June 10, 2004
Meanwhile, this morning, hoping to have catharis and maybe some insight, I thought I'd stretch my poetry writing muscle. It's been sort of strained of late due to previous overuse, and I don't claim the result as anything especially worthy. What IS worthy is the clear message I got from the Mystery.
I 'chanced' to idly look over at a CD tower, and the title of one I'd not played in a while caught my eye. ''Set You Free'' seemed a positive thought, and I put it into the stereo.
While a spritely jig began, I took pen to paper, cautious like. But I needed this catharsis.
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(me) Singing a sad song, through true, just a bit too blue, so true.
(Mystery)
(me) |
The first quote comes from a couple of paragraphs Dr. Acquino wrote in his book about the Church of Satan. He was describing what opening up the passageway to the magickal link is like, like acquiring a new sense one did not have previously:
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It is next to impossible to describe the sensations of Black Magical ritual to someone who has not participated in it - and it is unnecessary to do so to those who have. But I shall venture this approximation: It is as though the individual undergoes a form of "mental displacement". The physical environment is unchanged, the celebrant remains alert and in control of himself, but ... something is different. The mind is suddenly aware, if only by a sort of peripheral perception, of forces and influences in the atmospher which are undetectable under normal circumstances. Moreover, the mind is sensitive to a link which it opens with these forces and influences - a link which may be nebulous but which quite definitely exists. Basic magical ritual, then, becomes an exercise in which one struggles to define, strengthen and ultimately apply that link. It was exhilarating, intoxicating, and - I will admit it - unnerving. I have made tactical parachute jumps at night with Special Forces teams that weren't half so electrifying. Physical danger is at least something concrete which can be accepted and addressed by the mind in a logical or emotional manner, but the atmosphere of a ritual is a danger far more profound and primal. Yawning pits of infinate darkness seems to open before the naked consciousness, and the magician struggles desperately for a law upon which the normal, natural functions of his mind can grasp. It is not halluciation or madness in the vulgar sense, because one's normal perceptions and thought-mannerisms are neither abandoned nor distorted. It is rather that something else is added to them. A citizen of the country of the blind acquires an eye. (Underline mine) |
And thus it is, the ability to connect to this link of 'forces and influences in the atmosphere', which I call the Mystery, feels like a new sense. The gateways of perception open before us. And thus, in my need this moody morning, that Gateway opened to give me hope, for the Mystery clearly influenced my choice of CD this morning. The second quote came from a song on that CD, "When You And I Were True" by John Spillane. My ears pricked up when I heard that phrase, and it fell nicely into my poem, and I wrote it down just when I heard it.
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In the country where we're headed, love, there's nothing but rocks and stones. No friendly plant nor animal, no angel to guide you home, until the day you'll find in the country of the blind, some wanderer just like you and the singing of a bird... |
All the ignorance and misguided intentions can get discouraging at times, but the "Power" and the "Mystery' are re-assuring me I am NOT alone on this path. I may know this intellectually, but it helps to have a Magickal Reminder. May I thus, in turn reassure you. Don't listen to the words of those who call us 'evil'. Those of us who understand the Magickal Link are not alone. We are connected in more ways than we can suspect. Hail, where ever you are, and Take Heart! Courage, fellow traveller!
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