Technical Note #1: Confusion of the Sight Sense

Amongst the many tools of the traditional shaman to achieve journeys to other realities are entheogenic herbs.  These are materials that seem to ease the transition from “ordinary reality” to the visionary quality that is at the core of the “shamanic trip.”  The word entheogen is a neologism meaning “generating divinity within” coined to replace the words “psychedelic” and “hallucinogen,” since so many of the materials that fall under these umbrella terms are traditionally used psychoactive plants used in a religious or spiritual context.  I myself have not used these materials since I was in my teens, but remember well the experiences that these plants and chemicals engender.

The experience of hallucinogens, in a very gross sense, is similar to many other types of intoxication. There is a sense of euphoria, sometimes a feeling of sickness.  In other ways, psychedelics are different from ordinary "intoxication." There are visual and auditory experiences that are quite out of the ordinary.  The ability of the herbs to confuse and combine sensory input in strange ways is likely the part of the experience that feels like a journey.  Most people who have had an experience with psychedelics recall the experience of walls “breathing,” of background noise organizing itself into conversations, and the like.  These experiences are not unlike those that happen in the trance of the seer, so it seems reasonable to expect that entheogens could be used to enhance the ability of the seer to either enter or hold trance, or both.

Most of these materials are on the DEA’s Schedule of Controlled substances, in spite of their long history of traditional use.  They are therefore not practical for me to experiment with their use in my role as seer and priestess. 

These entheogenic plants and chemicals are not the only way to have a trancelike experience, however.  A high fever will induce both visual and auditory perturbations that are not entirely unlike those stimulated by drugs.  During a confused feverish state, I once mistook my cat, Max, for a bear.  It was this experience that made me connect the activation of visual “confusion” with the trip-like interpretation of the fever.  I began to look for ways to induce the visual strangeness without drugs and sickness.

The first of these experiments took place during the initiatory rite of the Lunar Sphere to which I have referred in the previous post.  I set the altar with a series of highly polished, curved bowls and candlestick holders, all positioned on a round, flat mirror.  Inside the top bowl, I placed a ring with a snowflake obsidian sphere on top.  That bowl was filled with holy water.  Around the perimeter of the silver surfaces were positioned four candles.  The silver bowls, when illuminated in this way, presented a dazzling and confusing array of distorted images.  Many of the bowls possessed both concave and convex surfaces, so that although some the images in the surfaces of the bowls had a familiar color, no details of the images could be discerned.  Some of the images encountered during the rite were incredibly disturbing.  In one instance, I encountered my own face with only one eye. In another, I saw fixed items behind me as moving and blood red liquid seemed to pour from one bowl to another.

With the silver surfaces as only real cause for these intense visual experiences, as the rite proceeded, the trance broadened to auditory strangeness, complete with voices.  It was a deep and long-lasting trance experience.  Could it be that “visual confusion” could be a key to a class of psychedelic experience?

Two illustrative photos are included in this blog post. The first is a photograph of my hand holding a concave optical mirror.  Notice haw the image is upside down?  The mirror also could be said to “contain too much information,” as compared with a flat surface mirror, with a more collimated field of view.  Both of these effects contribute to the tripiness of the ritual.  The second photograph is a subset of the altar arrangement for the initiatory rite.  Some of the surfaces shown here are concave, but some are also convex.  These images are upright, but “contain too little information,” than expected from experience with flat mirrors.  Additionally, the convex surfaces yield images that are disturbing because they appear to be bloated.

These initial experiments make me wonder how much of a psychedelic experience we can have in the absence of the chemistry, just by playing with our own sensory input.  Preliminary results seem to indicate that, while it is unlikely to generate the entirety of an entheogenic journey without the entheogens, one can obtain interesting results within a spiritual or religious context by using creative sensory confusion.

More to come.

Be thou blessed,

Photos by Harper Feist.  Please do not use without permission.

Initiation into the Sphere of the Moon: Part II - Some Preliminary Results

Early In July, RO and I performed a ritual wherein I was initiated into the Sphere of the Moon.  It was a wonderfully intense experience and I observed some of the most intense visuals ever – I fully intend to write more about that shortly, but I wanted to actually discuss the results, which came hard on the heels of the ritual.

Since the day in early July that I requested Gabriel’s entry into the Sphere of the Moon, I have been compelled to deal with a problem that I’ve had for many years, hyper-menorrhagia.  The bleeding during my menses is so intense that when I call the insurance nurses for advice, they tell me to go immediately to the emergency room.  It’s frightening and inconvenient, and leads to chronic anemia.  It’s also been going on for years.  Doctors say that there’s no physical cause for it, and all their recommendations for a cure are intrusive and violent, so I have allowed it continue.  Suddenly, I am searching for a solution.

I am doing due diligence with doctors and have updated my nutritional supplements to cope, but I have also become much more familiar with the lore of the lunar sphere.

The Lunar Sphere itself is an idea out of Chaldean theology that comes down to the hermetic magic community as the place where ideas from God’s mind are actually brought into form.  This makes sense because of the Moon’s relationship with “increase and decrease;” i.e. the polarities that make motion and create bodies.  Macrobius says in his Comments on the Dream of Scipio:

 “…from the sphere of the Moon, it acquires the strength needed to propagate by the generation and increase of bodies. This lunar sphere, which is last and lowest with respect to divine bodies, is first and highest with respect to earthly bodies. This lunar body, as it were the sediment of celestial matter, at the same time is found to be the purest substance of animal matter." (Ch.XIl) 

Later he states:

“The Moon is the nearest planet. She receives and transmits to the observer the action of all the other celestial agencies.”

Therefore, the Sphere of the Moon is the place where we receive bodies upon creation – the funnel of the energy of all the higher spheres into Earth-life – but is also sexual in nature.  This is mapped onto the Kabbalah as the sephira of Yesod and into the chakra system as Swadhisthana chakra.

An appetizer about Yesod, from Wikipedia:

“The sephirah of Yesod translates spiritual concepts into actions that unite us with God.

It is often associated with the Moon, because it is the sphere which reflects the light of all the other sephirot into Malkuth, and it is associated with the sexual organs, because it is here that the higher spheres connect to the earth.

It plays the role of collecting and balancing the different and opposing energies of Hod and Netzach, and also from Tiferet above it, storing and distributing it throughout the world. It is likened to the 'engine-room' of creation.

The archangel of this sphere is Gabriel, and the Cherubim is the Angelic order.

Yesod was taught to be the sephirah of Sabbatai Zevi.”

The Swadhisthana chakra is the one a couple of fingers higher than Muladhara and is the sexual/creative chakra.  It is tied with the unconscious, with emotion, with the element of water, with the sense of taste and with sexual reproduction.  Wiki says with regard to this topic, “The location of Swadhisthana is just in front of the spine, in the sacral region, and its kshetram or activation point is in the pubic region. Being connected with the sense of taste, it is associated with the tongue, and being connected with reproduction, it is associated with the genitals.

It is often associated with the testes and ovaries. These produce the hormones testosterone or estrogen, which are important factors in sexual behaviour.”

Now it’s getting very clear how this entire concept relates to the symptoms of irregular menses.

This chakra also pertains to unconscious desires, especially sexual desire.  Because of this, it is allegedly very difficult to raise the kundalini shakti (energy of consciousness) above the Swadhisthana chakra.  Fully open and operational Swadhisthana is said to bestow the yogic super-powers of freedom from all enemies, eloquent speech and awareness of astral entities (still looking to attribute this statement).  In kundalini yoga, there are two bandha (locks) that support the development of the Swadhisthana chakra vajroli mudra (contraction of the genitals) and ashvini mudra (contraction of the anus).  There are also asana and various pranayama that are recommended.

On a more mundane (but highly related) note, gushing menses are related by some alternative health practitioners to a condition called estrogen dominance.  This is (massively oversimplified explanation to follow) the state of the system being out of balance with excess estrogen or deficient progesterone.  Being in this condition can be caused by too much estrogen, of course.  This can be a hormonal problem or it can be exposure to xenoestrogens.  People with ordinary modern habits are exposed to many estrogenic compounds in their environment and diet (factory meat, insecticides, certain kinds of plastic…), so this is not an unlikely cause.  In addition, some of us are not spring chickens anymore, and progesterone production has been measured to decrease with age.  If you’re me, the impact of all these entwined factors is my dramatic symptom. 

An interesting thing – the liver is the chief processor (read removal mechanism) of excess estrogen.  If it’s busy processing beer or drugs (yes, even those that the doctor gives you), it is measurably less efficient at estrogen removal. 

So, what will I be doing about this?  Well, on the mundane level, I guess I’ll be drinking more water (i.e. fewer martinis), taking iron and using topical progesterone.  I’ll also be working toward a more complete understanding and experience of the Lunar Sphere, and having some heart-to-heart conversations with Gabriel.

Note: I’m not a medical doctor.  If you’re having issues like this, get information from your doctor, your body and from reliable medical sources.  Don’t do what I’m doing without having conducted your own research.

Blessed Be Thou

photo by Harper Feist, please don't use without permission.

young and silly, a brief diversion

We have a new kitten in our house.  Allegedly born somewhere around Valentine’s day, she’s now in the stage where everything is prey.  The belt of my robe has fallen to her stealth, and the stuffed Mr. Burns doll (yes, recall the Simpsons) needs to have his stuffing put back in nearly every day.  She’s wild, vital, and completely alive in every sense.

One of her favorite toys is a laser pointer.  When she bites on the things that she should not bite, we get out the pointer.  She recognizes that the appearance of the black metal cartridge precedes the fun, and goes onto high alert when it is brandished.  We use it to imitate an insect, zooming briefly on the floor and then disappearing, only to return somewhere else soon.  When it is invisible, the kitten sits intently, applying every sense to the discovery of the dot.  As I watched her this morning, I realized she was SNIFFING for it, hunting it with even those senses that were obviously not (to our minds, anyway) involved.  How like the seer she is, I thought.

We not only see, WE SEEK.

Blessed be thou.

Reverence Thy Body

It should be clear from the previous posts that my body is the primary sensor in seership.  The full visual manifestation that is the goal of some workers is not quite so important to me.  It’s wonderful and amazing, of course, but using that as the main or only goal dismisses a lot of other very interesting and informative “data.”

That reminder having been issued, I wanted to bring a up topic that has been on my mind.  I have recently received an injunction to “hold myself chaste and reverent toward my body.”  It’s important to note up front that the origin of this requirement is not a Christian one, it’s Thelemic.  Hint: it doesn’t mean “no sex.”

It also doesn’t have the sense of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

It absolutely does not mirror John’s writing:, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

And then there’s a section of Romans: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

This is one origin of our attitudes regarding our physical bodies in the modern world.  As we live in a largely Christian society, we have received the message in the womb that in the best case, your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, but it’s not yours.  In the worst case the body is a bad thing, something to be lived in temporarily until we can arrive in Heaven.  It is possible that this alone is reason McDonald's exists.

My mentor and I discussed this a little bit, and worked up the definition that it was advantageous to control and focus of the mind (and therefore any magickal workings) to have the body be in proper functioning order, so as not to be distracting (at least).  He pointed out that the origin of the word “ascetic” doesn’t imply self-denial, but rather rigorous discipline (Greek askētikós  subject to rigorous exercise, hardworking).  So, for this context, revering the body and holding oneself chaste is to have developed a physical system, including healthy sexuality, that is AT THE VERY LEAST not in the way of your spiritual (pun, get it?) pursuits.  If your body is full of pain and discomfort, reaching into yourself for the relaxation necessary to meet with the unincarnated will be more difficult.

Chastity is another word that carries lots of baggage.  Etymologically, this word may have it’s origins in the Latin castitatem, which means pure (N.B. not everyone agrees with me on that assignment).  Pure is the state of being uncontaminated.

Crowley says this in “Chastity,” one of the “Little Essays Toward Truth: "Chastity may thus be defined as the strict observance of the Magical Oath; that is, in the Light of the Law of Thelema, absolute and perfected devotion to the Holy Guardian Angel and exclusive pursuit of the Way of the True Will.”[1]

Of course, that is the least of it.  Your body is a juicy device that can lead to the most intense raptures, allowing you to meld with God and gods.  It all is made so much easier with a body that is as healthy as you can make it.

So, then.  I give you the same advice that was given to me.  Revere your lovely and delicious body and aim it in the same direction as your mind and power, with all your might.  Next time, I'll talk more about the application of all this to seership.

Blessed Be Thou

[1]  http://hermetic.com/crowley/little-essays-towards-truth/chastity.html

Preparatio

By now, most of you have read RO’s description of the technology behind the rites we do, broken down into planning, preparatory, conjuration, communication and dismissal pieces.  If you need a reminder, here's the address of his post: http://headforred.blogspot.com/2013/04/working-with-seer-tech-basics.html.  The planning stage obviously involves us both, normally at similar levels of effort.  However, while the conjuror’s preparatory actions are pretty simple, involving holy water and self-annointing with Abramelin oil, my activities here are usually pretty substantial.

My ordinary reality is very linear.  My mind is also pretty linear.  Therefore, before I try to do any trance work, I have to spend a little time getting non-linear.  What I mean specifically by this is that  before I fall into the “seeing” state, the edges of reality have to soften a little, helping to minimize the constant  judgment of things that float through my mind and senses.

Those of you who have done astral and trance work will immediately recognize that when the phrase “this isn’t real” goes through your mind, it’s hard to get back on track. Sometimes, after this sensation, it’s all over.  Therefore the preparations are meant to quiet that part of your mind just a little bit.  It’s a totally new way to control your mind and sense of reality, but at its basis, it is self control.  It's self control without any rigid tie to your mundane expectations about how things work.

Recognizing that my mind is intimately associated with my physical being, much of what I’m about to say involves full relaxation of various body parts.  The muscles in my sacral spine, hips and butt are tightly linked to my emotional state, use of imagination and ability to go into trance.  Tension in this region can actually be interpreted as light anxiety, if I am not paying attention.  I have spoken to a handful of people about this, and full relaxation of this part of their bodies leads to an open feeling, one tinged with gratitude. 

I generally do this exercise in a warm bath that has been consecrated to the purpose with hyssop (either tea or oil) and salts.  When I have them, I put in about a cup each of table salt, baking soda and Epsom salts.  Often, I darken the bathroom, using only candles of appropriate ritual colors as illumination.  When every muscle between the bottom of my rib cage and my knees is completely empty of tension, I move to the next step.

Once I am feeling “open,” I want to fill myself with a feeling of the sacred.  I have some chants I use to do this, but strangely, one of my favorites is the Te Deum Laudamus from the old red Lutheran hymnal.  I like it because of the way it weaves major and minor keys.  It’s also something I have known for a long time, and it ties the very young religious me to who I am now.  I sing this in the darkness of the bathroom, always nerdily happy with the wonderful acoustics, until I start to talk to the Universe (meaning not to any being in particular) about being clean and open and ready to reach past my ordinary experience.  This part of the preparations varies extensively, is ecstatic and normally ends up with me chanting and singing and talking to myself/ me as creator god until the bath water is cold, which is the only thing that normally ejects me from the bathtub.

At this point, I wrap my wet hair in a white towel, put my robe on and go into the temple, where typically RO is waiting for me.

In one of the following posts, RO and/or I will discuss the next step, the anointing with oils.  This gets into the relationship between conjuror and seer, as we consecrate each other to the Work in the temple.

Be thou blessed.

Seership: One Possible Recipe

I’ll talk more about the spirit-in-the-crystal-ball stuff soon, but this post will be a bit of a personal retrospective about how my seership came to be.  

I had a rough childhood, and probably developed some dissociative tendencies at that time.  That will serve to partially explain why it’s relatively easy to get myself out of the way to permit occupation by gods and angels, which is how this all started for me.  

The witchcraft community that I was part of for many years calls this “aspecting.” However, it didn't start there.  

When I was a kid, I loved church.  I loved to sing, I loved the candles, the high ceiling, the feeling and sense of sacredness.  It seemed natural to me that I was Mary at the Christmas pageant for a couple years running starting when I was about 10 years old.

I present this event in particular because it may have been when I first aspected a deity.  When I played Mary in the children’s Christmas pageant, I WAS Mary.  Mary was in me.  People commented upon the strangeness of the thing.  Looking back, that in itself was sort of weird.  Means that those Lutherans actually could sense the presence of the sacred… Who would’ve thought?

So fast-forward through my years as one of the first female “altar-attendants”, my terrifying visionary experiences in church when I felt guilty about teenage problems, the time the pastor decided that he would save my soul… the end result being my apostasy from all things Christian.

Many years later, I much more purposefully learned how to contain and present the gods in public ritual when I was a priestess in the Reclaiming community.  It came naturally – making my own personality quiet so that something else could enter.  In those early days, I held Erishkegal, Psyche, Hekate, Inanna, and many others.  With some help from my teachers, especially Shen-Tat at Coven of the Witches, I learned how to let myself go AND re-establish myself when I was finished.  The last time I aspected publicly was at a pagan festival near Denver, where I was filled by Quakoralina, the Faery Star Goddess.

Often, when aspecting is done in wiccan/pagan/faery ceremony, the deity/spirit who is to be housed in the witch performing the aspecting is subject to an invitation by other celebrants (typical those who are organizing the ceremony).  The idea is for the aspecting individual to open themselves to the deity in the safety of sacred space, moderated by others who are monitoring the process.  

The personality of the individual is quieted during this operation, such that the deity can participate in the rite or even address the celebrants.  It perhaps a form of hypnotism.  This is analogous in many ways to being “ridden” in Voudou.  In many cases when I was performing this purpose in ritual, I literally have no recollection of what transpired, emphasizing the point that moderators are very important.

All this is different from seership, where the personality of the seer must be close enough to the surface to be able to utilize the senses (both physical and astral) to sense and interpret the message of the disincarnate being called in the rite.  There are important things in common, however:  a safe environment is required, the “personality” and body must be relaxed in such a way that sensual data can be used to feel the presence of a non-corporeal entity.  Interestingly, many of the basic preparations for the two things are the same, and that is what I’ll address in the next post.

Be thou blessed.

["Cleopatra" J.W. Waterhouse]

Allergy symptoms and spirit manifestation?

The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for me to discuss my adventures in spirit, of course. The historical background is important to me, to create context, to present technology the way that some other people have utilized it. Ultimately, though, the creation of a link between whatever spirit is and my consciousness is a pretty personal matter. Whenever I am talking about that, it's all me. I want to describe my experiences in a way that I hope will arouse interest in doing this kind of work, and also in a manner that will facilitate others' entrance into it. With all that in mind, here we go.

I awakened this morning with allergy symptoms. I have recently moved to the Florida panhandle, and having grown up in a place with different flora, as well as much less humidity, amount of pollen in the air is a completely new thing. I have gone from the person who says "nope, I'm not allergic to anything" to "pass the Benadryl."

I bring this up because the physical state brought on by the allergies is not dissimilar to what I feel when am acting as a seer. My head feels a little bit of pressure, my neck and upper back are wearing some tension. I feel isolated and insulated in my body. There are times when I experience a ringing in my ears. All of these factors come together to amplify any sensory experience that occurs during the rite. This is important because a significant amount of the "raw data" I acquire during the rite is actually neither visual nor auditory.

The issue of physical state when opening oneself up to what might be sensed only by being very quiet of mind and additionally very still of body will be discussed (probably ad nauseum) whilst I'm describing my role in the current rites that RO and I are doing. We're going to be doing tag-team discussions about the relationship between seer and conjuror in the near future, and much about how this all seems to work will be illuminated.

This will all begin in the next few days with (from my side) a discussion of how seership differs from "aspecting" and how my personal past has contributed to my occult abilities, preparations that I follow prior to mediumship, leading up to my actual experiences during the rites. RO will be writing about topics that more or less mirror these, but I'll leave that for him to expose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the game is afoot.