I

In beginning this, we must understand that there is no beginning. In understanding, we must accord ourselves certain latitudes; we are after all amidst the chaos of the normal. Such chaos is, in point of fact, borne of certain curvatures and shapings of which we are not, at least initially, entirely cognizant.

We perceive the world as outside ourselves; the arrangement of disorder as a thing and of itself. Order is that which is perceptible, and so we find ourselves equating the breaking-apart of perception to be like unto a shattering of of some ceramic vase, some clay cup. Its destruction seems without sense; as individually featureless as the shards and the spaces between that which we once thought whole.

The particular configuration of experience we are used to – that is to say, that which we conceive of as being the default, is wrung out of that same chaotic normality. The breadth of possibility is immense, and yet we willingly confine ourselves to narrow prescriptiveness for the sake of convention.

All this is to say that we use others to reckon upon our position and boundaries. The curvature, the very arc of of normality is self-referential, and needs must be so in order to preserve integrity.

And yet, it is is this self-referential quality which places us at the mouth of a great river – the estuary from which everything flows hereafter into the sea of the Soul. The same sea which is reflected in every mere, lake, spring and well which humankind has called holy since we were born to know.

As an enclosed space, the normal has provided us with safe-harbour – a notion of stability which has insulated us against the sheer power and fluidity of that same sea. From within this place, we were able to finally observe the times and tides as if from a position apart – to take a breath before heading inland in search of higher ground, from which we might survey our seeming domain.

That same higher ground was sought precisely because of tidal flow, the implacable rise and ebb which could seem so placid, and yet drag us down with savage undertow, down into the dark and lightless depths.

From on high, the rip and curl of wave, the roaring pulse of onrush and flood could do little; the pounding breakers receding into the distance. Only in dreaming terror, burning lust or frenzied rage would the echo be remembered, would the pulse of the blood come to recall us to our origins. Only in extasis, when we came to ourselves once more. Only in the fury, the nocturnal archaism of the primordial would we coalesce, would we come together, not as single entities long divided by distance and time, but as the coven and the band, the horde and army bound together in primordial kinship, eschewing division and separation.

No longer simply holding position, requiring another to define location and form, but as court and constellation; each utterly alone in the howling silence, isolate and containing an unuttered vastness.

For those same wells and springs were well guarded, their waters deep and hungry; even amidst the solid lands, fathomless dark portals now freezing the marrow. These our bloody passages, our ever-swallowing receivers of sacrifice.

In-betweennesses abound; the waters were never thin. Instead, thick and and all encompassing, so these Soul-portals recall the bloodlit archaisms of our origins.

II

Blood and honey. These mark out the daemonic – the sweet nectar and the bitter draught. From the ferment of the normal, its very death and dissolution comes the wine. And that same death and dissolution comes from its distillation and concentration; the inescapable vitalism found within its every portion.

The same cup which was so all encompassing now brims over. The void begs to be filled; that which is no longer capable becomes its own monument; the ruins breaking up the landscape like jagged teeth; shards that lie in wait to open veins, to return us to the understanding of our own labyrinthine nature. The monstrous daemon at our very heart waits in darkness like a burning star within the earth; the immortal congress of kosmic Eros giving birth to a terrible, awful understanding.

There is no word which is poetry. No verse which is rhythm entire, or rune all-encompassing. Conveyance flounders, speech is dumbstruck and silence echoes with an ache that shall never be satiated.

This is the pain of Gethsemane, the thorny spear which wounds us as we are bound to the Tree, that windy gallows at the crossroads of Golgotha upon which we hang for nine whole nights, walking the paths of the dead without moving.

We thirst, but are given no mead. We hunger, but are given no bread.

Utterly alone, so we hang in sacrifice. We are anointed, blessed by own blood, sacrificing ourselves to the upwelling of the Soul, self now obsessed, possessed by Self. Memory and Thought now raise twin heads, converge to feast upon our very body, drink our blood, bringing ten thousand wild hunters to feast upon this prey, now brought inexorably to bay.

Behold then, the feast in all its frenzy, all its wine-dark essence; this most primordial revelation.

The daemonic polarity is inescapable; the magnetic pulse draws countless familiars. In counterpoint, it is we who become once more the Stranger, the endless wanderer with the ravenous hunger for Gnosis.

We, who were given no bread, no mead, may devour all things, and in doing so, bring forth communion. We are nourished by the Soul, which liberates the Spirit from its own bondage, and engenders an orgia of ambrosial wonder, a shining blood-glow of poetic mead that burns like the very sun itself, a whirling wheel as terrible and glorious as blackest Time Beyond Time.

We cannibalise ourselves, even as we devour and our devoured by courts of intimate and terrible deities; the freezing wastes inhabit our very marrow and we are consumed by the Heraclitan fire.

All is fury. And in that bloody inundation, that primordial drowning, we are thrice baptised in the battle-sweat which cools and purifies us anew, to stand as feral children of the pleromatic Allfather; lone harriers and fighters who fight and die and rise again in the Primal Night of Images.

Warrior-poets, vagabonds, singers, lovers, aristocrats of the Soul; we who listen to the rhythm and the runes, the tides and the pulse, who go forth and back and in between.

We who know naught, and in knowing naught, may know precisely what is needful; who love Wisdom as the dark and fierce Lady she is, hidden in all things, so we raise our voices as we sing forever:

Be Whole!

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