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Death

05:18 / 30.09.03

I just tried to sleep but my head was totally overtaken with dark thoughts of loss, regret, and Death. Especially death, standing in judgement of my deeds, how I related to those who've suffered and passed out of my life, and the emphemera of emotion and attachment with which I comfort my self through such times. This is not common for me, though not entirely uncommon either.

I suspected a demon of some sort (and by "demon" I mean "vague psychological thought-pattern most likely internal but just possibly from elsewhere") but I remained warm and calm, somewhat detached yet emotional and saddened. So of course I got out of bed and logged on to Barbelith.

When I think of Death I think of the old maxim: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Death is the ultimate enemy for most (though J. Seinfeld has a great bit about the fear of public speaking, "... most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy"). About 12 or 13 years ago (possibly since I first ate acid) I began to engage death directly on many levels - an alliance which ultimately found me bedside for the passing of two souls in the course of 2 years.

So how, as mages, chaotes, goths, shaman, do we relate to Death? Do you regard and relate to death as a deity, anthropomorphised, as a psychospiritual concept, or not at all? Is it an entity that you willfully avoid or actively engage? Have you experienced physical death of another first-hand? Have you symbolically experienced your own death? Did either of these fundamentally change your relationship with Death? And finally, how, if at all, has Death crafted your Path?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

05:36 / 30.09.03

I relate to death in three main ways. Though anthromorphic gods, mainly Odin but sometimes Anubis or Osiris. As the inevitable when I try bushido meditations. And as the tarot trump thirteen, death as new beginning.

Symbolically and otherwise I have experienced death, Hense the Re: Birth.

Nice thread. I hope this is a very productive one

08:44 / 30.09.03

Death inspires us to act. Without mortality it would be easy to put off until tomorrow everything which you want to see done. It also forces you to communicate what you've learned or to let it die with you. How many amazing insights have been lost due to poor communication skills (or lack of desire to communicate them) and then death?

And a side note about the magick mini-meet in London over the weekend...

I don't know how long it is since I last sat at a table with twenty people and all of them smoked.

Many mages smoke. Why? Contempt for death? Acceptance of mortality? Too busy using their willpower on Higher Things?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

09:22 / 30.09.03

Death inspires us to act.

This is one purpose of the bushido death contemplation.

Shanghai Quasar

10:07 / 30.09.03

Acceptance of mortality is important to the development of a human creature, no matter what their beliefs about the nature of things.

I've never met or engaged any embodiment of Death firsthand - perhaps reading mythology has led me to expect that whatever appears won't be Death, just a judge or guide of the process. The process itself is all around, mingling with life, needing no representation for my purposes. Life and Death, pushing one another about, kids in the Playground Universal.

My experiences with human death have always felt distant, even with people I knew or was close to. Suddenly a person is gone and there's nothing to be done about it. Their energy is cast off to the winds, never to come together as it was again. At the same time, you feel aware that energy still exists, just out of reach and far away from where you are. You'll never know it again, but it's always there, waiting behind you.

The magic(k)al context.

Death as forced change. A new beginning may result from Death, but Death itself is not the beginning.

Death as gradual change. Death is the beginning, Life is the ending.

Death as resignation. Acceptance that this path will end, that when it is done you won't be the same again, you will not come back.

I'll come back to this. Deeper contemplation is required.

11:37 / 30.09.03

Well for a start, most mages smoke cos they like a drink and haven't been self-disciplined enough to stop (yet). I doubt whether there's any significance in this.

I find myself thinking about Death a lot at the moment. The thought of just not being here seems inconceivable. But then again, I'm not upset about the times when I wasn't here, all the stuff I missed out on before I was born. I don't know what scares me more death or aging, losing all your strength and fitness. (I've just read an article about the world's oldest man passing away in China - will find a link when I'm on a faster connection).

Actually I suspect neither will scare me if that much if I stay conscious - I was very impressed with this interview with Baba Ram Dass I posted on here a while back, especially his statement, reacting to his stroke, that if he rests in awareness he's fine. I like the Tibetian Buddhist take on death which sees it as a great opportunity, an experience of clearness and clarity if, again, you stay conscious and don't get distracted by all the death bed hallucinations. (This is what Tim Leary had in mind when he rewrote the Tibetian Book of the Dead as The Psychedelic Experience - a guide through negative hallucinations). So I guess to stay conscious is the way, stay aware of the goddamn inevitablity of the whole thing, don't fight against inevitable process or get too caught up in sadness and resentments, or anything that'll stop you going into it with open eyes - and then, the slim chance that there is something else you'll be able to embrace it. Sounds quite trite now I've written that, but that's my current thoughts. More later.

11:44 / 30.09.03

There's this thread also.

11:54 / 30.09.03

Suddenly a person is gone and there's nothing to be done about it. Their energy is cast off to the winds, never to come together as it was again. At the same time, you feel aware that energy still exists, just out of reach and far away from where you are.

Since childhood, I've been driven by the exact opposite perceptions. It is a temptation to think they were promoted by the desire of having dead people back, but no, they were arised from some sort of childish and irrevocable certainty that elongated into my teens and beyond, and also by the sense of making things and the world improbably funnier, and I mean a lot funnier. And intriguing also.

Of course, also since childhood I have had corresponding feedback congruent with such perceptions, be it through striking dreams or daily events that were way too blatantly obvious to disregard as "coincidences".

And no, I don't go around saying "That's grandpa who made the radio guys play that tango he liked so much just when we were talking about him", I just keep it for myself and contrast my feelings to those of loss and longing from others. And I know it makes "grandpa" feel better, simply because he knows he can reach out and say "hi" without meeting a sea of tears.

And I tell you what, if you hold into that perception and kind of put it on like a nice glove ready to shake a happy hand you've been missing, the "dead" -for lack of a better term- will be more than glad that someone among their blind and obstruse acquaintances is looking a bit on their way to say hello and see how things are going. Granted, they'll notice immediately.

But be prepared, some of the "dead" might hold very convinced to other perceptions, thus imposing the barriers and distances you might be willing to vanquish.

12:56 / 30.09.03

*scared to post as I killed the other thread stone dead*
Remember that Necromancy tends to be frowned upon, by Death as much as by people.

17:24 / 30.09.03

Ill & Quantum, thanks for referring to that older thread - some great stuff in there. I knew this one was a bit of a rehash but couldn't quite put my finger on it.

But still I am curious about the personal relationships people have with this construct & it's anthropomorphization. So let's consider this thread as a continuation of the the other one. Oh, and I'd like to see more exploration of the relationship between Death and Dreaming. Some cool stuff down that path for sure...

See Quantum, you didn't kill the last one, you just helped send it out on a little voyage and now it's returned with a bit more experience under its belt.

20:32 / 30.09.03

I have never thought of personifying death in any way.

My grandma just died 4 days ago, so death has been on my mind more than usually.....
I did some hyperspace meditations/communications which were pretty intense, she didn't want to let go and die. Which made me realize that I have a pretty healthy attitude towards "death", I am not araid of death, in fact I am kind looking forward to experiencing the real deal.
I think death is the same thing as shamanic travel or really heavy psychadelic trip or some states of dreaming, only further and with no return to this ego awareness. I call it the "hyperspace tunnel", a state that either equals death, or at least happens right before death, kind of what peole describe who had NDE...

Contrary to my "no fear of death" statement: I have been doing quite a bit of dmt lately, and it's scaring the crap out of me. Not sure why I'm scraed and freaked out, I am starting to believe that I am afraid of death after all, that complete loss of myself is freaking me out, and I guess it's similar to what I described about my grandma not wanting to let go.

21:23 / 30.09.03

looking forward to death... well I'm not looking forward to death, although I kinda accept it. It's like playing tetris - you know the game can't last for ever but you enjoy prolonging it to the bitter end.

Unusual for me, I shall quote pratchet...

Death: You're just putting off the inevitable.

Wizard: Isn't that what life's all about?

23:33 / 30.09.03

h3r wrote:
I have been doing quite a bit of dmt lately, and it's scaring the crap out of me.

Yeah, I'm really interested in the territorial overlap between death, dreaming, and DMT. My wife smoked it for the first time as her father was suffering from a terminal illness. She emerged in happy tears and felt as if she'd visited the place that her Dad was going to, that the world beyond wasn't so bad and certainly not lonely.

Rick Strassman has a great book out (as others have noted around these parts) that explores just this territory. The complex neurochemistry of death, dreaming, and DMT are quite similar in many respects.

So, does Death travel through chemistry? Can a molecule encode the archetype of Death?

09:00 / 01.10.03

Some of my feelings towards death have been shaped by once visiting a spritualist church which a friend used to be a member of. It seemed obvious to me that the spirits they communicated with (when they did do - which wasn't always) weren't active agents in any sense - rather they were "coming back" to help and comfort the people at the church, let them deal with grief or whatever. It wasn't as if they continued in the afterlife with active concerns and involvments ie. you find yourself on the other side and go and start doing physics lessons with Einstein or somesuch. Any communications seemed to focus on us, the living, and what we're doing. This made me think that this is it, this is your oneshot - after you die, maybe you go onto to be part of some body of archetypes/ancestors but individuality in this form with these concerns, and this ability to act - no, not a chance. So this is something to be cherished and indulged as long as it lasts, I think. Dreams of an afterworld of eternal satisfaction, are just that, dreams. I wonder if this is the same with DMT - is it almost too gnostic, too powerful, too compelling? Is there something of a temptation to want to live in the weird universe you see on DMT visions rather than ground those visions in this life?

On the DMT note I believe one of the guys doing research in the 'states was asked to desist by the Mahayama Buddhist community of which he was a part - he was told his work was somehow interfering with the spirits of the dead. Can anybody corraborate this story? Can't remember his name. So, there may be a link between the two.

The thing that strikes me about the death of people I've known, is their absence. How can someone who has been so intense, so vital, just disappear? So strange, like a blank person-shaped space. As if the Universe is missing one it's bits, as if you wake up and there's no sky or something. Don't think I'll ever resolve that to my satisfaction.

On the subject of death imagery, one of the most powerful for me would be Kali, but I've never worked with her. There's seems a wealth of symbols attached all about facing this fear and horror though.

11:40 / 01.10.03

I am increasingly leaning toward an Egyptian style belief in several parts of the 'soul'. I wouldn't go so far as to say we have nine souls (Ka, Ba etc.) or that we have to recite the negative confessions and stuff, but it does answer a lot of questions.
When you die, maybe a version or part of you 'ascends' as it were, a shadow or afterimage of you remains (perhaps the psychic imprint ghost theory) another part rots (your body) another part remains in your children, etc.
So Death is the shattering of identity in a way- life keeps you bound together into an individual, and Death is the cessation of that identity as component selves seperate. Like a bundle of sticks, when the string snaps the bundle is no more but the sticks remain.

16:48 / 01.10.03

On the DMT note I believe one of the guys doing research in the 'states was asked to desist by the Mahayama Buddhist community of which he was a part - he was told his work was somehow interfering with the spirits of the dead. Can anybody corraborate this story?

that was Rick Strassman (who was also mentioned at an earlier post by LVX23. yes that book is pretty good, i recommend it to anyone who experiments with DMT))
As far as I remember the complaints against Strassman from the Buddhist community were rather about his findings that spiritual experiences are chemically based, than about meddling with the spirits of the dead.... when continuing his research he was expelled from the monastic order he had been part of most of his life....politics....

So, does Death travel through chemistry?
my belief ( based on my own experience as well as scientific research by people like Strassman) is that the release of DMT onto the pineal gland (whether "articficially" or naturally induced) lifts a persons consciousness from this reality into hyperspace, where one exists not as "one" anymore at all. I believe this to be the "place" we enter upon death. Once there, time does not exist and so from that perspective death and dmt trip (or other routes to get to hyperspace) have the same effects, lead to the same goal/final station. From our earthly perspective though there is quite the difference, because death does not offer a return to this existence and consciousness here.... NED would then be pretty much exactly the same as a DMT trip, also from this realities perspective, since one returns and lives to tell the tale....

16:50 / 01.10.03

NED would of course be NDE
near death experiments. damn acronyms.....

18:04 / 01.10.03

last revision for the day:
near death experience
I guess for me it's "experiments"

Shanghai Quasar

19:09 / 01.10.03

"A shadow or afterimage of you remains (perhaps the psychic imprint ghost theory)"

If I must just use Quantum's thoughts as my own (just for a moment), I'll respond to Sebastian's comments and suggest that is about as close to a belief in ghosts as I've come. A shadow, some resonance of what was ringing through the ether.

So cheers to Quantum for allowing me to put hir words into my mouth, with or without permission.