Fleshed Out, Part 3

(Chapter III) An Unexpected Passage

The writer wanted to give a clue to the prince, something plausible, and which could put him on the right track. Chewing the tip of his quill dreamily, he resumed his writing.

Whereas the prince was lost in abysses of perplexity, the old man rose with a preternatural speed of which one would not have believed the old bones capable. Or at least, the prince thought he had risen, because the next thing he knew he was standing next to the old man, with his left hand in his.

He had a movement of retreat, but the grip of the old man was firm, and looking at him right in the eyes, he told him with a voice that seemed to reverberate as if they had been standing inside a cave: “Watch”.

The prince was going to object, but the piercing glance penetrated through the depths of him and prevented him to say anything. Then, he watched. And not a thing occurred.

As if reading his thoughts, the old man smiled cunningly, and his voice resounded again: “Watch Again”.

And his voice resonated, vibrating such as a thousand great bells chiming the angelus, reaching miles and miles around. His head was filled up with sounds, chattering blended with the sound of hosts of children laughing blithely.

A warm light was whirling, where a multitude of particles of dust gleamed and circled at unrestrained intervals. Their rhythm accelerated, then stabilized in front of his eyes, and what he was seeing dancing in front of his eyes was the fire of the hearth in the tower, where his last dream had stopped. But the hearth was superimposed on the shack where he was standing now, and the two environments mixed one with the other.

Up to the point where the fire ceased by and by its dancing, becoming incandescent embers, by and by blackened, and finally falling to ashes.

He was back in the smoky shack, and the old man looked at him with merry eyes.

“Well, has this small trip enlightened you?”

---

Again the writer had stopped. These hesitations were becoming tiresome. Moreover, he was not even sure that this paragraph had helped the prince —or the plot for that matter…

While he had been writing without much conviction the vision of the prince, an old name had appeared in his mind, now refusing to quit: “Angus”. Perhaps someone had shouted it in the street outside, and he had not paid attention —which was of course quite possible. What was astonishing was this intuition that this name was a key, the key of a knowing he had forgotten on his way.

This name was familiar; he remembered that Angus or rather Áengus was in Celtic mythology a god of love and poetry, often represented along with four birds.

Well then, if he was a god of inspiration, he was not refusing his help.

He took one of his books of mythologies, and leafed through to find the relevant article. It was short, but he found two points of interest in addition to what he already knew.

William Butler Yeats had written a poem entitled The Song of Wandering Aengus.

And the origin of the name Áengus came from the two Celtic roots oino “one, unique” and guss “choice, chosen”.

Traditional interpretation was thus surely something like “The Chosen One”, but he preferred to see in this name “One choice” or even “the Choice”.

Akin to this prince who hesitated between these two worlds… A new connection came to his mind as he was putting some notes on a sheet of paper, so seemingly disconnected and yet so much valid that it assured him that he was on the right track.

The Choice, in this dear old set of tarots he had inherited as a child from his gypsyish great-aunt, was represented by the trump with number VI – L’AMOVREVX —The Lover(s). It showed a cupid, on top of three characters: the one in the middle apparently hesitating between two women, a young fair-haired on the right, and mature dark-haired on the left.

What had always fascinated him in this trump was that the drawing apparently so simple, almost childish, was actually so skillful that the arm between the young man and the fair woman was indistinguishably attached either to him or to her.

The main issue that he saw was indeed his incapacity to make the choice of one direction to stick to.

Not for fear to make a wrong choice, because he knew that such a thing did not exist. Every choice brought its own teachings. He just wanted to make the least tortuous, the most effortless one. But what? His choice was precisely not to leave neither one nor the other of the two worlds; he felt a responsibility towards them and did not want to give up any of them for the other. That much was a certainty: there was always another solution apart from (or including) the obvious and imposed choices.

Besides, The Lover of the tarot continued his initiatory path to the other trumps, and did not stop with the obvious choices. Hesitation thus was not detrimental, it was a signal.

In this case, the signal that none of the choices was satisfactory.

Going to bed, he smiled, thinking of the wisdom of Japanese Zen Masters who had a particular negation (無) to tell that a question was not decidable because neither “yes” nor “no” was acceptable…

The following day, he went to the library to look for an anthology of Yeats, so that he could read this poem, hoping that it would change his ideas, and perhaps would give his mind more grist to grind.

A stiff librarian indicated to him where to direct his research. He thanked her politely, then went in the pointed direction. After having leafed through several dusty volumes, he found the poem.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939).
The Wind Among the Reeds 1899.

A fine piece of poetry indeed, as he told himself, that had reminded him of one of the reasons why the prince did not wish to give up the kingdom of the statues. His future wife was there, whom he had married in his dreams. Or perhaps the reverse…

While casually browsing the table of contents, the titles of one of Yeats’ poems struck him. He had already noted two poems with titles that had amused him: The Winding Stair and the Tower. But these were such overused symbols that he had barely paid attention until now.

But there, this one was entitled The Statues. Two stanzas caught his attention:

THE STATUES

[PYTHAGORAS’] numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.

[…] Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
When gong and conch declare the hour to bless
Grimalkin crawls to Buddha’s emptiness.

These serendipities and his own previous considerations had made him feverish, and the thoughts were bouncing in his head.

The last sentence especially intrigued him. He had the weird feeling to draw threads from skeins in the outer rim of the space of his consciousness, to tie them at this moment to obtain that meaning, that direction he was seeking.

Grimalkin was grey malkin, the grey evil cat standing for the witch, Circe, or Medusa.

Succession of the tarot trumps, standing from one end to the other, bridging the past of the first eleven ones, the future of the eleven next ones, these two conflicting worlds, and their realization was at stake at this moment…

… suspended around the median trump, the Force, representing a Woman at grips with a Lion.

This Lion she cannot simply overcome, but has to tame it —the very Lion at the doors of Chinese temples, guarding the entrance.

He had not ceased to think about all that he had discovered during the rest of the afternoon. Not in a proper state to write anything this evening, he decided to lie down and try to sleep.

Feverish, he turned over and over in his bed, at grips with phantasmagoric images he did not want to look at, and that kept changing with incredible buoyancy and imagination, as a mad Proteus unwilling to reveal his secrets to the impudent requester.

Exasperated, he straightened himself in the bed and sighed noisily. Concentrating on his breathing to calm himself down, he suddenly had a brilliant realization. These images were the archetypal Lion!

Its daunting aspect was a trick, to protect the sanctuary of his Being from the phenomenal and destroying capacity of his own fears.

And with this realization, he knew that by looking straight in the face of his fears, while literally penetrating through his fears, he would tame the Lion, his faithful guardian and his instructor.

The hallucinated forms followed one another more and more rapidly, alternating deformed faces, sharp-edged hooks, scaly faces, livid expressions and threatening glances, all these images he had already seen in these Tibetan mandalas representing the wrathful divine forms.

Wholly adequate analogy, he told himself, trying to calm his exalted spirits. He was on the threshold of the Bardo of the Tibetans —or rather of a bardo, one of the intermediate states, between two worlds of his spirit.

He needed not to be afraid, for this was what he did every evening, like everyone, since his childhood —except that most of the time he did not try to keep a clear perception, and to bring his conscious mind in the realm of dreams, preferring to sink in a sleep deemed more restful that way. Obviously, these visions were reflections of his recent mental activity, and they had no power over him, only the one he granted to them.

One by one, he thus confronted all the visions which were presented to him, simply acknowledging them, with his spirit calm as the shiny surface of a lake in summer. And little by little, they combined into an immense vision, fluctuating, whirling.

He stayed trustful, clear-minded, and let it approach him, little by little.

Or himself approached it, still, and still, until he could, finally, pass through…

(to be continued…)

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