Consider participation mystique, a term coined by anthropologist Lucien Levy-Brühl and used extensively by Carl Jung. In such a state, our beliefs and the objects of our beliefs are experienced as one undifferentiated mass. Thus, for example, we can experience an inanimate object (or even living things like trees and animals) as having intentions, feelings, thoughts, spirit, and other qualities of consciousness.

This stands in contrast to what some would call anthropomorphism, thus revealing their allegiance to nihilism, which I will discuss shortly. In participation mystique correspondence is identity; there are no symbols, only literalism.

This mode of relationship enables us to experience the living magic of the cosmos (for surely participation mystique is a vehicle for the riches of imagination), but it also enables some very backward and hackneyed thinking, for example paranoia, denial, and superstition. The world is mystical, but if we are immersed without reflection in that world then we can get into trouble. For we then lack perspective on the sense or otherwise of our beliefs and deeds.

At the other extreme from “primitive” mysticism we have modern nihilism: when all our attributions, projections, and beliefs are radically withdrawn from the world around us, are seen purely as products of our isolated consciousness. Consequently we risk experiencing nothing as satisfying, comforting, joyous, or meaningful. Participation mystique enables the very possibility of communication, by conjuring for us a “theory of mind for the Other” and therefore implying the existence of relationships. That possibility is lost in nihilism, which is stuck in an endless, narcissistic, self-examining regress.

Nonetheless, great self-understanding and insight can come from the reflectiveness of nihilism. Once we withdraw our raw and undifferentiated acceptance of our experience of the world, we can develop subtle perception and deep appreciation of complexity. We can assess the implications of our thoughts and deeds, evaluate them, and refine them.

So if the supposedly premodern consciousness of participation mystique has reverence but not sense; and if the supposedly modern consciousness of nihilism has insight but wallows in the despair of abstraction, what are we to do?

Contra Levy-Brühl, who saw participation mystique as being culturally “primitive,” I do not believe that these two modes of consciousness are mutually exclusive. Rather, throughout history their symbiosis ebbs and flows in complementary tides. They exist in each of us, all the time, and weave around one another in complex and subtle patterns. Both can be active in a single belief or action, engaging together like multifaceted computer programs interfacing over the Internet; like two chess masters of equal ability but totally opposed styles and methods; like Odin’s ravens Thought (nihilism) and Memory (mysticism).

Participation mystique invariably collapses. Either its own irrationality causes it to dismantle (consider the Protestant Reformation of an insane Catholic church); or it is so absorbed in the “world of its concern” (c.f. Martin Heidegger’s work) that it cannot cope with a sudden dramatic change of game (as happened to many indigenous cultures when European invaders turned up with guns, grog, and the Cross). Eve always ends up eating the apple and, though it can be unpleasant, the fall into ego consciousness is a necessary potentiality on the horizon of sacred oneness.

The Faustian fall into the clutches of the Devil’s isolated ego leads to a different kind of disaster than those which haunt participation mystique. Once we forget that our actions have consequences in the causal web that binds everything together, we begin to do incredibly stupid things. For example, burn dangerous quantities of fossil fuels, or base our society on disposability, unsustainably exponential “growth,” and other illusions. We layer abstractions upon abstractions, until stratospherically arbitrary conventions such as legality and economics conjure plenty in the midst of poverty…and, as we have seen so keenly in recent years, poverty in the midst of plenty.

Nonetheless, with the self-reflection of nihilism we are afforded an opportunity to, as Jung would say, withdraw our projections from the world. We can begin to recognize that our emotions, attributions, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about the world are distinct from the objects in the world to which they pertain.

This is not dissimilar to what Edmund Husserl called the phenomenological turn. He correctly intuited a strong streak of participation mystique, of absorption in objects without reflection, in all the sciences (it continues today). In response, he called for a phenomenological revolution – to go “back to the things themselves” – to the projections which are the meat of all human experience.

A simple example: we all have an intuitive idea of what this “life” thing is that biology studies, and that intuition implicitly guides the very shape of all biological study. But try to draw out that intuition into a clear, explicit statement that doesn’t, in some fashion, already presuppose the shape of the field of study! Not so easy to do, least of all if you are a biologist. Husserl warned that often our implicit understandings quietly but fatefully determine the way we experience and interpret reality. Modern research on cognitive bias – on the dangers of the tendency thumbnailed by Robert Anton Wilson as “the prover proves what the thinker thinks” – is a powerful, if somewhat narrow, contemporary scientific exploration of this problem.

So Husserl invokes this turn, away from the world, to the phenomena themselves. In the process he puts the question of reality “as such,” “in truth,” aside. Which is in a sense nihilistic (or at least a kind of epistemological agnosticism). Yet it allows us to clarify how our unconscious beliefs frame and occlude the experiences we have. This in turn opens us, enables us to experience reality with a lot more open-mindedness, wonder, curiosity, acceptance, and equanimity. At least, it does if we set it to good use and do not allow it to become a hall of mirrors ala postmodern philosophy (which indeed partly emerged as a critical successor to Husserl’s ideas).

If we do not stop at a narrow and cramped state of nihilism (withdrawal of meaning from the world into the perceiver), but instead use that state to clarify how we relate to the world, then we find ourselves drawn, as Husserl was, to appreciate both the Forest and the Trees. Thus instead of being stuck with only mysticism, or only nihilism, we are given the gift of a bigger picture and a rapprochement of what seemed at first to be fundamentally irreconcilable kinds of consciousness.

For Jung, this all has a psychological dimension. Psychological well-being is achieved once we have systematically withdrawn all our projections from the world, grasped them as projections, as objects themselves (“to the things themselves!” we again hear Husserl cry).

This gradually enables us to see how our experience is shaped by our expectations, habits, and unconscious beliefs. Through this process we come to realize that it is not the world, not events, not other people that make us happy or unhappy, but rather our ability to achieve peace within ourselves; we become less dependent on the arbitrary whims of fate in order to feel whole. Of course, we then have to reintegrate ourselves so that the breach of psyche and cosmos is resolved into a new, far more robust relationship between mind and world.

(This is not to say that life events of a negative character somehow magically “shouldn’t” have a traumatic consequence, but to rather say that the person who achieves something close to Jung’s ideal of individuation is able to accept, cope with, and resolve negative situations more effectively and with less suffering).

Jung saw this process of withdrawal and rebirth in the symbolism of alchemy. He felt that the alchemists – sometimes purposefully, sometimes instinctively – used the state of participation mystique as a framework within which to experience their psychological withdrawal, transformation, and reintegration. Their medium? The myth-laden operations of their paraphernalia. Here we see the brilliance of alchemy: it distills the best of nihilistic, detached consciousness by establishing it within an environment of mystical literalism!

(Psychotherapy is almost identical, except that it substitutes the temenos of the therapeutic relationship for the retorts, alembics, and chemicals of the pseudo-scientist. The analogy was certainly not lost on Jung).

So: we begin by being immersed uncritically in the world, unable to separate our consciousness, our emotions and beliefs, from that which is around us – other people, other places, other things. Then we separate and become self-conscious – we detach ourselves from the world around in order to come to self-awareness. Finally we reintegrate, so that our newfound perspective serves to open and enrich our experience, while imparting a fresh sense of inner wholeness.

In this way we can enjoy the mystical sense of all existence as a sacred and interconnected whole without the blinders that we suffered prior to our quest for self-awareness. And naturally this is actually a recurring cycle, without alpha or omega.

The three stage model (withdrawal, transformation, reintegration) can be seen in the three stages of alchemy. We begin with the Prima Materia, the raw stuff to which we apply our Art. Then we enter stage one, nigredo: blackness, death – the detachment of self from world. Our gestation produces stage two, albedo: whiteness, in which we are transformed until we are pristine, unsullied by the world; but also isolated, disconnected. Finally comes stage three, the rubedo: reddening, where our pristine nature is redeemed to the world, and vice versa. Thus the lead becomes gold.

It is significant in this connection that Mercurius, the arch-patron of alchemy, is both Prima Materia and the Philosopher’s Stone; that is, he is both lead and gold. We begin with the lead, we finish with the gold, but Mercurius shows them to be the one thing. We complete our alchemical or psychological journey back where we started…yet at the same time everything is totally different. In this sense, alchemy depicts a spiral movement: our circular orbits nevertheless also describe an ascending path, with the Self or the Stone as the axis of the spiral. The same holds for any sound process of spiritual or psychological development.

The Philosopher’s Stone, the goal of alchemy, is that which is wrested from the chaos of the world, refined in isolation, and then reintegrated with the world from which it was wrenched. In a sense, this psychological redemption touches all of objective reality, for they are one even as they are distinct.

It is from Jung that I draw the analogy of the Self to the Stone – snatched from the blindness of naive projection, refined in the isolating reflection of the therapy room (or other life experiences), and then returning to the world in such a way that it is connected with, but no longer dissolved into, everything around it. It no longer needs to attack or defend or justify itself or anything of the sort. It is its own singular foundation and yet simultaneously utterly integrated and one with the universe as a whole.

I had a vision tonight. Woden appeared to me younger than he ever has – no beard, and two eyes. He led me through a forest to a clearing. In the clearing was a phoenix (a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone, of the goal of psycho-spiritual wholeness and perfection).

Woden explained that it is a mistake to think the phoenix dies and is reborn. Rather, he said, if you look closely you can see an almost invisible membrane around it: its egg. The phoenix can expand and contract this membrane at will. When its egg is expanded it contains the whole universe, and thus we perceive the phoenix and think it alive. But when needs be, the phoenix can contract the egg until the bird is tightly enclosed. Then it seems to us to have disappeared, to have died, only to be “reborn” when the phoenix is ready to “participate mystically” through projection once again, which is to say, only when it again expands its membrane to encompass the world around.

This is the model which Woden, in his almost Mercurial form, encouraged me to pursue psychologically and spiritually. The eternal phoenix, neither born nor unborn, in the world, loving the world, but not owned by the world. Shamanistic but not superstitious; realistic but not cynical.

That the three-part process of withdrawal – transformation – reintegration is common in premodern cultural imagery suggests that participation mystique was never as absolute as Levy-Brühl proposes; otherwise it would never have been posed as a problem or questioned at all. That the three-fold process here discussed is so resonant even in modern times suggests that nihilism does not hold total sway even in this, its ascendant age. We can have hope.

Yet none of the foregoing means anything if we do not act on our hope. Learn to meditate. Keep a journal. Get psychotherapy. Join a community of like minded seekers. Reflect. Pray. Make art. Find the divine in small things and hidden places. Be your own inner alchemist. This is the purpose for which we have been made.

For when we invert the alchemical way – when we run things inside out and try to observe participation mystique within a cocoon of nihilism – then we expose ourselves to danger. For then we reduce ourselves to mere armchair practice; to being talkers and not doers. Although we may sound like we have undertaken the necessary work, the truth is we are just making ourselves vulnerable to the worst aspects of both mysticism and nihilism, under the spell of for our laziness, fear, hurt, arrogance, self-hatred, and all the rest. We might even make ourselves worse off than when we began, for we risk flagrant hypocrisy as well. Alchemy was considered a dangerous art, and these are some of the pitfalls of proceeding incorrectly.

I have made such mistakes too readily in my life. Now is the time, now is always the time, to undo the ills of armchair “wisdom” and roll up my sleeves. Join me.

Fear often manifests for me in hesitation. Hesitate to phone someone. Hesitate to express my understanding without loading it first with childish “attitude.” Resistance to doing many tasks – stems from fear. Laziness and resentment are both also driven by fear. Resistance to being present, to negotiating complexity or interpersonal ambiguity – all rooted in fear, which is to say, impiety against Mystery and the Tree and the Well.

“Feel the fear but do it anyway” does not break out of the ego as a basic framework (a cage, if you will). This notion counsels that we accept the ego…but then force aside its resistance. But I just cannot sustainably or reliably win that. Even if I could, I could never relax, feel confident or secure. That was a big part of what fed/feeds anxiety in me: the knowledge that I am not enough to meet the challenges of life by myself.

Formerly I imagined that I needed to make myself equal to the challenge of life. I thought if I could just be hard enough on myself then I would force myself into the person I wanted to be. This did not work.

Then I thought that if I just obliterated my ego then what remained of me would become a vessel for the divine. Superhuman power would swiftly follow and thus I could become equal to the challenge of life (and equal to my ever skyrocketing standards). This also did not work.

The first approach failed because you cannot get something from nothing. Trying to force myself to be font and foundation of my own existence was futile, foolish, and impossible. It guaranteed failure in vicious cycles; I learned to think that if I punished myself more then maybe I’d get somewhere. Astride a horse carcass, I whipped and flayed with exponential urgency. I could not see my whip was only cutting my own flesh.

The second approach was better, I admit. But I became righteous and inflated by my knowledge of the need to embrace Mystery and the simultaneous oneness and difference of all things. I easily became complacent; my ego found ways to claim credit for achievements that my moments of reverence and surrender were responsible for. Eventually I realised that despite my supposedly advanced spirituality, supposed humility (in distinction to humiliation), supposed wisdom and dedication – I still suffered, flailed, became entangled in my own poison. I had finally found truth, but then proceeded to abuse it. Consequently: self punishment, suffering, self pity, pessimism. As before.

My new way I am only beginning to approach, to trace out and understand. It remains as yet a sketch and projection of possibility. Yet it seems to be the best option so far. It is to trust in the Divine and in my patron Wod (id est Mercurius). If I truly trust then I abandon my grandiose expectations of perfection, adolescent/egoistic wish fulfilment, self-obsession (other-obliviousness), overweening hypocrisy. If I truly trust then I hand over my fear. Not try to dominate it through force of will. Not try to obliterate it as part of the ego.

No. Just hand it over. Fear is an expression of lack of trust. So I will trust and accept that whatever happens is meant to be. Even if I don’t like it. Guess what? That’s real ego shedding. Being willing to be a flawed, finite mortal if that is my patron’s will (which it manifestly is, for I am human). I cannot defeat fear, but I can be willing to hand it away. If I trust my patron then I must hand over my fear. And thus transcend the binary madhouse of courage and cowardice altogether.

Fingers crossed.

This morning I find him in a forest, on the hunt. He is wild and laughing, gray beard wagging, spear keen for the flesh of boar. We walk briskly as he counsels me.

“There was a man who traveled far from home. One day he came to a village and decided to settle there. But he did not speak the language or know the culture, and so he had many difficulties. He could not communicate his needs, he unwittingly behaved in socially unacceptable ways, and in general earned himself a reputation for being obnoxious or stupid.

“But despite his early troubles and conflicts, he persevered. Gradually he came to understand the local customs. Gradually he came to understand the language. He came to be able to make his way in the village, to meet his needs and earn a place of respect and value in the community. Sometimes he would still slip or become confused, but these reversals became less and less. The villagers came in turn to realize that he was not churlish or foolish.”

This, he tells me, is the story of my life.

This morning I find myself outside the palisade that wards his hall. This is new, and I cannot seem to make it otherwise. The gate is locked. No one answers to my knocking. It is cold and dark in the predawn. Resigned, I set to clambering, haul myself with difficulty up over the timbers of the wall, carefully lift over the sharpened tops of the posts, then drop to the other side.

The courtyard is bare but for sheets of morning frost that crackle beneath my feet. I find the door to the hall. Smoke belches sullenly from near-spent fires, wafting from the building in desultory manner. The door creaks open at my touch.

Inside, the bodies of the einheriar are strewn about wildly. Laid low by drink and revelry, not battle. I recall that this is the 11th of November, a day of commemoration. Of course, therefore, they’ve had an especially big party last night. I pick my way through their sluggard forms, negotiate scattered furniture, feet scratching on hay-strewn floor.

There he is, sprawled, sleeping, on his throne. He has appeared in various forms to me recently, but today it is as his younger self, when he still had color in his beard; when he still had two eyes. One side of his mouth raises into a grin when he senses my approach.

“You again. Good that you’re here. We had some fun last night. More important, I have something to show you.”

He rises unsteadily from his repose, smells of sweat and swill. Shuffles across the floor, and I follow a safe distance behind. We come to a spiral of stone-cut stairs that drills down into the earth. He climbs down into the darkness and I follow.

The staircase winds in a wide radius. We descend, and descend, and descend into a vast chasm, totally black. It could be inside…or outside. There is no way of knowing. The stairs are wrapped around a massive column, its surface rough. I steady myself on it as I negotiate the treacherous stairs, and I realize that it is the trunk of a massive, almighty tree. I know which tree this is.

Our descent continues into infinity and darkness. Until our destination finds us. The staircase deposits us in a clearing in a forest. Even here, at the bottom of the great chasm, I cannot tell if I am inside or outside. Insects and birds make an eerie chorus.

In the center of the clearing he stands, leaning on his proverbial spear. And at the edge of the clearing I also see another of his clan, a warrior who stands, impassive, a tremendous horn slung over one shoulder as if ready to be blown in the face of the faintest glimmer of emergency.

Beside my guide there is a well, set in the heart of this grove. No, a spring, for it gently weeps liquid that pours out over the grass and soil and seeps down into the earth. The water has a strange clarity and motility. I know that it is living.

At his gesture I approach, stare at him from across the well. He dips a ladle into the waters.

“This water is the stuff of life. It is the essence of memory. Memory, the heart and meaning of all that is. This is the gushing source of time, and tide, history and anticipation. It heals all wounds. It can heal you. It can help you live in the present moment, in your own flesh, in your own breath. It can reveal to you the philosophical stone, the inner self inviolate, that none can harm or touch or weary. But you need to drink, and drink often, else, parched and lost, you’ll become isolated, dehydrated, lost in misery. You know this already.”

He raises the ladle to my lips. “What you need to know is this. Despite all your doubt, fear, resentment, distrust, hatred, pettiness, weakness, hypocrisy – I am always holding this ladle, filled with the waters of memory, to your lips. It is always there for you, a draught of memory perpetually hangs before your lips. You need but open your mouth and solace, healing, strength, hope are waiting for you. You are never alone.”

We stand there, the water before my open mouth. We both know the power of this message. For all beings are vessels for the flow of the waters. We live to give their irrepressible essence form and flushing life. The illusion of my isolation, my cold rejection and ejection from the world, is refuted by these waters. And here I stand, at their source, and he is telling me that the water is always right there for me to drink, no matter how determined I am to convince myself of my self-pitying separation.

When I open my eyes, finish my observances, I know that I have been given a powerful, powerful gift and reminder. One that must be renewed every day through prayer and dedication. Through reverence and memorialization of the sacred in all things. Through remembrance, all things are preserved in their beauty and immortality. Only the arbitrary, transient human consciousness forgets. Forgets, yes. But therefore, also: remembers.

My heart brims with shining water. I hail the lord of the hall that lies beyond. And I feel just the slightest intimation of knowing the essence of this and all days of remembrance, beyond even the ledgers of tragedy that fill the history books to bursting: Lest We Forget.

There it was staring back at me. Two faint lines across my forehead. The lightest dusting of shadows under my eyes that will one day crease my features like dry creek beds. Granted, it was late, after a long day at work. Granted, I had a touch of conjunctivitis, which could not have helped. Nevertheless, the proof of time was revealed in that moment.

These words are not an expression of panic, nor hand wringing. And I still look young for my age. And I am not at all addicted to the cult of youth-at-all-cost: beauty and youth are not identical, and neither is essential or even necessarily desirable.

The marks of time’s seductive kisses drew my awareness to a memory that lurks all too often in my body and mind (which are really the one thing, a continuum from matter to spirit): death is my fate. Before I was born, I was ordained to die. “Like acres of wheat we’re all grown to be mown” (Beastianity).

This is not a sad thought to recover. I am not afraid of death, which of course makes me unusual as a human being. I have had a bit to do with death. It has hurt me, stolen loved ones with untimely haste, and several times almost had me before my own fair allotment of breath. Even as a child I had shed my fear, had it shriven from my bones.

The memory of my inevitable demise points me to a horizon of infinite mystery – the mystery of being a conscious being in this vast universe. Confronted with the impenetrable veil, one’s life stands out all too starkly. The small mercies for which one feels gratitude, the endless barrage of wounds, the compromises and concessions into which one drifts and atomises.

Death sends out its call, strings the beads of momentary living onto a single thread. Where chaotic experience invisibly carries us through scattered moments, death draws all into alignment. It brings us to the forest clearing and, in the thought of absence of life, the very shape of life is exposed.

And we forget, and forget, and forget. If indeed we ever remember in the first place. I believe it a poor thing to get to later life without being touched vicariously by death through the loss of loved ones. Death shocks us from the cocoon of our self-evidence. If we have not embraced it then the very foundations of our whole life may prove wanting when the unavoidable time comes and we must cope with loss, with the outrages of fortune’s arrows and slings.

Death points us to a paradox: to set our living with deep roots, so that this transient existence might be as soundly made as it may be, we must confront that same transience, the skull and scythe hovering impatiently in the wings of every stage.

Not the confrontation of aggressive emergency surgery. Not the confrontation of dogmatic faith in the hereafter. Rather, we must court death, embrace this god so that our denial of its power does not make of it a devil. Not to literally paint ourselves in its livery, but to let it draw our attention clear of the infinite hall of mirrors from which life is composed.

Facing the mystery of death is facing the mystery of life. The two are one, and though we tend to only understand them implicitly, unconsciously, we nevertheless always must encounter them together.

The mystery of death is a mystery of memory and forgetfulness. We touch the mystery and recoil, and in the icy gasp of our vulnerability we find our reptile emotionality – fear, fury, the fire of lust.

The mystery of death is a mystery of vulnerability. We carry our death with us always. It spans out before us, probing for the shape of our unfolding life. We carry our death with us, our finite nature, our helplessness before the vast eye of the cosmos, which exceeds our deepest wisdom and our subtlest science.

The conclusion is inescapable: we face the mystery of death whether we wish to or not. We face the mystery of death whether we realise it or not. It curls its tendrils around our every breath. It haunts the choices we make as much as it does the choices we decline. Therefore I ask: how best to face this mystery? Death’s precociousness is legendary: how may we make ourselves equal to the doom that we carry in our very flesh?

The mystery of death is the mystery of life, and it trades in the currency of memory and forgetfulness. It trades in the currency of vulnerability. How might we enrich the wealth of our vulnerability? How might we strike a balance between memory and forgetfulness so that we might fully embrace our demise and the riches of the life that precedes it?

My answer is simple: through memento mori. By building reminders of the elusive memory of death into our life. Yet any reminder loses its gloss in time: the amnesia of our world-encircled nature guarantees it. Thus facing the mystery requires more than a one time effort. We have to renew our memories, continually wash the soporific of daily living from our eyes and ears.

Spiritual practice offers many means for this rememorialising: doing the gardening, meditating, creating art, reflecting on myth, and others. Conversations where we ask questions to which we genuinely do not know the answers; rituals in which we truly put aside our egos and embrace the irrepressible life that binds this universe together. When we go beyond ourselves, we also go deep within ourselves.

And what of Heathen spirituality? Odin is a god of death. It is this that earns him the right to be called All Father.

Living really clean has been a strange experience. On the one hand I feel a lot more solid, a lot more present and a lot more me than I have for a long time. Physically and emotionally, I feel like I’m seventeen again.

On the other hand, I’ve been feeling a lot more cut off from the people around me. I won’t share their drink and I can’t share their food. I’ve become an outsider and, for once, that’s not the way I wanted it to be.

The question of how to handle Heathenism without drinking has also been bothering me for a while. 90% of my experience with Heathen group ritual has always involved massive binge drinking. It shouldn’t really be an issue, as I’m mostly what you’d call a solitary practitioner anyway, but I really miss toasting the gods (and a glass of milk just doesn’t seem to have quite the same zing).

This gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that, for a long time, I’d been getting signals that “the gods” wanted me to quit drinking. Alcohol had definitely ceased being useful as a social lubricant and instead become a threat to my work, my health and my family.

Staying clean is undeniably the right thing for me to do. My new ascetic path has, in some ways, brought me a feeling of being much closer to the gods (Odin in particular). Unfortunately, it has also left me confused as to how to properly express that closeness.

Perhaps now I finally have an answer.

In the past I’ve always “shared” a drink with the gods. Perhaps now I have a chance to really sacrifice. I’ve given up drinking (a sacrifice of self to self) but of course the gods have not. What greater sacrifice could there be than to offer them that which I crave without ever taking so much as a drop?

This idea requires exploration.

“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.

The Runic Seed was planted into my Soul

I have no need for a religious creed

My spirit ascends and is free, without a goal

I heed the Old Man’s advice, who moves with speed

When the world’s veil is pushed aside

Mystery plays with me Hide-and-Seek

Where Her Eternal Forms give birth at night

Attracting the strong, but frightening the weak

We all are Learners on the Runic Path no matter how far we get, Rune Master Ian Read recently wrote in a course he gave at Arcanorium College. I’m not a great fan of online-learning, but Clint pointed me into that direction recently (thanks, bro!) and I joined it for three months. Magical luminaries like Peter Carrol, Dave Lee, Ian Read and many other magicians from the Chaos Magic Current give courses there about all kinds of interesting things: courses on Mind Money & Magick, Following Spare’s Footprints, Galdrastafir, Sorcery & Alternative Science, Kitchen Magic, Aloha Huna Shamanism, Magickal Trance and many other interesting things can be found there. Seekers could learn directly from Pete Carrol to „pursue a bracing and invigorating program of martial magic to empower the inner warrior and to immanentise the eschaton in whatever way participants choose“ in a course he called the Jihad of Chaos. So should you be interested in practical magic and if you need some new approaches or inspiration, that’s the place to go. Ok, enough advertisement. Suffice it to say that the ‘Jihad’ Carrol is talking about is the real one. The Holy War here isn’t about killing, but is a „war of consciousness against conformity“ (Michael Kelly), which means „to stand against ignorance or tyranny“ (Sweyn Plowright) – fighting „against the inertia of the cosmos“ (Don Webb), against the stupidity of man, if you will.

However, recently I heard some people asking for introductory books on Runes. This really made me ponder, because I don’t think this is an easy question to answer. Sure, I have my favourite books. But at a deeper level I believe it doesn’t really matter what kind of books one reads in the beginning, because those dedicated to the Path will find their way ‘any-way’. Further the true meaning of the Runes cannot be found in books, no matter how knowledgable such an author seems to be. But even if this is the case we shouldn’t let people run into the wrong direction just because we somehow found our way inside (wherever that is where we are now). First of all, I should say that I hardly talk about Runes or magic with other persons, because it seems to be a waste of time and energy. (I look back at my teenager years/ early twenties with amusement, when I began to become nervous after five minutes when a conversation moved into a different direction than magic.) Most so-called occultists somehow seem to think that they know better what Runes are all about and that it’s ‘just another system’ and after all it doesn’t matter what kind of system one uses, because all of them lead to the same aim anyway. Really?

If I’d be asked by someone what kind of books I recommend for him  or her for learning about the Runes, I had to decide depending on the person. The ’shamanic type’ should probably begin with Jan Fries’ Helrunar. Those more into a traditional use of Runes should read Thorsson’s Futhark and Runelore. But all would get a copy of Sweyn Plowright’s Rune Primer. However, honestly said I do not think that Runes can be learned from books. It should also be noted that though I’m not absolutely new to Runes, I am considering myself a beginner and am still in the process of becoming familiar with the fundamental literature. (This stement is no wrongly understood modesty. It implies also that I haven’t read through or studied thoroughly every book I recommend. For example, I haven’t read most of the sagas.) It seems to me that in the beginning it makes sense to become familiar with a few academic books like Klaus Düwel’s Runenkunde and R. I. Page’s Runes. Especially the esoteric buff and occultnik should become familiar with the objective facts, regardless of how ‘dry’ or ‘boring’ they seem to be to him or her. Then a certain knowledge of the way our ancestors thought and what they believed could be helpful. The sagas and Hilda Ellis Davidson’s books come to my mind. The dedicated German speaking seeker should study Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. First then the esoteric works should be taken into account. How to practice ‘Rune Magic’ is next to impossible to explain as everyone will develop his or her own methods over the years, but Thorsson’s, Carrol’s and Fries’ magical methods are a good pointer how to enter this wyrd realm. At this stage subjective meanings will appear that will very likely contradict with (some of) the interpretations of other magical authors. My take on this is: follow your intuition. Noone can help you here except your ‘Deep Mind’ (Jan Fries) or, to say it in a more traditional way, your Fylgja. The only rule is: don’t universalise your own intuitive realisations. It is this subjective stage most of us are engaged in. Some say, there is no other stage to reach (than a subjective one), others are convinced that there is a level of meaning that is reflecting a traditional, objective knowledge. It’s not for me here to decide for you what take is the right one. But I recommend to think about the fact that a purely subjective knowledge will leave us with nothing more than a ‘NiTEiP ‘-attitude that we Chaos Heathens do not subscribe to (please correct me Elhaz fellows, if you disagree). To me this is one of the huge differences between Chaos Heathendom and Chaos Magic.

Let me exemplify how my chaos-magical approach to Runes (rooted in a ‘NiTEiP ‘-attitude) moved from a ‘Personal Gnosis Above All’-belief (PGAA – thanks, Henry!) – that considered my UPG [Unverified Personal Gnosis] as the most important one – towards a traditional approach to the meaning of the Runes (of course always supplemented and deepened by UPGs). When I worked with the ‘astral projection’-method Jan Fries suggests in Helrunar I somehow got to the conclusion that the Ingwaz-Rune – on one level of reference – is an entrance and symbolizes a vagina. I imagined Isa as the penis in this context. (Yes, Mr. Freud, I know it’s all suppressed sexuality, right? Or did I just read too much about Crowley’s sex magick? :-) Ingwaz – seen here as two united Kenaz-Runes – would symbolize fire and heat (sexual arousal) to me. On another, deeper level I saw an ‘alchemical’ process behind these three Runes (Isa, Kenaz, Ingwaz) and thought of the Isa-Rune also as the ‘I’, the ego. The ‘ice’ of the ego – its rigidity and illusory solidity – could be molten by the heat of Kenaz (‘gnosis’ in a CM sense) and so being transformed into ‘Ing’, an enlightened state of being, its essence or true Self. „Man finds his Ing“ has been a beautiful expression for this interpretation that caught my attention in Osborn’s inspiring (albeit rather untraditional) book Rune Games at that time. All this might look quiet weird and exremely subjective to you. Well, it is. But this is somehow the way things work (on a subjective level). And if you ‘feed your mind’ with accurate (traditional) data, better results will come out of your Runic Work. However, at some point I was made aware of the fact at Rune-Net that the traditional meaning of Ingwaz was the opposite of what I came to consider as one layer of its meaning: Ingwaz in no way does represent a vagina or female fertility (the latter meaning being encoded in Berkano amongst others), but rather male fertility manifested in the God Ing. Also the ideographic interpretation of Ingwaz proposed by Thorsson in Futhark is of an erected penis. (Oh yes, there exists Germanic sex magic. And Spare’s method of sigils – as original as it might look at first glance – has been known to our ancestors since centuries in the form of Bind-Runes etc. Always look to tradition first. Never underestimate the wisdom of the ‘ancients in your brain’ [John Balance].) I couldn’t agree more with what Henry has to say about the importance of tradition in his last article:

„I find that the more I research actual magical traditions the more I realise that the average modern occultist or Heathen has far inferior ideas to those that mythological or occult traditions have left behind. We really need tradition as a source of material for our creative, spiritual, and unconscious aspects to weave into reality. The depth and texture of a whole magical ideology cannot possibly be replicated in the half hearted attempts of individual seekers of whatever sort to invent their own. How can one person compete with centuries of people organically and indirectly collaborating across the ages?“

The same has been recently said by my brother, Hubert, who wondered how shallow Crowley’s Thelemic ‘mythology’ appears when it is compared to the richness, profundity and subtlety of the ancient Lore of our forefathers and foremothers. So I started to explore the traditional meaning of this Rune (Ingwaz) and, after that one, of all other Runes of the Elder Futhark. It’s not easy to let go of subjective ‘insights’ or visions and your own UPGs in favour of an ‘objective tradition’. But looking back, I think, this is exactly the point where I began to discover the far richer and greater worlds of ‘Runic Magic’ than before. All modern occultisms appear to me today as totally artificial, deficient and illusory ivory towers lacking the power and tested ‘down-to-earth’ approach of tradition. (Again, as said in another post, read Flowers’ The Northern Dawn before saying that our tradition is lost and unaccessible to us anymore.) I think that I knew intuitively about this intrinsic constructional flaw of western occultism, that’s why I always peered to the East until my Eye has been attracted by the strangely shining, northern Noxia-Licht [night-light] of Thule. The difference between the occult systems of the modern age and the Runic system of old is that in the latter there is no ‘final aim’, ‘last explanation of everything’, ‘final revelation of God’ or final state of consciousness like ‘Nirvana‘, ‘Eternal Bliss‘, ‘Samadhi‘ or ‘Heaven‘. If anything, there is the will to power, to continuance and enjoyment of life and the expansion of consciousness. I find these aims are of great importance today.

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.” (Aleister Crowley)

The expansion of consciousness and continuation of life can be seen as the sole dictums of evolution itself. That’s why the attempt of some Ásatrú groups today to deny this evolutionary aspect of our tradition – like its contribution to the development of modern science – is not only historically wrong, but also dangerous in the sense that only science and traditional wisdom can prevent humankind from the ecological desaster we’re facing now and not hiding in the woods while dreaming up a romantic utopia in the past. Sweyn stresses the connection between our Heathen Germanic Tradition and modern ideas and ideals in his article ‘Heathenry and Modernity’:

„In many ways, the values developed by the Enlightenment thinkers can be seen as a real renaissance of the Heathen Germanic culture of freedom, law, pragmatic reasonableness, and individual rights. The success of this culture is obvious in the way it has become that basis of the values of the free world. The English language spread along with it, and has become the language of international trade, science, and politics to a large degree. So, while it is worthwhile connecting with nature and our ancestors, camping out and dressing in Viking gear at feasts, it is not necessary or productive to make that the major focus of one’s life. In the larger modern world, a world of our own making, we need to be participants. We need to be there to safeguard and carry forward the legacy and values of our Heathen ancestors as they have come down to us in the form of modern democratic freedoms. Something our ancestors were always prepared to fight for.“

In modern science the will to power is demonstrated by its attempt to control the environment. In the Heathen Germanic system of magic this will to power manifests differently and it shouldn’t be understood solely in a Nietzschen superman fashion (though everyone who knows me, knows that I love this aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy). It is rather a power of the soul that is sought here and the ability to let the different ‘parts’ of the soul communicate with eachother and to enable them to work harmoniously. The work of the Rune Master then, perhaps, is the immortalization of those parts of the soul that make up the magician’s individuated personality (in a Jungian sense, not its persona) and to strengthen them to gain Sovereignty.

„[T]he power that Initiates seek is not the same as the power that politicians seek. We seek Sovereignty, not control.“ (Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis, p. 216)

This quest for meaning, transcendence and power is encoded in the Runic system. In this age the will to power manifests (amongst others) in an existential way as the need of modern man to find meaning in life. I think the worst consequence of the modern age is that it has isolated man from the world around him, that it has obscured  his ‘transpersonal will’ (Assagioli) or ’spiritual need’ (‘transcendent self-actualisation’ in Maslow’s model of the hierarchy of needs) and thrown him into a universe devoid of any meaning. This led finally to an emptiness and ‘inner desert’ – an existential vacuum – that existentialists felt so deeply inside them and that Tolstoi described in A Confession. To overcome that emptiness, that feeling of senselessness and „absurdity of one’s own existence“ (Camus) is only possible by the individual effort of each man by an act of (‘transporsonal’) will. Thus ‘the will to power’ is also a will to meaning, as Frankl has put it, who survived the horror of the concentration camp in Nazi Germany. There he observed that those who saw a meaning in life or believed in a ‘higher power’ or fate were stronger in spirit and were more likely to survive these inhuman conditions.

„… the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power stressed by Adlerian psychology [deduced from the Nietzschean concept, my remark].“ (Viktor E. Frankl)

By immersing oneself in the Runic worldview this will to meaning is manifested in the pursuit of power, knowledge and wisdom. But the meanings that are thus experienced are not created by man or his ego, but are uncovered and rediscovered by a transpersonal power and guidance that opens up and leads us on to greater deeds and mightier thoughts, where „one word leads to another word, and one work leads to another work“ as Fjölsviðr envisioned in the Hávamál. By delving deeper and deeper into the Runic realms we learn that behind the Runes – their actual shapes, sounds and meanings – greater Runes exist that man’s mind will never pervade completely. Layer after layer new meanings emerge and we are „approaching an infinite succession of veils, each of which parts to reveal another behind it“ (Dave Lee). This is how Runa is hiding and sought after eternally. This terrific, tremendous, sacred dance of consciousness and mystery, Óðinn and his Runakóna Freyja, Shiva and Shakti, spirit and matter, life and death and on and on ad infinitum, is where the meaning of Life Everlasting is created from moment to moment – and inbetween, where time collapses back upon itself like the waves of the ocean subside at the shore, Eternity gushes endlessly from no-where to ‘now-here’…  …from Ásgarðr to Miðgarðr. Um mik ok í mér Ásgarðr ok Miðgarðr!

„Everything copulates around me“, Spare laughed in ecstasy and hurled himself into this violent flame erupting from the creative Chaos we call rather unimaginatively ‘being alive’.

If I had any choice in the matter, I probably would have dedicated to Tyr ten years ago. But, I’ve never really been able to get Tyr “on the phone” as it were, and an excessive focus on Warriorhood has long since proven to be unhealthy for me.

My flirtation with Loki has proven to be rewarding in a number of ways. Loki’s opened a lot of doors for me, pointed out a lot of ideas I’d missed. Intellectually, Loki seems the perfect choice of deity for a “Discordian Heathen with Satanic Tendencies”. In the end, though, Loki feels more like a best buddy and “partner in crime” than a spiritual mentor.

While I’m at it, I probably ought to give Thor a little more credit. He’s done me a couple of solids that I really haven’t earned. Nor repaid, now that I think about it.

But, for some reason, all roads seem to lead back to Odin.

When I first began to learn about Asatru, I suppose, the idea of dedicating to Odin seem a little too obvious, too predictable. In retrospect it seems more inevitable that I would one day call myself an Odin’s man. Odin represents everything that is important to me.

Poet. Warrior. Shaman. Transhumanist.

Odin’s appeal is both primal and futurist, specific and yet universal. It’s easy to envision interstellar cults dedicated to Odin, a thousand years hence. It’s equally easy to recognize the Odinic spirit in some of the most primitive forms of Hindu Saivite Tantrism.

Odin is everywhere and yet is clearly not for everyone.

Hail Odin.

Aum.

...it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.

Henry David Thoreau, „Walden“

In such a union „each element achieves completeness, not directly in a seperate consummation, but by incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it can enter into contact with all others.“ (Teilhard de Chardin) Tillich was expressing the same thought when he denied that union with the Ground of Being means a loss of self in a larger whole. „If the self participates in the power of being-itself,“ said Tillich, „it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swollow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does.“

Braden, „The Private Sea – LSD and the Search for God“

There are two souls living in my breast. Goethe said that. And I often feel the same way. On the one hand there is the „Anarch“ (Ernst Jünger), the free spirit („Freigeist“), the one, who dares to live without certainty and follows his own path… …and then there is the one, who follows more systematic approches to Mystery by more experienced magicians, the one, who needs some guarantee that he’s on the right track, someone who believes that someone ‘out there’ might have THE answers. Ironically these antagonistic forces in my soul led me once into the arms of the OTO. They promise freedom of speech and individualism, but practice dogma, rigidity, hierarchies and, ultimately, the subordination of the individual under certain ‘truths’ (read DOGMA=AMGOD). The fine line where freedom of speech ends and dogma begins is not easily seen, especially when you’re a 19 years old occultist, who believes in the Great White Brotherhood (I know why cynics exist). However, when I study the magical systems of others and try to follow their approaches to the Mystery, I always get stuck at some point where I begin to question some (or all) of their basic premises. This always leads me to the same conclusion: that I’m not a follower type, that I want to create my own philosophy and that there are Masters and Magicians who can help along the way, but there are no guarantees. If I may just quote a quote Henry uses in an upcoming article (in a magazine) that resonated deeply with my being:

„Theoretical loyalty provides clear direction but is inherently limiting; theoretical anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts uncertainty…there are no fixed and correct ideas or methods…and therefore no inherently right ways…“ (for the source, read Henry’s article when it’s published)

Just think about it: Theoretical Anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts Uncertainty! Don’t we all just yearn for that absolute certainty? But with absolute certainty Mystery ceases to exist. Hasn’t the world reached that point already? The way of the world is not my way… Uncertainty means freedom, certainty means dogma.

To trust my own instincts is the hard part of the equation. I do, but not all the time. However, doubts and conflicts have always been an important part of my path. They have often created a Need-Fire (Nauthiz), which led me to new horizons beyond what any magical model can describe as every model is „a map, not the reality“ (RAW). This dynamic of ‘friction-resistence-breakthrough’ was also behind the process to go beyond Crowley’s Thelemic model that finally culminated in the termination of my OTO membership in 2006 (and that dynamic is behind many other important processes that led to inner development). I regard this step as one of my most important ones towards an independent magical path.

In Occultism there is the tendency to explain everything, to package the Mystery in a formulae. Crowley’s teachings are full of such formulas and they explain a lot, but ultimately mean nothing. They may be used, but after all they cloth the Mystery in some costume. But this costume is not the Mystery itself. The Mystery is sensed in a certain state of consciousness (usually a kind of gnosis in a CM sense) and fills the seeker with awe. (Rudolf Otto described this awe in his work about The Holy and called the two emotions of man when he encounters the Divine mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans.) And after such an experience the seeker tries to rationalize what he experienced by creating certain correspondences between his experience and the system he’s using. He does this by assigning certain concrete elements of his experience to certain abstract qualities of his system-in-use. Too abstract? Ok, I give you an example:

Let’s say I invoke my Genius / HGA / Augoides / Wode-Self / Fylgja (what ever you want to call it – I’m not saying it’s all the same thing; the HGA seems to represent a combination of Wode-Self and Fylgja) and I’m deeply rooted in the Kabbalistic Psychocosm. If you invoke that part of your psyche in that system you will do it with surrender and love and, maybe, with submission. After you have established a rapport with your Deep Mind a voice starts speaking (not necessarily verbally, but visually or otherwise) that seems to come out of the core of your very existence (one-dimensional, uneducated and spiritually underdeveloped primates often think they met „God“). After this mysterious experience you turn towards your Tree of Life and assign that experience to Tiphareth. This corresponds to the Sun and the Heart. This again is connected to the Anahatha-Chakra, which leads to another chain of correspondences. In modern QBL these can be connected to the Hebrew aphabet and Tarot cards, so that finally a psychocosm full of correspondences is created. Too many are obsessed with the symbols, signs, correspondences, colours etc., so that they forget what the initial intention was behind to use them in the first place. And that’s basically to allow the mind to focus and use all those tools as keys for opening the doors of perception and thus to reach higher states of conciousness. BUT, once you are there, as Isreal Regardie never stopped emphasising, throw away the ladder, because you don’t need it anymore! All too often from such correspondences predetermined routes to „enlightenment“ (also known under its mysterious name „delusion“) are created that alienate the true seeker from the goal.

So, what is the goal? In my experience the first and foremost aim is to experience reality directly, without immediately conceptualising and contexualising the experience itself. Though I don’t deny the usefulness of certain concepts I realize that it’s all to easy to take the package for the content. Honestly said, I believe that my path has often revolved around CONCEPTS (package) explaining some of my (hardly to explain and hardly to accept) mystical and/or magical experiences (content). This, I believe, is the reason why Jan Fries said in my interview that „I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.“

Labels, they give certainty, don’t they? Words are more real than reality – for most of us. But in truth we’re caught in our own prison of concepts most of the time.

Ludwig Feuerbach, the first real atheist we know of (maybe the Greeks had also some examples of what we think of as ‘atheists’ today) showed how to free man from the concept of a transcendental being called „God“. He was a German philosopher, who declared that God was nothing but the projection of human qualities in their perfected form. He argued that the superhuman deities of religion are involuntary projections of the essential attributes of human nature, and this projection, in turn, is explained by him by using a theory of human consciousness that is heavily indepted to Hegel. Feuerbach is really the unrecognised father of the criticism of religion, because whatever was interesting in Feuerbach has been taken up by Marx and Freud (I’m not saying they’re right), who formulated their theses in a more logical, coherent and systematic fashion. However, Feuerbach proved that ‘God’ is just a WORD (label). But wait, words are more real than reality, right? In the beginning was the word… and the word was God. (By negating the existence of God – after his daughter has died at a very early age – Feuerbach has been prohibited to publish his works.) But those of us who experienced the Divine (content) cannot believe in the explanations of religion (package). And isn’t it strange that those Christians, who encountered the Divine in mystical experiences (like Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Blaise Pascal etc.) were doomed by the Church and that the Fathers of Dogma (who are the fathers of fear) became the patrons of this alien creed called Christianity? Before they imposed their dogmas on our forefathers and foremothers we had no conception of THE Divine (as the “One God”), but experienced that quality of reality (or consciousness – after all, I don’t know, if it has an objective reality) in different forms (thus polytheism). So, if Feuerbach is right (albeit a materialist), then he is confirming the mystical premise that the Gods live in our breasts. Thus the projections of “the superhuman deities of religion” that man has created aren’t mere illusions of human consciousness, but become an essential expression of the divine nature of Consciousness itself (Óðr).

In this way the label “God” degenerated into a concept that man has to believe in, instead of being the vision of each man realizing the core of his very existence. (I finally have to read Emerson. I know that he had a lot to say about that.) This imprisonment to labels is the hypnotising effect of language itself and due to an “evolutionary error” in our brains to ceaselessly create meaning. Zen Masters and other Masters of Meditation developed all kinds of techniques –including shock techniques, gazing at walls for hours, silence, sensory deprivation, mantras, mudras, yantras etc. – to overcome that miserable condition, also known as the conditio humana.

What I learn from this is that being a chaos mystic – doing your own research, experiments, rituals, meditations asf., and trusting your own experiences and your own perception, asking any premise and any dogma, system or preacher – is the only way to go. We can learn from those who walked the Path before us (magicians and mystics), we can learn to read their sign posts (symbol systems) and explanations (philosophies), but after everything is said and done, whom will you trust when you’re in danger or when death approaches? Your guru, your system, your God?

My answer is: “No, I will trust mySelf.”

This Self, I believe, is part of the Divine energy of godhead that creates and maintains the universe, who is the Alföðr and whom the Einherjar called Óðinn.

Persistence is all. Search continues…