sacred techniques and occult technologies

I just posted this on my livejournal, but figured it was fitting enough to be included here as well...

Yesterday after drinking way too much coffee then I needed I biked down to CMU for the art sale, at which James and Laura and Matthu had a table displaying all the work they threw together the day before while Matthu and I were recording. Right across the aisle Alberto was set up, and I couldn't help but let myself fall into his strange spiraling landscapes and technorganic geometries. As much as I wished I had the money to buy one of his masterpieces I contented myself with flipping through a stack of photocopied pages from his notebooks. To my shock and pleasure I discovered that he had not just copied some of his more beautiful hand drawn pieces but several pages worth of instructions for drawing golden spirals, phyllotaxis, and hypercubes and other sacred geometries all in relation to each other. Alberto taught me phyllotaxis awhile back and I recently passed it on to James and Luara, and for the past several days I had been experimenting with golden spirals based off of fibonacci's sequence and was only beginning to scratch the surface, but here in my hand were secret techniques that would allow me to push these lines to the horizons. I felt like I was holding pages torn out of some ancient grimoire, magical knowledge hidden in the layers between ink and page, and when Alberto saw me scrambling through the pages he laughed heartily. Of all the people who had walked past the table that day and rifled through the sheets I was the only one so far who saw them for what they were, magic spells, and a chance to tap the mind of one of the greatest living alchemical artists in the world, or at least on this side of the room. How am I so blessed that my closest friends, the people gathered in this ten foot bubble of art and energy, are the ones who will revolutionize the medium and push art past whatever boundaries it has currently been languishing? And is it coincidence that they've all gone to CMU and live in Pittsburgh? I think not.

I am not a trained visual artist myself, or even a seriously dedicated one. I am a dabbler for the most part, and have chosen language as my primary medium, but when it comes to sacred geometries I can't stop myself from working with them. They are like maps to the universe, little bits of ordering tossed up from the chaos that help it make just a little bit more sense. A petaled circle, a graceful spiral, to some they may be pretty lines, but to me they really are magical devices, and worth infinitely more than simple money.

"You will put these to good use" Alberto said, as I handed him some creased bills, "and teach me anything you get out of them." Of course I would, and I smiled that on one of the pages was his son's small footprints, themselves a study in complexity. Sarah was there with Javier and I looked into the child's eyes and realized that they were not really blue or black or any color at this point. They were like hematite or mercury, shimmering and flowing over the world that to this little one will always be an incredibly mindboggling wonder. The son of artists and shamans, those eyes will see more than any of us could possibly imagine.


tangled attractors

I went home where we celebrated Joan's birthday, and I spent the rest of the evening drawing, trying out new lines and angles and permutations till I could no longer think straight and the ink began crawling off the page. At one point James came over, and we finally got a chance to talk about a few of the visions we had had during the other week's session. Well, mostly I rambled about matrices, seeing rooms and beings with closed eyes, downloading instructions from the akashic records, and being a mask on the film of the iridescent bubble of reality or a cell in the talon of some vast intergalactic sphinx-like hyper-deity. Finally we settled down to draw some possible appearences on what we both came to decide was a psychic hub that connects each of us to everything else we have continued contact with through the angles of certain usage patterns; a device very similair in description and purpose to Castaneda's assemblage point, which interprets a reality from the lines of the world that pass through it. James remarked that we didn't have to be physicists to make breakthroughs in the field, at which I laughed and said that's because we're metaphysicists and that if there was a breakthrough, chances are it would break out other places as well, which seems to be the norm for inventive memes. Who knows, perhaps this too is another sacred geometric passed down from shaman to shaman throughout the ages to map the precious fields of chaos.


assemblage point

the taboo against saying what you believe to be true

It seems the self-expression vs. self-repression memeplex is floating around right now, as I just read several lj entries all dealing with accepting one's own peculiarities and longings enough over society's mores to be able to actually express what we feel. I've been going through this for a long time too, trying to get the jump on the cop in my head, trying to severe myself enough from the super-ego where I can just not give a fuck what comes out of my mouth. Granted I am one of the more repressed people that I know. It's a sad fact but one I am learning to deal with. I don't talk much, but when I do people usually look at me funny. More often now they look at me funny anyway, which is fine as long as I don't care. At least that feels honest. Several weeks ago Joel and I were having this conversation, when he brought up the idea of "not giving a fuck", and said something to the effect of if you are not personally attached to the words that come out of your mouth, other people will be more likely to accept them for what they are, and accept you for what you are. Of course, Joelski usually has to worry about saying too much rather than too little, but at least that's honest too. For example we went on to talk about Christian booty rap (of all things) and he eventually started rapping "who's my mother-fucker? God's my motherfucker!" Which could have been extremely offensive if we were actually attached to the memes of religion and it wasn't a true statement in their mythos. Afterwards I used this as a test to see just how much one could get away with saying in a social setting and repeated this story loudly at several bars. When I got to the "god's my motherfucker" line, people usually laughed, and then said if they hadn't heard it in the context of a story about not giving a fuck what you say they might actually have been offended by it.

Of course, the types of things that usually come out of my subconscious are generally less amusing and more perturbing if people don't have any understanding of where I am coming from. Like when I told Joel about seeing spirits in the corners of my room. Granted I was drunk and raving about all sorts of psycho-delic transcendence at this point (Joel is one of the few people who I can really let it all go in front of), but when I told him about the spirits he said that it sounded like I either needed to find a priest or a psychologist to talk to. At which I laughed and said most of the stuff in my head could easily get me locked up by someone with a normalized view of what is possible. At least I can draw a line between what I know to be real and all the crazy perceptions I put on top of the real to amuse myself and create change on deeper levels. But it's probably true though. If I really didn't give a fuck at all what came out of my mouth I might end up in a mental institution. Sometimes it feels like I say these things anyway precisely to push that boundary. The social limits set up to disuade people from talking madness are much deeper than those set up to keep people from expressing their true feelings for each other and the world. Saying you want to sleep with someone, or love them passionately, or you want to overthrow the government, these things are easy to say, almost acceptable to say, even when we pretend they are not. Other people may not agree with your sentiments, but they still find them as valid opinions. Talking to ghosts and communicating with other people through the backs of their heads are not so valid right now, at least in most circles. And then the question comes up, is this too just a faulty personal perception of what society deems acceptable?

The cop in my head has his claws in deeper than I first thought.

riding quantum waves

Here's the aforementioned diagram of the human energy octave represented as a wavefront, based off an unfolded golden spiral confirming to fibbonaci's sequence (for aesthetic reasons only, I kind of doubt the harmonic ratio between the layers is really 011235813). Click on the picture for a larger and labeled version of the diagram. I picture it as a single wave spinning around itself, like if you took a conch shell and spun it on its tip like a top, so that the 3rd 5th and 7th centers extend out from the central axis to form the qabalah map. The center axis is the main tree and the left and right sides the body and mind trees respectively. And I couldn't keep myself from spicing up the drawing with a fractal series of golden spirals. If I had a really large sheet of graph paper this could show how multiple waves become connected (in the blank space above the quantum layer and extending out in each direction). Like always though, my ability to put these concepts into visual form falls far short of how I perceive them internally. But hasn't that always been the curse of the artist? Feedback greatly appreciated.

(a look at) the 8 layers of human consciousness

[scroll down...]

8. Spiritual-fractal energy - heaven	non-local quantum neuroatomic	cosmic metatypes	god/ ILU – avatar application	black C - aura
7. Mythic-ontic thought - wind	archetypal morphogenetic	akashic genotypes	shaman session	white b - crown
6. Psychic light - fire	imaginative neuroelectric	psionic memotypes	metaprogrammer presentation	violet a – pineal
5. Sensory-creative sound – mountain	communicative neurosomatic	hedonic processes	yogi transport	blue g - throat
4. Socio-political air – lake	connective self-organization	civilized protocols	domestic human network	green f – heart
3. Conceptual-experiential fire - water	directive timespace-binding	paleolithic semantics	exploring child symbol (identity)	yellow e – solar plexus
2. Emotional-sexual water - lightning	responsive movement	mammalian parameters	dualistic child sign (stigmergy)	orange d – gravity axis
1. Physical earth - earth	environmental bio-survival	invertebrate medium	infant signal (channel)	red c - coccyx

I've been working on this chart for weeks now, trying to draw up suitable graphics to represent the eight layers of human consciousness as a waveform, but decided just to post the chart as it was anyway, which might perhaps encourage me to finish my drawings post haste.

Anyway, these ideas are mostly out there, and I drew a lot from traditional chakra mappings (with an 8th total field chakra), the qabalah (can you find it?), the I Ching guas, Wilson's 8-dimensional take on Leary's circuits of consciousness, metachor's recent work on mapping the OSI model of computer network protocal stacks with the occult stacks, and of course my own lived experience of the different layers, which like always seems to contradict previous maps of this territory. I'm sure most of this will be out-dated before I even post it.

While helping me compile this work Metachor pointed out that several of the layers form dialectic pairs across the body-mind spectrum. Particularly the 3rd, 5th, and 7th layers which end up forming the side spheres of the qabalah when mapped out. I'll have that diagram done soon...

illusions of madness

I haven't been posting much here this week. Along with the spring I have been in an extended state of euphoria that makes reflection difficult and analyzation near impossible. It also doesn't help that I've been working on my hypersigil regularly. When ever I'm writing a story it is my life, it's world is my world, even if that isn't exactly the world my body is in. And worse, I can't look at any other text without reading them as the lines in my head, or as fodder and inspiration for that plot. But most of all I've just been feeling wholly ecstatic, in a way that far surpasses my usual manic states.

It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "

That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.

Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.

Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.

romancing the universe

[notes from my blackbook]

Since my latest undisclosed mind-opening experience last Monday I’ve found myself aware of psychic realms that are quickly becoming a body of magical technique. Unlike last summer’s breakthrough which was more of a total bodily experience of universal interconnection, this was more focused on the specifics of how to use that connected energy in my workings.

For days I’ve been forming a stronger psychic connection with my muse (HGA, whatever you’d call it). Last year the Teacher and I were on 4-aces and almost succeeded in breaking through the boundaries of selfhood, and I had my first direct experience with that place right behind our heads where the self and the world become one. At one point reality grew so thin that he said if I looked over I could see another being present in the room that was made from the both of us together. At this point my psyche couldn’t have handled it, and I didn’t look. The other day though I had this experience again in a much more controlled and relaxed manner, recognizing that we are connected in a matrix like manner as individual masks on the face of some larger collective entity, and can learn to access that point of connection. So after the usual ritual preparations, circling, yoga, breathing, etc… I meditated on candle flames with half-closed eyes (which I am trying to develop into a scrying technique) and began chanting to my muse romantically as if to summon her into actual being with my love. The energy in the room was gathering rapidly and the flames flickering wildly, and as I got to the peak of my chanting and verbalized that she was here I felt a tangible presence in the room connected around from the back of my head and the wall above my alter began rippling like water, as if something might emerge from the thinness. I knew that if I looked around, she would be there. But I didn’t, because I heard the strange popping noises in the upper corners of my room which has become a call sign for negative energies. Ever since I magically set off the fire alarm interruptive noises suck me into a ‘bad reality’ paranoia and have become inimical to my workings.

I decided that what I needed was a tool that could clear my mind and space, that would act as a metanoic edge to separate the energies I wanted present from those I didn’t and keep me from slipping into the dark. I’m not so familiar with the Golden Dawn system of magic for creating such tools, but recognized that a sword or athame was the right device for the task. Not having a good ceremonial knife handy I picked up the old wooden toy kris dagger my cousin had fashioned for me as a kid, which already has a lifetime of positive and magical experiences gathered around it, and placed it on my alter. The next night I stayed up until I had reached the sleep-deprivation trance state and then as the sky turned from black to gray to blue I did several sun salutations and stood on my head for ten minutes before sitting at my alter with the sword in my hands. It was raining softly outside, and birds were singing joyfully in it. The window was open and these sounds were carried in on the gentle spring wind. All this peace wrapped around me and cleared my mind and I channeled that feeling into the sword with all the memories I had of its past use in my childhood. Then I recited my favorite Rilke quote, which is in itself a mantra of clarity. "Cast the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe – perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying." As I said this the flock of birds in the tree out front took flight past my window and the rain stopped. Then I rubbed fragrant oil over the blade to act as a mnemonic trigger for its new energy, and it seems to work so far. Just touching the object brings me back to that peace of rain and birdsong and clearing the corners of my room with it has made the following rituals much more peaceful and undisturbed by strange noises and energies.

Last night Metachor recommended that I read the latest Maybe Logic Quarterly, and with great joy found Eva Davis’s "Holey Bible part 2" which contained not only a great deal of magical and anarchist experience and a clever retelling of the Genesis story, but an account of trying t o make love to the sky. For a long time now I’ve been learning to become the sky, using breathing to form a yogic dissolution of inside and outside. The way I look at it all our fear and self doubt are like little bubbles of air that get trapped in us and cause tension, and by breathing they are released and join back with the air from which they came. In a tantric sense making love to the sky would bring about such a union, and having realized during Monday’s escape that breathing is the primal sexual experience figured I might as well give it a try. After clearing and some yoga I laid down in corpse pose and relaxed my physical body, visualizing it filling up with a star-filled sky. I let my body float on the waves of my breath, a technique picked up last fall by studying the rocking motion of being in a German wheel which I fortuitously had access to, and began relaxing my energy body. I’ve been doing a lot of work learning to vibrate my chakras recently, with breath and intonation, to the point of being able to recognize and activate their different layers of energy vibration as they play out in my daily life. As I charged them I focused it into an internally erotic feeling similair to that of raising kundalini, so that the breath and energy flowing through me were titillating my subtle centers as they passed, like the world was fingering my soul. As the energy raised through me I felt myself lifted off the ground, and when it broke through my crown and connected around to the world I was swept up in waves of ecstasy with each breath. I was no longer this physical shell writhing in pleasure on the floor, but the air that surrounded it and carried it and flowed through its every cell. The sky and I had finally become one. Then while I was so open and so on I "made love" to my room, to my alter and candles on it, merging with everything around until there was just one. And to think before this I had any clue what the yogic yama brahmacharya actually meant. Practicing total oneness… What next, the sea, the flames, the planet? I feel like I could romance the whole Universe right now, a recognition of the subtle processes of being as inseperate from the spinning of the stars. I think my magic and yoga just got a lot more exciting.

Black holes 'do not exist'

These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.

"This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.

Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.

If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole."

You know, I always sort of suspected that something like this would end up being the case. It just makes so much more sense that such strong gravity around a negative core would create enough kinetic force to keep the galaxies spinning. Like the void between electrons from which the virtual photon is formed that propels them apart. I imagine there's a little spot of nothing in the middle of most things, even in our own subtle energy centers, a microscopic void taking in the flux of particles and spitting it back out in some altered form, and binding the whole system together. Sartre might not have been quite wrong when he said consciousness was actually nothing.

[via posthuman blues]

welcome to the machine

I created a new lj, os_matrix for my latest work of journalistic metafiction, Open Source Existence, the first installment of which I posted here recently. This is the field notes of one free agent trying to break out of the matrix reality-construct in which he has recently found himself.

I figured if I'm going to be juggling all these different realities it was best if I gave them each the free reign they desire.