7 10 105 https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/0da9516193fa07da71ab0c4d477d34ec.pdf f48fc9c1689439566acae8e0265062e6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (8pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document TEMPLES OF THE WORLD. PART ONE. The Temple is the centre of a Madrian town or village – not only physically, but symbolically. All the important events in the life of the people occur there. There they are married; there they have their children offered and see them being taught. Most important of all, it is there that their children are initiated, and so are able to receive the Sacraments; no longer children but adults. From this outline, it can be seen that a Temple is not just a place where all the good Madrians go once a week to a Rite performed by the Priestess. Let us consider what a Temple was like 12,000 years ago. The Temple was perhaps a large granite building, probably looking oblong from the outside. Its size would dominate the town. All round the front and the sides there would be a large paved area where there would be a market 2 or 3 times a week. There stallhi[o]lders would haggle with the maids and daughters that householders had sent to buy fruit, food or pots. Some of Lady of the Households could perhaps be seen, as they haggled with a carpenter-maid over the price that she was going to charge them for their new wood panel carving for the window. You might see a maid carrying a basket, and notice that people gave way to her to let her past, and reverenced her with respect. She might stop at the cloth stall, pick up some silk, and pay the price that the stall-holder first asked. From that you would know that the maid was on the errand of the Temple, and if you looked at the ring on her hand you would know that she was in fact a Lady of the Temple. That is a position which commands much authority, and the stall-holder would be honoured that she had graced her stall, and would tell her so. As you go into the Temple, you curtsey in the direction of the High Altar. Having done this, you idly cast your eyes around, and spot with delight your close friend Alcina busily chatting to Donna Chrysothemis. Donna Chrysothemis is only just married, and is very pleased with her title. You walk up to them. You may not greet them while they are talking – it is rude, but you hope to catch their eye, and you do so. They greet you warmly, and you make a small reverence to Donna Chrysothemis. After all, she is a member of your age-group and someone of whom you are very fond. You talk with them a while of the weather, and the crop and who is studying which new craft. You also tease Donna Chrysothemis about being married, and then you, rather shockingly, remind her of the young man who wanted her to marry him. This was rather amusing, as he had sent her poetry. He could not, of course, give it to her, or say directly who it was to and who it was from, for that would be immodest, but as usual there were sufficient clues. Golden Hair Webster could only refer to Donna Chrysothemis, who was the only maid with golden hair to have the craft of weaving, and the Blue Shepherd, although a little more puzzling, was decided finally to be Frickacles, who was the only shepherd who not only word blue, as three of them did, but had blue eyes to match. The poem had been delivered in the usual manner; pinned to the tree in the courtyard of the house, from whence it had been taken to the Lady of the Household, who had merely smiled and given it to the children (meaning every one) to work out who it applied to. Donna Chrysothemis had been annoyed and embarrassed, as a maid usually was, but the others had said that she should not be too hard on him; after all, he was a man, and in a way it was quite sweet. Donna Chrysothemis tries to look disapprovingly at you, but cannot contain the laughter that the reminder causes. The three of you recover, and then walk down the side of the Temple. As you pass one of the groups of people who are seated on the floor on mats, with the Ranya of the group seated in a large chair, you hear the words that you heard only this morning, but this time they are not directed at you, but by a different Ranya at a different child. The maid who is standing disconsolately, with hanging head is a maid of about 17. The Ranya, you notice, has seen you, and so the three of you curtsey and are greeted with a sign signifying a blessing. As you walk on, you hear her say, "Well, Maia, my child, I do not wish for a student who does not pay attention to the words of her Ranya. So it seems then that you must speak with Mistress Sally.* In not paying attention to my words, you are not only being disrespectful to me, but to the whole line of Ranyas that stretch back in time, and upwards to Heaven. For I teach you now as a representative of the Holy line of Ranyas, not as myself. I have had to discipline you once on this subject already this week. Obviously you have not listened to Mistress Sally either. Well, you will speak again with her now. Fetch me the cane– no, I will take the Sally. Now, come over my knee." You feel very sorry for her, but you know that she deserves it – just as you had that morning. All the other children of the class are very ashamed, but they are not so afraid of pain as the modern age. A little discipline, they know, is good, and although the maid just about to be spanked with a Sally is being punished in a manner in which children often are, despite the fact that the maid is to marry in the summer, they know that for a childish offence she deserves it. As you walk on, you hear her return, completely mortified, to her place, and you know that within a few minutes her shame will have disappeared and she will be happy again. You pass a few more teaching groups; one being taught Tapestry, another drawing. One of the Ancillas is teaching some pupils a sacred poem. You curtsey to all of them as you pass. A movement and sound at the very back of the Temple catches your eye, and you see that the town dance-troupe is practising a Ritual dance-drama to perfect a movement, under the guidance of a Priestess, who herself has often taken the role of a questing soul, or Hera. This time, she is directing the Troupe, but not acting as well. Her Ancilla will play the music for them. Of course, they usually practise in secret, but they have only just started, so nobody will mind seeing them. When the moves are put together, they will only let the Priestess and her Ancilla see them try. Of course, it is no secret what the play is for. It has to be to celebrate Theia'[s] marriage to Anchises. They will perform in the same ring that the wedding will take place in afterwards. The ring will be made of flowers piled high, and will be just in front of the Rite of Sacrifice Altar. Then there will be games and singing, followed by a feast. Best of all, perhaps, that day will be a holiday for everyone every year until one of them dies. Theia and Anchises are not getting married on one of the specially propitious marriage days; that is very unusual, and there is a good reason. It is thought that her mother will not live until the next usual day, so the marriage is taking place immediately. You hope that her mother will go to Avala, happy to see her daughter married, but you are also not too unhappy at the thought of an extra days' [sic] holiday a year. As most marriages take place on a limited number of days, those days are holidays in honour of all the couples who were married then. You pass through the gated archways into the Grove proper, which is about half the size of the Grove that is used for all kinds of things. This part, which is nearest to the High Altar, is reserved for devotions and quietness only. Many shrines, large and small, lead off behind the pillars to the sides. You are approaching the Caverna wall, and as you come up to the Great Caverna Gates, the three of you make a deep curtsey to the High Altar. You look into the Caverna through the silver filligree Gates, and see the Priestess feeding the Sacred Flame. If there is a college of Priestesses attached to a Temple, the Flame will be guarded day and night, by Priestesses taking turns. Otherwise, it is fed regularly, and ceremoniously checked during the seven daily Offices, although the Selene Office (Midnight Invocation) will not always be said. Either way, it must never be allowed to go out. It is put out every year on the day of the Passion, and relit with great jubilation during the Sacrament on Resurrection dawn. You can see the Lady of the Temple moving around, preparing some altarcloths. You all say a Silver Star, and make a deep curtsey to the High Altar. As you move away from the Great Gates, you see the elder Priestesss of the two who serve the Temple. She is sitting in the Confession chair, which is situated between one corner of the caverna and the last pillar of the row. You curtsey to her, and she raises her hand in blessing. You wait until she speaks to you, greeting you kindly, and you go on to ask her how the rehearsal with the dancers went. She smiles and replies with a laugh, that they should be more circumspect than to practise in the Temple. She mentions that it has been a little while since you confessed, and motioning to your friends to walk on, she tells you to kneel. Out come your sins from their hiding places! You have been rude to your father, not paid attention to your Ranya, and committed quite a few minor sins. You feel your heart beat loudly. Although you have already been beaten quite hard for the first two sins, it would hardly be surprising if the Priestess beat you as well. Ah, but she had decided not to, that you would benefit from a stiff lecture in her study tonight when everyone is telling stories by the fire, and you are to make three full Rosaries within the next week. She purifies you, and you kneel on one knee and kiss her hand, and run off to catch up with your friends. This earns you a stiff rebuke and a warning from one of the Outer Temple Maids. If it happens again she will tell the Priestess and your mother will whip you when she knows. There are very few things you may not do in a Temple that you do elsewhere; one of them is buying and selling, and another is running races. The Outer Temple Maid also has another message – the Temple will be shut tonight from 7 of the clock to 9 of the clock, so the Priestess may make Magic in the Temple. Magic is her path, or at least one of them, and not merely to produce results. When a Priestess studies Magic, her soul moves among high spheres on her path to Our Lady. It is almost time to be home, to take some tea and cake with your mother, so the three of you move toward the big door that will be locked for two hours tonight. At the door, you turn round and make a deep reverence to the High Altar, and then move into the courtyard. As soon as you pass the prayer wheel you give it a turn and say "Hail Inanna!" Your friends do the same, and then you walk along the path that leads to your home, watching the golden sunlight play upon the cupolas that crown the roof of the Temple, thanking Her for having made so many beautiful things, such as Temples, the sun, and friends. *Mistress Sally is the usual familiar term used to describe any kind of willow branch used to keep discipline, from the little switch which stings intensely and stops in a minute, to the great Rod which is used only by a priestess. A Sally is a bunch of willow twigs tied together. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Temples of the World: Part I Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/5aa5441ca1b9571542a8a3e4e6fc976b.pdf 034d22f5094874cbed3abb6d4545d784 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (4pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document SNIPPETS Strangeness and Familiarity A masculist theologian has said truly that religion is a contact with the Holy, which is the absolutely Other. That is true, but at the same time, the Holy is also the absolutely familiar – more familiar than anything we have ever encountered in this life. The essence of this world for us is that it is unfamiliar. We cannot truly known another person, however long we live with her, however much we try – we cannot even really know ourselves. Usually we hardly notice; we are content with the outward gestures which substitute for real knowing. But every now and then, the essential alienness of the world, our absolute and irremediable isolation, engulfs us in a sudden chilling wave. Things, people, our own body, our own mind, all of these are quite other, out of reach of real communion. Only Deity is truly familiar. She is other because She shatters all the conventional gestures of familiarity. She is terrible, because She shows us these in all their meaninglessness – but She is the one thing which we really know – the one place which is truly our spiritual Home. And when we finally come to perfect union with Her, all things will have become familiar, and nothing will be other. Resurrections Life is full of resurrections. The archetype is that of our Lady: the victory of kear and evil, and the triumph of Good out of that victory. But every time we grow inward and petulant, hating a fast or a penance, and are suddenly flooded with a consciousness of the tremendous privilege of doing it for Her; every time we stray from Her in prayer and bring ourselves back to Her; every time we commit a fauly and truly repent, that is a little resurrection: the victory of kear and our triumph over that victory. Every such triumph is made possible by Her resurrection. Without that source of spiritual power, we, who have given ourselves to kear at the beginning, would have no defence against it. The process is continual, shadowed in the year, the cycle of the moon, the rise and set of every sun. But through this continual enactment of little resurrections, we bring ourselves ever closer to the absolute resolution of the one absolute Resurrection. Modern Psychology.... Psychology is the study of the human soul (Psyche). Modern psychology begins by assuming that the soul does not exist. If one begins by eliminating the supernatural, that is in one sense legitimate. I cannot complain if a chess player asks me to assume that bishops move diagonally – that is her game, and either I play it or I don't. The psychologists [sic] game is akin to the game of looking at a light bulb and saying: "Eliminating the existence of electricity, how might this work?" Many ingenious answers could no doubt be devised. ...Freud and Jung As a raconteur and wit, Freud is infinitely persuasive – and, of course, to the arid materialism of the nineteenth century her brought the revelation (not new, but as old as the hills) that there was actually something in the human mind beyond the fussy little filing clerk of the rational consciousness (but how typically Victorian to see this "beyond" as a quagmire of repressed carnality!). Herein lay his deep attraction for the starved souls of the turn-of-the-century intelligentsia. Their unconscious minds craved so strongly the bread of the Spirit that they were even grateful when Freud gave them a stone – or, more precisely, when he told them that their unconscious minds craved raw flesh. Jung is very jolly, and quite the darling of the 'esoterics'. But it does seem mighty daft to accept for no particular reason the materialist hypothesis and then trying to drag in the super-natural by the short hairs backwards (for there has never been a shred of evidence for materialism – modern society accepts it out of emotional need. If one doesn't need it, why accept it?). At these times, he seems like the chap who, when the electric light bulb game has reached the stage of suggesting that the globe is lit by a gross or so of glow-worms, suddenly pipes up "Aha! But what if the glow-worms are powered by electricity?" If materialists merely stand agog and cry "But that's cheating!" they are not being in the least unscientific. It is cheating. You can't move a bishop along ranks and files. Behind the Veil The body is a thing essentially alien to the true self; a limiting thing, subject to pain, disease and decrepit age. It is also a powerful source of illusion. How quickly we tire of the ill behaviour of an ugly and prepossessing person; and yet if a person of breathtaking beauty and enchanting manner did these same things, how easy it would be to forgive. To the spiritual perception, the soul at prayer or in even partial harmony with the Goddess is more radiantly beautiful than anything that can be seen on earth. How easy it is then for our guardian Genia [Janya] to love us in despite of all our faults. But the rejection of deity is an act more hideous than we can conceive; though limited to our material perception, we are apt to suppose the word hideous to be merely a metaphor. Could we but push aside the veil of matter, what a world of brilliant light and abysmal darkness, of dazzling beauty and dizzying horror, would meet our sense, as we saw the true spiritual colour of the most everyday moral choices and actions. Let us try to act as though we could "see" as well as know the meaning of our actions. Punishment Does our Lady punish us? Perhaps; but not after the fashion of masculist legalism: "such as been your crime, such is the punishment due, the account must be settled". When She punishes, it is an instrument of our progress. Hers is the rod of a Preceptress, uncompromising in Her standards yet infinitely patient, not of the public executioner. "Justice" is simply the nature of things: distance from the Goddess=evil=pain. But when we have come close enough to Her and have given ourselves in complete submission to Her, perhaps She may manipulate that suffering which is the inalienable condition of our particular state of fallenness in the form of precisely those punishments at precisely those times when they will do us most good. But I do not think She gives us pain. I do not think She adds to that which we must suffer. If anything (by a paradox) She lessens it. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Snippets Description An account of the resource A collection of short reflections on various topics. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/22e981b12a4537129487ecfa7e4449f2.pdf b39e8567d8ba86cf4653334e2a5cc2ab Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (54pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Amazons in Sain Arien: Part One The first thing the Amazons brought to Sain Arien was music. On that fine spring day in the month of Hera when three hundred soldiers marched down the main street, the little market town had not for many a year heard such a rousing and heart-cheering sound. Long side-drums pounded, horns hallooed and flute-pipes rilled an infectious tune from the West that seemed familiar even on its first hearing and set every foot stepping in its rhythm. The whole town had come to see them, of course, and people from the surrounding villages for several miles around, and truly they were a fine sight to be seen; banners streaming in the wind, purple, blue and gold, pennants and standards; triumphs of a dozen campaigns fought on their eastward march from the sea. Gleaming helms and breastplates in silver, leather and bronze; shields and spears, and the maids themselves; taller, for the most part, than the maids of the middle-world, and made to look taller yet by the high horsehair plumes upon their helmets. Disciplined and self-possessed, yet with an air of gaiety about them. They were the products of a rigorous training which had honed them to perfection in the practice of the martial [vikhelic] arts, yet had taught them primarily as a way of contemplation and a spiritual discipline. Nevertheless, they were not contemplatives or mystics in the true sense, they were young women fully devoted to the life of outward activity, at a peak of physical condition and alive with animal spirits. To this their spiritual training had added a calmness and control, a depth and wisdom, which was the foundation both of their courage and of their courtesy. For the Amazons were renowned for their courtesy and generosity both to the peoples of their captured nations and to their conquered enemies (who were usually foreign invaders of those nations from the barbaric patriarchal tribes of the North and East). A few cynics said that they were only trying to purchase the support of the people; but for the most part even those who could not see that their gentleness proceeded from a far deeper source found such 'purchase' considerably preferable to the methods of enforcing support which had been employed by one patriarchal army after another: killing of children, burning of homesteads, maiming of livestock, and, of course, the continual plunder of the harvests. After all, the only 'support' an army really needs from the people is their obedience, and it can easily get that without purchasing it. As one patriarchal army drove out another in those bitter years before the coming of the Amazon crusade, each one came to relieve the tyranny of the one before it and to bring new and better gods, and each was as bad as, or worse than its predecessor, or even if there was some small improvement, that was more than offset by the hardships inflicted by the war. As for the gods, they all looked remarkably like the kings who brought them, and behaved similarly also. Thus, when the rumours of the great Amazon army first reached the citizens of the middle-world, there was little rejoicing. A new army to sweep away oppression and to establish the worship of the one true God. Yes, one had heard all that many times before. Perhaps a ray of hope was kindled when it became known that this was the old Faith that had prevailed before the chaos had begun; the God of the old Temples, to whom [sic] each of the male godlings had in turn been 'married', taking Her as his 'consort'; yet ironically, this very piece of blasphemy had led to great confusion in the religious sense of the people, not least because the majority of those endowed with understanding had risen furiously and unthinkingly against it, and so had been slain many years ago. In any case, an army was an army, whatever it fought for. What could it mean, this Great Crusade, except more looting, more burning, more maiming? But as the Crusade advanced steadily through the continent, it became known that this was an army like no other army. When before had teams of soldiers rebuilt burned houses? When before had an army brought with an Order of white-robed sisters, many of whom, skilled in the medical arts, spread out into the towns and villages, healing the disease and suffering that had been spread by the wars, and teaching not some politically-motivated state religion, but a Way of inner peace? When before had land taken by previous conquerors been given back to its original owners, and the reigns [sic] of government put back into the hands of the local people, while the soldiers helped to put the devastated farmsteads back into order? Never before had these things happened, and never before had an army been garlanded with flowers by the people of a city as it marched into the main street; yet all these things became familiar occurrences as the Great Crusade carved its inexorable path eastward. From the Amazons, people learned that an army could be trusted and that a firm, sound and dependable order could arise out of chaos. And from the white-robed Innocui (meaning "The Unarmed"), the teaching and healing Order that marched with them, and were popularly known as "White Amazons", they gained a re-awakening of spiritual understanding. The babble [sic?] of religious claims and counter-claims, all motivated by political interests, was suddenly silenced by a single voice, clear, sweet and thrilling, speaking the ancient Truth known from time immemorial, and still remembered by many from their childhood: "One God alone, none other God than She." The Amazon rule was strict yet gentle. Its aim was to clean up the chaos as quickly as possible, but without undue severity. There were no widespread reprisals after an Amazon victoy. Those guilty of rape, torture or the desecration of a Temple were summarily executed. Men guilty of beating their wives, or of other acts of violence against maids, together with priestesses and other Temple officers guilty of apostasy, unless committed under extreme pressure, were publicly whipped with birch-rods. Other than this there was a general amnesty on all crimes committed during the period of non-matriarchal rule; "the time without the Law". Even these laws were administered leniently, with every consideration being given to extraordinary circumstances; and even the whippings, although certainly a salutary chastisement, were very far removed from the ingenious and long drawn-out torture practised by the various patriarchal juntas. Their whole purpose was to restore the balance and, having purified the transgressors, to allow them to return to life within the Law. "The sin being purged, let it no more be spoke of" said one Amazon edict. For the real meaning of the Great Crusade lay far deeper than the cleaning up of human chaos and tyranny. It was the re-establishment of the Divine Order and Harmony in the middle-world. For this neither vindictiveness nor retribution were necessary, but "the unmaking of knots" – the ritual cleansing of all mortal transgressions which would be a stain upon the sacred Order and a weakness in its fabric – was very much so. After this came the slow process of re-establishing the matriarchal order. This belonged largely to the White Amazons, assisted by the army in the physical task of reconstruction, and occasionally in curbing any of the menfolk who were too tenacious in their memory of patriarchal ideas. They did this as little as possible, for it was their aim to put all discipline in the hands of the homesteads and their mistresses and of the local community as a whole as quickly as possible. Their aim was not to build an empire, but simply to re-establish the Law and then to pass on, leaving the nations behind them free and independent. Thus it was a task for the teacher and the preacher rather than the soldier. Often there were other tasks also. In many areas banditry had become rife in the time without the Law, and roads outside the major cities were used only by fools and by great caravans of traders protected by armed guards; and even these latter were often attacked. In such cases it was the custom of the Amazons to issue an edict on the first new moon after their establishment in a city, declaring that all bandits who came to them before the next new moon would be granted a free pardon, honourable livelihood and dwelling; after that "upon thy haunts and thy hiding-places; upon thy ways of passage and upon thy fastnesses shall the right hand of the Law descend, and the servant thereof, like, in her wrath, to the very thunder of the heavens." These edicts nearly always went out in the name of Alana Fi'Alana; for that name was known and feared throughout the continent – Red Alana "the Hammer of the Lawless". Many of the bandits were but fugitives from patriarchy and not only gave themselves up freely enough, but quickly joined the Amazons and became the core of the native Civil Guards which the Amazons were setting up, or even joined the Crusade itself. Many of those who did not give themselves up also ended by becoming good Amazons; even patriarchal bandits often finished by swelling the ranks of the Men's Auxiliary Units. In large measure, this was due to the extraordinary personality of Red Alana. She was a strikingly handsome maid in the fourth decade of her age, despite the fact that a long vertical scar ran down the left side of her forehead and her left cheek, having missed destroying her eye by the merest whisker (the line of her eyelash still did not quite run true). The vivid red hair which had given her her name (vivid even for the western Amazons, among whom red hair was not uncommon) had, for some reason, turned prematurely white. Not from worry, certainly, for she was still as wild and devil-may-care as she had been at twenty. Her methods were unusual to say the least. It was rumoured that she tried and passed sentence upon her prisoners from horseback, and executed the sentence there and then. The High Command turned a blind eye to her eccentricities not so much because she was highly efficient in a military sense (although she was), but because of her ability to communicate with the bandits; to win over those whom the Amazons would otherwise have had to fight to the death. Many of the bandits who did not give themselves up in the first place were not very admirable characters. The worst of them would raid remote outlying homesteads and torture the inhabitants into revealing the whereabouts of their treasures – not so much life-savings as the savings of five or ten generations. When a person first inflicts torture upon another person, he (for it is nearly always a man) feels a certain reluctance, a certain drawing-back, but slowly he becomes innured to it, and finally learns to enjoy it. He becomes a true, hardened sadist. What hope is there then for his soul, emptied of all human decency? The only hope is death, which breaks what would otherwise be a vicious cycle endlessly dragging him deeper and deeper into the blackest abysses of depravity. This is one of the merciful functions of death; one of the reasons why God, in Her infinite wisdom, allowed death into the universe. Born again as a child, cut off from the past and oblivious to it, the torturer is given a fresh start, his downward plunge arrested; although nothing will be able to stop the chain of action and reaction which will bring suffering to him in the proportion to the suffering he has inflicted. For such torturers, the sword of Red Alana hastened the merciful release of death, and cut short the catalogue of crimes for which they would have to suffer. She had, as it were, a nose for those who were the really depraved souls, and often, with these despatched, a spell was broken over the others. The old reactions of human decency came quickly back to them. The manner of their leader's death often provided the psychological shock which they required. Having passed sentence of death, Alana would, without warning, spur her horse forward, draw the sword and strike off his head. Or, giving some rogue a Silver Star's start (i.e. letting him run for the time it took to say the Silver Star prayer), she would gallop after him and return in a minute or so bearing his head. If she was unjust at all, she erred on the side of lenity, but the dramatic manner in which she carried out her sentences, together with the ferocity and suddenness with which her hand-picked raiders battled and subdued the gangs, convinced them that they were confronted with someone a hundred times wilder and fiercer than their own dreaded leaders. Suddenly the bully who had held them in awe lay dead and, seinging his head by the hair, this remarkable swashbuckler, this lightning bolt of the right hand of the Law, was now giving the orders. They had thought the Amazons were 'soft', despite their conquests. They had thought the Law was starchy and colourless compared to their wild, lawless life. They did not think so now. Yet for all this, the success of the "Red Raiders" depended equally upon another personality, very different from that of Red Alana. For every thousand people that had heard the name of Red Alana, perhaps one or two had heard that of Mother Igrayne, yet, in her way, she was a person no less remarkable. Her hair was a[s] white as Alana's own, for she was between twice and thrice her age (maids lived longer in that age), and over the white robe of her Order she was wont to wear a long brown old army cloak. In her youth she had been an archer, fighting in battles long before the Great Crusade had been thought of, or would even have been thought possible. When the little Amazon settlements – mostly remote religious communities in self-imposed exile from the decadence of the late-matriarchal cities, suddenly swelled by a stream of refugees as those cities fell to the patriarchal hordes – were attack by the patriarchs, she had fought with one of the brace little makeshift armies that defended their mountain fastnesses. "The League for the Defence of New Marisia", it had been called, later it was simply The Chivalric League, and later still the Fifth Legion, still nicknamed "the Leaguers"; but nowadays, one only had to mention "the League" anywhere in the middle-world, and everybody would know what was meant. She never rose above the ranks, and sometimes joked in later years about having been an archer in a Legion whose fame rested almost wholly upon its cavalry. She was a deeply contemplative person, as archers often are; archery being one of the most contemplative of the martial [vikhelic] arts. It was not unusual for an archer to become a full contemplative in her later years. Igrayne did so much earlier than usual. The little armies and better, the spiritual training methods of the contemplative Orders refined the martial arts to perfection, and the would-be believers eventually decided that they were biting off more than they could chew. As soon as a lasting peace was established, Igrayne retired from the League, and wandered deep into the mountains as a strave – a solitary contemplative. Little is known of her life during this period, but at the age when many archers are beginning to think of retiring into contemplation, she returned, having, as she put it, "licked the rim of the cup of Enlightenment". She settled in a cave not far from New Marisia, teaching a small group of devoted aspirants until, as she grew older, she was persuaded to come into one of the contemplative orders for the sake of her health; so, she put on the white robe and continued her teaching from a pleasant little room looking out over a cloister with a neat green quadrangle and a fountain at the centre. And there she was expected to end her days. But she did not. When the Great Crusade began, her Order sent a great many sisters into the White Amazons; but imagine the consternation when old Mother Igrayne declared her intention of going with them! They tried every manner of persuasion, but nobody quite dared to stand in the way of so saintly a person. "God has called me," she declared, "and She knows what is best." The trouble was that she had never actually joined the Order; officially she had always been a guest of the House, so she had no superior who could actually bind her in obedience not to go. "My chickens are going," she declared, referring to her pupils, "and I am going with them. They need someone to look after them." It was perhaps a good thing that nobody at the convent at New Marisia knew for a long time that, having made sure that her "chickens" were alright, Mother Igrayne somehow managed to attach herself to the notorious Red Raiders. Red Alana was not wont to be rude; certainly not to the old, and least of all to those in sacred Orders; but she did have three demons of a temper as the phrase went, especially before she met Mother Igrayne; and Providence had arranged that she should be in a particularly fiery humour the morning those two first encountered. "I desire no White Amazons to ride with me," exploded that tempestuous person; "an I did I'd not choose thee, for that thou art old and breathless and no fit rider; now carry off thy carcase for I have much that calls me." "I am an Innocua," replied the old ascetic with dignity, "therefore I may not raise a sword against yours. But if you will put up your fists..." Alana stepped forward incredulously, thinking she must have misheard her visitor's words. Long contemplation does not dim an archer's eye, but contrariwise, makes it all the sharper, and so a wizened, bony fist flew straight and true as a flighted shaft, unerringly found its target and, as Alana herself later put it, "knocked me clean off my pins and left me wondering if the moon had fallen on my head." This began one of the most important friendships in the history of the Great Crusade. "There be a lesson in the art of courtesy," said Mother Igrayne. "An thou had been my pupil I should have taught it with a willow-rod." "Mother," said Alana Fi'Alana, picking herself up from the ground only to prostrate herself again, "an thee will have me, I am thy pupil from this day forth." To the fire of Alana's native temperament Igrayne added the fire of the love of God; from an adventurer in the name of the Law, she turned her into a servant of the Law who was also an adventurer. Long hours she spen in unfolding to that passionate and contemplative mind the beauty and majesty of the Divine Order, and at times she despaired of reaching her inner depths. One day Alana came to her and knelt at her feet, as was the custom between Ranya and pupil. "Mother," she said, "I have seen so much suffering in my days; so much cruelty and wickedness, that my heart is heavy with it." "Thou hast done more than thy part in setting it aright, my daughter," replied her mistress. "Yet, mother, there is so much, so very much," she sighed. "It is said that all the raindrops that fall upon the earth are the tears of Our Lady, weeping for Her children," said Igrayne, and thereupon fell for a few minutes into contemplation. When again she became conscious of the world, Alana was still kneeling before her, with her head bowed, but she noticed that her shoulders were trembling. "Look at me, child," she said. Alana obeyed, and she saw that tears were streaming down her cheeks. Igrayne took her in her arms. "My little child," she said, "I believe that we have found thy heart." For the rest of that day and most of the night Igrayne talked to her of the meaning of suffering and the bitter sacrifice of our Lady and of the sacred Law that She has brought to rescue us from suffering and from that day forward, Red Alana was a changed person. No less a fighter and a firebrand, perhaps more so; but one that had found her soul. "Many are the ways of God," said Mother Igrayne "as many as the souls that travel them; and some of them be passing strange." And strange it was that Red Alana, that was always so joyful, should come to God by the way of sorrow. She had a deeper joy now, and the secret suffering, though not yet passed from her, was calmed within her breast. It was perhaps because she understood less of the Truth than most Amazons that Red Alana had been so good at working with the bandits. Yet now that she had found the Truth, she was even better. Igrayne and Alana worked in double harness. Slowly Igrayne regrouped most of her old "chickens" around her, forming them into "White Raiders", who moved among the bandit gangs as Alana's Red Raiders were finishing the first part of their job. Shocked by the whirlwind attack of the Raiders; shocked by the sudden execution of the "rotten apple", who had seemed like unassailable demon-kings mere hours ago, almost equally shocked by the lack of brutality which the Raiders showed once the unpleasant part of the job was over, and completely disoriented and uncertain about what the rest of their lives might be (if, indeed, they were to have any), they found themselves gathered around a blazing camp-fire by this old woman. They were given warming food by her pupils, who treated them with the most exquisite grace and courtesy; and she began to talk to them. She spoke gently, and she was gentle, yet somehow they sensed that, in her own way she was as tough as, if not tougher than, Red Alana herself. She spoke to them of death and the meaning of life. Themes which perhaps they would have laughted to scorn this time yesterday but which today seemed terribly real and urgent. Shaken and afraid, they could begin to understand how their victims had felt, they could, perhaps begin to feel remorse; if not remorse, they could at any rate feel the urgency of Igrayne's question: "It may be you will die this night or on the morrow; will the deeds of your life grant you safe passage in the world to come, or will they rise up to accuse you?" She held them fascinated, for her voice resounded with the force of Truth, and her person radiated the intangible but unmistakable aura of one who had "licked the rim of the cup of Enlightenment". "These lawless ones are all wound so tight as fiddlestrings. Deep within they do desire to hear the Truth, though their outer parts be so stubborn that they must be pinned by the ears before they are constrained to listen. Deep within they hate the evil they have done; they want to yield themselves up and to be forgiven. Our Lady wants only to forgive them." And it seemed that she was right. By the end of the evening many of the law-less were in tears about her. The scorn of their 'harder' comrades no longer mattered. This saintly and wonderful person believed the Truth, and so did Red Alana; so did the graceful sisters they saw about them; so also the steel-hard Raiders who had thrashed both them and their comrades in combat. Their old world had died that day, and this night a new world was born. So the Amazons made their slow but certain way through the middle-world, carefully ordering and purifying each territory before they moved on to the next. But not all territories presented such problems. Not all were infested with bandits; not all even required conquest. One of these was the little town of Sain Arien and its outlying villages. The Amazons in Sain Arien: Part 2 The first thing the Amazons brought to Sain Arien was music, and music was, in all probability, the most lasting thing that they brought: music and tales. A hundred years after they had gone, their songs were still sung in the ale-house and around the fire on winter's evening; their tunes were still played on the pipe-and-tabor for the dancers in the village square and picked out with a goose-quill on the three stringed dulcimer. Their tales – variants from the western world upon the old eternal themes – were added to the stock of the village story-tellers and became part of the rich green mental undergrowth of generations of children. These things apart, the Amazons brought little of lasting importance to Sain Arien; life carried on before their coming and after their going much as it had for countless generations. For Sain Arien was a quiet, out-of-the-way sort of place, distant from any large centers of population and of no political importance. The various patriarchal revolutions had scarcely touched it. In point of fact, Sain Arien did officially have a patriarchal government when the Amazons arrived. The third of the patriarchal revolutions which shook the Annapolita region, on whose outskirts lay Sain Arien, established the Eternal Empire of the Earth-Father, one of the more stable of the juntas, which, having a longer period of unchallenged rule than most, found time to turn its attention to less pressing matters. Thus it was that Sain Arien received an embassage from the emissaries of Adonay II, the Living God (may he live forever!) demanding the fealty of Sain Arien under threat of fire and sword. Their demand to speak with the town's governor caused some confusion since no such office existed, but it was finally decided that they should meet the Lady Marya Fi-Arian, who was the head of the oldest and most noble family in Sain Arien. She was a just and wise if somewhat idiosyncratic old matriarch, come of a long line of just and wise and (more often than not) somewhat idiosyncratic matriarchs both old and young. Despite the fact that she held no official position outside her own family, and the town was theoretically governed by a council of elders, it was unthinkable that the affairs of the town should ever proceed other than according to her stated wishes. The emissaries, however would not accept a female governor, so the new post of governor was hurriedly created and given to Master Gilrois FiAletta FiArien, the Lady Marya's husband. So was established the custom, still in force when the Amazons arived, that the Governor of Sain Arien should be the husband of the head of the Arianya. The Eternal Empire levied a heavy tribute upon Sain Arien, which was collected by a small military detachment every year at harvest-time; and after the various officers involved had taken extra to line their own purses, the blow was crippling. Fortunately, the Empire soon became fully occupied with raids on its more accessible borders, and Sain Arien was forgotten. Within a few short years the Eternal Empire was forgotten also, and Adony [sic] II the Living God had been crucified by King Luda, the Lord of the Heavens. Sain Arien, however, knew nothing about this, and still believed itself to be a part of the Eternal Empire, glad only that that awesome body had decided it could survive without the tribute of Sain Arien. It was many years and several revolutions before a new embassy arrived to demand the allegiance of and tribute to the Governor Colbert; and once again, the intolerable burden was born [sic] only for a short time. The same patter repeated itself three more times, and when the Amazons arrived, the people of Sain Arien believed themselves to be the subjects of Adolphus IV, Universal Monarch of the World. The Amazons found it a delightful joke that Sain Arien was three revolutions behind the times. By the time of the Governor Kynan, three revolutions after Adolphus IV, the incursions had become a bitter memory, and life in Sain Arien had long returned to its accustomed way of life. They had heard nothing of the Great Crusade, and the arrival one dull spring afternoon of a serious young Amazon officer in her ceremonial armour, a vision of silver and gold, seated bolt upright in her ceremonial chariot and surrounded by a guard of six cavalry officers, like the sun enthroned among her six planets (which, indeed, was the symbolic meaning of the party), created among them a sensation of gloom and leaden apprehension. They knew nothing of the six Legoins whose colours the horsemaids bore, nor even of the illustrious Princess Mariamne, the leader of the Crusade, whose royal banner floated above the splendid war-chariot. Nevertheless, the Governor was quickly aware of a great difference between the embassage of the daike Rhien Terysien and any previous emissaries. Until today, all such visitations had had but one purpose: extortion, more or less thinly disguised in official jargon. But of all the strange proclamations Sain Arien had ever received, this was most certainly the strangest. The long address read out by the Daike's herald asked, in brief, whether the Governor and people of Sain Arien would willingly renounce all heresies and misbelief and return to the Ekklesia of the one true God in obedience to Her law, or whether they would meet with the armies of Her servant and regent, the worshipful Princess Mariamne, namely the Holy Confederation of the Six Legions, upon the field of war. Not even the smallest of the patriarchates had ever suggested going to war with Sain Arien, and the idea of her taking up arms against the massed forces of the Amazon legions was positively bizarre, yet Amazon courtest demanded that this little two should be accorded no less dignity than the mightiest nation-at-arms. After supervising the proclamation in the town square, the Daike was taken to Mansarian, the ancestral home of the Arianya, and therefore also the Governor's residence, for a private audience with the Governor. At the entrance of the great house she was met by the chaplain and the seneschal. She was surprised to see that the chaplain was robed in a manner indistinguishable from that of an orthodox priestess – which, indeed, was precisely what she was. The Daike drew her sword, and, holding it by the blade, presented the hilt to the seneschal in token of peace. If the seneschal was taken aback by this small ritual (and surely she must have been) she showed nothing. The post of seneschal was an hereditary one, held always by the oldest daughter of a certain prominent Sain Arien family, and they prided themselves upon being equal to every situation. The last time an Arian seneschal had shown a flicker of surprise was when the late Mistress Kara insisted upon galloping cross-country and jumping the two hedges at the sides of the Gated Path mounted backwards on her horse. The Governor was a youngish man of a type commonly found among the Kindred (rural gentry) of the matriarchal countryside. Long before any patriarchal occupation, and in areas where it had not taken place, the old matriarchal cities had succumbed, if not always to decadence, at any rate to a slickness and over-sophistication which was one step removed from it. Those of the Raihira, or noble, estate who had not accepted this ethos were consciously in reaction against it. They no longer possessed the simple natural nobility – the nobility of innocence – which was to be found in Sain Arien. Young men like Kynan FiArien could be met throughout the middle-world in relatively undisturbed backwaters such as Sain Arien, though Daike Rhien Terysien had not higherto enjoyed that pleasure. Indeed, this was the first time that the Daike had encountered the culture of the middle-world in anything other than its most degenerate form. Governor Kynan exhaled the atmosphere of his native culture, and even as he was beginning to realise that the Daike was very different from the barbarians with whom his father had had to deal, so she was beginning to sense the atmosphere of a civilisation not decadent, yet laxer and mellower than the austere and brilliant Amazon world. A culture older not only than the new world of the Amazons, forged from the deep piety of the exile-convents and the high courage of the warriors, but older also than the world of the Western Empire and the sunken continent that had gone before it. Her mind travelled quickly over the past few months, and suddenly a thought struck her which was the answer to a vague but insistent puzzle which had been troubling her mind. As the Crusade struck ever deeper into the heartland of the middle-world she had become increasingly conscious of a distinct difference in character between the decadent cities which they were coming upon and those which they had met at the beginning of the Crusade; a different kind of decadence, she had thought. Now, suddenly, the explanation came to her. As they moved eastward they were coming more and more into territories which, shile still a part of the Western Empire, had been far less under its influence. Parts of their culture had been brought from the south during the great migrations from the Southern Empire thousands of years ago; a culture too high and fine to continue in the coarser air of these later times. The gentle hand of the Western Empire had shored it up, and a hybrid of the two cultures had been formed. The whole of the middle world had been shaken by the collapse of the Empire, and decadence had set in here as elsewhere. It was not so much a different kind of decadence as a different thing in decay. The decadent cities of the west and those which the Crusade had recently taken were as similar and as different as a rotten apple and a rotten plum. She had not sufficient evidence to make a report to the High Command but intuitively the Daike was already sure: Sain Arien was sound. but it was not the soundness of the great western matriarchates which had begin to decline two centuries ago. It was the soundness of a good sturdy mongrel culture alloyed of the western culture and of another culture, older, deeper and far more beautiful. Outwardly impassive, the Daike breathes inwardly a sigh. What had the poet said? "Many the fine, fair things are passed away, and shall not be again; and our world shall not know the glory of our mothers, neither shall our daughters know our glory." Yes, the world was a long and weary downward path; and even if the Great Crusade would turn back the clock for a century or two, yet the patriarchal barbarians would inherit the earth in the end. Thus was it written and thus should it be. The Pax Amazonia of the coming centuries would not be so fine a thing as the Western Empire had been at its best; and as for the beauties of the old middle-world, and the still more distant beauties of the South, what remained of them now? "The grass doth grow upon the dust that was their body." And some time in the distant future, when the barbarians had destroyed this world entirely, a new Golden Age would come, and so the cycle should begin again. How truly had her old Ranya spoken: "This world is but a turning wheel from which thy soul must leap if she will be free." The Daike wrenched her mind from these meditations and concentrated her mind upon her host. Gentle of manner and slightly shy, he moved with practised grace and lightness. If he was agitated, his strict Raihira upbringing permitted him to show nothing beyond his serene and courteous exterior. The Daike felt herself drawn to him. "We are as similar," she thought, "as a firm apple and a firm plum. And as different." The Governor was pressing a drink upon her. "It is very poor, most excellent mistress, very poor most truly, but it is the best we do own. Out harvests have been more bad than we can say." Such self-deprecation was common Raihira courtesy, but sipping her skokkien [sp?], the Daika found that poor was, if anything, too generous a term for it. It was difficult to believe that a Raihira had nothing better, or that he would give such bilge-water to his guests. Was this a calculated insult? No, she felt not. She cast her eyes around the room and found it generally well appointed, and yet showing certain conspicuous signs of dilapidation. Most notably a window was broken, and the glass covering a portrait of the first Lady Marya as the lily-moon-mistress (one of the five traditional portrait forms) was cracked from side to side. The Daike's natural sensitivity had been honed to perfection by long training in the art of the sword, for a perfect swordsmaid can see her opponent's stroke before she has made it. In this case she could tell as easliy as if she had been present that the damage in this room had been done within this hour. She could sense the violence – and also the unwillingness – with which it had been performed. Something was amiss in this house. Something passing strange. "It is a fine and noble brew, my reverend master," she said with some effort. "I pray you, refill my cup." "You do my mistress's house more honour than it can ever deserve." Even through his serene exterior, the Governor showed a little discomfort, acutely conscious that, in the matter of skokkien at any rate, his words were more than a mere ritual of courtesy. "I have travelled from the western edge of the world, my master, and I have not seen a finer house nor one more fair to look upon." "My lady is most gracious, but this house has ever been a humble dwelling: a little lodge in the mountains, lost to the grandeur of the world. Yet even so it has known better days; better days and richer, ma'am. The soil of these lands is quite exhausted, and our people know barely how to eke a sustenance. Ma'am, if every soul in Sain Arien were a wandering strave, we could be scarce the poorer and that is the hard truth of it." He bowed his head and placed two fingers upon his brow in the traditional gesture of sorrow. "Good master," you spoke of your mistress's house. Are you not Governor here?" The Governor was quite unable to see any inconsistency in this, and replied in some puzzlement, with disarming innocence "Yes, ma'am, most surely I am Governor here. I spoke of my wife." The Daike could not restrain the shimmer of a smile from passing her lips. "Well, good master Governor, you have studied the proclamation of my most royal mistress. What is your reply?" The Governor's reply was obviously a time-honoured one, learned by rote by every Governor of Sain Arien. "Most reverent mistress, the Governor and people are happy beyond expression to accept the yoke and suzerainty of your most noble and puissant empire; and with all our hearts we will to serve your royal mistress with all the means at our command. Truly we hall keep the day of your coming as a day of feast and rejoicing so long as Sain Arien shall endure." "My sovereign master," replued the Daike "with the profoundest and most humble respect, I venture to suggest that you have not yet fully comprehended the nature of my mistress's proclamation. I am the emissary of no empire, not does my lady seek sovereignty over Sain Arien." "Good my mistress, I understand you not," replied the Governor somewhat nervously. "Will the Governor and people of Sain Arien undertake willingly to return to the single Law of God and the Way of Themis [Thamë]?" asked the Daike. Surely Sain Arien was sound enough for these words to be understood. In truth, it was too sound. "Return? ... Good my mistress, I understand you not." "Will the Governor and people of Sain Arien willingly renounce all heresies..." "Heresies!" interjected Kynan. Now she had really frightened him. "Please, ma'am, would it cause great offece if I ask that my wife be present, that you may speak with her in this matter?" "No offence in the world, my good master," replied the Daike. "I wish only to abide by the custom of this place." The seneschal was summoned, left the room again, and in a remarkably short space of time returned to hold open the door for the fifth Lady Marya, tall, dark, remarkably young looking and with a force of personality that filled the room like a lightning-storm. The Daike sensed that for the past half-hour she had been pacing a nearby room in an agony of frustration that so important an affair should be taking place in her house, and she unable to see that it was conducted aright. Had she been eavesdropping? Most certainly not; but there was little that missed the ears of the seneschal and her staff, and nothing that was not reported to the mistress. Certainly, from the scant attention she paid, she had little need of her husband's explanations. Outwardly she appeared serene, but her inner turmoil was betrayed by the fact that she entered with a glass of skokkien in her hands – a minor breach of etiquette which would rarely occur in such a household. "Donna [sp?]," said the Governor, reverencing her with a deep little bow, "the most noble Daike wishes to know about heresy in Sain Arien." "Heresy!" exploded the Lady Marya, returning the Daike's reverence curtly. "An there were heresy in Sain Arien I should know about it. Aye, and an I knew about it there should not long be heresy in Sain Arien, that I warrant thee. Heresy, on my mother's pyre! Heresy, by the legions of the damned! I'll tell thee. There have been heretics in Sain Arien. Aye, and thieves too. But not a one of them came from Sain Arien." "My lady," said Kynan, calm, but deathly pale, "use caution, use reason, they have the power..." "Aye, aye, they have the power." She turned again to the Daike, beginning more calmly, but quickly losing her temper again. "You can make Sain Arien a part of your empire. We are very willing. You can take your tributes and bleed our people white. But if you come into my house and talk of heresy in Sain Arien, by the Holy Name, I'll take a dog-whip..." "My lady..." Kynan raised his voice for the first time in many years, but the Lady Marya could not be stopped. "You are the heretics, you with your ugly male godlings and your idols and abominations. Come to this window. See you that Temple? Never was there any idol in that Temple, and never will there be. We shall burn it down first. You talk of making war on Sain Arien. Truly, if you desire to lay hands on our Temple there will be a war. You will win it, of course, but you'll have to kill every lasy one of us before you touch our Lady's house." Flushed and angry, she walked to the chair where Kynan was weeping, and, standing behind it, placed both her hands upon his breast, glaring furiously at the Daike, as if to say "Look what you have done to my husband." "My lady, my lady," sobbed Kynan, "you know not what it is that you have done." The Lady Marya stroked his hair for a short time. Her anger subsided and a deep sadness came over her. "My swallow, my stallion, my lovely hunting-dog; I know full well what I have done. I spoke in anger, but I spoke not rashly. If the time has come, then the time has come. We know that it must come some day. Praise be to our Lady that we were spared so long. We will not live a life of ignominy and treason, my dear one. That were to live too long." She looked up again at the Daike. "You shall see, my good soldier, you shall see. Sain Arien knows how to die." For a moment the Daike gazed upon Lady Marya. She was not a beautiful maid, though she was not unattractive, but the fire in her heart lit up her whole being with a loveliness surpassing any merely physical beauty. And seeing such courage and such nobility, the eyes of the Daike Rhien Terysien welled up with tears. "My lady," she said, "thy soul is so comely that thou hast melted the heart of a hard soldier. No Amazon shall ever lay hands on thy Temple. My lady, I would tell thee that I love our Lady as greatly as thine own self, if that were not to praise myself too highly. If any infidel shall seek to lay hands upon the Temple of Sain Arien, there shall be three centuries of Amazons, horse, foot and chariot to defend it. You have the word of the Daike Rhien Terysien. I shall kneel before the alter in the Temple of Sain Arien and make an offering to our Lady in thanks that there are such noble hearts in the world as thine." "You are believers?" faltered the Lady Marya. "Believers, aye, and that is all the purpose of our coming. To turn the middle-world unto the Law again, to cast out the infidels and their idols and abominations. We do not want you to be a part of any empire. We do not want to rob you or take tributes..." "You are not levying a tribute?" "Most surely not, did I not say..." "And we have made you drink this bellgrot!" exploded the Lady Marya seizing the glass from the hand of the astonished Daike. She pressed her own glass into her hand. "Here, drink this, 'twill settle your stomach." Obediently, the Daike took a sip. "Why, 'tis the finest skokkien I have tasted this long year," she exclaimed, and no part of this statement was motivated by courtesy – indeed the note of suprise in her voice was scarcely in keeping with the demands of etiquette. She began to laugh. "Seneschal! Seneschal!" cried the Lady Marya, "fetch someone to mend that window; we are like enough to die of cold in here." She turned again to the Daike. "I fear we have no food fit to be eaten in the house, mistress. Everything has been taken away in case you made an inspection. We deemed it fit that we should appear to be in poverty, my mistress, that the tribute should be small. My people have suffered greatly in the past..." The Daike was still laughing. "Reason me no more, good my lady, I have some little wit, for all I be a soldier." "There is the sub-cellar, my lady," suggested Kynan with a twinkle. "The sub-cellar; of course!" exclaimed Marya. "We have a cellar below the cellar which nobody could ever find. Do Amazons drink ale?" By this latter question, the Lady Marya had unwittingly showed how very far Sain Arien lay from the west of the world. The embassage did not return home that night. But on the morrow it carried tidings of a fully successful mission. The Amazons in Sain Arien Part 3. The long green victory-dragon snaked down the main street of Sain Arien in front of the procession with bells kingling and ribbons streaming, the thirteen Amazons within its silken body wheeling and curving with a deftness born of long practice. It came to rest before the raised platform which had been erected in the town square. The troops arrayed themselves in their order with banners to the fore. As well as those of the two legions represented among the contingent, there were several emblems of the regions and craft-guilds to which sections of the soldiery belonged. When all were in place, a wide aisle was left between the ranks of soldiers and townspeople, leading to the platform steps. Down this aisle passed first the bearer of the royal standard, followed by a Nikraya of the Triumulate responsible for all military and secular affairs in the Annapolita region. She was flanked by two Daikes, one from each legion – one of these the people recognised as the one who had called upon the Governor a few weeks ago. Accompanying this party were two white-robed Innocui bearing ceremonial staves, and with silver circlets over their white head-veils. Behind them came a small retinue of standard bearers and others. The lively music of the triumphal entry had given place to a solemn and dignified processional march. Upon the platform were the Governor's party; himself, the Lady Marya, the household chaplain, the senior priestess of the town with her ancilla, the Lady of the Temple with her senior Temple-maiden, representatives from each of the villages and magdoranyas from each of the crafts. The Nikraya and her party mounted the platform. She bowed deeply to the Governor, for he was governor still, although within the hour he would be so no longer. He returned her reverance and they embraced in token of peace and the bond of friendship. He then embraced each of the Daikes in turn, and a particular warmth was in the embrace with Rhien Terysien, for already a deep friendship had taken root between her and Kynan and the Lady Marya. During the ceremony that followed, the Governor's personal standard was removed, and that of the Lady Marya put in its place. The preparation for this had involved some difficulty, since Kynan had never possessed a personal standard. Finding one for the Lady Marya had involved some little thought, but it was quickly decided that the standard of Sain Arien itself could be used, since the name of the Arian family was the same as that of the town. Indeed, enquiry among the more historically-minded of the townsfolk revealed that the standard had been used by the Arianya at one period. A personal standard for the Governor, however, presented more difficulty. His mother's family had never born [sic] a standard so far as anyone could recall. The obvious procedure would be for him to adopt his wife's, but this, apparently, would not be in keeping with the nature of the ceremony. As Rhien Terysien put it: "Sain Arien has to become a little more patriarchal before we can make it matriarchal again." "Well, it do seem passing strange to me, for a surety," declared the Lady Marya. The senior priestess, Madria Kerunna, however, having a firm grasp of the nature and importance of ritual, found no difficulty in understanding the matter. "Twill do more of good for Sain Arien than you may think, most honoured daughter," she explained. "Master Kynan is a good man, and never was Governor save in name alone, yet well thou dost know that there is no thing transpires upon this heavy world of clay that echoes not within the world invisible, nor canst thou name a name on any thing or person that bindeth not a web of working. Let Sain Arien be brought within the full measure of the Law by this most puissant working of the western race, and that which was amiss shall be set right." "By your leave, most reverend mother," replied the Lady Marya, ever quick to defend her beloved people, "there is but little amiss in Sain Arien." "But little indeed," said the priestess with a smile – for were they not her children also? "Yet if a score of chanters chant together and but one have a false ear, is not the sweetness of the music turned, like to milk that hath stood an hour too long before drinking?" "You will say ere long that there is heresy in Sain Arien!" exclaimed the Lady Marya, who was by this time able to make light of her former outburst. The company laughed. "Not heresy, daughter, but there is a little forgetfulness; we have been two long severed from the learned world and the teachers of high doctrine." "My mother," said the Lady Marya, with earnestness "how can we have been severed from the world of learning whiles you have been with us?" Madria Kerunna smiled. Her children regarded her as a very oracle of wisdom, and the priestesses of the village came to her as a great Ranya; yet she was conscious that she was herself but little more than a simple country priestess, having spent but a single year in the little seminary of Annamatri [sp?] in the distant days of her youth, just before it was closed by Adonay. With deep shame, she acknowledged a part of herself which dreaded the coming of real learned teachers for [from] the west, for she feared that the respect of her children would diminish greatly once they were able to make the comparison. "Yet I need not fear to lose their love" she consoled herself "and that is all a good priestess should desire. I should not with to be thought what I am not." Yet her fears were largely unfounded, for long years of contemplation and of painstaking work in helping her pupils in matters great and small had built steadily upon the firm foundation laid by the seminary, and she had grown far wiser than she knew. Aloud she said: "I shall welcome the coming of the learned innocui to our town and to our villages, for they shall work great good among us." Turning her attention to the matter in hand, the priestess fell for a few minutes into contemplation, and then, returning to herself, she declared that since the name he had inherited from his mother was FiaDjane, the silver crescent of the Arianya should, on Kynan's standard, be supported by the bear of Djane. It was also necessary that a wand of office should be made for him, in order that it might pass into the hands of the Lady Marya. The passing of the wand was the high point of the ceremony. Kneeling, the Governor presented it to Madria Kerunna, and was no longer the Governor. Kneeling, the Lady Marya received it from the priestess, and with it the authority over Sain Arien passed to her. She was not, however, titled Governor, for that, as the Amazons said, was an abominable patriarchal name. As she rose to address her people, holding aloft the wand, she was the first Vicar of Sain Arien. Vicar was an old imperial title, which had been common in the middle-world up until a hundred years ago, although it had not reached so far east as Annapolita. The Vicar of a town or region was so called because she was the vicar or representative of the local Princess (the Western empire beyond the shores of the drowned continent being made up of the a large number of tiny nations or city-states), just as the Princess was the vicar of the Empress and the empress the vicar of God. It was perhaps a little incongruous, therefore, that the various independent territories now being established by the Amazons in the middle-world were each governed by a Vicar, though in later years, as the Pax Amazonia found itself compelled to take on the mantle of Empire, they became Vicars in the old, literal sense. The Vicar of Sain Arien was by no means unaccustomed to the making of speeches. She began by speaking of the great benefits which would accrue from the working of this ritual. Many of the villages interpreted this as a promise of good harvests; and indeed that summer the long run of poor harvests in the area was broken by a magnificent crop. She talked of her friendship with the Amazons, and of the Daike Rhien Terysien's promise to defend the Temple of Sain Arien. "These are our sisters," she declared. "Our sisters, our friends and our most welcome guests. Let us show that Sain Arien knows how to greet them out of the bounty of our hearts." There was an enthusiastic response from part of the crowd, but an awkward silence from others. The Lady Marya laughed. "Aye, and Littlewell and Underwood, and Bridgewater..." As the names of the villages rolled off her tongue, wave upon wave of cheers exploded from different sections of the crowd, until all was drowned in a chaos of applause and laughter. Kynan smiled at Daike Rhien, who was obviously enjoying the spectacle. He knew that Lady Marya knew her audience well, and had brought off this little joke largely in order to amuse her. In truth, it pleased the Daike rather more deeply than either of them would suspect. After months of dealing with crushed and dispirited peoples confused and demoralised by the effects of chaos, tyranny and war, or at the best, with people utterly spoiled by the slick, cynical sophistication of the urban matriarchal decadence, how glorious it was to witness the healthy, innocent exuberance of normal, God-loving people. "Sain Arien is sound," she thought, repeating her first assessment of the town. "This is what we are fighting for." The Lady Marya turned to more serious matters, and told the people of the Great Crusade, the liberation of Annapolita and of the middle-world. "The age of lawlessness doth draw to a close in the middle-world, my dear ones, and on the day of the tyrant-wolf doth the sun go down. Henceforth shall the world tread the measure of the Law, according to the music of Eternity, even as it was in the good days of our mothers. And even among us here a new day doth dawn; a new day, my dear ones, and a brighter. Our Lady hath preserved us through the darkness of the night, my gentle people, for She is very merciful. There is one God, one God alone, none other God than She." "One God alone, none other God than She," echoed the people in the time-honoured response. "This day, my good people, this day are we returned unto the full measure of Her Law. Let us turn again unto our Lady. Let us dedicate ourselves to Her anew. Where there were faults and forgetfulness in the lawless time, my dear ones, let them be forgotten. She has forgiven them, for She is very merciful. Let us turn again, my dear ones, let us turn again to Her." From the ground, a group of innocui began a chant of the holy Name, and the people enthusiastically joined in, for they were a devout and warm-hearted people. The Amazon musicians accentuated the rhythm with their drums and bells. The very quality of the chanting told the more experienced of the White Amazons that here was a rich and fruitful soil for the nurture of souls. The chant began slowly and sweetly, becoming faster and louder until it reached an exhilarating climax, and then tapered slowly and sweetly away into silence. When the silence had laster for a minute or two, the Lady Marya made her final announcement. "My dear ones," she said, "thank you so much for kindly coming here. In honour of this most auspicious day, I have made ready for you in the grounds of Mansarian a very small and unworthy feast. I have no doubt that you will find fare much surpassing the paltry offering upon your boards at home, but if you will condescend this night to eat at the table of my house, you would do me great honour." A cheer rose up from the crowd, but the Lady Marya quickly turned the applause away from herself. "All hail the Great Crusade!" she cried above the noise. "Hail! Hail! Hail!" came the response. "Hail the Holy Amazons that shall deliver the middle-world!" "Hail the most saintly innocui, bearers of light into the darkness!" "Hail to the Princess Marianne, and to her worthy Nikraya that she has sent unto us!" "Hail to the Daike Rhien Terysien that is friend to Sain Arien and sworn defender of our holy Temple!" The banquet was a truly magnificent affair. The Daike Rhien had consented to use her charioteer to bring a ranyarani of the culinary art all the way from Annapolita. Mansarian's own reserves, brought out of hiding, were supplemented by provisions supplied by the Amazon commissariat, and an Amazon hunting-party had contributed two wild boars. It was probably the first and only time that a banquet at Mansarian had come as a real surprise to the people. Usually, although pretending to be surprised, in accordance with customary etiquette, the preparations would have attracted attention weeks in advance, and indeed, many town and village people would have been directly and indirectly involved with them. This time, however, with many of the supplies coming from outside, with the work being shared wholly between the Mansarian staff, under the strict surveillance of the seneschal, and the Amazons, and with so many strange happenings and mysterious Amazon comings and goings, the feast quite genuinely took everyone by surprise. Nor had there for many generations been a banquet on such a scale. Row upon row of long tressle-tables filled the great walled garden, each with a fringed white parasol at its head to honour the head of the table, for each of the major households was provided with a table of its own. It was usual on such occasions for groups from the town and from the villages to spend several weeks in preparing "spontaneous" entertainments for the surprise banquets; but since on this occasion that had not been possible, their place was filled by the Amazons. They played western music and performed the dragon-dance. They displayed the breathtaking sword dance in which sword clashed against sword and pelta (the light Amazon moon-shield) with terrifying speed and force and uncanny precision. They gave displays of archery and fire-leaping, but the Nikraya refused permission for a makeshift chariot race. They raised the thrilling warchants of their two legions. "Thy people are practised in the chant, I warrant," said one of the two elder Innocui who had been in the platform in the town square, having made her salutation to the Lady Marya. "In truth, mother," she returned, greatly pleased, "never before have we known this manner of devotion." "Well, ye shall come to know it well before the White Amazons be gone from ye, for it is a goodly way for us in these late times, that have not the wisdom of our mothers." "Truly, we are ever most pleased to receive the ways and counsel of the learned, my mother." The Nikraya approached them and made her salutation. She turned to the Lady Marya. "My Lady, the provisions are all made ready. Our company, in its greater part, doth leave Sain Arien on the day after this morrow; a little number will remain at the town, and a lesser shall go unto each of the villages, in accordance with our custom. Should you require their assistance in the return unto the Law, they shall be at thy bidding, thought I doubt me thou wilt have need. Other, they shall render service unto thy people in keeping with their estate. But their most important reason for abiding here is that they form a little thread in the great web that is spun for the defence of the entire land of Annapolita, and so also for the defence of thine own people. Should thunder in from the East..." "From the East..." interrupted the Vicar. "Aye, from the East. I know well that all thy troubles have come from the West, but the West is now subdued and doth lie in the hand of Themis [Thamë]. Thus Summertide, the war shall move eastward, and shall be harder fought, perhaps, than ever it hath been. We know not but that the storm may return upon Annapolita or upon the other lands at the Eastward of the Western world. Most like it will not, but an it should, these soldiers shall be thy first defence; but they will be swiftly enforced from the little garrison at Annamatri, and a short time after from the great garrison at Annapolita. The Amazons shall keep a good watch; but should any thing troublous be seen by the shepherds on the hills or by any of thy people, let it be made known to the Kefalle who shall have command over all the troops in Sain Arien." "Shall the Daike Rhien be not with us?" asked the Vicar, a little disappointed. "The Daike Rhien shall bide in Annapolita. An there is thunder in Sain Arien, she shall most like be with you." Making her salutations, the second Daike joined them, and after some further converse, she and the Nikraya departed together to watch the swordplay at the other side of the garden. They walked in silence until they reached the enclosure where the mock-battles were taking place. "A passing fine stroke," commented the Daike, as they watched a particularly skilled passage of arms. "Aye, a passing fine," agreed the Nikraya. "It is such skill as this shall bring the East into the hand of Themis [Thamë]." "Yet I do think" said the Nikraya, "that the swordmaid shall not enact so great a part in the taking of the East as she hath done in the Western world, nay, nor the fine-plumed horses, neither." "Why so?" enquired the Daike. "The Easterling is a most dangerous warrior," replied the Nikhail. "When he arose and broke the Wheel of Themis [Thamë], the chivalry of the Western Empire rode forth against him, yet he stood firm and was not defeated. The imperial boundaries were narrowed by his advance until that time a great battle was foughten which was called the Battle of Varga. I doubt not you will mind it from thy school-days. So Varga became the stopping place and the boundary of the Empire. From that day forth, the Empress moved not Eastward into Varga, nor the infidel westward beyond Varga, for it was a terrible battle that neither wished to repeat. The Easterlings that we have thus far met withal have been but a rabble of orgulous malcontents; but now we draw nigh unto the land of Varga, and we shall encounter with the Easterlings proper." "What is his nature," asked the Daike, "and why is he so terrible?" "The Easterling warrior is a footsoldier," she replied, "short and dark and heavily made. He doth carry a great pike or pole-axe, some eighteen feet in length, whose great steel head doth add a further foot. So steadfast is their battle array that they do seem as a phalanx of moving wood, and before their line project not the pikes of the first rank only, but those of the second, third and fourth likewise, like to a bristling porcupine of steel. Behind the fourth ranks, stand those with pikes held upright, in readiness to fill the gaps left by those who fall. And should the onset of the pikes be checked, their ranks will open to let through the axemen. These warriors cary an axe that nothing resembles the light Amazon labrys, but is full eight feet in length of its ashen haft, with a head of great weight which doth end in a sharp point. It hath a hatchet blade afore and a ripping-hook behind, and doth make a wound so loathly to look upon that even our doughty Amazon swordmaids may stand appalled. Wielded by these muscular dwarfs it will cleave through the Amazon helm or breastplate, or even through the heavy armour of the western men as though it were but foil. It will tear through the pelta and arm in a single blow. And with the axemen come the bearers of the morning star, a club five feet in length set heavily with iron spikes about the end, and of the Varganese hammer, which is like to the Easterling axe but that it hath three great ripping hooks at its head instead of a blade. Also they bear a great two-handed sword, thrice the length and five times the weight of the Amazon sword. "A cavalry charge of the Western Empress was cut in pieces by the Easterlings; their horses' breasts riven open by the pikes, their legs swept off by the great axes. I greatly misdoubt me whether even the charge of the Leaguer cavalry could break them; neither would the swift and light-armed Amazon footsoldier fare well in an assault upon that close-packed mass of heavy steel." "Then how may we hope to prevail against them?" asked the Daike. "'Most skillful battle is that in which no blow is struck,'" quoted the Nikraya "most skillful next is that which is won with the least noise." This was the opening sentence of the Nikcoutrei, the great Amazon treatise on the art of war. It was a text that the senior officers never tired of repeating to those juniors whom they were grooming for positions of high command, for it contained the most important principle of their education. They had been picked out for their courage, their steadfastness, their skill and above all, their vocation in the art of war. Now they must learn serenity, detachment and subtlety. Their hot-blooded eagerness for hard fighting must be curbed and refined into a perception of war not only as a science but as an art; not only as an art, but as, before all, a sacred art. The Nikcoutrei was regarded not simply as a military handbook, but as a sacred text; and, this, indeed, was precisely what it was, being in the tradition of dwicoutri, or magdacoutri, "secondary scriptures" produced by great contemplative scholars by the application of the divine Principles found in the Scriptures to some sphere of earthly activity. God created maid with a lesser bodily strength than man, the text explained, that she might fight with subtlety and with the Spirit. Let her once forget the true Way and descend to the use of mere material force, and man would have the advantage, the true Order would be turned upside-down, and the world would be set on the path which must eventually lead to complete materialism and patriarchy. Therefore, the arts of war must be spiritual arts, and the ways of war pursued with subtlety and gentleness. One example of this was the way in which the Amazons were not permitted to slaughter captives or to practise torture in the way that all the patriarchal armies did. To some extent this placed them at a disadvantage, but as their gentleness became well known, they turned it to good account by having their rumour-spreaders extol the good treatment of those who surrendered to the Amazons, and using conspicuously marked chariots to bear surrendered enemies safely off the field of battle. This, together with campaigns of stirring up discontent against patriarchal rulers, often ensured a considerable number of the enemy being removed from the field by surrender without a blow being struck; the more so since many of them were often pressed men. The rumour-spreaders and intelligencers – sometimes specially trained Amazons, and sometimes paid, or even unwitting, agents, were part of an extensive network of "quiet warriors" – the world's first, and probably best, secret service. They probed the enemies [sic] hidden weaknesses, made contact with the Old Believers within his walls, assisted deserters from his army, encouraged rivalries and discontents within it, gave arms and money to rebellious factions, and in a hundred other ways promoted his defeat "without a blow being struck". The Daike smiled, for she was all too familiar with her mistress's meaning. "The path of Shearwind the Trickster may lead us far;" she granted, "But a time must come that we must meet the Easterling upon the field of Nike [Vikhë] the Warrior. How then shall we do battle with the wooden porcupine?" "The porcupine cannot shoot his quills," replied the Nikraya. "I take not thy meaning, my lady." "There is no archer in the world can match the prowess of the Western bowmaid," said the Nikraya. "Her swiftness and unerring aim shall deliver to us the crown of Varga when that the time is come for battle. In our front rank we shall place two or three rows of footsoldiers. Each shall bear two heavy javelins and a great oblong shield. The shields shall be locked together to form a solid wall for the defence of the archers. We must choose our ground so that the Easterling shall be as far a[s] possible hampered in his advance, and as he comes forward, the archers shall fire volley after volley into his midst over the heads of the spearmaids. His great four-horse chariots, though fearful to behold are not formidable. Our light cavalry and mounted archers will prevent them from attacking our line, and if possible, attempt to turn his flanks; though of this latter we hold but little hope. "As the Varganese line approaches ours, the archers must fall back, the spearmaids will discharge their javelins from their slings and then disperse. Then the field will be left clear for the chariots. With the line thinned by the archers, and checked by the impact of the first and second javelins, a sudden chariot-charge, becaked by the heavy cavalry and lancers will be able to penetrate it. Given time, the axemen would still be like to cur the horses in pieces, but they must not have such time. The charge must pass through them as swiftly as possible. Then will come the moment for your well-beloved swordmaids. Against the close-packed foe they should ill indeed, but with his line broke and spread, our fleet and nimble dancers shall have room wherein to whirl and dodge and sting him at their will. Then shall the race go to the swift indeed, I think." Both turned their eyes again upon the swordplay. With the grace and precision of a dance, with the speed of a whirling chariot-wheel, the maids went through their practised motions, drawing wonder and applause from their audience. The Nikraya noted another excellent stroke from the maid who had made the one that the Daike had first remarked upon. "There is a fine warrior indeed," she said. "Aye, my lady," agreed the Daike with a smile. "Her name is Renata. But she, I think, is destined to fight this war without striking a blow." "It may be so," said the Nikraya, gazing upon her with her wise and gentle old eyes. "For all her skill, she was not born to be a soldier. Yet I think she will strike a blow of no small import before her warrior days be over." The great bell of Mansarian rang out over the fields. Great steaming trenchers were being borne out of the house, and the guests began to take their places at the tables. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Amazons in Sain Arien: Parts I, II, and III Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/d5913a294c5c6e570aff732bee9bad68.pdf 7ec1549d173bbce3106e7ce787747c0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (26pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document [In Mr David Kay's handwriting]. The Road to the Future (The closing address, given by Sister Angelina, at the conference entitled "The Re-Emergence of the Goddess at Kensington, [London, Britain] Maia [April 18th - May 15th] 5080 [1979]) This conference has been very much like a kaleidoscope. In a kaleidoscope, many bright fragments of different sizes, shapes and colours come together to form a beautiful and harmonious whole. And this conference, too, has been a phantasmagoria of many different experiences, both artistic and intellectual, covering several different traditions, viewpoints, arts and crafts. But the things in the kaleidoscope would be nothing more than a meaningless jumble if it were not for the mirror (or more exactly, the arrangement of three mirrors) which impress symmetry, order and harmony upon what would otherwise be a mere meaningless chaos. At this conference, the unifying Principle has been the Goddess Herself; She Who is Three in One and One in Threes, and Who wrought order out of chaos at the dawn of time. And from the dawn of time, seven divine Principles have flowed from the heart of the Goddess, like seven streams, from the one fountain; on earth they are reflected in the seven colours of the rainbow, the seven sacred planets, the seven ancient metals, the seven notes of the musical scale and a hundred other sacred sevens. And one of those Principles is Order. In Madrian tradition we call her by the name of Themis. The seasons come and pass in their appointed rhythm; and for those who can see beyond the outward show, a sacred dance is being performed, a ritual drama enacted before our eyes. Each flower, each tree, each snowflake and each crystal develops in perfect accordance with a divine pattern so intricate and is perfect that it is at once more beautiful than any work of art and more complex than the American space programme. And it is this same law, this same pattern, this same themis, to which in any normal society, all the activities of maid are attuned (and maid, of course, embraces man). All of her arts, all her crafts, the way she builds her house, the way she tills the soil, the way she weaves her clothes: none of these things is done haphazardly or at random, any more than a crystal is formed at random. Neither is it done simply in the quickest, cheapest or most efficient way, as it is in an abnormal society like our own. It is done according to a ritual pattern laid down from time immemorial. Why is this so? I think those present who have some understanding of the principles of magic (I think they are a majority) will readily understand why. For they will know that a properly conducted ritual is not simply a game, but something that has a very defina[i]te effect. Imagine, then, the force of a ritual performed not just by a handful of people in a room or a forest for an hour or so, perhaps once in a month; but performed by an entire society for most of the waking life of all its members, over a period of thousands upon thousands of years. And remember that when we speak of a society here, we are not referring to a town or a village, or even to a country, but to the whole world, for the religion of the Goddess was the faith of every part of the globe up until a few thousand years ago. And what was the purpose of this ritual? It was not, for the most part, to attain any material goal, but to bind every soul to She Who has created her; to God Herself. Beyond that its purpose was the same as the rhythm of the seasons, and every natural pattern: to show forth the divine drama; to unite every creature in the dance of the love of the Goddess. For love and harmony and order are one. I would like to read you some words from the book of the Crystal Tablet:* [33] " It is Love that holds the drop of dew penda[e]nt upon a blade of grass, neither flowing forth in watery profusion, but swelling within the unseen urn of its brief harmony. [34] " It is Love that holds the stars within their courses, and all the worlds of the immeasurable cosmos within the harmony of the celestial music. [35] " Truly, all the cycles of the times and the seasons; all the rhythms of the soul and of the mind and of the body: truly, all these flow from the love of our Lady, the Maid, that creation may not decompose, each several member flying away into black eternal chaos." It has been said that the function of a conference is not so much to answer questions as to ask them. And one question before all others has implicitly been asked by the whole of this conference. Not only by the things that have been said and done, but by the very fact that it has taken place at all. That question, put in its simplest form, is: where are we going? Where lies the road to the future? For this conference is more than just an isolated event; it is a symptom. It is a symptom of a very real change that is taking place in the thinking and feeling of many of the most sensitive people in our time; a symptom of a subtle but very defina[i]te shift in the spiritual aethyr which surrounds and interpenetrates our physical world. A conference of adult maids and men meeting together in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century to discuss the Goddess. Of course, it happened last year in California, but then California is California. Anything can happen in California. But in Kensington? [London, Britain] Ten years ago it would have been impossible. Five years ago it would have been wildly improbable. Today it has happened. In its way it is a landmark, and it is defina[i]tely part of a pattern. I would like to relate a few incidents which make clear the nature of that pattern. A little over three years ago, I was part of a group of traditional Madrians living partly near Oxford and partly around the Kentish Coast. The members of this group were thinking and talking about taking the unprecedented step of bringing their religion out into the open, and giving those who had not been brought up in traditional Madrian homes the opportunity of becoming a part of the religion of the Goddess. It is difficult to appreciate what a tremendous step this was if you have never experienced the life of the traditional Madrian community. The beliefs and customs of the faith have been passed down from mother to children for centuries in the strictest secrecy. The whole life of the community is governed by traditional ritual and custom. To do anything which breaks with tradition is something almost unheard of. Now please don't misunderstand me; I am not criticising this attitude in the smallest degree. I know only too well that the value and power of tradition is something infinitely deeper and more mysterious then the profane world can possibly understand. But we believed not only that this was not so much a break with tradition as a return to a deeper and more ancient tradition. After all, the religion of the Goddess has not always been secret by any means. For most of the history of the human race it has been not only open, but the universal religion of the whole world. Also, we believed that what we were doing was in accordance with a new pattern which was about to emerge in the course of human history. That is why we called our magazine The Coming Age. In fact, subsequent events only too neatly served to confirm the pattern. Traditional Madrians have very little contact with the mass-media, so I don't think any of us at that time were aware that a book by Elizabeth Gould Davis entitled The First Sex was sweeping through the women's liberation movement in America and creating radical changes in the thinking of many maids and men who had not previously thought of themselves as feminists. Or that the paperback edition was already beginning to make an impact in this country. [Penguin Books, London UK (1973)]. This book marshal[l]s a vast array of evidence, arch[a]eological, anthropological and historical, to establish three facts beyond reasonable doubt: firstly that human civilisation, in the form of civilised and cultured communities had been in existence for tens of thousands of years before the rise of the patriarchal cultures of the last four or five millen[n]ia; secondly, that these older civilisations were matriarchal - that maids were the heads of households and priestess - queens, rather than warrior kings, the heads of state; thirdly, that almost without exception, all these matriarchal civilisations, in China, in Europe, in the Middle East, in India, in the Americas, worshipped a supreme God, and that She was invariably depicted as female. Of course, this was very far from being new. Apart from Madrian traditions, people had been saying this for over a century, from J. J. Bachofen to Robert Graves (in fact Elizabeth was a close friend of Robert Graves). And the information has always been there in the ancient writers, such as Herodotus, for those who cared to read it. She certainly added some more up-to-date evidence to clinch the case - such as the findings of the Catal Huyuk excavation of the early sixties. But the real importance of the [book] was its impact. For years the facts about matriarchy had been told, but nobody had listened. Now it seemed that they were emerging from the category of forgotten facts, known by the few and ignored by the many. Matriarchy was an idea whose time was coming. In the next few years, of course, we witnessed a tremendous upsurge of interest in matriarchy and the religion of the Goddess. A number of books were published and organisations founded within a short time of each other, all of which were the result of long thought and preparation. To a large extent, this conference is a result of those years of activity. The fascinating thing is that for several years a number of different people, with no contact between them, were all working and thinking along the same lines at the same time. It is beyond the bounds of coincidence. Something important was happening. After centuries of suppression, the world's first religion was preparing to break in again upon the consciousness of the world. I am not saying that everyone involved in this large and rather amorphous movement was aware of what was going on. Probably not. But the movement was far greater than the sum total of individuals who made it up. We are living in one of those rare moments in history when Eternity touches time, and where the seeds of deep and mysterious changes take route [root] in the soil of human destiny. The essence of these changes was neatly summed up by the writer and journalist Stewart Farrar: *2 "...the readmission of the Goddess to Her proper place in the minds of men and women is probably the most significant relig[i]ous development of modern times. I will risk a prophecy, because I profoundly believe that it will prove to be true: that over the coming centuries (or even decades), it will be at Her shrines, increasingly and predominantly, that the mass of humanity will worship." If this [this] is true, why is it true? I think the answer takes us back to the question of themis, order or harmony. I don't think anyone can be unaware today that man (and I use the word advisedly) is flouting the laws of nature to a degree which puts the entire future of the human race in doubt. Natural resources are wantonly wasted; the environment is polluted; nightmarish weapons are created. On a more subtle but no less important leva[e]l, the spiritual environment is being equally polluted. Polluted by making the majority of people do work which has no spiritual meaning, unlike the traditional crafts. By undermining the faith in spiritual and supernatural realities by a shallow and vulgar materialistic pseudo-philosophy incalculated compulsorily by the education system and semi-compulsorily by the mass-media. A friend of mine is an avid reader of children's comics. One of the current stories, set a few decades in the future, depicts a time when there are no more trees or grass, when the parks are stocked with plastic replicas of plants. Where the entire landscape is nothing more than an endless concrete ant-heap broken by a few pseudo-parks. The vision is a horrifying one; but one has only to pause for a moment to see it is no more horrifying, and probably rather less so, than our own cities - and, indeed our industrialised agriculture - would seem to a visitor from a natural society. In that world the people revolt; and in this world too the first signs of revolt are manifesting themselves. On the physical level through ecological, self-sufficiency and similar movements. On the spiritual level by a widespread movement toward exploring spiritual realities. I do not think the return to the Goddess is a part of this movement, I think it is the very heart of it. Everything that is wrong with this world springs from a rupture in the divine order, in the natural themis of human life. And that rupture is not new; it started a very long time ago. It started when the first warrior king usurped the throne of the first priestess-queen, and when the worship of the female God of love and harmony was overthrown by the idolatry of the male god of wrath and war. The real disease of the modern world is not physical but spiritual, as Theodore Koszak has put it: "What, after all, is the ecological crisis which now captures so much belated attention but the inevitable extro[a]version of a blighted p[s]yche? Like inside, like outside. In the eleventh hour, the very physical environment suddenly looms up before us as the outward mirror of our inner condition, for many the first discerna[i]ble symptom of advanced disease within." *3 If we want to cure the disease, we cannot simply concentrate upon the external symptoms, we must get down to the spiritual roots. The fundamental problem is disorder. Matriarchy used to be called chrysothemis: "the golden order", because the Goddess, as we have seen, is the very principle of order, and the order of society which She has ordained is necessarily the perfect order. When we look at the world without the Goddess we see chaos. Because to look at the world without the Goddess is like looking through a kaleidoscope without the mirrors. We see a jumble of physical facts which have neither beauty nor transcenda[e]nt meaning. This is the materialist view of the world, and it cannot do anything except produce a world which lacks beauty and meaning. It has to produce ugly cities and despoil nature because it cannot understand beauty. It has to create spiritually useless work, because it does not know the spiritual meaning of the world. All it can see is a chaotic jumble of physical "things", and all it can ask is "how can we get as much out of them as possible". Even the animals are treated as "things". We all know about the way hens and calves are treated on factory farms. I won't go into the sort of torture they practice in vivisection laboratories, because we have just eaten. This sort of thing is inevitable, and it will get worse, so long as society continues to turn its back on the Goddess. Everything that is good, everything that is humane, everything that is beautiful in the modern world is what we call a legacy; a fund of spiritual capital left over from the time when the whole world worshipped the Goddess. And that capital is running out rapidly. There is only one possible solution, and that is to turn back to the Source, the single Fountainhead of grace, Who is the Goddess. If we do not do that, then all the ecological, political and other measures taken to ease the situation will be like so much straw stuffed into the cracks in a bursting dam. Every action and every thought is a ritual. And when we see matter without Spirit, the world without the Goddess, the fragments without their unifying Principle; and when we act out this vision as if it were true, which is what the whole of modern society is all about; then things really start becoming disconnected fragments; the world starts to fall apart, both the outer world of the environment, and the inner world of our own souls. The ancient arts and crafts and all the ancient wisdom was a sort of white magic devoted to unifying the world with God and with itself. Modern industry and all the false teachings of modern materialism are a sort of black magic, which has the effect of breaking up and fragmenting the world. I have said that the spiritual capital which we have borrowed from our matriarchal past is rapidly running out. One very good example of this concerns Tibet. Tibet was perhaps the last country of any size upon this earth whose whole way of life was based around spiritual principles. This was largely due to the fact that although on the surface she had been patriarchalised, she retained to a very large extent her matriarchal heritage. The Goddess, under the name of Tara, was the most powerful religious influence in the country. To quote from Dr. Beyar's The Cult of Tara: *4 "Tara is the principle superhuman being in Tibet who might be called divine without further qualification. She is prayed to by millions. Her help in adversity is divine. "...It does not help much to search for "causes" to explain this trust in Tara and her eternity... She was real, she was divine. Tara was, had always been, and still is the almighty support of her devotees who address her. In fact she is mightier than Buddhas and Bodhisattvas... To understand something of her cult is to understand something of the mainstay of Tibetan culture." In the country regions of Tibet, a more or less matriarchal structure existed right up until the turn of the century. Savage Landor, who travelled there reported that: "The Tibetan woman is far superior to the man, never shy; while the men ran away or hid from foreigners, the women always received them with dignity, speaking fluently."*5 "In that country, the women are the mistress of the house, the men live in dependency upon them, show them great respect, and treat them with such affection and submissiveness that nothing is undertaken without their consent." *6 As well as a general level of spiritual advancement unparalleled by any other nation in this century, Tibet was also renowned for her respect for nature and compassion toward the animal realm. Of course, the ancient priestess - queens had not reigned for many years and a male dominated Buddhism was the official religion. Very slowly, a decadence was [was] setting in deeper and deeper. But still the ritual power of that country and its way of life was a profound force for good in the world; helping to hold at bay the forces of the final disintegration. Now that country has been ravaged and its traditions demolished by the military force of a China enflamed by Western materialist ideology. We should not be surprised at this, for all traditional teaching, in contradiction to the modern creed of "progress", teaches that each succeeding age within the historical cycle will be darker than the one before it. At the beginning of the last and darkest age, Kali Yuga, or the Age of Iron, which began some 5,000 years ago, first matriarchy was slowly undermined, and the religion of the Goddess corrupted by alien cults and practices, then the ancient faith was supplanted by new invented cults. Each of these new religions contained something of the ancient truth, but slowly, as the age progressed, that truth became more and more diluted and corrupted. New cults sprang up as old ones decayed, each containing less of the truth to begin with and succumbing more quickly to corruption. Now we stand at the end of the age, when ignorance, or blindness to spiritual Reality reaches its point of greatest extension, and when Truth is at its lowest ebb. Yet when the dark age ends, it must be followed by a new Golden Age - a renewal of the chrysothemis, the Golden Order; and the seeds of this new order must already be present in the final stages of the dark age. Whenever I am asked what is the difference between a world ordered in harmony and one which has broken away from it - I mean the really practical difference, I always have to go back to the traditional Madrian communities for an illustration. Of course, these communities cannot be anything like the Golden Order, for this is the Iron Age, but they certainly do give a picture of the difference between a people who see the kaleidoscope with the mirror and a people who see it without. And in many ways the difference is even greater than one might have thought. Many people in the modern world find Madrian ideas and doctrines very difficult to understand until they have become used to them. For their part, the members of traditional Madrian communities find the modern world almost impossible to understand. And when they do get to the bottom of a modern way of looking at something, the answer is often more puzzling than the question. Having explained a modern notion, the answer often comes in the form: "I see... really... well, I wonder whatever possesses then to think [think] that." The difference is, of course, that the modern world sees things - anything, from grass to carpentry, from seals to stars, from myths to maths, in terms of physical facts, while the traditional view sees them in terms of the spiritual cause which underlies them. We may use an image to understand this. Imagine a big, old-fashioned cartwheel. The hub represents Spirit, from which all the manifest universe pours fo[u]rth. The spokes shine forth from the hub like rays from the sun. The spokes may be taken to represent either all the different souls, or all the different things in the world. The rim of the cartwheel is the physical plane where your particular spoke touches the rim that is your body, where your particular spoke touches the hub, that is your Spirit or the Spirit. We can say either, because it is the point where "you" stop being an individual sepe[a[rate ego, and become one with the essence of all things , it is the state of oneness achieved by the heras or saints: subjectively, it can be called enlightenment; objectively, it can be called the Absolute. Both are true, because it is both subjective and objective simultaneously. It is at once the top of your individual spoke, and the centre of the wheel. It is described by Yeats: There all the barrel-hoops are knit, There all the serpent-tails are bit, There all the figures converge in one, There all the planets drop in the sun. *7 Most of us, of course, is neither body nor spirit, but soul. And we exist at once, at least potentially, on countless intermediate leva[e]ls of being between matter and spirit. You will notice by the way, that the hub is often compared to the sun. That is because the sun symbolises the Mother, Who is pure Spirit; while the moon symbolises the Daughter, who is perfect Soul, and who has broken away from the hub in order to lead us back to it. As the original doctrine became corrupted, this was misunderstood, and the Goddess was thought of as being either the moon only (as in the Graeco-Roman west), or the Sun only (as in Japan). To return to our wheel. If the spokes are considered as "things" rather than souls, the point at which the spoke touches the hub [is] the point at which a "thing" is emanated fro[m] the Goddess as a divine Idea. The point at which the spoke touches the rim is the point at which the Idea crystallises in physical matter to form a physical object. The real essence or inner nature of the soul lies in the physical body. And like the soul, the "thing" is manifested at countless different leva[e]ls between matter and Spirit. That is why traditional peoples say that the symbolic nature of a thing is more real than its physical nature. The symbolic nature is manifested at every leva[e]l, right the way up to the hub, while the physical object only exists only at the rim. The rose, as a physical flower, exists only in the physical world, but the complex and uniquely beautiful expression of love, and of union with God the Mother, which is the inner essence of rose-ness exists at every leva[e]l of being. It exists at leva[e]ls where the experiences of redness, softness, sharpness and perfume have no meaning, but each of these qualities will have its precise equivalent, and those equivalents will be gathered together to represent at that leva[e]l the unique and universal archetype of the rose. [Full article: Symbolism: The Wheel and the Chariot, page 18, 19, 20, issue 11 The Coming Age]. Now the historical decline, from the beginning of the Golden Age to the end of the Iron Age, may be seen as a centrifugal movement from the hub of the wheel out towards the rim. Of course, we can never quite reach the rim, for if we did, we would not see things and people at all, we would see nothing but sheer undifferentiated matter. In a sense, modern science is pushing toward this final goal when it seeks to explain everything in terms of pure quality, ignoring all their qualitative aspects, and to reduce everything to numbers. So is modern industry when it treats all people as mere numerical units, interchangeable button-pushers. In fact everything that is specifically modern is a sort of black alchemy, seeking to transmute all the remaining gold which we have inherited from our matriarchal past into iron, so that we may reach the iron hoop at the rim of the wheel. But we can never quite reach it. Or rather, we can only touch it for one brief instant of total and absolute chaos, the momentary hiatus in which the wheel stops turning, before it reverses direction, and the Golden Age is restored. Chaos is the precise word to describe this moment, for the hub, being perfect unity, is also perfect harmony, while the rim, being the point where the spokes reach their greatest separation, is absolute discord. Similarly, the axle-point at the centre of the wheel remains still. This is absolute Deity, beyond all manifestation, the Dark Mother. The hub revolves slowly, throwing out her rays into manifestation. The spokes move more and more rapidly as they approach the rim, corresponding to the acceleration of the historical cycle as it reaches its end-point, the ever more rapid rise and fall of empires, ideas and religions, and finally the frenetic "pace of life" of the modern world, its passion for speed and change above all things. And the acceleration itself accelerates, for as the speed increases, the centrifugal pull becomes stronger. [The following is published in one page on page 15, issue 11 The Coming Age]. Now, the whole difference between the traditional and the modern way of thinking is that the traditional order or themis looks toward the centre for the meaning of all things, while the modern mentality has been conditioned to look towards the rim. And this affects everything that each of them says, does and thinks. I say the modern mind has been conditioned, because it is not natural to look toward matter for explanations of things. When a child asks why there is a moon, she is not really satisfied with an explanation of what the moon is, in terms of physical matter. But if she goes on asking why, she will be met with something like "it just is, that's all. There isn't any why." Now to answer the child's question what, or why, is the moon, by saying that it is a piece of rock floating in space, is a bit like answering the question "why do you look so sad", by going into a long rigmarole about the chemicals in your brain and electrical impulses and so forth. In a sense it is true, but it only describes the mechanics of the thing, and doesn't really answer the question. The essential moon like the essential rose, is something far beyond its physical manifestation on this plane. And it is this essential moon that the child is instinctively after. Hammering this instinct out of her, killing her natural intuition of the spiritual nature of things: this is what is known as education. Now when we move from the modern world, whose whole life is directed toward the rim into a traditional Madrian community, it is like stepping into another world or into another time-period. The whole of life takes on the character of a dance. There is a space and elegance about every activity which, in a way, is the exact opposite of what we call "natural behaviour". For the aim of life is not to express the outward, egoic self but to express the true Self, which is the spiritual Centre of every maid. Every individual is unique, that is why there are different arts, different crafts, different vocations; but the uniqueness of the individual is expressed through the pattern of the dance. It is not a question of everyone being very "spiritual" all the time - it is just a different way of looking at life. In many ways, the expression of emotion is freerer [freer]. The members of the communities are quicker to laughter and to tears; they are able to throw themselves heart and soul into a festival in a way that few modern people can manage. The reason for this is that people are less self-conscious. In the modern world, people are afraid of taking anything too seriously. In Madrian communities, people are aware of being surrouned by eternal Realities. The symbol really is the thing it symbolises, on its own level. We do not say "the cartwheel is a symbol of the cosmos", we speak of "the cosmos in the likeness of a cartwheel"; and the sacred craft of the wheelwright is, in a sense more real than the untraditional mind can comprehend, a re-creation of the world - or, more exactly, a participation in the continuous creation of the world. These are deep and complex doctrines, and there is not time to go into there her; in any case, they cannot really be understood without being experienced. But they do give a key to the life of Madrian communities today, and the seeds of the new order which is emerging from the present chaos. The head of the household is obeyed because she is, on her own level, the surrogate of the Goddess. The household revolves about her as the planets revolve about the sun, or the Geniae revolve about the Goddess. All levels of reality are brought together. In this age, of course, even the best community can be only a shadow of what things were and will be in the Golden Age. Materialism is not merely an attitude of mind; it corresponds to a very real "hardening" or consolidation of the material environment that has been taking place over the last centuries of the iron age. The world has become in many ways a less "magical" place. The ancient writers are often thought of as naive and credulous for believing strange and wonderful tales, and even reporting such events. It is not considered that the very conditions of the terrestrial environment may have undergone changes, and that what is impossible today may not have been so many centuries ago. And since we are speaking only of the degeneration that has taken place within the latter half of the Iron Age, it will be seen that the possibilities open in the Golden Age will be immeasurably greater. There are two possibilities before each of us. Either we lend our weight to the downward spiral, or else we help to sow the seeds of the future. If we choose the latter, the road will not be easy. We must re-think everything that we have been taught by the profane world; we must learn from the primordial tradition a Reality which lies far deeper than the "facts" of the profane world. We must not condition our children to see the pieces without the kaleidoscope. If spiritual truth is true then it affects everything. If one teaches atheist physics, history and geography, there is no point in adding a little "religious" education. Our whole view of the world must be restructured in the light of the Spirit, looking toward the hub and not the rim. It will not be easy, and we cannot do it by ourselves. But if we turn to the Goddess in love, she will show us the way; for "it is love that holds the stars within their courses". All the physical, moral, intellectual and organisational efforts that we make toward the future; not one of them can be separated from the devotional love of the Goddess. Without that love, they will all be as nothing. With it the "impossible" will become a reality. This conference is drawing to a close. Soon we will be going out into the world; and much of what has been said today may begin to seem "unreal". The things we hold dear, the world does not understand, and our minds are in danger of being swamped by the sheer dead weight of its dreary materialist "common sense". Let us remember, then, that the things we have been speaking of are very much hard realities. They have dominated the world for countless thousands of years, compared to which, the reign of the modern materialist mentality is no more than a fleeting moment. And it is fleeting. Already it is passing from us. Already the technological society is beginning to crumble under its own weight, like a weed that has outgrown its strength. All that dull, smug world out there; where will it be in a hundred years from now? Do not forget either that the signs of the times are manifesting themselves not only in a negative sense, but in a positive one as well. This conference has been one symptom of the gradual but deli[be]rate process by which the consciousness of the Goddess is returning to the surface. Things will continue to move slowly for a little time yet. But it has been said, and there can be no question that it has been said truly: there is nothing in the world so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Notes *1 The Crystal Tablet, 33-35 *2 Sut Anubis, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 6 *3 T Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, Garden City, New York, 1973, p. XVII *4 S Beyar, The Cult of Tara, University of California Press, introduction *5 Helen Diner, Mothers and Amazons, Anchor Brooks, New York, 1973, p. 133 *6 Ibid p. 134 *7 W. B. Yeats, Supernatural Songs, No. IV (from A Full Moon in March) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Road to the Future Description An account of the resource The closing address of the Kensington "The Re-Emergence of the Goddess" conference (1979), delivered by Sr. Angelina. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Angelina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f642881a51c434e33c7dd64317395b22.pdf 7d13ce5cb850c16869ce5283fa622fa8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (13pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document An Introduction to the Language of the Rhennes The Rhennes, the traditional matriarchal people of Britain, have been said to speak a different language from the "lost sheep", or non-Madrian inhabitants of these islands. In fact, the Rhennish dialect is recognisably the same tongue as that spoken by modern English or Americans. On the other hand, it is more different from modern standard English than any regional dialect. This is largely due to the fact that changes which have taken place in the English spoken from Mayfair to the depths of Yorkshire and Cornwall have often failed to affect the conservative matriarchal communities. Indeed, in some respects, the Rhennish may appear to be a mixture of several regional dialects; for most dialects retain certain conservative features; thus the Scots pronunciation of "house" and the Irish pronunciation of "meat" (which was current in the time of Swift) and the American inflexion of "gotten" (which could be heard in England in Shakespeare's time) are found side by side in Rhennish. An unfamiliar eavesdropper on a Rhennish conversation would undoubtedly find it almost impossible to follow. Modern English sentences spoken with Rhennish pronunciation would prove a little difficult at first, but the many unfamiliar words and turns of phrase would make it much harder. For this reason, many Rhennes, in intercourse with outsiders, drop into a sort of imitation of Modern English which is jokingly called half-Rhennish; a fact which has led to adaptations of certain Scriptural and other traditional phrases in communities where the old speech has become all but incomprehensible. Mother Alethea, who has often (wrongly) been supposed to be an innovator, was greatly anxious for the preservation of the Rhennish speech and of all the Rhennish traditional narratives. There are, in fact, considerable regional variations within Rhennish itself, but all of these have more in common with each other than with any other English dialect. Another variation within Rhennish is that between High Rhennish and Low Rhennish. The usual explanation given of this is that High Rhennish is that dialect spoken by the Kindred, by scholars, and by certain other groups (the Kindred were once the Raihira – princesses, nobles and warriors – Estate; but after centuries of living within a state not ordered on lawful matriarchal lines, they have become a group of old families defined only by a certain noblesse oblige, and the fact that they have been locally acknowledged as Kindred for many generations), while Low Rhennish is that spoken by the peasants and craftmaids (the word "peasant", of course, is never a term of contempt among Madrians, but rather the reverse. Only the bourgeoisie and the urban proletariat, who blong to no legitimate Estate, and are therefore "outcastes", belong to a social class which is per se contemptible. They are contemptible not because the individuals who comprise them are necessarily so, but because as social entities they have no legitimate existence). But it is not really quite so simple, for there is really no one dialect which can be called High Rhennish and another which can be called Low Rhennish. Both dialects vary greatly from region to region (Low Rhennish far more so than High), and there is considerable transference between them. There are also numerous stages in between the two, so much so, that it can be said that the ideal absolute High Rhennish and the ideal absolute Low Rhennish do not really occur at all. The homely pictorial colloquialisms of Low Rhennish salt the speech of most of the rural Kindred (and most of the Kindred have been rural these thousand years, at least), while the eloquent use of High Rhennish polysyllables in even the most mundane contexts has long been a notable foible of many Low Rhennish speakers, as in a sentence such as "They two cattis be indistinguishable one from t'other on a night so obscure as this." Having said this, we must recognize that High Rhennish is a language of great elegance, beauty and subtlety in which the high matriarchal philosophical tradition has been perpetuated, and which has lent itself perfectly to that particular blend of wit, charm and self-effacing sophistication which is the hallmark of the English Kindred. Low Rhennish, on the other hand, is a vivid and colourful dialect, a language alive and in contact with the soil. Each language continually feeds the other, and in that respect, the two dialects are not only complementary, but mutually necessary. Both High and Low Rhennish are fundamentally intelligent languages, as opposed to the modern use of English by most speakers and writers. Each deals, for the most part in concrete images, pictures and stories, while underlying the thought of each are non-tangible spiritual Realities. This is true of any traditional speech. Modern English, like other degenerate styles of speech, reverses this, for while its thought is limited to the realm of matter, it habitually expresses itself in abstractions and in vague metaphors which are virtually abstractions, since their actual meaning is forgotten, if it was ever known. To take a single example, the term "feedback", which has become a modish word used in a variety of contexts, is a metaphor from audio electronics, yet it is used in a sense almost opposite to its original meaning, since it is used to refer to an articulate response to something or other, whereas an actual feedback in a sound recording system creates a high-pitched screech which cuts out all articulate sound until the feedback is stopped. This may seem a fairly minor matter, and certainly one could point to far more pernicious abuses of language – such as the use of the term "democratic" in politics as a vague synonym for "good", so that practices which are obviously not democratic according to any literal interpretation of the word are called "democratic" by anyone who wishes merely to state that they are good – but the point really is that one begins to use abstractions and vagaries of this sort only when one has ceased to think clearly. Only among a people whose minds are going soggy can anyone get away with declaring a work of art to be "significant" without being immediately challenged by the question "Significant of what?"; or with declaring anything to be relevant without the challenge "Relevant to what?" This sort of loose thinking and loose speaking occurs inevitably when there is no concrete philosophical basis for thought. Meaningless value-words like significant, relevant, progressive, forward-looking, are simply substitutes for a real scale of values and an authentic intellectual basis for distinguishing what is good and valuable from what is bad or worthless (we may note that many modern good-words such as "progressive" and bad-words such as "reactionary" or "out-of-date" rest merely on the vague unspoken prejudice "past = bad, future = good"). On the other hand value-words used within Madrian thought – such as the word "legitimate", used earlier in this paper in connection with the Estates – are never mere carriers of vague prejudice, but always have a precise definition and meaning. The word "legitimate" derives from legis, law. To say that something is legitimate is to say that it is in accordance with the law, to say that it is illegitimate is to say that it contravenes the law. Nor is there any question about which law is being referred to, for there is only one authentic law, the Law of God; the themis [thamë] which She has established for the ordering of all human activities. Thus, things are judged not by considerations of their fashionability or their direction in time, nor by their "relevance" to some tenuous Zeitgeist, but only by their accordance or otherwise withthe unchanging and unchangeable canons of the Absolute. This may seem to lead us a little away from the subject of Rhennish dialect, but in actuality it does not, for a conscious[ness] of supra-physical Reality and of absolute values underlies every word spoken both in High and in Low Rhennish, just as materialism and relativism underlie every word in the flaccid jargons spoken by the television pundit and the factory operative in the profane world. Nor is the lack of any concrete value-words in modern language unconnected with, for example, the high rate of adultery among all social classes in the profane world, and the utter lack of any real sense of wrongdoing with which it is carried out. Language, culture, morality and intelligence (or the lack of it) are all intimately bound up, and a people cannot remain degenerate for long without their language degenerating also; not can they for long speak a degenerate language without succumbing to its corrupting influence. Conversely, there can be no reform of life without a reform of language, nor any reform of language without a reform of life. We have concentrated here upon words which have directly to do with values, since their implications are easier to analyze without digressing too far from the immediate purpose of this paper, but it must be understood that all the words of everyday speech, together with the particular ways in which they are used carry profound implications as to the world-view which underlies them, and inevitably act as powerful psychological agents for good or ill. In a healthy traditional language, the "essential" and "substantial" poles of its existence (represented in the present case by High and Low Rhennish respectively) are on the one hand its intellectual basis, preserved by its philosophical, ritual and courtly use, and on the other by its rootedness in the life of the soil and the crafts. As with Essence and substance on the cosmological level, it is the continual interplay of these two elements which maintains the vitality and the very existence of the language. The great epic narratives which arise at certain points in the development of a culture always represent a wedding of the two styles. The "High" forms may appear more directly intellectual, but in fact, the "Low" style, being rooted in the phenomena of nature and the crafts, which, in a traditional society can never be considered in separation from the informing Realities which they express, is no less so, although it may be less complex; and wherever "High" speech begins to abandon the simple, natural images which as a part of its heritage from the "Low", it is moving toward degeneracy. Modern developments in English speech, like modern developments in many areas, represent a parody of the true development of language, with the place of "High" speech being taken by the jargon of sociology, psychology, pseudo-philosophy and the journalese of the mass-media, and that of the "Low" by the argot of the New York slums and the criminal underworld, together with items of adolescent pop-slang gleaned from all over Britain and North America, all of which is systematically taught and popularised by means of the television. We may note here that slang of all types is always associated with rootless urban populations whether proletarian or bourgeois, and is intimately related to the cult of change and progress, being motivated by a desire for novelty and for increasing intensity in language, and a wish to keep up with fashions. Traditional societies in undisturbed times have relatively settled speech patterns, and change takes place very slowly. We may see, then, that the "High" element in modern English speech development springs from the "intellectual" perversions of false philosophy, while the "Low" element springs from the emotional perversions and distorted way of life of those elements in modern urban society most vulnerable to its disruptive influence: the young, the dispossessed, the ethnic minorities and those drawn to the fringes of urban sub-culture. It is noteworthy that, as with musical fads and styles of dress, slang phrases which begin by being obviously crude and decadent are quickly established in common usage by continual media exposure which begins by being snickeringly shock-mongering and quickly becomes commonplace. So far we have confined ourselves to the relatively "exoteric" aspects of language, but we must understand that deeper issues are involved in the form and structure of language than merely the philosophy and assumptions which underly it. For every human language is, as the Scriptures tell us, a descendent from "the first, the mother language" [1 Teachings 1:4], which is itself the manifestation of the single Divine Word. The Word, which is pure Intelligence, corresponds to the Point from which all manifestation unfolds. Every created thing, in its highest essence, that is to say, every celestial Archetype is a word of God; the expression of an Idea in Her mind. Thus, the primordial language is the sum of all possible acts and entities conceived in perfection. Thus also, while from the earthly point of view it is natural to conceive of names as being the consequences of things, from the absolute standpoint, things are the consequences of names; for all things were known and denominated by God before (in the sense of being manifested) they were. And, indeed, it was "the naming of their names" by which their manifestations took place. Perfect human language is thus a microcosm of the primordial language; and we see the creation of this microcosm in Creation I, 11, where the naming of the things of creation by the first maid reflects her Mother's creation of them, even as her own being reflects her Mother's Being; and it is achieved by virtue of her knowing that same "cunning" which the Mother knew in verse 5. From this it follows that the words of the perfect human language are very far from being mere arbitrary conventional "symbols" for concepts. On the contrary, each word is a perfect depiction or "imitation" of the thing which it represents in terms of sound, just as a painting is an "imitation" in terms of colour. But just as traditional sacred art, unlike modern "realistic" art represents not the physical "shadows" of things, but the supre-physical Realities which are their essential being, so the original human language is not an imitation of physical things and events in terms of sound (which is manifestly impossible) but rather the manifestation in sound of the unspoken Language, whose words are the essences of all things (even as sacred music is the manifestation in sound of the unheard music of the spheres). Now, the breaking of this original language into different dialects was obviously a cardinal stage in the fragmentation and degeneration of language. The major families into which language split – i.e. those which use completely different root-words to express most concepts – may be likened to radically different styles of music or painting, which use fundamentally different formal conventions (for all sacred art is formal and stylistic) to express the same eternal verities. However, the groups divided by such radical differences are fewer in number and greater in extent than might at first be expected. The Indo-European group, for example, to which English belongs, contains Sanskrit and all its derivatives (Hindi, Bengali, etc.), Russian and all the Slavic languages, Latin, Greek, all the Teutonic languages, all the Celtic languages, together with the Iranian and Lithuanian families, and, of course, all modern European languages (with the exception of Basque) which are all descendants of one or more of these. It is a notable feature of Rhennish that its pronunciation of words in many cases is far closer to the root-language than is modern English. For example, most question-words in the [L]atin languages begin with (qu) – quod, quis, quando, que, etc. as do such words as question, quiz, enquire, etc. These words have their equivalents in the Teutonic languages, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. In English, as in Icelandic and German, the (k) of the (kw) sound is represented by a hard h. Now in modern French the sound has been corrupted by dropping the (w), so that que and qui are pronounced (ke) and (ki), whereas in modern English it is the (k) that has been dropped, so that what, when and where are pronounce (wot), (wen) and (wer) by most speakers. Rhennish, on the other hand, retains the (h), and in many regional variants, retains it in a hard form (some Rhennish speakers write the word Rhen as Kren – though a pronunciation so hard is the exception). Who, on the other hand is pronounced (hou) in modern English, while Rhennish continues to pronounce it (hwo). Again, the retention of the rough-breathing in the middle of the word daughter leaves it much closer to the consonantal structure of the root-word which gave rise also to the Sanskrit duhitri. The pronunciation of "one" as (one) as opposed to (wun) leaves it closer to uno and its equivalents in all the Indo-European languages, and the retention of the old form tehen for modern ten, bearing in mind previous comments on the function of h, leaves it closer to Latin decem, Greek deka, Sanskrit dacan etc. One could list countless other examples; but in any case, this approach is a little oversimplified, since it does not take into account certain laws of sound-change which have operated between the various groups of Indo-European dialects. The point is not so much that Rhennish approaches closer to the original human language (although in some respects it certainly does), for all English is very much an Iron Age tongue, but that Rhennish represents a legitimate development of the original language, whilst modern English language, like modern English society, has, since the "Renaissance" been formed by influences which are the very reverse of legitimate. We have said that English is very much an Iron Age tongue; but we might go further and say that English is the ultimate Iron Age tongue; for the British Isles represent the far west of the old world (the Americas are for many reasons a case apart; and in any case, those parts of them which are having the most profound effect upon world history are English-speaking), and the modern aberration is specifically western in character (as befits its relation to the end of the present world-era; the west being the land of the setting sun). It is no coincidence, then, that these islands were prominent in the birth of both industrial capitalism and Marxist communism (although Marx was born in Germany, most of his theoretical work was done in the British Museum), the two ideologies (which at root are but two faces of the same coin) which dominate the modern world. By the same token, it is no coincidence that English is the most specifically Iron Age of all the Indo-European dialects. The earliest Indo-European dialects are highly "synthetic"; that is to say that they have extremely complex inflectional structures which make it possible to convey a large amount of information in a single word. This can be seen by a cursory glance at a Latin/English or Greek/English parallel text, where a passage in the original language must always be rendered by a much longer passage in English; while a passage of Sanskrit must usually be rendered by an English passage twice or three times as long. This descent from the highly concise and synthetic original forms has taken place in all Indo-European languages. The Neo-Latin romance languages (primarily French, Italian and Spanish, all of which are dialectical variants of low Latin), for example, gradually rejected all case-endings and passive verbal forms. The Latin amabor, for instance, is expressed by three words in Italian and French: io sarò amato; je serai aimé. It would require four in English: I shall be loved; for English has travelled further along this path than any other Indo European [sic] language, having retained scarcely a dozen of the many hundred inflections characteristic of the original Indo-European speech. At the opposite pole stands Lithuanian, a language even more ancient than Sanskrit, and which, unlike Sanskrit, was still a living language up until the invasion of Lithuania by the Russians, and its cultural devastation by means of mass deportations and other disruptive measures.* Lithuanian retained more of the original inflectional system than any other language spoken in modern times. It is worth noting in this context that Lithuanian-language folk-culture contains material of the profoundest metaphysical significance which is undisguisedly matriarchal in character. See "Old Lithuanian Songs" by Martin Lings in The Sword of Gnosis (Penguin Metaphysical Library). The matriarchal character of the songs is unmistakable, despite the author's attempts to gloss over it. It is no coincidence, then, that in these latter days English should have become the most widely disseminated and most rapidly spreading language of the world, and the lingua franca of international commerce and diplomacy; any more than the sudden destruction of Lithuanian as the world era enters its final phase is "accidental". What is the significance of the descent of the Indo-European language group from synthetic to analytic, of which English represents the terminal point? From the most "outward" point of view, it is evidnt that with the continual intellectual decline which takes place from the beginning to the end of the world-era, people are striving for ever simpler and simpler language forms. Ancient Greek is to the modern mind a maze of case endings, while among classical Vedic scholars in India – people who are already speaking Sanskrit-based dialects – it normally takes ten years of intensive study to master Sanskrit grammar. But while the drive to simplification necessitated by intellectual decline provides the outward cause and motive-force for this movement, far deeper and more significant issues are involved in the inner meaning of the change. The progressive "fragmentation" of the language is an image of the descent or unfolding of manifestation from the primordial Unity to the multiplicity of material nature. Specifically, it is related to the corresponding phenomenon in the human mind – of which, of course, human language is primarily the embodiment. In the first Age, maid was possessed of a unitive vision of Reality; a vision direct and immediate which required no rational formulation. She could "take in the universe at a single glance". The earliest philosophical treatises were terse to the point of being utterly enigmatic to later generations. The next generation could not understand them without commentaries expanding and elaborating their meaning. The generation after that required commentaries upon the commentaries, and so forth. The work of the Pallas Academy today is purely a matter of "translating" the one primordial Doctrine into a form yet more elaborate and explicit for the benefit of these last generations. Thus, the "translation" of a passage from one generation to the next requires progressively more words, even when it is expressed in the same dialect. It is fitting, therefore, that the same process should take place in the very structure of language itself. The fragmentation of language accompanies also the fragmentation of ideas. In the first Age, maid sees only the First Principles; she requires no other science, for the knowledge of all things is contained within these; it is only when she ceases to see them sufficiently clearly that the secondary sciences – applications of the Principles to the things of nature and to human uses – become necessary. Here again, we may see that the fragmentation of ideas in the human microcosm mirrors the macrocosmic process of manifestation, in which things descend, or unfold from the level of principial, unmanifest Divine Ideas, or Archetypes into all the ramifications of manifestation on the various levels of matter. At its lowest levels, the fragmentation of ideas reaches a state at which the Principle is wholly lost to sight, and only the appearances of multiplicity are seen; this is the standpoint of modern materialism or scientism, as described in the first paper of the Pallas Academy's Foundational Diploma Course: "The unitive nature of metaphysical knowledge stands in sharp distinction to the fragmentary and ever more "specialistic" tendency of profane studies, and (since the outward characteristics of a phenomenon are never merely 'accidental') symbolises the antithetical spiritual 'directions' of the two systems of knowledge: the one directed ultimately toward the central unifying Principle 'from whence all comes, whereto all must return' [1 Teachings 2:26]; the other toward the chaos and indistinction of brute matter." The pyramid and the wheel are both traditional symbols of manifestation. In the first case, we see the descent from the single point of the apex toward the square base (representing the fourfold nature of matter) large enough to contain countless points. In the second we see the spokes raiating out from the unity of the hub, becoming ever more widely separated until they reach the rim. In either case, the descent is from unity to multiplicity and separativity. This is precisely the process mirrored in the descent of language from synthetic to analytic; and indeed, this is what the very words mean: syn-thesis, a putting-together; ana-lysis, an unloosing or separating. In the realm of ideas, there is no reason why the process of analysis or breaking-down should not continue indefinitely without aberrating from the Truth (although it is metaphysically necessary on other grounds that the cycle should realise its most inferior possibilities). The "descent" of metaphysical exposition into ever lower and more fragmented domains is an act of Grace precisely analogous to our Lady's descent into the nether regions; and indeed, it is by Her Sacrifice that it is rendered possible, for She is the Mayaranya: the primordial Teacher, by Whom, through Whom and in Whom all earthly teachers teach (which is the reason for the traditional reverence and devotion accorded to the Ranya). For just as our return to God is a paradox wrought by Her sacrifice, so the exposition of the Truth which can be known only through the unitive Vision in the absence of that Vision is a paradox, and therefore a miracle. And it is a miracle wrought fundamentally through the medium of language. Out Lady's declaration "I have forged thy words into a crystal mirror that they may reflect the Truth" [1 Teachings 1:6], which follow upon Her explanation of the degenerate state of human language, refer primarily to the revelation of the Scriptures, but they also refer in a secondary sense to the rendering of human language to be a fit vehicle for the exposition of Truth; and indeed the two senses of the passage are inextricably linked. Now just as the descent of our Lady into the nether regions is for the purpose of raising up the souls fallen into those regions that they may return to God; so the descent of metaphysics – and therefore of the language which is its substantial support – into the realms of ever greater fragmentation takes place solely in order to make some part of the Truth intelligible to the minds of the age in which it finds itself, and to lead them out of the fragmentary state in which they are and back to the unitive Vision, which is the goal of all metaphysical endeavour. So long as this is the end in view, the process of fragmentation, or analysis, can continue indefinitely and still remain legitimate. It is only when the purpose is lost, and analysis is pursued as an end in itself; the fragmentary nature of things in manifestation is mistaken for reality – as happens in the materialist or scientific world-view – that analytical thought becomes aberrant. Now it is precisely in this that Rhennish differs from modern English. It is no less analytical in structure (except for the retention of a handful of extra inflexions, such as "gotten", which are of no practical significance); but the analytical function in Rhennish has never deviated from its true and legitimate purpose. It remains a language rooted in metaphysical Reality, both in the underlying assumptions of its idiomatic form and "style", and in its legitimacy, in pronunciation and other matters, as an authentic – though very distant – development of the original human language; and therefore a microcosmic reflection of the unheard Language which contains the inner essences of all things in the form of divine Words or Names. *In the '40s and '50s of the present century. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Introduction to the Language of the Rhennes Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/06b88ada3f2855c0f0afa83646035d52.pdf 390dbfdfd14967cb2fc54b9b349f7132 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (18pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Pattern of History and the Quest of the Soul Every religious tradition informs us that the Golden Age or Garden of Eden lies in the past, and that humanity has for long grown ever more distant from absolute spiritual reality. The modern mythology of progress, on the other hand, which has been called 'the religion of the newspaper' preaches a strange inversion of this, holding that we have developed from a superstitious primitiveness, and are rapidly approaching moral and physical perfection on earth through the multiplication of material acquisitions. The earliest civilisations known to archaeology were controlled by women, ruled by priestess-queens, and devoted to the service of the Goddess. Although these civilisations existed for many thousands of years, we possess relics only of their declining centuries when the people were beginning to fall away from their highest religious ideals. Certainly there was a harmony between society and the highest forces of creation of a kind that has rarely been dreamed of since. Nevertheless, certain areas of life were becoming 'secularised': certain elements of materialism were creeping into popular thought and practice, and although these were so far removed from the materialism of our own time that a modern mind might well think of them as forms of the highest spirituality, nonetheless the earliest ideals, which saw the whole of society as one great temple to the Goddess, and all of life as a single and exuberant act of devotion, were declining. And with this decline came a corresponding decline in cultural achievement. Even when the decline had gone so far that nomadic patriarchal tribes from the east had been allowed to make considerable inroads into religious thought, and a second wave of more savage patriarchal invaders had found it possible to overrun large areas, suppressing matriarchy and introducing the cult of the male god of wrath – even at this stage, those states which remained matriarchal maintained a culture whose remains have provoked effusive tribute from even the most soberly academic of historians. Thus, comparing matriarchal Crete with the surrounding male-governed states, the normally unenthusiastic Harold Hauser writes "...what a difference in the whole conception of art! What freedom in artistic life in contrast to the oppressive conventionalism of the rest of the Ancient-Oriental world!" While the art-historian Mrs. Groenwegen Frankfort writes "Here and here alone, the human bid for timelessness was disregarded in the most complete acceptance of the grace of life the world has ever known." Jacquette Hawkes describes the queen-priestess's [sic] palace at Knosses as having "...a residential style, a domestic civility and convenience that seems to anticipate European palaces of the Renaissance and after rather than imitating its contemporaries in Egypt and the Orient." In the language of progressism, it was some three thousand years 'ahead of its time'! Yet perhaps more important than all these things are the qualities which the matriarchate lacked. Miss Hawkes has described how contemporary male rulers surrounded with huge painted scenes of battle and bloodshed. Prisoners bound and writhing, severed hands and severed heads are displayed not only on paintings covering walls and stairs, but also in a great variety of carved objects. This form of decoration – the glorification of violence which has characterised the patriarchate through practically all of its existence – is found not only in contemporary Europe and the Orient, but as far afield as Central America. "And yet in Crete," writes Miss Hawkes, "where hallowed rulers commanded wealth and power and lived in splendid palaces, there was hardly a trace of these manifestations of masculine pride and unthinking cruelty." The difference between these two cultures is best expressed by saying that one was a spiritual culture and the other is a material culture. In one culture, even the architecture expresses the 'grace of life'. In the other culture, even the Supreme Being is represented as an oriental potentate. It is true that at certain times the later religions did recapture certain of the truths of the original religion. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between the two kinds of religion which is expressed in a very profound symbol – the unpronounceable Name of the Goddess. This Name is represented by the three letters I H V (the Trigrammaton). When the earliest priests of the patriarchate set out to masculinise the Godhead, they did a very revealing thing: a thing which, consciously or unconsciously, symbolised the inmost nature of the culture which was to dominate the world for the next five thousand years. They added one letter to the Trigrammaton, thus forming the Tetragrammaton, I H V H. Deity was no longer expressed by the spiritual number three, but by the material number four. The full significance of this can best be understood in the light of the spiritual history of that group of souls which make up humanity. When intelligent creation first turned from the Goddess, the universe was translated from the sphere of ideal forms or Divine thoughts into the realm of matter which includes not only the level of dense material which we call the physical world, but also the etheric and other subtle planes. This separation from the Goddess was not to be permanent, but as by her own choices and actions the child had strayed, so, if she was to retain her essential freedom, by her own choices and actions she must return (it is to make this possible that the holy Maid has come to us). At this time all souls were at a much higher level than now, living on the subtlest planes and still very close to the Goddess. Since then every soul has taken its own direction – some descending to lower planes to incarnate in human form, others coming back into union with the Goddess, and multitudes of others moving through every level of existence from the lowest to the highest. Life on earth, too, has been subject to continual change. At the beginning humanity was still close to the higher realms, sensitive to etheric currents, and to the mental and emotional vibrations of others, able to see 'spiritual' entities and to bring about changes in physical matter by a simple operation of the will. The powers of individuals have never been uniform, and at every time there have been some possessed of the highest faculties; but there is always a general level, and because of the sensitivity of the individual soul to the psychological atmosphere about her, she is rarely able to rise very far above that level. In our own time the level is very low. At the height of the last matriarchal period, however, humanity reached a peak of achievement. Both culture and human faculties were brought to a high point of refinement. It is difficult to describe exactly what took place at that time; but one way of putting it is to say that idea was much closer to actuality than it is now. All our actions begin with an idea and consist of the attempt to bring that idea into actuality. In the Divine Mind, every idea is at once actuality – that is what we mean by Divine creation. We are told that in the beginning 'the daughters of the Goddess' – intelligent creation – possessed a measure of this divine prerogative. As a creature grows further from her Goddess, so her ideas and her actuality grow further apart. We may also say then that humanity had in the period of which we are speaking come very close to the Goddess – for the more a soul is in harmony with Divinity, the more she is in harmony with all things, and the more all things harmonize [sic] with her will. This is the highest meaning of magic. This high level of culture was attained by the dedicated cultivation of the spiritual. The ideal of beauty was applied to every area of life, for only the beautiful was fit for a gift to the Goddess; and all life was to be given to Her. The ideal of perfection governed everything – from the tallest building to the briefest gesture of the hand, each thing must achieve perfection after its own kind. When this is understood, we may see how a decline was possible. Why should those who have a complete magical control over the things about them ever choose to lapse from that state? Why should the choose hardship and effort in place of a life of sublime grace? Because the effort entailed in maintaining themselves at this level was inconceivably great. Because the closer we come to the Goddess, the more She demands complete perfection. We are released from the physical demands of life that we may meet demands of a higher and purer nature whose fulfillment is immeasurably more satisfying than anything we now know, but also immeasurably more difficult. Our Lady demands that we become the perfect and resplendent creatures that we were when She first created us. She leads us patiently, step by step; She does not at any time demand more of us than we are able to perform – but neither does She demand one whit less. Our Lady is pleased beyond measure with our first faltering turning to Her. She is delighted with every loving act and each small sign of progress. But She is only satisfied with perfection. There can be no standing still on this path. Either one is moving forward or one starts to slip back. As soon as one ceases to make moral effort, idea and actuality begin to drift apart and the psychic and magical faculties begin to lose their sharpness. This is not a punishment any more than the faculties themselves were a reward; it is a simple matter of cause and effect. Where idea and actuality separate, the world becomes for all practical purposes more 'solid'; its material is more intractable; and we are increasingly driven to the use of physical intermediaries between ourselves and the matter which we would affect rather than the direct employment of the will. At its most sophisticated the use of such intermediaries becomes an advanced technology. It is ironic that such technologies are claimed to increase human control over the environment, for while in one sense that is certainly the case, in the deepest sense the reverse is true. The exclusive study of the 'objective' physical conditions of the world brings about precisely the psychological conditions which promote the continuing 'solidification' of matter. It also tends to foster an attitude of mind which precludes any serious spirituality and therefore drives people yet further from the Goddess, Who is the fount and source of all creative activity. Must we say, then, that the achievement of the matriarchal age has been completely lost? No, for not only did that period help many souls to refine themselves until they could leave the world and continue their upward journey in the heavenly spheres, but also, every true aspiration to perfection is a precious creation that continues to exist in a realm beyond time and place. This is another and more immediate question which emerges from our brief survey of the pattern of history: for those of us who have remained in the lower planes and in the cycle of reincarnation, is it much harder in this present age for us to come closer to the Goddess? There is a twofold answer to this question. In the first place, it is true that insofar as we have drifted further from out Lady we have a greater distance to return. But it is also true that the farther we stray from the light the fainter it becomes until we can no longer see it at all, and must be lost to flounder in eternal darkness; or even if we should catch a glimpse of it, the tiny increase of brightness which would come from much arduous striving toward it would be of such small comfort to our souls that we could not find the courage to continue. That, in the nature of things is the situation in which we must find ourselves. And yet so great is the love of our Lady for Her children that She could not allow it to remain so. She must come to the assistance of Her children. But how can She, Who is pure unbounded energy and abundance come into a place tinged with restriction and limitation? To put it another way, how can She, Who is pure good, come into a place which contains evil? How, in short, can She come into that place which by its very definition is that-place-where-She-is-not? The nature of that problem is made more difficult for us to understand by the fact that we think mostly in the language of the materialist culture. One the material plane it is easy for a mother to pick up her straying child and carry her back home. She compels the body, but she does not compel the soul. She picks up the body and puts it where it ought to be, but she cannot pick up the mind and put it where it ought to be. She cannot make the child think what she ought to think, feel what she ought to feel, like what she should like and dislike what she should dislike. The mother can teach and encourage the child, but she cannot do these things for her – if she could the child would quite literally cease to have a mind of her own. We could not speak of it being for the child's own good, for the child would simply have ceased to exist as a person. Now on the spiritual plane there is only soul – we have no body that may be carried. Our Lady cannot take us to Her, for is She did so, She would destroy the essential freedom which gives us our existence as intelligent personal beings. We must come to Her of ourselves. It may be asked why She may not come to us, but this too is a question born of material ideas – for coming and going are the only ways of speaking, for there is neither time and space in the spiritual world. The choice that each of us has made from the beginning of our separation was that we should be apart from the glory of Her light and energy. She cannot annul that choice without annulling our personal existence. The distance between ourselves and the Goddess is not real space, but the outward spiritual manifestation of our inward spiritual rejection of Her. It was necessary, then, that She should come to us shorn of the glory of Her light and energy; that She should put Herself on the same spiritual plane as us by making the same choice that we have made – by rejecting Herself. Thus She came to us in the person of Her Daughter. The coming of our Lady is symbolised in the story of Her nativity, and the terrible Act of divine self-rejection in the story of Her passion and death. We cannot ever understand the full meaning of this Act, but some insight may be gained by meditation upon these words from the Easter [sic] Liturgy: She Who is life and life alone, the quintessence of life, Went to death for our sakes; She Who is all and only light Gave Herself to be cast into the profoundest darkness; She, Who is wholly one with the Mother, and is the Mother, Who is the glance of Her eyes and the breath of Her mouth, And the strength and cunning of Her hands; She alone suffered the most terrible severance That we might be reunited. Through this sacrifice has our Lady come to us so that we need not be without Her love even in the lowest depths of fallen creation, and even when we cannot open our eyes to Her light, we have but to stretch out a hand with faith into the darkness and it shall be taken by another hand infinitely strong and infinitely gentle; the hand of One Who has suffered more deeply than we can ever suffer; the hand that shaped the universe. The answer to our question, then, is that we are in any age able to turn to our Lady and to receive Her love, 'so far as we are able to contain it'. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that it is ever harder to turn to Her and to keep Her image before us as we are increasingly surrounded by a leaden atmosphere of dull materialism and receive no encouragement on any side. Materialism has increased throughout the history of the patriarchate. Although it has been a continuing process there were two major religious shifts. The first was when Christianity replaced the Classical religions – the patriarchate could no longer understand a purely spiritual account of divine Actions, and had to imagine that the divine Sacrifice was an actual historical event – also with this went the worship of our Lady under the names of the classical Goddesses. The second was the so-called Reformation – attuning of Christianity to the mechanistic minds of those who initiated the factory system; over-urbanisation and all the other trappings of the last phase of materialism – along with this went the destruction of the worship of our Lady under the name of Mary. It may seem, then, that this flight from the Goddess into materialism might continue forever, and that the souls caught up in its current might be eternally lost. To earthly eyes it may appear so; but in its final stages, the advance of materialism falls subject to a law stated in the Oracle of Changes thousands of years before the dawn of the patriarchal age. This is the law of Climax and Reversion which states that as any temporal movement reaches its point of greatest extension it begins to change into its opposite. We can see how this works in the case of patriarchal religion: the rationalistic spirit of its most extreme form has increased to the point where it has destroyed its own beliefs and ushered in a period of general irreligion – with protestantism [sic], the destructive vibration of Christianity reaches the point at which it shakes itself apart. Yet all the values of civilisation have their source and meaning in religion – divorced from this source, they are but empty husks to be swept aside by the criticism of alienated minds which are brilliant in their destructiveness, but can offer no positive solutions. They speak of 'social conscience', but cannot answer the question of why there should be a society in the first place; they talk of 'human happiness' but cannot say why human beings should exist at all, or what a human being is – how much less can they know in what true happiness might consist. Their 'science' can answer the question 'how' with considerable accuracy (thought even here its limits are severely marked) but it cannot even ask the question 'why'. Life divorced from an understanding of its religious meaning becomes increasingly purposeless and void; that is what is happening to the present society – with irreligion the snake of patriarchal-materialism bites it own tail and begins to devour itself. There is a still deeper reason why we cannot be carried downward forever on the tide of materialism; it is also the profoundest reason why no soul can ever be lost. Because this concerns the highest spiritual truths, it can only be expressed in a symbol. We are told that the highest state of existence consists in beholding the perfect beauty of our Celestial Mother; living in the Divine Image. As we move away from Her, existence becomes less and less like that image until, should we go as far from Her as it is possible to go, at the 'bottom of the universe' we should see a vision so dreadful that to compare it to the most hateful nightmare of high fever were but to make a mockery of it. It is the absolute reverse of our Mother's image. This vision is the most terrible shock that the created soul can sustain; yet although it is an experience of unmitigated horror, its evil is turned to a good purpose, for at the sight of the true face of Evil, every soul is filled with loathing, and must turn to flee back our Lady. This is the final safeguard against 'damnation' for no soul, seeing evil in its absolute form, can fail to hate it. The absurd doctrine that Deity will allow the soul to lose her essential freedom at this point so that she cannot turn, but must suffer eternally is the cruellest of all blasphemies. Though she has the furthest possible distance to travel to her Mother, yet the Daughter, who, through Her sacrifice, has penetrated even to the lowest depths, is waiting to comfort her, and to help her upon her way. This is not to suggest, of course, that human society has collectively plumbed the uttermost depths of Hell, for this can only occur to the individual soul. But a shadow of that awful vision is creeping across the modern mind, and some of the more sensitive souls are already experiencing a revulsion from it. In this revulsion, they are turning again to our celestial Mother. And it is here that we see the true miracle of our Lady's grace. It is part of Her promise that those who love Her shall never lack a way to turn to Her. The most perfect way in which an earthly creature may turn to Her is by participation in Her divine sacraments, but when, due to the laxity of Her servants, these were suppressed by Her enemies, She was called by the names of the pagan Goddesses. When these too were suppressed, She too for us the name of Mary, Maris Stella, Regina Coelis. When this cult was suppressed, still there were the folk-beliefs and popular Marian devotion. And now even that is taken from us, the darkest hour seems upon us – but look again. The light has not vanished, but grows stronger; the sacraments themselves are openly performed once more. The wheel has reached its point of farthest extension and can but return. The waxing has begun. --- Note: The term 'spiritual world' used in this paper should not be confused with the 'spirit world' of the mediums which might more accurately be called the 'psychic world'. It refers to the highest plane of fallen existence which intersects with the lowest plane of perfect existence. The most refined souls have their whole being in this sphere, but all actions of intelligent souls on any plane have spiritual significance and therefore operate also in the spiritual world. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Pattern of History and the Quest of the Soul Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/05c74f5d548be3b99f9a9d9f9db1cbf4.pdf f99a6be661d9cb282e78cc08eb9b4181 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (2pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX An enigma of modern psychology understood in light of the Madrian faith. Modern psychology has been a mixed blessing. Insofar as it has increased awareness of levels of mind beyond normal waking consciousness, it has done humanity a great service, but insofar as it has tried to explain these in purely material terms, it has attempted to deprive humanity of even such glimpses beyond the 'natural' as nineteenth-century scientism allowed. One truly significant aspect of the psychoanalytic method, however, has been its recognition of the importance of myth. Even Freud, the most materialistic of psychoanalysts, realised that in order to express the emotive and psychic quality of a psychological situation as well as merely describing it intellectually, one must harness the archetypal depth of myth to one's purposes. He did not realise, though, that the psychological level of myth is inextricably connected with far deeper levels of spiritual meaning, and that one cannot use one without unconsciously bringing in the others. It is because of this archetypal depth that the idea of the Oedipus complex has had such a profound effect on modern thought – despite the fact that most of its details are incorrect. Baldly stated, the idea of the Oedipus complex is that nearly every man has within him the repressed and therefore unconscious desire to kill his father and marry his mother. The evidence upon which Freud came to this conclusion was correct; but Freudian theory is founded upon a thoroughly materialistic world view – the belief that human beings have no souls, but are merely 'naked apes.' This gave rise to two prejudices which distorted the interpretation of the evidence: 1. The prejudice that we cannot have had any existence previous to this life – and therefore all feelings held from an early age must originate in childhood experience (or even 'womb-experiences.') 2. The prejudice that we have no higher or spiritual impulses – and therefore all motivation can eventually be reduced to animal instincts – hunger, aggression, sex, etc. The Oedipus story is, in its origins, connected with the early stages of the patriarchal revolution (see footnote). On the surface level, it is a chronicle of an attempt to overthrow Madrian-Matriarchal society and religion, and the tragic consequences which followed. But as the overthrow became complete, the story took the form of a paradigm of the feelings of the deep unconscious of every person – a longing to return to the Goddess, and a bitter resentment against the cruel and arrogant 'father' god of wrath, and the repressive social order set up by his followers. When one realises the tremendous emotional power of past and present Madrian devotion, and the tender and delicate relationship which is built up between the aspiring soul and her Goddess, it is easy to understand the depth and bitterness of the psychological trauma when she feels herself rudely thrust aside by a coarse and violent-tempered 'god' claiming first to own and possess the Goddess, and then denying Her existence altogether. Under the influence of the first of his two prejudices, Freud, who saw every fairy-tale queen and king as types of mother and father, of course interpreted Jocasta and Laius in the same way. Under the influence of his second prejudice, the only motivation he could come up with for the whole things [sic] was his good old standby – sex. And because of his emphasis on sexual (and purely heterosexual) motivation, he could not conclude that women could also have 'Oedipal' feelings. He therefore invented for women the 'Elektra complex,' a pitiful afterthought which has made no real contribution to the understanding of psychology. The Oedipus complex has become a household word because it expressed something which people instinctively felt to contain a great truth – but how many people have even heard of the 'Elektra Complex'? The fact is, however, that the so-called Oedipus complex not only applies to both sexes, but applies more strongly on the whole to women, because they tend to be more spiritually developed. The sexual aspect of Freud's theory, and of the patriarchal version of the Oedipus myth itself are both typical of the spiritual immaturity of masculist culture. The primary act of communion is the union of the female soul with female Deity – not because all Her worshippers are female, but because the soul itself is female. The matriarchal Celts taught that upon death the soul took an 'angel' form, and that all 'angels' were female. The patriarchal Greeks and Romans spoke of their souls as 'she.' Only Christian dogma ended this with its unsophisticated doctrine of bodily resurrection after death. (Incredibly, this doctrine is still officially held by all the major Christian denominations to this day!) The Freudian version of the Oedipus complex has two extremely harmful effects. Morally, its effect is at one with that of puritan patriarchalism – it both crushes and innures; making people feel 'sinful' because of the wicked thoughts which they are unconsciously harbouring, and making them feel that since they have wicked ideas which they can't control, they aren't really morally responsible anyway. The second effect is to help establish repression as a condition of life. One's most basic desire is to kill one parent and marry the other. One cannot possibly do that, therefore one's most basic desire must be repressed. Emotional life is to be founded upon frustration from the beginning. Once we have understood the real nature of the desire, we see also that it can and must be fulfilled. We must overthrow the male 'god' and all the materialisms and puritanisms that follow in his train. We must return to the love of Our [sic] Lady, the one true Deity. * Footnote. See Robert Graves, "The Greek Myths," Penguin, vol. II, pp. 9–15. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Oedipus Complex Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4a935439f4037d049341c799beb959a1.pdf cb18227482bfa7531f5ca48ec68b9219 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (24pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Normal Life The Problem Profane society is abnormal. A society with no aim or purpose except material acquisition either individual or communla is an historical oddity. It occurs from time to time; usually at the decay of some great world-order. It happened during the last centuries of the Roman Empire and during the last centuries of the Babylonian Empire. It is happening today. Even during patriarchy, it has been usual for the structure of life (and particularly of peasant life, which has been the life of most people throughout history) to be based primarily on spiritual rather than material considerations. The profane myth that human history is the story of a prolonged struggle for control over the environment and the betterment of material conditions, leading from the caves to the modern technocratic utopia, is not only refuted by spiritual knowledge (which tells us that maid began her earthly history as a spiritual creature having perfect control over her environment, which she only lost by her gradual descent into matter); it is also refuted by a simple study of history, which shows that for the average person in the average century life was neither rich nor poor, and she had better things to think about than the betterment of her material conditions. A normal society is normal not only in the quantitative sense – that it is by far the most usual and frequent type of society – but in the far more important qualitative sense; that it is a society striving to manifest the norm or pattern of fallen humanity laid down by the Divine: that pattern by which human life is rendered as perfect as possible within the limits of its fallen condition and the level of its decline into matter, and by which human activity and society acts as the best possible instrument for the liberation and spiritual advancement of each individual. No patriarchal society can be truly normal in this sense (nor even, considerting that the vast majority of human history has been matriarchal, in the quantitative sense), but a thoroughly profane society such as the one prevailing in both eastern and western Europe (the minor differences of ideology between one materialistic system and another are of negligible importance from an overall spiritual point of view) and extending throughout the world by economic and/or military force is abnormal to a quite extraordinary degree. Every physical act has a spiritual meaning. Every word we speak, every action we make, as well as the environment with which we surround ourselves, has a definite effect upon our spiritual nature and on the whole "spiritual atmosphere" in which we exist. The cumulative effect of all our actions, words and gestures, together with those of the people around us, together with such things as decor, music, entertainment, clothes, modes of transport and the countless other "soul-shaping" influences to which we are constantly exposed, is to build into us an almost unbreakable pattern. This is because our dual physical/spiritual nature is so constructed that it cannot act or be acted upon on one plane without a corresponding action on the other. This fact is used by a normal society in order to build up patterns which lead the soul back to its true spiritual home, not only in a relatively limited number of periods set aside for woship or contemplation, but through every action of her everyday life. This, indeed, is the norm or pattern of human life laid down by the Goddess from the beginning. The pattern is built into the very structure of life on our planet. The divine Mysteries are continually expressed through the cycles of the seasons and of the moon. Every human community, however far it may have strayed from strict spiritual truth, has recognized these facts and enshrined them in its religious rites and in the rituals of everyday life. Every human community, that is, with the solitary exception of the specifically profane society. Superficially, it would seem that the great mistake of profane societies is that they are able to see only the outward and physical results of human activities, that they completely ignore their far more important spiritual aspect. In lloking at human existence, they miss the central and salient feature (its spiritual reality) and focus wholly on what is merely accidental, merely the medium through which it is expressed; like the one who, seeing a great painting, should comment only on the quality of the canvas. But it must not be forgotten that every material phenomenon is in essence an spiritual phenomenon, including materialism itself; and while the human architects of the profane society are for the most part quite ignorant of the inner meaning of their own actions, the spiritual forces which stand behind them know only too well what they are doing. This is evidenced by the fact that the results of profane activity are never "spiritually neutral", but rather the whol momentum of profane society is geared to the undermining and destruction of the relationship of humanity with the Divine. Technological society systematically severs human contact with the seasons, taking the vast majority away from the land, mechanising what little agricultural work remains, creating work which has no seasonal variation of any sort. Natural rhythms are supplanted by mechanical rhythms. The cult of speed is inculcated in every area, creating reflexes of haste and superficiality which are directly contrary to the habit of contemplation and deep thought. To the same end a constant barrage of noise, and a constant stream of mass "entertainment" are maintained. Traditional forms in dress and custom, which usually preserve some trace of the profound spiritual principles upon which all dress and custom were once based, are systematically eradicated, even where they pose no threat to "efficiency". Similar examples are to be listed in every area of life. Every act is a ritual act with a ritual effect; and the effect of this profane ritual (or anti-ritual) is to create a great network of discordant vibrations which are wholly destructive of spiritual harmony, both in the individual and in society as a whole. Although profane society is not by any means a new phenomenon, its successive manifestations have increased in intensity throughout recorded history. The decadence of the Babylonian empire was a relatively local occurrence. Roman materialism, using its undoubted advantages on the physical plane, expanded over the whole of Europe, north Africa [sic] and the Middle East. Nevertheless, not only did it leave untouched vast areas of the globe, such as the Far East and the Americas, but since it had no great effect on the actual methods of agriculture, the areas at any distance fromt he main Imperial centres retained in many respects a way of life unbroken by disruptive influences. As the Empire fell victim to its own innate spiritual dissonance, and came to its inevitable conclusion, there was a break-up of the great metropolitan centres and a massive flight to the land, where the more traditional life-style provided the basis for a return to the relative sanity of a "normal" patriarchal society. During recorded history, there has never been such a thoroughgoing attempt to permeate profane structures throughout the world. Every major area has been taken over, the life of the land has been undermined, and even the smallest pockets of resistance are being systematically eradicated. Tribal traditions are destroyed in Africa by contralised bureaucracies under the guidance of east or west European neo-colonialists, the mountain fastnesses of Tibet are invaded by China under the banner of a western materialism. Indeed, wherever any vestige of a normal spiritually-based life-style survives, it is fighting a losing battle against the economic and political forces pitted against it. The patriarchal religious organisations, even where they do represent a genuine spiritual concern, have too little spiritual knowledge even to understand what is taking place, and for the most part lend their support to the very forces which are destroying them in one form or another. By accepting the division between "religious" and "secular" life, the patriarchal religions have compromised the very principle upon which religion is based and undermined their own foundations. It is no coincidence that this contradiction lies at the very foundation of that religion which has been most bound up with and implicated in the development of modern profanity, in the words "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". Nothing belongs to Caesar, because all life belongs to God. If Caesar is given anything, there is no logical reasons why he should not have everything. Which is exactly what has happened. But when a civilisation is spiritually disrupted the seeds of its material destruction are already sown. That lesson is clear both from spiritual knowledge and from history. Anyone who has given the smallest study to the ecological crisis facing modern civilisation over the coming century will realise how close that destruction is in physical terms, even assuming that the nightmarish arsenals of nuclear and other "advanced" weaponry are not unleashed upon the world. People who have studied the subject are constantly amazed that governments with the facts of almost unavoidable disaster before them simply treat the problem as if it did not exist. What they cannot know, studying the subject from a purely material standpoint, is that this problem is not in itself the disease which is destroying profane civilisation, but merely the physical symptoms of a far greater spiritual disease; and that even if catastrophe could in some way be circumvented, without a complete spiritual re-orientation of society, it would only be a postponement of the inevitable. From a long term spiritual/historical perspective, what is far more disturbing than the fact that profane society is in its final days is the fact that it has spent those days in destroying all the things which might provide human life with continuity after its demise. Unless a very sudden change of direction takes place – of which there are no signs – there will not be any remnant of a normal life-style left in any part of the globe to which the refugees of the collapsing civilisation may flee for shelter and which may become the basis for renewal. It is this which makes the modern phase of profanity more dangerous than any of its predecessors. Yet even this is not a mere "accident" of the material level. Even in this a definite pattern can be traced. Ever since the ending of the matriarchal period (which can almost be termed a "second Fall"), there has been a steady and continual decline or downward spiral. Each profane phase has been more intense and more widespread than its predecessor. Each "recovery" after the inevitable downfall of the profane civilisation has been less complete, incorporating religions even further removed from the archetypal faith, and forms of society ever farther removed from the authentic Norm. We have now reached the extreme point of descent, at which we are confronted with a sort of mirror-image or inverted parody of normal world-order. During the matriarchal period (except in the last decadence) a single faith was held in every part of the world. Throughout the various phases of matriarchal civilisation over countless thousands of years, the one religion was that revealed by the Goddess from the beginning of earthly existence. Although social forms in different times and places varied over this vast period, each one was essentially normal, in that it was based on absolute spiritual principles and always judged every action not by its outward result or "efficiency" but by its spiritual or ritual effect.* After the "second Fall", spiritual Truth was fragmented. Different civilisations took up different aspects of the Truth and allowed others to drop. Everywhere the essential Centre and guiding image of the one Goddess was cast aside. Thus the one complete Religion was replaced by a variety of partial religions. Every patriarchal society abandoned the Norm, but each fell further from it or came closer to it, passed through profane phases and quasi-normal phases according to the vicissitudes of each particular culture. Now, for the first time since the matriarchal period, the world adheres to a single faith, a dogmatic scientistic materialism completely closed to any form of spiritual reality (it matters little whether the adherents of this faith pay lip-service to the masculist religions, or rather to the burnt-out shells of them); and the whole world stands in the same relationship to the social Norm: that of complete rejection and alienation. The long process of decline is rapidly approaching its ultimate point: the total inversino of the normal state of human existence. After this there can be no new "recovery", for the ever-dwindling spiritual residue left over from the matriarchal period will finally have been exhausted. The human race is rapidly approaching spiritual extinction; and extinction on the spiritual plane would, of course, be mirrored immediately on the physical. The instruments of this physical extinction are already in place, awaiting only the touch of a button. Is there any escape from this extinction? In the strict logic of cause and effect, there can be no escape. But we must not forget that the sacrifice of the Daughter permeates the whole of fallen creation, and that through this, the mystery of mercy may always overrule the logic of causality. Through Her death and resurrection, every death contains the potentiality of a resurrection. Even now, She is actively making available the means of a new rebirth. The religion of the matriarchies has once more become a reality on earth. The seeds are being sown from which a new world may arise out of the ashes of the old. But the Goddess cannot save us without our active participation, for that would be to destroy our free will. She is making the way ready for us, but we must take it. This means firstly that we must return to Her spiritually; but it must be a return which involves not only an intellectual decision, but a radical re-orientation of our whole lives. Secondly, we must begin to lay the foundations for a rebirth of the normal lifestyle. This means beginning to construct a way of life based upon ritual and spiritual principles; one in which outward activity is directed not only to outward aims, but is continually "referred back" by its traditional form to the centre of all being. The transfer from abnormal life to normal life is in essence a transfer from living "on the surface" to living "from the centre". The Solution: first principles The ways in which we may begin to recover the normal life will vary with the situation of each person or group of persons. No full attempt to realise the active life can be made outside the context of a community, or at least a relatively large and self-contained household; and between the ideal community and the most unfavourable individual circumstances, every intermediate stage will present its own peculair problems and advantages. Here we will attempt only to give certain fundamental principles. There are two forms of the normal life: the active life and the contemplative life. Of these, the higher, and in the fullest sense the more active, is the contemplative life. In this life the soul is fully active and moves among the highest spheres. The activity is not "intellectual" in the profane sense (i.e. exclusively concerned with the lower faculty of reason), nor is it emotional; it is a raising up of the self to the plane of pure Intellect, or pure apprehension of Absolute Reality, "changeless, beyond the impermanent flux of time" [1 Teachings 12:6], that is to say, "behind" the purely relative events or "shadows" of the material world. This activity of pure Intellect is expressed in the Teachings in the words "then shall mind rise up into soul and soul breathe the breath of Spirit" [1 Teachings 12:23]. It is, however, an extraordinarily strenuous activity as well as requiring a special aptitude (that is to say, a special state of moiraic** [werdic] development), and is, therefore, only the vocation of a relatively small number of people. Our main concern here will be with the active life. Whereas the contemplative life penetrates behind the veil of matter to the Absolute Reality that lies beyond, the active life remains within the flux of material events. However, it is fully aware of the relative nature of these events, and realises that they exist only by virtue of the external Cause and Ground of all being. Therefore no material objective is regarded as an end in itself, but rather, all outward activity is seen as the expression of inner Truth. Contingent existence is continually referred back and re-connected with the first Cause from which it flows and upon which it depends. The contemplative life and the active life are in no way opposed. Rather they are complementary, although not equal. It is said that the contemplative life is the elder sister of the active life, guiding and protecting her, and also teaching her to grow up in her own likeness. For the ultimate aim of the active life (although it is not necessarily to be achieved in the present incarnation) is to transcend outward activity and penetrate the veil of matter; for all truly normal activity leads eventually to the same point. The active life is sometimes called the "slow way", or the "gentle way". Nor should too rigid a distinction be drawn between the two lives, for all outward activity, in so far as it is authentically normal must contain at least a minimal contemplative element. Its very ritual pattern is a constant "reminder" of the eternal Truth which underlies it. Furthermore, certain outward activities, particularly in the sphere of artistic expression, are wholly or partly contemplative disciplines, whose creations in a normal society are judged not by their "originality" or individualistic self-expression, but by the contemplative realisation of the Whole that shines through them, as expressed in the saying: "not I, but She that creates through me". This true art is practised both by contemplatives and by those in active life (usually under the direction of contemplatives). Which raises the converse point, that even the strictest contemplative is, by the very fact of inhabiting a material body, necessarily involved in some degree of outward activity, and that by her very presence, as well as by her spiritual ministry, she makes an important, not to say essential, contribution to the normal active community. There is a third life, which may be called the passive, or passionate life. This life is lived according to no Principle, but is merely bent upon maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. This life is, strictly speaking, sub-human, since it relinquishes the free will which is the essential characteristic of humanity, making the soul the passive plaything of external influences, biological drives, and physiological reactions. The passive life may be exceedingly "active" in the outward sense at times, but this is not the authentic activity of the soul, but merely a reaction to stimuli. The soul is active only in the sense that a log is active when borne by a rushing torrent. It is this perversion of the active life which constitutes the whole life of abnormal societies. This life is doomed to a continual frustration, since in its constant round of outward activity it is desperately seeking a depth of peace and satisfaction which, by its very nature, is not be found in the flux of outward things, but only in the Reality which underlies it. In the first instance, a considerable part of the development of the normal lifestyle will be negative, since we must begin to cut off the channels by which the passive life is inculcated into us by profane society. The difficulty here is that our natural inclination to take the line of least resistance is always working against us, since the passive life is by definitino the line of least resistance. The false self is naturally inclined towards the passive life. That is why the introduction of western attitudes and lifestyles into relatively normal eastern societies has often broken up the traditional way of life even when it was not enforced upon the people compulsorily, merely by the power of "temptation". We will put ourselves in a very vulnerable position if we underestimate this power, and we will do wel, as far as possible, to remove ourselves from it. One particular example of this lies in the profane mass-media, particularly television. The very nature of the media, quite apart from anything they may actually say, is so constituted as to inculcate a profane world-view. They are designed to concentrate upon change, novelty, "news", in other words, to fix the consciousness exclusively upon "the impermanent flux of time" [1 Teachings 12:6]. The visual nature of television is designed to fix the mind on outward "things", rather than on fundamental principles, ideas or contemplative truths. These faults are quite apart from the specifically profane and materialistic scale of values which underlies every word written or spoken, the more or less dogmatic assumption that only the outward events of the physical world are "real", and that they exist by and for themselves, with neither cause nor purpose beyond them. This is no less true of those who profess a religion, for except when they are speaking on specifically "religious" subjects, they invariably express views indistinguishable from those of the materialist, though perhaps with a few "religious" catch-phrases by way of decoration. They have no specifically spiritual analysis of the world. These may seem merely negative evils, but all evil is essentially the negation of good, just as all cold is the negation of warmth. Evil is not an entity in its own right. The profane media inculcate a whole view of the world designed to entrap the soul within the outward flux and blind her with the veil of matter. There is a temptation to feel that since we realise these things, the media can have no power to persuade us, and therefore can do us no harm, although they may harm others. Ironically, this is based upon a fallacy which has its roots in profane rationalism: the fallacy that "intellectual" persuasion (in the profane sense) is the only danger. The answer to this lies in the Teachings: "Thoughts of the mind pass not away, nor vanish into air. For every thought is a builder in the subtle world that lies about you." [1 Teachings 11:1–2] Each time we expose ourselves to particular thoughts or currents of thought, structures are being created or strengthened within the psychic and astral material of our subtle bodies. This last principle is one of the keys to both positive and negative action in the construction of the active life. To put it another way, the material world is really a realm of symbols rather than realities. If those symbols reflect the Reality which underlies material existence, they participate in its quality of realness. If, on the other hand, they become severed from it, they become like the arbitrary scrawls of an infant on a piece of paper, devoid of significance. It is necessary, therefore, to exclude negative influences and to construct positive ones. Grace, rhythm and a certain formality are the keynotes of the active life. The modern use of language and gesture, for example, fosters a casual and "outward" approach to life. Here one must be careful in the use of terms. What is certainly not wanted is a "formality" of the kind cultivated by the governing classes of late patriarchal societies, but rather the easy and natural formality of the central matriarchal period: gestures of respect, such as the reverence, formulae of speech. One recalls the simple and natural use of "Mari be praised" on referring to the homeliest blessings, and the everyday use of invocational forms. The remembrance that all words are a species of magic ("I am ... between the lightest word of greeting and the thought from which it flows": Teachings [1 Teachings 11:35]) is a guarantee of a formality of the correct type, since the instinct for correct speech is latent in every human being. Nevertheless, language as a whole is a very involved subject, since the whole modern dialect, and indeed the late patriarchal languages as a whole are very far degenerated from archetypal language, which, very far from having its origins in animal squeaks and grunts, as profane mythology suggests, was a direct manifestation of Divine Intelligence on the particular fallen plane which we inhabit. There can be no question of the sudden creation of an artificial language. We must work with the languages we have, allowing the Madrian communities to develop first their own dialect, and gradually, over several generations, their own distinctive language. Insofar as this language develops out of an authentically normal way of life, it will be a sacred language, having retained and purified that which is true in contemporary languages, replaced that which has been lost and discarded all that is false. The fostering of developments of this sort is another reason for the isolation of the community, so far as possible, from profane influences. The slowness of this process should not be a source of discouragement; firstly, because it is one of the marks of abnormal society that its thinking never extends beyond the next generation, owing to its immersion in the cults of speed and immediacy, secondly because there is no implication that the very earliest forms of purified speech will not be an immeasurable improvement on current profane language. Very much the reverse; once the real nature of language is understood, and that understanding is put into practice, we have already stepped over the boundary which divides normal speech from profane speech. We are encamped, so to speak, in sacred territory; the task that follows is the building of a permanent citadel. Clothes, decoration, forms of recreation, etc. should never be devoid of higher meaning, for that would be to imply the self-existence of material things. This is not to say that, for example, our stories and poems should all be "religious" in the restricted sense which that term has acquired in profane society. On the contrary, all authentic art whether "folk-art" or "high-art" has a metaphysical dimension; the genuine fairy-tale is always an allegory of the soul's quest (it is the characteristic failure to understand this – or at a deeper level, the unconscious realisation of it – which has induced modern society to banish the fairy-tale to the nursery. It was never written for children alone). So-called "realistic" art, on the other hand, has for its "moral" the self-existence of material events. The distinction between art and craft is also false, based on the one hand on the profane cult of "originality" in art, and on the other, upon the degeneration of craft into mere "production". In a normal community, both art and craft are the expression of primordial principles, with traditions of form and style governing every aspect; which far from limiting the expression of the craftsmaid, provides her with that field of expression within which alone she can convey genuine meaning. Spiritual leadership and direction is particularly important in the process of distinguishing harmonic forms of expression from dissonant ones, and in creating cohesion within the community as a whole. Profane society, while imposing an increasing uniformity of lifestyle and activity upon all its members, together with a continuing "standardisation" of the artefacts and influences which affect their everyday life, encourages a lack of discipline in all matters of abnormal behaviour and a disregard for all forms of courtesy, respect and obedience on the personal level. This is calculated to strengthen the passive life, by making the individual increasingly subject to impersonal stimuli, while simultaneously undermining the willed control of outward actions which is the essential characteristic of the active life. On the esoteric level, it also helps to prevent any workable alternative to profane society from emerging by ensuring that personal discipline is absent and genuine authority (which is always based upon spiritual principles) is confused with the tyrannical (because unfounded) pseudo-authority of profane society. Thus the vast majority of "alternatives" founded on purely secular, or inauthentically "spiritual" bases, have collapsed in a welter of conflicting personalities. While it is unlikely that a Madrian community would make this elementary mistake, it is essential that a sound authority whould run throughout the community, and that no concessions be made to the falsely "libertarian" conditionoing of profane society (the express purpose of which is to destroy the liberty of the soul by making her "passion's slave"); while at the same time, that authoirty should be constantly referred back to its spiritual bases and not exercised outside them, otherwise it will degenerate into mere tyrannt of the profane order. Crafts and work which is in tune with the rhythms of nature are best suited to a normal community; and it is essential that an entirely new rhythm should begin to pervade the community as a whole. A slower rhythm; a rhythm suited to the human being and her natural environment rather than to the machine; a rhythm which will welcome the re-telling of old stories without craving for novelty or novels, which in all things is released from the necessity for ever new stimuli. A new simplicity and a sense of wonder in simple things, which is in a sense a refining of the perception until it begins to see the unity underlying all things. The profane rhythm of the working week must give way to the sacred rhythms of the moon and sun. These rhythms are an expression of the childlikeness enjoined upon us in the Mythos. They are nurtured by the ritualisation of life, and by the setting up of patterns in dance and song and ritual drama. Above all, they will be fostered by the habit of contemplation, and the presence within the community of at least one person pursuing the fully contemplative life will be of inestimable value. Touching only on principles, we have said but little about the actual practices which a community might establish. Some of these will be suggestes in the companion paper to this, to which this paper really forms a preface. Yet the principles enunciated here will prove fruitful if applied contemplatively and prayerfully to a living situation. They may be summarised in three words: live from the Centre, harmonise, control. They are perfectly expressed in the following passage, and in the whole of the Teaching from which it is taken: "It is not possible that a flute should play at once two tunes. Nor may any maid pursue at once true wisdom and the false. Therefore, be you attuned to the music of Eternity, and dance within the rhythm of the Mysteries and the seasons. Let your soul be simple, that she may be a mirror of perfect love." [1 Teachings 3:43–5] *Which, incidentally, was as successful in achieving happiness, peace and – within the limits prescribed by a non-materialist society – prosperity as civilisations wholly devoted to these temporal aims have been unsuccessful. **Moira [werdë] is the stream of moral/spiritual causality which continues from one incarnation to another. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Normal Life Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/2c0cbb1198203e7763210b674d77a0fb.pdf 4524d5e22a43862311e1ad8e5dc34c6b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (11pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Matriarchy and the Nature of Ritual In choosing to discuss the subject of ritual, I feel as one who should attempt to pull a long blue thread from an intricate and many-coloured tapestry. For the subject of ritual is closely interwoven with every other subject of religion, and the subject of religion is interwoven with the whole of life. Even to say this is to say something of importance on the subject; for there has been an increasing tendency over the last four hundred years to regard ritual as something external to the real matter of religion – something which has been tacked on and which can, without difficulty, be altered or removed. The reason for this is not difficult to understand, and in understanding it, we will provide ourselves with a key to the whole phenomenon of masculist religion. It can be expressed in the following words: "If we are to have a religion, it must be a sensible system of rational propositions which do not interfere with the rationality of the world. If there is a God, She must remain neatly in Her heaven – there must be no point at which She makes real contact with the real world." But ritual is precisely such a point. It is an intersection between time and Eternity; between space and the Infinite. A meeting-place of cosmos and Creatrix. As malekind became more and more pleased with the sight of his own reflection in the shallow pool of his rationalism, he became less and less able to understand this absolute contact with the absolutely Other. There is a passage in The First Sex which is often quoted by Madrians and frequently greeted with surprise: "When man first resolved to exalt the peculiarities of his own sex, muscularity and spiritual immaturity, he adopted the policy that reality meant tangibility and that what could not be seen or touched did not exist... by crushing every manifestation of supersensory or extrasensory truth and worshipping only sensate matter, man made himself a mere biological organism and denied himself the divine ray that once upon a time woman had revealed to him." "But surely," it is said, "surely all the great masculist religions are a living contradiction of this". But to say this is to misunderstand the origin of masculist religion and society. It did not appear one morning, all complete and shining in the dew. It was the result of a long slow decline from the highest point of Madrian-matriarchal civilisation. Certainly patriarchy came into being through sudden and violent revolutions, but these could take place only when the Matriarchates had become sufficiently decadent to allow them to. Neither did the decline finish with the patriarchal revolution. It goes on to this day. Religion is the fundamental experience of humanity. If we could completely lose it, we would cease to be truly human. The whole drift of patriarchy is away from religion; but it has never been lost. The essential spiritual deposit inherited from matriarchal Madrianism has become more and more diluted as the patriarchal religions have 'progressed'; but it is only to the extent that they retain something of that deposit that they can continue to be called religions at all. The development of patriarchal religion and culture is not constant. Life the forces of nature, it ebbs and flows. It goes round in circles – or rather, it goes round in a spiral, for every time we arrive back at the same point, we are one a lower level. This decline takes two forms which are outwardly different, but inwardly are identical: the masculinization of religion, and the drift towards materialism and eventual atheism. In the beginning the one Goddess stood alone. She is One and She is Three. This is the fundamental fact of all religion. Her life, Her death, Her resurrection: these are the fundamental Mysteries of all religion. Here, in stark simplicity, in utter purity is the one Truth which lies behind all later religious formulations. The earliest deviations from this Truth may seem harmless enough; they involved usually the introduction of a son or consort of the Goddess, always in a very modest and unassuming capacity. Now the danger, and the destructive quality of these deviations was not their religious impurity. There is no innate tendency in the human soul to worship a male god; it is a highly artifical and unnatural form of worship which only comes about when all avenues to the Mother have been blocked off by force or by social conditioning. Even then, it is only a blind and desperate way of striving towards Her. Therefore, there was no danger of the spontaneous growth of an idolatrous cult of the son or consort. Except in the most arid spiritual climate, the son is not a religious motif. And it is precisely in this that the real danger lay. It is only into a religion that is becoming ossified that one can introduce an image totally devoid of real religious content. Further, the introduction of such images accelerates the ossification and creates a downward spiral; for those who have a genuine religious sensitivity and might have reformed the structure find themselves confused and alienated by the harsh and jarring notes which have become a part of the Faith. These tender and delicate souls will be among the first to be driven into a secular aestheticism or a private and uncommunicative mysticism, or any of a hundred other refuges. Increasingly, religion will pass from the hands of the religious into the hands of the religiose. It will become a 'civic religion'. It will represent 'social realities' rather than Absolute Reality. In the Dark Ages which followed upon the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity very nearly perished altogether; and when the great Christian revival came at the dawn of the mediaeval period, it was spearheaded not by the cross of 'Christ', but by the holy image of the one Goddess, and the name of Mary. Elizabeth Gould Davis writes: "The church seemed doomed to failure, destined to go down to bloody death amidst the bleeding corpses of its victims, when the people discovered Mary. And only when Mary, against the stern decrees of the church, was dug out of the oblivion to which Constantine had consigned her and became identified with the Great Goddess was Christianity finally tolerated by the people." From this point, Christianity divided into a worldly and totalitarian civic religion on the one hand, and on the other, a vast popular devotion to our Lady, under the name of Mary and of certain other saints (such as the Irish St. Brigit or St. Bride, under whose name continued the Celtic cult of the Goddess Brighde). The final turn of the spiral began with the Protestant reformation. Again, a rigorous return to the cult of the Death and Resurrection, and an equally rigorous attempt to abolish the worship of Mary and the saints. But Protestanitsm was more than this: it was an attempt to adapt religion to the urbanism and hyper-rationalism of the modern period. Max Weber argued that Protestantism and the social spirit it engendered was the cause of industrial capitalism; others have suggested that incipient industrial capitalism and the social spirit it engendered was the cause of Protestantism. But nobody can deny that Protestantism goes hand in hand with urbanism, industrialism and materialism. This did not affect only the Protestant churches. At the Council of Trent, soon after the Reformation the Christian-"Catholic" church significantly Protestantised itself, and has continued the process ever since, following always a few steps behind the professing Protestant denominations (the Second Vatican Council has recently come close to completing the process). This is the final turn of the spiral, for the decline begins to approach its nadir. The religious movement cannot continue, but moves steadily toward materialism, atheism and alienation. The patriarchal religions, living on the borrowed spiritual resources of the ancient Matriarchal faith have finally run dry. Humanity flounders without hope or direction, clutching at straws. The old religions can do nothing to help. Either we will return to the ancient springs of the one fundamental Truth, or the Atomic Age will destroy us spiritually and probably physically as well. Either we will have a revival of the one ancient and (literally) catholic faith of the one Goddess, or we will have nothing. Now if this seems to have led us a long way from the subject of ritual, I can only say two things in my defence: firstly, that I feel it was necessary, and secondly, that it has at least led us right back to the subject of ritual. For if there was one thing which characterised the final (or Protestant) phase of patriarchal religion more than any other, it was the extreme dislike and misunderstanding of ritual which was mentioned at the beginning of this article. And the two reasons for this were the rationalism and materialism that have been developing ever since the decline of the great matriarchal civilisations. The rationalist, even if she believes in a religion, must believe that its essence is a series of rational propositions, and not a series of seemingly irrational acts. The person who is on the road to materialism can believe that her body is nourished by a little bread and wine, but she cannot believe that her soul is nourished by a Sacrament, even if she professes to believe that she has a soul. This, of course, is perfectly illogical. If one has decided, for emotional or cultural reasons, to give one's faith to the belief that there can be nothing beyond the material, then one is logically justified in believing that there can be no such thing as a supernatural event. We may quarrel about the first belief, and ask where it came from, but we cannot deny that the second belief came by a process of strict logic from the first. But if, on the other hand, one believes in the supernatural, and indeed in the Divine, then one cannot expect to tame Her – one cannot start making rules to circumscribe the areas in which She may manifest Herself. One cannot keep Her out of the living room. It may embarrass the scientists, or it may embarrass us in front of the scientists, but there it is. If there is a Power above and beyond the 'natural' world, we must accept that She is able to invade the world and to act upon the world. She will give us miracles and She will give us sacraments. Now there is one very typical objection to this which goes as follows: "But is not ritual a rule governing the manifestation of the Divine? Is it not an act by which you conjure up the Goddess?" It is a frequent objection and one which reveals a reasonable mind. But it also reveals a mind which knows nothing of the nature of ritual and has never participated fully in a real Rite of the Goddess. Anyone who has knelt in Her Presence at any Rite will know that ritual is not an act by which we conjure up the Goddess; it is an act by which She conjures up us. Every religion which understands the dual nature of ritual teaches that it is not just a Rite, but a duty. It is not just a means by which we come to the Divine, but a means by which we must come to Her. The recurring events of the month and of the year echo the call of the Mother, and we who are Her children obey it. Equally, every religion which understands the nature of ritual teaches that it is not a thing invented by maidkind for the sake of the Goddess, but a thing instituted by the Goddess for the sake of maidkind. Ritual is not artificial: it grows naturally (or rather supernaturally) wherever there is a genuine worship of the Goddess. Anyone who has truly experienced a ritual knows that it has an independent and indescribable power, far beyond anything which can be explained by the actions and words of the Rite itself. This is not to say that there cannot be artificial rituals. Every government ceremony is an artificial ritual, so, for the most part, are the rites of the masculist civic religions. But an artifical ritual is as much an anomaly as an artificial tree, and about as much use. When one begins to see ritual as a purely human creation which has no spiritual purpose beyond being a "commemoration" or a "communal expression of faith", then the most honourable thing is to do wihat the most extreme Protestants did: abolish it altogether. But the first patriarchs did not see ritual as a human creation which could be altered or modified at will. They altered the ancient Myths, they destroyed the ancient temples, they made idols to replace the image of the Goddess; but they dared not tamper with the rituals. They knew that these were their last contact with the divine. Sometimes, working on the masculist-materialist principle of 'bigger is better', they replaced the simple Sacrifice of a cake or flower with vast and bloody holocausts, but even this was rare and did not last. All the rites which have survived into the present era are taken from the Rites of the Goddess. If the patriarchs wanted a ritual of initiation and rebirth, they must use the sprinkling of water used by the Babylonian matriarhs in the name of Ishtar. If they wanted a sign of blessing, they must adopt the three-fingered blessing of the Phrygian Madrians, and named after the Amazon princess Myrine. If they wanted a rite of communion, they must copy the bread-and-wine Communion which was celebrated at Eleusis in honour of Demeter. Christians like Clement of Alexandria spread obscene slanders about the Eleusinian Mysteries. Christians from Paul onwards loathed even the most mildly independent woman, and would have shuddered at the thought of a conquering Amazon princess. But they dared not change the ritual acts. In the early years of patriarchy, priests wore the robes of a priestess and had false breasts, for they knew that a religious rite could only be celebrated by a woman. To this very day, the priests of ritualist religions wear flowing robes, and in the Roman "Catholic" church, they are not allowed to grow beards. The patriarchs did not do these things because they found them attractive, or because they could not devise for themselves any better "expression of communal faith". They did them because they knew that ritual was real; and they were still close enough to the true heart of religion to realize [sic] that the only genuinely efficacious rituals are the Rites of the Goddess. Inevitably, these rituals became more and more debased as patriarchy progressed; but the completely negative attitude toward them which has developed over the last few centuries is the surest sign that we have reached the last turn of the spiral: that we are rapidly approaching the point at which must either make a radical change of direction or decline into spiritual oblivion. The decline of ritual is a symptom of the general spiritual decline of humanity. But in a sense, it is also a cause of it, for all aspects of life and religion are closely interlinked, and a decline in any one will create decline in the others, which will in turn react back upon the first, creating a vicious cycle. But positive developments can also have the same cyclical effect; and the way in which we can bring about the necessary reversal of spiritual direction is by creating and nurturing this interreacting process of positive development, first in ourselves, and then in an increasing number of others who are becoming ready to turn to the Goddess. It is like kindling a fire. First we light one twig, and then another, trying to make the tiny flickering flames spread and combine and strengthen one another, sheltering them from the winds of the world that could so easily destroy them; often despairing of the possibility that they shall not be extinguished as soon as our breath stops blowing on the dying embers; often fearing lest our own tears should put them out. But slowly the fire grows, the twigs become bigger, and soon we are bringing logs and branches to feed the leaping flames. The little pile of glowing twigs becomes an all-consuming pyre which no force can withstand, lighting and warming the cold, dead world of the expiring patriarchy, and gathering up those who stand closest into the burning ecstasy of the Goddess. Now ritual is one of the first and most important areas – perhaps the most important area – in which we can begin the upward spiral. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that ritual provides a supernatural time-structure for our lives. By regular participation in ritual, we are delivered from the slavery of the lineal time of masculist-materialist culture. This time is endless in two senses; that it has no termination, and that it has no end in the sense of an aim or object of consummation. At its best it is idealised in the vaguely optimistic, but essentially aimless cultural motifs of 'progress' and 'evolution'; in reality it is epitomised by the unending tedium of the conveyor belt. The practice of ritual displaces this time-structure. Not only is the climax of a Rite a literal transcendence of time, but the regular experience of ritual structures the life of the psyche around the recurring events of the lunar and seasonal cycles; which are themselves the symbolic reflections of the Divine Events – the fundamental Mysteries of existence. The regular practice of ritual continually deepens the spiritual apprehension of the Timeless as it is reflected in the progression of time. Masculist-materialist time is a line attempting to extend itself into infinity. Madrian or ritual time is a circle attempting to transform itself into the perfect sphere of Eternity. And just as the masculist time-conception has provided late-masculist culture with the central element of its characteristic view of the world: progressivism or evolutionism; so the Madrian or ritual time-structure, as it grows within us, will give rise to a qualitatively different and characteristically feminist world-outlook. Another importance of ritual, which is closely related to this, is that it has its greatest effect on an unconscious level. This is important because, whether we like it or not, most of us have been so deeply indoctrinated by patriarchal culture that much of the time we are either unconsciously operating on its inbuilt assumptions, or (which is almost as bad) reacting directly against them. The process of ritual experience slowly permeated the deepest levels of our whole bein in a way that no rational formulation could ever achieve, so that even when the conscious mind cannot find its way through the tangled maze of patriarchal sophistry, the deeper levels of thought are able to cut a clear path to the Mother. Behind both these facts lies a third which is greater than either. It is the simple fact that ritual is. It works. It is real. It was instituted by our Mother in the beginning, and when we can be sure of nothing else, we can be sure of this. Some modern sects and cults have wanted to do away with 'stuffy rituals', stressing the importance of a simple, direct personal contact with Deity. In a way, they were right. The rituals to which they referred were, for the most part, artificial rites; and one can never say too much about the glories of a simple direct communion with the Divine. But one of the things that one should not forget to say is that it will not always be there. Everyone, however deep her faith, knows that there come times which we feel a million miles away from the Goddess. We have not ceased to love Her; we do not believe that She has ceased to love us; but somehow we feel a complete lack of contact, we feel as though a great gulf has opened up between ourselves and She. But however dissatisfied we may feel with our prayers, and even when we feel repelled by our personal devotions (as may occasionally happen even to the most spiritual), we can always be sure when we participate in a Rite of the Goddess that She is there, and that at some level of our being, Her grace flows within us. Not everybody experiences Divine rapture at Sacrifice, and nobody does on every occasion: but we can always be certain of the Rite. The mind may be unable to concentrate upon Her for a moment; the heart may lack all faith, but the soul has come before Her altar, and it is enough. She will receive us in the Rite, for She has promised; and we will know that She has received us, for we cannot doubt Her sacred vow. We may fail Her, but She will never fail us. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Matriarchy and the Nature of Ritual Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://www.filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/352aa5bf9706837a9250e0d6b481a2d9.pdf 36bfa04fdce3a5f81c2108239b1185c2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (10pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Inner Meaning of Music The idea of an art as something merely aesthetic; that is, as something with no purpose beyond that of creating a pleasurable sensation in the observer, is a thoroughly modern invention. It is as foreign to the traditional mode of thought as the related idea of a craft as a mere method of "production", the sole aim of which is to manufacture useful articles as efficiently as possible. In every traditional society from the Incas to the Japanese, from the European Middle Ages to the African tribes, the primary content of both art and craft is intellectual, or doctrinal. The tools, the methods, the traditional styles and patterns of the craft all have a profound symbolic meaning, which "actualised" within the context of the authentic practice of the "mystery", become the constitutents of a contemplative path toward spiritual realisation. The term "mystery" is not used idly. Until recently, every craft was called by its practitioners a mystery, as any student of English literature will be aware; and passing out of the apprentice stage of one's training took place by way of a true Initiation far more solemn and portentous than the rather messy horseplay that still accompanies the occasion in a few of the older crafts today. At one time, this was merely a high-spirited release of nervous tension after the ordeal of the Initiation itself. Having passed this Initiation, one was truly set upon the Path which was the particular craft in question. Such a craft was a worthwhile "living" or life's-work, for its first aim was to fulfil the purpose for which souls are incarnate in human form in the first place – to return to God. Not every soul, of course, is destined to become fully "realised" in one lifetime; nevertheless, the priorities are correct, one is facing in the right direction. At death one should at least be a few steps further forward than one was upon entering the world. It is only when the true meaning of craft has been forgotten that an "industry" in the modern sense of the term can arise. It is craft stripped of everything which relates to the supernatural; a mere mechanical production of goods by the cheapest and quickest means possible, with no regard to the spiritual effect of the work upon the worker. In a society based on an "industry" of this sort, novody, from the chain-belt operator to the managing director, has a worthwhile living. All of them, however many goods and however much money they may be amassing in this life, are from the standpoint not even of eternity, but just of the next couple centuries in the life of their souls, wasting their time. And they know it. There has never been a time in which so many people have been stricken and oppressed by the sheer futility and meaninglessness of life. The advertising and entertainment industries pour out an unending stream of novelties in order to maintain the attention of the jaded masses. No material pleasure can hold its attraction for more than a brief time, so there is a constant demand for more, bigger, better, newer, stranger or even more disgusting novelties to replace the ones that were in vogue the day before. The level of psychiatric disorder is alarminly high, and psychiatrists report that the main underlying problem is "lack of life content" – meaninglessness, apathy, despair. Since the time of William Morris, there have been numerous attempts to return to a more meaningful way of life; to practise traditional arts and crafts, to live the "simple life", to restore satisfaction to everyday activity. All these attempts, however, are doomed to failure for one simple reason. While they reject the symptoms of the modern malaise, they have not rejected the disease itself. Indeed, they have failed to understand what it is. In trying to restore life-satisfaction by bringing back the mere outward form of certain older ways of living, they are like the villagers who tried to keep the spring from passing by fencing the cuckoo to prevent it from flying away. It was not the crafts themselves which made the traditional way of life satisfying. It was the inner meaning which they embodied. It is often supposed by modernists that the Industrial Revolution came about because of new technical knowledge. Actually history makes nonsense of this idea. All the technological innovations of the first stages of the Industrial Revolution could have been made at almost any time in history; but it was only when the real meaning of the crafts had been lost that anybody would have thought of making them. The Industrial Revolution was the product not of new knowledge, but of a new ignorance. It is this ignorance which is the real disease. The loss of the crafts and the traditional way of life are nothing more than a symptom. And it is the disease which must be cured if we are to recover. In practice, this means rediscovering the intellectual or metaphysical content of the crafts and learning to practice them not merely as scaled-down forms of "industry" – mere means to physical ends, albeit somewhat more picturesque and satisfying means – but as authentic contemplative paths. But this is not quite so simple as it may seem, for was are immediately confronted by a double-headed difficulty, which may be summed up in the single word Traditio. We have used the word in its Latin form in order to draw attention to its actual meaning. In modern English usage, "tradition" has come to have a vague meaning, roughly equivalent to "custom" or "convention" or "anything-over-fifty-years-old" (or in some contexts, even over five years old!). In all traditional societies it has a meaning far more precise, and immeasurably more important. It means literally something "passed-down" from the Golden Age – the primordial time when "Heaven touched earth". The techniques of the crafts are not mere human "inventions", but Divinely-instituted rituals. They are passed down through a full-scale initiatory process by ritually qualified teachers in an unbroken chain (tradition) from the beginning. The two aspects of the problem, then, are firstly that no merely human reconstruction of traditional craft-doctrine will be of any value, and secondly that once the chain has been broken, there will no longer be any teachers qualified to carry out the ritual transmission of the Mysteries. However, in the English matriarchal tradition, the craft mysteries are still transmitted. There is an unbroken line of Ranyas or craft-mistresses going back to the earliest period of the manifestation of "human" souls on earth. We may turn, then, to the universal matriarchal tradition in its English form for examples of the practice of craft in the true traditional manner. As a case in point, we may take the craft of music. It may be objected that music is an art rather than a craft; but traditional philosophy draws no distinction between the two. Art, moreover, gives a wider scope for comparison between the traditional and modern perspectives, for modern art cannot help but have some intellectual content, whereas in "industry", all is subjugated to blank utilitarianism. The cardinal difference between traditional and modern art is that the modern world conceives art as having no purpose except to please (or at any rate to arouse some sensation in) the recipient; whereas the traditional doctrine holds that art must be founded upon metaphysical principles and must communicate the primordial Truths of existence in order to be of the smallest value. This is encapsulated in the traditional dictum: "Ars sine scientia nihil", art without science is nothing. But the science in question is, of course, not the merely physical observations which have usurped that name in the modern world, but a knowledge of the underlying metaphysical principles of being. This understood, let us proceed to a brief examination of the art of music. Sound is of two kinds: the heard and the unheard. Heard sound is that manifested upon the physical plane and perceived by our ears. Unheard sound is the primordial expression of creation, the "music of the spheres", the harmonies inherent in the single creative Word spoken by God Herself at the beginning. These harmonies ramify out from the original Note, manifesting the entire range of the Archetypes – the perfect, unfallen order of creation, of which all the lower orders, the physical included, are but reflections. The purpose of the art of music is to organise heard sound into a perfect echo of the unheard. In this, music resembles every other authentic art; for all art has as its aim the depiction not of material "facts" (whether physical, emotional or mental), but of the underlying Realities of which the phenomena of this world are but broken and imperfect shadows. Ar is essentially contemplative. The first task of the artist is to see the Real in contemplative vision. Her second is to depict it in the materials of the shadow-world which we inhabit. Tradition provides her with the means to do this. All the stylised art-forms of traditional societies, from matriarchal Crete to Pharaonic Egypt to Gothic Germany were means for the expression of inner Reality. WHen a traditional artist paints a tree, she is not attempting to mimic the purely physical characteristics of the ash on the village green; she is seeking to capture the essential ash-ness inherent in it; the Divine Idea of ash that has existed in the mind of God before the dawn of time, and will continue to exist in the Real world when this planet and all its trees are ash of another sort. The modern supposition that traditional artists "did not know how to draw true perspective" reflects the same provincial stupidity as the belief that they could not have created an industrial revolution; while modern "realistic" art, which aims merely to reflect material "facts" (physical ones in paint, "psychological" ones in novels, etc.) is an aberration of exactly the same order as modern industry itself. The final loss of traditional art took place in the so-called Renaissance. beginning with the most "concrete" arts of painting and sculpture, a spectacular efflorescence of "realism" replaced the stylistic art-forms of the Middle Ages. These forms cannot but attract our admiration, firstly because material nature is a reflection of the Real, and an art which faithfully reproduces it, although but a "copy of a copy", contains something of its divine quality; secondly because they were the product of a starburst of creative energy released by the sudden relaxation of traditional restraints. It is like a will-disciplined academy suddenly taken over by a principal who believes in a relaxation of all discipline. At first her scheme will work well. nobody will run riot, because the discipline of previous years will have become second nature. For a brief period one will have the best of both worlds – all the advantages of discipline with none of its drawbacks. But as the customs of the past fade and a new generation which has never known the old regime arises, order begins to break down and chaos superenes. In the same way, the age of Raphael and Michaelangelp gave place to the increasingly effete manifestations of the Baroque and Rococo, the sentimentality of Romanticism, and then Surrealism, Dada, Cubism. I hear that some gallery has recently paid for an exhibition of "kinetic art" consisting of a man vomiting into a bucket. Music, due to its more "abstract" character was protected for a certain time from this degenerative process; but this was no more than a temporary reprieve. While it is true that Renaissance music adhered far more closely to authentic traditional patterns than its sister arts, we have today reached a point where all music being composed (with a few insignificant exceptions) can be divided into the slick, meretrecious "popular" variety, and something called "serious music", which is so wholly devoid of either meaning or beauty that short pieces of it have to be sandwiched into programmes of Beethoven and Bruckner in order to induce any concert-goer to listen to it. It may be noted in passing that the two great arguments invariably produced by advocates of the "new music" cancel one another out. The first is "Oh, but all new music is disliked at first; look at Tannhäuser." The second is "We really should be getting used to Berg (or Webern, etc.) by now – after all, it is hardly new, it's been going on for fifty years." Precisely. Beethoven's ninth may have been hissed at the first performance; but it was accepted within a couple of years. Berg et al have not received the wholehearted acceptance of the public in half a century, and there is no reason to suppose that they ever will. But the bankruptcy of modern music, like the bankruptcy of all the arts, has its roots many years earlier, in the loss of its guiding metaphysical principles and the consequent gradual descent into chaos and futility. In other word, it may be accounted for by its failure to echo the unheard Music. In the traditional music of the West, a single note of unchanging pitch is sounded throughout. The melody departs from it and returns to it at the end and at frequent intervals throughout the composition. It is an expression or manifestation of the potentialities inherent in this primordial and continuous note; the "tonic", as it is called. This actual sounding of the tonic throughout the piece is still practised in the music of, say, the bagpipes, and to a lesser degree in the music of such droned stringed instruments as the scheitholt, the langeleik and the Appalachian dulcimer. Where the tonic is not actually sounded, the melody is nonetheless developed in such a way that it is still effectively present and governing the music. The drone, sounding before, during and after the development of the melody corresponds to the Mother, the timeless and unchanging Absolute, while the melody itself represents all the flux and diversity of nature, emerging from Her as its divine Source and returning to Her at the close of its cycle of existence. This process also reflects the emergence of the Daughter from the Mother, the "play" of the events of Her life, and Her final heuresis or reunion. And as it reflects the Daughter, Who is the perfect Soul, so, on a lesser plane, it reflects the separation (or fall) of every soul from union with Godhead, her journey through the vicissitudes of successive incarnations and her final reunion, realisation or salvation. The tonic itself emerges from and returns into silence, even as God the Mother, who is pure Being, emerges from and returns into Absolute Deity, the Dark Mother, who is beyond being and unbeing. In counterpoint which retains an essentially modal character, and in harmony where the ground remains unbroken, the pattern, although more complex, is essentially the same. Here there are several manifestations out of the principial Note instead of one; and their intricate interrelations form the character of the music. Each part affects and is affectes by the others; we find ourselves in a world of opposites and dualities, night and day, pleasure and pain, yin and yang. A world of multiplicity and of seeming "accidents"; and yet every even is directed by the inherent logic of the composition – the destiny, or moira [werdë], which determines all earthly events; and beneath is all, either heard or unheard, continues the principial Note which underlies all the "play" of the manifest universe. The Unity which all the movement of multiplicity is, either consciously or unconsciously, seeking. Now once this principle has been lst, we are quickly confronted with forms of music which modulate, changing from one key or tonality to another. The unheard tonic is actually altered during the course of the composition. At first there were only brief forays out of the key, with a final return being regarded as imperative. Later, modulation became a dominant feature of music, and the "well-tempered" scale, in which all keys are interchangeable because they differ only in pitch, was invented in order to facilitate this. At a later stage, we have the logical development (or reductio ad absurdum) of this in atonal music which deliberately rejects all tonality as a matter of principle, or rather of counter-principle, thus producing that music so alien to the divine (and therefore to the human) Norm as to be wholly unattractive to the normal listener. Now it may be noted that once the ground is broken, it ceases to be an unchanging drone and becomes simply another melody. In other words, the immutability of the Absolute is denied, and all is reduced to relativity, flux and transience. This, it will be seen, corresponds perfectly not only to the pseudo-doctrine of "materialism" (which denies all things beyond the flux of the physical), but also to nearly all the tendencies of specifically modern and anti-traditional thought: the "evolutionism" which seeks to reduce all existence to "a process of becoming"; the "dynamism" which regards action as being superior to contemplation; the "anti-dogmatism" which wishes to see all statements about ultimate Reality reduced to the level of "opinion" and "experiment"; the entire ideology of "progress" which permeates every aspect of modern life and thought. It is certainly no coincidence that although the composers of the last few centuries have had no conception of the nature, or even the existence, of the principles which they have been violating, modern music has produced, in musical language, a perfect paraphrase of the errors which dominate and determine modern society. The tonic which generates a given composition may be any one of the seven notes of the natural scale, and because the intervals between the tones of the scale are not identical, a different pattern is formed by the scale depending upon which note begins it; thus there are seven different scales, or "modes" as they are called, each with its own peculiar character. It is well known that all the authentic folk music of this country is modal. Each of the modes has its own particular effect upon the mental state of its hearer; this fact is admitted by the soberest of modern musicologists, although they are able to offer not "rational" explanation for it. Ancient writers, who still had some access to the older matriarchal traditions are able to go into much more detail. Plato encourages certain modes as beneficial to the moral fibre of his ideal republic, while others he would exclude as being corrupting or effeminate. Pythagoras used music in both physical and psychological healing, using mnusic in certain modes to help to counteract conditions of an opposite character. None of these writers, however, has left a systematic exposition of the characters of the modes and their underlying doctrines. Fortunately, this has been preserved in the matriarchal tradition itself. Each mode, in fact, is governed by one of the seven great Geniae [Janyati]; manifestations of God Herself governing the categories of being; they are related to the seven planets of the ancient system. In some traditions they have been called "goddesses", but in modern English this term carries misleading implications. "Angels" might be a better rendering, but it is still inadequate; the more so since an "angel" in Madrian usage is strictly the servant of a Genia [Janya]. The correspondences of the modes are as follows: Classical name; Folk name; Tonic; Genia [Janya]; Planet; Character Ionian; Do; C; Theia [Raya]; Sun; Generosity, Energy, Heroism Dorian; Re; D; Phoebe [Candrë]; Moon; Purity, Peace, Childlikeness Phrygian; Me; E; Nike [Vikhë]; Mars; Discord, Courage, Combat Lydian; Fa; F; Metis [Mati]; Mercury; Wisdom, Trickery, Unworldliness Mixolydian; So; G; Themis [Thamë]; Jupiter; Harmony, Joy, Humour Aeolian; La; A; Tethys [Sushuri]; Venus; Love, Peace, Gentleness Locrian; Te; B; Rhea [Rhavë]; Saturn; Death, Darkness, Mystery The characters given here are obviously rather brief. It will be noted also that the "planetary" Geniae [Janyati] govern the modes in the same order that they govern the days of the week. Some books on music state that the Locrian mode was rarely used, others that it was never used. Especially in the Christian eccleasiastical usage of the Middle Ages, it was usual to speak of the six modes rather than the seven, although it is obvious that seven scales must naturally exist. The fact is that the Locrian mode was never used for everyday music-making, its dark and mysterious power being far too dangerous for ordinary use (particularly in ages when the substance of the world, both psychic and material, was far more sensitive to subtle influences than it is today). But a number of traditional melodies in the Locrian moder were (and are) used in certain highly specific ritual contexts, which cannot be disclosed here. The use of the mode was not preserved in Christianity. Returning to tour previous explanation of music as a paradigm of cosmic manifestation, we may now see that music in each of the modes will represent one particular aspect of that manifestation, which will be further modified by the precise nature of the music itself, just as the archetypal Ash-ness is modified into the individual reee on the village green. In traditional ritual dance-drama, each scene will be set in a particular mode, which established the spiritual "domain" in which the action takes place. The "central" mode is the Ionian. In the table above, the modes themselves are ranked in Ionian order, as is customary. In modern non-modal music, the major key is identical with the Ionian mode. It is the familiar do-re-me scale in which most ordinary tunes are set. The centrality of this mode is natural, since the Sun in its highest aspect represents the Mother Herself, Who governs all the Geniae [Janyati], even as the physical sun forms the central organising principle for all the planets. The name Theia [Raya] can be taken to simply mean "God", and it is possible for Ionian music to be taken as being in no particular mode; that is, as an expression of Divine manifestation pure and simple, under no special Genia [Janya]-aspect. Nevertheless, the Lady Theia is a very distinct personality in her own right who must take her place alongside her six sisters if the full richness and diversity of the Divine Self-expression is to be perceived. On one level, the fall of modal music echoes the puritan rejection of the cult of the saints and angels (which contained the remnants of the old matriarchal worship; particularly in the cult of the Virgin) in favour of a one-dimensional father-god, who quickly dwindled into the insipid "supreme being" of the eighteenth century. The last vestige of this bloodless creature is still worshipped in the modern atheist cult under the name of Progress/Evolution. He created the world. He gives it what little it has of meaning and direction. He even occasionally displays a little of the old autocrat in the oft-repeated incantation "You can't stand in the way of Progress", ritually chanted in defence of every modern atrocity. The true, traditional modal music, like every authentic art, is, on the contrary, a reflection of cosmic manifestation in all its exuberant abundance. It is the Song of God which has become the world. And yet, like every authentic Mystery, it does not stop there, but leads those who have ears to hear beyond the song and beyond the world, into the arms of God, into Her very Heart, "from whence all comes, whereto all must return." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Inner Meaning of Music Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text