11: lust - a whore astride a ravening beast - the aspirations of empires are brought low by their desire, amoral power unchecked. Strength is now lust. Consider the conquests of Rome, while reckless orgies seethed at home, a proud harlot headed for a fall. 12: the hanged man - how light descended, plunged to dark, hard won knowledge of mankind to brute barbarian night consigned. Initiation may be a dark and desperate ride, a journey through the land of shade required before progress is made. Man's Dark Age was but a necessary ordeal, the anaesthetic dark you'd need for vital sugery to proceed. 13: death - dark ages at its peak, battlefields, the funeral, one state must end before another can start. Rebirth. Renaissance. 14: art - dawn, temperance, imagination tempered by will, chemistry, science art and beauty rose anew like gods. Through skies, consciousness flourished, reason thrived, civilization was revived
15: the devil - pentacle surmounts his frown with 4 points up and one down, 4 elements rise while spirit tramples lies, satan offers christ, materialism. In the light the renaissance brings, the age of reason spreads its wings, rationalism holds full sway and science ascends as god gives way 16: the tower - technological progress causes war. Babel meant to heaven reach, all towers men build a lesson teach. Lightning descending from the sky, reminds man there's but one most high, the divine. Industrial utopia went down in flames of world war one. 17: the star - the aftermath of war, many yearn for a more sacred path, theosophy, golden dawn, materialism ends, occult philosophy thrives. 18: the moon - the flicker of light that is the star, it's tiny and surrounded by blackness, occult nazis, darker more unreasoning side, moon's blackest face we see, nuclear stockpiles, with its end obsessed, darkness and conflict. 19: the sun - spiritual rediscovery, wealth and science and demographic surge, new ideas, buddhism, zen, astrology, i ching, hippies, psychedelics, bards and seers, zeitgeists solar flash scorches most visionaries to ash unfortunately, drugged melodramas become. 20: the aeon - judgment day, apocalypse = revelation, ideas from the psychedelics fuel progress, knowledge doubles, information. 21: the universe - new universe is begun, add card zero and ten spheres and 32 paths appear, this earth-moon path shows flesh & imagination's dance, mankind moves from earthly plane to the moon's imaginary domain, the dream-realm awaits, rejoice this is the promised time, of earth's ascent to realms sublime.
What will follow is a very basic summary with other tarot pictures, if you want the beautiful imagery and prose you will have to read Promethea issue 12
0: the fool - the initial quantum vacume From whence were space and time deployed, if not this empty quantum void?
1: the magician - the will, the creative, the wand, the spark The Fool to the Magician yields, and from the vacant quantum fields erupts the singularity of all that is, or that may be. The spark from which al things proceed!
2: the high priestess - parent, mother of dreams Parent of Suns and Substance, she! Womb of all possibility! She's mother to all matter's schemes, its aspirations and its dreams.
3: the empress - all bounty and love, venus, bright, earth/water/fire/air = one, union, holy spark burns in her, seeds of life in her abide. The Big Bang!
4: the emperor - life, dna, divine energy, double helix sceptre, the cast, life's script, scheme, cosmic play's theme
5: the hierophant - source comes alive, force, terrestrial line, adapts, thrives This visionary papal force guides fledgling life upon its course that the initial spark divine might foster a terrestrial line. From algue to annelid worm, through evolutions hoop we squirm, from fish to reptile, snake to bird, we're scaled, or feathered or else furred. From monkeys, life adapts and thrives.
6: the lovers - modern man & woman, sex, in eden they did not know sex or death, amoebas were quite immortal and hermaphrodite (amoebas: implied by eve, grown from husband's side), serpent dna brings sex and death into play, with these two factors there can be progress and possibility, thus we fall (or in genetic terms, descend), so eden ends. unlike amoebas, kill to stay alive, animal dilemmas, it's plain: either you're abel or you're cain.
7: the chariot - the holy cup containing ambrosia, nectar, soma, shamanism, entheogens the chariot that lifts us up
8: Justice: equilibrium, harmony from stern judgment, order, laws, civilization, society develops. 9: the hermit - human culture has to wait, gestate, grow, dark & warm from simple to more complex, retreat, evolving, the embryo.
10: (wheel of) fortune - Babylon falls, Egypt thrives till Alexanders' Greeks arrive, Romans come, only change changes not. Like sulfur, salt and mercury, the 3 principles of alchemy, one state must to the next give way.
So in the wonderful Comic Book Promethea, she gets initiated by Jack Faust into the Chakra Kundalini System in a rather tantric way. Read issue 10 if you wanna see it all: here are some teasers. The first image is from Issue 9 though.
Muladhara: earthly consciousness
Svadishtana: lunar sphere of dream, imagination, sexual fantasy
Manipura: solar plexus, strength, power, desire, fire, mars, heat, fierceness
Anahata: heart, sorrow, joy, soul, sun, gold, love
Visuddha: abyss, beyond existence, knowledge enters, where holy information leaks
Ajna: female principle, roles & identities turn inside out: magicians are male, their symbol is the wand, they seek to penetrate the mystery, once they succeed, they become magic, the mystery, that which is penetrated, they become female, hermaphrodite
Sahasrana: pure white diamond brilliance, crown, step out of time
In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. The old Greeks believed that the deceased lived on as shadows in Hades' Underworld. Hermes (Promethea) guided the dead to the mythical river Styx, where Charon brought them with a ferry to the other side.
Moon river, wider than a mile
I'm crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your wayTwo drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me
"...because I believe that there is a strong distinction between faith on the one hand and belief on the other. That belief is as a matter of fact quite contrary to faith, because belief is really wishing, it's from the Anglo-Saxon root Leaf/ve (?) = to wish, and belief stated say in the creed, is a fervant hope that the universe will turn out to be thus and so, and in this sense therefor belief precludes the possibility of faith, because faith is openness to truth to reality - whatever it may turn out to be.
I want to know the truth, that is the attitude of faith, and therefor to use ideas about the universe and about God as something to hang on to, in the spirit of rock of ages cleft for me, and there's something very rigid about a rock. And we are finding our rock getting rather worn out in an age where it becomes more and more obvious that our world is a floating world. It's a world floating in space, where all positions are relative and any point may be regarded as the center. A world that doesn't float on anything and therefor the religious attitude appropriate to our time is not one of clinging to rocks, but of learning to swim, and you know that if you get in the water and you've nothing to hold onto, and you try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if on the other hand if you trust yourself to the water, and let go, you will float, and this is exactly the situation of faith."
(10) Ten let the countdown begin (9) I was born in the mind (8) Take the head of a snake (7) Behold Armaggedeon (6) Ain't no love for the rich (5) Only strong will survive (4) Cause we live by the sword (3) Plus sixty degrees (2) For the black and the blue (1) For the sun.. step into millenium
Investigating the Western tradition of magick can be confusing at the best of times, let alone for a person who is at the beginning of their magical journey. There is the near-impenetrable transcend-entalism of early twentieth-century magical texts, the moralistic environmentalism of the modern Pa-gan movement, the popular naive sentimentality of the New Age and the almost cartoon-like prac-tical materialism of some postmodern authors.
Where are we supposed to look for a basic intro-duction to magick, when there doesn't appear to be a consensus on what magick is, let alone a reas-on for why we might want to practice it?
So imagine you recently had the most enlightning experience of your life through a mushroom trip, and a few months later you decide to try it again. But instead of enlightning visions, you end up huddled scared in a corner of your bedroom and whenever you close your eyes you see a GIANT FUCKING SNAKE FILLING UP THE REST OF THE ROOM GRINNING AT YOU. Well since I was meditating for hours on end during that time I finally know what the hell the trip was trying to tell me, that I was too frightened of Earthly life and was exploring inner space too much foregoing on the exterior space. I backed off from any psychonaut adventures for a long while after that so it served its purpose, but now I finally know, thanks to Alan Moore, what it symbolized.
I'm so tired of my guns and my vanity I'd like to trade them in for some sanity And I don't know it didn't come too easy it didn't come easy to me either from the freezer to a believer in love, in love ...
she might be new, she might be old she might be scared as hell she might not be so bold she might not be so bold
Since I broke up with my girlfriend I decided to inject some much needed Magick into my life again, part of my 2012andbeyondbucketlisttostartlivingagain, and I might even share a bit or a lot of it with you. There seems to be a certain lack of Magick in the world, so time to fill it up!
In Grant Morrison's Pop Magic, he suggests the first God to chat up to is Hermes, reading up on Hermes is quite interesting and all over the place, and maybe one of the most beautiful and engaging ways to read up on Hermes is his female version of Alan Moore's Promethea.
A true gem of comics, I finally got off my ass and started reading more comics, I had read the Invisibles, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, but the rest I didn't keep up partly cause it actually takes some effort to read a comic book. What helped was my new kindled motivation and also this new reader I'm using, I used to have CDisplay but I recently found ComicRack (mirror). It needs .net Framework 4 to work, and I read a review somewhere saying if you want a Jumbo Jet to get somewhere instead of a bicycle you can use this, since Hermes is associated with Wings on the hat or sandals, sure I'll take that Jumbo Jet, it really displays the comics great with a sexy fade visual.
And what better comic to test it out with than Promethea, probably the most beautiful comics I've ever seen using tons of different styles. About a girl who researches the mythical Promethea and turns into her. Another great primer on Magick and on Hermes that Grant Morrison directs us to.
click for bigger version
Promethea has so many wonderful tidbits of Magickal knowledge sprinkled throughout, you will want to keep a notepad handy so you don't just skip by 'em, often you will probably unknowingly just scan passed some wonderfully helpful symbols, techniques or advice. And I guess that's why we re-read comics.
Hilarious! Maybe Worf symbolizes the Emotional 2nd Circuit like Dr. McCoy in the original Star Trek? Then I kinda like it, the 2nd BS Emotional Territorial Circuit denied over and over by the Physical (Crusher), Rational (Picard) and Socio-Sexual (Riker) Circuits all the time. Or, you know, the Federation are a bunch of space racists.
I was thinking if I had any heroes that are still alive and at first I couldn't come up with any, but then like a bolt of lightning flashed Grant Morrison into my consciousness. This documentary/interview is must see!
"To me it comes down to a very simple equation: Life + Significance = Magick."
"If I had a £1 for every person I've met over the years who's said, "oh I don't bother with banishing rituals" - and then wondered why they started to have problems with their magic - I'd probably have, er..well enough money for a meal in a decent London restaurant. A Banishing Ritual is one of the first practical exercises that you should learn in magic (in my view, anyway), and by doing so, you can save yourself a lot of trouble later on.
Banishing is also known as Centering, which in many respects, is a more accurate term for the exercise.
So what is a Banishing Ritual? Essentially, Banishing has three aims. The first is that it 'warms you up' as a preparation for doing further ritual, meditation, or whatever, enabling you to put aside 'everyday thoughts' - "what's on TV later", etc. It allows you to take on the role of 'magician' (I'll go into this later on), and to place yourself in the 'centre' of your magical universe - the axis mundi. Secondly, Banishing sets up the space you are working in as 'sacred', so that the loft, bedroom, basement or wherever you are becomes, temporarily, a 'temple' space. Thirdly, a Banishing 'clears' the atmosphere of the area that you're working in of 'psychic debris' - I'm not entirely happy with this description, so I'll try and expand on that later as well.
Most Banishing rituals have three basic components:
A section to focus awareness on the BodyMind.
A section which demarcates the main zones, gates, quarters or dimensions of the chosen magical universe - at which you are the centre.
An identification with a chosen source of inspiration - merging the macrocosm (total psychocosm) with the microcosm (self)."
From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
"We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."
Hey, you never know the Mayans may be right (lol, about what?), but anyway, an interesting way to make 2012 a fun year is to cross everything off your Bucket List! It'll make the rest of your life more interesting too as you've already done a lot of cool shizzle! So do what you always wanted to do, see what you always wanted to see, listen to what you always wanted to hear, experience what you always wanted to experience, etc. Don't mistake this post for me going to share my entire bucket list with you, though I might some :P, actually it's not a bad idea lol, hmm let me mull it over. Starting, I actually saw a play, ok it was on the computer, but I watched the downloadable video of the play of Wilhelm Reich in Hell and it was pretty cool, recommend it to anyone, GO.
Based on a book by Hunter S. Thompson he wrote when only 22.
"I wanna make a promise to you: the reader, and I don't know if i can fulfill it tomorrow or even the day after that, but I put the bastards in this world on notice, that I do not have their best interest at heart. I will try and speak for my reader, that is my promise, and it will be a voice made of ink and rage."
I freaking love Doug Stanhope, for me a legendary comic who says what he thinks and doesn't give a flying fuck about people's retarded beliefs or values. This is a clip of his new DVD filmed in Oslo Norway where he rips on Royal Families, being from Belgium with our own bunch of retards I can relate :p some more quotes:
Put your fucking camera away, you stupid fucking tourist of life! There's a whole generation of shitheads just filming every fucking thing they do. "I'm gonna film my entire life and watch it later!"
I don't like when minorities tell me that I can't understand racism because I'm white. I go: "No, you can't understand racism 'cause you're not white; I hear the shit they say about you when you leave the room! They don't hold back on my account."
We live in a world where people will have a GPS and a crucifix on the same dashboard — and you want me to have hope for these fuckin' monkeys on swing-sets?
Tradition and heritage are all dead people's baggage, stop carrying it. Move forward.
This movie is a bit obvious but was entertaining enough, time is literally money in this movie and what a good analogy. After all, the rich print their money, or these days just punch in a few nrs on a computer, and then loan out their summoned magick at intrest rates to leech off us etc. We pay so much bullshit taxes which is the same as time running out, money running out. The cost of living keeps rising, while the poor and middle class gets poorer the rich get richer and taxes and budget cuts pay for fuckups by banks, corporations and politicians. No evolution but devolution and stagnation so the ones in power stay in power, the media's main job is to facilitate the status quo and serve as a stage for their pawns to distract us and put themselves on their pathetic little pedestals. How long can this bullshit last?
In a future where people stop aging at 25, but are engineered to live only one more year, having the means to buy your way out of the situation is a shot at immortal youth. Here, Will Salas finds himself accused of murder and on the run with a hostage - a connection that becomes an important part of the way against the system.
Henry Hamilton: How old are you? In real time? Will Salas: 28. Henry Hamilton: I'm 105. Will Salas: Good for you. You won't see 106, you have too many more nights like tonight. Henry Hamilton: You are right. But the day comes when you've had enough. Your mind can be spent, even if your body's not. We want to die. We need to. Will Salas: That's your problem? You've been alive too long? You ever known anyone who's died? Henry Hamilton: For a few to be immortal, many must die. Will Salas: What the hell is that supposed to mean? Henry Hamilton: You really don't know, do you? Everyone can't live forever. Where would we put them? Why do you think there are time zones? Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day in the ghetto? The cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep dying. How else could there be men with a million years while most live day to day? But the truth is... there's more than enough. No one has to die before their time. If you had as much time as I have on that clock, what would you do with it? Will Salas: I'd stop watching it. I can tell you one thing. If I had all that time, I sure as hell wouldn't waste it.
Philippe Weis: You'd steal from your own father. Sylvia Weis: Is it stealing if it's already stolen?
Philippe Weis: Even if you gave a year to a million people, you're just prolonging their agony. Sylvia Weis: We're prolonging their lives. Philippe Weis: Flooding the wrong zone with a million years, it could cripple the system. Will Salas: Let's hope so. Sylvia Weis: We're not meant to live like this. We're not meant to live forever. Although I do wonder, Father, if you've ever lived a day in your life
11: lust - a whore astride a ravening beast - the aspirations of empires are brought low by their desire, amoral power unchecked. Strength is now lust. Consider the conquests of Rome, while reckless orgies seethed at home, a proud harlot headed for a fall.
12: the hanged man - how light descended, plunged to dark, hard won knowledge of mankind to brute barbarian night consigned. Initiation may be a dark and desperate ride, a journey through the land of shade required before progress is made. Man's Dark Age was but a necessary ordeal, the anaesthetic dark you'd need for vital sugery to proceed.
13: death - dark ages at its peak, battlefields, the funeral, one state must end before another can start. Rebirth. Renaissance.
14: art - dawn, temperance, imagination tempered by will, chemistry, science art and beauty rose anew like gods. Through skies, consciousness flourished, reason thrived, civilization was revived
15: the devil - pentacle surmounts his frown with 4 points up and one down, 4 elements rise while spirit tramples lies, satan offers christ, materialism. In the light the renaissance brings, the age of reason spreads its wings, rationalism holds full sway and science ascends as god gives way
16: the tower - technological progress causes war. Babel meant to heaven reach, all towers men build a lesson teach. Lightning descending from the sky, reminds man there's but one most high, the divine. Industrial utopia went down in flames of world war one.
17: the star - the aftermath of war, many yearn for a more sacred path, theosophy, golden dawn, materialism ends, occult philosophy thrives.
18: the moon - the flicker of light that is the star, it's tiny and surrounded by blackness, occult nazis, darker more unreasoning side, moon's blackest face we see, nuclear stockpiles, with its end obsessed, darkness and conflict.
19: the sun - spiritual rediscovery, wealth and science and demographic surge, new ideas, buddhism, zen, astrology, i ching, hippies, psychedelics, bards and seers, zeitgeists solar flash scorches most visionaries to ash unfortunately, drugged melodramas become.
20: the aeon - judgment day, apocalypse = revelation, ideas from the psychedelics fuel progress, knowledge doubles, information.
21: the universe - new universe is begun, add card zero and ten spheres and 32 paths appear, this earth-moon path shows flesh & imagination's dance, mankind moves from earthly plane to the moon's imaginary domain, the dream-realm awaits, rejoice this is the promised time, of earth's ascent to realms sublime.
