A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran

 

Khalil Gibran was a visionary who hailed from Lebanon. His land was beautiful and the people simple and pure. But it was a land that was ruled by corruption, and he saw this. The church and the local despots and mukhtars keep the people under lock and key. The church keeps the villagers chained to traditions that enforce their slavery. Women are given to rich older men and are locked in marriages with people they no longer care about. The church and the landowner keep the people enslaved. Working in partnership the landowners and village chiefs work the villagers to death all for their own profits. Khalil Gibran wrote about this problem and spoke about it at length in his poetry and prose. The church excommunicated him for it and he eventually came to US to live in exile.

While I cannot remember all the names of everything I have read.  The stories and poems illustrate their point. On story tells about a monk who is excommunicated from a monastery. His crime was preaching pure Christianity. Giving charity to the poor and encouraging freedom of though. Once expelled from the monastery he finds refuge with a widow and her daughter. But no sooner has he found refuge when the local mukhtar and priest find him and lock him up. The exiled monk speaks his truth and eventually the townspeople free him.

 

In another story three people are tried and condemned for various offenses. The first offence is for a woman accused of adultery. Her body is left to rot in the woods. What happened is that she was in love with another man. He went out of town for a day and her father married her off to an older more established man. Her old lover came to visit her one last time when the husband walked in. She was accused of adultery and killed. The second person killed the sultan’s soldier with his own sword and for that he was sentenced to death. A woman came by his body after it was left for the beasts to devour it. She buried the body and explained the story. The sultans’ soldiers had detained her family and were about to do bad thinks to the women folk.  He bravely stepped up and defended her. The third case involves a man stealing from a monastery. His wife comes by to bury him after his death sentence. She explains that he stole from the monastery to feed his family. He asked the church for help, but no charity was forthcoming.

Khalil Gibran also touches upon reincarnation and the deities of old. In one story there is a priest, dedicated to Ishtar the goddess of love. As he watches his love die she gives him a promise that they will meet again in another life. They do so. A young shepherd meets a young maiden and the two fall in love. It is in a lovers embrace that their memories return.

The poet loved his country, and he loved his people. It was unfortunate that Lebanon was run by corrupt leaders and supported by a greedy church that k new how to take and not to give. The leadership and the church worked in tandem to keep the people oppressed and have them be subservient. Marriage customs were outdated and oppressive as well. Often time a father would marry his daughter off to an older more well-established gentleman. The father cared about his business contacts and not about the daughter’s health and wellbeing. This led to a situation where in the woman had to remain locked in a marriage, she was not happy in. In many of his writings this young woman was or is in love with a nother lover closer to her age. For his writings and point of view Khalil Gibran was excommunicated by the church.

Fairy Tales Glimpses at Society

 Fairy tales are filled with wonder. Strange creatures’ dwell within those realms. Fairies, dwarves, and elves populate the landscape. Although works of fiction they still take us away to another reality. Good literature places a mirror in front of us giving us a view of who we really are. These fairy tales are exactly that a mirror in which to view ourselves and society. 

The first tale is about a fairy who strives to eliminate hatred and prejudice by summoning a spell to keep people from acting out their base hatreds. But in the fairy’s efforts to enforce equality the people in this tale cannot be proud of their achievement as it may make others feel bad. Making all the same is not equality. 

The pursuit of knowledge can lead to disastrous consequences if one is not aware of the pitfalls of their journey. Two of the tales displays this. Once is about a moth who ventures to close to a source of light, and another is about a robin who wants to find the secrets of life. Seeking the wise old owl might not be the smartest move. 

The Savior from Over the Sea has a fairy queen deliver a curse to a town. The curse is to see their own wickedness and greed reflected to them to the point where they want to blind pout their own eyes. The Rose Garden shows how are needed to possess things we find beautiful ultimately ends up with us eventually destroying the thing that we want to possess. There is a race of fairies in these tales called “Blamekin” These fat useless fairies justify their existence by criticizing everyone and everything. The complaining eventually destroys their society with intense litigation and senseless laws. 

The Tower of Glass tells a tale of how fairies in a large glass tower look down upon the humans and their hovel. The fairies thinking, they are superior talk about ways to help the suffering humans, but nothing ever comes of it. In the end there is a war and the faeries realized that the humans were just like them and that they are in fact brothers. The superiority was just an illusion. 

The last faery tale is about a group of gods who are bored and decide to inhabit mundane bodies to experience limitation. 

This set of fairy tales holds the mirror to societies face and lets society see its own reflection. As a society we are afflicted with political correctness that it does in fact limit what we can say. We are so afraid of offending others that we are afraid to mention our accomplishments or offer criticism for fear of offending other. Our world is filled with pitfalls as the Owl and the Sparrow illustrates. In our quest for knowledge, we must be wary of those tricksters who pretend they want to help us only to take advantage of us when our guard is down. The Myth of Total Equality points out how we as a society in our quest for equality has sought to eliminate any differences and tries to make us all the same. Equality is allowing others to be different and accepting that difference. A very short but enlightening read. 

Drawing Down the Feminine Divine

 How to contact a goddess and have her with you and influence you....this is a book you could well be looking for. I have read books before on trance work and have also read books on how to contact spiritual allies. These techniques are similar .

The first technique is walking with the goddess. Walking with a deity is sort of like having a conversation with a goddess as you are walking. It is reminiscent of a Jewish practice called “hisbodedut “ where in someone can our out there heart to a deity . This connection is more casual. The goddesses she uses to illustrate this technique are Bloodwould and Persephone. Bloodwould was a maiden created from flowers and Persephone was the Greek goddess abducted by Hades. The author renders her experience with each of the goddesses,. She illustrates two goddesses per technique. At the end of each section .

The second technique for connecting with deity is research. That is right you can read up on your deities through scholarly works and their mythology. The two goddesses she illustrates this with are Isis and Mary. After this section there is a creative exercise involving writing and creative expression.

The third technique is dedication. This method of connecting with deity means that you are dedicated to that deity for a specific time period. Usually it is for a year and a day. The goddesses that she uses this technique with are Ereshkigal and Aphrodite. There are ritual suggestions at the end of the section for dedicating oneself to deity.

Presencing is when you invite a deity into your ritual and/ or life and allow them to become part of things. The focus is on the relationship between you and deity. The goddesses she works with using this technique are Freya and Nephthys. At the end of the section there is a chapter on creating your altar and another chapter on developing aspects of the deity within yourself.

Enacting a myth during ritual is when you sort of make a play out of the myth and everyone acts out there part. Gives new perspective into the old mythology. The Goddesses that works with using this technique are Inanna and Ariadne. At the end of the section on enacting a myth and another chapter on finding your own story within the myth. The process is rather creative

Aspecting is when you let the deity take partial or full control of your body. One can give the deities various amounts of control and that is something to be negotiated. The goddesses she uses this technique with are the Star Goddess and Eve from the Bible.

The end of the book discusses grounding, invocation and entering and leaving trance states. The chapter on grounding talks about the importance of grounding but I wish there was more information on grounding techniques . The section on invocation taught abut the different flavors and invocation may have for a certain goddess. The invocation focused on an aspect of the deity. Entering and leaving trance states was excellent and the role of the person tending the person going into a trance.

A word to thee wise, you can use these techniques for gods as well as goddesses and if you are into Chaos magic then you can use these techniques for imaginary deities and servitors.