Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Greene and Greene (Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene)

With Longfellow and Greene and Greene we stretch all the way from 1807 up to 1957. And it's a curious 150 years that's held in the lives of these individuals. I placed them together at this particular juncture of the lecture series to bring out and stress an aspect to American history which is very rarely observed and almost never emphasized and accentuated except the fact that it reoccurs again and again. And its first real appearance in American history was in the voice of Walt Whitman by his voicing poems and what he wrote and the intent what or what purposes he wrote. And succinctly put it's this. That the European experience and the new world when it was exact and when it was spiritually energy touched upon a juncture of two currents that had been separated by at least twelve to fifteen thousand years of temporal history. But it formed a unity in the primordial past and was disguised by this ethical time period that lapsed and somehow psychic fighting the Europeans who came to this country in their spiritual visions put their faith on point of contact and lost and that lost to everyone and was brought back out so that the missing parts of the unity were put back together. And so the European Americans became the kingdom bringing back together two disparate paths of tradition after a whole epochal period since the close of the last ice age and made again a unity which we now inherit in this time and whose benefits we listen to experience in our time.

In the tradition was that Asia and the American Indians was an unbroken tradition for thousands of years ago and it was only by the great enormous migrations and great enormous span of time since that it happened that those traditions were seen as sundered and disparate and different and at opposite ends of the world and had no content. But that was only an illusion of time distance. It had absolutely nothing to do with the reality and the fact that the American spiritual tradition developed and the capacity and intensity of the American sages deepen, the more they came in contact with the natural living context of this country and the more they realized the liaison of the spirit with the American Indians the more in harmony we appear to be with the Asians. And as the American Indians rejuvenate the visionary of the European capacity now the Americans the more it was seen to be a great affinity with the Asian spiritual classics. And of course this at first began to make its appearance with the visions and visionary poetics of Walt Whitman. The elements that first came up were those core root elements of the Asian tradition which we have discussed in this lecture series at the beginning.

Whitman in his great ramblings around Paumanok, Long Island, the Indian portion of Long Island. He became almost the same kind of Upanishadic seer that we would have found in India about 2000 BC. And if you want to read the kind of efflorescence of imagery that Whitman's songs have then we go back to the Rig Veda. We go back 4000 years and we find the same sorts of evidence the same natural based and the same beginnings and developments of ritual expression of a clear sighted visionary experience which the core of it is to form a civilization of teaching and passing it on to generations to come through the sun cycles to the ceremonial site. While contemporaneous with Whitman and this fantastic unconscious discovery of his shall we say was contemporary of his Longfellow. Longfellow a totally different type of personality but contemporaneous with Whitman and in his own right most excellent sort of character defined style, human-heartedness, which is always required in pure vision was there among them. And so it was. And even though he was an academic and even though he came from a patrician family and loved to be in that village, Longfellow could not help but express in his works and especially the one which I'll stress tonight, The Song of Hiawatha. The same kind of penetrating vision only somewhat more unconscious - if we can use that term - than Whitman. Nevertheless there. And it's interesting to note that just at the time when Longfellow's merged with Whitman’s garnering his visions and insights. The Greene’s should be born and Charles Sumner Greene should be named after Longfellow's best friend Charles Sumner and that the Greene brothers would turn their Native American crafts vision into a worldly visionary source bringing out the essence of East Asian tradition. This time in an architectural form rather than into a song because the evolution of spirit of nature had moved from the songs and shouting of philosophic visions down through the millennia into the expression of Japanese architecture, one of its ultimate expressive forms.

And so it is that between Whitman and Longfellow and Greene and Greene and others who we will see in this series, we have this great parenthesis in the last 150 years of American history whereas the more we find our own traditions the land that we actually live within the native peoples who actually energized that land and took their livelihood from the imagery that was there, the more we come into harmony with their vision, the more we find ourselves in sync with the Asian vision, and the more the world East and West comes together and forms kind of the unity which had not been seen for at least the last twelve to fifteen thousand years wherein that geography and in that time does that seem that penetration that interest when it comes to Southern California in the late 20th century in our time. So in order to flesh this out not just the idea of literally not just the notion of it philosophically but the fullness of it as a living experience to which we are treasured heirs we must go back to Longfellow and begin there because with Whitman the trumpet blast is a little flat blank a little loud and we are overcome by his genius. But with Longfellow a somewhat lesser voice yet no less important because in his quiet life in his same refrain we can find a root key that we can follow with our minds and our anger and our sense of spiritual development and trace it up to our own time where this little root key is no longer unconscious but has blossomed into a flower and a peculiar particular character for our people and art. But we have to go back to the beginning.

Longfellow was born in the state of Maine in 1807. He lived most of his early life there around Portland on the coast. He was born into a fairly wealthy family. He was sent to the Portland Academy as a youngster. He was very pretentious in his writing capacity and style. He was sent finally to the Bowdoin College and he precociously brought out as a teenager a volume of translations from the Latin in particular which so impressed the people at Bowdoin College that they decided off the cuff and immediately to make this very very young man professor of modern languages fantastic surprise and rather not the way our universities do things having spent ten years in that school. So, Longfellow was sent off to Europe to learn his craft, his trade, languages, and he spent three years in Europe and he learned progressively as he traveled through the countries and stayed in them. He learned French, Spanish, Italian, and later on German, and of course Latin, and Greek, and Swedish, Danish and Dutch, Portuguese, English. So when Longfellow came back even though he was 22 years old. He was easily the greatest scholar in the United States. And he bowled them over and they couldn't handle his fantastic capacity. And the only place in the United States that can handle it. And they were glad to get it was Harvard and Harvard sent word. And so Longfellow became a distinguished Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. And with him he took this fantastic sense of having a mind which was expressively clear in more than a dozen languages. This does something who can make sense out of his feelings out of his experiences in a dozen different ways. It produces in a rather mechanical sense but nevertheless the sense of kaleidoscopic vision which the sage seer like Whitman would have had all along. So that Longfellow died in rather generic vogue but got it nonetheless. This capacity as a writer once told me to see things in six dimensions at once and to always have to be picking and choosing what is going to emphasize in his conception perception in order to just make some token path which he can live. As Longfellow developed things more he realized that the language books which he was writing - histories of French language, study guides to Spanish, and so forth, translations from the German, all these various things, a lot of academic papers, and books, and articles, and of course syllabuses and everything. But it wasn't satisfactory to him as a man as a human being as someone to whom his kaleidoscopic capacity had been opened up. So he turned more and more to poetry because it's sympoiesis that make up reality through language. It's through sympoiesis that we find a satisfaction in the sense that it resolves in modes of expression disparate rhythms of insight that otherwise would entangle you up hopelessly and yet have some way to translate them. And so we can't write books of poetry and surprisingly enough to him they began to sell. Longfellow was one of the few American poets ever to have a wide commercial audience. Let’s total up the statistics. By 1857 he had sold more than 30 million books in this country which is outrageous. Hiawatha sold 50,000 copies in its first year as a hardcover book in 1855. It's unheard of. Someone once observed that probably every household in the country had a Bible and Evangeline. So that Longfellow began to observe in his own capacities this fantastic talent that he had somehow touched perhaps in a popular mass but nevertheless had touched some secret core of the American intelligence and consciousness.

Although they wouldn't use that term now sensibility is essential. He had touched something which reverberated in almost every family that cared to read it and sure enough the wife had a few cramps were missing. Blessed existence he has. He married twice. His first wife died after four years of childbirth. They were in Europe on a trip and she died in Rotterdam and it took 6 or 7 years for Longfellow to be able to make his way out of this and the second time he married the prettiest wealthiest girl in the town and her name was Frances Applegate. And for a wedding present they were bought this enormous three story house in Cambridge which Longfellow had then admired as a young man living in the apartment as a professor. And eventually they were given cottages here and there. So tremendous happy life. The second wife died in a fire after about 20 years of marriage. And it was in that fire that Longfellow's face was scarred trying to save his second wife. And that's why he grew this enormous beard. And also in photographs Longfellow was a distinguished looking rather athletically sculpted young man. Up until about 1860 with just the muttonchops coming out and after his second wife died in 1861 he began growing the beard just in three years. He became a white haired white bearded old man whose face is familiar and synonymous with poets in the 19th century. For instance when Longfellow died in 1882 he had a special niche set aside for him in Westminster Abbey because of the high regard that he was held. He had been a lifelong friend of Charles Dickens and other members and so forth. But Longfellow was if we may use this term archetypally the poet in the 19th century for America. If he thought a poem because he touched a root and a chord which although most people could never express probably would have been surprised to learn what vistas it actually opened up to 100 years later. But people are not Jewish nor do they have any sense of them and managed to preserve as we have seen time and time again those elements of experience which really are essential to survival and excellence. The people will preserve those. And so this tremendous popular response forming was actually we can see such a tremendous recognition that there were two places. His right hand was the point of resolution for a whole experience to count without which having the vision of Longfellow or Whitman or the latest developments in American history would become an enigma to counter polar spirals. The one forming the background to the other bringing in opposite directions and really be lost forever trying to trace what is the real form. What is the background? Wherever are we going? Those without a vision in this country very very quickly perish into India because of the nature of our history because of the key that's required to open it up. Without the key it's the biggest mess we've ever seen. With the key it's the best for the child. It's just that sort of thing. And incidentally Frank Lloyd Wright and I’m sorry we don't have him in this series but I promise you in the next series was sort of the ultimate seer seeing this penetration of the American background and the Asian connection and the future American expression and of course the folded hands coming together later replaced by the red square the vision.

Out of all of Longfellow's works, I chose the song I love because it's perhaps the most familiar, but it's the one easiest to get a hitch on to. Looking at the development of traits he used several sources. One of them we have here in our library, The Myth of Hiawatha and Other Oral Legends of the North American Indians by Henry Schoolcraft. It's simply called The Hiawatha Legends. We have it here in our library down the road. If you remember Schoolcraft is the one who did that huge six volume series on American Indians that we started with this series. And so we come back to Schoolcraft. We come back to the American Indians. We've been going all this time with the development and this is part of the nature of the United States. We are not supposed to get away from the essentials. We're supposed to come back again and again then and work them in because we were given treasures and they're not instruments and they have to be worked in. So the form repeats itself in this series. Thank you.

The Song of Hiawatha begins with an introduction and in the introduction he asks where do these songs come from? And he writes it this way.

Should you ask me once you start, whence these legends and traditions with the owners of the forest with the dew and damp meadows etc. I should answer, I should tell you from the forests, from the prairies, from the Great Lakes of the Northland, from the land of the ___ plains on the lands of the Dakotas. In other words it comes from the natural horizon of experience the mountains, the prairies and the people who have always expressively been there as long as we can tell.

Other modern literary critics who in their academic offices write on poets are going to say well he seemed confused several different languages. Well I simply said he did bring several different legends together. And it's all right it doesn't matter. We're not engineers building a bridge. We're not going to have to have steel girders. We can go in a different way. He chose as a basic set the Lake Superior area and he called it the big sea water. And he chose this area because in his time when he was writing this, the 1850s, it was still pretty wild. The interface between the civilized portions of this country and the northern wilderness stretching indefinitely on, so that Lake Superior on one side on the Wisconsin-Michigan side had just recently been settled and on the Minnesota-Canadian side it was just being probed so that it was the area at the time that was on the line between civilization and wilderness. So he used it as a setting even though Hiawatha in terms of historical development and lived probably in the upper New York State over near the Iroquois League area. Yes he transposed Hiram. He transposed them out of the tribes out of the area out of the time but because of the exigencies of his vision and of the need for the symbolic time of this bold meaning that we've been talking about so often. So it had to be at Lake Superior and the stories come from the background there and the peoples there. And after the introduction of saying where are these visions, these songs seem to have their origin in nature and in people. Then the Song of Hiawatha proper begins and the very first beginning of it is the peace pipe, the calumet, so that it begins with that symbol of unity between man and the divine between man as the civilized and the divine as the wilderness yet to be explored so that the Lake Superior becomes transposed into the calumet in the peace pipe. And he begins the poem with that and how the peace pipe was made and the peace pipe was made by the Great Spirit himself from a red rock quarry and in fact it was such a apropos experience for humankind for the Indians for our forebearers that Longfellow says that,

All the various tribes were sent for so that representatives were brought together and many weeks and moons passed so that all these various representatives from all the different tribes could come together. And then the Great Spirit gave them the directions of how to break away this red plate and take the reed stems growing and place it together and take this new development tobacco and prepare and tap the pipe and how to smoke it with turning to the six directions - North, South, East, West, Heavenward, and Earthward - and to share in this and that. Once having gone through that ceremony together they then would understand the necessity for burying their weapons. And so the whole first part of the Song of Hiawatha is a poetic expression of how in some time past for people now becoming extinct they learned the primal lesson of how to get along with each other so that they could end their collectivity, form an interface with the divine because that was the purpose of man and of creation all along. And without this gathering together of the tribes and this exploring of divinity together man has no purpose, has no nature worth saving. So that Hiawatha's song begins with that.

Then the second part of it is just entitled The Four Winds. And the major mythological force personified in this passage is Mudjekeewis. And Mudjekeewis becomes the arbiter of the winds and saved the West wind for himself and Mudjekeewis thereby becomes the shaping force on the Earth. The winds control the temperature the winds control the seasons. They control the cycles of life so that Mudjekeewis becomes a mythological personage who has the reins of power in his hand. And he is said then to enter into the picture in this way. And by the third part we finally get to Hiawatha's childhood and Longfellow writes it this way,

“Downward through the evening twilight. In the days that are forgotten in the unremembered ages. From the full moon down Nokomis fell the beautiful Nokomis because she a wife but not mother. She was sporting with her women swaying and swaying of grapevines. When her rival though rejected full of jealousy and hatred cut the leafy swain asunder come entwined the twisted grapevines and Nokomis fell affrightedly downward through the evening twilight on a musk day. The meadow on the prairie full of blossoms. See a star fall said the people from the sky. A star is falling.”

Nokomis becomes the earth, the universal mother, the mother of mankind. She really is that image. And she is a full moon. She is an Earth personified in full moon phase able to bring fruition. She has a daughter named Wenonah and it is Wenonah who is the mother of Hiawatha. And she is the mother of Hiawatha through the interference of Mudjekeewis is much worse and human nature becomes pregnant when known by God and this way. And Wenonah dies in childbirth and Little Hiawatha is born so that he is raised by his grandmother. In the American Indian tradition it is the grandparent generation that can give out spiritual instruction. You don't go to your parents to learn about the spirit. You go to your grandfathers, the grandfathers. They are the grandmothers. They are holy because they do not have the immediate physical type, the parental type. They are not concerned just with your nourishment in terms of food and education and clothing. They are concerned with you as children of children. And they have that distance that feature of the expression in terms of wave modulation that is needed for being concerned with the larger things the larger patterns so as to the grandmother and Nokomis raises Hiawatha. He is raised by his grandmother and he has this kind of an education. And this is beautiful in the way that Longfellow expresses it,

“sang the song. The fullness of time. Wild wild chase. That little fire fly. Little flitting white fire insect. Little dancing white fire creature light me with your little candle air upon my bed I live in air and sleep. I close my eyelids. And then saw the moon rise from the water. Rippling round from the water. Saw the flecks and shadows on it. Whispered. What is that Nokomis? And the good Nokomis answered. Once a warrior, very angry.”

And she goes on and tells him. So he sees the man in the next image that he sees is a rainbow. You see the moon the rainbow and our three final images. A rainbow or beginnings of fruition. Of a moon for beginnings of fruition a rainbow for the covenant sign and an owl for the Wisdom incarnate symbol. The full moon, a rainbow, member and Genesis. The rainbow was set in as a guarantee of covenant that this destruction will not happen but it bridging. And so it's a full moon break on an owl and each time he asks in a whisper. What is that Nokomis. And she telling him does not give definitions. She gives the story patterns behind so that the more that he asks the more glimpses into patterns he has so that his wisdom grows. Not like the dictionary but as a world so that as he matures he has been given all the time to questions that he asks. In the wisdom the fullness expresses the answers. You could ask for the arts of the great wheel of existence that begins to fill in so that at maturity a moment of vision comes and you understand how all of it moves together. And this is how you walk. This is his visionary passage.

And when he is grown the sign that he is known is that he is able to go out and provide meat for the table and kill a deer. Not to kill but to bring home food for the table nourishment and not. Longfellow writes that the deer seem to leap to find the arrow showing it wasn't a killing but it was a meeting and it was a sign of trying to both for the maturation of Hiawatha.

What does a spiritual being do? The first time in his career he makes a pilgrimage to his origins to clear up the relational element. And so Hiawatha goes to find his father. Who is his father? His father is Mudjekeewis, the West wind. And where does he live? Well it must be somewhere in the west. So Hiawatha journeys. And where does he journey? He journeys across the United States, just like our historical development. He goes all the way to the Rockies and beyond and there he finds the home of West Wind. And as Longfellow says it's at the edge of everything just before, not that it falls off into nothingness, the edge of the pond. And there he finds Mudjekeewis. And when he finds him his father recognizes him because he sees in him the beauty of his mother not so much in the facial features but in the capacity that he is descended through his mother from Nokomis who like a star fell from heaven and became primordial earth. In a way a meteorite falls and encapsulated iron that becomes the tool that allows the civilization to develop. And he sees that aspect present in Hiawatha.

Now Mudjekeewis is immortal. He is a natural function. He is a mythological being. He is in the spiritual vision one of the structural elements of reality. Longfellow has Hiawatha coming with a thought of vengeance in his mind that he will equalize destiny by trying to kill Mudjekeewis because it wasn't that he had killed his mother. But that's a snag in Hiawatha's own vision that needs to be cleared up. And so Mudjekeewis like the right father the spiritual element that is necessary in constructing this major protagonist in the last little part of his vision he has to see himself as a part of that wheel pattern and not as separate from it. So he has to fit into it so that he is one with the wheel. And so much of us begins to have a wrestling match with him. And this wrestling is like Jacob wrestling with the angel. It's a spiritual wrestling. And fortunately this hierarchy goes through this wrestling. And we'll see later that he goes through a wrestling match again four times later on in his life and his career. Finally, Mudjekeewis says hold at length prior to Mudjekeewis, hold my son my Hiawatha. Tis impossible to kill me. For you cannot kill the immortal. I have put you to this trial. But to know and to prove your courage now receive the prize of valor. Go back home to your people. Live upon them. Toil among them. Cleanse the earth from all that harm them. Clear the fishing grounds and rivers. Slay all monsters and magicians. All the wendigos and giants. All the serpents. The king of beasts. As I slew the mission. Slew the great bear of the Montes. And at last when death draws near you when the awful eyes of father glorify you in the darkness I will share my kingdom with you. Ruler shall we be thenceforward of the northwest wind so that he will transform and join the natural forces and his transformation. When he is coming back from this, when he is still caught up still shocked enough to discover that he too belongs in the pattern that the Great Wheel of Existence has a spoke with his name on it and that is where he belongs. Still in that state he runs across and is traveling back. The woman that he is to meet and share his life with Minnehaha, Laughing Water. And as he is coming back, there in the Dakota there the ancient arrow maker. Remember arrows? Some of you were here for those shamanistic lectures. The arrow is that great element of transformation. It's not just that instrument that we shoot with the ball but as the symbol of the power of transformation itself later on becomes the Vajra in the Tibetan Buddhist. So the arrow. This is the ancient arrow maker. He's the father of Laughing Water. And Laughing Water is the complement to Hiawatha. There the ancient arrow maker made his arrowheads of sandstone, arrowheads of chert stone, arrowheads of flint and jasper smoothed and sharpened at the edges, hard and polished, keen and costly as a primordial tool is the arrowhead of his name. With him dwells his dark eyed daughter wayward as the Minnehaha with the roots of shade and sunshine. She has the white eyes that smiled and frowned. Alternate fleet. As rapid as the river, tresses, flowing like the water and as musical a laughter. And he named her from the river, from the waterfall teeming with many hot water. And so this image is given to him. This is also a reward of valour for him. The image of his complement because not that he belongs to the great will of truth and its turning he now has the right to have accomplished. Amazing he has earned the right to domestic market.

When he comes back Hiawatha trying not to get involved personally trying not to lose this universal rhythm which he has gotten from his father leaves Minnehaha with her father and comes back to finish up his ritual which is always for the American Indian to have a dream. Any spiritual undertaking must issue in a dream vision. And so Hiawatha comes back and commences his fasting and he's going to go on a seven day fast. And in the seven day fast the dream image finally comes to him. He's asleep in his hut and it's near sunset and through this arch is cut from the abyss a dream universe. And he saw a youth approaching dressed in garments green and yellow coming through the purple twilight plumes of green bounced over his forehead and his hair was soft and golden. Standing at the open doorway long he looked at Hiawatha, looked with pity and compassion on his wasted form and features and in accents like the sign of the south wind in the treetops said he, Oh my Hiawatha All your prayers are heard in heaven. And so this brief visitor comes and he says to him, tomorrow is the last day of your conference, is the last day of your fasting. You will conquer and overcome me. Make a bed for me to lie in where the rain will fall upon me, where the sun will come in warmth. Strengthen these garments. Green and yellow. Strip this knot in front of me. Lay me in the earth. And make it soft and loose. And light above me. Let no man disturb my slumber. Let no weed nor worm molest me. Let not the raven come to haunt and molest me. Only come yourself to watch me. Till I wake and start. And quick. Till I leap into the sunshine.

And so Hiawatha is told that he must kill and dismember and strip and bury this dream. Very very. But he does. And so he brings day by day to Hiawatha. Go to wait and watch. The sun kept the dark mode soft above it. Kept it clean from weeds and insects. Drove away with stops and shouting how to keep the king of ravens till at length the green feather from the earth shot slowly upward. Then another and another. And before the summer ended stood the maize in all its beauty. Corn stalks of corn. With its shining ropes about it. And its long soft yellow tresses. Protests and enraptured Hiawatha cried aloud. It is moaned in his dream vision. A person comes back each time so that the maize, the corn, the root of nourishment and the new world is given in the vision to Hiawatha. And then when he has this vision and is able to convey it to his friends then I want to meet you there. So we have the adventures of Hiawatha and then we have his voyage. Unto the bow the cord is sewn to the man his woman. Though she bends him she obeys him. Though she draws him. Yet she follows useless each without the other. Thus the youthful Hiawatha said within himself and pondered much perplexed by various feelings listens long hope and care dreaming still in the heart of the lovely laughing water in the land of the Dakotas.

And so he inquires on old Nokomis they are brought together and they have a wedding feast. And after his mystic marriage and because we're dealing with the universe and the elements brought together, visits occasion at this juncture for all the spokes are made to come together for a humble understanding to be generous and so long ago beautiful in his way gives us them at this pub of me. Three different events. The first one is a dance done by a character named _____ around the mystic heritage. And you shall hear how quick he was. How the handsome yet dizzy danced at Hiawatha's wedding. So he dances. He dances the dance of life. He is really a Shiva incarnate. And the second is how the gentle Chibiabos, he the sweetest of musicians sings his songs of love and longing.

So this character Chibiabos who is the master singer who is able to put into songs the great traditions songs that are short enough that first may understand them and remember mnemonically. But songs that mystically can unfold in all the necessary expressive meanings that we would require of understanding. So we have a mystic dancer who can create or destroy. We have a seer who can sing in songs. And third an old friend of Nokomis named Iagoo, I-A-G-O-O, who's the great boaster and the marvelous storyteller told his tales of strange adventure that the feast might be more joyous that the time might pass more gaily and the guests be more contented. Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis made at Hiawatha's wedding but the stories are the gifts and that the large houses of the towns where the rural districts and large.

So we have this. He dances. He dances. We have the wonderful songs that Chibiabos sang. And we'll see a little later how some of those songs were translated. I have some slides because the picture part writing of the Algonquin Indians were exactly those songs that were kept and were not understood until the Smithsonian Institute sponsored a few people to actually go and understand what all these curious treasures were that we have in the museums. They went to White Earth, Minnesota people who work because they have some on their own. You have to go and find someone who still remembers living and then you find that but it's different.

So Iagoo tells a myth, the story The Son of Evening Star. And we haven't time to go into it. But I think for those who have come to the Summer Solstice program here every year, the Evening Star is a formative mythological figure in all the North American and South American Indian traditions. And of course the son of the Evening Star fits in with the Sun Dance material. It fits in also with the medieval material. All the great mystical ceremonies in the Americas featured the Evening star reminded his disciples.

After then comes a section called Blessing the Cornfields because it was the deliverance of corn through the vision the nourishment to the people that permitted the higher gods and mystic marriage to happen. And then after of course remembering what we're all about when he goes to bless the thing itself. That's the wonderful thing in Midsummer Night's Dream after all the marriages are brought together the very spirits of nature and the world come in and bless the houses bless the castle because those were the cornfields of Jerusalem. Then after that is done we reach a plateau where Longfellow was able at long last to bring up a spiritual treasure and that is what I've just alluded to - picture writing - and how Hiawatha delivered the elements of symbolic great picture writing hieroglyphic meaning to the people and taught all uses of it. Thus it was that Hiawatha in his wisdom taught the people all the mysteries of painting all the art of picture writing on the smooth bark of the birch tree on the white skin of the reindeer on the grave posts of the village. Then follow several other sections and among them is one where the mystic dancer who has warmed up one man now must turn one and this unwinding is destroyed. And he comes in and says what is that image of the unwinding of the creative force that destructive force he brings in and games of chance to lead people astray.

White. Better English. Remember me the confidence man the devil and his time as a Mississippi riverboat gambler loved you. Ray's consternation and anxious over gain and losing hope. You shall hear how popular he was. He the handsome young Daisy whom the people called the storm pulled vexed the village with disturbance. You shall hear about his mischief and his fight. Flight from Hiawatha and his wondrous transmigrations at the end of his adventures. The key risk being a destructive Shiva-like form may transform or if you wish a different metaphoric face like in Homer Hawkins the Old Man and the Sea whom Odysseus grabs and transforms into many different shapes. But she would not let go. And Hiawatha does not let go. The heroes do not let go. They understand the emotion and the form and they are there to resolve the energy not to be baffled by its illusory manifestations. And so Papa was happy Shouted Papa Key West as he entered at the doorway. I am tired of this talk. Tired of old stories. Tired of Hiawatha's wisdom. Here are something to amuse you better than this endless talking. Then from out of his pouch of wolfskin forth he drew with solemn manner all the games of bowl and counters. Papa sang with 13 pieces. White on one side they were painted and vermilion on the other. Two Kennebecs the great serpents too in its way and originally one Great War club. And he goes on with all the elements of this game and series of games and gambling. Thus he taught the game of hazard and thus displayed it and explained it running through its various chances, various changes, various means. 20 curious eyes stared at him full of eagerness. Stared at him. Many game said obviously many games of skill enhancement. And so of course it's this notion that the best way to unwind an integrated commission is to bleed off its energies and perceptions with games of chance and meander. That's the easiest way to unravel civilization. It's not probably that people are so top down hierarchical and actively propertyless is able to change and transform but I want. Hiawatha takes care of him and we're all his tricks. And Gambling's ended all his craft and cunning. Ended all his mischief and all his gambling and his dancing. All his wooing of names. Then the noble Hiawatha took his soul his ghost. His shadow spake and said O Jesus nevermore in human form shall we search for new adventures Nevermore. With jest and laughter. Dance the dust and leaves and whirlwinds. But above there in heavens you shall soar and sail. And serpent I will change you to an eagle. To him the great war eagle. Chief of all the fowls and feathers. Chief of Hiawatha. Chickens. So the wise sage theme doesn't exclude from the will of war any element but transforms it and works it in so that it becomes part of the pattern is the immigration form that is the text and not the continuing seeking or exorcising an undesirable element which is always the lure that leads into a new complication.

Harmon gains when the will is integrated when the chocolate world is complete. I'm always concerned no matter what the reason for thinking this is not worth keeping. This should not be. It all is and it is should drop in one motion. Then after this Longfellow brings the end of The Song of Hiawatha by the vision of the coming of the white man. And when he sees in his vision that the white man. Then he bravely spake and answered to the jeering. And there Justin true is all the author advertisers. I have seen it in a vision seen the great canoe with pinions seen the people with white faces seeing the coming of this bearded people on the wooden vessel from the regions of the morning from the land of water. Gichi Manidoo the mighty the Great Spirit the creator sends him on his errand. They're coming not for their greed not to take our lands. They are also in the spirit of existence coming under the direction of the Great Spirit. And therefore Hiawatha departs westward and sets up among these activities and his vision a cycle that the pioneers will follow. And Northampton will at some time in the future realize that they went the same way.

They overlaid the experience of the revenue and that there was a mystic intertwined purpose of the Great Spirit in this adventure. So Hiawatha's departure and Longfellow styled it in this manner. Two exits by the shores of Gitchee. Gumee by the shining sea. One at the doorway of his wigwam in the pleasant summer morning. Hiawatha stood and weighed. All the air was full of freshness. All the earth was bright and joyous. And before him to the sunshine westward toward the neighboring forest passed in golden swarms. Onward past the bees the honeymooners burning singing in the sunshine bright above him. Shown the heavens love us. Spread the light before him. Promise doesn't leap. The sturgeon sparkling flashing in the sunshine on its margins. The great forest stood Student reflected in the water. Every shop has its shadow motionless beneath the water. In other words the vision of the unity of nature is polarities unified. And with that vision that spiritual perception the pilot believes to move westward. Nothing. Nothing fragments. Nothing about a company but a vision of wholeness in nature. And he begins to set him through his God a pioneer path that the red man will take. And later the white man will take over him so that there is a double helix of motion in American history which Hiawatha initiated by his guilt. And of course he himself becomes convinced that he stands in. And it takes him.

I am going on a long and distant journey. Many moons and many weathers will have come and will be finished where I come down to see you. But my guests are behind me. Listen to their words of wisdom. Listen to the truth they tell me. For the master of life has sent them from the land and light of light and morning. On the shores of Hiawatha. Turned and waved his hand and parted on the clear and luminous water. Launched his birch canoe or sailing from the pebbles of the march shouted forth into the water whispered to it westward westward Can this be done for me Time and time to eat. And drink. And green to green. What happened What happened A. Lot of friends got together with five of them. Made a club and one of the people was Charles Sumner Greene. Charles Sumner for whom Charles Sumner was named. Was a wonderful musician. He was in Congress for about 25 years in Congress from 1851 to 1874. He had a birthday. He was the chairman of Foreign Relations from 1851 to 1861. So he was very high up in Congress. He was a very close associate with congressional of the Lincoln How Long they all believed. About slavery and putting the country back in the moral frame. And Charles Sumner Greene was born in 1868 so he was 14 when he was young. And his brother Henry wanted his life his own to give it to a tremendous metabolic health.

And both in 1950. Henry died in 1954 and Charles died and come out. 1957. They kept most of their work done creative work before the First World War And built very little after the First World War. We weren't recognized by the American Institute of Architects until they had a big celebration for the 1952 World Cup. So most of the private residences because perhaps the home is a very potent symbol for human beings for happiness particularly for Americans. Home is a very potent symbol. It has imposed all of its possibilities. Everything that we really did need to know. And so it is always a revelation to find architects instead of designers artists and set construction engineers can a home and in the case of Greene and Greene in one particular instance a home. Perfect. And we can say it any time you wish. And speaking of the house. Which is about as mystical an expression of the human spirit here one time the parking lot. It has an area for obsessive to elicit from the qualities which when you get acquainted again here can only you can give yourself. And it was not in some Arcane cipher documents were buried but was raised up in sunlight and natural materials to be lived in day after day and to the great graces of the energies that moved in our region has been preserved almost perfectly then put into the context of the great North Sea so that it will be preserved and we can know and experience over and over again.

The basic motif that occurs in animals is a motif of this cloud symbol and you can play with the cloud symbol and go back through vibration and through humanities and math to evidence of cloud natural cumulus cloud and where that symbol or artistic motif may have come from. But this form is used over and over and over in various disciplines so that the entire House in terms of its composition. Creates the vibration of cloud formed motion. And if you've been in there a dozen times you can come out of that door and not feel like you're walking on something. And you have to go and get yourself in. There because we designed every aspect of the house. They made the carpets the rugs they made the furniture and they made everything that you see and don't see so that the entire structure. The gamblers went off to Europe where they had. Year round. It's so great. May God bless you with all the master craftsmen. And kitchen glass experts and carpenters know how to work with the woods and the world nations. They brought the whole crew together and we sat them for a year or so. And they built an enormous 8000 square foot home. And it's 12 rooms just open to the invisible realm of like proportions and the whole thing.

And the clouds are just everywhere in a natural form and sort of imaginary. It is the counterpoint of this Expression of the wrath of man. Nature. Open book of this nature. Because to learn how to write with natural symbols in architecture. Dream. Dream made a true visionary home which we can occupy. And it is peculiarly an American expression. You won't find it in Japan and you won't find it anywhere. And you find it here. It is odd because it brings together like harmonious elements from disparate groups that had once been primordial before and now they're brought back together. And gives it that unmistakable flavor Later on. Jeremy and. The mystic pressurized the making of songs in a limited way. A symbol is an art which was beginning to become attuned to. And so John and I have made some finds of some of these from the Smithsonian Institute publication which on the Grand Lodge of the Red River of the Ojibwa. We have some slides and I'm afraid we have some slides from somewhere high up. And again if I just show them to you and not too much too much we will come back to these moments. And this will bring back next week because we talked about William James who comes out of it the same way. Born and brought up there about the same time we begin to see that these ranks of great visionaries in this country seem to touch side by side and we seem to find that there is this great chain of being operating within American history all of this one perfect love.

And with James when we talk about the varieties of religious experience and great classes will have to come back and the old Algonquin Indian Psalms to shall we say hands which should be encouraging him in religious vision. And James of course the great synthesizer on the psychological intellectual level. The coming of Mr. James on. Well let's look at some questions. I hope this is going to work. This is a slide of ranking person. Right. So. This is one of the few smiling we've ever been able to discover. The Alice Library here found a cache of engraved images of presidents and writers. And among them was a smiling at his smiling as he got. I forget who it was. Somebody once said that future tyrants are going to have a terrible time trying to deal with American history and heroes to justify their tyrannies because when you look back and you see what they represented you can see it for your own self. It represented dignity maturity and integration. And there's no way to get around the. Rail splitter. Sounds pretty straight line for a long time. 1869 1870. Around here would be 60 years old or so after most of his publications. And a Russian lawyer who attempted to defend. These are phases of the Ojibwa Indians.

In Longfellow's time. These were painted in the 1880s and represented the kind of individual that we would be dealing with some. Mark carriers. I don't know if you can see engraved on the Thunderbird and more abstractly the ends are frayed and curved in so as to hold the contents. And be carried like a baton in the hand. And here are some other. Materials to write. The elements of the ceremony are the recipe for all transformative magic. The drum the rattle. The tobacco for making inhalation visible. The songs the movements and the whispers. Here's a rattle. Looking very much like a prayer. And. The very first. One the card belonged to. Visited the Hopi Indians. They hit it right on the line to shoot up past the rain and the rain which they could understand. And the rain. And it happened a few years ago. Similar traditions. Similar wedges of insight. In the Grand Medicine Lodge our hosts and the folks universally true authors and prophets. More often they were about seven feet high often painted red and green striped across the top and a stuffed owl would be posted on top of the structure. And these would be placed in a lodge the intentions of which would be roughly 80ft by 20 and the walls and roof would be just the one thatched saplings worked in. This kind of constant. In the foreground is a flattened stone more than a foot in diameter basically as a focus for certain Ceremonial happenings.

The post at the far end. This will be the first degree or four degrees to the left and then a blanket in the center for the donation by the initiate of tobacco for the priests and various other elements. The east or west walls would have apertures that open out and it was like doors being double doors being flung open and kept open so that the walls would form little sharp corners at either end. On the east end about 100 paces away would be built the sweat lodge and at the beginning of the ceremony of initiation it would be four days successively and the sweat lodge and then the initiate on the fifth day would be brought into the ceremony So for whatever degree he was receiving. This is from later on a forum post in which you can see the. International consensus on one aspect in the cinema which is outstanding is the what they call the shooting of Amigas. Amigas is a mystic symbol usually thought to be a shell very much like a like a small white shell rather curved and rounded having a vesicant type outline. And it would be symbolically shot into the breast of the initiative. This would be there are two first degree that we would were poor had increased and each one would take a medicine pouch which had been made to move on the ground by his telepathic power telekinetic power beforehand to show that he did in fact have the power to charge in the doorway.

I am tired of this talking. Tired of old stories tired of Hiawatha's wisdom. Here are some of them to amuse you better than this endless talking. Then from out his pouch of wolf skin forth he drew with solemn manner all the games of bowl and counters. Papa sang with 13 pieces of white and white side. They were painted and vermilion on the other two kennebecs the great serpents too in its way and originally one Great War club. And he goes on with all the elements of this game and series of games of gambling. Thus he taught the game of hazard. Thus dissuaded and explained it running through its various chances. Various changes various meanings. 20. Curious eyes stared at him full of eagerness stared at him. Many game said boldly. Many games of skill enhancement. And so of course it's this notion that the best way to unwind an integrated commission is to bleed off its energies and perceptions with games of chance and meander. That's the easiest way to unravel civilization. It's. Not probably the people. They're. So fucking cute. Which then turns the whole place down. I wanted to ask him how he was able to change and transform but I wanted to cure him and ended with all his tricks and gambits ended all his craft and ended all his mischief making all his gambling and his dancing all his wooing of maidens.

Then the noble Firewalker took his soul his ghost his shadow spake and said O Patricius nevermore. In human form shall we search for new adventures. Nevermore. With jest and laughter. Danced with dust and leaves and whirlwinds. But above there in the heavens you shall soar and sail. And serpent I will change you to an eagle. To him the great war eagle. Chief of all the fowls and feathers. Chief of Hiawatha's chickens. So the wise sage being doesn't exclude from the will of war any element but transforms it and works it out so it becomes part of the app. It's the integration form that is the test and not the continuing seeking or exorcising an undesirable element which is always the lure that leads into a new complication. Carmen ends when guilt is involved when the chocolate was complete. I'm always concerned no matter what the reason for thinking this is not worth keeping. This should not be. It all is and is should be one motion. Then after this long deliberation ended the song of Hiawatha by the vision of the coming of the white man. And when he sees in his vision that the white man. Then he bravely spake and answered to the jeering actor Justin Theroux is all the author tells us. I have seen it in a vision seen the great canoe with pinions seeing the people with white faces seeing the coming of this bearded people of the wooden vessel from the regions of the morning from the land of water giving money to the mighty the Great Spirit the creator sends him upon his errand.

There comes not through their greed not to take our money. They are also in this great existence coming under the direction of the Great Spirit. And therefore Hiawatha departs westward and sets up among the sea. For in his vision a cycle that the pioneers will come and inform Will at some time in the future realize that they went the same way. They overlaid the experience of the revenue and that there was a mystic intertwined purpose of the Great Spirit in this adventure. So Hiawatha's departure and Longfellow styled it in this manner. Two exits by the shores of Gitchee Gumee by the shining big sea water at the doorway of his wigwam in the pleasant summer morning Hiawatha stood and weighed. All the air was full of freshness. All the earth was bright and joyous. And before him to the sunshine westward toward the neighboring forest passed in golden swarms. Onward past the bees to honey makers burning singing in the sunshine bright above him shall the heavens let us spread the light before Beforehand. How much does it meet The sturgeon sparkling flashing in the sunshine on its margins. The great forest stood reflected in the water. Every treetop had its shadow motionless beneath the water.

In other words the vision of the unity of nature is polarities unified. And with that vision that spiritual perception that I want the leaves to move westward. Nothing. Nothing fragment. Nothing about a continent but a vision of wholeness in nature. And he begins to set him through his God a pioneer path that the red man will take and later the white man will take over him so that there is a double helix of motion through American history which Hiawatha initiated by his glory. And of course as his self becomes convinced that he stands in and it takes him I am going with my people on a long and distant journey. Many moons and many weddings will have come and will have vanished. There I come again to see you but my guests are behind me. Listen to the words of wisdom. Listen to the truth they tell me. For the master of life has sent them from the land and light of light and morning on the shores of Hiawatha. Turned and waved his hand and parted on the clear and luminous water launched his birch canoe or sailing upon the tablets of the march shouted forth into the water whispered to it. Westward westward and the speed of dark. Time Time to beat. And I can get to green and green. Get to green. What happened My four friends got together and five of them made a club. And one of the people is Charles Sumner Green.

That's Charles Sumner for whom Charles Sumner was named. Sumner was a wonderful musician. He was in Congress for about 25 years. And so the Congress of 1851 to 1874 we had a birthday. He was the chairman of foreign relations from 51. 1861. So he was very high in confidence. He was a very close associate with congressional of the Lincoln Republican. Yes. Long time. And they all believed in the testimony about slavery and the putting the country back in the world trade. And Charles Sumner was born in 1868. So he was 14 when he was young. And his brother Henry born two years later. They don't give you a tremendous metabolic health. And both of them lived in 1950. Henry died in Albany In 1934 Charles and I come up to 57. They did most of their work no creative work before the First World War and built very little after the First World War. We weren't recognized by the American Institute of Architects until they had a big celebration for the 1952 the couple that. Built most of their private residences because perhaps the home is a very potent symbol for human beings for happiness particularly for Americans. Home is a very potent symbol. It has stolen all of its possibilities. Everything that we really give treasure and grace gives me tonight. And so it is always a revelation to find architects instead of designers. Artists instead of construction engineers.

Can a home and in the case of green and green in one particular instance a home Perfect. And we can sit anytime we wish and sit down and have dinner which is about as mystical an expression of the human spirit at one time. As It has an area for assessment to elicit from volunteers which when you get acquainted again here can only you can give yourself. And it was put not in some arcane cipher documents to be buried but was raised up in sunlight and natural materials to be lived in day after day and to the great graces and the energies that moved in our region has been preserved almost perfectly then put into a context of great emphasis so that it will be preserved and we can go and experience over and over again. The basic motif that occurs in animals is a motif of this Wow. Simple. The plan was quite simple. Go back to vibration and through dimensions. Down through the cloud. Naturally. Cumulus clouds from where that symbol or artistic motif may have come from. But this form is used over and over and over in various towns and cities so that the entire house in terms of its composition. Creates the vibration of cloud form motion. And if you've been in there a dozen times you can come out of that door and not feel like you're walking in front of something and you have to go and get yourself in.

Brooklyn is an incredible experience because we design every aspect of the house. They make the carpets the rugs they made the furniture. They made everything that you see and don't see so that the entire structure. The gamblers run off to Europe for a year and they left a mountain of $50,000 to build this thing. And it's so great. We got to see all the master craftsmen and they brought Tiffany glass experts and carpenters that knew how to work with the woods and the world nations and they brought the whole crew together. And we sat them for a year or so and they built and built this enormous 8000 square foot home. It's 12 rooms just open into the invisible realm of light propulsion. And the golden mean and the power symbol are just everywhere in a natural form. And. It is the counterpoint of this expression of the rhetoric of the man for whom nature was an open book of this nature. Because through learning how to write with natural symbols in architecture dream dream made a true visionary home which we can occupy and it is peculiarly an American expression. You won't find it in Japan and you won't find it in here. Which. Is odd because it brings together like harmonious elements from disparate groups that had once been fragmented into the portable and now the brought back together. And isn't that the unmistakable flavor of Jeremy and.

The mystic Texturizing the making of certain songs in a limited array of symbols is an art which was beginning to become attuned to. And so John and I have made some slides of some of these drawings of Smithsonian Institute publication which on the Grand Lodge of the movement of the We have some slides and I'm afraid we have some slides in there. So maybe. If I just show them to you and not enlarge too much we will come back to these elements. Domestic soccer will be back next week because we'll be talking about William James who comes out of Harvard. James Bond was born and brought up there about the same time. We begin to see that these points of great visionaries in this country seem to touch side by side and we seem to find that there is this great chain of being operating within American history all this perfect love. And with James when we talk about the varieties of religious experience and great classes will have to combine and will this is all Algonquin Indian sign to show basic patterns which we encouraging them in religious vision. And of course the great synthesizer on psychological intellectual level of the colony of Mr. James. All right. Well let's look at some questions. I hope this is going to work. Yes this is applied in person. Right. So. This is one of the few smiling language we've ever been able to discover.

Alice our librarian here found a cache of engraved images of presidents and writers and the old woman was smiling at him smiling as he got. Mad. I forget who it was. Somebody once said that future tyrants are going to have a terrible time trying to use American history and heroes to justify their tyrannies because when you look back and you see what they represented you can see it for your own self. It represented dignity maturity and integration and there's no way to get around. This rail splitter. Sounds pretty straight. To me. Why not 1865 1870. Around here would be 60 years old or so. After his publications the Russians attempted to extend. These are phases of the Ojibwa Indians. In Longfellow's time these were painted in the 1880s and the two represent the kind of individuals that would be dealing with the song. Mark carriers. I don't know if you can see engraved on the Thunderbird and above that are abstracted. The ends are frayed and curved in so as to hold the contents and we carried like a baton a hammer. And some other. Materials to write. The elements of the ceremony are the recipe for all transformative magic. The drum the rattle. The tobacco for making inhalation visible. The songs. The movements and the steps. Here's a gravel. Look very much like the. Very first. When the car he belongs to lifted the engines. They hit it right on. The line was.

Shut up We asked for rain and the rain was ever understand the rain that happened a few years ago Similar tradition. Similar wedges of himself. In the Grand Medicine Lodge. Our posts and the posts universally true often resemble prophecies. More often they were about seven feet high often painted red with a green stripe across the Job and a stuffed owl would be posted on top of the structure. And these would be placed in a large conventions of which would be roughly 80ft by 20 and the walls and roof would be just the one thatched saplings worked in. This kind of constant in the foreground is a flattened stone more than a foot in diameter basically as a focus for certain ceremonial happenings. The post at the far end. This would be the first degree or four degrees to the roof and then a blanket in the center for the donation by the initiate of tobacco for the priests and various other functions. The east and west walls we have apertures that open out and like doors being double doors being flung open and kept open so that the walls form little short corridors at either end. Off on the east end about 100 paces away. He felt the sweat lodge and at the end of the ceremony of initiation which would be four days successively in the sweat lodge and the initiate on the fifth day would be brought into the ceremony for whatever degree he was receiving.

This is from later on the fourth day but you can see that one aspect in the ceremony which is outstanding is the What they call the shooting of Amigas. Amigas is a mystic symbol usually thought to be a shell very much like a like a small white shell rather curved and rounded having a vesicant type outline and it would be symbolically shot into the breast of the initiative. This would be there are two first degree when we were in for men and priests and each one would take a medicine pouch which had been made to move on the ground by his telepathic power telekinetic power before him to show that he did in fact have the power charge in him so that he could manipulate at a distance physical objects. Then he would pick up the pouch that had the little white shell in it and he would make motions as if it were like a gun and bring it with a loud heavy air to the breast of the initiative and each one of the crews would do this coming closer and closer to the heart of the initiative so that the initiative was actually a target for mystic death. And after the fourth motion after the complete cycle of motions and form the initiate would fall as if dead and the little white shell which had been placed ceremoniously in the mouth beforehand would come out before beginning to fall.

And then this little shell would be brought back and given to the mouth of the initiative by the head priest. And then there was an ambulance. And bring that person back to life reborn and a reconstruction. This is a general outcome of its motion. That was the first degree. And there were four degrees of increasingly complex. The song that was being sung for each of the stages of this motion would be noted down. And this sort of map on birch bark. And there are four separate songs. I think we've got one now. I will try and write them up and. I don't know if you can do this. And then. We can move along faster. Upside down. I'm not going to trust the space station. Each element in the song will be a symbolic frame. That. Will work on me and return to us. Within the next week. I have a couple of songs the celebrant would go through. The various stages would receive face paint somewhat similar to the painting on post so that very often the facial colors that you see here are not the mark of savage at all but the mark of sophisticated religious initiation. And you notice that polarity natural polarity of green and red are the most often used colorations and very often lines of vermilion line cross the bridge of the nose which intersects the eyes and runs across to the temples brings in that one horizon of nature sight smell hearing and integration levels with the third eye level.

And there are other similarities. When we have a time where we have a special on this this whole element of picture writing and facial painting. But this is a sketch a series of sketch of three sketches made by a fourth degree medieval priest who was also a magician known in Algonquin language as a Jessica. And these are mystical paintings and drawings. And if you can see we have shapes and shapes inside. This first sketch is like a heart is bending but it also is worn. On the chest is the symbol of the priest and the larger this diadem on the chest on the scapular here the larger it is the higher the degree of severity here. Here's the priest. Here's the munitions. Here's the hand off in a scabbard. Nexus from this are many spirits some of them malevolent most of them in fact some of them at the top of Thunderbird. Thunderbird. Teaching them about the Great Spirit. In the second one there's a confusion of meaning and the diadem has it going on rather like a sunburst. And there seemed to be a kind of a scattering of energies throughout the Spirit Mountains. Then the third thing under the chief with the initiate being brought closer together and in fact being in a position to experience through his own transcending mind the tree of life is reinstated and brought together to integrate so that all of the spirit.