Charleston 2007
Heather, Morgan, and I spent Memorial Day weekend with Diana, Doreen, Gregory, and Holly at Doreen’s new house in Charleston, SC.
Before leaving, I did a Working to strengthen my skills as a Social Alchemist, so that I might better play my part in opening portals of possibility and mystery for us all, and to further enter into my own Mysteries. I wanted to have a richly rewarding time with my family, and the Working was designed to give my particular qualities and skills at exploiting the right times and moments a fine-tuning. With this in mind, it is interesting to note that the only conflict of the entire weekend occurred when I was not present.
The bedroom that Heather and I used had a Hawaiian fetish statue in it, a large tribal figure carved out of deep brown wood, with an enormous bald head and, most strikingly, the dual genitals of a hermaphrodite. I have never actually seen a statue quite like this, but I have read about some of the symbolism, and I know that a hermaphrodite is considered by many archaic cultures to possess great power, which is why many of them became shamans. Diana’s mother Doreen, a “white” witch who describes herself as a Christian-Wiccan, told me that the statue had been given to her by her own mother, and said that she didn’t “like to mess with such things”. White-siders often fear and disdain anything that smacks of the Black! The statue made her nervous, and she expressed an interest in leaving it to me in her will. I said that I would be glad to have it.
I brought along my book by Huston Smith called “The World’s Religions”, which I find to be worth reading more than once. Buddhism became my operative framework for the day. It set the proper tone for myself, and nicely contrasted with the conversations of the other adults, which tended to gravitate toward tales involving negative emotions about other people who acted stupid and drove them crazy. Diana and Doreen both fire themselves up to frenzied heights over the actions of others, and this seems to be a popular basis for bonding amongst all strata of society in our culture. I could tell them that this is the kind of thing that Buddhism consciously strives to overcome, but they would just look at me like I come from another world. In a sense, I do.
The following words struck me with force:
“The realm of the gods is not a distinct place. It is where the traveler stands; and if that stance happens to be in this world, the world itself is transmuted…this our worldly life is an activity of Nirvana itself; not the slightest distinction exists between them.”
“The noisy disjunction between acceptance and rejection has been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually is…that which is sin is also wisdom; the realm of Becoming is Nirvana…This earth on which we stand is the promised Lotus Land.”
“The bodhisattva rises to the point where the distinction between time and eternity has lost its force. That distinction, drawn by the rational mind, is dissolved in the lightning-and-thunder insight that annihilates opposites. Time and eternity are now two aspects of the same experiential whole. “The jewel of eternity is in the lotus of birth and death.” Where to eagle vision the river can still be seen, it is seen as connecting the two banks rather than dividing them.”
- Huston Smith
O, and let me not forget this one:
This world is a mansion of mirth; here I can eat, drink and make merry”
- Ramakrishna
It is worthwhile to say that, amidst the potential volatility of the whole company, which was composed of feisty and opinionated people, a great time was had by all.
On the way to the beach, I played Gentle Giant’s “Out of the Woods”, which infused my day with the perfect mental soundtrack to the powerful polyrhythmic currents in the sea. Alien gods slumbering in sunken cities near the bottom of the abyss! Tentacles of a humongous octopus coiled beneath towering waves! The moon bathed eerily in a deep blue sky. We yelled and played with the innocence of laughing children in the rough and tumble water, which had the strongest undercurrent I have ever felt. Fortunately it dragged us southward, parallel to the shore instead of out to sea, which would have been deadly.
That night we had a sumptuous fish dinner. Diana’s son Gregory, who used to annoy me to the depths of hatred, has turned out to be a bit of a genius, the signs of which he has shown for a long while, in spite of and / or because of his loud and erratic, over-the-top behavior. We had long and intense discussions about the future of America, Iraq, religion, and the dwindling global oil supply. He is very intent on a plan of his own to create a hydrogen-based fuel source to power the whole nation that exploits hydrogen’s ability to combine, separate, and recombine. “Imagine a plane that can run off the air it sucks in, and can fly for as long as a pilot or computer can keep it running. Imagine a car that never needs refueling. Imagine power plants that create no harmful waste product.” He told me, going into the science behind it all in a very articulate and confident fashion that, frankly, left me a little behind. None of that really mattered to me, I realized, only the enthusiasm of the boy speaking to me, and the Big Picture he was painting, which I recognized as a worthy goal. He told me that such a technology would probably appear in the military fist…and could be sold as engines to power tanks and aircraft that would need no fuel lines or sources to protect. He told me the military angle would protect him from the hostility of the oil companies. I cautioned him about overconfidence in this approach. He is also the first 17 year old I have met who has read Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, which he said reflected back at him thoughts that he had already suspected, which was my own first reaction to it. After some of these intense conversations, he returned to roaring and video games, etc.
May the delicate structure of potential genius withstand the pressures that it cannot yet foresee or imagine! Gregory’s father was a potentially brilliant man who squandered his intelligence on sex and drug addiction; a brilliance that eventually turned on itself and caused him to do the weirdest, most senselessly self-destructive things.
The next day Heather, Diana, Holly, and I went into Charleston to walk around the marketplace. For this venture I donned my perennial role of the Quester who searches for that magical object / experience that he will not know until he finds or creates it. This role has always served me well, and is an excellent form with which to approach and enter the Mystery of the Unknown. Walking past the alleyways to somewhere down the cobblestone streets, I did an impromptu Working to utilize the local magical currents as fuel for my Becoming. No one of course would have any idea that I was doing such a thing, and would see only a bald guy walking down the street. This type of public Working is a purely internal event. After it was finished I stated “So it is done”, and went about having fun. You consciously work to forget about such operations after doing them primarily to keep yourself from dwelling on them, which blocks the crucial unconscious developments from taking place.
We came to the heart of the marketplace, which was a huge flea market underneath a series of long roofs. The human carnival was out in force. Colorful clothes and skin and babble! Above the sonic tumult a black man stood in an adjacent alleyway and belted out operatic vocals in a deep, sonorous voice that floated over everything like a wave on the surface of our sea.
Heather came up to me to show me what she had bought me. It was a little green Buddha statue and black pedestal for him to sit on. So there was one of my operative gods to reach me in a physical representation. I continued on, eyes open for my unknown magical object. Directly across from the opera singer I came to a stall that sold African art. The man who ran it was a remarkable specimen of humanity, friendly, open, and direct. The artifacts on his table were stunning in their visual power. I saw immediately what it was that attracted the cubists and surrealists to African art, the elongated heads and features, the distorted proportions, the darkness of the wood, the surface sheen, the slightly frightening menace and alien-ness, as if it was created by creatures from another planet or dimension. These objects were magical by virtue of the power they exerted on my imagination, which was stimulated to infuse them with high voltage and amperage. My eye was immediately drawn to a head with two horns rising from it. It was visually wicked and thus beautiful. I talked to the man running the stall. He was from Ghana. All of the artwork came from tribal craftsmen in Ghana. He went around to every object and told me of its symbolic meaning, all of which was positive. Even tho this may be the entire truth, since tribes have always traditionally suffered from a fear of almost everything, I thought that this emphasis was for the tourists who were buying them. I have never yet come across a god who did not possess certain qualities that us westerners would cast under the umbrella of the “dark side”. “Nothing is good or evil but thinking makes it so”, say’s Hamlet, a piece of wisdom that is central to an understanding of magic. A god’s power comes from his or her ambiguousness to such human categories as good and evil, thus all gods have a dark side relative to a culture that believes in good and evil….and as I was saying, I was talking to the man. I asked him for certain clues I could look for as signs to a shared meaning. He showed me the statues and masks that had bead designs on them, and said they were all about prosperity, as the beads were at one time a form of currency and exchange. The mask I was interested in stood for good harvests and happiness, hence the horns on its head. Horns are universally a symbol for virility and nature. I had found my magical object, and bought it. The man told me that his life was divided between the US and Ghana, and that he did not entirely live in one of the other, but was perpetually in between both. This makes him a man who lives in a liminal state, which is a transitional state between boundaries, like the one between wakefulness and sleep, light and dark, youth and adulthood, conscious and unconscious. Set is the god of liminal states. I told him that exciting things happen in liminal states, shook his hand, and thanked him.
Afterwards I found Heather and Diana and Holly, and we all posed for a group picture. I held my statue up, and he became a part of it, too. The risen sun is carved on his forehead.
I watched the crowds in the marketplace. From a distance I heard the Who’s “Armenia; City in the Sky” playing. I realized that it is not necessary for me to “be a part of” what I see going on. To perceive things in a detached yet transformative way is a superior form of action.
On the way back to the car we walked past a monumental church with a spire that dominated the downtown skyline. On an impulse that is typical to me, I walked thru the gate that surrounded it and opened one of the old wooden doors, walking inside. No one followed me. I walked thru the lobby and looked into the vast cathedral. A priest stood in the aisle, delivering a sermon to about 20 people clustered together in the pews in front of the main stage, a very small group for so cavernous a hall.
“And that is a central point about Popeye”, the priest said. “It is the same one we can find in other forms of pop culture, like Star wars. Let us look at Luke Skywalker. What did his mentor OB1 Kenobi say to him just before he blew up the Death Star?”
There was silence in the cathedral. I came close to saying “trust your feelings” in a loud whisper, but restrained myself.
“Use the Force, Luke”, the priest finally said. “So you can see how pop culture can present us with the message of the Gospels, even if it does not realize it is doing so…which brings me back to the message of Popeye.”
At this point I turned around and left the church. I had caught the message that was important for me to hear. I suppose the spinach could be related to the power of the Force, which is actually the power of God. I certainly hope this is not the point he went on to make, tho it is probable. The Force is more akin to Eastern concepts like the Tao, and is not at all at home in the alien atmosphere of a personal and egoistic creator-god. If we present Luke Skywalker and Popeye as two figures who turn to something external to themselves as a source of greater power, we hold them up as models of what is wrong with modern western humanity, not what is right with it. If turning to something external is our path to salvation, than the worship of technology is our true religion, and we pray to a Machine Messiah. Spinach can only fortify the basis for strength that I already have, and the Force flows thru all living creatures. Its message is that we are all potentially gods if we but awaken to the fact. The doorway is within.
I told Heather and Diana and Holly about the sermon I heard. They thought I was joking. Only with time did they come to believe that I was telling the truth. I guess you had to be there. Nonetheless, everyone laughed uproariously at my imitation of the preacher. I guess you can say that his sermon brought unexpected mirth to those who did not even hear it.
Only later did I realize the interconnectedness of my experiences. My Working to utilize the local magical currents had yielded up not only my African religious statue, which symbolizes ancient magical currents from Africa that first found their portal to America in the slave trade that landed its cargo in the ports of Charleston, but my alternate white version in the church with the priest, and his attempts to utilize national pop culture for his spiritual message. The magical currents of Charleston are very much of a black and white origin, and I received one in an object and a man (the guy from Ghana) and another in an experience within a church. My operative images, both Buddhist and tribal, appeared as physical representations in my hands. My African god of good harvests and happiness fits perfectly with the larger pre-trip Working for increasing my skills at Social Alchemy, which requires cultivating and exploiting certain attitudes in others for the purpose of increasing freedom and opportunity and happiness for all who are involved.
Each of my Workings served the combined goal of both, which was achieved in the great time that was had by all, something I do not stake a claim to as my own doing, but which I definitely recognize as a result that depended upon my own efforts to achieve it. I could have easily ruined the entire vacation for everyone if I had wanted to, but instead put forth my entire effort at sheer enjoyment for everyone.
The Adept magician infuses his life with meaning. Most people will look at this sentence and immediately think that they do it, too. This is true, but they are not conscious of the extent to which they do it, nor of the extent to which they CAN do it. A Magician works to become more conscious of how exactly he infuses his life with meaning, and from this knowledge he works to gain a greater conscious control of how he purposefully does it. To recognize the interconnectedness of meaning in my life, to see how I create it, and to gain the control to extend it to greater depths and heights – to the point of becoming the conscious God of my own universe – is the true goal of magic.
Everything is raw material for my purpose, yet since the transformer is inside of me, I need never fight a resource war with anyone.
-Werbinox
Before leaving, I did a Working to strengthen my skills as a Social Alchemist, so that I might better play my part in opening portals of possibility and mystery for us all, and to further enter into my own Mysteries. I wanted to have a richly rewarding time with my family, and the Working was designed to give my particular qualities and skills at exploiting the right times and moments a fine-tuning. With this in mind, it is interesting to note that the only conflict of the entire weekend occurred when I was not present.
The bedroom that Heather and I used had a Hawaiian fetish statue in it, a large tribal figure carved out of deep brown wood, with an enormous bald head and, most strikingly, the dual genitals of a hermaphrodite. I have never actually seen a statue quite like this, but I have read about some of the symbolism, and I know that a hermaphrodite is considered by many archaic cultures to possess great power, which is why many of them became shamans. Diana’s mother Doreen, a “white” witch who describes herself as a Christian-Wiccan, told me that the statue had been given to her by her own mother, and said that she didn’t “like to mess with such things”. White-siders often fear and disdain anything that smacks of the Black! The statue made her nervous, and she expressed an interest in leaving it to me in her will. I said that I would be glad to have it.
I brought along my book by Huston Smith called “The World’s Religions”, which I find to be worth reading more than once. Buddhism became my operative framework for the day. It set the proper tone for myself, and nicely contrasted with the conversations of the other adults, which tended to gravitate toward tales involving negative emotions about other people who acted stupid and drove them crazy. Diana and Doreen both fire themselves up to frenzied heights over the actions of others, and this seems to be a popular basis for bonding amongst all strata of society in our culture. I could tell them that this is the kind of thing that Buddhism consciously strives to overcome, but they would just look at me like I come from another world. In a sense, I do.
The following words struck me with force:
“The realm of the gods is not a distinct place. It is where the traveler stands; and if that stance happens to be in this world, the world itself is transmuted…this our worldly life is an activity of Nirvana itself; not the slightest distinction exists between them.”
“The noisy disjunction between acceptance and rejection has been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually is…that which is sin is also wisdom; the realm of Becoming is Nirvana…This earth on which we stand is the promised Lotus Land.”
“The bodhisattva rises to the point where the distinction between time and eternity has lost its force. That distinction, drawn by the rational mind, is dissolved in the lightning-and-thunder insight that annihilates opposites. Time and eternity are now two aspects of the same experiential whole. “The jewel of eternity is in the lotus of birth and death.” Where to eagle vision the river can still be seen, it is seen as connecting the two banks rather than dividing them.”
- Huston Smith
O, and let me not forget this one:
This world is a mansion of mirth; here I can eat, drink and make merry”
- Ramakrishna
It is worthwhile to say that, amidst the potential volatility of the whole company, which was composed of feisty and opinionated people, a great time was had by all.
On the way to the beach, I played Gentle Giant’s “Out of the Woods”, which infused my day with the perfect mental soundtrack to the powerful polyrhythmic currents in the sea. Alien gods slumbering in sunken cities near the bottom of the abyss! Tentacles of a humongous octopus coiled beneath towering waves! The moon bathed eerily in a deep blue sky. We yelled and played with the innocence of laughing children in the rough and tumble water, which had the strongest undercurrent I have ever felt. Fortunately it dragged us southward, parallel to the shore instead of out to sea, which would have been deadly.
That night we had a sumptuous fish dinner. Diana’s son Gregory, who used to annoy me to the depths of hatred, has turned out to be a bit of a genius, the signs of which he has shown for a long while, in spite of and / or because of his loud and erratic, over-the-top behavior. We had long and intense discussions about the future of America, Iraq, religion, and the dwindling global oil supply. He is very intent on a plan of his own to create a hydrogen-based fuel source to power the whole nation that exploits hydrogen’s ability to combine, separate, and recombine. “Imagine a plane that can run off the air it sucks in, and can fly for as long as a pilot or computer can keep it running. Imagine a car that never needs refueling. Imagine power plants that create no harmful waste product.” He told me, going into the science behind it all in a very articulate and confident fashion that, frankly, left me a little behind. None of that really mattered to me, I realized, only the enthusiasm of the boy speaking to me, and the Big Picture he was painting, which I recognized as a worthy goal. He told me that such a technology would probably appear in the military fist…and could be sold as engines to power tanks and aircraft that would need no fuel lines or sources to protect. He told me the military angle would protect him from the hostility of the oil companies. I cautioned him about overconfidence in this approach. He is also the first 17 year old I have met who has read Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, which he said reflected back at him thoughts that he had already suspected, which was my own first reaction to it. After some of these intense conversations, he returned to roaring and video games, etc.
May the delicate structure of potential genius withstand the pressures that it cannot yet foresee or imagine! Gregory’s father was a potentially brilliant man who squandered his intelligence on sex and drug addiction; a brilliance that eventually turned on itself and caused him to do the weirdest, most senselessly self-destructive things.
The next day Heather, Diana, Holly, and I went into Charleston to walk around the marketplace. For this venture I donned my perennial role of the Quester who searches for that magical object / experience that he will not know until he finds or creates it. This role has always served me well, and is an excellent form with which to approach and enter the Mystery of the Unknown. Walking past the alleyways to somewhere down the cobblestone streets, I did an impromptu Working to utilize the local magical currents as fuel for my Becoming. No one of course would have any idea that I was doing such a thing, and would see only a bald guy walking down the street. This type of public Working is a purely internal event. After it was finished I stated “So it is done”, and went about having fun. You consciously work to forget about such operations after doing them primarily to keep yourself from dwelling on them, which blocks the crucial unconscious developments from taking place.
We came to the heart of the marketplace, which was a huge flea market underneath a series of long roofs. The human carnival was out in force. Colorful clothes and skin and babble! Above the sonic tumult a black man stood in an adjacent alleyway and belted out operatic vocals in a deep, sonorous voice that floated over everything like a wave on the surface of our sea.
Heather came up to me to show me what she had bought me. It was a little green Buddha statue and black pedestal for him to sit on. So there was one of my operative gods to reach me in a physical representation. I continued on, eyes open for my unknown magical object. Directly across from the opera singer I came to a stall that sold African art. The man who ran it was a remarkable specimen of humanity, friendly, open, and direct. The artifacts on his table were stunning in their visual power. I saw immediately what it was that attracted the cubists and surrealists to African art, the elongated heads and features, the distorted proportions, the darkness of the wood, the surface sheen, the slightly frightening menace and alien-ness, as if it was created by creatures from another planet or dimension. These objects were magical by virtue of the power they exerted on my imagination, which was stimulated to infuse them with high voltage and amperage. My eye was immediately drawn to a head with two horns rising from it. It was visually wicked and thus beautiful. I talked to the man running the stall. He was from Ghana. All of the artwork came from tribal craftsmen in Ghana. He went around to every object and told me of its symbolic meaning, all of which was positive. Even tho this may be the entire truth, since tribes have always traditionally suffered from a fear of almost everything, I thought that this emphasis was for the tourists who were buying them. I have never yet come across a god who did not possess certain qualities that us westerners would cast under the umbrella of the “dark side”. “Nothing is good or evil but thinking makes it so”, say’s Hamlet, a piece of wisdom that is central to an understanding of magic. A god’s power comes from his or her ambiguousness to such human categories as good and evil, thus all gods have a dark side relative to a culture that believes in good and evil….and as I was saying, I was talking to the man. I asked him for certain clues I could look for as signs to a shared meaning. He showed me the statues and masks that had bead designs on them, and said they were all about prosperity, as the beads were at one time a form of currency and exchange. The mask I was interested in stood for good harvests and happiness, hence the horns on its head. Horns are universally a symbol for virility and nature. I had found my magical object, and bought it. The man told me that his life was divided between the US and Ghana, and that he did not entirely live in one of the other, but was perpetually in between both. This makes him a man who lives in a liminal state, which is a transitional state between boundaries, like the one between wakefulness and sleep, light and dark, youth and adulthood, conscious and unconscious. Set is the god of liminal states. I told him that exciting things happen in liminal states, shook his hand, and thanked him.
Afterwards I found Heather and Diana and Holly, and we all posed for a group picture. I held my statue up, and he became a part of it, too. The risen sun is carved on his forehead.
I watched the crowds in the marketplace. From a distance I heard the Who’s “Armenia; City in the Sky” playing. I realized that it is not necessary for me to “be a part of” what I see going on. To perceive things in a detached yet transformative way is a superior form of action.
On the way back to the car we walked past a monumental church with a spire that dominated the downtown skyline. On an impulse that is typical to me, I walked thru the gate that surrounded it and opened one of the old wooden doors, walking inside. No one followed me. I walked thru the lobby and looked into the vast cathedral. A priest stood in the aisle, delivering a sermon to about 20 people clustered together in the pews in front of the main stage, a very small group for so cavernous a hall.
“And that is a central point about Popeye”, the priest said. “It is the same one we can find in other forms of pop culture, like Star wars. Let us look at Luke Skywalker. What did his mentor OB1 Kenobi say to him just before he blew up the Death Star?”
There was silence in the cathedral. I came close to saying “trust your feelings” in a loud whisper, but restrained myself.
“Use the Force, Luke”, the priest finally said. “So you can see how pop culture can present us with the message of the Gospels, even if it does not realize it is doing so…which brings me back to the message of Popeye.”
At this point I turned around and left the church. I had caught the message that was important for me to hear. I suppose the spinach could be related to the power of the Force, which is actually the power of God. I certainly hope this is not the point he went on to make, tho it is probable. The Force is more akin to Eastern concepts like the Tao, and is not at all at home in the alien atmosphere of a personal and egoistic creator-god. If we present Luke Skywalker and Popeye as two figures who turn to something external to themselves as a source of greater power, we hold them up as models of what is wrong with modern western humanity, not what is right with it. If turning to something external is our path to salvation, than the worship of technology is our true religion, and we pray to a Machine Messiah. Spinach can only fortify the basis for strength that I already have, and the Force flows thru all living creatures. Its message is that we are all potentially gods if we but awaken to the fact. The doorway is within.
I told Heather and Diana and Holly about the sermon I heard. They thought I was joking. Only with time did they come to believe that I was telling the truth. I guess you had to be there. Nonetheless, everyone laughed uproariously at my imitation of the preacher. I guess you can say that his sermon brought unexpected mirth to those who did not even hear it.
Only later did I realize the interconnectedness of my experiences. My Working to utilize the local magical currents had yielded up not only my African religious statue, which symbolizes ancient magical currents from Africa that first found their portal to America in the slave trade that landed its cargo in the ports of Charleston, but my alternate white version in the church with the priest, and his attempts to utilize national pop culture for his spiritual message. The magical currents of Charleston are very much of a black and white origin, and I received one in an object and a man (the guy from Ghana) and another in an experience within a church. My operative images, both Buddhist and tribal, appeared as physical representations in my hands. My African god of good harvests and happiness fits perfectly with the larger pre-trip Working for increasing my skills at Social Alchemy, which requires cultivating and exploiting certain attitudes in others for the purpose of increasing freedom and opportunity and happiness for all who are involved.
Each of my Workings served the combined goal of both, which was achieved in the great time that was had by all, something I do not stake a claim to as my own doing, but which I definitely recognize as a result that depended upon my own efforts to achieve it. I could have easily ruined the entire vacation for everyone if I had wanted to, but instead put forth my entire effort at sheer enjoyment for everyone.
The Adept magician infuses his life with meaning. Most people will look at this sentence and immediately think that they do it, too. This is true, but they are not conscious of the extent to which they do it, nor of the extent to which they CAN do it. A Magician works to become more conscious of how exactly he infuses his life with meaning, and from this knowledge he works to gain a greater conscious control of how he purposefully does it. To recognize the interconnectedness of meaning in my life, to see how I create it, and to gain the control to extend it to greater depths and heights – to the point of becoming the conscious God of my own universe – is the true goal of magic.
Everything is raw material for my purpose, yet since the transformer is inside of me, I need never fight a resource war with anyone.
-Werbinox
