1. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Along with its sequels, The Confusion and The System of the World, Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is a stunning achievement, and more importantly and excellent story to boot. Set in the time of change and revolution, this saga spans the time of years just after the English Civil War (1645) to the ascension of the House of Hanover to the throne of England in 1714. This series is not entirely concerned with England, with much of the action taking place elsewhere, and as such shows much of the world as it was at that time.

2. Temeraire by Naomi Novik
Hornblower with dragons. I can't be the first to say this, in fact I suspect Novik was when she first pitched the series. An eminently readable series set in Napoleonic times. The same players are at one another's throats - England, Prussia, revolutionary France, however this time each country has dragons as well as an army and navy on its side. The role of a true air force has not been realised, with most countries using their dragons as fast messengers, or to intercept the dragons of others. However Napoleon was always known as a master tactician...

3. Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell by Susannah Clarke
As with Temeraire this novel is set in England during Napoleonic times. However this novel covers the last two magicians in England, and their dealings with one another. I enjoyed the pace of this novel, but others who have read it found it too slow.

4. I Claudius / Claudius the God by Robert Graves
What Quicksilver does to the seventeenth century I, Claudius does for ancient Rome - brings the time period to life with stunning clarity.

5. Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden
This series covers the rise of Ghengis Khan in the thirteenth century. So far it has two books, but a third is on the way - next year, maybe? Already this is a great saga.

Of course, everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes a classic work and there are different criteria for determining when something becomes classic. For me, it's a combination of the age of the work (and possibly the fact that it's still in print while other books released at the same time have gone the way of the dodo bird) and how often modern writers cite or make reference to it.

A true classic may speak with use and relevance to our lives here and now, even if it was written decades (or even centuries) earlier. Or it may have become obsolete in and of itself but, because its voice was so pivotal in spurring other writers, it holds its place as a classic, reflecting back a time-that-was and another perspective on our evolving consciousness.

Two particular references jump to mind on this topic.
The first is Robert Graves' The White Goddess. This work was ground breaking in its time and Graves' sweeping poetic vision of the divine feminine started the ball rolling for many a writer, scholar and Goddess worshipper. While most of his work has now been clearly identified as inspired personal vision vs. historically based fact, the work can be found in the bibliography of many a book to this day. It's not an especially quick read but it's well worth the effort as you have the advantage of being able to spot his influence in more current works.

Also well worth a read is Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Before there was The Secret and The Law of Attraction and all the current abundance teachings, Napoleon Hill was writing about his personal achievements with focused intentions, planning to succeed and, well, sheer will power. Easily 80% of his book is totally relevant today (there are bits where he wanders into slightly odd theories but they stand out like a sore thumb among the usable bits). It's so clear that his vision was one of the cornerstones for all the modern work in this field.

And, I've just finished reading a classic for booksellers and booklovers alike - Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road. A chronicle of correspondence between bombastic bibliophile Helene, a New York writer, and reserved Frank Doel and his associates at Marks and Co., booksellers in London. What begins as business develops into mutual friendship as the years and titles sought and purchased pass. I'll admit to getting a bit teary at the end but I'll leave it at that.

That's just scratching the surface, of course. Sometimes you don't even need to name a specific book, just the great mind behind the work (Joseph Campbell anyone?). I must admit I've not yet read The Golden Bough (I know, I know) or much from the Greek and Roman philosophers but, gosh, there's only so many hours in the day!

Let's hear from all of you - what are your classics? Why? Doesn't have to be lengthy - just a few lines.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

-- Robert Graves

But things get murkier when there is creativity involved. If I deliberately include a phrase from another writer, but I intend it to be there and am cheerfully willing to admit that I borrowed it and it's an homage to their work which I have always admired, that's different. And then we get to sound all literary by tossing around terms like 'intertextuality' (here, let me save you the trouble of typing it in yourself).

What if it's even more complex than that? What if, say, two writers shack up together for a time and one of them writes something and claims the other one 'sucked, bled, squeezed, plucked, picked, grabbed, dipped, sliced, carved, lifted the body of my work'? But the other one (or, rather, the head of his fan club) claims it was an homage and anyway he'd been using those themes for a while already?

Meet Robert Graves and Laura Riding Jackson.

I'll be interested to read Dr Mark Jacobs's book; this article doesn't give enough evidence for me to decide one way or another. It will also be another interesting example of gender relations within literature. For all I know, Jackson may have been the better poet.

Sorry, no conclusions or great thoughts here. As you were.

[...] "Pay attention to his laugh around 1:02" [...] writes Matthew E. Miller in a race42008.com blog burst titled Nixon ... again. Sen. Obama's laugh---an exasperated snort, like a respiratory rolling of the eyes---is at once impatient and supremely---almost sublimely---superior and condescending.

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum posso dicere, non amo te.

Or, as Robert Graves did tell it:

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

N.

Robert Graves once wrote:  love is a universal migraine.

It's interesting to me how frustrating love can be.  Especially dating, for that matter.  I have pretty much settled on the fact that I prefer to stay home and make myself a fabulous dinner and treat myself to an at-home spa treatment than go on some random date.  I'm not into online dating - in fact, I had a match.com profile, off and on, for a few years now, though it's currently expired, and I have yet to meet anyone in person because of it.  And the men of Portland, and perhaps the west coast, for that matter, don't really ask women out on dates.  It's very bizarre.  But I've gotten used to it, I think.

About a month ago, when I was still watching the Redwings in the Stanley Cup playoffs and finals, I met a nice guy who recently moved to Portland.  In any case, he asked me out.  He seemed like a nice guy, so I accepted.  He texted me to chose a movie - anything but Sex & the City.  Easy.  So I came up with this interesting list - including Bra Boys, a film about the cultural evolution of the Sydney beach suburb of Maroubra, and the struggle of its notorious surf gang, a tatoo-clad group of surfer rebel rousers known as the Bra Boys, narrated by Russel Crowe.  My other choice was Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk, about the declining Colorado River filmed and experienced by writer-antropologist Wade Davis and world-renowned river advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., accompanied by their daughters Kick Kennedy and Tara Davis, with the score by the Dave Matthews Band and narration by Robert Redford.  It was playing at the IMAX Theater at OMSI.  Grand Canyon Adventure won!

I met this guy at OMSI at 7:30 and we picked up our tickets for the 9:00 p.m. show.  We walked around the Water Street industrial neighborhood and settled on Clark Lewis's tiki-like bar for a place to sit and imbibe on something before the show.  I had a Maker's Manhattan.  Disappointingly, there was a maraschino cherry, which I think is gross.  I was hoping for an amaretto cherry.  The cocktail was very average, but the bartender, Jordan, was very charming and engaging.  After a nice conversation with my date, we walked back to OMSI and headed in to the movie.

I have to say, I loved the film.  When we first entered the IMAX theater I felt a little dizzy.  It was kind of weird, a little like Vertigo (ooh - that Hitchcock classic is actually playing at a cool art house movie theater downtown, which I'd like to go see).  I digress.  Anyway.  Once the film started, I was mesmerized.  The Grand Canyon is just amazing.  I can't get over the way ancient river flow sculpted and carved out that incredible landscape.  Watching this group make their way down guided down the Colorado made me want to go rafting!  What a wild life experience!  They say a river like that challenges you, changes you and makes you a little tougher, makes you appreciate life a little more, makes you connect with the river in a very spiritual way.

It's shocking how much water loss this river has endured.  It was interesting to see old photos, the first taken of the Colorado River's run and current views of those same frames, now depleted and eerily changed.  I loved the native American thread.  And I was just moved to want to do my part to conserve water, to think about my impact on the environment and to develop my love of natural waters in our world.  Further, I am eager to go white water rafting.  I would love to experience the magic and thrill of the Colorado as it runs through the Grand Canyon, but I think I'll start somewhere up here first  - perhaps the Deschutes near Bend or the Rogue near Grant's Pass.

Summer's here.  Perhaps a trip is in order. 

It was a nice date, which appropriately ended with a hug.  It's too early for me to feel a connection yet.  I don't date, after all.  And I am much obliged for developing friendships with good guys at this point.  I am in no rush to fall for someone without thoughtful consideration and really getting to know him.  It's so important to take things slow.  I'm not interested in diving into anything right now, except for maybe a big, ole river!  Anyway, I'd definitely go out with him again, but I am also interested in getting to know other potential migraine enducers out there.

Meantime, the movie was over under an hour and I got home at a nice and reasonable hour, which was pretty cool.  I had minimal sleep each night this week and I was exhausted.  I was glad to make myself a cup of Yogi chamomile tea.  The back of the box suggests "Let the worries of the day float away as you sit with a cup of our organic Chamomile tea."  In addition to enducing relaxation, allowing you to unwind after a stressful day, drift into a restful sleep, east minor menstrual cramps or occasional stomach discomfort.  I was hoping it would help me drift into a restful sleep tonight.

The fortune on the tea bag read:  there is nothing more precious than the self.

As I began to let the worries of my day float away and relaxed with the happiness I usually feel when it's warm and sunny out or when it's the start of a weekend, I contemplated love once more.  Especially self love, which, as Yogi Tea man Yogi Bhajan suggests is the most precious thing.  I contemplated my ongoing thoughts about dating, or really, about love - about finding love in all of its manifestations!  About finding true love.  And Graves' poem, Symptoms of Love, concludes: 

Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?

I suppose when you find the right love - whatever that symbolically means in your life, or if it's literally about finding love, I suppose when it's under the right terms or when you've found the right person, then it really is worth the migraines, the grief and any other symptom that requires you to courageously carry on.

Meantime, I curled up with my cat India on the sofa, while Capri napped solo on her favorite fleece blanket of mine, folded on the leather love seat, and watched an old episode of Sex & the City.

If we look at the news today the word 'myth' takes on several meanings ranging from the sublime, the heavenly, the horrendous and the mundane.

Common among all contemporary usages is the notion that myth points to something beyond the ken of science.

Scholars such as the Indologist Wendy Doniger suggest that most myths possess an inherent structure that reveals some kind of hidden rationality.

And the pioneer mythographer Sir James. G. Frazer said that underneath their colorful imagery myths are, in fact, a kind of primitive protoscience.

Other scholars say that myth is 'more sacred' than the arts because at different points in history myth connects with ritual.

And yet others emphasize the literary and artistic dimensions of myth, arguing that ritual itself does not ensure the presence of the sacred. 

Myths and Fairy Tales

According to professor T. Henighan,¹ the Freudian child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim says that myth:

• Contains particular heroes with unique names
• Tells of heroes that are ‘larger than life'
• Involves majestic and ‘spiritual' divine beings
• Relates an often tragic and pessimistic story²
• Reveals conflict between the superego (i.e. internalized social conscience) and id (i.e. instinctual drives of love and death that seek gratification)
• Sets unrealistic demands that normal human beings can never fully achieve

Whereas fairy tales are a type of folk tale in which:

• The names of heroes and heroines are absent or ordinary³
• Supernatural but not divine beings are mentioned
• Positive outcomes are the norm
• Childhood and adolescence figure prominently
• The actual content (i.e. Oedipal material) is obscured through elaborate symbolism

This, of course, is just one point of view. Specialists hardly agree as to whether myths and folk tales are essentially equivalent or categorically different. Moreover, some contend that myth precedes the folk tale, others the reverse.

True and False Stories

In his book Myth and Reality Mircea Eliade maintains that "societies in which myth is—or was until very recently—'living,'" distinguish true from false stories.⁴

Eliade gives examples from two American Indian groups, the Pawne and the Cherokee. And from Africa he cites the Herero and the inhabitants of Togo.

As any good sociologist or anthropologist will observe, however, Eliade seems to naively take existing ethnological research at face value. 

He asserts that these cultures believe their myths are true stories while folk tales are apparently regarded as morally instructive but false stories.

Here, Eliade is not referring to the myths of the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. And he rightly notes that mythic stories were not universally accepted as truth in ancient societies where different beliefs and philosophical schools often competed for legitimacy.⁵ 

But the idea that all members of a given "living" society privately regard hegemonic myths as true stories is open to question. It would be unwise to assume that mythic beliefs are universally accepted in any culture or, for that matter, subculture. As with the ancient world, external displays of acceptance - among both leaders and community members - very likely could be feigned out of prudence or for political expedience.⁶

Hard to Define

As to a defintion of myth, Eliade says:

It would be hard to find a definition of myth that would be acceptable to all scholars and at the same time intelligible to nonspecialists. Then, too, is it even possible to find one definition that will cover all the types and functions of myths in all traditional and archaic societies? Myth is an extremely complex cultural reality, which can be approached and interpreted from various and complementary viewpoints.⁷

While there is no unanimous agreement as to the meaning of myth, this multiplicity speaks to its richness and importance.

The following summarizes some of the leading and interrelated theories on mythology, with an attempt to illustrate its contemporary relevance.

This list is far from exhaustive. It should be taken as a set of general reference points designed to encourage independent research and analysis.

Psychological

• Conceals our instinctual and repressed unconscious desires and tendencies (Sigmund Freud)
• Reveals our "personal infantile history," particularly with regard to the creators and followers of hero myths (Otto Rank)
• Reflects transpersonal, elementary ideas (Adolf Bastien) or a collective unconscious revealing through mythic images a deeper meaning in life (Carl Jung)
• Provides imaginal signposts along an inner and outer journey, helping heroic individuals gain enhanced wisdom (Carl Jung, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell)
• Mythic thinking may be a survival mechanism for painful ritual abuse but in the negative unresolved instance, mythic thinking may culminate in sociopathic behavior-e.g. the ethical insanity of a Hitler (Chrystine Oksana)

Sociological

• Codifies, legitimizes and strengthens dominant beliefs, practices and relationships based on power in a given society (Antonio Gramsci, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault)
• Fosters social cohesion, functioning, development or chaos (Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Emile Durkheim);
• Contributes to egoism, altruism, alienation and anomie (Emile Durkheim)

Cultural

• Reading myths affords aesthetic charm to the, at times, "stale, flat and unprofitable" task of living (C. S. Lewis, [quotation: William Shakespeare])
• Provides religious or heroic legends that the audience knows are fictional (Robert Graves)
• Helps us to meaningfully interpret and transform our world (Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung)

Anthropological

• A non-scientific attempt to explain natural phenomena (E. B. Tylor)
• Archaic source of oral stories, history and cultural identity (Micea Eliade, Clifford Geertz)
• The second stage in mankind's evolutionary sequence of symbolical, mythical and logical modes of thought (J. J. Bachofen)
• Directs individuals through important stages of life, in many cultures marked by solemn or sacred "rites of passage" (Karl Kerenyi, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)
• Provides communal meaning about ancestors and the afterlife (Carl Jung)
• Myth is best understood as the sum total of its variants and is a tool that can help solve cultural problems, paradoxes and contradictions (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
• Offers a grid defined by its own rules of construction. This grid doesn't explain the meaning of myth in itself  but creates a "matrix of intelligibility" which facilitates understanding of the world by revealing structural laws of human thought, communication, interaction and behavior (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
• Legitimizes beliefs in magic, which for so-called primitives is a kind of protoscience that may be used for practical purposes, such as regulating the harvest (Sir James. G. Frazer)
• Magic is recognized a kind of myth by so-called primitives, used symbolically to relieve natural anxiety and express their hopes for positive outcomes--e.g. while hunting or fishing in dangerous places (Bronislaw Malinowski)

Historical

• Provides information about historical conditions, especially about those with the power to create myths (John Noss)

Political

• May be used as global propaganda (e.g. Marxist Theory of History) and for political agendas--e.g. glorifying oneself and demonizing opponents, as in election-time TV ads (Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes)

Ethical

• Outlines right and wrong, and inevitable punishments and rewards for dishonorable and praiseworthy acts (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Pedagogical

• Teaches individuals how to conform and advance in society, especially in archaic cultures (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Cosmological

• Provides a working "map" of the conceivable universe (S. H. Hooke)
• Relates to a Creation of the World and the subsequent interaction of gods, goddesses, semi-divine beings, human beings, animals, vegetation and the geographical landscape (Donna Rosenberg)

Magical

• A story designed to evoke magical powers (Jane Harrison)

Spiritual

• Symbolizes and possibly leads to an awareness of dimensions and beings beyond the mundane world (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung)
• Mythic rites and rituals bring forth a 'sacred history' within the context of human life (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Philosophical and Theological

• Myth arises from incorrect insights, that is, intuitions about ultimate reality (or specific situations) which have not been questioned nor empirically investigated "until no further relevant questions arise" (Bernard Lonergan)
• A symbolic means of expression through which mankind attempts to answer existential questions-i.e. achieve self-understanding in a world where the transcendental is often seen as immanent (Rudolf Bultmann)

Transformational

• Recent figures like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Joseph Campbell, Mary Daly and Barbara Walker implicitly or explicitly say that their own modern myths (i.e. theories about myth and related cosmologies) contribute to the betterment of self and society

Economic and Entertainment

• Film, music, videos, literature, TV, advertising, video games and most other forms of popular culture belong here (and in some of the above categories). To mention a few: Kyle XY, X-Men, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, BattleStar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, The Incredible Hulk, Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV Hercules, KISS, Marilyn Manson, Michael Jackson, HALO 3, Super Mario

Conclusion

As noted in the opening paragraphs, some scholars contend that myth is ‘more sacred’ than the arts because at various points in history myth connects with ritual.

But to further complicate matters, the definition of ritual is also open to debate.

Could watching a favorite science fiction TV show with fellow fans every Friday night, for instance, be considered a ritual?

This doesn't seem so far-fetched. Not a few scholars discuss Star Trek, for instance, as if it were a religion or perhaps a mythology.⁸

Myth seems to overlap with legend, folk tale, religion and entertainment, among other human pursuits. Some go as far to say that everything is myth--that is, even science is regarded as a hallowed if somewhat hollow god.

Amid the ongoing debates one thing seems certain. Mythology is as diverse, ancient and new as mankind. And most sensible, well-rounded thinkers woud agree that the word 'myth' describes an incredibly complex range of phenomena.

Notes

1. Tom Henighan. ITV lecture for English 18.208 (Myth and Symbol) televised at Carleton University, Ottawa: January 29, 1998.

2. This is debatable, particularly with regard to Hindu myth.

3. Cinderella might seem an exception but as 'Microglyphic' pointed out at the former Askme.com, she's renamed as such by her step-sisters. See, for instance the Brothers Grimm variant of the tale.

4. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963, pp. 8-10.

5. (a) Anaximander (611-547 BCE) and Xenophanes (570-480 BCE) for instance, directly challenged the anthropomorhpic gods of ancient Greece. And doubts most likely existed among the historically invisible (i.e. the vast majority of people who never became famous enough for the history books). And in ancient Egypt crudely made statues apparently mocked Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, likely carved by dissenters.
(b) Military conquerors and occupying powers also influenced local myths in the ancient world. Conquerors would sometimes replace indigenous myths with their own. Other times they would import myths yet tolerate those of the subjugated. Military victors also synthesized their own myths with those of the defeated populations, as in India and Rome.

6. (a) John Noss in Man's Religions (1957: 45-96) outlines some of the political and socially stratified aspects of pagan worship in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. 
(b) A contemporary example of this might be found within the Roman Catholic Church, where penalties can be harsh for disobedience among the clergy and also among wayward believers (e.g. women ordained as 'priests').

7. Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 5.

8. Of course, second-rate thinkers with little or no appreciation for the nuances of contemporary Western culture might not be able to see it that way.

"Into the Mythic: A fresh look at some old ideas" © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

Dante, it seems, did not know Greek; but he had Virgil at his side.

The Mantuan had conscientiously and studiously designed his own Aeneid as a sequel to the Iliad and would have been chagrined to realise that his own, but not Homer’s, epic was available to Dante in the land of their birth. But in conjecturing a fitting end for Ulysses, Dante drew on the imagery of James’s letter in the New Testament.

According to David H Higgins, whose detailed notes accompany CH Sisson’s excellent translation of the Divine Comedy,[1] Dante knew the texts of the Iliad and Odyssey only

fragmentarily in quotation or glosses in Latin authors. Dante knew no Greek, and no MSS of the epics were known in the West early in the fourteenth century. Dante’s esteem of Homer is based solely on his reputation as reported in later classical authors. (p. 509)

As sometimes happens with translation, the spirit and nobility of a work leap across a chasm, not only of language, but of an absent text. This particular torch is important to the relay that is often observed to be central to the progressive character of European literature. Thus Homer is complemented and extended by Virgil, who – virtuous pagan – is adopted by Dante in early Renaissance Italy as a guide, psychopomp and emblem of human reason.

That Christian rationalism has seldom been so beset as in the Nazi era of Auschwitz. And no cry more piteous has been heard than in Primo Levi’s account, in chapter 11 of If This Is A Man,[2] of his reconstruction from memory of the ending of Inferno Canto XXVI for the benefit of Jean (or Pikolo), his twenty-four year old Alsatian companion, who

although he continued his secret individual struggle against death … did not neglect his human relationships […] (p. 137)

In the context of a first lesson in Italian, commenced immediately because

the important thing is not to lose time, not to waste this hour (p. 139)

‘Primo’ (as he is known in the camp) begins with the Canto on Ulysses! Pikolo shows his mettle (he is a survivor) by continuing to listen attentively, to wait, to suggest words, even when Levi struggles to tell him

about the Middle Ages, about the so human and so necessary and yet unexpected anachronism, but still more, something gigantic that I myself have only just seen, in a flash of intuition, perhaps the reason for our fate, for our being here today … (p. 143)

The soup queue, which they must enter to bring back a 100 pound canister of cabbage and turnip soup supported on two poles for their colleagues in the Kommando, is forgotten:

It is vitally necessary and urgent that he listen, that he understand this … before it is too late; tomorrow he or I might be dead, or we might never see each other again […] (p. 142)

Here the injured and perjured spirit of Europe cries, and is heard, through the medium of fastidious care for a text, the details of which, though many elude the memory of this man, a chemist who never thought of himself as a writer before he entered Auschwitz, come to seem, in the moment of telling, enormously significant:

“I set forth” [misi me] is not je me mis [Levi is trying both to remember Dante’s old Italian and to convey it in modern French to Pikolo], it is much stronger and more audacious, it is a chain which has been broken, it is throwing oneself on the other side of a barrier, we know the impulse well. (p. 140)

And as with every textual detail recounted, the meaning’s relevance to their situation explodes with the force of revelation.

2.

This textual force arises from a tradition, a channel of living inspiration, a world of ideal exemplars – of veracity, of clarity, even of mission, the task of the writer being to bear witness, to fulfil a national or divine purpose of the highest kind (the founding of Rome, the dispensing of eternal justice, of surviving the death camp in order to convey faithfully the intrinsic detail of the experience).

In addition to the vicissitudes of memory, which seem fatally to imperil the reconstruction of the Canto in the brief window of opportunity, as Primo and the Pikolo are

swept by the fierce rhythm of the Lager (p. 138 )

there is, for us as well as for Pikolo, the problem of linguistic access. Medieval Italian seems a special study, possibly requiring a lifetime; in this case, is there any English version which may be preferred?

Laurence Binyon (1933-43) and Dorothy Sayers (1949-62) have both ventured verse translations into English, which are highly regarded, but to which I do not have access. There are others, too, by John Sinclair (1939-46), John Ciardi (1954), Allen Mandelbaum (1980-82) and Mark Musa (1971), also unknown to me.

The internet provides[3] a verse translation by Henry F. Cary[4] (1892) which we may examine, choosing as specimen a pleasing extended simile (lines 27-35 or thereabouts) which compares the poet’s coming upon the eighth chasm of the eighth circle to a countryman’s view, at dusk, of glow-worms below in the valley where he has been working. Cary has this:

As in that season, when the sun least veils       

His face that lightens all, what time the fly        

Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,   

Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees

Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale,     

Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labor lies;         

With flames so numberless throughout its space           

Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth       

Was to my view exposed.

This is Miltonic – contrived with the mechanical model of Latin quantitative verse in mind – but, unlike Milton, relatively inert, even pedantic:

what time … [and] then

resolutely compacted to the metre, just as ‘innumerous’ must be devised to avoid the extra syllable of ‘innumerable’. This is the fabric of Wardour Street English, inkhorn words, even fustian. ‘Spangling’ carries peculiarly the wrong association – of decorative artificiality. Moreover

when the sun least veils 

His face that lightens all

requires some decoding, possibly recourse to a note (which is not supplied).

Another verse translation, undertaken with a “poetic rather than pedantic” approach, shows that even faithful versifying can be readable, that is, can flow:

The view

Beneath us was an empty depth, wherethrough

Lights moved, abundant as the fireflies are

At even, when the gnats succeed the flies.

A myriad gleams the labourer sees who lies

Above them, resting, while the vale below

Already darkens to the night, - he toiled

From dawn to store the ripened grapes, or till

The roots around, and on the shadowing hill

Reclines and gazes down the vale.[5]

This succeeds, though, at the cost of suppressing the elaborate reference to summer.

The greatness of Dante having been lost by straining through Cary’s sieve, we turn to the contemporary Sisson:

As the countryman, who is resting on a hill,

At the season when he who lights up the world

Hides his face from us for the shortest time,

When flies give way to gnats, sees in the valley

Thousands of glow-worms, perhaps in the very place

Where he has worked at harvest or at plough;

There were as many flames there glittering

In the eighth cleft, which I perceived,

As soon as I arrived where I could see the bottom.[6]

It is clear, now, that Dante’s nested parentheses (“at the season when … he who”) are going to cause difficulty to any translator and reader, but

At the season when he who lights up the world

Hides his face from us for the shortest time,

is graced by a note:

i.e. during the summer, when the days are longer than the nights. (p. 543)

This hurdle over, we find the agreeable colloquialism of the last line, and metrical overflow of

Thousands of glow-worms, perhaps in the very place

(devices both of which make for readability over the course of many pages), more than matched by a return of classical brio in:

There were as many flames there glittering

The contemporary fashion in verse translation for rough carpentry may be accepted in the present case, but it is a delicate balance. In passing, it may be noted that Seamus Heaney, who has acknowledged the soaring figure of Dante in his own inspiration, even writing ‘Station Island’[7] within the “big acoustic” of the Divine Comedy, has twice included his translations of sections of the ‘Inferno’ in his own books.[8] The later of these, a version of Canto III, lines 82-129, ends

And they are eager to go across the river

Because Divine Justice goads them with its spur

So that their fear is turned into desire.

No good spirits ever pass this way

And therefore, if Charon objects to you,

You should understand well what his words imply […] (p. 113)

- thus confirming, in spite of serious urgency, some sense that, as regards any main verse line, the departures rather outnumber the returns.

Sisson, then, bridges the considerable gap between verse probity and prose readability, a modern achievement that may make him a preferred contemporary Dante.

Less modern, but with its own vivacity, is the Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed version,[9] so-called because three pairs of hands translated the three parts of the Comedy. With the ‘Inferno’ we are concerned with the work of John Aitken Carlyle. The same passage is given as:

As many fireflies as the peasant who is resting on the hill – at the time when he who lightens the world hides his face from us,[10]

when the fly yields to the gnat – sees down along the valley there perchance where he gathers grapes and tills:

with flames thus numerous the eighth chasm was all gleaming, as I perceived, so soon as I came to where the bottom showed itself. (p. 139)

Here the syntax of the argument is stretched further, necessitating the “thus numerous” to pick up the thread of the fireflies, introduced early. But we may admire the immediacy of “where the bottom shows itself” and “where he [the peasant] gathers grapes and tills”. This cheerful pithiness of diction is sustained, agreeably to the modern reader: Ulysses and his companions, swathed in fire, soon appear moving “along the gullet of the fosse”.

If the modern trend in verse translation is to eschew manicured lines and forms imposed from a tradition alien to the Divine Comedy, then this kind of springy and mineral-rich prose is likely to hold the frail attention of the interested, but fatigable, contemporary reader, in all probability a student.

There is finally, an older version long held in special regard by connoisseurs, the prose translation by Charles Eliot Norton.[11] This was reviewed in the early 1920s in the following terms:

[…] a prose translation, and, needless to say, a faithful one. Compared with a prose masterpiece like Andrew Lang’s version of Theocritus, it seems rather dry, and wanting in such rhythmic beauty as is well within the reach of prose. Here the austerity of Dante seems to have fused with the austerity of the Norton stock to produce something more austere than either. Norton’s version holds its own, however, with other prose versions of Dante.[12]

But Norton was writing somewhat in the shadow of Longfellow’s own verse translation of Dante and perhaps in a spirit of quiet dissidence. Let us make the same comparison:

As many as the fireflies which, in the season when he that brightens the world keeps his face least hidden from us, the rustic, who is resting on the hillside what time the fly yields to the gnat, sees down in the valley, perhaps there where he makes his vintage and ploughs ― with so many flames all the eighth pit was gleaming, as I perceived so soon as I was there where the bottom became apparent. [13]

Here the laws of elegant prose, rather than of regular verse, are being observed. Once again the quantitative figure (“As many … with so many”) has to be picked up after an interval occasioned by those nesting parentheses, but by now we may attribute this equally to the elaborateness of Dante and the fidelity of the translator. Otherwise the version is faultless and might well satisfy even the eagle-eyed Robert Graves, pitiless exposer of unclear prose.[14]

3.

The criterion, then, for a translation of Dante in any age – because each new failure reveals unfamiliar faces of a turning planet – is: does it enable the trembling entry of the new reader into the world of Dante? The new reader, like Pikolo, needs to understand unmistakably the meaning of this work, the concern with salvation and judgement, with cosmos and order, in an older language; with valid living and existential truth, in a newer one.

History is the motor of culture, as tradition is of literature. In an age of relativism and officially sponsored amnesia, there is always denial of this obvious truth. But against all the odds, new questioners are born who wish to possess the cultural world they find themselves in – and wish to possess themselves.

In Europe, this sequence of defining epics – masterworks – begins perhaps with the lyric sweep of Homer, is crystallised further in the noble polity of Virgil and flowers through Christianity and the judicious passions of Dante, her greatest poet. Thus we look, as if down a telescope, from Levi to Dante, to Virgil and finally to Homer. The segments cohere, they obey an invisible sequence, they subdue the gulfs of time and interpret the inner values of a civilisation.

At its weakest this tradition gathers dust like a geranium in a museum, slumbering on the sill of yawning scholarship; but it is not its weakest that concerns us. Like a resilient nervous system, whose power is revealed only in extremity, the European tradition throws off fleshly veils of aestheticism when survival itself is threatened, when the succession becomes Homer, Virgil, Dante … and Primo Levi.

Dante leads Ulysses and his crew through the Pillars of Hercules and out towards Atlantis where, after a further five months of voyaging past the forbidden limits, they reach the imposingly dark mountain isle of Purgatory. Here, in a storm, the ship with all lives is lost, as “it pleased another [i.e. God] it should [be]”. This is an invented, but fitting, death for Ulysses, one of the

corrupt advisers, guilty of misapplying their intellectual powers, [who] are similarly guilty of the abuse of eloquence.[15]

Levi writes:

[…] the sun is already high, midday is near. I am in a hurry, a terrible hurry […] (p. 141)

He continues:

As if I also was hearing it for the first time: like the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God. For a moment I forget who I am and where I am. (p. 141)

Has all this urgency to communicate and remember, to recover, through exact text, the fountain of European spirituality in the most unpropitious circumstances imaginable, been in vain? Perhaps, says Levi,

perhaps, despite the wan translation and the pedestrian, rushed commentary, he [Pikolo] has received the message, he has felt that it has to do with him, that it has to do with all men who toil, and with us in particular; and that it has to do with us two, who dare to reason of these things with the poles for the soup on our shoulders. (pp. 141-2)

Thus are Dante’s words, variably translated, given a meaning and urgency that might have surprised Dante or Virgil, but would not have surprised those sinners writhing eternally in their fires in the eighth circle of that other hell.

30^th August 2003

- Let’s talk about the research that began twenty years ago.

-Everything began with the reading of "El enigma de la Mesa de Salomón" (The mystery of the Table of Solomon) by Juan Eslava Galán, although I was already interested several years ago in the old Arts and Sciences, above all Alchemy, Kabala and Tarot, and not as much in Astrology. I was interested since I checked that it takes the human being and the cosmos as a whole and that, although we think nowadays that they were product of ignorance and superstition (you know, the arrogance of the illustrated), they were arts and holistic sciences that enlightened the mind of their practitioners through millennia. What we consider today as science hardly has several centuries of existence. It is very silly to think that men were previously idiots dominated by superstitions. But is that what the positivists think. What absurd and complete nonsense! I don't know if they realize the stupidity that is implied from such a belief.

-But why do you call them sciences? In fact, they are not real sciences.

-They are not in the sense that we use the word "Science". That is why I add "old". Of all the definitions that the Dictionary of the Real Academy gives the word "Science", none has the exclusive sense given it today by the scientists. Science means knowledge and its meaning includes that of the positivist science. The dictionary says that science is a "ordered knowledge and, generally by experiment, of the things" or a "collection of knowledge and doctrines ordered methodically", but it doesn't say in any case, because it would be really stupid, that science is only the western science of the last two or three centuries.

-And you come from the positivist tradition.

-And I still believe in it, I don't think that there is a contradiction between both levels of knowledge. What is wrong is when they mix, when it is pretended to investigate what belongs to the area of the old sciences, and I say positivists, and not empiricists because old sciences are empirical as well.

- Fine. I suppose that that would need to be explained a bit further; however, let’s go to your research.

- No, wait a minute. I will clarify it in a moment. Positivism is the philosophical system formulated by August Comte that considers that the human knowledge can be based only in the senses, while Empiricism takes the experience as the only base of the human knowledge. I say that the old science is empirical, not empiricist, in the sense that take the experience as base of its knowledge, although not as the only base. In other words, in addition to being based in the experience, it considers that there are other methods for the human knowledge. It is not exclusive.

Furthermore, its technology was more developed that we think. Astronomical observatories as exact as Stonehenge, constructions so perfect as the pyramids of Egypt or machines like of the Antiquitera, to give some examples that cover approximately from the 3rd millennium to the 2nd century A.D, should make us think that we have underestimated their knowledge. We should recover from it their focus, their method that conceives that men were not separated from their environment and try to relate the different dimensions of the reality, not only the physical.

-Yes. Lets go back to your research. You affirm that there was an Original Model that can be considered origin of all the others which is the base of all knowledge, even of the scientific, as we understand this concept today.

-Yes, more or less. I have to qualify that a bit.

-And that that Original Model was created in a certain moment of the human History by a specific civilization, the original culture, which gave place then to the other historical cultures, religions and civilizations with their cosmologies, myths systems, symbolical, ritualistic, etc...

- I recognized that I don't count with definitive demonstrations, only signs. However, they are quite clear and specific. They approximate very much to authentic evidences.

-For example...

-It is difficult to sum up all the information taken through twenty years of research in an interview like this... Summarising very much: according to the archaeologist, in the Spanish south-west, which now we call East Andalucía, in the Calcolítico or Copper Age there was a civilization which gave names to its more important sites. It's about the Culture of the Millares. Although, it is possible that Plato refers to them in the myth of the Atlantis. I know that we are introducing a very controversial subject, but I'm interested as much to make categorical affirmations than to make indications. The case is that one of the sites of that culture was found some years ago near the city of Jaen. It is about the low Marroquies, a town of the Calcolítico constructed according to the architectural scheme that Plato described for the Atlantis. Then we have the persistent tradition that points Jaen and Granada as references of a series of legends over the original garden (the Hesperides Garden, Iram of the columns, the kingdom of Agarta, the table of Solomon...) and many other legends that point Andalucia as the origin of the alphabet (the forest of the alphabetical columns of the Tartasside, etc). And finally, the identification made by me of the signs of the zodiac in the landscape of Jaen with the letters of the Greek alphabet and the Tarot symbols.

-Are you suggesting that that culture invented the alphabet...

-There are a lot of signs of that... I tell it in the Notebooks of Jana:

according to Strabon, the Turdetans, successors of the Tartessios, possesed a grammar, poems and laws in verse around 6.000 years ago... Robert Graves in the White Goddess says that the Ogham alphabet "used in Britain and Ireland some centuries before of the Latin ABC" came from Spain. The invention of this alphabet was attributed to "Ogma-cara-de-Sol hijo de Breas, Ogma-sun-face son of Breas)", which he represented as a veteran Hercules, with the club and the lion skin". Having Perseus/Mercury won against the Gorgone Medusa, he takes, poetically, the alphabet in a sack to the Tartasside. Graves relates, as many other authors, this land (Tartessos) with Cadiz, as many others situate it between Huelva and Cádiz (Schulten) or in the surroundings of the estuary of Guadalquivir, in the lower Andalucia. They doesn't consider that all ends have their beginning; in other words, that the sacred river had a birth of "silver roots" where it was situated the sanctuary of the Goddess Mother, which according to a primary vision will be identified with the "origin". Where it maybe comes from the old name of Jaen (Auringe). What is true is that in the Tartesside there was a sanctuary to Hercules, Robert Graves says: "It is probable that the Hercules of the Phoenicians of the Tartasside was Palamedes (Greek hero related with the invention of the Alphabet), or with the God Ogmios with the lion skin, to which the Irish attributed the invention of the alphabet which they "received from Spain and that Gwion, in his elegy about "Ercwlf", celebrates as a planter of alphabetical columns. The inhabitants of the Tartesside were famous in the classical period because of the respect they show to the old people, and Ogmios, according to Luciano, was represented as an old Hercules. That the Gorgones lived in a grove in the Tartesside can only mean that they had to hide an alphabetical secret".

It is not difficult to realise that the “planter of alphabetical columns", like a builder of megalithic monuments, has a symbolic meaning in relation with events of astronomical type. In Jaen there could be an observatory of this type (as suggested by a great variety of signs; moreover, guarded by a lizard, or dragon, according the popular legend of the city of the Lizard of Malena. The Gorgonnes were Greek monsters that Hesiodus represented as three sisters. The relationship between the number three and the Goddess Mother is documented enough by the specialists.

As Hesiodus tells, one of the sisters, Medusa, was killed by Perseus and her body mutilated (he cut her head) when the monster Geriones appeared, a giant that lived in the island of Eritheia and that possessed three heads and three bodies till the waist and was killed by Heracles for stealing his herd of oxen. Geriones sends us to Gerion, the first of the legendary kings of Tartessos.

And although Eritheia is Cadiz, Hesiodus could refer with the name of a part of the kingdom to all the kingdom of Tartessos. That the Gorgonnes kept a secret alphabet in a grove of the Tartasside recall us again the legend of the lizard of Malena, in which a monster defends, attacking whoever approximates to his den, some secret was hidden. That the blood of the Medusa, took by Athenea and given to the God of the Medicine Asclepius, had the power to resuscitate the death, and recall us to what was said before about the spring of the Magdalena situated in the roots of the Tree of the Immortality and to the resurrection of the Sun in the summer solstice.

At the other side, two traditional legends exist in Jaen that label it the owner of a secret and the home of a group of people that, through the centuries, dedicated themselves to transmit, or better said, to guard. It is about those that look for the Cava, a name that appears in a list that Eslava Galan found in the Diocesal Archives of the Jaen Cathedral. In other words, that all the civilizations that stood in its territory had a notion of the meaning of that geographical space and of that city.

- But, why has nothing been heard about it before?

- Because, as I said, that group of people who Eslava Galán was referring to had the mission to protect that secret, since they considered it gave power to who posses it. In fact, the Royal Families of Aragón and Castille were in the secret...

- Then, the old sanctuary, is it something like a model of the world that reflects the old vision of the Cosmos in the same disposition of its geographical features?

- Yes, but it is worthless to know that if we don't identify with precision, correctly, what it means for each one of its elements in the all and the relations that exist between them.

- And that is what do you do in the Arkegram. What, then, is the Arkegram?

- A model described as a diagram or mandala that considers each one of those elements and it relates them with the letters of the sacred alphabet, the articulated sounds or phonemes, musical notes, colours, symbols, old myths, the archetypical principles...

- But, wouldn’t there be a grade of arbitrariness in all that, an purely assignation... how to say...

- Imaginary? No, look, there are too many coincidences. At this point, I find it a bit embarrassing to talk about it. I wouldn't like anyone to think I'm crazy. I'm perfectly conscious of the transcendence of the discovery. I know that it would be the key that the alchemists, occultists... have been looking for through millennia, and it resolves the mystery of the Table of Solomon, and that makes me feel a big responsibility because I can give proof that demonstrates it.

But what interests me more is the way that it can serve the men of our period, because that model is in the base of what Jung called the collective unconscious and of our analogical thinking, symbolical, archetypical... for it can be use as a table of correspondences that clarifies... I don't know if I'm explaining myself... The case it is that when I started to check the existence of precise correspondences between the geographical features of the landscape of Jaén-Granada and the symbols of Tarot, the shapes of the Greek letters, etc. I started, as is logical, to ask questions to myself. The answers to those questions were the content of my investigations through those years.

- But you affirm much more and that it is its relation with the new paradigms.

- Of course, because it is a description of the basic structure and dynamics of the energy, because the old Cosmo vision was ecological, systemic, holistic...

- And what about its applications?

- Having the frame of correspondences perfectly clear, after a meticulous and reasoned demonstration we can establish a map of conscience based in the observed energetic process, the place and function of the archetypes, the meaning of symbols and myths, the last sense of dreams, which would allow us to establish precise and exact correspondences in technique and energetical therapies like Tai-Chi, Chi-Kung, bio energy, etc. and maybe can be a help to us in the study of the deep structure of the matter.

- Don't you think that you take your discovery too far, that your implications and proposed applications are too far of your object of study?

- No, I don't think so. It is true that I'm not a historian, nor an anthropologist, nor a professional scientist, only an artist, a musician, maybe a creator, a poet, that as Robert Graves says in his book the White Goddess "I don't belong to any religious cult, to any secret society, to any philosophical sect", and if I felt compelled to study these specialties I was motivated by that first poetic intuition (sounds that remit to other sounds forming a net of meanings that seems to be related with the life of humanity and my life). When I made my first discovery, in which there was already the seed of the conclusions that I offer now, I was like the kid who has just received a toy and doesn't know how to use it, nor what it is for. The necessary books arrived to me, in an unpredictable way, like Graves said that arrived to him: I came across with them, without looking for them. Literally, I entered to a bookshop, and like in trance, something was taking me directly to them. I didn't even read the most of them, but I knew where to find them when I needed them. As Graves says, "this presupposed that the knowledge existed and it was accessible and, consequently, the books coincided then with my necessities" and then "I could form reasonably an order of the ideas into which I arrived without reason". Despite that, I tried the possible combinations after all, such that the first intuition passed all the obstacles of the methodical doubt.

The case is that, as I progressed in my investigations, I saw that it could have certain transcendence, since, surprisingly the discoveries indicated certain class of relations between the geographical features of the surroundings of Jaén and the model in the Tarot, the symbols used in the Alchemy, the signs of the zodiac, the letters of the sacred Greek alphabet... and then the musical notes, the colours, the old myths, etc. The symbolism impressed in the landscape and the disposition in the city, inherited from the old sanctuary became so clear that any doubt seemed to me superfluous, while the information they were adding reinforced that first discovery. I discovered afterwards that myths and symbols lived inside me, that they were the matter of my dreams, but, as well, that they could transmit facts that happened before History. Facts that for not being historical were not less real: love affairs between the rivers, mountains and cities, towns named as their national hero, their king or the capital of their kingdom... confusion in the names, never in the concepts, nor a mistake in the genealogy. It was then my obligation to follow them to the primordial garden, to the origin.

Now I have a treasure in my hands, but am incapable to take all the use my own. That is why I decided to reveal it to the public, that is why I published this blog, that is why I'm giving lessons about it, that is why I look for an editor for the Jana Notebooks, and that is why I'm giving this interview.

- But to my understanding you still haven't given any definitive proof. And without proofs I think it is too ridiculous to affirm things like you say.

- Proof; I'm afraid that what you can call definitive proof is never going to be presented. There are no documents; maybe the last one was lost with the unburied bishop (the bishop Suarez) from the Cathedral of Jaen. That is why I don't think that historical proofs can be given, for me or anyone else, at least for now. What I affirm it is based on, however, is signs and evidences that I can't develop here completely and some others that I don't tell just for precaution. On the other side, I'm not the first nor the only one that affirms that, as Ortega and Gasset said, "indicios que se acumulan nos hacen entrever que antes de soplar el viento de los influjos históricos desde Egipto y, en general, desde el Mediterráneo oriental hacia el occidental había reinado una sazón de ráfagas opuestas". I don´t know if you know about the book El Jardín de las Hesperides by J.M. Paredes Grosso, in which he affirms: "Este misterioso Jardín de Occidente (...) es el escenario de grandes mitos, algunos de trascendencia universal en el Mundo Antiguo. Y es probable lugar de origen de una antiquísima religión, eco de una civilización anterior a la Helénica, y de la que ésta tomaría muchos de sus fundamentos".

I assure you that if there is not conclusive proof that this territory, which today we call Andalucía, was in the past (with the meridional east and the Portuguese Algarbe) the territory of the first civilization (at least in the etymological sense of civis, city) and that the sanctuary of Oringi (which the pre-roman natives use to call Jaén) was used as the reference for the platonic myth of Atlantis, there is proof to reveal the mystery related with its landscape (which the old cultures, as today the traditionalist, considered sacred), in which their vision of the world was represented, and consequently, could be considered as the original model of the old art and science. Of this last one I can give proof since I have deciphered what each one of its elements mean and their relation with the group.

It is curious that the territory of Jaén was the only one in the Christian West that received the title of Sacred Kingdom, that its cathedral was built to house the relic of the Sacred Face, the true face of God; where the name Veronica, vera icon (from the "true image"), comes from. I already explained that I would need a book to expose all the information available to me. Eslava Galán exposed some, although he relates the mystery with a concrete object, a table... when in reality the secret it is in the landscape and the design of the city, in its disposition, measures and orientation of its monuments... As I described in my blog the Jaina are lined up to the direction of the sunset in the solstice of summer pointing in straight line to Finisterre or end of the earth, which religious enclave is as anyone knows Santiago de Compostela, and it passes through significant places like Arjona (where the famous gravestone is found), the sanctuary of the Virgin of the Head, the monastery of Guadalupe, Yuste... This is to the Northeast and in the opposite direction: Mágina, Guadix, Almería (concretely the village of the Millares).

On the other side, the towers of the cathedral of Jaén point with an angle in relation to the axis North-South of 23º, which is of the ecliptic in respect to the celestial Equator, to Quiebrajano (the quebrada of Jano, the double roman God related with the circle of the year and with the solstices), Colomera (town of Granada where the shepherd that discovered the Virgin of the Head, Granada, the Alhambra, Sierra Nevada, came from). They are leys, as the English call them (check for La memoria de la Tierra, The Memory of the earth, by Paul Devereux) that relate the territory with the movement of the stars, and in the case I mentioned, they are linked with the origin and the end of the line of the sunset and sunrise in the solstices, in which centre the megalithic astronomical observatory or the old sanctuary of Oringi (Origin)is situated; a reflection or model of the world.

We talked about the Cosmic Tree already present in the vision of the cosmos of the Chamans (check for example Chamanism by Mircea Eliade), then represented as the Tree of the Paradise, which is the one sculpted in the gothic cenefa of the Cathedral of Jaén. By understanding one we understand the other. Do I explain myself? I'm only trying, by summarising a lot, to give clues. And what I mentioned is only part of the mystery, do you understand? Maybe he was referring to Manuel Muñoz Garnica "maybe the last of those who looked for the Table of Solomon", according to Eslava Galán, or the last one that discovered its secret and, by the way, got rich through the archaeological treasures he found -when he said in one text date in 1846: “the Mezquita and the library of the moor were the temple and the science of the East and the West".

- From which we can deduce the true name of God or Name of Power, the Hebrew Shem Shemaforash.

- Evidently, that is why I keep it quiet.

After waiting four months I bought the Olympus Tarot, and then someone mentioned to me that they'd bought the Celestial Tarot on sale and had consulted the Robert Graves book The Greek Myths with it. Mentioning a book to me is like an auto suggestion, I have to go and look! I had considered buying this a couple of years ago as I thought Graves's take on mythology might be nice to compare with more conventional texts, but I stuck to my budget and didn't buy it then.

I have ordered it now though along with the Celestial Tarot; the Ace of Wands in the Celestial Tarot is Cassiopeia and I had to have her. I find astronomy interesting because I have trouble finding things in the night sky. However, in November 2004 the aurora borealis was streaming from the back woods and over my house and just above the tree line was the constellation Cassiopeia, or The Big W as I call it. I've never forgotten the streaming coloured light enveloping my house, and I always look for Cassiopeia now when I take the dogs outside at night.</