Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Aidan Kelly: Including Paganism

Home
Pagan
“History” — Part I

“History” — Part I

Last updated on: February 18, 2013 at 12:30 pm by Aidan Kelly

“History” — Part I 2013-02-18T12:30:30-08:00 Aidan Kelly

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In December 1963 I had a spontaneous series of altered states that lasted for about three weeks. In the center of it was an ecstatic conversion experience much like what had happened to me at age 14. Most people have no idea that such an experience is even possible. Those who do know about it think that it is always a conversion from one set of beliefs or faith community to another. In my case, and I think in many historical cases, it was a conversion from ignorance to knowledge. Belief became unnecessary; I know what I felt. I thus am and since age 14 have been fundamentally a Gnostic. The writings of the Church Fathers and of the Gnostics themselves seem transparently clear to me. Almost everything I have done in life has been part of a search for adequate ways to articulate and manifest that knowledge.

A prose description of the 1963 experiences was thoroughly inadequate. I spent the next five years working on the raw materials of the following poem. It was completed during the year that our huge friendship group was creating the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn. It can be read as 22 separate poems, of course, but it is a single poem with an overarching structure, in which the many portmanteau words are necessary elements. Read the title in light of Alice’s conversation with the White Knight.

“History”

or

Shiny pieces Found in the Ruens of a Mythology

(A Catechlysm in Dialectical Sonata Form, Which Suite Accompanies a Miracle Play):

Exploration of an Inscape by Meditation on the Tarot

Praylewd

1. The Juggler

I wonder what these ruens

Whirr good for, but only when

I wander out hear for my recreations

Of a hypersphear on afternoons

I could be duing sumthing else.

Hear’s a pretty peace. I wonder

How it worked. It’s nicely wayted,

Good for tossing up and down,

A skipping stone.

Maybe it will grow again

When enjinns clear the ruens away.

Sometimes I juggle catnip mice

Or make history mosaics

Of pieces I like. Someone’s throne

The picture box away, and mixed up

Fra Angelico with Hearonymus Bosh.

But it passes the evening,

Or is it dawn? Ben, was that sun

On the back of the Precedent’s chair

In Philadelphia going up, or down?

First theme

2. The Word: Jove Reversed

And I Am says “Hippopotamus,”

And there (oops!) is a hippopotamus,

And I Am sees that it (surprise!) is good.

And the Prince of Light

Says, “Lord, why do you

Call that a hippopotamus?”

And I Am says, “Because

It looks like a hippopotamus.”

And after a wile

The Prince of light says, “Lord,

Were you trying to be funny?”

And I Am sighs and says, “Yes, Prince.”

So the Prince of Light goes off

To think about that, and I Am

Looks at the hippopotamus and says,

“The trouble with him is

He ain’t got no senza hyumah.”

But the hippopotamus

Is too busy getting up

A petition for a female

Hippopotamus to care about

Anybody else’s hangups.

Anyway, the word

Creates the thing

It names. Birds

Are sferic inklings.

3. Escapement: The Wheel

History: I think

About it all

The time, about

How it tries

To say it all, but

As millennia clock’s

Pendulum empires

And manespring cities

Tickle a million

Possible seconds

A second, patterns

Huge or close escape

The involving eye

That must implode

To see how each

Chosen second

Shapes itself upon us.

4. The Tower

I am working at my desk, the same

Wooden desk I’ve told yew about time

And time again.

Wooden: treeness

Denied, the mind minding itself,

Leafing an iron-vine-spiraled fence,

Not painted green,

Between inside and outside.

My fingers pass, repass,

Tracing the invisibell

Blewprints of our age, the secret

Tradition all vision has sung:

To storm the gates of Second Eden.

“Poet, this battle hasn’t yet begun.

Prepare the Quaker canon,

The Gandhi-dancing gun.”

And playing the Ninth Symphony,

Of a sudden breaks a cloud, unknowing,

For Beethoven, realing all that dumb

Schillering, sings the same Coming:

“Joy, Godspark, Blyzelandsdatter,”

Even in the tower

The golden shower

“Steps us up firedrunk to havenhome”

In rarified air

The Danaed discharge

“Spells, heals all custom sunders”

From cloud to earth

A human history

“Featherbrushes all brotherness”:

Civitas Day!

The record ends: and Anna desceands

From our Attic bed to hold me,

Abstracted from my head,

Heartswollen in torrents of molten gold,

Weeping for the organic city

Unsundered by epicycles;

Crying, “If historians were poets,

They’d run naked in the streets,

Screaming, `Abolish history!

Destroy all the clocks!'”

New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn

poetry

Theology

Previous Post

February 17, 2013

A History of the Craft in America: The Council of Earth Religions and the Green Egg Yellow Pages

Next Post

February 19, 2013 "History" -- Part II

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Gnostics Pagan Paganism Poetry Social Justice Theology Uncategorized Witches

Select a Month August 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 November 2015 September 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 September 2014 August 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz