r.a.szy

Ritual chanting >> the buried song .. bursting with vitality /// Pass the Holy Spirit // bones dry / skin peeling // lens of the past broken through violent appeal to continuity /// Horizon fractured/ filtering reality across hillside // tensions shift the terrain / landscape splits a nerve .. swelling painful history /// Etch vein-like across hillside / phantom memory .. its form is light blasts of estuarine air // fluid tides swell.. drawing up mucus of time deposits ... /// signal repeats .. carved cavity in the forest floor >> the gradual mutation of the territory .. clay, stone,hills, marshes // organic space .. tension making adjustments .. sickly clay blasts // pressure from the dream world .. congealed vision // this is the anamnesis memory.. of tape-echo memory .. hissing pirate radio transmission memory >> explosive explosive Radio Explosive /// Linear time fractures /// Track woodland signal death / observe the lens to bypass memory .. pierces skin from bone /// Slumbering cry can be heard over sea surface of the hillsides >> history flows through the blood number of fractures >> record inked notebook glyphs /// Employ incineration of her injuries / markings on wood // the lens here is the ancient heathen ceremony / river encounter / bones applied in pattern stone /// Origin songs transmit Gods of Oil and Coast.

#cutup #gradualmutationoftheterritory #noise

'Weathered backpack leans against stone — inside, a loosely bound collection of pages comprising journals and travel-sketches, path-workings and meditations, herbals and inscriptions'

'and unearthed from beneath the floorboards of the house older hand-written pages of Leechcraft and Wortcunning'

'words pulled from history from land and dream — words written and re-written, discarded and transfigured'

'At the close of the decade I am re-tuning to old frequencies, straining to track dub-soaked broadcasts from the Isle far across the sea'

'Fingers dig into crystallised mud, excavating deposits of time — robed in dewy mist I conjure a signal blast from the North Sea, down the circuit cables of memory'

'I bury the papers amongst the loose earth and stones — a sacrifice to the distant Gods of Oil and Coast, and to the Deities of Hillside and Down with whom I used to roam'

'Narrow woods come into view banked in dark mud, burial mounds of feathers and fragile white bones'

'With surgical precision, open the veins etched across the territory and the spectra of history oozes through, glittering fields of tape-echo — spillages of space-time'

'Re-adjust the drift calibration, charge the walking memory, map the Ghost Loop of the folklore spectrum'

'Re-tune to the frequency of ritual here, conducted into a ground loop of blast mounds & anti-tank ditches — muddy creek beds thick with early morning fog and the sound of bird watchers rustling sandwich bags'

'A deteriorating stretch of corrosive blackened history — tributaries flanked by humming pylons, skeletal transmitters tracing the GHQ line, sewing up the hexagonal carcasses of concrete river defences'

'Toxic — splintered deposits of mangled industry cause a decrease in the memory circuit'

'Eyes crusted over with sediment of limestone and clay — bones dry, skin explosive — the mixture causes a lapse in the ability to process linear time'

#cutup #gradualmutationoftheterritory #thamesestuary

'The land has memory loss. England sleeps — hurt — broken'

'The land has amnesia — history played back with the worn down tone of magnetic tape'

'In my dream, the river coils about me — the Thames.. that liquid thread of history full of relics and death.'

'I spent a Summer tramping along muddied banks chasing premonitions and shadows, divining the future in pools of shimmering oil washed up over spurts of clay, broken pottery pieces, splintered driftwood, reading the cracks in mudflats like a wrinkled old palm or dried tea leaves.'

'I cast my mind back to faded days worn with the recollection, threadbare like comfortable cardigans.'

'Pick carefully across the floodplains traversing the bloodied tributaries pushing through the blackening trees — the land spits out time, dry skin peels from bone — this is anxiety about worn places'

'Spectral phosphors glow over marshland at night — a phantom flicker, a landscape without time'

'Regions are just layers for storage — Perform a regional invocation, Perform a regional summoning, to draw something up from the localised past'

'Place clay offerings among the brown leaves on the slopes of the greenbelt'

'The days along the Estuary — the River Days — are the days that led me here.. the path waiting to be deciphered.. revealed..'

'Its signs were etched into the land and hanging all about me like mist off the North Sea.'

'Bury clay offerings beneath loose Earth in a circle of small bones — the remains of a fallen Magpie or Treecreeper.

'This is the anamnesis of place — Here lie the Gods of Tree's and Wilderness'

'In the morning mist apparitions wire up the land'

'I could open my lungs and breathe the future in.'

#cutup #gradualmutationoftheterritory #thamesestuary

'I dream of distant illusions and remnants of revenant territory —

'I re-calibrate my senses, preparing to cast my mind back, again, back to the city I left behind — buried in the sands of memory'

'Eyes flicker open on the break of day — vision crawling over the remains of a derelict language'

'Beneath flickering shattered strip-lights — twitching slithering spasms of illumination'

'Glimpse the last dying of the night-light — spooks crawling back to their haunts in the cracked landscape'

'A gradually enveloped vision of monumental proportions, curving imperceptibly towards abstract horizon'

'Glittering fields of tape-echo.. Spillages of space-time'

'Over-exposing the grey morning and the irregular, angular, bony intersections of concrete'

'electricity cables strung up like veins, an exposed nervous system grafted onto the brutalist body — transmissions and signals pulse received and replayed by unseen participants — generators whirr and humm, powerful.. elemental'

'I meet another drifter on the fringes.. a settler, a Shaman of the dispossessed with inky black glyphs marking the backs of his hands — he shows me how to access the old energies to decode the tags graffed up and down the walls, ..liminal sigils he calls them'

'he speaks of ancient Pagan ecstasies buried in the territory, of psychic residue feeding the roots of the estate — a young woman moving with him explains how burning certain incense attracts helpful spirits, showing respect for the land'

#buskingghosts #cutup #london

We're approaching the end of the thinning season. Beginning around Allhelgonadagen with a sea of candles laid in memory of our ancestors and the dead. By the time we get to the white-gowned processions of Lucia and Vintersolståndet, the veil has almost disappeared, and all manner of things may slip between.

As the most liminal period in the forest draws near, a small cairn is laid in the mossy bed as a marker of the year end. Later it may act as a centre-point for the circumambulatory ritual of Kringgång, or as an orientation point in the more elaborate ceremonial divination of Årsgång.

#lore #ritual

This fox skull is one of the many protective 'charms' placed by my mother-in-law throughout the neighbouring forest. 'He' is situated so as to act as a guardian for the home, and to aid in warding off the dangers of the year ahead.

#lore #ritual

Notes on the Yew Tree (Taxus baccata)

Considered an emblem of mourning from a very early period [...] the dark and sombre Yew-tree has from the remote past been invested with an essentially funereal character, and hence is appropriately found in the shade of churchyards [despite the ghastly superstition attached to these trees, that they prey upon the dead who lie beneath their sombre shade] and in propinquity to tombs.

(Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics, Richard Folkard, 1884)

The Yew — I will be the guardian of graveyards. No bee shall pillage with impunity my poisoned flowers. No bird shall rest on my branches; for my exhalations shall give forth death.

(Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics, Richard Folkard, 1884)

Now more I love thee, melancholy Yew, Whose still green leaves in silence wave Above the peasant's rude unhonoured grave, Which oft thou moistenest with the morning dew. To thee the sad. to thee the weary fly; They rest in peace beneath thy sacred gloom, Thou sole companion of the lonely tomb; No leaves but thine in pity o'er them siyh: Lo ! now to fancy's gaze thou seem'st to spread Thy shadowy boughs to shroud me with the dead.

(To The Yew, John Leyden, 1799)

Well do I know thee by thy trusty Yew, Cheerless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs, and worms; Where light-heeled ghosts, and visionary shades, Beneath the wan cold moon (so fame reports), Embody'd, thick, perform their mystic rounds. No other merriment, dull tree! is thine.

(The Grave Robert Blair, 1743)

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

(In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850)

The long-living, sturdy yew was a life-symbol and sometimes scattered in graves. To cut down or burn a yew was unlucky. Relic boxes and weapons were made from its wood which was also excellent for magic wands. At Charlton-upon-Otmoor, Oxfordshire (UK), a yew cross stands on the rood screen throughout the year and is decorated with flowers on May Day, a curious blend of pagan and Christian ritual.

(Discovering The Folklore of Plants, Margaret Baker, 1969)

From the Balkans, yew is still used as a protective amulet to keep away evil spirits. Crosses of yew wood are worn or upside down triangles are fashioned from its wood and carried. Yew sticks are also thought protective. [...] An old German adage translates to: “Before the yews, no harmful magic can remain” [...] Yew wood is also helpful for divination work, especially when concerning the deceased [such as in ancestor workings].

(Under the Witching Tree, Corinne Boyer, 2016)

This wood, of death, of gift, of golden memory This wood, roots in the old world, touching tombs This wood envibe and empower, with protection and foresight, Never to decay, never to wither

(Under the Witching Tree, Corinne Boyer, 2016)

#lore

.ᛇ.

(Ēoh) byþ ūtan unsmēþe trēow heard hrūsan fæst, hyrde fȳres, wyrtrumun underwreþyd, wynan on ēþle.

~ Anglo-Frisian / Old English Rune Poem

(Yew) is on the outside a rough tree and hard, firm in the earth, keeper of the fire, supported by roots, (it is a) joy on the estate.

~ Edred Thorsson translation

(Yew) is a rough and hard tree on the surface, holding fast and strong in the ground supported by a heavy stock of roots, it is the warden of the eternal fire, and a joy to behold on the homeland.

~ own translation

#lore #runesong