Merry spells it out - part two

Chapter 3 – stuff and nonsense

I’m sick to death of all this nonsense about magick. People waving their arms around, muttering incantations, cutting off chickens’ heads or lighting candles in the dead of night. When will they learn? When, I ask you, will they learn?

Sure, they can sometimes get lucky and move the pieces around a little, and then they’re convinced they’ve got the hang of it. They’re convinced they are growing into a powerful sorcerer, while all the time they’re sucking themselves deeper into the quicksand of 3D reality, making themselves heavier with stuff and nonsense, clogging and disrupting their connection with something truly magical, truly wonderful, truly breathtaking – their connection with all-that-is.

Sounds boring doesn’t it? Sounds ridiculously simple? Sounds too good to be true – that instead of studying hard and learning and occluded craft – that the real path to a magical life is by taking off the blinders and embracing the all-that-is – stepping out of the mind-gaol we find ourselves in, and rediscovering everything we’ve been missing out on, everything we’ve been blocking, everything we’ve been denying all these years. You see, in our viciousness, we convinced ourselves that life is fundamentally rotten, that God created a kind of hell for us to live in, and the only way to mitigate the hellishness of life on Earth was a kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest approach – that we needed to be smarter and perhaps even more ruthless than the rest to get ahead and stay ahead. We certainly didn’t imagine, believe or accept that in fact, we had it all wrong – that the only thing keeping us from beauty and bounty, from light and life’s limitless capacity to surprise, evolve and grow beyond whatever situation we find ourselves facing at any given moment – was our own reluctance to embrace life, to embrace the magick of all-that-is instead of pointlessly trying to defend ourselves from the inevitable. Try and stop the rising tide – try and stand against the force of life, the power of infinity – and you’re either a damn fool, or a suicidal maniac. Why would you want to?

So, if doesn’t take a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to realise that life itself contains all the keys, all the wisdom, secrets and knowledge you might possibly need – just as long as you’re willing to see, willing to hear – willing to remain sensible to the magick all around, and within – for that way there’s a reasonable chance you’ll avoid the pitfall of falling into the highly reasonable, rational, reality delusion.

What? What? What?

The reality delusion – I call it – though you might refer to it otherwise. You might, for example, call it the 3D reality delusion, or the objective reality delusion – by that as it may, but I choose to keep it simple and economise on words.

So what, you ask, is the reality delusion – other than reasonable and rational? Well, it’s the belief or assumption that this is it – that you’ve attained the full, undiluted perception of reality. Oh dear – how little we bother to test that assumption, and how far from the truth it could in fact be. You see, if, as I suspect, we’re only operating at 10% of our conscious capacity – or somewhere thereabouts, then what you’re calling reality today – is a far, far cry from what it truly is, and magick has nothing to do with hocus pocus or mumbo jumbo, and everything to do with opening up that conscious-awareness – letting a little more light into the darkened chamber of the mind in order to discover where we really are, what’s really going on, what we’re really capable of and… that will do.

The central avenue is paved with questions. Unless we’re willing to question our assumptions we’ll never learn anything – and that requires Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, otherwise he’ll be moving at the sluggish speed of thought, the miniscule speed of mind – and he’ll never get airborne. In order to be nimble and quick we need to take a step back and start looking at how children think – and what assumptions they’re making. They’re a lot closer to the balance point, to the main axis, to the circle’s centre – which is why they’re good at make believe – pretending, imagining, playing… which is why they don’t have a problem shifting into other states of consciousness. Sadly, after years of education children become ponderous dinosaurs known as adults. That’s the end. They’re finished. Babies, house, car, dog, pension, cancer treatment – that’s all that remains, unless they’re willing to dive back into the [what appears to be] insanity of the inner child – the unfettered flow of the human being – the poet, the madman, the druid, the dancer, the dreamer, the highly pragmatic magick worker.

Chapter 4 – if there’s more than this – where the hell is it

Precisely. Where the hell is it – if there’s more than this?

Aren’t you sick of hearing airy fairy waffly stuff about other dimensions or subtle energies. Screw that. If this magick stuff is for real – then where’s the proof, where’s the pudding? Anything less should be unacceptable, don’t you agree?

Actually, I’m not sure I was being uncouth when I used the word “hell”. Contrary to what the etymologists suggest, “hell” is in fact a very simple Germanic word meaning “bright”. Forget all that stuff about torment, penitence or holes in the ground. These may all exist – but they’re largely the product of our self-inflicted misery – our willful blindness or wrongmindedness – our obsession with suffering and sin and guilt – all of which are very real, and well capable of generating the deepest psycho-emotional hell imaginable. But at this moment, I’m using the word “hell” in its original meaning, which was/ is a place of brightness, lightness and perhaps wholeness or holeness, if you prefer to drop your w’s.

But, but… Look, dear friends of gnowing, friends of gnowledge, history has been rewritten, words’ original meanings have been altered dramatically – so it behoves us to apply a little healthy scepticism, and do our own research. One thing we do is play around with words that sound the same or similar. They might give us a clue. So whole and hole – in English – what else – hell, hall, hill – they’re all somehow connected or related energetically – because they have a similar sound, a similar vibration. What can we draw from all this fanciful speculation? Well, the magicks are not accessible through the right mind alone – because that’s the way you’ve been trained to think in order to eliminate them, or eliminate your access to them. Instead we need heaven and hell, father and mother, right and left. Only then with the hill – upward curce and hell, downward curve, can we be whole enough to enter the hall of the unfucked mind – apologies once again for seeming uncouthness – I assure you I do not wish to shock or offend – only then are we able to pass down the hole and open up the real architecture beyond the flat mind we’re otherwise bound by.

So, to answer your question – in a manner of speaking – the more we sure simply doesn’t exist – does – in the one place we don’t wish to look or go – because it scares the life out of us – it’s the hell hole.

But, but…

Yes, I know, most people don’t really believe in hell – and few are aware of a yawning gulf – a hell hole that is right there before the rational mind – which is hardly surprising – as the rational mind is designed to deal with the hell hole by insisting constantly, that that hellish hole is of no significance, no import, amount to nothing more than nought – and thus it wholly obliterates all trace of it, to the extent we’re not even aware it’s there. It has effectively become our nought – our one great constant – our one great certainty – that which is not – that which amounts to nought – that which our conscious, rational mind simply refuses to see, refuses to countenance, successfully.

How – you might ask – is the mind able to pull off this coup de grace? And the answer is – as simple as simple can be. As long as we’re either in left or right mind – there’s nothing there – nothing to be seen. Nothing. Nothing at all – for only the whole mind can see the hell hole we carry within. We have some vague terrors which afflict us from time to time. Depressions, panics, an occasional sense of monsters lurking – but our mind is remarkably good at containing these issues – relegating them to the status of irrationalities or unknowable unknowns, and thus we bat the mind’s ball into another court every time it gets too close to falling down the hell hole – we kick the can, we distract, and tell ourselves that we simply haven’t the time, the resources to look at it – and society does the same – it would be irresponsible, dangerous, perhaps even sinful, if society still plays that card, to flip the switch, to go wholistic for a moment, and confront the great what is not at the centre of our being.

So there you have it. Ironically, the magicks are caught up in no man’s land – a place we cannot, will not gaze for fear of breaking the great taboo – for fear of losing our way, for fear of ostracism by all our good friends and companions in this our table top reality – which is constructed on the very premise that anything else, anything lurking within the great nought, cannot, must not be given a moment’s attention – or all hell might break loose. And so, we do noughtt – and to be honest, probably that’s wise enough – for Pandora’s box is not the kind of thing you want to mess with, unless you’ve reached the end of a cycle, unless you can no longer survive as a race without accessing the magicks – for before you there has now appeared a gulf – a break in the fabric of space and time, a meaninglessness, a void which cannot be solved thingfully, by thought alone – which seems to require something else – something more – something we lack, have no access to, unless, until we decide to reunite mind and mynd – to discover what’s really hidden beneath the earth.

Chapter 5 – where angels fear to tread

Usually it happens when folk fall sick, or else when they fall in love. That’s when the tools on the table top reality they’ve been comfortably living in are no longer adequate to the task. That’s when they’re compelled to start casting around for something else – something else which doesn’t appear to exist at all, and yet a murmur, faint, yet persistent, hints that there’s an 0ther, a something else, hidden from sight, God only knows where, which might just offer the solution. With the dreadful life threatening disease of love infatuation, or some other malignancy, the patient now finds the courage to life the stone, to look under the cover, to go where angels fear to tread, not for the sake of greed, vanity or even curiosity, but in order to save a life – in order to restore some semblance of normalcy to a table top turned upside down. And thus the quest begins.

Little is the faith, these days, in the power of nought – for we have been taught to think of it as no thing whatsoever, and thus, of no consequence – but the mathematician will speedily correct this misapprehension – he, or indeed she, will make short shrift of such a fallacy – for how could one, the humble number one, rise to the dignity of ten, the nobility of one hundred, the potency of one thousand or the majesty of one million without the aid and assistance of noughts. Noughts – I ask you – what an absurdity is that – how can there be noughts – either there be nought or not – but in our right minded wonkish way of thinking, nought is a little empty thing, a cypher that fills a gap. No, that cannot be so, and though we are accustomed to use three for a thousand, six for a million, yet in truth, there is only one nought – which expands or shrinks to fill the space, to raise or lower one, or any other number, to the level required. Indeed, we might suggest that nought is the fabric of all things, all reality, and the number, the label, the name, merely a surface marking to indicate the extent that nought has reached. But enough of this metaphysical speculation. We have a meeting with immanent death, and are obliged to go where angels fear to tread, will we, nil we.

There’s nothing like impending death to override the great taboo, to enable us to sense, to see, to surf the dark waters of infinity which hide just behind the right mind, just prior to the lunacy of the left. By all means insist that my left and your right are confused – it makes no difference whatsoever – the fact remains that no sooner have we more to lose by remaining amid ships, in table top reality – a world of sense, reason and profound normality – than we discover an urgent desire to investigate the other side of things – the side that we neither suspected nor accepted a moment prior – yet as life’s candle flame sputters, we suddenly get wind of something else – an upwelling of life force, a magma column indicating that there be more beneath the surface than nought. And the fear of dying works its magic – equalising, cancelling out that fear of the void – and so at last I’m on my way. But what do I find?

This is a journey that can take you anywhere – I assure you. But to do so it has to start rubbing out layer upon layer of what – layer upon layer of things that have accumulated, things that are only true to the extent that nought is not, only true to the extent that right is right and left is cursed – which ironically, is true as long as you’re comfortably encamped on the table top, yet ceases to be true, utterly, the minute you need something more, something else than the table top world of normalcy affords – and so – we proceed, turn by turn, twist by twist, revolution by revolution, with the grand disillusion of things that were conditionally true, normally true, things that now only get in the way and prevent you from experiencing what you need to in order to survive – in order to evolve, in order to become the butterfly, the frog, the new expression of all. These things – however – many of them are deeply held beliefs – deep convictions – things that emerged from a time of upheaval and fear, as you sought to establish yourself bodily in a material world – which enabled you to get a foothold on the slippery slope, and establish yourself on the table top. In other words, you’re not going to let them go lightly. You’re going to hold on for grim death – until the warm waters of Lethe rise to the level where it’s either all or nothing – either you relinquish that prop or you damn yourself – so, you may find yourself parting with many a sacred cow along the way – to keep the hot air balloon from landing prematurely in the icy waters. And yet many folk go down heroically, preferring death – for the alternative might appear to be apostasy. They do not, however, escape their encounter with infinity by dying. Death merely transfers the venue to an alternative level. Alternatively, there are some folk who start by throwing out one shibboleth – a conviction which no longer serves, then another, and another, until it gets easier and easier – for this is a homecoming, a reversion to the cosmic mean – a return to zero equals one, and now our journey takes us beyond physical realms, beyond words into colour and sound, into wave and particle, into the very quantum stream – which, paradoxically, is equally no less a field, down to the very roots of  consciousness.

Should you care to go that far – I would ask you to look at prehistoric cave paintings – to get an idea of what we’re talking about, or the Nasca lines in Peru. Likewise, I’d ask you to take a look at the oldest version of fairy tales you can lay your hands on. These contain a wealth of information. It goes without saying that you should carefully study Spells, for this are by their very nature archetypal, and can help you cut through much of the garbage and dead wood that afflicts the night as he strives to reach the princess in her tower. What I would not advise you is to follow any one’s instructions – for the minute you read words telling you what or how – you’re guaranteed to table top your way back into things, rather than transporting yourself electro-magnetically back to a plasma realm of being ineffably.

Paradox, is it not, that your friend is that which you most fear. Paradox is it not, that without a terrible scourge such as a pox, be it a love pox or a malady, you’ll never make it out of the vice like grip of the system, the world, the matter you’re embedded in. So, instead of giving full rein to your fears – let fear be your friend, and discover the fearless knight – knight as in night – a darkness within that is not all dark, which can cope with things that you cannot.

Paradoxical, is it not, that our spirit opens the sluice gates, allowing in poisonous waters when it senses the time is right for us to effect a change. We, in our hobbitishness, may be terrified of what is happening, sensing more than we realise – realising that this is the end of the world as I knew it – yet the knight within, or the hero – which sounds very like zero, does it not, is evidently delighted – for it has been bored and listless all these years that you have endeavoured to work within the system, conscientiously. So, spirit opens the biblical flood gates, and suddenly all hell breaks loose – for hell was never far away, and now you find yourself in a life and death environment – hating it, and yet, somewhere else within, loving it too. What happens next depends entirely on you – on your willingness to listen to spirit – listen to your soul, to sense what is really happening – for no sooner do you do so than things start swinging round into their proper channel. Your lines have been cut, your anchor either weighed or left behind, and you’re now adrift on the waters of Is – the i s – three dimensions if you care to see – the dot, the line and the curve or wave. That is what you/ where you now are. That, and only that, is how you can survive – if you are to do so yourself – by embracing, engagine the magicks of May – which may or may not come to your assistance, depending on whether you present a story sufficiently compelling for them to be inspired by your tale.