5 10 105 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4b3dc0c60bb852f9b33c3a398d2a49a6.pdf 0af1a0dbb06e1838c8e02b86a125ca75 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 Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 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 mixed 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 Rosa Madriana Introductory Materials Description An account of the resource A collection of introductory pamphlets and articles produced by Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey McEvoy III, who received them from Madria Olga. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mixes 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/5f1b8e3c0d3ef28342ba2a85b959fbb2.pdf a00d61c64fda1ff1d4ee4447a2c4869b 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, 3pp. 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 Sister Angelina's Interview with Bryony Evans Description An account of the resource A brief interview with Sister Angelina. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bryony Evans Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, who discovered the original in the remains of the Madrian house at Burtonport after their period of occupation. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource typescript, loose-leaf, 3pp. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Burtonport, Ireland 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/91618cc1549ce5b1960bd66c2f244424.pdf e0d09dc653a2d7cb7fa5bb38b64beed1 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 Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 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, 5pp. 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 Special Prayers Description An account of the resource A collection of prayers handwritten by Madria Olga. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, a former correspondent of Madria Olga. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose-leaf, 5pp. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/d5467ef5cec4d291b58e77aafa0366e4.pdf 4e25aef87afccd1f35b8429a3cd527c9 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 Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 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; 3pp. typewritten, 32pp, handwritten 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 Steps for Drawing Up a Sacred Calendar Description An account of the resource Madria Olga's handwritten calendar, containing descriptions of the feasts and fasts along with seasonal meditations. Includes three pages of instructions for creating one's own annual calendar. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Private collection of Georgia Cobb. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource n.d. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Contributed by Sister Sophia Ruth. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/415c0cdab8d12c635c27741db9f07d86.pdf 46e2bd426c6f0457051d28e70e09ed21 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 Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 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 photocopies, 19pp. 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 TCA Articles Kept by Madria Olga Description An account of the resource A selection of TCA articles kept by Madria Olga and used in her teaching. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lux Madriana Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Donated by the student recipient, Joey McEvoy III. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Lux Madriana Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose-leaf photocopies, 19pp. 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/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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/1757c2d2a8e5d2f0ad2273bbe852f88b.pdf 7d58bf157f10c07ba6fdb3b05e9a34ec 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 (16pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Madrian Literature Circle: The Beauty and the Beast Debate The three articles reproduced here represent a debate conducted in the pages of the New-Age magazine Aquarian Arrow. It began with a feature in that magazine entitled "Women on Crowley on Women", including a passage by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (who liked to refer to himself as "The Great Beast" of the Christian Book of Revelation, "whose number was 666"), expounding his views on maids. This was accompanied by comments from a number of maids working in the occult field. The whole piece was then sent to Lux Madriana by the editors, with an invitation to comment upon it. Sister Angelina responded with the article "Beauty and the Beast" which was published in the following issue. This drew a response from an anonymous contributor writing under the nom de plume of "Robert". His piece, "Lux Madriana and the Solar Logos", sets out in a clear and serious way many of the fundamental errors and confusions of the New-Age movement in general and of the modern pseudo-matriarchal school in particular. The refutation of these errors involves, indirectly, the refutation of the whole modern world-view. Obviously an entire book could be devoted to the subject; but in a witty and concise article, "Marie Antoinetter and the Reine Soleil", Sister Angelina tackles all the fundamental issues. This piece should be read carefully more than once, for it will make many things fall into place which may previously have seemed obscure. <div style="text-align:left;"> --- NOTE: Crowley's argument, briefly, was to reject all sexual morality as a "superstition" and to declare that woman should realise herself as a primarily sexual being, whose "archetype" is the Great Whore. Beauty and the Beast Superstition presupposes ignorance. For a superstition is literally something which "stands over"; a disembodied remnant of a philosophical structure which, rent from its context and idolised for its own sake, is devoid of content. A hundred years from now, when the primordial forests are slowly reclaiming these islands, there will no doubt be many who will set up steering wheels or spools of computer tape on piles of stones and bow down before them. That will be superstition. Our descendents will have a vague memory of the "power" attaching to these objects, but the context in which alone that power could be actualised will have been lost in the mists of ignorance. In precisely the same way, the sexual "morality" prevalent in Crowley's time (and, to an extent, today) was and is superstition. Certain taboos and mores inherited from the past were regarded with a superstitious awe; a quasi-noumenous "power" was recognized as attaching to them. Just like the steering wheel, these mores had once been part of an integrated system, and it was in their relation to the system alone that their "power" had any validity. The relations between the sexes are the reflection on the material plane of certain transcendent Realities. Realities which existed long before the manifestation of physical creatures endowed with biological gender and which will exist long after they have passed away. Marriage is a ritual "actualisation" of the reflection. That is what it was created for, and that is how it has been understood in every civilisation that has not lost sight of the Absolute. The more conventional of Crowley's contemporaries were superstitious because they worshipped marriage while they did not have the vaguest idea of what marriage is. Crowley (along with the whole contemporary avant garde, whom he merely echoes in rather more fustian prose) is not superstitious; but he is equally ignorant. He does not worship marriage, but he has no more idea of what marriage is. He disposes from the beginning of the idea that he might have any metaphysical understanding: "This Nibbana-idea is the coward – "mother's boy" idea; one ought to take a dip in the Tao, no more." To make a statement like this is simply to say "I am not a metaphysician", just as to declare that 2+2=5 is to say "I am not a mathematician"". The wisdom of the saints and sages is replaced by the crass "dynamism" of Herbert Spencer projected onto the Absolute. "Why do men insist on the innocence of women?" he asks, and comes up with a series of answers on teh same level of profundity as the nineteenth-century dictum that "myths are primitive attempts to explain natural phenomena". He sees woman as nothing more than a sex-object, and proceeds to project this sex-object onto his own sentimental equivalent of the metaphysical plane in the form of an Archetypal Whore. Always the same fundamental error – an error that can only arise in a materialist environment, but which in that environment will always vitiate any spirituality which lacks metaphysical principles. The projection of the relative onto the Absolute. The belief that "as below, so above". What, then, is marriage? For herein lies the answer to the whole problem. Marriage is the ritual actualisation of the fire-kiss. The transformation of the dragon by the sun-maiden. Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince and hundred similar folk-motifs are allegories of the archetypal marriage. The maid is (nay, not represents, for, by the power of the Rite, she is) the Spirit, the supernal Sun. The man is the soul ensnared in matter, who is consumed, destroyed and reborn in Her kiss. No mortal maid is God; yet in the power of the Rite, while she does not become the Reality, the Reality becomes Her. The all-consuming fire-kiss is re-enacted in every "consummation" of the marriage; and the ritual extends not only to this, but to every action of marital life. That is why a man must obey his wife. In many of the matriarchal civilisations which have dominated the world for the vast majority of human history, a maid was allowed up to four husbands: the four men representing the four material elements and the maid the quinta essentia. This is not the practice among contemporary Madrians, but it expresses a vital truth about the real nature of marriage. Patriarchal marriage partly inverted and partly misinterpreted the truth. It was perversion, it was heresy, but it was not yet ignorance. Yet the seeds of ignorance lie at the very heart of patriarchy. For every act is a ritual and every ritual has a magical effect. In ritually turning from the feminine principle to the masculine principle – from the sun-maiden to the unregenerate dragon – civilisation turned from the qualitative to the quantitative; from pure metaphysical Intellect to earthbound reason; from transcendent Truth to transient "facts". When the first warrior king usurped the throne of the first priestess-queen, the advent of Freud, Marx and Darwin became an inevitability. So did that of Crowley. In rejecting the fire-kiss of the sun-maiden, patriarchal civilisation also rejected Intelligence in its pure form. For the Kiss operates on many levels, from the simple marriage to the consummation of the perfected hera (saint) in God Herself. Without the Kiss of pure transcendent Intellect (which is not other than the supernal Sun Herself), the dragon of earthbound reason cannot be raised up out of the mire of matter. Instead is will become ever more "materialist", until it grows into the hydra-headed monster of modern techno-bureaucratic scientism. Crowley sought to react against this monster; but having no access to metaphysical principles, his thinking could not be radically different (in the strict sense of that much-abused term) from that which it opposed. he could not have been other than he was. 666, and never been Kissed. Sister Angelina This article is the first of three published by Aquarian Arrow. Lux Madriana and the Solar Logos I am a Thelemite, and hold no brief for Crowley's attitude to women nor his writings on sex. But when Sister Angelina accuses Crowley of metaphysical ignorance, this is really the pot calling the kettle black. For in none of his writings has Crowley ever displayed such a crass misunderstanding of the "underlying realities" behind traditional metaphysical attributions of some elements to women, and others to men, as Sister Angelina did in her article. There may well have cultures in the past in which women personified the Sun and men the Earth, just as the Moon is masculine and the Sun feminine in the German language. But these have been a minority, among matriarchal just as much as among patriarchal cultures. Women have been associated with Earth and Matter long before the days of patriarchal monotheism. This was not the result of men seeking to debase women, because the Earth and Matter were not until recently regarded as "base". In pantheist cultures, Matter and Spirit are but two different aspects of the same divine Reality underlying all Life. Women have been associated with the Earth, because they bear and bring forth children in the same manner in which the Earth brings forth crops. That is why the word "matter" (in Latin materia) has the same linguistic roots as the word "mother" (in Latin mater). Matter is seen as the mother-stuff from which all physical sentient life is made. Women have also been associated with the Moon, because of the close parallel between their twenty-eight day menstrual cycles and lunar months. That is why in matriarchal fertility cultures, the calendar was divided into thirteen lunar months, and each month into four seven-day weeks representing one of the quarters, and why the number thirteen was sacred. It is also at night, especially when the Moon shines and is near Full Moon, that men and women are most under the influence of their feelings and emotions, especially the feeling of Love. This is also associated more closely with women than with men, because of their primary role in rearing children and in protecting them in infancy. The Moon influences also the sea's tides: hence a link between the Moon and the sea, and by extension between women and the element of Water, which also plays an important role through rain in preserving the fertility of the soil. These are the "underlying Realities" behind traditional metaphysical attributions of Earth and Water as feminine elements. The Sun, on the other hand, is associated with the element of Fire: not unnaturally, since the Sun is itself a huge ball of fiery thermo-nuclear explosions and chemical reactions. Fire is itself an aggressive and destructive element, capable of reducing fertile jungles to ashes. The Sun too is essentially destructive when it is not balanced by Water in a landscape: it turns vast pasts of the tropics to deserts, and its solar flares were the main agent of evolution on Earth before the arrival of Man, usually by causing climatic changes that wiped out whole species unable to adapt, for example, the dinosaurs. The male sex has traditionally been the more aggressive of the two, not just in human cultures, but in most mammal species as well. Hence it is natural to attribute the aggressive elements of Fire and the Sun to men. Humanity alone of all animal species has been able to domesticate Fire, and to turn its destructive prooperties to creative use, in the smelting of metals and the fashioning of tools. But these in turn have been used as means of aggression against the environment, of destroying an existing landscape as the first step to fashioning it in a new form. This creative use of the destructive power of Fire, and of the tools made with it, requires the ability for mental conceptualisation of patters different from the existing ones. This conceptual ability, usually attributed to the element of Air, tends to be more highly developed in that statistical myth the "average man" than in the "average woman", although differences between individuals are of course much greater than between the sexes. Hence the attribution of the elements of Air and Fire, Conceptualisation (Logos) and the Destructive and Creative Will to men. Life on Earth is the result of a delicate balance between all these elements. Pure Conceptualisation and Destructive-Creative Will unbalanced by the conservative forces of Form and Love produce the fiery furnace of the Sun, in whose chemical processes millions of new shapes and colours are forever being created, but endure for less than a microsecond, because the conservative force of Matter is absent to hold them and give them form. But pure Matter and Form, unfertilised by thte energy of the Sun mediated by an atmosphere of Air and Water, produces the unchanging surface of the Moon. The Earth is intermediate between these two extremes, though closer to the Moon, and thus we have the marvellous balance of Life, ever-changing but also renewing itself, and in which individual life-forms last long enough both as species and as individuals, to establish an identity and to experience that identity. The ancient pantheistic cultures recognised that Life on Earth is the product of a sacred marriage between the Sun and the Earth mediated by the Moon, of the elements of Fire and Matter, mediated by Air and Water. The sacred marriage of men and women was indeed a paradigm of this. But it was not unregenerate Man being spiritualised by the Sun-maiden. It was Man's fiery aggression and airy speculative intellect being "earthed" and made productive by Woman, by disciplining it into the world of Form. This is still true in practice today, though in the absence of an understood ritual to sanctify it, participants in the process are mostly unaware of it on the conscious level. Men on their own either form armies, that are embodiments of the Destructive-Creative Will, the element of Fire; or congregate into monasteries, universities, or research laboratories, to pursue speculative and conceptual thought for its own sake, the element of Air. It is the women who domesticate the warriors, and bring the speculators down to reality, by asking practical questions such as: "How are your children and I going to survive this war?" or "What good will this wonderful utopia do to ordinary people?" Men are the idealists, women the materialists. But when a great statesman, writer or architect actually achieves something enduring, it is frequently because he had one or more women behind him, encouraging him to give form to some of his many abstract concepts. Solar monotheism originated with the Aryan tribes of the Caucasus, as an attempt to become more efficient at war and conquest by worshipping the spirit of fiery aggression to the exclusion of the gentler loving elements of Earth and Water. That is why they forbade the priestess-dominated fertility cults: they made the tribes "soft" and tolerant, and less effective in war. Solar monotheism also made these warrior tribes less efficient at the Goddess-ruled arts of agriculture, but this did not matter since they could conquer agricultural Goddess-worshipping peoples and force them to feed them. This was the logic behind the solar monotheism of the Aryans and Persians, and later of the Jews under Moses and the Prophets. This could work as long as solar monotheism was the religion only of an upper caste of rulers and warriors, and the lower classes were allowed to retain their religious beliefs with the Earth. But when the Christian Church in its zeal hunted down the witches of the villages, and made the ordinary country people be as solar monotheist as the aristocracy and town inhabitants, the path was set for the society we have today. This is not so much "materialist" in the true metaphysical sense – would that it were! – as obsessionally creative of useless artefacts from which derive no real enjoyment other than the pride of having made them. In doing so, we destroy the much more beautiful and essential environment in which we live, and display the mutual fear and distrust (or at least our rulers do) that is the sign of people alienated from their roots. Sister Angelina claims to deplore this society as much as I do. But she and her fellow Madrians appear to think that all that is needed to redress the balance is to put women at the top of a religious-political edifice that still worships the Solar Logos to the exclusion of Matter, by making the Sun a "Her" instead of a "Him". Instead of turning to the great Earth Mother Goddess of antiquity – to Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Cybele or Kwan-Yin – the Madrians worship Jehovah-in-drag. Jehovah is a real God – i.e. aspect of the Ultimate Reality – who generally answers the prayers of those that worship Him/Her exclusively, by refashioning their souls in His/Her image of ruthless Destructive-Creative Will. He gave the Jews the will to conquer Palestine on at least three occasions in as many millenia, and the Protestant Puritans the will to conquer and settle North America, South Africa and Australasia, as well as to found countless business empires. Judging by the tone of her interventions at the recent conference on "The Re-emergence of the Goddess" in April 1979, Jehovah has already given Sister Angelina that steely conviction of alone possessing the Truth that I normally associate with Jewish and Christian Fundamentalists. In time Jehovah will help the Madrians to get themselves accepted as equals by men in the rat-race to the top of executive boardrooms, or to become tomorrow's Mrs Gandhis, Golda Meirs and Margaret Thatchers (which is all that some feminists are interested in). But I doubt whether Jehovah can teach the Madrians how to make their kisses initiatory to a higher level of consciousness either to their partners or to themselves, for that is not in that God's gift. To achieve self-transcendence in a Sacred Marriage, the two partners must approach it in a spirit of recognising the divine in their partners that can complement the divine in themselves, and then surrender to them, rahter than look down on them as rather base creatures "ensnared in matter" whom one is trying to lift up. What good would it do humanity to have more Golda Meirs and Mrs Gandhis? Israel was no less intransigently aggressive under Mrs Meir than under earlier and later male Prime Ministers, and India a great deal more oppressed under Mrs Gandhi than before or since. Western civilisation has now worshipped the Solar Destructive-Creative Will exclusively for so long that it is in grave danger of blowing itself and the whole of life on Earth up with its overstocked arsenal of artificial suns, the H-bombs. If we are to prevent this, then it is desperately urgent for us to restore the ancient Earth Mother Goddess to Her temples, put more faith into the preserving power of Love and Fertility than into the sterile Capitalist and Socialist abstract utopias. It is because we all know deep down within ourselves that women are so much closer in intuitive empathy to the Earth spirit that alone can save us that male resistance to the women's struggle is crumbling in the West, and many men would indeed gladly put up with a period of matriarchy. But it would have to be a matriarchy of the intuitive as well as of intellectual women, the sensual and loving ones more than the politicians and administrators. Fortunately, important elements in the Feminist Movement recognise this better than Lux Madriana. For perceptive and sensitive contributions to the resurgence of Mother Goddess worship, and a historically more accurate description of the matriarchal past, read Merlin Stone's Paradise Papers, Carol Ochs's Behind the Sex of God and Anne Kent Rush's Moon, Moon. Robert This article is the second of three published by Aquarian Arrow. Marie Antoinette and the Reine Soleil To begin at the end of Robert's article: yes, there is a form of matriarchalism very different from that of Madrianism. It is preached (with variations) by Merlin Stone, Robert Graves and others. It consists, broadly, in accepting the old patriarchal sky-father/earth-mother doctrine, but inverting their hierarchical order, so that the earth-mother and her cthonic values are exalted above the "rationality" of the sky-father. Madrians have always maintained that such a minor cosmetic operation could never alter the real patriarchal essence of the doctrine; and if proof were needed, Robert's delightfully chauvinist article (behind every Great Statesman is a Good Woman, etc.) surely supplies it. Actually, the whole situation is the result of a metaphysical confusion so excruciatingly entangled that one is reminded more than anything else of a kitten that has managed to get itself trussed like a chicken in its own ball of wool. And this confusion, in turn, derives from the sheer blackness [word unclear] of metaphysical ignorance which characterises (and indeed practically constitutes) the post-Renaissance mentality. In view of this, it is scarcely surprising that Robert is able to accuse me of metaphysical ignorance. I have heard a topologist facetiously but not inaccurately described as "someone who can't tell the difference between a teacup and a doughnut". Robert's reaction to true metaphysics in akin to that of the bumpkin who bursts out: "Topology's supposed to be the science of shapes ain't it? Well any idiot can tell the difference between a teacup and doughnut. Them blamed professors must be daft!" This is not so much a personal criticism of Robert as a general crticism of modern ignorance as a whole. But a little real metaphysics can quickly dispel the ignorance and get the kitten out of the cats'-cradle. But what is real metaphyics? It is the primordial Philosophy not devised by any human mind, but passed down (traditio) from mother to daughter since the primordial time, the Golden Age "when earth touched Heaven". In its original form, this Philosophy was matriarchal, as was the social order. The social order was matriarchal because the primordial Philosophy was matriarchal. Earth followed the law of Heaven. Yet even as humanity descended away from the Golden Age, through the Silver and Bronze Ages, into the Iron Age itself (which began some 5,000 years ago), and in this final Age, patriarchy slowly took over from matriarchy, the primordial Philosophy continued to be taught. It was taught by Plato and Plotinus, by Shankara and Shakyamuni the Buddha; indeed, every Iron Age civliisation has possessed its own more or less scaled-down version of the primordial Philosophy. Or rather, that was true up until the last 300 years. And although each version speaks a slightly different spiritual "language", each is saying the same things. Metaphysics is not a matter of personal opinion; it is as precise as a mathematical equation. The essence of Robert's confusion is as follows: he equates the sky-father/earth-mother duality with two other dualities, namely Spirit/matter and rationalism/emotionalism. Now in the first place thesee two dualities are not only not equivalent, they have no common measure whatever; and in the second place, he has completely misconceived both of them. He state calmly that the majority of matriarchal as well as patriarchal cultures have regarded women as earth/matter as opposed to sun/spirit. Yet even Merlin Stone has pointed out that the sun was female in Japan, India, Canaan, Anatolia, Aravia, Australia and among the Eskimos (The Paradise Papers, p. 18) and one could easily add others to the list. In fact the male sun is purely a patriarchal Indo-Aryan invention. The same author points out that far from being exclusively an earth-goddess, Her most frequent title from the earliest times has been Queen of Heaven (perhaps Robert should scratch the book off his list). The reason he gives for this supposed matriarchal equation of maid with matter is that matter was then given its due worship for its own innate virtues. This is an interesting argument, but it has one fatal flaw. However amazing it may seem to the modern mind, the concept of matter as a physical stuff possessing certain innate qualities was wholly unknown up until 400 years ago. All form, all qualities, according to the primordial Philosophy, are Archetypes, or Divine Ideas, belonging to Spirit. Matter is simply the wax upon which the seal of forms and qualities is impressed. This means that pure matter, untouched by Spirit, would have no qualities whatever: no size, no weight, no shape, neither hardness nor softness, hear nor coldness nor colour. Obviously, it is in no sense physical. The equation of nature with matter implied in Robert's article rests upon the post-Cartesian concept of matter. Applied to ancient civilisations, whether matriarchal or patriarchal, it is pure anachronism. When we speak of modern "materialism", we are using the term loosely, for what is in question is not true matter, but the modern fantasy of "physical matter", which very phrase is a contradiction in terms. This is not to say that all ordinary people in the ancient world possessed a clear philosophical concept of matter, but they certainly did not possess the unnatural notion of "physical matter" which has been inculcated into the modern mind via the compulsory "education" system and the mass-media. Matter, then, is a "crystal mirror", a tabula rasa ready to accept whatever image Spirit shall impress upon it. The combination of matter and Spirit is nature (whether physical or non-physical). The patriarchs knew precisely what they were doing in equating maid with matter, thus making her the purely passive support of man's activity (behind every Great Statesman is a Good Woman). The matriarchal perspective is not simply the reverse of this, for the man in the marriage rite is not "man" being saved by "maid", he is soul being saved by Spirit; the maid is just as much soul as the man; but she is enacting a ritual role. The ritual is certainly real, and not just an "act". But not on the most obvious level. If that were so it would mean that every wife was God! This is subtle stuff, I know, and it cannot be mae any clearer by tossing it about in a polemical arena. All I can say is, contemplate [word unclear] it if you want to and don't if you don't. Any true understanding well be supra-verbal. Which brings us to rationalism. It has become a New-Age truism that the Christian west is overbalanced on the side of solar intellect; and like most New-Age truisms, it is not true. Of the two paths, bhakti marga and jnana marga; the path of Love, will, or emotion and the path of Light or solar Intellect, Christianity has always erred on the side of the former. If one were to look for a culture which has erred on the other side, Buddhism would be an obvious example. What the New-Age critics have in mind is actually the rationalism of the Christian west. But rationalism and solar Intellect are two entirely different things. Intellect not only perceives, but is one with, the Spiritual Archetypes. It is not an individual faculty at all, but rather the point at which the individual soul touches the trans-personal Centre. Viewed subjectively, it is Enlightenment; viewed objectively, it is the Absolute; nor is it other than pure Love (which, from our earthly point of view, is lunar), since the distinction between the two is an illusion which appears only when seen from "below". Rationalism, on the other hand, is the ignorant reaction of the individual mental faculty, through its agent the brain, upon the contingent things of the physical world as transmitted via the senses. Ignorant because it is, by definition, unaware of the Spiritual Archetypes which are the real essence of all physical phenomena. Sentimentalism or emotionalism is a similarly ignorant reaction to the same phenomena by the passional faculty. Far from being in any way opposed, rationalism and sentimentalism are two sides of the same coin. The west is rationalist because it is sentimentalist. The two are inseparable. But just as Love and Intellect, seen in their true persepctive, are seen to be one, so their inferior parodies, sentimentalism and rationalism, being cut of from unitive Reality, present the illusion of being eternally separate. Every modernist reaction against rationalism inevitably takes the form of a mere appeal to emotional reactions as opposed to mental ones: thus its sole effect is to give the wheel of Samsara another turn. Robert's underlying thesis is simply another essay in the long history of such barren sentimentalist reactions. One must sympathise with the desire to react against rationalism. But nothing is achieved by running continually from the right hand of Moira into her left. Since deserting the revealed symbolic structure of the matriarchal Philosophy, patriarchal metaphysics has always been balancing on a tightrope. With Christianity, it finally fell victim to its own meddling with the primordial Doctrine. Due to its dogma of the male sun, it mistook the Christ (who is actually a masculinised version of the lunder Daughter, as opposed to the solar Mother) for the Solar Logos; thus depriving itself of any authentic representative of the solar Principle. The two greatest exponents of solar Intellect in Christianity were Origen and Meister Eckhardt. Both were declared heretics. Lacking the "backbone" of Intellect, the love-path of Christianity declined into a samsaric sentimentality, which eventually gave rise, at the time of Aquinas, to an equally samsaric rationalism, which was the inverse parody of the missing Intellectuality. This rationalism developed slowly, still dressed in metaphysical garments, until the Renaissance, when it broke loose and initiated the wild downward spiral which has led us to the modern world; creating on the way such topsy-turvy notions as "physical matter", and all the confusions which they have generated. These confusions have proved particularly effective in neutralising all intellectual resistance to the downward movement. What is the answer to this impulse? How shall we cleave a path between the Scylla of rationalism and the Charybdis of sentimentalism? The Madrian answer is very straightforward: we must return to the primordial matriachal Philosophy, devotion and way of life. This does not mean reconstructing [word unclear] a "matriarchalism" from a handful of archaeological bones tied together by modern speculations (which will inevitably by rationalist, sentimentalist, or – more likely – both). That will leave us right back where we started. We must go to the living matriarchal tradition, as it has been preserved down the ages in this country and elsewhere. The tradition we call Madrian. And this means not only accepting a Philosophy – although the path of Light is indispensable; nor simply opening our hearts to the adoration of God in the form in which She has revealed Herself to humanity from the dawn of time – although the path of Love is also indispensable. It also means treading the third path, which called the path of Works, or of themis [thamë]. This entails governing our entire way of lief in accordance with divine Harmony. It means rejecting all secular political systems which are not directed by the one lawful Princess of Earth. It means rejecting all industrial systems which are geared to merely "making goods", instead of practising the ancient sacred crafts which are not merely utilitarian, but also a path of meditation. It means rejecting commercialism and the cash nexus, whether in its capitalist or socialist forms. In short, it means rejecting the whole edifice of modern human-centred culture, and returning to a God-centred matriarchy. This is the most extraordinary part of Robert's article. He might have accused us of being wild anarchists bent on tearing down all the "achievements" of "progress". He might have called us Amazon reactionaries intractably opposed to the liberal-democratic ideals of late patriarchy. Either accusation would have some semblance of plausibililty. The more impish among us might have been sorely tempted to reply: "Yop, that's about the size of it." But instead, he chooses to accuse us of wanting to join "the ratrace to the top of executive boardrooms, or to become tomorrow's Indira Gandhis, Golda Meirs and Margaret Thatchers" – we, who do not even accept any secular or patriarchal government as legal! It is rather like accusing Mary Whitehouse of being a pornographer, or Archbishop Lefèbvre of being a Protestant. The good primate no doubt has his detractors. Some of them, perhaps, say some very nasty things about him. It is even conceivable that some of those things may be true. But if anyone is going about accusing him of being a Protestant, we may be forgiven for thinking that person does not have the remotest idea of what he is talking about. Actually, Madrianism, while it is unashamedly matriarchal both in its doctrine and in its social institutions, has nothing to do with denigrating men, or with regarding them as in any sense "base". It is a simple, traditional way of life, based on authority, love and devotion. It puts God (both in Her solar and Her lunar aspects) at the centre not only of its Sundays, but of its stories, its songs, its work and its life. It is lived by men and maids, in that mutual love and respect which one finds only in a God-centred hierarchy. I do not deny that there are many self-styled matriarchalists (most of whom have never seen the inside of a matriarchal household) who, filled with the urban ideologies of the Iron Age, despise our way of life and all that it stands for. But I cannot help but thinking that theirs is the fastidious contempt of a Marie Antoinette, dressed up with crook and smock, upon meeting a real-life shepherdess. Sister Angelina This article is the third of three published by Aquarian Arrow</div> 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 Beauty and the Beast Debate Subject The topic of the resource Aleister Crowley, sex, femininity, New Age, marriage, role of men, matriarchy, decline of the ages, Solar Intellect, rationalism, sentimentalism, feminism, Christianity, metaphysics Description An account of the resource A reproduction of letters exchanged between Sr. Angelina and "Robert" in the pages of Aquarian Arrow, offering competing analyses of Aleister Crowley's views on the nature and archetype of woman. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Angelina 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 Christianity decline of the ages femininity marriage men metaphysics New Age sex social criticism Solar Intellect