My Old Teacher

[Al Fish]

Shortly I’ll be visiting my old Teacher. He’s a returned man: Second World War. Allegedly held the record for fastest at transmitting Morse code. Used to head the oldest Order in continuous existence in the southern hemisphere - probably. Taught me more than I care to confess, especially to him.

 

So I’ll be taking him an Agung Buddy, a plastic ball-shaped grinder for his elderly hands, a cheap gas-lighter and something to make it all worthwhile. He knows I’m coming and he’s excited. Said he’s going to toast with Drambuie.

 

So I’ll get there. Organise some coffee. Give him his presents and take it from there. I know I’m supposed to be cooking lunch with enough over for the next day. Mild vegetable Satay with tofu-chicken and bacon with extra peanut butter. He likes noodles.

 

Then we’ll talk deep and dark things, experiences too weird to tarnish by embellishment and that each of us will probably misunderstand, in some degree. We will remember those who have gone before us. And wait on those to come. My old teacher will never know the effect his teaching had, for he is planning his dark retreat. And he is old and not in good health.

 

But while he recovers I will help him dream his dreams and ruminate.

 

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“RECALL, O MY SON, THE FABLE OF THE Hebrews, which they brought from the City of Babylon, how Nebuchadnezzar the Great King, being afflicted in his Spirit, did depart from among Men for Seven Years’ Space, eating Grass as doth an Ox …O my Son, yester eve came the Spirit upon me that I should eat the Grass of the Arabians, and by Virtue of the Bewitchment thereof behold that which might be appointed for the Enlightenment of mine Eyes. Now then of this may I not speak, seeing that it involveth the Mystery of the Transcending of Time, so that in One Hour of our Terrestrial Measure did I gather the Harvest of an Aeon, and in Ten Lives I could not declare it.”

 

Liber Aleph vel CXI

The Book of Wisdom or Folly

Chapter 177

De Herdo Sanctissimo

Arabico

On the Most Holy

Grass of the Arabs

The Master Therion

 

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For I am the first and the last.

I am the honoured one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter

 

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

 

I am the slave of him who prepared me.

 

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent

 

I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,

and you have been shameless to me.

 

For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins

and incontinences and disgraceful passions,

and fleeting pleasures which men embrace until they become sober

and go up to their resting place.

And they will find me there

and they will live

and they will not die again.

 

Perfect Thunder, Perfect Mind

Trans. G.W. MacRae/ Ed. D.M. Parrott

The Nag Hammadi Library James M. Robinson

General Editor

[mull]

Chin up Bazza, Al's got the ground covered