A Little Decor Detail

This is my favorite wine of the moment, named for the only group of people in history who have changed things for the better: the heretics. I love the fact that, instead of some image of a wise wizard or burning witch they put a star chart on the label--yesterday's heresy is often today's science, or religion, or common sense. The distances between the stars terrified Pascal; they enchant us. In the background we see the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, and to the left is my Beloved...Who glitters like the stars because She is the stars.

The Fountain, Part Deux [spoilers]

I looked at the journal entry I scribbled off right after seeing The Fountain, and realized it was way better than my post about the movie.

[Confusatory note: In the beginning was pure consciousness, pure being. The thought arose: "what am I?" and so, to quote the bard, It divided for the sake of love, for the sake of union. This was the creation of the universe and the first act of love.]

So here it is:

This is The Myth writ large--Isis & Osiris, Shakti & Shiva. I understand some things better now: the "God" sacrifices himself by becoming matter. This is his ahamkara, his manner of individuation, because he is the original Object. She, the Subject, becomes Energy and thus individuates, but it's pure energy without form or object. They need each other. To love each other, they had to separate, to individuate, to become an "I" separate from all else.

The ego we inherit from this original separation seeks reunion, seeks dissolution in total love, but it cannot achieve this union while still an "I," while clinging to its separateness from all. This was the punchline of the movie, when the God/Tom character finally tore himself away from his scientific (death-denying) experiments and followed Izzi (Isis rearrang'd) out into the snow (symbolic of the plenum?) -- into wonderment and play, away from his selfish absorption and arrogant denial of death. She leads him upward from the material; he finds his union with her only when he can let go of himself and finish the story--collaborate with her, as in the beginning. His alter ego Tomás blooms just as Osiris did upon being healed by Isis. His fire (ardor for the quest) is transmuted into water (the Fountain) at the same time as her water (ink in which she writes) becomes fire (new creation).

We are all constantly emulating the Goddess and God, just by being ourselves (individuated selves who seek dissolution, usually in love but sometimes in hatred, or intoxication, or--). The way to get back home is bhakti, to love (the Divine) in every moment, as everything is the Divine; to dance with It in spontaneous engagement/love. Devotion and gratitude are potent tools because they minimize ego while maximizing love.

The Divine Mother, as Izzi was in the film, writes the story of life but we must collaborate by being ourselves fully, by letting go of ourselves when we most want to cling to ego--when we are in love or are afraid or desirous or in pain. Izzi dies well; she lets go, as eventually Tomás does. This gives new meaning to Robert Anton Wilson's "final secret of the Illuminati" as presented in Cosmic Trigger. He was right after all. He was saying--in the darkest times we must embrace Her [the God of your understanding, Dear Reader] and if we do She will lead us beyond ourselves to a new union with Her, a new creation, a new Heaven and Earth.

The original Cosmic Trigger quote [emphasis in original]:

Tim Leary was here last week, lecturing at UC-Berkeley. The news arrived that his appeal had been rejected ... and he might have to go back to jail again....Tim continued to radiate humor, cheer and optimism....

Tim was stopped by one of our guests with a final question before he left.
"What do you do, Dr. Leary, when somebody keeps giving you negative energy?"

Tim grinned that special grin of his that so annoys all his critics." Come back with all the positive energy you have," he said....

And so I learned the final secret of the Illuminati.

[Confusatory note 2: There is a mistaken belief that, on the earth plane, the most efficacious act of magick must therefore take place only between a man and a woman. Believe me, there is nothing more wondrous nor more powerful, and it will definitely take you to places that (you) have never been--if you're straight. But as my Holy Guardian Angel hath pointed out, we must ever be on guard against universalizing our personal and cultural--and species--preferences. She takes as Her example those species which are asexual, those which can reproduce both sexually and asexually, those which diverge into more than two sexes, those which switch back and forth from male to female. Surely these, too, reflect Ultimate/Intimate Unity; surely they outnumber humans. Does Shiva/Shakti have an inordinate fondness for polymorphous polyamor(alit)y?]

Thank Goddess I Finally Have Internet at Home

I don't know how I managed this long...since October or something...it was a money thing. But here is the new Temple of Doom 2.0 WiHW inspiration module, the broadcast studio for my dreams and the grammarians' nightmares! The Sovereign Sanctuary of ... Gettin' Dowwwwwwwn !

As Above, So Below

Story on Science Daily...first paragraph:

Do Galaxies Follow Darwinian Evolution?

Using VIMOS on ESO's Very Large Telescope, a team of French and Italian astronomers have shown the strong influence the environment exerts on the way galaxies form and evolve. The scientists have for the first time charted remote parts of the Universe, showing that the distribution of galaxies has considerably evolved with time, depending on the galaxies' immediate surroundings. This surprising discovery poses new challenges for theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The graphic that goes with the story is very thought-provoking as well.

My Name Was Legion

It was probably grigorss who, long about 1985, hipped me to the idea of a news diet…and how radical it seemed at the time that one would--voluntarily!--deny oneself those up-to-the millisecond updates on the microstatus of, say, Ronald Reagan’s nap-taking or Daniel Ortega’s ongoing commiehood. How radical it seemed, later, to decide I might not really care about all those oh-so-important events I couldn’t influence or control happening in places I’d never go or be allowed into in the first place.

After my first news diet, I loved the mentally less-clogged, calmer new me, and later read endorsements of the diet plan from the likes of Robert Anton Wilson and my beloved Mary Daly…and from time to time since that doldrum decade of the Eighties I’ve dieted when I felt it was necessary or when it was imposed on me; in 1998 I spent six weeks out of the country and watched and read their news, which made little sense as I didn’t really understand their political system or know much about their society…imagine my surprise on returning to the US of A and finding the Bill and Monica show in full swing! Why had I not heard about this?? Maybe because—it didn’t matter?? Because it was completely, totally inconsequential except maybe to Bill, Monica, and Hillary? But...that foreign news I’d been imbibing... did it matter? Was it all just bricks in the wall…nodes in the Matrix?

I was all but macrobiotic when the 2000 “election” went down, but fell off the wagon into a tub of Ben [Bradlee] and Jerry [Springer]’s synapse-gorging info-goo…checking constantly the Times, the Post, CNN, and later, as my hunger grew over the Shrub years, newsmap, the BBC and the Guardian (so I could know what was going on in America), and Reason, and Arts and Letters Daily, and of course the Snopes clan grandaddy of all online media, the Drudge Report…

and in the past several months, after a period of controlled intake, I really got into it—news crack, news smack, mainlined headlines, zoning out to the javascript crawl on the BBC web site until I knew…it was time. So I programmed the NPR stations out of my car radio, ceased to read even the Times (except for the Science page and the ads for those multimillion-dollar apartments), I admitted I was powerless over information, and came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to uninformed sanity. I unplugged. And I feel great! Look at my new hat size—

Maybe the eating/drinking/drugging metaphor I’ve been using isn’t the best one. Several weeks ago, as I was about to begin this diet, I was in my car with, of course, the local NPR news/talk station on. Laura said to turn the volume down until I could hear the sound but not distinguish the words. When I did this, the staticky gurgle coming from the speakers no longer sounded smart, hip, and concerned, but, in Laura’s words, sounded like “the black-magical incantation it really was.” Can one be demonically possessed by Corey Flintoff? Are those waves of fear, anger, pity, and righteous indignation that overcome me when I’m all newsed up really... malevolent forces? Laura said something about not allowing my psyche to be colonized…but did she mean vampirized? Perhaps at this very moment there’s a nearby herd of swine who have become very interested in the findings of the Iraq Study Group…

By Their Golden Parachutes Ye Shall Know Them

“There’s currently a bull market in corporate psychopaths, according to psychologist Paul Babiak of HRBackOffice, an industrial consulting firm in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. Organizations undergoing major changes, such as downsizing or mergers, provide a chaotic atmosphere that savvy psychopaths exploit, Babiak holds. They cozy up to a firm’s power brokers, manipulate coworkers, and intimidate underlings on their way up the corporate ladder, stealing everything possible along the way.”

Bruce Bower, “The Predator’s Gaze: Scientists Explore the Frightening World of Psychopaths.” Science News 12/9/06.

Izzi Is Isis (je suis aussi)

I saw The Fountain a couple of weeks ago, and I just gotta say...

if I had not spent the past 20+ years immers'd in strange, forbidden knowledge, maybe it just would have been a semi-charming love story w/ really cool non-CGI (!) special effects. Maybe.

As it "is," I sat there, in the dark, not believing my eyes, because I was watching a very beautiful and moving presentation of

• the Isis/Osiris myth
• the Shakti/Shiva myth
• the Adam/Eve myth
• the secret of the ancient mystery schools
  
• the Sophia/Christ myth
• the tzim-tzum of Kabbalah
  
• the IX° of a certain palindromic magickal order
  

The filmmaker, Darren Aronofsky, has made Kabbalistic films before, including π, which I liked but felt a bit let down by--the magick or the mystery or whatever being a bit pedestrian for this jaded reporter. But The Fountain...! I felt like those characters in Valis who go out to the movies and are stunned by the subtexts-within-subtexts of an elegant work of symbolism that seems almost to be looking back at them, into their eyes, into their souls. And then they go on their quest, to find the mystery school or conspiracy behind the movie...

but the real truth is, we are all members of the conspiracy...as we find when we begin to chart the star-field of Creation, only to find writ there already the story of our journey, in the hieroglyphic code of God coming to know Her/self.


k∞

Stay tuned...

Coming...


a tantalizingly incomprehensible post on Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain...!

an unprecedented revelation about my secret identity...!

photos...of...stuff...!

and...just in time for Christmas (2007)...The Holy Guardian Angel Media Store...!



work is really crazy right now and it's to the point where Sophia and I trade emails and phone calls about who's closer to the abyss of absolute madness...I give it to her, because she had to shop for a bridesmaid's dress this weekend and had to work...but my Goddess, when will it end????????????????????????