The Work of the Hierophant - The Foolishness of the Neophyte

Last week I read Josephine McCarthy’s ‘The Work of the Hierophant’. The book explains in great detail how to set up and run a magical lodge. A lodge that is well connected to the inner realms and balanced by the two currents of divine and chthonic energies emerging from the veil beyond and the depths within the Abyss. 

...enter the adventure here.

I guess there aren't many books out there who go on to explain this process in such clarity and transparency, step by step, chapter by chapter? To be honest, I actually don't think there is any other book out there that even touches on what happens in the inner realms when forming or re-awakening a magical lodge with such a precision? And this is what makes this book exactly the type of literature you want to keep away from magicians who are still inexperienced in working actively in the inner realms. Magicians who still life their lives according to the simple principle of 'stay hungry, stay foolish'. Magicians who believe that nothing bad can happen to them as long as they remain curious, full of positive intent and empowered by their love for all things living... That's right: magicians like me.  

If you don't, though, and hand this book over to magicians who are really Neophytes of the Inner Realms a couple of interesting things will happen. Well to be frank, more accurately we can call these events for what they really are: painful mistakes. Here are few that happened to me...

First mistake: I guess we all have come across books that feel so real while reading them that we actually think we are doing the work described while swallowing the words that describe it. Big mistake. We are not doing the work until we do it. At some point we all have to learn that there is a painfully real difference between inspiration and skill, between commitment and competence.

Holding a great book in our hands that takes our mind on a journey hidden in its pages can easily blur the line between experience and imagination. It might evoke the impression as if the work described in it is taking place in this very moment. I guess this is the natural effect all movies and novels feed off? Yet it is clearly not real: Imaging the inner realms is different from acting in them. It's different like the echo from the spoken word, like the living form from the image in a mirror, like the pleasure of a fire-side story from the fear of the present moment. An experienced crime-novel reader doesn't make a good detective necessarily. 

Many before me have called this the difference between an armchair-magician and the price of real field studies... But let's consider this: When encountering a book like Josephine's we can utterly enjoy it as magical theory only. We can enjoy it as what it is: stories of other people's experiences handed on to us. We don't need to strive to make these our experiences. Unless we want to - and unless we are ready to pay the price. If you read the 'Bourne Identity' as a recipe for a successful life it's pretty clear what you will get. If you read a book like Josephine's as instructions for your own magical practice the road ahead is equally open and clear... it will take a toll.

What I am trying to say is - 'The Work of the Hierophant' shows us a hidden path through the maze of how to set up and run a magical lodge in the inner realms, how to build the astral fundament, the chapels and altars of the inner temple, how to form the vessel of the egregore and how to use angelic beings to construct forms and shapes that are both living and sheltering life. I guess many of us have searched for this knowledge for a long time... Yet, the fact that fate opened the window shutter to a forbidden room doesn't mean we are ready to open its door and walk right in. We always have a choice.

Second mistake: Let's assume the above was unknown to a magician like yours truly. What's next? Well, if you don't get the difference between commitment and competence you will assume that the love for riding a bike will make you instantly able to do so. Unfortunately working in the inner realms isn't exactly like riding a bike. Or maybe it is? But it kind of hurts more if you fall...

Having read through two thirds of the book I sat down and went into the inner realms. If Josephine's instruction kit on how to create temples on the inner realms really worked there must be plenty of temples around to visit? That's right - I had visited the physical remains of the ancient temples in Greece, Turkey, Persia and the Roman Empire. Why not visit what was left of their astral power-houses on the other side? So I set out and roamed through the desert that stretches between the Abyss and the River of Death. After a while I found a temple buried under sand. Only a small entrance at the very top had remained open - and I jumped right in.

What I found underneath during two subsequent visits was impressive. Huge dark halls arranged around a central eight-sided pyramid, containers of energy that glistened like gold, shining surfaces that were covered in moving sigils, walls that were build from a strange organic substance and a 'discussion hall' that contained an oversized harp which could be played by moving your body through it... Until I evoked the temple guardian and he kicked me out.

Some of you might have read my earlier post about the first journey to the city of the ziggurat? The story where I take over the body of one of my ancestors and just possess her? Well, I am getting familiar to the fact my manners in the astral realm aren't what they should be. They actually really suck.

Being thrown out by the temple guardian was a strange thing to experience. First of all I had never encountered any being so huge like this one. The difference between theory and practice, between inspiration and skill became painfully real at this point. He grabbed my astral form - I was shielded by the body of my angel - and in a blast of energy blew me out of the central tunnel through which I had accessed the temple. For a moment I was dancing on top of the beam of energy, like a drop on top of a fountain of water...

It was only later that day the tides turned and the related emotions were released into my body, like ice melting into water... I was laying in bed for hours that night, looking at strange visions behind closed eyes, painfully nervous for no obvious reason. The force of the energy blast had remained with me and now took its toll on my nerves: all my inner senses were irritated and tried to shield themselves against a thread that had long withdrawn into the depth of the temple under the sand. And quite successfully the guardian ensured that I wouldn't return and disturb the silence of the temple and shining walls and the instrument that played melodies on being touched by light... You wouldn't want to share such a space with strangers, would you?

Third mistake: As all of this has happened quite recently only I cannot give you much more at this point. Except for one thing that dawned on me when I got up this morning. Once you have opened the door and failed, once you have fallen off your bike and bruised your knees, the only reasonable thing to do is to get back on your bike right away. Well, maybe to get some more help first and then get back on your bike... 

Having run into two obvious mistakes after reading Josephine's wonderful book I still have a chance to avoid this third one: Assuming that the difference between commitment and competence can be closed in a single attempt. Cause here is what will hold true always - wether we work on the inner realms, try to learn how to ride a bike or build a romantic relationship that actually lasts: the difference between inspiration and skill is called 'try again'. The only thing that lies between a magician and a fool is time as well as the continuous courage to keep on learning...

Once I heard someone express exactly this in a wonderful sentence about what he called 'development courage'. I looked it up again and here it is... Isn't it wonderful how the same rules apply wether we roam the outer or inner realms? If we manage not to be afraid of our own fears, if we only manage not to be afraid to lose, to change and to transition life will be such a wonderful journey.

"Someone with Developmental Courage values learning more than comfort. That means they are willing to risk public failure, deep frustration, and the repeated hopelessness of being at wit’s end all in the name of building new skills, awareness and knowledge."

The Spirit Contact Cycle - or what makes magic an 'Afterwissenschaft'

I guess reading this blog entry will take you about 10 min give or take. That is enough to hear this wonderful tune at least twice in the background if you like... At the end of the day wonderful Mrs Feist and I are saying just the same. She obviously in much nicer words. 

::

The Spirit Contact Cycle originally came to life as a model to illustrate how humans engage with each other and their environment in the 1970s. Its core value lies in the fact that it describes all conscious and subconscious stages that need to be passed through in order to create vibrant and satisfying contact. Derived from that it also was a great model to explain all sort of things that can - and tend to - go wrong while we pass through these stages... Since its creation by Zinker in the 1970s it thus became one of the key models in Gestalt Therapy - and this is also where I got to know it from. 

Click here for the full article on
'The Spirit Contact Cycle'

But why do I share this here - or went through the work to write in length about it on myoccultcircle.com? Well, this has two reasons essentially. One personal and one, well how do call it best?, maybe epistemological... 

As I know this will be easier let's start with the latter: Ludwig Blau in his seminal work on ancient Jewish magic "Jüdisches Zauberwesen" (1898) used the term 'Afterwissenschaft' (anus-science) to refer to magic and sorcery in a highly derogative way. Wether we like it or not, he probably had a point there? What Blau criticized with this term were two ideas mainly: 

• First of all it was the fact that the fundamental approach of magic is to create connection between ideas and objects by use of 'sympathetic means', i.e. analogies and correspondences. As the identification of these analogies doesn't follow any scientific standards (but mythical and spiritual principles at best) it is a deeply flawed approach from a scientific perspective.
• Secondly, since it very early days magic has the tendency to absorb and amalgamate ideas, practices and artifacts from various cultures, times and fields of study into their very much bastard-born approaches. While this might be considered the pinnacle of pragmatism it also needs to be considered highly unscientific again. 

It was in light of these points that Blau - and many other scholars after him - termed magic an 'Afterwissenschaft'. Well, let's call that fair enough. Because the real point is that no practicing magician would argue against that. Call it whatever you want - being agnostic about where things come from and focussing on the results they can produce together - that sounds like an awful good approach to me? Tearing down the paper-walls between school of thoughts and paradigms, sciences and arts as well as ancient cultures and today's spiritual practices might create a mess in your living room. It might look like a bomb exploded or a your children had another party in your favorite study room. Yet it keeps everyone involved from becoming anal - and it would have never born the poisonous idea of 'purity' of concepts, school of thoughts and races ultimately... 

So what does that have to do with the Spirit Contact Cycle? Well, this model is exactly the type of bastard that has always earned the scorn of anal scholars and scientists alike: It's mother Gestalt Therapy, it's father a Ritual Magician. They met at night and lay on a bed of grass when the child was conceived; and a few months later it was born behind a barn in the fields. The mother was horrified by its look - so much not like her - turned away and left it alone. The father was never to be seen, busily working in the barn that he had converted into a temple, no time for his former lover or any offsprings... So let's find a home for this little thing and bring it back to where it belongs: right in the middle between humans and spirits.

I also mentioned there was a personal reason to share this lovely bastard child of my two favorite passions. This reason, however, is not so lovely after all.

When I first learned about the Contact Cycle in a Gestalt context I learned that every contact starts with becoming aware of an unconscious sensual impulse. This can be as simple as realizing that we actually are hungry, angry, sad, tired - anything - before this impulse builds up unconsciously and erupts in uncontrolled emotions or actions. The starting point and fundament for any healthy contact - I learned - was to be open, sensitive and aware to what is going on within us right now. Not to what we think or want to go on, but what is actually happening in our bodies, hearts and minds without our conscious interference right now...

It immediately dawned on me that I had spent the better part of the last decade to develop the magical equivalent of this ability: the skill to become more sensitive and aware to the things that were going on in the inner or astral realms around me. Like many of us I had spent years practicing asanas, meditations, trataka exercises, rituals and kabbalistic prayers - all aimed to increase my spiritual awareness and ability to determine what was going on around me in the invisible realm right now.

Over these years I had made some progress. While I clearly didn't land where I had hoped to - or where Bardon and alike suggested I should land - after more than 10 years I could now at least hear spirits when they were standing right in front of me screaming at me in full voice. I could also feel a slight itching when they slapped me in the face or - more appropriately - a growling nervousness in my stomach when they kicked me in the guts for weeks. So after all the spirits and I were in contact and started to have nice conversations. 'Nice' in the sense of a Caspar Hauser-like idiot stepping out into the sunlight for the very first time and inviting the first run-down pedophile he met on the streets for an afternoon tea... Not very smart but at least unafraid to get hurt.

That part, however, was the part I was okay with. What was not okay with me was when I realized that I had spent all these years training my astral senses to become more subtle and aware. But in doing so I had completely fucked up my physical senses to become better trained in things that happened around me on a plain social level...

While I considered myself a Neophyte at training my astral senses I had run into the completely wrong direction on a physical level for years. On an interpersonal level I wasn't in the vestibule of the temple, I was in a completely different part of the city! 

To be quite honest, this painful insight only dawned on my during recent weeks. Only then did I realize how often I get defensive or aggressive still in front of loved ones. Not because they or the conversations deserve it, but because I don't take care of myself well enough. And the reason why I don't is simply because I haven't learned how to do it... being so occupied with magic, rituals and astral ascension didn't leave me enough time to realize when I am hungry, sad, tired or simply incredibly exhausted.

This is clearly not the person, not the lover or magician I set out to become. And it was the Spirit Contact Cycle that helped me realize this truth. 

This is why I have written and am sharing this article with you. To share what has and is helping me and hopefully to contribute another little bit of waste to our wonderful 'Afterwissenschaft'.

::

What a wonderful life - when we have both musicians and spirits accompanying us, always finding the right words for what we are trying to say...

Secret heart

What are you made of

What are you so afraid of

Could it be

Three simple words

Or the fear of being overheard

What's wrong

Let em' in on your secret heart

Secret Heart

Why so mysterious

Why so sacred

Why so serious

Maybe you're

Just acting tough

Maybe you're just not man enough

What's wrong

Let em' in on your secret heart

This very secret

That you're trying to conceal

Is the very same one

That You're dying to reveal

Go tell them how you feel

Secret heart come out and share it

This loneliness, few can bear it

Could it have something to do with

Admitting that you just can't go through it alone?

Let em' in on your secret heart

This very secret

That you're trying to conceal

Is the very same one

That you're dying to reveal

Go tell them how you feel

This very secret heart

Go out and share it

This very secret heart

Feist - Secret Hearts

Allowing magic to do its magic - or learning through absence

These days I am still learning a lot of lessons on the nature of Tiphareth and the Olympic Spirit of Och (Sun). After conducting the Arbatel Ritual for Och in July I shared some thoughts on the direct aftermaths in a post back in August. Overall it has been three months now during which I have been working through the impact of that single rite - emotionally, mentally and on the material realm. 

As I am getting closer to integrating the forces of Tiphareth into my daily life and setting out to prepare for the next Arbatel Ritual I want to share something that turned out to be a major learning while going through this experience.

It's an insight into how the spirits or planetary forces I engage with teach me about their actual nature and mode of action. Maybe this is just the way it works for me or maybe it is something that turns out to be helpful in your own practice? Either way, the question is: If we look at live outside of our temples what is nature's way to integrate new spiritual forces into our life and consciousness?

Here are the two cents experience taught me: a new and yet unconscious force is best taught through experiencing its opposite. That means the modus operandi of any force we haven't come to consciously recognize yet is best taught by its complete absence. 

Only when we are hungry do we understand the essential nature of food. And once we are lonely and isolated, we immediately understand the nature of companionship and partnership. Many of us only when they are at war do understand the value of peace. And only once our spouse has left us for good do we recognize the true value and beauty of the relationship we have lost... 

A spirit teacher I found on a wall in
East London (early 2011)

The same principle applies in magic: if we ask to be taught a certain force or create relationship with a spirit being our journey might kick off at the exact opposite end. This opposing experience creates a void of the force we aimed to relate to - and it is this void that is realized by our conscious. It is the void that teaches us about the space and function this force normally holds in our lives. By taking away what we take for granted we dissolve the blind spot and gain consciousness.

Here is the thing: grey isn't a good teacher to understand the dynamics of light. We need a high contrast of dark against light to truly understand the dimension and dynamics of these polar forces.

It was in this way that I got to learn about the forces of Hagith (Venus): I was taught the value of life by the experience of illness. The ability to share love as long as we are sustained by the spring of our physical health was taught to me by drying up this well and showing me how fickle the fundament of my love had been built...

The same principle applied over recent months during my OCH experience: Once you take away any direction or goals in your life all rush and urge to control subsides. What emerged initially was a deeply felt fear of being lost and at the end of my magical tether (i.e. the opposite experience of what people would call Sun-related forces).

Once I had given this force room for contact and experience, however, what followed was hubris. From one end of the dimension I was lured to the other: moments of grandiosity. Thoughts that once the winds returned I could set my sails completely anew and travel anywhere I wanted, set and achieve any goals I chose freely... (i.e. experience of the force what people would call Sun-related forces, yet still imbalanced or distorted by my Ego).

It took me a couple of weeks to allow these thoughts to pass through me. I needed to accept them, yet not to identify with them. The only way to do this was not trying to control them, but to welcome them like passing boats on a river, like birds visiting a dovecote or foreign animals passing through the forest of my mind... Non-idenfitifcation.

After a while a third stage followed. This was when I understood that it is not me at all who sets any goals - neither in life nor in magic. That on entering the Sun, on stepping into the burning fire of continuously new born life I had turned myself into a mean through which forces higher than myself could work. That entering the centre of life hadn't come with more or a new direction of power, but with a request to me for complete service.

So here I am - deeply humbled by the experience and still stupid but a bit smarter than before. I now know that unfamiliar forces are taught to us by use of their opposites. And I know how much time, patience and openness it takes to move from initial contact to full integration. It's the journey of a lifetime.

On a final note, I found that my old passion for syncretism was rewarded once again. By not caring about how useful resources had come to me - through friends, books, Gestalt, magic, work or any other open source - I had found a wonderful crutch to support my little brain in understanding what was actually going on with me...

Take a look at the picture below and take a moment to follow the sequence of steps. What you see is a slightly amended form of Zinker's Contact Cycle. It shows a wonderful model to help us understand how we move from initial sensation to contact and finally integration. While this model had been developed as part of Gestalt Therapy it completely reflects the experience we go through when engaging with and getting to know new spiritual entities.

Life simply doesn't care wether we go through an encounter with our neighbor next door, with an ancestor from a previous life or with an entitiy high up or low the eternal chain beings. Every encounter is an invitation to adventure.

The Gestalt Contact Cycle from Zinker (adopted). Apologies for the
low resolution of the picture. I am working on a full article on this
model to be published on www.myocculticircle.com.
Thank for your patience.

How to enter your Inner Realm - or 3 exercises on elastic awareness

In evocation magic we strive for conscious contact with specific spirits. Sometimes this happens through visible appearance. Other times we allow the spirit to chose the best way to manifest - may it be in our inner realm, in dreams, in inner sight, etc. However, I guess we'll all agree an unsuccessful rite is a rite without any conscious contact.

In my recent posts on Ancestral Magic I shared some adventures I encountered while exploring a type of magical contact that's new for me. To embark on such a journey the magician needs two keys mainly: 

1. A technique to enter into the inner realm and access the stream of ancestral consciousness and
2. the ability to maintain what I call an 'elastic awareness' that maintains an unintentional and open state of consciousness.

Josephine hands over a great key for the first point in her Void exercise. However, it is the second point that will make your journey through the void a successful spirit encounter or just plain daydreaming. So it seems there is something to be said about how we use awareness in magic - may it be in rituals or in expeditions into the inner realms? 

Funny enough, the best teacher on it I found so far is Fritz Perls. This man certainly knew a lot about contact, awareness and how to bring these two together in order to travel to places we haven't known before. Perls didn't apply his techniques he created to magic or any type of spirit communion - but to commune with ourselves. 

So let's take a brief look at contact and awareness in Perl's own words: 

"It emerged that we had to shift the concern of psychiatry from the fetish of the unknown, from the adoration of the 'unconscious', to the problems and phenomenology of awareness: what factors operate in awareness, and how do faculties which can operate successfully only in the state of awareness lose this property?" (Perls, Gestalt Therapy, p.15)

"Contact as such is possible without awareness, but for awareness contact is indispensable. The crucial question is: with what is one in contact? The spectator of a modern painting may believe that he is in contact with the picture while he is actually in contact with the art critic of his favorite journal." (Perls, p.15)

"In the struggle for survival the most relevant need becomes figure (or better: Gestalt - ed. Acher) and organizes the behavior of an individual until this need is satisfied, whereupon it recedes into the background (temporary balance) and makes room for the next now most important need. In the healthy organism this change of dominance has the best survival chance. In our society such dominant needs, for example, morals, etc., often become chronic and interfere with the subtle self-regulating of the human organism." (Perls, p.18)

Well, sounds like a lot of psycho-bullshit? I guess Perls would agree pretty much. So let's give it a try and turn it into practical experience...

Step 1:

As you are reading these lines become aware with what you are in contact already. Scan through your bodily emotions while reading this. What does your stomach tell you? What contacts are your legs and feet picking up? Read this with minimal brain activity and allow your conscious to meander through your body... Can you feel your blood rushing underneath your skin? What type of awareness is present in your chest? What type of awareness is in your mind? 

Perls said: contact can happen without awareness but never the other way around. The first step in exploring our Inner Realm is to create what I called an elastic awareness. An awareness that rather than pursuing it's own intent and direction is open to be approached, to accept and to explore without desire... Our awareness needs to learn to sit still and perceive. Full of contact. Then we will realize how much we have ignored before. And that rather than trying harder, trying not all often can be the key.

Please don't get me wrong - this has nothing to do with replacing your magical strive with a strive for Nirvana. The goal of this exercise is not emptiness, but fullness. It is to perceive and become aware of the richness, the diversity and multitudes of contacts we are engaged in at any moment. This exercise is a fundament in order to be able to listen to the spirits. Because the spirits are talking to us through the contacts in our bodies.

Step 2:

When you are in bed and before your fall asleep create contact with your bodily senses again. Walk through your body, limb by limb and pick up the emotions and sensual impressions that are already there. Don't try to create any contacts. Just allow your awareness to flow through your body and discover the things that are present already... Once you have explored your entire body allow your conscious to rest and come to a halt in your chest area. Now all impression merge into a single vibrant perception of your bodily field of contact. Full presence. You feel the energy in your body, undistinguished from your conscious. 

Did I first listen to this song or
first think of this post? Does it matter?

Then slowly expand your field of awareness beyond your bodily borders. Allow your senses to expand beyond your skin... I normally do this by listening to the things around me. The wind on the leaves of a tree through the open window, a passing car, the slow breaths of my dog in the room next door. Whatever ambient sounds there are, just allow your senses to merge with them. Your field of awareness expands. And after a short while you will find it has become a sphere of consciousness, expanding beyond the room you are lying in, into the night, including street lamps, concrete and cars... all contacts presently waiting for my conscious to find them.

Normally I come to pause once the sphere of awareness has grown to roughly 100 feet in diameter. I then rest in the present awareness of all things inside my consciousness now. My body, the body of my wife, the darkness, the body of our dog, the house, the night sky, the streets... It is a wonderful feeling, liberating, without any intent or tension, completely calm. All stress from my workday has disappeared as I myself have vanished. What is left is a glowing sphere of consciousness, allowing the night wind and ambient sounds and wandering cats to pass through it. 

Step 3:

Combine Step 1 and 2 into a single exercise and perform at any moment throughout your normal workday. Make it a habit to discover contacts you were involved in but not aware about. Make it a habit for your senses to expand beyond your body. Feel the grass on the front years behind the window, feel the electric buzz of computers and coffee machines around you, feel the rush of a street car and the energy fields of 40-something people in it passing by... Allow your awareness to become an open system, to become the Linux version of consciousness. 

Once this third step works well for you in random situations you shouldn't have any problems to explore your inner realms. Well, you might have problems at your work place now instead though. Cause sitting in your chair, eyes closed and drooling isn't really the picture of a high performer many bosses have in their mind. But hey - there is a price to be paid for any big achievement!

Let me close this on a final note that connects back to the journeys into my own Ancestral Magic I had shared before...

Last week I was at an airport, tired and exhausted, arriving at night, standing on the escalators and watching the commercials passing by. When suddenly I felt Immar's presence within me. This had never happened before - I hadn't even considered the possibility that Immar might contact me on her own initiative! Yet while I was ascending to the next floor I could clear feel her gaze through my eyes. There was a significant amount of surprise and astonishment going on on her end... Maybe that is how I looked to her when I gazed at the ziggurat? She stayed with me on my entire journey through the belly of the airport. Only when I entered the taxi and spoke to the driver I felt her presence withdraw. Probably because I had left the timeless entrails of the airport, these synthetically lid passages of glass and commercials, of silence and polished floors. A space without any intent except for passing through it. An open system, a passage of time.

When I had entered the taxi my mind had closed again. I started to re-focus on my journey to the hotel, showing the address to the driver, watching passer-bys and starting to think about the day to come...

I learned it early on in my Arbatel Experience and am still so much working to get it right. My angel told me in no ambiguous language: "Everything will be good, as long as you don't have a plan."

::

But when he swam out

in this black void of nothing

he was anxious, but excited

and he didn´t know

he wouldn´t come back

to shore again.

Johnossi - Maverick

Learning the Magic of my Ancestors - part 3

The third trip to the city of clay started from my actual temple. It was a week of vacation, the sun was shining bright and warm outside, I had finished my standard meditation and left the communion with my angel. At this point my mind and body are charged and radiant with energy yet very quiet and peaceful. It's the perfect mindset to continue an exploration into the unknown, ready to accept anything that might come along...

I entered the Void through the flames on the altar before which I was sitting. Their fire burned away all outer shapes and pulled me into the darkness I had come to appreciate so much. After a while of getting acquainted to the emptiness within and around me, I raised my right hand in front of my eyes, used a knife to make a deep cut into my palm and saw the stream of blood emerge... Then I sank backwards, just like the two times before, and allowed the stream to carry me through the Void and out into the desert.

Doreen Valenza: Vision Seekers-Memento Mori-
The Ancestors of the Family speaking to me #3

As the current was carrying me backward I tried to be mindful of the environment and catch glimpses of the shore, the sky and the colors around me. However, all impressions remained blurred and somewhat faint. The only clear sensual impression was my own being in the river, rushing through its waters... I guess traveling through the stream of blood is a journey through time. It makes sense that unless one stops and climbs out of the stream all impressions remain somewhat distant and faint. Otherwise the influx of memories would be huge and completely overwhelming...

Just like on my two previous visits I got caught in a fish trap after a while. The water was pushing me to the back of the trap and rushing past me. Then the trap got pulled out of the river, it was emptied into another basked fixed to the back of a carrier and we set in motion on our way through the desert. This time, however, the basket didn't have a lid and I could see snippets of scenery and the bright sky above as we were walking towards the city. I also remember the walls of the city looked really colorful... 

Maybe I should share some context here? Since the last journey I had received instructions from an inner contact to research on a specific aspect of the magic of the Arabs, Greek and Chaldeans. My studies had pivoted on the magic of the Chaldeans for several weeks now and I had refreshed a lot of my understanding of their cosmology and spirit realm. One of the things I remembered clearly from the studies was the fact that in Chaldean times the ramparts of rich cities were adored with small, colored domes which were attached horizontally to the walls. Maybe it were these domes that were shining brightly in the sun and creating the colorful view of the city we were approaching? Or maybe my imagination and astral perception simply mingled? Either way, it was a stunning sight and I wondered why I had missed it on previous trips to the city?

Then we approached the huge gate. Again I saw the guarding spirit standing on an elevated post in the shadows under the main arch, staring straight in front of him and chattering his teeth. Once we passed through the gate I was surprised to catch a glimpse of my ancestor: She was approaching from the right side of the gate, walked towards the carrier in whose basket I lay and grabbed me right out of it. Nobody seemed to realize her burglary or at least no one complained... Through dusty streets filled with market stalls Immar carried me back to her hut. 

In the small room of her hut Immar puts me down on something she has carved on the floor. I don't get to see it clearly, maybe it is the spirit gate she showed me on my last visit? Then smoke appears and washes over my fish body. Is Immar blowing the smoke over me from a bowl of burning incense? As the smoke covers my body my shape changes and I turn into human form. I am not a naked boy anymore; this time my human form is much closer to my actual shape and age.

Immar is sitting on her bed. I take a seat on the low chair opposite her. Now I can sense her sadness, it's incredibly present and strong. Immar isn't crying yet sitting quietly on the bed of straw. Something inside her seems to be the source of constant pain and grief, but she has become too used to it to complain or cry... I hold out my hand and she puts hers into mine. We sit there quietly for a while holding hands. Now I can feel that it's her heart that's weak.

• Immar: I need water.

I understand that water to drink will not stop her thirst; it's her heart that has run dry. I open my own heart and allow the waters of my heart to stream into hers. Through the physical connection of our hands I can see a rush of energy pouring into her. Immar's shape changes. As my heart-waters start to fill her heart she turns younger. After a while her skin has become firm and radiant again. She looks much better now, yet I know that we haven't cured the source of her sadness yet... There is something else we need to do.

Immar turns over and lays down on her bed. She seems to be very tired. I get up and stand above her. Without knowing the words that I am saying, I am starting to sing. My words, the melody, everything is flowing out of my heart in its own way and form. I try not to control anything. The melody of the song to washes over Immar's tired body... Then I hold out my hands over her heart area. Immar is lying crouched on her right side, eyes closed, her face turned to the dark clay wall in front of her. I don't know if she is still awake or sleeping? Suddenly I can feel the presence of my angel standing behind me in the small room. His presence is strong and bright, his light shines through my body as if I am made of glass. My glass body bundles his rays into my hands and his light is streaming through my palms over Immar's heart...

At this point I have become a tool, a spoke in a process that is much larger than myself. My angel is working through me; I don't have to do anything except for remain calm and present and allow his force to use my body as a channel. I can see his light working on Immar's heart. Then something is extracted from Immar's heart. It leaves a hole and my angel fills it up with a shining force or presence I do not know. Like a wound that is filled with healing herbs Immar's heart is filled with a bright, living light. The presence that has been extracted from her heart is held tightly in a ray of energy next to her heart. Looking back I cannot tell whether it was a dark substance or simply a shadow. I know I remember my first thought: ‘It must be a worm.’ Without having prepared anything in advance I know what to do next.

Beside her bed I can see a small stack of green leaves with a dark paste greased upon them. I take the substance or shadow extracted from Immar's heart, pull it out of her body and put it onto the paste of the leaves. Then I roll up the leaves and lash them up with a cord that had been prepared underneath them. I hold the roll of lashed leaves in my hand; they are filled with a vibrant presence I do not know and don't want to know any better... I step outside of the hut and burn the leaves. Their ashes fall down and I catch them in a small clay pot.

For a short moment I am unsure what to do with the ashes. They are not secure yet, they still carry the imprint of the energy caught in the leaves... I look back into the dark room, Immar’s silhouette on the low bed. A moment later it's completely clear what to do with the ashes. 

I walk out on the street and follow its path to the base of the ziggurat. There, beneath the stairs leading up on the huge building I find large pots of clay that look like immense cauldrons. They are filled with earth. As I come closer and look inside them, I see that it's not earth they are filled with but ashes of multiple shades of grey. I empty the ashes of the leaves into the clay pot. From somewhere I gained a clear understanding of what will happen with them: at certain times priests descend from the temple on top of the ziggurat. They empty the clay pots and carry the ashes to the top of the ziggurat (well, to be precise I guess some slaves will do the carrying for them?). Then they perform rituals over the remains of the ashes, banishing the wicked spirits still caught in them from the city. Planetary beings assist them in these rites.

I walk back to Immar's hut. She is sitting on her bed, looking very happy.

• Immar: What can I give you in return?
• Acher: Can you teach me something about your gods?

She gets up and stands close to me. In her hands I can see an oblate - or maybe it is a coin? Without hesitation I open my mouth and Immar puts the oblate underneath my tongue. I turn around and look outside. The night sky has changed. Or is it really night or simply a different, darkened visions of my eyes? As if painted with broad brushes I can suddenly see the presence and work of the spirits in the city. They are shining like moving rays in the dark; their predominant color is a silver-white-blueish radiance that is moving over the flat roofs of the city, swirling and working on multiple places. There are so many of them? I can see them rise into the night sky and shoot down into the city again. It’s a busy coming and going. I am thinking: ‘There are probably as many spirits as human beings in this city...` Then I turn back to Immar. To my surprise I find that we are shining as well. Our bodies look like complex nettings of irradiating twigs. It's breathtakingly beautiful! I feel like a walking, shining lamp in the astral realm...

Finally we depart and leave Immar’s hut. Above the ziggurat I can now see a huge tower of light raising up into the night sky. The massive building of the ziggurat is dwarfed by the sheer size of this shining, vibrant, living tower of spirit presence. Without understanding any of the techniques or details, my heart immediately gets it: all physical objects in this city are potential interfaces between the material and spirit realm, potential focus points of energies. And the tallest building erected by humans is just the base of a much larger manifestation in the astral realm. One building is built upon the other, interconnected, like Yin and Yan, yet existing in two different realms. Is this the nature of every true temple? I have never seen something like this before.

Then I leave the city without turning back. I return to the river in the desert and flow upwards through its current, back into the darkness of the Void.

A ziggurat (also: ziqqurat) is a type of step-pyramid temple first built by the Sumerians 5,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia, made of sun-dried mud bricks. The peoples of Mesopotamia – the Assyrians and Babylonians continued building ziggurats for thousands of years. (source)

::

These experiences are becoming so intense, so intimate maybe I should stop reporting openly about them? I should ask Immar about her opinion on my next visit... Looking backwards now the most striking thing is the way magical teaching seems to work on the inner realms? It seems to be less verbal, less focussed on speech or writing than we know it from the manifest realm. Immar doesn't show me any books and she doesn't give lectures. She just shares experiences. When I am with her everything is alive, fluid and emerging. Nothing can be fixed and all structure evades in light of the living presence of the experience itself... When it comes to teaching on the inner realms words don't seem to matter that much? When I asked her to teach me about her gods, she didn't tell but she showed me her gods. 

I wish we could achieve a similar state of instantness, of presence and sharing of vision on the material realm... How would a school, a study group or an occult order look like if we were capable of sharing our visions like Immar does? Well, and maybe without drugs? These seem to be an essential ingredient of her magic so far... 

My experiences in the city of clay also raise questions about the Grimoires and forms of written magical tradition for me: How much magic can we actually share and pass on by writing things down? Doesn't the written word kill or at least confine the living spirit? Is it possible to share anything more than just the 'grammar' of a dead language by passing on written knowledge? And how much arduous work is it for all of us to re-create dead languages from dusty books of grammar - rather than traveling to the places where languages are still alive and spoken by living beings?

I'll leave you with one thought that has come back to me repeatedly since my third visit at Immar's hut: Maybe the whole Western Magical Tradition of the past 2000 years has been dominated way too much by men? Maybe it's a predominantly male trait to look for patterns, structure, grammar and everything that can be fixed and pinned down first and foremost? Weren't it male biologists who traveled the world, hunting for unknown species  and drowning them in millions of glasses of pure alcohol? I haven't heard of a lot of woman taking such an approach to exploring the unknown... Maybe it's as simple as that: Less structure and more living. Less science and more art. Less obsession with objectivity. And more experiences in our own inner realms? 

Learning the Magic of my Ancestors - part 2

A few weeks after my first ancestral journey I embarked on the second expedition. Since my return from the city of clay I had been curious to learn more about my ancestor's magic. However, it took a few weeks to integrate all the impulses I had received, to make sense of this new experience and relationship before I felt ready to return and re-engage...

Here is my account of what happened during my second visit. This time I was sitting in the small meditation room up on the first floor of our old house. Incense was raising from the Tibetian skull cup in front of me and filling the room. I had just finished my standard meditation, opened my eyes and looked at the cup of water that I had placed next to the incense... I stared at it for a while, closed my eyes and took its picture with me into the dark. The room and all outside world disappeared as I saw myself standing in the water bowl. Finally I had reached the Void again and enjoyed the quietness, the openness and the vast space stretching out around me in all directions...

It was clear that I had to follow the exact same path again in order to return to my female ancestor. So I cut my hand open and sank backwards into the stream of blood. After some time I emerged from the Void into the burning sun of the desert and allowed the stream to carry me in its current.

Sigil of Immar's spirit gate

as carved on her floor

Before entering on this journey I had drafted somewhat of a strategy on how to better engage with my ancestor. Last time I had taken over her body, not introduced myself and probably violated most unwritten etiquettes of ancestral visits? So this time I needed to do better. My idea was to enter the city in the shape of a fish. That had been the shape I arrived in the fish trap during my first visit and it seemed like a good approach to get through the guarded gates of the city. I would then call on my ancestor and ask her to come to the market and buy me from the fisherman that had brought me there. Once in her home I could take my human form again and we could interact openly and undisturbed from the outside world. 

I was flowing in the bloodstream through the desert, a crazy plan on my mind and no idea of where this would take me... It took much longer than before, yet at some point I found myself caught in a fish trap again. The water was rushing over me and I was stuck in a braided basket. Finally a hand pulled the basket out of the water and emptied it into another, larger basket which was fixed to the back of a man. A lid closed above me and I felt how the man set in motion. I was lying in the shade of the basket in my fish form, waiting for the man to arrive in the city...

After a long travel the lid was opened again. I found myself in a relatively dark room, tamped stairs were leading down into it and all walls as well as the ceiling were made from earth. I had been thrown onto a clay pot full of fish, when suddenly my ancestor was descending over the stairs and picking me up. Without hesitation she wrapped me into a cloth and disappeared again. When I saw the light again we were back in here small hut made from clay.

The loom was still standing to my right. On my left I saw the clay pots on the shelves; in front of me stood a low bed made from straw on which my ancestor was sitting. I am not sure how this happened, but once I looked around in the hut I realized that I had lost my fish form and had taken the shape of a naked young boy. My skin was almost white and I was sitting on a low chair opposite her...

• Acher: What is your name?
• Ancestor: (I am not going to share her full name; let's just call her Immar which I consider to be her first name. Her full name consists of six syllables and four words.)
• Acher: I am the one who comes from far away.
• Immar: Me too.

I don't recall why anymore, but at this point in our conversation I tried to change my shape. Maybe I started to feel uncomfortable being naked in front of her or maybe just being so much younger? I shifted my shape without intention and immediately turned into an old man.

Suddenly Immar was gone. The entire hut had turned empty from one moment to the next; the loom was gone, only some broken clay pots were left on the shelves... I shifted my shape again and returned to the form of the young boy. Everything was back in the room, Immar still sitting opposite me. A thought struck me... I carefully shifted my age forward, like the dial of a clock. I could see how Immar turned older immediately. For some strange reason the only way for us to communicate with each other at that particular time was in the shapes we had naturally taken: for me as young naked boy and for her as a woman, probably somewhere in her late 30s...

• Acher: How do you speak to the spirits?
• Immar: I just stand in their space. A physical space that is. Their power is connected to the earth and can be activated. Like this...

I look on the tamped floor in front of me and see a large sigil carved into the earth. (The closest form my mind could recreate after the expedition is the picture above.) Immar uses this sigil to open the spirit gates; the spirits pass through the earth.

• Acher: What can you teach me about your magic?
• Immar: I animate substances.
• Acher: How do you do that?
• Immar: I use everything that is ready to share. There are potent substances that can grant life to lifeless forms. I search these substances and I use them on others. Thus life is passed on, shared and I can animate things.

My view is caught by her underarms. Scars grace her dark skin, in the twilight of the room they look like bracelets covering everything from her wrist up to the elbows. I understand that scorpions play an important role in this, but I don't get to understand why and how she uses the poison to create these scars...

Immar hands me a drink in a dark clay pot. Now I am standing on the sigil on the ground; the drink is sticky and bitter. My body becomes weak. Immar takes back the bowl and hands me a paste of green herbs. I swallow the herbs; they taste dry and even more bitter than the drink. A strange perception is running through my body: I feel how my physical muscles and nerves turn weak and I am close to fainting. At the same time a new force is coming to life in my body, rushing through me, like a spirit in a new house. Something is entering into me.

I have become weak and shiver. I lay down on her bed. Immar approaches the bed and lays down next to me. My body becomes lucid, then transparent. I turn into smoke. I leave her hut through the open clay door into the streets. 

I return to the outer ring of walls that protect the city. The huge gate appears in front of me. It doesn't have any wooden doors, or at least I don't see them? Yet, this time I do see the magic it works even clearer: the inside of the gate is covered by a shiny, glistening web. The web is almost as dense as a lucid yet somewhat milky piece of glass. It protects the city from evil. I am flowing through the web and out into the desert. It's night. I return to the stream I had been caught in as a fish... Then I flow upstream like before, a long time, until I enter back into the Void.

::

It was only a couple of days after this second expedition that I realized something important. It was a feeling that had followed me, all the way up the river and through the Void. Immar was sad. Something burdensome and heavy was upon her. She hadn't mentioned it - probably because I hadn't asked for it. For a second time now I had come to her with a clear idea of what I wanted to receive - and yet with nothing to give back? 

Sometimes I really do get tired of myself. Mostly that is when I do the same mistakes over and over again. This clearly was one of these cases - going back to my ancestor for the second time and behaving like a small kid. Me, me, me! Well, maybe that was why I had been forced into the shape of a naked young boy?

Pondering about Immar's sadness and the course of our second encounter the strategy for my third visit became clearer: Next time I would return to give something back. 

:: continue with part 3 ::

Learning the Magic of my Ancestors - part 1

So much has been happening - and so little time to wrap things up in writing and share with you. My apologies. But let me try to make up - and share things as they happened, step by step... What we will embark upon together if you like is an expedition into magical workings with my ancestors. More specifically with a female ancestor of mine living in a city built of clay... 

Below is the story of how it all began. Since this first encounter I did three further visits which I will share shortly with you. I have learned a lot since then from the lady at the loom. And I guess what started as curiosity about an exercise in a book is slowly coming to life in a relationship across millennia of time... 

Since reading Josephine's book Magical Knowledge II I have been fascinated by her approach to magic - and most of all by the types of ancestral workings she explains. So after experimenting with using the Void as a gateway to the inner realms, I started out to explore my own bloodline... Here is the account of the first expedition.

::

Today I undertook my first ancestral journey through the Void according to Josephine's instruction. Unfortunately I had her book borrowed and so I had to recall the flow of the exercise by heart - which might be a good thing considering this is a journey through the time buried in my own blood.

Anyway, currently staying in the hills of wonderful Liguria I found myself a remote place behind a cemetary in the olive groves. I laid out a circle of small stones, sat myself on the bare ground and placed a small kitchen cup on a flat stone in front of me. I sprinkled water into the four directions ofthe sky and pouered therest into the cup. Finally I anointed the front and the back of my head with the water and sank into meditation.

My bloodline - some stuff I did with clay
and cherries fallen from a tree after my
first ancestral journey... 

After a while I found myself in the Void. I relaxed and enjoyed the darkness and space around me, void of any borders or objects restraining the flow of quiet consciousness. My right hand appeared out of darkness in front of me; I took a knife and made a deep cut into it... Blood immediately poured out, started to cover the ground below me and formed a current that dragged me backwards. I briefly thought that this makes perfect sense as my plan was to flow backwards in time. Then I let go and allowed the stream to carry me with it in its current... After a while I emerged out of the Void in a stream that led through a rough, desert-like scenery. The riverbed was carved deep into the sandstone and the shadows of the cliffs protected it slightly from the piercing sun. 

At some point I felt the urge to get out of the water. I climbed out of the stream and walked through the desert. Behind some dunes I discovered a tribe of shepherds who sat around a fire that had burned down to a pillar of smoke raising into the sky. I sat next to them and allowed their voices to adjust to my ear. I asked them what my relation was with them. They looked surprised and answered I was just one of them; a shepherd in their tribe. I asked for their priest and they told me to enter a black tent behind them. So I did. Inside I found the contours of a big person wearing a wooden mask and sitting in the back of the dark tent, half covered in cold sand. I asked something I forgot - and got a vision of his mask coming to life and bending towards me in a scream as a reply. I left the tent, walked back to the stream of blood and jumped into it again. Immidiately it carried me further backwards in time....

At one point I got caught in a fish trap. Somone took me out of the water and stabbed me into the stomach with a black, triangular knife. Then he put some pounded herbs into my mouth. Both the wound in my stomach and the herbs disappeared at the same time. The men was wearing his hair and beard in the knotted style of the Chaldeans or Assyrians. Through the desert he took me to a town build from clay. We entered the city through a huge portal. Under the arc of the portal on my right I could perceived the ghost of the guardian spirit of the portal. He remained calm and only chattered his teeth... 

On entering the inner city I immediately realized the huge ziggurat forming the center of the town. It raised high above the other buildings and most streets seemed to lead directly towards it. So did the one we walked on. The fisherman took me to a small house on one of the main streets. Inside of it was a wooden loom. On entering the house my own shape had changed; I now was a woman whose age seemed to constantly shift between young and beautilful and old and exhausted... I remember me thinking that maybe I had lived for a long time in this house, thus my changing shape might reflect all the years spent living here? 

I sat down in front of the loom and started to work. Immediately a feeling of deep meaning and satisfaction filled me: I could see the colored strands of wool weave together and hear the sound my hands on the wooden loom. To my surprise I realized that weaving on this loom was a purely magical act - my lips were reciting incantations as I created a specific pattern from the strands of wool... 

On turning around I saw the back wall of the clay hut covered with hollow-ware of all sorts. Some of them contained herbs and incenses, others parts of animals and liquids. I walked to the back, took one of the clay pots and went back to the loom. From inside the pot I smeared a dark-red liquid on my fingers and started to rub it onto the wool on the loom. Again, I knew this was a magical act for a specific purpose. Maybe to bring the patterns in the wool to live? Yet my body did all movements automatically and I didn't have any specific understanding of it. It felt as if I was a guest in this body, silently observing and lost in the deep yet foreign meaning of its actions...

Finally I got up from the loom and stood in the main door of the clay hut. Night had fallen upon the city and I saw lights burning high up on the ziggurat. Above me, pure and bright I saw the stars in all their constellations. Only then I realized that the eyes in this body were different from my eyes today: Everything looked as if shining from within through them, as if these eyes didn't try to distinguish between living and dead substances. Through these eyes every living and dead body seemed to be clothed in a silverfish spirit body, veiled softly and shimmering around it. Even from the stars I saw living lights streaming down into the streets of the town....

I think it was at this point that the Void started to return. It surrounded myself organically, like mist that raises from the fields... It washed away the lights and colors with darkness. My body had disappeared and I was back flowing in the limitless darkness ofthe Void. I allowed for the cup of water to come forth from the Void and the natural world around me to re-emerge from the water. Then I opened my eyes and drank the water from the white cup.

::

What I know now on reflection is that the woman on the loom wasn't an earlier incarnation of myself but one of my ancestors. Only now do I understand how important this differentiation is! This explains perfectly why I didn't had any control over her movements and didn't know what she was doing when being inside her body. She simply had allowed me to enter her body. To her I was an ancestral spirit (from the future) visiting her and she willingly had shared her body for a short while with me. When she stepped out of the hut and looked up at the stars, the Void re-appeard - because she had pulled me out of her body...

Next time I return to the city of the ziggurat I need to be much more respectful of her own individuality and being! And I need to find myself a different body so we can talk face to face. 

I am curious to learn about her magical loom and the type of magic she does with it. And maybe I can be of good service to her? I guess it should all start by introducing myself to her, just like any civilized person would do in any ancient or modern times - rather than taking possession of your body out of nowhere? I guess rudnesses like this only are accepted among ancestors...?

::

Stay with me. A few weeks later I returned to the city of clay. I'll be back posting the second visit shortly... That time my female ancestor told me her name and more about the specific type of magic she is working on.

:: Read on here ::