WORD Before the written word, there was the spoken word. Before the chronicles of history, there were stories. Before tabloids and the messy spawn of scandalous gossip, ballads and epic poems sounded in mouths of bards and minnesingers. Against the blind furies of forgetfulness, arose high cultures of memory. Long before civilized humanity slumped into pulp fiction and sado-masochistic fantasies, myths were weaving threads of truth into archetypes, extending the dimensions of reality. Guiding words of fire’s intensity and eloquence resonate joyously through the alchemic laboratories of time! You who have befriended Tolkien and the Shire, Arthur, Merlin, and voyagers to the Isle of Women, far, far off in…