Escape From a Schwarzschild Radius of Insanity

I have finally become a refugee.

From Twitter and Facebook, that is.

Last night I deleted both accounts before I went to bed and woke up this morning with such a sense of relief that I knew I'd done exactly the right thing.

I started out years ago on Twitter with 40 followers and ended up with over 1.5K of the buggers. This is not a good thing, as anyone conversant with the horrific phenomenon of Twitter can attest.

Twitter. It's a great tool for keeping up-to-date on whatever news you're interested in; you get the latest breaking stuff first, plus much of the as-yet-unverified speculation. But with that comes a clamouring clinging of hanger-on demons which will eventually deeply wound your sanity if you're even halfway in your right mind to start with.

Some issues, let's face it, are bound to be emotive. Transgender Rights, the Patriarchal control of the globe, Donald Trump...So you make a resolution to rise above the gutter-wiping of the basest Tweeps. I'll just observe, you tell yourself, and take in arguments from both sides - to which end, you include a broad spectrum of class, race and political affiliation in your Follow list. Sounds about right.

But gradually, over months and possibly years, you find yourself taking sides. taking umbrage at the others. Taking seriously the emotionally immature rantings of a faceless archon who uses 140 characters to inflict as much pain as possible. And you find yourself doing this, too; becoming habituated to being as pithily nasty in as short a text as humanly possible to someone you don't even know.

This is the template for all 9 rings of Dante's Hell to coalesce and eventually collapse into a screaming, barking mad black hole of insanity.

And Facebook? With even the best of intentions of keeping it confined to family, you find yourself scrolling through endless reams of photographic saccharine memes, brain-deficient repetitions of somebody else's endless idle time...nope. Just Nope.

And so I left those places. Threw them to the West, iconic icons and all, turned on my heel and walked away.
Because I can't be having with this any longer.

Pic: Paul Kidby's rendering of Esmerelda Weatherwax

Coming Into Focus

Well, I've successfully de-Googled and de-Twittered myself.
I hope.

My blog and much of my online identity was heavily snarled up with Google, so it took a little time to sort out, but it's done now.

I'm retaining this blog and all of 2 friends on Facebook - my son and my partner. All other "friends", all pages, all groups - unlinked.

The thing is not so much the hysterical shouting about the NSA and how the governments of the world are spying on us - much of that is true, but it's the risk you take being online - it's more that I really need to get back to a place where the real world is primary, and my attention is not so much in danger of fragmenting into a thousand billion ineffective pieces.

So now, while I wait for the stodgy network at work to process my code, or sit in traffic, I'll be engaging with the world on the ground, so to speak.And getting back some of that awesome power to really concentrate on remembering who I am, as well as making sense of the superficially nonsensical.

So I haven't gone away. I'm actually stood on the real Earth again, looking around me in, initially, slight bewilderment.

Observing incarnation coming into focus once more.

Hecate Propylaea

In honour of the Full Moon of the Scorpio-Taurus axis, which I always associate strongly with Hecate, I will be burning Myrrh tonight and holding the eastern seaboard of the US in my thoughts.

It seems as if, whenever I've had a moment to rest my mind today, I've looked into it and seen there a picture of unutterable peace and joy: a place I visited once in a dream and have never forgotten.
It was on the edge of the ocean, and the full moon hung over the blue-black-purple waves rolling to shore, casting silver and bright white highlights over all. There was a cove to the north, and a human-built structure on the natural jetty standing with huge doors open wide.

I saw it only once, but I have never forgotten it, or the way it made me feel. So at peace, so full of the beauty of life and night and moon and sea.

And now I am holding this place close to the surface, between the small stresses of the day and the wondering worry about Hurricane Sandy.

May Hecate guard your gates tonight.
May She fill us all with the beauty of moon-sea-night.
May She bear our light into the eye of the storm.
Blessed Be.

Holding Space

There's this thing that humans do, sometimes. It's called holding space.

Our divine imaginations are capable of not only describing in detail, but creating and keeping alive entire other dimensions. We are storytellers, and world creators. We are energy conduits and containers of Spirit. Often, the way we hold space is to weave a tale  - imagine it into Being, populate it, breathe Life into it.

 I'm not sure if other animals do this. Tell stories, sure: birds, dolphin, whales, elephants and great apes are very likely storytellers par excellence. But holding that spun tale open in perpetuity for generations to move into and inhabit? I strongly doubt it, although perhaps I am wrong.

Decades ago, a talented storyteller named Frank Herbert opened up not just one planet, but an entire universe of feudal-systemed society, ecospheres and groups of human and non-human peoples - this dimension has established itself in this world through the minds of its readers.
  Who has not heard of the Litany Against Fear? Or aligned themselves, in some instance or other if only briefly, with the Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit?
 OK, I'm talking about people similar to me here - readers, and absorbers of books. People with finely-honed imaginary talents whose spirits are never confined solely to this planet, this time, and this set of realities.

And so it is that - although I admit my deep bias straight off the bat - I found myself asleep in the luxury of a mid-morning nap, dreaming in a world of Rusts, and Clockwork Angels, and a Chronicler named Charles Anderson.

My only son has - for me at least - managed to create a space and hold it open in enough vividness for someone like me - for me - to step into it once the bindings of consensus reality are loosed in sleep.

Shevek Moore's novella-length story, The Day The Sky Caught Fire, is a truly space-holding creation. It's a space I've never been in before, and I was caught in its copper-toned magic for the first time. I suspect I'll be back, too. And, as I have said, I and all his ancestors are incredibly proud of him.

Pic: Blue Fire Studio, Owl Holding Space for the Dream of Love

Sigil

Read Obligation

...by Scylla

"Unless you have to. Unless the spirits demand it. Unless you have no other option: Do not walk the Witch-path. You'll come out the other side mad, dead, or a shaman. And them ain't the best odds. "

Well said Scylla. Who is not, I might add, my dog of the same name.

But also:

You could come out all three. Mad, Dead and a Shaman.

Just saying.

Pic: Found somewhat inexplicably here

Heart Decoder

Working for the fatal downfall of the Patriarchy - which is just another name for Civilisation, in my book - has many,many options open.
One of the ways to get into the guerrilla war against The Machine is to open yourself completely to yourSelf, as much as you can.
Opening your heart chakra (decoder) is one of the most beautiful things a human being can do to this end.

Here's Neil Kramer, from the ARC convention last year, with more to say (and a more succinct way of saying it):

Holy Shit

There's absolutely nothing like your car catching on fire to scare the holy shit out of you. Except that little transient ploy doesn't seem to have worked, this time.

We were headed home on the N1 South yesterday - oh, maybe around quarter to five, so the road was packed - when the car, a little white Daewoo we've had for less than a year, lost power to the engine. We were in the far left hand lane so Warren started to pull over . As we coasted to a stop, huge flames started to billow out from under the hood.

We got out of the car in the emergency lane, and Warren wrestled the bonnet open. At about the same time, a blue Nissan bakkie pulled in behind us and the driver rushed up to us with a fire extinguisher. Bless him a  thousand times - I think he saved our car. The fire in the engine was put out, but a bloke standing on the side of the highway ran up to tell us that the road under the car was now on fire, too. He flagged down a passing van full of labourers on their way home and used their extinguisher to put out the tarmac fire. Bless him, also. Two people who had absolutely nothing to gain - but they were, almost, the only two. Most of the other road users -in a scene reminiscent of when my bike broke down in Bryanston - hooted angrily or satirically and roared on by.

We're insured by Outsurance, and to be fair to them (because I'm going to blast them in a minute) they haven't given us much trouble in the last ten years or so - they've towed our vehicles home three times so far, at no charge. Not this time though. This time they wanted to charge us, and the rate the tow company they referred us to asked was absurd. For a tow of  about 10km or less, they quoted R750. Not feeling that we had much choice - and how many people feel trapped like that in an emergency situation?- we were about to agree, when the third of our miracle rescuers pitched up.

He was a tow truck driver from Rapid 24/7 (sorry guys, can't find your website!). Immediately helpful, he asked, and I gave him R450 for the towing service. In no time we were home -the dogs were worried - and this morning Warren is busy repairing the bits of engine which were melted down.

Thank you, Nash from Rapid Towing. Thank you, guy in Nissan bakkie. Thank you, itinerant worker standing on the side of the highway.

No thanks go to you, Outsurance, for your contractor's -First Road - blatant attempt to rip off people in an emergency situation. I'll never use your financial services again. And First Road - forget it. You crooks.

And here's a thing: when our engine burst into flames and it looked very much like we were going to lose our entire car, when Warren was busy burning his hands to get the bonnet open, while we found ourselves stranded on the side of an insanely busy highway, I might have expected to feel fear, even panic. But the twin egregores Phobos and Deimos were startlingly absent from my psyche during the entire episode. Even back home, tweeting and facebooking the drama in short form, I was almost subconsciously searching myself for that fear response. Or that anger response, which is almost the same thing in humans. But no. Nothing.

So thank you, Ancestors gathered round. And thank you, Deities standing ready to assist. And thank you, spirit-and-flesh Totems so strongly possessing the body and soul that apparently, no fear reaction was even necessary.

Dunes

Frankincense heating in the water which is in the stone which contains the fire; twin pillars of flame rising over-and-above my eye level;pentagram bone white inscribed upon the creamy blackness: this, here, is momentarily the All.

Breathing through my base chakra up into my crown, letting the energy soar and course through my hollow middle pillar, heat building now in my upturned palms and a revenant of power spills out into the night from my own hands.

Thoughts let go into the suction-maw of the West – elemental garbage disposal for the dross of the day. This day spent mostly in delirious sickness and enlightening brainstorm.

The water is at less than half; the salt has hardened. I reach out my right hand and break the stagnant crust. Pulling the whole bowl into my lap, now, I feel for the state of the rest of the Earth element, and find it petrified, all. I dig in with power-dancing fingers and disturb the solidification of complacence. Weaving through and down, I create dunes and rivulets of salt – a once-static mass now swirled by chaos. Something new, something motile, something of profound new potentials.

After a while, I stand, make my obeisance, and extinguish the fire. The fire which has started to temper the basic air-and-water of me. As I turn from the altar, I leave little piles of white salt in my wake.

From The Chymical Wedding..

..by Lindsay Clarke, the book I'm currently inhabiting. It's marvellous.

Listen:

 "My verse was obscure because I was obscure to myself. I was a young man then...a young fool. I heard the music but I had no inkling how serious these matters were. Or how dangerous."
He returned from a pained abstraction, and smiled at me a little ruefully. "I was much like you - infatuated with my own talent, worshipping only my own intellect...A crime for which, as Ficino points out, a capital punishment is appointed. And in the symbolic domain the punishment is entirely appropriate - dismemberment, beheading."

The undertaking of the Great Work actually has many forms - I've been engaged in my own version for years - and mostly, they sound very similar when you pass into the realm of symbols. Which is, in fact, the only way to do this Work.

Right, then - I'm off back to bed to nurse a broken brain and legs which won't work.

Pic: The Joust of Sol and Luna from Aurora consurgens (early 16th century); note that Sol’s shield has a lunar emblem, while Luna’s shield carries a solar one.

We Are The Shadow

"The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life"

Dear Derrick Jensen. Premise Ten is my absolute favourite.

The moment that the eyes of your spirit start to open -or, to put it another way, the moment Ajna awakens in your energy body - you start to become aware that culture is not your friend.

I am disengaging daily from this culture: this toxic mimic of what it is to be alive in a living system, this Wetiko charade that passes for life at this time in this place.

And yet - I am not unhappy. I support Anarchists all over the globe, those who have felt the rage of trying to be a human animal within a decidedly inhuman system, those whose only answer is to fight back, to try to smash the machine, to monkeywrench the systems of control. I understand their pure anger.

But I don't see myself out in the streets in black hoodie wielding a half brick excoriating the pigs and agitating to be locked up - does this make me a hypocrite? From some perspectives, maybe.

But from where I sit, detached to a large degree from the social norms and societal urges, I can see what's maybe only obvious to someone like me, hanging out on the edges of the system. That is, it is all our Stuff.

Every mind-warping atrocity, every dazzling act of Grace. Each gulp of swallowed bile and every moment of transcendental ecstasy - all Us, all Ours.

The blinding light is the fact that we All - rocks, humans, sparrows, coltsfoot, spin-up quarks, colossal regions of inter-galactic dark matter, PitBulls and quartz crystals - are responsible for All This. It is our Making and Shaping, our Creation , whether of Frankensteinian provenance or Angelic manufacture... all, All Ours.

And it's maybe time we woke up a little more to this fact. That there's no sinister human-hating force controlling the world from Davos; no subterranean culture lords rubbing their secret hands in glee at the next bit of greedy perfidy launched upon an ailing world- or if there is, they're Us.
McKenna again: "The real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control, absolutely no one..."

No One but Us, that is. And we need to own up to that.

Last word I leave to Neil Kramer - that somewhat mad, wholly authentic, English gentleman of words:
"The antidote to the poisonous odium is to fundamentally acknowledge that we are the shadow. No-one else is to blame. The responsibility lies with us. With you."

Back In The Slightly Realer World

As some of you might have inferred, my son contacted me a little while ago.
We had been estranged for 11 years - he was taken away from me, rightfully I have to say, when I lost the rest of my family, and all my worldly goods, and my sanity, and a roof over my head, and very nearly my life. That this period was an agonising death and rebirth experience, often referred to as a Shamanic Dismemberment, is neither here nor there for this post .

I joined up on Facebook as Shevek seems to keep a regular network of connections over there - not too many, to his credit, but at the time he wasn't on the wider web- and FB only through his cellphone- so it was a great way to keep in contact with him.

So Shevek was the primary reason I had a Facebook account. If it could have stayed there, it might have been well and good. But I soon found myself being friended by people I didn't know from a bar of soap, being cajoled into using apps I shouldn't touch with a bargepole and joining groups which, frankly, should know better than to not only stick their heads above the parapet but to wave their flags around wildly as well.

A week or so ago I finally had enough and deactivated my account, after mailing my important friends about my decision. I just couldn't take the attention-deficit inane chatter any longer.

So I've more time to mull things over, to myself, here on this blog, which has always struck me as a richer, more organic way to belong to the Gaian Polity. I also feel vastly relieved. There are, as far as I'm concerned, angelic modes of communication on the web: blogs, focused and well-run discussion groups, the occasional outstanding lecture on video. But the demonic realm is well represented in all its distracting, confounding noise as well: FB, Twitter and other superficial networking systems. Which, as far as I'm concerned, I'm well out of.


Pic: Some games graphics work by Shevek

King, Blood, Soil

In an amazing interview, CJ Stone, no ordinary mortal himself, explains some of the phenomenon known as King Arthur Pendragon.

There was this dysfunctional boy from an army family, a soldier and then a biker, who, at some weird juncture in his life adopts this name and then it’s as if all the responsibility for living the life that the name represents is dumped on his lap. At this point he “becomes” Arthur. It doesn’t matter if he is the reincarnation or not. If he hadn’t lived up to the role none of that would matter, and by living up to the role he activates it on a magical level: he makes it real. I’ve adopted the role as writer, and by living up to it to the best of my ability I am making it real.

I have been following the adventures of this man, born John Rothwell, off and on for a while now. CJ Stone adds a new level of meaning and understanding.

Could have achieved the same under another name? Of course not. It’s the name that has the magic. The name is resonant of so many things. For a start, it represents something ancient in the British landscape and in the British psyche: something real and authentic. So what Arthur does is to challenge the modern world – this criminal world of corporate irresponsibility – from the position of something more ancient, more authentic, more true. True justice as opposed to fake justice. Real truth, real honour. So when the man, Arthur, calls upon the name he is activating some deep reality which calls us all to rise up and challenge the corporate takeover of our world and to get back to our deeper selves

It could have been anybody - it could have been any of us - but it was this particular man, this time.

It makes me want to go and fling my life and my soul at the feet of this man. And I don't feel that way about anybody easily. Hel, I don't feel that way about anybody, at all. Until now.

As much as I am an African, and my blood and my soul belong to this land, here where I stand - just as much can I understand what Britain means to Her people, and most of my genes are British.

We need one of these King Arthurs for every country in the world, I think.

Whatever Comes...

So, I've got this half-hour-odd guided meditation mp3, "Opening to the Great Perfection", which sounds quite promising. It's narrated by one of those Integral/Evo Spiritualism guys, who can sometimes display great clarity, even if I'm not always confined to their apparent level.

I put it on the iTunes player on my desktop, settle on the rug in half lotus, roll my eyes up and touch my tongue to the roof of my mouth, starting to breath deeply.

Taranis, however, takes this opportunity to research what it is I have on my hands. His furry nose breaks up the gyan mudra of my left hand as he starts licking the residue of chocolate from my palm. Snapping out of it, I give him a firm no and try to recapture my composure.

Furry-arse is attempting to get every last molecule of chocolate from me, however, and won't be put off by the Voice of His Mistress. At this point, Scylla reckons she's missing out on something good, and barrels into me from the other side.

I give up, laughing. Putting my arms around my two canine friends, I snort oh yes, Thou Art God, too at them and roll around on the floor for a little bit with them.

It's really hard to fool animals, you know. They see the Shiva in you, lurking behind your eyes, every time.

There may be a limitless perfection available just the other side of that meditative microsecond - in fact, I know there is. But when the other components of deity want to indulge in a little Lila - I would counsel you to give in, laugh from your belly, and experience that moment, instead.

Boaz and Joachim

It’s the duality out of which all things are made.
Sun and Moon.
Mercy and Severity.

Beauty and Strength…Power and Compassion…Honour and Humility...Mirth and Reverence.

Pole and AntiPole.
Positron and Electron.
Top and Bottom quarks.
Light and Darkness.

The twin pillars representing the polarity underlying the entire material plane.

One god invariably splits into two, and breeds. Heinlein, I think.

From the One proceeds the Two, and from the Two, the Many..the All.
From the All – the Zero.
Yes, we know it’s mostly a material illusion,surely we do. But there is nothing made without the twin foundational pillars upon the Earth plane.
And between them: the Middle Pillar.
I’m fairly shocked that I’ve never explicitly performed the Middle Pillar exercise – but that’s what a crooked path will get you, many surprises as the road twists and turns.

However, the concept is pretty well internalised.
Between the black pillar and the white, at the focus, held in tension by their polarity, is the result of their union. You and me, teeming Life, and all incarnation.
You have to circle back behind the Tree to find the Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur which is the ground of all being.

This Vernal Equinox:
I’m setting up the black and white candles upon the altar, and erecting the Boaz and Joachim within my soul.



Pic:by the ever-fabulous Avia Venefica at Symbolic Meanings

In the Wake

Aric McBay has a good site up which collects together inspirational and enraging commentary.

Quote for the day comes from Lierre Keith, discussing this culture of male violence against women and the earth.

"I don't want to educate men, I want to stop them."

Yup.

Do You Remember ?

Do you remember?

When primal energy swirled its Will to become primal matter?

You should,for every part of you was there.

It comes back to me in fits and starts and in dreams and at odd moments which catch me by surprise and take my breath away.

Looking into the face of life, matter enmeshed with spirit - no, not trapped, you can free yourself any time you like - and mostly, in the human animal, forgetful of its own reality.

The grass has not forgotten. Do you hear the squeal of pain as you step upon it? Or is that a yell of pure ecstasy, life unto life?

The spiders have not forgotten, and sit staring into our dense and confused minds from the corner of the room, wondering where we have gone and how we could have lost our memories so completely.

The water - ah, the water has never forgotten.

Every form of matter - indeed, the planet itself - remembers when we made this novelty, this new thing, this combinatory dense-energy-form we now call Life. Every form remembers but most humans do not.

We are not special, homo sap., we are not Made In God's Image any more than any other consciousness-meshed life. We are more forgetful though.
Maybe we were enticed by ourselves further into this amnesia. Sometimes I think I know the emotions which lead us further from our Godhead and deeper into slumber...then it is gone, not a rack behind in time to give me the words to encapsulate it.

Just one more animal on this planet - not the brightest, but certainly the most destructive. It may help to think of humans as the life form gone mad upon this earth. The one species which has forgotten so thoroughly hir origins and true nature that she's now poisoning the very matter of which she made hirself. Humankind is murdering, most foully, the primal particles we formed ourselves from.

And no - riding bicycles will not help to stop this murder. Nor will taking shorter showers. Recycling? You've got to be kidding me. All this 'green' activity will accomplish is to make you feel better, more virtuous, doing your bit to save the planet. You're not. It is the very existence of civilization which is killing our grand foray. It needs to be stopped - and separating out your rubbish is not going to do it, I'm sorry.

Instead, help take the Machine down.For us All.

Pic: Holy Fire by Alex Grey

Real Power

September has been declared Real Power Month.

Hecate says so - that settles it.

"From time to time, various Pagan bloggers have declared certain months to be devoted to various topics: Pagan Values was a recent one. I'd like to suggest that the Paganii of Blogistan devote September to discussions of : How do we offer real sacraments? Real experience? Raise real cones of real power?"

For me, real power consists of real relationship.

Being an intense introvert, I hardly ever feel that spark of real power in an open, public (or even large private) ritual. Instead, one or two other people in the circle with me is more than enough. Flesh and blood people, that is.
For my connection to the source winds through each relationship I have forged on the planes, or other worlds.

My Spirit Totems connect me with the physical plane and the present, my Ancestors connect me with the etheric and the past, and my Deities with the future and all so-called 'higher' planes out from the etheric.

I myself, a nexus for this web of connections, am both intimately immanent in all worlds and transcendent of them.

Let me come at this from another angle.

I love humanity very much. All of them, even murdering bastards and child rapists. They are the physical representations of the divine consciousness. But I don't love them more than pied crows, black panthers, silver oaks and streptococcus bacteria.
In a large gathering of human beings, I would have to have an established relationship with each individuated soul to feel any real power in the working - and that, given my introversion and habitual avoidance of human relation, is perhaps not so likely to happen in this lifetime of mine.

Wrong? Maybe, but it feels right for me.

My web-connection to the All through my companions between and upon the other worlds is a strong two-way conductor, and it is in this way that I have learnt to offer real sacrament, gain real knowledge and wield real, effective power.

It probably is not so for you - but I would be interested in learning of the many ways that other humans have established their embededness into the workings of real power.

Oh, but this is a huge and complex topic. I'm going to have to come back to it again throughout this Month of Real Power.

Pic: Thre Tree(or Hanged Man) from Joanna Powell Colbert's Gaian Tarot