A Pebble on the Beach

The next week, “some may say”; is set to be an extraordinary term with a 17th February 2026 solar eclipse being the commencement of a period of change; culminating in a choice point. A time that will run from the 14th of February 2026, to the 20th February 2026. How do we know this to be the case? Well! For those of us who don’t specialize in astrology; we don’t. Can we say then it is false? No! Neither this way or that; not until we have deployed the Fourth Way cornerstone maxim which came from Mr G I Gurdjieff, who famously instructed; “I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.” Mr Gurdjieff and some subsequent transmitters of his teaching feature in the poem ‘A Scapeshifter’ which this site is about; ‘A Scapeshifter’ also being a pointer to T S Eliot’s 1922 poem ‘The Waste Land’ which became one of the great modernist works of the 20th century. Another gifted poet, W H Auden, said of Mr Eliot after he had written his masterpiece ‘Four Quartets’ in the years following ‘The Waste Land’ that he was the greatest living poet of the 20th century; which is high praise from a man who did not readily give credit to other poets and writers. And speaking of verification, if it’s required for the validity of Mr Auden’s opinion: have a read of the Alexander McCall Smith book; ‘What W H Auden Can Do For You’ and if you require verification for ‘The Four Quartets’ try ‘Dove Descending’ by Thomas Howard. So why all this verification? Well astrology, as with Poetry, astronomy, mythology, music, performing arts, painting / drawing, science, philosophy, literature, and to to join poetry to movement; Temple Dance, along with a plethora of other contemporary and historical packages of information, we discover discipline’s alone, but then paradoxically find connections between them; one to another, nevertheless. A study of any of one of which can require many years of dedicated research and practice, and still after that; the corpus of whichever, to most of us mere mortals, turns out to be too expansive to fully get a grasp of the produce its essence has given birth to; by way of timeless teaching’s, or spawned by way of what Joseph Glanvill called; ‘The Vanity of Dogmatizing'(1661), and distilled to some extent in the Mathew Arnold poem ‘The Scholar-Gypsy’ with a reminder for the contemporary world in the poetic section of the ‘Lol Cooper Band’ song ‘Time Flies’ also pointing to another poem ‘Wind Hover’ by Gerald Manley Hopkins. Is our situation hopeless then? No! The key to meaning is aim; to find an aim, to take aim, and to Work at not missing our mark. And if we are wide of the mark? Try again, and again; as if sometimes is seems as though we’re forever beginning again in the moment, whilst at the same time being aware of that apocryphal saying; ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. To avoid madness in modernity, which it seems Mr Gurdjieff could see coming; he introduced a fundamental precept of his system, which is called ‘self observation;’ allowing us to steadily and cumulatively see ourselves for what we are, and why it is we’ve missed the mark, and sometimes keep missing it. Over long periods of self observation, leading on to another Fourth Way precept called self remembering; Work is done to recognise and deal with imbalances, an individual, often Working with a group, can start to separate the essence of something, which can lead onto ascent and evolution, from that which is false and malefic, and that leads to descent and degradation, with the potential to do damage to themselves and others, often perpetrated in states that don’t even allow them to acknowledge even that; their eye line obscured and perceptions distorted by biased justification and evaluation. However great an expert becomes in their field; the understanding they attain will in the end be made up of components which are the fragments they have found and pieced together leaving many of the jigsaw pieces still undiscovered. A late pupil of G I Gurdjieff called Kathryn Hulme who was part of a group of women that Worked with him and became known as ‘women of the rope’ wrote a book called ‘Undiscovered Country’ which is an interesting read and quite handy for verification, and insight into the later teachings and writings of Mr G I Gurdjieff.

So when a window of opportunity seems to be sprung upon, by way of cosmology; the uninitiated and unsuspecting, who are suddenly told to shape up quickly, the time is now, planets are aligned, pay attention, the door is closing, you can ascend or descend, but the Universe requires you to choose now. Well! without time for verification, confusion and bemusement will most probably rein; like the scientists who imagine they can fathom everything from the origin of the universe, to its end, and in between imagine they can prove the meaninglessness of life; blurting out, by way of self important bloviation, the spurious dogmatic spell; ‘the science says’ which in truth infers that science is never wrong: see ‘Science Fictions’ by Stuart Ritchie to verify some scientific misnomers, and quite often intentional scientific fabrications which lead to the retraction of malefic scientific papers. Science is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and as late physicist John Polkinghorne used to say; “often out of date to some extent within two hundred years.” As said earlier science is one discipline, and it should not be claiming infallibility any more than any other belief system: to reiterate “don’t believe anything until you have verified it for yourself.” Consider Barrow’s Uncertainty Principle; “Any Universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it” a phrase coined by John D Barrow; an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist and mathematician, so straight from the horses mouth so to speak: using a metaphor in the so called year of the fire horse. This however is where the poetry of Mr Eliot, and the System of Mr Gurdjieff come into their own. If the Work is done we can begin to understand that we are in ‘The Waste Land’ and that once we have observed this initially then verified it for ourselves we can take up the tools the System puts in place by Way of the Fourth Way allowing us to move towards an equanimity of mind, and harmonious balance; with moving instinctive functions, and emotions, which prepare us for significant events or alignments, or a good old fashioned worldly unfolding of events, so that a life taking us nowhere in meaningless circles of repetition, can become akin to a coiled spiral, which may help us ascend and evolve, rather than descend and devolve; into the mire on an ever greater meaningless existence. See line four of part 1; ‘Call Me Carpenter’ of ‘A Scapeshifter’ and for for aim whilst collecting fragments part 4 ‘William Telemachus’ line 2.

Part 4 of ‘A Scapeshifter’ is the shortest part of the poem but as a poem within a poem it does what the poet should do; try to see what’s coming early, and distill it for posterity and conveyance. If change is coming? And each of us must verify that for ourselves then it might well be by way of a renaissance which pulls those who want to catch and embrace a change for the better, from mundane naturalistic money worshiping modernity, to creative seekers of truth; finding meaning as they put some distance between themselves and the superstition of materialism. An early pupil in France at ‘The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man’ Maurice Nicoll was a psychiatrist and first world war army doctor who had been a colleague of Carl Gustav Jung before the war, and a pupil of P D Ouspensky after the war in London, before going onto Work with Mr Gurdjieff at Chateau Le Prieure at Fontainebleau-Avon, near Paris before later returning to England subsequently becoming a ‘Fourth Way’ Teacher and writer who whoes teaching are recorded in a series of books which became known as ‘The Commentaries’ which to which the song ‘Time Flies’ by ‘The Lol Cooper Band’ has a pointer near the opening of the number which says; “you can’t change and remain the same” which is stating the obvious but that does not necessarily n

mean the message of Mr Gurdjieff, and subsequent writers and teachers of his System like Mr Maurice Nicoll and Mr P D Ouspensky will be heeded; this Work is not for everybody, most people are to attached to their toxic negative emotions to countenance leaving them behind. The poem ‘A Scapeshifter’ has also been distilled into cliff notes as another subsequent poem ‘Beauty Things’ which also looks to draw attention to the 100th anniversary of the T S Eliot poem ‘The Hollow Men’ which is cliff notes of ‘The Waste Land’ and has been said by some to be T S Eliot’s greatest achievement in poetry. ‘The Waste Land’ by T S Eliot references many works of art and connections to the past and was originally going to be called ‘He Do the Police in Different Voices’ which is a line from a Charles Dickin’s book. You can verify this by reading through the works of Charles Dickens which if you have a day job and normal life commitments will take you about three to four years, or you can ask aficionado of Mr Dickin’s work or embrace modern day technology, and stick it in a search engine? You may get to where you’re aiming to be, or you may be deceived by something on wikapedia that’s been hijacked and twisted by dubious types with twisted agendas. It’s why C S Lewis in an essay wrote about what he called the fresh sea breeze of the ages where old books contained timeless truths which can protect us from incorrect ephemeral assumptions of our time. C S Lewis and T S Eliot became friends and even worked together in later life. A R Orage who owned the weekly magazine ‘The New Age’ from 1907 until 1922 was a friend of T S Eliot and also G I Gurdjieff. Mr Eliot regarded Mr Orage highly and desribed him as “the finest critical intelligence of aour day.” Mr Gurdjieff sent A R Orage off the United States in the 1920’s after he had spent time at ‘The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man’ near Pari in France to be his ambassador and fund raiser there and to later work as a translator on G I Gurdjieffs’s ‘All and Everything’ in three series.

The time lines and people connect; the poem ‘Beauty Things’ was also a preamble to the song ‘Time Flies’ by ‘The Lol Cooper Band’ which also connects to a song called ‘Minds Eye’ off the bands album ‘Soul to Sun’ which aligns directly with the poem ‘A Scapeshifter’ which distills down to essence to facilitate being open to that which is Higher whilst still being grounded in ‘Beauty Things’ which can lead back to then away from ‘The Hollow Men’ and as you verify all this the time will fly and that’s why the poets must put the music into the poetry.