Skulls Are Evil - Erase Them

Some commentary on death and skulls:

I know certain Christian fundamentalists who think skulls are the epitome of evil. The thought of their own mortality is disturbing, and, because good and evil are defined by feeeeeelings, anything that brings to mind the fact that their life is fleeting, is labeled negative and to be avoided. Nursing homes and hospitals are filled with fascinating people who have lived full lives, with tremendous insights to share before they blast off - nobody wants to visit though. It feeeeels icky and depressing (smells like piss too). Comical irony.

I'm very comforted by the thought that perpetual tax evasion is a reality.You work until you are physically and mentally unprofitable and unproductive, a walking anachronism, and then you are left to enjoy the last few years of that in a desolate pasture somewhere. Death is the real retirement. That's why skulls grin.

The string of celebrity deaths has had an interesting impact on culture, on social media. People seem to be shocked that death has the audacity to call. It's almost like people are offended by death. At the same time though, I see this as bringing a new and definitely Saturnian consciousness to the forefront. The future is death, for all of us; even Ray Kurzweil, the poor Jewish man. Just in a matter of a few short years, personal death comes. Is binging on Netflix how you really want to spend your time? Do you really want to give your life to that job you hate? Why are you here? Remember when you had creative ideas? Death can serve to remind you that you have been living as though you were dead. Go ahead and put up a memento mori to keep that in mind.

Nephesh in the Jungle

Reading in Rudd's Goetia.

Always the distinction between the magician and sorcerer. Today the two have pretty much become synonymous terms, with the latter denoting a more practical magic, applicable to everyday life; a magic fulfilling basic needs as well as desires. Traditionally though, the distinction was simple, was black and white - magicians were co-workers with the divine; sorcerers had given themselves over to the infernal, and were its unwitting tools. I think of Eliphas Levi talking about diseased creatures who have opened the void within themselves.

Look around. It's obvious who is who, no matter the title they choose for themselves. You can observe those that ooze a black ectoplasm of ego. Their motivations are simple: Feed the Nephesh. Involving themselves in metaphysics has served to amplify their monstrous nature. The older they become, the more obvious their nature. They have devolved into creatures without compassion, irreverent, heartless, cruel, bitter. Not the wizened sage at all. You know who they are. They are the world. They are it's problem.

Rising on the planes, past the postmodern war-torn fields of Assiah—the overgrown garden of ego where "things are done to me, I'm a victim"—rising into Yetzirah, becoming aware of the subtle emanations of Briah and Atziluth, how bizarre the world below becomes. People lost, without identity. Wasting away in false forms; unhappy, unfulfilled, unaware. You can't save them. You can't reach them. You can't make them understand. They come to resent you. I am not a parent, but it must be an extraordinarily excruciating experience. And then, you come back down, and join with these people, again forgetting your own identity, caught up in the entrancing droning pandemonium of the machinery. You've brought back something precious though. A new consciousness. An awareness that this dismal existence is totally malleable.

Something hit me hard yesterday - the last day of Mercury Rx, 1.15.16. It put me in a fetal position. I was struck, but not defeated. I rose again, did not wallow in the Kingdom of Ego, did not seek to lose myself in addiction or behaviors that have an adverse and negative cumulative effect. I've had enough of that. I don't have time for that. I have magic to do, a will to accomplish, things to manifest.

No matter how far we rise, how much we mature and grow, we are yet human. Our realm, our home is Malkuth, and our Nephesh is dominant here. Once we begin to rise above, once we become conscious that our animal desires are not our identity, we are called to tame the beast. Give it something different, that requires an acquired taste. Bring it in from the jungle and into the palace for an exquisite liver-paste hors d'oeuvre.

Place of Sacrifice

There is a story I keep meaning to tell, yet keep forgetting to tell. This night, it comes to me again, as I sip catnip and chamomile tea.

I was very young, though old enough to go with my mother and father on hikes within our mountains. The Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina, home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians for centuries untold, where dense forests and rock formations as old as the Precambrian and early Paleozoic still cast their shadows.

I wish that I had remembered to ask my father where we were hiking before he died. We were deep into the woods. I don't remember a trail. I was too young to even remember my parents reaction to what we came upon. I think I was the only one to approach it, to walk within it. I perhaps had come upon it myself, straying off from my parents and the trail. 

 

 

I had come to a small cleared place in the dark wood. It was rectangular and perhaps 8x10, the size of an average room. Within the space the forest floor had been covered with bone. The ground crunched as I walked upon it, my eyes wide. The trees around the space all had various animal skulls nailed to them. I remember looking at what I guessed was a dog skull nailed to a tree. I remember thinking of the pain of all these animals. The fear.

All these years later, I still wonder, what in the fuck did I stumble into? I never spoke about it with my parents that I remember.

 

Love Is A Spell Unending

“A woman could want a man so much she might vomit in the kitchen sink or cry so fiercely blood would form in the corners of her eyes. She put her hand to her throat as though someone were strangling her, but really she was choking on all that love she thought she’d needed so badly. What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn’t let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for it’s sake.”

~ Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

As a child, I was quite sheltered. My parents were older, were religious. They never divorced. I was an only child. I lived in a fantasy world of ideal. I believed that one day I would marry the love of my life, and that we would remain together forever, bonded closer than any two people could hope to be. My heart was pure. 

As I grew older, as I went to school, I became aware that life was not ideal. That other children were cruel. That adults were cruel. They lied. They were unhappy. They took joy from cruelty. I withdrew further into myself, to a place that they could not reach to hurt me. My quiet indifference to them and to their world seemed to inflame their loathing. I learned that teachers were not wise elders that could be trusted. They joined with great glee in my public scorning. I withdrew from trying at all. I had my secret place within myself from where I drew power. 

I felt as if spirits were very close to me in my most troubled years. I could go to a secluded place, close my eyes, and feel that there were others all around me, who cared for me, who were watching out for me. The knowledge of this emboldened me. I was not alone. There were those who were on my side, who would fight for me.

The same peculiarity that allowed me to be aware of these others - this sensitivity to the world - secluded me so much. Alcohol helped me to normalize. To not feel so much. I was an alcoholic for many years. Suppressing a nature that I was ashamed of. That I thought was weakness, worthy of mockery and ridicule. I managed to even forget who I was. I became callous, bitter, cynical.

I met a girl. Julia. 

She was by my side, always. I eventually stopped drinking. I began to seek who I was. I was still a drunk - a dry drunk. So isolated, so unhappy. But I had Julia by my side. Always. 

In my heart - way deep down - I was still pure. I loved Julia. I didn't know how to express love. She left me. She didn't just leave. She absolutely destroyed that person. I remember at what moment he fell. He fell to his knees at her feet. She rejected him. It wasn't just rejection. He was betrayed, and cruelly so. 

The love that Miss Hoffman describes - I felt the twisted form of this. There could be no greater torture.

What followed in the next 3 years were 3 relationships, each one somewhat a repeat of previous rejection, and with the 3rd, the previous betrayal. With each one, everything flooded back, raw, bleeding. 

 
Would you die for love's sake? The danger in love, is that it may nail you to a cross and leave you there.

All has passed away, even I. The world that I use to withdraw into, is now the world I live in. One of solitude. Of quietness. I am again aware of the others. They again give me strength. 

My heart bears the burden of loving those that chose not to love me. I can not not love them. I came to know them more intimately than I have ever known anyone else. I believe that the people who destroy love, who cause irreparable damage in others - they will one day come to the full knowledge and understanding of the severity of their actions, and the consequences that grew out from them. This makes me all the more sorrowful. I sometimes wonder if I will see my loves on the other side, and if they will finally understand. If they will once again be returned to innocence.

That burden is heavy. Heavy enough for me to have stopped seeking for love from others. The others are cruel. They lie. Love is not a toy, nor something easy and sweat, nor is it just to play with. 

Might is Right Undeveloped

On The Dead Files tonight, one of the spirits Amy encountered was this angry as hell guy who just wanted to be left alone. He was a 64 year old janitor who had hung himself.

Now, despite whether or not I buy into the worldview espoused on the show, this interested me, because I currently am a janitor. If I am still a janitor in even like 3 more years, I very likely will be contemplating hanging myself. But this guy had traveled abroad quite a bit, and had crossed into Canada with a small fortune in cash. So, it was very likely, according to the authorities, that he was a highway robber. Before Steve brought all this evidence to the forefront, Amy had said the guy didn't know how to be good - that he took what he wanted from people and did what he had to do to earn power and respect. And then he somehow lost his stolen goods (that tends to happen with stolen goods) and ends up a janitor. His ego couldn't deal with it, and he hung himself. That is the type of man the material world appreciates. That is a role model for the matrix and its denizens. A fit survivor. Practical. Ruthless. Soulless. What every girl dreams of.

There are higher powers than the demiurge of this world though... There are even some here who have not despised and thrown away their birthright as spiritual beings for the fulfillment of material hungers.

So I never have had anything even remotely close to power or respect, and honestly I could give a schijt less. I know I'm no idiot. I don't have anything to prove to anyone but myself. It would be nice to meet a woman, to meet friends, who didn't care what I was, but cared who I am. I realize this isn't likely to happen, unless I take the reigns of the material, and force it to happen, and disappointment is sure to ensue. I've tried to force relationships before. It just doesn't work. I'm to weird and rare and others are to horribly normal and boring. It may be due to the fact that I am located in North Carolina....

I rather be alone than with people who are the brethren of that highway robber janitor. Rather than be with the admirers of Ragnar Redbeard. But, I am hoping too that someone somewhere is watching - someone who can cause effect. That God's janitors, who are given the most mundane tasks of overseeing the most mundane lives - I hope they are paying attention to me and to those like me. Life isn't fair. The fittest, the meanest, the most stupidly ignorant - they prosper. But sometimes ironic justice is played out in the material realm.

The Fire of Creation

 

 

I am nearing now a month of intensely altered behavior. I've dropped behaviors that I no longer find any comfort in, if I ever really did. Often in life we confuse pain with pleasure, because pain can be a meaningful experience; and above all else, should we be conscious of it or not, we seek meaning.

I find myself daily enduring the inherent pain that I was attempting to evade by daily manufactured pain. I have no explanation why it is that I suddenly have the power within myself to accomplish this, other than I started after a dream visitation from my dad, and "Edward", who spoke to me with words I cannot remember, but were words that caused me to weep openly in my dream.

The best way I can describe how this alteration feels, is that my hand is being stayed. I am being helped. What's even more strange, is that within my dreams, I came to know the faces of the two individuals who are helping me most intimately. I sometimes suspect that the girl has been with me since my childhood. I too suspect she is Maya, which brings up a bunch of questions in my mind. I think I have loved her since I was a child.

No matter my loneliness, my existential despondency, I feel them, and I know they are guiding me to something, and I can choose to hope in this and have faith in it. After all, for once in my life, I am seeing objective evidence - real change - internal change - internal life.

 

I very clearly remember when this process began to eventualize. It was during the last Venus Rx from 2015's July - September. That Rx lasted 40 days and 40 nights. It was almost as unpleasant as the time in which my wife left me for some jackass around 3 years ago. This rejection thing keeps repeating, and it repeated in a big way during that time. Then Mercury Rx hit immediately after, from September to October. My mom got into an accident and totaled her car. I put a major dent in my Dodge Challenger. But these were minor things compared to what I was experiencing in my personal and emotional life. It could be summed up by saying that I "came to naught". A lot took place, to bring me down to the end of myself. After years and years, I'm finally there. I'm ready for whatever it is THEY have for me. It's all that's left for me. Chesterton spoke of the democracy of the dead. I am not fighting fate anymore. I will embrace it, only now that I have been graced with the power of free will to do so.

Sustainable Happiness

I heard a "scientific" study that revealed that we are "happiest" at work — yet we think the exact opposite — that we are "happiest" in leisure.

This term "happy" — we don't understand it. The things in our lives that we think make us happy, are destroying us, making us miserable. Many, many times in life we mistake a deformed emotional dependency for happiness — drugs, alcohol, relationships — the things that cause us the most pain and regret, we mislabel as "makes me happy".

So, I think what this study about being happiest at work points to, is that we are most content and fulfilled and joyous when we are doing that which has an accumulative effect — that which has a substantial result, a meaning beyond "I feel better for the moment". That which bears depth, has continuity and consistency. 

What really makes you happy?  What would?  There is an active force in this world whose purpose is to prevent change, to postpone awakening, to be the grand prohibiter of people attaining anything but the most base of consciousness. Whatever this force is — it's vehicle is culture.

Burning Liars

I have no patience with liars. They are grotesque unevolved creatures who slowly weave the contorted webs that they will eventually find themselves trapped in.

Scripture calls them lost souls, with open graves for throats. Under their lips is the venom of snakes. A monstrous picture, and quite suitable. Those of you who have been personal witness to the devastating effect of one cowardly liar, know that they are the most foul and twisted creatures who walk the earth, leaving destruction in their wake. Such people seriously make me reconsider theonomy. I think they must serve some purpose though, as does all evil. The Darkness is for those of us who would like to come into Light.

And lying to a magician, causing him quibbles, is incredibly stupid.

For The Heartbroken

I wish what I now feel about my ex wife, I felt about the two women I got involved with after her.  One I lived with for around a year. I think the relationship hobbled on for maybe almost two years, though it was decidedly dead long before I was conscious of the fact. Love can make you way more blind than masturbation ever will. The other woman I only talked to for around a week - but we had so much in common, and I was so eager - suddenly she just blocks me out of her life, and I am left thrown back into the pit of despair with the demons of the past reawakened, eager to feed mercilessly on my poor soul. A week! One week!

One thing is for certain:  I will not let anyone else into the sacred space of my heart unless they prove to me that they deserve to be there. I cannot go on pretending, with the idealistic notions of a child, that I will be loved as I love, just because that is reasonable and fair and just and good and decent. Nope. Doesn't work like that. 

People are of fickle minds and of fickle hearts. People are selfish. People are cruel. People are confused by what the romanticists have done to us on a cultural level. Love isn't perfect. Love isn't like in a novel, or a movie. Love is some real down and dirty, in your face shit. You need sparring gear to even enter the arena of love. 

Even though I know love is a choice and not a feeling, a conscious decision, and all that - I still let my need to be loved, and the euphoria of new love - the wonderful emotional state that actually puts a smile on your face when the morning comes -  I let that totally eclipse the rational, logical, objective part of me. And I paid dearly. I mean it almost killed me. 

Where is the balance?  It's like gambling. No matter how smart you are, how well you know the game, the odds, the player, you still are gambling. You still could lose everything. Trust me:  No matter how safe you think you are, it could end tomorrow. I never thought it could happen to me, even though it was all around me, even though the culture is drenched in the idea that monogamy is a quaint impractical obsolete idea which no modern and sophisticated person would afflict themselves with or encumber their partner with. You are the great individual, the only one who matters, the only one whose needs must be met.

We strange people who actually are looking for someone to give our loyalty to, who demand loyalty in return, who want permanence, and meaning, and growth, who know that individuality is good, but when placed upon the throne of worship becomes a weakness - we are just anachronistic weirdos that have to protect our hearts from whatever horrible messes you would call those out there that we have tried to love, and that have rejected us, torn us, caused our life to be poured out, caused us a seeming eternity of a living existential hell. It does get better. But not if you keep making the same mistake of loving someone who is not going to love you.

The Love that Cannot Fail

The longer I live, the more I realize the wisdom of Don Qixote.

He chose to love a woman in the most pure way - blind and totally unconditional, and therefore detached - an ideal he placed firmly on a pedestal. This was a practical way to go about attaining true love, and true inspiration - his muse - and it is purely genius.

First he chose a woman who would never disappoint him. She could go no further down than she was in her station of life or her character - see Sancho's description below.  Then he renamed her and re-imagined her, and brought her to life in his heart. Aldonza was the proxy for the goddess, Dulcinea of del Toboso. Don Qixote must have truly been a sage, to see the irony of letting Dulcinea have life through a lowly and unattractive peasant girl. It is more beautiful. To people around him, the knight-errant was comical, and very insane. I find that his will was that of a god - he chose to create his world, rather than let the world create him.

I am reminded of a short story I heard on a scifi podcast.  I can't remember the name of it, but there was this lonely man in a war-torn world who lived alone with a notebook full of images of women. One day, a woman, a soldier or something, came upon him, and they lived together for a while. She offered him love, or at least sex.  He preferred his notebook, and eventually betrayed her, and she was killed.  I thought he was an idiot. Now, after the passage of time, and the passage of a few relationships, I think the romanticists are onto something. Something eternal, immutable. Something high above the mundane.

From wikipedia:

Don Quixote describes her appearance in the following terms: "... her name is Dulcinea, her country El Toboso, a village of La Mancha, her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare." [Volume 1/Chapter XIII]

However, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote's squire, knows Dulcinea well. Her real name is Aldonza Lorenzo, and Sancho describes her as follows: "… I can tell you that she pitches a bar as well as the strongest lad in the whole village… She's a brawny girl, well built and tall and sturdy, and she will know how to keep her chin out of the mud with any knight errant who ever has her for his mistress. O the wench, what muscles she's got, and what a pair of lungs! I remember the day she went up the village belfry to call in some of their lads who were working in a fallow field of her father's, and they could hear her plainly as if they had been at the foot of the tower, although they were nearly two miles away. There's a good deal of the court-lady about her too, for she has a crack with everybody, and makes a joke and a mock of them all." [Volume 1/Chapter XXV]

The Mushroom Replied: Each Person Should Parent Just 1 Child

I was listening to Terrence McKenna​, and he was saying that he asked the Mushroom what could be done to save the Earth. This was not a question McKenna had for himself, but from a more "earth biscuity" woman who had ask him to ask this. The Mushroom's response was astounding:

Each parent should have only one child.

The implications of this are astounding.

"If you will parent one child, you will have increased leisure time, you will have greater earning power, more expendable income..."

And perhaps an incentive to do this could be tax cuts and college discounts and so forth and so on.

This encouraged me in my decision to have no children.

Facts

• Rich Nations, Poor Nations
• 20% of the people in developed nations consume 86% of the world’s goods.
• 12% of the world's population uses 85 percent of its water.
• Globally, 20% of the world's people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures - the poorest 20% account for a minuscule 1.3%. Specifically, the richest fifth (1/5):
  • Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth consume 5%.
  • Use 58% of the total energy, the poorest fifth use less than 4%.
  • Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth have 1.5%.
  • Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth use 1.1%.
  • Own 87% of the world's vehicle fleet, while the poorest fifth own less than 1%.
• An analysis of past trends shows that the gap between the richest and poorest countries are increasing:
  • In 1820, it was 5 to 1.
  • In 1913, it was 11 to 1.
  • In the 1950s, it was 35 to 1.
  • In 1973, it was 44 to 1.
  • In 1992, it was 72 to 1.
• The cost of providing basic health care and nutrition for all people in the world would be less than the annual cost of pet food in Europe and the United States.

• Poverty, Hunger
• Over 840 million people in the world are malnourished—799 million of them are from the developing world. Sadly, more than 153 million of them are under the age of 5 (half the entire US population).
• Every day, 34,000 children under five die of hunger or other hunger-related diseases. This results in 6 million deaths a year.
• Of 6.2 billion living today, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.
• 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water; 2.4 billion live without decent sanitation; and 4 billion without wastewater disposal.
• 12 million people die each year from lack of water, including 3 million children from waterborne disease. More than 113 million children in the developing world are without access to basic education; 60 percent of them are girls.

Resources

UN Food and Agriculture Association -
     State of Food Insecurity 2003

Cults of Answers

It doesn't matter how stupid a cult's answers are to questions - what matters is that they provide answers.

"Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
― Terence McKenna

“The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer”
― Terence McKenna

Are You Religious Or Not?

I wonder at the context of Gandhi's words. What is religion?

Sociologist Emile Durkheim defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things".

That's a great definition, but what are "sacred things" then?

I define the sacred as reality tunnels, big pictures, metanarratives. Stuff of the mind that emanates down into the material realm, where it can be translated into the communicable, or rather translated into dogma, into a belief that can be preached.

We all find worth in belief. To worship is nothing more than to acknowledge the worth of something. We hold ideology as sacred, as absolute truth. This is what God got upset about in Jewish and Christian Scriptures - people holding to an absolute truth, that is not absolute truth.

We all think we have the truth, or we are all in the process of seeking the truth. Most people are so sure that their worldview is true, they never have even thought of testing it, much less examining it. They are good at criticizing other worldviews.  That brings to mind something called the law of projection. This is why religion is so infuriating. Thesis and antithesis rarely result in synthesis. What we get is a more pig-headed thesis, and a more stubborn antithesis. The majority of religion, of belief, is made strong by opposing belief alone - not by its truthfulness. Beliefs in ideas are guarded like Fort Knox. Try to break in and tell me how that goes.

Of course the sacred often is regarded in material objects, but the real thing being worshiped is the belief in the idea being projected onto the object. The objects are no more than symbols of the idea.

So, my conclusion is that religion pertains to belief and sacraments, which are ideas. If you believe any idea, you are religious. If you believe nothing, nothing is that which you believe in the absolute, is an idea, and you are religious. We have no choice but to be religious.  Our minds are bound by religion.

I'm not crazy about religion, about belief. I do like the sacraments though - the ideas. I am concerned with truth. You can have religion without truth. Once you have the absolute truth, you have no need for religion, for belief, you have the knowledge of it being the absolute truth.

There are those who say there is no absolute truth. Are they absolutely sure? More religion, and asinine at that. Logic, experience, knowledge. These will guide you as you travel through the realms of the mind. Don't get waylaid with religion - by holding sacred a relic of someone else's idea. Don't be an antithesis. They are angry old sticks in the mud.