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| Tiger Lily |
THE LOVERS: PARADISE REGAINED
About two years ago, I hiked alone
through a high meadow near Tamarack Creek over fallen branches and
tree trunks. Where few people had ever ventured, I found arrow leaf
tansy and tiger lilies and columbine and spent the morning immersed
in rivulets and flowers. After I rested on a rock and ate lunch, a
few minutes later my heart started beating irregularly. My stomach
felt like a stone that had lurched up into my chest. I thought I was
dying of a heart attack and plopped down on a large, flat stone. I
leaned back against a pine tree as water gurgled peacefully in the
nearby stream until the AFib finally dissipated about forty minutes
later. Without knowing it then, I had reached an advanced stage of
celiac disease. My small lunch, which had contained gluten, had sent
my heart into a frenzy. Many months later, after numerous experiences
with AFib, I finally made the connection between gluten and erratic
heartbeats, in time to avoid a blood clot or an actual heart attack.
After eliminating gluten entirely from my diet, I have not
experienced AFib for almost two years now.
I returned to Tamarack Creek last
weekend. After a winter of heavy snowfall, the tiger lilies were
blooming more profusely than I've ever seen before. Over 7,000 feet
above the San Joaquin Valley, where almost every inch of land has
been cultivated and urbanized in the last century, over a mile from
Highway 168, the meadow has remained pristine. Near the highway,
however, ranchers have grazed cattle that have trampled a great many
flowers, including some rare ones like gentian and little elephant's
head, and logging roads snake down the mountain high above the creek
on both sides, yet the meadow has managed to avoid molestation,
possibly because of so many fallen trees and branches near its edges.
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| Columbine |
After the Ritual of Divine Madness
(see previous post), I returned to the meadow. During the ritual, I
had become the Fool, the eternal child, resilient within fields of
change and adversity, knowing long moments of inner freedom without
negativity. As the Fool by the creek, for one day I experienced Eden
physically and spiritually. Thanks to my ritual I returned to a
paradise not of the id or the ego, but of the higher self, which
feels the unity and divinity within all things. Because I also
invoked the God Min during the ritual, I felt a surge of well-being
and a greater sensitivity to the life-force: The auras of plants and
trees were tuned to their surroundings. Tiger lilies, so abundant
that their fragrance permeated the meadow, hovered above the rivulets
and broken branches near waves of golden arrow-leaf tansy and
columbine bobbing in the breeze, in a self-sustaining community,
interconnected physically and spiritually, that will survive long
after the human race has perished—if we leave it alone. Because of
my ritual, I felt the life-force thrilling through me and through all
the plants and animals in the forest.
Back in the city, I realized how
little I have been in touch with the life-force, which has as many names as there are civilizations.
The life-force can't be found in our electronic devices, but you
can't tear those devices out of my hands or the hands of most
children and adults these days. The life-force does not exist in
movies or TV shows, yet it's extremely hard to get me to avert my
eyes for even a few moments once I start watching. The life-force is
not in my car or or my furniture or my house, only the residues of
human elemental energies. I began to understand why forests might
seem like pure chaos to people who are only used to human order, why
so many people have become terrified of the life-force as it
manifests in nature, why in the past thirty years I have encountered
in the wild only a handful of other people, most of whom were
carrying fishing rods or guns.
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| Shooting Stars |
As I stare at my computer screen,
I realize that in this information age, it has become so easy to lose
the knowledge about how the life-force manifests within ourselves and
the creatures of the Earth. So many are obsessed with the body but
know nothing about the subtle energies of the aura or the chambers of
the soul. So many are aware of cartoon super-heroes but are unaware
of the Gods that personify powerful natural forces.
After I performed the Ritual of
Divine Madness and returned to the meadow, I realized that the
metaphor of rebooting and reformatting my personality that I used in
the previous post was wrong. I wasn't creating a new identity—I had
instead returned to something like the self I had known many years
ago—my spiritual life-force, undistorted by social conditioning. I
retained the knowledge and wisdom that I have gathered over the past
fifty-six years but felt free of decades of negativity.
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| Larkspur |
It became clear to me why I had
never fully discovered the knowledge of the life-force within me. As
a child I was regimented in the public school system for nine months
of the year but had three months of freedom every summer. When not
playing sports or hanging out at the mall during summer vacation, I
was watching TV or going to the movies. Inevitably, during the last
half of the summer, I spent less time with friends and more time
watching TV. In fact, the TV was on all the time, even during
meal-times; I was socialized year-round to become a productive unit
of labor and a spendthrift consumer. When I grew up I was going to
buy, buy, buy junk food and clothes and cars and furniture and
houses. I would go to college just so that I could get a great job
and afford so many awesome things.
Money is a type of human energy
but does not contain the life-force. Cars have a type of power but
not the power of the life-force. Clothes and furniture and houses
accommodate our needs and reveal our status in society but do not
contain the life-force. For decades, in public schools, at home, at
malls and amusement parks, at the movies, in college, I was starving
for the life-force.
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| Larkspur near Rock |
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| Tiger Lilies |
After my recent rituals, I feel
sometimes that I am at a place in consciousness where the soul meets
the divine. However, I suspect that few people understand what I'm
saying because so many are cut off from the life-force. Most people
probably just consider me crazy. Some people have made me feel less
than worthy, but I realize that the more I let go of negativity in my
body and mind, and the more I invoke powerful subtle forces, the more
I feel healthy and free. I know, though, that with a chronic illness,
feeling positive about myself is not going to happen 24/7.
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| Arrow-Leaf Tansy, Tiger Lilies |
Due to my social conditioning and
my chronic illness, I have searched a long time for health and
freedom. Long before my recent rituals, for instance, I chose not to
be ruled by a symbol system. I pick and choose the symbols from
various cultures that I need in my spiritual work. Identifying with
the symbol instead of the spiritual force has led to untold madness,
with cultures forcing each other to adopt their symbol systems
through oppression and violence. A symbol system does not contain
power until people connect with the subtle forces that the symbols
represent; people who are forced to worship a symbol are unlikely to
connect with its power. Using the secret name of Christ to invoke the
Egyptian God Min through the Tarot card The Devil, as I did in The
Ritual of Divine Madness, might seem more than a little mind-bending
to some people, but it is this very act of breaking free from the
tyranny of symbol systems that leads to greater freedom. Connecting
with spiritual principle and spiritual forces is essentially what
matters, not any symbol system, not Christianity or Buddhism or
Hinduism or the so-called “dead” religions that we consider
myths. Authentic spirituality for me is about the soul aligning with
the divine spark and connecting with the forces of Being. Myth, which
is about all that any religion amounts to, is merely one way
throughout history that people have used to achieve those ends. The
unseen forces do not change, only the symbols.
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| Tiger Lilies by Rivulet |
Stepping away from the herd does
not mean ignoring laws and values. Once I had the Vision of Harmony
and understood my own divinity and the divinity within nature, I
understood that my soul is a tiny thread of consciousness in one vast
tapestry of energy. Everything is connected. I shrink from the
thought of harming anyone or anything because I am part of who or
what they are; I would be harming myself by harming another. Until
every person internalizes that simple spiritual principle, laws that
prohibit harming others must stay in place, and we will continue to
label unbalanced acts as sins. A person who internalizes spiritual
principle would not dream of harming or killing another, except in
self-defense. That is why I have said that the only true sin is
having a value system that cuts you off from knowing all the
vibrations of the life-force because that also cuts you off from
knowing the interrelationship of all things. The lack of inner
awareness of the life-force and spiritual laws leads to harmful and
horrific acts, not weak social laws. Lack of empathy, which stems
from an ignorance of the divinity of nature and the self, can lead to
mass starvation and genocide.
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| Path 17 |
The Nine of Swords, Lord of
Despair and Cruelty, clearly reveals what happens when a person is
cut off from the life-force. Swords pierce the higher energy centers
of the aura, and the person lies in black despair, the swords
pointing straight out, suggesting how a miserable person projects
cruelty outwards at others. Due to my chronic illness I find it
difficult to remain positive, so in this ritual I first banish the
Nine of Swords.
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| Nine of Swords Mars in Gemini Moon in Yesod |
Then I invoke The Lovers with the Active Invoking Pentagram,
specifically the two great Gods associated with the card: Isis and
Osiris. I also invoke Horus, who is the son of Isis and Osiris and is
associated with Mars, since the decan correspondences of the Nine of
Swords are Mars in Gemini. Mars can shake up your life and cause
despair, but I am using the positive energy of Mars through the God
Horus to burn away negativity.
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| Modifiers for the Ritual of Paradise Regained |
The Lovers shows the alignment of
the divine core with the soul and the masculine and feminine energies
of the manifested personality. In terms of the microcosm, or
individual, the sun is the divine spark, the angel is the
Evolutionary Personality (or soul), and the man and the woman
represent the duality of the masculine and feminine energies within
the incarnated personality. The Number Cards associated with Gemini
(the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords) emphasize the mortal side of the
self. The Lovers, the Major Arcana card associated with Gemini,
reveals the immortal side, in a state of paradise regained.
This ritual contains only a few
modifiers but is powerful in its simplicity. I have included examples
of improvised invocations below.
ISIS (The Empress)
Great Isis, Goddess of healing,
Goddess of beauty, Goddess of
nurturing,
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| Path 14 |
Goddess who knows human suffering,
Goddess who resurrected Osiris
and conceived Horus, Great Goddess,
look favorably upon me now,
help me align my body, soul
and divine core so that I know
divinity within all things,
so that I know paradise regained,
so that I live where soul meets
my divine core and the divine forces
of nature, so that I am healed
in body and mind and soul
and know the beauty of the cosmos.
In the name of Yeheshua, I invoke thee.
Amen.
OSIRIS (The Hierophant)
Great Osiris, God of the Spirit World,
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| Path 16 |
God of the the brilliant Crown,
the thousand-petaled lotus,
God who knows suffering and death,
resurrected God, heal me,
resurrect me so that I know
the harmony of paradise,
so that my divine spirit aligns
with my soul and my body
and divine natural forces.
Let me let go of negativity
so that I may be whole again.
In the name of Yeheshua, I invoke thee.
Amen.
HORUS (The Tower)
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| Path 15 |
Great Horus, God of the higher self,
one eye the sun, the other the moon,
burn away what does not serve me.
Consume all disease and negativity
so that I may live where the self
meets the divine spark—my spirit
connected to all Being. Let the Sun
of spirit shine through the soul,
manifesting in this world so that I
manifest harmony in the world,
serving thee and the Source
for the highest possible good.
I am resurrected in thy light.
In the name of Yeheshua I invoke thee.
Amen.
It bears repeating that Yeheshua
is the secret name of Christ, the Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau,
Heh associated with the points of the pentagram. Since I use the Tarot Pentagram
Spread in the ritual, Yeheshua is especially
powerful in the invocation of the Gods.
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