Thursday, September 27, 2012

Wormwood Star


Wormwood, or mugwort, is a species of herb, also known as St. John’s plant.  St John the Divine is most well known for being the author of the New Testament’s Book of Revelations.  The book of Revelations is a visionary manuscript, the ecstatic vision of a shamanic trance, accepted into the bible as an allegory of evil. 


In the opening of the Seventh Seal, in Revelations Chapter 8, verse 10 and 11: “… the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

The allegory here with wormwood is that it is a bitter herb, although wormwood itself is also a drug, and is associated with visions of a certain sort.


“A wormwood user may also become disoriented and experience an altered, dream-like perception of reality. Some users report wormwood effects such as an increase in clarity of thought, euphoria, and sensation of relaxing.  A curious phenomenon known as the "doll-house" effect is one of the more distinctive wormwood effects. Users describe perceiving objects as idealized representations of themselves or as simplified copies of the real objects, as though they belonged in a doll house. This effect is often experienced along with wormwood's other common effects. Objects may be perceived with a striking clarity of definition and color, however, wormwood only serves to enhance perception and has no hallucinogenic properties.”
–Source 1


On that note I must point out that one of the main themes of Philip K Dicks Gnostic Science Fiction work The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich may have been based on the experiences of a similar “drug trip.”  In this novel, interstellar colonists on a harsh terraforming assignment use “Can-D,” a drug which allows them to vicariously inhabit and experience the life of little miniature dolls.  The colonists buy and set up little doll houses and then communally live artificial lives through the effects of the Can-D drug.  Philip K Dick is simply a modern St John, interpreting his visions into Science Fiction rather than biblical testament. 

Wormwood is also a primary ingredient to traditional absinthe, a green colored and licorice flavored liquor once common in France and Europe.  Now, I can go on and discuss how Aleister Crowley was a famous absinthe drinker, or how the word Chernobyl translates to “place where wormwood grows” but I would like to do you one better.


Wormwood, the Daemonic Connection:


The Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis, (another famous Science Fiction writer) are a series of polemic essays disguised as correspondence letters between two demons, discussing demonic stratagems for luring a man away from God.  In them, Screwtape, the elder demon, tutors his nephew Wormwood on the finer points of corrupting a soul. 


Wormwood is an herb also known for its anti-parasitic properties, which is a very telling clue to the hierarchal nature of these demonic entities.  The text can be read from a magical perspective; Lewis clearly has a deep understanding of the topic at hand.  It has been speculated by many that Lewis and Tolkien may have been members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  If not, I would at least assert that Lewis understood the esoteric undercurrents of Christianity.  The political and materialist philosophies within Lewis’s Letters smash any misconception that modern politics are anything but black magic, and common morality a befuddlement of truth.  But don’t take my word for it.   From CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters:

“I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all he pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The "Life Force", the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work - the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" - then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you."

"I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.


I read the above as an interesting denouncement of Crowley’s hermeticim.  Although it should be noted that not all Gnostics are tantrics; (sometimes a snake is only a snake.) 


From another letter we have the Church compared to a Goddess:  “One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.”


“Terrible as an army with banners” is a biblical phrase from the Song of Solomon, 6:10:  “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” 

In The Red Goddess, Peter Grey states the woman referred to here is Babalon, and that John and Solomon were both inspired by the same “Red Goddess.”  Grey goes as far as suggesting that John used a preexistent (pre-Christian) text as a basis for his work, expanding upon it to create Revelations.  


"And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and screamed in the anguish of delivery." -Revelations


How should we interpret the statements of CS Lewis, whose truth is hiding between the lines?  Lewis’s own advice on understanding these letters is this:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. The sort of script which is used in this book can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me.

Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.”

When everything is politically polemicised, every man is set upon his own world, the final resulting philosophy is “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” with every man justifying his own personal desires.  A truthful writer actually studies the argument of his enemy with equal respect, considering it for its merits, and wrestling with the part of his own mind which wants to believe one thing or another.  Then, an honest writer asks themselves why.


What is absent in mainstream Christianity is the discourse, the option to doubt, and therefore the ability to let a truth stand on its own two feet, and not on “faith alone.”  Clearly, CS Lewis was able to discern the depth of the issue, and consider all sides of the argument.  From one of CS Lewis’s personal letters, we can see the “demons” he was struggling with:


“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myth: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a 'description' of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The 'doctrines' we get out of the true myths are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of the wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened.”


In other words, it’s a complex issue.  Or you can just accept that the myth transcends religious or phenomenological precepts and tenets?  And exists outside of time?


I want to end this post with some Gematria, Just for fun.  Philip K Dick’s book Valis has a Jewish Gematria value of 820.  Another phrase which equals 820 is The Gray Demons.  Valis is an interesting word all on its own; perhaps PKD chose it for its similarity with the word Vatis.  Vatis is a Latin word which means prophetess, mouthpiece of deity, oracle or soothsayer.  So why not just title the book Vatis, you say?  PKD may have chosen to change the word for a more appropriate Gematria value.  See for yourself:


Valis=820,378, 63

Vatis=900,426,71

Yhvh=1116,378,63

The Gray Demons=820,924,154

Values listed above are for Jewish Gematria, followed by English and simple Gematria.


Sources:


CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Gematria Calculator Online:  http://www.gematrix.org/


The Red Goddess, Peter Grey



Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Great Reconciler (Part 2)



The problem and solution concealed in the content of comparative myth is this:  There are advanced esoteric truths and we have hard heads, so, in order to get past the ego-brain barrier, constant reformulation of truth is the best method.  Eventually, the medicine finally takes, the bell finally rings, and the symbolism reaches the deep right brain, “the subconscious-” the ancient early circuitry, and creates a direct knowing

Time itself is a mnemonic device.  The only way to divide attention or create a memory is to assume a past and future, in reality there is only the present.  There is only present moment, forever and always.

I understand why authors create new terminology to explain metaphysical ideas.  Part of it is the writers’ persona, from the omi-inclusive slang of Buckminster Fuller to the proselytized and parochial pandering of one Aleister Crowley.  But the major point here is that words get old.  They carry baggage, and they never mean what you want them to.  Consider the word Gnostic, for instance.  There are some who say these mysterious worshippers of the Naas snake never really existed.  There are others who would have them represent any and all of their pet metaphysical projects, their favorite underdog-ideas and new age ideals. 
Whatever happened to the physical experience?  What do the ancient Gnostic symbols actually represent?

There are three relevant topics I would like to discuss (reverberate) in regards to Gnostic symbolism:
  1. A Chimera idol-often a snake, rooster, hawk, or lion, (usually a combination of two or more of these)
  2. Sun symbolism-and the number seven 
  3. The Chnuphis Serpent

To the extent that they help explain the baggage attached to the word Gnostic, let’s discuss seven Sun Gods.  Look for the above components in the summaries that follow.

Apollo- Ancient Greek God, Son of Goddess Leto, and twin brother of Artemis.  Apollo slew Python and his son is Asclepius, the god o’ healin.  Asclepius is also known as the constellation Ophichus, which some Astrologers consider the 13th astrological sign, as it overlaps the constellation Scorpio. 

Jesus-Sacrebleu!  Yes, Jesus is a sun god, but only because he shares his birthday with Tammuz.  How very Christian of him.  The Christ myth draws from previous fertility cults, pagan in origin.  Christianity works, in a half assed way, but only due to its shameless borrowing of prominent preexisting mythological dates and rites.  The Holy Catholic Communion combines the rites of Tammuz/Apollo with Dionysus/Bacchus in a shameless rip-off of these previous (and contemporaneous) mystery religions and their rites.

Really, I don’t have a lot bad to say about Christianity, the funny thing is that if you take the paganism out of it; there isn’t a whole lot of anything left.  How did Christianity take over from a religion which actually had some real substance to back their claims?  Fear, subversion and statecraft are the primary enemies of truth.  The problem is, and the Pauline Christians at Nicea knew this, that lies only stand if there is nobody to speak against them, so they burned the truth.

Jessie L Weston said it best, in From Ritual to Romance:
“But the triumph of the new faith once assured the organizing, dominating, influence of Imperial Rome speedily came into play.  Christianity, originally an Eastern, became a Western religion, the “Mystery” elements were frowned upon, kinship with pre-christian faiths ignored, or denied; where the resemblances between the cults proved too striking for either of these methods such resemblances were boldly attributed to the invention of the Father of Lies himself, a cunning snare whereby to deceive unwary souls.  Christianity was carefully trimmed, shaped, and forced into an Orthodox mould, and anything that refused to adopt itself to this drastic process became by that very refusal anathema to the righteous.” Jessie L Weston

I’itoi- not necessarily a sun god in his own right, I’itoi is a mountaintop creator god of the O’odham Indians, local to the Sonoran Desert.  I’itoi is known as “the man in the maze,” which is an intricate labyrinth design which these native people still incorporate into baskets and art.  The design combines a sun ray motif with a labyrinth design consisting of seven concentric circles, with a little man perched on top.  The man in the maze symbol is said to represent the choices of life. 
The Man in the Maize, ahem, Maze, is the perfect symbol for a winnowing basket.  But MIM, as I like to call him, is a very ancient symbol, occurring in early petroglyph rock carvings. 

To put the I’itoi myth in a more Kabbalistic light, I’itoi, acts as the Son of the Sun God, or Tammuz, while representing the seven concentric circles, as the “choices of life,” which might better be interpreted as, the forces which cause man to choose, whether he wants to or not.  

Paul Maud’Dib, from Frank Herbert’s Dune, is an excellent Apollo.  Read Dune.  (I’m just sayin.)

Leto II, sand snake extraordinaire, is worshiped by “fish speakers,” a female warrior caste in the Dune myth.  The Catholics of course, call them Nuns.  The Hebrew letter “Nun is thought to have come from a pictogram of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of a fish in water for its origin (in Arabic, nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake.”  -Wikipedia


Garuda is the Hindu Bird God associated with the sun and its rays.  The story of Vinata, Garuda’s mother being held prisoner by snakes, who demand Amrita, the soma of the gods, for her release, reads similarly to the Apollo/Python myth. “Garuda was the enemy of the snakes, [Anata] and the snakes were all afraid of Garuda.”

Tammuz-It is only helpful to “remythologize” if you’ve found a new and interesting way of stating a grand truth, a greater dimension of grandeur.   There is, of course, a common mythological theme between grains, sacramental breads and grain mills.  The Babalonian God Tammuz is the son of the Sun, the God in the seed, who, in dying (sowing in the earth) brings life.  We eat of him to remember, and praise his sacrifice, weeping for him.  The ancient Babalonian trinity is Nimrod (Father), Semiramis(Mother) and Tammuz(Son). 
Tammuz in the God who, after travelling seven spheres, or Sephirah, is crushed in the millstone of Daath, destroying the ego and yielding the holy bread of life.  This is a myth with meaning.  The Lion headed snake has been associated with the number seven since ancient Egypt, look for the many archeological occurrences of this theme here: http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/Abrasax1.html 

So, there went the ancient myth, now what about now, in the Synchromystic Moment?
I have been having a great deal of synchronicity linking the snake with the bee.  Come to think of it, I am really coming to terms with my own Synchronicity.  I no longer think of it in a “gee whiz, this is fun” type of way.  Now I think of it with the philosophy: “what can my Synchronicity do for me?”  The title image of this post, of the Chnuphis with a bee on its mouth, “turned up” after I had three unusual personal experiences linking the snake with the bee in my everyday life.

In the first situation I was hiking the Appalachian Trail with my dogs, and after seeing two snakes in my path, (a little one and a big one) my dogs were attacked by a nest of ground-dwelling yellow jackets.   The yellow jackets continued to attack my puppies, so I poked the bees to death with a stick; thankfully I was not stung myself.

Several days later, at my place of work, I observed a woman with an extensive (and beautiful) snake tattoo on her arm.  Directly afterwards I found a honeybee in the same area, which I picked up by her wings and placed outside. 

Now, I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to Synchronicity, and I interpret it as instruction, as the universe trying to tell me something.  I will attempt to explain the combined meaning of the two Synchronous symbols:  

To me, the bee is a symbolic representation of the collective experience.  To be a bee is to act as a member of a highly functional collectivity.  The buzzing of the bee also represents the whirring sound which tends to occur before travel out of body.  I suspect that the fire snake may represent the reptile mind, or the basest animal instincts, while the bee represents the unity, or the greatest spiritual height.  In other words:  Reconciliation of higher and lower is what this symbol means. 

This brings us to what I see as a modern retelling of this age old mystery: in Star Trek Voyager (and Next Generation)

“I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many, I am the Borg.” –The Borg Queen
The Chnuphis snake is the form which the Borg Queen takes when she is plugged in to the collective.  Then when she wants to act as an individual, she inserts her snake/spine into a human body.

The Borg are a bee-like collective colony/humanoid race in the Star Trek universe.  For those who are unfamiliar with The Next Generation Series, the Borg are portrayed as a great enemy to humanity.  The Borg are a highly technological, transhuman collective who are portrayed as more machine than human.  As it goes, (In Star Trek Voyager) there is a virtual-reality dream-world, called “unimatrix zero,” which the (some of) the Borg can visit while they sleep.  This analogy is a pretty cohesive reversal of what Jungians believe about our dream/imaginal state.  Jung believed that he could access the collective unconscious by active imagination as well as dreaming.   We are individuals who dream collectively and these Borg are collectives who dream themselves individuals!

I would like to clarify again, that I have absolutely no intention of muddling different myths together with the goal of justifying a single great concept or all encompassing God.  There is everything to be said of Paganism, and it’s attachment of local ecology-based understandings, to the natural cycles of growth, death, and resurrection.  What is interesting in the comparison of myth are the new ideas that occur when you observe a familiar myth under the interpretation of another cultural or imaginative setting.  There is just so much truth that you can wring out of these ancient archetypes, they clean up so nice! 

There are still mysteries out there.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Dog Days Are Over



Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run