INSANE IS THE NEW NORMAL: POST SIXTEEN

Earth Triplicity: Capricorn

THE ALTAR

     I employ several techniques to maintain peace of mind, mainly because I was fortunate as a kid. My family would sometimes go camping, and when my parents were busy fishing, my brother would often dash into the woods, and I would do my best to follow him until he ditched me in the wilderness. I would cuss him out for a few minutes, but then I would begin to enjoy hanging out with the trees and rocks and water until the deep tranquility of the Earth Soul drenched me, filling me with a peace that I have rarely found in human society. So now I strive as often as I can to find a path back to the Soul of the World. 

Earth Triplicity: Virgo

     When I was a child, this peace and harmony prepared me for the understanding, much later on in life, that the cosmos, including human thoughts and feelings, is comprised of field upon field of energy, all interconnected. And as the core of my being continued to resonate with the Earth, I eventually understood that we experience some vibrations of energy with the soul, not with our physical senses.
     Many obstacles interfere with our ability to experience the Earth Soul and other subtle vibrations. As I grew up, I lived with the fear of failure: the failure to fit in and the failure to be myself. I knew that I would never succeed and gain financial independence unless I made the right grades, impressed the right people and always performed well in the right circumstances. I eventually realized that I could not fit in this society and be my quirky, artistic self, so I grew sick of the fear of failure, especially since I already had an illness that the people closest to me did not wish to acknowledge. Due to chronic illness, no matter how hard I worked during my best times, I could not succeed in living up to what turned out to be, given my constitution, the unreasonable expectations of others. The less I was able to fit in, the more tired I became of a fear-based life until finally I reached a point where I desired to live, to the greatest extent possible, free of negativity. Attaining a simple, harmonious life has since become my greatest challenge as my life grows ever stranger.

Earth Triplicity: Taurus

     In my early forties, paranormal events began occurring on a regular basis. I began having visions of spiritual symbols during meditation as my life blew up. I lost several jobs, and someone attempted at least twice to kill me. (See previous posts and other blogs.)  I realized as I was envisioning symbols of harmony that my psyche was out of balance and brimming with negativity, and I was therefore attracting chaos and negativity into my life. Fortunately, I was able to reestablish harmony is several ways: I found a few paths back to the peace of the Earth Soul, and my visions of symbols led me to a method of spiritual development known as the Qabalah.
     I burn myself up in my own mind every night, which is one of the main reasons I have survived the past decade and a half. At one stage of the banishing ritual, which I perform just before going to bed, I invoke Michael, the Archangel of the element of Fire, and in my mind a silver caduceus wand leaps into me, the central staff extending below my feet up to the crown chakra above my head. Then in my mind spiritual fire consumes me, and negativity burns away. 

Wands: Fire

     The caduceus wand is not the conventional wand associated with the element of Fire found in the Tarot. A symbol used by the medical profession to symbolize health, the caduceus wand on the spiritual level represents the pure life-force moving through the channels of the aura, the balanced Ida and Pingala energies entwined and flowing along the central Shushumna channel without obstruction. When I first performed the banishing ritual, I imagined the wooden staff that represents the element of Fire in the Tarot, but by the twentieth time I performed the ritual, the caduceus wand appeared in my mind’s eye, and that wand has “leaped” into my aura during the ritual ever since.

Caduceus Wand

     Four symbols in the banishing ritual represent the cosmic force of balance, known in Western civilization as the Christ force, on different levels: the sword, the cup, the wand, the pentagram, each standing for an element of the wise known as Air, Water, Fire, Earth, respectively, each element symbolically representing a type of subtle energy “behind” the material world. An Archangel is associated with each element, Raphael with the element of Air in the eastern quadrant, Michael (Mee-kai-el) with the element of Fire in the southern quadrant, Gabriel with the element of Water in the western quadrant, and Auriel in the northern quadrant. During the ritual, as I invoke the Archangels, the symbols of the sword, wand, cup, pentagram leap into me in turn. The effect of the sword, caduceus wand, chalice, and pentagram on the psyche is hauntingly powerful, like the influence of a dream that only wears off gradually, because the symbols of the elements are links to spiritual realities. Each symbol is a channel for the cosmic force of harmony into a different level of the psyche. 

Swords: Air

     The Christ is currently the central symbol of harmonizing love and spiritual exaltation in Western religion, but the cosmic force of balance and harmony goes by many names and has many faces. Besides Jesus, different Gods and Archangels, from Ra, Ma’at, Thoth, Osiris, Isis, Horus in Egypt, to Apollo and Dionysus and Athena in Greece, to Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel in the Middle East, to name a few, have represented aspects of this force.  
     What could be a more powerful symbol of the conscious mind establishing and maintaining harmony than the shining, double-edged sword, oriented straight up and down? What could be a more powerful symbol of health and balance within the psyche than the caduceus wand? The cup as an archetype, which in the esoteric tradition of the Qabalah is a deep bowl on top of a truncated pyramid, symbolizes spirit manifesting harmoniously in matter. And the pentagram, so often mistakenly interpreted as a symbol of the devil, represents the secret name of Christ, representing the the higher self manifesting in the personality and spirit manifesting harmoniously within matter. Used repeatedly for at least forty days, the length of time it takes to make or break a habit, and then continuously afterward to clear away negative energies and protect against malicious spirits, the banishing ritual channels the cosmic force of harmony and balance, what in Western society we call the Christ force, into the mind.

Cups: Water

     The figure of Jesus emphasizes love as the way to manifest the Christ force, the new commandment being, “Love one another.” I’ve discovered that it is difficult to love if the soul is plagued by negativity and disrupted by chaotic thinking. The banishing ritual is one simple method that aids in the process of mental and physical purification, using symbols that channel the cosmic force of harmony into the soul. This is “practical” spirituality that resolves internal conflicts before they erupt into external conflicts, which within this volatile society can escalate into violence and even war. At this time of planetary crisis, for me the ritual is a simple but powerful way of establishing harmony within my sphere of influence to the greatest extent possible.

Pentacles: Earth

     Due to my compulsions, spiritual, artistic, and otherwise, and my chronic illness, I have lived mainly outside the pale, and I am well aware that in this society, by speaking my truth, I lose credibility as an “serious” artist. My work is either an alternative view of sanity or insanity--but so, I’ve discovered, is most religion that stems from authentic spiritual experience.
     In retrospect, one experience a few years ago at Tamarack Creek reflects how my work stands in relationship to an audience. Claiming that this actually happened calls into question everything I have said, but I will go to my grave insisting that this occurred even if it makes the rest of my work seem to collapse in a clatter of postmodern nihilism and obfuscation.

Water Triplicity: Pisces

     One day a few years ago, my wife and I hiked along a creek past blue gentian, tiger lilies, lupine, columbine, paint brush and sneezeweed until we reached a beach within a small canyon, where we lounged against rocks near tranquil water. My wife began reading a passage out loud from a book in which the writer, if I recall correctly, claims that all time exists at once within the mind of God. A person in physical incarnation, however, must travel through linear time as though through a tunnel and must focus on a particular part of the tunnel wall. If a person were to go through the same tunnel twice while focusing on a different part of the wall, life could end up being different. Any two people who go through the same tunnel have a different experience, depending on their perspective. (That is at least what I remember hearing.)

Water Triplicity: Scorpio

     While my wife was reading out loud, I suddenly heard a male tenor belting out a song a capello on the other side of the creek. The singer was so loud that I had difficulty understanding my wife, so I was surprised when I could not see the singer nearby. I thought at first that he was an aspiring opera singer who had chosen a secluded natural area to practice his art, but he sang with a smooth delivery in a different language, without pausing or making any mistakes, each song with a different tempo and tone, each song a masterpiece. After seven or eight of these songs, I realized that I was hearing the work of a consummate artist who was sharing his astonishing voice with the natural world, the way a bird might sing for the sheer joy of it. I shared my amazement with my wife and told her that I wanted to search the area. She stopped reading and smiled. As I hiked down the creek, I looked everywhere but could not find any sign of the singer.

Water Triplicity: Cancer

     As I was hiking, I suddenly envisioned a logger from Europe practicing his art by the creek during his time off, but I had the uneasy feeling that such a situation could only have occurred many years ago. By the time I returned to the little beach by the creek, the performance was over. I was disappointed because I thought the singer had disappeared into the woods and I had lost my opportunity to meet the artist and share my admiration for his work. My wife and I packed up our belongings, climbed out of the canyon and trekked back to the car.
     My wife and I returned to the beach by the creek months later, and I mentioned the amazing performance we had experienced the previous time. My wife looked at me, perplexed. I reminded her that we had heard a song cycle or opera arias in another language while she was reading out loud to me. My wife claimed that she had never heard anyone singing by the creek. I couldn’t believe that she had forgotten, especially since the vocalist had belted out each song so ebulliently that I could hardly hear what she was reading. She became nonplussed and insisted that she had never heard anyone singing by this creek or any other creek, ever. She began looking at me like I was crazy, both of us becoming more and more frustrated at the other’s insistence on a different reality.

Air Triplicity: Aquarius

     I returned a few months later by myself and explored the other side of the creek. About a quarter of a mile down from the beach I found a heavy iron stove in an area that loggers had clear cut. A logging road led from that area up toward the main highway. I deduced, based on the design of the stove, that the camp had been abandoned many years before and that the loggers had decided to leave the stove behind because it was too heavy to transport.
     I cannot explain in any scientific way why I heard the singer and my wife did not. My wife is not deaf, and she is very sensitive to emotional and spiritual currents.  It’s possible that I was hearing a frequency from a subtle dimension that she could not hear, a frequency which to my consciousness was just as real as the sounds of bird songs or water. 

Air Triplicity: Libra

     My paranormal experiences over the past two decades suggest that we each have subtle senses related to different dimensions of consciousness that perceive what the physical senses cannot process. We are capable of experiencing more than just the physical world, and some of us--perhaps all of us at one point or another--tune in to these subtle dimensions, sometimes without even being aware of it. At the time, for instance, I had no reason to question whether or not my wife heard the singer. I expressed my amazement, but she probably thought that I was referring to the passage she was reading. 
     I was not on drugs. Someone slipped me a hallucinogen once, many years ago, so I know what it’s like to hallucinate, and I was definitely not experiencing anything that appeared the least bit surreal or even out of the ordinary, except for those songs in the middle of the wilderness. 
     My wife still adamantly insists, whenever I mention it, that she has never heard anyone singing by a creek, anywhere.

Air Triplicity: Gemini

     I know how long it takes to compose a decent piece of music--days, weeks, even years. My brain could not have spontaneously composed and performed eight or nine masterpieces in a language that I did not know--even if I were hallucinating. How could I possibly have gotten all the notes and tempo and tone for each song just right? I cannot imagine how I could have hallucinated a singer who continued at the same pace and volume without making a single mistake for almost an hour. Such masterpieces would have taken me years to compose. I know because I have created a song cycle, which took me over twenty years to complete. While writing music, I typically stop every few notes and check to see if I like what I’ve written. The singer was obviously a trained vocalist, which I am not. In fact, I have a very limited range; I am lucky if I hit more than a few notes in a row. I have never even imagined myself singing so brilliantly up and down the scales.

Fire Triplicity: Leo

     And I could not have possibly hallucinated a brilliant singer performing an entire song cycle while at the same time I tried to listen carefully to my wife reading out loud. I am simply not that good at multi-tasking. I was in a relaxed state, concentrating on the writer’s ideas, occasionally annoyed that the singer was so loud and that my wife and I were not alone in the forest. 

Fire Triplicity: Sagittarius

     Another possibility is that I was hearing a performance from some other time, in what is known as retrocognition or “timeslip.” In such cases sensitive people can view, hear, taste, touch, or smell aspects of events that have occurred in the past. In some cases, witnesses only hear the event, such as a battle many years after the actual event took place. In other cases, people have fully experienced the past, one of the most famous being the encounter in 1901 with Marie Antoinette by two scholars and early administrators of British university education for women,  Annie Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, as they tried to find their way to Marie Antoinette's private château, the Petit Trianon. Believing that they had become lost, they instead encountered Marie Antoinette herself. They published an account of their experience in 1911 as An Adventure, describing how they had become convinced, over the following weeks, that persons they saw and even spoke to on that occasion, given certain details of dress, accent, topography and architecture, must have been in the last days of the Queen at Trianon in 1789.
     Based on my experience, what exists outside the normal limits of our physical senses--and what we are capable of perceiving--is far more than science can explain. Events from different times and different dimensions reverberate through consciousness as eternity unfolds, and the boundaries of consciousness continue to elude us.
     I have heard the laughter of women near pounding stones, without anyone else being in the vicinity. When no one else was around, I have heard voices correctly predicting what would happen many years later. I have heard someone make a farting noise right behind me when no one else was in the house. I have been shaken so hard that I thought my cells were going to fly apart and then nudged hard several times--when no one else was in the room with me. Even though I was alone, I have been tapped hard on the shoulder and other times touched gently on my face. I have experienced visions of spiritual symbols without ever having seen them before, only to encounter them a short time later in the Tarot or in books or on the internet. I have experienced many intuitions that cannot be explained by science, several of which may have saved my life. 

Fire Triplicity: Aries

     Through it all I have relied on the banishing ritual to maintain balance and rid myself of negative energies that latch on to me. It is quite possible that I have had at least some of these paranormal experiences because I have gone through a process of self-purification and am therefore more open to subtle vibrations.
     Until just over a decade and a half ago, I was possibly even more skeptical than you. But an artist, at this stage of history when the fate of humanity is at stake, must speak his truth even if people consider him insane. The artist has no choice, if he wishes to be relevant, but to sacrifice whatever is necessary to help maintain balance in the world. So for you I have placed my art, my life’s work, on the sacrificial altar. 
     Because I have been reborn from the ashes.
     True healing takes place on all levels of the psyche, and archetypes help in the cleansing process and in understanding spiritual principle. During meditation, which can occur as an integral part of ritual, I have discovered that if you are in the right state of mind the higher self presents spiritual principle through an association chain of archetypes, much the same way that dreams often present a chain of psychologically meaningful symbols.

Ma'at

     One of the blessings (or curses) of spiritual development is a hyper-sensitivity to the feelings of others. Once recently as I stood in line at a bookstore lightheartedly chatting with my wife, I suddenly felt the most hateful rage directed at me from a man standing nearby. I felt pierced by it and wondered for awhile afterwards why anyone would direct such hatred toward complete strangers who were simply having a little fun. At the time I was having difficulty letting go of anger and resentment myself--chronic illness over the years as I mentioned has led several times to a failure to realize my potential, and I was well aware that I have on occasion subconsciously projected anger outward at other people. After pondering for several hours, I eventually understood why in the bookstore the stranger’s projection of rage cut me so deeply.  I was being reminded that thought forms charged with negative emotion can truly hurt others on a subconscious level. I have experienced similar psychic attacks before, so I redoubled my efforts to face my own demons. 

Tree of Life with Minor Arcana

     For several days in ritual, during the Supreme Invoking Ritual, I focused on eliminating the feelings of anger and resentment. During the ritual, I moved from the station representing the element of Air--the conscious mind, what some might call the intellect--to the station representing spiritual Fire. In the ritual, you invoke the energy of each element, Air, Fire, Water, Earth respectively, as a way to cleanse and energize your aura. As a normal part of my ritual, I imagine the symbol associated with the element leaping into my heart and then the energy of the ruling Archangel flowing toward me and swirling around me and into me. 

Anubis

     In the first two quadrants of the elements (Air and Fire), I felt the energy of each element cleansing my aura. As energized as that made me feel, it wasn’t enough. I needed more than the purification of the active elements. When I moved to the station representing the Water element, I felt a powerful wave of emotion, which started an association chain associated with the Tarot. I envisioned the card known as The Moon, associated with Pisces, a Water sign, and the Egyptian God Anubis. At that point, I experienced the sensation of going deep into my subconscious mind. Then I envisioned the card known as Death, associated with Scorpio, also a Water sign, which signifies dramatic transformation. I envisioned the child holding flowers up for the figure of Death and realized that I needed to become as a little child in the face of change. At that point, I imagined the element of Water cleansing me deeply as black, negative energy drained out of me into the magma below the earth’s crust. Then in the ritual I moved to the station representing the Earth element, which started another association chain with the card known as The Devil, associated with Capricorn and with the Egyptian God Set.
     The energies of the element of Earth are actually the spiritual background energies of the physical world, what some call “etheric" energy. The pure etheric energies of the element of Earth cleansed me and rejuvenated me until I felt whole, but only after I had consciously experienced a kind of rebirth after releasing the black, negative energies from deep in my subconscious mind and experiencing the cleansing energies of the element of Water as well.

Tree of Life with Major Arcana

     In the Major Arcana of the Tarot, twelve of the cards are associated with the zodiac, seven with the planets, and three with the elements (Water, Air, Fire). In order to facilitate the occurrence of association chains, I have laid out the twelve cards associated with the zodiac in the triplicities based on their position on the Tree of Life in their respective quadrants on my central altar, in each case beginning with the card closest to Malkuth, the Kingdom, on the left, to the card more centrally positioned on the Tree of Life in the middle, to the card closest to Kether, The Crown, on the right, each triplicity forming a symbolic progression.

Bastet

     The day after the deep cleansing, I experienced another association chain during ritual. When I invoked the Water element, I envisioned the symbol of Water, the blue head of an eagle, in my heart, and I suddenly felt on the verge of realizing a profound truth. Then I remembered the symbols associated with Scorpio: the scorpion, symbol of primal instincts deep in the subconscious; the snake, symbol of rebirth because it sheds its skin: and the eagle, symbol of the higher self because it flies high and experiences the perspective of eternity.  I thought of those three symbols in terms of my progression of Tarot cards. The scorpion resembles the lobster climbing out of the water in the card known as The Moon. I thought of the snake in terms of the second card in my progression, Death. In the card, as I mentioned, a child presents flowers to the skeletal figure of death. The child in the card without fear accepts change and death as a natural process like the snake shedding its skin. 

Horus

     After recalling the image in the Tarot card Death, I understood why the symbol of the eagle was affecting me so profoundly: I was envisioning a symbol of the higher self in my heart, and I understood then that fear of change and death blocks the manifestation of the higher self. Because of the way I have been conditioned, too many of my actions have been based on fear--the fear of not succeeding or thriving or even surviving. And due to chronic illness, no matter how hard I tried, I could not succeed the way I or others had imagined, receiving the rewards that society promises for those who work hard. So I was growing more filled with anger and resentment.

Seth

     The association chain emphasized that what I truly need is a life of simple harmony and compassion, a life of the higher self. Then I moved to the Earth element and imagined its triplicity, as represented by the Tarot, in a progression moving from The Devil (Capricorn) to The Hermit (Virgo) to The Hierophant (Taurus). The devil is presented as a sphinx, with the legs of a bird, the body of a human and the head of a goat. The Hebrew letter Ayin, which means “eye,” is associated with the card, suggesting that you must look below the surface of the physical world to perceive the divine energies of manifestation.  In the card the devil lifts his right hand up in blessing, much like the character of Spock does in Star Trek, with all four fingers held up in a V formation, suggesting that all of the divine energies in the material universe can be known if perceived with the eyes of the soul. 
     Then I mentally compared The Devil with The Hierophant, a card once known as The Pope, which is associated with Taurus, the Bull. In the card the keys of the Kingdom rest at the Hierophant’s feet because, I realized, knowing the spiritual energies of the Earth opens up an awareness of the spiritual energies of Heaven, which are, at this stage of evolution at any rate, partially concealed to human consciousness, hence the two fingers down in the blessing of the Hierophant, as opposed to all four fingers held up in the Tarot card The Devil. The Hierophant has cloth near his ears that resembles donkey ears to suggest that if we listen with the ears of the humble donkey (or with the ears of our own animal self), we will hear whispers of divine knowledge and inspiration. Once again, in this association chain, I was being reminded of the divinity of the Earth Soul.

Thoth

   The association chains during these rituals added up to spiritual principle: The death of the lower personality into the higher self opens up an awareness of divine energies within the physical world as well as the more enigmatic energies of the spiritual dimensions. Toward the end of my ritual meditation I again envisioned the blue eagle head of the higher self in my heart, but then, to my surprise, I also envisioned my head as a skull, which to me signifies two things. I am dying to my old personality, with all of its anger and resentment, even as I am healing on deeper levels of the psyche. And, also, to remain aware of the higher self in my heart, I must own my death, remaining aware of my own mortality until I no longer fear change or the inscrutable.
      As I mentioned, on my central altar I have placed the twelve Tarot cards representing the zodiac and the triplicities of the elements. On the smaller altar against each wall I have placed small statues of Egyptian Gods, each signifying a different element. On the altar representing the element of Air, I have placed small statues of Thoth and his consort Ma’at. On the altar representing Fire, I have placed a statue of Horus, on the altar representing Water, the statues of Anubis and Bastet, on the altar representing Earth, the statue of Set. These statues add great power to the association chains of the Tarot, each card of which is assigned a path on the Tree of Life. Knowing where each card fits on the Tree in itself can start an association chain that leads to greater understanding of spiritual principle.
     In the final symbol of the association chain that I experienced during the ritual that day, I envisioned the phoenix wand held up by Horus, who symbolizes the higher self manifested in the material realm, and I remembered that Set, on my altar in the north quadrant associated with the Earth, also holds up the phoenix wand: The divine energies of Earth can lead to rebirth into the higher self just as effectively as the spiritual energies of Heaven, and certainly the divine energies of Earth are the most accessible to us while we are tabernacled in the flesh.