Mr. Porcupine in the Tree

Our friend seen eye-to-eye
Has a face like a caboose
And appears to me
To have philosophical depth --
He seems a bit shy.
Tom leaves him a snack -- a carrot and celery...

As night falls -- Mr. Porcupine begins his day --
Backs down the barky oaken branch and trunk
Backs down all the way
With old-man-in-corduroys caution --
Long tail alive feeling behind him,
Helps to find his way down.

Didn't eat his snack -- we learn next day --
And he's gone on his unknown way.

Now, as my final touches here are done --
You, me, and Mr. P.
And the live oak tree
Everything on this good green Earth
All things are no more and no less than One.

The Egypt Cards Book is a Great Resource and a Real Treasure!

Egypt Cards: Using the Sacred Hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt in Today’s World by Constance Trillich

I’ve been an amateur Egyptologist for over 50 years, since I was a very young boy, and had the privilege of visiting Egypt at age 5 with my family. Recently, all these decades later, I have discovered a remarkable resource to continue and deepen my study of the ancient Egyptian culture, language and religion, in the deceptively simple form of Constance Trillich’s Egypt Cards deck and the companion book that I obtained from Amazon. This is concentrated information, like a far bigger book!

The cards are not precisely a Tarot deck, though the creator and author now plans to add a set of “Major Arcana” so that it will correspond neatly with the structure of the Tarot, which it already does in many ways, minus those trumps. My own study of Tarot, also many decades long, though not quite as venerable as my love for Egypt, has led me to some unconventional interpretations.

I view the Tarot (and also the Egypt Cards) not only as an oracle deck that can yield profound insight from the unconscious mind into conscious awareness, but at core, as a book that depicts the grand design of the evolution of energy in formation. That may sound complex or challenging to understand, but think of how during formation from embryo to fetus to you as an adult human, your form underwent all those stages that parallel the single cell, worm-like form, fishy form, little tailed animal, then human ape, and finally domesticated primate grown-up.

 A remarkable thing that can be seen in Constance’s superb cards is that the deck also suggests “future” paths for human evolution, as our conscious awareness continues to expand and heighten. She makes Egypt relevant to today’s people and our world now.

To keep this review simple, let me mention that I still keep my copy of the deck in the numerical order that the cards are discussed in the beautiful book that explains them. To me, this is something like the “Periodic Table of Evolution,” and Constance clearly spent much time arranging the order of the cards with great care as well as creating their clear, beautiful artwork. Here you have a comprehensive inventory of key Egyptian hieroglyphs and deities, core concepts and patterns, all beautifully encoded into the deck and its imagery.

My knowledge is fairly in-depth, in that I study the language of ancient Egypt, as well as the art, culture and history, the archaeology and its interpretation, yet I still gain nuggets of new information and insight as I work with the deck and read this book.

I’ll confess that I have never before come across another contemporary interpreter of Egyptian civilization with whom I feel quite such a sympathetic alignment, in terms of Constance’s interpretations, choice of terms, spellings for many of the somewhat mysterious terms and names. She comes across as both practical and visionary. Kudos to Constance Trillich (who uses the last name Johnson on Facebook) and my gratitude to her for her creation of this book and the deck of cards, her sharing these, and her generous personal communications with me as well.

This work confirms what I feel more than ever, that in essence, Egyptian culture was not overwhelmingly complex, rather it was grounded in everyday experience and simple central patterns.

If you are interested in ancient Egypt, this is a major contribution to contemporary appreciation and understanding of that fascinating civilization to which we still owe so much of what we are today.

www.egyptcards.com

Thrills Along the Spine of the Stories!: A Review of BLOOD AND GOLD by Anne Rice

Every time I read one of Anne Rice's books I am seduced and I am pulled through irresistibly…

Not long ago I re-entered the VAMPIRE CHRONICLES via PANDORA, with its 2000-year first-person perspective on the world of Anne Rice’s beloved characters. Pandora has a bittersweet relationship with the half-Keltoi, half Roman Marius.

Despite her inability to live with Marius, it was to his story BLOOD AND GOLD that Pandora brought me, as if by the hand. “His version of things is in its own way as comprehensive as Lestat’s,” I could almost hear her telling me. In first-person terms, it is even more so because Marius is far older. In Lestat’s own accounts it is also Marius who provides much of the older history. Marius tells his own tale including how he first encountered They Who Must Be Kept so long ago and spent many centuries protecting those parents and originals of all vampires in Anne’s mythos.

I’ve so much enjoyed my reunion with Marius, whose account of his own existence forms a kind of common spine of all the CHRONICLES, much as Lestat’s do—and yet in this case from Marius’s own fantastic perspective.

One remarkable thing about Marius story is his brilliant account of the Renaissance, when he lived in Venice as a painter and discovered Amadeo—someone we know later as Armand—whom he liberates from enslavement, where he would have been sold to a brothel. Let me not provide too many SPOILERS to the delicious intricacies of the plot for the uninitiated… however I especially enjoy how the vampiric Marius clearly delights in providing the beautiful red-haired youth Amadeo with erotic pleasures in his own ways. I am moved and touched all over again as Marius bestows the Dark Gift upon Amadeo to save his life. Their involvement with the lovely Bianca is also likewise delicious and totally plausible, and something of a triad.

Towards the end of the novel, Marius himself became a bit long-winded and repetitive, even fussy, for which I would blame Marius de Romanus himself, not Anne! She writes when a story “comes to me like a swarm of bees surrounding my head,” she says, and I’ve also heard her say that at one point she had not intended to write another, but Lestat began to whisper in her ear. Like any great storyteller, her imagination is so strong that the characters come alive, and even take on a life and a distinct voice of their own!

I'm always astounded at the sensory details Anne invokes, the richness of settings and atmosphere and the depth of interaction among the characters, the total immersion in place, times, characters that this she achieves every time!

Now that I’ve finished this remarkable journey again, Marius directs to his fledgling  Amadeo, AKA Armand. I also recall that for me, THE VAMPIRE ARMAND was the most erotic of these novels, as it became even more clear that though Marius did not make love to Armand as a mortal would, he definitely pleasured the young man! Plus I recall that Armand provides his own rich and unique perspectives on everything in these realms.

Oh, what a cunning web Ms. Rice weaves!

Onward…

A Dogma-free Yeshua for Today!

Anne Rice accomplishes something quite audacious, and yet respectful to existing sources, with her two novels concerning the Life of Christ. The second, The Road to Cana, is again a first-person narrative told by Yeshua himself, and this time he's past thirty, on the verge of somewhat reluctantly entering his ministry. His voice seems to me to be his own, not Anne's! Authorial craft, I suppose? In the first book, Out of Egypt, he is a boy whose family living in exile in Alexandria returns to Nazareth upon the news that Herod the Great has died.

We know we're not in Oz as this one begins when the mature Yeshua has apparently had a wet dream about a beautiful woman in his village, wakes up a bit wet and messy and washes his robe. Though none of the specifics are really Biblical up until the marriage at Cana at the end, except for the baptism in the Jordan and a few other moments, every event, every detail and description seems plausible to me. The historical context and background are immaculate. I especially love in these books, the mention of a place on a hillside where Jesus likes to go to simply be alone in Nature.

As with the first of the two books, there are no cheesy miracles, no preaching, no blatant Christian dogma presented, though this is a traditional view that the gospels are quite accurate. Though Anne Rice does not feel quite the same on the subject now, she has not abandoned these novels, any more than she totally rejected her other supernatural creations during her venture back in the arms of Mother Church. Recently she has expressed interest in the film version of Out of Egypt. When these books came out, I remember emailing Anne and telling her that I though they contained some of her finest writing. I still feel that way.

In retrospect, Yeshua is of course, another sort of supernatural, possibly immortal being. She brings him to life in a way I've never experienced before. And yet this always happens with her characters, whether with Louis and Claudia  and Lestat in the Vampire Chronicles, or Mona and Quinn in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches as they merged with the Vampires, or dashing young Reuben of the new Man Wolf series.

Anne always provides moments that raise every hair on my body--SPOILER ALERT, I SUPPOSE--and in this case it involves Yeshua's awareness that there are two kinds so prayer for him--a rote thing learned, and a direct connection when he feels one with his heavenly Father--and he makes a command. In this case, there has been a long drought in Israel and it has to do with a sudden storm, only it's about far more than bringing rainfall…

Got me, Anne, as you always do!

THis woman's writing continues to evolve. In many ways, for example Blood Canticle was the finest wine of all the Vampire and Witch books that intertwined in the last two volumes. An actively practicing artist often only improves with age, and this is certainly the case with Anne Rice. She keeps opening another treasure-chest of literary delight for her fans, time-after-time.

It may seem unlikely, however I'd still love to see the third Christ book, which I believe was referred to as The Kingdom of Heaven. You never know…

Passionate, Exquisite Prose for Our Times

Like many of Anne Rice's long-time readers, when I first learned that she had returned to the church, I did not know what to think of it. When her first novel about the life of Christ, CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT was published in 2005, I was probably feeling withdrawal from the regular appearance of Anne's novels, which I had been reading regularly since 1976.

So I have an exquisite hardcover First Edition of this book, which was delivered to me on its publication date, because I paid for Second Day shipping. Though stores cannot put a book out legally before the lay-down date, mail-order book sellers can send books ahead that will ship a couple of days early.

What amazes me about Anne's Christ novels is first, the sheer audacity of depicting the Life of Christ in first-person narrations. Something else amazing here is that the novel is free of dogma, cheesy miracles, or silly special-effects. And though Anne did major amounts of research for authenticity, near the very beginning is an allusion to one of the non-canonical "Childhood Miracle" Gospels of Jesus. Let me not SPOIL any surprises, but this vivid reference near the very beginning of the book refers to clay birds.

I suppose I should post a POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT for anyone who might wish to go into the novel with no idea of things to come. Two remarkably powerful things for me were Anne's description of the animal sacrifices at the Great Temple, a virtual mist of blood, and young Jesus's reaction when he hears the story of King Herod and the male children under age 2 years. This is one of those gripping moments that Anne offers in every book, usually quite a number of them, that really grabs you.

For years I've felt that Anne's publishers honor the class, quality and elegance of her writings with the hardcover First Editions that have deckled edges, gorgeous fonts, classical art on the covers, and sometimes gold. It's the treasure chest of the stories and the language within those lovely covers, however, that really matters. Anne writes in what seems to me a white-hot inferno of activated imagination, in which as she SEES the story, it flows through her fingertips through the keyboard into the novel.

Some people complain about the simplicity of the words in this narrative, as if not recalling that Jesus at the time he tells this story is 7 or 8 years of age. His voice is that of a boy that age, who is also aware that he may be something more than an ordinary boy.

In this book and the followup three years later, Jesus was brought to life as a human person, also divine, as never before for me. I've read the New Testament and the Old, and what I love about this novel of Anne's is that it is not propaganda for a religion. It is the story of a boy talking about his life some two millennia in the past.

Anne has moved on in her personal life, and as I always said to my friends, she's highly intelligent, a good person, and she did not lose her marbles when she went back to the Catholic church. However I'm proud of her because she keeps moving.

Enter the Portal and Be Seduced All Over Again… A review of PANDORA by Anne Rice

When the astonishing, elegant, and relentless Anne Rice published THE WOLF GIFT earlier this year, I was transported, as always by her remarkable prose. The new Man Wolf Saga (she tells us the next one comes in 2013) whetted my appetite to return to her magnificent Vampires.

Only where to enter?

PANDORA has become my new entry point. She appears first in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT and QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, as a sometime-companion of Marius, a somewhat sad, unhappy character, though she always intrigued me. In her own story, which she narrates, the novel PANDORA begins as David Talbot (post-BODY THIEF) persuades her to write in a couple of beautiful notebooks. I will try not to give major spoilers, but be forewarned, if you want to go into her story with no idea of its riches. (SPOILER WARNINGS: SORT OF!) Pandora’s words sweep me back two millennia to the Rome of Augustus, an era that comes totally alive. Her first meeting with Marius when she is a prominent Roman’s young daughter and he a tall, handsome “barbarian” dazzles me all over with premonitions.

Originally called Lydia, she narrates this vivid and totally plausible history, both personal and broader. When she purchases a handsome one-legged slave named Flavius, we are enriched with the kind of utterly believable and quirky character Anne frequently creates. Flavius prefers boys, yet Pandora clearly loves and wants him as a lover. Eventually Pandora persuades her first crush, Marius, to give her the Dark Gift, though she soon comes to regret it. They become a perennial couple, in some ways like Louis and Lestat—unable to live together, or to totally disconnect emotionally.

Towards the end of this marvel of characters and scenes, again the Rice magick unfolds a strange and lovely vignette that involves an elderly monk, beehives and a sort of scarecrow—unlike anything a lesser imagination could invoke. It blows me away! The book is profoundly about the need for companionship and how difficult our human nature can make that to sustain.

Now I know I can trust these characters to call to me, and I need not think about where to go. Of course, Marius wants his say, so from here it’s to BLOOD AND GOLD, for his side of things. Plus I already see that his beloved from the Renaissance, Armand, will probably want my attention next. Ah! Amazing how these beings truly live, and yet they are undead!

Bravo all over again, Anne Rice, and much gratitude and love for the riches you gift us with in your tales.

WORKSHOP: "Egyptian SOUL"

Dear Friends and Loved Ones:

Some of my local friends don't see me very often since I stopped my little retail day-job, and I'm sort of a hermit writing and painting at home, here in Paradise Garden--so if you've missed me at all (and I KNOW I've missed many of YOU!), here's a chance for us to spend some quality time together. Also please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested...

Imagine immersion in the powerful mythology and imagery of Ancient Egypt, and allowing this to perform a kind of Soul Retrieval for you!

The workshop I offer on SUNDAY, AUGUST 19th, 2012 from 1:00-4:30 PM at ANCIENT MYSTERIES in Austin can awaken what already exists within you--the potent heritage of those ancient people that remained so closely connected with Nature and their environment. Nothing could be more timely in today's rapidly changing world than to make such a connection within yourself!

If you have ever felt drawn to explore Egyptian culture and beliefs, here's your chance to take it to the next level. A beautiful altar will present the Great Family of the Egyptian Goddesses and Gods!

During the workshop you may:

1.) Discover the Seven Sacred Spirits of Your Soul
2.) Reconnect your human nature with Nature itself
3.) Learn the intuitive key to all Egyptian writing and art
4.) Be able to "read" Egyptian culture without further study
5.) Remember who you are on the deepest levels
6.) Allow your Third Eye to open
7.) Connect with Ancestors

You will hear powerful mythic stories and fascinating history, receive a substantial packet of original handouts containing the basic keys to all Egyptian culture, taste Egyptian treats, hear ancient Egyptian music, and the wings of your Ba (the Heart-Bird of your Soul) will spread wide and soar aloft!!! You will return there--then come back to Now!

For more information on “Reclaiming Your Ancient Egyptian SOUL” please visit:http://www.9realities.com/egyptian_soul_workshop.html

Thank you for reading this!

Peace & (((HUGS)))
Bruce
http://www.9realities.com/homepagebooks.html
_________________________
Nada Te Turbe*
       -- Theresa of Avila
*(Let Nothing Disturb You)