Travels with Mani
Welcome to another adventure from the Thousand Acre Woods deep within Trollheim of the NJ Pine Belt! Tales Chronicled by Jonathan Hulton... That's me! In today’s tale, Pops, Bjorn, and I sit under the night sky celebrating our yearly celebration of Mani. Happy Manimas—how would you like someone to sing happy birthday to your job title...
I was walking to Pop's observatory. His tribe used this clearing to observe the sky to coordinate the planting seasons.
We were meeting here, like every September 13th, to observe the constellation Virgo give birth.
My Clontarf sword on my hip, I was bringing it to show Bjorn. When I got into the clearing, I saw Pop's putting wood on the fire. I lit one of the candles on the stump and sat down next to Bjorn.
Bjorn was polishing a katana, which was unexpected. "Where did you get that?" I asked.
"I got it the first time visiting Mani in Shingō,"
"Japan?"
"Yes, when we were younger men," Bjorn continued while dabbing some powder on the blade; "we learned from Buddhist sages in India. Later, we wanted to learn how it shaped up when mixed with Shinto thought."
"I never knew he traveled that far," I pondered.
"That, and he introduced them to yogurt," he laughed.
"Yogurt?"
"There is still a yogurt factory in Shingō…"
"A true prophet who could milk it for all its worth…"
"Hey…"
"OK, Im sorry."
"He met a local priestess, a Quan Ying sort," he smiled. "A sort of good samaritan miracle worker, Mani learned a lot from her—she was smarter than him. She did all of her healings in private, and denied every one of them. It kept traffic to a comfortable trickle."
"Did he fall in love?"
"Deeply, but she didn't hide her mutual love.
"She was his watchtower to his shepard. She overviewed the whole, he dealt with them one at a time.
"They taught the community and their children to do for themselves and in return they were taught by them as well."
"Why did you bring the sword tonight?" I asked.
"Discernment," Bjorn answered. "the sword is exacting, it choses like a butter knife. It selects a slice or two from the loaf. It points to its goal. It determines."
"The sheath?"
"A return to the womb, shelter, stillness, illumination."
"Arthur's sheath was even more powerful than his sword, the sheath would mend all wounds," I smiled, thinking I said something he didn't know.
"Oh, I made that sheath for the Fisher King, but he lost it…
"Mani and I ventured there with Nicodemus and Arimathea—it was outside of Rome's reach, at least for ten years.
"Mother Mary went to Ephesus in Turkey where they worshiped Artemis and we had went to Britain and created the Arthur myth—the bear cult centered on death and resurrection.
"Though it was the little death, the ego-death. Artemis ruled the moon, which symbolizes the little deaths that we find when we lose a job and start anew, one love affair ends and another begins, when on quits liquor and is saved."
"Ursa Major and Orion, Artemis' lover and bear are flanking Virgo tonight—when Virgo is in the house of the sun its time to reap wheat for bread. Mani was born in the house of bread, Bethlehem.
"In Communion, we eat the bread of life," I aded as Pops sat next to us.
Pops offered some tobacco to the wind. "We harvest corn in September. We have a god who gave his life to one of our brothers to be planted and born again as corn—Mon-da-min."
"I know that one, the boy wrestled him for four days until he died, and was planted," Bjorn added.
"Thor's day, the fourth day, the day Mani was taken off the cross," I explained.
"I thought he was crucified on Friday," Pop's questioned.
"Catholics can't count, if he was in the tomb for three days and rose on Sunday…" Bjorn answered.
"I knew those missionaries had some issues…" Pops shook his head.
"Three hours of darkness, three women at the cross, and three days in the tomb," Bjorn counted.
"After his ninth step, after defeating the serpent, Thor fell as if he was dead—"
"Yes, three times three is nine," Pops added.
"Thor survived the end of the world along with his sons," I concluded.
"So did Mani, he survived the end of the world after the destruction of the temple, with his sons and wife," Bjorn said.
"I bet he had trouble eating his yogurt with that sword…" I concluded.
"OK, better sheath any future comments about swords and sheaths," Bjorn warned.
"My wife loves eating my corn," Pops interjected.
"That was truly corny," I added.
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Following the Harry N. Abrams, Inc. tradition of the series that created Brian Froud's and Alan Lee's Faeries and Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, we present you with what would have been the next book in the series: Trolls: A Compendium. Trolls—do you think you know what they are? Could you be wrong?
Trolls within Scandinavian lore, myth, saga, fantasy, and folktales are actually anything magical within our northern neighbor's culture. Richly illustrated in this volume are the tales of faeries, dwarves, nissen, huldras, gods, Jotuns, draugar, ghosts, and more. Also, this book introduces our readers to the world of Trollheim, populated by Nattrolls that escaped the 17th-century Swedish colony within the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Narrated by Christopher Jonathan Hulton, who lives in the Thousand Acre Woods just after the Civil War, their tales are filled with Native American lore and tales of their neighbor, the Jersey Devil.
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