On Holding a Russian Icon

March 6, 2010

Trinity_tikhon_filatiev

Touching this icon
flesh dissolves
and our true containment
contains us.
What was great to us before
now shrinks
and the small and disregarded seed,
the secret and abiding
meaning of our lives,
expands.
With God’s all-seeing eye
we see
and seeing
know.
In His hands
we rest
and in His heart
are blessed.

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Revelation

February 26, 2010

William Blake - Beatrice 

The dangerous seeing eye
is poised to strike at darkness.
No mild recognition,
but terror,
as meaning leaps to meaning
like lightning on iron mountains.
   Words slit
   in revelation.
The crust of long-accustomed thought
   shatters
and an unfamiliar landscape
   is revealed.

Published in The William Blake Birthday Book (ISBN 9780956199904)

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Life Story by Moyra Caldecott

LIFE STORY
Life is woven out of stories…
warp and weft
the threads interplay
and interact.
Mind stories
lying in bed at night
reshaping the day’s events…
reading…
listening…
watching…
Stories shape and colour
the fabric of our dreams and memories.
Words and images
flux and flow…
change… reform…
and give illusion of reality.
Who can unpick the threads
and know
where we begin
or end?

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False Investment

Thumbnail image for False Investment

(a poem Moyra wrote in 1946)
The bank has gone insolvent
and is closing now.
The heavy brass doors shut.
The people shout in vain
against the pillrs of the vestibule.
The gods are sending out the bills and we can’t pay.
Too late we see
it was a false invenstment.
We stand
and stare at the bills
and the shut doors
of [...]

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Atlantis: The Crystal in the Bermuda Triangle

Atlantis: The Crystal in the Bermuda Triangle
(from Crystal Legends by Moyra Caldecott, Chapter 26)
It seems Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic and healer of Virginia Beach, Florida, predicted that Atlantis would be discovered in 1968. In a series of explorations that began in 1968 Dr Ray Brown, a professional diver, discovered what he was convinced was [...]

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The anniversary of a death

A poem from The Breathless Pause by Moyra Caldecott

The anniversary of a death
Trying to reconstruct a person
on the anniversary of his death
you must enter
the labyrinth of memory
with its twisting
and its turning,
its sudden shocks,
its false starts
and its blind alleys,
and its sudden revelations
of what you did not know you knew.
Someone emerges
from the shadows,
familiar,
yet unfamiliar…
substantial
yet unsubstantial.
Fading fast
leaving an [...]

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While I was wasting the day

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause:

While I was wasting the day
While I was wasting the day
the grass was growing,
daisies opening,
sunflowers
pushing up tall stems.
While I was wasting the day
the bee pushed its way
into a hundred foxgloves
and went home tired.
Now the light fades.
The rain wets my hair.
I smell honey suckle and musk rose
and take [...]

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The net of pearls

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause:

The net of pearls
Reality is not a straight line
from past to future
through the present…
but a network
of inter connections
going every which way.
When we recognise
the nodes
sitting in a garden at dawn,
watching little finches,
or flowers opening,
a pearl is formed
and shines
even in the night
when we are lonely
and far from home.

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Swan

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause.
Leaving the pond
and the gentle water weeds
a swan rode the ocean.
At first,
because it was evening
and mirror still,
not knowing
the fathoms
of deep and restless currents
stirring beneath
its poised white weight,
it rested easily,
on smooth silver.
But then -
slowly -
it began to feel
the pull and tug of the tide,
the unfamiliar hidden strength
and secret [...]

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Dare Darkness Grab Us

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause:

Dare Darkness Grab Us
Shivering on a very small earth,
the night sky
formidable
with stars,
we pull the comforting blanket
of our love
over us,
and,
curled together,
dare Darkness grab us
and Time scatter us.

Dare Darkness Grab Us
Shivering on a very small earth,
the night sky
formidable
with stars,
we pull the comforting blanket
of our love
over us,
and,
curled together,
dare Darkness [...]

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Revelation

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The William Blake Birthday Book (ISBN 978-0956199904).

Revelation
The dangerous seeing eye
poised to strike at darkness.
No mild recognition,
but terror,
as meaning leaps to meaning,
like lightning on iron mountains.
Words split
in revelation.
The crust of long accustomed
shatters
and an unfamiliar landscape
is revealed.

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Moyra at St James Wine Vaults, Bath

Moyra Caldecott will be one of the featured poets on 30th October 2009 at St James Wine Vaults, 10 St James Street, Bath BA1 2TW.
“What a Performance” is an evening of poetry, story-telling, and music and songs. Please go along — the more the merrier.
Although Moyra will be attending, friends will be reading her poems [...]

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Full Moon

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause.
Sleeping
with the silver disk
of the full moon
on my forehead…
light shining
through the thick bone.
Watch how it glints
on mind mirrors,
Scatters shadows,
and seeks at last,
the tiny seed thought
that waits for birth.

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 10

Before I leave this section another thought has come to mind in connection with those fairy tales. I don’t understand Einstein’s theories but I have been told that he suggested that if you faster than the speed of light, time slows down, so you don’t age as fast as those you left behind on earth.
Now [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 9

Fairy stories are sometimes the ‘dumbing down’ of mighty ancient myths. The shining, highly evolved beings of other realms are reduced to improbable little flittering creatures that hide among the bluebells. But nevertheless their stories can still give us the insights we need, and the sentence that starts them all off ‘Once upon a time’ [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 8

One of the peculiarities of being human is our belief in a Golden Age when everything was running smoothly and everyone was happy and fulfilled. From the Hopi Indians who posit various worlds which started off in perfection but were gradually corrupted and destroyed, to Plato who spoke of perfect archetypes, only the shadows of [...]

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Moyra is featured poet at St James Wine Vaults in Bath

During the month of October, Moyra is featured poet at St James Wine Vaults in Bath. I don’t have much information at present, but will update this post when I know more…

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 7

As far as I understand it the Aborigine Dream Time is at once a mythic representation of the origins of their culture, set in the ancient past, and a state of heightened being they can slip in to the present in which their actions take on a deeply spiritual meaning. In other words it is [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 6

Another very important group of categories I would like to mention this evening is what I will call The Mythic or The Spiritual.
The Mythic
I have written several books about the esoteric meaning of myths, legends and fairy tails, and so when I label this category MYTHIC I do not mean it to be filed in [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 5

Although this evening I am talking about different types of time – of course I know that there are no clear categories in real life. What I call Linear Time runs into Physical Time, and Physical Time runs into Psychological Time, not to mention Dream and Memory Time. That is why I use the term [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 4

Most of my books have sprung from similar experiences that could have been ‘far memory’. The Tower and the Emerald was written incorporating an experience I had at a stone circle in Derbyshire, where all the stones are lying down on the earth as though pushed down by a giant hand. There I felt that [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 3

My next category I call Psychological Time.
We have all noticed how time seems to speed up when we are happy and occupied, how it drags when we are bored or unoccupied, how long the nights are when we cannot sleep and how quickly they pass when we can.
Under this heading I would include the strange [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 2

I want you now to envisage the sky at night. Imagine yourselves standing in some country place, far away from the distracting lights of the city.
What you are looking at may look like blackness dotted with points of light, but is actually an unimaginably vast space filled with enormous balls of fire, like our sun, [...]

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Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 1

A talk given by Moyra Caldecott to the Wessex Research Group, Bath, UK on 9 September 1999.
When Grethe asked me to give this talk she suggested I should speak about the coming millennium. My reaction to this was one of dismay. Even way back then, in early spring, I was already tired of hearing about [...]

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On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 6

Last time, Moyra told the story of Kivanga. Now she provides the commentary….

Many African mythologies assume that the first beings were deformed versions of the human race, and had to undergo transformation with the help of some hero or heroine. In the case of Kivanga, it is significant that the human race comes into [...]

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On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 5

Moyra has been exploring the universal meaning of mythical stories, the connection between the ancient stories and our present lives. She continues…
I will tell you a story now that is so rich in meaning and fascinated me so much I put it in my own book: Mythical Journeys, Legendary Quests.

Before people as we know [...]

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On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4

The White Bird
At a still pool in the Kalahari
A hunter stoops to drink.
The mirror surface
Flashes with white light
As wings spread to rise.
He looks up
But already the bird
Has flown.
Nothing in sight
But a measureless sky.
The red dust of the earth,
Thorn bushes
And the stark skeletons of rock.
From that day on
He travelled across the parched land
Seeking the bird.
“Wings so [...]

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Transcript of a speech by Stratford Caldecott

Below is the transcript of a speech made by Stratford Caldecott, son of Moyra Caldecott, at the event to launch her book, Multi-dimensional Life, at Gothic Image in Glastonbury on June 9, 2007.
Strat’s speech at Moyra’s 80th birthday party/ booklaunch at Gothic Image bookshop, Glastonbury on 9 June 2007
On behalf of Moyra, I want to [...]

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On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 3

In “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1″ and “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2″ Moyra has been talking about the universal meaning of some traditional African legends. This time she explores the meaning of the story of The Young Man, The Lion, and the Yellow-flowered Zwart-Storm Tree…
In this story a lion [...]

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On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2

In the first of this series, “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1” Moyra concluded that all cultures have myths that speak to other cultures, because they address a universal need: to make sense of life and death. Now she continues…
Take Africa, for example. The African continent is huge and contains many different cultures. [...]

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