Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist
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George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist
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"Why do I come? Has thou not degraded me before all the maidens
of Eri by forsaking me for a woman of the Sidhe without a cause?
You ask why I come when every one of the Ultonians looks at me in
questioning doubt and wonder! But I see you have found a more
beautiful partner."
"We came hither, Laeg and I, to learn the lore of the Sidhe. Why
should you not leave me here for a time, Emer? This maiden is of
wondrous magical power: she is a princess in her own land, and is
as pure and chaste to this hour as you."
"I see indeed she is more beautiful than I am. That is why you
are drawn away. Her face has not grown familiar. Everything that
is new or strange you follow. The passing cheeks are ruddier than
the pale face which has shared your troubles. What you know is
weariness, and you leave it to learn what you do not know. The
Ultonians falter while you are absent from duty in battle and
council, and I, whom you brought with sweet words when half a
child from my home, am left alone. Oh, Cuchullain, beloved, I
was once dear to thee, and if today or tomorrow were our first
meeting I should be so again."
A torrent of self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him.
"I swear to you," he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears,
"you are immortally dear to me, Emer."
"Then you leave me," burst forth Fand, rising to her full height,
her dark, bright eyes filled with a sudden fire, an image of mystic
indignation and shame.
"If indeed," said Emer softly, "joy and love and beauty are more
among the Sidhe than where we dwell in Eri, then it were better
for thee to remain."
"No, he shall not now," said Fand passionately. "It is I whom he
shall leave. I long foresaw this moment, but ran against fate like
a child. Go, warrior, Cu; tear this love out of thy heart as I
out of mine. Go, Laeg, I will not forget thee. Thou alone hast
thought about these things truly. But now--I cannot speak." She
flung herself upon the couch in the dark shadow and hid her face
away from them.
The pale phantom wavered and faded away, going to one who awoke
from sleep with a happiness she could not understand. Cuchullain
and Laeg passed out silently into the night. At the door of the
dun a voice they knew not spake:
"So, warrior, you return. It is well. Not yet for thee is the
brotherhood of the Sidhe, and thy destiny and Fand's lie far apart.
Thine is not so great but it will be greater, in ages yet to come,
in other lands, among other peoples, when the battle fury in thee
shall have turned to wisdom and anger to compassion. Nations that
lie hidden in the womb of time shall hail thee as friend, deliverer
and saviour. Go and forget what has passed. This also thou shalt
forget. It will not linger in thy mind; but in thy heart shall
remain the memory and it will urge thee to nobler deeds. Farewell,
warrior, saviour that is to be!"
As the two went along the moon lit shore mighty forms followed,
and there was a waving of awful hands over them to blot out memory.
In the room where Fand lay with mad beating heart tearing itself
in remorse, there was one watching with divine pity. Mannanan,
the Golden Glory, the Self of the Sun. "Weep not, O shadow; thy
days of passion and pain are over." breathed the Pity in her breast.
"Rise up, O Ray, from thy sepulchre of forgetfulness. Spirit come
forth to they ancient and immemorial home." She rose up and stood
erect. As the Mantle of Mannanan enfolded her, no human words
could tell the love, the exultation, the pathos, the wild passion
of surrender, the music of divine and human life interblending.
Faintly we echo--like this spake the Shadow and like this the Glory.
The Shadow
Who art thou, O Glory,
In flame from the deep,
Where stars chant their story,
Why trouble my sleep?
I hardly had rested,
My dreams wither now:
Why comest thou crested
And gemmed on they brow?
The Glory
Up, Shadow, and follow
The way I will show;
The blue gleaming hollow
To-night we will know,
And rise mid the vast to
The fountain of days;
From whence we had pass to
The parting of ways.
The Shadow
I know thee, O Glory:
Thine eyes and thy brow
With white fire all hoary
Come back to me now.
Together we wandered
In ages agone;
Our thoughts as we pondered
Were stars at the dawn.
The glory has dwindled,
My azure and gold:
Yet you keep enkindled
The Sun-fire of old.
My footsteps are tied to
The heath and the stone;
My thoughts earth-allied-to--
Ah! leave me alone.
Go back, thou of gladness,
Nor wound me with pain,
Nor spite me with madness,
Nor come nigh again.
The Glory
Why tremble and weep now,
Whom stars once obeyed?
Come forth to the deep now
And be not afraid.
The Dark One is calling,
I know, for his dreams
Around me are falling
In musical streams.
A diamond is burning
In depths of the Lone
Thy spirit returning
May claim for its throne.
In flame-fringed islands
Its sorrows shall cease,
Absorbed in the silence
And quenched in the peace.
Come lay thy poor head on
My breast where it glows
With love ruby-red on
Thy heart for its woes.
My power I surrender:
To thee it is due:
Come forth, for the splendor
Is waiting for you.
--The End
--November 15, 1895-March 15, 1896
Shadow and Substance
Many are the voices that entreat and warn those who would live the
life of the Magi. It is well they should speak. They are voices
of the wise. But after having listened and pondered, oh, that
someone would arise and shout into our souls how much more fatal
it is to refrain. For we miss to hear the fairy tale of time,
the aeonian chant radiant with light and color which the spirit
prolongs. The warnings are not for those who stay at home, but
for those who adventure abroad. They constitute an invitation to
enter the mysteries. We study and think these things were well
in the happy prime and will be again the years to come. But not
yesterday only or tomorrow--today, today burns in the heart the
fire which made mighty the heroes of old. And in what future will
be born the powers which are not quick in the present? It will
never be a matter of greater ease to enter the path, though we may
well have the stimulus of greater despair. For this and that there
are times and seasons, but for the highest it is always the hour.
The eternal beauty does not pale because its shadow trails over
slime and corruption. It is always present beneath the faded mould
whereon our lives are spent. Still the old mysterious glimmer
from mountain and cave allures, and the golden gleams divide and
descend on us from the haunts of the Gods.
The dark age is our darkness and not the darkness of life. It is
not well for us who in the beginning came forth with the wonder-light
about us, that it should have turned in us to darkness, the song of
life be dumb. We close our eyes from the many-coloured mirage of
day, and are alone soundless and sightless in the unillumined cell
of the brain. But there are thoughts that shine, impulses born of
fire. Still there are moments when the prison world reels away a
distant shadow, and the inner chamber of clay fills full with fiery
visions. We choose from the traditions of the past some symbol of
our greatness, and seem again the Titans or Morning Stars of the prime.
In this self-conception lies the secret of life, the way of escape
and return. We have imagined ourselves into forgetfulness, into
darkness, into feebleness. From this strange and pitiful dream of
life, oh, that we may awaken and know ourselves once again.
But the student too often turns to books, to the words sent back
to him, forgetful that the best of scriptures do no more than stand
as symbols. We hear too much of study, as if the wisdom of life
and ethics could be learned like ritual, and of their application
to this and that ephemeral pursuit. But from the Golden One, the
child of the divine, comes a voice to its shadow. It is stranger
to our world, aloof from our ambitions, with a destiny not here to
be fulfilled. It says: "You are of dust while I am robed in
opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay, I in a temple not
made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must come with me."
And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the spirit behind
the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no ending. It
is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the
angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it
stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the
Friend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this
strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by
what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness.
But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint
furniture of thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They
abide only in the shining. How different from academic psychology
of the past, with its dry enumeration of faculties, reason,
cognition and so forth, is the burning thing we know. We revolted
from that, but we must take care lest we teach in another way a
catalogue of things equally unliving to us. The plain truth is,
that after having learned what is taught about the hierarchies and
various spheres, many of us are still in this world exactly where
we were before. If we speak our laboriously-acquired information we
are listened to in amazement. It sounds so learned, so intellectual,
there must need be applause. But by-and-by someone comes with quiet
voice, who without pretence speaks of the "soul" and uses familiar
words, and the listeners drink deep, and pay the applause of silence
and long remembrance and sustained after-endeavor. Our failure
lies in this, we would use the powers of soul and we have not yet
become the soul. None but the wise one himself could bend the bow
of Ulysses. We cannot communicate more of the true than we ourselves
know. It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little
than to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods. So I say, lay down
your books for a while and try the magic of thought. "What a man
thinks, that he is; that is the old secret." I utter, I know,
but a partial voice of the soul with many needs. But I say, forget
for a while that you are student, forget your name and time. Think
of yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero
with the form of beauty, the heart of love. And of those divine
spheres forget the nomenclature; think rather of them as the
places of a great childhood you now return to, these homes no
longer ours. In some moment of more complete imagination the
thought-born may go forth and look on the olden Beauty. So it
was in the mysteries long ago and may well be today. The poor
dead shadow was laid to sleep in forgotten darkness, as the fiery
power, mounting from heart to head, went forth in radiance. Not
then did it rest, nor ought we. The dim worlds dropped behind it,
the lights of earth disappeared as it neared the heights of the
Immortals. There was One seated on a throne, One dark and bright
with ethereal glory. I arose in greeting. The radiant figure
laid its head against the breast which grew suddenly golden, and
father and son vanished in that which has no place nor name.
--January 15, 1896
On W. Q. Judge's Passing
It is with no feeling of sadness that I think of this withdrawal.
He would not have wished for that. But with a faltering hand I try
to express one of many incommunicable thoughts about the hero who
has departed. Long before I met him, before even written words of
his had been read, his name like an incantation stirred and summoned
forth some secret spiritual impulse in my heart. It was no surface
tie which bound us to him. No one ever tried less than he to gain
from men that adherence which comes from impressive manner. I hardly
thought what he was while he spoke; but on departing I found my
heart, wiser than my brain, had given itself away to him; an inner
exaltation lasting for months witnessed his power. It was in that
memorable convention in London two years ago that I first glimpsed
his real greatness. As he sat there quietly, one among many, not
speaking a word, I was overcome by a sense of spiritual dilation,
of unconquerable will about him, and that one figure with the grey
head became all the room to me. Shall I not say the truth I think?
Here was a hero out of the remote, antique, giant ages come among us,
wearing but on the surface the vesture of our little day. We, too,
came out of that past, but in forgetfulness; he with memory and
power soon regained. To him and to one other we owe an unspeakable
gratitude for faith and hope and knowledge born again. We may say
now, using words of his early years: "Even in hell I lift up my
eyes to those who are beyond me and do not deny them." Ah, hero,
we know you would have stayed with us if it were possible; but
fires have been kindled that shall not soon fade, fires that shall
be bright when you again return. I feel no sadness, knowing there
are no farewells in the True: to whosoever has touched on that
real being there is comradeship with all the great and wise of time.
That he will again return we need not doubt. His ideals were those
which are attained only by the Saviours and Deliverers of nations.
When or where he may appear I know not, but I foresee the coming
when our need invokes him. Light of the future aeons, I hail, I
hail to thee!
--April 15, 1896
Self-Reliance
Perhaps it is now while we are in a state of transition, when old
leaders have gone out of sight and the new ones have not yet taken
their place in the van, that we ought to consider what we are in
ourselves. Some questions we ought to ask ourselves about this
movement: where its foundations were laid? what the links are?
where is the fountain of force? what are the doors? You answer
the first and you say "America," or you say "India." But if that
old doctrine of emanations be true it was not on earth but in the
heavenworld where our minds immortal are linked together. There
it was born and well born, and grew downwards into earth, and all
our hopes and efforts and achievements here but vaguely reflect
what was true and perfect in intent above, a compact of many hearts
to save the generations wandering to their doom. Wiser, stronger,
mightier than we were those who shielded us in the first years;
who went about among us renewing memory, whispering in our hearts
the message of the meaning of life, recalling the immemorial endeavor
of the spirit for freedom, knowledge, mastery. But it is our
movement and not the movement of the Masters only. It is our own
work we are carrying on; our own primal will we are trying to give
effect to. Well may the kingly sages depart from bodies which were
torment and pain to them. They took them on for our sakes, and we
may wave them a grateful farewell below and think of the spheres
invisible as so much richer by their presence, more to be longed for,
more to be attained. I think indeed they are nearer heart and mind
there than here. What is real in us can lose no brotherhood with
such as they through death. Still flash the lights from soul to
soul in ceaseless radiance, in endless begetting of energy, thought
and will, in endless return of joy and love and hope. I would
rather hear one word of theirs in my heart than a thousand in my ears.
I would rather think of my guide and captain as embodied in the flame
than in the clay. Although we may gaze on the grave, kindly face
living no more, there can be no cessation of the magic influence,
the breath of fire, which flowed aforetime from the soul to us.
We feel in our profoundest hearts that he whom they call dead is
living, is alive for evermore.
He has earned his rest, a deep rest, if indeed such as he cease
from labor. As for us, we may go our ways assured that the links
are unbroken. What did you think the links were? That you knew
some one who knew the Masters? Such a presence and such a Companion
would indeed be an aid, a link. But I think where ever there is
belief in our transcendent being, in justice, our spiritual unity
and destiny, wherever there is brotherhood, there are unseen ties,
links, shining cords, influx from and unbroken communication with
the divine. So much we have in our own natures, not enough to
perfect us in the mysteries, but always enough to light our path,
to show us our next step, to give us strength for duty. We should
not always look outside for aid, remembering that some time we must
be able to stand alone. Let us not deny our own deeper being, our
obscured glory. That we accepted these truths, even as intuitions
which we were unable intellectually to justify, is proof that there
is that within us which has been initiate in the past, which lives
in and knows well what in the shadowy world is but a hope. There
is part of ourselves whose progress we do not comprehend. There
are deeds done in unremembered dream, and a deeper meditation in
the further unrecorded silences of slumber. Downward from sphere
to sphere the Immortal works its way into the flesh, and the soul
has adventures in dream whose resultant wisdom is not lost because
memory is lacking here. Yet enough has been said to give us the hint,
the clue to trace backwards the streams of force to their fount.
We wake in some dawn and there is morning also in our hearts, a love,
a fiery vigor, a magnetic sweetness in the blood. Could we track
to its source this invigorating power, we might perhaps find that
as we fell asleep some olden memory had awakened in the soul, or
the Master had called it forth, or it was transformed by the wizard
power of Self and went forth to seek the Holy Place. Whether we
have here a guide, or whether we have not, one thing is certain,
that behind and within the "Father worketh hitherto." A warrior
fights for us. Our thoughts tip the arrows of his quiver. He wings
them with flame and impels them with the Holy Breath. They will
not fail if we think clear. What matters it if in the mist we do
not see where they strike. Still they are of avail. After a time
the mists will arise and show a clear field; the shining powers
will salute us as victors.
I have no doubt about our future; no doubt but that we will have
a guide and an unbroken succession of guides. But I think their
task would be easier, our way be less clouded with dejection and
doubt, if we placed our trust in no hierarchy of beings, however
august, but in the Law of which they are ministers. Their power,
though mighty, ebbs and flows with contracting and expanding nature.
They, like us, are but children in the dense infinitudes. Something
like this, I think, the Wise Ones would wish each one of us to speak:
"O Brotherhood of Light, though I long to be with you, though it
sustains me to think you are behind me, though your aid made sure
my path, still, if the Law does not permit you to act for me today,
I trust in the One whose love a fiery breath never ceases; I fall
back on it with exultation: I rely upon it joyfully." Was it not
to point to that greater life that the elder brothers sent forth
their messengers, to tell us that it is on this we ought to rely,
to point us to grander thrones than they are seated on? It is
well to be prepared to face any chance with equal mind; to meet
the darkness with gay and defiant thought as to salute the Light
with reverence and love and joy. But I have it in my heart that
we are not deserted. As the cycles went their upward way the
heroic figures of the dawn reappear. Some have passed before us;
others in the same spirit and power will follow: for the new day
a rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it. When it comes let
it find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared
and ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands
to the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our
guides and friends.
--May 15, 1896
The Mountains
While we live within four walls we half insensibly lose something
of our naturalness and comport ourselves as creatures of the
civilization we belong to. But we never really feel at home there,
though childhood may have wreathed round with tender memories old
rooms and the quaint garden-places of happy unthinking hours.
There is a house, a temple not built with hands; perhaps we thought
it a mere cabin when we first formed it, and laid aside humbly many
of our royal possessions as we entered, for the heavens and the
heaven of heavens could not contain all of our glory. But now it
seems vast enough, and we feel more at home there, and we find
places which seem nearer of access to our first life. Such are
the mountains. As I lie here on the monstrous mould of the hillside
covered with such delicate fringes of tiny green leaves, I understand
something of his longing who said: "I lift up mine eyes to the hills,
from whence cometh my aid." Oh, but the air is sweet, is sweet.
Earth-breath, what is it you whisper? As I listen, listen, I know
it is no whisper but a chant from profoundest deeps, a voice hailing
its great companions in the aether spaces, but whose innumerable
tones in their infinite modulations speak clear to us also in our
littleness. Our lips are stilled with awe; we dare not repeat
what here we think. These mountains are sacred in our Celtic
traditions. Haunt of the mysteries, here the Tuatha de Danaans
once had their home. We sigh, thinking of the vanished glory, but
look with hope for the fulfilment of the prophecy which the seer
of another line left on record, that once more the Druid fires
should blaze on these mountains. As the purple amplitude of night
enfold them, already the dark mounds seem to throw up their sheeny
illuminations; great shadowy forms, the shepherds of our race,
to throng and gather; the many-coloured winds to roll their aerial
tides hither and thither. Eri, hearth and home of so many mystic
races, Isle of Destiny, there shall yet return to thee the spiritual
magic that thrilled thee long ago. As we descend and go back to
a life, not the life we would will, not the life we will have, we
think with sorrow of the pain, the passion, the partings, through
which our race will once more return to nature, spirit and freedom.
We turned back mad from the mystic mountains
All foamed with red and with faery gold;
Up from the heart of the twilight's fountains
The fires enchanted were starward rolled.
We turned back mad--we thought of the morrow,
The iron clang of the far-away town:
We could not weep in our bitter sorrow
But joy as an arctic sun went down.
--May 15, 1896
Works and Days
When we were boys with what anxiety we watched for the rare smile
on the master's face ere we preferred a request for some favor, a
holiday or early release. There was wisdom in that. As we grow
up we act more or less consciously upon intuitions as to time and
place. My companion, I shall not invite you to a merrymaking when
a bitter moment befalls you and the flame of life sinks into ashes
in your heart; nor yet, however true and trusted, will I confide
to you what inward revelations of the mysteries I may have while
I sense in you a momentary outwardness. The gifts of the heart
are too sacred to be laid before a closed door. Your mood, I know,
will pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us. I wait,
for it can be said but once: I cannot commune magically twice on
the same theme with you. I do not propose we should be opportunists,
nor lay down a formula; but to be skillful in action we must work
with and comprehend the ebb and flow of power. Mystery and gloom,
dark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the
clear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, heroic ardor and the
exultation of power. Ever varying, prismatic and fleeting, the
days go by and the secret of change eludes us here. I bend the
bow of thought at a mark and it is already gone. I lay the shaft
aside and while unprepared the quarry again fleets by. We have
to seek elsewhere for the source of that power which momentarily
overflows into our world and transforms it with its enchantment.
On the motions of an inner sphere, we are told, all things here depend;
on spheres of the less evanescent which, in their turn, are enclosed
in spheres of the real, whose solemn chariot movements again are
guided by the inflexible will of Fire. In all of these we have part.
This dim consciousness which burns in my brain is not all of myself.
Behind me it widens out and upward into God. I feel in some other
world it shines with purer light: in some sphere more divine than
this it has a larger day and a deeper rest. That day of the inner
self illuminates many of our mortal days; its night leaves many
of them dark. And so the One Ray expanding lives in many vestures.
It is last of all the King-Self who wakes at the dawn of ages,
whose day is the day of Brahma, whose rest is his rest. Here is
the clue to cyclic change, to the individual feebleness and power,
the gloom of one epoch and the glory of another. The Bright Fortnight,
the Northern Sun, Light and Flame name the days of other spheres,
and wandering on from day to day man may at last reach the end of
his journey. You would pass from rapidly revolving day and night
to where the mystical sunlight streams. The way lies through
yourself and the portals open as the inner day expands. Who is
there who has not felt in some way or other the rhythmic recurrence
of light within? We were weary of life, baffled, ready to forswear
endeavor, when half insensibly a change comes over us; we doubt
no more but do joyfully our work; we renew the sweet magical
affinities with nature: out of a heart more laden with love we
think and act; our meditations prolong themselves into the shining
wonderful life of soul; we tremble on the verge of the vast halls
of the gods where their mighty speech may be heard, their message
of radiant will be seen. They speak a universal language not for
themselves only but for all. What is poetry but a mingling of
some tone of theirs with the sounds that below we utter? What is
love but a breath of their very being? Their every mood has colors
beyond the rainbow; every thought rings in far-heard melody. So
the gods speak to each other across the expanses of ethereal light,
breaking the divine silences with words which are deeds. So, too,
they speak to the soul. Mystics of all time have tried to express
it, likening it to peals of faery bells, the singing of enchanted
birds, the clanging of silver cymbals, the organ voices of wind
and water bent together--but in vain, in vain. Perhaps in this
there is a danger, for the true is realized in being and not in
perception. The gods are ourselves beyond the changes of time
which harass and vex us here. They do not demand adoration but an
equal will to bind us consciously in unity with themselves. The
heresy of separateness cuts us asunder in these enraptured moments;
but when thrilled by the deepest breath, when the silent, unseen,
uncomprehended takes possession of thee, think "Thou art That,"
and something of thee will abide for ever in It. All thought not
based on this is a weaving of new bonds, of illusions more difficult
to break; it begets only more passionate longing and pain.
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