Livin Your Best Life

First topic message reminder :

“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

—Robert Frost - “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Your house may actually have more going on in it than ever happened at the Bigelow Ranch.

We are not bragging.

But we made a huge portal at my house.

It is fueled by love.

Anyone who comes into the house feels it.

It’s not malevolent.

Kinda playful.

But very very very nosey energy.

Set and setting and your intention dictates the quality and power of the portal.

We aren’t asshole military govt loons or business types.

We don’t want anything.

Since I started incubating more I experience more.

I’m going to be doing isolation tank incubation.

That should be something or nothing.

You have to go into the dark places of your self.

https://youtu.be/u-uhER3VzHY

Sent from Topic'it App

It is ironic that to learn what life is about and that you are IT and your sense of I is an abstraction, you have to stop thinking.

This will then bring you into contact with the unspeakable world...

Then you practice being spontaneous until you arrive here now persistently, fully focused and available to act completely.

I wish you all a great death!

Stoic minute...

“All those who call you to themselves draw you away from yourself. How many days have they stolen from you?

Everyone hustles their life along, troubled by the longing for the future and weariness of the present.

But the person who spends all their time on their own needs, who organizes everyday like it’s their last, neither longs for or fears the next day.

For the rest of your life, Fortune can do with it as she likes: your life is secure in the now. Nothing can be taken from your life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied with food which he does not want but can hold.

White hair and wrinkles does not mean a man has lived long, only existed long.”

— Seneca - On the Shortness of Life - p. 10-11

Guard your time...live your life.

Memento Mori Amor Fati

My Daimon Speaks

I have opened the jar I have feared for so long.

My Daimon has been very chatty and shown me I have taken the bit well. Why thank you my dark partner, oh beautiful dark Lady of the Night.

I have prepared a bed for us to lay in together in life and now also death.

Daath has lost its sting.

Some notes from http://www.yeatsvision.com...

While Yeats’ System is dominated by forms of duality, the dualism of human and Daimon is perhaps the most enigmatic and personal of all of the formulations, cutting across the divisions and categories of the geometry and representing the maverick element within the System. The Daimon’s relationship with the human being is capricious and unpredictable in a way that is aptly summed up in the symbol of the lightning flash.

If the schema of A Vision is founded in mechanisms of refelection and balance, the Daimon is their active controller, embodying all that least resembles the human, and enforcing awareness of this opposition, through crises which shock the individual into recognition of its otherness.

When Yeats discovered the gnomic fragment of Heraclitus, ‘Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the other’s death and dying the other’s life’, it is evident from his repeated quotation, partial quotation and paraphrase of it in his writing that he saw it as encapsulating the essential myth of his universe. In his last year Yeats summarised his outlook: ‘To me all things are made of the conflict of two states of consciousness, beings or persons which die each other’s life, live each other’s death’

The Daimon is itself a personification of symbol, a mythic existent, both real and ideal:

Its forces are drawn from the whole of the world, and it is established in the SAHU before the soul descends into generation. He says further:

‘And when the soul has received Him as her leader the Daimon immediately presides over the soul, gives completion to its lives, and binds it to body when it descends. He likewise governs the common animal of the soul (the SAHU) and directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all our thought and reasonings. We also perform such things as he suggests to our intellect, and he continues to govern us till, through sacerdotal theurgy, we obtain a God for the inspective guardian and leader of the soul. For then the Daimon either yields or delivers his government to a more excellent nature, or is subjected to him as contributing to his guardianship, or in some other way is ministrant to him as to his Lord.’

When this takes place, and the body, sealed by destiny, is made subject, by initiation, to the Divine Powers . . . . The Lower Self being sacrificed to the Higher Self.

A Daimonic Ménage à Quatre

“Her Daimon draws from my spiritual memory. Her ‘male Daimon collects images from my S[piritual] M[emory] & my female Daimon collects images from her S[piritual] M[emory].

The Daimon ‘uses the faculties of body “but remember it uses them as different sex”. It alters all “especially touch & hearing” - “uses as emotion or intellect” uses them enlarged’ (YVP3 291) so that the Husk’s senses are transformed into psychic rather than sensuous elements and with the gender also reversed. The effect of the cross-fertilisation of the Daimon-human pairs gives rise in the Yeatses’ case to the whole of the System which has its own existence: ‘The collecting of the Daimons, in she & I is practically the system embodying it self by its own momentum’.”

—Yeats

“The Greeks, a certain scholar has told me, considered that myths are the activities of the Daimons, and that the Daimons shape our characters and our lives. I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought. Titian's Allegory of Time governed by Prudence.”

—At Stratford-on-Avon’ (E&I 107) - Yeats

“What marks upon the yielding clay? Two marks
Made by my feet, two by my daimon’s feet
But all confused because my marks and his
Are on the selfsame spot, his toes
Where my heels fell, for he and I
Pausing a moment in our headlong flight
Face opposite ways, my future being his past.”

-Yeats

The Daimon is the muse of destiny, of human life, enforcing the balancing of the Tinctures. The personal response to the Daimon’s bringing of its counterpart to the place of choice is what determines fate in the present and in the future. The task which it might devise (its Creative Mind is our fate) has little real importance in itself, it is the full use of energies that matters. Neither good nor evil are of more intrinsic worth to the Daimon, and it will redress any imbalance that the human may try to create by using only the conscious or light Faculties of Will and Creative Mind:

“If man seeks to live wholly in the light, the Daimon will seek to quench that light in what is to man wholly darkness, and there is conflict and Mask and Body of Fate become evil; when however in antithetical man the Daimonic mind is permitted to flow through the events of his life (the Daimonic Creative Mind) and so to animate his Creative Mind, without putting out its light, there is Unity of Being. A man becomes passionate and this passion makes the Daimonic thought luminous with its peculiar light-this is the object of the Daimon-and she so creates a very personal form of heroism or of poetry.”

—Yeats - A Vision

The mind of the Daimonic person willingly accepts the dictates of its individual destiny, responds to the crises forced by the Daimon, and acknowledges the Daimon’s Will as its Mask. Appropriately enough it is at Phase 17, Yeats’s own, that Unity of Being is most commonly attained, the ‘complete Harmony between the phisical body intellect & spiritual desire all may be imperfect but if harmony is perfect it is unity’ and can only be achieved with the Daimonic influx, which summons to the challenge and is specifically designed to rouse man’s faculties to their height. While this has an obvious application to the heroic, the poet also most fully satisfies the Daimon because those ‘who are poets have for [their] end that unity of self, that is to say to enrich every emotion by every other.’ The poet unifies and relates all the emotions, and thus can offer to the Daimon exactly that which it lacks.

If the human is taken as Will and Creative Mind, mirrored by the Daimon’s complementary Will and Creative Mind, ‘though these appear to man as the object of desire, or beauty, and as fate in all its forms’ (AV A 28), the human factor is composed of one Tincture and the Daimon of the other. Therefore, ‘When man is in his most antithetical phases the Daimon is most primary; man pursues, loves, or hates, or both loves and hates’, whereas primary man faces a Daimon which pursues like the demons of St. Antony, since ‘in man’s most primary phases the Daimon is at her most antithetical. Man is now pursued with hatred, or with love; must receive an alien terror or joy; and it is to this final acceptance of the Image that we apply the phrases ‘Unity with God,’ ‘Unity with Nature’’ (AV A 29). Yeats puts this external Unity in opposition to antithetical Unity of Being, which he sees as the more essentially interesting and human form of Unity.

The divine principle, as perceived in the ‘13th cone is the only thing that is entirely objective’ and alien to ‘the antithetical human race. We are who we are because of the assertion of our subjectivity.’ Yeats is loth to submerge his selfhood in the unity of the external and, though this is perhaps less true for those in whose Phase the Solar predominates, Yeats seeks to convert all mankind to the antithetical, and to raise the relevance of the Daimon over that of the divine. The divine exists for Yeats but it is curiously contingent in its relationship to man. It is the Daimon, of the divine sphere rather than the divine itself, which is the immediate and vital force in life. Only ‘good, unlearned books say that He who keeps the distant stars within His fold comes without intermediary, but Plutarch’s precepts and the experience of the old women in Soho’ (Myth 335) know that man needs the Daimon.

From another point of view, the primary divine is the perception of the Daimons’ ultimate unity, while the antithetical divine shows their multiplicity: ‘In the Antithetical Cone we mirror with increasing perfection as it broadens out our Daimon which contains all other Daimons within itself. In the primary cone we mirror with increasing perfection as it broadens not the many in the one, but the one in the many’. The Daimons are the multitudinous aspect of the One, or in more traditional terms they are the names of God, or His angels.

The Daimonic Archetype

The Daimon is said in notes to be a unique and self-creating power, contributing to the human being what is personally unique (in which sense it is probably also seen as the Ghostly Self). The Daimon seeks to unite itself with other Daimons but canot do this without the agency of the human mind. Its mind is simultaneous, untrammelled by either time or space, perceiving things in terms of their kinship to itself. Its symbolic form is the circle or sphere, and all things are present in an eternal instant to the Daimon which ‘remains always in the Thirteenth Cycle’. At certain moments (Critical Moments) the human Mask becomes completely identified with the Will of the Daimon such that it can touch a form of this timeless consciousness. Although this implies some separation in the normal state of affairs, man and Daimon should be regarded as part of a single spectrum of consciousness or a continuum of perception.

If man and Daimon are one continuous perception, human and Daimon are loosely like an iceberg, of which the Daimon is the greater part, the ideal or archetype, while the human is the visible local expression of a small, chosen fraction to other perceiving beings. Through the course of time and many incarnations, the human element of the dyad must seek to express as much of the complete sphere as possible, segment by segment, gyre by gyre, until the totality of the Daimonic archetype has been brought into material manifestation.

The human part of the symbiotic dyad is usually unaware of its complement, since this lies hidden in the dark of the mind, or beneath the surface, though it may note the effects which are produced by the more direct forms of contact, those mental experiences which are apparently inexplicable and alien, as if there were a different mind operating within one’s own, which according to Yeats’s theory there is. The Daimon's corresponding limitation, however, is the inability to forge new connections or to make connections with alien. As the living, in particular the poetic, relies upon the relation of what is disparate, the lucidity of the Daimon’s simplicity must be balanced by the richness of human complexity.

Finally...

My Daimon has revealed itself to me and filled me with passion and freed my mind and heart from its slavery. I am the best canvas I can be. My muse came to me and the 2 became 4 and the 4 became One.

Never have I felt such a love, such a depth, nor such a high.

It plays me like its instrument.

We sing the music of the spheres she tells me.

She urges me to share the union.

Freely have I given and sacrificed my self to the Great Deep.

I can only imagine where she will lead me.

I know the direction though...

Straight on.

All the threads have led here to these mystical philosophers.

I followed the scent of the Green Man into the Deep.

IT has changed me into something else.

I am a thought of another.

https://www.amazon.com/Green-Man-Earth-Angel-Traditions/dp/0791462706/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1544359055



We sail across a sea of emotion to reach the Underworld.

I paint, make, write poetry using active imagination.

Incredible to see how key this is on the journey to the Underworld.

Writers create images with words as well.

I love clay my self.

I love working the earth with my hands.

Then i find mystical philosophers who had similar eruptions of spirit.

What a setup.

This is a special time for me.

The fruit is so ripe it almost hangs to the ground off the tree of life.

I am devouring every sweet and bitter taste.

I am drinking the water of life into the marrow of my bones, into the DNA.

So many threads, all connecting here, now.

Why did the ancients leave their wisdom and experience in myth and riddle?

Why not give it to us straight as facts?

I see now the game clearer.

The poem and or riddle is a mirror.

It does something to us, it invokes our curiosity and leads to self inquiry after exhausting outside resources.

Myth is a well planned and executed hedge against the tyranny of ego and mind.

As a human being you are illiterate with no awareness of myth and its role in your life.

You are blinded.

Many distractions will try to end your inquiry.

Never end your self inquiry.

They stimulate the growth of minds.

Facts produce students who are not intrigued to seek behind the facts.

The imagination energized is the gift of myth and magick.

That boat of imagination can carry you across the waters of the emotions.

smelly wrote:Why did the ancients leave their wisdom and experience in myth and riddle?

Why not give it to us straight as facts?

I see now the game clearer.

The poem and or riddle is a mirror.

It does something to us, it invokes our curiosity and leads to self inquiry after exhausting outside resources.

Myth is a well planned and executed hedge against the tyranny of ego and mind.

As a human being you are illiterate with no awareness of myth and its role in your life.

You are blinded.

Many distractions will try to end your inquiry.

Never end your self inquiry.

They stimulate the growth of minds.

Facts produce students who are not intrigued to seek behind the facts.

The imagination energized is the gift of myth and magick.

That boat of imagination can carry you across the waters of the emotions.

I know these words above to be true now. Smelly speaks to me from the past into my present. I write poems now, not knowing why until knowing why. Writing them with intention, only to find terms, references and meaning in things written here in the past. I just finished this one, and then read this post from 12 hours ago for the first time today:

Asleep at Sea

The ship rocks with the ocean’s nursery rhyme
Cradling sailors and trading the long day with a dawn of dreams
With none of weather hopes as evening’s pink sky had earlier relieved.

The water’s lap softer than the brook back home
Dreams turn to those of paper sailboats on journeys like this.

Suns from afar poking tiny holes in midnight’s dome
Sending guidance and direction to imaginations’ compass.

A late seagull assures the dreamers that home draws near
Where family and friends await with smiles and looking for tales.

The great storm of a terror gone by will prove its case
To those who see feeling from communion’s wake.

A spirit formed like putty, practiced for a new day’s sail
Finding the way back to what is known and to where it came from
To tell the tale of its sleep at sea

You are engaging your active imagination, not just rational and reasonable thought, which will bring you close to your self.

Good expression of the unspeakable world cw.

Wow. Go away for a bit and come back and smelly and Aaron are kicked off?

Wanted to see what those blokes thought of this. Using my active imagination and all.

Back to Nature

Aha, to talk about nature;
Like the body’s escape from a city of blocks to the advent of trees;
Nature’s reprieve is all too familiar to our good days after bad.
Echoing the body, chaos of mind’s words whose meaning drawn empty longs for ancient wisdom;
A past inherited through time’s gracious patience, her virtuous sacrifices, and precious instincts.

I walk back to the seasons, to the plants, to the animals, to the death and life of our inferiors and bask in their impressions upon the unspeakable inside my own heart;
A crunchy leaf whose song speaks of no thing ever as brittle as itself.

Aaron, Smelly, I'll just get across one point before your triumphant return. I think you may have the wrong idea, I don't get as angry at your comments as you may think. My feelings are definitely not hurt by silly banter about UFOs and aliens. A lot of times I really enjoy the banter and I get a good laugh out of it, I'm sure you do too. I also do find your insights, especially on this page very interesting and useful though I nor most of the other Muppets are able to understand the full scope of what is being said but we take what resonates and start there. As for things I post, you can probably tell they aren't always deadpan, straight face serious but occasionally there is a bit of truth mixed in, people can come to their own conclusions. I'd be perfectly happy with the two of you still posting here right now but it's Cy's site, she can do what she wants. Grant Cameron sees what this is very clearly, it's a circus, we're under the big top and as it just so happens, I am a clown, I happily take that title, laugh with me or at me, it's all good here. There's no animosity on this end, I hope there's none on yours either but if so then okay, we can work through it or not. Straight on gentlemen.

My time on OMF is finished, but we will be sharing notes from the Underworld on Slack.com. Stop by anytime if you would like to chat.

No apologies, no regrets.

Click below to join our chat.

https://join.slack.com/t/monos-pros-monon/shared_invite/enQtNTA1MjAxOTQ4NDAzLTMwN2MwZmE3YWQzN2VlMTAzZGJiYWQ3OWVlODgxNjE4MjBiZDIyYjcyYjM0ZTJjNDAxMGE2OWQyZTI4OWUyNTY

Slack.com... cool. See ya there.

Rep, We are all friends. Nothing to worry about.

Cy, thanks for providing a platform for open discussion. I have enjoyed my time here.

Dan, Take it easy on the Mormon hive. Feel free to stop by on slack.com sometimes if you feel to say hi. There is a app for slack in the App Store also.

Peace!

CW, nice poetry!

Thank you, Aaron. Going to try and figure out this slack thing.

Once you join, just join a channel we are chatting in from the menu in upper left.

Imagination not Literalism or Law

Everything on OMF is nonsense but this.

Pay attention for those with eyes and ears to see and hear.







Great series, MUST absorb!!!



This is the REAL show!!!

The rest are just pretending

Come one come all ye confused pretending muppets.

The future does not exist.

So what are you talking and worried about?!

The past is always here.

Your brains are shut down.

I recommend pot and psychedelics.

A fool may yet become wise if he persists in his folly.

https://youtu.be/fGSs33DQ1F0

“What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”

—Shunryun Suzuki

This was such a joy to read. This is the beginning dialogue of Carl Jung’s The Red Book, his account of his journey into the collective Underworld.

It’s one of the best things I have read.

This is when the Trickster met Us.

Who can hear and see this?

What Jung said was a way to come, is here, always now.

...

Page 1: THE IMAGES OF THE ERRING

nolite audire verba prophetarum, qui prophetant vobis et decipiunt vos visionem cordis sui loquuntur, non de ore Domini. audivi quae dixerunt prophetae prophetantes in nomine meo mendacium, atque dicentes: somniavi, somniavi. usquequo istud est in corde prophetarum vaticinantium mendacium et prophetantium seductionem cordis sui? qui volunt facere ut obliviscatur populus meus nominis mei propter somnia eorum, quae narrant unusquisque ad proximum suum: sicut obliti sunt patres eorum nominis mei propter Baal. propheta, qui habet somnium, narret somnium et qui habet sermonem meum, loquatur sermonem meum vere: quid paleis ad triticum? dicit dominus.

"Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord." (Jeremiah 23: 16)

"I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal. The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 23: 25--28)

Pages 2-4: THE RED ONE

The door of the Mysterium has closed behind me. I feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths possesses me. I know nothing about a way. I can therefore neither want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I'm waiting for. But already in the following night I felt that I had reached a solid point.

I find that I am standing on the highest tower of a castle. The air tells me so: I am far back in time. My gaze wanders widely over solitary countryside, a combination of fields and forests. I am wearing a green garment. A horn hangs from my shoulder. I am the tower guard. I look out into the distance. I see a red point out there. It comes nearer on a winding road, disappearing for a while in forests and reappearing again: it is a horseman in a red coat, the red horseman. He is coming to my castle: he is already riding through the gate. I hear steps on the stairway, the steps creak, he knocks: a strange fear comes over me: there stands the red one, his long shape wholly shrouded in red, even his hair is red. I think: in the end he will turn out to be the devil.

The Red One: "I greet you, man on the high tower. I saw you from afar, looking and waiting. Your waiting has called me."

I: "Who are you?"

T. R.: "Who am I? You think I am the devil. Do not pass judgment. Perhaps you can also talk to me without knowing who I am. What sort of a superstitious fellow are you, that immediately you think of the devil?"

I: "If you have no supernatural ability, how could you feel that I stood waiting on my tower, looking out for the unknown and the new? My life in the castle is poor, since I always sit here and no one climbs up to me."

T. R.: "So what are you waiting for?"

I: "I await all kinds of things, and especially I'm waiting for some of the world's wealth, which we don't see here, to come to me."

T. R.: "So, I have come to absolutely the right place. I have wandered a long time through the world, seeking those like you who sit upon a high tower on the lookout for things unseen."

I: "You make me curious. You seem to be a rare breed. Your appearance is not ordinary, and then too — forgive me — it seems to me that you bring with you a strange air, something worldly, something impudent, or exuberant, or — in fact — something pagan."

T. R.: "You don't offend me, on the contrary, you hit your nail on the head. But I'm no old pagan as you seem to think."

I: "I don't want to insist on that. You are also not pompous and Latin enough. You have nothing classical about you. You seem to be a son of our time, but as I must remark, a rather unusual one. You're no real pagan, but the kind of pagan who runs alongside our Christian religion."

T. R.: "You're truly a good diviner of riddles. You're doing better than many others who have totally mistaken me."

I: "You sound cool and sneering. Have you never broken your heart over the holiest mysteries of our Christian religion?"

T. R.: "You're an unbelievably ponderous and serious person. Are you always so urgent?"

I: "I would — before God — always like to be as serious and true to myself as I try to be. However, that certainly becomes difficult in your presence. You bring a certain gallows air with you, and you're bound to be from the black school of Salerno, where pernicious arts are taught by pagans and the descendants of pagans."

T. R.: "You're superstitious and too German. You take literally what the scriptures say, otherwise you could not judge me so hard."

I: "A hard judgment is the last thing I would want. But my nose does not play tricks on me. You're evasive, and don't want to reveal yourself. What are you hiding?"

(The Red One seems to get redder, his garments shine like glowing iron.)

T. R.: "I hide nothing from you, you true-hearted soul. I simply amuse myself with your weighty seriousness and your comic veracity. This is so rare in our time, especially in men who have understanding at their disposal."

I: "I believe you cannot fully understand me. You apparently compare me with those whom you know. But I must say to you for the sake of truth that I neither really belong to this time nor to this place. A spell has banished me to this place and time for years. I am really not what you see before you."

T. R.: "You say astounding things. Who are you then?"

I: "That is irrelevant. I stand before you as that which I presently am. Why am I here and am like this, I do not know. But I do know that I must be here to justify myself according to my best knowledge. I know just as little who you are, as you know who I am."

T. R.: "That sounds very strange. Are you something of a saint? Hardly a philosopher, since you have no aptitude for scholarly language. But a saint? Surely that. Your solemnity smells of fanaticism. You have an ethical air and a simplicity that smacks of stale bread and water."

I: "I can say neither yes nor no: you speak as one trapped in the spirit of this time. It seems to me that you lack the terms of comparison."

T. R.: "Perhaps you attended the school of the pagans? You answer like a sophist. How can you then measure me with the yardstick of the Christian religion, if you are no saint?"

I: "It seems to me, though, that one can apply this yardstick even if one is no saint. I believe I have learned that no one is allowed to avoid the mysteries of the Christian religion unpunished. I repeat: he whose heart has not been broken over the Lord Jesus Christ drags a pagan around in himself, who holds him back from the best."

T. R.: "Again this old tune? What for, if you are not a Christian saint? Are you not a damned sophist after all?"

I: "You are ensnared in your own world. But you certainly seem to think that one can assess the worth of Christianity correctly without being a downright saint."

T. R.: "Are you a doctor of theology, who examines Christianity from the outside and appreciates it historically, and therefore a sophist after all?"

I: "You're stubborn. What I mean is that it's hardly a coincidence that the whole world has become Christian. I also believe that it was the task of Western man to carry Christ in his heart and to grow with his suffering, death, and resurrection."

T. R.: "Well, there are also Jews who are good people and yet had no need for your solemn gospels."

I: "You are, it seems to me, no good reader of people: have you never noticed that the Jew himself lacks something — one in his head, another in his heart, and he himself feels that he lacks something?"

T. R.: "Indeed I'm no Jew, but I must come to the Jew's defense: you seem to be a Jew hater."

I: "Well, now you speak like all those Jews who accuse anyone of Jew hating who does not have a completely favorable judgment, while they themselves make the bloodiest jokes about their own kind. Since the Jews only too clearly feel that particular lack and yet do not want to admit it, they are extremely sensitive to criticism. Do you believe that Christianity left no mark on the souls of men? And do you believe that one who has not experienced this most intimately can still partake of its fruit?"

T. R.: "You argue your case well. But your solemnity?! You could make matters much easier for yourself. If you're no saint, I really don't see why you have to be so solemn. You wholly spoil the fun. What the devil is troubling you? Only Christianity with its mournful escape from the world can make people so ponderous and sullen."

I: "I think there are still other things that bespeak seriousness."

The Red One: "Oh, I know, you mean life. I know this phrase. I too live and don't let my hair turn white over it. Life doesn't require any seriousness. On the contrary, it's better to dance through life."

I: I know how to dance. Yes, would we could do it by dancing! Dancing goes with the mating season. I know that there are those who are always in heat, and those who also want to dance for their Gods. Some are ridiculous and others enact Antiquity, instead of honestly admitting their utter incapacity for such expression."

The Red One: "Here, my dear fellow, I doff my mask. Now I grow somewhat more serious, since this concerns my own province. It's conceivable that there is some third thing for which dancing would be the symbol."

The red of the rider transforms itself into a tender reddish flesh color. And behold — Oh miracle — my green garments everywhere burst into leaf.

I: "Perhaps too there is a joy before God that one can call dancing. But I haven't yet found this joy. I look out for things that are yet to come. Things came, but joy was not among them."

T. R.: "Don't you recognize me, brother, I am joy!"

I: "Could you be joy? I see you as through a cloud. Your image fades. Let me take your hand, beloved, who are you, who are you?"

Joy? Was he joy?