geometries of initiation

prelude (on sacrificing oneself to oneself)

hints & stirrings is how it begins, voices whispered through the wind. that much was expected, the magician preparing, practicing daily. then it expands, like being swept up into a tornado. looking back, the magician is incapable of pointing to when, how or where this'd happened. all of a sudden. lost in a reality that intersected with this at an incomprehensible angle; or not so much an 'angle' as a half-remembered dream. even now, immersed within the experience. there are two of them, the one who slays & the one who weeps, mutters helpless. (& yet the magician is neither...)projections. the magician has mastered the art of sending forth credible projections. the Master is perhaps a projection & nothing more; a gateway, an opening for a force of the sort that finds names as amusing as they are irrelevant. & yet. the magician has never been so alive as she has been since her death. since she stopped moving in a straight line, started going round in circles. ever since the echoing instant within which she embodied these strange geometries of initiation

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crossroads

The experience is plain and simple and can be described to a certain extent, yet it is often spoken of using metaphors and obscure language. As if the experience were not already obscure enough, in that people rarely have it. They often say, "be in the moment". Well- if a person is ever "in the moment" enough, they might stop giving that advice so freely, because when a person is fully in the moment they arrive at the crossroads. We have the perception of time that we have because we lag behind the center of the moment. There is even evidence that light creates "cools" into the elements and systems that comprise our reality because light itself is slowed in a way through it's immersion in what some are calling the "zero point field". The reason why we human beings lag behind time to such an extent is because of our thought processes and our use of language as we think. Our thought processes create the sense of linear time because they create a lag. When a person is fully aware, is fully in the moment, thinking ceases, and then time literally ceases to exist. The world around a person stops moving and becomes like a still, rather than a moving image.  If one looses his or her focus and regains it, or starts to panic, time can rewind and replay itself within one's subjective awareness. This applies to sound and other senses as well as vision. At the same instant that one's environment becomes a still image, the future and the past begin to flow into the present- into the center.  One can remember, in that state, as far into the future as into the past- which is, in that state, not particularly far. It is like two rivers flowing together into the center. How is this possible- when we know that different people's activities fit together, and that there is a kind of linear time? One can speculate that, because on some level we are made of pure light (and if at the speed of light time stops for the subject) then that might be the solution to this question- as other people seem to imply- for instance Castaneda.  If one then enters into this center- into the crossroads, then the world undergoes "Inversion"- that is, the outside becomes the inside, and the inside becomes the outside.  One is then aware of one's inner-world with the same intensity as is normally focused onto the exterior world. The outer world is experienced as well, but as something internal.

electromagnetic initiation mandala, earth chakra

it is possible to understand the energy body from a physical perspective. however, this would have almost nothing in common with the materialist-empiricism of today. after all, the body is not simply a mechanical machine, but also an electrical one - charged signals govern everything from thought to muscle movement. thus, instead of a superficial understanding of the body as a simple mechanism, we would now need to account for all of its interconnections to (pretty much) everything else (or, more particularly- those things which are possessed of an electromagnetic component. this would include stars, planets and perhaps even other 'bodies' which are by some rather difficult to discern: we might hypothesize the existence of entities which exist solely on the e.-m. level, without a body as it is usually experienced. might this be the basis on which to ground a scientific theory of spirits? it is left up to the interested reader to pursue this further...). thus can we compose an endless web of associations and correlations which would have almost nothing in common with classical mechanical conceptions.

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It is at this point that one can ascend the "world-tree", which is described in various ways in a great deal of literature from modern accounts of shamans, to Hermetic teachings. The elements may be experienced as one ascends through the "wheels", or chakras. This experience of the elements is a very powerful one- quite a bit more powerful than ordinary awareness. One has an experience of the classical elements, Earth, Water, Air and Fire that is so intense that the 'Moods' of these elements are as powerful as say, all of the emotions that one has ever experienced packed into these particular 'Moods'. The elements are experienced as having many gradations within each of them- this we might call the "Moods of the elements". These moods are very distinct and particular, and progress in a predetermined way- like the slow ticking of a clock is the regularity of the changes within each element. Each change can seem to last practically an eternity and yet is a regular "Ticking" behind the changes. In this phase, people who are dead may be encountered by the individual. They are encountered as images of themselves who are known by their elemental signature- a kind of a code- having to do with which moods of which elements comprised the sum of their personalities- not their inherent selves, but their personalities. Living people can also be contacted in this way. One can then see through the eyes of a person with whom one is familiar, and one can rifle through their memories, etc.

 

 electromagnetic initiation mandala, water chakra

we have wavelengths. some move fast, others move more slowly. the basic structure of one's frequency is reflected in their body, and even more in their behavior. within these general parameters, one's frequency falls within a particular range determined by their mood and emotional state. we can picture 'hot' emotions (anger, acute fear, etc.) as having a shorter wavelength, and a higher frequency than a calm or 'at rest' position. except that in doing this we are not simply using our imagination: there is a scientific schema which does just this, using brainwave frequencies as a means of reference. one can be said to empathize with another if they are, as it were, 'on the same wavelength'. but, there is no a priori reason for restricting this 'other' to a person (vide supra, re. all the different kinds of bodies that possess electromagnetic signatures).

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After ascending through the elements, one reaches the fifth element, the vanguard- the point at which one is actively participating in the creation at the very edge of reality. One then, at some point after a seeming eternity, returns to one's baseline state through a process that seems to be very similar to the experience that one has when one enters the world- that is, as a biological entity. However, at least at first, on returning, one will be in what is called the mystical state, at least to the point that within one's environment, there is no subject/object distinction, though the "observer consciousness" can still be active. Most commonly, one's self includes everything within the limits of perception. One is then only a part of Oneself. 

 

 electromagnetic initiation mandala, air chakra

regarding seasonal shifts, & their effects on behavior. these latter tend to vary from the physiological to much more subtle internal psychic modifications. the magician uses these to their benefit, adjusting with the movements of the seasons, effectively dancing with them. on a scientific level, we can almost certainly hypothesize explanations for this. perhaps its electromagnetic shifts, slowly altering the balance of sensitive brain chemicals. in fact, there's a scientific article on evidence of solar geomagnetic seasonal control of the topside ionosphere (which a simple web search might uncover) and another on Diurnal, seasonal and inter-annual variations in the Schumann resonance parameters (also publicly available online) to list just two examples. if its been conclusively determined that drugs (& even certain foods) alter (balances of) particular brain chemicals, would it be such a stretch to postulate an electromagnetic system that interconnects the planet with its inhabitants? (such would be a solid scientific basis for the so-called gaia hypothesis of Lovelock et al.) & why stop there. perhaps this is exactly the kind of scientific grounding that astrology supposedly lacks. after all, where there's gravity, there's magnetism.

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There are a few things that should be mentioned in connection to this phenomenon. For one thing, it is a relatively common experience for shamans who use psychoactive sacraments. Also- it seems to be what Castaneda called "stopping the world".  When one approaches this "place", if one is around other people, their movements become jerky, and the whole thing has a rather low-tech quality as if a film maker didn't have access to very high quality editing equipment. Castaneda very accurately describes this aspect and notes that there is something fundamentally disturbing about the nature of this jerky quality of time. One wonders why he would be so vague about other aspects of this experience. Another thing about it is that as one approaches it, one loses the ability to think in words. If someone is talking to you, you will lose the ability to understand what they are saying. One can use this aspect of it to bring another person into this experience by what we might term the technique of "Prattling and Mumbling". Begin to speak very distinctly while sort of prattling on and on.  Then gradually slow your speech and make it increasingly indecipherable while not letting on with your body language that anything has changed, all the while  concentrating your power into yourself so as to create a kind of a gravity that would pull the other person into the same state as that which you are entering.

You will lose the ability to talk to yourself about what you are experiencing, and this by itself can be disturbing. But, this can allow a lot of power to flow into a person, and from a subjective point of view, the surrounding world can seem very chaotic, like the powerful emotions and perceptions that one might experience when laying closely next to a rail of train tracks while a train is passing. There are reliable keys to deliver this experience which we will leave it to the reader to discover. Anyone who has these "keys" can experience this if the amount of the keys is sufficient. The person, knowing what has here been written and having the keys can experience what we have described. Read it and think on it while the keys turn the locks. The reader should however be warned that this is an experience of what lies beyond death. Only those who truly desire to die in life and live again in a much changed state should consider this. One will not be better at one's job by doing this.  One will have a lot to think about- for the rest of one's life- though it gets easier with practice.  At first it lays heavy on the self and impels one by great Need to learn about what has happened to him or her.  This can be a distraction from any pragmatic goals one might have. So heed this warning because it is not for affect, nor is it an understatement. 

 

 electromagnetic initiation mandala, fire chakra

the most effective (perhaps the only) initiations are self-initiations. from another perspective, one might say with equal justification that the circumstances that lead one to initiation are like a force of nature that grabs hold of whom it will, without any volition on the part of the 'victim'. more interestingly, it might be both of these simultaneously, and it might well be that even this is irrelevant. what matters is what lies beyond this point, when one inevitably begins the study of these deep structures, these subtle