Intimacy & the Godhead: Being Unveiled

Intimacy & the Godhead: Being Unveiled

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What is it to know Being in the Other? Is it the study of treatises and tractates? Is it wholly conceptual or is there an element of the personal in these encounters? Augustine once called humans “The Great Deep”- Grande Profundum. It is in the abyss of the human heart that we are able to perceive the depth of Being in other humans as well as Other entities. Ralph Harper equated it to intimacy when he wrote, “mystics draw analogies between the feeling of the presence of God and the feeling of the presence of another person, particularly in the dark.”[1] It is in the dark of the abyss as well as the moments of intimacy that occur in the dark that we become consumed and wholly possessed in the Being of another. This is how we know true presence.

And it is these experiences that assimilate us into the godhead as well. It is the pure unitive state of being at-one and entangled in union that we know the deity. Sufism understands this perfectly well in its request:

‘O God If I love you for fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I love you for hope of heaven, deny me heaven. If I love you for yourself alone, give me yourself.’[2]

Presence of the divine is no different in experience than presence conjured in intimacy. Yes, perhaps there are conceptual discrepancies, unless of course you worship your loved one and negate any inconsistency whatsoever. And maybe that’s the point. Perhaps all along religion and its appellations of the sacred were meant to be experienced in the dark. In the ‘deep’ there is no need for prayer or faith because we know the presence of Deity.        

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[1] Harper, Ralph. On Presence: Variations and Reflections. 1991. Trinity Press International. pp. 58.

[2] Arberry, A.J. Sufism. 1970. Penguin Books. New York. pp. 42.

Activation Through Interaction: Couliano, Mirrors & the Pneuma of Occultism

Activation Through Interaction: Couliano, Mirrors & the Pneuma of Occultism

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What is the occult that many seem to fear and misunderstand? That which is deemed occult – although difficult to define, does have characteristics that make it at least identifiable. The concept of correspondences is maybe the most common trait associated with occult design. Like the Gnostic maxim, ‘As Above, So Below’ the microcosm as represented by Man corresponds to the universe that is the macrocosm. As Ioan Couliano remarked, “Before becoming aware of his own possibilities, man-microcosm finds himself in a universe in which the parties, both low and high, ‘cooperate’ with each other without his knowledge. At the time he grasps the structure of that cooperation, the correspondences between the visible universe and its invisible prototype, he will be able to make use of them in the service of capturing the unknown presences that lurk in the threshold between the two worlds”.[1] In other words, mind and matter cooperate to achieve a desired goal by corresponding with each other.  However, although mind and its conjurations are one, we are not always aware of the correspondences. Sometimes they are simply beyond our reach until the association unfolds experientially. And that’s not to say that the angels or demons invoked by Man are ‘exclusively’ in the mind. They are also autonomous entities that have their own personalities and agenda. This idea is a rejection of ontological dualism. Instead of binary opposition, the occult works off of benign reciprocity. Entities make magicians do things. There is work involved. When a magician constructs a magic circle and an entity appears, both parties are doing something. The presence of the entity acts in accordance with the work the magician did in ritual. 

However, occult processes judiciously negate linear causation as well. This work that is done in ritual- the complex expressions and original sentiment would never be replaced by simple, sleight-of-hand utterances of causation under the pretext that former explains the latter. Instead, occultists present a state of affairs. In the act of invocation, for example, the magic circle-like a laboratory, construction site, chef’s kitchen, or theater stage, shows us the consensus decisions used to create an association. It is the paths taken in the labyrinth to reach a correspondence. Not only does it lead you backstage and introduce you to the skills and tracks of practitioners, it also provides a rare glimpse of what it is for a thing to emerge of our inexistence by adding to any existing entity its time dimension.[2] In the construction of an occult interaction, the magician vicariously activates the signatures of the primordial but not necessarily in a lineal mode of time. What occurs is a completely unique state of affairs built on correspondence.

Furthermore, this activation through interaction is another common occult trait. To cause to function, excite, or react is the utmost goal of the magical rite. Usually the activation of the ‘Pneuma’ facilitates the interaction a magician will have with an entity. The Pneuma or “immaterial ether” is the breath of the living god. Judaic mystics asserted that it was the Pneuma that sparked the primordial air of Hokmah, then the water and fire of Binah and Hesed on the Tree of Life. And according to Eilberg-Schwartz, Pneuma denotes air in movement. It can refer to wind, breath, or life, in the sense of animating power. The Pneuma  occurs in the 1^st century BCE in connection with the oracles of Apollo at Delphi: the priestess sat over an opening in the earth and when she became intoxicated by the vapors that arose from the fissure she fell into trance, which was interpreted as possession by Apollo.[3] The Pneuma is the residing spirit John Dee activated to communicate with angels. It was the Pneuma that was activated when Aleister Crowley received the ‘Book of the Law’ in 1904. Pneuma is a mirror with two faces , one of which reflects perceptions coming from the external senses and the other the phantasmagoria of the soul.[4] The Pneuma is innate yet when activated an event or surprise. It is a surreptitious mediator that translates how occultists make their entities do things.  

                                    (Professor Ioan Couliano. Brilliant Occult Thinker)  

Imagination and Intuition are what allows the occultist to perceive the many correspondences in their craft. Tarot readers and astrologers use intuitiveness to interpret divination after Pneuma has been activated. Both imagination and intuition are forms of perception. Fantastical reality is part of the real world and it’s these areas of our psyche that make the jumps and connect the dots during an occult interaction. There are many ways in which mystics, sages, magicians, and shamans utilize the imagination and intuitive faculties of the mind to aid in occult practice. Some tirelessly use meditation in order to awaken areas of the psyche otherwise unexplored. Visualization techniques are also honed so that focus can be elevated. For some, lucid dreaming or the use of psychedelic drugs opens portals in the mind. What they all share, however, is the assertion that the imagination is not simply flights of fancy or unimportant debris of the conscious self. The imagination is something unique, mysterious, and transcendent.

Occult doesn't define a reality. It was never meant to. It is a translation or movement that shows us a reflective state of affairs. It is paths taken to reach a precedent or circumstance. This reflectivity is reflective of occultists themselves. This is the reason why the mirror has long been an enduring occult tool. Supernatural folklore is also full of mirror narratives as portrayed in folktales such as Snow White or in legends like Bloody Mary. Renaissance magician Marsilio Ficino wrote that menstruating women who look at themselves in the mirror leave little drops of blood on its surface.[5] And its been long thought the soul is connected to its reflection in a mirror and that‘s why breaking a mirror is bad luck. The mirror is a mediator between the microcosm and macrocosm. It is a portal between realities. After all, if the whole of reality is infinite and universal, then Man(the microcosm) must also be infinite and universal. And since experience shows that the body is neither infinite nor universal, there must be in Man ‘something’ of the infinite and universal. The reflection cannot differ from that which the mirror reflects. [6]

The mirror is also brutally honest. Reflections don’t lie and for may occultists, reflections in a mirror are a metaphor for their own spiritual progress. If they perceive a reflection that is cloudy or if the soul is not sufficiently clean, the individual can be reduced to a lower, almost bestial state. Then it is a matter of polishing the mirror, removing its impurities-restoring to the clouded spirit its original transparency as well as its purity, flexibility, and hardness. [7] Plato associated mirrors with the Pneuma itself. He stated that, “using the senses [spirit] grasps the images of external bodies; now, the soul itself cannot perceive these images directly, given that incorporeal substance, superior to that of the body, cannot be induced by the latter to receive images. Omnipresent in spirit, the soul can easily contemplate images of bodies reflected in it as in a mirror. It is through these images it can appraise the bodies themselves.”[8] Although the body cannot directly perceive the Daimonic world due to our meaty matter state, the soul or Pneuma is free to reflect on this unseen world and perceive it as in a mirror’s reflection.

The occult is much more than a collection of spells designed to conjure demons or gain access to the spirit realm.  The concept has evolved. The word now acts as a canopy for all manner of the strange and inexplicable. Although ceremonial magic may be the centerpiece of the occult altar, the word also evokes ufology and  paranormal studies. Nowadays, the occult is both Lam and Old Hag. It is hauntings and Hecate herself. The word has become intertwined with the supernatural and the two are in many ways one and the same. The fact that the occult has transformed tells us that it has undergone its own rites of passage. Just as initiates go through changes of status during supernatural events, the occult has also experienced a change in ontological state due to ritual processes.

Schopenhauer and Mysticism: Reconciling Contrasts in Mystical Narratives

Schopenhauer and Mysticism

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But in the end, much of what makes up the occult are stories. They are narratives designed to transmit something. They are signals that relay a common purpose to reach alterity and make contact. Not so far removed from the use of Scriptures in some religious systems or the deploying of Mandalas in others. The narratives say something about the human condition and the need for supernatural agency. Because believe it or not, there is a real need for ‘Otherness’ in the human condition. This need manifests in the creation of subatomic particles by physicists to explain the universe. It is also evident in the ritualization of myth and folklore into daily lives. It is a need to be moved. Within this pathos is an appeal to communicate a specific feeling. In answer to this appeal, Man creates temple complexes with clear lines that demarcate sacred from the profane. Such is the case at the ‘Villa of the Mysteries’ at Pompeii.

Artistic iconography at the Villa transmits the pathos of life and fertility. As Carl Jung remarked, “Here death is embedded by a female demon, with great black wings, visibly thwarted by the erect phallus of the sacred basket” (Jung 1964). The story portrayed in the Villa walls is one initiation and it conjures the feeling of initiation. The ritual and the subjective experience of undergoing an initiatory journey converge to form an event. And this is the goal of occult pathos. Here there is no separation of object and subject. As Eliade states, “By virtue of his initiation, the neophyte attained to another mode of being; he became equal to the gods, was one with the gods” (Eliade 1989). The ritual and its experience are one in the same. I call this merging the occult law of convergence.

The Object Subject dichotomy is a classic philosophical problem that sometimes manifests in reconciliation of contrasts (duality). Ideas of plurality and distinction are considered mere appearances that distract the practitioner from attaining the oneness or at-one-ment of the sacred. Schopenhauer suggested that when someone mediates, they come into the contact with the Will. This Will is the life-force of that person. He wrote that “it is what is innermost, the kernel of each individual thing and equally of the whole. It is manifest in every blindly working force of nature; it is manifest, also, in the considered deeds of man” (Schopenhauer 1844). The Will, according to Schopenhauer, is that piece of sanctity and fire of life that everybody is born with. A spark of the divine, it is the gnosis and sublimity of being at one with the universe. He goes on to state that

                       

Up to now, the concept Will has been subsumed under the concept Force;           but I am using it just the opposite way, and mean that every force in nature is to be understood as a function of Will. For at the back of the concept Force there is finally our visual knowledge of the objective world, i.e. of some phenomenon, something seen. It is from this that the concept Force derives…whereas the concept Will, on the contrary, is the one, among all possible concepts, that does not derive from the observation of phenomena, not from mere visual knowledge, but comes from inside, emerges from the immediate consciousness of each one of us: not as a form, not even in terms of the subject-object relationship, but as that which he himself is; for here the knower and the known are the same. (Ibid)

Akin to the Hindu Brahman, the Will makes distinctions between the Self and the universe unnecessary. Being the universal spirit and the feeling of being in that state are one in the same and anything else is either paradox or absurdity.

Religious Re-newal: Eros, Alchemy and "Love-Speak"

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Karl Jaspers once wrote, “A look at the beloved is like a look at Being itself.” I never forgot that bit. It is in the rapture of love, of Being in the grip of it that we gift presence to an ‘Other’. Latour called it a form of renewal. He has reiterated time and again that religious affirmation has been lost on those who go through the motions of ritual without consciously ‘renewing’ the love that makes gift of presence possible. He likened it to “love-speak” in couples. I think everybody would agree that humans innately know when a partner’s love-speak is sincere. It’s when these words evoke chills or the hair on the back of your neck stands up; that filling of absolute affirmation when your lover expresses words of love. Likewise, we also know, sometimes inexplicably, when these same words are counterfeit. There are times when loves-speak is said without the feeling of renewal.

It’s utter affirmation of sincerity that we should strive for in our religious ritual. It’s that renewal that is the basis for ideas of the ‘alchemical wedding’ and marrying the Sophia in godhead. Our religious rites are designed to evoke ‘love-speak’ and in doing so grant metaphysics of presence to our deities. But often times, religious ritual is a monotonous droning of liturgy and unfelt, unconscientious habits that fail in delivering the evocation of presence. Being cannot erupt into existence without a conscious interaction between Man and the beloved. It is these interactions that Couliano described as Eros and should be the goal of any so-called religious person. 

Tarot Theory: How does it work?

www.magusmagazines.com  Here are some talking points on Tarot Conceptualization and Ritual I'll be discussing in more depth in June's volume of 'Magus Magazine'!  

Often times, I’m asked how and why Tarot ‘works’. What is it about the deck that constructs a metaphysics of presence? Although Tarot certainly appropriates an interpretation of iconography and symbolization to form a narrative based on archetypal conceptualization, there are other forces at work that re-structure our patterns of belief. As Latour once remarked, “Belief is not a psychological state, not a way of grasping statements, but a polemical (controversial argument) mode of relations.” Tarot also creates a ‘mode of relations’ with polemic attributes. Each reading formulates a proposition that must be substantiated critically by the querent. Sometimes the discernment occurs intuitively but always there is a set of interactions that make a robust interpretation possible.

These interaction include:

-          

     As mediator of the divine, the tarot is a set of circulating references. Each mediator ‘does’ something. They are continuously re-fabricating a reality of interconnections and network that makes autonomy possible. Querents enter a liminal existence as soon as the cards are dealt. This liminality results in changes of State.

-         Tarot is extraction. The mediators extract our immanence and intuition thus making the subconscious conscious. Very similar to traditional alchemy, the mediators make use of a object/subject relationship and extract immanence as a way to reintegrate with the transcendent Other.

-          The mediators are neither omniscient nor omnipresent. Each will never have a perfect understanding of the others. They are wholly separate entities that are re-formed continuously. Because of this, each mediator has a frailty. It’s these frailties that make the set a viable method of divination. 

Peer Polity Interaction & Numinous Experience.

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Much of modern academia and science ignores the societal nuances of supernatural experience. However, there are cross-cultural features that make numinous experience universal. It goes without saying that if these events were culturally specific and developed solely within each separate culture, then each account would be wholly unique. But we find shared features and universal similarities. This stems from the experiential nature of the supernatural experience. Social accounts across cultures are based upon the dialogue that is created when perceiving the experience.

Cross-cultural dissemination also occurs through a process anthropologists call peer polity interaction. Traditionally, PPI refers to exchanges of social behavior and material goods that are appropriated (for lack of a better term) as separate polities interact with one another. They both symbolically and literally begin to take on attributes of one another. This happens in ritual as well. Both material artifacts and symbolic artifacts share characteristics through an intermingling of separate cultures and their gods. We see this in the uncanny resemblance between ancient mystery religions in the Greco-Roman world. In both ritual and in ritual paraphernalia, there are clear features of peer polity interaction at work. It’s left to us to examine how and to what extent PPI affects the legitimacy and dissemination of supernatural folk belief in the modern world.

Snake-Oil Salesman: Spinning the Occult

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Snake-Oil Salesman: Spinning the Occult

I read recently in a book about disinformation that ‘spin’ is a polite word for deception. It got me thinking. Why is it that traditional paradigms of religion such as Christianity, Buddhism, or even Islam are ‘treated’ differently than religious minorities such as Thelema? Why are occult systems subject to exorbitant amounts of ‘spin’? Is the deception merely monetary and would Thelemites be given more favorable provenance? Probably. But this systemic mischaracterization goes beyond creating a counterfeit reality or ‘spinning a yarn’. The real problem is in denying pertinent information about occultism by refusing to think critically about it. Of all the religious systems out there, paradigms of the occult are the most conducive for ontological discussion. After all, the entire mythos is based on creation, sustainment, and interaction of Being. In each state of affairs is a network of interactive autonomy. Whereas traditional religious systems have an already established set of supernatural beings. (i.e. Father, Son, Spirit etc…), occult is a fluidic assemblage of invisible mediators that stay in flux re-assembling and re-newing themselves continuously. They are both determinate and self-determining. Invocation is simply the means of gaining rapport and making contact.   

Why Occult has nothing to do with faith at all

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Why Occult has nothing to do with faith at all:  Common perception of the supernatural suggests folk belief creates an illusory representation of experience. That it is constructed and self-fulfilling. A mirage of the senses interpreted afterwards as a real event. In other words, a leap of faith. But there are voices of dissent that suggest these events are grounded in empirical evidence. Many of these experiences occur regardless of somebody’s past belief or previous knowledge. Folklorist David Hufford gives an excellent example of this with a hummingbird. He states that, “One who has never heard of a hummingbird, and therefore lacks the concept, can still perceive a hummingbird if it flies into the garden. Although not experiencing the percept “of a hummingbird”, one will still have a perceptual experience.” Supernatural experiences work the same way. We may have no concept of a goetic demon or inter-dimensional extraterrestrial craft but we can experience this numinous event without prior knowledge or belief. There’s no faith needed in this circumstance. Moreover, truth doesn’t necessarily have to be addressed. In its pure, unaltered, and raw state, the supernatural is not self-evidently false but experiential. Often, it defies logic or rationality and remains numinous- i.e. mysterious connection with the godhead. Whether it can be comprehended accurately or understood at all is a whole other topic but what is clear is that at no time does it depend on self-fulfilling belief or knowledge. It’s a sovereign and autonomous state of being that makes use of the same empirical attributes that other folk traditions employ.  

What is Occult Renewal?

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I hear people continually ask whether occult has become obsolete in this day and age. I always wonder what trajectory they refer to. Belief is always alive and well. The operator recognizes the invisible work that instills autonomy in the divinities while recognizing the forces that drive his or her own renewal. Symbiotic relationships are the key to these interactions. Occult has never been simply about invocation or summoning but contact. In many ways, the UFOlogists are more occult than traditional occultists. Whereas the occultist will construct elaborate circles and perform complex ritualization, the UFO searcher knows instinctively that invisible strings are being plucked every time he aims a telescope at the sky or traverses a crop circle. The ritual is the method. Occult is not dead it just manifests in a variety of ways. You perform occult renewal every time you engage in love-talk while lying in bed with a significant Other or when composing a piece of music to be heard by no one but your Self. Renewal is in the inter-action. 

“One Generation Away”: Occult Persecution in Modern America

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“One Generation Away”: Occult Persecution in Modern America

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

George Orwell

The last night of the Sacred Owl ceremony at Bohemian Grove was met with a howling wind. Seats kept blowing over and the owl effigy was in danger of toppling. This event is always a swanky affair. Every year hundreds of world leaders and corporate entities lazily congregate and discuss where and how reality will shaped. This year was no different. The customary dinner before the ritual theatre was a mash-up of blood red steaks, liver, and of course hummus. It was a fine set-up; perfectly attuned to meet the needs of the big-wigs in attendance. CEO’s and political leaders laughed jovially and mingled. Midgets were chased by half-baked executives donning terrifying masks and carrying wands. Otherwise straight laced corporate leaders danced like babes and ran naked.

That was until the maniacal child-star and holy soldier Kirk Cameron appeared like a phantasm and began to exorcise everything in sight. He began with trees and rocks spouting obscenities and thrusting a wooden cross into the face of all in attendance. It was like watching a snake handler on the brink of being bitten in the face. The terrified world leaders squealed and were seized with a fight or flight response. Some ran blindly into the woods, others grabbed eating utensils and stood in defensive postures. All while Cameron hooted and wrung his hands-crazily running up and down the aisle seats shrieking about rapture and openly invoking Michele Bachmann. It was heartbreaking.

The cord was cut. I personally heard Cameron whisper to Ray Comfort, “We’ve got to be careful with this lot. They’re heathen. This is the only thing they care about or really believe in. They’ll tie us to that goddamn owl before they burn it.” Comfort laughed nervously but his face betrayed thoughts that were clearly, Oh God, we’re in real trouble. He managed a half-choked sob and pleaded, “Maybe we shouldn’t be filming? What if they find the camera in your glasses?” Cameron soothed, “They’re just Druids. They’re savage. I’d be surprised if they even know what it is. We’ll run them down like dogs. It’s pre-ordained.”

This effectively killed the mojo of the weekend but that’s the growing trend as occultists all over the United States are being herded into underground shipping containers and tanker trucks like lepers. It’s not a myth. We are now “One Generation Away” from all-out occult persecution. We will witness in our children’s lifetimes the streets run red with the blood of occult martyrs. According to the Coalition for Occult Conservatives, 57% of practicing Pagans and Thelemites will be interred in underground communities by the year 2070. The Subterranean Occult Society (S.O.S.) have been frantically trying to stem the ebb and flow of occult persecution by throwing tens of millions of dollars into occult ‘think tanks’ in hopes of enticing diversity in local law-makers, media outlets, and other shapers of consensus reality. But the fear of ‘filthy superstition’ has stirred up a host of enemies to religious pluralism. Anti-occult mouthpieces such as Jeff Harshbarger have remarked, “Our society is submerged in the occult; Harry Potter has filled the minds of our children for a decade and vampirism meets our teens with the illusions of grandeur. Witchcraft went mainstream decades ago and Wicca is its offspring.” Other persecutors such as T. Franklin from the ‘Objective Ministries’ has stated that, “If there is one thing that Satanists, Goths, and Pagans of all stripes fear, it is ‘light’; this is why they hold their coven meetings at night, skulk around in the shadows, and wear dark clothing instead of bright, cheerful colors.”

This is the common perception toward esoteric schools of thought. And it’s working folks. On the surface, occultism is just an irritating religious minority. But the debris of this all-out assault yields a far more systemic evil if one only has the will to dig. The problem lays in anthropocentric autonomy. Modern religious autonomy is anthropocentric. In other words, it is organized by reference to human beings alone. But occult interaction doesn’t necessarily denote an anthropocentric perspective of the godhead. There are a myriad of entities and creatures accepted by occult ritualization that isn’t necessarily human but literally alien.

It’s this anthropocentric point of view that is the foundation for modern rule. For example, imagine if UFOs on earth were proved to be actual extraterrestrials from another dimension. This reality would threaten anthropocentric sovereignty of the power structure and is why the reality of UFOs isn’t so much denied but the question not even asked. Or what about the second coming of Jesus Christ? Again, an event of this caliber would be a real problem for existing paradigms of anthropocentric rule. The occult suffers from the same system of ‘consensus reality’. It’s not that occult ritual is refuted or that esoteric thought is critically found to be ineffective. Oh no, occult study much like UFO reality is taboo. It threatens the anthropocentric metaphysics of sovereignty. In so doing, it also violates what is accepted in consensus reality.

When occult evidence comes to the fore, what is needed is an ‘autonomous agnosticism’. A temporary suspension of consensus reality (i.e norms and laws of spiritual belief) so that occult reality has the opportunity to affect rational belief. All that is needed is the perspective that occult goals and esoteric reality is reachable and knowable. Having a potential materialization of the metaphysical is at least asking the question. It’s not hard to see how this point of view would also benefit UFO discussion. In the potential to be knowable epistemologically, we also grant it an autonomy based on ontological foundations.

But consensus reality will push back not because of the irrational or illogical. Most religious systems including Christianity have elements of the illogical. That’s just the ride. Autonomous agnosticism will be denied because the regime of truth becomes threatened if what is accepted as metaphysically possible violates what is already established as real. And so the possibilities are unthinkable. If it seems that the problem is as much politic as religious than your already seeing reality in a form of agnostic autonomy and questioning the norms and laws of rational belief. Structures of power are anthropocentric and anything that trespasses this trespasses what is truth and must be made taboo. I’m not saying give world power over to the risen Christ or Extraterrestrials but the possibility of invoking daimons or entities or aliens certainly places a burden on current sovereignty of power. Perhaps what is needed is a new consensus reality where occultism doesn’t threaten power structures but contributes to what can be known and attained. It’s at least asking the question.