1 10 42 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/6acbe111c6d770f9d4d5d2ad7f444103.pdf 3d83c2a78f6e707196b858aac111e8ab Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2pp., loose-leaf, typewritten Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Symbol of Venus Subject The topic of the resource Symbolism Description An account of the resource Donna Chrysothemis' "Symbol of Venus" article from TCA 1 as later circulated by the Madrian Literature Circle. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donna Chrysothemis Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Private collection of Mr. David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Lux Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f63c7ef837b8ea47048addc76824f1e1.jpg 2d046ac05190ff5deb9acc3a3df85137 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/b8e8e541dcda1832396f0f2794dc35ff.txt 8279a4590ef97f409ec1f7b6571390a0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data typewritten (3pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document the savel must choose whether in her lac draven thernigh, other els sink adown among aye deeper shadowy mares; sink adown among swevening spectres and al the blent mire. 27 She that forturneth the light of berAthme in this world goth adown beyond death among bodiless echoes of dark. 28 But everich lac that is worked full well in the Mother is the breath of the sawlis true self and doth losen hir chains. 29 ¶ Live the sawl in the Light and no working is yond of hir canning; Live the sawl in the Light and no thing is that can nat be don; Live the sawl in the Light and hir lacning accomplisheth all things, for hir will shall be on with the will of sai Raya the Rayin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fragment of The Crystal Tablet Description An account of the resource Scan of one surviving page from an unpublished printed copy of The Crystal Tablet, set for comparison against equivalent section from the published edition of Lux Madriana. Attached also is a txt file giving further information and scholarly conjecture by Sister Sophia Ruth regarding differences in the text. The fragment was discovered by Sister Sophia Ruth among other Madrian documents obtained at a used book shop in the early 1990s. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of Sister Sophia Ruth. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1975? Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4575e3805b8294f8455ee7825b5a4737.pdf aace832e211078dbb6848204397fa661 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (20pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Silverwolf Project: SILVERWOLF Section 1: "Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". Chapter 1: Mayanna. Scene: Industrial Street. One of the grimier areas of a large English city. Night time. Princess Mayanna walks down Industrial Street. She is tall. Her hair is in long golden braids studded with jewels. The braids fall down from beneath a rich silver helmet. Her clothes are of richly embroidered silk and at her left hip hands a sword. Nobody looks at her. Nobody sees her. Princess Mayanna is a daydream. What they would see, if they bothered to look, is Petra Stone, an ordinary sixteen year old schoolgirl. Petra doesn't live in this world. She doesn't like this world. She lives in daydreams. Her mother says it will get her into trouble, but her mother doesn't know about Mayanna. Nobody knows about Mayanna, because Petra will never tell anybody. They will never know about a beautiful, brilliant, heroic world a million miles away from the boring, trivial stupidity of modern England. Ten times a day, her mother says, "One of these days you'll come down to Earth with a crash." She does. Petra Stone is lying on the pavement, bewildered and slightly bruised. For a moment she can't work out where she is. A voice brings her back. "Gotcher 'ead inna clouds, intcher?" Two louts in black leather jackets are leaning against a wall. "Fell over me foot, dintcher? Wanner watch where yer goin', dontcher?" She tries to get up, but a motorcycle boot pushes her down again. Petra Stone is scared. Princess Mayanna isn't. She's angry. The Princess wins. With unexpected speed and agility, Petra springs to her feet, kicking her assailant in the knee. Hard. As he bends to clutch his knee, she kicks him in the face. SNIK. The sound draws her eyes. The other lout has sprung a flick knife. SNIK. The first one is scrambling to his feet. He's sprung one too. "Yer've really asked for it now, kid." She believes him. No Princess now. Just Petra Stone. Scared stiff. She runs. They run. She's fast. So are they. A few streets on she turns into a used car yard. They aren't there yet. She gets under a car, praying they won't see her. They run right past, heading for the gate at the other end of the yard. Once they go through it, she can get out the way she came in. She'll be safe. But why should they get away? The Princess is back, angrier than ever. Get up, get after them, you snivelling coward. Let them learn what it is to attack a warrior princess. She's up. She's shouting. "Come back here, scum!" They do. She hears them talking. "I dunno about this, Mick, there's something funny about 'er." "Wodgermean? She's just an ordinary kid. Wassamatter, yeller?" "Awright, just watch me, I'll show you 'oo's yeller." SNIK. "Just an ordinary kid." The words hit her like a bucket of cold water. "Of course I am. What was I thinking of? It must be mad. I am mad. Thank God they're walking slowly. They're still only halfway across the yard. I've got a start on them." She runs. They run. Out of the yard, down the street. She's tiring now, but they're still behind her. "Maybe I can give them the slip again." She swerves into a little alley. It's pitch dark. No houses, just high walls on both sides. They're still behind her. Then her blood turns to ice. A high wall ahead. It's a dead end. Her thoughts race. The alley's empty. The street outside was deserted. Nobody will hear her. Or didn't she see a small child go into the alley? But what would that... She runs into something. A large arm closes around her. A gruff voice speaks. "What's all this, then?" She looks up, her eyes growing accustomed to the dark, and sees a burly policeman. He has a dog. The louts nearly tun into him, then turn and run the other way. Princess Mayanna is furious. "They're getting away! Get after them!" "Hold on a minute, Miss, there's a few questions I'd like to ask you first." "I'm not going to run away. I'll wait right here if you like. Just get after them before it's too late." "But, y'see, it isn't them I'm looking for, miss, it's you." "Me... what do you mean?" "You are the Princess Mayanna, are you not?..." Project: SILVERWOLF Section I: "Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". Chapter I: Mayanna. ENDS. Project: SILVERWOLF SECTION 1: "Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". Chapter 2: Gateway. Scene: Churchyard. A mile and a half from the previous scene. At one end of the churchyard are two large standing stones. They look as if they've been there for thousands of years. They have. About the stones stand three figures dressed in casual clothes and combat jackets. Normally, Petra Stone wouldn't go into a place like this at night. Tonight she has no choice. The policeman is going in, and she's handcuffed to him. One of the figures by the stones starts running towards her. It's a girl... and she's in tears. She cries out "Silverwolf!" She takes her in her arms, she kisses her, she lifts her off her feet as if she weighed nothing. "Silverwolf, is it you? Is it really you?" Petra is too bewildered to answer. She doesn't know the answer. Mayanna, yes. That's her daydream-name; though how anyone else would know that... but Silverwolf. The name means nothing to her... or does it... "Do not be foolish, windchild, time is short." Another of the figures is approaching. Petra has never seen anyone so big. Seven feet tall, easily. But the voice is even more surprising. Definitely female. It isn't a man, despite her size; that's clear as she comes closer. She's pretty, maybe twice Petra's age and getting on for thrice her size. Her thoughts are cut short by the arrival of a third member of the party. She is the most striking of the three, although there is nothing especially unusual about her appearance. She is a much older woman, her steel-grey hair combed severely back from a handsome, intelligent face. She is not wearing a combat jacket, but a long grey trench-coat. She has an air of command which almost makes the air about her crackle. Hands in trenchcoat pockets, shoulders thrust back, she steps close to Petra. Is she police? Who is she? "Time, indeed, is short. You are to answer my questions briefly and truthfully. You are the Princess Mayanna?" "Y-yes." "Where do you come from?" "Number 60, Saint John..." "Please, child, is that where the Princess Mayanna comes from?" "You mean you want the details of my daydream?" "Time is short, Silverwolf, please do not waste it. Where do you come from?" "From Sun-City." "Rayapurh," the first of the three interrupts, "she means Rayapurh. It is her." "Silence." The older woman cuts her short. "So you are from Rayapurh; Sun-City in your language. What is it like? Where do you live? Who is your mother? Tell me." "It is beautiful. The palace is white. The towers tretch up to the sun. My mother is the Queen and I live with her sometimes. And sometimes I live in the forest with the Riders..." "Enough. You have said enough. I am convinced." "But it's all daydream. I made it up..." "No, you did not make it up. It is all perfectly true. To you it all happened about five thousand years ago. To us, about five years ago. I will explain that later. The important thing is this. The Princess Mayanna is a reality. Rayapurh is a reality. You can go back there now, tonight, if you choose to do so. But there are two things you must understand. Firstly, if you do go back you can never return to this life here. Secondly, and rather more importantly..." Her voice stops dead. It begins again, swiftly but calmly. "The time has turn out. We are under sttack. In a moment they will be coming through that gate. Thunder, protect us." Things start happening quickly. Almost too quickly to follow. The big one runs to the gate the Leader pointed at. She must be Thunder. Two gunshots ring out before she gets there. She stops, staggers. She's been hit. Hald a dozen soldiers pour in through the gate. They're wearing berets. Look like special commandos – SAS or something. Thunder straightens up. Was she hit? She leaps forward with a speed that belies her size, grabs the two nearest soldiers by the throat – one in each hand – and just picks them up and throws them into the others. The teenager – the one they call 'windchild' – is among them too. How did she get there so fast? She's hitting them with her fists and they can't seem to touch her. She's only a sliver of a girl, but she's hitting like a heavyweight boxer. The soldiers are falling but more are pouring in through the gate. Her attack intensifies. Her movement is a blur of speed. Her feet, her hands, her elbows, her knees: every part of her is an offensive weapon. She doesn't hit any soldier twice. She doesn't need to. Thunder is slower, but her strength is unbelievable, and she seems almost immune to gunfire. It looks as if they'll mop up the commandoes in minutes. Suddenly the Leader cries "Retreat!" At the same time the six foot high railing which runs along the length of the churchyard shudders and crashes to the ground. Commando boots are tramping over it. There must be hundreds of them. Thunder and the windchild are fighting their way back towards the standing stones. The policeman's arm tightens around Petra's throat. "It's alright, boys, I've got her." It isn't the policeman's voice. She looks up. It isn't the policeman. It's one of the soldiers. The policeman has gone. The handcuffs have gone. Is this a dream or what? She knows it isn't. "But Colonel," one of the soldiers speaks, "if you hold her like that we can't..." "Shut up. I know what I'm doing. I've got my orders. Get out of my way." The Colonel pushes a path through the soldiers toward the standing stones, dragging Petra with him. Ahead she sees Thunder and the windchild. They run between the stones... and disappear. The Leader follows them. She passes betwen the stones and doesn't come out the other side. Petra can see clearly through the stones. They aren't there. They've just vanished! And that's where the Colonel is taking her. Suddenly a voice rises above the tumult. "Hey, what's going on? That isn't the Colonel. He's back here. Stop them!" They're almost between the stones. The Colonel, or whoever he is, is trying to push Petra through. She's putting up a good struggle. He isn't as strong as he looks. In fact he's having real difficulty. Another voice cuts through the air. "Contingency B. The Mortar. Get back, men." Suddenly the crowd of soldiers isn't there any more. They're scrambling for cover, throwing themselves to the ground. A dull boom. A mortar shell screams through the air. With a sudden violent thrust, Petra is shoved between the stones. She vanishes. Her captor follows her. Fireworks. When the smoke clears the stones are gone. Blown to rubble. Two soldiers walk slowly toward the wreckage. "I'm sorry, Colonel." "I don't believe it. We've blown the job. I just don't believe it." "I'm sorry, Colonel." "Not your fault, sergeant. The Brigadier's going to have my head for this." "If it was that flippin' important we should have blasted the flippin' thing in the first place. 'Preservin' a national monument'. I sometimes wonder if they've got their heads screwed on right. Project: SILVERWOLF. Section 1: "Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". Chapter 2: Gateway. ENDS. Project: SILVERWOLF. Section 1: Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". Chapter 3: Home. Scene: A clearing in a forest. At the centre, two large standing stones. They look like the two which have just been blasted. They are. Daylight. One second the black shadows of midnight. Next second, broad noon daylight. Petra stumbles out from between the stones, her eyes dazzled by daylight. It's been a strange night, but nothing in the world could compare to this for strangeness. Before her stand the three from the churchyard. She falls at their feet, off-balance from the soldier's push. The soldier comes up behind her. It's been a strange night, but it looks like being a stranger day. A hundred emotions teem through her soul. For some reason the one that comes uppermost is anger. She's on her feet. "Who do you think you're shoving, soldier? Who are you anyway?" For a moment the soldier seems to swim before her eyes, like a reflection on rippled water. And in his place stands the policeman. "Surely you remember me, miss," he says. "Leave thy tricks, Imp," cries the windchild. "Is she not bedazzled enough already?" The policeman shimmers, and there stands a little child. A tiny golden haired wisp of a child with sharp features, a turned-up nose, and pointed ears. "There, there, no tricks soever, ma'am. I'm myself again, or so much of a self as I have. Let her remember my loving-kindness the next time she threats to tie me in a tree by my tail." "Enough of this." The Leader speaks. "Time is still short. Silverwolf, you have answered my questions, now I shall answer yours. All that you desire to ask. But first we must quit this place. We are lucky that there was no ambush awaiting us. Let us pray that our arrival has been unobserved. Thunder, the horses." "Here, Ma'am," Thunder, who had disappeared into the wood, returns leading four horses. "But..." Petra interjects. "Briefly, then," the Leader replies. "The Imp, as must be obvious, is a shape-shifter. We are in a forest a few miles outside Rayapurh, and we may well be in very grave danger. That must satisfy you for the present. We must ride and ride hard." "But I've never ridden a horse in my life." The Leader smiled. "That all depends on which life you mean. Just mount up and I think you will find that you can ride very well. But hurry. Every moment increases the chances of the wrong eyes becoming aware that we have arrived." --- Scene: A dark room with dark, heavy furniture. In a heavy oaken chair sits a man of enormous bulk and power. His name is Fear. He has a black bears and thick, sensuous lips. Before him stands an old man with stooped shoulders and furtive eyes. He is a man-witch. He speaks. "They have arrived." "What!" "Everything went awry. They arrived much sooner than expected. They were to explain everything to the child before they brought her. Give her time to decide. It should have taken at least an hour. Apparently they were ambushed by troops and had to leave suddenly." "Ambushed by troops! Five thousand years hence! How could they know? Why should they care?" "It is a mystery, Lord Fear. It evades all my calculations." "I should have your head for this. Why did we not destroy the stones while they were gone and leave them trapped in the Dark Age?" "You know that we dared not do that, Lord Fear." "If I had known of this I should have dared." "Is it so grave a matter, Lord Fear? I have seen the girl. She is little more than a child." "Greyface, you are a fool. With the single excpetion of Rhianne, Silverwolf is almost certainly the most dangerous maid in these islands." --- Scene: A great lake at the edge of the forest. Petra: "Britain. We're in Britain." The Leader: "England to be exact. Or Abolan as it is called in these days. What did you imagine? The stones cannot walk. They will stand in exactly the same place for the next five thousand years, until the night they are destroyed. The night we have just left." Thunder: And the curse of the stones... the curse upon the sovereign powers of these islands if they are destroyed?" Leader: "Presumably it will come into effect. But that is a long time from now. It need hardly trouble us. Let us dismount." They do so, and the Leader takes off her trenchcoat. Beneath it she wears a long black dress of a velvet material with a silver belt and silver pendant. She places a little black cap, studded with jewels, upon her head. The others remove their modern clothes too. They are dressed in shorter dresses with leather belts and daggers. Tall leather boots. About their heads they tie long bandanas, knotted at the back and trailing down. "Dispose of these," says the Leader, indicating the clothes they have shed. Thunder ties the clothes in a tight bundle, her powerful hands compressing them into a surprisingly small, dense package. With a graceful swing of her arm, she sends it soaring hundreds of yards into the centre of the lake where it sinks without trace. Petra watches her. Her body, her movements are beautifully elegant. Stripped of the combat jacket, it is clear that she is in no way bulky. She is a well-proportioned maid, with the body of an athlete. She is simply constructed on a larger scale. It is also clear that her strength is far more than proportional to her size. Leader: "Perhaps it is time we introduced ourselves – or rather reintroduced ourselves. You, of course, are the Princess Mayanna, known to friend and foe alike as Silverwolf. I am Rayanna, the leader of this little troop. Clothed in brown is Teressa. She is more commonly known as Thunder, for she is as steadfast as the thunder-tree, the oak, and as mighty as the thunderbolt itself. "The windchild, Vitrina, is your dearest friend. I hope you will learn soon to remember her, even if remember not the rest of us. Her clothing is blue in significance of the wind, for it is said that she can outrace the wind in her speed, and her attack is like the tornado. They call her Whirlwind." Imp: "Might you not be forgetting somebody, ma'am?" Rayanna: "Is it likely that I would forget you? This is Uisce, whose form flows like water, who has not true form of its own. As you see, it dresses in green. It is not of our troop, for it is not human; but it seems to have attached itself to us. We call it the Imp." Imp: "You'll hate me. We were worst enemies." Petra: "I don't think so. I think I like you... when you're not pushing me around." Imp: "Me push you around. There's a turnaround." Petra: "You only manhandled me when you – er – were that soldier... you only did it to save me from getting hit by a stray buller, didn't you?" Rayana: "It wouldn't have been a stray bullet, child. Their mission was to kill you. They weren't interested in us. That is why we were unable to leave you a choice whether to stay or to come. But now that we are here, the position will be the same [?]. It is you that are in the most immediate danger. You that will be the target." Petra: "Oh, gosh. Well, at least we won't be facing guns and bombs here." Rayanna: "The history they teach in your time is very limited. It is controlled by knaves with the purpose of making a world of slaves. They do not know much, but the powers that control the world you have come from conceal all but a fraction of what they do know. You believe that you have come into a simpler, less "advanced" world. But you have come into a world where there are things far more powerful – far more terrible than guns and bombs." --- Scene: Lord Fear's chamber. The magician has left. A warrior enters, clad in leather armour. Warrior: "Heil, Milord." Fear: "Heil, warrior. We know the approximate whereabouts of Silverwolf. She is travelling with a very small company, but they are among the deadliest in Abalon. We shall despatch the Swarm to destroy them." Warrior: "The Swarm! Forgive me, Lord, but is that not akin to taking a battering ram to crush a fly?" Fear: "It is. Through our errors they have come too far already. We dare not risk any further failure. See to it." Project: SILVERWOLF Section 1: "Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot". ENDS: Chapter 3: Home. ENDS. --- Next: THE SWARM. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Silverwolf Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f5b976feaa80faab5b419fcfaeb4b11b.pdf ca7df1a73009173d572fdd8056d7d7d3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (2pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document THE SONGS OF THE WOOD-MAIDEN In those days when the Goddess was worshipped across the face of all the earth, there was a maid who lived alone in a hut of sprouting willows in the deep woods. And there she tended the wild beasts and healed their wounds with her herbal potions and gentle care. She especially loved those animals that had lost their mothers, and said that the Goddess had made her their protector. All the beasts and birds of the wood were without fear in her company, and there were those who claimed to have heard her talk and sing to the beasts in a strange language unlike any of the tongues of the earth. Her gay and carefree spirit won her many friends from the nearby city, who often brought her gifts and stayed to eat with her and hear her singing. For her voice was a rare wonder in those days, sweet and clear. And one day towards the middle of summer, several of these friends were gathered at the Wood-Maiden's home. And they called on her to sing their favourite song, which told of her childhood. And so she sang of her early life in the city and of her mother's death which had stricken her dumb and filled her with terror so that she ran blindly into the woods. She sang of her ceaseless weeping and of her prayers to our Lady, and of how the Goddess had led her to a young fawn whimpering beside its mother's corpse, so that she forgot her own sorrow in comforting and caring for the little one. And finally she told how our Lady had restored her voice and increased its beauty so that never a day passed when she failed to raise it in songs of praise and thanks to Her. And after this her friends spoke of fears of famine in the city. The uninhabited grassland and forest further inland had suffered badly from the drought so that the birds had flown toward the city to look for food. Usually the people did not mind the birds taking some of the grain, but this time they feared that the fields would be stripped. "And what is being planned?" asked the Wood-Maiden. But her friends were silent, and she guessed that there were some urging that the birds should be destroyed. This so worried the Wood-Maiden that she went into the city to find out if it was true that they would kill our Lady's creatures. And she found the people so stricken with fear that they saw no other course. So she prayed to the Goddess for guidance. Then she went into the fields, black with birds, and began to sing in a high and piercing tone so that the birds flocked to her, and the people covered their ears. For the space of three hours the maid sang, and then the birds rose in a flock and flew toward the mountains. The Wood-Maiden told the people that the birds were going to a safe place. But she would say no more, and ran away to the woods as soon as she could, for the found the thanks of the people embarrassing. About a year after this, some of the maiden's friends visited her in great distress. Some ambassadors had come from another city, famed for its philosophers, who had laughed at the people's devotions to the Goddess. For, they said, She did not care for earthly creatures who were beneath Her contempt. And they said that She had a consort and a son whom She loved greatly, but She did not love the people, nor consider them Her children. And the maid's friends told her that the people believed this and had abandoned all their devotion. The Wood-Maiden thought it at first mere foolishness, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought it wrong and wicked. "But it is nonsense!" she cried, "for She created us and is our Mother, and no mother would neglect any of her children. We have only to look at this beautiful world to know it is a gift from Her. And She loves us all equally, as a perfect mother will not favour any of her children. Even we know that it is wrong, although we sometimes do it." And the maid went once more into the city and said these things. But the people would not hear her arguments, thinking the philosophers must know better than a simple maid from the woods. And she was perplexed. And as she was leaving, she saw a child throwing stones at a dog that he had tethered to a tree. She took hold of the child and shook him, saying: "How can you do that to one of our Lady's creatures?" But he said: "If She doesn't care about us because we're lower than Her, why should we care about animals?" And he ran away. The Wood-Maiden wept, and took refuge in the temple, which was now quite cold and empty, praying for the Goddess' aid. She rose next morning very early with joy in her heart, for the Goddess had spoken to her in a dream. She sang softly and thrillingly until the city was filled with her singing. Some of the older people stirred restlessly, but on the children woke, and were compelled to run to her. She told them that she would take them to a beautiful garden, and bade the older children fetch the babies. When the people awoke to find their children missing, they were frantic with worry. And it was not until the next day that the Wood-Maiden returned to the city. They begged her to tell them where their children were, but she refused, saying only that they were safe and happy. She told them they were not fit to raise children if they could tell them nonsense that made them cruel and wicked. After much persuasion she seemed to relent, and said she would return some of the children, but only those who were favourites and worthy of love. But the people protested, saying they loved all their children and wanted them all back, even those who were naughty and rebellious. And the Wood-Maiden laughed and said: "And can you not see that your Mother in Heaven loves you all? And that She has not picked out two of Her creatures to be with while she neglects the others? Believe that and I will return your children." And the people thought and saw that the maid was right after all, and this was not only because they missed their children but rather because their own hearts had been saddened to think the Goddess did not love them; and they now realised that it was a foolish notion. So the Wood-Maiden brought back the children, who were happy and excited and talked of the beautiful country they had visited. And some thought the Wood-Maiden must have sent the birds there because there had been so many. And about this time the ambassadors came again and said the philosophers had changed their minds and discovered why the Goddess loves us. But the people only laughed at them. And they never listened to philosophers again, but only to their own hearts. * First published in The Coming Age No. 3. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Songs of the Wood-Maiden Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/c001e09e95a1c35fc8a32a9f24361059.pdf 40839abbc5ef60f47e7c35073efa38a2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (5pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document VIVISECTION AND ABSOLUTE VALUES I should like to describe two pieces of specialised laboratory apparatus. The first is called the Blalock Press. Its purpose is to produce experimental shock in dogs by crushing the limbs without breaking the bones. The hind legs are clamped into the press which exerts a pressure of up to 5,000 pounds per square inch. After some hours the flesh is reduced to a pulp while the bones remain whole. One group of researchers crushed four hundred dogs by this method. Most died in extreme pain within five to twelve hours. None was given any sedation. The second machine is the Noble-Collip drum. It is designed to produce traumatic shock in guinea-pigs, hamsters and other small animals. They are placed in the drum with feet taped together, unanaesthetised; the drum is then turned by an electric motor. The interior is then fitted with small projections, so that at each revolution the animal is carried to the top of the drum and dropped. In one experiment, the animals were "drummed" to death, observations being taken at every hundred revolutions. Injuries included fractured skulls, bruised livers and engorgement of the bowels, lungs, kidneys and stomach. The term "to drum" in this sense has passed into the language of biomedical research. Each of these machines is an expensive and sophisticated piece of equipment. No department is likely to invest in one unless it is to be used extensively over a period of years. They are not the only devices of the sort, nor even the worst, but they do serve to indicate the nature of the cold matter-of-fact atrocities which are performed every day by scientists who in private life are, for the most part ordinary, kindly, respectable people. Nor is there any reason for such experiments to stop at animals. Most of us have heard accounts of the hideous medical experiments practised on human beings under the Nazi regime. What is usually comfortably overlooked is that the practitioners were not, for the most part, sadists, neither were they politically motivated. Most of them had held eminent medical positions long before the National Socialists came to power. They justified their conduct by exactly the same arguements as the vivisectionists; the suffering of a few experimental victims was far outweighed by the widespread relief of suffering which could be brought about by the medical discoveries which resulted. Logically the argument is incontestable. There is no reason to suppose it will not prevail in the future – particularly under political systems where the collective is valued above the individual. There is no reason to suppose it does not prevail at present in some places. The cozy myth that the Nazis were the only really wicked people to walk the earth (at least in our enlightened century!) is largely due to the fact that there were powerful vested interests in exposing the crimes of that regime, whereas in most cases the powerful interests lay on the side of keeping them hushed up. What guarantee can we have against a future of unparalleled cruelty? At the moment there are residual feelings of respect for the human being which prevent brutality from becoming public policy; but why should we expect them to last? There was a time when public opinion would have revolted against vivisection or the battery system, but it has been moulded into shape by propaganda and the bogus "authority" of science. There is no absolute morality. Any atrocity can be justified by sophisticated arguements [sic] and sentimental appeals to "the greater good". There is only one defence against evil, and that is an absolute standard which can state that evil is evil; not merely on the shifting grounds of human sentiment, but according to an eternal and Divine law. A society which sees nothing beyond the physical world will always be brutal. It can torture without compunction, because it fears no higher justice beyond this world. Because it sees nothing beyond this life it will scrabble in the slime of depraved cruelty in order to find ways of prolonging that life for a few more miserable years. Blind to all but the grosses physical effects, it does not see that the massive practice of cruelty (100,000 animals per week die in experiments in this country alone, 85% of which are conducted without anaesthetic at any stage) is releasing a spiritual poison which must pervade the psychic atmosphere at every level; and that the seed of cruetly, once sown, must sooner or later spawn a hideous harvest. Once we can see beyond this world, we can begin to face the hard realities of life: that human life, at the best of times, is short. That no human life is ever "saved", only prolonged a little; and that what happens to a person beyond this life is a direct result of the way she acts while she is in it. Once we realise this, we will know that it is not the length or quantity of life that is important, but the depth or quality. Seeing life in its true perspective, we will give up the abject and cowardly dictum that "no price is too high for saving lives", and realise that dragging our souls into the mire of cruelty is one example of a price that is far too high. Life has a purpose; a spiritual purpose that lies far beyond this earthly life itself. The fanatical passion for preserving life for its own sake at whatever costs comes from forgetting this. And so long as it is forgotten, we can expect to live in a society which is ultimately prepared to perpetrate any kind of cruelty in the name of "practical" necessities of life, or even in the name of luxuries and pleasures which have become the only goal of profane life. It is true that cruelties have been perpetrated in the name of religion; but it is also true that religion has been degenerating into materialism for a great many centuries. The world's original religion was purely spiritual; God revealed Herself in feminine form and the whole way of life (for it was far more than just a "religion" in the limited modern sense) was imbued with the qualities of love and compassion for all creatures. With masculine religion and the supplanting of the old priestess-queens by warrior kings, the slide into materialism became inevitable, as did the orgy of cruelty which has dogged patriarchy from the Roman (often lit by human torches), through the Inquisition, to the present. Archeological records show matriarchal societies which lasted for thousands of years, vegetarian, ruled by priestess-queens and pervaded by the love and worship of God the Mother. Millenia passed without war or violence. Three things made this possible: divine love, a knowledge of immanent justice ("I can do no harm to another creature which will not rebound on my own head in the fullness of time"); and an understanding of absolute values, far beyond the slippery arguments of human convenience. For a Madrian, ancient or modern, there can be no quibbles about whether a particular factory farming technique is cruel or not: to treat animals in such a way is out of Harmony, against nature, "anathemis" [athamic]. Divine Law is absolute, and no human sophistries can weigh against it. This is the only guarantee against evil. Once morality becomes a merely relative matter, an atrocity is possible and most are probable. The immense prestige of the "science" which perpetrates these evils is directly due to the ignorance of the real nature of things. The ultimate truth about the material universe lies in its spiritual meaning and purpose. When we have lost this metaphysical knowledge we are all to[o] ready to take merely physical descriptions of the mechanics of the universe as a substitute for Absolute Truth. The scientist-materialist word-view in turn reinforces the error that the physical world is all there is, that there is no super-material justice, that life must be preserved at all costs, etc. It is a vicious circle. The only way to break it is by a return to the primordial Truth. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vivisection and Absolute Values Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/07cbac08c0ba7766ad91405dc39b7344.pdf 8682bbb7d382ad4dac6e41170ce00d45 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (11pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Madrian Literature Circle The Mountain [Story] Once upon a time, there were three sisters who lived with their mother and father in a little cottage at the foot of a high mountain. [hand drawn illustration] Their names were Cora, Dora and Flora. Cora was the eldest, and she was as beautiful as a butterfly in a summer meadow; Dora was the middle in age, and she was as beautiful as a swan on a calm blue lake; and Flora was the youngest, and she was as beautiful as a perfect red rose, jewelled with the dew of the early morn. Now, when Cora was fourteen years of age, and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother and said: "Mother dear, I am fourteen years old and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron, and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother was sad, and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for folk say that there is an old hag who lives up there all alone, all crazed with evil and loneliness, and that she kills any who go up the mountain, and sucks the marrow from their bones." Cora was frightened when she heard this and went away. But the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day, and the next, until her mother sadly and with a heavy heart did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Cora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a golden chain from which hung a little golden rose. Cora said farewell to her father and her sisters and set off to climb the steep, winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Cora came to a place where the narrow path became wider and more level, and where a little stream dropped from the mountain to run into a dark, rocky pool. But as she put her hand towards the water, she heard a harsh voice behind her saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" Cora turned round and saw the ugliest, crookedest old hag that she had ever seen. Her hair was grey and hung over her face like rope from a sunken ship; her hands and feet were filthy beyond description; and her nose was exactly the right size and shape for taking the cork out of a wine bottle. Cora was terrified and stammered that she meant no harm, but was very thirsty and craved some water from the pool. "Well," said the beldame, "if it's water you want, drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Cora thought this a mean way to treat a traveller, but as the last drop of water was some three miles down the path, she drank her fill and, taking more water in the bucket the old woman pointed out to her, she followed her new mistress to a tiny but very dirty hut, which was built squarely across the path which led to the top of the mountain. Now, the hut may have been small, but it was more than a few years since it had seen water and a scrubbing brush, and Cora saw that she would have her work cut out to clean it in a day and a night. Still, she set to her task with no very good grace, and scrubbed and rubbed and polished until her back ached, and her arms and legs were stiff and as heavy as marble. She was still no more than half done, when she heard a little voice above her head: "Little Mistress, Little Mistress," it said, "of your kindness please give me a sip of clean water." Cora looked up: there, hanging from the rafter was a [a] cage, and in the cage was a small, bedraggled lark. [hand drawn illustration] "Please, Little Mistress," she pleaded "a mouthful of clean water." Cora looked about her, but the only water in the hut lay in her bucket, and that was so black that had she had a pen she could have written with it. The only way she could bring clean water to the little bird was by fetching it from the pool, and that would mean that she would not finish her cleaning before night fell again, so she said to the bird, not unkindly, "You must wait, Little Sister, until I have finished my work, and then I will bring you all the water you need." The bird sighed deeply but said nothing more, and when Cora next looked up, it seemed to her that the bird and her cage were smaller than they had been before. At last the work was finished, and the hut was so clean that it sparkled in the sunlight. Cora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag and poured the dirty water away outside the door. Then she remembered the thirsty lark, and looked up into the rafters, but neither of the bird nor of the cage was there any sign. Cora went out to where the old woman lay sleeping under a tree, and, not daring to waken her, or to try to find a way around the hut to the upward path, she fled down the mountain and back to her mother's cottage. And before many years she took the son of the woodcutter for her husband, and they did live together until they both died. Now, although she loved her dearly, Dora had always thought that her elder sister had shown too little spirit in her encounter with the old woman of the mountain. And when she in her turn was fourteen years old and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother, and said, "Mother dear, I am fourteen years old and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, and yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother was sad, and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for folk say that the old hag who lives up there all alone and crazed with evil and loneliness, kills any who go up the mountain, and sucks the marrow from their bones." And Dora went away, but the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day and the next, until sadly and with a heavy heart did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Dora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a silvern chain from which hung a little silvern rose. Dora said farewell to her father and her sisters and set off to climb the winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Dora came to the place where lay the dark, rocky pool, and she stopped to drink. But as she put her hand towards the water, she heard the harsh voice saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" There behind her was the aged beldame with the corkscrew nose, looking even dirtier and uglier than she had before. Dora was made of sterner stuff than her sister, but even she was frightened by the sudden appearance of this horrible hag. But she gathered her wits about her and asked the harridan for a little drink of water to quench her thirst. "Well," said the old woman, "if it's water you want you can drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Dora accepted this bargain as gracefully as she could. She drank her fill and, taking more water in the old woman's bucket, she followed her new mistress to her tiny hut which lay across the path to the summit. Now, you would not have thought that that hut had been cleaned within the last twenty years, and Dora saw that it would be more than a day and a night that she would spend cleaning it. But she set to her task with determination, and scrubbed and rubbed and polished until her back ached, and her arms and legs were as heavy as marble. She was still no more than half done when she heard a little voice above her head: "Little Mistress, Little Mistress," it said, "Of your kindness, please give me a sip of clean water." Dora looked up, and there, hanging from the rafter, was the cage with the small, bedraggled lark. "Please, Little Mistress," she pleaded "a mouthful of clean water." Dora looked all about her, but the only water in the hut was that which lay in her bucket, and that was so black that that she could have blacked her shoes with it. The only way she could bring clean water to the little bird was by fetching it from the well, [pool] and that would mean that she would not finish her work before night fell again. But she remembered how thirsty she had been when she reached the pool, and sighing to herself, she took down a cup from the shelf, filled it at the pond, and brought it back to the caged bird. She held the brimming cup against the bars of the cage, and the little lark dipped her beak gratefully into the cool, clear water. To Dora's amazement, as the bird drank, her feathers became more glossy, and she seemed to grow larger and handsomer; even her cage was bigger. Dora listened entranced as the lark began to sing of the eastern lands beyond the mountain, but, too soon, they heard the old woman stirring in her sleep beneath the tree. The lark ceased to sing but whispered in Dora's ear, "You must return to your work, Little Mistress, or the old woman will be angry; but beware, for she will not want you to leave when the work is done." "Oh, Little Sister, what shall I do?" sobbed Dora, "I want to climb to the top of the mountain, and, even if I escape from the old woman, her hut blocks the path to the summit." "Listen carefully and do as I say, Little Sister," said the bird, "On the night of the day which belongs to no year, this hut spins around like a wheel, and it is possible to leap out of the door onto the upward path. But the old woman is sworn to destroy any who try to make that leap, so before you can attempt it, you must wait until she falls asleep, [hand drawn illustration] then take the hatchet and chop her head right off." [hand drawn illustration] Dora was horrified and she cried, "Little Sister, that would be a shameful thing, to murder an old woman in her sleep, however foul she be." But the bird bade her be silent, saying, "Do not say so, Little Mistress, for in truth the old woman was never maid nor mistress, but a serpent in human form. Do you as I advise, and you shall come safe to the top of the mountain; but take care to chop off her head with one blow, for you will never have the chance to strike a second time." So Dora went back to her work, and by the time the old woman came into the hut it was so clean that it sparkled in the sunlight. Dora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag, and pour the du[i]rty water outside the door. The old woman was surprised to find Dora still in the hut, but she summoned from her cunning mouth the most ingratiating words that she could find: "You must be tired, maid, for you have worked so hard. Lie down, sweetling, on this bed and rest yourself." Dora did as the woman said, and the ancient crone flung herself down on a pile of rushes and was soon sound asleep. Now this was the night of the day which belongs to no year, and the old woman was no sooner asleep than the hut began to spin like a wheel; slowly at first, then faster and faster. Dora rose cautiously from her bed and crept to the chimney corner where the hatchet lay. Then she walked on tiptoe to the place where the old woman slept. She raised her arm and brought the hatchet down on the hag's skinny neck. But at the last moment her heart misgave her, and the blow landed on the mound of rushes. The hag awoke with a shriek. Dora, in panic, fled to the door of the hut and, without a thought for the spinning, leapt through. But at that moment, the door opened not unto the upward path, nor even onto the downward one. Below Dora's feet, the ground fell away five thousand feet to the crags which loomed over her mother's cottage; and there the corpse of the maid came to rest. There now remained to the aging parents only the youngest daughter, Flora, and on her they poured out all their love, for she was a gentle as the fawn and as wise as the subtle serpent. But when Flora was fourteen years old, and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother, and said, "Mother dear, I am fourteen years of age and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, and yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron, and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother wept and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for I fear that the old hag who lives up there, all alone and crazed with evil and loneliness, killed your sister and will kill you too, and sucks the marrow from your bones." And Flora went away, but the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day, and the next, until her mother sadly and with a heavy heart, did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Flora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a necklace of crystal beads, each one carved into the shape of a perfect rose. Flora said farewell to her father and set off to climb the steep, winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Flora came to the place where lay the dark, rocky pool, and she stopped to drink. But as she put out her hand towards the water, she heard a harsh voice saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" There behind her was the crone with the corkscrew nose, looking fouler than she had before. But Flora kept her wits about her and replied courteously: "Mistress, I ask your pardon if I am trespassing, but, of your kindness, please let me drink from your pool." "Well," said the crone, "if it's water you want, drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Flora agreed wholeheartedly to this bargain and, after drinking her fill, followed her new mistress to her tiny hut which lay across the path to the summit. Well, you may not believe it, but that hut looked as if it had not been cleaned since the day it was built, and Flora saw that it would be more than a day and a night that she would spend cleaning it. But as soon as the old woman had gone to lie under her tree, Flora noticed the cage hanging from the rafter and the little, bedraggled lark which was asleep inside it. "Oh, Little Sister," she said, "Your water bowl is quite empty. Let me bring you clean water from the pool." So saying, she took down a cup from the shelf, washed it in the clean water in the bucket and ran down to the pool to fill it. Then she hurried back to the hut, without spilling a drop, and held it against the bars of the cage so that the thirsty bird could drink. To Flora's amazement, as the lark drank, her feathers became more glossy, and she seemed to grow larger and handsomer; even her cage was bigger. She began to sing of the eastern lands beyond the mountain, until she heard the old woman stirring in her sleep beneath the tree. The lark ceased to sing but whispered in Flora's ear, "You must begin your work, Little Mistress, or the old woman will be angry and beat you, but beware, for when you have finished, she will not want you to leave." "Little Sister, give me your advice," said Flora, "How can I reach the top of the mountain when this hut blocks the way? I would gladly serve the old woman for seven years, if I could only hope the find the path to the summit." "Listen carefully and do as I say, Little Mistress," said the bird. "It is not by serving the old woman that you will find your way to the top, for she is sworn to prevent any from reaching the summit. But on the night of the day which belongs to no year, this hut spins around like a wheel, and it is possible to leap out of the door onto the upward path. But, before you can do that, you must wait until the old woman falls asleep, than take the hatchet and chop her head right off." Flora was horrified and she cried, "Little Sister, for shame. I cannot murder an old woman in her sleep, however foul she be!" But the bird bid her be silent, saying, "Do not say so, Little Mistress, for the crone would destroy you. In truth, she was never maid nor mistress, but a serpent in human form. Do as I advise, and you will come safe to the top of the mountain; but take care to chop off her head with one blow, for you will never have the chance to strike a second time." So Flora began to clean the hut. And she scrubbed and rubbed and polished, and all the time she pondered on the words of the lark; and she prayed for help to make the right choice. In less time than seemed possible, the hut gleamed like a new pin, and Flora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag, and poured away the dirty water outside the door. When the old woman came back to the hut, she was surprised to find Flora still there, but she summoned from her cunning mouth the most ingratiating words. "You must be tired, maid, for you have worked so hard. Lie down, sweetling, on this bed and rest yourself." But though her words were honeyed, Flora looked into her eyes and saw that they were the lidless eyes of a snake, and she determined to do exactly as the lark had told her. She lay on the bed and the old woman flung herself upon the pile of rushes and was soon sound asleep. Now this was the night of the day which belongs to no year, and the old woman was no sooner asleep than the hut began to spin like a wheel; slowly at first, then faster and faster. Flora rose cautiously from her bed and crept to the chimney corner where the hatchet lay. Then she walked on tip-toe to the place where the old woman slept. She raised her arm and brought the hatchet down on the hag's skinny neck. And her stroke was straight and true, and the old crone's ugly head was riven from her malformed body. As the blow fell, the cage door sprung open and the lark flew free with a glorious song of praise to the Mother of All Things. And as she sand, her form changed to that of a beautiful maiden shining like the sun and dressed in a robe of dazzling white. Flora was filled with wonder. "Who are you, maiden?" she asked. "I am the one who lay in thrall to the snake but whom your courage has freed," replied the maid. "Go now towards the summit, for the path is at your feet. I will come with you." Flora realised that the hut was no longer spinning, but the door opened upon the upward path. The two maids climbed it with light hearts and light feet, until they reached the summit. There, below them, the fair, shining lands of the east were spread. Despite the distance, they could see the folk working in the fields and the fair houses and noble temples of the towns as clearly as if they stood among them, [hand drawn illustration] and Flora heard the singing of the temple maidens rising to greet the dawn. At last, the lark-maiden said: "Go now, sister. Return to your own folk. But remember what you have seen and heard, and some day you will return to walk in that fair land." So Flora took her leave of her sister, and returned to her mother's cottage, to the great joy of her parents. And in later years she became a great teacher and was beloved of all her pupils, who saw through her the beauty of the eastern lands, until at last she returned, as the lark-maiden had promised, to walk in that fair country, to her heart's content. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Mountain Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f625c9622034dc6fd49b07b773803217.pdf 70e75196cdb79d970468c46d5678f3fc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (7pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document How the Light Came to the Terrible Forest Once upon a time, when the sun and the moon were young, and the world still remembered the great darkness before the lights were set in the sky, there was a vast forest, set in the marshes beside a wide, black river. I cannot begin to tell you what a horrible place it was. Try to imagine a thick tangle of twisted trees, whose roots rose up in the middle of the pathways to catch your feet, and whose brances and dripping leaves met overhead to stop any light from reaching the ground. Between the trees grew long brambles, with thorns like darning needles, and never a trace of sweet blackberry. Long creepers hung from the treetops, with stems like stinging nettles and burrs which clung to anyone who passed underneath. The ground was thick sticky mud, more than five feet deep in places, and even on the paths it would come up to your ankles; and, under the mud, leeches lay in wait to fasten themselves between your toes and drink your blood. Try to imagine it; but the forest was a hundred times worse than anything you can think of. For in the forest lived all the bad, wicked creatures who hated the light: the dragons and the werewolves; the ghouls and the night hags; the goblins and the big, black spiders; and, most terrible of all, the Dark Queen, who had the face of a huge snake and spat poison into the eyes of those she hated. She hated everything that lived in the light and made terrible plans to destroy the children of the earth, who loved to sing and dance under the sun and the moon. But she could not attack them openly, because she and all the creatures of the darkness were afraid of the light and dared not travel out of the wood. Sometimes travellers who came near to the dark forest wandered into the shadow of the trees, because the paths were wide and dry near the edges, and were gay with brightly coloured flowers and scarlett [sic] butterflies. But those who tried to take a shortcut through the forest were soon hopelessly lost, and ran shouting through the brambles, weaving in and out of the curtains of creepers. The wicked creatures of the forest always gathered in the trees around a lost traveller, laughing and jeering and, sometimes, offering to lead the way to the edge of the trees. But anyone who followed such a guide was soon wading through thick mud, and many found themselves sinking up to their necks in the marsh, while the goblin – it was usually a goblin who played this trick – shrieked with laughter in a nearby tree. Now, every night, the Moon Princess passed over this awful forest, and she was sad when she saw that many of the children of the earth, whom she loved dearly, were lost under the trees in the black darkness. She decided that she would bring her silver light into the shadows to comfort them and lead them back to the bright lands beyond the woods. So, one night, when the moon was full, the Moon Princess came down to the earth as the sun was rising and walked into the dark forest, by the path lined with purple flowers, that so many of the children of earth had taken. As she walked under the trees, her soft, silver light shone for the first time in that place, and the travellers who saw it were filled with hope; but the wicked night creatures hated and feared her. Yet they were glad that the Moon Princess had come into the forest, because they thought that they could trap her in the thickest part, so that the moon would not shine upon the earth, and the Dark Queen could attack the children of earth when the sun had set. A small group of the boldest goblins moved before her, hidden by the thick screen of creepers, making the path plainer so that she could reach the black heart of the forest more quickly. At last, she came to a place where the trees grew so close together and the brambles were so thick, that she could go no further, and the creepers formed a blanket around her so that her light could not be seen. When she stopped, the thick creepers wound themselves around her arms and legs and held her so tightly that she could not move or free herself. Then the Dark Queen came and stood before her and laughed to see her hanging among twisted creepers; and she said, "You fool, to come into my forest! Now you will be my prisoner, and you will hang there until I decide to kill you with my poison. But first, my armies will destroy the children of the earth, when the darkness falls." When she had spoken, her daughters and the other wicked creatures surrounded the Moon Princess, pressing close about her, and tying her arms and legs even tighter with thin, spiney brambles and the fierce, stinging creepers. They boasted of how they would kill the children of earth when night fell, except for those few who would live forever as slaves in the Dark Queen's fortress. The Moon Princess did not cry, or plead for mercy, but hung from the trees for a day and a night, and her light died. At evening time, the sun set, and the children of earth were very surprised when the moon did not rise as usual. They gathered together in small groups, looking towards the east, and asking each other if it was not the time of the full moon. But they knew that something was terribly wrong; and, when they heard the stirings in the dark forest and realised that its wicked creatures were ready to attack them, they were afraid. Some hid in their houses and whimpered with fear; some collected stones and kitchen knives and ran about to all their neighbours, shouting to keep up their courage; and those who loved the Moon Princess best wept for her, for they thought that she was lost for ever. Then the Mother of the Moon Princess, the Star-Blazing Queen, heard the cries of the children of earth, and saw that her daughter was a prisoner in the dark forest. She came at once to the earth, and as she came near, the children of earth hid their faces and did not dare to look at her; because, although she loved them, they now lived far from her and they could not bear her light. The children of earth could not even look directly at the sun, for their eyes were weak, but the Star-Blazing Queen was brighter than a thousand suns and they were afraid to see her – even those who loved her daughter's silver light. When the Star-Blazing Queen came near to the forest, the creatures who saw her fled in terror, and scattered ove the earth. The travellers threw themselves to the ground covering their eyes with their cloaks until she had passed. As she walked through the forest, the thick, sticky mud dried and became firm; the thorns and creepers shrivelled and burned up under her fiery gaze; and the trees stood for the first time tall and straight before her, for they knew that she had made them. Behind her, the fresh, green grass sprang from the newly dried soil, and the flowers of the bright wood – primroses, violets, bluebells and woodbine – opened their petals to the light. She came at last to the thicket where the Moon Princess was held prisoner. The Dark Queen did not wait to meet her, but, at the sound of her footsteps, she ran out of the forest so fast that she overtook the wind before her, and did not stop until she reached the sea at the edge of the world. The Star-Blazing Queen took her daughter into her arms, and the creepers and briars which bound her withered away, and her light shone forth again. The Moon Princess hugged her mother, and both of them cried for joy, because the Moon Princess was free and the Dark Queen and all her followers had fled. But the Star-Blazing Queen knew that her light was too bright for the children of earth, and so she rose again into the sky, leaving her daughter to light the forest and bring the lost travellers safely home. There was one creature of the night who had not run away when the Star-Blazing Queen appeared in the forest. She was the youngest daughter of the Dark Queen, and she had felt sorry for the Moon Princess when the other wicked creatures tormented her. Now she was trying to hide behind a gnarled old tree at the edge of the thicket, for she longed to come to the light but was afraid. The Moon Princess saw her, and called to her to come nearer. The daughter of the Dark Queen threw herself at the feet of the Moon Princess, wrapping her cloak about her head and trembling in every limb. The Moon Princess raised her to her feet and kissed her, and the daughter of the Dark Queen loved the Moon Princess, and forgot her wicked mother and walked in the light. The Moon Princess walked through every part of the forest, and, wherever she went, the forest became light, the paths became firm and dry, and the grass and bright flowers covered the ground beneath the singing trees. All the children of earth who were lost in the forest followed her and came at last into the bright open country under the sun. When they looked back into the woods, they saw the sunbeams playing under the branches of the trees, and wild roses blossoming in the warm sunlight. When the sun set on that day, the moon rose into her rightful place in the sky, and the children of earth danced and sang on the flower-studded grass in her silver light; but the creatures of the dark forest hid in their holes and quaked with fear. To this day, the wicked creatures cannot bear to come out into the moonlight; but if ever you see one come sneaking out on a dark and moonless night, thinking that the Moon Princess will not see it, you have only to remind it of this night when the Star-Blazing Queen came to find her daughter in the darkness, and it will run to hide itself in a deep hole and not dare to come out for a very long time. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource How the Light Came to the Terrible Forest Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/0da9516193fa07da71ab0c4d477d34ec.pdf f48fc9c1689439566acae8e0265062e6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (8pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document TEMPLES OF THE WORLD. PART ONE. The Temple is the centre of a Madrian town or village – not only physically, but symbolically. All the important events in the life of the people occur there. There they are married; there they have their children offered and see them being taught. Most important of all, it is there that their children are initiated, and so are able to receive the Sacraments; no longer children but adults. From this outline, it can be seen that a Temple is not just a place where all the good Madrians go once a week to a Rite performed by the Priestess. Let us consider what a Temple was like 12,000 years ago. The Temple was perhaps a large granite building, probably looking oblong from the outside. Its size would dominate the town. All round the front and the sides there would be a large paved area where there would be a market 2 or 3 times a week. There stallhi[o]lders would haggle with the maids and daughters that householders had sent to buy fruit, food or pots. Some of Lady of the Households could perhaps be seen, as they haggled with a carpenter-maid over the price that she was going to charge them for their new wood panel carving for the window. You might see a maid carrying a basket, and notice that people gave way to her to let her past, and reverenced her with respect. She might stop at the cloth stall, pick up some silk, and pay the price that the stall-holder first asked. From that you would know that the maid was on the errand of the Temple, and if you looked at the ring on her hand you would know that she was in fact a Lady of the Temple. That is a position which commands much authority, and the stall-holder would be honoured that she had graced her stall, and would tell her so. As you go into the Temple, you curtsey in the direction of the High Altar. Having done this, you idly cast your eyes around, and spot with delight your close friend Alcina busily chatting to Donna Chrysothemis. Donna Chrysothemis is only just married, and is very pleased with her title. You walk up to them. You may not greet them while they are talking – it is rude, but you hope to catch their eye, and you do so. They greet you warmly, and you make a small reverence to Donna Chrysothemis. After all, she is a member of your age-group and someone of whom you are very fond. You talk with them a while of the weather, and the crop and who is studying which new craft. You also tease Donna Chrysothemis about being married, and then you, rather shockingly, remind her of the young man who wanted her to marry him. This was rather amusing, as he had sent her poetry. He could not, of course, give it to her, or say directly who it was to and who it was from, for that would be immodest, but as usual there were sufficient clues. Golden Hair Webster could only refer to Donna Chrysothemis, who was the only maid with golden hair to have the craft of weaving, and the Blue Shepherd, although a little more puzzling, was decided finally to be Frickacles, who was the only shepherd who not only word blue, as three of them did, but had blue eyes to match. The poem had been delivered in the usual manner; pinned to the tree in the courtyard of the house, from whence it had been taken to the Lady of the Household, who had merely smiled and given it to the children (meaning every one) to work out who it applied to. Donna Chrysothemis had been annoyed and embarrassed, as a maid usually was, but the others had said that she should not be too hard on him; after all, he was a man, and in a way it was quite sweet. Donna Chrysothemis tries to look disapprovingly at you, but cannot contain the laughter that the reminder causes. The three of you recover, and then walk down the side of the Temple. As you pass one of the groups of people who are seated on the floor on mats, with the Ranya of the group seated in a large chair, you hear the words that you heard only this morning, but this time they are not directed at you, but by a different Ranya at a different child. The maid who is standing disconsolately, with hanging head is a maid of about 17. The Ranya, you notice, has seen you, and so the three of you curtsey and are greeted with a sign signifying a blessing. As you walk on, you hear her say, "Well, Maia, my child, I do not wish for a student who does not pay attention to the words of her Ranya. So it seems then that you must speak with Mistress Sally.* In not paying attention to my words, you are not only being disrespectful to me, but to the whole line of Ranyas that stretch back in time, and upwards to Heaven. For I teach you now as a representative of the Holy line of Ranyas, not as myself. I have had to discipline you once on this subject already this week. Obviously you have not listened to Mistress Sally either. Well, you will speak again with her now. Fetch me the cane– no, I will take the Sally. Now, come over my knee." You feel very sorry for her, but you know that she deserves it – just as you had that morning. All the other children of the class are very ashamed, but they are not so afraid of pain as the modern age. A little discipline, they know, is good, and although the maid just about to be spanked with a Sally is being punished in a manner in which children often are, despite the fact that the maid is to marry in the summer, they know that for a childish offence she deserves it. As you walk on, you hear her return, completely mortified, to her place, and you know that within a few minutes her shame will have disappeared and she will be happy again. You pass a few more teaching groups; one being taught Tapestry, another drawing. One of the Ancillas is teaching some pupils a sacred poem. You curtsey to all of them as you pass. A movement and sound at the very back of the Temple catches your eye, and you see that the town dance-troupe is practising a Ritual dance-drama to perfect a movement, under the guidance of a Priestess, who herself has often taken the role of a questing soul, or Hera. This time, she is directing the Troupe, but not acting as well. Her Ancilla will play the music for them. Of course, they usually practise in secret, but they have only just started, so nobody will mind seeing them. When the moves are put together, they will only let the Priestess and her Ancilla see them try. Of course, it is no secret what the play is for. It has to be to celebrate Theia'[s] marriage to Anchises. They will perform in the same ring that the wedding will take place in afterwards. The ring will be made of flowers piled high, and will be just in front of the Rite of Sacrifice Altar. Then there will be games and singing, followed by a feast. Best of all, perhaps, that day will be a holiday for everyone every year until one of them dies. Theia and Anchises are not getting married on one of the specially propitious marriage days; that is very unusual, and there is a good reason. It is thought that her mother will not live until the next usual day, so the marriage is taking place immediately. You hope that her mother will go to Avala, happy to see her daughter married, but you are also not too unhappy at the thought of an extra days' [sic] holiday a year. As most marriages take place on a limited number of days, those days are holidays in honour of all the couples who were married then. You pass through the gated archways into the Grove proper, which is about half the size of the Grove that is used for all kinds of things. This part, which is nearest to the High Altar, is reserved for devotions and quietness only. Many shrines, large and small, lead off behind the pillars to the sides. You are approaching the Caverna wall, and as you come up to the Great Caverna Gates, the three of you make a deep curtsey to the High Altar. You look into the Caverna through the silver filligree Gates, and see the Priestess feeding the Sacred Flame. If there is a college of Priestesses attached to a Temple, the Flame will be guarded day and night, by Priestesses taking turns. Otherwise, it is fed regularly, and ceremoniously checked during the seven daily Offices, although the Selene Office (Midnight Invocation) will not always be said. Either way, it must never be allowed to go out. It is put out every year on the day of the Passion, and relit with great jubilation during the Sacrament on Resurrection dawn. You can see the Lady of the Temple moving around, preparing some altarcloths. You all say a Silver Star, and make a deep curtsey to the High Altar. As you move away from the Great Gates, you see the elder Priestesss of the two who serve the Temple. She is sitting in the Confession chair, which is situated between one corner of the caverna and the last pillar of the row. You curtsey to her, and she raises her hand in blessing. You wait until she speaks to you, greeting you kindly, and you go on to ask her how the rehearsal with the dancers went. She smiles and replies with a laugh, that they should be more circumspect than to practise in the Temple. She mentions that it has been a little while since you confessed, and motioning to your friends to walk on, she tells you to kneel. Out come your sins from their hiding places! You have been rude to your father, not paid attention to your Ranya, and committed quite a few minor sins. You feel your heart beat loudly. Although you have already been beaten quite hard for the first two sins, it would hardly be surprising if the Priestess beat you as well. Ah, but she had decided not to, that you would benefit from a stiff lecture in her study tonight when everyone is telling stories by the fire, and you are to make three full Rosaries within the next week. She purifies you, and you kneel on one knee and kiss her hand, and run off to catch up with your friends. This earns you a stiff rebuke and a warning from one of the Outer Temple Maids. If it happens again she will tell the Priestess and your mother will whip you when she knows. There are very few things you may not do in a Temple that you do elsewhere; one of them is buying and selling, and another is running races. The Outer Temple Maid also has another message – the Temple will be shut tonight from 7 of the clock to 9 of the clock, so the Priestess may make Magic in the Temple. Magic is her path, or at least one of them, and not merely to produce results. When a Priestess studies Magic, her soul moves among high spheres on her path to Our Lady. It is almost time to be home, to take some tea and cake with your mother, so the three of you move toward the big door that will be locked for two hours tonight. At the door, you turn round and make a deep reverence to the High Altar, and then move into the courtyard. As soon as you pass the prayer wheel you give it a turn and say "Hail Inanna!" Your friends do the same, and then you walk along the path that leads to your home, watching the golden sunlight play upon the cupolas that crown the roof of the Temple, thanking Her for having made so many beautiful things, such as Temples, the sun, and friends. *Mistress Sally is the usual familiar term used to describe any kind of willow branch used to keep discipline, from the little switch which stings intensely and stops in a minute, to the great Rod which is used only by a priestess. A Sally is a bunch of willow twigs tied together. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Temples of the World: Part I Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/5aa5441ca1b9571542a8a3e4e6fc976b.pdf 034d22f5094874cbed3abb6d4545d784 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (4pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document SNIPPETS Strangeness and Familiarity A masculist theologian has said truly that religion is a contact with the Holy, which is the absolutely Other. That is true, but at the same time, the Holy is also the absolutely familiar – more familiar than anything we have ever encountered in this life. The essence of this world for us is that it is unfamiliar. We cannot truly known another person, however long we live with her, however much we try – we cannot even really know ourselves. Usually we hardly notice; we are content with the outward gestures which substitute for real knowing. But every now and then, the essential alienness of the world, our absolute and irremediable isolation, engulfs us in a sudden chilling wave. Things, people, our own body, our own mind, all of these are quite other, out of reach of real communion. Only Deity is truly familiar. She is other because She shatters all the conventional gestures of familiarity. She is terrible, because She shows us these in all their meaninglessness – but She is the one thing which we really know – the one place which is truly our spiritual Home. And when we finally come to perfect union with Her, all things will have become familiar, and nothing will be other. Resurrections Life is full of resurrections. The archetype is that of our Lady: the victory of kear and evil, and the triumph of Good out of that victory. But every time we grow inward and petulant, hating a fast or a penance, and are suddenly flooded with a consciousness of the tremendous privilege of doing it for Her; every time we stray from Her in prayer and bring ourselves back to Her; every time we commit a fauly and truly repent, that is a little resurrection: the victory of kear and our triumph over that victory. Every such triumph is made possible by Her resurrection. Without that source of spiritual power, we, who have given ourselves to kear at the beginning, would have no defence against it. The process is continual, shadowed in the year, the cycle of the moon, the rise and set of every sun. But through this continual enactment of little resurrections, we bring ourselves ever closer to the absolute resolution of the one absolute Resurrection. Modern Psychology.... Psychology is the study of the human soul (Psyche). Modern psychology begins by assuming that the soul does not exist. If one begins by eliminating the supernatural, that is in one sense legitimate. I cannot complain if a chess player asks me to assume that bishops move diagonally – that is her game, and either I play it or I don't. The psychologists [sic] game is akin to the game of looking at a light bulb and saying: "Eliminating the existence of electricity, how might this work?" Many ingenious answers could no doubt be devised. ...Freud and Jung As a raconteur and wit, Freud is infinitely persuasive – and, of course, to the arid materialism of the nineteenth century her brought the revelation (not new, but as old as the hills) that there was actually something in the human mind beyond the fussy little filing clerk of the rational consciousness (but how typically Victorian to see this "beyond" as a quagmire of repressed carnality!). Herein lay his deep attraction for the starved souls of the turn-of-the-century intelligentsia. Their unconscious minds craved so strongly the bread of the Spirit that they were even grateful when Freud gave them a stone – or, more precisely, when he told them that their unconscious minds craved raw flesh. Jung is very jolly, and quite the darling of the 'esoterics'. But it does seem mighty daft to accept for no particular reason the materialist hypothesis and then trying to drag in the super-natural by the short hairs backwards (for there has never been a shred of evidence for materialism – modern society accepts it out of emotional need. If one doesn't need it, why accept it?). At these times, he seems like the chap who, when the electric light bulb game has reached the stage of suggesting that the globe is lit by a gross or so of glow-worms, suddenly pipes up "Aha! But what if the glow-worms are powered by electricity?" If materialists merely stand agog and cry "But that's cheating!" they are not being in the least unscientific. It is cheating. You can't move a bishop along ranks and files. Behind the Veil The body is a thing essentially alien to the true self; a limiting thing, subject to pain, disease and decrepit age. It is also a powerful source of illusion. How quickly we tire of the ill behaviour of an ugly and prepossessing person; and yet if a person of breathtaking beauty and enchanting manner did these same things, how easy it would be to forgive. To the spiritual perception, the soul at prayer or in even partial harmony with the Goddess is more radiantly beautiful than anything that can be seen on earth. How easy it is then for our guardian Genia [Janya] to love us in despite of all our faults. But the rejection of deity is an act more hideous than we can conceive; though limited to our material perception, we are apt to suppose the word hideous to be merely a metaphor. Could we but push aside the veil of matter, what a world of brilliant light and abysmal darkness, of dazzling beauty and dizzying horror, would meet our sense, as we saw the true spiritual colour of the most everyday moral choices and actions. Let us try to act as though we could "see" as well as know the meaning of our actions. Punishment Does our Lady punish us? Perhaps; but not after the fashion of masculist legalism: "such as been your crime, such is the punishment due, the account must be settled". When She punishes, it is an instrument of our progress. Hers is the rod of a Preceptress, uncompromising in Her standards yet infinitely patient, not of the public executioner. "Justice" is simply the nature of things: distance from the Goddess=evil=pain. But when we have come close enough to Her and have given ourselves in complete submission to Her, perhaps She may manipulate that suffering which is the inalienable condition of our particular state of fallenness in the form of precisely those punishments at precisely those times when they will do us most good. But I do not think She gives us pain. I do not think She adds to that which we must suffer. If anything (by a paradox) She lessens it. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Snippets Description An account of the resource A collection of short reflections on various topics. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/22e981b12a4537129487ecfa7e4449f2.pdf b39e8567d8ba86cf4653334e2a5cc2ab Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (54pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Amazons in Sain Arien: Part One The first thing the Amazons brought to Sain Arien was music. On that fine spring day in the month of Hera when three hundred soldiers marched down the main street, the little market town had not for many a year heard such a rousing and heart-cheering sound. Long side-drums pounded, horns hallooed and flute-pipes rilled an infectious tune from the West that seemed familiar even on its first hearing and set every foot stepping in its rhythm. The whole town had come to see them, of course, and people from the surrounding villages for several miles around, and truly they were a fine sight to be seen; banners streaming in the wind, purple, blue and gold, pennants and standards; triumphs of a dozen campaigns fought on their eastward march from the sea. Gleaming helms and breastplates in silver, leather and bronze; shields and spears, and the maids themselves; taller, for the most part, than the maids of the middle-world, and made to look taller yet by the high horsehair plumes upon their helmets. Disciplined and self-possessed, yet with an air of gaiety about them. They were the products of a rigorous training which had honed them to perfection in the practice of the martial [vikhelic] arts, yet had taught them primarily as a way of contemplation and a spiritual discipline. Nevertheless, they were not contemplatives or mystics in the true sense, they were young women fully devoted to the life of outward activity, at a peak of physical condition and alive with animal spirits. To this their spiritual training had added a calmness and control, a depth and wisdom, which was the foundation both of their courage and of their courtesy. For the Amazons were renowned for their courtesy and generosity both to the peoples of their captured nations and to their conquered enemies (who were usually foreign invaders of those nations from the barbaric patriarchal tribes of the North and East). A few cynics said that they were only trying to purchase the support of the people; but for the most part even those who could not see that their gentleness proceeded from a far deeper source found such 'purchase' considerably preferable to the methods of enforcing support which had been employed by one patriarchal army after another: killing of children, burning of homesteads, maiming of livestock, and, of course, the continual plunder of the harvests. After all, the only 'support' an army really needs from the people is their obedience, and it can easily get that without purchasing it. As one patriarchal army drove out another in those bitter years before the coming of the Amazon crusade, each one came to relieve the tyranny of the one before it and to bring new and better gods, and each was as bad as, or worse than its predecessor, or even if there was some small improvement, that was more than offset by the hardships inflicted by the war. As for the gods, they all looked remarkably like the kings who brought them, and behaved similarly also. Thus, when the rumours of the great Amazon army first reached the citizens of the middle-world, there was little rejoicing. A new army to sweep away oppression and to establish the worship of the one true God. Yes, one had heard all that many times before. Perhaps a ray of hope was kindled when it became known that this was the old Faith that had prevailed before the chaos had begun; the God of the old Temples, to whom [sic] each of the male godlings had in turn been 'married', taking Her as his 'consort'; yet ironically, this very piece of blasphemy had led to great confusion in the religious sense of the people, not least because the majority of those endowed with understanding had risen furiously and unthinkingly against it, and so had been slain many years ago. In any case, an army was an army, whatever it fought for. What could it mean, this Great Crusade, except more looting, more burning, more maiming? But as the Crusade advanced steadily through the continent, it became known that this was an army like no other army. When before had teams of soldiers rebuilt burned houses? When before had an army brought with an Order of white-robed sisters, many of whom, skilled in the medical arts, spread out into the towns and villages, healing the disease and suffering that had been spread by the wars, and teaching not some politically-motivated state religion, but a Way of inner peace? When before had land taken by previous conquerors been given back to its original owners, and the reigns [sic] of government put back into the hands of the local people, while the soldiers helped to put the devastated farmsteads back into order? Never before had these things happened, and never before had an army been garlanded with flowers by the people of a city as it marched into the main street; yet all these things became familiar occurrences as the Great Crusade carved its inexorable path eastward. From the Amazons, people learned that an army could be trusted and that a firm, sound and dependable order could arise out of chaos. And from the white-robed Innocui (meaning "The Unarmed"), the teaching and healing Order that marched with them, and were popularly known as "White Amazons", they gained a re-awakening of spiritual understanding. The babble [sic?] of religious claims and counter-claims, all motivated by political interests, was suddenly silenced by a single voice, clear, sweet and thrilling, speaking the ancient Truth known from time immemorial, and still remembered by many from their childhood: "One God alone, none other God than She." The Amazon rule was strict yet gentle. Its aim was to clean up the chaos as quickly as possible, but without undue severity. There were no widespread reprisals after an Amazon victoy. Those guilty of rape, torture or the desecration of a Temple were summarily executed. Men guilty of beating their wives, or of other acts of violence against maids, together with priestesses and other Temple officers guilty of apostasy, unless committed under extreme pressure, were publicly whipped with birch-rods. Other than this there was a general amnesty on all crimes committed during the period of non-matriarchal rule; "the time without the Law". Even these laws were administered leniently, with every consideration being given to extraordinary circumstances; and even the whippings, although certainly a salutary chastisement, were very far removed from the ingenious and long drawn-out torture practised by the various patriarchal juntas. Their whole purpose was to restore the balance and, having purified the transgressors, to allow them to return to life within the Law. "The sin being purged, let it no more be spoke of" said one Amazon edict. For the real meaning of the Great Crusade lay far deeper than the cleaning up of human chaos and tyranny. It was the re-establishment of the Divine Order and Harmony in the middle-world. For this neither vindictiveness nor retribution were necessary, but "the unmaking of knots" – the ritual cleansing of all mortal transgressions which would be a stain upon the sacred Order and a weakness in its fabric – was very much so. After this came the slow process of re-establishing the matriarchal order. This belonged largely to the White Amazons, assisted by the army in the physical task of reconstruction, and occasionally in curbing any of the menfolk who were too tenacious in their memory of patriarchal ideas. They did this as little as possible, for it was their aim to put all discipline in the hands of the homesteads and their mistresses and of the local community as a whole as quickly as possible. Their aim was not to build an empire, but simply to re-establish the Law and then to pass on, leaving the nations behind them free and independent. Thus it was a task for the teacher and the preacher rather than the soldier. Often there were other tasks also. In many areas banditry had become rife in the time without the Law, and roads outside the major cities were used only by fools and by great caravans of traders protected by armed guards; and even these latter were often attacked. In such cases it was the custom of the Amazons to issue an edict on the first new moon after their establishment in a city, declaring that all bandits who came to them before the next new moon would be granted a free pardon, honourable livelihood and dwelling; after that "upon thy haunts and thy hiding-places; upon thy ways of passage and upon thy fastnesses shall the right hand of the Law descend, and the servant thereof, like, in her wrath, to the very thunder of the heavens." These edicts nearly always went out in the name of Alana Fi'Alana; for that name was known and feared throughout the continent – Red Alana "the Hammer of the Lawless". Many of the bandits were but fugitives from patriarchy and not only gave themselves up freely enough, but quickly joined the Amazons and became the core of the native Civil Guards which the Amazons were setting up, or even joined the Crusade itself. Many of those who did not give themselves up also ended by becoming good Amazons; even patriarchal bandits often finished by swelling the ranks of the Men's Auxiliary Units. In large measure, this was due to the extraordinary personality of Red Alana. She was a strikingly handsome maid in the fourth decade of her age, despite the fact that a long vertical scar ran down the left side of her forehead and her left cheek, having missed destroying her eye by the merest whisker (the line of her eyelash still did not quite run true). The vivid red hair which had given her her name (vivid even for the western Amazons, among whom red hair was not uncommon) had, for some reason, turned prematurely white. Not from worry, certainly, for she was still as wild and devil-may-care as she had been at twenty. Her methods were unusual to say the least. It was rumoured that she tried and passed sentence upon her prisoners from horseback, and executed the sentence there and then. The High Command turned a blind eye to her eccentricities not so much because she was highly efficient in a military sense (although she was), but because of her ability to communicate with the bandits; to win over those whom the Amazons would otherwise have had to fight to the death. Many of the bandits who did not give themselves up in the first place were not very admirable characters. The worst of them would raid remote outlying homesteads and torture the inhabitants into revealing the whereabouts of their treasures – not so much life-savings as the savings of five or ten generations. When a person first inflicts torture upon another person, he (for it is nearly always a man) feels a certain reluctance, a certain drawing-back, but slowly he becomes innured to it, and finally learns to enjoy it. He becomes a true, hardened sadist. What hope is there then for his soul, emptied of all human decency? The only hope is death, which breaks what would otherwise be a vicious cycle endlessly dragging him deeper and deeper into the blackest abysses of depravity. This is one of the merciful functions of death; one of the reasons why God, in Her infinite wisdom, allowed death into the universe. Born again as a child, cut off from the past and oblivious to it, the torturer is given a fresh start, his downward plunge arrested; although nothing will be able to stop the chain of action and reaction which will bring suffering to him in the proportion to the suffering he has inflicted. For such torturers, the sword of Red Alana hastened the merciful release of death, and cut short the catalogue of crimes for which they would have to suffer. She had, as it were, a nose for those who were the really depraved souls, and often, with these despatched, a spell was broken over the others. The old reactions of human decency came quickly back to them. The manner of their leader's death often provided the psychological shock which they required. Having passed sentence of death, Alana would, without warning, spur her horse forward, draw the sword and strike off his head. Or, giving some rogue a Silver Star's start (i.e. letting him run for the time it took to say the Silver Star prayer), she would gallop after him and return in a minute or so bearing his head. If she was unjust at all, she erred on the side of lenity, but the dramatic manner in which she carried out her sentences, together with the ferocity and suddenness with which her hand-picked raiders battled and subdued the gangs, convinced them that they were confronted with someone a hundred times wilder and fiercer than their own dreaded leaders. Suddenly the bully who had held them in awe lay dead and, seinging his head by the hair, this remarkable swashbuckler, this lightning bolt of the right hand of the Law, was now giving the orders. They had thought the Amazons were 'soft', despite their conquests. They had thought the Law was starchy and colourless compared to their wild, lawless life. They did not think so now. Yet for all this, the success of the "Red Raiders" depended equally upon another personality, very different from that of Red Alana. For every thousand people that had heard the name of Red Alana, perhaps one or two had heard that of Mother Igrayne, yet, in her way, she was a person no less remarkable. Her hair was a[s] white as Alana's own, for she was between twice and thrice her age (maids lived longer in that age), and over the white robe of her Order she was wont to wear a long brown old army cloak. In her youth she had been an archer, fighting in battles long before the Great Crusade had been thought of, or would even have been thought possible. When the little Amazon settlements – mostly remote religious communities in self-imposed exile from the decadence of the late-matriarchal cities, suddenly swelled by a stream of refugees as those cities fell to the patriarchal hordes – were attack by the patriarchs, she had fought with one of the brace little makeshift armies that defended their mountain fastnesses. "The League for the Defence of New Marisia", it had been called, later it was simply The Chivalric League, and later still the Fifth Legion, still nicknamed "the Leaguers"; but nowadays, one only had to mention "the League" anywhere in the middle-world, and everybody would know what was meant. She never rose above the ranks, and sometimes joked in later years about having been an archer in a Legion whose fame rested almost wholly upon its cavalry. She was a deeply contemplative person, as archers often are; archery being one of the most contemplative of the martial [vikhelic] arts. It was not unusual for an archer to become a full contemplative in her later years. Igrayne did so much earlier than usual. The little armies and better, the spiritual training methods of the contemplative Orders refined the martial arts to perfection, and the would-be believers eventually decided that they were biting off more than they could chew. As soon as a lasting peace was established, Igrayne retired from the League, and wandered deep into the mountains as a strave – a solitary contemplative. Little is known of her life during this period, but at the age when many archers are beginning to think of retiring into contemplation, she returned, having, as she put it, "licked the rim of the cup of Enlightenment". She settled in a cave not far from New Marisia, teaching a small group of devoted aspirants until, as she grew older, she was persuaded to come into one of the contemplative orders for the sake of her health; so, she put on the white robe and continued her teaching from a pleasant little room looking out over a cloister with a neat green quadrangle and a fountain at the centre. And there she was expected to end her days. But she did not. When the Great Crusade began, her Order sent a great many sisters into the White Amazons; but imagine the consternation when old Mother Igrayne declared her intention of going with them! They tried every manner of persuasion, but nobody quite dared to stand in the way of so saintly a person. "God has called me," she declared, "and She knows what is best." The trouble was that she had never actually joined the Order; officially she had always been a guest of the House, so she had no superior who could actually bind her in obedience not to go. "My chickens are going," she declared, referring to her pupils, "and I am going with them. They need someone to look after them." It was perhaps a good thing that nobody at the convent at New Marisia knew for a long time that, having made sure that her "chickens" were alright, Mother Igrayne somehow managed to attach herself to the notorious Red Raiders. Red Alana was not wont to be rude; certainly not to the old, and least of all to those in sacred Orders; but she did have three demons of a temper as the phrase went, especially before she met Mother Igrayne; and Providence had arranged that she should be in a particularly fiery humour the morning those two first encountered. "I desire no White Amazons to ride with me," exploded that tempestuous person; "an I did I'd not choose thee, for that thou art old and breathless and no fit rider; now carry off thy carcase for I have much that calls me." "I am an Innocua," replied the old ascetic with dignity, "therefore I may not raise a sword against yours. But if you will put up your fists..." Alana stepped forward incredulously, thinking she must have misheard her visitor's words. Long contemplation does not dim an archer's eye, but contrariwise, makes it all the sharper, and so a wizened, bony fist flew straight and true as a flighted shaft, unerringly found its target and, as Alana herself later put it, "knocked me clean off my pins and left me wondering if the moon had fallen on my head." This began one of the most important friendships in the history of the Great Crusade. "There be a lesson in the art of courtesy," said Mother Igrayne. "An thou had been my pupil I should have taught it with a willow-rod." "Mother," said Alana Fi'Alana, picking herself up from the ground only to prostrate herself again, "an thee will have me, I am thy pupil from this day forth." To the fire of Alana's native temperament Igrayne added the fire of the love of God; from an adventurer in the name of the Law, she turned her into a servant of the Law who was also an adventurer. Long hours she spen in unfolding to that passionate and contemplative mind the beauty and majesty of the Divine Order, and at times she despaired of reaching her inner depths. One day Alana came to her and knelt at her feet, as was the custom between Ranya and pupil. "Mother," she said, "I have seen so much suffering in my days; so much cruelty and wickedness, that my heart is heavy with it." "Thou hast done more than thy part in setting it aright, my daughter," replied her mistress. "Yet, mother, there is so much, so very much," she sighed. "It is said that all the raindrops that fall upon the earth are the tears of Our Lady, weeping for Her children," said Igrayne, and thereupon fell for a few minutes into contemplation. When again she became conscious of the world, Alana was still kneeling before her, with her head bowed, but she noticed that her shoulders were trembling. "Look at me, child," she said. Alana obeyed, and she saw that tears were streaming down her cheeks. Igrayne took her in her arms. "My little child," she said, "I believe that we have found thy heart." For the rest of that day and most of the night Igrayne talked to her of the meaning of suffering and the bitter sacrifice of our Lady and of the sacred Law that She has brought to rescue us from suffering and from that day forward, Red Alana was a changed person. No less a fighter and a firebrand, perhaps more so; but one that had found her soul. "Many are the ways of God," said Mother Igrayne "as many as the souls that travel them; and some of them be passing strange." And strange it was that Red Alana, that was always so joyful, should come to God by the way of sorrow. She had a deeper joy now, and the secret suffering, though not yet passed from her, was calmed within her breast. It was perhaps because she understood less of the Truth than most Amazons that Red Alana had been so good at working with the bandits. Yet now that she had found the Truth, she was even better. Igrayne and Alana worked in double harness. Slowly Igrayne regrouped most of her old "chickens" around her, forming them into "White Raiders", who moved among the bandit gangs as Alana's Red Raiders were finishing the first part of their job. Shocked by the whirlwind attack of the Raiders; shocked by the sudden execution of the "rotten apple", who had seemed like unassailable demon-kings mere hours ago, almost equally shocked by the lack of brutality which the Raiders showed once the unpleasant part of the job was over, and completely disoriented and uncertain about what the rest of their lives might be (if, indeed, they were to have any), they found themselves gathered around a blazing camp-fire by this old woman. They were given warming food by her pupils, who treated them with the most exquisite grace and courtesy; and she began to talk to them. She spoke gently, and she was gentle, yet somehow they sensed that, in her own way she was as tough as, if not tougher than, Red Alana herself. She spoke to them of death and the meaning of life. Themes which perhaps they would have laughted to scorn this time yesterday but which today seemed terribly real and urgent. Shaken and afraid, they could begin to understand how their victims had felt, they could, perhaps begin to feel remorse; if not remorse, they could at any rate feel the urgency of Igrayne's question: "It may be you will die this night or on the morrow; will the deeds of your life grant you safe passage in the world to come, or will they rise up to accuse you?" She held them fascinated, for her voice resounded with the force of Truth, and her person radiated the intangible but unmistakable aura of one who had "licked the rim of the cup of Enlightenment". "These lawless ones are all wound so tight as fiddlestrings. Deep within they do desire to hear the Truth, though their outer parts be so stubborn that they must be pinned by the ears before they are constrained to listen. Deep within they hate the evil they have done; they want to yield themselves up and to be forgiven. Our Lady wants only to forgive them." And it seemed that she was right. By the end of the evening many of the law-less were in tears about her. The scorn of their 'harder' comrades no longer mattered. This saintly and wonderful person believed the Truth, and so did Red Alana; so did the graceful sisters they saw about them; so also the steel-hard Raiders who had thrashed both them and their comrades in combat. Their old world had died that day, and this night a new world was born. So the Amazons made their slow but certain way through the middle-world, carefully ordering and purifying each territory before they moved on to the next. But not all territories presented such problems. Not all were infested with bandits; not all even required conquest. One of these was the little town of Sain Arien and its outlying villages. The Amazons in Sain Arien: Part 2 The first thing the Amazons brought to Sain Arien was music, and music was, in all probability, the most lasting thing that they brought: music and tales. A hundred years after they had gone, their songs were still sung in the ale-house and around the fire on winter's evening; their tunes were still played on the pipe-and-tabor for the dancers in the village square and picked out with a goose-quill on the three stringed dulcimer. Their tales – variants from the western world upon the old eternal themes – were added to the stock of the village story-tellers and became part of the rich green mental undergrowth of generations of children. These things apart, the Amazons brought little of lasting importance to Sain Arien; life carried on before their coming and after their going much as it had for countless generations. For Sain Arien was a quiet, out-of-the-way sort of place, distant from any large centers of population and of no political importance. The various patriarchal revolutions had scarcely touched it. In point of fact, Sain Arien did officially have a patriarchal government when the Amazons arrived. The third of the patriarchal revolutions which shook the Annapolita region, on whose outskirts lay Sain Arien, established the Eternal Empire of the Earth-Father, one of the more stable of the juntas, which, having a longer period of unchallenged rule than most, found time to turn its attention to less pressing matters. Thus it was that Sain Arien received an embassage from the emissaries of Adonay II, the Living God (may he live forever!) demanding the fealty of Sain Arien under threat of fire and sword. Their demand to speak with the town's governor caused some confusion since no such office existed, but it was finally decided that they should meet the Lady Marya Fi-Arian, who was the head of the oldest and most noble family in Sain Arien. She was a just and wise if somewhat idiosyncratic old matriarch, come of a long line of just and wise and (more often than not) somewhat idiosyncratic matriarchs both old and young. Despite the fact that she held no official position outside her own family, and the town was theoretically governed by a council of elders, it was unthinkable that the affairs of the town should ever proceed other than according to her stated wishes. The emissaries, however would not accept a female governor, so the new post of governor was hurriedly created and given to Master Gilrois FiAletta FiArien, the Lady Marya's husband. So was established the custom, still in force when the Amazons arived, that the Governor of Sain Arien should be the husband of the head of the Arianya. The Eternal Empire levied a heavy tribute upon Sain Arien, which was collected by a small military detachment every year at harvest-time; and after the various officers involved had taken extra to line their own purses, the blow was crippling. Fortunately, the Empire soon became fully occupied with raids on its more accessible borders, and Sain Arien was forgotten. Within a few short years the Eternal Empire was forgotten also, and Adony [sic] II the Living God had been crucified by King Luda, the Lord of the Heavens. Sain Arien, however, knew nothing about this, and still believed itself to be a part of the Eternal Empire, glad only that that awesome body had decided it could survive without the tribute of Sain Arien. It was many years and several revolutions before a new embassy arrived to demand the allegiance of and tribute to the Governor Colbert; and once again, the intolerable burden was born [sic] only for a short time. The same patter repeated itself three more times, and when the Amazons arrived, the people of Sain Arien believed themselves to be the subjects of Adolphus IV, Universal Monarch of the World. The Amazons found it a delightful joke that Sain Arien was three revolutions behind the times. By the time of the Governor Kynan, three revolutions after Adolphus IV, the incursions had become a bitter memory, and life in Sain Arien had long returned to its accustomed way of life. They had heard nothing of the Great Crusade, and the arrival one dull spring afternoon of a serious young Amazon officer in her ceremonial armour, a vision of silver and gold, seated bolt upright in her ceremonial chariot and surrounded by a guard of six cavalry officers, like the sun enthroned among her six planets (which, indeed, was the symbolic meaning of the party), created among them a sensation of gloom and leaden apprehension. They knew nothing of the six Legoins whose colours the horsemaids bore, nor even of the illustrious Princess Mariamne, the leader of the Crusade, whose royal banner floated above the splendid war-chariot. Nevertheless, the Governor was quickly aware of a great difference between the embassage of the daike Rhien Terysien and any previous emissaries. Until today, all such visitations had had but one purpose: extortion, more or less thinly disguised in official jargon. But of all the strange proclamations Sain Arien had ever received, this was most certainly the strangest. The long address read out by the Daike's herald asked, in brief, whether the Governor and people of Sain Arien would willingly renounce all heresies and misbelief and return to the Ekklesia of the one true God in obedience to Her law, or whether they would meet with the armies of Her servant and regent, the worshipful Princess Mariamne, namely the Holy Confederation of the Six Legions, upon the field of war. Not even the smallest of the patriarchates had ever suggested going to war with Sain Arien, and the idea of her taking up arms against the massed forces of the Amazon legions was positively bizarre, yet Amazon courtest demanded that this little two should be accorded no less dignity than the mightiest nation-at-arms. After supervising the proclamation in the town square, the Daike was taken to Mansarian, the ancestral home of the Arianya, and therefore also the Governor's residence, for a private audience with the Governor. At the entrance of the great house she was met by the chaplain and the seneschal. She was surprised to see that the chaplain was robed in a manner indistinguishable from that of an orthodox priestess – which, indeed, was precisely what she was. The Daike drew her sword, and, holding it by the blade, presented the hilt to the seneschal in token of peace. If the seneschal was taken aback by this small ritual (and surely she must have been) she showed nothing. The post of seneschal was an hereditary one, held always by the oldest daughter of a certain prominent Sain Arien family, and they prided themselves upon being equal to every situation. The last time an Arian seneschal had shown a flicker of surprise was when the late Mistress Kara insisted upon galloping cross-country and jumping the two hedges at the sides of the Gated Path mounted backwards on her horse. The Governor was a youngish man of a type commonly found among the Kindred (rural gentry) of the matriarchal countryside. Long before any patriarchal occupation, and in areas where it had not taken place, the old matriarchal cities had succumbed, if not always to decadence, at any rate to a slickness and over-sophistication which was one step removed from it. Those of the Raihira, or noble, estate who had not accepted this ethos were consciously in reaction against it. They no longer possessed the simple natural nobility – the nobility of innocence – which was to be found in Sain Arien. Young men like Kynan FiArien could be met throughout the middle-world in relatively undisturbed backwaters such as Sain Arien, though Daike Rhien Terysien had not higherto enjoyed that pleasure. Indeed, this was the first time that the Daike had encountered the culture of the middle-world in anything other than its most degenerate form. Governor Kynan exhaled the atmosphere of his native culture, and even as he was beginning to realise that the Daike was very different from the barbarians with whom his father had had to deal, so she was beginning to sense the atmosphere of a civilisation not decadent, yet laxer and mellower than the austere and brilliant Amazon world. A culture older not only than the new world of the Amazons, forged from the deep piety of the exile-convents and the high courage of the warriors, but older also than the world of the Western Empire and the sunken continent that had gone before it. Her mind travelled quickly over the past few months, and suddenly a thought struck her which was the answer to a vague but insistent puzzle which had been troubling her mind. As the Crusade struck ever deeper into the heartland of the middle-world she had become increasingly conscious of a distinct difference in character between the decadent cities which they were coming upon and those which they had met at the beginning of the Crusade; a different kind of decadence, she had thought. Now, suddenly, the explanation came to her. As they moved eastward they were coming more and more into territories which, shile still a part of the Western Empire, had been far less under its influence. Parts of their culture had been brought from the south during the great migrations from the Southern Empire thousands of years ago; a culture too high and fine to continue in the coarser air of these later times. The gentle hand of the Western Empire had shored it up, and a hybrid of the two cultures had been formed. The whole of the middle world had been shaken by the collapse of the Empire, and decadence had set in here as elsewhere. It was not so much a different kind of decadence as a different thing in decay. The decadent cities of the west and those which the Crusade had recently taken were as similar and as different as a rotten apple and a rotten plum. She had not sufficient evidence to make a report to the High Command but intuitively the Daike was already sure: Sain Arien was sound. but it was not the soundness of the great western matriarchates which had begin to decline two centuries ago. It was the soundness of a good sturdy mongrel culture alloyed of the western culture and of another culture, older, deeper and far more beautiful. Outwardly impassive, the Daike breathes inwardly a sigh. What had the poet said? "Many the fine, fair things are passed away, and shall not be again; and our world shall not know the glory of our mothers, neither shall our daughters know our glory." Yes, the world was a long and weary downward path; and even if the Great Crusade would turn back the clock for a century or two, yet the patriarchal barbarians would inherit the earth in the end. Thus was it written and thus should it be. The Pax Amazonia of the coming centuries would not be so fine a thing as the Western Empire had been at its best; and as for the beauties of the old middle-world, and the still more distant beauties of the South, what remained of them now? "The grass doth grow upon the dust that was their body." And some time in the distant future, when the barbarians had destroyed this world entirely, a new Golden Age would come, and so the cycle should begin again. How truly had her old Ranya spoken: "This world is but a turning wheel from which thy soul must leap if she will be free." The Daike wrenched her mind from these meditations and concentrated her mind upon her host. Gentle of manner and slightly shy, he moved with practised grace and lightness. If he was agitated, his strict Raihira upbringing permitted him to show nothing beyond his serene and courteous exterior. The Daike felt herself drawn to him. "We are as similar," she thought, "as a firm apple and a firm plum. And as different." The Governor was pressing a drink upon her. "It is very poor, most excellent mistress, very poor most truly, but it is the best we do own. Out harvests have been more bad than we can say." Such self-deprecation was common Raihira courtesy, but sipping her skokkien [sp?], the Daika found that poor was, if anything, too generous a term for it. It was difficult to believe that a Raihira had nothing better, or that he would give such bilge-water to his guests. Was this a calculated insult? No, she felt not. She cast her eyes around the room and found it generally well appointed, and yet showing certain conspicuous signs of dilapidation. Most notably a window was broken, and the glass covering a portrait of the first Lady Marya as the lily-moon-mistress (one of the five traditional portrait forms) was cracked from side to side. The Daike's natural sensitivity had been honed to perfection by long training in the art of the sword, for a perfect swordsmaid can see her opponent's stroke before she has made it. In this case she could tell as easliy as if she had been present that the damage in this room had been done within this hour. She could sense the violence – and also the unwillingness – with which it had been performed. Something was amiss in this house. Something passing strange. "It is a fine and noble brew, my reverend master," she said with some effort. "I pray you, refill my cup." "You do my mistress's house more honour than it can ever deserve." Even through his serene exterior, the Governor showed a little discomfort, acutely conscious that, in the matter of skokkien at any rate, his words were more than a mere ritual of courtesy. "I have travelled from the western edge of the world, my master, and I have not seen a finer house nor one more fair to look upon." "My lady is most gracious, but this house has ever been a humble dwelling: a little lodge in the mountains, lost to the grandeur of the world. Yet even so it has known better days; better days and richer, ma'am. The soil of these lands is quite exhausted, and our people know barely how to eke a sustenance. Ma'am, if every soul in Sain Arien were a wandering strave, we could be scarce the poorer and that is the hard truth of it." He bowed his head and placed two fingers upon his brow in the traditional gesture of sorrow. "Good master," you spoke of your mistress's house. Are you not Governor here?" The Governor was quite unable to see any inconsistency in this, and replied in some puzzlement, with disarming innocence "Yes, ma'am, most surely I am Governor here. I spoke of my wife." The Daike could not restrain the shimmer of a smile from passing her lips. "Well, good master Governor, you have studied the proclamation of my most royal mistress. What is your reply?" The Governor's reply was obviously a time-honoured one, learned by rote by every Governor of Sain Arien. "Most reverent mistress, the Governor and people are happy beyond expression to accept the yoke and suzerainty of your most noble and puissant empire; and with all our hearts we will to serve your royal mistress with all the means at our command. Truly we hall keep the day of your coming as a day of feast and rejoicing so long as Sain Arien shall endure." "My sovereign master," replued the Daike "with the profoundest and most humble respect, I venture to suggest that you have not yet fully comprehended the nature of my mistress's proclamation. I am the emissary of no empire, not does my lady seek sovereignty over Sain Arien." "Good my mistress, I understand you not," replied the Governor somewhat nervously. "Will the Governor and people of Sain Arien undertake willingly to return to the single Law of God and the Way of Themis [Thamë]?" asked the Daike. Surely Sain Arien was sound enough for these words to be understood. In truth, it was too sound. "Return? ... Good my mistress, I understand you not." "Will the Governor and people of Sain Arien willingly renounce all heresies..." "Heresies!" interjected Kynan. Now she had really frightened him. "Please, ma'am, would it cause great offece if I ask that my wife be present, that you may speak with her in this matter?" "No offence in the world, my good master," replied the Daike. "I wish only to abide by the custom of this place." The seneschal was summoned, left the room again, and in a remarkably short space of time returned to hold open the door for the fifth Lady Marya, tall, dark, remarkably young looking and with a force of personality that filled the room like a lightning-storm. The Daike sensed that for the past half-hour she had been pacing a nearby room in an agony of frustration that so important an affair should be taking place in her house, and she unable to see that it was conducted aright. Had she been eavesdropping? Most certainly not; but there was little that missed the ears of the seneschal and her staff, and nothing that was not reported to the mistress. Certainly, from the scant attention she paid, she had little need of her husband's explanations. Outwardly she appeared serene, but her inner turmoil was betrayed by the fact that she entered with a glass of skokkien in her hands – a minor breach of etiquette which would rarely occur in such a household. "Donna [sp?]," said the Governor, reverencing her with a deep little bow, "the most noble Daike wishes to know about heresy in Sain Arien." "Heresy!" exploded the Lady Marya, returning the Daike's reverence curtly. "An there were heresy in Sain Arien I should know about it. Aye, and an I knew about it there should not long be heresy in Sain Arien, that I warrant thee. Heresy, on my mother's pyre! Heresy, by the legions of the damned! I'll tell thee. There have been heretics in Sain Arien. Aye, and thieves too. But not a one of them came from Sain Arien." "My lady," said Kynan, calm, but deathly pale, "use caution, use reason, they have the power..." "Aye, aye, they have the power." She turned again to the Daike, beginning more calmly, but quickly losing her temper again. "You can make Sain Arien a part of your empire. We are very willing. You can take your tributes and bleed our people white. But if you come into my house and talk of heresy in Sain Arien, by the Holy Name, I'll take a dog-whip..." "My lady..." Kynan raised his voice for the first time in many years, but the Lady Marya could not be stopped. "You are the heretics, you with your ugly male godlings and your idols and abominations. Come to this window. See you that Temple? Never was there any idol in that Temple, and never will there be. We shall burn it down first. You talk of making war on Sain Arien. Truly, if you desire to lay hands on our Temple there will be a war. You will win it, of course, but you'll have to kill every lasy one of us before you touch our Lady's house." Flushed and angry, she walked to the chair where Kynan was weeping, and, standing behind it, placed both her hands upon his breast, glaring furiously at the Daike, as if to say "Look what you have done to my husband." "My lady, my lady," sobbed Kynan, "you know not what it is that you have done." The Lady Marya stroked his hair for a short time. Her anger subsided and a deep sadness came over her. "My swallow, my stallion, my lovely hunting-dog; I know full well what I have done. I spoke in anger, but I spoke not rashly. If the time has come, then the time has come. We know that it must come some day. Praise be to our Lady that we were spared so long. We will not live a life of ignominy and treason, my dear one. That were to live too long." She looked up again at the Daike. "You shall see, my good soldier, you shall see. Sain Arien knows how to die." For a moment the Daike gazed upon Lady Marya. She was not a beautiful maid, though she was not unattractive, but the fire in her heart lit up her whole being with a loveliness surpassing any merely physical beauty. And seeing such courage and such nobility, the eyes of the Daike Rhien Terysien welled up with tears. "My lady," she said, "thy soul is so comely that thou hast melted the heart of a hard soldier. No Amazon shall ever lay hands on thy Temple. My lady, I would tell thee that I love our Lady as greatly as thine own self, if that were not to praise myself too highly. If any infidel shall seek to lay hands upon the Temple of Sain Arien, there shall be three centuries of Amazons, horse, foot and chariot to defend it. You have the word of the Daike Rhien Terysien. I shall kneel before the alter in the Temple of Sain Arien and make an offering to our Lady in thanks that there are such noble hearts in the world as thine." "You are believers?" faltered the Lady Marya. "Believers, aye, and that is all the purpose of our coming. To turn the middle-world unto the Law again, to cast out the infidels and their idols and abominations. We do not want you to be a part of any empire. We do not want to rob you or take tributes..." "You are not levying a tribute?" "Most surely not, did I not say..." "And we have made you drink this bellgrot!" exploded the Lady Marya seizing the glass from the hand of the astonished Daike. She pressed her own glass into her hand. "Here, drink this, 'twill settle your stomach." Obediently, the Daike took a sip. "Why, 'tis the finest skokkien I have tasted this long year," she exclaimed, and no part of this statement was motivated by courtesy – indeed the note of suprise in her voice was scarcely in keeping with the demands of etiquette. She began to laugh. "Seneschal! Seneschal!" cried the Lady Marya, "fetch someone to mend that window; we are like enough to die of cold in here." She turned again to the Daike. "I fear we have no food fit to be eaten in the house, mistress. Everything has been taken away in case you made an inspection. We deemed it fit that we should appear to be in poverty, my mistress, that the tribute should be small. My people have suffered greatly in the past..." The Daike was still laughing. "Reason me no more, good my lady, I have some little wit, for all I be a soldier." "There is the sub-cellar, my lady," suggested Kynan with a twinkle. "The sub-cellar; of course!" exclaimed Marya. "We have a cellar below the cellar which nobody could ever find. Do Amazons drink ale?" By this latter question, the Lady Marya had unwittingly showed how very far Sain Arien lay from the west of the world. The embassage did not return home that night. But on the morrow it carried tidings of a fully successful mission. The Amazons in Sain Arien Part 3. The long green victory-dragon snaked down the main street of Sain Arien in front of the procession with bells kingling and ribbons streaming, the thirteen Amazons within its silken body wheeling and curving with a deftness born of long practice. It came to rest before the raised platform which had been erected in the town square. The troops arrayed themselves in their order with banners to the fore. As well as those of the two legions represented among the contingent, there were several emblems of the regions and craft-guilds to which sections of the soldiery belonged. When all were in place, a wide aisle was left between the ranks of soldiers and townspeople, leading to the platform steps. Down this aisle passed first the bearer of the royal standard, followed by a Nikraya of the Triumulate responsible for all military and secular affairs in the Annapolita region. She was flanked by two Daikes, one from each legion – one of these the people recognised as the one who had called upon the Governor a few weeks ago. Accompanying this party were two white-robed Innocui bearing ceremonial staves, and with silver circlets over their white head-veils. Behind them came a small retinue of standard bearers and others. The lively music of the triumphal entry had given place to a solemn and dignified processional march. Upon the platform were the Governor's party; himself, the Lady Marya, the household chaplain, the senior priestess of the town with her ancilla, the Lady of the Temple with her senior Temple-maiden, representatives from each of the villages and magdoranyas from each of the crafts. The Nikraya and her party mounted the platform. She bowed deeply to the Governor, for he was governor still, although within the hour he would be so no longer. He returned her reverance and they embraced in token of peace and the bond of friendship. He then embraced each of the Daikes in turn, and a particular warmth was in the embrace with Rhien Terysien, for already a deep friendship had taken root between her and Kynan and the Lady Marya. During the ceremony that followed, the Governor's personal standard was removed, and that of the Lady Marya put in its place. The preparation for this had involved some difficulty, since Kynan had never possessed a personal standard. Finding one for the Lady Marya had involved some little thought, but it was quickly decided that the standard of Sain Arien itself could be used, since the name of the Arian family was the same as that of the town. Indeed, enquiry among the more historically-minded of the townsfolk revealed that the standard had been used by the Arianya at one period. A personal standard for the Governor, however, presented more difficulty. His mother's family had never born [sic] a standard so far as anyone could recall. The obvious procedure would be for him to adopt his wife's, but this, apparently, would not be in keeping with the nature of the ceremony. As Rhien Terysien put it: "Sain Arien has to become a little more patriarchal before we can make it matriarchal again." "Well, it do seem passing strange to me, for a surety," declared the Lady Marya. The senior priestess, Madria Kerunna, however, having a firm grasp of the nature and importance of ritual, found no difficulty in understanding the matter. "Twill do more of good for Sain Arien than you may think, most honoured daughter," she explained. "Master Kynan is a good man, and never was Governor save in name alone, yet well thou dost know that there is no thing transpires upon this heavy world of clay that echoes not within the world invisible, nor canst thou name a name on any thing or person that bindeth not a web of working. Let Sain Arien be brought within the full measure of the Law by this most puissant working of the western race, and that which was amiss shall be set right." "By your leave, most reverend mother," replied the Lady Marya, ever quick to defend her beloved people, "there is but little amiss in Sain Arien." "But little indeed," said the priestess with a smile – for were they not her children also? "Yet if a score of chanters chant together and but one have a false ear, is not the sweetness of the music turned, like to milk that hath stood an hour too long before drinking?" "You will say ere long that there is heresy in Sain Arien!" exclaimed the Lady Marya, who was by this time able to make light of her former outburst. The company laughed. "Not heresy, daughter, but there is a little forgetfulness; we have been two long severed from the learned world and the teachers of high doctrine." "My mother," said the Lady Marya, with earnestness "how can we have been severed from the world of learning whiles you have been with us?" Madria Kerunna smiled. Her children regarded her as a very oracle of wisdom, and the priestesses of the village came to her as a great Ranya; yet she was conscious that she was herself but little more than a simple country priestess, having spent but a single year in the little seminary of Annamatri [sp?] in the distant days of her youth, just before it was closed by Adonay. With deep shame, she acknowledged a part of herself which dreaded the coming of real learned teachers for [from] the west, for she feared that the respect of her children would diminish greatly once they were able to make the comparison. "Yet I need not fear to lose their love" she consoled herself "and that is all a good priestess should desire. I should not with to be thought what I am not." Yet her fears were largely unfounded, for long years of contemplation and of painstaking work in helping her pupils in matters great and small had built steadily upon the firm foundation laid by the seminary, and she had grown far wiser than she knew. Aloud she said: "I shall welcome the coming of the learned innocui to our town and to our villages, for they shall work great good among us." Turning her attention to the matter in hand, the priestess fell for a few minutes into contemplation, and then, returning to herself, she declared that since the name he had inherited from his mother was FiaDjane, the silver crescent of the Arianya should, on Kynan's standard, be supported by the bear of Djane. It was also necessary that a wand of office should be made for him, in order that it might pass into the hands of the Lady Marya. The passing of the wand was the high point of the ceremony. Kneeling, the Governor presented it to Madria Kerunna, and was no longer the Governor. Kneeling, the Lady Marya received it from the priestess, and with it the authority over Sain Arien passed to her. She was not, however, titled Governor, for that, as the Amazons said, was an abominable patriarchal name. As she rose to address her people, holding aloft the wand, she was the first Vicar of Sain Arien. Vicar was an old imperial title, which had been common in the middle-world up until a hundred years ago, although it had not reached so far east as Annapolita. The Vicar of a town or region was so called because she was the vicar or representative of the local Princess (the Western empire beyond the shores of the drowned continent being made up of the a large number of tiny nations or city-states), just as the Princess was the vicar of the Empress and the empress the vicar of God. It was perhaps a little incongruous, therefore, that the various independent territories now being established by the Amazons in the middle-world were each governed by a Vicar, though in later years, as the Pax Amazonia found itself compelled to take on the mantle of Empire, they became Vicars in the old, literal sense. The Vicar of Sain Arien was by no means unaccustomed to the making of speeches. She began by speaking of the great benefits which would accrue from the working of this ritual. Many of the villages interpreted this as a promise of good harvests; and indeed that summer the long run of poor harvests in the area was broken by a magnificent crop. She talked of her friendship with the Amazons, and of the Daike Rhien Terysien's promise to defend the Temple of Sain Arien. "These are our sisters," she declared. "Our sisters, our friends and our most welcome guests. Let us show that Sain Arien knows how to greet them out of the bounty of our hearts." There was an enthusiastic response from part of the crowd, but an awkward silence from others. The Lady Marya laughed. "Aye, and Littlewell and Underwood, and Bridgewater..." As the names of the villages rolled off her tongue, wave upon wave of cheers exploded from different sections of the crowd, until all was drowned in a chaos of applause and laughter. Kynan smiled at Daike Rhien, who was obviously enjoying the spectacle. He knew that Lady Marya knew her audience well, and had brought off this little joke largely in order to amuse her. In truth, it pleased the Daike rather more deeply than either of them would suspect. After months of dealing with crushed and dispirited peoples confused and demoralised by the effects of chaos, tyranny and war, or at the best, with people utterly spoiled by the slick, cynical sophistication of the urban matriarchal decadence, how glorious it was to witness the healthy, innocent exuberance of normal, God-loving people. "Sain Arien is sound," she thought, repeating her first assessment of the town. "This is what we are fighting for." The Lady Marya turned to more serious matters, and told the people of the Great Crusade, the liberation of Annapolita and of the middle-world. "The age of lawlessness doth draw to a close in the middle-world, my dear ones, and on the day of the tyrant-wolf doth the sun go down. Henceforth shall the world tread the measure of the Law, according to the music of Eternity, even as it was in the good days of our mothers. And even among us here a new day doth dawn; a new day, my dear ones, and a brighter. Our Lady hath preserved us through the darkness of the night, my gentle people, for She is very merciful. There is one God, one God alone, none other God than She." "One God alone, none other God than She," echoed the people in the time-honoured response. "This day, my good people, this day are we returned unto the full measure of Her Law. Let us turn again unto our Lady. Let us dedicate ourselves to Her anew. Where there were faults and forgetfulness in the lawless time, my dear ones, let them be forgotten. She has forgiven them, for She is very merciful. Let us turn again, my dear ones, let us turn again to Her." From the ground, a group of innocui began a chant of the holy Name, and the people enthusiastically joined in, for they were a devout and warm-hearted people. The Amazon musicians accentuated the rhythm with their drums and bells. The very quality of the chanting told the more experienced of the White Amazons that here was a rich and fruitful soil for the nurture of souls. The chant began slowly and sweetly, becoming faster and louder until it reached an exhilarating climax, and then tapered slowly and sweetly away into silence. When the silence had laster for a minute or two, the Lady Marya made her final announcement. "My dear ones," she said, "thank you so much for kindly coming here. In honour of this most auspicious day, I have made ready for you in the grounds of Mansarian a very small and unworthy feast. I have no doubt that you will find fare much surpassing the paltry offering upon your boards at home, but if you will condescend this night to eat at the table of my house, you would do me great honour." A cheer rose up from the crowd, but the Lady Marya quickly turned the applause away from herself. "All hail the Great Crusade!" she cried above the noise. "Hail! Hail! Hail!" came the response. "Hail the Holy Amazons that shall deliver the middle-world!" "Hail the most saintly innocui, bearers of light into the darkness!" "Hail to the Princess Marianne, and to her worthy Nikraya that she has sent unto us!" "Hail to the Daike Rhien Terysien that is friend to Sain Arien and sworn defender of our holy Temple!" The banquet was a truly magnificent affair. The Daike Rhien had consented to use her charioteer to bring a ranyarani of the culinary art all the way from Annapolita. Mansarian's own reserves, brought out of hiding, were supplemented by provisions supplied by the Amazon commissariat, and an Amazon hunting-party had contributed two wild boars. It was probably the first and only time that a banquet at Mansarian had come as a real surprise to the people. Usually, although pretending to be surprised, in accordance with customary etiquette, the preparations would have attracted attention weeks in advance, and indeed, many town and village people would have been directly and indirectly involved with them. This time, however, with many of the supplies coming from outside, with the work being shared wholly between the Mansarian staff, under the strict surveillance of the seneschal, and the Amazons, and with so many strange happenings and mysterious Amazon comings and goings, the feast quite genuinely took everyone by surprise. Nor had there for many generations been a banquet on such a scale. Row upon row of long tressle-tables filled the great walled garden, each with a fringed white parasol at its head to honour the head of the table, for each of the major households was provided with a table of its own. It was usual on such occasions for groups from the town and from the villages to spend several weeks in preparing "spontaneous" entertainments for the surprise banquets; but since on this occasion that had not been possible, their place was filled by the Amazons. They played western music and performed the dragon-dance. They displayed the breathtaking sword dance in which sword clashed against sword and pelta (the light Amazon moon-shield) with terrifying speed and force and uncanny precision. They gave displays of archery and fire-leaping, but the Nikraya refused permission for a makeshift chariot race. They raised the thrilling warchants of their two legions. "Thy people are practised in the chant, I warrant," said one of the two elder Innocui who had been in the platform in the town square, having made her salutation to the Lady Marya. "In truth, mother," she returned, greatly pleased, "never before have we known this manner of devotion." "Well, ye shall come to know it well before the White Amazons be gone from ye, for it is a goodly way for us in these late times, that have not the wisdom of our mothers." "Truly, we are ever most pleased to receive the ways and counsel of the learned, my mother." The Nikraya approached them and made her salutation. She turned to the Lady Marya. "My Lady, the provisions are all made ready. Our company, in its greater part, doth leave Sain Arien on the day after this morrow; a little number will remain at the town, and a lesser shall go unto each of the villages, in accordance with our custom. Should you require their assistance in the return unto the Law, they shall be at thy bidding, thought I doubt me thou wilt have need. Other, they shall render service unto thy people in keeping with their estate. But their most important reason for abiding here is that they form a little thread in the great web that is spun for the defence of the entire land of Annapolita, and so also for the defence of thine own people. Should thunder in from the East..." "From the East..." interrupted the Vicar. "Aye, from the East. I know well that all thy troubles have come from the West, but the West is now subdued and doth lie in the hand of Themis [Thamë]. Thus Summertide, the war shall move eastward, and shall be harder fought, perhaps, than ever it hath been. We know not but that the storm may return upon Annapolita or upon the other lands at the Eastward of the Western world. Most like it will not, but an it should, these soldiers shall be thy first defence; but they will be swiftly enforced from the little garrison at Annamatri, and a short time after from the great garrison at Annapolita. The Amazons shall keep a good watch; but should any thing troublous be seen by the shepherds on the hills or by any of thy people, let it be made known to the Kefalle who shall have command over all the troops in Sain Arien." "Shall the Daike Rhien be not with us?" asked the Vicar, a little disappointed. "The Daike Rhien shall bide in Annapolita. An there is thunder in Sain Arien, she shall most like be with you." Making her salutations, the second Daike joined them, and after some further converse, she and the Nikraya departed together to watch the swordplay at the other side of the garden. They walked in silence until they reached the enclosure where the mock-battles were taking place. "A passing fine stroke," commented the Daike, as they watched a particularly skilled passage of arms. "Aye, a passing fine," agreed the Nikraya. "It is such skill as this shall bring the East into the hand of Themis [Thamë]." "Yet I do think" said the Nikraya, "that the swordmaid shall not enact so great a part in the taking of the East as she hath done in the Western world, nay, nor the fine-plumed horses, neither." "Why so?" enquired the Daike. "The Easterling is a most dangerous warrior," replied the Nikhail. "When he arose and broke the Wheel of Themis [Thamë], the chivalry of the Western Empire rode forth against him, yet he stood firm and was not defeated. The imperial boundaries were narrowed by his advance until that time a great battle was foughten which was called the Battle of Varga. I doubt not you will mind it from thy school-days. So Varga became the stopping place and the boundary of the Empire. From that day forth, the Empress moved not Eastward into Varga, nor the infidel westward beyond Varga, for it was a terrible battle that neither wished to repeat. The Easterlings that we have thus far met withal have been but a rabble of orgulous malcontents; but now we draw nigh unto the land of Varga, and we shall encounter with the Easterlings proper." "What is his nature," asked the Daike, "and why is he so terrible?" "The Easterling warrior is a footsoldier," she replied, "short and dark and heavily made. He doth carry a great pike or pole-axe, some eighteen feet in length, whose great steel head doth add a further foot. So steadfast is their battle array that they do seem as a phalanx of moving wood, and before their line project not the pikes of the first rank only, but those of the second, third and fourth likewise, like to a bristling porcupine of steel. Behind the fourth ranks, stand those with pikes held upright, in readiness to fill the gaps left by those who fall. And should the onset of the pikes be checked, their ranks will open to let through the axemen. These warriors cary an axe that nothing resembles the light Amazon labrys, but is full eight feet in length of its ashen haft, with a head of great weight which doth end in a sharp point. It hath a hatchet blade afore and a ripping-hook behind, and doth make a wound so loathly to look upon that even our doughty Amazon swordmaids may stand appalled. Wielded by these muscular dwarfs it will cleave through the Amazon helm or breastplate, or even through the heavy armour of the western men as though it were but foil. It will tear through the pelta and arm in a single blow. And with the axemen come the bearers of the morning star, a club five feet in length set heavily with iron spikes about the end, and of the Varganese hammer, which is like to the Easterling axe but that it hath three great ripping hooks at its head instead of a blade. Also they bear a great two-handed sword, thrice the length and five times the weight of the Amazon sword. "A cavalry charge of the Western Empress was cut in pieces by the Easterlings; their horses' breasts riven open by the pikes, their legs swept off by the great axes. I greatly misdoubt me whether even the charge of the Leaguer cavalry could break them; neither would the swift and light-armed Amazon footsoldier fare well in an assault upon that close-packed mass of heavy steel." "Then how may we hope to prevail against them?" asked the Daike. "'Most skillful battle is that in which no blow is struck,'" quoted the Nikraya "most skillful next is that which is won with the least noise." This was the opening sentence of the Nikcoutrei, the great Amazon treatise on the art of war. It was a text that the senior officers never tired of repeating to those juniors whom they were grooming for positions of high command, for it contained the most important principle of their education. They had been picked out for their courage, their steadfastness, their skill and above all, their vocation in the art of war. Now they must learn serenity, detachment and subtlety. Their hot-blooded eagerness for hard fighting must be curbed and refined into a perception of war not only as a science but as an art; not only as an art, but as, before all, a sacred art. The Nikcoutrei was regarded not simply as a military handbook, but as a sacred text; and, this, indeed, was precisely what it was, being in the tradition of dwicoutri, or magdacoutri, "secondary scriptures" produced by great contemplative scholars by the application of the divine Principles found in the Scriptures to some sphere of earthly activity. God created maid with a lesser bodily strength than man, the text explained, that she might fight with subtlety and with the Spirit. Let her once forget the true Way and descend to the use of mere material force, and man would have the advantage, the true Order would be turned upside-down, and the world would be set on the path which must eventually lead to complete materialism and patriarchy. Therefore, the arts of war must be spiritual arts, and the ways of war pursued with subtlety and gentleness. One example of this was the way in which the Amazons were not permitted to slaughter captives or to practise torture in the way that all the patriarchal armies did. To some extent this placed them at a disadvantage, but as their gentleness became well known, they turned it to good account by having their rumour-spreaders extol the good treatment of those who surrendered to the Amazons, and using conspicuously marked chariots to bear surrendered enemies safely off the field of battle. This, together with campaigns of stirring up discontent against patriarchal rulers, often ensured a considerable number of the enemy being removed from the field by surrender without a blow being struck; the more so since many of them were often pressed men. The rumour-spreaders and intelligencers – sometimes specially trained Amazons, and sometimes paid, or even unwitting, agents, were part of an extensive network of "quiet warriors" – the world's first, and probably best, secret service. They probed the enemies [sic] hidden weaknesses, made contact with the Old Believers within his walls, assisted deserters from his army, encouraged rivalries and discontents within it, gave arms and money to rebellious factions, and in a hundred other ways promoted his defeat "without a blow being struck". The Daike smiled, for she was all too familiar with her mistress's meaning. "The path of Shearwind the Trickster may lead us far;" she granted, "But a time must come that we must meet the Easterling upon the field of Nike [Vikhë] the Warrior. How then shall we do battle with the wooden porcupine?" "The porcupine cannot shoot his quills," replied the Nikraya. "I take not thy meaning, my lady." "There is no archer in the world can match the prowess of the Western bowmaid," said the Nikraya. "Her swiftness and unerring aim shall deliver to us the crown of Varga when that the time is come for battle. In our front rank we shall place two or three rows of footsoldiers. Each shall bear two heavy javelins and a great oblong shield. The shields shall be locked together to form a solid wall for the defence of the archers. We must choose our ground so that the Easterling shall be as far a[s] possible hampered in his advance, and as he comes forward, the archers shall fire volley after volley into his midst over the heads of the spearmaids. His great four-horse chariots, though fearful to behold are not formidable. Our light cavalry and mounted archers will prevent them from attacking our line, and if possible, attempt to turn his flanks; though of this latter we hold but little hope. "As the Varganese line approaches ours, the archers must fall back, the spearmaids will discharge their javelins from their slings and then disperse. Then the field will be left clear for the chariots. With the line thinned by the archers, and checked by the impact of the first and second javelins, a sudden chariot-charge, becaked by the heavy cavalry and lancers will be able to penetrate it. Given time, the axemen would still be like to cur the horses in pieces, but they must not have such time. The charge must pass through them as swiftly as possible. Then will come the moment for your well-beloved swordmaids. Against the close-packed foe they should ill indeed, but with his line broke and spread, our fleet and nimble dancers shall have room wherein to whirl and dodge and sting him at their will. Then shall the race go to the swift indeed, I think." Both turned their eyes again upon the swordplay. With the grace and precision of a dance, with the speed of a whirling chariot-wheel, the maids went through their practised motions, drawing wonder and applause from their audience. The Nikraya noted another excellent stroke from the maid who had made the one that the Daike had first remarked upon. "There is a fine warrior indeed," she said. "Aye, my lady," agreed the Daike with a smile. "Her name is Renata. But she, I think, is destined to fight this war without striking a blow." "It may be so," said the Nikraya, gazing upon her with her wise and gentle old eyes. "For all her skill, she was not born to be a soldier. Yet I think she will strike a blow of no small import before her warrior days be over." The great bell of Mansarian rang out over the fields. Great steaming trenchers were being borne out of the house, and the guests began to take their places at the tables. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Amazons in Sain Arien: Parts I, II, and III Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text