Data comparison, occultist style

Last week, fellow occultist Brother MS honored me with a request to take part in a double blind experiment, the conjuration of a spirit he had recently encountered.  He sent me the sigil (below) and a brief description, and asked that I report back on my findings.

Daisos' sigil

The spirit was initially encountered during some Jupiter work during which Fr. MS asked Jove to send him a spirit to help him with his concerns, particularly in regards to managing finances and obtaining wealth. MS provided the following description of his experience: “As soon as he had asked, he sat up straight as though in trance and had a vision of the sigil and following it, a small putto appeared wearing a dalmatic and stole, carrying a spade and sliver of a lightning bolt. Around him, in Greek letters, appeared his name: Daisos (Δαισος).”  A short conversation ensued between MS and Daisos, and the day after, MS received a small loan and then later, came into a larger sum of money that enabled him to pay off some debts.  Daisos seemed to him like a good character to know, and few days later, RO and I got to work, amusingly enough, without firstly looking up the definition for the word “putto”.

Daisos was conjured using a modified Trithemian rite and Tzadqiel as an intermediary, in honor of the Jupiterian nature of his initial arrival.  I felt him first of all as a burst of heat.  We asked after his nature, and he was a little confused.  He settled on something like "catalysis that brings expansion" and "quickening," such as when a plant germinates.  As to appearance, he "rode" me more than I saw him, but both RO and I saw a triangular image in the crystal, a little foxy.  RO had the initial impression that Daisos was a terrestrial spirit of air.  The spirit said that he was more comfortable with plants than people or animals. Our experience was that of an agricultural/botanical spirit.  The spirit even made reference to the three blue-purple morning glories that were on the altar in honor of Jupiter.

Further, he didn’t seem explicitly masculine, although he did have an expansive feel about him.  Indeed, he had a strong childlike quality about him: RO asked him what his favorite flavor was.

He didn't understand this question at all, and began (as a way to sideline the question almost) talking about how things smell.  I interpreted it as a Shinto nature spirit type of entity.

Daisos had words explicitly directed to MS: "needs to have heat to bring wealth, the heat that quickens" and he showed me a seed.

MS's drawing of Daisos

Following the conjuration, we spoke with MS.  The amount of agreement between our experiences was quite remarkable.  He agreed that Daisos was very ruddy - that was his first impression.  MS stated with respect to the first contact  “it wasn't so much seeing but there was a heat and then a more concrete image of the putto.”  MS showed us an image of Daisos that he had drawn, below, in which the spirit is similar to a winged cherub.  When the three of us were talking about the experience, I had to confess that I hadn’t known ahead of time what a putto was.  MS described a putto: “They're nature spirits. Usually called 'cherubs' but that's another thing. They are basically classic, Romano-Hellenic angels.”

MS felt as though we had achieved a very good confirmation of the basic nature of Daisos.  We both felt the heat, the agricultural/botanic nature of the spirit, as witnessed first by the little shovel.  The mention of the seed appealed very much to MS, as he often works with plant spirits.  The image of the seed had been appearing recently in dreams, additionally.  He confirmed the innocent of the spirit, “He's very childlike in my interactions.”

It was an amazing experience, and has built a little confidence into my practice.  I’ll be looking for further comparison work like this.  Thanks to Brother MS, to RO and, naturally, to Daisos!

MS may well tell this story from his side in his blog, The Digital Enchiridion: http://michaelseblux.wordpress.com/

"Psychic"?

Someone gave me a hard time last weekend about having claimed to be psychic.  Besides mild irritation, because I have not (nor would I) ever declared myself "psychic," this denunciation brought up some thoughts that I thought I would share.

I began this blog with the thought that if I, a very linear and logical person, could develop a seer's capacity, then probably most people could do the same.  The blog itself is actually an exploration into concrete aspects of the practice.  

There, I've said it.  It's a PRACTICE.  

We live in a cold and rational world, and people in general try to restrict themselves to that sort of "thinking" way of being.  However, that is by no means the only technology with which to experience the world.  A useful comparison might be that of the very small range of electromagnetic radiation that can be directly experienced by the human eye (370 to 780 nm or so) compared with the whole of the known EM spectrum, from gamma rays to radio waves.  It goes without saying that humans can readily see the visible spectrum easily, but the remainder of all radiation can be detected using sensors to relay the information to the eyes and then to the mind.  Therefore, we can "sense" the entire EM spectrum, if we have the right technology.

Seership is something like that.  Want to open yourself to different realms?  The mystical realms are yours to explore.  There are the ways that take less effort, such as entheogens and alcohol.  There are physical ways, like exercise and sex.  There are ways that have been documented by mystics throughout time, such as trance and prayer.  It is very passive and receptive, and there is great work sometimes involved in the act of removing oneself from the path of information.  A rough paraphrase from a  Meister Eckhart text: "One must agree to the flow, as it rushes forth from the unmanifest, and be buoyant enough to keep up with its unfolding. Nothing can snag or delay the person awakened to the simple matter of rising to this life.  The repetition of seeing involves living life as a seer who is purified by the seeing."

I bet that Eckhart was not directly discussing the issue of seers and spirits, yet for me, his description is very pertinent.  I cannot say whether or not my experiences agree with those of other workers, as I haven't been doing this for very long, but as I develop the opportunity to perform these comparisons, you'd better believe I'll write about them.  Even if the comparisons don't seem to match, because...well, I never claimed to be psychic, but I do claim to be a experimentalist. One that documents the events.

Emotional Content in Scrying

Last night, it being Thursday, RO and I were doing our weekly Jupiter ritual.  This began  in a way similar to the Taphthartharath conjuration that I described recently, although it was a good deal more formal.  We donned suits, we had whiskey on hand, we worked to Mozart’s Requiem.  Like nearly every working we do, we started with the Invocation to First Father, we spoke the words from the Stele of Jeu (Invocation of the Headless God), we consecrated the crystal and incense.  As I sat in readiness, RO conjured the archangel of Jupiter, Tzadqiel and read the Orphic hymn to Jove.

 

RO spoke to Tzadqiel of G4J as a community, who liked this very much.  A graceful dancer appeared in the crystal, along with the heavy and electric atmosphere that we often feel.  T, who felt particularly feminine, provided me the vision of the members of the community as ballet dancers on a stage, each a perfect diamond unto themselves, but also trying to establish choreography, an organization.  A rush of love came at this point, indicating the depth of T’s regard for us all who are using the forces of Jupiter to better themselves and the world.  I wept with happiness, overwhelmed with the intensity of this feeling.  T. asked RO at least once to speak more about the Gents.

This is the first time that my seer experience has been so dominated by an emotion.  I truly felt love the way I did at church when I was a child, and not since.  I continued to weep throughout the remainder of the rite.

Still weeping, I leaned over to touch one of the cats, who had been present since the Invocation of the Headless God, purring incessantly.  As I did, an electrical and incredibly pleasurable feeling came over me.  T. whispered "what a gift it was to be incarnated."  Ah.....

Blessed be thou.

"A Fragment of Underdone Potato..."- Physical contact with conjured spirits, or not?

In the last blog post, I described my first experience where there seemed to be a physical contact with a spirit, the spirit of Mercury, Taphthartharath.  I was slightly surprised by the intensity of the experience, and reported to be glad to be a little more protected during this conjuration than in some others.  After I published this description, there was a comment made to RO on Facebook indicating the authoress thought I might have been in some danger during the rite.  While that is not impossible, I would say that it wasn’t likely.  Recall that the spirit was summoned into a crystal situated on a table of practice, which is to say inside a circle of angels and inside the traditional triangle.

I appreciated the comment very much, though, because it shows that the person who wrote the remark actually experienced something of the surprising intensity of the event.  It was indeed a disturbing sort of episode.  However, I may actually not have described well that while I experienced the spirit physically with my skin and eyes, that I did not believe that he was in actual physical contact with my body.  And, intense though it was, I don’t believe it was dangerous, or even odd.  For me, spirit conjuration always has at least some degree of body-sensory inclusion to it, and I don’t believe those experiences to have been damaging.   The experiences described in this blog notwithstanding, I have a normal existence that includes healthy human relationships, adequate self-care and a paycheck.

Besides the larger question of whether spirits have reality external to us or not (i.e. is he “a plot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato” or not, with apologies to Charles Dickens), it’s not necessary for any person or being to touch me for me to have an experience of them.  In some ways, the simple version of this statement is “my eye doesn’t need to touch the crystal to see what’s inside the crystal.”  Just as when one is focused, one can sense heat from another person’s body, I don’t see any reason why this can’t be a sort of amplified version of the sensation you get when someone is watching you. I say amplified because it occurred in a ritual scenario when all of my senses had been turned up to 11.

Another source of the “feelings” could also be that during ritual data initially received as visual gets funneled through the imagination and can emerge as other sensory  information.  This leads to such observations as “T. is slimy, dark and metallic,” which I wrote in my magickal diary after the event was over.  This sort of data handling synesthesia could be used to explain much of spirit manifestation, including the descriptions of the Aethyrs and the catalog of spirits in Lemegeton’s Goetia, I believe.

Blessed Be Thou

Photo by "freewallpapers.com."  Swipe if you wish.

Staying close to the door...

Last night was the first time that I was actually "touched" by a spirit.

R.O. and I conjured Taphthartharath to do some material manifestation work.  Because we were making a talisman, I didn’t have time to fully prepare myself optimally for the experience.  I took a hasty bath in complete darkness and tied my wet hair up in a white bar towel.  We prepared the temple, carried in a shot of bourbon to share with the spirits, and began.  As we began the rite, I became aware of a smell.  It was an unpleasant yeasty smell, and I immediately ascribed it to the towel I had used to put my hair in.  We purified one another with hyssop oil and then I took the towel off to put on my phylactery (a headband embroidered with the words ΑΟΘ ΑΒΡΑΟΘ ΒΑΣΙΜ ΙΣΑΚ ΣΑΒΑΟΘ ΙΑΟ).  The smell vanished with the towel and was at that point replaced by the smell of the modified Abramelin oil we used to trace the beneficial sign on one another’s foreheads.

The usual Goetic precautions were taken to prevent any misadventures with T, and then we summoned him into the crystal.  I could see hints of him in the crystal, and got the usual feeling of thickness in my shoulders that I associate with the presence of a spirit, but I also immediately got the sensation of his hands.  They were chill, lizard-like and very large.  I had the impression that they were black or gray in color and metallic, although this was not visually acquired data.  Even whilst in the trance, I was grateful that I was not as open as I sometimes get for this particular rite.

It's worth noting here that my experience does not necessarily mean that the spirit was not fully contained by the circle and triangle on the Table of Practice.  As many people "see" the spirits in the crystal, part of my interpretation of information coming out of the crystal seems to involve senses other than sight.  Not probably very strange, but intense, to be sure.

We had a fruitful and interesting conversation with T, which I will not document here.  His hands were on or near me during much of the rite, and I stayed very close to the surface (i.e. normal consciousness) so that I could easily escape them if they became too frightening or intrusive.  There was a lasciviousness to the experience that was a real first for me.

At the end of the rite, we snuffed the candles and turned the lights on.  The white candles we used had melted dark gray wax that had dribbled down their sides.  The towel had a smell certainly, but it was not the strange unhealthy yeasty smell that it possessed as the rite began.  Lastly, the remainder of the bourbon left for the spirits had developed a white cloudy precipitate.

Brrrr.

Be thou blessed.

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.