Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: mythology

  • ‘Hittites: A History From Beginning to End’ by Hourly History – book review

    Hittites: A History From Beginning to End by Hourly History
    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    The name Uriah always fascinated me from British Rock band Uriah Heep to the biblical Uriah, whose beautiful wife led him ultimately to death, willy-nilly, by King David infatuated with her sensuousness. When I learned that the ancestor of Uriahs was the founder of the Hittites race, being the great-grandson of Noah, the biblical patriarch, I had a Eureka moment. Consequently, I picked up this concise but comprehensive book on the Hittites to know a little more about the people whose founder had the great name.

    Before the splendor of ancient Greek contributions to our human cultural progress as a collective enterprise, there was the forgotten but enduring legacy of the Hittites, the mysterious Indo-European trailblazers of civilizations at the crossroads of the East and the West in the vast plain of modern-day Turkey. The Hittites were an integral people to solve the mystery of mythological and biblical events anchored in the real world, thus dissolving fact and legend into one another like a genie from an empire that vanished into the dunes of time and comes alive in the calling. The calling of these mysteriously vanished people came first from British Reverends Archibald Henry Sayce and William Wright in the early 19th century. They discovered the artifacts and sites of the Hittites. Their discovery led to more remarkable discoveries. During the middle Bronze age and Iron age, the Hittites were the first to utilize iron from the region of present Armenia to craft tools and weapons. Also, the Hittites were deft at commerce, developing the city of Carchemish as an ancient mercantile hubbub in which they imported products from Phoenicia and exported them to Assyria (the North) and Babylon (the South) in Mesopotamia. In this fabulous ancient city, Israelites of the Old Testament acted as intermediaries in trade between Egyptians for exporting horses and chariots and the Hittites for importing them.

    Like all those famous entertainers who sparkled then lost the lusters, the Hittites as a collective empire fell from splendor gradually by outside forces: some pointed the fingers at the Sea People, while the others blamed a certain barbarous Kaska people. But, perhaps, such clandestine ending of the Hittites is what makes them formidably alluring and mysteriously fascinating, blurring the boundary of fact and legend. Suppose you are keen on the history of ancient civilizations other than Greece and Egypt. In that case, this elegant primer for the history of the Hittites will equip you with fundamental knowledge enough to whet your craving for more and more profound knowledge about the Hittites.



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  • the castle east of the sun west of the moon

    She sits under the shades of willow
    Where she came from, no one cares
    The castle East of the Sun West of the Moon.

    Then the leaves of the tree whisper to her ears
    “Ride on the wings of the Four Winds therefrom
    The Castle East of the Sun West of the Moon.”

    She speaks in the language of the wind, Aeolian
    And calls for the Four Winds to carry her home
    The Castle East of the Sun the West of the Moon.

    First East wind comes, she rides on his wings anon,
    West Wind, South Wind, and to North Wind reaching
    The Castle East of the Sun West of the Moon.

    Ere the Sun goes west and the Moon comes east
    Or she will never get to her beloved home
    The Castle East of the Sun West of the Moon.

  • the golden apples

    Maidens of the Evening Star, Daughters of Atlas
    Goddesses of the Evening, Children of Nyx
    Live far away from here beyond glorious oceans
    On the boundary of the Night encircled by stars
    with pales hues of sunshine in the land of the Hesperides;


    Mirth and music spring from the land of the Hesperides
    Where they tend a garden of divine golden apples
    Guarded by the faithful dragon Ladon with mighty wings
    Swooping four winds, bellowing a crescendo of flames
    That envelope the circle of divine parameter against the mortals
    Till the impetuous half-man, half-god Hercules darts an arrow
    Dipped in the blood of Hydra piercing the heart that dies in sorrow
    shedding the tears for love for his goddesses, the Hesperides;


    They mourn for the death of their beloved Ladon, whose blood flows
    From the still warm heart and meets with tears from the diamond eyes;
    And the gods of Olympus bring the slain dragon among the stars
    And give him a house of his own named Draco where he can watch always
    Over the garden of golden apples in his beloved land of the Hesperides.

  • the wizard of rain

    The wizard of rain, the knight of nature,
    Goes to the hill in the twilight of the dawn
    With a falcon sitting on his right shoulder
    And rising to the virgin sky before a new sun
    in search of the meadow where a moon was drawn.

    The wizard of rain, the collector of wonder,
    Gathers dewdrops from the fresh frost of grass
    Into a crystal bottle and reads his grimoire
    As the falcon flaps his wings in the air
    And brings the forces of nature in abundance.

    The wizard of rain, the wondrous sorcerer,
    Calls the names of gods, demons, and angels
    Wielding his wand in a symphony of nature
    Amid the swaying leaves of the grass and trees,
    All in harmony bringing rains from the sky.

  • Draw the Moon

    The sky is howling in the twilight

    As the chariot of the moon flies;

    She hears her fate that she wants not

    Thru the rustling leaves and grass

    Swaying in the wind of the chariot

    And draws the moon from the seat

    To take back her unwanted future.

  • “Insidious” (2010) – film review

    “Insidious” (2010), directed by James Wan is an intelligent movie with an entertaining flair to hold the attentions of both serious and light-hearted movie lovers. I am glad to have watched it last night on Netflix after reading a book on the history of ancient magic and ritual, and I must say there must be some kind of strange reason that I came upon the movie. It always seems so pat to find a supernatural movie orbiting around me and materializing at an apropos time that it gives me chilling fillip to my suspected element unrealized from within. Whatever it may be, and apart from all the mysterious signs hinting at something about my unknown anima, I am pleased to write about the movie herein.

    The movie is anything but a faulty horror movie. Not “Insidious.” Hardly Ever the criticism of flamboyant cast. Never the limitations of a seemingly infinite range of imaginations that the writer wrote and the director portrayed. It is beautiful alchemy of the harmonious performance of the stellar cast and brilliant storytelling of the extraordinary event in the ordinary existence, all fascinating and riveting. Like an incantation of a professional sorcerer, the narrative slowly builds mystery around the atmosphere. It brings up images of the beyond at the zenith of the ritual when everything seems ready for demons or the superiors to appear before your very eyes.

    The magnet of the movie is the Elise character faultlessly played by Lin Shaye, who began to change my perspectives on a psychic that if there is one like her in real life, I would love to chat with her and possibly work for her even as a part-time assistant. Elise reminds me of an ancient Cumaean Sybil who helped Trojan refugee Aeneas meet his father’s spirit in the Underworld with a gentle but powerful voice elucidating her beautiful spirit. But to call her psychic doesn’t do justice to her essence and vocation as a mystic helping people in distress. She balances her spiritual power with a rational mind by scientific methods to discern the origins of the spiritual maladies of her clients. And she does it in the gracefulness of a good witch performing white magic that I believe even priests would be envious of.

    What makes the movie on par with the timeless supernatural film is the universal subject of the world beyond our sensory perceptions and across religious dogmas. It’s the world of “Further” where spirits lost wander around and dammed lurk in the darker corners of the crossroads. Elise helps the lost spirit of the boy in the Further find his way back to Here and goes further than she should save people’s lives from the evil power even it means to be at her expense.

    “Insidious” is a thoughtful movie dealing with a supernatural thematic element that is harder to play on the screen than it is to envision in the mind’s theater. The movie’s impression spreads into a mind’s garden and stays there in alterations like an insidious charm of ghastly sightseeing so incredible that you can hardly dispel it. If you like to watch a good, decent ghost movie without mutilated bodies and ear-shattering screams, but ghosts or demons only, this movie may do.