The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #16284   Message #151956
Posted By: _gargoyle
20-Dec-99 - 12:29 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Bright Blue Rose (Jimmy MacCarthy)
Subject: RE: Help: Bright Blue Rose
Using a plebian slang term like "GEEK" these lyrics probably are not based on a literary, mythical, or historical allusions.

However, last night, reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (translatted by H.T. Lowe-Porter) Oriiginallyt issued as Der Zauberberg copyright 1924 by S. Fisher Verlag, Berlin, copyright 1952 by Thomas Mann, copyright 1981 The Franklin Library 1981, p. 511.

"As for the lodge, however, I am thinking of the cult of the sepulchre, to whom I referred you before. In both cases it has to do with a symbolism of the ultimate, with elements of orgiastic primitive religion, with wild sacrificial rites by night, to the honour of dying transforming, death, metamorphosis, resurrection. You will recall that the mysteries of Isis, the the Eleusinian mysteries too, were served by night, and in caverns. In Freemasonry there are present a host of Egyptian survivals, and there were, among the secret societies, some that called themselves Eleusinian. There were lodges that held feasts of Eleusinian mysteries and aphrodistic rites which finally did introduce the female element: feasts of roses, to which reference is made in the three blue-roses on the Masonic apron, and which often passed over into the bacchantic." (emphasis added)