XXXXXX XX XX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XX XX TEMPLE OV PSYCHICK YOUTH XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX ON-LINE TRANSMISSION 2.01 XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XX XX 23 JANUARY, 1992 XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XX XX XXXXXX ________________________________________________________________________________ 1) Edit by COYOTE 131 2) ALamut 3) A Coyote Tale 4) ZOS KIA ________________________________________________________________________________ 1) E hope everyone had a delightful solistice and new y-era so far...thee Holy Daze was quite delightful for me...timE with loved ones is in always nice...ALumut has information on-line dealing with thee OTO, TOPY & other related topics ov interest...two serials are starting with this TRANSMISSION...native american tales about thee Coyote....and writings by Spare...for those wishing more information please contact me & and i will give you the snail-mail addresses of thee TOPY Stations and Action Points... L-ov-E under WILL, Rev. Lung.sTong.sMyon-pa "I have nothing to say and that I am saying it is poetry." -John Cage ________________________________________________________________________________ 2)ALamut has begun a magickal information access point in CYBERSPACE --->|<------------------------------------------------------------------------- <---|---> TOPY INFO-NET BBS <-:-> <---|---> ALamut 415.431.7541 1:125/51 TOPYnet Host --->|<------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Child of Chaos Coyote: a Folklore by: Josepha Sherman [The World & I - April 1990] Coyote ... mischief maker, child of chaos, creator-by-chance. Coyote...the unpredictable whose pranks, somehow, tend to Set Things Right...Coyote, there at the very Beginning. Trickster tales remind us that life isn't necessarily fair, but that nothing, no matter how unhappy, lasts forever. The amoral trickster, as befits his shape-shifting, unpredictable nature, can be a force of wild, primal power, acting on mere whim. He assumes many guises and roles: the Greek god of wine and chaos Dionysus; High John, the black slave who always gets the better of his master and is the breath of hope to an enslaved people; or folk heroes such as the German medieval Till Eulenspiegel, the English Robin Hood, and even modern cartoon characters who give us the relief of laughter and the vicarious triumph of 'little' people over the pompous, bureaucratic, or tyrannical. Coyote is the form of trickster common to the Native Americans of the West, Southwest, and Great Plains. Anyone who has followed the coyote's triumphs over those who have been trying for the last two hundred years to eradicate him with traps, poison and guns can understand why he was chosen as a mythic symbol. The following stories are examples of the vast lore surrounding Coyote, whose offspring can even today be heard howling within an hour's drive of most major American metropolises. A Zuni Tale: The theft of Sun and Moon. At the very beginning of things neither sun nor moon were in the sky. The Kachinas, the spirit people, kept them, safe and secret, in a box that they opened whenever they wished some light. Without the sun, the world was always dark. Without the moon, there were no seasons; the world was never cold nor warm, never white with snow nor green with leaves. Coyote thought this was a sorry state of affairs. He liked change, did sly Coyote - most certainly, since he was a clumsy hunter in the darkness shrouding the world. 'Ho, Eagle Chief,' he called, 'let us form a hunting partnership. Two hunters should do better than one.' Haughty Eagle looked down at Coyote and laughed. What, he, the keen of eye and mighty of wing, make a pact with a flightless ground crawler? But he remembered that Coyote, the sly one, could steal an eagles meal, even in the darkness. Better to keep Coyote in the open, where he could ply no pranks! So Eagle agreed to the partnership. But even so, Coyote caught nothing but bugs. 'Bah! How can anyone do any decent hunting in all this darkness? Tell me, Eagle, you who fly so high, have you ever seen any light in your travelings?' 'Why, yes, from time to time I have seen a flickering of light in the west, where the Kachinas live' 'Then west, we shall go.' Eagle soared lightly in the winds. Coyote, wingless, had to struggle through desert and mountain, river and mud. But he would not give up, not he! There at last lay the camp of the Kachinas. Coyote and Eagle hid and watched. Eagle stared at the Kachinas sacred dances. But Coyote only stared at a strange dark box. When one of the Kachinas opened it a crack, golden light poured out. When one of the Kachinas opened it halfway, silver light poured out. 'That's what we want,' Coyote whispered. 'We must steal that box!' 'All you think about is theft!' Eagle whispered back. 'I will go and ask the Kachinas if they will let us borrow their box of light.' Coyote watched as Eagle approached the Kachinas and demanded the box of light. He watched as the angry Kachinas threw stones to chase Eagle, bruised and squawking, back into the sky. But while all the Kachinas were chasing Eagle, Coyote the sly slid silently into their camp, caught up the box of light in his jaws, and scurried away. But the box was heavy. Coyote's jaws were getting tired. Eagle swooped down to join him. 'Here, give me the box. I can carry it more easily in my talons.' He snatched it up and flew away. Coyote ran after him, panting. 'Hey, Eagle Chief! Let me carry the box again.' 'No, no, you will spoil everything.' 'You only want to see what's inside.' Coyote yelled up at Eagle, 'Whose sides ache from the Kachinas blows? Not mine! Who stole away the box with never a bruise? Not You! Now, let me have the box.' The box was heavy. Eagle swooped down again. 'Take it. But don't open it!' But as Eagle soared up into the sky once more, Coyote studied the box. And curiosity began to burn and burn within him. Could the sun and moon really be inside? Surely there could be no harm in opening the box just a bit... A ray of golden light shot out and hit him right in the eyes! Coyote yelped - and let the lid fly open. In a blaze of gold, the sun flashed up into the heavens. The first day had begun. 'Well now,' Coyote said, admiring his grey coat in the sunlight. 'That's not bad, not bad at all.' He watched the sun move across the sky till it was out of sight and darkness came again. Eagle came flapping hurriedly back. 'What have you done? You've let the sun escape!' 'It will return,' Coyote said placidly. 'No, no, you've spoiled everything!' Angry Eagle lunged at Coyote. Coyote dodged - but as he did, he knocked over the box. The moon came shooting out and flashed up into the heavens. High rose the moon, higher yet, and the world grew chill. Leaves dropped from the trees, and an icy wind blew. The first season had begin, and it was winter. 'What have you done?' Eagle shrieked. 'You've brought cold into the world!' True enough. But Coyote, ruffling his fur, only grinned. Why, things had worked out even better than he'd planned! For he had also brought day into the world, and night. He had brought winter, spring, summer, fall. He had given the world variety, never-ending changes enough to please even the wily grey trickster himself. ________________________________________________________________________________ 4) AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE AND THE ZOS KIA CULTUS H.P. LOVECRAFT, in one of his tales of terror, alludes to certain entities which have their being "not in the spaces known to us, but between them. They walk calm and primal, of no dimensions, and to us unseen." This aptly describes Austin Osman Spare. The circumstances of his birth emphasize the element of ambivalence and inbetweeness which forms the theme of his magic. He told me he was not sure whether he was born on the last day of December 1888, or on New Year's Day, 1889; whether, as he put it, he was Janus backward-turning, or Janus forward-facing. But whichever aspect of the deity he more closely represented, it is a fact that his life was a curious blend of past and future. Despite his inability to remember quite when he was born, the place was certainly Snowhill, London: he was the only son of a City of London policeman. When barely twenty years of age he began writing The Book of Pleasure, in which he used art and sex to explore the subconscious mind. The Book of Pleasure reeks of diabolism to such an extent that Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony (Oxford, 1933) refers to Spare as an English "satanic occultist", and he places him in the same category as Aleister Crowley. Spare's intense interest in the more obscure aspects of sorcery sprang from his early friendship with an old colonial woman who claimed descent from a line of Salem witches that Cotton Mather had failed to exterminate. Spare always alluded to her as Mrs. Paterson, and called her his "second mother". She had an extremely limited vocabulary composed mainly of the fortune-teller's argot, yet she was able to define and explain the most abstract ideas much more clearly than could Spare with his large and unusual vocabulary. Although penniless, she would accept no payment for her fortune-telling, but insisted on the odd symbolic coin traditionally exacted as a sacrifice fee. Apart from her skill in divining, she was the only person Spare ever met who could materialize thoughts to visible appearance. Aleister Crowley- who met and attracted all kinds of psychically active individuals- met two only in the course of his life who had this particular siddhi*(1). *(1) Allan Bennett was one; the other, Crowley did not name. Mrs. Paterson, when visited for purposes of fortune-telling, would read a person's character immediately as a matter of course before going into details about the future. If she prophesied an event she was unable to describe verbally, she would objectivize the event in a visual image and the querent would see, in some dark corner of her room, a clearly defined if fleeting image of the prophesied event. And this never failed to follow at the appointed time. It was undoubtedly Mrs. Paterson's influence that stimulated Spare's innate interest in the occult, which, allied to his remarkable skill as a draughtsman enabled him to reproduce through his art the strange entities he encountered in transmundane spheres. He drew several portraits of Mrs. Paterson, one of which appeared in The Focus of Life, published by the Morland Press in 1921. Another drawing of her by Spare recently appeared (1971) in the part-work encyclopaedia Man, Myth and Magic, where she is shown after having "exteriorized" herself in the form of a nubile girl. Spare too was able occasionally to conjure thought-forms to visible appearance, but whereas in the old witch's case it was an unfailing power, in his own case it was erratic and uncertain. On one occasion it worked only too effectively, as two unfortunate persons learnt to their cost. They were of the dilettante kind, mere dabblers in the occult. They wanted Spare to conjure an Elemental to visible appearance. They had seen materialized spirits of the dead in the seance room, but had never seen an Elemental. Spare tried to dissuade them, explaining that such creatures were subconscious automata inhabiting the human psyche at levels normally inaccessible to the conscious mind. As they almost always embodied atavistic urges and propensities, it was an act of folly to evoke them as their intrusion into waking life could be extremely dangerous. But the smatterers did not take him seriously. Using his own method of elemental evocation, Spare set to work. Nothing happened for some time, then a greenish vapour, resembling fluid seaweed, gradually invaded the room. Tenuous fingers of mist began to congeal into a definite, organized shape. It entered their midst, gaining more solidity with each successive moment. The atmosphere grew miasmic with its presence and an overpowering stench accompanied it; and in the massive cloud of horror that enveloped them, two pinpoints of fire glowed like eyes, blinking in an idiot face which suddenly seemed to fill all space. As it grew in size the couple panicked and implored Spare to drive the thing away. He banished it accordingly. It seemed to crinkle and diminish, then it fell apart like a blanket swiftly disintegrating. But while it had cohered and hung in the room like a cloud, it was virtually opaque and tangible; and it reeked of evil. Both the people concerned were fundamentally changed. Within weeks, one died of no apparent cause; the other had to be committed to an insane asylum. Although Spare was convinced that an occult Intelligence frequently painted, drew, or wrote through him, he was unable to discover its identity. He was, however, in almost daily contact with a familiar, a spirit-guide, known as Black Eagle whom he had clearly seen and drawn on several occasions. But he was convinced that Black Eagle was not the sole source of his automatism. Spare had but to turn his head suddenly and he would sometimes catch a glimpse of the familiar spirits that constantly surrounded him. Several times he had "caught" one of them long enough to make a lightning-swift sketch. Spare's frequent traffic with denizens of invisible realms led to his evolving a graphic means of conjoining all thoughts- past, present, and future- in the ever-fluid ether of Consciousness. His graphic symbology represents a definite language designed to facilitate communication with the psychic and subliminal world. It was Spare's opinion that for this language to be truly effective, each individual should evolve his own, creating his sigils from the material nearest to hand- his own subconscious. He gave as a reason for so much failure in divination the fact that, although the operator sometimes succeeded in annexing traditional symbols to his own subconscious awareness of their true values, many of the symbols eluded correct interpretation; they therefore failed of nexus and were consequently sterile. Not only could Spare "tell fortunes" in the usually accepted sense, he could also use the cards for influencing the host of subtle entities which swarm in the astral light, and with their cooperation he accomplished much of his magic. He designed and used a pack of cards which he called the "Arena of Anon", each card bearing a magical emblem which was a variation of one of the letters of the Alphabet of Desire*(2). When vividly visualized, the emblem or sigil mysteriously stirs the subconscious and a corresponding image, or set of images, arises in the mind. In proportion to the power of belief in the sigil, so is the clarity of the image which it evokes. If the sigil taps a layer of ancient or cosmic memory, some astonishing images surge into the mind and the skilful sorcerer is able to project them into the astral mind-stuff of other individuals, so that they imagine the image to be a palpable presence. *(2) The basis of this Alphabet, together with many early examples of the letters composing it, is given in Spare's The Book of Pleasure, on which he began working in 1909 and published (privately on completion, in 1913. Spare could influence elemental phenomena as well as the minds of other people. Great danger lies in possession, and Spare wisely refrained from writing too openly about the processes he employed. What I know about his methods I learnt from personal contact with him. Even as a child, Spare employed these curious sigils. One is reminded of Yeat's words in The Trembling of the Veil: "Mathers described how as a boy he had drawn over and over again some event that he longed for; and called those drawings an instinctive magic." When he was seventeen Spare stayed at the home of the Rev. Robert Hugh Benson, author of The Necromancers and other occult novels. They went out for a walk one summer day; a serene and cloudless blue sky shone overhead. It had been fine all day, and Benson was curious to know whether Spare could, in such unlikely circumstances, produce rain by magical means. Spare said he could, proceeded to trace a sigil on the back of a used envelope, and, pausing in his tracks, concentrated all his attention upon it. Within ten minutes small clouds began to appear; they massed at a point immediately above their heads and discharged violently. Both Benson and Spare were drenched to the skin. A year or two later, Benson introduced Spare to the Hon. Everard Feilding, Secretary of the Society of Psychic Research. At the time Feilding was associated with Frederick Bligh Bond, the President of the Archaeological Society who, by psychic means, had discovered the buried Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey. Like Benson, Feilding wanted proof of Spare's magical powers and, when the latter offered to oblige, proposed the following test: Spare was to materialize an object which Feilding mentally visualized without giving any clue as to its nature. Spare drew one of his magical sigils, which, instead of being symbolic of the unknown desired object, was the ideograph of a familiar spirit whose services he frequently employed when any mind-reading was required. After some time, Spare received a vivid impression of the object in Feilding's mind. He then drew a second sigil, told Feilding he need no longer concentrate, and proceeded to do so himself. These proceedings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Feilding tiptoed to the door, opened it, and was amazed to find his valet proffering a pair of slippers. Feilding turned to Spare and asked him how he had done it! An essential part of Spare's technique lay in deliberate forgetfulness, and this is the part which a novice finds extremely difficult. One is reminded of the king who lavished a fortune on an itinerant alchemist who had successfully manufactured the Philosopher's Stone. After giving the king lengthy and complicated instructions, which the king repeated by heart, the alchemist smiled and said approvingly: "Yes, your Highness has remembered every detail perfectly; there is just one further point to remember. For three minutes before the Alchemical Substance congeals, you must concentrate your mind upon its lustre as it seethes in the alembic, but during this time you should on no account let the thought of greenness cross you mind for even a moment." The king thanked the alchemist and prepared to make the Stone. Everything went according to plan until the last few minutes, when the mind of the king was invaded by an army of green objects which he was powerless to banish. With Spare's sigils the case is somewhat similar. The reason he gives for forgetting the desire at the time of invoking it lies in the fact that for the operation to succeed the conscious mind must have no inkling of the transaction. Consciously formulated desires take time to materialize; subconscious desires can be made to materialize very swiftly. Consciousness of the desire vitiates the entire process, so a method had to be found of forgetting the desire during the period of magical evocation. Spare called the process "union through absent-mindedness" and advocated the yogic method of emptying the mind of all but the sigil. This is not always successful so as an alternative he suggests the sigillization of perennial desires, desires that are sure to arise periodically, as for instance the desire for beautiful women. Several such desires are then sigillized, scrambled together, and laid aside for several days. On reassembling the cards upon which they have been drawn, the operator is unable to remember precisely what sigillizes what! The rite is then comparatively easy to accomplish for it requires only concentrated thought. Spare often supplemented the process by a sexual formula which endowed it with added efficacy. He derived most of his sex-magical formulae from a Delphic Pythoness who communed with him during sessions of automatic writing. This Delphic Oracle was probably the spirit of old Mrs. Paterson, guiding him from beyond. One such formula enabled him to "give life to the autistic, by an earthenware virgin". In view of the present-day predilection for auto-erotic aids to ecstasy, the resuscitation of the dildo*(3) and the widespread curiosity about the sorcery of sex, Spare's formula of the Earthenware Virgin is of particular interest, though for Spare it had an exclusively magical aim. *(3) At the time of writing, my attention has been drawn to "the first European sex paper" which reflects the current obsession with purely mechanistic aspects of self-love. Nevertheless, such methods employed in a magical manner may place the practitioner in direct contact with his daemon or genius. Until he received this formula he had, as he put it, "copulated merely with the atmosphere, or rode whores, witches and bitches of all kinds, there being few virgins". In order to translate a specified desire from the level of subjective consciousness to the material or objective plane, the Pythoness instructed him to construct an urn in conformity with the dimensions of the erect penis. Sufficient space- but no more- was to be left at the end of the vessel in order to form a vacuum when the phallus was inserted. The cavity was to contain the sigillized wish, which was automatically consecrated at the moment of orgasm. The greatly enhanced pleasure induced by the suctional power of the vacuum increased the size of the penis and caused an unusually prolonged orgasm. At the critical moment, the desire was to be vividly visualized and held steadily in mind for as long as possible. When the mental image began to wane and disappear the urn was hermetically sealed and buried in a casket filled with earth, or in the ground itself. Spare maintained that this was the formula used by the ancient Greek urnings; hence the designation. In one of his unpublished writings he give the following instructions: "Bury the urn at midnight, the moon being quartered. When the moon wanes, disinter the urn and- while repeating a suitable incantation- pour its contents as a libation on to the earth. Then re-bury it." As the sperm would by that time have congealed, Spare advised a replenishment before the second "burial". He describes the Earthenware Virgin as "the most formidable formula known; it never fails and is dangerous. Hence, what is not written down must be guessed. "From this formula was derived the legend of the genii of the brazen vessel associated with Solomon." Whether this is so, I do not know, but there is a curious illustration in Payne Knight's celebrated Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (London, 1865) which is not satisfactorily explained in the text. It is in two parts and depicts a male figure with sexual organ erect; in his raised right hand he holds a vase-shaped sheath which he is about to clamp upon the phallus. The second part of the illustration shows the same image, but with penis drooping languidly after ejaculation, and the waist of the figure girdled with fruits symbolic of the rite's fulfilment. There are also one or two illustrations in Reinach's Repertoire des Vases Peints (Paris, 1899), which suggest a similar magical practice. Spare could undoubtedly materialize atavisms from his own subconsciousness and clothe them fleetingly in the sexual ectoplasm (or astral semen) of his atmospheric copulations.*(4) ________________________________________________________________________________ END TRANSMISSION 2.01