The Nine Muses

Red - Erato
Awakener of Desire
The Watchers
Milumet Family
Belief System of Sexuality

If humanity were a tree, she would be its roots that dig deep into the heart of Gaia and wrap themselves tightly around core issues, and in doing this anchors humanity so that it can grow from sapling to straight and tall and mighty.

The Milumet Muse is the belief system of sexuality, and she is as red as blood, or the flocked wall paper of a Vegas casino. She is the still dark waters that run so deep you could not know bottom unless she speaks in the voice of sunset over the Grand Canyon.

Erato has a social art to cherish, as she defines love in the most pleasurable manner of deep connection, and it spills out and flows across the mental landscape like a river of appreciation. She combines the physical being with its own deep rooted spirituality in such a way that we recognize her energy in the orgasm of no separation. If your most personal spiritual experience was during sex, then you know Erato well enough to also recognize her in the iron soaked soil of Arizona, or the wise red face of a Native American hero, or the backbone of strength in the physical body.

Erato is all about grounding, as her red energy flows downward from the sexual organs through the bottom of the feet, and she reminds humanity of its heritage with the environment as well as any Indian myth that storytells about the red race of mankind. She is also represented in the teeth that provide the body nourishment, like the roots of a tree feed the tree in such a way that it knows itself as spirit. Erato is the New Age movement in the early nineties that erased the word religion, and replaced it with spirituality.

Erato moves slowly, but with determination, like Suzanne who takes you down to her place by the river, and feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China. And just when you want to tell her, that you have no love to give her, she gets you on her wavelength, and lets the river answer that you've always been her lover.


Orange - Urania
World View
Dream Artists
The Formers
Gramada Family
Belief System of Science

For the name of each Mousa, they say, men have found a reason (basis or motive for an action) appropriate to her ...Ourania, because men who have been instructed by her she raises aloft to heaven (ouranos), for it is a fact that imagination and the power of thought lift men’s souls to heavenly heights. –Diodorus Siculus 4.7.1

I often think that Urania's feet don’t touch the floor, but when I blink and look with physical eyes, I see them anchored in cement. How can that be? How can Gramada organize, classify, and put so much under the scrutiny of the microscope of science? How can she so adore technology, and so implore new direction?

And yet Urania is the favorite of her grandfather Uranus, who secretly gave her the key to the sky and heavens, so that she may enter the realms of the museum that Clio curates. Clio who has been vouchsafed the power to know the hearts of the gods, and the ways by which things come to be.

Urania wanders in her dream body, grasping those ideas that fascinate her, and molding them into a shape and form like no other. Urania, the Einstein of original thought.

And it is Urania that can walk the delicate balance between a concrete mathematical formula, and the vapor imagination that spawned it. Not necessarily to the extent of the schizophrenic Nobel Prize winner, John Nash, but flying high with her invaluable wings of world view. And indeed a beautiful mind.

Urania makes contributions outside the spotlight of attention, in a manner that changes the course of history. She holds the globe in her hands, and she looks to the heavens pregnant with the multitude of stars of brilliance. Urania can pluck any star, and make it fit into her pocket so she can bring it back with her. If you check Urania’s chambers, you will see them glowing with the dust of other dimensions.

Orange Urania is the combined sexuality of red Erato, and the passion of yellow Vold. She is the brilliance of fire beneath a cold blanket of respectability. She is the initiator. She is the orange magic hour of dusk, halfway between daylight and night, that shadows all in black. Urania desires to reproduce in its many aspects.

Everything begins with Urania’s original ideas, formed intentionally for the Vold to immediately reform, modify, crusade for, and implement. Urania is the ornate art of the early 1900's, and her brain looks like filigree. She is as orange as the painting of Flaming June, and as orange as the invention of psychology, and as orange as the belief system of science.

Without Urania society would have one foot nailed to the floor.

She is anything but dull.


Yellow - Melpomene
Drama Queen
The Reformers
Vold Family
Belief System of Emotion

I highly recommend that everyone immediately download a frontal photo of Melpomene, print it out, and post it somewhere in plain view, as one of America’s Most Wanted. If her picture were on a playing card, she would be the Queen of Clubs, ready at any moment to club you over the head. But actually it’s more like a swift kick to the yellow gut area. Melpomene has a unique way of pushing your belly button.

This is in case your signal door bell rings, and you focus through the reality peek hole, and you see Melpomene staring back at you, you know NOT to open the door until you are ready. Melpomene is the Jehovah Witness of messengers, and you cannot be yellow-bellied when dealing with the Vold muse. You have been thusly warned.

Unfortunately, I opened the door before I was ready.

Melpomene is intense, and definitely there to rearrange your mental furniture, whether you like it or not. The Gramada are the formers, but the Volds are the re-formers, that directly follow and bite at the heels of humanity with a Chupacabra attitude until it changes.

Not that Melpomene isn’t entertaining, because she is, as she shuffles through the door in her high top Doc Martins, that double as the cothurnus, one hand grasping tightly to her camouflage of tragedy, and one hand brandishing a sword. Melpomene, from the chanting melodia, by which she charms the souls of her listeners, acts the classic tragedy with precision and motivation. She is hardly a victim. Her intent is to make you feel, as she is the yellow belief system of emotion.

Melpomene projects outward as strongly as a Yoga master can knock you over with chi. If your not buying into her tragic story, she might kick and scream, or cough and sputter, or wave her sword demanding compassion and understanding equal to her own.

Melpomene hears the call of the distant drummer, the off stage prompting, and she reflects by prompting society to greater heights, or more options of arrangement. Melpomene receives the cue, and gives us a clue, the mistress of modification. Her heart is on her sleeve, her head is in the sky, her vision is far sighted, and her tongue can be as tart as a lemon.

Melpomene is the heat of the noon day sun, and the release of a good cry. Her poetry is that which unites humanity in common bond. She is the songstress of the fountain of vitality that is the blazing golden dawn of energy. She is the art deco of the thirties, sleek and energetic, that pushed society into the industrial age with paintings of cars, trains, ships and planes. And she waves at you in a leather cap and goggles holding a glamorous cigarette.


Green - Thalia
Storytellers
The Tellers
Ilda Family
Belief System of Religion


The Queen of Comedy
According to the Geek Greeks, any story with a happy ending is a comedy.


Thaila is green, flourishing, thriving, and healing. She is the social artist that paints in amusement. Her poetry is pastoral poetry, and if you don’t know what pastoral poetry is, go into any regional bar and listen to the jokes. They tell you more about the region and its ideas that any geography book or atlas. It’s the heart of the community, like green is the heart of appreciation love.

Thalia is the wood nymph that flies from community to community, and spreads the word through entertainment. She is the jokes we email back and forth, the stand up comedy that stands up for us, the sitcoms that amuse us, all because they express our feelings that we can’t accept another way other than the soft cover of humor.

Every story has its bumps and grinds, its challenges, its disappointments. But if you can’t see the happy ending, then that’s where Thalia comes into the play. What makes Thaila the favorite, is that she tells you the happy ending in irony. She pokes fun at the worst disaster, the worst administration, the worst authority.

Thalia knits the cultures together with communication, she is the jolly roger of the high seas, she is the Chinese restaurant in every railroad town, with bad food, but open 24 hours. She is the musicals of the early fifties, and the sci fi of scary alien movies. She is the Peter Pan of imagination, and the Tinkerbell of belief.

Thaila is the breath of relaxation that one has when one laughs.

She is the master storyteller.

She is the belief system of religion (you know all that is myth, don't you?)

She is the muse in amusing.

She is the Ilda muse.

Laughter heals all.








Thalia’s Story

Thalia wants me to tell you this story cause she was there. It was in the seventies, during the time of the Sumari flower children, but some were not feeling like Sumari flowers and had gone off to fight a useless war we now call Vietnam.

During the last days of the war the god Chaos had taken over, and it was obvious there was no rhyme or reason. No resolution or solution. It was just a matter of pure survival.

And there existed in that time a group of people who’s intent was to save lives, rather than take them, the medics. But it was too much to handle. Bleeding bodies were strewn everywhere like a Greek tragedy. Some of the bodies of our young warriors were lying in stacked pine boxes with flags draped over them, waiting to be shipped home to heartbroken parents. It was heavy with doom.

It was the time of the triage, where those who seemed to be wounded beyond help, were left to die in favor of those who perhaps could be helped. Kronos had made linear time a life or death situation. Mortal people were making god like decisions of who lives and who doesn’t, quick and fierce like the fire and lightning god of the Old Testament.

But the medics needed to survive. You can’t help someone out of the quicksand if you jump in there with them. They were at the embassy, which was fenced and guarded, and they felt they could at last have a rest. So they had parties. Giant feasts, with drink, music and love making, in spite of young starving children waving their hands through the bars of the fence crying out for a morsel, only a few feet away.

And yet, in their collective memories, they recall the voldy intense time the best time they ever had. The best parties. The best taste of food and wine. The best sound of music. The best love making.

Thalia says you don’t begin to process pain until you laugh. Laughter opens the doorway to other options. It takes one outside that steel box of automatic responses. The more outrageous the joke, the better. Every joke is another option opening up. A different viewpoint becoming evident.

If one is in pain, and only focuses on the pain, pain reinforces itself and creates more pain reflected outwards as physical reality. And it recreates it in the moment, moment after moment, after moment. Every moment a brand new beginning, an entire new universe, but creating pain over and over and over, like the hamster in the wheel.

One tiny little smile, one slight upturn of the corners of the lips, lights the eyes and causes them to shine a little brighter. The muscles down the neck relax and the heart opens with welcome hands. The energy centers flare outwards and reach to the far horizons of other choices.

You can’t grit your teeth and laugh at the same time. The iron mask of camouflage breaks away, and there is freedom of restriction.

So make us laugh Thalia, you little wood nymph Tinkerbell, that flutters from flower to flower like a butterfly, depositing the pixie dust of healing humor on the petals of the mortal blooms.

HAIL HOLY!







Pink - Polyhymnia
Many Hymns
The Nurturers
Borledim Family
Belief System of Relationship


Everything, Borledim, is Sacred


The Borledim muse is
the rapture of childbirth
and the colors of the sunrise of a new day.

She is the rudimentary of relationships
and the peace of a dying dove that knows itself as transformation.

She is the weightless wings of flight
that chooses to touch upon both the moist earth
and the outstretched branches of the most far reaching horizons,
that caresses with the effectiveness of a feather.

Polyhymnia is the gentle kiss of flora and fauna
that decorates Gaia in the most glorious of manifestation,
and she sings to the purple mountain majesty
and amber waves of grain.

She sings to the calm indigo night and the spotlighted golden moon.
She sings to the orange autumn season, and the black hole of connection.
She sings to the blue/green that is the atmosphere between sky and land.

She is the pink blush of embarrassment
and the rose flush of viewpoint.

She is the nursing mother of nurture,
and mother nature personified.

She is the velvet rose flower that is
the gasp of the gods,
the joy of mortals,
and the glory of bloom for only the sake of beauty.

She is the fragrance of red Erato enhanced
with green garlands of appreciation love and healing.

Her eyes reflect the silence of meaning,
and the mist of a soundless voice.

She is most grace-full of the Muses,
and the very breath of inspiration.

She is the pink belief system of relationship,
and expressed her nurturing poetry through the baby boom.


Blue - Calliope
Beautiful Voice
The Speakers
Sumari Family
Belief System of Truth


Calliope, the First Born

Out of the blue, out of nowhere she appeared.
I remember it was this season last year.
I had stated my intent to learn all I could of the muses
And how they relate to the essence family that fuses.

Since she is my muse in rising
It shouldn’t be too surprising
That she was first born to me
In a time when I was dancing with glee.

Sumari knows the benefits of playfulness.


The Greeks are Sumafi in intent, and I can’t think of a better word than inspiration to define the gentle feather like touch of a muse. A zephyr of vibration and feeling, or just plain celestial music. You can’t hold inspiration, like you can’t hold your breath for long, it’s meant to flow in and out again. Each breath is a new beginning. The Sumafi Geeks knew.

Each muse represents a kaleidoscope of feeling or poetry in motion. And the Sumari expresses in unique creativity that adorns Gaia in a life that imitates art. Sumari is the creator of all things artistic, and she sings in paint, music, sculpture, dance, and written or artistic expression of all forms. It is her domain.

The Sumari are not the teachers, they are the doers, the examples, being highly creative, extremely unique, and sometimes bordering on eccentric. They are not introverted or shy, but do not align with societies, governments, or religions. They do not conform to the norm. They provide movement within a culture with the instigation of new ideas and initiate great change, but then like Seth says, they don’t hang around to mow the grass. They are best known as the “pot stirrers.”

They appeared within our culture as the “flower children,” the expressers of love and freedom. They are the muse for the individual expression, which is why Calliope sings to the hero in us, the one longing for freedom. It is a freedom of expression. It is the deep seeded desire of the search for THE truth, like THE truth actually existed. And yet, it is a basic knowing that all things are true for each individual and unique perspective. Sumaris understand unique. They are unique personified, and the belief system of truth. Sumari’s don’t care about accuracy the way Sumafi’s do, they care about the tone of the expression.

Sumaris are temporary. They do not establish cultures to be lasting, they are more encouraging of creativity in society. Within history there are evidences of cultures that were Sumari influenced. Sumer is a Sumari culture. Sumaris are the Speakers or the vibration of the blue throat chakra of communication. Subjectively, we all know Sumari. They are obvious. So we all know Calliope, no matter how she presents herself.

I recall when I first tried to connect with Calliope as I had asked her what the hell is a heroic epic? But she didn’t answer right away, instead she waited for me to relax and become playful. Calliope communicates best when one is playful, or in that realm of easy time.

When Calliope, the Speaker sings to you, she doesn’t need words, she expresses in the tone of the state of being, the way the Sumari language expresses. Or her words may be the nonsense verses of the “Dead Can Dance,” that sound like the most beautiful and barely remembered foreign language. Or you can make up your own words to her music if you desire, she doesn’t mind.

By co-incidence my daughter had a CD of calliope music. We put it on, grabbed some scarves, and danced around like fools, but within that action I suddenly discovered the energy of Calliope singing to me in the vibration and tone of Sumari blue. And in that moment she told me the meaning of the heroic epic, within her terms of feelings and remembrances.

Calliope’s playful voice is that of the merry-go-round, vocalizing in its unusual tone and timbre of steam whistle. The instrument calliope projects loudly and great distances, like the voice of the Speaker that commands attention.

Either she sings a delightful song that can’t help but gladden your heart, like “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” Where you can image yourself flowing down the river of life, captain of your own ship of direction. Or a heroic epic, like “America the Beautiful” or “God Bless America.” It was “God Bless America” that connected me to Calliope.

I was connecting with not the poetry of words, but with the poetry of sound, that causes us to stand in allegiance and put our hands on our hearts, and feel deeply the hero in each of us. Do you remember that feeling after 9-11, when playful Hollywood contributed to the war effort by giving a telethon? And how no one, except perhaps Willy and the Boys knew all the words, but the intensity of the feeling of heroism and community was inspiring. I remember that I couldn’t help but sing along.

It is that feeling…that childhood memory…that inspiration one had when playfully riding proudly upon the back of a painted Pegasus, holding tightly to the spiraled unicorn horn, while moving ever upwards and forwards, reaching out in earnest for the brass ring of accomplishment. It is the siren voice of Calliope that calls to the hero in each of us as we journey. There is no voice more beautiful.


Indigo - Euterpe
Giver of Pleasure
The Healers
Tumold Family
Belief System of Perception


Giver of Comfort

Of all the muses the Tumold muse was the hardest for me to get to know. I called for her several times, and she didn't show. Oh yeah, I can find her in my backyard as the deep indigo night, or on my television as ER or Bewitched. Then I realized that Euterpe had shown up several times, I had just failed to recognize her because she has a split personality. I should have also seen her in CSI, or Dead like Me, or episodes of Six Feet Under.

Generally Euterpe is calming and easy to be around as her very nature is to restore. She is healing, whether she touches you physically with outstretched hands, or touches your soul with the remembrance words of Mnemosyne. Her mere presence is the energy of the mystical healers that weave their way into every culture and hold the cherished positions of priest-magician. Euterpe is often royalty.

She is a natural interpreter that reads energy like a dime store novel. She reads people, creatures, landscape, song, events, and collects these into tidbits that increase her knowledge of her own essence being. Euterpe engages you in enchanting dialogue that radiates the hue of calming indigo, for she is the belief system of perception. She holds your heart in her arms, and perceives the tune of many heads, bearing within her sensitive ability the most adequate vibration to calm the pending fear, or sooth the worst demon. Her intent is not to heal, it is to remind others that they themselves hold the ability to return to the natural state of being at any time.

Her lyric poetry are the words of the opera, the libretto of human suffering, within a haunting chant that manages to ease the beast of burden. Her melody is an orchestration of harmony, in the timbre of the compassion of empathy. Her knowledge is knowing not to repair, but remind, and she often appears in society as mass disengagement when Gaia herself is ill.

When aligned, Euterpe will extend the greatest effort, determined as the intent of a doctor to save lives. When she slips into episodes of rescue and fix it, she has a tendency to overmedicate, even under the best circumstances. But even if the operation is totally successful, the patient will eventually die, and this is Tumold's shinning glory of belonging.

Euterpe knows death. She has perceived it up close, dismembered and rotting, but she also sees beyond that one brief moment of choice. Euterpe is the euthenics of life and the euthanasia of death. Euterpe is the master of the music of the Gorgones, and she plays the poetry of the flute that hypnotizes the Medusa snakes that haunt the head.

Euterpe is comfort personified.


Purple - Terpsichore
The Whirler
Living Art
The Imagers
Zuli Family
Belief System of Physical Creation


The Whirler

I can’t even look at the Zuli muse without feeling pangs of jealousy towards her perfection of body and movement. She is the personification of the Greek adoration of the human physical form. She is art imitating life.

The grace of a ballet dancer, or a stripper at the pole, or a football player. Physical beauty so immense it’s often called pornographic, but it’s admiration of the physical body attuned to every cell and molecule, meeting every physical challenge, and often excelling to the point of metals. Her art is the Olympics, and she is as purple as a Cirque Du Soleil costume.

She is the muse of choral song and dancing. Depicted with the lyre, and plucking with plectrum the strings of the physical image, so to make it sing in the poetry of dance.

She is the master of capabilities, and the mistress of salacious. She hones the human image that patient Borledim manifests. She is the striving of Apollo, and the attractiveness of Aphrodite. The kiss of youth and flawlessness, and the image of strength and potential.

She is US in a cowboy hat and boots, ready to take on any challenge. She is buff Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, or the agile Neo in Matrix, adapt in the oriental arts of movement of chi.

She is whirling acrobatics, twirling square dances, or a high flying swan dive. She is awesome in the manifestation of her poetry of the flesh.

She is living art.


Black - Clio
Glory
History
The Seers
Sumafi Family
Belief System of Duplicity


Ode to Clio

Oh, sister of Calliope
I know you can see in me
An explosion of creativity
That sparks like the electric bolt that it is.

I beg you give pause
To my cause
Maybe not applause
But just a noticing in passing thought

For secretly,

I covet the Clio award
All that Sumafi records
It is the highest reward
For it is Clio that recognizes accomplishment.

I’d be so honored.




Dear Clio;

I know you don’t have the easiest job, and that it gets hot under that long black robe of the educators, the ministers, and the judges, the elite of society. And the belief system of duplicity that you know the best, is the plague of society, the continual paradox, the black or white riddle that cannot be solved. A demand for Justice, where there is no need for Justice. Everyone creates their own reality, how more just can it get?

And that you even attempt to give balance to that paradox of bad and good, right and wrong, amazes me, for the attempt itself is Titan, and as ugly as the fierce two headed dragon of fear. You are St. George the dragon slayer, armed only with tooth and nail, and I highly respect your tenacity of repetition. I respect your love of accuracy, and that you are the natural born teacher of acceptance.

You straighten the crooked images on the wall, you dust the nooks and crannies of the cortex, and you oversee the history of a culture. You are the black hole of connection that will transport us all at light speed into a brand new dimension of reality. And I noticed your energy first in 1995, as I began to objectively shift, and I called upon you for assistance in understanding.

You set the pace, although it’s not a race.

Miss Clio with your red penciled fingers, you do often correct my punctuation while I’m still speaking it. But sometimes I depend on you to dot my I’s and cross my T’s. Other times I’m lying with my fingers crossed, hoping you don’t catch me.

Often times you harp the Abso-lute. Other times you sing the sweetest tune of praise, with honey covered words of wisdom that drip in the sweetness of success. Behind every accomplished person is the Sumafi muse, or perhaps in front.

I’d like to think that we are side by side, arm in arm, traveling the same path, in the same direction. As compatible as fraternal twins can be. Dancin’ and singin’ all the way.

Much Love,

Sis