The Realization Of My Tautologies...

It's been five years
since the Moon spoke to me
And I did my best to listen
and remember

I'd never been more lost
never felt more alone and confused
never been closer to death
than I was that year
Technically an accident
but living so recklessly
"accidents" become a near certainty
so I am not free of responsibility
I nearly ended my self

Grasping at straws for months on end
Clutching at any whispered fragment of hope
of a Way Out
One morning
I heard a news report
about an upcoming celestial event
a Total Lunar Eclipse
of the Full Moon
I barely noticed it
thought nothing of it
changed the channel
and landed on a cartoon
about the embodiment of the Tao
in the Spirit of the Moon
and something clicked
I know that click
I'm intimately familiar with that click
I have been my whole life
But it'd been almost a year since I'd last felt it
I thought it was gone
gone forever
but here it was again
from a news report
and a cartoon
a cartoon!
of all things
but unmistakeable nonetheless
something about the Tao
and the Moon
and an eclipse

That night five years ago
the night of the eclipse
I didn't know what to do
I almost gave up
but I finally decided to go through with it
out of a sense of absolute desperation
I had nothing left
I might as well
At the appointed time
I took my posture
half-lotus in front of my altar
set flame to candle
and recel
I tried to relax
to let go
to empty myself
I found my Center Mind
and reached inward
to the Void
When it was time I let myself go
drifting up out of my body
flying through the atmosphere
floating in space
above the Earth
staring at the glowing white surface of the Moon
filling my vision
with cratered beauty
and profound grace

And I waited
I watched as a shadow crept across the face of the Moon
from East to West
as the Earth behind me
moved slowly between us and the Sun
And I waited
until the shadow blotted out the Moon entirely
leaving me in darkness
And I waited

And nothing happened

And I felt something inside me break
I had been so certain
that click had always meant The Way before
but nothing had happened
I must really be Lost then
so I gave up
and started to let myself fall back to my body

Just then
the eclipse broke
as the Earth continued on its Way
the shadow began to leave the face of the Moon
a brilliant crescent of white light blinded me from the eastern edge
and I heard a voice that was not my own say

All things that Are, are Change

As amazing as the experience was
a voice inside my head
that I did not recognize
I was still let down
What it had said was
hardly news to me
a paraphrasing of Heraclitus
"All things that Are, are Fire"
The only Constant is Change
Nothing is Certain
except Uncertainty
et cetera
I knew that
had been living it
for years
the purview of Chaos
Nothing is True
and Everything is Permitted
Kids' stuff
arm-chair mysticism
Tell me something I don't know
I said
And the voice answered

You cannot be Good
You cannot be Bad
You can only Be

And suddenly I knew
what should've been obvious
all along
Good and Bad are entirely subjective
just ideas
not Truth
their existence depends entirely
on our particular point of view
at any given moment
there is no single thing in this Universe
that is entirely Good
or entirely Bad
every single thing is both
Good and Bad
depending on your circumstance
your point of view
how you look at it
just as no single thing in this Universe
is entirely Yin
or entirely Yang
every single thing is both
Yin and Yang
that is the Way
that is the Tao

How had I lost sight of that?
What had happened to me?
I wanted more
I knew there was more
I asked the Spirit of the Moon
What else?
and Manni-Moon-Yin replied

Look on the Bright Side
Make the Most of it

Again it suddenly seemed so obvious
it followed naturally that
if all things are both
Good and Bad
then it must be our choice
to view them either one way
or the other
Joy is not a circumstance
Happiness is not an event
something beyond our control
that we must wait for
wait until it happens to us
No
It is a choice
it is something that we do
or don't do
So if there is Good in every single thing
then all I need to do
is choose to see it

Reeling
Overwhelmed
Overcome
Humbled
Awed
I asked
Is that all?
And Manni-Moon-Yin replied

You are Amazing
And so is Everyone Else

Human existence is
astronomically improbable
We should not exist
We are the end result
of a billion
one-in-a-billion chances
all coming up Jackpot
even the worst of Us
is an absolute fucking miracle of Nature
the most amazing thing in the known Universe
the Living Embodiment of Tao
a Human Being
an astounding accident
a chemical formula so complex
that it has become aware of itself
and I am one of them
and I should never lose sight of that
I am one of these ridiculously
outrageously
amazing pinpoints of sentience
and so is every single other person I will ever see
or hear
or touch
or encounter in any way
throughout my entire life
Each person is an Individual
and I can't know them
can't know their experience
or their circumstance
so it is unfair
and pointless
and rather ridiculous
to try and judge them
when we are all equally amazing
each in our own Way

I said Goodbye then
to Sifu
to Master
to Manni-Moon-Yin
and slowly fell back to Earth
back to my body
back to my self
anchored by Knowing
by finally Knowing
something
some True thing
again
with certainty
and clarity

To this day
I do not know
whose voice I heard that night
the Moon Spirit's
or my own
my Unconscious
and I don't care
it makes no difference to me
either way
because the words that voice spoke
are Truth
undeniable
inarguable
solid
foundational
Truth
and I will remember them
for as long as I live
and as long as I remember them
I will never again
be lost

Meditation #1...

Reaching Inside
to Center Mind
and further still
past Grey Matter
past axon and dendrite
through the synapse
Once more unto the breach
and further still
into cell
into nucleus
into gene
into acid amino
and further still
into particle carbon
past electron
past proton
into neutron
and further still
to Reach
The Void
and reside within
and wait, still
Being within Nothing
as the World Serpent
tail-in-mouth
consumes itself

Wait
and Hold
Still

Wait

and

Hold

Still

Now gently Returning
Up and Out
tugging softly at The Void
with wish whisper touch
softer than Light
pulling
bringing Nothing
Up and Out
into Everything
into Center Mind
Up and Out
leaving neutron
past proton and electron
leaving carbon
Up and Out
pulling No-thing
Up and Out
leaving gene, leaving nucleus, leaving cell
Up and Out
bringing The Void
Up and Out
through synapse
past dendrite and axon
through Matters Grey
Up and Out and Into

Center of Mind
the Hole in
Your Self
the Whole within
the Holy
You

Now Wait

and Hold

Still

Our Dreamings...

My brotherfriend wrote me the other day about some of his dreams.  This is something we often do.  His writing sparked this conversation between us:

My dreams have been all psychic angst lately.  Last night I took a sports car out for a test drive, and immediately crashed it into a harbor or boat dock or river channel or something.  The night before I had to let Her be gang-raped by a group of nasty, drug-addled urban pirates, because it was the only way to get us both out of the situation alive (if I'd tried to stop them, they'd have just killed me and raped her anyways).  Others have been more mundane - She and I fighting or bickering in some strange, emotionally-amplified way; uncomfortable, awkward, ego-bruising social situations.  In one memorable one, I was living in my office on the weekends for some reason, and as I was laying in my tiny office bed masturbating one Saturday morning, the whole office suddenly showed up for work/a party (it was a party, but people were working - ??) and I was caught naked and furry-handed, as it were, and then fired in the most humiliating manner imaginable.

    So - this may be a dumb question, but how do you feel about these dreams after you wake, is it more of a nightmare response - quickened pulse, hard breathing, kind of thing? Do you take them as expressions of turmoil, or do you see much omen in them?


I don't think that's a dumb question.  When I wake I can usually feel the residual, coming-down edge of adrenaline, the fleeting wake of anxiety.  Not quite a quickened pulse or hard-breathing (it's been a long time since I had a dream that upset me to that degree; what I wouldn't give to have a true full-bore, holy-fuck nightmare), but I can tell that something just happened.  Then I'll remember the dream, and that will lead to a feeling of "ugh, fuck" and then I'll be in a bad mood for a little while.  (Or sometimes longer, depending on how bad the dream was.  The gang-rape left me pretty fucked up for most of the day.)

I don't generally interpret my dreams, or try to divine from them, unless there is something unusual or interesting about the dream; some quality that makes it stand out from the usual nighttime fluff and cerebral noise.  Whether pleasant or painful, if it feels like "just a dream" then I usually treat it that way.  But dreams that are particularly vivid, say - I will pay more attention to those, and go over them afterwards again and again, sifting for relevant or interesting data.  Those dreams where I have an interesting quality of consciousness - where I am more aware than usual, that I remember in more detail upon waking, etc. - will also usually attract my attention and therefore garner greater scrutiny.  I've also learned to recognize certain signs over the years that I know mean something to me.  For instance, whenever a dead person appears in my dream, and does not speak, I know that something different was happening that night, and that was not just an ordinary dream.  (For some reason, dead people never speak in my dreams.  They communicate, but only through body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures.  They never say anything.  And I only ever remember after I wake up, "oh, wait a minute - that person is dead.")  Dreams with multiple layers, dreams with puzzles or labyrinths, dreams where I am lost, dreams where the lights go out, dreams where I display some vulgar magickal ability; these all usually mean something to me.

As for how I interpret those dreams worthy of attention - as coded messages (either from myself or Other), as portents or omens, as communications from or meetings with outside spirits or entities, or what-have-you - depends entirely on the specifics of the dream itself.  It's just a sense of that particular dream.  What did it feel like?  That's probably what it was.

Most of my dreams lately have just been the usual noise.  The fact that they've been less than pleasant is due, I believe, simply to the fact that I've been under more stress than usual lately.  I've been working hard, both at work and home, and not relaxing enough, or expressing enough, and so the pressure-release valve of my unconscious is blasting all that psychic bong-resin out the back of my head as I sleep.  That's how it feels to me, anyways.

+     +     +

Every night, when I lay down to go to sleep, I perform a Dreamlands visualization.  I see my Astral standing naked on the bed where we're sleeping, and I take my Silver Key off of my bedstand where it hangs, and put it around my neck; as soon as it is around my neck it morphs into the Silver Key (complete with "arabesque" symbols, etc.).  At that point, a hole opens up in my bed, revealing a staircase leading downward into the Dreamlands.  I count out each of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber, down to the Cavern of Flame, where I then have to perform some feat in order to convince the gatekeepers Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to travel in the Dream.  It is usually something gruesome and grotesque, such as flaying myself alive and magickally creating a robe to wear from the strips of my skin; or transfiguring myself into some many-limbed, many-eyed, many-teeted, many-tentacled thing that tears its way out of my body, or burning myself alive in magickal fire until all my flesh is burned away and I am just a spirit of living flame.  Stuff like that, whatever I come up with that particular night.  It's different every time.  If I'm then judged worthy by the Gatekeepers, they will open a doorway in the CoF revealing the staircase of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber, which lead down to the Enchanted Wood that is the entrance to the Dreamlands, and I will then begin to descend those, again counting out each step as I go.  I always arrive in the CoF naked, but always leave robed.  I almost always make it to the CoF before I fall asleep, and I am almost always judged worthy.  I have made it to the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber many times, but have never made it to the Enchanted Wood before falling asleep.  I often fall asleep in the CoF while performing for Nasht and Kaman-Tha.

      Just curious - is there a particular reason that your feats are all body horror related? Is there any relationship between those feats and the kinds of dreams you have? I really like the path working, and might use it myself - but I wasn't sure if the transformations were something you feel is important to the entire process, or if it is the best way for you to convince Nasht and Kaman-Tha that you should be permitted to descend the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber.



I've never felt any anxiety about these nightly grotesqueries; they've never upset me.  If anything, they're kind of a thrill.  I'll never get to do any of these things in real life, so it's kind of fun to get to do them in my head, and let my imagination run wild.  So, no, I wouldn't say that they have anything to do with the unpleasantness of my recent dreams.  Though I guess it's certainly possible.  I've never kept tally of the number of good vs. bad dreams I've had after passing through the Cavern of Flame.

As to why they are all "body horror" related (which I originally read as "bloody horror"), I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I guess I can see now that the three examples I gave were each an instance of me mutilating my body in some fashion, but that was just a coincidence; I didn't mean to imply that I always need to rend my flesh in some manner in order to impress the Gatekeepers.  I've also often done astral work, or summoned a creature, or something else.  So, the only real requirement is that it be a feat of magickal or psychic prowess.

All I'm really trying to do there, is impress upon Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to enter the Dream.  That I am both powerful enough to take care of myself, and that I am familiar enough with the kinds of oddities I am likely to find at the bottom of that long staircase that I am probably not going to go mad as soon as I get there.  Probably.  I am trying to display to them, both the powers of my imagination and an ability to control the dream.  And then no doubt the simple fact that it's a Mythos working must also color my imagination in some fashion, leading to a greater incidence of performances of "unimaginable horrors."  You work with the Mythos, and you're gonna get some tentacles.  That's just unavoidable.

I imagine that everyone's experience with the Gatekeepers would be unique to the individual magickian/dreamer, though.  I'd be really interested to know yours.

The Interzone...

I had a strange dream this morning.  (Oh, what I wouldn't give for the ability to come up with something interesting to write about on my own, at will, and not have to rely on the random firings of comatose neurons in order to conjure my art from the void.  But that's a worry for another day.  For now, I'll take what I can get.)

+     +     +

I let three birds fly into my home.

Then I laid down on my couch to watch them.

I was paralyzed as I lay there, unable to move.

One of the birds, the smallest one, kept turning into a young woman.  She wore a t-shirt of alternating thick blue and yellow horizontal stripes, white shorts, and white canvas topsiders.  She was sitting on my living room floor, using one of my laptops.  She wasn't beautiful, but she was very attractive.

And while she wasn't quite masturbating, she seemed like she was building up to it.

She was rubbing her hands all over her body with sensuous intent, as she stared transfixed at the laptop screen, her face awash in bluegreen glow.  Every once in a while she would lift her shirt up to run her hand across her belly, or up over one of her small breasts.

Unsurprisingly, I was completely entranced by her.  I could not look away.

I knew she was really a bird, but that didn't seem to make any difference.  Every once in a while she would turn back into a bird again, or I would see her as a bird again, just for a moment.  And in those moments, I could see the other birds, too.  They were poking holes all throughout the walls of my apartment.  Burrowing into them, building nests.

I didn't care.  Couldn't care.  Couldn't even imagine caring.  All I wanted was to keep watching this young woman enjoying herself at whatever it was she was doing.

But suddenly, all too soon, she was gone.  The room had gone dark, like the sky outside was ready to storm.  The walls were crumbling and full of holes.  And I was staring at an image of myself on the floor in front of the laptop, where the birdgirl had been; a projection of my own unconscious creation, from myself to myself.

With this realization, I could move again.

As I started to rise from the couch, I heard a crunching noise behind me.  I stood and turned, to see my living room in a fantastical state of decay, and crawling all over with the most enormous bugs I have ever seen.  The walls and front door were wet, rotten planks of wood, layered with moss a foot thick, like a fallen tree that had been rotting on the forest floor for fifty years.  Indeed, the advanced state of woodland decay displayed in my living room gave off a distinct Rip Van Winkle feel, and I found myself afraid that I might have been watching that girl for a hundred years without even knowing it.  Dark stormlight poured in through the holes between the rotten planks of door and wall.

And the bugs!  Oh gods, they were everywhere.  And they were enormous.  The size of guinea pigs.  Long, beetle-like things, with pincers like serrated scissors on their heads.  Thank the Sun they didn't seem capable of flying.  But they were crawling all over everything.  I could hear them chittering behind the walls.  They crunched under my feet as a I walked.  I discovered that a large portion of them appeared to have been torn apart, their carapaces left discarded about the floor like crushed, empty walnut shells.

I realized that the birds had been eating them.

I stooped to examine some of these remains.  They were covered in this sticky brown goo, like a cross between molasses and motor oil.  It was all over the place.

It was at this point that I began to have a freak-out.

I ran down the hall to the back of my apartment, screaming for help, and found a girl there that I know from the IOT in waking life.  She was cleaning my apartment.  It was completely spotless back there, in fact; no evidence at all of the chaos from the front rooms.  She didn't live there, and we weren't lovers (either in or out of the dream), yet it didn't strike me as at all odd that she was cleaning my home.

I tried to describe the situation to her, screaming hysterically, but she was completely nonchalant about the whole thing.  Very, "yeah, yeah, I'll be right there; let me just finish this first."  Which only made me panic more, as if she didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or wasn't taking me seriously enough.  So I started to freak out on her even more, to try and get across just how seriously fucked everything actually was.  I held out my hands to show her as evidence.  They were cut up and bleeding, apparently from the bugs.  But she still didn't hurry.

Eventually, at my desperate pleading, she followed me out into the living room, to see the destruction I had been raving about.  She was not impressed.  Nor was she particularly concerned.  It seemed as if she viewed it all as just one more mess to tidy up.

I began to run around the apartment, frantically closing all the doors and windows, of which there were suddenly way too many - more than was rational - and all of which were wide open.  I crushed several of the giant beetlebugs in various window frames, as I closed the windows on them.  I didn't actually want to kill them, surprisingly; I was just afraid to touch them to move them out of the way.

I flung open my front door to try and sweep the forest of decay and bugs outside, and in so doing let in warm Spring sunlight, and a life-scented breeze.

And the birds. 

All three returned.

But whether to watch, or to help, or to hinder, or to take me away, or otherwise end me, I will never know.

Perhaps one day I'll remember.

We May Just Go Where No One's Been...

This is a song about magick, life, and the endless possibilities inherent in humanity.

Black
then
white are
all I see
in my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be,
reaching out to me.
Lets me see.

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope.
Watch it bend.

Over-thinking,
over-analyzing,
separates the body from the mind.
Withering
my intuition,
missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will
to feel that moment.
Drawing way outside the lines.

Black
then
white are
all I see
in my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be,
reaching out to me.
lets me see
there is
so much
more and
beckons me
to look through to these
infinite possibilities.

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope.
Watch it bend.

Over-thinking,
over-analyzing,
separates the body from the mind.
Withering
my intuition,
leaving opportunities behind.

Feed my will to
feel this moment
urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace
the random.
Reaching out to embrace
whatever may come.

I embrace my
desire to...
I embrace my
desire to
feel the rhythm, to
feel connected
enough to step aside and
weep like a widow, to
feel inspired, to
fathom the power, to
witness the beauty, to
bathe in the fountain, to
swing on the spiral, to
swing on the spiral, to

swing on the spiral of
our divinity and
still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground
I lose myself between the sounds
and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up
and reaching out,
I'm reaching for
the random or
whatever will bewilder me.
Whatever will bewilder me.
And following our will and whim
we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end
and may just go where no one's been.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

               -"Lateralus"
                 Tool, Lateralus

Stroke Of Insight...

As an addendum to yesterday's post, please take a few minutes out of your day and watch this video presentation on the neuro-biochemical experience of "I am you."

Fifteen Minutes...

Another last minute post.

Fifteen minutes before I have to start getting ready to leave.  Fifteen minutes to write, edit, revise, and post.  Can I do it?  And what will the pressure inspire me to spit out this time?

Clock's ticking, boy-o.  Better come up with something quick.

Oh, great, I'm talking to myself.  Again.  A sign of mental illness.  And, worse, unoriginal.

Blah, blah, blahbitty-blah.  This is how I cure my writer's block.  I just type out whatever comes into my head, as unfiltered as possible, until I start to feel the creative energy flowing.  Then I tap that vein, and run with it.

My concern is that this time, the energy will start to flow right about the time I run out of time to do anything with it.

But, if so, then oh, well.  At least I did the exercise, and posted something for the day that wasn't just "did X recently; doing Y tomorrow," or, "oh, woe iz me, for I am ze alcoholiqué."

Five minutes.  You're running out of time.

But that's all time ever does, isn't it?  Run out?  That is Time's purpose.  To run away, until it's all gone, and everything is nothing.  Until every thing is no-thing.

Four minutes.  Is that all you got, kid?

That was an existential query on the end of all things!  What else is there?  (And why do you always talk to me like a noir detective?  Does my alter ego think he's in a Raymond Chandler novel or something?)

Three minutes.  "It's a Raymond Chandler evening / At the end of someone's day / And I'm standing in my pocket / And I'm slowly turning grey..."

Oh, fucking great.  You're quoting Robyn Hitchcock lyrics from "The Crow" at me?  Who's the hack now?

Two minutes.  And the answer would be you, since that is who I am.

Which reminds me of something I'd forgotten.  I think one of the most powerful phrases in all of humanity is, "I am you."  It cuts through the facade of our separate realities and points directly to the essential truth that we are all interconnected, and ultimately, all one organism, one tribe, one species, made of the same stuff, sharing the same planet, the same history, the same fate.  We are not individuals, we only perceive ourselves as individuals because of the biological accident of our evolution.  In fact, we are all one; undifferentiated, undivided, inseparable.

One minute left, hot shot.  That what you're going to end with?

No.  I'm going to end with this:  if you're reading this, then please, do me this favor.  For the rest of the day, for every person you see, try to remember to think to yourself, "I am you."  Your child.  "I am you."  Your lover/spouse.  "I am you."  The barista at the coffeehouse.  The guy who flicked you off in traffic.  Your boss.  "I am you, and I am you, and I am you, as well."  Note how this affects you.

Report.

Well, no time to edit, so I guess this'll have to do.

Good luck, kid.

The Junkie And The Monk...

This is one of my absolute favorite Moth stories ever, and I'm so glad they finally posted it to their YouTube channel.


The Junkie And The Monk by Mike DeStefano

Chutes and Ladders...

Just a brief synopsis of my day...

In preparation for the upgrade of my work PC (currently my only working computer, since my laptop is in the shop being repaired) from Windows XP to Windows 7 tomorrow, I had a bunch of files to backup, and one program (Quicken) to upgrade, since the version of Quicken that I've been using to manage my personal finances for the last ten years is not compatible with Win7.

I'd already bought the latest version of Quicken, so the upgrade installation should only take about an hour.  Decided to do that first, only to discover that the CD-ROM drive on my PC is apparently broken.  Luckily managed to scrounge a portable CD-ROM from the Help Desk that plugs in on a USB.  After running for a half-hour, the installation program suddenly shuts down with an error message.  Had to restart my computer and do it again; another half an hour, but this time it works.  But when I start up the new program, it tells me that I can't covert data from my old version (2002) to the new version (2012).  I'll need to download and install an intermediate version (2004), convert my data from 2002 to 2004, then re-install 2012, and then finally convert my data from 2004 to 2012.  Ugh, ok.  Luckily, they offered a free version of 2004 for download.

So, downloaded that, but it took me a half dozen tries to install it.  Kept getting error messages, had to uninstall 2012 first (another half-hour), but it eventually worked, and I managed to convert my data to 2004 format.  Then I spent another half-hour installing 2012, only to have it fail with the same error message again.  Had to restart my machine (all told, had to restart my machine six times - at about ten minutes a piece, that's an hour I spent restarting my machine alone!), and install it again.  Another half-hour, but this time it worked.

But then when I went to run it, it told me that I couldn't use my data because it was for a Deluxe version of Quicken.  (Apparently the "free" version of 2004 that they offered was the Quicken 2004 Deluxe.)  And so, in order to be able to use my data that I had just spent over four hours trying to convert, I would need to upgrade to the Deluxe version of 2012, at a cost of $60.  I'd already spent $30 on the version I'd just spent all day trying to install!  I then spent an hour on the phone with an argumentative gentleman from New Delhi at Quicken Customer Service trying to find a way around this, to no avail.  Ended up having to upgrade to the Deluxe version, even though I didn't want it, just to save my data.  Spent another half an hour installing it and converting my data (FINALLY!).

All told, I ended up spending almost seven hours of my day just trying to install this one fucking program.  In my entire life using computers, I have never had this much difficulty installing a program, ever.  Not even close.

And I couldn't use my computer for anything else the whole time it was installing (so that would be all day), so I still had all the rest of my work to do!  But I was out of time, because I had to rush home to try and see the Transit of Venus.

Venus crosses the face of the Sun (from our point of view on Earth) twice about every hundred years or so.  The last time it happened was in 2004.  The next time it will happen, after today, is 2117.  Literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  And I am lucky to live within walking distance of an elementary school science lab/planetarium that had set up telescopes with special filters to allow the public to view the transit from 6-8p today.

But it was cloudy.  From horizon to horizon, grey fluffballs of clouds covering the entire sky.

Anticipating a long wait, we brought along one of our two folding camp chairs.  Removing it from it's carrying pouch, She discovered a hidden treasure inside.  A sword, with a crystal handle, and a brass hilt.  This sword had been an important magickal item to me for years.  I used it in various Solar rituals.  It had also been one of the treasures offered up in our wedding ceremony.  I had lost it years ago.  So long ago in fact, that it has been years since I even considered it lost; for many years now I have simply assumed that it was gone, and that I would never see it again.

And then, suddenly, as I'm waiting, desperately, for the Sun to appear from behind the curtain of clouds, so that I could watch this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of our closest neighbor planet floating across its immense, bright face, my long-lost Magickal Sun Sword simply appears out of nowhere.  Almost as if by magick.

Surely, this was a sign that my luck was turning.

And, sure enough, with less than fifteen minutes before the Sun disappeared behind the horizon, there was a sudden break in the clouds!  And She managed to secure us a spot near the front of the line!!  (You have my eternal gratitude for this, Precious. You saved me from disappointment and disaster.)

And so, for about ten seconds, I was able to look through a telescope's eyepiece, and directly into the face of our Star.  And there she was - Venus.  A small, black dot, floating against a backdrop of the enormous, white circle of the Sun.  I saw it with my own eyes.

I will remember those ten seconds for the rest of my life.

And then I got to drive all the way back to my office to finish up the file backup preparations for tomorrow that I hadn't had a chance to do earlier.  And now I'm done, and it's time to go home.  And by the time I get there, it will be past my bedtime.

But I don't even care.

Today was a great day.

Dream Diary #1...

It's late, and I should be leaving the office now, but I really don't want to try to write this at home, and I also really don't want to skip writing today.  Today was one of those busy days where you feel like you never get a chance to catch your breath, and this is really just the first opportunity I've had to write at all.  So, I'll try to be brief.

I had a strange and unsettling dream this morning.  A lot of it I don't remember, and a lot of it was fluff not worth remembering, but there was a core of something strange, and vivid, and unsettling enough that it's been on my mind off and on all day.

I remember that Dollface and I were staying in a hotel room somewhere, in some small town that was strange to us; we'd never been there before.  It was a cheap motor lodge kind of place.  I remember that she was asleep, and I was bored, and I decided to go check out this new town while we were here.  (Something that has happened in our waking life many times.)

It was the middle of the night, and I drove just down the street aways, until I came upon this strange strip mall.  It was all lit up like an amusement park.  But all the stores were wooden cabins, like you'd find at a campground.  Porches and screen doors; everything hung with strings of lights.  There were shoppers and kids and punks and stoners smoking joints and junkies looking for a fix.  And there were prostitutes, most of them looking like junkies or meth-heads, trolling for johns, so they could get their medicine.

I decided to try and find one I liked.

Definitely not something I have ever done before, in the dream or in real life, and I can't say exactly why I made that decision.  For some reason, I thought the best way to go about this was to sit down in the grass next to one of the porches of one of the stores/cabins.  So, I sat down there in the grass, and looked up at the stars.

It was then that I noticed that there were two moons in the sky.  Both waxing gibbous (a little more than a quarter-full, heading towards full) - mirror images - one slightly above and to the right of the other.  And there were these strange trails of the image of the moon, like a dragon of smoke in the sky below them.  In the dream, as I stared at this awesome and impossible sight, I remembered hearing about this rare lunar condition on the radio, and felt delighted that I'd actually had a chance to see it, since the radio had said it was not going to happen again in my lifetime.

A young girl walked over to me and asked if I was looking for some company.  I said I was.  So she sat down cross-legged in the grass in front of me.  She was wearing a thin white t-shirt, cut-off blue jean shorts, and low-top chuck taylors.  She was very thin.  Too thin for her clothes.  She looked very young, too.  Her skin was smooth and soft and pale.  Her dirty blonde hair cropped short in a sort-of bob.  She didn't look sick and used, like all the others.  In her face, she looked like she still had some baby-fat.  She probably could've passed for 15.  But I was going under the assumption that she was at least 18, because her arms and legs were covered in tattoos.

All of her tattoos were glyphs and symbols.  Sigils and hex-marks and other occult signs.  And Runes.  I could read them.  They were incantations.

"Those are runic incantations," I said to her, pointing to the string of runes on her shoulder.

"Uh, yes, they are," she replied, slightly taken aback.

"Oh, and that is a very powerful mark," I said, pointing to a runic sigil on her bicep that was written in a sort of runic "code."  The ancient runic sorcerers had used it after the christian conversions in order to keep their work hidden from the prying invaders, who had a nasty habit of burning sorcerers.

"Now, you don't look like the kind of person who can read runic incantations," she said, smiling.

"No, I guess not."

We sat in silence for a while, staring at each other.  I liked her.  It seemed like she liked me.  At least enough, anyways.

"What's it like?," I asked.

"Well, for the most part, I actually enjoy it.  Haven't gotten hurt yet.  And I'd be doing it anyways, but this way I get paid for it."  She looked down at her feet, started playing with the grass.  She looked like such a little girl.  "But, I don't really have much choice, do I?"

"Why do you do it?"

"Well, ya know, I got things I need, ya know?"  I nodded.  I did know about that kind of need.  I've felt it pulling down in my bones before, too.  Watched from outside myself as I did things I couldn't believe, just to make that ache go away.

I was beginning to feel that way about this beautiful, sad little girl in front of me, as a matter of fact.

"I know what that's like."

"Yeah, right," she said, and I could tell at that moment she thought I was an asshole.  Just another mark.  I realized what a stupid thing it was to have said.  What the fuck did I know about her life?  What the fuck did I really know about that kind of hunger?  I felt like a privileged rich kid telling a kid from the ghetto that I understood being poor.

I laid down on my back on the grass beside her, and looked up at the sky, with the twin moons, and the dragonsmoke trails of lunar dust.

"Look at that," I said, "Isn't that beautiful?  Won't happen again for a thousand years."

She looked up from the grass.  "Yeah, I guess it kinda is."  She laid down on her back next to me, and watched the sky.  We stayed like that for a while, in silence, at peace.  Until I felt her take my hand.

"What do you want?," she asked.

"How much?"

"Twenty, fifty, or a hundred, depending on what you want."

"I want it all."

"I know."

Te: The Power of Small Things

I combed my hair the other day.

For many months now, I've been sporting what I've referred to as, "The Mad Scientist Look."  Hair going up and out in every direction, like a birds' nest; my only effort to do my hair in the morning being simply to wet it, towel it dry, and then muss it up as much as possible, almost as if I were giving myself a noogie.  Though I thought of it as "Mad Scientist," in retrospect it probably came off more as "The Homeless Junkie Look."

After my drift on Saturday, after my shower, as I was getting myself ready to go out to dinner, I decided to comb my hair.  I honestly can't remember the last time I did this.  (Even before the M-S-L, all of the haircuts I've had in recent memory have required the use of my hands to arrange, if they've needed arranging at all.  I can't remember the last brush I owned, and the only thing I've used a comb for lately is my beard.)  Just combed my wet hair back along my part, very simple and neat.  I don't know why I made that particular change just then, but I felt different, so it felt right to look different.  And I'm still following my instincts, listening to my gut, going with the flow of my Tao, etc.  And the pull inside me just then said, "comb your hair."  So I did.

I have to say that I like the new look better than the old.  Overnight my hair went from curly to straight.  And I hadn't realized how long my hair had gotten.  Swept back over my skull, it has an almost classic, yet still quite nerdy feel that I find I'm enjoying.

But it was a fairly severe departure, as you can imagine.  Pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd been doing before.  This has become especially apparent to me today, now that I am back at work, in the form of the many double-takes I've received from co-workers.  Over and over again, I'll pass someone in the hall whom I've worked with for many years, and we'll each say "hi."  And I'll see in their eyes when we first address each other, just a split-second of the process Incomprehension-to-Recognition-to-Surprise.

What I realize as I observe this, is the Tao of Properly Applied Force.

Such a small thing to do, such a minor difference to make, and with such minimal effort.  But the affect of this miniscule action ripples out through my entire life and changes so much.  My appearance, or the information that I broadcast to every other human I encounter in my day-to-day life, is now completely different.  And so not only has my message changed, but for those who know me, and who know how I looked before, there is the additional message of, "something has changed with him; he is different now than he was before."  And not just with the hair.  Because on some level, even for just a microsecond, they have to think:  Why did he do that?  Why would he change his appearance to almost the exact opposite of the way it has been for so long now?  And why now?  What happened to him?

And it affects me greatly, as well.  Every time I look in the mirror, or catch my reflection in a pane of glass out of the corner of my eye, I see someone that I don't immediately recognize.  For a split-second, I am a stranger to myself.  And again, there is that instant of cognitive dissonance, of gnosis.  That brief crack in reality where, for the tiniest of moments, you're not sure which side of the looking glass you're standing on.  That hyperunit of time where everything is true, and everything is possible.  And then recognition sets in, and your ego returns, and you're suddenly aware of who you are again.  The effect of so many brief flashes of un-reality inserted into ones' day is not to be underestimated.  It tends to make everything feel less real, and more fluid; it tends to make the seemingly impossible feel more possible.  And it is exhilarating.

I've managed to change my sense of what is real, simply by combing my hair.

In the Dreaming of Olde Fredericktowne...

Friday, May 28th  (last night of the full moon)

-8:39p - Sacrament: sick rose

-8:45-9:19p - ritually deconstruct altar, construct altar to Cthulhu

-9:20p - Sacrament: liao

-9:25p - all lights off, ignite altarcandle/Lya'o incense, take meditative posture of half-lotus, hands on knees in Kish mudra and engage mindfold

-~9:30p - decide to perform Battery Activation Meditation (routine chi-visualization ritual I often use as an opening rite; activates the power-centers, opens a Black Lotus at each of my tan-t'ien, encases me in a geometric energy construct that serves as both a dimension portal & a protective barrier, and finally centers me on the Axis Mundi) - sitting inside my construct, I feel powerful, serene, comfortable, safe, strong, secure, aware - hesitant to perform the last step for some reason - don't want to "break the bubble", which I've never felt here before - eventually I gather my chi along my spine and launch out the top of my skull and down my tailbone and out to the ends of creation until I am centered on the Pole of the Universe - something strange, different from other times; something I've never experienced here before - normally I feel god-like from this vantage point - but now I suddenly feel absolutely infinitesimal - instead of retaining my own perspective, as has always happened before, it seems as though my perspective on the Axis Mundi has shifted to the infinite universe itself! - I feel like I've shrunk to the size of a particle - and, yet, I also feel, quite distinctly, as though the ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS NOW STARING DIRECTLY AT ME - I shrink even further

-9:43p - Journal Entry: "mindfold - darkness, which had been comfortably enveloping me suddenly became oppressive and claustrophobic - I wanted out - then malevolent! - some thing was coming AT ME through the dark - trying to get into me - masses of black worms - tendrils IN MY EYES" [note added here: my entire field of "vision" inside the darkness of the mindfold was filled with the writhing of black tendrils - I quickly removed my mask and opened my eyes, and saw my new altar for what felt like the very first time]

-9:46p - JE: "almost as if in response(?) sudden overwhelming urge to masturbate myself before the altar - pleasure was overwhelming, yet remained flaccid throughout, even through orgasm and ejaculation - very aware that it was the mental image of my limp cock birthing millions of tiny tentacled blobs of slime that finally triggered my orgasm" [note: another experience unknown to me before tonight - afterward, felt slightly nauseous, kind of sticky & gross; wanted to take a shower] [addendum: realization as I'm writing this that I should have consumed this sacrament, as well!  a missed opportunity.]

-9:59p - JE: "decide it's time to begin my descent" [note: following this entry, I gathered my tools and got dressed - I wore the Silver Key on a ribbon wrapped around my wrist, and an ankh (for ghouls) on a chain around my neck - I filled my pockets with small sacrificial offerings from my altar, a few tools I thought I might possibly want or need along the way (bag of runelots for divination, iPod, etc.), and some basic practical items for the journey (water, phone, etc.)]

-10:29p - JE: "Begin descent." [note: after making this entry, I opened the blinds covering the window above my altar, letting the world back in, and letting it out onto the world - then I turned around, put in my earpieces and turned on my music (Aklo, "Unnameable" and "Beyond Madness", shuffle/repeat), formed both hands into the Kish mudra and began to count out the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber that begin the descent into the Dreamlands]

-seventy steps from my altar turned out to be the second to last step at the bottom of the stairs before reaching the courtyard of my building - was this the Cavern of Flame? - I waited - no, it wasn't - what now? - there is a secret door at the back of the courtyard; an iron gate that leads out into the wild of vines and weeds and giant, gnarled, hundred-year-old oaks hidden in the darkness behind the building - going through the gate is step 1 of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber

-I count my steps through the dark, leading along the path from the gate and out into the gravel lot behind the building - there is a large, ancient, rectangular hunk of shattered concrete embedded in the middle of that lot for no apparent reason, and the seventieth step places me square on the South side of that block, facing North, looking directly at the gate leading out of the lot, and exactly in the middle of a 2' triangle formed by three intersecting cracks in the concrete - when I step into the triangle, the music crescendos and the chittering sounds grow louder and more insistent - this is the Cavern of Flame

-I stand waiting in the middle of the empty lot - I am in darkness, but I can see the cars and people on the street not fifty feet in front of me - none of them seems to notice me - despite the security of the darkness, I feel open and exposed - I become aware of two large, columnar shadows suddenly flanking either side of me - I don't want to look directly at them - tall, shadow-black, man-shaped, arms folded over chests, wearing headdresses - Nasht and Kaman-Tha - am I worthy to proceed? - I stand waiting, waiting, under the weight of their gaze - why am I sweating? am I starting to shake? - cold rush of fear - I look to my right, directly at... Kaman-Tha, as it turns out - then to my left: Nasht - I am left alone - stepping out of the triangle is the first of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber

-counting out my steps toward the gate at the N end of the lot, I am suddenly aware that I am about to walk out onto the street, in public, walking in an odd and stunted way, with both of my hands rigidly held in what, to anyone else, is the middle-finger sign - I think this might arouse a bit too much attention - I jam my hands in my pockets so that I can continue to hold the mudras without being so obvious about it - now, with my hands jammed awkwardly in my pockets, and my staccato off-kilter walk, I feel as though I look like someone doing a very bad job of trying very hard to act nonchalant - this becomes especially tense when, around steps 450-500, I have to walk directly through a party of people that has spilled over the stoop and onto the sidewalk - I cannot hear any of them, am acting VERY weird, and have to walk right through the middle of everyone, very aware that I am interrupting everything and everyone is staring at me - I just continue counting - 523, 524, 525...

-at step 600, reach a crossroads - to my right is an alley - I feel very strongly that the remaining 100 steps lead in that direction - however continuing ahead of me, I know there is a sacred spot I've been to before; should be about a hundred steps away - which way do I go? gut feeling or intellectual curiosity? - usually I'll go with gut, but that alley looks like it leads into someone's backyard; I really don't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard, right now, do I? - better proceed fwd instead

-at ~step 660, reach the gate of a public park, wherein lies the most potently magickal natural setting in my neighborhood - surely the Gate of Deeper Slumber is in there - but there is a large sign drilled into the gate - have I ever seen it before? - it says it is illegal to be in the park at this time of night - seems no matter which way I go, I'm going to have to commit some type of crime in order to reach the Gate of Deeper Slumber - there are a lot of people about on the street - no way I could walk in without being seen - how long have I been standing here, staring at this gate? - ... - ... - I can't do it - I guess I failed this attempt - nonetheless, I hold my mudras, and cross the street counting down the last steps, until I reach the seven hundredth

-10:45p - it feels wonderful to release my hands, roll up my sleeves, take a drink of cold water, and walk like a normal person again - am I in the Dreamlands now? - I don't know - decide to just start drifting

-L onto W. Patrick - "Crystal Row" - all the yoga studios and Reiki treatment centers and naturopathy clinics - never realized before, but all of these buildings are old *houses* - this has been a business district my whole life, but looking at it now, I can't help but see the residential neighborhood it was a century or more ago - these huge, old, Victorian "homes"; what would've been "mansions" back then - some of them still fitted with gaslight - how sinister and imposing they seem to me now, as never before - what horrors and atrocities had been birthed within those walls a hundred years ago? - how oddly out of place it seems to me now that they should all be housing new-age wellness centers! - like an amusement park built from the ruins of a concentration camp

-R down a street I've never seen before - lined with several multi-story condominiums I hadn't known were there - road makes a 90* bend to the R, and I follow it - end up in a back-alley that ends at a T - L, another alley - follow that to a crossroads where R looks like it leads out to a road - I take that R and end up... on the opposite side of Baker Park from where I just was up on W. Patrick. - I'm about a mile to two miles away from where I'd first turned down this street - ??? - how can that be?? - I'm on the other side of the fucking CANAL for fuck's sake! - how did I get to the other side of the canal without crossing a single bridge?!

-disoriented, I walk to the nearest bridge and cross the canal, then work my way back to the other side of the park, to where I'd been just a few minutes earlier [note: realizing now that it never even occurred to me to trace my steps back in the direction I had come - ??] - the path leads me through the park, following the canal - the water is black, and stagnant, and smells like a marsh - it is full of flies - I stop and sit down beside it to gag on the smell for a few minutes - doesn't take long before I'm actually starting to retch, so I continue on my way

-at this point, my wife begins txt'ing me from her night, and we continue to txt back and forth for the next couple of hours, until she goes to bed - the experience feels somewhat like getting a phone call from the other side of the looking glass

-TXT-Received: "Where you @, baby?" - Sent: "Dreaming"

-11p - finally free from the park, I am shocked to discover that the entire ordeal, everything from the seven hundredth step on, which seemed to last for hours, has only taken 15 minutes

-TXT-S: "How did that year only last 15mins?!"

-leaving the park, I cross Bentz and head E down W. Church St. - the mansions lining this street are pre-revolution, colonial - by American standards, they are ancient - if the houses on Crystal Row held hidden horrors, these ancient estates bled and screamed with unseen atrocities - every edifice seems to leer - every shadow has fangs - every well-tended topiary squats lifeless, like flowers in a tomb - I can hear screaming children being raped and sodomized - a young nigger slave girl's gurgling wails of uncomprehending terror while she watches as her infant is viciously carved from her womb - the sickening snap of bone - the sharp sting of a whip - the sloppy wet sound of vomiting - the smell of blood and shit

-then I come to the churches - this is Church St., after all - they've been built upon and added to and refurbished and renovated so many times through the centuries that they look modern now in comparison to the brick mansions all around them, even though they are technically much older - these are the "famous" Seven Clustered Spires of Olde Fredericktowne - standing on the street I look up to the top of the spire above me - from the smoky blackness above, I see the image of a dozen gargantuan tentacles free-falling out of the sky - they land squarely on the church, absolutely demolishing it in an explosion of brick and dust - I look down the street and see another mass of tentacles descend similarly, crushing another huge old church on the other side of the street - then the first mass of tentacles to my right lifts up into the sky almost as quickly as it came down, and I see it come down again, further down the street than the second mass but still on the same side of the street as it was before, again crushing another building - I realize now that these are limbs of some Thing that is *walking* down Church St. - every step utterly destroying some giant old stone building like a toy model - it quickly stomps off into the darkness at the far end of the street, several blocks away - I decide to follow it

-PIC1 - What long-forgotten tomes of ancient occulted knowledge are held hostage by the insidious Mr. Marshall Etchison??

-11:12p - JE: "reach the funereal [sic] home on Church St.  it begins to rain.  no... mist"  [note: an enormous gothic mansion, the first time I visited this funeral home was to view my mother's body; this fall, I was back again, in the same room as a matter of fact, for the funeral of my wife's father - as I stood there staring at it, contemplating the width and breath of that horrible old building's place in my life, the air suddenly became wet - at first I thought it had started to rain, but then I looked down the street and realized that a mist had rolled in off the canal]

-turn R down Carroll Alley - past the post office - the stench of manure - end up on another bridge crossing the canal again - decide to turn L and head E down the canal towards the other side of town - quickly reach the end of the renovated "garden/shopping district" area of the canal and keep going, past the art museum, entering into the "flat, wide open river of concrete with a sewer running down the center of it" portion of the canal walk - suddenly notice there are marks covering the concrete here - no, wait; paintings - the entire expanse of concrete has been marked off into a grid of squares - each square is numbered - some of the squares are filled in with paintings - a couple indicating classes of schoolchildren - a couple apparently done by (and to promote) local civics organizations - a few of them simply artistic - I imagine that people must be purchasing the rights to paint these squares - but why? - it begins to rain in earnest now; silent lightening strobes the sky - a few of the painted squares grab my attention

-PIC2 - this square was apparently painted by Ms. MacGregor's 4th grade class - the knowledge of the Horrors Beyond the Stars has already infected our young!

-PIC3 - suggestion: skip lines 5-7, instead going from line 4 ("We are more than") directly to line 8 ("...life") - re-read - what is it saying now?

-PIC4 - in case the image is unclear, this block of stone displays the message "the stars eat your body." - someone PAID to write that there - I feel simultaneously wigged out and a growing affection for my hometown - this phrase would repeat in my mind for the rest of the night

-I follow the canal until it goes under E. Patrick - turn R and head E down E. Patrick - wife is txt'ing me again - we have a small chat back and forth as I walk - going back and forth from staring at the bright screen to trying to find my way down the dark, unlighted street is disorienting me - every time I close my phone and look up, it takes what seems like forever before I can begin to see anything again, and every time I get a new text it feels as if the screen's light is going to burn out my eyes - I end up taking a dark side street I've never been down before - I take a couple of turns this way and that [I don't remember exactly] - I have no idea where I am anymore - suddenly, I find myself in a housing project I've never seen or heard of before - there are more people out here than anywhere else I've been so far tonight other than the heart of the bar/restaraunt district downtown - every single one of them is poor and black - any of them could have ended up here after being forced to move out of my neighborhood after my wealth magick had succeeded in gentrifying most of downtown, starting with my neighborhood - and here I am taking a stroll through the middle of *their* neighborhood, their home, in the middle of the night - and they are all looking at me and it is obvious that I do not belong here - I'm hoping to walk through the project and out the other side to who-knows-where, but I get to the end of the street and it empties out into a huge cul-de-sac of project buildings - there are people everywhere and they are all staring at me and I am The Outsider and there is no way out - and now I have to turn my back to all of them, only the sounds of madness in my ears, and find my way back out - I can't hear them, I don't dare look back - I'm lost and don't know how to find my way out of this maze - but I remain calm, keep walking, and make the Voorish Sign to appease any deranged savages or gibbering creatures that may accost me from the darkness - eventually, I find a side-alley that cuts through two backyards and leads me back out onto E. Patrick - a few blocks further down, I take a R down a street I know very well, but have never known the name of

-~11:55p - TXT-S: "I'm starting to limp." [note: three days later, I am still limping - if this is the beginning of some transfiguration, I am not amused]

-~12a - down this unnamed street, I find a small church that I have never seen before - how many hundreds of times have I been down this street?  how could I never notice this church?! - I realize just how many fucking churches and chapels I have seen over the course of the night - it seems like every street I've been down has at least one house of christian worship - often it's an actual house that has been converted to a chapel, but just as often it's a huge, stone church, bordering on "cathedral" - why do we need SO MANY CHURCHES in this town??

-TXT-S: "There are churches EVERYWHERE!"

-reaching the end of that unnamed street, I suddenly realize where I am

-~12:10 - TXT-S: "Wait... this is... South St.?"

-realizing I've ended up back on my "home turf" as it were, I feel the pull to return home - I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot - I'm soaked in sweat and I'm out of water, and I have to piss like a camel - I send the street names in txt's to my wife as I make my way out of the mists and fog of my dream, and back to the more stable footing of the "real world"

-~12:15 - TXT-S: "East"

-~12:20 - TXT-S: "Carroll"

-~12:25 - TXT-S: "All Saints"

-12:29a - JE: "home"

-being home again felt like being tightly strapped into the most comfortable bed ever made - I showered the slime off myself, got dressed in a more relaxed and normal outfit, and at 1a went to catch last call at my local and get a pint and a shot of whiskey before the night was over - I felt I'd earned it - couldn't really interact with anybody much in my current mental state, so I passed my time by reading up about the city of Kish online while I drank (apparently, it is the first city we have record of after the Great Flood, etc.), and for the next couple of hours after

-~4a - began the coming-down process  - rest of the evening progressed relatively "normally" - nothing unexpected or unusual - eventually drifted off to sleep about 6a - no dreams I could recall



-in hindsight, I don't think I made it INTO the Dreamlands that night - but something was definitely different - maybe I was skirting the edge of our Dream? - what happened? - perhaps I lost the path somewhere along the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber?  was I not judged worthy in the Cavern of Flame? - either seems possible/plausible

-CONCLUSION:  this experiment must be repeated - try a different path for the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? - try the same path but follow it to its conclusion this time, now that I know where it goes? - what do I need to do to ensure worthiness at the Cavern of Flame? - READ DREAMLANDS STORIES - STUDY DREAMLANDS!

My Silver Key...

Journal - Thursday, 5.20.10

One of the very first group-rituals I ever performed was a Dreamlands pathworking, in which Nyarlat-hotep gave to each of us our own Silver Key to the Gate of Dreams. Since that night, my Silver Key has become one of the most used fetishes of my magickal career.

Last night, I took my Silver Key from my altar and wore it to bed. And dreamt for the first time in recent memory. (I don't usually remember any dreaming I do. Sleep is a short blankness in between periods of consciousness for me. My own petit morte, if you will.)

It was a nightmare. Incredibly vivid. Again, it wasn't the typical eldritch horrors I've come to expect, but it still left me feeling quite unsettled.

It started with the discovery that my wife had been cheating on me for a quite a while. When I confronted her about this she sneered, "Well, sometimes I need it in the fucking ass and he can do that for me!" (I don't think my wife has ever actually sneered at anything her entire life.) The rest of the dream was the slow, dawning realization that my wife was nothing like the person I've always thought she was. My wife is a sweet, patient, compassionate, and very loving woman - in the dream she was a raging coke-whore. She was constantly yelling at me and calling me names, or alternately ignoring me completely, throwing tantrums, and more than once she laughed to the point of tears at the pain and anguish she was causing me. I spent most of the dream chasing her around, trying to get her to stop... being that way, but the more I pleaded with her, the worse she got.

I remember, towards the end of the dream, finding her in a flop-house down the block from our apartment building, sucking off a group of guys for some crystal. When I dragged her out of there, she shoved the crystal into my hand. (Just a bunch of loose crystal, no baggie, like trying to hold onto a handful of crushed glass shards.) When we got back to our building, there were a bunch of cops hanging around the entryway for some reason, and I had to sneak by them with the crystal in my hand, terrified the entire time that she was going to tell them and get me arrested.

I also remember that our building was *off*, somehow. It was definitely our apartment building from waking life, but nothing about it was exactly the way it really is. Some things were a bit bigger than they were supposed to be, some a bit smaller; some things weren't pointed in quite the same direction they really are; some doors and windows that were supposed to be there weren't, and there were doors and windows that were only there in the dream, as well. There was nothing I could point to and say "There! That is not supposed to be like that - it's supposed to be like this!" But the whole place, normally so comfortable and familiar, felt slightly strange and alien.

So, again, it wasn't getting eaten by a giant, tentacled alien, or being transported to another plane of existence by a grey-skinned, faceless man with bat-wings, but I would still definitely consider this a mythos-colored dream. I was forced to confront the madness of having the thing most precious to me in this life taken and twisted into a monster before my eyes. I woke up very agitated by the experience, and I've remained slightly nervous and anxious and just generally unsettled all morning because of it.

My wife's kisses somehow just didn't seem as sweet this morning.

Hail ManniMoonYin (2.20.08)...

I wasn't cold. I remember being surprised by that. Floating in outer space, thousands of miles above Earth, I somehow expected I would feel cold. But, then again, I wasn't in my body just then, either. It was only my astral body, my self-image, a mental projection of my Self, that was hovering there in the darkness; surrounded by a pseudo-spaceship of geometric forms woven from my own ch'i, the three Black Lotuses flowering at my tan-t'ien connected by a line of ch'i in the loop of the microcosmic orbit, the Chaosphere slowly rotating counter-clockwise in the center of my mind, and my form firmly attached to the glowing, white light of the infinite Axis Mundi passing straight down through my head, my spine, and out to the ends of everything.

I also hadn't expected the Moon to be so goddamned big. It was ENORMOUS! It filled almost my entire field of vision and appeared to be much larger than either the Earth or the Sun behind me. I had apparently arrived just in time for the eclipse, as there was only a sliver of glowing white Moon left visible on the left hand side of its face. Behind me, the Earth was ringed in a corona of fire, as it was positioned directly between the Sun, and myself and the Moon. I was left awestruck at the beauty of these sights, and I just floated there, overwhelmed, as the shadow crept westward across the surface of the Moon. As it inched closer and closer towards the westward edge, towards the totality of the eclipse, my anticipation grew. I eagerly awaited that penultimate cosmic moment when the eclipse would zenith, and the heavenly bodies would align, and the vibratory frequency of the universe would begin to resonate "harmony", "balance", and "Tao". I didn't know what to expect, exactly, but I knew that was the moment I was waiting for, that was the event I was working towards. Finally, the big moment arrived, the shadow moved that final inch, the Moon completely disappeared beneath the shadow of the Earth, and...absolutely nothing happened.

I sat there for a few moments, waiting for something, anything to happen, but nothing did. The sensation was very much as if a symphony had just worked up to its climax, and then everyone had suddenly just stopped playing; no cannons booming, no cymbals crashing, no horns crescendo-ing, nothing. At first, for a moment, I was simply confused. How could this be happening? But quickly I transitioned into disappointment. Once again, I felt like a fool. I'd gotten my hopes up, but once again, I'd ended up just talking to myself. I felt useless and stupid. As the shadow began to move off the westward edge of the Moon, and the first crescent of white light appeared on its eastward edge, the eclipse now ending, I decided it was time for me to leave, to return to my body and go to bed. But just then, I heard a voice in my mind, completely distinct from my own internal monologue, say:

"All things that are, are change."

I knew this was the Spirit of the Moon. The Spirit of the Moon, speaking directly to me. And for some reason that I still cannot explain, instead of being completely elated by this turn of events (after all, this meant that I hadn't failed, after all; that I wasn't just talking to myself out here), instead I felt bitterly disappointed by what the Moon Spirit had said. It was a paraphrase of Heraclitus: "All things that are, are Fire." And it was an idea with which I was intimately familiar, and had been for a long time. So, yeah, the Moon Spirit was talking to me, but it still didn't change anything; it was just telling me what I already knew. It was telling me that the only constant is change. That nothing lasts forever. That everything is mutable. Basically, the philosophy that had guided me for the past ten years. And so I sarcastically replied back to the Spirit:

"Yeah. Tell me something I don't know."

To which it immediately replied, "You cannot be good. You cannot be bad. You can only be."

The realization of the truth of this statement hit me like a hammer blow. It was as if God himself had just personally forgiven me of all my sins; had told me, in fact, that I could never have even sinned to begin with. Of course, I can't be good or bad! How had I not realized that before? "Good" and "bad" are arbitrary concepts; ideas that each individual person defines for themselves in any given situation based on their own experience and point of view. That doesn't make them real. The only thing that's real, the only thing I can be certain of, is that I exist. Cogito ergo sum. That doesn't mean, "I exist because I think." It means "The only thing I can be certain of is my own existence, because there has to be some thing existing to think of the question in the first place." "I am" is the only universally true statement. Everything else is relative.

I really hate to resort to the cliché "it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of my chest," but in this case it's absolutely true. I physically felt lighter, as though I had finally dropped a weight of chains that I had been carrying coiled around my body for months now. I knew something with certainty again. What an incredible feeling! I had found one tiny piece of solid ground to stand on, after being adrift and lost in an endless void of empty questions for so long. And I wasn't a bad person. And I wasn't a good person, either. I was just Michael. The months of self-abuse, of giving in to my desires, of escaping into selfish pleasure, of hurting the people I Loved most just because I didn't know how to care about anything else...none of it mattered. It was done, and I couldn't undo it, or make up for it. But it didn't make me who I am, either. What's done, is Done, and in any given moment, I am free to define myself as I see fit, regardless of what has come before. I am only who I decide to be. I wept uncontrollably with joy, and relief, and the overwhelming knowledge of all the possibilities inherent in life.

As I wept, dazed and dumbfounded, the Moon Spirit continued:

"Your new mantras will be 'Look on the bright side.' and 'Make the most of it.' This is the only life you get. 'You walk but once among the living, so no regrets, and no forgiving.' And since 'there's nothing good nor bad in this world but thinking makes it so,' then find the good in everything. Even your mother's suicide was a good thing when you figured out how to look at it the right way. Choose joy, and you will be joyous."

And again, the sheer force of the truth of the Moon Spirit's words drilled right to the core of my Self. My mother had been right. In fact, she was the only one in the situation who had been right. With her repeated suicided attempts, she was telling us that she had to go. She kept trying to leave, but we wouldn't let her. It's not just that she couldn't take the constant pain and depression any longer. It was that she knew that she was destroying our family; dragging all of us down with her into her madness and into the agony of her slow death. Her suicide wasn't a selfish act. It was a self-less act. It was an act of Love. The ultimate act of Love, in fact. She had given her life so that we wouldn't have to suffer. She'd died to save us. All I have to do to see the truth of this is to look at our family now, and then imagine what it would be like if she were still here. Looking at where each of us is now, and the lives we have, there's simply no denying that we wouldn't have anything we have now if she were still alive and suffering and mad. Our lives are better in every way now than they were then, and things would only have continued to have gotten worse for everyone if she hadn't died. She would've gotten sicker and sicker, and crazier and crazier, and fallen deeper and deeper into addiction and abuse. And we all would've gone crazy ourselves trying desperately and futilely to help her and to keep her alive. It sounds so horrible to say that our whole family is better in every way because our mother committed suicide, but as horrible as it might be, that doesn't change the fact that it is also unarguably true. She was right. She was trying to do what she needed to do to save her family. But we wouldn't listen to her. We wouldn't let her go. We wouldn't even let ourselves entertain the possibility. "How can you think that? What's wrong with you? How can you say those things? You have to live! You have to stay with us!" As though she didn't have any choice in the matter. As though she didn't have any say in how she lived her own life.

We were the bad guys here. She was the hero.

So then, that would mean that the part I played in bringing about her death was a good thing, too, wouldn't it? My intent had never been to kill her. My intent had been to "end her pain, and bring her peace." And isn't that exactly what happened? She wasn't suffering anymore. And neither were the people she Loved. Yeah, it hurt a lot when she died. But we're all better off now because of it. I didn't want to hurt her. I Loved her. As crazy and abusive and fucked up as she was, she was also wonderful and caring and thoughtful, and I Loved her. My ritual that night had been as much an act of Love as her suicide had. I just didn't want her to be in pain anymore. And obviously, she felt the same. So what's the point of beating myself up about it? Yes, I could truthfully say "I killed my mother." But I could also truthfully say "I saved my mother, and our entire family from a slow, painful death." It all depends on which side of the street you're standing on. And if they're both true, then why would I choose to view it from the side that makes me into an evil monster, when I could just as easily view it from the side that makes me a powerful savior?

I knew then, that everything would be different from here on out. I knew, with absolute certainty, that nothing is good, and nothing is bad. Everything is both good and bad. The only thing that changes, is our perception. So I would "look on the bright side." I would "make the most of it." I would try to find the good in everything from now on, and not let myself get depressed or miserable or angry when things didn't go the way I wanted. I'd know that, in those situations, there really isn't anything wrong or bad to be upset about; it's simply my point of view that would make it appear that way. So I would change my point of view. I would choose to be joyous.

To say that I was overwhelmed at that point (as I've said several times already here myself) would be a gross understatement. I felt absolutely transformed, transfigured, transmogrified! I felt changed on a genetic level. I could feel my focus slipping, my grip on the mental image beginning to loosen under the effects of such a deep and profound catharsis. Sensing that it was time to go, I bowed low to the Moon Spirit, in deep gratitude and sincere appreciation, and thanked it profusely for showing me so many truths. As I began to descend along the Axis Mundi back to my body, the Spirit said to me:

"There is one more thing you should know before you return. You are amazing. And so is everyone else."

Aleister Crowley said, "Every man and every woman is a Star." Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." We are all human. We all live the same human lives, on the same planet, spinning through the same universe. Just as "good" and "bad" are merely points of view, so, too, there is really no such thing as a person who is "better" or "worse" than anyone else. Think of all that we are capable of! Memory. Emotion. Reason. Language. Consciousness. Science. Magick. Each and every human being is a truly magnificent and amazing thing. The probability of our coming to exist at all is basically nil, and yet here we are, doing the most extraordinary things. The idea of another person being better or worse than me is just an illusion created by the angle of my view. And I also can't let myself forget, that I am one of these amazing monkeys, myself. No matter what I do, no matter how I fuck up, no matter how down on myself I might get, I am still amazing. Just the mere fact of my existence is miraculous, in and of itself. So I won't beat myself up when I don't live up to my own standards. And I will count every human being as my brother or my sister. And when they do something that hurts me, I won't consider them inferior to myself; I will remember that I have done similar things myself, that everyone has, and that in a similar situation, I could appear to someone else just as they appear to me now. And when I meet someone who seems greater than myself, I will remember that they are just a person, like me, and while they may be able to do some things better than I can, there are also surely many things that I can do better than they.

Still reeling from the weight of so many epiphanies experienced so quickly, I descended through space, through the clouds, down to Earth, and back into my body. It felt as if I'd been gone for at least an hour. I removed my mindfold and looked at the clock. It had been only 20 minutes.

That night I slept peacefully and deeply and contentedly, in a way that I had forgotten was possible.

But it didn't end there. Over the next few days, this experience, and the four truths I learned here, would continue to challenge and change me, and lead me to even greater discoveries and epiphanies, which would result in the most profound personal transformation I could ever have hoped to experience. Until then, remember, You Cannot Be Good, You Cannot Be Bad; You Can Only Be.

Re: Bath Re-Birth...

It's Memorial Day, and I'm sitting on my front porch as I type this, enjoying a simply spectacular Spring day. It's the perfect temperature, the sky is a brilliant shade of blue, with little wispy, cotton clouds. The air smells of warmth and life and flowers of all kinds, with the occasional scent of the sea carried in off the canal on a cool breeze. The courtyard below is a hundred brilliant hues of green and red and pink and yellow and orange and violet, and the sound of the fountain tinkling softly is as comforting and relaxing as a babbling brook. And I can't help but remember that only 6-months ago, I could not enjoy this. I might have been able to look at it and call it "pretty", I might even have been able to sit out here and pronounce it "serene", but I could not have truly enjoyed it. Not like this. I was simply incapable of experiencing these feelings; of perceiving on this level. The only thing in my life that I could find joy in, was getting high. Escaping into pleasure, into sex and drugs. Disappearing into fictional worlds, losing myself in other lives. Taking refuge in baths.

I can pinpoint now where that all began to change, though I was unaware of it at the time. It was one particular bath, back around the beginning of February. I still don't know where exactly this compulsion came from, but for some reason, when my bath was over and I started to get out, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to simply shut out the lights and lay back down. So I did. The water was tepid, only slightly above room temperature, as I'd already been soaking an hour or more. I was, as usual, drunk and high. And in the pitch blackness of my small bathroom, I laid down in the still dark and attempted to submerge myself as completely as possible. I leaned my head back to fill my ears with water. I kept my eyes open, staring into the black, watching starbursts of color dance kaleidoscopic waltzes in the void before me. I listened to the sound of my breathing, hearing it through the water and through my body, rather than my ears. It was indistinguishable from the sound of the ocean crashing repeatedly against the shore. My life of summers at my family's cottage on Bethany Beach (the one my grandfather sold shortly before he died, the proceeds from which became my inheritance) have granted me an inherent familiarity with that sound. How many thousands of hours have I played in that very surf? How many hundreds of nights have I fallen asleep to that very sound? To this day, I use a white-noise machine when I go to sleep, tuned to replicate the sound of ocean surf crashing against a beach. I know that sound, that rhythm, as I know my own voice. Pull back, rear up, crescendo, CRASH, reach out, pull back... And I could hear it in my own breath in the still darkness. The great, vast ocean, within me. Dark beyond all dark. Seemingly endless. But there is movement within it, a rhythm repeated. And underneath it all, the steady pulse of a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the world. The heartbeat of life. My heartbeat.

Despite my purple prose description here, at the time, I thought the experience to be quite boring. My breath sounds like the ocean. That's kinda neat. But, so what? I recognized that what I had just done amounted to a minor sensory deprivation experience (not the full equivalent of being in a sensory deprivation tank, but close enough), but I didn't feel that I had experienced anything worthwhile or inspirational or transformative, or even really interesting. I didn't feel like I'd learned anything or that my circumstances had changed at all as a result of it. I didn't feel any different afterwards. So I just filed it away in my mind under "useful meditation/trance techniques" for possible use in some later ritual or exercise, and got out of the tub. I didn't know it at the time, but everything actually had changed just then. And the next day, I would begin to notice the difference.

It wasn't until several months later, after all of these events had transpired, when I was telling my family this story of my recent epiphanies and transformations, that I began to understand why this experience triggered a series of changes in my life and my Self. As I came to this point in the story, the sense-dep tub experience, I explained that I knew this was where everything had changed, but that I hadn't yet figured out why that was. My stepmother, an ordained minister in a local church, said, "Well, it's obvious, isn't it? You had a re-birth experience. You went back to the womb." It seemed so obvious when she said it. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Of course, that's exactly what I'd done. And that's exactly why after that experience, I began to see everything in new and different ways. I'd gone back to the very beginning. It was as if I'd re-started my Self; hit the RESET button in my mind.

Funny enough, the first new thoughts and feelings I experienced, were stirred up by a cartoon of all things. I guess that makes sense in its own way; if I'd just been re-born the day before, then it'd be like I was a kid again, so why shouldn't I be moved by a cartoon? It was an episode of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. The plot of this particular episode revolved, in large part, around the spirits of the Moon and the Ocean. These spirits resided in two Koi fish that lived in a sacred pool; one fish was black, with a white spot on its head, the other was white with a black spot. They circled each other continuously, endlessly chasing each other's tails, their swirling pattern forming a dynamic tai-chi in the water. The interplay of the fish was supposed to mirror the interplay of the Moon and the Ocean: locked together, eternally united, the two separate but as one, push and pull, give and take, advance and retreat, back and forth, cycle and tide, their constant movement creating a perfect balance. It was an expression of the principles of the Tao. In a kids' cartoon show. And it reminded me of the eternal mystery that I had been attracted to for so long. It reminded me that it didn't matter whether magick was real, whether I'd been deluding myself or not; the fact remains that there is a world to be explored behind the curtain, there still is mystery in life, if I cared to look for it.

I was attracted to this representation of the Tao in a cartoon. I was inspired by it! I hadn't been inspired by anything in months! And then I was further inspired by the realization that I'd just been inspired! I suddenly knew that I had to do something with this information. I had to take this event and make something out of it. Something to do with the Moon. And Tao. But what, exactly? Then I remembered a story I'd heard on the news that very morning about a total lunar eclipse coming up in a few weeks. I immediately jumped online and began researching. I learned there would be a total lunar eclipse on February 20th. That was also the night of the Full Moon. And, in fact, the two events synched almost perfectly: for our area, the eclipse would zenith at 10:26p and the Moon would reach total Fullness at 10:31p. And what's more, I remembered that day was also the Equinox! My mind nearly exploded with this realization! It was as if our local corner of the universe was going to be aligned almost perfectly to represent cosmic balance! First we'd have the Equinox, the very essence of "balance", when the Earth was at its most upright on its axis, and poised perfectly between the Sun and Moon. Then we'd have a total eclipse of the Full Moon, yin and yang merging in the heavens, a gargantuan tai-chi shining down on us for a few brief moments, infusing all the Ten Thousand Things with eternal Tao. The cosmos would be vibrating to the frequency of "balance", "harmony", and "Tao", and I knew that I had to do something to harness that energy! I knew that I had to perform some ritual or ceremony or pathworking or something during this cosmic event in order to synch my self up with that current. And even though I had no idea what I would do, exactly, I didn't care; it felt incredible just to know something, anything, with absolute certainty again. I knew what I had to do, and nothing else mattered just then.

The weeks went by, and my certainty faded bit-by-bit, as I fell back into old patterns. I was growing more and more anxious about the coming event, about which I still had no idea what to do, but still felt I had to do something. The morning before the eclipse, I suddenly realized, out-of-the-blue as I was getting ready for work, This is the Spring Equinox. How could the *Spring* Equinox be in February? Wait! The Spring Equinox is in MARCH!! I was completely floored by the absolute DUH of this realization. It was like waking up from a dream and suddenly realizing that you were, in fact, only dreaming. But I'd been awake the whole time. How could I possibly have spent 3 full weeks believing, absolutely, that the Spring Equinox was going to take place on February 20th?? How did I even end up thinking that in the first place?! I couldn't remember. I still can't remember. I believe now that I had to think this in order to be inspired and roused to action. That would be consistent with the fact that I can't remember how I became convinced of this in the first place, that I managed to go for 3 full weeks believing something so obviously wrong, that none of the people I told about the Equinox/Full Moon/Eclipse cosmic triumvirate during those 3 weeks ever realized it themselves and corrected me, and with the way it all suddenly hit me at once out of nowhere while I was thinking about something completely unrelated the very day before the big event. It was as if a spell had been lifted.

But that realization came later, after the fact. At the time, my main concern was, what did this mean for the working I had been planning to do the next night? The entire premise that had inspired me was based on a fallacy. It wasn't an Equinox and a Full Moon and a total lunar eclipse. It was just a Full Moon and a total lunar eclipse. I had been inspired by the idea of all 3, and now thinking of just the latter 2, I wasn't sure what it meant anymore. I didn't know if I should still go ahead or not. And if I did go ahead, should I go ahead exactly as I'd been planning to do, or did I need to change my plans to fit the new scenario? And if so, how exactly? I was right back to having handfuls of questions with no answers. I didn't know what to do anymore. I couldn't figure anything out. All I knew was that I definitely did not feel inspired by this turn of events. I felt stupid and disappointed.

The night of the Full Moon eclipse came, and I still didn't know anything. I hadn't figured anything out. I still didn't know why I'd thought it was the Equinox. I still didn't know what a Full Moon total eclipse meant to me, if it meant anything at all. I still didn't know if I should do anything anymore, and if so, what, and to what purpose. I was still agonizing over all of these questions when the appointed time came. I was ready to just give up and get high and go to bed. And then Precious said to me, "Just do it. The worst that could happen is that nothing would happen again, just like the other times. But at least then you'd know one way or the other. And who knows? Maybe it'll work and something will happen and you'll feel better. You'll never know if you don't try." I still haven't thanked her enough for saying that. I wonder if she even knows that she almost certainly saved my life just then, with that little bit of thoughtful compassion. I hope so. It's important for her to know that. It's important for her to know just how much her Love means to me. How much it's changed me. How she's helped me to be a better man.

I took her advice, of course. It's good advice. I decided to go ahead and do it, even though I still didn't know what "it" was, exactly. I decided to just figure it out as I went along. I didn't want to do anything big or elaborate; no ceremonial rituals, no sorcery. Just something small and spare and straight to the point, whatever it was. Just kind of put myself out there, and see what happened. I put on some simple ritual clothing. Then I lit a single candle on my altar. I turned on a CD of Taoist monks chanting. Figuring out each step as I did it, one after another. I lit some incense designed for astral illumination work. I decided to sit down in front of my altar and put on my Mindfold and see what happened. Then at that point, I decided to run though an energetic banishing ritual that I had used a lot a few years back, when I was doing a whole lot of heavy sorcery.

I visualized myself sitting in front of my altar as I was, as though I were standing behind my body looking down at it. I "moved in" and visualized my brain in my skull. Then I "moved in" again and visualized the corpus callosum at the center of my brain. Then the individual dendrites, axons, and synapses in the corpus callosum. Then the individual cells that make up a single dendrite. Then the nucleus at the center of one of those cells. Then the genes inside the nucleus. Then the protein at the center of a single DNA helix. Then the chemicals that make up that protein. Then the molecules that make up one of those chemicals. Then the particles that make up one of those molecules. Finally, I visualized my point of view moving into the center of one of the electrons of one of those particles. Inside the electron, I found an endless, white expanse of nothing. The Void. After a moment of stillness and silence in the Void, I visualized a tiny black dot at the very center of the endless white expanse. I visualized the black dot growing, so that it quickly grew to encompass my entire field of vision. I "backed out" to the particles, and the black dot engulfed the electron I had been in, growing out of it, and quickly grew again to engulf all the other particles and encompass my entire field of vision once more. I "backed out" again to the chemical-level, and the blackness followed me again. Back to the proteins. Back to the genes. Back to the nucleus, the blackness following me all the way. Back to the cells. Back to the dendrites. Back to the corpus callosum. Back to my brain. And once the black dot expanded to this point, all the way from the very center of my mindbrain, I willed it to stop, leaving a 2-dimensional black circle about 2-inches across, floating in the center of my brain.

Next, I visualized eight rays growing from the circle to form a 2-dimensional chaosphere. Then I visualized that the 2-dimensional image "popped" into a 3-dimensional one, and began to slowly rotate counter-clockwise on the point of one ray. (I'm going to dispense with the formality of typing "I visualized" before each event from here on out; it's getting irritatingly redundant at this point, and I'm only about a quarter of the way through the description of this banishing ritual as it is. Please simply note that everything I describe regarding the events of this banishing ritual from here on out, I willed to happen. I visualized things happening this way, and so they did; I did not passively witness these events as they were happening to me.)

As the chaosphere began to rotate, its movement created energy. This energy was attracted to the magickal tattoos that I have on my chest. (They were created to act as batteries for "chaos" energy; one is positively charged, the other negative.) The energy (or ch'i) arched like lightning bolts from the chaosphere to each tattoo, then arched between the two tattoos, forming a triangle. Then it arched from the two batteries on my chest through my body, to a third tattoo on my back (this tattoo represents my magickal will and potency), located over my spine, directly between the two on my chest, forming a second triangle parallel to the floor that crossed through my upper body. Finally, the ch'i arched from the tattoo on my back, back up to the chaosphere in my mind from which it had originated, creating two more triangles, and forming a tetrahedron of glowing lines of ch'i extending from the center of my brain down to the middle of my upper body. Then the chaosphere poured ch'i into the tetrahedron, filling it in, until it was solid.

Next, I copied the tetrahedron, and grew its double up, down, and out, until I was sitting inside a solid tetrahedron of glowing ch'i that extended from a point just above my head, down to the floor, with the original tetrahedron still positioned in my body, extending from the chaosphere in the middle of my brain down to the three tattoos on my chest and back. Then I copied the larger, external tetrahedron, but this time the copy was directly below the original, such that now I was sitting in the center of a diamond shape of glowing ch'i, made from the two tetrahedrons stacked together, base-to-base. Then I began to slowly spin the tetra-diamond clockwise. Then a little faster. Then a little faster. Picking up speed, more and more, until it was spinning at a blur. I heard the high-pitched whine of a hyper-accelerated engine. And the energy this spinning tetra-diamond created began to pour down from the point above, and up from the point below, forming the beginnings of a spherical shape. The tetra-diamond spun and whirred and the energy accumulated from the points until the two hemispheres met in a flash, leaving behind a solid sphere of glowing ch'i, surrounding a solid tetra-diamond of glowing ch'i, inside of which, I sat, cross-legged on my meditation cushion, hands folded in my lap, in my ritual clothing, with my Mindfold on, and a glowing tetrahedron of ch'i extending from the slowly rotating 3-dimensional chaosphere in the center of my brain, down to the three tattoos on my upper chest and back.

Now that I had created the energy construct that would mark my working space, I proceeded on to the last part of the banishing ritual, wherein I prepared myself to perform the work at hand (whatever that happened to be). Using a directed breathing technique, I began to draw a line of ch'i down from the chaosphere, down my spine, all the way to my lower tan-t'ien (one of the three "sacred spots" in Taoist internal alchemy, it also corresponds to the perineum or root chakra). I continued to draw down ch'i, collecting a pool of it at my lower tan-t'ien. When I had collected enough, I formed it into a black lotus pod. Then, continuing to draw down ch'i from the chaosphere using the breathing technique, I opened the Black Lotus at my lower tan-t'ien. Next, I repeated this process for my middle tan-t'ien (the second sacred spot, in the middle of the chest, corresponding to the heart chakra), pulling the energy down from the chaosphere to my lower tan-t'ien, and then up the front of my body from the lower tan-t'ien to the middle.

Once I had opened the Black Lotus at my middle tan-t'ien, I began to cycle the ch'i up from there to the upper tan-t'ien (the third sacred spot, corresponding to the pineal gland in the brain, and the third-eye chakra), which is also where the chaosphere was floating. This circuit, down the spine from the brain, up the front back to the brain, is the reverse flow of a ch'i pathway known in Taoist internal alchemy as "the microcosmic orbit". Once I had opened a third Black Lotus at my upper tan-t'ien, I began to cycle my ch'i in this pathway, down and back up, down and back up, faster and faster, until it built up enough speed and suddenly shot a white line of glowing light like a laser up out of the top of my head and down out of my root. This line of light extended to the edges of the universe, as far as reality goes. It represents the Axis Mundi, or "Axis of the Universe" and it is the "pole" from which all of creation hangs. Now that I was connected to it, I was, essentially, at the center of creation.

All of this took maybe about 10 or 15 minutes "real" time. It's much more complicated to describe than it is to actually perform, believe me. I spent several minutes just visualizing myself that way. Sitting inside my tetra-diamond which was inside my sphere, glowing tetrahedron inside my head and chest, rotating chaosphere in the center of my brain, the three Black Lotuses at my tan-t'ien, connected by a cycle of ch'i flowing between them, and an axis of white light extending from one edge of the universe, down my head, down my spine, out my ass, and on to the other edge of the universe. After a while of simply sitting there, wondering what to do, I felt that I should go to the Moon and witness this cosmic event for myself. So I let my astral body (the energetic copy of my physical self) rise out of my physical body along the axis of light. I floated up and up and up (still filled with all the various energy constructs of lotuses and geometric shapes, still surrounded by the tetra-diamond inside the sphere) and up and up. I saw my town as if from a plane, and then it turned into dots of light in a grid pattern, and then there were just collections of lights from several points all over, and then I was looking at the mid-atlantic section of the eastern seaboard, and then I was passing through the clouds, and looking down at the entire east coast of the US. And finally, I was floating free above the Earth, in outer space, with the Earth directly below me, and the Moon directly above. I rotated my astral form slightly to orient myself, so that the Earth was behind me and the Moon directly in front.

And the sight that greeted me there was simply awesome, in the truest sense of the word. I was overwhelmed with awe and reduced to tears at the beauty of the vision before me. But that's going to have to wait until next time. Until then, remember, "All Things that Are, are Fire."