June 11, 2016 by The Blog of Baphomet

Group Wisdom and the Chaos Magick Tarot

I’ve been playing with the excellent Chaos Magick Group tarot recently. This wonderful collaborative work of contemporary occultists is still available to purchase, though I understand this may not be for long. If you want a copy, as E.A.Koetting might say, better act now!

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to present this deck at a large meeting of members of the IOT, and indeed to use it in a ritual context. Although I and a couple of other members of the IOT contributed card designs to the project, this tarot emerges from the wider chaos magical community. The virtual work space (a Facebook group) in which this deck was created provided the means for geographically distant occultists to work together. The creation of media by magicians, working in virtual spaces is, I suspect, something we will see more and more of. Working on these types of creative projects seems to me to be a good use of the technology I and my peers have access to.

I really enjoy collaborative working (many of my books are co-authored for this reason), so when it comes to doing magical ceremony the stuff I like most is group practice. While I’ve been involved in a few experiments in group ritual over Skype and using other tech, so far nothing comes close to being in the same physical sacred space with other magicians. Working directly with others is rich territory; there are many practices that would be impractical without collaboration; there is the possibility of camaraderie, of feedback, of challenge and much more. For me the IOT provides and excellent network through which I get to meet and work with cool magicians in physical (as well as sometimes virtual) spaces. I’m also fortunate that my relationships within the shamanic and Wiccan communities means that I’ve been able to physically work alongside some fabulous practitioners of those styles too.

Of course solitary work is important but even activities such as mindfulness meditation can benefit from the existence of a sangha, a community of practice (which provides the opportunity to practice together). Sure there may be people who, in terms of their own style, prefer to be primarily solitary. However humans are social creatures and I think that it’s helpful to bring our magic, especially our ritual work, into contact with other humans.

Loners who just can’t stop joining teams

One way this happens for me is via the work of being a celebrant or Priest. In that capacity those of us who do this kind of work make an offering of our skills to facilitate ritual for others. But this isn’t the same as working in a community of peers, be that a coven, temple, working group, circle or whatever. Working with other people helps us to not disappear into obsessive or narcissistic paradigms (aka up ‘one’s own arse’). Magicians, by the nature of their studies, can benefit from the occasional reality check and outside critique. A good community of practice, while supporting the basic premise of spiritual endeavor, seeks also to help the individual develop the Self (or find their ‘True Will’, ‘make their Soul’, become ‘Illuminated’ or whatever) in context of others. This is important since this is where we live – with other people.

Cultivating good, mutually beneficial relationships with others is an important part of the development of any magician who wishes to be enriched by the (human) spirits they consort with on a daily basis. The mythic tower inhabited by the iconic solitary sorcerer may make for a Tolkienesque glamour, but successful magicians are real people living with families, colleagues and the rest of humanity, connected within the noosphere of the 21st century. Meeting other humans in physical magical spaces (of an ongoing esoteric community and within ceremonial settings) – for all the slings and arrows of social interaction – helps us understand who we are, as magicians and as people.

So back to that example of good collaboration via the internet, the CMG Tarot. It was suggested in the group that contributing artists write some text to accompany their work, so here’s a brief commentary on the cards I created:

The Ace of Disks is also known as the Root of the Powers of Earth. In divination it indicates the core qualities associated with the Earthly element. These include wealth, work, the physical body, property, diligent study, territory.

The quality of this card is generally beneficial, pointing towards productive striving, steadfast discipline and success. When this symbol is encountered in difficult circumstances the process may be that of struggle, limiting obligation and toil, but unless the conditions are very difficult, there is still the suggestion of success if determination is applied.

The disk shown is the Pentacle held as part of the regalia of the British Isles Section of The Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros. A ceremonial requirement of this tool is that it is regularly used in ritual with non-members of the IOT since the purpose of the pentacle, as a plate, is to share (typically offerings of food). The disk itself is fashioned from a mirror (since magic is all about smoke and mirrors).

Various ritual items emblematic of the diversity of chaos magical practice are shown arrayed round the disk. These include the vertebra of a whale, a rudraksha mala, a chicken mask, a reefer, a drum, a scourge, a dildo and sundry other objects.

The Ace of Disks is typically the card upon which the publisher of a deck sets their seal or monogram. In this case the disk displays the eight-fold star of chaos and the koan ‘Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted’.

Ace tarot

The Ten of Disks is the final card in the tarot deck. It represents the full unfolding of the earth element and the ‘completed’ journey of The Fool that is the narrative of the cards as the Mutis Liber. Using the astrological scheme devised by McGregor Mathers, this card is related to Mercury in the sign of Virgo, while the number 10 denotes the sephira of Malkuth, the World, and the final outpouring of the divine emanation. This combination of symbols strongly links this card to The Great Work as the full-flowering of illumination; however this does not lead to ‘resting on one’s laurels’ but paves the way for a new iteration of the magical process.

(The bad news for folk who think they have ‘attained’ Enlightenment (or whatever) is that nothing stays the same and there is always the perennial question, ‘what next?’)

Within the New Age paradigm this card may represent ‘prosperity consciousness’ and our ability to manifest our wealth. This may suggest a change from a scarcity based frame of mind to one predicated on an imagined universal abundance (or at least the possibility of realizing desire). The fruition of investments may be indicated by this card, retirement, and a sense of accomplishment. Like the rune Othala this card is related to the idea of inheritance (of money, property, genetics, stories of our culture), the wealth that comes to us and which we in turn pass on to others.

The disks show in the image are drawn from many nations suggesting they are owned by someone who has lived a well-travelled and rich life. The disks are shown spilling, or perhaps flying, out of a bag. This bag is the same one typically carried in images of The Fool over the shoulder as a bindle, or on the back as a knapsack.

The bag is emblazoned with the stars of deep space recalling the primeval Kia from which emerge all the objects of the world. The title of this card is ‘Lord of Wealth’ and the wise understand that Wealth, though symbolised here as coins, comes in many forms. (All money is forged not of metal but from the imagination. The person with a rich imagination, combined with the diligence represented by the earthly disks, can never be poor.) The coins in this card are free from their original containment in The Fool’s knapsack, since Wealth implies freedom and exchange rather than avarice and acquisition. They have, in an esoteric sense, been put into circulation (‘spent’) by The Fool during the journey through the other 76 cards. In the 10 of Pentacles the initial ‘capital’ of The Fool reappears in the form of experiential Wealth because he has invested in the journey and not retreated from engagement with the World.

One of the disks shown is a solid gold chaosphere owned by a former British Isles Section Head of The Illuminates of Thanateros, this was crafted by the master jeweller Russell Lownsbrough. Another is made of chocolate.

Lord of Wealth

The tarot cards are a magical community, a jostling pack of spirits. They mean things in themselves (though not perhaps without an observer…) but gain so much more in relationship with their fellows.

As occultists we also live among the spirits; of animals, plants, places, people and more. It is in those relationships where much of the magic happens, just as it is within the combination of cards that the reading, the transformative journey of question and revelation, unfolds.

May 8, 2016 by The Blog of Baphomet

Dionysus’ Doorway

Thousands of years ago, Plato attended the Rites of Eleusis. He stood in the crowd, and had a deeply meaningful experience which set him, and us, on the road to the split of mind-body duality. He writes:

For, as has been said, every soul of man has by the law of nature beheld the realities, otherwise it would not have entered into a human being, but it is not easy for all souls to gain from earthly things a recollection of those realities, either for those which had but a brief view of them at that earlier time, or for those which, after falling to earth, were so unfortunate as to be turned toward unrighteousness through some evil communications and to have forgotten the holy sights they once saw. Few then are left which retain an adequate recollection of them; but these when they see here any likeness of the things of that other world, are stricken with amazement and can no longer control themselves; but they do not understand their condition, because they do not clearly perceive. Now in the earthly copies of justice and temperance and the other ideas which are precious to souls there is no light, but only a few, approaching the images through the darkling organs of sense, behold in them the nature of that which they imitate, and these few do this with difficulty. But at that former time they saw beauty shining in brightness, when, with a blessed company—we following in the train of Zeus, and others in that of some other god—they saw the blessed sight and vision and were initiated into that which is rightly called the most blessed of mysteries, which we celebrated in a state of perfection, when we were without experience of the evils which awaited us in the time to come, being permitted as initiates to the sight of perfect and simple and calm and happy apparitions, which we saw in the pure light, being ourselves pure and not entombed in this which we carry about with us and call the body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell. So much, then, in honour of memory, on account of which I have now spoken at some length, through yearning for the joys of that other time. But beauty, as I said before, shone in brilliance among those visions; and since we came to earth we have found it shining most clearly through the clearest of our senses; for sight is the sharpest of the physical senses, though wisdom is not seen by it, for wisdom would arouse terrible love, if such a clear image of it were granted as would come through sight, and the same is true of the other lovely realities; but beauty alone has this privilege, and therefore it is most clearly seen and loveliest.
Plato, Phaedra, 250 a-e.

Plato can rightly be regarded as the auctor of Western philosophy. His vision of the soul yearning to soar free of the sepulchre of the body has influenced countless generations of those whose world view forms the scaffold of our own individual versions of the body/mind division.

However, he was wrong. Limited by the dichotomy of the Greek language comparing this on one hand, that on the other, he was blind to the multitudinous steps betwixt cup and lip, from objective (out there) to subjective (in here), and slipped up.

I recently read two things posted in close succession on my facebook wall. One was the news of publication of research on the physiological effects of LSD on the brain’s blood circulation. The other was a report on how vision works, how the incoming signals from light striking our retinal cells is smoothed out by the activity of the brain.

Before I draw my tentative conclusions, I’d like to examine these two scientific findings a little more closely.

LSD, similarly to other psychedelic substances such as psilocybin, seems to affect the brain’s blood flow adversely. In contrast to the expected extra activity, stimulating extra colours and shapes, instead the fMRI scanner showed a loss of blood flow (and therefore activity, in its gross sense) in many areas of the brain. Something is not happening which usually does.
Light falls on the cells of our eyes, causing the photo-pigments within the eye to change shape. This chemical change affects the transmission of an electrical signal to the brain. Once the signal has been ‘sent’, the photo-pigment regains its previous shape, and awaits another external input to fall upon it and allow the process to repeat. This takes a measurable amount of time, which if always perceived would cause issues with evaluating the true colour of any thing. To allow a consistent picture of the colour, the brain averages out the inputs received over some seconds, approximately 15 according to this study. A sensible way of overcoming the refresh rate of our mechanistic system.

It occurred to me that this constant activity of the brain in smoothing out these sensorial flickers could be part of what ceases during the low level of blood flow observed when in a psychedelic state. If so, then under the influence we would perceive a world with waves of intense/fading colours, especially if the gaze rests upon an object meaning that colour perception is our main focus of attention.

Freudian

And this seems to be borne out by personal observations. 1P LSD is currently legal in the UK (although probably for only a few more weeks), and having taken one blotter recently in auspicious circumstances I waited to see if my theory might bear fruit. Looking carefully at a painting, I saw the colours appear and disappear clearly, fading in and out of my awareness. Greens, reds, blues, and the mixtures of these, became visible in turns, creating a shifting texture of shape as different elements of the composition revealed themselves in turn.

The painting was a modern one, depicting a hand and forearm. As the colours ‘moved’, the arm came alive. Later, I stood on the doorstep of the house and watched the trees in the front garden shift and sway from the inner breeze originating from my eyeballs’ pigments changing shape.

The experience was profound. Aware intellectually of what was happening at a basic level of my own biochemistry, added to the wonder I felt at the sight, just as the knowledge that the stars are gigantic balls of gas lights years away adds to the magic of the immediate view of them as twinkling pin pricks of light.

There are likely to be analogous effects on other sensory inputs; sound, bodily sensations such as temperature, kinaesthetic awareness, proprioception, taste and smell. So psychedelics, named after the apparent mind-manifesting effects, may actually reveal instead a lack of ‘mind’ as we currently understand this terminology. The reducing valve theory of Huxley has already gained acceptance with regard to integration of brain centres. This visual phenomenon of visible colour waves could provide an easily accessible concrete example of its application. Psychedelics may well reveal the building blocks of our raw state of perception. This could explain that sense of familiarity many people have commented on, the coming home. For really, we ALWAYS see the world this way with our sensory apparatus, the non-psychedelic reality being constructed post-here&now by constant activity within our filtering brain.

Thus, I suggest that the iconography of ‘higher’ levels of consciousness, of the ideal realms beyond our mundane reality, is unhelpful. Rather, we could use linguistic approaches emphasising the physical ground of our existence as those worthy of most awe, exposure to direct lived embodied awareness as the basis of our spiritual awakenings. Shifting our attention downwards, to the felt foundation, could resolve the vertiginous sickness of the last two millennia spent trying to find the Real in the cosmic distance. The ‘other dimensions’ beloved of so many entheogenic gurus may turn out to be the real world, whilst our normal awareness describes for us a practically useful fiction, a steady state narrative within which we see and move.

Ego dissolution, changes to the serotonin system and other physiological effects of classic psychedelic drugs are under investigation. As further results are published, I anticipate greater insights into how our Newtonian mechanistic body, and our idealist Platonic mind, could swirl together beyond divisive labels of classification; this has profound implications for spiritual thinking, panpsychism, and the imminence of the divine. By directly experiencing the bodymind as One Thing, seeing with full cognitive and intellectual awareness even one aspect of how our marvellous complex neural processing creates useful simpler narrative consistency, we may come closer to a unification of this apparent duality into a tangible philosophy.

Previous attempts at describing the numinous have placed it somewhere other, often above us, in higher otherworldly spaces accessible only to those who can climb above others. Top-down hierarchies have given us dry channels to literally non-existent heavens, whilst a model of underground networking provides far more resilience, sustainability, and dare I say it, a better legacy. I posit that instead of shouting our prayers to the stars, we ought to listen to the ground when seeking deeper wisdom. Conceptualise our ‘altered states of consciousness’ as the apocalyptic, revealed, awesome foundation of our beliefs, as the bedrock, the floor of our magick. Sky-dwelling supernatural beings have had their day, and as they fall, the earthly body answers our entreaties. Rise!

Dionysus, god of ecstatic visionary states, Plato’s inspiration, has held the key to this doorway of perception for thousands of years. As the source of philosophical musings, in vino veritas, he seems a fitting deity to honour in naming this observation of mine, regarding the revelation of what is actually seen in these states:- The opening of Dionysus’ Doorway to a truly visionary way of perception.