Bowman’s Gyre

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birch bark letter, Elaine Stirling, incantation, Karelian dialect, poetry translation, rondeau tercet, shamanic invocation, thirteenth century

arrow of God, your name is ten
arrow glittering arrow fires
the god who faults in us inspires

pull me tight, an instrument when
lightning strikes despondent pyres
arrow of God, your name is ten
arrow glittering arrow fires

renew my courage from this glen
of birch around the archer tires
driven by your thundering gyres

arrow of God, your name is ten
arrow glittering arrow fires
the god who faults in us inspires

~~~

As fixed verse, this poem is a rondeau tercet. The opening stanza, however, is not mine. It is a translation from a 13th century birch bark letter (shown in the image), the oldest known document in a Finnic language. It was found in 1957 by a Soviet expedition in Karelia, a deeply mythic region that straddles Finland and Russia. Most scholars agree that the birch bark was an invocation against lightning, or an appeal for protection to the Almighty, who was viewed as the god of thunder.

My paternal grandfather came from Karelia, so I feel a deep kinship to the shamanic traditions that politics, war, and religion have never been able to completely suppress. To construct this piece, I compared various translations into Finnish, Karelian, and English from the Cyrillic script you see here. Finnic languages are agglutinative; words and meaning cluster, so I’ve attempted to replicate that through minimal punctuation. (There was none on the birch bark!) It is my hope that by reading the invocation with a steady beat, you may feel a sense of the archer readying for battle centuries ago, calling on the highest powers—and affirming his/her intent by the most profound act of writing.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

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That Thing You Fear

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Canadian Thanksgiving, Elaine Stirling, flash fiction, incantation, Law of Attraction, like attracts like, nagual, poetry, rune singing, self-importance, self-pity, spontaneity, the old ways, vibrational reality

It was the summer of ’82 when my life fell apart, and I visited Grandma, sat on her porch in Hazelnut Corners, drinking iced tea and watching lightning bugs play catch-me-dare in the twilight.

“What’s that thing you fear, child?”

I was twenty-three, hardly a child, and hoped I made it clear in my response.

She cupped her ear and leaned forward on her squeaky porch swing. “The Reaper cussin’? That’s what scares you?”

“I said, repercussion, Grandma.”

“Well, hell, that’s just hogwash! There ain’t no repercussion, ain’t no Reaper cussin’, except the kind you place in front of your own self like banged-up paint cans to trip over and make a big howly whoop-dee-do for any poor soul who’s close enough to listen.”

I clinked the ice cubes in my tea and awaited what I knew was coming.

Grandma would never call herself a poet, though once she got a rhythm going, you could snap peas and shuck corn using half the energy and a quarter the time. Reverend Hicks said she’d have been a mighty preacher, if it weren’t for that holy injunction against women at a pulpit. But Grandma held no truck with thou-shalt-nots and given a pulpit, would have sent everyone home and turned the church into a B&B.

“Go make joyful noises,” she’d have said. “Let your kids bang pots, do some banging of your own. God knows some of you could use it.”

I wish now that I’d recorded her rune-songs while she was singing them, for rune-songs is what they were. Spontaneous, unbound, her incantations called down the Spirit and sent up her own, spinning out and growing the loop of creation her Creator began. Here, best as I remember, is what else Grandma said in her saucy way, that day we talked about the thing I feared.

Give yourself some
head room, child, grow
a house beside another
house becomes a village
with a garden, ‘nuff
to feed the crops of
young ones sprouting
tow and woolly heads
who chase each other
cross the gullies, nets
and footballs arcing
toward the sunset till
your mothers step
outside and call your
names to come indoors
where clean or rumpled
sheets await with dreams
pressed up like noses
to a candy store—it’s you
the world is looking for
the sweet and salty
liquorice taste of
smacking lips and tongue
your teeth and dreams need
spice to salivate and chew
bite down, enjoy the meats
that tempt while juices flow
let no one come between
you and the joy you’ve
come to sow, spit out
that thing you fear, it
winked out long ago
see for yourself
the lightning bugs
they’ll tell you so.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com

Summer Rune Song (not for the feint of heart)

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abundancy, agglutinative language, brave new business leadership, cross-culturalism, Elaine Stirling, Finnish mythology, folklore, incantation, intentionality, Kalevala, Louhi, magic realism, Ogham, paganism, pre-Christian practices, rune chants, rune singing, shamanism, The Corporate Storyteller, tree language, Väinämöinen, whole brain thinking, word play

The universal echo of the
sounding system that is
shaman is my final word
on tricks of elocution meant
to summon some and some
to send away until
the sunset revolutions
has her way with
certain beaux jeunes hommes
who answer
to the rune songs
that precede
cerebral paucities
opinions of complexities
the rattle drum
the rattle snake
uproot the tattle
that forsakes
and likes to think
anticipates
but cannot reach
behind itself
and cannot read
the Ogham of
the mighty and forbidding
wizard’s tree until
it’s burned the inner
bark of self-impotent
self-important, self
importing culture-vulturosity
not virtuous but vulturous
and vulgar in its opulence,
its oculence, an ocu-lens
innocuous, a knock
a knock, a knock
a knock, a knock…

~~~

In recent months, I’ve posted a few examples at Oceantics of rune-singing, the ancient incantation or song-prayers, familiar to my Finnish ancestors in pre-Christian times. I haven’t said much about the posts, preferring to leave the experience to readers. However, because of our tendency and desire to interpret, thereby to increase enjoyment, I thought I’d say a few words about the craft.

Rune-singing is primarily a vibrational language that relies on a combination of sound, word play and intentionality of the shaman. Because many of us hear incantation in languages we don’t speak, we assume (seldom a good idea) that the chants are nonsensical. If you’ve had the pleasure of reading Kalevala in Finnish or in a solid translation, you’ll know that nothing could be further from the truth. The entire saga is a rune-song, an epic, pure story, layered and riddled with meanings within meaning.

When the shaman, male or female, embarks upon a rune song, she begins with intentionality. She brings it as an offering to whatever level of the vibrational (sound-based) universe she’s capable of reaching. The more skilled the shaman, the more quickly he can reach the symbiosis, sacred marriage, of physical-nonphysical, and the rattlesnake of sound comes to life.

In ancient times, which were not pre-literate but literate of a different nature, the rune-song was a one-off event, something like flamenco. You must learn the rhythms, but don’t waste your time trying to repeat what you’ve just heard—or worse, analyze it. She’s gone: allow and enjoy the transformation if you had one. If not, there will always be another.

The best way to enjoy a written rune-song is to read it aloud. Let your blood and bones feel the syllabic, multi-layered, agglutinative word play. Note, too, where the rhythms make you stumble. They’re there deliberately, not to trip you in a “haha, made you fall!” way but to knock the rational mind into different layers of thinking. Where you end up at the end of the rune-song may be somewhere pleasurable, or not. The good news is, you can read it again and be uplifted, read it again and be uplifted more…

A word about the image: I found this glorious picture of Louhi, hag of the North, at http://www.kalevalataidettakouluille.ateneum.fi. She is the “antagonista” of the Kalevala epic, shamaness of the highest degree. Don’t be fooled by her appearance. Louhi was (she is) a master of the rattle, and a good witch to have on your side when composing rune-songs.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Incantation for Large Projects

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Elaine Stirling, Finno-Ugric, incantation, Kalevala, Law of Attraction, Louhi, manifestation, poetry, rhyme, rune singing, The Corporate Storyteller, trochaic meter, Väinämöinen, vibrational reality

The place of space the rhyme
of time and lure of pure they’re
coaxed divine from habiting
the daily fix of nothing wrong
and all is right in actions
that are fractioned whole
in one the swing relies on eyes’
horizon for the sun to rise
in time with every little
thing that flies in face
of parent and apparent and
a child who will lead us through
the turbulence and sing
us into opulence if that
be our desire and if not it
doesn’t matter for the babe
knows how to shatter every
obstacle that clatters in the
pestilence and virulence of
subjugating innocent momentum
is the starting gate of effervescent
practicums that go and come
and go and come with escalating
thunder drums and rainbows
with the promise of…

done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done oh
yes oh done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done
oh yes oh done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done

oh YES!

~~~

NOTE: The Kalevala meter of this incantation was practiced by shamans, both male and female, of the ancient Finno-Ugric nations, of whom Louhi and Väinämöinen may be the most famous practitioners.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

–Image from Amazing World
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