Needle: A Treatise on Obsessive Magick ::: Chapter Four

Chapter Four ::: The Guide

"The knower of truth should go about the world outwardly stupid like a child, a madman or a fool." - The Mahavakya Ratnamala

Had I not met my mentor I too may well have looked at life in the same light as Thomas Hobbes; a rather unpleasant occurrence whose main attributes appeared "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".  Yet I knew, even from that young age, that there was something more, that life was some type of unfoldment and that any attachment to nihilism merely reflected entrapment in a specific trance. 

We surely are all trapped between two mysterious worlds; one of outer 'normality' and another of inner feelings, torments, joys and emotions.  Both of these 'realities' feed on each other and both are locked in a kind of continuous struggle.  Nobody ever quite adjusts properly to this two-world existence.  People wear masks that cry out 'I am adjusted', 'I am happy', 'I am normal', but just beneath the mask there is always that turmoil of uncertainty.

Religion has kept its appeal because it helps to alleviate the uncertainty of existence.  Religion has never truly centered itself on truth but rather on fear, and even today it maintains its merit with vapid words like 'hope' and 'faith'.  The more the fear the more the believer believes.  Given the right circumstance and the appropriate amount of fear, the deeply religious (fearful) will meet doubt with guns and mockery with knives.

To the fearful, killing over cartoons is as pleasing as bowing for a prescribed number of times a day to keep the deity from punishing (or forgetting).  Punishment and fear, murder and intolerance; as natural and predictable as dogma and genocide.

It's difficult territory to travail, this mysterious path to awakening, and the more one consults the masters and guides that have gone before the more they seem to suggest a hidden and skewed path. As one moves closer to the mystery indeed one also becomes increasingly filled with doubt, and yet this 'lost' stage appears not only important but in fact signals a kind of breakthrough.  In the Apophthegmata of the Desert Fathers we hear and can well understand the voice of a fourth-century monk when he tells us, "Truly, Abbot Joseph has found the way, because he has said: 'I do not know.'"

I had to know.

I first met my guide in a book.  I cannot remember the title now but it was one of those typical 'Great Mysteries of the World' type volumes.  Big foot was there and UFO's, and the usual chapters on strange rains of fish, Jack the Ripper and ghosts.  But none of these Fortean curiosities really interested me.  They were fascinating topics to be sure, but once you have read one of these types of books you have read them all.

There was one chapter however that did catch me and its subject was occultism and 'magick'.  At that young age it was the first time I had seen the word magick with its peculiar spelling.  A black and white photograph jumped out at me, it depicted a man dressed in a robe, in front of him on a table were placed a sword, a mysterious looking book, what looked like a crystal ball, a small vial of oil, and a large old-looking Egyptian stele.  The man held a wand and his head was crowned with a snake motif and upon his chest lay a necklace depicting some sort of cross.  

I looked closely at the photograph and read the inscription beneath.  'Aleister Crowley', that was the man's name, and the book referred to him as a 'ritual magician'.  I had no real understanding what any of this meant but a peculiar feeling told me that this person was to play a crucial role in my life.

I knew then and there that I had to make a decision.  Something was pulling me towards this man and a choice had to be made: close the book, walk away and forget I had ever seen this strange character or find out everything I could about him.  Had I taken the first choice then you, my dear reader, would most certainly not be reading this book.  But I chose the second option and from that moment I knew that this figure would act as some type of strange attractor forever leading me deeper into initiation.

I had to find out everything I could about this person and so I began to read.  I visited every library, sat hidden in every bookshop that would allow me hours of undisturbed reading, poured over every detail about this man.  The basics were easy enough, born Edward Alexander Crowley on Tuesday, October 12th, 1875 between the hours of 11 p.m. and midnight.  His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren, an ultra conservative Christian sect famous for its strict adherence to a literal interpretation of scripture and its harsh dishing out of physical discipline and punishment.  This ensured Crowley's early life would be punctuated with beatings for even the mildest of misdeeds.

He suffered through a difficult upbringing until at last, in 1893, at the young age of eighteen, he declared himself not only a magician but promised to raise Magick from its then current fallen state and into a legitimate science.  Right from the beginning he referred to this ancient science using the old English word 'magick' and his choice for doing so he tells us was "in order to distinguish the Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits."

It did not take long for Crowley to first encounter doubt and this 'lost' stage thrust itself upon him with great force. In his masterpiece recounting of Crowley's life and spiritual achievement titled Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, Kenneth Grant documents Crowley's quick rise and his struggle with the trance of futility:

"Within a year of his initiation into the Order of the Golden Dawn, Crowley's advance had been so swift that he attained the highest grade, and according to an unpublished autobiographical note (1924, by the year 1903, Crowley was the most advanced Adept (as distinct from Master) in the world.  But as at Cambridge, when he had undergone the Buddhist Trance of Sorrow and realized the futility of earthly ambition and achievement, so now, when almost at the summit of mystical attainment, he was overwhelmed by a similar sense of futility.  It was so acute that he abandoned the Great Work itself."

This trance of doubt and futility scared me greatly when I first read of it and yet I knew that such a trance was already familiar to me.  It had been thrust upon me on that road, by that van, by that girl, by her death.

In the 16th century a Spanish Roman Catholic mystic commonly named Saint John of the Cross titled his famous poem The Dark Night of the Soul (La Noche Oscura Del Alma), in it he details a tumultuous process as the soul ascends from its bodily form and unto God. Was I ready for the dark night?  Are any of us ever truly ready?

Needle: A Treatise on Obsessive Magick ::: Chapter Three

Chapter Three ::: Innocence

“It takes a very long time to become young.” - Pablo Picasso

I have always had a strange faith in the ‘Gods’.

My faith has never really wavered in what I feel is a populated universe inside me.  I see the universe outside of me just as surely as anyone else but I feel there is also an equal universe within me.  A vast space filled with creation and destruction, victory and loss, gods and demons, peace and war, and hope; a strange hope that is not really based on any experience, no proof that warrants its existence and yet it’s there.  Many a time have I woken and found it merely a disturbing corpse and yet the faith remains; unchanged and mysterious.

Looking at it through the eye of the skeptic I understand this ‘faith’ may well be a kind of innocence.  The weight of the universe is perhaps so overwhelming that we mere humans invent hope and clench at it as a drowning man would clench at straws.

I saw hope die that day. In fact, looking back at it now, I believe I saw the universe die.  I saw her universe die.

Of course I understood there and then that existence is but a mere farce; a tragic play containing no particular direction and certainly no inkling of moral meaning.  To this very day, if I could, I would dearly love to spit in the face of moral meaning.

For me religion died that day.  And God died with it.

Yet strangely my faith in the Gods did not die, even though I knew they did not care.  Like people everywhere they too were busy with their own lives to bother too much with the triflings of beings scratching out an existence on this side of the curtain.  The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin have an intimate understanding of this when they say that their creation God (Oludumare) is distant and cold.  For me all of the Gods are distant and cold.  Only the pretenders seek out a personal relationship with their creation.

In the traditional Yoruba creation myth, the Orishas (spirits) became so tired of serving Oludumare that they plan a revolt; the destruction of heaven and the seizing of power.  Certain Judaic Christian myths (Adam and Eve, Lucifer, etc) also play on this theme of disobedience and rebellion against a creative force too distant to give a damn and too restrictive to allow pleasure.  Alas, too inhuman to understand loss.

None of this of course concerned me when I was twelve.  Something much bigger and much more pressing enveloped my thoughts; the dreaded fact that I had to walk to school. 

Plagued with the paralyzing fear that I had to cross that road every day, that I had to re-live that destruction every moment I walked to school and every moment I walked back out.  Yet strangely, it was not only that particular road that disturbed me, every road hurt me.  Walking anywhere on any road with cars whizzing past made me anxious.  A car appearing suddenly or screeching its tires made my hands shake uncontrollably (sometimes they shook so much that I hid them in my pockets so nobody would see them).

The road became my nemesis.

At any moment I knew those cars were going to jump the footpath and they were going to destroy me.  I knew it.  Every bit of me was certain it would happen, if not that day then certainly another day or later.  This of course affected my travel and restricted my activities.  I avoided going out, or if I did go out, I avoided the main roads and took only the back streets where the cars were forced to move slower.  Where I felt I had a better chance of surviving their sudden lunge should they suddenly be inclined to destroy me.

A typical journey that may have previously taken twenty minutes now took as much as an hour.  A trip around the quieter side streets involved complicated detours and even cutting through neighbor’s yards. People became suspicious of course.  One time I was stopped by the police, they wanted to see my backpack to check if I had stolen goods from any of the houses whose yards I had walked through.  They asked a lot of questions and I tried to answer them the best I could.

But how could I tell them I was afraid of cars?

Arrival was always bliss.  To arrive at school, the shops, anywhere without being eaten by cars always filled me with almost ecstatic relief, and yet, in the back of my mind there was always the tightening fear of the return trip home.  I knew they were waiting, sometimes parked, sometimes moving, but always waiting for that perfect moment when they would feed. 

And they would feed. 

All machinery needs feeding.  All development requires sacrifice.  Just like the old Gods demanded bloody sacrifices on their altars to ensure the crops would remain fertile, so too technology demands blood and rewards with progress.

Just look at the numbers. Statistically the roads demand 1.2 million sacrifices worldwide every year, and we pay it willingly, sadly and quietly.  The Gods reward nicely even if the fruits often taste bitter.

It was also at this age, when the cars were trying to eat me and the roads appeared like fiery streams leading to hell, that I met my guide. 

Needle: A Treatise on Obsessive Magick ::: Chapter Two

Chapter Two ::: On Love Lost

“Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” - Khalil Gibran

The Serbian writer Dejan Stojanovic once remarked about himself: “my feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.”   That's how I felt when my time at primary school came to an end.  Too damn introverted to cry out and just too damn shy to let a girl know she was beautiful.

I am not shy now, in fact I don’t really give a damn what anyone thinks of me.  I am me.  But it would take a terrible lesson to change this me; a terrible way for a twelve-year-old child to learn to stop being so damn shy.

And it goes like this: think of the most beautiful girl in the world.

Can you see her? 

No?  Close your eyes and picture her.  Go Slowly.  Stop reading this until you can see her.

See her?

She is beautiful yeah?  She makes you feel things you have never felt before.  You have never been in love before so this ‘thing’ that’s happening in your body (and soul) is so overbearing in its intensity that you can hardly breathe.

Her quick glances past you makes your heart beat fast (I say past you because you are sure she has never noticed you).  When she laughs the sound of her easy happiness makes your heart ache with an intense loving pain.  The waves of her long black hair are like a tranquil ocean; soothing and innocently inviting.
 
When she walks past, you breathe in deep, hoping to catch her smell, to have something of her inside you.  If she has ever noticed you when passing she would have only caught sight of an increasingly nervous boy trying as much as he can to melt into the ground, the wall, anything. 

If fate had ever chanced a brief question or comment from her (maybe she wants to know the time) your voice would have trembled quietly as your hands shook with embarrassed fear. 

But chance never did intervene for me until that day when I walked out of school and in the not so far distance I saw her. It was just her; nobody else in sight.  We were alone, we could talk, or maybe we could just stand close together.  That would have been enough.

Oh wave of ecstasy, what good fortune has brought you so close to me?  What good karma has granted me the reward of beholding your form?

I made my move, walking faster and faster so as to get as close to her as possible.

What would I say to her?

“Hello”, and then what?

What would follow the greeting?  What words would  come out of me that could possibly keep her interested?  This uncertainty made me afraid.

I was always afraid. 

And then I was stuck, frozen and unable to take another step.  I was so close I could almost touch her but the words I so desperately wanted to come out of me were stuck.  I could not speak; she could not hear me.  She we would never know I existed.

Oh garland of sweet words why have you abandoned me? What cruelty has kept my mouth shut?

She stands at the traffic lights and waits for the little green man to indicate it is safe to cross.  It’s a three lane road on the side where we are standing.  Two lanes must turn right and one lane (the closest to us) goes straight.  The arrow for the two lanes turning right turned red and a few cars have already come to a stop.  But there is still one green light; the light that indicates to cars traveling on the lane closest to us that it is safe to proceed straight and at normal speed. 

I see the white and blue van traveling at what seemed like a high speed, but I am not sure if it is speeding or if it’s just my head that is processing events at an unusual rate.

She steps out onto the road.  Why has she stepped out when the little man is still red?  The little man is still red and he has not turned green, why has she stepped out?  I am screaming questions and yet I am silent, I cannot move but I know something is wrong.

The sound of the van hitting her perfect little body is so disgusting that even now I cannot find the words to describe the horror.  I don’t want to describe it because to do so would be to give voice to a kind of evil; a perverted mocking malice that deviously destroys perfection.  A monster that creeps in from another world and in an instant grabs a child and takes her fragile spirit as its prize.  I despise it! It destroys love!

Everything stopped.  The world froze and everything fell to silence.  When the world came back to life it was with piercing screams coming from all directions.  People running from everywhere and rushing to her broken body as it lay there in the middle of the road.  Her black hair floating in her blood and her face expressing a look that seemed to cry confusion.

“Why now?  I had only started to live.”

I stood there a long time.  Frozen solid as crowds milled around her little body.

Stop looking at her!

I heard the sirens; the police and the ambulance and whoever and whatever else came, I’m not sure, I didn’t care.  I was a statue, frozen solid and unable to move while within me my soul screamed. 

This was the day my innocence died.  This was the day that would determine so much of what I would become, so much of what I am still.  Although I didn't know it at the time, it was also the day I started my search for magick; the day I started looking for her.

Needle: A Treatise on Obsessive Magick ::: Chapter One

Chapter One ::: The Dark Room

“Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires.” - Khalil Gibran

I was sleeping when the towers tumbled down. 

I was living in Australia in 2001 and what was morning for New Yorkers on September 11 for me was night.  Of course the late night news cut live to the unfolding events but I missed it all.  I had gone to bed early. 

I remember it well, I recall that night vividly and I can, even now, describe in detail my dream that night.

There was a forest lush with trees, flowers and plants and there were bears, a whole family of them.  The bears were a creamy white and they felt safe to touch.  I was not afraid of them and didn’t feel I was in any danger being surrounded by them.  If anything I felt peaceful, comfortable and protected. 

But something in that place did scare me and I never did find out what it was.  It was there in the forest with the bears and me but I never saw it - only felt it and heard it.  A strange presence that made the bears uneasy and made me want to walk faster, further and deeper into that dense green womb. 

I heard its roar and I wanted to get away from it, a terrifying scream oddly set against what was largely a peaceful natural scene.  It did not belong in that forest and yet it was there, it existed.  It wanted attention.  I don’t know if it was a scream of anger or despair but I recall a meaning.  The scream said something, it was not just noise, there were words and it was only before my eyes snapped open that I understood them:

“Don’t forget us.”

These were the words that screamed out in that lush forest with those beautiful creamy white bears.

I had little time to think about this strange dream before the television news informed me the world had changed.  I had slept through Armageddon accompanied by creamy bears. 

Was any of it real?  Were any of the people falling from the towers real? 

‘Jumpers’ the media would later call them, a shallow name for what seemed like a new fad, an extreme sport, a new dance craze.  But these people were not crazy; they had jumped because their skin had started to crackle as the flames licked their fragile flesh.

They had made a decision to plummet into the abyss when their clothes began to catch fire; in some of the videos captured that day you can clearly see that for some of them their clothes were already on fire as they fell.  They had waited for the last possible moment before taking the final step into nothing. 

What a choice to have to make.

Jumpers; it’s a terrible name, an empty label attached to a group of dead people.  It’s neutral, it contains no emotion and it passes no comment on why.

 Why?

“Don’t forget us.”

For me the images on the television - set to what seemed like infinite repeat - merely compounded what was already a troubled morning.  I knew what was coming and every bit of me resisted it.  The sweats had already arrived and my stomach felt as if at any moment it would break loose and gallons of thick watery diarrhea would come pouring out. 

The last of the heroin was slowly making its way out of me and what awaited me now was pain.  Hell.

Not just physical pain, I could handle that, but emotional pain of such intensity that I knew it would drive me crazy with grief.  This is what is little understood about getting off the big H, the emotional torment that sends most users cowering back to their dealers.  If you have never felt this kind of darkness then I am sure it will be very difficult for you to understand.

But perhaps I can make you understand. 

Think of a time in your life when you have lost someone close.  Someone you really loved quickly and unexpectedly passed away; a car accident, or maybe a fall, a shooting, anything that would take them from you before you had time to prepare.  No goodbyes, nothing, just gone; one day they smile - beautifully and gloriously alive - and the next they are in a box.

That kind of sorrow is difficult to describe but if you have ever been through it you know that there is little else that can compare to it.  Darkness this vast is mercifully only inflicted on us rarely. 

Every time you get off the junk you are in that darkness.  It’s that dark room; that place where all of your fears have been locked up, even your fears of childhood are inside that room (even the monster under the bed that terrified you when you were five, he’s there too).

Want to come in?

Once you do come in the door will close behind you for a long time (at least to you it will feel like a long time).  The minutes will drag like hours and the seconds will feel as if they are tracing away the day in super slow motion.  The pain will increase, the cramps will have you bent over and the diarrhea will have you shitting until you don’t have anything left in your stomach to shit; but even then it will keep coming, watery disgusting goo, endlessly dripping your energy away.

Take a seat and make yourself comfortable if you can because you are going to be here a while.  Think of something, anything that will keep the dark thoughts from engulfing you.  Your body is in shock and it will give you signals you can little understand, much less prepare for.  From deep pools of depression to feeling horny, the feelings all come at you in waves, pouring out in no particular sequence and making no sense. 

“Why didn’t I score?” 

That’s what I tell myself - over and over - feeling stupid for entertaining the notion that I could get off.  My thoughts rage on.

I can’t get off, this is not the right time, call the dealer, make the call now before it gets worse. 

And it will get worse, much worse.

I pick up the telephone, the dealer’s number so often dialed that my fingers just move automatically over the phone pad. 

It rings.  It keeps on ringing but there is no answer.

I dial again and again it rings out.  I dial a third time; the weight of that unanswered ring makes me panic.  I desperately want someone to answer, a click and then the usual “hello?” 

But there is no answer and there would never be an answer ever again.

***

I have gone too fast, I have brought you to an end but I have not told you about the beginning.  How it all came to this.  I think it’s important you know the beginning so that it all makes sense.  I met  darkness in my youth, a being who took my normality away from me.  For you to understand the rest of my journey I think it is important I introduce him to you.