3d9c7f91   
   XPost: soc.culture.native, nz.soc.maori, alt.religion.shamanism   
   XPost: talk.religion.newage   
   From: dalton@nfld.com   
      
   This may or may not be of interest to some on here.   
      
   Luthien Seagull/the chain that snaps   
   Summary: powerful mystic experience, Luthien/Jonathan Livingstone seagull   
      
   A few days after three days in hospital, on Feb. 23/96, at Lake View (on the   
   Avalon peninsula of Newfoundland), in normal mood, I had a moving experience.   
   We were in the midst of an unusually warm spell, up to 15 degrees Celsius,   
   much better than Feb/97. I had just finished listening to Sarah McLachlan's   
   The Freedom Sessions and had three books in front of me:   
      
   J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion   
   M.Z. Bradley's The Mists of Avalon   
   Ursula K. Leguin's The Fisherman of an Inland Sea, which has an elf dancing   
   on the water on the cover.   
      
   I opened The Silmarillion (sort of skimming) to p.165 where it reads "and the   
   song of Luthien released the bonds of winter, and the frozen waters spoke,   
   and flowers sprang from the cold earth where her feet had passed."   
      
   Due to the warm weather there was just a thin sheet of ice on the pond. I   
   then lay back on my bed and glanced at the pond and just then a large white   
   seagull landed on the very thin ice and paused for at least a minute. As the   
   bright seagull took off, the neighbours' dog with the Inuit name Akila (or   
   Kila or Quila? I later thought Akila because I made a pun about Achilles   
   heel) howled, and the ice all melted/broke up simultaneously, leaving just   
   ripples on the pond in the gentle wind. From this Luthien (or Jonathan if   
   male) seagull incident, if Alan MacLeod is Raven then I am Seagull, which   
   covers the world well, especially near fish (the whales would laugh). :-) I   
   wrote this in the margin of The Silmarillion, ending on p.171. On that page I   
   crossed out with one big X everything in the poem after "the chain that   
   snaps" (where the chain is the chain of abuse and intolerance) to leave   
      
   He chanted a song of wizardry   
   Of piercing, opening, of treachery,   
   Revealing, uncovering, betraying.   
   Then suddenly Felagund there swaying   
   Sang in answer a song of staying,   
   Resisting, battling against power,   
   Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,   
   And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;   
   Of changing and of shifting shape,   
   Of snares eluded, broken traps,   
   The prison opening, the chain that snaps.   
      
   --   
   David Dalton dalton@nfld.com http://www.nfld.com/~dalton (home page)   
   http://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)   
   “I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book   
   I need a love reaction/Come on now baby gimme just one look" (B.S.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)