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Old dog learns new tricks

  
  

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Scrambled Password Bogus Email
22:49 / 09.01.06
grant - just had a little Google around about the Lukumi Seven African Powers, and Sao Miguel is more traditionally associated with Ellegua - As is San Antonio of Padua, who is also affiliated with Ogum...who also is syncretised with St.George, which is maybe what you were thinking of...both serpent slayers, often pictured spearing/lancing a dragon...

Sao Miguel / Ellegua is an intersting development. Makes even more sense, actually...

It's a cross collateralised minefield, the syncretic religion of the diaspora, and no mistake!
 
 
Ganesh
23:52 / 09.01.06
Your thoughts?

To be honest, I feel out of my depth venturing opinion on any of this. I'm just reading...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
02:03 / 10.01.06
Hehe...I seem to have discovered a limit to the length of a single post to the board...

Why is it cutting off my 3 hours plus posting??
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
02:10 / 10.01.06
PART 1

*Deep Breath*

Right then. It's late/early, and I'm really quite poorly, but this tale will not let me sleep tonight, so here goes nothing.

Daybreak, and it's Solstice eve. Todays work does not commence until 6pm, so the day is ours to do as we will. Many are arranging to head into town, but I have prepared already. My business is in the forests, at the crosssroads, and by the rivers. I have ceremonies and offerings, and I know what I would like in return. All is prepared.

I spent the morning, after breakfast and a shower, in a languid, relaxed yoga practice, followed by a really loud, positive LBRP right in the middle of the room. Hah. Confidence is high, repeat confidence is high! It was a beautiful day, three days of works had left me cleansed, invigorated, relaxed and ready for anything. I was so happy. And so excited for this evenings proceedings.

Most of the hinarios for this evening I had never sung before. Also, the structure, and length of the work(s) was a novelty for me. A complete 6-7 concentration, singing the hinario of the Apocalypse, Caboclo Guerreiro, followed by a dancing work following a sequence of hinarios of great power (though I didn't know at this stage which ones)...Pdrinho Valdete, Sao Miguel, Sao Joao, and our esteemd works' leader himself (X)'s own hinario...a work of bloody genius, with some English songs as well as many Portugese, of course.

I cannot stress enough the virtuosity and musical genius of the two Wizards we are so blessed to have to lead our trabalhos. Absolutely jaw dropping musicianship, multi-instrumentalists...just genius, shining, playing, right there in front of me. Dedicated to the [xxxxx], to making it possible for all of us to explore our selves and the Mysteries in such safety, with such solid wisdom and protection to guide the way...Gratitude, I never knew the meaning of that word until I was involved with this system, it was a hollow sound with no substance until it became the foundation on which my life is built, around which I live and am inspired by. Thank you.

By the time the ablutions and morning rituals were done, it was time to get going. I wanted to perform the crossroads working at midday, or as near as possible, a temporal crossroads, of sorts, as well as a physical one. From an early indication of many participants, there were, in the end, including me, 5 of us to go to the selected sites...Most auspicious, in the end, since 5 is Lady Oxum's number, beautiful Goddess that she is...

We drove to the spot, a sacred and beautiful [xxxxx] with very unusual stones and the ruins of a pre-history settlement on the mile and a half / two mile walk to the river we had found on the first day...It was cold, and threatening to rain by the time we got to the crossroads, which rather beautifully was just before the river itself.

I fished a large, made-for-the-job stone out of the river as a makeshift altar, and the offerings were consecrated to the Keeper of the Keys, then laid carefully on the altar while the ritual was performed. Really nice, I spared no expense on these, since I figured it doesn't pay to go cheapskate on the Gatekeeper. Authentic region, and everything! I had written/received the appeal to both Orixa that morning, having been incubating it since Day 1, it flowed beautifully and without impediment, and was perfect in shape and form and vibratory possibilities. I can have a way with words when the need be, and the inspiration was duly received. Ashe, ashe, ashe.

We proceeded downstream to the awesome spot we had discovered for the ritual for Oxum. This place...man, it was just perfect. Reminded me, actually, of Dominica, it was so perfect. Just so green, and overgrown, and lichen covered, and teeming with wildlife, and the river was Gullumping through the rocks in a fashion which had the effect of an Udu rhythm...just p.e.r.f.ec.t. My partner in crime for the whole journey had brought one of his djembe's, so we sang a devotional song (though not a traditional orisha, unfortunately...I actually know, very well, two for Ogum, having produced and recorded them with a percussion teacher last year, but none (yet) for Oxum herself...I'll be fixing that this year!)..Then, we all stepped onto a large, perfectly placed boulder right smack bang in the middle of this burbling, beautiful river, singing its own songs of the Queen of its Mysteries, and her persona, cinnamon, honey and mirror were laid out for her irresistably saucy and sensual delectation and delight. Ori Yeye O!

The chant for her was much longer than that for the Crossroads Guardian. An appeal to her very specific sensibilities, and for her Mysteries to manifest in all our lives, an invitation to attend our works as honoured guest and dignitary under the reign of our Imperial Master Juramidam, and so on. Can't really spill the beans on the prayer cos, well, it's mine, capiche? Power in privacy and all that. Christ knows, I'm spilling nearly all the beans there are to spill here as it is, eh? So much for the Sacred Silence and Secrecy.

Anyway, I'm President of the United States of Fuck It, so there.

Anyway, it felt right. It had power. The air, dare I say, was electrified. The offerings were tossed into the river, and we all ate a little cinnamon with honey, the esoteric symbols were drawn, and we stepped off the altar. I also carefully baptised myself, five times, across the forehead, the third eye, with the river water, and drank a hefty gulp. Ashe, ashe, ashe, ashe, ashe. Ori Yeye O!.

There is power in ritual of this nature, I have discovered (well, duh!)...Yep, the preparation, the search, the adventure, the consecration, the vibration of names, the reception of ritual and chant, the performance, the meaning...power resides in these things. Though if you don;t think so, if you read this and think 'What a twat! Must have looked a right gimp! Wasting time and money!' than that's fine, too. Nothing for sale here. Move along! Bargains in the next window! Closing down sales, January clearouts, everything must go!

So, invigorated, and somewhat chuffed at the outcome, we all headed back through the forest to our vehicles, drumming the djembe and having a proper sing song. Bloody hippies!!

Once back at the ceremonial space, I performed another LBRP, really detailed in the visualisations, and taking great effort over the vibration. Remember, this work was a monster, specific to the Solstice...Caboclo Guerreiro is a very special hinario...'Caboclo' are evil spirits who have been brought back into the light by shaman, and accepted the error of their ways...redeemed demons...redeemons! The Guerreiro is their prophecy, their tales of the Apocalypse..it's heavy stuff...and the nature of the concentration was an invitation to all incarnate and discarnate spirits to attend...this is not, I repeat not, kid's stuff. This is about as far from choking one off over a crayon diagram as its possible to get (not that there's anything wrong with sigils, mind you...). And how. I mean, this turned out to be the most terrifying night of my entire lifef, followed by...well, I've said that enough, yes? Idle, meaningless claims be damned.

No one, under any circumstances, was allowed to leave the concentration, except to go to the toilet. No breathers in the side rooms, no lurking in the kitchen or loo, no wandering outside, heaven forbid. Stay.with.the.group. It was going to get pretty hairy in there.

And it did.

The concentration was like nothing I have ever experienced ever before, or ever will again, as a result of what it did. It was a huge, terrifying, possibly very dangerous - I'm not sure on that now, but it certainly seemed at the time that my very...soul...far more than my life, my actual...hmmm....being, past present and future, the fabric of what I am and have always been and will ever be, was in grave peril that night - but ultimately transformative and liberating, emancipatory revelation. Yep, nothing short of a revelation. A deep, abiding, incredible (damn, I've got to say it again) extended moment of absolute clarity. Satori. Illumination.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
02:17 / 10.01.06
PART 2

My I Ching for the night, cast after the second LBRP, and after the Orixa working, with Oxum proudly on the altar resting aginst her sister Iemanja, the cinnamon rayed out encompassing the whole room, firing her patronage upon us all...

"After Initiating/Seeking Harmony* and within the Divine Process of Growing Upward* and the presence of Humbleness*, what changes must I navigate for Properity, and Patience and Diligence, if you please?"

*The previous day, I had been unsure, after collecting the coins from a cast, if I had remembered correctly the fall of heads/tails...I therefore decided to consult both resulting Gua, both present and future...both made perfect sense (Growing Upward, again...)

Present situation : 32, Heng, Long Lasting (Duration)

A choice fragment : "Heavenly bodies exemplify duration. They move in their fixed orbits, and because of this their light-giving power endures. The seasons of the year follow a fixed law of change and transformation, hence can produce effects that endure.

So likewise the dedicated man embodies an enduring meaning in his way of life, and thereby the world is formed. In that which gives things their duration, we can come to understand the nature of all beings in heaven and on earth.

Note that this text is culled from the Eclectic energies site, whereas I use Alfred Huang's somewhat controversial, but in my case beloved, translation...Still, you get the picture.

The Mutual Gua, key to understanding the First Hexagram of the I Ching (also called the Nuclear Gua) was 43, Eliminating, or Breakthrough

Choice snippets (Don't be lazy now! Follow the link!;-))

Break-through. One must resolutely make the matter known
At the court of the king.
It must be announced truthfully. Danger.
It is necessary to notify one's own city.
It does not further to resort to arms.
It furthers one to undertake something.

Also:

In a resolute struggle of the good against evil, there are, however, definite rules that must not be disregarded, if it is to succeed. First, resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness. Second, a compromise with evil is not possible; evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited. Nor must our own passions and shortcomings be glossed over. Third, the struggle must not be carried on directly by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion.

Ah, me. The power of branding myself with this wisdom for the duration of a work is, indeed, great.

Transforming into

31, Xian, Mutual Influence

Again! Notice that in four days, four casts, three gua have occurred twice each! The odds against this, mathematically, are fairly large, given the so-called 'random' nature of the divination.

Gots to love that 'Xian' pun/play on words synchronicity as well...from Chinese oracles to the legacy of Ishoa in one handy language conundrum!

It's a most auspicious hexagram, beginning the Lower Canon in style just as Qian, Initiating/the Creative begins the Upper Canon...

So, Caboclo Guerreiro. I should point out that I had no idea, at the time, that this was the hinario of the Apocalypse. I mean, Guerreiro should have been a bit of a give-away, but I wasn't aware at all. Nor did I know, then, what a Caboclo was. Only that (X) was heard to mutter, before we began, that this trabalho should well and truly put the cat amongst the pigeons!

I drank my so far de rigeur double dose at the outset, and it proved to be the last time I would do this for the rest of that night...

Two reasons :
one, it just sort of worked out that way...I had drunk enough to achieve what I had set out to achieve, and the night was long, and still young...

two, I was absolutely petrified, truly quaking in terror, once we got going, that I had taken on a sorcerous task I was not preapred for, and was going to be unable to handle...and - which we'll get to - that I may have lost control of something which would destroy the whole planet (HAH! Seriously! There's just no telling where the mind can end up on these journeys!!HehemwahahHAH!)

OK, warning : Serious David Icke moments ahead. Woohoo!Cuckoo! Hatstand. Fnubber, fnubber. Nurse! Increase the medication, this one's a Goner! etc...)

You're going to have to humour me on this one...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
02:24 / 10.01.06
PART 3

First thing to note, this was a concentration, which is always a little more, ah, difficult. No distractions, no escape or diversion from the direction of just being. It's just you and you and silence for a large swathe of the time. Plenty of opportunity for wild runaway trains of thought.

Second thing to note, there was a process at play from the fardados which I was not privvy to the details of, but which entailed huge amounts of burning incense, I mean, clouds of billowing scented smoke...and trust me, that shit was CHOCK-A-BLOCK with spirits...whether you believe in 'em or not, amties, they were bloody crowding the joint out like a port in a storm. Incarnate and Discarnate. The whole damn lot.

Third thing to note, a very dear friend of mine, a truly precious human being, a very talented very important individual to me and many of my friends, is very very ill. He has a stupidly rare disease, which I'm not going to go into here, but the circumstances under which he caught it and its potential to, well...killl him, are just absurd, atrocious and horrifying. I love this guy. Pray for him, please, include him in your own works. Anyway, he was very much on my mind, since I heard, while there, that he had deteriorated somewhat...

So, off we went. Caboclo Guerreiro. And let me tell you folks, sensitive soul that I am, I channelled the entire damn hinario. Not knowing why at the time, but I bore witness to the End Times. Only afterwards, when I found out, did I have one of those enormous 'Ah HA!' moments, when the penny well and truly drops.

Yes, my brothers and sisters, meus irmaos, the End of it All for lovely planet Earth. And, here we go : it was Bush and his lot wot done it!

Pretty ealry on, the Adversary was there, the Deceiver, in spite of all my banishings and wards...well, it was sort of his party for a while, I guess.

After that big second dose, and half way through the concentration, let me just tell you, that I was fucking.petrified. I deeply, deeply believed that I (and we, but particularly me, with my greedy guts approach) had tapped an occult channel too far, that we were messing, yes, with (*cheesy American baritone, late 1950s*) 'forces beyond our comprehension...'. That we, inadvertantly, were in the midst of sparking the Apocalypse, Armageddon. One more time, I'll point out that at this time I had no idea that was the nature of the hinario. No smoke without fire, eh?

Yep, it was us, officer. Sorry, everyone, but that's it.

So, as a result of teh Darque Maggics that were abroad, the gloves came off. All pretence was dropped, all attempts at subtlety and immersion within the Earthly realm were abandoned, in an escalating, enormous rush of terrible, evil and dark spiralling sorcery. Bush, et al, just burst right out of their human facades, sprouted the lizard wings, grew extremely fucking large, and rampaged over the Earth demonically doing what demons do best. I mean, fuck War of the Worlds..It was over, folks...Hell. On. Earth. Just like in the books, just like in the movies, demons ruled this realm. They fucking killed everyone and everything, except their serbvants. They rampaged, it was on the news. the whole planet was like : 'Oh. SHIT!' Didn't see that coming. Thought it was all a joke. Have been atheist my whole life! Richard Dawkins was up there, squirming with the rest of us. Oh. I see.

The serpents ruled. This no doubt sounds trite and absurd and stupid and far fetched, but trust me, I was in the middle of it. I cried, for my son - he would not know a world where demons did not reign, his existence was to be one of fucking Hell on Earth...the fiery pit, Dante's Inferno, the whole nine yards (six yards??).. Now, I ain't ever been raised in a church environment, i never had the fear of this shit put in me, I was not a Catholic, never went to Catholic school, but I guess I must have absorbed this by Osmosis, from outr delightfula nd wonderful culture. Or maybe it's there in the cells, trace memories from - what? Dinosaurs? Before the formation of the Earth? the Nuclear fires of Creation? The SuperNovae of the Suns of which we are made? I don't have these answers. but I was there, as it happened, as things span out of control and in sudden escalations of madness, the demons were back in their human suits, but Nuclear Armageddon ensued. A sudden escalation of madness, and it all came to pass...Judgement Fucking Day, KAPOW, the nukes were flying...I had this urgent, terrible notion that this was happening, right NOW, there and then, as a result of our tangling in this maelstrom of magic. I was really horrified.

It grew worse and worse. My son was...gone. My wife, my family, everything I had ever loved taken away, and I was told, cackling instruction, that this was Prophecy. Then my friend, the one with the illness, I was shown his sudden seizure and death, violent, ill, finished...and again, it was convinvcingly prophetic. This is the future. It is already happening. Look. LOOK! You cannot look away! Look and see for yourself what is coming!

Fuckin' Ell. Literally. I was in a bad way here. It occurred to me that my concentration on it, my engagement with it on its terms was...bringing it about...somehow, making it possible, laying the basis for that future...and yet another part of my mind told me this was wishful thinking, that the inevitability of it was pre-ordained, it was already done...

I fought back. I began what I consider to be my journey through the fires of Initiation at that exact moment. I was given some tools - mudhras, hand movements, like programming a complex machine, adjusting settings, pulling levers, throwing faders and switches...that's not it, too technical, it was truly arcane, something old and abstract and arabesque, ornate, Victorian, like an HG Wells contraption trying to envisage future technology but so artful, so ornate and beautiful...I worked it, frantically, and the visions began to be fought, but always I was a step behind, always there was the creeeping inevitability, always I was unable to reach, or move fast enough to save my family, my friends, myself, my loved ones, anyone...

I got up, by now the concentration truly at fever pitch, no more silence, singing, singing. Fuck sitting down, I couldn't. I was up, I had to do something!I left Xzeczxycza behind, I had to go and stand in the centre at the back of the room, behind those seated, right in the middle, and frantically continue my mudhras...it was like a cross between martial arts and yoga, tai ch'i and...I dunno...operating a mchine, totally channeled...i knew exactly what had to be done, and I was gonna do it by Christ!

The horror. The fucking horror. Every single suppressed nightmare and private terror and worst outcome I have ever harbored was being made flesh, made manifest, made real and coming to pass, and it was my fucking fault. I was to blame. My son, his early life, his beautiful beautiful existence, terrified out of his wits by this reptilian demonic bastards (Bush & Co!! HahA! I'm serious!! It started with them!!), and then his life ended when an asteroid, after the Hell on Earth had wrought it's terror, its reign of slime and pestilence, this giant, ridiculous, moon sized lump of obsidian black rock came and just wiped all trace of this beautiful planet clean out of the Universe. Game. Over.

No more chances..no 'And with a final lunge...they rallied together, love conquered all and yes, they saved the day'. Just BLAM. That's all folks. Everything ever fought for, cherished, loved, revered, consecrated, hoped for or won or worked for...GONE. Finito. Cyonara.

I cried. For my son, I cried. Then choked back. No way. Fuck that. It ain't going out like that! I pleaded with it, no, make it not so, and carried on with my fight against it...gained some ground, we tussled, the struggle intensified.

And then, like a kettle screaming, like fast forward just buckling the tape and the picture exploding, like the moment of escape velocity, frequency into the supersonic, self-oscillating, resonant, harmonics bursting through every orifice, every corner of the room every cell of my body - it just broke.

The entire struggle, the whole notion of a fight, the war - it just BROKE. Total, and I mean, total relaxation filled my being, and my frantic mudhras, my tai ch'i boxing, my act of sorcery, my initation...it was finished. Done. Over. BROKE. The entire game, the whole thinking mechanism, the egoic process - it was finished. There, in that moment. No. More.

Gone.

My body was totally at peace, totally tai ch'i. I knew, profoundly, and deeply and it was bodily, not mental, it was...Me...it was all I was...It defined me, and contained me...I knew, and still know..and here it is folks, Minha Verdade, My truth, of no use to anyone else, and you ain't gonna be impressed, but here it is...

I knew, there and then, from the fucking DNA I'm made of, from the consciousness which is all there is, that every agenda contains the foundation, blueprint, means and motion of manifesting its own defeat.

Every plan is the eventual foil of its own fruition, every desire the source of obstruction to fulfilment of that very thing...The attachment to an outcome is what creates friction within the sytem, which is already perfect.

YOU. ARE. IN. THE. WAY.

The sytem is completely closed. All movement, in any direction, is movement away from the already present perfection of the Absolute. By moving towards a goal or outcome desired, or pursuing a petty little pleasure orientated plan, you are only moving away from the absolute perfection, the sublime, irreplaceable, unimprovable beauty of what IS, right there right NOW.

If you push two pounds per square inch north, you are being pushed, two pounds per square inch from the south. To direct intent towards something, is to have equal and opposite intent directed at you from the opposite but mutual whole, Absolute direction.

The system is totally closed. Perfect in every way. By remaining still, and centred, and doing NOTHING, you do EVERYTHING, nothing is done, and yet nothing is left UNDONE.

Yep. there it is. Most of you will have read stuff like that before, right? Me too. But it was never mine. I claimed I understood the notion, adding caveats - vaguely, cerebrally - but there was no understanding.

Well, Caboclo Guerreiro, I was annihilated. My thinking games vanished. I claimed that truth, it was given me, so, so, so clearly, I could smell it, I could see it, I could taste it. All interconnected Unity was visible and apprehendable to li'l ol' me. Advaita. There is not two.

And you know what? Prepare for the Rapture. My heart was filled, filled to overflowing, with Love. Bright white light, gentle, not stark, not wincing, just beautiful, tears on the cheeks, bright whitelight. What a cliche, right? Why is that? That's what it was. Bright white light and Love like nothing i have ever experienced in my entire existence.

I was facing heaven, and I have to tell you, I was filled with Love. For God. You don't believe in God? That's fine. No probklem. But the love that filled my heart in that moment was unmistakeable, and it was Love for God.

Man, can I even believe what a transformation has occurred in my life? I don't want to go over it all again, but I was such an obnoxious atheist. And much religion still royally pisses me off, I mean it's just loathsome.

But, what can i say. The love in my heart. Tears running down my goddamn face. Rapture. You know?

Have I scared anyone off yet?

In that moment, my sorcery became so, so gentle. I stopped with the frantic mudhras and with the athletic defence-omancy, and just relaxed into a gentle, swaying, perfectly at peace sort of stance of submission. All the demoms, the Adversary, the Deceiver, all of it, just howled. I laughed at it. And it vanished. The day before, funny enough, i had had Sao Miguel in front of me while the Deceiver paced aggressively up and down, and I was like, spitting athis feet, saying 'I hate you! You;re shit! you're nothing!'..and you know what - Got! Deceived. Caught up. Check the I Ching, 43, yes? Nietzche had it - beware when fighting demons that you do not become one.

There is no fight. No struggle. No war. You cannot fight yourself. It's absurd. You lose even if you win. So it all went. The whole nonsense. Demons, angels, all of that mental apparatus, just subsumed, completely bathed away in the shining of that brilliant , perfect white Divine light.

Nothing...nothing...can be, without its consent. Everything that is, is only by it's jurisprudence. Isness. SUPREME BEING. Demons, Adversaries, Angels, Good, Evil, War, Peace, Kit, Kaboodle and Kitchen Sink...it all is, because It is. (Although of course, 'it' ain't an 'it' at all, but you know...we are trying to talk about 'it' here, and language is a bit limited, like).

And I was there, in its Glory. No other word for it, me hearties, its G.L.O.R.Y. It was invited in, and it bloody well came. And it shooed out almost everything.

It told me, as well, the Porridge, that I was to remind my ill friend of this truth - Every agenda is the source of its own defeat. Do not fight your illness. Do not struggle. The process is always and already arising. The system is perfect. your thoughts are nought but friction to the already manifesting transformation. Let. it. be.

Now, this is the bit I really like...now....it was time to clear away the chairs, the concentration was over, and we were to sing the dancing work until dawn!!!

HAHAHA!! WAHEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYY!

And you know what? Juramidam, Meu Mestre, came back.

And here is more of Minha verdade, given me by He, manifestation of that Brilliance, that Glory:

There is no Death, for there is no Birth, only the oscillation of this Universe breathing from 0 to 1 and back again, In and Out within the Whle that Transcends this Duality, for all Eternity...and if you breathe with it, all is well, and if you breathe against it, you will struggle. Life is a Dream within this breath, a Dream within the Dream of the Absolute.

And Juramidam took me away. Off the planet. Throughout the work, as we danced, I was gone. He took me on a tour of his favourite Realms. So much Beauty, so much incredible Beauty. And He brought me to these places that I could know that when this Dream is over, and it is time to Awaken once and for all, he will be waiting, attendant on that moment, and there will be No Fear. And we will journey there together.

Not bad, eh? Sold. Never mind the brochure, the tour was fucking great! Other worlds, meus irmaos, worlds within worlds, within worlds. Layer upon Layer, tucked inside the cells and alkaloids and quantum flux of existence itself, all of it conscious. For there is nothing else.

Ever wondered what the consciousness of a peptide might be like? Im ean, your own locus of reality, the hive of consciousness we delude ourselves into believing is an 'I', we know what that's like...it's like this, right? Look around.

But that amylase process in your lower intestine, what is it's Universe made up of? What are it's myths and archetypes, what are its sciences and rligions, if, indeed, these terms are in any way meaningful at such a graining of consciousness///What is it's conscious experience? Is it even vaguely analogous? comprehensible, renderable in metaphor that our own locus of consciousness can assimilate?

Maybe, and its just a thought, but maybe that's what all these entities are...Points of consciousness within the physical body, and surrounding environment, translated through the Babel Fish of DMT such that they become comprehensible and able to be interacted with at the grain of the locus of human chemical consciousness, perceptual and thinking. Maybe John Matthew was a meeting with the consciousness of my spleen, or knee, and Juramidam is my Pineal Gland made incarnate and anthropomorphic by the Rosetta Stone of SD, Magic Porridge.

All just musings.

So there we have it. The madness of Money $hot. NYE was just so beautiful, but maybe another time....all my games are finished, now, no more darkness, no more struggle, no more fight, for it is only myself that is fighting, and if I win, I lose.

Every agenda is the source of its own defeat

This truth is even tucked away, hidden within the opening two Gua of the I Ching.

Qian - Initiating
Kun - Receiving

The paradox of consciousness, the trap of thought - you begin with an intention - Initiating, the Creative...but this is all the sytem requires. It is perfect, closed. Once the intention is manifest and broadcast, immediate transformation to the Receptive is the only means of avoiding struggle and frictiona nd impediment tot he fruition of the intention. Qian, to Kun. Already Fulfilled, to Not Yet Fulfilled. You know, if you extract the Mutual Gua for any Hexagram in the I Ching twice...i.e, extract the Mutual Gua, then extract the Mutual Gua's Mutal Gua...you will always end up with either the first two Hexagrams of the Oracle, or the last two. They bound all transformation and change, intrinsically and fundamentally.

Initiating and Receiving. Already Fulfilled and Not Yet Fulfilled.

Every agenda is the source of its own defeat

Esta e Minha Verdade, dada a mim por Juramidam.

Peace, meus irmaos, my brothers and sisters. Peace.

x

P.S : Sorry for the absolute mess of these posts. Basically, I messed up an html tag, whcih messed up the posts, and then I posted the long original post in parts, thinking it was too long, but it wasn't. It was the tags. Then I messed up the parts as well. So its a bit of a mess, and the poor mods have got mod requests and delete requests stacked up like air-traffic over LAX.

Moments of illumination notwithstanding, I'm still just as much of a twat as I ever was. :-)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:40 / 10.01.06
Ah, blimey, in all the excitement there I nearly forgot about the Kundalini archive...the database of immensity from which I was able to...download...skills and so on...

Yes, it was real, whatever that means...on the day before, when that incredible unravelling, double helix fire had torn through my system, and I had sprouted extra eyes and limbs and been zooming aorund the ceiling, I had access to a library of everything ever achieved by anyone or anything ever...a bit daunting, and I doubt I used it to its fullest advantage, but I was able to request things, and they were manifested. Burssting out of my hands into my body, visible energies...

The Portugese was one of these...help with languages...it was so powerful for the immediate days following the Solstice, and remains, at a lower frequency, still.

I requested help with my own musicianship, and it was hilarious...still is...immediately after theo works, there was - I shit you not - nothing I could not play on the baby Grand piano there...Now, don't get me wrong, I've been playing for years - I can play, right? But its been such a mission, such a struggle for me to be able to practice, I have no time and chops on an instrument are...well...use 'em or lose 'em...its been a long time since I felt confident enough to improvise and so on...but all of the principles, all of the necessary feeling and instinct and just knowledge of the instrument...it's just there...It absolutely astounds me...I can pick any tune at all by ear, first time or near enough, and my improv. is absolutely off, if you'll excuse the pun, the scale. Astounding. I'm also back on the guitar and learning the accordion, going great...Its so funny, I'm just empty, playing...nothing there at all, just watching my hands play and it sure as shit ain't me that's behind it...

The other requests I put in were healing and patience...sensitivity to my own and other's bodies, the ability to heal and to be healed, massage, energy manipulation, subtle energy body sensitivity and so on...and patience, patience, patience in all things...the sensitivity to just let it be, work itself out, take its sweet, languid time and not worry...

All pretty unmeasurable by anyone except me, but I ain't out to prove any of this. Believe what you wish, credit what you will. It makes not a jot of difference.

There was lots of weird gubbins I really didn't understand as well...this mudhras thing, this re-arrangement and 'programming' of something 'in the air' in front of me, was totally compelling and I was pretty unable to stop it for quite some time (looked like a right proper freak, I assure you. 'What the fuck is that MAD BASTARD doing over there!?!?!' Like I cared less at the time!).

Oh, and the tai chi form...its not authentic, I know, but its more than that...its mine, and its right...beautiful balance and centredness, and the resistance of a tissue in the wind...its beautiful...

I really need to learn the textbook stuff as well, of course. But I have the principle...

Laterzzzzz....
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:47 / 10.01.06
But not that much laterzzz! haha!

I just can't leave this one alone, can I?

A couple of interesting things to note from teh journeys of my compatriots on this incredible quest:

After the solstice works (we all watched the sun rise outside, a truly spectacular morning, beautiful pinks and reds and azures and deep blues splitting the lunar sky apart on the horizon, and one of our numbers playing the most gorgeous shakuhachi for ever and ever...msn, that was a beautiful morning! And the Solstice as well! How fucking great is that?) a friend of mine (actually, the flute player...) mentioned, though he had arrived late and had not seen my banishing ritual, that there were flaming pentagrams in the centre of the room around the altar, and angels coming through the walls...

I told him what I'd been up to (LBRP), and it was quite uncanny...though I guess not, really. Still, of worthy of note that morning...LBRP definitely has something in it...

On that note, I found it highly visually effective myself, at that work...the archangels were, like, huge, and up in the rafters of the high ceilings, wings spread...very potent ...remember, I performed it twice in the lead up, bith before and after the Orixa working.

Ah, yes, Fair Lady Oxum...she was so powerfully present it was almost overwhelming...In the midst of some of the terror of that night (in case it wasn't obvious, the Apocalypse visions lasted about 6-7 hours...) I suddenly remmeberd Minha Rainha, and took regular opportunities to pay respects to her on the altar, and feed off her presence, feel her in the room...

The river, particularly, arrivedpowerfully at one point, cleansing, and flowing, a metaphor for the process of life itself, a symbolic vision of the key to progressing through the initiation, my Queen of the Rivers thank you, thank you!

She appeared in forms that night I have never before encountered her in, usually she is very specific...a very beautiful shifting,living collage of two particular ladies (one of them my Mrs., honest!)...but this night...Rowr. She was unstoppable, taking many, many forms and really, nearly overwhelming me at many points with unbelievable sensual ecstasy...I mean, carnal or what? Yowch. Damn, girl! Let me rest a minute! Spiritual Viagra! Orixan aphrodisiac or what?...Very powerful Goddess. So, so chuffed she seems to favour me...Ori Yeye O!. You sexy thing...

One of the [xxxxx]'s, a proper tower of strngth, I mean this guy is no-nonsense, hard as bricks, salt of the Earth Concrete, been drinking upwards of eight years, was well and truly freaked out...Many, many people had had a very disturbing work indeed...him included...his work had been densely populated with reptilians, scary alien buggers, joining us in the devotional work, who's sacrament was human blood, and whose devotion was at extremely crossed purposes to our own...

He was convinvced, along with a couple of my other friends, that a certain person there, who was somewhat distracted and off on a wee bit of an egoic one, was channeling all this shit right into the space (though obliviously, not exactly deliberately...). He was proper spooked by it. Many parallels with my own work there, though...and many others had had a dark, dark concentration as well...

Man, this shit is well and truly sanity bending. The implications and ramifications of some of the experiences I have had in there are just...well, you've read it, right? I mean, I've run out of superlatives to adequately cover the paradigm wrenching seriousness of what gets revealed, hiding behind a simple endogenous molecule...A whole other Universe, just getting on with its own rules and ramifications, but always, invisibly, interacting with this one...It's straight-jacket material if you let it get to you...

I had this little...gremlin...on my chest once, made of electricity, like a large cartoon spark, but it was real malevolent looking...and it had all these vicious looking implements and blades and surgical tools, and it was just ferociously, clinically, without any heed of my status as the receiver of this, operating on the centre ofmy lungs, the split in the middle of both, whatever that is called. It was making me uncomfortable, and I looked down at it in some alarm.

I kind of said to it, telepathically, 'Hey! You could be a bit nicer about all this...'. And it stopped, momentarily, what it was doing, and looked straight at me, narrowed its eyes, snarled, and just gave me this really sarcastic, horrible, forced mockery of a big smile...too broad, to leering and not pleasant at all...then it resumed its excavations in my lungs with even more fervour, whipping these instruments into my body and scooping stuff out and putting other shit in and...Im ean, y'know? Fucking *SHIVER*...like, Brrrrrrrrrrrrr....it ain't for the faint hearted, I can tell you.

I strongly suspect that Richard Strassman is really onto something when he suggests that many, if not all, alien abduction and encounter experiences may well be incidences of DMT experience, perhaps endogenously crossing the blood-brain barrier somehow...I mean, all the classic reports are so close as to make it a highly interesting avenue of investigation...realer than real, beings emerging from the ether, clinical experiments being conducted by research teams with callous precision, or loving messages of peace from interdimensional healers, time dislocation, the sensation of days or longer passing and then only minutes having gone by, otr the other way round, losing hours and not being able to explain where they've been or what has happened...spatial and temporal distortion...all of it adds up.

My Mrs, at her first ever work, was operated on by the Doctor, he soothed and calmed her, showed her a number of physical postures she needed to do to reset her bio-mechanics properly, took her on a guided tour of her health and wellbeing...and at a certain point, she jumped, POW, like she'd had a little shock, and felt something going into her leg behind the knee...the Doctor calmly and soothingly told her that he had inserted a locating and healing device into her, so that it could make 'her legs better' and so that he could find her if he needed to at any time.

Jacques Vallee to ER, stat! I mean, is that not classic abduction scenario reportage?

All this time, looking out into the solar system, looking far far away for alien intelligence, trying to receive messages from the cosmos...maybe they are already here, all around and within us, hiding inside simple molecules, their spaceships actually too small to see, and nothing so much as a tryptamine alkaloid, the Universe seeded with plants which carry this transport system, for organisms to discover and utilise if they achieve a high enough level of adaptability and intelligence, tool smithing and work, that kind of thing...The entire, buzzing Universe, populated to the brim with intelligences and entities of all manner and description, already all around us and within us, contact already made, if we would only look in the right place, not out, but in, in here.

Just musings, you know.

On the other hand, it's all in your head. I guess in the end, it makes little difference really. But it's fun to speculate, eh?

All the love and chocolate sponge there is or ever will be, chums!

Anon.
 
 
grant
11:41 / 10.01.06
grant - just had a little Google around about the Lukumi Seven African Powers, and Sao Miguel is more traditionally associated with Ellegua - As is San Antonio of Padua, who is also affiliated with Ogum...who also is syncretised with St.George, which is maybe what you were thinking of...both serpent slayers, often pictured spearing/lancing a dragon...

I kinda suspect it has a lot to do with the picture -- if there's a spear, it's Ogun. Eleggua also gets lined up with St. Peter in some traditions, who also lines up with Chango (who's also St. Barbara with the lightning and red robes), and with San Lazaro (who's also Babalu Aye the healer). I think the Eleggua visual key is the man with the staff/walking stick. Just a guess, though.

This is amazing stuff. I think I know what you mean about the music and getting out of the way, although I've only ever been able to do that for very short periods of time before the "Dude, look at me!" thing kicks in and suddenly I become aware of where my fingers are and they all stop working right. Ditto for surfing, which I haven't done in far too long.

How's the accordion treating you now, two weeks later?

And have you been able to communicate your message to your friend? (That seems hard.)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:57 / 10.01.06
Ooh! Sorry! Things keep coming back to me that I forgot to mention while caught int he flow...

At these works, i believe on Day Two of Padrinho Sebastiao, though possibly later, I was, for the first time ever in nearly two years of drinking, transformed into my Power Animal...and given some titles...

This is a very special shamanic moment, and it came gift wrapped with its own little synchronicity type punctuation mark...

Yes, there I was, working away, dancing, singing and generally healing, when i had this extremely powerful vision of myself adorned like Slaine, 200AD style, in thick skins and with a fucking great big sword and a crown, wind whipped and Hollywood epic stylee, and was told I was (slightly embarrassed about this, here and now, but...well...) a Warrior King. Rei Guerreiro..

I smiled at this, thinking 'Hey, if the shoe fits!' and then, very powerfully, just turned into a bloody great, giant mane and all, tail, the works, Lion. A Lion, no less! (My Chinese year is the year of the Tiger, actually...no Lions in that system...still pretty close! Naturalists would no doubt disagree!)

Yeah, it was beautiful. I was King of the Jungle, baby. Fierce, and Proud, and battle scarred. I stalked about and hunted and was protetora of my kin...

It was fascinating stuff. Occasionally sort of flickering, human to lion, to human and back again, crackling between the two like a half tuned receiver, between two stations.

This and the Phoenix work I have been through gave me the other claims in the opening posts...Leao Alado (thanks DM) da Verdade - winged lion of truth.

It's all terribly pompous and a bit silly in the comfort of your computer chair, but it is pretty huge stuff in situ, believe you me.

A bloody Lion. Hah! ROAWAAAR!! Don't Mess.

So anyway, had hardly finfished the work, was just beginning to mingle and hug the throng and shake hands and kiss cheeks and congratualte all and sundry, nowhere near enough time yet to get onto a discussion of the work just passed, when some of the kids, little lunatics, little nutters, came rushing up to me and, in no uncertain terms told me : "You're a LION!!".

Ding Dong. Take Money $hot off the hob, he's cooked already.

Can't argue with a six year old. 'Funny', I told them back 'that's just what I was thinking!'

nyuk nyuk nyuk
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:04 / 10.01.06
And have you been able to communicate your message to your friend? (That seems hard.)

Actually, yes...on NYE, I got a chance to speak with him, and tell him.

I actually saw him the day i got back to the city...there was another work, a days rest after solstice, then Mestre Irineu my favourite hinario by far, but I just couldn't stay for it....commitments back at the homestead and all that. I saw him that eve, though, it was his birthday, and i told him i had amessage for him, but that we'd talk later, another time.

So, yeah, it gave me a chance to be delicate about it, and get the words right. At the solstice I was so...ALIGHT...with what had happened to me, that I was gassing off to all and sundry about my message for him, and it was delicately pointed out to me that people can take these things the wrong way if not handled properly, that the message was great, but also quite piercing and sort of hard to accept, perhaps, maybe, for someone in that scenario...So, bless meus irmaos, for their wisdom in the face of wisdom, wisdom on wisdom!

But yeah, i told him, for which I am really glad. And, you know...I think he's going to be OK. I think it should be Good.

Thanks for asking...and thanks for reading! This has turned into a bloody novel! I should edit and serialise it or something.

Accordion is shaping up nicely...quite the bitch, but give it a year or so...
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
12:08 / 10.01.06
Ogun and St Michael are syncretised, as are Ogun and St George.

"I'm gonna put on an iron shirt, and chase the devil out of earth"
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:18 / 10.01.06
heheheh, my re-immersion into the city and my peers was, um, interesting, to say the leaast...

I got back into town next eveing, and was at my works Christmas Dinner. Haha! Talk about freak everybody out.

I was, to be fair, floating about 8 inches off the floor, completely serence, implacable, piercing, and full of loveliness. I could barely speak without the workds 'spirit' or 'angels' or 'illumination' creeping in there. I mean, I wasn't going to lie, or pretend to be anything other than what I was, which was floating in the Astral with no landing window on the horizon whatsoever. Heheheheh. I know for a fact that I totally did my sister-in-law's head in, who is really rather pithy and earthy, and was not prepared for the somewhat radical transformation in me (Sao Miguel t-shirt and all...Hahah!)

Ah that was a blast. Happy days.

The Kundalini took about 10 days to calm down. I had to work a fair amount of energetic mudhras and yogic work to keep from being quite overwhelmed sometimes. And, occasionally, i would just go into a deep, deep, deep sleep...almost narcoleptic, within minutes I wouls just Close. Down. and it would be about 3-4 hours before I could be roused.

Xmas day I had a Champagne breakfast, and that precipitated rushes, like really strong E, that knocked me off my feet.

It's all a lot calmer now, though. Back to a sort of normal, really. Whatever that means.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
15:39 / 10.01.06
This is the best thing I've read on barbelith for fucking years.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:53 / 10.01.06
Tcha. You're biased ;-)
 
 
grant
16:09 / 10.01.06
I'm with him.

This has turned into a bloody novel! I should edit and serialise it or something.

Now I'm wondering if you'd be interested in editing this into something for erowid.org -- I know the people there, and this seems like the kind of thing they'd be interested in publishing.

I'm also thinking now about how... syncretic the whole experience seems to have been. OK, take a step back. You've layered a South American indigenous ritual with an African religious framework, filtered through European iconography (based, in essence, on the Middle Eastern mystery religion of Christianity, plus the maybe-Hebraic roots of the LBRP) which you, in turn, processed using a Chinese divination system.

That's pretty wild.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:24 / 10.01.06
Hmm..hadn't really considered that, to be honest...but you're right, I guess, it's...er...eclectic to say the least.

It's been really cathartic to record it here, I must say...As I mentioned elsewhere, I wrestled with whether it was the right thing to do, both for me and for the [xxxxx] generally, our group, etc....I'm really glad it's found a welcome and appreciative home.

What would the Erowid edit entail? I've no objection in principle...

And, er...

Do you wanna do it? ;-)

Must. Stop. Using. Smileys.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:33 / 10.01.06
Man, I'm having trouble just keeping up with this thread. But it's wonderful.
 
 
SteppersFan
20:07 / 10.01.06
Yes, I agree, this is the best thread I've read on Barbelith in years.

I think about the story here all the time. I find it scary and comforting at the same time. I'm really glad it's taken as long to unfold as it has, as well. Oh, I'd have edited out the odd sentence here and there for print, but this story has been very well told; it's a gripping narrative, because it's true. It's just amazing.

I also agree that it sounds surprisingly eclectic and that's the first of my questions -- do you think there was any "fall-out" from combining other practices with this work?

And, the kind of questions that occur to me as a dad - how much use was this stuff in every day life? Like, does it help you deal with a child who's being vile and having a tantrum?

Did you have to persuade your wife to participate? What made her decide to do it? Has your kid noticed a difference in you?

Thanks ever so much for sharing this with us. It's inspirational.
 
 
LVX23
22:39 / 10.01.06
Well hell, now I'm gonna have to get caught up and read the last two pages.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
23:52 / 10.01.06
I think about the story here all the time. I find it scary and comforting at the same time.

That's really sweet man...thank you. It has had its scary moments, eh? But in the final picture, deathless and timeless and infinitely beautiful, abiding in eternity. S'gonna be OK, man!!

do you think there was any "fall-out" from combining other practices with this work?

Hmmm. It goes without saying that I approach these things with the greatest of respect, and (mostly) the utmost caution...And, really, the Orixa are there in [xxxxx]...so the fit is pretty much made to measure...I mean, as a pre-existing structure, it's pretty syncretic already.

On top of this, it is pretty much elastically inclusive...like sufism, it has no rigid dogma...it is able to absorb and work with many systems, it is, in the end, a simple expression of the wisdom of a plant (two plants)...and those plants are not really bothered how you dress up the Truth they impart, you know? There are many roads to the top of the Mountain, you can point at the Moon from many directions...just so long as you end up looking at the moon and not the finger, yes?

I'm very slowly forging my relationship my Lady, Rainha dos Rios. Her presence on the altar was a first at the solstice, and she has since joined me for NYE...It's powerful stuff having her there, she abides with me at the work even more vividly and potently than before...I have this notion that I have been developing that my association with Dominica may be wrapped up in this as well, land of 365 rivers, most of which I've bathed in at one point or another...I have powerfully felt the female Juju of Dominica before, particularly when I got married there, in the rainforests....never had a name or a Deity before, but now, perhaps, I do...

As for the I Ching...man, Porridge and the I Ching go together like Laurel'n'Hardy, like Cheese'n'Onion, like Drum'n'Bass...they must be drinking buddies or something, you know? Hang out at weekends, that kind of thing. They are both speaking from the same eternal place about the same eternal stuff - Alignment with the Way, the many Ways, the right ones. The I Ching is like the studious nerdy freshman version of the [xxxxx]'s more frivolous party loving senior...well, no, not really a good analogy, but you know what I mean. I love them both, reverently, and they love me right back. S'way the Universe works, a lot of the time, I'm finding.

And, the kind of questions that occur to me as a dad - how much use was this stuff in every day life? Like, does it help you deal with a child who's being vile and having a tantrum?

Hehe, that's pretty specfic there, dude...That is why I do it, man. For that every day life. It grounds me in Gratitude, the essential foundation from which everything else springs...wasn't always like this, I probably had a hefty chip on my shoulder, truth be told. But she sings, whispers always, does Porridge...you can't forget. She transforms, realigns, guides. And my relationships are healthier, less clingy, less attached, less circumscribed by old emotional baggage and petty bullshit. Just gratitude, you know?

Although, don't get me wrong, i can be as big an asshole as the next guy. Just ask my wife :-) !

Did you have to persuade your wife to participate? What made her decide to do it? Has your kid noticed a difference in you?

Man, I would never accept the responsibility for bringing someone to the works. Never. It's an essential part of the way the apparatus functions that the participants have made their own way there, had the calling for themselves, initiated their participation, made their own decision.

You wouldn't want their work to be your responsibility, trust me...hard enough doing your own work, sometimes, never mind worrying about whether or not your trustee is about to explode or go crazy or start vanishing or blinking out of existence etc..!

No, she has taken a fairly long time about it...As did I...was 5-6 years before I made it myself after my first invitation. Can't hurry anything along, it knows when it's time, and so do you...

She loved it, which i'm glad of, but is in no rush to return just yet...which is fine, and as it should be. She'll be back, I suspect.

Thanks ever so much for sharing this with us. It's inspirational.

The privilege is mine, hombre, thanks for engaging with it.
 
 
grant
11:30 / 11.01.06
Synchronicity: looking at The Tao of Jeet Kune Do for that chaos martial arts thread, I find the following highlighted sentence:

The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:26 / 11.01.06
And, indeed, any plan, intention or agenda.

He was a beautiful man.

A few more thoughts, fairly scattered...

Dark Matter. The missing 'stuff' of the Universe....Hmmmm. And hmmm again.

Probably a daft notion, but *hand up* Sir! Sir! Miss! Miss! I've seen a whole other Universe which is well aware of this one, and it's tucked behind a molecule inside this one! Never mind 'stuff' it's an entire bloody replica, with extra bits, and other rules! Let's go there and see what we can do, together! What the potential is!

It amused me hugely that one of the leading scientific researchers on this subject is called...

...wait for it...

John Peacock

John. Peacock

Chortle chortle.

Anyway, as I said, probably a daft notion. Probably.

The beautiful I Ching is unfolding for me in such an amazing way...The relationship between its secrets and the wisdom of the Qaballah is starting to really slot into place, all of which is from the Porridge revealing connections and relationships...Enyclopaedia Galactica, man, written in the chemistry of plants.

The penultimate hexagram of the system contains what, to appearance, is the ever-present perfection inherent in the Universe - Already Fulfilled, the Stream already Crossed. But the decision on this Gua is not entirely auspicious, and full of warning...because change is the nature of the system, and a time of perfection, of Eden if you like, contains a future of less than perfection, of disarray, of the ten thousand things. Hence Already Fulfilled does not complete the I Ching...What follows is...The Fall...the deference to ego within consciousness, the dissatisfied self, the goal orientated pleasure addict : Not Yet Fulfilled, The Stream Not Yet Crossed.

And as this point of consciousness, this manifestation of change, which needs to do domething, fill its emptiness instead of abiding in and with it, precipitates a new breath, a brand new cycle of change birthing the Ten Thousand Things (or at least the 64 Gua of the I Ching), so, in order to do so, it resolves back to...what?

Qian. Initiating. The Creative. The intention, the first, if you like, cause. Born of dissatisfaction with the perfection which already is, and beginning the journey from Kether to Malkuth...And then onwards, a guide to flowing with the process of Isness, As It Is, Kun, the Receptive, neutral and listening, for the signal is quiet, so, so quiet, and if you continue shouting your intention you will miss completely the arrival of its fruition, and struggle on, the friction now endemic within the egoic process, iterating, tying itself in ever tighter and tighter knots...onto hexagram 3, Initial Adversity, difficulty in the beginning...and so on...

What a phenomenal text. What awesome wisdom. My study of it is only just beginning, and i've been using it for years. The inter-relationships between the Gua, the mutual Gua and Inverse gua and how these rlate to the primary divination, the trigrams of whcih the hexagrams are composed, and their relationships, and the connections between them and manifest physical reality...i mean, where did this text come from?...It's as mysterious as the pyramids of the Egyptians and Aztecs and the inca lines and all of that Fortean stuff. They are already here... ;-)

The I Ching is the only surviving oracle of possibly up to 5 original divinatory systems of ancient China. All the others were lost, in antiquity. Ain't that a jib? I wonder what they were like...

I've just got hold of Stephen Karcher's Total I Ching and Alfred Huang's (whose Complete I Ching I regularly use, though I consult others as well)The Numerology of the I Ching...so I've lots of reading ahead...

Boy oh boy. Something I didn't mention in the epic post above, which I meant to and so, sod it, I'll stick it in here, fragmentation be damned, was the incredible sensation of wrought magic during the Concentration on the Solstice work.

The lighting was carefully managed and measured, and, as I said, there was dense, dense incense burning, being circulated by fardados and fardadas...so, our square of chairs, bisectged by the altar, was bordered by thick smoke and we were lit in the centre, while shadows bordered the hall itself...and, man, once we were in the thick of it, it was like...like an oasis out of time, like time was running much slower within the sacred square, the [xxxxx] geometry, while history raged and flew past within the smoke...Almost like a bordering television, out of the corner of the eye one could see epic stories passing by within the curtains of no doubt carefully selected incense and burning oils, huge vistas of narrative passing by, now in realtime, now fastforward, now a dizzying blur, now slow motion...and I was powerfully aware of the protection afforded by the geometry in the centre...do not stray too far! Stay in the centre! Danger lurks in all other spaces...remain within the protective light of the altar, the patriarchs, the cross of cefluris, the devotions and tributes...Do not stray...

It was just sooo powerful... High. Sorcery. I don't mean to wax lyrical (hah!), but there is no better term for it. No training given, no manual, no book - the initiation was a self created, self administered, self executed lesson in adapatability and managing the magic...Assimilate or Die.

And it lead to the Palace, to the very steps before the throne of the Divine. Maybe try not to gag on that if you reject religion and its poilitics and doctrines, because trust me, I hate that shit. I still do. It's just a way of speaking about something which is way beyond language. The Dao. God. Isness. Beyond duality. I Am That I Am. Tat tvam asi...Thou art that. As above so below, as without so within. Spirit. It was just...so beautiful. The Light. Not a light...The. Light. A total gnosis that all was well, nothing could possibly ever 'go wrong' because wrong is a false division within perfection always and already arising, in and of eternity...I was made an angel, made known that I was loved of this presence, and within its protection and grace, that I could forget the dark forever.

Wow, now that really is veering toward Evangelist TV yick, eh? But that's how it was, or the best way I can find to describe it. You see Buffy? Buffy and similar genre pieces have got it all wrong, man. By fighting demons you guarantee the eternal continuation of the struggle. By abiding in and in love and deference to the Ultimate Presence (gah! sick buckets!), and tickling them under the chin and laughing, truly laughing at their silliness, maybe giving them a really gentle, heartfelt massage, they are gone. Zhoop! Vanished, no fight, no struggle, just *blink* - no more...

In the instant of illumination, when the light came in, a cross between a FLASH! and a sort of decompression PSSSSSSSSST!, the 'Spirit TV' in the surrounding magic flux was labelled, clearly : Theatre of the Absurd.

Juramidam, later, on my soujourn around and through the Universe and its many beautiful, achingly beautiful dimensions and locations (beaches! My God, the beaches!) told me 'Do not fear the stories being told in the Theatre of the Absurd. The actors are lost in their roles. They collaborate in an epic mockery of compassion, love, decency, justice and truth. All will pass.'

I think I'd like to run a cable station, Conscious News, with that as the entire story for every day.

"Welcome to Conscious News, its [date]. Today, in the Theatre of the Absurd, most of the Ensemble cast failed yet again to Awaken to the simple, ever present truth that they are actors in a self created, jointly edited narrative of their own authorship. This ignorance has lead to yet another epic collaboration in a total mockery of all notions of decency, love, compassion, good humour, justice and truth.

And now...Sport!'

Well, maybe not.

OK, enough already. Apologies to the die hard materialists and cynics...

Ciao for now.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:13 / 11.01.06
OK, sorry, last wee thing...

We have, collectively, created this thing called 'culture' which is the highest embodiment of ego.

Culture and ego are one and and the same thing, entwined, the large extracted from the small and back again in an ongoing dance...Culture, now refined to the point of sickly, chemical extraction, is the highest expression of that Change within the cycle of changes : Not Yet Fulfilled.

It is the basis upon which all so-called 'purposive action' which everybody seems to think is so important to a well functioning 'civilisation' (Gandhi, step up to the mic please, your pithiness is appropriate here...) is predicated...It is the very foundation, the keystone, upon which commerce and consumerism and economies rest - You do not have enough, you are not fulfilled, you LACK, happiness is not yours, and never can be, for there is SO MUCH TO DO, and most of it, most of what you have to do is....well, that bit is blank, and we have jointly filled it in with 'ACQUIRE'. Stuff. Get more stuff. Stuff is what is missing.

So, our culture is a perfect reflection of our egoic games, springing from this basis in dissatisfaction with all that is, and our egoic games contain all of that mythic and archetypal emotional struggle in which angels are fighting demons and the greatest beauty must be sacrificed for the salvation of the majority, and the fire of the gods has been stolen by prometheus and sysyphus just has to keep on pushing that rock up that wretched hill...

Yes, the culture contains the entirety of thought, everything your brain and my brain is able to receive from the archives is already ther, all questions arising out of an inntuited sense that there is an answer, and preceeded by it, though it may remain hidden...

No wonder it looks the way it does, man. Theatre. Of. the. Absurd.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intention to head off to the hills and hernetically while away the time. But it's a useful tool to own, or at least it seems that way to me, to know exactly what Play, in which playhouse, I have a role in.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:19 / 11.01.06
I really should get a blog, shouldn't I?

Or at least a shoebox, or something.
 
 
Dead Megatron
18:52 / 11.01.06
This thread is certainly worthy of tis own site. Maybe the Tea has turned you into a obsessive writer, Money, my friend

I'm gonna have to come back here in the weekend and read it all with the proper calm. Till then, keep obsessing, this is fun (and educational...)
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:02 / 11.01.06
This is so. Fucking. Cool.
 
 
illmatic
06:43 / 12.01.06
where did this text come from?...

Try here and then here for an answer.

Check out the website in the first link, it's full of great info. (The author is no fan of Steve Karcher, though).

Haven't had time to read the rest of thread yet, but will do so soon.
 
 
illmatic
07:36 / 12.01.06
Having posted that, I'm not sure if you need more to obsess about ...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:15 / 12.01.06
Thanks for those links, Illmatic.

$175 for 2 books. Hmmm. The library, perhaps, beckons. Even they'll probably laugh in my face.

That first site is, indeed, very disparaging of Huang (not Karcher, assume this is what you meant...). All of their criticisms are valid, though its interesting to note that the second link you provide is a book relating to evidence of the Shang/Wen/Wu Dynastic drama and its historical authenticity as basis for and foundation within the Zhou Yi, while Biroco's major gripe with Huang, aside from a few proof-reading, clumsy errors in the text, is that he asserts exactly this throughout his translation, but does not substantiate it in any way...merely stating it as 'fact'...

It's odd, actually, that Huang is so much my grimoire...I have other translations, and refer to them often as well, even the David Allen Hulse books (The Key of It All : The Eastern Mysteries) have very useful esoteric cross-references etc., but Huang is...the Walther PPK to my James Bond. If you know what I mean.

Bloody expensive books, man!
 
 
Char Aina
11:32 / 12.01.06
watched altered states.
thought of you.
as you were.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:14 / 12.01.06
If you do get a blog, I'll sure as hell read it. This stuff is fascinating in a wonderful wonderful way.
 
 
Dead Megatron
18:38 / 12.01.06
visions of life
brought to us from the forest
free so many minds
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:46 / 12.01.06
M$;

I'm sure you've addressed this earlier on, but I can't help feeling that my refusal/drunken inability to read through the posts on this thread makes me especially qualified to comment, damnit. About this;

What if none of it was real?

(I don't, at all, necessarily buy into this argument, but what happens if 'power plants' are just an amuising detour
on the road to the abyss to which all mortal flesh is subject?)
 
 
Dead Megatron
19:51 / 12.01.06
ahhh, skepitcs (gotta love'em). I was beggining to wonder where they were...
 
  

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