Thursday, May 24, 2012
What You Learn In School
All this matter we call the universe swirls around at the bottom like so much silt. High above, the waters clear and eventually, if you swim high enough, you may glimpse that wonderful mythic Sun all the fishes whisper about in school.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
A Spell for Darkness
9 yards of rain
5 perfect kumquats
a thimbleful of old odds and ends no one remembers the names of
Sit in darkness and feel the rain fall. Shake the memories, filling the darkness with the voices of the past. After they have settled down, eat one kumquat. When the taste just lingers on the tongue, eat the second. There are times when we must feign insanity. Eat the third kumquat. For really bad cases of darkness, eat the fourth. Otherwise, bury it with the fifth. Cover the seeds with memories and let the rain soak the ground.
5 perfect kumquats
a thimbleful of old odds and ends no one remembers the names of
Sit in darkness and feel the rain fall. Shake the memories, filling the darkness with the voices of the past. After they have settled down, eat one kumquat. When the taste just lingers on the tongue, eat the second. There are times when we must feign insanity. Eat the third kumquat. For really bad cases of darkness, eat the fourth. Otherwise, bury it with the fifth. Cover the seeds with memories and let the rain soak the ground.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Speed Of Consciousness
Modern occultists, alchemists, and magicians will sometimes say that consciousness speeds up evolution. Dion Fortune was a proponent of this. She was pretty experienced when it comes to things like the nature of consciousness, much more than me, so I certainly don’t want to second guess her. But I really don’t think the point of existence is to get through it as fast as possible. It’s not a race.
It's not that we are speeding up evolution by doing alchemy. It's that consciousness slows down and complicates the way to the divine source. Consciousness makes the path tricky. Consciousness adds turns and switchbacks, dead ends, detours, and the occasional roadside tourist trap. What had seemed in childhood like an obvious and delightful traipse up the mountain because a lifetime walking in your own shoes.
And I note a cool thing about the effect of consciousness. It’s like how sometimes, everything just goes by so quickly and other times it goes by slowly. Consciousness can affect those rates. Sometimes we enter a state of heightened consciousness and it’s like flow. We are apprehending many things at once, easily, a billion points of existence all at once with ease, and we come out of the state to find that hours have gone by in what seemed like a timeless moment.
And sometimes, consciousness is like a road trip through the back way. You leave behind the mindless interstate that transports you unchanged to your destination and instead see every tree and roadside attraction, you feel every turn. You pay attention to all the small places on the map. Consciousness may make evolution go faster, but it also gives us more to evolve. We end up not going any faster than non-conscious matter, but we have so many more opportunities for doing so, so many ways to do it.
It's not that we are speeding up evolution by doing alchemy. It's that consciousness slows down and complicates the way to the divine source. Consciousness makes the path tricky. Consciousness adds turns and switchbacks, dead ends, detours, and the occasional roadside tourist trap. What had seemed in childhood like an obvious and delightful traipse up the mountain because a lifetime walking in your own shoes.
And I note a cool thing about the effect of consciousness. It’s like how sometimes, everything just goes by so quickly and other times it goes by slowly. Consciousness can affect those rates. Sometimes we enter a state of heightened consciousness and it’s like flow. We are apprehending many things at once, easily, a billion points of existence all at once with ease, and we come out of the state to find that hours have gone by in what seemed like a timeless moment.
And sometimes, consciousness is like a road trip through the back way. You leave behind the mindless interstate that transports you unchanged to your destination and instead see every tree and roadside attraction, you feel every turn. You pay attention to all the small places on the map. Consciousness may make evolution go faster, but it also gives us more to evolve. We end up not going any faster than non-conscious matter, but we have so many more opportunities for doing so, so many ways to do it.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
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.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Personal Excellence
Because it's really all about facing the day while loving fiercely and excellently shouting down the bastards who would tell us we suck.
Know what is personal excellence for yourself. It isn’t winning or being the best, or better than. There is striving and allowing, striving to free the scales from your eyes and allowing them to fall away in their time. Striving to nourish the flower and allowing it to bloom. Striving to know your true will and allowing your best in this moment expressing it.
The virtuous path honors all desires, seeking for all the self to become whatever it is becoming. The virtuous path includes allowing the whole effort to drop excellently into the subconscious while you eat chocolate or veg on the sofa, or do whatever lets you off the hook when that is what’s needed. Being excellent can mean getting the bills paid. It can mean lighting a candle and getting on when the electric is turned off. The virtuous path just makes sure the life keeps going, understanding that we can even be total crap excellently.
Allowing what we desire to happen even when the chic pencil skirt pattern we found on that new craft blog totally looked like granny when we actually tried to make it and we realize making all our own clothes isn’t what we were desiring after all.
And so is bearing up and getting through, changing you game as the list of stressors gets shuffled on the wheel, and you are being pulled in too many ways, don’t know whether to buy food or keep the gas on, and every attempt to think of excellence sounds like failure, And in your excellent alignment with your true will you discover that a night on the couch is just the thing. The whole is the flux of all the standard obstacles in the course. The things that attack you and the things that just suck included. In all this movement we can stay with ourselves and then just do it the best we can. That is enough. That is life and love and everything called for.
You have checked all the boxes on the list just by staying moment by moment and being who only you are.
Facing all those moments with the knowledge that you are unique and always in the process of becoming something even more uniquely developed, with a great history to draw on and more adventures to tell, more people to draw the life forth from you, in the good way, so it joins with your friends, dancing under the stars and the tiki lamps befores returning to you refreshed and infused with new light and life. This is all excellent.
Know what is personal excellence for yourself. It isn’t winning or being the best, or better than. There is striving and allowing, striving to free the scales from your eyes and allowing them to fall away in their time. Striving to nourish the flower and allowing it to bloom. Striving to know your true will and allowing your best in this moment expressing it.
The virtuous path honors all desires, seeking for all the self to become whatever it is becoming. The virtuous path includes allowing the whole effort to drop excellently into the subconscious while you eat chocolate or veg on the sofa, or do whatever lets you off the hook when that is what’s needed. Being excellent can mean getting the bills paid. It can mean lighting a candle and getting on when the electric is turned off. The virtuous path just makes sure the life keeps going, understanding that we can even be total crap excellently.
To know what is personal excellence for yourself is to know what you want, to know your true will.
Allowing what we desire to happen even when the chic pencil skirt pattern we found on that new craft blog totally looked like granny when we actually tried to make it and we realize making all our own clothes isn’t what we were desiring after all.
And so is bearing up and getting through, changing you game as the list of stressors gets shuffled on the wheel, and you are being pulled in too many ways, don’t know whether to buy food or keep the gas on, and every attempt to think of excellence sounds like failure, And in your excellent alignment with your true will you discover that a night on the couch is just the thing. The whole is the flux of all the standard obstacles in the course. The things that attack you and the things that just suck included. In all this movement we can stay with ourselves and then just do it the best we can. That is enough. That is life and love and everything called for.
You have checked all the boxes on the list just by staying moment by moment and being who only you are.
Facing all those moments with the knowledge that you are unique and always in the process of becoming something even more uniquely developed, with a great history to draw on and more adventures to tell, more people to draw the life forth from you, in the good way, so it joins with your friends, dancing under the stars and the tiki lamps befores returning to you refreshed and infused with new light and life. This is all excellent.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The Up And The Down
In Alchemy, direction matters. Up and down. In and out. But these directions aren’t necessarily ones that would show up on a compass. You can’t find alchemical up and come back to it by turning your feet the right way. Up today isn’t necessarily up tomorrow. Rather, existence is like an Escher print, with directions changing depending on whether you are looking with your eyes or your heart.
Rather than learn which direction is kept where, we must learn to recognize paths wherever they appear. Paths have flavors and textures. Directions are also places that have denizens to meet, activities to do, special foods and even architectural styles. You don’t learn where a path is, but what it feels like, what it tastes like.
What is Down? Down under earth, the roots plough through the dark dirt. They branch, and branch again, blindly reaching out. At the tip of each root end, is a cluster of hard cells that can press through bedrock. But along their sides, the skin of the roots are open to the world, drawing in nutrients: nitrogen and potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Roots are opportunistic. They do not plan ahead and contrary to popular perception, they do not grow towards water or food. Instead they take the path of least resistance, using what is already available such as cracks in the soil, worm tunnels, and old root channels. When they find a resource in abundance, they proliferate, but such a discovery is always a happy surprise rather than the result of a deliberate plan.
What is Up? Leaves open, airy, light gathering. So short a life span, just a year or less, while the tree lives for years and years. Evergreens shed all year round keeping their canopies continuously intact. Evergreen means always shedding leaves, a continuous sacrifice. Leaves are high up, sometimes hundreds of feet above the roots. they create the outer edges of the tree. They grow at the foremost edges of trees, creating a field of energy collection. The leaves themselves work to shed rainfall down to the ground where it will be absorbed by the roots and brought back up through the trunk. The real purpose of the leaves is to collect sunlight energy. To receive. And here, at the other edge of the being, we find another kind of absorption. The absorption of light.
This is one example of the Up and the Down.
Rather than learn which direction is kept where, we must learn to recognize paths wherever they appear. Paths have flavors and textures. Directions are also places that have denizens to meet, activities to do, special foods and even architectural styles. You don’t learn where a path is, but what it feels like, what it tastes like.
What is Down? Down under earth, the roots plough through the dark dirt. They branch, and branch again, blindly reaching out. At the tip of each root end, is a cluster of hard cells that can press through bedrock. But along their sides, the skin of the roots are open to the world, drawing in nutrients: nitrogen and potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Roots are opportunistic. They do not plan ahead and contrary to popular perception, they do not grow towards water or food. Instead they take the path of least resistance, using what is already available such as cracks in the soil, worm tunnels, and old root channels. When they find a resource in abundance, they proliferate, but such a discovery is always a happy surprise rather than the result of a deliberate plan.
What is Up? Leaves open, airy, light gathering. So short a life span, just a year or less, while the tree lives for years and years. Evergreens shed all year round keeping their canopies continuously intact. Evergreen means always shedding leaves, a continuous sacrifice. Leaves are high up, sometimes hundreds of feet above the roots. they create the outer edges of the tree. They grow at the foremost edges of trees, creating a field of energy collection. The leaves themselves work to shed rainfall down to the ground where it will be absorbed by the roots and brought back up through the trunk. The real purpose of the leaves is to collect sunlight energy. To receive. And here, at the other edge of the being, we find another kind of absorption. The absorption of light.
This is one example of the Up and the Down.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Triple Expedite
[Originally posted at The Imaginary Menagerie]
There's a theory in some circles that you insure the gods will come through on a request by withholding the offering until after the goods are delivered. This is more true in Christianity and Hoodoo than general modern Paganism. Go to Italy and you may see an old woman spitting and cursing a statue of Mary. The local priest will pass this off. "Of course she curses the statue. Her daughter still is not pregnant." A friend of mine once gave a prayer to Saint Expedite, but she made the mistake of giving him the flowers and pound cake before she got the really cool job. When the job went to someone else, the local Hoodoo expert asked her, "Why would Expedite work for the job when he already has his cake?" Magical prayer can be a lot like high-school sex.
***
Last week I lost my bank card. I only lost it for an hour, but that was enough time for me to call the bank and cancel the card. I had to write checks and go without online book purchases for a week. And did you know that Whole Foods does not take checks? I only found that out after I'd unloaded my cart onto the checkout conveyor belt. I let the clerks reshelve my organic golden beets and gluten-free pasta.
Life was going to be a bit rougher for the next few days.
But then I had a brilliant idea. On Friday as I said my morning prayer to Hermes, I realized I could ask him to help. Hermes is a god of business transactions. He makes sure things move. In the divine commerce of gods and men, Hermes delivers the smoke of incense and offerings to Olympus along with praises, prayers and the list of victorious athletes and playwrights. Hermes made the jump to Christianity as Saint Expedite, the patron saint of express mail. My request for a timely arrival for my debit card seemed right up his alley.
I'm not very good at asking for help, and indeed this request seemed a little frivolous. I believe that if you have food, shelter and basic health, the gods figure you are doing just fine. Asking for my new debit card to arrive in a timely fashion so that I could return to my heightened American level of consumption seemed, well, let's just say I would understand if Hermes just rolled his eyes when he heard my prayer.
I told the King of the Rustlers that I understood my request was small, but that it was also a simple thing for a god as great as Hermes. This sounds sycophantic written out in a modern context, but in prayer it's just fact. I told the Many Twisting One that if I got my card that day, I'd pour him a libation and sing his praises at the upcoming theoxenia, a public Hellenic ritual. This second offering was given with a fair amount of dread as I'd been hoping to avoid attending this particular ritual based on past experience.
The card did not arrive.
Well, I thought, I dodged that one. I may not have my bank card, but I also don't have to go to that ritual.
By Saturday morning, however, I decided to try the prayer thing again. There were these really tasty gluten-free protein bars I wanted and the only place that carried them was an online site that charged $4.95 for processing check payments.
I made the same offering to sing the Whisperer's praises at the theoxenia and then remembered that the date of the ritual conflicted with something I really wanted to do. I was torn. If the card showed up on Saturday, rather than having dinner with friends I rarely see, I'd be stuck sitting in someone's living room eating bad potluck and trying to block out the screams of the high priest's hyperactive children.
Thinking quickly (praise Wingfooted Hermes) I amended my prayer. Scratch that earlier offer, I told the god. Instead of singing your praises at the theoxenia, I'll write a piece about you on my blog.
The private libation was still in play. That means I'll have to buy some honey and perhaps a nice Cabernet with the bank card that came in the mail later that day.
I also have to write this blog. The bad ritual would have been torture for an evening, but having to write something carries a higher price.
It's hard for a writer when the act of writing makes the brain switch into depressed mode. I can journal everyday, but when I write something at all creative, especially something I want people to read, I have a tendency to spend the next few days hating on myself. I have to watch myself for health reasons. This high-risk writer's block is also something I want to overcome so that I can write again. Hermes held out for the more significant offer using the small thing--for him such an easy, simple bit of work--to garner the more difficult offering. More difficult, but also exactly what I needed.
So here's to you, Thrice Great Hermes, Glad-hearted and Glorious. Thank you.
There's a theory in some circles that you insure the gods will come through on a request by withholding the offering until after the goods are delivered. This is more true in Christianity and Hoodoo than general modern Paganism. Go to Italy and you may see an old woman spitting and cursing a statue of Mary. The local priest will pass this off. "Of course she curses the statue. Her daughter still is not pregnant." A friend of mine once gave a prayer to Saint Expedite, but she made the mistake of giving him the flowers and pound cake before she got the really cool job. When the job went to someone else, the local Hoodoo expert asked her, "Why would Expedite work for the job when he already has his cake?" Magical prayer can be a lot like high-school sex.
***
Last week I lost my bank card. I only lost it for an hour, but that was enough time for me to call the bank and cancel the card. I had to write checks and go without online book purchases for a week. And did you know that Whole Foods does not take checks? I only found that out after I'd unloaded my cart onto the checkout conveyor belt. I let the clerks reshelve my organic golden beets and gluten-free pasta.
Life was going to be a bit rougher for the next few days.
But then I had a brilliant idea. On Friday as I said my morning prayer to Hermes, I realized I could ask him to help. Hermes is a god of business transactions. He makes sure things move. In the divine commerce of gods and men, Hermes delivers the smoke of incense and offerings to Olympus along with praises, prayers and the list of victorious athletes and playwrights. Hermes made the jump to Christianity as Saint Expedite, the patron saint of express mail. My request for a timely arrival for my debit card seemed right up his alley.
I'm not very good at asking for help, and indeed this request seemed a little frivolous. I believe that if you have food, shelter and basic health, the gods figure you are doing just fine. Asking for my new debit card to arrive in a timely fashion so that I could return to my heightened American level of consumption seemed, well, let's just say I would understand if Hermes just rolled his eyes when he heard my prayer.
I told the King of the Rustlers that I understood my request was small, but that it was also a simple thing for a god as great as Hermes. This sounds sycophantic written out in a modern context, but in prayer it's just fact. I told the Many Twisting One that if I got my card that day, I'd pour him a libation and sing his praises at the upcoming theoxenia, a public Hellenic ritual. This second offering was given with a fair amount of dread as I'd been hoping to avoid attending this particular ritual based on past experience.
The card did not arrive.
Well, I thought, I dodged that one. I may not have my bank card, but I also don't have to go to that ritual.
By Saturday morning, however, I decided to try the prayer thing again. There were these really tasty gluten-free protein bars I wanted and the only place that carried them was an online site that charged $4.95 for processing check payments.
I made the same offering to sing the Whisperer's praises at the theoxenia and then remembered that the date of the ritual conflicted with something I really wanted to do. I was torn. If the card showed up on Saturday, rather than having dinner with friends I rarely see, I'd be stuck sitting in someone's living room eating bad potluck and trying to block out the screams of the high priest's hyperactive children.
Thinking quickly (praise Wingfooted Hermes) I amended my prayer. Scratch that earlier offer, I told the god. Instead of singing your praises at the theoxenia, I'll write a piece about you on my blog.
The private libation was still in play. That means I'll have to buy some honey and perhaps a nice Cabernet with the bank card that came in the mail later that day.
I also have to write this blog. The bad ritual would have been torture for an evening, but having to write something carries a higher price.
It's hard for a writer when the act of writing makes the brain switch into depressed mode. I can journal everyday, but when I write something at all creative, especially something I want people to read, I have a tendency to spend the next few days hating on myself. I have to watch myself for health reasons. This high-risk writer's block is also something I want to overcome so that I can write again. Hermes held out for the more significant offer using the small thing--for him such an easy, simple bit of work--to garner the more difficult offering. More difficult, but also exactly what I needed.
So here's to you, Thrice Great Hermes, Glad-hearted and Glorious. Thank you.
