Booth #5: ThoRns Grove - Where Books Eat YOU

[poseidon]

What I'm trying to figure out is how the 12 tribes/signs correlate to the Tree Of Life? I've found some interesting sites, but nothing specific.

Actually found a site. If whats written there is correct my sign, gemini correlates to the 17th path, from Tipharet to Binah. Interesting site:

www.borndigital.com/tree/index.html

[Rit]

I don't know if any of you have seen the Star Trek episode I referenced earlier, but their using a Blake poem really fits in the context of the plot. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but it seems the writer knew his Blake. It wasn't just arbitrarily tossed in there for 'high culture.' It reinforces why I think the original Star Trek is one of the most important and worthy series every presented on TeeVee (for all its cheese by today's standards).

what was the name of that episode, Strat? i might hunt it down and d/l it.

[strat-0]

It was called "Plato's Stepchildren" Details here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_Stepchildren

[poseidon]

Didn't William Blake paint "Dante's Inferno?'

"I heard somebody say...burn baby burn..."

[poseidon]

Watched "Moulin Rouge" tonight on the Oxygen channel (commercials and all) and thought up this little ditty:

Some come high in the sky
others go low on the road
woe for those who have done both
a rose, is a rose, is a rose...is a rose.

[Rit]

one of Blake's unfinished poems:

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human Heart
and Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
and Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

[Rit]

this (sometimes) witty attempt by the BBC to explain William Blake to a newcomer is a pretty neat intro to Blake, for those of you interested....

www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2116694

a quick quote from it, from the concluding paragraph:
"..Receive his legacy this way. Allow him that presumption, that his spirit might resonate with yours. Blake is neither trivial, nor pretentious. Blake is profound. Blake is Promethean. Blake is Piety wreathed in Flame...."

[Rit]

poem by Patti Smith:

april is the cruelest month etc. what remains?
brian jones bones, jim morrisons friend jimi hendrix
bandana. sweatband angel. judies garland. the
starched collar of baudelaire. the sculptured cap of
voltaire. the crusaders helmet like a temple itself.
rimbaud's valise. his artificial limb genuflects. surreal
space. brancusi bird brain.

[Rit]

An Abridged List of the Visionary Christian Literature of Western Culture:

(* now, i'm no theist or religionist or pillar of orthodoxy. i'm not even religious in the "heaven and "hell", "church on Sunday" sense, but i do see the poetic appeal of this type of literature. All the great Poets and Artists and Rockers have some sense of the Divine in the back of their minds. This is what i mean to tap into by printing out this list. That said, i've been super critical as to what is great visionary literature, and what is merely religious dogma which reduces all life to unimaginative dullness *)

--------------------
The Wisdom Books of the Bible (Job, Eccesiastes, Proverbs, Psalms)
The Proheptic Books of the Bible (Isaiah, Jeremiah)
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of John
The Gospel of Thomas
The Secret Gospel of James
The Book of Revelations
Confessions - St. Augustine
The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) - Dante
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Faust, a tragedie in two parts - Goethe
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake
Fear & Trembling - Kierkegaard
Un Saison en Enfer (A Season In Hell) - Arthur Rimbaud
-------------------

(* the selection of these works is meant to spur the imagination along to a grander imaginative life and soul. reading them will only enrich. it ought to be akin to immersing yourself in Buddhist literature or Zen koans, except that Christian literature happens to the be backbone of Western literature, and is a tradition of robust reading in its own right *)

(* and at every step of the way, if you find yourself slipping into sleepy dogmatic agreeance with it, shake yourself out of it, and so you'll toughen your mental guard against becoming some orthodox bible-thumper *)

[Thorngrub]

Some day I will think of something to say to this.

[Thorngrub]

HOly SHITE!! ! !! ! ! !!

2nite:

an historic reading of Allen Ginsberg's primal scream HOWL.


This is going to be a once in a lifetime experience.

I am there with bells on. I hope they have a brief open-mic - - I got just the piece to read beforehand. *psYched*

* poet Alex Caldieri will be reading this legendary poem on a stage at our main Public Library. The stage has been set designed to resemble the original coffee house in San Francisco wherein Allen Ginsberg first read this searing document aloud, exactly 50 years ago.

There's an After Party @ Ken Sander's place - - - *hot damn*

[Thorngrub]

Algernon Blackwood is simply my favorite of the 19th/20th century fantasists. People will praise the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Stoker, all with quite valid justification of course, but you hardly ever hear of their esteemed contemporary, Algernon Blackwood.

The above depicted scan is of a recently published (thank you, Stark House) edition which, for the first time, publishes the 2 most important novels of Blackwood's career into one outstanding tome of occult fantasy.

I myself have enjoyed many of Blackwood's ghost stories and tales of the supernatural, they're nearly always a thoroughly enjoyable read. But I never had the opportunity to read this diptych.

All I can say is nearly every page is saturated with immeasurable fascination. The attention to detail, the command of language and syntax, one is immediately made fully aware they are in the presence of a master.

There is an invaluable introduction by an author named Mike Ashley, and I agree he says it best when he writes "You will encounter nothing like Julius LaVallon/The Bright Messenger anywhere else in the whole of fantastic literature."

- - - -
a brief biography: hem.fyristorg.com/bd/ab/

[luke]

That sounds excellent, thorn. I'd like to check that out.

[luke]

I didn’t want to buy this thing myself, so I asked for it as a Christmas present. I was expecting something remarkably lame and arrogant, but I was rather shocked.

Other than the straight-away, cut-and-dry E.B. White readings you can find on writing, this is the best book on the subject I have ever read. King says things that make his critics hate him all the more, and things that your Creative Writing professor would kick you out of class for.

Steve-O’s incentive for writing this book was the lack of attention that popular writers get for their use of “the language.” Nobody asks the Kings, Grishams, Clanceys, and Chrichtons about the language.

The book starts with a brief autobiography that centers on his writing. It would be boring, but King is such a good storyteller that you get sucked in.

When he actually gets to the bits on writing, he’s informative. He goes over common sense and the basics, but he does this with a basic, common sense approach. Nothing like you’d hear from some snooty professor or critic. He emphasizes grammar and bashes adverbs. He points out that the story is everything, and you should write only what you know. He says- and this is where it sinks in that this is a book about popular writing- that theme and symbolism are strictly optional. If you can find them in your story, you’re a fool not to emphasize them in second draft. But if they’re not there, then fuck’em. They are not the be-all, end-all of storytelling.

King gives some basic guidelines on editing and drafts, and says that, if you want to publish, you should let some select “ideal readers” read your second draft and offer you constructive criticism. Most importantly, you should listen to this criticism. If you don’t want to write something that other people enjoy, why bother publishing?

You should read and write four to six hours a day, according to this book. If you want to be a success, you’ll find the time. Lose the music in the car in favor of audio books, bring a book to the grocery store, quit watching TV, and write, write, write.

The book gets dangerously close to boring, but then picks up mid-way after King’s accident. The words become more aggressive and more vigorous. It’s fun to read, not only for the advice, but to study the man brought back to life after being hit by a van.

King is a little self-deprecating, as always. He jokes about how many forests were wasted on his books, and how disheartening is that most of his fans regard The Stand, written over 20 years ago, as his best piece.

Sometimes it gets painful, though, as Stephen King, the master of telling you character traits instead of subtly weaving them for you to pick up, stresses that you not be too upfront with description. However, he does warn to “do as I say and not as I do.” There’s not much bullshit in this book.

I’m not through with this book yet, but I plan on wrapping it up in the next couple days. It’s a great read, offers some good advice, reinforces some well-treaded advice, and, most importantly, makes you want to get off your ass and write.

[Thorngrub]

luke said:

That sounds excellent, thorn. I'd like to check that out.

You should, although I just realized I didn't say anything on what the book is about. It may not hold as much fascination for some as it does for me, but in a nutshell, the story deals with a principal character who narrates it, recalling the memories of youth when his best friend, the titular Julius LeVallon, was a being who remembered all his past lives. He is the enigmatic outsider respected by the school master, shunned by most of the pupils, and who reveals to our narrator that they both worked towards a common cause many lifetimes ago, and have repeatedly joined forces throughout several lifetimes, involving a third party yet to appear in the story, who was a woman.

They had all communed with powerful nature forces back then, when humankind had more of an affinity with controlling them, and a wholly different approach to gathering knowledge. Apparantly these 3 had unleashed a primal force back then, which according to natural law, needs be set straight so the balance can be restored.

That sounds kinda corny boiled down like that, but the read is truly absorbing as the author describes down to the minutest details these seemingly paranormal qualities to the universe, itself convincingly described as being wholly sentient and alive, and of which humankind only plays its particular role in the overall scheme of things.

The author himself was a member of the Golden Dawn, but not into the "occult" as it is incorrectly perceived by the general populace today, but rather, he was a true "Nature" boy, who liked nothing better than to escape into the wild and commune with the living forces encountered there.

In other words . . . totally up my alley.