Perpetual War and Its Discontents

thoughts and a playlist

“The Death of King Arthur” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

First, in case you haven’t heard and are interested, I still have some room in my Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion course that starts in January, though it is filling up. You can read all about it here. But to the matter at hand.

One of my earliest soul intuitions or dream-images about myself (perhaps “imagination” is a better word) is that I was a knight or soldier, I suppose in the Middle Ages, and that I was sorely wounded and left for dead. But a group of women (maybe nuns, maybe something else) found me, placed me on a cart or wheelbarrow of some type and ferried me to their home where they nursed me to health. I in particular recall the cart ride where every bump along the road caused my wounds to cough blood.

When I told them about this imagination, some of my friends, women as it turns out, suggested that I was simply recalling a past life. I don’t really have an opinion about that, but I cannot deny the importance of this imagination for me. It has lived with me for such a long time.

Of course, such an image has resonances with the Death of King Arthur, who, after the Battle of Camlann, was taken to the Isle of Avalon by women to be healed of his wounds. It was promised that he would one day return from Avalon to rule once again over England in a era of peace. It could be that my imagination was reworking the Arthurian tale, though I don’t think I knew about it at the time. But, even if it did, it does not diminish the importance of the imagination. There is something about the healing of wounds caused in war by being immersed in the feminine that is enormously comforting, not to mention sophiological.

I hate war, though I would not call myself a pacifist (though I flirted with the idea for a time). Sometimes you have to fight. One thing I do know is that those who promote war rarely have anything to lose by getting involved in it. That is left to peasants like us, who lose our lives, or our children’s lives, or our lands for one batch of lies or another (“making the world safe for democracy” is one that really makes me see red). There are two types of people when it comes to war: those who profit by it (BlackRock, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, etc.) and those who suffer from it. (The same thing happened in a more subtle way during the Covid totalitarianism). So when Anthony Blinken and his fellow sociopaths at the State Department decided to up the ante in the Ukraine war and risk escalating to a nuclear conflict—this in a lame duck presidency, no less—I felt more than a little outrage. Perhaps you did too.

(Astrological side note: the fact that they did this just hours before Pluto, planet of the underworld and wealth, left Capricorn, the sign of money and greed, and entered Aquarius, sign of innovation and imagination, suggests to me that the sociopaths both know astrology and think they can avoid—or at least disrupt—what’s coming. Good luck with that! It’s game over and they know it.)

At such moments, I recall the long history of songs of lament and outrage concerning the fortunes and misfortunes of war. Most of these songs are from the losing side in conflict, and since the folk traditions of the British Isles are so dear to me, many of my favorites are those from Scotland and Ireland (now vassal states of the NWO alas) that lamented the oppression caused by the greed of English kings and potentates over the long arc of history. England still sucks that way. So here are a few songs I threw together by way of a playlist. I hoe you enjoy them and please suggest your won in the comments.

“The Deserter” traditional ballad as performed by Fairport Convention

Fairport’s Liege & Lief may be the greatest folk rock album ever recorded, and this track, a traditional folk ballad, was apparently Fairport singer Sandy Denny’s favorite on the album.

“It Was a' for Our Rightfu' King” by Robert Burns (performed by Dougie Maclean)

For a time in the 1990s—before I had too many children—I used to perform folk songs (English, Scottish, and Irish) at coffee houses, pubs, and parties. This was one of my favorites. It’s a Jacobite song about leaving Scotland to join the lost cause of Catholic King James II’s forces in Ireland, a war that sought to preserve the rights of Catholics in a hostile political environment.

“The Minstrel Boy” by Thomas Moore (performed by Aoife Scott)

This is one of the earliest songs I recall hearing someone sing, as my grandfather, Michael Patrick Conlon of Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland, used to sing it of a summer evening after more than a few glasses of beer and accompanying “small ones.” I don’t know anything about Aoife Scott or the television show, Seachtar Na Cásca, from which this clip comes. But my eyes are full of tears anyway. The same demonic forces are trying to destroy Ireland (and the rest of the word) today.

“The Flowers of the Forest” (traditional) as performed by Fairport Convention

Here’s another of my favorites to perform. Another sad tale of a fierce and independent people, the Scots in this case, being destroyed by English greed for empire, this time with the defeat of King James IV at Flodden Field in 1513.

“War Pigs” by Black Sabbath (performed by Zac Brown and the Foo Fighters)

Okay, so it’s not a folk song! Nevertheless, this is the first thing that comes to mind every time the war pigs in Washington rev up the death machine. You really can’t argue with lyrics like this:

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death's construction

In the fields, the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds

The really are just like witches at black masses.

“War” written and performed by Dougie Maclean

This is a contemporary anti-war song written by Maclean at the time of the Gulf War, another of those “making the world safe for democracy” deals. [insert eyeroll] I taught this song to one of my Waldorf classes long ago. And, yes, a committee investigated.

“Young Ned of the Hill” attributed to Éamonn Ó Riain (Edmund O'Ryan) and performed by The Pogues

Éamonn Ó Riain was an Irish Jacobite, poet, and rebel—the entire Irish package, if you will. This song is about the Irish resistance to the genocidal campaign of Oliver Cromwell, one the BIGGEST BASTARDS EVER TO HAVE SUCKED AIR. Ó Riain was killed in his sleep by his cousin for the bounty that was upon his head. Most Irish people are a little more hospitable. I’m takin’ to the drink, I am.

“Bean Dubh a' Ghleanna” by Éamonn Ó Riain as performed by Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Not to end on a depressing note, here’s “Bean Dubh a' Ghleanna” (“The Dark Lady of the Glenn”). O’Riain wrote this haunting tune about his wife, Mary Leahy. Because that’s what he was fighting for. In addition, below is a version of the song/tale as recorded by Altan (it has an entirely different vibe from Amhlaoibh’s), one of my favorite bands ever. I taught this version (but with the verses in English) to one of my Waldorf classes and we incorporated it into a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I played the song last night, me wife teared up, she did.

I hate war, but I’m willing to fight for what I love. And I don’t love war profiteers and globalists. I love my wife, my family, my faith, and the land.