Last year, I published “I, the Dragon: Chronicles of An Epic Life Among the Humans.” One of the threads that runs throughout the narrative is a shamanic tale, a ‘tale of Seven Beasts,’ i.e., the animal guides that brought my vital medicine at crucial moments: first was the Lizard, then the Wolf, then the Cave Bear, then the Raven, then the Vulture, then the Dragon and yes a seventh beast, which is a mystery, a shape-shifter.
The title of this talk, “Dragon Bone Broth,” concerns the sixth of the seven beasts.
I came across this beautiful illustration from the Norwegian artist, Theodore Severin Kittleson. 1892. The corpse of a dragon draped over its horde of treasure. In a mountain cave, by the sea. Just the skeleton and some swaths of dried skin. East and West, the dragon is an alchemical symbol. And so is gold. Looking deep into this Kittleson illustration, I felt the truth of what the treasure horde means in the motif of the life-affirming dragon. The evil dragon, the life-negating dragon hordes material gold, the dense gold, the gold of the Caesars and it covets its treasure, and it becomes poisonous and dangerous and weird. But the other dragon, the life-affirming dragon hoards the alchemical gold, the gold of existence, the gold of human experience, the gold of human evolution, the dragon gathers this gold and protects it in this cave, hordes it there, preserves it for the future. The ancient future. And the bones of the dragon will have become medicine. The bones and what’s left of the dragon’s skin will become medicine. Whoever eventually discovers the cave will the dragon medicine in a great heap, mixed in with the alchemical gold of human evolution. – “I, the Dragon: Chronicles of An Epic Life Among the Humans,” pp. 393-394.
There is a deep magic moving among us. That's why here at the beginning of a new year, the Tibetan Year of the Female Earth Boar," in this time of danger, in this time of great peril, in this time of chaos, I felt it would be beneficial to throw some dragon bones into the cauldron, stir in some powerful herbs, and offer you this medicine broth, tozencourage and empower you.
We are in danger. Our nation is in great peril. Environmentally, economically, politically. All of humanity is in danger. Countless species face extinction. Our own species dancing around extinction-level events of its own making. The worst and sickest among seem to act out with impunity. And whether you choose to ignore it or not, this is all hitting you hard.
“The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.”– Jonathan Watts, “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe,” Guardian, 10/8/18
“Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research. It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible ….” – Damian Carrington, “Immediate fossil fuel phaseout could arrest climate change,” Guardian, 1/16/19
One of the overarching themes in both Wyrds of Power and I, the Dragon is the reframing of altruism and sustainability as spiritual (and existential) imperatives.
Whenever I am standing in one of those long lines at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, I look around me in awe. What if all the shelves and freezers were not so readily replenished? How soon would this orderly line turn into a desperate mob? And what if the plastic cards clutched by each person in that line suddenly led to nothing more than "DECLINED," what would be the next step? How much of your life is shaped by unspoken assumptions? For example, the assumption that there will be electricity when you flip on the switch, the assumption that there will be water when you turn on the faucet, the assumption that the garbage truck will come every week to empty your bins, the assumption that there will be gasoline for your car when you are running on empty, the assumption that all the satellites and servers will keep churning on and on 24 x 7 x 365. How of many of your behaviors are dependent upon such assumptions? How many of your opinions are shaped by them? Take an inventory of those you love. Hold them in the mirror of your mind. Can you imagine those you love threatened with starvation? Can you imagine them threatened with death by dehydration? Can you imagine them pursued by rape-gangs in military uniform? Darfur may be the first Climate Crisis holocaust but it won't be the last, and there could well be a new Sahara coming to the U.S.A. Today it’s Darfur, but tomorrow, or next year, it could be Kansas or Texas or L.A. We are never more than a few ticks from collapse – even in the best of times. It isn't just something that happens somewhere else. It can happen anywhere. It may happen everywhere. Seriously. To have coconut water at all is a luxury, but at Rainbow Grocery, on any day of the week, I can choose from a dozen different kinds. We live in a paradise. Of course, there are consequences. This paradise is fueled by a hell. I do not say this to make you feel guilty for drinking coconut water. I drink coconut water. (It’s not disruptive like Palm Oil or Quinoa.)I just want you to be conscious and grateful that you were born into a paradise, and I want you to use your time well. – “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality,” pp. 382-384
Lately, I have been having a new experience on those long lines at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. I have been detecting something in some of those Millennials (now in their thirties) and Generation Z (now in their twenties) ahead of me in line, something in their aura, in their vibe, in their countenance. It is a state I recognize, but it’s difficult to put into words. It’s not anger, but there is anger in it, righteous anger, it’s not shock, but it has the air of having emerged from shock, it’s a state beyond “WTF?!?!?” These young people I have detected are leaning forward, “stoic” could be a word, “spartan” could be a word. They are calm, poised, speechless, but dealing. There is full realization of how utterly upside down, twisted, insane it has all become, and a sense of astonishment of how this all could have been allowed to happen. It’s all there in the forward-leaning grimace: the climate crisis, the political crisis, a system perverted by the absurd premises that money is speech and corporations are people, people debating whether or not 2+2 = “4” or “5” as if there was an equivalency between the arguments, the open pandering to racism, misogyny and homophobia, student loan debt, the cost of healthcare, the cost of housing, all of it, crimes against nature, crimes against humanity, all of it … As they reach for their credit card, in their psyche/soma I see this, I hear this: “WTF?!?!? I don’t how I am going to get through this but I am going to get through this. I will not lose my humanity. I will deal. I will cope. I will do what I have to do to stay ahead of this tsunami of reckoning. But I will not lose my humanity.” That’s what I’m seeing now. It’s the countenance of a warrior, the atmosphere of a warrior. Not someone who chose the path of the warrior, but someone who life compelled to take up the path of the warrior in order to simply survive and remain somehow whole. Now I don’t see this in every Millennial or Gen Zer that I see, but in a significant subset ... And this “WTF?!?!” state is further evidence of the Great Shift already underway …
I want you to know I am hopeful. For our future.
"I, the Dragon: Chronicles of An Epic Life Among the Humans" (2018) and "Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality" (2017) laid side by side on the tomb of the great Irish poet, mystic and rEvolutionary W.B. Yeats in Sligo.
Photo Credit: Kevin McLaughlin
“I, the Dragon” and “Wyrds of Power”
This talk marks the end of the year-long roll-out of “I, the Dragon.”
Although I will keep the Go Fund Me campaign open for a while longer, both “I, the Dragon” and “Wyrds of Power” are now available via Amazon.com, so the campaign is over.
There is a lot I could say about this year-long effort. but I’m not going to.
At least not here and now.
What I will say about it here and now is that I am profoundly grateful to those beings who actually did participate in this book’s GoFundMe campaign and especially to those beings who read it, felt a deep resonance with it and were moved to share powerful testimonials.
Artifacts
This talk is composed of five segments.
Each of these segments could be a talk on its own. Each of these segments could be a book on its own. But I’m just going to put it all into this Dragon Bone Broth.
A preview of this talk was given at the Theosophical Society of San Francisco on 1/18/19, the full version was delivered a month later via Facebook Live on 2/17/19.
Here are some artifacts. Text versions, PowerPoint slides and embedded videos.
Consciousness has numerous attributes, numerous powers, numerous functions; e.g., it pierces through, analyzes, dissects, it computes, it conceives and creates, it remembers, it imagines, it illuminates … and it reflects … All of these attributes, powers, functions are ways of knowing, ways of arriving at knowledge … Consciousness aggregates, elaborates, extracts, and expands, it independently evolves knowledge … In the context of this talk, I just want to focus on one of these powers … Reflection is a very powerful way of knowing … the great Sufi Inayat Khan called the Mind World a Palace of Mirrors … We mirror each other … In this instance, I don’t mean “mirroring” in the way you might imagine, I don’t mean someone showing you to yourself by holding a mirror up to you; I mean your consciousness comes upon something and opens to it and reflects it and in reflecting it, you learn and know and in this process of reflection, we, meaning me and whatever it is a being human or another species a seemingly inanimate object even a space that I am reflecting, we know each other in a new way and we are changed. When two psyches mirror each other, they meet each other in a very different way than they would otherwise, they know each other in a very different way.
Inter-species communication offers examples of this kind of knowing. You have this experience with animals, it could be an animal that lives with you and shares space with you and depends on you, or it could be another domesticated animal you encounter in a friend’s home, or on the street, or it could be a wild animal you encounter on a trail in the forest. Inter-species communication. You just know what the other wants or needs. I’m not talking about projecting human thoughts or emotions on animals, I’m not talking about anthropomorphizing them. I mean when you really simply know what they are trying to tell you, not in words, not in anything like a human thought, when you really understand each other in the moment, well, they are actually mirroring each other’s minds, and in that mirroring they understand. We have the same experience in mind to mind communications between people who are very close to each other, even if they are only meeting for the first time in this life, because they are so close, so aligned. They feel a great openness toward each other. So they slip seamlessly into that mirroring mind and they know each other’s thoughts and feelings in that moment.
Each psyche is a palace of mirrors. And each grouping, each city, each country, each collective is a palace of mirrors constituted of the palaces of mirrors of all of the individuals within it. And Gaia itself, Herself, is a palace of mirrors which holds all of the collective palaces of mirrors which hold all of the individual palaces of mirrors within. And of course each palace of mirrors is … Infinite … So this powerful, these concentric circles of collective psyches, palaces of mirrors in which each mirror is a palace of mirrors, and the planetary psyche is a palace of mirrors which contains all of the collective palaces of mirrors holding all of the individual palaces of mirrors for all of its life forms, for all of its life forms …
And to that you add the Internet, and social media, clusters of such mirror palaces, accessible to us in ways never before possible, and it changes psyche, it changes all of the psyches, all of the palaces of mirrors receive new reflections directly or indirectly, because of the internet and social media, which become like another sense, of course our framing of “five senses” is very simplistic the reality is much subtler much richer much more complex, but within that “five senses” framing we describe the intuitive faculties as a “sixth sense” and so we should describe the internet and social media as a “seventh sense.”
I want you to put aside for the moment all of our valid and serious concerns about the internet and social media, the issue of addiction, the issue of potential damage to cognitive functioning, the issue of the ways in which hidden forces seek to use the internet and social media to warp and misdirect the collective psyche or even individual psyches in a targeted way, all of these concerns are serious and valid, but just for the space of this presentation let us explore the powerful benign primal potential that is available to us …
I just want to touch on three realms of phenomena within this vastness …
But first some recent statistics to provide context:
1 billion people use Instagram.
80% of Instagram users are outside of the US.
Most Instagram users are between 18-29 years old.
95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day.
Over 40 billion photos and videos have been shared on the Instagram platform since its conception.
This is a palace of mirrors being poured into by a billion palace of mirrors, so everything is out there, on there, in there -- the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it, the stupid, the brilliant, the vain, the poignant, all of it …
I just want to take two or three slices out of this vastness for us to briefly examine:
Instagram Yoga
Selfie
FOMO
InstagramYoga
The power of Asana unleashed in the Palace of Mirrors.
I know, I know, just as there is with the internet and social media as a whole, there is much that is of serious and valid concern about the phenomenon of “Instagram Yoga” There is a whole conversation we could have about what’s wrong with Instagram Yoga. But just as I did with the internet and social media as a whole, I want you to put that all aside for the space of this presentation, and focus for a moment on the powerful benign primal potential that is available to us … The power of Asana unleashed in the Palace of Mirrors …
There are several overarching themes in both “Wyrds of Power” and “I, the Dragon,” e.g., the Ascendancy of the Feminine in Psyche, Altruism and Sustainability as Spiritual Imperatives and yes, the Evolution of Yoga and the Yoga of Evolution. Yoga is evolving in the 21st Century. It has evolved beyond its origins in India. It is evolving beyond the patriarchal framework within which it was held, and handed down, over these last few centuries.
Yoga is evolving on a global scale. It is no longer the intellectual property of India. It is not the property of patriarchal and hierarchical traditions. It is evolving. And this evolution is being largely driven by women. On a global scale, being driven by women, and in its initial phases it is being driven primarily by women in the West. And I say that the evolution of yoga and the yoga of evolution are intricately intertwined, but by that I don’t mean that yoga itself as a methodology will be somehow at the center of everything, the center of government, the center of business, I don’t mean it that way, I mean that those who are now moving toward the centers of power in business, in government, in the arts and sciences, a significantly higher percent of those people, on a global scale, have yoga in their bodies, have done asana, have taken on yoga, not just physical yoga of course, but also aspects of jnani yoga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga, the principles, the experiential power of yoga, they are in it, it has opened them up to somatic intelligence that they would not otherwise have, a significant number of people coming to power in all of these realms, at all different levels in all of these realms, will have an awakened somatic intelligence, will be informed in a way through their yoga practice, in a way that others have not be informed in the past, and this will play an important part in the evolution of what is to come in the Great Shift …
The power of Asana unleashed in the Palace of Mirrors.
The hash tags tell us the story:
#InstragramYoga (61,865 posts)
#Yoga (61,048,707 Posts)
#YogaEveryDamnDay (15,315,887 Posts)
#YogaLife (7,606,890 Posts)
The power of Asana unleashed in the Palace of Mirrors --
It all starts with one asana, one pose. Maybe it’s a heart opener, like Ustrasana,maybe it’s a hip opener, like Baddha Konasana, maybe it’s an inversion, like Salamba Sarvangasana. It could even just be Mountain (Tadasana), simply standing tall and open, or Corpse (Svravasana), simply lying on your back in stillness. But in some pose or another, if you are meant for this path, it will just happen, it will just take you. Seemingly suddenly, seemingly spontaneously, you will be on the other side of the membrane of maya, you will be inside your physical body perhaps for the first time, and certainly in a new way. It will all flow onward from that moment. The truth will dawn on you, what yoga really is, and it will offer you ever deeper insights into the mystery of your own being. Each asana is a hieroglyphic. In the language of soma. Each asana is a sacred syllable. In the mantra of human embodiment. Each asana contains occult information. The asana knows more about you than you do. And it knows what it knows about you in a way that you are probably not used to feeling or knowing anything about yourself. Each asana has a message for you. It may be repeat the same message over and over again. Or it may bring forth a different message every you settle into it. But whatever message(s) you receive, you will be in direct communication with a power beyond comprehension. When you enter into an asana, a single, simple asana, any asana, you are entering into direct relationship with an infinite intelligence that has direct access not only to the full spectrum of your current physical state, but also to the entirety of your own soul’s akashic record (past and future) as well as to the sacred, multi-dimensional repository of all divine wisdom from all ages in all worlds. If you listen to what the asanas tell you, a path will open to you, a path of transformation, a path of healing and revelation. –Richard Power, I, the Dragon: Chronicles of An Epic Life Among the Humans (2018), pp. 287-292
I posit that asanas are hieroglyphs that unlock vita information for you in practice, I further posit that even seeing asanas unlocks information … Hence my fascination with the number of posts using these hash tags … These powerful somatic hieroglyphs are being shot out into the palace of mirrors tens of millions of times. This means something on both the individual and collective scales, and changes something on both the individual and collective scales …
Occult History of the Self-Portrait
Another element in this palace of mirrors that is social media is the Selfie.
In the 19thCentury, and before the 19thCentury, and even on into the early 20thCentury, self-portraiture was the exclusive province of the painter. Brushstrokes on canvass. Furthermore, the little we have, the compelling self-portraits that hang on the walls of our galleries, are only the work of the subset of artists who somehow survived both the gauntlet of critics and patrons, as well as the labyrinth of their own psychological challenges. In particular, Edward Munch and Frida Kahlo bravely explored the vast, abysmal depths of the self-portrait. These are two of my favorites: Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell(c.1903) and Kahlo’s Autorretrato Muy Fea, Self-Portrait Very Ugly (1933)
I align the rise of photography as an art form alongside with the rise of existentialism in philosophy and psychology in science, in terms of its importance to the modern and post-modern world. The rise of photography as an art form led to a quantum leap in what a self-portrait could convey, and also who could do a self-portrait. The who, how, when, where, it all opened up, it moved beyond the brushstroke and the canvass, the field of self-portraiture became much more intimate, much more immediate and much more democratic.
For me, Diane Arbus’ Self-Portrait, Pregnant (N.Y.C., 1945) and Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1986) embody this quantum leap.
Now fast forward to the world of the smartphone and social media, and to the culture of the Selfie. Suspend for just a moment whatever derisive views you might hold concerning Selfies, and take in the sweeping scope of this occult history of the self-portrait from the brushstrokes of Munch and Kahlo to cameras and tripods in the age of Diane Arbus, Francis Woodman and Andy Warhol to iPhone and Instagram, and therefore to everyone, anyone, everywhere, anywhere … The power to take an instantaneous self-portrait. The power to take a Selfie, and the social permission to share it, allows you as an individual to capture a dimension of yourself you might never have seen, to preserve some fleeting version you that might otherwise be lost forever, and perhaps most important, it not only allows you to share it, the intimacy of it, the transparency of it, it encourages you to, it invites you to …
and it is not just you taking a selfie can allow you to explore the nature of relationship, to reveal the nature of friendships, it allows us to display how we reflect each other in this palace of mirrors … the power of the Selfie can be transformative …
Palace of Mirrors - FOMO
I was with a young friend of mine, we were walking her dog in the Oakland hills, she is one of the most impressive people I know, we met on a golden dragon in the desert, i.e., at Burning Man, in the six years she has survived two challenging, heartbreaking relationships, she has walked away (literally) from a serious car crash in which her convertible flipped over and landed upside down, she changed careers, became the valedictorian of her class and bought her own home. But when I asked her about something I had seen on Facebook, she mentioned she wasn’t on social media much anymore. And when I asked why, she said “FOMO.”
Urban Dictionary Definition of FOMO
noun a state of mental or emotional strain caused by the fear of missing out … A form of social anxiety - a compulsive concern that one might miss an opportunity or satisfying event, often aroused by posts seen on social media websites
The notion intrigued me. As I said, she is one of the most impressive young people I know. How could she feel FOMO? And then I looked at myself and said well, I certainly shouldn’t be susceptible to FOMO. After all that I have experienced, after all my adventures, all my travels. I dug deeper. But once the notion had been introduced into my psyche I found it there after all. There are some studies of FOMO. It’s a fascinating subject to explore. It is something that has always been with us of course. The Four Noble Truths speak to it. Seriously. But in this palace of mirrors, with our seventh sense operating, we are vulnerable to it in a heightened way.
This is a self-portrait taken by my friend Erin (@KikiLeOrange), she is a professional photographer, adventure leader and yoga teacher. She took this photo of herself at an extraordinary waterfall in Bali. (Because after all on Instagram it seems as if everyone is moving from Bali to Iceland and back again. Such is the nature of the illusory in the palace of mirrors.) In the accompanying caption, Erin shared her feelings on a year of transformation and healing.
So FOMO, FOMO. FOMO … Everything that you once experienced that you can no longer experience. Everything that you have never experienced, and have always wanted to experience, but never will experience. Everything you choose not to experience and now regret choosing not to. Everything. Everything. All of it. In the course of scrolling through your Instagram feed, all kinds of emotional and psychological content arise.
NOTE: “The Strophalos, or Hecate’s wheel is an ancient Greek symbol, and is an emblem of the initiatory lunar Goddess Hecate (Diana Lucifera), and her triple aspect. Only one ancient source remains to shed any light on the emblem’s meaning. The second century Alexandrian text known as the Chaldean oracle describes the emblem as a labyrinthine serpent (emblematic of rebirth) surrounding a spiral, symbolic of the Iynges- “whirlings” or emanations of divine thought. Today, it is generally used by practitioners of Hellenic Recon or Dianic Traditions of Wicca as an emblem of religious identification. Other emblems of Hecate include torches, dogs (generally female), keys, serpents, and of course, the crossroads.” – Dictionary of Symbols
So as you can see now, even just by touching lightly on only these three strains within the infinite reflections coursing through the palace of mirrors, the 21stCentury offers us countless opportunities to practice. And I want to offer you two 21stCentury reinterpretations of powerful methods to deepen your awareness, your grounding in the reality of who and what you really are and what this life truly is …
The first of these two powerful methods is Vichara (Self-Inquiry).
I have spoken about Vichara over the years, and I have written about Vichara over the years.
It was principally articulated for us by Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of Arunachala.
Ramana is a very important source. His being, his teachings, had a profound impact on my Yoda, the legendary American sage Joe Miller. And consequently his being, his teachings have exercised a profound influence over me on my ow journey forward and inward.
The method, the technique, the practice is simply to ask yourself, “Who am I?” Whatever you are doing, whatever arises, however you feel, wherever you are, whatever, whatever, whatever, just ask yourself silently, inwardly, “Who am I?” Not to separate yourself out from whatever you are doing not to separate yourself out from whatever you are feeling, or wherever you find yourself in the moment, just ask yourself, peacefully, gently, “Who am I?”
I say “not to separate yourself,” and this is very important, I mean not to isolate yourself, it’s not intended somehow remove yourself from the moment, or to somehow make whatever you are experiencing less than something else, or different from something else … so this is NOT “Neti, Neti …” (i.e., “Not this, Not that …”) Although it will often be presented to you as something equivalent to “Neti, Neti …” Vichara is not “Neti, Neti …”
People would come to Ramana and ask him, “Is reincarnation real?” And he would say why don’t you ask yourself, “Who am I?” Find the answer to that question; and then if you still want to ask about reincarnation come back and we will discuss it. People would come to Ramana and ask him, “Which is it, is it all free will or is it all determinism?” And he would say why don’t you ask yourself, “Who am I?” Find the answer to that question; and then if you still want to ask about free will vs. determinism come back and we will discuss it.
Who am I as I sit here and speak to you? Who am I? The answer isn’t “I am not my body,” or “I am not my ego,” or “I am not my name.” That’s not it.
Just ask yourself, “Who am I?” And don’t posit an answer.
Just ask the question. Don’t posit an answer. Just take a gentle, in-drawn breath and allow the question to answer itself, allow the question itself to reflect the answer. Unspoken, unspeakable. Indescribable, incomprehensible. But nevertheless immanent, intimate, direct and utter. That space between two thoughts, that is the answer itself, it is the substance of the reality of who and what you are. It is from that that the Voice of the Silence arises. It says nothing, and in saying nothing it embraces and exalts everything. The answer is so immediate, so direct, that people don’t believe it, they can’t trust it, there is no concept to cling to. The answer to that question is so immanent, so instantaneously present, that people miss it.
Who am I?
The second practice is Vairagya.
Vairagya is typically translated as “dispassion, detachment, renunciation, indifference” and the subsequent implication is that you must somehow rise above, to live in pure white and eat only pure food and remove yourself from the profane world, to live removed from the world around you, or somehow cultivate indifference to the world, to be detached from it.
Here is a description of Vairagya offered by Swami Vivekananda, who was a very important historical and a noble servant of the truth. But in this description of Vairagya, Swami Vivekananda is just wrong, typical but wrong.
This quote BTW has literally become an internet meme, rattling through the palace of mirrors.
“The chief helps in this liberation are Abhyasa and Vairagya. Vairagya is non-attachment to life, because it is the will to enjoy that brings all this bondage in its train; and Abhyasa is constant practice of any one of the Yogas.”— Swami Vivekananda
As you see, I have taken the liberty of crossing out the wrong-headed teaching.
I suggest to you that Vairagya means no such thing, at least not to us here in the 21stCentury, if it ever did mean any such thing. For us, it means to be able to remain present, to abide in a great peace, to call it an inner peace would be misleading because it takes us back into “inner” and “outer” let’s just say a piece that is like your own skin a peace that moves with you through all of it, so you can be fully present with the greatest joy or the deepest sorrow, fully present, without pulling away, remaining with the truth of it in the moment, fully, all of it, to feel the greatest joy or the deepest sorrow, fully, and yet not lose that all enwrapping skin of peace even when you unravel it, even when you are skinned alive, and robbed of that peace, you simply return to it, you reinitialize it reboot it, and you resume your practice, and you put one foot in front of the other, leaning forward, that’s vairagya, and so FOMO brings us this opportunity to cultivate vairagya, scrolling through all that you once had and will never have again, all that you have always wanted but will never have, all that you could have had if only, all that you should have except for, all of it, the places you will never return to, the places you want to visit but may never get to, the life experiences you have lost, the life experiences you have passed by, all of it, whatever it is for you, it is an opportunity to practice, to cultivate true vairagya, which is not the pushing away of the greatest joy or the deepest sorrow, or the memory or echo or reflection of either, but simply being present with it, for it, through it, and on and on and on … Vairagya is a powerful ally …
STDs. Spiritually Transmitted Diseases. Or Spiritually Transmitted Delusions. They’re synonymous. (I see that my friend, Alita Arose, a gifted performance artist, recently posted on what she called “Sexually Transmitted Demons,” another creative use of the “STDs” acronym. Well, Sexually Transmitted Demons” is a real problem too, but I will refer you to her IG feed, @AlitaArose, for more on that one.) So what do I mean by Spiritually Transmitted Diseases, or Spiritually Transmitted Delusions? And how do you become an STD carrier? I am not talking about false teachings or false teachers. If you are a false teacher and/or you are somehow propagating false teachings you are just trying to con people, and put something over on them, and in many cases on yourself. But to be an STD carrier you have to have some degree of realization, you have to have something of value to share, that’s how the STD moves. You have to know something, you have to have some real insight, some real experiences, some realization. You have to be earnest and have some grounding in experiential truth to become a carrier. Some among us are riddled with STDs, however well-intended, even if they have been touched by the reality itself. And these STDs are transmitted through teachings.
[NOTE: This is yantra of Chhinnamasta. She is one of the ten Tantric goddesses known as Mahavidyas. She is a headless goddess. A fierce, red-skinned young woman, with matted hair, full breasts, and a blue lotus near her heart. Depicted here in coitus with Siva, she is often shown standing in fighting stance on top of copulating lovers. She beheads herself. The three streams of blood nourish the two yoginis who serve her, as well as her own severed head. Multiple meanings speak out through this powerful image: interdependence of life, death and sexuality, awakening of Kundalini and the Siddhis, eradication of ignorance. Some consider her worship dangerous. Yes. But aghoris call on her. "Srim hrim klim aim Vajravairocaniye hum hum phat svaha ..."]
No doubt that there are other STDs, but tonight I just want to focus on the one I call “Usurper.” What “Usurper” does is it changes a teaching into its opposite, e.g., if something is meant to free you it imprisons you, instead of bringing you into union, liberation and awakening, it leads you into further imprisonment, isolation and ignorance. All with the best of intentions, of course.
I have identified three strains of Usurper, there are others, but let’s focus on these:
Strain
A --Tables of Erroneous Correspondences, i.e., false characterizations
drawn from the misleading misapplication of provisional symbols. It’s a
big problem. It’s in many worthwhile books of occult lore. It’s in many
useful yoga teacher training (YTT) manuals. It’s in many of our minds.
What do I mean by “Erroneous Correspondences”? For example: “Male / Sky /
Sun / Yang / White, Active” and “Female / Moon / Earth / Yin / Black /
Passive.”
And it can go on and on and on ... The Table of Erroneous Correspondences can get very long. Maybe
you remember that in the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Padma
Sambhava talks about the Clear Light of the Voidness, and how it is of
the Dharma Kaya, and he likens it to a “cloudless sky” and that “knowing
the All-Consciousness in one’s own mind, one knows it to be as void of
quality as the sky.” He uses the sky as a symbol over and over to
communicate something about the nature of reality, but then he is quick
to emphasize that this is only a “provisional symbol,” i.e., that it’s
“only symbolically so,” and therefore the nature of reality “does not
depend upon the sky symbol.” In other words, it’s just a metaphor. The
depth of consciousness is like a cloudless sky, ok, but don’t get hung
up on my metaphor. Nevertheless the metaphor ends up in a table, the
great Table of Erroneous Correspondences, in which energies, metaphors,
forces of nature, gender, different dimensions are all sorted out,
separated and wrongly categorized, and then knowledge of this table and
its false correspondences supplants direct experience and eradicates
wonder. Life, our beings, the universe and its elements, it is all much
more complex than this Table of Erroneous Correspondences implies. So
this Table of Erroneous Correspondences has to be broken up, among other
damaging side-effects, it serves to reinforce the perversion that is
the patriarchal framework, this Table has to be left behind, all of its
contents have to be allowed to redefine, regroup, realign, re-orientate
themselves in our understanding, in our own explorations … if you do
this you will see they will line up in new ways, different ways, very
revealing ways, much more dynamic ways …
Strain B --
Disempowering Memes, e.g., “What you resist, persists.” This one came up
a lot in 2016. When people don’t want to get involved in political
struggle (or any other kind of struggle really), when they just want to
turn away from conflict, because either they are afraid to engage, or
they just rather live on in denial, so they say, “well, what you resist,
persists, I’m uncomfortable with that word ‘resistance,’ just don’t
give it energy, don’t give fascism any energy, you’re just making it
stronger.” So I call that a disempowering meme. Of course there are
circumstances in which “what you resist, persists” is wisdom, and
medicine, and an appropriate prescription, but not in all circumstances,
and not even in most circumstances. It’s a misapplication. It’s the
wrong prescription in many circumstances. It’s based on a misdiagnosis.
The wrong prescription can be dangerous, even deadly.
Strain C – Big Picture Perversion is perhaps the most virulent strain of Usurper.
Here are two examples:
“Divine
Authorship of Everything” – Many yoga teachers have painted themselves
into a corner within the span of a 45-minute noon yoga class, by saying
something about “how everything that happens in our lives is by divine
will” and that “the divine intelligence is in everything” and then a
student says, “Well, what about Hitler? What about Evil?” And confusion
overtakes them all. That mis-teaching is so facile and warped. Divine
authorship of everything, yes. But everything means everything, and
within that everything there is a whole lot going on, there is
randomness, within that everything, there is chaos theory within that
everything, there is a whole lot that divine authorship is not
micro-managing, it’s not moving around the atoms of everything like they
were black and white Go pieces.
Perhaps the most important one
is the “Oneness vs. Duality” story – So “Duality bad, Oneness good.” “Oh
your thinking is so dualistic.” Your political thinking, or your
approach to psychological problems, it’s so dualistic. It’s all a
Oneness!” Well, the reality is it isn’t Duality or Oneness, actually the
reality, the truth is in the granularity of everything, and the
complexity of everything, and the truth of oneness is found in
granularity and specificity, and the uniqueness of everything. It’s very
different from this infected state of “Oh, let’s rise up into oneness
and leave duality behind.” Life is much richer than that.
Now it is
vital to boost your mystical immune system to avoid contracting Usurper
and other STDs. This list of boosters might surprise you.
Your
True, Primal Conscience. Not the morality that is imposed by the social
order, or in your family, or in your tradition, but your own innate,
native, pristine, in-born conscience, it has been with you before the
beginning, it’s the depth of you that just knows right from wrong, even
if it can’t explain the why, it just knows.
Chop Wood and Carry
Water. Just that, chopping wood and carrying water, whatever that looks
like in your circumstances. Some form of useful manual labor. Some
outdoor activity that sustains. It makes us strong, it keeps us honest.
It grounds us. It moves from the belly, from the root, from the feet.
Common Sense, Sense of Humor, And More Common Sense. The great Madame
Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, articulated this as an
occult secret of the greatest importance. And my Yoda, the legendary
American sage Joe Miller pass it on to some of us it in the late
20th Century.
Somatic, Intuitive and (Almost As If) “Olfactory”
Information – information that your five bodies give you, the
information your intuition gives you, and that sense of “this just
doesn’t smell right.”
Digging into granularity and embracing
complexity in your quest for the mystical secrets of the universe, and
yes allowing for conflict in your quest for the truth of what it means
to be human.
Have you seen the Gillette commercial that was debuted recently?
It reflects an important shift in our culture.
Gillette's latest commercial questioning "toxic masculinity" in the
Me Too era is facing backlash from some viewers. With almost 20 million
views on YouTube, the ad garnered 535,000 likes and 990,000 dislikes.
But according to one expert on the intersection of masculinity and
violence against women, the ad is being misconstrued … The commercial,
titled "The Best Men Can Be," depicts bullying, sexual harassment and
workplace gender dynamics, with a call for men to hold other men
accountable. It prompts viewers to consider: "It's only challenging
ourselves to do more that we can get closer to our best." – Jean Song,
New Gillette commercial "not an indictment on manhood," expert says,
CBS, 1/18/19
Within
a few days of that commercial being aired for the first time, the
American Psychological Association released a report that reflects
the same shift.
The APA’s sensible concern over the danger posed by traditional
gender roles will save lives. “Traditional notions of masculinity,
marked by stoicism, competitiveness and aggression, are clearly toxic to
both men and women. As the APA write in an article accompanying the
study: “Men commit 90% of homicides in the United States and represent
77% of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of
being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than
women to die by suicide.” They also point to research that found men who
bought into traditional notions of masculinity were less likely to seek
mental health support than those who had more open gender attitudes.
The guidelines advise psychologists to understand “how power, privilege
and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them
in narrow roles”. – Arwa Mahdawi, Guardian, 1/12/19
And
what is this important cultural shift? We are turning at last to deal
with the problem with men, i.e., the problem of toxic “masculinity.”
I
place “masculinity" inside of quotes because it is my contention that we
don’t even really know what a man is. I have written
and spoken at length on the Ascendancy of the Feminine in Psyche;
indeed, it is one of the four or five overarching themes in both “Wyrds
of Power” and “I, the Dragon.”
But in the context of this talk, I want
to spend a few moments exploring the underside of the Feminine
Ascendancy, i.e., this problem with men. From my perspective, an understanding of Ardhanari is essential to this exploration.
In
the psyche of each person, there are two halves. Both must be
understood, and healed. In each person, these two halves dance with each
other in different ways, and each of these dances is a unique
expression within the oneness of it all. This is why I invoke the
name and image of Ardhanaranari ("the half man-half woman") as part of
this exposition. Half Siva, half Sakti, half male, half female. Not
split down the middle. Integrated down the middle. One body, one being. He/she
is known by other names, of course, e.g., Ardhanarishvara ("the Lord
who is half woman") or Naranari ("man-woman") or Ammiappan
("Mother-Father). Variations on it are found in statues and paintings
all over India, but it is something of a sideshow, and it is not very
well known in the West. Of course, Ardhanaranari could no doubt
be of great solace to LGBT humans both East and West, because it is an
image of divinity that includes so much more than just straight male or
straight female. But, as important and beautiful as that function is,
there is an even greater purpose to it, because in every psyche there is
both Yin and Yang, and within the Yin there is the core of Yang, and
within the Yang there is the core of Yin. And so much of what is wrong
with where we are, and what we have become, socially and culturally, on
this planet is a result of this split down the middle of psyche, it is
more than just a divide between masculine and feminine, it is also a
divide between light and dark, nature and spirit, life and death. This
great split has driven us mad. So I place Ardhanaranari here in
this context, and suggest the image and what it represents shouldn’t be
so obscured. Arguably, it should be one of the central images of
divinity. Indeed, it is a worthy candidate for one of the principle
avatar icons of the 21stCentury. Yes, we need to exalt Ardhanaranari
along with the Great Triune Goddess as bringers of a new age in
consciousness for us all. There are many false memes about gender
in relation to the spiritual path, e.g., that the divine nature is
masculine, and that the feminine is somehow inferior, and also that LGBT
orientations are somehow unnatural. We must dispel these hurtful lies. The
mysteries of gender, and all its permutations, are an aspect of our
primal reality, and as such they are sacred. – Richard Power, Wyrds of
Power: New Language for A New Reality (2017), pp. 149-150
Now
just work with me, accepting this premise that Ardhanari should be the
avatar of the 21st Century, because it/they/she/he represents the human
psyche, in its primal condition, with both of its hemispheres vibrant
and alive. I want you to close your eyes and move with me into the
creative imagination. Begin by holding the image of Ardhanari, the half
Shiva / half Shakti avatar, in your mind’s eye. Next, spin it, whirl it,
faster and faster, until the image begins dissolve, disassemble it,
whirling, whirling, until it liquifies and all of the colors transmute
into a bright blue and a bright pink, a swirling cyclone of liquid drops
of blue and pink, and then allow the whirling to slow gradually, and
taking a new form, you could see it as a brain with two hemispheres, you
could see it as a heart with two “halves,” but better to imagine them
as hemispheres, you could see it as a cauldron with two hemispheres, if
you can draw in your creative imagination a structure that is brain,
heart and cauldron, the contours of each of the three forms showing,
perhaps the brain, within the heart, and the heart emerging from the
cauldron, but all fused somehow, all touching, not separate, connected
with each other, or somehow superimposed upon each other. This is more
representative of what we really are than a brain alone, or a heart
alone, or a brain and a heart alone together, the cauldron, the belly
must be included, and all three must be interpenetrating … the only
colors you are working with are bright blue and bright pink, the outline
of this heart-brain-belly superstructure is not drawn with solid lines,
it is drawn with broken lines, dashes, and these dashes alternately
bright blue or bright pink all throughout the outline of the
superstructure, so it is all dynamic and it is all both pink and blue …
not static, not divided, flowing like Yin and Yang, but not black and
white like Yin and Yang, because we want to free ourselves and these
powerful symbols from that Table of Erroneous Correspondences I
mentioned earlier … Now imagine these two hemispheres within the
brain-heart-belly superstructure: one hemisphere is pink, the other
hemisphere is blue, but just as the outline of the superstructure is
made with alternating blue and pink dashes instead of solid lines,
likewise the edge at which the hemispheres meet, along the center from
top to bottom, it isn’t a solid line, the two hemispheres sort of bleed
over into each other, the line is blurred … these are Female and Male
hemispheres of the human psyche … and just as there is a swirl of Yin
(black) inside the Yang (white) and a swirl of Yang (white) inside the
Yin (black), there is a pink (female) spiral inside of the blue (blue)
hemisphere, these are more like spirals than swirls, they are shaped
differently than the little drops of Yin and Yang each inside the
hemisphere of the other, and also unlike the Yin-Yang symbol, these pink
and blue spirals, each inside of the hemisphere of the other, they are
not fixed at the center of the opposite hemisphere as they are in the
Yin-Yang symbol, in this vision, they are dynamic, they move, like
satellite images of hurricanes moving over the surface of the sea, nor
are they in tandem, they are not aligned with each other, they move
independently and ceaselessly, the pink storm could be up way high in
the blue hemisphere, while the pink storm could be at the center, next
moment the pink one at the center could have moved to the outer edge of
the blue hemisphere, while the blue storm moves all the way to the
bottom of the pink hemisphere … this is a depiction, a vision of the
primal human psyche, healthy and whole … all issues of gender,
sexuality, gender identity, gender politics, all of that is way down
stream from this vision of the primal human psyche, this is the truth of
our psyche, whatever your gender identity, whatever your physical body
parts, whatever, whatever, all of that involves other factors, other
dimensions: karmas, chains of dependent arising, biology, psychology,
it’s all downstream from this primal reality …
Now imagine an
individual human psyche in a male physical body after 3,000 to 5,000
years of Patriarchy: the psyche’s female hemisphere shrunken to 0-15 %
of its primal mass, the rest of that space that hemisphere would fill up
is a dead zone, blank, no blue, no color, and there is no blue
(masculine) cyclone moving in that hemisphere, there is not enough mass
of pink to sustain it, and blue (male) hemisphere itself is shrunken, it
has receded at the edges, it has lost maybe 15-20% of its own mass,
there are also dead zones within the hemisphere itself, and of course,
there no pink (female) spiral in the blue hemisphere … So this is
a graphic representation of the problem with men. It provides context
for my statement that at this point in the human saga, we don’t realty
even know what a man is, or was meant to be, because for 3,000 to 5,000
years we have been denied half of our own psyches. Of course, women,
human psyches inhabiting female physical body, have been physically,
psychologically, spiritually, economically oppressed for those same
3,000 to 5,000 years, across most of the planet, almost all of the
planet, in both civilizations and in many indigenous cultures as well.
(In the East, the iconography may be balanced, and therefore healthy in
that way, but it doesn’t translate to the social order, in the social order the patriarchy, in its violence and perversion, rules.)
Now, because in this exercise we are focused on that problem, I’m not going to go on here to draw the human psyche in a female physical body, that’s a topic for another time, and also I feel it would be better, truer, to work with a woman on that depiction …
I propose some radical remedies for this problem with men. Smash the Patriarchy: The first of these remedies is one that is a meme moving among us all now and I embrace it and I hold it up to you as of profound importance and immediate necessity: SMASH THE PATRIARCHY in all realms of human life, in government, in media, business, in science, in the arts, in academia, in medicine, all of it … across the board … every Charlie Rose that falls is replaced with a Christiane Amanpour … just recently the female head of the CIA just appointed women to lead each of the four directorates. The CIA if you don’t know this, is organized into four groupings, directorates: Clandestine Services, Science and Technology, Intelligence and Support. For the first time in the Agency’’s history each of these entities is being directed by a woman. Now I am not talking about ideology here, I am talking about anthropology. There is a fundamental difference anthropologically, things will be handled differently. There are profound potentially long-lasting changes that in systems, policies, cultures, etc. that can flow from this if it is allowed to continue long enough … Ditch the “Divine Masculine”: Perhaps it’s a sensitive subject for some of you, but I am going to suggest to you that if we don’t really know what a man is than I don’t really know how we can project wildly about what the “Divine Masculine” is, at best it would be a projection based on the warped, ill, broken psyche we depicted in our vision of the human psyche in a male human after 3,000 to 5,000 of Patriarchy. So that’s can be right. Most of the time when I heard the term “Divine Masculine” used it’s being used in a self-serving way or in a romantically delusional way, as a projection of the qualities of some ideal lover … So let’s just ditch it, throw it over board, and revisit the notion later, much later … for how long? I don’t know. A hundred years? A thousand years? No More Male Spiritual Teachers: OK, I know this is going to press some buttons, but seriously. Maybe for 100 years, maybe for 1,000 years. OK, I know it’s radical, but what if we start here – No More Male “Tantra Teachers” and especially “No More Male Neo-Tantra Teachers.” For a century, for a millennium. That might really help everybody. What A ‘Real Men’s Workshop’ Would Look Like: Instead of let’s say twenty men going off into the forest together to sort out stuff, when as we have seen they do not possess that half of the psyche they would need to sort it out, instead of that futile model, I suggest you take each one of those twenty men and send them off into the forest with twenty women, each man alone with twenty women, isolated, in the forest for two weeks, or a month … sorting through all that arises from the problem with men, that would be a “Men’s Workshop” that might actually help a man begin to resuscitate some of those dead zones patches in the pink hemisphere of his psyche … Dragon Bone Broth: The Problem with Men (Video) via Spoken Words of Power
Toward A Taxonomy of Magical Beings, Notes from A Field Journal
An Exercise in Creative Imagination
Now for an exercise in creative imagination.
We are a research team of occult anthropologists from the Ancient Future.
We are identifying and classifying magical species indigenous to Gaia in the early 21st Century.
Based in a secure, undisclosed location, relying heavily on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling as source material, we immerse ourselves in social media, searching for specimens to catch, examine, tag and release. One team member is scrolling through Instagram, another is scrolling through Facebook, another is spelunking in You Tube. Occasionally one of us will encounter an intriguing countenance or an unusual aura, and call in fellow team members to work together in an attempt to classify the creature. Magical or muggle? If magical, which species or sub-species? Is it muggle-afflicted? Is it entity-afflicted. Is it a hybrid?
These excerpts are from the research notes recorded in our field journals.
The ultimate goal is a Taxonomy of Magical Beings …
A Few Words About Muggles
The human race divides two distinct categories, “Muggle” (i.e., “Non-Magical”) and “Magical."
Muggles don’t recognize the magic all around us, they don’t feel it, they don’t hear it, they don’t work with it, when confronted with it, their initial response is typically fearful.
However, it is important to note, that our research indicates that the Muggles play some mysterious but vital role in the vast magical eco-system. Further research is called for.
It should also be noted that Muggles are often healthier, happier, more prosperous, of higher morals, even kinder than Magicals; they are however hardly ever as beautiful.
The ratio of Magicals to Muggles is open to debate, it is a subject of ongoing research.
Although our team has no interest in exploring the different species of Muggle, if there are indeed different species (or sub-species), we have identified two curious types of Muggle, the Heroic Muggle and the Magical Muggle. These two types of Muggle exhibit qualities of a mythical or mystical nature, but are not actually genetically Magical. They are occasionally mistaken for Magicals. They are often found in close proximity to Magicals, sometimes collaborating or cohabitating with Magicals. We do not know what percent of the Muggle population is “Magical Muggle” or “Heroic Muggle” but it is clear that it is a rare condition.
It should also be noted that Hobbits are sometimes mistaken for Muggles, but they are, of course, a magical species. On the Nature of Magic
Although the definition of Muggle is straight-forward, i.e., a non-magical being, the definition of Magical is somewhat more elusive, since of course it is dependent upon a definition of Magic itself, which is arguably an impossibility. We have no intention of losing ourselves in a futile attempt to render such a definition, but we will instead offer some clues concerning its nature.
"The basis of herb magic—and all magic—is the power. This power has worn many names and forms through the centuries; at times even its existence was kept secret; at others it was common knowledge. The power is that which generated and maintains the universe. It is the power that germinates seeds, raises winds, and spins our planet. It is the energy behind birth, life, and death. Everything in the universe was created by it, contains a bit of it, and is answerable to it." — Scott Cunningham (Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs (Cunningham's Encyclopedia Series)
"It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Yes, magic is vibration, vibration is power, magic is sound, sound is power, all the true names, the “syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars”
“The bottom line is that magic is communication: communication between yourself, Earth and all the other life forms with whom we share our Earth Mother.-- Judika Illes The Big Book of Practical Spells: Everyday Magic That Works
In “Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics,” the great witch Starhawk declared, “When we practice magic we are always making connections, moving energy, identifying with other forms of being … Magic could be called the applied science that is based on an understanding of how energy makes patterns and patterns direct energy. To put it another way, at its heart is a paradox: Consciousness shapes reality; Reality shapes consciousness.
Yes, magic is actionable and interactive. Willful from within the Reality to work upon reality
“Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold...The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
Yes, magic is fierce, magic is dangerous. But not in an aggressive way, or in a pathological way. Magic is fierce and dangerous, like mountain climbing, like trekking through a wilderness …
Occult Sciences
Our research here on Gaia in the 21stCentury touches on several occult sciences, including occult cosmology, occult anthropology (our principle discipline) and occult earth science.
Just as the human race divides into two categories, Magical and Muggle, the nature of reality itself is best describing as having two modes: lower case “r” reality and upper case “R” Reality. Lower case “r” reality is defined by the three-dimensional space (i.e., height, width and depth) and linear time, which we will count as a fourth dimension. Upper case “R” Reality is constituted of not just three-dimensional space and linear time as the fourth dimension, but many more dimensions, which blow up our default concepts of space and time.
The lower case “r” reality is the domain of the Muggle but also the baseline of the Magical. Both share the experience of lower case “r” reality. The upper case “R” Reality is the domain of the Magical, and is beyond sensory perception or mental constructs.
Thus we say the Muggle World and the Magical World occupy the same space.
It is beyond the purview of this research project to utterly demolish the Genesis story as it is told in the Old Testament. But what we can say here is that if you turn the Genesis story inside out and upside down you will get closer to the truth of it all.
Could anything be more absurd than the notion that a Father God created Adam in “his own image” and then fashioned “Eve” from one of Adam’s ribs? Furthermore, just as Morgan Le Fay was wrongfully demonized in the patriarchal, Christianity-tainted versions of the Arthurian legend, so Lilith, the first mother, was demonized in the Old Testament’s patriarchally perverted Genesis story. All you need to know in the context of this research is that transhistorically, the Magicals are the Children of Lilith and the Muggles are the Children of Eve.
Now the Magicals and the Muggles are not alone, within this space of reality/Reality, there are of course the animal, plant and mineral queendoms, all throbbing with life, all shimmering with sentience of their own, all with their own remarkable relationships to the nature of Magic, just waiting to be explore. but there is more, there is more to the supernatural dimensions of it all …
There are, of course, the Elementals.
Related to or embodying the powers of nature.
"a thunderstorm is the inevitable outcome of battling elemental forces"
"a thunderstorm is the inevitable outcome of battling elemental forces"
-- Google Dictionary
In the 16th Century, the great occult philosopher Paracelsus identified four categories of elementals: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, corresponding to Earth, Water, Air and Fire. The fifth element, Ether, is the space itself, the space in which all of this plays out, there are no elementals attributed to the Etheric, it is the Skin of the All Herself.
And then there is also the realm of the Toxic Entities, the Shells, the Shards, the Demon Spawn. It is all too common that these things might be called “Dark Entities,” but that is a misnomer we are breaking up the Table of Erroneous Correspondences, Dark and Light are not the duality of Good and Evil, they are the dynamic duo of Yin and Yang, they can symbolize. We are liberating Darkness from this wrongful association, so we call these Toxic Entities …
Some ancient traditions, e.g., among early Egyptians, it is taught that you aren’t born with a soul, that you have to create your soul in your life … I understand what those teachings are pointing to, but I don’t buy into that view … What I do know is that you can lose your soul … You can become soulless …It isn’t easy, but it can happen, it does happen … Think of your soul as something like a creature that has chosen to stay with you and live with you, it has become part you and you have become part of it, you are vital to each other, symbiotic, it is dependent upon you and you are dependent upon it, like a service animal, now this service animal, this soul is strong, fiercely loyal, dedicated, it won’t leave you easily, it wants to be with you and help you, it wants to nourish you and be nourished by you, but if you mistreat or neglect yourself, or allow yourself to be neglected or mistreated, or if as a child you are helpless to resist such cruelty, or you are in some other way helpless to escape it, then you soul can get sick and die, serial killers are soulless, mass murderers are soulless, well, what happens really is more like your soul gets suck out of an air lock into the cold emptiness of space … and once it has been sucked through and out into nothingness, it is torn to pieces, these are the shards and shells, the remnants of souls that have been lost, they are sucked through the cracks in the circle of the life, the cracks in the world …. And all of these shards and shells fly around in a bardo of their own outside the periphery of the circle of life, below the world, but they are drawn back again, of course, they are attracted to the play of light and dark, and in the green garden of the world, they seek energy, they want to feed, they are drawn back the life of senses, so they fly back in through those cracks in the circle of the life, and they attach themselves to someone vulnerable, someone weakened, someone who has opened themselves up unconsciously, to the wrong influences or the wrong kinds of appetites … and they glom on, and take hold, and feed parasitically off your life force, and over time they warp you in different ways … so some classifications can become very complex, you can have, for example, an entity-afflicted Magical or an entity-afflicted Muggle ..
Also occasionally numerous shards and shells will aggregate to form a demon, a thing that has a life of its own in a way, and these demons will return to the edge of the circle of life, to dwell among the magicals and the muggles, some will occupy the shell of a muggle or the shell of a magical, some will actually have their own incarnation, there types of demons, species and sub-species which evolve out of the various strains of shard husks shells soul remnants …
Both Sauron in Lord of the Rings and Voldemort in the Tales of Harry Potter were soulless and disembodied and yet over time returned to once again threaten the circle of life …
Notes from a Field Journal
Partial List of Magical Species Identified, Cataloged and Tagged in Our Research: Dakini, Fairy, Pixie, Sprite, Mermaid, the Spectrum of Fey, Centaur, Unicorn, Pegasus, Peris, Jinn/Genie, Garuda, Brownie, Dwarves, Valkyrie, Elves, Sorceress/Sorcerer (Species), Vampire, Wyrwolf, Amazon …
Yes, there are many sub-species, e.g., one isn’t simply mermaid, our research has detected different kinds of mermaids … And yes, there are hybrids too, resulting from the inter-twining of different magical strains …
We have identified what we call the “Spectrum of Fey.” In the beginning, and before the beginning, what we now identify as Dakini and what we now identify as Fey were the same, it was one species, BUT over the bloody, insane course of three to five patriarchal millennia, the species bifurcated East and West, and because of numerous, profound mass crimes, e.g., the Spanish Inquisition, what was once all Dakini, went underground, broke up into sub species indigenous to particular regions, morphed, mutated, intertwined with other magical creatures, lived on taking different names and styles, developing diverse strains, and yet always on the edge of annihilation … much of what we understand as “witches” and “sorceresses” and “priestesses” down through the ages are made up of one sub-species of Fey or another … we call this range of sub-species “the Spectrum of Fey” and it reaches from a strong strain of Fairy-Fey intertwining at one end of the spectrum to a strong strain of Elven-Fey intertwining at the other end of the spectrum …
The current state of species identification work relies heavily on legends of East and West, but deeper study of North and South will reveal many new species and sub-species
Within the last 72 hours we have classified an incubus occupying the shell of a muggle projecting herself as a magical being and a “tantra teacher” living in Northern California and an Amazon/Pegasus hybrid witch living in New England as a wife and mother …
The Secret Engine of the World
In closing, here is a new poem --
What are you called? Bruja? Baul? Bodhisattva? Tantrika? Aghori? Troubadour? Dakini? Bhakta? Curandera? Yogini? Wizard? Sorceress? These are all just cover stories. Your true designation is beyond human speech. Authentic, mystical love, real love, is the secret engine of the world. But this authentic, mystical love, this real love, does not act like fire or water; it does not incinerate or drown that which it encounters. Authentic, mystical love, real love, moves like a vast glacier; whatever it does not crush or bury, it pushes forward. Yes, this love glacier levels mountains and forges canyons, it breaks the unbreakable and reshapes the earth. The love glacier is so massive that it takes a lifetime just to glimpse it, and even then it can only be seen as far as the horizon; it moves so slowly it is almost undetectable, and so it takes a lifetime to measure its grinding progress. Authentic, mystical love does not act like fire or water; it does not incinerate or drown that which it encounters. this love moves like a vast glacier; whatever it does not crush and bury, it pushes forward. This is the secret engine of the world. How utterly empty and free you must be to revel in the movement of this glacier, knowing that all you have ever had or wanted will be torn up and ground under, and that then in the glacier's aftermath there will be only a long fathomless silence, in which you will be no more than the shadow of a raven on the white stillness of the deep snow.
