PSYCHONAUT: THE ART OF BLUEFLUKE

"...it is my position that art, language, consciousness and magic are all aspects of the same phenomenon. With art and magic seen as almost wholly interchangeable, the realm of the imagination becomes crucial to both practices."

- Alan Moore

Magic seems to go hand in hand with artistic impulses.  It only makes sense; Magicians and Artists work at manipulating symbols, and the act of "creation" is integral to both.  Rattle off a list of modern Magicians and you find a pack of artists as well.  Crowley was a poet and prolific writer.  Spare was a renowned visual artist.  Anton LaVey was a gifted musician keenly interested in the idea of the image as essential to magic.  Andrew Chumbley's works combine striking visual imagery with magic and poetry.  Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are both comic book high priests and public Magicians.  Indeed. if you dig deeply enough for the Indo-European roots of the words we use, it is even likely that magic and imagine derive from the same source (possibly PIE magh- "to be able, to have power").  It goes back to the shamans who painted on cave walls to ensure a good hunt, to the idea of seizing an idea from the hidden realms and shaping it into something tangible.

  

What we now call "chaos magic" originally was just referred to as "magical art" in seminal works like Liber Null and Psychonaut.  Generally viewed as the offspring of Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin (the latter of whom liked to use the term "the theatre of magic"), chaos magic was born in the 1970s as an attempt to look across the broad field of magical traditions in an attempt to distill the techniques and practices common to all.  It was meant to be magic ripped free of tradition, a highly individualistic path that encouraged the development of one's own symbol sets.  If Carroll and Sherwin were the parents, Austin Spare was clearly the grandfather (though to my mind, LaVey does not get the credit he should for being a sort of uncle).  At the core of sorcery, chaos magic wanted to tell us, was the exploration and manipulation of consciousness. "Belief," in this quest, was "a tool."  I would liken this to LaVey's "suspension of disbelief."  The idea was that magic invested symbols--any symbols--with power, irregardless of where these symbols were drawn from.  The Magician could invoke Isis or Gabriel or Alice in Wonderland so long as in the course of the ritual these beings were animated by belief.

Obviously this flies in the faces of hardcore Traditionalists like Julius Evola, who tended to see their symbols as a sort of Truth handed down from time immemorial.  This iconoclasm gave chaos magic its sort of "punk" glamor.  Chaos magic was a post modern field where magic was liberated from dusty grimoires and kabbalistic laundry lists.  Now magic could turn up anywhere.  Even, as Morrison and Moore have demonstrated time and time again, in comic books.

This brings us to Arch-Traitor Bluefluke.

Since I first tripped across Bluefluke's work, it has become a destination I recommend to anyone trying to get a sense of what chaos magic is  ("Curious about chaos magic?  Go check out http://bluefluke.deviantart.com").  All the hallmarks are there.  The Magician comes at you with a striking visual style simultaneously mystical, anime, and punk and a "magical name" that sounds like a rave DJ.  Bluefluke writes and illustrates with the same cocktail of respect/disdain for tradition that fuels zen, a yin-yang fusion of opposites essential for reaching "qabbalstic zero" (or again, Crowley's n + -n = 0).  In a way, this Magician is performing the same trick that LaVey used in slapping Satan across his magic...many will look at Bluefluke's art and think "this can't be taken seriously" and wander off (LaVey was going for the more "frightened off").  The intellectually curious, however, will stick around and suddenly discover how deep the well goes.  This is an ancient trick, my friends, separating the initiates from the voyeurs.

And Bluefluke is worth sticking around.  The Psychonaut Field Manual, at this writing in it's 3.5 incarnation with four of five chapters finished, is a free grimoire containing a completely workable system.  The title is obviously a wink and a nod to Peter J. Carroll, and this combined with the focus on gnosis (qabbalistic zero again), the Discordian touches and the frequent appearance of Michael Moorcock's star of chaos all plant Bluefluke firmly in the chaos magic stream, but the tech in its digital pages is universal.  This isn't to say that Bluefluke's work isn't highly idiosyncratic and recognizably unique, nor that the particular synthesis of ideas here isn't new (it is), but rather that this very uniqueness is showing by example what chaos magicians should be striving for.  "Take these tools and explore thyself."

I'm still fond of Grant Morrison's "Pop! Magic" essay as an entry point for chaos magic, but The Psychonaut Field Manual is meatier on a thousand different levels.  Browse the illustrations alone and the Magician communicates this approach to magic; they seem at once hieroglyphic and Pokemon, stained glass and Cartoon Network.  This gives the images a punch that even, say, Chumbley's illustrations did not have.  They seem to say "magic is not all spooky and scary...it is spooky and scary and cotton candy Wizard of Oz.  That alone is heady stuff.

So what is actually in this system?  It starts with the familiar chaos magic idea of gnosis, a transcendent state wherein opposites are reconciled and thus nullified, including the subject/object dichotomy.  This mental "void" state is akin to the yogic samadhi and Buddhist nirvana, a deep meditative state in which the mind is silenced.  It is in this state that commands are implanted, causing subsequent change in the Magician and his Microcosm.  Part of this process involves overcoming the Ego, which Bluefluke terms the "Selfconscious."  This is the "I" that most people identify themselves with, the "I" that speaks, goes to work, and pays the bills.  The Selfconscious is really just a construct, however, a complex operating system running on our brains that is built by our experiences. Bluefluke tells us the Selfconscious is just one of a Trinity of "selves", and these three must be brought into alignment to enter gnosis.  Its partners are the "Subconscious," which is the body and its animal drives, and the "Superconscious" which is the artist, the visionary, and idealist.  Exercises are offered to bring these into "Soul Resonance," alongside visualization and meditative techniques.  This is the core of the system, which always runs along the lines of "Invoke Soul Resonance, enter gnosis," and then perform whatever specific act of magic follows.

The rest of Psychonaut deals with techniques like sigilization, invoking and evoking, god forms, and astral projection...among a great deal else.  There is a lot crammed into this deceptively simple little work.  Along the way Bluefluke offers a new way of looking at traditional consciousness mapping like chakras or the Qabbalistic sephiroth, looking at these as evolutionary stages of brain development in a new eightfold system partially inspired by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.  

This is a beginner friendly system, but also a refresher course for those who are old hands at all of this.  Like most chaos magic is it stripped entirely of "religious" elements, pared down to simple techniques and workable exercises.  It's a manual you are going to want to actually use to understand.

As with Bluefluke's artwork, the writing style is refreshing.  It is playful while taking itself serious, irreverent while speaking reverently, and relentlessly modern while teaching tricks used since before the mammoths went extinct.    The Psychonaut Field Manual will entertain you, challenge you, and delight you.  What more could one want in a grimoire.

And while you are there, do check out Bluefluke's Tarot Trumps.  I might prefer the Thelemic re-alignment of the Thoth deck better, but there are some fresh, powerful images there.





  

       

THE SERPENT AT THE CROSSROADS; THE SYMBOLS OF TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT, PART THREE

PART THREE: THE SERPENT AND THE STAR 

The Dragon guarding the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. The Wyrm guarding the Golden Fleece. Vasuki coiled around Mount Mandara churning the sea. Níðhöggr gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil. The Serpent in the Tree of Knowledge. To these stories we might add the Taoist legend of a Dragon guarding a Tree bearing immortality-granting peaches. We could look towards Mesoamerica, halfway across the world, where the Mayans spoke of a Tree that united Heaven and Earth, the "Vision Serpent" lurking in its highest branches. Or we could look to ancient Sumer, where the goddess Inanna planted a Huluppu Tree and set a Serpent to guard it. The Serpent, the Dragon, coiled around a cosmic center is spoken of around the globe. 

But of course, this is a story written in the stars.

Ancient peoples depended on the night sky. The heavens served as their calendar, telling them went to plant and harvest, when to hunt, when to migrate. The stars were their compass and their map. The night was a repository for the legends and fables of the people, with tales of gods and heroes recorded in the planets and constellations. Most significantly for our purposes here, the heavens were also the gateway to the Underworld, the hidden realm of the spirit. The power of life and death was hidden there.

It might seem counterintuitive to associate the heavens with the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, but consider: all the stars and constellations, the planets, the Moon and the Sun, rise in the East and set in the West. For the ancients, this setting was a descent into the Underworld. All the occupants of the heavens, when not traveling across the sky, were understood to spend an equal amount of time traveling across the Underworld. In an endless cycle, the stars and planets were born, lived, died, and then were reborn after a sojourn in the realm of the Dead.

And the Serpent--who shed his old skin and renewed himself--was the Lord of the Underworld.

Because, really, not all the stars rise and fall. In the Northern Hemisphere, the entire dome of Heaven seems to revolve around a single center, the Pole Star. The Cosmic Tree, or Mountain, is nothing less than this, the axis mundi, the hub around which all of creation turns. In physical terms, we are talking the celestial or geographic pole, but for ancient peoples it was much more than this. The axis mundi was the center of the world, a magical place at the crossroads of North, South, East, and West. Like the trunk of a Tree, all of creation was understood to grow from this mystic center. It was the heart and origin of the universe. Of it, the great scholar of comparative religions, Mircea Eliade, wrote;

We have a sequence of religious conceptions and cosmological images that are inseparably connected and form a system that may be called the "system of the world" prevalent in traditional societies: (a) a sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (b) this break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to the underworld); (c) communication with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi: pillar (cf. the universalis columna), ladder (cf. Jacob's ladder), mountain [Meru in India, Haraberazaiti in Iran, Gerizim in Palestine], tree, vine, etc.; (d) around this cosmic axis lies the world (= our world), hence the axis is located "in the middle," at the "navel of the earth"; it is the Center of the World...

The Tree, the Mountain, the Crossroads, are all cognate symbols of the axis mundi, the Hub of the Cosmos. Seen from above, the picture is clear. The Pyramid (a symbol of the cosmic Mountain) and the Tree both become Crossroads. These then are really a Wheel, the Dome of Heaven turning around a center. 

This is why the axis mundi is understood to be the "crossroads" of the universe, where the realms of flesh and spirit, the living and the dead, come together. It is the axel that turns the Wheel of Time, the cycle of the seasons, of Death and Rebirth. While other stars rise and fall, the Pole Star sits eternal at the center, reigning over them all. This is why the Tree is associated with sovereignty, with life and death, with power.

Andrew Chumbley, author of such texts as the Azoetia and the Dragon Book of Essex, writes on the subject;

the word 'Qutub' (rendered as the tri-literal root QTB) is interpreted as meaning 'The Great Magnetic Centre', or 'The Axis' - the Point of Universal Centrality. This focus of existence is identified with the concept of the Logos and with the Soul of the Perfected Human Being (Insani Kamil). It is also cognate, in sidereal terms, with the Pole-star of the Age and thus with the Hub of the Universe. We may therefore consider 'Qutub' to be a term equivalent with the Mystical Absolute of Being: I.

Andrew Chumbley, "Qutub"

and also;

By going forth through the Gateway of the Cross'd-Roads the aspirant meets face-to-face the Catena of the Mighty Dead, not only those of his own metempsychotic lineage, but all Kindred of Our Arte to which he is bound by the Covenant of descent from the First Initiate. He enters the Circle of the Living and the Dead to dance in co-eval rings of moments, days and epochs, hand-in-hand with Gods, Beasts, Men and things of Spirit and Flesh as yet unnamed. This Vision is that of the Great Sabbat — the Prototype or 'Form' of Magical Quintessence from which all magical rites and practices take their pattern...

Andrew Chumbley, "Gnosis for the Flesh Eternal"

At the Crossroads--the Tree--the Heart of the Universe is reached. Here the realms collide, men can become kings, and kings can become gods. And the Guardian of this terrible power is the Serpent...because coiled around the Pole Star, the axis mundi, there for all to see, is the constellation Draco.

While other constellations can be seen only at certain times of the year, the Dragon is always visible, there in the northern night skies. He turns nightly around the cosmic center, circling it, the Watcher and Lord of the Crossroads. This makes the Dragon the embodiment of its powers.

Of course, Draco is not the only circumpolar constellation. Why don't the legends talk about Ursa Major and Minor, Camelopardalis, or Lynx? The answer is simple; the star Thuban (Arabic for "snake"), also known as Alpha Draconis, was the Pole Star from 3942 BC to 1793 BC. This is the period when the Great Pyramid of Giza--itself a model of the "cosmic mountain"--was built. It may be that the "air shaft" in this pyramid, leading to the King's Chamber, was intentionally aligned so that Thuban's light shone down it, playing a role in the immortality of the Pharaoh. Due to the precession of the Earth's rotational axis, the Pole Star moved from Thuban to Kappa Draconis around 1793 BC, yet another star in Draco. This means that from 3942 BC to about 1000 BC, the Pole Star was in Draco. The Dragon was the center of the cosmos, the bridge between worlds.

But what of his sinister aspect? The Serpent's associations with the Underworld, with immortality and secret wisdom are clear, but what is it that fills the profane with dread?

The North is the one place the Sun never enters, at least not in the Northern Hemisphere. It rises in the East, journeys on an arc through the South, and sets in the West. The North remains untouched by it, a place of darkness. In addition, if you face the rising Sun, the North falls at your Left Hand, with all the "sinister" associations that come with it. The Old English norð come from the Proto-Germanic *nurtha- and earlier from the Indo-European *ner-, a term that means "left," as well as "below" (think of nether and north). It is related to the Sanskrit narakah ("hell") and the Greek enerthen "from beneath." The same pattern of associating the North with the Left Hand and the Underworld underlies the Old Irish tuath "left; northern" and Arabic shamal "left hand; north." Language itself associates the North with darkness, with the Left Hand, with the Underworld. The Dragon, as Lord of the North Star, picks up these associations as well.

The result is a fearsome guardian, a psychopomp of shadowy aspect and terrible power.

In terms of numerical symbolism and the Kabbalah, the Pole Star naturally assumes the role and properties of One, or Kether. It is Unity, the underlying foundation and structure of existence. The Center of All. It is the exact point in the Crossroads where the paths cross and become One. 

As the Guardian of the Crossroads, the Dragon is associated with Two, the Dyad, and the sephiroth Chokmah. This gives us important insight into its nature. If One is Unity, then Two is Opposition. It is Polarity and Division. Divide. Dual. Devil. It is the Shadow to the Light. The Night to the Day. Aleister Crowley associated it with Chaos is his theogony, which is to say the Great Beast that consorts with Babalon, a relationship Crowley symbolized by the Lion Serpent, Teth. 

This is another draconic image, which immediately recalls the shape of Draco itself. For Crowley, this Dragon is actually "higher" than the One. We must recall the formula essential to his Thelema, 2 = 0. The Dyad, the Opposite, is the key to attainting the very highest. He describes our Dragon as;

This is the meaning of that passage; they are attempts to interpret Chaos, but Chaos is Peace... Blackness, blackness intolerable, before the beginning of the light. This is the first verse of Genesis. Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!... But when the balances are equal, scale matched with scale, then will Chaos return...

For Crowley, Unity is unchanging and static. You cannot transcend it because it cannot transcend itself. Zero, nirvana, the Ain, is the transcendent reality and it can only be attained by Opposition (-n + n = 0). In short, to attain a transcendent state, one must confront the Opposer, the Dragon. This is how Marduk made himself ruler of the gods; he fought Tiamat. It is how the Hebrew god Yahweh did as well, as he boasts in Job 41. 

Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook

or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose

or pierce its jaw with a hook?

Will it keep begging you for mercy?

Will it speak to you with gentle words?

Will it make an agreement with you

for you to take it as your slave for life?

...Who dares open the doors of its mouth,

ringed about with fearsome teeth?

Its back has rows of shields

tightly sealed together;

each is so close to the next

that no air can pass between.

They are joined fast to one another;

they cling together and cannot be parted.

Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the rays of dawn.

Flames stream from its mouth;

sparks of fire shoot out.

Smoke pours from its nostrils

as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.

Its breath sets coals ablaze,

and flames dart from its mouth....

Nothing on earth is its equal—

a creature without fear.

These boasts do not make sense for the Almighty Creator of the Universe to be making. If this were the case, Yahweh would simply be beating up on a creature He Himself created. But they do make sense in the context of facing the Dragon to reach a transcendent state. In this, the Hebrew god was no different from Jason or Heracles.

Unity and Division, One and Two, are two-thirds of the Trinity that defines the Circle of Heaven (the Point, the Radius, and the Circumference). In out next installment, we will be looking at the third defining member of the formula, the Woman who manifests in these tales as the Norns, the Nymphs, the Sorceress.

LITTLE LECTURES ON MAGICK, PART 4: THE ENOCHIAN UNIVERSE

He symbolized the Fourth-Dimensional Universe in two dimensions as a square surrounded by 30 concentric circles (the 30 Æthyrs or Aires) whose radii increase in a geometrical proportion...The sides of the square are the four great watch-towers which are attributed to the elements. There is also a “black cross” (or “central tablet” according to the arrangement shewn)...

--Aleister Crowley, Liber Chanokh

LIKE THE TREE OF LIFE the Enochian Watchtowers are a conceptual model of existence.  This model consists of two main parts; one signifies the Earth and is a table made up of lettered squares, 25 columns by 27 rows.  The other signifies the Heavens, consisting of 30 concentric circles surrounding and enclosing this grid (see the diagram below). As we shall see, the Circles and the Squares are perfect reflections of one another.  Though at first glance this may not look anything like the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the two models in fact work very much the same way.

The Keys

The first things Dee and Kelley were given by the Angels were the Enochian Keys, dictated in both the Angelic language and English.  These consisted of 18 Keys meant to be used with the Watchtowers of Earth, and 30 Keys meant to be used with the Aethyrs of Heaven (though technically they were given only 48 Keys total, they were told there was a 49th being held back from them).

The Aethyrs

Next they were given were the 30 three-letter names of the Aethyrs.  These Aethyrs enclose each other like the layers of an onion, with the first Aethyr, LIL, being the outermost, and the thirtieth, TEX, being innermost and closest to the Material World.  Each Aethyr is ruled by 3 Governors, except TEX, which being closest to the Material World has 4.  The names of these Governors are all 7 letters long.  Along with each Governor's name, Dee and Kelley were given a Sigil for that name (see the accompanying picture for a sample).  The grand total of Governors was 91.

Dee was told little about these Aethyrs.  But as we shall see, much can be gleaned about them from the Watchtowers.

The Watchtowers

The lettered square at the heart of the circles is called "the Great Table." It represents the Material World, the Earth.  

The Great Table is composed of four smaller tables, and these correspond to the Four Elements (Air, Fire, Earth, and Water) as well as the Four Directions (East, South, North, and West).  Each of these is said to be a Watchtower, occupied by a Great King, his Seniors, and various angelic and demonic beings.  These Four Watchtowers stand guard over the material universe, and are responsible for maintaining and governing it.  The Watchtowers are connected by a central "Black Cross" of Spirit, the 5th Element or "quintessence."

Each Watchtower consists of 12 columns and 13 rows of letters, for a total of 156 letters per Watchtower.  Some of these letters are capital, some are lowercase, and two letters per Watchtower are backwards.  There are reasons for all of this.  Every Watchtower is further subdivided into four quadrants by another cross created by the 6th and 7th columns and the 7th row.  These quadrants are each made of 5 columns and 6 rows.  Again, there is nothing arbitrary in any of this.

Finally, each quadrant contains yet another cross, made by the 3rd column  and the 2nd row of that quadrant.  See the picture above for clarification.

The Black Cross holds only 4 names, but the left side and bottom of the cross mirror the names (see above).

The Angels instructed Dee and Kelley to letter the Great Table in English, rather than the "Angelic Script" of the Celestial tongue.  This is crucial, because the Angelic Script doesn't have capitals or lower case letters.  Kelley and Dee drew up the grid and lettered all several hundred squares from left to right, top to bottom, instructed to write capitals seemingly at random.  There seemed no rhyme or reason to the eight backwards letters either (shown above with an asterisk).  The Angels refused to explain, and it wasn't until years later--long after the sessions ended and Kelley was gone--that Dee finally cracked the code.  The mysterious capitals mark the initial letter of a Governor's name.  The names of the 91 Governors make up the letters on the Great Table, each one arranged in the shape of its Sigil, like interlocking puzzle pieces...  

The Watchtowers of Earth thus mirror the Heavens.  The same 91 Governors who define the Aethyrs define them.

The Governors in the Watchtowers

Each Watchtower, as it turns out, is made up of exactly 22 Governors.  As we shall see, this is vital.  The eight reversed letters, however, are a special case.  One of them, the "L," wraps "around" to the black cross to make a Governor name.  That leaves seven, PARAOAN, unaccounted for. When Dee questioned the Angels about PARAOAN, they were warned each letter of the name is a living fire and the final N is a vial of destruction.

Qabalistic  Correspondences 

When we examine the Enochian Model, it begins to resemble both the Tarot and the Tree of Life in fundamental ways.  Partly, this is because the same numbers are in play; 1-10, especially 3 and 7, along with 12 and 22 are all key.  The extremely significant Kabbalistic number 13 is also present (we touched on 13 in a broad sense--the 12 edges of the Cube plus the center--but it is very important in Hebrew gematria.  13 is the enumeration of Unity "AChD" and Love "AHVH." Together these make 26, "YHVH," suggesting the nature of God is Unity and Love).  

But the numbers are only part of the story.  Like the Tree of Life, the Enochian universe assumes both a spiritual and a physical dimension, the Heavens and the Earth.  Both Enochian and Qabalistic cosmologies postulate a spiritual hierarchy that governs the cosmos.  And both incorporate the idea of the Four Elements, the Seven Planets, the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, and the notion of Heaven as a Sphere and the Earth as a Cube.  All of this makes it easy to draw parallels between the Tree of Life, Tarot, and Enochian.

Consider the 30 Aethyrs.  In most schools of Qabalah, there is not one Tree of Life, there are actually four (one Tree for each of the Qabalistic worlds, see below).   This fits nicely with the Four Suits of the Tarot.  The Six of Wands, for example, is Six in the highest world of Atziluth.  The Six of Cups is Six in Briah, the Six of Swords is Six in Yetzirah, and the Six of Discs is Six in Assiah, the Material World.  The 30 Aethyrs, likewise, correspond to the Trees in Atziluth, Briah, and Yetzirah.  The first Aethyr, LIL, corresponds to  Kether in Atziluth, while the Thirtieth, TEX, corresponds to Malkuth in Yetzirah.  The Fourth Tree is actually hidden in the Watchtowers, which correspond to Assiah, the Material World (as we shall see, there are ten "choirs" of Angels in each Watchtower).  

These four Trees of Life also have 22 paths each, so theoretically there are four sets of Tarot Trumps, one each for the Fiery world of Atziluth, the Watery world of Briah, the Airy world of Yetzirah, and the Earthy world of Assiah.  In the Enochian system, there are 22 Governors in each of the Watchtowers, a direct parallel of this. 

Looking at the Watchtowers, each corresponds to a classical Element, and thus to  a Tarot Suit.  The Watchtower of the East and Air corresponds to Swords, the Watchtower of the West and Water to Cups, the Watchtower of the South and Fire to Wands, and the Watchtower of the North and Earth to Discs.  Each of these, as we have seen, is subdivided into Quadrants, and these correspond to the Court Cards.  The Quadrants of the Southern Watchtower, for example, relate to the Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess of Wands.  And again, each Watchtower is home to 10 Choirs of Angels, each corresponding to one of the small cards.  The 22 Trumps are present in each as the 22 Governors.

In addition to the Watchtower associations above, each tower is itself the Ace, with each of the quadrants relating to a court card.  This fact, coupled with each tower being lettered by the names of 22 Governor (each relating to a Tarot Trump) means that the Great Table itself contains the whole of the Tarot in it.

The following tables have been prepared to demonstrate some of these correspondences.

THE ANGEL MOST HIGH; Part 3 of an Exploration of Andrew Chumbley's Work

This is the third in an ongoing study of Andrew Chumbley’s (1967-2004) work.  Readers are gently encouraged to read and digest both my essay on Qutub and the first article on the Azoetia before returning here.  - ALM

There is a myth known to Few, a myth silent dreaming within all Creation, a myth of which I will but whisper:- 

"Before the Manifest came to exist there was a Place of Darkness - the Negative Existence. Naught may truthfully be said of this Place, for it is Otherness Entire. Within this Domain are Those-who-exist~not, call'd by their descendants "The Elder Gods" - They who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight. With the conception of the Universe was the Beginning and the Fall of the One, the One that men have named falsely. At the side of the One there was the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods. Yet the One knew naught of this, the Veil having fallen upon the Mystery of Otherness. In Time, the One didst create the World and sought to make one like unto Itself. Therefore was the Angel sent unto the Earth, for it alone had power to take seven handfuls of clay from the World's Heart,- this being the Substance for the Creation of the First Man. Then was Man fashioned in the likeness of the One, yet being born solely of the clay; and the One didst marvel at this and commanded the Angel to bow down before Man. Then, being wise and subtle, didst the Angel leave the side of the One, knowing that it had commanded falsehood. The Angel Most High went forth upon the Earth in the form of the Serpent to transmit unto Man the Fire of the Elder Gods, knowing that in the Fullness of Time Man would claim for Himself the substance of his own Creation and Know Himself as the One True-born of the Elder Gods."

Andrew Chumbley, Qutub, “Commentary,” p. 59

It is the literary version of Austin Spare’s sigilization technique, folding in upon themselves symbols and meanings from a dozen different traditions into what almost appears to be nothing at all. 

The myth above is a perfect illustration of Chumbley’s work, and what both the Azoetia and Qutub set out to do.  Once again, Chumbley compresses a vast amount of arcana into a brief passage--in this case less than three hundred words.  It is the occult equivalent of a ZIP file.  This is a gift the author has; Crowley had it as well.  It is the literary version of Austin Spare’s sigilization technique, folding in upon themselves symbols and meanings from a dozen different traditions into what almost appears to be nothing at all.   For the unitiated it is unintelligible; for the occultist it requires careful unpacking to fully appreciate.

At first it looks like a retelling of a Biblical story familiar to most of us.  This is the first veil.  The fact is that nowhere does the Bible tell us about the “fall of Lucifer.”  The story that we all think we know is a mangled translation of Isaiah 14:12-15.  "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!"  So begins the passage, describing the death of the King of Babylon and the release of the Israel people from bondage.  It goes on to say;

"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: 'Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?’”

In the centuries old game of ‘Telephone” that is Biblical translation, the Hebrew name of the planet Venus, הילל בן שחר (hêlêl ben šāḥar) was first passed into Greek as “phosphorous” (the Light-Bearer) and then into Latin as “Lucifer.”  The Church incorporated this into their manufacture of “Satan,” a figure which does not exist in the Hebrew scriptures but is the invention of Christian theologians Biblical scholar Elaine Pagels, in her excellent "The Origin of Satan," writes;

In biblical sources the Hebrew term the satan describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a particular character. Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B.C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called the satan, what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity.

Thus John Calvin was correct when he wrote of Isaiah 14, “The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance: for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians.”  But by the time he wrote this it was far too late.  The King of Babylon had become the Devil, and the story of Lucifer’s fall was used as a boogeyman to warn children what happens if you dare to challenge God.

The serpent in Eden is a serpent, a Trickster figure like Coyote or Raven in Native American traditions.  The fact that it “speaks” is unremarkable; Balaam’s donkey speaks too and no Christians are screaming that this constitutes evidence for its infernal nature...

Chumbley seems to have swallowed the entire “Lucifer, Son of Morning” lie hook line and sinker.  He also seems to have swallowed the similar error that the serpent in Eden was the Devil.  Once again, there is no “Devil” in the Hebrew scriptures, and the “ancient serpent” of the Christian Gospels is a later addition to the mythos.  The serpent in Eden is a serpent, a Trickster figure like Coyote or Raven in Native American traditions.  The fact that it “speaks” is unremarkable; Balaam’s donkey speaks too and no Christians are screaming that this constitutes evidence for its infernal nature (see Numbers 22:30)!  Like all ancient Trickster figures, the serpent is an agent of change, and what he brings is double edged.  Adam and Eve get wisdom, but they lose their divine Sugar Daddy in the process.  

But as we peel back this veil, it slowly becomes clear that the magician is using lies to tell a truth.  It is the old question in magic again; what is the mask and what is the mirror?  Chumbley tells us that the serpent is passing on  the “Fire of the Elder Gods,” which recalls both Prometheus and the genuine fallen angels of Hebrew scripture, the ones we first get wind of in Genesis 6:1-4;  

Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.   

Late Hebrew tradition and scriptures would flesh out the tale of these “sons of God” in full, and it was probably from these later stories of fallen angels that the early Christians began to draw Satan from.  The story appears in the apocryphal “Book of Enoch,” and was widely known by the time of Christ (indeed, Jude 1:14-15 quotes from the much earlier 1 Enoch) .  Essentially, the “sons of God” are called the ‘Watchers,’ angels charged with keeping an eye on man.  They begin to lust after the daughters of men and take them as wives.  In exchange they teach humankind the arts and sciences, including such things as metallurgy, astrology, medicine, and magic;

This is the original “fallen angel” story; it has nothing to do with pride or Lucifer placing himself above God.  Instead, it directly parallels the tale of Prometheus, chained to a rock and faced with eternal punishment for stealing fire for man.  

And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, taught astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon...  

God is infuriated by this, and inflicts a punishment that the reader will instantly recognize as the inspiration for Lucifer’s later banishment to Hell;

...the Lord said to Raphael: 'Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dûdâêl (God's Kettle/Crucible/Cauldron), and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light. And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire. And heal the earth which the angels have corrupted, and proclaim the healing of the earth, that they may heal the plague, and that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things that the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons. And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin."   

This is the original “fallen angel” story; it has nothing to do with pride or Lucifer placing himself above God.  Instead, it directly parallels the tale of Prometheus, chained to a rock and faced with eternal punishment for stealing fire for man.  The Watchers‘ crime is to pass immortal spirit into mortal flesh, and to teach the knowledge of Heaven to human creatures.  Like the Serpent, they brought knowledge. It shouldn’t surprise us then that the Gnostics might look upon the serpent and these angels in a more favorable light.  And Chumbley, both in his reference to the ‘Devil’ as “the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods,” and in in the line “The Angel Most High went forth upon the Earth in the form of the Serpent to transmit unto Man the Fire of the Elder Gods” is showing his Gnostic inclinations.  He understands full well that the tale of Lucifer, the fallen Angel Most High, is nonsense, and that the serpent had nothing to do with the Devil.  But he is using this myth to tell us about the myth behind it, and, as we will see in Part 2, uses the myth behind it to suggest an even deeper secret.  

WRITERS, SHAMANS, AND FOOLS

master shaman, i have come

with my dolly from the shadow side

with a demon and an englishman

Tori Amos, "Sister Janet"

Once upon a time, long ago, I knew this strange kid. His family moved around every year, and he was perpetually the "new kid" in school, reluctant to make strong attachments he knew would be broken before the end of the year. Despite this, he was never really lonely. He had friends no one else could see.

He would wander, often, into the desert; there amidst the scorpions and rattlesnakes the dust would whisper to him, and he heard voices in the wind. The ghosts of long dead Native peoples would tell him their stories. The sun and stars sang to him tales of long ago. A little bit older, his family resettled back east, and the wooded landscape of rural New York was so very different from the one he had grown up in. Still, he would often disappear for hours to wander lost in the mountains, returning from such meanderings starry-eyed, dazed, and slightly out of it. But it wasn't chemicals secretly getting him high. He was just out talking to the trees.

Then of course his family did the worst possible thing you could do with a kid like that. They gave him an old manual typewriter. And parents--let this be a warning to you. If you are concerned about your children dabbling in occult forces, don't worry about the ouija board or the Tarot cards. Whatever you do, keep them away from pens and paper and keyboards. Take away their paint brushes and their clay. Because after they gave the boy his keyboard, he no longer went out to the spirits.

The spirits now came to him.

I have often felt, when I sit down to write, that I should be beating a medicine drum, drawing chalk circles, or chanting invocations. Like any shaman, I am preparing for an out-of-body experience, a journey to the Otherside. My spirit leaves my body and flows through the clicking of the keyboard, channeled to some nether realm where the voices come and tell me their stories. I can lose hours, skip meals, forget to sleep. Screw heroin, alcohol, or sex. No one fully understands addiction the way people compelled to create do.

At times I feel certain there must be some grand celestial waiting room out there, where all the unwritten songs, the unimagined paintings, and the untold tales are all lined up waiting for some poor fool to pick up a pencil and let them out. They are there, whispering, scratching at the walls of reality, waiting to be born. "Come get me. Let me out." Because inasmuch as people concerned with commercial success will tell you something inane like "write what you know," the best stories--the real stories--just come through. They almost seem to be using you as a passage into the world. I won a playwright's competition when I was 17, and I remember the director asking me if I had personally experienced the events in the tale. I hadn't. I didn't know anyone who had. And I had no flipping clue where it came from. All I knew was that an English teacher knew I liked to write, challenged me to enter the competition, and I sat down to knock off a story. There was no plotting. No scripting. No laying out scenes. The voices just started whispering.

I am not a writer. I am a secretary who takes dictation from the ghosts in his head. And thus it is rather difficult for me to be lonely, or to even imagine what lonely feels like. Like any medium, I am not looking to fill the silence, but instead looking for silence where and when I can.

THIS ROUGH MAGIC

"We are quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound... our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music, in a flash of color... we live on the wind and in the sparkle of a star! ...And you want to trade it all for a quarter of an acre of crabgrass."

- Endora to Samantha, Bewitched

I started writing when I was ten, and by the sixth grade was reading my stories aloud to the class. By sixteen I'd written two novels--neither was very good, but they showed enough promise to get some attention. At seventeen I won the New York State Young Playwright's Contest, and the next year won it again. So by the time I went to university, everyone expected me to major in English. But there was only one problem with that. Creative writing classes and literary criticism make me cringe.

When someone starts talking to me about plots, character arcs, and motivations I recoil like Bela Lugosi did from the crucifix. For me, at least, stories are not car engines that can be broken down, analyzed, and reproduced. Storytelling isn't a science, it's an art, and the characters that inhabit them are not little robots designed to serve a function, but beings evoked from somewhere else. Writers, like the coccyx or the appendix, are the vestiges of a more ancient phenomenon. They are the modern shamans; odd, half-mad people who cross over the the Otherworld, traffic with spirits, and bring back something to share with the tribe.

Alan Moore (From Hell, Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc), who is a practicing ritual magician as well as a writer, pointed out in the conclusion of his epic Promethea that language and magic are intimately intertwined. We cast spells and have spelling, poetry talks about invocation and evocation just like conjuring spirits does, and the traditional magic book of wizards--the grimoire--is linguistically related to the word grammar. We cannot think coherently without language, which at its core is about shaping the world around and inside us. This makes it a quite magical thing indeed. Having spent the last 25 years practicing magic myself, I see other connections as well. The deepest of these is summoning spirits.

Despite being a magician I consider myself a materialist; I don't believe that spirits and other worlds exist in exactly the same way the physical world does. I like to use the analogy of figures in a dream. They may, in fact, be figments of our imagination, but at the same time they seem to exist independent of us. They are the Other, and operate outside our conscious wills. If this wasn't true, nightmares could not frighten us. We'd just tell them to go away. Inside our heads are entire landscapes, multiple unformed realities populated by a legion of beings. Through language, they can sometimes be conjured from their world into our own, where they achieve a kind of half-life. "Hamlet" is distinct from any of the actors who play him, and there is something in acting anyway that resembles possession. "Santa Claus" may not be real the way my neighbor is but he certainly has more power to affect behavior around the world. And don't get me started with "God." These things may--or may not--be conjured up from within the human psyche, but it is a mistake to think they are not feisty, independent, or real.

For me, putting characters on paper then is no different from conjuring elementals or Enochian angels. I think this is what the Greeks meant when they discussed Muses. I don't necessarily see myself as making up characters and stories, so much as I cross over into some deep place and discover them. I go over to the Otherside and bring something back. This is also why Hermes--the Roman Mercury--was the god of magicians as well as of communication and crossing between this world and the next (he was also the patron of liars, con men, and thieves, but those are just storytellers who use their power for evil).

There is something miraculous, mystical, and fantastic about a good story. The characters seem real. I know for myself, at least, that I cannot really force them to do anything. Rather, they follow their own courses, make their own choices, and I scribble down what paths they chose. When people ask me to make changes to a story, my standard response is "don't tell me, take it up with them." I enjoy the magic of the process, and resorting to what they teach you in Creative Writing 101 feels a bit like trading quicksilver for that quarter acre of crabgrass.