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| Ocean Beach. San Francisco, September 2018. |
"I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." --
Anne Frank, Diary of Anne Frank.
Sunday, 9/23/18, at 1:54 UTC, which means Autumn on Saturday, 9/22/18, at 6:54 p.m. in San Francisco and 9:54 p.m. in Brooklyn and on Sunday at 3:54 a.m. in Copenhagen and 7:39 a.m. in Kathmandu, and Spring on Saturday at 10:54 pm in Buenos Aires and on Sunday at 3:54 am in Capetown and 11:54 am in Sydney. The great wheel turns, turn with it; while feeling the dynamism of the planetary polarity. In the north of the world, we move toward the darkness. In the south of the world, we move toward the light. Yin and yang. Light and dark swirling, each emerging from the other. Allow yourself to align with the majesty of these sacred cycles. Such alignment is itself sanctuary. Allow yourself to draw on these sacred cycles as an immense engine generating inexhaustible power. This power will sustain you as our herstoric struggle for the soul and future of the human species enters an even more dangerous phase.
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| Ocean Beach. San Francisco, September 2018. |
Resistance is rEvolution.
Check your registration, get your friends and allies to check their registration. Vote, get your friends and allies to vote. Vote Democratic up and down the ballot. Get your friends and allies to vote Democratic up and down the ballot. March. Educate. Lead. This is not a drill. You can't escape choosing sides. You can't transcend what is upon us or reframe it for yourself and your followers from the luxury of your privilege. The complaint that having to choose between Democrats and Republicans is being forced to "choose the lesser of two evils" is a tragically false meme. But even if it were true, if you refused to choose the lesser evil then in reality you would have chosen the greater evil, because you have without a doubt empowered the greater evil. Seriously.
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| Great Highway. San Francisco, August 2018. |
"
Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?" --
Jack Kerouac, "The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959).
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| Ocean Beach. San Francisco, September 2018. |
Sixty-Fifth Sun in Virgo
After months of intense and sometimes acrimonious negotiations with the Norns (I.e., the Fates), I have signed a new ten year contract for residency on Terra. Details of the agreement will remain confidential for now. But as we already know the price of joy is sorrow and the price of life is death. Cash only. No refunds. All sales final. The great wheel turns. We are strangers in a strange land. Gathered in a tavern of ruin. To celebrate savage beauty and whisper wild magic. Each of us carries a pearl of great price hidden in our elven cloaks. There are troubadours here, steeped in Gaian Poetics; some of these troubadours will be "killed before they reach Bombay." There are Dakini here, emissaries of an ancient future. Asked for a map of the wilderness ahead, one of these Dakini smiles treacherously, reaches into her medicine pouch for a handful of parchment ash and blows it into the west wind. At the center of this circle, the dark goddess herself stirs the hot bronze cauldron of our primal reality. And as she stirs, the great wheel turns. The Yang flows from within the Yin, the Yin flows from with the Yang. Chi is the river. Chi is the sea. Chi is the rain. Chi is the soil. Chi is the stone. Chi is the sky. Chi is the flesh. Chi is the blood. Chi is root, trunk, bark, limbs, leaves. Chi is the solar fire and the lava flow. Chi is the Space which shudders with the thrill of it all. Realize this for yourself and share it in the way you find yourself inspired to share it. Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Peme Siddhi Hung.
The Year of the Dragon Rolls On
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| San Francisco, September 2018. |
With her fierce intellect and powerful voice,
Kali Holloway (@kalihollowayftw) is an invaluable journalistic resource on social justice and culture in this perilous time. She is a gifted writer/editor, a friend and colleague, and I am honored to share her poignant testimonial: "I, the Dragon is equal parts intimate memoir, zen treatise and firsthand historical document. Across a life filled with bothtrauma and triumph, Richard Power has traveled the world, witnessed extraordinary things, met an astounding list of fellow travelers and emerged with a story—many stories, many of them remarkable—that is both resonant and beautiful." -- Kali Holloway. "I, the Dragon: Chronicles of An Epic Life Among the Humans" is available in both a black and white signed edition for $55, and a full color limited edition (333 copies) numbered and signed for $133. For more information, visit
http://GoFundMe.com/wordsofpower
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| Great Highway. San Francisco, August 2018. |
The Goddess falls in love with Herself, drawing forth her own emanation, which takes on a life of its own. Love of self for self is the creative force of the universe. Desire is the primal energy, and that energy is erotic: the attraction of lover to beloved, of planet to star, the lust of electron for proton. Love is the glue that holds the world together.” -- Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religions of the Great Goddess (1999)
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| San Francisco, September 2018 |
The Secret Engine of the World
What are you called? Bruja? Baul? Bodhisattva? Tantrika? Aghori? Troubadour? Dakini? Bhakta? Curandera? Yogini? Wizard? Sorceress? These are all just cover stories. Your true designation is beyond human speech. Authentic, mystical love, real love, is the secret engine of the world. But this authentic, mystical love, this real love, does not act like fire or water; it does not incinerate or drown that which it encounters. Authentic, mystical love, real love, moves like a vast glacier; whatever it does not crush or bury, it pushes forward. Yes, this love glacier levels mountains and forges canyons, it breaks the unbreakable and reshapes the earth. The love glacier is so massive that it takes a lifetime just to glimpse it, and even then it can only be seen as far as the horizon; it moves so slowly it is almost undetectable, it takes a lifetime to measure its grinding progress. Authentic, mystical love does not act like fire or water; it does not incinerate or drown that which it encounters. this love moves like a vast glacier; whatever it does not crush and bury, it pushes forward. This is the secret engine of the world. How utterly empty and free you must be to revel in the movement of this glacier, knowing that all you have ever had or wanted will be torn up and ground under, and that then in the glacier's aftermath there will be only a long fathomless silence, in which you will be no more than the shadow of a raven on the white stillness of the deep snow.
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| Ocean beach. San Francisco, September 2018. |
"
There is a room in the Department of Mysteries, that is kept locked at all times.
It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.” -- Dumbledore to Harry in
J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"
