The Emptiness Working Month 2: Obsession

I was watching the movie Aviator recently. It's a bio film about Howard Hughes. Watching that film is always fascinating to me, because it displays the life of someone who was clearly innovative and inventive and yet also suffered from a mental affliction, OCD. His attention to detail in his inventiveness was another sign of that OCD. I thankfully don't have OCD myself, but I've always found the balance between genius and madness to be fascinating to both watch and to experience in my own work. My own inventiveness has primarily occurred in the context of magic, both in its theory and its practice and knowing beyond doubt what could be possible. My interest in other disciplines has also contributed to that inventiveness. And yet in doing a lot of the magical work that I've pursued there has definitely been an element of risk involved in terms of how far I'm willing to push myself to achieve my goals.

In the movie, Hughes is portrayed as a very driven and passionate person when it comes to his pursuits. I can appreciate that drive, even as I acknowledge that it is a two-edged sword and indeed you see that Hughes, because that drive certainly tests his sanity. My wife tells me that I drive myself too hard, and has asked me where it comes from. When I watched Aviator, I thought about that. I can't speak to any motivation that Hughes felt, but my own motivation is rooted to some degree in my emptiness, and it always has been.

I've always had a fascination with people who were geniuses and also dealt with madness. Some of that fascination is rooted in my own struggle with an electrochemical predisposition toward depression and finding a way to cure that depression instead of letting it rule me...Some of it seeing those people struggle with something within themselves and yet still be able triumph in some form or another despite it.

When I was young, I grew up in a situation where no matter what I accomplished, it was never enough for the people in my life. I eventually realized that any accomplishments I did make in my life had to be for myself, and consequently I pushed myself much harder than anyone else might have. I think, in part, that is why the ph.d didn't work out. I was research, experimenting and writing books while also pursuing graduate work full time. My pushing myself has often been a response to my emptiness to try and fill it up. My's observations about that has lately had me considering the value of not pushing myself so hard, especially when I consider that those who push themselves so hard may make a lot of change, but also end up pushing themselves into places where they can't recover. I, for a time, danced with madness while in grad school, resulting in several mental breakdowns as well as becoming a recluse...it's not a fun place to be. The emptiness might motivate my drive and indeed I still want to be driven, but moderating it some may be just as important, in order to live a life where I am happy as well as driven. Some of this emptiness working is focused on finding that balance.

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I've lately been dealing with the root of my feelings about abandonment and neglect. Since these feelings are related to my sense of emptiness it makes a lot of sense to me to deal with them. The root of it all is in my childhood, in the experience of not really having a strong set of parents or friends to turn to. I mostly was either neglected or when I did get attention it wasn't favorable. I talked about it in therapy on the 21st of November, and it was surprising for me to acknowledge just how hurt I still feel so many years later. And this really is where my fear of bring shunted aside for someone else comes from, because so often I saw my half-sister given much more positive attention and interest than I received. She could get away with anything, while I was more often than not scapegoated anything she did. Then too there were all the times I was told to go outside, because I wasn't wanted in the house. If I was outside that was good, that was wanted. I never felt wanted.

Recognizing these feelings as the root of my emptiness is good for me. Yes, it's painful, yes it hurts, and yet it is a healing hurt. It is choosing to feel that pain instead of just analyzing it . It is hopefully letting it go so I can move on with my life in better directions than where I was previously.

An interesting realization I had. I am a very territorial person with certain people because I think of them as mine, as part of my pack, as people who belong to me. I can think of a few people this applies to in my life, close friends and lovers, and yes my immediate family as well in an odd way. I say that last because while I do love my family, I also recognize that there are certain things I can never fully share with them that I could share with the others by virtue of choices made by those others...but my immediate family is part of my pack as well.

With my friends and lovers that dimension of territoriality extends in subtle ways. I am possessive of them, but also protective of them. They are mine because I love them in such a deep way, yet really I can't fully possess...I can only possess my feelings for them; those same feelings cause me to feel vulnerable with those people. They touch me so deeply, and so they touch my emptiness and in touching that simultaneously show me a feeling of love and warmth and also remind me of that emptiness. As I learned this last year, love is a terrible force...this added layer of recent realization shows me how incredibly vulnerable I am in my choice to genuinely love someone.

Emptiness is finding something or someone who speaks you to on a very deep level, touching those places where you feel empty and bringing something to those places, while also emphasizing that same emptiness in a subtle way. Or it is finding someone who speaks so deeply to values that you have and realizing profound joy and gratitude in finding this person while also working on accepting that how often you physically share space with this person could be very limited? Emptiness contains fullness even as it embodies emptiness.

I meditated tonight (Nov 25) on my territoriality and my tendency to give up if I feel I/that territory isn't valued. It was a meditation on emptiness as well. My tendency to give up is that emptiness, the painful resounding feeling of being rejected again in some form or manner and so withdrawing myself away from that rejection. If s/he/it doesn't want me, then why should I continue to show effort? I want to be wanted, as much as I as also want to show my own desire for someone. I recently noted how I never really felt I'd had anyone fall in love with me, anyone show a level of desire FOR me that hadn't already been shown significantly in advance by myself for that person. I can think of one exception, but given how that turned out...Ironically this is the way of all relationships...one person shows more interest initially than the other does. Rationally I know this. Emotionally, I am still that child with the sunken eyes who watched as others were more valued than he was. This feeling of having to give more in order to receive; it seems like generosity, but it masks one of my deepest wounds: That I am somehow not worthy enough of the love, friendship, etc. that I want. And it's only now that I can consciously admit I feel this wound in me, this wound which is part of the emptiness in my life. I am that wounded child that cries to the moon for solace in the night. I see that wounded child in my eyes. His fear is so tangible. He is so tired, and yet he has no trust of anyone. I think one of my favorite musician's John Terlazzo sums this child up:

I am the loss antagonized child who finds no vision in the street. There are no shelters, no places of refuge. there's no protection. There is no Priest. So I yell at the moon, "I won't be this child!" and I yell at the sky, "I give up this child tonight!"

But I can't give that child up. I must enfold in my arms, give him sanctuary, warmth, love, and an opportunity to heal. So my arms are open. I enfold him in my torn white robes and I tell him to tell me how he feels and I listen...I listen so that I can heal his wounds and mine and find succor and peace with my emptiness instead of continuing to try and give it up.

We had Thanksgiving...Even after eating so much, I feel so empty. I feel the emperor stir and put his hand on my shoulder and he whispers to me about feeling unloved. I spent a year on this emotion love, and what it revealed is the great emptiness within. In some ways this elemental working is an extension of last year's love working, which is quite natural given that this emptiness was born out of the feeling of not having love when I was so young. I feel incredibly needy sometimes for attention and I realize it is something I've felt most of my life...A child's desire to be loved and accepted unconditionally, and even now that child is within me. There's a theme of a child in this month's working...that's another direction to go in.

Nov 28th: A discussion with my therapist and some thinking about my interactions with my mom helped me realize some fundamental issues in regards to my emptiness as well as some of what I mentioned above. I realized I'm angry at her because of feeling micro-managed and smothered and controlled, but also angry because I got her bad habits. I got the micromanagement (to a degree), the money paranoid issues, etc. And I'm like, "Dammit, how'd I get those from you when I didn't come to live with you until I was 15"

Just goes to show that a person is susceptible to emotion/thought viruses at any age. It was actually really good for me to realize I felt anger toward this person, but also compassion and a desire to mediate my anger in a way that could actually help us heal our wounds as opposed to prolonging them through senseless fighting. Recognizing behaviors I didn't like from her, that I sometimes do has actually given me some food for thought on how to change those behaviors in myself, as well as recognizing how others might feel when I do act on those behaviors. I feel empowered...I also actually feel pleased with myself, because one of those behaviors, advice giving without asking is one I've cut down on a lot, because of the life coaching training I received. I can still improve, but I realize just how much I have changed and it feels really good to say, yes I can change! It's a little triumph and yet one that shows me I'm on the right track with this emptiness working.

Dec 5th. Every time I meditate on emptiness I feel irritable afterwards. The wounds have been picked I suppose. Emptiness is an ugly feeling tonight. Part of me wants to take up the knife and carve myself open, creating a display of art and magic with the bloody trails I leave on my skin. Naturally some of this is brought on by the digging I'm doing into this feeling of emptiness.

For instance, realizing that the reason I observe people so closely has much less to do with interest and alot more to do with survival. When you grow up in a situation where the people around you are unpredictable in their actions and treatment of you, you try and find patterns and predictions so that you can, as best possible, avoid the worse consequences. There is some part of me that feels so angry with certain people in my life for realizing just how deeply they affected me. I watch everyone I know closely, waiting for what I would consider the inevitable betrayal. Hardly a way I want to live life, but realizing just how subtle that particular behavior is, and how much it's informed how I deal with people.

And dealing as well with the awkwardness of being direct, to a point which can sometimes work against me, because even in a culture where supposedly people are direct there's a lot more subtleties going on than what I care for dealing with. I'm not a subtle person, and I have no desire to be a subtle person, because of all the games that seem to go with such subtleties. I'd much rather just put it all out on the table. Problem with that is, when you deal with people who look for subtleties, they can't really believe that you are that direct. They look for the hidden dagger you are waiting to plant in them. How ironic that last sentence though, because one could interpret my watching of others so carefully as what I just described above. Good things to recognize, but recognizing them right now just makes me feel irritable with everyone and myself.

12-09 We are getting ready to move. I've been doing most of the packing and I feel uprooted, liminal, neither here nor there, nor anywhere. I feel alone. I know once we move and get settled in that I'll be fine, but moving is a strange activity.

On top of that my adventures in hopeless romance have continued from last month, leaving me still feeling unsatisfied and a little bitter. I confessed to my wife that I felt I'd been given emotional blueballs, earlier this month because of different situations with different people. Yet I have no one to blame really, other than myself. It is I who puts myself in these situations. It is I who chooses to foster some hope that this time said person will actually feel interest and want to reciprocate. It is also I who is too direct, perhaps, for my own good. And there's still just a bit of guilt from last year and some secret part of me which says, "Don't you deserve it after what you did?" That guilt still lingers. It's becoming less. I'm forgiving myself more, but there's still that part of me which is angry at myself. And so perhaps that part is both masochistic and sadistic and enjoys putting me into a situation where I twist in the wind of longing, wanting some connection that seems, at the moment, to be denied. And yet I can't help but think that this isn't just on me. In only one case was the person I was interested in able to be direct and upfront and explain that she couldn't reciprocate. That act of kindness (and it was kind of her) means so much to me...it helped me see a new level with her and appreciate her further because she didn't feel need to play a game and see how long I'd twist...

Looking at this from the perspective of emptiness, I ask myself: What will finding "love" with any of these people do for you? What need does it fulfill? What does it block? How much does this need cause you to limit yourself because you perceive these people in a particular way?" All very rational, good questions. Emotionally working toward the answer however is a bitch. However, I think working to that answer will pay off, both for myself and my relationship with myself, and for future relationships with other people.

Dec 11 In thinking about what I wrote above earlier, and actually feeling it as well, there seems to be a need to find some kind of acceptance, some place where it's always warm, filled up, perfect. A need to perfection, which is unrealistic, and yet there, because if you had a very imperfect childhood, like I did, you want to find the opposite the rest of your life. I've looked for it from other people, but I also need to look for it in myself. Last year's love working helped some with it...perhaps this year will do even more.

Dec 12 I figured out what the title is for this month: Obsession. Really commenting on Aviator should've told me that, but it was made fully aware to me today until I stopped over at the place of someone I like, because I hadn't heard from them in a while and pretty much made a fool of myself. Something she said really stood out to me: "It's great that you know what you want and that you're so in touch with it, but you don't know yet what I want and where what we have between us will go." And she's right...and I realized that I had, once again, let my emotions get the better of me. I let myself become obsessed with a particular desired reality, over being open to what could occur. A lust for a result, big no-no in magic, and here I am doing it. I can tell you why, but it doesn't excuse it...It does illuminate into the emptiness though.

I was thinking about it on the way back. If my emotions are gateways into emptiness, they are also gateways for emptiness to express itself and obsession, to me, is an expression of emptiness. If you've watched Smallville, you've probably noticed that as Lex becomes the "evil villain" that he becomes, he also grows more and more obsessed. That obsession is what leads him down the dark path he goes. He can't control his emotions or desires...they rule him. And I can sometimes be obsessive myself. Anyone can, but since this is about my magical journey, I'll focus on me. To me obsession is the loss of control to emotion...it's where emotion takes over. When I was young I didn't feel emotions. I repressed them. It wasn't until my late teens and twenties that I really began to feel emotions and then they overwhelmed me. Even to this day, as is obvious by what occurred, I still get overwhelmed by those emotions. I've learned how to feel them and yet control the expression of them to some degree, but today illustrates a way to go.

In playing Kingdom Hearts again, I see a similar vector to Lex and myself. The villains become heartless when they let their emotions control them. They allow the emotions to take control to such a degree that they lose perspective. The heartless is really an embodiment of raw emotion, while the nobody is an embodiment of intellect.

So where does this leave me? Besides feeling humiliated and unhappy with myself, it was a good cosmic slap upside the head today that I'm still looking to much to the external. Don't get me wrong I didn't think this person was going to take away my emptiness, and yet on an emotional level my feelings came out of this desire, this need, this whatever. I've spent the last two months trying to get involved with someone or another...it's been a fairly mindless activity for me, benign in a way, but at the same time not so much because I am hurting. But that hurt has really been caused by myself, by trying to find something with someone.

It's time to shift focus. No more looking for other relationships until I can get a better handle on my emptiness. It's time to start some other meditation techniques I have access to. Do that, work through this feeling of need and desire and go from there. It takes a while, but yes I really do learn lessons eventually. We are moving tomorrow. I'm going to post this today and start the new month off when we get internet access again. And please wish me luck with this emptiness working...it's just as hard as the love working was. This month really kicked me ass.

Clock time and natural time

I've been thinking further about natural perceptions of time vs clock time. Jean Houston, as far as I can tell, was the first person to overtly note a substantial difference between clock time, and natural or internal time, in her book The Possible Human. However, As I've been musing on this subject, I've also noted that even in everyday consciousness the perception of time can vastly differ depending on how time is measured. Let me give you an example. An acquaintance and I were discussing the formation of modern education in the U.S. the other day. The modern education system was developed during the industrial revolution as a way of moving people out of an agrarian approach to life and more towards an industrial model. In an Agrarian approach time is measured by when the sun rises and sets. It isn't parceled down into hours and minutes, and instead is much more rhythmic, in tune with the day light. Now take people out of that approach to life and put them into a factory, and you end up having an issue, because the way those people approach time affects how they approach work. To get around that you put them in a setting where they are educated about time through the example of having periods of time that are used to measure how long they are in class and how much time they have for a break. And then afterwards they are trained for a very linear approach to work. You have only to look at today's average work day to see this in effect. So many minutes for a break, so may for how long you work, the rest you schedule what else you want to do.

That conversation came up in way that I'd say was odd, if it wasn't for working with the spider goddess of time. Ever since I worked with her, she's been showing up in different ways and while I didn't see her when I was having this conversation, I definitely felt a divine nudge that there was a lesson here, and was reminded of my classes at clarion, where this very subject was discussed at some length as to why classrooms are arranged the way they are spatially...it's a factory setting. Students lined up in rows, ready to be processed and put on the line.

I've had a few moments of alternity, where time has seemed to stretch out. I get that every so often in general...time expands, my sense of possibilities changes, everything seems elongated, crystalline, fitting together perfectly. I'll see it occasionally as I drive, but sometimes as I walk or doing something else...time stretches out, becomes a parchment of silver webbing, shining strands of possibilities, and the sense of time changes, becomes much less overt. It's only when I look at a clock that I'm really brought to a linear awareness of time. The clock constrains, restrains, and otherwise confines a sense of time to a very immediate moment. I look at the clock and I see a specific time: 9:29:39 and only that moment exists. Everything else, all other possibilities fade in the glowing green digits of time that express exactly this one moment of linear time, which my entirety exists in.

I can see why clock time has become so prevalent, so important to the work world for instance. It is the engine which drives people to perform for whoever they work for, the way of rating the exchange of life for the means to sustain that life.

Yet how much is missed out on in the obsession of clock time, when we lost the natural rhythms of life to the growing gleen digits that mark out how much time is left for a person to work, or for that matter to live? Where is the seamless experience of time as not just one moment, but a sea of infinite possibilities, or the silver paths of the web the spider goddess lives in? We find it when we can let go of clock time, let go of the need to look at the very face of time that binds us...When a day becomes much more than just one hour passing after another...it becomes full of possibilities and adventures and so much else.

Give me natural time any moment of the continuum

Some thoughts on physiology, entheogens, and awareness of time.

I've just started reading Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream: a day in the life of your body by Jennifer Ackerman. I'm already intrigued by what I've read, but in the first chapter she notes that there is a set of neurons that comprise the master clock in your brain, which basically dictates the rhythms of time for the body. Last night when I was having my entheogen experience, my perception of time changed drastically. Time felt elongated, slowed down, stretched out. Even my perception of light was stretched so that the light moved much differently than it normally would. My circadian rhythm had been changed by the entheogen. And this interests me, because how one's physiology reacts to any substance can dictate not only the health of a person, or the awareness of time, but also the rhythm of that person. My awareness of time admittedly also might've changed because that was what I brought into my inner journey, but nonetheless I have to acknowledge that my internal rhythms were influenced. This same distortion of time has happened with magical workings and meditation. While not necessarily as visually stimulating as my trip, my awareness of time changes a lot when I meditate. I will sometimes think I have been under for hours, only to find out I've been under for twenty minutes or a half hour. This recent experience as well as comparing notes with my meditations has made me wonder just how much our perception of linear time interferes with the awareness of biological time. When I measure time from a biological perspective, from a rhythmic awareness it seems to be much different from the ticking of minutes and seconds that tells me what time it is on my computer. It's a possible angle for further experimentation.

Speaking of possible angles for experimentation, watching a friend and former student doing her work with with the element of darkness and specifically with Sora from Kingdom Hearts decided me on utilizing the Kingdom Hearts Video games as part of my work with emptiness. Yes, I know quite profane, but also quite useful...the metaphysical aspects of the Heartless and nobodies is untapped as yet, and it could also be an excellent exploration of projective identity and personal narrative as a pathworking, similar to what The force unleashed inspired in me for working with the Emperor as an aspect of emptiness.

Entheogens and emptiness

Tonight I went over to a friend's place and utilized an entheogen. It's been about ten years since I've done it. The first time I did it, there was no spiritual purpose for doing it, but tonight, I had a specific spiritual purpose in mind.  I pulled out my two tarot decks and did a similar working, and while doing that I drank orange juice which contained the entheogen in it. I wanted to see what the experience of walking in the silver web of time would be like with the entheogen. Right now I feel like everything is an illusion, and that seems to have been the tone of the trip throughout the evening. I evoked XaH, Thiede, Purson, and the Spider Goddess of Time as I ingested the brew. I also invoked my future self, the Master of time. As I was writing down the results of the reading, perhaps twenty minutes in I began to notice that it was hard to write. I frantically finished scrabbling my notes and then put my hands into the prayer pose to start working with the silver webs of time. As an interesting note, I noticed that my train of thought became very cyclical and spider web oriented throughout the entire trip. I recall one of my fellow journeyers pointing out that what you brought into the trip is what you got out of it...echoes the sentiment of give to get.

My emotional spectrum was all over the place. I think a lot of my inner demons took the opportunity to come out and play tonight. I saw a lot of control issues and ego issues played out emotionally. Not horrible either to experience those and realize how much they sometimes inform my choices and actions. It actually showed me how strung up I can get sometimes about  the choices of life. Also the spider goddes of time devoured me at one point, or at least came close to it. She ate most of me, but left a small part behind and I regrew. I felt purified after she ate me...it was as if she ate the parts that were trying to control instead of just letting go and feeling the trip.

Physically, I felt like I was getting made love to by the music we listened to. I felt so damn good...it was like having a really good orgasm, except that it lasted for hours and hours. Also my feeling of time elongated, so that minutes seemed to take an infinity to occur. My perception of light became perceptions of web patterns of time. I wasn't so much weaving them as I was becoming them. I became this great spiral of time where I could traverse the web and go to different points.

One thing which really stands out me is that at one point I realized how instinctual every thing is. Basically I couldn't rationalize any of my choices. I recognized the instinct that informed each choice and saw each choice purely as an instinctual response. At another point I noticed how long I took between breaths as well as how heavy my body felt when I took each breath. At yet another point, the light seemed to elongate...and when I smiled or moved I felt incredible.

Remembers another point, where I pointed out to my one friend that he was wearing a sleep mask. He slipped it off and smiled...everyone moved in slow motion, jelly like in the flow of the concentric webs of time.

The final phase, which I'm in now, has been an odd experience. I'm basically observing myself doing things, talking, eating, whatever else. I'm cognizant that I'm doing the action, but it almost seems like someone else is. What's really been odd is that the observer part feels as if it's a step forward in time. So I feel like I know what Lupa will say a second before she says it. It's like everything was rehearsed in the lines of a play. I could predict what would happen and then it would happen. It was an odd experience of time to have because I did feel like an oracle. There's a part of me which is currently questioning whether I'm really writing this post or if it's just an illusion on my part.

I'm feeling really mellow at this point. The emptiness aspect of this experience really involved the inner demons coming out...maybe, or maybe it's this feeling of mellowness, or maybe its something else. Regardless, I feel very mellow, very relaxed. I think I will enjoy that for the rest of this evening. I may try these again in the near future for another space/time experiment as it proved fruitful in terms of experiencing the silver web of time.

Book Release: Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick

Immanion Press has just released Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick by Frater Barrabbas. It's the first book of a trilogy he is offering on ceremonial magic. I really enjoyed his previous book Disciple's Guide to Magic, and also enjoyed reading this one when I copy-edited it.

Space/Time Tarot/Deity experiments

I decided to do some space/time work with tarot cards after finishing A Brief hirstory of Time by Oryelle Defenstrate-Bascule. In his book he'd explain some of his own space/time tarot techniques and it reminded me of some of my experiments with space/time tarot, which I'd done a year or so back. As good as any reason to break out the cards and do some further experimentation as well as deal with a few gnawing situations in my life. As Oryelle points out and I have pointed out as well, tarot isn't just for divination. It's also for conjuration. A reading provides you more than a glimpse of the future...it also provides you an opportunity to manipulate the possibilities presented to you. I used the voyager deck to create a magical circle and an evocation triangle. The magical circle and triangle is based off the book Portable Tarot by Donald Tyson, but the technique described here is an extension of his concepts into my own style and experimentation of magic. Here's what it looks like (Note you can also click the link to see the full picture):

The aces are in the center. They form the elemental foundation. On top of them is the card, which represents my current self. My presence is the Hanged Man. The outer circle is the trumps cards used to create the magical circle or tarot temple or whatever else you want to call it.The row of cards above are trump influences I am relying on. All of them were appropriate as gateways and power providers.

The summoning Triangle is the Priestess, the Fool, and Space/Time. Normally the Hanged man would be part of the Triangle, but I replaced him with the Priestess card, thinking it appropriate, plus the Hanged man is the presence of me. The Master of Worlds is the Future self I picked for myself. I thought of going to the usual card, the Woman of Crystals aka the Gaurdian, but I realized that didn't feel right, so I randomly stirred the voyager cards until my hand came to that card, which said I am the future of you. I realize now that the Guardian card is no longer representative of me. She was the guardian of my lies, illusions, and delusions which Babalon stripped away from me this last year. The presence of the Hanged Man is that which stares into the emptiness of zero seeking answers while submitting to the suffering necessary for achieving those answers. That suffering, for me, is really the emptiness work and the work with my past, with the roots of all that has haunted me in this life. The Master of Worlds is also the Master of time, but to master anything, you have to submit to it first, surrender to the flow in order to understand the force and manifest a movement that goes in sync with others. The master has surrendered to the emptiness and so understood it. He is me after this year is finished, or at least a possible variant of me.

I did the activation of the circle as well as the invocation of the future self into my present self, asking him to guide my hands for the reading I was going to do. I evoked the spider goddess of time, Purson demon of time, and Thiede the Dehar of space/time. I also evoked Xah my Personal Daemon and fox spirit and guide. Each of these beings are essential to my mythology of time. I wanted their presence and guidance in the working I was doing, because I wasn't just doing a divinatory reading, but actually a conjuration across the silver web of time. Below is a picture of me meditating with the forces that I'm working with:

I felt my older self lay his hands into mine and I shuffled my Alchemy deck and created a reading specific to circumstances in my life, both present circumstances, but also seeking for the person(s) who are part of a very specific magical working in my life that is yet to come, which this emptiness working and the love working has been a prelude to. Below is the cards pulled for the alchemy deck (Note you can also click the link to see the entire picture):

You can see most of the cards, though one got caught in the glare of the light. The Three in One, in the center, are present situations in my life. The two cards above and below the three card spread are current potential factors I can use that also involve what it is I'm seeking for. The card to the left is the past, and aptly reflects who I was. The cards to the right is an action to take as well as the desired reality. This not justr a reading...it is actually a specific working, a conjuration of reality, which utilizes the principles of the cards to manifest specific goals. The last time I did this type of working, was for Leisa Refalo's Podcast on Tarot and the magical working I did has come to fruition and continued to manifest since then. I mention that because I want to emphasize the dynamic nature of this working. It isn't a divination...It it a conjuration of potential that is manifested into reality. It does provide necessary information for how the conjuration will manifest, while also aligning the realities into one. It's also a kind of retroactive magic, because I'm using my future self to guide my presence in manifesting this potential into specific reality.

After I did this reading, I then spent some time working with the spider goddess of time in particular. I asked her to show me how to weave webs of potential into reality. I put my hands together as if in prayer, but as I looked at my hands, I felt the Astral fingers of each hand go through the other hand, so that I held my physical fingers in prayer, but held my astral fingers in a kind of V and used both sets of hands to weave the silver strands of time into reality. She guided my weaving and as I looked into those hands, I began to see a flickering of images that represented different potential realities. I started weaving the images into the silver webs and then cast the webs into reality. The webs of time would take the images of the possible future and meld them into reality. Below is a picture of the prayer pose I was doing. Obviously you can't see the astral fingers, but it gives you an idea of what I was doing on a physical level:

When I finished with the meditation, I thinked each deity of time and then thanked my future self. I recorded the cards and the specifics of the reading in my personal journal and then undid the temple, releasing the silver webs into reality. I'll be experimenting with this technique in more depth and there will likely be an article about it in the future, but I also wanted to show a work in progress as it were as well as how I do some of my space/time magic work. This post will likely end up in my book on identity and magic, as a lot of my research and experimentation is involving a lot of space/time work. This is a small example of that work.

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Review of A Brief Hirstory of Time by Oryelle Defenstrate-Bascule

For any chronomancer out there, this book is a must read. Not only will it put you in touch with the Spider Goddess of Time, but it also demonstrates experimental magic at its finest. Oryelle presents some very intriguing concepts and ideas about time magic. I found it hard to put this book down as I was enthralled by his ideas, as well as noticing some intriguing synchronicities in our work (which isn't surprising as this seems to be common amongst Space/Time magicians), most notably the silver strands of time. Oyrelle artfully blends poetry and art into a discourse on space/time magic which is revolutionary for what it offers, namely a non-linear perspective on time as well as methods for practicing some potent space/time magic. I'll definitely be utilizing some of this techniques and experimenting with them, because I know the process described within the book works. I've already started working with the spider goddess of time and she is a very real presence. I highly recommend this book. You will get a lot out of it and also be supporting and artist and magician in his work.

5 out of 5 silver webs of time.

Past, present, future...is any of it real?

In a previous post, Xi O'Teaz asked for more details about my perception of time, wherein I stated the present didn't exist. He noted that many would argue that only the present existed, while the past and future were illusions. Intriguingly enough quantum physics seems to support my meditative trance perspective of time, as I'll explain a bit further down in this post. The perspective that only the present exists, while the future and past are illusions is a perspective that is easy to adopt in everyday consciousness, because the experience of time is a very linear, moment to moment experience in that kind of consciousness. You experience it once and then its gone, and was it ever real? It's this kind of awareness of time which leads, I think to a lot of the short term thinking that has continually created problems for the world in general...too much focus on the immediate moment, while ignoring a more long term perspective.

In the meditative trance states I've hit, the sense of linear time fades right out. It's replaced with a feeling of timelessness, or rather a feeling of time being a very fluid gel that contains every possibility you could experience and has all the past moments available as well. The present becomes just one moment among all other moments experienced. It is neither more real or unreal than any other moment.

In The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, he explains that time is a continuum which we experience all at once. A moment that occurred in the "past" is still present...in fact space/time contains and encompasses all the events that occur within it, which means that all of those events are occurring at the same time. Wait a minute, though...how do we have free will, choice, etc., if this is all occurring at the same time? Also how do you explain linear time then?

The answer to the first question is that all events in space/time are really possibilities. They are simultaneously real and not real. They exist and yet they don't exist. So how do we have free will, etc. This is where linear time comes in, because linear time is really about filtering all the extraneous possibilities and focusing on specific realities that are local to the person. Time becomes organized and laid out in a fashion that enables choices to be made, while limiting those choices. Linear time is also a way of keeping us sane, because experiencing all possibilties can make for a very heady experience, but also one where the variety of choices overwhelm the capacity to make a choice, unless you go in with an agenda focused on a specific set of circumstances, at which point it could be argued that you are imposing some linear time limitations on non-linear time in order to effect a choice.

So is the present real or is the past and future real? All are real, and all are possibilities. And we censor it all out to deal with set possibilities, to limit ourselves, and this makes sense on so many levels, and offers so much potential for how to change those limitations as well, provided we're willing to brave the wilds of non-linear time to do so. There are ways to do that...meditation being one, the creative flow another, and of course magic, but a lot of it really comes down to changing the awareness of what is possible vs what can become real.

The Emptiness Working Month 1: Rotting

In the first three weeks of getting involved in the emptiness working, I've already had so much come up. Just as the elemental love working was intense from the get go, this working has also been intense from day one. A lot of this first month has involved dealing with insecurities. Insecurities about myself, insecurities about my relationships...The gateways into emptiness. In this first month, I've suddenly found myself surrounded by potential love interests and yet none of them really manifested into anything concrete. It was if I was given a tiny taste, a few drops of water, but then it was taken away. And the ache, after it was taken away was sharp and discordant because it emphasized what was not there. In each case I met people who I could be very interested in, even feel a bit of NRE for and yet there would be something which just didn't quite work...something about each person or situation which said, "This can't happen right now." And I felt each time a sense of loss, a sense of emptiness, because I would get excited, get a taste, and then...There's a pattern there, and yes there is emptiness in that pattern.

Another way emptiness manifested into my life was through realizing just how much the guilt over last year has changed how I approach situations with people. When I was told by someone how much my actions had hurt that person, my wife, and I...and when I saw some of those same patterns repeat themselves, I realized on some level that my focus on my own desires, without any real sense of awareness for how others felt or would be effected, had caused the pain that the people. And when I looked back at not just my recent past, but also much further back, I saw that same pattern and it really hit me how much I had hurt other people because of my selfishness. I carried that guilt with me through most of this last year's elemental working...and I've carried it into this year's working as well. In an argument with my wife, it came out in a way I didn't expect...it came to my awareness, when I realized how much I didn't want to see someone else carry a similar load of guilt. And I see it in how much my actions have changed now, when it comes to people coming into my life...how much more cautious I am. But realizing how much that guilt has changed has left me feeling very sad and alone as well. We bear the weight of our crimes, but sometimes that weight sinks us, and I have sunk further into my emptiness.

And then there was the car accident, which while not horrible, nonetheless brought a sense of mortality with it, and a reminder of a much younger time and a much worse accident.

Finally, to some degree everything has lost some of it's lustre for me. At the core of myself, I feel a dull pain, a haggard kind of awareness. I feel all the cuts I've ever given myself over the course of the years. I feel all these emotions, the anger, the fear, the hunger...all of these emotions which has lead to an experience of emptiness and I realize I need to feel these, feel how I get into the emptiness before I can let go of those triggers. And some part of me feels as if it is rotting...I am in the putrefaction stage of alchemy...desiccating, decomposing, returning to the rich hummus of the Earth...part of the cycle of life, where something falls apart, in order for something else to replace it. Occasionally I look at myself and all I see is what is falling apart...The illusions feel away and what was underneath is not so pretty. I feel like one of the dragon snakes...bloated with all these emotions, growing fat on my own fear, only to have it fall away to revel the rotting core underneath.

And throughout all of this I have felt the Emperor's hand on one shoulder and Xah on the other, one whispering of how to use my emptiness, how to use my emotions and feelings to go and further into a state of mind that while very observant, is also very empty, very dark, and very alone. And XAH tells me, that the fox is about illusion but also uncovering the truth beneath the illusion. Both tempt me...both are dangerous to me in their own way...but the emptiness itself is it's own temptation. the gateway is open, and as I work through these feelings that lead to emptiness, it beckons to me...

Occasionally, I've felt moments of oneness with the emptiness, of a kind of peace. It's a rare feeling. And when I feel that way, the energy of emptiness has interwoven itself into my own energy...my hands have grown very warm, warmer than other times I do energy work, and the world has actually become crystalline...everything stands out in sharp relief...perfect.

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I went to a fetish event tonight. What waste of time. I've actually noticed that such events tend to enhance my feeling of emptiness and aloneness. I think it's because what I see is something I would enjoy, but it lacks something I'm looking for and so consequently all I really see are people going through the motions. Or perhaps I'm just consoling myself by saying that and really not admitting that what I feel is a terrible sense of loneliness that these events evoke. I see what is had and yet I cannot seem to have any of it. I look at these people and I have nothing to say or to offer. I realized something very important about how I handle social situations. Unless there is a very specific purpose to the event, it's hard for me to feel comfortable enough to initiate conversation. I'm great at in-person networking where I ask what do you do? But asking that at a fetish event does not exactly make one interesting...maybe I should start asking: What fetish do you do?

A friend of mine said, tonight, that she rarely feels the emptiness because as a priestess she is a vessel for whatever she works with. I'm not a priest. I'm a magician. I occasionally with entities or deities, but I am not filled by those deities. I'm not sure which of us is better off: Her being filled with whatever, good, bad, or otherwise, or me, empty, a person stumbling around, looking for something to fill that emptiness, which never quite gets filled.

At some point though (and this point incidentally is like now) you realize you can't fill it...that in fact maybe the point isn't to fill it. Emptiness can be about acceptance, as much as it can be about what is lacking. I can look at what I don't have and be filled with bitterness, anger, and fear, or I can accept what I don't have and let it go into that emptiness.

I've been experimenting with several meditation techniques in regards to emptiness. One I've done at fetish events, is to simply sit down and start meditating using Taoist breathing techniques and circulating the energy. This can lead to a very observant and mindful state of mind, and the emptiness ends up being channeled into energy I can feel...it becomes a current.

The second technique is one I've started adopting in the last couple of days. I go upstairs with a pillow. I have a blanket there...no heat on. I lay down initially in a pose which resembles the hanged man. One leg extended, the other bent, with the foot, placed beneath the other leg, arms outstretched, one eye open and one eye closed, One looking to the future, the other eye looking to the past. I eventually have to shift my legs...I'm still very flexible, but I can feel my age and it is uncomfortable to keep my one leg bent for a long period of time. This meditation can easily last an hour minimum, as it is very much a fluid state of being and one spread across time. Incidentally if you do this meditation, make sure no one disturbs you. The consequences can be unnerving as your sense of time is stretched out all over the place.

You basically end up drifting across time during this meditation. At the same time, all those feelings of emptiness just end up getting accepted and flow away into the river of time. I not only come away with an altered state of mind and a subconscious awareness of what to do next, and even some conscious manipulations of time, but I also come away a sense of great calm. Undoubtedly I'll be doing this meditation more, so keep your reader eyes peeled. I look into the past and the future. I am not present, because present doesn't exist, yet I have presence in all things and none, everything and nothing.

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The last week has continued in a similar vein to the rest of this month. As I work with this element the past has been dug up. That's where the emptiness began, so it's fitting I go to the root of it in my explorations of this element. I use my meditation technique on days when the emptiness particularly feels present, so that I can work with that feeling, even as I extend my mind across time into memories of future and past.

Meeting the Spider Goddess of Time

My grandmother died on Veteran's day. I never really knew her. I met her maybe half a dozen times in my life. But I did feel sad for my father, who even though prepared for it, is still sad. I don't attribute any special significance to her death in regards to emptiness itself, so much as I recognize that death is an ending, and emptiness is about endings and beginnings. She's left one form of life and rejoined the cycle of life. After I found out she died, I decided to try and use my new meditation to try and make one last connection out of respect for her presence in my life, and also a bit of sorrow for missed opportunities. I wanted to pay my respects to her in some form or manner that would let me connect with her, even though she is now gone from this plane of existence. I used my special meditation for emptiness, arms outstretched, one eye open, the other closed, my mind drifting across all time and space. The eye that is open is only partially open, with the eye-lid half closed, so that you only see partially out of one eyelid and there isn't much focusing. The focus of the eye shifts inward, so you're looking across time and space. I called the name of her once, out load, letting the vibrations carry out across the spiral rhythm of time, onto the web of the spider time goddess. I found her in memories, I found her ready to join the dead, and she asked, "Why have you come after me, my grandson?" And I said, "To help you on your way to the land of the dead, she who was and will be..." We walked, nothing said, just walking across the silken strands of time, visiting moments of intersection in my memory briefly and then coming to a river, my ancestors across the way waving to her. She turned to me and said, "This is goodbye". I said, "Goodbye my grandmother, goodbye she who was and will be..." We embraced one time, then she flowed on to the land of the dead, back into the cycle of life.

As I came back from the land of the dead, I met the spider goddess of time, weaving her web of wyrds and fate and destiny. She looked at me and said, "You are one of mine, even as you belong to the other time gods. The emptiness you seek is the doorway to our domain, to the infinity of time and space, all things and none. Use your guide and the infinity sign to keep finding us. In them is the eternal beat of the spiral rhythm of time, the silken vibrations of my web, the pulsing red star light of Thiede, Purson's promise of all secrets revealed and more. We named you ours early on, and we're coming to take our due. Seek us in the emptiness, seek us in the depths of all and none, the zero and one through which you've seen the crystalline perfection and the star eyed one who is you, as you are hir."

I bowed to her and thanked her, and she said, "Thank the one who departed. It's her gift to you." I thanked my departed grandmother for her gift of this journey that allowed me to meet the spider goddess of time.

Everything is perfect in the moment when you have no control over anything. When you surrender and let it all overwhelm you and take you somewhere no one else can go. Tonight, I surrendered to the current of time and let it sweep me somewhere I'd never gone...perfection. I lose myself in that current sometimes, whether in a meditation like tonight, or in the rapidly turning pages of a book, where I'm caught up in the creation of the time and space in the pages that turn and the words that burn into my mind a different world and place. My awareness of time slips out of linear and into a place where time is very circular, spiral, all over the place. Times' always been something very mutable and malleable. One moment shifts into another, but a moment can last for an infinity or it can be gone in the blink of an eye, which is one reason I'm fascinated with time as an expression of reality. The spider goddess of time, as grokked from Oryelle's writing and met tonight on my trance passage is enough another expression of temporal slippages. I've walked on her silver silken strands before, but this time I met her. I'm sure we will meet again.

Bits and Pieces

I finished reading Language, Thought and Reality by Benjamin Lee Whorf and waltzed right into Defining Reality by Edward Schiappa. Whorf's work was interesting and makes me wonder how much Burroughs might have read or if Burroughs came to similar conclusions about language independently. Defining Reality, by Schiappa, is a favorite book of mine and is a logical extension of Whorf's work and argument that language shapes our conceptions of reality. A definition describes agency, and can be an attempt to control the conceptualization of reality. *********

I've been thinking lately that the more a person exposes him/her self to a particular meme, the more desensitizied s/he becomes to that particular meme. Initially the meme is quite pervasive and powerful, but later it becomes boring, something all too often encountered. You begin to realize that you've been there again and again and again. What makes a meme live? The value and meaning associated with it, but desensitization can take the meaning out of a meme, make it part of the background. Eventually it fades away, the lustre lost in the glow of new memes or simply the lack of meaning a person finds in all those crazy memes. At some point a meme without meaning is a person without water. Dehydrated and dying. Memes only have value when they are provided meaning...even if that meaning is as simple as fulfilling a desire such as hunger or sex.

The dedication to the Element of Emptiness

On Saturday I finished my elemental love working and switched over to the element of emptiness. When Babalon took me and handed me off, she handed me to XAH, the fox lord. XAH is part of my personal mythology, the core of my being, a fox lord, and yet so much more as well...He is not a being I've ever written about before...I've kept him secret over the years. I suppose it's appropriate he comes out now when I'm doing this work at the very core of myself. As soon as I was handed to him, I felt him take me into the center of my being, into the emptiness, with lots of potential, but also an aching sense of nothing...this which has prompted so many of my choices. I painted the elemental symbol of emptiness on my chest and then I felt JAH possess my body. I hunched down on my four legs, one eye open, the other closed, my mouth a rictus snarl...I felt him speak:

"I am the emptiness you fear, the emptiness you seek.

I am the mote of light in the darkness that shows so bright and entices so much,

but leaves you always longing for more.

I am the fox-lord XAH, I am the core of your spirit...melded with you since you were seven...you are mine now...for this year we'll get to know each other well, and see if we can't find some peace with this emptiness.

We sat down and he took my hand and started painting, the painting to represent his face, to represent his presence:

Today, my birthday, I'd told Lupa that I'd be going on a solo hike. I normally spend my birthday with her, but since this the element of emptiness, I told her she was free to do as she pleased and she opted for getting together with a friend. As I saw her leave this morning, I felt a sensation of abandonment and XAH stirred and grinning told me, "Return to Source"

I headed out to the Multnomah Gorge, listening to Current 93 and as I sang along with the songs, I felt XAH stir again and the energy within me seemed to focus on feelings of abandonment, guilt etc...reminded me of something I was told on Sunday, to let go of the guilt others had put on me. The abandonment is a core emotion for me. My earliest memory was of being given away to my dad by my mom, sometime after they divorced, and the theme of abandonment has played out numerous other times in my life. Realizing how tied abandonment has been to my feeling of emptiness was enlightening for me...it's a gateway emotion, but also a distraction from the emptiness.

When I got to Multnomah falls, I got my gear and started to hike. I'd actually had someone recommend a place with caves for today, but I chose where a lot of people went, because many of my experiences with emptiness have happened around people, the feeling of not really belonging, of having no connection with those people...so it seemed appropiate that a contemplation of emptiness in my life start in a place with lots of people.

As I hiked, I felt empty, but also felt emotions come up. Emotions of abandonment, not fitting in, jealousy, guilt, anger, hunger...all the emotions that signal emptiness for me. And I acknowledged these emotions and let them fall away, because again they were distractions...something to acknowledge, but also something that sometimes only allowed me to experience a surface knowledge of emptiness. As I hiked further in and dealt with emotions that came up, I also felt more and more comfortable with the emptiness. I came to a point, where no one was hiking except for me and I was in a place I hadn't been and I felt a great sense of contentment sweep over me and I felt empty and it was good...it was a state of profound observation and awareness, with no mental chatter. I looked around at the way the light kissed the trees and the ground, the way the wetness permeated the air and I felt alive, at peace, empty and free. I realized emptiness itself has never been the issue...it's been the emotions leading to it, the focus on negative experiences and the association that arises as a result. I continued hiking. XAH would occasionally make himself known to me, offering bits of advice or suggestions about where I could go. The gentle humor he offered, as well as the integration of our respective energies was quite comforting. I came away with a greatly enhanced appreciation of what I was experiencing. The emptiness was a place where no thought needed to arise, no emotion needed to be felt. You just experienced. I don't think I've ever felt as close to nature as I did today. The place I was in had a twilight appearance.

I eventually turned around and came home, but I felt touched in a way that is so silent, so graceful, so different from so much of my life. I think I will learn a lot this year.

Book Reviews and a meditation on Emptiness

Book Reviews: Grammar for the Soul by Lawrence Weinstein While not a typical book that one might associate with spiritual techniques, this book proved rather intriguing because the author examines how punctuation, tenses, clauses, passivity, etc is used in language to communicate and also empower an individual. As someone who consistently is interested in exploring the connection between language and spiritual techniques, I also found this book useful for considering how I could not only improve my writing, but also improve the efficacy of my magical workings when it came to using language.

Each chapter is only a few pages long, but the author manages to include a lot of information as well as samples for how grammar can be used to empower and communicate, as well as create personal change. The author's narrative is friendly and approachable. I didn't feel lost in a sea of grammar rules. If anything, I felt that I could easily navigate grammar's laws and use them to my benefit, both for my writing and my sense of self.

If I have one quibble with this book, it's that the author didn't include exercises for the reader. While the examples he used were illustrative of how to improve one's writing skills as well as how to use writing to effect personal change, the lack of exercises can keep the reader from realizing the book's full potential, unless they are already active writers. That said, I'd give this book a 4.5 out of 5.

Book Review: The Mind and the Brain by Jeffery Schwartz and Sharon Begley

This book was probably the most fascinating book I read about neuroscience and that's saying something since I find all of them fascinating. In this book the author explains neuroplasticity and how it continues to work in the brains of an adult as well as a child. The author also reviews many of the neuroscience experiments and projects done by various people as well as how those projects have confirmed the efficacy of mindful practices in controlling our habits and thoughts.

What I found really fascinating was how the author's work with OCD patients help them overcome that affliction by learning how to rewire the thought patterns. Equally interesting is the focus on how we can deliberately change our brains not only to heal, but also to continue sharpening our skills. For people interested in the intersection of neuroscience and magic, this book is a must read. 5 out 5

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A Meditation on Emptiness

Last night, while at the Deacon X fetish event, I again felt myself feeling empty...I think it was a continuing realization that with everything going on there, I had a sense of loneliness, a sense of not feeling satisfied...a realization, again, that this emptiness is not something that can be cured by the presence of anyone person...that it is something that can be ignored or sometimes not felt, but it is still a fundamental part of life. I felt a moment of anger and frustration...part of me wanted to walk out and just keep walking...but instead of doing that I sat down, and start a Taoist breathing meditation, opening myself up to that feeling of emptiness, accepting it. As I breathed I circulated my energy into that feeling of emptiness and felt my emotions swirl into the energy until I felt very calm. And I felt the emptiness reach out and start teaching me something I could do with the circulating energy to not only calm myself, but direct the emptiness I felt. I directed it into my hands, which I would later put to good use at said event ;)

Still what I came away with is that emptiness can be worked with...not just felt but worked with, which will make the oncoming elemental year very interesting indeed.

Visualization usually isn't

One of the things I read constantly in magical, occult, meditative, and other works is the need to "visualize" things.  One visualized light, or deities, or anything else.  When it comes to mental and magical work, visualize is pretty high in the buzzword bingo game. Visualization is of course very important as any meditator and magician can tell you, but I find that it's one of those words that's misunderstood and often misused.

When the term "visualization" comes up (when it's not being thrown around casually), it usually seems to mean one doesn't just imagine the site of something, but feels something intensely - site, sound, smell, etc.  One is not "observing" what is to be visualized passively, but is intimately involved with it as if it is a real object.  In my own writing I tend to think o fit as "feeling" an object or image.

Unfortunately, more and more I encounter people that think visualizing really is just conjuring up a visual image.  It's pale, context-less, and uninvolving for the most part.  We can let a thousand images pass before our inner eye and not feel any connection to them - and connection is what magic and meditation is all about.

I think the term "visualization" wormed its way into common usage simply because humans are visual creatures, and the term itself is convenient for the act of actively conjuring up an image.  Unfortunately it's too easy to take the term literally.

Now that being said, ask yourself what other commonly used words aren't actually as useful as they may seem in occultism . . .

On the value of Inner Alchemy

I'm copy editing a book for Immanion Press called Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot: A Troubleshooter's Guide to Magic by A'Miketh, and I'm really impressed by what I'm reading, because this guy has managed to explain some complex concepts in fairly approachable language, and more importantly he's cleared stated the value and need for doing external work before getting into all of the flashy external magical work. And I have a lot of respect for that. I was chatting with Bill Whitcomb earlier tonight about how change occurs in society, and we both agreed that change takes a long time to occur when it's done right, because the best way that change occurs is through changing the internal reality of yourself and modeling that change to others. It's not nearly as dramatic or active as trying to protest political rallies or trying to throw a revolution because you dislike what other people are doing. It's a much slower form or change...it takes time and some effort to create change in yourself that brings you to healthier patterns of behavior and communication.

But I would take that kind of change over the change of a revolution, because a revolution inevitably only replaces the previous oppressors with the people revolting against them. That is to say in a revolution the only thing that changes are the people in charge. What doesn't change is how those people treat other people, because for a revolution to usually be successful, it is violent...and that same violence twists the people who beget it, so that they become what they hate, because having overthrown a previous government, they quickly begin to fear that the same will happen to them. The French revolution and the Bolshevik revolution and revolutions in China (both in the early and mid twentieth century), and to a lesser extent the American revolution are good examples of this process, where change is promised and a government is overthrown and ultimately what replaces it is more of the oppression that the revolutionaries claimed they fought against. This incidentally is one of the reasons I'm skeptical about the so-called good intentions of the activists...I see them as just another form of political extremism and should that extremism replace what we currently have, I don't believe it will be any better than what it replaces.

I favor instead a revolution that comes from within a person...a fervent desire to change the self, to recognize that to change the world around us, we must first be willing to take responsibility for our own actions and thoughts. Instead of blaming others for the woes of the worlds, we should take responsibility for ourselves and what we can change...our attitudes about others, our actions toward the environment we live in and do it in a manner where we model how we want the world to change, but without trying to force that change down everyone's throat. I imagine that may sound idealistic, but in copy-editing this book and reading this person's thoughts on how to create a system of mindful awareness and internal change mechanisms in western practices of occultism, I see more than idealism...I see a methodology and practice that can make it happen, but ultimately requires a voluntary to make it occur. I turned to Taoist and Buddhist breathing and meditation techniques to develop a system for internal work that was also mixed with Western techniques for pathworking, but in reading some of Dunlap's ideas, I also see some hope for Western occultism developing some of those same internal practices without having to borrow as much from Eastern practices.

It seems to me that when a culture or society doesn't have a system of some sorts for developing reflective and consciousness awareness of emotions and reactions and triggers, it is very hard for that society to change. And really, for this kind of internal work to really bear results, you need everyone in society doing the work...not just some monks in a mountain hideaway. This is why I hope such practices will continue to become more prevalent in this culture...so that people can really be aware of what sets them off and work on deprogramming the bad triggers, while also figuring out who they really want to be and how they want to manifest that to each other and the world at large. I think if such practices were more prevalent there would be much less violence, much more cooperation, and also much more of a sense of connection to and with each other as well as an awareness of the responsibility we have to each other, to ourselves and to the environment we live in, aka, to the entirety of this Earth and universe.

Upcoming Radio Interview with Al Anderson, a Book Review, and my own radio show

I'll be being interviewed on Thursday on the Ascending Way show via blogtalkradio. Details below Ridgewood, N.Y. -- September 1, 2008 -- Nationally renown and respected Author, Visual Artist, Magician, and Life Coach Taylor Ellwood, will appear on BlogTalkRadio's show ´Ascending Way http://blogtalkradio.com/Ascending-Way with host Al Anderson on Thursday September 4, 2008, at 2:00pm Eastern.  The Exclusive Interview will examine Taylor's outstanding contribution to the Metaphysical/Occult community and the world-wide pursuit of Ascension.   The live, Internet talk-radio show will stream from the Ascending Way program's host page: http://blogtalkradio.com/Ascending-Way .

Taylor Ellwood, describes himself as a writer, painter, collage artist, and magician. Most people who interact with him describe him as prolific, insightful, wise, generous, and powerful.  He and his wife Lupa, are an integral part of the Portland Spiritual & Magickal community.

As an author he has written the following books; ´Pop Culture Magick, ´Space/Time Magic, ´Inner Alchemy, and ´Multi-Media Magic.  He has also co-written; ´Creating Magical Entities (with David Michael Cunningham and Amanda Wagener) and ´Kink Magic (with Lupa). He has served as Editor of; ´Magick on the Edge: An Anthology of Experimental Magic, ´Manifesting Prosperity: A Wealth Magic Anthology, and various other books by solo authors.

Taylor has written numerous articles for magazines, websites, blogs and ezines, which have appeared in, Rending The Veil, Witchvox, Key 23, Key 64, Disinfo, Spiral Nature, newWitch, Konton Magazine, If...Journal, and many others.

As prolific as Taylor is, he still finds time to pursue the vocation of Counselor and Life Coach; certified in Whole Person Design Life Coaching. He provides services as a creativity and marketing coach, accessible through his website: http://www.imagineyourreality.com<

An archive will be available at the same link immediately following the show or listeners can subscribe to the archives via the RSS feed located on the host page.  Read more about the host on the Wizard Phaeron tab at http:AscensionHouse.org.

About Ascending Way

Ascending Way is an interactive, live Internet talk-radio show which focuses on Practitioners and Organizations of all descriptions who are committed to the Healing of the World and Humanity's Great Adventure of Ascension.  Host Al Anderson explores the Mission, Vision, History, Vocation, and future Plans of each guest and/or the organization which they represent. The Stream and Archives are available at http://blogtalkradio.com/Ascending-Way.

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Book Review: Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkins

My wife Lupa really liked this book and I was curious myself to see what it was about. Nature and the Human soul examines nature and how it informs and otherwise nourishes the human soul. The author breaks up the human life into eight stages and relates a concept of nature to each stage of human development. The author's argument is that we need to cultivate an ecocentric relationship with nature and each other as opposed to a selfish egocentric relationship.

After reading this book, I will say that I have a renewed appreciation of nature and why it's important to have activities in one's life that involves doing something to foster a relationship with nature. I'm not talking about a walk in the park or even a hike in a forest either...I'm talking more along the lines of actively being a steward of nature. In this book, the author argues that we need to bring nature back into our cultural practices so that we can build spiritual and community practices that focus on the well-being of all, as opposed to the material well-being of humans. The author uses different stages of human development to show what can be done during each stage of development to build such practices.

One thing which works against the efficacy of this book is the lack of exercises. While the author makes an excellent argument for integrating into a person's spiritual and community practices, he doesn't offer much in the way of practical exercises to show how this can be done. The theory is in place, but the practice also needs to be instituted to really make the concepts in this book workable.

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I recently decided to start up my own radio show, through the medium of Blogtalk Radio and it's Called Imagine Your Reality radio (after my life coaching business). Below are details for the show

Imagine Your Reality Radio Show

When: Wednesday September 3, 2008 at 3pm-4pm Pacific Time

Topic: What is the connection between Imagination and Reality?

Summary: In this show we’ll explore the connection between imagination and reality as well as show you how consciousness awareness and intention can be used to direct your imagination and shape it into reality. The focus of this first show and subsequent shows will show how you can apply spiritual and psychological techniques to improve your life and business. Listeners are encouraged to call in to the show. It will be broadcasting on blogtalkradio which can be found at http://www.blogtalkradio.com. Here is my blogtalk radio profile page

Call in Number (646) 652-2830

Follow-up to my post about my disillusionment with the Occult Scene

I've been watching with some interest just how much traffic my post about my disillusionment with the occult scene has generated. It even got linked by Chas Clifton, a pagan blogger and academic. He summarized that post as, " Aleister Crowley's legacy still poses problems for occultists -- especially when they take Internet "life" as equivalent to a "scene." Unfortunately that summary misses the point of that post entirely. I can understand, however, why he might think this was an issue with Crowley's legacy (such as it is) given my previous posts about Crowley on this blog. However Crowley is just a symptom of the problem, albeit to my mind, one of the originating symptoms. My original issue with Crowley essentially boils down to this: If after seventy years since his death, Crowley still represents the pinnacle of occultism, then occultism as a discipline hasn't advanced at all, which then brings up the question as to why any of us even bother practicing magic at all, if all we're trying to do is emulate him. Mind you, I don't believe all of us are trying to emulate him, but my original issue with Crowley was spurred on by seeing this person talked about so much, with so very little attention seemingly given to other occult authors or other original perspectives that weren't necessarily overtly influenced by him, to the point that some of these occult authors are only, in recent times, being rediscovered (Franz Bardon particularly comes to mind, though I can think of a number of others).

But after re-reading some of Crowley's work, I came to realize that my issue with Crowley was just a symptom of a deeper problem. I could see that Crowley had some valid points to make, even if the end I felt that while what he wrote could be insightful, I still don't believe its as influential as some people would argue. Before I get into any arguments with people who disagree, I'll just accept that yes he obviously has a lot of influence on you and your practice of magic. However, in re-reading his work I still don't find it very illuminating or graceful or any of the other things you think about it (so let's agree to disagree about that).

But this brings me to the problem I now see Crowley as a symptom of. Crowley's image, his notoriety is to me symbolic of the problem I perceive with the occult scene. I honestly wonder if people would find his work as influential if he didn't also have that bad boy image that he has. In other words, I think that the image has overtaken the content. And given that there are no other occult authors that really have that kind of notoriety, a further question I find myself asking is, "If another occult author had that kind of notoriety, would people read his works in the same way...would the image influence how the content was perceived?" Now someone might say, "Hey it's not fair that you assume that Crowley's image influences my reading of his content." Yes it may not be fair, but it is a valid consideration to bear in mind. Does Crowley's image overtake, overshadow, and consequently influence how his work is read and/or practiced? Is Crowley the best role model of a magician that we have? Should he be a role model for us? But it doesn't end with Crowley. The problem here is how much is the occult scene invested in image opposed to content (and who decides what is image and what is content?)?

When I talk about the occult scene, I'm not just talking about Crowley and I'm certainly not just talking about the internet occult scene. The Zee list was an excellent example of what I considered to be part of this image problem I've talked about, because on the zee list what you really had occurring was a lot of chest beating and posturing over who was the uber occultist of them all. What didn't occur was a lot of sharing of ideas or experiments. Some of that occurred, but most of the time you had flame wars erupting...and to a lesser degree this also occurred on other e-lists. I can't say if it's occurred in recent times, because I'm not on any of the e-lists I used to be on. I stayed off them when I realized that any experiments or work I was going to do would probably be best shared with only a select group of people.

So dear reader, at this point, you might ask, "So why are you feeling disillusioned?" And my response: "Is occultism as a culture about image or content or is there a good balance for both?" I think of Generation Hex, the anthology edited by Jason Louv as an example of what I'm asking about. Because on one hand it represents a snapshot in the lives of certain people and their pursuit and practice of magic, and on the other hand it also represents a method for marketing the practice of magic as something cool people can do. It's a cultural text that offers us insight into why people decided magic was relevant to them as a practice and as way of connecting with other people, etc, but it's a statement of how magic could (should?) be perceived.

And then too my disillusionment about occultism comes down to: "What does doing all of this stuff really do for me? How is this really changing my life?" I have no doubt magic has changed my life and changed it for the better, but in considering questions such as those, I also consider the role of occultism as a culture and as a practice in my life. Is the practice of magic just a practice that allows people to connect socially or culturally? Is the practice of magic an elaborate social schema for interaction with certain types of people? Or is there more? I can point to my own experiments and say yes there has been more than just a connection on social or cultural level. But when I look at occultism as a whole, as a culture, I'm asking, what are we practicing magic for? What is the purpose for practicing magic? How does this practice benefit us as individuals, as a cultural group, or humanity, or the Earth, or the universe? What is the significance, if anything...or is it just image in the end?

And to be clear I'm not commenting on the practices of others or your choice to be influenced by Crowley or whatever else as a way of dismissing it. To quote a tried and true maxim of chaos magic, "Whatever works for you" I'm really commenting on all of this for myself, as a way of looking at how I situate my practice of magic into my life, and into my interactions with the occult community and culture. I'm seeking answers to my questions, because those answers will really shape the direction my spiritual path goes into, as well as how and if I continue to take part in the occult community. Posting it here is the opportunity to articulate my feelings and concerns, to get some distance from them, to come back with a different perspective down the line. What answers I get, which could come from commentary that others offer, still are answers I have to find on my own. I suppose you could my disillusionment my spiritual mid life crisis. It's not necessarily a dark night of the soul, but it certainly is something to me...and that's just fine, because it means something is happening.

On the Art Of Return

The last three years have been quite busy for me, and there's aspects of my meditative practice that I minimized or ignored (at times while starting other practices), so I've engaged in a comprehensive effort to return to them. A lot of my work involved abdominal breathing and energy work, which required gradual build-up in order to realize (with deep abdominal breathing your entire breathing changes).  So my first goal was to merely repeat my previous works and build back up the way I had before.

And after a few months, my breathing work wasn't going so well -  I stalled out and didn't make any progress.

This was frustrating and curious to me at the same time.  I'd done this before, but suddenly I had no progress despite having done some deep breathwork for years.  How could I now be stumped?

After a lot of analysis, work, and quite a few other methods, I came to the rather simple conclusion that it wasn't working because, having achieved some deeper states of breathing, my attempts to repeat it didn't work because I was in a different state of mind.

• I'd had experiences from my past breath work that set different expectations - expectations I didn't have the last time.
• Some of the exercises i was using were frankly unnecessary - I was restraining myself from deeper practice by deliberately forcing shallower practices that I could frankly leapfrog.

In short, I was a different person, with different experiences and a different state of mind.  The proper "prescription" was not repeating my past work, but finding how to approach it in a way that worked for who I'd become.  I knew how to ride the bike, so training wheels were just a distraction.

Despite our hope for regular practice, our meditative and magical practices are interrupted at points.  However as we leap back to them, we have to keep in mind that once we achieve certain skills and have certain experiences, the paths that led us there may not be entirely the ones we have to take again.

Why internal work is so important

Yesterday I got to meet someone in person that has been doing a lot of internal work. I've been following her blog quite a bit and it was a real pleasure to talk with her about her practices as well as comparing some notes. She made an interesting comment, "I'm doing this work because now that I know what's inside my mind, I have to do it" That's paraphrased actually, but essentially she acknowledged that once she was aware of different issues it became her responsibility to deal with those issues. I agree. I feel a similar feeling of responsibility with my own issues.  Once the ignorance is stripped away I can't not act on those issues. And that's why internal work is so essential to a magical path. It's not as glamorous or splashy as doing sigil work or some form of ceremonial magic or something similarly more focused on external reality, but internal work is what allows us to develop an appreciation of our place in this universe as well as our responsibility to it...and of course the internal work is linked to the external reality. The more you straighten yourself the less need you may find for doing some of the flashier forms of magic.

Over the last few years I've embarked on a journey of internal work which has progressively taken me both deeper into myself and deeper into the awareness of others around me as well as the environment. I've consciously come face to face with a lot of toxic behaviors. And I've managed to work through a lot of those behaviors. I still am working through others (the year long love work being an example of dealing with my toxic behavior patterns regarding love and sex). It's not easy work. Sometimes I've wanted to quit or hated what I've seen about myself and yet as I continue on this journey I feel more empowered each day by my choice to stay on it, by my acceptance to consciously change my life instead of acting out the same old patterns with the same results.

To me it's striking to consider who I was four or five years ago and who I am now. The differences are profound. Four/five years ago I was undisciplined, much quicker to anger and more inclined to hold a grudge and it really never benefitted me to do any of that. It usually just created more problems. And now, while I still have some ways to go with some areas of my life, I overall feel much more stable, clam, and focused. Life is getting better and less chaotic. And I don't feel nearly as uncontrolled as I used to because I've found the strength within myself to recognize my patterns and make changes for the better. Without that internal work, I have to admit I don't know where I would be.

Staring into the sun

Sometimes I like to lay down on the floor of my apartment, with the overhead fan running, the light turned on, and stretch myself out, so that my arms and hands are placed like I was on a cross and my feet are stretched as well. I close my eyes and face my head toward the light, letting it pierce my closed eyelids while I let my mind wander on a mystical journey. I'm staring, staring, staring into the sun. There's nothing to really see, but the light provides me a doorway and stairs to climb. As I climb each step, the door shines brighter and brighter, but once I reach it and step through I find myself in another space, another time.

I'm in a place of light in all directions, all shades of colors, a place of nothingness, of zero, all about to become one. I'm in endless potential, floating, no sensation other than light...yet it's so crowded, everything grasping, gasping, desperate to become one...to move forth form potential into action, nirvana into reality.

All the little pieces fit together perfectly. Nothing is out of place because there is nothing...it's all a ghost, shades of maybe played out for all to see, but there's no audience here, no awareness, just something primal, the perfect bringing together of different sounds...a cosmic soup, but no one's eating just yet. We await, we of the potential, give us direction, give us harmony, give us life...give us a fake reality, illusion, but it's so real!

Give us crystallization, the slow hum of feeling something replace nothing, direction, zero becomes 1, becomes the arrow which becomes direction, reality manifested, so it all fits together, falls into place, perfection, dig? It's everything you wanted, everything you needed, everything you dreaded. It's reality.

Zero and 0ne. Everything and nothing becomes something when your hand stirs the mix and takes away potential, shaping it into reality, molding, sculpting, playing.

Spirit becomes thought, thought becomes emotion, emotion becomes action, action creates reality.

He;s putting it all together, the subtle strum...it's so close, so perfect...it is, we are...everything becomes and is...all else fade away...let go, let go, let go...your bliss is here, zero is here, 1 subsumed, collapsing back into zero.

Welcome back...you've become the potential of everything and nothing...no particular spark, you're floating on a sea of quantum light and hum....all and nothing, pure potential...sink, sink, sink under the waves, til you're pulled out again to become 1, direction into reality.

It just is...don't you get it...it just is...let go...you're done now...time is starting up again.

Ethics and the Development of Will

"The Will" is an important component of Western Magic, if often ill-defined in practice and discussion. I have defined it as a personal coherence, wherein ones self is so unified that its directives and activities produce clear results - be that in magic or other activities. I consider it essentially the same as "Te" in Chinese culture, the Self of Jungian psychology, or the Freudian ideal where an aware Ego replaces incoherent Id and mechanical Superego.

Building Will, exploring Will, etc. is of course something important to a Magician - that quality is what lets us achieve results as well as personal well-being. There are meditations, exercises, goal-directings, banishing of demons internal and external, etc. that people apply to clear their minds and develop that curious, important quality.

One technique I find useful in developing the Will, is ethical self-analysis and adaption of ethical stances.

Our initial ethical stances and beliefs do not come to us by choice, of course. If we are lucky our parents, peers, and culture provided us a useful ethical system and encouraged us to analyze, understand, and improve our stances. Or if we're unlucky, we get something, to put it charitably, that is less than ideal and is more pure imprinting than anything else.

Unfortunately I think a lot of us aren't overly fortunate in our ethical upbringing and experiences. Ethical situations and issues can be unpleasant, constricting, and confusing because of our pasts and our culture. Trying to imagine a sane discussion of ethical issues on American News, for instance, is something I put in the realm of "extremely unlikely".

So, let's work on our own ethics. When one examines ethical situations and choices, when one decides ones stances and decides on ones codes, one can actually have very profound experiences:

• To understand why one holds beliefs is very informative - even if at times one discovers unpleasant truths.
• To confront unpleasant situations and analyze ones beliefs and actions is informative and strengthens one's resolve.
• To make conscious decisions as to how one can and will behave - and why - is to take responsibility for oneself, providing freedom from unconscious imprinting and making choices conscious.
• To understand how ones magical system(s) affect and recommend ethics helps one connect themselves to that paradigm.
• The exploration of ethics allows the exposure of deep psychological structures so they may be leveraged, addressed, or healed.
• Exercising and developing one's ethics also lets one be "inoculated" against surprises in the future where one can be paralyzed by an unexpected ethical conflict.

I myself find a good sit-down with ethically stimulating literature to be great for personal growth - a little Confucius, a book of classic tales and legends, etc. can provide wonderful fodder for consideration and analysis.

Working actively on my ethical development and contemplation has been helpful to my magical work, especially that of a psychological nature and in my energy work (obviously). I'm more comfortable with myself, more sure of my choices, and better able to rally my resources, and feel more 'in place' in the magical systems I work within. In short, it helps develop my Will.

So next time, before that meditation or work at banishing that personal demon, consider a read of a good classic on ethics or similar.

Energy Work update

I've recently been working with Mantak Chia's Cosmic Fusion energy technique, which builds off the elemental fusion work. I've so far done two of the trigrams, and I'm going to add the third tonight with the breath work I'm doing. The benefits I'm noticing are a stronger cleaning out of the energetic and physical body, but also a condensing of the energy being recycled...so basically it enhances the elemental fusion work. I have to say that the Taoist system of energy work is probably the most thorough one I've worked with so far, especially because the emphasis is on integrating the energy work into the body. I feel the effects and my health has improved because of doing the energy work. It's much easier to maintain my energetic reserves as well. I'll post updates as I continue with integrating it into my life.