Strip Mall Satori

The first step to enlightenment is getting past the smell. We had formed a cloud of two behind some brambly bushes off of a dinky hiking trail to a city park. Time to seek visions. The recipe is simple chemistry. Water, starting fluid, bottle, shake and drain. I dowsed my rag and began a deep rhythmic breathing. Pictures of Buddhist watercolor flickered behind my eyelids. My head was shaved. Dangling so gently above my smooth head a needle dispensed the finest lavender chalk to track my meditations. Flash to a moment of my master showing me the chalk. It was so soft, scented like spring, delicate and precious. i held the chalk in my hand and clumsily i spilled the chalk on myself. I looked at my hand with the rag in it, repeating softly, "i'm sorry". What are you sorry about? i was back in the bushes with my cloud mate, tears in my eyes. I glanced behind in time to catch the corner of a bright orange Buddhist monk's robe flutter away into the brush.

Demons... CONTINUED

(this is a continuation of the previous article)

Now, there is much speculation as to what these demons might actually be. Some would say that they are malignant and evil by nature; I tend to believe that the goals and attitudes of these demons are as varies as there are goals and attitudes. How these beings came about is more or less a chicken or the egg kind of argument. Most wizards I know would tell you that a spirit or demon can be created in a variety of ways:

1. A demon can be created out of pure emotion.
2. A demon can be created with some sort of magic or ritual spell.
3. A demon can be created when someone dies.
4. A demon can be created when some intense event occurs.

I have heard that when one summons a demon you are actually creating that demon there on the spot. I would have to say that this could be half true. I believe that if one were to summon a demon that did not already exist, the effect would be that of creation. It is also a good question to ask ourselves: where do these demons go when we are not summoning, creating, or communing with them?

Demons and Why I Won't Summon One For You!

I was asked by a former employer of mine to summon a demon. He wanted real physical proof that magic was real and that I could use it. I tried to explain to him the gravity of the situation, how a demon would most likely want something from one of us in return, that it could possess one or all of us, that any dangerously unpredictable thing could come out of such a ritual.

And I say to you now the same thing that I said to my former boss,

It does not matter which came first,
the demon or the ritual to summon it,
for when a demon is summoned
a demon appears.

2500 mgs

I was lying in a bunk bed at my mother's house and I began to meditate. I found my body growing lighter and I could feel my ego swelling as if to burst and I could feel myself slipping. This was the second time that I had taken a sub-anesthetic dose (what some of us Psychonauts call a Fourth Plateau dose) of dextromethorphan hbr. I started blacking out sporadically, losing time. The fifth or sixth time I blacked out, I felt like I was being pulled out of my body. When I opened my eyes I was somewhere else.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of the place. It smelled like shit: human and pack animal. And the sweat, wow, I had never encountered such body odor - it was amazing. The next thing I noticed was the sun beating down on my face and my back, which was bare. All around me people were pushing each other - a restless mob stumbling in a vague direction forward. They compelled me forward.

I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I immediately recognized it as some middle eastern language. As we walked on, I started to pick up snippets of words I thought I recognized, until I realized that it was Hebrew! Eventually the mob grew more agitated and uncontrollable. It seemed the whole mass of writhing rioters was about to explode. Then, on a hill in a clearing of low, twisty olive trees, I saw him and recognized the whole seen.

This was the Crucifiction. And there he was, with a few others (not three, but at least six or seven), nailed up on a cross. He looked right at me, this man Jesus, and said "Abba! Abba!" Father! Father! And I knew that he was talking to me.

That was the first time that ever time traveled.

Proof

When I was still wrestling with my destiny as a prophet, certain situations compelled me to leave home and strike out into the wilds of The Crazy an Inane States of America. After several pretty tame adventures I started to hear of a place where wizards, anarchists, hippies, and freaks would gather in staggering numbers to live and share and grow together. These Rainbow Gatherings, I had heard, had been happening for almost 40 years in forests all over the world. I knew that should go and check it out, and to be honest I really couldn't get my mind off of it.

Through the interwebs I met an old woman named Momma Copper who needed a ride to the National Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico (this was the summer of 2009). I dropped down from Missouri to Georgia and picked her up. It turns out that Momma Copper is the coolest old witch that I have yet to meet. She told me that magic was real. She said, "All you have to do, you know, is ask the universe something, anything, and it'll give it to you. You just have to know how to ask." I didn't believe her, I mean, I'm a born skeptic, and at the time I was a pretty sincere atheist. I told her as much. "Okay," she said, "what do want?"

"Anything?" I said.

"Anything."

I thought for a moment and burst out laughing. Of course I knew what I wanted. "What I always want? What does anybody want? A bag of weed!"

The old crone just cackled for a minute. Finally she said, "Done."

We were diving through the top little part of Texas toward Amarillo at the time and were running low on gas. Just outside Amarillo we pull in to a little Texico, I open my car door and there sitting next to me on the concrete is about a half ounce of weed in a little baggy. I showed the bag to Momma Copper and she just cackled her cackle and proceeded to roll joints until the bag was empty.

She sparked up the first joint, took a wicked long puff, blew it out, coughed, regained her composure and said, "Proof."

The Long Story: Part 1(-ish)

I was given the name Joshua by my birth mother. This is the real name of the supposed man you may have heard of named Jesus. Some would say that Joshua means "a savior or deliverer," but a deeper search into the individual Hebrew characters that make up the name has given us a more literal meaning: "to put the fire in hand." My parents give me the name Joshua, perhaps not fully understanding the power of names, and that name has shaped me.

Aleister Crowley is quoted often as having said, "'Do what thou wilt,' shall be the whole of the law." This phrase is an oversimplification of his philosophy of Thelema or Divine Will. Crowley believed that we, each of us, had our own divine purpose, a path to follow that flowed with the ebb and flow of the universe. What he meant was that one should do anything and everything in service to that Divine Will, and that would be the whole of the law. Crowley identified his role as The Messenger. This is the line of Horus, Moses, Hermes, Jesus, Khalil Gibran, and other such Prophets. I too have found my Divine purpose to be that of Messenger.

Our Divine Wills can be easily observed in tribal based cultures or any community that's survival hinges on the survival of the whole community. In a tribe, members awaken over time to their place within the workings of the tribe. Some become warriors, medicine men, healers, mothers, jesters, hunters, crafters, and etc. It's as if this innate ability to thrive in a group system arises at the right time in the right people.

Some times, we need to awaken to a new understanding or to shed a false understanding. It is for these times that we Messengers are made.