Category: extramundane

extramundane very… : situated in or relating to a region beyond the material world. Essence, feelings beyond the mundane… “It trusts solitude. It enjoys silence. And it rises with an agreeable determination to the challenge of tension, cries and no-win dilemma” ~ James Hillman

Prometheus

One profound moment I can recall when myth and literature merged in my life started with a long stick, or some call it sheath, of fennel and a stencil of Chiron.

“…so it was left to Heracles to arrange a bargain with Zeus to exchange Chiron’s immortality for the life of Prometheus, who had been chained to a rock and left to die for his transgressions.” Apollodorus, 2.5.4

Santa Monica Mountain Promethean Fennel sheath

They were in opposition to each other for a few years. I sat between them in my living room. Fennel was cut from a plant from my front yard. It stood about as tall as me. As it dries, a thick fennel stick becomes stronger and more resilient. It rests near my hearth. The Chiron stencil is upon the wall in my living room. Art, I created years ago when my oldest son was young.

Yet there they were. I knew about the mythology that tells a story of Prometheus. He brought fire to humanity in such a fennel stick. For this sacrifice he was punished and tortured by Zeus. Bound to a rock, and so the story goes. Yet I finally stumbled upon a hidden myth that it was Chiron who set Prometheus free. The day I found this out. My living room bounded with joy. Here in my little living room, I came to understand this mystery! I felt liberated as well in a magical way. As if a secret story was only told to me. I finally comprehended it clearly. I imagined dancing around while holding hands with my two dear friends.

It took me a great deal of time to see this, but there they were in opposition to each other. Yet not them but the struggle was in me. I mused so many imagined ideas. How much longer was it that I also stumbled upon the quote from Shelly’s prose Prometheus Unbound? I suddenly read the passage and them knew the truth of what I read. A conversation between the earth and moon. Prose describing the liberation of Prometheus towards the heavens. The moment Chiron set Prometheus free. Here is the quote.

Chiron Stencil by Hudlsy

The Earth.

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,

The vaporous exultation not be be confined!

Ha! Ha! the animation of delight

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,

And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

The Moon.

Brother mine, calm wanderer,

Happy globe of land and air,

Some Sprint is darted like a beam from thee,

Which penetrated my frozen frame,

And passes with the warmth of flame,

With love, and odour, and deep melody

Through me through me!

(320 _ 330 Prometheus Unbound)

I cried. my heart almost leaps out with him towards the heavens. Overjoyed how this all came together. I bear witness to this. Now I share my joy here. To at least know in a creative way, how liberation may be viewed by the earth and the moon. Also, I address humanity … we need to see how precious literature merged with mythology is. To feel it and be inspired. To know the hope, it offers us now!

Now to take this story further. Finding out that I will be working with Uranus, which is now in opposition to Uranus in my birth chart.  I am taken down on a path to know Uranus better. To know myself better as well as humanity. I realize as we get older, we all share in this journey. Be it consciously or unconsciously.  I want to know Uranus better.

I already know Uranus better then I knew. I stumbled upon a book that made me realize all this time I had a relationship with the Uranian myth through what I have known about Prometheus.

“,,,the planet Uranus was reflected in the myth of Prometheus: the initiation of radical change, the passion for freedom, the defiance of authority, the act of cosmic rebellion against a universal structure to free humanity of bondage, the urge to transcend limitation, the intellectual brilliance and genius, the element of excitement and risk. So also Prometheus’s style in outwitting the gods, when he used subtle stratagems and unexpected timing to upset the established order: he, too, was called the cosmic trickster. And the resonant symbol of Prometheus’s fire conveyed at once several meanings—the creative spark, cultural and technological breakthrough, the enhancement of human autonomy, the liberating gift from the heavens, sudden enlightenment, intellectual and spiritual awakening—all of which astrologers consider to be connected with the planet Uranus.”

Tarnas, Richard. Prometheus the Awakener (pp. 20-21). Spring Publications, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The beauty of a flower and a bee.

From my garden

A Summer Poem

By Hudley Flipside : An Underground Bard

So much given to us for free

All of creation

Watch the flowers open up

To share nectar to the bees, butterflies, bumblebees

The hungry hummingbirds.

In return pollination.

A free giving cycle…

We humans are as flowers,

We can open our psyches

Give out our creative soul nectar

Out into the world

And in return get pollinated

There are the invisible makings of nature

As there are the invisible happenings in a human being…

How accidentally nature shows us this beauty

From our living gardens.

We look out and there it is

Sharing, sharing, and giving

Life vast and beyond.

Following the motif of

The simple flower.

Clouds that hold moister

Then rains upon the earth

A summer overcast day

That cools the dry dirt.

The open window that shares

This active beauty from tall trees overhead

And above me.

A song that inspires us to be

Loving and understanding

The beauty of a flower and a bee.

From darkness to light

    And in your hand brandishing your night-

    lighting flame, with god-possessed frenzy

    you went to the vales of Eleusis

    where the whole people of Hellas’

    land, alongside your own native witnesses

    of the holy mysteries, calls upon you

    as Iacchus: for mortals from their pains

    you have opened a haven without toils. ” *note below

————————-

“On an island in the sun

We’ll be playin’ and havin’ fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can’t control my brain.”

Two and a half years ago

I made it back

From the darkness…

Today I celebrate

While driving home

From my secret market

The special song came on

my car radio

I remember the first day

I awoke

From the darkness to light

It was such a sight

Wizard the Lizard

Doing arm lifts

Singing

“Hip Hip”

Up and down

“Hip Hip”

On top of the red brick

Next to the Wild Promethean Fennel

The aroma still in my nose

When I heard the beat

I was walking around the block

I heard the song Island in The Sun

neighbor kids were rocking out

guitar, drums and singing

In their garage.

Today yes today

Driving home

On the anniversary of

Returning to the light

The song played

On my car radio.

In my brain again

I reached up as

The promethean Thyrsus

Pulled me up and out

Dionysus declaring to me…

Hip hip

Hip hip

“We’ll never feel bad anymore (Hip hip)

No no (Hip hip)

Hip hip

We’ll never feel bad anymore (Hip hip)

No no (Hip hip)

Hip hip

We’ll never feel bad anymore.”

*An inscription found on a stone stele (c. 340 BC), found at Delphi, contains a paean to Dionysus, which describes his travels.[98] From Thebes, where he was born, he first went to Delphi where he displayed his “starry body”, and with “Delphian girls” took his “place on the folds of Parnassus”,[99] then next to Eleusis, where he is called “Iacchus” “

Sterling Hayden’s anima, maybe.

Pictures of Sterling Hayden
Sterling Hayden the wise.

Today is International Women’s Day, and soon follows St. Paddy’s Day and then the Spring Equinox.

Consider the following statement. Every river began its life as a stream, and every stream had its origin in the minutest trickle. In turn, every trickle is the result of filtration through rock and sand and soil, and from this process a single drop of water arises. So often most of these single drops have not seen the sky or the light of the sun for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Hughes, Kristoffer. Cerridwen (p. 20). Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.. Kindle Edition.

How did Hayden Sterling the best Noir dude and Cerridwen the Welsh Goddess of inspiration twine together in my heart, blood and water in my body’s imagination? The earth, male and female, sea, sky, rain and the divinely profound now cumulatively and happily joined together to reveal an old image to me.

There is no new water on earth. In turn, there is no new myth on earth but only the retelling of the same rivers of mythology, flavoured only by the passing of time.

Hughes, Kristoffer. Cerridwen (p. 20). Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.. Kindle Edition.

Cerridwen Stencil by Hudley Flipside 1995…

The image is Cerridwen and she is holding her cauldron and staff. I once thought the image was Persephone…yet now I know who she is. A subtle part of my heritage.   

Where from, you growling water? How old are you? Did you come in from the sea with the midnight flood? Were you sired by an iceberg out of the South Polar Cap, or was your dam a cloud knocked up by the High Sierra? Were you falling rain short months ago? What’s the news from Donner Pass and Emigrant Gap, and how are those new motels? You look a little wan, as though you’re tired of the land. Tried to trap you, did they—up Sacramento way? Piped you through a tunnel, dumped chlorine in your face, spun you through a toilet bowl—small wonder you’re brown as a sportsman’s chest. Don’t quit now; two hours will see you through the Gate, and once you’re clear keep rolling on. I’ll join you one day soon. Maybe.

Hayden, Sterling. Wanderer (p. 7). QM Classics. Kindle Edition.

The Nasty woman is me.

The Nasty Woman and the

Smörgåsbord of words and feelings… some very nasty…. like me.

“In his late works , he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen in to deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.” 

~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.

I realize I am being confrontational, nasty and outrageous. It is that two-week time as we move into the autumnal equinox. I hate this time of transition, but I love autumn.

Today I had to get gas on the way to where I was going. This local gas station charged me a 30 cents gas fee. Yet this is the normal way to skim the top and make a lot of money off millions of poor people. I remember when gas stations had attendants pour the gas, check the oil and fill the car tires. It was service with a smile.

I wish one of these monster gas companies would be brave and bring the service attendants back. They could collect the cash and we could give them the service charge… instead of a fucking machine.

Every time we take away a person’s job and replace them with a machine, we become less human.

I went into the mini-market and the cashier, who seemed to be acting as an employe,  knew nothing about the fee and said,

“I don’t know why you are asking about it. You are the only one that cares? No one else has asked about it.”

I looked at her silently and squarely.

“You should know about it and all the things around you here. I must pay a fee and it is dirty filthy outside around the gas tanks. I remember the day…”

A man came forward and interrupted our conversation and the cashier looked away.

“Excuse us,” I said. “We are talking.”

I used a figure to point to the cashier and me.

“Grumble, “said the man under his breath.

I left telling the cashier she should lose her job for not knowing anything.

Then I came home to find standing outside my home a strange older man smoking a cigarette.

“Are you waiting for someone,” I said.

“No.”

“Then why did you park here?”

The street had no other cars around. He then looked up at the tree. I then asked him to please move his car I needed to part our truck there. He seemed nice enough for not having a reason for being there besides smoking a cigarette. We talked back and forth.

“We have had issues with drug dealers around here,” I said.

He soon left and I moved the truck out. I know I was being ridiculous. I thought it strange that he would get out of his car with his cell home in hand to smoke a cigarette under our lovely olive tree. I did say to him.

“I don’t like the smell of cigarettes and I am sure the tree doesn’t either.”

I think upon a poem I wrote that I have changed a bit.

Any time of the year but now it is moving into the Autumn poem.

Green-gold olives

This eve
I take my broom
Last ray of sun is dead here …
it is real…

The shy clouds hide stars
Only the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn shine their breastplates.
Of radiant light…

I take my broom to the front of our home into the dustpan goes
Dry brown and yellow
Pointy olive leaves and hard green-gold olives…

Into the waste bin… away away.
Goes all the thoughts of this day
Of a wooing Crone…
Looking around as I sweep and bend

For any Fay to show their haunting ways 
In the clouds sailing on the night or
Upon the grasping arms of the olive tree. 
Queen of Elphame mocks me
As I move quickly and consistently,
I call her Sabrina…

How symbolic have I become?
Wild movement… yet strangely calm.
Sweet sweat dripping
My dusty perfume…

I do as many an old Crone
Sweeping clean the front of their home
At this transforming time.
Today I am a nasty one...

 

 

 

 

Resilient

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.” ― William Blake

fire monster pic by Hudley

burnt tree pic by Hudley

return of mustard greens pic by Hudley

It was terrifying living through the California fires. I took a picture across the street then of what I see as a fire monster. At least it looks like one. The fires approached so close to our home.

When Spring came so did the Monarch butterflies. A flying path over our home called us to visit the burned hills. I was beside myself with wonder. How resilient nature is.  I know these hills well, and I saw blooming flowers I had never seen before. A multitude of creatures and fresh green hills. Roadrunners and rabbits have also returned.

Purple mystery flowers from the Santa Monica HIlls. Pic by Hudley

Today I study the ideal of contraries. It is part of who we are as human beings and nature and the cosmos. I cannot think of a better quote then William Blake’s above to understand what we are going through right now. I want to share a hopeful part of nature as well.  Contrary as is may seem now. It is a dependable pattern we can trust.

In its highest sense.

To my friend Dionysus

“According to Jung, humanity holds a special role in creation: to contribute to the act of consciousness, and the point of view of morality, in its highest sense.” ~ Johnson, Robert A. Ecstasy (p. 64) Harper One. Kindle Edition.

Uranus and Jupiter at the threshold…

A Muse named Urania watercolor by Hudley

OK to take this into concurrence, my mind is filled with an old image and a song. I can not keep them from speaking so I will post about them.

Flowing Myrrh

Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) (1445 � 1510)
La Derelitta
I slept but my heart was awake.
Listen! My beloved is knocking:
“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew,
my hair with the dampness of the night.”
I have taken off my robe—
 must I put it on again?
I have washed my feet—
must I soil them again?
My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening;
my heart began to pound for him.
I arose to open for my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with flowing myrrh,
on the handles of the bolt.
I opened for my beloved,
but my beloved had left; he was gone.
My heart sank at his departure. [a]
I looked for him but did not find him.
I called him but he did not answer.
The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
They beat me, they bruised me;
they took away my cloak,
those watchmen of the walls!
Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—
if you find my beloved,
what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love.

Song of Solomon 5: 1-8

myrrh