I gaze with crystalline eyes
into the silver light
seeing a web that hums and strums with power
spatial nodes representing place, person, or thing,
while temporal strands of activity move the spaces
with their songs of power and promise.

I am in the zero space/time continuum where nothing matters
and everything is revealed
where identity becomes one from zero
and emptiness gives way to realizations
of empowerment through peace
identity changing from dysfunction to function
to awareness that no one is a victim of themselves
unless they choose to wallow in their victimhood
and excuse themselves from taking responsibility
for their end of matters

Magic reveals the greatest truth
that life is an endless play
of possibility on reality
of the conjoining sexual acts
of space and time joining each other
shuddering in lustful, blissful abandon
to create this present moment
a baby of circumstance, fate, destiny
and the shattering sighs of universal harmony
dissonant in our ears, for we cannot hear
fully that song of time and space
joining into one,
The present is a present,
with the past full of hidden secrets
and the future blazing ahead to provide
this final greatest moment
of life passing to death passing to life
the cycle has no end or beginning
just endless possibility, endless illusion
til you strip away the scales
from your eyes and see
all along it was a joke you played on yourself
to bring meaning into your every moment
a cruel explanation of why
when we look into each other’s eyes
we realize we know each other
for you are in me, and I in you
and soon we discover
we are all in each other
everything we ever needed

Now join me for this one last act
this blissful orgasmic
death love lust act
of sex, the little death
the beginning-end of our song
and drama
I let you go, let go of myself
and find in the release
the expression of space/time that exquisitely
presents this god breath whispering into me writing.
We’re all joined in this moment.
Hello to me, hello to XAH
my highest self telling me the secrets of the universe
penning them down, laughing all the while.
We’ll meet again you and I,
when we see ourselves in each other
and realize it’s all an illusion
this joke of you and I.

When I visited the spider goddess, she showed me a new technique where I could create a silver thread of time to an event or person, if one hadn’t existed before. This approach complements the editing technique I learned from her the last time I visited. The main difference is that you are essentially creating a new connection as opposed to editing an existing one. You can even create context specific strands of time. In other words, if there’s a specific context that you want to create for a situation or person then you put that into the strand that connects you to the event or person.

Afterward the spider goddess and I discussed time itself. She pointed out something that she has said before. The sense of time a person has is dictated much more by awareness of natural rhythms and cycles than an actual force of time. The conceptualization of time as a force is a useful illusion that has its own rule, which can be used to manipulate the awareness of time a person has. It’s something I can understand. I know that my “age” is more or less an arbitrary number used to explain the physiological process of aging and that day and night are terms used to understand the changes brought about by the rotation of the Earth around the sun. The concept of the flow of time seems to be more of a comfort illusion than an actual reality. The word when allows us to situate a place and space as much as a time. Even the spider web is another concept tool for the illusion of time. It works, and certainly something happens, but her point is that time isn’t so much of a mysterious external force, so much as its a perception and explanation and a method for sorting out and indexing changes. We create time to explain and understand the changes that occur in and around us, but you have to wonder if time would even exist as a concept if there was no one thinking about it.

Review of In Search of Time by Dan Falk

This book presents a “history” of time, with a heavy focus on physics and how physicists throughout history have approached and tried to conceptualize and explain time. The author does an excellent job of presenting a wide variety of both contemporary and historical perceptions of time. I enjoyed reading this book because it provided some food for thought on how I understand and conceptualize time. I recommend it to anyone who finds the concept of time fascinating and wants to learn what others have to say about it.

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5 out of 5

I decided to then work with this technique, by looking at two different people I’m connected to and editing the strands of time. In one case it’s editing the strands to factor in a change of relationship, so that the person will be more accepting of those changes, because the strands that previously supported a specific type of relationship aren’t in place anymore to continue supporting it, due to changing circumstances in both our lives.

The other case was doing a working the strands of time for a friend dealing with some medical issues. In this case, the editing focused on editing out the cause of the medical issues, removing them from that person’s timeline, as it were, so that they would no longer be an issue. I figure if there’s no longer a temporal anchor for the cause of the medical issue, then the medical issue will no longer exist.

Since I did this just today, I don’t know for sure if it’s worked, but I’m fairly sure I’ll know soon enough and I will be doing some more work with this technique, to experiment with and refine it.

But the other element that always stand out to me is what I consider to be the extremely accurate depiction of the capricious nature of the Greek gods. If you read the myths about the gods, they as often punish as they reward and even the gifts they give are ultimately double-edged. For me, a game such as GOW is an opportunity to retell and reconnect with such beings.

And that is really the power of contemporary technology. It provides us new ways to connect with old paradigms, and at the same time births something new, which comes to be as evocative as what had already been there. It’s not that GOW is a better version of the Greek myths (far from it) but rather a reinterpretation, with a new kind of interaction provided as well. And there can be something magic in that…all depends on the perspective you bring to it.

And that…that really resonates with me. And it always has. I remember when I was a teenager and for a brief time, a born again Christian, that the pastor of the church I attended saw I read fantasy books and told me that those books were sinful and that the content was only about sinful things. And I remember thinking how limited that perspective was, and how I couldn’t endorse believing in a god that was so narrow and limited, and I realized that at some point I wouldn’t be a Christian, because being one was antithetical to who I am: A person who is full of curiosity and who wants to walk his own path, instead of following someone else. I realized I could not follow the path of the Christian God, because it wasn’t my path or truth, and it never would be.

Little wonder then when I discovered magic was real that I also found, for myself, the beginning of the path I walk to this day, one where I ask the question and find the answers, where ultimately it is up to me to save myself, as opposed to having someone else die for my supposed sins.

And my encounters with Pagans who have, in their own way, expressed a similar fanaticism, a belief that there is a one true way ™ and that the god(s) are the purveyors of that truth only convinces me further that following the path of another ultimately, for me, leads to a place that isn’t my truth. It may be the truth of those other people, but I find that when you hand over your authority to another being and let that being dictate your choices, at that point you also give away your truth and allow it to be subsumed to the truth of another being.

I can work with a god. I can respect it, but I just can’t worship it. Some will call that pride. It is a fundamental recognition that nothing is true and everything is permitted and if that is the case, then it is permitted for me to walk my own path and find my own truth and be responsible for it. And there are consequences for making that choice, but there is also freedom and knowing in the end that I am walking my path, pursuing my truth and that when I encounter the gods or other beings they are guides with information that represents a perspective to help me appreciate the journey I am on, but that is all they need to be for me, and I can give them respect for that.

And to be fair, I do recognize that for many people having a relationship where they worship a god or gods is the truth that works for them and is meaningful to them…and so long as they can do that in a way where it doesn’t negatively impact others, I wish them the best on their journey to their respective truths, but I see so much harm committed in the name of deities, in the choice to follow what someone else says. I see it, and I cannot help but think that if these people chose to be fully responsible for themselves, to stop following the words written in a book, or told to them by some person or entity, but instead to question everything and to choose their actions carefully because they could recognize that they and they alone were responsible for their actions, that perhaps they wouldn’t be so inclined to harm others just to prove how much they worship a god or how well they follow the path another provides them.

Tonight I finally did my third working to Thiede, in this case to claim my new space as my ritual space. I pulled out nine stone eggs and arranged them in a circle around me, pulled out the memory box and got elephant’s permission to open the gate of space/time. Then I evoked Thiede, and placed my hands on the memory box and let him guide me on a journey to claim my space.

He asked me what had changed in my space, and I told him my perspective, my sense of freedom, my place with different people. Then he showed me how to take the spatial awareness that we’d been cultivating and apply it to the room I was in. The room become a dome, like a bucky dome actually, with different matrices forming and in each matrix was a perspective, a place of awareness about not only the physical space I was in, but also the space of my life. Thiede asked me if I was really ready to claim my space, not just the room, but my space as a person. Was I ready, he asked, to be true to myself about what I wanted in that space.

And I thought that for the first time in my life I can be honest with myself about what I really want…or more honest than I have been, because I’m through with buying into certain societal expectations about what I should want in my space, from another person, etc. I realized that I don’t want to compromise my sense of space for someone else, not if that means I’m unhappy as a result.

I claimed my physical space, but also my metaphysical identity space, to be true to what I want in that space, so I can be true as well to who I allow into that space. And I recognize as well that every other person has his/her own space and so each person must respect his/her own space…I claimed my space, and my awareness of that space. Thiede told me than to do another working with Elephant and get ready for Purson…

In other news…

Panthea-con schedule is up. I’ll be teaching the class on Space/Time magic on Saturday morning at nine.

I opened the memory box, which is my gateway to the silver web and put both my hands on its sides. And I traveled along the silver web until I came to the center, where the Spider Goddess of Time awaited me. She held up the book of her mysteries and said, “It’s good you have this back, now paint what I show you.”

I pulled out my paintbrush and waters color and painted a web of time. Just one colors, lots of silver-gray…I asked her…was this really it? And she told me that my perceptions of time were too limited by human made standards of time. That what I painted wasn’t even so much a symbol as a way of relating to time and space, a way of moving past the linear perceptions and measurements that mark time by human standards. She told me that this year would be a move away from the mystical path I’ve been on, back to more of a focus on magic, but also a focus on changing those limited perceptions on time…that all the material she’d put in my path the last couple of months was partial prep work for the workings ahead.

And with that, she stopped my hand, looked at my work and said, “Start with this and see what it teaches you.”

Then I closed the gate to the silver web of time and gave my thanks to Thiede, Purson, and Elephant…and to her, the spider goddess of time. And so that’s the beginning into the element of time.

9-28-09 There’s not really much to write. Unlike all the other months, what I really feel right now is anticipation, or being in the center of the eye of the hurricane. I can look around me and see everything I’ve been dealing, but also recognize where I am and know I’ve moved past everything. Now it feels more like making a choice and getting ready to move ahead, free of the rotting putrefaction I went through, because the refinement is here.

10-01-09 I’ve been playing the Force Unleashed recently. When I first started my emptiness working, I played that game a fair amount. It represented, for me, the feeling of emptiness at the beginning. It doesn’t really anymore because I no longer see emptiness as an antagonist. It’s something I can see as part of me, instead of against me.

10-02-09 I reflected today that to truly experience emptiness I’ve had, in one form or another, to really become empty, to really see everything I hold dear fall through in some form or manner, if only to convey to me the full depths of emptiness. Recognizing that everything could be taken away, that’s been hard, but useful as well.

10-06-09 On a really deep level I wonder how much this year’s working has really helped me. I’ve been exposed to what drives me toward feeling empty, come to a really good understanding of it, but I don’t feel like its really solved. There’s still a part of me that just wants to find someone, something that will somehow meet this very intangible need I have. It’s a very primal, emotive part, not something rational that can be reasoned with. And it’s likely always going to be there. I guess I’ve learned better strategies for handling it and recognizing it when it comes out…and maybe I feel a bit less driven than I did before, but I also feel like somehow I just haven’t really “solved” the core issue for me. I don’t know if I ever will. Maybe, all I’ll really come away is a better grasp of my emptiness and a better way of handling it, when it comes up in potentially unhealthy situations.

10-08-09 I woke up this morning thinking about D. D was someone I met when I was twenty. We became lovers. She was seventeen years older than I was, a gifted magician, and very experienced when it came to life, and for that matter sex. I never fully, consciously realized until now just how deeply she imprinted me, or how much the relationship not working out would affect me. The majority of women I’ve been attracted to have always had a connection to Babalon, Lililth, or a similar type of goddess, i.e. the sacred whore archetype and I think it’s because of that imprint from D. This person made a really strong impression and I never fully got to satisfy or see where that relationship would go. So I see it as the root of a lot of my longings and seeking when it came to possible partners and sex in general. I’ve been trying to find someone with this particular current for a long time but I never fully understood why that was the case. And now I do…I really understand some of my choices in a very different light now than I did before.

10-10-09 I’ve been thinking further about what I wrote above, about the person I contacted, etc. I look back at various activities, various sexual encounters and I see this particular need trace itself through most of my relationships in a manner that never fully addresses it in a satisfactory way. The two partners I ended up with in long term relationships never embraced that particular archetype of the sacred whore. And conversely I’ve put myself in situations where I could almost have that relationship with someone who embodied that archetype, but then would take it away from myself, too afraid perhaps of getting what I wanted, or perhaps just not ready. I’m tired of that pattern. I’m tired of the hurt it’s caused me and others. And while I do love my wife very much and take genuine pleasure and joy from her presence in my life, I also have to acknowledge that this current is in my life and likely always will be. It’s something I want to explore with someone, safely and sanely.

10-11-09 One of my problems or flaws is that I put expectations on a lot of experiences, people, etc. In a conversation with a friend this morning, I thought about that…really thought about how much those expectations have actually caused me to miss out on some good experiences. I know I’ve placed expectations on so much of my life, and I’m even relatively sure of where that pattern came from. I also know those same expectations create a lot of the emptiness I feel as well.

I’ve been reading the Doctrine of Awakening by Julius Evola. It looks at some of the earliest tenets of Buddhism. I’m finding a lot of it speaking to some of the struggles I’ve been experiencing for a long time. And I’ve been reminded that I’m not really drawing on all the tools available to me. But I’m not surprised by that either. I’ve needed to fall apart this year, to see my flaws up close and personal as well as understanding the cause. It’s when you know the cause that you can start at the beginning with awareness and readiness to move forward. So falling apart has been discovering the causes…and starting the healing. I’m just about ready to move forward.

She said: “all you have to do is look around you and really see, not the image of your life but the real life. When you can define yourself alone, all the emptiness goes away” The image of my life is the desires, the expectations, the fixations, everything that haunts me because it isn’t realized. The real life is accepting how little any of that matters and how much what does matter is less about expectation and a lot more about the experience.

10-12-09: Further discussion with D, as well as thinking about something written in The Doctrine of Awakening, which stated that when a person “needs” another person they are spiritually weak. Not need as in rely on a person to back you up, but need as in codependent need, trying to find someone to fulfill something within you. As we all know by now, my emptiness working has at its core been dealing with that very issue, and on a very primal level, sex as a shadow activity can be expressed that way. Sex becomes a connection, the intimacy a doorway…the problem is it can also be addictive…it’s a drug like any other. You become a junkie, looking for your next fix. And for me, sex, like so much else, has been a way to avoid emptiness, to try and fill it up, and otherwise shut it out, but it’s always been a temporary fix. And it’s always been more about a constructed reality than an actual acceptance of this reality.

I know that now. That’s really what this year has been about, is finally, finally tracing the emptiness to every single root event and coming away with a profoundly different awareness of my emptiness in the process, as well as myself. And always going away with the awareness that I have a choice, have always had a choice, but now have more awareness in making that choice.

10-16-09 I volunteered at a play party tonight, to help out with one of the communities I’m part. After finishing up volunteering, I watched some people play and was struck with a feeling of incredible loneliness, and later a feeling of anger at myself and others for the last few years. I feel really alone. I have for a while. And a lot of it’s my own making. Seeing the fun and intimacy others were experiencing tonight just brought it home to me.

10-18-09 I ended up writing a long post about how I was feeling the other night on another site and got some useful feedback. But it also seems that the last couple of days has conspired to put me in touch with some possible interests…and I kind of laugh about that, because it’s the end of the emptiness working…and that ending is going to be opening a lot up for me. Last night I had a dream of a silver web and in the middle was a glowing orb and cracks were starting to appear in it.

10-20-09 I went and got the tattoo for Xah. The artist, Alice Kendall did an excellent job . You can see a picture below of the sigil for Xah, as well as the saying “From 0 to 1″ Tonight, I went into my ritual room, and painted my body with the sigil of Xah, while vibratingh isn ame over and over again. Eventually, the fox lord came, eyes laughing, tongue lolling out. “You’ve been through a lot this year. What have you learned?”

“I’ve known myself at my weakest, all my faults, flaws, and reactions exposed to myself. I’ve known myself at my strongest, confident, secure in who I am, able to achieve anything. And I’ve known myself as a mixture, and I am humbled by everything I’ve experienced. And I’m ready to move from 0 to 1, from a place of reactions to the past and old wounds, to a place of conscious decision and acceptance of the consequences.”

Then I, for a while, just meditated on this last year, on what I’d learned about myself, and my choices. This has been the hardest year of my life, in terms of really facing myself, and fully coming to terms with my emptiness. I’ve had to dig up all my core wounds, come to terms with some different people and their effect on me and also more importantly come to terms with my choices and how those have really effected others. I can’t say I’m a better person, so much as I’m a much more aware person after this year, after, the last five years really…and that awareness provides me an opportunity to be much more mindful of my choices. This year has been the culmination of a lot of internal work. I don’t even recognize myself sometimes, because so much has changed…but I’m ready to embrace this person I’ve become, and let go the weight of the past.

At times I wondered if I could make it…I spoke for a while just to myself about this last year, about what I learned, about who I’ve decided to be. And then I told Xah I was ready to finish this year, and move into the next one. I decided to use a bit of sex magic and brought myself to ecstasy, and in that ecstasy gave myself to Xah again and felt him enter through the sigil I’d placed on my arm and then felt the zero crack open and from it came forth the direction I’ve chosen…then a shower to wash the paint off…and now it is the 21st my Birthday. And I’ve made it through this year of emptiness and found myself and found clarity and sanity and peace with myself. For yes, there is emptiness, but now I no longer need to fight it or run from it. Finally, finally, I have accepted it.

I read through my entries on emptiness…it’s about a good four pages worth Just re-read everything…from start to now. If you go to the categories dropdown, you can select emptiness and read every entry…go back four pages or so…start at the beginning…You’ll read a journey of this last year, of a person’s journey to find himself and find resolution and closure with an element that most of us in the West would rather ignore.

Below is a picture of the tattoo I got as a tribute to this last year.

Happy Birthday to me.

“Will you be okay with that?”

“Certainly, go ahead.”

After Lupa left, she came back and said, “So about that audience.” I nodded, and went over to the guest bathroom and started up the bath water, mixing in oils as well. Once the bath was ready, I sank into the hot world, and she appeared before me, in all of her awful majesty…my lady Babalon. Her eyes were as red as blood, her hair the darkness of pitch, her skin ivory…and she looked through my soul and words poured forth from her perfect lips:

“Almost a year ago you entered into me, and through me descended into the abyss. You took on the rotting that was predicted to you, when you chose to stay here.”

I nodded.

“You’ve come through this admirably. You’ve rotted and that was my gift to you, not a punishment, but a gift, for you fully needed to feel helpless, fully needed to feel the strength of your desires even onto addiction itself, to fully come to to the root of what has caused your pain and emptiness. You never would’ve come to this realization if you’d gone out there, and so you would have remained a beast…but now you have traveled through your abyss, through your own rot and dis-ease, and horror and fear, and come through it with a clear understanding of what has held you back.”

“I agree. I felt a lot of regret and guilt over what happened, but as I went through this year and came to fully face what has haunted me so much of my life, as I rotted, I finally could find resolution to so much of the pain and emptiness that had previously driven me on. I finally came face to face with each of my core wounds and came away healed.”

“This year was your abyss walk, but also the culmination of the previous four years of work. You chose to walk into the abyss through me, as all magicians must, for it is only in facing your desires and facing the shadow behind them that you can move to the next step of your journey. You are no longer a beast, a pashu. You are now a person, a human.”

And then I said, “And if still I have the same desire after all of this. I’ve accepted I may never have that desire fulfilled and accepted that its best to enjoy what comes my way, but still I feel it, even after all of this. I feel it in a conscious way…recognize it as more than just an attempt to fill something up.”

She smiled gently. “After all of this, I will tell you enjoy what comes your way and what you have, but I will also say that what you desire will come when the time is right, and in a way that doesn’t involve you leaving the Earth you’ve come to call as your home, and also in a way that respects fully what is already there.”

“I’m still one of yours aren’t I?”

She smiled again, and said, “You never stopped being one of mine. But you are not a beast to be ridden either. Remember what you’ve said yourself, ‘Both parties create the relationship and choose what it will be.’ And what have you chosen with me?”

“For you and I, Milady,” I said, “I choose to walk with you at my side, even as I am at yours, devoted to you and your mysteries, but also free to be me and continue on with the journey I’ve chosen.”

“And that is how it should be with you. For you are your own star, and must shine that light on the path you walk. And you and I both know that you’ve chosen to walk a very particular path, to bring forth the unorthodox and unusual, and manifest as well that success which is yours to claim.”

Then she kissed me on the lips, her energy melding with my own, and looked into my eyes with her red eyes and said,” Tomorrow you’ll move from Zero to One, from Something to Nothing, and mark it with the sign of Xah….Tomorrow you will start your re-birth, and claim your freedom from the abyss. Remember, I’m always at your side, never too far away…and you are one of mine, even as you are your very own self. Enjoy what’s coming next…you’ve earned it.”

Then she left, milady Babalon, just like that…and I climbed out of the bath…and readied myself for tomorrow, purified and ready for the rebirth.

Here’s a little-known fact about me: Elephants are my absolute favorite animal in the world. I’ve always been fascinated by them and actually collect elephant statues, and would have to say that in some ways I do identify with elephant strongly. And certainly I seem to have similar memory traits as I generally remember wherever I’ve been and can trace the path pretty easily and have an intuitive ability to find my way around as well.

So tonight I decided to meditate and see out elephant. I’d gotten an elephant statue recently and I held it in one hand, whiel I meditated, using it as a link to connect with elephant. What ended up happening is that elephant found me on a prairie plain and asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to know what the significance of his presence in my life was. He told me that if I wanted to, I could work with him more and he could show me how to get better at clearing my path of obstacles and finding the best paths to get to my goals. He showed me how he did this a lot, when seeking food and water, and said my search for business was essentially the same…trying to find my food and water…and that he could help. I think I’ll be meditating with him further on this and seeing how he can help, but I’m definitely intrigued.

After my meditation with elephant, I decided to do a working with Apophenia, from the Apophenion by Peter Carroll. Basically I asked her to show me the random connections in my current situation, which is what she is known for, I used the elemental hexagon deck and the reading I got pretty much confirmed a prior reading, so it was an excellent way to test Apophenia, while also getting a bit more information on the situation I was doing the reading about. I’ll start working with her a bit more proactively in the near future, but this time around just wanted to connect with her and that seemed to work pretty well.