A vision quest of sorts, guided by Miles Davis’ awesome 26 minute, 52 second groove “Right Off”, celebrating Beltane and the goddess, be she primal blood-soaked earth or heaven’s Queen Sophia. I did my usual rituals – LBRP, MP, LIRP of Water, invoked her and the higher self, and invoked Miles through the song. Within moments, ideas started to form. It wasn’t much, but it was beautiful. The Witches’ Sabbath…awesome. Most of the references to people here are RP characters, some are friends. It’s intensely personal, but for the benefit of those who might want to see it, I have posted it anyway. Thanks for at least reading, even if you scratch your head and think I’m nuts 😛 Also, listen to the song – it ROCKS! 😀
By the way, I have totally not become Wiccan. My spiritual path is integrating the divine feminine, an element I had discarded but that remained a part of my being until I chose to acknowledge it…I still worked with goddesses, demons like Lilith and Gremory for sure. But I found I’m really more comfortable with them at times…and the Earth is primal, funky, dark. These concepts are important to my path, to Sophia, to Binah, to Malkuth. I am learning…only the future knows what it holds. And what is time but an illusion? I can’t wait to see what happens even the rest of today…it seems my Walpurgisnacht awesome insight spell became true after all 😀
RIGHT OFF – BELTANE
The beat, chaos undefined. The clean slate, pulsing bass of the mother’s heart the drums her lively dance. On this slate, a guitar forms, rising, falling, soloing, Nuit. Then silence, or the appearance of it. McLaughlin’s guitar drops out, quietly whispering to itself, then becomes brighter. Then MILES! The unveiling of HADIT, BURNING STARFORCE!
Is that what he was trying to teach me? He mentioned starting and stopping with regard to funk…perhaps primeval blood-spattering with moments where the red blood meets the dark soil. Where pain-fire dissolves into night, where crack addiction and busted knees give rise to art. We all tour the world in search of something – usually our own art. In night we find respite. And she descends around me…
Her hair brushes mine, her cheek kisses mine. “I will always be there for you.” The interplay of Hadit and Nuit happens around us, she takes me to dance. Firelight of Miles, night sky of John. It is Walpurgisnacht again in this our dream…there is no time. We dance. No stars, save myself. I blaze with fire, she a deep blue. Now swords – for no dance can forever remain peaceful. A few parries, and I find myself stabbed in the solar plexus. Blue sword like an icicle, yet warmth. “It is here you say YHVH ELOAH VE-DAATH is it not? The Lord God of Wisdom, or the Lord God of the Abyss?”
I am tossed about on the end of a stick, meat for her. Miles is soloing, only Hadit remains. Well, in the interplay he’s Hadit, but in the sound he/she is Nuit.
“Answer me.” A playful smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. I gasp for breath.
“The abyss!” I cry. “In water is found knowing, yet also Devastation.”
“There is a reason you capitalized that,” she says knowingly.
“Yes…Devin. The original devastator, the Deva, the Devil. All that is dark and hateful yet feminine that I am able to manifest in written form…my intuition tells me she is myself.”
The dance continues, her shielding my smallness against her naked body. As if she is bounding, running, The moon over us. Menstrual blood springs to mind.
Some self of mine – the bridge I erected between myself and her – the Anima? – speaks forth. “Is this how all the feminine mysteries are to you? Violent and dark? There are only hard women, tomboys, fighters. Even your Schrollmouse appears as a leopard, a beast.” I nod.
“There are Kylies, there are Robins who are not so evil…” But I know Robin kicks ass too. There is not one feminine soul in my mind, one entirely uncorrupted by Hadit’s polarity. And Nuit-Miles is blazing away in the darkness, echo effect on his horn…the band cuts in, ruining a spiritual moment. Fuck.
She is a horse now, a ghost-horse. I ride within her under the moonlight, to places unknown. There is a grove of trees…I hear the name, see the image. Lucifer. Is this my own mind? A big-brother voice speaks to me – 37 for sure. “It doesn’t fucking matter. Enjoy the show.”
She is in the center of a ring of people, a lone point amongst the circle. Roles are reversed in that shape.
She has blond hair, Galadriel-fire eyes that are yet nothing-wells, wispy clothing. Miles and the bass duel – Henderson’s bass. She dances, a congruence – congroovence? – of funk. Casting off her clothes. The circle begins to clap in time, swaying as John returns to the beat. Now Herbie’s organ. She chooses one of us – one of us from a circle of tyrants, my mind tells me. A representative sample of all humanity from all time. She and this person begin to have sex in the fire before us, not burning. For where there was only my Sophie, now there is a fire….and Herbie plays this gigantic fucking BBRRRROOOOVVVVMMMMPPP on the organ and the place erupts. She is a goddess – a female lead in a musical, a pop idol, and we are her backup dancers. Her fucking some no-name sample of humanity matters not.
A crown rests on my head as we dance. It is gold, with a black hole in the center. The hole radiates white light. I begin to dance, smiling and reaching out to her. She says “no, not yet,” and pulls away, ripping free the last bit of clothing. On her torso is a giant black sigil – it looks like an angelic sigil from the Theurgia Goetia, and is yet an ankh as well.
Now the repetitive part. Drums in the center – a clapping crowd. A two-second riff, repeated a thousand fucking times on John’s guitar. I hated this part…but it is where we fuck. She is a beast, wild, biting, clawing. Is she a lycanthrope in disguise, my wisdom?
The sigil is a snake. It winds around me, up my throat, out my mouth. The tongue flicks – my tongue. The eyes light up yellow – my eyes. That drumbeat is syncopated, oddly…never noticed that. The crowd begins to dance in two wings around us as synthesis is attained. Music is beginning to play again, organ, bass, guitar, drums…groovy. She dances with snake-me – “man attained to Lucifer”, my dream-words say. Am I Gnostic now somehow?
How now, brown cow? She mocks me…or someone does. Wisdom is an illusion, unless you are experiencing it. This sabbath of the witches is just the path.
Miles should be here…where is he? He’s the Cain type…and there he is. On top of a rock outcropping, playing like the kokopelli figure in Southwestern native imagery. There are trees forming around us…a new phase in the music. We are done with sex, I guess. She hands me a knife. Simple, yet formed of black metal. “Now kill me,” she says. Her eyes glowing red…not with hate, with KNOWFIRE.
I cannot fathom what to say. I know I must, but the dance cannot end. “Will you be reborn?” She says I know she will…there is an image of a dove fluttering to the sky, a ghost-dove. I raise the knife, and hug and kiss her.
“May the earth swallow thee.” BAM HADIT EXPLOSION LIKE FUCKING FIRE AND FORCE AND KNOWLEDGE, starlight. My head is spinning. The area is rock and desert, no trees, no dancers, no shit. She is gone, except for her stars in the sky. A campfire appears next to me. A store, like a truck stop in the distance. A car pulls up, small red four-door, about 1992 model. Two guys get out – regular joes.
“You going to Albuquerque?”
I do not have time to answer. The song has passed. But in the words of Led Zeppelin…the song remains the same?
“Sophie…you there?” I pray, for there is no other word to describe it.
“Always, hon.” Her voice smiles. One finger touches me. “What did you learn?”
That we must love, that others must be loved by you without my jealousy and with my approval…
Good….
That I must one day kill you. Is that the abyss?
No. It’s the death of the you you clung to, a cleaning of the slate. At some point a dreamstate must end, and you must cease dancing. You must wake to a cold reality where no magic exists…and this will be the start of a new journey.
Wait…you don’t mean that magic will stop forever?
Hell no! I mean (and here I realize it’s what Miles meant earlier today about starting and stopping) that gnosis gives way to re-entry….you can’t burn all the time.
Have to be able to keep going, even when I’m not engaged in magic.
Yeah…that, if anything is the lesson of the abyss. Dark nights of the soul, she says. Pain. Heartbreak. Loss. But in between the wild nights, the dancing. And in that circle is all of us. All of our peace, all of our knowledge, all of our pain.
A triangle appears to mind. The circle in it – an evokation triangle. “You must realize this is the shield of the Abyss. Keep spirits around you, always be happy. No Abyss can constrain the Leviathan who is always roaring, raging, re-ifying.”
Reifying….reinventing the Me?
Yeah, sorta. (Here she seems like Robin.) No Abyss can hold a new creature.
So it only holds the me that was.
Yeah…and there can be many abysses. Pluto, Saturn, Uranus. Consumers in the cold dark. Devouring maws of worms and grass.
But in those abysses your blood, healing the magic and making the worms and grass of the grave grow to a new light.
Miles – JoJo is playing. A happy jazz-funk-pop tune from the 80s.
“Yup. You must always acknowledge rebirth. Don’t you see? Blood has brought new life all along. It’s just that some people haven’t understood it properly.”
I can almost see a paradigm shifty thing here. Become tired, lose sight of the goal…kill you and start fresh in the jungle.
(The wolf age of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, child of the predator comes to mind…)
So we can start a new me. A heliocentric me, a pranacentric me. A Terra Nova, a Terra Firma, a Terra Incognita. Whichever fits our being at the moment.
(Or our doing, someone says. The self that read Psybermagick earlier?)
More or less. Do you wish to create a new you?
Jungle drums…funk guitar. Blood – metal percussion like the clash of swords. Maybe my gnosis is not so gone after all.
“I don’t have the faintest idea where to start…the ideas are gone. All of you has passed from me with the end of the song. I’m sorry mama.”
“It’s okay, hon.” She rocks me to sleep amongst a cornfield, singing a song about…something. Maybe a key, a sailor. How he found the moon and it kept him swinging into the sky’s eternal, infinite nether regions, where no man dared to dwell.
The Strange Love A Star Woman Teaches….
goodnight mama. Thanks for everything. And thank you too, Miles…thanks for bringing me peace and clarity and at least a measure of understanding today.
Thanks for reading…keep being awesome!
37
Liber Verendus 