“p>Fierce and gentle,
Loud and silent,
The river doesn't understand itself.
The wave doesn't find itself, until it reaches the sea.Oh the wave passes,
And the waves to come will be the same.
Hunger for love
Is strong in the heart.Standing before the waves,
I think of you and me.
I think of the great sea
And I wonder where the waves come from.The waves must come from the wind.
And I wonder where the wind comes from,
And I wonder
When will we love each other again?The waves deep in the sea
And the waves on the sea's surface
Long for the shore of the sea.
Day and night the waves cannot sleep
As I can not sleep, even in dreams,
Because of my longing for you.When I go to the North,
Or to the South,
When I go anywhere, I think of you,
My only direction.Out in the great sea
Thousands of waves are pushing,
Which one never reachs the shore
Even miles and miles from home?Life is so long;
Years and months go by.
Like the sea, life is endless.
Clouds fly to the distant horizon.How can I become
Like the hundreds of thousands of small waves
In the great sea of love
And lap forever against your shore?”

Pibroch of Donald Dhu (1816), St. 4.

Quoted in "Heath Ledger's Lonesome Trail" http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9448111/heath_ledgers_lonesome_trail/print, Rolling Stone, March 23, 2006.

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The magician to some degree is trying to drive him or herself mad in a controlled setting, within controlled laws. You ask the protective spirits to look after you, or whatever. This provides a framework over an essentially amorphous experience. You are setting up your terms, your ritual, your channels – but you deliberately stepping over the edge into the madness. You are not falling over the edge, or tripping over the edge.
When I was a kid, I used to go to the seaside and play in the waves. The thing you learn about waves, is that when you see a big one coming, you run towards it. You try and get out of its way and you’ll end up twenty yards up the beach covered in scratches. Dive into it, and then you can get behind it. You get on top it, you won’t be hurt. It is counter-intuitive, the impulse is to run away, but the right thing to do is to plunge into it deliberately, and be in control when you do it. Magic is a response to the madness of the twentieth century.

"The Strong Are Saying Nothing
1930s

The Moonlit Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

The Wave of the Future (1940)

Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.
Source: Confessions (c. 397), X