Days 2 & 3: Hadit & Ra-Hoor-Khuit (For the Files)

Day 2: Hadit

Rising at the wee hour of dawn or so to read Chapter Two of Liber AL vel Legis in attunement with the misfits, or, as we call ourselves, the Scarlets. On this noteworthy day, at this daybreak hour, I am struck by these lines in particular:

30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.

-- Chapter 1, Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX      

This struck me as very relevant to my recent rants about armchairs & community progress & the conflicts that arise therefrom. I held the words in my cheek pouch until evening & spat them out before the members of the O.T.O. after the reading. Ah ha! (It was one of those moments.) Bodies stir in their chairs. Heavily made up green eyes, thick with kohl light up from across the table. Garnished by her robust Serbian voice, the emphatic response sparkles (much like her eyes) in the air, "Yes! I love that too!" Being just as I am, of course, I cannot help myself & I ask "Why?" What great reception! What remarkable variability of thought! Every response unique & independent, yet entirely compatible with the others... & isn't that just as it should be? This is why, despite all the arguments I can summon to justify doing so, I simply cannot turn up my nose at Crowley.

"Nuit & Hadit" by unknown binaries of DeviantART.

Day 3: Ra-Hoor-Khuit

Rising at the wee hour of dawn or so to read Chapter Three of Liber AL vel Legis in attunement with the misfits, or, as we call ourselves, the Scarlets. On this noteworthy day, at this daybreak hour, I recognize that I am still not ready to be fully receptive to this chapter. I suppose, this is the sort of thing that causes me to forever be an "in-between."

Day 1: Nuit (For the files)

Rising at the wee hour of dawn or so to read Chapter One of Liber AL vel Legis in attunement with the misfits, or, as we call ourselves, the Scarlets. On this noteworthy day, at this daybreak hour, I am struck by these lines in particular:

27. Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat: O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous! 

28. None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two. 

29. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union. 

30. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.   

-- Chapter 1, Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX     

Kisses of the Stars - REVISED

by horrificus of DeviantART.

Like a Moth to the Misfits, or, Finding My "In Betweens"

Already two months in your presence my friends... such an unexpected gift.

I have become very fond of & comfortable with our little local Thelemic "study group." I find myself looking forward to our meetings for many days beforehand -- it has become my respite from a weekly grind which I keep thinking will come to a halt, but still refuses to relent. For several weeks I have been wondering about how & why, in the spiritual shakedown, I would wind up with the Thelemites. After all, my relationship with Mr. Crowley has always been simultaneously ambivalent & appreciative. Most certainly his approach to spiritual engagement was a far cry from huffing duff in some damp forest... 

Members of the local O.T.O. encampment sometimes join us, but last night none of them attended. This allowed for an openness & freedom of personal expression which is quelled in their presence. (This occurs, I believe, out of respect for visitors who are not privy to our personal lives & politics -- an effort not to bore them -- not because they are intolerant guests or because we we fear candid conversation.) In their absence, we talked at length, without pause, without awkward silences, without splintering into side conversations, winding freely in & out of overtly Thelemic themes into other subjects, brushing upon more personal matters & community matters...

We talked about Thelema.
We talked about rites, rituals, ceremony-ing & common vs. individual religious experience.
We talked about understanding & misunderstanding.
We talked about pan-pagn politics & the woes thereof.

We talked about language & the language of symbols, both shared & strange.

We talked about pasts & futures & common stories.
We talked about wanting to belong, but refusing to compromise ourselves in order to do so.

We talked about values & wants & needs & dreams & how virtually none of us gets what we really want.

We talked about how in this big, little Alaskan community each of us is really quite alone...

I realized something about this group; we are the community's misfits (not all of them, of course), the in-betweens. A crew comprised of bookworms, butterflies, dedicants & dirt monkeys, none of us "practice" in the same manner. We do not share a common spiritual tradition & we vary greatly in the degree to which our worldviews overlap. Yet, with uncommon consistency we continue to aggregate & bond. Moths spiraling between the flames, in the Darkness, among the Stars, amid the Everything & the Nothing. 

Before last night, I assumed that our shared appreciation for the Law of Thelema was the binding agent; the glue that held us together & gave us a common language. Now, I think there is something more that unites us, something beyond & in addition to, Thelema. I cannot yet articulate it. It might be a mysterious, organic, complicated commonality of something or, it could be as raw & basic as loneliness... or perhaps a simple answer lies with Rudolph & his dentist friend.

Regardless of the glue's composition, I am so very thankful to fly among these people.

Tree Huggers & Temple People or... How Does Space Feed the Spirit?

Rustic pulpit, March 16th, 1879, from the Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views @ Wikicommons.
Quite possibly the only churchy-indoor-space that might compel me to darken its doorstep.

We have been moving, again. I do believe we have reached a frequency of moving that qualifies as absurd. Or completely mad. Or something. This time, the distance is short & very hopefully permanent -- as far as Alaska goes. Please knock on a tree, table, pressboard, masonite now, please.

There was much damage control to be done in the new unit & much demolition & rebuilding & remodeling has happened. We retire every evening exhausted & tense, but with increasing hope that this has a conclusion which is nearing ever closer with each strenuous day. Now that the grunt work has significantly abated, our efforts have turned to squeezing as much swank into each square foot as humanly possible. This is the part of the process that has gotten me thinking -- thinking about space...

When I talk to other pagan folk about "sacred" spaces & places, it always seems that they fall into one or the other side of the indoor/outdoor dichotomy. This is one of those subjects where people seem to have strong feelings. The Druids ("Oh, those Druids...") pretty universally go outside. Alaskan Druids don't seem to care if its so cold outside that it hurts to breathe. Out they go. In corresponding with other animists, it sure seems like we also have that tendency, often struggling with issues over being house-bound. On the other hand, my Thelemite cohorts prefer to be indoors, or so it seems for the most of them. Then again, Thelema has all those specifications & rules for worship which seem to require a dedicated indoor space. Wiccans, ("Oh, those Wiccans...") seem to be the most plastic about space, but perhaps this is because their "sacred space" is created by circle-casting. As individuals however, they do seem to have strong personal tendencies, for example, the High Priest; he prefers indoors, period. But, we all know the hedgewitch-types who prefer the outdoors. 

This brings me to my quandary: How does space feed the spirit? More specifically, as I look ahead to the coming months of intensive indoor dwelling, I wonder how can we design/create indoor space that inspires & nourishes the soul (in particular, of the outdoors-oriented worshipper), a place where I won't spend quite so much time gazing longingly out the window at the Darkness?

I have been trying to remember the time before the altar-altering mushroom incident when I worked to create "sacred spaces" indoors, trying to remember the thoughts in an old book I have stored away in the desert house entitled, A Home for the Soul, trying to remember what it was about certain small Mexican churches my mother & I visited in Albuquerque, trying to grasp what gives the niches & meditation spaces on temple grounds of the Rosicruscian Order, AMORC their set apart, otherworldly, "sacred" feeling.  What is it that transforms a people-space & imbues it with a sense of spiritual significance?

I am thinking it is, to a large extent, art.

But not entirely because the range of human "sacred spaces" stretches from the the most baroque, rococo cathedrals, to the "rustic pulpit" pictured above, to the streamlined simplicity of a reflecting pool. Art is part of this, but not the all of it. So, what is it? What are the cues that tell us a people-place is hallowed, "spiritual" or "sacred"? What is it that whispers to our subconscious, "This place is special, pause a moment & feed your soul..."? This, I would like to understand.