I think of the glory which inhabits nature, that inexplicable force, and I think of my own task as I increasingly see it here in this Meeting House, to be an ambassador for that plane beyond this world of illusion, that realm within the depths of the self, the mundus imaginalis. And my uplifting task to grope around for the words to express something of that realm, that I myself have only but momentarily beheld, as through a “dusky transparency” as this morning’s sage - George William Russell - expresses it. He was an Irish mystic, and poet, who I have only just discovered this week, and yet his words I have felt a resonance to. I haven’t been able to put him down. Because I think this task, to express or inspire some form of spiritual realization, is greatly aided through the telling of stories, fairy tales, and poetry, which George Russell understood better than most. It’s aided by these forms, because what we speak of is not something that can be grasped within the rational confines of the mind – it requires an invocation of a quality that lies between the words, or behind the word, an intuited feeling, images painted in the mind’s eye, which say more than any mere concept can say, however eloquently expressed.

We’ve heard a section already from George Russell’s book, ‘Song and its Fountains’, and I’m going to read a bit more, so that you can get a better sense of it…

… “By the magic of that music which so rose

within me the universe seemed to reel away

from me, and to be remote and unsubstantial

as the most distant nebulae, and for some

minutes I was able to re-create within myself

the musical movement of the power, and

could stay the soul upon the high uplands.

But it quickly vanished as a dream might go

after our waking, and try as I might I could

not recall it again. But for a moment I

understood what power might be in sound

or incantation.

It made me understand a little of those mystics

who speak of travelling

up a Jacob’s Ladder of Sound to the Logos,

the fountain of all melody. I found later

if meditation on the Spirit is prolonged

and profound enough,

we enter on a state where our being is musical,

not a music heard without but felt within as if

the soul itself had become music,

or had drawn nigh to

the ray of the Logos, the Master Singer,

and was for that instant part of its multitudinous song.

While “By the Margin of the Great Deep”

was being conceived I felt that

music in my being before the words were

swept together, a state akin to that I experienced

waking in dream when I followed

in their descending order the phases from

deep own-being through images or symbols

to their last echo in words.

I held these

memories with others akin to them, hoping

that at last I might understand the psyche

and come to some mastery of the hidden

powers. I do not think we shall ever come

to truth otherwise than by such gropings in

the cave of the soul, when with shut eyes

we are in a dim illuminated darkness, and

seek through transient transparencies to peer

into the profundities of being. It is the

most exciting of all adventures, the exploration

of the psyche, even though the windows

out of which we gaze are soon darkened

for us by our own bodily emanations. Yet

there are enchanted moments when we have

vision, however distant, of the divinities who

uphold the universe. It is true we are at an

immense distance from their greatness, and

see them as a shepherd boy far away among

his hills might see the glittering of the army

of a great king, and he is awed by the majesty

and bows low at the vision of greatness,

and dreams over it when the army is past

and he turns to his humble task with his

sheep. So remotely is it I have apprehended

splendours overshadowing my insignificance.

They stand over all of us. I think if we

chose the least inspiring among those we

know, one seeming not at all puissant or

entitled to respect, and could know of the

immortal powers which uphold the frailty

of his being, his darkened life would seem

to the imagination to move in a blaze of

glory.”

George Russell, here, expresses what I would like to, but better than I have managed. The most exciting adventure – the exploration of the psyche. The music not heard, the soul which has become music.

He was born, George William Russell, in 1867, in county Armagh, in Ulster. All of Ireland was under its enforced unification with the rest of the United Kingdom at that point. At a young age, Russell moved with his parents to Dublin. He studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, where he met his lifelong friend, W. B. Yeats, and along with Yeats, he had a lifelong interest in esoteric wisdom. While studying in Dublin, he read Madame Blavatsky’s work, and became a member of the theosophical society, and was even in correspondence with Blavatsky in the last few years of her life, when she was living in London.

At Lammas tide I think of…

The light and the dark, the death and the life…

I breath it in… Nature’s lectionary, which calls for our attention.

I think of wide-open landscapes, and the marshes of the fens,

Hot springs bursting into the air, vast waterfalls roaring,

Glow-worms twinkling, the aurora filling the sky,

the interconnected relationship of it all,

the kingfisher, the roe deer, and the red squirrel,

that remarkable harmony, that balance, that peace,

that joy, and that unity

which awakens our imagination, and our receptivity to things:

that gentle attention which is our worship, prayer, and devotion.