Annotations & Epistles

The Constant North.

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 02:39:00 GMT

Encompass me, my lover,
With your eyes' wide calm.
Though noonday shadows are assembling doom,
The sun remains when I remember them;
And death, if it should come,
Must fall like quiet snow from such clear skies.

Minutes we snatched from the unkind winds
Are grown into daffodils by the sea's
Edge, mocking its green miseries;
Yet I seek you hourly still, over
A new Atlantis loneliness, blind
As a restless needle held by the constant north we always have in mind.

- J.F. Hendry

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Mon, 10 Mar 2014 20:49:40 GMT

( On Parabola )

[a collaborative document can be found here; use it to share your own quotes, correspondences, and speculations.]

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Joined.

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 05:49:25 GMT

'It's good luck, getting married [...] Your spouse is like a bright false-star: clear and steady, to steer you home.'
- the Salt-Scarred Navigator

Indeed.

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On Celestial Language.

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 23:37:31 GMT

"Now a word is twofold, viz. internall, and uttered; An internall word is a conception of the mind, and motion of the soul, which is made without a voice. As in dreams we seem to speak, and dispute with our selves, and whilest we are awake we run over a whole speech silently. But an uttered word hath a certain act in the voice, and properties of locution, and is brought forth with the breath of a man, with opening of his mouth, and with the speech of his tongue, in which nature hath coupled the corporeall voice, and speech to the mind, and understanding, making that a declarer, and interpreter of the conception of our intellect to the hearers, And of this we now speak. Words therefore are the fittest medium betwixt the speaker and the hearer, carrying with them not only the conception of the mind, but also the vertue of the speaker with a certain efficacy unto the hearers, and this oftentimes with so great a power, that oftentimes they change not only the hearers, but also other bodies, and things that have no life. Now those words are of greater efficacy then others, which represent greater things, as intellectuall, Celestiall, and supernaturall, as more expressly, so more misteriously."
- Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia libri III

"As you are of course aware, the Correspondence is a form of language. We are still investigating what form of person or creature actually used this language, and what concepts it can communicate. The Senior Reader had this outlandish idea that one could use it to speak with, ah, celestial entities."
- The Semi-Semiotic Fellow of the Department of _______

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Putting the Pieces Together.

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 03:10:51 GMT

( Regarding the Bazaar, her beloved, and her children )

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Prelapsarian Notes.

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 07:04:19 GMT

( A Collection )

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Free of the Name.

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 03:45:38 GMT

"When you wake up - and you're about to wake up - throw the candle away. Let your scars heal. Forget all this stuff. For good. Right?

"Now then. I invoke the Spires, for the price. I invoke the Sea, for the cleansing. I invoke the God who Dreams, for the light..."

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Glaedelig Jul.

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 04:45:40 GMT

[This season, Theodor Gylden has sent you something of home: a card featuring the julenisse, yule-hob, and its yuletide goat laden with presents.

( Glaedelig Jul, says his handwriting like spikes of holly, og godt nytår. )]

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Notes -- Parabola and Polythreme.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:59:19 GMT

Everything, I believe, is interconnected ... Fingerwork, the Gates of the Garden, the Eyes of Icarus, the Falling Cities. And so the Mysteries of Polythreme interconnect with Parabola's; they form themselves a parabola, an image mirrored unto itself. I've written before on my voyage to the Marches of the Mirror Country. Now I will write on my voyage across the zee.

First, let me begin in Fallen London. There I worked with an Implacable Detective, to discover a missing Medium -- and when I discovered her, I discovered that she, like me, had been Behind the Mirror. But she appeared possessed by it ... She sang in English and in Loamsprach, the language of the Clay. 'We will exist!' 'Clothed in jade and clothed in mud!' 'The king with a hundred hearts!' 'No flying thing, no thing that flies!' 'The garden gates, with faces locked ...' In her reflection, her hair and hands moved like the slithering of serpents.

That would not be the last I heard of the Serpent-Handed. In another, private case, I found that a novelist of the Neath and a poet of the Surface had both invoked that mirror image, independent of one another, inspired by their dreams. And thus I learned of a dream-entity that slithers through one's consciousness whenever one brings it to being by writing of it. I believe the Medium was touched by this entity. ~~I believe I may be touched, too~~

But enough of serpents. The Medium spoke of the king with a hundred hearts, and I did not know her meaning then, but I know it now. The King of a Hundred Hearts is the king of Polythreme -- its genius loci. In Polythreme, everything is animate. Stone screams, water begs. On the Grunting Fen, I speculated that all things share a soul, or spirit -- pneuma, as the Stoics conceived of pneuma, the breath of life and the form possessed even by the lifeless. I have come to believe that soul, that spirit, that pneuma, is the Hundreds'. Through the Hundreds, Polythreme lives and the Clay Men are born. I witnessed the birth of a Clay Man in Polythreme, one heart broken from many. Like men, the Hundreds dream. Like the author, like the poet, the King's dreams bring something into being, and that something is the Clay Men. Clothed in jade and clothed in mud, they will exist.

What of garden gate, with faces locked? Polythreme's priests speak of the garden and the mountain. There, too, is an interconnection, for it is said that in the Elder Country exists a great glowing mountain -- and it said that wherever death flees from, it flees from the Elder Country first, like the shadow fleeing light. There is a curious quality to the Neath. We die, but our deaths are a part of life such that we can live again. We dream, but we dream in common, as in a common reality. In Polythreme, even the lifeless have life. In Parabola, we wander a waking dream. One opens to the other, as through reflecting frames. I know they have a single source.

I do not yet know what, or how -- but in my dreams it shines with the Memory of Light.

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North.

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:22:56 GMT

With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,
Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;
Some lying fast at anchor in the road,
Some veering up and down, one knew not why.
A goodly Vessel did I then espy
Come like a giant from a haven broad;
And lustily along the bay she strode,
Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.
This Ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
Yet I pursued her with a Lover’s look;
This Ship to all the rest did I prefer:
When will she turn, and whither? She will brook
No tarrying; where She comes the winds must stir:
On went She, and due north her journey took.

- William Wordsworth

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We are all seekers in the quest of the Philosopher's Stone.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:14:35 GMT

'It is true of all of us, then, that we seek for Unity -- unity in mind and life. Some seek it in science and a life of knowledge; some seek it in religion and a life of faith; some seek it in human love and find it in the life of service to their fellows; some seek it in pleasure and the gratification of the senses' demands; some seek it in the harmonious development of all the facets of their being. Many the methods, right and wrong; many the terms under which the One is conceived, true and false--in a sense, to use the phraseology of a bygone system of philosophy, we are all, consciously or unconsciously, following paths that lead thither or paths that lead away, seekers in the quest of the Philosopher's Stone.'
- H. Stanley Redgrove

'MANY OF US YEARN FOR ... UNITY. TO BE SEPARATED AND MADE ALONE IS ... DIFFICULT. WE SORROW FOR OUR BROTHERS TITHED TO THE MAW THAT IS LONDON. BUT IT IS OUR NATURE TO LOVE. FOR THE KING WITH THE HUNDRED HEARTS BECAME SO BECAUSE OF THE LOVE OF ANOTHER.'
- a Clay Priest of Polythreme

'Love is a vital principle uniting, or seeking to unite two together.'
- St Augustine

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On Animals and Their Names.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:41:43 GMT

[a personal registry.]

Diaktoros (Dazed Raven Advisor), for the minister and messenger.

Himinglæva (Cheerful Goldfish), for the wave that reflects the light of the sky.

Norðri, Suðri, Austri, and Vestri (Sulky Bats), for the winds.

Hylde (Haunted-looking Dog), for what can be found in a bookshop.

Tæppe (Slavering Dream-hound), for what comforts us when we dream and is gone by morning.

Nabu (Corresponding Ocelot), for the god of the stylus.

Askalaphos (Bifurcated Owl), for the dæmon of the underworld's orchards.

Wadjet (Hound of Heaven), for the sunsnake.

Keket (Grubby Kitten), for primordial darkness.

Bezalel (Unfinished Hat), for the rabbi.

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Yuletide Treasure

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:03:02 GMT

[Theodor has given that rarest of gifts from Paulsen & Associates, booksellers -- books. Some are obscure, some are popular, some are curiously bound and curiously pointless. All of them smell of old ink and wonder.]

adam emet
The Game of Logic
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/610604862/the-game-of-logic-carroll-lewis-macmillan

apple
Royal Illuminated Book of Nursery Rhymes
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/816378355/theshipthatflew-via-yama-bato-fairy-tales

asclepius unbound
Chaldean Magic
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/909478358/chaldean-magic-first-uk-edition-london-samuel

asher wilsford
Picturesque Egypt
http://yama-bato.tumblr.com/post/535154502/front-cover-ebers-egypt-vo-i-source-ebers

bartholomaew
Manual on Shipsignalling
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/4093573740/shipsignalling

becquerel curie
Episodes of Insect Life
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/13465799312/episodes-of-insect-life-budgen-e-l-acheta

bel falkenrath
The Quiver of Love
http://yama-bato.tumblr.com/post/818537231/walter-crane-artist-british-1845-1915-the

cécile béringer
The Techno-Chemical Receipt Book
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/407497151/the-techno-chemical-receipt-book-1889-the-latest

commodore creazil
La Grande Danse Macabre
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/12169757904/la-grande-danse-macabre-des-hommes-et-des-femmes

crocifissa
Science and Art of Chess
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/2943001849/chess

delphina demmings
The Universe
http://northsuite.tumblr.com/post/14724285499

eris fnord
Poems
http://scrap.oldbookillustrations.com/post/374331801/sealmaiden-cobden-sanderson-binding-on-dante

gabriel flynn
Sibylline Oracles
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/14413611229/sibylline-oracles-opsopoeus-johannes-ed-in

helen demeter
Flowers of Paradise
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/356688581/flowers-of-paradise-by-reginald-francis

henrik paulsen
Book of Hours
http://ornamentedbeing.tumblr.com/post/14067014930

honoria marlowe
Golden Leaves
http://yama-bato.tumblr.com/post/5670230242/leighton-john-designer-style-publishers

israel salvador
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/1157193835/a-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth-verne-jules

laura riding
Old English Ballads
http://scrap.oldbookillustrations.com/post/14544643838/old-english-ballads-cover

lamp, lace, and pear
Little Ditties
http://scrap.oldbookillustrations.com/post/11108368926/little-ditties-cover

lin-sijan yujao
The Savage World Natural History
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/14821122697/the-savage-world-1889

louis plumb
Mathematical Magic
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/12476313639/mathematical-magic-or-the-wonders-that-may-be

midnight voyager
Japanese Fragments
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/354610431/japanese-fragments-with-facsimiles-of

narciso
Endymion
http://yama-bato.tumblr.com/post/590027435/indigodreams-keats-john-1795-1821-title

nathan attford
The Language and Poetry of Flowers
http://scrap.oldbookillustrations.com/post/620948341/language-flowers-cover

polly gorey
The Origin and Progress of Writing
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/6789712898/the-origin-and-progress-of-writing-as-well

scarlet fenwick
Glimpses in the Twilight
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/1109494701/ghoulnextdoor-rev-george-frederick-lee

thomas puz
The Hunting of the Snark
http://book-aesthete.tumblr.com/post/732061378/dodgson-charles-lutwidge-lewis-carroll-the

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