Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist
G >>
George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20
Still we must learn to know the hidden ways, to use the luminous
rivers for the commerce of thought. Our Druid forefathers began
their magical operations on the sixth day of the new moon, taking
the Bright Fortnight at its flood-time. In these hours of expansion
what we think has more force, more freedom, more electric and
penetrating power. We find too, if we have co-workers, that we
draw from a common fountain, the same impulse visits us and them.
What one possess all become possessed of; and something of the
same unity and harmony arises between us here as exists for all
time between us in the worlds above. While the currents circulate
we are to see to it that they part from us no less pure than they came.
To this dawn of an inner day may in some measure be traced the sudden
inspirations of movements, such as we lately feel, not all due to
the abrupt descent into our midst of a new messenger, for the elder
Brothers work with law and foresee when nature, time, and the
awakening souls of men will aid them. Much may now be done. On
whosoever accepts, acknowledges and does the will of the Light in
these awakenings the die and image of divinity is more firmly set,
his thought grows more consciously into the being of the presiding
god. Yet not while seeking for ourselves can we lay hold of final
truths, for then what we perceive we retain but in thought and memory.
The Highest is a motion, a breath. We become it only in the imparting.
It is in all, for all and goes out to all. It will not be restrained
in a narrow basin, but through the free-giver it freely flows.
There are throngs innumerable who await this gift. Can we let this
most ancient light which again returns to us be felt by them only
as a vague emotion, a little peace of uncertain duration, a passing
sweetness of the heart? Can we not do something to allay the sorrow
of the world? My brothers, the time of opportunity has come. One
day in the long-marshaled line of endless days has dawned for our
race, and the buried treasure-houses in the bosom of the deep have
been opened to endow it with more light, to fill it with more power.
The divine ascetics stand with torches lit before the temple of wisdom.
Those who are nigh them have caught the fire and offer to us in turn
to light the torch, the blazing torch of soul. Let us accept the
gift and pass it on, pointing out the prime givers. We shall see
in time the eager races of men starting on their pilgrimage of
return and facing the light. So in the mystical past the call of
light was seen on the sacred hills; the rays were spread and gathered;
and returning with them the initiate-children were buried in the
Father-Flame.
--June 15, 1896
The Childhood of Apollo
It was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers
truly. The old shepherd Tithonius sat before the door of his hut
waiting for his grandson to return. He watched with drowsy eyes
the eve gather, and the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles--
the isles of ancient Greece. It was Greece before its day of beauty,
and day was never lovelier. The cloudy blossoms of smoke curling
upward from the valley sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air,
a vague memorial of the world of men below. From that too the
colour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to
some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the
mountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with
intentness; there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion
in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his
starry children with the dark radiance of aether.
"Ah!" murmured the old man, looking upward, "once it was living;
once it spoke to me. It speaks not now, but it speaks to others
I know--to the child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy
night. Why does he linger now? He is beyond his hour. Ah, there
now are his footsteps!"
A boy came up the valley driving the grey flocks which tumbled
before him in the darkness. He lifted his young face for the
shepherd to kiss. It was alight with ecstasy. Tithonius looked
at him with wonder. A light golden and silvery rayed all about
the him so that his delicate ethereal beauty seemed set in a star
which followed his dancing footsteps.
"How bright your eyes!" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe.
"Why do your white limbs shine with moonfire light?"
"Oh, father," said the boy Apollo, "I am glad, for everything is
living tonight. The evening is all a voice and many voices. While
the flocks were browsing night gathered about me: I saw within it
and it was living everywhere; and all together, the wind with dim-
blown tresses, odour, incense and secret-falling dew, mingled in
one warm breath. They whispered to me and called me 'Child of the
Stars,' 'Dew Heart,' and 'Soul of Fire.' Oh, father, as I came up
the valley the voices followed me with song; everything murmured
love; even the daffodils, nodding in the olive gloom, grew golden
at my feet, and a flower within my heart knew of the still sweet
secret of the flowers. Listen, listen!"
There were voices in the night, voices as of star-rays descending.
"Now the roof-tree of the midnight spreading
Buds in citron, green, and blue:
From afar its mystic odors shedding,
Child, on you."
Then other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the
distant waters and air followed in benediction, and a last voice
like a murmur from universal Nature:
"Now the buried stars beneath the mountains
And the vales their life renew,
Jetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains,
Child, for you.
"As within our quiet waters passing
Sun and moon and stars we view,
So the loveliness of life is glassing,
Child, in you.
"In the diamond air the sun-star glowing
Up its feathered radiance threw;
All the jewel glory there was flowing,
Child, for you.
"And the fire divine in all things burning
Yearns for home and rest anew,
From its wanderings far again returning,
Child, to you."
"Oh, voices, voices," cried the child, "what you say I know not,
but I ray back love for love. Father, what is it they tell me?
They embosom me in light and I am far away even though I hold
your hand."
"The gods are about us. Heaven mingles with the earth," said
Tithonius trembling. "Let us go to Diotima. She has grown wise
brooding for many a year where the great caves lead to the underworld.
She sees the bright ones as they pass by where she sits with shut
eyes, her drowsy lips murmuring as nature's self."
That night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music
encircled by the silence. The trees long rooted in antique slumber
were throbbing with rich life; through glimmering bark and drooping
leaf a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague
figures nodded at them. These were the hamadryad souls of the wood.
They were bathed in tender colours and shimmering lights draping
them from root to leaf. A murmur came from the heart of every one,
a low enchantment breathing joy and peace. It grew and swelled
until at last it seemed as if through a myriad pipes that Pan the
earth spirit was fluting his magical creative song.
They found the cave of Diotima covered by vines and tangled strailers
at the end of the island where the dark-green woodland rose up from
the waters. Tithonius paused, for he dreaded this mystic prophetess;
but a voice from within called them: "Come in, child of light;
come in, old shepherd, I know why you seek me!" They entered,
Tithonius trembling with more fear than before. A fire was blazing
in a recess of the cavern and by it sat a majestic figure robed
in purple. She was bent forward, her hand supporting her face,
her burning eyes turned on the intruders.
"Come hither, child," she said, taking the boy by the hands and
gazing into his face. "So this frail form is to be the home of
the god. The gods choose wisely. They take no warrior wild, no
mighty hero to be their messenger to men, but crown this gentle
head. Tell me--you dream--have you ever seen a light from the sun
falling upon you in your slumber? No, but look now; look upward."
As she spoke she waved her hands over him, and the cavern with its
dusky roof seemed to melt away, and beyond the heavens the heaven
of heavens lay dark in pure tranquillity, a quiet which was the
very hush of being. In an instant it vanished and over the zenith
broke a wonderful light. "See now," cried Diotima, "the Ancient
Beauty! Look how its petals expand and what comes forth from its
heart!" A vast and glowing breath, mutable and opalescent, spread
itself between heaven and earth, and out of it slowly descended a
radiant form like a god's. It drew nigh radiating lights, pure,
beautiful, and starlike. It stood for a moment by the child and
placed its hand on his head, and then it was gone. The old shepherd
fell upon his face in awe, while the boy stood breathless and entranced.
"Go now," said the Sybil, "I can teach thee naught. Nature herself
will adore you and sing through you her loveliest song. But, ah,
the light you hail in joy you shall impart in tears. So from age
to age the eternal Beauty bows itself down amid sorrows that the
children of men may not forget it, that their anguish may be
transformed smitten through by its fire."
--November 15, 1896
The Awakening of the Fires
When twilight flutters the mountains over
The faery lights from the earth unfold,
And over the hills enchanted hover
The giant heroes and gods of old:
The bird of aether its flaming pinions
Waves over earth the whole night long:
The stars drop down in their blue dominions
To hymn together their choral song:
The child of earth in his heart grows burning
Mad for the night and the deep unknown;
His alien flame in a dream returning
Seats itself on the ancient throne.
When twilight over the mountains fluttered
And night with its starry millions came,
I too had dreams; the thoughts I have uttered.
Come from my heart that was touched by the flame
I thought over the attempts made time after time to gain our freedom;
how failure had followed failure until at last it seemed that we must
write over hero and chieftain of our cause the memorial spoken of
the warriors of old, "They went forth to the battle but they always
fell;" and it seemed to me that these efforts resulted in failure
because the ideals put forward were not in the plan of nature for us;
that it was not in our destiny that we should attempt a civilization
like that of other lands. Though the cry of nationality rings for
ever in our ears, the word here has embodied to most no other hope
than this, that we should when free be able to enter with more
energy upon pursuits already adopted by the people of other countries.
Our leaders have erected no nobler standard than theirs, and we who,
as a race, are the forlorn hope of idealism in Europe, sink day by
day into apathy and forget what a past was ours and what a destiny
awaits us if we will but rise responsive to it. Though so old in
tradition this Ireland of today is a child among the nations of
the world; and what a child, and with what a strain of genius in
it! There is all the superstition, the timidity and lack of judgment,
the unthought recklessness of childhood, but combined with what
generosity and devotion, and what an unfathomable love for its heroes.
Who can forget that memorable day when its last great chief was
laid to rest? He was not the prophet of our spiritual future;
he was not the hero of our highest ideals; but he was the only
hero we knew. The very air was penetrated with the sobbing and
passion of unutterable regret. Ah, Eri, in other lands there is
strength and mind and the massive culmination of ordered power,
but in thee alone is there such love as the big heart of childhood
can feel. It is this which maketh all thy exiles turn with longing
thoughts to thee.
Before trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed
from brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs
in the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier
of access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that
we have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is
yet our most precious heritage. We are not yet involved in a social
knot which only red revolution can sever: our humanity, the ancient
gift of nature to us, is still fresh in our veins: our force is
not merely the reverberation of a past, an inevitable momentum
started in the long ago, but is free for newer life to do what we
will with in the coming time.
I know there are some who regret this, who associate national
greatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of
factories and with large dividends; and others, again, who wish
that our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom
of our neighbours. But I raise the standard of idealism, to try
everything by it, every custom, every thought before we make it
our own, and every sentiment before it finds a place in our hearts.
Are these conditions, social and mental, which some would have us
strive for really so admirable as we are assured they are? Are
they worth having at all? What of the heroic best of man; how
does that show? His spirituality, beauty and tenderness, are
these fostered in the civilizations of today? I say if questions
like these bearing upon that inner life wherein is the real greatness
of nations cannot be answered satisfactorily, that it is our duty
to maintain our struggle, to remain aloof, lest by accepting a
delusive prosperity we shut ourselves from our primitive sources
of power. For this spirit of the modern, with which we are so
little in touch, is one which tends to lead man further and further
from nature. She is no more to him the Great Mother so reverently
named long ago, but merely an adjunct to his life, the distant
supplier of his needs. What to the average dweller in cities are
stars and skies and mountains? They pay no dividends to him, no
wages. Why should he care about them indeed. And no longer
concerning himself about nature what wonder is it that nature
ebbs out of him. She has her revenge, for from whatever standpoint
of idealism considered the average man shows but of pigmy stature.
For him there is no before or after. In his material life he has
forgotten or never heard of the heroic traditions of his race,
their aspirations to godlike state. One wonders what will happen
to him when death ushers him out from the great visible life to
the loneliness amid the stars. To what hearth or home shall he
flee who never raised the veil of nature while living, nor saw it
waver tremulous with the hidden glory before his eyes? The Holy
Breath from the past communes no more with him, and if he is
oblivious of these things, though a thousand workman call him
master, within he is bankrupt, his effects sequestered, a poor
shadow, an outcast from the Kingdom of Light.
We see too, that as age after age passes and teems only with the
commonplace, that those who are the poets and teachers falter and
lose faith: they utter no more of man the divine things the poets
said of old. Perhaps the sheer respectability of the people they
address deters them from making statements which in some respects
might be considered libelous. But from whatever cause, from lack
of heart or lack of faith, they have no real inspiration. The
literature of Europe has had but little influence on the Celt in
this isle. Its philosophies and revolutionary ideas have stayed
their waves at his coast: they had no message of interpretation
for him, no potent electric thought to light up the mystery of his
nature. For the mystery of the Celt is the mystery of Amergin the
Druid. All nature speaks through him. He is her darling, the
confidant of her secrets. Her mountains have been more to him
than a feeling. She has revealed them to him as the home of her
brighter children, her heroes become immortal. For him her streams
ripple with magical life and the light of day was once filled with
more aerial rainbow wonder. Though thousands of years have passed
since this mysterious Druid land was at its noonday, and long
centuries have rolled by since the weeping seers saw the lights
vanish from mountain and valley, still this alliance of the soul
of man and the soul of nature more or less manifestly characterizes
the people of this isle. The thought produced in and for complex
civilizations is not pregnant enough with the vast for them, is
not enough thrilled through by that impalpable breathing from
another nature. We have had but little native literature here
worth the name until of late years, and that not yet popularized,
but during all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some
affinity with the mighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so
evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and
faery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air
and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet
with hidden influence. It would make one feel sad to think that
all that beautiful folklore is fading slowly from the memory that
held it so long, were it not for the belief that the watchful
powers who fostered its continuance relax their care because the
night with beautiful dreams and deeds done only in fancy is passing:
the day is coming with the beautiful real, with heroes and heroic deeds.
It may not be well to prophecy, but it is always permissible to
speak of our hopes. If day but copies day may we not hope for
Ireland, after its long cycle of night, such another glory as
lightened it of old, which tradition paints in such mystic colours?
What was the mysterious glamour of the Druid age? What meant the
fires on the mountains, the rainbow glow of air, the magic life in
water and earth, but that the Radiance of Deity was shining through
our shadowy world, that it mingled with and was perceived along
with the forms we know. There it threw up its fountains of life-
giving fire, the faery fountains of story, and the children of
earth breathing that rich life felt the flush of an immortal vigour
within them; and so nourished sprang into being the Danaan races,
men who made themselves gods by will and that magical breath.
Rulers of earth and air and fire, their memory looms titanic in
the cloud stories of our dawn, and as we think of that splendid
strength of the past something leaps up in the heart to confirm
it true for all the wonder of it.
This idea of man's expansion into divinity, which is in the highest
teaching of every race, is one which shone like a star at the dawn
of our Celtic history also. Hero after hero is called away by a
voice ringing out of the land of eternal youth, which is but a
name for the soul of earth, the enchantress and mother of all.
There as guardians of the race they shed their influence on the isle;
from them sprang all that was best and noblest in our past, and
let no one think but that it was noble. Leaving aside that mystic
sense of union with another world and looking only at the tales of
battle, when we read of heroes whose knightly vows forbade the use
of stratagem in war, and all but the equal strife with equals in
opportunity; when we hear of the reverence for truth among the
Fianna, "We the Fianna of Erin never lied, falsehood was never
attributed to us"--a reverence for truth carried so far that they
could not believe their foemen even could speak falsely--I say
that in these days when our public life is filled with slander
and unworthy imputation, we might do worse than turn back to that
ideal Paganism of the past, and learn some lessons of noble trust,
and this truth that greatness of soul alone insures final victory
to us who live and move and have our being in the life of God.
In hoping for such another day I do not of course mean the renewal
of the ancient order, but rather look for the return of the same
light which was manifest in the past. For so the eternal Beauty
brings itself to the memory of man from time to time brooding over
nations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought
with the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its
myriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt
not only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of
the people. What has been called the Celtic renaissance in
literature is one of the least of the signs. Of far more
significance is the number of strange, dreamy children one meets,
whose hearts are in the elsewhere, and young people who love to
brood on the past, I speak of which is all the world to them.
The present has no voice to interpret their dreams and visions,
the enraptured solitude by mountain or shore, or what they feel
when they lie close pressed to the bosom of the earth, mad with
the longing for old joys, the fiery communion of spirit with spirit,
which was once the privilege of man. These some voice, not
proclaiming an arid political propaganda, may recall into the
actual: some ideal of heroic life may bring them to the service
of their kind, and none can serve the world better than those who
from mighty dreams turn exultant to their realisation: who bring
to labour the love, the courage, the unfailing hope, which they
only possess who have gone into the hidden nature and found it
sweet at heart.
So this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of
Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a
petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims
of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith,
which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's
inmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every
land. Now, although a great literature and great thought may be
part of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our
ideal. As in our past the bards gave way before the heroes, so
in any national ideal worthy the name, all must give way in its
hopes, wealth, literature, art, everything before manhood itself.
If our humanity fails us or become degraded, of what value are
the rest? What use would it be to you or to me if our ships
sailed on every sea and our wealth rivaled the antique Ind, if
we ourselves were unchanged, had no more kingly consciousness of
life, nor that overtopping grandeur of soul indifferent whether
it dwells in a palace or a cottage?
If this be not clear to the intuition, there is the experience of
the world and the example of many nations. Let us take the highest,
and consider what have a thousand years of empire brought to England.
Wealth without parallel, but at what expense! The lover of his
kind must feel as if a knife were entering his heart when he looks
at those black centres of boasted prosperity, at factory, smoke
and mine, the arid life and spiritual death. Do you call those
miserable myriads a humanity? We look at those people in despair
and pity. Where is the ancient image of divinity in man's face:
where in man's heart the prompting of the divine? There is nothing
but a ceaseless energy without; a night terrible as hell within.
Is this the only way for us as a people? Is nature to be lost;
beauty to be swallowed up? The crown and sceptre were taken from
us in the past, our path has been strewn with sorrows, but the
spirit shall not be taken until it becomes as clay, and man forgets
that he was born in the divine, and hears no more the call of the
great deep in his heart as he bows himself to the dust in his bitter
labours. It maddens to think it should be for ever thus, with us
and with them, and that man the immortal, man the divine, should
sink deeper and deeper into night and ignorance, and know no more
of himself than glimmers upon him in the wearied intervals of
long routine.
Here we have this hope that nature appeals with her old glamour
to many, and there is still the ancient love for the hero. In a
land where so many well nigh hopeless causes have found faithful
adherents, where there has been so much devotion and sacrifice,
where poverty has made itself poorer still for the sake of leader
and cause, may we not hope that when an appeal is made to the
people to follow still higher ideals, that they will set aside
the lower for the higher, that they will not relegate idealism
to the poets only, but that it will dwell in the public as the
private heart and make impossible any nations' undertaking
inconsistent with the dignity and beauty of life? To me it seems
that here the task of teacher and writer is above all to present
images and ideals of divine manhood to the people whose real gods
have always been their heroes. These titan figures, Cuculain,
Finn, Oscar, Oisin, Caolte, all a mixed gentleness and fire, have
commanded for generations that spontaneous love which is the only
true worship paid by men. It is because of this profound and long-
enduring love for the heroes, which must be considered as forecasting
the future, that I declare the true ideal and destiny of the Celt
in this island to be the begetting of humanity whose desires and
visions shall rise above earth illimitable into godlike nature,
who shall renew for the world the hope, the beauty, the magic,
the wonder which will draw the buried stars which are the souls of
men to their native firmament of spiritual light and elemental power.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20