De LVX ARTillery
"Light at the End of the Tunnel Vision"
FROM UNDERGROUND TO UNDERCOVER
(c) Zora-Lux Burden
Conversation between Iona Miller and Zora Von Burden, 2004
Editor Zora von Burden was born and raised in San Francisco, California.
A frequent contributor to The San Francisco Herald, von Burden also wrote
the screenplay for Geoff Cordner’s underground cult classic film, Hotel Hopscotch.
Editor Zora von Burden was born and raised in San Francisco, California.
A frequent contributor to The San Francisco Herald, von Burden also wrote
the screenplay for Geoff Cordner’s underground cult classic film, Hotel Hopscotch.
Into the Mystic
Z - I'm curious as to who or what had first introduced you to the esoteric or occult practices?
My first exposure to metaphysics was in the 60's. We used to get high and go see mystics and psychics for the fun of it. I remember buying my first tarot deck in La Jolla, Ca. I lived in Ojai, California, a Theosophical center and home of Krotona, their center with its huge library of metaphysics. They had classes for everything, just like you find everywhere now, but then it was rare to non-existent. The whole town was like living in a cult, so even the public library was full of wonderful philosophy books - things very rare in those days. Much of what now passes for New Age thought is just warmed-over Theosophy.
It was around that time the Krishnamurti Foundation was established for the "Un-guru." I was lucky enough to see his Oak Grove talks, and had many ‘wise old woman’ mentors who directed my studies and goals, short-cutting my process of shopping the ‘spiritual supermarket’. Due to this I never had much respect for the spiritual materialism of the metaphysical or parapolitical lecture circuit, which claims to tell you the real truth, while sticking it's hand deeply into your pockets.
Through Theosophy, and the excellent library there, I learned early about various mystic arts, including astrology from a former Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church. I learned more than she thought she was teaching since she loved her daily Port. She would get drunk and rave about being “possessed by Koothomi” and ask me to slap her in the face. So, before the vogue for channelling, I learned “don’t go THERE”! The unconscious can produce unvarnished rubbish as well as wisdom. But she was a terrific astrologer, named Marion…with many cats. Since then, numerous channels have vied for the public interest, and again, for their disposable income, but they usually wind up with PR egg on their face.
Of all of the occult arts, magick seemed to be the most intriguing because it had the most depth. Qabala seemed a hobby one could neither exhaust nor conquer. My study ranged far and deep, and of course Crowley was a big part of that, initially. My first real magick book was Regardie’s TREE OF LIFE. I really got into it. Realizing this was not exactly the "norm," I began investigating psychology, also, to keep a reality check on myself. By the early 70's, I was an avid Jungian which evolved into archetypal psychology. I began writing to crystallize my thoughts on the interface between mysticism and depth psychology. This eventually became THE HOLISTIC QABALA, whose outline came through in one of those blissful "flow experiences" where it all comes together synchronistically.
One of my primary interests is the relationship of psyche and matter…that interface where nothing becomes something, or psyche “matters”. This developed into my keen interest in paraphysics, the vacuum potential, and the threshold where the virtual [un]particles of the antimatter universe become perceptible. This eventually led to my work around Holographic Archetypes and other aspects of frontier science..
What was your first inclination in regards to which were the true Hermetic doctrines?
I followed what had appeal for me, what spoke to my heart and resonated. I was never much into grimoires and that kind of "Solomonic" magick as the ultimately necessary self transformation type of practice, that is largely psychological. I viewed it as the tradition of the Intelligentsia of each era. Now practice of the mystic arts has gotten mixed up with conspiracy theories. It all looks like a bunch of control-fantasies to me. The Elite, Illuminati, magic, and social engineering have become synonymous. Fact is, no one holographic control group is "in charge" but several factions interact in complex patterns. through the dynamics of chaos. Bob Dobbs gave the name "Android Meme" to the collective effect of media and technology that now morphs the meme-scape.
Still, the core of ritual, altering consciousness by constructing atmospheres of various spheres and pathworking seemed to be a comprehensive and very elegant system, based in enough ersatz “tradition” to satisfy me of its symbolic, if not historical, authenticity. It is a self-initiatory artform, a mental and spiritual practice, a Way. But it’s true I plowed through a graveyard of crappy occult literature in the interest of leaving no philosopher’s stone unturned. I got a pretty comprehensive picture of the whole landscape of spiritual alternatives and their relative levels of psychic penetration and illumination. My favorite map of this inscape is by John Curtis Gowan. Developed in the 70s, it still holds up as a skeleton for the creative and transformative process.
How had you studied and applied these?
I don't know: I was made for qabalah and it was made for me. I ate, lived and breathed Magick for decades until it became sort of a 24/7 headspace resembling a flow experience rather than any kind of effort or even intentionality. Magick is a worldview. I did the full Abramelin Retreat. The transformative journey was always my priority, a core mode of personal self-expression. Everything either takes you closer to THAT connection to your own essence or further away. Eventually, you just inhabit sacred spacetime, even if one foot remains in the mundane. Everything takes on a depth dimension, spinning and unraveling deep meanings. Naturally, such musing remain subject to one's own critical thinking and discernment.
If "Will", in Crowley's sense of the term, really came into it, it was more like just focusing on what I sought to accomplish. Now it’s more like “being there,” than any kind of striving for ultimates. I've become more like a Strange Attractor. Ultimately magick undergirds one’s worldview, or not. Nature either validates your worldview or not. It’s not really something you choose - it chooses you. Was it Castenada who said 'find a path with heart'?
Again I had some great mentors to learn from on the way, including the Grand Dames of the Agape Lodge of North Hollywood, Phyllis Seckler and Helen Parsons Smith. I was born and raised in spitting distance of their notorious Pasadena workings. But I selected not to go the OTO route, with “Our Father, Aleister Crowley”, because I wanted to write prolifically LIKE Crowley, not memorize his entire catalog of works or “worship” him like another Theosophical “ass-ended master”. I am not saying I have matched Crowley in any way, but I admired his impressive body of work in the same sense I admired Jung.
Remember, when looking at my inspirations or mentors, I am always under the early influence of the independence-promoting Krishnamurti even though that SOUNDS paradoxical. I was, however, pleased years later to see him hooked up with David Bohm’s holographic work. They were philosophical buddies since their views echoed and reinforced one anothers' positions at a higher scientific and spiritual level that the public became well-aware of early in this century.
What was your experience with the kabbalah to so passionately address it as you do in your belief system? I had heard the Kabbalah (for which the tarot cards were guides) was formulated back during the existence of Lemuria.
Well, Lemuria and other lost continents got a lot of press in Theosophy, but I never really cared much about that. Legendary tales contain too much confabulation. Current archaeology does show some plausible explanation for sunken habitat around the end of the last Ice Ages, however. You often see confabulation doing hypnotherapy. It starts with a grain of truth, then the imagination fills in the blanks. What’s done is done - like past lives. IF they existed, we are the culmination of that and I’m forward and future oriented - visionary. So, time for me is telescoped - the past infuses the present, the future shakes hands with the present.
Why did I love kabbalah? It nourished me. It gave me a sense of a great web of life. It WORKED for me in a way I found tangible, and comprehensible, and like my immersion in Jungian psychology allowed me to articulate and express myself in a more meaningful and deeper way with its unique vocabulary and nuance. It was heartful, rational, and aesthetically appealing. Ultimately, lots of ritual work is fundamentally celebratory - being alive and grooving with Nature, and our own nature. ...And, the drugs and sex weren't bad, either. Then!
Again, I’m less into the history of it all, and kabbalah's so-called “authentic” roots or politics, than in its symbolic authenticity. It is a way to awaken, mobilize and deploy the unconscious. It is a comprehensive symbol system, which can be played symphonically to alter states of consciousness systematically. Correspondences are a palette to be carefully mixed in the artful process.
The Tree of Life conveniently depicts all ways of Being (spheres) and Becoming (paths) in the minimum number of graphic elements - colors and simple reiterative geometry. My inner artist appreciates that elegance and depth in simplicity. The Tree is sort of the E=MC2 of metaphysics. It appeals to me aesthetically. I LIVE in that place, from that place - an ongoing multidimensional perspective. It is a multidimensional, comprehensive point of view. One is frequently in the Observer Self.
What I used to tell my psychotherapy clients is true of kabbalah, also: "The method works if you do." It isn’t called the GREAT WORK for nothing, not the Great Dabble, or the Great Party, or the Great Persona, or whatever. It is about the serious business of examining, knowing, and changing yourself at the core level.
My first exposure to metaphysics was in the 60's. We used to get high and go see mystics and psychics for the fun of it. I remember buying my first tarot deck in La Jolla, Ca. I lived in Ojai, California, a Theosophical center and home of Krotona, their center with its huge library of metaphysics. They had classes for everything, just like you find everywhere now, but then it was rare to non-existent. The whole town was like living in a cult, so even the public library was full of wonderful philosophy books - things very rare in those days. Much of what now passes for New Age thought is just warmed-over Theosophy.
It was around that time the Krishnamurti Foundation was established for the "Un-guru." I was lucky enough to see his Oak Grove talks, and had many ‘wise old woman’ mentors who directed my studies and goals, short-cutting my process of shopping the ‘spiritual supermarket’. Due to this I never had much respect for the spiritual materialism of the metaphysical or parapolitical lecture circuit, which claims to tell you the real truth, while sticking it's hand deeply into your pockets.
Through Theosophy, and the excellent library there, I learned early about various mystic arts, including astrology from a former Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church. I learned more than she thought she was teaching since she loved her daily Port. She would get drunk and rave about being “possessed by Koothomi” and ask me to slap her in the face. So, before the vogue for channelling, I learned “don’t go THERE”! The unconscious can produce unvarnished rubbish as well as wisdom. But she was a terrific astrologer, named Marion…with many cats. Since then, numerous channels have vied for the public interest, and again, for their disposable income, but they usually wind up with PR egg on their face.
Of all of the occult arts, magick seemed to be the most intriguing because it had the most depth. Qabala seemed a hobby one could neither exhaust nor conquer. My study ranged far and deep, and of course Crowley was a big part of that, initially. My first real magick book was Regardie’s TREE OF LIFE. I really got into it. Realizing this was not exactly the "norm," I began investigating psychology, also, to keep a reality check on myself. By the early 70's, I was an avid Jungian which evolved into archetypal psychology. I began writing to crystallize my thoughts on the interface between mysticism and depth psychology. This eventually became THE HOLISTIC QABALA, whose outline came through in one of those blissful "flow experiences" where it all comes together synchronistically.
One of my primary interests is the relationship of psyche and matter…that interface where nothing becomes something, or psyche “matters”. This developed into my keen interest in paraphysics, the vacuum potential, and the threshold where the virtual [un]particles of the antimatter universe become perceptible. This eventually led to my work around Holographic Archetypes and other aspects of frontier science..
What was your first inclination in regards to which were the true Hermetic doctrines?
I followed what had appeal for me, what spoke to my heart and resonated. I was never much into grimoires and that kind of "Solomonic" magick as the ultimately necessary self transformation type of practice, that is largely psychological. I viewed it as the tradition of the Intelligentsia of each era. Now practice of the mystic arts has gotten mixed up with conspiracy theories. It all looks like a bunch of control-fantasies to me. The Elite, Illuminati, magic, and social engineering have become synonymous. Fact is, no one holographic control group is "in charge" but several factions interact in complex patterns. through the dynamics of chaos. Bob Dobbs gave the name "Android Meme" to the collective effect of media and technology that now morphs the meme-scape.
Still, the core of ritual, altering consciousness by constructing atmospheres of various spheres and pathworking seemed to be a comprehensive and very elegant system, based in enough ersatz “tradition” to satisfy me of its symbolic, if not historical, authenticity. It is a self-initiatory artform, a mental and spiritual practice, a Way. But it’s true I plowed through a graveyard of crappy occult literature in the interest of leaving no philosopher’s stone unturned. I got a pretty comprehensive picture of the whole landscape of spiritual alternatives and their relative levels of psychic penetration and illumination. My favorite map of this inscape is by John Curtis Gowan. Developed in the 70s, it still holds up as a skeleton for the creative and transformative process.
How had you studied and applied these?
I don't know: I was made for qabalah and it was made for me. I ate, lived and breathed Magick for decades until it became sort of a 24/7 headspace resembling a flow experience rather than any kind of effort or even intentionality. Magick is a worldview. I did the full Abramelin Retreat. The transformative journey was always my priority, a core mode of personal self-expression. Everything either takes you closer to THAT connection to your own essence or further away. Eventually, you just inhabit sacred spacetime, even if one foot remains in the mundane. Everything takes on a depth dimension, spinning and unraveling deep meanings. Naturally, such musing remain subject to one's own critical thinking and discernment.
If "Will", in Crowley's sense of the term, really came into it, it was more like just focusing on what I sought to accomplish. Now it’s more like “being there,” than any kind of striving for ultimates. I've become more like a Strange Attractor. Ultimately magick undergirds one’s worldview, or not. Nature either validates your worldview or not. It’s not really something you choose - it chooses you. Was it Castenada who said 'find a path with heart'?
Again I had some great mentors to learn from on the way, including the Grand Dames of the Agape Lodge of North Hollywood, Phyllis Seckler and Helen Parsons Smith. I was born and raised in spitting distance of their notorious Pasadena workings. But I selected not to go the OTO route, with “Our Father, Aleister Crowley”, because I wanted to write prolifically LIKE Crowley, not memorize his entire catalog of works or “worship” him like another Theosophical “ass-ended master”. I am not saying I have matched Crowley in any way, but I admired his impressive body of work in the same sense I admired Jung.
Remember, when looking at my inspirations or mentors, I am always under the early influence of the independence-promoting Krishnamurti even though that SOUNDS paradoxical. I was, however, pleased years later to see him hooked up with David Bohm’s holographic work. They were philosophical buddies since their views echoed and reinforced one anothers' positions at a higher scientific and spiritual level that the public became well-aware of early in this century.
What was your experience with the kabbalah to so passionately address it as you do in your belief system? I had heard the Kabbalah (for which the tarot cards were guides) was formulated back during the existence of Lemuria.
Well, Lemuria and other lost continents got a lot of press in Theosophy, but I never really cared much about that. Legendary tales contain too much confabulation. Current archaeology does show some plausible explanation for sunken habitat around the end of the last Ice Ages, however. You often see confabulation doing hypnotherapy. It starts with a grain of truth, then the imagination fills in the blanks. What’s done is done - like past lives. IF they existed, we are the culmination of that and I’m forward and future oriented - visionary. So, time for me is telescoped - the past infuses the present, the future shakes hands with the present.
Why did I love kabbalah? It nourished me. It gave me a sense of a great web of life. It WORKED for me in a way I found tangible, and comprehensible, and like my immersion in Jungian psychology allowed me to articulate and express myself in a more meaningful and deeper way with its unique vocabulary and nuance. It was heartful, rational, and aesthetically appealing. Ultimately, lots of ritual work is fundamentally celebratory - being alive and grooving with Nature, and our own nature. ...And, the drugs and sex weren't bad, either. Then!
Again, I’m less into the history of it all, and kabbalah's so-called “authentic” roots or politics, than in its symbolic authenticity. It is a way to awaken, mobilize and deploy the unconscious. It is a comprehensive symbol system, which can be played symphonically to alter states of consciousness systematically. Correspondences are a palette to be carefully mixed in the artful process.
The Tree of Life conveniently depicts all ways of Being (spheres) and Becoming (paths) in the minimum number of graphic elements - colors and simple reiterative geometry. My inner artist appreciates that elegance and depth in simplicity. The Tree is sort of the E=MC2 of metaphysics. It appeals to me aesthetically. I LIVE in that place, from that place - an ongoing multidimensional perspective. It is a multidimensional, comprehensive point of view. One is frequently in the Observer Self.
What I used to tell my psychotherapy clients is true of kabbalah, also: "The method works if you do." It isn’t called the GREAT WORK for nothing, not the Great Dabble, or the Great Party, or the Great Persona, or whatever. It is about the serious business of examining, knowing, and changing yourself at the core level.
Theosophy
Do you believe this race of humans existed? That its history dates back farther than Sumeria?
It’s pure conjecture, although civilization appears to have fallen out of the sky. But it didn't -- there is far more archaeological evidence from pre-history now than in the past. Still, one should be careful not to join the Cult of Self-delusion of a Past that Never Happened.
Science is finding Neolithic evidence for cultures older than Sumeria -- Goddess-oriented cultures, such as the Vinca and Gebekli Tepe. But who knows. Sitchin confounded the whole issue with ancient astronauts, and then there is the whole new genre of so-called “Forbidden Archaeology”, some of which is more credible than others. Again, that is sterile conjecture for me, though clearly humans were doing some remarkable things before the dawn of written history. What’s next? Either way, we are the spearhead of civilization, such as it is.
It's the Super volcanoes you've got to watch out for! 70,000 years ago, scientists conjecture, Tuva squeezed the human race down to a few thousand survivors as the DNA record shows. Civilizations have been deeply affected by catastrophes. In addition to periodic glacial melt, current research indicates the Sumerian Flood of The Bible was caused by an asteroid hitting the Indian Ocean and flooding the Persian Gulf. Many myths have a factual if fanciful basis.
What is your opinion of Blavatsky's teachings?
Nice surreptitious compilation of the wisdom of the East with her name on it. The East never forgot its history and did not succumb to Western propaganda about its cultural heritage. Serpent worship cultures were once spread all over the globe. So, the stories of ancient civilizations were alive and well on the subcontinent. HPB's stories were strongly reflective of some 200 books she had in her library and her travels. Too bad she got caught faking poltergeists in her séance shenanigans. But she opened the west to eastern thought - Sufi, Hindu and Buddhist, and was a political influence, too. Rumor has it, like many occultists before and after, that she also used her arcane interests to mask her activity as a spy. Theosophy is such a mish-mash. She was one strong lady, way ahead of her time.
This is why I laugh when I hear the term “New Age”. It’s all warmed over Theosophy, often with a big dose of idiosyncratic symbolism, if not idiot-syncratic. I believe in keeping the basis of tradition and contemporizing from there, not leaving all proven systems of philosophical thought behind. After all, the territory is well charted in several symbolic languages and systems. But people tend to be eclectic now, or to try on this and that trend and compound their own philosophy. The problem is the cultural support inherent in the tribal forms of practice are largely non-existent, so there is little feedback and informed critique at the personal level.
However, in my youth I preferred the writings and style of Lucis Trust, which is now accused of being an NWO front. I remember standing in Krotona looking up at that big imposing portrait and thinking, “Yeah!” Ah, youth. Now I have no aspirations to such organizational authority. Alice Bailey impressed me with her notion of "false glamor" (she secretly meant to bash the Blavatsky/Besant cabal) and that has stuck with me through this whole era of new age hucksterism. But, today to be heard you have to engage in a degree of shameless self-promotion.
How do you feel about the Golden Dawn and its offshoot branches like the OTO of Crowley's creation?
I think they are great for those who choose to participate, and I support their work, and am also pro-BOTA which I think has the best qabalistic writing from Ann Davies. Phyllis Seckler told me in blunt terms that OTO is strictly a fraternal organization which she didn’t feel had any occult current, though she claimed one for her A.A., and her branded College of Thelema.
Again, it comes down to certain kinds of human needs for different types of personality and what they resonate with. Some want to lead, and some want to follow. Structure for a developmental process is perhaps good, but it may be the sign of an overactive ego too, paradoxically. Seekers can be a bit heroic and therefore, “yanged out.” Some people just want to build their persona around being magickal or Goth, or whatever. We were Goth before it existed - with Beltane Books in Seattle. I will say also, I have never seen two magicians agree philosophically on anything, and rarely on practicalities. Because of this I always laugh in Grade B horror flicks at how organized and coordinated the “black magicians” always are, haha. They’ve got their act together. It is easier to orchestrate fear than to make a silk purse of a sow's ear.
What do you think happened that would have caused the failure of Madame Blavatsky and Katherine Tingley's Utopian Retreat?
I don’t know. Blavatsky brought herself down with her chicanery - fraud. There are rumors of child abuse in Tingley's compound. Still, the work stands on its own philosophically, and has risen above that tainted legacy as the basis of postmodern alternative spirituality. You might say, it's tough to keep a good Buddha down. But it is the inner truths that make this so, perennial wisdom, not any of the cult personalities and slogan-spewers involved. People remain hungry for something real.
Utopian ideas and ideals have obvious limitations and some pernicious roots in Fabian socialism. An argument can be made they are part of social engineering programs to control society that came out of England, out of Tavistock, and were perpetuated through the "Aquarian Conspiracy", sexual revolution, and other contrived movements to break apart families and social boundaries.
Mostly, utopianism is a fantasized reaction to oppression. Fact is, we don’t live in an IDEAL world. The 60s communal living experiments are a good example. Most of these didn’t “work” in the long run either. There are a million ways to go wrong, not even counting that people have a change of heart or want a different lifestyle. I think lifestyle is the root of most relationship trouble, even when there is strong love. If two people can barely get along, how are you going to maintain a core group indefinitely?
It’s pure conjecture, although civilization appears to have fallen out of the sky. But it didn't -- there is far more archaeological evidence from pre-history now than in the past. Still, one should be careful not to join the Cult of Self-delusion of a Past that Never Happened.
Science is finding Neolithic evidence for cultures older than Sumeria -- Goddess-oriented cultures, such as the Vinca and Gebekli Tepe. But who knows. Sitchin confounded the whole issue with ancient astronauts, and then there is the whole new genre of so-called “Forbidden Archaeology”, some of which is more credible than others. Again, that is sterile conjecture for me, though clearly humans were doing some remarkable things before the dawn of written history. What’s next? Either way, we are the spearhead of civilization, such as it is.
It's the Super volcanoes you've got to watch out for! 70,000 years ago, scientists conjecture, Tuva squeezed the human race down to a few thousand survivors as the DNA record shows. Civilizations have been deeply affected by catastrophes. In addition to periodic glacial melt, current research indicates the Sumerian Flood of The Bible was caused by an asteroid hitting the Indian Ocean and flooding the Persian Gulf. Many myths have a factual if fanciful basis.
What is your opinion of Blavatsky's teachings?
Nice surreptitious compilation of the wisdom of the East with her name on it. The East never forgot its history and did not succumb to Western propaganda about its cultural heritage. Serpent worship cultures were once spread all over the globe. So, the stories of ancient civilizations were alive and well on the subcontinent. HPB's stories were strongly reflective of some 200 books she had in her library and her travels. Too bad she got caught faking poltergeists in her séance shenanigans. But she opened the west to eastern thought - Sufi, Hindu and Buddhist, and was a political influence, too. Rumor has it, like many occultists before and after, that she also used her arcane interests to mask her activity as a spy. Theosophy is such a mish-mash. She was one strong lady, way ahead of her time.
This is why I laugh when I hear the term “New Age”. It’s all warmed over Theosophy, often with a big dose of idiosyncratic symbolism, if not idiot-syncratic. I believe in keeping the basis of tradition and contemporizing from there, not leaving all proven systems of philosophical thought behind. After all, the territory is well charted in several symbolic languages and systems. But people tend to be eclectic now, or to try on this and that trend and compound their own philosophy. The problem is the cultural support inherent in the tribal forms of practice are largely non-existent, so there is little feedback and informed critique at the personal level.
However, in my youth I preferred the writings and style of Lucis Trust, which is now accused of being an NWO front. I remember standing in Krotona looking up at that big imposing portrait and thinking, “Yeah!” Ah, youth. Now I have no aspirations to such organizational authority. Alice Bailey impressed me with her notion of "false glamor" (she secretly meant to bash the Blavatsky/Besant cabal) and that has stuck with me through this whole era of new age hucksterism. But, today to be heard you have to engage in a degree of shameless self-promotion.
How do you feel about the Golden Dawn and its offshoot branches like the OTO of Crowley's creation?
I think they are great for those who choose to participate, and I support their work, and am also pro-BOTA which I think has the best qabalistic writing from Ann Davies. Phyllis Seckler told me in blunt terms that OTO is strictly a fraternal organization which she didn’t feel had any occult current, though she claimed one for her A.A., and her branded College of Thelema.
Again, it comes down to certain kinds of human needs for different types of personality and what they resonate with. Some want to lead, and some want to follow. Structure for a developmental process is perhaps good, but it may be the sign of an overactive ego too, paradoxically. Seekers can be a bit heroic and therefore, “yanged out.” Some people just want to build their persona around being magickal or Goth, or whatever. We were Goth before it existed - with Beltane Books in Seattle. I will say also, I have never seen two magicians agree philosophically on anything, and rarely on practicalities. Because of this I always laugh in Grade B horror flicks at how organized and coordinated the “black magicians” always are, haha. They’ve got their act together. It is easier to orchestrate fear than to make a silk purse of a sow's ear.
What do you think happened that would have caused the failure of Madame Blavatsky and Katherine Tingley's Utopian Retreat?
I don’t know. Blavatsky brought herself down with her chicanery - fraud. There are rumors of child abuse in Tingley's compound. Still, the work stands on its own philosophically, and has risen above that tainted legacy as the basis of postmodern alternative spirituality. You might say, it's tough to keep a good Buddha down. But it is the inner truths that make this so, perennial wisdom, not any of the cult personalities and slogan-spewers involved. People remain hungry for something real.
Utopian ideas and ideals have obvious limitations and some pernicious roots in Fabian socialism. An argument can be made they are part of social engineering programs to control society that came out of England, out of Tavistock, and were perpetuated through the "Aquarian Conspiracy", sexual revolution, and other contrived movements to break apart families and social boundaries.
Mostly, utopianism is a fantasized reaction to oppression. Fact is, we don’t live in an IDEAL world. The 60s communal living experiments are a good example. Most of these didn’t “work” in the long run either. There are a million ways to go wrong, not even counting that people have a change of heart or want a different lifestyle. I think lifestyle is the root of most relationship trouble, even when there is strong love. If two people can barely get along, how are you going to maintain a core group indefinitely?
Adepti
What is your interpretation of an adept?
Io - Few will likely agree with what I say, but there are varying degrees of facility at conjuring up one’s reality to be the way you want it. But that presumes Will has anything to do with it, though this same faculty is now called “intentionality” in paraphysics and now in THE SECRET, whose commercialism I loath. We can think of it as the logical impossibility of synthetic synchronicity, tweaking the potential field. The trick is knowing exactly what needs to be done so the universe cooperates. It has to be absolutely necessary.
I consider one who is a (minor) adept roughly equivalent to Maslow’s self-actualizing individual who enjoys some degree of self fulfillment but still serves some inner Muse, or drive, or mission ~ a dynamic deeper than the personality or persona. In Jungian terms, it is a vital connection to the Self, as inner authority figure greater than oneself. The problem is, through confounding archetypes like the Shadow and Self, people can respond to misguided inner authority, misinterpreting psychic contents which are maladaptive for spiritual imperatives.
In touch with, aware of, and constantly choosing to embody their higher Self, the Minor Adept is a Tiphareth-realized individual (at least Tiphareth of the astral) -- what psychology might call self-realized or self-actualizing. Higher consciousness is stabilized, not sporadic or emergent. Empathy, compassion and service are its hallmarks. In postmodern Jungian terms it means moving beyond archetypal roles and metanarratives and constricting belief systems toward true individuation. In magickal terms, it would also imply someone who has so incorporated experiences of the atmospheres of each sphere within so that awareness automatically persists as a gestalt giving depth to every situation. In physics terms, I guess you might call it a transformed field body. Theosophy calls it the causal body or mental body, contrasted with the astral or emotional body.
In short, the adept is someone who lives from their heart with passion and compassion, but firmly grounded in the body ~ no dichotomy of spiritual and physical worlds. This might not be a continuous state of mind, but it would be a stabilized grace, rather than emergent one.
Spirit and soul conjoined, in the sense of Eros and Psyche is an erotic and passionate embrace with Being, erotically imaginative. A conscious active indissoluble bond with Source feeds and nourishes the soul. In the melodious harmony of the flow state all things conspire toward the inevitable. That is magick. When the inevitable becomes what you want, what you want becomes inevitable.
How do you yourself see the godhead?
Io-…a disappearing act.
Io - Few will likely agree with what I say, but there are varying degrees of facility at conjuring up one’s reality to be the way you want it. But that presumes Will has anything to do with it, though this same faculty is now called “intentionality” in paraphysics and now in THE SECRET, whose commercialism I loath. We can think of it as the logical impossibility of synthetic synchronicity, tweaking the potential field. The trick is knowing exactly what needs to be done so the universe cooperates. It has to be absolutely necessary.
I consider one who is a (minor) adept roughly equivalent to Maslow’s self-actualizing individual who enjoys some degree of self fulfillment but still serves some inner Muse, or drive, or mission ~ a dynamic deeper than the personality or persona. In Jungian terms, it is a vital connection to the Self, as inner authority figure greater than oneself. The problem is, through confounding archetypes like the Shadow and Self, people can respond to misguided inner authority, misinterpreting psychic contents which are maladaptive for spiritual imperatives.
In touch with, aware of, and constantly choosing to embody their higher Self, the Minor Adept is a Tiphareth-realized individual (at least Tiphareth of the astral) -- what psychology might call self-realized or self-actualizing. Higher consciousness is stabilized, not sporadic or emergent. Empathy, compassion and service are its hallmarks. In postmodern Jungian terms it means moving beyond archetypal roles and metanarratives and constricting belief systems toward true individuation. In magickal terms, it would also imply someone who has so incorporated experiences of the atmospheres of each sphere within so that awareness automatically persists as a gestalt giving depth to every situation. In physics terms, I guess you might call it a transformed field body. Theosophy calls it the causal body or mental body, contrasted with the astral or emotional body.
In short, the adept is someone who lives from their heart with passion and compassion, but firmly grounded in the body ~ no dichotomy of spiritual and physical worlds. This might not be a continuous state of mind, but it would be a stabilized grace, rather than emergent one.
Spirit and soul conjoined, in the sense of Eros and Psyche is an erotic and passionate embrace with Being, erotically imaginative. A conscious active indissoluble bond with Source feeds and nourishes the soul. In the melodious harmony of the flow state all things conspire toward the inevitable. That is magick. When the inevitable becomes what you want, what you want becomes inevitable.
How do you yourself see the godhead?
Io-…a disappearing act.
Magick Societies
How do you feel about the Golden Dawn and its offshoot branches like the OTO of Crowley's creation?
I think they are great resources for their participants, and I support their work, and am also pro-BOTA which I think has the best qabalistic writing from Ann Davies. Phyllis Seckler told me in blunt terms that OTO is strictly a fraternal organization which she didn’t feel had an occult current, though she claimed one for her A.A., and College of Thelema. On the other hand, I saw her reschedule a Solstice rite for a convenient weekend date rather than observing magical timing, then break the magickal circle to answer the door.
Again, it comes down to certain kinds of human needs for different types of personality and what they resonate with. Some want to lead, and some want to follow, and some remain independent. Jung felt no good came from groups in terms of individuation, which can be a rather lonely path. Structure for a developmental process is perhaps good, but it may be the sign of an overactive ego too, paradoxically. A bit heroic and therefore, “yang-ed out.” Some people just want to build their persona around being magickal or Goth or whatever. We were Goth before it existed - with Beltane Books in Seattle.
I will say also, I have never seen two magicians agree philosophically on anything, and rarely on practicalities.Because of this I always laugh in Grade B horror flicks at how organized and coordinated the “black magicians” always are, haha. They’ve got their shit together.
You had stated learning from two grand Dames of the Agape Lodge, Helen Parsons and Phyllis Seckler. Can you elaborate on what you learned from them? Could you tell me what they were both like personally?
As important women figures in the organization I think it's imperative to mention them too. I learned from them mostly by their focus, behaviors, and goals.
Phyllis was certainly the most serious about her work, and tried to move the teaching forward systematically. Whether her efforts survive the power wars remains to be seen.Helen had moved away from any semblance of magical lifestyle. I specifically did NOT join OTO because Phyllis said to me, "No one in the OTO has gotten their Angel, except maybe me." That didn't leave much for me there, as getting your angel is the basic point. The whole problem for me was a rerun of what I loathed in Theosophy - the chicanery and in-fighting, the thievery, the cliquish squabbling.
They were, however, dedicated preservationists in their own ways, dedicated to the Crowley legacy. They taught me indirectly to keep the focus on the transformational process, not a bunch of fraternal in fighting and administration. They did not understand my contemporizations of magical philosophy, much like elder scientists are loath to embrace a new paradigm.
When you said that after your early experiences with the OTO, you had chosen something else.."I went another Way..". What did you mean by that?
Io: I was initiated in Sant Mat, one of the Radha Soami faiths (now called Science of the Soul)…a meditation school, whose consciousness map described exactly the same phenomenology as kabbalah, including the Abyss and Daath and 3 veils of negative manifestation. It just had a more competent credible teacher than I could find in Magick. At least it was a better role model, for me.
Also, have you felt your 'angel'? It's a temperamental and conditional gift, so if you do not want to discuss it I understand.
I cannot talk about my Sant Mat experiences as we are enjoined not to do that. But my angel is my daemon, my genius and is always with me and always was. It's not temperamental, but that drive does demand service. That is why I am so prolific. What else would you call it? Yes, a gift, a grace. Again, that is why I didn’t join OTO. If only one person even "got their angel" there (according to Phyllis), why bother?
I've always wanted to ask you what you feel the spirit consists of after death?
Returned to the ‘ground state’ of the vacuum potential, cosmic zero - to Nuit. Frankly, I think when you’re dead, you’re dead - fade to black. Personally, I've already begun purposefully merging with my Ancestors.
Have you had any discussions with otherworldly figures?
Not that I took literally, which isn't to deny that they appear autonomous. The dialogue is continuous and includes my ancestors. Dialogical gnosis is a process.
You are called a quantum metaphysicist. Can you explain what this means?
Haha, well, I don’t think I’ve applied this abstruse term to myself, but I’ll give it a go. Originally physics was a discipline of discerning the nature of physical reality, objective reality. Quantum mechanics shows that at its fundamental levels, reality is in a state of continual flux that cannot be pinned down. The vacuum potential, or zero-point energy fluctuates in and out of the observable domain. Many theories have been advanced to describe this “mattering” of something from nothing. I've written many articles on that subject for frontier science journals.
Meta-physics means simply 'beyond physics,' beyond the objective, beyond the concrete observables. There is no consensus in physics now about the primal nature of reality, that is why there are so many competing models from string or M-theory to the old Copenhagen notion of quantum mechanics that required the subjective observation of the experimenter. All of this is now wrapped up with the nature of consciousness, our consciousness and the nature of the cosmos.This means physics itself has reverted to a natural philosophy, rather than what was called “hard science”, because at this time the hypotheses are essentially untestable and the notion of ‘objectivity’ itself has been questioned. I've moved into philosophy of science.
So, if I were to “own” the title of quantum metaphysicist (I would prefer quantum metaphysician ), it would mean that the domain of my investigations on the nature of reality and my reality focuses on that interface where psyche “matters”, where the imaginal and the concrete merge and give birth to the whole panoply of creation, where our beliefs and thoughts create our reality. The closest we can examine this process at this time is the domain of subspace, the flux of virtual particles in and out of our universe. Chaos theory would contend that any perturbation, intentional or not, at this level of virtuality could create dramatic alterations in the timeline of individual and the cosmos - or multiverses, as the case may be.
In terms of the resonant nature of humans and cosmos, there are 4 positions or quadrants, but so far all the models are pure subjective conjecture:
1.Monist;
2. Dualist;
3. Physicalist;
4. Metaphysicalist.
1. All is Mind (upper right)
2. All is Matter (upper left)
3. Matter and Mind are separable and interactive (lower right)
4. Matter and Mind are two distinct and unified aspects of everything (lower left)
Will you explain to those who may not know, what chaos magic is and how it relates on scientific levels as well as philosophical and the physical, and what it should manifest? When did you begin to really investigate its correlation to quantum physics?
“What it should manifest”, what it has manifested is a new paradigm which permeates most fields of science, from medicine to astronomy. Why not apply that to the art and science of magick as well?
I was exploring this relationship before anything known as [dis]organized chaos magic came on the scene, as far as I know.
Many artists anticipated the importance of nonlinear creativity, including James Joyce, Burroughs with his cut up technique, Pollack who’s paintings actually display mathematical chaos, etc. The importance is that artists anticipate both science and social shift, long before it can be articulated. Chaos is iconoclastic; it breaks up the old order and makes way for the new at the creative edge. This edgework is the essence of chaos magic. IMHO - spiritual brinksmanship.
I don’t know a thing about what is formally called ‘chaos magic’, except a tendency by practitioners to reject metanarratives, or to THINK they are rejecting them. Trendy philosophies tend to harden into memes. I suppose it is influenced by A.O. Spare and Kenneth Grant’s dark philosophies. I prefer ‘living color.’ Chaos theory describes the constraints of self-organizing systems and they exist within us as what Jung called our complexes. Magick pits our potential against our limitations and desires.
What we are discussing is the nature of one’s worldview. You can import an idea to base it on, but one’s experiential base will ultimately color the belief system which lies deeper than the dance of thoughts and feelings and faddish attachments. For example, the motivations for building a persona as a ‘chaos magician’ might come from childhood trauma(s).
Ideas can grow roots in our psyches. You see it in fundamentalists, and the same can be said for the reprogramming of most spiritual paths. Is there a “God”, is there a “self”, what is the nature of and value of pain, and what of an afterlife? Or, the ennui of the existential cry, “Is this all there is?” Exposure to such ideas is so ubiquitous we are bound to hold conflicting beliefs.
The discipline of Complexity has shown us that slight changes can lead to big effects, both in terms of catastrophe and quantum leaps. So, chaos magic to me means simply that one acknowledges throughout the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels that chaos has a deterministic though undisclosed agenda that conditions our orbits as humans. We all dance to the tune of various cyclic and strange attractors. The magic part comes in building a conscious relation with those forces, acknowledging their supremacy and influence, and flowing with that process, rather than bucking the current egotistically, or egoistically. The center cannot, and does not need to hold.
I began my philosophical investigation of this, in ‘chaos’ vernacular, before Asklepia presented at the inaugural meeting of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences - SCTPLS http://www.societyforchaostheory.org/ - roughly in the late 80’s. Of course, I was influenced much earlier by Prigogine’s classic and Bohm’s work in the early 80s. Even then, a holographic concept of reality was not unfamiliar to me, as my ex-husband and colleagues were the first in print on the subject in the mid-70s, as published by Dr. Stanley Krippner.
Our dreamhealing techniques at Asklepia Foundation, later termed Consciousness Restructuring Process (CRP), were not a result of chaos theory, but provided a systematic language and analog model for the transformational processes we observed in experiential work. It allowed us to describe the phenomenology. What Jung termed archetypes became seen as attractors which could capture the libido or psychic energy of a person, enhancing or derailing their personality goals. It was especially good for describing sensory archetypes that lie deeper in the psyche than the mythological layers.
The ancient language for this process was couched in alchemical terms. I summed up much of that in my Autonomedia article, “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” which appeared in PSYCHEDELICS RE-IMAGINED, edited by Tom Lyttle. Leary and I spoke about this at length around 1993-4. He can certainly be counted among the “agents of Chaos”. Probably, one of the main points of chaos theory is the deterministic yet unpredictable nature of nonlinear dynamics. Humans are subject to that self-organizing principle, as is the cosmos: “As above; so below.”
In regards to sex magic or tantric sex, what would be the best way for a beginner to approach this practice? How would a couple know when it was a truly complete act?
Approach it with love. When you can fully imagine your lover as God/Goddess, their transcendent embodiment of the essence of male/femaleness, you’re there. It is “knowing” in the “Biblical” sense of direct, undeniable experience -- a gnosis. It is ravishment, beyond rapture; complete transport to the sacred world which is beyond time, beyond decay. It conveys a sense of the eternal, the fated.
But again, my ideas are likely not in harmony with the traditional teaching which suggests sex with sacred strangers, emotional distancing, dissociation or detachment, and motionless sex while raising the kundalini and transmuting that libido to higher expressions.
Ultimately, it’s all about love ~ in or out of bed. You must approach the world as your lover, with naked awareness. That does not mean to be socially naïve.
A lot of experimentation in this direction goes on in the name of polyamory. This term was coined by my sister moon, Morning Glory Zell, a pioneer of the neo-pagan movement, high priestess of the Church of All Worlds, patterned after the nests in Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.” What I notice is that for some people, this is a model to be creatively licentious. Whereas, the Zell’s were in a mutually-supportive group marriage of five where everyone’s “real needs” were openly met, physically and emotionally.
True polyamory means what it says, actively loving more than one “prime mate”, rather than having casual, recreational or sporting sex with whoever strikes your fancy. It implies an increased capacity for intimacy which takes the burden off a primary relationship to be one’s “be all and end all.” Many couples become too insular in traditional relationship. We are exploring new ways of connecting, of being 2gether. But, to each his/her/hir own…
If you believe in the struggle of a dichotomy in matter and spirit, how exactly do you see this type of Abraxas inter-relation coexisting in a harmonious way? In what manner of opposites?
You have rightly named the root of these dualities in the Zoroastrian religion which highlighted the battle of good and evil in matter. Later, this spread through syncretism into all Mediterranean philosophical thought. This notion of a war of opposites undergirds gender bias and colors all emotional life as black or white thinking…this OR that, with no in-betweeness.
We are crucified on the cross of the opposites, which actually just symbolizes the Four Elements of creation - the Cartesian coordinates of corporeal life. It’s hard to think of that manifestation as a “Fall” into materiality, into time-boundedness from unbound consciousness. But perhaps the ‘original sin’ is just that once we are here we must partake in the act of consumption at the expense of other beings, just by breathing, walking, eating.
We are consumers; we live off the entropy of others. In a basic way, we all “use” one another, for strokes, for survival, for pleasure. We must choose to either consume consciously or we may be toxic consumers. In America it is difficult to realize how much of the world’s “pie” of resources we consume…way out of proportion to the rest of the planetary inhabitants. So, one solution is to consciously live “small”, ameliorating our impact on the environment. I like to buy nearly everything used - there is so much discarded everyday which is still serviceable. Who cares if it was pre-owned?
Jung named the Transcendent Function as the dynamic of transcending opposites in a wholly new third thing. Modern Jungians, such as Marion Woodman and James Hillman, speak extensively on ways of “holding the tension of the opposites, “discrete but conjoined.” Try holding two totally opposites points of view simultaneously without cognitive dissonance. You can train yourself to see opposites working in tandem, as reins of control, much as shown in the Tarot card, The Chariot (Merkabah). Crowley suggested annihilating thoughts with their opposite.
On the Tree of Life it means opening the Middle Way by harmonizing the dynamics of Left- and Right-handed Paths…the way of the magician or the way of bhakti or devotion. Personally, I no longer see a dichotomy between spirit and matter, and such was one alchemical goal - that of the Unus Mundus - or One World where soul and spirit are conjoined. When the position of the body is brought into the equation, you get the Philosopher’s Stone, a union of body, soul and spirit. The lead of the psychosexual self is transmuted or transubstantiated into the gold of a life lived from the Self, or higher self. In modern terms, it is much like Maslow’s self-actualization.
Which do you feel is more important in doing magickal work, meditation, conjuring, ritual, ingestion of various natural substances or simply understanding and applying the philosophy in a devotional relation?
Well, do you want to go to church and ingest dogma, or have mystical experiences? Gnosis is not Gnosticism.
Meditation is absolutely most fundamental, but works best with an object of love. This is the search for The Beloved, this is the Grail Quest. Ritual is mostly social and celebratory - it gives structure to daily life. Conjuring clearly is low on the priority list; you can get more results quicker by simple work. The value of magickal work is only as strong as the goal you are pursuing - short and long term. The possibility you are fooling yourself exists, too, haha. Being devoted to the Great Work however you conceive it is essential.
I don’t think taking ‘allies’ alone confers any spiritual direction or growth. Even among the so-called psychedelic intelligentsia, many are not interested in “seeing God”. Whether it enhances your path is a very personal choice on which your inner guide will comment from time to time. I just remember the first time I took acid, my thought was, “This is great; now how do you do it without drugs?”
For many, the drug experiences are unintegratable, one cannot maintain the realizations of the high. So they don’t stabilize, but destabilize the personality, which is your tool or vehicle for navigating reality. I have known many notables, in magick, medicine, and transpersonal psychology who liked to journey at least once a year as a sort of “refresher”. I think my artwork shows I’ve had enough, haha. I asked Tim Leary how to “turn it off”, but he was no help!
I wanted to address with you sex magick as a route to higher consciousness, to find god rather than for ones on personal monitary gains or advancement only in the physical world.
The point of that would be to go until all the senses were thoroughly filled up and exhausted.
When a male is trying to invoke the muse, what are the conditions he should place upon the woman or expect from her during this encounter?
I could only imagine this as a unique contract between two people. Most practitioners I've known were coupled up at the time. HE may not know WHAT he expects...of himself or you. OR, he may have some rather pretentious notions.
Depends on WHO he is. The real question is what do YOU expect from him. What part of him do you expect him to carry?
What will he be exemplifying in your mind? Can you fuse as alchemical opposites? Can you hold the multisensory vision of him as a divine archetypal force? Will you simply fully surrender to the sensuality, to the moment and letting the mind go blissfully blank? Do you want to be psychosexually overcome and taken, perhaps beyond your boundaries? Can you surrender completely and TRUST THE PROCESS? DO YOU TRUST YOUR PARTNER? THEN ~ isn't the whole thing really about LOVE?
Do you feel there is any aesthetic value that should be expected?
I don't think there is ever any rule. Perhaps sometimes you feel very dramatic, others earthy,...it's nice to have an atmospheric spot, certainly conducive music and perhaps the right incense for the operation... if you are even doing the same one..
What should a woman present herself as to personally identify and invoke the goddess or muse as well?
Authenticity - bringing one's whole self to encounter. If you are sensual, be sensual ~ whatever your style is, express yourself freely.
Let intuition guide you to elicit just what is evocative for him from the psyche of the man. "She" will let you know. Ever notice how you can be different with different people?
How does one truly know they've been successful in this ritual?
Did you feel some cosmic merger? some divine infusion? transcendence? My preference is ravishment - beyond rapture. I wouldn't think in terms of "success", one way or the other.
You cannot fail unless you are dead. Success is relative; what would thrill you one week is perhaps boring the next. Examine the nature of your desire and why you are using magick rather than some other means to achieve it. Is that necessary or is it a confusion of the planes, like invoking the undines to save a drowning child? Keep the end result in mind.
Examine your implicit belief that you might find god through sex. Why do you even think that, let alone act on it? Annihilate it with its opposite -- that will open the Abyss of the void by uniting the opposites. Always question your underlying assumptions. Often they are false premises to begin with. There are always ordeals.
I've also wanted to ask, with all the chemical processes that are induced during ceremonies whether it be neurological from sexual relations or introduced by ingested substance, how does a person know what they're experiencing is truly contact with celestial beings or higher planes or just hallucinated and their own wishes projected?
Garbage in, garbage out?
Here's the secret: it's all you!
It isn't "real" or "unreal", but imaginal ~a psychological truth...but it can rototill up some complexes too in the process -- astral larva. "Magical thinking" is all projective.That doesn't mean it isn't meaningful.
I have a friend who said she talked to a Rabbi in Israel during her time there for an archeological dig about 'practicing' the Kabbala. The actual process and ritual ascending up the tree to the 'godhead'. He told her most Rabbis do not attempt this practice until they are over 90 or near death as the actual exposure to any concept of the real godhead is so incomprehensible it can cause madness. Have you heard of this?
Oh yes, there is a lot of dramatic rabbinic commentary on it. It's like in the movie "PI" when the nasty rabbi tells the antihero he isn't pure enough to get the revelation. And he retorts, "YEAH! But God gave it to ME." ...then he drilled a hole in his skull. Or, maybe it just takes us kabbalah newbies longer. Not many are in danger of touching godhead.
Jung also recommended not doing analysis until after 40. Its about maturity and personality integration and being established in the family years, etc. After 40 men get more sensitive like women, and women get more ambitious and outgoing. Symptoms of anima/us integration. After child rearing there may be more time for self-reflection. But some people are forced onto the path early - I was among them.
When you mentioned you had no choice in the matter growing up regarding where life would lead you spiritually, what did you mean? Was this a general statement?
I meant it in the sense of a non-refusable vocational call…I guess you could say a shamanic call in Joseph Campbell’s terms.
I think they are great resources for their participants, and I support their work, and am also pro-BOTA which I think has the best qabalistic writing from Ann Davies. Phyllis Seckler told me in blunt terms that OTO is strictly a fraternal organization which she didn’t feel had an occult current, though she claimed one for her A.A., and College of Thelema. On the other hand, I saw her reschedule a Solstice rite for a convenient weekend date rather than observing magical timing, then break the magickal circle to answer the door.
Again, it comes down to certain kinds of human needs for different types of personality and what they resonate with. Some want to lead, and some want to follow, and some remain independent. Jung felt no good came from groups in terms of individuation, which can be a rather lonely path. Structure for a developmental process is perhaps good, but it may be the sign of an overactive ego too, paradoxically. A bit heroic and therefore, “yang-ed out.” Some people just want to build their persona around being magickal or Goth or whatever. We were Goth before it existed - with Beltane Books in Seattle.
I will say also, I have never seen two magicians agree philosophically on anything, and rarely on practicalities.Because of this I always laugh in Grade B horror flicks at how organized and coordinated the “black magicians” always are, haha. They’ve got their shit together.
You had stated learning from two grand Dames of the Agape Lodge, Helen Parsons and Phyllis Seckler. Can you elaborate on what you learned from them? Could you tell me what they were both like personally?
As important women figures in the organization I think it's imperative to mention them too. I learned from them mostly by their focus, behaviors, and goals.
Phyllis was certainly the most serious about her work, and tried to move the teaching forward systematically. Whether her efforts survive the power wars remains to be seen.Helen had moved away from any semblance of magical lifestyle. I specifically did NOT join OTO because Phyllis said to me, "No one in the OTO has gotten their Angel, except maybe me." That didn't leave much for me there, as getting your angel is the basic point. The whole problem for me was a rerun of what I loathed in Theosophy - the chicanery and in-fighting, the thievery, the cliquish squabbling.
They were, however, dedicated preservationists in their own ways, dedicated to the Crowley legacy. They taught me indirectly to keep the focus on the transformational process, not a bunch of fraternal in fighting and administration. They did not understand my contemporizations of magical philosophy, much like elder scientists are loath to embrace a new paradigm.
When you said that after your early experiences with the OTO, you had chosen something else.."I went another Way..". What did you mean by that?
Io: I was initiated in Sant Mat, one of the Radha Soami faiths (now called Science of the Soul)…a meditation school, whose consciousness map described exactly the same phenomenology as kabbalah, including the Abyss and Daath and 3 veils of negative manifestation. It just had a more competent credible teacher than I could find in Magick. At least it was a better role model, for me.
Also, have you felt your 'angel'? It's a temperamental and conditional gift, so if you do not want to discuss it I understand.
I cannot talk about my Sant Mat experiences as we are enjoined not to do that. But my angel is my daemon, my genius and is always with me and always was. It's not temperamental, but that drive does demand service. That is why I am so prolific. What else would you call it? Yes, a gift, a grace. Again, that is why I didn’t join OTO. If only one person even "got their angel" there (according to Phyllis), why bother?
I've always wanted to ask you what you feel the spirit consists of after death?
Returned to the ‘ground state’ of the vacuum potential, cosmic zero - to Nuit. Frankly, I think when you’re dead, you’re dead - fade to black. Personally, I've already begun purposefully merging with my Ancestors.
Have you had any discussions with otherworldly figures?
Not that I took literally, which isn't to deny that they appear autonomous. The dialogue is continuous and includes my ancestors. Dialogical gnosis is a process.
You are called a quantum metaphysicist. Can you explain what this means?
Haha, well, I don’t think I’ve applied this abstruse term to myself, but I’ll give it a go. Originally physics was a discipline of discerning the nature of physical reality, objective reality. Quantum mechanics shows that at its fundamental levels, reality is in a state of continual flux that cannot be pinned down. The vacuum potential, or zero-point energy fluctuates in and out of the observable domain. Many theories have been advanced to describe this “mattering” of something from nothing. I've written many articles on that subject for frontier science journals.
Meta-physics means simply 'beyond physics,' beyond the objective, beyond the concrete observables. There is no consensus in physics now about the primal nature of reality, that is why there are so many competing models from string or M-theory to the old Copenhagen notion of quantum mechanics that required the subjective observation of the experimenter. All of this is now wrapped up with the nature of consciousness, our consciousness and the nature of the cosmos.This means physics itself has reverted to a natural philosophy, rather than what was called “hard science”, because at this time the hypotheses are essentially untestable and the notion of ‘objectivity’ itself has been questioned. I've moved into philosophy of science.
So, if I were to “own” the title of quantum metaphysicist (I would prefer quantum metaphysician ), it would mean that the domain of my investigations on the nature of reality and my reality focuses on that interface where psyche “matters”, where the imaginal and the concrete merge and give birth to the whole panoply of creation, where our beliefs and thoughts create our reality. The closest we can examine this process at this time is the domain of subspace, the flux of virtual particles in and out of our universe. Chaos theory would contend that any perturbation, intentional or not, at this level of virtuality could create dramatic alterations in the timeline of individual and the cosmos - or multiverses, as the case may be.
In terms of the resonant nature of humans and cosmos, there are 4 positions or quadrants, but so far all the models are pure subjective conjecture:
1.Monist;
2. Dualist;
3. Physicalist;
4. Metaphysicalist.
1. All is Mind (upper right)
2. All is Matter (upper left)
3. Matter and Mind are separable and interactive (lower right)
4. Matter and Mind are two distinct and unified aspects of everything (lower left)
Will you explain to those who may not know, what chaos magic is and how it relates on scientific levels as well as philosophical and the physical, and what it should manifest? When did you begin to really investigate its correlation to quantum physics?
“What it should manifest”, what it has manifested is a new paradigm which permeates most fields of science, from medicine to astronomy. Why not apply that to the art and science of magick as well?
I was exploring this relationship before anything known as [dis]organized chaos magic came on the scene, as far as I know.
Many artists anticipated the importance of nonlinear creativity, including James Joyce, Burroughs with his cut up technique, Pollack who’s paintings actually display mathematical chaos, etc. The importance is that artists anticipate both science and social shift, long before it can be articulated. Chaos is iconoclastic; it breaks up the old order and makes way for the new at the creative edge. This edgework is the essence of chaos magic. IMHO - spiritual brinksmanship.
I don’t know a thing about what is formally called ‘chaos magic’, except a tendency by practitioners to reject metanarratives, or to THINK they are rejecting them. Trendy philosophies tend to harden into memes. I suppose it is influenced by A.O. Spare and Kenneth Grant’s dark philosophies. I prefer ‘living color.’ Chaos theory describes the constraints of self-organizing systems and they exist within us as what Jung called our complexes. Magick pits our potential against our limitations and desires.
What we are discussing is the nature of one’s worldview. You can import an idea to base it on, but one’s experiential base will ultimately color the belief system which lies deeper than the dance of thoughts and feelings and faddish attachments. For example, the motivations for building a persona as a ‘chaos magician’ might come from childhood trauma(s).
Ideas can grow roots in our psyches. You see it in fundamentalists, and the same can be said for the reprogramming of most spiritual paths. Is there a “God”, is there a “self”, what is the nature of and value of pain, and what of an afterlife? Or, the ennui of the existential cry, “Is this all there is?” Exposure to such ideas is so ubiquitous we are bound to hold conflicting beliefs.
The discipline of Complexity has shown us that slight changes can lead to big effects, both in terms of catastrophe and quantum leaps. So, chaos magic to me means simply that one acknowledges throughout the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels that chaos has a deterministic though undisclosed agenda that conditions our orbits as humans. We all dance to the tune of various cyclic and strange attractors. The magic part comes in building a conscious relation with those forces, acknowledging their supremacy and influence, and flowing with that process, rather than bucking the current egotistically, or egoistically. The center cannot, and does not need to hold.
I began my philosophical investigation of this, in ‘chaos’ vernacular, before Asklepia presented at the inaugural meeting of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences - SCTPLS http://www.societyforchaostheory.org/ - roughly in the late 80’s. Of course, I was influenced much earlier by Prigogine’s classic and Bohm’s work in the early 80s. Even then, a holographic concept of reality was not unfamiliar to me, as my ex-husband and colleagues were the first in print on the subject in the mid-70s, as published by Dr. Stanley Krippner.
Our dreamhealing techniques at Asklepia Foundation, later termed Consciousness Restructuring Process (CRP), were not a result of chaos theory, but provided a systematic language and analog model for the transformational processes we observed in experiential work. It allowed us to describe the phenomenology. What Jung termed archetypes became seen as attractors which could capture the libido or psychic energy of a person, enhancing or derailing their personality goals. It was especially good for describing sensory archetypes that lie deeper in the psyche than the mythological layers.
The ancient language for this process was couched in alchemical terms. I summed up much of that in my Autonomedia article, “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” which appeared in PSYCHEDELICS RE-IMAGINED, edited by Tom Lyttle. Leary and I spoke about this at length around 1993-4. He can certainly be counted among the “agents of Chaos”. Probably, one of the main points of chaos theory is the deterministic yet unpredictable nature of nonlinear dynamics. Humans are subject to that self-organizing principle, as is the cosmos: “As above; so below.”
In regards to sex magic or tantric sex, what would be the best way for a beginner to approach this practice? How would a couple know when it was a truly complete act?
Approach it with love. When you can fully imagine your lover as God/Goddess, their transcendent embodiment of the essence of male/femaleness, you’re there. It is “knowing” in the “Biblical” sense of direct, undeniable experience -- a gnosis. It is ravishment, beyond rapture; complete transport to the sacred world which is beyond time, beyond decay. It conveys a sense of the eternal, the fated.
But again, my ideas are likely not in harmony with the traditional teaching which suggests sex with sacred strangers, emotional distancing, dissociation or detachment, and motionless sex while raising the kundalini and transmuting that libido to higher expressions.
Ultimately, it’s all about love ~ in or out of bed. You must approach the world as your lover, with naked awareness. That does not mean to be socially naïve.
A lot of experimentation in this direction goes on in the name of polyamory. This term was coined by my sister moon, Morning Glory Zell, a pioneer of the neo-pagan movement, high priestess of the Church of All Worlds, patterned after the nests in Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.” What I notice is that for some people, this is a model to be creatively licentious. Whereas, the Zell’s were in a mutually-supportive group marriage of five where everyone’s “real needs” were openly met, physically and emotionally.
True polyamory means what it says, actively loving more than one “prime mate”, rather than having casual, recreational or sporting sex with whoever strikes your fancy. It implies an increased capacity for intimacy which takes the burden off a primary relationship to be one’s “be all and end all.” Many couples become too insular in traditional relationship. We are exploring new ways of connecting, of being 2gether. But, to each his/her/hir own…
If you believe in the struggle of a dichotomy in matter and spirit, how exactly do you see this type of Abraxas inter-relation coexisting in a harmonious way? In what manner of opposites?
You have rightly named the root of these dualities in the Zoroastrian religion which highlighted the battle of good and evil in matter. Later, this spread through syncretism into all Mediterranean philosophical thought. This notion of a war of opposites undergirds gender bias and colors all emotional life as black or white thinking…this OR that, with no in-betweeness.
We are crucified on the cross of the opposites, which actually just symbolizes the Four Elements of creation - the Cartesian coordinates of corporeal life. It’s hard to think of that manifestation as a “Fall” into materiality, into time-boundedness from unbound consciousness. But perhaps the ‘original sin’ is just that once we are here we must partake in the act of consumption at the expense of other beings, just by breathing, walking, eating.
We are consumers; we live off the entropy of others. In a basic way, we all “use” one another, for strokes, for survival, for pleasure. We must choose to either consume consciously or we may be toxic consumers. In America it is difficult to realize how much of the world’s “pie” of resources we consume…way out of proportion to the rest of the planetary inhabitants. So, one solution is to consciously live “small”, ameliorating our impact on the environment. I like to buy nearly everything used - there is so much discarded everyday which is still serviceable. Who cares if it was pre-owned?
Jung named the Transcendent Function as the dynamic of transcending opposites in a wholly new third thing. Modern Jungians, such as Marion Woodman and James Hillman, speak extensively on ways of “holding the tension of the opposites, “discrete but conjoined.” Try holding two totally opposites points of view simultaneously without cognitive dissonance. You can train yourself to see opposites working in tandem, as reins of control, much as shown in the Tarot card, The Chariot (Merkabah). Crowley suggested annihilating thoughts with their opposite.
On the Tree of Life it means opening the Middle Way by harmonizing the dynamics of Left- and Right-handed Paths…the way of the magician or the way of bhakti or devotion. Personally, I no longer see a dichotomy between spirit and matter, and such was one alchemical goal - that of the Unus Mundus - or One World where soul and spirit are conjoined. When the position of the body is brought into the equation, you get the Philosopher’s Stone, a union of body, soul and spirit. The lead of the psychosexual self is transmuted or transubstantiated into the gold of a life lived from the Self, or higher self. In modern terms, it is much like Maslow’s self-actualization.
Which do you feel is more important in doing magickal work, meditation, conjuring, ritual, ingestion of various natural substances or simply understanding and applying the philosophy in a devotional relation?
Well, do you want to go to church and ingest dogma, or have mystical experiences? Gnosis is not Gnosticism.
Meditation is absolutely most fundamental, but works best with an object of love. This is the search for The Beloved, this is the Grail Quest. Ritual is mostly social and celebratory - it gives structure to daily life. Conjuring clearly is low on the priority list; you can get more results quicker by simple work. The value of magickal work is only as strong as the goal you are pursuing - short and long term. The possibility you are fooling yourself exists, too, haha. Being devoted to the Great Work however you conceive it is essential.
I don’t think taking ‘allies’ alone confers any spiritual direction or growth. Even among the so-called psychedelic intelligentsia, many are not interested in “seeing God”. Whether it enhances your path is a very personal choice on which your inner guide will comment from time to time. I just remember the first time I took acid, my thought was, “This is great; now how do you do it without drugs?”
For many, the drug experiences are unintegratable, one cannot maintain the realizations of the high. So they don’t stabilize, but destabilize the personality, which is your tool or vehicle for navigating reality. I have known many notables, in magick, medicine, and transpersonal psychology who liked to journey at least once a year as a sort of “refresher”. I think my artwork shows I’ve had enough, haha. I asked Tim Leary how to “turn it off”, but he was no help!
I wanted to address with you sex magick as a route to higher consciousness, to find god rather than for ones on personal monitary gains or advancement only in the physical world.
The point of that would be to go until all the senses were thoroughly filled up and exhausted.
When a male is trying to invoke the muse, what are the conditions he should place upon the woman or expect from her during this encounter?
I could only imagine this as a unique contract between two people. Most practitioners I've known were coupled up at the time. HE may not know WHAT he expects...of himself or you. OR, he may have some rather pretentious notions.
Depends on WHO he is. The real question is what do YOU expect from him. What part of him do you expect him to carry?
What will he be exemplifying in your mind? Can you fuse as alchemical opposites? Can you hold the multisensory vision of him as a divine archetypal force? Will you simply fully surrender to the sensuality, to the moment and letting the mind go blissfully blank? Do you want to be psychosexually overcome and taken, perhaps beyond your boundaries? Can you surrender completely and TRUST THE PROCESS? DO YOU TRUST YOUR PARTNER? THEN ~ isn't the whole thing really about LOVE?
Do you feel there is any aesthetic value that should be expected?
I don't think there is ever any rule. Perhaps sometimes you feel very dramatic, others earthy,...it's nice to have an atmospheric spot, certainly conducive music and perhaps the right incense for the operation... if you are even doing the same one..
What should a woman present herself as to personally identify and invoke the goddess or muse as well?
Authenticity - bringing one's whole self to encounter. If you are sensual, be sensual ~ whatever your style is, express yourself freely.
Let intuition guide you to elicit just what is evocative for him from the psyche of the man. "She" will let you know. Ever notice how you can be different with different people?
How does one truly know they've been successful in this ritual?
Did you feel some cosmic merger? some divine infusion? transcendence? My preference is ravishment - beyond rapture. I wouldn't think in terms of "success", one way or the other.
You cannot fail unless you are dead. Success is relative; what would thrill you one week is perhaps boring the next. Examine the nature of your desire and why you are using magick rather than some other means to achieve it. Is that necessary or is it a confusion of the planes, like invoking the undines to save a drowning child? Keep the end result in mind.
Examine your implicit belief that you might find god through sex. Why do you even think that, let alone act on it? Annihilate it with its opposite -- that will open the Abyss of the void by uniting the opposites. Always question your underlying assumptions. Often they are false premises to begin with. There are always ordeals.
I've also wanted to ask, with all the chemical processes that are induced during ceremonies whether it be neurological from sexual relations or introduced by ingested substance, how does a person know what they're experiencing is truly contact with celestial beings or higher planes or just hallucinated and their own wishes projected?
Garbage in, garbage out?
Here's the secret: it's all you!
It isn't "real" or "unreal", but imaginal ~a psychological truth...but it can rototill up some complexes too in the process -- astral larva. "Magical thinking" is all projective.That doesn't mean it isn't meaningful.
I have a friend who said she talked to a Rabbi in Israel during her time there for an archeological dig about 'practicing' the Kabbala. The actual process and ritual ascending up the tree to the 'godhead'. He told her most Rabbis do not attempt this practice until they are over 90 or near death as the actual exposure to any concept of the real godhead is so incomprehensible it can cause madness. Have you heard of this?
Oh yes, there is a lot of dramatic rabbinic commentary on it. It's like in the movie "PI" when the nasty rabbi tells the antihero he isn't pure enough to get the revelation. And he retorts, "YEAH! But God gave it to ME." ...then he drilled a hole in his skull. Or, maybe it just takes us kabbalah newbies longer. Not many are in danger of touching godhead.
Jung also recommended not doing analysis until after 40. Its about maturity and personality integration and being established in the family years, etc. After 40 men get more sensitive like women, and women get more ambitious and outgoing. Symptoms of anima/us integration. After child rearing there may be more time for self-reflection. But some people are forced onto the path early - I was among them.
When you mentioned you had no choice in the matter growing up regarding where life would lead you spiritually, what did you mean? Was this a general statement?
I meant it in the sense of a non-refusable vocational call…I guess you could say a shamanic call in Joseph Campbell’s terms.
Info Guerrilla
What are some of the most important Jungian systems in your opinion?
Io - While Jung laid down a good foundation his immediate followers created an institution which James Hillman blew wide open with his revisioning of Archetypal Psychology. Imaginal Psychology is even a bit more radical where “Imagination is Reality”, the primary way we experience all external and internal phenomena. Both of these contemporary forms of depth psychology are grounded in a polytheistic viewpoint that reverberates throughout its literature. It is a non-heroic Way of Being. It means living mythically, not living one hero’s monomyth.
Practically, like metaphysics, it can mean several things to our self-awareness and help us understand the greater stories played out in our lives.
Understanding the value and meaning of suffering and depression. This is the alchemical Nigredo or blackness, being stuck in your own shit, so you figure out the chakra.I n kabbalah it is Malkuth: “merde to merde”.
Learning to objectively admit and dialogue with our shadow. Could also be linked to Malkuth ~ our personal portion of darkness to which we are often blind, but also our unlived potential we let others carry for us because we are lazy. A sociopath might have a 'good' shadow side that remains elusive or projected.
Understanding the nature of projections in relationships and belief systems. In kabbalah, Yesod the sphere of the Moon; in alchemy the albedo or whitening through solutio - liquification, becoming emotional enough to process your “stuckness”.
Having some kind of validation for meaningfulness in dreamlife. More moon connection with the feminine side of life and the unconscious.
Honoring the imaginal (Anima Mundi) as the primary, phenomenological form of Reality. Recognizing the Goddess and being THAT, on the Tree of Life via the middle path Art and Priestess.
Learning to hold the tension of the opposites and embrace many viewpoints as simultaneously valid, like being the axel of a wheel, as Tiphareth (Self) is on the Tree, mediating the forces of the Left and Right Pillars. In alchemy the Royal Marriage or Coniunctio.
What is the connection these theorems have with chaos magick and the kabbalah?
Io -- Jung systematically described the phenomenology of different layers of the psyche and so does kabbalah and its “bastard offshoot” magick, which draws its root metaphor from the Tree of Life.
All explore the interface of the inner and outer worlds, their common ground. The nexus point is the interface of psyche and matter; where “psyche matters”; where change can and does happen. The creative edge of chaos is the cutting edge of our personal evolution. At every choice point, virtually every breath, we choose a forking path leading us into further adventures on the quest to we know not where. Artists often reach toward the unknown when expressing themselves in new media and spontaneous performance.
Both therapy and kabbalah use visualizations or pathworking with symbolism to keep us in touch with certain well-trodden roads, certain typically illuminating experiences. These are the well-known milestones of the inner terrain which have been described by Jean Houston, Stan Grof, Ken Wilber, John Curtis Gowan, and others.Gareth Knight did a good job of it in Qabalah. The imagery is typical and somewhat predictable, if you know the iconography of the different stations and depths of the psyche.
I have no knowledge of what is formally or anarchistically (haha) now called “chaos magic” and its principles.I only know how I perceive the juxtaposition of chaos theory, process dynamics, and magick.Chaos magic, IMHO, follows the unique trajectory, guided by an unseen Strange Attractor - your inevitable future - with its unpredictable yet inexorable gravity.Your nonlinear “Angel” reaches into the past to pull you into your future.
I suppose chaos magic would have no investment philosophically in any kind of linear growth or development of personality; rather it follows nature’s nonlinear way.Any perturbation can radically alter one’s course…between turbulence and flow.Healing doesn’t occur through “work on one’s self” or causation but through contagion, ravishment, and radical change in worldview and fundamental self-image.
So just like one toxic experience can create dysfunction, one strong healing experience can eliminate it.And it can happen using metaphor, epistemogical metaphors that emerge from within, i.e. “how you know what you know” and what it is “like”.One has to let go and trust that process to let old patterns dissolve so new ones emerge creatively from the deepest level.The difference in treatment philosophy is that it is brief therapy, not endless analysis.
The imagery that emerges in this process is spontaneously healing ~ it is not different from the healing, and it is idiosyncratic, very particularized and in no way “programmable”.It cannot be “imported” into a person as in guided visualization.It emerges spontaneously from within and can be deepend further into a waking dream.This type of experiential therapy is often likened by participants to psychedelic journeys.I have written extensively on this aspect, for example in “Chaos as the Universal Solvent”.
However, kabbalah is a lived philosophy, a deeply engrained worldview you train yourself into.That is the Great Work.However, credible instructions are unavailable and you must make a pastiche from what you can glean or put yourself at the mercy of fellow lodgemembers.
Initiation means nothing more than simply a beginning ~ of a new way of being, a new lifestyle, a consolidation of a new metabeliefs and the nature of yourself, others and the world.It’s a point of view that is simultaneously aware of many dimensions at once.In this sense it is like depth psychology; there is always lots of subtle subtext ~ and the synchronicities, etc.
Io - While Jung laid down a good foundation his immediate followers created an institution which James Hillman blew wide open with his revisioning of Archetypal Psychology. Imaginal Psychology is even a bit more radical where “Imagination is Reality”, the primary way we experience all external and internal phenomena. Both of these contemporary forms of depth psychology are grounded in a polytheistic viewpoint that reverberates throughout its literature. It is a non-heroic Way of Being. It means living mythically, not living one hero’s monomyth.
Practically, like metaphysics, it can mean several things to our self-awareness and help us understand the greater stories played out in our lives.
Understanding the value and meaning of suffering and depression. This is the alchemical Nigredo or blackness, being stuck in your own shit, so you figure out the chakra.I n kabbalah it is Malkuth: “merde to merde”.
Learning to objectively admit and dialogue with our shadow. Could also be linked to Malkuth ~ our personal portion of darkness to which we are often blind, but also our unlived potential we let others carry for us because we are lazy. A sociopath might have a 'good' shadow side that remains elusive or projected.
Understanding the nature of projections in relationships and belief systems. In kabbalah, Yesod the sphere of the Moon; in alchemy the albedo or whitening through solutio - liquification, becoming emotional enough to process your “stuckness”.
Having some kind of validation for meaningfulness in dreamlife. More moon connection with the feminine side of life and the unconscious.
Honoring the imaginal (Anima Mundi) as the primary, phenomenological form of Reality. Recognizing the Goddess and being THAT, on the Tree of Life via the middle path Art and Priestess.
Learning to hold the tension of the opposites and embrace many viewpoints as simultaneously valid, like being the axel of a wheel, as Tiphareth (Self) is on the Tree, mediating the forces of the Left and Right Pillars. In alchemy the Royal Marriage or Coniunctio.
What is the connection these theorems have with chaos magick and the kabbalah?
Io -- Jung systematically described the phenomenology of different layers of the psyche and so does kabbalah and its “bastard offshoot” magick, which draws its root metaphor from the Tree of Life.
All explore the interface of the inner and outer worlds, their common ground. The nexus point is the interface of psyche and matter; where “psyche matters”; where change can and does happen. The creative edge of chaos is the cutting edge of our personal evolution. At every choice point, virtually every breath, we choose a forking path leading us into further adventures on the quest to we know not where. Artists often reach toward the unknown when expressing themselves in new media and spontaneous performance.
Both therapy and kabbalah use visualizations or pathworking with symbolism to keep us in touch with certain well-trodden roads, certain typically illuminating experiences. These are the well-known milestones of the inner terrain which have been described by Jean Houston, Stan Grof, Ken Wilber, John Curtis Gowan, and others.Gareth Knight did a good job of it in Qabalah. The imagery is typical and somewhat predictable, if you know the iconography of the different stations and depths of the psyche.
I have no knowledge of what is formally or anarchistically (haha) now called “chaos magic” and its principles.I only know how I perceive the juxtaposition of chaos theory, process dynamics, and magick.Chaos magic, IMHO, follows the unique trajectory, guided by an unseen Strange Attractor - your inevitable future - with its unpredictable yet inexorable gravity.Your nonlinear “Angel” reaches into the past to pull you into your future.
I suppose chaos magic would have no investment philosophically in any kind of linear growth or development of personality; rather it follows nature’s nonlinear way.Any perturbation can radically alter one’s course…between turbulence and flow.Healing doesn’t occur through “work on one’s self” or causation but through contagion, ravishment, and radical change in worldview and fundamental self-image.
So just like one toxic experience can create dysfunction, one strong healing experience can eliminate it.And it can happen using metaphor, epistemogical metaphors that emerge from within, i.e. “how you know what you know” and what it is “like”.One has to let go and trust that process to let old patterns dissolve so new ones emerge creatively from the deepest level.The difference in treatment philosophy is that it is brief therapy, not endless analysis.
The imagery that emerges in this process is spontaneously healing ~ it is not different from the healing, and it is idiosyncratic, very particularized and in no way “programmable”.It cannot be “imported” into a person as in guided visualization.It emerges spontaneously from within and can be deepend further into a waking dream.This type of experiential therapy is often likened by participants to psychedelic journeys.I have written extensively on this aspect, for example in “Chaos as the Universal Solvent”.
However, kabbalah is a lived philosophy, a deeply engrained worldview you train yourself into.That is the Great Work.However, credible instructions are unavailable and you must make a pastiche from what you can glean or put yourself at the mercy of fellow lodgemembers.
Initiation means nothing more than simply a beginning ~ of a new way of being, a new lifestyle, a consolidation of a new metabeliefs and the nature of yourself, others and the world.It’s a point of view that is simultaneously aware of many dimensions at once.In this sense it is like depth psychology; there is always lots of subtle subtext ~ and the synchronicities, etc.
Philosophy of Treatment
How do you incorporate your beliefs systems into your therapeutic practice?
Short answer is I don't, or hope I don't. My practice is evocative not introjective; that's my philosophy of treatment. The solution emerges as order from chaos within.
Hypnotherapy is perhaps the mostly explicitly shamanistic of the healing arts. After all, our first and virtually only requirement as practitioners is to induce an altered state in the client, to co-consciously journey with him or her to “foreign lands” as guide, companion and mentor. However, the client sets the agenda in brief therapy, so treatment of choice is determined by their own soul goals.
Though you can’t get out of it, your own Schrodinger’s box, my beliefs have nothing to do with the session. My philosophy of treatment is to enter the belief system of the other and work within that. those beliefs change when the psyche is rototilled but that is an organically emergent not induced process. 'Do no harm' means don’t strip away the irreplaceable blithely until something better is nigh. It undermines adaptation. As the Videru Telemahandi says, “The ecology of the soul is to recycle one’s consciousness.”
That said, I have had many Dr. Tavener-type adventures in psychotherapy, where my exposure to occulture has made a crucial difference.Even the straightest people would walk in my office door and say the same thing, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this; I’ve never told anyone, but the weirdest thing happened…”Whatever it was didn’t fit in their worldview, and they want some authoritative context from someone they feel safe with.
The objective “truth” of the account is not as important to me, as the truth of the soul it narrates.People always have different points of view, and the same is true of synchronistic or psychophysical experiences.Often there are banal explanations, such as night terrors, temporal lobe seizures, geomagnetic anomalies, etc. You can’t leap to conclusions about the supernatural. A few incidents keep their Mystery, which remains to be explored.If it is their desire, we go “into the mystic”.
Could you explain what Virtual Reality is, a summarization?
I would say there are varieties of virtualities: Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual, depending on form, content, degree of immersion, and transformative capacity.
PHYSICAL: Technological VR is a computer interface that allows a multisensory experience of an ersatz space, a simulation of a reality, some programmed, some interactive.Jaron Lanier popularized the notion in Mondo 2000 and designed body gloves and body suits for VR.Soon you will be able to essentially step into the world of your X-Box, they say.
EMOTIONAL: A psychological kind of VR is the trances people live.They have certain pre-programmed parameters, and “rules” for their scripts, games and rackets.
MENTAL: Internet is a virtuality all it’s own.Many days my “chip” body has a far more exciting time than “I” do, sitting in my office talking with the world.
A friend just returned from a photography convention and had a 3-D scan taken.They display it in a crystal cube. Even more exciting is a project I am involved with called REAL FANTASY. It involves using fine art principles to create high end entertainment simulations - full immersion.
Siliconwood is developing a new entertainment experience of real fantasy - like Karoake for movies - where players participate in a digital adventure in a virtual theme park. Not Reality TV - Reality Movie - you get to be in the movie. Members of the audience get to be a character in a hip computer generated 3D movie at our facility and eventually in every home theatre and digital home entertainment center with broadband Internet.
We combine 3D computer animation, scripted story telling with plot, subplots and character development run by a director with real-time professional voice actors for true interaction. Our first release is an exciting political intrigue in a rich fantasy setting: think "Alias" meets "The Lord Of The Rings".
SPIRITUAL: However, I am mainly interested in the general artistic application of REAL FANTASY as a prelude to my lifelong project, VIRTUAL QABALAH - which I envision as a full immersion initiatic pathworking experience.I have a posse of production talent forming already - musicians, qabalists, animators, 3-D and gaming simulations people, even a public TV producer who is a qabalist and accomplished musician.
Remember how tarot books all say the Trumps were originally on the walls of ancient initiation chambers? Same idea 21st Century style, using the correspondence system to create atmospheres and neuro and videofeedback to change biological parameters.
Over the course of your decades of experience, you've done many lectures attending conferences and festivals all over the world related to science, metaphysics, psychology and spirituality. Can you mention what these were?
Many, if not most, of my meetings with remarkable people were informal and/or virtual. There was Krontona in Ojai in the 60s, to Gnosticon in the 70s, Panarion, Dera in India. In the old days, we sent our scouts around to various events and reported back eagerly to one another. Its a pastiche of the Sunset Strip, Fillmore, Bowie concerts, Chateau Liberte, magickal initiations, transpersonal, hypnotherapeutic, and family work.
Psychic healer Jack Schwartz who lived here in Southern Oregon, uber-counselor Virginia Satir, Jungian Elisabeth Kubler Ross, Psychology Today editor Sam Keen, those with less publicized names. Many notables in the psychedelic intelligentsia - Clark Heinrich, DMT doctor Rick Strassman, James Arthur, the “real” Bob Dobbs, and others in the NYC Non Linear Circle Salon (NLC), the Poetry Science folks, one of which was a senior Omni editor, and those who best remain unnamed.
Short answer is I don't, or hope I don't. My practice is evocative not introjective; that's my philosophy of treatment. The solution emerges as order from chaos within.
Hypnotherapy is perhaps the mostly explicitly shamanistic of the healing arts. After all, our first and virtually only requirement as practitioners is to induce an altered state in the client, to co-consciously journey with him or her to “foreign lands” as guide, companion and mentor. However, the client sets the agenda in brief therapy, so treatment of choice is determined by their own soul goals.
Though you can’t get out of it, your own Schrodinger’s box, my beliefs have nothing to do with the session. My philosophy of treatment is to enter the belief system of the other and work within that. those beliefs change when the psyche is rototilled but that is an organically emergent not induced process. 'Do no harm' means don’t strip away the irreplaceable blithely until something better is nigh. It undermines adaptation. As the Videru Telemahandi says, “The ecology of the soul is to recycle one’s consciousness.”
That said, I have had many Dr. Tavener-type adventures in psychotherapy, where my exposure to occulture has made a crucial difference.Even the straightest people would walk in my office door and say the same thing, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this; I’ve never told anyone, but the weirdest thing happened…”Whatever it was didn’t fit in their worldview, and they want some authoritative context from someone they feel safe with.
The objective “truth” of the account is not as important to me, as the truth of the soul it narrates.People always have different points of view, and the same is true of synchronistic or psychophysical experiences.Often there are banal explanations, such as night terrors, temporal lobe seizures, geomagnetic anomalies, etc. You can’t leap to conclusions about the supernatural. A few incidents keep their Mystery, which remains to be explored.If it is their desire, we go “into the mystic”.
Could you explain what Virtual Reality is, a summarization?
I would say there are varieties of virtualities: Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual, depending on form, content, degree of immersion, and transformative capacity.
PHYSICAL: Technological VR is a computer interface that allows a multisensory experience of an ersatz space, a simulation of a reality, some programmed, some interactive.Jaron Lanier popularized the notion in Mondo 2000 and designed body gloves and body suits for VR.Soon you will be able to essentially step into the world of your X-Box, they say.
EMOTIONAL: A psychological kind of VR is the trances people live.They have certain pre-programmed parameters, and “rules” for their scripts, games and rackets.
MENTAL: Internet is a virtuality all it’s own.Many days my “chip” body has a far more exciting time than “I” do, sitting in my office talking with the world.
A friend just returned from a photography convention and had a 3-D scan taken.They display it in a crystal cube. Even more exciting is a project I am involved with called REAL FANTASY. It involves using fine art principles to create high end entertainment simulations - full immersion.
Siliconwood is developing a new entertainment experience of real fantasy - like Karoake for movies - where players participate in a digital adventure in a virtual theme park. Not Reality TV - Reality Movie - you get to be in the movie. Members of the audience get to be a character in a hip computer generated 3D movie at our facility and eventually in every home theatre and digital home entertainment center with broadband Internet.
We combine 3D computer animation, scripted story telling with plot, subplots and character development run by a director with real-time professional voice actors for true interaction. Our first release is an exciting political intrigue in a rich fantasy setting: think "Alias" meets "The Lord Of The Rings".
SPIRITUAL: However, I am mainly interested in the general artistic application of REAL FANTASY as a prelude to my lifelong project, VIRTUAL QABALAH - which I envision as a full immersion initiatic pathworking experience.I have a posse of production talent forming already - musicians, qabalists, animators, 3-D and gaming simulations people, even a public TV producer who is a qabalist and accomplished musician.
Remember how tarot books all say the Trumps were originally on the walls of ancient initiation chambers? Same idea 21st Century style, using the correspondence system to create atmospheres and neuro and videofeedback to change biological parameters.
Over the course of your decades of experience, you've done many lectures attending conferences and festivals all over the world related to science, metaphysics, psychology and spirituality. Can you mention what these were?
Many, if not most, of my meetings with remarkable people were informal and/or virtual. There was Krontona in Ojai in the 60s, to Gnosticon in the 70s, Panarion, Dera in India. In the old days, we sent our scouts around to various events and reported back eagerly to one another. Its a pastiche of the Sunset Strip, Fillmore, Bowie concerts, Chateau Liberte, magickal initiations, transpersonal, hypnotherapeutic, and family work.
Psychic healer Jack Schwartz who lived here in Southern Oregon, uber-counselor Virginia Satir, Jungian Elisabeth Kubler Ross, Psychology Today editor Sam Keen, those with less publicized names. Many notables in the psychedelic intelligentsia - Clark Heinrich, DMT doctor Rick Strassman, James Arthur, the “real” Bob Dobbs, and others in the NYC Non Linear Circle Salon (NLC), the Poetry Science folks, one of which was a senior Omni editor, and those who best remain unnamed.
Fellow Explorers
What were some of your more memorable meetings and what is the topic of conversation?
Ones that stand out include a private gathering in 1993 at Isis Oasis in Geyserville, California; Consciousness Technologies II in Sisters, Oregon, and Nexus 2004 in Brisbane, Australia. Each was uplifting and illuminating in a different way. Isis Oasis was a private Fall Equinox gathering of our friends in the Church of All Worlds (CAW)with our associates from Florida blotter art dealer and editor Tom Lyttle’s PSYCHEDELIC MONOGRAPHS AND ESSAYS. The focus was neo-pagan, chaos magic.
CTII was centered around consciousness exploration from psychedelics to alchemy, from hypnosis to body work, from holotropic breathwork to sacred geometry and transcendance. I spoke on neurotheology, sacred geometry and experiential psychotherapy, I think. Anyway, I know we did some groupwork. Many of our old and new friends were there.
Nexus is the infamous international conspiracy/ufo/future science zine. The speakers here are world authorities on their subjects. I’d written for them for a couple of years, mostly in future science. I am also on the editorial board of the parapsychology/biophysics Journal of Nonlocality and Remote Mental Interactions - remote viewing and distance healing. The superstar of the event was the Russian UFO “czar”, Valery Uvarov, and HAARP activist Nick Begich.
Isis Oasis included some interesting guests, and others who didn’t make it just as interesting. These included Terrence McKenna and Jacque Vallee, who were friends of Diane Darling, editor of the original neo-pagan zine Green Egg at that time. We wanted to get together for our annual visit with editor Tom Lyttle of PM&E and decided on Isis Oasis. Tom invited his friends from the experimental triad group marriage Phoenix from Beverly Hills. Lyn Ehrnstein was the lawyer for Synanon, the pioneer heroine recovery program. Neo-pagan movement pioneers and The Church of All Worlds founders Tim [Otter-OZ-Oberon] and Morning Glory Zell also came for their 20th anniversary celebration. CAW was patterned after Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. Other CAW members included Anodea Judith, who wrote ‘Wheels of Life’ for Llewellyn on the chakras, her husband Richard, Sandra and Morgan Ware, CAW members there for the Eleusian Mysteries Ceremony. CAW member, Adam Walks Between Worlds, who wrote terrific articles on Jack Parsons and Robert Heinlein for Green Egg, meant to bring McKenna and Valle, but plans changed. This was the second time we failed to connect with McKenna, another being when we were at the MONDO 2000 house in Berkeley. We had his former girlfriend, the one from his butterfly book on Southeast Asia, with us. When we left, RU Sirius was literally rolling on the floor, holding his head, exclaiming “I can’t believe it!”.
Anyway, Adam instead brought underground demigod Genesis P-Orridge with him from Occidental. This was early in Gen’s banishment from Britain, before his accident in the fire at Houdini’s mansion in Hollywood. We didn’t really know who Gen was then, but Tom informed us of his cult Temple of Psychic Youth, and his current band Psychic TV not to mention his influential role in the Industrial, Rave, and Acid House Movements. What was clear was that he was a walking piece of art and possible candidate for the real vampire Lestat. Genesis was wonderfully warm and friendly and we discussed his kids, his exile, Leary, what dreamhealing and chaos magic was and wasn’t while it was congealing as a philosophy, and also what it might be.
I just saw Gen again in Hollywood, November ‘04 with PTV3. I was there with South Park animator Bob Judd and former PTV member Don Bolles, formerly of The Germs and 45 Grave. I’ve come to respect Gen’s commitment to his art tremendously. Magick happened. Synergy happened. Talk about ‘set” and “setting”. We ate, we communed, sang, there were hot tubs and absinthe, and a fine time was had by all. Loreon Vigne, formerly a San Francisco artist, is the owner of Isis Oasis, and a High Priestess of Isis. The grounds are a beautiful magical retreat center in the wine country with an Egyptian Temple, a large theatre and hall, separate redwood paneled heritage houses with Egyptian decor, exotic rescue animals, big cats, peacocks and game birds, etc.The following week Deepak Chopra came.
At CT II I saw perhaps the most amusing demonstration of stand-up shamanism possible. Arguably the world’s leading expert in the legal-high Pfalaris grass was there with a truck load of the stuff. After teaching everyone how to grow Wild Turkey in a tub on the roof being sure to mow it regularly, he proceeded to brew up a batch of DMT for 80. But there was no chemical nor alchemical gear. This guy is a downhome farmer from Montana.He had a huge metal barrel and industrial burner, a bag of lemons and a pitchfork. It was surreal like a scene somewhere between Casteneda and Cheech and Chong when he started making lemonade, boiling it and chucking in what looked like lawn clippings. He was the perfect embodiment of the Trickster, as his jokes flew as fast as his pitchfork. Everyone was hysterical with laughter, mesmerized, skeptical if hopeful. I didn’t ingest any of the resulting potion, being the “natural high” person. It got mixed reviews, but the show was great. Reports varied depending on what other independent bioassays each individual was conducting at the time. My Quaker friends, the Joys are very clear and reported a pleasant persistent effect. If it was placebo effect, that’s good, too! You’re as high as you think you are.
This same shaman, who is a graduate transpersonal psychologist, has gone on to engage in serious Mars Mission research. He is one of the world’s leading experts on ancient and extraterrestrial geology. Last year he went to the Mars Mission camp, where you live like you are there for weeks. That was some fun e-mail with photos to match. Talk about virtualities! So, you see, all of these events, all of these meeting with people who are each Strange Attractors, leads to bifurcations in our respective pathways. We cross-pollinate and boomerang back into one another over the decades, crossing the boundaries of philosophy, metaphysics, art, ritual, music.Many of these people have a distinctive mythic quality to their lives.They are in touch with and can express both subconscious and transpersonal energies. They are what I call Uniques. Some may be Homo Lumen, while I suspect others are Homo Mutans.
Now, at the Nexus conference, it was hard to tell the human from the hybrids, the spooks from the hackers, the lightworkers from the technoshamans. The Russian government has decided UFOs are real and they are going to tell the world and appointed Valery Uvarov to do it.He’s a superstar in St. Petersburg.He claims there is another earth-sized planet on the other side of the Sun so we can never see it. He says inhabitants of this planet created an Installation in Tunguska that prevented a catastrophic collision with a meteorite by exploding it with giant plasma balls. Jim Marrs is a leading conspiracy investigative journalist.His book was the basis for Oliver Stone’s JFK movie.He spoke on 911 and alien presence. HAARP is a giant antenna array in Alaska which can heat and distort the ionosphere. The government uses it to communicate with atomic submarines through ELF frequencies, but it can change weather, scorch the earth, alter consciousness, and a variety of other heinous psychophysical effects. The main vocal opponent Nick Begich was there telling how other installations have gone up across the globe. Playing with this global electromagnetism could collapse the atmosphere.Lloyd Pye talked about his Star-child Skull and alien genetic engineering.
We all shared nearly every meal together for days, so you can imagine what the behind the scenes chat was like if that was the public talk. We got together with other participants after the event. But loose lips sink ships, eh? We are slated again for this spring in Amsterdam with Linda Moulton Howe from the Art Bell Show. Her original specialty was cattle mutilations. I can’t wait to see her grill the Russian ufologist.
Ones that stand out include a private gathering in 1993 at Isis Oasis in Geyserville, California; Consciousness Technologies II in Sisters, Oregon, and Nexus 2004 in Brisbane, Australia. Each was uplifting and illuminating in a different way. Isis Oasis was a private Fall Equinox gathering of our friends in the Church of All Worlds (CAW)with our associates from Florida blotter art dealer and editor Tom Lyttle’s PSYCHEDELIC MONOGRAPHS AND ESSAYS. The focus was neo-pagan, chaos magic.
CTII was centered around consciousness exploration from psychedelics to alchemy, from hypnosis to body work, from holotropic breathwork to sacred geometry and transcendance. I spoke on neurotheology, sacred geometry and experiential psychotherapy, I think. Anyway, I know we did some groupwork. Many of our old and new friends were there.
Nexus is the infamous international conspiracy/ufo/future science zine. The speakers here are world authorities on their subjects. I’d written for them for a couple of years, mostly in future science. I am also on the editorial board of the parapsychology/biophysics Journal of Nonlocality and Remote Mental Interactions - remote viewing and distance healing. The superstar of the event was the Russian UFO “czar”, Valery Uvarov, and HAARP activist Nick Begich.
Isis Oasis included some interesting guests, and others who didn’t make it just as interesting. These included Terrence McKenna and Jacque Vallee, who were friends of Diane Darling, editor of the original neo-pagan zine Green Egg at that time. We wanted to get together for our annual visit with editor Tom Lyttle of PM&E and decided on Isis Oasis. Tom invited his friends from the experimental triad group marriage Phoenix from Beverly Hills. Lyn Ehrnstein was the lawyer for Synanon, the pioneer heroine recovery program. Neo-pagan movement pioneers and The Church of All Worlds founders Tim [Otter-OZ-Oberon] and Morning Glory Zell also came for their 20th anniversary celebration. CAW was patterned after Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. Other CAW members included Anodea Judith, who wrote ‘Wheels of Life’ for Llewellyn on the chakras, her husband Richard, Sandra and Morgan Ware, CAW members there for the Eleusian Mysteries Ceremony. CAW member, Adam Walks Between Worlds, who wrote terrific articles on Jack Parsons and Robert Heinlein for Green Egg, meant to bring McKenna and Valle, but plans changed. This was the second time we failed to connect with McKenna, another being when we were at the MONDO 2000 house in Berkeley. We had his former girlfriend, the one from his butterfly book on Southeast Asia, with us. When we left, RU Sirius was literally rolling on the floor, holding his head, exclaiming “I can’t believe it!”.
Anyway, Adam instead brought underground demigod Genesis P-Orridge with him from Occidental. This was early in Gen’s banishment from Britain, before his accident in the fire at Houdini’s mansion in Hollywood. We didn’t really know who Gen was then, but Tom informed us of his cult Temple of Psychic Youth, and his current band Psychic TV not to mention his influential role in the Industrial, Rave, and Acid House Movements. What was clear was that he was a walking piece of art and possible candidate for the real vampire Lestat. Genesis was wonderfully warm and friendly and we discussed his kids, his exile, Leary, what dreamhealing and chaos magic was and wasn’t while it was congealing as a philosophy, and also what it might be.
I just saw Gen again in Hollywood, November ‘04 with PTV3. I was there with South Park animator Bob Judd and former PTV member Don Bolles, formerly of The Germs and 45 Grave. I’ve come to respect Gen’s commitment to his art tremendously. Magick happened. Synergy happened. Talk about ‘set” and “setting”. We ate, we communed, sang, there were hot tubs and absinthe, and a fine time was had by all. Loreon Vigne, formerly a San Francisco artist, is the owner of Isis Oasis, and a High Priestess of Isis. The grounds are a beautiful magical retreat center in the wine country with an Egyptian Temple, a large theatre and hall, separate redwood paneled heritage houses with Egyptian decor, exotic rescue animals, big cats, peacocks and game birds, etc.The following week Deepak Chopra came.
At CT II I saw perhaps the most amusing demonstration of stand-up shamanism possible. Arguably the world’s leading expert in the legal-high Pfalaris grass was there with a truck load of the stuff. After teaching everyone how to grow Wild Turkey in a tub on the roof being sure to mow it regularly, he proceeded to brew up a batch of DMT for 80. But there was no chemical nor alchemical gear. This guy is a downhome farmer from Montana.He had a huge metal barrel and industrial burner, a bag of lemons and a pitchfork. It was surreal like a scene somewhere between Casteneda and Cheech and Chong when he started making lemonade, boiling it and chucking in what looked like lawn clippings. He was the perfect embodiment of the Trickster, as his jokes flew as fast as his pitchfork. Everyone was hysterical with laughter, mesmerized, skeptical if hopeful. I didn’t ingest any of the resulting potion, being the “natural high” person. It got mixed reviews, but the show was great. Reports varied depending on what other independent bioassays each individual was conducting at the time. My Quaker friends, the Joys are very clear and reported a pleasant persistent effect. If it was placebo effect, that’s good, too! You’re as high as you think you are.
This same shaman, who is a graduate transpersonal psychologist, has gone on to engage in serious Mars Mission research. He is one of the world’s leading experts on ancient and extraterrestrial geology. Last year he went to the Mars Mission camp, where you live like you are there for weeks. That was some fun e-mail with photos to match. Talk about virtualities! So, you see, all of these events, all of these meeting with people who are each Strange Attractors, leads to bifurcations in our respective pathways. We cross-pollinate and boomerang back into one another over the decades, crossing the boundaries of philosophy, metaphysics, art, ritual, music.Many of these people have a distinctive mythic quality to their lives.They are in touch with and can express both subconscious and transpersonal energies. They are what I call Uniques. Some may be Homo Lumen, while I suspect others are Homo Mutans.
Now, at the Nexus conference, it was hard to tell the human from the hybrids, the spooks from the hackers, the lightworkers from the technoshamans. The Russian government has decided UFOs are real and they are going to tell the world and appointed Valery Uvarov to do it.He’s a superstar in St. Petersburg.He claims there is another earth-sized planet on the other side of the Sun so we can never see it. He says inhabitants of this planet created an Installation in Tunguska that prevented a catastrophic collision with a meteorite by exploding it with giant plasma balls. Jim Marrs is a leading conspiracy investigative journalist.His book was the basis for Oliver Stone’s JFK movie.He spoke on 911 and alien presence. HAARP is a giant antenna array in Alaska which can heat and distort the ionosphere. The government uses it to communicate with atomic submarines through ELF frequencies, but it can change weather, scorch the earth, alter consciousness, and a variety of other heinous psychophysical effects. The main vocal opponent Nick Begich was there telling how other installations have gone up across the globe. Playing with this global electromagnetism could collapse the atmosphere.Lloyd Pye talked about his Star-child Skull and alien genetic engineering.
We all shared nearly every meal together for days, so you can imagine what the behind the scenes chat was like if that was the public talk. We got together with other participants after the event. But loose lips sink ships, eh? We are slated again for this spring in Amsterdam with Linda Moulton Howe from the Art Bell Show. Her original specialty was cattle mutilations. I can’t wait to see her grill the Russian ufologist.
Writing
Will you talk about your work on and contributions to Chaosophy and Nexus?
Chaosophy is my annual journal, and contains mostly my writings for each year which are germain to its topic of consciousness and chaos. That is pretty broad scope from culture to biophysics.
Nexus (nexusmagazine.com) is an edgy alt.health and alt.reality international print magazine. You can probably grasp it best if I say it is well-suited to the Art Bell crowd. A friend of mine was gaga about that kind of thing for years, and kept trying to get me to read it. I found out they are sticklers about their editing, references and sources, which was a great surprise.
Finally, when Rick wanted to get back in the speaking arena in “weird science” I suggested them as publishers and wrote several articles toward that end promoting us both. Some were scientific on Schumann Resonance and the brain and psi powers, others political on the HAARP installation in Alaska, another told of our research on the DNA hologram with Russian scientists, still others on the varieties of parallel worlds, economic and political articles.
There are more in the pipeline, with more to come. This issue is one with my electrical engineer friend Ben Lonetree on the Sedona vortex effect. Rick and I went to the Nexus conference in Brisbane last year and are going to Amsterdam in a couple of months. The cream of the crop in conspiracy theory and ufology are there, such as Jim Marrs and Linda Moulton Howe. The superstar of the events is the Russian UFO czar, Valery Uvarov.
You founded many centers, lodges and organizations in your life, will talk about them and what prompted you to develop these?
They were simply collabos that came up in the natural course of events following my interest. People are always asking me to do things with them. I’m not really organization oriented, but I am a systems person by typology. I like to set things up, but my mind moves on to other projects, multitasking. However, I always complete my projects, too. I like to collaborate with people who are equally self-motivated and expeditious. To me, these are just extrapolated artistic media - I see the practice of therapy in the same way, as an artform.
Aside from your infamous, now x husband Richard Alan Miller, who was most influential in your life's work?
I would have to say my best girlfriend Susanna, who turned me on to Jung at a crossroads. She was very nurturing and validating when I didn’t have many sources of that. She “fed” me, encouraged me, and most of all believed in me. She was also one of the few people who could “bust” me, psychologically. We basically did our training analyses on one another. She is my personal hero(ine) and touchstone ~ my own Athena whom I adore. Hers is probably the opinion I value most highly.
After that, Dr. Krippner the famous parapsychologist and lately Dr. Marshall Gilula, who I consider the world’s foremost distance healer, but he is also a practicing neuropsychiatrist.
Spiritually, Leary, Krishnamurti and Charan Singh. Many others showed me graphically what NOT to do, including Crowley in the end. Fortunately, I got to ask Tim “how do you turn it off?” He was no help! So here I am, a geyser of hyperdelic creativity.
In my work, there are too many to name. I loved them all and their thought is woven into my own until it has become my fabric. Lately, in art Digital Media Artist and photographer Gartel, animator Bob Judd, and painter Robert Pope are my mentors.
You've been friends with some of the most brilliant scientists and power occultists not to mention renowned shaman. Do you have any particular memories with them that displaying their work that were particularly mind blowing experiences and changed your life?
Haha, when you say that I get a picture of aged but agile permaculturist Fukuoka whirling around a chalkboard talking rapidly in Japanese, at an interview we did at Evergreen College. It was his essential being that was captivating - what Casteneda might call personal power. Likewise, most of my brilliant acquaintances.
Everyone is quite normal except occasionally, when they “blip” off the screen of normal reality for a nanosecond. But it is not those instants that fascinate, but their essence. One of the most brilliant was master painter Morris Graves who simply infused me, asking me to help him in his metaphysical work.
My mind was blown early, so it was like a vast open sky and unusual experiences blew past like tornados in Kansas. I grew up next to Disneyland. Normal is a relative term. What do you say to this question when synchronicities are commonplace, and the extraordinary is the norm? It would be unusual if the remarkable stopped happening.
In my own pursuit of the Great Work I was least concerned with Siddhas and more with a quality of being and congruence - integrity, individuation, embodying the Self, realizing that. Brilliance is in the end intellectual, even if inspiring. Power is a test, like in the Ring trilogy - a trap best left for others.
I am most impressed by healing of the psychophysical self. Mostly it comes from inside each individual, a triumph of human resilience and creativity.
What do you feel are some of the most powerful aphrodisiacs not just with scents but color, food, music, environment in general?
Hypnosis can, of course, be used in seduction. How often we claim to be bewitched or enchanted or under someone’s spell. It all boils down to rapport, being the face of empathy. I wrote about enhancing sex with trance in “Hyp-Know-Sex” on Virtual Tantra.
Remember the corny line, “you fill up my senses”? That pretty much says it. There are 64 tantric arts that play into intensification of the experience, building anticipation. But maybe your lover doesn’t care about the flower arrangement on the buffet or feng shui, or whatever.
Remember, Crowley said, “Be strong, then can you bear more joy.” Love is the best aphrodisiac, of course. The Lover wants to be with The Beloved. The arousal of desire begins in the mind. Incorporating a mythic or spiritual dimension adds depth, even if that nuance is a strictly personal or interior experience.
Prescriptions are reliable, but I say use whatever works for you. The mind is the biggest sexual organ. Great sex is like taking psychedelics - it is a psychedelic, releasing DMT, endorphins and oxytocin. The longer you stick with it, the more chemistry you pump out. I wrote on sexual transcendence extensively in “Emotional Alchemy in Tantra”.
In any psychedelic experience, set and setting is important, though that will mean vastly different turn ons to different people. Personally, I like heavy oriental fragrances, except in summer. My perfumer, Gail Adrian, composes perfumes from your chart. My favorite fabric palettes are rich, shimmery jewel tones that really pop. My own room is ersatz “Arabian Nights”. My artwork provides a window on my own personal fantasy aesthetic. And the poetry, haha:
God entreats Goddess, becoming evermore emphatic;
Both now One, growing steadily more empathic.
Power and Light unleashed more awesome than frightening,
A spiralling energy we now know as Ball Lightning.
Chaosophy is my annual journal, and contains mostly my writings for each year which are germain to its topic of consciousness and chaos. That is pretty broad scope from culture to biophysics.
Nexus (nexusmagazine.com) is an edgy alt.health and alt.reality international print magazine. You can probably grasp it best if I say it is well-suited to the Art Bell crowd. A friend of mine was gaga about that kind of thing for years, and kept trying to get me to read it. I found out they are sticklers about their editing, references and sources, which was a great surprise.
Finally, when Rick wanted to get back in the speaking arena in “weird science” I suggested them as publishers and wrote several articles toward that end promoting us both. Some were scientific on Schumann Resonance and the brain and psi powers, others political on the HAARP installation in Alaska, another told of our research on the DNA hologram with Russian scientists, still others on the varieties of parallel worlds, economic and political articles.
There are more in the pipeline, with more to come. This issue is one with my electrical engineer friend Ben Lonetree on the Sedona vortex effect. Rick and I went to the Nexus conference in Brisbane last year and are going to Amsterdam in a couple of months. The cream of the crop in conspiracy theory and ufology are there, such as Jim Marrs and Linda Moulton Howe. The superstar of the events is the Russian UFO czar, Valery Uvarov.
You founded many centers, lodges and organizations in your life, will talk about them and what prompted you to develop these?
They were simply collabos that came up in the natural course of events following my interest. People are always asking me to do things with them. I’m not really organization oriented, but I am a systems person by typology. I like to set things up, but my mind moves on to other projects, multitasking. However, I always complete my projects, too. I like to collaborate with people who are equally self-motivated and expeditious. To me, these are just extrapolated artistic media - I see the practice of therapy in the same way, as an artform.
Aside from your infamous, now x husband Richard Alan Miller, who was most influential in your life's work?
I would have to say my best girlfriend Susanna, who turned me on to Jung at a crossroads. She was very nurturing and validating when I didn’t have many sources of that. She “fed” me, encouraged me, and most of all believed in me. She was also one of the few people who could “bust” me, psychologically. We basically did our training analyses on one another. She is my personal hero(ine) and touchstone ~ my own Athena whom I adore. Hers is probably the opinion I value most highly.
After that, Dr. Krippner the famous parapsychologist and lately Dr. Marshall Gilula, who I consider the world’s foremost distance healer, but he is also a practicing neuropsychiatrist.
Spiritually, Leary, Krishnamurti and Charan Singh. Many others showed me graphically what NOT to do, including Crowley in the end. Fortunately, I got to ask Tim “how do you turn it off?” He was no help! So here I am, a geyser of hyperdelic creativity.
In my work, there are too many to name. I loved them all and their thought is woven into my own until it has become my fabric. Lately, in art Digital Media Artist and photographer Gartel, animator Bob Judd, and painter Robert Pope are my mentors.
You've been friends with some of the most brilliant scientists and power occultists not to mention renowned shaman. Do you have any particular memories with them that displaying their work that were particularly mind blowing experiences and changed your life?
Haha, when you say that I get a picture of aged but agile permaculturist Fukuoka whirling around a chalkboard talking rapidly in Japanese, at an interview we did at Evergreen College. It was his essential being that was captivating - what Casteneda might call personal power. Likewise, most of my brilliant acquaintances.
Everyone is quite normal except occasionally, when they “blip” off the screen of normal reality for a nanosecond. But it is not those instants that fascinate, but their essence. One of the most brilliant was master painter Morris Graves who simply infused me, asking me to help him in his metaphysical work.
My mind was blown early, so it was like a vast open sky and unusual experiences blew past like tornados in Kansas. I grew up next to Disneyland. Normal is a relative term. What do you say to this question when synchronicities are commonplace, and the extraordinary is the norm? It would be unusual if the remarkable stopped happening.
In my own pursuit of the Great Work I was least concerned with Siddhas and more with a quality of being and congruence - integrity, individuation, embodying the Self, realizing that. Brilliance is in the end intellectual, even if inspiring. Power is a test, like in the Ring trilogy - a trap best left for others.
I am most impressed by healing of the psychophysical self. Mostly it comes from inside each individual, a triumph of human resilience and creativity.
What do you feel are some of the most powerful aphrodisiacs not just with scents but color, food, music, environment in general?
Hypnosis can, of course, be used in seduction. How often we claim to be bewitched or enchanted or under someone’s spell. It all boils down to rapport, being the face of empathy. I wrote about enhancing sex with trance in “Hyp-Know-Sex” on Virtual Tantra.
Remember the corny line, “you fill up my senses”? That pretty much says it. There are 64 tantric arts that play into intensification of the experience, building anticipation. But maybe your lover doesn’t care about the flower arrangement on the buffet or feng shui, or whatever.
Remember, Crowley said, “Be strong, then can you bear more joy.” Love is the best aphrodisiac, of course. The Lover wants to be with The Beloved. The arousal of desire begins in the mind. Incorporating a mythic or spiritual dimension adds depth, even if that nuance is a strictly personal or interior experience.
Prescriptions are reliable, but I say use whatever works for you. The mind is the biggest sexual organ. Great sex is like taking psychedelics - it is a psychedelic, releasing DMT, endorphins and oxytocin. The longer you stick with it, the more chemistry you pump out. I wrote on sexual transcendence extensively in “Emotional Alchemy in Tantra”.
In any psychedelic experience, set and setting is important, though that will mean vastly different turn ons to different people. Personally, I like heavy oriental fragrances, except in summer. My perfumer, Gail Adrian, composes perfumes from your chart. My favorite fabric palettes are rich, shimmery jewel tones that really pop. My own room is ersatz “Arabian Nights”. My artwork provides a window on my own personal fantasy aesthetic. And the poetry, haha:
God entreats Goddess, becoming evermore emphatic;
Both now One, growing steadily more empathic.
Power and Light unleashed more awesome than frightening,
A spiralling energy we now know as Ball Lightning.
Goddesses - Old & New
How do you see the progression over time with decline of the goddess religions, especially those of Babylon as with Cybelle and Attis, which have become obsolete and vilified? What happened exactly for women to have been the divine then reduced from positions of power to mere vessels of the 'gods' as with the Virgin Mary in Catholicism?
Goddess religions were relegated to the heretical left-handed paths by the Church, including gnosticism. It is this exile of the free feminine WITHIN humankind that has caused this degradation and demise ... of nature and humanity. The problem is covered clearly in the healing fiction THE DA VINCI CODE. Scholars argue over its lack of authenticity and historicity, but the psychological truth is revealed there and that is why so many have resonated with the story.
It’s hard to say how “divinely” women were treated in practical terms, even in the era of the Goddess. Every marriage goes through a phase of power-struggle that either makes or breaks it. Society has been stuck in this struggle for some time, much of it the result of political and socio-economic pressures. Of course, it served the agenda of the early church. There is one glaring problem in modern Catholicism, since the assumption of the Virgin, which is that if Mary is elevated to Goddess status, Jesus cannot be the Son of Man - rather of a God and Goddess.
In ancient times, a ‘Virgin’ meant a woman who was complete in herself - psychologically, rather than biologically intact. She has a lived relationship with her Spirit; she carries it for herself, rather than projecting that strength outward for some man to carry for her. So ultimately, the battle of patriarchy is one of Spirit and Soul, which is what the alchemist sought to reunite with the body. If you leave body out of the equation, it is just a “head trip”, and nothing will change fundamentally.
Patriarchy is linked to biological imperatives of child-rearing, and brings up the conundrums of sexual paradox. Men want to know who their rightful offspring are in order to support them, and women want the most potent genetic material they can access, married or not. Much of this goes on unconsciously, of course, but studies have been done on how women dress more provocatively during ovulation, and on how women engage in affairs on their bread-winner husbands to acquire “better” sperm from more virile or high-status males. Even the sperm competes with chemical warfare in the womb. There are whole ranks of sperm with no job other than to “nuke” any interloper.
With all that said, is it any wonder this biology jumps its domain to the social level? Now we have DNA tests to prove paternity, but the primal drives still move us, despite the real needs of our personalities. Freud’s id still operates below the awareness of our persona’s or social masks in most cases.
However, again - in the interest of moving forward, rather than looking back, there are some new models of gender reunion. For the last couple of decades we have been consciously getting in touch with our inner opposites - anima for men and animus for women. Men have learned new sensitivities and young mothers and enlightened fathers send gender-positive messages to their children. Women find their strengths earlier, and are raised to be more independent. On the other hand, societal pressure to couple up is still strong.
Again, artists lead the way in breaking through barriers of gender-bias. By living beyond the pale of normal social roles, they open the old forms to new possibilities. Genesis P-Orridge is among my favorite artists who exemplify this chaotic restructuring of our expectations about gender. I admire him, in particular, because he is so deliberate, so insightfully articulate about his artistic direction and aware of his cultural engineering influence. It is real commitment to put one’s body on the line in the name of art as a living embodiment of gender reunion. As s/he implies, this archetype of the divine androgyne has been evoked by the fantasies of our age. “Nothing short of a total gender”.
Symbolically, I would have to say this expresses a cultural yearning for a deep sense of “completion”, full-fillment, at the species level. It is part of our nostalgia for union with self, nature, others, Spirit in whatever way we conceive it. It is not a desire to revert to matriarchy, if it ever existed in any global sense, but to discover ‘the next-new-way-on”.
What is your interpretation of the 'Whore' of Babylon prophesized by Crowley? What attributes does she contain? How do you feel a woman's role within the magickal realm (OTO or otherwise) especially the westernized world has changed in the last century? What specific events have taken place to change these?
My feeling is much of Crowley's imagery is reactionary and part of his post-Christian hangover. Now Babylon may just be a tired trope. I don't see a female role in the magickal realm as relevant. I would suggest magical roles are created equally, but transcending roles and role-boundedness is the real telos of magic, not role perfection or elevation. As a single practitioner, I'm not the best person to comment on group trends. Surely, there are multiple threads of influence. Originally, sex magic rites were a royal prerogative -- even ritual duty required for seership -- which allegedly worked only for certain bloodlines, Dragon bloodlines.
Why do you feel mythology still must play an important role in society today?
It’s not that I feel it must; it just does. Like the myth of the Rapture, which implies it’s OK to “use up” the planet because the human race has a shelf life anyway. We certainly have our modern Venuses and Prometheus IT and science people, the list goes on. Gods and goddesses are a way of discussing those dynamics which implies an eternal dimension; they become a way of “seeing through” the veneer of everyday consensus reality to deeper driving forces in a conscious way…to notice nature at work. They are rather like colors in the spectrum, each discreet in its symbolic domain.
What do you feel current day mythologies are that are significant to our ideals whether superficial or not?
What IS the ideal? Myself, I am a fan of Isis ~ spell it IS-IS. What is is and one learns to function, adapt, and deal within that dynamic environment. We don’t live in an ideal world. Myths? Some widely in play include:
Your favorite fairy tale as a child can reveal a lot. Mine was The Wizard of Oz. So I married him, haha. I also loved Arabian Nights and Alice in Wonderland.
Some people I know, feel that the 'mentally ill' especially schizophrenics, are not hallucinating but really seeing into other dimensions be it spiritual or time/space envelopes. Their voices have told them things about people, myself included that no one could possibly know..from my past or secrets I've kept. Even in foreseeing the future. Do you agree there is that possibility? That science or psychology is looking at mental illness as a sickness rather than someone who is 'in tune'?
I would NOT say they are in tune, rather their door is wide open. They appear psychic, but there is no control over the delusions or reality testing. I don’t think the mentally ill are proficient at foretelling the future, or even deducing the present. They ARE wide open to the collective unconscious and may pick up on cues not obvious to others intuitively. Often ‘gifts’ whether of the impaired or extraordinary are both a blessing and a curse.
You also don’t find east Indians seeing Jesus in the tunnel in their near-death experiences. The content is a distorted confabulation of the input of their lifetime. If they could “read” you, it is because they are so close to the primal psyche - it’s bleed over, resonance on an open string. Jung wrote his first work on the occult about his schizophrenic cousin. I had one myself, so I know how he might have felt.
Goddess religions were relegated to the heretical left-handed paths by the Church, including gnosticism. It is this exile of the free feminine WITHIN humankind that has caused this degradation and demise ... of nature and humanity. The problem is covered clearly in the healing fiction THE DA VINCI CODE. Scholars argue over its lack of authenticity and historicity, but the psychological truth is revealed there and that is why so many have resonated with the story.
It’s hard to say how “divinely” women were treated in practical terms, even in the era of the Goddess. Every marriage goes through a phase of power-struggle that either makes or breaks it. Society has been stuck in this struggle for some time, much of it the result of political and socio-economic pressures. Of course, it served the agenda of the early church. There is one glaring problem in modern Catholicism, since the assumption of the Virgin, which is that if Mary is elevated to Goddess status, Jesus cannot be the Son of Man - rather of a God and Goddess.
In ancient times, a ‘Virgin’ meant a woman who was complete in herself - psychologically, rather than biologically intact. She has a lived relationship with her Spirit; she carries it for herself, rather than projecting that strength outward for some man to carry for her. So ultimately, the battle of patriarchy is one of Spirit and Soul, which is what the alchemist sought to reunite with the body. If you leave body out of the equation, it is just a “head trip”, and nothing will change fundamentally.
Patriarchy is linked to biological imperatives of child-rearing, and brings up the conundrums of sexual paradox. Men want to know who their rightful offspring are in order to support them, and women want the most potent genetic material they can access, married or not. Much of this goes on unconsciously, of course, but studies have been done on how women dress more provocatively during ovulation, and on how women engage in affairs on their bread-winner husbands to acquire “better” sperm from more virile or high-status males. Even the sperm competes with chemical warfare in the womb. There are whole ranks of sperm with no job other than to “nuke” any interloper.
With all that said, is it any wonder this biology jumps its domain to the social level? Now we have DNA tests to prove paternity, but the primal drives still move us, despite the real needs of our personalities. Freud’s id still operates below the awareness of our persona’s or social masks in most cases.
However, again - in the interest of moving forward, rather than looking back, there are some new models of gender reunion. For the last couple of decades we have been consciously getting in touch with our inner opposites - anima for men and animus for women. Men have learned new sensitivities and young mothers and enlightened fathers send gender-positive messages to their children. Women find their strengths earlier, and are raised to be more independent. On the other hand, societal pressure to couple up is still strong.
Again, artists lead the way in breaking through barriers of gender-bias. By living beyond the pale of normal social roles, they open the old forms to new possibilities. Genesis P-Orridge is among my favorite artists who exemplify this chaotic restructuring of our expectations about gender. I admire him, in particular, because he is so deliberate, so insightfully articulate about his artistic direction and aware of his cultural engineering influence. It is real commitment to put one’s body on the line in the name of art as a living embodiment of gender reunion. As s/he implies, this archetype of the divine androgyne has been evoked by the fantasies of our age. “Nothing short of a total gender”.
Symbolically, I would have to say this expresses a cultural yearning for a deep sense of “completion”, full-fillment, at the species level. It is part of our nostalgia for union with self, nature, others, Spirit in whatever way we conceive it. It is not a desire to revert to matriarchy, if it ever existed in any global sense, but to discover ‘the next-new-way-on”.
What is your interpretation of the 'Whore' of Babylon prophesized by Crowley? What attributes does she contain? How do you feel a woman's role within the magickal realm (OTO or otherwise) especially the westernized world has changed in the last century? What specific events have taken place to change these?
My feeling is much of Crowley's imagery is reactionary and part of his post-Christian hangover. Now Babylon may just be a tired trope. I don't see a female role in the magickal realm as relevant. I would suggest magical roles are created equally, but transcending roles and role-boundedness is the real telos of magic, not role perfection or elevation. As a single practitioner, I'm not the best person to comment on group trends. Surely, there are multiple threads of influence. Originally, sex magic rites were a royal prerogative -- even ritual duty required for seership -- which allegedly worked only for certain bloodlines, Dragon bloodlines.
Why do you feel mythology still must play an important role in society today?
It’s not that I feel it must; it just does. Like the myth of the Rapture, which implies it’s OK to “use up” the planet because the human race has a shelf life anyway. We certainly have our modern Venuses and Prometheus IT and science people, the list goes on. Gods and goddesses are a way of discussing those dynamics which implies an eternal dimension; they become a way of “seeing through” the veneer of everyday consensus reality to deeper driving forces in a conscious way…to notice nature at work. They are rather like colors in the spectrum, each discreet in its symbolic domain.
What do you feel current day mythologies are that are significant to our ideals whether superficial or not?
What IS the ideal? Myself, I am a fan of Isis ~ spell it IS-IS. What is is and one learns to function, adapt, and deal within that dynamic environment. We don’t live in an ideal world. Myths? Some widely in play include:
- Sisyphus, individually.
- American Dream of consumerism, sociologically.
- The Emperor’s New Clothes, politically.
Your favorite fairy tale as a child can reveal a lot. Mine was The Wizard of Oz. So I married him, haha. I also loved Arabian Nights and Alice in Wonderland.
Some people I know, feel that the 'mentally ill' especially schizophrenics, are not hallucinating but really seeing into other dimensions be it spiritual or time/space envelopes. Their voices have told them things about people, myself included that no one could possibly know..from my past or secrets I've kept. Even in foreseeing the future. Do you agree there is that possibility? That science or psychology is looking at mental illness as a sickness rather than someone who is 'in tune'?
I would NOT say they are in tune, rather their door is wide open. They appear psychic, but there is no control over the delusions or reality testing. I don’t think the mentally ill are proficient at foretelling the future, or even deducing the present. They ARE wide open to the collective unconscious and may pick up on cues not obvious to others intuitively. Often ‘gifts’ whether of the impaired or extraordinary are both a blessing and a curse.
You also don’t find east Indians seeing Jesus in the tunnel in their near-death experiences. The content is a distorted confabulation of the input of their lifetime. If they could “read” you, it is because they are so close to the primal psyche - it’s bleed over, resonance on an open string. Jung wrote his first work on the occult about his schizophrenic cousin. I had one myself, so I know how he might have felt.
