Reality as music

or, what if the gods are a frequency? 

In vodou, some guedes are legbas, & some legbas are guedes, but not all legbas (or guedes) are guedes (or legbas). Dig? This can seem counterintuitive if we perceive them as discrete entities but it makes a lot more sense if they're particular energetic frequencies between which there is some overlap. Hindus hold that creation manifested as a vibration, the ubiquitous AUM, and even the neoplatonic conception of emanations can be visualized as ripples from some center. Nor is this some mystical fluff that one can repeat to hypnotize oneself after a long day at the office. Quantum mechanics, perhaps the very foundation of hard science, admits that particles can be measured, and thus actually behave in terms of either waves or particles. The question, then, is why does our experience exclude waves, rhythm, frequency in favor of solidity, mass, quantity?

Remedios Varo, The flutist (1955)

The short answer is that we perceive discrete entities out of sheer habit. Still, it is possible to attune (pun intended) to this perspective; indeed, it is one of the main objectives of esotericism. One can make a list of techniques demonstrating this, & to pick examples representative in their diversity we might cite whirling dervishes, invocations of gods, vodou drumming. Fair enough, but why bother? What are the benefits of using these techniques, of  accessing these levels of awareness? We might respond by quoting Nietzsche, who writes that "without music, life would be a mistake". Or we can attempt to sway others by pointing out that there are particular interests who stand to benefit from utilizing piles of resources standing in reserve, and that what is to their good is not necessarily to everyone else's. Ultimately, though, one who has experienced being in the flow arrives at the understanding that this work, or play, is its very own reward.

remembering Kenneth Grant

featuring Michael Bertiaux on La Prise-des-Yeaux, Carlos Castaneda on seeing & a special guest appearance by William Blake

Grant's work is everything that esotericism is at its best - bold, creative, almost athletically eclectic, & lacking the all-too-common narcotic qualities of much else in the field. Many of his detractors, taking a cue from the notorious Crowley quip (specifically: "you cannot be content with the simplicity of reality or fact; you have to go off into a pipedream", from a correspondence) see Grant as a fantasist. Never mind that this may have been based on a single incident, or that the man, or beast, was sometimes condescending even to his closest associates. Against this misconception there is Grant's own position, first articulated in The Magical Revival & expanded upon throughout the Typhonian trilogies, that the gnosis is, at least in its original, undistorted form, physical. About as down-to-earth as you can get, that.

William Blake, Hecate (1795)

William Blake asserts that "if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite", Michael Bertiaux outlines the faculty known as la prise-des-yeaux & Carlos Castaneda's descriptions of seeing are a central theme in his books. There are many stimulating similarities between these concepts which we will leave it to the reader to uncover. Suffice it to say here that they all point to a deep, immediate grasp of an intense, somehow more real reality only glimpsed rarely & fleetingly but which, with initiation, can become continuous. Making use of Grant's dictum as outlined above, one can form an assemblage linking Blake's recommendation concerning the cleansing of the doors of perception, through physiological cleansing procedures (something along the lines of the yama and niyama of Patanjali's yoga sutras, which were intended more as technical recommendations than moral injunctions) to the objective of la prise-des-yeux, or of seeing for what it is the inexhaustible, luminescent wonder of the world.