The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

Robert Burns Day Special:

Enjoy your haggis, common man.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Is There for Honest Poverty”

Robert Burns

Is there for honest Poverty

That hings his head, an’ a’ that;

The coward slave—we pass him by,

We dare be poor for a’ that!

For a’ that, an’ a’ that.

Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,

The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hodden grey, an’ a that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;

A Man’s a Man for a’ that:

For a’ that, and a’ that,

Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;

The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,

Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,

Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;

Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,

He’s but a coof for a’ that:

For a’ that, an’ a’ that,

His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:

The man o’ independent mind

He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;

But an honest man’s abon his might,

Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!

For a’ that, an’ a’ that,

Their dignities an’ a’ that;

The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,

Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a’ that,)

That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.

For a’ that, an’ a’ that,

It’s coming yet for a’ that,

That Man to Man, the world o’er,

Shall brothers be for a’ that.

An ominous mood finely rendered in art and prose.

⁓The Voice before the Void

View other works by Jason Heeley at jasonheeley.deviantart.com

“Final Train”

Jason Heeley

I was fascinated by diesel locos as a child, always impressed by the vague, terrifying notions of whatever I imagined was caged inside each of those grimy, rolling metal hulks – that which thundered and protested and shook concrete and stone as it passed. Their appearance seemed to me evocative of something unstoppable, otherworldly, cold, and immensely threatening. Throughout my adult life, I’ve spent more than my fair share of time on Britain’s crumbling rail network, but nothing I’ve seen since has seemed to match the power of those old childhood imprints, locked in memory. Trains are emotive things, as witnessed by the number of romances, thrillers, and chilling supernatural tales concerning them – perhaps the reason is that so many real journeys begin and end with them.

But what if there was always one final train to take? A service we all board at our own designated hour. You may find yourself on that strangely silent platform without warning. Soon, an immense, dark loco pulls in slowly with its train, crackling and shuddering as some unearthly energy courses angrily beneath its decaying metal skin. Of course, you are compelled to travel – whatever its destination may be…

“Cosmic Comprehension”

The Voice before the Void

Drawn from the dust of the cosmos, a mind was created to comprehend the workings of those cosmos. That mind lived many, many years before you live, in a hut on a path that led out of a little town by a sea. The mind invented a language of symbols; it cogitated within those symbols. The mind fulfilled its purpose. “The universe has been comprehended by its created mind.” The mind told no one, burned everything, died alone.

Winter Special:

To those of us who have lived in cabins, in woods, in winter, and to those of us who haven’t.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Winter Night”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pile high the hickory and the light

Log of chestnut struck by the blight.

Welcome-in the winter night.

The day has gone in hewing and felling,

Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling

For the night of talk and story-telling.

These are the hours that give the edge

To the blunted axe and the bent wedge,

Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

Here are question and reply,

And the fire reflected in the thinking eye.

So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.

Winter Special:

Join Sandburg by his chair, January after January, year after year, and hear of glory forlorn.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Manitoba Childe Roland”

Carl Sandburg

Last night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing happens—and he goes on and on—and it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on—and nothing happens—and he comes on a horse’s skull, dry bones of a dead horse—and you know more than ever it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows—he fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty sky and the empty land—and blows one last wonder-cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimeter projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba and Minnesota—in the sled derby run from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg—the lead dog is eaten by four team mates—and the man goes on and on—running while the other racers ride—running while the other racers sleep—

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle of travel hour after hour—fighting the dogs who dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep—pushing on—running and walking five hundred miles to the end of the race—almost a winner—one toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers—I know why judges of the race call him a winner and give him a special prize even though he is a loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland—and I told the six-year-old girl all about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

Make up an extravagant, mysterious, elaborate idea, and it just might live for generations.

⁓The Voice before the Void

The Lost Continent of Mu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mu is the name of a fictional continent that was once believed to have existed in one of Earth’s oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.

The concept and the name were proposed by 19th-century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu—which he located in the Atlantic Ocean. This concept was popularized and expanded by James Churchward, who asserted that Mu was once located in the Pacific.

The existence of Mu was disputed already in Le Plongeon’s time. Today scientists dismiss the concept of Mu (and of other lost continents such as Atlantis and Lemuria) as physically impossible, arguing that a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed in the short period of time required by this premise. Mu is today considered to be a fictional place.

History of the concept

Augustus Le Plongeon

The mythical idea of Mu first appeared in the works of Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), after his investigations of the Maya ruins in Yucatán. He claimed that he had translated the ancient Mayan writings, which supposedly showed that the Maya of Yucatán were older than the later civilizations of Greece and Egypt, and additionally told the story of an even older continent.

Le Plongeon actually got the name “Mu” from Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg who in 1864 mistranslated what was then called the Troano Codex using the de Landa alphabet. Brasseur believed that a word that he read as Mu referred to a land submerged by a catastrophe. Le Plongeon then identified this lost land with Atlantis, and turned it into a continent which had supposedly sunk into the Atlantic Ocean:

“In our journey westward across the Atlantic we shall pass in sight of that spot where once existed the pride and life of the ocean, the Land of Mu, which, at the epoch that we have been considering, had not yet been visited by the wrath of Human, that lord of volcanic fires to whose fury it afterward fell a victim. The description of that land given to Solon by Sonchis, priest at Sais; its destruction by earthquakes, and submergence, recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it.”

Le Plongeon claimed that the civilization of ancient Egypt was founded by Queen Moo, a refugee from the land’s demise. Other refugees supposedly fled to Central America and became the Mayans.

James Churchward

Mu, as a lost Pacific Ocean continent, was later popularised by James Churchward (1851–1936) in a series of books, beginning with Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926), re-edited later as The Lost Continent Mu (1931). Other popular books in the series are The Children of Mu (1931), and The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933).

Churchward claimed that “more than fifty years ago,” while he was a soldier in India, he befriended a high-ranking temple priest who showed him a set of ancient “sunburnt” clay tablets, supposedly in a long lost “Naga-Maya language” which only two other people in India could read. Having mastered the language himself, Churchward found out that they originated from “the place where [man] first appeared—Mu.” The 1931 edition states that “all matter of science in this work are based on translations of two sets of ancient tablets”: the clay tablets he read in India, and a collection of 2,

Kings Day Special:

Gold the valuable, symbol of kingship; frankincense the incense, symbol of deity; and myrrh the embalming oil, symbol of death.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Three Kings of Orient”

John Henry Hopkins, Jr.

We Three Kings of Orient are,

Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain,

Moor and mountain,

Following yonder Star.

O Star of Wonder, Star of Night,

Star with Royal Beauty bright,

Westward leading,

Still proceeding,

Guide us to Thy perfect Light.

Born a King on Bethlehem plain,

Gold I bring to crown Him again,

King for ever,

Ceasing never

Over us all to reign.

Frankincense to offer have I,

Incense owns a Deity nigh:

Prayer and praising

All men raising,

Worship Him God on High.

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume

Breathes a life of gathering gloom;–

Sorrowing, sighing,

Bleeding, dying,

Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

Glorious now behold Him arise,

King, and God, and Sacrifice;

Heav’n sings

Hallelujah:

Hallelujah the earth replies.

Highly weird fiction.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“SCP-055”

The SCP Foundation

Item #: SCP-055

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: Object is kept within a five (5) by five (5) by two point five (2.5) meter square room constructed of cement (fifty (50) centimeter thickness), with a Faraday cage surrounding the cement walls. Access is via a heavy containment door measuring two (2) by two point five (2.5) meters constructed on bearings to ensure door closes and locks automatically unless held open deliberately. Security guards are NOT to be posted outside SCP-055’s room. It is further advised that all personnel maintaining or studying other SCP objects in the vicinity try to maintain a distance of at least fifty (50) meters from the geometric center of the room, as long as this is reasonably practical.

Description: SCP-055 is a “self-keeping secret” or “anti-meme”. Information about SCP-055’s physical appearance as well as its nature, behavior, and origins is self-classifying. To clarify:

* How Site 19 originally acquired SCP-055 is unknown.

* When SCP-055 was obtained, and by whom, is unknown.

* SCP-055’s physical appearance is unknown. It is not merely indescribable, or invisible: individuals are perfectly capable of entering SCP-055’s container and observing it, taking mental or written notes, making sketches, taking photographs, and even making audio/video recordings. An extensive log of such observations is on file. However, information about SCP-055’s physical appearance “leaks” out of a human mind soon after such an observation. Individuals tasked with describing SCP-055 afterwards find their minds wandering and lose interest in the task; individuals tasked with sketching a copy of a photograph of SCP-055 are unable to remember what the photograph looks like, as are researchers overseeing these tests. Security personnel who have observed SCP-055 via closed-circuit television cameras emerge after a full shift exhausted and effectively amnesiac about the events of the previous hours.

* Who authorized the construction of SCP-055’s containment room, why it was constructed in this way, or what the purpose of the described Containment Procedures may be, are all unknown.

* Despite SCP-055’s container being easily accessible, all personnel at Site 19 claim no knowledge of SCP-055’s existence when challenged.

All of these facts are periodically rediscovered, usually by chance readers of this file, causing a great deal of alarm. This state of concern lasts minutes at most, before the matter is simply forgotten about.

A great deal of scientific data has been recorded from SCP-055, but cannot be studied.

At least one attempt has been made to destroy SCP-055, or possibly move it from containment at Site 19 to another site, meeting failure for reasons unknown.

SCP-055 may present a major physical threat and indeed may have killed many hundreds of personnel, and we would not know it. Certainly it presents a gigantic memetic/mental threat, hence its Keter classification.

Document #055-1: An Analysis of SCP-055

The author puts forward the hypothesis that SCP-055 was never formally acquired by ████████████ ████████ and is in fact an autonomous or remotely-controlled agent, inserted at Site 19 by an unidentified third party for one or all of the following purposes:

* to silently observe, or interfere with, activities at Site 19

* to silently observe, or interfere with, activities at other SCP locations

* to silently observe, or interfere with, activities of humanity worldwide

* to silently observe, or interfere with, other SCP objects

* to silently observe, or interfere with, ████████████

No action to counter any of these potential threats is suggested,

New Year’s Special:

For the times we have shared.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Auld Lang Syne”

Robert Burns

translated from the Scots by Wikisource

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

And surely you’ll get your pint cup!

and surely I’ll get mine!

And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

We two have run about the slopes,

and picked the daisies fine;

But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,

since auld lang syne.

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun ’till dine;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!

and give a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,

for auld lang syne.

Xmas Special:

Christmas monster. (Iceland has the coolest stuff.)

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Yule Cat”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Yule Cat (Icelandic: Jólakötturinn or Jólaköttur) is a monster from Icelandic folklore, a huge and vicious cat said to lurk about the snowy countryside during Christmastime and eat people who have not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve. The Yule Cat has become associated with other figures from Icelandic folklore as the house pet of the giantess Grýla and her sons, the Yule Lads.

The threat of being eaten by the Yule Cat was used by farmers as an incentive for their workers to finish processing the autumn wool before Christmas. The ones who took part in the work would be rewarded with new clothes, but otherwise get nothing and thus be preyed upon by the monstrous cat. The cat has alternatively been interpreted as merely eating away the food of ones without new clothes during Christmas feasts. The perception of the Yule Cat as a man-eating beast was partly popularized by the poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum in his poem “Jólakötturinn.”