The Bedroom of Morpheus or Papaver somniferum

Pan

I
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?
No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?
And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?
Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?

II
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.
No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
This modern world hath need of thee!
A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!
Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!


(Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900)

As it were, as they used to say, so to speak; yes, it was in this way.

I awoke to a relatively cool October morning in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in which that was pleasantly damp and darkened.  Strong gales were enlivened with their duties of peeling back the loosened top layer of the over world and in violently playing the wind chimes strung in the low-hanging and impoverished apple, pear and cherry trees outside of my window.  I was startled by unceremonious illumination of the world in lavender light and the gradually dissipating low rolling rumble of thunder.  I envisioned the harsh face of Zeus.  Revelation 10:4 leapt into my mind.

When the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write; and I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken and do not write them."

It seemed to me that the day had manifested itself as a sleepy and opiate induced glowing vision of unmasked anthocyanin, carotenoid, and xanthophyll pigment which was revealed in the Oak, the Maple, the Sourwood, the Beech, the Birch, the Sumac, the Magnolia, and the Mountain ash by the cloud-weakened rays of the rising ocherous sun.  At no other time of the year do the mountains relinquish such splendor.

As I came to the kitchen window, pondering the morning's provisions, I was carried away in thought by the sight of various ominous looking black and elongated clouds sweeping past the tops of swaying trees, all set against the ashen bittersweet sky.  I remembered that I had been dreaming something of importance a short time ago.  As to what it was, I was lost.  The scene outside the window brought me to the memory of a conversation I had with Isis at around this time last year.  The subject was on a dream of mine...

I had a dream quite unlike any other I have had before.  I dreamed of an idol of Pan with two goddesses or angels or feminine figures on his left and  right.


Nymphs?, asked Isis in a seducing tone of voice.

Mayhaps.  They both bore wings upon their backs.  Mayhaps they were Malakhim, of a sort.  They were made of stone and sat upon the ground of a secret grove.  The female on Pan's right was facing his left.  The female on his left was larger than the other and facing his right.  Pan was facing outward between the two.  Also in the dream were many circles of stone amidst the barren ground.  There was no grass.  In the dream I felt lost in the unvisited recesses of a familiar area.  Past was very near to present.  This was the essence of the dream.  What do you make of this Isis?

Isis gazes into the flowing waters.

I believe this is a dream that relates directly to your spirituality.  There is much duality, suggesting that you are at a point of journey in which you are beginning to acknowledge two very different worlds; the spiritual and the physical; and realize the interrelationship that exists between them.  They are separate but complimentary.  The lack of grass is the stripping away of a pretty layer that stops you from seeing the real Earth; the important reality that stays hidden; but is nonetheless real.  You know that the Earth is there beneath the grass giving you your physical foundation, but you take it for granted, so you do not connect to that realness as you should.  The stone circles represent the spiritual, manifested in the physical, sitting on bare Earth in your full view.  The pretty grass is no longer stopping your seeing what you knew was there.  Your dream suggests that you are ready to see the Whole.  You know that the Feng Shui coin is not one-sided, and that there is a hole in the middle—that which is representing the union of Heaven and Earth. 

I was drawn from this memory by the realization that the wind had become still.

Years later I find myself surrounded by stone circles amid shady spots lacking grass.

Hymn to Pan

 Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me!
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful god,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain — come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man! my man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp —
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all-begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come. Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, Maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!

(Aleister Crowley,  1875 – 1947)