World's Woe

Here's something that I won't do again very often, if at all, but I've shared it elsewhere so thought I might put it here too. 

When I was at school doing A level English I wrote a poem in which all the words began with a W (for obvious reasons plus I was born on a Wednesday). That was lost years ago but I've tried to reconstruct it from memory so some of this is old and some new and some a mixture of the two. Lowercase omega is like a w and is the last letter of the Greek alphabet so the poem was about the end of things. 

Nowadays I might call that the Kali Yuga and that is the subject of this poem. The last phase of a world cycle when the environment, both physical and psychological, degrades and not just the spiritual but the natural too is overturned with understanding of the true good lost, to be replaced by a pseudo-good based on the primacy of humanity in and for itself. But, because this is a lie, the world deteriorates and many people who notice this now happening completely fail to see that it is they who are responsible. There is a grim humour in the current lamentations of leftists about how bad things are getting (Trump, Brexit etc) for they don't realise that it is they who have caused this reaction by their anti-God and anti-Nature behaviour of the last 50 years. When your thoughts and actions are out of harmony with reality then chaos and disruption are the inevitable consequence. Monsters breed monsters.

World's Woe

When will we wonder why we went wandering wistfully woodways?

Will we walk with wizards while whispering women wait without?

What will we wear when water weeps?

Why waste words with wicked wastrels?

Wild winds worsen wintry weather

Worthless worship weakens warriors

Winners welcome wagers with winks

Wisdom will warm when wedlock wanes

Weaklings, wet with wine, whimper while wolves watch

Weeping willows waver, wormy, weedy, wasted

Wounded wombs wither, wealth wilts

Wives, widows, witches, woeful world

Whitewashed wills weave worn words

War waxes while whips whirl

Whether warnings work when we wake weary

Wonders witnessed within will.


A friendly critic told me that the poem as a poem would be improved if I allowed myself to break the w rule occasionally. He's quite right. For instance, the last two lines could be made clearer. They mean that outer warnings won't stir us when our minds have been dulled and desensitised by the distortions of modernity so inner spiritual awakening is required. However, I was hoping to create an incantationary quality too and that would be diminished. I like the idea of a poem as a magical spell and with the sense somewhat hidden.

A Devilish Masterplan

This may seem a bit of foolishness but it has a serious side to it. Obviously anyone who does anything like this owes a debt to C.S. Lewis.


Some time ago one of the chief devils and his advisers sat down to work out how they might best mislead humanity. "For a start we need to destroy Christianity." said one. "No doubt" sneered another "but how do we do that?"

They thought for a moment and then one of them said. "To begin with, we need to divide it to make it weaker. Didn't someone once talk about a house divided amongst itself? Then we can attack it with its own weapons".
"How does that work?"
"We emphasise the purely worldly and social aspects of it and push the spiritual aspects to the background. Pretty soon the social aspects will seem all important and the spiritual ones will only have relevance in the light of those, and then they will cease to have any relevance at all."

"Not bad" said the chief. "What next?"
"We'll get some of their thinkers to start expressing doubts about the reality of absolute truth. First of all, whether you can know it and then, when that's done, whether it exists at all. Take things in stages so they don't notice what's happening. That way they will eventually accept what they would never have dreamed of accepting at the beginning of the process. So we'll get their clever people to say that the only things we can know are what appear to us through our senses. Anything else is just theoretical and has no intrinsic reality. Before you know it they'll be thinking that there are no absolutes and everything is relative and that will make them feel that nothing means anything. Which of course is true"
"Give me more".
"We'll inspire them to question the reality of their own creation. We know that some aspects of life are left to chance because of the absurd plan of the tyrant and his ridiculous penchant for freedom. We'll get them to focus exclusively on those and ignore the main elements of the process which they can't uncover with their puny intelligence left to its own devices anyway. This will flatter their sense of self-importance and make them feel they direct their own future instead of, as we know, that little task being our concern."
"More. More"
"We'll make them reject the idea of higher and lower or better and worse in the name of an imagined unity, equality and fairness. They are mostly unable to hold two apparently paradoxical ideas in their minds at the same time anyway so that should be easy. We'll over-emphasise one side of the question and take it out of context, and that will make them reject the other side. We know that when you remove the idea of anything higher from the mix everything settles down nicely to a fairly low level which suits us very well."
" All right, but I want more."
"What about attacking the family and eroding the difference between man and woman? The first gives them too much security and a sense of deep rootedness. They shouldn't have security as it provides them with a nasty inner strength and confidence in stupidities like tradition, and they mustn't have strong roots so they're more easily manipulated. As for the men and women thing, well, haven't we always wanted to deviate nature and turn it against itself? Don't we delight in corruption? Once men and women start to see themselves as fundamentally the same they will lose any connection to an inner life. Then they will regard each other in a competitive light instead of being able to cooperate harmoniously in a complementary fashion as they were originally designed to do. Eugh! Of course, ever since that splendid victory in the Garden we've already made them fight but we can do much better."

"Persuade them that anything done in the name of love is good and if someone disputes that then they are a wicked and unloving person." said another.
"Attack their culture." said one more. " Destroy the sense of beauty and so called truth in their foul works of art. Let them see our more heroic truth in all its glorious abandonment of strait-laced convention and embracing of  the real freedom to do anything you want".
"Corrupt their music" said another. " We know that music can serve us or the enemy, and it affects humans and the way they think and feel in a powerful way. Make it serve us! We want noise and more noise!"

The chief devil considered the matter for a while. "All these ideas have some merit. I congratulate myself on giving you the hints to come up with them. But they are not enough. The enemy will undoubtedly send people to counter them. We need to do more. We need to inspire those humans who respond to us and make them think they are advancing the cause of humanity. We need to make humans believe that their salvation relies on progress in their world, on material progress and more knowledge to bend nature to their will. Give them lots of things to distract them,  then they will more easily be ours. Excite them with sex and more sex and get them to overlook what it's really for. That's always been easy but once we remove those bigoted and unnatural religious constraints it will be even easier. We need to foster atheism and materialism, of course, but we also need to infect their spiritual ideas with our own sweet additions that will poison the mix. We will send some of our disciples to lead astray those humans who are sensitive to spiritual matters but who also have their own ambitions and agendas which are ultimately more important to them. Wherever the enemy has his people we will attack relentlessly. We can sometimes bring them down through their desire for recognition or power. Many of them will resist us but many won't. We will prove to the enemy that our decision was the right one. I want souls! Get to work!"

The meeting closed and the devils went about their business. Far away in heaven the armies of light prepared themselves for the fight ahead. They knew that victory would eventually be theirs, of that there was no doubt, but they also knew there was a battle for souls to be had. Each individual human being was infinitely precious to their Master but each one had to make his or her own decision.

The Young Siddhartha

Today is Wesak which is the day of the full moon when the sun is in Taurus. At this time the Buddha is supposed to have been born, achieved enlightenment and died, and so I thought I would mark the occasion with a little flight of fancy.

Prince Siddhartha had just celebrated his 15^th birthday. He had received many gifts from his father and the courtiers who attended him. A gold bracelet, a necklace of pearls and rubies, new silk robes and a fine bow of wood and horn in the form of a serpent. Best of all was a white elephant calf given him by his father to remind him of the mother who had died in giving him birth.  Siddhartha had never known his mother but often felt he saw her face in dreams, and his aunt, who had brought him up as her own child, told him stories about her. “When we were young” she said,“ the whole court adored her for her beauty and simple grace, and, such was her goodness, I was never jealous. I loved her too.”

The presents had been given after the morning puja. Incense was burned, bells rung and flowers scattered throughout the palace.  At midday a great feast had been held in the main hall at which all the nobles of his father’s kingdom had attended. Great honour had been paid Siddhartha who was deemed shortly to be entering manhood. Indeed, his marriage was expected for the following year, and already the court astrologers were searching for a suitable bride. The rejoicing had been long but now, as the heat of the afternoon sun approached, all the guests sought shade and rest. Quietness descended on the palace with nothing to be heard but the buzzing of insects and the occasional snore from one of the more venerable members of the royal entourage.

But Siddhartha could not sleep. He should have been happy but he felt a discontent that no amount of presents or praise could dispel. “What is wrong with me?” he thought. “Why do I feel like this? I am ashamed of my ingratitude.” He looked about him at his sleeping companions. The friends of his childhood and the servants he treated as brothers were quite unaware of the shadow that fell over him. He loved them all but now he felt a distance from them that troubled him. They were content and satisfied but he, whose birthday it was, felt only a sadness made all the heavier for being unaccountable.

He wandered out into the gardens. The sun was hot and hurt his eyes. A watchful attendant who, even as he dozed, still kept an eye on his master, jumped up with an umbrella to hold over the prince but Siddhartha waved him away. He wanted to be by himself and undistracted so that he could focus entirely on what he was feeling.

He looked into his mind and tried to watch what was passing there. Thoughts came but he ignored them. The sadness rose up again but with a slight effort he dismissed it. He wanted to see what underlay these reactions of his mind to the outer world. "They are not me" he said to himself. "These thoughts and feelings are not me but what then am I?" He sat down beneath the shade of a large tree and gave himself entirely to consideration of this question. "If thoughts are not me then thinking will not show me what I am. If my feelings are external to me, which they must be because I am feeling them, then anything I feel cannot tell me the truth about myself. Thoughts and feelings are always changing but there is something else, something behind all that, which never changes. It is that I must discover and surely I can only do so when all external and internal activity comes to a halt". He sat completely still. He waited. His mind became like a deep pool with not the slightest ripple on its surface.

As if in homage to the intensity of his aspiration the birds in the garden fell silent. There was a quivering in the air that may have been the heat but might also have been occasioned by the solemnity of the moment. It was as if the whole of surrounding nature was watching, trembling with anticipation for the birth of something new.

And then Siddhartha's mind burst open. The entire history of the world up to that point and on into the future flooded into his mind and then out again in a single second. Torrents of light and colour streamed through him until he could no longer tell what was him and what was the light. He was seemingly lifted high above the world and caught up in a golden sea of blazing suns which enveloped his whole being but "This is not the end" he said, and with a tremendous effort he stayed detached from it all. He knew that this exuberant abundance of form was still part of the created world and if he reacted to it in any way, he would go no further. Then images of gods and goddesses appeared before him, some praising him for his wisdom and beauty, unequalled amongst mortals, others cursing him with terrible threats for his temerity in seeking answers beyond even their knowledge, but he remained unmoved, neither flattered by the praise nor fearing the threats.

The gods departed. Siddhartha sat beneath the tree, his mind still fixed on an unmoving point. The sun was now setting and night was drawing in. The silence deepened. Siddhartha was looking into dark space, absolutely pitch black. Within that space, he realised, was the answer to his questioning.The answer to what he was and what the universe was when all covering veils were torn away. And that answer was nothing. Pure, naked emptiness. Siddhartha understood. What else could it be? But then he hesitated. Could he leave his friends and family? Could he renounce the beauties and pleasures of the world? Before him was the void, absolute and infinite. Was he ready yet to enter? From the palace he heard his name being called. "Siddhartha, Siddhartha, where are you? Come back." He sighed and rose from his seat.

Not now perhaps, but one day he would know the truth.