Nimue Brown's Blog, page 435

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Yesterday’s interview with Jack Barrow leads me neatly to today’s pondering of his book, which I have read. I had no idea how much I wanted this book until it turned up, but it turns out that I’ve been craving this kind of thing for a long time. Our Mr Barrow is a magician, he knows his stuff, and thus when he sets out to write comedy magical fiction, he does so from a basis of understanding, and the results are kickass.

Most fiction writing about magic, occult people and Pagans comes from the outside, and it’s usually there to be a plot device, spice the story up or cover a plot hole or five. Often this depresses the hell out of me, especially in the paranormal romance genre.

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil features four guys who I know I’ve met, somewhere along the way. The geeky, overweight, slightly intoxicated ones who might be totally ridiculous, or might, on the other hand, be all that stands between us and certain doom. This book is full of chaotic magic that is all about the power of your will and imagination, not at all about having the right coloured candle. The insights are so on the money, and so funny… I laughed out loud a lot.

Furthermore, this isn’t just excellent magical writing, its damn fine writing. Mr Barrow has a self conscious narratorial style (Not unlike Robert Rankin) and plays with the nature of fiction and reality in a seriously effective way. It is a clever, clever book. I rarely find a book that both surprises me and holds together, but this one does. Most of the time I had no idea where it was going, but it went there, and I followed along, alternately giggling and being impressed.

Now, The Hidden Masters have the potential to be a series, which would be splendid, to which end, lots of copies need to wing their way out into the world. The publisher, Twin Serpents, is not big. However, I’m a firm believer in small publishing, and in getting more good stuff out there. If you like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin, if you like clever, knowing, very funny writing, and if you’ve been aching for the kind of magical realism that comes from inside the English magical tradition, this is your book. Seek it out now.

Jack Barrow interview

Jack Barrow came to me through one of those random online connections. I read his book blurb, thought this sounds fun and grabbed him for an interview. As he’s not yet famous, I thought I should do some of those ‘who are you?’ questions, and the results were fascinating…

Nimue: Hello Jack! Let’s start with an enquiry about the nature of your path…

Jack: What can I say? I tend to call myself a pagan these days but only really because that’s the community that I belong to. Back when I started on this path, in the early eighties, I described myself as an occultist. I suppose magician is the definitive category. My background is probably best described as ceremonial magician, mostly derived from cabalistic or Thelemic sources. I have an interest in Crowley and Spare but not to the exclusion of other sources. I believe that the foundations of paganism lie in the time-honoured symbol systems, particularly the Tarot and astrology. If a practitioner can master those then they have a foundation that can take them anywhere. I once went through a stage of describing myself as an eclectic/comedic magician because I steal from anywhere but don’t take anything seriously. After a while I changed that as I realised that I do actually take the practice of magic quite seriously, at least in terms of my understanding of the mechanisms involved in making magic successful. I’ve been described as a chaos magician but I’ve never liked the term.

Nimue: And in the rest of your life?

Jack: I’ve been making a living out of writing, in one form or another, since the late eighties. In that time I’ve done most sorts of corporate writing (which is what you have to do to survive) including copywriting and technical writing as well as some journalism. I’ve written on all sorts of subjects from advertising features about BBQs (there’s not much you can say after about 200 words) to technical manuals for helicopter engines or photocopiers. I started writing about ideas in 1989 when I heard of an astrological event that caught my imagination. I say ideas because that’s what I write about, paganism or magical concepts are just some of those ideas but my writing back then was as much about politics and philosophy as it was about astrology, and that was mundane astrology which is the astrology of global events. Later I found I could write stories about the sort of people I knew at the time, people involved in the magical scene, and the fiction came from there. Eventually it occurred to me that writing fiction is a better way to communicate those ideas and it gives the opportunity for a few jokes at the same time. I found myself writing about the kind of magic that members of the community practise and I enjoyed getting away from the sparks from the fingertips magic portrayed in the Harry Potter stories.

Otherwise I’ve studied psychology for which I got a very poor degree from a relatively good university. I like African percussion and early blues music (as well as most things in between). After watching a Horizon programme I’m fasting two days a week in an attempt to not turn into my father. I like red wine, and Top Gear, often at the same time, and I have an over romanticised ambition to throw a tent and backpack in my car and drive off into the wilderness with a tablet computer to write my next novel in splendid isolation.

Nimue: Now, when I read the blurb for The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, I got a strong feeling of comedy, so, you’re writing about wizards, and you come from an occult background, how does the juggling of realities, personal, mainstream, fictional, work for you?

Jack: I would say I’m writing about magicians (rather than wizards) because that’s my tradition (although I try not to push a link between myself and the characters too much). As far as juggling realities goes, I find it comes pretty much second nature. When I perform an act of magic it’s usually in some magickal scenario: in the temple, robed up, after long preparation or some other factor that divides it away from everyday life. The act of dressing a temple, the clouds of incense or candle lit room with shadowy corners; that all creates an atmosphere of magic and changes that reality, generates gnosis if you like.

Being a practitioner of magic (for me) is suspension of disbelief and when I do it just comes naturally. I don’t actually believe that waving a stick around and chanting in some ancient language is going to cause an outcome but I have an expectation that it will generate results, so long as I give it a chance.

In terms of fictional realities, I’m not sure there is any difference to the real world. My characters live in present day England, have day jobs, get drunk, fall over, etc. Their reality is the same as ours. They perform magic in the same way as we do, the only difference is that they get to save the universe at weekends. Otherwise they are just like you and me.

Nimue: Ah, suspension of disbelief, that’s a powerful thing in writing and in being an audience. The ability to choose what to believe.

Jack: I wouldn’t call it choosing what to believe as much as role play. However, I think there are only some roles that will work, or perhaps only some roles (or alternate views of reality) that I’d want to get involved with. It’s difficult to pin down and I don’t want to analyse that too closely as analysis is the province of a different approach to the world from the magical approach. It’s not so much belief as expectation. I really don’t think I believe in magic. I’m a rationalist at heart. However I do use magic and use divinations systems, that sort of thing. Rationally I can’t believe that they can possibly work, however I’ve used them so many times and found them useful that I have an expectation that it these practices will work out for me. Don’t ask me how magic can possibly work because I really don’t believe in it.

Nimue: So would you say that a Pagan reader will find something familiar about your characters and their lives? Might these be the people you run into at the local moot?

Jack: Yes I hope so. When I started to write the book I didn’t really know how the magic was going to work out and I was writing it sequentially, originally publishing a chapter a month on an obscure pagan web site. When it came to describing the first major act of magic I just described it as I would have approached it. Well, okay, I wouldn’t normally try to start a car with magic but you have to put your characters is different situations from people in everyday life. So I was left with the dilemma of how to resolve this and decided that I’d just have the car start without too much explanation, as if by coincidence. Isn’t that how magic works for pagans?

There are one or two completely impossible things that happen in the story but when I realised how the rest of the magic was working I decided I wanted to keep the obviously supernatural to a minimum. Therefore there are no Potteresque sparks from wands or people flying on broomsticks, apart from that one major obviously impossible event in the first half of the book but I’m not going to give that away as it’s got a fairly significant gag attached to it.

Could Nigel, Wayne and Clint be at the moot? Most probably, if they know about the moot but I’m not sure how much they get out, perhaps Wayne does as he spends a lot of time in pubs. They are certainly not some special breed of hero that never mixes with the public. They tend to meet in Nigel’s house on a Tuesday night to drink dark rum, or whatever they can get hold of. You might think of it as like a coven meeting but they are not witches, I’d just call it a group meeting. That’s all explored in The Esbat, that’s the title of the first chapter and a chapter title that will probably appear in all future stories featuring the Hidden Masters.

Nimue: Speaking as someone who would like some Paganish fiction to read, it sounds to me like a very promising balance. Harry Potter is fun, but it’s too much fantasy, I hanker after something a bit more like magical realism, things I can almost believe.

Jack: I think my fiction might be described as magic realism, just I don’t use the term. And of

course there is that one major event in the story that couldn’t possibly be true.

Nimue: Who are your influences, on the writing side?

Jack: Influences, definitely Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin. Otherwise I have very eclectic tastes and I’m as much into non-fiction as fiction. In the last few months I’ve reread The Hobbit, a few books by Bill Bryson, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and I’m currently reading Gandhi’s autobiography. When I’ve finished that I’m planning to read Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails as research for my next novel which starts on a mountain top with an end of the world cult. Otherwise I’m just not sure what my influences are, the Open University perhaps.

Nimue: Where can people find you?

Jack: http://www.jack-barrow.com/books/unspeakable_evil.htm

(Book review to follow, because I’ve now read, and loved Jack’s writing… watch this space…)

Dancing down the knife edge

I’m not sure if this counts as magic, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week… It’s not exactly a case of going with the flow because that suggests submitting to where life seems to be taking you. I have found that when I’m going the right way, coincidence, serendipity, luck, call it what you will, helps me put things together in ways that take me forward. When I’m not going the right way, it’s like walking through mud and climbing over slidey walls on a regular basis.

I have yet to pin down a good working definition of ‘right way’. I know it doesn’t automatically correspond to my assumptions about what I should be doing. I don’t really believe in an external conductor of reality who wants me to do some things and not others. Which mostly leaves me feeling that I have no idea what this really is or how it works. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that it does exist, and does work because I’ve dealt with it so many times. If I am going the wrong way, its all uphill and grindy and miserable and nothing works right. If I go the right way, things fall into place.

Not that the ‘right way’ can be defined as somehow easy. Its often mad

and challenging, hence the title. My best description of what it feels like to be going the right way, is to be dancing down the blade of a very sharp knife. One slip and it’s going to hurt like hell. The right way is more like tightrope than a path, and often seems to depend on putting together things that really I have no right to assume will come together. I had a period of this around leaving my last home and moving to the boat, and I got everything I needed sorted in the necessary time frame, and I danced the knife blade all the way. Losing my nerve results in the fall and the inevitable cuts. I’m reasonably convinced now that blind faith that I *can* both find and dance down the knife blades of reality when required, is pretty much essential for actually doing it, which means if I’m overwhelmed with depression or anxiety, I’ve got no chance. I won’t dare the knife dance, but the not daring tends to bring more of the grind and the uphill struggle. Apparently my life does not come with an easy option, or if it did, I missed the turning a very long time ago. Dance the knife, or push boulders up mountains… both are exhausting, but the knife edge is wild and exhilarating, and gets me places I should not get to be.

Being a lot like dancing down the blade of a knife, the knife option is inherently scary, a lot of the time. I’m sort of reconciled to that. A bit. I’ve come to the conclusion at any rate that I am not going to spend my life pushing any more irrelevant boulders up mountains than is strictly necessary. if I’m going to have challenges, I’d rather they be wild and of my seeking, and maybe have some point to them and be able to achieve something. When I can get into it enough to really dance down the knife with everything I have, unafraid and totally able to believe I can dance the knife blade, I make stuff happen. Things come to me. Things fall into place. The book I need, lands. The right information or person finds me. It may be simply that when I believe I can do it, I become able to see all the disparate things that can be pulled together to make something. It might just be a perception issue. That doesn’t make it any less magical.

… laces on dancing shoes…

Pregnant Pagan: The Sacrifice of Self

Reblogged from The Ditzy Druid:

When we decided to try having a baby, my husband and I were well aware of the fact that doing so would mean putting some of ourselves aside (at least for a little while).  We must re-prioritize how we spend our excess money and time.  Traveling will be a little difficult for a few years.  Spontaneous nights out at the movies will stop until the little one is old enough to come along (here's hoping there are some good children's movies in the making!).  

Read more… 1,047 more words

Doing a reblog today because this is a fine and thoughtful piece of writing, well worth taking the time to read. I'm off to look at a school and short of time, so will be back tomorrow all being well. In the meantime, enjoy the excellent thoughts about historical Druidry in this post...

Druidry and magic

There isn’t a great tradition of spell working in Druidry. Much of the magic is about inner transformation and the natural consequence of ritual and communion with nature. Magic is a process that happens to us as much as something we might instigate. Mostly. There’s the magic of captivating and inspiring people – a big part of the business of being a Bard. There’s the magic of experiencing the world in a profound and awe inspiring way. We request the presence and blessings of spirits, or deities sometimes, but we don’t command or demand.

Part, if not all of the reason this is so, is philosophical. If you go through life trying to disappear all the bumps and challenges, where is your scope for heroic virtue and learning? You can’t be heroic if everything is easy! The Celts had a heroic culture, they celebrated the characters who faced up to challenges. We are here to learn, and to live, and much of life is challenging, awkward and less than perfectly comfortable. In learning to love what is imperfect and being open to not getting our own way, we learn how to do a better job of being people.

I know I don’t really know what’s for the best. Sometimes what I thought would be really good doesn’t happen, and it opens the door to something I would never have dared to imagine. Being open to what comes from outside, rather than trying to control every aspect of our lives, can often take us further and give us more. Most of the time I would never even consider trying to magic an outcome that I really wanted, in case it caused me to miss something that would have turned out better.

I’m interested in the ‘magic’ of positive thinking and inner calm, as day to day issues. There’s often a fine line between magic and psychology (as Terry Pratchett fans will know, Headology rules.) While I don’t believe we entirely create our experiences, we have a lot of room for manoeuvre in how we choose to interpret and understand. Additionally, what we bring to a situation will heavily inform what we get out of it.

The other reason to leave magic alone is that it’s a messy and unruly thing (assuming you believe in it, and I admit that I do.) The more complex a situation, the more variables, people involved, possible outcomes, the harder it is to work out what would need to change in order to give you what you want. Ethically speaking, seeking the outcome without considering the consequences is totally off limits, for me. Magic is generally understood to require focus and precision, so the woollier and more confusing the situation, the less scope you have to begin with.

Now and then though, life throws up a situation where the issues are pretty simple, and there’s only one tolerable outcome. I would imagine that finding you have cancer would create one of those. Most of the time life does not hand over such clear cut win-lose scenarios, but when it does, perhaps that is the time to dust off the wand and start composing the demands you need to make of the universe.

My mother always said that magic is what you do when you can’t do anything else. It’s also what you do when you absolutely cannot afford to have anything else happen. If nothing else, there’s a bit of Headology here, holding the belief that you can win gives you a better shot at winning than falling into a pit of despair does.

Sometimes, the universe seems to conspire to make things work out after all. I don’t generally believe that the universe is an inherently benevolent place that has our best interests at heart, but I think sometimes it might be persuaded to act that way. And when you get to that sort of point, there’s little to lose in trying.

The sun returns

In my memory at least, aside from one week in February and another in April, last year was grey. It rained a shocking amount, and there was nothing even slightly resembling a summer. Well, we have a bit of sun now, and I can only hope that’s not last year’s pattern playing out again.

I didn’t used to be much of a sun worshipper, but have come to appreciate it, in its absence. The good weather for drying washing, the option of having a window open, the not wading through mud or flood on a regular basis. Rural life is not easy in bad weather, especially if you don’t have a car, but in the sun, it’s pure joy. We did quite a long cycle ride today, needing to sort things further afield, and the pleasure of pedalling along (on the downhill bits) was considerable. Being outside on a day like today is a delight, and I feel much more cheerful and alive for the experience.

Come rain, hail or snow I go out most days – unless I’m really ill. There are things to do that cannot be done on the boat – the school run in particular. I can’t claim I always like encountering nature in the raw. Nature can be cold and wet, and not especially forgiving. But when there’s a beautiful sunrise over the misty canal (today) or I’m greeted by a succession of wildlife – yesterday we had a buzzard, heron and kingfisher – that’s inspiring and cheering.

There’s something about colour. I may wear a lot of dark and subtle hues, but I love having colour in my environment. I struggle in the winter with the lack of colour at least as much as with the shortage of light. Today the sky is the most vivid shade of blue, and this makes me happy. The sunsets have been rich and brilliant this week, also wonderful. Soon there will be leaves on the trees again and even in the rain, the world will not be quite so grey. If there’s enough light to show up the fabulous blue iridescence of the kingfisher, so much the better.

I’m hoping for a good sort of year. One with plenty of blue skies in it. One full of opportunity and reasons to smile. We’ve got some fairly epic challenges ahead, as a family, some major upheavals in the offing. The small one changes school and we’ll be moving, and who knows what else? Hopefully these things will be more like adventures and less like stress-fests. But today the sky is blue, and I feel optimistic.

A place to stand

Being a solitary Druid feels a bit wrong for a lot of us. I tried it, I didn’t like it. Being a Druid definitely has a collective quality about it, and comes with a side order of feeling a need to belong. Mind you, that’s generally a human thing, we all want to fit somewhere. Writing about exclusion in Druidry I got a lot of responses both here and on facebook, from people who do not seem to have a place to stand.

Yesterday I took the plunge and offered something I’d been contemplating for a while.There is now a proper and permenant page for it here http://druidlife.wordpress.com/secret-order-steampunk-druids/

The Secret Order of Steampunk Druids is neither secretive nor very orderly. It may help to be into either Steampunk or Druidry, but the only qualification for membership is wanting to be a member. The only requirement is playing nicely. Believe what you want to believe. Practice however you practice. Talk about it by all means. Accept that other people may be different and that’s their business, and all shall be well.

I’m not going to set up any kind of online chat space because those seem to be places where people with too much time on their hands try to tell other people how to be Druids, and frankly that’s all very dull and it would be more fun to communicate by other means. In person is nice.

I’m barely going to run this at all, but if anyone fails to ‘play nicely’ I shall come round and raise my eyebrows at them until they reform. Probably. Or I’ll just giggle at them, but those of you who already wanted in are deeply splendid individuals so I doubt eyebrow raising will be called for.

If you need a place to stand, if you need to be recognised and to belong, and this seems like a space, claim it. If the idea of revival revival inspires an impish grin to form upon your features, hang around. There was so much energy, craziness and creativity in revival Druidry, it would be fun to try and reclaim that without all the fibbing about where it really came from.

In the meantime, initiate yourself with a nice cup of tea, or similar, and perhaps a bit of cake, feel free to contemplate what you might want to wear, and where you might take this, let me know if you are playing, and if you need to, give yourself a title. As a general guideline, the less you know about Druidry the more outlandish your title should be. People who know their stuff should have quiet, self effacing titles.

Our two major tenets are warmth, playfulness and comedy our three, three major tenets are warmth, comedy, playfulness and a strange devotion to Professor Elemental, Lord Summerisle, no, four…

And if you do see Professor Elemental when you are out there, do consider it your proper business as a Steampunk Druid, to follow him round singing songs from The Wicker Man. If you don’t know any, just hum…

What makes a Druid?

Following on from Those other people who should not be Druids, and the many fascinating and thought-inspiring comments. What makes a Druid?

It isn’t the name, really. We aren’t even sure where ‘Druid’ comes from as a word – there are many theories – and we don’t entirely know what it means, and we don’t know what the Druids called themselves, although we have guesses there too.

It isn’t the robes (those came from a mistake about some statues of Greek philosophers, apparently) or the beards, and it can’t be the gold sickles because no one has ever found one, and they wouldn’t work anyway.

I’m guessing that in ancient history, you were a Druid if you’d been taught by Druids and those who were already established said that you could be. Although given the speed of travel and communication in the ancient world and the general tendency of people to hive off and start new things, I’m also prepared to bet that even then, there was more than one kind of Druidry about, and probably a fair number of people who hadn’t got *proper* Druid qualifications and still used the title, or who were called it by people who assumed they were because they did the job. Even with the best organised system of education and regulation, there are still people who make stuff up and claim to be things they are not and I doubt that’s anything new. There are also people who just intrinsically are something, and for whom the piece of paper that confirms it hardly seems appropriate.

Buzzard commented yesterday that Druidry is heartfelt, and Symbian remarked on the importance of caring about what we do and giving it our best. Only in the safety of our own heads do we know what we’ve done, and whether we did it well or not. You can have a qualification and only the most superficial understanding of how to do the job. With the right coaching, you can fake a pass at most things, when you wouldn’t be able to sustain the work alone. This is not purely a Druid issue. How is anybody an anything? What makes me an author? What makes my bloke an artist? So often in life the titles aren’t really handed out. Anyone can write a book, does that mean everyone can realistically claim to be ‘an author’? As Wendy pointed out yesterday, many titles are so diluted as to be meaningless.

Part of me likes that. I’m not keen on authority, and the weakening of titles weakens arbitrary authority too. Part of me finds it frustrating, because the multiplying of meaningless titles makes it harder to see where the good stuff is, and makes the accolades less meaningful where they are deserved. On the plus side it means we’re all called upon to pay attention, to judge people by their actions and not the bit of paper (thank you Silverbear). We are all thinking creatures, and we can think for ourselves. When it comes to making judgements about what we do, and what other people do, your own mind is actually the only useful thing you’ve got. All the rest is just propaganda.

What makes a Druid? I still haven’t answered that, have I? I know what I think makes me a Druid, but that wouldn’t necessarily define anyone else. Nor should it.

Thank you everyone who shared thoughts and ideas yesterday, I greatly appreciate the comments, even if I don’t reliably respond to all of them.

Those other people who should not be Druids

Sooner or later just about every online discussion group for Druidry seems to get round to the idea of how irritating it is that anyone can call themselves a Druid. Those other people, the ones who do it all wrong and don’t know enough, inspire everything from frustration to full on outrage. If you’ve dabbled in any groups, odds are you’ve seen it. Any idiot can call themselves a Druid. They don’t even have to speak a Celtic language or know mediaeval Welsh mythology. They don’t have to be qualified herbalists either, nor do they need a degree in astro-physics, medical training and diplomatic service experience.

Why are we, as a community, so often obsessed with wanting to hold a boundary that excludes someone else from being able to call themselves a Druid? Why do we care? Am I any less a Druid because Fred at number four thinks that all you need is the right robes and a spangly wand he got off ebay? Am I any less a Druid because the Ancient and Austere Order of Very Serious Druids have not initiated me? Whose approval do I need? And who, come to that, needs my approval? Nobody, I hope.

Anyone can call themselves a Druid. Anyone can call themselves Napoleon Bonaparte as well, come to that. Titles are only as meaningful as we choose to make them. I could declare myself Queen of the Faeries, if I wanted to be pointed at and mocked a lot. I could call myself ArchDruid of somewhere or other if I wanted to. No one can stop me. Mostly what stops me is that I don’t care enough and really can’t be bothered.

Druidry is between you, and your land. You and your Gods, if you have them. You and whatever tribe you serve. It comes down to what we do, not what others think of us.

A frightening amount of time gets wasted in these pointless debates about who isn’t a proper Druid really and how nice it would be if we could have some regulating body. There’s a reason we don’t have a regulating body, and it is simply that there are far too many kinds of Druid and forms of Druidry out there for us ever to satisfactorily agree on who we ‘in’ and who we reject. I fear the truth may be that many people who want to regulate simply want to make everyone else do it their way. You won’t find many people on forums writing to the effect that they fear their Druidry is a bit shabby and lacks the proper intellectual underpinnings and bemoaning the shortage of people to tell them how to do it right. The people who come asking to be taught do not do that, and rightly so.

Amusingly, to make this stick I would have to go out and forcibly convert the Druid community to my way of seeing things and make everyone do what I say. Well, not this week, I’ve got better things to be doing, like looking at the sky and talking to the cat. And anyway, no one would go along with it I tried, which may be as well.

It doesn’t matter who calls themselves what. It matters what we do, whether we do it wholeheartedly and with integrity, whether we are any good, whether it works.

Unquiet land

Perhaps naught in this life is real at all,

Deity sleeps and dreams that it is so

We may dare to imagine, cannot know

Are we wisps of fancy, destined to fall

If ever time the sleeper should awake?

Picture the dreaming god who is all things

Breathes deeply in the peace of utter rest,

Whose one exhale a flock of decades brings

Eternity yet marches on his chest,

But name him not lest naming make him stir.

When deity breathes in all must contract,

The many flowing back towards the source,

As tides of being turn to run their course

The disparate align and are compact.

Once more drawn tight in union of space.

And when the breathing out returns at last,

All things unmesh and fly upon their way,

The time for reconciliation past,

Unmaking comes in turn to have its day

While deity in slumber worries not.

So moves the current, thus washes the tide,

Or worlds and time, of all that yet might be,

For dreams of gods are vast and stretching wide

Unknowable in their enormity.

Who dares to picture this must rend their mind.

Come down into the slow dark earth to wait

Where centuries lie heavy in the soil

Time running thick and slow as midnight oil

Sticky the cloying touch of eager fate

Of all that is and was and yet could be.

For what has gone before must come again

The ebb and flow of tides eternally,

With time and landscape flowing like the sea

Nothing quite lost, nothing to quite remain

Waxes and wanes in neatest chaos dance.

Then set one human figure to this stage,

Bring the eternal to a moment’s eye

Small fragile one who does not yet know why

The world seems caught up in unnatural rage.

The breath is ended now, your tide has turned.

This is a thing from a project I’ve been playing with for a while. I needed to air a bit of it. It owes a debt to Dunsany, with the sleeping god.