April 5, 2015 by The Blog of Baphomet

Walking Between the Sun and Moon

This month, I have been mostly believing in astrology. As we enter a few days of Sun conjunct Uranus, this entirely true story really wants to be told to you…

Today is Easter Sunday. Last night I stayed awake until dawn, celebrating a close friend’s birthday with a meal, a few drinks, and lots of talking through the night with some truly beautiful people. Walking home in order to appreciate the quiet streets, as is my wont on the (now rare!) occasions I do this, I could see the sun about to rise, and the full moon about to set, opposite each other. The growing light behind me, pink clouds framing the moon’s pale disc ahead. The lunar eclipse of the night before, and the solar eclipse of a fortnight before that, had brought both heavenly orbs to the keen attention of many the planet’s humans.

As I walked the mile home, from my friend’s home to my own, I noticed the tiny feathered dinosaurs in the dawning spring light, singing and perching, pecking up the first food of the day. Several pairs of crows caught my eye. The crow is especially important to me, as an inhabitant of this island I live upon, as they play a major role in the northern European mythology. Companions of Odin/Wotan, Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory) fly over the world and return at the end of the day to tell him of all they have seen and heard.

Huginn ok Munin
fljúga hverjan dag
Jörmungrund yfir;
óumc ek of Hugin
at hann aftr né comiþ,
þó siámc meir um Munin.

As is customary, the first crow one sees is Huginn, with Muninn never far away if you but turn to look.

[Edit: The real Huginn and Muninn are of course ravens, not crows. Extensive persecution from gamekeepers led to whole areas where for the last century they have vanished. As such, crows have had to act as their ornothimancical stand ins… Ravens are now rapidly reclaiming their previous territory, so hopefully soon I can deduce profound auguries from the correct avatars.]

Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, I had a nicely empty head. Watching my thoughts arise, then become memories, whilst being so aware of my position directly between the sun and moon, it seemed I walked between the crows too. Between thought, and memory. The imagination of the future (the possible), and the past. Here and now, in that infinitesimally small ‘gap’ between, so ineffable, so fleeting, yet eternally present.

A smile grew as I felt the visceral sense of this, and at that moment a single crow flew in from my left, swept over my head, and as I turned my head to look behind it flew away along the road I had just walked.

6.20 a.m. Eternal

Back down that same road a few minutes earlier I had paused to photograph the golden sky, bright and shining with the Easter light. And as I paused I said the words XIQUAL CHAORAS, Ouranian Barbaric for “manifest aeon”. During the night it had become apparent that shifts in family dynamics were occurring, relationship constellations clicking into new forms for several of us. Shifts in our own identities, as children and parents, moving from one level to another as the generations change, as others change; whether by dying, or growing up, or appearing into life and adding new names to our tangled trees. As these things happen we must needs move ourselves a step along the shared path of all life from cradle to grave.

Recognising for myself this new aeon, this new position of the stars of my life, by simply uttering these words, was a way for me to catch up with events of late. And, a way of acknowledging the fact of my own death.

So Huginn flew towards me, and Muninn flew away from me, into the physical location of that tiny magickal event in the past, into the sunrise, as this planet I live upon spins around.

One foot in front of another, to my door. Wondering if the experience warranted a blogpost; a sign, please…?

Obviously indoors, after cleaning my teeth and in bed, cyberaddict that I am I pressed the screen of my phone to call up the company of facebook, my sleep deprived mind having nearly forgotten my previous request.

And the first newsfeed item, a minute old, was a quote:

“The function of the Magister Templi is to cause the desert to blossom by transmitting the Logos of the Æon to those that are below the Abyss.” [Commentary to Liber LXV, IV:61-63]

Let us feast for the Annihilation of the Adept, who’s word is Agape.

“…to him who would be a Master of the Temple, the reverse applies. He wishes to remain perpetually in Samadhi, and it is therefore his renunciation to descend further and further into matter. He has volatilized the fixed; now he must fix the volatile. He has ascended from his particular body to the Universal Soul. That Universal Soul must now incarnate itself ever more completely in that body, and in the bodies and minds of all men. He has made his darkness light; that light must illuminate the darkness of all…. The Great Work is accomplished. The new Great Work is proclaimed. He has finished with Solve. He must begin Coagula.” [The Temple of Solomon the King]

So, here & now then, on Sunday afternoon I started to type. I thought the synchronicities had piled up enough by now, but another newsfeed item manifested one paragraph after I had begun to write. Lo! there appeared a post from a friend of a friend:

The frequency generators which stabilize the universe were breached in the early morning hours of 04/05/2015, at first it was thought by many to be a simple shift of consciousness generated by the world’s Christian communities united in prayer due to the Easter Holiday… It was soon realized that this unauthorized disturbance in the universal frequency was being deliberately tampered with, as reports poured in from across the globe of strange sensations, realizations and even hallucinations…
Unable to reset the generators remotely, a team of undisclosed personal trained in psi-ops was dispatched to reset the devices manually…
Upon attempting to gain entry it was also discovered that these personnel no longer had security clearance privileges and were being detained by the very security system that they had created to avoid such a thing ever happening in the 1st place…
Interestingly enough, shortly after sunrise there was a brief power outage which left the entire stabilization zone without any measure of security and access was finally gained… At present it is unknown as to whether or not the generators can be successfully reset to their previous frequencies, it is simply being looked upon as a surprise that the equipment was not in any way destroyed…
With no lead as to what person or persons may have been involved, it is still much too early to speculate as to why these generators were tampered with…
This report has been brought to you by “DreamLand Productions”

Windy Fox

To finish this tale with the important part of it: I spent a few minutes of my journey playing with the linguistics we might use when describing the future, and trying out only using permissive language instead of the usual determinate style we tend towards. “Later on I’m going to..” becomes “Later on I could…” We may consider the implications, the difference such a small shift can induce. The different qualities that thought could have, compared to memory.

March 24, 2015 by The Blog of Baphomet

A Mindful Mass to Sophia

In a recent interview that I did about Chaos Magic and Gnosticism, the interviewer was keen to understand more about the process of ritual creativity that Chaos magicians often engage in. For me personally I am engaged in an on-going journey of exploration, research and poetic inspiration as I seek to make deeper sense of the material that I’m digging into.

Anyhow, I thought I’d provide a recent example of such ritual practice that probably gives you a feel for how we go about such work. Such ritual outlines are not meant to be prescriptive; rather they are serving suggestions to inspire your own innovation and creativity.

The purpose of this ritual was to creative a ritual environment in which the concept of divine wisdom could be explored via the Gnostic figure of Sophia. Via the use of both poetry and meditative technologies, we were seeking new insight regarding holy wisdom and a sense of deep listening as to how future work should proceed.

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars

Opening with singing bowl rung in the 8 directions.

“We begin in Silence and Space

The realm of the Pleroma

The marriage of Darkness and Light.”

8 Breaths taken together.

“In the pregnant space of reflection

Wisdom is born

Glowing deep blue against the blackness

Silver Star points glow

As the holy Aeon descends

And gives birth to life.

Selah

20 minutes Mindfulness practice – using awareness of the breath as an anchor for awareness and gently surrendering thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations as they arise.

“Wisdom makes manifest

An outflowing of the multiple and the complex

The Craftsman makes the World

Soul glows and breaths:

“I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me.

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.

And do not banish me from your sight.

And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.

Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!

Do not be ignorant of me.

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons.

I am she whose wedding is great,

and I have not taken a husband.

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labour pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

and it is my husband who begot me.

I am the mother of my father

and the sister of my husband

and he is my offspring…..

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple.

I am the utterance of my name.”

(Excerpt from Thunder Perfect Mind.)

Trance drumming.

During this ritual we had three drummers all using the technique outlined by Michael Harner, where trance is induced through the use of a consistent drum beat of around 200 beats per minute.

After the trance period and drumming ceases the following words are spoken:

“The many forms beget Joy

But also the forgetting of our original face,

We give thanks for these moments of stillness and remembering!

Wisdom calls:

“Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
²At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
³beside the gate leading into the city,
at the entrance, she cries aloud:
⁴“To you, O people, I call out;
I raise my voice to all humanity.
⁵You who are simple, gain prudence;
you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.
⁶Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say;
I open my lips to speak what is right.
⁷My mouth speaks what is true,
for my lips detest wickedness.
⁸All the words of my mouth are just;
none of them is crooked or perverse.
⁹To the discerning all of them are right;
they are upright to those who have found knowledge.
¹⁰Choose my instruction instead of silver,
knowledge rather than choice gold,”

(Proverbs 8 1-10.)

Close with three bells.

In my recent post I mentioned the concept of ‘soul making’. This notion appears in a number of contexts. One of the earliest is in the Ireanean theodicy inspired by the work of Saint Irenaeus, the second-century philosopher and theologian. The Ireanean view is that creation happens in two stages. This process requires the existence of suffering and evil, making the world something akin to schoolroom for the soul. The creation of a soul is the work of humans, their aspiration being to become perfect and like God.

Soul Brother

This ritual grows out of a desire to explore these ideas, concepts related to the tension between the (theoretical Platonic) perfect creation and the (apparently) flawed world of the Demiurge. Through this meditation, this trance and these words we have a space to encounter imperfection, suffering, pleasure and those other abstractions that so fascinated the ancient Gnostics.

Soul making also appears as an important concept in the work of psychologist and Jungian analyst James Hillman. The Wikipedia entry for Hillman nicely summarises this:

The poetic basis of mind places psychological activities in the realm of images. It seeks to explore images rather than explain them. Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls “soul making” takes place. Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture. The goal is draw soul into the world via the creative acts of the individual, not excluded [from] it in the name of social order. The potential for soul making is revealed by psychic images to which a person is drawn and apprehends in a meaningful way. Indeed the act of being drawn to and looking deeper at the images presented creates meaning – that is, soul.

Thus this ceremony is an encounter with this Gnostic ‘realm of images’ and, critically through drumming, emphasising the encounter as a somatic as well as intellectual event. This is Gnosticism but one that includes, rather than rejects, the world of the flesh. Fathoming suffering and the vicissitudes of life not as the result of a Fall from grace but perhaps as a necessary proving ground for the unfolding of a divine Self.