This too shall pass.

There is a story that when Moses was small, everybody loved him – and why wouldn\’t they? The Pharaoh\’s Daughter loved him as her own, this miracle prince that had been delivered to her by the Nile, source of all life. Everyone admired this handsome baby, even Pharaoh kissed his head and dandied him on his knee. Think about that for a second:

The living god, embodiment of the sun, ruler of all Egypt, called this child beautiful. The being who kept the kosmos of the world going, called this child special. He loved Moses.

Now, for the Egyptians, the kosmos was quite simply As Above, So Below. The Nile was the source of all life and being – its waters rose and fell, dictating the rhythm of the civilisation like a heartbeat. It was there, in their blood, in their bone and breath. Even the name, Khem meant \’The Black Land\’, for its soil was made black and fertile by the Nile\’s inundation.

So when the Egyptians raised their faces to the heavens and gave thanks to the gods, they not only saw the sun, but the god there, with them. When the sun set, when the glorious bright being began his nightly sojourn through the underworld along the Nile, they saw far more than we. Without the light pollution we have today, the stars were bright; millions of them shining in the heavenly vault, and winding through them was the ribbon of Milky Way – or perhaps, more accurately – winding through the infinite darkness was the Nile.

We are not speaking of representation or symbol – the peeling away, the notion that meaning operates at one remove. The Galactic River did not symbolise the Nile, or vice versa.

They were identical. A name was a person, and a person was their name. The Pharoah was Re, was the Sun, was Osiris/Assur. They were each other. Numinous beings all the way up, and down.

Imagine then, that you are a court counsellor, a priest-sorcerer schooled in the Mysteries. You understand the nuances and shifts in a way that uninitiated do not. You speak from your heart, your essence. You interpret dreams and manipulate Heka, the magical quality which infuses all things.

You see the Pharaoh as man and god both, with no dissonance at all. You know the man\’s actions are guided by the bright sun within him – you see the shining serpent wisdom gleam between his brows. You know the man must die, as the sun must set, to rise again – ever immortal. You understand, for you have seen the feather of Ma\’at and the dark twin of it in Mut\’s vulture plumage. You have heard the laughter of the grey wolf and the jackal; the wisdom unveiled by the Opener Of The Mouth.

You have listened to the scorpion, when it tells tales of how Isis/Aset gathered up the pieces of her beloved husband from the places where Sutekh had scattered them, and how she learned Re\’s secret name. How she used the knowledge of the name of the Hidden Sun to re-member her brother-husband, to make him whole once more.

You see the stars and know each is an immortal soul, an akh existing in its perfect fullness, requiring naught but itself. You have dressed gods and stripped them naked. You have pressed your flesh against theirs, eaten them up and laid in the beds of their handmaids. You have heard the voice of them amidst the sweet songs of praises, felt the truth of those words, the ineffable  quality there that set things in their proper places.

All this you have done,  and you know too the power of the Lord Of The Red Desert – the spear-carrier who slays Osiris and Apep both. You have felt Sutekh pass close in the hot wind, seen the power of his staff, gifted and mirrored to all the other gods in the was sceptre that all carry.

You have held conference with your colleague, who tells you he dreams of another life, another name, further down the River. He whispers a name:

Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu. He who lives for Khonsu – the traveller, the son of Mut.

Far and wide, like his lord, that priest walks, far downstream, near the end of things. He walks beside the Nile beneath the hawk\’s cry, smelling ash on the wind as the conquerors slowly but surely bring the Black Land to its knees. There, in that dream within in a dream, he watches the shining marble that clads the Pyramids crack and flake  – the gleam and shine of the immortal stars is stolen from the land, revealing only pitiless blank stone beneath. The fields are salted, the bright colours and Names hewn into living rock are eroded and broken, amidst a landscape of ruins and half-buried monoliths – the temples closed and shuttered.

Still onwards presses the traveller, heart heavy as he stalks unfamilliar streets, the Mysteries veiled in coarse shouts promising wonders in exchange for coin.  The  Hellenes and the Hyksos long gone now, invaders shifting like the tide in the Nile, swallowed up by Time, wisdoms as shining things cloaked in crude clay and dust.

On and on the nomad goes, turning and turning in the widening gyre; the spinning vortex, the rushing rapids of river-torrent. His heart mourns, each beat a wounding, each pulse a terrible spike of restlessness. Here, now, you feel the knowledge of it scratching at the back of your tongue like a stylus engraving; meat instead of wax, flesh instead of papyrus, blood instead of ink. The bitterness sluices through you, the redness staining all your fluids, poisoning all your waters like a plague.

Yet still you listen, still you must have the knowing of it, because otherwise, how may you offer counsel to your king? How otherwise may you lend and blend your arts to strengthen the kingdom, to pursue Ma\’at in whatever form her beauty may manifest?

He speaks with hushed voice, like wind whispering in the reeds – as if he fears the Great Devourer might surface in the river and pull him down, rolling, spinning; twisting and biting with its ancient jaws, gulping his souls down in an unending death-roll. As if his horrific journey might leave him torn in two, cloven apart and dispersed, forgotten in a howling gale.

The Nile rises and falls as ever, tombs broken open – the vehicles of the immortals ground up and consumed by hungry beasts, or imprisoned behind glass, to be slowly burned away to nothingness by a million hungry eys. Alien tongues stumble, corrupt and twist the language of the gods as smoke blots out the sky and clanking metal beasts tear across landscapes.

Through it all, the hawk screams, king of naught but desolation – and yet, the dreamer dreams  hands upon his thread, fingering the weave with curiosity. They reach out, fragments of Mystery arranged like potsherds, grasping for him, trying to feel the fibre of the dream\’s fabric, to pull back the curtain and reveal the will, the beingness of Ma\’at.

Cold stone and darkness as the hawk screams, like an enraged and gleeful child. The dream thickens and then, the fragments begin to gleam like whitest marble. Pyramid luminescence  shines out, the memory of reflected star-light all about him. Rising, like the sun, to emerge from the fragmentary darkness into somewhere new despite the horror.

He sees them grubbing through the dust, picking over the corpse of the Kingdom, digging in the dry soil, trying to crack it open to find the fertility beneath. He hears the echo then, sees them call on half-remembered gods, barely put together enough to find the essence of the names. Yet call they do, and it is the call that follows the River\’s course, bending back upon itself.

He sees himself in new flesh, this dream of a dreamer seeing the light within his eyes. The innocent light, all unrestrained, childlike and as immortal as the fixed stars. Fear ripples down the River bank, as if someone has tossed a stone beneath the waters. It laps at, and through both of them.

The light grows. It burns all things, the wind of its wings scouring skin from bones as the crowned and conquering child swoops in all hawk-headed.

All knew then, he says to you, in that dryest whisper. All within the dream perceived the prophecy – a million years of darkness, where even the stars were cloaked, where even the immortals hid their faces.  A million years of light, so long hidden, now unleashed in one moment – swelling to immensity from a single seed, as inescapable as Sekhmet, devouring all who comes before her. No escape from such light, do you understand? All reduced to ash, that glitters like the stars.

You understand of course. Even if you have not seen it, not known it as the dreamer knew it, you understand because you too have followed the River. You too have looked up at night and seen the stars, each one gleaming down upon you. You know of the sun, and the moon, and time and tide. of the secrets you keep, and the dreams you have, even when you don\’t remember them.

You know and you  understand this, and all that has gone before, because you\’ve stood in the throne room, watching Pharaoh dandy Moses on his knee, seen his chubby fingers reach for the golden crown, innocent and playful. You don\’t even have to imagine the chill racing up your spine, because it\’s always there, with the hair rising up on the back of your neck, as you recognise hidden things revealing themselves, yes?

Think about it, the echoes of someone else\’s dream still chilling you to the bone, folding together – disparate parts meeting and knitting themselves into the proper place, allowing you to remember, even now…

…Even now as you can see the child on the king\’s knee, the hawk stretching forth its talons…

So perhaps it\’s unsurprising that you\’re worried for things. After all, you don\’t want everything burned to ash – so you advise that the child be executed. One death, to avert a frankly horrific course of events. It\’s supremely logical, and you wouldn\’t be a proper counsellor if you didn\’t warn the king.

But of course, if Moses  had been killed as a child, then, well frankly, things would be very different. In an effort to preserve the child\’s life, so the story goes, his future father-in-law suggested that they put him to the test, to see if he understood what it was that he was doing.

Two piles were erected, one of gold, and the other of hot coals. It was determined that if the child reached for the gold, he had understanding, and if for the coals, he had none, and would survive. This was done, and Moses promptly reached towards the gold!

Fortunately for the Hebrews, and Moses (!), the angel Gabriel intervened, moving the gold away from the child and put the hot coal in Moses hand instead, which a surprised baby put into his mouth, as babies are wont to do. Needless to say, this burnt the child quite badly, and it is for this reason that Moses was said to be \’slow of speech\’ and let his brother do the talking.

Angels, eh?

But do you remember this?:

\”I am Moses your prophet to whom you have transmitted your mysteries celebrated by Israel; you have revealed the moist and the dry and all nourishment; hear me.\”

Or this:

\”…I am the mighty one who possesses the immortal fire; I am the truth who hates the fact that unjust deeds are done in the world; I am the one that makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll; I am the one whose sweat is the heavy rain which falls upon the earth that it might be inseminated; I am the one whose mouth is utterly aflame.\”

Remember the Crowned & Conquering Child of Thelema? Remember that the Crowley version of the above rite is said to be a pre-requisite for the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel? You know, the thing that sets you off on the Great Work?

All these pieces, all these parts coming together, knitting into their proper place…running down down the river, with the ebbs and flows, the times and tides. The land fertilised by the great inundation of the Nile – Isis re-membering Osiris, bringing back the risen sun.

(Numinous beings all the way down, and up.)

And we can\’t forget Gabriel can we? The messenger of good news, the blower of the last trump. The angel of resurrection and judgement – and, what\’s this? The angel of Elemental Water in the Western Mystery Tradition, but associated with Fire in Jewish mysticism…

Fire upon the deep.  Have you ever seen water burn, or fire flow?

(\’The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.)

Careful now, lest you slide too far down the serpent\’s spine – get too carried away by the intoxicating liquor, drunk on the burning fluid, the cross-roads of Atziluth, Briah, pouring down, shaped by Yetzirah. Temperance is a virtue, but being tee-total is a vice!

Perhaps, as they say, Osiris is a black god – recall the scorpion\’s tale? Recall the venom with which Isis stung Old Man Re, until she had the secret of his Hidden Name?

There are whispers that Gabriel once gave Solomon a ring, a ring that gave him great wisdom, and it is with this wisdom that the great king could command demons and set them to build the Temple. They say Gabriel leads the soul down its path to the body, sliding in through the gate in the back of your head, lit by the light of the moon.

And Osiris sits in the Western Lands…

Pieces, fragments, all coming together, each part a potential path to the whole – for every man and woman is a star; be it supernova or black hole, blazing light or endless darkness, you are a star. You are Hadit, hiding at the heart of every atom, the centre of every circle. You are Behadet – the winged and risen sun that sits atop the staff of Hermes.

Have you seen a rainbow in the dark of the night? Seen the colours gleam, suddenly unveiled in a the wing of a carrion bird?

Bifrost bridges the gap between men and gods – the Rainbow Serpent writhes through the waters, slides down the Tree.

(IEOU PYR IOU IAŌT IAĒŌ IOOU ABRASAX SABRIAM OO YY EY OO YY ADŌNAIE, immediately, immediately, good messenger of God)

Papa Legba ouvri bayé pou mwen, ago é!
Atibon Legba ouvri bayé pou mwen,
Ouvri bayé pou mwen papa, pou m pasé,
Le\’m retounen map remesi lwa yo.

Being the messenger, the doorkeeper and storyteller, one can only lead. The choice is yours as to when exactly you will come forth and follow!

This too shall pass.

All I can do is whisper, show you the pieces and demonstrate the strange unity behind it all – to reveal as best I can the transitory nature of identity and flesh and bone, of the flux of thought and form, to show that the end is the beginning. To show that the whole may be found in any and all of the parts. To return you to the water that dissolves and creates. The water that burns and freezes to smoking breath beyond stage or state.

Fire, water, air and earth – elements all, pieces arranged in myriad different ways for infinite variety. The periodic table, full of elements too, born of stars.  There is no Great Work, but You. You are your Magnum Opus – the currents and movements of your life are yours and yours alone, and you cannot stop them. You cannot halt the river – cannot dam the Celestial Nile, cannot slay the serpent without being poisoned and changed by its blood.

You are Whole, by being a part. You are a member of some great body, some particle of supernova, a twinkle in the eye of the All. Play your part to the hilt – cease doing and start Being. You have all the pieces. Trust me.

Someone once said some things – and because they were things, there were usually words for them. That\’s what words are, you see; names of things. There\’s old magic in them, so much magic and so very old that we have forgotten it\’s magic at all. The names of things become the things themselves, until you can speak the name and everyone knows and sees the thing.

That\’s their cue. Speak the name, and lo, they appear!

(\”Speak of the devil…\”)

They come to life, moving on the stage, strutting their stuff, speaking their lines so that you can gain insight into their character, into what they are. Maybe they\’re present for the whole of the performance, only vanishing when the curtain falls, or perhaps they\’re gone after one line, leaving it hanging there as they exit stage-left. It doesn\’t matter. They do their jobs, communicate what\’s needed and then poof, gone like smoke, lost in the rushing stream of experience.

(\”Out, out, brief candle!
Life\’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage[.]\”)

None of what is written here is important – someone once said some things, is all. We know the map is not the territory. We know that the world of words is not an accurate representation, just some quick and dirty joining of the dots, some pattern recognition, a short-cut quickly scribbled down in blood and ink and breath.

( \”O friend of man, and prophet of discourse:
Great life-supporter, to rejoice is thine, in arts gymnastic, and in fraud divine:
With pow\’r endu\’d all language to explain, of care the loos\’ner, and the source of gain.\”)

We know that, because we understand magic; we know that the line between the charlatan and the magus is perilously thin. We know that Clarke\’s Third Law applies, and how, in ways that most folk do not, and in that knowing we have an edge. Magic is just a word for something vast and terrible, inexplicable and faster than quicksliver, slippery as sin and twice as sweet.

(\”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\”)

Techne and Poiesis. Just words, just names, just things. Arrangements of sound and thought like the posts and lintel for doors. Did you know we\’re more likely to forget things when we pass from one room into another? Frames and context it seems, are key; when a word ends, it stops being. When a word is forgotten, we struggle to describe a thing, to extract it from experience, to communicate it to others.

(\”Looking out over the wine-dark sea, he spoke out
in passionate distress:\”)

What does it mean? No word for blue in Ancient Greek, a description of a sunset sea, or an ocean that flowed like wine? Poetic allusion, the kenning of the skald; the opaque, apophatic denial of direct representation. Would you beg Mercury to stand still? To tell wild, wandering Woden to cease his endless stalking over the graves of giants?

If so, you\’re an idiot. You know, from idios \”personal, private,\” properly \”particular to oneself.\”  That\’s perfectly fine, by the by – after all:

(ὁ Ἡράκλειτός φησι τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀποστρέφεσθαι) (\”Heraclitus said that the waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.\”)

Rest well. No harm done, my idiot friend. None at all, for everyone wakes eventually, whether they like it or not. For the rest of us, well, we\’ll keep right on with the show.

(/Come breathe with me/Breathe with me/)

I have a confession to make, and it\’s nothing new, because someone once said some things. Someone once said what I\’m saying, and what I\’m going to say now. You see, I\’m a Gnostic Agnostic. I\’m of the opinion that we live in a created world, and that we can never know if the created world is anything more than a representation.

I\’m of the opinion that this is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Do you see? Someone once said some things, and they built the world you inhabit. You watched them, learned how to use the same tools as them, the tools called language and thought, through mimicry and rote. There is no demiurge. Just a bunch of idiots; an interactive audience of people letting things play out; following a script whose author has been forgotten, if there ever was a Creator anyway – instead of a weird ad-hoc collaboration. A hastily codified improv session gone a bit wrong.

Do you like being called an idiot? I\’ll bet you don\’t, and I\’ll bet it\’s because someone said some things, to you, right? Spoke some words, communicated their displeasure somehow. Maybe they called you names?

Yes, there\’s old magic in them, so much magic and so very old that we have forgotten it\’s magic at all.

Forgotten that the tools can be used in other ways than simple maintenance; simple manual, grinding, repetition. Not simply as technologies, but as disciplines – arts even – of living. The wonders wrought by the premier thaumaturgists now appear common-place. Yes. So they appear, wrapped in the hooded cloak of the mundane, the veil of the bride.

(/Come play my game/Inhale, inhale, you\’re the victim/Come play my game/Exhale, exhale, exhale/)

I\’ve been an idiot. I\’ve turned away from confronting the nature of things. Some days I still do, because it\’s hard work, and it changes you, sometimes even beyond all recognition. Forces you to dissolve the armour that gave you shape, and definition. Turns you from automatism and the apparent safety that it brings.

Suddenly you are standing on your own. Few people like doing that; even most iconoclasts use their iconoclasm – how they are seen by other people – as a bulwark for their identity. Humans are social animals, constantly referencing their position in terms of others, reacting to stimuli. It\’s a kind of homeostasis, and yet what gets lauded is the appearance of balance, stillness and peace. To achieve that, there are thousands of micro-movements, millions of tiny adjustments, and yet it is the appearance which is regarded as worthy.

Does that not seem a little odd, to you? That fixity and stability is so prized; a direct denial of how things are is elevated above others?

We all have a tendency towards idiocy, you see. A tendency to turn away and keep turning. Eventually of course, in our turning, we end up back where we started. If we haven\’t sorted the point that started us turning, we\’ll just keep turning. Eventually, we\’ll get dizzy and fall over though, which is why you will eventually wake up – you\’ll do the equivalent of falling out of bed.

We usually call this hitting of the floorboards by a familiar name:

Death.

It\’s the end of the world, the place where your word stops, where you leave the stage. Where your name no longer applies to you, if it ever did. We have a less terminal concept in our spinning too – we call it failure. That thing that disrupts your plans, the thing that causes the break-down, that pulls you up short. It\’s all a bit Hexagram 23 really.

(Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;…)

So what to do? What indeed, except take advantage of that natural tendency to turn, to whirl like dervishes, to willfully leap from the bed!  There is a concept here, a concept called afragility; it has  similarities to Stoic philosophy, to the contemplation of death in the Hagakure. The concept suggests, quite brutally, that in terms of the balance-sheet of the universe, many human things dislike change or volatility. There are however, things and ways that may benefit from this Nietzschean \’creative destruction\’.

Things that occur in spite of \’success\’ or \’failure\’. Things that don\’t have goals, but are inevitable. Afragility is asymmetric, and magic is an asymmetric attack on \’reality\’. It does not accept reality\’s terms of engagement. This is key to everything I\’ve ever written; it is not about denial of reality – to do that is tantamount to signing your metaphysical, as well as your physical death warrant. A rock falling will crush you, however much you try to deny it, after all. But if there were a way to make that rock fall as ten smaller stones, you\’d get out of it with a few cuts and bruises, and maybe a mild concussion.

This is of course impossible. Which makes it our business.

The possible may as well be the mandatory. If you want to do something, you must do it a possible way, or so the received wisdom says. Likewise, navigation is mandatory; all forms of navigation require external references, whether it be maps/charts or landmarks or the stars.

Over a long enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero, the chance of a failure increases to near certainty – these are important if you look at magic in terms of probability and odds of success. Fortunately, that\’s not the game we\’re interested in, because the practice of subtraction, of negativity is what we want.

If we\’re properly interested in asymmetry and afragility, then the principle is to put ourselves in the worst situation possible, and not just robustly survive, but thrive. To be able, with the absolute minimum of effort, benefit and increase our influence, in whatever circumstance. This means specifically concentrating ourselves, divesting ourselves of everything that is unnecessary.

Note that I not advocating asceticism here, but neither am I denigrating it – just as we take advantage of that urge to turn away,  domesticating it and turning it into an engine for finding the inevitable so we can turn inward. By doing that, in discovering the  inevitable change and volatility of ourselves, we can find  a guiding principle, an inescapable virtue which exists throughout that volatility.

Throughout all emotion, all experience, one finds a presence or quality which is unique to each of us. One cannot say what it is, only what it is not. I could waffle for ages about light in the darkness, or the Tao, or whatever. The fact is, none of these are right – all I would be doing is creating an image, a map.

I would be making it mandatory, and none of the names are it. But if you look at everything, inside and outside, you\’ll find traces of it. Heraclitus would call it the Logos, and I have no problem with him calling it that, so long as you understand that the word means nothing, until it does.

But the weeping philosopher, like the poet, said that the Logos was Fire. All is flux. Yet emerging from that flux is the appearance of a principle, a principle that is seemingly inevitable and inviolate; a principle which exists through and in all things. Even you. Based on the ancient notion of sympathy there is no difference between you and it.

Suddenly, asymmetric warfare seems to be the only warfare that even makes sense. A billion sperm failed in order for that one to fertilise a particular egg which grew into you. Failure is the default state. You cannot inhale without first exhaling. Once you understand that this is so, that the condition of Fire is, as the weltfeuer, is in all things, things get easier. You understand that it\’s the fire in the cave that throws shadows.

Siva dances, and the Aghori drink from skull cups. Great Mother Kali places her foot upon his heart. Mahakala is wreathed in flames.

\’\”Have you ever tried to return to all this?\” he asked, gesturing. Quiet, warm, inhabited houses. Late-night cars. The real world . . . she shook her head. All fire burns, little baby. You\’ll learn. \”You can\’t. It\’s one or the other. Nobody ever gets both.\”\’)

There comes a point when you can never go home. Nothing is ever as it was. If you ever become Master of the Temple, in time it will fall about you, crumbling to dust, like the sand blowing in the wind. Sand that was once mountains, teeth of the dragon, things that can birth warriors;\’ seeds of the battle trees that spring up making loud clangor on their shields.

D\’ye ken yet? Or would you know more?

Such a whetstone it is; this jewel that slays warriors and thralls and slits their throats; the ease with which they attack each other, as it sets them to frenzy.

(D’ye ken that bitch whose tongue was death?
D’ye ken her sons of peerless faith?
D’ye ken that fox, with his last breath
Curs’d them all as he died in the morning?)

Poetic allusion, sliding past the critical factor as you breathe. You haven\’t forgotten to breathe, have you – just because someone said something?  Just because the words marked out the boundaries, staked their claim to your perceptions, your knowledge?

Keep your sword in its sheath, swim like the fish in the deeps. Don\’t show your cards.  You don\’t need to grasp – every grasp can be broken, every weapon disarmed. That\’s the black hat truth of it; everything can be taken from you. Everything. The words, the things, can all vanish in a puff of smoke.

Poof.

And there\’s no smoke without fire, right?

Idiocy is separateness remember; it\’s each of us believing our own worlds are just that – our own. Follow the common, says Heraclitus. So what\’s the common, but loss? We hate loss. We hate it like Gollum hates the filthy hobbitses, because those things are our precioussss. We\’re as greedy as everyone who ever took the One Ring.

(One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them)

Our worlds are not our own, we can\’t own them, they are not possessed by us. You can\’t lose what you never had. Perhaps it might be clearer to say that you can only lose something if you buy into the terms of gain and loss. Now, I can hear some of you muttering that this is all very well, but how does this apply in the so called \’real world\’?

This is where asymmetry comes in – the most afragile is that which requires minimal input for maximal effort; the action which, even if it fails, still creates options. Indeed, you should go into any afragile action expecting to lose. Walk into that job interview knowing you will be humiliated, and that you can\’t control any portion of the individuals reactions. Know that you will fail;, but refuse to accept that humiliation in yourself. You refuse to accept that, and you smile with the endless smile of the death\’s head no matter what.

You will break them. Trust me.

A shallow form of this can be seen in the saw: \”Feel the fear and do it anyway.\” Moving deeper however, cultivate your fear, turn it into abject terror. In that  grim terror, you will realise you are nothing and no-one; you are mortal. Even now you are burning on the pyre of existence. Even now you are in the common with all things, for mountains fall to dust and empires crumble.

All notions of power and strength, all the things you have been taught to crave, are empty. Value means nothing unless it moves;  the quickening is all that matters, and to draw a distinction between the quick and the dead is pointless. So, thus we throw ourselves into the fire, and amidst that fire, we become as Mahakala.

Our death produces options. We redefine and reframe. We make our own luck. We take words and shape them; fold the map up and punch a hole through, passing from one point to another without crossing the intervening space. Remember, navigation is mandatory – canals and roads, seemingly the only way. But in the quickening, the dérive subverts this; the divisive Spirit is co-opted and infused by Soul. The map is remembered as a living, organic thing – full of dancing flame.

Someone once said some things – and because they were things, there were usually words for them. That\’s what words are, you see; names of things. There\’s old magic in them, so much magic and so very old that we have forgotten it\’s magic at all.

( I am the mighty one who possesses the immortal fire…
I am the one whose mouth burns completely; I am the one who begets and destroys...)

Remember that stone that would kill you, except it can now be broken into smaller stones? Remember the laughter in the darkness, the endless upwelling feral joy of it?

Yes.

That.

Let me tell you a story. Lend me your ears, your minds, and by extension your bodies.

All settled in, all ready to fire up the magic-lantern show of your imagination, to light the flame?

After all, if you\’re reading this, the sparks between us are already flying as you make sense of the words. All you need do is add some kindling, starting even now to add the fuel of your mind, watching the flames dance and the shadows leap on the wall. You\’ve seen them, haven\’t you, these leapers, those dancers – the fast-flickers that twist and stretch, swifter than matter, darker than burning air.

The painted gleaming darknesses, the shining ones hidden in stone and rock, under the hollow hills. The night-black folk who move through earth like water, faster than the wind. You know the ones, don\’t you?  But I\’ll bet you won\’t utter their names, even if you know the real, true ones which are secret above all things. I\’ll not even call them by their titles, by their use-names. No, for such things are not entirely neccessary, not if you look inside the cave of your heart.

So, to the story, which also – and not  coincidentally – includes a cave. As with all the best stories, it\’s an old thing in a new skin – though the new skin is thousands of years old, by itself. In that very cave, there is also a fire, and there are people gathered around it, just as you can gather about the central light of the tale and all the things it\’ll show you, if you watch carefully. The people in the story, we shall say, also watch quite carefully, for they can do no other thing. The fire is warm at their backs, and they see the shadow-play upon the wall, just as you might see it now, if you consider this most carefully.

Eventually, you\’ll notice the most obvious thing; they\’re carefully watching because they cannot move, what with being chained up and all. Slipped around their necks are collars, snapped across their wrists are manacles. Now, sometimes a few of them might look uncomfortable. Perhaps they\’re experiencing an awareness of the metal against their skin or something. They struggle for a bit, panicked, but unable to break free, eventually soothed by the rhythmic clinking that their struggles have produced in the chains, somehow more satisfied than before. At least until the next bout of feeling helpless strikes, that is.

Here\’s the thing though; most don\’t even do that because the chains are placed on them at birth, reforged as they grow. Perhaps the restriction is comforting, or something. Now, it must be said that these chains are mostly of the same type, varying only in size, their shape dictated by variations on an average person, and average necks and wrists. There is actually some room to move given the variety of people, but most if not all choose not to explore it; after all there is less stress that way, right?

So the staus quo remains. Yet every so often, there are slaves born, just a few mind you, who for some reason, don\’t fit their chains very well. Maybe they have different sized necks or different shaped bodies. Maybe they\’re stronger or even weaker than the average. Let\’s focus on those weaker folks for a second; they\’re the type of people who might end up getting dragged along on a chain gang, the ones who drop from exhaustion, held aloft only by their chains, or driven on by pain from ill fitting metal digging into flesh. Maybe they\’re disabled in some way, blind or deaf, old, ill, or even bizarrely pregnant with something from birth.

They\’re there amidst the rest. Perhaps the rest see them as making trouble for the majority, and try and beat them into line out of some fervent desire to have a more unified group, or perhaps they\’re seen as a burden. RO\’s already covered the strong angle, the Red angle of wilful fire that parts the Waters and leads to the Promised Land, and that\’s why, as traditionally seems to be the case, I\’m talking about the Blue Way. The Cold Way, hel-blár  or ná-folr in nature.

Try and put yourselves in the shoes of those folks, and feel the way they feel. You could talk to them all you like about being children of G-d and they\’d probably say that he was an absent parent, or at the very least, might have visited some further curse upon them. They\’d probably say that, especially if you were silly enought to say that it was all part of the Divine Plan, or that \”Everything Happens for A Reason.\” Most of them would have, at some point, probably wanted to die, reasoning that it was probably the only rest they were ever going to get. So perhaps they\’d believe in Paradise after death, a return home to the land of their people or something like that, and you know what?

Good luck to them.

But it\’s not those people we\’re concerning ourselves with. No, this story doesn\’t concern them, and the Moses types only come in tangentially. It concerns the others, the ones who are dragged in the dust and beaten for their differences, are wounded by the fact that the accoutrements of slavery bite even more terribly than for others. They are the ones for whom the metal does not simply chafe, but lays them open to the very bone itself.

It renders them naked in a way no person should be; even their body goes a little nuts in attempting to help them heal, as skin tries to grow over metal to cover the wound. They are more intimately accquainted with their chains than almost everyone else. It\’s got inside them, spreading through the blood-stream like a poison. They know it\’s going to kill them.  They know their difference has separated them for the whole of their existences, but unlike the Moses\’ of their tribe, its only going to bring death rather than freedom, and unlike the ones who see death as final rest, they are restless beyond belief.

You\’ve seen them, perhaps you even know them – the ones with smiles like knives that never seem to shift. The ones who laugh at everything for its inherent ridiculousness. They are the differentiated.

I\’m not!

They don\’t even have to try to differentiate themselves, they simply are. This makes them distinct from those who seek to be individuals, because those always refer to others. They are sui generis; of a different virtue entirely. They share this with the Moses\’ of the world, but where the wilful stretch out their hand and shape the world as they see fit, those we are concerned with ruthlessly pursue their difference because they have no other choice.

TAO TE CHING – Chapter 36. Opposition
To reduce someone\’s influence, first expand it;
To reduce someone\’s force, first increase it;
To overthrow someone, first exalt them;
To take from someone, first give to them.
This is the subtlety by which the weak overcome the strong:
Fish should not leave their depths,
And swords should not leave their scabbards. – Merel trans.

Remember that nakedness, that inescapable  bite of the chain? Remember that they do not fit? This is their virtue, this is their subtlety. They do not seek to be free of the chain, for the chain provides the method of their freedom. Their differentiation, applied with the nature of the chain provides an impossibility. By accentuating that nature until it is undeniable and inexorable, they become something great and terrible.

In inner alchemy, this is the cold and dry way – the direct consequence of exposure to Air and the breath as I said in my last post. It is the essence of exposure, of walking out into the wilderness, of  Captain Oates the polar explorer who said: \”I\’m going out, I may be some time.\” In another sense, it is heavily implicit in the notion of Sky Burial and the chod of Tibetan Buddhism.

If you\’ve ever stood beneath the dome of the sky on  a clear, cold day when your breath steams and is visible before you. If you\’ve ever fallen to breathing and felt the cold fill you up with a burn that seems to lighten and clarify your being, to hollow you out into a crystal diamond, then you know a little of what I\’m talking about. If you have ever heard the wind sing as it flutes through your hollowed-out bones as the sun sets and the light is filled with the luminescence of the gloaming? Then you\’ve tasted some of it as your blood thickens to gleaming ichor and begins to burn with its own inner light.

There is no will there, is there? No exertion save the merciless focus on what is. On Being, itself.

\”I call upon thee, awesome and invisible god, with an empty spirit.\”

Sound familiar? What about about this?

I am the headless daimon with sight in my feet; I am the mighty one who possesses the immortal fire; I am the truth who hates the fact that unjust deeds are done in the world; I am the one that makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll; I am the one whose sweat is the heavy rain which falls upon the earth that it might be inseminated; I am the one whose mouth is utterly aflame; I am the one who begets and destroys; I am the favour of the Aion; my name is a heart encircled by a serpent; come forth and follow.

Now, I\’m not saying that RO is incorrect. Far from it. But in terms of our story of chains and cave-dwellers, we must consider the notion that the daimon of which the Stele of Jeu has spoken, is, by necessity and name, Headless. Whether the head is in another realm or non-existent is neither here nor there. The fact that, amidst all this bombast, there is a peculiar notion of the sight in the feet, might make one wonder what excatly this being is standing on.

More to the point, the immortal fire is just that. It does not die, and when we get to considering it, might we not consider that fire as the ancients might have done, as the fire of Heraclitus – the constant move and change of state, later shifted outward by Christian and Islamic theologians into the realm of the Empyrean, and as the dwelling place of G-d and the Elect.

Plato would perhaps have had us believe that the fire inside the cave is a poor reflection of the Light beyond the cave, and in one sense he would be correct – for those in the cave can only infer the existence of the fire at their backs, nevermind the fact that they probably can\’t see beyond the confines of the cave, or even conceive of such a thing. They would identify with the shadow-play, sorrowing when these echoes seemed to shift and die.

For our calm, cold folks, there is no such sorrow. Indeed, in their singleminded pursuit to use the chain to their benefit, to cultivate their alone-ness, their differentiation, they would uncover the extent of their ability to move, which through that pursuit, would be far more than those who never tried. Perhaps the next step after discovering that movement is to once again use that unique method of movement to increase their influence. Perhaps they manage to turn around and behold the fire. and in their contemplations, they may move slightly, raise a hand perhaps, to feel its heat, and in doing so gain the ability to learn how to cast shadows against the wall, deliberately?

Might this not seem to grant them apparent powers over the worlds of shadows which all others regard as real? Might not it be said of them that they hold discourse with the hidden folk in the stone? That they can command things to occur and it will occur?

More to the point, have not our differentiated folk seen the fire at the heart of that world of shadows? Have they not seen the secret, ever shifting source of the ten thousand things of the manifest world? Might they, by use and domination of their restrictions, their \”sins\”, be able to infuse those chains with fire?

Being beyond Good and Evil, following an inner law which seems to be in defiance of conventional morality. Seems sort of familiar .Not living from the head but from the heart which is encircled by a serpent – the daimonic symbolism is clear. If there\’s any love in this heart, it burns cold and is not \’wet\’. It is a sober, disciplined intoxication \’unassuaged of purpose\’, as precise in character as the prima materia itself. But the heart remains steadfast, ever giving, ever being itself. This makes more sense when we note that the Ancient Egyptians, in whose mysteries Moses was well versed, viewed the heart or Ab as the seat of the soul. This was not some airy fairy, quality, but that which infused and reddened the body, gave it life itself.

The soul itself becomes empowered by the daimon. \”Lord, King, Master, Helper, empower my soul.\”

At death, the heart, according to the Ancient Egyptians, was weighed against the feather of Ma\’at – the embodiment of Divine Right/Order/Justice. Only if they were balanced, would the sould survive death. One might argue there\’s a secret there – that the soul becomes equal to Ma\’at. That the heart is thusly capable of exerting divine right, by virtue of its totality and hence surviving death.

You can see where I\’m going, can\’t you?

For if our differentiated folk pursue their path unflinchingly within the heart, they may be soft, they may give, without loss. If they have found that cold fire within, within themselves as apparently the basest of metals, sat naked and unflinching on the mountainside as all their illusions are stripped away by virtue of their gifting it to any and all. By making it a discipline, one excels. The sword remains in its scabbard, with no need to take it out and test it. The fish remain where they are, excelling in their Being.

So our chained ones smile, for they recognise themselves within that immortal fire, and hence they can become like the sun which exists without the cave.

Besides, you know that metal becomes brittle at super-low temperatures, right?

I\’m not up on my astrology, but y\’know, when\’s that ever stopped me from taking a topical issue and twisting it until it gives up wisdom? However, what with the recent election circus in the US and the odd archontic currents floating around in certain areas, I thought I would pontificate a little. That said, if you are into proper astrology rather than your average tabloid crap which boils down to trying to cram the vast celestial machinery into half a bloody page to be gulped as greedily and unthinkingly as the morning coffee you need to function?

Go see the Art(e)ist formally known as der Baron. Seriously, get him on your case, because the man knows his stuff and is currently hard at work  on the next version of his wondrous Astrological Almanac. Tell him I sent you while giggling into my prodigous beard – it probably won\’t get you a discount or anything, I just like people to know I\’m…watching.

Yes.

Seriously though, most people will have heard of Mercury Retrograde which is when communication and other such things within the Planetary Purview of Mercury end up going a certain creek without a method of propulsion. Now, if you\’re caught in this particular mess, nothing seems to go right at all, does it? Yet it\’s interesting that US Election Day happened at the same time, and in a a peculiar way you can see the strangeness looming in American politics. People are unfriending folks on Facebook over election choice and other such things. There\’s a pall of despair hanging over the world in general, or so the narrative goes. Gordon has his finger on a pulse which anyone with half a brain in the UK can see – I suggest you read his posts on James Bond vs The Demiurge, The Rex Mundi Jigsaw and The REALLY SCARY HALLOWE\’EN STORY to get a flavour of the deep weirdness of what\’s going on now, on a mythic and on some horribly real level.

It doesn\’t matter if you believe it – you don\’t have to. All that\’s required is to spend enough time to get that odd, acrid taste in your mouth. You know the one I mean – the electric-chemical tang of artificial sweetener mixed with sour lightning. The faintly disgusting spiky cloyingness of texture you just want to scrape off your tongue; it lingers even afterwards, and just when you think its gone, it queers up your dinner and makes you feel nauseous. You push the plate away, formerly nutritious and delicious fare suddenly rendered with the spoiled nastiness of something rotten.

It\’s the bad acid, the ominous rumble, the Murdochian Black Magic; the reptile tongue flicking obscenely to taste the air, fouling it with dirty fire of Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. It\’s the spell Geist or Spirit casts over the world, the divisive and tricky blade that teaches things are only really there if they have a border that cannot be crossed. The deathgrip of avarice, the glorification of apparent objectivity, the Panopticon dread that means everyone must see and be seen to have any value. You might say it\’s Mercury in its poisonous form – for all its shining glitter, its reflected gleam it brings that most fearful of things – death.

Let me tell you a secret though – its a caricature. Its an exageration, an overloading. Watch the news and you\’ll taste it everwhere, this distilled vileness, and in that noticing, perhaps you\’ll begin to wonder why it\’s so damn effective about getting down into your hindbrain.

Notice how it makes your heart-rate kick up, your breath quickening as the fingernails of adrenaline begin to scrape the inside of your veins. Notice how it polarises and strengthens your identity; predator/prey, black/white, Republican/Democrat, male/female, straight/queer, Christian/Atheist, dead/alive, friend/enemy, Us/Them.

Feel the rage, feel the fear. Feel the hopelessness in the guts of the Kali Yuga. Feel the Kyriarchy grinding its boot into your face.

 \”You\’re nothing. Nothing at all.\”

Maybe They are right, or maybe you want to deny Them. Maybe you want to fight, to rebel. To go to gods-damned war, to  burn the the world They\’ve made and make something from the ashes? To be a shining Phoenix gleaming with glorious light.

Can you feel that surge, that rising in your heart? Good. Because that is what They want. Because there is no Them, not really. There\’s only Us. And that\’s the point, whether you believe in shadowy intelligences playing games to leech energy off people or not. Anger, fear, hopefulness and hopelessness, social position, money and wealth and countless other things?

Thse emotions are strong animal survival drives. They kick your body in action, set your mind awhirl, heat your blood. Think about how powerful you feel, how righteous  and mighty, when you\’re going to prove someone wrong. Really, take a minute to savour the idea of being victorious, of being free of restraint.

I\’ll wait.

…

Bet it felt good, on some level. I bet you felt a little less helpless, a little more in control, yes? A little more sure of yourself and your place on this spinning space-ship in an ever expanding universe, this little bubble of life voyaging in the endless interstellar gulfs.

Welcome then, to the archontic urge. Welcome to the desire that makes people \”sell their soul\” and allow obscenities to go on for fear of not being believed, or because it might affect their position. Welcome to the bestial awareness that you can do horrific things and get away with it because you\’re covered by a big, trusted organisation or position. Welcome to the realisation that you can make or break someone else\’s life.

Welcome to Empire, to the conversion of the heathen and the slaughter of the infidel. Welcome to signing your name to kill-lists, to being a Super-power, to Weapons of Mass Destruction. To gas chambers and concentration camps, to nationalism and fanaticism. To killing with words and drones, to demonising sections of the population for wealth and political gain.

Welcome to the evocation of authority without soul and understanding. Welcome to a morality based on fear of exclusion and conversion, lacking any higher aims other than maintaining social coherence based on a framework of sin and scarcity. Welcome to the age where the only authority comes from the barrel of gun, and the individual lifespan is more important than the whole.

What has this to do with Mercury Retrograde, I hear you ask?

If Mercury is the messenger, is the medium of communication, then its retrograde is by necessity divisive. When you consider Mercury\’s elder form of the Greek Hermes, you get some more answers. Hermes is the god of thieves, merchants, tricksters, travellers, lord of roads:

Hermes, draw near, and to my pray\’r incline, angel of Jove [Zeus], and Maia\’s son divine;
Studious of contests, ruler of mankind, with heart almighty, and a prudent mind.
Celestial messenger, of various skill, whose pow\’rful arts could watchful Argus kill:
With winged feet, \’tis thine thro\’ air to course, O friend of man, and prophet of discourse:
Great life-supporter, to rejoice is thine, in arts gymnastic, and in fraud divine:
With pow\’r endu\’d all language to explain, of care the loos\’ner, and the source of gain.
Whose hand contains of blameless peace the rod, Corucian, blessed, profitable God;
Of various speech, whose aid in works we find, and in necessities to mortals kind:
Dire weapon of the tongue, which men revere, be present, Hermes, and thy suppliant hear;
Assist my works, conclude my life with peace, give graceful speech, and me memory\’s increase.

– Orphic Hymn to Hermes

And:

Hermes I call, whom Fate decrees to dwell in the dire path which leads to deepest hell
O Bacchic [Bakkheios] Hermes, progeny divine of Dionysius [Dionysos], parent of the vine,
And of celestial Venus [Aphrodite] Paphian queen, dark eye-lash\’d Goddess of a lovely mien:
Who constant wand\’rest thro\’ the sacred feats
where hell\’s dread empress, Proserpine [Persephone], retreats;
To wretched souls the leader of thc way when Fate decrees, to regions void of day:
Thine is the wand which causes sleep to fly, or lulls to slumb\’rous rest the weary eye;
For Proserpine [Persephone\’s] thro\’ Tart\’rus dark and wide gave thee forever flowing souls to guide.
Come, blessed pow\’r the sacrifice attend, and grant our mystic works a happy end.

– Orphic Hymn to Hermes Kthonikos

Hermes, the leader of souls, the stealer of cattle, guardian of sheep and shepherds. Hermes with the rod, Hermes with the magic wand that drives souls and leads them to their destination. If you look at all these things, you find a guide and manipulator, through magic, communication and language. If Hermes were retrograde, all these things would not be good and right. To drive cattle, to tame them and move them where you want to go takes skill and discipline, and there\’s a secret there. Imagine then, that these arts were deployed to divide an conquer, to amass wealth and hoard it instead of letting it flow along the roads in a constant shifting exchange. Imagine what would occur if language was deployed to divide and separate, to isolate and destroy?

All of these things can be easily seen – the map becoming divorced from the territory, the abstraction and disconnecting from the actual into the theoretical framework, where prediction and its short-term practical efficacy is viewed as more important than seeing implications and wholes, or at least in seeking them.  \’Good enough\’ becomes the new watchword, oversimplification destroying nuance and subtlety. Excellence is valued only so long as it makes money, as long as it is profitable.

So, in a sense, our entire culture is governed by those who\’ve made Spiritual pacts with the demiurge – everyone wants the disks, the pentacles, the earthly prosperity. And this is a mistake, because Mercury is the root of merchant, merchandise, mercenary etc etc. It\’s about trade, about movement, not about profit and loss, and that\’s a mistake many occultists make. But let\’s look at the swiftness of Mercury/Hermes; he\’s the fastest bastard there is, the trickiest bugger there ever was. He invents musical instruments, carries messages for the gods, is patron of memory and most of all, is kind to mortals. He passes through the air, unstoppable as speech as conjoining as desire. He acknowledges no difference between living and dead, he\’s the guide of the soul. He\’s air, breath, music, leader of the trail of the dead.

Wednesday is Mercury\’s Day in Romance language – Wodan\’s in the Germanic. Both of the wander roads, and ride through the air Woden is the storm, the mantic speech, the warrior poet, the inspirer of men. That\’s the trick of it, you see – the breath. All life respires  even if it\’s not oxygen based. There\’s movement and exchange, and that\’s how you beat the Archons.

The secret is that everything breathes and that\’s the truth of it. Everyone breathes and shares that breath. It\’s a fundamental fact that cannot be denied, the great leveller, and if you\’re clever, you can do something with that, the Air which is full of Mercury power. You can outrun the Archons while you\’re standing still, and the ancient Gnostics knew that, and the Stoics definitely did. Have you ever heard of the pneuma? Go on and look it up. The breath shot through with Primordial Fire – the word of God. Hermes is the Herald of Zeus, the speaker of that divine word that makes supposedly dumb matter leap to life. Even inanimate objects hold the pneuma, according to tradition, slumbering until it is  quickened – quickened by the soul that is disciplined, that is not pulled hither and yon like an animal that isn\’t being driven correctly.

The archontic forces are divisive, distracting you, enflaming your emotions, leading you by the nose by hacking your body, flooding you with hormones and worry, reducing you to something a thousand times less than you are. There\’s no point striving for excellence, just get good enough, says that little voice. But who decides what\’s good enough? Society? Your family and friends?

So what about excellence in breathing?

On a practical level, there are many breath techniques which can help you, the key is mindfulness over automatism. When was the the last time you breathed well, for more than one breath? When was the last itme you disciplined that most basic of functions, and enforced a rhythm upon it? A pattern that you decided, a breath of ice and fire in which your thoughts suddenly seemed like pebbles in an icy rushing stream, so easily picked up, examined and put to one side as your whole body begins to to share as part of a whole, as part of life itself.

Control is a fallacy, and your money is going to slip through your fingers, your lives are constantly moving. How many  people do you meet every day? How many of them do you give something to, with kind words and an implacable heart full of the knowledge we\’re all together, because we\’re all breathing? If you don\’t give, then why not? What exactly does it take from you? Networking is under Mercury\’s purview, but does he do it for a return, or does he do it because it\’s what he is?

In today\’s world, we\’re being pumped full of FUD, convinced we\’re losing our grip on sanity and sense. The tried and tested ways seem to be breaking down, sand what was once thought to be immutable morality has been shown to be the mumbling of a child hanging on to their security blanket with a death grip. Today\’s technology merely reveals, through a glass darkly, what\’s always been known, that we all breathe the same air.

So go on, take a deep breath of the Frankincense and the Storax that call Hermes, and learn from it.

Be seeing you.

Let me start this by plainly stating something. This is in no way a review of the lovely book that arrived in the post the other morning. It is not a judgement of the validity or otherwise of any of its contents.

Hell, the foregoing isn\’t a disclaimer either – merely a statement of fact. The reason it\’s there is because I don\’t think you can review a book like this. Trying to maintain critical distance in order to present an opinion of a book like this is frankly silly. That means that this whole post is going to be about my impressions of the work, and where it led me. If you\’re not interested in where my soul and psyche was taken while embracing and discovering the current behind the words, then please, stop reading and go do something else – it\’s not for you, seriously.

…

Now, hopefully, all the dry and boring people will have taken the hint and sodded off. Which leaves you, dear reader, with me. First published in 2011 by Fulgur, my copy arrived from the newly born Theion Publishing, complete with sigilized inscription of Les Trois Soeurs. That\’s important, by the way, so I\’ll ask you to bear that in mind for later.

If you\’ve been reading CA for a bit, you\’ll note that I have more time than some for the Voudon Gnostic Workbook and Gnostic Voudon in generally. I\’ve attended two talks by David Beth in Manchester, and once again, was heavily impressed by both. So I\’m coming at this whole thing from a position of respect for a group of people who quite obviously do the Work, rather than simply being an \”occult social club.\”

(This may be also because in order to get to said talks I\’ve had to be hauled up the 2 narrow flights of stairs in a 206 year old pub to get there. Trust me, I wouldn\’t have done it twice if I thought David didn\’t have the goods. He does.)

ATUA is an anthology of individual praxis, so as such, there is a variety of stuff here. Just reading the contents page intrigued me greatly, so I was excited to sit down the other afternoon and immerse myself in such interesting material. I have a bit of a history with Gnostic Voudon, so in a certain sense it was like revisiting my roots, or going back to where I began this oddly crooked path to say hello to some old friends.

This was made even more so by the  fact that the book fell open to the section on Legbha-Guedhe in one of Hagen Von Tulien\’s pieces, particularly the section on Close Encounters With Saturnian Lwa. In my case it was the twin energies of Leghba and Ghuedhe which accelerated my rediscovery of the ancestors who  have since become an integral part of my life. Without the intervention of these lwa, who knows where I\’d be!

(Quiet in the peanut gallery there!)

\”Many spirits of Lucky Hoodoo like to indwell a painted wooden box with a lid, called an ATUA or A TOO A. All spirits dwell in those invisible Atuas that are made of spirit-matter in the world of the spirits.\” Voudon Gnostic Workbook

It\’s obvious, having internalised the above quote, why this book has been named such. It is a dwelling place for the Gnostic spirits which each of the contributors work with. In a sense, opening it and reading it can be seen as answering an invitation, creating a meeting point between the mind/soul complex of the reader and the spirits within. If the reader chooses to allow this meeting, this congress and communication which takes place within the world of primal images, one literally resides at a crossroads. Here then, is where the notion of Leghba-Ghuedhe is so important, for Von Tulien\’s piece makes it explicitly clear that the opening rite to the lwa may be performed alone or as precursor to other work within the VG continuum.

Embracing the timeless furious character of such an Opener Of The Ways, what occurs next is beyond  nature;  walking the road beneath freezing stars without moving from one\’s origin leads inexorably to the next stage of the journey. Long ago, and many times since, have the words \”The Master Comes From The North.\” resounded in my being. So it\’s unsurprising that the next stage of my journey within this house of spirits was David Beth\’s Gnostic Isolation and Journey to the Centre of The World. This combined with Craig Williams Shadow Shaman to engender a terrific sense of resonance with my own praxis.

Standing alone at the centre of the soul there stands that which might be considered the central Mystery that sings to me – that most terrible gallows which is axis mundi and horse of the Terrrible One. Accessible by walking inward and down to the secret centre of the self. So now we entertain the notion that it stands there alone storm-tossed and  blasted by the kosmic winds within an Earth which is not merely hollow but is curved abyss itself. It rises to primacy like some mighty poteau-mitan – its transportational power being the unintelligible voidness which exists within and behind the manifest worlds.

Nor is this the end of the Saturnian resonance – for it is Saturn-Kronos who separated Ouranos from Gaia, and cut off his father\’s member. The resulting frothing mix of semen provides the gate of manifestation for Aphrodite, and that seems fitting given the prevalence of the erotognosis which is so vital within such work. Irrespective of that, it is Saturn-Kronos who becomes the axis mundi,  the daimonic central connection between heaven and earth. It is Saturn-Kronos who devours his children and vomits forth the stone which serves as ersatz-Zeus; that stone which is the Omphalos or navel of the world.

It is Saturn-Kronos who is imprisoned by Zeus, then later released to rule of over the Isles of the Blessed.

\”Etherial father, mighty Titan, hear, great fire of Gods and men, whom all revere:
Endu\’d with various council, pure and strong, to whom perfection and decrease belong.
Consum\’d by thee all forms that hourly die, by thee restor\’d, their former place supply;
The world immense in everlasting chains, strong and ineffable thy pow\’r contains
Father of vast eternity, divine, O mighty Saturn [Kronos], various speech is thine:
Blossom of earth and of the starry skies, husband of Rhea, and Prometheus wife.
Obstetric Nature, venerable root, from which the various forms of being shoot;
No parts peculiar can thy pow\’r enclose, diffus\’d thro\’ all, from which the world arose,
O, best of beings, of a subtle mind, propitious hear to holy pray\’rs inclin\’d;
The sacred rites benevolent attend, and grant a blameless life, a blessed end.\” –  Orphic Hymn XII

Small wonder then, that the Maitre Grand Bois D\’Islet has Saturnian connexions, for, as von Tulien says:

\”[He] is a Neptune an Pluto type of deity, he is the twin and companion of Ghuedhe-Nibbho. As there exist certain secret relations between Moon, Sun and Saturn within the inner Saturnian Sphere and some very special connections between Saturn and those trans-Saturnian planets can be made.\”

There, residing in his realm beneath the crystal waters, with the leaves of the underwater forest shifting with ancient currents, lies that lwa. Diffused and suffusing that place, the great wood suffused with kosmic blue, he resides in quietness. The omnipresence of that spirit is the omnipresence of the deeps to which we must descend to greet our heroic ancestors. The blood in our veins quickens, turning to ichor as we follow the blood-path and exult in the ferocity of the Mighty Dead, those who have returned to their primal atavisms and gifted us with the means of revealing our heritages.

Nor is this something that can be accomplished without merciless dedication, without what Craig Williams mentions as kaivalya – or \”the condition of the isolated Self…obtainable by Gnosis (Jnana) alone.\” 

Now, I\’ve talked many times before about that notion of isolation; the principle of operating coldly, or at the very least more coolly.  This cooling is a notion which is against reactivity – against blind automatism which renders us nought but beasts. Unsurpisingly, the notion of Saturn being related to Prajapati, or  the \”Lord of All Creatures\” evokes subtle notions of Shiva, Rudra and Agni – for it is by willingly sacrificing onself on the cosmic pyre that one gives up the notions of control, status and social ego. In understanding that one is burned to ones bones, one emerges clothed in ashes, much like Shiva – and thus, on a physical level, one becomes as Pashupati, or the Lord Of Beasts. No longer mastered, but Master.

One does not return from death. One emerges as beyond-death, fierce and terrible. The pyre of the weltfeuer when wilfully embraced enables us to break the power of Spirit and ignite the Soul. Those same Saturnine chains which bind us may be used to set us free. Just ask anyone with experience of the erotognosis of bondage and they will confirm this for you most clearly!

Within the Cremation Ground of the Soul, one becomes a dread-locked aesetic, drinking from the cup of one\’s own skull; a tantrik form par excellence – perhaps a cannibalistic ghul would serve as a useful meditative image for those of a Lovecraftian persuasion?

In a Zoetic Universe, that is to say a universe which may perhaps also be described as Animist in nature, the Zoetic principle is omnipresent. This does not contradict the philosophy of Gnostic Agnosticism because all that is known is mediated throu the sensorium which is itself a crystalisation of the Zoetic principle. Or to state it more clearly, perhaps one can say that the universe is alive because we are alive, and the universe is a contigent system. Suffice to say, one might argue that the constant combustion as spoken of by Heraclitus is well suited to the reference in the above Orphic Hymn.

Part of the cooling notion is that the constant change is a constant immolation – we are every sacrifced, ever participating in the universe. However, the colder we become, the more we learn to replace reaction with action.  We are no longer burning indiscriminately – in essence we are answering it with a level of ferocity which renders us as a dance partner in the charnel ground, rather than simple fuel.

Here we see a resonance with Oryelle Defenestrate-Bascule\’s piece on Mahakala-Ghuedhe. This fierce deity also survives as a wrathful deity in Tibetan Buddhism – the devouring, burning embodiment of Great Black Time itself. Many years ago, I found myself drawn to such a depiction, and a statue of Mahakalha has long sat upon my altar. All things fall before Mahakala, just as Maha-Kali is the Great Black Mother – the all-comsuming one who dances endlessly on, the womb from which we all emerge and return.

In Binah, we see the Black Sea of Understanding; a watery parallel that matches the conflagration which we have spoken of; an abyssal gulf in which one may plunge to infinite depth. Within those waters one may perhaps dvine the  weave of inescapable Fate – the cold doom which snares us the moment we are born. In that ocean  we may find figures limned with kosmic light – guides to draw us along the corridors of the birthing ossuries, moving at sidereal angles across the lattice of crystal interstices which lead us further on.  In those in-between spaces, one may watch the four limbs of the crossroads shift and double.  Perhaps what was once human in form now becomes arachnoid? The absurdity of the call towards were-tarantulahood now loses its schlock-horror aspect and becomes awfullyunmistakeable.

Suddenly the web of time emerges – the wyrd shrieking now resolving into laughter and the thrust of hips as Barons and Maitres teach the wisdom of brewing strange liqours. And yet there, beneath that Black Sun, deep within that Hollow Earth already spoken of, one also notes the eight legs and the ferocity of speed as the best of all horses canters down to Hel. The Gallows Lord thunders on, with his Furious Host about him.

Les Trois Soeurs, all full of secrets and potions in their alchemical erotognosis, which are bearing secret kinships to the venoms of the Elivagar. Les Trois Soeurs with their faces in ink that stare out of the page – relevantly sigilised for this copy that found its way to me. Les Trois Soeurs who annoint and salve the body of the initiate, engineering and engendering the Atua to produce such poisons as will transmute the flesh and bone into a creature of unavoidable daimonic presence.

With their intercessions, emissions and fluids tatooed into amorphous writhing script upon the skin and bones of the initiate, so the darkly gleaming mandalas of monstrous  primordial machinery hidden within the cellars of imaterial citadels begin to spin up to life. Only then can the initiate face the fanged noumena found in the realm termed by David Beth as the Meon. Only with the anointing of the seeker\’s body with the clays of the three wells that lie on Yggdrasil, only by seeking the giant maids who mark the fates of men, can one feel the cold blood course through the bindrune of your existence. Only by taking that venomous draught, by embracing your monstrous end as food for the wolf and fuel for Surtur\’s fire, can you be reconstituted to journey further on, in to the realms of metacosmic darkness.  Only through the intercession of the Giant Maids can you embrace and become your wyrd such that none can harm you.

Or so the whisperings from the dreamings inform me – and it it is any wonder that All-Father Wotan, that mightiest of ceaseless hunters may seize you by the neck and carry you away? Is there any wonder that there is no rest for the wicked, that the kosmic gnosis surfaces in multiple streams, or that the dancing, whirling form of Mahakala meets fierce cannibalistic Saturn; that ash-daubed Siva and the ruddy gleam of Rudra meets the mighty howling of Set? That the genius of Leghba-Ghuedhe rises again from beneath and behind the cross to stand with Hermes and Carrefour and Cimitere?

Yes.

There is wonder, in abundance, and we must thank the contributors of Atua;  thank Fulgur and Theion Publishing; thank the Master of your Soul for shattering the chains of Spirit.

Yes.

Time to blow the dust off this old place; to walk again amongst the electronic megaliths that lie here like a ruined temple to a forgotten universe. Or, to put it another way, CA is back up and running after some code mishaps and, I can blog again. But it\’s more than a blog, it\’s a living, breathing concept that\’ll be extant long after the world has burned itself out. The blog is just a door.

The main reason, code aside, that this place has been so very silent, is that I\’ve been busy. Busy working with, and becoming part of, Foolish People. To quote directly:

FoolishPeople create film, theatre, music and books. We curate and engineer immersive experiences that have the power to raise the numinous within the spectator. Over a number of years, we have developed a unique practice, Theatre of Manifestation. We combine mythology, shamanism, drama therapy, strategic forecasting and open source collaboration in the creation of this work. Each piece takes form by merging text, performance, sound, art, light and the building itself to create a unique, dreamlike world that living characters inhabit.

Since around about May I\’ve this year, I\’ve turned my talents to helping craft a world  which was designed to grab people by throat and gut, and shake them about a bit until all the encrusted bits fall off, to reveal the skin beneath. That world was the world of VIRULENT EXPERIENCE:

The Age of Emotional Prohibition has begun.

THEN: London, 2012: CCTV on every corner, missile batteries on the roof of council blocks for national security during the Olympiad. Every moment of your life logged and regulated by governments and corporations trying to sell you things through your smart-phone and browser while people you haven’t seen in years can follow your life moment by moment online.

NOW: London, 2040: The Ministry of Information’s Emotional Experience Act is in force. In an effort to stop the nation tearing itself apart, the government has instituted ENGLAND REBORN – for your Safety, Security & Sanity. Thanks to the Sure Heart implant technology gifted to newborn citizens, all disruptive, antisocial and negative emotions and rogue experiences are now prohibited, isolated and catalogued within the Virulent Museum of Human Experience via real time analysis of your lives. No longer do the self destructive impulses of the nation manifest in the phenomenon known as Virulent Novelty. Always connected, never alone – watched over by the ubiquitous BLAKE. Truly it is a Green and Pleasant Land.

Helping craft the transmedia narrative for the production along with the rest of the team,  as well as writing much of the in-world text and other things that needed words to make them live, I\’ve been on a long strange trip.

A trip that rquired every ounce of textual, storytelling and magical nous that I possess. A trip that culminated in visiting Conway Hall on the 23rd of August 2012, to meet those with whom I had been sharing ideaspace for months end, and to investigate its physical manifestation through the primal ritual of theatre.

That meeting may very well have changed my life on its own, being the culmination of years of synchronicity, occult social connexions and directed magical work. Only time will tell what that mutual contact may spawn in the years to come, but that\’s neither here nor there. What follows below, is on the other hand, a direct recounting of the experiences and thoughts raised  within me during  the ritual production itself. I hope you enjoy it – I have many more tales still to tell, after all.

***

There\’s a lot of assumptions you know.

Things that everyone carries around without noticing – weights and baggage heaped upon us changing how we grow, like Bonsai. Things that we accept because we have no way of knowing that our only sources of authority are also operating on received wisdom.

Culture\’s built on Chinese Whispers – or what\’s the other name for it? The Telephone Game. Crackle down the line; spectral phonemes hissing along the copper wire amidst the white noise. Maybe now it should be phantoms and apparitions dancing down the fibre-optics? Emergent properties, fractal fragments and seeds of Rainbow Bodies surging along at the speed of light.

Accelerate those fast enough and time begins to dilate, space begins to curve in on itself. Everything warps subtly, twists like a snake eating its own tail. Think about those serpentine coils as an electro-magnet for a second – it doesn\’t matter that we\’re back to the simple motif of copper coils and radio.

It doesn\’t matter that fibre-optics evoke analogue systems, that the digital binary pulse leads to a weird organic clarity emerging from the background. Doesn\’t matter that the electro-magnet hums with power as it accelerates particles – as it sings in cyclotrons and smashes open the secrets of the universe.

Doesn\’t matter that the future and past are looping on, forming a toroid event horizon about the black hole of the Now. Beyond that threshold, everything is super-dense – the All-At-Once. Beyond the threshold, the limen, everything is liminal. Light folds back on itself, everything folds back on itself. Opposites become their own origin.

The multiverse thrums with a deep magnetic pull, the highest gravitational energy. You could call it a machine, a construct. You\’d be wrong, because it isn\’t anything. It\’s the All-Thing. The All-Thing which is Nothing, Nobody In Particular.

It\’s endless flux. Endless play. They say the mask has no back, that there is nothing behind it. They\’re right – there are no phenomena, only the unknowable noumena from which arise apparitions of things.

All that humans create, from architecture to machines to other humans, is this enacted.

Crystallisation of the imaginal. A manifestation of the Way Back Home via the terrific and inspiring faculty of the imagination. Everything the species has ever done, is this. Manipulation of phenomena to re-create a memory of the Dream-Time. This is Art. This the primal sorcery which built the world.

Manipulation and modulation of phenomena – arrangements of experience and matter which propels one beyond the faculty of knowledge into the glorious gnosis of agnosis. Socrates was declared wisest of all by the Oracle at Delphi, and yet he claimed knowledge of nothing.

Socrates is ever in the basement of my mind, as he was in the basement of Conway Hall. Biding his time in the bright darkness of Blake, as the ghost of a wilful harlequin named Harry led me down the corridors of the Museum.

Surrounded by words; twenty-six things of ink and thought arranged upon the page so as to conjure remembered experience and rearrange them in other minds. People can be portals, did you know that?

Gateways – their flesh living thresholds across which the liminal, the All-Thing may come, in all its absent fullness, all its incomprehensible profundity. In all its primordial potency.

We\’re all fictional, all made up – acting like we think we should.

\’I\’ was a ghost prowling the corridors of Mind, dancing as it slips and sings between the membrane of so many personal cosmoses. It\’s still doing it – deus ex machina.

Someone once said that human beings are machines for making gods. Maybe. Maybe gods are machines for making humans? After all, they, and we, are peculiar arrangements of matter and energy.

VIRULENT EXPERIENCE is a machine. A carefully crafted creation made of flesh and blood and word. Of thought and memory, humour and madness. Its design acts like a certain particle accelerator that is searching for, and has probably found, the figuratively named God-particle.

Except that there\’s nothing figurative about it here. Foolish People have manifested the numen for you. The quality of all the gods that ever were, has been brought to you. Cycle after cycle, forming that gate – that way to touch the All-Thing, to hear it behind the words and actions, to enable you to re-cognise the fact of its existence.

To know that you are a thing of dreamflesh; a precipitated and concentrated child of the All-At-Once. A manifested moonchild, a living, walking embodiment of the agnosis. A literal incarnation of wonder.

How many names and identities do we bear that are not our own? How many creations have been layered atop us, how many impressions have been inscribed in our clay?

VIRULENT EXPERIENCE is a machine, an arrangement of matter and energy which gives you a glimpse into the notion of tabula rasa. A doorway into the infinite potential of the blank page; that which contains all words, all states of being, and yet is none of them.

A machine that invites you to see the power of what you may be, if you choose to be.

So, I finished a book the other week. Not so unusual, except that it was one that I wrote myself, in response to a very clever fellow askling me to tell a story. I\’ve pimped it enough for now – indeed it\’s not actually finished, because it\’s sat with the publisher ready to be edited. Now, you might be thinking, why don\’t I shut up until it\’s ready? The answer to that is that, in fact, this has nothing to do with the publishing process, and everything to do with the writing process.

Now, I don\’t know if the book is actually any good, and I know that it\’s full of typographical errors, and the odd missing word; the speed at which you think is often rarely matched by your fingers, and even the fastest typist will often get carried away. So, given that, what\’s the initial maneuvering for?

Let me put it another way:

The final manuscript comes in at just over 100,000 words, and I have no idea what it is. Honestly, it\’s like the thing came to life on its own, and as I wrote the last page – which incidentally, returns you to the first page, because I\’m clever like that – I realised that it was an impenetrable thing.

A bloody slab of something that requires participation and in return exerts an odd influence on you. I say this because in the latter stages I spent 18 days, 8 hrs a day hammering out words. One after the other, again and again, and do you know what that does when you do it day after day?

It. Rewires. Your. Brain.

Even uncle Aristotle knew that, despite being a bugger for the bottle:

(I was considering including the full Bruce sketch but I thought Gordon might kick me.)

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

I could point you to all kinds of evidence on neuroplasticity, or pretty MRI pictures, and I could equally spout some bollocks about expert-hood taking 10,000 hours to achieve. Yes, I could do that, and I\’m not going to, because if you are really interested, then you\’ll look it up yourself – and if you\’re not, I\’m wasting my time typing them all out. It\’s a bit like summoning witnesses to prove a case, and honestly I\’m not interested in that, and nor, I think, are you.

Instead, I\’d ask you to picture this:

A chap with long tangled hair and a prodigious beard glares at the monitor, swigging coffee and gulping it down so fast that it might be bruising his gullet. Hunched over the keyboard, he hammers away, hearing the voice in his head conjure up emotions and experience; crazed juxtapositions and frenzied metaphors serve as door into recalling and recombining of sensation and experience.

You see, you can\’t expect to have an effect, unless you are affected. It\’s not simply about stringing words together, and indeed anyone who tells you that is lying. Think of the last time you spoke to someone more than in passing, of how the conversation takes you through a range of thoughts, and how the other other person\’s responses shape what you\’re saying and the emotions you\’re feeling.

Imagine summoning them up, before you put them on the page – imagine going first – never expecting anyone to feel something you\’re not capable of feeling yourself, because that\’s what you\’re trying to do – you\’re trying to share with the other person, with your audience, with your co-conspirator.

Of course, you can never be sure how they\’re going to react, can you? They might have had a bad night\’s sleep, be annoyed at their partner, or perhaps have something so awesome on their minds that they\’re only listening for long enough so that they can get a word in edgewise.

Such things are pretty much beyond your knowledge; the complex interactions and circumstances are just that – complex. So all you can do is fire them up and cast them into the void. Which, in a way is a bit like sigils – you fire \’em and then you forget. Except a lot of people have a problem with the forgetting, and understandably so.

After all, if you\’re going to use magic, it\’s probably either to get you that extra edge, or because you\’re hitting a wall and want to bring out the big guns, right?

So you\’re invested, quite obviously, and sometimes that investment can get in the way – your striving for a particular outcome can screw things up, narrow your perception and mean you miss precisely the opportunities you need to achieve your goals. One of the ways around this is the practice that Gordon refers to as shoaling where you break down your goals to maximise their potential probability. It\’s a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if its done – eventually something will stick.

It\’s a useful technique, and one that I\’ve used before, especially when applied with the other kind of work – the laser-focused statement of intent.

One thing writing this book has taught me is that, on a long term project like this your emotional relationship to it shifts. You can love it one moment, and hate it the next, and it doesn\’t matter because if you\’re doing it right, you can\’t not work on it. It literally becomes an habituated obsession.

You bcome literally obsessed, fudamentally occupied and beseiged by the idea, by the project, and here\’s where this sort of thing gets deeply interesting.

Because you\’re suddenly not doing it for any goal except itself. I was asked to tell a story, but soon enough that was not the goal – I wasn\’t telling it for my audience. I wasn\’t even telling it because I liked it – indeed I often hated it. It was, at points, the vilest most disgusting piece of excrement ever to be produced by a human mind.

Understand, this is not a metaphor. There were days when I felt literally sick as I sat down to work on this monstrosity, but I did it anyway, because I couldn\’t avoid it. I\’d been doing it so long that thinking thoughts which were not connected to it became impossible. It was in me like an invader.

Like a disease.

It became the ground of my existence, this story, until it was telling me what to write, and there were loops and whorls and repetitions and oddnesses galore; until at last I began to realise that this stream of conciousness was revealing the oblique, the hidden thing behind and beneath it – as if the words were but doors to something incomprehensible, like 100,000 fingers pointing at the moon in the zen koan.

I mention this because the project becomes a thing in-and-of-itself. It doesn\’t matter if it\’s succesful or not, doesn\’t mater if it gets you fame and fortune or leaves you penniless in a ditch. It\’s simply is – an event in  space and time. It doesn\’t matter if those goals are even possible, because the goal is irrelevant. You\’re not doing it for a goal.

You are doing it because your doing-of-it is an inevitability.

It is habit squared; you do not have anything other than it. Or as Spare puts it:

Does not matter – need not be

The result does not matter, and need not be in any particular form. Think of how many times your emotions shift, and how they influence your actions – think how easily your thoughts are capable of carried like tumbleweed from one thing to another. Many schools of esotericsm require the development of so-called \’thought-control\’  to create a disciplined focus, yet I\’d argue it\’s a misleading misnomer.

If the idea is to silence the mental chatter, then people are often taught to squelch it – yet in writing a book that originates in that stream of chatter, I\’ve found that it\’s far better to let the chatter proceed unresisted, because eventually its underlying structure is revealed. Or to put it another way, our inner storyteller spouts a load of shite but if you do not react to it, it eventually starts producing gold.

Without external stimuli, things smooth out – the emotions and worries, the loves and the hate of it rise and fall, and all that matters is the writing itself. Is it any wonder perhaps, that Spare\’s major written work is The Book Of Pleasure (Self-Love)?

There is no-one involved but the Self – it pays no attention to external stimuli, is heedless of possibility, or probability.

Bringing this out of the realm of high concept, consider the idea that probability manipulation is by its very nature, referential to an external source – that of reality. Circumstances may change, and due to the sheer complexity of the universe, what\’s possible may change from moment to moment.

The only thing that is inevitable is the impossible. Black Swan events are events with near-impossible qualities which are rationalised in hindsight as probable. The mob-spectacle of perception known as reality tries to rationalise them afterwards – to provide causal links, to render them stable, rather than feral events.

Think back to that image of the frenzied writer, posessed and obsessed by a story. It does not give a monkeys for \’reality\’ – the book, once produced, does not change in reference to stimuli. It is, in the McLuhan sense, a colder medium.

Just like a sigil, it is itself – and the whole point of scrambling the statement of intent in modern chaos magic is to obliterate meaning, to render the sigil into an occult glyph, an unintelligible thing. The sigil doesn\’t give (another anamalistic metaphor)\’s for your goals. It does its job, as best it can given the environment.

There\’s a problem, I think, in casting magical work into the realm of probability – but that\’s not to say one shouldn\’t take advantage of it when it benefits you. No, instead, perhaps you should instead acknowledge that what you are seeking to do is impossible, and that you\’re deliberately attempting to induce events which reality will almost instantaneously attempt to co-opt with its ration-al-isation.

Do what you do, and be cold about it. Be obsessed by it, not for what it can do for you, but what it is. Get into the habit of being impossible

Ladies and Gentlemen –

Cold Albion has been quiet, and quiet for a reason. I am having a book published, and frankly, I\’m busy writing the bloody thing. Closer to the time, look for exclusive content here and pop over to Modern Mythology to see explorations of themes linked to the book!

Have a gander, and please do spread it around!

Be Seeing You.

_______________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – LONDON 5TH SEPTEMBER 2011

Weaponized is proud to announce the publication of ‘The Ravens Head’ a powerful new book by author Craig VI Slee.

Once upon a time, the first story was told – somewhere deep within the fields of memory, a vision was transmitted from one person to another. Once upon a time, a tale touched you and changed your world. It transported you somewhere else and left its fingerprints upon your life, and then when others saw the marks, you told of how they came to be. Over time, you wrapped yourself in stories, tattooing them upon the skin of your existence to make sense of all that happened. When others offered you stories, you took them gladly and spliced them with your own, until you could no longer discover where yours ended and theirs began.

Who exactly is it that tells your tale, guides the monologue and direct your actions? How much of your world is actually your own, and how much of it is painted scenery put there in the years before you were born? What is actually wallpaper over Plato’s cave walls, put there to soothe humankind and conceal the bare, unyielding rock?

What happens when you boil it all down and you are left with ash, ground down to the bone and struggling under the weight of loss and incomprehension?

Welcome then, to The Ravens’ Head.

A story about stories, about the search for the language of the birds, the tongue of the Angels – it chronicles the life and work of a man engaging in the oldest quest. The quest to become more human than human, and recover his nature from the mob-spectacle known as “reality.”

The Ravens’ Head is part travelogue, part mythic narrative and part journey inward into the depths of consciousness itself. Written by a figure steeped in mythic landscapes and tales, it presents a unique take on life and the notions of disability and impairment.

Focusing on the inescapable notions of physicality and sensation, it examines the conventions of power and control – revealing them to be nothing but stories and charms to ease the discomfort of life in an indifferent universe.

A furious exploration of the connections between poetry and communication – between stories, myth and magic, it serves as a gateway into the world behind the wallpaper; through the metaphors of ancient myth and personal experience, it opens doors for the reader to examine their own life and partake in a glorious phantasmagoria of inspired creation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
CRAIG ‘VI’ SLEE or MR. VI if you’re feeling formal, lives in the North of England in a place charmingly nicknamed ‘Hanging Town’. Crazed spastic: poet, storyteller and philosopher, he embraces a peculiar life of furious seizure.

Gripped by the ecstatic awe and dread known by the ancients as wôdh, he makes deals with the grandfathers of ravens and counts the Furious Host as blood brothers. He sits at crossroads in the middle of the night and knows the scent of blood and frost as well as he does mead and woodsmoke.

He’s more than a little bit dead. He drinks dark ale and smoky whisky and can send you places by the power of his voice. The waters of the dream-sea flow in his veins and pain is the herald and gateway of his vision.

He made a deal with the Devil in the grounds of a thousand year-old church, giving up his soul for skill with words. Or he conjured up the Headless One and ignited the immortal fire, and he walks without walking, striding through your dreams and over the graves of giants.

At least, these are some of the stories they tell of him. He has a beard and a hat, and if you asked about them and called him a sorcerer, he couldn’t possibly comment. But he does like cats, which is nice.

ABOUT WEAPONIZED:
Weaponized publishes experimental forms of fiction, prose and art that offer new ways to experience stories and myth. They are passionately committed to finding unique narrative hybrids that challenge, engage, inform and inspire readers.

The imprint was founded by FoolishPeople, FoolishPeople create film, theatre, music and books and curate and engineer immersive experiences that have the power to raise the numinous within the spectator. FoolishPeople are currently shooting ’Strange Factories’ in Prague, a ground breaking immersive film that will be toured and presented within an immersive event created by FoolishPeople that explores the early history of cinema and film via the touring traditions of Phantasmagoria and theatric arcana.

Since its launch in August 2010 Weaponized has published FoolishPeople scripts ‘Cirxus’ and ‘Dead Language’ by John Harrigan, ‘The Sparky Show’ by Xanadu Xero and ‘Forum’ by Richard Webb and ‘Citizen Y’ written by John Harrigan and James Curcio and ‘The End of the Word As We Know It’ by Wes Unruh.

‘The Ravens Head’ is published by Weaponized in February 2012.

Artwork by P. Emerson Williams

PRESS CONTACT For further information please email press@weaponized.net

Now listen, or as they say:

Hwaet!

We are passing through corridors of stone; routes of labyrinthine complexity filled with hollow, echoing ghosts – phantasmal strains and thin snatches of half-remembered speech. Perhaps there should be dust, and maybe, in the darkest corners, the compressed and most unseen crevices, there is.

But even a place like this must conform to certain biological processes – for there to be dust, there must be human skin to flake and to float, in the air that is so awfully still. And there hasn\’t been a human presence here for an extraordinarily long time.

This is not simply a poetic way of describing a blog that\’s been quiet for the past six months or so, while I\’ve been busy doing other things. Nor is it distinctly evocative of a particular milieu – no grandiose visions of primordial places,  with hidden treasure glinting in subterranean splendour, all unseen by the eye of mortal man. No slumbering warriors lie in wait; an army of metaphor does not listen for the clarion call to reach its ears, rising with an inhuman swiftness; it is not charging into battle to engage in the struggle which we laughably call communication.

No. Because this is Cold Albion, and like all cold things, it exists at a remarkably low-energy state.

We have all met people before, and we have interacted with them – every look you give, every glance you receive, engages the neurology of those you contact, as well as your own. You carry representations of things, linkages and patterns, and all these are arrangements of energy.

When you see your loved ones, certain arrangements and patterns fire up. A great deal of the time, if you compared these arrangements -these perceptions – with a kind of nebulous \’actuality\’ you\’d find pretty major discrepancies.

This is because it\’s less effort than constantly re-analysing things. In short, it\’s an evolutionary hack. It uses less energy and  means we can move faster, and do other things with that energy, because, apparently like every other organism on the planet, we are biochemical in nature.

Molecules shift and move, obeying particulate rules and concentration gradients – diffusion and pH – principles and contacts, meetings and transferences via chemical pump; these are the methods which produce the electric surge, and the crackle of lightning that runs along your nerves and the neurotransmitters that carry the messages over the synaptic gap.

Heat the body up too much and the enzymes are denatured, the bio-machines cooked into uselessness. Too much energy and radiation warps your DNA, or burns your flesh and bone. All fire burns, and what\’s fire but the fastest thing; the hungry flame that consumes the fuel?

Imagine having that energy within you, the metabolic processes constantly running; proceeding endlessly until your systems begin mutating or degrading, worn by years of replicating ceaselessly while you are  unaware of the lion\’s share of it, as you are going about your life. Does it feel like anything familiar, that sense of rushing existence?

…

And in that feeling, maybe we are considering something, you and I. Perhaps we could be considering the implications of the heated meat package that is our corporeal selves.

Because we\’ve stood in the cold, haven\’t we? It\’s a sensation you\’ve no doubt had – the heat of yourself bleeding away into the vaster space, spreading out and becoming diffuse. The way the chill is beginning to set in – except of course you\’re losing heat, not gaining cold.

It\’s not as if the cold is penetrating you, piercing you like a knife. It\’s not as if the chill bites with sharp teeth, right before the numbness is beginning to set in, is it? In actual fact it\’s the comfort that is leaving, dissolving; becoming threadbare as the body begins attempting the desperate process of  conserving heat, of keeping things moving. Withdrawing to the centre, protecting those vitally important organs, leaving extremities to their fates.

Yet actual facts of biology have little to to do with language and how we go about perceiving. The metaphors are those of disruption and attack, instead of an apparently natural adherence to basic physical-theory.

So what happens when you start considering the fact that energy is finite, that all fires exhaust their fuel eventually? We\’ve discussed this before, and it\’s fairly implicit in my philosophy and words. As  I say over in my latest essay on  Modern Mythology – Toasters, Bladerunner and Schizophrenia:

We can\’t even tell if we\’re Replicants. Can\’t trust our memories, or our assumptions, or our senses.  All we have is now, this moment, and even that is being filtered by our imagined pasts and futures.

There is no escape; no external environment wherein the processes of change are stilled and all is in perfect repose, perfect balance. So instead, we wander these corridors and halls, chilled by the notion of eventual decay.

Gordon said I should write more, that there had been too much of silence in the corner of the blogosphere we inhabit. He said it, and admitted it was for purely selfish reasons. Since he\’s back posting, I\’m picking up that gauntlet: I respect such admissions, and that\’s why I would like you to begin accepting the chill as we continue on, because in a sense it is somewhat necessary to what I\’d like to give you.

Because I want to talk about trolls.

Not your internet trolls – this is not about griefers or 4chan – but the creatures from Scandinavian folklore. The monstrous beings that lurk in dark places and hidden caves, and who become quite literally petrified by sunlight; turned to stone by the dawn.

The heavy and unwieldy media, such as stone, are time binders. Used for writing, they are very cool indeed, and serve to unify the ages – Marshall McLuhan, \’Understanding Media.\’

Past, present and future, all emerging, swirling from the stony well of Urðarbrunnr. The woven web of wyrd, reaching back and forth, warp and weft and threads  a-binding; up and down, left and right, ana and kata.

Down at the roots of mountains, back along paths of memory, might you know the music of trolls?  If you\’re of a certain age and from the UK, you might recognise it from Alton Towers adverts:

The well known piece, written by Grieg for Henrik Ibsen\’s play Peer Gynt, occurs when the protagonist falls and strikes his head on a rock after chasing three maidens. Three maidens who claim to have got rid of their useless human lovers and are, to put it bluntly, hot for a little…troll-based action.

Peer, being a braggart and womaniser, claims he has enough troll-like stamina to satisfy all three, and so the chase ensues. Knocked unconscious by his amorous quest, he dreams of a green-clad girl who he pursues, eventually realising she is the daughter of the Old Man of the Mountain – specifically the Troll-King of the Dovre mountains. Lured by lust, as they travel to the Hall of the Mountain King, Peer comments on the clothing choice of his would-be shag:

THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

My week-day gown is of gold and silk.

 

PEER

It looks to me liker tow and straws.

 

THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

Ay, there is one thing you must remember:-

this is the Ronde-folk\’s use and wont:

all our possessions have twofold form.

When you shall come to my father\’s hall,

it well may chance that you\’re on the point

of thinking you stand in a dismal moraine.

And here\’s where things get interesting – the land of the Trolls seems to require a different way of looking at the world, of perceiving objects, and indeed, like many Otherly spaces, perhaps time itself. For when Peer arrives in that stony hall of the Old Man, far from being torn apart as the troll-courtiers would like, the King asks him a series of questions, questions that seem faintly ridiculous, albeit probably harmless – and the answers are even stranger. Take for example, the exchange that occurs when the Old Man asks what the difference is between humans and troll-kind:

PEER

No difference at all, as it seems to me.

Big trolls would roast you and small trolls would claw you;-

with us it were likewise, if only they dared.

 

THE OLD MAN

True enough; in that and in more we\’re alike.

Yet morning is morning, and even is even,

and there is a difference all the same.-

Now let me tell you wherein it lies:

Out yonder, under the shining vault,

among men the saying goes: \”Man, be thyself!\”

At home here with us, \’mid the tribe of the trolls,

the saying goes: \”Troll, to thyself be-enough!\”

Now, Grieg himself wrote of the piece:

\”For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and \’to-thyself-be-enough-ness\’ that I can\’t bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt.\”

So we can see that he felt the piece summed up something negative, brash, and we might even say…trollish. Yet when you look at the Troll King\’s remarks, you can perhaps feel a deeper meaning.

 

THE OLD MAN

My son, that \”Enough,\” that most potent and sundering  word, must be graven upon your escutcheon.

Further trials  await Peer – he is presented with music and dancing which to him is only a cacophony, and feasting which is only offal and gore. As he balks, the trolls  cry out for him to be torn apart, but the Old Man cautions them that he is, after all, only human, with human senses.

The proposed solution is grisly, involving a scratching of the eye and the wearing of blinders to rid Peer of his human perceptual biases. Presented with the notion that his human sense may never return after such an operation, he flees from the hall, giving up on his paramour and returning to the waking world of men.

While a classic mythical narrow escape, here we\’re more concerned with the inescapable. Peer\’s human perceptions render the world a certain way, and the ambivalence of trollish existence is abhorrent to him. So the question then becomes, from whence did Peer Gynt gain his humanity that it is so easily removable by the Old Man?

There are some that might argue such things are innate, but if so, how is it that his senses would not heal?

It\’s that enough which concerns us. If we contrast this with chase of Peer Gynt after his women, then might we look at the trolls as those who are capable of perceiving what is dross and foulness to humans, as things of great joy and beauty?

Imagine if you could modulate your perception in such a way as to gain exactly what was needed from things others could not process or deal with. Not simple contrariness, or even \’settling for less\’, but having different requirements?

Suddenly the claims of the Yogis, the magicians, the Tibetan Masters – they start to appear as something other than mere hyperbole.  If you could change your perception, you could change how you react to things. What was once hostile and fearsome might now be known as a fierce protector or enthralling companion – phobia shifting to fascination, for example.

We are biochemical creatures, as  I\’ve said. Our emotions are made manifest by chemical and hormonal shifts in response to stimuli. You swim in a soup of neuro-transmitters, our veins and arteries rage with chemical fury. Born from that amniotic ocean, you are briny seas suffused with lightning – an plethora of complex systems operating in concert to produce \’your\’ existence.

Where does this roaring creature gain its shape? Where does personality come from, its name and sense of self? Do you know where you begin, and where you end?

There\’s a dilemma here, because every thing is defined by what it is not. If you are human, there must be something that is not human. For there even to be a \’you\’ as a distict thing, there must also be that which is not-you.

Can you remember where you came from?

Marshall McLuhan wrote of a spectrum of media, from hot to cool. Hot media requires little participation – it is delivered rapidly and possesses its own energy, its own structure and arrangement, which is impressed upon the recipient.  Film, for McLuhan, enhanced the visual sense – the spectacle is pre-delivered, it\’s informational content designed to evoke specific reactions and resonances.

\”The passive consumer wants packages, but those[…]who are concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort to aphorisms, just because they are incomplete and require participation in depth.\” – Marshall McLuhan

How much energy is spent, how much time is used, in the construction of identity? How many packages have you received before a personality emerged, and hence, how much of \’you\’ is a product of environmental shaping? Multi-billion dollar corporations are founded on the presumption that the consumer wants to be kept in-formed – hot off the presses comes the gossip, the news, the celebrity hijinks!

The trolls come from a cold and snowy land – their way is colder, slower. The Old Man\’s aphorism is an incompleteness, an indefinite ambivalence that Peer cannot stomach – he\’d rather be off chasing hot young wenches!

(Can\’t fault him there, actually.)

The cooler media that McLuhan speaks of requires participation – cold media is incomplete and requires interaction to access.

We\’ve all been in that situation – you know the one – where we\’re presented with someone who we know nothing about, at a party, some sort of social gathering, or a business function. Striking up a conversation often requires more energy from the initiator than the recipient at the beginning. Once both parties are comfortable with the level of communication and interest, communication starts flowing easily and time can just fly by!

Things that exist at low energy states, such as this place, can lie quiet for a long while, and as participation increases, the level of energy increases dramatically because of the incompleteness.

It takes more energy to define, and maintain those definitions, than it does to allow ambivalence and incompleteness. More energy is expended in maintaining the status quo, than is accepting and utilising changing conditions. I\’ve touched on the subject more narrowly in this post about the power of absence and architectural decay as regards creativity.

The coldest medium is apparently the environment itself – the mountains so beloved of the Troll King and other natural phenomena. They exist independently of the human sphere, indeed the majority of human culture seems to be about heating them up – defining and making sense of them. Even with modern technology, their contouring – or rather their need to be defined and mapped in the human mind, they generate more energy than a thousand scientists and poets in the silent inscrutability.

They do not require rapid, hot, energy to maintain some notion of integrity, unlike most of the human sphere.

And if cold media requires participation, then the earliest form within that sphere would be storytelling – a shared experience which the audience experiences and co-creates to produce something richer than its constituent parts. What\’s more, the art is not lost – many are waking up to this fact, and I\’ll even point you to some.

Foolish People are producing an independent film that\’s certainly cooler than the films McLuhan knew of. Crowdfunded, \”Strange Factories\” offers bonuses and artefacts which draw their funders deeper into the world. But rather than just being a simple film, Strange Factories will have a live component, with the characters directly interacting with the audience. You can read more about it in this Wired article.

And if there\’s anything of a magical persuasion about cold media, it\’s this – a seemingly inert or innocuous word, object or gesture, possessed of low energy or apparent significance, can  achieve a stronger affect than a drug regimen or therapy. It can even kill.

Now, as I said earlier, the coldest medium is the environment, except that\’s not true.

The coldest medium is the self, that same roaring creature you were considering earlier. Because it is an indefinite thing. Why else would humanity be so desperate to define and name and package you?  How do you perceive the self? Imagine if you could perceive all those processes, and modulate them.

Imagine what kind of being that would be, perceiving and participating in itself; how very vast and terrible it might be to have the knowing that you were enough, and knowing that you were all you could ever know.

Coldly aware that the rune of your self, risted with your life\’s blood, was the only thing that was yours. That your name and everything you were taught – along with half your thoughts – were not actually native to you, but an attempt to confine you, to complete the incomplete, to cook you until you were palatable, and not raw and indigestible.

…

Yes. Welcome back to Cold Albion.

 THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

       My week-day gown is of gold and silk.

  PEER

       It looks to me liker tow and straws.

  THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

       Ay, there is one thing you must remember:-

       this is the Ronde-folk\'s use and wont:

       all our possessions have twofold form.

       When you shall come to my father\'s hall,

       it well may chance that you\'re on the point

       of thinking you stand in a dismal moraine.

 PEER

       No difference at all, as it seems to me.

       Big trolls would roast you and small trolls would claw you;-

       with us it were likewise, if only they dared.

  THE OLD MAN

       True enough; in that and in more we\'re alike.

       Yet morning is morning, and even is even,

       and there is a difference all the same.-

       Now let me tell you wherein it lies:

       Out yonder, under the shining vault,

       among men the saying goes: \"Man, be thyself!\"

       At home here with us, \'mid the tribe of the trolls,

       the saying goes: \"Troll, to thyself be-enough!\"

So I\’ve not posted here in a bit and there\’s a reason for that. I\’ve been getting a few articles under my belt at the Modern Mythology blog. It\’s run by the editor of Immanence of Myth, the multi-faceted James Curcio, and he\’s assembled quite a pack of extremely smart and erudite folks there.

So if you want to see posts that dig into the guts of the human narratives, I advise you to head over there. We\’ve got some lovely surprises coming in the next few months, trust me on that.

And if you\’re missing your fix here – don\’t worry – I have some blinding content brewing in the back of my fevered brain just for you lot!

Until then…

Be seeing you.