When and why is male nudity “pornographic”? This is a question in light of having my ebook novel The Sex Lives of Sorcerers banned from amazon.com after replacing the cover image with a more colorful and—what I thought—more appropriate cover image. The story is, after all, about two men and their love affair with (each other) and a damsel who turns out to be the incarnation of a siren.

 I looked at images of classical art for my inspiration and was somewhat self-congratulatory upon completing the image thinking it came out alright considering how out-of-practice I am about rendering the human figure.

I resubmitted the ebook with the new cover. Amazon sent me a notice rejecting the book and directing me  to its content guidelines; namely, these 2 points:

Pornography
We don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.

Offensive Content
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.

Now, let’s look at the illustration and then examine the definition (Merriam-Webster) of “pornography”

1. the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement

2. material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement

3. the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

The legal definition is something like this: The representation in books, magazines, photographs, films, and other media of scenes of sexual behavior that are erotic or lewd and are designed to arouse sexual interest.

Where’s the erotic behavior much less “depiction of graphic sexual acts” happening in the illustration?  No, you have to open the book up and read into it for that. Considering that I don’t ever get “graphic” exactly in the novel, the reader has the luxurious freedom to imagine whatever floats his or her boat when s/he gets to those parts. So then, I must scratch my head and ask for more clarification regarding the Content Guidelines statement: “What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.” Apparently not.

Male Nudity Obscene?

Apparently, it is nudity or specifically male nudity—or more specifically: penises—including their inclusion in stylized literary illustrations—that is “offensive” and, by amazon.com’s standards “pornographic.”

What would the reviewers at amazon.com have to say about this tawdry piece of smut?


                                                                                              

or this obscenity?


                                                                                            

And so I ask,  When and why is male nudity “pornographic”?

The ebook is temporarily unavailable through amazon.com but is available—with its new cover image—at www.smashwords.com where it can be downloaded in multiple ebook formats. Here is the link:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/118600   So if your feeling naughty and anarchistic and like reading fantasy fiction about magic, spirituality, redemption, sex magic, love triangles, and bisexuality, this may be the banned book for you. It is currently priced at a mere $1.50, but if you would like a complimentary copy—especially for the purposes of reviewing the book—send off an email to me at sororzsd23@google.com. 

Tangential to the first novel in the series, La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi, I’m pretty sure it can be read and appreciated independently of the first story although the 2 stories are linked and characters from the first influence and appear in the second.

The Sex Lives of Sorcerers is a provocative title, a catchy name. It rolled off a neural synapse into my thought field with the very first hint of the story’s premise while I was nearing the wrap up of the first draft of La Maga. Sure, it deals with sex magick, promiscuity, polyamory, bisexuality, and 3-way sex, but, sorry, it is not particularly graphic or titillating.  It’s not meant to be. Rather, these themes are humanely presented as simple aspects of sexuality within relationships that may be complex.

Sexual energy is a powerful tool in mysticism and magick whether the agenda is to sublimate or revel in it.

A range of ideas inspired the novel.  The official synopsis:

When a fairy is discovered to have incarnated as the quirky girl-next-door, sorcerers from the Inner Plane swoop in to vie for her affections. Transferences of powers through intimate acts place the fairy and the sorcerers with whom she joins under the scrutiny of the Lions of Light and its adversaries. But more than this, through the drama, those magical men she encounters undergo profound transformations and come to know who they truly are and want to be. As savior, a redeemer, and a siren, the story’s oddly alluring heroine circumspectly aids the Lions of Light and sets the stage for radical and illuminating transformations of the men who join with her. References to alchemy, medieval occultism, steganography, and sex magic permeate the text. Each of the 22 chapters is named for and thematically reflects a card of the Tarot’s Upper Arcana.

Whereas La Maga is influenced by my background in Eastern spirituality, The Sex Lives of Sorcerers was written while I was exploring medieval philosophical alchemy. As for the heroine of the story, Bellaluna Drago, she developed out of my fascination with mermaids, sirens, and fairies as wisdom beings. That stimulus was coupled with a passage about the nature of elementals from Gareth Knight’s book  A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, and, especially, an anecdote about “fallen” dakinis related to me by a lama I once studied with.

In more rarified Buddhist thought, a dakini is a process regarded as a catalyst in the enfoldment of spiritual illumination. In more simplistic thinking, it is a feminine wisdom entity and may also refer to a human female adept—a yogini. Sometimes the term is translated as “fairy” or “muse.” Sometimes it may be a godform, a feminine ideal, an astral consort, or else a glorification bestowed upon a gal who a male Tantric adept wants to get off with for goals related to sexual yoga—a “scarlet woman,” to borrow a Thelemic term, facilitating ecstatic spiritual experiences through the engagement of the sexual impulse.

The lama I had been studying with told a group of us, during one of our discussions that preceded a meditation session, that some women out there in the world were incarnations of celestial beings fallen from grace—fallen dakinis who have forgotten who and what they really are and are struggling in human life to get back on track. Well, I thought this was wildly romantic and it stuck in my mind along with the way the lama eyeballed me as he said all this.

 More than 10 years later, it inspired a book. Here’s the link. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/118600

What else is on the agenda for Soror ZSD23? The e-journal kult ov kaos is gearing up for a new, improved relaunch. If and when I can gather enough content, I would like to launch another e-journal more geared toward gnostic magical spirituality than post-modern magick. And in my spare moments, I am working on book 3 in the series and a book about working with the Arbatel.

The Sex Lives of Sorcerers https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/118600

La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Mag ihttps://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115354

Durga Puja, an important Hindu festival, just passed in October. It commemorates the victory of good over evil, order over chaos, and reveres the Great Goddess as the Redemptive Principle and Savior of the Universe. During this time, a section of the Markandeya Purana  known as the Devi Mahatmyam, or Chandi, which relates heroic exploits of the Goddess, is ceremoniously chanted in the context of elaborate ritual. Images of the goddess are constructed for the event, worshipped as representations of the Goddess, displayed in pageants, and then sunk in the Ganges or other waterways in locales outside the “Motherland,” such as the USA.  See the Wikipedia entry on Durga Puja here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja

I had been dedicated to the goddess Durga for very many years. I was (and continue to be despite my perhaps incongruent immersion in Western occultism and contemporary Paganism) a long-time adherent of reformed Advaita Vedanta.  I was obsessed with the aforementioned text Devi Mahatmyam for at least a decade. The title translates as “Glory of the Goddess.” It has been dated to the 3^rd century and is a trilogy of mythologies in which the Goddess, personifying the combined power of the gods, defeats various demons in battles and, thus, restores the order of the Universe.

The full text, which takes more than an hour or three to recite, is chanted in the context of devotional ritual (puja) and is prefaced and followed by several auxiliary prayers, chants, mantra, and ritual gestures. It is generally done as a thaumatergic exercise in which the Goddess is thought of as a beneficent entity who is being addressed for the sake of gaining favors and for protection from both supernatural evil and the nasty world-at-large. In working with the text, I ultimately took a more Gnostic and literal approach. After all, Advaita Vedanta is jnana yoga, the discipline of spiritual integration through contemplativism and gnosis. In addition, the translations of the names of the demons that the Goddess is battling in the Devi Mahatmyam include The Great Deceiver (Mahahanu), The Aimless One (Parivarita), The Hypocrite  (Bidala), Anger (Kruddha), The Savage (Ugrasya),  He Who Gives  Way to Temptation (Durdhara), The Vicious (Chanda), The Malicious (Munda), Conceit (Shumbha), and Self-deprecation (Nishumbha). And the most famous demon celebrated in the scripture is Mahishasura—the “Buffalo demon” of egoism, the depiction of the slaying of which is an important piece of Hindu iconography.

So, the demons that The Goddess is protecting you from are not oogah-boogah things “out there”; they are negative qualities within yourself that the Goddess battles with a barrage of weapons: the sword of discrimination, club of articulation, bow of determination, arrow of penetration, pike of attention, rod of restraint, axe of right action, net of unity, trident of harmony, and discus of revolving time. Then she cuts off the head of your ferocious ego. And, frankly, this is why, philosophically speaking, “bad things happen to good people,” because they are not “bad things”; they are transformational and transitional things. Or else, they are just stuff happening in the grand drama of life.

When I began writing La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi, my immersion in Eastern spirituality was much more robust than my then new foray into Western magical and Hermetic traditions and so the magic in La Maga is fanciful but the philosophy is built on a strong foundation. We are told in the novel that the main character, Sofia La Maga, had spent many years in the East and so returned home after long years in exile with an Eastern paradigm, including a devotion to an Eastern form of the Goddess. This she displays in 12

The Glory of the Goddess:

Excerpt

As the audience reveled in the display, Sofia continued the recitation: “‘The primordial creative vibration is the bow; oneself is the arrow. The Supreme Divinity is the target. Penetrating it unerringly, become one with it, just as the arrow unites with its aim.’”

When the audience settled from its enthusiasm, Sofia joined her hands in prayer and chanted:

“I meditate on She who embodies existence, the grantor of perfection, who is utterly luminous, whose eyes swell with tears of compassion, and who holds in her hands the net of unity, the scimitar of wisdom, the bow of determination, and the arrow of penetration.”

She proceeded to sprout 10 weapon-wielding arms.

“The sword of discrimination, club of articulation, bow of determination, arrow of penetration, pike of attention, rod of restraint, axe of right action, net of unity, trident of harmony, and discus of revolving time. With these weapons,” she announced, “the adept slays the mighty host of demons within himself.” She began uttering the names of demons embedded in Hindu myth:

Mahahanu: The Great Deceiver

Parivarita: The Aimless One

Bidala: The Hypocrite

Kruddha: Anger

Ugrasya:  The Savage

Durdhara: Given in to Temptation

Raktabija: Rampant Desire

Chanda: The Vicious

Munda: The Malicious

Shumbha: Conceit

Nishumbha: Self-deprecation

Armed, menacing, livid creatures, hairy and ogre-like, with snouts and tusks, claws and tails appeared. They amassed exponentially, charging upon the transfigured maga who glided about, dodging attacks and hurling weapons at the beasts. A whirlwind melee double-eighted the field until all the hobgoblins were cut to the quick. The field was rendered into a pit of bloody mud and grizzle. Severed heads, limbs, and entrails of monsters were heaped about. Sofia, winded and drenched in blood, stood in the midst of it, seeming . . . resolute.

She stretched her arms up, wrung them, and shimmied as if dispensing with a chill. The grizzle that coated her dissolved. The field resumed its earlier, more pristine state. The crowd cheered. Sofia produced a golden goblet of wine and sipped it. She smiled. While lingering in this manner, she explained that the phantasmagoria just witnessed was selected from a particularly important Hindu tale called the The Glory of the Goddess. “Which relates three episodes of how the Great Goddess, who is the embodiment of the power of all the gods, battles demons to restore the order of the universe.” 

She was nearing the end of her oratory when a giant water buffalo with a tremendous rack of horns sprung onto the field. It rutted and bellowed, threw up dust, and charged.

“‘Yeah, go ahead and roar! Roar and bellow while I finish drinking my wine,’” she told the creature. “‘When I’m through, you’ll be DEAD and the gods will be roaring in this very place!’” She egged on the audience to cheer, adding that “the worst demon of all that needs to be slain is the Great Ego, which manifests as the animal-familiar of the god of death. That demon is simply called the ‘buffalo-demon,’ Mahishasura.”

The great animal charged. Sofia pranced around the beast’s rut, racing and skirting over the field while dueling the creature’s horns with a trident. Finally, she took a ferocious running leap at the creature as it charged. Skirting a head-on thrust, she stuck her weapon into the animal’s side and pole-vaulted onto its back. She pressed her left foot into the buffalo’s neck and, although her weight on the beast had to have been slight, it sunk as if overwhelmed.

Collapsing, a fissure opened between the horns of the animal’s head. From it emerged another livid ogre. The audience squealed, but Sofia produced a double-edged sword and with it lopped off the ogre’s head.

Cheers resounded. The grizzle dissolved. A rainbow flooded the sky from which flowers rained down and wisps of angelic creatures wafted about. Sofia thanked the crowd, curtsied, and made a run for the gate.

Available as a Kindle ebook: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005TWRBK6

Excerpt from Chapter X A Very Reluctant God
(followed by ZSD23s  commentary on thought forms).

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005TWRBK6

Leo spent a great deal of time in his uppermost studio—the turret of his tower. He needed the quiet. He needed the sublime and took solace in gazing into the shallow, round, crystal-lined tank that he had installed up there.

Sometimes the water within it was clear and still. Sometimes it was rippled by the wind and marred by leaves, drowned insects, pollen, and dander. Sometimes raindrops plunked into the tank to make designs before merging with its contents.

Whatever the condition, the tank was a source of fascination and mental calm for Leo. It helped him know his mind, the contents of his mind, and the difference between the two. Magical prowess depended on acuity of mind. It depended on thriftiness of thought, unambiguousness of motive, and unwavering momentum.

It was this presence of mind that made Leo a master of materializations. Unless he specifically willed it, his thought-forms were not affected by instability or decay. They were not flimsy or slight. There were creations like those of an artist—or like those of a god.

But the person who could create things of substance on a whim and with ease was tasked with maintaining sobriety, self-restraint, and self-censorship. For this reason, Leo was a subdued person, although his subtlety went unnoticed and unappreciated, as already mentioned.

As he matured, however, he increasingly wasted his gift on small entertainments and the manufacture of collectibles coveted by Outer Plane folks. Whether because he enjoyed the extra income or taking advantage of Commons and their vulgarities, his manufacture of objects precious to them had become a robust hobby over the years.

Was that newly discovered van Gogh by van Gogh or Leo de Lux? A slew of Tiffany lamps, Venetian glass and Goebel Hummels, Mesopotamian seals and Mayan gold, Black Madonnas from Romanian grottoes, excavated Buddha icons from jungle ruins—even dinosaur bones.

When Commons marveled at such objects and muttered that they were “out of this world,” they might have been right. Unlike replicas and forgeries crafted by Commons, the true origins of things materialized by Inner Plane peoples and planted in the Outer Plane were somewhat untraceable. Hence, stories (woven with fascination charms) given about their history were unopposed.

True masters of this art, like de Lux, engaged in high-end antiquing and lucrative museum acquisitions. Amateurs and mischievous dabbling young adepts deposited supernatural creatures and phenomena in the midst of Commons: sea monsters in lakes, neo-cavemen in snows, and little green men that went bump in the night, not to mention mermaids and unicorns, and various other apparitions. Unlike entrepreneurial schemes, mischievous materializationalism in the Outer Plane was outlawed but hard to enforce.

It, like Phaeton maneuver offenses, fell into de Lux’s jurisdiction. This meant that Leo had to engage in public lectures and news briefings in which he spoke on the danger of introducing inexplicable phenomena into the world of Commons. It confused and perverted their cultural and spiritual beliefs, he contended.

“Such sadistic practices result in long lapses of instability, conflict, hardship, and intellectual decline among these lower peoples. We are tasked as a more evolved race to treat these peoples with tenderness rather than disdain, for their plane is valuable to us and the eventual home of Outer Plane denizens is with us,” Leo would say. Meanwhile, placard-carrying college students and Expansionist Party sympathizers would protest outside wherever he was presenting. They continually accused him of hypocrisy and double-dealing and also demanded an end to the entrepreneurial oppression of Commons.

This was Leo’s lot as a resident and magistrate of the North Atlantic Sovereignty, Terra Nova, Inner Plane Regions. It was wearing on him.

In addition to his job, another heavy burden was parceled with his gift. It was another element that demanded flawless control. Being an entity who could create anything, Leo had the power to destroy anything as well—not merely his or another’s thought-form, but all forms, any entity, all of which were essentially some expression of thought.

Thought-Forms, Tulpas, Servitors, and the Like

Thought-forms are important tools in sorcery. What are they? They are purpose-directed thoughts that are so strong and well-defined that they seem to manifest as concrete objects or otherwise take on a life of their own. In post-modern magic, they are often referred to as servitors. To this American, “servitor” sound like a great dystopic term coined by a sci-fi writer, but it is simply a synonym for “servant,” more commonly used in British English (and coopted by the patriarchs of Chaos Magic and used as part of the lingo). A great essay on servitors that has been web-accessible for decades is Sigils, Servitors and Godforms at http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/servitors.html

The idea of making concrete objects appear out of thin air and of conjuring purpose-directed phantoms not only exists in fantasy and sci-fi and magic that, in part, draws inspiration from pop culture memes, but in the reality of sorcerers and shamans the world over.  Yogi “godmen,” such as the late Sai Baba (1926-2011), for example, have been reported to miraculously materialize objects (although episodes are often revealed to be hoaxes). ZSD23 was once close to a very pious elderly Hindu lady who, although a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna (1833-1986), found herself miraculously covered in rose petals at the conclusion of a group devotional to Sai Baba that she attended at her daughter’s home. She was the only participant at the event who was showered in rose petals but did not come away with a one because, according to her, every scrap was scarfed up by devotees who felt entitled to hoard the miraculously manifesting flotsam.

Probably most noted in discussion about thought-forms are Tibetan yogis, lamas, and shamans for which the phantom or materialization is sometimes referred to as a tulpa. It is an extension of the sorcerer/shamans consciousness. Virtually no discussion about tulpas in Western pop lit on the subject goes without mention of the 19^th-20^th century explorer and esotericist Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969), who spent several years roaming Nepal and Tibet as a “lady lama.”  In her memoirs, David-Neel occasionally relates anecdotes about sorcerer-lamas who communicate with each other over long distances by dispatching fancifully shaped phantoms to deliver news or else simply surround themselves with servant-like creatures almost reminiscent of the genetic designer in Blade Runner, F. Sebastian, who created comical little beings to keep himself company. David-Neel also frequently reports episodes in which lamas  miraculously make things appear out of thin air (which also was a popular topic of doctrinaire discussion when Soror ZSD23 was involved with a Nygmapa [Dzogchen] Buddhist sangha about 10 years ago).

David-Neel warns that, sometimes tulpas can turn rogue—completely independent of their creators—and go off to run amok. She relates an anecdote in Magic and Mystery in Tibet, in which she, as an experiment, created a tulpa—a “Friar Tuck-like” fellow who began to be sighted within her traveling party. Over time, though, his appearance began to change, becoming sinister-looking, according to David-Neel, and it took some effort to dissolve the thing.

I haven’t come across any anecdotes of servitors in material form among Chaos or other modern/post-modern magicians.  Nevertheless, some servitors are legendary, such as the time-warping entity Fotamecus (http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/fotamec2.html, the use of which went viral until Fotamecus, like Pinocchio, was deemed to become a conscious and independently operating force—an egregore or godform. A current project in the occult community is the egregore-like manifestation of Atem, “a self-created entity that human minds participate in” for the purpose of being empowered to create more mimetic entities—new godforms to interact with in a new paradigm. (see Philip H. Farber, Meta-Magick the Book of Atem. San Francisco: Weiser Books. 2008).

ZSD23 has attempted servitor creation with mixed results. The very first one she ever created took the form of a lion and was meant to be a type of protection. It came through for her at party in which a young woman was treating her in an amazingly rude fashion presumably because she wanted the attention of ZSD23’s companion. The girl ultimately put ZSD23 in danger of physical injury and so, the otherwise long-suffering, patient, and polite Soror unleashed her lion servitor, which took a bite out of the nasty girl’s ass. ZSD23 then watched the girl’s expression drop. Her face turned away from where she stood before ZSD23 companion and she and her entourage abruptly walked to the other side of the room, after which the girl kept great distance from the Soror whenever they happened to be in the same environs.

In the Sorcerer’s and Magi mystical fantasy fiction series, the Pyr Sacra is an important empowerment that is transferred between high-ranking sorcerers and magi and their would-be apprentices. The Pyr Sacra, which is garbled Latin for “Holy Fire,” is depicted as a profound transformation of consciousness that results in a certain level of “enlightenment.”

Many people in the West now look to Eastern paradigms and jargon to explain enlightenment experiences and dabble in practices to achieve these experiences. The terms shaktipat and Kundalini are bandied about. People receive shaktipat—a transformational empowerment—from spiritual adepts—and engage in yogic practices to “awaken” Kundalini.  These esoteric Eastern ideas filtered into Western consciousness during the New Thought movement and occult revival that occurred at the turn of the 20^th century. They especially gained notoriety during the 60s counterculture era.  Now, the web and bookshelves are overflowing with rhetoric about them. As it happens, Soror ZSD23 herself spent several years—more than a decade, in fact—engaged in study of literature (scriptural, academic, and “pop”) and yogic practice related to the Kundalini phenomenon.

In her view, shaktipat and the so-called Kundalini experience is a sudden reformatting of consciousness; indeed, a reformatting of neurochemical pathways that, ideally, undo the conditioned robot that you became shortly after you popped out of your mother’s uterus. The experience is described in this way in the Kashmir Shaivite classic the Spanda Karikas:

He sees the totality of objects appearing and disappearing in the ether of his consciousness like a series of reflections in a mirror. Instantly, all of his thought-constructs are split asunder by the recognition, after a thousand lives, of his true, essential nature, surpassing common experience and full of unprecedented bliss. He is struck with awe, with mouth agape. As he experiences vast expansion, his proper, essential nature suddenly manifests.

            --translation adapted from Jaideva Singh. Spanda-Karikas The Divine Pulsation. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1980. 

It is a profound paradigm shift that can be caused, not only as a result of dogged spiritual practice but a wide variety of means, including person-to-person transmission.  Variants of shaktipat/Kundalini awakening exist in many other esoteric cultures and are explained using different names and descriptors. In classical Greek mysticism, it may have been referred to as the speirema (“serpent power,” which is what Kundalini [literally, “she who is coiled”] is said to mean). In medieval Western Hermetic esotericism, it was dubbed Holy Fire. In more pedestrian ecstatic forms of Christianity, it called the Holy Spirit. And these examples are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

In the extreme, the shaktipat/Holy Fire experience is a full-blown transformation. Otherwise, many people involved in spiritual practices experience self-limited enlightenment experiences. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will quote myself from an article published in the January 2001 issue of Yoga International magazine:

In the kundalini-rising episode, the pathways become clear; a subjective sensation of heat and energy ascending through the body often occurs and culminates in an exalted meditative experience. It is typically self-limited—the energy seems to filter back down and you go back to ordinary life.  After each episode, however, you may be left with the impression that a change has taken place or some insight or initiation has spontaneously arisen. More interesting, the quality of life and encounters in the days, weeks, and even months following more intensive episodes may be marked by a peculiar graciousness. This suggests that the kundalini-rising experience itself, though coveted, is not the end-goal of the process but its epiphenomenon. It is the effect of a quantum leap in mind and body that can occur again and again and evolve in quality.

            --Excerpt  from Kundalini Rising by Dee Rapposelli. Yoga International. January 2001:70-75.

What might a shaktipat-Holy Fire experience feel like?  In Chapter VI of La Maga A Story About Sorcerers and Magi, Leonard de Lux Junior  has the life-changing experience:

Excerpt from Chapter VI The Pyr Sacra Empowerment

He was pretty sure that Professor La Maga had forgotten about him. He was poised to conclude that she was jerking him off with her glamour—the girly cuteness, the familiarity, the sappy, stumbling false vulnerability. It was a complex ruse to undo Leonard and his father. Leonard had fallen into the trap. Stupidity.

He was in the kind of mood in which a person questions why he was born and whether staying alive was worth it. He pricked his finger on a splinter of wood gouged from the floor. He wanted to feel the sting and watch a bead of blood well up.

A black hole, a dark night. Leonard felt a tingly sensation fizzle over the left side of his body that became especially strong when it reached his cheek and then his ear. A heat, as if he had taken a shot of hard liquor and ignited his insides swelled in his stomach and leeched up.

This heat and a tingling pressure pent up at his neck. It forced Leonard’s spine to elongate as if he were a marionette tugged on a string. As the sensation burst into his head, he was enveloped in a scintillating flood of light, fluttering, and profound depth. Thunder roared inside his ears like the sound of a furious tide. His heart beat hard, and his breath rhythmically billowed in a way beyond conscious control.

Arrested in terror and elation, his eyes fluttered and teared to the vision of vast light and stroboscopic effects. He uttered an amazed sound as if gazing upon something magnificent—an entity of breathtaking beauty and hospitality, a communication of utter reassurance. He could neither see nor hear it, but he witnessed it nonetheless.

Everything about his life and circumstances—and everything about everyone else’s life—suddenly seemed incidental and pathetic. Reality, on the other hand, seemed to be pure happiness, and it was in his grip.

The seizure subsided. The thunder resolved into sheer calm and the strobing into radiance. The episode was probably much briefer than it seemed. It left Leonard refreshed and full of breath like he might have been at the moment he was born.

The room seemed illuminated. Leonard himself seemed illuminated. He could only laugh however disoriented, because it was as if he didn’t know himself. He pressed his thumbnails into his fingertips and examined his hands. They seemed to be glowing. He had to find a mirror and look into it. He hardly recognized himself.

His eyes ran with tears. Tears of laughter, tears of awe. It seemed all the same, and then of gratitude when he pulled together enough to realize what had happened.

 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005TWRBK6

A few years ago when I was the editor of a journal targeted to neurologists, I became fascinated with conotoxin research. Conotoxins are highly complex chemicals secreted by marine cone snails to paralyze their prey. Neuroscientists have been looking into the medicinal uses of conotoxins for such conditions as intractable pain, dystonia, epilepsy, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and even schizophrenia.

But all this is an aside. I became especially fascinated with conotoxins and marine cone snails because one of the snails under study was called Conus magus—“magician’s cone.”  The writer in me was inspired.  “This is something I can play with,” I thought. I found myself working the Conus magus into an important subplot of the Sorcerers and Magi mystical fantasy novel series.

The Conus Magus Charm and its less potent variant, the Conus Magus Maneuver, described in chapter I of La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi, are, essentially, forms of vampirism. The Conus Magus Charm has two different forms. The first draws on a common, prosaic motif in fantasy and science fiction—the diabolical ability to completely seize and absorb the life of another being in way similar to the way a venomous cone snail absorbs its prey. The second, however, is a play on a rather natural behavior: that of being an energy drain on others.  Indeed, “Commons,” like you and me, “do it as a matter of course.” And its lesser variant, the  Conus Magus Maneuver, is simply the ability to smile wide and get over on someone else.

Gothic vampirism—a literary theme that enjoys perennial popularity—is built on lore that haplessly fiendish immortal but soulless creatures feed on the blood of humans. These kinds of vampires originated in medieval superstitions about what the restless dead might be up to. Why did medieval folks think that the dead were not only restless but blood thirsty? In part, because, in the early phase of decomposition, when the flesh begins to shrink away from the teeth and blood congeals around the mouth, corpses look like they have fangs and have just lunched on plasma. To help prevent bad behavior among the restless dead, a corpse would be staked to the ground to make sure it stayed put.

Nowadays, people just write novels and make movies about these kinds of vampires or else indulge in role play games and, less frequently, sociopathic behavior that romanticizes the emulates Gothic vampire lore. Nowadays, people also talk about “energy vampires” with the same sincerity as medieval “peeps” talked about blood-sucking, zombified ones. But this type of vampire has really been an archetype of human consciousness for a very long time. In fact, it is associated with the idea of the “evil eye.” In Italian culture, for one, the evil eye lore dates back to ancient Roman times. Equivalents of long standing exist in many cultures the world over.

In addition to being an intentional curse, the evil eye is a consequence of envy, and it is acknowledged that it can occur haplessly. That is, sometimes a person can’t control how he or she feels about someone else’s good fortune.  It is sometimes natural to feel badly that the great thing that happened to someone else hasn’t happened for you. Envy, jealousy, resentment, self-pity, covetousness.  Expressions of these feelings, however subtle and suppressed, are thought to be curses—energy drains on their targets. This is the evil eye.

Magical gestures and rituals are, therefore, enacted to not only avert the evil eye but to keep oneself from being a source of it. A person watches one’s words and thoughts, being scrupulous about keeping a cheerful, positive attitude. This was a principle that one of my great grandmothers’s—a real maga—lived by.

Illness and death of infants, infertility, and erectile dysfunction are traditionally thought to be effects of the evil eye. In Italy, amulets to avert the evil eye are traditionally made of red coral, the color of blood and, according to the principles of natural magic, holding the vitality of blood. The amulets are symbols of sexual potency: the bull’s horn, or corno, and the thumb-in-fist, or fica (literally, “fig,” which is Italian jargon for female genitalia). And of course, the most well known evil eye charm is a blue (and sometimes amber) glass eye ball. Why blue?  Because it is represents an eye sapped of color. It is an “apotropaic” charm; that is, a charm that resembles and repels the very thing is represents.

In Chapter I of La Maga, we learn a well-kept secret: steely Consul Leo de Lux Sortiar has the power of the rarer and lethal form of the Conus Magus Charm. In fact, his eyes are sapped of color as a consequence of launching the charm against a foe to avenge himself and family from a devastating magical attack. We also learn, in this chapter, that the more common form of the Conus Magus Charm is so ordinary and natural that even people in the Outer Plane—Commons—do it without even thinking about it. We sap energy from each other through our attitudes and behavior, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

In Chapter II, Professor Sofia La Maga Magus is told that she must mentor a young woman whose eyes also are sapped of color. Having grown up among folk practitioners instead of more learned and sophisticated sorcerers and magi, Professor La Maga is, at first, very agitated about having anything to do with the young woman. At hearing the news, she turns away and ritually spits on her fingers, making a sound like “Peh.” It is an act of natural magic meant to create “juice” to replace that sapped by the evil eye.

Excerpt from Chapter II An Apprentice

Sofia eyed the girl. There was something strikingly and unnaturally familiar about her, considering that Sofia had been a world away in the Mysticus for nearly the whole of this girl’s life. She was about 18 years of age, probably an Academy freshman. She had the tawny complexion of a mulatto Creole and was tall and lithe, with a doe-like face that was delicate but also rather sour and intense. Her hair had carelessly grown out into thin matted strands that reached down her back and her eyes were an eerily light grayish green. That Danny Bruno had perhaps selected her to play into one of his many secret schemes was extremely intriguing. Sofia quietly bristled with suspense about where this conversation with Professor Waite was going. She watched the girl slightly smile and tilt her head to acknowledge Sofia, but when she did that, her eyes flashed white.

It caused Sofia to cringe. A low repulsed noise eked from her. She pivoted abruptly, turning her back to the girl. With fingers close to her mouth, she made a sound like, “Peh,” which amounted to a ritual spitting gesture.

“Professor La Maga!”  Professor Waite gasped in an appalled but muffled screech.

“Why are her eyes are fucked up?” Sofia growled accusingly.

It was the jettadura; the evil eye; the wanton, sapping, vampiric eye. The girl and that pompous patrician sorcerer, de Lux, both had it. Two in one day! That was not good. Sofia fumed over Danny Bruno’s sick sense of humor.

“Mirelle has ocular albinism,” Professor Waite explained. “Had she remained in the Outer Plane she would’ve been legally blind by now. The nerves in her eyes are palsied for lack of melanin. It’s a genetic disorder, Professor La Maga; not a curse. I’m surprised at you!”

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The Arbatel, I’ve concluded, essentially is a treatise on how to live in harmony, ease, and intimacy with the energies of the Multiverse. It begins by saying that the Arbatel “Is made of nine Tomes of seven septenaries of Aphorisms.” (Et habet Tomos neouem Aphorismorum septies septenorum; Turner transliterates this phrase as “Containing nine Tomes, and seven Septenaries of Aphorisms.”) Although the Arbatel declares that is it a document that contains nine chapters that each contain seven sections of seven aphorisms (total 49 aphorisms per section), the only known, existing “tome” of the Arbatel is the first, called the Isagoge, which the author of the Arbatel says relates “the most general precepts of the whole Art” and means “Book of the Institutions of Magic.” It does read like an overview except for a portion (aphorism 17) that goes into some detail about the Olympic Spirits, leaving late Modern and post-Modern occultists fixated on just that and conflating information within the Arbatel with their own magical paradigms.

 Behind the Christian-based medieval piety is a spiritual paradigm that harkens to—not Solomonic or Cabalist magic or Rosicrucian mysticism (which the Arbatel likely predates)—but classical Roman paganism in which every conceivable thing had a tutelary spirit underlying its reason for being with the idea that harmony came through cooperative exchange. The treatise also can be categorized as “qualified nondualism,” in which it is acknowledged that all things have their source and existence within rather than in relation to God. This is inferred in aphorism 13:

 The Lord lives and all things that live do so in him.

 The Arbatel stands apart from other notable medieval grimoire. References to ceremonialism and Solomonic and Cabalistic trappings are marginal. Rather, the tract references Pythagorean, classical Hermetic, and classical Roman mysticism.

 Although I initially thought that Aphorism 27, which gives instructions about drawing the Seal of Secrets, referred to the Olympic Spirits, I later realized that, no; it is meant to be a floor plan of where various tutelary spirits reside according to the day, season, phase of the moon, moon mansion, month, and zodiac.  

 Last summer, while conducting dreamtime experiments related to the Olympic Spirits and Arbatel with three other persons, I—and others in the group—were confronted with cryptic messages about the Seal of Secrets being a gadget, a calendar, something to sort through, and also one’s own body. All these things are true, but we were so stuck on the Olympic-Spirit slant that we did not see the bigger picture. 

 ·         I believe that the Seal of Secrets is a Western yantra of the Multiverse, the meditation on which, for the initiated, reveals the structure and interconnectedness of the macrocosm and the microcosm.

 ·         Imagine the seal being multidimensional. The very center is a tiny sphere representing Phul, the elemental world, form, the body.

 ·         Eight radials emerge from it which are like cones forming the armature of the Cosmos, each connecting the micrcocosm to the macrocosm. This is the pillar or channel within which is found the so-called six-rayed star. It is Ophiel, the Azoth, serpent power, and secret fire.

 ·         Enclosing the small central orb is another orb. This is Hagith, the elemental sphere—the Earth, Earth Mother, and its sustaining energies. The sphere is guarded and buttressed by angelic entities related to the elemental humors: air, fire, water, and earth.  

 ·         Surrounding this is a cube that divides space into halves, representing duality, complementarities, oppositions, and tensions that move individual being into action and interaction. This is Phaleg.

 ·         Surrounding the cube is another sphere that is like a corona that vitalizes all within it. This is Och.

 ·         Boundlessly permeating all this and strung like a web on the armature is the Eros, Life Force, the World Soul, which is Bethor.

 ·         Enclosing it all and providing a Ground of Being, Limitation, and Intelligible Design is the Intellectual Principle, which is Aratron.

 The Seal also is a mnemonic, calendar-like device in which a person can place him or herself in a certain 23-hour or so time span (i.e., mansion of the moon) in a particular part of a week, month, astrological sign, and season  and then reflect on, accommodate, or use all of the tutelary entities associated with that particular time frame. The problem is that the paradigm used by the author of the Arbatel is not explicit. Clues suggest that it wasn’t the same paradigm used by, say, Robert Fludd (1574-1627) or Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), though.

 Aphorism 27 includes the following information:

 The Eastern secret is the study of all wisdom. The West is of Strength. The South, of cultivation. The North of a more rigid life . . . .  The use of this seal of secrets is that, through it, you may know when the spirits or angels are produced that may teach you secrets they receive from God . . . .

 This might place an angelic entity associated with Jupiter in the East, Sol in the West, Saturn in the South, and Luna in the North. We know that in Roman lore, Jupiter was associated with wisdom, Saturn with cultivation/agriculture, the sun with strength, and the moon with the natural and elemental world.  

 This section of aphorism 27 goes on to make references to the horsemen of the apocalypse (a Christian reworking of “the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.” [Zechariah 1:8-17, 6:1-8).

 But they have names taken from their offices and powers, according to the gift that God has given to each one. One has the power of the sword [war; red horse], another of pestilence [death; pale horse], and another of inflicting famine upon the people [black horse], according to the will of God. Some are destroyers of cities [conquest; white horse], as those two [Michael and Gabriel, according to lore] were who were sent to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrha and the places adjacent to them . . . Some watch over Kingdoms; others are the keepers of private persons . . . .[tutlelary and guardian angels]

 The author of the Arbatel continues, saying that persons and cultures have their own names for various angels—and also stresses elsewhere in the text—that spiritual entities, including the Olympic Spirits, are named after their offices and roles but may give more personal names and energy signatures to the people who enter into communication with them. In addition, the author states in the latter part of aphorism 27 that all that is needed is to address the angelic or tutelary entity “seriously, with a great mental desire, faith, constancy, and without doubt that what he asks he shall receive from God, the father of all Spirits. This faith surmounts all seals and brings them into subjection of the will of man. Calling angels through their characters follows this faith, which depends on divine revelation . . . .”

 There is another way, which is more common, that secrets also may be revealed unto thee when thou art unwitting thereof, either by God or by Spirits that have secrets in their power; or by dreams or by strong imaginations and impressions;  or else by the constellation of a nativity by celestial knowledge. From aphorism 26, Fourth Septenary, Arbatel de Magia Veterum

 In brief, the Seal of Secrets of the World, described in aphorism 27, seems to be a tool to align oneself with the elemental, planetary, celestial, and angelic energies of each day.

 It is kind of “slap-in-the-head” simple and perhaps the reason why some of the members of the Arbatel Cohort kept receiving dream impressions of the Seal as a mechanism or gadget or categorical list.

 Any comment or more astute information on this observation is greatly welcome.

 After deciding what the Olympic Spirits were in relation to the Seal of Secrets (which I have written about at length in this blog), I began to think, “well all that is great and grand, but what has it got to do with my puny, miserable life?” In the wee hours of the morning of January 17^th—my birthday—I had a dream in which all I can recall is that Mercury was present and the number 373 was communicated. Toward daybreak, not only did I define what this number meant to me but other communications and images came on the lathe of waking and sleep that led to certain provisional insights—as happened again some days later on the morning of January 22.

 The number 373 and the other content that emerged in hypnogogic somnolence on the mornings of January 17 and 22 refer to the following passage in aphorism 27 of the Arbatel (parentheses are my interjections):

 The Prince of the Eastern secrets is resident in the middle, and hath three Nobles on either side, every one hath four under him, and the Prince himself hath four pertaining unto him. And in this manner, the other Princes and Nobles have their quadrants of secrets with their four secrets.

            But the Eastern secret is the study of all wisdom; the West of strength; the South of cultivation, and the North of a more rigid life . . . .

            The use of this seal of secrets is that thereby thou maist know whence the Spirits or Angels are produced, which may teach the secrets revealed unto them from God. . . . One hath the power of the sword, another of the pestilence, another of inflicting famine [reference to the horsemen of the apocalypse/ill humors]. . . . Some are destroyers of Cities, as those two were who were sent to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah and the places adjacent [i.e., Michael and Gabriel, according to lore] . . . . Some are watch-men over Kingdoms, others the keepers of private persons [i.e., tutelary or “guardian” angels] . . . .

 Each quarter in the Seal of Secrets, which refers to a direction, season, and chunk of the multiverse, is overseen by an angelic prince and flanked by six other angelic entities, three on each side (7 angels; the 7^th in the center flanked by 3 on each side = 373). To fully appreciate and use the “geography” of the Seal of Secrets, we would need to know which particular archangels and angels of the various groupings cited by medieval esotericists were recognized by the original students of the Arbatel. The Arbatel does not provide names of any angels specifically associated with particular portions of seal.

 For the purposes of discussing a model, let’s make the reasonable assumption that the 7 total angels are the 7 archangels that stand in the presence of God and correspond with the planetary angels. Different sources vary on the names of these archangels. Whether the author of the Arbatel used the paradigm from the Book of Enoch is unknown. For our speculative model, let’s use the following archangels: Michael (Who is Like God?; Sol), Gabriel (Strength of God, Luna), Camael (Sighting of God; Mars), Raphael (Healer of God; Mercury), Sachiel (Covering of God, Jupiter), Anael (Joy of God, Venus), and Cassiel (Speed of God; Saturn).

 The classical guardians of the four quarters are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel although in this model Uriel would be switched out and replaced by Cassiel (or vice versa).

 In a number of medieval mandala (unlike the more modern schema introduced by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and adopted by neopagans), Michael is associated with the East and the element of fire; Uriel with the South and the element air; Raphael with the West and the element water; and Gabriel with the North and the element of earth. The following passage, however, may cause us to question whether this schema was used by the original students of the Arbatel: But the Eastern secret is the study of all wisdom; the West of strength; the South of cultivation, and the North of a more rigid life . . . .

Each of the 7 angels (prince and nobles) is said to have 4 angels answering to him. This suggests that each of the 7 archangels per quarter oversees 4 consecutive mansions of the moon and their corresponding angels. (A listing of the angels of the mansions of the moon is found in Francis Barret’s The Magus, and is presumably gotten from the work of Cornelius Agrippa and his alleged mentor Tristhemius of Sponheim [and also note that many angel names found in medieval/Early Modern period magical texts are mere garble]). In addition, every 7 mansions equals a moon phase.

Perhaps the Seal of Secrets is, in part, a tool, to align oneself with the planetary intelligences (i.e., Olympic Spirits) as well as angels related to each season, quarter of space, element, humor, lunar mansion, etc.   For example, on January 22, 2011, at about 10 PM, the moon entered the14^th lunar mansion and remained until 7 PM January 23rd. The name of the 14^th mansion is Azimech (meaning, the Unarmed—a named that generally refers to where it appears in the constellation of Virgo, i.e., 17.9 degrees). It is ruled by Saturn. It is a generally auspicious mansion that suggests encouraging friendship, love, protection, and healing (according to the Picatrix).

 In applying the Seal of Secrets in daily life, the information above about the 14^th lunar mansion would be coupled with other data, including that pertaining to the season and its correspondences and rulerships and also the phase of the moon and astrological signs.  January 22 falls early in Aquarius, which would fall in the northern quarter of the Seal, governed by the Prince of that quarter (Gabriel if going by the popular classical model) and having humoral qualities of cold and dry. The 14^th mansion of the moon falls under the rulership of the Prince of the quarter, which in the northern quarter would be Gabriel in the provisional paradigm we are using here. The 14^th mansion also falls at the cusp of the 2^nd quarter waxing and 3^rd quarter waning moon, corresponding with the full moon (which occurred on the 19^th). So, for January 22 to the 23^rd, we are looking at a theme for the day of love and friendship and bonding that may also have Lunar and Saturnine qualities, strongly feminine and earthy/cool and airy/moist, internal, brooding but active.

-Soror ZSD23

 I think the Arbatel differs from other grimoire of its time because it is more purely influenced by Neoplatonic and pre-Socratic mysticism and doesn’t include the trappings of Solomonic magic. In working with the Arbatel, I had theurgic experiences and in related work with images from the Secret Grimoire of Turiel, I brushed on similar experiences, which admittedly have more to do with me than the material I’m working with. I strongly began to question the necessity of circle casting etc., except to consider that it primes and assuages the mind and also establishes thought-form constructs within which to operate. Structure. A refuge and a jail.

 In any case, I feel—and have long felt—that I should put more energy into exploring mysticism of the PreSocratic philosophers and Neoplatonists, whose ideas might have flourished and developed with more continuity and consistency over time had thought-policing not been as draconian and paranoid as it was in antiquity in both pre-Christian and Christian eras alike. Unlike in the East where various ontological and spiritual concepts were allowed to flourish and heterogeneity of ideas was leveraged toward philosophical debate and the seamless development of new ideas, the Western World has been bent on censoring any idea or movement that isn’t expedient to the power structure in one way or another. It is also driven by fads that sometimes become tools and traps.

 In the two weeks post Christmas, regularity and time for meditation was lacking because of job-related and health factors. There was less focus on angel imagery and more on the planetary intelligences themselves and also on absorption in meditation rather than imagery or messages. Names from Buddhist Mahayana spirituality also made their way into my mind. The first was Chenrezig, the Tibetan name for the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who embodies compassion. The other was Amogasiddhi, an elemental Buddha associated with the northern quarter, the element of air, and the poisons of jealousy and fear and the contrasting enlightened state of all-accomplishing wisdom (i.e., perfected action). I believe that these two Buddhist characters were meant to also, respectively, be expressions of the Jovian (Sachiel/Tzadkiel/Iophiel) and Saturnine (Uriel/Ariel, etc/Cassiel) energies that dominated the past month of meditations. 

 It occurred to me that I had been relating to the planetary intelligences as “benefactors”—a technique used in Buddhist meditation in which a person imagines a “benefactor” who bestows sentiments of warmth and caring on the aspirant, with the idea that those sensations transform the aspirant who, in turn, extends those sentiments to others.  The planetary intelligences, angels, gods, etc., are elements of the self and also forces that are much larger. They are psychodynamic energy vortices that have both dark, self-defeating and light, redeeming/enlightenment qualities. The discipline is not about commanding or supplicating them; but identifying with and expressing the energy signature. They are not “other,” but they are like the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. The Self alone is Real. 


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