***post: IF ONLY I KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Samuel T. Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a mysterious old sailor stops a younger man at a wedding and begins to tell him a strange tale involving a calamity that happened to the Mariner during his earlier years. While out at sea, the crew of the ship the Mariner is sailing on encounters some weird fog and once an albatross appears to guide the crew to safety, the Mariner decides to kill the bird of good omen in a horrible, life-changing moment of whim, damning them all to punishment from the Tones (i.e.: gods) who have Office over that transdimensional part of the ocean. A series of hard labors deluge the crew while trapped by the still waters they rest on - no winds push the boat, terrible thirst spreads & eventual madness infects the crew as they all begin to drop dead, leaving the Mariner to dwell on his mistake in the midst of the blossoming carpet of corpses at his feet. Before the last of the crew dies, the Mariner spots a ship on the horizon: however, this vessel is piloted by Death & Life-in-Death (a goddess of the undead - the two of Them being Earth-Tones; of the Earth-Office) - They have come to collect a grim harvest in the form of the emaciated crew. Feeling sporty, the two deities roll some magick dice for the souls of the sailors. Death wins the souls of the crew in the roll but it is Life-in-Death who gets to decide the fate of the living witness to the wager - the Mariner. She decides to teach him a lesson in Oneness, a lesson involving the realization that every life-force is connected on a quantum level: this takes place in the anecdote as the Mariner blessing each & every living creature (spiritual and material) walking the land, every form dwelling upon & below the waters, within all the Five Tiers of Sun, Moon, Sky, Sea and Yird. His acknowledgement of their right to life allows the albatross hung about his neck, the initial instrument of his damnation, to fall into the waters below, inviting a storm that hides the Powers rushing to his aid. The albatross then becomes the alchemical symbol of his redemption (partially). After the results of the wager are agreed upon by the two visiting Powers, a host of different spirits are then called upon by Life-in-Death to animate their dead bodies and to push the ship from beneath the waters. Finally arriving in a safer harbor, the Mariner is then compelled to live out his servitude immediately, to tell his tale to all who would hear it. A hermit (priest) shrieves him of his sins (uniting the earthly absolution with the divine - summed up in the old maxim as Above, so Below) and realizes that something is different with this old salt, made unnaturally aged by his encounter with Them. The priest can know this even though hes never met the Mariner before: the mark of Life-in-Death is on him, a visible patina. Rime, while being an old term for rhyme, also means hoarfrost and implies the Mariners appearance as ancient. Although the end of this tale, it is not the end of the Mariner, nor is it the end of his crossroad moment with the young man stopped at the wedding. The wedding guest enraptured by the Mariner is alternately engrossed, bored, fascinated, horrified, and, ultimately, awakened (slightly) by the anecdote. The Mariner insists that he is compelled as a part of his servitude to the Powers to pass on this realization of Oneness to all who would hear it and the wedding guest departs the party to ponder the existential aspect of what hes heard. His world has been forever changed by this old salt. By the end of the tale, we know who the Mariner is; who Death and Life-in-Death are. We know what powers this world on its spiritual plane, we learn of the redemptive capacities of an albatross and we even meet several supporting personalities in the form of the damned crew and the old hermit. The one person whom we dont know is the wedding guest. Coleridge has never said and there has never been any speculation on the parts of poets & dreamers, philosophers & mystics, doges & lords of old. Not even Iron Maiden in all their heavy metal bravado, when turning this poem into an amazing 14 minute song, were willing to venture a guess. Soooo... who, then, is the wedding guest?? I will tell you... The wedding guest stopped by the Mariner is HIS YOUNGER SELF - the wedding guest IS the Mariner from his youth before his life became irreparably married to the sea. +++++++++++++ Remember: the Mariner, by the end (and beginning) of the tale, belongs to Life-in-Death, a goddess of the undead. The Mariner is stuck in-between living & dying, a revenant imbued with unearthly power as a servant of this deity. He must have some power in order to compel others to see his vision of the Oneness that holds this world fast, a vision imparted by Them because OF Them - eliciting the secret wisdom that even the Powers are held fast by this Oneness, which is connection to Source. Even They can be prisoners to Power. The fact that the wedding guest is the Mariners younger self is evident in the binary appearance of the guest at the beginning & ending of the tale - it is not the Mariner-as-servant-of-the Powers who is the most important figure in this story but the unnamed wedding guest-as-the-Mariners younger self who is central and, indeed, most crucial to the invisible mechanisms of the anecdote. Having the power he inherited from his mistress Life-in-Death, the Mariner effects a loop in Time (because he is outside of the strictures of the Fourth Dimension as undead) and travels back to his past to warn his younger self of the future calamity he will face at sea once older. However, it ultimately does no good, for the Mariner still winds up becoming a thrall to the goddess. Metaphorically AND literally, there can be no escaping the inception of this gnosis once realizing that Oneness is an undeniable reality - this is why the Mariner cannot shake his loop; why the wedding guest, although a sadder & wiser man, grows up to be the selfish Mariner that damns his crew - the same selfish Mariner who tries to warn his younger self of the horrors that await him, horror born of the ultimate realization: WE ARE ONE. But this view is only horror if it is fought, if it is run from and allowed to chase because finally noticed. There is no escaping Oneness - it is too big, too unwieldy. It is both the heaviest & lightest substance imaginable. It is nowhere and everywhere at the same time, in all times & in all ways. You cannot divide it, yet it is compartmentalized into uncountable levels and frequencies and dimensions. Although only a meme, the Mariner willed himself into servitude of the Powers and needed the transformative experience of this terrible calamity at sea in order to come to this crossroad: with himself, with the Powers, with the Universe, with Source-as-God. Some of us need this confrontation - it is written into our Akashik accounts. He chose to walk the hardest road on the way to discovering rapport with his Higher Self and, most likely, walks it still, forever out of Time yet having all the time in the world to contemplate this fate. As Udrokoos Kristo (the Aquarian Christ) and Major Domo of House Hydrochous, as the current bearer of Bel-Zeus, Lawgiver & Rex dioses of the Asuras, I can understand that terrible road, that loneliness, that ultimate in horrors - we are One and there is naught to do but comply. Ave 666 - Ave the Morningstars! Everything we do now is held under the harshest of lights, here in the death of Death and the burning of old shadows... ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 19:08:11 +0000
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