The Western Gate

Mabon, The turning of the season, pivoting between the Abundance and the Waning, the Harvest Moon upon which I was born. The sun heads west, the barque of Ra descending into the shadows. Hecate will once again by the three dark moons of winter seek the Goddess to rejuvenate the land.
Where Lammas yields the Grain and Samhain the Roots and Fauna so between them, Mabon~ the harvest of Fruits. Fallen then, the seed of life;- Persephone takes the Pomegranate and is cast out from the Garden.

Into sleep my senses surrender and I cannot say whether I feel my mind collapse internally or expand externally, perhaps it is both. But, I awake in the gardens of Kensington, the private and keyed garden, yet here, as a trespasser in dream who can avail me to understand law and property, when in freedom and just liberty I can wander.
I am a cowan, the watcher in a sacred temple hiding behind the pillar, to witness.
The poet there! I know him as Rumi. That this is a dream, I have surely manifested him, and perhaps incorrectly, judging by his oriental appearance, yet here he is, freewill determines his character and he lends his ear and bestows his thoughts freely without my subjective reckoning. Apparently.
Time and time I have asked, what is the point? what purpose? and in the maze of riddles, poetry and mysticism I have come to the source of the ineffable logos, the answer is in fact the question. That we seek, is to maintain, that we endure is to evolve, that we strive for, lust, hunger and persevere means eternal duration.
“What am I !!” cried aloud the first instance, and creation existed forever in that quest, dividing what Is, to What will be.
I remember Rumi once questioned my hobbies, but in the question he was actually prompting me, for the clue was there, “why do you indulge in so many hobbies?”
It wasn’t that I was fickle or that I lacked the conviction to master this or that, but the quest! the unknown. This was what Rumi tried to show, the act of of non-complacency . “Why do you indulge in so many hobbies?”, and the answer is not because I wish to know, but because I wish to be in situation where I Do Not Know. ( A Master of None, an Apprentice to Many).
‘Badru’~ بدر Rumi calls Me. It is Arabic for Full Moon (As that station ‘pon which I breathed my first sigh), and I questioned not how this arose when dream is supposed to be no more than subjective mind stuff, inherent in my deepest thoughts, a deep lost message that somewhere, sometime I had heard and made the connection. I must have! This cannot have come unknown. So I am told.
The Full Moon, Complete and radiant and yet will inevitably wane and darken. The Dark Moon is upon the EArth now, I am in opposition.
I view a dream within a dream;- The Priest stands upon a marble column bema and shouts to another priest who waits, standing upon his own pillar, “Carry the message on!” Comes the command, and the second priest forwards the message to another in the temple of Atlantis-Hiraeth, the performance continues in the beautiful acoustic design of the temple, echoes reflect the sound and the cacophony of the call becomes a drone “Carry the message on,” echoing throughout like a dub-master creating the repetition of the exodus in music.
There is no message. Just the action. There is no word of God, just the breathe, just sound, just being.
“Your word today”, says Rumi mocking is “Harvest”
“I do not destroy all that is created,” I argue, ” I create dynamism, I create the waves of the sea and the winds, such that nothing is still. I create life not in acceptance but in rebellion.”
These are not my words, and yet I hear myself say them as if they were long lost (Anamnesis).
Rumi answered, ” I give you a noun and a verb. The noun can also be a verb, that word is ‘Love’. But it is the thing which exists as of itself. And the Verb, this I give as both to show the noun is lost and also recovered, it is ‘Become’.”
Become– the ressurection, how can I arise from the dead when I am sleeping.
“And What,” I asked, ” Would you have me do with this Aphorism, this oracle of saccahrine?”
Rumi dismissed my deliberation provoking.
” To each of the sephirah, create the noun and the verb, until at the Earth whence you descend to, the garden is not forever, nor complete, but is to be tilled. Farmed. And then harvested, that these three seasons be.”
Rumi seeks me to whittle and meddle and contrive upon the Tree of life, and it will inevitably end up as completed for completion sake, and not for the joy of eureka, not for the blinding light of wisdom, the cessation of this endless cycle, but for the futile pleasure of musing.
As Rumi headed off, I felt my dream shifting, loosing clarity and control, “The Sun will stand with the Balance, Badru, upon the scales art the nature of things judged…”
I awoke.
I crafted Rumi’s puzzle. A Noun and a Verb to each sephira but I would do it of one syllable for I wanted to parody and condescend, to show off perhaps, to go one better than Rumi’s task. To wade in the water than walk across the bridge.
Each sephira displays its nature by the confluence of the paths that reach it. The sun, the heart rests with Balance as Rumi demanded.
And the final path, there is your harvest Rumi, in the act of the world.
There was no eureka, there is no wonder, as always from this runt of the litter, from the East side of London where I was born to the West Side where I will perish, that is the extent of my travel and as every stereotype called ‘Dagenham Dave’ does in response to anything that is meant to impress him;- there is only ever a shrug of my shoulders and the sigh, “Whatever”.

Header Image: adapted from;-Autumn Landscape with Four Trees, 1885 by Vincent Van Gogh