Yael R.

Dragwyla First North American rights

Email: Polaris93@aol.com 51,400 words
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New Magicks for a New Age

Volume 4: The Notebooks of a Magickian
Book Thirteen

The First Eden?

http://www.thevesselofgod.com/thefirsteden.html

The Face of the Deep

It is remarkable how many creation myths have nearly identical beginnings. They begin with tales of
a primordial chaos, and that chaos is usually symbolized by the element of water. For the Babylonians,
the goddess Tiamat (“the bitter ocean”) represented the chaos which spawned all things. She took as her
husband Apsu, the god of the fresh waters. This union of bitter ocean and fresh waters is certainly
suggestive of a flood, and this idea is borne out by the fact that their son Ea equates with the Sumerian
King Ia, who was known to history as “the Lord of the Flood.”
The Egyptian story of creation also begins with water and chaos. Before the gods there was only a
dark, watery abyss called Nun. Within its chaos, Nun contained the potentiality of all things and the
latent divinity of the creator. At the dawn of the world a primeval mound arose from the waters,
providing the first deity with a place to come into being. Finding himself alone, he created the world and
peopled it with gods and men patterned on his image. This first deity became the Sun God who brought
light and order to where darkness and chaos once reigned.
These are but a few examples out of many. Most are not incredibly dissimilar to what is found in
Genesis, where it says: “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face o the waters.” (Emphasis ours.) Like the Egyptian deity,
Jehovah also created order out of chaos, brought light into the darkness, and created man in his own
image. Virtually identical stories are told by cultures existing in parts of the world far distant from these.
The striking similarities between so many creation myths cannot be explained as mere coincidence. They
have to represent a shared primordial memory of some sort. We think they do. We think the symbolism
of chaos and a vast watery abyss is related to another of man’s most widespread myths - that of the
Flood.
 Nearly every culture recounts the tale of a global flood. Nearly every culture has a Flood hero who
survives the Deluge, along with a remnant of humanity, to repopulate the Earth. We believe that the
Flood represents the true starting point of our current historical epoch, and that it represents the end of
the previous epoch - one referred to by many cultures as “the First Time.” Plato records that the Egyptian
priests told Solon the Earth was far older than the Greeks thought, and that it had been ravaged by fire
and floods repeatedly. Each time there was enough of a remnant left living to start anew. Could this be
the reason why, in the first chapter of Genesis, God says to Adam, “...be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth”? The commandment is fairly unambiguous. Though contrary to the storyline, God is
clearly telling Adam to be fruitful, multiply, and repopulate the earth.
The story of Eden is a highly symbolic account, containing elements of both truth and fiction. Those
aspects that reflect the most historical accuracy are the various names involved, which can be shown to
relate to very real figures in the Sumerian king lists. “King Ia” is Adam, his son “Kin” is Cain, the third
king “Enu” is Enoch, and so on. But the king lists may also contain clues which shed light on the
fictional aspects of the Eden story. The Sumerians also had an antediluvian king list, which is generally
regarded as a work of fiction. It purports to document a glorious pre-history of Sumer - one that stretched
back 241,000 years into the past. Some of the kings included on the list were said to have lived
exceedingly long lives, a few to the age of 30,000. Sumeriologist L.A. Waddell was able to demonstrate
that this antediluvian king list could be patterned upon names and alternate titles of figures in the post-
Flood king lists, and that the fabrication had probably been an attempt on the part of the Sumerians to
reconstruct that part of their history which had been lost or forgotten. Authors of the Old Testament,
using the Sumerian prototype as a guide, started their tale with the post-Flood figures, later inserting the
story of the Flood out of sequence. We find support for our thesis, yet again, in the strange figure of
Enoch.
Central to the lore of Enoch is the notion that he preserved the lost wisdom of the antediluvian
world. The question such an idea naturally raises is this: How could a figure who vanishes from biblical
texts before the Flood (not to reappear thereafter) be expected to have accomplished such a task? Even in
The Book of Enoch, he dispatches his “antediluvian” wisdom well before any suggestion of a coming
deluge. Enoch’s story only makes sense if Noah’s story didn’t happen in the way it is presented. And
evidence exists to suggest that this is precisely the case.
As unorthodox as such as idea may seem, there is evidence indicating that Enoch and Noah were
really the same figure. In some ancient texts the name “Noah” is rendered as “Noach”, while elsewhere
Enoch is presented as “Noach.” Joseph Riess, author of Language, Myth and Man, believes that Noah,
Noach and Enoch are all alternate names for the same figure. L.A. Waddell, citing different evidence,
also believes Noah and Enoch to be one and the same. According to Waddell, Enoch was sometimes
called “Hanuk”, and in certain translations of Genesis Noah is called “Hanuk” as well. Also, a tradition
exists among the Chaldeans specifically linking the third Sumerian king Enu (Enoch) to the legend of the
Flood. Enu’s son bore the royal title of Ia-patesi (“Priest-King of God Ia”), which Waddell believes is
preserved in the name of Noah’s son, Iapeth, or Japeth. Waddell even states that, “Enoch... is regarded by
Biblical authorities as being identical with Noah of the Flood myth.” 1 If such an idea was in currency
with the Biblical scholars of Waddell’s time (the 1920s), it doesn’t seem to have taken hold. And yet it is
immanently logical. If Enoch piloted the Ark, it would explain how it was he who was credited with
preserving the secrets of the antediluvian world. In The Book of the Cave of Treasures, it is said that one
of the most sacred things taken aboard the Ark was a text containing “the most ancient secrets of the
church” - the very secrets synonymous with the legend of Enoch.
Presuming that Enoch piloted the Ark necessitates a complete rethinking of the chronology contained
in Genesis, and would require viewing the events described as history told in highly symbolic terms. It is
altogether possible that this may in fact have been the intent of the original authors, and that they have
left enough clues for us to read between the lines. Comparing the details of Genesis with the traditions
from which it was derived provides further clues still.
Let us start with a simple hypothesis: Could the story of Adam’s expulsion from Eden be emblematic
of a previous Golden Age empire coming to an end? And could the ensuing banishment to a wasteland
symbolize the condition of a planet left devastated by a flood? Virtually every culture had a legend of a
“Golden Age” sometimes in the mythical past. Perhaps the most well-known of these is that of Atlantis.
Like the stories of Genesis, Atlantis is intimately connected with ideas of a fall from grace, divine
retribution, and a flood. The history of Sumer begins with a flood; the story of Atlantis ends with one.
Many mainstream scientists and experts now concur that such a flood did in fact occur. Is it a tale rooted
in history, and not myth? Could it be possible that Atlantis was the first Eden?
 Let us take a closer look at the most pertinent details of both stories. Both take place in a primordial
paradise of perfection, a place whose “soil produced a wealth of roots, wood, gums, flowers and fruits,
the sweet juice of the grape, and corn, all desirous... vegetables... shady trees sheltered it’s happy people,
and diverse fruits appeased their hunger and thirst... in a word, there was to be found ... everything which
could satisfy the body, the spirit, and engender piety towards the gods.” The foregoing description, so
evocative of the Biblical Eden, is in fact Plato’s description of Atlantis. It wholly reflects the popular
conception of Eden, though in The Book of Genesis Eden is never described with such a vivid wealth of
detail.
In both stories, the end of the idyllic paradise is precipitated by a rebellion against the gods (or
“God”, as the case may be). Divine punishment ensues, and the Golden Age comes to an end. Perhaps the
oddest theme to be shared by both stories is that of giants. In both stories, giants are the result of
miscegenation between gods and mortals - or more precisely, between gods and mortal women. Could
such startling similarities be pure coincidence, or do the stories of Eden and Atlantis have a shared
origin? Are the Watchers of The Book of Enoch synonymous with the antediluvian gods, perhaps the
survivors of the island’s destruction?

The White Gods

The stories of the Watchers, of Dagon and Oannes are, as we know, not unique. Nearly identical
tales are told in virtually every corner of the globe. The only explanation that seems to make sense of
such stories is surprisingly simple and straight-forward: they represent the interaction of peoples from
radically different cultures. Imagine for a moment that people fleeing the destruction of a high
civilization turned up in a society incredibly less advanced than their own? What might the local
inhabitants make of them? How might the natives perceive a group of strangers possessing technology
wholly unknown to them, possibly a people who looked, dressed and spoke differently than themselves -
a people of perhaps far greater stature than any with whom they’d ever come into contact? Very possibly,
they might be looked upon as gods.
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in South America, the indigenous population though they were
witnessing the return of the white gods who had visited their people in antiquity, promising one day to
return. There were in for an unpleasant shock. In our own time, we have the phenomenon of the “cargo
cult.” During WWII, pilots used a sparsely populated island in the Pacific to set down their cargo planes.
To ensure the peaceful cooperation of the native populace, they gave them food and gifts. The locals
assumed these people were gods, and when the visitors had left, ritualistic runways were constructed in
their honor, and wooden fetishes shaped like planes became objects of worship. The example of the cargo
cult is probably not altogether different from the sort of interactions that spawned the mythologies of so
many tutelary deities: the wise teachers (or ancestor gods) who appeared to so many peoples “at the dawn
of time” to bequeath their wisdom. We can choose to believe one of two things about these figures: either
that they were really gods who enjoyed sharing the secrets of geometry, astronomy, agriculture and
architecture; or that there was in fact a race of men at that time who had this knowledge. We can at least
assume that that tales told of them constitute some form of truth, because any people fabricating their
own history would surely concoct something far more self-aggrandizing.
If these cultures had developed geometry, astronomy, etc. on their own, they would surely take pride
in that fact, and take credit for it in their own history. If they hadn’t developed it themselves, yet
produced artifacts that clearly demonstrate a knowledge of it, then it stands to reason that they must have
learned it from someone else. Not only are the stories of tutelary deities nearly identical, often even the
names of the figures are incredibly similar.
In short, it seems highly unlikely that such stories are mere myths or fabrications. Orthodox
historians would dismiss these tales, because they fall outside the parameters of our conventional view of
history. At the same time, historians seem to be at a loss to satisfactorily explain away the stunning
similarities found in such myths as the following, from virtually every corner of the globe:

• In Islam, it is said that the angels “Harut” and “Marut” descended from Heaven on a golden
rope, then taught men writing, math and astronomy.
• In Tibetan Buddhism, it is said that some 18,000 years ago, “Mura” descended from heaven on a
coiled rope and taught man the “wisdom of the universe.”
 • In Southern Afghanistan, the creator god is “Imra”, and is said to be the dynastic ancestor of all
tribal chieftains. He positioned the Sun and Moon, and was known as the teacher of mankind. He
is also called “Mara.”
• In East Africa, the creator god is known as “Imana.” (He may equate Imra.) He created the first
man, who descended to Earth on a rope.
• The Aztecs also claimed a god who descended on a rope to serve as “the shepherd of mankind.”
He taught them to read, write, plant, harvest, and construct buildings.
• The ancestral god of Japan’s Shinto religion was known as “Ninigi.” He too came to Earth from
the heavens to rule Japan, and is thought to be the ancestor of that country’s imperial dynasty.
• There is a Western Semitic mountain god called “Amurru”, who was depicted as carrying a
shepherd’s staff. His consort was “Athirat”, a variant of “Asherat” or “Asarte.”
• The Mesopotamian god “Martu” is thought to be related to Amurru. He was a tutelary god who
taught his people knowledge.
• The Northern Arabian god “Marnas” is another tutelary god. His cult is thought to have replaced
that of Dagon (a.k.a. “Muru.”)
• In Sudan and Zaire, the god “Tule” was said to have descended from the sky on a rope. He
brought the people seeds and the tools of civilization.
• The Mesoamerican creator god and sun deity “Atl” appeared after a cataclysmic deluge in which
all of humanity was turned into fishes.

Some of the names of these gods reveal specifically Atlantean connotations, while a full two-thirds
of them contain root words relating to water or the sea. The name “Tule”, for instance, is all but identical
to the Northern European designation for Atlantis, “Thule.” 2 In some ancient cultures the word for the sea
was phonetically pronounced “tl”, which serves as the root for “Atl.” And “Atl”, in turn, can be found in
both “Atlas” and “Atlantis.” Over half of the names on this list contain the root words “Mer”, “Mar”, or
“Mur”, all of which relate to the sea in numerous languages both ancient and modern. A connection also
seems evident between these figures and the story of the tutelary god already discussed, Muru, or Maru 3
(Dagon). He is identified as the second Sumerian deified king, Kan, the biblical Cain. His “Maru” title is
of special interest, because it ties into our thesis relating the legend of Atlantis to the place remembered
as Eden.
According to L.A. Waddell, the Sanskrit word “Maru” has the same meaning as the Sumerian word
“Etin”, or “Eden.” Plato has made evident in his Criteas and Timeaus that the name of Atlantis (and those
of its gods) had been rendered into Greek, so as to be more comprehensible to readers of his native land.
But other traditions relating the story of Atlantis give it the name of “Merou.” So if Atlantis is
synonymous with Merou, and Maru is synonymous with Eden, might it be possible that Atlantis (Merou)
and Eden (Maru) actually refer to the same place? We believe so. We have already presented evidence
supportive of the fact that the figures of Enoch and Noah can both be traced to the third Sumerian king
Enu, and that in the Chaldean flood legend it was he who piloted the Ark. Further support for this is
found in the Sumerian king lists compiled by the Erech dynasty, in which his title is given as “Shepherd
of the Vessel.” Might not such a title easily be interpreted to mean “pilot of the Ark?”
If Eden was Atlantis, and Enoch piloted the Ark that preserved the remnant of its populace, it is very
probable that two of the passengers on that vessel would have been his father and grandfather; that is to
say: the first two kings of Sumer - the biblical Adam and Cain. As we explore the myths of the tutelary
deities from the new world, the foregoing thesis will begin to seem less and less like some wild fantasy,
and increasingly like a credible possibility. We will demonstrate what appear to be tangible links
between the figures in these tales, and those central to both Genesis and early Sumer. Though these
myths are virtually identical to those already discussed, there is a fundamental difference: the indigenous
peoples assert that these gods arrived following the destruction by flood of their sacred homeland - an
island.

Foam of the Sea

In the highest peaks of the Andean mountains lie the ruins of Cuzco, a cyclopean city built of
massive stones weighing many tons each. In the region, it is said that a “white god” who was “very tall”
had built this city in ancient times. He had come from across the sea, and thus was given the name
“Viracocha”, meaning “foam of the sea.” These peaks are widely separated from the sea, and so seem to
support the idea that in ancient times a flood had occurred which had made them more accessible. Other
ancient cities on the continent remained undiscovered until the 1980s, because they rested on peaks so
high that they were shrouded in clouds. There is a good possibility that other such cities exist in South
America, atop great mountains surrounded in fog.
In The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega, it is clear that the beginning of
their history coincides with the Flood: “After the waters of the Deluge had subsided, a certain man
appeared in the country of Tiahuanaco... .” That man was known as Viracocha, Manco Capac, Illa, and to
the Aztecs, as Quetzalcoatl. The author continues:
“In the life on Manco Capac, who was the first Inca, and from whom they began to boast themselves
children of the Sun... they had an ample account of the Deluge. They say that in it perished all races of
men and created things insomuch as the waters rose above the highest mountain peaks in the world. No
living thing survived except a man and a woman who remained in a box and, when the waters subsided,
the wind carried them... to Tiahuanaco, where the creator began to raise up the people and nations that
are in the region... .”
This, of course, tends to reinforce our theory that the Flood represented the true genesis of our
current epoch. But there are even more intriguing correspondences. The name of Manco Capac’s
descendants, the “Inca”, has more than a passing resemblance to Cain’s Mesopotamian title, “Enki”. The
story being told is very much the same, and so too are many of the names involved. Viracocha is the
Andean name for this figure. In the Yucatan he was called “Noach Yum Chac.” He was also known as
“Illa”, which equates with the Chaldean “Ila”, and the Mesopotamian “Ellu” - “The Shining One.” Even
the name “Andes” seems to allude to the Mesopotamian god-name of “An.”
It was said that Viracocha could call down “fire from the heavens.” If he caused this fire to consume
a huge rock, that rock would become “light as a cork”, and could be easily be used for such constructions
as can still be seen at Cuzco. In Andean legends, it is asserted that this Cyclopean city was built in a
single night.
Like Dagon and Oannes, Viracocha taught the people to read and write, how to plant crops and till
the field, and various magical arts. But there is an even more tangible link between the figure of
Viracocha and the Sumerian fish gods. A statue of Viracocha exists which depicts him as a white man
with a long beard. From the waist up he is normal in appearance, but from the waist down he is covered
in fish scales. It would appear, then, that Viracocha was not merely a figure whose story happened to
resemble that of Dagon - he was Dagon. He was in fact the very same person who appeared “from out of
the sea” to impart his wisdom to the Sumerians. In some versions of his saga, he left the people and went
back out to sea, promising one day to return. This is a very common element to this tale wherever it is
told, and it is told all over the globe. The American Indians even have a version of it in which a fish man
leads their people out of Asia and into North America. Sabine Baring-Gould describes it in Myths of the
Middle Ages:

“... The people of our nation were much terrified at seeing a strange creature much resembling a
man riding on the waves. He had upon his head long green hair, [and] a beard of the same color... from
his breast down he was actually a fish, or rather two fishes, for each of his legs was a whole and distinct
fish. And he would sit for hours singing to the wondering ears of the Indians of the beautiful things he
saw in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with these words: ‘Follow me, and see
what I will show you.’ For a great many suns, they dared not venture upon the water; but when they grew
hungry, they at last put to sea, and following the fish-man, who kept close to the boat, reached the
American coast.”

A related tale is told by the same author of Mexico’s “Huchucton-acateao-cateao-upatle, or Fish-god-

of-our-flesh... [who] somewhat resembled the Noah of sacred writ; for... in a time of great flood, when
the Earth was covered with water, he rescued himself in a cypress trunk, and peopled the world with wise
and intelligent beings.” This figure may or may not be the same as Quetzalcoatl, the “white god” who
came to the Aztecs and erected a series of massive ziggurats. Though often depicted symbolically as a
feathered white serpent, Quetzalcoatl was said to have been a bearded white man who “was very tall.”
Could it be possible that all of these stories are describing various people’s encounters with the same
person? Perhaps a more appropriate question would be, “What is the likelihood that they are not? The
details of the stories, though mythic and seemingly improbable, all seem to correspond to one another.
What are the chances that people so geographically remote from one another (the Middle East, North
America, and South America) would all contrive the same tale, unless it really happened to them?
 What elevates such tales from the realm of mere comparative mythology is the fact that that they are
connected to physical evidence which attests to their truth. The cities said to have been built by these
“mythical” figures still exist, and defy all explanation. On the shore of Lake Titicaca there is a dock
carved of solid stone which weighs 440 tons. In Mexico there is a ziggurat dedicated to Quetzalcoatl that
has a base of forty-five square acres - larger than the pyramid of Khufu. In Sacsayhuanan, North of
Cuzco, there are gigantic walls made of stones weighing between 100 and 361 tons. Whoever created
such works had powers and abilities which modern man, with all of his technology, is at a loss to
replicate. It is easy to see why the so-called “primitive” peoples of these regions may have viewed the
creators of these monuments as gods.

Viracocha and Cain

In some versions of this story, Viracocha wasn’t just the flood hero. It was his descendants who were
called “the Viracocha”, and he was called “Con” (or “Con Ticci”/”Kon Tiki.”) Yet again, we see a clear
etymological link to the figure of Cain. This same figure was also known as “Sinan.” The words “Sin”
and “An” both have Sumerian origins, and are both related to the Sumerian deified kings. What are the
odds that two peoples half-way across the world from each other would coin these two identical words,
and then use them in conjunction with one another, as the title of one of their deified kings? Quite
simply, the odds in favor of it are downright astronomical. Add to this the fact that most of the other titles
applied to the same figure have Sumerian equivalents, and that they all appear to relate to Cain (or his
son), and the likelihood of it all being a strange coincidence starts to look very negligible indeed. Let us
review the primary correlations:

• “Kon/Con”: This is equivalent to the Hebrew “Qin”, the Sumerian “Kan”, and the Biblical Cain
• “Inca”: This seems to equate with the Mesopotamian Cain figure “Enki”
• “Atl”: He resembles Atlas, the son of Poseidon
• “Sinan”: This sounds like “Caanan”, another son of Poseidon
• “Ila”: This coincides precisely with the Chaldean “Ila, and nearly so with the Mesopotamian
“Ellu.”
• “Noach Yum Chac”: This equates with “Noach”, considered to be interchangeable with
“Enoch”, “Noah” and “Oannes.”

Keeping in mind that these people had an oral tradition, it comes as no surprise that the
pronunciation of some of these titles would understandably have become somewhat garbled with the
passage of so many centuries. But considering that circumstance, they are actually remarkably similar,
and have undergone little more metamorphosis than did the same titles in the neighboring nations and
city-states of the Middle East. Given the fact that these names are connected to legendary episodes
thought to have taken place perhaps five thousand years ago (maybe more), they seem to have survived
pretty much intact.
And what of the strange name of “Quetzalcoatl?” A simple perusal of key Sumerian words seeming
to have the same phonetic qualities gives us a series of words that not only sound similar, but make sense
in the context of this figure. They are well known terms which figure in many royal titles, and which
when spoken as a single word, not only sound very close to “Quetzalcoatl”, but mean “King, God, Lord
of the Sea.” Such grandiose titles were not uncommon for Sumerian kings. In fact, there were quite the
norm. It was far less common to find such kings whose titles were in any way understated. The most
telling syllable in Quetzalcoatl’s name is “tl”, or “atl.” As James Bailey explains in The God-Kings and
the Titans:

“Mexican mythology especially belonged to the Nahua-speaking predecessors of the Aztecs. In

Nahua ‘atl’ means ‘sea’ or ‘water.’ Thus ‘Atlas’ would be a reasonable Mexican title for a man who
knew the sea in all its depths (Odyssey) and was the son of the sea-god Poseidon (Plato). In fact, I
believe that ... there is an identity between the Greek Titan Atlas and the Mexican culture-hero
Quetzalcoatl, both having a common root in Berber, the remnant of the ancient Mediterranean language
of the white Africans, in which the root TL means ‘water.’”
 Returning to the story of the god from across the sea, we shall examine the Mayan deity of
“Kukulkan”, or “Kinich Ahan.” Both of these titles bear root words relating to “king” or “Cain” (“Can”
and “Kin”, respectively.) As one might expect, he is again depicted as a white man with a beard. The
beard is not an insignificant detail, as the native peoples had no facial hair. According to the Mayans, this
figure came to them from over the sea “to escape the flood.” Kukulcan was the Mayan Quetzalcoatl, and
was similarly depicted as a solar deity of reading, writing medicine and mathematics. His most well-
known gift to them was the so-called “Mayan calendar”, reputed to have fixed the exact date of the
world’s end. James Bailey writes:

“The Mayan calendar required a sophisticated mathematical system; it even included a number for
zero. The Mayans were thus able to use large numbers, infinitely large. The only other peoples at this
date with that skill it is said were the Babylonians and Assyrians, from whom the Phoenicians are said to
have borrowed a large part of their mathematics. The Mayans calculated the solar year with marvelous
accuracy as 365.2420 days by comparison with the modern calculation of 365.2422 days. This invention,
along with their mathematical skills, seems to have appeared suddenly amid primitive people... .”

Indeed, that was not all that “appeared suddenly” amongst these people. A good many cylinder seals
were found which resembled those used by the Sumerians and Akkadians. Other artifacts indicate a later,
perhaps Phoenician influence. Author Pierre Honore cites a possible Phoenician influence in his book In
Search of the White Gods, in which he states that:

“[The names of Mayan letters] are indeed very like the names of the ancient Phoenician and Greek
letters; some, in fact, are almost identical. Here are a few instances - giving the letters in Greek,
Phoenician and Mayan in that order:

Alpha, Aleph, Ahan.

Beta, Bejt, Baaz
Gamma, Gimel, Ghanan
Epsilon, Eh, Eb
Iota, Iud, Ik
Kappa, Koph, Queh
Lamda, Lamed, Lamat
Tau, Tav, Tihaz.”

While this is compelling evidence, it is not the whole story. There are a good many symbols used by
the Mayans that are virtually identical, and often precisely so, with those in the (as yet untranslated)
“Linear A” alphabet of Minoan Crete. But if Kukulkan is indeed the same figure as the other “white
gods” of South America, and is, as we suspect, synonymous with the Sumerian Kan and the Biblical
Cain, it would fix the date of his appearance in the New World to a period far earlier than Minoan Crete.4
Given the supposed relation between the Greek, Phoenician and Mayan languages, it is interesting to
speculate on a possible meaning of the name “Kukulkan.” The “Kukul” part of the word sounds very
similar to the Greek word for “circle”, “Kuklos”, which could render the title as “King of the Circle”, or
“King of All.” When Viracocha came out of Lake Titicaca, he proclaimed himself “Lord of the Four
Quarters”, meaning the four corners of the world. Many such figures used identical titles. Later they
would be shortened to the more straight-forward “King of the Earth” or “Lord of the World”, both titles
eventually bestowed on Lucifer himself. Kukulkan’s alternate title, “Kinich Ahan” easily equates with a
simple Sumerian title. “Kinich” is “Kin-ash”, “The Lord Kin.” “Ahan” appears to be rooted in “Aha”, a
title meaning “the Warrior”, and a word that was virtually the same in ancient Sumer, Egypt and India. It
was part of the title of Menes, son of Sargon the Great, and the first dynastic pharaoh of Egypt.

Osiris and Cain

Some authors (such as Graham Hancock) have posited a connection between South America’s white
gods and the Egyptian Osiris. Once again, their stories share a good many things in common. Osiris, like
Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, et. al., appeared to his people and taught them the arts of
civilization: healing, farming, astronomy, writing, and so on. He gave them their first law code. Like his
South American counterparts, Osiris is associated with a high civilization that seems to have come into
being all at once, at a very high level of culture. And like in South America, we have monuments,
artworks, and inscriptions that attest to the existence of that high culture, yet nothing to indicate what
came before it, or could have conceivably given rise to it. Nothing, that is, but the testimony of the
Egyptians, who tell us that a single figure brought it all to them. Sound familiar? This is the same story
told by the Sumerians in regards to Dagon, and by the Chaldeans in regards to Oannes. But the Egyptian
story has an interesting twist: after founding Egypt, Osiris took his leave for a time, going over the waters
towards where the Sun vanishes beneath the horizon in the West. He informed his people that he would
return, but only after traveling the world to spread his teaching.
Is it even conceivable that the South American tutelary figures, all of whom “came over the waters
from the East”, might not represent the same person just described? But for the difference in a few
eccentric mytho-poetic details, the story of Oannes is the story of Osiris. The story of Osiris is the story
of Viracocha. And as you’ll recall, Viracocha is depicted as part-man, part-fish, just like Oannes.
Egyptian scholar E. Wallis Budge had this to say:

“Of the earliest phases of the cult of Osiris in the predynastic period nothing is known; it is probable
that Osiris was not his original name, for the view that the name of Osiris is of Babylonian or Sumerian
origin has much to recommend it.”

Indeed, the name “Osiris” is rooted in the Sumerian “Asar”, a title applied to this deity in pre-
dynastic times. “Asar” is the root of “Assur” and “Ashira”, both variants of the same figure in
neighboring nations. And “Asar” is a title meaning “Son of Sar” (a.k.a. “Sag” and “Zag” or “Ia”). This
definitely links Asar/Osiris to the Sumerian Kin or Kan (Cain), whose alternate titles were “Asag”,
“Azag”, and “Asar.” The importance of this connection will be revealed in due course. 5
Though the art of Egypt and South America is vastly different in style, there are similarities of
content which are incredibly striking for the time at which they were done. In many depictions of Osiris,
it is plainly evident that he is a foreigner. His skin is not merely pale, but pure white, and his eyes a pale
blue. Those who surround him resemble what we would imagine Egyptians of old to look like, but he
clearly looks nothing like them. So too the depictions of Viracocha, “the white man of august presence,
with blue eyes and a beard.” His associates are clearly Mayan or Andean, and he is obviously not. His
queen was called “Mother Egg”, because, it was said, “her flesh was as white as an egg shell.” These
people were evidently far paler than the subsequent peoples known as “Caucasians.” This, again, accords
with the description of the offspring of the Nephilim, whose skin was so pale that it seemed to glow. Was
Viracocha one of the Watchers, a fallen angel? Or was he a man who inherited the lost wisdom of the
antediluvian world, who undertook great journeys to the four corners of the Earth in order to preserve that
knowledge and promote its widespread dispersal? The story is told repeatedly that when he took leave of
his people and vanished back across the seas, he promised that one day he would return. It’s perhaps a
token of the high esteem in which he was held that the peoples to whom he had made this promise
awaited his return with great relish - for millennia.
Could it be that he did in fact return - and repeatedly, but that with each return, he appeared to
another people and reenacted the same scenario yet again? It would appear so. From place to place and
people to people, while the stories of this figure are incredibly uniform, the monuments he left behind
and the people’s description of him seem to differ greatly. Always he is a tall white man with pale blue
eyes. Yet sometimes his hair is reported as dark black, and other times it is said to be white. Could it be
that the various populations are describing the same personage, but at different stages of his life? Possibly
so.
Most of the stories of this figure, though kept alive only in oral tradition, are seemingly very precise
in detail. Take, for instance, this description of how Quetzalcoatl’s disciples were clothed, as chronicled
by Juan de Torquemada:

“They were men of good carriage, well-dressed, in long robes of black linen, open in front, and
without capes, cut low at the neck, with short sleeves that did not come to the elbow... These followers of
Quetzalcoatl were men of great knowledge and cunning in all kinds of fine work.”

Assuming a given people (countless centuries later) could remember such concise details about how
such people were dressed, the length of their sleeves, and so on, would it not follow that their
recollections as to hair color, etc. might not also be trustworthy? Supposing this man went to one region
early in his life, to another later, and another still later, would not the remembrances of him both differ
and show similarities, as did his architecture? Of course they would. But could any person have traversed
such expanses as these, and have impacted so many people in a single lifetime? Given certain
circumstances, perhaps.

Odin and Cain

Some people believe that in ancient times, men had far longer lifetimes than they do presently, and
that they may have lived a thousand years, perhaps longer. This, at first, sounds fantastic. But consider
the facts. In the 1700s, the average lifespan was twenty-five years of age. In the 1800s it was thirty-five.
In the 1900s it was sixty-five. And people born today have an average life expectancy of seventy-seven
years. This means that our lifespan has virtually tripled in just three centuries. Given this evolutionary
advance, where will we be a century hence, or two, or five? We couldn’t begin to guess. Nor could we
begin to hypothesize the possible life spans of those who may have been survivors left over from the
antediluvian world. But one thing is certain - the most ancient chronicles of antiquity are unanimous in
their assertion that people once lived for incredibly long periods of time. As Josephus tells us:

“...all those that have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians... relate that the
ancients lived a thousand years... .”

Josephus lists the legendary chroniclers whose works confirmed this thesis: Manetheo, Berosus,
Heironymous the Egyptian, Hesiod, Hellanicus, Acusilus, Ephorus, Niclaus, and others. He then goes on
to say that the good use to which the ancients put their longer lifespans is demonstrable in their advanced
knowledge of astronomy and geometry. Such knowledge was demonstrated by South America’s visitors
as well. James Bailey writes that:

“West of the Maya were the tribe called Tyendal, whose white culture-bringer was Votan. [He]...
invented hieroglyphic signs, taught them how to cultivate maize and cotton, and collected them into
villages. Votan... is also said by them to have measured the Earth.”

Those familiar with Nordic mythology will be struck by the similarity between “Votan” and
“Wotan”, the father god of the Northern European pantheon. The pronunciation of both names is in fact
identical. He is also known as “Odin” or “Wodan.” Sumerian scholar L.A. Waddell has this to say about
Wodan:

“Wodan is regularly represented as ... a Chaldee priest, and latterly sometimes mythologically as a
serpent... .”

This is significant because the South American Votan was also symbolized as a snake. So too were
Ityamana, Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan. 6 The figure known as “Noach Yum Chac” even wrote a text
entitled Proof That I am a Serpent. In it, he asserts that he is “the third Votan”, a descendant of Chan, and
- of course - a serpent.
Wotan/Odin, like Votan, brought his people the arts of civilization. He is credited with inventing the
runes, both a form of writing and a powerful system of magic. The Nordic Eddas tell us that Odin
descended from Heaven and enthroned himself as King at “Urd.” This reflects the Sumerian record which
says, “Kingship from heaven was made arise. At Urdu City, kingship was made... [and] the king
reigned.” The texts also call Odin “The Etil, the first leader of men.” This word “Etil” (or “lord”) the root
for a number of key words. It is a royal clan title for the Nordic gods (the “Asa”, or “Aesir”), and is the
basis for the “odal” rune, a symbol found in runic as well as Sumerian pictographic writing. 7 But perhaps
the most extraordinary link provided by the title “Etil” is the clear connection to another South American
deity - “Atl.” And “Atl”, as you’ll recall, was a word meaning “lord”, but it also meant “the sea”, or “the
waters.” So “Atl” could mean, “Lord of the Sea”, or “Lord of the Waters”, both of which echo the first
Sumerian king’s title “Lord of the Flood”, or “Lord of the Deep Waters.” “Atl” is also, as we’ve said, a
root word found in “Atlas”, “Atlantis”, and “Quetzalcoatl.”
 Odin was revered by the ancient Nordics as the inventor of mead, a wine-like alcoholic beverage that
was made from honey. (Remember that the bee was the royal emblem of the Merovingians.)
Interestingly, certain of the South American white gods are accredited with the production of alcoholic
honey drinks. Noteworthy among these was “Acan”, the Mayan god of wine. The name “Acan”, besides
bearing an obvious relation to both the Sumerian Kan and the South American “Con” (or “Con Tiki”)
reveals an even more explicit relation to Cain, in that the latter was renowned for the cultivation of
grapes and the invention of wine. Acan added the bark of a tree to this honey brew (called “balche”), and
to this day the tree is called “the balche tree.” The word “balche” seems to echo an alternate title of Cain
in the Edda, where he is called “Bauge.” And in Sumer, an alternate royal title of Cain was “Bakus”,
upon which is rooted the name of “Bacchus”, the legendary Greek god remembered as “the Lord of
Plants and Wine.” This connects him yet again to Osiris, who was known as “Asar-Bakha” (or “Osiris-
Bakha”) when represented as a bull. 8 Osiris was also “Lord of the Vine”, and the putative inventor of
wine. Before moving on it is also worth noting that the name “Acan” could carry the Sumerian meaning
“Son of Kan/Kon”, representing Cain’s son Enoch, who would have undoubtedly learned the winemaking
arts of his father.
Names relating to Enoch also show up in a South American context. An alternate title of Enoch in
the Sumerian king list called The Kish Chronicle is “Naksha.” This finds accord in the Peruvian place-
name of “Nazca.” In East Indian king lists, the tile of Enoch was “Nahusha”, and one of the principle
early languages in ancient Mexico was named “Nahua.” 9 Is this an indication that Enoch too journeyed to
South America? Cain obviously named a number of cities in the Middle East after members of his
family, and he may have done the same in South America. Take for instance, Cuzco. Ia, like all the early
Sumerian kings, was known by many titles, a few of which were: “Sag”, “Zag”, “Dur”, “Dar”, and
“Ukuzi.” The last one simply means “Lord Kuzi.” Could “Kuzi” and “Cuzco” be related? It would appear
so. The “U” of “Ukuzi” has the same solar connotation as the “O” of “Odin.” Both prefixes share the dual
meaning of “Sun” and “Lord.” If the “o” at the end of “Cuzco” has the same meaning, then “Ukuzi” and
‘Cuzco” could very well represent identical titles. And Cuzco was said to have been built by a race of
sun-worshippers.
Ia/Ukuzi’s alternate titles of “Sag” and “Zag” reveal a connection both to the Nordics and the Greeks
as well. The name given to the Nordic rune of victory was the “Sig” rune, an S-shaped zigzag resembling
a lightening bolt. The Greek god Zeus is derived from “Zag”, and his weapon of preference is the
lightening bolt. His son Kronos is the Greek version of Cain. The figure of Zag brings us full circle, for
his son “Azag”, known by such numerous titles, is shown yet again to be the pivotal character whom
we’ve examined in so many guises. Going back to the fallen angels of The Book of Enoch, L.A. Waddell
has this to say:

“Further confirmation of Cain... the artificer in bronze and iron, is supplied by The Book of Enoch,
which, originally written in Hebrew or its sister Aramaic script, is now arbitrarily classified as
‘apocryphal.’ It states (Chap. VIII.1): ‘And Azaz-el taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields
and breastplates, and made known to them the metals and the working of them, and bracelets and
ornaments.’ Here, significantly Azaz-el, which is not a Hebrew word, except the suffix ‘el’, which means
‘Lord’, is disclosed as the Sumerian title for the second Sumerian king (Gun or ‘Cain’), namely Azag...
Thus Azaz-el, or ‘Lord Azag’, the inventor of metal working of the Hebrew legend, is identified with
Cain.”
Thus, too, is Cain linked explicitly to the figures known in the West as fallen angels. Consequently,
we can see that all of these stories are indeed the same story. The mysterious race, whether called “sons
of God”, “white gods”, or what have you, are all one and the same. And they were all lead by a single
figure who, despite his plethora of names and titles, equates with the biblical Cain. Because of this man’s
seemingly superhuman, or even supernatural powers and abilities, he and his entourage were perceived to
be angels or gods. And despite the fact that, even today, we remain incapable of understanding the exact
nature of those powers, there is every likelihood that these beings were just men. The notion that they
were something more than mere mortals has prevented our understanding of their saga for millennia.
Central to their story has been a rebellion against “the gods”, and a flood sent in retribution. Thus we
envision “the gods” in question ensconced in the clouds, atop Olympus, or in some faraway Valhalla. But
what if these gods were flesh and blood beings living alongside those they ruled? What if they were a
ruling elite whose level of evolution was so much more advanced than those they governed that they
were perceived as gods and not as men? Then the story becomes much more straightforward. Having
interbred with those they governed over for a long enough period of time, a new class would have
eventually emerged - a class sharing the attributes of both the ruler and the ruled. The inevitable rebellion
of this class “against the gods” can be seen, therefore, as something not the least mythological. Rather, it
would have constituted a mere example of class war, described in mytho-poetic terms. The retribution
taken against the insurgents was undoubtedly far more direct than a flood. In fact, the Flood had no
cause-and-effect relationship with these events at all. The story of the Flood was attached to the tale of
rebellion to serve as a cautionary warning, lest post-diluvian peoples ever entertain such thoughts.
Remember, a key element of this story, in most of the places it is told, is that the gods intermarried with
the ruling dynasties, taking the daughter of the king or tribal chieftain to wife. 10 In this way they were
laying the foundation for a future global empire, mixing their genes with those of royal dynasties across
the planet, so that in time the rulers of every people and nation would be their blood relations. This kind
of “genetic imperialism” would inevitably lead to the emergence of a ruling class who would be
perceived as descendants of the gods, and establishing the notion that they possessed the ability to bring
forth a cataclysmic flood undoubtedly went a long way towards insuring that the rank and file would be
on their best behavior.

The Decline of Civilization

If indeed the white gods were preparing the way for a worldwide empire, it was a plan doomed to
failure. Though they may have had the power to impose civilization where none previously existed,
perhaps they failed to take into consideration that not every people wants, or in fact needs civilization.
While their efforts in the East and Middle East met with success, South America and Meso-America were
another story. Though the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs seem to have flourished for a time, observers seem
to be at a loss to explain why the once-thriving cultures simply shut down. Some say that the Mayans
inexplicably vanished (a story also told in relation to the Mycenaeans, Cretans and Philistines). Others
say that conquistadors arrived and killed these people “by the millions”; but whatever the excesses of the
conquistadors may have been, it seems highly unlikely. Firstly, there is nothing to indicate that these
cultures could have supported “millions” of people. And if there were millions, the logistics of a handful
of men killing nearly all of them are unimaginable. 11 A far more likely thesis, perhaps, can be found in
Plato’s statements about the descendants of the gods in Critias:

“... when the divine portion began to fade away in them, and became diluted too often, and with too
much of the mortal admixture... they [became} unable to bear their fortune, [and became} base, and had
lost the fairest of their precious gifts... .”

In other words, when the ruling class lost its ability to deal with the burden of civilization, these
peoples probably abandoned their magnificent cities and returned to their native ways. They undoubtedly
retained those things which were beneficial to them and bade good riddance to a good many aspects of
civilization which had never been relevant to their daily lives. To this day, some tribes of Native South
Americans still make boats of reeds in the style taught to them so long ago by the strange visitors. But
what need does a man struggling just to survive have of geometry, astronomy, complex calendars, and
the like? It is probably as utterly irrelevant to him now as it was at the height of Mayan civilization. Like
many indigenous peoples, they were self-sufficient, with cultures that were organic and self-contained.
The Mayans did not vanish - they just got back to basics. But at the end of the day, what ultimately
became of these cultures is outside the scope of our own inquiry. We are less concerned with how they
lost their culture than with how they attained it to begin with. And all of our sources tell the same story: a
story with which we are well-acquainted from so many other places throughout the world.

The Atlantean Hypothesis

When we first began to research the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau full-time, we could not possibly
have conceived that our inquiries would lead to the lost continent of Atlantis. We were familiar with the
writings on Atlantis by Plato, Ignatius Donnelly, and others, but we considered the story to be little more
than a curious (though fascinating) episode from mythology. Over the course of a number of years,
however, our researches would repeatedly point back to the lost island kingdom. Following the evidence
to where it lead us, we began to compile a compelling array of material in support of the Atlantis
hypothesis, much of which has already been discussed. In the years that ensued, we began to find it
increasingly plausible that Atlantis could very well play a key role in this whole mystery. In time, we
would come to have our suspicions confirmed - and confirmed by the most unexpected source: the Priory
of Sion itself.

1 For those desirous of further proof connecting Enoch with Noah, Waddell refers readers to the 1920s
edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, page 623.
2 This also shows a correspondence with the Islamic “Allah”, who was originally known as “Tualla.”
3 Short for “Marud” or “Nimarud”, alternate titles of Kan.
4 The discovery of such artifacts as a doll bearing a Roman inscription, and dated in the thirteenth
century AD indicate that people must have come to this place after a period of many centuries. The
Phoenicians and Minoans could well have known of this site from the legends of an ancestor who
had visited it far earlier - the figure remembered by the Mayans as Kukulkan.
5 The names “Oannes” and “Osiris” have nearly the same meaning. The “es” and “is” at the end equate
with the Sumerian “Ash”, meaning “Lord.” The “an” in “Oannes” means “god.” The “sir” in
“Osiris” equates with the Sumerian “Sar” or “Sha”, meaning “king” or “god.” It is from this root that
we derive “Shah”, the aristocratic title of “Sir”, and the royal appellation of “Sire.” In many ancient
languages an “o” or a “u” meant “sun”, and can be seen in the titles of numerous solar deities. So
both “Oannes” and “Osiris” are titles very much consistent with those used by South America’s
deified kings, albeit perhaps somewhat less verbose.
6 In the elder Norse Eddas, Wodan was represented as a Galdur, a word synonymous with “sorcerer.”
But Galdur’s real meaning was simply “Chaldee” or “Chaldean.” Remember that the Church of
Joseph of Arimathea in Glastonbury was called early on the “Culdee Church.” And it was said that
the first followers of Christ in England, “were the pure Culdees [Chaldeans.]” Remember too that
certain Biblical patriarchs were Chaldean Abraham, for instance was from the Chaldean capital of
Ur. There is an Indian tribe in South America called the Uru, and even orthodox scholars can’t help
but comment on the seeming connection between the words Ur and Uru. But few dare comment on
the similarity between Votan and the Northern European Wotan. Those who do, do so only in
passing, and then only to dismiss the possibility of any apparent correlation. Their logic seems to be
that the same figure couldn’t conceivably play a role in two separate and distinct cultures. But their
logic is faulty.
7 The same ideogram has been found in Egypt, Crete, Etruria, Brazil, and on various pre-historic
megaliths.
8 It is interesting to note that the word “apis” means “bull” in some ancient languages, and “bee” in
others.
9 There is also a native American tribe in the region called Aymara, suggestive of Amaru or Amuru,
descendants of Muru (Cain.) Furthermore, the East Indian king lists record that Enoch/Naksha had a
grandson named “Puru.”
10 Mythology (particularly Greek mythology) abounds with tales of gods seducing or raping queens and
princesses. It is a major thematic element.
11 If the number were even 2,000,000, to kill them all would take a year’s time, even if 230 were killed
per hour, 24 hours a day, every single day.

Concerning the article below:

In a message dated 4/20/2004 11:03:03 PM Pacific Standard Time, BTRIPP writes:

<< Website “made public on 4/20/04”!

Click here: The Vessel Of God – An Introduction To The Grail Research & Esoteric Writings of Boyd
Rice >>

So far, have looked only at “The Underworld”

(http://www.thevesselofgod.com/thealphaandtheomega.html). The following struck me:

”The “underworld thesis” may also shed some light on the recurring mythological theme of the Black
Sun, a scenario of death and resurrection. When the king dies, the sun turns black. He descends to the
underworld and is reborn as God, a very bizarre notion. But imagine for a moment that the death of the
king symbolizes the destruction of his empire by a global cataclysm. The sun is blotted from the sky by
unprecedented storms such as would flood the entire world, or by violent volcanic activity that would fill
the atmosphere with ash, and reduce the temperature so abruptly as to trigger an ice age.”

It’s also possible that this was a culture that appeased the great dragon devouring the Sun (their
interpretation of an eclipse of the Sun by the Moon) by offering the king as a sacrifice. Something like
that could happen fairly frequently, and would be great legend-fodder, but great world-destroying floods
don’t happen very often, and that sort of scenario isn’t a staple of the Flood legends around the world.
(The Flood legends almost certainly go back to the collapse of a great ice dam that walled off the
Mediterranean from the enormous glacial lake that became the Black Sea as a result, about 8000 years.
The languages of widely separated cultures, such as Polynesian ones and that of the Hebrew ancestors of
the Jews, contain many words and phrases, almost all of them liturgical in nature, that sound virtually
alike and have virtually identical meanings. For example, the Hebrew “Noah” is virtually identical to the
Hawaiian “Nuu,” the Hawaiian version of the patriarch who survived the Flood. The word for “priest” in
Hebrew is “cohen,” the one in Hawaiian is “kahuna.” And so on. It’s quite possible that peoples living
around the southern end of the great freshwater lake that was converted to the Black Sea by the collapse
of that ice dam fled southward to the Middle East, some remaining there, some continuing on to
Africa, and from Africa to Madagascar, India, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, and
Polynesia. That the words in question are liturgical – and up until the founding of the modern state of
Israel in 1948, Hebrew was entirely liturgical in nature, a dead language save for use in connection with
Torah and the religious holidays and rituals of Judaism – used only in connection with religious practice
and study, would have kept them virtually unchanged over that horrendous amount of time.) The authors
don’t seem to have taken that possibility into account. It’s more mundane than the Velikovsky scenarios,
but an important way of testing their hypotheses – in fact, archeological research now being done in and
around the Black Sea is probably yielding treasures of data that could be used for that purpose.

Just started looking over the site. I’ll keep you posted as to my reactions. – Yael

Brendan –

“There is speculation that the Flood was caused by the end of an ice age. Melting ice and snow
turned to liquid and soon the world was submerged under water.”
Actually, that’s not the Black Sea hypothesis, not quite. The idea is that the warming of the world at
the end of the last Ice Age, 8,000 years ago, was responsible for the melting-through of an ice dam at the
southern end of the freshwater lake that became the Black Sea as a result of that collapse. The ice-dam
became thinner and thinner as the world warmed, and finally became so thin and fragile that it could no
longer hold back the waters of the Mediterranean, which rushed through, adding megatons of salt water
to the lake and expanding its margins by vast amounts. People living near the southern end of the lake
would have been drowned unless they had already realized what was happening to that ice dam and fled
the area. People living in more northern portions of the lake’s margins may have had time to get away
after the Med began flooding in, and certainly many of them must have done so, fleeing west to Europe,
north to northern Russia, Scandinavia, and Siberia, east to China, India, and southeast Asia, and south
(probably through other areas) to the Middle East and, in some cases, from there on to Africa, driving
many indigenous peoples in their way before them or maybe slaughtering them wholesale as they went.
Wherever they settled afterward, in some cases they may have settled down with whoever was already
living there, but as territorial as human beings are, the likelihood in many cases is that the two peoples,
indigenes and attempted invaders, fought to the death, winners taking all (land, women and children to
keep as slaves, the possessions of the losers, etc.). There was no world-destroying flood, just a very big
one in the area of what is now the Black Sea, but it would have been more than big enough to be
remembered for the deaths it caused, the terror it brought, and the scattering of lakeside dwellers to the
four quarters of the Eurasian continent that took place as a result. This flood could easily be the one
remembered in so many cultures’ legends and religious stories. It could also have given rise to such
legends as that of the Fall of the Tower of Babel (though that one could be a just-so story that came about
as an attempt to describe why so many people, speaking so many languages, existed in and around the
city of Babylon, which was a major trade center of the ancient world, a fact that is probably responsible
for the plethora of subcultures and languages associated with it back when), and that of Cain and Abel
(which probably has to do with a Neolithic, semiurban people, represented by Cain, likely a leader or
king, that wanted to occupy the lush, verdant land occupied by a Paleolithic, hunting-gathering people,
represented by Abel, maybe a clan elder; the land occupied by Cain’s people may have gone barren
through over-cultivation, or maybe was one of the lands drowned by the Black Sea flood, whereas Abel’s
land, maybe to the west or south, was still fertile and green because hunting-gathering peoples tend to
keep their populations low and randomize their hunting and gathering spots, which prevents over-use of
the land. The ghastly massacre that came about when Cain’s people entered the land, saw Abel’s people
there, and fell on them might have been remembered for a long, long time by Cain’s people, and finally
come down to us in the Bible. It is also a story that was probably repeated countless times during the
transition across the world from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic – the Neanderthals may have been driven
to extinction in just that way, save for those of their women that became slaves and concubines of Cro-
Magnon invaders and conquerors of their lands, who could then have borne the babies of the invaders,
keeping their people’s genes alive in the hominid gene-pool in that way).
Too bad we don’t have a time-machine. Otherwise we could all go back and see what really
happened back when. Maybe this guy’s theories are true, but they aren’t as likely as the Black Sea model
of the Flood, which could have given rise to so many legends and religious stories, nor as easily tested
(well, relatively easy; the Black Sea project is going to require a lot of bread to do right, at least tens of
millions of dollars, as well as a lot of international cooperation – Russia, like the Soviet Union, is jealous
of her territory and very uneasy about letting a bunch of Westerners too close to it, and so gives
permission to enter the Black Sea and explore it only with great reluctance . . . if then).
More to come soon, Yael

Brendan –
BTW, there’s a gorgeous area here in NE Washington state known as the scablands, a badlands carved
out by an enormous flood around (roughly) the same time that the ice dam between the Black Sea and the
Med collapsed. There are channels all through the scablands that are clearly the result of sudden,
catastrophic flooding which, several years ago, inspired some scientists to consider the idea that maybe
some of the big dry channels on Mars, such as those in the Valles Marineris area, were the result of
similar flooding. (See, e.g., CVO Website - Glacial Lake Missoula – to get that I used as a keyword
phrase “scablands lake missoula washington”). There wasn’t just one huge flood in that time frame, but
maybe dozens. Fun to check out. :-)
– Yael

Why Mercury retrograde and Mercury stationary screw everything up for everybody:

Mercury is a small planet, and not very close to us. Obviously its gravitational pull on us isn’t nearly
strong enough to account for the fact that whenever Mercury is retrograde or takes a station (appears to
the naked eye to stand still against the backdrop of the heavens over the course of several nights),
everything that can possibly go wrong in our everyday lives, or with our computers or other appliances,
the Internet, communication in general, our relationships with siblings and neighbors, and all the other
things of which Mercury is the astrological ruler, not only does so, but does so in spades, far more so than
can be accounted for either by Murphy’s Law or the notorious perversities of inanimate objects. Either
we’re all victims of very similar hallucinatory experiences of that sort whenever Mercury isn’t in direct
motion, subject to masochistic wish-fulfillment, even those of us who know nothing about astrology, let
alone have any desire to vindicate it in the face of relentless criticism from debunkers, professional and
otherwise; or it all really happens, just that way, and something else is going on, something that accounts
for it.
As a matter of fact, there is something that could be responsible for such phenomena. It has to do
with the fact that Mercury has a strong electromagnetic field, far stronger than anyone had expected
before its strength was measured by our one Mercury probe. This implies that Mercury has a core that is
almost entirely solid iron, with few contaminants, and is thus effectively a huge electromagnet.
As this planet-sized electromagnet orbits the Sun, as any moving magnet will, it generates strong
electrical fields in its vicinity. On the other hand, the Sun, a gigantic ball of plasma, i.e., highly ionized,
extremely hot gas, has a strong electromagnetic field of its own, whose characteristics change as the fluid
corpus of the Sun is tweaked and tugged this way and that by the gravitational fields of the other bodies
of the Solar System in their various endless, complex dances around the Sun. The Sun’s electromagnetic
field is huge, extending as far out as the orbit of Jupiter. In the vicinity of our world, it is still strong
enough that every living thing on Earth is affected by it, just as organisms placed close to an
electromagnetic field from a source here on Earth would be. As that field’s characteristics change, we
sense that and react to it measurably on physiological levels as any others. So anything that affects that
field and its characteristics in the vicinity of the Earth will affect everything alive on Earth at least to
some degree.
Enter Mercury. The interaction of the electromagnetic fields of the Sun and Mercury can be
ferocious. In addition, since Mercury is so close to the Sun, its mass including that huge ball of iron in its
interior, its gravitational field will have a strong effect on the Sun’s photosphere, somewhat less of an
effect on those parts of the Sun below its photosphere. In turn, that affects the Sun’s electromagnetic
field. And when the geometric interrelationship of the Sun, Mercury, and the Earth are such that
Mercury’s apparent motion from night to night is retrograde (moving east-to-west through the sky, as
seen against the background of the starry heavens, rather than west-to-east, as is normal), stationary
retrograde (apparently stationary in the sky, preparing to go retrograde after having been in direct motion
for several months), or stationary direct (apparently stationary in the sky, preparing to go direct after
having been in retrograde motion for several weeks), the affect that has on that portion of the Sun’s
electromagnetic field that is in close proximity to Earth is very strong, with characteristics that aren’t
particularly comfortable for our biology.
As our biology goes, so goes our brains, and thus our minds, whether we like it or not. Mercury
retrograde and Mercury stationary cause changes in the Sun’s electromagnetic field, as received on Earth,
that tend to affect Earthly life in much the same way that a Santa Ana wind condition affects everything
in the Los Angeles Basin as long as it blow. Throughout the periods during which such conditions hold
sway, we tend to trip over our own feet when it comes to doing almost anything, make mistakes totalling
up our checkbooks, have our computers blow up on us, get in screaming fights with neighbors or
relatives, and otherwise go through a mercurial version of Hell until Mercury is once more in direct
motion. And the cause of this is essential <i>physical</i> in nature, that big iron ball at the center of the
closest planet to the Sun.
This is something that can be tested, though doing in-depth tests on it will have to wait until we have
space probes in semi-permanent orbit around that planet, or even a manned or robotic base on it. If tests
bear out the scenario described above – and I’m betting the farm on it – that would indicate that what
astrology measures and predicts are our behavior patterns, health, and mental outlook as these are
affected by purely physical phenomena, electromagnetic in nature, rather than by “mystical” ones that
can’t be explained, only taken on faith. Mind and body aren’t unrelated to each other. Anything that
affects one affects the other, as well, and does so ways that can be predicted from the reactions of the
first to it. One check on it is what effects Venus has on the Sun’s electromagnetic field and on that of the
Earth, at least in terms of gravitational effects. Anyone up for space? :-)

True Kings

The word “king” has gone out of favor these days, but true kingship, by whatever name, is something
everyone recognizes instantly, that lifts the heart of everyone not wholly damned to see it.
This is not a characteristic of most politicians. And kingship is not found only in that breed; it
occurs rarely, but can be found in every walk of life and occupation. The difference between the true
king – or queen; this is not a matter of gender, and never was, and if you doubt that, consider Queen
Elizabeth I of England and Queen Ysabella of Spain – and those who merely want the perks of kingship
with none of the responsibilities is this:
As far as the false kings go, it is all about them. Their positions, their power, their privileges are all
for them, no one else. They grandstand. They posture. They do everything they can to show the world
how great they are – so that others, seeing this, will adore them and submit to them and surrender all their
power to them. They are, in short, totally self-centered, and their only God is the great God Me, and in
the long run the best thing that can be said of them is that sometimes they gave great entertainment
value. As for the worst – well, history is replete with horrifying examples of their worst, from
Macmillan’s well-meaning pact with Hitler to the carnage wrought by the Third Reich, Stalin’s Russia,
and Communist China.
For the true king, it’s all about them – his people, his nation, his world, his God. From his people he
draws forth that which will show the world how great they are, and the measure of his pride is in their
achievements. At his worst, he is still capable of greatness and of leading his people to their moment of
greatness. At his best – at his best, like FDR, without assistance he somehow pulls himself erect on legs
deadened by polio to show his cabinet that yes, their country can and will win the war that the attack on
Pearl Harbor has forced on it; like Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto, he turns apparent cowardice
into an astounding defeat of an army many times larger than his; like Charles Lindbergh, he does the
impossible, flying across the Atlantic from New York to Paris without a copilot, just to show it can be
done; like Sir Winston Churchill, in his country’s darkest hour he somehow rallies them and leads them
to victory over an implacable foe far better armed and equipped than they. The examples of true kings
can be found among every ethnic group, every nation, every culture, every human group that ever was – I
have picked these four because I know them better than others, but you, Gentle Reader, can come up with
plenty of your own, I am sure.
The point is that when it comes time for a change of leaders, you should ask yourselves: is that
candidate or that one a true king, or just another political carnival barker, out to make a buck and have
some fun and do it at your expense? Consider your answer carefully when it comes to the next election.
And to you who know a deeper meaning of the word “king” – 93. Let’s roll!

Archangels of Islam and the US

It occurs to me that whereas the Archangel ruling over Islam – as Mohammed himself taught – is
Gabriel, Lord of the Northern Quarter and of the Element Water, which fact of and by itself does not
indicate anything bad, the Qlippoth of Islam, what happens to Islam when it goes bad, is ruled over by
Asmodeus, whose Chaldean name was Chasmodai (don’t pronounce it; for some reason, every time I
have done so godawful things have begun happening to me and everyone in the vicinity – there’s
something real going on there). Chasmodai was the Chaldean Lord of the Moon, and Asmodeus is a
Qlippothic lunar spirit. And Gabriel is the Archangelic Lord of the Moon. (BTW, “Qlippoth” includes
any sort of deviation from the ideal form of a thing, and is not used here in a pejorative sense. A
Qlippoth can be as harmless as a minor spill of food on a kitchen floor, easily and quickly cleaned up; or
something as horrifying as Germany’s Third Reich and everything it stood for. The USA has its own
Qlippoth, too, from misbehaving appliances and automobiles to murderously sadistic and mischievous
mercurial spirits gone wrong. So this term shouldn’t be taken as insulting. It is simply descriptive, the
spiritual nature of what it describes having to be determined with reference to other things.)
Now, centuries before the beginning of the Common Era the Archangel Raphael is supposed to have
defeated and bound and banished Asmodeus (using, would you believe, the smoke from the roasting of a
“fierce fish,” probably a shark or something like that), and it is Raphael that occultists call on to banish
Asmodeus today when that particularly entity gives trouble.
To cut to the chase, Raphael is another avatar of Hermes, and of the Roman God Mercurius
(mercury). How odd it is that the nation whose presiding spirit is Raphael (by whatever name) is now in
battle with a splinter group of Muslims, Jihadistan, that is associated with Asmodeus.

A Secret of Great Writing

The great writer remains transparent, invisible to the reader, so that the reader comes to feel that he,
the reader, is an omnipotent observer of that which the writing describes, wholly the Omniscient
Observer. Once the writer’s ego becomes more evident to the reader than his characters and story (or, in
the case of nonfiction prose, his subject), the writing can quickly deteriorate into an exercise in
narcissistic punditry and grandstanding.

Stephen King and The Book of the Law

Concerning Aleister Crowley and Stephen King:

For some reason the use of the word “king” in Crowley’s Book of the Law has always hit me funny,
not in a bad way, but rather the reaction you have to something that you know is very important, but don’t
know why, as if it were prophecy that couldn’t be interpreted until much later events (than publication of
the Book of the Law) had taken place, along with a paradigm shift without which it still wouldn’t make
any sense. My sneaky weird strange mind always flashed on those phrases whenever I ran across King’s
books, or mention of him, or articles by him. Finally Rich, who’d listened to an interview of King on the
science-fiction radio program Hour 25, which is broadcast from the Los Angeles area, gave me King’s
natal data: September 21, 1947, 4:18 a.m., Portland, Maine (I’m attaching herewith a JPG of the chart
image for you to look over if you’re interested).
Among other things, King has the star Algol smack on the Midheaven, which is the 10th House cusp,
having to do with career; Algol is generally associated with horrifying things. He also has
Spica conjunct the 3rd-house cusp (though only in the Placidus House domification system; that cusp
will drift back and forth several degrees in other systems, and the orb for the only aspects of a star to
anything in a chart, the conjunction and opposition, that are effective for most people is 1 degree, no ore,
so it was lucky I use that system exclusively or I’d never have spotted that). Spica is the most fortunate
of the stars, while the 3rd House rules writing and teaching, and King, one of America’s premier writers,
taught English classes when he was in his 20s, before he started getting his books published. Also,
Jupiter is in his 3rd House, too – Jupiter is the Great Benefic. King’s fortune is definitely connected with
his writing. And his Part of Fortune is in Gemini in his 10th House, along with Uranus – his fortune has
also come from his career, which is connected with things ruled by Uranus, among other things (the 10th-
House cusp is in Taurus, ruled by Venus, another benefic planet). Uranus is exalted in Scorpio, which
rules death, horror, and other things of the sort you find in King’s writing. It also rules science-fiction,
which is how King characterizes his writing.
On top of everything else, King’s birth-time, 4:18, occurs in Liber Al as a numerologically
significant number (“418”). And so on and on.
Anyway, one wonders whether The Book of the Law foreshadowed him by its use of the word “king,”
or, like most supposedly prophetic works, can be “proved” to be “true” after the fact by picking and
choosing from enough news events, biographies, etc. :-)

What is a Jew?

Over thousands of years, Judaism has been hammered out, refined again and again to an exquisite
degree, on the anvil of history by the hammer of one disaster, war, pogrom, or other vast evil after
another. The point of Judaism isn’t to perpetuate itself; Jews don’t exist for Judaism, but rather the
reverse – the point of Judaism isn’t to perpetuate itself, but rather to enable the people Israel to continue
to exist under the harshest of persecutions and the most evil conditions. What, then, is the reason for the
existence of Jews? Jews, to use a metaphor from engineering that is no less an ultimate truth for being a
metaphor, by remaining Jews no matter how relentless the selective pressures falling on them, maintain a
set-point of the spirit in the world, a set of values, standards, and ideals without which the world would
rapidly spin out of control and ace itself out of existence. By existing as Jews, Jews enable justice, keep
justice alive in the world. Without some people like them, without some people who maintain a way of
life that is justice, in the same way that Morpheus in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is dream, and his
sister Thanatos is Death, the world, or at least that part of it that can someday enable the living world to
have babies of its own natural body among the stars before it dies, would cease to exist; for such power
as that found in a high-energy technological species like humanity cannot long avoid collecting an
ultimate Darwin Award without ironclad checks on its inevitable hubristic arrogance. That Life shall go
on long after its parent has died, there must be justice, which is to the community, including that ultimate
sort of community that is a living world, what health is to the body of an individual organism. It is the
task of Jews to live a way of life from birth to death that preserves that balance.

Chariots of Fire

April 24, 2004

Watched a video of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire a few hours ago. Maginificent! What struck me
was the fact that via competition, those young athletes were also learning the value of cooperation in
team effort – symbiosis as a result of competition! The competition helped support and build
community, opponents participating in team efforts to support their teams, schools, and countries as well
as competing against one another. This is nature at her sneakiest, refuting Spencerian social mores at the
same time she refutes Socialist principles, demonstrating that the nature of the universe is essentially
Taoistic, that everything entails its opposite, that Yin and Yang can work together for a common good. I
wonder if biologist Lynn Margulis assigns the video as a homework assignment – it’d be a great
illustration of what she teaches. ;-)

The Alamo

Rich –
Just saw The Alamo. Go see it. Shoot somebody if that’s the only way you can see it. The
“Freedom Alliance” idiots who gave it such a bad press in the last few weeks apparently only saw a
couple of trailers, and not the best, at that. The movie is about ordinary men – mortals, weak, flawed,
definitely not superheroes – who, for the love of honor, freedom, and the desire not to look bad in the
eyes of their fellows trapped with them in that death-trap, did an extraordinary thing: sacrificing
themselves for their dream, they inspired the rest of Texas to make that dream come true.
Demigods, beings who can’t fail, who can do anything because they transcend mortal weakness and
failings, who are by definition sinless and without stain, can’t be heroes. Heroes are ordinary men who
somehow transcend their very real mortality, weaknesses, sins, and failings to carry off the most
extraordinary things, even in the face of death. It happened at the Alamo. It happened long years later
on an island called Iwo Jima. And all the bitching about the fact that this movie showed men like Sam
Houston and Jim Bowie as mortals with numerous failings somehow didn’t mention the fact that those
same men went on to transcend those failings, and bring about the most extraordinary things.
Go see it. It’s worth seeing. The idiots will continue to carp that the men portrayed in it came off in
the movie’s beginning as less than little tin Gods – and so what? Men aren’t Gods. They’re mortal – but
quite a few of them somehow become the instruments by which the Gods make miracles happen. And
that’s what this movie was about – and why we still remember the Alamo. Ultimately, the meaning of
one’s life is what one is willing to die for, to sacrifice oneself for to bring into manifestation. The men at
the Alamo sacrificed theirs for independence from Mexico, and above all, for liberty, so that their
descendants would be free. They succeeded. A terrible sort of Magick, that a man must die to make his
dreams come true – but ultimately, that’s what life is all about.
Above all, the portrayal of Davy Crockett was superb. – Actually, all the actors did superlative jobs.
I was stunned at how good it was. But then, I’m not a little tin God belonging to the Freedom Alliance.
I’m just mortal clay, myself, praying that if the task ever falls on my shoulders to participate in
something like what those men did, I’ll be up to it, terrified that I won’t be. So what do I know?

Email conversation with someone for whom I recently did a natal horoscope:

In a message dated 4/23/2004 7:35:42 PM Pacific Standard Time, ***@****.org writes:

<< Thank you my dear, you do great, none of us are straight forward I guess, and we must all strive to
accentuate the positives and hold the negatives in check. There was much I see of the me which has
evolved through many phases, and assume that it is the case with everyone. On reflection though, perhaps
all people do not evolve, but remain pretty much the same all their life. I would be interested in your take
on this. >>

I think every living creature evolves, not only over lifetimes, but in every lifetime. But in most cases
most of us never get a glimpse of the things that would show progressive changes in others. It all depends
on how well you know a given individual, and for how long, and whether you are each on the other’s
wavelength, I think. Also, progressive change in an individual is rather like heating water to make it boil.
Even when water gets to 212° F (100° C), it takes awhile, sitting on the heat, for it to begin actively
boiling; this is because it takes additional energy to get the molecules of water, which haven’t been
moving around much, to begin moving in a way that makes itself visible to us as a rolling boil. Likewise,
Spring doesn’t really begin to make itself evident until at least a month or so of increasing light and heat
has poured into the world – the solar month we call Pisces, from February 18 to March 20 – even though,
in the northern hemisphere, the Sun had begun trending north again back in late December and the days
had begun to lengthen again then, so that by February 18 one would think that it should be warm again.
The events and currents of the world we live in force change in us, but it takes awhile for the cumulative
effects of those changes to show themselves in us in ways others can see.
<< I know I am not in the least as I was in my youth, and looking back see myself as having evolved
beyond what would have been even conceived by the me which was the youth. Having said that, not
anyone I know has experienced it to the degree I have. >>

You might be surprised. :-)

<< Does any of this make any sense to you? >>

Of course it does. The thing is, I’ve been studying and practicing Magick since 1969, when I first
discovered Crowley. Like Zen, Mystic Christianity, various schools of combat arts, and other
metaphysical systems, the study and practice of Magick over the years forces change in you, a continuous
series of initiations, but it takes awhile for the changes to become evident. The idea is ultimately to
become a valued community elder, but to do that you have to go through a lot of things, things that force
that transmutation from callow youth to experienced and even wise elder. Like any other such school,
Magick may speed up and refine that developmental progress, but it can never eliminate the long years
necessary to bring about the alchemy that transmutes one into a truly formidable and valuable member of
the community. And alchemy is exactly what the study and practice of Magick is all about: the
alchemical transformation of spiritual lead into spiritual gold, both spiritual metals being part of the
individual’s spirit and soul.
And after 59 years of life, and 37 as a student and journeyman practitioner of Magick, I still ain’t got
there. But then, “there” is like “up”: there’s no ceiling on it. :-)
– Yael

American Dragons

In a message dated 4/4/2004 5:52:57 PM Pacific Standard Time, xxxx@yyyy.org writes:

Ahhh yes my dear,

I agree, and I served my time and saw my share of fighting, but this is different.
There are no great armies massing, it is not as if you could see them, they hide in the
dark and hit any one of millions of targets and die or escape to do another one. The
number of targets is unbelievable and there are not enough guards available in your
wildest imagination to monitor all the vulnerable targets. The hundreds of thousands of
miles of rails, the thousands of water reservoirs, the hundreds of thousands of bridges
and tunnels, the power plants, hundreds of trains and buses on any given day,
distribution warehouses, the list goes on. This doesn’t even count the crowded city
opportunities, the high rise office buildings, and subways.
The object is to terrorize the populace, who will not ride the subway after two or
three are hit, who will not go to work in a high-rise after the same thing happens. If a
major transformer is blown on the east coast it will stop all activity, without traffic
lights the traffic can’t move, when that one is repaired another one is blown and before
it can be repaired the cities are out of groceries. people can’t leave, it gets ugly. The
same thing would happen in any area of any country.
It just isn’t a war like the world has ever seen before, the closest thing is the
underground in Europe during WW2 but on a world wide scale. I would like to think
we can mobilize and stomp it, but .............
Love, ****

Yes, we can. Do you know how many ninja dojos – real ones, part of the Bujinkan system, not the
flashy, tinsel-and-glitter junk dojos – there are now in this country alone? Thousands – and many of
them are taught by men who served in Vietnam, Gulf War 1, even Korea. You are right that this war is
definitely a guerilla war – so it takes guerilla fighters to win it. More and more, the US armed services
are turning to ninja training, the real thing, to prepare our troops to do what is necessary in foreign wars
of that sort – and so are more and more police departments all across this country.
That’s one. The second advantage we have is that over the past several decades more and more
people have, like me, learned everything they could about survival skills in the midst of the sort of
disasters you’re describing. Y2K helped a lot in that respect, but it was happening even before then.
There are also the Mormons, millions of them: besides their proud service in our militaries and in
various government agencies, devout Mormons also keep at least a year’s supply of imperishable food on
hand at all times, can their own food (and are good at it, no botulism), have firearms and plenty of
ammunition and know how to use them (as well as how to load ammo), and could survive such
catastrophe very well – not to mention making life miserable for any would-be invaders or infiltrators.
Sure, the bulk of Americans aren’t prepared for such a siege – yet. Nor were we prepared for WW 2
– we had to wing it, getting over trying to fight the previous war in order to fight the one at hand with
any chance of success. The civilian population had to learn how to deal with the shortages of wartime
life, how to re-gear our industry for war, and all the rest of it. It didn’t happen overnight, and we had just
come through that hellish Great Depression, as well, making the transition a thousand times harder than it
would have been otherwise.
In the Black Dragon of Putrefaction that is war, the relentless alchemical fires of WW 2 transformed
us from a beaten-down nation of farmers into a nation of determined soldiers. I’ve no doubt at all that
whatever is coming as far as the Jihad goes, it’ll do the same to us. It may even be what we need to get
us into space in a permanent way – like everybody else, it takes a war to make us great, to bring out our
genius and put it to work, and the one that’s coming will put us between the hammer and the anvil and
hammer away at us until nothing is left but that genius.
As for trying to protect everybody, of course it can’t be done. Domestic security will ultimately
entail protecting the sources of production and the means of distribution, because if those are destroyed,
everything will fall with them. But if you protect those, the survivors can use them to fight back and
fight back and fight back.
Too many Americans have gotten into a mind-set of entitlement, entertainment-on-demand, police-
as-nannies that has to be shattered if we are ever again to achieve anything great. The job of our police,
fire departments, armed forces, and executive branch of the government will be to protect the means by
which communities, counties, states, and the nation as a whole can survive no matter how many die. The
job of the individual American will be to re-learn self-reliance, including having and knowing how to use
and having the determination to use as necessary truly effective means of self-defense, AKA firearms and
all the rest of it, along with how to get food if the markets aren’t available, how to make heat and light if
electricity and natural gas fail, how to deliver a baby at home, and all the other things that were matters
of course to 18th- and 19th-century Americans. And the job of Darwin will be to hand out those
infamous awards, trimming the fat off the national psyche, leaving only the lean, mean survival machines
to carry on until, one way or another, it’s over.
As I said, we are the dragon. And we’re just full of surprises – ask at any dojo worth its name. :-)
– Yael

On Alchemy

Alchemy – man as enzyme, doing things at low temperatures and pressures, over extended periods of
time, that would otherwise take the core of a star to accomplish. Man as vitamin, a template bringing
together imperfect materials and, by his slow, persistent, consistent actions, breaking them down, then
putting them back together in alchemically perfected form. Man doing on the level of particle physics
what vitamins and other enzymes do on the molecular level.

On Conspiracies

In a message dated 4/13/2004 10:59:46 PM Pacific Standard Time, ronwebbNOSPAMMERS@gci.net

writes:

<< I like the speech, but I think we’re gonna have to find someone other than the grandson of Prescott
Bush to give it.
What do you know about things like the “Trilateral Commission”? I’m afraid I’m pretty vague on
that sort of thing, but many accusations are about, and some things are pretty suspicious - like the illegal
alien amnesty thing - what mindset would consider THAT a good idea??? >>

Polaris93 responds:

I don’t know much. There are one hell of a lot of rumors out there about such things, but precious
little in the way of substantive evidence to back them up. The mindset of most conspiratologists is akin to
that of a drunkard regarding his tipple: their pleasure is to create conspiracy theories, and who wants to
threaten them with some cruddy facts? A Google search will turn up reams of info on such things, but I
don’t think they’ll check out very well – “You can prove anything if you ignore enough facts.”
As it is, conspiracies are like any opportunistic infection: take away the opportunities and the
conspiracies become dust in the wind. The underlying causes of the great currents of our history have
orders of magnitude more to do with economic, ecological, and sociological phenomena than deliberate,
planned human action, including conspiracies. Look at the Nazis: rather than being a cadre of supermen,
as they told themselves they were, able to run rings around the Allies and get away with anything they
wanted to, they made a great many classical blunders, such as starting and becoming embroiled in a 2-
front war (with the Soviet Union being one of those fronts, yet!), overextending so egregiously that as a
result they were almost transparent, applying “mystical insights” to military reality, and pouring the bulk
of Germany’s resources into implementing the Final Solution as well as idiot projects such as trying to
prove out the World-Ice Theory. In the beginning, Hitler seemed like such a brilliant strategist, but as the
months wore on, he and his goons became more and more bizarre in their attempt at world-conquering,
until finally, as reality so often does to fools, reality sat down on them all like a Magick truck on a garter
snake, and that was the end of that nonsense.
Conspiracies start out with the confident exuberance of those who know they are about to take over
the world. What happens to them in the end depends upon the extent of the knowledge about how reality,
especially people reality, works and appropriate action thereon by the conspirators. In other words,
Reality always calls the shots, and (to thoroughly mix metaphors) conspirators must always dance to the
tune Reality plays for them, where Reality comprises all the momentum and inertia of history,
socioeconomic reality, and all the rest of the things largely beyond anyone’s control, including
conspirators.
Successful conspirators are like chess masters: rather than knowing everything – nobody knows
everything, and damned few know more than a little – they know just about enough to stay one or two
steps ahead of the competition and the behavior of their general environment, and that’s it.
Conspiratologists, on the other hand, assume the existence of omnipotent cabals made up of omniscient
Masters of the Universe that run everything behind the scenes. They ain’t no sitch animule, as the old
farmer said when he saw the giraffe for the first time. So there’s not much out there that will be really
helpful when it comes to tracking down real conspiracies and what they really do, except for the stuff that
is truly old news, such as Boss Tweed and the Tweed Ring, that sort of thing.
I wish I had more to go on, Ron, I really do. But I have no idea where to find it. {sigh}

In a message dated 4/14/2004 12:51:15 AM Pacific Standard Time, Polaris93 adds:

Ron –
I think an awful lot of conspiracy theories stem from the uncertainty in our lives most of us face
anymore, and a tremendous need to have understandable, believable explanations for what’s going on
around us, even if we can’t really do anything about them. Madness results from not knowing, in the face
of horrendous mysteries that impact our lives in dreadful ways, such as 9-11, or, well before that, Love
Canal, World War II, and all the other vast phenomena that have swept us all up and carried as along the
way riptides carry unwary swimmers out to sea to drown. So people make theories about What It All
Means, and come up with the idea of gigantic conspiracies of super-powerful individuals to run the world
behind the scenes, because that’s less scary by far than knowing that ultimately, nobody is in charge, or at
least, nobody human. If you ignore enough data, you can prove anything you want to, so people spin and
spin their theories, using as input older theories, because there just isn’t much else to base them on, and
they come up with these theories about the Illuminati and the Hell Nazis from the Dungeon Dimensions
and all the rest of it, because, as mad and scary as those theories are, they aren’t a patch on Chaos,
unsteered, uncontrolled, unfettered, rife in the universe – in our universe, petty as that universe and our
concerns about it may be.
Maybe what’s Behind It All are the bacteria. They’ve been around for four billion years, and what
we are, we big eukaryotic organisms such as human beings and dogs and oak trees and toadstools and
blue whales and paramecia, are their condominium apartment buildings and their Sunday-go-to-meeting
clothes and their general transportation around the planet and in space. DNA wants to replicate itself to
infinity, of course, and the only direction it can do so now is straight up, so it’s time for us to get into
space in a permanent way. But that requires a very high level of scientific and mathematical
understanding and technological achievement. Nothing drives those the way war does, so we have war
after war after war, each one of which has given us something more when it comes to science and
technology. The American Civil War was the first really big, deadly one, because of the way the North
had already industrialized and the technological advances that were made and implemented in the 19th
century through the last year of the Civil War. After that, high-tech war was a big business – as witness,
since then, World Wars 1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and both Gulf Wars. Maybe DNA, via the bacteria that
carry it, is Behind It All, whispering nasty ideas into our brains to make us go to war with one another so
our technology will be driven literally sky-high and Earthly life can finally make it to the stars.
And why not? If we don’t get to the stars, we – all Earth’s life – are toast. Maybe not tomorrow, or the
next day, maybe it will take quite awhile, but without the stars we are all dead organisms walking. It’s
just a matter of time.
In fact, I really believe that that is most of what is Behind It All: DNA, via the bacteria and other
microbes we carry around inside us all the time, whispering its siren song of hate and vengeance and high
technology into our receptive brains, the cells of which themselves, as biologist Lynn Margulis
postulates,* may have evolved from spirochete bacteria. As Fred Saberhagen shows in the short story
“Pressure,” part of his Berserker series of stories and novels, in the end Life, the ultimate ninja, is both
sneakier and more powerful than any mere piece of hardware. I think, at least on the level of the DNA in
the nuclei of each of the cells of our bodies and the extranuclear mitochondria within those cells, we
ourselves are happily conspiring with Life to trick ourselves into doing the deadly, vicious things
necessary to getting us and the rest of the life we share our world with to the stars – because the
alternative is extinction for us as well as them. The “Secret Chiefs” of every Magickal Order and the
Illuminati and all the rest of them are just our dim perceptions of the intelligence within every strand of
DNA and RNA in our bodies and the bodies of all other living things, the intelligence that is, slowly but
surely, pushing us toward the stars. The fact that participating in that evolutionary conspiracy gets a lot of
us dead in horrifying ways is beside the point: again, the alternative is complete extinction.
I think that’s why we do as we do, at least in the aggregate and over appreciable reaches of time. I
really believe that all our governments and our wars and our mass movements and all the other great
currents of ourselves and our societies are just the outward and visible signs of inward and intelligent
Presences that are physically manifest as nucleic acid, in which all the living books of Life’s vast library
are stored.
That’s not to say that it’s never appropriate to lynch a bastard or two – DNA or no DNA, if I had a
time machine and could go back in time and nuke Hitler before he ever got rolling, I’d do it in a
nanosecond, and doubtless all the rest of us have our own villains that want nuking. But that’s part of it,
too – otherwise we’d never have gotten into WW 2 in response to Pearl Harbor, maybe there never would
have been a Pearl Harbor at all . . . and all the technological and scientific advances we made during
WW 2 out of the sheer, relentless press of military necessity wouldn’t have happened, either.
So here we are, after four billion years’ worth of bacteriological conspiracies, staring at those stars,
planning to get to them . . . It’s not such a bad conspiracy after all, is it? ;-)

*For more on which see, e.g., Margulis, Lynn and Sagan, Dorian. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of
Microbial Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986, 1997. ISBN 0-520-
21064-6.

– Yael
Qaballistic, Magickal, and Astrological Assignments of Neil Gaiman’s Endless

For those interested in the Qaballistic assignments of Neil Gaiman’s Endless, these are as follows:

Sephiroth 9-10: Earth/Moon – Lord Dream

Sephirah 8: Mercury – Lady Death
Sephirah 7: Venus – L. Desire
Sephirah 6: Sun – Lord Destiny
Sephirah 5: Mars – Lord Destruction
Sephirah 4: Jupiter – Lady Delight/Delirium
Sephirah 11 (Da’ath): Saturn, asteroids, Centaurs (e.g., Chiron, Pholus), Kuyper bodies, Trans-
Neptunian Objects, Oört cloud of Comets at the edge of the Solar System– Lady Despair
Sephirah 3: Uranus – Lady Despair
Sephirah 2: Neptune – Lady Despair
Sephirah 1: Pluto – Lady Despair
Sephirah 0 (the Three Zeroes – Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur): Interstellar Space, Intraätomic Space,
other universes, space in this universe involving dimensions beyond the normal 3 of space and 1 of
time, strange space of any kind – Lady Despair

In a sense, Lady Despair represents and entails all the Endless. Without Her, there might not be any
Endless. Despair also rules humor and Comedy, especially Darwin Awards, and the Jews. She is Queen
Shabbas and Shekkinah (Sophia), hence is analogous in important ways to Pallas Athena Medusa, Durga,
Kali, Parvati, Chandi, the Sorrowing Mother of Christ, and St. Michael.
Magick is Life Itself
In a message dated 5/3/2004 10:01:19 AM Pacific Standard Time, *––@***.com writes:

[ Concerning http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63280,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 –
“Nasty Malware Fouls PCs With Porn” ]

|| That poor Grandma. It would upset a lot of people, but I can see how someone like
that would take it especially hard. Putting her computer under a statue of the Virgin
Mary is, well...kinda cute, really, but I’m glad her grandson was able to help her. I
don’t think the Virgin Mary would have been much use in that situation. ||

Since icons of Gods people really believe in can be used by the unconscious mind, at least, as
Magickal gears to bring about change in conformity with will, it could have helped, or have been
unconsciously used to help. Her grandson did help her, which is what she wanted.
BTW, the Virgin Mary is an avatar of Durga, the Hindu great mother Goddess (or vice-versa, take
your pick), as well as of Athena, Corn Woman, and a host of other great mother Goddesses. Just as
Durga’s battle-aspect is Kali and Athena’s is Medusa, Mary’s is the Archangel Michael. Magickians like
me call on such Gods all the time to get things done, with great success. In fact, everyone does Magick
all the time – acts to cause change in conformity with Will – but most of us aren’t dedicated to it, and
don’t do it consciously, or thinking of it as such. If you raised your hand to pick up a tool and use it,
that’s Magick, by definition. If that doesn’t sound mystical enough, think about it: how does the mind
get the body to do what it wants? Mind and spirit came first, physical reality second – quantum
mechanics shows that the universe observed itself into being, which would take years to explain, but it
does work that way. Anything you can do with your physical body is literally a case of mind over
matter. Magickians just specialize in certain aspects of that, that’s all. Every religious icon, every prop
in any sort of ritual, can be used by the mind to bring about change in reality, including physical reality,
whatever way is desired – mostly you just have to want that change strongly enough, with a strong
enough focus to avoid egregious unwanted side-effects.
Granted, that woman would never consciously think of having Mary’s icon there that way – but she
got what she wanted, which was to get the problem cleaned up, and putting Mary’s icon there was part of
it. Maybe it made her grandson realize how desperately unhappy she was, maybe it was more mystical
than that, but it was part of the process of fixing the problem. In Magick, what counts are results. If you
get the results you want, then whatever was done in connection with that, however strange or seemingly
non-Magickal, was part of it, at least for you. Whether or not it would have worked for someone else, if
it works for you, then it works for you.
Remember: Magick is Life itself. Every living thing does Magick every instant – uses the Art and
Science of causing change in conformity with its Will – to keep itself alive. The Art and Science of
causing change in conformity with Will – Magick – can only be done by living beings, that is, beings
with minds of their won and at least some free will, who make decisions based on what are necessarily
educated guesses on their part about what the future is likely to hold for them, using entropy to better
themselves. Nothing else can. So “People’s Magick” is “Life’s Magick, no more, no less, regardless of
whether it is done consciously, with what are recognizable rituals, or otherwise Whatever we put our
Will into, there are our Magickal weapons; whatever we do with will and purpose, there is our Magick.
The Scientific Sins of Esotericists
LiveJournal entry of May 2, 2004

Oh, God, where do I start?

The sins against science of esotericists – the worst offenders, again, seem to be astrologers – are one
of the most important reasons that today’s scientific community heaps such scorn on occultists,
hermeticists, and their various avocations and subjects of study. If you want scientists – not “science,”
which is a field and method of study, dammit, not an individual and not a group of people – to take you
seriously, then you’d better take science seriously, and show that you do in your work. Altogether too
many students and practitioners of the Great Artists don’t, and scientists, very understandably, don’t take
people like that seriously when it comes to science itself.
One horrible example of scientific stupidity among astrologers, one that truly merits some sort of
Darwin Award – as soon as possible – is a remark I once heard a teacher of astrology make to her class
concerning the astrological influence of the planet Saturn, to wit: “When the astrologers of thousands of
years ago looked through their telescopes and saw the rings of Saturn</i>, it was clear to them at once
that the nature of Saturn was confining and restricting [<i?i.e., as suggested by the “confinement” and
“restriction” of Saturn by its gorgeous ring-system. – yrd</i>]). Now, we’ve never found evidence yet of
the invention or use of even the most primitive telescopes before the 16th-17th centuries. Galileo, one of
the fathers of modern astronomy, who lived int he 17th century, was one of the first known to search the
skies with the use of a telescope (that’s how he discovered the four largest Moons of Jupiter). So how
could astrologers back then have seen Saturn’s rings – via the good offices of one or another type of
recreational fungus, maybe?
To be fair, it was clear from conversations I’d had with this astrologer that her misconception of the
origin of our modern interpretation of Saturn’s astrological influence was due to simple ignorance and the
fact that she didn’t know she should have known better (hence didn’t realize she should have checked out
the idea before feeding it to her students – most of whom, by the way, did know better, and did what they
could to set her straight on the matter). This particular scientific sin is, like so many of them, a result of
the intellectual meat-grinder that our public schools have become, which train children to be passive
recipients of mis- and disinformation doled out to them by their teachers rather than active participants in
a learning process which should, after school is done with, go on for the rest of their lives, on their own
initiative.
Another example, one I run into all the time, which sets my teeth on edge whenever I encounter it,
has to do with basic physics, that is, simple mechanics. This has to do with a theory which has been
given various names (you do not want to know what I call it; it would turn every electron on the Internet
and in your email an eye-blinding Cherenkov blue if I used it here), and which essentially postulates a
tipping-over of our world on its rotational axis within a period of weeks or even days by anywhere from
10-90°, not just once, but hundreds of times in the Earth’s history This theory, then, is offered as “proof”
of all sorts of things ranging from the uncovering of 100-million year old fossils belonging to creatures
that were tropical in nature in various places in Antarctica, archeological ruins of ancient civilizations
that were apparently obliterated in what must have been a geological instant, and a host of other things.
Setting aside the fact that global theories of this sort almost never turn out to be more than so much hot
air – anything that purports to explain everything explains nothing – and the fact that in almost all cases,
those enamored of this theory are entirely ignorant of solid evidence for explanations of such phenomena
that are nothing like this theory, not to mention not like one another, there’s a little matter of what
anybody who has ever driven a car, with rare exceptions (clearly the brain-dead are capable of driving),
knows as torque. Torque is a measure of the tendency of a force to cause rotation (of something such as
a tire, say), equal to the force multiplied by the perpendicular distance between the line of action of the
force and the center of rotation; popularly, the force that acts to produce rotation, as in an automotive
vehicle. In a moving automobile, the force that causes rotation, which is provided by the motor, is
applied to gears that then cause the axles – and the tires with them – to rotate. The “perpendicular
distance between the line of action of the force and the center of rotation” is thus the distance between
the hub of each tire and its rim. With me so far? Okay, now imagine that something acts to bring this
car to a sudden halt – the brakes, say. One thing that this produces is a lot of heat, the result of bringing
any fast-moving thing to a halt. Motion is kinetic energy; when the thing that moves comes to a
screeching halt, all that energy has to go somewhere, and where it goes is into heating of the surrounding
medium – in this case, the ground, the tire, the brakes, and the axles of the car.
 Now, suppose you’ve got a big rotating thing – say, the size of our planet, Earth. And suppose some
force – setting aside, for the moment, the question of just what that force might be – acts to suddenly
change its angle of rotation, relative to the ecliptic plane of the solar system. In this case, rather than
halting the rotation, the vector of the axis of rotation changes drastically, with the same result as the
braking of that spinning tire: it generates one hell of a lot of heat. Now, some of that heat will surely be
radiated away into outer space. But the heat is emitted randomly – there’s nothing to prevent it from
radiating away in all directions at once – so some of it will go straight down, right into the crust of the
Earth. And then the mantle of the Earth. And then maybe all the way to the Earth’s core. Because the
Earth masses 5.974 x 10^24 kg – 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg, or 6.6 sextillion tons – and
changing the angle of rotation of all that spinning mass by any significant amount (here, significant
comes to anything over a degree) within just a few days requires a force sufficient to slag the planet all
the way down to bedrock. Worse, the “theory” postulates that the magnitude of the change in angle of
rotation is not just one or two degrees, but anywhere from 45 to 90 degrees, which, if it had actually ever
happened, would have transformed the entire crust and top portions of the Earth mantle into gaily
bubbling lava. In other words, it could only have happened once – after that, there would have been no
Earth, and no us on it to come up with theories like this. Yet the adherent of this theory believe this has
happened not once, but hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times to our world! Obviously none of the
poor, ignorant bastards are auto mechanics, who would laugh like hell over the theory.
The actual explanations for the various and sundry things this theory is supposed to explain, which
have plenty of solid evidence in suport of them, range from plate tectonics (why we can find fossils of
what were obviously tropical animals and plants in Antarctica today) to socioeconomics and
epidemiology (which certain Neolithic civilizations fell seemingly overnight). None of them are hidden
from view – before the Web, they were all in public libraries, and today they’re all out there on the
Internet, too, just waiting to be looked up. And yet the fanatical adherents of this theory are still its
fanatical adherents. When I called one of them on it recently, pointing out the simple mechanical
problems that contradict it, as described above, she asked me in a lost, bewildered voice, “But – but –
maybe it happened that way in another universe?” <sigh>
Then there are the Twelfth Planet fans. This book, written by Zecharia Sitchin, supposedly contains
“indisputable documentary proof” that all of humanity was created by a group of aliens who visited this
planet between roughly 450,000 BC and 13,000 BC. The aliens created humanity by combining their
DNA with that of the proto-humans the found on Earth in a scheme to create somewhat intelligent
workers for the mining enterprises they were founding on Earth. Aside from the many other glaring
scientific boners contained in this book, the author mentions a “legend” in which Saturn supposedly
remained, stationary, over the Earth’s north pole for an unspecified period in the past during which Earth
was a satellite of Saturn. Oh, sure. If that had occurred, Earth would have been rotating around Saturn
with the north pole of its axis of rotation pointing continuously at Saturn as it did so, such that its axis of
rotation would have been rotating about the center of Saturn. The problem with this is precisely
that entailed by the sudden slippage of the Earth’s axis of rotation by tens of degrees at a time: it could
only happen once – and only for a few minutes, because afterward Earth would have been nothing more
than a big molten ball, with nothing alive on or in it. As for our sort of life evolving after such an
astronomical donnybrook, supposedly this took place after the first true human beings arose on our world,
less than, say, a hundred thousand years ago, a period less than one-ten thousandth of that necessary to
produce complex life of the sort that now graces the Earth from its first microbial ancestors.
Then there are the racist rants of Madame Helena Blavatsky and, later on, Hitler and his followers,
and other demagogues of that stripe. Setting aside moral revulsion against their ideas, while they may
have gotten some narcissistic satisfaction out of pushing their ideas and getting others to act on them in
one way or another, those ideas don’t hold water. More, in many cases they are based on circular
reasoning (assuming a thing to be true as a starting position for “proving” it to be true) combined with a
confusion of scientific concepts along with made-up “facts” with no parallel in our universe, the results
of which are an unprovable – or, often, a blatantly false-to-fact – theory that is not only not good science,
but also entails horrible illogic. The one thing of scientific interest about such theories is the opportunity
which their fanatical adherents provide some struggling, deserving sociology, psychology, or
anthropology grad student or professor for getting grant money to study them. Otherwise, scientifically
speaking, they are worthless.
The preceding are sterling examples of the sort of scientific, logical, and scholastic sins of which
altogether too many astrologers, Magickians, and other esotericists are flagrantly guilty, as is made clear
in their many books and Websites. That’s not, however, the problem. People are entitled to believe any
damned thing they want, and as the old saying goes, a fool (in this case, adult followers of such people
and purchasers of their books and other products) and his money are soon parted, and so what? The
problem comes in when, on top of all the nonsense they push, such “authorities” in esoteric fields
demand that scientists – real, modern astronomers, biologists, physicists, etc. – take their bullshit
seriously. Well, why should scientists do so? The idiots pushing this stuff are obviously ignorant of
science, and well-content with their ignorance! No real scientist in his right mind would take them or
any of their idiot theories seriously. And yet the yammer and clamor of “Take us seriously! We know
the truth!” goes on and on and on. Sorry, people, you don’t get taken seriously until you clean up your
scientific and metamathematical act. Until then, ¡hasta la vista, amigos!
Nota bene: The foregoing is just a small sampling of the scientific idiocies committed by numerous
“authorities” on esoteric and occult subjects, and not the worst, by any means. I’ll save that for another
rant, another day. For now, these will just have to do.
Linguistic abuses committed by astrologers and other esotericists
In addition to the list of words and their egregious and often revolting misuse that I gave in my
LiveJournal entry of Friday, April 23, 2004, 10:20 p.m., there is the absolutely ignorant misuse of words
by astrologers – not to mention the absolute inability to write their way out of a checkbook that
altogether too many writers on that subject seem to possess – that doesn’t just drive me up the wall, but
has me all the way past Neptune and on my way to Alpha Centauri. Such abuse of a perfectly good
language, in this case English, by those whose mother tongue it is, is a hallmark of those who are not just
ignorant, but horribly maleducated products of our public “education” system. I would like to give
examples of such crimes against the English language here – maybe it’ll shame a few of them into
cleaning up their linguistic act. Or something. I’m betting on the something – iron-clad, arrogant
ignorance of that sort rarely changes. But anyway, gang, onward . . .
Of course, there are all the old horrors, such as our old friends the Terrible Triplets, “its,” “it’s,” and
“its’,” the first two of which are used interchangeably, often the in the same document, and the third
which, in spite of the fact that it should never be used, is sprinkled cavalierly throughout those
documents, often being used therein instead of “its” or “it’s.” There are reasons for the way we are
supposed to use “its” and “it’s” (and why we don’t ever, ever, ever use “its’”, and they have to do with
facilitation of clear communication between the writer and his audience. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is,”
while “its” is the possessive form of the pronoun “it.” They mean two completely different things.
Using either when it is the other you mean can be confusing to your audience – who, incidentally, is also
the one buying your books. Confuse the reader enough and he’ll go spend his hard-earned shekels on
somebody else’s and, we hope, less confusing books.
Then there is “to,” “too,” and “two.” The first is a preposition used to indicate direction, or the
infinitive or general construction of a verb (word indicating action – remember?); the second means
“also,” “in addition to,” and similar things; and the third is a number, the sum of one and one.
Now, those are general things, and astrologers are only a very small fraction of the linguistic sinners
who are guilty of such misuses. But what the linguistically sinning astrologers lack in number they more
than make up for when it comes to the sheer awfulness of their sins. Let’s look at some of them.
The first one is the use of “conjuncting” when what is meant is “conjoin.” A conjunction is an
aspect, i.e. (“id est,” = that is, remember?) longitudinal separation of 0° between two bodies or sensitive
points in an astrological chart. It derives from the Latin word conjunctio, meaning “to join, to bring
together.” “Conjunction” literally means “joining,” or “conjoining,” from the English verbs “to join” or
“to conjoin.” A related construction is “conjunct,” which is an adjective, i.e., descriptive modifier of a
noun (person, place, thing). The suffix “-ing,” on the other hand, when applied to the root form of a verb
(e.g. [exempli gratia = for example], run(n)ing,” “talking,” “lying,” etc. [not “ect,” nor should the period
be omitted; “etc.” stands for “et cetera,” Latin for “and others,” “and the like,” “and the rest,” etc.]),
produces a gerund, a verbal noun used to indicate continuing or generalized action, which in England has
all the uses of the noun but retains certain syntactic characeristics of the verb, such as the ability to take
an object or an adverbial modifier. Adding such suffixes as “-ing,” “-ed,” “-s,” and other endings typical
of active verbs to “conjunct,” which is an adjective, dammit, not a verb, is a miscegenation equivalent to
tacking the head of a stuffed moose onto the trunk of a Joshua Tree, or maybe the neck of a decapitated
Tyrannosaurus rex – it sure as hell doesn’t produce anything recognized by linguists anywhere other
than a revolting barbarism that indicates that whoever put that construction together is a maleducated
idiot who really shouldn’t be allowed out without somebody to help him cross the verbal streets, because
otherwise he’s likely to get splattered by the first 18-wheeler of a paragraph that comes along.
Then there are the various misuses of the term “opposition.” “Opposition” is a noun indicating that
two things – two planets, two sensitive points in a chart – that have celestial longitudes (the rest of you
can look it up when you get home) that are 180° away from each other. An analogy is two people
confronting each other in preparation for a fight – or for making love. The related verb is “to oppose,”
the gerund of which is “opposing.” Acceptable constructions are “in opposition to (one another,”
“opposed,” “opposing,” “opposes,” “opposed,” “opposed to,” etc. “A opposition B,” “A opposed B,”
and similar horros are not acceptable.
Words used for other aspects, such as the square, sextile, quincunx, and so on, are misused by many
astrologers at least as horribly as “opposition” and “conjunction” are. Digestion fails at the idea of going
through the entirety of the list; suffice it to say that astrologers, like anyone else with literary aspirations,
need early on the writing game to commit Strunk & White’s Elements of Style to memory. Studying a
foreign language also helps, because to gain any fluency at all in one, the student has to learn how to
decline nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, the conjugation of verbs, sentence construction, etc. Above all,
I recommend investment in Theodore M. Bernstein’s tour de force on the technical mastery of English,
The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (New York: Atheneum, 1966), which should be
available on eBay, abebooks.com, amazon.com, or bookfinder.com at reasonable prices.
As for the general literary sins of astrologers, beyond those of vile constructions of the sort described
above, chief among them are overwriting, i.e., adding a boxcar’s worth of verbal freight to a sentence
that requires at most an adjective, a noun, a verb, and maybe an adverb (modifier of a verb, such as
“swiftly,” “agreeably,” and so on; adverbs, like adverbial phrases such as “in a ferocious way,” “with a
stiff manner,” etc., should be used as sparingly as possible, the modifications of verbs coming mostly
from context, but that’s for some other day); use of a twenty-dollar word or phrase where a simple 10-
cent one will do just fine – in poetry this can kill a whole poem; in prose writing, it marks the writer as a
pedantic ass or an incompetent hack; use of certain big words because they “sound good and will
impress the reader with my erudition” when said words have absolutely no meaning to what the writer is
supposedly trying to say or anything in the document (I remember a fad a couple of decades ago among
college students for the ubiquitous use of the word “ubiquitous,” which means “universal,”
“everywhere,” etc., whether or not said use was appropriate; I’m sure we all have our own literary
horror-stories to tell of that sort); a companion sin, which is use of one word when another is meant, due
to simple ignorance – that’s what the dictionary is for, dammit, go look it up!; inappropriate punctuation
(see The Careful Writer, above); and a host of other barbarisms too numerous to mention. In short, the
guilty parties here don’t know how to write, and may not even want to know how to write – simply
dumping words on a page, any old words, is fine enough for some of them. As for the rest, megalomania,
arrogance, dedicated ignorance and maleducation by our public “education” systems, or some horrifying
combination of these seem to account for most problems – all of which can be cured by reading good
books and thereby getting one great example after another of how the language should be used, and is
used by the best of writers. As said before, studying a foreign language helps, too, as does frequent
research in dictionaries and works on grammar and style.
How can you impress your audience favorably if you write like an idiot? You can’t. And the fewer
of them you impress, the smaller your audience will ultimately be, and the less you’ll make on your
work, if you’re into commercialism. Certainly the best of the astrologers before you wouldn’t look
favorably on the crap that is often pushed as “astrological” texts in the nation’s bookstores. What would
John Lily think of you? Shame on you!
Now, go and sin no more . . .
The Feast of Fluffy: April 23. (“April is the cruelest month.” “A cat is
not a dog.” – T. S. Eliot)

This is Fluffy. He is the destroyer of worlds.

Add this Non-Movable Feast to your calendar of Saints & Gods. Fluffy, the Western version of
Shiva, destroys the living-rooms and pees all over the feet of enemies of those who sacrifice to Him.
Suitable sacrifices to Fluffy include:
A Replogle globe of the world, to which Things are Done (such as: shooting it up with an AK-47,
drowning it in hydrochloric acid, covering it in napalm and setting it alight, peeing on it,
crapping on it, and otherwise maltreating it)
One shoe
One sock (of the last matched pair in the drawer)
Some other dog’s rubber bone or, if he’s really in a nasty mood, doghouse
Most of the chinaware in the house
One of the pair of your ultra-comfortable bedroom slippers
That sandwich you just fixed for yourself and set down on the coffee table while you went over to
adjust the TV set
The TV set itself
Your computer’s monitor
Every last one of your computer mousepads
Several of your classic Rock ‘n’ Roll tapes that have never been remastered for CDs and are no
longer in production in any form

Fluffy’s constant companion is The Flea

Fluffy’s nemesis: Bitter Apple solution
Fluffy’s consort: God forbid – they might breed!
Fluffy doesn’t get rabies, just chronic allergies which he somehow manages to transit to you
 Email to a friend, August 30, 2006

Ron –
As you know, I’ve led a very strange life. Sometime back you told me that your wife mentioned the
possibility of my talking with members of her church about the things I’ve experienced in my time. I got
to thinking, before I shuffle off this mortal coil, whenever that may be, I would like to talk with someone
about my experiences so that through them – and myself, if I last that long – some hideous injustices I’ve
witnessed might be rectified. I have herewith attached a file which is a copy of a letter I had sent to a
woman named Beatriz Steeghs after the $40 I sent her in sheer desperation for some sort of spiritual
advice turned out to be totally wasted. In it I describe some things that happened to me when I was very
small – ignore the stuff about reincarnation if the latter doesn’t seem to be possible (I included it in the
letter because I really do seem to have such memories, and all of them contradict the sort of BS [what’s
in a name, yes?] she was pushing), but the things I said happened to me in *this* life really happened.
There have been other things, too, like the lucid nightmares – far worse than mere night-terrors – I’ve had
since I was 5 and had the first one, which may shed light on some of the activities of my adoptive father
and his friends, in the form of buried memories returned. My adoptive father was an occultist of the
“let’s put beans in our ears because nobody told us not to,” a.k.a. “let’s play with matches and dynamite
caps” school of occult activities – as any forensic analyst can tell you, trying to figure such people out
and predict their likely actions in the future is far more difficult than doing that concerning actual
Satanists and others who practice highly ritualized sorcery, because the latter believe in their religions
and follow a predictable calendar, whereas the former mess around just any old way and end up
generating a good deal of chaos in their lives and wakes. The damage they do to those around them isn’t
occult at all – it’s the same-old same-old that turns up in the papers all the time: terrorized spouses and
children, lies told to relatives and friends that finally come unraveled along with their lives, alcoholism,
drunk driving ending in catastrophic accidents, you name it. The occultism is much more symptom than
cause in such cases, but can also involve practices that sometimes entail real and deadly crimes, and they
can end up being a real and present danger to others because of it.
Anyway, my adoptive father and his friends had some frankly horrifying hobbies. What that bastard
did to me and his wife – her stairs quite frankly didn’t go all the way to the top, but he drove her crazy –
was nothing compared to some of the things I was forced to witness him and his friends doing when I was
small, and the films they loved to watch, which had come into existence in the early 1940s on a
completely different continent and involved the murder of innocents (we’d call them “kiddie-porn snuff-
films” today).
That’s one major topic – well, actually two, that of the mischief my adoptive father and his friends
got up to, and the even worse things their beloved films entailed. The second has to do with something
that seems to have been following me around all my life since I was born, or maybe even when I was in
the womb. I say “something,” because I don’t really know what it is for sure, except that it is utterly
malignant and, I think, believes it owns me, has done so since I was a newborn because of some pact my
adoptive father and his friends made with it. All I know is the sense of its presence, which is vicious
beyond belief, and the trail of tragedy and heartbreak that turns up in its wake whenever it puts in an
appearance. I don’t think it thinks I’m important, not in and of myself, but I *think* it thinks I am or
could be a tool it could put to use somehow – and what it wants to do with that tool is create as much
utter destruction as possible. It has blasted at me out of certain others who have been in my life: foster
parents, both sets, that weird student George Bryson I once had, you name it. It has even done so on an
entirely psychic level, which it did most of the time for months and months after my fiance died in 1963,
though my foster parents at the time aided and abetted it, maybe unknowingly, due to their own
corruption, which ended in my leaving in 1967 after they tried to force me into a menage a trois with the
both of them (as Tom Lehrer said, I’d rather marry a duckbilled platypus, except that platypi are *much*
more attractive than either of those clowns were. And in 1993 it blasted at me from that student when he
called me up and swore he was going to kill people all over NYC because they were “all junkies” and on
and on and on (I’ll give the details as desired, it’s just too long to go into in this email, so just ask), which
is when I told him, “I’m sorry, George, I can’t do this any more,” and hung up the phone. He tried one
time after that to insinuate himself back into my life, a few months after that, calling me up and trying to
cozen me and bribe me to go to NYC to lecture at NYU Stonybrook on Magick, even trying to
“psychoanalyze” me out of being afraid of getting near him because, as I told him, he already had a
track-record by then (he’d shot a former boyfriend in 1988, and though he got off because it was
provoked, there was some question as to whether he’d provoked the provocation, another thing I’ll
provide details on if anyone is interested) – which is when it finally dawned on me that his hero was
Hannibal the Cannibal (the one in the movie SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), and that he was fantasizing he
himself was the character, and no, thank you, George!
That’s not all, though. I’ve also run across others down the years who’ve had similar experiences,
and I’ve read of still other cases. This whatever-it-is wasn’t and isn’t just directed at me. I’m not sure
what it *is* aimed at, but whatever it is doesn’t bode well for anybody. In 1987 a novel by Robert R.
McCammon, SWAN SONG, was published in a Pocket Book edition. It’s worth reading – it’s
beautifully written, and it explores all the fears and real possibilities that the whole world was going
through throughout the Cold War. It’s fiction, but there’s a character in it, call it a demon or whatever,
but its goal was to destroy the whole world through nuclear war – and it almost did. The reason it’s
relevant here is that the presence I’ve been dogged by for all these decades *is the same damned presence
that came blasting at me out of the pages of that novel.* McCammon, like any good parent, was terrified
of what would happen to his daughter, who was then growing up, if the balloon went up, and out of that
worry and one hell of a lot of research, he wrote SWAN SONG. It has a happy ending, but up until then
– oh, my God! The thing about it that stuck with me is, as I said, the very close similarity of the
ultramalefic thing described in there and whatever has followed me around all my life. If anyone wants a
good idea of what’s been after me all my life, through I don’t know how many people and situations, that
at least presents a profile, the sort a forensic analyst might come up with. So that would be something to
add to all this.
One other thing: I mentioned lucid nightmares. The first one I remember occurred when I was 5. In
it, I was standing in the den of my adoptive parents lovely, large one-story home in San Gabriel, CA – we
lived there then, no surprise that was the setting. The den, which had been a porch until they walled it off
and made it a part of the house, had a home bar against the east wall, along with a door into the laundry
room off the kitchen; a doorway on the north into the dining room; a fireplace on the west side; and a
door leading down into the back yard on the south. In the middle of the floor, close to the fireplace, was
a large, low, square lacquered bamboo table; on either side of the table, oriented east-west, were two
rattan couches with cushions on them. In the dream I was standing a few feet to the east of that table,
looking toward those couches – I was maybe three-four feet from the near ends of the two couches, and
on a line bisecting that coffee table and running through the fireplace (I don’t mean a physical line, just
that as orientation). Above each of the two ends of each couch was a gigantic white flame, hovering so
that its base was a few inches above the seat-back cushion and the end of the couch; the cloth and
bamboo and rattan weren’t so much as mildly scorched. The flames weren’t hot, but they gave off a
strong yellowish white light – if light could be running with pus and corruption, it would be like that.
And all four of those flames were aware of everything going on around them, all four were aware of
*me*, and all four of them were *gloating* over me – it was utterly terrifying. Though otherwise the
room looked normal, the sunlight (it was somewhere near noon) coming through the room’s windows was
that sort of curdled, sickly light you get when there are very high, thin clouds that strain out just enough
of the sunlight so that there’s a noticeable dimming of the light, but not enough to be truly overcast – a
“white noon,” sort of, where the sky is a grayish-white rather than blue. It was dead quiet. No other
human being was around. And while, as I said, the room was otherwise normal, the sense of menace and
the presence of pure gleeful malice were so strong that it was like being in the anteway of Hell. I woke
up screaming my throat raw, fighting to come awake, because I didn’t dare stay in that dream a second
longer, for fear of what those four presences would do to me if I did.
That arrangement of those flames could go with a certain type of occult ritual, one in which the
cross-quarters (northeast-northwest-southeast-southwest, rather than north-east-south-west are significant,
very likely a variant of a Magickal system called Enochian. That system by itself isn’t evil, but there are
some assholes who’ve used it from time to time for purposes that range from stupid to unspeakable, all of
them very likely to backfire on the practitioner, if not actually Magickally, then psychologically and
socially. As I said, I had that dream *when I was 5 years old*, long before I would have been able to
learn anything about Enochian Magick from a book. I have remembered it all these years because it was
that terrifying. So where did I get that memory? I really believe that somewhere between the age of 9
months, when I started talking, and five years old, I witnessed an evocation of something horrible by my
adoptive father and his friends, and the dream came from that. And there are whole chunks of my
memories missing from between my third and fourth birthday, so maybe it was in there. Dreadful things
happened to me during that year – if I can remember those, how bad were the things I *can’t* remember,
that I maybe repressed so deep I’ll never get them bad because they were just too terrible?
I have been a witness to the 20th century, in all its horror and glory – and, on a personal level, I have
witnessed dreadful things, things which the cops would have been very interested in if they’d started
investigating at the time. Of course they never did. My adoptive father and his friends kept their
shenanigans very private, and the only witness to those shenanigans was a child, a very young child who,
being that young, had no credibility of a legal sort, not to mention nobody who would have gone to bat
for her then and found out what happened and brought it into the public eye.
I do have a memory of one man who would have tried to help if he’d known about this: his name
was Tony, and he was boss of a group of men who were hired by my adoptive parents to do work on the
house when I was around 4-1/2. In his memory, I have a mitzvah, an obligation, a “burden of diamonds”
to let someone know who might be able to track some of this down and maybe ultimately see that justice
is done – not on my behalf, but on that of the innocents whose grisly deaths I was forced to watch when I
was less than 3 years old.
If there is anyone at your wife’s church who knows someone in Seattle I could talk to about these
things, I would very much like to be put in touch with him or her. I think I gave you my telephone
number; if I misremember, or you lost it, it’s 206-365-9849. And, of course, I can be reached my email,
same one you use to email me. If you want to ask Rich what he thinks about all this, that’s fine with me
– as you can see, I’m CC’ing this to him, for just that reason.
Always, Yael Dragwyla

August 30, 2006

Ron –
Forgot to add:
Assuming that there is a spiritual dimension to reality – something I believe, but a lot of people don’t
– what I have been witness to and experienced in my life may have far broader implications than
anything connected with me personally. It’s the same with the lucid nightmares and other, less horrific
lucid dreams I have had all my life, many of which I remember vividly, which aren’t about me, but rather
about what could happen to people in general, perhaps to the whole world, as if time had two dimensions,
so that it was like a fan with an infinite number of panels, each panel radiating into a future at least a
little different than any of the others. These dreams really aren’t about me, but rather what might yet be,
and in the same way, my experiences weren’t and aren’t just about me, but may possibly about everyone
– and the future.
The twentieth century had its greatness, but it was also horrifying – Dachau, Belsen, Hiroshima, the
dreadful abuses to which innocents have been subjected even in our country by physicians and social
workers and others without heart or conscience, serial killings, media excesses, you name it, and every
evil under the Sun not only occurred during the 20th century, but paraded around with brass bands,
leering and sniggering at all of us. The Cold War is a good example – the world almost died in
thermonuclear fire a number of times during the Cold War (good example: read Kenneth Sewell and
Clint Richmond’s Red Star Rogue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005; ISBN 978-0743261128), which
I’ve mentioned before). Somehow the world got past that; the Soviet Union ran out of gas and that was
that. Except now we’re facing an enemy that in many ways is far worse: Islamist terrorists combined
with the lunatics in Pyongyang and the Greens, all of whom seem to have a love affair with fire (a line
from McCammon’s novel Swan Song (Nw York: Pocket Books, 1987), BTW) and no hesitation about
burning down the world to save it. They can make thermonuclear devices now you can build into a truck
– a big trailer rig, but still a truck rather than a supertanker or something even bigger, the way it once
was. And they don’t care what they do to others with their incendiaries and anything else handy, as long
as they get their sick pseudo-religious thrill out of it. There are others, too, ranging from individuals who
want to total the space program just to piss of those of us who care about getting into space to occult
groups playing around with the idea of somehow calling an antichrist into being so that he or she will
head up a coalition that would eventually destroy most of humanity so that the coalition could then rule
what was left. Nasty business.
In 1904, with no particularly bad intentions in mind, Aleister Crowley did the Cairo Working, an
invocation of the Gods of Egypt inside the Great Pyramid. 3 weeks later, he wrote – or took from
dictation by some sort of spirit, take your pick – something called The Book of the Law. It has three
chapters, and in the third one there is a spirit talking at one point that is every bit as vicious as that demon
or whatever it is in Swan Song SONG. Ten years later, WW 1 began, one of the most terrible wars the
world has ever known. Then the Depression hit the world, followed by WW 2, which was in many
respects an extension of WW 1. That war ended with the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the
initiation of the Cold War. Vietnam followed, then Gulf War 1. In the meantime, back in 1918, the
Bolshevik Revolution trashed the 1917 revolution against Russia’s government, the latter being a real
revolution of the people, the first the overthrow of a real democracy and establishment of a totalitarian
state. During the Depression, Germany went through hell, one expression of which was the sexual and
cultural excesses and corruption that took place during the time of the Weimar Republic; the Nazis were
able to take Germany over the way they did in part because of public revulsion against those excesses.
Then in 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and we all know where *that* led – and let us not
forget the German physicians who eagerly euthanized so many “undesirables” among their patients, such
as invalids, the elderly, the developmentally disabled, and so on, generally by starvation and withholding
of all fluids.
Crowley certainly didn’t intend any of that. In fact, during WW 2, along with other prominent
occultists and authorities on the occult, he worked for Britain’s MI-5 as a psy-ops expert who had some
real knowledge of how occultists think and was able to provide the Allies with some very useful
information that they could apply to messing over the Nazi high command. I think he stumbled into
everyone else’s accident. And when it comes to good intentions, we all know what road is paved with
*those*! No good deed goes unpunished, no bad deed goes unrewarded.
Sarcasm aside, the odd thing here is some synchronicity, and no, I don’t know what, if anything, it
implies:
Crowley’s Cairo Working took place on March 20, 1904, around midnight (early a.m. of that day).
I was born exactly 41 years later, on March 20, 1945.
Crowley wrote THE BOOK OF THE LAW on April 8-10, 1904.
My adoptive father and his friends “dedicated” me to whatever it was when I was just three weeks
old, on April 10, 1945. (He and his wife took me home from Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, CA, where
I was born, on March 29.)
On July 16, 1945, my biological mother signed away all rights to me, so that my grey-market
adoption by the Dingles was legal.
Also on July 16, 1945, the first official test of the Bomb was conducted at Trinity Flats, New
Mexico. On that same date in 1969, Apollo XI took off for the Moon (cool!). On that same date in 1994,
the first chunk of Comet Shoemaker-Levy came thundering down onto Jupiter (cool!) – and at the time it
did, a ferret named Bart was born whom I purchased in 1995 (he was just like that, too – Mr. Comet
Catastrophe! And oh, I loved him dearly).
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese made a dawn attack on Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1958, my adoptive father died of his second heart-attack (about which I am NOT
complaining!).
There are more such. My life seems to be somehow tied into the history of the 20th century for
better as well as worse. If you want, I can give more details.
At any rate, back to history. Looking over the history of the 20th century, and how these first few
years of the 21st are turning out, maybe, just maybe, the dickens up to which my adoptive father and his
friends got up to might say something about what was going on elsewhere in the world. If it does, I’d
like to tell responsible people about it, that, as I said, justice will be done on behalf of innocents. I don’t
know if that’s possible, but if it is, here is what I know. I am just a bystander at the crossroads of history,
but what I’ve seen in my time may shed some light, at least a little, on the horrors of the 20th century –
and maybe eventually provide a little leverage to make the 21st century make up for some of those
horrors.
Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll get this off, then head off to bed. – Yael

August 30, 2006

Ron –
One more note on the subject preceding two emails, one that doesn’t have anything in particular to
do with me:
I mentioned the third and last chapter of Crowley’s The Book of the Law and a malefic section of it.
In that section – I can write it out and email it to you, if you wish – as in the previous two, there seem to
be more than one voice, and one of those voices is absolutely horrifying, both implicitly and explicitly. I
also mentioned the demonic entity in McCammon’s fictional Swan Song a presence I’ve encountered
personally many times, and the same presence encountered by others. That presence seems to be quite
real, whatever it really is, and very much like that *thing* in Swan Song, as far as personality goes – and
very like that voice in Chapter 3 of The Book of the Law. It means good to none of us, and total
destruction of the world and all its life, human life included.
 Crowley wrote The Book of the Law in April 1904, and since then the world has gone through one
horrific war after another, along with the Great Depression and the Cold War – not to mention the
damned jihad aimed at the West by a bunch of lunatics who want to drag us all kicking and screaming
into the 8th century, to make slaves and dhimmi of those of us they don’t murder outright. Sexual
slavery and sexual abuse of children is on the rise, murder-for-profit is business as usual in numerous
places i in the world, the Democratic Party is rotted out from the heart, you name it, every slimy, deadly
thing you can think of is manifesting throughout the world. While we human beings can certainly come
up with highly creative and vicious evil all on our own, there are hints that we’ve all been influenced to
some extent by something.
Strangely enough, there are things in The Book of the Law that seem to presage the best of the 20th
and 21st centuries, as well, such as the computer revolution (which really began after Crowley’s death in
1947, so he couldn’t have known of it), the ASCII character set (I’m not kidding), the use of Boolean
algebra for computer calculations, and several other things of enormous importance *none* of which
Crowley *could* have known about or predicted in any ordinary way. Seeing those in that book had to
wait until IBM, Microsoft, and others put the true universal computer on your desktop and mine, making
it available to ordinary people in all walks of life, beginning nearly 8 decades after The Book of the Law
was written.
It’s as if at least two of the voices in Chapter 3 of The Book of the Law, which was supposed to be all
about the future, were battling it out in the real world, one viciously malefic one trying to destroy that
world, the other trying to preserve it and, ultimately, send Earth’s life to the stars, humanity included. In
fact, if you read THE BOOK OF THE LAW (texts are available free online, and it isn’t a long book),
you’ll find that Chapter 3 has to do with, among other things, two Egyptian Gods, twin offspring of one
or another deity (depending on the tradition) that some consider to be two aspects of one God: Horus and
Set, who pretty much have such a rivalry going between them.
All of this is “as if,” but the similarities between what is written in Chapter 3 of The Book of the Law
and real-world events, both good and bad, are quite real. So are the other aforementioned similarities.
Maybe it’s all just coincidence, maybe not. What gets me, though, is that on May 8, 1968, 750 miles
NW of Hilo, HI, in the deep darkness of night, a rogue crew of KGB special forces that had taken over a
Golf-II class submarine armed with three one-megaton missiles came *this* close to launching one of
those missiles at Hilo – and setting off a chain of events that would have culminated in all-out warfare
between us and the Soviet Union. If not for whoever through to equip all Soviet missile-carrying
submarines with failsafe devices to prevent unauthorized launches, all of us would now be so much
radioactive dust in the wind. We came so close. And now we’re facing down these various groups of
lunatics, some of which are armed with nukes. So much for the Age of Aquarius being all about peace
and brotherhood! (Actually, Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, which is associated with uranium, revolution,
nuclear war, nuclear energy, the space program, uncommon people, all that sort of thing, but don’t tell
the New Agers that, they’re too busy wallowing in sweetness and light to want to hear anything about
it!) I don’t know if this is germane or not, but it’s an interesting coda to the first two emails.
If you’ve gotten tired of flamers and other attack-commenters . . .
Blog entry, Jul. 11th, 2009 at 3:55 PM

. . . especially the ones that don’t make much sense and are therefore extremely hard to refute (ever try to
nail a custard pie to the wall?), try this:

Instead of responding with a reasoned, thoughtful comment or just the written equivalent of an
inarticulate, outraged scream, return-serve with any or a combination of the following:

I had one grunch, but the eggplant over there.

It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.

Furshlugginner.

Farshimelt.

Potrzbie.

No, it is three o’clock.

williammgaines

wallywood

harveykurtzman

frankkellyfreas

alfeldstein

normanmingo

jackdavis

Alfred E. Neuman

What, me worry?

donmartin

joeorlando

gloriaorlando

Furshlugginner potrzbie axolotol, fu belalugosi Lucrezia tuffluk boobooday Sodere iseenunu hyme
potrzbie opie Howsyourmomed fu moxiecowznofski donmartin basenji cocopuffs; dis yipeetiyi schlemiel
fu beevis; fu ax yeecch daisychain siesta fu salakadula harvykurtzman fabian. Cheechwizard hyme
vigorish dis oxidol jerrydefuccia al Joeorlando leonardbrenner arthur al melbrooks fu frankjacobs
micasasucasa manzanita luiluwah dis aljaffee, onion jackdavis humorinajugularvein alfeldstein
micasasucasa enema. Ol’ furshlugginner yacketyyack donttalkback maybebaby myob oyveh jamesthurber
jackbenny meshugginer. Ohno! ohno! Notmebabe! Ohno! Cucamunga! Williamgaines schlemazl u
soupysales gesundheit Wallywood! NUNU! gloriaorlando farqhuard denada!

etc. etc. etc.

Then sit back and eat popcorn while you watch your antagonist go nuts trying to respond . . . or get wise
enough never to bother you again.

And if we all do this – if we start a movement of people all doing this – well, who knows where it’ll go
from there? ;-)
A template for ritually exorcising known nuisances
NEW MAGICKS FOR A NEW AGE

Volume I: A New Order of the Ages

Book 3: Applications

Part 5: Magickal Ritual Applications, Chapter 2 – The Conjuration of Neuman, An Exorcism

1 Ritual – Saturn and Uranus

Something a little different, to demonstrate the technique of controlled evocation from a unique angle.
Feel free to modify it as you will, and to aim it at whatever fool or fools you totally think need to get a
serious attitude adjustment.

1) Saturday: Saturn – an example of an invocation during the hours of daylight

Nota bene: On Timing

As with any other ritual, it is extremely important to time the ritual properly. First, if the invocation is for
a benefic or neutral purpose – a ritual of increase – then the Moon should be waxing; if it is for a malefic
purpose or should otherwise be classified as a ritual of decrease, the Moon should be waning.

Second, if it is possible, the Sun, Moon, and/or the Planet itself should be in a Sign in which the Planet to
be invoked is strong; the best for this purpose are the Planet’s esoteric rulerships. Saturn’s esoteric
rulerships are Virgo and Sagittarius; His exaltations, next best, are Libra and Scorpio; and His mundane
rulerships are Capricorn and Aquarius. If this isn’t possible, an alternative is to have the Planet in the
Houses ruled by those Signs; for Saturn, these are respectively the Sixth, Ninth, Seventh, Eighth, Tenth,
and Eleventh Houses.

Third, in the case of the Outer Planets, Saturn through Pluto, it is desirable to have the Sun, Moon, and/or
Planet to be invoked in an Element which that Planet rules – in this case, Earth.

Fourth, the day or night of the week should always be the one ruled by the Planet involved; Saturn rules
the daylight hours of Saturday and Monday night, and Uranus rules Wednesday night and the third, tenth,
etc. hours of that night.

Finally, the hour of the day or night for the ritual should always be one ruled by the Planet. Saturn rules
the first, eighth, and (in high latitudes) fifteenth hours (60-minute periods) after dawn of His day and the
third, tenth, and (in high latitudes) the seventeenth hour (after sunset) of His night. However, under
certain circumstances, this last rule has an alternative: Certain of the Planets also rule the four Angles of
the horoscope. These are the Ascendant, or Dawn, ruled by the Sun and Pluto; the Zenith, ruled by the
Sun and Saturn; the Descendant, or Sunset, ruled by Saturn and Uranus; and the Nadir, or Midnight, ruled
by Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, and Luna. Sunset is especially appropriate for invocations of Saturn, just as
the Zenith is for invocations of Sol, and the Nadir is for Pluto; so sunset on Monday night is a perfectly
acceptable timing for invoking Saturn, and sunset on Wednesday night, for invoking Uranus. (This, of
course, refers to local midnight and noon, which may differ considerably from “official” or clock time,
depending upon the locality and time of year.)

The Conjuration of Comedia: A Bathetic Evocation for Exorcism of Evil Spirits of All Kinds and
Combating All Enemies of Truth, Justice, the American Way, and Hot Dogs Without Buns.

Ruling planets: Saturn, the ruler of comedy; Uranus, the ruler of the unexpected and whoopee-cushions.

Jesus Was A Clown – The Devil is a Psychologist

by the Very Left Reverend Doktor Magistra Batrix,

 To Mikron Qerion
and like that
The Infra-Red Woman of the Church of the SubGenius,
Pope of All Broadview and Linden Avenue North,
23® = 3.14159™

It is by means of our human communities, those great complex things that are half-machine, half-dream,
that we survive and carry on the torch of the generations. That which protects community, indeed, the
possibility of community, which inspires and generates it, lies at the heart of what it is to be human.
Saturn, the Protector, the first, most inward of the Outer Planets of the Collective, is the apotheosis of
humanity, and thus of community, as the preserver and nourisher of life. The following essay, on the
psychosocial and sociospiritual niche of the clown, concerns what may be Saturn’s least-understood
function, that of the shaman that is the clown, who defines and protects the outer bounds of human
community by means of comedy, satire, lampoon, and other forms of humor. By getting us all to laugh at
something, he or she also gets us all to laugh with one another, and thereby include one another in our
community. By inspiring solidarity through laughter, the clown thereby induces us to strive to cherish
and protect those with whom we share our laughter, and therefore ultimately the total community of life.

The title of this rant, children, is taken from something which that great and wise Sub, the anti-
psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, once wrote: “A psychologist is someone who, rather than laughing at a joke,
analyzes it.” It is laughter that is our true Saving Grace – and that which sets us off, not from the other
beings with which we share the Living Universe, but rather from ultimate evil, the Endless Utter
Darkness of the Soul, that hates all that lives and participates in Life.

I happen to be a Ceremonial Magickian. In the course of my life, I’ve had to undergo a lot of tests, learn
a great deal of things – you see, to become a true Magus of Power, one must systematically recover
everything that has come together to create one in the first place – not just one’s individual lifespan, not
even just the history of one’s community and society and culture, but the natural history of one’s whole
species, indeed, that of the whole living world. And one has to do this not only intellectually, but on all
the Planes, especially those of real-life experience, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For the hu-
man being, this means recovery of all of Homo faber, Man the Maker, of course – Tool-User, Tool-
Maker, Craftsman, Artisan, Engineer, all of it: Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief; Doctor, Lawyer,
Indian Chief! Remember the old rhyme? The Warrior, the Poet, the Beggar, the King, the Goodwife, the
Child, the Courtesan, the Prostitute, the Statesman, the Actor, the Charwoman, the Janitor and Garbage-
Collector and Handyman and Lion-Tamer and Nurseryman.

And the Fiend. Oh, yes, children – the Fiend.

I received what may have been Chas Addams’ last great gift, at least to me, from a dream this morning.
In that dream, I saw the Exit from Club Vesta, this interminably long, drawn-out epic about an American,
non-sectarian Inferno I’d been slowly exploring and taking notes on for the last many months. And lo, on
the rock wall outside the Exit, low down, close to the place it met the pathway leading away, to the world
of Life, was the old, familiar, beloved signature:

As I had been discovering on my journey through Club Vesta, what a human being really is, is a
community animal, an animal whose nature evolved as part and parcel of communities of his own kind,
whose survival and well-being, physically and spiritually, is dependent upon those of his community.
Human culture and human psychology have both been selected to try always, among other things, to do
what they can to preserve and cherish such community and keep the individual part of it. Someone once
defined Homo sapiens as “the animal who laughs.” I would amend that to “the animal who laughs as part
of a community of his own kind,” whose laughter is part of a vast, unbelievably rich and complex set of
collective survival strategies designed to help perpetuate and nurture the community upon which he is
dependent for the survival of his very soul, not just his body. In our laughter, we are far more than just
ourselves as individuals – when we laugh, for a short time we become our communities, including that
most vast of our communities, our living world, Gaia. In his masterpiece, A Canticle for Liebowitz
[1960], Walter M. Miller, Jr. had one of his characters in the second part of the book, an abbot, thinking
about what it is that makes us human and more than a little divine, that sets us off and helps protect us
from real evil. As he put it, thinking about the Feast of St. Maisie, it’s a matter of “laughing at the
hangman – no, laughing with the hangman, laughing at the Stultus Maximus,” at ultimate evil, as part of
human community, the latter including even the hangman. In our laughter, in even our sickest jokes –
indeed, especially in our very sickest jokes, our most midnight-black humor – we acknowledge, embrace
the whole human community for those moments of laughter. Orgasm unites us momentarily with the
individual beloved under the aegis of Eros – laughter units us for a little while the entire human
community, perhaps even the whole living world, under the aegis of the Living God, the God of All.

In vacuuo, that is, alone by ourselves, cut off from the sociospiritual universe of communion with other
human beings or just with other living beings of any kind, we are not human. No matter what definition
of ourselves we come up with, it can’t define us accurately or completely unless it takes account of the
fact that our nature is inextricably bound up in community – not only the community of those with whom
we share a gene-pool, but indeed the whole living world. “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” St. Francis knew.
Native peoples who regard non-human beings as people – they know, too. We are ultimately integral,
inextricable parts on a psychospiritual as well as ecological level of the community that is the whole
living world. Our laughter reflects even that – why else do we find Gary Larson, Chas Addams, Gahan
Wilson so hysterically funny? Even H. P. Lovecraft’s ghoul-friend Pickman and his companions, even
Gary Larson’s cows, Chas Addams’ night-creeps – they are all our close spiritual kin, aren’t they?
Laughter isn’t just a matter of laughing at – it is a matter of laughing with, of acknowledging who our
true kin are . . . and laughing at our affected pretensions that oh, no, we aren’t as them. Well, yes, we are
too as them (whoever the fuck they are), aren’t we, after all? Otherwise we couldn’t laugh as we do at
such outrageousness – whereas instead we can’t not laugh!

I have been hunting all my life for community to be part of. I went through such hell on earth, such
psychospiritual horror as a toddler and small child, that no matter who I reached out to, nobody ever
understood, nobody could care. Not even survivors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, nobody
recognized me as part of their living community! Nobody. And so there never was any love. – Except . . .
I was raised by a cat. She loved me. A non-human being. She loved me dearly – and she taught me what
community is really all about!

Shall we talk about what goes on in experimental laboratories where they use cats as subjects? Or dogs,
or rabbits, or ferrets, or insects, for Wotan’s sake?! Or, shall we talk about what goes on in slaughter-
houses? Shall we talk, for that matter, the horrors that people who work in the City Morgue see every
day, that cops and firemen and paramedics and soldiers can’t avoid seeing, day in and day out, because
it’s their job? Graveyard humor: all of us, human and non-human alike, understand it – and when we find
ourselves laughing at it before we can think about it, instinctively, compulsively, for that little while we
know we are one with all others who likewise understand it, and laugh, that we are ultimately, spiritually,
on the inside looking out with the living world, with human beings, with whatever community we share
our laughter with . . . and that what we are looking out at is the horror we are laughing at. We are, in
laughter, expressing our joy at being warm and cozy inside the great beating Heart of Life with our
community – and that that, the horror we laugh at, is outside that Heart, locked away where it can’t hurt
us, locked away by the unbreakable bonds of love and shared understanding that are Life’s great, eternal
Community.

Damnation is being locked out of that heart, locked outside, in the Sitra Achra, forever . . . where all the
monsters are. A major indicator of true psychopathology is the inability to laugh at all. Those who can’t
laugh, not at anything, we know instinctively are dead to the heart. Black depression is a taste of such
ultimate, utter damnation. We call those who are denied the blessings of laughter spiritless – for we know
that their spirits, their wills, their very souls have been utterly crushed, their last psychospiritual ties to
the rest of us totally destroyed.

This is why, as that all-time Master of Horror, Stephen King, has pointed out, horror and laughter lie so
close together, why, when we confront and feel horror, laughter is never very far away: because the
literature and cinema of horror are jokes, acknowledgment of common membership in the same
community, just as laughter is. When we are feel the horror which an author or producer is trying to
evoke in us with his or her creation, we can only do so because we are part of the same community he or
she is – and the fact that we feel the horror, like the fact that we feel the laughter the comedian or story-
teller is striving to call forth in us, is realization that we are part of that community. Otherwise that com-
mon understanding and reaction couldn’t be possible. Horror, like laughter, is a matter of laughing at the
Stultus Maximus, sharing that laughter with the hangman and everyone else in our community, no matter
how low or tabu. The difference is – as long as horror isn’t transmuted into laughter, like the erotic
zombies trapped in Club Vesta, you are never sure whether you can ever go home again, whether you’ll
be able to get back Inside from the terrifying Cold Darkness here Outside that is the universe of horror
fiction. Tragedy concerns the stories of those poor bastards who find, at last, that no, they can’t go home
again, that they will indeed remain trapped forever Outside in the Demonic Dark. Comedy concerns the
realization that yes, you can go home again – and the experience of doing so, in laughter. It wasn’t for
nothing that Dante called his three-part masterpiece The Divine Comedy!

Robert A. Heinlein hints at this in Stranger in a Strange Land. Charles Addams shows it. There are Ad-
dams cartoons – ones you and I would recognize instantly, with which we have long been familiar –
everywhere, even in huts in the midst of tropical jungles in South America and Africa. His humor is
universal – his humor of darkness, horror, agony. Whether prelate or bishop or goodwife or prostitute or
physician or witch-doctor, whoever we are, we look – and we laugh. We can’t not laugh. It is always the
same Feared Thing we see – and we laugh, and know that like everyone else, we share that fear, and
knowing that we do, we realize we are part of the whole world, neighbors to everyone and everything,
and that the Boogyman is locked out there in the Cold forever away from us, with us inside here in the
Warm for all eternity. And in that blessed understanding we find our redemption.

In our laughter we are redeemed. That is why the Church of the SubGenius and adoration of MAD
Magazine are true and real and great religiona: they addresses the heart and soul of what it is to be hu-
man, in a terrifying, dark, scary universe full of alien weirdness and horrible peril, and show us how to be
whole and happy within it . . . by making us laugh.

God bless the clowns. Jesus is our “Bob”!

Hence the paradox of the Grim Clown: those who have skated most closely to the bare, bitter Razor’s-
Edge of Things know best how to call forth our laughter, for they know most thoroughly what it is to be
human – from having had their humanity, their souls most horribly threatened. Concentration-camp
survivors, battered wives, battered children, cops, firemen, interns – they know best what makes us laugh.
They have to – that is their psychospiritual lifeline, that knowledge, perhaps all that keeps them from
falling free into the Big Dark Empty forever, screaming, screaming down into demonic damnation.
Laughter keeps them tied on a spiritual level to human community as nothing else could, not need to
make a living, not sex – nothing else.

There is, of course, laughter that doesn’t draw us into its warm, welcome orbit, the joke we don’t share,
can’t share: this is the joke of the one so far gone away from life’s communion, not merely human
community but that of the whole living world, that he or she no longer shares our fears, our joys, our
hopes, our desires, our terrors. This is the one who has embraced the Sitra Achra, the Other Side, the
universe so alien that it contains nothing of humanity, perhaps not even of Life itself. It is the world of
Josef Mengele, Jeff Dahmer, history’s great monsters, the ones to whom all the rest of us are at best no
better than stockyard resources, things to be used and thrown away, at worst pests to be exterminated – or
tortured to death for the sheer fun of it. For them, the joke is on Life itself – the joke is at Life and
everything that makes it worth living, indeed, even possible. Like all other human (including erstwhile)
beings, they, too, are part of some community: thus, they laugh. But with what? Of what community are
they part? That of the Sitra Achra, ultimate evil, that which hates Life, lives on its destruction, thrives on
the eternal spiraling downward into the ultimate Death of All.

– Oh, yes, children, I hear you say: We are not as them, we don’t take our joy in life-destroying evil, we
love, we embrace life, we are truly part of human community, we love “Bob” and “Bob” loves us, we
aren’t monsters, oh, no, not us. . . . Oh, yeah? So why the </i>fuck</i> are you sniggering right along
with Beavis and Butthead?!
For you see, between the deadly Dark of the Sitra Achra and the warm, gold, sunny vistas of Life, there is
this vast gray area, the area of In Between. This is the place we find ourselves in when we descend from
all that God-like Agape and Common Humanity and Communal Oneness into mean-spiritedness,
sourness and twilight, in short, less than the sort of divine perfection we all aspire to and would like to
think we’ve achieved. Hah! Oh, sure we have! As long as we live, we are mortal, and therefore less than
perfect – and thus somewhere deep inside each of us there is a Beavis, yea, a Butthead, a sniggering,
snot-nosed, horrible sub-adolescent thing that goes Nyuck-snuck-snuck! over utterly ghastly situations,
that laughs at cripples, and pretty girls, and little children, that gets its rocks off at traffic accidents and
loves it when everything goes horribly Wrong and the circus tent goes up in flames with all the clowns
and children inside and the fire department doesn’t get there in time and when it does get there, the fire-
hydrants turn out to yield nothing but pure </i>gasoline</i>! Oh, yes, children, yea and verily, Beavis
liveth, Butthead liveth, they are also, yea and verily, you better believe it, part of all we are – the nastiest
part, I’ll give you, the part we are very right to be thoroughly ashamed of . . . but still an inalienable part
of us, forevermore.

The genius of Chas Addams was that he enabled us to laugh not only at good ol’ Beavis and Butthead,
but with them, as well, to enable us, with a spasm of laughter, to accept even those parts of ourselves as
part of us, to love even that in ourselves – and understand that the Unmentionable Thing to Be Laughed
At is outside and beyond even them, even that slimy, nasty, unbearable, unspeakable Littleness within
ourselves.

Ave morituri, Chas, thou great and good and wonderful clown – you gave us back to ourselves, enabled
us to love ourselves, as few others could. If Jesus was ever real, he was a clown – no one else could have
done what he was alleged to do! “Bob” be with you, now and forever more: without you and all the other
Dear and Glorious Physicians of our souls and spirits, Hell would have triumphed over us long, long ago.

The true Magi of Power, as they have always been, are clowns, children. Like “Bob,” Jesus was a clown.
It is in laughter that we are ultimately saved – and those who kill laughter, who take out its warm,
beating heart and vivisect it to death, are the devil’s henchmen. Not even Nhee-Ghee turns against the
very thing that keeps life mended and whole in spite of everything that happens to rend it to pieces!
Nhee-Ghee is of Wotan, as “Bob” is of Wotan, Left Hand to “Bob”‘s Right – but the people who kill
laughter, who analyze it to death, to “study its psychology” in the way that the Department of Offense
studies an enemy general, in order to defeat it – these, these aren’t of our universe at all! They never
knew “Bob” and never can, are not even of the Conspiracy, but rather of Ultimate Evil, the true
destroyers of life and the world and all that we hold dear!

So remember, children: Jesus was a clown. God bless the clowns – they are, at the last, all that stand
between us and the Great Awful Dark!

[In what follows, for the names of Gods, etc. given therein, the names of comedic Gods such as Bugs
Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Bill Gaines, Alfred E. Neuman, etc. are
to be substituted. The idea is to throw an astral cosmic custard pie at the bad guys – a thermonuclear one,
about 50 megatons worth. Saturn rules satire, lampoon, and comedy, so in the following invocation only
the names change, though some of the accoutrements of bathos may be added, such as jester’s-headed
wands, custard pies, etc.]

ABSTRACT

The following is a description of a ritual to be used for attainment of liberty from any kind of unjust
restriction and for combating enemies of Liberty, Justice, and Thelema of all kinds, together with a brief
recapitulation of a particular instance of its use and some interesting physical phenomena that took place
thereafter. Before and after using this ritual, the Supernal, Transcendental, and Trans-Universe versions
of the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram should be used following the standard form of thereof (Liber O)
because of the nature of the energies employed and released during this Uranian invocation; not only are
these of extreme high magnitudes, possibly up to supernova ranges, but also, in many cases, extremely
“dirty,” that is, permeated or followed by the psychospiritual equivalent of intensely radioactive fallout.
(For copies of the Supernal, Transcendental, and Trans-Universe Pentagram Rituals, contact the author at
polaris93@aol.com.) The philosophical and esoteric framework of this ritual is modeled on the new
English-language 16-Sephiroth Qaballah developed by the author some years ago, and takes advantage of
certain aspects of the physical universe currently described and discussed in terms of String Theory (an
aspect of modern cosmological physics and quantum mechanics) both to bring about its intended results
and to keep the Operator from major harm as a side-effect of performance of this invocation. For more
detailed discussion of these and other topics related to the invocation, see below.

A. Esoteric background and related considerations

The esoteric structure of this ritual is adapted from the new English-language 16-Sephiroth Qaballah
developed by the author some years ago. It was found that this extended version of the Qaballah was
necessary to make it possible to successfully access, contain, and deploy the horrendous energies
involved in a manner which would not do irreparable damage to the Operator. The extra six Sephiroth
make it possible to access the extra dimensions of time and space which are described by String Theory
and certain other extremely recent branches of physics and cosmology, both for gaining access to the
necessary energies and for putting them to work properly for the purposes of the Working. (The 16-Seph-
iroth Qaballah uses a three-dimensional version of the Tree of Life for its model; there is no reason to
suppose that higher-dimensional models of the Tree of Life, having many more than 16 Sephiroth,
couldn’t also be constructed, making it possible to access even more puissant forms of energy, for even
more effective and complex results, to do everything from create a successful form of interstellar or even
intergalactic travel to exploring the Inner Planes of extremely remote portions of this universe or even
other ones. In such a case, for a hypersphere of n dimensions, the Tree of Life inscribed in it would
contain (n - 1) x 6 + 4 Sephiroth). For more information on the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah, please contact the
author of this paper.

While performing this Working, the Operator should visualize him/herself as standing inside the Sphere
of Life, head at Kether, feet at Malkuth, heart at Tiphareth, loins at Yesod, right shoulder at Chokmah,
left shoulder at Binah, with the new Sephirah Àsub-Two directly before him or her at the level of the
thyroid gland, and the new Sephirah i = Ö-1 directly behind him or her at the same level. The Uranian
Kundalini and higher energies are channeled up from the Tunnels of Set through Malkuth, thence up
through the Pillar of Power behind the Operator, which contains the new Sephiroth (in ascending order)
Æ (the Empty Set), 0 (Zero), and i = Ö-1 (the square root of minus-one), to Kether, to do the work. The
waste energies then come back down through Kether to the Pillar of Grace, before the Operator,
containing (in descending order) the new Sephiroth) Aleph-sub-Two, Aleph-sub-One, and Aleph-sub-
Zero (the first three Cantorian transfinites). The ordinary channels – the Left Pillar of Severity and Right
Pillar of Mercy of traditional Qaballah are not sufficient to contain and direct these energies properly;
neither is the Central Pillar of Consciousness. Trying to use any of these three access channels for this
ritual in the usual manner could result in disaster or even the madness or death of the Operator, since the
energies used are in the Kundalini range or higher, analogous to those released during detonation of
thermonuclear devices or volcanoes, possibly even rivaling those of phenomena related to plate tectonics
or even supernova.

Those who are familiar with the Spare Sigil and its use may also wish to convert the text of this Working,
given below, to such a sigil and deploy it appropriately. Those familiar with TOPY’s use of target-
shooting with a revolver for Magickal reinforcement of Will may wish to make a Spare Sigil of the text,
paste it over the bull’s-eye of a paper target, and attempt hitting the bull’s-eye of the target (and thus the
Sigil) with shots from a handgun; the idea is to reinforce the intent of the Working thereby.

Note: The body of this ritual may be included within another invocation as an evocation.

B.. Timing considerations

The Working should be done when the Moon is waning, on a Wednesday night or a Saturday, during an
hour compatible with Uranus. Hours ruled by Uranus (any hour of any night traditionally ruled by
Mercury is also ruled by Uranus; so are those hours of any day or night traditionally ruled by Saturn) or
by Saturn are compatible with Uranus. It is also helpful to perform this Working during a Solar month
compatible with Uranus (months compatible with Uranus include Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricorn, and Aquarius) and, if possible, when the Moon is in such a Sign. Additionally, the more
strongly Uranian astrological transits taking place at the time, the better, including mutual receptions
between Uranus and anything else, placement of Uranus in a Sign in which He is strong, Void-of-Course
Moon, etc.

C. Ritual accompaniment

Music appropriate for reinforcement of this Working includes, e.g., “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The
Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Hector Berlioz’s “La Marseillaise,” “She Got a Nose Job,” “It’s a Gas,”
“She Let’s Me Watch Her Mom and Pop Fight,” “The Boy From . . .,” “Well, It Ain’t,” “Makin’ Out,”
“Meet the Staff of MAD,” “Yakety Sax,” “Barely Alive,” “This Time, This Night,” “Disco Suicide,”
“Blind Date,” “I Found Her Telephone Number Written on the Boys’ Bathroom Wall,” “Entrance of the
Gladiators,” lots of stuff from Dr. Demento, and other classics of comedy. For other forms of
reinforcement, see Keys 3 and 11 in Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777. Anything connected with those
matters rules by Uranus, such as Moon-rock returned to Earth via the Apollo XI mission, photographs of
the Planets taken from fly-by probes such as the Voyagers, pieces of uraninite or green glass from nuclear
test sites, computer chips or diskettes, copies of Congressional bills and legislation, facsimiles of the
Declaration of Independence, the American flag, the post-Revolutionary French Flag, a piece of the Ber-
lin Wall, copies of any issues of MAD Magazine prior to 1998, etc. may be useful as ritual
reinforcements for this type of Uranian Working. Those who would like to perform this ritual should do
careful and thorough research into just what things, matters, persons, etc are ruled by Uranus, Saturn, and
Comedy that could be useful for such a Working.

D. The Ritual Proper

(Open with appropriate ritual ceremonies of opening after performing, in order, the Banishing forms of
Liber O and the Supernal, Transcendental, and Trans-Universe Pentagram rituals.)

(Read aloud, accompanied by appropriate music, in an appropriate ritual setting, properly timed, the
following:)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law! Love is the law, love under Will.

Behold! The mighty voices of my vengeance smash the stillness of the air and stand as monoliths of
MADness upon a plain of writhing dodosaurs. I am become as a monstrous machine of total
ridiculousness to the furshlugginner fragments of the mind(s) of he (she, they) who would restrict me.

I repent not that my summons doth ride upon the blasting winds which multiply the sting of my lampoon.
And great black slimy shapes shall rise from image frames and neener-neener-neener their laughter into
his (her, their) puny brain(s).

I call upon the messengers of satire to laugh with grim delight at this (these) idiot(s) I have chosen. Loud
as a bastard is that kookaburra that feeds upon the brain-pulp of he (her, they) who hath (have) tormented
me, and the pratfall of the is to be shall sustain itself in shrieks of mirth, only to serve as banners of
potrzbie to those who would be party-poopers.

(Read the Declaration of Independence of the Representatives of the United States of America, in
General Congress assembled, July 4, 1776, verbatim. Follow, in order, with the Preamble to the
Constitution of the United States of America [submitted to the legislatures of the several states in 1777;
declared in effect 1789]; all ten Articles, in order, of the Bill of Rights [the ten original Amendments to
the Constitution of the United States]; appropriate readings from the writings of Thomas Paine, Thomas
Jefferson, etc, on liberty; and Chapter 3 of Aleister Crowley’s Liber Al vel Legis [The Book of the Law].)

(Recite [from Aleister Crowley’s Liber OZ]:)

Every man and every woman is a Star.

1. Man has the right to live by his own law, to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will;
to play as he will;
to rest as he will;
to die when and how he will.

2. Man has the right to eat what he will;

to drink what he will;
to dwell where he will;
to move as he will on the face of the Earth.

3. Man has the right to think what he will;

to speak what he will;
to write what he will;
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will;
to dress as he will.

4. Man has the right to love as he will.

5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart those rights.

Furshlugginner potrzbie axolotol, fu belalugosi Lucrezia tuffluk boobooday Sodere iseenunu hyme
potrzbie opie Howsyourmomed fu moxiecowznofski donmartin basenji cocopuffs; dis yipeetiyi schlemiel
fu beevis; fu ax yeecch daisychain siesta fu salakadula harvykurtzman fabian. Cheechwizard hyme
vigorish dis oxidol jerrydefuccia al Joeorlando leonardbrenner arthur al melbrooks fu frankjacobs
micasasucasa manzanita luiluwah dis aljaffee, onion jackdavis humorinajugularvein alfeldstein
micasasucasa enema. Ol’ peterpaulnmary yacketyyack maybebaby myob oyveh jamesthurber jackbenny
meshugginer. Ohno! ohno! Notmebabe! Ohno! Cucamunga! Williamgaines schlemazl u soupysales
gesundheit Wallywood! NUNU! gloriaorlando farqhuard denada!

(Read:)

O come forth in the name of Alfred E. Neuman and destroy (Name)!

O great citizens of Satire, Lampoon, and Parody, Ye Who make my place of comfort, Who ride out on
the hot winds of Chaos, Who dwell in Liberty’s fane: Move and appear! Present yourselves to he (she,
they) who sustain(eth) the rottenness of the mind(s) that move(s) that (those) gibbering mouth(s) that
mock those who love Liberty! Tangle that (those) gaggling tongue(s) and give him (her, them) such a
smack, O Kali! Give him (her, them) a giant hickey, one that is luminescent purple, can’t be hidden with
any amount of makeup, and lasts for at least a week, O Moxie Cowznowski! Embroil him (her, them) in
endless hilarious, totally lugubrious confusion, O Don Martin! Embed them in the spirit-roiling Twinkies
of Forever, O Donald Duck! Plunge the utterly confused, break-dancing, raving revenant(s) of what
passes for his (her, their) mind into the circular file, O all-conquering Eris!

I set out the thermonuclear banquet of Liberty, and over the eternal flames of its participants’ nasty
remarks, resplendently roasted, my sacrifice through Comedy rests!

(Repeat three times:)

Proclaim liberty throughout the land! Bring the Jubilee!

Furshlugginner! How’s your mom Ed! What me worry!

Love is the law, love under Will.

(Close with appropriate ritual closure ceremony. Perform Banishing forms of Liber O and the Supernal,
Transcendental, and Trans-Universe Pentagram rituals.)

Acknowledgments:

Parts of the text for this Working were adapted from Anton Szandor La Vey’s The Satanic Bible (New
York: Avon Books, 1969), notably “The Conjuration of Destruction,” pp. 149-150, and “The Tenth
Enochian Key,” p. 215. Those parts were then thoroughly miscegenated with MAD Magazine, and you
see the results here. Oy veh!

Nota bene: No clowns were harmed in the production of this template.

Educating both sides of the head
Blog entry, Jan. 2nd, 2009 at 10:41 PM

In the previous entry on this blog (http://polaris93.livejournal.com/982732.html), I looked at the

differences between spiritual disciplines such as alchemy and Magick, and objective disciplines, such as
mathematics and the objective sciences. There is another way to look at these differences, as follows.
Exoteric disciplines such as mathematics and the objective sciences are analytic in nature, taking
systems apart and examining their components and the interrelationships among those components.
Alchemy, Magick, astrology, Qaballah, and the other esoteric disciplines are both analytic and synthetic
in nature, looking at phenomena both in terms of their individual components and as systems in their own
right. (One word for synthetic systems is “holistic,” a word much loved by the New Age community,
which has overused it and inappropriately applied it so much that it has lost most of its meaning and
become no more than a buzzword used to sell various services and goods. So I won’t use it in these
discussions, because it is calculated to provoke an emotional response in the listener without stimulating
the intellect and getting people to reason.)
Alchemy is one of the clearest examples of this two-sidedness of an approach to discovery. In a
process called decomposition, the alchemist analyzes materials, i.e., literally taking them apart, rendering
them into various forms, usually referred to as the mercury, not a quicksilver metal but rather a sort of
vapor peculiar to the original substance from which it is derived; the sulfur, not the yellow mineral
familiar to metallurgists, chemists, and geologists, but rather a sort of oil, its nature varying as to the
material it comes from; and the salte, an ash obtained by complete calcination – burning – of what is left
of the original substance once the mercury and sulfur have been removed from it. Then the alchemist
essentially puts the material back together, recombining its sulfur, mercury, and salte using various
alchemical processes, to produce what is called the alchemical version of that material. This can be done
with any physical material, and doing so to as many types of material as possible, from herbs and other
organic materials to metals, gases, and liquids of all kinds, is part of what the alchemist must do to
succeed on that Path, the goal of which is to attain enlightenment, which is usually attended by
extraordinary transformations in the alchemist. Alchemical versions of materials seem to be exactly like
their untransformed counterparts in every particular under completely chemical examination, but their
behavior differs importantly from their original versions in many ways, so this sort of processing of
materials has real and significant results, results which can be objetively verified.
Alchemists were the first to keep detailed, comprehensive notes on their experiments, so they could
check every step they carried out in their work. They were extraordinarily competent chemists and
geologists – they had to be, because mistakes in their work frequently led to disasters, often lethal ones.
They were the first true scientists. And they were not frauds.
There were those calling themselves alchemists who claimed that they could turn lead into gold, and
make people immortal, and fooled others into believing it, and in that way gulled people out of
unconscionable sums of money and other valuables. They included many counterfeiters, who were the
bane of civilization then as now – the fate of a nation could turn on how much fake money was in
circulation, and counterfeiters that got caught at it suffered fates ranging from immediate lynching to
burning at the stake. For good reason: the damage to a nation’s economy they were potentially capable of
could leave huge numbers of people homeless, without food, clothing, or shelter, and the nation itself
defenseless against foreign armies and navies. The problem was that the public had no way to tell the
difference between the frauds and counterfeiters and the real alchemists. The alchemists were reclusive
and secretive, partly to avoid the sort of scrutiny that could get them arrested, tried, convicted, and
executed for fraud and treason, and partly because much of there work was only possible in solitude. So,
because of frauds who abused public trust, the alchemists were damned as criminals themselves, and later
labeled “quacks,” “charlatans,” and “delusionary” when in fact they were none of these.
Alchemists, like Magickians, serious astrologers, Qaballists, and other dedicated students and
practitioners of the esoteric, are following a spiritual Path to enlightenment. There are many such Paths.
That of alchemy entails a belief that the best way to get to know the Creator and one’s relationship to that
Creator is to work directly with matter in all its phases. A career as a metallurgist, geologist,
archaeologist, paleobiologist, paleontologist, physicist, or anyone else working directly with matter (and
energy) could be a spiritual Path; to be one, it would have to include the understanding that what is
broken apart (analyzed) should eventually be reassembled (synthesized) to be wholly understood, and
that the physical scientist, like every other seeker of truth, esoteric or exoteric, is an inalienable part of
the universe he/she studies.
 A modern neurologist would look at this in still another way, having to do with the division of labor
in the brain. In most of us, the right side of the brain is concerned with spatial relationships, music,
higher mathematics, some language skills, systems/holons, and related phenomena, while the left side of
the brain is concerned with logic, arithmetic, vocabulary and language skills, and social structures and
limits. The right side of the brain is concerned with love and trust, the left side of the brain, with distance
and critical judgment. And so on. Both the objective, exoteric sciences and the esoteric disciplines
depend on both sides of the brain. With the modern objective sciences, however, there is an emphasis on
left-brain functions (except for mathematical reasoning, which depends on both sides of the brain).
The proven enormous power of modern science to probe the deepest levels of physical reality as well
as the farthest reaches of the cosmos is not to be sneered at. But the power of the esoteric disciplines to
give the student an understanding of reality that makes it utterly clear that he or she is a living part of a
living universe, supported and sustained by that universe, his or her essence carried forth by it to the
future after death, should not be ignored and discarded, either. We need both, and we desperately need to
have them not be at war. As Rudyard Kipling’s Kim says: “. . . And I thank Allah / Who gave me both
sides of my head.”
Human ecology and astrology
Blog entry, May. 31st, 2010 at 12:16 PM

People have asked me, if I love the sciences the way I do, why am I also an astrologer? Isn’t that
hypocritical or, at best, confused?
Not really. Most people – including way too many astrologers, btw – don’t know what astrology
really is. It’s simply another way of mapping the way energy from electromagnetic radiation, chemical
reactions, and the radioactivity of the rocks making up the Earth’s crust and the Earth’s interior moves
through the living world, including every living organism in it. Astrology describes the pathways which
energy most likely to take on its way to a state of maximum entropy. It is the ongoing, continuous,
overall interactions of all the bodies comprising the Solar System, especially their combined effects on
the Sun and the Sun’s associated electromagnetic field, and the Moon’s gravitational effects on the Earth
and its life that determines the most likely pathways energy will take to try to reach a ground state, and
that is what astrology maps.
All life on Earth exists within the Sun’s electromagnetic field. The characteristics of that field
change continuously as the flow of the plasma that makes up the body of the Sun changes. In turn, as the
various bodies of the Solar System tug and haul on the Sun, the shape of the Sun, hence the motions of
the highly ionized gases (plasma) making up the Sun, change in accordance. Since the motion of ionized
gases is equivalent to an electric current and its associated electromagnetic field, this means that as the
planets and other bodies of the Solar System revolve around their parent star the Sun’s electromagnetic
field changes both quantitatively and qualitatively in kind.
Every living organism on Earth consists of various materials containing or suspended in the watery
fluids that make up the bulk of that organism. Throughout its life, the atoms and molecules making up
those materials and that fluid are in continuous motion, passing through, within, and between the cells
that make it up. As these atoms and molecules are in many cases themselves ionized, that means that
electrical currents and an associated electromagnetic field flux are continuously present in the body of the
organism and within its constituent cells. In the case of organisms with complex central nervous systems,
beating hearts, and other organs that depend on those electrical currents and associated electromagnetic
field flux for their functioning, any change in them induced from outside the body of the organism will
impact that organism’s overall functioning and the functioning of its individual organs, sometimes
beneficially, sometimes otherwise. Since every such organism lives within the ever-changing
electromagnetic field of the Sun, not to mention that of the Earth, that means that changes in the Sun’s
electromagnetic field will induce changes in the functioning of every living creature on Earth in ways
that reflect the behavior of the Sun and, in turn, that of the bodies of the Solar System, for reasons
outlined above. The changes may be small and inconsequential; but where individual neurons and
myocardial cells are concerned, even small changes can have very significant effects on the organism and
the functioning of its organs, because the behavior of organs such as the vertebrate brain and heart are by
nature mathematically chaotic. Hence relatively small changes in the Sun’s electromagnetic field due to
the behavior of the planets and other bodies in the Solar System and their geometric interrelationships
can have significant impact on the functioning, hence the behavior, of every living thing on Earth.
If this sounds ridiculous, consider that ham radio operators keep up-to-date ephemerides handy by
their rigs so that they can always have a good idea of how the Heavyside layer is behaving at any given
time. It turns out that when the Solar System’s great Gas Giants, Jupiter and Saturn, as observed from
Earth are in a square aspect or in opposition to each other in the sky, radio reception is generally bad, and
transmitted signals often get lost somewhere in the Heavyside layer. But when they are in trine or trine
aspect to each other, radio reception is generally very good, and radio transmissions are clear and easy to
receive and interpret. A similar case holds true for the Solar System’s Ice Giants – Neptune and Uranus –
and their geometric interrelationships with each other and with the Gas Giants as observed in the sky
from Earth. Radio operation is electrical in nature; what affects their operation will likewise impact the
delicate functioning of the organs of living organisms, especially organs such as the brain and heart
whose functioning is as much electrical as chemical in nature – and which are far more sensitive to
changes in ambient phenomena, with far more nuanced responses to them, than any radio ever made.*
And in fact it has been observed at population levels, living organisms, ourselves included, behave
collectively in ways that track the aspects which the planets of the Solar System, as observed from Earth,
make to one another and to the Sun. In a general sense, all other things being equal, it tends to work for
individual organisms, including human beings, as well. I say “tends” because astrology is not, contrary to
popular opinion, a determinative predictor of behavior and mind-set; it marks out likelihoods rather than
certainties, and somewhere between free will and Eris living creatures manage to beat the odds all the
time.
What astrology is, is an ancient version of human ecology, a real heuristic sort of science that our
Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age ancestors used with an acceptable success rate to determine the best
times to sow, tend, and reap their crops and breed, tend, butcher, and otherwise deal with their stock
animals and work animals – activities their very lives and the ongoing success of their socities depended
on absolutely. They survived well enough – that we are here today shows that – so their use of astrology
to regulate these and other critically important activities on which their very survival depended was
successful. True, there are limits on its applicability, but when used the way it’s supposed to be used,
astrology is successful enough as a practical discipline to warrant interest in and study of it.
Astrology is not, however, an explanatory science the way, say, many branches of medicine, biology,
physics, and chemistry are. It describes behavioral likelihoods due to ever-changing physical phenomena,
but when it comes to getting at the underlying reasons for those likelihoods, it fails miserably.
Astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the biological and biomedical sciences, on the other hand, are superb
at getting at those underlying causes, but ignore easily observable trends in behavior as related to the
continuously changing geometry of the Solar System as observed from Earth, pretending they don’t exist,
because, frankly, there have been too many damned frauds calling themselves astrologers, alchemists,
and other practitioners of such ancient discipline when in fact they are anything but for honest men and
women to have any truck with anything those frauds discuss or practice, thank you very much.
At any rate, I study and practice astrology because I find it fascinating insofar as it gets at aspects of
the interactions of people with one another, members of other species, and the environment in general
that are missed by other disciplines. Up to that point, it is a success as a predictive discipline, at least as
long as whole populations and societies of organisms are considered. It works as far as individuals go, as
well – but only up to a point, and only in terms of likelihoods, because, when you get right down to it,
any organism with a given life-history and ancestry, when faced by a particular situation, will do exactly
as it damned pleases, and throw everybody’s predictions into a cocked hat. (Military analogue: “The
moment the enemy appears, all your battle-plans go to shit.”)
Have a great Memorial Day, everybody. XD

*In fact, Earth’s atmosphere and, to a great extent, also react to major aspects among the bodies of the
Solar System. Like living organisms, the atmosphere is an inherently chaotic phenomenon, and like
living creatures, it responds to changes in the Heavyside layer and the general electromagnetic
ambient environment in ways that range from subtle to catastrophic. Storms form and unform, evolve
and strut their stuff in response to fluctuations in that ambient environment; tornadoes and hurricanes
and shindees and dust devils and lightning storms all reflect the behavior of the Sun in response to
the ongoing evolution of the general gravitational field of the Solar System. In turn, the lithosphere
responds to the birth, evolution, and death of every storm front, weather system, and other
meteorological phenomenon, and the overall effect likewise mirrors the same phenomena astrologers
work with. This perhaps accounts for the fact that event charts erected for the times, dates, and
locations of earthquakes always show quincunxes, aspects interpreted by astrologers as signifying a
need for adjustment among components of a system that are under strong tensions – like, by the way,
the various faults in the crust of an area in which an earthquake is about to occur. Astrology
measures the behavior of chaotic systems in response to changes in the ambient electromagnetic
environment in which they are located. The range of such systems include biological, geological,
and meteorological systems, and astrology can therefore be applied usefully to them all as far as
after-the-fact analysis of their behavior and its causes goes.
Liber AL A spyglass into the future

Blog entry, Aug. 28th, 2009 at 9:35 PM

I’ve posted entries here before about the things which Aleister Crowley’s Liber Al vel Legis
(http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Law)
obliquely refers to that have come to pass long after the writing of that book in 1904, as well as the death
of its author in 1947. These were things that neither Crowley nor anyone else would have been aware of
back at the beginning of the 20th century, and which, in many cases, almost no one could have predicted
prior to the 1980s and 1990s: the discovery of the true 16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah (if you’d
like a copy of that file in Word format, send an email to me at Polaris93@aol.com, giving your preferred
return email address, and I’ll be happy to upload it to you, FREE); Boolean algebra and its computer
applications; the invention of the universal computer (one which can calculate or produce data on
anything if given the proper software instructions for doing so, rather than being restricted to operations
based on hard-wired plugboard-style processing); the invention of the original, 94-character ASCII
character lexicon, and its relationship to the elements 1-94 of the Periodic Table of the chemical
elements; and the Information Age, the Internet, and the World Wide Web.
There is also the admonition “Take strange drugs” (Liber AL, Chapter II, verse 22). This has been
interpreted by many as license to ingest every conceivable weird and/or addictive substance ever
discovered or invented on a daily basis, with consequent and often serious problems resulting therefrom.
But there is also this: the waters of our world are filled with so many pollutants of all kinds, especially
remnants of medications taken and then urinated out again by millions of people whose wastewaters run
right into rivers, lakes, ponds, and the ocean, that ingesting that water can cause a host of problems
ranging from miscarriages and intersex offspring to biochemically facilitated psychosis, sterility, and a
host of other problems. All you have to do to take strange drugs these days is drink the water, which is, in
Tom Lehrer’s immortal words, simply “hot- and cold-running crud.” The same is true for the food we
eat, which is nurtured on that water, and is processed in ways that leave it full of additives and pollutants.
And then there are the medications themselves that end up in our waterways, which, all too often, are
worthless or even harmful to us, especially since around 1985 (for more on which, see Melody Petersen,
Our Daily Meds (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/books/17masl.html?_r=1)), which are often
“strange drugs,” indeed, from statins, prescribed for cholesterol control, which can dissolve muscles and
neurological tissue, to aspirin, which can do real harm to the GI tract, to medications to control diabetes
which can destroy the liver, and countless others. In this case, “take strange drugs” clearly isn’t an
admonition to ingest recreational drugs; rather, it is a simple observation of a way of life in the late 20th
and early 21st centuries because of which the bodies of most of us are stiff with weird chemicals, most of
which we never knew we were ingesting and never wanted to ingest, most of the rest being prescribed by
physicians who should have known better.
In other words, the heart of The Book of the Law isn’t prophesy, but rather references to real things
occurring in a future which, when Crowley wrote the book, wasn’t all that far off in terms of chronology,
but was countless generations away in terms of cultural and technological evolution, so much so that
neither Crowley nor his contemporaries nor most of the people who have tried since to analyze The Book
of the Law to determine what it means caught the slightest whiff of what was coming down the pike after
Crowley’s death.
So what else does that book contain, however obliquely, concerning some of the most Earth-shaking
events of human history and, indeed, of life’s tenure on Earth? Forget the apparent admonitions and
prophesy that obviously bills itself as such – those have been done to death by countless analysts, many
of whom, by the way, have been very good at the task. In the interest of not duplicating good effort, let’s
look at The Book of the Law not from a religious or philosophical perspective, but those of speculative
science, science-fiction, technological war-gaming, and analysis of the history of the 20th and 21st
centuries since 1904. And since “speculative science” can be aimed in any direction, that means looking
at what we have learned of life on Earth and the evolution of the cosmos over billions of years, current
and cutting-edge models of physical, cosmological, and biological reality, and all the other ways of
looking at the Once and Future Universe.
What’s in there? Several hundred bazillion delicately laminated layers of information about the
nature of the cosmos and the life in it, extraterrestrial civilizations, the exploration and colonization of
space, future wars? I’m betting there are a zillion yottabytes of information in there, just waiting to be
found, that nobody before the late 1940s, when the first real universal computer, ENIAC, was built, could
ever have suspected was there. I’m betting that rather than being a Bible of sorts, The Book of the Law is
a vast library of information that can be accessed only as the keys for doing so are discovered: the 16-
Sephiroth English-language Qaballah, the strange geometries of M. C. Escher’s paintings and the even
stranger ones of Salvador Dali, and Chaos Science come to mind, and there are probably many others.
Any Thelemites out there not moving in lockstep with others when it comes to analyzing The Book
of the Law? Any non-Thelemites who, because of their specialized backgrounds – military science,
biology, physics, anthropology, cosmology, intelligence operations, whatever – might find such a task
interesting? There is a real possibility that information the world badly needs in order to make the
decisions in the future that will have a direct bearing on the survival and well-being of humanity and,
indeed, all live on Earth is contained in it. Anyone have enough curiosity to give it a try?
Nota bene: In Liber AL, there is a verse which says, “Every man and woman is a star.” There’s also
quite a few things said about True Will, more or less what is called dharma in Buddhism, as opposed to
raw impulse. Putting these two things together, then we might conclude, as Crowley did, that “True Wills
never collide, any more than stars collide.” Right? Well, not exactly. See
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050515.html,
http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=when_stars_collid,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051005_short_bursts.html,
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/13/science/two-stars-collide-a-new-star-is-born.html,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582110/, etc. for more on which.
March 21 is not always the first day of Spring & the Tatvic Tides

Blog entry, Dec. 18th, 2008 at 3:42 PM

On those little lists of when the Sun enters a given astrological sign, the sort of thing you find on
pocket calendars, in almanacs, and so on, it says that (in the northern hemisphere) the first day of Spring
is March 21. Well, it isn’t always so, and is never so in the Americas. For example, on March 20, 2009,
the Sun will enter Aries (i.e., the first moment of Spring occurred) at 11:45 a.m. UT, i.e., in Greenwich,
England; it will do so at 3:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on America’s West Coast; at 4:45 a.m. in
America’s Mountain Time Zone; at 5:45 a.m. in America’s Central Time Zone; and at 6:45 a.m. on
America’s East Coast.
On March 20, 2008, the Sun entered Aries at 5:49 a.m. UT, hence at 9:49 p.m. on March 19 on
America’s West Coast, and at 12:49 a.m. – 49 minutes after midnight – on March 20 on America’s East
Coast.
On March 21, 2007, the Sun entered Aries at 12:09 a.m. UT, but at 4:09 p.m. on March 20 on
America’s West Coast.
On March 20, 2006, the Sun entered Aries at 6:27 p.m. UT, and at 10:27 a.m. on America’s West
Coast.
And on March 20, 2005, the Sun entered Aries at 12:43 p.m. UT, and at 4:43 a.m. on America’s
West Coast.
Because of the insertion of an extra day in the year every four years (the leap year), the time of
entrance of the Sun into Aries (and any other sign) gets earlier and earlier each year, then jumps back to a
high, thereafter once again getting earlier and earlier each year, and so on. From the vantage point of
America’s West Coast and points out over the Pacific Ocean, the Sun never enters Aries after March 20,
though it will occasionally do so on March 21 in Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. You can check this on
the Web or using a standard ephemeris (I particularly recommend ACS Publications’ The American
Ephemeris series, which can be purchased in volumes covering various decades or centuries). The Sun is
definitely in Aries on March 21 everywhere – but actually enters Aries on March 20 in most places. So if
you are told you are “on the cusp” of Aries, that your Sun is very close to 0 degrees Aries one way or the
other (in late Pisces or early Aries), and you know your birthday is on March 20, check the ephemeris
and/or with good astrological software to check your natal Sun’s exact position in the heavens when you
were born.
I was born just an hour and ten minutes after the first moment of Spring, March 20, 1945, at 5:48
p.m. Pacific War Time, Pasadena, California, but people who don’t bother to check are always reassuring
me I’m a Pisces, not an Aries. When I produce a copy of my chart, and they see that my Sun’s position is
0 degrees 3’ Aries, they simper, “Oh, you’re on the cusp!” (The Sun is a disc 30’, i.e., half a degree, wide
as seen from Earth, about the same apparent width as the lunar disc. So the leading 27 minutes of arc of
my Sun was in Pisces, the other 33 minutes in Aries.) Well, there’s this little business called the Tatvic
Tides, having to do with the inception of the seasons as measured from the Solstices and Equinoxes.
Spring beings with Aries, a Fire sign, and there’s a vast flood of Fiery energy that washes through the
world beginning from the moment the center of the Sun hits 0 degrees Aries. Similarly, Summer, starting
with the Watery sign Cancer, begins with a flood of Watery energy; Fall and Libra, with a flood of Airy
energy; and Winter and Capricorn, with a flood of Earthy energy. Every baby born in the first few hours
of a season thus receives that flood of elemental energy peculiar to that season. In my case, it was Fire. I
do have Neptune in my first house, and thus there is Piscean influence in my natal chart, but the
predominant energy is Fire and Mars/Pluto. So my Neptune is the ninja and naval Neptune, the warrior
Neptune, not the wishy-washy Neptune.
Anyway, don’t assume that because you were born the day before some itty-bitty pocket calendar
says the Sun enters a particular sign that your Sun sign is the previous sign – check the ephemeris, first.
And if you were born close to the beginning of a Season, check the ephemeris and your software to find
its exact placement, because you may have been gifted with a flood of the energy of the season’s
beginning.
More notes on Liber AL

Blog entry, Aug. 29th, 2009 at 4:06 PM

I’ve posted many times here about various oddities in Liber AL (the last post on that subject is at
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1552540.html). Liber Al vel Legis is a map, a map of the n-dimensional
future, of the many possible futures, that we can use to navigate our way with maximum safety (not
necessarily 100%, but the greatest degree of safety possible) to – what?
The reason that everything on Earth is so screwed up now is that unfortunately, we depended on the
GPS system to get us where we wanted to go, and as a result ended up in the middle of the Inverness golf
course’s water-trap. To read and use the map properly, one needs keys (already mentioned in the post
linked above) and the ability to consider the text of Liber AL in a way analogous to plane spotting, in
which the observer uses his peripheral vision rather than direct vision for the task, since peripheral vision,
out of “the corner of the eye,” is much better at picking up motion and contrast at a distance than direct
vision is. Similarly, to capture the implicit references in Liber AL having to do with events and
phenomena from times long after the publication of that book and the death of its author, one must
observe it out of the corner of one’s mind, the back of the mind, letting the unconscious do almost all the
work, as it is far better at putting things together to arrive at a recognition of the meaning of things than
the conscious mind is.
Nor should you dismiss “stupid ides” without considering them. For example, it’s possible that the artistic
work of say, the painter M. C. Escher, Youtube, CDs and DVDs, the Hubble Space Telescope, and other
things are implicitly referenced in that book. Why not consider that possibility? It makes for a fine hobby
and an amusing way to while away a rainy Saturday afternoon.
In Jeanne DuPrau’s The Prophet of Yonwood: The Third Book of Ember
(http://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Yonwood-Third-Ember-Books/dp/0375875263,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_of_Yonwood), a young girl named Nickie is traveling with her
Aunt Crystal to an old house in Yonwood, North Carolina. Nickie’s great-grandfather has died, and the
house where he lived, in a neighborhood called Greenhaven, is inherited by Crystal, who plans to sell it.
Over time, Nickie begins to love the house and finds a girl named Amanda who lives there. She is there
because she used to look after Arthur Green, the great grandfather of Nickie. Amanda tells Nicke of
Althea Tower, who saw the future of the world in burning flames and smoke, and subsequently has spent
months in a dream-like semiconscious state, in which she mutters phrases and words. A woman in the
town, Mrs. Beeson, who tends Althea, who can’t take care of herself, calls them instructions from God
and requires townspeople to comply with her interpretation of the words, and insists that the entire city
quit their “wrong” ways and start to be good people, so God will be with them. She becomes the power
that directs the police in the town to enforce the “war against evil” and slaps buzzing bracelets on
offenders who don’t comply. The so called instructions gradually become more and more strict and
unreasonable, beginning with things like no sinners, no singing, no lights, and eventually no dogs.
Ultimately, Althea comes back to her senses, discovers what Mrs. Beeson and those who believe in her
have been doing to the townsfolk, and tells the townspeople that what Mrs. Beeson took as
commandments of God were really bits and pieces of what Althea had seen in her vision, e.g., “no birds”
came from the fact that in the vision, no birds remained alive, a result of nuclear war, rather than that
God commanded the town to get rid of all birds. And all ends well . . . sort of.
It may be that the various interpretations and analyses of The Book of the Law (Liber Al vel Legis)
are to some extent rather like Mrs. Beeson’s interpretations of the things Althea was mumbling in the
entranced state that was the long aftermath of her terrible vision: references to real things in the future,
rather than commandments from one or another spirit of some kind. With that in mind, it might be fun to
wade through Liber AL and see what you can find. After all, what I’ve already found with little training
for doing so is rather earth-shaking – how the hell could Crowley or whatever spirit inspired him during
the writing of that book have known about our modern universal computers, the ASCII character set, the
use of uranium and plutonium nuclear bombs in war, all the strange (indeed!) drugs in everything from
food and water to products of today’s huge pharmaceutical companies, and the other things discussed in
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1552540.html?
On Magick

Blog entry, Jun. 5th, 2010 at 3:44 PM

How does one do Magick? Aleister Crowley said that “Magick is the Art and Science of causing
change in conformity with Will.” If you stop and think about it, he was right on the money with that
definition. Magickians do their thing by striving to achieve this, that, or the other thing, regardless of how
they do it. Arthur C. Clarke said that “Magick is any significantly advanced technology,” i.e., any
technology so advanced over what the observer understands or can replicate that it seems to be
supernatural. Anton Szandor LaVey pointed out that small children use Magick successfully all the time:
“See that little girl playing with her dolls? She is conjuring herself into the mother she will become when
she grows up. See that little boy playing at being a fireman? He is conjuring up the breadwinner and head
of a family he will become as a grown man.” Basically, all goal-oriented behavior is, by that definition,
Magick; all goal-oriented attitudes are, by that same definition, Magickal by intent. Therefore all living
organisms are Magickians, for all living organisms display goal-oriented behavior as long as they live,
whether it be the reflex drawing-in of air so their bodies can extract from it the gases needed to fuel their
metabolism, the putting-down of roots by plants to extract soil nutrients or the emitting of chemicals by
those same roots to ward or kill off neighbors or rivals who crowd them a little too closely; the behavior
involved in feeding, fighting, fleeing, and romantic involvements of animal life; or any other sort of
behavior at any level on the part of any organism necessary for its continued existence and the
propagation of its genes (or the protection, education, and nurturance of the genes of its cousins, which
comes down to the same thing).
But Magick, with a capital “M,” is usually considered to involve actual paranormal phenomena as its
means of achieving its goals, such as action at a distance (i.e., with no apparent physical connection
between the Magickian and the results of his/her Workings), the sort of thing which, however, quantum
mechanics seems to explain. The Western Ceremonial tradition achieves such results by invocation of the
Gods; shamanism apparently does this through the direction action-at-a-distance of the shaman
him/herself. With reference to my earlier entry on this blog “Semper Fi – What makes for a successful
shaman?” (http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2314527.html), this seems to require a lack of alienation
among the shaman’s/Magickian’s mind, body, and the universe at large, whether that is a permanent and
non-contingent condition, originally brought about as the result of deep physical or mental wounds, or a
temporary and contingent one brought about by ritual practice.
The thing is, the Gods are simply various aspects of God, the universal Intelligences that inform all
Creation and all the living world. As I said in “Semper Fi – Mars Gets Autotuned! | Universe Today”
(http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2313805.html) , the beings of the Lovecraftian Mythos are among those
aspects of Creation from which we have become alienated, including, for example, our own bodies as
well as anything outside them. Shub-Niggurath, for example, is the Intelligence of cosmic biodiversity,
the swarming life-forms making up rain-forest ecosystems such as those of the Amazon Basin and other
areas of the world, and, by extension, of the universe as a whole, and perhaps even of the infinite
multiverse. In similar wise, Nyarlathotep may be to the cosmos as a whole what Hermes-Djehuti was to
the Greeks: the Divine Messenger Who carries information from everywhere to everywhere else and
enables decipherment of its meaning, the great Trickster Who is there to remind us that no matter how
much we think we know or how great we are, there’s always Somebody a lot bigger, more
knowledgeable, and meaner, Lord of Thieves and Protector and Comforter of orphaned and abused
children, Lord of Wisdom and the One Who brings us knowledge of the scariest, deepest realms of the
Deep Unconscious of both ourselves and all Creation. Yog-Sothoth is the All-knower, the Keeper of all
knowledge, the cosmic equivalent of the Library at Unseen University in the city-state of Ankh-Morpork
on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. And so on.
Not to say that any of these beings are cuddly and cozy. Think, for example, about the Amazon
Basin – a place where deadly pathogens abound, where great anacondas that can easily kill and devour a
man whole live, where there are Brazilian Wandering Spiders and pretty little frogs with venom that can
disable you within minutes and kill you shortly after. Think about Spider Woman – She is the Creator of
the Multiverse, the begetter of all things, Whose webs are hung with golden galaxies without number.
But if She is the All-begetter, She is also the All-devourer, Who spins Her creations only to devour them
again when She is done with them, so that they may provide the raw resources out of which Her next
cycle of Creations can be spun.
Similar considerations apply to every one of the Mythos beings, and to numerous other entities Who are
great enough to be considered Gods, but too frightening for most of us to want to confront or invoke. All
of Them are universal Intelligences of one or another aspect of God, and every one of Them can be and
usually is utterly terrifying. The Archangel Michael is an excellent exemplar of such beings, as is the
Goddess Kali. They are not beings which most of us want to meet down a dark alley at midnight – or, for
that matter, at high noon in the middle of Times Square, either. Beautiful and terrible, They inform all
Creation with Their Intelligences, and are absolutely necessary for the existence of life itself – but no one
in his or her right mind considers any of them cute, cuddly, cozy, or harmless. They are anything but.
And that is Their terror – and Their glory. And the Magickian Who, in spite of his or her understandable,
rightful dread, nevertheless invokes Them, the shaman who comes to know Them, thereby achieves an
awareness of a far larger universe, or a multiverse, the rest of us will never know, and abilities that the
rest of us only dream of. – And, of course, all the hell that goes with them.
This is the ultimate goal of the fully mature human being, one who has attained to the status of a
Protector, the one who is the wise and protective grandparent to generations, perhaps to the whole living
world, and not just to his or her own restricted genetic lineage: to become truly whole in mind, soul, and
spirit by de-alienating him- or herself from those Deep Gods, those Aspects of God which most of us
want nothing to do with because they are so terrifying, uniting both intellect and psyche, science and
Magick, to become the Whole Human who, like the eponymous Kim of Rudyard Kipling’s novel of that
title, thanks “Allah for both sides of my head.”
On the selling of one’s soul

Blog entry, Mar. 27th, 2010 at 3:56 PM

Because I’m known as a Ceremonial Magickian, people often assume I know everything about the
“supernatural,” asking me questions that range from “Are Chupacabras real?” to “Can you conjure up
piles of money?” and “What size shorts did Aleister Crowley wear?” (The ready answers to which are, in
order, “I don’t know,” “No – would I live like this if I could?”, and “That’s none of your damned
business.”) Among such questions are the age-old “How does one make a pact with a demon?”, “Do
demons really deliver on their promises?”, “Do you have to sell your soul to do it?”, and “What does
selling your soul involve?”
Why anyone would want to sell his or her soul for anything is beyond me – that would entail an
especially horrific form of slavery, and, or so all authorities say, and I believe them, you never, ever get
what you bargained your soul away for. Whatever you get, it’s always anything but what you wanted, or
what you wanted in a form so twisted and warped that you hate it on sight. That answer provokes yet
another question: Why does selling your soul produce such horrible results?
As a matter of fact, people sell their souls every day – or, rather, can be found in the process of doing
so. That process can go on for years, and it doesn’t entail any sort of traffic with supernatural entities,
other than, if you will, the sort of evil spirits you can find in any bottle of whiskey, gin, brandy, or Mad
Dog. Drug dependency, whether involving alcohol or various recreational drugs or, for that matter,
prescription drugs can easily reduce people into whining wrecks whose only conscious thoughts are of
somehow feeding that great big monkey on their backs, of doing whatever it takes to do so. Tweakers,
coke-heads, alkies, smack-hounds – these are some of the pejorative labels that are applied by many of us
to drug abusers, who have become so dependent on their poisons of choice that they require a dose of
them just to get out of bed in the morning, or avoid being huddled up in a ball, moaning, as they go
through the agonies of the damned due to withdrawal. There’s nothing supernatural about it, unless you
consider what one philosopher asked, “Forget asking why this or that phenomenon is as it is. The real
puzzle is why anything at all exists.” Thanks to media exposure, we all know what getting one’s soul
back after being hooked on one or another interesting chemical involves: the agonizing process of
withdrawal, the equally agonizing process of relinquishing denial, the assessing of what one has left in
life after one has lost one’s job, all one’s financial assets, one’s spouse, one’s home, one’s children, one’s
relatives and friends, one’s clean record, and everything else that gave one’s life meaning thanks to that
long, vicious drug habit. Drugs always promise everything, but give – nothing. In fact, they steal
everything from you, and leave you high and dry on a barren shore – or dead of a drug overdose, or any
of the other unpleasant things that drug addiction can involve.
But there are other addictions that are just as powerful. Such as addiction to junk food, to sugar, to
American cigarettes (which are loaded with monstrous things to give them flavor, such as deer’s-tongue
herb, which can destroy your liver and kidneys), to pornography, to Scientology, to any other religion or
political philosophy that devours its own followers, to sex, to danger and the adrenaline rush it brings, to
gambling, to political power, to other people’s money, to child molestation and child rape, to murder
every time one gets the urge, to setting fires. You name it, somewhere, someone is addicted to it.
Sometimes those addictions are relatively harmless, however disgusting they may seem to the rest of us,
such as that of endlessly poring over shoe catalogs, in the case of foot fetishes who prefer to exercise
their jones on pictures of the beloved rather than the real thing. Sometimes, in the case of serial killers,
recreational arsonists, serial rapists, and serial child-molesters, they are violently harmful. But all such
addictions, regardless of the degree of harm to others they cause, require the selling of one’s soul, not all
at once, but inchmeal, one piece at a time, often over a period of many years, for the illusions of power
and pleasure given by the objects of such addictions, at the price of huge chunks of one’s life and one’s
place in the community. No supernatural spirits, no devils are involved in this, only the slow, steady,
permanent erosion of lives, often with a wake of ruined lives of others left behind the addict as he or she
stumbles through life. Ask any veteran of Alcoholics Anonymous – AA knows, and they’ll tell you true.
They’ll tell you about the shattered lives of AA members, and the lives of innocent bystanders destroyed
by parents, children, neighbors, friends, and strangers still under the spell of the giant apes on their backs.
And in every such addictive process and every addict you can see what is involved in selling one’s soul,
and the ruination it causes: getting nothing, or far less than nothing, in exchange for things of great value,
including, ultimately, one’s very soul.
 The soul is the emotional life, where we really live: memory, creativity, social skills, empathy with
others, the extraction of meaning from the things we experience. It is our apprehension of the bonds we
have with other living creatures, especially our loved ones and our communities. Anything that steals our
souls from us, or destroys them outright, robs us forever of at least some of our humanity, not to mention
most or all our resources and the other human beings who mean anything to us. It doesn’t have to be a
demon to do that. All it has to do is give us powerful illusions we’ll do anything, give up anything,
destroy anything to continue to experience. Whatever corrupts the will, whatever changes the focus of the
will from the things pertinent to life to the mere chasing of will-o’-wisps, which every addictive process
does, corrupts the soul, as well.
It doesn’t take a Magickian to tell you that. Look around you – and into the nearest mirror. Every
one of us has some moral frailty, some need that can be exploited by this substance or that experience or
the other process to take us over, body and soul if things fall out a certain way.
And all our legislators who voted for that thrice-damned “Health Care” bill, in all its ugliness, not to
mention the President of the United States, all his cronies, and everyone whose battle-cry is
“Entitlement!”, have in fact sold their souls after the fashion described above: for power, for wealth, for
safety, for considerations. Demons, anyone?
Speculations

Blog entry, Dec. 13th, 2008 at 2:41 PM

As planets revolve around the Sun, their gravitational influence on it changes the Sun’s overall
shape. Usually such changes are minute, but sometimes, especially when Jupiter and Saturn, or even
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, are all more or less on the same straight line as the Sun (when they
are said to be conjoined, as seen from the observer’s point of view), those changes can be relatively large.
Even when they aren’t that large, geometrically speaking, they can cause a significant spike in one
direction or another of the Sun’s electromagnetic field.
The Sun is, after all, a giant ball of highly ionized gas (plasma). Highly ionized gas is essentially a
huge cloud of nucleons (protons + neutrons, the cores of atoms) and electrons, the latter liberated from
the former, flying about all on their own until the gas cools enough for the electrons to return to
minimum levels of excitement. A cloud of electrons is potentially a current. All it needs is direction. The
combined gravitational influence of all other bodies in the Solar System continuously tugging and
hauling on the Sun’s corpus provides that direction, or, rather, numerous directions. As that influence
continuously changes as those heavenly bodies move through their orbits, and does so in a complex,
cyclic fashion, so does the shape of the Sun – and thus so does the Sun’s electromagnetic field.
Put any living organism inside a varying electromagnetic field and you’ll see changes in it according
to the strength of the field and the way it changes from moment to moment. A living creature is,
physically speaking, a huge collection of molecules through which ionized molecules (ions) move, both
in intra- and intercellular bioplasmas and in circulatory systems, assuming creatures have the latter. Just
as the highly ionized gases making up the Sun constitute a gigantic complex of currents, so the bodies of
living creatures and even the tissues of their fruits exhibit current flows in the form of those moving,
ionized atoms and molecules. If a current flows through an electromagnetic field induced on it from
outside, and the latter is constantly changing, the behavior of the ions that make it up will mirror that of
the electromagnetic field in which they are embedded.
The Earth lies within the Sun’s electromagnetic field, which therefore envelops and permeates every
living creature on Earth. So the ever-changing geometry of the Solar System is reflected in the ever-
changing physiology and behavior of all Earth’s life. That is precisely what is measured by astrology,
whether the astrologer is aware of it or not: a physical influence on the physical bodies of all Earth’s
creatures (and those of life-forms on other worlds with respect to their own day-stars) which, influencing
their nervous systems, has a real impact on their minds and behavior.
In other words, whether it should or not, astrology does work. We can all do without the New Age
bullshit, of course, and astrology should never be used as an excuse for uncivil or criminal behavior,
Shirley MacLaine and her ilk to the contrary. But as a predictor of behavior, especially at a collective
level, astrology does work. In fact, it works on shortwave radios – ham radio operators keep ephemerides
with them at all times to check on the positions of Jupiter and Saturn relative to the Sun, because when
these two gas giants are in a trine (120-degree) relationship, as seen from the surface of the Earth (and,
more or less, from the Sun, since these two worlds are far enough out from the Sun and us that from
either perspective they seem to have pretty much the same relationship to each other) radio reception is
usually excellent, whereas when they are in a square (90-degree) relationship, radio reception is poor to
nonexistent. If it works on radios, it really should work on the much more finely-tuned entities that are
the bodies and nervous systems of living creatures.
But then there are the bells and whistles of astrology, the little details that also work, prompting to
make one ask: now, why?
One of these has to do with something called sign/house rulerships, i.e., the signs and houses of the
horoscope in which a celestial body’s influence seems to be especially strong. The most authoritative
students of astrology list these as follows:

Moon/Cancer/4th House
Sun/Leo/5th House
Mercury/Gemini & Virgo/3rd & 6th Houses
Venus/Taurus & Libra/2nd & 7th Houses
Mars/Aries & Scorpio/1st & 8th Houses
Jupiter/Sagittarius & Pisces/9th & 12th Houses
Saturn/Capricorn & Aquarius/10th & 11th Houses
 The traditional system of the planetary rulerships of the horoscope

This system can be expanded to include the planets beyond Saturn, and even those in the Kuyper
Belt beyond Pluto. It can also be reoriented to give a similar system for the exaltations (influences more
powerful than those of planets in the signs of their rulerships) and esoteric rulerships (more powerful
still). (The signs and houses of planetary weaknesses – respectively the placements of their detriments,
falls, and esoteric detriments – are those opposite the signs/houses of their rulerships, exaltations, and
esoteric rulerships.) But the system illustrated in the graphic given above is the traditional one, used by
astrologers for many centuries to determine how strong the influence of each planet in a horoscope is.
The one thing all such systems have in common is bilateral symmetry. Given that they work – and
they do – why do they work?
Clearly, our response to the changes in the Solar System’s geometry, as mirrored by the mutations
they induce in the Sun’s electromagnetic field, is a biological one. It affects all life on Earth, including
Gaia, the biosphere itself. It is our biology that responds to the Sun’s changes. So the answer to that
question must lie in our biology.
At least in almost all animals, the hox genes control segmental patterning during development,
specifying which end of an animal is the head, and which is the tail. They control segmentation during
early development of eumetazoan animals (“true animals,” any animal less generalized than a sponge).
They are critical for the proper placement and number of embryonic segment structures such as legs,
antennae, and eyes. What hox genes do is, basically, determine symmetry and segmentation in the body
of an animal. Some animals, such as sponges, have only a sort of vertical patterning, i.e., a holdfast
below and fronds with no particular orientation with respect to one another waving in marine currents
above. Other animals, such as the cnideria (jellyfish), exhibit radial symmetry, the sort of symmetry that
a circle or sphere does if you section it through the center, the edges all equidistant from that center. Still
others, such as most terrestrial animals, including our own species, and many marine organisms, exhibit
bilateral symmetry, that is, bodies of any length relative to their width, but symmetrical around their long
axis, each side a mirror-image of the other side.
The image of the wheel of planetary rulerships presented above exhibits bilateral symmetry about an
axis determined by the cusp of the 11th House (Aquarius) and that of the 5th House (Leo), each planet
ruling two signs/houses on either side of that axis. True, Luna rules Cancer and the 4th House, the Sun,
Leo and the 5th. But the Sun and Moon are considered by astrologers to be each other’s equivalent during
the hours of a diurnal period when the other is below the horizon or not easily seen, two expressions of
one principle: light. They are in fact called that, the Lights, and are two of the three strongest influences
in a horoscope (the third is the Ascendant, the point rising at the east for the moment and place an
astrological chart is erected).
The bilateral symmetry of the schemum of the rulerships is suspiciously similar to that imposed on a
developing eumetazoan by its hox genes. More biology. An interesting field of study for an
astrobiologist. (For more on hox genes, see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_genes,
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/a_brief_overview_of_hox_genes/, etc.)
What makes for a successful shaman?
Blog entry Jun. 5th, 2010 at 1:42 PM

Note: I am here using the term “shaman” to include a number of other things, such as “Magickian,”
“psychic,” “telepath,” etc., having to do with abilities that seem to be beyond the range that human
beings and other creatures normally have. By definition, all such people regularly exhibit one or more
paranormal abilities, and have at least some control over the times, places, and forms which
manifestations of those abilities take. That control need not be perfect, but if it is entirely lacking, rather
than being a shaman, one is an individual sorely besieged by weird phenomena that may or may not also
cause harm to others, with no good way to integrate them into his or her life. In that case, results are as
expected: the individual labors under a handicap that may at times become life-threatening to oneself
and/or others, and which rarely, if ever, provides any benefits.
In the case of the shaman, however, one has some degree of control over these abilities, is able to
gain some benefit from them, and, at least most of the time, is not particularly harmed by their
manifestation. What distinguishes him or her from individuals who apparently do not manifest such
abilities, or do not do so predictably, is he or she has found a way of controlling them. Those abilities
may have come to manifest entirely on their own, as sometimes happens to those who have suffered
severe trauma, either physical or psychological or both – accident victims with severe head injuries, those
who have survived virulent infectious illnesses that usually kill their victims, survivors of chronic,
egregious child-abuse, former POWs and political prisoners who underwent torture on a chronic basis for
a significant length of time, etc. – but the shaman, by whatever name, has learned how to control them,
integrate them into his or her life, and even get some benefit from them. In some cases, such abilities
only manifest after a long period of training and practice, as is the case for, e.g., many who follow the
Western Ceremonial tradition. Yet even in such cases, as in those of people who never seem to manifest
such talents or who, at least, never admit to that, one may have true precognitive and/or clairvoyant
experiences while dreaming, and/or have premonitions that turn out to be spot on.
And in fact it would be strange if that weren’t the case. Life has a predilection for such things,
regularly employing quantum mechanical processes at a cellular or molecular level to accomplish what it
must in order to survive and thrive (http://www.nowpublic.com/plants_feeding_off_quantum_physics,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7006/full/431256a.html,
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/13-is-quantum-mechanics-controlling-your-thoughts,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/quantum-photosynthesis/,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203131356.htm,
http://www.dexterlagan.com/2009/10/plants-quantum-mechanics-and-human.html).
Moreover, down the centuries there have been countless reports of otherwise inexplicable and weird
events and phenomena. As they say, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire – and the references cited
above document what has to be, judging from that enormous volume of smoke, one hell of a big fire. (Of
course, another saying has it that with all this horseshit, there’s bound to be a pony in there somewhere,
with nary a pony to be seen anywhere, but with damn plants queuing up to apply for a job with the
psychic networks, it’s unlikely – with a probability closely approaching zero – that paranormal events
don’t happen and that the universe doesn’t accommodate a plethora of weirdness. But I digress.) So why
don’t more people have manifest paranormal abilities under their personal control? Dammit, if a plant
can do it, why can’t we? Or rather, why can’t more of us than is demonstrably the case?
Part of the problem seems to be a loss of an ability that not only “primitive” humanity but perhaps all
nonhuman life has in abundance, which is a strong sense of connectedness between one’s body and mind
and between one’s body and mind and everything in one’s environment or even the universe as a whole.
One has a strong sense that one not only lives in one’s body, but that’s one’s body is an extension of the
core of one’s being, of one’s psyche and will, and that one is, body, psyche, and spirit, one of countless
manifestations or extensions of the universe at large, with no absolute barrier between self and Creation
of any kind. Barriers there are in plenty, but they are all porous to one degree or another, or rather both
porous and, each in its way, useful conduits connecting sense and object, mind and body, self and
universe, so that everything is ultimately part of one seamless weave, one great tapestry of being.
Now, that may sound as if I’m being overly mystical or poetical – it does sound a bit precious,
doesn’t it? But that is the most concise and accurate way of putting it. The shaman, his Western cousin,
the Magickian, the witch-doctor and the saint – all these have that sense of connection with everything
around them, and between their innermost being and their bodies. St. Francis d’Assisi had it. So did – or
does? – Carlos Castenada’s teacher, Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui sorcerer. So did Aleister Crowley, the
great Western shaman/Magus/sorcerer, and Dion Fortune, a.k.a. Violet Mary Firth Evans, widely
considered to be one of the greatest Western experts on Qaballah, Magick, and related disciplines. So has
Nick Herbert, one of our greatest Western shamans. I could expand that list indefinitely, but these
examples should serve to show what they all have in common: a lack of alienation from their own bodies
and the universe at large. Rather than thinking of their bodies as mere mechanical housing for their
essential non-physical minds – the so-called philosophy of mind-body dualism – that is so characteristic
of those schooled and educated in Western ways of living, these shamans/magi tend not to be alienated
from physical reality in either intellect or emotional life, and it is clear that it is that that makes the
difference between them and the rest of us, for whom cryptophenomena and experiences are not part of
quotidian existence, and who do not manifest paranormal abilities at will.
But as it is that very alienation, that trained-in experience of an absolute separation between mind
and body, between self and the universe as a whole, however false-to-fact it may be, that has also made
Westerners so successful scientifically and in terms of applied science. Excluding from consciousness the
things within us has allowed us to concentrate completely on things around us with so high a focus that
we have thereby been able to burrow into the very heart of physical reality and expand our awareness to
the very edges of the universe, harnessing the power of the atom and even of the quantum-mechanical
aspects of spacetime itself. We are reaching out to the very stars, we are acquiring knowledge about
reality at a frightening rate. Dare we give that all up in order to acquire shamanic talents?
Are you kidding me? Notice some of those inclusions in that list of names of prominent shamans
given above: Physicist Nick Herbert. Highly educated 19th-century Englishman Aleister Crowley.
Quintessentially Western Dion Fortune. And the ultimate saint: Francis d’Assisi. All of them Westerners.
All of them at home with a thoroughly Western outlook. And all of them also at home in the universe as
well as in their own physical selves, regardless of whatever temporary quarrels they have had with that
universe or their bodies. All of them knew what the alchemists have always known, that study of physical
reality is the primary path to God, and that experience of one’s relationship with one’s body and one’s
universe is the foundation of that study. Why was top physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer a student of the
great Hindu religious traditions? Why were so many other Westerners, all well-known as scientists and
scholars, also deeply interested in the strange side of reality? And Why else have whole generations of
Cal Tech have, in addition to their deep study of advanced mathematics and the objective sciences, gone
heavily for Magick, alchemy, and related studies and practices (and no, we are not talking about Cal
Tech Hell Week, but that’s another story entirely).
Body, mind, soul, spirit, universe – all one thing, one seamless weave of the stuff that Hindu
physicists sometimes call “Kali,” for the blackness of spacetime, of the essential matrix in which all other
things come to be, continue, and pass away. The shaman, like plants, like the nervous system of any
animal at a cellular level, lives that. The rest of us don’t. And that is what makes the difference.
Other references:

Lisa Jones, Broken: A Love Story (http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Love-Story-Lisa-

Jones/dp/1416579060)
Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and
Eastern Mysticism (http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels-
Anniversary/dp/1570625190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278051343&sr=1-1)
The Philosophy of alienation

Blog entry, Jan. 2nd, 2009 at 8:17 PM

I wasn’t sure what to title this entry, which is about alienation, a psychosocial condition that can
cause real misery, and what helps protect against it, so I chose that.
Alienation is a psychosocial condition in which someone feels cut off from others on a psychological
level. Those others may include family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, one’s community, even
humanity at large. The “other” from whom one is alienated may be the whole living world, as a living
world, instead of a random collection of nuts and bolts going through the motions. In either case, one is
miserable because one does not feel that one is part of anything important or quite real. If you feel that
even in death something of you will be carried forward into the future – your soul, your spirit, your
genes, your contributions – life feels as if it has some point and purpose, because you are part of
something much bigger, older, and potentially longer-lived than you are. Otherwise you are alone in the
void, standing outside it all, manipulating the universe without being a part of it, and that can ultimately
prove to be deadly. Alienation can kill, driving the sufferer into a suicidal depression. Proving that the
alienated one isn’t alone, cut off from everything important, is hard to do, because the problem is
emotional and cognitive rather than something solidly based in objective reality to which you can direct
the sufferer’s attention. The solution to that problem must also be subjective, and it’s hard for anyone to
provide a subjective solution to someone else’s subjective problem.
The best way to deal with alienation is to avoid it entirely. How can you do that? Up until the advent
of the 19th century, and especially before, say, the 15th century, both the common man and the scholar
had a worldview which saw the universe as one whole living thing, and both humanity and the human
individual as part of it. The conception was both religious and philosophical, and it ramified down into
the emotional life of the individual. Ecology would not have been a hard field to learn for our ancestors,
because they lived it day by day, or did all their intellectual work within a framework that treated the
entire universe and all within it as what we would now call an ecosystem. The idea of an ecosystem and
its ecological dynamics wouldn’t have seemed strange to them at all, because, after all, all their days and
all their thoughts were part of a universal ecosystem.
We see this in traditional Qaballah and its roots, out of which was born the idea of the Tree of Life, a
map of all of reality. All was seen to come from an initial spark of creation by God, and to be included
within God’s will and oversight. This view of things finds its apotheosis in, among other things, Dante’s
Divine Comedy, which is based on the idea of a living world-cosmos with Hell within the Earth,
Purgatory a mountain of vast height reaching to Heaven, and Heaven that surrounding all the rest of
Creation, cradling and nurturing it.
On this idea was based Medieval Magick, astrology, and alchemy which, contrary to the opinions of
many, including scientists who ought to know better, rather than being fraudulent poor-man’s relatives of
the sciences, were not only the forerunners of the modern sciences, but also legitimate disciplines in their
own right, with their own aims and fields of study. Magick, alchemy, astrology are all based on the idea
that the universe is in its way alive, and that we, like all other creatures, are part of it. They are spiritual
Dos (paths) as much as they are quests for knowledge or anything else. They look at the same universe
that science does, but from very different perspectives, with different goals and aims, most notably
perfecting the relationship between the individual and his or her Creator. The purpose of taking such a
path isn’t to gain power or wealth, but rather to become wise, healthy, and happy due to increasing
spiritual enlightenment. They do different things and are aimed at different goals than are the objective
sciences. A scientist can be a great scientist and a great Magickian, alchemist, astrologer, or Qaballist at
the same time, as long as he or she understands what the proper places of the exoteric and esoteric
disciplines are.
More than this, study of those spiritual disciplines familiarizes one with the idea that yes, we are all
inalienable living parts of the living universe, which siderails alienation and junks it before it gets a grip
on the student, or even after it does so. Yet today’s scientists are encouraged to take on a worldview of
themselves somehow standing outside all things, manipulating this or that part of the universe,
dominating it but never really part of it. They are never taught that explicitly – well, some might be, but I
think most professors would be embarrassed to teach such a notion explicitly – but the image forms deep
in the mind of themselves outside it all, working the universe, owning it, controlling it . . . but not part of
it. Not ever.
And that attitude spreads. It works its way gradually outward to the general public, to the schools, to
children in those schools, to the media, to the media’s audiences. More and more of us feel cut off from
life, from our communities, from people in general, from the living world, from all that really matters –
and for many, that leads to the slippery downhill slide into hell via terminal depression. Others, for lack
of a felt contact with life, the living world, and other people, drift farther and farther away from reality,
coming to be permanent tenants in this or that castle in the air. Money becomes more real than what it
buys; pills come to substitute for health; fantasies replace relationships of all kinds, from friendship,
family ties, and love of one’s spouse and children to community ties, sexual bonds, or any other.
Religion has had this one thing going for it from the beginning: Whether Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wiccan, or any other, they all teach that we are all living parts of a living
world and subject to its will, occupying our true niches in it our only real shot at happiness. If you don’t
like the idea of God, fine, pick Buddhism, which doesn’t entail belief in God. It still teaches that we are
all part of one great living thing, and that our ultimate goal is to put ourselves in harmony with it, body,
mind, soul, and spirit.
Ultimately, the war between science, on the one hand, and religion/Magick/alchemy/Qaballah/astrology,
on the other, is really a war between alienation and inclusion, between a worldview based on the idea of
oneself as totally, permanently separated from life, and that of oneself as a living part of the ecosystem,
the biosphere, that is the cosmos. These are two different ways of looking at one thing, reality as it is,
both its objective and its subjective aspects, and both should be included in our education if we are to be
psychologically healthy and still reap the very real benefits of the sciences and the engineering fields that
stem from them.
So what would holding such a worldview do to the dream of space, of reaching the stars? It wouldn’t
inhibit it, given what we know now of astronomy and cosmology. We leave the planet only to enter a
vast universe that is itself a biosphere, a hyperbiosphere, if you will, 14 billion years deep in time and
getting larger every moment. If we leave our universe, we enter the Multiverse at large, the ultimate
ecosphere. And we are always inalienable parts of whatever ecosphere we are part of, and all Creation,
and all of its living parts, are ecospheres, of which we are part. We are always and forever home, the
place of the heart, wherever we are.
The n-dimensional network of life
Blog entry, Dec. 14th, 2008 at 11:23 PM

Biologist Lynne Margulis has pointed out that bacteria and viruses happily swap genetic material
with one another as well as any other life-forms they contact, and do so indiscriminately, regardless of
kind or taxon. This means that the chances that any living organism, human or otherwise, carries in its
genes segments of DNA that originally came from a fish, bird, reptile, plant, fungus, or any other type of
organism is good. Furthermore, it means that on the level of raw genetic material, all life on Earth is
interlinked, and heirs to all the direct ancestors of all its contemporaries as well as its own. From the
inception of life on Earth to the present, this universal gene-swapping has been the rule, and every one of
Earth’s life-forms is connected to every other by endless sequences of transfer of genetic material among
them all not only through normal reproductive behavior, but also due to microbial facilitation of transfer
of genetic material among organisms of all kinds.
Likewise, every organism is ecologically connected to all others, past and present, as a result of the
transfer and recycling of gases, liquids, and solids due to the intake of food, water, and atmospheric gases
and the excretion of waste gases, solids, and liquids by organisms. Every atom of oxygen, nitrogen, and
trace gases in Earth’s atmosphere has been breathed in by countless organisms down through Earthly
life’s history, and released back into the world as organisms breathe out, excrete wastes, and, finally, die
and decompose, the substances of which their bodies were composed passing on to be recycled through
the Earth or taken up in the food, water, and air used by new organisms. The same is true of everything
organisms eat and drink during their lives. We are all interconnected over billions of years and all the
Earth by vast networks of materials transfers among one another, networks which will endure until the
last of Earth’s life is gone.
Similarly, noőtic information – the sort of information upon which mind and behavior operate – is
shared across long reaches of time and space not just by organisms of the same species, but, in many
cases, by creatures of many species. Organisms learn from one another, and this process of learning can
and often does transcend species and even higher-order taxic barriers.
In at least three different ways, material, genetic, and informational, Earthly life is interconnected
with itself in vast networks of indescribable complexity, richness, and beauty. The geometry of these
networks is measured in all the physical dimensions of our universe, at least 11 in number, including
those having to do with choice and the different paths upon which an organism’s feet are set by the
decisions it makes in life, not to mention the uncertainty inherent in the behavior of subatomic particles
and other physical entities. This situation must be duplicated infinitely many times in the infinite-
dimensional multiverse/megaverse of which our own universe and an infinite number of others are part.
The dimensionality of the networks of interconnectedness within and between living worlds must
therefore be fractal and infinite – fractal, because the pattern of these networks must be reproduced over
and over at all levels of magnification; infinite, because there are an infinite number of universes, each
with its own inherent geometry, all interrelated to one another.
The infinite-dimensional Tree of Life (Circle/Sphere/Hypersphere of Life) previously discussed is a
good approximation of the totality of all such networks of interrelatedness among life-forms and physical
entities in the multiverse. How close a fit the former has to the latter, topologically and algebraically
speaking, remains to be studied; it may be that further refinements must be made in the former to allow it
to become a perfect map of the latter.
 From my

Qaballah and Tarot:

A Basic Course in Nine Lessons

1) Notes on the Tree of Life as a multilinear system

comprising a transfinite set of Trees of Life of various
orders and structures
A note on consideration of the Tree of Life as a multilinear system that can be decomposed into an
infinite number of Trees of Life each having a distinct number of Sephiroth and Paths. Should be noted
in New Magicks for a New Age, my Qaballah & Tarot: A Basic Course, and any other of my
manuscripts to which it is relevant.

The Tree of Life is not only fractal in nature, each Sephirah and, according to some authorities, even
each Path being a Tree of Life in its own right, the elements of which are in turn also Trees of Life, and
so on ad infinitum; but multilinear, as well.
The Tree of Life can be represented in the form of an array or multilinear vector containing A
elements, where A = z1 x z2 x . . . z≡ = ∏ zi for 1 [ i [ ≡ and zj ∈N, the set of all natural numbers,
decomposable into vectors each containing A/zj = Aj elements, for some i,j ∈ N. Hence there can be
simultaneously less than 10 and more – many more – than 10 Sephirah and 22 Paths in a given version of
the Tree of Life, depending upon how you decompose the fractal universe that is the primordial Tree of
Life.
For example, the Tree of Life can be conceived of as comprising ten Sephirah and 22 Paths, no
more, no less, as is traditional. Simultaneously, it can be conceived of as comprising 16 Sephirah and ∑
16 = 136 Paths, or 5 Sephirah and 2 Paths, or any other permitted* combination. All these Trees are
decomposition products of the One Tree, the original, coexisting simultaneously.

*For a version of the Tree of Life containing exactly n Sephirah, where n a natural or counting number,
it can have no more than ∑ n = n x (n+1)/2 Paths, that is, connections between the separate
members of pairs of that Tree’s Sephirah.

2. Coinage Elements in Alchemy and Magick

For the physical and chemical properties of the elements, see, e.g., http://www.chemicalelements.com/,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element, etc.

The coinage elements include: copper, silver, terbium, gold, berkelium, roentgenium, which are
respectively associated with Venus, Luna, Earth, the Sun, the Centaurs (comets whose highly irregular
orbits lie between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune), and the spheroidal Oort Cloud of comets that
surrounds the Solar System. Notice that the Z- or proton-numbers of these elements are respectively 29,
47, 65, 79, 97, and 111. These produce the following Qaballistic reductions:

29 –> 2 + 9 = 11, the number of Magick and of Uranus, ruler of Magick and liberty.
 47 –> 4 + 7 = 11, the number of Magick and of Uranus, ruler of Magick and liberty.

65 –> 6 + 5 = 11, the number of Magick and of Uranus, ruler of Magick and liberty.

79 –> 7 + 9 = 16 –> 1 + 6 = 7, the number of perfection and of Venus and love.

97 –> 7 + 9 = 16 –> 1 + 6 = 7, the number of perfection and of Venus and love.

111 –> 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, a number of Luna; and 111 is also the sum of the Hebrew letters that spell
out ALePh, which is associated with Atu 0, the Path connecting Sephirah 1, Kether,
associated with Pluto, with Sephirah 2, associated with Neptune. Aleph is also associated
with Uranus and thus with Magick and liberty.

Magick is the Art and Science of causing change in conformity with Will, and is thus the discipline of the
directed and cohered exercise of the Will. Love is the foundation of all successful Magick. So these six
chemical elements together represent the doctrine of Thelema: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of
the Law. Love is the law, love under Will.” The number of that doctrine is 93, the atomic number of
neptunium, associated with Neptune, and the ordinal number (counting from helium up) of plutonium,
associated with Pluto.

3) A deeper understanding of the Tree of Life

The Tree of Life of Qaballah is a map of the relationships among all of Creation and God.
 The Tree of Life

The Sephiroth, the discs on the above diagram from which radiate one or more Paths, are actually the
origin – the Origin, both mathematical and theological – of the entire system. They differ only in the
Paths connected to them and defined by them. The Paths are vectors, or dimensions/directions, radiating
out from the Origin, which is represented in the different forms of the Sephiroth according to the
system’s dimensions that are the Paths. In other words, the Paths are representative of the system’s
dimensionality, while the Sephiroth are representative of the Origin as nested within that dimensionality.
Given that, obviously there must be as many Paths as connections between Sephiroth allow: if there are,
e.g., 10 Sephiroth, then there are
1 + 2 + ... + 10 = 55

possible Paths in that version of the Tree of Life. If the Tree of Life map is 2-dimensional (using the term
“map” as distinct from the actual system of the Tree; the map is a graphic representation of the Tree,
whereas the Tree itself is a system in its own right), then it has 10 Sephiroth, 4 on the Central Pillar and 3
each on the Left and Right Pillars. If it is 3-dimensional, it has 16 Sephiroth, 4 on the Central Pillar, 6 (3
and 3) on the Left and Right Pillars in one vertical plane, and 6 more on the Left and Right Pillars in the
vertical plane orthogonal to the first one, for a total of 4 + 6 + 6 = 16 Sephiroth, with 1 + 2 + ... + 16 =
136 actual Paths among them. Similarly, if it is 4-dimensional, then there are 4 + 6 + 6 + 6 = 22
Sephiroth, with 1 + 2 + ... + 22 = 253 Paths among them. In general, if the Tree is n-dimensional, for n
greater than 1, then there are 4 + (n-1) x 6 = 6n - 2 Sephiroth, and 1 + 2 + 3 + . . . + (6n - 2) Paths among
them. The traditional Tree is 2-dimensional, with 10 Sephiroth, and only 22 of the possible 55 Paths are
represented in its traditional form, but it can be expanded indefinitely according to the formulae given
above.
Theologically, perhaps this might be explained in terms of life on other worlds and in other universes
(not “dimensions”; a dimension is in fact a direction, a vector, whereas the structure of a universe or
multiverse is defined in terms of its dimensions and the forms they take, whether integral, fractional,
fractal, etc.). Different peoples require different Commandments (the Sephiroth) and ways of life (the
Paths connecting the Sephiroth) to live well and in a good relationship with the Creator. Hence all these
infinite possible systems, for use in an infinite and infinite-dimensional universe.

4) New kinds of Paths on the Tree of Life?

Traditionally, a Qaballistic or Magickal Path represents a bijective (that is, one-one & onto)
relationship between exactly two Sephiroth. But one could define a Path to be a set S whose elements
include three or more Sephiroth, together with a second set F of possible interrelationships among those
Sephiroth, such as quaternions, mappings that are non-injective (one-to-one) or -surjective (onto),
permutations, fractal interrelationships, and others, taking forms such as algebras, groups, rings, and
numerous other mathematical entities. I know I won’t live long enough to see research on this idea bear
fruit, so I’m tossing it out for whoever wants to work on it.

5) The extended Qaballah: concepts

Qaballah can be imagined as an elegant filing system by which the mind can organize every concept,
phenomenon, and process conceivable – or inconceivable. The traditional, 10-Sephiroth Tree of Life is
associated with the planets of the Solar System, the counting numbers 1-10, and numerous other concepts
that have been important to humans ever since we began counting things, noticing the lights in the sky,
and otherwise observing and wondering about our cosmos. What would the 16-, 22-, 28-, etc.-Sephiroth,
n-dimensional Trees of Life be used to organize?
The first set of 6 extra Sephiroth, those of the 3-dimensional, 5-Pillar Tree of Life, can be put in
association with weird numbers such as i = √-1, zero, ∅ (the Empty Set, {}), e, pi, and other strange
numbers. The second set of 6 new Sephiroth, those of the 4-dimensional, 7-Pillar Tree, can be associated
with mathematical entities such as algebras, groups, rings, fields, Mandelbrot sets, Julia sets, etc. With
each successive extension in higher and higher dimensions of the Tree of Life, new types of
mathematical concepts are associated with the additional Sephiroth. As for the Paths, in similar wise each
new generation of Paths can have distinct physical, biological, mythological/spiritual, and cultural
associations. However complex life becomes for us, an n-dimensional extension of the Tree of Life will
allow us to map every aspect of our universe onto it.

6. The Hypersphere of Life

 Continuing the lessons on some rather esoteric aspects of Qaballah, let’s look at a non-traditional
geometric representation of the Tree of Life, which might be called the Circle of Life, in this case
including the original ten Sephiroth only.
At the top of the circle is a point, the first point, Sephirah 1. Somewhere else on the circle is another
point, the last of ten points, Sephirah 10, Malkuth. It would make sense to make it be the closest point to
Sephirah 1 to the left or right if the other eight points are to be strung around the circle between the two.
However, as long as we are on the surface of the Earth and out of water, where a gravitational gradient
exists against which we must work all our days, it makes more sense to put Sephirah 10 equal to the point
on the circle exactly opposite to Sephirah 1, so that Kether and Malkuth then determine a line on which
are placed Sephiroth 6 (Tiphareth) and 9 (Yesod), with Tiphareth closer to Kether and Yesod closer to
Malkuth. The remaining six Sephiroth – 2 (Chokmah), 3 (Binah), 4 (Chesed), 5 (Geburah), 7 (Netzach), 8
(Hod) – are then distributed along the circle such that, from the observer’s point of view, Sephiroth 2, 4,
and 7 are on the right-hand half of the circle between Kether and Malkuth, and Sephiroth 3, 5, and 8 are
on the left-hand half of the circle between Kether and Malkuth. The Paths – bijective functions on pairs
of Sephiroth like those associated with the traditional figure of the Tree of Life – are laid out as before,
either the traditional 22, or the full complement of 55. The result doesn’t look too different from the
standard, traditional version of the 10-Sephiroth Tree of Life.
But consider creatures that exist on some world other than Earth. If they live within the Solar
System, that gravitational gradient is still there, going from the Sun outward to the stars. But in free fall –
in orbit around the Sun or freely falling toward it or a planet or other body in the system – gravity is not
experienced. Now the Tree of Life becomes a circle on which the 10 Sephiroth are strung like sapphires
on a necklace. Now it makes sense to place Kether anywhere on the circle, and Malkuth close to it, with
the other eight Sephiroth strung in order along the arc between those two Sephiroth. Now no Sephiroth
are strung on a line determined by Kether and Malkuth, and no Paths connect points on the circle with
points on such a line. All Paths become chords determining arcs of the circle, each of them determined in
turn by two Sephiroth.
Outside any stellar system, of course, the same holds true as for creatures in free-fall within the
system. The lack of a gravitational gradient removes the need for a line bisecting the circle on which is
strung the two inner Sephiroth of the Central Pillar. We look at the figures determined by the system of
Paths in the Circle of Life, analyzing it both topologically and geometrically, and see that these Paths and
the Sephiroth they connect form a 10-pointed star which, however, is not exactly equal to the standard
decagram, in which only some of the connections among points on the circle are allowed. All possible
two-way links between points on the Circle of Life are allowed. The topology of this figure is one of 55-
connectedness. And every Path and Sephirah in the Circle of Life is itself a Circle of Life, the larger
replicated in every detail in the smaller.
Now consider the 16-Sephiroth Sphere of Life, with its 136-connectedness, the 3-dimensional analog
of the 2-dimensional Circle of Life, all its Sephiroth on its surface, its 136 Paths crossing the interior of
the Sphere as the 55 Paths of the 2-dimensional Circle of Life cross the interior of that circle.. Each one
of the Hypersphere’s elements – its Paths and Sephiroth is in turn a Sphere of Life, each element of
which is in turn a Sphere of Life, each . . . and so on to infinity.
Now consider the 22-Sephiroth 4-dimensional Hypersphere of Life, a higher-dimensional analog of
the Sphere of Life. Its Sephiroth are all distributed on its hypersurface, its Paths all crossing its
hyperinterior. Every one of its elements is in turn a Hypersphere of Life, each element of which is a
Hypersphere of Life, and so on to infinity.
We can continue this process to infinity, adding 6 new Sephiroth at each extension of the original
Circle of Life. Always the Paths of such an n-dimensional hypersphere cross its hyperinterior; as there are
4 + [(n - 1) x 6] = 6n - 2 Sephiroth on each such figure, where n is the dimensionality of the figure, there
are thus [1 + 2 + . . . + (6n - 2) = Z] Paths in the figure, which is thus Z-connected.
This gives a series of Circles/Spheres/Hyperspheres of Life for any number of dimensions that can
accommodate life of any kind, whether it exists in a gravity gradient or not, even the Mi-Go of the
Lovecraftian Mythos, flying about in their brain-cans in the spaces between worlds and universes.

7. The kinetic style of Qaballistic Magick

Qaballistic Magick – like Qaballah itself – isn’t the sort of thing that easily lends itself to attack-style
practice and goals. Those who nurture a state of mind embracing the idea that “I will have such-and-such,
I will do so-and-so, this is what I will to happen” will find Qaballah a slipper thing, indeed.
 The various schools of Magick and the philosophical systems underlying them can be compared to
various schools of combat arts and their philosophical underpinnings. Spell-casting and curses both, for
better or worse, resemble karate, which is all about speed-and-power, the forcing of the universe to do
what the sorcerer or witch wants it to do. Qaballah and Qaballistic Magick, on the other hand, are based
on a way of viewing reality much like that of the philosophy behind tai chi, of moving with the universe
rather than attacking it and attempting to force it into conformity with one’s desires. Theologically
Qaballah entails the belief that Creation makes manifest God’s Will and mirrors that Will, however
imperfectly, so its ideas and practices also entail cooperating with God’s Will, of moving with that Will
rather than trying to evade or attack it as part of one’s attempt to cause change in conformity with one’s
own will and desires.
For this reason, when applied appropriately, Qaballistic Magick is far more efficient and effective
than attack-style Magick, because it aligns the Operator’s will with that of Creation as a whole as well as
God’s will. In effect, the Qaballist steers the momentum of events to do the job of realizing his goals,
with consequently far less wear and tear on his mind and body than if he were to employ spell-casting,
hexes, curses, and similar Magickal tools and styles to do so. Like karate, the latter approach to Magick
leads to the psychospiritual equivalent of worn-out joints, torn muscles and tendons, and worse;
Qaballistic Magick, on the other hand, gradually aligns the practitioner with the Will of All Things,
which strongly tends to promote healing and fulfillment, again like tai chi.
Of course, use of Qaballistic Magick for the ends of what is popularly called “Black Magick,” i.e.,
destructive Magick, can lead to results that are not only, in the words of COBOL compiler error
messages, unpredictable, but actually harmful to the practitioner. Far better to use Qaballah to take that
knife that mugger is about to use on you and hand it back to him – as a gift, all while gently assisting him
in slamming head first into a nearby wall . . .

8. The n-dimensional network of life

Biologist Lynne Margulis has pointed out that bacteria and viruses happily swap genetic material
with one another as well as any other life-forms they contact, and do so indiscriminately, regardless of
kind or taxon. This means that the chances that any living organism, human or otherwise, carries in its
genes segments of DNA that originally came from a fish, bird, reptile, plant, fungus, or any other type of
organism is good. Furthermore, it means that on the level of raw genetic material, all life on Earth is
interlinked, and heirs to all the direct ancestors of all its contemporaries as well as its own. From the
inception of life on Earth to the present, this universal gene-swapping has been the rule, and every one of
Earth’s life-forms is connected to every other by endless sequences of transfer of genetic material among
them all not only through normal reproductive behavior, but also due to microbial facilitation of transfer
of genetic material among organisms of all kinds.
Likewise, every organism is ecologically connected to all others, past and present, as a result of the
transfer and recycling of gases, liquids, and solids due to the intake of food, water, and atmospheric gases
and the excretion of waste gases, solids, and liquids by organisms. Every atom of oxygen, nitrogen, and
trace gases in Earth’s atmosphere has been breathed in by countless organisms down through Earthly
life’s history, and released back into the world as organisms breathe out, excrete wastes, and, finally, die
and decompose, the substances of which their bodies were composed passing on to be recycled through
the Earth or taken up in the food, water, and air used by new organisms. The same is true of everything
organisms eat and drink during their lives. We are all interconnected over billions of years and all the
Earth by vast networks of materials transfers among one another, networks which will endure until the
last of Earth’s life is gone.
Similarly, noötic information – the sort of information upon which mind and behavior operate – is
shared across long reaches of time and space not just by organisms of the same species, but, in many
cases, by creatures of many species. Organisms learn from one another, and this process of learning can
and often does transcend species and even higher-order taxic barriers.
In at least three different ways, material, genetic, and informational, Earthly life is interconnected
with itself in vast networks of indescribable complexity, richness, and beauty. The geometry of these
networks is measured in all the physical dimensions of our universe, at least 11 in number, including
those having to do with choice and the different paths upon which an organism’s feet are set by the
decisions it makes in life, not to mention the uncertainty inherent in the behavior of subatomic particles
and other physical entities. This situation must be duplicated infinitely many times in the infinite-
dimensional multiverse/megaverse of which our own universe and an infinite number of others are part.
The dimensionality of the networks of interconnectedness within and between living worlds must
therefore be fractal and infinite – fractal, because the pattern of these networks must be reproduced over
and over at all levels of magnification; infinite, because there are an infinite number of universes, each
with its own inherent geometry, all interrelated to one another.
The infinite-dimensional Tree of Life (Circle/Sphere/Hypersphere of Life) previously discussed is a
good approximation of the totality of all such networks of interrelatedness among life-forms and physical
entities in the multiverse. How close a fit the former has to the latter, topologically and algebraically
speaking, remains to be studied; it may be that further refinements must be made in the former to allow it
to become a perfect map of the latter.

9. The Qaballistic elucidation of pi

Pi, an irrational scalar (non-imaginary) number equal to the ratio of the radius of a circle to its
diameter, ~ 3.14159 . . ., can be represented on the Tree of Life as follows:
The first digit in the sequence, 3, corresponds to Binah, Sephirah 3, the head of the Left-Hand Pillar
of Severity on the traditional 10-Sephiroth Tree of Life. The second, 1, corresponds to Kether within
Binah, i.e., to Sephirah 1 of the Tree of Life that is Binah. The third digit, 4, is represented by Chesed
within Kether within Binah, i.e., to Sephirah 4 of the Tree of Life that is Sephirah 1 of the Tree of Life
that is Binah. And so it goes, from one to another level of magnification that is the intricate fractal
system that is the Tree of Life, ad infinitum, every digit of the fully calculated number pi thus uniquely
accounted for such that no other scalar number can be represented in quite that way.
The effect is that of an infinite series of nested sets. The primary set is {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,(1)0}, each
digit corresponding to exactly one distinct Sephirah of the traditional (2-dimensional representation) Tree
of Life. The secondary set is that represented by Binah, Sephirah 3; again, it contains the integers
{1,2,...,9,0} (where 0 represents Sephirah 10); the next digit of pi, 1, corresponds to Kether, Sephirah 1
on that secondary Tree of Life that is Binah. And so on. One representation of it might look like this:

{3{1{4{1{5{9 . . .}}}}}}

So for pi we have a unique series of nested sets corresponding to a unique assembly of points on the
Tree of Life. In this fashion we can represent any number on the Real Line uniquely using this sort of
placement on the Tree of Life. We use the two-dimensional, traditional Tree of Life, which has exactly
10 Sephiroth, for numbers represented in our usual base-10 notation. For hexadecimal numbers, we
would use the three-dimensional, 16-Sephiroth Tree of Life, which we would also use for representing
complex numbers. For numbers represented in other notational forms, we would select whatever type of
Tree of Life was appropriate to that sort of notation and/or vector structure. (Nota bene: Scalars, ordinary
numbers, all represented by points on the Real Line, are one-dimensional. Complex numbers are two-
dimensional. The dimensionality of vectors depends on the sort of vector space they are part of, and the
form of the Tree of Life appropriate for representing them has a dimensionality equal to that of the
vectors in question.)
Question: Is there such a thing as a Tree of Life with fractal dimensionality, that is, independent of
its self-replicatory nature on all levels of magnification? Leaving the magnification out of it, looking at
each Sephiroth and Path as indivisible things rather than Trees of Life in their own right, could you have
a Tree of Life whose dimensionality was somewhere between n and (n + 1), where n is a positive integer?
Could you have a Tree of Life (or any other set of points) with a negative dimensionality? If the answer
to any of these questions is “Yes,” then what is the applicability of any such oddball Tree of Life?

10) Review: 777 and Other Qaballistic Writings of Aleister

Crowley
777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria and Sepher Sephiroth
(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123658.777_And_Other_Qabalistic_Writings_of_Aleister_C
rowley)
 At any rate, I have found this work to be one of the most useful resources on esoteric subjects I have
ever run across. There are three books included in this work: Book 1, Gematria; Book 2: Liber 777; and
Book 3: Sepher Sephiroth. Book 1 discusses Gematria, a powerful tool for analyzing language and
harnessing it for Magickal ritual. Book 2 provides a basic Qaballistic lexicon, a set of alphanumeric
symbols in a one-to-one/onto correspondence with the integers 0-32, along with a wide variety of
phenomena and esoteric concepts associated with each of the symbols indexed by the set of 33 integers.
Book 3 is a Qaballistic dictionary indexed by the numbers 1-3321 and various Hebrew words and phrases
associated with each one in terms of the sum of the values of the Hebrew letters in each (not all the larger
indexing numbers are listed, however, and of those that are given, many are without corresponding
Hebrew associations), along with a display of the Hebrew alphabet and the numerical value or values of
each of its letters (some Hebrew letters have more than one value, depending on where they fall in a
word). In addition, Israel Regardie’s introduction provides fascinating insights on Qaballah as well as a
discussion of the history of this work and of Crowley himself.
In Book 1 of this work, Crowley discusses the definition of Qaballah: a set of distinct numbers in
bijective correspondence with a set of distinct alphanumeric symbols. He doesn’t phrase it quite that way,
but that’s the meaning of what he says there. He also says that which numbers are used as the indexing
set for those symbols can be whatever you wish them to be, as long as you are consistent. That made me
realize that looking at Qaballah strictly in terms of information or computer science, any set of distinct
numbers that can be placed in a one-to-one/onto correspondence with any given set of distinct
alphanumeric symbols is a Qaballah. Depending on the numbers and symbols, it may not be traditional
Qaballah, and would be regarded among Qaballists as a theological abomination, but for purposes of
mathematical analysis, those conditions fulfill the definition of Qaballah. The numbers pi, e, V-1 = i, and
other strange mathematical entities (various types of sets could also be used for this, e.g., algebras, rings,
fields, the Mandelbrot set, julia sets, etc.) would be fine for that purpose. The symbols could include,
e.g., the ASCII character set (the original form of which included 93 visible symbols plus the blank, so
that the blank could be associated with zero and the rest with the counting numbers 1-93), the Periodic
Table of the Chemical Elements (the elements from helium to plutonium [hydrogen is not, strictly
speaking, an element, as it has no neutron:] can be associated with the integers 1-93, and hydrogen with
0), etc. The first two of those sets of 93 elements and a building component (blank, hydrogen) reflect the
93 current of the New Aeon of Horus. To accommodate them on the Tree of Life, additional vertical
planes of Left and Right Pillars each at right angles to the traditional, original plane and with one another
can be added, each containing six new Sephiroth, in a process continuing indefinitely, producing Trees of
Life of 3, 4, 5, . . . ., and so on up to one with transfinite dimensionality. Given that a Path, or Atu, on the
Tree of Life is a bijective function associating any two Sephiroth, then, via the process of expansion
described above, the n-dimensional Tree of Life will have as many Paths and Sephiroth as needed to
accommodate any given set of distinct alphanumeric symbols, however large the latter may be. A Tree of
Life for the Multiverse!
As for Books 2 and 3, I use them all the time for various purposes. Among other things, Book 2
provides a tremendous number of ideas for things that can be used to reinforce the efficacy of Magickl
ritual: planets, colors, Hebrew letters and words, alchemical concepts, gemstones, perfumes, elixirs,
incenses, Buddhist concepts, the Gods of various cultures, the names of God, angles, archangels, you
name it, anything can be indexed precisely by Qaballah. Among other things, each element – each Path
and Sephirah – on the Tree of Life is itself a complete Tree of Life, each of the elements of which is a
complete Tree of Life, and so on to infinity. So there’s room for anything you wish there. The Tree is a
fractal structure, self-replicating and never growing any less complex no matter how many levels of
magnification you go on it.
Both as a wonderful reference work for Qaballists, students of the Tarot, Magickians, alchemists,
astrologers, and other students and practitioners of the esoteric Arts and Sciences, and cultural
anthropologists, mathematicians (for the enjoyment of the intricate structure of the Tree of Life and its
possible extensions), and Jungian psychologists, this book will be a great addition to any thinking
person’s personal library. It should be available in an English-language edition from Samuel Weiser’s, or,
if it is out of print, amazon.com or other online bookstores may have it.

11) What is chaos science?

Chaos science is Qaballah turned inside-out, upside-down, and backwards, with a huge torque added
to it. The Tree of Life and the Mandelbrot set stand back to back, each describing the same universe that
the other does, and it turns out they are the same thing, just coming at the universe from different
directions. Now: imagine the Tree of Life crossed with the Mandelbrot set, the result crossed with The
Onion, Cracked.com, and MAD Magazine, and that result crossed with J. R. “Bob” Dobbs. The result of
that cross is what you get when you turn Godzilla inside out, upside-down, and backwards, with a huge
torque applied. Or when you have a few too many at a really good party, plus a drink from the
punchbowl into which somebody dumped some strange chemicals.

12) The Tree of Life and the Mandelbrot Set

Another ultimate secret of Qaballah is this: Each element of the Tree of Life is itself the Tree of Life,
each element of which is itself the Tree of Life . . . and so on, to infinity. That is, the Qaballah is a set of
elements – Sephiroth and Paths connecting pairs of them – which is self-replicating, and therefore is a
fractal. Given [4 + (n - 1) x 6] Sephiroth and {1 + 2 + . . . + [4 + (n - 1) x 6} Paths
on the Tree of Life as normally diagrammed, each Sephiroth and Path of that Tree consists of [4 + (n - 1)
x 6] Sephiroth and {1 + 2 + . . . + [4 + (n - 1) x 6} Paths, each of which consist . . . and so on, to infinity.
Or, as Jonathan Coulton sings in his video “Mandelbrot Set” (for various video versions of which see
http://www.youtube.com/results?
search_query=mandelbrot+set+jonathan+coulton&search_type=&aq=f), it’s one bad-ass fucking
fractal, the Godzilla of sets in general and fractals in particular, mo’ bettah you believe me!
Now: isn’t set theory fun?

12) A note on Qaballistic Magick and Chaos

In the mathematical sense, as James Gleick discusses in his Chaos: Making a New Science
(http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/0140092501) , life is naturally
chaotic. That is, the more orderly and the less mathematically chaotic the processes in the body of a
living organism are, the closer that organism is to death. Optimally, life is a chaotic affair,
mathematically speaking, and life-processes naturally tend toward the chaotic in that sense.
Mathematical chaos describes systems in which small changes in input make for large changes in
output, i.e., where small changes in the conditions to which that system is subject result in large changes
in the behavior and state of that system. All living entities, whether individual organisms, ecosystems, or
entire biospheres, are just such systems. Magick, as the pre-eminent biological behavior – the Art and
Science of causing change in conformity with Will, which is the essence of behavior of every living
creature throughout its life, which is always goal-oriented, the goals being those necessary for that
creature’s survival and ability to propagate or protect the vehicles of its genes – is in this sense typical of
life’s phenomena; its products are chaotic, need to be chaotic in order to create or enable viable outcomes
for the goal-oriented behavior of the living organisms that practice Magick. This means that whenever a
Magickal artifact is created or used, mathematical chaos immediately begins to pervade it. If this were
not so, that artifact or its use would not, could not serve the purposes, the True Will, of the living
organism that created or wielded it. This is just as true of Qaballistic Magick as any other Magickal Art:
the deployment or use in any capacity of the Tree of Life and Qaballistic knowledge and technique will
at once begin to generate mathematical chaos in the world as necessary to achieve the purpose of the
Operation. Otherwise the Operation would fail, either not produce any results, or produce results contrary
to its purpose.
So however tempting it is to try to “restore order” to results of any Magickal Operation that seem to
be “too disorderly,” don’t do it. That’s the natural and inevitable way by which Magick brings about its
successful results in the real world, and to interrupt that evolution is to derail the results of the Working.
In this case, the evolution of chaos in the results of the Operation indicates success rather than failure,
and rather than causing dismay, should be an occasion for rejoicing, because it will ultimately cause
change in conformity with the Operator’s Will.
Eris has been too long unappreciated for Her true niche in the Cosmos and the necessity of Her
domain, that of entropy, chaos, and uncertainty. It’s time to begin reverencing Her as absolutely
necessary to all aspects of life and its ongoingness, and cherishing Her manifestations when they occur,
in Magick and elsewhere.
On interpretations of dreams
Blog entry, Aug. 2nd, 2009 at 12:51 AM

There are numerous schools of thought on how to interpret dreams. Many of these are of the
province of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Others are the sort of thing you find in dream
books of the sort you can find at occult head shops and bazaars where Tarot and palm readings are done.
The relationship between any of these schools of ideas about dream interpretation and what the dream
actually means is at best vague, nebulous, and confusing – in most cases, testing such an interpretation
objectively is about like trying to measure water using a colander.
I think part of this confusion and the maddening refusal of dreams to yield to interpretation comes
from thinking of dreams as stories, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our daylight minds see
everything as a story, from the trajectory of a baseball to the history of life on Earth and the evolution of
the cosmos from the beginning. That’s how we’re wired to interpret things when we’re awake. It can
yield useful knowledge – but it isn’t really all that relevant to dreams.
Dreaming isn’t about story. It’s about looking through the windows in the mind which, like M. C.
Escher’s “Another World” –
 (http://www.mcescher.net/target1.html)

looks out onto a strange universe in which our waking world is nested like one pixel in an enormous
canvas covered with a painting by Salvador Dali or Escher himself. Our waking world is only the tiniest
portion of that far larger cosmos, and there is little or nothing similar to it no matter in which direction
you look out of the mind’s windows. Which is why dreams are so strange: they concern the cosmos
beyond us, and only secondarily our emotional and esthetic reactions to that cosmos. That cosmos stands,
complete and entire, as an entity in its own right, with no dependence whatsoever on us for its continued
existence – though our existence depends on its. We live in it, we depend on it, but it doesn’t particularly
care about us one way or the other. And it looks so different from the waking world because it contains
all the things beyond what we pay attention to when awake, things that are just as real as what we see
when awake, perhaps more real than they.
No school of psychology and dream interpretation has ever been based on this idea. Psychology
assumes that the only thing worth caring about, from the psychologist’s point of view, is what goes on
within the confines of the patient’s skull. Yet what’s in that skull consists of reactions and adaptations to
the universe itself, as the patient has experienced, and it is about that universe that dreams inform us.
Dreams are thus practical, however weird they may seem. They are not confined to the four dimensions
of spacetime, or even the 11-dimensional universe of Superstring theory. They are views on an infinite-
dimensional multiverse, one that includes our spacetime and the other dimensions of Superstring Theory,
but infinitely more, as well. Hence dreams can be and are truly precognitive, seeing deep into the past
and future; and clairvoyant, seeing far across the planet, and even the universe.
Dreams look out on the reality of things as they really are; they are not confined to the rearranged
versions of sensory stimuli which the waking mind knows as perception. They open on everything, and
that is the secret of their glory – and terror.