George Harrison's Spiritual Quest

Some of the old  European veneration of the sun seems to continue in psychedelic-influenced rock lyrics.  In the past Persian Mithra, the Greek Phoibos Apollo (radiant Apollo), and Roman Sol invictus (unconquerable sun) were major solar deities worshiped in the classical world.  The Sixties seemed to resurrect these religions in another form.

Here is the other side of George: the Hare Krishna devotee.  This is what is termed a bhakti or devotional yoga, as opposed to other types, such as jnana yoga (path of knowledge, scholarship), karma yoga (path of action, service to others) and raja yoga (way of meditation).  There is a book out now called Working Class Mystic that chronicles his spiritual journey, I haven't read it, but it sounds reliable, the book is described here. 

The Beatles meet the Sitar

George Harrison actually without other Beatles, only Indian musicians, from 1967 Sgt. Pepper's album.  Nice Hindu-inspired mystical rant (if only they would change their ways, and do what I do!)  All in all though, not a bad message.

Truth in Advertising or Nanny State Psychosis?

Anyone who turns on their TV these days is soon inundated with hearing a detailed and seemingly never-ending list of the  nauseating side effects of advertised prescription drugs.  This is supposedly due to the FDA's truth-in-advertising requirements to present a balanced picture of the proffered product.  Behind the scenes of course are the rapacious trial lawyers who hope to capitalize on some missed symptom or legal detail to sue the hell out of the drug manufacturers.  Then of course we have all sorts of reality shows from The Dog Whisperer to Dual Survival with their "don't try this at home" or "without the help of a professional" warnings to protect them from those human sharks known as trial lawyers. 

What this really amounts to is a farce and paying homage to nanny state rules instead of using common sense.  Of course if one sees a drug advertised on TV, one has to ask one's doctor for a prescription, and that is where one should learn about side effects.  Every medicine and drug that ever existed has side effects, what is the big deal?  As far as adventure or reality shows demonstrating some obviously dangerous stunt or ordeal, no one with half a brain can claim they did not realize the activity was dangerous, and yes, kiddies, life itself is dangerous, let's just use some common sense and get on with it. 

There is a website that satirizes this sort of side effect descriptions here.  Another site that specializes  in listing outrageous nanny state policies such as San Francisco's ban of  free McDonald's Happy Meal toys, is here.  Another list is here.  I'm afraid we may be headed the way of Great? Britain where the right of self defense has evaporated in the rush to protect the criminals from bodily harm when they are in the act of committing a crime.  Here is one example of what has transpired there.  Apparently things have gone so far in the nutty nanny state direction that some legal authorities are trying to return to a reasonable interpretation of the law.  

The riots that England experienced a while back were out of control because everyone except a few Turk or Pakistani immigrants knew it was against the law to offer resistance to people who entered their neighborhoods to break, steal and set fire to everything.  In fact in one instance when a policeman took action during a melee it was to attempt to arrest an immigrant who had successfully beaten off some rioters in his street.  Luckily he was pulled away from the cop by his friends.  Meanwhile it was normal for other cops to just look on at the rioters without moving a muscle.   You can't even defend yourself with a letter opener or brandish anything that could be used as a weapon to ward off would-be thieves or assailants. 

A Trip to Bulgaria

From It's a Beautiful Day album, pretty spacey music, lot of violin, title is said to be a mistake by the manager, actually should have been "Love for You."

Balinese Masks

Balinese art was influenced by Hinduism and Javanese art, it is often forgotten Java was Buddhist at one point, and the Borobudur monument was created there in the shape of a huge mandala:

More Moody Blues

From Lost Chord album in 1968, playful lyrics, video graphics very cuddly.  It reminds us how big a deal exploration was in previous centuries before anyplace on Earth could be photographed from space and one could zoom into anyplace on the planet with the Google Earth app.  Apparently this technology was originally funded by the CIA, just as the Internet helped get its start from Department of Defense funding. 

It is strange that the book that inspired the English to further explorations was Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, published in 1589, was chock full of baleful tales of shipwrecked sailors, cannibal-infested islands, sickened crew members, starving and sunburnt in windless latitudes, dying of thirst, tortured and killed by natives,  and so forth.  Yet his book inspired a great many to take to the mast and seek their fortune in foreign lands.  Thus we may conclude that the condition of daily life in England at the time was fairly miserable and visions of gold and glory overseas were enough to motivate a great many.

Walking Meditation

Many people are afraid of trying the sitting practice of meditation because they think prolonged sitting will be physically painful, not to mention boring.  They should be relieved to know that Buddhist practice sessions are punctuated with what is termed walking meditation, in which one walks slowly at a steady pace around the sitting cushions of the room.  This helps us stretch our legs obviously, but also provides a different mental perspective, in which, instead of focusing on the breath while sitting, we instead feel our feet lifting and stepping, first the heel comes down, then the foot is flat on the ground, then the toes come in contact with the earth as we take another step.  

During this process we keep our hands together usually with the left in a fist covered by the right held against our waist, and as we walk we just observe the space around us in a sort of neutral way, not analyzing it or relishing it, just pure observation.  One can take a break from the sitting position every twenty minutes or so, walking five to ten minutes, then returning to the cushion to sit in a cross-legged fashion.  We don't have to attempt what is called a full or half lotus position with our feet pulled up on top of each thigh, just a simple "Indian" style of crossing our legs in front of us, while sitting up on some sort of hard cushion, will be comfortable.  

It is curious to know that the Stoics got their name from the place where they walked up and down during their teaching, at the Stoa Poikile or painted porch in Athens.  Aristotle also had taught while walking about the Lyceum, thus his school became known as the peripatetic philosophers.   While it is true and also unfortunate that the Stoics never developed a sitting meditation tradition, they did practice recollection of past actions at the end of the day, in order to evaluate and see clearly how much they were really adhering to their lofty Stoic ideals.  

More Wheels

Cream's Wheels of Fire album, 1968, featuring the eerie White Room cut, notice the wah-wah pedal again as in Brave Ulysses.   Quite a good interpretation of White Room here.  Others have interpreted it as having to do with seeing one's lover off at a train station, in stream of consciousness style, others as having hidden drug meanings, another rather surprising one that it is about viewing a dead lover at a funeral parlor.   Someone has a great imagination. 

Cosmic Wheels

Finally decided to throw this one in here, graphics are so-so but better than I could do.  A little break from reading Cicero's speeches and bios of Roman generals.  The Romans would appreciate the astrological references in the song. 

The Roman Republic

Trying to sort through the chaotic maze of institutions that formed the Roman Republic up to its end with the civil war following Caesar's assassination, is not a task I  am finding easy.  Not only are there strange offices and institutions like the Centurial Assembly, the Tribal Assembly, the powerful Senate, tribunes, consules, procounsuls, censors, praetors, quaesters, aediles, patricians, equites and plebs, but all of these categories evolved and changed though the centuries in an ever-changing panorama of power politics. 

I am going through this self-imposed agony in order to unravel an historical question that I find keeps recurring every generation: that is, with regard to Julius Caesar, was he a good guy who cared for and sided with the common people against the autocracy of the Senators and aristocrats, or was he a bad guy who trampled the democratic traditions of the Republic in his quest for absolute power?  To answer such a question, of course one has to examine the nature of this supposed Republic and see how it functioned, both in theory and in real life.  Then one has to look at the period just previous to Caesar's career, for instance at the disturbances that occurred around the governance of the Gracchus brothers, and then the lives of Gaius Marius, Caesar's uncle, and seven-times consul,  who opposed the conservative faction, and finally Lucius Sulla, from whose name we get the word sullied, who reestablished in a bloodthirsty manner the authority of the aristocrats.  Not that Marius set a very good example himself in the way he treated suspected enemies. 

But as one can see, just to get a grip on the basic reality on the ground on which Caesar strode, one has to digest a lot of material and then try to make sense of it all, and decide which sources are more reliable than others, and which are useful as long as one takes into consideration that person's bias.   Anyway, this is the point at which I find myself, deeply immersed in the minutiae of a vast assembly of historical facts and fictions, not able to see any patterns or themes yet, much less make any evaluation of the main question.   But it is a worthwhile exercise, I believe, as this particular period in Western history has had many ramifications in later times, and so, to understand it gives one the ability to understand certain trends or ideologies that have shaped our own lives. 

Tibetan Ritual Music and Dancing

If you get bored, just jump ahead to the next act.  I always liked the deep sound of the long horns.

Owl Invasion

A few owl images.  The Greeks (Athenians at least) thought it a symbol of wisdom and put owls on their coins, since the owl was a favorite of Athena, the goddess of wisdom.  The Romans, being a more superstitious bunch, saw owls as foretellers of doom. 

Some Crazy Cajun Music

These guys are are in the same voodoo-inspired vein as Dr. John's old Zu Zu Mamou video, this one is more self-mocking and less creepy.  I guess this song Les flammes d'enfer, the Flames of Hell, goes back quite a ways, as there are many Cajun versions of it, as well as this French production:

This video could be called Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Band meets the Psychic Circus (from the Doctor Who episode The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.)

The Beatles in Role of Psychedelic Shamans

Tomorrow Never Knows - 1966

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream,
It is not dying, it is not dying
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,
Is it shining? Is it shining?
That you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being
Love is all and love is everyone
Is it knowing? Is it knowing?
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing
But listen to the colour of your dreams
Is it not living, is it not living
Or play the game "Existence" to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning

Why not more Naga statues?

Some kind of resin or artificial substance that looks like ivory.

One I bought a few years ago.

Interesting face gazing at the observer.

Another one with uncoiled tail.

Very Chinese or Kuan Yin features.

Donovan

The Sun is a Very Magic Fellow, from the Hurdy Gurdy Man album.  Have to admit I don't recall it, very pleasant though.  Wanted to put in video of Cosmic Wheels, but none of the ones posted on youtube have any decent graphics.  This song reminds me though, of my musings on the ubiquity of sun imagery or what amounts to solar worship in psychedelic music, in song names, lyrics and band designations.  One could mention songs by the Beatles: Here Comes the Sun, I'll Follow the Sun, Sun King; the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun, Sunshine Superman by Donovan, the Doors' Sunshine of Your Love, Sunlight in Her Hair, Waiting for the Sun; I Can Take You to the Sun by the Misunderstood, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun by Pink Floyd, Paper Sun by Traffic and so forth. 

Solar imagery plays a big part of psychedelic art posters and album covers as well.  The whole hippie counterculture movement could be seen as a return to some imagined solar pagan worship, from communes to outdoor festivals, nudity and food co-ops based on small outdoor gardens.   

Naga Kanya

This means daughter of the snake, and was originally a Hindu figure later adopted by the Buddhist to represent the guardians of treasures, especially concealed teachings.  Nagarjuna, of the second century, is said to have received the important prajnaparamita sutra text from the underworld nagas or snake deities.  This text became a fundamental doctrine of the new Mahayana Buddhist movement, and was published in book form in China in 868 A.D., the earliest printed book in the world.  Jack Kerouac, who tried to be a Buddhist when he wasn't drunk, especially like the Diamond Sutra, which is an exposition of these teachings. 

 

The first two above are fairly traditional representations of Naga Kanya, and are usually products of Nepalese artisans.  The third figure with both hands raised seems a little unorthodox, although still holding what appears to be a conch shell, which is fairly traditional.  The sumptuousness and vitality of it do not need description. 

A painting of Naga Kunya, less common than statue representations.

A different take on the figure, without the coiling up of the body beneath the torso.

A real colorful artifact.  All of the figures have wings, which gives them something in common with their mortal enemies, the garudas.  Normal nagas did not have wings.

The garudas are said to have enormous wingspans and were always hunting nagas.  The nagas took to swollowing stones, making them too heavy for the garudas to carry, so they gave up until they found out the secret and then started grabbing the nagas by the tail, forcing them to vomit out the stone, and off the garuda went with his dinner clutched in his claws.  Later according to one sutra, the Buddha made peace between the garudas and nagas.

More Tibetan Goodies

Ready for the gong show.  Gong ringing is traditionally used to start and stop meditation sessions in group practice.  Also many people use them to make a ringing or singing sound when the striker is rotated around the inner top of the bowl.  

Small hand held prayer wheels of many colors and jeweled inlays.  Even a red crucifix in lower right for sale.

More Tibetan style jewelry.  On right there seem to be small crystal dorjes which are usually brass and have either five or nine prongs on each end, symbolizing the thunderbolt as well as a diamond.

Some statues of Tara, who serves as a savioress in tantric Buddhism, probably the inspiration of the Chinese figure of Kuan Yin, as pointed out by John Blofeld, who studied and practiced Buddhism in China just before the Communists came to power. Some wrist malas above, and ritual choppers below on table. 

Some ritual masks, possibly of wrathful deity Mahakala.  Below appear to be some table top prayer wheels that can be turned by a sweeping hand motion against them. 

Closeup of masks.  They appear to be life size, if not too delicate could be worn in ritual dancing.

Water Snake Year

Today the Tibetan New Year or Losar begins as well as the Chinese New Year.  In both systems it is called the Water Snake year.  The two new years usually only coincide about a third of the time, for the Tibetans use some different lunar calendar calculations.  The Chinese system is easy to grasp: the second new moon after the winter solstice.  To make matters even more complicated, however, Chinese astrologers insist the actual new year begins a few days before the New Years Day celebration, this year February 4.  But most people don't seem to pay attention to that.  In Japan they get real sloppy and just consider the Western year to coincide with the Chinese year.  

The system of 12 animals and 5 elements gives a 60 year cycle before any animal/element combination is repeated.  In the Buddhist tradition, the sequence of animals is based on a legend of the order of the animals arriving to see the dying Buddha.  In Taoist tradition it is the animals showing up to meet the Jade Emperor for some reason.  The Tibetans view the last 5 or so days of the year to be full of the accumulated trouble and obstacles of that year and some kind of ritual mantra practice is done to pacify and transmute that negative energy into positive.  This is done often by practicing the Vajrakilaya ceremony, or in the Shambhala tradition, pacifying the turmoil of the mamos, wrathful female forces, using the Vajrasattva mantra. 

The "common people" often treat the Losar celebrations as a time to get pretty rowdy at times, a practice common to agricultural societies who wish to invoke the fertility of the soil and stimulate the new year's productivity and energy through their own high-jinks.  

This year being a snake year should have something to do with mysticism, reflection, and introversion, all snake characteristics.  This combined with the water element signifying travel, communication and networking.  The snake year represents a pause between the highly charged energy of the Dragon and Horse years, as it lies in between them.  It is perhaps a time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. 

Tibetan Wares

Disraeli Gears album

A classic from 1967, Eric Clapton composed the music based on lyrics by Martin Sharp...one of the first rock uses of the newly invented wah-wah pedal for electic guitar.  Mining the early Greek classics for psychedelic gold.

Country Joe - Section 43

It's amazing these guys named their group after a couple of cutthroats who made their living by murdering millions of their fellow citizens,  Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung ("the revolutionary moves through the peasantry as a fish through water) and nobody called them out about it.  Of course under either one of those dictators the Fish would have been quickly fried as bourgeois degenerates.  But of course the whole hippie movement was blissfully ignorant of real history and therefore supported the Communist North Vietnamese, who upon victory sent a million South Vietnamese to concentration camps. 

Elizabeth Mackintosh

A Scottish novelist who passed away in 1952, her detective stories in particular were popular for the next twenty years, after which they became almost forgotten.  Writing under the name of Josephine Tey, she created the character of the detective Alan Grant.  Her most famous work is The Daughter of Time, which investigates the supposed wicked deeds of King Richard III.  She did not believe he was hunchbacked, thinking it was later Tutor propaganda.  However just a few days ago a hunchbacked skeleton was supposed to be scientifically proven to be that of Richard III. 

Kind of gruesome...Arguments claiming Richard III did not murder the two princes in the Tower of London are examined in her book.  However most historians follow the theory of foul play at the hands of R III, who had custody of the boys.

Bird Brain II

An African Grey with quite a vocabulary.  If you talk to them a lot this is the kind of dividend you get back...they can carry on conversations with themselves for a long time like this bird named Clover.

More Worldly Wisdom

Some texts giving further explanations of maxims cited here:

127.  Grace in Everything
’Tis the life of talents, the breath of speech, the soul of action, and the ornament of ornament. Perfections are the adornment of our nature, but this is the adornment of perfection itself. It shows itself even in the thoughts. ’Tis most a gift of nature and owes least to education; it even triumphs over training. It is more than ease, approaches the free and easy, gets over embarrassment, and adds the finishing touch to perfection. Without it beauty is lifeless, graciousness ungraceful: it surpasses valour, discretion, prudence, even majesty it-self. ’Tis a short way to dispatch and an easy escape from embarrassment.

253. Do not explain too much.
Most men do not esteem what they understand, and venerate what they do not see. To be valued things should cost dear: what is not understood becomes overrated. You have to appear wiser and more prudent than he requires with whom you deal, if you desire to give him a high opinion of you: yet in this there should be moderation and no excess. And though with sensible people common sense holds its own, with most men a little elaboration is necessary. Give them no time for blame: occupy them with understanding your drift. Many praise a thing without being able to tell why, if asked. The reason is that they venerate the unknown as a mystery, and praise it because they hear it praised.

294.  Be moderate in your views.
Every one holds views according to his interest, and imagines he has abundant grounds for them. For with most men judgment has to give way to inclination. It may occur that two may meet with exactly opposite views and yet each thinks to have reason on his side, yet reason is always true to itself and never has two faces. In such a difficulty a prudent man will go to work with care, for his decision of his opponent's view may cast doubt on his own. Place yourself in such a case in the other man's place and then investigate the reasons for his opinion. You will not then condemn him or justify yourself in such a confusing way.

Treaty of Locarno

This agreement made in 1925 in Switzerland was supposed to prevent a recurrence of a war between France and Germany especially.  It was in hindsight obviously a total failure and helped cause World War II rather than prevent it.  This is because it achieved German acceptance of its western borders with Belgium and France but said nothing about its recently changed borders on the east with Poland and Czechoslovakia.   And World War II started because of German demands on Polish territory, i.e. Danzig. 

For various reasons, Great Britain refused to support France's desire to guarantee the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia and thus the appeasement of Germany and the unraveling of the terms of the Versailles Treaty started.  And this was before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.   France made token agreements with Poland and Czechoslovakia but her agreement in Locarno prevented it from attacking Germany across the Rhine, which would be the only way possible to come to the aid of her eastern allies.  Therefore her strategy of surrounding Germany with a strong alliance was reduced to nonsense. 

The British diplomats in particular showed incredible stupidity in losing sight of the destabilizing and and aggressive potential of Germany.  Because of fears of pushing Germany into the arms of the Soviet Union and of not appreciating France as a bulwark against a hostile Germany, the British virtually invited future German expansionism in the east.  This was only 6 years after they helped create these boundaries in the Treaty of Versailles.  In the new agreement  Germany voluntarily  agreed to the de-militarization of the Rhineland.  Of course when Hitler marched his soldiers back into that area in 1936, scrapping the Treaty of Locarno, the British and French did nothing.  So the Allied betrayal of Poland and Czechoslovakia in that treaty was for nothing. 

Time Is

I suppose everyone has heard the White Bird cut of It's a Beautiful Day album, but I think this last 9 1/2 minute work is one of the best rock songs ever.  One could attempt to make profound statements about the nature of time at this point, but that would be pointless.  Just sit back and enjoy.

Rome vs. the Samnites

The ancient Romans were not exactly good neighbors, supposedly every year about March they would meet together just to decide which neighboring tribe or colony to conquer during the seven-month war season when food was more abundant.  As the Italian peninsula in the times of the founding of Rome consisted of many small Italic states, some Greek colonies, the Samnites in the central highlands, the Etruscans to the north and the Goths further north, there was a lot of pushing and shoving amongst them all. 

One neighbor the Romans especially feared were the warrior herdsmen Samnites, and they waged three wars against them ending in 290 BC, and eventually won of course.  One of the stranger battles of those wars occurred when a Roman legion was tricked (again by enemy agents) into taking a short cut through the mountains where they discovered the way forward barricaded and the way back occupied by their enemies.  With no way in, out or over this area, called the Caudine Forks, without water they would soon perish.  The Samnite leader Gaius Pontius apparently had not thought what to do if his plan worked, for he decided send for advice to his father as to what to do next.  His father  told him to quickly let the Romans go.  Pontius thought this was too lenient, and sent another message.  This time the answer was to kill them all.  Pontius thought this was too cruel, and went to his dad for an explanation.

His father said if they let the Romans go without harm, they had a great opportunity to end the conflict and become friends with Rome.  On the other hand, if this was not done, then they should kill every one of the trapped soldiers, which would so damage Rome's war-making ability as to make the Samnites free of their incursions.   However Pontius did not like either alternative and thought a middle way between them was best, that of humiliating the Romans by having them bend down under a symbolic ox yoke made of their own spears and after taking 600 hostages, forcing them to accept an unfavorable five year peace treaty.  This may not sound like a big deal to us today, but apparently in those days honor was everything and a humiliating surrender was worse then dying on the battlefield.  

The upshot of it was that the Samnites achieved neither peace nor victory by this decision, and after the five year term was up the Romans went after them with renewed vigor, and eventually defeated them despite the intervention of the Etruscans and Gauls on the Samnite side.  The Romans borrowed the Samnite battle formation called the manipular system, replacing the phalanx formation they previously utilized, and used it with great effect throughout the days of the Republic and Empire.

Comparisons have been made with this kind of compromised peace agreement with the end of World War I and the Versailles Treaty, which started out being harsh on defeated Germany but then was abrogated piece by piece in the coming years, leaving the Germans so humiliated that the Nazis were to ride to power on these feelings.  Wilson's original 14 points did not contemplate harsh reparations imposed upon Germany, and had such a huge debt not been imposed, perhaps the Weimar Republic could have survived challenges by the extremists of the right and left.   But there are many variables that made such a forgiving plan difficult, mainly having to do with finding a way to compensate France for the incredible destruction of its farms and factories by the Germans, not to mention loss of blood and treasure.  I believe it was certain the German and Austrian high command used the excuse of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to start a preemptive war against  France and Russia, so forcing them to accept responsibility for the war was not unreasonable.  Unfortunately, since Allied armies did not fight their way into Germany and prove to the German public that they had utterly lost fair and square, the Armistice allowed the false impression to grow that they had been somehow created of victory and this lead to the rise of Hitler.