Paradisial

The grounds around the castle, paradisial in their own natural beauty under this heavenly blue sky of June, were adorned with all that art and taste and wealth could bring to enhance their attractions in honor of the occasion.

Nor far they steppèd when on culm'inant height / where stretcht a gem-enamel'd mead they stood; / Smaragd and Ruby-strewn, so rich the sight / presumed 'twas Paradisial floor they trod.

And there the Turk, who holds thee with dog's teeth And makes of thee a valley of sad tears, O paradisial land of old Ionia; And here, our Mother Greece, Dream-weaver of unending laurel-wreaths Beside her Cretan helmsman and her king!

An underground legend in the States for decades, multi-instrumentalist Christian Vander's unwieldy ensemble (composed during its heyday of a rotating cast of European rock and jazz players, with Vander and his wife, Stella, the only constants) is probably best known for its early-70s cycle of mind-bogglingly overwrought concept albums, which revolved around space travel between a degenerate, miserable near-future Earth and a paradisial planet called Kobaia and the earthlings' inability to accept the Kobaians' message of peace and spiritual enlightenment.

But "Firdous e Bareen," an instrumental track, provides a clue about the flavor of mysticism in play--it shares its name with the paradisial garden reputedly maintained by Hassan ibn as-Sabbah, an 11th-century missionary of the esoteric Nizari sect of Shia Islam, for the indoctrination of his Hashshashins.