Chapter 18: The Almost Monk

 The Dad taught The Boy about chivalry.  He taught him about the knights and a round table.  The Dad taught The Boy about the goodness behind that kingdom, the truth encapsulated into Camelot. The Old Man taught The Boy about the Darkness.  He taught The Boy about Merlin and Morgana, the struggles between Light and Darkness, and The Boy absorbed all he could about the lessons that The Dad, and The Old Man shared with him.  In his mind his became both a Warrior of Light and The Encompassor of The Dark.  He wanted to know everything he could about being a Human Being, a Man of Knowledge.  

The Dad had a friend that would visit from time to time.  His friend would walk with The Dad and The Old Man in the fields late at night talking about the acts of a Warrior, being a hunter.  These Hunters stalk Death.  They Hunt and are being Hunted by what The Old Man called The Terrible Other, The Shadow of the Stalker, also coined as The Angel Of Death.  

Very late on an evening The Boy was sleeping in his tent next to Winston, The Dad's Friend tapped on the side of the tent and woke The Boy.  When The Boy climbed out of the tent The Dad's Friend was there waiting for him.  The Boy looked at him, beneath His short black sombrero The Dad's Friend had eyes that were shinning a silver light as terrible as anything The Boy had ever seen.  In a voice that sounded straight from Hell The Dad's Friend spoke, "I See You." Then he ran back into the fields.  The Boy was left sitting in the grass in front of His tent next to Winston.  He was petrified. 

The next morning The Old Man brought him a plate of tortillas, some chicken strips, and a cup of café' mocha, chocolate coffee.  The Boy ate, drank and thought about the past night.  The Old Man just said, "You'll understand someday.  We are the Toltec."  Then he went back into Winston.  

The Boy took a shower and did his chores.  The Dad was waiting for him in the horse stalls.  He had the stalls cleaned already but there was a large metal cauldron full of water sitting in the middle of the stable.  The Dad instructed The Boy to stand low in a Riding Horse and slap the water with first the palm of his hand, then the back of his hand rotating back and forth right to left, left to right and so forth. "Don't stop until I come back for you." The Dad repeated twice, "Savvy?"  Then He walked away. 

The Boy did as he was instructed.  After about an hour his hands began becoming numb.  After two hours the numbness translated into the kind of pain that a person shouldn't feel.  The hands felt like they would melt.  After 4 hours they began feeling like falling stones attached to two tightly wound ropes.  The Boy's hands were becoming weapons. 

The Dad returned just as the sun was falling behind the horizon with a bucket of ice and submerged The Boy's hands into the ice.  The Boy winced in pain, then the pain went away and His hands suddenly felt very good.  The Dad pulled The Boy's hands out of the ice and dried them with a towel.  He showed The Boy his hands, they looked red, but nothing worse for the wear.  They felt powerful.  

Again that night The Dad's Friend showed up at the tent.  This time he shook The Boy's hand and said, "It was very good meeting you.  I See You."  Then he got into his car and drove away down the road to the highway.  The Dad waved at his retreat, and The Old Man was laughing. 

Episodes like these repeated themselves over the course of several years until The Boy voiced His urge to walk to the mountains and live with the Zen Monks there.  The Dad said these words to The Boy, and they changed the course of his life, "It's Easy to be a Holy man sitting in front of a tree alone with no one but the tree and yourself to keep you company, But what of the man who walks amongst the people learning and absorbing everything from life that He can take?  This is the way of The Toltec."

Peace and Balance,

John

Merlin, Arthur, And The Tree.

 

Merlin stood silently, as still as a stone overlooking the ocean above the White Cliffs.  A young Arthur came up to him and began questioning him, "Master what  are you looking at?"  There was no answer.

"Master why so still?" Again nothing was said.

The boy began running in circles around and around Merlin, but Merlin did not move  

Finely after spending the day trying to illicit a reaction from his Master.  The young Arthur finely stopped and just stood and watched what Merin was watching and asked, "Master, what is it you are trying to do?"

Merlin, as the sun was setting in the sea, finely answered, "I'm practicing."  

"Practicing what sir?" Arthur asked in a quiet tone.

"Being a Tree of course." Was all Merlin replied.

Peace and Balance,

John

Merlin's Charm Of Making

Merlin's Charm of Making was in old Gaelic: An'al nathrach, Orth' bh'ais's bethad, do ch'el d'enmha.  In modern Irish: Anal nathrach Ortha bhais is beatha, do cheal deanaimh.  Not pronounced as it is written.  In English it is translated to: Serpents breath, Charm of death and life, thy omen of making.  Merlin was the son of Queen Mab, an ancient name of the Earth Mother in Celtic mythology.  Queen Mab conjured Merlin up from her union with a sky Dragon using the old ways on the eve of the Christian invasion of the Misty Isles.   Merlin was the male heir for the throne of Tir Nan Og, the land of the fiery, his mother's kingdom.  This was all before Merlin rejected his upbringing and said, "No!" to the idea of taking the throne in order to save the old ways, enraging his mother, Mab.  He spent the rest of his life with humans, teaching, guiding, and bringing in the new Majick to the world.  

Merlin was a dragon and already a thousand years old before he met the young Arthur in the Forest of Broceliande, commonly know as Du Lac, the lake.  The majickal forest surrounded a great lake at it's center.  This forest was a creation of the forces of nature that Merlin had mastered over the thousand years he was residing in it.  Merlin and the land are one. 

Merlin's Charm of Making are responsible for first the lake and then the forest.  At the center of the lake lives Merlin's wife, Queen Mab's daughter, Nimue' also known as Viviane.  The relationship is that of majickal creatures and should not be analyzed to closely as both are the son's and daughters of the same mother, Mab.  In the ancient tongue Mab is another name for the Earth.  

For a thousand years Merlin and Nimue' lived in peace and created the surface of the world readying for the appearance of the New King of Light.  Some would say they were waiting for the Christ Jesus.  No, they were waiting for the child Arthur Uther PenDragon, son of Uther the King and Igraine.  Igraine is supposedly the physical incarnation of Queen Mab herself.  Mab created Merlin in Tir Nan Og, and Arthur on the surface of the Earth, Mab.  Merlin and Arthur are brothers.  Merlin the Dragon, and Arthur the Man.  A new way had begun.  

Merlin's Charm of Making I will attempt at writing a phonic translation:  Annal  Nathrock Oothvas bethuud Daffiel Deennvay.  This is a proper pronunciation for the Gaelic written in the above paragraphs.  Which means roughly, not directly: Through the Breath of the Dragon I move Death and Life my Omen of Creation.  From Merlin, Myrdrynn the Wizard son of Mab the Earth.  

The things you learn as a child from your father. 

Peace and Balance,

John 

Our Mad Stories

 Rothegar called Grendal to him from his Hubris.  Rothegar had forgotten the old ways and was partying it up at the expense of his people.  Yet he refused to accept the Christ as a representation of the one God. He was worshiping the Earth mother in ways she was not proud of.  

The Earth Mother sent her message in the guise of the beast Grendal.  The son of Chaos, and his Mother was the only creature Grendal was afraid of.  From the bowels of the Earth rose a dark Dragon that appeared as half human half beast, with breath so fowl all would die before it, and eyes so dark that all light would be sucked out of existence by them.  This was Grendal's mother, the Beast of the Earth Mother. 

Beowulf, or Bov,i' as he was classically called, was a hero from a neighboring land north of Rothegar's kingdom.  Bov,i's people were a warrior race that traveled in search of great adventure and personal conquest.  The son of a King, Bov,i' was given the gift of a present mind and powerful body by the gods of order.  

We have Grendal who was created from chaos, and Bov,i' who represented order facing off at the end of the epic poem, "Beowulf" which Bov,i' and Grendal both made their presences known to the world longer ago than written memory.  It is the product of a verbal tail passed down from generation to generation from a time we have long forgotten.  

Many of our classical stories have made their ways into our collective unconscious in the same manner as verbal tales from times that we have forgotten.  These stories include, but are not limited to, the Arthurian tales, Merlin and his epic story, don Quixote Dela Mancha, and strange as it may sound, the several versions of the Holy Bible, Hebron version, Christian version, and Islamic version.  Kinda makes you wonder doesn't it.  

There is a prevailing similarity to each of these stories, they all start with a woman.  The main character of each story had a dubious flirtation with and often marriage to the female counterpart of that story.  Making a holistic completeness, In Ro, Yin Yang, Earth Sky, Male Female, the wholeness of being. 

Magdalena had Jesus, Freia had Beowulf, Dulciana had Don Quixote, Salama had Mohamoud. Guinevere had Arthur, and Nimuea had Merlin.  The downfall of all people.  Human kind and their collective madness.

Peace and Balance,

John