Ayahuasca Anniversary

                           Yum Yum!

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the most recent time that I imbibed the ayahuasca brew. I write 'most recent' rather than 'last' deliberately: I have no plans, or indeed reason, to drink ayuahuasca at present, but what I may or may not decide for the future I have no idea.

Nowadays the internet is awash with reports and articles connected to ayahuasca. Much of this I consider to be pretty low quality stuff. It is full of claims and counter-claims; a remarkable degree of certainty, dogmatism even, on a subject which, given its nature, is nothing if not strange and elusive. "Ayahausca is this...... No, ayahuasca is this........ No, stupid, ayahuasca is this......." It seems to be a case of Ego attempting to understand, get a grip on, make sense of, something which is well outside its realm, its comfort zone. It is a well-known psychological process, to experience dimensions of consciousness beyond the normal, then desperately try to 'understand' them within the parameters of the more confined Ego which experience returns to. At worst, the Ego hijacks the entire show, claiming to be God, Jesus, Maitreya, or whatever. Experience beyond that of ego consciousness does not require a personal narrative to validate it, but this is a lesson which everyday mind finds difficult to swallow. So often it does not - as is the case with many of our modern ayahuasca slurpers.

One subject about which much is written and said is 'la purga'. This is a prominent feature of most, though not all, ayahuasca trips. A serious, deep intestinal vomiting session or two is viewed by some as an essential aspect to taking ayahuasca. Without it, some will tell you, the healing elements to the encounter with Mama Aya are severely compromised, if not completely negated. There is a way, I had discovered, a little-known method, of preparing ayahuasca so that nausea and vomiting potential are almost totally removed. Some will call this cheating, but I didn't care. As somebody who, at the time, experienced deep intestinal cleansing, complete with outpouring of copious bile, on a monthly basis due to severe migraines, I wasn't the least bothered about bypassing the delights when it came to ayahuasca.

The liquid that I imbibed five years ago is not, in the strict sense, ayahuasca at all. It is known as mimosahuasca. The 'classic' ingredients of ayahuasca have their origins in the Amazon Basin. They are normally psychotria viridis and banisteriopsis caapi. The same psychoactives can be found in many other plants, however, especially some species of mimosa eg mimosa hostilis, and syrian rue. Some of these grow in places closer to home, such as the Near East, giving rise to all sort of theories about the origins of Old Testament visions etc etc. Mimosahuasca has the reputation of being more bad-ass than ayahuasca strictly speaking. There may be something in that......

I had experimented with both types of 'huasca' before my drink of January 2012. With both I had enjoyed either light visionary experiences, or nothing at all - apart from the serious purga. I had no special reason to expect anything different this time. Even without the main nausea-inducing elements, 'huasca' is vile. I did what you need to do: take a deep breath, gulp it down in one go, ensure you don't breathe again before you rinse out your mouth with water or mouthwash from the local chemist. Even then, this sense of imbibing an extraordinarily bitter liquid sends shivers through your body.

Like any right-on conscientious psychonaut, I wrote the trip up afterwards. The rest of this post will rely largely on quotes from that particular trip report.

"The brew was prepared in precisely the same manner as previously, with the same quantity of plants. The only resultant difference was the rather larger quantity of liquid to drink. But there, more or les, the similarities end....."

"Soon after lying on the bed, I realised this might be something else. The closed-eye visual effects became far stronger: geometrical shapes moving around frenetically. The strength intensified, and I decided to open my eyes to orient myself better. No such luck: the blue carpet had transformed into a wild, choppy sea, with wave after frantic wave. I closed my eyes again."

"The trip was nearing its peak. A huge tunnel, its walls composed of white polystyrene-looking material, opened up to the left and above me. By now, I had lost all but the most peripheral awareness of the 'outside world'. Consciousness of my physical body reduced to one or two vague sensations. Then I felt something like an electric charge passing up my left arm. 'I'm going to have a heart attack' was the instant response. But then I recalled having similar experiences up my left arm before. I was going to be alright."

"This 'electric sense' moved all through the energy and light that was, I suppose, my body. Then I had a strong sensaton of the 'golden tubes' of energy that form my intestines moving, or being moved, around. It was as if they were being reconfigured, reformed, reset. I say 'moving or being moved' because, though I saw no entities, there was a definite feeling of something 'being done' to me, rather than it just happening."

In Castaneda language, I don't really consider ayahuasca a plant ally of mine. If I had to make nominations, a number of other substances with which I have interfaced over the decades would be nearer the top of the list. But most fascinating was the experience with the intestines.

For many years previous to the trip, I had had real problems with my intestinal tract: IBS would be the rather vague and unsatisfactory catch-all, if you are desperate for an orthodox diagnosis. The slow, irregular improvements in intestinal function that I have experienced over recent times can be dated back to this ayahuasca experience. Something happened that has impacted slowly but surely on my physical health, to the point where, though still needing to exert caution with how much I eat of what, I am free of intestinal pain and discomfort for most of the time. Other factors have been involved in the improvement as well as the mimosahuasca, but this seemed to be the first step in a process, one which has wrought a big change.

There are plenty of ayahuasca devotees who attest to the healing properties of the sacred plant brew, speaking of its curative effects even on conditions that orthodox medicine will proclaim as 'untreatable' or 'terminal'. Personally, I am inclined to believe them. The personal reports are there, and I have my own experience. Nevertheless, as is the case with other 'energy-based healings', the chances of these approaches getting a proper hearing in the mainstream are slim while Big Pharma is still in business. Should you want to give your advanced cancer a go with Mama Aya or hands-on energy healing, rather than poisoning it silly with chemo, you do so off your own back. You do it as a courageous pioneer, taking your life into your own hands, quite literally. Anybody wishing to do so has my well-wishing behind them.

                

  

      

Apocalypse Now

Yes indeed. It certainly seems like that. In the eyes of many, at least. The end of the world is nigh; flood, pestilence, famine will be upon us in a flash. The Great Beast is on his wicked way, the numbers 666 emblazoned on his saddle. The world as we know it is about to collapse. The Trump is upon us.

It's a funny thing (and simultaneously gives the game away). A Stalin, a Mugabe, an Idi Amin, would provoke far less outcry than does the imminent arrival of the Trump. The horror, the horror, is also

funny (and for a second time gives the game away) because it suggests that the protestors actually believe that the alternative is, or was, any better. The Obamas, the Clintons, the Bushes; and further afield their partners in ideology, the Camerons, the Blairs, the Merkels, the heads of the EU, the Soros's. Are these good guys? Not at all - they're bad guys! They have sat aside, passively overseeing the demoralising of, the sucking of vitality and lifeblood from, the very nations that they had been entrusted to care for. They have been implicit in the troubles and instability of many-a country in the Middle East and North Africa that have led to the needless loss of life and home for many. So it's all a bit bizarre.

While I laugh, I also sometimes feel a little isolated: most of the people I know - though fortunately not all - are of the Apocalyptic variety. I am given to anger, puzzlement, disbelief, shock, surprise, at how many people have been 'had' by the official stories of the day, how they have been duped, deceived, and don't get it.

If I were put in charge of the Planet for a day, the first thing I would do is to close all the universities. The notion of academia is one of the mind-dupes (I have another word for 'dupe', which begins with the letter 'f', but prefer not to use it on this blog) used by the establishment, system of control, call it what you will, to keep people in their place. It has been a clever move over recent centuries, to exalt 'the mind', 'the intellect', 'the rational', 'thought', 'mentality' over and above other human faculties. As a result, the 'big mind', the thoughts of the academic, are taken very seriously indeed. They have come to possess magical import. The academic is viewed as a particularly developed member of the species, whose every utterance is to be taken most seriously, almost revered - as it should be, since it is a message straight from the new gods, of science and 'rational humanism' (readers of this blog will well know why 'rational humanism' goes inside inverted commas).

Universities, and therefore most academics, are primarily mouthpieces for the communication of the ethos and ideology of the time. In our present moment, this is the message of indiscriminate inclusivism and multiculturalism, the obliteration of gender, the denial of difference between people of different sexes, cultures, religions, traditions, and belief systems. This along with other memes that go to constitute the body of political correctness: human-engendered catastrophic global warming remains another favourite.

Most people who I read and admire for their intellectual contribution to the treasure chest of humanity - the people who have beneficially impacted upon my life - are not officially academics at all. They are self-taught; auto-didacts is the smart term. They have been compelled by personal passion to explore, to attempt to know, to make the world a better place perchance. Driven by the burning fire that is unique and individual to them. University academics, by contrast, are part and parcel of a system. To the degree (bad pun) that they depend upon research grants and similar, or rely upon peer approval for their work, to that extent they are no more than big-brained prostitutes to a poisoned system. Today they spew out politically correct bile and poison as a matter of bread-and-butter. As somebody once pointed out: apply for a grant to fund a research project into 'Butterflies' and you'll get nothing. Apply for money for 'Butterflies and global warming' and they'll be queuing up to throw money at you.             

In my experience, most academics are low-graders in terms of  full-spectrum humanity (there are notable exceptions - check out Jordan Peterson as an inspirational case. But they are few and far between, and generally have a tough time). I speak with three years of study at Oxford University behind me, so this is not purely rhetoric on my part. It was when I left behind 'higher education' and entered the 'alternative world' of the time that I began to meet people with real creativity, integrity, purpose in life. People to respect and admire.

Neil Kramer is somebody capable of articulating what many people sense, feel, know, but are unable to express coherently. He recently brought out his long-awaited (by some) Roamcast 20. On this, he lays out clearly many ideas about how current developments like the rising of the Trump may not be a bad thing. In particular, he draws the distinction between systems encouraging self-determination, and those based upon the dogmas and ideologies of collectivism on the other. It is collectivism in its various forms that has ruled the roost over recent times, and it is an approach that fears, abhors, and attempts to eradicate the magnificent uniqueness of the aspiring individual. This uniqueness is, to collectivism, inconvenient at best, dangerous and threatening at worst. The rise of the Trump, along with Brexit, is a nightmare for the global collectivist project. Neil Kramer is optimistic about the coming end of Empire; I hope he is right. The Roamcast is well worth one hour, fifteen minutes of your life.

neilkramer.com/roamcast-20-the-earth-is-harsh-for-a-reason/


Image: Apocalypse, Deviant Art

Primordial Being

Part One

"I'm just going up into the loft before breakfast" I announced assertively to the long-suffering lady who has chosen to live with me over the years. She looked up from the bits of mango she was in the process of cutting up, a barely-concealed quizzical look on her face. "I'm looking for something connected with Buddhism" I volunteered not altogether helpfully. She shook her head slowly, before returning to the fruit.

Single-minded passion. Focussed enthusiasm. The King of Wands in person. Some people might call it obsession, but I know better. Whatever. It was this energy that drove me to get out the ladder and crawl around amongst the bags and boxes (mainly my wife's, in my defence) before breakfast time."It's not there" I pronounced, as I retreated, dusted myself down and sat down to yogurt and fruit.

A few days later, a thought appeared. The garage! Rusty lock is prised open, wobbly black door swings creakily wide, and I enter. Barring the way is the never-used bicycle. Having negotiated its immensity, I look at the array of boxes, containers, and cartons stacked up before me. That large one's full of decorating and repairing materials that I hope won't be needed before I die. The enormous green plastic thing from Poundstretcher is chockerblock with photos and miscellaneous other stuff of my wife's from the time she lived in France twenty-five years ago. Ah, that's the one. The damp, musty box with the dodgy bottom contains file upon file of notes on lectures, seminars, and study groups on Buddhism. Plus a few books from the era: Protestant Buddhism. Ah yes. The Duties of Brotherhood in Islam. Hmmmm. Everything except what I am looking for. As the box is put back in its rightful spot, the bottom falls out, and years of lectures go tumbling over the floor. "I must get one of those nice new boxes I saw in the loft to replace it" I muse as I slowly close the garage door again.

Dorje Chang. The first time I made a personal connection with any Buddha-type figure was with Dorje Chang. I had a poster, black and white, of a beautiful Dorje Chang while I was still living in Oxford, well before I got 'properly involved in proper Buddhism'. Where it came from I cannot recall, in the same way that I cannot remember why it is not to be found in the loft or the garage - I suppose it was yet one more unwitting victim of my occasional fits of renunciation, always a cause of eventual regret.

I surmise that my meeting with Dorje Chang was not an 'accident'. The encounter was a receptacle of meaning which, even today, continues to unravel. Dorje Chang (or Vajradhara in Sanskrit) is the Primordial Buddha, or Adi Buddha. He embodies the naked essence of reality (naked literally in his equivalent in other systems of Tibetan Buddhism, Samantabhadra). Various types of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism enumerate three 'bodies', kayas, of Buddha. The first, which manifests through the form of Dorje Chang, is the Dharmakaya, the pure unified experienced essence of reality. Then there is the Sambhogakaya, the archetypal manifestation. Then there is Nirmanakaya, reality manifested on the plane of flesh-and-blood: Buddhamind Jimmy Smith queuing up at checkout in the supermarket in Huddersfield.

It has always made me laugh. Dharmakaya, the scholars and Madhyamika purists tell us, is beyond description, representation. Cue cosmic, abstract, 'wow'. Yet the meditators, the imagination-saturated artists, can't resist. So there is Dorje Chang, there is Samantabhadra, embodied manifestations in their indescribable magnificence. And they appear either alone or, quite frequently, in yab-yum, ie with female consort in full sexual embrace.

So why did I feel the sudden urge to look for Dorje Chang in the attic and the garage? And, for that matter, what on earth is he doing turning up here at all? The answer, in brief, is that Dorje Chang seems the closest that the Buddhist traditions have come up with to what I was trying to get at in my most recent post: the sense of the God that is not at all like the counterfeit God who appears in the mainstream God-based religions. The source of all emanation, the ground of being. Dorje Chang bridges the gap. Maybe.

Part Two

Like a number of other Buddha archetypes, Dorje Chang manifests wielding a vajra (dorje in Tibetan) and a bell. These are his implements of magical transformation, his spiritual/existential weapons, even. What is special about Dorje Chang is the way he holds them. The bell (his love, compassion, the water element, chalices in Tarot), and the vajra (wisdom, seeing through and into, air, the sword of the Tarot) are held at total ease and in complete equipoise across his heart. There is no fluff around the edges, no qualifying, no theorising the likes of 'you develop the wisdom and the emotions come along for the ride later'. Nope. In Dorje Chang the two rest together, in total harmony. They are, in truth, part and parcel of one and the same experience. Twin aspects which manifest simultaneously, undifferentiated. It's a bit like a balloon bursting. You may experience it as a sudden, loud noise, or as a piece of rubbery stuff suddenly shrinking. Either way, it's the same thing, experienced differently yet simultaneously.

At the same time, they are the primal differentiation, the first splitting, of the undivided primordial wisdom as it breaks up en route to eventual everyday humdrum experience. Bell and vajra; heart and
mind; feeling and mentation; action and reflection; love and seeing. The basic oppositional moment. In tarot it's the twos. The aces manifest the primordial beingness of Dorje Chang; if they turn up, there's not a lot you can do with them. But one step 'down' you have the twos. basic polarity. Most of us fail to live in Dorje Chang world very much, so the essential opposition of the twos, of the bell and vajra, is where our work begins to effectively take place.

Vajra without a bell is a bit useless; likewise, bell sans vajra. I wrote enough about mind with a deficit of heart back in August and September, in my own 'liberation is no liberation' series. But heart without mind is pretty useless too. Dangerous, even. Bell needs vajra. The problem with stand-alone feelings is that they are extremely vulnerable to dirty influences. The person based on emotion is easily manipulated; easy prey for those who would prey. Appeal to their feelings and you've got them! This, sadly, is what I appear to see all around me: well-meaning, good-hearted people who are continually being 'had' by dint of their bells without vajras. Blind - blinded by feelings - and constantly and relentlessly taken in by tales, often tall. Stories in the mainstream media, for example. People's feelings perverted into weird confections through appeals to their sense of Justice, maybe (Crowley wisely replaced 'Justice' card in the Thoth Tarot with 'Adjustment'), or Equality (what does that mean, precisely?).

Vajra does not suggest forming opinions, however intelligent or articulate they might appear to be. Most 'thinking' is just this: points of view based upon frequently unconscious feelings. The people who are 'had' the worst are just these, the articulate, typically 'well-educated' ones, who pride themselves in their clarity of thought. I know, because many of my acquaintances fall into this camp. Vajra denotes more - far, far more - than this. It is original thought, an emanation from the primordial, deceived and deluded by nothing and nobody. It is looking at the warped, distorted mirrors held up to us by religion, politics, culture, science, history, and the rest, chucking the vajra at them full-force, and watching them shatter into a million splintered pieces. More disturbing, world-and-ego destroying, than any revelations of 'inner realities' is the realisation that the world-as-presented is a fiction, a made-up story, in good part specifically designed to deceive.

To realise that you've been led up the garden path by the school, the BBC, the newspapers, the stupid bishops, silly Brian Cox and the rest - that's really uncomfortable. No wonder few people still go there. It's part of the esoteric aspect of vajra work. And at a moment like this the vajra needs to be passed on from peaceful Dorje Chang to a raging wrathful deity. Maybe Vajrapani himself, Wielder of the Vajra. I occasionally get it as I'm lying in bed early in the morning. A fury begins to rise up from near the solar plexus centre. It's a total rage, destructive and indestructible, a power that's unshakeable. Its aim: to burn up and smash through all the crap, the nonsense, the lies told my myself and by others. After a while it dies down. But I remember.          

Images:  Dorje Chang (Keith Dowman)

              Two of Swords from Wild Unknown Tarot

              Vajrapani              

    

Supreme Being

Part One

Maybe. Maybe. Just maybe. Maybe...... maybe I've been wrong all these years. That is to say, for most of my life. Worse yet: maybe I've been had. Duped. Deceived. Well and truly. Hook, line, and sinker. You see, maybe there is a God after all. It's just that the real God has nothing - and I mean literally nothing - to do with the God popularly believed in and paraded in the Abrahamic religions of our mainstream cultures.

When I was a wee boy, I was quite a fan of baby Jesus. This, at least, is what I'm told by my sister. Say a bad word about the baby Jesus and you'd get your knuckles religiously rapped. I must have been seven or eight when I started to seriously dismiss the entire thing as nonsense. You don't require overmuch intelligence to work it all out. There were all these stories about Jesus, Moses, prophets, disciples, and the like, dished out as truth but with no reason to believe them. Nobody bothered to explain to me why I should give any more credence to these often bizarre and unpleasant Bible narratives than I should 'Noddy and Big Ears' or 'Thomas the Tank Engine' (both of which were peopled by far more likeable characters than those who turned up in the 'Good Book'). The Bible was this foreboding piece of reading that was invariably bound in sombre black, and you just had to believe it as true. Most strange.

Similarly, this God of the Christian religion. I saw no evidence. Nothing in my feelings or instincts resonated with the notions presented to me by believers. There was, instead, an instinctive turning-away: it did not feel right or true or healthy. This God was a twisted fantasy, nothing more. People who based their life around this make-believe character had to be a bit deficient.

Aged ten I won the Scripture Prize at school. This was more a reflection of the other kids' total lack of application in class than anything to do with me. The short walk onto the school stage to receive my prize - a Bible, of course - was one of the most uncomfortable experiences in the life of the young me. "You've made a horrible mistake. You've got the wrong man. You don't understand." The protests resounded through my mind.

Life as presented appeared to offer a simple choice: Christianity or the rest. This 'the rest' consisted largely of variations on a theme of secular humanism, scientific materialism, atheism, rational agnosticism, and similar. I think you get the picture. I didn't fit into this group very well, either. Despite my outright rejection of Christianity, I felt no kinship with the flat, restrictive, claustrophobic premises of this lot, who left no room for acknowledging the centrality of fantasy, imagination, crazy wisdom: the sort of stuff that's always turning up on Pale Green Vortex.

Years later, I fell in with Buddhism. And Buddhism kind-of took its place quite neatly in this category of 'the rest'. Firstly, it boasted no can't-see-him-anywhere God. Then it didn't require faith in a whole load of beliefs and stories which generally seemed twisted and unhealthy - not the sort of stuff you want to follow in the first place. Finally, Buddhism appeared to be practical and pragmatic. It had a range of practices that you could actually follow, in a suck-it-and-see way. If it works, do it; if it doesn't, move on. Meditation, in particular, stood out as a technique for knowing oneself. I took to it; it seemed to work. Buddhism as working with direct experience seemed brilliant. As the years passed, I came to see that it wasn't quite that simple. But still....

Part Two

Around five years or so ago, I began to more consciously and systematically undertake a process akin to what the alchemists of old might have called 'purifying the vessel'. This involves removing, dismantling, chucking out, those contents of ones consciousness, as Jung would put it, which are preventing the pure open space of awareness from manifesting. 'Adventitious defilements' is one term that appears somewhere in Buddhism which relates to this phenomenon. A catalogue of attitudes which are generally considered necessary for successful functioning as a human being were investigated and experimented with; some, as a result, were consigned to the dustbin and kicked out. I was forced to face head-on the anxiety which, as an undercurrent, has been my constant companion over the decades. I looked deep into its nature, its inappropriateness, its falseness, and more-or-less eliminated its obscuring activity, on one level at least (I see that it lurks still, but as a totally existential entity).

As a result of these and other endeavours, the space began to clear. There was less separate 'me', distinct from the ebbs and flows, the comings and goings, the unique magic of the sensate moment, than there once was. And, as this space began to clear, two new elements unexpectedly made their presence known.

Firstly, I found a channel of communication opening up with 'Something Else'. At first it was a bit of a secret between 'me' and 'it', almost like a clandestine love affair. What this 'Something Else', this 'Other' is precisely, I have been in no hurry to attempt to define. Higher Self? Holy Guardian Angel? Sophia, Shekinah, Universal Mind? Whatever. An intermittent two-way communication started up, with 'Something' that is both rigorously personal to me and completely impersonal. And before any Bible people get too excited about a Christian awakening on Pale Green Vortex, this 'Something Else' seems to be female, or at least to have a focal feminine component.

The other 'emergence' was the existence of intent in the universe. Through a variety of events involving especially synchronicities I found it increasingly difficult to escape from the sense, the feeling, that there is intent in the universe. Through the various experiences of non-duality and similar that I had had over the decades, intent - purpose - had never come into it. Clear your personal space enough, however, and the universe begins to take interest - as in the previous paragraph, an interest simultaneously highly personal and impersonal - and begins to present signs, challenges, nice experiences and nasty experiences, all with the aim of showing the way, helping you along. The universe wants us to 'grow'. The universe wants everything to grow. The universe needs everything to grow in order to achieve its own fulfilment.

This all sits rather uncomfortably with both sides of the dichotomy that I grew up with: Bible and the Christian God on the one hand, and the rest, including no-god Buddhism, on the other. I am in no mood to attempt a neat reconciliation these days. There are actually aspects of Buddhism which resonate with the experiences I have described -  the notion of Universal Bodhicitta is one such - but it seems to me that these have become increasingly marginalised. Western practice of Buddhism has veered in the direction of rationalistic, mental sides to its multifaceted jewel. All too often, Buddhism in modern times is the refuge for those who identify with thought, the rational; in Jung's typology, introverted thinking types. Not the kind to take easily to the notion that the universe possesses purpose.

No. I am left with the feeling - the horrible feeling - that I've been had. For most of my life I've been victim of a false dichotomy. Maybe those crazy Gnostics were right after all. The Christian God, they claimed, is a false god. He is the demiurge, an impostor, a demented lower-level being who is bent on deception. He turns up boasting that he is the god, the only god, the creator of all. The tragedy is that huge portions of humanity fall for his lies. I, too, have been 'had' by the demiurge, in that I have believed that 'God' as presented by him is the true and only notion of God. Like any reasonable person, I have rejected the claims of the demiurge, while failing to see through to the roots of the deception. The demiurge is the pretender par excellence.

Part Three

'Counterfeit mimickry' - pretending to be something, while really being something else, the opposite, even -, which is what we could call the antics of the demiurge, is not a one-off. It remains a prime tactic in tricking humanity today, leading it astray from its natural way, its 'god-given' sacred path. You take humanity's innate sense of the spiritual - its most valuable asset, if you will - and then you twist it to your own devious ends.

Take, for example, that intuition of one-ness, of the interconnectedness of all life, which finds an echo, however far or faint, in the lives of many, if not all, people. This gets twisted into the modern ideology of multiculturalism, espoused by many dcent, well-intentioned folk nowadays. But they've been had. Oneness is not in the least the same as sameness, which is the hallmark of multiculturalism as presented. It seeks to create uniformity, mediocrity, one-size-fits-all. This is a programme relentlessly pushed by organs of control such as the BBC. Its result is a dead and deadening cultural globalism, brought into being by the artificial removal of distinction - which, paradoxically (or not), is the basis for true 'spiritual growth'.

It's a similar story with ardent forms of feminism, along with the war against gender distinction. These zealous efforts to erode and nullify difference, undertaken in the guise of 'fighting against sexism', have similar aims. Once more, many well-meaning people subscribe to these agendas, but they have been duped. What superficially appears to promote freedom is actually an Orwellian move beyond the wildest dreams of Big Brother in 1984.

This is an exercise in social manipulation built upon a dark distortion, in this case a bastardisation, of what Jungians call 'wholeness'. It is the union of opposites, the divine hermaphrodite and the royal marriage as represented in alchemy, or the yab-yum in tantra. This wondrous flower of the sacred life is corrupted into a monster. The result is a society of men unable to comment that a woman is looking nice today, for fear of ending up with a criminal record. Can a society get more sick than that?

There are other examples, but they can stay in the box for now. This hijacking of our deep-down spiritual sense is one of the darkest aspects of modern culture and politics. The cult of political correctness, in particular, is riddled with this pernicious, soul-destroying virus. It befalls us to, at the very least, look out for it, see it when at work, and free ourselves individually from its toxic influence. It's out to destroy the world of spirit, the spirit of the world.


Images:

Top:       Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, Altona, 1785 ('Wisdom is the female emanation of God')

Below:   The Temptation of St. Hilarion by D.L.Papety. Scratch beneath the surface, and you find that present-day efforts to eradicate gender distinction are nothing but a continuation for secular times of the Christian 'horror of the temptations of the flesh' crusade. That same visceral unease (dis-ease) with difference and the reactions it evokes. Both are life denying. Both attempt to repress Eros and the sensual.  
                

Brexit: Six of Cups

The Six of Cups - or Chalices, as I prefer to call them (Chalices, after all, come in sacred gold or silver, vessels of vision, soaked in legend and exoticism - Grail and Parzifal. Cups, on the other hand, are what you use for hot chocolate before going to bed). The Six of Chalices should be such a lovely card. Six, the number of harmony, the different elements mingling in perfect concord. And the Chalice is associated with the Water Element: flow, feeling, emotion, a certain kind of intuition, a worthy receptacle for the feminine aspect to existence. What felicity!

In the Thoth Tarot, the Six of Cups is simply called 'Pleasure'. In the Waite-Smith, two young children are depicted in a spacious garden. The larger child is handing a cup filled with flowers to the smaller. Around them are five more flower-laden cups. The card is often read as being related to nostalgia, pleasant memories of the  past, a fond looking back on things that have vanished. We have to go to some of the dark Tarot decks to shake us out of this illusion of a flowery Garden of Eden, a horticultural Paradise on Earth,

A deeper consideration will reveal that the Six of Cups is inviting us to look closely at the whole matter of how we relate to the past; to our past. There is indeed in this card nostalgia. Nostalgia.
There are those who will claim that a positive nostalgia does not exist. Severing all attachment to, and identity with, our 'personal past' is a necessary prerequisite for spiritual freedom. In Castaneda, the notion takes the form of 'erasing personal history'. Even granted the possibility of a positive nostalgia, still dwelling overmuch on the past brings its perils. Yearning, hopeless longing, the inability to let go of what what has been and is no more; the refusal to release, to merge with the one and only reality, that of the present moment. Repeating the past over and over again, without regard for the current situation. Finally getting caught in a nightmare version of Nietsche's eternal recurrence.

In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the darker waters of the Six of Chalices unexpectedly began to flow, and with some force. I have found it difficult to comprehend what I have seen with my own two eyes during my brief forays into the twisted world of 'mainstream media'. It is indeed eternal recurrence gone horribly wrong. Like a bad smell from a too-long stagnant sewer. Or like slimy maggots crawling out of the furniture in that room in the East Wing that nobody visits these days. Like ghosts, nay ghouls of the worst kind; or, more accurately, vampires, irresistibly drawn out by a stench that they recognise only too well.

What are the phantoms that I witnessed, almost incredulously, in this spectral resurrection? There was Blair. There was Major. Miliband. Clegg. Out of the dark, dank, vapid air of the past did they make their unwelcome reappearance. Nobody prayed for their presence, or even invited them to raise their fatigued heads, but there they were, unmistakeable. It was as if an alarm bell had been rung, warning of the end of the world as we know it, and indeed how it should be, and they were powerless to resist. They responded, just as skeletal automatons would be expected to respond.

Why the opinions of the Blair should be given any more credence nowadays than those of Kirsty on the Tesco check-out in Paisley I have no idea. It seems that we are witness to the emergence out of their burrows of a tiny group of beings who are not able to live with the possibility that it's time to go join their local pub tiddleywinks team (not dominoes, since it reminds them of what they dreamed of seeing in the Middle East, and they start cheating); or do 'Strictly Come Dancing' or the jungle programme.

While Miliband at least had the decency to stop short of calling for another referendum, because the first one provided the wrong result, Blair and Major have been open and cavalier in their snubbing of the democracy that we are supposed to inhabit and adhere to. What did Major talk about? The tyranny of the majority? Am I hearing right?Dodgy stuff. While readers of Pale Green Vortex will be aware that we take western democracy with a pinch of salt, regarding it largely as a charade, another kind of opium for the masses, a veil over the deeper, not very democratic at all, realities of parapolitics etc, still..... You don't sign up for a democracy with your own sub-clause '.... when it suits me'.

In this parade of dishonour, I have to single out Blair as prime Lord of Darkness. Many years ago, I was well and truly had by Blair myself. I was among the multitude who shed a tear, quite literally, when he first came to power, and was on television walking around smiling, shaking the hands of well-wishers. Hope had arrived in the form of the Blair. The wicked witch was gone, her second-rate successors dead and buried as well. Bring in a new era.

Six years later, I was sitting in a restaurant in Notting Hill Gate, London, eating pizza with a friend (come on out, you know who you are....!). Halfway through the meal, my friend leaned over his Quattro Formaggi, looked me straight in the eye, and in a conspiratorial tone of voice asked me the question:"Are you against the invasion of Iraq?" I looked around nervously, checked that nobody was within earshot, before quietly intoning my reply:"Not as much as some people." We polished off our pizza quickly, wiped the cheese off our false moustaches, then shuffled uneasily out into the night.

Those were the days when I still believed what the mainstream television and newspapers had to say; I had no reason to do otherwise. I worked on the same basis as most people: the mainstream media report the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and leave the individual to form their own opinion. Rather than the process that I now see only too often: the mainstream media present certain events, facts, quasi-facts, fabrications and selected information, all of which serve to form your opinion for you.

So I was well and truly had by Blair (B-liar) and his not-so merry band of men from the shadows: Mandelson, Campbell et al. It's part of life's learning curve, should one wish to take up the challenge. Most hilarious of all today, is how this theme has started to go around: how we are living in a new world, where truth is no longer the yardstick. Surely this is another tactic of mind-subversion by the evermore desperate cool, trendy, liberal, all-embracing people (who are actually very nasty and intolerant of others when crunch comes to crunch), whose ascendence has been threatened by Brexit and the Trump. When was this Golden Era, when Truth was so valued above all else. Was it the time of the Blairs, Milibands, Cleggs, Majors???? Give us a break. The credibility-ometer has just exploded.

   
Images: Six of Chalices:
              Waite-Smith (top)
              Royo Dark Tarot (centre)
              Dark Fairytale Tarot (below)

Images of Tarot (Part Two)

When I first came across the Tarot, around forty years ago, readily-accessed information about it was very limited. And the only deck that the majority of people were aware of was the Waite-Smith. Today, things have changed remarkably; and, I venture, for the better. The wealth of info, the abundance of different decks, is amazing. I'm just going to write a few words here about my own impressions of a little that is available today.

First up, we've got the 'historical Tarot decks'. These date back mainly to the 18th and 19th centuries, and issue primarily from France eg the Marseilles decks, or Italy eg the Ancient Italian deck. Like the Waite-Smith Tarot, some of the symbolism and aesthetic has Christian connections. Unlike our 'classic Tarot', however, these are unsullied by the puritan/protestant influence. They come without the censor of richness and abundance getting out his chopping knife first. The figures are gaily
depicted, richly adorned, in colours that sometimes remind more of Veronese than of the gaunt, measured aesthetic of northern Europe. In truth, they seem to partake of the same spirit as that of the Italian Renaissance, the Greco-classical spirit mixed with that of Christianity. Give me the Ancient Italian over the Waite-Smith any day. The main drawback - and it is, for me, a critical one - with these older decks is that the 'pip' cards, ie those minor ones with numbers, are not fully illustrated, but simply come with stylised wands, cups, etc. This does mean that imagination has very little to work with, and interpretation of these minor arcana cards is very limited.

Next comes what is, apparently, the second most popular Tarot after the Waite-Smith. It makes its entrance 100% untainted by Christian undertones, overtones, or anything else. This is hardly surprising since it is the brainchild of Aleister Crowley, brought into full physical manifestation thanks to the fantastic artwork and infinite patience of Lady Frieda Harris. This is the Thoth Tarot. Compared to the Waite-Smith and historical Tarots it is more abstract, more trippy, speaking more of internal realities than beings and happenings in the outer world. In my opinion, its logic is easier to follow, in the sense of being a comprehensive and comprehensible projection of the emanation aspects of the Kabbala. Crowley was openly scornful of the endeavours of A.E. Waite, and got very irritated with his 'there is a special mystery hidden here, which I know about but which I am not at liberty to share with you' habit. Either tell us what you know or shut up, complained Crowley. Otherwise it's just an insidious game of pseudo-mystical one-upmanship. "Here is your criticism, Arthur, straight from the shoulder. Any man that knows Truth and conceals it is a traitor to humanity; any man that doesn't know, and tries to conceal his ignorance by pretending to be a guardian of a secret, is a charlatan. Which is it?" (Crowley, Equinox, vol 1).

I, too, find this aspect of Waite's Tarot annoying, so am with Crowley on this one. The Great Beast made fun of Waite viciously, even publishing an obituary of the fellow while he was still alive. It was entitled 'Dead Waite'. I find this episode both very naughty and completely hilarious. I like the Thoth Tarot. It works well for me, and I find it relatively simple to use. It's one of my two main Tarot decks.

Then there's the rest. Loads of them. Hundreds, literally.

Things have changed remarkably over the forty years since I first became a long-haired, commune-dwelling, reader of Tarot. And, I would say, these changes have been, in general, for the better. The variety of Tarot decks available today is amazing. Some are profound, others frivolous. Some are dark, mysterious, scary even; others come full of light, smiley maybe, at worst sanitised. Anybody with an interest in Tarot nowadays can simply have a good look around ('Aeclectic Tarot' is an online resource with a broad overview) and find what appeals; what speaks to you, that is the most important thing. And only you can know.

Most  of the more worthwhile modern Tarots are based loosely on the root systems of the Waite-Smith or Crowley's Thoth. Some, I feel, have actually outstripped their original inspirations. And this is no great surprise. A lot has happened since Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith were beavering away on their landmark Tarot a century ago. We've had Jung, archetypes, the collective unconscious; synchronicity, transpersonal psychology, psychedelic gnosis; Tantra, Tibetan Buddhism, the release from prison of Eros, Dionysus, sensuality, the recognition of Shadow as a force within and without. Despite the mess of the political world, of the ongoing project of mind control, we're not in such a bad place after all.

To be effective, Tarot requires a blend of intellect/knowledge and intuition to be brought to bear; the masculine and feminine principles working in harmony. A basic grounding in meanings, patterns, and systems is needed, really. At the same time, some of the more modern decks major on intuition: no confidence in your intuition and you will end up bewildered, probably throwing the cards in the bin. In a world still dominated by linear, mechanical notions of reality, this primacy of intuition as a tool for understanding, of making sense, has to be agood thing.

For myself, I have a special liking for some of the darker, fantasy, gothic even, decks. They seem to speak more directly to the archetypal, mythical aspects of being than do more naturalistic decks, or the cardboard cut-outs of Waite-Smith. They do not play safe, but venture towards the periphery of the psyche, where we may feel perturbed by its inhabitants, denizens of the night, teetering on the threshold. Shadow, eros, darkness, are encountered, viewed as portals to the sacred, even. This is a more total language of reality than that spoken by some other 'nice', 'safe' Tarots. That's me. Anybody properly interested in Tarot should follow their own bliss - or, rather, their own nose, their intuition, to discover where the treasure lies for them. Uniquely.

Images:  Top: King of Wands(Clubs) from Ancient Tarot of Lombardy
              Centre: King of Wands from Deviant Moon Tarot
              Bottom: Grumpy ol' King of Wands from Waite-Smith Tarot

Images of Tarot (Part One)

An archetype is an archetype is an archetype. By the time it reaches the realm of planetary human life, however, it's a bit beaten up and bashed around. Or it may find its entrance forbidden altogether by the authors of fabricated reality, thus gaining access only through secret subterranean tunnels of its own construction.

The prime agents of this bullying, bruising, and archetype distortion are culture and religion. These, the founding blocks of 'human civilisation', have their own prior, often unspoken agendas, which encourage and promote certain attitudes and energies, ignore others, and demonise others still. Archetypal life is forced into the synthetic straijackets of officially-sanctioned morality, goals and value systems, incapable of giving free rein to its pure energetic spontaneity.

Even such a clearly archetypal system as Tarot is subject to the twistings and distortions of culture and religion; of 'the age', 'the time'.

Take the Waite-Smith Tarot, the classic Tarot deck; far and away the most popular deck, and often the only one that people know of. It was earlier this year that I purchased a copy of 'Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot'. I'm a real sucker for books with the words 'secret' and 'mystery' in the title: I have an entire bookshelf of such tomes in the living room. At the same time, I find it hilarious: it's not much of a 'secret' if the whole world can read about it with a couple of clicks on Amazon!

Be that as it may. In 'Secrets.......', writers Tali Goodwin and Marcus Katz, two people with lots of experience with Tarot, teach us many things. Description and discussion of the meanings of all 78 cards as interpreted in the Waite-Smith system. Biographical info on Waite and the hitherto under-recognised Pamela Colman Smith. Information on how to read the cards. Most interesting to me, and new at the time, details of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and how Tarot connects up with this system.

This is all good stuff. 'Secrets......' is a substantial, weighty tome, with enough material to keep you going for quite a while. But there's the culture, the religion......

A.E.Waite is the chief mystical intellect and intuitive, providing authoritative inspiration for the deck. It is Pamela Colman Smith who gives the ideas of Waite physical form; she is the artist. The illustrations in the Waite-Smith Tarot are clear, crisp, precise in outline, providing a host of symbolic meanings in the details for those in the know. Endless heady esoteric entertainment for the curious.Waite was a mystic, but a mystic with a Catholic foundation. And it shows. A good deal of symbolic detail comes down from orthodox Christianity, some from more esoteric Christianity, while the entire deck is subtly pervaded with the perfume of the religion. As an illustration, I have included pictures here of the Judgement card, sometimes wisely called 'Aeon' instead. It is the card of renewal, of the phoenix, of the arrival in ones life of the magnificent 'Other', even. The top one (above) is the Waite-Smith depiction. Below there are two more modern manifestations of 'Judgement'. Words from me are superfluous: I leave the reader to make their own judgement.

And the culture, the culture. The Waite-Smith Tarot was given birth a little over a century ago, shortly before the First World War. I get the shivers every time I think about the cultural-religio norms of the first half of the twentieth century. What an era of dead and deadly conventionality, of repression of the life force; what a time at odds with nature and natural instinct, at odds with the body. Shadow, to use a term from Jung, was denied both personally and collectively, to such an extent that it had no choice but to be projected outwards in the form of two awful world wars. My early childhood was spent in the late 1950s, and it quickly became clear to me: a main aim in life was to escape the horror of that unspoken air of repression which pervaded....... everything.

As time goes by, I find myself having increasing respect for those who dared to champion the body, sexuality, the senses in that dark age for the natural world. Nowadays, it's not such a big deal (among some people, at any rate), but then.......  I think of D.H. Lawrence, as prime example, a man with many flaws and who made many errors in his life, from what I can see. But a man who had the courage to go against the flow, come what may, and proclaim the resurrection of the flesh, the divinity of life within a body.

Above all, in the Waite-Smith Tarot, there is the 'high seriousness' of so many of the cards. The figures are sometimes referred to as resembling cartoon cut-outs, but above all they convey the feeling that life, especially spiritual life, is something extremely serious. Take a look, especially, at the Court Cards (King, Queen etc). They are a dour, crusty-looking bunch. Not a lot of laughs to be had on the way to enlightenment, that's for sure.

The cards of the Waite-Smith Tarot reflect too much of the era for me. Apollo has won out over Dionysus; Logos reigns supreme, while Eros has gone missing. Which has suited down to the ground the following generations of 'alternative' people in northern Europe and the USA, where the protestant, puritan heritage has continued to infect the mindscape. We can be 'progressive', 'alternative' without coming out of the comfort zone provided by mentality, rationality, the clarity of Apollo.

With the Waite-Smith Tarot, we can be clear, we can be clever, spotting and interpreting the mystical symbols half-hidden here, there, and everywhere. For me, at least, my 'wholeness' is left hungry, wanting, if I contemplate this version of Tarot alone. This 'number one Tarot' is not the one for me.

To be continued.

Images:  Judgement from Waite-Smith Tarot
              Judgement from Archeon Tarot
              Judgement from Wild Unknown Tarot