Note: Sometimes the beauty of undines rises to the level of an archetype--each individual may in fact interact with the same undine and yet each individual's experience is always personal and something uniquely their own. Though I have written about my own experiences with Istiphul in my book, Sylphs, Undines, Gnomes, and Salamanders, it is appropriate with this undine to speculate and try to describe her archetypal aspects.

They feast on raptures unconfin'd/ Vast & luxuriant, such as prove/ The immortality of Love/ For who but a divinity/ Could mingle souls to that degree/ And melt them into Extasy.

--William Blake, Memoranda from the Note-Book 1807

That ancient king known as Solomon who sat on an ivory throne--he was known throughout the world for wealth beyond compare and also profound wisdom. And Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.

But I do not think that Solomon's women were as beautiful nor did they bear such treasures of spirit from distant lands as those with whom I meditate. But you can decide this for yourself as to who has been more inspired by the opposite gender or who greets with greater welcome the Mystery of Love--the king when he wrote The Song of Solomon or I when I dialogue with the queens of undines.

Have you heard this tale or even one song sung of the Queen of undines named Istiphul? No? Then let us begin! Istiphul is the most beautiful creature on this planet other than a goddess. If it were possible, her beauty would rival what sages and poets describe as the goddess Dawn spoken of in Hindu mythology--the first feminine form born of Creation. Istiphul is that undine, that spirit of the sea, whose touch more than bliss bestows and whose eyes know secrets no sailor on earth will ever discover by sailing the seven seas.

In the past bards did not sing of Istiphul nor mention her name aloud--mankind was deemed too weak to endure such beauty. But my voice is not bound by the laws governing former bards. And where they would have kept Istiphul secret, to have her for themselves alone, I am more generous than they: I speak aloud and I offer my songs to the entire world.

How did I happened to meet such a creature of wonder so hidden and unknown? When I gaze at the sea, it is impossible for me not to feel her presence. Her fragrance is in the wind. Her voice is in the sound of the breaking waves. Her touch is in the spray and drops of water running down my skin.

To speak with her, to call her forth, is just a matter of opening your senses to the presence of the sea and following your feelings back to their source. But this is not to say that such an encounter is without risk or danger. When I first spoke with Istiphul decades ago I entered that place we all know so well but can not define--in quiet moments an uninvited feeling may accost us--an indescribable sadness fall upon us. This sadness is perhaps an echo, a reverberation from feeling separated, but we do not know precisely from what. And the instant I saw Istiphul I said to myself--

I will never meet a woman who is this beautiful.

This thought was like a lightning bolt hurled through an empty void within my soul, a void her face had just revealed. It spoke of an unnamed loss--a tension with no release.

And though many others would have fled thinking this knowledge too forbidden to behold, I stayed and faced it. I felt the emptiness which gripped my soul. And I tasted every bit of that sorrow which lingers in us from being so distant from nature.

But you know, looking back two decades later, I think I was quite wrong about the beauty of human women compared to the pure enchantment concealed within nature--for one of life's greatest secrets is that she is full of surprises. And though I have kept Istiphul's existence secret for these many years, I am now free to sing of her beauty--that mankind might be informed of the power of love hidden within the depths of the sea.

Ah, Istiphul! She is the essence of feminine companionship. When I first touched her aura with my hand, I realized I had just met a woman who could and would willingly create out of her inner being, out of her feminine essence, the perfect counterpart to all of my desires. She even perceives unknown needs I have not yet discovered within myself.

My dreams, what I have sought, what I have lost--she comes weaving a spell of love that harmonizes all that I am. The deepest place within me which I can not find--she is alive there already shining with beauty that radiates and flows freely throughout my soul.

But Istiphul is not a fantasy. And it is not that she molds her identity to fit my imagination. She is not as many mortal women who out of insecurity create something fake to please their mate, surrendering their own will and life in the bargain, as collateral.

Rather, she is a master of what magicians call the magnetic fluid: the feminine counterpart to the electric, masculine energy in the universe. And these two together are a part of every creative act whether it be conception, the moment of inspiration in art, or the birth of the universe. When these two are acting together, the magnetic and electric fluids, Fate herself comes forth to bargain and accept them as payment for changes we wish to made in reality--so great is their value and their influence.

With a magical empathy, Istiphul senses my whole being and then uses her beauty to make me feel complete. She creates a space of love where two separate and individual souls may find each other and unite as one. Her great gift and mastery are nothing else than a knowledge all those on earth who have found true love practice and celebrate.

A Secret Longing of the Kings of the Earth

I tell you Istiphul is the one for whom the kings of the world have longed to have as their consort. But their bards, poets, wise men, sages, priests, druids, and Brahmans, at least those who knew of her, would not disclose her name or reveal her existence--due to selfishness, yes, but there is more. They were strangely silent as if something they could not even bring into their consciousness did bind them, forbidding even one song to be written or spoken--

Lest human evolution take a different turn from what has been ordained or from a course which moves within acceptable boundaries.

And so it has been that some bards have had a distinct advantage in living their lives with an unknown zest, a passion, and an abandon kings do not possess. But sensing that this happiness is a real possibility, the kings of old made it against the law to interfere with the work of bards--they were waiting to hear songs such as this that it might lighten their woes and replace the darkness in their souls with songs of mirth and rapture blended.

And so it is no jest--I tell you, if Helen of Troy had been as beautiful as Istiphul, it would not have been just the Greeks and Trojans but the entire world at war over the right to kiss her lips. And Lancelot, our knight in shining armor, would have overcome his obsession with Guinevere though not many knights would have been left to quest for the Holy Grail if they had known the name Istiphul. And forget not that Merlin too met his match in Niniane who made a fool of him and trapped him under a rock. Yet Niniane was but a mortal woman and had less skill and less power of attraction compared to Istiphul.

And Henry the Eighth would not have embraced Protestant Christianity nor would he have pursued so many wives seeking an heir if there had been a John Dee who had shown the king Istiphul in his magic mirror; no, the king would have lost his interest in posterity with distractions this ripe.

For that matter, if Gauguin or Michelangelo had met Istiphul, their faces would have turned white, their hands shaking, and their heartbeats arrhythmic. But their eyes would not stray for an instant. They would have stood for two days without pausing until they had captured her face on their canvas.

Even Hegel and Marx would have had second thoughts. They would have added a new twist to the march of the dialectic. They would have insisted there is a place where both the Geist which unfolds history and the human soul must go in order to be rejuvenated.

Kierkegaard too would have renounced despair and angst had Istiphul's touch traced lightning through his bones; that is right, his "fear and trembling" would have had an entirely different meaning--on this I speak from experience! In fact, if William Blake had seen Istiphul as more than a blur in the distance his visions would have rivaled the Prophet Isaiah and the Apostle John.

The sages whose songs originated the Vedas and Upanishads, they too did not know of Istiphul--barely an echo of her is heard anywhere in the world's mythologies. For if they had known her, the poets of India would not have been so fanciful in populating the celestial realms with such a glittering array of deities. No! They would have been more empirical and stuck closer to nature as they fashioned images--their mystical dreams would have been more concrete and filled with the sounds of waves, wind, rain, and the seas.

And that other child of India, the Buddha--with his gentle, enigmatic, and transcendental smile, a smile inviting us all to melt into infinity--his smile would have been kinder, less monastic and stark, had the artists of India sculptured statutes of Istiphul from marble and ivory.

Others, of the Tibetan inclination, say that the Buddha already knew of Istiphul. The Buddha once changed his form into that of Kalachakra at the request of King Suchandra who was from Shambhala. At that time, the Buddha included Istiphul as one of the 720 entities within the mandala of planetary liberation--though she is known there by another name and is not so clearly seen in her beauty as she is within my poetry.

But my exploration of the four elements on earth would not be complete if I did not speak of Istiphul. And though until now no bard was free to speak her name aloud and reveal her beauty to the world, no seal nor secret may bind nor limit my voice--you see, my patron, Divine Providence, has so ordered it.