Category: Perspectives

Posted on

Another Trip Around The Sun

Astrolabe

So yesterday was another birthday. I am now officially in my late 50s. While that is hardly old, I think it is, with a few exceptions, at least a decade on from most of my readership.

And that’s okay. I don’t build relationships around age. I build relationships around personalities. If you are interesting, and I like you, then I will make an effort to get to know you, regardless of your age or other physical factors. These are, after all, transitory, and probably illusional anyway.

My physical manifestation has been experiencing linear time for almost three score years. My mind goes further back. Way back. Back well before back. infinitely back if I squint hard enough.

And so, I believe, does everyone else’s, though most get hung up on that linear time, physicality, and other limitations. Letting go is difficult. Letting go is scary. Because, there is a very real danger that once you make that trip, you won’t ever come back.

Entering an altered state of consciousness that transcends time and space effectively dissolves one’s physicality.

Our attachment to the meat suit means it is very very difficult to reach a point where we aren’t wondering if the meat suit is sitting somewhere, in a quasi-vegetative state, slowly ceasing to function, to the horror and sorrow of all the other meat suits who were also attached to it.

There are, in fact, accounts of monks and hermits in many faiths to whom this actually happened. Their spirits roamed beyond the limitations of the world around them, but their physical bodies starved to death.

Which of course brings about the question as to whether or not the freedom of the spirit was the necessary death of the physical host. Is the dissolution of the physical experienced by the total awareness of the spiritual ultimately only possible by breaking that bond and letting the physical cease to function?

And if the limitations of the physical are only illusions, then why does it matter? Why do we worry about what happens to that meat suit?

And why do we put up with the aches and pains and longings and hungers and frustrations and limitations of the meat suit as it starts to wear out? Each day I feel more and more the weight of the years on this physical form, so why, if we know that the ultimate expression of self is in a dissolved spirit where all are one and one are all, do we continue to return to the burden of physicality and temporality?

Life is a constant mystery.

Instruments
A selection of instruments for measuring space and time. The armillary, on the far left, is designed to plot one’s position on the earth at a certain point in time. This was done by sighting for a particular star and then rotating the rings round till things lined up properly. Armillaries weren’t usually thought of as portable instruments. That is, they were usually something kept at home and used from that location. They show up frequently in depictions of astronomers, astrologers, alchemists, and the smart set from the Renaissance onward.

The middle image is of a modern orrery. An orrery is the forerunner of the planetarium, and is a cunning clockwork device that simulates the relative motion of the earth and moon, and sometimes other planets, around the sun. Orreries came about after Copernicus succeeded in replacing Ptolemy’s earth-centered universe with a sun-centered system, although astrologers continued to use the geo-centric model, and still do today, when calculating aspects and planetary influences.

The instrument on the right is a more or less modern device called a sextant. This is because the curved piece on the bottom represents 60 degrees of arc (30 degrees to each side of the center position). A similar instrument called a quadrant represented an arc of 90 degrees, but as it offered no great advantage in navigations, the larger size was quickly dropped for the improved model. The principles of the sextant derive from the more ancient astrolabe, but essentially involve calculating one’s position in space by using the angle of sun or a star at a certain time of day. The sextant can also be used horizontally to measure angles between points in the distance, and through the use of trigonometry, calculate range to one of the points.

The accuracy of these antique analog instruments varied by manufacturer and user, but a quality device in the hands of an experienced user would be comparable to a modern GPS locator, at least for purposes of general navigation.

Even in those moments when I can take my mind way back before way back before before, there is still some mystery to work out.

We are responsible to ourselves, to the nature of life itself, to keep poking at that mystery.

We should never take anything at face value. We should always wonder. We should always question. We should always wonder if the reality that we are experiencing is the final and ultimate one. Because if one is an illusion, then there is always and ever the possibility that all are.

I have been something of a cynic since childhood. A cynic is different than a skeptic. The skeptic says, “I don’t necessarily believe this, but if you have proof, I am open to changing my mind.” A cynic says, “I don’t necessarily believe this, and I need to see the proof of your proof. Which I also may not believe.”

If I look up the definition of cynic on the various web resources, it’s been boiled down to a general distrust of people’s motives and/or a school of Greek philosophy that was based on the rejection of convention or societal norms in favor of harmony with the cosmos. I’m not entirely sure I agree with either definition, which, of course, is the cynical point of view.

Of course, if you dig into it, skepticism is also a philosophical concept, based on the idea that we cannot know some things.

So for the skeptic, “It’s a mystery.” is sufficient explanation.

For the cynic “But is it a mystery?” is the more apt question. Why do we accept this is an answer? Is it impossible to know the answer? If I say I do know the answer, should I be believed?

I have spent the majority of my life in pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, and insight. Yet for every guru or teacher or prophet or messiah or philosopher or iconoclast, I am always asking “but what if you’re wrong?”

Because I am always asking myself that question.

“What if you’re wrong?”

This is not the same as the apostate or heretic, who doubts their resolve against the dogma of their former faith. It is not the fear of those who, upon hearing the soft tread of the psychopomp approaching, strive to find some peace of mind in the shadow of impending demise.

It is a simple, semi-scientific, quest for error.

I bought off on scientific method early on. It appealed to my sense of logic and reason. I’m not sure it even gets taught in the schools today, so I’ll cover it briefly here.

Theorize. Test the theory. Observe the results. Refine the theory. Repeat as necessary.

Theorize is that part where we all go “this is the way things are”.

Test the theory is that part where some go “but is this the way things are?”.

Observe the results is something like “no, this is not the way things are”.

And finally we come to “Oh, so this is how things are”.

But life is a constant mystery. We have to keep running the loop. We must repeat as necessary. And it is always necessary.

Starchart01
Expressions of space and time vary greatly in human experience. We live in a four-dimensional space time that consists of up-down/left-right/forward-back/and past/future. Yet as humans we are able to conceptualize these dimensions and abstract them into three and two dimensional versions, and still work out what they mean.

A sculpture represents a specific moment. That is, it has the dimensions of up-down/left-right/ and forward-back, but within itself there is no past-future. It is a fixed point in time, that occupies space. Ironically, because all sculptures as we experience them exist in that four dimensional space-time, it is a representation of a fixed point in time that is moving through time.

Two-dimensional images abstract this even further. They represent our mental experience of four dimensions frozen at one point, and then flattened out. They no longer contain the dimensions of forward-back and past-future, but our minds are able to accept this because we innately learn how to abstract four dimensions to two as our brains grow. We have a further complexity in that we are able to perceive two dimensional images that contain representations of three dimensions (see below) and two-dimensional images that represent two dimensions. This was a conundrum explored by the Cubist and Surrealist movements in art, and ultimately gave rise to non-representational art in the mid-twentieth century.

Yet the history of visual and plastic arts gives us a number of examples of intentional manipulation of our perception of space time. If one looks at the conventions of Ancient Egyptian art, we are confronted with figures who have heads, hands, and legs and feet in profile, but torsos and hips portrayed frontally. It’s clear, however, from their sculpture work that they not only understood, but mastered depictions of three-dimensions. The deliberate choice to create such distorted flat images in two-dimensions derived from their concepts of the nature of things. They had to include, as much as possible, a clear picture in two dimensions, of the three-dimensional form, otherwise the gods and spirits might not recognize it, and the magic would fail to work.
Starchart02

Science and spirituality would both have you believe that they are mutually exclusive disciplines, but this is an erroneous idea. To paraphrase from Pauley Perrette’s character on NCIS “I believe in magic, prayer and logic equally”. Arthur C. Clarke, who was both a famous science fiction author and inventor of the geosynchronous satellite, gives us “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. And for me, the one thing that I think both science and spiritualism should have in common is that desire to always question the status quo.

Time and space have changed significantly since I was a child. Our understanding of modern physics today embraces concepts that were considered in the realm of science fiction when I was growing up. This is because the more we learn about the nature of the observable physical universe, the more we are forced to alter the accepted viewpoint, and in some cases, to admit an as-yet-unknown nature which is not quantifiable using the current means.

Isaac Newton had to invent calculus in order to express his understanding of the nature of space and time. Modern physicists have expanded on his work, but we may require another watershed like Principia Mathematica or the General and Special Theory of Relativity to leap past our present limits.

Most people work their way through the world without an awareness of even the basics of Newtonian physics, to say nothing of the implications of quantum uncertainty and the potential of multiple universes with alternate timelines. Gravity is a literal fact. It does what it does, and keeps us all from sliding off into space, and that’s a good thing.

Yet the complex interaction of gravitational forces alone that make possible our habitation of this little rock are staggering to ponder. We are all of us pulled toward the center of the Earth. Yet we are also pulled toward the Moon as it slowly circles the earth overhead. Both Earth and Moon are drawn inward toward a massive star we call the Sun. It is only the speed at which we travel around it, and occasional tugs from other planets in orbit, the smaller one’s due to their distance, and the larger ones due to their size, that keeps us from spiraling in and melting.

Our meat suits have evolved to live in this soup of interlocking forces that move the universe on a cosmic scale. The invisible engine of gravity moves the stars in the heavens, and causes them to be born and to die. It whirls the galaxies together, in orbits around great dark objects of such unbelievable size that space is curved toward the infinite, and light itself cannot escape. It is a truly amazing and terrifying cosmos we inhabit.

Before Mr. Newton and the Enlightenment, the operation of this system was bound by the works of Claudius Ptolemy, a researcher and encyclopedist at the library of Alexandria in the first century AD.

His Four Books provides the basis for Western astrology, and his Mathematic Systems was the astronomical text that taught how to plot the movements of the stars. Like Newton, he wrote the math text to explain the apparent motion of the heavens. Unlike his latter day counterpart, though, his interest in that motion was for the use of astrological horoscopy.

Astrology, and most likely the mathematical models necessary to support it, was practiced as a science by the ancient Chaldeans, and probably older civilizations. There are increasing numbers of discoveries that stone-age peoples were observing and possibly recording the passage of time using the positions of celestial objects around the world.

Stonehenge is probably the most famous such site, but there are a number in the Americas, and recently many more have been found in Asia and Africa, so there is some reason to believe that humans marked time and specifically events like the solstices and the equinoxes at a very early point in our development, and that we used similar methods regardless of geography.

We might expect that the reason is simply agricultural. When one is dependent upon the crops, one should probably know when to plant and when to harvest, and a solar observatory is a more accurate means of working out that information than a tally stick or other similar counting mechanism.

Yet these constructions, some of which obviously required a lot of people and sometimes centuries to build, seem a bit over the top for this purpose alone.

Evidence supports that Stonehenge actually began as a wood-henge (and Woodhenge is also a nearby site) that was modified repeatedly over a span of several hundred years. So a simpler, and certainly easier to build version was sufficient. We can speculate that stones were later involved, because they would be more permanent and lower maintenance.

But that only explains the small stone circle, at least as far as practical function is concerned.

To harness the labor and skills necessary to bring the great big stones that make up the final stage, you really have to be looking at more than just keep track of time for the harvest. Recent discoveries at Stonehenge, and at places like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, suggest that perhaps it was the other way around.

Both sites appear to have been places where large groups of more or less nomadic stone-age tribes would gather at specific times, and have large festivals. Theoretically such festivals included a lot of eating and drinking, and logically might also involve trading, cultural exchange, marriages and betrothals, etc. before the crowd sobered up and went back to their usual ranges.

The desire to support these occasional meetings may have led to increased domestication of both animals and plants, in order to meet the demand for annual or semi-annual feasts.
As we now know these supposedly “primitive” people were gathering at pre-appointed times, we have to consider that they had a fairly good command of both time and space outside of the calendrical functions of the solar sites themselves.

That is, a tribe needed to know how many days (or thereabouts) it would take for them to travel from their usual stomping grounds to the ceremonial center. They then would need to be able to subtract those days from the date of the meeting, say, the Summer Solstice, in order to know when to leave so they could be there on time.

While it’s hardly rocket science, it does mean that at least some members of the tribe both had the necessary information, and could keep track of the passage of days, without the need of a Stonehenge type calendar. While one might argue that the numerous other stone circles and semi-circles around the world were local “clocks” there’s a bit of problem.

Solar calendars like Stonehenge are “set” according to equinoxes and solstices. If your travel time from the local clock, in say, Northern Scotland, to Stonehenge, takes about three months, then you can leave on the equinox and arrive on the solstice and reasonably expect to get back on the next equinox. But, aside from the issues this brings up with planting, harvesting, etc. in a fixed agrarian society, it’s also just not right.

According to internet mapping software, one can walk from Inverness to Stonehenge in around 8 days. Now presuming one is not actually constantly walking, and is possibly also bringing along slower moving livestock, a more reasonable journey is probably about a fortnight. So one would need to know about two to three weeks before the Summer Solstice that they needed to pack up and head south.

On the other hand, we might look at the equinox to solstice ratio as indicative of seasonal migration, where both people and animals left the colder northern climate for a more favorable winter on the Salisbury plain, and returning to the fields in Scotland just about the time the spring grazing was beginning.

So many of the ancient magical dates revolve around the agricultural imperative that it’s impossible to say which came first, the farm or the festival? But if people are migrating to festivals rather than fields, then we have to admit the possibility of early calendar devices being accessible to stone-age peoples without being locations in a landscape.

Tools similar to quadrants are known to have existed in Ancient Mesopotamia. The exact date of their invention is unknown. These devices are designed to work out the position of the stars above the horizon, and thus can be used to calculate both location and time of the day as well as the day of the year.

Prior to the global positioning system, a variation of this technology, the sextant, was used for the same purpose.

In the Middle Ages a very complex version called an astrolabe was probably developed in China, and made it’s way westward along the Silk Road, which the development of the astrolabe made possible. In later times, as the Muslim culture spread out across northern Africa, this amazing device took on more significance in that it could be used to determine the location of Mecca and calculate the proper times to stop for prayer.

Astrolabes, quadrants, and sextants all operate on measuring the angles of the sun or other fixed celestial point, in relation to an horizon. The astrolabe uses a full circle, while a quadrant and sextant use a fourth and a sixth, or 90 and 60 degrees of arc, respectively. The accuracy of these analog devices when used by a skilled technician is comparable to computers and GPS systems. Manned space craft in Earth’s orbit still carry a sextant.

I obviously have a fascination with the mechanics of the planets and stars. In a quantum multiverse, where nothing is ever in the same place at the same time ever, it seems to me difficult to casually dismiss that unique moment into which we are all born as an irrelevance.

As we draw near to, and enter into our birth date, even though it is not the same as it was when were were born, the nearer factors, that gravity of the Earth, Moon, Sun, and planets, swirls similarly around us. All our local planets inhabit the gravity well of the Sun, so it is not surprising that our Solar Return augurs importantly. Our Moon signs, though the Moon is smaller even than the Earth, derive from a much closer relationship with her forces. The meat suits evolved to have about the same amount of water in them as the Earth does on it, so the effects of the Moon on tides cannot easily be dismissed.

Astrology, astronomy, and the human need to quantify time and space are as ancient as our brains. If we limit ourselves to the scientific only, and suggest that the spirit is a quirk of evolutionary mutation, present only between the fertilization of the gamete and the end of respiration, we are still faced with the question of how that consciousness comes to be, and what it’s purpose is, because it simply can’t be explained as an adaptation to environmental survival. Self-awareness might argue somewhat of an advantage. Language and the ability to pass on information, certainly is a powerful survival factor. But the bees have that and they’re not doing so well.

It’s fascinating to think, though, that the bee language, and the information system that affords them an evolutionary advantage, appears to be related to navigating based on the position of the Sun. So our own connection to space and time may be as integral. We may be drawn to the sky because somewhere back in our evolution, we had a built-in orientation to the positions of the celestial objects.

Ignoring that because “astrology is a pseudoscience” is not to our advantage in our journey of self-discovery as a species.

As always, I question everything. I recommend it as a way of living. It can take a lot of time and energy, but you may find it worth the extra effort.

I’ll return next week, after few more days around the Sun.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

I Hope People Come To See Them

Halloween Studio

Snippets of conversations with my oldest as she started her customized Funko Pop side hustle:

Her: Dad. I need (insert exotic art or craft supply) for this Pop project. Where would I get that?

Me: Upstairs, My Office. Brown Cabinet, Fourth Drawer. Left side.

Her: No…no. I meant where can I buy it.

Me. Why? I already have that upstairs.

Her: But I need to know.

Me: Will you need it again? Ever?

Her: Well, um, no.

Me: Upstairs. My Office. Brown Cabinet. Fourth Drawer. Left Side.

Also:

Her: Dad, why do you have 18 different kinds of glue?

Me: Because I need to be able to stick anything to anything and not everything sticks to everything.

This is what we used to call in the theater “Hell Week”, the run-up to opening night where everything that is not finished must be finished and everything that is not tested has to be tested and if it isn’t working has to be made to work. Because, on Saturday night…

Showtime

I’ve been dabbling with prop and costume work since I was a wee laddie. It’s nice to actually be at a point in my life where I can go buy that special glue that sticks this thing to that thing and does nothing else. Of great importance during Hell Week is understanding just how long it takes for the special glue to fully set up, because, unfortunately, not everything can be stuck together with Krazy Glue, despite what the ads say.

I know, because at some time or another I have tried to use Krazy Glue on just about everything. Likewise hot glue. Which melts some things you want to stick together. It truly sucks to discover that during the last day before you go live.

Other magical “universal” adhesives are not nearly as universal as they claim to be. Some will work. Some will work but not well. Some will work but do damage (see melting above), and some will decide that you truly need to be humbled by the cosmos for not doing the proper homework and leave you with no choice but to start over with hours or minutes to go.

In these situations, we go for the roll of “duct” tape, or the more expensive and oft misused roll of gaffer’s tape. “Duct” tape is not actually duct tape. That is, it is a vinyl backed canvas scrim high tack tape that was originally designed to provide a water-proof seal on ammunition cans back in WWII. The word used then was “duck tape” as in “tighter than a duck’s…” “Duck tape is actually a brand name for this particular kind of tape.

Now, it is used sometimes on ducts, but there is a duct tape that is adhesive backed heavy aluminum foil that is used to provide airtight efficiency for HVAC systems. It could be used in place of the duck type, but the duck type is not always a viable substitute for the duct type.

Gaff or gaffer’s tape is a special fabric scrim tape with a special rubber adhesive that leaves minimal to no residue, and most commonly comes in matte black. It’s original purpose was to secure electrical cables on stage and set. There are now color varieties and a glow-in-the-dark version for putting down actor’s marks or lighting steps offstage during performances.

I am sure you are enjoying this short education on the various kinds of roll based adhesive but there is a little imp in the back of your brain screaming about what in the world does this have to do with occult practice.

I’m not sure it does. The joke has been made that the “Force” from the Star Wars franchise is duck-type tape because it also binds the galaxy together.

But rather I am thinking the parallel, and it’s a thin one, is that need to understand what works in a given situation, and what doesn’t. Secondarily, much study, practice, and yes, terrible devastating failure may be necessary to gain that knowledge.

Put simply, you can spend hours and days and years and dollars on books and blogs and seminars and videos to “educate” yourself in the esoteric subject of your choice. There is some need for that, because trial and error, though instructive, takes a very very very long time to teach. On the other hand, if all you do is pursue the academic, to sit in the chat rooms or on social media ping-ponging back and forth over some minor point of lore or methodology, you are not putting your knowledge to any good use.

At some point you have to try to stick this thing to that thing and deal with whatever consequence comes of it. You gotta do the work.

And with that said, I will hang back to the theme-based title of this week’s article and share some WIP images of the props work that will go live Saturday. The next week’s article will feature photos of the same taken during the event, with lights and fog and hopefully a crowd willing to brave the elements and be entertained by the odd bits I have created.

Raw Material
This year I was blessed with some great finds in raw materials. I just happened to hit the right weekend at the end of August where there were deep discounts on skeletons and the big cauldron at Party City. The witch, coming in at a decent four feet tall, was next door at a last chance discount store. The tag had been torn off, and since a four foot witch is probably intimidating to a lot of shoppers, I was able to get a heck of deal. She and the cauldron are the core of the “Witch’s Kitchen” part of the event.
Hearts And Minds
I posted a pic with the “raw” brain a few weeks ago. This is the nearly complete final display that will be in the Laboratory. Along side it is the heart in the jar I’ve always wanted. Now I can tell people that I am not the cruel ogre that they think me, I have the heart of a loving child…in a jar, on my desk. There’s probably another joke here about winning hearts and minds, but you’ve been punished enough.
The Hat
So there’s always that meme out there about sometimes you have to put on the hat and remind them who you are. This year I am this hat, which I acquired back in the springtime. It’s a lovely costume piece, and though it lends itself to certain copyrighted characters, I will, as usual, make something very different for my performance.
The Spanish Inquisition
I don’t know how many people will be expecting this. The joke may be lost on the younger generation, in which case, they’re just spooky and weird. When I got the two-for-one skeleton deal shown above, I know I was going to mummify one of them, but not sure about the other. And then I realized I had costume pieces to make Biggles (on the right) already in the closet, so here they are. When assembled they’ll have another skeleton tied to a comfy chair that he’ll be poking with soft cushions. Maybe next year I’ll be able to get the costumes made for them to be the Fab Four, or I’ll come up with something equally wacky. After all, I’m only seven short of staging Leonardo’s Last Supper.

For the artist, there is always an exchange of energy when the audience is present. While we ultimately do what we do as a private ritual, the result of which is tangible within our minds, to deny that we want public accolades is disingenuous. They are two separate things, but they are connected.

There are, perhaps artists and creatives for whom the process is the ultimate reward. They can divorce themselves from the completed work emotionally, and either are indifferent to audience experience or view it only as a transactional matter involved in the fiscal support of that process.

There are others who are so emotionally invested in their creation that a bad review will send them into spirals of deep depression.

For me personally there is a sliding middle, and I think that comes from many many years of doing the work with the realization that if I want to consider it more than a personal hobby, I have to put it out there and deal with the public eye.

Since the nature of my work is generally outre in the first place, prior to the Internet the receptive audience was extremely limited. I am happy to have found a larger tribe these days, and I am happy that my children (and everyone else’s) live in a world where they will probably be able to find those who honor, respect, and enjoy their creative output, their personal quirkiness, and the life they choose to lead.

At the same time, I am troubled that even with this global perspective, there are those who still feel the need to limit and corral other people and dim their spark, simply because the “tribe” doesn’t conform to the vanity of their own egos.

As we move closer to our most cherished personal holidays, there comes the inevitable online snarking about the proper pronunciation of Samhain, and how all the modern Christian holidays are stolen from pagans, and whether or not veils are thinning, and a number of other unimportant diatribes that simply serve to puff up people on social media.

Such pedantry and dogmatism are for the unimaginative. WE are better than this. WE need to act like it.

Now, please excuse me. I have a mummy to wrap.



Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

My House Is A Museum

Castles

If you’ve been following along, I suppose you’ve noticed a theme going on here. A theme song, in fact. I’m sure you know the words. All the best weirdos do. An appreciation for re-runs of this odd ball 60s sitcom, and the various alternate versions featuring those strange people from the pen of cartoonist Charles Addams is something that runs somewhat commonly through witchy people of my acquaintance. To my mind is a part of the modern “witch aesthetic” that we hear bandied about online. But I’m sure there are some who are oh-so-serious as to debate that assessment.

I’ve written at length about the Addams family before, and am trying not to repeat myself overmuch in this series of articles. Yet the world is cyclic, and ideas come back around. Just like Halloween. That’s actually somewhat comfortable, and really somewhat necessary.

If we as a species could get everything right the first time through, we’d have all attained NIrvana and moved on to whatever challenges await us at that next plateau which is probably not the final state either. Or as surely as the oscillation model of the universe, we are disturbed and distributed out of that state to try and learn again.

Point being, things do repeat, they give us the opportunity to relearn, to renew, to grow and expand, and to re-experience, both good and bad. Re-experience and remembering is an important human activity, because we gear a lot of our lives toward it. We have our favorite foods, our favorite books, our favorite movies and TV shows, and all the assorted knick-knacks that go with them, so that we can treasure them repeatedly. It gives us a fixed point in an ever-evolving cosmos that can be awfully awfully big and awfully awfully indifferent and cruel.

So, yes, my house is a museum of my own life experiences, the things I have liked enough to collect over the years, and the things that I want to keep around me that probably have zero practical purpose.

Swords
Someday we’ll have a house where we can duel in the library again. Proper swordplay really requires vaulted ceilings. Yes, of course we could use the yard, but that seems awfully bourgeois.

Like a set of china my great grandmother acquired with S&H Green Stamps back in 40s. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, savings stamps were the precursor to airline miles or credit card cash back. They were typically given out by service stations (what you’d call a gas station now) as a premium when people made a fuel purchase. If you saved enough of them, by pasting them into a booklet they’d give you, then you could purchase items from a catalog provided by the stamp company. In this way, consumers could acquire things for which their ordinary cash flow was insufficient, without needing to qualify for a credit card or payment program, which in the elder days were much harder to get.

The practice of thrift – as it was known – was more fundamental to the middle and working classes in American society until around the 1980s. Saving more than spending was the way of things, because ultimately you’d need to get something that cost a lot, and financing was not something easily accessible to those who really needed it more than the Vanderbilts and Pierpoint Morgans.

It wasn’t just cash, of course, it was all the stuff. In my grandmother’s house were at least five complete bedroom sets, multiple tables, chests, cabinets, sideboards, buffets, sets of dishes, pots, pans, pickling crocks, butter churns, cake stands, and untold numbers of mason jars. Huge steamer trunks, ironically owned by people who had never seen an ocean until late in life, held quilts, blankets, and bedspreads, extra pillows and linens, and a variety of old clothes. There were baby cribs and high chairs. There were old toys and a few books, and a dark floorless attic where one might find the discarded wonders of a bygone age (or a Ouija board everyone swears was never in the house).

These were not collected as ostentation, or any sign of wealth or prestige. They had nothing to do with desire, nor were they a sign of a hoarding malediction. These things had accumulated into this house (and a thousand others like it across mid-century rural America) because they had been saved for the future. Because someday, somebody might need them. There would be children. There would be weddings and new households and grandchildren, and those people would need these things because they would not have them. They’d need them until they got enough S&H Green Stamps of their own to get things, and then they’d pass them on to their children and their grandchildren.

By the time we reached the 1970s, though, it became much easier for an emerging rural middle class to acquire new things. That set of old china became a revered heirloom rather than a practical useful item. It was only used on special occasions when all the family was back together for the holidays. And of course it was never used at the kid’s table, because heaven forbid we might chip one of these quasi-antique plates that, since Granny was no longer with us, had taken on a sacred nature.

So by the time my grandmother passed away, and her children were tasked with parsing out the collections of several human lifetimes, the china came to me, where it sits, sadly, in the top of a cabinet, unused, for fear that it’s age means it contained toxic lead in the glaze. In all likelihood, food will never touch it again.

Meanwhile, my generation has replaced our more disposable mid-century hand-me-downs several times, passed on to our own adult children mismatched sets of melamine and discount store china that survived from our earlier days, and are now faced with the daunting task of a looming inheritance of such things as soup tureens and sideboards that no longer serve our lifestyles or really that of anyone living below the millionaire line.

When my wife and I were younger, we entertained with the finest of plasticware and paper plates. Our peers, there for chips and dips and beer and wine, were content with that, since they did that at their own homes. “Charcuterie” often came on their own plastic presentation trays from the grocery, and being the thrifty sort, we washed those and reused them.

When children came along the inherent need for durability and practicality relegated the china and crystal to the domain of locked display cabinets, and very rare use from time to time. As the children got older more practical but “nicer” pieces were acquired, that suit personal tastes and sensibilities, and are easier and less expensive to replace should a guest have a bit too much wine and tip the glass over.

Now the children have moved out to an apartment, and considerably less space for such things, and their careers and lifestyle choices mean that they may always live in an apartment or condo with limited space and need for soup tureens and sideboards and quasi-antique possibly toxic china that will never be used. Their own personal museums reflect their tastes and time, and so these “old things” no longer live as part of the family, as they really should, and have become part of a memory that we can’t easily let go of.

So while this article may serve to educate the docent who will eventually conduct a tour of my unused kitchen for posterity, it probably seems very far afield from ideas esoteric and occult. I’m coming to that.

Samhain in the Celtic tradition is the end of the year fire festival which closes out the living growing world of the Summer and prepares us all for the coming of the Winter Dark, with its unwelcome reminders of death and privation. It was against such death and privation that my ancestors, and possibly your own accumulated these “useless things” from one generation to the next. They were never really meant to become relics, but they almost always do. They end up being the things of the dead people that we keep around so that we remember those dead people.

I have mentioned in earlier articles and discussions with people online, that I don’t actively practice “veneration of the ancestors”. But I still keep Granny’s gas-station stamp china around. The history of these basically worthless objects, as I have shared it with you here, reminds me of the person that she was, the life that she lived, and the community of others who shared that culture, going back to when they came across the ocean from the poverty of Wales, and Scotland, and Ireland, many with just the clothes on their backs.

Paintings
Like most museums there are more pieces in our collection than can be properly displayed at any one time. This is especially true because the proper placement, care, and conservation of art pieces is not really the purpose of the average suburban home. One must carefully consider things like exposure to light, humidity, air currents, and other key factors in order to make sure you are not unduly harming something, even if it is not a rare piece by a famous artist.

This doesn’t even begin to take into account the problems in storing and displaying cursed objects, enchanted amulets, and other such items that museums have to contend with. So far most of the dead things in my collection seem content to remain silent, or at least, to only prank when they are lacking attention.

The day after the Celtic Samhain is celebrated as Dios de Los Muertos by the Latin American culture. The Day of the Dead is an overt veneration of the ancestors and festooned with feasting and music and bright colors and sugar skulls. We get more of it here in Texas than perhaps people do in the center of the country, though the Latin population has been expanding from the border for years. I think about the people pressed at that border now, with only the clothes on their backs, seeking some future they can only imagine. I think of the children and grandchildren that someday may look back to them on the Day of the Dead, and point to a plate or a bowl up on the top shelf of a locked cupboard and tell their stories, and remind themselves of the people that they were.

It is important to participate in these cycles. We none of us get to stick around here forever, and when we go, we don’t come back in that same way ever again. What is left behind, be it memory or relic, is important, not just to us but to the memory of us that it will carry into the future. The old plate speaks for us when we cannot speak for ourselves. That’s why we don’t get rid of them. That’s why we try to hold on.

Eventually the memories will change. My children have dim memories of my grandmothers, not nearly so vivid as the one’s I have of my Granny. And my children will probably not have children of their own, and that is okay too. That means that someday, someone may find a box of old plates at an estate sale, and take them to some new life.

Even if, in the end, they become nameless broken sherds in a trash dump, some future archaeologist may haul them into a museum and say, “look, this is what people in the middle 20th century used to eat on”, and there will still be some memory that we were here at all.

We all of us live in a big house on a little rock in space, and that house is our museum. It is our collective memory and the repository of the remains of every one of us that has ever lived. Time rolls out into the past in an unfathomably long scroll, predating our history, our pre-history, and even our being. It encompasses so many cycles of beings that we only comprehend the briefest bits, the tiny parts that through quirks of nature, have survived as reminders of other orders of beings that have lived before us. The time of the dinosaurs is so long ago, that it is conceivable at least one sentient advanced civilization might have arisen, flourished, and disappeared into dust, without leaving any tangible sign of their existence. It is entirely possible that in that vast ocean of years, a civilization could have arisen to leave the earth, and travel out into the stars, by some method we would not even now be able to understand. It is equally possible that such a race survived on a distant world and that because the time between us and them is so vast, they have evolved beyond anything that they or we would imagine came from this lonely little pebble.

The cycles keep turning. We are not the first to imagine and fear that “the end of time is nigh”. We can look into the recorded history and find this sentiment almost constantly plaguing the currently extant culture. It seems that our individual mortality predisposes us to think in terms of the mortality of culture, civilization, or way of life.

In truth, such things are very fragile. Lines shift on the map. The world I was born into is not the world we live in now, nor will the world I leave behind be the world as it is today. I am not always happy with this fact, but the awareness of it as an absolute is helpful in dealing with that discontentment.

All we may do is plant the seeds for tomorrow, and hope that they take some root. How they grow, and indeed, what they will grow into, is beyond our petty power to manage. If we live true to our natures, then perhaps our memories will be honored by those who come after us.

If not, at least the broken pieces may sit in a display case, and remind others how foolish and selfish we were way back when.

I am returning to my prop work now, and will be back in a week with perhaps lighter fare.

A bit of a housekeeping note. Owing to the changes made at the former Twitter, I have pulled the plug on the automatic update to that website. Since apparently my “interaction” doesn’t satisfy the New World Order’s standards for actually sharing my content, there is no point in continuing to post there. If you were someone who actually looked for the link on that platform, well, I invite you to visit my Instagram or the Facebook page for the reminder, or simply come by here Wednesday’s after 5PM US Central Time.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

Mysterious And Spooky

Mysterious And Spoolky

Having assayed the Threads platform for a bit, I am still not quite sure what my longtime involvement will be there. It waffles from intriguing forum for meeting new contacts to colossal time waster, and not much between. I trust human toxicity and the inevitable need to monetize the platform will make the decision for me soon, particularly with elections coming up.

Be that as it may, one of the most frequent “QT with your answers” themes for October is to list your go-to movies for the season.

Since last week I mentioned my deep interest and ambitions in the film business, I suppose this is as good a time as any to delve into my personal favorites, and why they are so, and maybe connect that up a bit with the usual themes of magic and the occult. I mean, should be easy, right?

In last week’s article I made a distinction between horror movies, monster movies, and slasher movies. This is how I personally break down the overall “spooky weird” film category, and I’ll explain why, but I will say that I don’t know of any official scholarly or critical school of thought to support it. There is overlap. There’s a lot of overlap. But this is how my brain splits them up, and so for purposes of analysis and discussion, we’ll use it, since this is my bully-pulpit. You won’t find it on Siskel and Ebert, or Joe Bob’s Drive-In or Elvira’s Movie Macabre, though I respect and have watched all those sources.

So, first, horror movies. Well, sort of. That term was first applied (and perhaps still is) largely to the genre of films made at Universal in the 1930s and 40s, beginning with the Tod Browning Bela Lugosi Dracula. This, was based on the play version authorized by Stoker’s estate, also starring Lugosi. Following Dracula, director James Whale made Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, both freely adapted from Mary Shelley’s work, which is possibly the oldest science-fiction novel. Then followed Boris Karloff in the original Mummy.

Well, sorry, I classify these as monster movies. The antagonist is a fantastical creature of some kind – vampire, golem, mummy, werewolf, gill-man, alien, giant bug, or city-stomping atomic monster. The plots are not generally complex (though many remakes attempt to be) and in the end, kindly old Dr. Exposition Character triumphs over the critter through his superior esoteric knowledge. It does vary as the offending critter gets bigger through the threat of nuclear radiation, but still, it’s hardly psychologically thrilling. It’s a good popcorn flick.

So what then do I call a horror movie? Well, something that’s really unsettling. Yes, the antagonist can still be a supernatural entity. They frequently are, but what it is, and how it works, inspires genuine fear. It has to literally keep me up at night, or at least, make me turn more lights on in the house.

Exorcist
Blatty’s book was big in the 70s and quickly made into a hit film. The Oesterreich text, which claims to be used to “scourge the devil” in the movie is a paperback release following banking on that popularity. The text itself is just a skosh younger than me, being printed in January of 1966. It’s dry reading, but if you are interested, there’s a lot of good documentation on beliefs and practices around the world involving the displacement of a personality by another entity. It’s pricey, but you may be able to find it used like I did.

Many of the cases it documents as possession might today be considered schizophrenia, or other forms of delusion or mental illness. As science took hold of medicine, supernatural agencies were relegated to the realm of the non-such. My college psych professor had a good sense of humor about it. The multiple choice question about what modern psychiatric and psychologic practice use as a standard reference text included the Maleus Maleficarum (seen next to the Possession text on my shelf). While the correct answer is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM for short, there was a time in history where the Maleus was the defacto means of determining if someone was a witch or under the influence of infernal forces. It’s a fair point to make that at the time I studied psychology in the 1970s and 80s, the extant version of the DSM including homosexuality and transexual behaviors as mental illnesses. The previous version, only updated in the mid-60s, give us the words imbecile, moron, and idiot to refer to persons with mental disability impacting the “standard” IQ.

I had though Oesterreich included the exorcism text in the book, but I couldn’t locate it easily this morning. If you are looking for a copy, for whatever reason, it’s in Volume 2 of the Roman Ritual.

The banner entry in this category is 1973’s The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s equally unsettling book and directed by the late William Friedkin. And yes, when I went back and read the novel, already having seen this movie, I did turn more lights on. The movie itself is very stylized, and as such has been copied in a number of other such films, and TV shows, including several weeks where Diedre Hall’s character Marlena Evans was possessed on the venerable Days of Our Lives soap opera. A fourth sequel is being released this Halloween season, with some of the original actors in supporting parts, and what appear to be very inventive effects. The trailers seem to remain somewhat faithful to what made the original so unnerving.

Faith, of course, is central to the movie. It concerns the possession of a young girl by Satan (at least that’s the initial story) and subsequent attempts by her formerly Catholic now atheist mother to obtain the Rite of Exorcism. One of the best things about this movie is that it shows the rational scientific approach to explaining Regan’s symptoms, and includes the Catholic Church’s policy to not sanction an exorcism until all potential medical and psychiatric origins have been ruled out.

Ultimately the Church banned this movie for good Catholics, citing a number of things that they found more offensive than the Devil himself. But at least at some point there must have been a consultant available. Blatty was on set and his research is impeccable, so perhaps that accounts for it, rather than involvement by the Vatican. But the ritual is fairly authentic based on my own research.

The chief origin for the plot was an exorcism sanctioned by the Vatican in the 1950s in St. Louis. It is believed to have been one of the last official such rites performed, as mental illness became better understood and the use of anti-psychotics allowed many of the symptoms of demonic possession to be treated clinically. But evangelicals have been known to perform brutal exorcisms on the mentally ill, children, and homosexuals or other “deviants” up to recent times.

I always found it curious that in medieval and Renaissance times, when the practice of psychiatry didn’t exist, that witches were not treated by exorcism, rather than being tortured and murdered. If one believed that an evil spirit could take over someone and make them do bad things, why was the witch not extended this mercy? The Church, and the Reformation both saw witches as willing participants, rather than hapless victims, so the ritual to drive out the unclean spirit was ineffective. But mightn’t a few of the thousands who were burned alive have been “under the influence”? Apparently no one considered the question.

On the subject of the Devil, I’ll mention two other 70s era horror movies that scared the hell out of me in my younger days – while at the same time, motivating me toward more research into esoteric knowledge. The first is The Omen, concerning the birth of Satan’s child as foretold in Revelations. This movie sparked the whole 666 thing, at least as it was applied in the late 70s and early 80s and alluded to every politico and would be dictator faster than you can say “Prophecies of Nostradamus”. And of course the need for the mass media market to wrap post-Christian quasi-political ecstatic prophecy with ancient Judaic traditions, evangelical political ambition, and obscure medieval French poetry made for a heady mix. Still, the original movie has some genuinely creepy moments and the internal religio-magic system is rather unique.

A less successful piece was The Sentinel, in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby (which is also a wonderful horror movie on its own) concerning the gateway to Hell being in an apartment of an old Brooklyn brownstone. What elevates this is the portrayal by aging veteran horror actor John Caradine as the devil’s doorman.

The chiefly disturbing thing about these movies, and why I call them horror films, is that the dark forces, to paraphrase young Wednesday Addams, look just like everyone else. They are the evil that walks among us in our modern world, and certainly as many were set in the decaying and corrupt New York City of the late seventies, you can read them as social commentary, or at least a psychological attempt to grapple with the modern world not turning out to be the expected Utopia of the flower children.

I’ll backtrack to the monster movies now, and say that my favorites are tied for first. They are the original Boris Karloff version of The Mummy and the 1953 Godzilla, King of The Monsters which is the American release of Toho Studio’s post-war epic Gojira.

Themummy
This relief sculpture version of the lobby poster of The Mummy features billing of Karloff the Uncanny. This traded on the previous year’s success of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. It was also how he was billed in the film’s credits, though later movies would go back to using his full stage name of Boris Karloff. The actor’s name was really William Henry Pratt, not a terribly frightening moniker, so it was modified for the genre to sound more or less Slavic. His frequent co-star and competitor Bela Lugosi was an Hungarian actor named Aristad Olt. His stage name was perhaps easier to pronounce for the majority of movie goers in the 30s.

The man named Im-ho-tep in real life was a fascinating person, if what was attributed to him is even partially true. He is the inventor of the pyramid, creating the Step Pyramid of Saqqara for his pharaoh Djoser as the first stone building in human history. Additionally, he was considered a great magician and healer, and later would be elevated to demi-god status as patron of physicians. His shrines and temples at Saqqara are found to have hundreds of mummified ibises, the sacred bird of Tehuti, or Thoth, so this is certainly where the “Scroll of Thoth” came about in the movie. The basis for it, as well as the images shown on it, are from the Papyrus of Ani in the collection of the British Museum. We know it better as the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Ironically it is, in fact, a long elaborate magical text for bringing the dead back to life, or at least for insuring that the part of the soul, which the Egyptians called the ka, that represented ourselves was able to re-inhabit his mummy and speak the important spells to reach the paradise of the afterlife.

The chief difference between the Japanese movie and the one I first saw (and I have them both now) is that the US release wraps the Japanese film with about twenty minutes of footage with actor Raymond Burr, who would shortly become famous as Perry Mason. These scenes were shot with a handful of Asian actors in a hotel in San Francisco, and serve to frame the action of the rest of the movie with it’s poorly dubbed scenes. Burr, as Steve Martin (and I always wondered if Steve Martin got his name from that) is an American reporter in Tokyo when the monster rises.

The atomic creature is presented as a mutation of dinosaurs, brought about by American H-bomb tests. Now universally seen as a metaphor for the horror visited on Japan by the only atomic weapons ever used in wartime (and against a civilian population), the truly terrible nature of Godzilla’s destructiveness is not as clear in the US version, and with reason. The movie was scarcely seven years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in the early days of the US-Soviet atomic cold war. Many Americans did not wish to be reminded of the impact of those events. Many Japanese were still living who could not forget.

Godzilla was successful on both continents and spawned a number of sequels. Going into the 50s, Japan’s relationship with the monster became less clear, and it evolved into a sometimes threat/sometimes champion taking on a host of other giant monsters from pre-history, myth, and outer-space. Rebooted several times it currently is franchised with modern CGI in four US made versions, and is likely to spawn a few more. They just keep coming back.

The Karloff Mummy differs from it’s several sequels in that it is the only version where the mummy is seen out of his wrappings and up to no good. The priest Imhotep (an actual historical personage- in fact the first person other than a king we know from history) was sentenced to be mummified alive for the transgression of attempting to raise the Pharaoh’s daughter from the dead. She and the priest had been romantically linked, but the act was sacrilege. So Imhotep was sentenced to the long dirt nap, and to stop such future sacrilege the magical Scroll of Thoth was buried along with him.

Naturally, when everyone was digging up everyone in the twenties in the name of archaeology, someone opens Imhotep’s tomb, and of course, reads from the scroll.

Rather than being blasted to dust by Isis for such an act, the hapless digger is simply driven mad when he sees the mummy of Imhotep get up and walk away -taking the scroll with him.

Years pass and the mummy directs the son of the man who dug him up to the tomb of his girlfriend, with the intention of summoning her spirit so that they can live forever as decaying corpses. The hitch is that her spirit has been reincarnated in a modern woman, who in the space of a few scenes falls madly in love with the young archaeologist. Imhotep employs his ancient magical powers to draw her away, but she rejects him when he suggests that she needs to die and be embalmed for them to be together eternally. She pleads to Isis, who this time obliges with a handy lightning bolt obliterating Imhotep and the scroll.

It’s a neat movie, with a limited plot, and very little accuracy in terms of Egyptian myth or history, but it did instill in me a deep desire to explore Egyptology and Egyptian magic that remains with me to this day. In the final analysis, the story is simply Dracula, but set in Egypt, and Dr. Van Helsing is transformed into Professor Mueller, in the person of actor Edward Von Sloan who plays both. He also shows up a the “men should not meddle in such things” Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein. Typecasting in the Universal monster flicks insured the audience got the shorthand and didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out who was who.

A multitude of sequels followed, lifting the forbidden love and buried alive portions to the mummy of Kharis, who was reanimated through the use of the secret herbal Tanna leaves by a succession of dedicated priests, who at the end of each movie somehow became less dedicated and more self-serving.

Remakes abound. The Hammer one is fairly faithful to the original plot. The Universal one with Brendan Frazier is highly enjoyable and if anything far less historically and mythically accurate than the Karloff one. I try not to let it bother me. But like Godzilla, the old monsters keep coming back.

Which brings us round to the slasher movies. These are based upon the precept of violent dismemberment frequently including on-screen gore. The original, was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It’s still my favorite. It is derived from a Robert Bloch story, which is itself supposed to be based on a serial murderer in the Midwest.

There is actually very little gore and violence on-screen in Psycho. It’s implied, and very well. But that’s Hitchcock. Hitchcock was a true genius.

The next prominent slasher film got past implied violence. It was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It also was based on a true incident of serial murder, dismemberment, necrophilia, and grave robbing. in rural Wisconsin.

Then John Carpenter made Halloween and the world changed.

Slasher
“OMG, there’s ROMAINE EVERYWHERE!”

Anyone interested in seeing more vegan friendly slasher movies?

Before Hollywood became all activist, much of the blood and guts you’d find in your typical slasher flick was actual blood and guts, collected cheap down at the local slaughterhouse, and liberally slopped around the set. I’m sure there are probably still indie or low-budget genre movies that still use it, but most major productions have replaced the real things with silicon and latex organs. In addition to being PETA/ASPCA and animal friendly, they’re certain more sanitary. They tend to be rather durable. Once the fluids and semi-fluids are washed off, and the phony parts dried and stored properly, they can be used repeatedly on different shoots and different productions.

Real offal had a short and stinky “life” span, though it did have the advantage of drawing real flies (there’s now a special syrup used by the fly wranglers for that. Yes there are fly wranglers. Sit through the credits sometime) ,

Blood and ichor have been replaced by ecofriendly plant-based alternatives. My own first forays were with the tried and true corn syrup and food coloring, but now you can get stage blood that is glycerin based from a cup size all the way up to a 50 gallon drum.

For semi-fluids methyl-cellulose comes in powder form to mix to the consistency required, from slippery and slimy up to full goo blob. This translucent wood pulp material stands in for everything from saliva to alien ooze.

If you can’t track down methhyl-cel, you can use plain ol’ unflavored gelatin. Ooze level depends on the amount of water and the time you boil it. However, if you are vegan, I will tell you that it is an animal product, so consult your local stage supply or the interwebs for sources more to your liking.

Fun fact, in case you didn’t know, the blood in famous shower scene in Psycho is really just chocolate syrup. Stage blood options that were available didn’t keep their consistency and color when swirling toward the drain, so Hitch substituted a can of Hershey’s. It worked far better on the black and white film than the red colored “blood”.

The use of a spray painted Captain Kirk mask on the killer, and the eerie synthesize soundtrack were dictated by the miniscule budget rather than a planned aesthetic. Yet these enhanced the film toward cult status, and spawned a host of imitators. The unkillable Mike Myers of Halloween became the unkillable Jason Vorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise, and any self-respecting holiday that didn’t have an associated slasher flick attached dared not show its face.

In the midst of the copy-cats, Nightmare On Elm Street introduced us to the evil ghost of a child molester who was taking his revenge by killing teenagers in their dreams. Deriving from the urban legend that dying in a dream will really kill you, the pock-faced knife-fingered pursued teenager after teenager as they slept. The imagery was often inventive, and for a while, I had some interest in the genre again, but ultimately even these evolved into self parody, with Freddie Versus Jason, and Friday the 13th Jason in Space.

I’ve never been a great fan of slashers. I saw a lot of them when I was working part-time as a projectionist at the local theater, and they were all basically clones. Escaped lunatic takes vengeance on unwitting victims who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, usually trying to sneak some quick sex, which triggers said lunatic. Freddy Kruger was the first original thing to come along, and it quickly reverted to formula.

Like the Universal flicks of the 30s and 40s, or the giant monster and alien movies of the 50s and 60s, the formula was an effective means of promoting the content to a public who wanted to know what they were getting. These were never meant to be serious fare, at least not in the U. S. More thoughtful and more artful treatments don’t always find an audience and disappear into obscurity.

One of the more imaginative examples of this is The Hunger starring Catherine Deneuve, rising engeneue Susan Sarandon, and rock superstar David Bowie. As a trio of vampires, they stalk the New York singles scene at the height of the disco era, dealing with the problems of immortality and not-so-eternal youth. It features some outstanding makeup work by the late great Dick Smith, and gives us vampires without fangs. It’s a very chic and stylistic work, and still one of my favorites. It’s possible to see it metaphorical, or at least partially inspired, by the nascent AIDS epidemic, but I may be way off base with the producer’s intentions there. It was not as commercially successful as other fare that featured thinner plots and larger cup sizes.

So, if you’re waiting on that hellbroth to cool, or Instacart is slow in delivering your eye of newt, pop up some corn, grab the remote, and go browsing through the back stacks on the streaming service of your choice. I think all these goodies can be found out there somewhere, including other outre works that defy simpler classification like the original Suspiria and The Wicker Man as well as Viy, a 1967 Soviet-made horror film that evokes all sorts of dark Slavic imagery. ‘Tis the season, after all.

In the meantime, I am back to the lab to paint more eyeballs, and stitch electrodes into hearts in preparation for the big day. See you all next week.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

To Every Purpose Under Heaven

Human Skill Tree

I was looking for a topic for this week as I made my way into the office this morning. Shifting gears back from having the security of the next Tarot trump has been a bit more difficult than I thought, especially when it coincided with the Labor Day Weekend, short weeks, impending projects, new arrivals in the household (furry ones) and healthy doses of Mercury retrograde impacting technology and logistics on a grand scale.

A rested mind (and I am truly a mind in need of a rest) might find fertile options blooming forth in everyday encounters. This was much what I was doing last year, and I am confident I can wiggle back to it, especially if I get that rest I am talking about. This however is the start of my busy season, so resting never quite seems to actually arrive.

Ultimately it is the season that impressed itself on my this morning. As I drove down from suburbia to the quasi-industrial area of my day job, I noticed subtle, but apparent, changes in the leaves.

The Texas coastal plains lack that broad biodiversity of New England’s deciduous forests. And here along the Gulf, winter is more of a quaint notion (usually) than real alteration of the environment. Nevertheless, there are signs that in some of the trees the sap is beginning to retreat, and the leaves are going from green to yellow, and thence to less brilliant russets or scarlets, before dropping off.

I had always thought this transformation was a factor of temperature, but following one of the hottest summers on record, our descent into September has only meant a grudging movement from the 100s to the upper 90s daily. While it’s a drop, and for those of us living down here almost a cold snap, it certainly shouldn’t trigger any biological processes. So I started wondering what the trees knew that we didn’t , and how it might be that they knew this.

According to the U.S. Forest Service (and presumably they checked with the trees) the trigger is not temperature but light. The length of daylight, which gradually lessens from the Summer Solstice down to the Autumnal Equinox (in a few days), impacts the production of the green chlorophyll in the leaves. Chlorophyll is that magic substance that binds the carbon in carbon dioxide with the hydrogen in water to create simple sugars. These chemical factories are what make plants food for animals, and they are solar powered. So when there is less sunlight, there is less chlorophyll, and the leaves start making other chemical which produce the different colors.

So basically, we have the changing colors in the trees because the nights are getting longer. Trees are astronomically controlled. This all seems very logical and sensibly scientific once you know, but ponder for a moment how many billions of years were involved in coming to this very efficient arrangement. The trees that will wow tourists in Vermont and New Hampshire began as simple one-celled organisms untold ages ago. Some of them drifted nearer the top of an ancient sea, and through a quirk of chemistry started to make the green pigment that sucked carbon dioxide out of the air. These basic creatures are still with us in the form of algae, though they can form much more complex systems now like kelp.

Their contribution in removing the carbon dioxide and releasing the free oxygen made it possible for other little critters to survive. These eventually became the proto-animals, similar to jellies that inhabit our oceans. The jellies developed specialized cell structures, and mutated to become corals and anemones and worms and mollusks and so on an so forth until we arrived to marvel at the changing of the leaves.

So despite shifts in climate, weather patterns, pollution, deforestation, wildfires and all the thousand natural shocks that forests are heir to, the trees keep looking to the sky, and repeating this ancient cycle of growth, death, and rebirth as the planet wobbles around the sun each year.

There’s a comfort to that. This cycle is something it may be very hard for humans to break. Despite all the abuses we heap upon Mother Earth we have, as yet, been unable to stop the sun from shining.

There are, however, other things that can. Some of them are right here on the planet, and some of them come from out there in the dark.

human skull tree
The “Descent of Man” from the little monkey like creature at the bottom center to the homo sapiens skull at upper left. Evolution has made a lot of wrong turns and dead ends with the homonids, up to the couple of chaps to our immediate right, representing Heidelburg and Neanderthal Man. Heidelburg Man was discovered a little later than his more well known cousin, and the differences are slight. It was this species that we most associate with “cavemen” though they could has easily have been tribal nomads like the indigenous peoples of many places today. His ability to exploit his environment was not as efficient as that of his successor. He made and used tools, but he didn’t seem to be interested in innovation. Good enough was good enough for the Neanderthal, which is why the more successful Cro-Magnon ultimately replaced him in the Stone Age landscape. Modern studies suggest that Neanderthals merged into our DNA, rather than becoming completely extinct, but they may be considered another casualty of human domination of the environment.

On the earth, the effect of large volcanic eruptions putting tons and tones of dust and ash up into the atmosphere have documented effects on the cycle of seasons. It is not just a drop in ambient temperature, as the scattered debris bounces light and heat back into space. It is that drop in light that tells the trees that winter is coming, that has a significant effect.

Likewise, the earth and rock and water vapor thrown up into the air by an asteroid collision can create periods of false winter that last for years or even decades. We believe that some of these events may have ended the age of dinosaurs, because the abundant plant life that made big heavy herbivores possible simply failed to wake up. Without the big heavy herbivores, the big heavy carnivores starved, and the mode of life became smaller and more efficient. Life mutated away from scales and feathers and eggs as dominant to fur and skin and wombs.

As the debris gradually dropped back down to earth from these events, the green plants bounced back, and ultimately big life forms were again fashionable, though the early mammals never got back to dinosaur scale. The few remaining giants we have are small (for the most part) in comparison to their ancestors. The elephant is impressive, but not so much as the great wooly mammoth. The grizzly and polar bears are certainly terrible to us, but the cave bears that stalked our ancestors were bigger still. It’s fairly clear, then, that the conditions conducive to big herbivores and big carnivores are starting to shrink again, without drastic events like super volcanoes and asteroids collisions.

The new force eradicating the green biomass is human expansion. On my drive to work daily I see another area that was forested clear cut to put in another subdivision, or worse, a complex of warehouses and industrial spaces.

predators
The creatures on the right plagued our ancestors, but already they were starting to diminish. You can see that the cave bear and saber-toothed cat were not much larger than there modern counterparts. The person standing at the edge of the picture is average sized for a modern human, and possibly a bit bigger than the people who ran from these predators. Yet neither of them were more than a mouthful for the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex on the left. While the pictures are not exactly to scale, they are close. The big predator had six inch teeth in an eight foot skull, and by all accounts was a formidable killing machine. The earth ceased to be able to sustain such monsters long ago, when geologic upheaval and meteor impacts caused major shifts in the amount of sunlight. A dimmer world was a browner world, and the lush forests and grasslands that fed these amazing creatures went away, never to return.

This latter exploitation is most harmful, because it produces acres and acres on non-permeable asphalt, concrete or hardpacked stone. The monster facilities now ring the city of Houston and show no signs of stopping.

Where once rain fell onto upper leaves, then lower leaves, then a floor of fallen leaves and decomposing wood, before percolating into soil, it now splatters across indifferent silica, before being rapidly funneled into gutters and sewers that fill the bayous faster than the grade can drain it. This results in increased flooding. To combat this, the watercourses are dredged, speeding up the removal of nutrient rich soils, and increasing the speed in which industrial and agricultural run-off are reaching the oceans.

houston view 1984-2023
The browning of Earth. These photos represent the greater Houston Texas area in 1984 and today. You can easily see how much more of the countryside is covered in concrete and asphalt.
cairo 1984-2016 view
Development may be even rapider in the “developing world” which is not as restricted by environmental laws as the United States. This is Cairo, the largest city in Africa. 1984 is on the left and 2016 is on the right. For scale, the small whitish area on the far left near the bottom is the pyramids.
vegas 1984-2023 view
Development in marginal environments causes an even greater strain of the ecosystem. Las Vegas has grown by almost 400% in the last twenty years. Notice how as the city has become larger, the nearby lakes, that made such an oasis in the harsh desert possible, have dwindled. In addition to limiting water available to meet the needs of the city, the lower water levels threaten to fall below the intakes for the power plants, meaning that someday soon, Las Vegas may be left in the dark.

In the suburban developments, the same thing occurs on a smaller scale, but it is no less harmful. Lawns and landscaping introduce an artificial ecosystem that must be maintained artificially, with pesticides and fertilizers and forced watering.

Human populations continue to grow and place more demands for food and housing and rapid Amazon delivery that drives this destructive cycle. The pandemic has massively altered our distribution model in the United States and the net result are these massive storage facilities “convenient” to the neighborhoods that spread outward from every city and town.

We are browning the planet with our building. It is not enough to blame fossil fuel use and the automobile for this rapidly growing issue. All these fields of concrete reflect heat. These human-made deserts are orders of magnitude warmer than a surrounding woodland or grassland would be. The heat impacts the ability for rain to fall. It is causing local climate change and may be responsible for the record highs we are all experiencing this summer.

I don’t have a simple solution. I know that there is not a simple solution, and that is what is holding us back from working on more complex ones. “Going green” involves changing our human mindset, globally, as a species, and I am not sure that is possible. We are wired by evolution to be acquisitive. We are built to consume resources and driven to become better at it because back in the days when Oog and Groont came down from the trees that was what kept us alive.

Such acquisitiveness and the unchecked growth it creates frequently has caused the periodic collapse of social orders. Civilizations rise and fall, and much can be attributed to the overextension of the natural resources that such populations require to be sustainable.

But we are now approaching a truly global civilization, and the limits of the planet to sustain it are finite. We can’t simply expand, like the old empires did. There is no where left for us to go, realistically. The sky is our limit. Even if we dream of colonizing the planets and moons of our local star system, the resources required have to come from this already overburdened planet we inhabit.

There are two outcomes to this situation.

We can, as a species, learn to live more responsibly with the planet we inhabit. This requires a fundamental chain in our habits, our politics, and certainly our economics. I don’t know that this will happen in my lifetime, even though I expect my lifetime to be longer than my ancestors. The pace of changing our ways compared to the pace at which those ways threaten to destroy us is not an optimistic picture.

Which is the second outcome. We fail as a species. Humanity dies out, like the dinosaurs, leaving behind maybe a few bones to be dug up in a hundred million years by whatever creatures evolve to replace us. It’s our species that is under the greatest threat from the mass extinction event we are feeding. We may not be the sole cause, but we are certainly a major contributing factor.

But when we are gone, there is every chance that the crud we have pumped into the air and water and the earth will eventually settle out, be buried deep, and the trees will start their cycle again.

It’s not about us.

I’ll be back next week.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

The Long Road

Lion Pipe

…some of it’s magic, and some of it’s tragic, but I had a good life all the way

He Went To Paris – Jimmy Buffet

This was supposed to be a short article. It’s a short week in the US due to the Labor Day holiday, and that means cramming a lot more into less time. Also, I spent a good part of the last week driving (40 hours in the vehicle according to the travel clock) across the country, and that is more exhausting than it used to be.

I set out from South Texas to Middle Tennessee, and after a few days there on business, pressed north and east to my birthplace in the hills of Eastern Kentucky.

It’s been a little over a year since my father passed from cancer. I ended up going through his things with my mother and brother, as people do. This had not been my plan, but it’s a part of the rituals of life we all are connected together by.

I have said before that I am not close to my “blood” family, preferring the company of my chosen family instead. I don’t know that this is unusual, but society seems to make a bigger deal of it than is healthy. There is no great reason for this disconnect other than that we simply have very little in common, and that has been the case as long as I can remember.

I have always had a wandering spirit and inquisitive mind, and have never been satisfied to make small talk and keep up with what was happening with the neighbors. My youngest says that I am a changeling, which is as fair an explanation as any for my unusual outlook and vast difference of personality from my parents, sibling, and much of the rest of that community. I was born weird. I remain so. I am both contented with, and proud of, my weirdness.

Yet we ofttimes find ourselves attached in ways we were not aware of, or expecting. This was one of those times. Long trips can bring about a sense of melancholy. Hours spent watching the miles go by invites contemplation of the world passing outside the windows. Or at least it does for this wandering spirit and inquisitive mind. The trip from Texas to Kentucky was not a new one, though I have made it infrequently. But such journey’s stir memories. Most recently I had made this trip to see my father after his cancer diagnosis. Before that I had driven up to attend the funeral of my high school art teacher. Both trips had impacts. Both trips came up in my mind as I drew nearer to the mountains.

And the mountains themselves had an effect on me. I do miss them. I do not deny a deep connection to the rocks and the trees and the hills, even though the negative aspects of culture are still abhorrent to me. It is a constant source of conflict that I want the broader perspective of life near the big city, but long for the solitude and freedom of wandering in the woods. I have still not resolved that, and I don’t know that I will. But it was nice to feel the energy of that earth under my wheels. And it was nice to feel the energy of my current home and the familiar spirits around it as I returned.

bill-monroe
At the side of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ol’ Opry, are statues of some of the pioneers of country music. This one, with it’s own historical marker, represents Mr. Bill Monroe. Mr. Monroe was a native of Kentucky like me, and is remembered as the Father of Bluegrass, a musical style that merged the Celtic traditional reels and laments with Southern gospels and other influences. Bluegrass was undoubtedly the forerunner of country music, and country music was at least a god parent of rock and roll and all that came after it. It is right and fitting that Mr. Monroe is honored in this way, but I actually knew him as a human being. When I was younger, he and several other prominent “country legends” still played Saturday nights in small venues, school gyms, and country fairs. It is strange to encounter someone you knew while they lived as monument.

This unquiet nature within us is part of the human condition, I think. We are only able to realize our identity when confronted with otherness, and otherness always creates tension. Even among loved ones, and in families. We are all seeking to impose our identities on the world around us, and that perforce means coming up against the walls of other’s identities.

I spend a lot of time in my own head, obviously. I think that anyone who has the weird bent probably does. Being content to look upon things as being “just because” or even worse “God’s plan” is not within us. It leaves a bad taste in our mouths. I bristle at the scent of anything mildly dogmatic.

And on this journey, I was confronted so many times with such dogmatic thinking. People knew–knew without question– exactly how I should feel, and exactly why I felt that way, and expected quiescent cooperation in their version of my reality. This after several decades of my obvious and overt weirdness, and vocal proclamation that my viewpoint was not so, and would never be so, and that my viewpoint was not wrong, only different.

If anyone out there knows the frustration of someone trying to fix you, you have my sympathies. Remaining genteel and cordial in such situations is exhausting. I think this is much truer than that I put a lot of miles under me.

There certainly were positive aspects to the visit. I managed to see some people I had not seen in years, and enjoyed a brief time in their company where my longtime oddness was accepted unchallenged. And I spent much time in contemplation.

My father’s death did have an impact on me, even though we did not always get along. For my part I tried to make him understand that I was just never going to be who he thought I was, or should be, and I hope that was enough. I did not expect to cure a half-century of mixed emotions in a few hours, and I am not sure that “cure” is the right word. This constant idea that we need to “heal” ourselves seems a New Age dogma that I don’t want to participate in. I am the sum total of my experiences. I am the shards of memory that I have of those experiences, good and bad. And so is everyone else.

I do understand, from the many years I have read psychology and psychiatry texts, that some emotions and traumas can be debilitating. They can cause people to be “broken” and unable to live fulfilling lives.

I began this journey through psychology because of my father. It was his first major in college, and I was exposed to the books and materials at an early age. The same is true for the art that I have always pursued as my own refuge, and will hopefully make a full time career in coming years.

It took a year, and this journey, and going through the relics of his life, to make these things, and other positive memories, what come up more often when I think of him. This was not the first reaction that I had just after he passed. So perhaps there is some “healing” to that, but maybe not. In either case it is an organic thing that comes from time and experience and memory, and not a goal to be pursued by some externalized ritual.

At least not in my viewpoint, and your mileage may vary. I ran across a comment on social media a few weeks ago regarding the “ancestors”. It smelled of New Age pablum and a healthy dose of cultural appropriation, as do many such comments on social media in the esoteric topics.

I personally do not maintain an altar of the ancestors or perform rituals related to such belief. To me it feels like I am stealing from indigenous cultures to begin with, even though “we all have ancestors”. That is true, of course, but of the ancestors I know, there is always the layers of emotional baggage that comes from living life with them, and dealing with that otherness I described above. Good and bad, we’ve all got it. Some of it is worse than others, but our memories of these people color our thinking about them.

There’s a context that one cannot think of something without immediately bringing to mind it’s opposite. So for every pleasant and positive memory, there’s another less comforting one lurking out there. The trick, of course, is to reach the point where the better ones can outweigh the rest in the final analysis. And that’s a process that I don’t think comes from a ritualized veneration. Again, your mileage may vary.

brass rubbing
This brass rubbing is one of several in our collection, now grown by some we retrieved from storage in Kentucky. They had been in my wife’s grandmother’s house, and store since she passed away some years ago. They are important in some ways because the practice is now largely prohibited (in order to preserve the brasses) and because they were made by my wife and her mother and sisters in England. So there is both human history and personal history here. I hope that I have instilled in my children enough respect for the legacy of humanity that such things will have value to them when I am long gone from the world. But in the end, things only have the value we give them. These have no actual purpose.


The ancestors that I didn’t know, or knew only by abstraction, through the honeyed (or not) memories of others who did know them are not altogether real to me. I don’t feel connected, beyond the basic awareness that we share genetic material.

Yes I am, because they were.

But I honestly doubt that any of them thought of me with any kind of depth of perspective. They were simply too busy trying to survive in a hard scrabble world.

Don’t get me wrong. I respect the idea of the ancestors, and I am aware of some bits and pieces of the history that go around them (good and bad).

But our family line was far from landed gentry. There’s a general understanding that at least one branch were brought to the Colonies as indentured servants acquired from debtor’s prisons. They escaped the tobacco plantations of Virginia by crossing the Appalachians and settling on the frontier. There was some intermarriage with the native peoples, Cherokee, I’m told. But there’s precious little documentation to any of this, as it’s very long ago and, well, the names may have been changed to protect the guilty.

Certainly one can find our various family names in the northern parts of Wales even today. There’s a great likelihood that my people came from there, excepting the one’s who were already here. We have no great immigrant story of entering through Ellis Island or achieving wealth and fame from humble roots in the tenements of New York.

Many of the people who came west from Virginia and the Carolinas remained in the mountains, and their insular culture continues to the present day. Life was not easy. Living off the land was simply the nature of things, and continued well into the 20th century. We hunted and trapped and grew much of what we needed, and the grocery store was simply a subsidy to that old way of doing things. My parents were born into a world without electricity or running water or air conditioning or refrigeration. My children were born into the era of worldwide communication and instant internet presence.

I wonder what the ancestors would make of all that? I’m not sure they’d consider it progress.

mural plaque
My own monument in metal. Some 35 years ago I painted a wall in what was then the extension campus of Morehead State University. The building changed hands a couple of times, and I had assumed the work had been painted over or the wall removed during a remodel. Recently friends made me aware of it’s survival .

Last Friday I stopped by to try and get a decent photo without the glare on the plexiglass. I suppose there’s some irony in that attempts to protect it end up making it nigh impossible to experience without reflections from the long windows and overhead fluorescents. Such is the price of fame I suppose.

The receptionist at the medical clinic that now occupies the building was perplexed at my efforts to get a photo. She seemed even more incredulous to learn that I was the actual artist.

I have become to that community a name on a wall, without context save to the remaining locals who “knew me when I was alive.” Like Mr. Monroe and the man whose bones rest under that brass in England, I am a disconnected memory of someone you may have once heard about. There’s a certain peace in that, really.

Sitting with my old friend last Saturday night and covering all the many things that had passed in the great gap of time since we were last in the same room, I mentioned casually that I expected with modern medical advancements and trying to live healthier that I would make it into my 130s.

He responded that even at 130 it will be too short a life.

In the end we are the coalescence of some ineffable energy that struts our brief span, and then disburses. What remains of us in this world is the memory of us, in the minds of the others, who will pass on some smaller version of that memory to people as yet unborn, until the sparks get smaller and smaller.

I did say that such journey’s make us melancholy. But that should also remind us to live while we are living. With that thought I will thank you for enduring my ramblings and invite you to return next week when hopefully my perspectives will be less personal and more profound.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

The Fool That Follows Us

Agents Of Fortune

This summer’s exercise in the exploration of the Major Arcana of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot began with a different intention and expectation than what it ultimately ended up being. I don’t consider this a failure on my part, either from an editorial standpoint, or in terms of the material presented. This is exactly what working with the Tarot is about.

Tarot is a mnemonic device. At it’s heart, it’s a set of images that are supposed to remind us of a set of predetermined meanings. And, of course, it is is that. But if that is all that it is, then everyone could understand and use these cards. In fact, this process could be fully automated and presented as a handy phone app. And it has been. Yet much like the auto-horoscope apps, this recitation of rote meanings only appears inciteful through coincidence, and the wishful thinking of the user. That is, it’s ability to access the ethereal and the subconscious is an illusion.

To really reach beyond, we have to become a part of the process ourselves. The cards are reminders, certainly, but they are also stimuli. Yes, the Fool may indicate new beginnings, naivete, or poor decisions (depending on whose book you read). But perhaps that moment of stepping off the cliff is what sets our imagination on it’s journey. If we become too involved with the “accepted” meaning of the card, we are locking ourselves off from other paths it might set us on.

This is just as valid a consideration when looking upon the cards as the “hero’s journey” or some other hidden initiatory message. While I do not discount this idea, adherence to that as an absolute and total meaning of the cards is limiting in aspect.

The point is that one must remain open to where the card directs the mind, rather than rushing toward a conventional interpretation. It may not even be the Fool that starts that inspiration. It may be the scarlet color of the tunic, or the angle of staff used to carry the pack. Or it may be the little dog that follows him.

If you follow my Instagram account, you are acquainted with the clips from the cards I have used to announce each week’s installment. I have accumulated them in the photo below. In preparing these, my intent was to find some piece of Pamela Smith’s images that would be unique, possibly iconic, but also not necessarily the obvious emblem of each card. In doing so, I hoped to express that same idea that the card as it is generally experienced may be refreshed by approaching it from a different angle.

major-arcana-icons
The Instagram clips from the article series. What do these snippets say to you? What do you think made me pick them?

The RWS have been around for over a century now. The fact that the designs are now in public domain mean that they are appearing everywhere from t-shirts to coffee mugs. The decks themselves are being reissued by multiple publishers who are recoloring and re-embellishing the old line work. They come in iridescent and hologram finishes, gilded or silvered on black and blue, and a wide range of color variations.

The result of this is that we are so inundated with the form of the images that we are becoming jaded. They are commonplace. Like the pentagram, the triple moon, and the Eye of Horus, our reaction to their sacred and special nature are growing weaker because of overexposure.

This is also a bane for the experienced reader, who, like myself, have been looking at these cards for years and years and almost immediately getting a one or two phrase “shorthand” meaning. I think this is one reason why we collect decks. Even though we go back to our favorites, the ability to access fresh and variant versions of the Tarot iconography can shake up our complacent reaction to the cards. It’s like hearing the same symphony played by a different orchestra, or arranged by a different conductor. Yes they are all Mozart, but perhaps in this version a passage ordinarily favoring strings has been given over to the woodwinds. The notes are the same notes, but played on a different instrument. This creates a different experience of the symphony, and evokes a different response in our minds.

So too is our experience of the RWS style deck interpreted by a different artist. And this gives us an opportunity to imagine and intuit different messages. It changes the nature of the narrative. By this process we may internalize some of these responses, and then when we return to that original deck, we have a different context for that card when it comes up.

There is inherent in this approach the potential stigma of the Unverifiable Personal Gnosis. This is the thing that you know you know, because you know. And frequently in modern discussions of magical practice, the “UPG” is somewhat frowned upon. I hope through the explorations of the cards these last several weeks, I have demonstrated that very much of the supposed “secret teachings” are the UPG of persons from the 18th and 19th century, frequently being legitimized as “ancient and forbidden knowledge” through spurious attributions to the Romani people and the Ancient Egyptians, among others.

The works I have cited in these articles are but a few of the many many texts on Tarot. They are in my personal library, and I am certain that they, along with some other texts I own on cartomancy, have an influence on my personal understanding of the cards. I will say that I agree in parts with these works, and I disagree on the whole. Many texts are in conflict, and this is not unique to the discipline of Tarot. The shelves of astrology texts I possess are at odds in terms of both interpretations and mechanisms.

Additionally, there has been and continues to be an impetus to merge other mantic arts like astrology and numerology, and other magical systems, like gematria, Kabbala, and angel magic with Tarot, and to establish some longstanding heritage for this fusion. If we pare away the legends and find a solid historical narrative for the Tarot – as I believe Paul Huson has done in his Mystical Origins of the Tarot, then we have to discard or at least degrade the majority of these pedigrees. Yet without a secret mystical tradition, the combination of the cards – as a visual magical tool – is still a valid method. There is, of course, some belief that the “true occult teaching” would be needed for such to work, but it truly depends on one’s approach.

There is some context that certain of the Tarot were used both for beneficent and baneful magic as early as the 17th century, and probably as soon as these cards were available. The basic doctrine of sympathies applied here, and of course still does. If you want to call the Devil, there’s the Devil card for that. If you dabble with love spells, the Lovers is an obvious choice, but there’s also the Two of Cups, or the Four of Wands. The imagery works regardless of “system” and truly needs no ancient occult connection to be effective. If we lock ourselves into such systems of thinking about the cards, we are also limiting our ability to access unexpected revelations from the cards themselves.

Shortly after finishing last week’s article I saw a posting by Psychic Witch author Mat Auryn. He suggested that on the Five of Wands, the staffs seem to just fail to make a pentagram. He further goes on to say that the persons wielding the staff’s then may be seen to represent the elements, where the one is the spotted tunic is Quintessence, or Spirit, and that he has purposely withdrawn his staff to “break” the natural shape of the pentagram. This is an intriguing insight. Generally speaking the usual meaning here is conflict or disorder. Yet with this approach, we can go further to express that when Spirit or Intelligence is extracted from its natural place within the elemental system, things tend to fall apart. We are presented with a metaphor of the world in chaos, or a person in chaos, rather than an external and literal conflict.

Expanding on this insight, I went back and looked at that card. It is also possible to contextualize as the five persons are about to form the pentagram We can here almost reverse the usual meaning of conflict and see the Five of Wands as an emblem of cooperation and common goals. Is this just wishful thinking? A complete personal rewrite of the meaning that for ages has been the same thing? Probably. But does that mean that either approach is wrong? No.

It is ultimately the impression of the card that we form as it gets turned over and laid down that is the meaning of the card. The key is to train ourselves to respond freshly to that impression rather than hammering the card into a pre-defined message, which completely ignores what our subconscious is trying to tell us.

I hope the last few weeks exercises have inspired you to look at the RWS and it’s related kin in a new light. Beyond that, an active awareness of all the images and impressions we are fed daily can expand our lives, our knowledge, and our ability to affect the world around us.

I’ll be back next week with new topics. As much as I have enjoyed this journey, I need now to step away from it and reset my thinking to write more extemporaneously as I was prior to April. We’ll see where it takes us.

Thank you for your continued patronage.

Featured image and Instagram pic clipped from the Blue Oyster Cult album Agents of Fortune. Artwork is by Lynn Curlee.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

Returning to the Earth

World

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.

Revelations Chapter 21, Verse 1 – King James Bible

I’ll leave you a moment to contemplate the irony that the above quote is being used to introduce Card XXI. If you have read last week’s article, you no doubt picked up on my fascination with the last book in the Christian Bible. I am not Christian by any means, but I was raised in a community that was tacitly Christian, and even the non-church going folk were believers. It was also an insular community which did not place a great deal of value on scholarly pursuits, so outside of an old tattered copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, some Childcraft Encyclopedias my parents bought on payments, and a handful of comic books, the Bible was the only available reading material for much of my youth.

Revelations was also the most magical and mystical of the books, with things like dragons and monsters and beasts full of eyes with six wings and horses with peoples heads, scorpion’s tails, and lion’s teeth. Certain more interesting for a young person with a penchant for weird than all that begatting stuff.

And as noted in last week’s article, the World is not what it started out to be.

world-RWS-tarot
The last of the Major Arcana, at least according to the order that Mr, Arthur Edward Waite puts them in.

The World is represented as a nude woman, with a sash winding around her. She holds a wand or scepter or baton in either hand. She appears inside an oval or ellipse that may be made of laurel leaves, like the traditional Roman crown of honor and victory. In the corners of the card, inside clouds, are the heads of a person, and eagle, a bull, and a lion. The background of the card is blue. There is no visible land or water.

Typically this card is seen as attainment, completion, or totality. Lately it has also come to be associated with Mother Nature, or Mother Earth, as the New Age, pagan, witchcraft and occult communities become more aware and concerned with the conditions on the planet, and the impact our tenancy is having on it. Yet neither of these associations is in keeping with the original images to be found on the earlier versions of these cards.

In the Visconti Sforza deck, we find this card represented by two cherubs or children (such as the missing twins from the Marseilles version of the Sun card) who hold up an orb containing a castle. This castle represents the City of Holy Jerusalem, which is said in verse 2 of Revelation 21 to descend from out of heaven to signal the new Utopian world following the trials of the End Times. Holy Jerusalem, and it’s measurements, worked out by mystics and bible scholars in the early Christian centuries, serves as the basis for the Gothic cathedral, and the numerous mystic, magical, and masonic rituals and traditions associated with those buildings. It’s also where we get the gold-paved streets and gates of pearl that are frequently assigned to heaven itself by modern evangelicals.

heavenly jerusalem
The “New Heaven and New Earth” as envisioned in early Renaissance Tarot. This pair of cherubs may have been the source for some Marseilles decks that have two children below the Sun. On those cards the glory of the “New Jerusalem” is replaced by the face of the solar deity. That this is not a Sun card is evidenced by the fact that the Visconti-Sforza Sun is a single cloud-mounted cherub holding aloft the red head of Helios. This card then must be the World, since no other trump is missed. It actually makes a good deal of sense that this follows the Last Judgement scenario, since this is the timeline of the Revelations narrative.

As a sequel to the Judgement Card this makes far more sense than a more or less pagan lady in the altogether. This is especially so if Huson’s theories about some of the Tarot imagery coming from the early Christian mystery plays. These were designed to teach biblical truth to a largely illiterate population. As such, many of them were made much more elaborate so as to be engaging and memorable. Even then, the movie was often much flashier than the book.

Huson also relates a version of the World where it is not our Gaia-esque figure here, but Christ himself. In fact, the image he offers I recall from my art history class as Christ Pantocrator, which is “Christ, King of the World”. This also would seem to be a more apt follower to the apocalyptic Judgement card.

Pantocrator is very frequently shown inside a mandorla, which is the official term for the elliptical or oval shape represented in RWS as a laurel wreath. The mandorla is an artistic convention, used to express a sacred or otherworldly space. It is frequently occupied by Christ, or the Mother Mary, or God Almighty, and often includes a company of angels, holy personages, and other important people, like the heads of the local church, nobles and chieftains, and particularly people who paid the painter.

mandorla-triptych
A trio of holy personages emerging from that rather odd looking shape called a mandorla. The leftmost is obviously not Christian, but it is not certain whether this usage came from exposure to the Christian model or vice-versa. 6

The center piece is Christ Pantocrator, from a Byzantine gospel book. You’ll no doubt recognize the sacred animals that appear in the Wheel and the World cards. Here they represent the four authors of the Gospel, but their origin is in the Old Testament, and in Revelations. The attribution of this specific meaning is part of the writing of the early church fathers, who struggled with a need to define what these strange images were. Later occultists would give them astrological attachments, or perhaps they rediscovered those that had been purloined by the church.

In any case the four beings of the corners are common to both the Asia image on the left, and that of the Virgin on the right. In the case of the Virgin and Child the mandorla itself is made of circling angelic beings identified as either cherubim or seraphim. These also stem from the vision of Ezekiel.

Regardless of it’s origins the mandorla represents a gap between our cosmos and the divine one. It is worth considering this when looking upon the visage of the World in the final Tarot trump.

Mandorlas seem to make their way into religious art from icons found in the Eastern Church, which were inspired by Byzantine mosaics. But we can also find mandorlas in the arts of Arabia, India, and China, so it is entirely possible they made their way to Europe on the Silk Road from Asia roots.

They might best be described a visual depiction of a rift in space. The inference is universally that we are seeing something not in this world.

Our idea of the “aura” may stem from these depictions. They are sometimes multi-hued or rainbow colored. That this spectral effect is the product of the spatial separation versus and emanation from the beings inside it is not certain. Persons having such encounters even today are not clear on the experience, but the descriptions seem to be close to this phenomenon.

This shouldn’t be confused with the idea of the mandala, although, as another mystical visualization, there is some common ground. The purpose of the mandala is to serve as an aid to meditation and understanding by depicting a spiritual realm as a sacred space. The space is typically centered on the deity or deities to whom the mandala is dedicated. Moving outward from that center we may find subordinate deities, associated deities, avatars, aspects, even depictions of demons and enemy beings trampled or defeated. The space is frequently divided into quarters, and there are things like gates and guard houses, populated by protective spirits, the whole making up a personal microcosm for the deity that is his or her place of power. In the making of the mandala the artist is meditating on the various principles involved in each depiction, and when finished, if permanent, then others can make this same mystical journey.

Let’s consider the more elaborate of the Christian mandorlas in a similar vein, with depictions of the various orders of angels, then a ring of saints and martyrs, then important personages perhaps living at the time of the creation of the piece. There are striking similarities, and while the idea of meditation is very different in East and West, it may be said that the Christian image does evoke a similar inward journey.

I’ll digress a bit further here and look at the similarity between these art objects and the sacred sand paintings of the American Southwest indigenous peoples. These share much in common with the mandala. They use a very symbolic language to represent gods and demi-gods and sacred narrative. Like some the Buddhist mandalas, these are also meant to be temporary constructions, destroyed once the magic is made, to prevent contamination by malevolent spirits.

We might further include the various Meso-American “calendar wheels” in this discussion, though their abstraction makes them a bit less directly so. Yet they do express a means of defining the cosmos, and that is in keeping with the ideology in the World card. And it underscores the importance we ought to ascribe to it, whether we come to it from a neo-pagan ecological perspective or an antique Judeo-Christian one.

Those four critters in the corners we’ve seen before. They are in the corners of the Wheel Of Fortune. As noted in the article for that card, they come from biblical sources, firstly the “living beings” in Ezekiel’s vision. In John’s Revelation they are referred to as the four beasts that surround the heavenly throne (though he gives them a lot more eyes). This is further testament to their origin as surrounding an image of a male Christ rather than a female Gaia.

In church dogma they are representative of the authors of the Four Gospels. But they are also astrologically Aquarius (human), Scorpio (eagle), Taurus (bull) and Leo (lion). Thus they are also then equal to Air, Water, Earth, and Fire, and subsequently to the suits of Swords, Cups, Pentacles, and Wands. They can also be seen as the Four Winds, Four Directions, Four Archangels, etc. depending on which system you want to employ them in. Very versatile these critters.

world-cosmic-tarot
In the Cosmic Tarot we are presented with an image very similar to the one Pamela Colman Smith has created. Yet there is an exoticism, and possibly also an eroticism, in how the figure of the earth is represented. This seems certainly more accessible than the woman in the RWS version.
world-hidden-realm-tarot
The Tarot of the Hidden Realm gives us Mother Earth in a verdant green with all her bounty exploding forth from her. The Gospel animals are gone, as they were never part of Faerie, and we are left with lushness and perhaps even lustiness.
world-shadowscapes-tarot
Stephanie Law’s magnificent Shadowscapes Tarot echoes the Hidden Realm in a number of ways. Her World though, is a regal queen, garbed in mystery, and keeping her own counsels.
world-wildwood-tarot
Finally, the Wildwood Tarot, with it’s Celtic shamanism, gives us the World Tree. I’m a tad concerned about calling this a “Celtic” ideation. Yggdrasil is a Norse concept. It seems a bit clumsily borrowed here to present an idea of the universal ideal, or knowledge, or spirit, when perhaps there are better more truly Celtic symbols that might be used.

With Tarot, one is always walking a balance between the work of the artist and interpreter, and what the actual images on the cards bring to mind. This quasi-intuitive approach provides for an infinite number of narratives when we lay the cards out. But we must remember how much our reactions, conscious or otherwise, may color that narrative. It is the fine line between, what are the cards telling us, and what are we telling the cards.

Let’s drop back and look at them elementally though. As in the Four Elements of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. In the center then, our figure of “the World” becomes by extension Quintessence – The Fifth Element. This element is styled as “Spirit” and this then tells us that the World, inside its sacred space is Spirit. It is not the mundane. It is not the physical, but it is that which transcends the physical. It is infinite, and eternal. It is everything and the nothing by which everything comes into existence. It is time and it is timeless.

This idea is hardly diminished if we look backward to the depiction of this as a Utopian paradise that comes after “the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” or even if it comes to us as a patriarchal and somewhat authoritarian depiction of the “King of the World”. We may still find here Ma’at, that cosmic truth and order that is nature itself.

As I noted in the discussion of the visionary portions of Revelations, the descriptions of things speak of a person’s struggling to share a deeply changed perception of the nature of reality with someone who has not had that experience, using the limitations of our linguistic structure. And further these may be couched in the concepts of the time they were written. Yet within them is a kind of ecstasy that they deeply want to share, but are frustrated in doing so. We are left with the imperfect version, with wild symbols, and tyrannical avatars, disturbingly violent depictions, and in some cases overt pornography. When these broken shadows are encountered by the less enlightened, misinterpretation is inevitable, and fear and hatred may be the result. It is the lack of the complete understanding of the experience, of the true nature of the cosmos we inhabit, of it’s existence beyond the physical corporeal and provable, that engenders otherness, and from otherness stems iniquity, envy, and apprehension.

The physical world, with it’s greed and privation, it’s war, famine, pestilence, and death, are the result of its own incomplete state. Where the spirit prevails, peace and harmony are possible. Where a greater vision is encompassed, happiness naturally ensues. Yet the limitation of the physical, the dependence upon finite resources, on structure and ego, continue to create such otherness, and disturb such natural order.

The physicists call this entropy. It is the tendency of the universe to fall apart. In a physical world, more energy is required to keep order. Chaos is easier. The End of Time is marked by everything becoming so broken and so far apart that there is simply not enough energy left to put it back together into any sort of ordered form. Like Humpty Dumpty, our universe has taken a great fall.

Yet physics also says energy can neither be created or destroyed, only moved from point to point. So in that end, at the Great Dark Silence that awaits, there must still be that same energy that was there.

That energy is the Quintessence. It is the Spirit. The actual living thing that brought about the Cosmos in order to know itself. And that cannot be destroyed. The World is, and was, and will be.

Next week I will have one more article in respect to the Major Arcana. I have enjoyed this exploration. I must admit it has led me down some rabbit holes that even I did not expect. I hope they were not too obscure. And if they were, well, we occultists are by definition in the obscurity busy.

Please join me next time.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

Renewal, Redemption, and Reincarnation

Judgement

Ray, did it ever occur to you that the reason we’ve been so busy lately is that the dead really are rising from their graves?

Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Husdon) – Ghostbusters

As we reach the penultimate Major Arcana card, we are confronted once again with the blatantly Christian origin of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck. The iconography on Card XX – Judgement has no other esoteric precedent. And yet, it’s possible to work around that if we spend a little time shifting the perspective.

judgement-rws
The card formerly known as The Last Judgement, or rather, the art theme it depicts.

The card shows an Archangel with flaming hair appearing over a cloud. The Archangel wears armor, and is sounding a trumpet, which bears a white banner marked with a red tau cross. On the ground below, with a white mountain range in the background, we see a six nude persons standing in boxes. The lids of the boxes are cast aside. Two of the figures are male, two are female, and two are children of undetermined gender. Between the male-child-female group in the foreground and the male-child-female group in the background is a river or other body of water. in the far background there are rolling hills and three trees may be seen. The colors in the lower part of the card are muted. The figures are the same grey as the boxes they inhabit. The landscape and river are a grey blue. Above the sky is a bright blue, but the strongest colors in the image are with the Archangel and its trumpet.

The majority of this imagery is derived from the Book Of The Revelation of John of Patmos. It is the last book in the official Christian Bible, King James Version, which was a dominant source of Protestant thinking for about 500 years. There are a number of other citations in the KJV regarding the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. And there are similarly multiple references to angels with trumpets. But this idea of the judging of the dead alongside the apocalyptic imagery is primarily in Revelations.

As someone raised in a Christian community, Revelations was one of the more interesting texts. Aside from Genesis and Exodus, it contains most of the “special effects”. Yes, there are a number of miracles that occur to prophets and saints and Christ, but the big epic blockbuster stuff is saved for the last book.

Most modern thinking suggests that Revelations is at least partially a veiled political attack on the Roman state and its treatment of the nascent Christian church, particularly under Nero and his successors. The “Beast with Seven Heads” and the the “Whore of Babylon” are metaphors for Rome, and for it’s imperial influence in the world. They are, perhaps, wishful thinking on the part of John (if John of Patmos was a single author) that Rome would shortly fall and be punished and revenged upon for the persecution of Christians.

On the other hand, the earlier parts about the Book of Seven Seals and the Angels with the Seven Trumpets are a remarkably interesting description of either an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war. Stars falling as flaming hail and a great star plunging into the sea and causing massive death and destruction, followed by a period of global darkening, is exactly the kind of scenario scientists describe as the aftermath of an asteroid. Consequently, it also is a dead ringer for nuclear winter. To the extent this is legitimately prophecy, or a dramatic retelling of some actual event experienced by early humans and preserved through oral tradition – much as the Deluge appears to have been – is hard to say. Back in the seventies, when I was reading through this stuff, and consuming all the bits on alien astronauts, pyramid power, ESP, cryptids, and all those other things Annie Potts asks Ernie Hudson if he believes during the job interview in Ghostbusters, anything seemed possible. I hope to have become a bit more critical in my old age. But I don’t know if I would use the term skeptical.

Judgement-Journey-Into-Egypt-Ghosts-and-spirits
Two versions of the Egyptian Weighing of the Heart. The left is from the Journey Into Egypt Tarot and the other from the Ghosts and Spirits Tarot. For the Egyptian themed one this is an obvious choice for Card XX. In both, Osiris, the murdered god who was reassembled and reanimated by his wife Isis, and Thoth (Tehuti) god of writing, knowledge, medicine, and magic, presides over the final hurdle of the soul before they are able to enter the abode of the blessed dead. The illustration at top is a version of the Papyrus of Ani, the most famous version of the Book of the Dead, currently in the British Museum. This New Kingdom text is the basis for most published English translations. Anubis brings the dead Ani to the chamber. Thoth stands on the opposite side of the balance waiting to record his name for eternity. Behind Thoth, Horus presents a successful Ani to his father Osiris and Mother Isis. Egyptian art did not employ this “time-travel” as a shortcut to narrative, but as a magical proof that Ani’s heart would balance with Ma’at’s feather.

The idea of resurrection, or at least the afterlife, and the judgment of the soul, is an ancient thing. We know at least that in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, that if the heart of the dead person weighs more than the Feather of Ma’at – Cosmic Truth, then that heart was given to the Devourer of Souls and the person no longer existed.

From the earliest times, though, our remote ancestors seemed to regard the person as surviving the body. Grave goods are found even in Neanderthal sites. Whether these were made as offerings, the disposal of now taboo objects, or simply a human need to show affection for the dead, we cannot know. But that idea that there is something extra beyond the meat suit seems to be a realization of early peoples, and our sometimes neurotic obsession with it persists to the present day, in every culture. Even the atheist and rationalist who argue that our consciousness is a quirk of chemistry, and just as fragile and temporary, can only say so as a “matter of faith”. While they say that the existence of the soul cannot be proven scientifically, it also can’t be disproven. It’s all a matter of what we believe.

Card XX acknowledges our basic need to believe something, even if something is nothing. In other words. the message of this card is that there is more than we know going on. In that context, our actions may have consequences that we are not aware of. This is the very essence of the concept of karma.

I am not any expert on the teachings of the Hindu or Buddhist mystic. I have read various tracts in both religions, as I have read Hebrew, Christian, Mormon, and Islam works. The popular notion of karma seems to have evolved as a New Age oversimplification of the actual teachings, through a lens of Western dualism. The ideas of good and bad karma, are not necessarily coincident with “good” and “bad” as we tend to think of them in a post-Protestant first world way. That’s not to say there is not some overlap. But our tendency to equate “karma” with a kind of cosmic balancer is, as far as I can tell, not quite correct.

Karma comes from a society whose afterlife belief was reincarnation. We may suspect this is because of the caste system, which is apparently still very important in Indian society even in the 21st century, but the ideas are ancient, and may simply reflect a differing view of what happens when the meat suit stops working properly. Reincarnation is not exclusive to Hinduism, but it is one of the most widespread examples, and along with Buddhism, one of the belief systems that has explored it deeply both ritually and philosophically.

judgement -Shadowscapes - Legacy
In the Shadowscapes Tarot and the Legacy of the Divine Tarot, more emphasis is placed on the ecstatic state of awakening or transcendence that the judging of the spirits. While they both still use the name Judgement, and employ versions of the traditional iconography, they’ve divorced that iconography from the Christian teaching about the Last Judgement, the End Times, and the attendant punishment and torment of those found wanting after the Apocalypse. These are happy, spiritual, and comforting. They speak of the escape from both earthly cares and mortal trauma, while not tying the experience to a particular ethos. The angelic figures need not be from an Abrahamic religion.

In the West, in the New Age, the idea of reincarnation quickly became more involved with having been someone prominent in a past life, rather than about what one would become in a future incarnation. Apparently most people were Cleopatra at some point. No wonder the poor woman had such a tragic life given all the people in her head. But there’s an entire branch of occult practice based around past life regressions and finding out who you were before you were you.

Now that is not to say there’s not value in that practice, if you believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation. Ultimately the goal of reincarnation is not to come back anymore. We keep coming back because we have failed to learn some vital lesson that will allow us to release our consciousness from this endless cycle of birth-suffering-death-rebirth and go on back to the source, which, is perhaps unconsciousness, or even, non-existence. So the idea that perhaps we can look back upon previous lifetimes and pinpoint where we went wrong – in order to avoid making the same mistakes in this life, and maybe future ones, is not without merit. So, maybe don’t get involved with invading foreign generals who are really just interested in rape and plunder. It never ends well.

Concepts like karmic debt and good karma and bad karma (and maybe instant karma) seem from my research to be largely Western adaptations to our already dualistic view of the cosmos. (If any of my readers are practicing a karmic religion and wish to correct me, I welcome it. As I said, I only know from research that may be faulty. I try my best, but I always want to truly understand). Karma is purely an expression of the need to be aware that our actions have consequences.

In the Christian (and ancient Egyptian) view of the afterlife, those consequences had a two-fold purpose. First, it was to cow behaviors that might otherwise be difficult or expensive to police. “If you breaketh this Commandment, thou shalt go directly to Hell. Thou shalt not pass go. Thou shalt not collect thy 200 sheckels”. Secondarily, it acted as an explanation for how those individuals who flagrantly and frequently shattered the commandments got little comeuppance, and in fact, appeared to profit mightily from it. If you are familiar with the history of the Church, you are aware that one of the issues at the heart of the Reformation was the sale of indulgences. That is, if one who profited from their sins might give some portion of the ill-gotten gains to building a new baptistry or chapel; and thereby shorten the time spent in the afterlife in Purgatory, waiting for a table to open up in Heaven. This “Get Out of Hell Free Card” was a key source of revenue for the expanding church, but they didn’t invent the idea. Ancient art is resplendent with temples and statues and stelae and obelisks given by the mighty and powerful who not only pleased their respective gods, but got a really nifty public relations boost.

New Age Tarot explorations of this card have obviously downplayed the Christian iconography used by Smith and Waite on this card. In Paul Huson’s Mystical Origins of the Tarot, this Last Judgement derives from same series of mystery pageant floats or stages as the Tower and some of the other more non-pagan symbols. I think he has a good argument here because it ties very well with the earlier forms of the next and final trump, the World. While we will delve more deeply into that card and it’s variants when I wrap up next week, it’s fair to say the original imaginings of the World card were also found in Revelations, and pertain to the aftermath of the events which we find displayed on this card.

Judgement-arthurian-hidden-realm-wildwood-Tarot
Three overtly pagan takes on Card XX, all of whom have dispensed with the imagery and the name associated with this card. The Arthurian Tarot, based on Grail Lore and a kind of Celtic shamanism, alludes to the legend that Arthur is not dead, but sleeping, waiting to rise again in time of need. His presence is personified in the land itself. In the Hidden Realm Tarot, the theme of the Fae expresses “Life Renewed” through the simple, but profound image of a sprouting acorn. Finally, the Wildwood Tarot, another Celtic shamanism deck, gives us the Great Bear. The Bear is terrible, and we fear it. It stands over the mouth of a burial mound. So here is death, waiting for us to make the wrong choice in a cosmos that will respond swiftly and brutally. Many shamanistic faiths feature “death journeys” as a form of initiation to express the death of one identity and the birth of another one. This prepares the individual to face the fact that our inevitable physical death will be another such journey.

By the time it reaches Levi, that version has moved toward a neo-pagan “Mother Earth”, and thus embraced by quasi-neo-pagan-reconstructionist-mystic-spiritualist-ceremonial-magicians who would ultimately give form to the RWS. Unfortunately that left Judgement twisting in the wind here with the Archangel Gabriel trumpeting the End Times to a bunch of folks who -by mid century – were really more interested in a self-centered, semi-hedonist, and in some ways anti-social kind of spiritual awakening. The New Age simply equated the card with the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and ignored the symbolism entirely.

But we can see this card as emblematic of personal awakening to the divine. Though Gabriel is frequently associated with the trumpet, and in Islam is identified as the giver of the Recitation to the Prophet, there are other candidates. The being identified as Metatron, personified as the “Word of God” also shows up in the Revelations. Described as proceeding from heaven on a white horse with a sword coming from his mouth that is the Word, with a name known only to himself, this being causes much of the violence and retribution of the prophecy. I know a number of Christian teaching equate him with Christ, and possibly also with Michael who is also often considered synonymous with Christ. Revelation, more than many of the other books, has a number of euphemisms and symbolic descriptions that, frankly, seem to be added for the sake of effect. There are a lot of things with multiple eyes, and horns, and wings, and a variety of horrific creatures that modern folks try to equate to weapons of war.

I’m fairly certain that the person or persons writing it were experiencing some kind of altered state of consciousness. Revelation is a hallucination, an ancient acid trip, or it’s an amazingly vivid dream. But those portions that are “special effects” would seem to indicate that whatever caused the experience was outside of that which anyone would easily express to another person.

So when approaching Card XX, I ponder the kind of transformative experience that leaves one forever different. This is not the Death that causes us to look for a rational alchemy in Temperance to deal with the new situation, nor is it the collapse of the external structure of the Tower which affords the opportunity to build new orders under the light of the Star. This leaves all the previous experiences behind. It is a change so profound to seem that before it one was dead, that the person who was, is not real, or relevant.

Such an experience may be overwhelming. The portent of such an experience, in a reading which centers on the mundane, the corporeal, and the worldly is jarring and incongruous. To try and integrate the message into the narrative of the other cards is difficult. Doubtless it’s easier to suggest it has something to do with making the proper choice, of being aware of karma, or even to demote it to the status of a simple positive outcome to a court case. But, excluding the last possible meaning assigned to this trump, a profound spiritual awakening is entangled with the perception of karma and the consequences of our choices. So in context, perhaps the card should be read as growing awareness of our own role in our fate, and our own responsibility for whatever else is going on.

With that, I will wrap up this week’s article and thank you for your continued patronage. I hope this series has been of benefit to you as you explore Tarot yourself. Next week is the World, the final trump, and I intend one last article to look back through the Major Arcana as a whole, before returning to a more or less eclectic editorial calendar. I hope you will join me.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Posted on

Light Unchallenged

Sun

All Hail the Coming of The Sun King!

Well, not me, thank you. I am a Creature of the Winter Dark, and the exultation of the primary luminary in his sign of Leo is not a comfort here in Texas with another week of 100°+ temps. The Sun is one of my least favorite cards. It’s certainly in the bottom five. I frequently avoid incarnations and avatars of the Sun in various mythologies. Save for it’s placement in my natal chart (only a couple of hours before dipping peacefully below the horizon) I do my best to avoid it. But here we are, and I shall try to assay it as best I can, though I shan’t say it will be without bias. No reading ever is.

sun-rws-tarot
Bit over the top, this one. But that is in keeping with the reverence for the top luminary.

Card XIX The Sun is characterized by a large solar disk, with 12 straight rays (assuming one behind the Roman numeral as logical) and 12 wavy rays. Beneath it in the background is a row of sunflowers planted behind a garden wall. In front of the wall there is a white horse. On his back is a nude child, crowned with a ring of smaller sunflowers and a red feather in the center. The child holds a great red banner.

The imagery here appears to be the more straightforward of almost any Tarot card. The rays can be taken to represent the hours of the day and the wavy rays those of the night (of which the Sun still holds sway). Alternatively, the rays can represent the signs of the Zodiac and the wavy rays the Houses, which are dependent upon the Rising Line. This meridian, most important in astrological calculations, is essentially the horizon at the time of birth. Since this is also a factor of the hour and moment, the Sun may be said to also control where the Houses are laid out. Equal Houses in a perfect system are synonymous with the signs, but because the Sun travels sign to sign over the space of about 30 days, and house to house in a period of twenty-four hours, there is likely to always be some variation. If a latitude driven House system like Placidus is used, then there is even more to take into consideration, but it is the Sun as arbiter of the hour that determines the Ascendant, and the Ascendant that determines the Houses. Since it is the Houses that are used to express good or ill omen of planetary placement and aspect, the Sun’s influence here may be as important, if not more important, than the Sun sign alone.

Sun signs are what most people who look at the daily horoscope are aware of. The Sun, as the biggest brightest and fastest moving object in our skies, has taken the lion’s share of the astrological celebrity. And lion’s share is appropriately given to him, as he is ruler of the Sign of Leo, that brightest and hottest season, following just after the Summer Solstice. The Moon, as his opposite, second largest, and second fastest, was given dominion over neighboring Cancer, preceding the Solstice, and expressed as water. Water as opposite the Sun’s fire makes a more complete analogy.

From these, then, the ancient Chaldees put the remaining five visible “wanderers” in charge of the chart in opposing pairs, starting with Mercury holding Gemini and Virgo, Venus with Taurus and Libra, Mars ruling the notorious Aries and Scorpio, Jupiter the burgeoning Pisces and Sagittarius, and finally old dark Saturn having sway over the cold winter signs of Capricorn and Aquarius. Comparatively recent discoveries of additional planets have necessitated given them rulership of signs in ways that seem most suitable, so the dark deep waters of Scorpio have been assigned to Pluto surrounded by his river Styx, Neptune rules the seas that Pisces swims in, and dreaming Uranus presides over Aquarian skies.

It is however the annual solar visit into each sign that gave us that popular Seventies singles scene question: “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?”. The Sun being biggest and brightest and fastest was given greatest influence in determining which characteristics would most mark an individual’s personality, or at least, their Leo-ness. The big and bold and egocentric and externalized aspects of ourselves are, like the bright Sun, and the charging Lion, what we see in ourselves and in others. The Moon, by contrast, governing the nightly tides, is equated to our tendency for emotional passions, thus our Moon Sign, is more frequently associated with our subconscious selves. Rounding out the top three is the Rising Sign, which is that sign where the Ascendant is placed, the sign on our “dawn” horizon at the hour of our birth. This is influential, in that it defines the First House, and the First House is the house of our ego, our self-image, and often our selfishness. Awareness of Sun, Moon, and Rising is becoming more common in the casual astrology follower these days, and are at least helpful if one doesn’t grasp the complex webs of planets, houses, aspects, rulerships, exaltations, detriments, falls, decans, parts, etc, that go into a full chart workup.

But what does all this astrology have to do with the Tarot card? Well, again, my approach to the Sun as a card is somewhat ambivalent. I think it’s a showy one-note card that just comes in bringing cheery good fortune and positive vibes and is very much often read like the Sun sign in a natal chart. That is, much more importance is given to its appearance than to the rest of the chart, or the rest of the Tarot spread itself.

sun-tarot-Marseille
This sample from the Tarot of Marseilles shows a French preference for two children playing in the sunlight. This variation is not unique, though there are a number of interpretations to it’s meaning. Some say it represents a young couple – or marriage – one of the potential inferences of this card. Alternatively the pair are the offspring of a successful domestic life, which is by extension the same thing. Others may see them as the denizens of the Tower, reborn in the full light of the New Dawn. I can find some other potential sources for them, though perhaps not so likely ones. Levi acknowledges them, as does Waite, but both elect for the version with a single child, and Waite goes further to prefer the single child on the spotless white horse. Through this we may be meant to associate the radiant Sun with the Christ Child.

The “arrival of Baby New Year” artwork smacks of the Baroque style of France’s Sun King Louis XIV. Now don’t get me wrong. I love Baroque art, but I am also conscious of the egotism involved. This is, after all, the man who, when told his plans for the palace at Versailles would bankrupt the state, replied “L’etat c’est moi.” – “I am the state.” While his great-great-great-grandson would lose it all (including his head) late, Louis XIV influence on the world and history was certainly worthy of the title he bestowed upon himself. Part of his propaganda was indulging a neo-pagan cult of Apollo, with him as the dutifully Catholic, but also fully mythical embodiment of the solar deity. The art and decoration of his palaces are resplendent with scenes of Greek myth, frequently erotic (and even pornographic) depictions of the Sun- centered sagas.

Which is why it’s curious to find that on the quintessential French Tarot decks, there are two children on this card. Most obviously when we find two of anything we expect an allusion to Gemini. Yet Gemini and the Sun are hardly related, as we’ve already expressed. The Sun rules Leo, little Mercury is charged with authority over Gemini. So who are these two, who often show up as cherubs in the iconography of other decks? There are perhaps a couple of candidates.

Let’s go with a French intrigue first. During the reign of the Sun King, a warrant was issued for one Eustache Dauger. Dauger was held in prison for the rest of his life, dying in the infamous Bastille. In this time he was the responsibility of a single jailer. This unusual arrangement has lead to much speculation, and expounded upon by the misreporting by the salacious minded Voltaire, that Dauger had been sentenced to wear an iron mask, forever obscuring his identity. It was also Voltaire who suggested that this person was an older bastard son of the previous king, and thus a longshot contender for the throne. Alexander Dumas, who penned The Man in the Iron Mask based on Dauger, makes him a moments older legitimate twin, whose existence must be kept secret by the usurper Louis. So perhaps these two children are a bit of naughty French parody that came at a later time (since during the reign of Louis XIV and indeed his successors, such a comment would send one to the Bastille or the guillotine.).

Another possible origin for the two children is an artistic theme quite common in Renaissance and later art associating the infant John the Baptist and the Christ Child. John, as the predecessor and prophet of Jesus, is a significant figure in the Gospels. John was an older cousin, according to the lore. When he was executed by Herod for preaching against him and the Roman occupation, Jesus moved up in prominence. It was fashionable in many works of religious art to show the two children together, often in the company of their mothers. Leonardo painted at least two such works, and the dual children on the Marseilles card always get me thinking of them.

The-Virgin-of-the-Rocks
Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. This is the version that is in the National Gallery in London. There’s another one in the Louvre that is somewhat different. It is generally acknowledged that this version may have been finished by apprentices, or later altered. In the Louvre version, the angel is pointing toward the Christ Child, here signified by the cross on his shoulder. The other infant is John the Baptist, his cousin and predecessor. The pointed finger as a symbol of the presence of the Divine is a common feature in Leonardo’s works. The French version is missing the cross, and the halos on the children, and the “modesty cloth” on the Christ Child. These alterations to the London version suggest a later “correction” by the church rather than a contemporary alteration to the painting by Leonardo’s helpers. The two children may be a possible source for the dual infants in some versions of the Sun Tarot.

The single child on the white horse is almost certainly a metaphor for the Christ, with his far too large red banner symbolizing the blood sacrifice that is reputed to save all of humanity. Confuting the Sun and the Son was useful in converting early pagans, and adopting some of the heliocal energies and attributions with the growing Christian cult. It’s important to remember that early Roman versions of Christ were not the bearded dark man we tend to view as Jesus today. Roman Jesus was Roman, often depicted as the Shepherd, clean-shaven, and light-haired or sometimes blonde. The infant in the Sun card is much more a remnant of that tradition, which is quasi-pagan, than of the later Gothic faith. This may be why I tend to bridle at the imagery of this card, which -at least artistically- doesn’t fit well with the style of the rest of the deck. I have no doubt that it was executed by Smith. Her definitive squiggle is buried down in the stones of the wall on the right. But it’s depiction is anachronistic in an otherwise congruous deck. It looks more like a Tiffany window than a Gothic icon. To me it just seems all too showy.

That is the nature of the Sun though. In hottest August, when all the summer’s growth has ripened and the true bounty of the earth has burst forth, we are perhaps able to appreciate this boisterous celebrant trump. If we are able to divorce it from the rather ham-handed Christian symbolism, and look at it rather as a pagan Sun that is part of the pagan celestial triad of Star-Moon-Sun, then it’s munificence and fertility might be felt as meant, and the traditional associations of fruition allowed to radiate out into the cards of the surrounding reading.

Two cards remain in the Major Arcana, styled XX-Judgement (sic) and XXI, The World. For many these last two complete the Tarot Journey begun with our ambling Fool about to walk off the cliff. Within them are the bones of their ancestors, and both artistically and oracularly they present a number of problems for the modern non-Christian reader. But I hope I am able to provide some incite into how I have worked around these shortcomings when using the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

As for this week’s trump, my best effort was to take it as astrologically as possible, because again, I just don’t like it.

We all have our favorites, and our non-favorites. We must be aware how that colors the story we tell to the client, or to ourselves, when either of those come up in the reading.

Until next week, thank you for your continued interest.

Please Share and Enjoy !