No. Not literal death.
“The poet T.S. Eliot was always one of my favorites. He was a perfect poet, yet an imperfect person, who glimpsed perfection with his far-off vision that lens of wonder that looked into the elasticity of time, and came away trying to find words to describe a loss of identity that came from a well dry of spiritual replenishment.
I shouldn’t frame this as all culture, rather I mean to speak of warrior culture and pop culture, and its adherents to fashion and trends who would rather look chic than live the truest life of ritual; amoral living breeds warrior death by spiritual suicide. Men die inside every day, yet long for a vanished glory found only in mythology.
Eliot was criticized for being an elitist but isn’t that the perspective that is necessary to hold the line to fight against spiritual paralysis? The above average man struggles to find his place in this world. He communes with others like himself or lives it alone. Who are the light-bearers? The answers to this struggle are never palatable. Self-control, personal responsibility, moral values, and individualism fights against the encroaching mechanical world.
I am reminded of the song by the Hunters and Collectors, “Woke up this morning from the strangest dream. I was in the biggest army the world has ever seen. We were marching as one. On the road to the holy grail.” Will this water heal the Fisher King’s Wasteland?
We are fed culture via the dropper of pop culture. Better to drink some before it evaporates. Spiritual regeneration and return to health are possible.
“Sibyl, what do you want?” And she says, “I want to die.”
We are atoms in the universe. Let us die and be reborn, on this day, into something better.
“Living nor dead, and I knew nothing. Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
Everything is beautiful and glorious.”
Sibyl, also called Sibylla, prophetess in Greek legend and literature. Tradition represented her as a woman of prodigious old age uttering predictions in ecstatic frenzy, but she was always a figure of the mythical past, and her prophecies, in Greek hexameters, were handed down in writing.
T.S. Eliot, in full Thomas Stearns Eliot, (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died January 4, 1965, London, England), American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones.
The Fisher King is a figure in Arthurian legend, the last in a long line of British kings tasked with guarding the Holy Grail. The Fisher King is both the protector and physical embodiment of his lands, but a wound renders him impotent and his kingdom barren.[1] Unable to walk or ride a horse, he is sometimes depicted as spending his time fishing while he awaits a “chosen one” who can heal him. Versions of the story vary widely, but the Fisher King is typically depicted as being wounded in the groin, legs, or thigh. The healing of these wounds always depends upon the completion of a hero-knight’s task.
Hunters & Collectors are an Australian rock band formed in 1981. Fronted by founding mainstay, singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Seymour, they developed a blend of pub rock and art-funk.
Woke up this morning, from the strangest dream I was in the biggest army, The world has ever seen We were marching as one, on the road to the holy grail Started out, Seeking fortune and glory It's a short song, but it's a Hell of a story, when you Spend your lifetime trying to get Your hands on the Holy Grail Bud have you heard of the Great Crusade? We ran into millions, and nobody got paid Yeah, we razed four corners of the globe, For the Holy Grail. All the locals scattered, They were hiding in the snow We were so far from home, So how were we to know, There'd be nothing left to plunder When we stumbled on the Holy Grail? We were foolish beings But we were dying like flies And those big black birds, they were circling in the sky, And you know what they say, yeah, Nobody deserves to die. Oh I, I've been searching for an easy way to escape the cold light of day I've been high, and I've been low But I've got nowhere else to go There's nowhere else to go I followed orders God knows where I'd be But I woke up alone, all my wounds were clean I'm still here I'm still a fool for the Holy Grail Oh yeah, I'm a fool for the Holy Grail
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