There is a place, one supposes, that calls to a simpler time. An age of pastoral greenery and unbridled passion. An idyllic ideal of the imagination, yearning to unravel through the concrete and tarmac trails of modernity. Arcadia, ever-present yet elusive, flickers in words and thought. An ancestral echo, barefoot in fecundity yet fragmented in form.

By Will of Margaret, I found my way.

She beckoned me to the city. To a secret garden (of sorts) beneath the spires of avarice. To a hall where once magick swelled. To a lecture on the nature of nature.

“The Idyllegy“, a book by poet Thomas Sharp, invokes Arcadia in its pages. Not merely appreciation of the natural world; but very much an affirmation of our place within it and its place within us.

Through the evening in Bridewell Hall he spoke of inspiration. Of the power of words to invoke metaphor. Of The Wind in the Willows and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Of Gilgamesh and Maid Marian. Herdsmen and Aphrodite. Ur-archetypes of horned gods and maidens fair, speaking to the eros of deeper truth. The freedom and horror within the wild. The life-giver, Pan; and the eternal goddess encompassing all.

Lurking in the negative space between words and thought-forms, the connections manifest. Between people. Between dreams. Between then and now and beyond. Moments of pause in a peripheral glimpse of bucolic belonging. Deftly tracing Arcadian lineage from antiquity to those present today.

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This was no dry lecture of mumbled uncertainty and inconclusive introspection. This was a feast of possibility in absinthe-tinged art, the Green Beast in libido-liberating libation. Delicate piano and vocal recitals from Sarah Kershaw channeled Debussy. Emotive, enthralling video from Francesca Way captivated the soul. And of course, Margaret’s magick in illustration and music enriched her already enchanting presence.

Weaving through the heady words came ceremony. A modern re-interpretation of Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis, once performed at this very location to much scandal, but repurposed now in rose petals and whispered kindness (with a cheeky nod to Liber Resh). The spirits of god-concepts, planets and beasts swirled in summoning, serenaded by solar-system sonification, correspondences all for the nature of man.

And through wilful participation, joy was invoked. Arcadian splendour from a world beyond the walls. Subversive escapism. A resonance of beauty and becoming.

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We contest the challenges of the universe pragmatically. “It is what it is”, our ubiquitous mantra of grim determination. Rationalising strife and suffering as the stoic clay from which we build character. Deferring our essential, ephemeral nature with the promise of a better life beyond.

But it is also joy that defines us, for character is tested too in jubilation. How we dance and play; succumbing to the rapture of ecstatic madness. How we smile in gratitude; of old friends reuniting and new bonds forged in laughter. How we love; those tender, deliberate touches that speak of acceptance. Arcadia is found in all these lustful moments and more, and the richness of life borne in all its bounty.

Io Pan!