Building a Life: Meaning and Purpose

Why are we here? What does it all mean? What the hell am I supposed to do with my life?

Without answers to these questions, otherwise intelligent people can become paralyzed by indecision and self doubt. To overcome this paralysis we need to have answers or at least acceptable working theories.

What is the meaning of life? I say that the meaning of life is living. Life is to be lived and enjoyed and has no other meaning. You don’t need to believe anything so crass, but you do need to figure out what life means to you. Without a defined philosophy man is like a ship without captain, adrift in an ocean of chaos.

One word of warning, however, your basic philosophy of life must actually be pro-life.

If your religion or fundamental philosophy encourages you to disregard the health and physical safety of your body, then you will have problems.

If your basic worldview is anti-money, anti-property and anti-profit, then you are likely to have problems there too.

Exhortations to poverty, chastity and self denial are anti-life and anti-humanity. If your religion proscribes the enjoyment of sex, or faces you to maintain relationships that are not conducive to your physical and emotional wellbeing then, I’m sorry, but you need to get yourself a new religion.

A healthy attitude toward pleasure and success is pre-requisite to everything.

Once you’ve come to your own conclusions about the meaning of life and the nature of reality, it’s time to start asking questions about society and your role in it.

As modern westerners we’re often told that we can be anything we want to be, or else that we’ll never amount to anything at all. Both of these lies are equally damaging.

The meaning of life is the same for everyone, even if we don’t necessarily all agree on what that is. The purpose of a life, the role of one individual in society, is something else altogether. Each of us is possessed of our own greatest passion, our own special talents and our own hidden wyrd. We can’t all be warriors. Nor can we all be priests, poets or magicians. Some of us were meant to be workers, some business people and, yes, some warriors or intellectuals. We can’t all be kickboxing personal trainers or society would have a really hard time getting much of anything else done.

Man needs a comprehensive philosophy, a worldview that explains something of the meaning of it all. He also needs a purpose, a goal, a mission or a role to play in society lest he be consumed by his own cosmic insignificance. Without meaning and purpose, nothing in life makes sense.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Building a Life: Sex & Relationships

The human being is both a sexual and a social animal. Deprived of sexual contact or a sense of social value, most of us will start to go loopy pretty quick. I’ve already written about the value to be found in a deliberate study of the art of seduction, so I won’t repeat myself here. What I’d like to discuss today is the importance of developing real and lasting relationships.

Those of us born into the great western cities of the modern age face a number of strange psychological dilemmas. We are offered an almost infinite choice of profession and, perhaps as a result, often find ourselves paralyzed with indecision about our roles in society. We live surrounded by people, and yet often we feel disconnected and very much alone. Those who earn some mastery of the art of seduction will eventually learn that sex alone is not enough to sustain the human heart. We need sex, yes, but we also need community, family and love.

To master this element requires an ongoing study of communication skills, conflict management, ethics and reciprocity. It also requires a high degree of awareness of who you are, who you want to be, who you want to include in your life and who you want to keep out. You need to build a tribe around yourself because, without one, all the wealth and good health in the world seem meaningless.

In the first post of this series, I quoted the meaning of life as “Survival and Reproduction”. Those of us who already have children already know how true the second part of that equation is. For those of you who don’t have kids, you should try it someday. You may find, as I have, a whole new sense of connection to your family…past, present and future.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Óðinn and Chaos Magick

„Do I contradict myself? I embrace multitudes.” (Walt Whitman)

„Belief is the fall from the Absolute. What are you going to believe? Truth seeks its own negation. Different aspects are not the truth, nor are they necessary to truth. Of its emanations which are you to strangle at birth? Are you illegitimate? You believe in right and wrong— what punishment will you determine? Can you escape the driving ‘Must’?” (Austin Osman Spare: The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love) – The Psychology of Ecstasy. For his self-portrait see above)

„We accept the proofs of Hume, Kant, Herbert Spencer, Fuller, and others of this thesis: The Ratiocinative Faculty or Reason of Man contains in its essential nature an element of self-contradiction.“ (Aleister Crowley: Equinox Vol 1 No 2)

„Odin is the Chaos Magician of traditional Northern European belief who dares anything and everything in his quest for wisdom and knowledge.“ (Ian Read)

The magickal jouney is circular, spiral, and chaotick. Not linear, orderly and without regressions / set-backs. I looked for a Higher Order, but found thee chaotick Vision and the Void. The Voice from within the Silence that leads me on. The only answer is to ask more questions. The only truth is to become a question mark? The only path is to reject fixed systems and to create your own system – not to become trapped in the labyrinth of some other man. „I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s. I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create.“ (St. William Blake) The magickal journey can never be an easy one, because then it ceases to be an adventurous expedition into the unexpected and the Unknown. I wanted Tradition but found dead letters. Traditions are the old, empty exoskeletons of an ancient serpent that is always turning and shedding skin. People then worship the dead skin calling it „Tradition“ and do not see the breathing, beautiful serpent behind the outer forms. They do not ride the living snake to the ancient lake. This snake erupts from Ginnungagap, the Almighty Chaos – Mother of Matter and Aether. The truth of today is the lie of tomorrow. My realizations of the past are nothing I shall hang on to on my initiatory journey.

„The personality, a mask of convenience, becomes stuck to the face. Eye becomes clouded by ‘I.’ The human spirit becomes a trivial mess of petty identifications. The most cherished principles are the greatest lies. ‘I think therefore I am.’ But what is ‘I’? The more you think, the more the I closes. Thinking, ‘I am alseep’; my I is blinded. The intellect is a sword, and its use is to prevent identification with any particular phenomenon encountered. The most powerful minds cling to the fewest fixed principles. The only clear view is from atop the mountain of your dead selves. “ (Carrol, Liber Null, p. 48)

All the persons I have been, all the masks I have born and all the clothes and ideologies I have worn are now torn – they are not me, but my „dead selves.“ This is a strange mystery: that the body that has been born is not the same body that will die. „This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.“ (AL I, 30) Our body cells are replaced a few times during our life. Yet there is an „I“, a feeling of self-ness all of the time (except you’re asleep or in uttermost ecstasy). Movement is a sign of SPIRITedness. We invent ourselves while we are moving through time and space. Otherwise „I“ will stagnate. But it has been written: Solve et coagula („Dissolve and Join Together“). No golden books are to be found but mystery. I wanted the answer. And I got it. Neatly boxed in perfect shape. Like a present from the devil. It looked ancient and impressive. Symbols of old were carved on it. This must be it! Do you think so? I tell you something: Wisdom is boring and costs 19.95 USD from Amazon.com.

Over the last years I have had kind of a troublesome relationship with Chaos Magick (CM). On the one hand it’s like I’ve been born for that current. Should I dare to say, I have been born by Chaos Magick? On the other hand there is an attitude of postmodern consumerism hidden in CM that I always rejected. I discarded CM a few times and like a boomerang it kept coming back to me. Not through books or the like, but from within. But I think my great antagonism has been the fact that I didn’t dare to trust mySelf in a deep sense. That’s why I always looked for some „father figure“ in magick to lead me on my path. Jung called this a father imago, an inner picture, often an idealized image of a person, usually a parent, formed in childhood and persisting unconsciously into adulthood. This was interrelated with my search for a coherent magickal system or ancient tradition. This in itself is not a bad thing when seen in the context of developmental stages of an initiatory journey. But of course the magickal arena is over-crowded with „gurus“ who would like to take over this role. In most cases not out of unselfish reasons, to say the least. However, being a hardcore sceptic and Anarch who asks too many questions I never really walked into this trap, except in a philosophical sense. This led me to call myself by such diverse names as Catholic, Nihilist, Anarchist, Aristocrat, Conservative, Thelemite, Buddhist, Gnostic, Pagan, folkish and universalist Ásatrúar, Odian, Libertarian, Tantric, Tradionalist, Futurist and so forth. The simple truth is that „I“ am „We“ and „We Are Legion“ (Carrol). Hence Anon. „This shall be your only proof. I forbid argument. Conquer! That is enough.“ (AL III, 11) Of course, I can find in all of my former positions and all the diverse worldviews I adopted something of value to me today. I learned from all these positions. They are like pieces of a puzzle to the most puzzling of all mysteries: my Self. That’s why, in hindsight, I think I’ve always been a Chaos Magician. In some sense I’ve even been a combination of an eclectic and a systematic „paradigmal pirate“, as Joshua Siddhartha Wetzel would have put it – but I haven’t been this in a conscious and deliberate way. And I don’t know if I will ever be. „In The Paradigmal Pirate, Joshua Wetzel made a distinction between eclectic and systematic paradigm piracy. Eclectic paradigm piracy is similar to religious syncretism, except that the resultant belief systems are temporary. Systematic paradigm pirates, on the other hand, tend to embrace existing belief systems as a whole, often pursuing official membership in organized religions or other groups.  Systematic paradigm pirates also often strive for strict orthodoxy in their chosen paradigms, and may appear indistinguishable from other adherents of that faith for the times that they are there. It is also not unusual for a paradigm pirate to use a combination of the two approaches.“ (Tsuzuki 26)

There are some fine chaosmagickal Grimoires out there, but true CM is your magick. Also, the situation in CM is changing and it becomes far more diverse in its approaches. And if one criticises paradigmal piracy, one has to acknowledge that not everything is bad about the current situation of being exposed to the „spiritual supermarket“ and using it to your own ends. People learn from different angles and eventually deepen their knowledge, when they stick to a tradition or they invent their own system (or both simultaneously). I tend to be a terrible fanatic whith my criticisms. Not everything in this age is bad. If you want to be a Viking today, become an astronaut and explore outer space! How many Americas, Africas and Australias are to be found there? Take of your viking clothes and don the astronaut spacesuits. Join the International Explorer’s Guild and reyn til Runa – seek the Unknown! „There is nothing new under the sun.“ (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Do you say so? Then seek out other suns in other solar systems! It’s so easy to be an anti-modernistic arsehole whilst enjoying all the freedoms of an age that is as interesting as hell! Men flying to the moon, communicating with people from all over the world by the click of a button, and a mankind that becomes slowly aware of the fact that Life is a vast and living, interdependent Intelligence System (ok, very slooowleey). Hopefully we will realize this before it’s too late for us. Billions of millions of years of evolution were necessary for us – the intelligent apes – to evolve on this planet and finally to become conscious of ourselves. Only to fuck up the whole situation and destroy ourselves by destroying our natural environment? If I may make a joke: Just consider Hegel’s Weltgeist, the world spirit, and its disappointment after billions of years of unfolding. No aim in history at all? No teleology? Really? Immanentize the Eschaton! Now!

„Most amazing is this realization that everything that exists in the universe came from a common origin. The material of your body and the material of my body are intrinsically related because they emerged from and are caught up in a single energetic event. Our ancestry stretches back through the life forms and into the stars, back to the beginnings of the primeval fireball. This universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence, and life. And all of this is new. None of the great figures of human history were aware of this. Not Plato, or Aristotle, or the Hebrew Prophets, or Confucius, or Thomas Aquinas, or Leibniz, or Newton, or any other world-maker. We are the first generation to live with an empirical view of the origin of the universe. We are the first humans to look into the night sky and see the birth of stars, the birth of galaxies, the birth of the cosmos as a whole. Our future as a species will be forged within this new story of the world. … To begin with, you will have to embrace your creative potential. The universe has unfolded to this point. It has poured into you the creative powers necessary for its further development. The journey of the cosmos depends on those creatures and elements existing now, you among them. For the unfolding of the universe, your creativity is as essential as the creativity inherent in the fireball. … The human provides the space in which the universe feels its stupendous beauty. The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human. Do you see? … From the same place that everything comes from [we come from]. From the same place out of which the primeval fireball comes: an empty realm, a mysterious order of reality, a no-thing-ness that is simultaneously the ultimate source of all things.“ (Brian Swimme: The Universe is a Green Dragon)

The Germanic ancients called it Ginnungagap. But back to the matter at hand: chaos magick. Dead or alive. Devil or god. With gand or gun. Hidden or forbidden. I don’t care: just give me full gnosis tonight! It seems to me that though we can stick with a system, it’s more the attitude that’s important. Dave Lee wrote to me:

„As for chaos magic, I see it as the premier critique of magical technique in the world today, and so I would unhesitatingly recommend elements of the chaos magic approach in any deep system of magical training. CM does not of course tend to adress issues outside of technique, and so there lies the need for a broader philosophy of life within which we weave our techniques.“

For me this philosophy is Chaos Heathenism. I hardly believe that one can build one’s magickal or spiritual philosophy on UPGs alone, though some do it and by doing so all too often only incorporate unknowingly the postmodern zeitgeist into their worldviews that reveals behind it a consumerist logic of late capitalism – the worst example being New Age. Considering the postmodern outlook of CM one shoud be aware that though POMO thought denies to follow the modernistic conception of „universal rules“ (of life, art, philosophy or anything else), it includes also the risk of fundamentalist relativism and an „epistemological hypochondria“ (Clifford Geertz), where „anything goes“ and where consequently real knowledge becomes impossible anymore. And as Dave Lee warns in Bright from the Well, postmodernism isn’t magic-friendly in the long run, because it doesn’t support any hierarchical levels of consciousness. Do the formulae of CM – to that I sometimes referred to as the „dark twin“ of the New Age – transcend that postmodern logic of consumerism with their battle call of Nothing is true, Everything is trance-mitted? Or do they replicate and reinforce that logic? This tension lies at the heart of many of the new forms of CM and cyberpaganism, „which in their own way reflect the ‘magical logic of late capitalism’. Are they merely reflections of an increasingly pluralistic, rapidly changing, hedonistic, and ‘chaotic’ consumer society? Or do they also offer the hope of breaking free of that culture? Does the quest for radical liberation from even the boundaries of the self really lead to any meaningful sort of freedom? Or has it simply transformed the ideas of ‘liberation’ and ‘transgression’ themselves into commodities that can be purchased for 19.95 US-Dollars from Amazon.com?“, the Tantric scholar Hugh B. Urban asks in his witty and interesting book Magia Sexualis – Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism.

That’s why, I think, CM must become aware of this dilemma and move beyond mere spiritual consumerism (which the CM current does, I observe). We should respect the traditions we encounter, especially when they are still alive (like some shamanic cultures). We can be respectless to their dogmas and superstitions in our own magickal work. We can discard what does not work for us, but not by disrespecting the peoples and their cultures from where we have taken the symbolism / methods / tools. This applies, of couse, also to the Runic tradition and our own ancestors and their culture in which the Runes originated. To decontextualise and universalise shamanic systems is in essence what New Age ideology does, which is nothing but the internalized cultural matrix of late capitalism projected forth into the sublime realms of spirituality. (I hope you survive so much intellectual „leftism.“)

It’s good to be aware of this when one employs the Chaos approach to whatever tradition one is working with. In my case, of course, the tradition is the Runic one. The question how the approaches of Chaos Magick and the Germanic Tradition inform eachother is hard to answer and probably can only be answered or worked out individually.The contraditions between these two currents are apparent. But the deep connections are hidden – as all secret knowledge in magick. I as a Chaos Heathen unite these two different currents in a kind of Dagazian paradox. „Chaos Heathenism is our philosophy. Heathenism is the spiritual harbour from which we sail, but like chaos magicians we are creative and irreverent and are not afraid to explore all manner of strange new oceans. In this we identify with the spirit that inspired so many Viking expeditions, as well as the far-reaching web of our ancestor’s trade routes and travails.” (Henry / Harigast)

My suggestion here is that the magician can walk in Óðinn’s footsteps, but at the same time s/he dares to explore new corners of the spirit and cutting edge magick. This is in accordance with the Óðinnic example to leave no stone unturned in your quest for wisdom and knowledge. As a Rune Magician called Thomas Wade Curtis said to me three years ago on Rune-Net: „Whatever you have learned from any source – if found useful – will become a tool. You will carve your own path with that tool and the insight gained. I believe you can learn from all paths, as in Chaos, stripping the wheat from the chaff, and deriving the essential technique and goal, from said path/practice, and then apply it to your current.“ The magician who travels Óðinn’s path, to praphrase Crowley, walks „with his head in the clouds and his feet firmly on the ground“… and seeks restlessly, like the Chaos Star points out, in all directions for Her – Miss Unknown. The Chaos Star itself, if imposed on Midgard (the magician’s self) on the Yggdrasil pattern as shown in Nine Doors of Midgard, could symbolise the expanding or travelling of the self into the eight directions of the other eight worlds.

A chaos magician from Berlin once told me that if the phrase „Nothing is true“ is true, then this sentence itself is untrue. Such an interpretation opens up a completely different perspective, I think. He also told me that to him chaos magicians, if they get beyond the obvious and deeper into the mysteries, should realize at some pont that shifting paradigms (or paradigmal piracy) has the purpose to discover that all magick derives from within the psyche, not an external symbol system. It’s not an end in itself and to think otherwise is to get stuck in a postmodern illusion, he assumed. However, creating your own system seems to me to be a worthy task for every seeker on his magickal path of individuation. Interstingly only a few magicians ever dedicate to the task of developing their own system of magick in a conscious and deliberate way. Finally, I’d like to quote Frater Stokastikos 127 and thus „reveal“ my aspiration in magick – beside falling in love with „Miss Terry“, also known as Mystery.

„Chaos, the life force of the universe, is not human-hearted. Therefore the wizard cannot be human-hearted when he seeks to tap the force of the universe. He performs monstrous and arbitrary acts to loosen the hold of human limitations upon himself. The magical life demands the abandonment of comfort, conventionality, security and safety — for competition, combat, extremes, and adversity are needed to produce higher resolutions and personal evolution. An air of desperation is required in a life lived close to the edge. One must be living by one’s wits. In a stagnant environment the body-mind creates its own adversity — disease and fantasy. Only in extremes can the spirit discover itself. A fluid environment is required as a vessel for magical consciousness. Only a fluid environment can conform to beliefs about it and be subject to the subtle magic forces. Only in mutable circumstances can divination come into its own. Therefore abandon all fixed patterns of residence, employment, relationship and taste. Among the titles of Kia is Anon. Anon freely transmogrifies its arbitrary personality, refusing any identity defined by its environment. Residing in the ultimate freedom possible on the plane of illusion, it has choice of duality. Everything which exists for it is a form of desire, for this is the universe in which it willed to incarnate. If this were believed to be either heaven or hell one would feel free to do anything. It is only the fear it is neither which imprisons us. The idea of mind or ego as a fixed attribute or possession of Self is illusory. All that can be said of Kia is that the amount of meaning one experiences is proportional to Kia’s manifestation in one’s circumstances. Kia is felt as meaningfulness, power, genius, and ecstasy in action. Outside of this nothing is true. The wizard doeth as he wilt on this illusory plane, knowing that nothing is more important than anything else and that anything he does is only a gesture. He is thus free to do anything as though it mattered to him. Acting without lust of result, he achieves his will. In the arena of Anon compete numerous selves, souls, familiar spirits, demons, obsessions, and an infinity of possible experiences. Each game is short, and then the pieces are hurled through death into unrecognizable new configurations. Only the style and spirit of Anon’s play survive transmogrification, unless the aetheric body has achieved great integration. “ (Carrol, Liber Null, p. 67-68)




Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Death is not an end

This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all. (AL I, 30)  The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!  Nothing is a secret key of this law. (AL I, 45 – 46)

In the centre of the cosmos there is no throne, but the sound of thunder! (Hubert Veðrfölnir)

Life behaves as if it were going on. The universe behaves as if Gods exist. The Psyche is not bound by the laws of time and space…

“I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities.

This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma.

In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.

CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of the created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma pervadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as a wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and the infinite. But we have no share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed; not spiritually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time and space.

Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous. Only figuratively, therefore, do I speak of created being as part of the pleroma. Because, actually, the pleroma is nowhere divided, since it is nothingness. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point (assumed only, not existing) in us and the boundless firmanent about us. But wherefore, then, do we speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing?

I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere, and also to free you from the delusion that somewhere, either without or within, there standeth something fixed, or in some way established, from the beginning. Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change.

What is changeable, however, is creatura. Therefore is it the one thing which is fixed and certain; because it hath qualities: it is even quality itself.

The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? Created beings came to pass, not creatura: since created being is the very quality of the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In all times and places is creation, in all times and places is death. The pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness.

Distinctiveness is creatura. It is distinct. Distinctivness is its essence, and therefore it distinguisheth. Wherefore also he distinguished qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguisheth them out of his own nature. Therefore he must speak of qualities of the pleroma which are not.

What use, say ye, to speak of it? Saidst thou not thyself, there is no profit in thinking upon the pleroma?

That said I unto you, to free you from the delusion that we are able to think about the pleroma. When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. But we have said nothing concerning the pleroma. Concerning our own distinctiveness, however, it is needful to speak, whereby we may distinguish ourselves enough. Our very nature is distinctiveness. If we are not true to this nature we do not distinguish ourselves enough. Therefore must we make distinctions of qualities.

What is the harm, ye ask, in not distinguishing oneself? If we do not distinguish, we get beyond our own nature, away from creatura. We fall into indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval, perilous sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS. This principle is the essence of the creature. From this you can see why indistictiveness and non-distinction are a great danger for the creature.

We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as:

The Effective and the ineffective.
Fullness and Emptiness.
Living and Dead.
Difference and Sameness.
Light and Darkness.
The Hot and the Cold.
Force and Matter.
Time and Space.
Good and Evil.
Beauty and Ugliness.
The One and the Many.

The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature is distinctiveness, which meaneth:

  1. These qualities are distinct and separate in us one from the other; therefore they are not balanced and void, but are effective. Thus are we the victims of the pairs of opposites. The pleroma is rent in us.
  1. The qualities belong to the pleroma, and only in the name and sign of distinctiveness can and must we possess and live them. We must distinguish ourselves from qualities. In the pleroma they are balanced and void; in us not. Being distinguished from them delivereth us.

When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is disinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labor to attain the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and ugly. And thus we fall not into the pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.

Thou sayest, ye object, that difference and sameness are also qualities of the pleroma. How would it be, then, if we strive after difference? Are we, in so doing, not true to our own nature? And must we none the less be given over to the sameness when we strive after difference?

Ye must not forget that the pleroma hath no qualities. We create them through thinking. If, therefore, ye strive after difference or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, ye pursue thoughts which flow to you out of the pleroma: thoughts, namely, concerning non-existing qualities of the pleroma. Inasmuch as ye run after these thoughts, ye fall again into the pleroma, and reach difference and sameness at the same time. Not your thinking, but your being, is distinctiveness. Therefore not after difference, ye think it, must ye strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being. If ye had this striving ye would not need to know anything about the pleroma and its qualities, and yet would ye come to your right goal by virtue of your own being. Since, however, thought estrangeth from being, that knowledge must I teach you wherewith ye may be able to hold your thought in leash. … God is not dead; he is as much alive as ever. God is the created world, inasmuch as he is something definite and therefore he is differentiated from the Pleroma. God is a quality of the Pleroma and everything that I have stated in reference to the created world is equally true of him.

God is distinguished from the created world, however, inasmuch as he is less definite and less definable than the created world in general. He is less differentiated than the created world, because the ground of his being is effective fullness; and only to the extent that he is definite and differentiated is he identical with the created world; and thus he is the manifestation of the effective fullness of the Pleroma.

Everything that we do not differentiate falls into the Pleroma and is cancelled out along with its opposite. Therefore if we do not discern God, then the effective fullness is cancelled out for us. God also is himself the Pleroma, even as every smallest point within the created world, as well as within the uncreated realm, is itself of the Pleroma.

The effective emptiness is the being of the Devil. God and Devil are the first manifestations of the nothingness, which we call the Pleroma. It does not matter whether the Pleroma is or is not, for it cancels itself out in all things. The created world, however, is different. Inasmuch as God and Devil are created beings, they do not cancel each other out, rather they stand against each other as active opposites. We need no proof of their being ; it is sufficient that we must always speak about them. Even if they did not exist, the created being would forever (because of its own differentiated nature) bring them for out of the Pleroma.

All things which are brought forth from the Pleroma by differentiation are pairs of opposites; therefore God always has with him the Devil.

This interrelationship is so close, as you have learned, it is so indissoluble in your own lives, that it is even as the Pleroma itself. The reason for this is that these two stand very close to the Pleroma, in which all opposites are cancelled out and unified.” (C. G. Jung 1916: The Seven Sermons to the Dead)

Listen to the message of a modern prophet: Carl Gustav Jung.

There can be many reasons and triggers that can wake you up — wake you up to that kind of awareness, where the higher and hidden levels of the spectrum of human consciousness are experienced. I can remember a week some years ago, when I fasted for five days (no food at all, but much water and juice) and I meditated a lot and did other spiritual excercises from Crowley’s curriculum. And in one moment I realized my mind was so clear that I thought to myself: “How can life be any different again? It’s so easy to attain such a clear mind. I will never loose it again.” Believe me, it’s easier to fall asleep than to wake up again. The mind is such a tricky and sneaky thing! I guess nothing is easier than to travel the road of life asleep until one dies. Hence the need for a spiritual discipline. Nothing else helps. I tried it. Pills, thrills, drills and stuff that kills. But only slow and steady wins the race. Not the extreme and radical, but the golden middle. Neither this master nor that teaching, neither this order nor that secret ritual, neither this drug nor that technique. All that is needed is Here, all the that you have is the Now, the only one who can do the Work is you. “Who is the Great Master that makes the grass green?” You, the silent Watcher, you, the Ultimate Observer.

However, some times are special, when we feel that Wyrd leads us and just everything falls into place. Such times are often characterized by unusual events, books you find or get, people you meet, things you discover, music you hear and all kinds of weird / wyrd synchronicities.

There are many songs I remember that influenced me during that time of sheer beauty and madness. (Literally one friend of mine later had a psychosis, because the things we were experiencing and ‘consuming’ were just too much and too heavy.) Two songs I remember vividly and still love are Fokstua Hall and Svartálfar by Fire + Ice (like many other songs by this magical band) and now I found out that Sweyn has written these two songs! Things like that are magical, meaningful and empowering on a personal level, because it gives one’s life a direction and purpose. They confirm on a personal level that you were and are on the right track.

The Inmost Light and This Shining Shining World (read the text below) are my favourite songs by the band Current 93, a band that was also very important on my path for some time. This Shining Shining World kind of ‘converted’ me with the help of magic mushrooms and the Tibetan Book of the Dead from nihilism to the beauty and awe of Mystery. And thus I broke on through to the other side that greeted me behind the dead end of existentialism, which I thought (in my youthful arrogance and ignorance at age 15) was the last answer to all questions. But since I could gaze at the spinning of the Wyrd Sisters on “the other side” (or behind the curtain and beneath the obvious) I decided to open up to the possibility of magic and pantheism. To put it rather roughly: I concluded that we may be — maybe — more than a chunk of meat. Since then my interest for mysticism and the Occult became a vital part of my life. I came to know, rather than to believe (like Mr. Jung, listen to his words above), that we are more than we seem. The idea that there are secrets which are eternal mysteries — that is what I am interested in. And I am still going. Still seeking…

(In this process after having been a member of a rather known occult franternity I came to be opposed to so-called occultism, because the occultists assert that there are secrets, but what they think of as mysteries are rather conventional things that I now put in my pocket. These people just make any arbitrary thing a secret and simply conceal it from you for the sake of keeping it a secret to manipulate people or to simply create a commodity and they will tell you that these “secrets” can only be revealed to you if you become a member of this group, read this book or do something along those lines. This is utter nonsense. True mystery does not belong to anyone nor can it be taught, shown, revealed or attained.)

However, since then I was touched by the Ansuz flame. And I remember that when I had my second trip and looked through the Looking-Glass I did my first Staða of Dagaz — my absolutely most beloved Rune and the central mystery of a certain God, who is said to be a great Poet, Magician and Master of ecstatic Consciousness.

“But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. … Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!” (AL I, 61).

Since then I had only one sincere wish: to seek for spiritual liberation. Sounds naive, probably. But who doesn’t want to be free? Free from what, one is inclined to ask? Freedom is a myth, the Buddhist Master and Tantric teacher of “Crazy Wisdom”, Chögyam Trungpa, once said (in: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism). By showing, in true Buddhist fashion, the interdependence of everything that exists, the dependence of any thing on some other thing is demonstrated (pratītyasamutpāda = „dependent origination“), including the ego, resulting in the realization that all things are ‘void’ or empty of any characteristic. So freedom in the way the usual Westerner imagines it doesn’t exist according to the philosophy of Shunyata (“Emptiness”), invented by the Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna (c. 150 – 250 CE). Though I’ve always been humbled and fascinated by Buddhist philosophy (not knowing a lot about it), I reject its world- and life-denying implications. That’s why I’m mostly interested in the Left-Hand Path manifestations of Tantric Buddhism and of the manifold sects (used here in a positive sense) of the complex religious phenomenon in India that the British colonials called rather unimaginatively “Hinduism”. Already Crowley observed:

“The essence of the Tantric cults is that by performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed with the will-to die. … [H]e implicitly denies the proposition that existence is sorrow and he formulates the postulate … that means exist by which the universal sorrow … may be unmasked.” (Crowley, in: Grant 1991 [1971]: The Magical Revival)

So freedom for an orthodox Buddhist or a Gnostic was reached when they were freed in a state of bliss (Nirvana or Heaven), delivered “from the body of Death” (Saint Paul). For a Tantric (spiritual) freedom was already here, for those who were strong, determined and courageous enough to grasp it. It is reached by developing what the chaos magician Julian Wilde once called Vajra Awareness. My brother and me had lastly a conversation and we were talking about god(s), the world(s) and all that stuff and then I misheard what he said, when a car drove by. And what I heard was: “In the centre of the cosmos there is no throne, but the sound of thunder!” Kaos Keraunos Kybernetosthe: The Chaos Thunderbolt Steers All Things. To hear the thunder and the silence at once, to see with the all-pentrating eye of the true nature of the mind, it is necessary to reach vajra awareness:


“The first necessary (and much misunderstood) stance is the need to remain ‘centred’, self-aware, to retain one’s ‘spirit’, … to seek an uninterrupted stream of consciousness/awareness whatever may happen, be it calamity, death or rebirth/becomings. It is a channelling process/tendency, an identification of the self as separate/disengaged from the rest of the universe.

The second is the need to transcend the human view-point, to realise the narrowness, arrogance and ultimate impotence of one’s present perception and to seek a re-alignment of one’s will/vision to that of the universe/void/chaos flow. It is a diffusing process, an identification with something larger than the human perspective (that can, unchecked or abused, lead to false bliss, a nirvanic torpor, a capitulation of drive/energy).

Held/practised together these two polar opposites create a third, highest stance. As usual the tantrists have a word for it. The word ‘vajra’ or ‘dorje’ can either mean a diamond ie- that which is compact/focused, symmetrical/crystalised, unbreakable, immutable, untarnishable (part of the drive to eros/control, order, possession) or a thunderbolt ie- that which is frightening, all-powerful, ego-destructive, disintegrating (part of the drive to thanatos/disorder, ego-death). ‘Vajra’ therefore may also be held to mean both stances (diamond-eros and thunderbolt-thanatos) together/simultaneously. This captures nicely the feel of the third stance so let us call it the vajra-awareness. As a bolt of lightning (the thunderbolt) strikes the earth, swift, random, brilliant (ILLUMINATING!), so too must the vajra-awareness be instantly in response, cultivated to be active/reactive to changing emotional states, rebirths, disasters and environments, being one with the lightning, being the lightning, flowing at one with all but retaining the diamond-hard yet infinitely flexible self-ness in the midst of conditions, manifestaions and becomings. The vajra-awareness is what it touches yet it retains its self-ness, wherever it alights there is totality and purity, where it is not are ignorance and eventual suffering.

The vajra-awareness, then is a conscious integration/inter-action with all that is – an eternal balance between self-knowing/posession and immersion in the ceaseless flux of the universe.“ (Julian Wilde 1999: The Grimoire of Chaos Magick)

This is what has to be done. One of the most important tasks of that Great Work is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. In terms of Germanic Soul-Lore this part of the Magician’s Psyche is called the Fylgja or Fetch. It can be contacted by certain methodologies like this one. The relationship to that entity (HGA, Augoides, Dæmon, Genius, “Totem”, Deep Mind or Fylgja) is a vital part of one’s initiatory process. The HGA / Fylgja is often thought of as a non-human intelligence or a seperate being that carries in it all the ancestors’ pasts and holds the individual’s fate.

“As to why such a relationship is vital to cultivate, even in early stages of one’s Rune Work, that’s perhaps easier.  I’d say that the idea of the complex, multifaceted Self — the plural Soul — is one that is absolutely key to deep understanding of and practical work with the Northern Mysteries (and Indo-European mysticism in general). It’s also one of the ideas that has been most thoroughly abolished from the modern, materialist concept of the self.  We clearly yearn for it though, and it consistently emerges in pop culture and fantasy literature (think of the daemons in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, and I’m sure other examples will come to light).  It is a very difficult task to learn to think of ‘One’s Selves’ rather than ‘Oneself,’ but when we can do so, we come to know, rather than to believe, that we are more than we seem.  And we move farther and faster along the road of personal transformation in the Germanic Tradition.” (Ristandi)

Such a transpersonal guide is hidden in the soul-complex and to be discovered by those who travel along the Runic pathways that lead down, around and up the Tree. This part of the Soul is non-local in the sense of quantum mind. To say it more accurately: it’s here in Midgard and there in Asgard simultaneously — the ‘Realm’ of Awakened Consciousness that might be (according to “metaphysics of ‘substance'”) / do (according to “all things flow”-process philosophy) in non-local ‘hyper-space’ beyond time, connected with the other eight worlds of the map of the multiverse, f.e. as represented by the Chaos Star (the multi-directional expansion of consciousness from a central still-point). Um mik ok í mér Ásgarðr ok Miðgarðr! From the point of view of the Germanic Soul-Lore, that C. G. Jung helped to dig up, this entity, the Fylgja, does not die because it already exists in an eternal dimension not bound by the laws of time and space, like Jung already suggested. And, apparently, most cosmological and psychological maps, especially those influenced by shamanic lore, implied something along those lines. Michael Kelly, who worked a lot with the Celtic soul model, says:

“We may now gain a perspective on what may cause an active shade or ghost to linger, if an attachment is still felt toward a loved one who embodied the deceased’s Other on the physical plane. But as I considered the soul in the context of Desire, I realised that the féin does not pass from this world into the magical realms upon physical death. Why not? Because it is already there and it always has been. The sense of Self is not and has never been bound to the physical body. Even in the most dull and unimaginative of people, it indulges in daydreams, it dreams while the body sleeps and it creates new worlds within the imagination. The féin resides permanently in the magical realms and it interfaces with the physical body through the other parts of the soul that we have described. Upon death, it draws several of those parts back to itself to one degree or another.”(Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis)

In Sweyn Plowright’s book True Helm Ian Read puts forth the idea (in the foreword) that upon following the guidelines in this book “you may create such a strong being (that we call hamingja) and may even, upon death, join those greatest warriors … in Valhalla.”  Ultimately, I come to understand it in such a way that the Hamingja — the life force and soul power of the magician — may become so strong in the process of individuation that even upon death it will survive.

“But exceed! exceed! Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine — and doubt it not, and if thou art ever joyous! — death is the crown of all. Ah! Ah! Death! Death! thou shalt long for death. Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee. The length of thy longing shall be the strength of its glory. He that lives long & desires death much is ever the King among the Kings.” (AL II, 71 – 74)

So, from a Germanic point of view, the Fylgja (unique to an individual, but nevertheless completely independent of him / her) and the Hamingja (later to become associated with one’s indwelling luck) are (semi-)autonomous ‘entities’ and yet portions of the individual’s psyche that are immune to physical death. What happens to the Self? Can it unite with the Fylgja and Hamingja? Does it continue to exist after death, like Kelly suggests in his Celtic soul model? Or is it rather an illusion as suggested in the teachings of Nagarjuna and as expressed in the idea of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination)? I don’t know, fellow traveler. It’a Mystery hidden in your Soul. Seek it!

“Consider the lillies of the field…” (Matt. 6: 28)
Consider the carnage and massacre
Consider the love and embraces
Consider the hangingred skies
Consider the pain of your enemy
Consider the hatred of your friend
There, oh there, there is the land
All the musics shall combine
All the daughters are no longer brought low
They are araised
In brightfiregodgiven they rejoice
And those who deny this world
Is the soul of the unbroken one
Lie
This is indeed Paradise
(Come I shall show you where
The stars give birth and sleep)
And all around you is the warm bluegreen breath of heavens
Do not fear
Around you is the vast blueblack space of stars
Do not fear
This is the great ocean
On which the endless waves crash down
God is not dead
There is no death I say
(Come I shall show you where
Dreams go to when they die)
Hurry now; the sun is descending
The shadows wait to play

Current 93, Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre — The Broken Heart Of Man (1994)

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Thor Says: Invoke With Laughter

Donovan and I celebrated a truly marvellous Thorrablot yesterday. One of the most brilliant ritual experiences I’ve ever had – we’re on such a strong shared wavelength and what an honour it is to know him.

I arose early. I packed a delicious organic lunch of red beans in pasta/tomato sauce, chopped carrot, almonds, and sauerkraut. We ended up mixing these together with surprisingly delicious results when lunch time arrived.

I drove out to Donovan’s place. That morning, suddenly inspired, he had made a beautifully carved Mjolnir from wood, a hefty hammer, an offering for us to give. Armed with mead and drinking horn, we drove to a National Park by the sea.

We spent the drive talking about our hopes, desires, lives, people we know; about our creative, health, spiritual, hobby, and financial goals.

We walked for an hour or more through exquisite forest, over dizzying ocean cliffs, the sea vast and majestic, the trees all wise and all wit.

We came to our secret location, a gigantic flat rock which perches, secluded and stolidly precarious, on the cliff face, overlooking vast ocean vistas. How to find this rock? The almost-hidden trail is marked from the main path by two trees which, if seen from the correct angle, one behind the other, form an Elhaz stave shape. Elhaz: perhaps it invokes the sacred space which is open and closed all at once.

We meditated, bare feet; let the distant, epic sea song wash away our petty conscious thoughts. We knew what we wanted this ritual to be from our conversations in car and forest. To invite Thor to help us renew the momentum of spirit in our lives, to drive out the frosty barbs of negativity and boredom and renew the membrane of magic. We let this hope flow through our beings, through the rocks, the trees, the clouds, the sea.

When it felt right the ritual began, in such a way that we scarcely even noticed that we were in it. We joked and played, laughing (with compassion) about the stiffness and artificiality that some folk fall into on ceremonial occasions – so anxious to get it “right” that they cramp up and lose the spirit of the thing. Not us; we called and hollered, half serious, half in parody, but we could feel that our deities were warmly inclined to our spirit of joy.

I sang and screeched and howled and Donovan roared. We told snappy tales about Thor’s many fine qualities, of his travelling companions, of our desire to uncover the magic in our lives that makes us joyous even amid the imperfect drudgery that seems always ready to swamp our days.

Three brilliant phrases emerged as we seethed and celebrated.

Wyrd trumps Will

This gem came to me in my meditation. I have in the past (and well after I should have known better) had this idea that if I fill myself with enough magic then with my power-bloated ego I can blast the hard things in my life into halcyon dream-perfection. Clearly a notion that can lead to disappointment!

What crystallised as I meditated was something I’ve explored several times recently with brilliant people in my life – that we don’t get to live a richly magical, spirited life only after we’ve cleared away all the sources of drudge and struggle.

No, the best way is to call on the magic in the midst of life’s hard work, to have the courage and creativity and humour to find magic even amidst the awesome mundanity of dealing with the ignorant, foolish, and petty (at some level that means all of us); in dealing with the unrelenting challenges of work and money and stale repetition and I-never-have-enough-time.

So go with wyrd, don’t try to fill your will up with numinous force, you’ll just waste it in exhausting struggle. Instead work with wind, tide, and wit. Cut with the grain, dance when you are tempted to stomp grumpily. Empty yourself and you cannot be drained – be a conduit, there’s an endless supply of magic that just desperately wants to be tapped into idiosyncratic human channels. It might or might not produce what you think you need, but there is a good chance it will produce what you actually need. Let yourself be curious. Radically curious. Let yourself be bewildered and surprised.

Then in our ritual playfulness a second phrase emerged.

Invoke with Laughter

Chaos magicians tend to think that laughter is the best way to banish magical moments, spirits, spells, states of mind, anything. Yet in certain senses (not all) this could actually be a very dry, grey, boring, ugly idea. Could it potentially imply that magic has to be pompous, serious, over-stuffed, strained, redundantly effortful – in a word, insincere, in a word, dishonest – in order to be summoned? What an awful notion seems to potentially coil implicit in the notion of banish with laughter!

We, on the other hand, we invoked with laughter. We joked about ourselves, people we know, about our gods, and they joked with us and on us, and it was exquisite. Cascading joy flooded the mounting force of our ritual, which had no distinct beginning but just came into tide when it wanted, as we gave it space to do so (a nice example of wyrd trumps will in action). And Thor is one of the most mirthful figures I can think of, a truly joyous force in the world: who better to call with hilarity?

We talked about Thurisaz, its recent recurring wyrd appearances in Donovan’s life. We agreed that we like this rune, with its scary reputation and its heart of gold. Thurisaz is like Hagalaz or Nauthiz – it invites a reality check and people are afraid of that and avoid – to their cost, or more accurately, to their loss.

And Laguz kept appearing in syncronicitous ways throughout the day, the sea rune, the rune of hidden riches and mystery! Of terror, and fury, and utter confusion, and yet also of “silk and gold and reveries of graciousness” (Nietzsche).

And goats! Thor has a close connection to goats. We celebrated how knowing, collected, assured, adaptable, tricky, durable, flexible, and just plain weird goats are. Nobody messes with Goat. Goat is low key. Goat doesn’t gab his mouth when he should be silent. Goat doesn’t give away his full abilities, doesn’t show his hand out of narcissism or insecurity. Goat keeps it real. Goat is permanently, impeccably unflappable. Goat keeps the magic of its membrane in flourishing order. Goat knows that horns are to be worn, not goofily tooted. What a truly awesome role model.

Ritual, not Routine

Then the third phrase came, and it was a verbal crack of thunder as it sprang from Donovan’s lips: Ritual, not Routine. Yes! Let’s not have lives of routine: numb, stupid, clanking, ornery, dogmatic. Repetition can also be playful, flowing, artful, even creative. It can have rhythm and flow and wit. We can move through all the “must do this” tasks of life with hang-dog heads, or with halos of fire and supple limbs (in a casual/subtle/low key way if you want of course).

It’s all in how you let yourself attach meaning to the things that unfold. Change the meaning, change yourself…well, who knows what sort of brilliant consequences that might have (you might not even notice them)?

Ritual, not Routine applies literally to the art of doing ritual observance – and we were doing ritual, not empty rote motions! It was sacred play. And this goes beyond into all of life. The whole of life is potentially a ritual: improvised, filled with joy, serendipity, learning, healing, growth, courage, and patience in the face of challenge. We forget this at our peril, falling into the factory farm of our own dullness. Yet it takes so little to stay – in the dance, in the joyous.

“Love life” is not an item to be checked off on some to-do list, some roster of accomplishments. And it has nothing to do with the arbitrary turning of events. In this we aligned ourselves with a tradition that stretches from Lao Tzu (and earlier) to Cicero and even to Nietzsche, yet without any self-consciousness or reflective pomposity: that to love this life is wonder, is its own reward, is nourishment complete. That we find love for life when we give love, not when we churlishly try to force life into the shape that we ignorantly think is best for us. After all, in an infinitely complex universe, who can really be sure of what is best for them anyway?

And to those who disapprove of our light feet: perhaps you need a dose of Nietzsche’s fröhliche wissenschaft, his gay science, his dancing seriousness and courageous frivolity. Being ponderous and heavy has nothing to do with being profound. Let yourself embrace the vulnerability and power of dedication and play admixed!

We drank toasts of delicious mead, charged with lashings of chanted Thurisaz runes. We laughed and prayed and affirmed and quaffed. We drenched the hammer and offered it up, our sacrifice. We splashed mead on rock, tree, sky, sea, cloud, every hidden delight of that sacred place. We offered our gratitude liberally.

We ate our lunch happily. We talked to spirits of stone and wood on our walk back through the forest, the mead sending us into buoyant clairvoyance and exuberant inspiration.

We talked and ate into the night, and sang, and played music, and warmed ourselves in the glow of family and dogs and the full moon, and laughed at the limp literalism that sometimes haunts folk that call themselves Heathens, and marvelled at the privilege we’ve been given to flow so easily into the spirit of things (and vice versa).

And I have to re-emphasise – nothing said here takes away the reality of the challenge and difficulty that life presents. If we try to force spirituality into being a magic bullet for the ease of our burdens then chances are good it will not long tolerate our presumptuousness, our pandering to our ego’s fear of suffering (which is not a trivial thing, but nonetheless which need not be made the maxim of our actions).

The trick might be to get beyond the mole-vision of bean-counting one’s entire life into allotments of effort (lots) and ease (never enough). There is no guarantee that any of us will see out our journey in the way we’d consciously most prefer, but with our eyes fixed on the horizon (and not on our feet) our chances are that much improved, and the toil of the path might be somewhat lessened (and if not then so be it – we are here to learn, so let’s not miss whatever opportunities we are given).

All such caveats aside, I want to express my profound gratitude for these fine gifts, these three principles of religious/magical/cultural practice…and for living life, too:

Wyrd trumps Will
Invoke with Laughter
Ritual, not Routine

I pray I remember, and keep living out my remembrance, of these terrible, wonderful thoughts.

Hail Thor!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Building a Life: Wealth & Lifestyle

 “The only real measure of magickal attainment is its manifestation in Midgard. I have to wonder about the claims of wizards who live on welfare, and don’t contribute articles because they can’t afford a second hand computer, or squander their talents on drugs and self pity.”

Sweyn Plowright

The second essential element of a full and happy life lies in mastering the balance between Wealth and Lifestyle.

Putting aside the question of money for a moment, I would like to point out that man cannot live in a vacuum. We need things. If you are going to survive in a human body, you will need a certain minimum amount of food and shelter. If you are going to survive in a human society, you are going to need a certain minimum of respectable clothing, transportation and some cash to spend on social events as well.

Oops, we didn’t get very far before the question of things became a question of money, did we?

The bottom line is we do need stuff to live and, in this day and age, we need money to buy the stuff we need to live. If you want to talk about going back to a DIY hunter/gatherer/farmer lifestyle, then we can talk, but I don’t want to hear anybody give me any crap about how the spiritually enlightened don’t need material possessions because that’s just a bunch of crap.

The monks, priests and yogis who preach most fervently against materialism are also the ones who beg for a living, in case you hadn’t noticed. I really fail to see how begging can be considered somehow more noble than producing something of value that you can trade with others.

The third possiblity would be to steal what you need, I suppose, and it certainly seems that some of our ancestors considered this a viable option. Personally,  jail time would interfere too much with some of my lifestyle preferences. So I’m planing to stick with earning a living for now.

This is, in fact, the important point that most success gurus overlook. Once you get beyond the bare essentials, how you make your money very quickly becomes more important than how much you make. It’s not much good making $10,000,000.00 a year if you have to work in hell eighteen hours a day to do it. It might make sense, in some cases, to put in a few hard years and save for an early retirement. To me it makes much more sense to find a way to make the money you need doing something you love and still have time for friends and family.

So what are the essential steps to mastering the balance between Wealth and Lifestyle?

1. Make a decision that you’re going to take responsibility for your own financial situation. The universe does not owe you a living and you’re not going anywhere in life until you realize that fact.

2. Develop a valuable specialized skill. Unskilled laborers earn peanuts and are generally subjected to crappy working conditions into the bargain. You need to make yourself valuable to your fellow man if you want to earn anything more than a subsistence.

3.Make sure that your special skill is something that you enjoy and that you have a natural talent for. There’s no such thing as nine-to-five in the real world and you may need to be doing your thing for a long time

4. Find an honest way to make money off of your special skill. Unfortunately, the money does not roll in automatically just because you happen to be great at something. You have to learn how to sell your services and you still have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day.

5. Learn how to manage and invest the money you do make. I’ve met plenty of poor/rich people who bring in huge paychecks but blow it all on crap and live neck-deep in debt. Don’t be one of them.

6. Don’t forget the meaning of life! Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Take the time to relax, enjoy yourself, look after your health and never ever forget the people in your life who make it all worth while.

That’s it! Not a lot of detail this time, just the broad strokes. The details are going to depend on you! What’s your greatest passion? What are your special talents? What do you want out of life and how far are you willing to go to make it happen?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Antichrist

Having read those words I had to share them. Of course, I could quote whole books from this greatest of all German philosophers. Nietzsche had his flaws. Every philosopher has. There have been many thinkers who said things of importance. But only a few have the courage, the strength, the fearless honesty, the fire and the force, the will and the stamina to ask of the truth whether it brings profit or a fatality to him… But there are truths and there is Truth. Find out for yourself, if you are a Hyperborean. And don’t forget: “Your karma is your Dogma.” (Dr. Hyatt)

Taken from “The Antichrist”, by Friedrich Nietzsche (of course Nietzsche in English will never equal Nietzsche in German, but you still get the spirit):

“This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?–First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me–I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops–and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him… He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner–to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm…Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self…..

Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?–The rest are merely humanity.–One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,–in contempt.

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE.

1.

–Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans–we know well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar1,in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death–our life, our happiness…We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?–The man of today?–“I don’t know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way in”–so sighs the man of today…This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,–we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds! . . . We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate–it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation” . . . There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast–for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal…

2.

What is good?–All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?–All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness?–The feeling that power increases–that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the ill-consituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.
What is more harmful than any vice?–Practiced sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak–Christianity…

3.

The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (–man is an end–): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors ;–and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man–the Christian. . .

4.

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “progress” is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents.

5.

We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts–the strong man as the typical reprobate, the “outcast among men.” Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!–

6.

It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity. It is used–and I wish to emphasize the fact again–without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward “virtue” and “godliness.” As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of decadence: my argument is that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are decadence-values.

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history of the “higher feelings,” the “ideals of humanity”–and it is possible that I’ll have to write it–would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will–that the values of decadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names.”

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Become What You Are

One of the central elements of spiritual living is the pursuit of self-improvement. Even if one’s goal is simply to be able to accept things precisely as they are, this already constitutes some kind of improvement of oneself.

Why? Why should spiritual pursuits encompass the nebulous idea of “self-improvement.” Why does spirituality often imply a journey, a transformative adventure? How can this be distinguished from simple greed for power or the shallow acquisitive lust that is celebrated in mainstream culture? I wouldn’t dare to hazard an answer – all the obvious and/or usual ones are far too glib to be acceptable.

Instead I’d like to present three fragmentary sketches of the spiritual journey of this life. There might be others, but these three seem to be reasonably common, and one person can be living out several of these stories simultaneously, though for most people one main theme will dominate at any one time (I suspect). Many of us get stuck somewhere along the way; impotent self-congratulation tends to follow in short order.

1) Spirituality as Building Oneself Up

First we have the notion that, from humble origins, one must create oneself, must set high ideals and then orchestrate one’s own evolution in order to achieve them. This is a very ego driven, (personal) will driven process. It assumes that one can know what is best for one; it assumes that the path will be more or less logical.

When I was younger and lacked trust in my basic capacities – since I had not felt myself to be proved in the world – this approach appealed to me. It made me feel good about myself because it enabled me to think that my life was in my control, that my spiritual and worldly destiny was mine to create. These were comforting illusions for someone who was relatively powerless. Indeed, they comfort even the most seemingly powerful.

Over time it became apparent to me that this model of spiritual development was inadequate. It tended to occlude my imagination, and to me imagination is one of the pillars of personal evolution.

I also found that it did not work very well. The effort of ego-will required to make changes leads to strain in the personality and the body itself. This straining and heaving makes progress difficult – it is as though one forges forward and resists oneself at the same time. Feeling constantly caught in this state, I began to question the whole model of “building oneself up” as a spiritual mode.

Ultimately I began to find that while going through the disciplined process of a regimented “magical curriculum” put out by a popular organisation I was not learning much from my “building myself up” work. Rather, what was educating me was a wildfire of spiritual experience, transforming me spontaneously and unpredictably and quite independently of my supposedly spiritual “training.”

When I was younger I struggled a lot with depression and anxiety and careened from crisis to crisis (many of which solely existed in my own mind). I began to realise that really I had no ability to fathom the true depths of the world’s mysteries. Consequently, the simple “build yourself up” model came to seem both superficial and moronic.

To achieve deep spiritual shifts it might be helpful to live a disciplined life, but on the other hand the discipline is not the source of the growth one seeks – at best it merely makes one more able to survive and integrate the mysteries of spontaneity when they strike.

Oh, and too much of that ego/will driven stuff will occlude one’s openness to mystery, and many proponents of this model of spirituality that I have met have turned out to be spiritually constipated, if not mentally deranged, by the disjointed artifice of their attempts at spiritual expression.

2) Spirituality as Passive Acceptance

Disillusioned with the Build Yourself Up model, I drifted in the clutches of my depression, my sense of alienation, my struggle to feel I could even exist in this unhomely world at all. I felt as though there was nothing else for me, for even with the periodic and intense lessons in personal gnosis that I underwent, I simply did not have the wherewithal to find my way.

Or so I thought. With hindsight I believe that I was instinctively walking the right path in my alienated disillusion, my mournful and directionless gloom. Despair, loss, and fear are all potent teachers if one is able to transmute them, or perhaps more accurately, if one is able to clear out of the way so that they can use one as a vessel for their own spontaneous transmutation.

Somewhere out of my sense of living defeat – punctuated by futile regression into trying to Build Myself Up – a rich spiritual vein opened in my life: reverence.

Reverence had always been a part of my life. I define it as admiration of the sheer majesty of existence. Of its unfathomable mystery. Of its vast complexity and simultaneous terrifying simplicity. Its shining brutality and its unending compassion.

From reverence I recovered something I had always known, yet often forgotten: that all is one, even though each thing is unique. The sacred oneness and difference of all thing(s) is a tricky mystery, and few are able to make sense of it, wanting to either dissolve the universe into a shallow unity or else pretend that it is utterly fragmented and compartmentalised.

And from this sense I found my gradual discovery that striving and achieving does not necessarily mean anything. That it can easily reduce one into a caricature of a human being.

When we think we can conquer ourselves and the reality in which we find ourselves, we no longer give ourselves the chance to let the beauty of Being sing for itself. We are so untrusting of the magic that binds reality together that we risk shutting ourselves from it. We get “cramp” as Jan Fries put it. As Princess Leia put it in Star Wars: “the more you tighten your fist, the more planets will slip through your fingers.”

So while I felt utterly defeated and barely clung to this existence, I was at least learning the full reality of just how infertile a field “Build Yourself Up” is.

Yet nothing is static, and gradually a new way opened for me. It is the way that I still wander, and I suspect that it is going to be the Way of the rest of my life.

3) Spirituality as Becoming What You Are

I discovered that when I am vulnerable and open and curious and willing to be surprised – well at those moments I discover I am capable of far more than I could have ever consciously believed.

For example when I was first playing in Sword Toward Self, learning the material, I constantly exceeded my self belief. Again and again I’d be presented with some ridiculously technical material to perform and again and again I’d find that I could play it immediately, even though I would not be able to believe my own ears as my fingers found their way across the fretboard of my bass.

It seems that perhaps the way to growth is not to build myself up, but to get out of my own way. My conscious expectations, even at their loftiest, where pathetic compared to what my unrehearsed spontaneity could invite. I began to realise how shallow and irrelevant the conscious thinking ego mind is. So much of its place is to offer distraction and chatter. The quieter this noise becomes, the more the gates open, the more the flow of the waters of life is free to gush through my being.

The tension and struggle of the ego magician is a product of wasted effort. It is possible to act without effort, but one needs to unlearn the habit of tension and striving. We move swiftest by aligning ourselves with the tides or the winds of wyrd: at full sail the ship of my soul will outrun any ego-galley’s oar-chained slave crew.

Of course, this impels us to have to learn how to trust. We have to trust mystery, uncertainty, the endless not-knowing. We have to know when to bide our time, to recognise the difference between prudent hesitation and cowardice or self-deception.

The more I strip away the false layers of my being, the more I am able to do this. Rather than waste endless energy trying to control the infinite unpredictability of the cosmos, I would prefer to embrace my personal oneness and separateness within the matrix of the universe.

I have learned that my Deep Mind is far wiser, more creative, and more spontaneous than my conscious mind will ever be. So I seek to turn myself over to its wisdom, to the wisdom of my heart and guts. And strangely, this seems in turn to produce the kinds of successes that my old attempts to build myself up sought and achieved only superficially (if at all).

In light of these reflections, Odin hanging on the tree as an image of spiritual transfiguration is a powerful refutation of the “build yourself up” mentality. It is good to have goals, to have discipline, to seek out and create a vision of the future. But if one is not rooted in oneself as a conduit of the flow of wyrd then one risks being little more than a vortex of wasted breath.

Discipline is best used not as a tool to build up but rather to dismantle the tyranny of conscious prejudice so that the true will, the rich and heady sap of the world tree which gives life to all, may flow through freely and without end. When we unlearn the ego’s addiction to strain we free our strength for creation, action, and reflection.

None of these reflections are original, even though it seems such sentiments need to be repeated endlessly for the sake of those who need them. In presenting them I can only do so as one who is a “work in progress.” Yet are we not all in such a predicament? The one who lays claim to any kind of perfection is a buffoon.

Becoming What You Are is not an easy task. You must sacrifice all your comforting illusions about who you think you should be. You have to cease imposing artbitrary standards of judgement and instead carefully uncover the deep logic of your life. You are a rock which does not require gaudy decoration (and hence be lost in an ocean of bad taste and stupidity). No: you need only let the tides of your life polish you into your innate beauty. It takes courage to bare oneself in this way, far more courage than anything else I can imagine.

Ass usual, Uncle Al was perhaps the most articulate of all who have touched on these themes:

“The Hawk and the Blindworm

This book would translate Beyond-Reason into the words of Reason.
Explain thou snow to them of Andaman.
The slaves of reason call this book Abuse-of-Language: they are right.
Language was made for men to eat and drink, make love, do barter, die.  The wealth of a language consists in its Abstracts; the poorest tongues have a wealth of Concretes.
Therefore have Adepts praised silence; at least it does not mislead as speech does.
Also, Speech is a symptom of Thought.
Yet, silence is but the negative side of Truth; the positive side is beyond even silence.
Nevertheless, One True God crieth hriliu!
And the laughter of the Death-rattle is akin.”

“The Sorcerer

A Sorcerer by the power of his magick had subdued all things to himself.
Would he travel? He could fly through space more swiftly than the stars.
Would he eat, drink, and take his pleasure?  There was none that did not instantly obey his bidding.
In the whole system of ten million times ten million spheres upon the two and twenty million planes he had his desire.
And with all this he was but himself.
Alas!”

“The Mountaineer

Consciousness is a symptom of disease.
All that moves well moves without will.
All skilfulness, all strain, all intention is contrary to ease.
Practice a thousand times, and it becomes difficult; a thousand thousand, and it becomes easy; a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, and it is no longer Thou that doeth it, but It that doeth itself through thee.  Not until then is that which is done well done.
Thus spoke FRATER PERDURABO as he leapt from rock to rock of the moraine without ever casting his eyes upon the ground.”

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Building a Life: Health & Safety

It’s been over two months since I wrote the first post in my intended series on “Building a Life”.

Some readers may have wondered if I’d dropped off the face of the earth. Well…that’s actually pretty near to being an accurate explanation, but there’s a simpler explanation for why it’s taken me so long to get back to writing. Before I could comfortably preach my new philosophy, there were certain elements that needed to be put more rigorously into practice.

That said, let’s take a look at the first elements of a life…

Health

It should be pretty obvious that if you haven’t got your health it’s going to be pretty difficult to get your life together in other ways.  It should be obvious, yet we so often ignore common sense preventative maintenance until it’s too late.

When you’re sick or out of shape your productivity declines, making it that much harder to make a living. To make matters worse, poor health decreases your your sexual and romantic attractiveness. It’s going to be that much harder to find true love when you’re fat, sick and tired looking. Finally, physical illness can lead to depression and other psychological disorders. Your brain is a part of your body, after all.

Letting your health slide is usually the first step in a vicious cycle. Stop taking care of yourself now, and you may soon find that you no longer have the energy, resources or support you’d need to stop the downward spiral.

To begin on the path to building a life, you must first come to understand your body as your vehicle and your temple. If fact, it is often best if you stop thinking of your body as “your body” and start thinking of simply as “yourself”. I am my body and there is no sense in which it is possible to conceive of “my body” as spearate from “me”.

While it’s obviously not necessary, possible or desirable for every adult human being to go to medical school, there are a number of basic skills that are necessary for self maintenance. A preliminary (i.e. incomplete) list for your consideration would be…

A working knowledge of basic hygiene.

A working knowledge of nutrition.

A working knowledge of cooking, in order to make good nutrition pleasant and palatable.

A working knowledge of exercise science.

A favored sport or physical activity, in order to make exercise fun, purposeful and meaningful.

A basic understanding of medical principles, in order distinguish good medical advice from bad.

A working knowledge of natural home treatment options.

and

A working knowledge of First Aid.

This last item on the list brings us to my next point, the other side of the first element…

Safety

Make no mistake, the primary causes of death for educated people living in civilized countries are the completely preventable, self inflicted “diseases of civilization”. There are few things more ironic than the sight of a sick, out of shape “martial arts expert”. (Except perhaps a sick, out of shape doctor, fitness trainer or nutritionist.) That said, there are other threats to your long term health and physical integrity that need to be adressed if you plan on functioning in the real world.

Just as it would make no sense to spend your life in paranoid fear of criminal attack, only to end up dying of heart disease, it makes equally no sense to cultivate a perfect healthly body only to end up stabbed, shot or smashed up in a car accident.

With that in mind, there are a few additional skillsets you need to master…

A working knowledge of practical self defense (note, I did not say “martial arts”).

A working knowledge of the most common weapons in your area (should be included under the heading of “practical self defense” but people tend to skip over this part).

A working knowledge of First Aid (yes, I included First Aid twice).

A high level of competence in Defensive Driving (car accident is a much more common cause of death than violent assault).

Again, note I did not include Martial Arts anywhere on my list essential skills. Now I happen to love martial arts (or rather, I love real martial arts) but formal training in martial arts is not necessary for most people.

As I believe I may have mentioned before, not everybody can (or should) be a warrior. Every free man and woman should , however, take responsibilty for their own health and safety. What we’re talking about here is the development of basic, practical skills, stripped of any  ritual or tradition. On the other hand, basic practical skills are where it’s at when you’re talking about real martial art, anyway. It is precisely the process of taking responsibility for yourself and developing these practical skills that leads to the catharsis that warrior training is so famous for.

Now the above may sound like a lot to learn, but remember that these are essential life skills we’re talking about. This is stuff you need to know to keep yourself fully functioning, healthy and in one piece.

These are also, ironically, topics that have been among the most terribly abused by confidence artists great and small. There is a huge amount of disinformation out there about health and safety. Learning to see through the bullshit may well be the first and most important step on the path to becoming a true Occult Philosopher, as well as a healthy, happy, free human being.

Think about it.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Binding the Leak

“In the East the wind is blowing all the boats across the sea,
And their sails, they fill the morning, and their cries ring out to me.

Oh the more it changes, well, well the more it stays the same,
And the hand just rearranges all the players in the game.

Oh, I had a dream: It seemed I stood alone,
And the veil of the ages, it goes sinking from my eyes like a stone.

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea. I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me. And these are the signs I bring to you to show you when your time is nigh…” (Peter Bellamy, “Nostradamus”, available from the Museum of Witchcraft)

Ok, I never did something like this before and I don’t know in which way magick can influence real time events of such a grand scale. But being the sorcerer’s appentice I am, why not try it? I’m talking about fighting the Gulf oil spil with Galdor or Chaos or Ceremonial Magic. I never believed (except in my teenage years) that doing a magickal ritual is enough to change the fabric of one’s Wyrd completely (sometimes it does). Here we are about to work on our collective Wyrd. What can be influenced by magick is a question of one’s sphere of availability and probably one’s Hamingja or ‘luck’. To enchant for low-probability events which lie beyond the range of possible options perceived at any one time isn’t wrong in itself. But I think that ritual must always be complemented by action. To paint the Helm of Awe on your forehead and then going into a fight without training and skills in martial arts won’t save you from being beaten up, if your adversary is a trained martial artist. Or another example: If the sole act of sorcery would make you win, why do all the African teams in soccer loose against a better skilled team from Europe? (They are supported by many sorcerers reportedly.) But conscious action and working focused on your objectives combined with magick will increase the chance to force the hand of fate. If a ritual is successful or not isn’t the thing, because you can never conceive all the forces of Wyrd that are at work. The only point is that you will get more likely what you want with magick than without it. I think the ritual for binding up and sealing the hole in the ocean floor that is causing the Gulf Oil Leak and for healing the associated environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico is also a working one does for oneself. Let me say it this way: Even if it has no effect at all or you don’t believe magick to be able to affect such things, it’s still a useful way to deal with one’s helplessness and to tansform one’s anger.

The mess caused by BP is a crime beyond imagination and it shows once again what huge damage the greed of a few irresponsible men without foresight and wisdom can cause to the fragile, beautiful, living ecosystem and to the Earth community. If there is an Anima Mundi, if there is an Earth Spirit, a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (Philip K. Dick), if nature is alive,  with a Soul or a Life-Force that representatives of the Lebensphilosophie assumed to be a vital, non-mechanistic principle distinct from biochemical reactions — then the events that take place deep in the Gulf of Mexico in this very moment you read this, are far more than just pollution. It’s only one of many signs that humanity as a whole has taken a wrong direction towards extinction and that our leaders have lost the ability to listen to the inner voice of wisdom and to see the interconnectedness of Wyrd. They have been elected to serve their folk, but instead they have become the puppets of powerful megacorporations and their short-sighted interests of fast profits and an ideology of economic growth that has been decoupled from its purpose and thus degenerated to an end in itself. All this might sound quiet left-wing and I’m surely not propagating socialism, but I’m sorry: the (neo-)liberal ideologies have failed. Let’s move to something more useful, where free markets are embedded in an economic system and a cultural paradigm that propagates more than just the senseless accumulation of commodities for its own sake. Fehu is a mighty power that must be put into service of a higher good. But all this won’t be new to most Heathens, Wiccans, Druids, Pagans, Chaos Magicians, Technoshamans, Thelemites, Seeresses, Seiðkónas, Mystics, and various other Prophets and Prophetesses of Chaos of the 21st century. It’s the easier and lazier path to become cynical about the conditions humanity finds itself in. Taking responsibility is much harder. But even the most numb and narrow-minded pleb will understand that his children and grandchildren will have no future, if we don’t change our behavioural patterns and ways of thinking.

For this reason maybe some of you would like to go out into your local countryside, alone or with a few friends, and do some magic to help to bind the leak Deepwater Horizon (what a name for such a shame!) has caused. I have been made aware of this link by Nadine Drizzeq who is the US head of the IOT (Chaos Germans here) and sells useful stuff at http://www.iotbooks.com/, including the indispensable Hex Magazine. Her great article for Elhaz Ablaze is about Magusitis, a mental illness amongst magicians most of us encounter in some way at a certain point. The ritual for binding the leak, containing a Chaos Magic and a Ceremonial Magic version, can be found below, whilst others might want to “sing the galdor for the bindrune, and to work intuitively to heal the earth in their own way” (Nadine Drizzeq). Call up the Mighty Forces of the Æsir and wield your Hammer against the thurses!

http://hyperritual.com/bindleak/

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail