1. First worship the Immortal Gods, as they are established and ordained by the Law.

2. Reverence the Oath, and next the Heroes, full of goodness and light.

3. Honour likewise the Terrestrial Dæmons by rendering them the worship lawfully due to them

4. Honour likewise thy parents, and those most nearly related to thee.

[…]

55. Unhappy that they are! They neither see nor understand that their good is near them.

56. Few know how to deliver themselves out of their misfortunes.

57. Such is the fate that blinds mankind, and takes away his senses.

58. Like huge cylinders they roll to and fro, and always oppressed with ills innumerable.

59. For fatal strife, innate, pursues them everywhere, tossing them up and down; nor do they perceive it.

60. Instead of provoking and stirring it up, they ought, by yielding, to avoid it.

61. Oh! Jupiter, our Father! if Thou would\’st deliver men from all the evils that oppress them,

62. Show them of what dæmon they make use.

63. But take courage; the race of man is divine.

64. Sacred nature reveals to them the most hidden mysteries.

65. If she impart to thee her secrets, thou wilt easily perform all the things which I have ordained thee.

66. And by the healing of thy soul, thou wilt deliver it from all evils, from all afflictions.

67. But abstain thou from the meats, which we have forbidden in the purifications and in the deliverance of the soul;

68. Make a just distinction of them, and examine all things well.

69. Leaving thyself always to be guided and directed by the understanding that comes from above, and that ought to hold the reins.

70. And when, after having divested thyself of thy mortal body, thou arrivest at the most pure Æther,

71. Thou shalt be a God, immortal, incorruptible, and Death shall have no more dominion over thee.

– The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Ah, Pythagoras, you were one most excellent bastard. The fun of it is? Although this is rooted in certain groundings of Hellenic Polytheism for want of a better term, this stuff is the basis for the Western World. The world in which we live had a Soul-basis from the beginning kids.

The horror of today’s world, which causes that ache deep inside, that sense there is something missing? Is there because something is missing – the very Soul has been forgotten.

Without its endlessly regenerating upwellings, without the interfacings of our selves with the nimbus of damonic Being which surrounds and iinterpenetrates and suffuses every single phenomenon – then we are left at the mercy of separateness induced by the counterfeit Spirit which has set itself up as Supreme.

That which denies the Pleromatic, vitalistic nature of the kosmos, which sets up Reason and-Rationality-as-Logos is  our enemy, but more than that, it is in total and utter self-denial of its mystic ancestry.

Our world, our science, proceeded from the deliberate descent into the realms of the Soul, where Wisdom itself spoke with those who had died before they died, and uttered the truths and planted the seeds which would blossom most appropriately in our limited localised space, time and culture. To once again reinvigorate the paths that would allow us to regenerate who we were and are and will be, providing us with technologies and practices so that we can mate our own selves with the Soul of the kosmos. To give us a way to always remember what we are.

But what has happened? Who now goes down to immerse themselves in the Soul, who enters the Hall of Night, seeking the star at the centre of the Labyrinth?

Who rides the very World-Tree, sacrificing all they are for gnosis, for those runes, those mysteries, those secret songs?

Hardly anyone.

And so, our world has forgotten its own Soul, the source of its Being. That is the ache you feel, the terror that makes you sweat, the mewling and thrashing of distress – a species acting out against itself, not realsing that its abandonment issues are self inflicted.

But that ache? We have tried to numb it for thousands of years, yet it has grown worse – leaching into every expression of holiness and wholeness. Vehicles and machineries of ecstasy and connexion have become rote mumblings, brief sparkings of long-drained batteries.

And the ache remains. It is a wound that will not heal, scarring our psyche and leading us to scar countless other cultures; systematically and instinctively severing connexions of indigenous peoples from their lands, their living links to the vastness of their own awareness of the kosmos.

In our own sadness and hunger for meaning, we pillage anything that we see gleaming with the light of the numinous, and then wonder why they become dim and lustreless in our grasping hands. Then we throw it away in disgust and ridicule, the hollow bitter mockery of ‘superstition’ and ‘primitivism’ curling our lips into supercilious sneers.

But that ache? It is our salvation, our path to healing. By embracing the pain, the agony of utter helplessness, we plunge into the deepest  of abysses. Howling, we fall down and down, descending into darkness.

.(A secret: They called Herakleitos \”The Weeping Philosopher”, did you know that?)

Into the vastness of infinite emptiness, the pitiless slate-grey of imprisoning meaningless, we are beseiged by voices, torn apart by wicked tongues speaking in well-loved voices.

(And somewhere, young Friedrich suffers at the end of his life, doomed to know the death of God will be hoisted up up as a blank-faced eidolon, instead of the fierce-faced daimon that drove him to call up Zarathustra’s mask and wear it to the revellries of Dionysos and Apollo…)

For the pain leads us home, though at first its sights be obscured by veils of tears. We are lost and fleeing, running pell mell into the Primal Night. Devoured by it a thousand-fold, torn apart by lions and strangled by serpents – stalked by night-black panthers in ruined cities, our passage marked by strange gods with feathered heads and animal bodies pierced over and over with ancient tribal taboos.

We are hollowed out, our flesh opened up to bare the Soul we carry, so long isolated that it flinches from the numinous; even the gentlest of touches sets it shrieking as if it has been set afire.

There is no escape as the daimons ring us all about, as we are passed from hand to hand by most frightful of wights. Bone-weariness assails us; anxious weight crushes implacably down, grinding our hearts.

Pressed into death, we are unaware of the wine that is released, the blood of the grape still ruby red from our own marrows, sweet as honey. Gripped by desert thirsts and scoured by northern winds, we who are slain again and again,cast down to crash to earth, to be swallowed by subterranean realms, are soon guided by soft hands.

(Beaten, burned and blackened, so the hero passes the ring of fire, to greet the maiden so lately risen from sleep. She hands him the meadcup, this honeyed grail of his own own blood. For the hero and the land are one. This a sovereign truth.)

So we suffer, so we smile. So we endure, as we begin to recall the old familarity, the themes that shuck their clothes to reveal their status as Primordial Images. And, wonder of wonders, we are welcomed amongst them!

Presented with the mirrors that smoke, welcomed with brassy pipings, so the vaguenesses of our notions are lifted, our own daimonic nature revealed  as we are ushed in by an honour-guard of kin.

It is the ache that has led us here, the suffering that brings us to the nameless, wordless wisdom. To rediscover our Soul, to become embodied anew as resurrected, restless beings who speak and howl and split open the very secrets of the world.

Nothing is ever lost. Nothing is ever forgotten. Not really. It is our doom. Our wyrd. And wyrd always goes as it should – for as we are enSouled, so are all things.

And in all things, we can bring it forth, because it is inevitable. Because it is Necessary. Because we have no other choice.