Lunar Fool: Two Stagetales

Contents

Author’s Forward to the Stagetales

Part 1

THE LUNAR PROJECT

Prelude Incantation to Luna

ACT I The Dog Star

ACT II Isis

THE HOLY FOOL

ACT I, Scene 1

ACT I, Scene 2

ACT II The Rescue

Part II

1. The Alchemist

2. Journal Sources for The Lunar Project and The Holy Fool

About the Author

To all who share this Spirit, especially Jala.

Author’s Forward to the Stagetales

The production history of these stagetales…that is, tales written to be acted out before an audience…began in June, 1995, when I first performed The Dog Star, now Act I of The Lunar Project, before a small, literary, coffee-house gathering at Prince Books in downtown Norfolk, VA. Encouraged by the reception there, I prepared The Lunar Project in its entirety for its world premiere, which happened that October (for one night only) at the Heritage Center in Virginia Beach. In June, 1996, I performed it again at Norfolk’s D’Art Center under the sponsorship of the Tidewater Dramatists Guild, of which I am a member.

From its premiere, The Lunar Project has included a Prelude, Incantation to Luna, written by my partner Jala Magik and performed as a dance to the spoken words…a dancepoem…against a musical background.

Meanwhile, The Holy Fool had a first staged reading at the Generic Theater in Norfolk, again under the sponsorship of the TDG, in March, 1997. Its world premier occurred that June at Second Story Theater in Norfolk, where it finally closed in November after running (weekends only) for 22 weeks.

Hard upon The Holy Fool’s closing in December, 1997, The Lunar Project got its turn at Second Story Theater, where it played four weekends. It was reprised for two weekends in September, 1998, after winning the Hampton Roads area Port Folio Award for the Best New Play of 1997-98.

Part One of this volume presents the stagetales. Edited and revised continuously through their performance history, their text has been crafted to please the solitary reader as well as the general listener in a theater audience. Hopefully, to some small degree, it accomplishes both.

Part Two, The Making of Lunar Fool, is for those interested in how these tales came to be and what I think they’re supposed to mean, including the documentation upon which I drew in writing them. Perhaps these sections will inspire others to try similar methods to reach their individual truths.

None of this would have been possible without the help and support of many. First on that list is Jala, my partner not only in work and in life but in the shared quest that has led to discovery of the secrets, however modest or marginal, herein unveiled. Thank you, Jala.

Nor would this work have been possible without the enduring influence of my mortal mother, Kitty Loving Shenk, who at times all my life until her final illness flagellated me consistently with the mantra, Know thyself! Balancing her philosophical militancy, my mortal dad Franklin

E. Shenk communicated his truth nonverbally, encouraging me to find the words.

Without the information in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall, the original idea for these stagetales could never have occurred to me. But without Paul Foster Case’s The Tarot, a compressed gem of occult symbolism and lore, I would never have been ready for the information in Manly. Behind them stand my Tarot teacher, Rusty Carnarius; my dream teacher, Marianne Wolfe; and my colleagues and friends in theater, in psychology, in alternative lifestyles and workplaces, in consciousness-raising and dream groups, and in crime.

I also owe a debt of thanks to my various producing partners. Mary Burke at the Heritage Center made The Lunar Project’s premier a reality. Jean Klein at the Tidewater Dramatists Guild kindly facilitated further development and opened the door to The Holy Fool. Billy Dean’s base-ment-tape video of The Lunar Project, shot improvisationally in the environs of Norfolk’s beachfront Ocean View district, kept the piece alive when no one else seemed interested. Ethan and Richard Marten, owners of Second Story Theater, practically handed their space over to these two shows for a full six months. Christa Jones, as director of The Holy Fool, helped me create the narrative style for both pieces and stood by me when the critics, predictably, ganged up on me. And countless audience members took the time to encourage and congratulate me, even when many seats were empty, laughs scarce, and the applause light. Foremost among these were my sister Kate and my brother-in-law Tom Harner, who journeyed 300 miles on four occasions to see performances.

But most of all I stand in awe-filled gratitude before the source of these musings. Out of little, It has, I believe, made much.

D.D. Delaney

Norfolk, VA Oct.21, 2001

Part 1

The Stagetales

THE LUNAR PROJECT

Prelude Incantation to Luna

by Jala Magik

O Mother, Goddess, Mare Luna,

Of most comfort to a daughter.

She smiles down at me and is

luminous, rosy-pearled,

Jewel of the blue evening sky,

Jewel of the sea.

She takes up and brushes my hair

With wind, with water, her thousand

hands caressing,

She fans out my hair all around

me in the sea,

And I watch it with delight,

Streaming behind me like her

own bright green seaweed,

her waving grasses.

She fills my eyes with light,

She, whitest of all beings,

White as that stone that has

no name

And is silent.

In silence I hear her voice singing

over me,

Rocking rocking rocking me

As her most beloved child, her most beloved

daughter;

She fills me with such love that

I melt into her sweetness, her song

Cradling me in the softest blue silk

of her skies,

Bathing me in the deepest green

of her waters.

And my breath comes in and

goes out,

Comes in and goes out, like the ebb

And flow of her tides,

In and out, and I drink of sweetness,

Her sweetness, Mother; I melt into her,

I drown in her waters, ‘til She is me,

And I am She, every motion, every dance,

Endlessly endlessly infinite, always

And forever….alive.

…end prelude…

THE LUNAR PROJECT

ACT I

The Dog Star

(1)

In the last months of 1973, before our commune fell, I received two prophetic signs. If I’d recognized them at the time, which I didn’t, I would have understood that my real life was far from over, my true goals only clarified, when all that I clung to so hopelessly…my home, my way of life, and most of my friends, my closest comrades…were finally lost.

By then, I suppose to compensate for our group insecurity, we were all sleeping in Heaven. That was the name we’d optimistically given to the upstairs room of virtually wall-to-wall mattresses, above the kitchen, under the low-peaked roof. In the two-and-a-half years of our commune’s existence, we’d shared many intimacies…and many griefs…in Heaven.

At night, we kept a red darkroom bulb lit, so people could see their way back and forth to bed. Someone was always awake and prowling around.

Sometimes, in the deep of the night…in that red light…when something would wake me, my normal perceptions would not immediately engage. There would be a slippery gap of time and space between sleeping and waking, a delay of recognition, as my familiar surroundings emerged, like a photograph in developing fluid. And in that gap, sometimes….

Well, strange things happened.

One night, I was interrupted from sleep by a caress…soft, warm and moist, deliberate…a kiss in fact, sweet, tenderly brushing my lips and nose. I opened my eyes in surprise. A dark-skinned, sylph-like creature, not two feet tall, almost shadow-like behind a brown veil billowing off her back, glided away as she glanced back at me over her shoulder. She wore a golden half-mask that highlighted black, almond-oval eyes, glistening with affection. My heart swelled with a powerful love for her as I lifted myself to my elbow. I wanted to reach out for her, call her back.

She looked away and waddled on out of the room. Only then did I see that it was Marilyn, our little German shepherd-beagle mix, a dear heart to be sure, once you got to know her. But few could claim that privilege. She’d never allowed herself to be tamed.

What had put it in her mind to kiss me like that in my sleep? And who was that eastern lover, that exotic dancer, who first appeared to my dream-soaked eyes? Could she have been Marilyn’s unveiled soul, her true self?

No matter. I felt as if I’d been blessed by the entire natural world in that kiss! I fell back to sleep with a smile, savoring the depths of tenderness she’d stirred in me.

That was the first sign. I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t understand it for many years. But not long after, Marilyn disappeared. We believed one of our former members, in an act of passion, coldly calculated, had kidnapped her and had her killed. But we were never certain.

In another few years, suburban developers were making plans for a shopping center on what had once been the wooded acres behind the commune property. By then, of course, it was no longer a commune but a private family residence. The natural spirit had left. When I realized that, I also realized that I could probably pinpoint just about precisely when it had happened.

Not long after Marilyn’s disappearance, in the middle of another night only a few weeks before the end, something again woke me up. I was lying on my back. In the dim, red-lit glow spread across the low, sloped ceiling, there was a man standing at the foot of my mattress, watching me. I had the impression he’d been there for awhile. He wore an overcoat or cloak, but no hat or hood, and I could see his face clearly…a friendly face, a lean, weathered, strong-featured face, with thick, bushy hair and deep, humorous eyes. I gazed up at him for a moment in utter peace and trust, not at all surprised, like a child waking up to see my father, back home late from business, come into my room to say goodnight, and smiling down on me with great kindness, great benevolent reassurance.

But though I instinctively trusted, and, I think, loved this man, it began to dawn on my waking consciousness that I didn’t know him. Who was he? What was he doing in here? I squinted for focus, but, familiar as he seemed, I just couldn’t place him.

Curiosity began to rouse me. I lifted my head, peering at him. I pulled myself up on an arm.

In an instant, half his energy banks blinked off! It was as if someone threw a switch! He still smiled at me, but he was only half as vivid. At the same time, I