the dildo song

what a lovely thing to receive in email this morning...

beyond our collective ken

i just ran across this newsletter entry on enlightenment.com's blogsite, on zaadz.com. it's dated october 31st, 2006 and it's the last entry there, but after reading the section entitled "beyond my ken" (sorry, no direct link available, you'll have to scroll down), i decided to give it a huge recommendation here.

jordan's well-thought out ideas about ken wilber, and what he's become, echo mine right down the line. i don't know for sure what it takes for any individual consciousness to withstand a collective onslaught like wilber's endured these past few years, but i suspect it takes a stronger, more integral consciousness than most of us possess to not become compromised by it.

so rather than judge, or gloat, or try to tear him down, i urge everyone i know simply to think good thoughts for him. regardless of what you think of his recent behavior, he's still contributed more to our knowledge of human consciousness than 99.9% of anyone you know. my opinion, of course, but i think that deserves a bit of compassion.

getting it off

our muse-ings today come from germany via yahoo news. apparently our german friends are developing a brand new penis toy. According to the developer, jan vinzenz krause, they are "trying to develop the perfect condom for men that's suited to every size of penis."

men need another reason to play with their penises.

no, seriously.

in this instance, there seems to be some practicality involved in putting an erect penis in a can and then pushing a button. though this would seem moderately terrifying to me (mild paranoia about such things -- it's why i don't use the `shift' key unless it's to evoke an alternate reality, such as a parenthetical phrase like this one) apparently it's the kind of go-gadget that tends to appeal to my brothers. listen to how krause describes it:

"It works by spraying on latex from nozzles on all sides," he said. "We call it the '360 degree procedure' -- once round and from top to bottom. It's a bit like a car wash."

i can see it now. "time to put on the wrapper, baby. here, just put that sweet baby in this can... no, honestly honey, it's just like a car wash for your prick! drive it in, once around and... oh come on, just put it in honey, it won't hurt... at least, i don't think it hurts... no, seriously! they say it's just like a car wash! what's not to like, here? you like cars, don't you?"

i'm all for helping people have better and more fulfilling sex lives and am in some senses looking forward to seeing some guy actually put his precious pee-pee into an anonymous canister to coat it with vulcanized latex. the laugh-factor alone ought to be right off the scale.

pirate pages and sexerati

the toxick muse is getting some other media exposure. no one is more surprised by this than i.

the pirate pages, with the article "words as workings" from yours truly, as well as some astonishing art and words of crazy wisdom from other freqs out there.

click here to download your pdf copy today.

reprint at will, distribute widely.

many thanks to arjay for all his hard work in editing and assembly.


and then there's sexerati, a joint podcast interview with ember faye, writer of erotica and purveyor of fine erotic imagery. the hosts of this interview are wu and brenden simpson.

any and all feedback welcome.

"Traveling the marshes"

"Traveling the marshes" = the newest (and probably one of the oldest) euphemisms for sexual intercourse.

Archeologists appear to have excavated evidence amid the ruins of a Temple in Luxor of an annual rite that featured anonymous, orgiastic sex, drugs, barrels of booze, and what must have been the ancient Egyptian equivalent of rock and roll. This "festival of drunkenness" celebrated the salvation of humanity (a noble cause) with the ruins dating as far back as 1470 BCE.

Betsy Bryan, an archeologist from John's Hopkins University has been spearheading an excavation of the "Temple of Mut" since 2001 and presented her findings during the New Horizons in Science briefing, presented by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

"We are talking about a festival in which people come together in a community to get drunk. Not high, not socially fun, but drunk knee-walking, absolutely passed-out drunk."

According to this article, the excavations date back to the reign of Hatshepsut, the only female pharoah known to have held power in ancient Egypt. These celebrations were held in the first month of the Egyptian calendar, after the first annual flooding of the Nile.

It makes sense to me that they found a woman running things during these rites. Rather difficult to imagine a man in such a patriarchal society encouraging his subjects to throw down, chug down, and boogie down to celebrate the yearly escape from drought, hunger, poverty, and destitution. A woman, on the other hand, has a deep intuition for what it takes to keep her people happy...

Some of the inscriptions that were uncovered at the temple link the drunkenness festival with "travelling through the marshes", which Bryan said was an ancient Egyptian euphemism for having sex. The sexual connection is reinforced by graffiti depicting men and women in positions that might draw some tut-tutting today.

There are some of us, collectors and connoisseurs of such things, who wouldn't mind seeing some ancient Egyptian porn. I'd compare it to the samples of ancient Greek and Roman smut I've got, noting stylistic similarities and disparities and wondering what they used for lube...

In any event, it appears we moderns didn't invent designated drivers, either. The rules for the "festival of drunkenness" called for a few folks to volunteer to stay sober while everyone else got hammered and thoroughly laid.

Is there a downside? Apparently so. After participating in this ritual (and likely nursing an ungodly hangover) you got to wake up to musicians walking around, banging drums loudly. Presumably this was to drive you off so you could go suffer in the privacy of your home.

I think I much prefer the way we tend to do such things up here (though this has definitely given me some inspiration for future party themes) -- much less drinking and no obnoxious drummers courting mass murder the next day. As for the sex, well... there's variety in the world for a reason. Some folks like drunken, anonymous orgiastic sex -- I much prefer being able to remember it the next day. ;)

Occulterati #1: "Foolish Persons"

John Harrigan and Nick Pell discuss situationist threatre, esotechnology, and enochian magicks.

Duration :: 00:32:56

Hosts :: Brenden Simpson, Wu
Release: Monday, October 30, 2006

http://www.media.brenico.com/occulterati/

monday already?

the good news is that the public areas of the toxick temple have a whole new look and i spent all weekend creating it.

the bad news is that i am so far behind on reading/researching/writing it will take me the rest of the week to get caught up.

and i've barely started the inner sanctuary yet.

:: sigh ::

got to find time to work on that bi-location thing, honestly...

500 channels and there's nothing on....

the internet is a lot like cable television, i suspect.

i have to "suspect" because i have never had cable television. i've heard those who do have it say this too, though:

"how can there be 500 channels and nothing on i want to watch?"

the internet is like that for me tonight. terrabytes of content, and nothing appeals.

it would worry me except that i suspect (again) that what i'm looking for tonight just isn't to be had online....

co(s)mic meditation

okay, i can't resist...

whammies

as in, two from out of the blue this morning (well, three, but i'm only going to talk about two of them here) to shake up whatever passes for reality here at the toxick temple.

these two came from rob brezsny's FreeWill Astrology newsletter. the first was the opener:

"If you desire to know where your spiritual work lies, look to your emotional pain."

--Alan Cohen, "Wisdom of The Heart"

i suspect that's probably pretty good advice. where was the man when i was asking this question ten years ago?

next, the actual weekly forecast for sagittarius:

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The phase you're entering may prove to be ridiculously confounding -- ridiculous both in the sense of absurdly extreme and very funny. Yet the immediate future also promises to provide you with unprecedented opportunities to outgrow limitations you may have imagined were permanent. To honor this synergistic blend of slapstick confusion and juicy potential, I'm offering you two pieces of advice. The first is from Eleanor Roosevelt: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." The second is from Edward Teller: "When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."

well, it promises to be amusing, anyway.

no one knows i spent about three years of my life with that second quote taped to my bathroom mirror... the rearview mirror in my car... stuck to the inside of my dayplanner... i would have gotten it tattooed on my forehead if i hadn't been so intent on blending in with the 'danes at that time.

looking back, i know it was true. back then, it was both mantra and profound supplication.

Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck

from one of my new favorite websites, crimethinc.com. no, i'm not going to reproduce
the whole thing here -- click your mouse and go read it, fer crissakes!

but, a few excerpts....

You know it's true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word? Why has attendance at your anarcho-communist theory discussion group meetings fallen to an all—time low? Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation?

...

When you make politics into a lifeless thing, a joyless thing, a dreadful responsibility, it becomes just another weight upon people, rather than a means to lift weight from people. And thus you ruin the idea of politics for the people to whom it should be most important. For everyone has a stake in considering their lives, in asking themselves what they want out of life and how they can get it. But you make politics look to them like a miserable, self-referential, pointless middle class/bohemian game, a game with no relevance to the real lives they are living out.

...

What should be political? Whether we enjoy what we do to get food and shelter. Whether we feel like our daily interactions with our friends, neighbors, and coworkers are fulfilling. Whether we have the opportunity to live each day the way we desire to. And "politics" should consist not of merely discussing these questions, but of acting directly to improve our lives in the immediate present.

reading this absolutely made my day... maybe my whole week. thank you, nadia c., whoever you are.

nostalgia

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

i saw him speak in kentucky when i was at university. he sat there drinking (scotch? or was it gin? i can't remember) liquor in a dry county and trashed kentucky thoroughly, along with the current administration (i'm not telling), religion, journalists and journalism; we laughed and he would excoriate us for laughing. god, we loved every minute of it.

fear and loathing in las vegas was a riot of a read from one end to the other and still amazingly pertinent today in some ways.

i'm no longer a part of the drug culture... i wonder if i'd still enjoy it as much...?

requiescat en pace, old man.

the dance of death

"To make love. we dance with Death. There will be flowing, there will be draining, there will be live birth and still birth and yet born-again birth of something new. To love is to learn the steps. To make love is to dance the dance".

-- Namita Gokhale, The Book of Shiva

i arose from the mists, body sinuous and serpent-like, scenting and tasting the air, caressed by each mote of water as it clung to the surface of my skin.

the beloved arose beside me, his long dark hair sweet with all the fragrance of desire and destruction. his strong, muscular body wrapped around mine. the mists upon his skin coalesced with that which clung to me, and the world was deluged in the flood.

we swam within it for eons, entwined, locked together point for point, lost in the ecstasy of shared communion. passion encased us within its shell. we died together even as the breath of rapture left our lips.

i arose from the mists, body sinuous and serpent-like, scenting and tasting the air, caressed by each mote of water as it clung to the surface of my skin...

another quote, so relevant...

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it.

-- William Durant

walking between the worlds

i've never done much dream work. for someone who usually doesn't remember her dreams, it's an undependable way to approach what i've come to call "the deep work." instead i've used meditation, contemplation, symbol analysis, visual arts, all good ways to access what's locked away in the deepest parts of me, to bring them to light for analysis, healing, and integration.

so, when my friend chaoflux23 invited me to participate in
key23's dreamspace project, i hesitated. i don't usually remember my dreams, i thought to myself. And then i remembered the other half of that maxim.

when i do remember my dreams, they're fairly important.

i resolved to post the next dream i remembered on dreamspace.

a resolution like that resounds throughout the multiverse. within two days i was calling up that link in gmail, ready to type in
the dream. it had some resonance, some quirky symbolism, and left me feeling a little unsettled --- all good indicators that the murky, chunky soup in my subconscious was ready to give over something fairly significant.

it was jung who said, i think, that one good dream would yield a lifetime's worth of analysis. i suspect it's probably true -- information gotten during the deep work has many layers, accesses many levels of reality. the questions posed from that dream (aided by my crazy magus-friend chris titan) led me to entertain an action i'd not considered for 7 or 8 years -- taking a deliberately conscious astral journey to follow up on the dream's messages.

could i still make it into the astral, that crazy-quilt place where symbolism is both language and currency? where consensual reality and dream are in your face about being the same thing? if i made it, could i retain enough energy to function? most especially, would i remember?

i won't bore you with the details. i decided to use the full moon energy on october 6th, 2006. the results are recorded here.

i'm as surprised as anyone that it worked.

again i used the dreamspace wiki and chris's insightful help to find some things that look like potential answers. go read it and follow the links --- it's silly to recreate that net of interconnections here.

the point is that i found dreamwork to be a valuable resource in the deep work especially when the collective consciousness (in the form of friends online and real-time) got involved to help. it's all in line
with where i want to take my work (inner and outer) in this next phase of my life: out into the community, group space, the egregore that informs and illuminates us all.

now i have two potential paths before me. interestingly, it's not necessarily and either/or situation. it very likely could be a both/and.

my book

and/or

sex parties

the contemplative tradition, and/or sex magick...

the mystic... the occultist...

merging these two distinct approaches to higher consciousness is just crazy to think about.

sanity's highly over-rated, anyway.

kali says...

DECLARATION OF CREATION


I am going to burn down the world

I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone

I am going to turn ideals to shit

I am going to shove hope up your ass

I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see SOMETHING as it really is

WATCHOUT

--Mel Lyman

the inn of the snakes

I came to the Inn of the Snakes (the Quetzalcoatl) with a group of friends. It did not appear the same as it did last time, but I understand that this chameleon-like quality is one of the hallmarks of the place. Once we got inside there were snake sculptures everywhere -- at least, they looked like sculptures when I looked right at them. In my peripheral vision, they moved and behaved as live snakes would, though they didn't seem to threaten anyone inside.

There were many other people there, and I recognized at least two members of my local sex-positive community. They were its leaders at one time, but their relationship broke down over a month ago and they are now separated. B, the male half of the couple, was shit-faced drunk...

I remember standing in front of a mirror in that place, cutting my own hair off in a very determined and ritualistic way... (another metaphor for sacrifice)

And the next thing I remember is being escorted to a huge room where "the game" was played. I had earned the right to play the game (through the sacrifice? not sure). It somewhat resembled an arcade or pinball game, only it was huge -- nearly room-sized, with an open top and pieces that could be picked up and moved at will.

The last thing I recall is walking out of the Inn of the Snakes and finding B puking his guts up at the curb.

emerging into group consciousness

toxick muse is a happy girl. her friends wu and fenris23 and new acquaintance klintron have all evinced interest in the meta-concepts expressed in Spiral Dynamics, an exciting new way to approach "emergent cyclical theory of human behavior and value systems."

i read this book and all attendant discussions a year ago, but have had no one with whom to discuss it since, let alone anyone to help me find practical value in its precepts by applying them to everyday concepts. just the thought of having these three very intelligent and creative men to bat this around with me...

if you are interested in the cycles of human evolution and know they didn't stop with you, then you may want to check out these articles at What is Enlightenment?" the online magazine version of the paper publication. they do not take the place of reading the actual book, but they'll give you a good idea of the core concepts.

:: happy sigh ::

it's been a long time coming.

thanks, guys!

dead for five

...and no one knew it.

(courtesy of Reuters)

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian authorities have discovered the body of a man who apparently died at home in bed five years ago, a Vienna newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The corpse of Franz Riedl, thought to have been in his late 80s when he died, went undetected for so long because his rent had been paid by automatic order from the bank account into which he received his pension, the daily Kurier said.

Neighbors said there was no strange smell coming from Riedl's apartment and authorities who found the body after a court order was given to enter said his body appeared to have "mummified" and was well preserved.

"He had been frail and a woman had helped him," the husband of the apartment block's caretaker told Kurier, adding that mail had always piled up outside the pensioner's flat. "We thought he had moved in with her or gone to an old people's home."

Police said they were not certain as to exactly when the man had died, but that they had found only schilling notes in the apartment -- the currency used by Austria before the introduction of the euro on January 1, 2002.

no one noticed he was dead.

i wonder if mr. riedl himself did...?

meeting god in darkness

"The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you're seeing God clearly."

--Caroline Myss, Spiritual Madness: The Necessity of Meeting God in Darkness

sometimes, it is very difficult to live in that truth.

always though, it is very necessary...

the broken road home

for those of you who've already checked into key23's dreamspace and read this piece there, my apologies. it just occurred to me this morning that i'd like a back up copy stored elsewhere...

i became conscious that there was a lot of stuff in front of me, and it needed to be moved to the ship that was moored at the docks down on the river. there were a lot of people around, most of them people i'd gone to the wall for in the past. none of them would help me move any of it. i felt so frustrated, but i didn't kill them. i just picked up a box and headed down to the ship.

a beautiful dark-haired woman approached me and offered me lodging at her inn. we arrived there, a gorgeous airy building limned in greenery and light. "this is the quetzlcoatl," she told me, and i saw the signs emblazoned with the quetzlcoatl everywhere...

she took me to a room with walls of glass. within was a man. when we looked at each other i knew i'd known him before, even though we'd never met. he was completely average looking, but his eyes were deep and clear and wise... he appeared to be in his 30's, wearing jeans and a tan sports jacket over a t-shirt. sexy, in a wholesome sort of way. the three of us made an ecstatic sort of love then, for an indeterminate time...

then there were men entering the room, sober serious men. they were to have a meeting, but i didn't want to stay. i remembered i'd left an article of clothing, which needed repaired at home. i wanted to walk home to get it. the man who was now my lover accompanied me.

we were walking along highway 101, which seemed oddly deserted of traffic. there was another couple walking to my left, garbed in pale colors and with pale hair. i thought they were an elderly couple, so i asked them to come to the right side of the road, where they would be safe if traffic resumed. they didn't speak to me, but they did as i asked. the four of us continued walking up the hill, toward the exit to my street.

we began walking down the exit, but the way was blocked by heavy equipment, a bulldozer and a dump truck, both huge. i guided the elderly couple toward a kind of cat-walk that kept them clear of the equipment while my lover and i negotiated our way around them. the elderly couple got ahead of us, then i saw them walking back. they still hadn't said a word. i managed to crawl over the treads of the bulldozer and saw why they'd turned back --- the road ahead was broken away, completely missing. some cataclysm had destroyed it.

my lover looked at me. "there is another way," he said.

seducing the muse

(courtesy of Reuters:)

Chocoholics find a venue and a menu

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Slices of chocolate pizza. Syringes that squirt liquid chocolate into your mouth. Warm double chocolate fondue.

Israeli restauranteur Max Brenner's new chocolate bar off New York's Union Square, Chocolate By The Bald Man, caters for chocoholics of all ages -- and is pretty much a disaster for anyone trying to watch their weight.

Brenner has opened 19 restaurants worldwide in the past six years -- in Australia, Israel, Singapore and the Philippines -- but this is his first in the United States with plans to open a second in New York's East Village later this month.

Sitting in his restaurant that has the feel of a European cafe but with zany wallpaper and pipes across the ceiling giving it the look of a chocolate factory, Brenner explains that he set out to create a chocolate culture.

"I believe chocolate for people is not just about taste. It's about memories, about fantasies, about fun," the bald-headed Brenner told Reuters as he melted, mixed and poured a variety of chocolate concoctions.

"People want the whole chocolate experience. A ritual. So I created a ceremony around chocolate with special cups and utensils."

Hot chocolate is served at his restaurants in oval-shaped cups tapered at one end called "hug mugs" that are cradled in hands. Coffee comes in "kangaroo cups" with a pouch or shelf for chocolate. Ice cream popsicles come with bowls of melted chocolate, chocolate waffle balls and caramelized pecan bits.

"Everyone loves chocolate in the way that we do it. It crosses all ages and cultures," said Brenner, a European-trained pastry chef and chocolatier, whose bald head is used as the logo for the stores.

The name Max Brenner is actually a composite of two Israelis, Max Fichtman and Oded Brenner, who launched the business 10 years ago in Israel as a chocolate shop.

But when Fichtman left after a few years, Brenner came up with the idea of a chocolate bar -- a restaurant serving chocolate with a gift shop -- and opened his first store in Sydney in 2000, adopting the Willy Wonka-like persona of "Max Brenner".

In 2001 Israel's second largest food and beverage company Strauss-Elite bought into the company, partnering with Brenner and opening a string of more restaurants to spread the chocolate gospel.

But in these days of health conscious eating are people still lured by chocolate?

"People love chocolate. It makes them smile. I believe the happiness it causes does magic things for your health," said Brenner, 36, a slim man, who eats chocolate daily but admits he goes to the gym every day too.

"If you do it in moderation it is good for you." Name: Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man Location: 841 Broadway @ 16th Street Prices: Main courses about $10, drinks about $4, Kids menu.

right now, that syringe bidness is sounding mighty fine...

wonder how soon before they open in sfbay?

symbol key

the diamond/triangle is a symbol for mysticism -- 7 sides, 7 angles. the colors are significant —- red for fire, life, passion; blue for water, intuition, emotion. in fact, the color choices for each element are intentional.

the OM yantra is self-explanatory. the ankh will be positioned right on my spine, between the shoulder blades (back of the 4th chakra). it’s in the center of a six-pointed star, solomon's seal, universal symbol of the intermingling of divine and earthly energies and the creation of sacred space.

the sun/moon is a hierosgamos, or symbol of the sacred marriage, the transcendence of duality.

the runic symbols serve two purposes, and my husband designed them both for me. the one on the left is a rune blessing. he "journeyed" to get it and it took him a few days to work out what it meant. the one on the right is his love letter to me. these must be in red, preferably dark like old blood.

the kanji symbols appear in the translation i have of the i Ching. the first hexagram, on the left, was “the creative.” the other was with the second hexagram, "the receptive." these are the two poles upon which all of creation is based.

the right artist is going to understand the significance of all this and be able to frame the piece accordingly. i purely wish i had that kind of talent, sometimes.

my tattoo, potentially

i'm looking for an artist who can turn it into art.

moon in scorpio

from an IM chat i had today:

(10:12:14) toxickmuse: someone once told me that a scorpio moon gave me 3 basic choices for my life -- madness, occultism, or mysticism.

(10:16:07) wesunruh: okay, I have to say that I think madness, occultism, and mysticism are all three facets of the same gem. sparkling darkly.

i edited this a little for clarity. the basic message is intact, though.

The Seduction of the Fall

And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.

-- H. P. Lovecraft, The Outsider, 1921

The only problem was, I fell.

I too had once grovelled at the base of the monolith, cursing the darkness, tempted by the promise of light. The jagged silhouette, deeper black against the sooty sky, was as sickeningly familiar as the fetid smell of decay and it was all I knew. For a long time, it was all I ever wanted to know.

There was never a satisfactory explanation for the un-ease, the dissatisfaction that crept over me, exacerbating the distaste I'd experience at the stupidity, violence and brutality that surrounded me. Instead of mute acceptance, I'd begun to cry out "Why? even if it was only within the silences of my soul. There was no answer, never an answer, only that vague, indefinable yearning for the heights above that grew ever stronger the more I tried to hide it.

Rationalizations ran around in my mind like squirrels on a wheel; the surcease promised in drugs only added illness to my discontent. I began to feel a pull, resisted it, could not keep myself from glancing upward, could not ignore the wrench of fear in my gut when I did.

My mind, ever an unreliable thing, somehow turned the arguments against the climb into arguments for it. The answers were there, at the top of the tower; I became convinced of it. At least I would know why this was happening, I told myself. If I died, well, death would ease that unknowing too, and with a finality which could not be argued.

Somehow, even my dim and half-coherent ideas about death now seemed infinitely better than a continuance of this aching desire that tore at me worse than anything I'd ever known. So was it simple desperation that prompted my ambitions? Or pitiable innocence?

I too began that awful climb, soon encountering evidence of the others who'd gone before me. A lock of hair caught between stones, a scrap of fabric torn away, scrapes in the masonry -- these became symbols of my hopes. Others had tried this too, they had made it this far. Maybe they now had the answers for which I too now searched. Keep going, find another fingerhold, wedge the toes in one more crack...

I don't know how long it was, truly. Time is measured differently in the ascent. At times I forgot everything else, clinging to the dank and rotting stones as the wind tore at me, forgot love and life and family completely. I even forgot why I was climbing for a time, grimly putting one hand above the other, knowing only that to let go was to perish and stubbornly refusing to give up on the reasons for the climb... assuming I could ever remember them...

On the climb I learned more about death, saw it implied in the pale fingerbones wrenched into the crevice beside my own. They were all that remained of some other climber, yet another feckless fool who'd gone before me, searching for answers when even the questions were
irrational. Just fingerbones, dead and dull and motionless, curved a little as if they'd only just begun to relax their grip when the rest was shorn away. I looked down again at the nothingness below me, tried to remember my life before and what had driven me to this. Unable to summon any recollection, I forced my other hand upward, finding the next handhold.

I climbed into a deeper darkness the higher I went, and experienced true despair for the first time. Was this truly all there was on this impossible journey, the weight of sorrow, grief, bitterness, abandonment? Was this my reward for tenacity and grit? Despair hollowed out the depths of my soul and filled it with salt-tears -- why was I clinging to this travesty so desperately?

It was then I felt the seductive pull of the depths below.

The first wave of vertigo swept over me, the yearning to fall born in the now unfathomable drop beneath me. I was terrified out of self-pity and almost too terrified to notice how sweet the yearning was that was just beneath it. Almost. You learn how to fight off both though, when you're clinging to a rock face and unable to see anything above you, or below. You fight off everything and you just keep climbing, because to stop is to die, and death has just become a horrifying consequence.

Then the second wave hit me. My calloused, bloody fingers softened their grip on the rocks and my whole body, gaunt and spare from the climb, now felt soft and heavy, like a gravid woman ready to give birth. The flush of promised relief danced at the edges of my consciousness, fighting for a foothold in the same way my
physical feet struggled to cling to the slimy rock. The wind sang in my ears, a tune of the unending peace in drifting away, drifting down, softly falling into nirvana, into bliss...

This went on for some time. With each recurrence it became harder and harder to resist. There was no end in sight, no hint of surcease or respite in the climb above. And who was I anyway, to attempt such a thing? How arrogant was I, to think I deserved answers or could even find them on this impossible quest?

Vertigo whispered constantly in my awareness. I wanted to fall into its embrace and forget, forget... forget answers, forget questions, forget despair and most of all forget the bright promises of love, peace, joy. I don't know how I held on as long as I did, so fierce that onslaught became.

I have a clear recollection of the moment I finally let go. As the stone ore itself from my numb and clinging fingers and I plummeted into an abyss unforgiving and inevitable, I wondered if it were mere optimism or blind desperation that had originally impelled me upwards? Or perhaps mere naivete made me believe that the courage to make the attempt would somehow protect me from the dangers inherent? After having ascended to a great height, knowing the feel of the masonry beneath my hands, courting the vagarities of wind and rain, having learned to navigate by instinct and inferrence alone, was it the
arrogance of mere accomplishment that blinded me to the power of the seduction of the fall?

Was I betrayed? Or did I betray myself?

There are still no answers. There never have been. I doubt there ever are.

I drift now on unknown winds and feel no sorrow, no joy. The days are grey and uniform and if I have no bliss, at least I have no despair.

Like Eurydice, I hear the call of my Beloved still, a tantalizing Orpheus who promises much more than he can ever deliver. Like her, I resist it -- please don't call me back to that pain and suffering, I whisper. Just leave me here, where I can find contentment of a sort. The price of bliss in your arms -- it was more than I could bear.

Don't ask me to try again. Don't ask me to face that failure.

Not again.

sexual subversion: the podcast

Frequency23.net released into the airwaves the sexually seditious interview with yours truly today, wherein my true identity is "outed" and something of the life of a toxick muse becomes known.

you can listen to it by clicking here.

or you can download it by clicking here instead.

kenchi used my friend pythriddle's music for the background. i wish i knew his website url, 'cause it's good stuff.

if you've got a half-hour or so, give it a listen. disseminate widely.

The Carnal Camp Out

sensual fun in the summer sun... now that there actually is some in humboldt.

going to be in northern california on august 19th? check out the website at http://Reasons2SayYes.com to find out how you can get ticketed for this amazingly decadent event.

one true thing

don't talk to me. don't bother with words.
just show me
show me one true thing about you.

no. i said, "no words" -- sound vibrations
in the air, free of meaning
except in contexts, which are endless
so just skip them. i only want to see
you show me
one true thing
about you.

just one. one true thing, without words.
is it so much to ask?

and you,
bleeding frustration and hurt
from scars
that never properly healed
throw up your hands
and walk away.

words in workings

there's a rather remarkable codex of sigils posted on Frequency23 just now. it's an intriguing piece of work for me especially; i do not often work in sigils. i've found the author's output in this field truly interesting, though i know i'm not understanding even a fraction of the meaning that's there.

juxtaposed with this precision artwork are several posted articles and discussions on the forum concerning the nature of different things, but all hinging on the word "belief" and its derivatives.

those of us who work with words know how subtle, deceitful, tricksy, false and just generally sloppy words are. it's the nature of the medium, no matter how precise we try to be. since so many of these conversations are turning on the word "belief" specifically, i'd like to open the discourse on how to use the word, and perhaps offer some words that have been generally found to better reflect the concepts we're trying to communicate -- and in some cases, manifest.

"belief" is intellectual laziness. it's a meme that's replicated itself in our psyches, unconsciously passed on to us by those who knew no better. it is a conviction of the truth, rather than an experience of it. we carry it like we do hundreds of viruses, without having experienced it, passing it onto others without realizing, without understanding. we communicate it to others as if it were truth born of our own knowingness when it is not.

there are at least three different ways of "knowing" something. in the age of enlightenment, humanity legitimized one way of knowing --logic-- at the expense of the other two. our forebears were taught that the only things that really existed could be grasped with one of the five physical senses and framed in logical structures, shared with others in this way, and thus ratified by common experience. anything else simply didn't exist, or suffered a lesser existence (love, hate, fear, grief, depression, god, thoughts, psychoses --all imaginings that would someday reveal themselves to logical empiricism, or so it was "believed").

thus bastardized, the other two channels for "knowing" something were almost completely lost. in our attempts to rediscover them, we've had to resort to poor substitutes to describe what we think we know that doesn't fit into logic's neat little boxes. one of those substitutes was the concept of "belief" -- and religions and tyrancies have been riding hard on this one, ever since.

a "belief" is a meme you hold in your head without any way of knowing its truth. as such beliefs interfere with your ability to experience what is true for yourself. if you fervently believe in a literal heaven, for instance, you're not going to be able to accept that it's just other galaxies out there in the night sky. pictures of supernovae and stellar nurseries and spectacular nebulae won't sway you--they're just the sparkling hem of god's robes. even if you should have a direct experience of being in the heart of a supernova through altered states of awareness* induced through meditation (or less desirably, through illness or drugs), you're likely to reduce that experience to an hallucination and dismiss it. your "belief" in what you've been told is absolute. it admits no refutation, and that belief will even trump personal experience.

beliefs are insidious. i have come to understand that they are every bit as effective a tool as fear in controlling human beings. if you can instill a belief in someone (in 2003 saddam hussein still had weapons of mass destruction) it allows you to justify a hell of a lot of stupidity in the name of that belief (the current quagmire in iraq being exempli gratis).

think i'm overstating? the harris poll as of february 2005 revealed that
36 percent still "believed" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. according to the pew forum on religion and public life, 42% of americans "believe" that life on earth exists now, in the same form, as it always has.

what's more, they believe these things not because they've experienced them as truth, but simply because they've been told.

i'd like to propose that those of us interested in being the authors of our own lives and/or magickal workings in any sense begin using the word "belief" in just this sense -- not as a form of knowing, but as a cipher standing in for real experience. what's more, i'd like to see each of us dedicated to rooting out these memes in favor of personal experience, or, failing that, the promise to simply keep our minds open to possibility.

for instance, i have never experienced "heaven" in the literal biblical sense of it. many others claim to have done so, but i have not -- therefore i'm keeping an open mind about the concept. the multiverse is stranger than i can know, and maybe there is a literal biblical heaven on some strand of reality i haven't yet accessed. in the meantime, i'm free to engage in the experience of discovery. i am the author of my experience. i haven't sold any part of my soul out to a "belief" that just wants to live rent-free in my psyche and replicate itself in others.

if i could give two gifts to the world (or even just to boards like Freq23), the second would be to eradicate "belief" in favor of experience.

the first would be to reinstate with equal vigor, acceptance and understanding the other two ways of knowing.

but that is an article for another day.


* - altered states of awareness are the second way of "knowing."

Venue Confirmed

mazes are always entertaining -- i think it's where everyone gets to find out whether they're really predators, or prey.

it's on for july 8th, 2006.

if you'll be in the northern california area during that time, visit http://reasons2sayyes.com to find out more. you could also email info (at) reasons2sayyes (dot) com...

i have it on good authority that tickets are already selling for this event....

evolution incarnate

"We have a mission to create, for we are evolution incarnate.

We are her self-awareness, her frontal lobes and fingertips.

We are second-generation star stuff come alive.

We are parts of something 3.5 billion years old, but pubertal in cosmic time.

We are neurons of this planet's interspecies mind."

Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

gizmos, robots, and dolls -- oh my!

i picked this article on the future of sex off of reuters today. by turns it has a-mused and be-mused me. however, it's only when you get toward the end of the article that its relation to consciousness and experience becomes evident.

ALL IN THE MIND

Going even a level further, other researchers say in decades to come advanced devices will be able to stimulate the brain to create a sexual experience without manipulating genitalia.

Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence dating back to 1951, said such devices could either trigger an actual physical response from the brain, or have the entire experience take place in the mind with the sensation of sex -- but without the mess or risk of sexually transmitted disease.

we've long known that the primary sexual organ for any human being is the brain. it's our minds and imaginations that turn us on (which, imo, is why intelligent persons are inherently sexier than the other kind), it's the strength of will and focus that determines so much of the character of sexual experience. in sex magick, it is the mind and will that moves the energy, assisted by the bodies present. but does that limit the entire experience to the body/mind?

when humanity can stimulate a complete (physiological) sexual experience ``without manipulating genitalia,'' is it still really sex?

perhaps a scientist would think so. a muse is not so sure.

by 2016 they say, i'll probably be able to try it for myself.

i'm wondering if something like this will ever be able to
dance with me in a cage and drive me wild...

the ark of the covenant

(copy/pasted from Toxick Bloging)

Lion lust
Queen of Spheres
Monad windowless divining
Arrow thrust
Deathless years
Star alembic role defining


Neptune's trident
Sea storm strident
Waves combining
Forms intwining
Sea salt teeming
Pledge redeeming
Bivalve plenum
Star-spate venom
Screwing physis
Starry Isis
Ophidian
Meridian


Grail task
Night sky manic
Fierce love of Heaven, pull of soul
Lampshade mask
Love joy panic
Diana Zagreus, take your toll!


Sailor drowning
Hound dog clowning
Meaning hidden
Knowledge midden
Salt shape sigil
Star spray vigil
Name reviling
Goddess smiling
Snake vibration
Sharp elation
Crustacea
Acacia


-- Grady L. McMurtry
12/5/61

thanks, chris.

catholics like torture and abortion

i know. it amazed me too.

according to the national catholic reporter and the pew research center for people and the press, catholics are more likely to approve of torture than their protestant counterparts. and way more likely to think its groovy than their secular counterparts.

bishop john h. ricard of pensacola-tallahassee, fla., member of the bishops’ committee on international policy thinks it's ``a reaction to 9/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of islam.''

from my friends who are recovering catholics, i'd say it's more due to their years and years of catholic schooling... or perhaps all the images of the saints self-flagellating, held up as role models...

and then there's all those opportunities to look at your savior every sunday, being tortured to death on a cross. ``if it was good enough for jesus, it's good enough for them!''

ahem.

moving on then... it would also appear that christians have just as many abortions as any other group except the catholics, who have more according to the center for reason.

The study, available as a downloadable report, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.

in my mind, when all this is juxtaposed with this study, done by the national center for policy analysis which describes significantly higher divorce rates in america's ``bible belt,'' you begin to get a picture that can be interpreted in at least three ways, none of which exclude the other two:

first possibility: that people with more freedom are more compassionate and behave more responsibly.

second possibility: the irresponsible desire to be controlled and have a sadistic desire to see others punished severely for being ``out of control.''

third: that as human beings, we're outgrowing our need for religious-flavored mind control.

I tend to favor door number three, while noting cynically that cable television is rapidly replacing religion for the mind control flavor du jour...

heresy, laughter, and civil disobedience

if you want a real fifth of november call to action, i have one for you. it proves there are reasons to pay attention to a select few who live in texas. it's just that their last names aren't ``bush.''

most of you already know why americans should be enraged at the theft of their government by coporate interests and their big money. those of you who aren't so sure yet, read the text of this speech by bill moyers, one of the few truly loyal and patriotic americans left in that state. he also happens to be one of the last of the prophets, in an archetypal sense, who still have a voice clear enough to call the people to action.

once you've been fired up, i would direct your attention to a story from another true blue texan, ms. molly ivins. i regret that i do not have a reference for the text of this story, for i heard her relate it in a speech a few years ago. i remember the tale, however. i found it inspiring.

upon hearing of the impending arrival of the ku klux klan in austin for yet another rally protesting whatever, ms. ivins and some of her friends gathered in a local pub, over a pitcher of beer, to discuss what to do about it. they are all first amendment loyalists, and so defended the right of the klan to say any damned thing it wished in public all the while loathing the general lowering of the city's IQ that occurred whenenver the klan rolled into town. it was as they got to the bottom of the pitcher that the idea occurred to them.

as the ku-kluxers debarked from their buses (apparently there weren't enough of them in austin for a proper rally, so they had to be trucked in from all over the state), they were met by perhaps 3000 citizens of austin, lined up on either side of the bus terminal. just as the klan braced itself for a fight, the citizens turned around, bent over, and dropped their pants, thereby subjecting the kkk to what may have been the largest public protest mooning on record.

i didn't tell you this story just to amuse you, though i confess i laughed for some time after i first heard ms. ivins tell it.

i told you this because, as a call to action for november 5, i think it's just about perfect.

we can't reach the american public with anger -- they've heard way too many angry protesters over the years. they're numb to it. but laughter, my comrades -- laughter gets them every single time.

so what say you? do you suppose we merry few, we band of brothers (and sisters) can organize a mass mooning to equal or surpass the politically astute citizens of autin, tx? perhaps a coordinated action on the lawn of every statehouse in the country, with a special attention turned toward the nation's capitol? organized properly, it should lead to no arrests. it is an act of civil disobedience (and disrespect, i might add), but accompanied by the proper signs, slogans, and chants, it will catch media attention across the country -- especially if the media are tipped off beforehand.

``tickle their ribs as you slide in the knife...''

sex, drugs, and, altered states of consciousness

it's an academic sort of paper, removed from a book manuscript because of its subjects.

what the publisher didn't want you to know.

the overall book takes a systems theory approach to the subjects of high sexual arousal, vs. just getting high.

i find the wording of part of his summation to be telling:

Insofar as people are not sufficiently gratified within their ordinary d-SoC [discrete State of Consciousness] and consensus reality, the d-ASCs [discrete Altered State of Consciousness] can appear to offer more satisfying ways of functioning.

it's all about getting gratified...