked effects, such as the relaxing, sleepy feeling induced by lavender, or the profound muscle relaxation that clary sage oil can bring about. Each of these has a certain feeling to it, and the feeling that comes from wine infused with Egyptian blue lotus petals is that of a gentle, feminine harmony - just what one needs if feeling aggravated by the aggressive agitation of too much Sethian 'yang'. There is no reason why this feeling might not be thought of as a healing of the Eye and a vision of Isis.

In the Egyptian story it was the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Aphrodite-Venus, the feminine as lover rather than mother, who healed Horus' sight. In the story she did this with gazelle milk. Did she milk the gazelle in the evening, when the milk is full of melatonin? Either way, milk is a good source of the amino acid tryptophan, a precursor to both melatonin and seratonin. Milk is also a high source of calcium, which has a relaxing effect on the body. This is why warm milk is drunk at night as a sleep aid. In the sleep state, when melatonin levels are high, we see visions called dreams. High melatonin levels in the waking state seem to be linked to the ability to see images when slipping into a kind of trancelike daydreaming, the same state needed for scrying with a bowl. This is not hallunication since it can be ended easily just by snapping out of the day dream. It is difficult to imagine achieving this with milk alone, but we now have a stronger source of this precursor to the brain chemicals of relaxation and satisfaction.

5-HTP, derived from an African plant, is available in healthfood shops. This form of tryptophan is particularly effective in entering the brain, when combined with a small amount of B-vitamins, a little carbohydrate, and, in my experience, a glass of good organic cider. A cup of tea in addition may help you go more towards the awake state where seratonin predominates. Serotonin is the chemical of physical satisfaction. Serotonin levels in the brain are higher when St John's Wort - also available in healthfood shops - is taken. People taking St John's Wort report an improved sex life, and this may be because a more satisfied state is a less out of control one. Now to go to a rather different level of reality.

The Egyptian word for satisfaction was written with the hieroglyphic equivalent of the three consonants H, T, and P, in that order, which seems to me to be something of a revelation, as if the present abbreviation for Hydroxy Tryptophan has somehow gone back into the past to form the ancient Egyptian word for the physical state which it induces. Egyptologists guess that the vowel sounds (not included in written Ancient Egyptian) would have made pronunciation of the word something like Hotep or Hetep, but what we actually have to go on is H T P. Some 5-HTP, some blue-lotus infused wine, a little milk (goat if you can't get gazelle), candle, scrying bowl, and incense (the latter really being ancient equivalents of lava lamp and joss stick) - yoga poses and trance inducing classical Indian sitar music will also help - and away you go. You'll have the Eye of Horus healed in no time.

What about the testicles of Seth? Research continues apace. Apparently resistance excercise - weights - two to three times a week increases testosterone levels in the body. Of human folk it was big-muscled Heracles who, for the ancient Greeks, beat death - by sheer strength - and got away with it, but at the same time too much excercise - particularly of the endurance kind - is detrimental to longevity. From the plant world, Long Jack has met the challenge of scientific experiment. From the labratories, ZMA 'supports the male hormonal environment' and something called 6-OXO is supposed to be effective in restoring the testosterone-oestrogen balance. A world with less young male aggression and less older male cantankorousness is a more peaceful world, a world with less war. Sort this out and we can return to the how things were in that time, as described in the Pyramid Texts:-

When no anger had yet arisen

When no noise had yet arisen

When no conflict had yet arisen

When no confusion had yet arisen

When the Eye of Horus had not been injured

When the testicles of Seth had not yet been made impotent.

LOOP pschedelic eye

THE FOUNDING PHARAOHS OF BRIT ROCK

The diagram shows progressive Brit-rock homes and origins all on a single line - a songline - the slope of the Great Pyramid of Khufu in the Jangleland Plan - Beatles, Moody Blues, Harrison, Lennon, Starkey, Robert Page (Zep), Charlie Watts (Stones). The Henley, Ascot & Plumpton residences all had recording studios built in.

see also JANGLOMETRY - ALL IS REVEALED !

Re Henley: (From Wikepedia) Friar Park is the 120-room Victorian neo-Gothic mansion built by the eccentric Sir Frank Crisp near Henley-on-Thames and bought by the musician George Harrison as his new home on January 14, 1970. Harrison immortalised the building in his song "Crackerbox Palace" (his nickname for the mansion, after Lord Buckley's home in California). A further powerful song, The Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll), was also inspired by the mansion's history. Harrison loved tending to the gardens personally, and among the groundskeepers were his older brothers Peter and Harry. George Harrison was photographed amongst the many garden gnomes for the cover of All Things Must Pass, and again with his father Harry a few years later (with the photo appearing in his album Thirty Three & 1/3).

Re Ascot: in September 1973 as John and Yoko were about to separate, Tittenhurst (Ascot) was sold, to Ringo Starr. Ringo lived here until early 1988. For more info see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob41.html

Re Plumpton: from wikepedia: In the early 1970's Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page purchased Plumpton Place, an Elizabethan manor, with C.20 alterations by Sir Edwin Lutyens, surrounded by a moat and extensive gardens. Because of its proximity to the Plumpton Racecourse the grounds also include stables for horses. Page outfitted the manor with a recording studio. The credits for the Led Zeppelin album In Through The Out Door indicates that album mixing was done there. The manor can be seen briefly near the beginning of the Led Zeppelin concert film, The Song Remains the Same where the camera walks up to Page, playing a hurdy gurdy, to inform him of the North American tour dates.

Re Brum: Moody blues originally from Birmingham. Creators of the song Nights In White Satin, they inspired and evolved the progressive rock style. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their seminal 1967 album Days of Future Passed. Used sitars, inspired by George Harrison. Definiately pharaoh's of Brit prog.

more mod than rock, the Jam formed in Woking, one of the locations of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Equinox Ma'at in Jangleland

(OK it's not quite the equinox, but I'll be away from the computer on Sunday, so posting today)

O Kehpre, winged-scarab, you who establish Solar Ra in the Place of Balance this morning, vivify Jangleland!



This day as Khekper in the Field of Reeds and Atum in the Field of Satisfaction you stand between the Two Pillars of North and South. You are at the Balance of that which is to the North and that which is to the South. You are the unifier of the Two Lands.

Irradiate the glassy dewdrop in the hedgerow, O Ra, on this day of your ordered rising and setting. Bejewel Jangleland.

Ra, bring Ma'at to Jangleland on this your day of glorious, orderly rising in the East, the Field of Reeds, and your setting West in the Field of Satisfaction. Bring Ma'at in your glorious rising and setting to the orientated Square of Jangleland.

Irradiate the glassy dewdrop in the hedgerow as you radiate Ma'at, O Ra, through Jangleland.

Radiate Balance, O Ra, through Jangleland.

Radiate Good Order, O Ra, through Jangleland.

The H.T.P. Hieroglyph

Extract from The Little Book of EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS (L&R ADKINS) :"The last two consonants of a trilateral could be repeated by phonetic complements...An example of a trilateral is (heiroglyph of loaf on mat), which represents the letters 'htp', and this could be accompanied by the phonetic complements [of] the letter 't' and the letter 'p'."

HTP in Egyptian hieroglyphs

Chronology of Jangleland Pharaohs

Hathor song: http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

pre 3100 BCE (Before Current Era)
- Upper Jangleland ruled by King Scarab Beatle
Lower Jangleland ruled by Rolling Stone King

see The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

3100 BCE - Unification of Upper and Lower Jangleland
under King Scarab Beatle


see Equinox Ma'at in Jangleland

3050 BCE - King Moody Faience Blues

see THE FOUNDING PHARAOHS OF BRIT ROCK

3000 BCE - Pink Floyd

2700 BCE - Intermediate Period - incursion of Punk warrirors,
known as the Nomadic Princes, from the deserts

2500 BCE - Expulsion of Punks, reunification of Jangleland as
prog kingdom under King Ozrick Tentacle

2200 BCE - Jangleland established as "A Gilded Eternity" under Loop. Institution of initiatic soceity The Guild of Eternity (A Gilded Fraternity)

2000 BCE - King Stone Roses

1800 BCE - King Orb

1700 BCE - Dread Zone

1500 BCE - Cold Play

1000 BCE - incursion of Shite

Current Era - Renaissance of Jangleland under The Hapi Monkeys featuring Bes
see
HTP SONG
&
Meet The Hapi Monkeys
&
HTP SONG / SCYRING BOWL INCIDENT
&
5-HTP
&
The H.T.P. Hieroglyph
&
The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

Thinking about the Beatles and the Stones with part of my mind, and about ancient Egypt with another part of my mind, I bissociated. Upper and Lower, the Southern and the Northern.

The foundation myth of Egypt was that of how the Two Lands became a United Kingdom, the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, mythologized as the pacification of the two powers of Set and Horus.

In Britain in the Sixties the Pharaohs from the North were the Beatles; those of the South were the Rolling Stones. How to unify the two, making the United Kingdom?

Ok, well the Beetle of Egyptian mythology is the Scarab which pushes the Sun. Here comes the Sun, the Sun King. In myth the Sun was seen as a sphere pushed by the Scarab Beatle, Khepr. The Rolling Stones take their name from the proverb about rolling stones and moss. To unify the Two Lands, the Two Powers, is therefore easy: the Scarab Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of Fire across the sky. Call it the foundation myth of Jangleland.

In this peace from Tutankhamun’s treasures we see the Beatle and the Rolling Stone, and even the Monkees! They are together in the Sun Boat at dawn (when baboons warm their paws in the Sun’s first rays), riding on the water hieroglyph (the Sea of Green? - actually the Egyptians called a region the Great Green and a portion of Egyptologists believe this was region was the Aegean Sea), and two Was scepters act as the Northern and Southern pillars holding up the Sky hieroglyph containing stars which shine before them like a million Suns. Now we’re rocking. And who’s this raggle taggle fellow comes dancing along from across the Water? Well if it isn’t Mr Sistrum Man! Hey, Mr Sistrum Man, play a song for us!




Left: Beatle, Rolling Stone and Monkees. Above: The Sun-Marine on the Pepperland Pyramid

The Serpent Path Around the Sun

The Serpent Path Around the Sun : A Planetary Perspective on the Eye of Ra



The cobra goddess encircles Ra, the Sun disk, throughout his journey across the sky. This cobra, Wadjyt, was equated with the Eye of Ra, linking her to Hathor and more specifically Hathor-Sekhmet, who was also given this name, Eye of Ra. As we shall see in a moment, Hathor, in this role of she who surrounds, encircles, protects the Sun god, was said to shine as a star in the twilight periods of dawn and dusk, in the direction of the eastern and western horizons respectively, and to be with the Sun at his rising and setting. There is a hypothesis that may be formed from this, because the bright heavenly body that continually circles the Sun in a snaking movement, and is never too far from the Sun, from our perspective on Earth, and who also shines brightly as either a morning or evening star in the East and the West, is Venus.

A clear and unambiguous reference to Hathor shining in the twilight of dusk may be found in the lyrics of a song to the goddess inscribed in the tomb of Kheruef at Thebes, an important official of Amenhotep III. This song includes the lines:

Come, rise, come
That I may make
Jubilation at twilight for you
And music in the evening
Oh Hathor, you are exalted in the hair of Ra…
Adoration of Gold [Hathor] when She shines forth in the sky…
Oh my lady, come and protect king Nebmaatre, given life.


Hathor as bovine goddess is frequently shown in association with the cobra, and Egyptologist Alison Roberts went so far as to write that Hathor is “the venomous cobra coiled around the …[Sun god’s] head.”1 The similarity of Hathor’s characteristics to those of Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus is obvious, and the Greeks of the Hellenistic period were quite happy with the assimilation of the two sensual goddesses of sexuality and attraction, but whether a shared connection to the planet Venus derives from coincidence or contact is not a question we shall look at here.

From at least the Middle Kingdom, according to Egyptologists Shaw and Nicholson2, the five planets from Mercury through to Saturn were recognized and depicted sailing in boats across the heavens. Venus was known as God of the Morning and The One Who Crosses, and it has been speculated that this ‘crossing’ shows that the Egyptians knew that it was the same planet that appeared as the Evening Star that then crossed over to become the Morning Star. The crossing may have referred to the intermediary period where Venus transits (crosses) or passes near the Sun so as to be swallowed by the brighter light for a time, appearing neither in the morning nor the evening.


The retrograde movements of Venus, when the relative movement of Earth causes her to appear to move backwards in her course, are distinctly serpentine in shape and call to mind the patterns produced by serpents snaking their way across desert sands, and indeed the looping shape of the cobra hanging down from the Sun disk in the Egyptian representations. The serpentine s-shaped pattern occurs when the Earth-Venus alignment (type 1, central in the diagram) is near one of the Venus nodes (when Venus is crossing the plane of the ecliptic). The four other retrograde movements are like coils or loops and still serpentine in nature.


The cobra continued to encircle the Sun morning, noon, and evening. Roberts tells us that in the coronation “only after the palace snake has coiled herself around…[the Sun king’s] brow does he make his ‘glorious rising.’”3

In Papyrus Chester Beatty I there is a poem in which the beloved is associated with this goddess of attractiveness and with a morning star, and though in this context it sounds more like Sirius, it is still worth mentioning since it fits into the matrix of a general association between the beautiful goddess and a morning star:-

The One, the sister without equal
The most beautiful of all
She resembles the rising Morning Star
At the beginning of a happy year.

At noon the following was sung of Ra, the Sun god:

It is your uraeus snake who has enchanted your enemies4

Then in the evening, as we read in the Book of the Dead, they would sing:

Hail Ra-Atum at your beautiful crossing…
You set in life in the holiness of the western horizon
Your uraeus snake surrounds you.5



In conclusion, there does appear to be a distinct possibility that the Egyptian goddess of beauty and sensuality, in her more fiery Eye of Ra aspect of the cobra encircling the Sun protectively, was in fact a personification of the same planet later identified as the goddess she would finally be assimilated with in Ptolemaic and Roman times, namely Venus.

5-HTP

The Fields of 5 - HoTeP

hymn to Hathor from the 18th Dynasty:

The beauty of your face

Glitters when you rise

Oh come in peace.
One is drunk

At your beautiful face,

O Gold, Hathor.

The above pictures show Hathor, in her bovine aspect, with Sun-disk between horns amongst papyrus plants in the Western Paradise in a picture from the Book of the Dead, and in he female aspect shaking the rattle known as the Sistrum

Egyptian writing didn’t use vowels, but we add them in to make the words easier to pronounce. So htp is usually written as hotep or hetep. It means ‘satisfaction’. It was used in phrases like ‘The Field of Satisfaction’ - the paradise of the Afterlife.

So anyway, I’d gone to the gym, which on this occasion had required the consumption of a certain amount of coffee to boost my motivation, and then afterwards I was thinking about how to ‘come down’ a bit, to smooth off the caffeine vibe. I decided upon a combination of cider, St John’s Wort and 5-HTP. 5-HTP, or 5-Hydroxytryptophan, is sold by health-food shops as a precursor to melatonin, the brain's natural relaxation / sleep chemical, and is also a chemical precursor to serotonin, the brain chemical that causes feelings of satisfaction. High melatonin levels at night are related to high serotonin levels during the day, and visa versa. Seratonin makes the body feel satisfied. When you’ve had some carbohydrate, for example, your brain signals to your body “Now we are sated”, and the body relaxes, enjoying the release of serotonin. Also after orgasm. And the chemical abbreviation actually spells out this Egyptian word for satisfaction, htp. I like that. So there I was, having taken my 5-hotep, sitting supping cider in the Bull in Ditchling, and they were playing a compilation of ambient lounge classics, you know the sort of thing. “If your fond of sand dunes….” I started to feel quite blissy - maybe it was the fusion of the coffee, the HTP and the post-gym endorphins. The one thing to bear in mind with HTP is that it is also a precursor to the sleep chemical; it can go either way. In fact I usually just take it to help get a restful night’s sleep. But it seems from my experience that perhaps the caffeine can be enough to signal to the body not to fall asleep, enough to tip the 5-HTP towards the serotonin pathway.

So I’m sitting there and suddenly this htp / satisfaction thing really starts to speak to me, like I’ve entered the Field of Satisfaction. Cosmically satisfied. Forget L-ucy in the S-ky with D-iamonds, we’re talking H-athor in T-ranquility with P-apyrus. Hathor is the Egyptian cow goddess of beauty, dance, sensuality, alcohol - in short, pleasure. She was often depicted standing amid the papyrus thickets of the Afterlife paradise. Picture yourself in a boat on the Great Waterway. Look for the girl with the Sun between her horns. Let me take you down, cos’ I’m going to the Fields of Satisfaction. I CAN get my… Sa-tis-fac-tion. You get the general idea. Reminds me of a post-St John’s Wort poem (actually song) I wrote a while back (St John's Wort increases the accumulation of serotonin in the brain):

I have tasted Satisfaction from my head down to my toes
Contentment like cows munching where the tall papyrus grows
My love her beauty's like the flowers that grace the heavens’ lawns
Beauty’s like the goddess with the Sun between her horns

In fields of Satisfaction with the grass as tall as trees
Have you heard it whisper when it’s blowing in the breeze?
Or seen the ibis wading where the crystal water flows
Down amongst the marshes where the tall papyrus grows?

It now occurs to me that this song could have a chorus:

Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus!
Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus!