“Not [the word as such], in this case, represents Crowley’s Qabalistic Zero, defined as 0=2. It is the Fool of the Tarot. It is a condition of Being unbound and unfettered, utterly outside of time and space. Thus it is not part of the Universe as we Understand it, it is the Absolute … It can be given no coherent definition, hence it is No-Thing, Nothing. It is every potential and possibility which we have within ourselves but have not yet made manifest. Thus it is all that … implies the omnijective perspective. … [W]e ourselves contain this Absolute and are Nothing, for we our Essence is not bound by the Universe.

‘There Is Never A Moment Which You Are Not’ — The declaration taken as a whole has two meanings, one obvious and one esoteric:

1. All of time and space, i.e. eternity and infinity, is imprinted with your presence and influence.

2. There exists a timeless Void in which you are All-Potential.”

(Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis, p.172/3)

“And if all things come from One Thing, then send your prayers to the Sun.” Boyd Rice

Everything is one, when 0=2, I pondered once, when I first grasped Crowley’s idea of the mystical Nothing, Zero or the Tarot trump The Fool. I remember that realization very vividly. My friend Henrik and me were on a trip, on shroooms, in the woods and he quoted a sentence from a Current 93 song: “Nothing shall fresh spring again.” And I said: “Isn’t that rather heavily pessimistic?” And he went: “No, don’t you get it? It’s about Nothing of which All springs.” Well, I’m quiet sure that the band was talking about apocalyptic visions and meant literally what they said. But with an overdose of Crowley and magic mushrooms things can connect quiet differently in your brain. However, it’s also encoded in the Qabalistic Ain and I think it’s behind the Germanic idea of the “magically charged Void”, Ginnungagap. The equation of the mystic then might be 2=0, changing duality into No-Thing, uniting duality, transcending the whole show (of duality and thus illusion), as it were, by returning to the source of all, to the primordial state of being (or non-being?). God to some (monists and monotheists), shunyata (‘emptiness’) to others (Buddhists). In Qabalistic terms it means to return to the Abode of the Nous, the higher triad of the Tree of Life (‘City of the Pyramids’), where the spiritual world, the Real, which is ideal, is seperated from the material one, the Unreal, which is actual (in neo-platonic thought). Hence the world-denying tendency in mystical currents (not all currents). The magician, in turn, plays with duality, with Maya, with Ginnung, or Chaos — an undifferentiated ether that longs to be formed into substance by the will of the magician. (Of course, this division between the mystic and the magician is arbitrary and unnecessary.)

“Ginnung or Ginning becomes a word for ‘delusion’ at a certain point in Old Norse. One of the sections of the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson is called the Gylfa-ginning, usually translated Gylfi’s Delusion. But in the Rig Veda we see that Maya is the creative power wielded by Varuna, who with his pashas [bonds] can bind or loosen, destroy or create anything he can imagine. In both cases what we are dealing with is the idea that this is ‘powerful stuff — and power can equal mortal danger. In essence Ginnung is the undifferentiated energy/matter which preexists creation, and which underlies the forms of all phenomena. What had been ‘magical power’ to the trained elite, became ‘bad ju-ju’ as its practices drifted down to the masses. The amount of training and discipline necessary to wield Ginnung in a reliable way is so great that the vast majority of humanity, when they try to ‘use’ it, simply end up confusing themselves and devolving into a morass of illusion. Hence the use of the substance becomes more or less taboo.” (Edred Thorsson)

This is an interesting explanation of what this ’stuff of Chaos’, this Ether, Maya or Ginning might be. Anyway, when I began to write this article today I thought of writing a short persiflage of the Lord’s Prayer, using the image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but my poem, including the whole article, turned into something completely different and took a strange direction in the last few hours. It’s rather weird to write poetry in your non-native language, similar to playing an instrument you can’t play. But also, it opens new angles and one can use words differently, create word-plays that don’t exist in one’s own language and new meanings emerge. That’s one of the many reasons why learning Old Norse will be very rewarding to any true Runer, I guess. And why learning new languages in general is a rewarding activity. “To learn another language is to possess another soul”, said Karl the Frank. After the poem I quote one of my absolute favourite passages from Hakim Bey’s famous Temporary Autonomous Zone that puts his idea of ontological anarchism across. He was also, like Henry, inspired by Sufism.

The Mystical (K)Not

Primal Chaos — permeating Heaven and Hell,

Shape wisdom erupting from Urðr’s Well,

As above, so below,

Eternal Mystery I strive to know.

Eagle King, spread thy wings,

Thou art the Shaper of all things,

Thou who art No-Thing and have no Name,

Inventor and Player of the Master Game,

Thy Intelligence come, thy Word be done,

I am thy Son of the the Black Sun.

Let feverish dreams rain down from the skies,

Teaching false truths and true lies,

Give us frenzy, make us divine or insane,

Push us to change ourSelves and to unchain

us from false divisions and Single Vision.

Lead us into temptation with Her — Runa,

I came to court Her, She’s my Fortuna.

And deliver us from mere Beliefs,

They are for priests and other thieves.

Death is the Warrior’s Wife and ultimate Bliss

The bloody Knife and the Valkyrie’s kiss,

And Life is Power, Beauty and Desire

We are the Dragon’s Eye, arosen from Fire.

For thine is Intelligent Chaos and Noetic Gnosis,

I don’t care, if you teach by thorns or by roses,

Thou art God’s Golden Shower

Magic is Love and Will to Power,

Thy Glory is the Cosmos’ Story

Of the Eternal Copulation of Kia and Zos,

Pulsating in Dagaz and the Elhaz Cross!

Blessed be their Child that dances and sees

Eternal Forms ascending in Ecstasies.

With formless Fire I create from mud,

I know I’m drunk on Kvasir’s blood.

Thou exhaled wisdom and divinity,

Now I bathe in thy Eternity,

For what is Thine is also Mine,

I Am as Thee and thou Art as Me.

Thou gave me Life-Breath, thou gave me Form,

Holy Madness pours from thy Horm,

Thou art the violent, upcoming storm

That tears all apart to again be reborn.

And to grow and to dance and to love and to fight

To rise in thy Might, seek for Darkness and Light

Is to love Mystery and to wear Her Sign

Man’s  incomplete, but man is Divine,

Do not fear, Eternity is here,

The only crime is not to notice Her,

And I think to myself, lying dead on the floor

Oh Life, oh Death, you are but one Door

Man cannot cut this Gordion Knot

There Is Never A Moment Which You Are Not

Hakim Bey, ontological anarchist and prophet of Chaos

“CHAOS NEVER DIED. Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology (like the shadows before Babylon), the original undifferentiated oneness-of-being still radiates serene as the black pennants of Assassins, random & perpetually intoxicated. Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it’s neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.

No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin–your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age–shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.

Agents of chaos cast burning glances at anything or anyone capable of bearing witness to their condition, their fever of lux et voluptas. I am awake only in what I love & desire to the point of terror–everything else is just shrouded furniture, quotidian anaesthesia, shit-for-brains, sub-reptilian ennui of totalitarian regimes, banal censorship & useless pain.

Avatars of chaos act as spies, saboteurs, criminals of amour fou, neither selfless nor selfish, accessible as children, mannered as barbarians, chafed with obsessions, unemployed, sensually deranged, wolfangels, mirrors for contemplation, eyes like flowers, pirates of all signs & meanings.

Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.

The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself, an invisible golden cord that connects us: illegal dancing in the courthouse corridors. If I were to kiss you here they’d call it an act of terrorism–so let’s take our pistols to bed & wake up the city at midnight like drunken bandits celebrating with a fusillade, the message of the taste of chaos.”

Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.

I can’t believe I’ve spilled so little ink (pixels?) on Loki with this little journal. If you’ve been following my writing for long you’ll know what a fool I am for the cheeky bastard. But how did I come to be a Loki lover? I mean, isn’t Loki, like, a BAD DUDE?

Well first of all we need to realise that his role in Norse mythology changes over time. For much of the myths Loki is a troublesome but sympathetic Puck, the partial outsider who initiates chaos but also fixes it in marvellously inventive ways.

Loki saves the gods from all kinds of messes (admittedly sometimes messes he created) and usually in doing so brings them all kinds of advantages. There’d be no Mjollnir, Skidbladnir, Sleipnir or Gungnir if not for Loki’s mischief and ingenuity.

Likewise, without Loki’s excruciating sense of humour the gods would have been thoroughly stomped on by Skadi (surely any myth involving goats and testicles has to be celebrated as a spiritual triumph!)

Not only that but for many adventures Loki and Thor are travel-mates and complement one another very well. The hammer god and the trickster are a perfect combination of character traits when you think about it: either on their own would have a much tougher time negotiating the dangers of Utgard.

And of course Loki and Odin are blood-brothers. Some people can’t understand this but I think they are forgetting that Odin is a lot more complex than just some boring “Our Father who art in Asgard” figure. People, Odin is not Jehovah! He’s a ragged, raging, womanising poet with a mouth filled with mead and veins filled with fire.

Of course Odin’s own ancestry is giantish anyway (like so many of the Aesir actually… this business about giants and gods being implacable foes is a myopic understanding of the mythology).

In fact if you think about it…Thor is the son of Odin and Jord – so he is himself of giant stock! Go on, someone tell me I’m wrong, I dare you!

Not familiar with these stories? Oh come on folks, I’m not going to retell these bloody myths here and now. Suffice to say, there’s plenty of hard mythic evidence to justify our celebration of Loki and his irrepressible spark. Go do some reading and drop a few blinders if you feel like it, too.

Ok, sure, so things go sour with Loki and the Aesir. Then again Ragnarok leads to rebirth and new life, and in a way even this terrible disaster makes ultimately for a brighter world.

I’m not necessarily defending Loki’s actions, but given that whole business with the gods chaining him down and dripping venom on him – well its understandable that he wasn’t a happy boy after that misadventure. Can’t have been much fun for poor Sigyn either, and she didn’t even do anything wrong!

So what about my personal relationship with Loki? You know, it was a gradual, bashful introduction. I got all curious about him, I guess because I myself have a very troublesome, cheeky streak. I like to “question authority” as Mr Leary would have it.

I might live in a glass house (don’t we all) but like Loki I still can’t resist chucking the odd stone or fifty.

That’s part of why we describe Chaos Heathenism as being internally contradictory. We rather figure that every other philosophy or approach to magic and/or Heathenism has its blind spots anyway so we might as well be up front about it. By embracing the attitude of a god of deception we actually end up being more honest. I hope.

I haven’t done it yet this year but usually around March I make an offering to Loki. Invariably he throws all sorts of trouble at me and I have to learn to laugh at my misfortune. On some occasions this has produced a string of events which – just like in the myths – have left me in a much better position for his machinations.

The thing is though – you can’t use Loki. I mean, if I did these offerings with the secret intention of getting something out of it, he’d shaft me for sure. And I wouldn’t blame him either. The motivation has to be one of reverence, respect and laughter. Loki kicks the asses of spiritual misers all day, every day.

I guess I also relate to Loki because I’ve often felt like an outsider, different, weird, strange – and in Germanic mythology he seems to occupy a similar role. At times Loki gives me courage to be myself, to stick it to the stiffs, and I really appreciate that gift.

It’s hard to be me sometimes, just because I don’t seem to play well with others in lots of contexts (though I think often that says more about them than about me). Loki has similar problem.

It isn’t malevolence – it’s just that when you can’t switch off your BS detector you can start to get a bit uppity. As I get older and braver I find it harder to silently choke on my troublesome instincts.

The danger is that this posture turns into an ego trip itself. “I am the great and mighty outsider, and all you sheep are just a bunch of worthless psychic wimps”. How many times have we all heard that little head trip? Sometimes these loonies even manage to accrue followers. Imagine – an army of perfectly uniform ‘individuals’. Classic.

Well I have no desire to be the next Heathen Osho (who seemed to have the spiritual goods even if he also developed a weakness for cult compounds, drugs and dodgy sexual manipulation).

But I still need to be careful because, as you might have noticed, I SOMETIMES FLY OFF THE HANDLE AND SAY STUPID, STUPID THINGS.

Ahh, that’s better. I hope you are getting a flavour for what Loki magic can be like. If you are a little horrified by your own antics then you are on the right track. Just don’t take it too far (except for when you really feel like it).

Loki can teach you a lot about your limitations, and about the limitations of others, if you spend a little time listening to his erratic advice. He can really help those of us who are deeply introverted to bust out and be ourselves.

The hilarious thing is that once you start acting out, you realise most people are too busy navel-gazing to notice you anyway. As Loko psychonauts Beastianity put it: “you’ll screw bars all over your windows and give thanks you don’t live in a prison”. Loki is great at shattering the mental halls of mirrors that we snare ourselves within.

Look, I am anything but an expert in the Loki way. I have so much to learn. I get so damn serious at times, so damn sincere that it hurts. I get really stuck in my little porthole into reality and I become an easy butt for jokes – but thank Loki I have friends willing to stick it to me.

It’s possible that some folks reading this article really might not know what the heck I’m on about. To these I invoke Loki – get out there and have some fun my troublesome friend!

The only way you’ll ever know is by giving Laufey’s son a go. So just call on him with honest passion and curiosity and a little love. He’ll take it from there.

I want magic in my life,
And laughter
And chaos
And joy.

I want Loki in my life.
Old friend,
Come back to me.

Hail Chaos!
Viva Loki!

VIVA!

You might have heard of a chap called Justice Yeldam, an experimental musician. He attaches microphones to pieces of glass, then manipulates the glass with his mouth. The sounds this creates are pretty wild, and his performances seem to involve a lot of blood.

The funny thing is, he says that despite how gory it all looks, he never really hurts himself very much. He goes into a very altered state and somehow in that state no harm comes to him.

In fact I recently I read an interview with him in which he laughs about the irony of a time when he badly cut his foot in a safe environment after a doing a performance that involved putting broken glass in his mouth for half an hour to no negative effect.

Think that sounds like berzerkergang? You bet, except this chap isn’t killing someone, he’s just putting himself at risk in order to create some very strange art. Which suggests that 1) violence is only one use for a berserk state and 2) berzerkergang has an awful lot in common with seidh.

The physiological science of all this stuff isn’t at all controversial – it has a lot to do with activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates all the bodily functions you can’t consciously control.

In other words, back we go to my good friend and writing partner the unconscious. The Uppsala Berzerkergang article goes into all this stuff in a lot more detail.

This is probably part of why in historical battles it was very helpful to surprise your enemy. While your side has had plenty of time to get itself all riled up and psycho-physically primed for conflict, the other side is still in a more sustainable, everyday, vulnerable conscious state. It is anything but a fair contest.

Of course today warfare seems to be more about having lots of bombs that you can bravely drop on the foe from thousands of miles away.

My reason for recounting all of this is to underline very strongly that there are many, many different shapes in which altered states can manifest, and those shapes are highly plastic. Thus the practices surrounding Heathen battle magic and the practices surrounding modern experimental music produce some comparable psycho-physical changes.

Some folks in modern Heathen argue that we absolutely must reconstruct the archaic practices as closely as possible or else we are somehow letting the Heathen side down. Well I agree that this is a fruitful and inspiring thing to do.

But it is also pretty clear that if we have different (perhaps even more) options available to reach the desired conscious states then that is no bad thing.

It certainly lacks any historical validity for me to use black metal as a consciousness altering tool, but somehow I think my ancestors would approve (at least once their ears recovered from the onslaught).

These comments serve as a pre-amble to the introduction of two possession forms that have entered my life in the last few months – namely Top Dog and Woki.

Top Dog is – well, he is THE dog. Class all the way. People get out of his way in the street when they see him coming. He like sunglasses, expensive alcoholic drinks, walking sticks and snappy clothes. Its hard not to love Top Dog because, damn it, he just loves himself so much!

Top Dog entered my life to help me in promoting my business, since I am naturally an introverted and retiring person (unless I am screaming my guts out on a stage – see above comments about using modern contexts to produce ancient trance states).

Since I am not a typical sunny kind a guy who thinks nothing of telephoning one thousand total strangers a day in the chase for referrals and work, I prefer not to be involved. Top Dog very kindly shadows me when I have to do this sort of thing.

Since Top Dog is undoubtedly THE dog of dogs, the classiest of class, he has no problem in selling us both to potential referral sources. Top Dog used my anxiety about promoting myself as a door to take over the reins – it was that anxiety which put my bodymind into the appropriately receptive state the first time we met.

He is in fact quite subtle in his presence when I am working with him (after all they are ultimately buying my services, not his). But during times of recreation he loves to put on the whole show, dancing, howling and amusing my somewhat dumbfounded wife with his antics.

He also likes walking around the neighbourhood, just so he knows that people have seen him around. And when he wants he can effect a total submersion ofmy ego, whereas usually when gods or spirits ride me I retain some sense of separate identity, watching as it were from the back of my skull.

Don’t tell anyone, but Top Dog seems to me to be an Odinnic identity. In fact, not long before Top Dog arrived on the scene my wife and I both noticed independently in Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology an intriguing Old Norse mythological name which I think is related to Odin – namely Hundalf/Hundulf.

There are debates about how this is translated – Dog-Elf or Dog-Wolf are the most common. I like to think Dog Wolf is the correct meaning – he is so purely Top Dog that one word for canine is not enough, so in Old Norse he gets two! I hope to get more of Top Dog into my life and to put together some really Classy
outfits for him to dress up in. It’s the least I can do in return for the help he gives me!

Oddly, Top Dog also reminds me of the Vodoun deity Baron Samedi, thought the Baron is admittedly a little more macabre than Hundulf is. Clint observed to me recently that there are many odd similarities between Heathenry and Vodoun. Weirder things have happened!

As for Woki – well let’s just say that WOden-loKI is a pretty natural concatenation is it not? But in truth I have had only limited experience with Woki thus far – though I must say that he turns up extremely quickly when invoked. He too is very energetic and a bit of a trouble maker.

I’m not sure how the deities in question arrange for this sort of alchemy to work out but I hope they continue with it. I love it! I also hope they teach me to get better at better at opening into their presence because really the average Odinnic or Loko personality is much more interesting than the average conventional me.

Or to refine that point – the most interesting parts of me get greatly amplified when these beings/patterns/mental states/trances/illusions/truths/insert-your-own-metaphyiscal-term start loitering around my bodymind.