Warning:
For mature
audiences only!
There is no sexually explicit material, nothing fun
here, just a bunch
of stuff that will get parents looking to lynch me for little snot-bags (that ignore
these legal disclaimers and any amount of warnings) managing to get in past my
fantastical, fictitious super-hyper-tech security measures that magically check
IDs at the door and do the parenting for them.
If you have a problem with your children reading this
kind of inflammatory, religiously damaging material, try some actual hands on
parenting and arm them against the wolves instead of sending out your little sheepies to be eaten.
No, I’m neither sorry nor ashamed.
A Skeptic’s Foray into The Unknown
For lack of a better title
Chapters:
Faith
and Religion and the Loss Thereof
Re-Creation
Through Recreation
Into the
Abyss (played & recorded by Altered State of Consciousness)
Now this is a fun subject. To start with, one has to get over being raised that these are all fairy tales and myths, (there are no such things as ghosts, ESP, etc.) to even look objectively for reference material. Some might leap forth to acclaim that in itself is paradigm shifting. I personally am, as the title suggests, a skeptic, and tend to view “paradigm” as more of a buzzword for limited perspectives, instead of the dictionaries’ definitions. I now understand what some mean in so far as stepping outside of the “mold” one forms to shape themselves into their role model, but it still gets overused by those who have no idea what that means, but spout catchphrases like “think outside the box” in attempt to keep up with the latest non-conformism trend. Even though some of the teachers that I highly respect use the word frequently, it makes me tend to take whatever it’s utterer says with an unhealthy upending of the shaker of salt. However, it is still an effort to overlook such longstanding preconceptions.
Then, just saying that one wants to explore the scientific possibility of anything that was previously unexplained automatically costs credibility. One has to accept that all of the witnesses available to interview have also lost credibility as soon as they admitted that they might have seen something that doesn’t already have a category and an officially accepted “ology” based on it.
On that note, maybe these researchers should just accept that they can be skeptic all they want, and that all of the accepted sciences of today were originally met with the same kind of resistance at the times of their inceptions. The most educated scholars in the world were once absolutely sure that the world is flat. Evolution was considered more lies from the Devil. I could write at least one whole book listing examples, and there are already books full of quotable experts putting their feet into their mouths for the whole world to watch. So the question, really, is: What defines a research scientist more, their insistence on what they already know or their ability to put aside their own doubts to observe objectively and then formulate their opinion?
Then one has to wade through countless honestly mistaken people, charlatans and wannabes, most of whom claim to have vital information. Finally, after determining which are most likely which (and accepting that for many we may never know), one has to convince everyone that one is not a great fool, and did not believe anyone readily in the hopes of proving theories… It really is no wonder that so many scientists would rather lick lit lamps than get their professional reputations anywhere near such socially taboo subjects.
That’s not even counting in the factors of religion, and whether or not mental “powers” have anything to do with theology, whether or not it would be considered delving into witchcraft to even expose oneself to reference materials on the subject. That raises questions like “What IS ‘witchcraft’?” (Does it have to deal with Deities to qualify?) and “Are the references against ‘witchcraft’ among the things that I feel should not be in the Bible, things to keep the masses in check and firmly under priests’ control?”
I should also state up front that while I do see a lot of metaphors and parallels drawn in the Catholics’ Holy Bible (the version that I was raised with and its various other forms), and in many systems, religions, philosophies and mythologies that I’ve read, I do not believe or follow any of them, not trusting the smell of the hand of man in them.
For the sake of this piece, I will attempt to keep religion separate, as I feel it should be. Not that it should not be omnipresent in how one lives ones life, but that should be one's OWN life, not others'. I do not believe we are supposed to be so far removed from a PERSONAL connection to our own spirituality: a detachment which I feel organized religion requires to retain the power of the priest caste. This, of course, means I can expect to be automatically labeled an enemy of the most politically powerful factions, as well as being ostracized by those who are in their thrall. I can only hope that those that I actually care about, namely family, can understand that my “soul” is in far less danger than those of the priests (not all priests, and some priestesses, too: greed and misuse of power are not gender specific) I decry. I am not worried about it.
Whether or not it makes any or all of that worse, I will not include names without getting the person’s permission first, and I don’t have any way to contact most of them. If you know me, you probably know one or more of the other witnesses involved.
Even knowing all of this, foreseeing all of the aggravations and probability of attacks aimed at my sanity and competence, I got to a point where I not only had to search through whatever information I could find, I had to compile the bits to share, and maybe save someone else wasted time and effort. That may be another book. If enough of us stand on each others’ shoulders, maybe we can reach the cookie jar at last.
I now believe that in that jar is what we are to become.
This, however, is starting in the middle. The beginning was too far back to go in chronological order, other than what this particular writing is to be anyways, my own experiences. I have been very “lucky” in those things that actually matter to me. I have survived unscathed through some things that I am unwilling to write about, and when I let the chips fall as they may, some might consider me to be charmed or something. I always have given the extra mental pushes, like very personal prayers without beseeching or asking anyOne or Thing for anything. I never expect a thing, but I don’t worry about it either. We will always be able to get what we need, so long as we are willing to look with unspoiled eyes. That means being willing to work for it too!
A Skeptics Foray Into The Unknown
This is merely my story, presented to illustrate some of the path I’ve taken thus far. It is by no means the right one, nor does anyone’s path have to lead them anywhere as far as I’m concerned. To some, I may seem to have merely wandered from shiny distraction to shiny distraction, letting chance, fate or destiny have the helm. The truth is not so far off, but I am not unaware, not just letting things happen. When I don’t like what I see, I change it, but for the most part I revel in the constant coincidences that dominate my day-to-day life.
How I went from scared & abandoned to skeptical & angry to scholarly & active…
I started off conflicted, from the very start was told two extremely different things. On the one hand, I had been taught through my whole family (and the Montessori schools some were active with) and the world full of aging ex-hippies to think about and question everything, to take nothing for granted, to check the facts even when you believe the source, and to learn as much as possible from everything.
On the other hand, I was taught in church, Sunday school and CCD (Catholic Children’s Development, a supplemental religion class for families that can’t afford the correct parochial schools to still get the RDA of brainwashing, er, religious education) that blind faith is an absolute essential if "original sinners" (descendants of the Original Offenders, Adam and Eve; translate to "humans") wish to escape the otherwise inevitable eternal torment of Hell. Why/how is it that I, a lowly, flawed homo-sapien, am to “forgive those who trespass against us” when The Almighty can’t forgive me for what my most ancient ancestors allegedly did?
Now, I don’t know about you, but those two seem pretty mutually exclusive to me. In fact, it seems to me that the only time someone DOESN’T want you to think about what they ask is when they know it is wrong, or at least that you won’t follow or support them if they allow you to make up your own mind about it. The way I see it, if God wants me to kill someone, God can tell me directly without the middleman in the gold threaded robe. Even then I’m pretty near positive that I would require a damned good reason It doesn’t stand to reason that God would want us following MAN after Jesus got so angry about the way they were going about it, nor that He would have an easier time talking to the Pope than anyone (or everyone) else. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for an all-powerful, omnipotent being to remain personally connected to those He allegedly demands love, respect and fear from.
For as long as I can remember, there have been instances of empathy (feeling foreign emotions) for me to deal with. I think that at first I just took it in stride, probably in the thought that everyone must be like this. As I grew, it wore on me and became less and less appreciated… most people are the equivalent of emotional poison. I couldn’t stand places where a lot of people were stressed, like hospitals. It’s a distinct possibility that that is where I first developed my aversion to church: very few people feel the same as they act there. Over the years, I learned to drown it out and dulled it… now I’m not sure if I could get it to work if I lost my mind and wanted it to. *Relief*
Wanting to be good, to make them proud, I tried; I really did. I was an altar boy, and knew the masses in English and Latin. I went to CCD, I studied, read the Bible, took the Sacraments… and still all I got were the same answers, and when they were cornered, always “Ah, well, that’s one of The Mysteries, isn’t it?”
Anyways, this is not anti-Christian, anti-religion, or even anti-organized-religion, which I thought was the key for years. As it turns out, now I see that religion is essential to some people, and important to most others. The problem is that people follow other people (blindly because it is what the other people tell them that God demands) and automatically accept that the priest or pope is somehow closer to a Deity than they are, even at times when their hearts scream out at them that this is WRONG.
The solution there is for people to work up certain sensitivities again, essentially re-opening the temple in their hearts. To all be directly connected to our God(s) and, hypothetically, each other.
Currently people still censor their consciences in hopes that the implied threat of excommunication exonerates them. If a religious figure, be they a priest, Pope or other, tells you that the other side is evil and it is ok to kill them, and you know in the core of your being that dead is dead and the attacker/killer is the bad guy, not the victim, then taking that advice is murder. The priest will have his own explaining to do, and will not be able to save your ass when you stand before your dreadfully disappointed Deity(ies) and ancestors trying to continue lying to yourself that you thought you were righteously justified.
Conversely, if we were all Communing with the Spirit World (however we each take or say that concept) and someone said “God told me…” the people would be able to reply with 100% confidence “No, He said you better sit down and say 3,000 rosaries, jackass.” or “YEAH! Me too! This HAS to be done.”
This argument appears airtight to me, but anything of the like was met with Bible quotes that didn’t quite fit (or that said to have blind faith, duh, like any of us wouldn’t have written that in too) and assurances that God has a plan. Well, to me this means that a part of that plan is for me to wander off and seek Truth elsewhere.
For a long time, I was angry, betrayed. I was let down, abandoned, on my own to look and see the minds that I looked up to beaten down and imprisoned by this same, obviously abusive relationship with God’s gatekeepers. I type it as “obviously abusive” because of the frightening resemblance to psychological abuse in couples: the abuser tells the abused how lowly and unworthy they are, how no one else could possibly love them, especially not as much… beat them down emotionally until their self esteem is completely destroyed, get them weeping about their flaws, then “but don’t worry, even though you are so flawed and ugly, I still love you, baby!”
This wasted my best learning years. I didn’t buy into anything that wasn’t proven, cold, hard facts. Even then I can sometimes get perhaps a little bit hypercritically skeptical of what makes these facts factual anyways. For that matter, I don’t think I believed anything at all fully. The way I saw it, they were all scams, all just a way for another type of priest caste to take control.
Since it apparently wasn’t going to be found in theology, maybe science held my answer: you can see the formulas and proof, you can analyze and determine for certain exactly if he who smelt it dealt it… surely the wondrous and awesome power behind TV’s magic pictures must be the Thing to have Faith in. That way, if Tourquemada tries to tell me that the Spanish must be converted, and I know that would be wrong, I can show something tangible instead of just knowing that it feels uncomfortable and being the bad guy for saying so.
I think that all children know that there are ghosts. Whether or not there actually are, they all know as well as they know anything else that there are ghosts in this world. For me to find that science did not acknowledge even the pursuit of proof (or disproof) of anything spectral was unthinkable. Yet, there it was, black and white, again and again serious scientists being ridiculed by scientists who take themselves too seriously and find it too uncomfortable to think beyond the textbooks that they learned from.
Why bother ever putting on a lab coat if you aren’t at least a little curious, especially on such a fascinating subject? If there are no such things as ghosts, to what CAN we attribute the gargantuan number of reports?
How can one call one’s self a scholar and make fun of anyone for wanting to systematically search for an unknown species of upright primate that might be smart enough to evade man still to this day? Wouldn’t you want to know one way or the other, instead of ASSuming that you already know?
Archeological forensics tells us that one of our first acts as a species was to declare war on and wipe out our closest competitors. Is it so unthinkable that small pockets of them may have survived in hiding in areas that we hardly ever even pass through, and occasionally sighted, becoming more frequent as we encroach those areas? Just because there have been proven hoaxes does not conclusively prove that they aren’t based on actual sightings. Stereotypically, women lie about having a headache all the time, but that does not mean that learning about aspirin or temple massages is a wasted effort!
Unfortunately, just about all of the most visible people who dealt with the paranormal (available to me at the time, anyways), were evidently unstable, some more clearly than others, but it was enough. They might be interesting people, fine to hang out or party with, but I didn’t meet anyone I could really listen to on the subject for many years.
There were a number of stories circulated; a few houses that were accepted as “haunted”… there were the legends that even devout Christians (the religion does not allow for ghosts) would tell avidly, like Resurrection Mary. Superstitions are still abundant, even new ones arise. Walking under a ladder or watching someone drive away is bad luck, stepping on a crack breaks your mother’s back (or causes hardships in translation), a couple walking one on either side of a pole instead of around is bad for their relationship, 3 leaf clovers, broken mirrors, lucky cigarettes (the one some people flip upside down first and smoke last), and black cats… When I was a teenager, green Bic lighters were considered very bad luck, and some members of the subcultures would not even ride in a car with someone else who had one on their person. To me that was a fun way to mess with people.
Still, before I could be objective about any of it, I had to have some encounters of my own. Then I had to be sure of what it was, and go back and scour the area racking my brain for alternate explanations. Even then, although it did make me more willing to listen to even the “crazies” I still didn’t trust anyone or take anyone else’s word for any of it.
I hyper-critically, thoroughly read whatever I find remotely pertinent to what I want to know, ruminate it and filter out the kernels of knowledge that I want. Most of the good stuff gets filed in a kind of file labeled “maybe” in my mind, to be cross referenced against everything else I find. The rest goes in a junk file, intended to be remembered but not relied on, ever.
I was in my teens, overconfident and fairly aimless, a typical outcast/rebel, but with a sharp analytical mind. I was evenhanded with the amount of respect and shit I would give people, putting everyone on the same level. As one could expect, this attracted other outcast types of all sorts.
One of them taught me a version of Futhark (a.k.a. Asatru, the Norse runes, which were as recently as the 1800s a death sentence to have on one’s person in their native land), which we used as a simple code language. I was also somewhat into making words and concepts into artistic overlappings of letters, much like I do with the Futhark runes now. They do make a handy crutch to focus a “push”.
A friend met through him had visions, although the one he had before meeting me did not happen (and most likely, I hope, won’t) but he did describe me in detail accurately. He had epileptic seizures and was said to be on medications for that and because the electrical levels of his brain were dangerous to itself! He also believed in elves, who he said would avoid people like me because I eat meat, so who knows…
Another of the outcast caste we affectionately referred to as “Damien”. This was not his name, but will do nicely enough for a published work. His grandfather (or great-grandfather, or something) was supposedly some kind of powerful Arch-Mage, famous in the right circles and all that. So, young Damien was eager to learn and become one himself. He was reading all sorts of different magic systems (as I have been in years since, back then I was under the impression that that was one of the Big No-Nos of magic, along with summoning things you can’t pronounce*) and initiated himself, to my understanding. Then, all by his lonesome he created and tested a conjuration to contact his Grand-Whomever in the local cemetery.
He did this, as I was told, without specifying a name, without a protective circle or seal, and without closing it when he left. He also did it near the sealed, heavy door into an already legendary empty crypt… (One that’s currently for sale for a mere quarter million - yes, American dollars - and called a temple in the listing http://www.graveyards.com/foresthome/temple.html) a crypt with a stone pavilion atop it, and a blank, black marker stone that is always warmer or cooler than the ones around it, by season. (Ooh, I have to go check that, see if it just FEELS different or actually is.) The door had at least an inch of dirt up its bottom before this. I knew it well, we partied there periodically.
As I was told about some of that, it was followed with “And now there are these huge clawed footsteps leading away, and one’s half under the door!” Well, how could one not go check that out?
I didn’t see any footprints myself, but that was because the huge, heavy, sealed door had scraped the dirt away and scattered it when it was opened. There was no handle, the lock was just gone, and I didn’t see any prints of any kind. I also didn’t see how someone could pull that massive door open without digging the dirt away first. It was very dark down there, cold and foreboding, so, being teenage boys, we had to be all brave and macho and go inside.
Inside was cold and dank, as one would anticipate. Lighters weren’t much use for light, and there didn’t appear to be anything to see. It was just a grey stone chamber, empty and unremarkable until I realized that the second closest corner was also the darkest. I had to go over there, to see the light flicker in that shadow. When I got there, it was still darker, and it got very cold. It felt like a doubled chill running down the spine. Thinking of it now, nearing two decades later, the hairs on the back of my neck tingle alertly and my back feels like it could go for a little squirming. It was unpleasant.
Not to show such a shiver as I felt, I spun around and leapt at the door shouting “BEER!” and sparking a race for the pavilion. Nobody wanted to seem scared. We didn’t drink there that night, either, but opted instead to go to the other side of the cemetery (well, the other half on that side of the river) and hang out on the mausoleum hill. It just seemed convenient to walk another block or two or so.
I’m not sure how much time passed, other than that it was within the same school-year. It was probably a week or two at most, that’s a long time when you’re young. However long it was, the next time I went there, it was with three other people. I told the story and we shortly forgot about it and drank on top, in the pavilion.
A short while later I saw something off in the distance, deeper in the graveyard. It was tall enough to tower over the headstones between us and black enough to stand out even when crossing shadowy areas and moving impossibly fast. It covered over 2 city blocks’ distance in a matter of seconds, and was moving evenly across the ground, not in bounds or leaps or even the normal bounce of running. As it reached the closest point of its pass, I saw that it looked indefinite at the back edges, like it trailed off, and did not reflect any light. Headlights from the highway refracted off of headstones directly surrounding it, but not that black shape, not at all.
One might think that perhaps any reasonably intelligent person would have put two and two together at this juncture. I did, and got “2+2=LSD”. I had already taken a good bit of acid by that time in my life, and while I had not on that day, I was familiar with flashbacks and assumed it was just me.
When we were leaving, one of the other people there, the one who was facing pretty much the same way I had been asked “Um, did anyone else see that?”
A revisit of the chill to the spine, “See what?”
Then he proceeded to describe the same thing that I’d seen; only he said it looked a bit like me in my fringed poncho running. That would be those trailings, and the chill went icy. We left quickly, even before I verified what he’d seen.
When he told another friend, he was told that that friend and another had seen something like that in the last week too. A couple of other people claimed to have seen strange things but not as clearly, and it all seemed to take place in the relatively short time since Damien had done his ritual.
We had heard rumors that the crypt was in fact a temple, and the black stone was brought in from another, possibly ruined temple dedicated to something of a “rogue demon”. Supposedly, this one was tough enough to tell the forces of Hell (or Legion, or whatever name you want) “No” when they joined and banded together, and wandered off on Its own way. The theory is that It found the rift Damien had made and popped through, setting up shop in the temple and just watching. Well, people are funny things, so I can see that as perhaps as feasible as anything else.
One might again think (boy, you’d think one would stop jumping to conclusions by now) that this occurrence would possibly be a deterrent to drinking in the graveyard, at least that particular one. Not only did I have to go back and check it out again, other people seemed to take sightings as a reason to hang around there.
In going back in the daylight, I determined that some of those tombstones were a lot taller than I’d thought from a distance at night (the ones It towered over) and that the estimated trajectory was too long for a track star to have faked it. That didn’t keep me from going back frequently.
Most of the sightings following that were just glances, and often left us with the impression of being circled and watched. Numerous skeptics came brazenly up to the mausoleum hill (most people felt better partying there than at the temple, as it was further from the entrance) and after catching a glimpse many had to leave in groups instead of whenever each felt like wandering homeward. As for me, it seemed that more often than not I was with the group when It was spotted, though it usually wasn’t me to see it first. Most times, once seen it would not be again, so I didn’t see it at all, but learned to identify the “feel” of it through the empathy. I’m not sure if it was that or the confidence I had in not caring, but I always seemed to end up walking others out after.
I talked to a few other people about it, was told to carry brass and blah, blah, blah… I really didn’t care, wasn’t worried, and was more than a little self destructive at the time. The idea was also presented that it was merely curious, and that seemed to fit most of the “feel” it gave. Another informed me that those that he’d heard rumors of the stone from also taught him that It doesn’t have its own emotions (or not as we understand them) and will mirror back whatever you give It.
When I walked other people out (that safety in numbers instinct) I often got the feeling it was there, and circling closer. It was one of those times, heading back in alone after walking others out, late into a night of drinking (thus suspect even to myself – for all I know I was passed out at the time and it was all my mental demon-things), that I felt it closer, stronger sense of It than ever before. I saw in my peripheral vision as a shadow flanked me.
Whipping to the side, instantly sobered, I was shocked to see that It was just on the other side of a big stone marker nearly as tall as I was, beside the path, and didn’t vanish when I looked directly at It. It wasn’t a glimpse and didn’t circle, just stood there.
The monument was maybe a little over Its waist, and It was definitely unnaturally black. I could see clearly, but memory is hazed, like my vision was blurring the more I looked. The edges were indefinite, and now I’m picturing them as somewhere between black fire and smoke, or a fading like heat waves. The eyes were the only light to the figure, and they had seemed burned into my vision like the sun, but now I can’t recall specifically if they were red, white, just bright or shifting.
We just looked at each other for an excruciatingly long moment. I got the inexplicable empathic impression that I was inspiring almost as much of the “What the Hell are YOU?” as I was experiencing. That didn’t seem logical to me, but I was not thinking about it (certainly not logically) at the time.
Even then, at that stage of my life I knew acutely that “He who hesitates is lost.” In other words, freezing up is what victims do, not survivors. Still, I stood there awe-struck.
Finally, I snapped out of my sudden stupor and remembered the masses of advice I’d received for just such an occasion. I fingered at the brass bit in my pocket, to which It seemed to almost chuckle. Gathering my wits, I said (and I know it’s corny and all, but hey, you stand in such a situation as an un-initiated teen and come up with better!) “I have nothing but respect for you, Sir” and bolted. Bolted isn’t strong enough a word. As fast as my legs could carry me doesn’t convey the speed at which I flew, pushing my dexterity to the limits until I was out, not looking back and not slowing for blocks after leaving.
Even then I still went back, but rarely alone (and that not for a while). I would sense Its presence at a distance, even giving me a vague idea of where It was. From then on had the distinct feeling that there was a great deal of mutual curiosity, and that if there were any danger to me, I’d have been eaten already. From there, the sightings and periodic circlings amused me most because of other people’s reactions and the amount of skeptics so easily scared… it wore thin after time.
At some point in that time I learned that my hobby of playing cards, more the methods I used for card tricks became less of “tricks”. I was “pushing” the probabilities so that I always got a royal flush (using wild cards) in poker, and I could find certain cards (like the ace of spades) without looking. I stopped playing poker, as much from my own boredom with it as the fact that most who knew me warned others not to play cards with me. I had gotten so accustomed to doing it, it just happened regardless of my intentions.
Then, for a long time nothing happened. Well, a lot happened, but nothing paranormal involving me, for years. I did meet a few people who honestly believed that they had encounters with ghosts, and a few with strange experiences involving street lights going off or on when they neared.
Apparently, that is not so uncommon. Years later I was told about studies involving that very phenomenon, calling it SLI (Street Light Interference) and those who “do” it “SLIders”. One of those who I know to have that interesting effect is also a natural radar detector, and known to waken in the passenger seat to warn a speeding driver “there’s a cop ahead”.
I also started playing Dungeons and Dragons frequently, and enjoying it thoroughly. Contrary to popular belief it did not lead me more towards the occult, rather it made me take such things less seriously. I developed and even harsher view of those that made claims that even remotely resembled the game. However, it did give some handy terminology for and ways to quantify things ranging from traits to unexplainable phenomenon. Still, even knowing that I was only borrowing convenient the terms to the game in such contexts, it also made it simpler to spot people who might be (subconsciously or otherwise) making their boring realities match their Gygaxian fantasies rather than actually experiencing supernatural occurrences.
I wasn’t concerned
about any of it, and so I just didn’t think about any of it. People seem not to want to think about such
things seriously, and take other people for fools if they are willing even to
look with skeptical eyes. So it faded
into the far background, and I got heavily into making music, a martial arts
circle and doing various things, living my normal (for me) life.
There has been a paranormal-ish bent to much of my life, seeming entirely by coincidence. The band I was in during the early 1990s was (a name that the two guitarists had for years before we met, without any real idea of what it means) Altered State of Consciousness. That is the exact wording given in most of the literature I’ve seen for what Gnosis, the trance-like magical state is. It was several years later before I even encountered the word “gnosis”. “Magic” (or “magick”) was not what interested me, and for the most part I avoided anything connected to it.
A good friend was our roadie extraordinaire (YEAH! Who else would dive across the stage and catch falling cymbals like that?) and we discussed some deep martial arts techniques. One day he was sitting and concentrating on focusing his chi to create a ball of energy and it worked… but seeing it shocked him into dissipating it. Then he found himself unable to reproduce it, too excited to get that degree of calm, perhaps. That was still a turning point in my mind, as the only conceptual experience I’d had with Chi and Ki were in adding such energy to the most potent strikes. The Idea that they might be used in peaceful context had never occurred to me.
I was writing a lot of lyrics at that age, they seemed to come out of the blue and fade away if not written soon after, so I always carried a notepad and pen. Quite frankly, some of them I didn’t really understand myself, but they were cool imagery… I used phrases like “liquid fire” and “cranial cell” frequently, and recently when I transcribed many of them to the computer, I realized that many of these things make a great deal more sense to me now. They are now significant to me in personal growth One very common theme that I could smack myself with a week old fish for missing is the indication through example that that which is frozen does not remain so. The things that I was unable to actually deal with would have to be dealt with at some time.
The following excerpt is from one of my lyrics about questioning my own sanity… I had never done or read anything about the rituals it parallels until a matter of months ago, and wrote this about 12 years ago. Months ago, when the Shadow Ritual started, and I began delving consciously into myself, I recognized the imagery (although it was more like impressions of images) as if it was a scene I’d seen but never actually examined before.
“As now I dive through the liquid fire
I find a new state of consciousness
In a cavern, the subconscious pyre
Hidden until opened by paranoid duress
In this altered alternate reality
Infinite power and pain I find
Seemingly immense eternal insanity
In the unexplored regions of my mind”
The insanity part would refer to how incredibly different when compared to the “real world”. The journey itself can be very difficult, and the more one adheres to what we consider “knowledge” and “fact”, the harder I’d imagine it would be. Just as words are often not adequate to convey a complete sentiment, the inner mind does not easily translate. Methinks mayhaps this is why we have such odd and cryptic dreams for the Freudians to fret about instead of conscious conversations with our subconscious.
“A twisted mental freedom brings
Living nightmares when I’m awake
A mind that screams such anguished things
Sanity on the brink of a break
Help me to unveil my heathen soul
Let bewildered child retain control
Unravel mysteries of the mind
Let my true face be shown to mankind
My consciousness falls away, with mind numbing pain
Colors all fade to grey, the real world seems insane
Wondering of reality, how easily it fell
Dreams of lost fidelity, but who could really tell?
Gone off on a mental trip, travel within my brain
Through tight lips a cry does slip, cracking under the strain
Accusations still declined, until my dying day
Sanity’s borders defined, but who am I to say?
The twisted side of my mind’s calling
Sensual bitter-sweet seduction
Hypothetically I am falling
Into an abyss to my destruction
My greatest loss, this mental decay
Nightmares of the day seem all too real
Just which world is truth I cannot say
For when I am asleep, do I not feel?”
The waking world seems so much less sane, sensible, and straightforward, so much more impersonally brutal and coldly callous as the world of our dreams is fading into the first views of morning. My own dream world is a very violent place, but the tangles are tangible, betrayers are beheaded, and the populace is capable of accepting that some things are beyond the scope of their understanding. We do not have to struggle with finding the balance between naïve and numb.
I recognize that the subject itself has always been very flustering. I felt like I would go insane, start ranting and screaming at the world around me that this is not right. There is this threshold, and if I stand upon it too long, I become certain that there is something missing, and if I can just get it out of the darkness beyond, it will be like finally untying my arms after having them bound at birth. Or perhaps it is more appropriately that I feel (metaphorically, of course) like there are wings bound tightly to my back, and I was born to fly.
As I mentioned first in the foreword, this is a subject that is tied closely with insanity. It feels frustrating to the point of maddening to explore it, externally and internally. A most common sentiment (though I imagine it is rarely voiced) is “Are we SURE we’re sane?”
Myself, I have always been absolutely sure that very few people are actually sane, and those probably only because they refuse to be corrupted by contact with the rest of us. Once someone is exposed to the world of the supernatural, they are stained by that exposure and the misconceptions that go hand in hand with it.
I’m not sure how
many, but some odd years later I went to a Halloween party at another friend’s
house in
I was not drinking, by that time my alcohol habit had burned a hole in my stomach, and the burning pain was too distracting to make it worthwhile. So, I made a good designated driver for a while.
Also in attendance, aside from a lot of people I didn’t know, were the person who’d given me some of the previous advisements, a musician friend who I’d come with, and another kind of rune mage (not Futhark-like). By that time, I think he was an ex-rune-mage, having discovered that the system he was studying got nastier in cost than he wanted to deal with. He and I together reached the conclusion that it didn’t matter what tools you use, so long as you know what energy you are using and where from, the “push” is what counts.
Someone brought up the haunted house, and the hostess (lovely lady and a good friend) brought out an Oija board. Various rules and reminders were bounced around the room, like “Their spelling sucks,” “don’t trust anything” and “They all lie…” and the most skeptical people, of course, had to be the ones with their hands on the planchette.
The pointer moved almost right away. It was determined within a couple questions that it wasn’t one of the ghosts in residence, although it claimed to be, so they broke the connection. Then (oddly not before the Oija started, but after it stopped) the room seemed to be flooded with icky feelings… I could triangulate them like with the Rogue and “sense” something fly around the room and up through the ceiling.
Next there was a disturbance upstairs, some kind of strange noise or something, but it got everyone’s attention. The stairs became crowded with people, at the top of which were our hostess, the aforementioned more experienced advisor and me. The two ghosts were evident, though not visible, and not letting her past. The other they let by without comment, but adamantly warned even those of us who couldn’t “hear” them that there was something BAD up there, and it scared them.
Once he went up, I had to follow, especially with those warnings I couldn’t let him face it alone. I already knew it didn’t feel as powerful as the Rogue, knew the concept of “pushing” non-corporeal entities around/away. Whatever it was up there, cowardice would have harmed me more.
The upstairs from there was a full sized floor, with separate rooms, but left looking like an attic. There was a street light in front of the house, which shone through the side windows but not the front. The front room was the darkest, and from the main room/hall you could not see in. I could empathically “feel” pulsating waves of hatred and nastiness oozing from the room. As I neared the room, and the back ahead of me disappeared into the shadows, the malevolent hatred intensified.
When I stepped into the room, my eyes almost immediately adjusted. The other had stopped a few feet further in, and there was something very black hunched in the corner. I’m not sure if it actually became audible or if it was just the vehemence of the emotional venom it was spitting, but it growled loudly, a snarling, spitting insane beast sound. As my eyes adjusted it glared at me. Before it came into focus, it started racing in mad, tight circles in the corner. After a couple of surprisingly super-sized seconds, it burst out through the front wall (making no marks that I could see as it did). The streetlight shined in for a flash then blinked out and the thing “felt” like it was getting further and further away.
As for what he and I were doing as it went through this, I could not say. I hadn’t been drinking (being the driver) but watching and really wanting it to not be there had pretty much consumed me. I probably did “push” at it, as was later theorized, but I had no destination consciously in mind. Another theory was that it was able to “smell” the more powerful Rogue on me.
A short while later everyone was back downstairs and things had returned to relative normalcy, for a party. I “sensed” it fly in and around the room a couple of times. As I was wondering if I could smack it away hard, (and noting that other people’s heads were following it) it left, again through a wall and rapidly away until it was out of range. I still don’t know how far that is, nor if I just “let go” of the “scent” once they are far enough to safely forget about.
That sparked a lot
of conversations even after and away from the party. Some of those led to previous experiences,
which in turn turned into an expedition of sorts with a number of skeptical
people from the Naperville/Bolingbrook area to
Relatively soon thereafter I met someone who was into Wicca (Sorry, I really like some Wiccans, but it really is a haughty collection of “ancient traditions” from as far back as the 1940s – if they’d lighten up on that people might lighten up on them), totems (animal spirit protectors) and things. I was told that mine is fairly strong, which generally means that you need a lot of protection. We did the totem ritual thing, and I was to “survive without my soul” for a week, it was to be protected by the teacher, etc.
It might have been as soon as the next day that my teacher told me that someone dream-scaped in the previous night (as a tall, drop-dead-gorgeous blonde) demanding my soul back, saying that they had claim on it first. When refused, they’d become hostile. To summarize, it was determined that the signature “feel” was the Rogue; we went and a challenge was issued. Again, I might have had something to do with what happened from there, or it may have been the challenge itself. I don’t know. What I do know is that we were there, I felt it approach at the edges of my range, I worried for the challenger and wanted very badly for It to go away, not to come to the temple, and It went away very fast. A theory for that is that It simply did not want to be against me, that perhaps I am seen as a potential ally or pet, or amusing enough not to want to damage.
Around that time, I met my Wife, and one of the first times we made love, we conceived our eldest daughter. A very powerful totem presented itself to protect her, my poor baby. Some time later, the ex-rune-mage was my best man at our wedding, a nice outdoor, non-religious ceremony. The party went on for three days.
I never did quite “get into” Wicca, to the extent that I don’t even recognize the religious aspects of my involvement or define myself as having been Wiccan. I only went to or was involved in a couple of rituals that directly related to me, and one of those was impromptu. How vain! Maybe if more rituals were about Me… Eh, that loses something without the sound of angelic choruses. I don’t think I’ve ever really worshipped any specific Deity, something more like The Universe and the Collective of Mankind, but that’s another book.
My best man and I
were hanging out one night outside of his apartment in
He was arachnophobic, so we went to visit with a rather large spider that had her web in his building’s laundry room. As a side note, that is something one really had to respect about him; I knew of his fear, and also knew him to cohabitate with the indigenous arachnids exceptionally well, even set aside a corner of his living room once for a wolf spider that was polite enough to stay in its designated area, as far as he could tell (which was really all that mattered).
We continued talking for a while on ranging subjects, and suddenly, completely unexpected, both ducked and looked upwards. It had felt like something was dive bombing us, and part of me was expecting to see a large bird of prey swooping back around and down again, but there was nothing visible. I “felt” something, but it was light and trivial, and somehow instantly annoying. It might have seemed to us that it was trying to scare or intimidate us, but both of us were highly offended that it kept buzzing around our heads like a fly. He made a somewhat nasty warning and we started making fun of it, calling it things like a bug, a little puppy and a yip-yip, so it left. The phrase stayed with me, and now that’s what a number of people call the lesser entity thingies that bark like tiny dogs with giant attitudes. I think it should be the officially recognized term, but I don’t know who to pester into officially recognizing it, nor why to bother expending so much effort.
On my way home a short while later, driving along the Eisenhower Expressway, probably well over the limit considering I was a male of less than 25 (based on my insurance premiums, I was a terror until I reached that magical age and officially realized that my life was on the line every time I took control of over a ton of steel, especially on Chicago’s roads with their dubious drivability) and it came back. I was doubly annoyed, and wondered how this little thing would hold up if it was to face that Rogue… so, with that destination in mind, I gave a little “push” at the yip-yip with my mind and whatever “sensed” it, and it went away.
A moment later it was back, swooping harder and faster at me, acting shaken but extremely agitated, as if I was supposed to resort to fright now, after a taste of how easy it was to mess up the flighty flitty’s entire viewpoint. I got a little smug and let my irritation show, telling aloud how I was about to send it on a tour of the Chinese Hells, and how billions of people living and dying believing in them assures their existence. It apparently rethought how important pestering me really was to it and left again, rapidly diminishing never to be seen (by me or my friend) again.
Inspired, I read more on the subject for a little bit, then made the miserable mistake of reading a certain writer of some renown, gagged and choked on it. Then I immediately gave up on the entire subject for several years. I mean, really, people are all welcome to their own opinions and beliefs, but I was very much not impressed by the books on any systems I had read so far. Some were lacking things that others provided, but they all missed the mark as far as I could tell. I was getting a very dismal view of most of the people who had anything to do with the subject, seeing how things were and reading how they romanticized them, and the amount of limitations they seemed to love adding to everything. So many people would get a glimpse of the Right Idea, realize that it is not the way that they were being misguided, and plunge wholeheartedly into another skew, desperate for difference.
Additionally, my new family was growing, and I really didn’t need anyone questioning my sanity and thus parental fitness. What I really needed was to hit the metaphorical gym, maybe some creative dieting, and keep from tipping the wrong scales, seeming insane in a world full of people crazed in the pursuit of a fallacy they call “normalcy”.
Oh, yeah, that lasts.
Some time and a few
jobs later, I found myself at an awkward choice. I was in my mid twenties, no high school
diploma, and the president of a company with a nice office and a dilemma. We’d been offered (fairly publicly, along
with a good number of other people) a modular home in
I did feel for him, however, our positions were hard earned, we had previously proven ourselves firmly unerring in our ethics. A relatively short time later, the business owners were expecting that to be malleable, for us to bend because this is Standard Operating Procedure and Everybody Does It. We opted to move. He sounded hesitant when we called, but still what he said was clearly “Come on down”.
A bit of planning, a little wheeling and dealing… the ex-rune mage decided he wanted to come with as well. We sold and gave away everything that wouldn’t fit into the 22 foot RV I’d picked up, and set about fixing it. Luck was against him all the way, everything that could go wrong did, as soon as he worked on or got too close to it. He broke a spark plug off in the engine, then proceeded to argue “righty tighty, lefty loosey” with me. It was a delay, an aggravation and a slight cost, but not a big deal, really. He was a good, long standing friend and I wasn’t that mad. I wasn’t even thinking about leaving him behind.
I was finding myself stressed, but more than that was an unshakeable feeling that something was wrong, some part of this was a bad idea, and as the time to leave approached, it intensified. I got the unmistakable impression (in those instincts that I just follow) that there was an immense impending conflict with my best friend… I assumed this to mean my best man, and when he left a bottle loose in the RV, I thought about how he has such habits, and how even weeks of living in a such Spartan space with someone who leaves stinky socks laying around seemed like it would end up being cause to blow way out of proportion. We logically rationalized that at this rate he would end up being a liability instead of an asset in the distinctly possible event of a crisis situation.
As it was, I was getting pretty pissy about a 20 oz pop bottle rolling around the cabin when I went to the store. I couldn’t explain it to him, and couldn’t spend the time to try and teach him how discourteous such things are or how everyone has to work harder at such things while everyone is under stress and duress. That morning, the day before we were to leave, I packed his stuff back up aside from ours and drove him back to his parents’ house.
It was a year later when I discovered who the close friend (the other best friend) to be cautious of actually was, and what they were doing… this other idiot knew me, and tried unsuccessfully to steal my wife and family, and had started in earnest at that point (up until then he had just been convincing us that he was either stupid or desperately clingy, calling me daily at least once before I got home from work, no matter how many times she told him what time I got home), first by writing a letter to my Love telling her how she’s the only one he’s ever met as smart as he is, and everyone else is a bunch of soulless lying thieves. This, of course, was coming from the guy who gave me my copy of “Unconventional Warfare, Weapons and Tactics”, and knew me as a vicious street fighter besides. (Not to be too egotistical, but that’s how I was known.) Yeah, really superior smarts in that one. He’s so lucky that I evidently really have the superior control he claimed!!! But, it is his poor illegitimate son who has claim on his sorry hide, not me. And I digress into bitterness, how unbecoming on one of my height and stature.
We said goodbye to
our families and friends and headed south.
Along the way we started discovering how many things slipped past me in
the mechanical check-up. The first I
should have spotted, the accelerator cable was laying
across one of the pulleys. It became
evident when we were pulling into
Next was the one
that was not possible to spot… and was amazingly not evident until we got out
of that part of
We finally arrived to the challenge of our lives… how well can you hold your temper? The person who’d made the offer looked surprised that we made it out there. We were just happy to be off of the road, and certainly didn’t want to be rude or unappreciatively eager to get started. I’m not sure how long after, if it was the next day or two or three nights as I am recalling it now; it may have just seemed that long in the waiting.
I started looking for work, and getting disgusted with the apparent dishonesty of the people who interviewed me, they saw it as polite, I saw it as wasting time and instilling false hope to say “Well, we have to finish the interviews we already have scheduled, then we’ll be callin’ ya back…” when it was clearly written on their face “This kid talks too fast, city boy thinks he’s slick, he don’ know nothin’ ‘bout Texas life…” and there was no way that they were ever going to call me back.
One afternoon, we finally got to see the backyard where this modular home allegedly was. There was a wild turkey in the yard, so he called attention to it and the creek that marked the back of his property. I looked at his eyes and asked “Where’s the modular home you were talking about?” “What?” “Didn’t you have a modular home that needed to be built into a building?”
The same old man who had begged me with sincerity in his eye contact now again looked me in the eye and said “Where the hell’d you get an idea like that from?”
I had sold and given away so much, left so much behind to bring my small children across the country, away from all help and everyone we knew and trusted over a lie. He simply couldn’t admit he had been making the original offer just to be a big shot and have something to talk about! I could have killed him right then and there, no thought to consequences, no thought of right or wrong, just a blind rage screaming in my skull “What are we supposed to do now?”
Of course, killing wasn’t the right answer. It was very sorely tempting, and we could have come up with an accident that would have been able to fool most forensics, I’m sure, but it wasn’t the way to handle it. We had the babies to think about, and had to have a next step for them. There was no guarantee that just dealing with the police wouldn’t be enough for them to decide we were wayward parents and take away our children.
It was after my wife called her family that I first heard of the most disturbing bits, and none of them said word fucking one at the time, I hope they read this and know what jackasses I will always think of them as as a direct result. The less troubling is the fact that he had already called people complaining that we showed up on his doorstep expecting him to house and care for us… It seemed to us like her family was turned against us, even though many of them heard the old bastard making his offer in the first place.
Then, they told us that they believed our side of things because of his history. He had a history of making things up to be important, and that is the main reason none of them wanted to “help him out” when he was asking. That still isn’t the worst, of course.
The old baby raper had a history of child molestation! May everyone who knew that and didn’t say a single word when we went through so much to bring our DAUGHTERS down there see me later in Hell… hopefully by then I’ll have some new and improved pains to reward such awful ignorance. Such a sin is unforgivable, inexcusable and in my definition makes the ones who stay silent (thus allowing more victims to be abused) just as guilty as if it had been their cock in the kid.
Naturally, we didn’t stick around. We didn’t stop and see not-so-great-grandpa ever again. I have plans to visit him in Hell. When he died in 2003, my wife sent condolences to her mother for her loss, and that was the closest we cared to be ever again.
We didn’t know where to go, only that we couldn’t stay anywhere near someone we hated so vehemently. We had at least a couple of months’ food with us (I made sure we were prepared for anything) but were running low on money.
It was about that time that my Love got some amazing news. A friend of hers from high school still had some of her old writings with her in college. Her professor was pressuring her to enter some writing contest, so finally, just to get him off of her back, she entered one of my wife’s pieces; it won a $5,000 prize!
So now we just had
to pick where to go and get an apartment.
After much deliberation we decided that we’d heard very good things
about
Along the way, in the middle of nowhere, both of the rear tires on one side blew out. I got it over to the side of the road without further incident and we surveyed the damage. This was not a car or van that can easily be jacked up, (a recreational vehicle 14 feet tall loaded with everything we owned) and there are no double spares that I’ve ever seen.
We’d seen nothing ahead and nothing behind for a while, but I went to look and see what might be up the road. Fortune smiled upon us again, there was a gas station and house a short hike up the road. We still didn’t have much cash, but at least it meant people and communication, and we were set to survive in our vehicle, camping out doesn’t require all six tires…
As I got closer, I noticed that the pumps and sign were removed, but there was a newer car, obviously too clean to have been abandoned. When I walked up it turned out that a couple had bought it to live there so that he could do his artwork, making silhouettes with sheet metal and cutting torch.
They let me use
their phone, and refused compensation even though I was calling near
There was no towing company in the area. We somehow managed to locate an overland-truck-towing company. Their policy was not to accept personal checks, nor out-of-state business checks, but for us they accepted an out-of-state personal check on the word of the bank over the phone. They were prompt (considering the distance) and did the repairs faster than most people change car tires even. Once we were mobile again, we stopped off and bought one of the artist’s pieces.
We arrived in the Denver/Golden area just in time for a minor blizzard. It wasn’t much when compared to what we think of when we hear “blizzard” but on those tightly winding high entrance and exit ramps in our battered beast it was unnerving to say the least. I miraculously held the icy roads and got us to our destinations, even the second day when I WAS the plow. We spent a day looking around and found an apartment within two days that was immediately available, big enough, low rent and had control of its own thermostat.
A few years later, I started experimenting more with the “pushes”. I learned that through concentration, I could separate sickness from my own flesh and gather it in my belly. At first, this was when I was nauseous repeatedly I finally insisted that it get everything that it has to OUT this time! Then it progressed, I got better at it, and (sorry about gross images) was able to push out most disease with defecation. The biggest drawback has been that I have to be able to concentrate to accomplish it, so I have been unable to do it when too sickly.
From there I developed the ability to push out the burning pain of my ulcer with my breath in similar fashion. I was always careful to blow it up and away from people, not knowing if they could possibly end up breathing it in. Second hand smoke is bad enough even to smokers, imagine second hand belly fire!
Over a year later, after dealing with my “shadow”, (don’t worry, that’s coming up) I graduated from treating the symptom to its cause, and figured out how to push my body into actually healing the hole. It was almost instantaneous, although I still get heartburn sometimes when I tempt it too much, (But then, doesn’t everyone?) I have been able to eat peppers and drink hard liquor with absolutely no effect; that’s light-years ahead of having to avoid acidic foods.
My wonderful wife started getting into yoga, through this time, where we first learned of “The Complete Breath”. It was more involved than the breathing for martial arts, but still not quite complete, as we later learned and expanded upon. Once we incorporated it into our regular method of breathing, it did seem to make us healthier and smarter. I had no idea that I was only functioning at 40-60% lung capacity, nor that the breath out was supposed to also be through the nose and as long as the intake was, to assure complete gas exchange and get rid of all applicable waste toxins.
Then, more and more people started “coming out of the broom closet” and more people were exposed to the alternatives to mainstream religions, which really explains the recent resurgence of Paganism: a lot of people don’t want to be led by the blinders and rapped on the knuckles when they ask questions. More of our friends started finding various different options, and my Love wanted faith and a community to raise our kids in. What she found instead was a horrible mess.
A word on the word Pagan: those that use it to define themselves cannot agree on a definitely definitive definition. It seems to me rationally to mean any of the religions that are based on religions that existed before the ones that are now the mainstream. The majority of those that I’ve seen want to include magic(k) systems as well, although most of them do not identify themselves as Pagan. Some insist that anyone who is not religiously one of the “big three” is Pagan whether they admit it or not.
I don’t like any of the pre-existing labels so far because of the connotations attached. We will have to change those misconceptions before trying to coin any new words, or they will go the same route, like “magick” (which I never thought was different enough to distinguish and looks like Olde English, which was the aristocrats’ way of banking on the hope that no one else knew any better) and “metaphysics” (which has become associated with New Age, which I find too naïvely eager to believe anything and leap onto the next bandwagon). I told a friend how I am normally instantly prejudiced when a site, book or person uses certain words. There are just too many flakes and fakes that cling to those main identifying words.
People in our region
are renowned for not getting along. An
“alternative” community didn’t exist, as far as I could tell. They already had lists, and all claim to want
(however they word it) a community, but then attack each other at the slightest
excuse or provocation. More than one
national organization of Pagan types gave up on and even expelled
If that isn’t bad enough, these are those we must rely on to be our peers, to stand up with us at a time when our government is seeking to destroy the separation of church and state.
So, back into it I plunge, if only to make them accept each other so that I won’t be forced to choose one of the “big three” and pretend, giving two separate educations to each in order to remain free to raise my own children. There is no one to stand up for atheists or agnostics.
People need to be exposed to the normal, decent people of “the other side” to understand and accept those who are different from themselves. What they see are the freaks that make it to tv, and assume that all of “them” are like that. We all know of decent Christians, as well as sleazebags that scam (or worse) people in the name of Christ. Is it not so far to stretch then and see how normal a Wiccan, Asatru, Voudoun (AKA Voodoo) or even Satanic family might be? If they are wrong, it is their souls on the line, not yours, right? To bring about change (to make our world what we want of it), it must be by example, not force, not shame or harshness. Ostracizing someone who is losing themselves to rebellion helps neither of you, right? Then, you might be surprised; maybe they don’t need to be saved after all. You may even find yourself learning something of how to be a better person! The point is you don’t know unless you check for yourself, and promoting hatred is just that.
I don’t know how she got to talking to them, but the Wife ended up starting a Yahoo group to promote harmony among these, adamantly NOT to run things, take over or regulate anything in any way. Naturally, the first thing to happen there was for the High and Mighty Priests to start whining about “Why are they here?” and a bunch of BS about preceding “consensus” that it was supposed to be just the leadership, and then huff off to talk turds about the rest of us everywhere else. They succeed only in further fragmenting their only defenses against King George and the upcoming witch burnings, the twits.
Don’t think it can’t or won’t happen
here! We’ve never had a President
declare war against the majority vote of the UN. We’ve never had anything like the Patriot Acts,
The Constitution “Restoration” Amendment (HAH!), religiously based legislation
solely to promote discrimination, and the evil nasty HR163, (yes, defeated, but
it has been re-introduced, will be again after the next 9-11, and most people
didn’t hear ANYTHING about it the first time!!!) which is designed to be a permanent draft, despite higher
education, gender, familial status (including last survivor to carry on the
family name) whether or not we are at war.
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.163:
Gotta love the ambiguity of “and for other purposes”!
If HR 163 passes, everyone
between the ages of 18 and 26 will
be drafted. Don’t worry about it being an easy term of
service during peacetime, either: the war in the Middle East has been going for
four thousand years, has not been dented by our $200 BILLION and over a
thousand Marines’ lives, and it sounds like this administration wants us in it
for the remainder. At least it’s
population control, right? Will you say
that to console me when my children are forced to die in sands across the world
because I can’t afford to move out of the country? Or will I to you when yours go?
Okay, off the soap box again.
So, we got this Harmony Council started and doing its job. Sadly, most people don’t seem to understand what its job is, but it is just to humanize us to each other. As it was stated on that message board, we see ourselves and each other talking to people we wouldn’t have before. Many of us found we did in fact have preconceptions about the others, and many were proven wrong. I have spoken to many about things that I would have thought beyond them, or too far outside the scope of their religious restrictions. I have been able to learn and piece together numerous bits that were just a year ago holes in my knowledge. I was referred to more serious works of literature, some few gems lost in the sewers of every-idiot-that-believes-in-magic(k)’s verbose ramblings of ego.
We also met a number
of people through the list, including a chaos mage who goes by the name of
We got to talking about all sorts of interesting things and theories, including defining some things as Technomancy, which many people use in times of stress to make their vehicle go further than it should be able. The way my father taught me to drive was to feel the vibrations, to follow them and feel out and picture all of the moving parts. From there, it is a fairly simple matter to push those movements and make it do what it is supposed to, what it has to, usually right into its parking space, where it needs major work. I’d never thought about it as anything special, but there have been an awful lot of times when cars barely made it back, when friends and I had known that the car wouldn’t make it all the way home, but we had to try… you could look around the car and see everyone’s faces screwed up in concentration, putting all of their mental effort towards pushing it a little further without thinking about what they were doing at all.
We have since been
working with energy manipulation exercises, most of which have been supplied by
My Love and I started looking up autism and Asperger’s Syndrome due to discussions and theories about other family members. What we found was, at first, what we expected: of course this could apply to them, as well as us, and probably many other people we knew that are just as normal (if not more so) as we are. We were then surprised to see what it was referring to, and that it wasn’t as much that the indications were so broad and vague as to include just about anybody. It was that these are the kind of people that we mostly get along with and are more comfortable around. People more like us than the rest of the world.
We both read up on it fairly extensively and ruminated together (hmm, what a mental image that is) and started to pay attention to which kinds of days were good for what (on the scale of our aut-ness that day). We are now better for it, and getting more efficient in our efforts.
Among the things we found in search engines were a number of sites on “Indigo Children”. We found that a little of it may be possible, but we didn’t buy most of it. They just take too many flying leaps for our tastes. I did like the concept of early releases being to prepare the world for those to come, and the ascendance Idea is close to a number of others’ (their idea of the progression is that humans evolve to Indigos then to ‘crystal beings” which are not limited by physical form). It somewhat parallels some of my personal opinions, but who knows, who can say either way and how can we tell if they are the ones to believe?
Some time in the
next year or so I attended a chaos magick class and ritual, taught by
That cleared up the question of how to go on to the next step nicely. There was another paradigm shifting exercise in between, but that is my strongest point, I can put myself into anyone’s shoes and see things through their perspective, not just my own from their position. When it came to the shadow parts, I was dubious that there could be any dark unknown parts of my personality… I seem so well in touch with all that, so I was also very curious as to what I might find. It was said that maybe I would find a banker type, all business and organization. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case, as that is a part of me that manifests itself far more frequently than it appears to.
What I did find I was unprepared for. I was not expecting the “appearance” or the methods employed against me. It must be borne in mind that this was in my head, and that appearance was based on impression, like one’s own self image, which rarely matches the mirror. It was large of body and baby faced, like Blaster of Master Blaster in “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” and acted like a stereotypical Jewish mother. It was a big ball of my weaknesses, selfish, whiny, all the things that I buried since I was very young and felt I had to. The feelings that I felt were beneath me. I had to release and deal with them, which also led to accepting and working with my own… I hate labels, even vague like this… “autistic”-ish tendencies.
I know that the whole thing was difficult on my Darling, she told me I’d been being kind of a jerk since the ritual shortly thereafter. It may sound weird but I appreciate that kind of open honesty, especially when one considers the alternative that too many marriages fall into. I had to do it, though, to heal, grow and progress I could not keep those things lurking. Some bits had to be re-integrated and accepted as something more than weaknesses.
Regardless of whether you want to call that psychology, magic or whatever does not matter. What does is that these were things that had to be dealt with, that have been an unseen stone around my neck for quite some time, even though I was not consciously aware of them.
Going back over earlier research, we now find that things were written for the way that “normal” people’s minds work. The differences that segregate my Wife and self into the Asperger’s category also make these things work a little different, perhaps even a little easier and maybe less endangering for us. We are cautious nonetheless, but toss most of the ritual, particularly any religious references, out and use mostly just the active ingredients.
In these widely varied readings and exercises we recognized some of the things that we seemed to know as children. Childhood is full of play that is practice, and it would seem that some of that play they maniacally manage to pick up or come to on their own despite the most tenacious efforts to keep the from learning the incredibly dangerous pastimes that we occupied ourselves with in our own youths. Perhaps it is somehow genetically learned that these early brushes with death build skills that mean later brushes with death instead of smacking full on into early death. Perhaps that is alike with our inherent need for Something Greater than our selves. I think it is possible that agnostics and atheists end up seeking to fulfill this need with more physical logic and science.
One of those things I realized is that as a small kid, especially while I was in the church buildings for any reasons other than mass, I used to talk with my God-head at great length. Well, that part I had already remembered, and that it was like looking at stained glass windows in my eyelids. What I hadn’t recalled before was the “feel” of it, and the little ritual-ish things I used to do leading into it. I can’t explain most of it because it was in a young child’s head, but a lot of it boils down to meditating.
I recall the sensations of it more than anything else, rather vividly in fact. Even the sensations of some times that I didn’t get deep/far enough or was interrupted seem to gleam in clarity. It is a feeling similar to being bedridden with fever, when you feel like you are both sinking into the mattress and floating and expanding out of your head. The difference is that while that feels so very free and isolated, the memory does not, I feel more connected, like ethereal webbing transmitting the vibrations, the warmth, even the smell of everything around in all directions. While standing, sitting or kneeling there with my eyes closed, completely consumed by the whole thing, my vision and conscious attention were focused on the radiantly backlit, kaleidoscopically shifting patterns that appeared.
Then when we talked, it was like normal conversation, with a child who still said everything he thought without thought to what it was or would sound like. That part I do not remember so well, mostly we were just talking randomly about everything and nothing. I don’t think I would have cared to know about myself and His plan and such, and hadn’t the slightest comprehension of the bigger pictures then anyways.
I was never worried about it, other than that I know that people who talk to God are most likely very confused and talking to themselves, or their dog(s). I knew that just about anyone I knew would view it as abnormal, and be as concerned for my sanity as I was, but in misguided directions.
Then, one night, the tree behind our house laid down gently on the house, landing in the one spot it would do almost no damage. It turned out to be a White Ash in a bad spot with root troubles (and now it’s growing again!), which happens to be a desirable wood for protection and connections to sex magic. The story is posted at http://www.geocities.com/[email protected]/ash/ashstory.html.
I had been carving very hard woods and stone for years now, and gotten modestly good at the workmanship. Put together with the energy manipulation and the more recent acceptance of using metaphysical tools such as runes or spells, it would seem I have a niche to fill here. http://www.gifts-from-ash.here.ws.
Forgive the omission of details, but we had recently been given a sex magic book (which I got the next step of proper breathing from) and tossed most of it out the window too. We recognized the Gnostic state part of it as something we are familiar with from our experiences; it parallels the French concept of “Le Petit Morte”, (translates to The Little Death, what romantics)… that strange, writhing, quasi-unconscious state on just the other side of over-stimulation. When we did experiment with it we were successful enough to gain the notice of a very powerful Entity who claims (see, I still don’t believe even those who could munch me in a nip) to be the God/Goddess of chaos… and wanting something set straight: the duality issue. While the one in the same, there are both male and female aspects, and both should be acknowledged. The Female Aspect, Which can be referred to as “Discordia” is the more likely to work in immediate terms, big upheavals and more obvious effects; and the Male, “Eris” is the more patient, the One that is more likely not to seem like anything is happening when in fact things are already in motion and the bigger picture is being affected more slowly/subtly. And I gather that neither appreciates being called “Dis”.
We are still not willing to worship any Deity at present, although we are more willing to work with Them (having only met the Duo thus far) so long as we agree with the objective and the method. I personally don’t care about the duality issue, but I can see how it would be important to Her/Him/Them… I just get tripped up over the pronouns.
I think that pretty much covers it for now.
What more is there to say? If anyone would actually like (really, it’s okay not to) to read further as I progress, just let me know at [email protected] and I’ll publish my development as an ongoing paranormal journal or in similar fashion. If enough people ask I’ll take a poll.