Vincent Bridges

PART ONE

“One Law for the Ox and Lion is Oppression.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Imagine a hawk circling high above the edge of the desert, a dark speck against the faint blue of the pre-dawn sky. The hawk soars higher, striking the first rays of the rising sun, and its feathers flame suddenly — glint and flash, harbingers of the sun’s arrival — transforming the bird of prey into an omen or a message from Re-Harrakte, phoenix soul of the sun itself. Dawn becomes myth; and morning in Heliopolis, as the Greeks called it a thousand years into its decline, was the time of worship. The sun, in all its forms and effects, had always been the “one” god of the ancient Egyptian city of Anu, “The Place of the Pillar of the Sun.”

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Sex Crimes, Celebrity and Sainthood in the Wasteland of the Technological Collective

One

The metaphor of the grail maiden

The “Eludcidations,” an anonymous prologue to Chretien de Troyes’ Le Conte del Graal, relates a curious tale about how the Land of Logres lost the “Voices of the Wells.” This Land of Logres, Merlin’s Isles of Greater Britain, is a curious place, a Celtic kingdom where the inner world and the outer world overlap and intermingle. Beautiful maidens live by the sacred wells and offer travelers sustenance from golden cups; the realm is at peace and life flourishes.

This Celtic paradise was destroyed by a sex crime, we are told. Evil King Amangons (his name suggests “a man of stones,” or a man with balls, an alpha-male deep in the throes of testosterone poisoning) ravished one of the maidens, held her captive and stole her golden bowl. This set an example and soon all the males were out raping the sacred maidens and before too long the peaceful and fertile realm became a wasteland. The springs and wells dried up, the land became infertile, the animals disappeared, flowers withered and the people faded away.

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I. Notes on the Great Myth

We see the religion of ancient Egypt through the filters of the royal cult and the theology of immortality. Consequently, much of the marginally related, but nonetheless significant, material has been lost or overlooked. The Great Myth, the mythological framework in which Egyptian Theology functions and gains expression, was unstated; perhaps because it was secret, jealously held by the temple initiates, or possibly because it was so well known as to be universal. Recovery of this lost Great Myth supplies a pattern in which the chaotic pieces of Egyptian mythology can be comfortably accommodated.
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by Vincent Bridges

Mt. Everest, Chomolungma, the mother of the world.

Far away, in the shadow of the towering White Himalayas, there lies an ancient kingdom where, until recently, paganism and politics still existed in the primal balance achieved at the end of the Paleolithic golden age. In the hidden valley of Nepal, land of the three kingdoms, a living goddess controlled the relationship between governed and governor. Between the people and the king lay the land and it’s ancient personification as the goddess, whose power was loaned to the king as the right of sovereignty. And, as such, might be taken away if misused.

As modern pagans, we are all too often apolitical. We might vote for Gore because of his environmental stance, or even join Green Peace, but rarely do we see our religious beliefs as having deep political implications. But they do, and the loss of those political ramifications led to the stake and to our modern wasteland of pathological displacement.

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