Arcana

LJ commenting on the Lambskin ( ch 38 of The Book of Lies) post said...

The Book of Lies is one of AC's more interesting books, but fairly obscure to me.

Cowan--'One who does the work of a mason, but has not been apprenticed to the trade. 2. Hence, One uninitiated in the secrets of Freemasonry 1707. 3. slang. A sneak, eavesdropper.'

http://www.masonicworld.com/education/files/dec04/cowan.htm

I suppose the first line means, 'Get lost, uninitiated!' or something along those lines.

I can't find 'Tyle' but the word 'Tyler' is the outer guard of a masonic lodge, but that may not be relevant.

Thank-you for this valuable research, LJ. It highlights a point previously unknown to me in that poem, but very related to what I've been getting at - that anyone can do the "work" that's been suggested in the past few posts from (to borrow a memorable phrase from William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson) 'right where you are sitting now.' Meaning that no special training is required. No particular ideology needs to be subscribed to or believed in. Nothing to buy or sign up for. You don't have to wait until you're ready.

This applies to everything that's been presented here about the technology of bardo readings - what Tibetans call the Power of Liberation by Sound - from doing a formal reading from the American Book of the Dead to singing a song for someone. From reciting the opening page of Finnegans Wake to inspire and invigorate a drum solo recording ( I saw a drummer named Skip Reed do this at a session for The Laughing Dogs - he recited it from memory) to listening to the Bill Laswell/Tony Williams collaboration, ARCANA: Arc of the Testimony with expansively directed attention.


The poem (or qabalistic koan, if you like) Lambskin starts out:

Cowan, skidoo!
Tyle!

My interpretation of Cowan leans more to the first definition LJ provided above: 'One who does the work of a mason but hasn't been apprenticed to the trade. ' The other definitions apply as well because we have multiple meanings here.

Skidoo is the title of chapter 23 from The Book of Lies. The formula there is, Get OUT.

Therefore the first line could read as: "Uninitiated, or beginner, get OUT!

Two meanings, opposite to each other, suggest themselves. The obvious one - a literal warning to be taken seriously, and the one Crowley gives as a magical formula which, on the most basic level, means to transcend your fundamental preconceptions about what is real and what is possible. Or to just simply get out of personality, get out of ego as a precursor for entering the temple. That's all the uninitiated need do to begin. By the way, this is but the tip of the iceberg to this formula/banishing, get out, as further study and practice will certainly reveal.

Tyler ( one who Tyles) has this definition in A.E. Waites', A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry:

- The Officer in charge on the further side of the Lodge-door. When he and the Officer on the hither side are on active service the Lodge is tyled. He is called Janitor in the Royal Arch and Guard or Sentinel in some other Degrees.

Well, that's as far as I'll go. After all, the back cover of The Book of Lies warns:

THE BOOK OF LIES is a witty, instructive, and admirable collection of paradoxes; however, it is not a philosophical or mystical treatise. Actually, its subtleties exhilarate. Scholars have said it is "stupendously idiotic and amazingly clever." To endeavor to translate it into definite terms Crowley's aphorisms would detract from the value of the book. It is wiser for readers to make their own interpretation.

Toshinori Kondo - Blow The Earth

Toshinori Kondo is one of the world's top players of the electric trumpet. I've had the great fortune of knowing and working with him since about 1991 when I went to Japan with Bill Laswell to mix the Front of House at the festival Kondo organized in his hometown, Imabari. We also recorded an improvised album at Kondo's studio, Metal Box, on the same trip called, The Map Is Not the Territory. It features an incredible line-up of musicians. Along with Kondo and Laswell it includes Ginger Baker, Anton Fier, Yamaki, Foday Musa Suso, Akira Sakata, and Peter Brotzmann among others. This collective became known as Autonomous Zone a name derived from Hakim Bey's radical manifesto, Temporary Autonomous Zone. Kondo began his Blow The Earth project playing solo against the backdrop of Israel's Negev Desert in 1993. 

I recently saw the dvd for his Blow The Earth Japan segment in which he "played the four seasons of Japanese nature." About Blow The Earth Kondo says: I wanted to improvise with the vibration of Great Nature. Blow The Earth is a quest for seeking the music of the XXIst Century ... The four seasons of Japanese nature seems like the breathing of Earth. I hope you can enjoy it! 

Most of the performances on Blow The Earth Japan are solo offerings outdoors in majestic and beautiful settings. The cinematography is crisp and alive, effectively capturing the grandiose scope of Kondo's vision. The various environments read like a visual musical accompaniment to the electric trumpet phrases and progressions often awash in a halo of atmospheric effects but sometimes sounding just the pure tonality of the horn. 

The Winter portion has Kondo playing at the Kamigamo Shinto Shrine in Kyoto. Here he improvises with chanting priests. Kondo also introduces Professor Naiko Tosa, a visual artist who researches interactive media art at Kyoto University. She and I would attempt to express the presences of the Gods through visuals and music.

This demonstrates the invocational nature of Kondo's music which becomes obvious when you hear it. Tosa adds, The ancient figures and the lightning will move with Kondo's trumpet sound. This is the aim of my interactive art. 

Kondo mentions that the god of this shrine is Thunder which is fire. But thunder brings rain so it is a god of water, also. So no one was surprised when it began to softly rain during the set-up for the show and the performance. The sound of the rain contributed gentle background polyrhythms to the composition. 

Spring sees Kondo and his electronics perched atop a small rock overlooking Kurushima Straits, the entrance to the Inland Sea, an area he played in as a child.  He also plays at Koriyuji Temple on Oshima Island, the family temple of the Murakami pirates. The performance opens with a group of Buddhists chanting an ancient poem of pilgrimage before Kondo improvises on the horn with traditional taiko drummers. 

For Summer Kondo travels north to Iheya, a small island near Okinawa to play during a solar eclipse on the beach just outside the entrance to a huge cave considered to be sacred. A crowd of about 300 gathers with protective eye filters to witness the solar eclipse while Kondo plays in front of an entrance to the Underworld. 

Autumn finds Kondo playing on top of Mount Aso in central Japan. He was hoping that a local phenomena of climate known as the Sea of Clouds would occur. It manifests as a continuous blanket of white cloud cover just below the summit of the mountain so that it appears as a sea of clouds from the mountain top. Told by a local that it's extremely unlikely that the Sea of Clouds would happen in the next few days, Kondo says that it's no problem, he will camp out on the mountain until it does. The next morning the Sea of Clouds rolls out in fine form apparently not wanting to be late for the curtain call. Kondo takes Shakespeare literally when he says, "All the world is a stage." 

 Apart from his other music projects, Kondo is a member of the Bill Laswell organized collective, Method of Defiance.

Lambskin

Special thanks to all those who responded to the last two posts. To wrap up the subject of Qabalah and the Bardo for the time being I'll leave you with this symmetrical poem from Crowley:

LAMBSKIN

Cowan, skidoo!
Tyle!
Swear to hele all.
This is the mystery.
Life!
Mind is the traitor.
Slay mind.
Let the corpse of mind lie unburied on the edge of
the Great Sea!
Death!
This is the mystery.
Tyle!
Cowan, skidoo!

from ch.38, The Book of Lies

Cowan and Tyle are terms from Freemasonry with meanings I know not. Skidoo alludes to ch. 23 of the same book, a key chapter related to what has been presented here.

Angel's Healing Journey

The practice of doing labyrinth readings can also heal. It basically provides the same type of service, a transmission of energy of some sort.

This energy has many different names and has been known for thousands of years in esoteric circles. More recently, Wilhelm Reich named it "orgone" and did extensive scientific research on the subject.

Sufis call it baraka, the Chinese know it as qigong. It may be the L.V.X. of Rosicrucians or the prana of the yogis. Every system or culture that has a name for this energy maintains that it's potentially available to anyone.

Wilhelm Reich also did groundbreaking work with using energy to heal.

The work of Wilhelm Reich is often referred to in the history and teaching of energy as a vehicle for healing.

Angels Healing Journey is a "Book of the Dead" by E. J. Gold with an orientation toward healing.

Angels Healing Journey is a book one may choose to use to address the Being of another just as you might do if you were to do a reading from one of the various "Books of the Dead". You would do this typically for someone who is suffering from one illness or another, though the book can and is used as a "Book of the Dead" since it contains readings for the First Stage (The Symptoms), Transition, Confronting the Clear Light, The Second Stage ( Disintegration) and the subsequent readings for the standard (number of) 49 Chambers for those in transition in the between lives states. An interesting feature of this book is the list of common diseases people suffer from, the names of their (corresponding) Angelic Healers, and the chamber(s) where they can be found. Turning to those chambers one can then read a description of these angelic entities and learn about some of their major attributes.

- James Duggan

It does use esoteric Hebrew imagery but apart from that has no connection to any religion, and again, functions effectively with or without limit of belief system. You don't have to believe any of it is real or that it works, but it helps. In that way it can be like magick where you temporarily suspend disbelief and skepticism to consciously, willfully, and voluntarily enter a belief system of your own design for your own intentions, and when done with that belief system, leave it.

Angel's Healing Journey uses the model/metaphor based on a tradition called Angelology. Peter Lamborn Wilson wrote a classic and beautiful work on the subject called Angels that first appeared in 1980.

I find it helpful when working with metaphors outside the ordinary programming and consensus of what is "real", to remember this brilliant bit of advice:

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
— Aleister Crowley (Magick in Theory and Practice)

It seems that this kind of healing isn't necessarily about curing diseases or making the body live longer. The healing takes place on an essential level which may or may not help the body.

Without Any Limit of Belief System

Special thanks to all my critics who show me how they continue to fail to get it, to receive what I'm communicating. So I'm going to get a little remedial here.

The previous post, "Bardo Readings", had nothing to do, and is not connected with any Organized or Unorganized Religion whatsoever. I know what you're going to say, that this was EXPLICITLY STATED in the post:

The reading instructions very clearly outline when and what to read, without any limitation of belief system--the practice is presented as non-denominational, not requiring Buddhist or Christian or Jewish prayers, but also not in conflict with any of these.


The part where it says, " without any limit of belief system" means that no particular belief system is required, at all, at all. You don't even have to believe that the readings are doing anything for dead people, but if you are reading, the existential fact is that you are reading at least for yourself and so could stumble upon something of value like you might with any other book.

Since this seems quite clear, I figured that the comparison to the Catholic Church could have come from an automatic, mechanical, Pavlovian reaction to how I signed off - the word "Blessings" is used by Christians ... as well as Pagans. At least I know the critics hang on my every word.

The post also had no intention of indoctrination into any strange cult or philosophical ideology. My philosophy holds that everyone has the liberty and right to choose for themselves what to do with their life in the spirit of Crowley's "Do what thou wilt." Or like Joseph Campbell's, "follow your bliss," or Timothy Leary's exhortation for everyone to "start your own religion" - uh oh, there's that word again, religion. Sorry if it freaks anyone out. Leary meant something like making your daily life sacred in however you as an individual choose to do so.

I only intended to present and suggest methods for dealing with/coping with death because I personally experienced a great deal of death at the time of the post. I've been working in this area since about 1980 when I randomly opened to it in Carl Jung's Collected Works. I've picked up a few things along the way and felt it necessary to pass some of it along yesterday.

To review, these methods include:

- learning how to do formal readings from The American Book of the Dead
- reading from any inspired text that feels right
- practicing Magick which can involve learning Qabalah. Mysticism appears identical to Theurgic Magick, so meditative activities could work as a method of bardo service.
- listening/ playing music with a particular intention or focus.
- writing

Intellectuals and cynics who take this as a bunch of nonsense have my permission to maintain their status quo and continue to tell lies about something they lack any understanding of. This is for a few people who might be interested.

There is no way I can prove any of this works. The only way to find out is to try it. At first, it might take a little time before you feel a strong contact with the bardo. However, you'll sense pretty quickly what effect practicing any of these methods has on you.

I also advocate the Gurdjieffian advice: DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING I SAY. Verify everything for yourself.

Bardo Readings

Received Jerry Cornelius' new book Altheia yesterday. First sentence evokes the Bardo. It reads:

"How the mind can torture itself in its quest to understand the travels of the soul from life, through death, to life again."

I find the timing of the book's release interesting as it coincides with my brief abstracts on the same subject that he begins with. I've just started the book. So far, it's first rate.

Saw that a new film called The Tree of Life opened in town today. I had heard about it a few weeks ago but had forgotten about it until now.


Nobody can tell you what will happen when you die. It's possible that the after-life bardo spaces, reported in so many different ways in many different cultures, occur as a result of the unraveling of the subconscious mind in the last minutes or seconds before brain-death.

Even taking the strictly scientific materialist perspective, that nothing happens after life, Bardo Training is of immense benefit. The way Erik Davis puts in Nomad Codes:

"Early in Waking Life, Ethan Hawke quotes Timothy Leary to the effect that, even if nothing of us survives death, the last few minutes of the brain's electrical activity may be experienced by the dying person as an entire life racing in time-lapse -- or, as the film itself suggests, a nearly infinite labyrinth of dreams. From this perspective, the traditional teachings of bardo navigation may come in handy despite the reality of brain-death: even if we are only riding that last wave to flatline, it pays to know how to surf. "

They are referring to a film called Waking Life by Richard Linklater which I haven't yet seen.

So what are the traditional teachings of bardo navigation?

I would guess that it involves the practice of delivering readings shortly before and during the transition of death, and for a period of time afterwards. Of course, there are now many non-traditional methods that encourage bardo navigation, qabalah being one of them, but traditionally it seems that readings have been done in certain cultures, in particular the Tibetan, for hundreds or thousands of years.

One way to experience or at least get a sense of the bardo is by learning how to do the readings. Clear instructions are given in the American Book of the Dead (ABD).

Readings do not necessarily need to come from the ABD. Any text meaningful to you, and/or the Voyager(s) ie the spirit or "soul" of the person(s) recently deceased. "Readings" don't even have to take the form of reading aloud from a text. I wrote a short story once as a "reading." It seems that there are different ways or methods to transmit a particular "something" to a voyager that can help them. The nature of this "something" can, I believe, get discovered more rapidly through Qabalah.

However, since it is a method of Liberation by sound, the easiest way to begin, and be effective immediately, is to start with the ABD. From the editorial description:

This book has been and still remains an important tool for providing a spiritual service to a dying person as opposed to grieving, processing loss, or mourning for that person's passage. Front matter includes "Notes on the Labyrinth" (or the Bardo...) and other commentary by the author that provides insights for an American reader who wishes to provide this guiding service to a family member, spouse, friend, or anyone who is terminal. The reading instructions very clearly outline when and what to read, without any limitation of belief system--the practice is presented as non-denominational, not requiring Buddhist or Christian or Jewish prayers, but also not in conflict with any of these. A schedule of readings shows graphically how to carry out the full series of 49 days of readings, at approximately 10 to 20 minutes per reading.

There is a course available by correspondence and on the internet that gives additional training for readers who wish to pursue the practice of performing "Labyrinth Readings" or "Bardo guiding" as a service to others--beyond one's own family and personal network.

Sometimes music can act as a carrier wave for the readings. I know of a difficult and stubborn woman who had Irish ancestry in her background. Nothing seemed to reach her until traditional Irish music was played with the reading.

News comes of the sudden death of Amy Winehouse, a great loss to the music community. As Keith Richards sings:

It's another good-bye to another good friend...



Playing her music while directing good intentions, best wishes, or prayers ( ie NOT grief, sadness, despair anger, etc) might serve a function similar to doing a reading.

This is the 93rd post of this blog.

Blessings and Peace ...

Hitchikers Guide and Finnegans Wake

To clarify a remark from the last post:

Because Bardo Training is synonymous with Magick, it does not follow that all Magick works as Bardo Training.

Speaking very generally, Magick can get classified into two branches:

1. Thaumaturgy, which has to do with changing the environment in some way, ie creating favorable weather for the crops, casting spells to influence things, cursing people who upset you, etc.

I would have to say that some measure of this kind of magick I've seen attempted has been by amateur dabblers thoroughly caught up in superstition and fantasy. Most of these types lack any real magical juice. I do acknowledge and have met rare individuals who can actually use Thaumaturgy in a responsible and non-ego gratifying way. Even so, it seems usually used quite sparingly.

2. Theurgic, that type of Magick concerned with expanding consciousness; invoking and contacting "god-forms" to open up circuits of gnostic reception; the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, which, in one sense, basically means finding out what in the hell you're here to do (True Will) and doing it., etc.

Theurgic Magick has significantly greater likelihood of providing the benefit of Bardo Training than thaumaturgy.

To address a recent case brought to my attention: If someone imagines they are putting a curse on you, a couple of courses of action come to mind:

1. You can just ignore it. Nothing will happen, it's just fantasy and superstition on their part. They might have even dreamed up of engaging in some kind of war with you for some imaginary reason - most likely unknown to you, but probably having to do with an inadvertent slight of one kind or another.

2. You can somehow metaphorically, and compassionately, position a mirror in front of them in the hopes that they will get a glimpse of the pain that's causing such fantastic daydreams. Anyone who suggests permanently hurting someone because they expressed a view that offended them is obviously in a great deal of pain however deeply buried it may be. Robert Anton Wilson somewhere recommends Laura Huxley's book of basic magick exercises called "You Are Not the Target." The exercise that's also the title of the book further explores this.

Ironically, having a curse thrown in your direction, if one should be so lucky, can be great for Bardo Training:

A string of meditations called "type three" meditations are the performing meditations - in other words, how to do something you wish to do while conflicting realities and disorientating phenomena are running on.

- American Book of the Dead, p.41

The curser actually serves the cursee.


Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy

Another qabalah encoded "book of the dead" type of literature is the science fiction comedy classic, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The main character, Arthur Dent gets off of Earth just before it gets destroyed to make way for a Hyperspatial Bypass Express. Dent, in his adventures post-Earth-mortem, travels through a series of bardo-like spaces and adventures learning as he goes. Very early on, after his first jump off of Earth, he is told by his extra-terrestrial guide, Ford Prefect, to always travel with a towel. Sound bardo advice on a few different levels.


Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Universe

The Hitchiker's Guide books are good as are the radio recordings. I've always enjoyed the BBC television production of this story. The Hollywood film version changed a lot and dumbed it down into a science fiction soap opera, a predictably superficial melodrama. Not worth seeing, in my opinion.

Immediately after the conclusion of the series, at the very end of the last episode, a song is played over the end credits - not only is it incredibly uplifting but also a crystal clear communication of the Great Work. I won't say what the song is. I think the whole series must be seen for the full effect of the music.

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake counts as one of the greatest literary storehouses of qabalah enriched bardo data. It's admittedly a difficult read, at first, but like any other maze, gets easier after a while through practice. One trick to navigating the foreignness of all the coined words, phrases and mash-ups, is to sound out the words phonetically. You can let the sound be a guide, as it works like any other book of the dead. James Joyce wrote musically.

from p. 18. I will give some explanation:

(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios
of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since
We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told
of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle. They
lived und laughed ant loved end left. Forsin. Thy thingdome is
given to the Meades and Porsons. The meandertale, aloss and
again, of our old Heidenburgh in the days when Head-in-Clouds
walked the earth. In the ignorance that implies impression that
knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that
convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that
adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that
entails the ensuance of existentiality.

My interpretation: On one level he's asking the reader if they can read his Qabalah- can you read it's world?

"abcedminded" - a pun referring both to awareness of letters and to "absent-minded," perhaps in the sense of quieting the thinking brain chatter, as a condition for reading "its world."

"Miscegenations on miscegenations" - miscegenation means interbreeding and could indicate the cross-pollination,indexing, and referencing of various religions, mythologies, systems of knowledge, etc that occurs in Qabalah.

"It is the same told of all" - finding the common core of truth in each system.

" ant loved" - animals, real and imaginary, and insects have qabalistic connotations. Ants aren't on the animal chart in 777, but they suggests an obvious image. Perhaps the actual versus potential capacity of what qabalah develops.

"in the days when Head-In-Clouds walked the earth." - recalls a comment I made toward the end of the Tales of the Tribe class responding to someone who suggested the aim of Qabalah was to get one's consciousness to Kether. I replied, that the aim, as far as I was concerned, was to bring the awareness of Kether into Malkuth ( the material world) .

The last sentence that starts, "In the ignorance..." could describe a qabalistic process of theurgic magick from inception to manifestation. It also references the death/rebirth archetype.