WAS Shakespeare 'the Bard'?

venicebard

Warning: I work from an old concordance, hence line-numbers will have to be adjusted down for many editions. (I post this here rather than under historical research so as not to step on toes.)

Beginning with tree-names but expanding quickly into related symbols, study of Shakespeare's use of bardic symbolism -- the best evidence for which would presumably be juxtaposition of symbols relating to the same letter of the bardic (tree-)alphabet -- has already exceeded my initial expectation, else I'd have commenced this study a decade ago. Relevance to tarot resides in the demonstrable fact (as I see it) that Tarot of Marseilles embodies a marriage of Brito-Irish (Gnostic Christian) bardic tradition with Jewish Merkabah 'mysticism' (actually gnosis) to produce TdM from the former and Kabbalah from the latter.

First off, I find no 'fir' in his plays, but 'pine' is plentiful, and almost always associated with height. (I will document later, as I must post in dribs and drabs.) This would be I LeBateleur, as ailm has come to mean 'pine', not 'fir'. It is gratifying to me to see that the underlying symbolic meaning -- that which lifts, overcoming gravity (by levitation) -- resides in 'pine' as well. For A is the Egyptian vulture or eagle in hieroglyphics, silver fir originally in the tree-alphabet (as evidenced by its shape in runic), and the ox that turns the pump for irrigation in Semitic.

Aspen, E's tree and II LaPapesse by bardic numbering, is always used for its property of quivering sensitivity: 2 Hen. IV ii 4 (117), Hostess (to Falstaff) says she shakes "an 'twere an aspen leaf," and in Titus Andronicus ii 4 (44) lily hands "Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute, And make the silken strings delight to kiss them," associating it thus with the conjoining or mating sanctioned by the heh added to Abram marking the Covenant -- and heh being 5 in Hebrew, the hand (of 5 fingers) given in matrimony in the Name (to mark the conjoining of 2, its bardic number).

I-Yew or 3 is associated with graveyards and death (and death-dealing longbows, of course). This trump and the preceding one are more obscured in symbolic meaning than the rest, because 2-aspen represents the sensitivity of the sexual organ (pledged along with the hand, in the Name), and 3-yew casts the Empress as the hag of death and old age -- what limits or rules life's duration.

Furze, O or ayin and IIII L'Empereur, is, oddly, just a prickly, common thing (here perhaps one need pursue a substitute, as with pine, so I will return later to this seeming gap).

Birch, B, or V LePape, the blessing or 'clean slate' (white bark) of infancy (birch's small stature, and that of the children the mother's arm presents to be blessed in the trump), appears but once, yet in proper context: Meas. for Meas. i 3 (24) has the Duke say, "Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mocked than fear'd." Birch besoms were used to switch (cleanse or 'bless') naughty children (whose evil spirits, collected therein, were used by witches).

The vine M ("mm" or sweetness), VI L'Amoureux, is well represented, as that which clings to the elm ["Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine," Com. of Errors ii 2 (176)], as "merry cheerer of the heart" [Hen. V v 2 (41)], as growing to the sun (of the future Elizabeth I) in Hen. VIII [v 5 (50)], and in invoking Bacchus [song in Anthony and Cleo., ii 7 (120)].

The obscure tree that is P or 7, peith the water elder or whitten or guelder rose (perhaps bush cranberry, for its relation to the crane of whose skin the bag was made that held the alphabet, in British lore), I did not find; but the reed, which is bardic Ng and takes the place of P in ogham, is present, and as it has several references and I must soon skedaddle, I shall pick up with the reed tomorrow.
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
First off, I find no 'fir' in his plays, but 'pine' is plentiful, and almost always associated with height. (I will document later, as I must post in dribs and drabs.) This would be I LeBateleur, as ailm has come to mean 'pine', not 'fir'.
I misspoke -- or rather misremembered -- as it is 'elm' which ailm has come to mean (from similarity of sound, no doubt, to ulmus). Yet it was a fortuitous error on my part, as it is clear that for Shakey the pine was the tall mountain-and-coast conifer-evergreen that towered above the other forest trees, not fir, and it is listed as a chieftain tree in place of fir in one (Irish) list, on in Graves's tWG (The White Goddess), p. 202.

Since rowan (luis) turns out to be missing from the plays, I take it elm was the letter L: tWG p. 300, says, "In one of the cypher-alphabets, Luis is given as elm, not rowan, because the Irish word for elm, lemh, beginns with an L." Since L-rowan means learning or instruction (as does lemedh in Hebrew), being the 2nd month (and thus immediately following birch, the year's birth) and wood of whips to tame bewitched horses, evidently this meaning was transferred to elm, which (tWG, p. 190) "was used for supporting the young vine and so became the alma mater of the Wine-god." It 'trains' the vine -- Com. of Errors ii 2 (176), "Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine," -- or ivy -- M-S N's Dream iv 1 (48), "The female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm."
. . . the reed, which is bardic Ng and takes the place of P in ogham, is present, and as it has several references and I must soon skedaddle, I shall pick up with the reed tomorrow.
But first I should jump all the way to LeMat and show how the hawthorn H relates directly to this trump in Shakespeare. In As You Like It, iii 2 (380) has Rosalind, casting the lover as a fool, say he "Hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles." But in Lear is the most striking use, both of hawthorn as a hollow, like space (its number being no-thing or zero), and reinforcing the Noblet image of the Fool as having his pants down (the hawthorn month was for fasting from sex). Act iii scene 4 is "The heath, before a hovel," heather being the vowel U of summer, which immediately follows H on the wheel (hawthorn being May and gemini). Edgar, disguised as a madman, after saying "hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey," and "Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets [?], thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend" (emphasis mine), utters this line from a song (line 47): "Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind."

Now to the reed. I say this is an interesting 'tree', in that it is Ng in ogham but samekh in Hebrew, evidently -- whose sign in old Semitic was the ogam-consaine Ng (3 strokes straight across a central line) -- but from the hieratic of the (Egyptian) hieroglyph wick of twisted flax (3 loops w/ the 2 ends sticking out below, like legs), whose place was at aries, the top of the round (direction flame tends). All this being said, consider these lines of Ariel from The Tempest i 2 (c. 213): "All but mariners Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, Then all afire with me: the king's son Ferdinand, With hair up-staring, -- then like reeds, not hair, -- Was the first man that leap'd; cried, 'Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.' Later he says he had "dispersed them 'bout the isle, The king's son have I landed by himself; Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, His arms in this sad knot." [Edited to add:] This knot would be the Northumbrian rune for Ng, which is like two angular Cs facing each other and overlapping on top and bottom.

This rings all sorts of bells. 'All but mariners' means water-beings stayed aboard -- the ship being the round of the zodiac here, representing water or form (as Ezekiel's third wheel) -- but the king's son -- that is, from Ng's place at the top -- was 'landed by himself' 'in an odd angle of the isle', meaning Ng was torn from the top, where samekh is, to the sagittary (back and a bit down) of the Cauldron or surroundings (where the double letters go in Merkabah/Kabbalah), its place in ogham (and the tree-calendar), when F takes samekh's place at aries of the Egg or zodiac (trunk or body seated in those surroundings). Moreover, 7 is P's number, and Ng stands in P's place, so the fact that XV LeDiable is 7th-from-the-end is relevant here as well, since the trumps form two Trees of 10 emanations progressing from both ends and meeting in the middle (1-11-21 are all 'one thing' [1 in itself, 11 to one ten-fingered, and 21 to two ten-fingereds], 2-11-20 all numerological plus-twos, and 3-11-19 all of plus-one valence, these being the three Sefirot not broken in the 'shattering of the vessels' of Lurianic Kabbalah) -- 'And all the devils are here.'

The association with aries the head, then, is brought out clearly in this scene from Cymbeline (to be continued).
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
The association with aries the head, then, is brought out clearly in this scene from Cymbeline (to be continued).
(I feel like I'm "dancin' with myself.")

Cymb. iv 2 (267): Guiderius, having brought step-brother Cloten's head -- Kelts were head-hunters, remember -- and saying they must 'lay [it] to the east' (east or towards capricorn in the Egg or zodiac points straight out to the sagittary of the Cauldron), begins a song, continued by his brother Arviragus, who sings: "Fear no more the frown o' the great; Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the [lowly] reed is as the oak: The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this and come to dust." This scene bears further examination (in future, not now).

Reed is associated with the head throughout. For later in The Tempest v 1 (17), Ariel says, "His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops From eaves of reeds." And in 1 Hen. IV i 3 (105) it is said that Severn's flood, "affrighted with their bloody looks, Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank."

One of the surprises was that I found no mention of the alder (F), which is aries the head in the tree-calendar. Since this is the tree of the corn-spirit, I take corn to be the substitute here (until or unless another presents itself). And here again the symbol of the head and of uprightness (or lack thereof) presents itself. For example, 2 Hen. VI i 2 (1), "Like over-ripen'd corn, Hanging the head at Ceres' plenteous load," and 3 Hen. VI v 7 (3), "What valiant foemen, like to autumn's corn, Have we mow'd down in tops of all their pride!" and Hen. VIII v 5 (32), "Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow." Or MacBeth iv 1 (55), "Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down," in other words, stiff corn stalks symbolizing what sticks straight up (pointing to aries).

The compressed wisdom symbolized by coll the hazel, 9, is clear in Hamlet ii 2 (260): I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." (L'Hermite 'in a nutshell, IMO.) But the hazel itself is used also in the sense, methinks, of its place on the Cauldron of surroundings, namely at virgo (the virgin): T. of Shrew ii 1 (255), "Kate like the hazel-twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts and sweeter than the kernels." I might remind the reader of the old pagan custom (according to Jacob Grimm) of weaning girls during (full or) waning moon so she might grow up slender and beautiful. And Petruchio in Romeo and J. i 4 (67) says (of Queen Mab): "Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut."

Next comes G or gort the ivy, 10 (LaRoue deFortune). Winter's Tale iii 3 (69): "They have scared away two of my best sheep... if anywhere I have them, 'tis by the seaside, browsing of ivy." I gave a start when I read this, as it speaks directly to the moving of E or heh, 2, to its bardic place at ivy's sign, scorpio, from aries the ram, i.e. sheep -- and of the taking-over of primordial earth (scorpio's triad) by water in astrology. The vine and ivy mentioned earlier twining about the 'training' elm symbolize, in the tree-calendar, the serpent-power or kundalini coiled at the base of the spine that is raised up the spine by proper meditation (yoga), since M and G are signs libra and scorpio therein, which precede sagittary the terminal filament (of the spine) in the closed or circular zodiac (albeit the thighs in the broken-and-extended one). And the quote from Com. of Errors ii 2 (180) speaks, if you ask me, to an even deeper level of Hermetic understanding: "It is dross, usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss."

Finally (for today), T or tinne the holly (11) appears only in a song, in As You Like It ii 7 (c. 180), "sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly," the song celebrating the fact that winter's bite is not so strong as 'benefits forgot' or 'friends remembered not'. Here I believe he is pointing to the fact that T represents the heart -- tav the crossroads or center or signature ('make your X right here') -- and seat of conscience.
 

venicebard

Indeed when one looks up lion -- the sign leo, which holly occupies -- it is completely intertwined with the heart. First, to indicate Shakey knew leo was holly, holly symbolized how many small pricks make one big prick -- the law of the phalanx -- and at 1 Hen. IV iii 2 (102) is the line, "Turns head against the lion's armed jaws," which shows the lion is itself a phalanx (of teeth). M-S N's D i 2 (72), "Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good;" Tr. & Cr. ii 3 (93), "He is not sick.---Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart;" As You Like It v 2 (26), "I thought thy heart had been wounded with the claws of a lion;" K. John (a play about a reputed ancestor of mine) i 1 (268), "He that perforce robs lions of their hearts May easily win a woman's," and ii 1 (3), "Richard, that robb'd the lion of his heart;" etc.

Moreover, Tempest ii 1 (312) and many other places emphasize the noise the lion makes -- relating it thus to its sign leo as 'that which approaches within earshot' (i.e. 30 degrees below the horizon, pointed to by cancer the breasts), indeed showing probable knowledge of its being 'of the surroundings' (the surrounding Cauldron of the 7 'double letters'), not of the bodily zodiac itself, where the "O" that is the lion's roar in the little play within M-S N's D resides. And this last -- both in rehearsal and in performance (since it is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe) -- plays with the theme of "a lion among ladies" [iii 1 (28)] and ["her mantle"] "Which lion vile with bloody mouth did stain," leading to speculation he had seen (or knew the underlying symbolic logic of) trump XI Force in the Marseilles deck: indeed iii 1 (?) saying [that to not frighten the ladies] "half his face must be seen through the lion's neck," as if satirizing the art on same!

To press on, XII Hanged Man's oak is present many places, as that which lightning splits, as symbol of hardness and endurance, or of the strength of a storm when its wind does bend or break the oak, and occasionally for its spread (also nobility, as in "the Duke's oak" of M-S N's D i 2 (113) at which the little play is to be performed).

But speaking of spread, there is a more pressing matter to speak of, and that is the quote I found that harnesses the poetic meaning of rowan, as that which shelters the young of other species that eventually replace it (plight of the teacher), to the cedar (though Graves sees cedar as Middle East equivalent of U-ura-heather) at 3 Hen. VI v 2 (11-), where Warwick says:

Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,
Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree [emphasis mine, that tree being oak],
And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind [rowan being mid-winter].
These eyes that now are dimm'd with death's black veil,
Have been as piercing as the mid-day sun,
To search the secret treasons of the world.

The last links it to learning's perspicacity (sp?), symbolized by its trump, XIIII Temperance.

I will skip a bit here to show a passage in which bardic I, yew, and Ii, mistletoe, appear in the same little speech. T. Andronicus ii 3 (85), Tamora queen of the Goths (yew is III Empress) is weaving a lie and says, "These two have ticed me hither to this place: A barren detested vale, you see it is; The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe: Here never shines the sun [mistletoe being XVIIII Sun]," followed a bit later (c. 107) by, "No sooner had they told this hellish tale [of pit of fiends and snakes and toads and urchins whose din at dead of night drove one mad] But straight they told me they would bind me here Unto the body of a dismal yew, And leave me to this miserable death." I-idho-yew is the vowel of the old moon: old age and death (the Empress that rules or limits life).

Ash (trump XIII) is mentioned but once that I can find, Cor. iv 5 (114), "That body, where against My grained ash an hundred times hath broke, And scarr'd the moon with splinters," referring no doubt to an ash-wood spear.

Elder or R, XV LeDiable, is here. Cymb. iv 2 (60), "Grow, patience! And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing vine," that is, of patience, for the two have "[m]ingle[d] their spurs together" (in the devil's wild ride no doubt). And T. Andronicus ii 3 (273), in a letter, "Look for thy reward Among the nettles at the elder-tree, Which overshades the mouth of that same pit Where we decreed to bury Bassianus," the pit being that of hell, of course: (277) "This is the pit, and this the elder-tree," where they find the body of Bassianus.

Willow, XVI LaMaisonDieu, is a rich field -- as willow and as osier -- but I dare not tarry more, as yesterday I tried to save my post and it would not let me since I had only 2+ minutes left! So, until the morrow, adieu.
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
Willow, XVI LaMaisonDieu, is a rich field -- as willow and as osier -- but I dare not tarry more, as yesterday I tried to save my post and it would not let me since I had only 2+ minutes left! So, until the morrow, adieu.
The willow methinks lives up to its image of lightning- or projectile-struck Tower. The ominous scene with Desdemona and Emilia at Othelo iv 3 (2:cool: involves a song that goes in part: "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree Sing all a green willow . . . Sing willow, willow, willow . . . Her salt tears fell from her, and soften'd the stones," these excerpts obviously milking the sound S, willow's letter (Irish saille is surely cognate with English sallow). It's propensity for brooks is remarked, and this, in telling her brother of Ophelia's death: Ham. iv 7 (172), [about garlands] "But our cold maids do dead man's fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang . . . ." Now this associates it with the head, S's place on the wheel (Hebrew equivalent shin is in the shape of a crown), as does 3 Hen. VI iii 3 (228), "Tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, I'll wear the willow garland for his sake," and Much Ado ii 1 (c. 225), "I offered him my company to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped," this last making it the adult form of birch I guess (just as the alchemical sign sol is Libyan B or winter solstice but Nordic Tifinag S at spring's equinox). Again, in 12th Night i 5, it is linked to "contemned love" (c. 287).

It is as osier that willow's propensity to be woven into baskets and such is invoked, in R. & J ii 3 (3-8): "And flecked darkness like a drundard reels From forth day's light and Titan's fiery wheels: Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers." Frier Lawrence here uses the term 'osier cage', which echos those supposedly used by druids to burn criminals as sacrifice, suggesting perhaps the truth underlying the latter (that they were used to burn offerings that perhaps contained herbs and produced a euphoric state of some sort). And finally, As You Like It iv 3: (80) "The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream [S sound again?]," answering someone wanting to know where is (78) "A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees?" Here osier (willow) is clearly associated with its proper sign, aries (ram = sheep), and perhaps paired with olive because olive, being Athena's tree, represents the Holy Spirit, which is what shin as one of the three 'mother letters' (in Kabbalah) signifies ultimately: mothers A-S-M stand for an original A-U-M that was/is the Logos and the only three bird signs in Egyptian hieroglyphics that stood for a single sound each (except in 'group writing', but that's another story), and A (alpha) is the Son or doer, U or O (omega) the Holy Spirit (ruach ha-kodesh) or thinker, M (mu) the Father or knower. This possibility stems from the essentially Gnostic character of British Christianity (source of Pelagian 'heresy') in the time of the bards, such ideas as making the Holy Spirit female surviving long after Rome took over in the British Isles.

Skipping to palm, ailm as XXI The World means one's location relative thereto, that is, the present instant: bardic AA, but Hebrew teyt Greek theta runic 'day', the latter an hourglass on its side (instant of its being turned over). Indeed palm is the victory of the moment, Merriam Webster (an old one) defining it as "2. A leaf of the palm, borne as a symbol of victory or rejoicing, 3. Any symbol of success or triumph [emphasis mine]; also victory; triumph," XXI being the trump that trumps or triumphs over all other tarot cards. For A-ailm-fir is that which sets forth upwards in defiance of gravity, and AA-ailm-palm is what it wrought, the end result of said setting-forth, all of which occurs in space (LeMat, no-thing, the hawthorn-hedge or runic/alphabetic fence-section H separating things).

Palm is much used in its Merriam-Webster sense quoted above. But one quote steers so close to my take on this trump that I give it here: As You Like It iii 2 (186), Rosalind says, of Orlando's poetry, "for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, [but that] was an Irish rat which I can hardly remember," and after trying to get the poet's name from Celia, "One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery." Celia had earlier said he wore a chain about his neck, which the wreath in XXI LeMonde resembles, and there is more but it will have to await the morrow's morrow!
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
Palm is much used in its Merriam-Webster sense quoted above. But one quote steers so close to my take on this trump that I give it here: As You Like It iii 2 (186), Rosalind says, of Orlando's poetry, "for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, [but that] was an Irish rat which I can hardly remember," and after trying to get the poet's name from Celia, "One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery." Celia had earlier said he wore a chain about his neck, which the wreath in XXI LeMonde resembles, and there is more but it will have to await the morrow's morrow!
The 'South-sea of discovery' reinforces what I have oft said, that palm also symbolizes physical location -- in both the Marseilles version and the earlier extant versions that have a hamlet seen through a commuter-jet window -- this derived from its place at the bottom of the wheel, the middle of the vowel sequence, which, as the anti-hero's howls of torment (and ours of derision), traverses the wheel's (tongue's) bottom half (the tongue-root). Since this points to where one sits (in meditation), teyt's form can either be taken as one's legs folded beneath one or as a serpent about to bite its tail, namely the Uroboros, which stands for the world-serpent or equator (equatorial regions) and also for the ocean that traverses it (with an occasional detour).
 

Thirteen

This is all very interesting, but why do you think Shakespeare had the same access to all this encyclopedic info that you do? He well might have--as he obviously was a curious guy who learned all he could from anyone and anything...but a lot of what you're refering probably was not yet discovered, learned, written down, or accurately written down given his time and place.

Shakespeare, afterall, has ancient Romans refering to "chimneys" in Julius Caesar. He isn't interested in historical accuracy, and I doubt that he was interested in accuracy about trees either--where they came from, what they mean, how they grow...etc. And he certainly didn't, like you, have a Merrian-Webster's dictionary. He didn't have the internet, he didn't even have much Latin or Greek if Johnson, his envious friend and fellow playwrite is to be believed. And I seriously doubt he knew Hebrew.

If you are suggesting that some higher power wrote through the Bard to give us some kind of greater message, then I certainly won't argue with you. But I will say that, with things like Shakespeare's plays, it's always good to remember that if you want to see a pony, you will see a pony...meaning that such interpetations are likely saying more about you than about the author.

In short, it's far less likely that the higher power is speaking through Shakepeare than it is using your own esoteric bias to give you a message as you read Shakespeare.
 

venicebard

Thirteen said:
In short, it's far less likely that the higher power is speaking through Shakepeare than it is using your own esoteric bias to give you a message as you read Shakespeare.
My sincere apology for simply diving in without introducing the subject better: this is an inquiry into the possibility of his having been privy to the Welsh bardic lore surviving (underground, largely) in his day, considering the proximity of his upbringing to Wales.
This is all very interesting, but why do you think Shakespeare had the same access to all this encyclopedic info that you do?
Tree-symbolism was at the heart of bardic tradition, its remnants in Ireland, for example, including an alphabet (the bethluisnion) whose letters are named for trees: it is a subject about which we moderns are much more likely to be ignorant than 16th-century Welsh minstrels.
Shakespeare, afterall, has ancient Romans refering to "chimneys" in Julius Caesar. He isn't interested in historical accuracy, and I doubt that he was interested in accuracy about trees either . . . And I seriously doubt he knew Hebrew.
(Hebrew is only a tool for moderns in unlocking bardic tradition, since the earliest Hebrew alphabet -- and the later one -- can be shown to be branches of the same trunk.)
But I will say that, with things like Shakespeare's plays, it's always good to remember that if you want to see a pony, you will see a pony...meaning that such interpetations are likely saying more about you than about the author.
What you describe is the mind on hallucinogens, not serious scholarship.

The reason for the hiatus in my entering further results is that I paused to await a couple of ordered books on Hermetic content in his plays, but by the time they arrived I had embarked on a thorough 'mapping' of ancient Hebrew roots (in which I am currently embroiled), forcing this lesser passion to wait its turn. Perhaps 'twill be sped up, though, by knowing at least one person has broached this thread besides me.

Thank you for your interest (I love your number, by the way).
 

Thirteen

venicebard said:
My sincere apology for simply diving in without introducing the subject better: this is an inquiry into the possibility of his having been privy to the Welsh bardic lore surviving (underground, largely) in his day, considering the proximity of his upbringing to Wales.
Shrug. Possible.

What you describe is the mind on hallucinogens, not serious scholarship.
Um, no, what I describe is all-too-common to serious scholarly analysis. I've seen it happen with professors and Ph.d students. My warning was meant seriously and with the best intention--serious scholarship cannot be done without objectivity. Many "scholars" dismiss this, and end up reading things into their area of investagation that they WANT to see, but which is not really there.

Self-delusion, seeing what you want to see because you want so BADLY to see it even if it's not there, hardly requires hallucinogenics.

Thank you for your interest (I love your number, by the way).
Thank you for explaining.
 

venicebard

Thirteen said:
Um, no, what I describe is all-too-common to serious scholarly analysis. I've seen it happen with professors and Ph.d students. My warning was meant seriously and with the best intention--serious scholarship cannot be done without objectivity. Many "scholars" dismiss this, and end up reading things into their area of investagation that they WANT to see, but which is not really there.

Self-delusion, seeing what you want to see because you want so BADLY to see it even if it's not there, hardly requires hallucinogenics.
Yes, you're quite right, I was being somewhat flippant (you caught me). But because someone is a professor or working towards a Ph.D. does not mean that person is a serious scholar -- in this day and age, usually the contrary. Most advances nowadays are made by mavericks, becaue of the entrenched and dogmatic nature of academia and 'academic' endeavor, perpetuated by the peer-review system as it has evolved (meaning the idea may not be inherently unsound, only unsound in application).

I personally am much more interested in discovery than in 'being right', and I am more than willing to admit when I'm wrong. But thanks for striving to keep me honest.