Friday, April 4, 2008

Who Are Yooooooou, Too?...

In the same year of my mother's suicide, and the beginning of my Love with Ingrid, I also experienced the next great shift in my spiritual development. I had left the Golden Dawn a couple of years earlier, after only a few months with my teacher. I found their system ultimately hollow and unfulfilling. It had nothing to do with the real world; it was only about their system, their organization. If you bought into what they were selling, and worked hard, you could eventually become very powerful in the Golden Dawn. But being powerful in the Golden Dawn only matters to other people in the Golden Dawn; outside of that tiny group, it meant exactly nothing. I thought I'd found "real" magick, but it turned out to be just more new-age bullshit. I continued studying the occult and practicing my western ceremonial rituals, though, still seeking for ultimate power and control behind-the-scenes of reality.

My best friend, eminent trip-partner, and blood-brother, Daniel, had been studying Peter Carroll's system of Chaos Magick, and he introduced me to it as well. It wasn't long before we were studying and practicing together on a regular basis. Chaos Magick, finally seemed to be what I had been looking for all along. The system eschews ancient mystical systems and order-centric ceremonies (the province of the Golden Dawn and just about every other magickal system out there) in favor of learning the mechanics behind magick that make it work, so that the magickian can create their own magick that works for them. The ultimate in postmodern relativism, it teaches that reality itself is inherently a subjective experience, and therefore it can be influenced using basic trance techniques combined with various methods of self-hypnosis. The idea is to study any and every system that appeals to you, learn what techniques you can, gain what experiences you can, and then move on to another system and do the same. This technique of "paradigm piracy" will inevitably reveal the fundamentals behind the systems, the common elements, the under-the-hood workings of magick, if you will; ultimately garnering the magickian an arsenal of magickal techniques and knowledge from throughout history and around the world that they can draw upon in order to create their own spells to accomplish whatever they want. Spells that really work. Whereas every other occult system I had ever studied relied upon rote memorization of ancient rituals of dubious origin that produced no real effects in consensus reality, Chaos Magick was a system that allowed the budding magickian to learn the basic skills of magick in order to affect actual change.

A year earlier, Daniel had applied to the IOT (the Illuminates of Thanateros; the occult Chaos Magick order founded by Peter Carroll and other progenitors of the system) but had been passed over for initiation because he was under 18 at the time. He came of age while we were practicing together, and in 1999 he was contacted by a friend of ours in the organization and asked if he still wanted to join. He did, and he recommended me, as well. I was invited to join, and along with a couple of other area magickians, we began the 6-month long IOT initiatory process known as MMM.

MMM is an intense regimen of daily meditation, detailed journal recording, and constant magickal study and practice. Each of the four of us were assigned a magickal paradigm (or belief system) with which we had no experience that we were required to learn over the course of our MMM. We would also have to develop several rituals in the style of our assigned paradigm. Daniel was given voodoo. I was given Heathenry, or ancient northern European paganism (most commonly referred to as Asatru); the spiritual beliefs of the vikings: Odin, Loki, Thor, the Runes, etc. Through my experiences in MMM, I fell in Love with the practice of Heathenry, and adopted it as a religion, practicing it alongside my other magickal work. I had studied many religions since I left the orthodox church (some in the course of my Seeking, some as part of my paradigm jumping), but this was the first one I had ever wanted to practice. Until I encountered Heathenry, all I had ever wanted to be was a Sorcerer. One of the other two people in our MMM group, Brian, was a specialist in the Heathen system, and a godhi (or pagan "priest" in the Heathen tradition). Our mentor, George (the friend who recommended us for initiation and guided us all through our MMM) was also growing more interested in the Northern paradigm, and between the three of us, everyone else in the group became interested in Heathenry, as well. So much so that the night we were initiated on April 21, 2000, the five of us formed an IOT Temple dedicated to pursuing Chaos Magick in the Northern style. We called ourselves Temple Gotterdamerung. Later that year, Brian formed a Heathen Kindred for those of us interested in exploring the religious traditions of the northern European pagans as well (as opposed to the magickal beliefs and practices we explored in Gotterdamerung), and on December 21, 2000 I joined Einauga Kindred. The oaths I swore to these two organizations that year were, at that time, the most important promises I had ever made.

For the next several years, my spiritual development continued on and off in this vein. I continued to practice both Chaos Magick and the Heathen religion. I met monthly for group work with Temple Gotterdamerung, and celebrated the holy days with Einauga Kindred. I studied many paradigms that interested me, with the Runes as my base practice, and developed an extensive archive of techniques and experiences from which to draw upon. Slowly but surely, I began to make things happen around me. I influenced people with talismans and, unbeknownst to them, got them to do the things I wanted them to do, even though it was quite contrary to their normal behavior. I cast a spell to get a new car, and two days later my father called and offered me his sister's old one, out of the blue. I performed a ritual to get ecstasy, and two hours later someone called me up out of the blue and offered me pills. I had learned how to work real magick, and I had the results to prove it. I was finally a Magickian!

I also became a godhi during this period, taking over Einauga Kindred from Brian after he moved away. But it wasn't long before everyone else's interest moved on to other things, and Ing and I were left as the only remaining members. We continued to observe the holy days, but it wasn't the same; without the large group, it became more personal and intimate of an experience than it had been before. They became our gods; our holidays. I stayed in the IOT, working with Temple Gotterdamerung, and then with Temple Lya'o when Gotterdamerung dissolved. Temple Lya'o was dedicated to studying the intercession of three of my favorite paradigms: Taoism, the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, and Drug Magick (utilizing the altered states of consciousness brought on by various chemicals in order to perform magickal acts and experience mystical states). It felt like a truly perfect fit.

I came to realize several important things about my spirituality during this period. I summarized them in a series of journal entries in 2003:

"My religion is my way of connecting w/ my planet in a way that is very hard to do in modern times (and getting harder to do w/ every tree that's cut down & w/ every farm that becomes a factory) & in a way that I feel it is very important to do.
The rise of Industry = The decline of Agrarian Society = The loss of our connection to our planet and its natural cycles and rhythms & The loss of our association w/ our planet as the giver and SUSTAINER of our lives (though it still is) = The loss or, perhaps, decline of magick in the world (it's not the only reason, but it's a big one)"


"Taoism - As long as I can remember, I have been attracted to dualities. Everything, it had always seemed to me, had an equal and an opposite. And it seems that in almost every instance where I perceived and classified a duality, I found that I fit into both categories. In those instances where I didn't, I tried to change to fit into both. I have tried to make things equal in my life; to keep balance in all ways between all poles of opposites. I have tried to find the middle path. All of this before I ever studied Taoism. I have since come to know that all 2's are the emanations of the 1 that is 0. And now I am just beginning to study the Tao."

"My personal belief structure begins with Taoism; my perception of reality, at its base, is a Taoist one. This is the core of my spirituality. At the next level of my spirituality, that of the more chosen or willed, active practice (though all is, in reality, Willed, some aspects of my life,such as religion, seem more obviously CHOSEN; at the core level of perception, it seems much more like "discovery of the nature of things" than it does "choosing a belief system") I follow Heathenism because I find its culture to be not only powerful, but rich and beautiful, as well. Also, it provides me with a connection to an aspect of human existence on Earth that I feel we have only lost very recently, and that I feel is important as it provides another connection to the world that is outside of me. And I am also very appreciative of the fact that Heathenism is not an EX-clusive religion, meaning that the belief structure of Heathenism allows room for the incorporation of other belief systems. Finally, at the third level of my spirituality I use the power that I have built within me from the first two levels in the practice of Magick. I do this in order to participate in the workings and construction or formation of my reality, and in order to raise myself up, in every way, in every world I walk in."

On September 17, 2004, I was initiated into the 3rd degree of the IOT, and given the leadership position of Temple Lya'o. At my initiation, I was required to renounce my pagan gods and re-dedicate myself to the pursuit of Chaos Magick. I didn't really want to do it, but I had also always considered my religious practice secondary to, and an expression of, my magickal practice, so if I had to choose one over the other, it was obvious to me which one had to go. I wanted to be a sorcerer a lot more than I wanted to be a godhi or a heathen. But that night, I felt like I left a part of myself behind, and over the next several years, that little hole remained; a constant nagging feeling that a piece of my life and my Self was missing somewhere.

In every other way, it seemed that things were going great for me. Over the next 3 years, Temple Lya'o developed into one of the biggest and most potent Temples in the North American section of the IOT. I studied Taoism in its many varied forms (mystical, alchemical, energetic, religious, magickal, shamanic, etc.), worked with the darkness and madness of the Cthulhu Mythos, and discovered drugs I had never heard of before. By this point, I had been smoking pot every day, morning, noon, and night, for almost ten years. Bong hits were my best friends. I'd get up in the morning and do some bong hits. When I got home from work, I'd smoke bowl after bowl until it was time to go to bed. I could tell that the effects of being constantly stoned were taking their toll on me; I was always tired, I never had any energy or motivation, everything felt like a constant struggle, I gained a lot of weight, when I ran out I would have wild mood swings, etc. But, as far as I was concerned then, those negatives were outweighed by the perceived benefits I received from pot (relaxation, pleasure, and mystical experiences). Besides, it's not like I was addicted. I'd seen my mother struggle with addiction for years, I'd gone with her to countless AA and NA meetings, I knew the signs, I knew the program, I knew addiction. And I wasn't addicted. And when and if I ever did get addicted, I would know exactly what to do. Not only did I have much more intimate knowledge of addiction than did the average user, but I was also a powerful Magickian. Reality bent to my fucking Will! What did I have to fear from something as minor as weed? I'd be fine, I told myself. I experimented with dozens of different drugs; some designer, some natural, some legal, some illegal, some for spiritual or mystical reasons, some for simple daily pleasure. I never turned down any experience.

Ingrid and I had gotten married on October 13, 2001, and six years later, we were still enjoying our newly-wedded bliss. Things were getting better and better for us at our jobs. The wealth magick that Ing and I had performed every full moon for two years had paid off, and within 3 days of each other, first our building went condo, and then I received a large inheritance that allowed me to buy our apartment. Our apartment complex was completely renovated. The courtyard that had been empty save for rotting wood planks and a large brick planter filled with barren dirt that would never support life became a lush garden almost overnight; and from the center of that empty planter where we had made our many sacrifices of blood and life and money, there now sprang a giant black fountain. Our apartment went from industrial carpeting, cracked walls, and broken down appliances, to hardwood floors, granite counter tops and marble tile, and a fully-stocked compliment of state-of-the-art technology. The entire neighborhood changed around us overnight, and what was once an aging ghetto of a neighborhood became a beautiful (and rich) center of young urban life. The annual international meeting of the IOT (the Annual Grand Meeting, or AGM) was coming back to the United States for only the 2nd time ever, and Temple Lya'o was hosting it. I had been tapped for my 2nd degree, and my performance in helping to put on the AGM would go towards proving my worth for the position. The whole world was turning in my favor.

And that's when everything fell apart. Which brings me to the real story I wanted to tell, the story that was the impetus for this blog in the first place. But that's going to have to wait until next time. Until then, remember, Everything is True, and Nothing is Permitted.