The Devil

As in the Tarot Card.

All the majors are, for me, neither good nor bad. They are all Good, as in part of the Law. The Devil is a wonderful friend. He prepares you to have your illusions of bondage torn away. He makes it possible for you to feel those chains and to desire to be rid of them. He is the part of g*d that allows us to alchemize even the most tawdry of experiences. Like the experience of feeling separate, or fearing the dark, or wanting to feel good even when we know we are destroying ourselves. The Devil is what allows us to take those experiences and do something Good with them. Among other things.

Adorable Ouroboros

I found him in a treatise on alchemy. He looks like he’s playing. So often alchemical processes are inscrutable, but this little guy is showing how the re-creation of self out of self can be recreational as well. He is obviously having a lot of fun.

In the ouroboros, everything that happens comes from within, drawn out through consciousness then consumed, brought back into the body to await the inevitable rise into consciousness again. Recreation of the self out of the self, a self-sustaining process. The ouroboros does not need to pull in sustenance from others. He doesn’t need to talk to others, or pay attention to anything outside of himself.

I often fantasize about this state, but really, it can be a drag. When this process happens in a small part of reality, say an individual human, the law of entropy comes into play. Every time we consume ourselves, we lose a bit of energy. Every time a thought re-emerges into our consciousness and instead of doing something to change it, we simply break it down and forget it, the thought will re-emerge later with a little less verve. Eventually, our thoughts will feel pale and boring unless we allow something new to enter the system.

But the ouroboros is only one state of a dynamic process. Look into his eyes. He’s spotted another game to play.

Orion and the Devil

I love that we are made of stardust. We are. We contain elements (like GOLD) that can only be made in supernovas. Yay!

Right now I have this picture of the constellation Orion on my desktop. You can just make out the Horsehead nebula to the right of the first beltloop, and further towards the hunter's knees, the eponymous Orion nebula.

There's Betelguese, at the left shoulder, all orange and sending the light of its own supernova hurtling towards us. It has already exploded, already made its gold, and we are just waiting for the light to arrive, which could happen AT ANY MOMENT - astronomically speaking. And in a billion years, there could be people made out of that star.

It should be known that I come down differently about the Devil's Bargain. That was a great deal. We get to live a whole life in the crazy incarnate state and the garden is just there waiting for us whenever figure out how to get back to it. Of course, the Devil had to make it seem like a rip off, had to pose as a snake in the grass, otherwise we would have suspected some trickery. It's just too good to be true!

I say that knowing that my middle-aged back is starting to hurt. I just got my first reading glasses last year. 150 works miracles, but my mother has just gotten 300s so eventually. I have one very close friend and for Christmas there was just my parents and my sister. I have a heartbreak still seeping from the 11 year marriage that fell apart 5 years ago. And through all this I've managed to not write that much, not create very many things, not break into management and also not get horribly addicted to anything, also haven't gone on a rampage, haven't oppressed anyone religiously or otherwise. I have neither had children nor left them on a bus. I have managed a mediocre life. And yet, when I look at Orion, I think there's something amazing echoing through me, through all of us.

To zoom in for the details of Orion go here.

First Matters

Dogs fighting to the death in laboratory beakers. Green, drooling lions swallowing the Sun. A peacock standing on a two-headed hermaphrodite.

In the Western Mystery Traditions, Alchemy is just plain weird. Sure it’s got dead women having sex with giant snakes, but can Alchemy really speak to modern people?

Of all of the various practices and philosophies that make up the spiritual apparatus in the West, from Qabalah and Christian Mysticism to Wicca and the various Reconstructivist movements, Alchemy gives us a process, a practical guide to the direct experience of the universal reality underpinning all mysteries. It is the Western version of Tantra, Taoism and Ayerveda. And it just may involve having sex with giant snakes.

You never know.