Fertility Rites

[Benny Bunter]

From Spenser's Epithalamion

And thou great Juno, which with awful might
The lawes of wedlock still dost patronize,
And the religion of the faith first plight
With sacred rites hast taught to solemnize:
And eeke for comfort often called art
Of women in their smart,
Eternally bind thou this lovely band,
And all thy blessings unto us impart.
And thou glad Genius, in whose gentle hand,
The bridale bowre and geniall bed remaine,
Without blemish or staine,
And the sweet pleasures of theyr loves delight
With secret ayde doest succour and supply,
Till they bring forth the fruitfull progeny,
Send us the timely fruit of this same night.
And thou fayre Hebe, and thou Hymen free,
Grant that it may so be.
Til which we cease your further prayse to sing,
Ne any woods shal answer, nor your Eccho ring.

 

[version]

Fertility, maybe THE major theme in art, mythology and religion, the source of our greatest joys and deepest anxieties. It seems like we need rituals to uphold it, as it is constantly under threat - are we in the Waste Land?

Finally watched Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future last night, the recent one, not the one from the 70s. The two leads - Mortensen and Seydoux - do these sexualised art performances where she operates on him and removes new organs that keep developing in his body. The big theme's this blurring of sex and surgery, the forms of life arising from that, and the attempts to police it.

 

[luka]

think i might of watched that by accident. it was so stupid.

 

[version]

think i might of watched that by accident. it was so stupid.

It's quite cheap and clunky and he couldn't come up with much of a story, but I enjoyed it.

 

[luka]

would of been better with more nudity tbh

 

[Benny Bunter]

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
the association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie˜
A dignified and commodious sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

 

[luka]

 

[Benny Bunter]

16: My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.

 

[Benny Bunter]

@luka @sus have you read the song of solomon?

 

[Benny Bunter]

Bring with you all the Nymphes that you can heare
Both of the rivers and the forrests greene:
And of the sea that neighbours to her neare,
Al with gay girlands goodly wel beseene.
And let them also with them bring in hand
Another gay girland
For my fayre love of lillyes and of roses,
Bound truelove wize with a blew silke riband.
And let them make great store of bridale poses,
And let them eeke bring store of other flowers
To deck the bridale bowers.
And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread,
For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong
Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along,
And diapred lyke the discolored mead.
Which done, doe at her chamber dore awayt,
For she will waken strayt,
The whiles doe ye this song unto her sing,
The woods shall to you answer and your Eccho ring.

Ye Nymphes of Mulla which with carefull heed,
The silver scaly trouts doe tend full well,
And greedy pikes which use therein to feed,
(Those trouts and pikes all others doo excell)
And ye likewise which keepe the rushy lake,
Where none doo fishes take,
Bynd up the locks the which hang scatterd light,
And in his waters which your mirror make,
Behold your faces as the christall bright,
That when you come whereas my love doth lie,
No blemish she may spie.
And eke ye lightfoot mayds which keepe the deere,
That on the hoary mountayne use to towre,
And the wylde wolves which seeke them to devoure,
With your steele darts doo chace from comming neer,
Be also present heere,
To helpe to decke her and to help to sing,
That all the woods may answer and your eccho ring.

 

[luka]

Yeah course

 

[Benny Bunter]

It's such a strange book, you read it and think wtf is this doing in the Bible? I suppose the only way Christians could accept it was as a sort of allegory of the love of God for the Earth. The Spenser poem does this too, it goes on about Jove and Maia, but puts it in a Christian marriage ceremony context. I like the friction between the two, the erotic pagan undertones bubbling up through the cracks.

 

[Benny Bunter]

SOS is weird, it wouldn't really hang together, except these repeated phrases that turn it into an incantation.

"His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me."

"This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes."

etc etc

 

[Benny Bunter]

I sort of half-listened to this the other day when I cooking and it sounded great, whoever read it did a brilliant job. But I need to see it written down though to get to grips with it. (Or maybe just listen to it properly when I'm not distracted)

my famous book, VEGETABLE EMPIRE, describes the waves of convergence and divergence, porosity and impermeability, 0 and 1, horizontal and vertical.
(audio book version)

you can see it at work in scenes, where eventually different tendencies formalise themselves and split off, you can see it with protestant church splitting from Rome and then fracturing into a thousand pieces, you can see it with politics (peoples front of judea etc)

imagine a repeat of the acid house summer of love with stabbing gangs standing in for football hooligans. love ya mate yeah love ya mate. )))))))(((((((

t.s eliot's The Wasteland is divergence and separation. "I can connect nothing with nothing."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

Vegetable Empire is the cure. (rustic rites of regeneration) the reentry of magic into the circuit. everything connects. and history starts moving again.

 

[sus]

@luka @sus have you read the song of solomon?

No not yet but I'd like to

 

[sus]

Which version are you reading?

 

[Benny Bunter]

KJV. It only takes about 10 minutes to read.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.