Minister of Free Inquiry (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} aethyrflux) wrote,@ 2008-04-21 23:12:00 |
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Atlantis Rising!
This year @ Burning Flipside, you will be able to find me @ Camp Atlantis...
"Where humanity gets it wrong by your time, is in imagining Atlantis as having any kind of quantifiable existence. Which of course it hasn't; not in the way they imagine anyway. There have been quite a few Atlantises, will be quite a few more. It is just a symbol. A symbol of the art. The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal."
- Spoken by The Mage-Lord of Atlantis to Timothy Hunter, from "The Books of Magic," by Neil Gaiman & John Bolton (q.v. pp. 27-29)
Starting @ Sunset (8:08pm) next Tuesday (April 29th, 2008), I will be hosting a weekly salon-style discussion group (@ my house: 1702 Romeria Dr. Austin, TX 78757) in order to explore some of these ideas! I have had some great experiences with gathering of, oh... 5-23 people every week to exchange diverse perspectives on the esoteric & mystical realms. For instance, after some searching in late 2004, I began participating in a weekly spirituality discussion group called The Mojo Meeting... which was started by Bean & !Bob (who had a lovely wedding, this past weekend) at their house, and eventually moved to the Warehouse. We started extremely free-form, but we eventually developed a structure where each week, people would show up around 7:30-7:45 & we would start a brief meditation @ 8:00... then, we would discuss a new topic (chosen at the end of the previous week), and after two hours of discussion, we would choose a new topic for the next week, and end with a brief closing ceremony.
So, to suggest a topic to begin with, next week... I thought we might enjoy sharing our fantasies with one another!
--
On that note, I would like to share these words of Randolph Carter, from "The Silver Key" by H.P. Lovecraft:
"Calm, lasting beauty comes only in a dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence."
--
And finally, I will close with this contemporary poem in a Neo-Elizabethan tone from Donald Sidney-Fryer, the romantic poet and arcane scholar who "uses the myth of Atlantis as a springboard for both art and artifice"
A Symbol for All Splendor Lost
"Abides nor goal nor ultimate of peace,
Nor lifts a beacon on the cosmic deep
To guide our wandering world on seas sublime . . ."
George Sterling, Sonnets by the Night Sea, I.
No more, no less than Plato's quaint conceit, –
Atlantis, – more than myth, this memory
Of a paradise we may once more complete,
This image of an island empery
Supreme in wealth, extent, antiquity, –
Has now become my own arcanic lore,
But more, a torch deep in eternity,
A symbol for all splendor lost, and more,
A sign for all of loveliness evanished evermore. . . .
Forevermore? Perhaps there shall rise yet in far-off time,–
Beyond this bleak, blind interim of now and nevermore,–
Many a new Atlantis form "the cosmic sea sublime". . . .
And there, perhaps, in future gardens marvellous and vast,
Shall bloom again all splendor and all beauty lost and past.
This year @ Burning Flipside, you will be able to find me @ Camp Atlantis...
"Where humanity gets it wrong by your time, is in imagining Atlantis as having any kind of quantifiable existence. Which of course it hasn't; not in the way they imagine anyway. There have been quite a few Atlantises, will be quite a few more. It is just a symbol. A symbol of the art. The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal."
- Spoken by The Mage-Lord of Atlantis to Timothy Hunter, from "The Books of Magic," by Neil Gaiman & John Bolton (q.v. pp. 27-29)
Starting @ Sunset (8:08pm) next Tuesday (April 29th, 2008), I will be hosting a weekly salon-style discussion group (@ my house: 1702 Romeria Dr. Austin, TX 78757) in order to explore some of these ideas! I have had some great experiences with gathering of, oh... 5-23 people every week to exchange diverse perspectives on the esoteric & mystical realms. For instance, after some searching in late 2004, I began participating in a weekly spirituality discussion group called The Mojo Meeting... which was started by Bean & !Bob (who had a lovely wedding, this past weekend) at their house, and eventually moved to the Warehouse. We started extremely free-form, but we eventually developed a structure where each week, people would show up around 7:30-7:45 & we would start a brief meditation @ 8:00... then, we would discuss a new topic (chosen at the end of the previous week), and after two hours of discussion, we would choose a new topic for the next week, and end with a brief closing ceremony.
So, to suggest a topic to begin with, next week... I thought we might enjoy sharing our fantasies with one another!
--
On that note, I would like to share these words of Randolph Carter, from "The Silver Key" by H.P. Lovecraft:
"Calm, lasting beauty comes only in a dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence."
--
And finally, I will close with this contemporary poem in a Neo-Elizabethan tone from Donald Sidney-Fryer, the romantic poet and arcane scholar who "uses the myth of Atlantis as a springboard for both art and artifice"
A Symbol for All Splendor Lost
"Abides nor goal nor ultimate of peace,
Nor lifts a beacon on the cosmic deep
To guide our wandering world on seas sublime . . ."
George Sterling, Sonnets by the Night Sea, I.
No more, no less than Plato's quaint conceit, –
Atlantis, – more than myth, this memory
Of a paradise we may once more complete,
This image of an island empery
Supreme in wealth, extent, antiquity, –
Has now become my own arcanic lore,
But more, a torch deep in eternity,
A symbol for all splendor lost, and more,
A sign for all of loveliness evanished evermore. . . .
Forevermore? Perhaps there shall rise yet in far-off time,–
Beyond this bleak, blind interim of now and nevermore,–
Many a new Atlantis form "the cosmic sea sublime". . . .
And there, perhaps, in future gardens marvellous and vast,
Shall bloom again all splendor and all beauty lost and past.
