Ritual
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Ritual Technologies: Light and Beauty
Imagine being in a cathedral. The hush, the dim light from stained glass windows and flickering candles, the faint scent of incense. The faint sound, perhaps, of sacred music through the profound silence. The architecture that sends the eye reaching up, up, to barely discernible vaults. Massive columns, larger-than-life statues of saints. Which, in turns, make the viewer feel small, insignificant by comparison to the soaring magnificence surrounding her. That’s sacred space. The mind cannot help but to downshift into Present, liminal consciousness. Into the Ritual State, which is also known as “trance”. These factors are not accidental. They were learned, over countless years, by those who meant for those who entered…
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Ritual Technologies: Sing!
If there is one human sense more than any other that really drills down beneath the thinking mind and evokes feelings, memories, longings, it would be the sense of smell. Olfactory cues go to the most primitive parts of our brains, and are remarkably powerful in snapping us back to powerful feelings and moments long past. Unfortunately, the experience of scent is passive, rather than expressive. While we have receptors for tremendously subtle combinations of chemical cues, we are not able to express ourselves in kind. The second-most powerful sense in terms of emotional impact, however, is sound—particularly, music. Music has the capacity to transport us, to evoke a wide range of…
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The Avalanche–A Poem for January
The avalanche took our home. A wave of ice drove us before it, And everything we thought we had we loaded on our backs And fled, but no luck: the cold fist ground us under. Home. Years. Love. Work. Health. We cried as it passed over us, scraping, Pinned in place, locked in dim blue light: Frozen. The avalanche took our hope. We lay motionless, pockets collapsing about us Stripping away more and more, and we did nothing: Only gazed upward, and mourned, and remembered And night came, and all disappeared But a smear of muted stars. And it wasn’t until the sun returned, and murky light Bathed us in…
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Mulled Wine
It begins where the smoke hits your eyes: smouldering peat, Mutton stew on a broad iron hook, Deep snow. How can it ever have been summer? Apples wrinkling and mice in the barley— With so much to fear, thank fortune for company! We’ll tell our tales, remember how we passed the cold Last year, and that before. And those who couldn’t. The grape leans across The seasons, clasps the hand of summer’s Dried rind, dreaming the new fruit, Calling the sun back, World without end amen. —Mark Green
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A Winter Spell
O cold, inexorable darkness Draw back now beyond these circling walls. Should fear, and want, and danger walk It shall not be, it is not here. Let this place of warming light Bulwark against freezing night: a promise Holding through the day that we, come nightfall May sleep safely, cozy, soundly in the soft Down drift of love and food and enough. Pass on, cold night. Howl your rages, Pelt your icy javelins. Blot the stars and Dance the barren trees in anger. But come not here. Pour upon the freezing ground Your brutal rain, but step Not one foot within this woolen nest. Have your time, o winter dark. But…
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Vigil
Vigil Winter stands in the corner of my garden, Rounds her shoulders, tucks her chin, draws tight her cloak of stars and ice, Razor moon and rain. Spare and erect, gaunt in the darkness, Bark-peeling with moss predation, slick and black she nods, She waits, she leans, The sky shows her jewelry, vents its wet moods. Death litters The paths with bones and brown rags. Secret life skulks then like a thief: She finds mushrooms between her toes, grows green and furry slippers. Long, long. Until one day the clearwashed air grows sweet and yellow With acacia, and her memory stirs with the taste Of a near-forgotten lover’s scent, feels…
