January 30, 2012 by oeith

The Vision of PAZ (Aethyr 4)

There comes over me the ‘buzzing’ state that heralds an out-of-body experience, but although it fails to develop, neither does it fully recede. It settles into a pulsing rhythm, quite unpleasant, but I decide to put up with it. My body is guided to a specific place, as if I were floating feet-first. This state does not feel deep. I wait for it to stabilise. It seems as if the cat is scratching my bedroom door. I decide to abandon this working, because the cat is bound to distract me, but then I realise there’s no evidence the cat is really there. If I am experiencing sights and sounds, then these cannot be distractions from the state – they are the state. And so I ask for admittance to the aethyr. I ask three times, because each request seems to strengthen the state.

[I was staying at my mother's. She was able to confirm that the cat really had been scratching at my door.]

Killer Bob. A demonic spirit from the Black Lodge. (Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 7.)

There are two spirits who spout all kinds of sententious-sounding stuff. But it’s nonsense. They take the form of a small aluminium pan and a plastic food container – which betrays their nature. Then I see a procession of things, which I repeat verbally to ensure I will remember. Yet I have forgotten them all. They seemed meaningful. It is only in the next moment, when the vision feels as if it has changed into a different mode or was drawing to a close, that my memory of it properly begins.

[Was there really stuff that I have forgotten? Or was this the vision's way of saying, 'You have forgotten everything that came before because you changed to another mode'? In a vision there is no boundary between experience and symbols.]

I am in a small room with patterned wallpaper, bare except for a bed against one wall. In the same wall is a big window onto absolute blackness. In the forgotten part of the vision, I was in the same room, but it had no window. Now, I stare through the glass, and briefly see my reflection on its surface. My reflection is replaced by a manic, seething face with long hair and bushy eyebrows. The face seems about my age – perhaps a little younger – but strikes me as very different from my own.

[The room reminded me of the one Ken Wilber's reported during a near-death experience [1]; and of the climax to Sapphire and Steel, a supernatural sci-fi drama, in which the heroes were trapped for eternity in a very peculiar motorway café [2]. The face is very much like the psychopathic spirit ‘Bob’, who possesses Leland Palmer when he kills his daughter, Laura, in the TV series Twin Peaks. [3]]

Fiji Mermaid and 'baby' from Eraserhead.

Above: Fiji Mermaid. Below: Nightmarish 'baby' from the film Eraserhead (1977).

I turn around and behind me, on the bed, is a woman dressed in a blue-grey smock with a pointed witch’s hat. She seems frumpy and ill-at-ease in her body. I realise that the face in the window is not my reflection, but hers. I am between them, but I have no image. I have a strong feeling that this is a joke. Someone is making fun, at my expense.

Then I feel again that the vision is changing mode or about to end. I am suddenly alone, until my sister appears. ‘Well, that’s it, brother. Weird, wasn’t it?’ she says. As she sits on the foot of the bed she transforms into a small wizened creature. It’s about two feet tall, totally paralysed, with round, staring eyes, and matted hair that fans out around its head like seaweed.

[The creature reminds me of a Fiji Mermaid [4] and the baby-creature from the film Eraserhead (directed by David Lynch, 1977).]

As I stand, staring, it transmutes into an inanimate object: The Ace of Wands, as depicted in the 1JJ tarot deck. Then the vision falls apart.

Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum). Trapped for eternity in a kind of cosmic Scratchwood service station.

[The next day, I happened to read this: 'The garbha-grha, or womb-chamber, is the enclosed, windowless room where the deity is kept in a Hindu temple' [5]. This synchronicity perhaps offers a key to an interpretation of the vision. The room is the womb. Early experience is forgotten because there is no reflexivity or ‘window’. Self is an illusion created by the window, from a position between the body (the woman, ‘witch’) and spirit (the man, ‘Bob’). In the vision, this process is presented as something uncanny and potentially ‘evil’. The womb is an emptiness, a void, and yet it is the space in which everything arises. ‘Sister’ is the one (who is not ourselves), who is made, spliced together (like a Fiji mermaid) in the womb. Again, the symbolism turns the generation of life into something grotesque and frightening: the horrifying baby from Eraserhead. In the garbha-grha is the image of the deity; here, the womb-chamber contains the Ace of Wands, a very conspicuous phallic symbol. The vision seems to be showing that whether the womb is empty or filled (by the father’s phallus, or by the deity) we can never find or position ourselves within it. If it is filled then we are displaced; if it is empty then we are not there. Like Sapphire and Steel, we are always already floating in eternity, lost forever.]

Notes

The Ace of Wands from the Swiss 1JJ tarot deck. It's certainly got wood. What's with all that yellow shading?

[1] Wilber described it as: ‘[A] really strange room of blue and pink pastels.‘

[2] Sapphire and Steel was created by Peter J. Hammond and aired between 1979 and 1982 on the UK’s ITV network.

[3] Twin Peaks was created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. It first aired between 1990 and 1991 on the USA’s ABC network.

[4] An object presented as the mummified body of a mermaid, which was actually the remains of a monkey and a fish, spliced together. (See picture, above.)

[5] Sarah Caldwell, ‘Margins at the Center: Tracing Kali through Time, Space and Culture’, in: Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West, edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), p. 265.

November 27, 2011 by oeith

The Visions of DEO, MAZ and LIT (Aethyrs 7 through 5)

The visions of the aethyrs are becoming subtler, harder to attain, and yet – surprisingly – more mundane and personal, as I approach the end of this five-year working. (Or has it been even longer?)

The Vision of DEO (Aethyr 7)

I’d not had a lucid dream in ages, so this working was an experiment: I opened the temple with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram; read the Enochian Call of the Aethyrs and opened Aethyr 7, reciting the names of the governors; and then, without banishing, I then went straight to bed. I had decided that whatever occurred between opening the aethyr and rising in the morning, I would accept as the vision of DEO.

Waiting to fall asleep, a spirit in the form of a young boy came and asked questions. ‘How do you open an Enochian aethyr?’ he kept pestering me. Earlier in the evening, whilst performing other operations, I had sensed a presence behind me, but it had not identified itself. I had banished afterwards, even though the working hadn’t required it. I wondered now if the young boy were that same spirit returning. There was something vexatious in his questions – because if he were a spirit of the aethyrs, why was he so interested in knowing how to open one? And besides, the spirits were there to answer my questions.

Eventually sleep came. The weather was breezy. Something, somewhere, made a slight, intermittent bumping sound that kept me partially awake throughout the night. Maybe this accounted for the paucity of dreams, yet it also provoked a consistent emotional state: not quite anxiety, but certainly a suspicious watchfulness that endured whilst the aethyr was open, and which I decided was one of its attributes.

At 4.19am I woke, got up, and sat in meditation until 5.10. I saw a headless being, composed of white, squirming limbs. Apart from the wind, the night was quiet, and I was reminded of my stint last year in the haunted prison cell. Fear took hold, several times. Watching the fear and its sources, at one point I entered a state where the presence of my mind was the cause of its fear. The mind was frightened just by the weird, ghostly fact of itself. My surprise that such a state could exist immediately put an end to it.

Usually, getting up to meditate and then going back to bed is my sure-fire method for obtaining a lucid dream. I lay on my back (another lucidity aid) but finally turned on my side and slept.

I was in my parents’ old house, sleeping in the room I’d had as a small child. Fra X was staying as a guest, asleep in a room upstairs (although, in actuality, there is no room above). Fra X liked listening to show tunes when he rose in the mornings, and it seemed I heard these, but soon the music stopped and Fra X had still not appeared.

[I hate show tunes. I were asked to nominate someone whose lifestyle was completely at odds with ordinary, family life, then I might nominate Fra X.]

It was still dark, and in the meantime I heard my father get up for work. As he moved about, making his breakfast to the news on the radio, it struck me how agile he sounded. ‘His hip must be better,’ I thought.

[The sounds of my father in the morning are memories from childhood. His bad hip is a reference to the present. By confusing the sequence of time, the past is enlisted to heal the present.]

Then I heard my mother get up and leave the house. I was curious and anxious where she might have gone. I found her at the bus station, waiting with a group of characters from my home town, looking the way they’d appeared in the 1970s. Sitting nearby was my grandmother with her next-door neighbour. This puzzled me, because I knew they were both dead. I missed an opportunity to become lucid at this point, yet they all looked so happy, chatting together whilst waiting, and having reassured myself my mother was okay I decided to leave them all to it. ‘You are all far too early in the morning for me!’ I laughed, and walked away.

A bus queue in Bedford, 1970. An image of the afterlife?

['Waiting for a bus' can feel like 'forever', and here is used to symbolise eternity. 'You are all too early' is a reversal of how the people waiting are actually 'late' – in the alternative sense of 'dead'. I am anxious for my mother because really I am afraid that she will die. I am able to reassure myself that it is not she who is dead but the others, and – anyway – they are all having a nice time, but evidently this is a fragile reassurance.]

Later, my sister came to visit. Fra X was still upstairs, but that was fine. If he ever got up and came down, it would be great to see him.

[Again, this rings false. If Fra X is the 'anti-family' then when he 'gets up', the family ceases to be.]

I had an electronic gadget that made quiet but distracting sounds – such as the noise of squelching food. I demonstrated it to my sister, at first without telling her. It drove her nuts. She couldn’t fathom where the noises were coming from. But when I showed her the device she found it very funny. She said it was exactly the kind of thing she supposed I would have.

[When we were kids, my sister was a noisy eater – which used to drive me nuts! The animosity of our childhood is forgotten here, the roles reversed, and the source of annoyance made into a toy, a novelty, that is a source of humour.]

Then there was a tiny, enclosed space, perhaps underground. As I was squeezing into this space, our long-dead family cat squeezed past me and ahead. My face was buried in the warmth of her fur, so what might have been a horribly claustrophobic episode was instead reassuring.

['Underground' suggests a grave. The family cat is buried in the garden. Regressive sexual imagery is combined with the deathly connotations. 'Cat' = 'pussy'. I'm pressing my face into the entrance of the womb! As a strategy for escaping death and separation, this is obviously rather flawed.]

The Vision of MAZ (Aethyr 6)

I am walking in a windy place with a childhood friend, thinking, ‘It would really impress him if I could fly.’ Realising that I am dreaming, I conclude: ‘Why not?’ And I do. But then I wonder, ‘Is there enough time to scry an aethyr?’

The state has become unstable, but I concentrate and it becomes more steady, and I state my intention: ‘I wish to enter MAZ, the sixth aethyr!’ Indeed, I state this so powerfully and clearly that I’m sure I’ve spoken it aloud in my sleep. The lucidity begins to fade again, but I reinvigorate it by spinning around and around.

I am on a mattress without blankets in a room that reminds me of my sister’s room in my parents’ old house, except it has an exceedingly high ceiling. My girlfriend is asleep next to me, and next to her is an identical aspect of herself, with a scarlet pentagram on her forehead at the third eye. She says something, which I do not remember and may not have been verbal anyway, but I recognise who she is: the part of my girlfriend that is childlike, mystical, and loving towards everyone.

[The amalgam of sister's room and partner suggests (again) the mystical sister, soror mystica, a personification of the male alchemist's 'female half' who assist in his quest. The pentagram is a symbol of earth and humanity. 'Scarlet' recalls the 'Scarlet Woman', the shakti, or tantric partner. The magickal practice of placing symbols on the forehead of the partner, charging them as sigils through orgasm during lovemaking, is also suggested here.]

'He meets his shakti Tuesdays, / Down the launderette. / They go behind the driers / And invoke Baphomet.'

At the foot of a mattress, high up against the wall on a ladder, a large naked man is fixing a red cube to the wall. ‘Who’s in charge?’ I call up to him. He laughs, but not derisively. ‘You’ll never see him around here,’ he says.

[Red cube: another symbol of earth and matter.]

There was a second part to this vision, which has faded from memory, in which it now seems that I did see and meet who was in charge. But whether there were images and I have lost them, and that’s why only the purport of it remains, I can no longer tell. Yet I know that the person in charge gave me something. Because he was angelic it was something very subtle and fine, so he showed me how to mix it with what is gross and disgusting, in order to make it usable in everyday experience.

[This suggests the magickal techniques of tantra and the Left Hand Path.]

Earlier I’d dreamt non-lucidly that Edgar Allan Poe decided to take his own life. He rode on his beloved horse to the edge of a cliff, then took out a handgun, intending to blow out his brains. It was the horse that swayed him. Poe couldn’t bear the thought that his horse might come to harm, and – realising a source of genuine love in his life – the urge to commit suicide faded. Instead he went home, and dined alone with gusto on a meal of roasted rats.

[Poe's lack of love contrasts with the compassionate nature of the mystical sister. The horse represents the bodily or animal nature of the rider. What we might have here is a view of the Right Hand Path from the perspective of the Left. Poe's 'spiritual practice' is to blow out his brains, rather than to use his connection with the 'horse'. The rat traditionally symbolises observation and intelligence – mental awareness, rather than bodily. In Poe's story 'The Pit and the Pendulum', the narrator is tortured by the Inquisition, but escapes after rats gnaw through the ropes that constrain him. The rat, in this instance, is perhaps a symbol of 'liberation by mental means'. Poe, of course, was an intensely cerebral character.]

'They swarmed upon me in ever-accumulating heaps...' Illustration for The Pit and the Pendulum by Byam Shaw, 1909.

And so the person in charge mixed the subtle thing he gave me with cooked, minced rats. And although Poe ate with relish what was actually disgusting, the mixture of the subtle thing and the rats was really quite palatable. Only when I thought of the ingredients did I feel disgust, but then only weakly, because it came from thinking and was not a bodily reaction.

[This suggests a way forward in my current practice.]

With this second scene, if there ever really was one, the vision ended.

The Vision of LIT (Aethyr 5)

I’m at a magickal moot. There’s a theatre performance, and also we’re all doing our rituals on the stage. There’s a large, dark guy who’s in an aggressive mood and keeps shoving me. I get angry and we start to fight, but we’ve only shoved each other a few times before the magickal brothers and sisters crowd in and calm us down.

[Are my magickal brethren really doing me a favour by preventing the fight between me and my shadow?]

It’s dawn and I want some breakfast, so I step outside and discover I’m in the main street of my home town. Mum and Dad aren’t far, but I doubt they’ll have the kind of breakfast I need. I could just buy a cup of tea, but realise I have no money. Then I remember there is both breakfast and tea back at the moot. It has begun to rain, so I decide to run back to where I came. A feeling of discontent arises at that thought and, noticing it, I also become aware that – anyway – I’m dreaming.

[The moot hasn't taken me far from home, but I seem to realise that it's still where I'm more likely to find appropriate 'food'.]

I look up at the sky and ask to enter LIT, the fifth aethyr. My words sound slurred, so I say it again. Beautiful coloured lights appear, swirling above me. When I look back to earth it’s as if my gaze drags the colours down – the lampposts and houses are festooned with bright decorations made of organic stuff, circular membranes of vivid colour. Everywhere I look more of the stuff appears, but I decide it’s all a bit ‘trippy’, so I head into the town centre to find something interesting.

Where the roads meet is a small café, which somehow I know offers divination. The sign above the window reads QUILITY FRINDS. The premises are very small: candlelit tables for two crammed closely together. At each table sits a woman, waiting for a customer. They are mostly quite short in stature, homely looking, with their hair tied up as if they really were workers in a café or bakery.

[QUILITY FRINDS ('QUALITY FRIENDS'?) = 75 = Five-Pointed Star.]

One of the women with her back to me turns around, sees me, and seems to take an instant dislike. ‘I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to help you,’ she says. But on my left is a woman who looks more friendly. She’s inside a kiosk, and it takes her a while to squeeze out. Another woman occupies the chair where I am supposed to sit. She squeezes out also, to share the seat with the woman from the kiosk. As it turns out, the second woman does most of the talking. The woman from the kiosk merely nods and says a few words.

‘Can you give me some information about the fifth aethyr?’

Next time you're in a lucid dream, visit QUILITY FRINDS. (Hopefully, their cakes are better than their divination.)

‘Well, yes,’ the second woman says, ‘although there are certain things about it we’re not permitted to tell. And anything I do say, you mustn’t take as an official representation. There are lots of beings here, so it’s just my view.’

‘Okay, that’s fine. What can you tell me?’

‘Something’s going to happen, but I’m not allowed to reveal it. It’s not good and it’ll come about on November 16th.’

Of course, on hearing this, I was determined to squeeze more details out of her.

‘Is it to do with my family or with health issues?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’ She sighs, and seems to give in. ‘It’s a bit of a rip-off, really. You’ll buy something and it’ll turn out not to be worth it.’

‘But hang on,’ I realise, ‘where I’ve come from, it’s November 21st. The 16th has already passed.’

[I had got up to meditate shortly before going back to bed and obtaining the vision. I had noticed the date whilst setting the alarm for the end of the meditation.]

The two women stare at each other as if this were entirely unexpected. ‘Then you’ll be able to look back and work out what it is,’ the first woman responds.

This seems to have broken our concentration – theirs, and also mine, because at this point the vision breaks up and fades.

[Looking back to November 16th, I have so far found nothing to support or illuminate this retrospective 'prediction'.]

September 26, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZID (Aethyr 8)

I am in my parents’ garden when I realise that I am dreaming, so I call to the sky for admittance to the aethyr. The scene fades. I wake. But afterwards appears a vast and sunlit white building. As I watch, scratched into the concrete of its walls, writing appears: numbers, fractions, percentages – all seemingly being added together. It is a vastly long sum, tending towards a single, simple result.

Belshazzar falls victim to the Divine Tagger. (Rembrandt, c.1635.)

[This recalls 'The Writing on the Wall', Daniel 5: 1-31. In the Old Testament story, the writing is in Aramaic, mene, mene, tekel upharsin, which is sometimes translated as 'number, number, weight, division', curiously echoed here by the 'numbers, fractions and percentages'. Daniel interprets this as a forewarning of the demise of King Belshazzar. The last part of the vision, below, perhaps provides a clue as to whose demise is being foretold here. 'Sum' is also 'I am', in Latin. The God of Daniel was He who identified Himself to Moses as 'I am that I am', Exodus 3: 14.]

And then I am inside the building, which is an enormous office, filled with storage areas, equipment, desks and workstations, with all the usual internal systems of electrics, plumbing and air-conditioning that such buildings have. But I am looking down on this through a skylight, and it is apparent how without its skylight this building has no order or structure at all. It would be a meaningless jumble. For this is a new generation of vast buildings that are defined by their skylight. In the future, the skylight will always come first and the rest will follow.

A skylight, whereby into a building is admitted the Celestial.

[A building or house is a common symbol for the mind-body, but this is a mind-body defined by its 'skylight', a hole in its roof. This appears to be a symbol for the apprehension of emptiness; it is nothingness, a void, that lends this building its sense of structure. That more buildings like this one will appear in the future seems to suggest that more and more people will arrive at an apprehension of emptiness.]

Then I become aware that English is dying out, replaced by the language of invaders who will one day conquer and enslave the country. It will be such a long process that they have started now, before the invasion takes place. Once the replacement of English is complete, only then will the actual invasion come.

[The concern shifts from mind, perhaps, to speech. Indeed, in the next part of the vision, the focus shifts again to the appearance of the body and its deeds. So we are being led through the three vajras of Tibetan Buddhism: mind, speech and body. In terms of speech, the implication here seems to be that realisation (the 'invasion') comes about only after changes in speech have taken place – almost unconsciously, it seems. The imagery of invasion is curious, however. It does not seem beneficent.]

And now I am at a Halloween party and someone is dressed as the character Worf. Someone else is dressed as Gary Numan, and I think how it should have been me. Then I spot Larry Hagman, who played J.R. in Dallas. He winks at me, and this tells me he really is Hagman – not just someone in a J.R. Costume. I weigh up the idea of congratulating Hagman on his costume, pretending that I’m convinced it must be a costume because I know that Larry Hagman is dead. But really, I know full well he’s alive. This might be a good Halloween joke – yet, thinking it over, I conclude that it would be impolite, in slightly bad taste, and it might even frighten Hagman.

Where, but at the Halloween party we call 'the human personality' would you find these three oddballs together?

[The 'Halloween party' is the everyday psychological self, and the characters are traditional aspects of that self: Worf is the id or shadow; Numan is the ego ideal or ideal ego ('it should have been me'); and Hagman is the ego. But Hagman, as the ego, is in a peculiar dead-alive state. Many people might indeed be uncertain whether, in real life, Hagman is still above ground. (He is.) So is the 'ego' alive here, or not? Is it 'real' or just a costume? In fact, the ego is both real and alive. Yet although it's Halloween, and darkly humorous pranks are the sort of thing one does at this time of year, the decision taken is not to entertain the prospect of the ego's death, because the ego itself might get offended or frightened. As this advice appears to originate from 'outside' the personality, it might be worth following... But for the life of me, I can't think of a good reason why – it is a Halloween party, after all...]

September 12, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZIP (Aethyr 9)

I am having a non-lucid dream that my bed is in the office at my place of work. I have an appointment with Sally, to train her in some software I have written. She turns out to be quite personable, but I realise I’m wearing only pyjamas and wonder if they’re clean. I mention this to Sally but she just climbs into my bed, readying herself for the training. I take this to mean that she doesn’t mind and she is trying to put me at ease by being informal too.

[Neurotic stuff. 'Sally' suggests 'Aunt Sally': a figure intentionally placed to divert attention from a more pertinent issue.]

I go downstairs to fetch something. A voiceover explains how my room was designed to embrace contrasting varieties of space. ‘There is the cave,’ the voice says, which is where my old bed is located, where I tend not to sleep any more, ‘and there is also the promontory,’ the voice continues, which is the bed in which I sleep most often these days.

['Downstairs', 'cave': these suggest the unconscious. I have been recovering from a prolonged period of illness, during which I slept in a different bed ('the old bed'). Since starting to recover, feelings of depression caused me to look up Hamlet's speech 'What a piece of work is man' (Act II, Scene II), which includes the words: 'this goodly frame the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.' The 'old bed' is illness; the 'new bed' is depression.]

Just for fun I go into the cave. I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a stranger sleeping there. When I reach out, it seems a hand grasps mine, but it isn’t clear whether this is really happening. This ambiguity alerts me that I’m dreaming, so I demand admittance to the 9th Aethyr, ZIP. It isn’t granted at once. I repeat the request: ‘In the name of the governors of the aethyr,’ I add, wishing that I’d taken the trouble to learn the governors’ names. But then the lucid state approaches; the scene changes and the vision begins.

[I've wondered whether, magically speaking, my scrying of the tenth aethyr may have played a part in falling ill. Here we see that escaping from or confronting the grip of illness is what leads to the opening of the ninth aethyr.]

I am looking up at the ceiling of a high room, like the classrooms I remember from early childhood. There is a picture stuck to the ceiling. The writing is upside-down, so I turn myself around, and read something like: ‘WOO! WONKY DUNKY!’ Beneath this are cartoon drawings of myself with absurd expressions on my face: amazement, bewilderment, consternation.

A red telephone box. Loved by nostalgic Brits and archangels.

[Mockery of my depression and self-pity.]

I go to the window. Outside, small children in school uniforms coloured white, red and black are at recess, playing on the grass among wooden benches. Examining the scene, I think: ‘Well, this is not so different from what is outside my room in reality.’ But that’s not true. Looking again, now on the right is shining, calm blue sea. On the left, the lawns of a cliff-top give way to a seafront road with traffic and shops. The children have gone and before me now is a steep, grassy mound: ancient earthworks.

[There is subtle imagery concerning mortality here. In Iron John, Robert Bly proposes a highly condensed model of human development based upon the colours red (passion), white (obedience) and black (ironic transcendence of rules). Men, Bly argues, typically develop from red to white to black; women from white to red to black. These colours together therefore suggest human life in its entirety. There are also quiet echoes here of Emily Dickinson's poem, 'Because I could not stop for death': 'We passed a school, where children strove / At recess in the ring... We paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground...' The seaside also suggests death: the place where rivers meet the ocean; the locality that people retire to when they are old.]

Alan is with me. We are both standing at the large window, looking out. I am very attentive, keen to soak up every detail of the vision.

An old man approaches the window, jeering. He waves his fist then turns and walks away.

The Archangel Michael, by Guido Reni (1636). The hexagram and the colour red are among his traditional attributes.

[The old man is perhaps Father Time, the Grim Reaper, Cronos. He is upset, as if he has been dislodged or forced to move on by the figure that subsequently appears.]

Stepping out from one of those classic, old red telephone boxes, another man approaches. He is old, but there is something young and alert in his eyes. He wears a medallion, which is not entirely clear, but seems to be a hexagram. Alan and I ask him questions, but he either ignores them or gives equivocal responses. Then I ask him an innocent, chatty question about how he likes to spend his time. ‘I keep coming back to earth to collect mink,’ he says.

[The telephone box suggests communication. The archangel whose symbol is the hexagram is Michael, the protector of the righteous and defeater of the Antichrist. According to Rudolf Steiner, Michael is the spirit that presides over our current era, which began in 1879 and will end around 2199. The mission of Michael is to elevate human beings to a new level of understanding, defeating the Ahrimanic forces of materialism that currently hold sway.]

A mink. WTF?! (I know enough about minks now to identify this as a European mink.)

This reveals that he is not an earthly being, and that he is drawn here by a specific desire he finds hard to resist. I repeat his words back to him, and can tell from his expression that he knows he has said too much. He gives a smirk and a shrug, and walks away. As the vision fades I realise that this is all I’m going to get.

[Despite my best efforts, I haven't found a satisfactory interpretation of Michael's comments about mink. It remains pleasingly weird and ambiguous.]

September 6, 2011 by oeith

Illness

I’ve been ill and it has changed the way I look at things, because I can’t escape the feeling it has had a metaphysical dimension. I wish it were only a matter of microbes and symptoms, but I suspect that this feeling ill, week after week, has a meaning. This troubles me as much as the thought I might not get better.

I travelled up to London in mid-July for a meeting. Thick incense smoke, plus the cigarette smoke of fellow magicians silently took their toll. But I can’t lay my illness at the door of smokers; the kundalini breathing exercise that was part of my working, which we performed in the unventilated room, wasn’t a good idea in retrospect. I’d loaded up my lungs with a toxic stew.

And then – that pesky metaphysical dimension. Perhaps I became sick because I was sick already of everything. On the tube ride to Victoria Station, homeward bound, drunk people disgusted me: so many of them, self-medicating for the weekend. I was struck by the appearance of young men in particular. I wasn’t convinced they were made of flesh, but of something like foam-rubber that hung in rounded folds about their cheeks and limbs. If you prodded them, it seemed the dent might take seconds to disappear. Many sported tufts of facial hair, to distract the casual observer from how they were made of Play-Doh.

Play-Doh. A sort of spongy modelling clay. (But *what* is that child holding?)

At Victoria station I bought peanuts. The man at front of the queue was drunk, playing out loudly his realisation he hadn’t enough money for his purchases. He seemed to want to involve everyone in a theatrical performance of himself. He didn’t look the kind of person you’d expect to do that: grey suit, goatee and glasses. A briefcase and a laptop slung around his shoulder. If the middle classes have given up on not acting like twats, is it any wonder the city would explode into moronic riots a fortnight later?

I’d taken my seat before I noticed the state of the carriage. It reeked of booze, because booze had been flung all over it. There were plastic glasses and beercans tossed everywhere. Ripped packets of Haribo lay under seats, their contents thrown wildly around. I helped the cleaner. We loaded his plastic sack with the glasses and cans, discovering several champagne bottles. Some of the Haribo were wet to the touch, as if they’d been sucked and spat out. I washed my hands afterwards, as best I could, but looking back, proceeding to eat peanuts with my fingers was perhaps not the wisest thing.

A man and woman sat a few rows ahead. The grey-suited guy from the shop asked if he could join them. It seemed a coincidence, but the carriage smelt so much like a pub I realised it was a subliminal Mecca for piss-heads. The train moved off and I listened to their conversation. Grey Suit talked self-deprecatingly, but then used any sympathy he received to launch personal, sexual remarks back at his hosts. Offending them, he would apologise, blame it on the drink, make more self-deprecating comments, and begin his game over again.

I wished he would wake up, and stop polluting others with his unacknowledged loneliness. But telling him that would only fuel his narcissistic self-hatred. The woman and the man eventually took flight, so Grey Suit started on the people opposite. I was sick of his bleak misery and changed carriages, and then all seemed well again. But it was far too late. The damage, the disgust, would wreak its effects.

A bag of Haribo. Ideal for sucking and then flinging around railway carriages.

I don’t remember much of the two weeks following. The next day I was groggy and wheezy from the smoke, but that’s not unusual after a night with magicians. Except it grew worse, until I felt feverish and aching, like the early stages of flu. I was at my girlfriend’s. She has chronic fatigue syndrome and is currently housebound. I figured I had a cold and wouldn’t be placing too much of a burden on her. But over the next few days I worsened until I could hardly move or eat and lay alternating through cycles of shivers and sweats, racked by a gurgling cough.

After a week of this and no sign of recovery, I rang my GP. I could only stand for a few seconds before becoming faint. He diagnosed pneumonia over the phone. I passingly thought it odd he didn’t need to examine me, but I eagerly took the course of antibiotics he prescribed. Over the next few days my temperature stabilised and I coughed up less green stuff. But another week passed and I still felt shit. Most of the time I stared into space, wondering why I had no energy to do anything else. I should have been bored, but I didn’t have the energy for that either. And my consciousness had changed. I could no longer see the Absolute. Since my awakening in March 2009, I’ve only had to turn my mind towards the Absolute and there it is: that vibrant spark of nothingness at the heart of self. I’d forgotten what life had been like before it appeared. Now I was receiving a cruel reminder.

Formerly, when unpleasant sensations arose, although there was suffering it was also apparent how there is actually no one to suffer – because at the heart of self is nothingness. But I couldn’t see that any more. The reason seemed to surface in a distorted fashion during feverish dreams. I dreamt I felt bad, yet kept assuming that feeling bad was centreless and absolute, a principle or the origin of experience rather than just another impression. The awakened recognition of the Absolute as the centre of self seemed to be serving me badly, now that I was ill. I’d assumed that a connection with the Absolute makes illness or dying easier to bear. But this is not the case. There are no guarantees against suffering for the awakened mind in illness – and, presumably, on the verge of death. The reason for this is obvious – but first, I had more suffering to do…

The antibiotics helped, yet my lungs still wheezed like a broken accordion, and in the night I couldn’t stop coughing once I’d started. I could get up for short periods, but a trip to the corner-shop left me faint and wiped out. So I rang my GP again. After much wrangling, a doctor came and examined me. She diagnosed bronchitis-asthma and prescribed inhalers, plus a course of steroids. Within two hours of the first dose of steroids, I felt miraculously better. I still had symptoms, but suddenly there was no sense of ‘illness’. It felt so striking, I tried to sketch the difference in my condition before and after:

The difference in consciousness of illness and of feeling better.

In the top drawing, the individual consciousness emerging from the Absolute, shown as the circular area, has impressions from the non-dual (I), astral (A) and etheric (E) levels bleeding into it. The lungs feature hugely in consciousness, which is fuzzy with illness, not as capable as usual at differentiating impressions of itself from others.

The bottom drawing shows the sense of illness dropped away: sensations from the lungs are less, and consciousness is clearer, because it can distinguish more ably impressions of itself. From a non-dual perspective the notion that consciousness is the container of impressions is problematic, but it seems to me this sensation of separation plays a role in our sense of well-being. When we are less able to distinguish between consciousness and its impressions, albeit an illusory distinction, then we live in a diseased universe rather than a diseased self.

The course of steroids lasted five days. Still shaky, I went back to work the following week, but started to notice that foods I usually enjoyed were becoming oddly repulsive. This steadily grew worse until I struggled to find food that didn’t make me retch the moment I put it in my mouth. By the Monday following, chocolate was about the only thing I could stomach, so that’s what I had for breakfast. Then I started to brush my teeth, but the sensation of the toothbrush in my mouth was suddenly so nauseating I found myself over the toilet bowl, puking.

‘Nausea is a common reaction to withdrawal from steroids,’ the doctor said. ‘If it hasn’t passed in a week, come back.’ And thus began five days of monumental vomiting and nausea. Each day until the Friday following, I puked up at regular intervals a rosy bile with flecks of blood in it. No matter how plain, all food was vile. And while I lay weak and inactive, my asthma, which had begun to improve, now took the opportunity to make a comeback. This nausea, supposedly a reaction to the medicine, felt worse that the condition the medicine was supposed to cure. I seemed in a worse place than where I started.

The metaphysical dimension was nagging me again. Suppose my own disgust had made my experience disgusting? Had this to do with the magical work I’d been doing? The last Enochian aethyr I’d scried had been the tenth, which traditionally is said to span the Abyss. I’d supposed that the Abyss held no further terrors for me. But what if the Abyss is that which by its nature presents an ordeal, regardless of where we are? I recalled how, the day after scrying the tenth aethyr, I’d visited the toilet and unexpectedly pissed blood into the bowl. (I’d decided at the time not to get this checked out, figuring that if it signified a serious condition it would recur – which it didn’t.) What if this signified the beginning of an ordeal of health? What if my passage across the Abyss hadn’t ended with the vision of the aethyr that I received, but somehow I were still inside it?

These thoughts nagged as I continued to fail to recover. And as the Absolute continued to evade me, I started to brood also over one of Christ’s last utterances from the cross: ‘Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?’ (‘Eli Eli lama sabachthani?’ Matthew 27: 46; Mark 15: 34) Not that my condition bore any comparison with Christ’s mutilation, but those words made me wonder why even a spiritual master as great as Christ had experienced an unexpected withdrawal of the Absolute at the moment of his greatest suffering. Was the absence of the Absolute a failing on my part, or an indication there are other possibilities for development I have yet to grasp? The weeks of illness have convinced me that the experience of the Absolute is of limited use against suffering. To paraphrase the Zen saying: first there is shit, then there is no shit, then there really, truly is shit.

The reason the Absolute is not apparent at the height of suffering is that the experience of the Absolute is not the Absolute. Because it is just an experience, it can be eclipsed by more powerful experiences – such as those we encounter in illness. To assume that the experience of the Absolute must be our most powerful experience is to make the same mistake, because if it’s an experience then that’s all it is. Its content doesn’t matter, even if its content is no content whatsoever. An experience of no content is still an experience. My feverish dreams tried to show me this, in a reversed fashion. Formerly, I could take refuge in the experience of the Absolute, assuming it were different somehow from experiences of suffering. In my fever-dreams I took my experience of illness as if it were absolute, and the result was a universe of suffering.

Although I now feel much better, I’m still not recovered. My health might remain fucked-up for a while, or maybe for years. Having witnessed the Absolute shrivel uselessly in the face of this suffering, a change in direction and view seems called for.

June 20, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZAX (Aethyr 10)

I am walking on grass, approaching the house where I go on retreat, and I’m full of joy to be back. The feeling that I have come home is so strong that I become conscious. There is a huge field, ringed by trees. I call up at the sky, ‘I wish to scry ZAX, the tenth aethyr!’

[The field ringed by trees is an exaggerated version of a part of the local recreation ground where I played as a child, which often features in my dreams as a backdrop to soaring emotion.]

I am fully aware, however, that this aethyr is accursed and inhabited by the demon Choronzon.

The scenery wavers and distorts. The trees shrink and assumed stunted shapes. I am not at the retreat centre after all, but back at university as an undergraduate.

Gormogon - the mysterious serial-killer from the third season of the TV series, 'Bones'.

Then I wake up and lie in stillness, watching my mind. I wonder if I’ll re-enter the dream, but instead I enter a state where there is no thought, only bodily sensations. Then I see an image of my body under the bedclothes, but still there is no thought and no vision. Slowly, another state takes over that provides the vision. It is not lucid, but not entirely non-lucid. I am not conscious, yet somehow I know that the things before me are symbolic.

[Perhaps I was dreaming that I was having a vision. In which case, both the scenes and their interpretation within the vision are dreams. My undergraduate years were generally an unhappy and difficult phase.]

So here I am, not on retreat but a student again. It is impossible to remember the order in which things appeared in the vision. It was not so much a narrative, but more like an awareness that certain things were the case.

My girlfriend from university, L., is still here, just the same, so I enter back into a relationship with her. I’m older and more experienced, so none of the things that were so embarrassing back then are a problem. We have sex over and over, yet the relationship somehow still returns to its old, negative groove. I hardly notice it at first, but then I realise that although she has an orgasm every time, I never do. But she keeps me bound to her with promises of satisfactions that never arrive. There is only her tiny student room, and the two of us in it, and the realisation I never receive anything from her – not even conversation.

[Choronzon has manifested as an ex-girlfriend! L. herself, of course, is simply a woman, and there neither was nor is anything inherently demonic about her. Choronzon's presence, however, is betrayed by the sluggish ignorance, dragging me into the past, even as it seems that my problems are resolved and the circumstances are changed. But just because issues are fixed that were a problem back then, that's no good reason to return to the past, nor a guarantee that the past could have turned out differently. Luckily, I seem to realise this in the vision...]

Once, I thought we were out on a date, but L. has joined the student branch of the Nazi party. What I thought was an outing turns into a flash mob, in which she and her Nazi friends line up in the street to sing ‘Radio Ga Ga’ by Queen, doing the movements, hitting the chest with the right fist twice, then raising the arm in a Nazi salute.

Queen performing in the video of 'Radio Ga Ga' (1984). Trying not to look like Nazis.

['Radio Ga Ga' was a 1984 hit by Queen. The video featured the band saluting a crowd dressed in white uniforms, but the salute consisted of holding the arms up in a wide V, fists clenched, then clapping the hands twice over the head. L. was not a Nazi, yet she was certainly a Tory – but, hey, this is the second half of the eighties we're talking about...]

I play along, but I can’t coordinate my movements to the song. Yet surprisingly, neither can the Nazis. They are very inexperienced.

[The banality of evil.]

There is a pond in the woods near the campus, a dangerous place, into which many had fallen and some had drowned. But now a strong metallic netting, so fine it is almost invisible, has been stretched over the pond and has made it safe. I realise that this is a metaphor for the Abyss. ‘What a squalid image,’ I think.

[Parochial, yes. But if something is parochial then that's because it is familiar. If the Abyss is just a pond then it has become known and made safe.]

Then there is something else, which is the hardest of all to remember, but it must be important because it sends L. livid with rage. It is told to me by an adrogynous magician, old and wise, who comes in especially to pass on the information.

[A message from the Holy Guardian Angel.]

I hardly understand what it means, and much less why it has such an unexpected effect on L. But it goes something like this: that there was a man we all knew some time ago, who was rather naive and easily-led, and became obsessed with a serial-killer called ‘Gormogon’. He decided to take ‘Gormogon’ as his name, and kept it even after he’d realised the error he’d made in falling under this person’s influence.

['Gormogon' (= 50 = 'abomination', 'infinite') is indeed the name of a serial-killer in the third season of the TV series Bones. He leads astray one of the main characters, called Zack (ZAX?), and persuades him to commit a murder. The Gormogons were also an obscure 18th century society whose aims are historically uncertain, but who seem to have been dedicated to undermining and ridiculing the Freemasons.]

But now it transpires that this man had a daughter, or a wife, who for a long time had forgotten her identity, but who was a victim of his evil actions during the time he was under the influence of the serial-killer Gormogon. Now, the magician tells me, this woman has realised who she is, and is coming to terms with her ordeal.

[This daughter / wife is the soror mystica, or 'mystical sister'. The male alchemist unites with this personification of his 'female half' and together they seek the Philosopher's Stone. In more neutral language, this represents the realisation that the part of the mind that looks for truth (the alchemist), and the part of the mind that is revealed by the looking (his mystical sister), are fundamentally joined. Separate, both remain unaware of their true nature. Together, they realise they are fundamentally joined and can then grasp something far deeper than both of them.]

The alchemist and his soror mystica collect the morning dew. (Mutus Liber, France, 1677.)

What has particularly impressed the magician who is telling me this story, which surprises me, but which absolutely outrages and disgusts L., is that this woman too has decided to take the name of Gormogon as her own.

[L. was an easy symbol for Choronzon to assume, because there are loose ends from that relationship still hanging painfully around in my mind. These are emotional hooks that could easily drag me backwards. Gormogon, perhaps, represents chaos magick and its institutions. Both the alchemist and his sister have realised that Gormogon was an error that kept them from the Stone, and yet Gormogon was also what brought them together. In the same way they have both retained Gormogon's name, I've retained my allegiance to magick. I renounced my attachment to L., because it wasn't truly worked through, and so Choronzon was able to drag me right back there in the vision. So what really pisses off L. / Choronzon about the man and the woman retaining their 'Gormogon' link is that they can't be haunted and confused by something they're not pretending has died to them.]

March 28, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZIM (Aethyr 13)

It takes a long time before I find the lucid state, but finally I’m in my parents’ house, looking out through the window of my old bedroom, and I realise I must be dreaming. ‘I wish to scry the thirteenth aethyr, ZIM,’ I shout, and push myself through the window, which feels mushy like jelly. It takes some effort but I make it through and fall onto the lawn. I look up at the sky, then feel myself dissolve and wake.

Ozymandias, a.k.a. Ramses II. This British Museum statue is thought to have inspired Shelley's sonnet.

For a while, only shapes. Then a large book placed on top of a boulder. A sense that the truth is written in this book. I lie down and about my body, white rock forms. When I move again, the crust of rock around me shatters and falls. Then I begin to shrink, and only now realise that formerly I was of a gigantic size. Back to normal, I find myself in a ruined city made from chunks of masonry formed by my body.

['Two vast and trunkless legs of stone...' The monumental limbs remind me of Shelley's 'Ozymandias'. The name comes from the translation into Greek of the throne name of Ramses II, User maat Re, Setep en Re, which could be translated into English as 'Ra's powerful law, beloved of Ra'. The book of truth on the boulder recalls the stone tablets revealed to Moses by Yahweh (Exodus 24: 12). Indeed, Ramses II is a likely candidate for the pharaoh of Exodus, who oppressed the Israelites. So we have the stone of a tyrant (Ramses) contrasted here with the stone of a prophet (Moses). The masonry is formed from my gigantic body. It's as if I were being shown how an over-inflated view of self produces calamity, decay and oppression of truth.]

Bull? Check! Tiger skin? Check! Trident? Check! Shiva, innit.

A spirit, TAMYIMS, shows me images of trash celebrity culture. Then a god comes, who sweeps all the trash and trivia away. At first he takes the form of a bull. Then he becomes a cartoon tiger, like Tony the Tiger on a Frosties cereal packet. He holds a trident. He reveals that a book has been painstakingly put together by his devotees and it is hidden in an empty house in Eire, one of those thousands which, due to the economic crisis, no one can currently live in or sell.

[TAMYIMS = 28 = 'culture', 'analysis'. The god is Shiva. He takes possession of the bull, Nandi, as his mount. The tiger represents lust; Shiva is seated on a tiger skin to symbolise his conquest of lust. The trident is his symbol of sovereignty, its points representing the three gunas: creation, preservation and destruction. The book compiled by his devotees is a striking contrast to the book on the rock: it has no single author; it's contemporary; and it is hidden in a place where no one wants to live.]

The god has scratched the number 71 onto glass with his claws. His devotees now depart the mundane world by entering into torrents of water and swimming free. Onto the water is written the name BALLS, in tiny letters, many times over. One man is not swimming with the devotees, but sinks beneath the surface and is gone. I hear the words: ‘Twenty-five years of demand against responsibility.’

Ed Balls at a party during the Thatcher era. (Only n-n-n-n-nineteen, bless him.)

[71 = 'Ra Hoor Khuit' (see below). BALLS = 10 = 'babe'. Ed Balls is the current UK Shadow Chancellor for the Labour Party. He was born the same year as myself. 'Twenty-five years ago' was 1986, the height of the Thatcher boom years, when Ed Balls was photographed at a student party dressed as a Nazi officer. 'Written on water' is a poetic commonplace for a reputation that will not last. The origin of the phrase is from Beaumont and Fletcher: 'All your better deeds shall be in water writ, but this in marble' (Philaster, 1611), which suggests that our dubious actions are set in 'stone', but our best ones are in 'water'. The words heard sound to me like a valid critique of every government since 1986 – and for the foreseeable future, no doubt.]

We are all of us in the water, some moving freely and some sinking. The water is suspended in nothingness, like a galaxy made of liquid. From its underside, the water puts out tendrils, Y-shaped in a three-dimensional way that reminds me of the shape of a wineglass. Many of these structures emerge, but there is a sense that this is only a temporary, desperate measure for the galaxy to sustain itself and it must surely fail.

[Water is more free than stone, but in water there is the possibility of sinking. Indeed, the water itself seems in danger of sinking and must put out tendrils to support itself. Everything seems precarious and ultimately doomed.]

The Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot. XX: The Aeon. Hoor Pa Kraat is centre, foreground. Ra Hoor Khuit is centre, background, seated.

A non-lucid dream from the night before re-surfaces: a French woman, who says she is anti-German. I ask her how a position like that could possibly make sense. It’s not as if she could remove Germany! But she seems to think that, somehow, this is possible. Then a German man who happens to be listening admits that Germans are often prejudiced against certain parts of Holland, so he can partially understand the Frenchwoman’s position. For my part, I confess that I’m not a fan of French culture, but it would be absurd of me to advocate the removal of France. ‘We can simply allow the spread of the English language to do the job,’ I add.

[A return to the theme of 'sweeping away' culture: only a god, Shiva, can accomplish this. In the human realm the idea makes little sense and cannot truly be achieved by force. The only way to change culture on a human level is through further cultural processes: e.g. the spread of the English language within French culture. A god can place himself outside this process, maybe, but human beings cannot.]

At some point during the vision a symbol appeared for the tiger-god’s purge of culture. It looked like ’52′ or ’5A’.

[52 = 'Hoor Pa Kraat'. The symbol for Shiva's 'purge of culture', then, would seem to be the god Horus, or Heru Ra Ha. Crowley writes: 'A double god; his extraverted form is Ra Hoor Khuit; and his passive or introverted form Hoor Pa Kraat' (The Book of Thoth, 'XX. The Aeon'). The symbol for Shiva's purge, then, is 52 = 'Hoor Pa Kraat'; his message scratched on glass is 71 = 'Ra Hoor Khuit'; both are complementary aspects of Heru-ra-ha = 44 = 'key of it all', 'prophet', 'disappear'. My stab at an interpretation of the whole vision is as follows. The process of enlightenment is the escape from 'stone' into 'water' through becoming a devotee of Shiva (meditation, enlightenment). This sweeps away what is decadent within culture, but only on an absolute level. The vision is a reminder (or warning, perhaps, because even when in water there is still the risk of sinking) that cultural change on the human level only comes about through itself – i.e. culture changes by cultural means. This process of this cultural change of culture is represented by the Thelemic deity, Heru Ra Ha.]

March 1, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of UTI (Aethyr 14)

The lucid dreaming state arrives and I’m in a school. There are children everywhere, so I take the nearest exit to find a private space. It’s a fine, sunny day. Schoolgirls surround me. They know what I’m doing and jokingly try to distract me by jostling and shouting. But I look to the sky and shout, ‘Please admit me to Aethyr 14, UTI!’

Once more, I am lifted, dissolve and awake.

I lie in bed waiting for the vision, but I fall asleep and a non-lucid dream begins. I am in a room within a school – perhaps the same school as earlier. This is where I am to receive the vision, but it is a slow, laborious process. The first part of the vision has something to do with my ex-girlfriend. She walks into the room and proceeds to tell me what she thinks it means. I retort, ‘Listen, I know all about dreams.’ She says, ‘Yes, but my dreams are very rare.’

Sophia by Raphael. Ceiling fresco from the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.

[The lover or partner represents Sophia or truth. The philosopher is literally 'the lover of truth'. My ex insisting that her dreams are rare is an indication that this is a dream of Sophia, a dream of truth.]

Next, my current partner comes in and gives me her take on what my ex just said. I can no longer remember specifically what either of them told me – only that, as insights go, they were very down-to-earth. Part of it concerned my attraction to my ex, which (when she came in) she revealed was based on a narcissistic fantasy to do with fulfilling a role that her present partner cannot. But when my current girlfriend came in, she punctured this interpretation as well, but on an even higher level.

[Before I became interested in magick and spirituality I was a student of psychoanalysis. The down-to-earth truth of psychoanalysis is represented here by my ex, who has been superseded by magick and enlightenment, represented by my current partner.]

I persist with the work of having this vision. Further parts painfully emerge. I am writing them down on a scrap of paper, but people keep tearing off strips for their own use.

Alan comes in. He has a hostage situation to deal with. An American ex-military man has taken a student hostage in a corner of the room. The man is no terrorist, but is making a stand on patriotic principles. He sits with a rifle pointed at the student, who is a geeky-looking character of perhaps doctoral age. The student smiles in a know-all, ironic way that does not arouse my sympathy.

'Don't make me meditate, else the babe gets it!'

[In one of the earliest aethyrs we scried together, Alan was advised by a spirit that he was in fact in the 14th Aethyr, and indeed – here he is! Alan is a guru and helps people become enlightened. In this sense he helps people negotiate freedom from their egos, the 'hostage-taker' represented by the American. The ego is not 'bad' or 'foreign', but is simply doing what it thinks is right. 'Making a stand' represents dualistic thinking. Many of Alan's students happen to be American. I am not drawn to teaching in the way that Alan is, which is perhaps why the 'student' appears so unattractive.]

I realise that part of the vision is a dream I had earlier, of stepping into some prefab buildings and discovering inside all the great and good of the city. They were quaffing champagne whilst watching their livestock give birth. This was an annual celebration to which only the wealthy were invited. A local councillor saw me and called my name. ‘Hello,’ she said, but it was apparent from her tone that she was telling me to leave quietly and at once. I pretended that I was one of the staff, by helpfully carrying outside a couple of foals. Then I decided to carry out a couple of handfuls of baby rabbits.

[The wealthy and powerful have control over the production of life, but no direct contact with it. They own the animals and derive financial value from them, but it is the staff who connect with and assist the animals. It would seem here that wealth and power consist not in having contact with or true ownership of life, but in having the influence to deny contact to others, or to change the nature of that connection into a question of financial value.]

I return to wondering why the American would risk his life for such an unprepossessing person as the student. But that’s Alan’s problem, I decide, noticing how much difficulty he is having talking the American out of the situation.

Gas is pumped into the room and the American falls asleep. A long time passes, until, Alan explains, ‘There is literally only one calorie left in his body.’ This means the American will no longer have strength to lift the rifle. Yet although he looks thin and starved, somehow he manages it. He laughs at Alan, who doesn’t seem at all discouraged, but tries another tack in his negotiations.

[Teaching enlightenment is a tiresome process of weakening the ego. Evidently, Alan has the patience to teach it. My sympathies lie more with the hostage-taker than the hostage.]

Back to the vision: I am writing down tables of symbols. One is a table of Enochian spirits. The other is a table of words that can be used for divination. The names of the spirits begin mostly with E. I think I see EXARP among them. In the divination table the words begin mostly with M. One is MANU. Another is MANGO. I think to myself how this is the advantage of the non-lucid state: I can directly receive information such as this. But I am already wondering how I will remember it all when I have woken.

King Manu (and friends) saved from the deluge by Vishnu as a great big fish.

[EXARP is the spirit of Air that governs the entire tablet of Air in Enochian magick. Manu in Hindu mythology was the progenitor of humanity, and is also a title bestowed upon the first ever king, and upon subsequent rulers or law-givers of specific aeons, each aeon referred to as a Manvantara (or 'life-span of a Manu'). MANGO = 23 = king = life = house. So the table of E-names seems to contain names of rulers of elements; the M-table seems to contain names of rulers of mankind. The rune MANNAZ (pronounced as an 'M') has the symbolic meaning of 'humanity' or 'the social order'. The runes also offer a possible combination of the two: EHWAZ is written as 'M' but pronounced as 'E'. It has the symbolic meaning of transportation, progress and change for the better.]

The information is useful in any case, because Alan, as he continues his negotiations, comes over to consult the divination table so he can plan accordingly. I really must make sure I get these tables down, so we can use them when we’re awake. But Alan keeps tearing off scraps of the paper, which isn’t helping.

[The M table would seem to contain information concerning aeonics and the relative dimension of truth. The E is spiritual and non-human. M and E is, of course, 'ME'. Perhaps this is pointing to the union of the relative and the spiritual in some sense.]

ME: Mannaz and Ehwaz.

A siren sounds ominously, as if a nuclear attack were underway or the end of the world. Lots of male students pile into the room with their teacher. The siren means that they must take shelter. I decide it can’t be as serious as it sounds – perhaps it’s simply raining outside. Alan seems to have decided this too. But the room is too crowded now for the hostage crisis to seem important, and Alan hardly seems to be working on it any more anyway. Then I notice the paper I am writing on includes simply the remains of an old game of squares.

The teacher of the students leans over and inspects the game, occasionally adding a line or tearing off further strips from my notes. He’s going to show his students a film of a football match. I think, ‘Fine. I’m not the least interested in football, so it won’t distract me.’

[The vision ends on what might seem an ominous note. Manu, the first king of Hindu mythology, saved the human race from a deluge, having recognised a warning given to him by a fish (Lord Matsya, an avatar of Vishnu) whose life he spared. We are not shown here why the students must come inside but, if it were raining, could this be a warning of a deluge? For Alan to have given up working with individual students ('the hostage crisis no longer seems important') something drastic must have happened. Likewise, the tables that the vision gave me have also evaporated and have turned into an 'old game of squares'. A two-sided game suggests dualism. The teacher insists on trying to perpetuate this game, although it is clearly already over. He also shows a film of a game to his students, which to me is obviously a distraction and a waste of time.]

The vision ends with the sensation of the slow, difficult process by which it has been attained.

February 15, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of OXO (Aethyr 15)

I’m looking at a book that I’ve written, filled with coloured images and text. A critic’s voice says approvingly, ‘It is a book of parodies. Some are gentle and some are cruel, but all are united in being parodies.’

[Perhaps this is a key for how to read what follows.]

Then I become aware of an enormous spirit that is vaguely cruciform in shape. It stares down at me as if it were a colossal building, but then it fades because another vision has interrupted.

Children at play.

There are children. Mostly boys. Dressed in inappropriate outfits – the type of things you would wear to a goth fetish club. The children are playing a cruel game with long-necked birds. Holding the birds upside-down (perhaps over a fire) they squeeze the birds until blood and innards ooze from their beaks. The aim is to be the first to squeeze out all the innards. The children are part of an organisation – like the Hitler Youth movement – which they are pressured into joining, and by which they are indoctrinated.

[During the day following the vision I went out for a run, and was disturbed by the spectacle of passersby gathered around a sick seagull stranded on the pavement. The people were laughing at the bird. This part of the vision seems to prefigure this event. The clothes worn in the vision suggest that these are not literal children but childish adults. A bird is traditionally a symbol for the soul. The 'Hitler Youth movement' might be taken as a metaphor for contemporary secular society, which encourages the game of 'squeezing out the soul'.]

Two important books are delivered. One is them is especially vital and was written by a female author. There is the sense that it is a draft or prototype; not the actual work. Its number is 49 (maybe 46). A man brings the books. He is dressed in black, with a brimmed hat. Because he walked into the room without an invitation and was looking at all my books, I said to him, ‘Are you just browsing?’ He replied, ‘No. These books were delivered for you at your old address and I have brought them.’ His number is 55. I am obligated to read these books – especially the one by the woman.

[Again, this seemed to prefigure actual events. On the day following the vision I unexpectedly received an email inviting me to read a draft of not two books, but a single book written by two authors (one male, one female). 49 = 'dissolution' = 'fruition'. 46 = 'children'. The number of the man, 55, is 'that veil is black' = 'Asar the adorant'. Asar is Osiris, Egyptian god of the dead and the underworld. The book I'd been invited to read was on magick. Its female co-author had contributed the sections on Santeria.]

The vast spirit. Like this - but huge. And made of masonry.

The vast spirit is back again, and I am being turned into something like him. My body flows into the masonry of the surrounding city. My body has become the city, but then I realise something even more far-reaching has happened: my consciousness was included in the transformation also. I enter a deep, conceptless samadhi, at which point my consciousness is locked into the masonry of the city. By becoming like the angel now I understand its nature. It is the city.

[This brings to mind the psychogeographical work I've been doing. So far I've mapped my city's elemental points, its chakras and its entrances into hell. I had also been thinking about locating its angelic guardians. Perhaps this is a confirmation that I should.]

And now there is a child: a girl with a jagged bob of black hair that obscures her features. Looking closer, I see she has no proper face. The flesh is distorted and amorphous, soft like porridge. She has only a mouth. She holds a bucket and I think at first that she is being constantly sick into it. But what falls into the bucket also has the nature of her mouth. What comes from her mouth is not a substance, but is the producer of further mouths. Her mouth multiplies itself.

A 'preta' or 'hungry ghost'. Nil by mouth. Please do not feed.

[A 'child' again. Perhaps this time it's consumerism that is the object of the 'parody': a mouth that can never be fed, but only gives rise to more mouths. The girl also recalls a hungry ghost (preta) from Buddhist mythology, a being tormented by cravings that are impossible to satisfy, but is always seeking food that can bring no release from hunger. Traditionally, hungry ghosts have long, thin necks and big bellies – like the long-necked birds that perhaps represented the children's souls in the earlier part of the vision.]

Then I see another spirit, which is a living eye embedded in stone. The stone is carved into the shape of a large, capital sigma. The eye is ensconced in the upper part of the character. It is looking left and right – perhaps nervously. A voice says, ‘It is of the nature of toilet paper.’

Sigma-eye.

[The upper case sigma represents 'summation' in mathematics, or 'self-energy' in physics. 'Sum' is also 'I am' in Latin. And 'eye' is a homophone for 'I', of course. This spirit seems associated with the ego or self – which is perhaps why it is looking nervous! Zen master Yunmen Wenyan, when asked 'What is the Buddha?' replied: 'A piece of used toilet paper'. In other words, the Buddha is something you can use to make yourself clean (enlightened).]

Then the images vanish and I am fully awake.

June 14, 2010 by oeith

The Vision of LEA (Aethyr 16)

This is the record and interpretation of a vision gained whilst scrying the sixteenth Enochian aethyr, LEA. I’ve posted the results of previous workings in this series on The Baptist’s Head. The system of gematria used to interpret the vision is English Qaballah.

I can see those round patterns that are sometimes found on ancient stones. When the record button on the voice-recorder was pressed, it was as if one of these round patterns was activated. These markings are beings, entities, and I see three of them. They are telling me that they are faery. This is what those petroglyphs actually depict. They do not always come in threes. They give me the number 37.

British example of classic 'cup and ring' petroglyphs.

[37 = 'book of law, hermit, liberty, mighty, perfect, spirit.' Recent thinking on ancient cup and ring marks engraved into stone is that they depict shamanic psychedelic experiences.]

Undergrowth has grown up all around us and everything has been absorbed into it. And now there is an entity which is like a king with a long beard. It is Oberon, King of the Faeries. He wears a crown and his beard merges with the undergrowth. He’s like an optical illusion; only if you look in a certain way will you see him against the trees, and if the wind blows then he’s invisible again.

I can see an angle! [Yes, that's no typo: 'angle' not 'angel'!] It’s very pointy. There are three of them, but they refuse to form a triangle because they all want to be sharp and acute and are pulling away from each other. They don’t want to add up to 180. I am given 37 again, as if each of these angles is 37 degrees.

[3 x 37 = 111 = 'Hermit + Lover + Man of Earth'. 37 is also suspiciously close to 38 (3 and 8), more on which is below.]

This place is full of spirits, but they are all tiny and poky. Many of them are impossible to describe. I am being crowded by them. I ask to see something bigger. There is not much happening, but I’m determined to make something happen. I summon the angel of the aethyr, who gives me the number 17.

[17 = 'aeon', 'astral', 'aum ha', 'eye', 'God'. The angel seems to be announcing his weightier credentials.]

The angel is insectoid, a diamond-shaped face, geometrical. I ask it if we have anything left to learn from the aethyrs. It stands to one side and shows me that we’re at the top of a waterfall where the water cascades down into a forest. The view is impressive. I step over the edge of the waterfall and walk in space, which was frightening at first but not for long.

The scene dissolves and now I see a rose, white, not in space but inside me, not a physical form. I am given 8 and 3, alternating over and over: 838383838383… Something to do with the rose. Possibly 38 or 83, but it seems to describe some kind of pattern belonging to the rose.

The orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

Martineau's depiction of the orbits of Jupiter (inner circle), Saturn (middle circle) and Uranus (outer circle).

[This took quite some time to decipher, but first I realised that 8 minus 3 is (of course) 5, and that 3, 5 and 8 are numbers in the Fibonacci series, a sequence that (as is commonly known) dominates the morphology of the natural and physical world. The repetition of 8 and 3 then led me to the concept of convergent fractions in mathematics, and then to the importance of these in the manufacture of the gear wheels used in an 'orrery' – a scaled model of the solar system that accurately depicts planetary orbits and movement. From there I arrived at the work of John Martineau concerning the mathematical relationships between the planets of the solar system. Martineau shows how the relationship between the orbits of Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter can be depicted as a circle inside which is a triangle (3), inside which is an eight-pointed star (8). The triangle that refused to add up to 180 degrees came instead to 111 = 'Hermit + Lover + Man of Earth'. These three figures could be taken to correspond, metaphorically and respectively, to Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn.]

The angel of the aethyr is back. It has an ‘alien’ feel about it, like the mantis aliens seen during abductions or DMT trips. We ask if we will get anything out of scrying the rest of the aethyrs.

I see a picture of Aleister Crowley – the one in which he wears a triangular hat bearing the sign of the eye in the triangle. He is making the sign of Pan. Triangles and a chrysalis.

That famous picture of Aleister Crowley.

[Note how the design on Crowley's hat is like a messed-up version of Martineau's diagram (circle, many-rayed star, triangle), as if the spirit were trying to give me an image but it was coming through in a distorted form.]

We ask what would happen if we didn’t scry the rest of the aethyrs. I see a musical score. There are signs against the staves: two wavy marks. Do these denote the tempo or mood of the music? They are like two Hebrew letter yods. This is the answer to the question. And now I see another musical sign, like a curly backwards figure 7.

[The two wavy marks are the musical symbol for a rest of a quarter note. The backward seven is an alternative symbol for the same. This suggests three 'pauses', and perhaps means that we will finish up the aethyrs after a break (or three?) of some kind.]

We ask whether the depth of each aethyr is determined by the scryer or its number.

This musical staves have changed into the shape of a seahorse, which vanishes. Now I see geometric forms, like fractals. We go deeper and deeper but keep finding the same pattern. This is the answer. It could refer to either!

[Seahorses are unique in that the male gives birth to the young. In previous workings the seahorse has appeared as a symbol of 'he who gives birth (to himself)'. This suggests that the depth of the aethyr is determined by the scryer. The way that the same pattern is found over and over suggests that the scryer's personality limits what can be perceived.]

Musical notation for 'a quarter note rest'.

We ask what will happen in Aethyr Ten.

I see lots of insects – flies crowding together. A nasty feeling of vermin.

We ask what will happen in Aethyr One.

‘The lid will come off the tub of margerine.’

There is a rose drawn in the margerine. Now I am in a field and there are beings like cows, except they do not move and are fixed into the ground. They are spirits. They are the makers of the margerine! I ask one of them what it is. It gives me 47 and the Greek letter sigma. It’s name is ESAU or ESU. It is like a resonator. All the cow creatures are fixed in the earth but when struck they resonate, which produces the margerine, which goes into the tub, which is what we will find in Aethyr One.

[47 = 'invisible', 'ultraviolet' (both suggesting the outermost planets, maybe) and 'man of earth' (which, we decided, may correspond to Saturn). 'Sigma' stands for 'sum', a hint that the answer to this cryptic symbolism lies in mathematics. 'Sigma' also represents the number 200, the interval of years between each conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Esau in the Bible sold his birthright to his brother for a meal of lentils, the implication of the story being that by doing so he proved himself unworthy of it anyway. The myths that surround Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter are similarly concerned with their usurpation of power from their predecessors, on the basis that the preceding generation was unfit to govern.]

Now I see a unicursal hexagram in the distance, written in a golden yellow colour – like the margerine. It’s definitely margerine, not butter, because it’s evidently easy to spread.

We ask who strikes the resonators. The answer is the angel of the aethyr. The margerine is sent down through the aethyrs, from the top to the lowermost. But it is not produced in every aethyr.

We ask who draws the rose onto the margerine.

‘Angels and faeries’ is the answer.

When does the angel strike the resonators?

3838383838383838… is the answer. I get the feeling this refers to some kind of frequency or wavelength. When I try striking one of the cows I introduce a 4 into the pattern, which creates some discord, but is soon cancelled out. I strike it again harder, and get 5s and 6s, but these vanish quickly too.

[These are harmonies built into the nature of reality which the individual is unable to affect. On the 28th of May this year – just after the time we performed the working – Jupiter and Saturn came into conjunction. Many astrologers have emphasised the importance and possibly far-reaching effect of this conjunction upon the course of human history over the next couple of decades. As one of them put it, 'This is the start of a 200 year period of fluidity, of the breaking down of national boundaries, of intellectual capital... [It] will help define the transition from material capital and national boundaries to intellectual capital and cultural boundaries (boundaries based on people being able to “talk the same language”).’]

The virtue of the margerine, I’m told, is explained on the tub, so I look closer at it and discover there are Smurfs depicted on it, blue beings with white hats. I’m given the number 18 and an astrological symbol: an H with a bulbous, dangling bit along the central bar.

The standard glyphs for Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

[18 doesn't equate to anything relevant in English Qaballah, but it does approximate to the duration of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. The 'H' symbol is the astrological glyph for Uranus. So the 'margerine' seems to be the influence of the planetary conjunction that is sent down through the aethyrs and effects humanity. There also seems to be a hint here that Uranus also plays some kind of astrological role in the conjunction.]

I ask the angel if this is the end of the vision, but I’m shown a castle in the distance. It is very cubic, square. I sense we are being told to continue with the aethyrs and that this castle is in one of the future aethyrs. The Smurfs are there.

[The square suggests the number 4, which is associated with Jupiter.]

I want to finish the vision, but the angel is holding me here. I ask him why. I am shown undergrowth again, the same as where the vision started. There are faeries and beings here inseparable from the undergrowth. Letting it grow becomes a trance state. I see something golden: a ring. Engraved all around its edge is the astrological symbol. The ring looks like the crown Oberon wore at the beginning. The ring is a miniature crown. The number 64. I break off the vision.

[64 = 'Do what thou wilt', 'Stele six six six'. Again, this seems to be a hint that Uranus is astrologically important and is perhaps being overlooked. The ring recalls Martineau's diagram, in which the orbit of Uranus is represented as the outer circle ('ring'). One of the moons of Uranus is named 'Oberon'. In astrology, Uranus is 'the awakener' and represents periods of sudden change or revolution.]

An audio montage and cut-up of parts of the ritual.

	FrNOC23 on Concerning the Vision of Spiri…
	speedbird on Invocation of My Demon Bo…
	Telkontar.504 on A Dialogue on Awakening with M…
	Real como la vigilia… on The Effects on Lucid Dreaming…
	robert on Invocation of My Demon Bo…

Occult Experiments in the Home

personal explorations of consciousness, reality and magick

Tag Archives: aethyr

The Vision of PAZ (Aethyr 4)

Notes

The Visions of DEO, MAZ and LIT (Aethyrs 7 through 5)

The Vision of DEO (Aethyr 7)

The Vision of MAZ (Aethyr 6)

The Vision of LIT (Aethyr 5)

The Vision of ZID (Aethyr 8)

The Vision of ZIP (Aethyr 9)

Illness

The Vision of ZAX (Aethyr 10)

The Vision of ZIM (Aethyr 13)

The Vision of UTI (Aethyr 14)

The Vision of OXO (Aethyr 15)

The Vision of LEA (Aethyr 16)

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