Let your marble be excavated
from the uterine deep mines of Olympus
and hammered into fiery female flesh
glazed with a light like fevers.
Let your eyes be the twin abyss
where the human dives to feel immortalized.
Let your form be incorruptible; your breasts,
a harmony that arouses the lifesap flow.
Be naked as the pot's soul.
But let that heathen nakedness
stay beyond the touch of man.
And if it should be your command
for sacrifice I will be that slaughtered victim
Greetings and Introduction
for your stone to drink the drop of my blood.
(In terms of raw boldness of spirit for the Astghik, our Goddess of Love,
in our opinion was one of Daniel Varoujan's greatest poems where he
was able with real inspiration of spirit somehow able to give us lyrics that expressed
the spirit of that primal ecstasy that is felt with the sight of a statue or image of Our Goddess.
Yet, in spite of this We are the worshipers of Our Gods and do not completely agree with the implications of theology mixed with an over active imagination on how We actually view Her.
The sheer beauty and genius of the poem, being obvious we are still at variance of with any image of
any Armenian God or Goddess being beyond the touch of man. On the contrary, it was always the custom of the Priesthood to
make Gods dwell in flesh to manifest their divinity as an example of their
Gift of Perfection to realize the correspondence of Man, Goddess, God, Priest and Priestess.
In addition to this, the expression "heathen nakedness" implies a false perception which is more from
the propaganda of the restrictions of the Church, who would associate the naked body with sin.
Also, the last stanza where he offers himself up in self sacrifice is a false perception on how We
perceive the Gods is another example on how a poet such as Varoujan who wrote about the so called
pagan heritage had no basis with the experience of its worship. The concept of self sacrifice to a God or
a Goddess is absolutely repulsive in Our eyes, and the improper blending of Christian theology with
Our way. Once again, the sheer beauty of the poetry cannot be denied, and yet it was not written by
one of Us, and therefore confusion of theology are all too apparent in the implications of these questionable stanzas. It
is with no little bewilderment he writes, "where the human dives to feel immortalized." and then absolutely contradicts the purity of this by giving us nonsense about chastity toward the nakedness of the
Goddess and implying that he would commit self sacrifice to our Deities.
All this is clearly a grave lesson to all those poets who would attempt to write of Our Gods, and try to
correspond spiritual experiences and ecstasies that are nearly always incorrect not being worshipers of the Gods themselves. In retrospect, it might be observed that while it is true that a cat can look at a king, you must realize that cat cannot see the king. Nor is there any known way to bring the cat to the level of the king unless that cat is of the blood of a king, which might be considered to be rare.
Yet, experience is always inconsistent with the imagination of presumption and we all know what the
philosophers state about "poetic license". So bearing all this in mind, we have to admit that real inspiration does
exists within the writings of Varoujan in spite of Our technical objections of
Temple Procedure.)
(As for Daniel Varoujan's Pagan Songs written in 1912 we reiterate our original objections that
although inspiration does occur often enough with this poet to be worthwhile for reading, an extended
commentary of the entire book might very well be necessary to clarify obscure points of our ancient
theology. Nonethemore, We highly recommend this book for all Armenian polytheists as a monument of an intellectuals sincere attempt to create an Armenian Renaissance that actually included the spirit of Our ancestors. Although his social club which was created in 1914 called the Mehian Literary Group had for its aspiration to accomplish these noble goals was rudely cut off by the Turkish
blood bath, the group did create a great deal of excitement. Had this social club not been so severely
operated on by these grave times and circumstances, who knows what would of come of it?
As for Pagan Songs, so called, you should already realize that they Manifest from singers who
awaken to the touch of our Spirit in spite their creeds or background. The Divine Song and the Divine
Oracle pounce upon the collective consciousness in direct correspondence to the ratio of Energy expended to Reality Awakened. Call this the necessity of the karma's expenditure, or universal awareness of Us on the planes of volition invoked into the soul of humanity's redress of survival.
Moreover, if I sprinkle the consecrated water upon the stranger, I am doing so that stranger would
give me words of inspiration from the collective consciousness or as of old times as it is expressed, purifying the possible messenger of the Gods so the words spoken would not be profaned by lack of consecration. That Daniel Varoujan was in no position to understand this is apparent that he would
have published such a book where he does not understand the dangers of dogma or how the season of
a God's words can be exhausted when the moment of necessity is past! How unfortunate that such a situation is beyond the comprehension of most of humanity who cannot understand supernal thought
and its connection with a child's chance words, or a strangers idle conversation, or the observations of
a village maid or how the Gods communicate with the soul of High Priestess.)
