‘Let there be songs to fill the air’

     
In my music tastes, I long ago left behind, but sometimes revisit, the sounds I enjoyed in my youth, and last night was one of those time-travel occasions. Robert Hunter, lyricist of the Grateful Dead, performed at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. This is not the same as seeing the Dead, which I had on a dozen or more nights between 1983 and, maybe, 1991. Mr. Hunter is not dynamic; his performance: a man and his guitar. Never a powerful vocalist, his singing today is that of an elderly man who battled cancer and who wants to enjoy playing his music to audiences while he still can.

Robert Hunter at the Capitol Theatre
in Port Chester, New York last night.

It is unfortunate that his music and the entire Grateful Dead experience were made synonymous in most people’s minds with seedy hedonism: the rampant drug consumption, poor hygiene, and general annoyance of the locusts who followed the band around the country and even outside the country. (I make a distinction between genuine music-lovers who, however they made it possible, toured with the band in some culture of idealist escapism, and those who came along around the time that I did, but who were determined to become part of a world they didn’t understand. They were a “believing is seeing” kind of folk, born too late to be hippies and figuring they had to capture a lifestyle from an earlier time, to put it as gently as I can.)

Projection upon the theater walls last night.

Or maybe my grasp of that situation is lacking, but the point of this edition of The Magpie Mind is the spiritual content of Hunter’s music, something that doesn’t get a lot of attention. (I think it funny that the iconography of the Grateful Dead, which is dominated by enough skulls and roses to make a Rosicrucian’s head explode, seems never to spark any conversation in esoteric circles.) Let me cite this tiny article from the Summer 1994 issue of Gnosis magazine, the painfully missed quarterly periodical on spiritual and esoteric subjects, to lead into some samples of Hunter’s lyrics from the songs he performed last night. Excerpted:


Robert Hunter is primarily known as the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, but he has also recorded many albums of his own, and his songs have been recorded by the likes of Bob Dylan. While never quite identifying himself as an esotericist, Hunter has written a whole corpus of visionary verse to rival Coleridge, outlining way stations between death and rebirth (Terrapin Station), celebrating the breaking through of gnosis (St. Stephen, Scarlet Begonias), or warning the seeker of unrealistic expectations of the afterlife (One Thing to Try, Stella Blue). His lyrics, which he readily concedes as sometimes being the work of his muses, have weird ways of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies (Uncle John’s Band, Playing in the Band), and there’s no doubt that his songs have launched thousands of peak experiences, with our without chemical enhancement. His most famous work, Ripple, details the sweet electric shock of suddenly knowing that the Unnamable Presence is in the room:

If my words did glow

with the gold of sunshine

and my tunes were played

on the harp unstrung

would you hear my voice

come through the music

and hold it near

as it were your own?

Without preaching, without dogma, Hunter has provided the voice of the Spirit to a generation, many of whom could no longer find it in their received traditions. References to Christ are multidimensional:

What you gonna call that pretty baby?

You must call it one thing or another.

This one parted water

that one walked upon

Perhaps I’ll call this child

a Rose of Sharon.

While I’m at it, might as well explain the name Grateful Dead. From Funk & Wagnall’s New Practical Dictionary of the English Language, Britannica World Language Edition, Volume One, 1955. Click the image to enlarge.


Grateful Dead – The motif of a cycle of folk tales which begin with the hero’s coming upon a group of people ill-treating or refusing to bury the corpse of a man who had died without paying his debts. He gives his last penny, either to pay the man’s debts or to give him a decent burial. Within a few hours he meets with a traveling companion who aids him in some impossible task, gets him a fortune, saves his life, etc. The story ends with the companion’s disclosing himself as the man whose corpse the other had befriended.

But about the lyrics, just a few songs to consider:

Dire Wolf

In the timbers of Fennario

the wolves are running round

The winter was so hard and cold

froze ten feet neath the ground

Don’t murder me

I beg of you don't murder me

Please 
don’t murder me

I sat down to my supper

T’was a bottle of red whiskey

I said my prayers and went to bed

That’s the last they saw of me

Don’t murder me

I beg of you don’t murder me

Please
don't murder me

When I awoke, the Dire Wolf

Six hundred pounds of sin

Was grinnin at my window

All I said was “come on in”

Don’t murder me

I beg of you don’t murder me

Please
don’t murder me

The wolf came in, I got my cards

We sat down for a game

I cut my deck to the Queen of Spades

but the cards were all the same

Don’t murder me

I beg of you don’t murder me

Please
don’t murder me

In the backwash of Fennario

The black and bloody mire

The Dire Wolf collects his due

while the boys sing round the fire

Don’t murder me

I beg of you don’t murder me

Please
don’t murder me

Brokedown Palace

Fare you well my honey

Fare you well my only true one

All the birds that were singing

Have flown except you alone

Goin to leave this Brokedown Palace

On my hands and my knees I will roll roll roll

Make myself a bed by the waterside

In my time - in my time - I will roll roll roll

In a bed, in a bed

by the waterside I will lay my head

Listen to the river sing sweet songs

to rock my soul

River gonna take me

Sing me sweet and sleepy

Sing me sweet and sleepy

all the way back back home

It’s a far gone lullaby

sung many years ago

Mama, Mama, many worlds I’ve come

since I first left home

Goin home, goin home

by the waterside I will rest my bones

Listen to the river sing sweet songs

to rock my soul

Goin to plant a weeping willow

On the banks green edge it will grow grow grow

Sing a lullaby beside the water

Lovers come and go - the river roll roll roll

Fare you well, fare you well

I love you more than words can tell

Listen to the river sing sweet songs

to rock my soul

Ripple

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung

Would you hear my voice come through the music?

Would you hold it near, as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken

Perhaps they’re better left unsung

I don't know, don’t really care

Let there be songs to fill the air

Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty

If your cup is full may it be again

Let it be known there is a fountain

That was not made by the hands of man

There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn and the dark of night

And if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone

Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow

You who choose to lead must follow

But if you fall, you fall alone

If you should stand, then who’s to guide you?

If I knew the way, I would take you home

All lyrics Copyright © Robert Hunter.

    

‘Gnosis from an old memory, literally’

     
A group photo of Brother Masons found its way to my Facebook wall. A posed shot obviously following a joyous and joyful church service.

It provokes mixed feelings. Of course on the one hand it’s great to see a bunch of friends enjoying what makes them happy and lively, and in second place is the lonely feeling that comes from being reminded of some Masonic orders’ artificial membership restrictions based on religious tests. Thirdly, I am simply kind of befuddled and indifferent. And so I want to concentrate and reconcile the competing sentiments so that understanding prevails. That ain’t gonna happen in the half hour I’ll devote to this blog post, because for as long as I’ve had ideas on the matter, I have viewed the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as a bridge that ought to unite Jews and Christians to a degree, instead of separating them irreconcilably. Jesus was Jewish. The New Testament is, arguably, and except several texts, a Jewish document. This is what enabled me physically, mentally, spiritually, and ethically to work my way East in the local Chapter of Rose Croix years ago. So I am stymied on those occasions when I consider these Christian-only fraternities within Freemasonry. They convene, sometimes in church, and close the doors, and what do they do – assuming they’re not just dinner clubs for the VIPs? They delve into Jewish mysticism, pretending it’s not proprietary to Judaism because all religions supposedly have some identical mystic path. I guess all religions speak Hebrew as well.

Magpie edit: Muskrat, stop bugging me about this.

Anyway, the photo jogged my memory sufficiently to send me directly to this one specific issue of Bro. Jay Kinney’s long missed Gnosis magazine. For anyone or anything to focus my mind so keenly as to allow me to step adroitly into my library (the floor is covered with piles of books needing to be filed away) and nimbly locate this one particular magazine is something quite powerful indeed. (By contrast, after thirteen years of carrying a cell phone every day, I still am capable of forgetting it somewhere.) But there it is: Issue No. 30 from the winter of 1994. Its theme is Sufism, Islam’s mystical branch, itself divided into numerous schools. Hardly my field of expertise, and yet I’m not utterly lost thanks to one of my favorite courses in my university days.

“…know that Sufis prefer the knowledge that comes by inspiration, to the exclusion of that acquired by study,” writes F.E. Peters, a professor of mine many years ago. “Again, they desire neither to study such learning nor to learn anything of what authors have written on the subject; to inspect neither their teachings nor their arguments. They maintain on the contrary that the ‘way’ consists in preferring spiritual combat, in getting rid of one’s faults, in breaking one’s ties and approaching God Most High through a single-minded spiritual effort. And every time those conditions are fulfilled, God for His part turns toward the heart of His servant and guarantees him an illumination by the lights of understanding.”

The Sufism issue of Gnosis delivers diverse articles on Sufi traditions, including that which popped into my head by way of that photo on Facebook. Written by Ya’quh ibn Yusuf, then a doctoral candidate studying Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, it includes a few paragraphs that can rattle some people. Like me.

I’d love to provide you the entire article. I want to hand you the magazine. You should have your lodge purchase the entire collection of back issues. I’ll share only that which I remembered, boldfacing the specifics. Do not be distracted by the mentions of Sufism. Or perhaps you should, mentally replacing the word Sufi with the word Masonry.

“…most of us in the West are already Christians or Jews. And while I believe it may be a mistake to narrowly identify with the religion of one’s ancestors, there is also a price to be paid for ignoring one’s own ancestral heritage. Our religious background is very much a kind of ‘local material’ out of which we are constructed. If we seek to follow Sufi teachings and develop our connection with God by digging deeply within ourselves, our own religion provides us with tools and a place in which to do some digging.

“Let me offer some examples of how I have seen these issues working themselves out among friends of mine. In Israel most Jews generally identify themselves as either ‘religious’ or ‘secular.’ It takes some courage and initiative to venture beyond these identifications and pursue one’s own spiritual search. I have observed that as they rise to the kind of challenge that Sufi teaching represents, secular seekers typically need to heal their rejection of Jewish tradition, while religious seekers need to overcome a general reflex of defending Jewish tradition as well as their specific allergy to Jesus… [This is] a matter of opening blocked channels to elements of religion which, it turns out, have a life within as well as outside the individual…

“All religions can be viewed not as ends in themselves, but as outer forms of belief and behavior that exist to facilitate inner work. The problem is that each religion also exists as a corporate entity that seeks to promote its own working set of tools and beliefs, and, like religions and sects, every spiritual group has a kind of collective ego that is fed by new adherents. All this should come as no surprise. What I believe we should bear in mind, however, is that too much of a focus on the particular form we are employing – whatever form that might be – serves to keep us stuck on the surface of appearances and prevents the work from moving more deeply within. This is why, as I understand it, Sufi teaching emphasizes ‘completion, not conversion.’

“Thus I have met observant Jews who have a personal relationship with Jesus, but choose not to convert to Christianity, and Christians who admit that their primary relationship is with God the Father. Certainly I know many Sufis who share the essential perspectives of the Prophet Muhammad but choose not to embrace Islam. In each of these cases there is an understandable reluctance to let an institutional mentality appropriate what properly belongs to the greater glory of God…

“Our task, as I understand it, is not to get rid of form on the social and religious levels any more than on the physical level. It is to appreciate the reflections of divinity to be found within form, to make of the forms in which we are involved a vehicle for the Divine. However we may choose to affiliate ourselves, whatever working basis we may choose to embrace, we do well to remember that the work of transformation does not depend on our concepts and categories, but on our actual cooperation with the grace of God.

Rarely am I at a loss for words when writing – fact is, I feel like I’m cheating here – but the above explains my thinking so well that I do not mind relying on it. In the “Great Work,” to borrow a phrase, there is room for Masons of most faith traditions to labor side by side if they want to. I do avoid saying “all” traditions, because somewhere there must be something that cannot fit, and because “all” connotes an absolutism that I sensed from that Facebook photo in the first place.

I am happy for my friends in the photograph. Almost all are smiling, their countenances revealing the satisfaction bubbling from within.

Having read a little about Freemasonry over the years, to me it seems the history of Freemasonry essentially is the story of Masons segregating themselves from other Masons. Try it for yourself: Start with Saint John Baptist Day 1717 when four lodges did you know what, and look at every group that either arose or splintered from another, each claiming to offer the whole Truth and nothing but. In the Christian-only fraternities within Freemasonry, I believe we see not only the promise of a sectarian truth – the “concepts and categories” mentioned by our magazine writer – but also the rejection of Enlightenment thinking (e.g. Anderson’s Constitutions’ Charge Concerning God and Religion) which is the guiding philosophy that enabled Freemasonry to spread throughout the world and endure the centuries so strongly... that it has been able to come into the lives of the very men in the photo.

That’s all I got. I desire neither to change nor intrude into what is, and I hope never to discuss this on The Magpie again. No calls please.