Chapter Eleven


    IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD II
    ~ In the Court of the Crimson King ~




    - chapter 11 index -
    pg. 1 - Moonchild | pg. 2 - The Dream The Illusion
    pg. 3 - The Court of the Crimson King | pg. 4 - The Purple Piper
    pg. 5 - Three Lullabies | pg. 6 - Orpheus
    pg. 7 - The Keeper of the City Keys | pg. 8 - The Pilgrim's Door
    pg. 9 - The Gardener | pg. 10 - The Yellow Jester
    pg. 11 - The Dance of the Puppets | pg. 12 - Dionysus
    pg. 13 - The Fool | pg. 14 - Logos
    pg. 15 - The Magician | pg. 16 - Finis


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    "I wait outside the pilgrim's door
    With insufficient schemes."

    Intellectual schemes. The cognitive function alone is insufficient to allow our protagonist to progress on the path of the spiritual pilgrim.

    "The black queen chants
    the funeral march,"

    As mentioned in chapter three, the Black Queen is Persephone/Proserpine.

    "Till a lock of hair is devoted to Proserpine, she refuses to release the soul from the dying body. When Dido mounted the funeral pile, she lingered in suffering till Juno sent Iris to cut off a lock of her hair. In all sacrifices a forelock was first cut off from the head of the victim as an offering to the black queen."

    - Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by E. Cobham Brewer

    Dido was the Queen of Carthage who loved Aeneas of Troy.

    "It is the Observation of such as skill Dreams, That to travel in our sleep a long way, and all alone, is a sign of Death. This it seems the Poet knew : for when the Queen of Carthage was to die for love, he fits her with this Melancholy Vision."

    - The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of the Rose Cross by Thomas Vaughan, 1652

    To gain the release of Euridice from Hades, Orpheus sang to Persephone, Queen of the underworld. The funeral march she is chanting is that of the Crimson King (the differentiated Thinking function), the aspect of the narrator that must die in order for him to progress on his journey. Both Persephone and Euridice were taken to the underworld by Hades. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades while... "gathering the flowers in her garden."

    "The cracked brass bells will ring;
    To summon back the fire witch
    To the court of the crimson king."

    "Leo is a fire sign, and the pre-eminent fire sign at this time. We are reminded that although God is love, God is also a ‘consuming fire’; fire burns, destroys and eradicates all that hinders the expression of divinity: a purifying process."

    - D. K. Foundation

    "The ancient Greek and Asiatic Sybils gave us prophecies of fire and light. These Sybils, traditionally portrayed as old women, gave us oracles during their ecstatic visions. They tell us about the past, and the future, and a coming purification by fire. The oracles were often consulted during times of war and crisis. They were so widely known in the ancient world that Michelangelo included the Italian Sybil Cumae in his masterwork, the Sistine Chapel. During the middle ages twelve Sybils were recognized as significant."

    - Sybilline Oracles Judgement of the Tenth Generation.

    "The Greek shrine of the oracular god Trophonius (the architect, incidentally, of the temple of Delphi) was in a cave with a maze-like arrangement of spikes and railings, and the pilgrim who threaded it was supposed to pass into the infernal regions. When Virgil's hero Aeneas comes to Cumae in Italy to venture below and consult the shades, he finds a temple with sculptured scenes of Daedalus, the Labyrinth and the Minotaur. The Cumaean Sibyl then guides him down through a cave entrance, quite in the style of Ariadne."

    - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

    His psyche may be divided ("cracked") but he still proclaims his intention to be whole again. The fire witch represents the attempt to transform his consciousness. (This will be explained in subsequent chapters.)

    "...the primary difference between a mystic and a prophet is one of direction: the mystic is dedicated to ascending the mountain; in Markavah mysticism, this is expressed as the ascent to the heavenly throne through seven distinct (and inseparable) spheres. The prophet, on the other hand, desires to "bring fire down from God," in other words returning from the peak of the mountain with a message for other men."

    - Mystical Reinterpretaion of Nothingness

    "Eliade enumerated the essential shamanic features: ascent to heaven, descent to the underworld to retrieve souls or to escort the dead, evocation and incarnation of the spirits in order to undertake the ecstatic journey, and mastery of fire."

    - Introduction to an Eleusinian Revival

    Which brings us back to The Long Sleep of the emperor (the Third Frederick) and of The Dream The Illusion .

    "As for the Long Sleep, that is of course a widespread folktale; Rip Van Winkle was no shaman. But its place at the beginning of the Epimenides-saga suggests that the Greeks had heard of the long "retreat" which is the shaman's novitiate and is sometimes largely spent in a condition of sleep or trance. "

    He (Orpheus) combines the professions of poet, magician, religious teacher, and oracle-giver. Like certain legendary shamans in Siberia, he can by his music summon birds and beasts to listen to him. Like shamans everywhere, he pays a visit to the underworld, and his motive is one very common among shamans - to recover a stolen soul. Finally, his magical self lives on as a singing head, which continues to give oracles for many years after his death."

    - The Greek Shamans and Puritanism by E.R. Dodds:


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