The Moon

I am all that you dream.

Mountains of amber and of antimony

shorelines of crystal

more real than all the dusty plains 

and snaking grey rilles of reality.

Adrift in the night

Your dreams are what created me

your dreams formed my every grain:

silver-edged, howl-begotten,

in ancient times eaten by a dragon

I always restored myself:

my triumph gave you the fight 

to do the same.

Once your earth and I were one.

But violence gave birth to me:

tore me away, destroyed our unity.

Now I circle, collecting dreams,

myths, monsters, goddesses,

maidens more beautiful than words,

heroes and hunters of the night.

Neither wolf, nor lover, nor madman

could miss me.

They gaze upon my silver

to howl, or to love,

or to dream with greater passion,

or to take comfort

in the refuge of a small insanity,

or just to go beyond.

I give them wings

I give them longing

I give them my reassuring constancy.

Still a monthly meal for a dragon

I fight my way free.

Painting: Gazing at te Moon by Jan Sam

Like the Sun and the Moon

"One ought not to know", he said, "but one ought to be".
I was pondering about this for a while. Suddenly a certainty rose inside me: 'If one can be, then it cannot be overlooked that we will discover that at some stage."
"That is true", he said, 'but this is a different kind of knowing than the knowing that you are so fond of lately. There is a lot of knowing that one can obtain independently of the fact of how one simply is - that is... if the brains are working okay! That kind of knowing can be crammed together in the container of the brains and give us plenty of useful information and pleasure. But there is also a kind of knowing that comes into existence because our 'being' permeates into our consciousness. In this kind of knowing lies a great clarity, which is of a different nature to the intellect. This clarity does not resolve intellectual riddles, nor will the clarity of intellect ever have an answer to the unsayable and the inescapable - what the people mean by the 'eternal questions'. There is no struggle between these two clarities. They are like the sun and the moon. Yes, that's how it is, for even if the moon is at her brightest, she would dim if the sun were not there. No, there never can be a conflict between the clarity of thought and the inner clarity that follows from Being."
"Inner clarity", I said, "sometimes I think that I knew it once - long ago."

Drawn from: Olsen's Foolishness, by Johannes Anker Larsen (1874-1957), Danish author and mystic.