Who Do You Serve?

For all of those who tend the many altars of the Faire
through our rituals of recreation --
offering communion and making sacrifice ...


The Pantheon
Who Do You Serve - I

The worshippers arrive in all their festal finery.
The altars are arrayed, the hierophants prepared
To chant the liturgy of Faire.
Mars' devotees perform the rites of morning;
The warriors on parade begin their drill.
Great gleaming blades and polished armor catch the sun,
Bright pennants flare and standards billow on the breeze
As men of war repeat their rituals of weaponry.
The smoke and scent of powder rise in homage
To the power of the militant.
A service thus is offered to the Battle God.

Vulcan is here to drink the incense of the forge,
Enjoy the sacred music of the beaten metal.
His acolytes, with straining sinew and with rhythm,
Work the altar, tend the flame of craft and of creation,
With the breathing of the bellows, hymn the harmony of labor.

Aye, and there the train of Bacchus rowdy reels from cupshot revels
Though the day be but begun.
These celebrants their voices and their chalices uplift;
Of precious metal or of humble clay,
The spirit flows as strong within the one as in the other.
This merry god embraces all who do him service with a lusty throat.
Now with the practiced skill of chantry priests
The cries of merchants and of mongers fill the air,
And Plutus, god of wealth, moves in his fur and velvet
Through the crowds; his sacrament of pence and pound
And crown and angel passes hand to hand. His blessing
Like a wanton's fancy, ebbs and flows among his dedicants.

And there be Lady Venus in her gay green gown,
With all her youthful serving maids about her --
Tresses wild and loose, and garland-girded --
Moving to an ancient, timeless rhythm,
Houris dancing in her honor.
Her full-blown beauties draw the eye to sink in reverence
Into the secret places of her worship.

And there he stands whose proud flesh honors Lord Priapus;
Rooted in profound response, beyond intent or thought,
His wand of office rises in invocation of primal epiphany --
Sacred sword searching, finding silken sheath --
Bursting forth in self awareness of myriad being of
One source, one great eye bringing forth a tear
In which the world is swimming.

And over all, the Sun, Apollo's chariot, rides high --
The patron of all Art, the Muses' master
Smiles at our plays of passion and morality,
Our comic dramas, and our doleful farce;
The dance of life and death, of loss and gain,
Of triumph and of tragedy is in his service
Instrument of artistry.

How many gods are here to greet the congregation!
How many mysteries are here concealed, revealed
Unto initiates alone, or blazoned to the multitudes
Who pay the price of entry?
We gather here, in all our great diversity,
Our difference of devotion and degree, and still --
Each here is servant to some force which rules the ritual of life;
We all tread measures in a sacred dance unto our deities.

Some, puppet-like move in the patterns all unknowing,
Yet -- they dance as well;
While others lead the liturgy, and some perform the sacrifice,
Or humbly tend the trappings and the vessels and the forms
The adepts then will use to call down holy fire;
And some but mediate with gnostic inner eye
The priestly functions. All are votaries.

The Faire embodies Pantheon, the temple of all gods made flesh
By our attendance, in our offered service honored and displayed.
Come, celebrants, the cup is raised!

Your Servant

Who Do You Serve? - II

The tradesmen and the sycophants, the clientele
With politic display profess their most profound respect,
"Your servant, Milord," quoth they.

"Your servant," a minion in picadils and pansied slops
Murmurs with a courtly gesture that conveys
A nicety of knowledge
In the ways of precedence and pretense.

A maid, with eyes that lift in arch regard
Beneath a lowered brow, both coy and brazen,
Avows herself "Your servant to command."

What earns, what buys, what is the price of such devoted service
As is found in these who offer with such easy speech?
What is the worth of such, when value is defined by substance,
And when words are based upon
Naught but the air that gives them voice?

Yet Service is the very cornerstone of Mystery
In which is found the substance that endures;
Doth not the golden chain of Lordship and responsibility,
Of grandeur and of power, define exalted status
By dependence on a greater power?
Doth not the regnant Prince derive from Greater Power still
The potency and privilege of that office?
Each in his place, a link upon a chain that stretches to Divinity
And back again.
So each a servant stands before his master,
Whose power and position thus devolves in some degree
Upon the heads of those who own allegiance to that Lordship.

Perhaps a servant may - by rightly served apprenticeship -
Gain entrance to the Mystery of the master, and attain
Thereby a wealth beyond the threat of theft or loss.
Or yet, perhaps for righteous service giv'n may honored be
And lifted thus -- for chain is also ladder
By which men and angels both descend and rise.

Philosophers and mystics may thus muse --
Yet all about are faces full of cunning, fear or avarice,
With smiles and reverences made by skillful computation
Of the gain.
Whose servants these, in truth?

A Service to the God of Commerce

Who Do You Serve? - III

Shattered on the dry stones, tattered by the hedges of enclosure,
The ragged mongrels of society appear to mock
The pomp and pageantry
Of prosperous reign upon a happy isle.
And from the wilderness that lies outside the walls
Come outcasts seeking, like foxes
As they near the well-stocked roost.

Methinks the modest village in its giving o'er to Commerce thus
Brings fire to the altar of the god thereof.
'Tis Mercury, quicksilver god of coin's exchange and flow,
And of intelligence conveyed with speed and wit --
Not always kind, yet ever deft and expeditious --
The god of tricksters, fools and miscreants --
'Tis he that rules the Marketplace.
How then could it be otherwise? The ritual evokes
The shadows with the light.

The gleam of coin, of gold and silver, thus draws brass
As also steel and iron and baser metals yet.
So mark you mercenaries everywhere,
Merchants of many wares and services, vendors of pleasure,
Or of power, or of precious symbols
Of an empty virtue;
They gather to the call of Faire.

Two Queens

Who Do You Serve? - IV












Two Queens on but one isle --
And o'er the water a distant voice chanting anathema,
Invoking murder as a gentle service to the greater Lord:
Shall our elysium then be known Virginia
Or Mary-Land?
Two queens - two women in whose service men will die -
Two crowns, two royal wills unable to unite
Divide the loyalties of our Faire Albion.
It matters little which side hath its say
When each of them holds forth that one be harlot,
One be Virgin blest.
(The which be which dependeth on allegiance.)
How many souls will answer to each call to kneel?
How many will remember the old ways, and to them cling
In face of all adversity;
How many will the magic of Faire Avalon embrace
And gather in to Gloriana's vision?
Think you it matters aught
Which queen, which crown, which hallow
You may choose? It is the mystic fane of Mastery
You serve in such election, and each one who sits upon a throne
Is but a cipher for a greater Truth.
What greater woe than this be known:
To live and die outside the chain of fealty,
Being masterless and all adrift
In seas of self-importance?

Who Do You Serve?

Who Do You Serve? - V

A gesture is required - a service to the Crown -
A ritual, an oath - allegiance sworn unto the head of government,
The head that bears the symbol of the realm, the body politic.

(A body wears that head, indeed --
And bears the title, "Prince,"
And rules in mortal realm with mortal power --
Yet cannot stay the claim of Death's taxation.
When thus the prince falls subject to a greater empire,
Doth not another body rise to meet the burden
Of the Crowned Head?
Is this not more than mortal mastery we bow unto?)

Who do you serve? Is't Queen, or King or Pope -- ?
Is't crown or cross, the grail or Roman chalice?
What is the more than mortal master of your fate?
Who do you serve?
To whom do you give reverence and love,
For whom would suffer, to whom sacrifice and still
Sing praises when petitions fail?
In whose eyes seek you to discover glory?
Who is your ruler, who the human measure of that grace divine
That rests on the Anointed?
Before that one, bend you -- and take the impress of that Will
Unto you as your own. Prove then your trust and fealty
With word true given, and deed well done.

Self-Service

Who Do You Serve? - VI

When all seems venal, honor bought for brass,
And service sworn with but an eye to self --
When service is to grasp and hold, to heighten one's own glory
In reflected splendor, not to surrender
To a righteous mastery, but venture rudderless
Upon a mercenary quest and find such company
As suits the moment, serving only when and where
The gain to self is greatest --
What mystery is served, what knowledge gained
From this apprenticeship?And who is lord and master?
I kneel and choose the golden chain of servitude
By which I live, by which I die to be reborn in perpetuity --
In which I find godly reflection in a greater eye.
Master is he who by himself hath mastered been,
Hath embraced all, and in this truth embraced
Hath ceded separate sense of errant seeking,
Finding greater Self to serve.

Faire Vanity's Conceits

Being a few reflections of Faire
through a dark mirror
&
for my much-loved partners in the interplay of Light and Shadow

The Vanities

Conceits
Faire Vanity's Conceits - I

Good honest usage doth beget fine form
And simple, with an elegance of line --
But Fashion breeds a fey, unruly swarm
Of impish, impious conceits. Design
The face to suit the moment's whim; the hair
Imbue with gold, shape, stain or pluck, or add
Another's to thy own. Where swart, paint fair,
Add color to the pale. Be in rags clad
And think thyself a peer to princes who
Require no robe or jewel beside their grace
To be themselves. Pride, Vanity -- in sooth --
The host of sins that do beset our race --
These are the children of Dame Fashion's feast
Of passion, and her mating with the Beast!