Butterfly Dreams

Over the course of ten years I collected little pieces I’d written on religious topics into a booklet entitled Butterfly Dreams. Most of these were small snippets came from letters I had written to friends, and to she who is known as “St. Debra the Patient,” i.e., my wife. I organized them into chapters, numbering them as well. The collection went through three versions before I decided it was done and moved on to other things.

The final version was done almost twenty years ago, and since then my views have changed on a lot of it. There are some parts of it, though, that I still like, and since self-indulgence is one of the benefits of having a website I decided to present them here. Originally I put the booklet on this site with the parts left out that I no longer agreed with, but I recently decided that there was a certain dishonesty in that. Accordingly, I've put all of the entries on this site, with the numbers of the ones I originally left out in bracketss. Maybe those will be ones that speak to you. Who knows?

I've also put the original introduction back in. It seemed right to have the entire thing complete.



Introduction

This is the fourth edition of Butterfly Dreams. In the previous version I said that I hoped it was the last, and here I am, continuing the series. It would seem to be my fate to do so, and I am content to do it. Perhaps every few years I will find myself sitting down and seeing what the butterfly has been up to, making it my own unpublished Leaves of Grass.

The first edition was handwritten, with 152 aphorisms in no particular order. A small number of people received photocopies. For the second edition I arranged the aphorisms by chapters and numbered them, with very little editing besides that. There was also a cross-referencing system whereby aphorisms that were in different chapters but shed light on each other were referred back and forth.

The third edition saw the greatest change. The cross-referencing system was eliminated, reluctantly, as too unwieldy, since the number of aphorisms had grown to 282. An even greater change was the inclusion of a second part of the book. The first part, the aphorisms, was entitled "Models Of." The second part was entitled "Models For."

"Models For" was a collection of rituals, basically all that I had written up to that point. It included a complete Book of Shadows, rituals for families, and rituals for Nuit. I have decided to allow the Book of Shadows to evolve separately from Butterfly Dreams, with the goal of eventually publishing it. Since my family rituals will be published soon, [this was in my book The Pagan Family.] I see no need for including any of them here. With these eliminated, the two rituals for Nuit seem too few to include, so this edition is an edited version of "Models Of."

The peculiar style of this book is a result of its origin. The first two editions were made up almost completely of excerpts from letters, primarily to my wife before we were married (June 1979-July 1981). Aphorisms not from letters were either added in the act of editing or taken from journals I have kept and added to whenever inspiration struck. I have kept to this style for a number of reasons.

First, having independent snippets allows me to tackle several subjects at once. These are not paragraphs, with one subject, but fragments of thought. Second, I think the style benefits the reader. With separate fragments a reader is more apt to digest one thought before moving to the next.

This edition was prompted by several reasons. First, a friend asked me several times if I was ever going to finish it and get it published. The answer is "probably not", but I would still like Butterfly Dreams to be the best it can be. I have a deep affection for it; I guess it's like a book of poetry that the poet only brings out for certain friends, but considers to be his best work. Second, I have made it a habit since high school to occasionally write a summary of my religious beliefs, and it seemed time. Third, although most of my writing time and energy has gone into my books and articles I had still accumulated a fair number of aphorisms since the last edition.

What I have mostly done in this edition is add those new aphorisms. At the same time I have written more, with the intent of bridging the gaps between one aphorism and the next, to make the transitions of thought easier and to explain myself more. There have also been changes in the aphorisms present in earlier editions, mostly in style (I hope I have improved my writing since 1979), but sometimes in content, when I had changed my opinion on something. In addition, I removed almost all references to Christianity; although I continue to be an interested observer, I do not feel I have a right to commit these observations to writing.

Finally, this edition has a new chapter, "Round/Line, Woman/Man." These are two questions that have concerned me for some time. I do not pretend to have answered them here, but I do think I have made a start. Consider this to be a peek behind the curtains of my mind to see a work in progress. (Some of the aphorisms in this chapter are from earlier editions, and have been moved from their positions in other chapters.)

The epilogue was mostly written while waiting for a plane at Heathrow. I have made some minor changes to it through the years, but it remains a succinct summary of my beliefs. I recommend reading it before as well as after the rest of the book. It will help a lot.


Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.(Chuang Tzu)

[1.] When you wake up in the morning, can you, without opening your eyes, or moving, or calling out, prove to yourself that everything you remember isn't just something you dreamt last night? That you haven't been lying in a mental institution for years, dreaming what you think is your life? No, you must open your eyes and see the things around you, and check their consistency with your memories. And if your ego-self is so dependent upon external events that it cannot even prove its own existence without their help, how can you say that it exists, that what you were yesterday didn't die when you fell asleep, and that what you are today isn't only a reconstruction from the same memory traces? You can't, of course. Only momentum keeps it going.

CHAPTER ONE

THE UNIVERSE


[2.] What is the structure of the Universe? What is the structure of an orgasm--for that is what the Universe is. Orgasm comes from a man and a woman, joined together in a certain way, with a certain attitude, and, at its best, with an infinite longing to be one. But that is not orgasm, it is how orgasm is produced. Orgasm is--and here I define it once and for all--orgasm is orgasm. And the Universe is the Universe.

3. The Universe (and all Reality) is the orgasm produced by the coition of Infinite Possibility and Finite Point of View.

[4.] How was the Universe created?
--It wasn't.
Was it manifested, then?
--No.
Has it always existed?
--No.
Is it merely illusion?
--No.
What then?
--Nothing exists. Everything cancels; from the infinite point of view there is no universe.
What then of the things we see; where do they come from?
--They arise from their finiteness. Their creator is a point of view. When we say: "Look, there they are," so they are. So if we could refrain from saying that, they would not be? --Yes they would not be; they would return to the Nothing from which they came. But can you refrain? Can you really be without a point of view? Accept all, deny all. That is what is asked of you. Good luck.

5. From the point of view of Infinity everything is Nothing, since it is self-canceling. From the point of view of Nothing, there is Infinity. Infinity and Nothingness cannot exist in pure forms independent of each other. It may be said that the Universe is a result of the oscillation between the two and that enlightenment is the direct perception of the oscillation and the extremes.

[6.] The Phoenix is a symbol of existence--every moment a destruction, every moment a rebirth. That is what is meant by Buckminster Fuller's "I seem to be a verb"--constant flow, constant change. Throw yourself into the dance.

7. Every moment is a death.

[8.] The separate entities we perceive are arbitrary (although not totally; they may be chosen for aesthetic reasons or to suit our biological makeup (which is itself arbitrary)) orderings of Infinity. They are no less valid for not being the "one true way," but other ways are equally valid.

[9.] Point of view. Point of view. The observer is part of the observed. The revolutions of physics are only slowly bubbling their way into Western philosophy. It will still be a while before they percolate through our religious attitudes. Who knows if they will ever make their way into our everyday lives?

[10.] The Universe is a funny place. Start treating it as if it existed in a certain way and the next thing you know it starts behaving as if it's existed that way all along. The failure to recognize that you are doing this can have dire results. In the words of Maslow, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail."

[11.] As Mason said to Dixon, "We have to draw the line somewhere." As so we do, and we call that line the border of reality.

[12.] With each baby a new world--we each create the world anew.

13. All beings are co-conspirators in dreaming the Universe.

14. The Universe is not a circle. The Universe is a Mobius strip. There you stand, and you think there is another side, but if you follow the strip around you find out there's only one side. All along you thought that opposites existed but suddenly you notice they don't.

15. At any given time there is only one: one event, one now. Then I say, Hey, look: there's one!, and that makes two, the one and the I. But from the point of view of the universe, all along there was only zero. You see, in an infinite universe, something is always happening to exactly cancel your event.

[16.] Within and beyond everything is its opposite, for without the opposite the thing could not exist. Otherwise there would be something created from nothing.

[17.] Existence is relative, is localized. All rules are localized. (Even this one.)

[18.] The point that may be anywhere cannot seriously be said to be in any one place. And yet it is only from one particular point that anything is serious. Thus we have the playful POINT masquerading as the serious point.

[19.] 1=2=0. Remember that. It helps you to be tolerant.

[20.] The Tao--structure of a non-static reality.

21. In the Eternal Now, the Flow of the Tao does not exist, for "flow" is a linear concept, requiring past, present and future. Put that in your hookah and smoke it.

[22.] Aleister Crowley said "Love is the Law," and he defined that Love as the embracing of change, the immersing of oneself in the stream of the Tao. The only way to see the way things really are is to immerse yourself in them. Do not think that there is a point outside Reality from which you might see everything. Where would you go to do this? You drag Reality along with you.

[23.] There is one assumption without which all this is just so many butterfly dreams, and that is the Infinite. I cannot say "the Universe, or Reality, is Infinite." Those are words, and thus defined, and thus limited. Perhaps "the Tao is Infinite," since the Tao is undefined.

[24.] And of course, the Tao is zero, since it is Infinite and thus self-canceling. So add another number to the equation: 1=2=0=∞.

[25.] If there are any contradictions in what I write, it would be so easy to cop out by saying that the conflicting statements operate on different levels of Reality and result from perceiving the Universe from different points of view. But I do say that, and you must believe that it is no cop out, but the truth.

[26.] In an infinite universe power is merely a local disturbance. In fact, all acts are local disturbances. Infinity always bounces back, balance returns, and power disappears.

27. Say All is One. And then look around you; choose something and watch it become distinct. If All is One, whence this distinctness? Then it must be false. But it's there; it must be true in some sense, since it's there. But it cannot be true, not on a cosmic scale. We need to stop thinking of true versus false. The Universe is too wonderful a place for such a sterile idea; it is alive, and not to be pinned down like an insect in a collection. The True embraces the False with that love which draws the beloved in: Truth groks Falsehood. Or to William Blake: Eternity is in love with the productions of time. Local definitions, local limitations, bother Infinity not at all.

28. When I say that everything is true, I mean that for anything there exists a point of view according to which it is true. When I say that everything is false, I mean that for anything there exists a point of view according to which it is false.

[29.] Point of View. The reconciliation of the One with the Many, the solution to the most basic of all philosophical and religious problems. Point of view.

30. Choose your points of view carefully.

31. Reality is born from an infinite sea of possibilities, continually swept around by the infinite number of points of view which it contains. So that the observer does not create his universe all by himself, but is impinged upon by all the other universes and impinges upon them as well.

[32.] A Point of View need not be individual. There are many shared ones, some of which are called "religions." And when you buy into one aspect of a POV you buy into others. For instance, if you believe in Pagan Gods you start seeing fairies.

[33.] But what starts it? Whose is the original point of view? Or do point of view and possibility arise together, neither existing except in the context of the other? That must be it, but what does that mean? How does it all start?

[34.] Start, original, mean--all words from the linear point of view.

[35.] Does every aspect of infinity (infinitely many infinitely divisible parts) have a point of view? Or is it limited to consciousness? And do non-alive things have consciousness? Consciousness/non-consciousness arises only after a point of view is imposed.

[36.] Not only can the Infinite be both A and not-A at the same time; it must be or it is not Infinite.

37. The Infinite is self-contradicting. - and + are included in Infinity. And the resultant Infinity includes its negation. And so on--infinite progression. After all, it is Infinity.

38. From our point of view we call them contradictions. If we look at them from the point of view of the finite looking at the infinite, we can call them paradoxes: seeming contradictions that conceal mysteries. But from the point of view of the Infinite, they are neither contradictions nor paradoxes. They just are--the infinite pairs of complements that are a necessary

39. Of course, the Infinite has no point of view. Point of view is finite.

[40.] If reason stands aghast at life and the universe, let the fault be laid on reason: existence was here first.

[41.] There seems to me to be no reason why the universe should follow rules invented by the ancient Greeks.

[42.] Infinity, qua Infinity, cannot be bound by anything. But we must take finite sections of Infinity and observe rules, although we must remember that a different chunk may behave according to different rules.

[43.] The name is not the thing only if there is a thing. But there are not things without names; the thing arises in the naming: a verb, not a noun.

44. There is nothing behind things; all meaning is in relationships. Nothing has meaning in and of itself: everything is empty and marvelous.

[45.] An Infinite has no purpose. How could it? It must be everything possible, and motion in a certain direction is limiting. This may sound depressing, as it makes existence meaningless. But just think; if the Universe had a purpose, if life had meaning by its very nature, we would not be free. We would either be working towards the Universe's goals or against them. But this way we can choose our own meaning! That is truly to be a God.

[46.] Don't feel insignificant because next to Infinity you are nothing. First, you aren't at all when you are compared to Infinity; you only are within the local point of view, so the comparison is meaningless. Second, without you Infinity is not Infinity.

[47.] And what made you think you could get out of Infinity so that you could be compared to it?

48. What is funny? What do we laugh at? Embarrassment, stupidity, pain--dukkha. We laugh when, from a detached point of view, we see others embroiled in samsara. And what is the ultimate joke, the Cosmic Belly Laugh? That this world, with all its pain and suffering has no meaning. Let he who has ears understand; develop your sense of humor, O bhikkhu!

[49.] Sometimes the master would cry out, "Attend, a parable!" and then tell a joke.

[50.] The only reason I can see for a God to manifest as the Universe is to have fun.

[51.] The Universe is God telling Himself a joke. Thus are solipsism and pantheism reconciled.

[52.] Think of the story of the blind men and the elephant. The one who was feeling the tusk was feeling the tusk, and the one feeling the tail was feeling the tail. It would be absurd to say that they were experiencing the same reality. Yet they were experiencing the same elephant. In their case they could have move to the other's parts and experienced them as well. But imagine an infinite elephant, with infinite space between a tusk and a tail that are each infinite.

[53.] Of course, we could smile smugly and say that we, who can see, know that the tusk and the tail are parts of one elephant. But to see is not to feel, and feeling is a legitimate way to approach reality. So we feel the tusk and tail (Gods) and from our sight experience (enlightenment) we know how it would be to feel the whole elephant (God, Tao.) But how do we know that we are seeing all there is to see in an elephant?

[54.] Science is not saying: Whatever we, together, both experience is real, but rather: Whatever we, separately, each experience and agree upon, is real. If we are together, unified, then what happens to one of us happens to all, to All. The doctrine of separation is that of the high priests of science. But there are also its prophets who serve Chaos, who rend asunder order, to let it grow again in another shape. Both are necessary: high priests without prophets are lifeless; prophets without priests, useless.

[55.] A Universe which is perfect can contain evil because in the Infinite all things occur. A cow might well say that the Universe isn't perfect because of slaughterhouses. Whose rules govern perfection? To a pantheist there is no God outside the Universe, so where is redemption to come from? It can't come from without, and if it comes from within, the Universe redeems itself, and is thus perfect without redemption. There are no rules.

56. Reality = the intersection of Infinite Possibility and Finite Point of View.

[57.] A Point of View can only be judged within that Point of View. So Rule 2 is the rule for living within a POV. To seek for something beyond is to invoke a new point of view, and act that annihilates the first one and frequently leads to infinite regression (not such a bad thing, but it can be deadly for trying to live a life).

CHAPTER TWO
GOD

[58.] What we call the universe when we look at it from one point of view, we call God when we look at it from another.

[59.] God (or Tao or what have you) is the Infinite of Infinites, the Ultimate Unlimited. (Did you ever notice how many capital letters have to be used when writing about God?) This means, of course, that it includes us. It includes the observed universe, the unobserved universe, and the unobservable universe. Science orders/creates the observed and the unobserved and religion orders/creates the unobservable (a distinction must be made here between "observe" and "experience") and links it with the ob-served/unobserved. Since God is so big, we can't observe all of Him at once, so we break him up. Every time we break something up, we lose something, of course, so all versions of God are in some way false. (No religion is true.) Of course, since God is so big, whatever version you come up with will be a part of Him. (All religions are true.)

[60.] I do not say that you can be God. I say that you are God.

[61.] According to Eliade, to the "religious man" (he is referring mainly to the archaic and primitive religions) the world is not sacred; i.e., he is not a pantheist. But the world is seen as potentially sacred: God can break through at any time. That is what idols are all about; they represent a place where this has happened, or where, by ritual, it might happen. Witness the many primitive cultures in which meteorites are reverenced--the heavenly has come to earth. Of course, this easily fades into pantheism, in which the goal is to actualize the potential sacrality of everything--to reconcile the sacred and the profane.

[62.] What I am saying, though, is that the God who can break through at any time was always there, in exactly what was there before he broke through. If we do not notice that, it is because we are not paying attention. (Our not paying attention is God, too.)

[63.] Once you become aware of your Godhood, the most "mundane" affairs become divine. They are not transformed themselves; you have not made them divine. What you have done is to realize that they have been divine all along.

[64.] What I am suggesting is a radical pantheism: God just as we are. Not potential Gods, Gods if we developed ourselves, or God if only we realized it. Realizing is nice, developing is nice--but whether we develop it or not, whether we realize it or not, we are God. Just as we are. Here and now. Yes.

[65.] No distinction between sacred and material. No metaphysical dualism. No difference between the here and now, and the infinite.

[66.] The greatest problem for a radical pantheist is not understanding how the incredibly evil can be God. Immense evil, on the order of Hitler, has a certain majesty to it. Terror can be a religious experience. The problem arises with the mediocre. It is hard to understand the divine nature of the utterly banal, the totally boring. It will not do to say that behind it there is the divine. The banal, just as it is, must be divine, or you have limited God, the easiest blasphemy of all to commit.

67. There is no such thing as blasphemy. The Infinite allows everything, so not only is there no blasphemy, but every description of it is true.

68. Who would blaspheme? And against whom would they blaspheme? All is holy, all is sacred, all is God. The blasphemer and the blasphemed are one. And the commission of blasphemy is a sacred act. There is no such thing as blasphemy.

69. Most people will tell you they believe God is infinite, but they really don't. Ask them: Am I God? Are you God? Is God revealed in other religions? Chances are a Westerner will give you at least one "no" answer. (There are more questions, some suited for followers of Eastern religions, and you will eventually get a "no.") But God is not "no." God is the eternal Yes, Yes to all things. Is God love? Yes. Is God not-love? Yes. Is God hate? Yes. Is God not-hate? Yes. Is God love and hate? Yes. Is God neither love nor hate? Yes. Yes Yes Yes Yes, again and again, and always Yes.

70. God is "beyond Good and Evil" because each of them would limit.

[71.] A spiritual materialism or a material spiritualism. Matter no less sacred than spirit; spirit no less sacred than matter.

[72.] The world of matter presents us with sacrality. From one point of view this means that everything has spirits. We are people, and when a tree talks to us it talks to us as a person. But it is still a tree and in its treeness it is sacred. It does not manifest a hidden reality, it is not a means of entering the spiritual realm; above all, it is not an outward form that is somehow less real than the inner spirit. It is real, it is sacred--just as it is.

[73.] It is the experience that is ganz andere, not the stimulus that provoked it. But we then assign the numinous quality to the stimulus and say, "This is a sacred place," "These are sacred words," "This is a sacred tool." "Sacred," when applied to anything other than an experience, means essentially "tending to result in an experience of sacrality." Thus the word has two meanings, one literal ("sacred experience") and one figurative ("sacred space). I enter a grove and say, "This is sacred space." But what I really mean is "I feel the sacred when I am here." The sacred is omnipresent, but it is felt more in particular places or through particular acts or in particular objects or ideas. We then call these places, acts, objects, and ideas "sacred." The word thus used describes a technology rather than an ontology: not really "these things partake of the sacred more than other things," but rather "these things arouse a feeling in me of the sacred more than other things."

[74.] But what is the sacred? Is it a quality of experience, a way of experiencing; or is it something which is glimpsed in the stimulus, the stimulus thereby acting as a door to a "higher reality"? Is the sacred a different way of experiencing or a different thing experienced? The sacred is the way things are.

75. We have forgotten the sacred. We look about us, searching for it, and most of what we find we let drop again, saying, "This is not the sacred." And these precious objects fall glittering from our hands. We have forgotten the sacred. We see only the material. We see "only the material"--if we could strike out the word"only", perhaps we would remember the sacred.

76. The sun rises every morning
and still no one wonders.

77. The cypress tree in the courtyard is still standing
the very body of the Buddha.

78. If it were far in the past, we would believe it was sacred. If it was in another land, we would believe it was sacred. If it was in another person's life, we would believe it was sacred. But it happens now, and here, and to us, and how can we believe? If you only knew, you would ask, how can we not believe?

79. Sacred vs. profane is one Point of View.

80. To say there is a God is to deny your own Godhead. Instead try being God.

[81.] All that groks is God--and the God is in the grokking.

82. We live God.

[83.] To be a God that "changes never"--what a terrible fate!

[84.] In one very real sense all religions are idol-worship, for they are all representations of the Infinite in symbolic acts, words, and beliefs, all of which are finite. Even to express the mystic's direct experience of the Infinite in words, or to conceptualize it even for one's self, is to create an idol. Thus "God" is an idol, and to worship God the worst idolatry. The way to avoid idol-worship is not to worship God, but to be God--the God that is in the grokking, not the grokked; the God that can never be pinned down, that is a relationship; a creating, not a creator.

[85.] Any God that can be worshipped is an idol. To worship you must conceive, hold, believe; you must hold a finite thought. The Infinite cannot be worshipped, only experienced.

86. It is perhaps less dangerous to pay reverence to statues and stones than to ideas. The latter are as much idols as the former, but are of a more subtle kind. They are therefore more likely to entrap us and to cause us to confuse that which we call God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent) or Tao (the eternal flow, the dynamic interaction of opposites) with that which these words are meant to describe. With physical idols the symbolic nature is more evident: the more physical the symbol, the more its symbolic nature is apparent. Abstract symbols are more easily misunderstood.

[87.] An idol is simply a finite expression of the Infinite.

[88.] A God is created by belief in Him. That is why the primitives say that the Gods need us as much as we need them.

[89.] Worship a God and He exists; pray to a Goddess and She is there.

[90.] Invocation (including all prayers) of a Deity bring Her out of infinite possibility and into our point of view. Did She exist before our original invocation? The question is inherently unanswerable. Nothing in infinite possibility can be said to exist because existence requires a point of view. But the non-existence is in us, not in the infinite possibility. And once She is here, She is as real as we have considered Her to be in our invocation.

[91.] If we view the universe from our personal point of view, we see personal forces: Gods, spirits, angels, fairies, and such. If we view it from an impersonal point of view (such as satori), we see impersonal Reality. Which is right? Point of view. Point of view.

[92.] The personal God is the natural outgrowth of the linear point of view. When the Infinite of Infinites is viewed linearly, it appears as a person. This is essentially the same situation as the personal self and reincarnation: both appear when the "blooming, buzzing confusion" is seen from the linear point of view.

93. God reveals Himself as person because that is what we are. Or He reveals Himself as natural forces, or society, or something else of which we have knowledge. The Infinite Nothing is beyond our experience, for it is something which cannot be grasped. It is the face of God, which none can see and live.

94. The Gods are not Ultimate Being or a manifestation of Ultimate Being. There is no Ultimate Being--all is Becoming. The Gods are changing: they are the changing of the year, the changing of nature, the changing of the self.

[95.] One argument for the existence of God is based on the universality of moral laws. But this is just a more subtle version of the Uncaused Cause argument and may be answered in a similar way. After all, if human morality must be imposed from without, where did God's morality come from? Better (that is to say, more parsimonious) to say that morality is as much a part of being human as storytelling is. Does the universality of storytelling tell us anything about the existence of God? Perhaps.

CHAPTER THREE
THE UNIVERSE: THE MYTHICAL VERSION
(INTRODUCING THE GODS)

[96.] The Tao-- ☯ . On one level the yin and the yang--the most abstract form of opposites possible. On another level Nuit, the circumference which is nowhere, and Hadit, the center which is everywhere--opposites in terms of mathematical abstractions. The next level--Chaos and the Winged Man--sees the creation of space/time. And then the two levels of Wicca. The level of Maghya and Cernunnos, the Goddess and the God--the most abstract forms of male and female. The level of Ekwa, Bhelto, and Yemos--that of the interaction of the opposites in matter. One level the Great Rite; one the Myths of the Year and the Moon.

[97.] The hierarchy of the manifestations of the Tao: Ekwa, Bhelto, and Yemos; Goddess and God (Maghya and Cernunnos); Chaos and the Winged Man; Nuit and Hadit; Yin and Yang. All but the last three have personified forms (Hadit appears as a winged globe, the Sun, a phallus, or a bright star), although Chaos has no personality. The Yin and the Yang are represented by the abstract symbol ☯, and are never represented separately. Nuit is not the Egyptian Sky-Goddess Nut. She has more affinities with the Thelemic Nuit, as Hadit with the Thelemic Hadit. This level is not that of Thelema, however; there is no Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The Winged Man's Lawgiver/Warrior split, however, is similar to Hadit/Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

[98.] "Hierarchy" is a bad word because it implies that there are higher levels that are better than the lower one, but I can't think of a better word to use. What I'm thinking of is more like a polar coordinate system--outer/inner rather that higher/lower. If you are better suited to start with one of the outer paths than on an inner one, go ahead. Bear in mind that wherever you start you will eventually have to master the levels you have passed over. Not to do this would be to leave something out of your infinity.

[99.] Nuit is the field in which all else takes place. She is the personification of Infinite Possibility. It may be said, therefore, that she does not exist, because all that exists is in her.

[100.] Her hair is spread throughout the Universe. Although infinitesimally fine, it is infinite in number and thus pervades all. "Because of my hair, the trees of Eternity." (AL I:59)

[101.] Nuit is worshipped by devotion, by bhakti. You do not worship Hadit; by worshipping Nuit you become Hadit. Hadit is the point of view.

[102.] Time and Space define each other. Level 3 of the Tao sees the creation of Time, Space, and the Universe.

[103.] Since Time and Space are first created on level 3, Nuit/Hadit are beyond them, as yin and yang. The Wiccan deities are in Time and Space.

(104-152 are some pieces of madness, speculating on a possible meta-myth. They aren’t to be considered to be accurate reports of ancient belief or practice. I like the madness of them.)

104. The dragon--Primeval Chaos, Tiamat, Leviathan. Holding in Her hands the Cosmic Egg--the egg which is also Herself. Out of the egg springs the Winged Man--motion to Chaos' space. First was Chaos, then Eros, binding Chaos together (splitting Chaos apart). The egg/dragon split in half by Marduk, one half the sky and one the earth. The dragon as sea serpent, the West, the sea: MR. And the Winged Man is the angel, the West; is the Spirit of God moving across the face of the waters, is the phallus, explosive force, extension, the great T. The two together are MTR, mother.

105. The dragon beneath Camelot, the center of the new earth--the world is based on the death of Chaos. The crystal towers over the crystal cave--the structured arising from the unstructured. The towers (male) from the cave (female).

106. But the Dragon is not dead. She only sleeps in Her cave, waiting.

107. Chaos is a state of "no difference"--there is no distinction, no order. In Chaos it cannot be said, "Here is this, there is that." All is one. Chaos is unity.

108. Chaos is always moving, always swirling, for to be still would give it order, and to stop would be to die. Chaos is life, is Change; it is only Cosmos that is dead. So in the swirling, in the changing, there arises a local order. True Chaos must have local order. Points of local order in infinite random series are called "Markoff chains" by mathematicians. So in the Chaos a Markoff region arises. And this Markoff region is the point, the germ, the sperm, that gives birth to the Warrior. Like a seed crystal in a supersaturated solution, it gathers the elements of Chaos around it and creates order.

109. There is a crack in the Cosmic Egg through which the Winged Man flies. This is the flight of the shaman, up the tent pole, through the smokehole. The axis mundi, the point where creation begins. "As we have of old been taught that the point within the center is the origin of all things."

110. The division of the egg is the creation of a universe. Motion in space defines limits. Sacred space is created by the reenactment of this original motion.

111. Motion both requires and produces separation; thus the first act of the Winged Man is separation. The God is the divinity of separation, even as the Goddess is of unity.

112. It is order that separates. A place for everything and everything in its place.

113. To be born is both to go from unity to separation and from Chaos to order. The outside world is not Chaos, as some think, but order, for Chaos is unity and the outside world is separation.

114. First comes birth: the mother is split. Then the making of a man: the new world is created. Then the orgasm: the thruster, destruction, dissolution, return to Chaos. From this a sperm, a new Winged Man: a new world is about to be born.

115. Chaos the womb; the Cosmic Egg, the human egg; the Winged Man, the sperm. The sperm on a voyage through the woman, motion through space. The Viking Voyager.

116. The Warrior becomes the crowned king, the orderer of the realm. He becomes the Lawgiver. Soon he will be the Lord of Death, but at first his ordering is creative.

117. Arthur, the warrior, becomes lawgiver, to be supplanted by Lancelot and Mordred, the new warriors. First the splitting, then the ordering. Then along comes the warrior.

118. We have here the Lawgiver and the Warrior; Marduk as Lord of Heaven (head of the divine hierarchy; archetype of the king) as well as killing Tiamat; Horus as double God.

118. We have here the Lawgiver and the Warrior; Marduk as Lord of Heaven (head of the divine hierarchy; archetype of the king) as well as killing Tiamat; Horus as double God.

119. Horus: "God is He, having the head of a hawk; having a spiral force." (Oracles of Zoroaster)

120. In the very midst of the moment
I have seen the Warrior arise
with His sword singing;
heard His laughter,
seen His weapon's gleam.
In the very instant
(it is less than an instant)
of Cosmos' crowning,
in that time
(it is before time)
of the imposition of order, I have known Chaos
known its beginning
known how behind things it survives,
waiting to return.

121. The rule of the Lord of Death is an attempt to fight the urge to Chaos within everything. It succeeds temporarily on a local scale, but eventually the dragon Chaos reasserts Herself and gives birth to the Winged Man Shiva/Dionysos.

122. "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
The Warrior arises again, the rough beast. But He is no sloucher--He is the joyous and dancing Shiva. (And his anarchy isn’t "mere", either.)

123. In the midst of Cosmos, Chaos lies hidden, waiting.

124. And in the midst of Chaos, Cosmos lies, waiting, to emerge as the Winged Man. And so on, through infinite time, through infinite space: infinite reverberation. No beginning, no end, no ground anywhere to stand on. Only the Cycle, through which to chart your course, like the Winged Man, or in which to dissolve, like Chaos.

125. Cosmos must eventually return to Chaos because it is a local and open system and must take in energy and substance from without in order to survive. This nourishment must come from Chaos,and inconsistent elements are thereby introduced into Cosmos. Inconsistency is the bane of Cosmos and must eventually break it asunder. It introduces Creativity, the Winged man, into Cosmos, the Crystal, vibrating it until it shatters. The Winged Man that makes order from Chaos and the Winged Man that turns Cosmos into Chaos are one and the same. He is the force of creativity.

126. Cosmos is built of the bones of Chaos. This is its strength and its downfall. Bones are strengtheners, but the bones of Chaos lurk within Cosmos awaiting their chance to break out.

127. The cycle Warrior/Creator-Lawgiver-Warrior/Destroyer is not, of course, a Creation myth in the mundane sense. Way back, in linear time, there was not nothing but the Goddess Chaos, out of whom sprang the Warrior, etc. And yet, it may be said that it is the story of the creation of the physical universe, for about us at all times is Primal Chaos, on which we impose order and call that order real. The instabilities of this order (because of the Chaos on which it is based, because it is a finite apprehension of the Infinite) give rise to the Warrior, who breaks the real down into its original Chaos. This happens in each moment of our existence. The real is then reformed from Chaos, and the process continues. This progression of cycles is called Time.

128. Everything has been ready for you from the beginning. "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be"--but the world's end is now. Destruction and recreation every moment.

129. The Winged Man is event, which gives rise to Time. Chaos is potentiality, which gives rise to events.

130. But Chaos does not exist, since things exist only for an observer, within a point of view. Observation is ordering. Thus Chaos, source of everything, is found nowhere.

131. It is only at this time, in this space, from this point of view, that reality of this sort can be said to exist. Cosmos is a random occurrence of order in a random existence, in Chaos. And the Warrior is a transition state.

132. The Warrior is the act of transition, is the transitioning.

132. The Warrior is the act of transition, is the transitioning.

133. The Winged Man is the point, as Chaos is the circle. Not the area within the circle, just the circumference. And not even that, but the formula of the circumference. But the formula is not really the circle until you plug in an infinite number of points.

134. The Winged Man is not only order. He is also breaking asunder, the split in the Cosmic Egg: Shiva, Dionysos. Here is the twin God (or father and son); Janus, the God of beginnings, of cusps, of turnings.

135. Janus, the God of surprise, God of non-attachment.

135. Janus, the God of surprise, God of non-attachment.

136. The destruction of which Shiva is God is a return to Chaos, a breakdown into primal elements: creative destruction.

137. The Winged Man is not two Gods, but a dual God. The Warrior and Lawgiver are inseparable, although they can be worshipped as if they were separate Gods.

138. The Winged Man is above all the separator: the Creator Separator (Warrior), the Discriminating Separator (Lawgiver), and the Destroyer Separator (Warrior).

139. The Warrior: Creating. The Lawgiver: Preserving. The Warrior: Destroying. Here is a Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva trinity. The dual God is a triple God, and the Warrior has two faces. The two faces of the Lawgiver are only in the observer: He constructs and preserves order; whether this order is creative or destructive is irrelevant to Him, but the two faces of the Warrior are in Him. Thus we can speak of three Gods or two Gods or one.

140. "Creative," when used to describe the Warrior, is not completely accurate. Chaos is potential; by splitting it open, He changes potential into actual. Thus, in a sense, He kills, changes animal into crystal. The "Destructive" is likewise inaccurate. The Order which is destroyed is stagnant, un-living, stifling. He returns this to the Chaos which promises creation.

141. The Warrior is everywhere.

142. It is fairly obvious that the Warrior has two aspects: the creative, bursting open the Cosmic Egg and providing the original impetus to order; and destructive, Shiva/Dionysos, who breaks apart the world order and returns Cosmos to Chaos. It is not so obvious that the Lawgiver also has two aspects: the constructive, ordering one, that creates Cosmos, building visions of beauty; and the Lord of Death, the stability of Order which prevents change and creativity, which stifles and stagnates.

143. In his form of Lawgiver, the Winged Man may be crow as well as hawk: Bran, Cronos (Chronos), Saturn, Odin. The oracular crow, carrion bird. (But the Warrior slips in as well; the crow is the bird of battles.)

[144.] Mithras is also the cognate God; splitting the rock asunder (the earth, the mother), he comes into the world at the critical winter equinox as Warrior and then establishes order, as Lawgiver.

145. The crow is Winged Time, the time that takes all before it rather than the time that takes all within it. This is the first rung of the Mysteries because this is the motivation for coming to them. And at the end is time again, Boundless Time, transformed like the initiate himself.

146. One name of the Lawgiver is Cosmos.

147. Hermes--the Word--is the orderer of Chaos. Hermes of knowledge, the phallic herm marking the boundaries. Hod, which is Geburah in a later manifestation.

[148.] Hermes is the leader into death, into initiation, back to the Goddess; the Psychopomp.

[149.] The Winged Man is worshipped both by bhakti and ritual identification. Chaos is best worshipped by bhakti and formless meditation.

[150.] The idol form of Chaos is the Venus of Willendorf--woman as Woman: no face, no separation: all women, All-Woman.

[151.] The idol form of the Winged Man (represented as having both aspects, Warrior and Lawgiver) has a hawk's head and wings, with Amoun's ram's horns, an erect phallus, and a sword in his right hand and a wand in his left. He is stepping forward with his right foot and he is about to take flight. Amoun-Hoor-Ra, composite God, the spiral force caused by a straight line within a circle.

152. It is the male aspect (Winged Man/Cosmos) that is externally active and the female (Chaos) that is internally active. The result is that Chaos does not appear active at all, when it fact it is continually teeming within. And the male aspect can appear as either, from outside, a cycle (Winged Man-Cosmos-Winged Man) or, from within, a line, arising out of apparent nothingness, travelling his own unique path. Point of view strikes again.

[153.] Chaos-West; Winged Man (Creator)-East; Cosmos-North; Winged Man (Destroyer)-South. A full circle to define our existence.

[154.] The sword of the Warrior has the waning and waxing moons together with the full moon disk for the crosspiece. The pommel is the dark moon disk.

[155.] This is to say: only in the service of the Great Mother. And also: the power of the male is the projection of the power of the female. And also: the power of both male and female has its root in the Void.

[156.] The spear is the weapon of the Warrior/Lawgiver and of Cernunnos. It is both sword and staff, the weapon of the knight. Often it is a trident: the weapon of Shiva, the blaster of the sea, the bolt of lightning. Again: only in the service of the threefold Goddess.

[157.] Some Pagans like to say that in the beginning was only the Goddess and that from Her came the God and from Them everything else. This I deny. There cannot be a One that is self-conscious until there is an Other. Then the self looks and says: that is that and I am I. The Hindus say that the word "tat" means "that" because it is the first word a child says. The child means: Look, there is something out there. Out of this, self-consciousness arises. It is the same with God and the Goddess. If there ever was a beginning (I do not think there was) then they arose together, one out of the other. This is mirrored in our own lives. Girls achieve awareness of themselves as girls in opposition to boys, and boys in opposition to girls. And the male consciousness gives rise to the female unconscious and vice versa: male ego creates anima; female ego creates animus. To say that any of them (God/Goddess, ego/anima. animus) can be before the other and give rise to it is like saying you can have an inside without an outside or a back without a front.

Does this conflict with my Chaos/Warrior/Lawgiver myth? I do not think so. My myth is not intended as an all-time origin creation myth. It is a myth of the moment, describing the creation and destruction of the instant. Moreover, Chaos gives rise to the Winged Man, but the Winged Man returns Cosmos to Chaos. Goddess creates God, God creates Goddess.

[158.] The male out of the female: woman is the source of power. The male as active, the female as passive: the wielding of power is the prerogative of the male. Power is from the female, to be wielded by the male. (Cf. the Celtic custom cited by Crowley, in which a man becomes king by wedding the eldest daughter of the king. The daughter was the land, was sovereignty; the man was wedded to the land.) Ill fares the male who grows proud and forgets the source of his power, and happy the man who returns to the woman for power. The power (the phallus: the wand (scepter), the sword) given to man can only create by dying in the woman: the king must die.

[159.] The Maghya/Cernunnos level is that of devotional identifi-cation, of bhakti (except in the rituals of the Women's and Men's Mysteries).

[160.] Maghya is the Moon, the triple Goddess Maiden/Mother/Crone. She also appears as the sea and the earth. On this level the Goddess acuires a personality.

[161.] The two attributes of Cernunnos are the torc and the ram-headed serpent. He is often shown with the torc in his right hand and the serpent in his left. This is to show his double nature. In his right, the hand of creation, is the torc, the symbol of rebirth given him by the Goddess. It was also the badge of the warrior, and thus of the warrior-king that is the Son. In his left, the hand of destruction, is the serpent that is both the God of Death and the Lawgiver (the serpent with the tree, and that raised up by Moses in the desert.)

[162.] Cernunnos, dual God, is Bhelto/Yemos, Warrior/Lawgiver, Torc/Ram-headed Serpent, Star Child/Serpent. The god of in-betweens, deity of the cusp.

[163.] Ekwa--the Horse-mother, the transfunctional hippomorphic goddess of sovereignty. Yemos--the Twin, lord of death that is our shadow, our counterpart, our twin. Bhelto--the Shining One, the bright lord, youthful.

[164.] The Ekwa/Yemos/Bhelto level is that of ritual identification, of myth. Yemos and Bhelto are not meant to be worshipped. They are found in the acting out of their myths.

[165.] Words, beliefs, concepts, ourselves--all idols, in fact--are symbols of the Infinite. There are several ways to conceive of the Gods: 1. The anthropomorphic--these are beings existing separately from us. 2. The semi-anthropomorphic--these are beings with a real existence, but they are created by our belief in them. 3. The natural force--the Gods are symbols of the flow of forces. 4. The semi-pantheistic--the Gods are projections of internal forces (manifestations of the Unconscious). 5. The full pantheistic--the Gods are a way of viewing the Tao that our minds can handle. I prefer the last way, especially since it allows me to use any of the other ways at will.

[166.] The Gods are local manifestations of the Tao. They are the Infinite looked at from a finite point of view. 167. How many Gods? Here, hold up this book. How many? One? But how many pages? Chapters? Paragraphs? Sentences? Lines? Letters? Combinations of letters? Words? Letter "b's"?

[168.] Not as parents to children, put in charge and knowing better.
Not as children to parents, in subordination and of lesser wisdom.
But as brothers and sisters, of the same kind, some greater and some lesser. A relationship of mutual respect, mutual love, mutual help. We need them, they need us. We are of the same kind, the Gods and we.

[169.] The North, the place of greatest darkness. But that iswhere the Gods come from: out of Chaos, the world. And when we are Gods we can return to it, beyond the Gods. Parasamgate.


CHAPTER FOUR
MYTHS AND SYMBOLS

[170.] The beliefs of Neo-Paganism are relationships, expressed in myths, not creeds. The greatest truths are found in stories because stories are alive.

[171.] A myth does not have to be true (in the historical sense), although in a certain sense it's always true. What a myth is, is a story people are willing to live by even if it isn't true.

' [172.] A myth is a map; it is an arrangement of symbols that both describe and prescribe. Myths provide a view of the world and a way of acting in it.

[173.] Myths are embodiments of Relativity.

[174.] Myth is a language that everyone should learn. It is the true mother tongue; rational thought is an artificial construct.

[175.] Mythical acts are the model for everything and myth time permeates the world. When we are in the Myth World we are outside time and space--"this is a time that is not a time, in a place that is not a place"--and in all time and all space. This sheds light on the question "are the Gods real?" In the Myth World they are the only real things, and also in the linear world as seen from the Myth World. But in the linear world, can we judge their reality? In relation to what? The idea is to slip at will between the linear world and the Myth World. (The Book of Pagan Rituals.)

176. Myth leads us in, myth guides us within, myth brings us back out. Myth is our defense against a takeover by madness. And myth introduces us to madness.

177. Myths may evolve over a period of time, but they are not arbitrary. They reflect certain characteristics of human existence, unfolded to suit the culture which tells them.

[178.] No matter where they live, people have certain things in common. It is therefore to be expected that certain mythic themes will appear all over the world; the Dying God is a well-known example. The way in which these themes are woven into myths and which of them are used is determined by the local environment and economy of a people. These myths then influence and are in turn influenced by that people's culture.

[179.] What I am trying to do with all this spinning of myths is to give Wicca a mythic structure, with rituals that fit it. This mythic structure is to concentrate first on the Celts and then on Northern Europe, but it is to bring in as many other mythologies as possible. Likewise, the rituals are to draw on these sources. The most important thing is for anyone brought up in a Western culture to be able to read through my rituals and feel a twinge of recognition.

[180.] I am not trying to create myths but to interpret them.

[181.] Myth is a language by which we can describe the world, and as such it shapes our perceptions of that world. I am a grammarian and a writer of dictionaries for this language, and as such I try to think in the language and then determine its rules and symbols.

[182.] I am trying to puzzle out the grammar and vocabulary of myth. I want to be able to recognize the symbols of myths and to understand their meanings and relationships. So if I see a raven as a character, I can think of it as a psychopomp, and link it with wisdom, both deriving from its correlation with Odin; and its function as a carrion bird, sign of battle, and link it with Hermes, who was both wisdom-god and psychopomp. Or if a cauldron, cup, or necklace appears, I'll know that it has to do with rebirth and the Goddess. Can you see what myth is? Myths are not explanatory but descriptive. The view that they were invented to explain natural phenomena and are therefore precursors to science is simplistic. Myths are a way of looking at things, giving structure to reality. They thus help us not to explain or predict, but to understand. That is why they cannot be understood from without. They can only be understood by entering them and following their endless twistings: they are art, not science.

183. It is important that a myth be first understood in the context of the culture in which it originated. What did it mean to people who told it? Sit down with it and listen. Listen to the people who first told it. Only after you have listened to it, without imposing your own preconceptions, will there be any value to asking questions of it. Then you may apply the rules you have learned from other cultures to see what it might mean to you.

[184.] Celtic mythology is a representation of two things: the cycle of the seasons and the course of life. The many myths of a young hero displacing an old, for instance (e.g., Tristan-Mark) can be seen alternately as summer replacing winter or a man's sons replacing him. In an odd way, then, Celtic myth is the reconciliation of macrocosm and microcosm. In it the cycles of both are expressed, and through its ritual enactment the two are balanced.

[185.] To the Celts the other world was just over the hill. A hero could get lost in a forest and run into some other-worldly characters. Or he'd enter a fog, and when it had gone away, everything would be changed. A lot of times he didn't even know he'd been in the other world until he got back and discovered, for instance, that ten years had gone by when he thought only three nights had. For a Celt, then, the magical world was very close, and anybody could enter it at any time.

[186.] Wicca uses two myths: the Myth of the Year, celebrated on the Sabbats, and the Myth of the Moon, celebrated on the Esbats. Wicca is their interaction. The Moon has the gentle myth instead of the quick, violent changes of the Sabbats, there's the slow development of the changing moon. The Year has three deities, relating in a rather dramatic way. The Moon Myth, on the other hand, has the Goddess, going through Her cycles, changing internally. It is the Myth of Woman, passing through her periods. The triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone; Artemis, Selene, Hecate.

[187.] The Myths of the Year and the Moon, and their associated rituals, are the means of breaking down the distinction between self and world.

[188.] At Yule, the Winter Solstice, Ekwa, the Great Mother, gives birth to Bhelto, the Sun God. She then draws away from the world to rest, leaving it in the hands of Yemos, her husband, the God of Death. Thus from Yule to Imbolc (February 2nd) is the coldest part of the year. When she returns on Imbolc, bearing with her the child Bhelto, to present to his father, she is once again the Virgin. Bhelto then grows until, on Ostara (Spring Equinox), he is given his arms and sent out into the world to roam as the Green Man and earn his manhood. On Beltane (May Day) he returns, to challenge his Father to battle. As the sun rises Yemos weakens, until he finally succumbs. Bhelto then takes back the cauldron of the Goddess and, returning it to her, marries and impregnates her. Bhelto is crowned king on Midsummers, and on Lammas (August 1st) the first fruits appear. On the Festival of the West (Fall Equinox) Bhelto, having become identified with the grain, is cut down by a boartooth-tipped sickle. In mourning, the Goddess begins to pull away from the world, until, on Samhain (Halloween) she goes in search of him in the Underworld. There she is challenged By Death Himself, who is standing before her cauldron which he has stolen. When she proves steadfast, he reveals himself as her husband, Bhelto, become Yemos. She stays out of love, transforming death into rebirth. And then comes Yule. And so the circle turns.

[189.] Imbolc is the day when the Goddess returns. After giving birth she aged rapidly and went off with her baby. Now she reappears, a virgin with her sunchild. What happens in-between I do not know, although it is most likely similar to what happens on the new moon.

[190.] Many Indo-European mythologies have an opposition between a warrior and a lawgiver, the second and first functions. In the Myth of the Year, Yemos is the lawgiver ("To dwell enthroned, the judge of Gods and men") and Bhelto is the warrior (ref. Beltane and Midsummers: the wandering minstrel is actually a knight of a quest.)

[191.] The second major myth of Wicca is the Myth of the Moon. This follows the three phases of the Moon. The first is the Waxing Moon, called Artemis by some, Mari in Proto-Indo-European. She is the Virgin, the Maiden, the loner, the playful one. She slowly transforms into the Full Moon, Selene, Mater in Proto- Indo-European. Selene is the Great Mother, Lover, Wife. The Waning Moon, Hecate, Anna in Proto-Indo-European, is the wise crone, the sow who eats her young. The transformation of the new moon I do not know. These are women's mysteries, and it is not for me to understand.

[192.] The Legend of the Descent is the giving of divinity from Goddess to God, culminating in the Great Rite. This is enacted at the new year point--the universe is destroyed and resurrected, although in another form. At Beltane the Son, a man who is an unrealized God, wanders in from the wilderness, to kill the Old God and thereby become God Himself. He then reawakens divinity in the Goddess and they celebrate the Great Rite--again the cosmogonic myth. Wicca has two new years. This coincides with the fact that in many covens the God rules the winter and the Goddess the summer. This is how it should be; the man is deified at Samhain and the woman at Beltane. But of course, the God at Beltane is merely returning the Goddess' powers--He only has them as Her son (and, later, Her husband), although He has forgotten that in the time He wandered as the Fool.

[193.] The birds in the Akkadian Myth of the Descent represent the souls of the dead as helpless flitters about, feeders on carrion. But the birds of the shaman are symbols of transcendence and freedom, of the soul ascending to heaven. The bird as a symbol of Isis is a symbol of protection (as in "to place under one's wing"). The Wiccan Myth of the Descent may easily incorporate these three meanings--the Goddess descends to death, to be confronted by the helpless dead, those with no hope of rebirth. She herself assumes the wings of Isis (or, in another version, such as Rhiannon, takes the birds as companions. And, since there are three of them, perhaps they are her in another form), and extends them over all men. 194. The Descent of the Goddess is from her manifest form to her unmanifest form, from Ekwa to Chaos (as in the ascent through neo-platonism's seven shells), there to meet the God, who has gone, on Samhain, from the personal to the impersonal form, from Yemos to Motion. And there is repeated the Primal Act, the Great Rite: Motion enters Chaos and together they create Love, and Love becomes manifest. This is the creation of the world.

[194.] The Descent of the Goddess is from her manifest form to her unmanifest form, from Ekwa to Chaos (as in the ascent through neo-platonism's seven shells), there to meet the God, who has gone, on Samhain, from the personal to the impersonal form, from Yemos to Motion. And there is repeated the Primal Act, the Great Rite: Motion enters Chaos and together they create Love, and Love becomes manifest. This is the creation of the world.

195. The Primal Act: not just a once and for all, but a continuous act--from manifest to unmanifest and back. Constant disso-lution, constant unification; the cycle of rebirth, Samsara. As in the Book of the Law: "For I am divided for love's sake, for the sake of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all." (AL I:29-30)

[196.] The Primal Act:
On the Yin/Yang level, a continual vibration between complements that forms a basis for manifestation.
On the Nuit/Hadit level, the relationship between possibility and point of view that gives rise to Reality. On the Chaos/Winged Man level, a mythical framework that creates Time and Space.
On the Maghya/Cernunnos level, a sexual act that creates the physical universe.
On the Ekwa/Bhelto/Yemos level, the development of sex into a complex mythical relationship: the seasons to begin with, but remember--the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.
And of course, on our physical, personal level, the primal act is simply sex in its purest form. But when it is part of the Great Rite, the participants rise through the levels to Nuit/Hadit, the highest level that is at all sexual.

[197.] Note that Chaos/Winged Man is to Nuit/Hadit as Ekwa/Bhelto/Yemos is to Maghya/Cernunnos: a mythical version of an abstract.

[198.] One of the reasons why crossroads are sacred to Pagans is because they divide the world into four quarters (as per Kerenyi, who discussing Hecate, was writing about the number three), the sacred plan of Paganism. That's why it is appropriate to place a pole there--uniting the four quarters with the three worlds.

[199.] Dionysos, bringer of unholy madness and mystical revelation. Most people think of him as merely the God of Wine, some drunken lout. That's fine with him; he's the Fool, who walks his path with a certain passion, not caring about others' opinions. He will laugh and sing with them, but if any frown at him he will walk away giggling.

[200.] The sea is female, yet ocean deities are almost universally male. The sea god is the manifest power of the sea, king to queen sea, showing forth her power. it is the same with Death; Death is female, but we approach it through the male God of Death. (In some cases, though, the deity of death is female; the devourer, the hungry vagina, the sow who eats her young. But the God usually appears there as psychopomp, so there is really no difference there.)

[201.] What is the meaning of the Bleeding Spear in the Grail mysteries? The psychological meaning is obvious--the phallus shedding semen (semen=life=blood) into the vagina (Grail=vagina). (Perhaps the Courier in the Beltane rite should be armed with a spear instead of a sword. The myths and legends are quite insistent on Perceval/Peredur being armed with a spear or spears.) But what is its meaning in terms of Celtic sovereignty myth/ritual? It is a peculiar enough symbol that it most likely goes back to the Grail's Pagan origins.

[202.] Another problem to be solved is the Lame King. Perhaps he comes from the days when the old king no longer had to fight for his kingship but could use a champion instead. And, later, when a knight could not hope to win the kingship, but could still hope to accomplish great deeds that would save his king. So perhaps it is not from the Pagan days but instead from the transition days. Or even from the later Pagan days when the desire of a king to continue his rule combined with his political power to force a modification of the custom. This occurred all throughout the area of the sacrificed kingship; it should be no surprise to find it in the area of the challenge kingship. What king willingly gives up his life?

[203.] The apple is a sacred fruit. Its flower has five petals and the fruit has five divisions. It is therefore sacred to the Goddess (it is a pentagram), as is the pomegranate (because of its many seeds).

[204.] The apple is one of Wicca's sacred trees. It is said to grow in the Otherworld, so it is a symbol of Death, but if you cut it open through the center horizontally, there is a pentagram formed by the five seed chambers. So its message is clear: life is hidden inside death. The omegranate, however, has the many seeds, the promises of new life. Yet it was these seeds that doomed Persephone to her stay in Hades. So its message too is clear: death is hidden inside life.

CHAPTER FIVE
RELIGIOUS DESIGN

205. Instructions for a religion:
Step 1. Make the potential convert believe he has a problem (original sin, dukkha).
Step 2. Convince him you have a way of solving this problem (salvation, nirvana).
Unless he accepts the existence of the problem, the path seems absurd.

206. Religions are ways of giving order to reality. Giving it, not observing it.

207. It is thus seen to be true that everyone is religious, for everyone lives in a structured reality.

208. The religious impulse is a search for a metaphor. Meaning arises only in context and ultimate meaning only in ultimate context. Since there can be no ultimate context there can be no ultimate meaning. Metaphor is context. Therefore the religious impulse is ultimately defeated: no ultimate metaphor is possible and religion must be satisfied with the limited.

[209.] Religion gives everyone a place in the cosmos and reinforces that place with rituals.

[210.] Different people are suited to approach God in different ways. Some are suited to be monks or nuns, and some are suited to be householders. Their appreciations of God will be different as well; that is, despite a common formal allegiance, or ritual, or terminology, they will have different religions. But then, so does everybody, since every person's God is unique. This is because everyone's Point of View is unique.

[211.] Below the Abyss--which is to say, below the Infinite of Infinites, at any point at which Tao/God is at all manifest, even as pure idea (Yin/Yang, Ground of Being, Love, etc.)--everything is arbitrary. All events, objects, ideas, beliefs, are local, arbitrary orderings of the original Chaos. ("Arbitrary" does not mean "randomly occurring" here, but rather "without absolute meaning." Their meaning is in their context.) Thus all religions are equivalent on the Infinite level. Do not misunderstand me; I am not repeating the old platitude that "all religions are saying the same thing." They are not; the God of Islam and the Void of Buddhism are very different. But neither is true outside its context. Any ordering of Chaos is true so long as it is internally consistent. It may be irrelevant to Chaos if it is not open to the Infinite, but that does not make it wrong. Within it, it is all true.
Any religion which is open to the Infinite is a legitimate way of approaching that Infinite. It is the true and maybe even the only way within its context, but you can change contexts at will and not worry about being wrong. Your choice should be guided by culture, upbringing, and purpose. Pragmatics should outweigh dogmatics. Who are you? Where are you? What do you want? The answer to these questions will give you the answer to the question, "What religion should you be?"

212. "All religions are basically saying the same thing." In a pig's eye! The Ultimates in the different traditions are clearly different. An argument might be made that they are masks worn by the Infinite of Infinites. But so long as we stay in one religion its particular mask is unremovable. Are those who believe in the equivalence of religious visions willing to give up their own religions to see that "same thing?" Perhaps the experience of the Infinite in a mystical state might be argued to be without a mask. But how can it be grabbed in the infinitesimal moment between the experience and the mask? I maintain it cannot. The mask is a real experience, worthy in itself, not to be denigrated as covering up the more Real.

213. The reason why it cannot be said that two different religions are worshipping the same God is that a religion is an all--inclusive Point of View. Two such Points f View can only be compared in the context of a third Point of View. Thus, since neither includes this third, and since the third treats them externally, the statement that they are worshipping the same God is meaningless.

214. There is God-1, the Infinite of Infinites, sometimes called the Godhead. Then there is God-2, God as we experience It. Every religion is trying to understand God-1 (that's all there is anyway), but each religion's highest conception is God-2, and these are all different.

215. Entropy--a closed system tends towards disorder, towards chaos. But how is a universal system, a religion, to be open? Any opening in a religion must be to the Infinite. And the Infinite is Chaos. Open or closed; it doesn't make any difference. Chaos awaits.

216. You must remember, that when a system is open to the Infinite it lets in a bit of the unmanifest. Order cannot hold out forever.

[217.] Like all hierarchies, my hierarchy provides a way to the top. Like some hierarchies, it allows entry at any point. Unlike most hierarchies, no value judgement is made against any levels; being a devotee of Nuit is not better that being a Wiccan. Someone who works with the two Wiccan levels may come to as complete and understanding as the worshipper of Nuit. The levels are arbitrary distinctions of a field where no distinctions really exist. So unlike all other hierarchies, the top that it provides a way to is not in the hierarchy itself.

[218.] Religion can work on a number of levels. One useful way to divide it up is Folk Religion, Theology, and Mysticism. (Things We Do, The Structure of Divine Reality When We Think About It, and The Structure of Divine Reality When We Experience It.)

219. We are all on a pilgrimage to Truth, but once belief becomes established, it is falsehood. Once we have found Truth we have lost it. Once we have left the pilgrimage to live in a shrine along the way, we have left the game, and Truth is gone.

CHAPTER SIX
PAGANISM AND WICCA

[220.] The Pagan metaphor is nature; the Pagan question is "What does it mean if I live my life with this metaphor?"

[221.] A Pagan lives in the world. He is part of it, has grown from it just like all the plants. He belongs here. This belonging results in actions ranging from turning off the water when brushing his teeth to organizing recycling in his community to observing some form of the Wheel of the Year appropriate to his local environment.

[222.] The different Pagan techniques are technologies to express this living in the world, to make it even possible. A Pagan can make use of more than one. For instance, as a shaman I seek the alternate shamanic view of the world, I seek to heal myself and others by bringing us into the world and keeping us there, and I seek to show proper respect to the spirits that share the world with me. As a Wiccan I follow the Wheel of the Year as a frame-work for my actions and attitudes, I revere the Sun and Moon above and the Earth beneath, and I sacralize the principles of male and female. There is no conflict here. I use one to relate to the world and the other to my own psyche, but others may make a different distinction, and even for me the distinction is a lot fuzzier than it looks expressed that way.
What is important is to be in the world as I find it here and now. All the rest is technique.

[223.] If I had to name the greatest message of Paganism it would be this: the world is good. Paganism sees the world in all its splendor and all its horror and says, "I accept this just as it is." And more than that, it goes on to say, "And it is wonderful." This is not to say that a Pagan would be apathetic about suffering. It is in our nature as human beings to struggle against suffering and that nature is one of the things Pagans accept and revel in. But Pagans refuse to award any cosmic status to suffering; we are not ethical dualists. Suffering is bad for us because we are people and people do not like to suffer. So as people we fight it. But we also accept it as part of the Universe. Part of the grace my family uses is "Be happy; the world is good." And one more quote, this time from Nietzsche: "Pagans are all those who say Yes to life, for whom 'god' is the word for the great Yes to all things." Yes. Yes to the happy, yes to the tragic. Joyous acceptance. (The Antichrist, 55).

224. What, in Paganism, is man's problem? It is not that he is cursed with an inherently sinful nature. It is not that his desires cause him suffering. It is rather that he has wandered away from his inherently divine nature. If he has any inherent flaw it is the same as his inherent strength--he is free, and thus free to screw up. But he is not some sort of wretch in need of salvation.

[225.] Neo-Paganism's unique contribution to Paganism is an acceptance of all history as sacred. Whereas in Paleo-Paganism history is sacred only in so far as it approximates the Dream Time, and in Judaeo-Christianity certain points in history (Exodus, Incarnation) are sacred, in Neo-Paganism each moment is sacred. This is pantheism carried to its ultimate end.

[226.] Every unique entity, either individual or collective, has its own associated spirit. Indeed, the recognition of the existence of the entity as such is the recognition of its spirit. A rock is separate from the mountain because it has its own spirit and the mountain includes the rock because the mountain has its own spirit. There is no contradiction here. There is not even paradox. Things are as they are.

[227.] The gods themselves are inseparable from the material world. They are involved in it as parents and lovers and children. That is indeed why they are plural and not singular; a God may be transcendant because he is the ultimate other. But gods share with us the necessity of relationship. They can never be other.

[228.] The gods share with us the necessity of relationship--that is, not only with each other, but with everything. Just like everything else, they arise and continue to be in context.

[229.] There is no such thing as Paganism except from the outside. It is a term given by Christians to lump other religions together. Within Paganism there are a variety of historically mutually exclusive mythical frameworks: the shamanic, the astrological, the agricultural/sacrificial, and more. Neo-Paganism is casting its net far and wide,pulling in fragments from all these and attempting to put them all together into one structure. Is it possible? Probably not, at least not without misunderstanding the functions of each within their respective cultures. Is it desirable? That's not my decision to make.

[230.] Wicca is based on a primal myth, the most basic statement in mythical terms of what it means to be human.

[231.] Wicca is not a direct survival of pre-Christian religion. It is a reconstruction, the majority of which is due to the genius of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente.

[232.] Mine is a mystical, tantric form of Wicca, whose Magic is not in spells, but in the intricate play of the Universe, the loveplay of God and Goddess, the goal of which is to hear the symphony being played out by all of Reality, to throw oneself into the vast river of Change, into the Void.

[233.] There are two conflicting strains within Wicca: 1) The Pagan, which teaches acceptance of the natural order of things. 2) The Magical (Magic-2), which teaches control of events. These are reconciled by Magic-1. Or as Ursula Leguin writes:

You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower, until at last he chooses nothing, but only and wholly what he must do.

[234.] Wicca isn't just gentle. But that's because the world isn't just gentle. Wicca does its best to be a mythological and ritual reflection of the world. Things just as they are, which puts us in the middle of an interplay of forces which can destroy us or lead us to realize our own inherent divinity. They can, therefore, from our point of view, be gentle or cruel. But we can never make them gentle by ignoring the cruel.

[235.] The beliefs of Wicca are best found in the rituals.

[236.] Wiccans have a responsibility to their Craft greater than the members of most other religions have to their religion. We are a reconstructed religion, and although Gardner's pessimistic prediction of the imminent death of the witch cult hasn't come true, neither is it growing by leaps and bounds. We are recovering a dead religion and we have the responsibility to preserve it. And we have the responsibility to live it to the utmost.

[237.] A group that doesn't correct error has collective guilt. In some sense, the entire Catholic church has a responsibility for Northern Ireland's troubles. And therefore they must achieve a collective forgiveness. The same thing goes for Wicca. Individual (or even community) spiritual development isn't enough. Wiccans need to work off our collective guilt. This is not Baptist guilt. No original sin, no depraved nature, no groveling before God. We are Gods. But Gods make mistakes too.

[238.] The coven hierarchy reflects the divine hierarchy. The Priestess is the Goddess in all of her forms, and the Priest is the God in all of his forms.

[239.] A coven is a group of people who have decided to say "thou are God" to each other. It is very easy to know your own Godhood when you are acting the part of a God and being recognized as such by others (especially those you know are also aware of their Godhood).

[240.] Perhaps urban Wiccans should abandon Wiccan ways for a more city-oriented path. Each city (like each tribe among the Celts or Germans) could have its own God or Goddess. Or perhaps a Goddess of cities in general--Urba or Urbina maybe? I`ve always thought the Statue of Liberty would make a nice Goddess for our country—Liberté.

CHAPTER SEVEN
MAGIC

[241.] Magic is when you do one thing and get another. When you try to understand the process in a systematic way, when you explain it, you have science. But what does it mean to explain something? For instance, when you turn on a light switch the light comes on. That's magic. But how? Well, the act connects a switch through which electricity flows to cause a filament to glow and give off light. We say that something has been explained when it has been translated into terms we already understand. For instance, the light example assumes we understand what electricity is. If we don't, the explanation must go further. Electricity is the movement of electrons. But what are electrons? And so on; the questions go on forever. Magic always remains. What we have to recognize is that the three-year old asking "But why?" represents the ultimate in science and the celebration of magic.

[242.] Magic is a way of being and doing in the world. The magician sees the world as a constantly shifting pattern. It is her job to decide by what rules it shifts and to shift with it. Since she deals with Infinity, of course, it makes no ultimate difference how she views it, as long as she acts correctly in reference to that view. That is true from the point of view of Infinity. But from the point of view of a human being in a particular culture, some ways seem more right than others, and she will have more success with these. Thus, in our Western culture, the Myth of the Twin Gods (or Father and Son) fighting for the Goddess makes sense. No one who grows up in an English-speaking culture can escape this myth; it lurks behind so many of our stories. Magic takes place within a mythical framework.

[243.] Imagination is the beginning of magic.

[244.] There are two forms of magic, usually called high magic and low magic. This implies a value judgement that may not be fair, so I'll call them Magic-1 (high) and Magic-2 (low). Magic-2 is what most people have always understood magic to be--the manipulation of events through unobserved (and possibly unobservable) means. Magic-1 is similar to mysticism. It is a system in which the magician seeks to attain union with Ultimate Reality and a total understanding of the nature of existence through transforming the self by means of rituals. Crowley compares Magic1 and mysticism thus: Mysticism works on the formula of 1-1=0. The student attempts to realize the All by loss of self. Magic works on the formula 1+(-1)=0. The magician seeks to incorporate and balance everything within himself and thus attain the All. He does this mainly by ritual, in which he slowly learns the structure of Reality, at the same time identifying himself with it. Magic-2 is a technology; Magic-1 is a ritual mysticism.

[245.] I am inventing a world where magic is the constant destruction and recreation of the universe out of the Void, whose every instant hums with a song of love between God and Goddess. Next thunderstorm sit in the dark and listen. And when the lightning flashes, let it be you who flashes with it, with a flash akin to orgasm, calming down to the rumble of thunder, and then the caressing of raindrops. Or stand outside among trees, while the wind blows hard, and become the trees. Sway with them, creak with them, talk with them as they recite their poetry of great forces. Become the wind, caressing the trees in their love affair of the constantly moving with the stationary. Be caught up and drop, as the wind blows and ebbs. Feel its rhythm within you. Or stay up to watch the sun rise over the hill, and feel the earth turning under your feet. Or clouds. Or a running stream. Or the ocean--watch, listen, feel. Do these things and you will understand my magic.

[246.] Or if you lie on your back under a tree and watch the leaves move in the wind. If you try to see and feel things from the point of view of a leaf you'll experience a shift in reality that will show you the way to magic. Learn to bring about that shift at will.

[247.] My goal as far as magic (both 1 and 2) is concerned is to be able to sense all the forces around me and grasp them and weave them at will, to play with them as if they were themes in a symphony. The way to learn this is to listen and let the forces flow through you so as to learn the way they float through each other. That's where meditation comes in--it's a way to learn how to shut up and listen without judging or even being involved. [248.] It is not enough to do magic. You must be magic.

CHAPTER EIGHT
RIGHT ACTION, RIGHT PRACTICE

249. Nowhere to go,
Nothing to be gained.
Since everything is by nature perfect,
What need is there of salvation?

250. Seeking purification
I spent a hot time in the sweat lodge.
Seeking guidance
I spent a cold time in the forest.
When all was said and done,
I had found nothing special.
When I had found what I sought, I had found nothing special.

251. Nothing special.
Nothing special.
"What did you go out to see?"
Something special.
"And what did you see there?"
Nothing special.

252. For a while I tried belief as a path. That got me somewhere, but not far enough.
Then I tried doubt. I doubted all things. That got me further, but not far enough.
Neither belief nor doubt is enough. The way to take is a third way: Wonder. Wonder at all things; expect nothing.

253. Expect nothing; expecting is the way of belief. Deny nothing; denial is the way of doubt. Wait and wonder.

[254.] When I can wonder at all things, remaining silent in the wonder of their existence, I will be ready for the next step.
And I do think there is a next step; I think it is only our Indo-European tradition that makes me think in threes.

[255.] Two quests: What is the purpose of each particular event or thing? How can I accept the events and things without insisting on a purpose? We have glorified the first, made it the most noble goal life can have, and have degraded the second with terms like "blind faith" and "uncomprehending acceptance." But I tell you this; it is just as noble, just as glorious, and yes, just as hard to accept as it is to explain.
And it is only after we have truly accepted that we can find our own place.
The fourth step: belief, doubt, wonder, and now acceptance.

[256.] Acceptance isn't resigned but joyful. Passionate, even as in Nietzsche.

257. You do what you do. You do your best. And you keep on doing it.

[258.] While the sacred is all about you, seeing it requires you to look differently than you are used to. You must pay attention without forcing it. Tough, huh? But you must do it if you want to know the sacred for what it is. Otherwise, you will have to see it like most of us--out of the corner of your eye, like a fairy or a faint star. It will be like a dream that you can't quite remember the details of in the morning after you get out of bed.

259. Trying to see the sacred will not work if you try too hard. You must try it as if you were falling off a cliff--inch up to it, balance on the edge, and then -- just -- fall.

260. Fall into the sacred. It will hold your weight. You will not hurt it.

[261.] You are blessed. You are sacred. You are God. Do you see it? Can you feel it? Please, please pay attention. Open your eyes and see without preconceived ideas. Or if you cannot, then see how wonderful, how amazing those preconceived ideas are. Wonder!

[262.] Not seeing the sacred is itself a sacred act. All acts are sacred. Seeing the sacred is a sacred act. All acts are sacred. Trying to see the sacred and failing is a sacred act. All acts are sacred.

263. Home, right now. At this very moment enlightenment is yours to grasp and let go. You've been there all along.

264. This moment is perfect. Everything you have done and everything that has happened to you has been to prepare you for this moment. And now it is here. What will you do with it?

265. "For behold:
I have been with you from the beginning
and I am that which is obtained at the end of desire."
The meaning of this part of the Charge is the same as the following Zen story:
Kozankoku (Huang Shan-ku), a Confucian poet and statesman of the Sun, came to Kwaido (Hui-t'ang) to be initiated into Zen. Said the Zen master: "There is a passage in the text which you are familiar with which fitly describes the teaching of Zen. Did not Confucius declare: 'Do you think I am hiding things from you, O my disciples? Indeed, I have nothing to hide from you.'" Kozankoku tried to answer, but Kwaido immediately checked him by saying "No, no!" The Confucian scholar felt troubled in mind but did not know how to express himself. Some time later they were having a walk in the mountains; the wild laurel was in full bloom and the air was redolent with its scent. Asked the Zen master, "Do you smell it?" When the Confucian answered affirmatively, Kwaido said, "There, I have nothing to hide from you."
Right here. Right now. All has been ready for you from the beginning. Nothing is hidden from you, nothing ever has been hidden from you. There is no secret meaning to these words, no esoteric formulas that must be puzzled out. I come before you as clear as a crystal in order that you might see through me and know that I am hiding nothing.

[266.] The point is not to become sacred as opposed to profane. The point is to become yourself a hierophany: sacred and profane in one. It is not just that the sacred valorizes the profane. It is that the profane valorizes the sacred as well. (It kind of makes you wonder if in the sacred world they would spend massive amounts of time invoking the profane.)

[267.] We are used to thinking of things from one point of view only. That is why it is so hard for us to understand how we can say both "You are already enlightened" and "You must strive for enlightenment." Both are true and false, depending on the point of view; the first is true from the Point of View of Infinity, and the second true from the Point of View of the Finite. Go, strive for enlightenment, and when you achieve it you will know how it is nothing.

[268.] Is mysticism the search for contextless meaning and is it potentially successful?

[269.] There are a number of reasons why mystical inflation (the magical tradition of identifying the self with the Universe) and mystical deflation (pure mysticism; detachment of self from everything, leading eventually to the abandonment of the ego-self as real) both lead to the same result. One is that if you are the universe, you aren't really little old ego-self anymore. And that's the same result as the other path. Another is the equation ∞=0.

270. Q: Whom does God worship?
A: God worships Himself.
Q: How does God worship Himself?
A: By being the best God He can be.
Q: How does God do this?
A: By playing the most infinite games He can.
Q: How should we worship?
A: By being as close to the Infinite as possible.
Q: How do we get close to the Infinite?
A: You already are.
--The Stamford Catechism.

[271.] If you worship God you will find Him. If you do not worship God He will be compelled to find you. Go on, make it easy on the guy.

272. Why do I worship the gods? Because it is right for me to do so. One can only answer that question by doing and seeing.

273. "Because I like to"--the wisdom of the three-year-old. Why worship the gods? Because I like to.

[274.] Prayer is not for the sake of God (the Infinite); God contains all things and therefore needs nothing. Prayer is for two things: 1. The gods. Gods are created by belief in them and gain power by worship; they draw it from our rituals (prayers). 2. Ourselves. Prayers remind us of the Infinite and help us realize our divinity.

275. Life is not a battle. It is a game. And not a game to be won, a game to be played. "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" is actually true.

[276.] If we break our slavery to the creation cycle, we will perceive the eternal Chaos, which when seen from its own point of view is called Nothing or the Void. So step 1: break free from the cycle. Step 2: attain the point of view of the Void.

[277.] Did you happen to notice that steps 1 and 2 are the same?

278. Did you know that the Void has no point of view?

[279.] Meditation is when you stop talking and moving and thinking and acting, and just shut up. Then, once everything is quiet, the voice of God comes through. Now many people sit there and listen to God for the longest time, and they end up thinking they've reached the end. But others know better, and they manage to get God to shut up--which is fine, because He's silent by nature anyway.

[280.] You don't have to meditate in special positions. Choose any position in which you feel both relaxed and alert. There is nothing special about meditation, anyway.

281. Is there anything more tedious than people who meditate regularly and insist on telling you all about it? (Certainly; people who insist on telling you their dreams.)

282. Q: I want so much to meditate and I know I should be doing it, but I find it so hard to get around to it. What should I do?
A: Don't worry. First you've got to bring yourself, somehow, to meditate just for a week or two. Just keep thinking, "Just seven more days, just six more days." You can do that. Then continue meditating just for that day. Don't think, "I'm going to be meditating every day for the rest of my life." That would be enough to turn off a saint. Think instead, "I'm going to meditate today. Tomorrow I'll just have to see what happens." Two things might happen: 1) This trick will work and you'll keep on meditating daily. 2) You'll stop meditating for a while. But this is okay; you'll have taken that first step on the Path. You may not be meditating, but something will be going on. It has to be; when you meditated for a while you went down to the cosmic doggie pound and got your own little yapper to keep you moving.
There's more to advancement than meditating, you know.
---The Stamford Questions

283. When you practice self-discipline, who disciplines and who is disciplined?

[284.] As well as meditation you should be engaged in physical exercises. Your sitting will be better, you breathing easier and more controlled, and your body less likely to complain, more supple. Your added power and grace will help you continue your meditational attitude throughout your everyday life. But most important, you will not be separating the sacred from the material.

285. Are you meditating for insights? For wisdom? Or even (vomit the word, spit it out, kill it) for enlightenment? Don't be such an ass. Meditate because it is right to do so. You know it is or you wouldn't be doing it.

286. Just because it's right doesn't mean it's easy.

287. Nothing is going to do you any good until you give up. Give up the systems, the organizations; give up the myths. Then it will happen. Just because it's right.

288. Give up. Only when you strive for the sake of the striving alone, with no hope of success, will your striving be pure. Only when you no longer work to achieve a goal will your work be the work of attainment. As it says in the Book of the Law, (AL I:49) only when you are "unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result" will you be "in every way perfect."

[289.] You must practice non-attachment. You must not be attached even to the practice of non-attachment. You must not be attached to any spiritual practice, or even to the goal of your practice. You must not be attached to non-attachment. It must be done as easily as a boat releasing its ropes so the tide can bear it away from the shore.

[290.] Non-attachment is not to be without possessions or friends, but to recognize that possessions and friends are transitory. They may stay with you, but what they were at the time you acquire them passes away forever, to be replaced by what they have become. With your most splendid effort you cannot prevent this, and yet you try. This is the source of your unhappiness, the difference between what you want things to be and what they have become. You must stop trying to hold on to things as they are at any one moment. Even accepting change is not enough: you must love change, seek it, revel in it. You must yourself be a perfect manifestation of change.

[291.] Non-attachment does not require separation of your consciousness from the external world. What it requires is immersion in the continuous flow. Separation is attachment; we make something more real in the very act of withdrawing from it.

[292.] Forgiveness is a form of non-attachment.

[293.] How many of our limitations were imposed on us by stray remarks directed towards us when we were children? "He's no good at (fill in the blank." And how many more were self-imposed as adolescents trying hard to define ourselves? "I'm an intellectual, so I can't like sports." Self-definition should be the self's concern, not that of ghosts from childhood. Do not define yourself by your limitations, or you will chain yourself to your weaknesses.

[294.] Give up your attachment to your limitations.

[295.] Sin is defined either as separation from God or disobedience to the will of God. It should be obvious how neither of these can be true for the butterfly--how can we be separate from that which is everything, and how can we disobey the will of that whose will is infinite diversity?

296. Q: If everything is relative, if there is no ground on which to stand, are we allowed to do what we will?
A: Yes, allowed, but by the Gods, if you do something make sure it is what you will. You must know what you are, what experiences have made you, and act in accordance with that, or, if you do not like it, change what you are. (Remember, all order is imposed on Chaos.) Do it. And accept the consequences as joyfully as you performed the action.
---The Stamford Questions

297. To act as though the matters of the moment had an absolute importance is to confuse the finite with the infinite. "This too shall pass"--and from the point of view of infinity (or even the point of view of 1000 years from now) it has no meaning.

But there is a complementary mistake. To act as though the matters of the moment had no importance at all is to confuse the infinite with the finite. That way lies apathy, since it doesn't matter from the point of view of infinity (or even from the point of view of 1000 years from now).

Matters of the moment have importance in relation to the moment. They derive their meaning from the finite context (point of view) in which they occur. No more, no less.

But remember--you live in a particular finite context.

That's where you will find your meaning.

[298.] "Consistency is all I ask". Consistency=integrity. Consistency within your point of view is a vital aspect of learning to act as God. Your views of life must be consistent. (Tom Stoppard, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Act I)

[299.] This moral law is laid upon you by your identity as a conscious creature: Be consistent within your point of view.

[300.] To lie is to be inconsistent.

[301.] How should we treat those who mistreat us? Act in context. We are each part of many things--a family, a society, a species, a planet, a universe, a Sacred Reality. How will your response to mistreatment affect those communities of which you are a part? Are your motives in responding pure, or do they confuse the different contexts? It isn't easy to distinguish the contexts. But no one said living a sacred life was going to be easy.

[302.] You already live a sacred life. Live it well, with all your attention, with all your passion.

303. There is no discrepancy between what you do and what you believe. If you do not live up to what you think are your values it is because you are wrong; they are not your values. You have two choices: 1) Change the way you live to correspond to what you would like to have as your values. 2) Change your values to correspond to the way you actually live. There is no difference between values and actions. Values are like common law or natural law rather than legislated law; that is, they are ordered observations of the way things are rather than prescriptions for the way things should be.

304. Paganism isn't about punishment or reward. It's about living the good life, in the sense meant by the ancient philosophers. To live in the way that will result in the greatest beauty and truth--to live authentically. And why? Because it is right to do so. We live as people are meant to live--that is the good life.

305. This does seem to deny the importance of context. I am speaking here of a right way to do things, almost a natural order. It would seem at first as if I had abandoned my position of no inherent meaning; of purpose arising from point of view, from context.
But it is in context that the good life is lived. What is right for this moment, this place, this person, this community, this planet--this context?

306. It is the question of context that has tripped up many people who have been taught moral relativism, as well as many who criticized moral relativism. It is indeed true that the rules of morality arise out of the situation. But that does not mean that "anything goes." It means that we must examine carefully the context of our lives and determine our correct actions from this careful examination. We do not give up our responsibility to act morally, either to a philosophy of "if it feels good, do it," nor to a set of rules that claims to apply to all situations.

[307.] We each play our own part in the infinite diversity that is God. Play your part well.

[308.] Do not let "spiritual" life interfere with your life as a householder if that is what you are. Each path is divine. Keep up your meditation, be mindful of the sacred, find God in your family life. When the family is grown, you and your spouse may then decide to enter into spiritual training on a full-time basis. This is the traditional Hindu way. It is a good way, preventing friction between the sacred and the profane that may keep you from recognizing their equality.

[309.] Ahimsa is not when you say "I have sworn ahimsa; therefore I will not kill this animal."
Ahimsa is not when you say, "I will not kill this animal because we are all brothers."
Ahimsa is when no thought of killing arises to be argued away.

[310.] Ahimsa is when no thought of killing arises--because all thought of killer and killed has vanished.

[311.] A Pagan has a moral obligation not to waste anything. It all comes from Mother Earth and Father Sky.

[312.] If a man picks up a piece of litter, he has performed an act of merit before the Gods.

313. It all hangs together; it's all one piece. If you pick up trash from the ground you are helping prevent nuclear war.

314. Find a place or a time that is on the border. Somewhere that is in-between. That is where you will find the answers. The balance on the knife edge, the sword bridge that crosses the river or the chasm. Find the between place, find the between time--find these and then find the answers. They wait for you.

[315.] All between places are sacred space. All sacred spaces are between places. They are where the one touches the other, where an irruption of the sacred can take place, has taken place, will take place, is taking place.

[316.] Take your lessons from the world around you. A pillar, for instance, teaches me balance, stability, and the power that comes from these, the power to bear great weight. Or does it? Do those lessons come from the pillar or are they in me and is the pillar merely a releasing stimulus? What is the lesson of the pillar in and of itself before you put you preconceptions, symbologies, and myths onto it? Can you find it? And if you find it, can you face it?

317. All hail to Odin, who gave an eye for wisdom and then hung nine days on the world tree, a sacrifice to himself. May our resolve be as great, that our attainment may be likewise.


319. The dog isn't just at our heels. He waits for us at the end of each stage of the Path. The little domesticated dog turns out to have been one with the wild jackel-headed lord of death--Anubis, god of initiation, weigher of souls. You must make your soul as light as the feather of truth.

320. What the hell do you want? And what made you think you would find it here? Or maybe it doesn't matter. Think the thoughts, do the exercises, live the myths--and then just see what happens.

321. The most important thing is to begin. Do something, anything. Meditate, even for five minutes a day. Set up a shrine. Say a rosary. You will soon see results that will encourage you. Even the smallest exercise, repeated regularly, will have its effect. You will grow more disciplined, more discerning, more dedicated. You'll see.

322. But don't worry about it. You have forever.

CHAPTER NINE
RITUAL

[324.] To worship a pantheist God is to say "Thou art God", with the twinkle in your eye that says, "But so am I." ( Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land)

325. The role of rituals in all religions cannot be overemphasized. Beliefs and rituals are each symbols for something higher, but rituals are less likely to become idols.


[327.] A ritual invokes a myth, orders Chaos; or it breaks the order, returns to Chaos. Ritual is of the Winged Man, is male.

[328.] The ritual must end with a return from Chaos; you must not stay in the madness. (If you cross the street in a mystical state you'll get hit by a bus.) Thus the rite as a whole starts with the breakdown to Chaos (the Warrior), continues with a sojourn in the Void (recharging with the Mother's power), and ends with a reconstruction of reality according to myth (the Lawgiver). Rituals restructure the universe.

329. Rituals take place in sacred space. It might, in fact, be said that sacred space is created by the very enactment of a ritual, whether it is specified to have been created or not. The acting out of a ritual also takes place in sacred time, since by definition a ritual has a beginning and an end. The time of the ritual is sacred.

330. If you can make your whole life a ritual, then you will live in sacred space and sacred time.

331. Any ritual should follow a plan or it will simply be a mishmash. "Spontaneous ritual" is a contradiction of terms, although spontaneity is very often incorporated into ritual.

332. A ritual is a meaningful arrangement of symbolic acts, words, and objects.

333. In a good ritual the acts aren't symbols of something, they are that thing – for the duration of the ritual. When we say that a ritual act is symbolic we are speaking from outside the ritual.

334. There is no such thing as symbolism in a ritual. In a ritual things are what they symbolize. The symbolism comes when the ritual is looked at from the outside.

335. The symbols must become that which is symbolized. For instance, if a ritual to consecrate a tool contains the words, "let this water be a symbol of purification of this tool", the tool will be cleansed of symbolic impurities. I don't think that is what is intended. You must say instead, "This water purifies this tool" (you certainly may make the words a little fancier), and then the purification will be complete. If you don't believe the acts to be more than symbolic in the midst of performing them, you're wasting your time. Go do something you can believe in.

336. Actions becoming real is the crucial point. Rituals create universes, define the real. That is why the first act in a ritual after purification is either the creation of sacred space or the invocation of the deity: the universe is ordered, the relationship to the Infinite defined.

337. A ritual explained is a ritual destroyed.

[338.] All the rites of Wicca lead to one end, the realization of Godhead by the participants. The creation of sacred space, the purification of self and world, are but preparations for the Drawing Down of the Moon, the Legend of the Descent, the Great Rite, the seasonal festivals, in which the participants identify with the Godhead by acting as Gods. This is the crux of Paganism, its distinguishing mark. In Christianity the important thing is what you believe; in the Eastern religions it is what you experience. But in Paganism the emphasis is on what you do, on how you fit into the workings of the universe.

339. A Westerner, attending a conference on religion in Japan, took the opportunity to visit as many Shinto shrines as possible. At the end of the conference, he said to a Shinto priest, "I don't get it. I've visited your shrines, I've watched your rituals, but I don't understand. What are your beliefs?" The priest thought for a while and then said, "You are right. We don't have any beliefs. We dance."
I wish a Neo-Pagan had said that. We dance. To the rhythm of our hearts, to the rhythm of our breathing, to the rhythm of day and night, to the rhythm of the moon, to the rhythm of the seasons, to the rhythm of birth and death and birth again--we dance.

CHAPTER TEN
ROUND/LINE, GODDESS/GOD, WOMAN/MAN

[340.] The question at hand seems simple. Which is the appropriate view for a Pagan: 1. That of the Round; that is to say, that there is a pattern to the Universe or to each particular individual (a Tao, a Dharma, a Wyrd), and our aim should be to live in accordance with that. 2. That of the Line; that is to say, the path of the hero, the one on the quest, who acts as an individual in relationship with the sacred, but does not give up his freedom of action to it. Joseph Campbell puts it in terms of the Neolithic and Bronze Age (the agricultural) versus the Iron Age (the hero) and the Northern European. It might even be defined as the Goddess versus the God.

[341.] These speculations work on a personal level, of course, one that cuts me to the quick: what am I to do? To follow the Tao or embark on the Quest? It's not just an academic question of influences in modern Paganism, but one that questions my very purpose for being, that makes me wonder about my every action. The closest reconciliation I can come to is a slinky approach--the rising spiral. But this results in a great danger of reducing the circle to a retarding of the line, or perhaps at best the Round is reduced to a technology for a more efficient progress. Its meaning is thereby lost. Can the two be reconciled without one being submerged in the other?

[342.] Is this part of the answer to the circle vs. line question? We accept the round joyously even as we act in accord with our human, linear nature. But how are we to do this?

[343.] The shaman, the Paleolithic man who faces nature as a separate soul and says "I accept you." The grown child, acknowledging his source and reverencing his relations, who nonetheless goes his way because he must; it is his wyrd. Reverence, acceptance, relation--as an adult to his mother. Thus is the European tradition taken back to its Paleolithic roots and discovered to be compatible with the Neolithic after all.

[344.] Predestination vs. Free Will. Communism vs. Democracy. Faith vs. Works. All are versions of Neolithic vs. Northern European. Can all be reconciled by the Paleolithic?

[345.] The shamanic journey, the Hero's Quest: descent into Nature, return to individuality. The self is strengthened by the encounter with the Round. It is Figure/Ground, Point/Space, Hadit/Nuit all over again. Not one final solution but a relationship.

[346.] In The Flight of the Wild Gander, Joseph Campbell makes the point that in Oriental religions the formula is a=/=x, where a is the individual and x is the Ultimate. This means that the individual both is and is not the Ultimate. And in the Levant the formula is aRx: the individual has a relationship with the Ultimate. But in Europe the formula is aRb, where b is another individual. What he doesn't say is that x is still there. And in this formula x=R: the Ultimate is found in the relationship of one individual with another. Not the impersonal sex of the tantric, but a relationship of two unique individuals. That is how Europeans see God.

[347.] Relationship is the solution.

[348.] But what is mankind and what are his unique talents? We are not in fact part of the Round; we are broken off bits that must somehow find a fit. But a fit with what? Is our goal to fit once again with the Round, to replace our bits upon the wheel? But that would be to deny our special talents. Or are we to clump together off the wheel or perhaps to make our ways as individual bits? But that would be to deny the world which brought us forth, to be take out of context and thus be meaningless. (Existential angst is the reductio ad absurdum of the European world view.) One frightening resolution which I must reject is for our ultimate goal to be the return to the Round for the very reason that we are separate. That is, because we are separate we have the goal, unique among creatures, of losing this separateness. This would be our tragic fate. And this I must deny, not because tragic fate does not have a strong appeal for me, but because its appeal arises only in the joy of passion striving against it. We are what we are; that must fit. So indeed, even our separateness is part of the Round. Let us glory in it, let us revel in it, let us find our passion in it. Not against the Round, but in counterpoint to it. We need each other, the Round and Mankind.

[349.] A reconciliation of Round and Line--man confronts nature, secure in his own identity, secure in his own sacrality, and affirming the equal sacrality of nature. Here we are, here we stand; are we not brothers?

350. There are an infinite number of ways that are in accord with nature. The true fate of a person will always be one of them. There are an equally infinite number of ways that are not in accord with nature. The true will of a person will never be one of them.

[351.] Homo sapiens is like a bubble in Nature--part of it, yet cut off. We can have our own ways, but they are played out against the background of nature.

[352.] The Line is drawn upon the Round. (An infinite curve would be straight in any finite section.)

[353.] One of the differences between the sacrificed God-king and challenge God-king is that the former submits to the Round and the latter does not. The challenge king works out his destiny against the background of the Round. He is a Markoff chain, an apparently ordered segment of a greater Chaos. For the sacrificed king, life's meaning is found in the way life fits with the great Round. But the meaning of the challenge king's life is found in the hero's path.
In Neo-Paganism there is a tension between the two traditions. The Celtic and Germanic influence is almost pure hero tradition. But coming from the Levant, by way of Graves and the feminists, is the Great Round. Thus the Iron Age meets the Bronze Age and the Neolithic. It is difficult to say what the eventual result will be. It is equally difficult to say whether being conscious of the two differing traditions and deliberately weaving the strands will help or hurt.

[354.] The Legend of the Descent is a woman's mystery. The woman descends into her (male) unconscious to confront and reconcile herself with her animus. This is at Samhain. Opposite in the calendar is Beltane. This is a man's mystery. The two sides of man confront each other. The dark one is killed (is eaten, is absorbed) and then the man can unite with his anima.

[355.] Women's mysteries tend to center around the menstrual cycle. Men's mysteries tend to be warrior mysteries. Both men and women must give blood for the community.

[356.] The Women's Mysteries in Wicca are based on the Myth of the Moon. The Men's Mystery is the Quest. The Quest is the development of individuality, represented by the Winged Man. The Man develops from the Fool, who does not even know he is separate, who does not even know his own body, and who take no responsibility for is actions because he has no free will (actions are through him, not by him) to the Warrior-King, responsible, alone, conscious.

[357.] The Grail mysteries are the mysteries of the Celtic sacred kings (challenge kings, not sacrificed kings), mysteries of sovereignty, mysteries of Beltane: the man must conquer and absorb his "other side", his Shadow, in order to win to wholeness, to unify with his anima, his unconscious, his Goddess (the Grail, the cauldron in the underworld, the queen).

[358.] But these are not the only men's mysteries. Just as the women have the Descent (reconciliation with their male parts) and the Myth of the Moon (the solely feminine cyclical myth), so the men have two mysteries: the Grail mystery (the reconciliation with the female within) and a solely male, linear mystery, a mystery of the warrior, the mysteries of Mithras, Unconquered Sun.

[359.] The Mysteries of Men are, on another, non-Wiccan level, the Mysteries of Mithras. The Soldier God, the Unconquered Sun, the Warrior, the Ruler.

[360.] No matter the tradition--Mithraic, Arthurian, American Indian--the Men's mysteries are the warrior's mysteries. No amount of waffling can change that. But only in the service of the Goddess.

[361.] We are all the Hidden Children of the Goddess, wandering in the Wasteland, searching for the Grail. The women resolve the Quest by mythic identification with the Grail, through the women's mysteries; the men by assuming the role of the quester Parsival, through the men's mysteries.

[362.] The quadrate circle is a male circle: a circle with a cross (+=phallus). The woman's circle should be a threefold division: This is a preeminent female symbol--the womb and the two fallopian tubes. The Crone is in the north, with Maiden in the east and south and the Mother in the south and west. This answers a question being kicked around in Paganism (primarily feminist paganism) on whether there's another aspect to the Goddess. The answer is that there may be, but it's not necessary, since a woman-only circle need not be arranged on a quartate basis.

The quadrate circle represents, in Indo-European terms, the three functions of the male plus the female. The tripartite circle represents, again in Indo-European terms, the Goddess who by her nature encompasses all three functions. There is no need for her to have the fourth part, because she, unlike the male, is complete in herself.

[363.] The Tower Struck by Lightning--in the Tarot it's falling down. But it is the phallus, the "hollow tube to bring down fire from heaven." It is the bridge between heaven and earth, the channeler of revelation. It is the phallus. Most particularly, it is the phallus after ejaculation; having spent its seed (the yods which fall from the crown) it dies in the very act of giving new life. (Crowley, The Book of Lies, p. 40).

[364.] The rainbow is the female equivalent of the phallus, the bridge between heaven and earth. It is the Maiden, the counter-part of the Sun. And as Kerenyi and Jung wrote, the Maiden is the Mother again, just as in the Kabbalah the Maiden and Mother are the He and He final of YHVH.

[365.] The bull horn to call the God; the conch to call the Goddess.

[366.] The God is all outside and the Goddess is all inside.
--But everything has both an outside and an inside.
Bingo. So what does that mean?
--That both the God and the Goddess are in everything.
Bingo again. That is the meaning of animus and anima, as well as the yin dot in the yang and the yang dot in the yin.
--The Rockland Teachings

[367.] He is all outside,
She is all inside.
This is one of the reasons why so many have wrongly said that women have no souls. When you go to His core, you find that He is all core, and thus His soul is obvious. But with Her, you can go deeper and deeper forever and never find any core. The mistake is to believe this means She has no soul. What it really means is that She has all souls, for She is the container of everything. He is soul; She has all souls.

[368.] He is the soul of each as She is the soul of all.

[369.] It is perhaps a bigger mistake to assume that all men are Him and all women are Her.

[370.] Does Paganism have a deity who acts in history? Yes. The God, in so far as He acts, acts in history, or rather, it is in His acting that He is, and in His acting that we have history. To be sure, He has a constrained end and follows Fate. But that is just what we all do when we act; the Goddess is the framework against which our acting (the God) takes place; the God the figure, the Goddess the ground.

[371.] The Goddess is the field in which the God operates. Picture it as the God wandering around on the Earth or voyaging through the Universe. Thus it can be said that, in so far as we act, we are the God. Yes, even women are more the God than the Goddess in sofar as they act.

[372.] Man's power may be a projection of woman's power, but women shouldn't get all puffed up either. Their power is a reflection of the Void, and it is at its greatest when they are most open to that Void.

[373.] The women will not attain to the Goddess unless it be through the God, just as the Man will not attain to the God unless he is on the path to the Goddess. Remember, the God is the Psychopomp.

[374.] The God is the path to the Goddess.

[375.] Perhaps it makes sense, this concentrating on the Goddess. She is the Earth, the Moon; She is even our bodies as we sit in meditation. We see Her, we feel Her; without, under our feet and over our head, and within, in our very life. But the God is the Sun, at whom we can not even look without pain. And He is us when we act, when we do anything. How are we to know Him then? Certainly not in meditation. (Perhaps in the meditating?) Thus the problem: we do not know how to know Him. He is not something to be known, He is the knowing itself. You will know Him in the rituals.

[376.] It is no coincidence that Patron Deities of travel tend to be male. After all, the God is moving. (Not motion; motion (=change) is the intersection of God (Time) and Goddess (Space).)

[377.] There is a split in the women's movement, sometimes evident even within individual women. It is the split between these two positions: 1. Women are equal to men. They are equally capable of producing the same performance in the same areas. There are no fundamental differences between women's thinking and men's thinking. 2. Women are different than men, even special. Their hormonal cycles give them a depth of experience not available to men. They need to get in touch with their bodies and learn how their bodies affect their performance and their thinking.

The reconciliation of these two positions lies in an accept-ance of the second combined with a redefinition of values. Women are different. The very cell composition of their brains differs from that of men. Ask any woman who's been pregnant or any husband of a woman who's been pregnant if hormonal levels affect thinking and personality. The thing to do is to learn in what way these things are affected (this will differ from woman to woman, although there will probably be general rules of thumb) and then to honor those ways. They have their own worth and must be acknowledged before they can be honored.

The goal is a recognition of equivalence rather than of equality.

378. In college a friend, a madman genius, once said as a non sequitur that we usually think of the male as active and the female as passive because the male penetrates and the female is penetrated, but that it is just as correct to say that the female is active and the male is passive, because the female enfolds and the male is enfolded.

[379.] Man is playful in some ways and serious in others. Woman is serious in some ways and playful in others. That is to say, Man is playful and puts on serious masks while Woman is serious and puts on playful masks. Cf. Joseph Campbell on the sexes and power: women go naked when they wish to make magic whereas men dress up. Woman Power inheres, Man Power adheres. This is Man's power: that he does not have inherent power and therefore can take power upon himself and cast if off at will. Cf. Nuit and Hadit and the Hearth Guardian and the Hunter: Man is the Roamer, Woman not only the source from which he comes and to which he returns but also the space in which he roams. Cf. the womb and the sperm.

This is why men's intimacies are found in competition and even in war. The Man and his Enemy are one. War is the ultimate play because it is the most serious manifestation of competition. Competitive play is cooperative; we cannot play against each other unless we play by the same rules. And yet war is open-ended; constant modifications of the rules are allowed. Even so, there is a self-righteous reaction when they are modified too far. Remember, for instance, the British reaction to the American colonists' adoption of Indian tactics.

Woman changes as the moon--always the same, even when different. Man changes abruptly--Father and Son. Thus the differing immortalitites of Goddess (continuous manifestation) and God (interrupted reincarnation). Woman is serious about Life; Man plays at Death.

[380.] Woman, for whom sex is a commitment, and man, who flits around.

381. "Men are incapable of expressing their emotions" is from Woman's point of view. Men express emotions playfully, as is their nature. And it is their right to do so.

382. When it is said that women are and men do, that is not to deny the doing of women or the being of men. But women do out of their being; their doing is a moving of a being. Men be out of their doing; it is in their doing that their being is found.

[383.] The male has been identified too long with the earth technical side of things. This, in feminist theory, is a result of his theft of the role of women. Whatever its cause, he must regain his celestial role.

[384.] There is a dance that the Bushmen dance, with the women in the center beating the rhythm and the men outside dancing. This is the most perfect ritual expression of the woman/source, man/manifestation I have ever seen. "Return the hunt to the measure of the dance"--man goes off and does his thing, but must check in from time to time to return to Her rhythm.

[385.] This a myth for man to follow. But woman in her mysteries will follow her own myth.

[386.] Men will continue to be men, to do things in men ways, even if they are doing them to the rhythm of women. One point to remember in the Bushmen's dance is that the women set the pace, determine the rhythm, drive the dance, but it is the men who decide how they will dance to that rhythm. They dance in a man's way, go out on their own and walk their own paths, to the rhythm set. One more reconciliation of Round and Line.

387. It is said despairingly by feminists that women's bodies are considered public property. Of course they are. They are the channel through which flows the life of the people. As such they are the servants of the people. But are men's bodies their own? The bodies that are sent to be destroyed on the battle-field, eaten away in the mines, lost in the ocean's storms, risked daily in a thousand ways that have not been required of women? Men give their bodies for the people too. Men bleed for the people too.

388. This is the secret of manhood that many men hide, even from themselves: Men are expendable. Deep inside we know that. It doesn’t cause us despair, but rather pride. It burns in our heart's core, warming and maintaining the knowledge of our worth to our people. Expendable does not mean worthless, it means useful.

389. Let this not be a battle of "my pain is greater than your pain." Let us instead accept our responsibilities and not hide from our bodies' uniquenesses.

390. Why are you here, at this place, at this time? This is the biggest of questions.
Why you, and not someone else?
Why this place, and not somewhere else?
Why this time, and not some time else?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
BIG QUESTIONS

[391.] Not all questions can be answered. Those that cannot include those where the terms are from different contexts. For example, is your pencil brave or not? Another class of unanswerable questions are those that involve infinity. For example, which is bigger, infinity minus one, or infinity minus two? The third class is made up of self-referential statements. The classic example is "This statement is false." Don't ever let anyone tell you you must answer a question yes or no. The world is far too messy a place for that.

[392.] Man is perfectly man. That is the only criterion by which he may be judged, since there is no personal God imposing rules.

[393.] Put three pencils together to form a triangle: △. Now take them apart. Where did the triangle go? Now take a bunch of memories, perceptions, actions, body organs, etc., and form a self. Take them apart. Where did the self go? Was it ever really there? Yes, just like the triangle. Was it ever really there? No, just like the triangle.

[394.] My being is intimately woven throughout the moment in which I look for it, and cannot be separated from it. There is no "I" to stand apart from the universe, just as there is no God to stand apart from the universe. Things only arise in context, only have their reality in context. "Is this real, in and of itself?" cannot be answered, because in and of itself there is nothing about which the question might be asked.

[395.] There is the immortality which comes from eternal change, and there is the immortality which comes from death and rebirth. The first is the Goddess and the second the God. Eternal existence without change is not immortality, it is death. [396.] Reincarnation--you mustn't think of it as historical; i.e., I live in one life and then another, past or future, and so on. Reincarnation, like the rest of this pantheistic universe, is happening all at once. I am your reincarnation, as I am the reincarnation of everything else in the Universe.

[397.] Reincarnation is going on right now. Your destruction and recreation is rebirth. And remember, you are reborn in every- thing you see. Everyone and everything you encounter is you, in another life. Did you think rebirth was linear? You should have learned by now that the linear universe is one of an infinite number of subsets of an infinite number of universes.

[398.] Reincarnation is not to progress. We are already perfect and infinite. Reincarnation is the playing out of our possibilities--an infinite game. The circle of rebirth is a dance of infinite variations.

399. Karma is not retribution, it is momentum.

[400.] On the questions of existence vs. essence, there are three assumptions made that are debatable: 1) There is such a thing as existence. 2) There is such a thing as essence. 3) There is a natural and necessary link between the two. The third assumption is the only one I find convincing. That is because I almost wrote "Essence exists" for assumption 2 and then I realized that assumption 1 could be written "Existence has a real essence." Now I defy you to take the argument seriously.

[401.] The question of Free Will vs. Predestination relies on the assumption of cause and effect. That in turn relies on linear time--first this, then that. But the linear view is only one of an infinite number of ways of looking at things. Therefore the Free Will vs. Predestination battle is a game to be played at will.

[402.] God, from God's point of view, does not care about good or evil. The Infinite, being unlimited, pays no attention to distinctions. But God, from man's point of view, cares very much. What he cares about changes according to context, though. Evil cannot be made absolute. Being true only in context does not make something less true; truth is always found only in context. From man's point of view, hate is evil because 1) it keeps us from seeing God in others, and 2) it attaches us, keeps us fixed and fearing change. Love can be evil, too, if it is attached love. Attached love is when we want that which is loved to stay as it is. All things change, and attached love soon becomes a lie. Good love (pure love) is that which embraces change in the loved one, loving both the changed one and the change.

[403.] If you cannot see a reason for something, there are two possibilities. 1) You have not really looked deeply enough or you need to look more creatively. 2) You have reached a postulate. If the former, the answer is to look harder or more creatively. If the latter, you must ask yourself: why is this a postulate? What unconscious prejudice laid down in my early years does this agree with? What about it "makes sense?" What will happen if I assume the opposite and then reason from that?

[404.] The real problem is deciding which possibility is true.

405. Q: I feel sometimes as if everything I've ever done was to bring me to this moment? What do you think?
A: You are here, where you are. What else matters?
--The Rockland Teachings

406. In the end all philosophical problems become linguistic problems--or they become koans.

408. After you've practiced for a while, you will come to the Gate, before which stands the Guardian. How will you go through it? The first time Ged reached the Door, he had to give his True Name. The second time he had to learn the True Name of another. After going through all his powers and using all his knowledge, he finally asked and was told. Lugh at the gate was let in because even though there where others with each of his skills, there was no one with all of them. Gandalf, at the gates of Moria, tried every spell he knew to gain entrance to the door that said, "Speak, friend, and enter." When he'd finally run out of spells, he spoke, "friend", and it opened. Another story has it that a strong man and a child reached the gates of paradise together. The gatesman told them that all they had to do to enter was get the gates open. The strong man tried all day to force them open. When he finally gave up, exhausted, the child knocked on them. The gatesman reappeared and the child said, "Please, sir; may I come in?" "Certainly," the gatesman replied, and opened the door. Or, as the Mumonkan would have it:

The Gateless Gate stands open
and no crowds of pilgrims block the way.

During your practice you must build yourself a gate and then confront its guardian. The biggest question of all your practice will then confront you--how do you open the gate?



[The following is the epilogue to the original. It's to intertwined to be able to mark it like I did the above, so here it is as it was written.]

EPILOGUE

1. There is an Infinite of Infinites. This term is used to distinguish it from limited infinites (all even numbers, for example). This is the basic postulate; as such it should be justified but cannot be proven. All proofs are a result of logic. Logic is an application of laws. Laws are limiting; therefore it is impossible to test the Infinite of Infinites with logic. The question of justification is left as an exercise for the reader. I will use the words "Tao" and "God" interchangeably for the Infinite of Infinites. That does not mean that I consider them to be equal to each other, but only that they are the best translations in their appropriate cultures for "The Infinite of Infinites."

2. Everything happens. Everything is true. If the Tao is to be truly infinite, it must contain all things, including both the existent and the non-existent.

3. Nothing happens. Everything is false. If everything happens, then the opposite of everything happens to cancel it out. From the point of view of the Tao, then, nothing ever changes.

4. The Tao is eternally changing. Permanence is limiting; therefore the Tao must change.

5. "Eternally" is a word based on a linear view of the Tao: first this, then that. Since order is limiting, the linear view of the Tao is false; since the Tao allows everything, the linear view of the Tao is true.

6. The Tao has no structure, since structure is limiting. It accepts all structures imposed upon it, since it allows everything.

7. Although nothing happens from the point of view of the Tao, anything may happen from the point of view of an observer of the Tao. That is, although the Tao may not limit the Tao, one of its finite elements may. Once a limit has been defined (point of view of an observer) other limits may be implied. From the point of view of an observer, then, things happen.

8. Reality is the intersection of infinite possibility and finite point of view, and is therefore relative.

9. The observer structures the unstructured Tao. A structuring of the unstructured Tao with all its attendant repercussions is called a religion. A structuring of an unstructured God with all its attendant repercussions is called a religion.

10. Since all religions are structures of God, from God's unstructured point of view they are all false. Since all religions are structures that order the Tao--that create the Universe--they are, from their creators' point of view, true. In creating a religion, the founder (each of us) has created a Universe. This creation is constantly occurring.

11. The act of structuring the Tao is the formation of a religion. The structure and all its implications and correlates is a religion. The system of symbols by which man seeks to express this structure is called a myth.

12. Weaving myths deliberately or operating on the Universe within a myth is called magic. The former is sometimes called high magic or theurgy; the latter is sometimes called low magic or thaumaturgy. When magic of either type is organized and subjected to mathematical analysis it is called science.

13. Since man is bilaterally symmetrical and divided into two sexes, it is natural for him to think of opposites. The most basic structure is therefore in those terms. "Complements" is perhaps a better word to use.

14. This complement structuring of God may be done in a hierarchical manner. This simplifies matters, appeals to most people, and makes its possible to develop a system of spiritual development. The hierarchy is neither true nor false, and it is both true and false.

15. The most abstract structure based on complements is that of the Yin-Yang: ☯. At this level the only characteristic of the complements is that they are complements. Specific qualities may be assigned to yin or to yang, each giving rise to its complement, but those qualities are not in the Yin-Yang itself.

16. Level 2 is mathematical--Nuit/Hadit. Nuit is n-space and Hadit the empty set. It is also spatial--Nuit is infinite possibility and Hadit the point of view.

17. Level 3 is the first level that is sexual--Chaos/Winged Man. They are male and female, but not personal--sex as an impersonal force.

18. The next two levels are the levels of Wicca. Level 4 is the Goddess/the God. These are female and male lost forever in sex. The orgasm of their eternal coition is the Universe.

19. Level 5 plays out the drama of Level 4 on this planet. It is here that the personalities of Level 4's deities become known. This is the level of the Myth of the Year and Ekwa, Yemos, and Bhelto.

20. These are the precepts. The most important thing to remember is that all of them, even the first, are non-Absolute. Remember what we are told in Principia Discordia (Pentabarf 5): "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What He Reads." Point of View. Yes, Yes.

21. There were 23 precepts, but two were lost. Finding them is the height of attainment.



REFERENCES AND INFLUENCES

Brown, Norman O. Love's Body. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. One of my favorite books, and a great one to help you learn to think mythically. Its style influenced my own.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces (2nd ed). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.

-----The Masks of God (four volumes). New York: Penguin Books, 1968.

-----Myths to Live By. New York: Viking Press, 1972.

Carse, James P. Finite and Infinite Games. New York: The Free Press, 1986.

Chuang Tzu. Basic Writings. tr. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. The writings of a Taoist sage.

Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Thoth. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1969. The best introductory book to this important occultist. As a person he was no prize, but his writing continues to inspire.

-----The Holy Books. Dallas: Sangreal, 1972.

-----The Vision and the Voice. ed. Israel Regardie. Dallas: Sangreal, 1972.

-----Liber Aleph. San Fransisco: Level Press, 1973. Another good introductory book to his thought.

-----Gems From the Equinox. ed. Israel Regardie. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1974. Excerpts from The Equinox. Contains most of Crowley's more important writings.

-----Magick in Theory and Practice. New York: Dover Publications, 1976.

-----The Book of Lies. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1978. My favorite of his books, and one of my favorite ever. Not recommended for beginners; it is very hard to penetrate.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. tr. W. R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1959. Another favorite. Should be read by anyone even remotely interested in religion.

-----Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. tr. P. Mairet. London: Harvill Press, 1960.

Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land. New York: Berkly Medallion Books, 1961.

Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. tr. D. C. Lau. New York: Penguin Books, 1963. Although this is available in a number of translations, Lau's is my favorite. This may very well be the most profound book ever written. I read it at least once a year.

Leguin, Ursula K. The Earthsea Trilogy. New York: Bantam Books, 1968. Beautiful stories with great wisdom regarding power, responsibility, and balance.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. ed. and tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1954. Misogynist and crazy, but generally considered far worse than he was. One of the few philosophers to write with passion.

Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her. ed. Malaclypse the Younger. Mason, MI: Loompanics, Unlimited, no date. Explains why there are 23 precepts in the Epilogue.

Ram Dass. Be Here Now. New York: Crown Publishing, 1978.

-----Grist for the Mill. With Stephen Levine. New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Reps, Ray (ed.). Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books, no date. Good selection of koans.

Ross, N. W. The World of Zen. New York: Random House, 1960. Good collection of koans, poems, plays, essays and such.

Shea, Robert, and Wilson, Robert Anton. Illuminatus! (3 vol.) New York: Dell Publishing, 1975. Fantasy, occult, mysticism, and politics all mixed together. Has to be read to be believed.

Suzuki, D. T. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. New York: Weatherhill, 1970.

Van de Wetering, Jan Willem. The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Zen Monastery. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

-----A Glimpse of Nothingness. New York: Pocket Books, 1975. Together they form the best introduction to Zen that I have found.

Watts, Alan. Does it Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.

-----Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. More essays.

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