Reliquiae: Vol 10 No 1

Volume 10 No 1 features: Among the new English translations are excerpts from the Icelandic ; a selection of 'Tigmo' from the Philippines; a fragment from Boethius' ; and Chinese poetry from the Song and Ming Dynasties. In world mythology there are Aztec hymns to the goddess Teteoinan, otherwise known as the All-Mother; Wabanaki invocations of sacred, shining mountains; and excerpts from the great Mayan creation myth, . There are Wabanaki songs of the stars, who proclaim with their light 'we are the birds of fire'; Inuit creation myths concerning the constellation Ursa Major; and discussions of the Milky Way in Chinese mythology, where it is characterised as a luminous 'River of Heaven'. There are macabre Kootenay legends of the Coyote and the Owl; explorations of the universe in Babylonian cosmology, including its 'seven heavens and seven hells'; Aztec hymns to the Hall of Flames and the God of Fire; and explorations of ancient Egyptian concepts of the soul. There are reflections on the destructive and regenerative cycles of the year in the Akkadian myth of Izdubar; Inuit stories of the transmigration of souls; and accounts of the ancient deities of Assyria. There are poetic evocations of basalt, amber and chalcedony; of mother goddesses, chthonic kings, 'rituals and wise blood'. There are lake mists, quick suns and bird-bone moons; 'Mestizo' invocations of the plants and animals of the Colombian Amazon jungle; and the ghosts of willow-trees awaiting embodiment. There are falling stars, spawning rivers and folded hills; cavernous depths, 'pageants of flowing stonework', and visionary recitals of apocalyptic and ecstatic violence. There are the spirit bones and broken forms of ancient animals; evocations of medieval bestiaries carved in wood; and the 'lawless promise' of 'the daughter of the fields'. There are invocations of the heron, 'deity of the river'; and of luminous places where every wound vanishes. There are the esoteric strivings of birds in flight, and the ephemerality of human agency set against the deep-time longevity of stones. There are 'thin places' and worlds 'more permanent' than the corporeal. There are sleeping minds and memory's 'accrual of moments'; nature-spirits, etheric doubles and desire-elementals; newborn stars, Artemis and Mother Deer. There are seventeenth century cosmologies describing the 'perpetual Serenity and constant Spring' of the antediluvian, 'paradisiacal' earth, and phantasmagorical theories of a prehistoric Eden at the north pole.