Green Way

“I first met Chang San-Feng above the forest,
near the clear spring,
when gathering clouds darkened the day,
and Mt. Shasta was silent.

His long beard was black as emptiness,
ear lobes to his shoulders,
holding obsidian in his hand,
pointing to the sun,
eyes staring into infinity,
his long body clothed in silence.

We exchanged “hellos”
smiled and bowed,
a barbarian and an Immortal,
both panting from the climb,
laughing,
ten-thousand echoes
between our rocky minds.

After billions upon billions of heartbeats past
(for he must have been 888 years old),
I was so bold
as to ask the ancient one
for the sacred mantra of yore.
He lifted his whisk,
and brushed my face,
I could not speak,
my lips were stone,
ideas stopped -
I was alone.”
- Michael P. Garofalo, Meetings with Master Chang San-Feng

Mike Garofalo sometimes writes under the pen names of “The Green Wizard” or “Gushen Moon”

Is Mike really a wizard? Hah! Come, come, my dear friends. He, like like his lanky and legendary mentor, Grand Master Chang San Feng, just likes to keep on walking, gardening, dancing at dawn, playing taijiquan, creating, enjoying scholarly pursuits, Internetting, encouraging peaceful productivity, standing under the Gushen Moon, and letting others bang his brass wizard’s hat.

“Standing at the Mysterious Pass
Centered in the Eternal Now,
Balanced in Body and Open in Mind,
Rooted into the Sacred Space,
Motionless as the Golden Mountain,
Fingers around the Primeval Sphere.
Dragons and Tigers are still dreaming -
Ready for Rebirth.

I breathe in, the World Breathes Out.
The Gate of Space opens;
Heaven moves and Yang is born.
The hands move out, embracing the One.
The mind settles and is clear.
The Dragon Howls,
Ravens fill the Vast Cauldron,
Mind forms melt like mercury,
Spirit rises in the Clouds of Eternity.
Yin appears like the moon at dusk.

I breathe out, the World Breathes In.
The Doors of Emptiness close;
Earth quiets and Yin is born.
The hands move in, entering the One.
The body settles and becomes whole.
The Tiger Roars,
The Great Ox is nourished by the Valley Spirit,
Substances spark from flaming furnaces,
Essence roots in the Watery Flesh.
Yang appears like the sun at dawn.

Dragons and Tigers
Transformed within the Mysterious Pass -
Chanting and Purring.
Awakened,
Peaceful,
Free.”

- Michael P. Garofalo, Opening at the Mysterious Pass

Blog Search Terms: Green Wizard, Taoism, Poetry, Qigong, Druids.

The Spirit of Gardening

Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong

One Taoist Druid’s Journey - The Green Wizard’s Notebooks

Gushen Moon

Valley Spirit Center, Red Bluff, California

The Green Wizard Opens the Door

The Witches’ Creed
By Doreen Valiente (1922-1999)

Hear now the words of the witches,
The secrets we hid in the night,
When dark was our destiny’s pathway,
That now we bring forth into light.

Mysterious water and fire,
The earth and the wide-ranging air,
By hidden quintessence we know them,
And will and keep silent and dare.

The birth and rebirth of all nature,
The passing of winter and spring,
We share with the life universal,
Rejoice in the magical ring.

Four times in the year the Great Sabbat
Returns, and witches are seen
At Lammas, and Candlemas dancing,
On May Eve and old Hallowe’en.

When day-time and night-time are equal,
When the sun is at greatest and least,
The four Lesser Sabbats are summoned,
Again witches gather in feast.

Thirteen silver moons in a year are,
Thirteen is the coven’s array.
Thirteen times as Esbat make merry,
For each golden year and a day.

The power was passed down the ages,
Each time between woman and man,
Each century unto the other,
Ere time and the ages began.

When drawn is the magical circle,
By sword or athame or power,
Its compass between the two worlds lie,
In Land of the Shades for that hour.

This world has no right then to know it,
And world beyond will tell naught,
The oldest of Gods are invoked there,
The Great Work of magic is wrought.

For two are the mystical pillars,
That stand to at the gate of the shrine,
And two are the powers of nature,
The forms and the forces divine.

The dark and the light in succession,
The opposites each unto each,
Shown forth as a God and a Goddess,
Of this did our ancestors teach.

By night he’s the wild wind’s rider,
The Horn’d One, the Lord of the shades,
By day he’s the King of the Woodlands,
The dweller in green forest glades.

She is youthful or old as she pleases,
She sails the torn clouds in her barque,
The bright silver lady of midnight,
The crone who weaves spells in the dark.

The master and mistress of magic,
They dwell in the deeps of the mind,
Immortal and ever-renewing,
With power to free or to bind.

So drink the good wine to the Old Gods,
And dance and make love in their praise,
Til Elphame’s fair land shall receive us,
In peace at the end of our days.

An Do What You Will be the challenge,
So be it in Love that harms none,
For this is the only commandment,
By Magick of old, be it done.”

Elegy for a Dead Witch
by Doreen Valiente

“To think that you are gone, over the crest of the hills,
As the Moon passed from her fulness, riding the sky,
And the White Mare took you with her.
To think that we will wait another life
To drink wine from the horns and leap the fire.
Farewell from this world, but not from the Circle.
That place that is between the worlds
Shall hold return in due time. Nothing is lost.
The half of a fruit from the tree of Avalon
Shall be our reminder, among the fallen leaves
This life treads underfoot. Let the rain weep,
Waken in sunlight from the Realms of Sleep.”

Preparing for Lughnasa, Lammas, Late Summer Feast

Two rattlesnakes in Oklahoma rise to greet the walker.

“America is the Great Satan, the wounded Snake.”
- Ayatollah Khomeini
Beware of wounded snakes, Ayatollah Whomever.

“A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat
To drink there.”
- D. H. Lawrence

Everything thirsts!

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
- Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese” from “Dream Work”

“My fingers split. My arms throbbed, and broke wide open. Working fibers snaked down the veins of my lungs. My feet seized and held the bank of the river, a root from my spine to the soil, and down, into the cold stone. Wide into the sky held my beseeching arms. They branched, and my full-leafed embrace filled the blue from where I panted, a green-pithed tree, rooted to the earth.
Well, Apollo loved me then, weeping, feeling the trilling of my human hear within my wooden girth. Because the gods love mortals. They seek our beauty, our courage, our joy. They envy us our hope. We are in our hearts what they can never master, and all the night long the lord of light knelt beside me, weeping for the love he would never win.
To this day when a daphine blossoms, or when any tree breaks into leaf, you can feel how the sun is chastened, faithful to the living he can worship but never possess. And as for me - feel no sorrow. When you see the wind stir the greenwood, or when you turn the pages of a book made from a tree’s sitll-blameless flesh, lean close and listen.
You hear my voice.”
- Michael Cadnum, Daphne

Greenman: Bibliography, Links, Quotes, Notes

Daphne - Wikipedia

“This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing
of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.”
- D.H. Lawrence

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon:
The Winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. –Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”
- William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much With Us”

Or, hear the silence of a dragonfly,
resting in the garden
enjoying the smell of tomato vines.
Doing nothing …

The Valley Spirit Green Wizard’s Reading List

“A Theos who is understood is really misunderstood … actually no Theos at all.

The little choices, day after day, are the biggest issue.

Stop looking for the Greenman and He will appear.

To always follow the hard, tough and rough way is foolishness.

The gardener is a priestess, the garden her temple and followers, gardening her liturgy.

Before you swear at the overgrown ivy, beware of Dionysus.

If you plant it, they will come.

The gardener fights against Chaos, wins a few battles, but always looses the war.

A gardener seeks direct experiences, seldom concepts.

Things always go downhill, fall apart, wear out … the arrow of Time pierces everything.

Standing naked in my garden, I laughed.”

- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions 615 aphorisms for gardeners and lovers of the Green Way.

“Onion Garden,” a concrete poem by Mike Garofalo.

“He dances the Moon with power and grace
Amidst the hills and trees, in His sacred space
A dancer moving swiftly between the realms
There in the leaves . . . . what do you see?
If you honour the Old Ways - it may be He”

The mysteries of Nature are waiting to reveal themselves to you, just outside the realm of the mundane. . . . . If you follow the path of the dancing God, you may find that the world is a much more magical place than you ever imagined. . . . . Embrace a tree, relax in a garden, or sit in a wooded glen, to find the Greenman. Focus on the mystery of a single clump of grass or a leaf. . . If you are patient and engrossed in your appreciation of simple nature, the Greenman will come to you!”
- The Green Man - Pagan Men

Beloved Order of the Greenmen

Green Man - Wikipedia

Green Wizard: Bibliography, Links, Quotes, Notes

This past week, I read four books about Earth Religions, Neo-Pagans, and Druids:

Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism. By Isaac Bonewits. New York, Kensington Pub. Co., Citadel, 2006. Index, bibliography, appendices, 329 pages. ISBN: 0806527102.

The Solitary Druid: A Practitioner’s Guide. By Robert Lee (Skip) Ellison. New York, Kensington Pub. Co,., Citadel Press, 2005. Index, bibliography, appendices, 262 pages. ISBN: 0806526750. Archdruid of Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF) and Dean of Divination and Beast Mastery - The Grey School of Wizardry.

Drawing Down the Moon. Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today. By Margot Adler. New York Penguin, Revised and Updated Edition, 2006. Index. First edition by Beacon Press, 1979. 1986. ISBN: 0143038192.

The Voyager Tarot: Way of the Great Oracle. By James Wanless. Carmel, California, Merrill-West Publishing, 1989. 330 pages. ISBN: 0961507934. I use this book and the Voyager Tarot nearly every day.

I’ve been doing some research on Carl Jung’s concept of the Creative Imagination:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”
- Quotes from Carl Jung

“Seven Precepts of Merlin:
First: Labor Diligently to acquire knowledge, for it is power.
Second: When in authority, decide reasonably, for thine authority may cease.
Third: Bear with fortitude the ills of life, remembering that no mortal sorrow is perpetual.
Fourth: Love virtue - for it bringeth peace.
Fifth; Abhor vice - for it bringeth evil upon all.
Sixth: Obey those in authority in all just things, that virtue may be exalted.
Seventh: Cultivate the social virtues, so shalt thou be beloved by all men.
The motto of the Druids the world over is “United to Assist.” The aim of the Druids is Unity, Peace and Concord.”

- Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism, p.162.

The Green Wizard: Bibliogrpahy, Links, Resources, Quotes. By Mike Garofalo. 90Kb.