Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} At the Gates of Dawn A Collection of Writings by Ella Young by Ella Young At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young by Ella Young. Time does not alter the fundamental and the elemental truths of this world. Though we allow ourselves to be easily caught up in the ephemeral nothingness of politics - the flag waving, the flag burning - words such as Oliver's and Young's are like finding an oasis filled with a calm and sober light directing us back to the purity of truth and away from that "false world." First let us hear from Mary Oliver: Teach the children. We don't matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb's quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. And, now, from Ella Young: It’s lore that makes the world beautiful…there are all about us, if we’ll only look for them. How sad it is that a materialistic world laughs at them and their beauty… “If you want to develop imagination in a child, to fan the creative spark which may make him great, you can’t restrict his thought. The fairy kingdom is a vast realm of magic where most anything can happen. It’s a far more interesting place for a youngster than to take him riding in a street car…Fairies, also, are not for all children, but to those who love them let them have them.” ". The modern child… lives in a false world surrounded by mechanical toys and artificial amusements. There is no time to let the child sit and think; to turn out to nature, where the mountains, the birds and the flowers may talk to him - and they do talk - and to let him feel the beauty of things about him. And, then, how will a child know the greatest lessons of antiquity if his elders frown upon the rich folklore which affords him an inheritance of imagination and romance? The Weird of Fionavar. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other . Read More. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. Read Less. All Copies ( 12 ) Softcover ( 8 ) Hardcover ( 3 ) Choose Edition ( 6 ) Book Details Seller Sort. 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press. Edition: 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press Trade paperback, New Available Copies: 10+ Details: ISBN: 0344724530 ISBN-13: 9780344724534 Pages: 28 Publisher: Franklin Classics Trade Press Published: 2018 Language: English Alibris ID: 15067526557 Shipping Options: Standard Shipping: $3.99 Trackable Expedited: $7.99 Two Day Air: $14.99 One Day Air: $19.99. Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination. Seller's Description: New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 28 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. ► Contact This Seller. 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press. Grand Rapids, MI, USA. 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Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers. ► Contact This Seller. 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press. PO BOX 318, OXON, UNITED KINGDOM. Edition: 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press Trade paperback, New Available Copies: 10+ Details: ISBN: 0344724530 ISBN-13: 9780344724534 Pages: 28 Publisher: Franklin Classics Trade Press Published: 11/2018 Language: English Alibris ID: 16031696116 Shipping Options: Standard Shipping: $3.99. Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination. Seller's Description: New. BRAND NEW BOOK! Shipped within 24-48 hours. Normal delivery time is 5-12 days. ► Contact This Seller. 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press. Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM. Edition: 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press Trade paperback, New Details: ISBN: 1163701270 ISBN-13: 9781163701270 Pages: 28 Publisher: Franklin Classics Trade Press Published: 2010 Language: English Alibris ID: 16181394580 Shipping Options: Standard Shipping: $3.99. Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination. Seller's Description: New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Contains: Illustrations, color. ► Contact This Seller. 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press. Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM. Edition: 2018, Franklin Classics Trade Press Trade paperback, New Details: ISBN: 0344724530 ISBN-13: 9780344724534 Pages: 28 Publisher: Franklin Classics Trade Press Published: 2018 Language: English Alibris ID: 16185183544 Shipping Options: Standard Shipping: $3.99. Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination. Ella Young. Ella Young (26 December 1867 – 23 July 1956) was an Irish poet and Celtic mythologist active in the Gaelic and literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.[1] Born in Ireland, Young was an author of poetry and children's books. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1925 as a temporary visitor and lived in California. For five years she gave speaking tours on Celtic mythology at American universities, and in 1931 she was involved in a publicized immigration controversy when she attempted to become a citizen. Young held a chair in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for seven years. At Berkeley she was known for her colorful and lively persona, giving lectures while wearing the purple robes of a Druid, expounding on legendary creatures such as fairies and elves, and praising the benefits of talking to trees. Her encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject of Celtic mythology attracted and influenced many of her friends and won her a wide audience among writers and artists in California, including poet , philosopher , photographer , and composer , who set several of her poems to music. Later in life she served as the "godmother" and inspiration for the Dunites,[3] a group of artists living in the dunes of San Luis Obispo County. She retired to the town of Oceano, where she died at the age of 88. Early life and work in Ireland. Born in Fenagh, County Antrim, she grew up in in a Protestant family and attended the Royal University. She was sister to the scholar Rose Maud Young. She later received her master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin. Her interest in Theosophy led her to become an early member of the Hermetic Society, the Dublin branch of the , where she met writer Kenneth Morris. Her acquaintance with "Æ" () resulted in becoming one of his select group of protégés known as the "singing birds". Russell had been her near neighbour, growing up on Grosvenor Square. Young's nationalist sentiments and her friendship with Patrick Pearsegave her a supporting role in the ; as a member of Cumann na mBan, she smuggled rifles and other supplies in support of Republican forces. Young's first volume of verse, titled simply Poems , was published in 1906, and her first work of Irish folklore, The Coming of Lugh , was published in 1909. She became friends with William Butler Yeats' erstwhile flame , who illustrated both Lugh and Young's first story collection, Celtic Wonder-Tales (1910). Although she continued to write poetry, she became known best for her redactions of traditional Irish legends. Immigration to the United States. Young first came to the United States in the 1920s to visit friends, traveling to to meet (Molly) and her husband, Irish poet .[8] Celtic studies scholar William Whittingham Lyman Jr. left the University of California, Berkeley in 1922 and Young was hired to fill the post in 1924.She immigrated to the United States in 1925; according to Kevin Starr she "had been briefly detained at Ellis Island as a probable mental case when the authorities learned that she believed in the existence of fairies, elves, and pixies."At the time, people suspected to have a mental illness were denied admission to the U.S. While based in California, Young began speaking at various universities in 1925, lecturing first at and then at , , and . According to Norm Hammond, Wherever she went, she was received enthusiastically, especially by the young people of America. They loved this white-haired lady with the eyes of a seer that appeared to be lighted from within. She spoke with a melodious voice; when she spoke everyone listened. She had a thin, wispy quality that made her appear as the apparition of the very spirits she described. Indeed, her skin had an almost translucent quality. Young lived in Sausalito in the mid-1920s. She was the James D. Phelan Lecturer in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for approximately a decade. As of 1931 she had not received legal immigration status; Charles Erskine Scott Wood advised her to go to Victoria, British Columbia, in order to restart the process toward American citizenship. Her application for re-entry to the U.S. was declined for months on the grounds that she might become a "public charge". Later life. In 1928 Young's book The Wonder-Smith and His Son , illustrated by , became a Newbery HonorBook (runner-up). During the 1920s she occasionally visited Halcyon, California, a Theosophical colony near San Luis Obispo. While living in a cabin behind John Varian's house there, Young finished writing The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales , a 1930 Newbery Honor Book. In Halcyon her eclectic circle of friends included Ansel Adams, whom she had first met in 1928 or 1929, in San Francisco through their mutual friend Albert M. Bender. She traveled with Adams and his wife Virginia to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1929, spending time with friends, visiting artists at the , and staying with . In Taos, Young also visited with Georgia O'Keeffe.[21] A photograph of Young and Virginia Adams appears in Ansel Adams's autobiography. Adams recalls that Young and fellow writer did not get along very well together but that conservationist Dorothy Erskine was one of Young's good friends. In 1932 The Unicorn with Silver Shoes was released, illustrated by Robert Lawson. Young published her autobiography, Flowering Dusk: Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately in 1945. Later, she found particular affinity in the California Redwoods After battling cancer, Young was found dead in her Oceano home on 23 July 1956. She was cremated, and in October her ashes were scattered in a redwood grove. A grave marker is located in the Santa Maria Cemetery District, Santa Maria, California. Young left the bulk of her estate to the Save-the-Redwoods League. Legacy. Writers John Matthews and Denise Sallee released an annotated anthology of Young's work in 2012, At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young . Writer Rose Murphy released a biography of Young in 2008. The South County Historical Society of San Luis Obispo County, California, is active in the research and preservation of the history of the Dunites and Ella Young. An archive of her papers is currently held by the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Los Angeles. Selected publications. Poetry. Poems (1906) The Rose of Heaven: Poems (1920) The Weird of Fionavar (1922) To the Little Princess: An Epistle (1930) Marzilian, and Other Poems (1938) Seed of the Pomegranate, and Other Poems (1949) Smoke of Myrrh, and Other Poems (1950) Fiction. The Coming of Lugh: A Celtic Wonder-Tale , illustrated by Maud Gonne (1909) Celtic Wonder-Tales , illus. Gonne (1910) The Wonder-Smith and His Son: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World , illus. Boris Artzybasheff (1927) The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales: Episodes from the Fionn Saga , illus. Vera Bock (1929) The Unicorn with Silver Shoes , illus. Robert Lawson (1932) Celtic Wonder Tales and Other Stories , illus. Artzybasheff and Gonne (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1988) – selected from the four collections. According to , the so-called tales are "based on Irish material" whereas The Unicorn is "an original tale, though resembling both [Kenneth] Morris and in its telling of the trip of an Irish hero to the Afterlife". One library catalogue summary of the 1988 selection, perhaps by its publisher Floris Books, implies that "Young's classic re-telling of Celtic stories" comprises all four earlier collections. According to Ruth Berman, The Unicorn is "her original fantasy". As of 1999 it was long out-of-print but Celtic Wonder Tales , The Wonder- Smith and His Son , and The Tangle-Coated Horse were republished in 1991 by Floris Books and Anthroposophic Press. At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young by Ella Young. On a warm July evening in 1956, a small band of robed men and women gathered in a redwood grove near St. Helena in Northern California to perform a Celtic ceremony. "Oh Earth, mother and goddess, to thee we give back this body, purified by fire." Then they spread the ashes of their friend beneath the roots of an ancient tree. The ceremony was in honor of Ella Young, an Irishwoman who embodied the spirit of the ancient druids. Ella lived her life in kinship with the living Earth, and shared her visions through writings, poems and storytelling performances. Ella was born in Northern Ireland in 1867, a sensitive child who had Otherworldly experiences at an early age. As a young woman living in Dublin, she soon found herself in the company of great minds and visionaries such as poet W. B. Yeats, actress Maud Gonne and painter George Russell (known as A.E.) This group was setting the whole country ablaze with passionate ideas and plans for a free, unified Ireland – renewed politically, culturally and spiritually after centuries of foreign oppression. Yeats in particular was writing dramas about the old gods and heroes of the land, designed to awaken the power and presence of these spirits from their sleep of ages. The friends took many outings to Ireland's half-forgotten sacred sites in the countryside in hopes of feeling their presence. Ella found great spiritual riches in the West of Ireland, on wild Atlantic shores where Irish was still the native tongue of the people. Here the old tales of gods, heroes and faeries were still told around the fireside as they had been for centuries. In this lonely and elemental landscape, Ella frequently encountered the faery folk. This is her account of an experience near Derrynane, County Kerry, from her autobiography, Flowering Dusk. Five or six elves of the hillside are trotting beside me. They are about the size of a child 12 years old. Their heads are large for the size of their bodies. They have pointed ears, round eyes and an engaging grin. They are going to show me anything worth seeing on the hillside. I see many wild flowers, but they say that isn't much. They know something really fine. They conduct me to it. It is a great stone thrusting from the greenness and against it a cotoneaster is growing, with multitudinous red berries on its branches. The elves display it with delight. There is nothing like it on the hillside. I haven't the heart to tell them I have seen cotoneasters before – in gardens. I show a proper astonishment and joy. I say, "Let us take some of these berries and plant them in other parts of the mountain." The elves smile from ear to ear. I take some berries and they troop after me. We plant them in different places. We have come a considerable distance, and I begin to feel that I must turn back. I don't want to turn back. The elves don't want to either. I shouldn't call them elves, because I know what the Gaelic-speaking people call them. They call them the "Good Folk," the “Daoine Maithe,” less with an idea of their goodness than with an idea of suggesting what they ought to be. Well, the Good Folk don't want to go back either. We stand in a group and consider matters. "If I could make a circle," I say, "if I could, by going on, find a way across to the inn, I need not turn back." They assure me there is a way. We proceed to follow it. Apparently it does lead back. But suddenly we come on a marsh. It is one of those soft places with masses of green spaghnum moss, green as an emerald, rose-red and amber-ivory in places, but everywhere treacherous. I am taken aback and deeply grieved. Never before had the Daoine Maithe deceived me. I know they play tricks on people, but they are friends of mine. "Do you understand," I say to them with emphasis, "that I cannot walk in places where my feet sink, whatever you folks can do?" "You can walk here," they say. "You are sure?" I ask. "We are sure." "Well, then, show me the stepping-stones." I went forward. I couldn't see a path, but always I found a stepping-stone, so I came safely out of the bog. My friends left me when I reached the high-road. I have never been back there, but if I were to go tomorrow, they would usher me to any cotoneaster that sprang from that sowing. Ella was also able to hear what she called the Music of Faerie, the ceol sídhe (pronounced kyol shee). This power came to her suddenly and unexpectedly on Achill Island, County Mayo: Here on the hillside I have heard snatches of song and little lilting airs . . . a heavy rhythmic beat, a great basic sound which I have named "The Anvil Beat" . . . This faery music has in it the sound of every instrument used in a great orchestra, and the sound of many, many instruments that no orchestra possesses. It has singing voices in it sweeter than human: and always it has a little running crest of melody like foam on a sea-wave or moon-gilding on the edge of a cloud. All these sounds, and sounds more indefinable are going on at the same time: undertones and overtones to a great main melody; to a lilted air, a snatch of song; of the resonance of a swung bell. At Beltaine, 1916, just after the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Yeats inaugurated a magical order – a Celtic Mystery School. It was modeled on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but grounded in Irish, rather than Egyptian, mythology and magic. It was called "The Order of the Four Jewels," a reference to the four gifts of cauldron, sword, spear and stone bequeathed to Ireland by the race of immortals known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, (the Tribe of the Goddess Dana.) Its goal was "the awakening of the ancient fires of Ireland." Sadly, its impetus died with the failure of the Irish rebellion, and the Order disbanded. Yet in a way, its fires were rekindled when Ella Young came to America. Ella was 58 when she accepted an invitation to give a series of lectures on Celtic mythology and culture at various American universities. But she almost didn't get in when the authorities discovered she had once been a gunrunner for the IRA. Fortunately, there was a storm of protest against the exclusion of the scholar and writer from the literary world, and a wealthy sponsor came to her aid. This was Gavin Arthur, a philanthropist and astrologer who was grandson of the 21st president. When Ella finally arrived at Ellis Island, the New York Times announced her arrival with the headline, "Ambassadress from Elfland!" Ella’s gift of oratory drew large enthusiastic audiences whom she held spellbound with the heroic myths and sagas told in her lilting Irish voice – the voice of the bard, a keeper of the ancient teachings of her ancestors. Everyone who saw Ella received the impression of a woman from another world, who had “strayed from the province of the sídhe.” She was a dramatic figure with a noble forehead and face that seemed to shine with an inner light. She let her shoulder-length silver hair hang free and wore flowing clothes like robes. Instead of shaking hands when introduced, she raised her hands high in the ancient druid greeting. Padraic Colum, poet and dramatist, was first to hail her as a druid, likening her to the ancient “women who knew the sacred places and their traditions, who knew the incantations and the cycles of stories about the Divine Powers, and who could relate them with authority and interpret them wisely. . . She speaks of Celtic times as if she were recalling them.” Ella felt most at home in the wild and rugged beauty of the West Coast, where she revived the old Celtic Mystery School at Mount Shasta, the sacred mountain in Northern California. It was called the “Fellowship of Shasta,” and dedicated to the Goddess in her aspect of Brigit, mother of poetry, smithcraft and healing, to whom Ella felt particularly close. In doing so, she became one of the first people in the United States to revive the religion of the Great Goddess. The Fellowship held their gatherings in places of power, which, along with Mount Shasta, included Mount Tamalpais in Marin County and on the Central Coast. In these then pristine and wild places they celebrated the four Fire Festivals of the Celtic year. Ella had a passionate love and reverence for the land of America. She regarded her new country as a "great tawny lioness," in contrast to Ireland, which she saw as a "white unicorn." She spent as much time as she could communing with the spirits of the land, whom she experienced as a larger race than their Irish counterparts. She considered the rocky, wooded promontory of Point Lobos to be the center of psychic power for the entire Pacific Coast. Here she communed with the dryads of the pine trees, the sea spirits, and the great guardian Deva who hovered over the sea with shining wings. Once, lecturing on local faeries at a PTA meeting in Carmel, she almost caused a stampede when the audience of 150 women insisted on going to look for them straight away. They didn’t find any. Ella's response was a chuckle: "But after all . . . those marching feet!" Her relationship with the Earth, which she saw as a "great living Being," was practical as well as mystical. When out on a picnic with her friends, she would never touch food until she had poured a libation of wine, giving thanks to "Earth, Air, Fire, Water" and the Great Goddess herself, whom she addressed in Gaelic. The Fellowship of Shasta became involved in environmental activism, working to prevent developers from building on Point Lobos (now a State Park) and also with the Save the Redwoods League which works to preserve the remaining old-growth forests of California. In her later years, Ella gave an interview to KPFA radio in Berkeley in which she talked of “the brotherhood of the Earth, the animals, the stones and the trees.” When asked how to see nature spirits and faeries, her answer was simple: "You have to be content to know that you love that tree, and you want to love it more, and you know it's alive and you want to come closer to it." In the early 1930s, Ella moved to Oceano, near San Luis Obispo, and became part of a community of artists and writers living on the sand dunes, known as the Dunites. Here she carried on as leader of the Fellowship of Shasta, celebrating the seasonal festivals every year on the dunes. She settled in a small cottage, which she transformed into a place of beauty with objects of art she had collected or been given by her many friends who came to visit her from far and near. Her eye for beauty, coupled with her ability to work with the nature spirits, had enabled her to create an exquisite garden on barren sandy soil. In the evenings she would fill the house with candlelight and hold court beside the hearthfire recounting magical stories to her friends, while conversations that meandered around the perennial wisdom of Celtic and other sacred traditions flowed far into the night. She still bore the faery magic of Ireland with her. One night, she was sitting in her cottage with San Francisco poet Elsa Gidlow, telling an Irish legend, when Elsa began to hear the faint music of bells in the garden: "The notes were high, almost too high to be heard if there had been any sort of noise . . . When she concluded the story I asked, 'Ella, have you put windbells anywhere in the garden?' The night was windless. She said, no, she had no bells there. 'But while you were telling your story just now, I heard clear high bells, very sweet.' 'Oh,” she said, matter-of-factly, 'you were hearing the faerie music.' The next day I looked everywhere through the garden to see if I could have found anything that might have made sounds. There was nothing. As she grew older, Ella felt she had outlived her own time and the values of the ancient days she celebrated. In a letter to Elsa Gidlow she wrote: . . . The gods of Mammon and Mars now almost exclusively relied on, have been the patrons of a great age. What then is lacking? Everything is lacking to us: beauty, truth, solitude, comradeship of the Nature Gods – in a word, life of body, soul, and spirit. We have bartered all these for a push button existence and the right to crow on every dunghill. Words that perhaps ring even more true today! In the 1950s, Ella's health began to decline. She had long dreamed of the time when, according to Irish tradition, her spirit would cross the threshold between the worlds and she would at last come to the Isles of the Ever-Living, the Summerlands. Here she would be reunited with Brigit, the goddess who had guided her soul throughout her earthly years. At the end of her autobiography, she describes a vision that sustained her: I walked in the Land of the Ever-Living with my Ladye. We walked in a wood. It was a wood that had the naked loveliness of Springtime, and yet the boughs were glad with blossoms. The wind moved with us, and where it touched the delicate grass under foot slender-stemmed hyacinths sprang up. There was music everywhere and changing colour and motion. The trees changed shape and stood a-tiptoe for very lightness of heart. I have said that we walked in the wood: equally the wood walked in us. It moved with us, the trees blossomed in us. The music, the wind, the flowers in the grass patterned our mood; and we patterned the trees: growing tall with their tallness, reaching out joyously with their branches. The music that surged and sounded everywhere was like the heart-beat of our blood. It would seem as I tell this, that I was thinking more of the wood than of my Ladye, but I was thinking more of my Ladye: for walking beside her again I was whole. I had no wish unfulfilled. Ella died in her cottage on July 23rd, 1956, at the age of 88. She handed over the leadership of the Fellowship of Shasta to Gavin Arthur, and calmly put all her belongings and the room in order. Lastly, she performed a beautiful ritual to release her spirit, and departed this world. Yet even today, fifty years after her death, Ella's spirit and work continues to benefit the land, as I found out when I was writing a book on Celtic spirituality and wanted to include a quotation from one of her books. On contacting the publishers in Edinburgh, I was told there was a rather steep fee for usage. But I had no reluctance paying it when I learned that all the profits from Ella's books are donated to the Save the Redwoods League in accordance with her wishes. Oddly enough, I happened to be writing this book in Carmel looking out of a window with a view over Point Lobos, and was very aware of Ella's spirit still present in the land she loved. Perhaps it is fitting to remember this woman of vision with the words she wrote, words that celebrate the triumph of the unity of all beings: I know that I am one with beauty And that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds. © 2021 The Chalice Centre Western Esoteric Wisdom Celtic Magical Traditions. At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young by Ella Young. "I had the Master-Word," said the Gubbaun. "I had knowledge enough to make a sky of stars. Now it is gone from me." "You know the talk of the birds," said the Son, "and the talk of the beasts, and the talk of the grasses. Is that not enough?" "I knew the joy that is in the heart of the sun! I knew the secret of life. Now it is gone." He said no more. He sat day-long like a stone. He lay night-long like a stone; like a sea-crag when the water ebbs from it. For the length of time the moon takes to broaden and grow slender he was like that: strength ebbed from him. "My thousand griefs!" cried the Son, "he will die: he will not leave behind him the wisdom of his craft!" "Go to him," said Aunya, "when day whitens. Ask him what tree is king of the forest. It may be that the brightness of his mind will come back to him: if it comes back, cry out that the Dune of Angus is fallen!" The Son of the Gubbaun rose early. He kindled a fire with boughs of the blackthorn. He dipped the palms of his hands in clear cold well- water. He wrapped himself in a cloak the colour of an amethyst stone. He went and stood before the Gub​baun. "0 Wonder-Smith, 0 Master- Builder," he cried, "The Sun is mirrored in the Sacred Well. What Tree is King of the Forest?" "I know a Forest," said the Gubbaun, "the roots of it go down deep, deep into the heart of the earth: the branches of it spread among the stars: the stars are fruit upon its branches. The leaves of it make a singing in my mind — singing and sleep." Sunday, November 20, 2016. Making the connection. Ella Young & Mary Oliver. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016 I am slowly, lovingly, breathing in Mary Oliver's book of essays Upstream . Though published 73 years later, Oliver's excerpt below echoes Ella Young's own words published in The Oakland Tribune , Sept, 22, 1931 and reprinted in the anthology At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young. Time does not alter the fundamental and the elemental truths of this world. Though we allow ourselves to be easily caught up in the ephemeral nothingness of politics - the flag waving, the flag burning - words such as Oliver's and Young's are like finding an oasis filled with a calm and sober light directing us back to the purity of truth and away from that "false world." First let us hear from Mary Oliver: Teach the children. We don't matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb's quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. And, now, from Ella Young: It’s fairy lore that makes the world beautiful…there are fairies all about us, if we’ll only look for them. How sad it is that a materialistic world laughs at them and their beauty… “If you want to develop imagination in a child, to fan the creative spark which may make him great, you can’t restrict his thought. The fairy kingdom is a vast realm of magic where most anything can happen. It’s a far more interesting place for a youngster than to take him riding in a street car…Fairies, also, are not for all children, but to those who love them let them have them.” ". The modern child… lives in a false world surrounded by mechanical toys and artificial amusements. There is no time to let the child sit and think; to turn out to nature, where the mountains, the birds and the flowers may talk to him - and they do talk - and to let him feel the beauty of things about him. And, then, how will a child know the greatest lessons of antiquity if his elders frown upon the rich folklore which affords him an inheritance of imagination and romance? Friday, November 11, 2016. Totem of Gratitude. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016 The hawk's cry as she soars across the very hills I resist calling my home. Words written in a faraway place and time that sought and found their secret entry to my soul. The memory imprinted, deeper than the ink of a tattoo and deeper still than death, your breath against my skin. A mother's love both given and received. A father's strength. The quiet miracle of rain. Going deeper, despite the darkness, and trusting in my resilience. Ancient notes; passion's sung; vibrations of a stranger's heart beating in my own. Lips to linger; hands to heal; eyes to envision; feet to fly. Health. Discernment. Fire. A raven's wing lifted to the moon. The Moon. The Light. The Dark. The embrace. The surrender. Monday, October 24, 2016. Samhain. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016. Samhain by Annie Finch. In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil. that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I move my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my own mind across another, I am with my mother's mother. Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings. arms that carry answers for me, intimate, a waiting bounty. "Carry me." She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze. Annie Finch, "Samhain" from Eve, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Copyright © 1997 by Annie Finch. Sunday, September 11, 2016. "The Tide of Sorrow" by A.E. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016. The Tide of Sorrow By: George William (“A. E.”) Russell (1867–1935). From: Collected Poems by A.E. 1913. ON the twilight-burnished hills I lie and long and gaze Where below the grey-lipped sands drink in the flowing tides, Drink, and fade and disappear: interpreting their ways A seer in my heart abides. Once the diamond dancing day-waves laved thy thirsty lips: Now they drink the dusky night-tide running cold and fleet, Drink, and as the chilly brilliance o’er their pallor slips They fade in the touch they meet. Wave on wave of pain where leaped of old the billowy joys: Hush and still thee now unmoved to drink the bitter sea, Drink with equal heart: be brave; and life with laughing voice And death will be one for thee. Ere my mortal days pass by and life in the world be done, Oh, to know what world shall rise within the spirit’s ken When it grows into the peace where light and dark are one! What voice for the world of men? Monday, June 20, 2016. Fionavar - the myth of war and peace. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2009 I remember well the idealism of my youth when I believed in (and worked for) world peace. Each year since has led to more and more war, more fighting over territory and religion. More greed. More power. The only peace I believe in now is that which I try to find for myself, within myself. I came across Eva Gore-Booth's notes for her dramatic work based upon Queen Maeve, her daughter Fionavar, and the ongoing struggle between war and peace. And then I remembered that Ella Young had also written about Fionavar so I decided to group the two Irish women's words together. They both lived through terribly troubling times in Ireland, and they both understood the power of their mythic tradition. Notes by Eva Gore-Booth: [Gore-Booth, Eva. The Death of Fionavar from The Triumph of Maeve . London: Erskine MacDonald, 1916.] Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Walking - An Essay by Linda Hogan. Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016 Walking by Linda Hogan Parabola (Summer 1990) It began in dark and underground weather, a slow hunger moving toward light. It grew in a dry gully beside the road where I live, a place where entire hillsides are sometimes yellow, windblown tides of sunflower plants. But this one was different. It was alone, and larger than the countless others who had established their lives further up the hill. This one was a traveler, a settler, and like a dream beginning in conflict, it grew where the land had been disturbed. I saw it first in early summer. It was a green and sleeping bud, raising itself toward the sun. Ants worked around the unopened bloom, gathering aphids and sap. A few days later, it was a tender young flower, soft and new, with a pale green center and a troop of silver gray insects climbing up and down the stalk. Over the summer this sunflower grew into a plant of incredible beauty, turning its face daily toward the sun in the most subtle of ways, the black center of it dark and alive with a deep blue light, as if flint had sparked an elemental1 fire there, in community with rain, mineral, mountain air, and sand. As summer changed from green to yellow there were new visitors daily: the lace‐winged insects, the bees whose legs were fat with pollen, and grasshoppers with their clattering wings and desperate hunger. There were other lives I missed, lives too small or hidden to see. It was as if this plant with its host of lives was a society, one in which moment by moment, depending on light and moisture, there was great and diverse change. There were changes in the next larger world around the plant as well. One day I was nearly lifted by a wind and sandstorm so fierce and hot that I had to wait for it to pass before I could return home. On this day the faded dry petals of the sunflower were swept across the land. That was when the birds arrived to carry the new seeds to another future. In this one plant, in one summer season, a drama of need and survival took place. Hungers were filled. There was escape, exhaustion, and death. Lives touched down a moment and were gone. I was an outsider. I only watched. I never learned the sunflower’s golden language or the tongues of its citizens. I had a small understanding, nothing more than a shallow observation of the flower, insects, and birds. But they knew what to do, how to live. An old voice from somewhere, gene or cell, told the plant how to evade the pull of gravity and find its way upward, how to open. It was instinct, intuition, necessity. A certain knowing directed the seedbearing birds on paths to ancestral homelands they had never seen. They believed it. They followed. There are other summons and calls, some even more mysterious than those commandments to birds or those survival journeys of insects. In bamboo plants, for instance, with their thin green canopy of light and golden stalks that creak in the wind. Once a century, all of a certain kind of bamboo flower on the same day. Whether they are in Malaysia or in a greenhouse in Minnesota makes no difference, nor does the age or size of the plant. They flower. Some current of an inner language passes between them, through space and separation, in ways we cannot explain in our language. They are all, somehow, one plant, each with a share of communal knowledge. John Hay, in The Immortal Wilderness , has written: “There are occasions when you can hear the mysterious language of the Earth, in water, or coming through the trees, emanating from the mosses, seeping through the undercurrents of the soil, but you have to be willing to wait and receive.” Sometimes I hear it talking. The light of the sunflower was one language, but there are others, more audible. Once, in the redwood forest, I heard a beat, something like a drum or heart coming from the ground and trees and wind. That underground current stirred a kind of knowing inside me, a kinship and longing, a dream barely remembered that disappeared back to the body. Another time, there was the booming voice of an ocean storm thundering from far out at sea, telling about what lived in the distance, about the rough water that would arrive, wave after wave revealing the disturbance at the center. Tonight I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watched the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and of immensity above them. Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark, considering snow. On the dry, red road, I pass the place of the sunflower, that dark and secret location where creation took place. I wonder if it will return this summer, if it will multiply and move up to the other stand of flowers in a territorial struggle. It’s winter and there is smoke from the fires. The square, lighted windows of houses are fogging over. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.