The Shadow Game
The Shadow Game
First composed in 1971
Copyright © 2007 by James Domine
All Rights Reserved
including right to reproduction in any form
Printed in the USA
The Shadow Game
Contents:
Introduction …………………………………………………………..……iv
Preamble ……………………………………………………………………1
Revelation …………………………………………………………………..7
The Pantheon ………………………………………………………………18
A Coven ……………………………………………………………………37
Benediction ……………………………….………………………………..56
Introduction to The Shadow Game
The Shadow Game, first in a series of long poems written between 1971 and 1976, is a dark metaphor for contemporary society viewed through a chronological kaleidoscope of technological and mythological imagery. It is composed of five parts each exploring different aspects of the main theme. The technique of cascading groups of lines is employed to give a visual sense of flow, an aid to rhythmic accent and emphasis of key words.
The Preamble sets the stage for what is to come by confronting us with the main concern of the poem; establishment of social order in a savage world of violence and degradation symbolized as city streets by night. The Revelation exposes forces of vice and decadence as purveyed by media legions in an orchestrated technological manipulation aimed at social control and maintenance of order by exploitation of basic needs. Pseudo-religious language is used to depict the nefarious nature of this conspiracy. The Pantheon is a mosaic of mythological images that form a sub-stratum of historical antecedents which are the underpinnings of the Shadow Game. Immortality, worship, ritual, and their contemporary forms are juxtaposed. The Coven extrapolates a derivative message by comparing and contrasting terminology of mystical significance through a morass of conceptually obscure dogma, the meaning of which is willfully concealed from all except the initiated.
The poem ends with a Benediction the purpose of which is to exorcise the evil demons seeking to possess and control the minds of humanity. It admonishes the individual person to remember the reality of their own uniqueness, and be aware of the value and worthiness of life itself as distinguished from the illusory deceptions played out in the Shadow Game.
On.
Postulate:
the number one
is representative of
order in the universe.
“Uni” being Latin
for the English “One.”
A million colored lights,
most of them
white lights.
A living myriad,
of fully automated devices—
each stimulating the occupant
into instantaneous full consciousness.
Like little
dots
of electrical existence,
the lights
betray
the presence
of life
which hides
beneath a blanket
of deep night.
Pinholes—
from which
to pierce
the dark-
ness, see
outside.
But,
perhaps…
perhaps…
Perhaps
they are but brilliant jewels—
diamonds;
sharp and sparkling,
inlaid in the mire,
oozing blackness
which bubbles up,
slippery, slick and warm.
A cloak
of Death
from under which
we hear
the muted,
muffled groans
of broken bodies
and twisted faces.
Like an animal,
its shiny skin breathes—
we can feel it—
but we cannot see beyond it—
and we
are afraid to touch it.
The light here is cold.
It stings us, refreshingly
while creating imperfect haloes,
so many pearly sheens…
eyes into the black.
The Judge:
the Ten Commandments
the Common Law
the System:
the government
the money
the city…
A game,
a system,
an order
established
in the chaos.
Shall we play?
It’s only a game—
An arbitrary system.
Rules of the Game:
Desire,
Conception,
Realization,
Delusion;
to establish
an order,
Is to accept
precepts,
arbitrary postulates.
To play the
Shadow Game,
is to follow
the rules.
Refrain:
the city street
by night,
street lights
overhang the avenue.
Dying shadows—
movies, amusements:
visual exhibitions.
Intense electric
light does not
satisfy.
(Our craving
for light.)
Seek the shadows,
enshroud within,
be safe from
discovery.
Strange tales
of the odd and the powerful
in all-night hotels, brothels
of infamy breathing heavily
behind a masque of desire.
Clear plastic
emasculation of environment.
shine an electric light through
to recreate shadows on the wall
like spiders, like ghosts.
Eyes pierce
from out of the folds of the dark,
straining to see, raging unseen,
amid soft crime, vice and fear
waiting and watching, immaculate.
Like sharp teeth,
glistening,
poised,
the lights pierce the folds
of oblivion’s fortress, a
patrol of simulated suns:
watchguards, illuminators,
shadow creators.
Voyeur,
stand in darkness, observe
creatures moving in the street
like microscopic organisms,
specimens of the bizarre
and beautiful.
Audience,
sitting in the theater, recall
the sensations of the elements;
out of the darkness, stare
at shadows compelling emotion
of fragile sterility.
Unseen,
but watchful, cast the beam
upon our willing prey; behold
creatures of synthetic Prometheus,
a catalyst to comprehension
legions of night,
visually devoured.
Some are actors
Who like royalty
play games for us
under the light.
Visual,
Sexhibition.
But most are audience
remaining unseen,
but watchful
behind the light
in the shadows.
The street light provides
niches of darkness…
from obscure corners
and ash-can alleys
the audience observes
the drama
in and of
the street.
Magnetically,
it draws us on
the game is strong;
inhaling us into itself.
Discontent,
madness and boredom
are monuments of stone
to the City-God.
Women
at the waters of sacrifice, a river,
lament the loss of unborn children,
yielding at last to the current’s flow.
The desire:
to remain apart
to remain unseen
to remain unknown
The realization:
the camera,
an unseeing eye,
our memory,
in mock-eternity,
the shadow spell.
Came dwellers
of enchanted glass caverns,
endowed with intoxicant powers
of sensuous hallucinogenic vision;
whose children take drugs
to relieve their omniscient
delusions.
No life—no death—
Sex and the City God,
the shadow.
Religion of light and shadow,
Religion of deception,
illusion,
delusion,
eliminator of confusion.
Technology—
We conjure Thee!
Deliver unto us
New Gods
pronouncing new commandments
in new temples of glass and steel.
The movie:
a quintessential shadow,
real without being alive,
Dead without ceasing to exist.
Never passing into silence,
never moving, never still.
Provided by the Priests
immerse your senses
into the shadow can,
See the experience.
(To see ¹ to experience)
A complete image-world,
for inducing hallucinations,
inciting illusions,
fomenting delusions:
a conflagration of confusion.
Form inside yourself
a visible world
of almost tangible experience.
Withdraw inside it. There,
be safe from all discovery.
Introduce the proper shadow
at the proper time, see
the unreal but visible world
complete itself.
In the New Religion,
the High Priests are
the providers of images.
Skilled
in the use of shadows,
able to bend and refract light,
they stimulate the visual
senses;
by manipulation and artifice,
they induce emotion
by use of image and conjuration.
Thus blinding us
to our confusion.
Technology God:
the Revelation
is given unto us
by television sets.
Modern Science
providers,
prophets,
creators,
supplanters—
able to ascend to heaven,
able to create life.
Our New Religion
provides a spurious imitation,
the compelling drama
of light and darkness
made of ineffable mystery.
Out of shadows,
We see NIKE bases,
Guardians of our Valhalla.
Like warrior idols
against the night sky,
Radar towers soar.
Space,
to the symbolic
is Heaven.
Electric God,
televised lunar landing,
a steaming mesh
of colored wires.
We have all we need;
Technology provides.
Via satellite,
by illusion and image,
we create God.
Radios and T.V.
Spewing the New Gospel.
Words:
incredibly clever devices
concealing foul murders
this way,
that way,
up, down,
here nor there,
shifting points
of view.
The camera’s lens
is microscopic in brilliance
or is opaque,
like cataracts
on the eyes of blind men.
A grey world of shadows
shifting within the poles.
Constant usage
sterilizes words.
Loss of meaning equals
end of linkage between
the object and its verbal
symbolic representation
(Examples: Ecology
War
Peace
Love.)
This breakdown is symptomatic
of our willingness to accept
symbols in the place of realties.
Comprehensive understanding thus forsaken
while changeling children fill the void.
Symbols
and delusions,
occupy a plane,
which is parallel
and in exact proportion
to the objects of Symbolization:
Realities.
“Magic”
when understood,
ceases to be
magical.
The pyramids:
mystical
magical,
Egyptians were powerful
magicians; their necromancy
endures as the basis of the séance,
the search for the souls of the dead.
Monuments in honor of many Gods,
houses of Living death.
Egyptians believed the dad
to live on, making use of all
material goods placed in the tomb.
Food was prepared and stored
that the interred soul might eat.
A place of refuge and repose.
A place of the eternal night.
Titan challenges
rising magnificently
against the night sky,
focusing the journey of the soul
to the farthest West, returning
to Osiris, the resurrected God
of the rising sun.
Or, some say,
the pyramids are time machines
with mysterious astral connections
to three northern stars in Orion’s belt.
A display of cosmic power on high,
demanding worship of those beneath
who cower in shadows on the ground.
Akhenaten, the Heretic,
Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty,
introduced the worship
of a single God, universal,
omniscient and omnipresent,
symbolized by the Sun
for its life-giving power
over the darkness of night,
and called by the sacred name
of “Aten,” in hymns and paeans.
As the story is related of old,
the High Priests of Amen, servants of
the multitheistic doctrine on antiquity,
were deposed by the New God, and
regarded worship of Aten as blasphemy.
They exterminated the cult of the sun
by the poisoned death of the Pharaoh,
and the great disgrace done thereafter
to the remains of his earthly body.
Daniel read the writing on the wall
to the horrified King of Babylonia,
who tasted the wrath and retribution
of the jealous God of Israel.
The worshippers of the Golden Calf,
servants of Bal, of Marduk, of Set,
priestesses of the triple Goddess cult,
whose ritual abomination filled the night
with the clamor of their orgiastic revelries;
all dissolve in the light of his countenance.
None may stand to see it.
The Aztecs,
last in a long chain
of vanished and mysteriously decaying
civilizations,
which included
the Toltec,
the Maya
and the Inca,
believed Cortes,
the red-haired
Spanish Conquistador,
to be the Great White God,
whose return was foretold in antiquity by the prophets
of their ancient religion.
The High Priests of Tenochtitlan,
tearing out the beating hearts
of their sacrificial victims,
preaching the Indian Gospel
high atop pyramids of stone.
According to ancient legend,
all magic was brought to Earth
by a group of super-humans;
or demi-gods, who were cast out
from their place among the stars.
They made the Earth their home,
and married among the daughters of Men,
for they were very beautiful.
Some say, they were from a place
beyond the firmament, a dimension
unknown, made only of light.
Others relate that chariots of fire
brought them here from a star which
can be seen in distant Orion’s belt.
Pre-Nordic Britons
the builders of Stonehenge,
believed in magic and
astrology;
the legend told of their origins
is one of banishment from their own land,
being driven away by various
hostile forces.
Settled in England,
they were later driven North
into the wilds of Scotland
by Anglo-Saxon invaders.
There, upon the heath,
they made their new home.
Norse legends
became the religious fulcrum
of the British Isles;
the heathen,
the elves,
known to practice
magic arts,
gave rise to a rich fairy-lore
inspiring the horrible,
frightening, but
wonderful
faery-folk.
Fantastic tales,
bred of imagination
were told:
of the elf, and
the leprechaun.
These mysterious beings
could sometimes be seen
dancing upon the heath
in the pale moonlight
at certain times of year.
Stonehenge is believed by some
to have certain astronomical significance
in its construction and design.
Markings on the rocks
clearly indicated the position
of key celestial influences
as they were once observed
at strategic sidereal intervals.
The concentric heavenly spheres
expressed in the circular formations
of Stonehenge reveal a symbolic
religious intent invested there long ago
by its star-gazing creators.
After the Castration of Uranus,
Cronos was married to his sister, Rhea,
who may be equated with Diana,
the Triple Goddess of the Dove and Oak cults.
The legend tells of the ten year War,
in which Zeus, mightiest of the Sons of Cronus,
ultimately defeated his father
with the help of his brothers,
Hades and Poseidon,
and banished the Titans
(with the exception of Atlas)
to a British Island
in the farthest West; or,
some say,
confined in Tartarus,
there guarded by
the Hundred-Handed Ones.
“Heathen,”
from the Old English “heathen”
is akin to “heath”
and in the 4th century,
came to be understood
(or misunderstood) as
“Wasteland Dweller.”
The Gods of Valhalla predicted a time
when they themselves would perish
at the hands of the enemy frost Giants.
With the armies of slain heroes,
borne into Valhalla by the daughters
of Wotan, their warrior chieftain,
side by side into the last battle
they march, a battle they cannot
together to be cast into the pit
of eternal fiery destruction
from which there is no escape.
In this premise to renew the birth
of what is swallowed in the earth,
the serpent mother devoured her young
as did Saturn—what was to come
o’eruled a passing right to life
to prevent an eventual erupting strife
which, nonetheless, will demand its due
as Zeus of the Titans, when all is through.
Prometheus
was the firebringer.
In defiance of the Gods
he plucked lighting
from the heavens,
and gave it to man.
For this crime,
he is punished eternally,
tied fast to a rock
where an eagle gnaws
upon his liver.
Satan,
was cast down,
thrown from heaven
falling to Earth,
into Hell.
He,
a most beloved Angel,
turned to defy God.
For this crime,
he is promised
eternal damnation
in the lake of fire.
All the Earth
to be consumed.
The Second Coming,
the Prodigal’s Return
shall spell the end
of the millennium.
Satan and his demons
to be cast into the pit
of eternal damnation,
there to die
the Final Death.
“And out of the ground
the Lord God formed
every beast of the field
and every fowl of the air,
and brought them unto Adam
to hear what he would call them:
And whatsoever Adam called
each living creature,
that was the name thereof.”
A language is,
at any given moment,
in a state of profound confusion.
The Tower of Babble
resulted when God, in anger,
caused the Tower’s builders
to speak in tongues
not comprehensible
to one another—
Babylonia.
The Tribal Tongues
of both Scotland
and Ireland became
Gaelic;
The language of poets
is still to be heard
in shadowy corners
and ancient places.
Echoes of bardic lore
whispered on the breeze,
Remember when Taliesin
Intoned the secret chant,
conjuring up the sacred
Winds of Time?
The Anglo-Sacon “wicce”
is the source or several modern words;
notably:
wit,
wisdom,
but also:
witch,
witchcraft.
“Luchorpan”
an Old Irish word: lu = little,
corpan = a diminution of “corp”
from the Latin “corpus,”
meaning “body.”
Usage evolved this word into
“Lupracan,”
finally becoming
the Modern English
“Leprechaun”
Elf,
a dwarf or diminutive person,
pet name for a lively child,
from the Old English, “Oelf.”
The season
time of year,
position of the stars,
and cycles of the moon,
to a large extent govern,
The Tides of Witchcraft.
White magic is best performed
while the moon waxes.
But while the moon wanes…
The Sabbats,
the Witch-rites,
were held at equinoxes,
and other strategic times
when the juxtaposition of the spheres,
was most conducive to paradox.
The eclipse
has always been a time of
great Worship.
Druidic stones rest
in the shade of time.
Powers of the Witch:
Telepathic force;
ability to exert
mental energy,
intensive concentration,
massive will-power,
and self-discipline.
The word of the witch
is never given
when it cannot be kept.
Precept:
Energy must expend itself.
To each and every action
there is resultant reaction.
Witchcraft is an electrical science,
of necessity involving a flow
of potential energy.
A spell is cast,
energy is exerted;
a reaction to this energy
must result.
The electroencephalograph (EEG)
measures
charts,
records,
the action of our
brains.
Electrical impulses,
tiny plus or minus potentials.
The Triangle:
holder of mystic significance,
inherited by the pyramid.
Three is,
and has always been
The Magic Number:
Look to your holy
and unholy Trinities;
Zeus, Poseidon, Hades,
Rhea, their mother,
triple goddess
of the Dove
and Oak cults.
“When shall we three meet again,
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost, and won.
Where the place? Upon The Heath.”
Erotic vivacity.
The witch can sense
copulation between rocks;
love affairs between the Earth,
the grass.
Phallic conjurations,
sexually symbolic;
A universal rhythm.
Ignorant of the most fundamental
principles of aero-dynamics,
a child must perceive and airplane
as a broomstick.
To the inventors of the word,
our new religion must appear
“magical.”
The Key of Solomon,
a medieval grimoire decrees:
before magic can be done
a circle must be cast—
the circle:
the most important of
Magic Symbols.
All magic occurs within
The area of consecration.
Solomon,
generally acknowledged
to be the wisest man
who ever lived,
was also regarded as
the greatest magician
to walk the Earth.
The King’s pentangle,
a five-pointed star,
because of its integrated
triangular construction
and intricate intervolved
complementary relationships,
was displayed for protection
against the forces of evil
on the shield of Sir Gawain
as he went out to do battle with
the malevolent Green Knight.
Mathematics,
a word derived from Greek,
meaning ‘disposed to learning’
is language in a purer form;
method,
order.
In using mathematics,
it is often necessary
to understand that
there are infinite quantities
which are measurable smaller
than other limited,
but infinite quantities.
The Witch of Agnesi:
the plane curve of the
equation x2y=4a2 (2a-y):
Symmetric w/respect to the y-axis,
and asymmetric to the x-axis.
Where the place?
Versiera.
The Pentangle:
construct diagonals;
find the resultant
pentagon:
aerial photographs
of Washington, D.C.
Fold all 5 points
of the star together
so that they join
at a common point:
the result—
a 5-sided
pyramid.
A coven exists when
a plurality of powers
combine to create
one unified and stronger
Power.
A coven exists between
all scientists:
mathematicians, physicians,
nuclear-physicists, chemists,
psychologists, psychiatrists,
astronomers, alchemists,
astrologers, magicians,
necromancers, musicians
as well as poets and priests
to form a deep pool
of concentrated energy,
focusing upon the use
and manipulation of
natural properties and forces,
ultimately allowing
Astronauts, in a ritual
of surrogate sacrifice,
to stand upon the Moon:
the primordial source
of all magic.
History,
mythology,
magic,
and science are to reality as
words are to understanding.
Prone,
in the doorway,
is the shattered,
decaying,
stinking,
broken, and
crumbling
corpse
of a massive,
once feared
Body
of knowledge.
V. Benediction
You are real, though not of Earth
your love as true as rain.
Like a wild river’s raging torrent,
streams of ecstasy and pain
attend your every moment.
I do not compare thee with vain artifice
for words are lies playing meaningless tricks,
ritual offerings of ancient arcane sacrifice
transposed to transparent electrical currents…
You are far more than these.
Your truth is like the sun for light,
like clouds for passing shade,
your life transcendent of this world
and of the stars is made—
You are real, you are all.