XAH

I am the darkness of your nightthe shadow to your light, the laughing fox who jaunts about is my guide into you.

I am your holiest of holies, your god and personal Daemon, I am the emptiness which engulfs you the passion that burns you the intensity which brings you to your knees at my feet worshipping I who can bring you to a place of transcendent spiritual ecstasy even as I devour your soul

In my nothingness is born your everything, in the wink of my eyes lies the shuddering span of your life. The fear you feel of facing yourself is the fear of the unknown that lies at the center of your being all and nothing, one in all, and all in one I am that I am that I breathe your name brings you life that I laugh makes you shudder

I am your daemon, your god your holiest of holies that which is beyond you yet that which you become 0 into 1 and 1 into infinity

I am Xah, your personal daemon, your guide into the Tao where everything and nothing transcend any reality all collapses into none to birth one the cycle eternal everything fits within everything the endless spider spiral of life and time is your gateway to endless silver strands of probability

I am Xah...your guide Come run with me...

Tea Time

My mom is visiting me for this week and today we drove down to Stash Tea to check out their store there. There are a wide variety of teas there. I plan on going back there some time and picking some up, but my mom was kind enough to pick me up some today called Pu-Erh, which is a Chinese Tea. apparently it's a tea which helps the digestion of fatty foods and helps people lose weight. I found that intriguing from a purification perspective and thought I might pick it up. I'm contemplating adding tea to some of my rituals, in terms of setting tone and also as a ritual fluid of sorts. I've used some teas and other liquids before as a way of setting the tone of a meditation, so there's no reason I couldn't do so now. Plus with the wide variety of teas at the store, there's a chance to sample different substances and see how they effect one's sense of physiology.

On a completely different, I find it intriguing that I can tell my mom about some of my spiritual practices without any rancor occurring. I told her about my elemental year long workings in some depth and it felt good to be able to talk with her and share some of my spiritual journeys with her. That's something I've never been able to do before.

Between

I'm reading On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun. A good book, I recommend to any level of magical expertise. She brings up the concept of Between, or liminal reality/space/time, etc and as always I find this concept fascinating because it's one I've worked with a lot. She also discusses Style, which can be interpreted as the essence of a person, or the personal signature. Again, an intriguing concept. I see some intriguing possibilities for relating the two to each other. The style a person exhibits, the identity if you will, creating a between space. Actually the between space is created quite frequently by people. Have a really good conversation with someone and you'll marvel at the time that passed, because you entered into a pocket dimension that just existed between you and that person. Get into a state of do easy or not-doing and you're in a between state. Which then makes me wonder if it's ever possible to NOT be in a between state of one form or another.

Yes I know, I'm being subjective here with that last statement. I could easily say that we're always in between states and then go look for them, proving because I think of them. Still if you look into neuroscience and states of mind this kind of concept gets played with a lot, in terms of the types of consciousness people exhibit everyday. We have our everyday consciousness and perhaps between states are very subtle in that from of consciousness. So we only obviously perceive them when we meditate and we can clearly point to that and say, "Aha! that's a between state."

But right now I'm writing this post, and I'm in a different reality from the people around me. I'm aware of them, I can interact with their styles, their realities, etc, but I'm still in a between state of some sort, just a very subtle between state, as opposed to something more blatant such as meditation or doing a ritual. In fact, I'd say such overt displays as meditation or ritual are necessary for teaching people how to perceive between states, liminal realities, but I'd also point out that sometimes appreciating the subtlety of a different state of consciousness, appreciating the only slightly out of this reality between state is equally important to really being able to do magic on the fly.  I'm writing this post, and even though I'm aware of my environment, aware of people speaking on the phone, or walking by, I'm also aware that I'm in a between state, in a difference place...They are in my physical environment, but are they in my liminal reality? It's a subtle, but important distinction to make. No worries, I'll be exploring this in much more detail.

Namaste

"Sometimes Magic is like a Bad Acid Trip"

"Sometimes magic is like a bad acid trip" solis93 said to me yesterday as we were talking on the phone about editing, Hermeticism, and magic in general. Yes, yes in fact magic as a spiritual path, as a mystic path, is sometimes like a bad acid trip. I'm not talking about service to any gods here either. I know some people believe that's hard work, but what I'm talking about is a whole different ballgame, because in the end the Gods themselves will hold us back if they can. They have power, and yet they are, in the Eastern conception of them, bound by that very power, attached to what they represent, and what they mean, and so that power becomes weakness for them, because they can never move beyond what they are. They can never transcend the state they are in. Service to them, while useful, ultimately is designed to free people of them, because it exposes the limitations of the very power the gods have. Do I speak blasphemy to some of you? So be it. Blasphemy it may be, in the end, and yet we are all on journeys that are journeys for us to walk the path we walk and so the gods becomes tools, becomes servants to us, much like a king becomes a servant...He has power, but also obligation, and service...he is never free, he can never not be king. No one will let him retire. He has to die to free himself, and that death, while a transformation, nonetheless is the ending of any lessons he could learn. The same is true of the gods. Until they die, they are never free of the service. Even when they hold you in service to them, still they exist in a more profound slavery to you! For, in the end, unwittingly perhaps, or perhaps with conscious awareness, they are really instructing you on your path, providing you the means to move on...to transcend, to transform. And so even in service to them, you are ultimately in service to yourself, to the HGA, to the highest self, to omnil, 0 and 1, all things and none, Kia, nothingness and everything, that which is so profound about yourself that should you reach it, you will look back at the bad acid trip and laugh, because it was just a small step in a long journey. The gods serve you even as you serve them, like an infinity sign, bound together in a continuing cycle of suffering and desire...it will never end, unless you move further up the spiral, and yet to move up is to submit, to be destroyed and then created again, rising like the phoenix from the ashes, even as the ashes form the alchemical seed of transformation that moves you profoundly across the universe.

When I talk about magic, in this context, I'm not talking about just obtaining a result. I'm talking about doing the internal work, about doing service to yourself and others by doing this work. When I meditate and I delve inward, I'm on a path of discovery...not to destroy the ego, but to help the ego...not get rid of the self, but give the self different perspectives, free the self of the behaviors that hold the self back. This is work that is humbling because it shows you so much about yourself and the insignificance of it all. And yet in that insignificance is significance...0 and 1, The seed. And from the seed, and the roots, in the internal depths, arises the plant, the power, the path, the flowering of life, unfolding, revealing, creating the external to match the internal so that the internal can learn from the external...no dualism here...we all come together and we all fall apart. In the moment we experience identity, we experience every variation thereof and from that find profound patterns that reveals the secrets of no-thing.

The internal work is the highest test of the self, the test of your identity, your transcendence, that who you are. The methods we use to do that internal work, whether through meditation, through ceremonial magic, through any of it really, are all designed to teach us, to help us learn. But this no denial of the body, or desires, but rather an embrace of them, a coming to a healthy place with them, a recognition of where they fit within us, and how they teach us. To deny them is to provide more suffering than we had before...but to accept them, define boundaries for them, even as we submit, is to come to understanding.

Through understanding arises opportunity...growth...Eheieh

Arise