Blood Meridian Opening Quotes

and on the other side for lack of sun there is death perhaps waiting for you in the uproar of a dazzling whirlwind with a thousand explosive arms stretched toward you man flower passing from the seller's hands to those of the lover and the loved passing from the hand of one event to the other passive and sad parakeet the teeth of doors are chattering and everything is done with impatience to make you leave quickly man amiable merchandise eyes open but tightly sealed cough of waterfall rhythm projected in meridians and slices globe spotted with mud with leprosy and blood winter mounted on its pedestal of night poor night weak and sterile draws the drapery of cloud over the cold menagerie and holds in its hands as if to throw a ball luminous number your head full of poetry

There was no wind and the silence out there was greatly favored by every kind of fugitive as was the open country itself and no mountains close at hand for enemies to black themselves against.

They found the lost scouts hanging head downward from the limbs of a fireblacked paloverde tree. They were skewered through the cords of their heels with sharpened shuttles of green wood and they hung gray and naked above the dead ashes of the coals where they’d been roasted until their heads had charred and the brains bubbled in the skulls and steam sang from their noseholes. Their tongues were drawn out and held with sharpened sticks thrust through them and they had been docked of their ears and their torsos were sliced open with flints until the entrails hung down on their chests. Some of the men pushed forward with their knives and cut the bodies down and they left them there in the ashes.

They found the lost scouts hanging head downward from the limbs of a fireblacked paloverde tree. They were skewered through the cords of their heels with sharpened shuttles of green wood and they hung gray and naked above the dead ashes of the coals where they’d been roasted until their heads had charred and the brains bubbled in the skulls and steam sang from their noseholes. Their tongues were drawn out and held with sharpened sticks thrust through them and they had been docked of their ears and their torsos were sliced open with flints until the entrails hung down on their chests.

There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends. And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

One moment,” Haung said, and drew the small knife from his belt. He rolled up his sleeve and drew the sharp edge over his skin, drawing a thin line of blood, black against his skin in the dark. Collecting the first, fresh well of blood from the cut he drew a smeared symbol on each eyelid. A deep breath and he opened the locked door in his mind, the place where he had contained the cold power of the void. He let a tiny bit leak out and then slammed the door shut again. He pushed the power along the meridian pathways of his body, focusing their energy in his eyes and locking it in place with blood symbols. There was a feeling of sickness in his stomach that passed quickly. “Done.

Traditionally, the chakras and their corresponding auric layers are shown in certain colors, such as the root red, sacral black, solar plexus yellow, heart white, throat violet, third eye indigo, and crown purple, and it is common to be mindful of these colors when dealing with a different chakra. Most students see some of these colors during a Reiki tuning, most commonly purple or orange. The energy, or ki, carried in through the chakras, is transmitted through a huge number of meridians and nadis around the body, which are something like blood arteries and veins. The first two are larger, the latter smaller, and some old charts show 72,000 of them. A treatment like acupuncture would not even be thinkable without detailed knowledge of their location. You need to be fairly confident about the right placement when doing open-heart surgery without anesthesia, helped only by a few long needles! The chakra function and its relation to mind, body, and spirit are explained in many good books. Many Reiki courses also incorporate aspects of it–after all, it's important to become more aware of the subtleties of our existence on Earth. And yet we are faced with a shock when it comes to Reiki: this information is not a precondition for its use. It's interesting and helpful–but not necessary. The practitioner will be guided by Reiki. It's just difficult to position your hands falsely! Even if it is difficult to get close to the actual difficulty site for some reason, Reiki will still get there, as thousands of Reiki users have learned.

General traditional theory asserts that when under stress, the body’s meridian system becomes imbalanced. Many factors cause stress, including physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual challenges, psychological issues, biochemical problems, and even electromagnetic difficulties such as geopathicstress. Even natural environmental factors such as excess cold, damp, wind, dryness, or heat can create imbalance. Under duress, the blood, chi, and fluid cannot flow normally, usually leading to congestion (excess or blockage) or depletion (deficiency or weakness). Symptoms of these imbalances can be found through the meridians even before they manifest physically. Once these problems appear physically, these underlying causes can impede the body’s healing ability. The meridian therapist essentially stimulates the acupuncture points to restore balance. Stagnant chi calls for stimulation. Cold chi needs warmth. As we will see in the section on meridian treatment modalities, diagnosis, and treatment, there are many paths open to a meridian specialist, including needling and non-needling techniques, massage, energy work, diet, herbs, and more. YIN/YANG Yin/yang is a synthesis of the other categories. Yin equals interior, empty, and cold. Yang equals exterior, full, and hot. It can also describe two kinds of emptiness: deficiency (not enough yin or yang) and collapse (critical “collapse” or recession of yin or yang).