Eros and Strife ~ Peace: An End

CHAPTER TWELVE

~ In the Wake of Poseidon ~

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Eros and Strife | pg. 2 - Peace: A Beginning | pg. 3 - Pictures of a City
pg. 4 - Cadence and Cascade | pg. 5 - In the Wake of Poseidon I | pg. 6 - In the Wake of Poseidon II
pg. 7 - Cat Food | pg. 8 - The Devil's Triangle | pg. 9 - Garden of Worm
pg. 10 - Peace: An End

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Peace - An End

"Peace is a word
Of the sea and the wind."

Peace comes when Eros and Logos, the "sea and the wind", are realized together.

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

"Since the days of Moses (who had employed the shamir when writing on the tablets of stone), the worm had been entrusted to the care of the Prince of the Sea who gave the shamir to the hoopoe-bird for safekeeping. The hoopoe promised to guard it with her life; for eons, she kept it with her at all times, safe in the Garden of Eden. Sometimes, when the hoopoe flew throughout the earth, she kept the little worm tight in her beak, departing with it only to cleft open rocks on desolate mountains, that she might seed them and cause vegetation to blossom forth and provide her with food."

- A Magical Worm Called the Shamir

"The demon king Asmodeus revealed that Shamir had been carried from the garden of Eden by the bird who kept it hidden still. Solomon then ordered glass bowls placed over all bird's nests in his kingdom. When Shamir came out to cut through the glass of his bird's nest, he was captured."

- Bestiary: Worm Page

"With the help of the miraculous worm, the wise king built the Temple; thereafter the shamir disappeared and to this very day no one knows where it is to be found."

- A Magical Worm Called the Shamir

"Peace is the love
Of a foe as a friend;"

"Foe as a friend" tells us the narrator has transcended duality .

"But I say unto you, love your enemies."

- Matthew 5: 44

"Shadow-work is challenging. Generally, we avoid the unpleasantness of the shadow by denying it entirely. But when we do begin to look at the elements of the shadow -- the parts we have denied or disliked -- our reaction might be shock, disbelief, guilt, shame, depression, humiliation, fear, and a sense that we have lost our innocence (as indeed we have). These effects might be more upsetting if we have invested deeply in a self-image of purely positive qualities, and if we have been further alienating ourselves from our shadow by indulging the judgmentalness which we see sometimes in social reformers and self-righteous religionists. If we decide to pursue self-awareness through an understanding of the shadow, we require some personal qualities:

Courage, to look at the elements which might destroy our life-long self-concepts.
Humility, to put aside any idea that we are not the pious person which we might have imagined ourselves to be.
Self-acceptance, to look at our ugly qualities without rejecting them back into the shadow again, or trying to disguise them into something more appealing. In our shadow, we might see the most repelling facets of human nature. We can meet each of those facets with love and forgiveness and honesty and a sense of curiosity and exploration.

Jesus' advice, "love your enemies," is appropriate for both our shadow elements and for the projections of those elements onto our human enemies; this "love" can be simply a desire to come to terms with an element whose viewpoint we assume to have some validity in the overall scheme even if it is contrary to our current preferences."

- The Shadow
by James Harvey Stout

"Expensive crimson or scarlet dye was made from worms and used for the clothing of kings. When Isaiah records the fall of the King of Babylon (sometimes as symbol of Lucifer), he writes, "Your pomp is brought down to Sheol...the maggot is spread under you, and worms cover you." [Is 14:11] Here is the irony of one who proudly wore crimson garments discovering that they are the garments of corruption and uncleanness."

- Bestiary: Worm Page

"Peace is the love you bring
To a child."

...confirming the child development subtext of the first album.

"Searching for me
You look everywhere,
Except beside you.
Searching for you
You look everywhere,
But not inside you."

...pointing in the direction of where our protagonist must go next : "inside".

The Coming of the Kingdom

"Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, `Here it is,' or `There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

- Luke 17: 20-21

"The mosque that is built in the hearts of the saints Is the place of worship for all, for God dwells there."

- Jalaluddin Rumi

"If enlightenment is not where you are standing, where will you look?"

- Zen saying

Yuri Zykov, a reader from Kazakhstan, makes an interesting point about Peace: An End .

"Look at the structure of the last verse of Peace - An End . The last word in each line appears in the next line as a description of peace:

"Peace is a stream from the heart of a man ;
Peace is a man , whose breadth is the dawn .
Peace is a dawn on a day without end;
Peace is the end, like death of the war ."

If you try to continue the song you get the paradoxical line:

"Peace is the war ..."

But the song finishes there, with only a cue to this paradox."

- Yuri Zykov

There are two answers to this riddle. "Peace is the war" is yet another statement indicating that the narrator has been freed from dualistic thinking.

"The unity of things is not a static harmony, but a dynamic equilibrium based on regulated tension. Like the eye of a hurricane and the center of a flame, the beauty and stillness of the kosmos exist because of powerful opposition. What is seen is a stable instability. What is common is war. "One must see that war is everywhere, and conflict is a good thing." (Fr. 80) People oppose conflict, not seeing that war implies peace and peace implies war."

- Heraclitus on the Logos

"And della vigna praises in this last Emperor of the ancient Empire the 'ideal of good.' 'who is free from crooked sight, who bindeth the corners of the earth and ruleth the elements, that frost is mated with fire, and wet with dry, and rough with smooth.'
The marriage of opposites had been from of old the token of aurea aetas , a Golden Age in which strife and war shall cease : an age of peace which the Savior-Emperor shall bring."

- Frederick II
by Ernst Kantorowicz
(p. 523)

"Peace is the war" also alludes to the "inner war" that is to come. The battle that must be waged in order for the narrator to find peace.

"Libra is something of an ‘interlude between two activities’, in which the soul can organise itself for battle!"

- D. K. Foundation

"Eternal Mother, mistress of the grain,
Sustaining growth with either milk or rain,
Engulfs again her children, whereupon
The self-consuming wheel of life goes on.
Within her womb we all descend again!"

- verse on the Empress tarot card

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