Mystical Rose Quotes

I will soothe you and heal you, I will bring you roses. I too have been covered with thorns.

If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love?

With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.

The forest rose like a dream from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter and the sun fell heavy and thick to warm the blood of a world not quite ready to live but so tired of its own imagination

THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness the unbelievable: for there before him stood the legendary creature, startling white, that had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes. The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a body wrought of finest ivory. And as he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight. High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign of his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait. The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth, whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly: he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose. His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure, reflecting vistas and events long vanished, and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Everything is in front of me But my gaze is lost And I can't wake up Because I never had The things I mostly wanted But nothing lasts forever And the day I long for will come

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

When Maya (external world) gives you (the soul) a rose (good or bad experience), you feel indebted (Karmic Debt). You feel bound to give her company. When you realize that the Maya will go on even when you are not with her, you will get the courage to do the divine break-up. You will get liberation.

The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.

The point of love Is not to change In order to receive love It's to change Through the love you're receiving

I believe That anything Is possible In this life As long as There is will

She was everything beautiful, everything good. She was all I knew of that mystical emotion called love.

The mountain panorama was the backdrop to every photo taken here, the backdrop to everything. At first Ursula had thought it beautiful, now she was beginning to find its magnificence oppressive. The great icy crags and the rushing waterfalls, the endless pine trees--nature and myth fused to form the Germanic sublimated soul. German Romanticism, it seemed to Ursula, was write large and mystical, the English Lakes seemed tame by comparison. And the English soul, if it resided anywhere, was surely in some unheroic back garden--a patch of lawn, a bed of roses, a row of runner beans.

And the secret is," I lowered my voice, as at a poetry reading, "he was right! It is vanity, it is pride! It is the hubris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the mystic, the god. It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us.

The heart is a mystical thing. It keeps us alive by pumping blood to every part of our body. It is a strong organ which scientists say has no memory. But the heart is also a thing of great speculation and power; spoken, written, and even put into songs, by many great authors, singers, actors and poets around the world. The heart is supposed to be the center of love, feeling, loneliness and heartbreak. And it was that organ, that great red Valentine's Day sought-after-object that was at present causing me trouble

No one is really enough Not even favorites It's all a trick So no wonder They see worth in me When you don't see it Everything consists of Dispersed masterpieces Everyday that passes I reach them more and more So I can belong

As we drew nearer we could see that the three men fishing seemed old and solemn-looking men. They sat on three chairs in the punt and watched intently their lines. And the red sunset threw a mystic light upon the waters and tinged with fire the towering woods and made a golden glory of the piled-up clouds. It was an hour of deep enchantment of ecstatic hope and longing. The little sail stood out against the purple sky the gloaming lay around us wrapping the world in rainbow shadows and behind us crept the night. We seemed like knights of some old legend sailing across some mystic lake into the unknown realm of twilight unto the great land of the sunset. We did not go into the realm of twilight we went slap into that punt where those three old men were fishing. We did not know what had happened at first because the sail shut out the view but from the nature of the language that rose up upon the evening air we gathered that we had come into the neighbourhood of human beings and that they were vexed and discontented.

And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew With all her spirit and life the sunrise through And through her lips the keen triumphant air Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were, And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth Of wind and light that moved upon the earth, Making the spring, and all the fruitful might And strong regeneration of delight That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man, Since the first life in the first world began To burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins, And the first love with sharp sweet procreant pains To pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she felt Through her own soul the sovereign morning melt, And all the sacred passion of the sun; And as the young clouds flamed and were undone About him coming, touched and burnt away In rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day, The sweet veil of her body and corporal sense Felt the dawn also cleave it, and incense With light from inward and with effluent heat The kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet. And as the august great blossom of the dawn Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat, So as a fire the mighty morning smote Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour Her whole soul's one great mystical red flower Burst, and the bud of her sweet spirit broke Rose-fashion, and the strong spring at a stroke Thrilled, and was cloven, and from the full sheath came The whole rose of the woman red as flame: And all her Mayday blood as from a swoon Flushed, and May rose up in her and was June. So for a space her hearth as heavenward burned: Then with half summer in her eyes she turned, And on her lips was April yet, and smiled, As though the spirit and sense unreconciled Shrank laughing back, and would not ere its hour Let life put forth the irrevocable flower. And the soft speech between them grew again

Yorkshire's autumn was as great a gift as Yorkshire's summer. I loved watching the rusting of the leaves while the dales mellowed to shades of ochre, and rose hips and blackberries grew deliciously fat on their branches. The morning mists were mystical and magical to me, and the rose-glow of the evening sun lent the sky a hypnotic light that matched any Cape Town sunset.

Words are symbols that assume a shared memory. The memory I now want to set down is mine alone; all those who share it have died. The mystics invoke a rose, a kiss, a bird that is all birds, a sun that is all the stars and the sun, a jug of wine, a garden, or the sexual act. Of these metaphors, none will serve me for that long, joyous night, which left us, tired out and happy, at the borders of dawn.

These hapless lovers were probably not always mere myths, and these legends which traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush or the rose were no idle poetic emblem of youth and beauty fleeting as the Summer flowers.

In the heart of the mystic lies a deep longing to be reunited with the ancient ways, coupled with a yearning to be able to show others what she can see. She wants to show others what she can see. Sadly, more often than not, others do not have the eyes with which to see, or, their eyes are blinded by bondage and fear. She is ever alone and yet ever accompanied by a thousand leagues of beauties and voices, that this mystic existence can only be described as a thorny rose— the mystic is the one who reaches for the rose because she knows that those who crave the rose must not fear the thorns.

In one of the verses of Lal Ded, or Lalla, a fourteenth-century mystic from Kashmir, Lalla says: “At the end of a crazy-moon night the love of God rose. I said “It’s me, Lalla.” “It’s me, Lalla,” becomes “It’s me…whoever you are,” proclaiming that we no longer stand on the sidelines but are leaping directly into the center of our lives, our truth, our full potential. No one can take that leap for us; and no one has to. This is our journey of faith.

She pulls on her heavy boots and carries the water bucket past the rose bushes, past the herb garden, and back to the barn behind the house. Her steps kick up the scents of herbs: thyme, mint, and lemon balm. The plants send up new stems each year from the roots that survived the winter and grew up again along the path. The perfumed walk is a mystical part of her world. Walking here is her favorite part of mornings. Sometimes, this is the highlight of her day.

When people began to throw stones at him, Shibli—so the legend has it—threw a rose, and Hallaj sighed. Asked the reason for his sigh, he answered: "They do not know what they do, but he should have known it." And the saying that "the rose, thrown by the friend, hurts more than any stone" has become a Turkish proverb.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I’m sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I’m trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. ...

God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. —JAMES M. BARRIE

No one approaches me In the way That can unlock All this paradox Inside of me

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or “Bible” of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called “mystical experiences” in every religion are true. He should have known better.

There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia. I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ... Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower... I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms. When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism. But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.

It was a fitting animal for a priest. Cats guard the secrets of the otherworld and are liaisons with mystic realms. Protectors of esoteric knowledge, cats can open the gates through which a priest can see the future and gain insight.

Suddenly the zephyr kicked up the leaves as well, and Sylvia saw something like a great, green angel arise in the spot where the mask had lain. Sylvia stood frozen to the spot watching as a face of living wood took shape from the mask-like object and rose over six feet with the leaves flowing over limbs.

That is the method practiced by all the prophets of all revealed religions from the beginning to the end. To help people purify themselves of destructive characteristics was the mission of Moses, of Jesus and also of the seal of prophets Muhammad, who was ordered by his Lord: “Purify them.” They all worked to this end and never despaired of success, as they had certainty that a treasure remained buried in people’s hearts. Look, if you have a precious diamond and then it falls into the toilet, are you going to flush it down with the dirties? Would anyone suggest such a thing? Perhaps some proud or weak stomached people might call for a servant to do it, but no one in his right mind would flush it away. Then when you retrieve that diamond you are going to wash it with soap and water thoroughly, perhaps dip it in rose oil, and then return it to your finger. No one is then thinking that the diamond is dirty. Diamonds do not absorb the qualities of what they fall into – souls are the same.

all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? ..

Oh, what a harmony of abandonment and impulse, of unnatural and yet graceful postures, in that mystical language of limbs miraculously freed from the weight of corporeal matter, marked quantity infused with new substantial form, as if the holy band were struck by an impetuous wind, breath of life, frenzy of delight, rejoicing song of praise miraculously transformed, from the sound that it was, into image.

La Mort des Amants Nous aurons des lits pleins d'odeurs légères, Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux, Et d'étranges fleurs sur des étagères, Ecloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux. Usant à l'envi leurs chaleurs dernières, Nos deux coeurs seront deux vastes flambeaux, Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumières Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux. Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique, Nous échangerons un éclair unique, Comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d'adieux; Et plus tard un Ange, entr'ouvrant les portes, Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux, Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes. We will have beds which exhale odours soft, We will have divans profound as the tomb, And delicate plants on the ledges aloft, Which under the bluest of skies for us bloom. Exhausting our hearts to their last desires, They both shall be like unto two glowing coals, Reflecting the twofold light of their fires Across the twin mirrors of our two souls. One evening of mystical azure skies, We'll exchange but one single lightning flash, Just like a long sob — replete with good byes. And later an angel shall joyously pass Through the half-open doors, to replenish and wash The torches expired, and the tarnished glass.

The mystic Al-Ghazali said that the inhabitants of heaven remain forever thirty-three. It reminds me of Iran, stuck in 1976 in the imagination of every exile. Iranians often say that when they visit Tehran or Shiraz or Isfahan, they find even the smallest changes confusing and painful - a beloved corner shop gone to dust, the smell of bread that once filled a street, a rose garden neglected. In their memories, they always change it back. Iran is like an aging parent, they say.

Occult Freemasonry likely derives from the Rosicrucian or "Rose Cross" rites popularized in Protestant regions of Germany...The core of Rosicrucianism is mystical parables and morality rites or liturgies that teach occult lessons for the enlightened. The central mystery is alchemy, or the belief that one can create gold from lower substances. This is the heresy of naturalism -- manipulating nature to produce something above nature -- just as Satan attempted to transcend his nature in order to become God.

You need only embrace the best-known secret of all: no mystery is closed to an open mind. What came of that mystical wedding, of the world we know and the world we do not know, by that rose of the spirit, committed thus in so great a hope, so great a faith? The Druid is not here to tell. Faith after Faith has withered like a leaf. But still we stand by ancestral altars, still offer the Rose of Desire to the veiled Mystery, still commit this our symbol to the fathomless, the everlasting, the unanswered Deep. —WILLIAM SHARP, from Where the Forest Murmurs

We were young and the focus on human suffering gave our retreats gravitas. But suffering is not the goal, it is the beginning of the path. Now in the retreat I teach, I also encourage participants to awaken to their innate joy. From the very beginning I encourage them to allow the moments of joy and well-being to deepen, to spread throughout their body and mind. Many of us are conditioned to fear joy and happiness, yet joy is necessary for awakening. As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, ‘When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine.

I was only beginning to enter into the infinite subtlety of Gregorian chant. It was - and remains - the only public prayer I have ever been able to engage in without feeling like a phony and a jackass. But then, one day in 1965 or so, it was simply abolished. With a stroke of his pen, Pope John XXIII - who had such good ideas about other things - declared that liturgy would henceforth be in the vernacular language of the people. That was, effectively, the end of Latin chant. Then all those monks and nuns who had devoted hours and hours a day began to sicken and fall into depressions, but nobody noticed for a long time. Maybe, as I can well believe, the music toned up their systems in some mysterious way. Or perhaps chant really was a language that God understood. Faced with numerous liturgical scholas shrieking away in the new vernacular hymns, Divinity may have covered its ears and withdrawn, leaving the monks to pine. We parish musicians, illiterate in anything written after the 13th century, stumbled around trying to score liturgies for guitar and bongo drums, trying to make sense of texts like "Eat his body! Drink his blood!" It wasn't because the music got so bad that I quit going to Mass, but it certainly was the beginning of my doubts about papal infallibility.

Silent remembering is a form of prayer. No fragrance is more enchanting to re-experience than the aromatic bouquet gleaned from inhaling the cherished memories of our pastimes. We regularly spot elderly citizens sitting alone gently rocking themselves while facing the glowing sun. Although these sun worshipers might appear lonely in their state of serene solitude, they are not alone at all, because they deeply enmesh themselves in recalling the glimmering memories of days gone by. Marcel Proust wrote “In Search of Time Lost,” “As with the future, it is not all at once but grain by grain that one savors the past.” Test tasting the honeycombed memories of their bygone years, a delicate smile play out on their rose thin lips. The mellow tang of sweet tea memories – childhood adventures, coming of age rituals, wedding rites, recreational jaunts, wilderness explorations, viewing and creating art, literature, music, and poetry, sharing in the mystical experiences of life, and time spent with family – is the brew of irresistible intoxicants that we all long to sip as we grow old. The nectar mashed from a collection of choice memories produces a tray of digestible vignettes that each of us lovingly roll our silky tongues over. On the eve of lying down for the last time in the stillness of our cradled deathbeds, we will swaddle ourselves with a blanket of heartfelt love and whisper a crowning chaplet of affection for all of humanity. After all, we been heaven blessed to take with us to our final resting place an endless scroll amassing the kiss soft memories of time yore.

O Friend! we are near you in friendship, Wherever you set foot, we prostrate ourselves like earth. How is it permissible, in the religion of love, That we should see your Creation and neglect to see You? That Friend brought me up with great care and attention; He sewed me a garment from skin and veins. The body is like a cloak and my heart in it like a mystic, The world is like a monastery and He is my Guide. Seek knowledge which unravels mysteries Before your life comes to close Give up that non-existence which looks like existence, Seek that Existence which looks like non-existence! There is a world outside Islam and Disbelief, We are enamoured of the atmosphere therein. The mystic lays down his head when he reaches there. There is neither Islam nor Disbelief in this place. Whenever I prostrate my head He is the one to whom I bow; In six directions or outside the six, he is the one I worship. The garden, the rose, the nightingale, music and the beauteous maiden Are a mere excuse and He alone is the real object. From"Life and Work of

Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.’ Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.

You may, for instance, inquire of a popular preacher, or any one else, who denounces his countrymen as "pagan" (as speakers, and even Bishops, at religious gatherings have been known to do) what, exactly, he means by this word, and you will find that he means irreligious, and is apparently oblivious of the fact that pagans were and are, in their village simplicity, the most religious persons who have ever flourished, having more gods to the square mile then the Christian or any other Church has ever possessed or desired, and paying these gods more devout and more earnest devotion than you will meet even among Anglo-Catholics in congress. To be pagan may not be very intelligent; it is rustic and superstitious, but it is at least religious. Yet you will hear the word "pagan" flung loosely about for "irreligious", or sometimes as meaning joyous, material and comfort-loving, whereas the simple pagans walked the earth full of what is called holy awe and that mystic faith in unseen powers which is the antithesis of materialism, and gloomy with apprehension of the visitations of their horrid and vindictive gods; and, though no doubt, like all men, they loved comfort, they only obtained, just as we do, as much of that as they could afford.

Charles is difficult to pigeonhole politically. Tony Blair wrote that he considered him a “curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour, at another definitely not) and of the princely and insecure.” He is certainly conservative in his old-fashioned dress and manners, his advocacy of traditional education in the arts and humanities, his reverence for classical architecture and the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer. But his forays into mysticism and his jeremiads against scientific progress, industrial development, and globalization give him an eccentric air. “One of the main purposes of the monarchy is to unite the country and not divide it,” said Kenneth Rose. When the Queen took the throne at age twenty-five, she was a blank slate, which gave her a great advantage in maintaining the neutrality necessary to preserve that unity. It was a gentler time, and she could develop her leadership style quietly. But it has also taken vigilance and discipline for her to keep her views private over so many decades. Charles has the disadvantage of a substantial public record of strong and sometimes contentious opinions, not to mention the private correspondence with government ministers protected by exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act that could come back to haunt him if any of it is made public. One letter that did leak was written in 1997 to a group of friends after a visit to Hong Kong and described the country’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks.

The rose is a symbol of the inner mysteries of Witchcraft. A red rose symbolizes the mysteries as they reside in Nature, within the living things. The white rose symbolizes the Otherworld and the mysteries hidden in secret places. When a single rose appears with white petals in the center of red petals, this represents the mysteries joined together within one reality. Thorns appearing with the rose represent challenges and the dedication required to fully grasp the enlightenment of the rose. One of the symbolisms associated with the rose reveals the covenant between the Witch and the Faery. In this, we find that both are stewards of the portal that opens to the inner mysteries. The Faery holds the celestial key, and the Witch bears the terrestrial key. When the two are joined together, they form an X—the sign of the crossroads. In this formation, where the keys cross we find a third point, the in-between place at the center. This is where the portal exists, and this is where it opens between the worlds. Look at the shape of the X and you can see four pointed tip markers (the V shapes). The upper half of the X points down, and the lower half points up. On the sides of the X, you can see that the left and right halves point to the center. This shows us that when the celestial and terrestrial realms join, they pull together the left ways and the right ways. These are occult terms for esoteric and exoteric modes of consciousness. In the fusion, everything briefly loses its distinction, its ability to mask the opposite reality, and in doing so, the secret third reality emerges in the center of it all. If this sounds confusing or nonsensical, then the guardian of that portal is doing its job well. The material in this book will connect you with an entity connected to the rose and its mystery. This is the previously mentioned She of the Thorn-Blooded Rose. With her guidance, you can be directed to the portal, and through it you can meet a variety of beings and entities. However, her primary task is to connect you with the Greenwood Realm and the plant spirits within it. In your journey to encounter these spirits, you will pass through the organic memory of the earth. You'll walk upon roads of mystical concepts and be accompanied by the Old Ones of

Paris might give you rose-colored glasses, but youth made anything seem possible.

Circulation of Song after Rumi Once again I'm climbing the mountain Circle on circle like a winding rose Below me the mountains fall away like rose-petals I wish to be at the centre of the mystic rose Where I shall meet Him He shall greet me: Beloved! So long in coming -- He shall be the lonely pine tree On the flattened promontory And I, the spider clinging to Him by a mere thread, against the sun and the wind Each dawn the sunrise tinting gold the burnt Sienna houses Each dusk the alpine rosy glow on the mountain Each afternoon such darkness in the glen Fold on fold in a foliage all the shades of green: They have crept into my dream He is the air I breathe Purest mountain-air: I'm cleaned He is the lark's descant And in the evening, the nightingale He is the star's ascent and the moon's cloud-hiding He is all the circles and in this circulation of song: I read you / you read me circulating In my blood from head to heel He is the fruit of my unfulfilled life The peach pooped with juice And running with the Argentine waters, the pear In the Chinese nectarine flecked like a child's cheek with red And in the sour loquat and the sweet cherry In the fragrance of the jasmine of India And the Shiraz rose that makes the bee mad for them In the grape that becomes wine to suffuse my cheek In the olive that becomes a lamp to shine through my cupped hands In these and not only in these does He circulate Pouring from the sun at 5' o'clock as if at noon Dancing on the lake, pure honey And all the chatter over tea! But in the quiet you find me out You find me out Plucking myself from Me So that I become you The breath in my nape-nerve Sweetly saying: I bow to the God in you

Rose Quartz has a gentle pulse, caring and nurturing, which retains the strength of unconditional love. This contains soothing and reassuring powers, and has a pulse of profound healing. Rose Quartz removes internal bleeding and is a perfect supporting stone for people with self-esteem difficulties. This fosters self-forgiveness and tolerance, and invokes self-confidence and self-worth. Amethyst is a highly potent and defensive stone with a strong mystical resonance. The heightened pulse lets you raise your spiritual awareness. Amethyst lets us heal any kind of harmful habits that are not for the user's highest and best benefit. Selenite is a mental-clearing mineral. Selenite enhances mental flexibility, makes it possible to make decisions, and is a stone of truth and honesty.  It is a stone with a very calming vibration that can be used when doing spiritual work or meditation. Selenite in any cure provides true light.

Ezra Pound famously said that culture begins when you forget what book that came from. Unfortunately he himself never forgot any citation that suited his mania, and his work as a totality is hopelessly vitiated by the half-witted diligence of the trainspotter. An edifying comparison can be made with Yeats, whose allegiance to the spiritualist claptrap of the theory of the Mystic Rose was at least as batty as Pound’s to the pseudo-economic quackery of the theory of Social Credit: but Yeats could develop beyond his early lyrics because art, for him, was a system of solid knowledge by far transcending his own fads.

Compare the serene and simple splendor of a rose in bloom with the tensions and restlessness of your life. The rose has a gift that you lack: It is perfectly content to be itself. It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it doesn’t have the slightest urge to be anything other than what it is. It possesses the artless grace and absence of inner conflict that among humans is only found in little children and mystics. Only the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another. Think of the sad history of your self-improvement efforts—they either ended in disaster or they succeeded only at the cost of struggle and pain. You are always dissatisfied with yourself, always wanting to change yourself, always wanting more. So, you are full of violence and self-intolerance, which only grows with every effort that you make to change yourself. Thus, any change you achieve is inevitably accompanied by inner conflict. Now suppose you stopped all efforts to change yourself and ended all self-dissatisfaction. Would you then be doomed to go to sleep at night having passively accepted everything in you and around you? There is another choice besides laborious self-pushing, on the one hand, or stagnant acceptance, on the other. It is the way of self-understanding. It is far from easy because to understand what you are requires complete freedom from all desire to change what you are into something else.

Let’s go, ladies,” said Dolores, her long face grim as she turned from the scene. “Let’s see what Obiryn can tell us about trapping this devil.” We had no need to stay here. We’d be much more productive back at Davenport House with glasses of wine between our hands. We did our best thinking and planning that way. Red wine is a superfood. I fell into step with Marcus as we all followed Dolores down the alleyway toward the Volvo station wagon parked at the curb. Beverly and Ruth walked in silence behind us. I felt a vibration chime through me just as the light faded as though storm clouds had suddenly covered the sky—just a little too fast. Curious, I halted and looked up into the sky. “What the hell is that?” I asked no one in particular. We’d come to the crime scene under a blue sky, a speckling of clouds, and a warm morning. But now a cold wind rose with a green horizon

Maggy never fit in with her aristocratic European life. Jung mentioned in an unpublished lecture about this patient (where she also appears anonymously) that she was extremely intelligent and sensitive and did not share the interests of her peers or her culture. She insisted on behaving unconventionally and, as a young woman, refused to marry11—though with her wealth, her looks, her passion (Jung wrote that she played the piano with such intensity that her body temperature quickly rose above 100 degrees12), and her brains, she ought to have been quite a catch for any man of suitable quality. He would have to put up with her independent-mindedness and argumentativeness though, a product of her keen intelligence and education. In her conservative social world, these qualities did not contribute to her being happy.13 But now, in Zurich, freed from the stifling atmosphere of her youth, in an intellectually exciting milieu dominated by the psychiatrist-mystic Jung, all that was changing.14

Let not us, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example — and warning — to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him — even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world. And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time. No wonder then, that it is hard to be a Christian — it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, lead the more surely to one’s own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds We must ultimately choose — our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both. God give us the strength to pursue the path to crucifixion; there is no other way to be Christian.

I hate hate And I love love But when I lack love Sometimes I hate And I'm angry But even then I don't believe what I say Because I hope That one day Love will fill my life

I want To love The whole world I don't know If it's possible Only if I was saint

I feel Something's happening For me Behind my back And I hope It's love Because it's The only thing I need In this world To be well

But perhaps Hubbard’s most enduring contribution to psychedelic therapy emerged in, of all places, the treatment room. […] Though he never used those terms, Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp the critical importance of set and setting in shaping the psychedelic experience. He instinctively understood that the white walls and fluorescent lighting of the sanitised hospital room were all wrong. So he brought pictures and music, flowers and diamonds into the treatment room where he would use them to prime patients for a mystical revelation or divert a journey when it took a terrifying turn. He liked to show people paintings by Salvador Dali or pictures of Jesus or to ask them to study the facets of a diamond he carried. On patient he treated in Vancouver, an alcoholic paralysed by social anxiety recalled Hubbard handing him a bouquet of roses during a LSD session. “He said, ‘Now hate them’. They withered and the petals fell off, and I started to cry. Then he said ‘Love them’ and they came back, brighter and even more spectacular than before. That meant a lot to me. I realised you can make your relationships anything you want. The trouble I was having with people was coming from me.’” What Hubbard was bringing into the treatment room was something well-known to any traditional healer. Shamans have understood for millennia that a person in the depths of a trance or under the influence of a powerful plant medicine can be readily manipulated with the help of certain words, special objects, or the right kind of music. Hubbard understood intuitively how the suggestibility of the human mind during an altered state of consciousness could be harnessed as an important resource for healing—for breaking destructive patterns of thought and for proposing new perspectives in their place.

I loved the love and i still love of it, because it's a light break in endless darkness, the lake that awaits you on the desert, the rose that cannot wither, the warm nest of birds. Love, between hello and goodbye we never are alone.

Rumi, the Persian mystic: “I died as stone, and rose again as plant. I died as plant, and became an animal. I died as animal, and was born a man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more shall I die as man, to soar with the angels. But even from angelhood, I must pass on. For all is change, except the face of God.

An interesting idea, sir, but I’m afraid this symbol—a circle with a round dot in the middle—has dozens of meanings. It’s called a circumpunct, and it’s one of the most widely used symbols in history.” “What are you talking about?” the dean asked, sounding skeptical. Langdon was stunned that a Mason was not more familiar with the spiritual importance of this symbol. “Sir, the circumpunct has countless meanings. In ancient Egypt, it was the symbol for Ra—the sun god—and modern astronomy still uses it as the solar symbol. In Eastern philosophy, it represents the spiritual insight of the Third Eye, the divine rose, and the sign of illumination. The Kabbalists use it to symbolize the Kether—the highest Sephiroth and ‘the most hidden of all hidden things.’ Early mystics called it the Eye of God and it’s the origin of the All-Seeing Eye on the Great Seal. The Pythagoreans used the circumpunct as the symbol of the Monad—the Divine Truth, the Prisca Sapientia, the at-one-ment of mind and soul, and the—

Towards that end, the soul provides you with experiences that are necessary, that purge or cleanse you. There is no such thing as a frivolous cleansing, and such experiences can take many familiar forms, such as illnesses or persistent inner sufferings. Others may be more spontaneous, the result of a sudden “aha” that hits home when you least expect it. For example, a man who rose very rapidly in the corporate world was enormously successful, but his arrogance, insecurity, and need for approval and attention made him unbearable to be around. Once his bank account was overflowing, he declared that he was being called by God to do good in the world, informed everyone that he was now a mystic, and set up a foundation to do good. But he went about all this with his old, bullish, corporate style. He had not changed inside, but would not admit that he was still a greedy, controlling, creature in spite of his declaration that he was now a mystic. Eventually, however, he met his match in a woman involved in a global project who told him that he did not qualify as a contributor, because, ‘You have an untrustworthy soul and until your soul is cleansed, we cannot have you sit among us. You will do more harm than good, in spite of your full wallet.’ He was stunned, but eventually admitted he had an agenda behind his charity work, and began the process of purification.

The most difficult challenge is life itself. Many fail because they strive to imitate others. But they don't realize that everyone has a different question paper.

Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time; Christ’s life is the example – and warning – to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. Suffering is the reality of the human condition and the beginning of true spiritual life. - The Monk Seraphim Rose.

They demonstrated that the elevated emotional states described by mystics weren’t just subjective fantasies; they were grounded in objective molecular interactions that could be measured and quantified. INGREDIENTS OF THE BLISS BRAIN COCKTAIL Research has shown that each one of the seven bliss neurochemicals is associated with meditation. A review and synthesis of the research literature found increases in serotonin, GABA, vasopressin, and melatonin. The dopamine levels of meditators rose by 56%. Cortisol dropped, and norepinephrine declined to levels appropriate to focused attention without anxiety. The rhythms of the brain’s production of beta-endorphins changed. Heightened oxytocin mobilized the synthesis of anandamide in the nucleus accumbens. A number of studies and reviews show that meditation stimulates the production of nitric oxide, providing meditators with the health benefits of better circulation and brain neuroplasticity. Nitric oxide release is closely coupled with anandamide production; thus meditation and other stress-reducing activities may stimulate the synthesis of both together. Anandamide can also improve cognitive function, motivation, learning, and memory, while triggering the growth of neurons in the brain centers that govern those functions. A blissed brain is a learning brain; meditation cements our feel-good experiences into brain hardware through increased neuroplasticity. Anandamide also relieves anxiety and depression while stimulating closeness and connection with others. The scientific literature shows that oxytocin is increased by meditation. As we saw earlier, oxytocin triggers the release of nitric oxide and anandamide, providing the meditator with a trifecta of pleasurable brain chemicals. 5.18. The only way to get all the most pleasurable neurochemicals surging through your brain at one time is the ecstatic flow state found in deep meditation. Each of these neurochemicals is pleasurable in its own right, and you can get them from activities that stimulate their production. These activities might get you one or two but not all seven in one package.

So, then, what aid do the mystics offer? Love, the Rhineland mystics say, is “without why.” We love because we love, and there is no answer as to why we love because there is no question. Johann Scheffler (1624–1677), the mystical poet who used the pen name Angelus Silesius, packed a great deal of wisdom into a very short couplet: The rose is without why. It blossoms because it blossoms; It cares not for itself, asks not if it is seen. Love is like the rose. The blossoming of the rose is how we love. Love releases the axiological realm by releasing life from its servitude to some other, servile purpose. Of course, we would all love to have our love returned with love, but that is not a condition of love. That is its risk, down on bended knee, heart pounding, hoping for a yes, yes. Love is transformational, not transactional. When we love we do not start by calculating what is in it for us or demand to know what purpose it serves. Faced with the unprethinkability of being and the unforeseeability of the future, love does not ask, “Why?” Love’s only question, the one true question, the question of all questions is, “Is it unconditionally worthy of affirmation, in itself, for itself, without why?” What is truly loved is loved simply for being there rather than not. We love what is intrinsically worthy of our love, prized and appreciated for itself, not for its use value or its exchange value, for enjoyment (frui), not employment (uti, use), Augustine said.

[...] The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. Er muoz gelîchesame die leiter abewerfen, sô er an ir ufgestigen. ... Is that how you say it?” “That is how it is said in my language. Who told you that?” “A mystic from your land. [...]

If Bliss Brain is so desirable and pleasurable, why is it so fragile? Why can our brains be distracted from happiness by the slightest hint of a thought? Why is the demon’s slightest whisper enough to drag us out of bliss? Why are our brains hardwired for negativity? The answer is simple: That’s how our ancestors survived. Those who were the most responsive to danger lived. If your ancestor’s brain had a genetic mutation that heard the rustle of the tiger in the grass a nanosecond earlier, he started running a moment sooner. Genes that paid close attention to threats conferred an enormous survival advantage, as I illustrate in my book The Genie in Your Genes. People who were less responsive to potential threats died, and their genes were lost to the gene pool. Those who reacted to the smallest hint of danger survived, passing their paranoid genes to the next generation. In contrast, happiness provided little or no survival value. Fail to notice a beautiful sunset, ignore the sound of children singing, walk by a rose bush without smelling the blooms? Nothing bad happens. But miss the rustle of the tiger? That’s fatal. So thousands of generations of evolution have honed our ability to respond to even the most minuscule whisper of the remotest possibility of threat, and abandon happiness at the drop of a hat. Mother Nature cares greatly about your survival—and not at all about your happiness. That’s why the DMN defaults to worry, instead of to bliss. Mentally rehearsing future stuff that might just possibly hurt us, past stuff that definitely hurt us, and present stuff that might signal danger—all these are signs of a brain that is successfully practicing the strategies that ensured our ancestors’ survival. This isn’t bad. It’s just excessive for the safe modern world in which we live. If you’re at a construction site where a skyscraper is being built, you wear a hard hat and safety goggles. Such an outfit is entirely appropriate for that context. As attire for tea with the queen? Not so much. Although the DMN interrupts meditation, it plays a useful role in our lives. It is active when we are thinking about others, considering our safety, remembering the past, and planning for the future. It is also active in self-oriented and social tasks, including memorizing the experiences we collect during task-oriented activities. The path of your inner mystic will elevate you to enlightenment. The goal of your inner demon is to keep you safe. You can’t get enlightened if you’ve been eaten by the tiger.

Let us Let us fall in love and be romantics once again, Let us kiss our desires again and again, Let me pursue my feelings in your beautiful eyes, Let us dive into them and feel the love that lies beyond these eyes, Let us wear our emotions all over us, To feel the kiss of love all over us, Let us become the daylight and spread everywhere, Or maybe in that secret somewhere where your beauty is everywhere, Let me love you now and love you forever, And let your heart confess it has felt the kiss of the true lover, My darling Irma, let our love be the only event in our lives, And let us only grow being a part of our beautiful love lives, Let you be the summer day that never ends, And let all my beginnings in your beautiful eyes find their ends, Let me belong to you just like the Moon belongs to the sky, Let us create a world where there is only your and my love’s sky, Let your feelings like the scent of the rose sink into my senses, And then let us love each other with all our senses, Let us reside in some quiet corner together, Where there is only one sound, that of our two hearts beating together, Let us travel together from our today into our every tomorrow, And carry our love into every moment that represents every tomorrow, Let us walk through the corridors of time, And leave the essence of our love as our signature in every moment of time, Then let me hold your hand and travel somewhere, Because now with our love’s essence residing in time, you shall be everywhere, even in places called somewhere, Let me say it again and again, that my heart beats for you, And then let every moment of time echo with these words, “my darling Irma I love you!” Let the drops of dew reflect your grace, And then let every flower bear the beauty of just one beautiful face, and your grace, Let the moments of time rain over you and me, And then let me find you everywhere within me, Finally let the night conceal us in its dark and mystical shades, And let us transform into love’s most beautiful cascades, only bearing your and my shades, Then let the river of love flow into the valley of promises, And let me find you in beautiful roses and let us now fulfill our promises!

Steam rose from the bread and Morgan's mouth watered. There was nothing quite like a fresh loaf of Irish brown bread, she thought.

Our age is also very functional. There are goals and purposes and programs for everything. The lovely thing about Eckhart is his absolute suspicion of the program. People got hooked on a program which became an end in itself. Our world today is haunted and obsessed by functional thinking which sees everything in terms of a process. Eckhart keeps God and the mystical way totally free of that thinking. He says that God is God and without a why: non habet quare; Ipsum est quare omnium et omnibus—He is the why of everything and to everything. A later follower of Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, wrote a beautiful short mystical poem called “Ohne Warum” (Without Why): The rose is without why She blooms because she blooms She does not care for herself Asks not if she is seen One of the beautiful things in Eckhart is the idea of letting things be. So many people wonder what they should do, how they should work. For Eckhart, none of this matters. The most important thing to focus on is how you should be. That is really mindfulness of presence. All intimacy, love, belonging, creativity is not when the grubby little hands of our functional minds get into the mystery, but when we stand back and let the mystery be, become enveloped in it so that it extends us and deepens us. Finally, Eckhart has the lovely idea of Gelassenheit. Gelassen is the German for “calmness.” Even when things go against you and the rhythm in your life takes you to awkward and lonely places, you can still maintain a stillness which is in your soul and will connect you and give you an inviolable belonging and togetherness. You won’t get that from a program but you can awaken it in your own heart. For Presence

Wholeness includes brokenness; perfect literally means inclusive of everything; complete means evolving. I incorporated this paradoxical wisdom into my life and became gentler with myself and others.

While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change. The bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was comfortingly suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green alfalfa fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely cedar trees, few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty. Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose an up-flinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows.

it could, do you really think Rowan and Ophelia Bloodgood, of all people, would not have tried?” My chest tightens at the sound of my parents’ names. When they met in the Northland’s southernmost city of Malgros, my father was Head Sentry for the Northland Watch, a guard witch assigned to protect the port. My mother was also a guard, often stationed near my father’s territory. A short time after Mother became pregnant with Nephele, tensions between the southern queen, Fia Drumera, better known as the Fire Queen, and the East’s King Regner, created unrest. As the southern and eastern breaks prepared for war, the Northland peoples along the coast feared the conflict might finally spill across the sea to our shores. Then Fia Drumera killed Regner, and soon, in the east, a mystical prince with no name rose to power. My parents were granted leave to raise their family but were required to head north and help protect the vale. They were never loyal to the king. But they were loyal to their land and their people. “I cannot say why they never tried,” I tell Finn. “Only that I am not them.” I grab the knife and animal skin and set them in my lap. “Will you help me or not? I need the blade sharpened. That is all I ask.” “You want me to hone a killing blade.” He folds his muscled arms across his chest. “That is, at its essence, what you said when you walked in here. Something to cut through flesh and bone alike. And I know you do not mean wild deer.

Angels waltz around like in one of my daydreams, glitter-dusted as the faeries I was warned about as a child. They're mystic, with spindly limbs and gossamer hair and skin that glows. Their wings unfurl behind them, some gilded and others adorned with pale pink shimmer. They flutter across the flower-filled glade, twirling like falling feathers. A few of the angels thread starlight into garlands or coax the flowers to bloom. A train of them braid baby's breath into one another's hair. Others lay fruit in front of what looks like shrines--- seashells brimming with water and floating petals that gleam with reflections of the moon. It's like something out of a storybook. Lanterns are strung between the evergreens, casting their light over a long table. On top of a silk tablecloth, candelabras drip with wax and flowers are strewn about--- cerise roses, vibrant marigolds, velvet violets, and pale bluebells. Fresh fruit spills out of a giant shell like a cornucopia--- mangoes, peaches, guavas, champagne grapes and deep red cherries. Dark wine fills crystal cups. Rose-jam tarts with wild raspberries and hibiscus petals pile alongside tea cakes piped with custard and sugared primroses. In the center of the feast is a roasted duck glazed with honey and decorated with slices of pineapple. The smell of buttered potatoes lingers in the air, fragrant with hints of rosemary and garlic.

Mystic Moon Dreaming Pillows Sometimes, when we are in need of extra rest, or when we just want to reach a deeper sleep state, we can achieve this by the use of dreaming pillows—small sachet like pillows that we can tuck inside of our pillow cases. Depending on the herbs, the pillows can encourage vivid dreams, astral work, or restful sleep. This recipe is designed to help promote peaceful slumber, since so many of us don’t get enough time in bed in this fast-paced world. You will need: 2 seven-inch squares of sturdy, purple material—linen works well Gold thread and needle or sewing machine Cotton batting 1/2 cup each: dried lavender mugwort rose petals lemon balm chamomile valerian root 3 drops lavender essential oil 3 drops lemon essential oil 2 drops rosemary essential oil Small spike of quartz crystal Mix herbs together in a bowl, focusing on your desire to encourage deep slumber and to work with your Higher Self while asleep. Focus on the nature of dreams, how they can solve problems, and ask that this energy infuse the herbs and bring out their natural magical tendencies. Add drops of essential oil and mix again. Place quartz spike in the middle of the herbs and set aside (in a bottle with a lid if you are going to wait to finish this charm). Place cloth pieces together, wrong sides out, and sew to form a pouch (use a 3/8” seam allowance), leaving on side open. Iron seams open, then reverse so pouch is right side out. Fill halfway with cotton batting. Add herb mixture and crystal, then pack with rest of cotton batting. Sew the end shut. Place this inside your pillowcase at night and, before you go to bed, focus on some thought you’d like to explore in the dream-state, then go to sleep as usual. Write down your dreams when you wake up and eventually, you should see them responding to your requests. You can recharge this pillow by adding two drops each of lavender oil, lemon oil, and rosemary oil when the fragrance starts to fade. Remember: It is up to us to solve our own problems, but we can call on the power of our Higher Self when we need help, or when we seek more information on a subject. Eventually, through focus and determination, we can enter the Dream-Time and learn to hear our inner guidance when we’re awake, not just during our sleep.

The secret chamber of my soul Was illumined by His face,

As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, “When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine.

Gently, and without thinking, Emma reached out to touch his forehead. His hand rose and closed around her wrist, and his fingers were at once strong and gentle. “Come here,” he said gruffly. He was like the mystical, superhuman creatures Emma had read about, captivating their victims with their eyes. She put the sandwich plate on the bedside stand and allowed him to pull her nearer, so that she sat on the edge of the bed. Her breasts rose and fell beneath her very proper bodice as he ran the calloused pad of his thumb up and down the inside of her wrist. A shiver went through her, and she swallowed hard, feeling like a field mouse facing a cobra. Steven’s hand left her wrist to lightly grasp her thick, red-blond braid and run it between his fingers. Then he traced her jawline and the full moistness of her lips, and she trembled and started to move away. He wouldn’t allow her to go. He cupped her chin in his hand and said, his voice low and mesmerizing, “You’re a wildcat underneath those librarian’s clothes, Emma Chalmers.” When her indigo eyes widened in surprise and the beginnings of offense, he smiled and continued. “And one of these days, I’m going to prove it’s true.” Having said that, he brought Emma’s face down to his and he kissed her, bold as you please.

Like the rose I am laughing with all my body, not only with my mouth, because I am without myself, alone with the king of the world. You who came with torch and at dawn ravished my heart, dispatch my soul after my heart, do not seize my heart alone. Do not in rage and envy make my soul a stranger to my heart; do not leave the former here, and do not summon the latter alone. Send a royal message, issue a general invitation; how long, O sultan, shall the one be with you and the other alone? If you do not come tonight as yesterday and close my lips, I will make a hundred uproars, my soul, I will not lament alone.

Unable to control destinies on earth openly because governments would resist, this mystic alliance can act only through secret societies…. These, gradually created as the need for them arises, are divided into distinct groups, groups seemingly in opposition, sometimes advocating the most contradictory policies in religion, politics, economics, and literature; but they are all connected, all directed by the invisible center that hides its power as it thus seeks to move all the scepters of the earth. —J. M. Hoene-Wronski, quoted by P. Sédir, Histoire et doctrine des Rose-Croix, Bibliothèque des Hermétistes, Paris, 1910

I could make a strong, if not conclusive, case for the idea that plants are more intelligent than people—more beautiful, more pacific, more ingenious in their ways of reproduction, more at home in their surroundings, and even more sensitive. Why, we even use flower-forms as our symbols of the divine when the human face reminds us too much of ourselves—the Hindu-Buddhist mandala, the golden lotus, and the Mystic Rose in Dante’s vision of Paradise. Nothing else reminds us so much of a star with a living heart.

***Not Religious October 31, 2017 I am an ordained Lama of the Celtic Buddhist lineage, a multi-decade student of many great Tibetan Buddhist teachers, a student of Brahmin/Hindu, Taoist, Wiccan, Animist and other traditions, a daily practitioner of sitting and moving meditations, with earlier roots in Judeo-Christian mysticism. I have recently faced enough folks remarking about what a “religious” person I am that it warrants a response. My response is, “Sorry. That’s just not true and pretty close to nonsense.” It is a very understandable mistake, my friends. I appreciate that you mean it as a compliment and I love you for the very kind intention. But who I am has somewhere between very little and nothing at all to do with the standard definitions of “religious.” I very highly recommend that you see the Why Celtic Buddhism Is Not A Religion section on the CB Homepage at celticbuddhism.org for clarification. I don’t disparage anyone who is religious (as long as they don’t use their religion as an excuse to kill, subjugate, demean or otherwise hurt anyone!) but for myself, it is not a label that fits. Be well, amigos. Much love, Ten (Lama Tenzin Roisin Dubh) p.s. Buy and read one or both of the two books at this Fearless Puppy website, or at Amazon. I say this for your benefit, not mine.

In monotheistic patriarchal perception, a miracle is an external intervention that suspends the laws of nature. God's rule over nature, the body, time, and earthly reality is made visible through the supernatural event. Mystical amazement, on the other hand, sees the original miracle in being itself, in creation, in a rose blooming. Of course, the mystic also sees when the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the hungry are fed. But the decisive aspect is not the sovereign intervention. It is in the interaction between "nature" yearning for healing, for a reversal of direction, and the in-breaking of "grace.

Sam scrutinized Mr. Khadir’s face. It expressed kindliness and gentleness, as well as mischievousness and fierceness. He stood about five feet ten inches with a pale-skinned complexion. His long softly curly hair, slightly graying at the temples, was parted in the middle, and went to the bottom of his neck. He had a hooked nose over which rose a prominent brow ridge. His eyes wee penetrating like an eagle’s. He held a sing rose in his hand. Although, Sam couldn’t se it, a drop of green blood lay on his hand where one of the thorns had pierced his skin. A hint of a smile was on his face and he seemed restless. He said nothing but looked at Sam expectantly. ‘I’m tired of seeking. My life is empty, and that’s just fine with me,’ Sam declared emphatically. ‘If you feel with all your being that you are empty, then I advise you to try once more,’ Mr. Khadir gently replied. ‘Mr. Khadir wore a jewel around his neck, a large emerald. It was remarkably similar to a jewel Sam’s mother used to wear. Something about the sight of the emerald touched Sam deeply within his soul. Sam took it as a sign that he should take Mr. Khadir up on his invitation. Sam knew there was no such thing as coincidence. Finally, the homeless man answered his enigmatic visitor, ‘I will follow you if you will teach me the Right Way.’ ‘You will not be able to bear patiently with me, for how can you experience true patience concerning events about which you lack full knowledge?’ Mr. Khadir answered turning away. The panic Sam felt that the stranger might leave him behind surprised him. He was already following Khadir toward the service road as he replied, ‘You will find me, if God wills, patient and obedient to your mystic teaching.’ Mr. Khadir said softly, ‘Then yes, I will teach you. When your poverty is complete, you will be God. But I must warn you: even if you see me doing strange things, acting foolishly, childishly – you must bear with me and attend to it all. Woe to you if you turn away.’ ‘Where are we going?’ Same wanted to know. ‘Allah knows best,’ Mr. Khadir replied.

Moving through the world of French academic science, Libchaber rose in his profession, his brilliance never questioned. His colleagues did sometimes think he was a little crazy—a Jewish mystic amid the rationalists, a Gaullist where most scientists were Communists. They joked about his Great Man theory of history, his fixation on Goethe, his obsession with old books. He had hundreds of original editions of works by scientists, some dating back to the 1600s. He read them not as historical curiosities but as a source of fresh ideas about the nature of reality, the same reality he was probing with his lasers and his high-technology refrigeration coils.

Womb cosmologies also contained the secret teachings of awakening the “Magdalene Womb,” or the “mystical rose,” by experiencing a mystical union with the Earth Womb. Through the spiral path of merging and harmonizing with the primordial elements, a person could once more enter the collective dreaming of Gaia. This mystical descension process into the Earth Womb, or the underworld, was the key to unifying with the arche, primordial feminine first cause, the deep silence of the dark mother. Uniting with the interconnected cosmic weaving allowed one to gain access to the vast knowledge store held within the Akashic field—the collective cosmic memory....connection with this energy was achieved through a feminine path of descent rather than ascent.

THE ROAD: The road is paved with heavy stone and carved along its tender edge are memories of healing and of rage so wild and free and cruel it took no remorse it threw itself into the flames and rose so high I never thought I’d see another sight so cold with truth. And memories of healing held themselves apart, they wouldn’t stand to see themselves by the light that gives no remorse to anybody other. The road goes on and on it leaves you with no clue of end it leaves as it stretches to the distance and at some point, some random stone I fall into my heavy bones and look upon the tender edges carved with memories of healing and of rage so wild and free and cruel it never turns away the truths that are accepted by no other.

So it was with the various eccentrics she discovered in the next years. Some she went home with, some she didn't; some she photographed, others she just talked to, but everyone impressed her. Like the irate lady who appeared to Diane one night pulling a kiddy's red express wagon trimmed with bells and filled with cats in fancy hats and dresses. Like the man in Brooklyn who called himself the Mystic Barber who teleported himself to Mars and said he was dead and wore a copper band around his forehead with antennae on it to receive instructions from the Martians. Or the lady in the Bronx who trained herself to eat and sleep underwater or the black who carried a rose and noose around with him at all times, or the person who invented a noiseless soup spoon, or the man from New Jersey who'd collected string for twenty years, winding it into a ball that was now five feet in diameter, sitting monstrous and splendid in his living room.

I look back on that May morning, and on myself at my pretty play‐work, as Eve must have looked back upon the pastimes of Paradise. I am not separated from that time by any great crime, as she was from the period of her happiness; but I think the yearning regret that filled the universal mother's bosom for the lotos‐scented airs that breathed about the banks of those mystic eastern rivers, was akin to the eager longing (never to be gratified now) with which I inhale in fancy the rough western breezes blowing round old Lestrange. I suppose it rained there in those days; I suppose it snowed, and was foggy, and cold, and dreary there in those days as much as other places—perhaps more; but I cannot realize that now. To me it seems as if those gnarled old trees were always crowned with a glory of green leaves; as if those walls were always sunlit; as if the pinks and the sweet peas and the larkspurs flowered there all the year round. I did not think myself particularly happy in those days. That is the worst of this life—one never tastes its sweets while they are in one's mouth; it is only when they are gone, and we are chewing the bitters, and making wry faces over them, that we recognise them for what they were.

One result of active imagination, according to some reports, is an increase in synchronistic and paranormal phenomena. 32 This was certainly true of Jung. In 1916, Jung again felt that something within wanted to get out. An eerie restlessness seemed to permeate his home. Jung, I have to say, was lucky to have his house in Küsnacht, where he retired to a room, his “intellectual cave,” decorated in colored glass, to commune with his interior voices; he demanded and got absolute silence, and neither his children nor Emma—nor even the maid—were allowed to enter.33 As his maternal grandfather did, Jung felt the presence of the dead. His children seemed to feel it, too. One daughter saw a strange white figure; another had her blankets snatched from her at night. His son drew a picture of a fisherman he had seen in a dream: a flaming chimney rose from the fisherman’s head, and a devil flew through the air, cursing the fisherman for stealing his fish. An angel warned the devil that he couldn’t hurt the fisherman because he only caught bad fish. Jung had yet to mention Philemon the Kingfisher to his family. Then, on a Sunday afternoon, the doorbell rang loudly when it was clear no one was there. The pressure increased and Jung finally demanded “What in the world is this?” Then he heard the voices. “We have come back from Jerusalem,” they said, “where we found not what we sought,” the beginning of one of the strangest works of “automatic writing,” Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead, which he attributed to “Basilides in Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth the West.

The effects of the mescalin were already on the decline: but the flowers in the gardens still trembled on the brink of being supernatural, the pepper trees and carobs along the side streets still manifestly belonged to some sacred grove. Eden alternated with Dodona. Yggdrasil with the mystic Rose.

While Diana and her mother started planning guest lists, wardrobe requirements and the other details for the wedding of the year, the media vainly attempted to discover her hiding-place. The one man who did know was the Prince of Wales. As the days passed, Diana pined for her Prince and yet he never telephoned. She excused his silence as due to the pressure of his royal duties. Finally she called him only to find that he was not in his apartment at Buckingham Palace. It was only after she called him that he telephoned her. Soothed by that solitary telephone call, Diana’s ruffled pride was momentarily mollified when she returned to Coleherne Court. There was a knock on the door and a member of the Prince’s staff appeared with a large bouquet of flowers. However there was no note from her future husband and she concluded sadly that it was simply a tactful gesture by his office. These concerns were forgotten a few days later when Diana rose at dawn and travelled to the Lambourn home of Nick Gaselee, Charles’s trainer, to watch him ride his horse, Allibar. As she and his detective observed the Prince put the horse through its paces on the gallops Diana was seized by another premonition of disaster. She said that Allibar was going to have a heart attack and die. Within seconds of her uttering those words, 11-year-old Allibar reared its head back and collapsed to the ground with a massive coronary. Diana leapt out of the Land Rover and raced to Charles’s side. There was nothing anyone could do. The couple stayed with the horse until a vet officially certified its death and then, to avoid waiting photographers, Diana left the Gaselees in the back of the Land Rover with a coat over her head. It was a miserable moment but there was little time to reflect on the tragedy. The inexorable demands of royal duty took Prince Charles on to wales, leaving Diana to sympathize with his loss by telephone. Soon they would be together forever, the subterfuge and deceit ended. It was nearly time to let the world into their secret. The night before the engagement announcement, which took place on February 24, 1981, she packed a bag, hugged her loyal friends and left Coleherne Court forever. She had an armed Scotland Yard bodyguard for company, Chief Inspector Paul Officer, a philosophical policeman who is fascinated by runes, mysticism and the after-world. As she prepared to say goodbye to her private life, he told her: “I just want you to know that this is the last night of freedom in your life so make the most of it.” Those words stopped her in her tracks. “They felt like a sword through my heart.

As the Son rose on Christian civilization, the Blessed Virgin emerged as the mother of poetry as she is the Mother of God in the magnificence of the Magnificat, and St. John, her divinely appointed son, is revealed as the progenitor of Christian metaphysical poetry in the opening lines of his Gospel and in the mystical majesty of his apocalyptic vision.

Hmm, you’re like a black rose—rare, mystical, and fucking tragic.

“The Ancients believed in the existence of a fifth humor within the body, a mystical substance of uncharted power.” -THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

Don't expect roses from me without Thorns. I m a very dual person with both Divinness and devilness or light and dark. I will give you lessons and experience but with bitter truth and painful internal wound. But these each act of Thorns will be responsible for your awakening and transformation. But you have to realise Thorns as roses yourself. It is a mystical world where miracles happens everyday. The knowing of desire as root of suffering isn't going to end suffering, the awakening of your being will.