Islands : side two ~ Prelude : Song of the Gulls

Chapter Seventeen

ISLANDS
- side two -

"If there be anywhere on earth where a lover of God is
always kept safe from falling, I know nothing of it, for it
was not shown me. But this was shown: that in falling
and rising again we are always kept in the same
precious love."

- Julian of Norwich

Musically and conceptually, Prelude: Song of the Gulls is as far removed from the carnal concerns of Ladies of the Road as one can imagine.

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"Aquarius is a fixed air symbol, it surrounds us in a circulating motion that is vital, vibrant and cool. It is like a refreshing breeze, sometimes radical & consciously shocking. The symbol is the waterbearer pouring down from the pitcher."

- The Age of Aquarius
by Norm Vogel

Prelude: Song of the Gulls also suggests a re-emergence out of the darkness (of the underworld) and into the bright white light of day.

"The colour first associated with Aquarius is dazzling white, like that of lightning or electricity. This is also known as the sign for maxima (with Sagittarius) the white light from which flows all the colours of the prism."

- The House System Continued
by DonnaKova Dauser

Aquarius

Mottos: I Universalize. I Know.

Animal: Large, talking birds

- Aquarius

"In the Teutonic legend of Lohengrin, Sigurd, in the Volsunga Saga (or Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied), after killing the dragon and tasting its blood, was able to understand the song of birds."

"Peace is a bird who sings
As you smile."

Braque's Ateliers And The Symbolic Bird
by Martin Ries

"Almost every commentator on Fulcanelli's masterpice, The Mystery of the Cathedrals, agrees that the explanation of the "Green Language" given in chapter 3 of part one is the heart of the book. It is the concept that you must grasp in order to have any chance at understanding (the sephiroth attributed to its location in the Tree of Life is Binah, or Understanding) the rest of the book. After a long paragraph of Gnostic philosophy, he finally returns to his theme of the secret language. Here, he labels it the "Language of the Birds, "parent and doyen of all other languages -- the one spoken by philosophers and diplomats." Fulcanelli continues that this was "the language which Jesus revealed to his Apostles, by sending them his spirit, the Holy Ghost." Fulcanelli declares that "this is the language which teaches the mystery of things and unveils the most hidden truths."

A Monument to the end of Time:
Alchemy, Fulcanelli & the Great Cross
by Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges

"Birds use the stars to navigate from pole to pole. If birds can tell where they are going by watching the stars, it should not be a surprise that human cultures were once developed based upon star stories. The idea behind the "language of the birds" is a kind of empirical intuition. It is empirical, because creatures have been using it for hundreds of millions of years, and humans have been recording its messages in esoteric and enigmatic languages for as long as we have records. The "language of the birds" is the "manna from heaven."

- Rush Allen, Language of Birds

"The constellation of the Eagle is placed just above the man carrying the pitcher of Aquarius, who follows the bird's movement so closely that he seems to be drawn after it by unseen bonds."

- Aquarius, the Water Carrier

"There is a "bridge" in the heavens which has a star at one corner called Sirrah. Sirrah is the head of the bound woman, Andromeda, and it is one corner of the Great Square. The other three corners are the wings of Pegasus. The star has a more common name, Alpheratz.

In the celestial mythologies, the Great Square represents that place which must be crossed in order to achieve eternal life. The asterism sits squarely above the location on the ecliptic where the path is furthest away from the galactic plane. In practically every culture of the world, this location was know as the place of death and resurrection. On the Santiago Staff which was inscribed with the Rongo-Rongo script of Easter Island, there is a story about a king who had fallen between two posts, and gone to the place where "birds copulate" with fishes. This is also part of the "language of the birds." Down below the Great Square and under the "bridge at Sirrah," a man lies upon his back with a Phoenix behind him. Above the man's mouth there is another man pouring a pitcher of water toward the mouth of the man on his back. The man with the pitcher of water is Aquarius. The man lying on his back is the Sacred Moai waiting to come back to life. But, first he must cross the "bridge at Sirrah." Above the bridge sits a King called Cepheus. It is the goal of Aquarius to help the man by the side of the road and get him back to his kingdom where he came from.
When the king fails to understand the "language of the birds," and accept the manna they receive from the heavens, the birds appear to copulate with the fishes, as the Rapa Nui have said. This is a clear expression that the rational creatures have drowned in the pits of self denial and truth has become insanity."

- Rush Allen, Language of Birds

"The burden of the water bearer (a man pouring water from a container) represents the collective consciousness, originality, and idealism of mankind being poured onto the parched earth of materialism and dullness."

- Aquarius

Formentera Lady , Sailor's Tale , Prelude: Song of the Gulls and Islands , contain strong references to water. By comparison, The Letters and Ladies of the Road seem to represent a dry season on life's journey.
And if Sailor's Tale is about stormy seas, surely Prelude: Song of the Gulls is about calm waters.

"Aquarius is associated with calmness - lull after the storm."

- The Garden of Love (Aquarius)
by Elizabeth Kyle

In fact, the arrangement evokes the idea of gentle waves.

"The glyph for Aquarius is two parallel lines or waves of water. These symbolic waves of water share the dual expression of vibrations of waves of electricity, or parallel lines of force. Something that is electric holds, carries or uses electricity or it is exciting, thrilling, or charged with emotion. An electron is a particle of negative electric charge. The basic principle of all electric machines is the reunion of separated electric charges...,"

(The alchemical reunion of opposites.)

"...with negatively charged electrons flowing through the machine toward a positively charged absence of electrons on the other side."

- Aquarius, the Water Bearer

"Like the glyph (two waves), Aquarius experiences both the valley and the mountain top. The results of the valley experience and of the mountain top with its vision and light, are very vividly depicted by Aquarius. The Aquarian can experience the depths of depression and of self-depreciation or he can know and pass through the exaltation of the soul and the sense of spiritual power which soul control gives, and know them to be the interplay and the action and reaction which are necessary for growth and comprehension."

- D. K. Foundation

"It says in the Lotus Sutra that the bodhisativa hears the music of the spheres, and understands the language of the birds, while hearing the cries in the deepest levels of hell."

- Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy

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And upon the gentle waves of Aquarius, perhaps, there is a boat under clear blue skies taking our "sailor" back to where he started from.

"The religions born in India share a common symbol of salvation as crossing the waters. The waters represent the painful existence in the world, plagued by ills, a continual passing from life to death in samsara. Tossed about on the turbulent sea, the wayfarer finds rest only on the other shore, the firm ground of Nirvana. In the Judeo-Christian scriptures, crossing the waters is also a symbol of salvation, drawn from the historical tradition of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea under divine protection and later crossing the Jordan River to reach the promised land."

- Crossing the Waters

The Return

"The hero must eventually come back into the ordinary world bearing great energy to be used for the construction of society. Moses returns. Jesus emerges from the wilderness to begin a public career of healing, exorcism, and teaching. Bilbo the Hobbit comes back to Bagshot Row in the Shire to become a solid citizen, a pillar of the community who unsuspectingly holds the Ring of Power that is the key to the great events of his age."

- The Heroic Journey

"The detail of Frederick Barbarossa's somnolence in a Thuringian grotto positively links his legend to that of the heroic knight Tannh�user, which is celebrated in the Wagnerian opera of the same name. A minnesinger -- the German equivalent of a troubadour -- Tannh�user was seduced by the goddess Venus and spent seven years indulging his carnal appetites at her court in the Horselloch Cavern of Thuringia. Returning at last to the World, he vainly sought absolution for his sins from one priest after another, appealing finally to the Pope, who dismissed him with the words: "You have as much chance of receiving absolution as this dry wooden staff in my hand has of sprouting green leaves!" Miraculously, the Pontiff's staff did sprout fresh shoots three days later, but a despairing Tannh�user had already returned to the pleasures of Venus' court, where folklore has him remaining 'until the end of Time'."

- In Quest of the Grail
by Thomas Jude Germinario

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