Thursday, December 28, 2006

7 Wands Cerridwen Hawk - Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day"

I did get caught up a little in the holiday fracas surrounding this commercial bonanza-bananas culture, getting a whole bunch of stuff for my lovey-dovey. I've been blessed in many ways this year, and I send out gratitude for all that I've received. There's a part of me that feels like I didn't get what I wanted--I did ask for a couple of things that my partner chose to disregard. That's a bit disconcerting. Perhaps I will have to be more specific for my birthday coming up. Some stuff I'm not sure I want, actually--do I really need to get more shirts for work? Whatever.

For the most part, however, my time over the past two weeks was taken up by reading Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. I read a couple of his books twenty-six years ago for an assignment in one of my classes. I did an author study of the man's work, and it was quite amazing to a 17 year-old fellow to read Pynchon. I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow in college, and couldn't stick with it--too many distractions. Like Ulysses, I probably could only have read that book if I had to for a class. I read Vineland when it came out, which really didn't stick with me, and I chose not to pick up Mason & Dixon, even though I've seen it marked down at various book outlets.

Against the Day wasn't as much of a challenge, and I decided to add my name to the queue at the library for this one after reading the Times Book Review's take on this tome. I was heartened that the reviewer described this book as his most accessible one.

Parts of this book are just breathtaking with clarity, and there's a definite affection for all of his characters, even the most Lynchian villian Scarsdale Vibe. I have a couple of quibbles with certain aspects of the book. I found myself skipping over paragraphs of listed details that just couldn't hold my attention. I wasn't really in the mood for those digressions, and truth to tell, I wanted to finish the book within the 2 week checkout period without having to keep the book another day beyond. One review on Amazon said "oh, read it an anecdote at a time." Ha!

(It's a possibility that I may decide I need to read this book again, as another reviewer on Amazon also had done, and had started her review of AtD by saying she was 30 pages into her second read. I have to let the book sift through my consciousness a bit before coming to that conclusion however.)

My other quibble is more major--I found the book structurally didn't have much of a payoff at the end. But that could also be because I booked through the last third of it, reading it all in two days' time. It's more than likely I missed the significance of something earlier on that, had I owned the book or had more leisure in being able to read it, would have noticed and later on gone, "Oh, of course!" It's also possible that it wasn't there too, however, and that the structure indeed is part of the point.

All that being said, I did find Against the Day to be one of the most spiritual novels I've read in a long time. Pynchon is coming at spirituality through scientific exploration. He makes no bones about incorporating the mystical with physics. I described the book as "phystical" or "mysicist" to people. Some of the ideas he explores in the book are things I've arrived at through my own strange odyssey through these days of late-Empire, and in some ways I find myself wondering whether Pynchon isn't throwing this book out there to find his own "homies." It's funny, but Pynchon was mentioned in an astrology column for Pisces that Rob Brezsny wrote up a couple of weeks ago. Brezsny had been mistaken for Thomas Pynchon in a bar, and he used that as a launching pad to ask Pisces which celebrities we wanted to be mistaken for--in an odd way, a rather Pyncho-Shakespearean notion indeed. (Should that be Shakespereo-Pynchonesque?)

For me the most fun part of the book was the Yashmeen-Reef-Cyprian menage. I enjoyed the frank exploration of sexuality and its part in pushing people toward spiritual revelation. The climax of that story I found to be quite moving, but again, due to the speed with which I was reading it and trying to balance it all with the Yuletide festivities surrounding me, I feel I missed something. Still, I identified a great deal with Cyprian's story and his realization of falling out of the relationship with the other two.

The shamanic stuff, and all the language about the other world that's at a 90-degree angle to our own is material that I have seen only wu-wu sites really talk about. The wu-wu and the scientific frequently intersect, however. Some of the smartest people out there are also the most out-there anyway. I'm "out there," though I frequently have doubts about my actual intelligence. There are some things I'm just closed to, and some of those things I'm closed to are truly unfortunate, I realize. I pray for willingness and the willingness to be willing.

In any case, I do think this is a book that should be read by a lot of different kinds of people. It does make a person feel a bit smarter to immerse themselves in this alternative history that is also in its way a history of this moment in time. There's an unspoken Buddhist notion of time in this book--all time is now sort of thing. And in the last 30 pages, a mystical event occurs that throws some light on these odd times we inhabit. I was very grateful to Mr. P for having written this, and I hope to revisit the book sometime in the future.

Monday, December 04, 2006

6 Swords Freyja Iguana - Blognomie

Haven't really felt like showing up to this ol' blog much lately. I go through cycles, and I recognize I'm in a hibernation mode.

Anyway, here's a poem I wrote and I hope to write 3 or 4 more of these:

Happy Christmas Poem #1
Let’s pronounce the word with a Spanish “c!”
“Deathember” would seem the best utterance
of the twelfth month’s name to fit its own taste
of festivity. Yes, we do protest
cherry and kelly favor as pretense
for that fantastical warm glow imagined
de los Navidades gone by, homes
revisited and remembered, faultless.
As if parents, siblings, various loved
ones never screamed a red rage, nor green eyes
envious, dripping venom, comparing
inside their tormented and holy minds
their own paltry gifts with that state-of-the-art
I-don’t-know-what, be-belled and be-whistled
sitting ’neath the Christmas tree, its label
addressed “To Shawn From Santa.” Oh, all the
“But what about me’s?” that dance in their heads
Indeed, remember the brave front put up
when Dad gave Mom a broom, promptly thrown out
into the snow, with Dad soon following?
Oh, certainly—a gay old time had by
all, right? Nothing to watch here, kiddle-kids!
“Merry Christmas?” my ass! Better to say
“It’s rough out there, call if you need back up.”

Thursday, November 09, 2006

2 Cups Hades Bear (My Mayan Birthday)

Also known as 6 Cimi, aka Death, but also known as "Transformer" and "World Bridger."

Couple thoughts about the election. I don't know what to think, honestly. Part of me is so underwhelmed, and part of me is relieved the democrats won. In the long run I don't think it makes a lot of difference though. I have been musing about whether "political power" is an oxymoron. The metaphor that comes to mind is that it's sort of like my allowance I got as a child from my parents if I did my chores. And there were all sorts of things my controlling parents built in to the system to get what they wanted, but essentially I was an underpaid slave. I'm like, "oh gee, great I get a vote, huh? Can I have $5.25 more now?"

My boyfriend give me a bit of a hard time about the fact I'm not registered. I conveniently let it slip my mind, but since I got suckered into voting in the 2004 election, I'm not sure I want to go back to that place again.

In that dismal event, I remember trying to send up a wish-bird to help John Kerry stay the course in challenging the fraud in Ohio. When I sent the bird up into the air, I fully expected it to head in a generally northeasterly direction. Instead, I sensed the bird got "batted" southwards. In fact, I sort of felt that it "popped", because he had of course already made his decision. My effort at sending him some positive intention was for naught. When it came out that he had conceded the "dyslection," I marveled at the event of my wishbird pfffftning into zilchhood. I simply knew, and realized this is all cuntnoise signifying vapors--the demicans and the republocrats are nothing but oligarchs and reptiles.

The other night I was at Valentine's on New Scotland Road and was gratified to hear that Dan Wilcox is someone who also sees that voting is a sham. He has a great little poem inspired by Allen Ginsberg, the title of which I can't remember. But the chorus is "Don't vote, don't vote, don't vote, don't vote, don't vote--it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax!" He doesn't know how grateful I am to have heard him perform that lovely piece! I start to feel a bit lonely out here in this corporate wilderness in which I half-heartedly partake. I pray for imagination to be able to move into the world beyond my wildest imaginings.

Four of my poems are published in "Other: Six" by Albany Poets. In my mind, it's really two--Toxicities #1, #2 and #3 are part of a seven-part poem, and I'll send them the other four for the next issue. In the meantime, I'm looking into learning more about shamanism. Jody's sister is being trained in that stuff, and I'm thinking there's something there for me. Don't exactly know what it is, but I read about something I need to do for myself. Once I perform these exercises inside sacred space, I will report what I learn.

Regardless of whatever else, sacred space is molto importante. I carry myself in a sacred bubble every day. That's what I see anyway. I make it thus.

I hope I can blog more. My energy right now is all over the place. Today is a burner day, of course, it being my Mayan Birthday and all. Still, I'm excited to be in this place and grateful to be alive and to have the awarenesses and interests and intentions I do.

In Lak'Ech.
Many Blessings

Friday, October 20, 2006

Princess Disks Vesta Beaver - Two Poems

“Love Poem to You, Another Myself”

We have this disease inside us, you and me.
It doesn’t have to manifest itself.
Diet, belief, behavior, activity—any
Can spark the monstrous addict lurking
Within every cell of the corpus, and contagious
As cholera, it affects much more than you
Or me alone. We move inexorably now
Toward an endpoint of this phase of human
History, where enough of us must change
Radically to continue the species. Else all of us
Shall perish. No great loss really, considering
All our kind has done in its traumatized blindness
But sad too, in the sense of all that Could Have
Been. Even though I urgently want you to get
The message, there’s not much I can do. I pray
That you awaken to a self-chosen God’s will
For you, delicious creature unaware of how special
You really are. Can I transmit the mirror back
To your unseeing, donkey eyes, stubbornly
Braying for me to quit regarding you with loving
Intentions? Is there a way to burn through layers
Of scar-tissue, your hardened armor of socialized
Domestication, wherein you are capable of acts both
Ruthless and kind, both craven and compassionate?
Maybe not me, maybe someone else will come along
And in that exquisite, unguarded moment
Touch the radiant divinity within that points
Both of us toward an integrated blissful Now,
Where we remember our connections to each other;
Where we recover everything being all right;
Where we rejuvenate the Eternal Alignment of Our Souls…

**************

“To Jody”

I wonder if you recognize yourself
in me, as I do you. Oh, lover.
I see a luminous essence seeking
to bridge the celestial with the mundane,
the spiritual and the carnal, to see
the two as one. I marvel, terrified
that you thrill at the fights. And yet don’t I
seem to have a little thing about Death
myself? Sometimes even longing for my rest
Eternal? I’m not about to commit
to irreversible action, don’t fret it.
There’s some workings I still need to unfurl
into this twisted plane. We are here, you
and I, as emissaries of the Source of All.
But as I awaken to my true nature, Dear
Heart, I see that holding title to this form
is not the highest priority. While I
stand and sit and fuck and eat and drink,
shit and piss and sleep and work and rest
I will keep my gifts in focus, one
of which is our tender interaction
and I will work with Divine spirit and create
alongside the Holy That, with whatever may
from my intentions and actions issue forth.

I trust, sexy lover, you are doing the same….

Monday, October 16, 2006

Knight Disks Persephone Goat

I've been in a bit of a torpor/whirlwind since returning from NoDak. There really is some sort of mojo that I respond to in the plains that I don't understand. When I go to my power place, I go to a place that's not unlike a more marshy NoDak. Perhaps on some level I sense that the lake itself has some amazing power in the situation that is my life. In any case, I felt a little twist in my heart when I got in the rental car to drive back to Fargo and board my plane.

Work has been mondo busy of late, and I realize that while I wasn't at work, I really wasn't "on vacation." This past weekend, Jody and I went off to Burlington and that felt more of a vacation than my entire trip did, with the exception of the driving across the state which I absolutely loved.

I have a lot to post, but I feel a need to let things sift a bit so that I might focus. I don't know when I'll be returning to NoDak, but I do intend on going again perhaps in the summer of next year. Provided things work out along those lines--anything's possible in this weirdass days.

Blessings.

Friday, September 22, 2006

8 Disks Hermes Gnome (Lamb)

I put (Lamb) in parens) because lately I've been getting the two guides mixed up in my head. I think I've got my head around a system now, though.

Tomorrow I'm off to Devils Lake, North Dakota. The last time I was in that Christian town was during the Republican convention in 2004. Almost right after that, I went off to my first Witch Camp. That September was miraculous in many ways. I thought I might be moving to NoDak, but the Capital District of New York also captured my attention. Eventually I made my way up here instead, but NoDak is a place I believe will have some import in my future, if only because my parents are ascending in age.

My Dad has the Alz, and Mom has had to be tethered to him for the past decade. Evidently he's getting worse, and I'll be seeing firsthand what my mother has had to bear these past ten years. Eventually she'll have to put him into a home, but she's putting that day off for other reasons.

A part of me would like to live there, actually, even though I know I'd probably get bored fairly quickly. It's hard to know for sure, but I might actually be surprised and find some cultured people out in Jeebusland. I'm a bit nervous about the trip actually, much as I was nervous about my trip to the boyfriend's hometown of Fort Worth. I was pleasantly surprised there too, however and who's to say what I should expect in Devils Lake-a-Christian-town? Even if it is THE location of that infamous Jesus Camp documentary that's making the rounds of major cities across the Unraveling State of 'MerK-KaKa.

One thing I must openly wonder, however about some of the events placetaking 'round allns ussens: When will we do like Lopez Obrador in Mexico and start to create a parallel government of freethinkers? Will it happen or are we just too medicated/afraid/insane to do so? Just asking.

Hopefully I'll ponder this notion while I'm away, and I don't expect to check mah emails during thisn here vacation. Momzels and Dadzels have nary a computer twixt them. Mayhap I"ll find meself on a 'puter, but I'z likes to doubtz it. Yawynasonst, I'll be pondering that and also how the houses might line up for post-carbonic experience for astrological notions and foretellings.

Blessings to one and all
Cinnumeg!
FrostWolff!
Richard

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Empress Dian-y-Glass Butterfly - More on Astrology

One thing I wish to do for people when I consult with them is talk frankly about the times in which we live, and that I think studying the birth chart for its story can illuminate areas of expertise and wisdom for people to consider as we all negotiate the slide out of domestication and addiction.

Again, it would be for those who want it.

To those who are obsessed with their careers and their love-lives, I'm not sure that I'd have a lot to offer them. That's a superficial way to approach the craft of astrology anyway. And while I understand the notion of "career" as it relates to the 10th House, the present day notion of "career," like "nation" and "corporation", are at that same point in their history as the 8-track tape was in in 1976. In other words, just before they're to be rendered obsolete. We'll have to go through the houses and determine what their meanings will be "post-civilization."

Speaking optimistically, the 4th House will become the repository for all things civilized. The 4th House and its cusp (also known as the Nadir) represents the past and all things historical/hysterical. The 4th House corresponds to Cancer which is interesting in light of the diseases of carcinoma which share the same name. It also has an affinity with the moon, and themes of motherhood and smotherhood. Nurturance and sheltering and also neglect and abuse as well. The 4th House also relates to the Home, traditions of all sorts (whether living or ineffective), and some other soon-to-be-historical notions of patriotism and national identity. The 4th House represents the family and also prepubescence in terms of the life cycle. On the human body, it corresponds to the breasts/chest area.

As we participate in the civilization in its death throes, 8th House and 12th House issues will come to the surface, but eventually, civilization will be solely a 4th House issue. We might look to both our eighth house and again our fourth house (because the 4th house is 9 houses away from the 8th, and therefore would represent "the death of the larger system"), to discover what we have on offer for these large scale transitions. I have Sagittarius on the 8th House cusp, with Ceres located therein. Cancer is on my 4th house cusp. I can take a long view as to the nature of death and even provide some nurturance to people as they adjust to the new circumstances. My Jupiter (ruler of the 8th house in my chart) is in Aries and the 12th house, which also seems to indicate that making space for divine connection can also provide assistance albeit in an active and possibly even masculine manner. Perhaps I can be a contingent avatar of God Herself or Father-Mother God.

As far as my own reaction to the Death of the Larger System, it's deeply emotional as Cancer is perhaps the most deeply emotional of the signs. It's my personal belief that of the 12 signs, Cancer is the most quietly powerful. Leo, Scorpio and Capricorn try to throw their weight around openly and frequently crassly, but it's Cancer that evinces the still, quiet voice of authentic power. The moon is the closest body to the earth and it is as big in the sky as the sun is which is of course much bigger, and therefore much further away. The moon has a deep pull, and for me, the Cancer themes of the 4th House are magnified that much more. The Moon in my chart is in the 3rd House which means somehow I need to communicate my perceptions in the simplest manner possible, so that a child could understand them.

In any case, I'm currently using my own chart to start to come up with other understandings of how I can, as a caring craftsman working within Urania's Bailiwick, can assist others in their transition out of domesticity and to their lovely, free and perhaps feral essences. We will need to learn and listen deeply to one another, and we will need to reconnect with our Divine Natural Awareness (DNA!) and to discharge the destructive-necrotic-assasins that would wipe us all off the face of the earth.

I'm going to have to meditate on what the different houses might point post-civ'd folks toward and how the archetypal/apersonal forces as rep'd by the planets and the modes as rep'd by the signs will affect the populace. If any of you have thoughts it'd be much appreciated.

Friday, September 08, 2006

4 Wands Odin Otter - 12 Step Society and Astrology

(Wow. It was kind of fun to type "4 Wands Odin Otter"! Under the surface, there's clearly a day of mischief waiting.)

Last night, I spoke with both of my sponsors in my two 12-Step Programs. I would really like to start a new 12-Step Program for any who are interested. Interestingly enough, this fellow Casey Maddox seemed to have the same idea before me, and even wrote a book about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Philosophy-Dies-Casey-Maddox/dp/0975301403/sr=1-1/qid=1157738371/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4477561-4725417?ie=UTF8&s=books

I actually have a play about something similar. It's about a woman who hits bottom, joins AA and starts to recover and then, miracle of miracles, gets fired. She works as a paper pusher for a company specializing in selective-human-pest-elimination (SHPETM) or what you and I refer to as "Contract Assassinations." The play is called Adrenaline and eventually I will publish it through a self-publishing website. It deserves to be published, actually, if not actually performed.

In any case, I've decided to start a new blog called "Empire Anonymous" (just in case Maddox owns a copyright on Civilization Anonymous. t-hee!)
http://empireanonymous-ea.blogspot.com

Anyway, the subject of my post today is the craft-poetic language known as Astrology. I've been meaning to post on this subject for a while with all the strange news about Pluto and Ceres and the "dwarf planets" and all.

I approach astrology as a craft, not as a science or art. Crafts combine both of those, actually, and therefore occupy an intermediate place. To craft a person-worthy understanding of the birth vehicle as evidenced by that snapshot in time of nativity is not unlike crafting the stageworthy play or the seaworthy ship. It is meant to be something that will help the native possessing that fleshly snapshot a mechanism for navigating life. The building blocks of this understanding are the planets, which I would describe as nodal foci of archetypal energies that operate in a style (zodiacal sign) which has quite a bit to do with seasonal understandings of the birth locale, and also in an arena of life (the astrological house) that covers a general area as understood by its location by axes north/south and east/west. To take an example from my own birth chart:

Uranus in Virgo in the 5th house for the Native born in Denver, Colorado:

Uranus is the archetype of the originator, the somewhat removed and revolutionary genius who can intuit as well as reason possibilities into being, the archetype of the "brethrenhood of humanity" as opposed to the mere individual, though often providing a stark representation of individual oddity. In Virgo, the archetype is expressed in a discriminating and sometimes exacting manner, as would befit farmers reaping their harvests (which takes place in the Virgo month, even in Denver, CO). That being said, Uranus in Virgo can get carried away sometimes with sudden and abrupt criticisms, often unasked for. In the fifth house, this Uranus will be looking to express itself in personal and self-directed modes but calling for others' captivated attention. Because of the Virgo influence, they'll take calculated risks, but in 5th House areas--gambling, children, theater and other performing arts, attracting power to the self.

This is in any case, a thumbnail of something I wrestle with. It's affected also by the fact that Uranus is conjunct Pluto and opposite Chiron and a Sun/Mars conjunction.

[In writing this, I wonder if someone who was born on the same day and time as me in say, Argentina, would have a different solar energy based on the fact that Pisces in the north is a "winter" sign (and indeed on the day I was born, it dumped 3 feet of snow), but in February, Argentina is in the "Virgo" time when they're gathering the harvest. At least I imagine that's true. I wonder if that's how the indigenous peoples of southern hemisphere locations do their cosmic craftings.]

Anyway, I will have more to post on stuff. I'll do that perhaps tomorrow. Tschuss!

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

6 Wands Star Goddess Chimera

Toxicities
Meditations on Endgame volume I by Derrick Jensen

#1

I like sugar. A lot. Can't get enough
I trudge from Bodega to deli to bakery
and nosh on creamy high necrose
corpse syrup addiction civilization
genocide yea! Give me a case
of Twinkies, I'll kill the fuckin' world!
I taste one, I must have a gazillion.
McDonald's? I AM the 200 billion served!

#2

I love you, that's why I need you to hit
me. Rape my buttcunt. That's what it's
there for! I'm your Iraq, you can be
my Donald Rumsfeld. Daisy-cut me!
Shards! Explode your BLU-82
inside my volumnious caverns.
Aren't I here just for your pleasure?
Like a Trojan, dump me wherever. I'm easy.

#3

Dude, you don't know--good it makes
me feel, meef... When you've had a hit.
You can't. Give it. Up. Easy. No. I like
my crank. Better than sex, dude
I feel that juice give ... it's intense... heat
Such awesome. Sweet. ness. P'rm'ssating
mah beebah, 'n'... I'm -- like -- gone --
I like being gone. Better than being HERE.

#4 (with apologies to Brecht & Weill)

O show me the way to the next
Megachurch. O don't ask why. Must
not ask why. For if I don't find the next
Megachurch, I tell you GENOCIDE AWAITS!
O judge of Salt Lake Vatican,
I must now say "Fuck you!"
For I've lost my dear Pope Prada,
and must have Jesus. O you know why.

#5

At work, I surf the web and in the car
I'm listing to radio and at home I
watch the cable channels, and media
blankets my existence. Cocoon, feel
so warm inside. Katie really cares about
my zits! I know. I can see it in her
photoshopped face. Rush! He's my pal.
K-Hate, where everyone knows my name!

#6

Such a golden life I lead. I can't wait
to get to my job each day, to file, process
applications for loans, to send rejection
letters and collection notices. Why society
itself would teeter without my silent
workings. My rage is what nurses me.
One of these days, They'll give me
an Uzi for backup. Then they'll know effective.

#7

If only they'd listen to me. I know what
you need to do. I've got answers. World
would be better off, I tell you. Trains run
on time. People go where they're supposed
to. I know great chains of being. Listen
to the center-men and shut up. Do as
you're told, and don't give any lip. That's me.
I'll be the Enforcer. Grim job, but I'm determined.

****************

A Prayer to Liberate the Soul from Mere Empire

"Have you had enough yet?"
The question drops into me.
Soft ripples expand outward
and swell upwards. Salty tears
course down cheeks to Cerridwen.
Kwan Yin smiles benevolent,
at my willingness to heal.

"Take this civilization
away from me," I mutter.
Do I now dare to dream big
of life after broken chains,
beyond all pronouncements
into blind slaveries?
Wash away my addiction
the sentencing to squalor,
and the dead-end suffering.

Whatever my natural
birthright my be, I"ve lost touch.
Connect me to earth and sky,
fire and water, mystery
of center, above, below.
Point me toward the direction
and clear out scattered debris
littering my mindscape.

Help me resist continued
applied empire pressure
to forget my feet planted
on Mother's energetic
body and disembody
my own soul and self. Let me
learn to love this grand locale
in which I awaken

to cyclic celebrations
of seasons ever changing.
Somehow, I'm here to help heal
this planet and those who want
what I have. Others holding
what I want freely give me
what I need, transforming this
former husk into abundant
node of bright light, love and joy.

I radiate the pulses
into fecund multiverse
and call to me peers seeking
engaging contact, to push
forth and contain the harmful
toxins polluting our souls'
ecology, to banish entities
pathologic, sucking us out.

To connect the most sacred
with economies grounded
in the landbase surrounding.
Help me string together more
moments of a contiguous
mindfulness and to effect
meaningful change as I reach
out to touch the face of God

Herself in the mirrored flesh
that reads or hears these words.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Prince Cups Hades Dragon

(Today's a burner day. Feel kinda blegh, but I'm starting to rally.)

I was going to post another set of poems I've been writing, and I shall probably do so tomorrow. Right now I'm reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame v.1. I've read a couple of his other books--Culture of Make-Believe and A Language Older Than Words. Both were helpful in articulating some things that I've implicitly understood for a long while, that our culture is based on the continuation of abuse. If we want the abuse to stop, then it so follows we also want the culture to stop as well.

Recently I came across a luscious website in the astrology realm--aquariuspapers.com. Mr. Wilkinson refers to this age as "The Grand Irrationality." I couldn't do any better. It's pretty cool lately how astrology seems to be offering all these ways to piece it all together. The whole Pluto affair has been wildly amusing, if you ask me. Hades and Persephone are just laughing in the same way that I assume "God" laughs in the statement "Man plans, God laughs."

I'm starting to ask my dream source for actions to take to hasten the birth of the next iteration of land-based cultures. Whatever else happens, I've decided for myself I need to be preparing to help others come to terms with the difficulties that are in all our futures, regardless of what happens ultimately. I've started writing a collection of monologues with the premise that all of us are headed into "The Great Sorting" as it were. One of the characters literally puts on a sorting hat and removes it to find she's been whisked into another world for her continued existence. (I doubt it would literally be like that, still it's a lot of fun to imagine. I have seven or eight characters who find themselves in different versions of the Earth, and some of them even can look in on other iterations, like to see the fundamentalist [insert religious toxin here] world that results in new scapegoats being made with the ultimate ends of nuclear annihilation of these errant fools. There but for the grace of Cerridwen go I, eh?)

I did write a series of 7 very short works that I'll probably submit to Albanypoets.com for their next issue. The collective title is "Toxicities" and they're in response to reading one specific chapter of Endgame called "Abuse." I'll post them here, maybe tomorrow. We'll see.

Still, I would like to get back to this blogging stuff. Perhaps, now that the latest burner period has ended, I'll be able to. I don't know. I definitely go through phases with this stuff. I always want to post, but many times I just don't feel I have much to say that's worth the effort of all this typing. (I type for a living, so I hope some of you will cut me some slack.)

Monday, August 14, 2006

Ace Swords Hermes Salamander - "Indra's Miracle Web"

Indra’s Miracle Web

For the moment, we’re just numbers to some
As we waken to be stewards
To this beauteous orb
This grand planet, so majestic!
We are so blessed and don’t know it yet.
Can you now choose to embrace
All your natural birthrights
And shuck off the husk?

Getting closer, yes our time it is night.
Post-American reality
Makes its visions known.
All is changing, all is moving
Quickly becoming something else new.
What will it all come to be,
When we start to acknowledge
Just how we’re needed?

I’m a dreamer, I have visions myself
Of a time when each of us remembers
Why we are here
What we came for, who we really are
‘neath shallow and brittlest masks
I’m just another yourself
You’re my mirror and I am yours.

Drance among the trees
Skipping along with dolphins
Salamanders breeze
Crackling through air with undines
All connected we are
(Indra’s miracle web.)

Thursday, August 10, 2006

6 Swords Hades Phoenix - Lughnaghsadh!

Lughnaghsadh!

Six weeks have passed since the Sun
reached its peak from our earthsome
viewpoint. Already, the days feel so much
shorter than before. Try as some might to avoid it
Autumn has announced her timely arrival
on the shores of our Augusted consciousness.
If we let our eyes but see, the ants and squirrels
busy themselves with their preparations
for winter’s onslaught, much as our ancestors
did at one time (and our descendants no
doubt will take up again, contemporary
Grasshoppery notwithstanding). Sitting
underneath this wise Standing Person
in the midst of Albanian Washington Park
I trust in the mother of us all, this Gaia
that supports my very life, the one without
of which I am but atoms and particles
that would circulate in space without tether.
Pleromic unification around divine spark
but holds all threads together, embodied fragile
as this hirsute poet desirous of shucking
off the shorts in addition to shirt and sandals.
Our beknighted scientists, near-sighted Gnostics
of ego, have formally arbitrated that the former
midpoints, those equinox and solstice brethren,
were actually seasons’ beginnings. To differ
I beg. For really there are eight seasons,
and the one in which we are now infounded
has a strange Celtic name that looks unutterable.
Lughnaghsadh it is called, for a celebration
of the sun god Lugh. This fire festival of yore
serves to mark the initial harvests of the fields
and calls us to gather in what we have reaped
on our way to the midpoint of Mabon, fall’s
day with its equal night. Oh, it is a sweet
time of year, as the corn itself brings out
its sugar and crafts such delicious starches.
Soon the butternuts, acorns and sweet dumpling
squashes will be making their market debuts.
And I sing a song for cooling skies to become
commonplace come September, indeed the favored
turn of the wheel of the year. I smile blessings
outward to all. Happy Lughnaghsadh, one and all.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Tower Hephaestus Deer - Musings on courage

It occurred to me today that today's world is so paralyzed and intoxicated with addictive hate, that it really does take courage to love and to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. The whiny worshippers of Jehovah-Satan (Yaldabaoth) pretty much wish to remain children. I think there are a number of people within the sciences that want to stay that way, just as much as I know there are within the arts. I myself have long felt rueful about being a playwright. I wish I could do theater without "theater people," many of whom are as addicted to drama offstage as they are alive to it onstage. People who wish to shuffle off their responsibilities to be human beings just make me tired.

And they deserve my love as much as our next sick and suffering fellows do, "in or out of the rooms of [Empire] Anonymous." Alcoholics=Narcotics=Overeaters=Gamblers=Sex & Love Addicts=Debtors=Empire=Domestication=Socialization=Absence-in-all-but-Body. Anonymous.

Sometimes I wonder if I even have the strength to treat the likes of W, Cheney, Ann Coulter with lovingkindess. I know they won't appreciate it, they'll spit on it even. Try to stomp their feet in my face. And I struggle with knowing the difference between compassion and "idiot compassion," forgiveness that's appropriate and worthwhile and the "codependent forgiveness" that erodes my sense of self just to make nice and be "in-control." Sometimes the compassionate thing is to express outrage. Sometimes it's taking defensive measures, though I don't know that the Israeli rabbinical council's declamation that there are no innocents where they dropped their bombs is anything but raving madness that needs to be contained somehow.

I must strive to send blessings outward, and ask the cosmos to heal sick humanity. To be shown where compassionate action lies, because frankly I don't know. I know it's not in protesting, not for me anymore. Show me where a protest has an effect these days. I haven't seen it, mostly because the protest continues the addicts' game. Really, it's about surrender, about knowing what to surrender and how. I won't even go into "why" because that's just conundrum-in-the-making for my ever-hungry addict to play with.

There are some interesting synchronicities going on too. I've performed my "Hekate's Prayer for the Common American" a few times in Albany now. People seem to really respond to it, not just the "calling south" aspect of it--I use my body as a percussion instrument as I sing it out. They're responding to the words as well. We know we have to turn to each other to create the Big Edens that are inside us, that are immanent within. I have seen a town we future-residents call "Scanekta." I don't know if I'm spelling it right. It's funny, I moved up to Albany understanding that Schenectady was nearby, though I've not seen my vision of Scanekta there. I've met people, and I've even been able to stroll the meadows and streets pied nue and the rest of me too! In total acceptance, and even sometime lust in some of the town's more bawdy residents. In my visions.

I'm being prompted to focus on what lights me up. There will be opposition because where I need to go carries the "threat" that others will have to also look within to find the Kingdom of Heaven. I'm going out on a limb, but I say the life I want is not only possible, but it's inevitable. Others have lived it, I will live it, and I offer it up that I'm living it now. I'm all lit up.

Blessings.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

2 Wands Hermes Bear

Hymn to Hermes

Ah, winged one, I don’t know why
I should have difficulties writing
a song to you, North God of my
understanding, but they multiply.
Perhaps it’s because you’re so intimate--
such a part and parcel of my mundane
existence. I employ the mail, use
the phone, I’m always communicating
and therefore I am embedded
in a reality as Hermetic as it’s
become Hadean, Kaliesque even.
Not to worry, not you. All of it
holds information. Scientists before me
often mistook their single pointed
awareness as reality’s cornerstone.
I refuse that tortuous error,
preferring instead to inhabit middle
spaces, seeking third modes of balance
midst technique and mystique.
Your godsome semibrother Hephaestus
favors craftsmen, but so too do you
in your own way. And know this,
Hermes, I do love thee as a brother,
albeit one who’s beyond mere corporality.
I see the beings in my pantheon
and those who come to visit as brethren.
I am I hope, sensible enough to grasp
that I don’t understand what makes
us equal, especially given that this
skin-packaged ego is slated for death,
amidst this deteriorating meat space.
Perhaps I will be engendering a magic
based on the current comprehension
of the transitional and the contingent?
I don’t know much, o Messenger God
of information, knowledge and the wisdom
perennial. I evoke you in the homely tones
of prayers to serenity without even knowing
of it. Therein I humbly seek you out
as companion into this realm of glorious
births, miraculous ascents, swoop-spectacular
falls and sweet endings. Sprinkle some of your
Trismegistal dirt on this hungry body. Cause
me to sing ululating praises to thee,
O Ruler of Geminis and Virgos.
Help me to lift the five hundred pound
And reach my voice out to others.
Helper of secretaries and lawyers alike.
You are community’s deity, Mercury.
Remind me I’ve nothing of which to fear.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

10 Cups Hephaestus Fairy

I've been a slug. Summer, is well, . . . yes...

That being said, I have been reading one of the Ur-texts of the integral "movement", though I don't think that's really the best word therefor. Perhaps "amovement" would be better? to go along with atemporal, arational, aspatial and aperspectival? Just a thought since Jean Gebser created a whole slew of different terms to speak of the aperspectival mutation that has been slowly gestating inside us all since the days of Leonardo da Vinci.

I started to post something recently, and I may still post it. A meditation on the nature of time and the both/and aspect of spiritual reality. (Not "Either astrology or physics," but "Both Astrology AND Physics." "Neither religion nor science, but both, and some other things developing as well.") It is helpful to try and slog through one of these books, and come up with my own conclusions rather than sit and try to be satisfied with the likes of Mr. Wilber and others. Most people don't go back to a text like The Ever-Present Origin, and while I can see why (and I would love it if I could get into a study group with others o' like mind about this book so we can all hash it out like it was an AA Big Book Meeting), I'm really glad I'm doing this legwork myself. I'll be curious to read other "Integral" thinkers, but I'm really planning on staying away from Wilber for the time being. I want to immerse my own "integrality" into the seminal texts.

Be all that as it may, I am also interested in submitting a couple of thoughts about the weirdness in the world today, and my own reactions to various people's perspectives on the boorish behavior of all parties involved in the Middle East. I read on one site that an "integral" perspective would side with the Israelis. On a gut level, I feel this is a rationalization of some sort. I don't see the Israelis or the Palestinians handling this matter with grace or in any way aligned with divine intentions. I'm not exactly sure what's going on in the Israeli mindset. The term "mad dog" does seem to be appropriate here. It sure feels like overreaction to me. It aslo looks like a number of people are a mite quick to jump on either bandwagon, either pro-Israeli or "pro"-Hezbollah. One of the things that increasingly has irked me about looking at the eternal tinderbox that is southwest Asian politics is that one can not seem to go about looking to find out what "reality" is without being accused of being "anti-semitic." It's a word that sends shivers up and down the spine, because that's tantamount to calling someone a Nazi these days. Ironically, it's when someone is called a "Nazi" that we've been told the epithet-thrower has lost the debate. Certainly most people check out when they hear the word. Perhaps the same fate needs to await "Anti-Semitic?" One can hope.

People like William Kristol become ever like the Wizard of Oz's man behind the curtain, only it's "ignore the Jew pulling the anti-Semitic strings." As if someone's race or "sectual preference" should absolve someone of acting humanely! Does the Holocaust give Israel the right to persecute a group of people who may have a legitimate point about the land they had stewarded for over a millennia? When I think of the Balfour Declaration, personally I think of the plight of Lois Wilson writ large on the map of the world. Lois Wilson was the wife of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometime in the 1950s, Lois realized that Bill's idea was so wonderful, that she and a friend (Ann S., I believe) got together and started Al-Anon. If only they had done so in time for the founding of Israel! Some of the Anglo-American codependence might have been addressed at that time. At least it would have kept the nascent apocalypticists in check.

There's more to it than that, I realize. A certain primal appeal to the dormant thug that resides below the skin's surface and rises up in nationalistic, "patriotic" fervor as evinced in the junior wars that are sporting events and everything that multiplies in devastation therefrom, is merely accepted and built into this system rather than confronted head-on. Few of us seem ready to address this winged lizard that clutches at our root and sex chakras so that we may enter into "the brethren of humankind," to celebrate our differences rather than seeking their (and our own) elimination. That is what is so disheartening about people on either side of the fence throwing about their addictive epithets--they are blind to the mirrors of their collective Other, and because they give that shadow more and more huge power, they threaten themselves with engulfment therefrom. I wonder just how many of them are truly gone far beyond the pale of recovery and into the wild urban desert of their own auto-mechanized insanity.

Part of it is in the Abrahamic creeds themselves, for all of them enshrine this unfortunate us-vs.-themism, which is part-and-parcel of Saklasian projection. G_d/Beelzebub aka Jehovah/Satan is the dualistic yin-yang that refuses to acknowledge its other side, and so becomes like the dog chasing its tail through the cosmos. Both sides need love don't they? Both sides need to put down their bats/bombs/rocks, etc. How this is achieved, I don't know. Anyway, I have other thoughts but I don't have time right now to put them all down. I need to not be a doormat and call it as I see it. My $.02

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

4 Swords Odin Salamander (?) - Current Matters

I hesitate to put it this way, but working the 3rd Step of the fellowships allied toward recovery of our disparate split-off selves as they manifested (and continue to manifest) themselves through addictions of all sorts compels me to put it thus:

We have the government we deserve.

This isn't exactly the most original thought. Alasdair Gray averred as much in his mindboggling opus Lanark, which has been on my mind of late. I've also been letting PKD's insights about Empire--that to fight it is to become "assimilated into the Borg" as it were--marinate this abstinent and sober body. But I must surrender to the fact that even though there's a part of me that agrees with Julia Roberts ("He's not MY president"), that indeed GWB is indeed the King of my Dark Side, and as such, he is the apotheosis of all I find dark and scary in the world, or rather, dark and scary in myself.

The man is the king of projections of "the Other", and as such, he has declared me (another himself) his enemy. The violences continue to splinter and splinter and splinter, and it's kind of like the broomsticks in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which keep reproducing more and more broomsticks sort of like fractal patterns. "The Other" keeps bifurcating as more and more of us infidels are concocted through the smoke and mirrors of media-savvy.

I had this realization the past week after sharing about the toxic sludge that we're all slogging through. I know that so much of this is beyond my control, but I need to focus on what I can do through the situation. And involving my personal pantheon in the issues is perhaps the best place to start. I get inner promptings about a lot of stuff, and I've been having more dreams related to my job. Though I seem to be having dreams about every era of my life--college, high school, elementary school. For all I know, I'm having dreams about the future. Last night I had a dream where Albany, Seattle and Denver all converged into a seamless whole. Interestingly, I was headed to a mall called "Turtle Creek," which has connotations of "Turtle Mountain" to me--the Ojibwe name for the North American continent. This mall seemed to be next to the Starbuck's on State & Pearl downtown. And I was going to see a film upstairs in the cinema there. Perhaps I need to rise to the occasion and dream my wildest dreams, for recovery of my split-off selves seems to herald ever greater visions.

I've had moments in the past where I've been able to give thanks for the Neocons and their incompetent degeneration. I still have to send out even more FAG, actually probably FLAG (Forgivness, Love, Acceptance, Gratitude). Gaia loves us all, after all, even as we attempt our self-destruction. Perhaps the attempt will be successful, I don't know. The Norse had a vision of Ragnarok where only Freyja survives. Maybe I can invoke Freyja myself, or rather "Freyja Self" (ar-ar-ar!) (I think she finds that mildly amusing--thwack! or maybe not!)

I keep thinking there's more to do, though. Some things are coming to fruition. A couple of my poems will be published by a local magazine this month, and I submitted an article addressing my concerns about community to a bi-monthly gay magazine in the Northeast. Perhaps these will develop into fruitful areas of endeavor. I feel warm and juicy about it all.

When I contemplate my Triple Soul, Talking Self seems to be a rich and vibrant green! It's the height of summer, and T.S. seems to be expressing that very nicely. All in all, I feel fairly excited about life in general. Thank you Goddess and God!

Friday, June 30, 2006

10 wands Hekate Fairy - Thoughts on the Calendar & Astrology

It's been a few months since I've instituted this Deity-animal guide model a la the Mayan Calendar, and I need to say a few things about it. I'm not sure that I have the animals right, so I think I'd better let them take over and say "It's me today" vs. my trying to impose an order. I have a feeling that some of them will stay right where they are, or they'll switch around slightly. I particularly have difficulties keeping track of the 8 and 9 and 18 and 19. For all I know though, the critters might decide to totally change things around. I could use a shake up.

(I am in a burner zone btw. My next burner day is Sunday, July 2 which will be a Hades-Sphinx day. Sphinx seems to work at #16. By my calendar, my boyfriend would be an East-Goddess/Sphinx. (Most likely Athena, in his case.) But #6 might be Wolf or Bear or Otter. I'll have to let that decide itself.)

As far as the Deities go however, I think the system works pretty well. The order does seem appropriate to me personally, and that's where things should stand. Today definitely feels like a Hekate day, and yesterday was a Cerridwen day. The deities seem pleased that they rotate over 13 days.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if they also fit with the planets, and perhaps even the signs of the Zodiac. Perhaps with the addition of Ophiuchus to the menagerie, there's another level of correspondence. Again, I'd have to go with the intuitive there, and I wouldn't think of the signs as being "ruled" by the deities. There's affinity, but not necessarily dominance.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

8 Cups Cerridwen Beaver

Edit: I wrote this poem over lunch hour, and it's about today's Goddess.

"Cerridwen"

I'd like to know more stories of you,
mystery goddess of the cauldron.
The first time I heard your name, a snap
of recognition puthed into awareness.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

Yes, you had the most beautiful girl,
the son whose face only you could love.
Chased over land, water, air and ate
Gwion Bach with a flap of your wings.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

After the chase ended with stomach
full of corn, your belly later became full
with a new life, that would become he
of the Shining Brow, Sexy Taliesin.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

Mother to great bard, what else is known?
It's as if all the other legends
of your deeds fell into that boiling
vat that holds the keys to your healing.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!

I know you as Steward, the Mountain
of Playwriting. I've visited there
many times without knowing. I trek
to you, Inspiration Dispenser.

Cerridwen, Cerridwen, say your name, a talisman
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, I ask your touch to guide me!
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, bless this hand that holds pens.
Cerridwen, Cerridwen, push this hand 'cross the page.


***********

Over at astroworld.us, the latest thread is called "Had Enough?" This apropos question has hovered over the world for the past six years or so, since that fateful night of November 2, 2000 when the old fan's fecoflagellation started happening. Because of my awareness of the addiction process, I know that some people have a bottomless appetite for misery. They can't get enough suffering it seems. They're like alcoholics, but instead of booze, it's just suffering that gets them all high--though it takes more and more of that misery to get them into "the zone."

Personally, for the rest of us, I hope that fatal dosages of TheoBelloThanatoCorporate MiseryTM inoculates these people into the arms of deathelz and soon. Perhaps I'm venting a bit here, but I feel ensludged by the toxicity that surrounds us all. Am I supposed to eat all this biliousness and send it away, like shamans of old? Or am I supposed to do something else with it?

Last night I went to an Al-Anon meeting just so I could try to get a perspective on this mishagoss. Perhaps I need to go on a media fast, I don't know. It does get to be a bit much. In the meeting I realized how much of my perspective has been formed in the crucible of the dysfunction I grew up inside, that all of us grew up inside whether it had infected our families via the mechanisms of booze/drugs/compulsive eating/compulsive sex/toxic belief, what have you. Television injected the Dys into our homes, as the messenger of Empire. And I guess ultimately it really does come back to working on my own stuff in conjunction with living alongside this sick and twisted Empire that interpenetrates with my evolving-gnostic self.

I need to own that I've undergone a gnosis myself. Recovering from food addiction was the single most important thing I've ever done, and it cleared away so much of the muck of my life. I want to own my power and connect with the best and brightest future self now possible. I sometimes see that fellow, actually. For some reason, he/I look(s) like a throwback to shamanic cultures or a native medicine man. At least that's how my point of wisdom appears when I meditate on the Pearl Pentacle. This gnosis is ongoing, however. It's not something that I do once and it's done. As we say in "the rooms", I can't keep it unless I give it away.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Moon Krom Goat

"Strange Choices #1"

Our choices are so strange today.
I don’t honestly know sometimes.
Do I believe what some would say?
That I must choose security
over freedom? That multiple
options of toothpaste availing
takes precedence over water
that’s free to everyone? Scoundrels
are looking to patent sunlight
and even the air we breathe, as
if they invented oxygen!
Satan-Jehovah works overtime
to insert his archons everywhere
and pollute each mind with ego’s
gossamer rewards. I say no
thank you. Give me liberty
I crave, or the other freedom
That lies in death’s sweeter embrace.

************

Strange Choices #2

Our choices are so strange today.
Sometimes I find myself at loss.
These folks whose sole business it seems
to provoke rage, fear, despair
to pack flocks into their churches,
who bleat intolerance at us
because their vinegar language
turns us off to their Saklas-God.
Clearly a form of insanity
holds by the wee-and-curlies these
self-styled Godly ones (O whither
that most unfortunate trademark).
The thing I don't get is how
these corrupted thuglatans go
unquestioned by the erstwhile
guardians, the fourth-estate whores
seem willing to receive Reverend
Almond Tinfoilhutte-Toller
and all Brittany and Tyler
Christofascist-Whites on the air
as the defenders against fact.
"On the left, we have the ocean
and its suspicious supporters
and on the right, the Right Reverend
will assail the seas for their grievous
mischief wetness! Watch the debate
over water's ev'lest wetness
How do we curb the ocean's onslaught
wave after wave, wicked moisture
pounds at the poor beaches! Tonight
at 11, join the Dream Team
Caspar Leche and Blanche Brotchen
take on this most potent issue.
You depend on them. Bet on it."

************

Strange Choices #3

Our choices are so strange today.
Where I wish to go is oddest
I'll admit--I'm looking forward
to seeing the Tower collapse
entirely. O Salamanders
Sylphs, Undines and Gnomes, please unleash
your elemental energies 'gainst
Black Iron Prison enslaving
our hearts, our spirits and our minds!
Cast a thunderbolt at Babel's
ivories and return us all
to our earthsome origins
where we can once again steward
this mystaculous orb and make
it shine with verbundance once more.
Guide my choices toward the simpler
and the greener options. I will
write poems and plays to that end
perhaps showing what's possible
in these improbable and dark times
even as I let myself out to help
you till the soil to grow the crops,
as I exert my back to lift sacks
of grain and vegetable onto carts
to give nourishment to others
as I sustain myself. I long
to cast off my civved persona,
and be in fertile nakedness
with you in your nudity grand
on this wholesome feast of planet!
I'll admit this fondest dream
seems impossible, impractical now.
rising oil and gas prices point
attention to where and how we
grow food we need to feed ourselves.
And thus I act as if the peak
of our technic heyday is past,
and seek now to be kind to you.
Let me be the stranger, dearest
Blanche du Bois's unknown to me now
within earshot of this poem.
I hope you remember kindness
with your simple version thereof
should either of us be in need,
for even that problem upcoming
is overcome when together
we come to meet it in common.

No one's smarter than all of us.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Hierophant Dian-y-Glas Iguana

I have a burner day coming up in 5 days. Yippee for me

Here's a poem I wrote yesterday (Knight of Wands Xochiquetzal Jaguar):

Xochiquetzal

Flowers have to be tough! Who knew?
This goddess takes no prisoners,
that much is for sure. No sappy
bitch of brood-tits she! Ho ho ho,
she’ll slap me upside this empty
space I call my MFA’d head,
send me on solo committee
toward unasked-for resolutions.
Like that other Little Flower
of small-town France, Xochiquetzal
may inspire the insipid ones--
annualéd pansies, snapdragons
froth out blither-nanities
as they will. I seek thorny rose
return or tulips’ recurrent
perennial philosophy.
“Thanks very much, Quaff my fragrance,
but take care of my sharpened pricks,”
she seems to say, Aztec goddess
of spring’s awaken and budding blooms.
She stared me down this grand morning
after my Ha Prayer and writing.
Nothing hostile, but not warm-fuzz
either. No nonsense, day-by-day
growth from one sunrise to the next.
That’s what I can expect these six
weeks from Litha to Lughnaghsad
with my visiting East Goddess
who’s with me from Midsummer to
Fall’s begin. Ah, bounty! Thou hast
a lyrical and dulcet name
I trill it into this northern
air and welcome the moments when
I’ll dance naked in the rainfall
to celebrate your arrival.
Xochiquetzal, Xochiquetzal!
Bless me with your supplest strength,
Ye lover of women and soft
men who love other fellows. I
Catch your scent and send it beyond.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Devil Hermes Deer

The Devil card in the Tarot is quite interesting, and I liked The Gnostic Tarot's take on it--that it does represent darkness and things that we'd rather not face, but that also in the path toward integration and wholeness, we need to shine a light on these things.

Like with the notion of cleaning my home: there's still this "abyssal" feeling (as opposed to abysmal?) that feels like I'm dangling over a precipice. There's some incredibly powerful "force" that really doesn't want me to go to the place of having a clean home. I don't get it, it's not something rational, and it doesn't want any part of that. And so I have to patiently shine my light on the "demon" that clutches at this illy behavior.

I have encountered these critters before and I'll probably continue to encounter them as I move on this path to becoming whole. This one feels particularly repulsive, but there's some gunk-covered beauty underneath the slime, just as there was when I went on that Medicine Walk last year and discovered "Soporis" clutching at my point of passion. This lizard creature has been set free and who knows where he's awandering these days!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Sacredness and Everyday Reality

The past few days I've been of low energy, probably because I have a wee case o' pink eye. I started feeling sluggish on Sunday night truth be told, and I carried myself around feeling "unnecessarily" burdened. I'm so quick to judge myself.

As I've noted in the last cycle of poems on this blog (my interruption of the "6 Death Pantheon" cycle), I've had to address a very common situation of late, that being my aversion to cleaning my own house. My boyfriend made certain choices a couple of weekends ago that amounted to manipulating us to not spend anytime at my house that weekend. I confronted him about it the next day, and while he acknowledged his manipulation, he was just as clear that he didn't like to be at my place because of the level of squalor I'm comfortable with. While I can rationalize this all sorts of ways, the thing I still needed to face was the pain of this realization, and the pain is complicated.

There's something really disturbing and primal behind my reluctance to clean up after myself. I've been doing little things over the past few days--scrubbed the kitchen floor one day, the bathtub the next, swept the floor of my 'droom today--with the intention of "sweeping the temple" as one Jungio-gnostica has described. That orientation to sacralizing the ordinary has helped quite a bit.

I'm sure that some day soon the deep, dark primal energy will make itself known inside my space, but on some level I'm creating a container for that Familios-like being to emerge. (Or will it be more like Saporis or the demon-turned-angel I encounted at the CBE workshop at Easton last August?) Having approached the broom, the dustpan, the mop and the bucket (and it now occurs to me that I need to BLESS these implements), I am enlarging my sphere in ways I don't even know. It's odd, but I feel that over the past ten days or so, as I've aligned my triple soul a la Starhawk/Thorn Coyle, I am noticing that my Sticky One and my Talking Self are blazing white. I seem to be aurically all aglow for some reason, perhaps because something true and appropriate and potent is taking root inside me as I root myself in my world--O Albany! indeed!

Today as I walked to work, I felt that everything I'm doing and that others are doing is mysteriuosly sacred, even those people who are sitting in front of their TV sets watching Beelweh-Yahzebub knows what and stuffing their faces with non-food, or those people who are actively plotting to sever us all from our inalienable rights (and to forbid the ocean from manifesting wetness in the process and ordering the desert to grow networks of hydrangea next to cactus and morning glories, and, oh yeah, forcing me into heterosexuality).

I wonder if this is how Dumbledore must have felt on his good days.

Chariot Persephone Bear

IV. Stern King Navigator, the 6 Death Speaks

Plunge right in, I guess. What else
can I do? I don't want to. Really don't.
It's coming up now for a reason. I could
choose to blame X, 1A, 6G6, Mars
for this turn of events. Waste my time though.
It is the right time, that noisome awareness
of Divine focus on raising my character
mumbles its inchoate insensateness.
Even in my oracles, Judgment appears
in the 6th House of health and hygiene.
Ancestors point their bony processes
at the floor, demanding I clean up after
myself. Mayhap it's a sign of more to come
to be removed from my lie? Or just that
I'mve crossed a new threshold wherein
the old warp of working and writing amid
squalor no longer works. The adjustments
made for meetings, food prep and new
commitments, budding relationships, needs
for fun and relaxation and my difficult
schedule must make its way around
the sweeping of the temenos, to sanctify
my abode for The Work as it Continues
As we say in os cuartos, I can't, the Gods
and Goddesses can. I think I'll le them.

Blessings!

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Hanged Man Krom Salamander

III. Voice of G6G

I’m not running away, you’re not pushing
me are you? Yes, we’re in a rough patch
and I’m at a loss as to what to say.
This is something you’re going through, and I
don’t understand, but I understand, you know?
There’s something really deep and really
painful. I’m concerned that you may be
wallowing. You say you’re not. You’re grieving
the fact of your forty-hour a week job—
not that you’ve lost it, but that you’ve even
got one. I don’t have a job like that, though
I work as you know, on my own. I bring in
the rent and the gas and the food and extras.
Oh, there is so much in you, honey! I’m amazed
at all that you’re capable of, but this cleaning
your apartment thing—well it does affect
me. I don’t like being at your place. You say
you want to clean, you’d like to put together
a home-business and do your creative stuff
which I support. The reality is though, you work
for a living. Lots of people balance the forty
with cleaning their houses, with going to meetings,
with working out, meditating, doing their writing,
working their food plan, taking and giving calls
to sponsors and sponsees, fixing up the backyard
having fun, laundry, getting enough rest,
looking for a decent therapist, moving to set
up your own business, and of course, being
in a relationship. You’ve got to pick up the slack,
sweetums, and stop paying attention to how
our culture’s going bye-bye bam-bam, which you
know I hate hearing about. Anyway, I’m tired
of this area of talk. Let’s move on to something positive?

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

9 Disks Dian-y-Glas Lamb

"Grief #1 (Cont'd)"
II. Morpheus, voice of Dreamland

A glade beckons? It is the "Fen of the Civilized"
Tranquil it is where the ferns and make grow.
An ecosystem beauteous, balanced, delectable?
It sits atop a dung heap. But take a closer
look... Why it's not a mound o'feces at all!
Urbanity teems inside its busy hiveness.
Lok at the wars being fought, and over what?
So terribly rote, so blandly manufactured.
War? Is that the best these miscreants
can come up with? To keep this whole
pile of self-defined crap going? Oh, but it does seem
to keep the glade beautiful. Yet there's
the smell of plastic about it all. Now that
I look closer, the artificial texture of fronds
dwell close to what was mistakenly taken
for moss, but is just a green chemical slime.
All of it arranged so tastefully to present
"gorgemousness." And now let's catapult
you, dreamer, away from this infernalé
to something more tangible. Take a look
at the Ruined City, your true parayso.
Perhaps it seems just boarded-up buildings
and free-floating refuse, but everywhere
you turn, my sleeping groom-bride, nature
reclaims this fever swamp. Behold your future
changeling! Liberated from indenture
you trudge beneath the ground, your earth
Mother-Father, longing to fly above it
and you can. But it's standing in that grace
(paradox's fine alias) to comprehend deep
mystery of the subway cars shuttling
you between stations of your cross.
You must immerse yourself in the waves
of undulating soil as if Poseidon himself
was surfer king of dirt rather than ocean.
Your choice is more clear dearest one:
Choose your ruination consciously
rather than succumbing to the mere miscues
of the misguidedly leisured. That ant
heap will soon see the revolt of the lower
berths who will break the chains barring
their egress shut, forcing they way upwards
only to discover that the Titanic
ship of maquinacultura Carried itself
an iceberg too far, and without the supports
to ensure significant survival. Nay sleeper
as you waken, remember to flee into ruin
itself, and let Boreas and Notus learn you
their firm, loving, hard lessons and drape
you with their breaths, in recognition
that only through acceptance of what IS
can your human species move through all of it.

Monday, June 12, 2006

8 Cups Vesta Sphinx

(Hmmm... mysteriously, interior-fire day this. And yesterday was Lugh-Phoenix, while Saturday was Hermes-Fairy. I got myself all aroundgeturned.)

GRIEF

I. Gabriel's Voice

He doesn't stop to think about it.
He gets up, he does his morning
routine, he walks out the door--
is he ready for the day? Never
really quite sure what that niggle
is that crawls around underneath
the skin of his chest. Somehow
he gets to the door of That Building
that houses his daily amnesic draft.
Other people drink, some eat, some others
have compulsive sex to medicate
that maw, that hole in the soul.
He used to partake--they don't work
anymore, so he must attend to that raw
emptiness he chooses not to name. (It's
all right, I've named it for him--Angel
of mercy that I am, I have clear eyes
to d.x. the civilization disease.)
He types, he faxes. He takes messages.
He stares off into space. He takes in
work, revises that which is not his own,
that he can not own, nor wishes
to take on for himself. He eats lunch.
A brief respite, whatever the weather.
He returns to That Building, and repeats
his morning. He connects sproadcially, he
squapes his true Self haphazardly
affixing a persona off a random trademarked
rack of masks approved for the enslaved
class. Then at some point, this Lethe
fog lifts and there he is again, walking home.
His cat is there. His boyfriend has his own
place, unable to tolerate teh accretions
of an unliving existence (and its reminders
of whatever the love is not doing) to be respon-
sible for his own life-force suppuration. Feeds
cat, calls boyfriend--"Hi, bye, love"--makes
dinner, muses about death. Ethylly-deathel
death, bat man, bat man, he sing-songs.
Wondering what a life might be like
post-collapse of all decrepit and old-old-old.
Nostalgia for necros and apocalypse
arrive as the two true loves of his life. A pipe
dream? Perhaps. Only the oil-clock knows
for sure. Even so, he takes off his clothes,
thinks about a clothing-optional town, dreams up
public fucking and jerks out a couple white
ribbons o'cum. Wipes the viscous away and
turns over, determined not to feel what then
washes over him in the land of Morphic Renaissance.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Tomorrow for me is Lugh Fairy

Because I won't be posting tomorrow, most likely, I decided I needed to post this poem today:

"Lugh"

I dno't know you all that well yet
But I understand some things.
You've decided to be with me
And you'll carry me forward.

Newer projects are emerging--
for example, new abundance
of a different sort I'm used to
which you'll lead me to somehow.

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Even though I hardly know you
I feel we've known forever
of each other's simple beings
we rekindle our kinship.

Unassuming, you stole back inside
Before I was aware I'd missed
you. Your quiet way like light
you inform me you're here to stay.

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Lugh, I now make a home for you
It's your place, yes alongside
in the vanguard of my quickening
toward the life in your light.

You and a certain wisdom goddess
appeared now to assist this man
as he transforms himself amidst
planet's metamorphosis

I sing your praises, Lugh,
God of sunlight and warmth
You shed your light into darkness
spread your goodness over me.

Chariot Odin Beaver

"Od(e)in"

One-eyed, divine one
Driver of Sleipnir
Iggdrasil's brooder
Norns or no norns!

He's a coolish god,
inside from the cold
Bard of the Aesir
My heart he does hold

Originator of runes
Diviner of Wisdom
Integral, universal
Now your presence descends

He sees more than most
Medicine of Old
Healer from Dreamlands
My life becomes gold.

O he sometimes plays tricks
Divide the slain with Freyja
Ice wolves and frost ravens
Nestle at his grand feet.

He's a wiseass god
and a wise guy to boot
Odin of the Northern skies
Bring in change from root.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

5 Wands Persephone Goat

U Que Fazer Cumar?

Todar, rialetto fajul la quila.
Bejuma piarosa que la vija for?
Bolsa mirandu fejula triassi,
corraju xire la torega missa.
Ben traxessi pod' a lemma
firuca bexaala ensomno
foren dissa morrer fazer, taz
que micolu fencha bistecca.

**********

My Friend, the Cracks

Shells are meant as temporary.
We harm ourselves when we make
them permanent, epoxying fisures
when they appear. Better to allow
the breaking apart to proceed
on nature's schedule and align
ourselves with divine timing to creat
the life beyond our wildest dreams.

*********

Time-Freedom #1

It's all really happening at once--
French Revolution, Constructing
the Great Wall. World War VI--
whatever. All these lives came
and went, come and gone, will
come and will go, all currently.
Step with me into Real-Myth Time
with Thoth. Let us laugh at it all.

*************

Time-Freedom #2

I've got work to do, still
haven't quite gotten the lucid
dreaming down. I fall asleep
and I'm in the reality of THERE.
This is the Other World, and each
night I lay down to awaken
to Reality, where I feel truly free.
What's the next step to break down that wall?

*********

Who knows why #060806

I dream a lot about subways.
For some reason to get to where
I need to go, I need to travel
beneath ground level to pop up
from below at my chosen point
o'destiny. Other people dream-fly
across skies to their arrivals. Me,
Mother Earth pushes along. Don't mind. Much.

**********

On the Road to Xibalba Be #1

We are stepping into our shells,
this ravenous time's end approaches.
I am just one imaginal cell
on this huge larval badoy.
And I've appeared to herald what's next--
we will crystallize a chyrsalis
inside of which we will transform
into a brand new form of beauty.

**********

On the Road to Xibalba Be #2

"Acceptance is the answer to all
my problems." So says O Libro Grande.
I'm just another post-American-to-be,
other post-Americans-to-be thereamongst,
no guru, though I have things to teach.
More of a wayshower really.
I share that unfortunate history
of having gone through something.


*********

Could I be a 6-6-6?
It's kind of academic
at this point, as there have been
translation errors from before.
"6-1-6" evidently
is the "true" number o' da Beast!
But I'm a 6-Death, two-thirds
the way there. It's possible
I could be 6 trio
depending on how many
years after a new-fire fest
from the Mayan calendar
which I believe was '60.
"Is it I, Lord? Is it I?" --
I certainly have the laugh!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Magician Hades Jaguar

Toxicity seems to be everywhere about today. I don't know if it's that stupid 6-6-6 thing or what, but I just feel ecchelly-blechel-blech right now. Part of it's that I haven't been getting the best sleep of late. I've been wanting to read, and I did make it to a bookstore to purchase The Gospel of Judas last night. It has done something to me, that much I can say--just what that is, I'm not so sure.

(Funny to read that particular book on 6-6-6. I didn't really think of it till just this minute.)

I feel better now that I've typed these particular words into my blog. The toxic crap just seems to pile higher and higher, and I know it has little to do with me really. I know I'm contributing to it somehow, but the pathway through it is being slowly but surely revealed. Earlier today I went to Facade.com and received three quick tarot readings. Each one featured the 10 of Swords. I don't really put too much stock in Facade's interpretations of the cards. They're a tad too cookbooky for my taste. I think of the 10 of Swords as being over-the-top aggressiveness and calling people on baseless grandstanding. It's actually a card of high comedy. Ten swords in the back of a fellow laying on a beach under a black sky? Bwaah!

I also think of the 10 of Swords as the Satirist's card. In the Cosmic Tribe, a beauteous naked fellow is being hoisted on "his" own petards. It's called "Delusion" there. It seems that with all the horrific stuff out there, the thing to do with the archonic consciousness is to laugh at it. Just laugh at O'Reilly, laugh at Rumsfeld, laugh at Pope-on-a-Rope etc. The risk sometimes is that the intellect can get too carried away, and people can get hurt. "Ill-dignified", I'd say the card could also be that of the Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib abusers. It could also be the card of Andersonville and of the prison guards at Auschwitz and other camp-like places, who use humor "to vent." Yeah, like "look at how that prisoner's balls bounce when we kick them off his body--hi-larious, bud!"

That's the kind of toxicity I feel I'm experiencing btw, and I don't know exactly from whence it comes. I just got up and did a quick banishing of the energies I'm experiencing. Interstingly enough, someone has a window open and I'm letting the negativities be blown away.

May this message find you well and toxin-free. Blessings.

Monday, June 05, 2006

9 Disks Freyja Butterfly

Interesting dream: I was involved in a discussion of The Lost Gospel of Judas. What was particularly curious about the dream, which wasn't interesting in and of itself per se--in fact, I don't remember what happened in the dream--was that each time I awoke due to my natural callings, I went back to sleep and picked up almost right where I left off. It was as if I was in a dreamtime seminar that was happening for several individuals communicating through dream space. I had asked my dream source what my next step is regarding my creativity. And this is the dream I had. I'd also had another dream about an address: 1300 Cook Street. Have no idea where this is. There might be a 1300 Cook in Denver, on the corner of (guess what?) 13th and Cook. Or perhaps a 1300 South Cook somewhere near the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Just kinda interesting stuffels.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Princess Cups Dian-y-Glas Hawk

"Dian-y-Glas: I, Devotee Hereof"

He called to me young.
I was eleven
when I had a dream.
Was watching TV
Afternoon movie.
It was at the break.
Kitty Carlisle, guest
chatted up the host
Giddily gushing
over this wondrous film.
Set my world ablaze
it did! He showered.
The film would cross-cut

and fade from one part
of his sexy blue
body' to another.
Water clung to his
amazing broad chest.
It showed everything!
His butt, succulent
c*ck and balls. I felt
touched by Lord Jesus
himself. Christ can
send mesages in nude
men taking showers
in deeper blue tones.

Many years later,
I was now forty--
whole Saturn cycle
gone, surfing the web.
A practitioner
of Feri Wicca
Had a blue god shrine.
Aha! Here he is!
Dian-y-Glas instead
of Greco-Jew name
He imbues many
men with his substance
irresistible.

I sat at my desk
subterranean
in awe and in tears.
I had no idea
that he'd been with me
all this time. I breathe
him in every day
now. His special blue,
a color of twilight
sky right after sun
sets in the lonesome
west. I throw open
my heart doors to you!

Dian-y-Glas, known too
as Melek Taus, I--
Devotee hereof.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Post-...

In the 90s ("like, ohmigod Sunbeam! That is like so LONG ago!), I remember having a conversation with a theater techie type person about the prefix "meta", how wonderful that was to drop in front of other words. Meta-transformative. Meta-baroque. Meta-modern. That quickly devolved into metacarpal. Metabolic. Etc. I even went so far as to craft "metacarpal tunnel vision quest for fire engine red nail polish sausage and biscuits." (I could go on, but for dignity purposes, I shall cease and desist therethrough.)

Anyway, another one of those wonderful prefixes is "post-". I've been thinking that perhaps it's time for some of us to embrace a transitional label--"post-national." Which would mean that some of us would be "post-American", but also "post-Mexican", "post-French", "post-Chinese," etc. And I would also like to embrace "post-corporate", which would also mean "post-Monsanto," "post-Microsoft", "post-Archer-Daniels-Midland," etc.

We need to move "post-business," as well as "post-fundamentalist." Some of us might be "post-religious" and others "post-atheist". Others "post-pagan," even. I'm even willing to say that I'm a "post-artist." I can certainly embrace "post-wage-enslaved". See? There's all sorts of possibilities with "post." Of course there are also things like "post-free", "post-tolerant", "post-loving", synonym for which might just be "dead", "necrotic", "moribund." We are moving not just through a "post-literate" age, but a "post-tonic" age as well. Some people even seem to be "post-feeling" and "post-sensitive." (Again, that death synonym thing applies.)

Perhaps all this is moot. I'm seeing that I need to embrace much of that which I am not, in order to bring it all to light. Yesterday I read in scattershot mode Paul Levy's latest on awakeninthedream.com. I have been "fascinated" with Bush and Co. and have felt the hooks of that destructive illness sink its tenters into me. It's because of what's going on in the country, that I have come to see myself as "post-American" and "pre-neonatoheiric" (newly-born sacred--feh, I'll come up mit etwas besseres). Even so, I consciously send light and love to all these neoconservative servants of Yaldabaoth and Chthulu and the other archonic entities because we are all sons and daughters of Sophia.

Just something I needed to say today. Part of my FAGging it, as it were, though I need to add love into that and change my Fag into a Flag.

8 Wands Athena Otter

"Athena Can Speak Through Us"

Please start with what is
and then build from there.
Aware, then accept--
All of it's of use.

Take action when called
once all has been viewed,
taken hold within--
really grasp the truth.

Effective, I know
from. I help design
the best responses.
bestow clarity.

Let me to guide you
to your wildest goals.
I give you patience
to break it all down.

One step, then the next.
There may be trouble--
you act in context
of others' desires.

Accept reactions,
do not pressure them.
Might still go forward
once you find the flaw.

Opponents sometimes
are in your own brain.
Sometimes friendship hides
fierce adversity.

Sometimes a loved one
stands in our pathway.
Find the space to breathe
and discover worth.

Please start with what is,
and then build frrom there.
Aware, then accept--
all of it's of use.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Princess Wands Vesta Griffon

"For Vesta"

Not everyone has a fireplace
keeping the warmth in their houses
but many people who live inside homes
at least have their stoves

It's on these stoves we cook our food,
and thereby keep our inner warmth.
Gas and oil and coal and wood
fuel these heatgivers.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We give you thanks and praise
for bringhing home the sacred fire.
Let's gather 'round the blaze.

Not everyone has a spouse
to kindle their sacred flams beside
but many have warm hands as tinder
to warm their jewels.

It's with these hands, we build reserves
for moving gracefully through our days
and there come moments when the sparks
catch other's bright eyes.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We sing our thanks to you
for holding sex as something sacred
and each of us has our view.

Dear Goddess, now I'll speak for myself.
I see a multicolored path ahead
A deeper sense of sacred presence
comes to rest in me.

Thank you for my loving boyfriend
our sex-container holds in so much
and I am blessed with food, understanding
how my soul is fed.

Vesta, my blessed sister!
I shout my gratitude!
Gentle fire transformed me from inside,
birthed a new attitude.

Vesta, our blessed sister!
We give you thanks and praise
for bringing home the sacred fire
Let's gather 'round the blaze!

Friday, May 26, 2006

Fool Persephone Salamander

"Song for Krom"

Living in the city,
I can easily forget
I'm as much a part of
Nature as Green Man is,
so sometimes I've got to
get to trees and pasture
Everyone needs their
toes feel dirt

My poor feet feel trapped
inside these leather dress shoes
sometimes I just long for
Nature, Cernunnos' house
and before I know it,
feet have done carried me
onto a bus, next stop
mounds of earth!

Skippin' through the hills and the valleys
imbibing that mountain air
feeling the breezes, the sun on my skin
My head is now clearing!
My heart is expanding!
I need to strip naked and roll in in the grass!
I confer with a speaking brook,
tells me "You feel your feet!
Just be at one with the rocks, the trees, the leaves!"

'Cause before I know it,
I'll be back typing documents
and catching busses so that
nature where horned one dwells
has to live inside my
heart until next time
the urge does come
and come it sure will
like the next breath I take
so in pause, I need
to remember that the soles
my feet in woodland strolls
shall carry me through
days of concrete on end.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ace Swords Star Goddess Gnome

"February 23, 1964, a Hades-Bear Day!"
A song!!!

Most people will not laugh
when upon you they think.
Indeed it's frowned upon
to smile or even wink.
Death, sex and taxes too--
the debts o'er which we drink.
O Hades I do adore
you, it's my twisty kink.

I
got my clue
I want you
to be trure
kiss me do
where I'll skew
breaths come few
Lungs turn blue.

Hades' Day
Words to say
Drift away
Not so gray!
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
A OK
Take me 'way
'Yond this fray.

Yes, too subversive, I
to embrace not the right
or hug even the left
For middle is most bright!
Persephone's you are.
Apocalypse love bite
And I do cheer at this
For humor is your might.

I
got my clue
I want you
to be trure
kiss me do
where I'll skew
breaths come few
Lungs turn blue.

Hades' Day
Words to say
Drift away
Not so gray!
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
A OK
Take me 'way
'Yond this fray.

My left shoulder's your home
Don't need to read no tome.
To hold you as the grave
is merely unwise-brave
You help me embrace life
to rise above the strife
Good days are Hades' days
Fun-filled days,
kill all hope and
Live each day as if it's your last, lovely Hades Day!

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Ace Wands Freyja Sphinx

Went to the Dandelion Gathering in Becket, MA this past weekend. A number of very interesting insights arose during this time.

1) I seem to need to address a "psychic infection" that would appear to be easily cured. I was in a healing ritual to address my creative wounds, and when the healer started to work on my aura, she basically "raked" my auric egg. Well, wouldn't you know but I discovered this awful structure that seems to be embedded even into my skin! I felt like as she was brushing through this cotton-candy-like gauze, that it was pulling my arms and legs with it. It really didn't want to let go. I saw a "spine" of something that looked like broken pieces of wood. This yielded to a brilliantly lovely orange and pink hibiscus, and then I saw a beautiful red-skinned man of either Hawaiian or native descent in a cape made of orange feathers with indigo eye-dots.

The really strange thing is the very next day, my boyfriend and I were walking around the pond at the YMCA camp there with a fellow who knew some things about biology. We saw a duck that fled from her nest and we thought we heard a beaver dive into the water. Other people actually saw the beavers. One of the things that we did see however was a tree that was "infected" with these caterpillars which had concocted some sort of white gauzy material around one of the tree's crotches. The caterpillars reminded me of the wooden structures I saw, though they seemed inert and dead in my vision.

Hawaii also seems to have not been too far away from the vision either, in curious ways. Two people who Jody and I hooked up with grew up there. Oddly enough they live a stone's throw away from my old alma mater. Very interesting that.

My best friend thinks the man in the orange feathers may have been Kamehameha or the Hawaiian deity Ku, or perhaps more likely, a figure connected to my second and sixth chakras. He was there to help me heal my creative wounds after all. He could also be Xochipili or some other mesoamerican deity, too. I don't know, but I had a kickass meditation with the fellow, who just likes to be called "Yal." And no, it's not short for Yaldabaoth--he said "Certainly not!"

2) I performed "Hecate's Prayer for the Common American" at this gathering as part of another celebratory ritual. I use my body as a percussion instrument for that piece. I have a couple of those I do this with. Got a lot of positive feedback about it. Need to pursue this somehow.

3) Another fellow witch told me to pursue another avenue for my hunger to teach. He's familiar with some Albany area schools and mentioned one I'd only vaguely heard of.

4) Almost immediately, people from Dandelion have started to show up in my dreams. One person was evidently instrumental in helping my declutter . . . something.

5) On the way home, Jody and I listened to Chanticleer's "Sounds of the Spirit." I had a curious reaction to one song called "Como Pod' a Groriosa" by Alfonso X the Learned of Spain. (It's listed as Alfonso XII which is wrong, I've come to discover.) It's written in a dialect called "Gallo-Portuguese." I feel that somehow this language is rather important to me on some level. I suspect a lot of my "automatic writing" might very well be in a language similar to this. I'm not sure, but I sometimes have seen this fellow in a doublet who goes on and on about Mirandola Mirandola, and I've wondered if it wasn't Pico della Mirandola himself. It could be I'm sure, but I remain skeptical. Though interestingly, my best friend mentioned encounters with famous people in his last meditation. I won't embarrass him by saying who, but I've been there!

So there's a lot to chew on there. More where that came from, but that's what I know so far.

Monday, May 15, 2006

2 Cups Hermes Lamb

Had a very productive weekend, but the thing that was most amazing was a meditation that took me, of all places, to Hogwarts!!! Yes, that's right. Instead of my receiving an owl, it was more like the Owl dragged me to the place and summarily dropped me off without even a "how'd'yado?" It was pretty awesome to come face to face with a Hermione Granger and a Ron Weasley who were still bickering as ever. I was there they said, to recieve "the Draft of Innisfree." Very interesting that. They administered it to me, and I felt like they had given me something that is germinating inside me. It feels like a creative project of some sort.

After the meditation, I sat down and wrote a ten-twelve page play a la Ed Wood, which I've entitled "The Hairbrush of Dooooommm!" It has a dreamlike logic. I had a couple of unusual dreams relating to the healing of my creativity which I've been seeking. Interestingly, both had barges in them. I was transported to a barge in the first, and in the second, a barge was rear-ended by a smaller craft in the Hudson River. A tractor trailer fell into the river. "The Sabre Dance" was playing. Needless to say, I woke up laughing.

I'll get that play upgetyped sometime soon. Probably will post it here, FWIW. La la la, I wrote something! Yeay for mih!

Friday, May 12, 2006

Queen of Wands Star Goddess Hawk

(Hmmm. Triple goddess as it were, for my Hawk's a Ms.!)

I'm thinking this might be the most important post I have done to date. I want to talk about FEAR. False Evidence Appearing Real. Face Everything And Recover. And of course, F Everything and Run!

I'm not sure if I've told this story on my blog before. But every once in awhile, I find myself in Phobos's company. And when I become aware of the critter, he just skedaddles. The first time I found myself in his company, I didn't even realize he was an entity. And I call him "He" because Phobos in the Greek Pantheon was the son of Ares along with Deimos or Terror. Fear & Terror, lovely eh? (I would like to add I have a collection of short, in-need-of-rewrite plays I entitled Furcht, Elend LLP: An Olio of Oiliness for These Unctuous Times. Furcht, Elend are German for Fear, Misery, and it's a slant on Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches: Szenen von der Meisterrass--in English "Fear & Misery of the Third Reich: Scenes from the Master Race.")

Anyway, I had been reading a wonderful book--Freeing the Soul from Fear by Robert Sardello. I had gone up to the Cloisters on a lovely spring day two years ago, and I had finished lunch and walked to a bench in the Fort Tryon Park and read some more of what this wonderful teacher has to say about meditation. I picked up a rock and just meditated on it for five minutes. Being the compulsive thinker that I am, it was a challenge to piece together thirty-forty seconds of "peace", but I did at least manage to do that, focusing on an image of the rock which I decided to carry with me. Since this meditation, I've done it with other rocks, paper clips, and a candle flame, all of which work well. It doesn't really matter what it is, because you dissolve it anyway and then sit in the "void", with an incredible sense of well-being.

Anyway, I got on the bus back downtown and decided I wanted to go to a bookstore. I was looking for a specific item--the Druid Animal Oracle. I vaguely remember talking with my best friend about animal guides, and had just discovered that the Otter is indeed one of those. I've had some wonderful experiences with Otter as a literal guide through parts of NYC that I didn't know existed, and Otter's all about play. I know Otter's got a bead on Albany now, but I haven't had the time to pursue his adventures as of yet.

Anyway, I found what I was looking for and went to the checkout stand. At the time I had two credit cards, and I knew one of them was close to being maxed out. The other one, however, I din't have the card for as I had lost it. So I had to grab the one that I thought might be outgemaxed. Sure enough, the clerk said (with a sort of "Ha-ha" chuckle in his voice) "I'm sorry that card's declined your purchase."

Instantly, I could feel all my hormones ablaze. "Caught-caught-caught" was the sound of the alarm in my brain, but interestingly instead of feeling it throughout my entire being, I only felt it in my body. I really felt the adrenaline coursing through me and realized that I could just feel the rush of heat to my face, the quickening heartbeat, etc., and not take it in, not react to this stimulus. I looked at the counter and witnessed myself and made a conscious choice to only let my body be the vessel that experienced the wave of energy and not let the rest of me get upgecaught inside.

I told the clerk that I had lost my other card, and expected it in the mail, that it might even be in my box when I got home (which indeed it was, funny enough), and that I would be back Monday or Tuesday to pick this up. He duly noted my name and put it behind the counter where they keep stuff to pick up and I walked out of the store and for the first time ever:

I Felt Joy!
It was pretty incredible, all in all. I later understood that I now had a tool in meditation to put myself in a place of well-being and happiness, and that what Abraham Lincoln had said about "Most people are about as happy as they want to be," only told part of the story. People who had access to this tool were lucky if they ever felt joy at some point in their lives, and even then only a faux joy that would come with something like winning the lottery.
Anyway, since this particular Phobos-encounter, I have come to see that fears are like these winged entities that exude malice and threat. Sometimes they really are bad-assssss entities, but a lot of the time they are parts of myself that have been cut-off from my awareness. I do have moments like one particular night a few weeks ago when I woke up feeling a nameless fear. And when I got quiet and retreated into my Self and my body, I saw one of these winged dark things at the foot of my aura, trying to paw its way in. "Caught!" in reverse, huh?
What I'm trying ultimately to say about False Evidence Appearing Real, is that I have the personal experience of feeling that adrenaline rush course through me and disbelieve that I have to follow it to the ends of the earth. My five minute, imperfect stone meditation, where I only could get maybe 30 seconds together of uninterrupted focus, actually had a preventive effect. I have had other experiences where I've been confronted by ugly fears in others, and been able to breathe into the experience and get calm so that I could be effective in the matter at hand. I start every day with meditations, and the fears are sometimes there around me. They disappear when I start to breathe in the Ha Prayer, however. And the only ones that come in now are the ones I consciously invite in, with the help of one or several of my many guides.
Fear. It's not you. It's beside you, not of you or in you though that is what it wants to make you think. It wants to override your visions, your motility, your volition and turn you into a machine, and the more addictions you put yourself into, whether it's sugar/flour, booze, drugs, toxic belief, power-over others, shame, American Idol, or whatever, the more vulnerable you are to the machinic/Matrix aspect out there.
Because fear is the currency of so many people out there these days, and because predation/vampiry/cancer/addiction appears to be the dominant M.O. in the Unraveling States, Counties, Burgs, Towns, Hamlets and Individuals of AmeriConned there's a lot of icky-smelling vapor in the air. But that's ALL it is, vapor. It's not real.
There is another power source within, much deeper than the adrenal glands stoking fight or flight energy. And that, my friends is a source of a deeper awareness and understanding of what's really going on.
Free. Your Soul. From Fear....