Void Dictionary

PERICHORESIS

The word is Greek, as you might imagine: peri "around" + choreio "dance." But for the Greeks "dancing" wasn't the aimless shuffling we do. It was more like ballet. "Choreography" is a lot closer to the idea -- in which particular movements are carefully planned and executed. Travel from one dimension to another occurs simultaneously on all levels of reality. We travel in and out of the astral during sleep every night and think nothing of it. And, as you know, when the shaman interfaces with the earth by taking narcotic mushrooms or cacti into his system, he's moving deliberately and consciously between universes.

Parallel worlds stretch horizontally from sinister to dexter, or rather, from increasing shades of darkness to increasing degrees of light. Beings entering from the darkside are perceived by us not as merely ignorant but as demonic, whereas the wisdom of the beings from the lightside stands so far beyond our recognition that we see them simply as angelic beings. Depending on the level of reality that we happen to occupy, the dark and light worlds are perceived as more or less similar to the world we currently inhabit. On some levels of reality, the transfiguration is reversed and we perceive them as inhabiting regions above and below a horizontal plane of reality that stretches into inaccessible temporal limits of Past and Future. In such a world, reality is a given that is perceived as revealing itself only at such Past and Future vanishing points -- Alpha and Omega.

Everywhere horizontal parallel plane meets vertical parallel levels and an Aeon is established, symbolized by a cross. If the cross, however is not circumscribed by a circle (the familiar symbol of cross in circle, representing "earth"), there is no cohesion and the center does not hold. The so-called "extremes," in fact, are not extremes at all, but merely their own opposites in a spinning circle.

Because of the nature of infinity, we have to recognize that we may never stand at any of the four extremities, but always only at the exact center of the omniverse.

Notice also that in any formal religious painting, the god or saint is always placed in the exact center. If he is raised too high from the center, the lower world is given undue importance and power, because, after all, in completely "secular" pictures, the God has been raised so high as to have been left out of the picture altogether! Placing the God too far down divests him of his divinity because his intensity looks, on our level, simply grotesque. Likewise, if the God is placed too far to the left or right, an imbalance is also created.

Thus, uncircumscribed, the ends of the cross stretch unchecked into the infinite four directions and an uncontrollable wickedness is set forth into all manifestations. Without the "earthing" of the cross, there is no manifestation. The extremities lead only into infinite "otherness" and delusion. It is the inner being at the solar plexus that is the heart of the universe. When we nail (i.e., Christianize) the higher spirit of man to an ancient quadratic event, the center is blocked and closed forever. Moreover, the center has been locked in the past, away from the Eternal Now. Until the nail (Xtianity) has been pulled out, no further evolution is possible and Death will prevail.

The way out is toward the central, innermost point.

The parallel world-planes are accessible at all times. We move in and out of them constantly, but are mostly unaware of having done so. Occasionally we get the feeling that "things are suddenly different" or that "something is about to happen" and that means we've inadvertently stepped into a new probable world that is much different from the ones we've hitherto occupied. You can move back into the world you've just left, only if you do so at once.

Whatever can be imagined, exists, will exist or has existed. Whatever has existed or will exist continues to exist now because time is one of the four real dimensions of things. Alongside this Reality there are an infinite number of co-existent realities of equal "solidity" and "substance." There are also an infinite number of "probable" realities and an infinite number of "possible" worlds. A moment's reflection will show that if this is so, then, obviously, available access to them must not be merely possible, but inevitable. Jane Robert's Seth describes the infinite "probable worlds" stretching out in either direction from this one. The closest ones being hardly distinguishable from this, as we progress outward, the probable worlds become stranger, increasingly incomprehensible and frighteningly unpredictable. In the fifth dimensional world, four dimensional objects have their own much more complete and solid "substance" which we cannot perceive so long as we inhabit lower planes of being.

You can, however, willingly and deliberately get up and walk from this world into the nearest adjacency and from there to the next, and the next. The only problem is that you're playing roulette. There's no way of telling what kind of world you are moving into.

If you are seeking to avoid some trouble in this world, be advised that things could be a lot worse in the world next door. Moreover, if you leave unsolved problem behind, your karma will continue to take you back there in future lives until eventually you are forced to solve them. On top of that, if you leave muddy footprints behind you as you run through world after world, you'll have added onto your present karma the extra burden of going back to mop them up.

Actual entrance/exit sites are a matter of intuitive perception. Dimensional doorways are not likely, for instance, to be found in your living room. They need to be places you've never crossed before (except as interdimensional thresholds). It's best to look for two pillars to pass between -- a couple of tall trees in a forest or park make excellent pillars. The more difficult the access the better. And the direction and angle of entrance are crucial. Select a "picture" framed by the trees as most nearly representing the world you want to leave behind you and before you a picture of what intuitively or esthetically looks to be an improvement of that. Make sure that nothing passes across your line of vision as you are actually walking through. If necessary, keep your eyes closed or look down at your feet.

At first the difference between adjacent worlds is scarcely discernible. Variations only become immediately evident at some distance. But if you are observant, you will eventually begin to notice tiny, subtle changes for the better (or worse). By the time these changes become evident, it's already too late to go back where you came from. The metaphors of artistic symbolism, religion and magic can also assist in perichoretic travel. With the enhanced ability to will and to imagine, the human mind can perceive parts of alternate realities with increasing clarity and may begin to see how to transform the reality we normally inhabit. In fact, so many are the pathways to alternate experience, it's a wonder anyone still believes that reality has but a single face!

There is, to be sure, ultimately only the One Plenum in which everything else transpires, but that sphere transcends experience in the Void of Nirvana.

Although, as we've seen above, there are relatively easy methods of interplanary travel (between planes), the ability to discover significant doorways into alternate dimensions, advanced perichoresis, not only requires an out-of-the-ordinary state of consciousness, but is a difficult technique in its own right, mastered properly only by experienced shamans. For instance, travel through time in the past requires us to move "forward" (i.e., towards the Beginning of Time) simply by ignoring vast areas of experience and being -- as we also do in the present -- in order to maintain a strict continuity of our own. Travel from the future (i.e., the End of Time), however, even though employing the same declination, creates an ever-thickening wall behind us, preventing all possibility of return to the starting point.

Kenneth Grant (Outside the Circles of Time) provides us with insights into the sexual avenue of interdimensional perichoresis and at the same time describes the procedure for creating a "moonchild." In his system, the door to our world opens inward in order for us to receive extratellurian immigrants.

Bipolar human sexuality, explains Grant, parallels cosmogenesis and the sacred void corresponds to the female vagina. Everything comes out of and falls back into this same eternal darkness. The creative light is sucked into its bottomless depths where it is swallowed up by vampiric blackness. Therefore, the doorway to the vacuum or zero of space is a priestess who has been chosen for her "master of the art of dream control." By allowing herself to become a mirror of impression-reception, she is able to generate illusions, "for all form is fantasy, and exists only in the dreaming mirror of the mind."

A material looking glass is placed above her, slanted to receive the starlight. Now, by her psychic ability she can project whatever star morph the magician requires onto the looking glass. A second mirror, creating an infinite regression reflection is placed 11 feet away, eleven being the number of the famous 11th Pathway of Black Magic. The circle of Daath is the corresponding doorway in the Qabalah.

Thereupon the priest uses his penis as the intergalactic conduit of the astro-seminal energy. His vibrations and invocations encourage the dream-manipulating priestess to focus the desired star-morph entity onto the mirrors. In the ultimate orgasm of priest, priestess and dream-entity, the eldolon rises briefly to life and erupts from the mirror as its starseed transmission runs down from the star to impregnate her. The zygote achieved by this cosmocopulation is a unique blend of human and extraterrestrial "genes."

According to most students, monstrous beings invisible to ordinary consciousness are entering our universe in unprecedented numbers, through this same interdimensional sexual doorway. (Apparently our time is a vector of unique significance.) The fantasy film, Ghostbusters, was a facetious rendering of this understanding, but revealed a good deal more than most viewers realized. Kenneth Grant teaches a heterosexual tantrism by which one may ride out again through the same door on the back of one of these demonic beasts and thereby escape. He calls this, again, the 11th Pathway. Others propose that there are homosexual and even solitary practices what serve this purpose equally well.

Sex and death are the two most common and well-known methods of conveyance between worlds, but such exclusively Scorpionic merkabahs are by no means the only ones. All of these methods follow the horizontal direction of planes to left and right, from darkness into light, or vice versa. There is also travel in the vertical direction from layers of reality and consciousness above and below. These cris-crossing horizontal and vertical planes endlessly extend out and recede into the vastnesses. Some of the planes are commonly thought, by the average person, to be "schizophrenic" because they appear to leave the traveller suspended in his "own little world." But such planes are of great importance to the magician or yogin. Reality, we must understand, is entirely a matter of the manipulation of illusion. The teacher, Gurdjieff, once pointed out that there is only one thing in the entire universe, but it is repeated endlessly in order to provide the illusion of "difference." Even chemistry and physics bear this out. The difference between each element is simply a difference in the number of their atomic electrons: Hydrogen 1, Helium 2, Lithium 3...

Some writers believe that there are denizens of other dimensions who use various perichoretic chariots that resemble the astral projections of those whose time and locality they visit. For Ezekiel and Daniel it was a fiery wheel bearing the tetramorph. For the Dogons it was a star ship. For our great grandfathers in the 19th Century it was frequently an airship. But they aren't just psychic experiences, say the witnesses, ufo's leave evidence behind ... a burned-out circle on the lawn, a map with indecipherable writing, MIBs, etc.

My own interdimensional visits to "the Other Side" have been neither A.D.E.'s nor OOBE's. They have occurred either through true-dreaming or by psychotropic methods, i.e., strictly via astral travel. In all, I have several times visited the "conventional" Astral Plane -- or abode of the (after-dead) spirits, three or four times encountered higher beings (although only at a distance), dwelt in the All-Consciousness of All-Phyla and once visited a previous time. Lately I have begun experimenting with ordinary consciousness as a routine means of perichoresis. The occult path I've travelled (until now) has always been the lonely one of the hermit. The beings I've encountered have been the traditional custodians of the pathways, that is to say, those archetypes hovering somewhere between being and non-being. Else they comprise the angels, Gods and daimones of pantheons we already know. But I have increasingly come under the purview of something more important: the existence of what seems to be an infinite number of Eternal Doorways between worlds. These doorways are available to us, of course, under very special circumstances -- that is to say, in altered psychic states lying clearly outside normal consciousness: Yoga, Tantra, sex magic, primitive rites of passage, repetitive rhythms (micro-events), sensory deprivation or stimulation, pain, extreme trauma, trance, all the multifarious REM/sleep/hypnotic states, rushes of adrenaline or fatigue intoxication, epilepsy, metamorphic anomaly, drug intoxication, illness, psychosis proper, thanatolepsy and death. (See SOLIPSISM.)

(See also: PERICHORESIS , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Kenon, To (Greek) The void; term used by the Greek Atomist philosophers, such as Democritus, for the spatial deeps or what the Buddhists call sunyata.

See also ATOMISTS

(See also: Kenon, To , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

MAGIC WORD

The root of all Magic is The Word. Ho Logos . In every culture, the shaman is the person with the largest vocabulary (although, ironically, he may express himself clumsily). He is also the one who sees beyond a person's words to what that person really means. For the magician, as for the poet, words are fluid and changing. Puns, paradoxes and triple/quadruple meanings come and go with varying degrees of exactitude or "correctness". Magical meanings derive from context or intention. Etymology is always strictly, historically, accurate, but usually beyond the safe and unimaginative academic frontiers into the realm of historical intuition. Where history and genuine insight leave off and illusion begins it is sometimes difficult to say.

The Egyptian God of magic, Thoth (or Tahuti, "The Speaker") is self-created and dwells in chaos. As he speaks, each word becomes a created thing (as in Greek a "poem" means anything that has been made). Hunchback: Is Chaos the Void or is it merely the pre-linguistic, Briatic world?

In our time when the television commercial has raped and perverted language for the sake of profit, when words have little more value than the squawking of parrots, it is difficult to imagine that there was once a mighty and living oral tradition. The true magician has not forgotten.

Therefore the adept must be adept with words. The unitiatated believe that Magic is entirely the result of uttering certain catchwords or phrases: "Hocus-Pocus-Dominocus!" or "Hey Presto! Hi Jingo, begone!" Oddly enough, this bit of folk wisdom is not as far off the mark as it might seem. Words do have power. Spells can be evoked. PKD once said that for every individual in the world there exists a special word or phrase, for him alone, which upon his hearing, would result in his death. There is also another word that would heal him of anything. Most of us, however, go through our whole lives without hearing either of these vital words or phrases.

The words used by magicians, when they are not the nonsense syllables of charlatans, tend to be words from archaic languages. Today these are primarily Latin or Greek (in our culture), whereas in the 18th and 19th Century, ritual words were usually taken from Hebrew. Hebrew magic itself borrowed from the earlier Chaldaeans, Babylonians and Assyrians. Finally, there is Buddhism and Yoga from Sanskrit, Tantrism from Tibetan, Taoism from Chinese and Sufism from Arabic.

Says Her Bak , "Do not be negligent in finding and using the right word. Thoth never replies to inexact medus."

(See also: MAGIC WORD , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Shunya Sampadane: (Sanskrit) "Gaining of Nothingness."

A primary text of Vira Saivism (ca 1550) consisting of debates and writings of the Siva Sharanas. Shunya: "the void, the distinctionless absolute;" sampadana: "attainment, realization, enlightenment."

(See also: Shunya Sampadane , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

HYPOSTASIS

Literally, an "underlying principle." Specifically, of the same Divine substance, but separate, like the persons of the Xtian Trinity. It should be distinguished from "nature" (as "the two natures of X: human and divine"). In the early days of Xtianity, Wisdom or Sophia was a hypostasis of God.

IALDABOATH

(Or YALDABAOTH; sometimes SAMAEL.) The Gnostic's Creator demiurge (name means "born of chaos" < yalda, "child" + bohu, "void"). He is little more than a demon, for the world is a creation of evil untouched by the true God, who dwells far away -- who, then, Jahweh is supposed to be is another question altogether, outside of context.

(See also: HYPOSTASIS , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

SEX AND DEATH

Death and the entry into the Abyss of Non-Being is the equivalent of the sexual act. As the orgasm is the ultimate affirmation of the body, so the death spasm is the ultimate denial of the body. On the common level we move in and out of Death and Life, in and out of the Void, from Manifestation to reincarnated Manifestation, endlessly. The Samsaric wheel of birth and death is the endless cosmic act of coitus until the final "orgasm" resulting in the bliss of Nirvana.

777

Reincarnation. We live 700 lives as an animal, 70 lives as a human being learning to overcome the Kama-Manasic levels and, finally, 7 incarnations as an Initiate.

(See also: SEX AND DEATH , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Wu Wei (Chinese) Inaction, inactivity; quiescence, placidity. Used in Taoism in relation to the tao of man, the idea being that "Heaven is emptiness" and by practicing wu wei (inaction) and becoming "empty" one becomes at one with heaven or tao. Reminiscent of the highly mystical import of the Buddhist sunyata (Sanskrit, "emptiness," "void").

In all such words the difficulty is in finding ordinary language to convey the thought. There is not an absolutely empty point of space in all infinitude; what seems to the human senses to be cosmic vacuity is actually complete or absolute fullness, a pleroma as the Gnostics said.

Cosmic sunyata or wu wei is emptiness simply because it lacks the lowest forms of matter -- forms and bodies which are like the spume or bubbles on the sea of cosmic reality, which to human senses is empty because invisible, intangible, and not subject to sense perception.

(See also: Wu Wei , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Audlang (Icelandic) (from audr void + langr long)

One of several heavens of the Norse Eddas; one of "the three gradually ascending planets of our 'Chain' " (SD 2:100), these unseen globes usually designated E, F, and G in theosophical literature. Audlang is evidently one of the "shelves" (planes) of substances different from our matter, of which these unseen globes are built. Beyond Audlang lie other heavens: Grimnismal in the Edda enumerates twelve mansions of the gods on their appropriate shelves.

(See also: Audlang , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

SATORI

Zen enlightenment, characterized by sudden, all-encompassing vision or complete understanding, as a result of a breakthrough from mediation. It lies beyond discrimination and differentiation and may endure from a mere intuitive flash to the eternal Void itself. Called No-Thought or No-Mind, it is considered the beginning of Zen training, the end of which is complete Non-Duality.

(See also: SATORI , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Arba-Il 'arba`-'el (Hebrew) (from 'arba` four + 'el divinity)

Four great divinities synthesized into a unity; mystically the four are one, precisely as the divine triad in nearly all ancient religious philosophies are both a divine unity and a trinity -- one in three, three in one, according to the Christian system. "This is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple one emanated the whole Kosmos.

First from one emanated number two, or Air, the creative element; and then number three, Water, proceeded from the air; Ether or Fire complete the mystic four, the Arba-il" (SD 1:447). "These are the ten Sephiroth out of Space (or the Void); One, from the Soul of the 'Elohim (or divinities) of living beings emanated Soul (Air); from the Air Water; from the Water Fire or Ether"; and from this last the manifested universe (Sepher Yetzirah 1:9).

See also AHATH RUAH ELOHIM HAYYIM.

(See also: Arba-Il , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

TIME

Adeste, O Tempora Omnia! ("Be now, All Ye Times!") According to Merlin and others, mortals tend to face the opposite direction from that which time actually flows, as when we are seated in a train facing away from the engine. But it is the frozen past that unfolds, not the blazing future. We move away from becoming into the permanence of that which finally is. We alter continuously the shape of our history as we live it backwards. We watch the world recede rapidly as we move into the Nothingness of the Void and are swallowed up by it. However, this old linear view of time is abruptly being replaced by a new understanding of time as an exradiating web with ourselves at the center. The 20th Century has become the most time-obsessed period in history, and thus one of the most confused.

Kenneth Grant defines time as "subjectivity" and space as objectivity," the future as "implicit" and the past as "explicit." Despite the eye-opening insights these definitions provide, they still present time as having concrete existence.

FTL speeds flatten time to zero because light released only as electrons takes quantum leaps in the evolution of matter. In other words, electrons have to be released in order for matter to evolve (i.e., change), in fact, in order for matter to exist, period. Existence is a kind of "fire" or transmutation. And you know (see REALITY), photons appear only when someone actually observes (interacts with) them, because Being and Mind are one. We can't separate the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) -- so if you could succeed in extracting "water" or "fire" you'd wind up with nothing at all. But part of "earth" (the 4th part) is also earth, that is, an infinite replification (hologram) of itself -- boxes inside boxes in infinite regression; and every part is exactly alike, each particle is the entirety.

Inside the holo-mind, the stoppage of time is a play-back of Zeno's Paradox. That is, it decreases by infinite halves, except that one can no longer step out, is locked into halving. This is how annihilation is possible... but we digress.

Time is not some abstract "duration" imposed from outside but is built into the structure of things. There is a secret known to very few initiates, that one of the elements is fictitious, i.e., an abstraction devised merely to connect the others. Our postmodern problem is that we can't decide whether that's Time or Space, because they called it simply "Air." I guess we can work backward -- the nature of air, unlike that of the other elements, is for molecules in its medium to repel other molecules. Earth doesn't repel. It attracts. Water doesn't repel, it allows molecules to pass across one another's paths without obstruction, to flow. Fire doesn't repel, it fuses and spreads. Air alone moves towards separation and disintegration, as the present constantly disengages from past moment to past moment. (Future never does come into existence, does it? Tomorrow literally never comes. It is a physical impossibility).

The "duration" of an ice cube is not really it's "fourth" dimension, but simply a description of water moving from one form (ice) to another (water) and it is at "no time" anything other than H2O. The "duration" of a life is almost meaningless. What has "endured"? The mewling babe or the grizzled old hunchback? What I'm getting at is that duration is such a philosophical term that sub specie aetemitatis it eventually ceases to have any pragmatic importance.

Well, then, if there is no future, how did I get here from the Past? The billions scream for illusions. And through the medium of herbs and drugs, the minds of ages past, present and potential can and do intertwine. It is called the principle of bilocalism, or being in two places at the same "time." As I lie upon my lion rug, dreaming of the 20th Century in my hut with the crossed spears over the doorway, I have entered one of the spirit worlds where time no longer counts. In the same way, I can entrance myself into "the year 1999" or (with a final twist) the year "2013" and this sorcerors have done since any of us can remember. But there is a wall that begins to thicken as we approach the 21st Century. Beyond this it soon becomes impossible to pass (apart from the 2013 "bubble"). That outer wall has been known to exist, since the seers of Egypt and Babylon first perceived it, thousands of years ago. It is the limit of this Aeon -- and it is a ring-pass-not of dense, dark flame.

Of course it's all an illusion. There is no future. What we're looking at is always the present. Infinite knowledge? Well, yes, obviously omniscience has always been there. All you have to do is walk into it. And, yes -- the crossing of infinite parallel lines -- all outcomes equally probable. But, again, it's the "improbable" that always has the edge. The world will actually "end" long before 1999 or 2012 -- the "Implosion" is building up and up. Those are only the uttermost limits. The Three are already at hand.

(See also: TIME , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Epicureans

Followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC). The Epicurean school in Athens consisted of a number of people living together in accordance with the master's teachings.

Most of our knowledge of these teachings comes from Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers and Lucretius's On Nature. Epicurean physics derived from the atomism of Democritus: there exists nothing but atoms moving in void, and their rearrangement accounts for all change. Our cosmos is one of many such temporary arrangements of atoms, brought into being by purely natural forces. Our souls are also perishable collections of atoms, perceiving the world by means of the atoms emanating from the surfaces of objects.

Perfect, imperishable, blessed gods exist, but, contrary to popular opinion, their perfection entails that they cannot have any projects or concerns and so do not intervene in our world. It is good for human beings to respect and admire these beings but not to expect rewards or punishments from them.

Epicureanism was concerned, above all, with ethics, with providing a practical guide to living a happy life. Notoriously, Epicureans saw this as a matter of fulfilling the natural human desire for pleasure. But contrary to the ancient prejudices against them, they did not advocate a life of reckless, sensual pleasure seeking. Rather, they recommended only those pleasures caused by the satisfaction of natural, necessary desires (e. g. , for food) and not those that are unnecessary or involve pain (e. g. , desire for delicious but unhealthy food). The ideally happy life was one of bodily health and "freedom from anxiety. "

(See also: Epicureans , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

PARSONS, JOHN WHITESIDE

I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote,

marijuana, morphine and  cocaine,

I never know sadness but only a madness

that burns at the  heart and the brain

I see each charwoman, ecstatic inhuman,

angelic,  demonic, divine.

Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon

that  brims with ambrosial wine.

So goes a poem written by magician Jack Parsons, head of the California lodge of the O.T.O. (1944-52), as privately printed in a 1943 issue of The Oriflamme. This was, synchronistically enough, as Robert Anton Wilson has pointed out, but a few weeks before the discovery of LSD.

All of Crowley's disciples struggled valiantly to "discover the identity of the hidden God" within them, their "True (Thelemic) Will" and to find a way to implement their knowledge. Their endings were mostly dismal. Those who claimed success in the Great Work ceased all further activity and led lives thereafter of total obscurity. One of them, Frater 210, Jack Parsons, claimed success, only to go up in flames shortly thereafter.

Jack Parsons was a co-founder of The California Institute of Technology. His contributions to the aerospace industry and nuclear research were so considerable that he has the unique distinction of being the only North American sorcerer in the 20th Century to have had a mountain on the moon named after him. He was also one of Aleister Crowley's more bizarre disciples.

He was born on October 2, 1914, in Los Angeles, California. The only offspring of divorced parents, he spent a solitary and uneventful childhood. He devoted himself, as solitary children do, to reading and daydreaming. He also harbored a grudge against authority and interference and nursed a rebellious spirit. His studies led him into aerospace technology, but by temperament he was apparently not a scientist and his life did not truly begin until 1939, when an acquaintance, Wilfred T. Smith, introduced him to Aleister Crowley's writings and invited him to join his Agap‚ Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Wilfred T. Smith, or Frater 132, had ostensibly been a special protege of Crowley's, who had decided for astrological reasons that Smith was a god imprisoned in human flesh. This seems curious to us now, because Smith's behavior was totally psychopathic. The truth is that Smith had fallen into disfavor with Crowley, who had decided the man was turning the O.T.O.'s California Lodge into a cheap love cult, which Crowley considered a "slimy abomination." As soon as Parsons came into the order, Smith grabbed Parson's wife, Helen, as his very own familiar and had a child by her. Thereupon Parsons abandoned her and took her younger sister, Betty, as his mistress and magickal partner. This arrangement appeared to work well enough for him and he soon advanced into the inner circles of the lodge. Meanwhile, Crowley very cleverly gave Smith a specific formula for his apotheosis and ordered him to resign in order to identify this God within. This was the easiest way of getting Smith out of the Lodge so that Parsons could be put in charge. Immediately, Smith's star began to fall. He conceived a hatred for Parsons and "attacked him astrally." Kenneth Grant in his Magical Revival recounts a curious hallucination or dream that Parsons underwent with a black-caped figure whom he transfixed with knives and eventually drove away.

But now Parsons, determined to repeat his initial disasters, brought in a mysterious "Frater X" as his secretary and who seemed a promising candidate for the lodge which Parsons had now taken over. His new friend, however, also proved to be a rogue and quickly wormed out of Parsons the top-secret psycho-sexual and magical techniques of the Agape Lodge. Soon thereafter, Frater X got him to enter a business venture with him, with Parson's money as the lion's share of the investment. Next Frater X persuaded him to sell the property that was the headquarters of the Lodge. Then he and Betty went on a yachting cruise around the world. Now that Frater X had reduced him to poverty, Parsons had to earn his living in an "aircraft company." What it is about the occult that could possibly interest dreary U.S. government agents defies the imagination, but Parsons was, after all, working for the government. So by now the O.T.O. was swarming with U.S. intelligence agents posing as members!

Since his mistress had also been stolen from him, Parsons set about, by evocation (and ritual masturbation supervised by Frater X), to obtain an Elemental Spirit to take the place of Betty. And in 1946 he wrote to Crowley that he had actually found such an elemental -- a woman named Marjorie Cameron. She soon became his second wife. Crowley wrote to warn him to avoid excessive devotion to an elemental, but his warning had little effect... Now Parsons contacted an "Intelligence" who spoke to him, directly at first. It was not long, however, before he began speaking through Fr. X, who, it seems, had returned and been forgiven! This time Frater X informed Parsons that he was "overshadowed by an Angel with flaming hair." Parsons now set about to make a Moonchild -- a procedure that must take place at a time when the moon is "void of course" or without earth influence. This endeavor annoyed the dying Crowley very much. In fact, by now, Crowley was thoroughly disgusted with Parsons and the Californians. At this point Parsons took the "Oath of the Abyss" and the magical name of "Belarion Armilus All Dajjal Anti-Christ." In 1948 he took the oath of the Antichrist and in 1949 penned his autobiographies. Finally he took up the "Black Pilgrimage," a terrible path forcing him to chose between suicide, madness and the Oath of the Abyss. In this endeavor he would open himself up to the influence of the demon, Choronzon.

Not long after that, in June of 1952, Parsons began a dangerous invocation in a last ditch effort to release his Will. He called upon an Aethyr who had already brought disaster to a fellow magus (Kelley), backed up by a sexual magick of his own. In his further rituals with the woman of the flaming hair and the invocation of the Lady of Babalon (not to be confused with "Babylon") there are constant calls to fire and flame, "Flame is out Lady, flame is her hair. I am flame" (In this case, "fire" refers to its opposite, "blood.") Suddenly, while working in his lab in Pasadena, he dropped a phial of fulminate of mercury and burst up in a terrible explosion -- ordinary fire being the opposite and balancing complement of blood.

Twenty years after his fiery death, official maps depicting the dark side of the moon prominently honored his many aerospace contributions with "Parson's Crater." Perhaps this act was fully intended as a deliberate pyrrhic mockery, suggesting mythic figures of old who were translated to the skies as immortal stars. Parsons is not the only mortal to have achieved celestial recognition without apotheosis, but he's the only one who deliberately tried, failed and then made it by default.

What makes Parsons so intriguing, no doubt, is that he appears in so many footnotes by so many different authors and yet hardly anything is known about him. Moreover, trying to cut a path through his zigzagging life is extremely frustrating for the biographer. Most lives, whether dull or interesting, tend to tell us something about the person, but Parsons' life seems almost deliberately labyrinthine. His writings are not easily unearthed and jealously guarded. The reason for that isn't hard to discern. Parsons was a social and intellectual rebel during an era of rigid conformity. He was not only the author of the two-volume book about the Anti- Christ: The Black Pilgrimage and The Manifesto of the Anti-Christ (which eponym he conferred on himself) but also claimed, says Colin Wilson, that he had been advised by a Higher Power "to declare war on all authority that is not based on courage and manhood... the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police and to call an end to restriction and inhibition, conscription, compulsion, regimentation and the tyranny of the laws."

The "Higher Power," it turned out, was an even more elusive character: our old friend, the sinister Frater X.

Until quite recently the Identity of Frater X remained unknown. Rumor had it that he had lived to a very old age in fame and luxury from the misuses of the magickal secrets that he had stolen. His identity remained a mystery until the late 1980's when it was revealed in several places at once that Frater X was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, father of Dianetics and Scientology.

Even initiates may not always recognize the daring, inspired and cosmic scope of Parson's effort. How much Hubbard was involved is uncertain, but that extraterrestrial contact of some kind was made through Parsons' rift in the wall between worlds was revealed, according to Kenneth Grant, by the Babalon working. He and Achad began this only a year before Crowley's death in 1947 and that year coincided with the first wave of ufo "invasions." "Parsons opened a door and something flew in" says Grant. Whatever that may be, something more than Babalon and channeled writings, we now realize, erupted into our world and continues to pour in, moving at weird and mocking variance to our sublunary science and reality systems. Crowley's and Achad's initiations, says Grant in his Outside the Circles of Time, led up to the "40's framed by AL. III. 46, the number of Mu, Cry of the Vulture of Maat and key of the mysteries" and that in turn finally "fulminated in Hiroshima of 1945." Grant wrote those words in 1980, before AIDS and the greenhouse effect, quoting from Crowley: "Now the 80's cower before me and are abased."

Ego and Initiation run the same hurdles. Ego interferes with the natural course of apotheosis. And for Grant, psychiatry is out of the question. It exposes the sensitive, personal and private talismans and techniques needed for reshaping social progress to the killing glare of mindless immediacy and expediency. Initiation, says Parsons himself, must proceed as best it can through and past the barriers... "until the misty bastions of infantile Trawenfells change into the rocks and crags of eternity; the garden of Klingsor into the City of God."

The Xtian idea of a God descending to become a man is the exact reverse of Magick. If Crowley's goal was to release the God hidden inside every human being, Jack Parsons dared to go a step further. His intention was to raise Hell to earth's level, to elevate our hellworld a step closer to Heaven! Since he was by nature a quiet and humble man, such a fusilary and hubristic ambition proved so powerful a charge for him that it burst out of the astral plane and destroyed him on the physical plane.

(See also: PARSONS, JOHN WHITESIDE , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Gungnir (Scandinavian) (from gunga to swing)

In Norse myths, the spear wrought for Allfather Odin by the giant-god Loki and the dwarf Dvalin. The name seems an allusion to alternating opposites, such as activity and rest, or spirituality and materiality.

Gullveig (thirst for gold, wisdom) was transfixed on it and burned, "thrice burned and thrice reborn, again and again, yet still she lives." It was then that Odin hurled his spear into the throng of gods, thus instigating the war in heaven which caused the aesir (active gods) to be ousted from Asgard, leaving the vanir in possession of their heavenly abode.

The vanir are "water gods": cosmic deities having reference to the mystic void, the waters of space. The vanir do not participate directly in our system of worlds, whereas the aesir are the creative powers in our universe and dwell in its globes, seen and unseen.

(See also: Gungnir , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Two Truths

1)    Relative or conventional, everyday truth of the mundane world subject to delusion and dichotomies and

2)    the Ultimate Truth, transcending dichotomies, as taught by the Buddhas.

According to Buddhism, there are two kinds of Truth, the Absolute and the Relative.

The Absolute Truth (of the Void) manifests "illumination but is always still," and this is absolutely inexplicable.

On the other hand, the Relative Truth (of the Unreal) manifests "stillness but is always illuminating," which means that it is immanent in everything. (Hsu Heng Chi/P.H. Wei). Pure Land thinkers such as the Patriarch Tao Ch'o accepted "the legitimacy of Conventional Truth as an expression of Ultimate Truth and as a vehicle to reach Ultimate Truth.

Even though all form is nonform, it is acceptable and necessary to use form within the limits of causality, because its use is an expedient means of saving others out of one's compassion for them and because, even for the unenlightened, the use of form can lead to the revelation of form as nonform" (David Chappell).

Thus to reach Buddhahood, which is formless, the cultivator can practice the Pure Land method based on form.

 (See also: Two Truths , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

Gungnir (Scandinavian) (from gunga to swing)

In Norse myths, the spear wrought for Allfather Odin by the giant-god Loki and the dwarf Dvalin. The name seems an allusion to alternating opposites, such as activity and rest, or spirituality and materiality.

Gullveig (thirst for gold, wisdom) was transfixed on it and burned, "thrice burned and thrice reborn, again and again, yet still she lives." It was then that Odin hurled his spear into the throng of gods, thus instigating the war in heaven which caused the aesir (active gods) to be ousted from Asgard, leaving the vanir in possession of their heavenly abode.

The vanir are "water gods": cosmic deities having reference to the mystic void, the waters of space. The vanir do not participate directly in our system of worlds, whereas the aesir are the creative powers in our universe and dwell in its globes, seen and unseen.

(See also: Gunavat , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

MOTHER GODDESS -

1. natural mother of all things or mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, the principle of them that dwell in heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the gods and goddesses, at whose will the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the seas and the lamentable silences of hell are dispersed. (Isis)

2. archetypal feminine aspect of the Godhead.

3. mediatrix, creator of forms, the celestial energy that gives birth to the world and all beings.

4. Mother Earth, Mother Nature.

5. space, the void field of consciousness.

6. time, who devours all her children.

7. Tao, way of gentle turning back (Lao-Tzu).

• Ala - Ibo Amaterasu-ami-kami-Shinto Anoba-Gaelic
• Aphrodite-Cypriot Asasa Ya-Yoruba  Astarte-Phoenician
• Athena-Greek Bellona-Roman  Benten-Japanese
• Brigid-Celtic Ceres-Eleusinian Ceridwain-Celtic
• Coatlicue-Nahuatl Chicomecoatl-Nahuatl Chom Lhari-Bhutanese
• Cybele-Phrygian Danu-Druidic  Demeter-Greek
• Devi Sri-Balance Diana-Cretan  Estanalehi-Navajo
• Fortuna-Roman Freya-Scandinavian Frigg-Scandinavian
• Gaia-Greek Hathor-Egyptian  Hecate-Greek
• Hel-Norse Illamatecuhtli-Aztec Isis-Egyptian
• Ishtar-Babylonian Ixchel-Mayan  Jord-Norse
• Juno-Roman Kali-Indian  Kuan Yin-Chinese
• Lakshmi-Indian Lilith-Hebrew  Luna-Roman
• Magan Mater-Latin Mary-Christian  Mawu-Dahomean
• Mayahuel-Nahuatl Minerva-Greek  Morgan Le Fay-Irish
• Nut-Egyptian Ostara-Germanic  Pachamama-Incan
• Persephone-Greek Pi-hsia Yuan-chun-Taoist Rangda-Balinese
• Saraswati-Indian Sagarmathe-Himalayain Sophua-Gnostic
• Tara-Tibetan Venus of Menten-Neolithic Venus of Lespugue-Neolithic
• White Goddess-Druidic

(See also: MOTHER GODDESS , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Deva-sarga (Sanskrit) (from deva divine + sarga emanation, emission, creation)

Divine emanation or emission; the creation of the gods, the last of the first series of creations enumerated in the Vishnu-Purana. It "has a universal reference; namely, the Evolutions in general, not specifically to our Manvantara; but the latter begins with the same over and over again, showing that it refers to several distinct Kalpas.

 For it is said 'at the close of the past (Padma) Kalpa the divine Brahma awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the universe void.' Then Brahma is shown going once more over the 'seven creations' in the secondary stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective plane" (SD 1:454).

(See also: Deva-sarga , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Atomists Certain ancient Greek philosophers, especially of the school of Leucippus and Deomcritus, who taught that all things arose from atoms (atomoi) and a vacuum (kenon). By atoms Democritus meant "indivisible particles of substance containing in themselves the potentialities of all possible future development, self-moved, self-driven . . . spiritual indivisible entities, the ultimates of being, self-conscious, spiritual monads.

"Nor by his word kenon, or void, did he mean an utter emptiness, as we misconstrue that word. He meant the vast expanses of the spatial deeps, Space, in fact, which this infinite host of monads filled" (MIE 34-5). The atomists became more materialistic as time passed. The equivalent Hindu atomist schools are the Nyaya and Vaiseshika.

(See also: Atomists , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Buri, Bore (Icelandic, Swedish) (from burdr birth)

Primeval progenitor of cosmic life in the Norse Eddas. During the "frost giant" (long ages of nonlife) the cow Audhumla (symbol of fertility) licked salt from the blocks of ice which were all that existed in the Great Void (Ginnungagap). She uncovered the head of Buri, first divine being. From him emanated Bur (which corresponds to the Second Logos of Greek thought), and he in turn gave rise to the trinity of creators -- Odin, Vile, and Vi -- who brought the worlds into being.

In Scandinavian lands King Bore or Buri still symbolizes the cold which reigns during the long winter.

(See also: Buri, Bore , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Epicurean Philosophy School founded by Epicurus (b. 341 BC), an atomist philosopher popularly associated with later travesties of his teachings. His actual teachings and way of living prove that his chief aim and good was happiness rather than pleasure; for he taught and practiced abstemiousness of living. In this he reacted to the travestied forms of Platonism which existed in his time, moving away from a barren idealism towards a concrete practicality, trying to substitute realities for empty abstractions, both in philosophy and ethics. For this reason he lays the chief stress on ethics, to the comparative neglect of logic and philosophy.

In philosophy he taught atoms and a void as the cosmic fundamentals; but his atoms were not the material particles of later European science, but the living monads or intelligent souls of the older Atomists. He did not attempt to represent the universe under the form of physical matter, but merely insisted upon the substantial nature of all being and life in protest against the impractical idealism which had reduced significant values to unrealities.

Again, Epicurus based everything on sensation in order to bring people back to actual experience, as opposed to vain outlooking speculation, as a solid foundation for an ethic. He was not an atheist in the modern sense, for he explicitly says that there are gods, but not the gods of the anthropomorphic religionists. In the same way, he did not teach a selfish individualism, but that the way to final freedom is within oneself; and when he depreciates the State and sundry social or political theories, he was merely opposing the futile abstractions then prevalent under these names.

(See also: Epicurean Philosophy, Epicurus , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Niflheim (Icelandic), Nebelheim (German) [from nifl mist, nebula + heim home]

In Norse mythology, the home of mists in which nebulae form. When the heat from Muspellsheim (home of fire) meets the mist-cold vapors of Niflheim in Ginnungagap (the gaping void), Ymer, the frost giant, comes into being. He is used by the gods to create "victory worlds" wherein souls can evolve. Niflheim has also been regarded as a Hades where the dead are sent, but this appears to refer to the disposition of the forms (bodies) of departed souls.

(See also: Niflheim , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)