The rhythmic sound of an electric toothbrush is followed by the pound of a needle. Then comes the wipe of a cooling towel and a soothing bit of Vaseline. Sound, pound, wipe, lubricant. Sound, pound, wipe, lubricant. 1,2,3,4—1,2,3,4—1,2,3,4—1,2….The sky is misty grey and the hills are twenty-one shades of lush green. The uphill trail is soggy from days of rain; scattered with white quartz from pea to egg size and various stages of sheep dung. I’m alone—but I’m not. I can hear my boots, but not hers. A gentle hand brushes down my sleeve. I put my hand back, but she didn’t take it.
“Can you answer me a question?”
“What’d you say?” Cat said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Ahh. yea. I’m fine. Just kinda somewhere else.”
“You need a break?”
“Naw. I’m good.”
“Okay. Let me know when you need me to stop for a bit.”
The rhythm of Cat’s tattooing resumed.
As I passed the Medicare threshold, my wife paid for adding some new body art to my collection. I wasted no time making an appointment. When I had opened the door to the small tattoo shop in old town Scottsdale, the distinct smell of a desert antiseptic—sage brush meets rain—took me back to the hours I had already spent there. Cat, the tattoo artist, turned to look at me. Her name does her justice. She stood frozen in place, squinting, as the outside halo of sunlight rained into the room. The door closed behind me and I stepped into the Light of the New Moon. Cat’s surreal mystical art that hangs on the walls, drummed psychic energy into the space. She seemed to be one with her art and studio and I feel privileged to be one of her many living canvasses. She’s the artist who has given design to my vision and ink to every tattoo on my body.
“Oh. Good to see you,” she said. “Come around here and take a look at what I have for you.”
She handed me her large IPad. On it was a completed drawing of the draft she had shown me via text a few weeks ago. This image would add to the work we had begun together several years ago. The new tattoo would fill the right side of my back; a female blue winged alchemist floats with priestly arms outstretched in prayer. She is the alchemist, the anima mundi, who is creating her philosopher’s stone of magic. The tattoo would eventually be completed over two sessions and seven hours. The image on the opposite side of my back had taken three sessions totaling eleven hours; a raven with a peacock tail rising from the gatekeeper’s cauldron. The mystical bird is flying above the sun toward the moon. The artwork on my arms and chest augment my mythic pilgrimage and have taken nearly fifteen hours of work. These tattoos, and whatever will follow, are a pictorial explanation of my personal myth; the mystical work of an alchemist.
I started my tattoo skin journal after walking across Ireland. A reoccurring dream, a vision, and a talking raven began the continual dialogue with my ally who lives in the psychoidal world. This is the world of a visionary experience, the luminous state of mind where Carl Jung wrote “The Red Book.” Jung’s two-year calligraphy and mandala journal of creative imagination is the external expression of his interior soul work. The tattoos you see had already been etched on the soul of Life’s Alchemist.
The rhythm of Cat’s artistry and the constant pounding of the needle create a soul opening for me to slide into another level of consciousness. A mental, physical, and psychic state that replicates walking the pilgrim’s trail while fasting. The exhaustion and hunger create a crack in the egg of this world’s reality, creating a labyrinth which leads to where the unseen becomes visible.
“I can feel you behind me. Why won’t you take my hand?”
Not expecting an answer, I tightened the straps on my pack, relieving some of the stress on my aching shoulders. A turn in the trail took me from the open fields and up into an ancient forest of giant mountain ash. The leaves glistened with an Irish mist, while the intertwined limbs eclipsed the sun. The breeze sang like a spectral choir. In some recent past, the heavy rains had so softened the ground that high winds toppled a few of the giant trees, exposing a root base higher than the roof of a house. The bog blackened roots stood as tombstones to another Aeon. The darkness breathed in and exhaled a purple fog, and I was suspended in timelessness.
“You had a question?” she said.
The gentle confident sound stopped my breathing. I thought I had a question, but her voice infused chaos in my already altered state of mind. I focused what little energy remained on the only sound I had heard for hours. The ancients in the forest sighed waiting for at least some feeble response.
I choked out whispered words, afraid I might hear myself speak. “Have you always been with me?”
The purple cloud thickened with nature’s exhale. Silence held the answer I expected to hear. I kept walking. The trail flattened out and I picked up my pace as a way of distraction for my aching soul. The pregnant air was broken by a laughing raven high above. The Pilgrim walked on while the painting on the wall began to question me. And I foolishly answered back.
I must be the Pilgrim’s Fool. Grail’s cocktail of self-disgust and realization. Or maybe not? I don’t know. Would that make the Christ the Magician? Must be. But Jesus could be the Fool. I think I’ve seen that in a deck somewhere before. No, no. Christ is the Magician. Because that would make a transmigration of Brigid Dubh, the Anam Cara, and the Soror Mystica the High Priestess? Of course. Then Mother Mary, Magdalene, and the other Mary would be the Empress. And the Lover, the Beloved, and the Spirit would be the Emperor. The Empress and the Emperor would be the pair of opposites, two sides of the same coin, the Hermaphrodite. The Pilgrim, the Magician, the Priestess, the Empress are woven into the World of the One. The unified world, the Unus Mundus, everywhere but nowhere. We’re living in it, but we are not. The interior has become the exterior, the unseen—the seen.
“What’s happening to me?”
She said, “Opposites in tension create transmutation; a new reality.”
Cat said. “You okay? You need a break?”
“Oh, I think I’m okay.”
“You got another thirty minutes in ya?”
“Yeah. How long have we been at it?”
“Almost four hours,” she said.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Thursday, January 17, 2019
Nasty Angels
John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World by Jason Louv
Eight in ten Americans believe that angels exist. Fifty-five percent believe they have a guardian angel. The three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all include angels as a significant part of their religious system. Those who buy into angels might equate their ideals to the 1996 film, “Michael” that starred John Travolta. He was an affable and naïve angel who smelled like fresh baked cookies. Few angel fans probably want their guardians to be the opposite of Michael, like the angels who appeared in Kevin Smith’s 1999 film “Dogma.” His angels were engaged in an apocalyptic, though humorous, battle. Historically, the angels of our major religions have a tendency to favor the later.
“Every generation gets its own apocalypse.” Jason Louv’s John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World portrays a realm of angels who are intent on driving human history toward the great apocalypse found in The Revelation of John. Louv’s ouroboros view of human history demands we take the alchemical “black pilgrimage” in hopes to experience the divine gold; the eternal elixir that resides deep within us all. “The true Revelation is that we have never left the Garden at all…we’ve just head tripped ourselves into thinking we have. Revelation means the lifting of the veil—the veil of our own mind that obscures Eden.” Louv’s Eden is the experience of enlightenment, the liberated mind, seeing God “face-to-face,” a state of consciousness humanity has known from the beginning but been taught otherwise by those same religions that think angels smell like fresh baked cookies.
The controversial, but often forgotten figure of John Dee (1527-1608) is the central character in Louv’s historical drama. Dee most likely paved the wave for the emerging scientific mind to evolve in 16th century England. At one time, his personal library exceeded that of the collected volumes of all the royalty, the monasteries, and the universities in the country. Depending on whose history you read, John Dee was either a spiritually wise sage or a genius madman—or both. Such the reasons that Queen Elizabeth I, kept Dee close to her left hand while pushing him with her right. His political and military acumen could be brilliant at times and disastrously miscalculated at others. Dee’s mystical spirituality and alchemical knowledge were to be equally coveted and feared. So convoluted was Dee’s life that historians have done their best to either downgrade his importance or deny his role in global history. Louv, however, provides a disparate interpretation of Dee’s legacy; that of master communicator with angels and an apocalyptic provocateur.
John Dee and the Empire of Angels is appropriately divided into the three sections, which Louv calls “Books”: The Magus, The Angelic Conversations, and the Antichrist. The title of each book is a foretelling. The Magus is a well written biography of Dee. The second book is an excruciatingly detailed journal of Dee’s encounters with angels. And book three exposes the results of the wizard’s work; a connection to the twenty-first century most readers would never imagine.
In Book One, The Magus, Louv does his best to provide the background necessary to decipher Dee’s (and the medieval Renaissance) theology of biblical Hermeticism. Not a philosophy most twenty-first century American Christians might find themselves comfortable in recognizing as their roots, particularly Evangelical Christians. Dee, educated and trained by the best Catholic minds, was unwillingly drafted into the dangers of Reformation’s murky milieu. Between the Inquisition’s torture rack and witch burnings, the theological storms were brewing perpetual destruction.
In Book Two, The Angelic Conversations, Louv takes us deep into Dee’s mental and spiritual world; the Christian of the twenty-first century should be forewarned—this glimpse is not for the religiously naïve. Through personal journals, Louv provides with us the minutia of details that allows Dee to encounter the realm of angels, their language, and their irascible nature. One should never forget that the God of Genesis created both the “Tree of Life” and the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” and both are on glorious and painful display in this story. Dee’s narrative is the child born of the mystical marriage of the dark and light of both the Old and New Testament.
In Book Three, Antichrist, Louv reveals the antichrist’s identity. Don’t think of one individual as the antichrist. Louv takes us through the modern occult world of Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, and L. Ron Hubbard to just name a few of the characters. Louv brings the story to a most timely and pertinent conclusion.
My best recommendation for John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World is to read the final chapter before starting through Louv’s labyrinthine work. Unless you have deep interest in John Dee, communicating with angels (Enochian Magic), alchemy, and the esoteric arts you might not make it through the introduction. Without the readers keen curiosity on the topics he presents, Louv provides only obscure hints and eclipsed clues that might not be enough to move the reader through the first forty-two pages. For the uninitiated, reading the final chapter first, “The Last Jerusalem,” will be more than enough motivation to hang on for the magical ride.
Jason Louv’s book is written with the precision of a journalist, the detail research of a historian, and the spiritual experience of well-traveled pilgrim. While I have studied the topics Louv covered I was not disappointed with the time I invested in this book; in fact, I learned a great deal. This is a beautiful book filled with lovely and important art. Inner Traditions did a wonderful publishing this book.
But the best thing about John Dee and the Empire of Angels is that I imagine both ends of the spiritual spectrum might hate it; most Christians will be shocked and confused while New Age magicians will be disgusted that their roots are so intertwined with the Christian story. Have fun.
Eight in ten Americans believe that angels exist. Fifty-five percent believe they have a guardian angel. The three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all include angels as a significant part of their religious system. Those who buy into angels might equate their ideals to the 1996 film, “Michael” that starred John Travolta. He was an affable and naïve angel who smelled like fresh baked cookies. Few angel fans probably want their guardians to be the opposite of Michael, like the angels who appeared in Kevin Smith’s 1999 film “Dogma.” His angels were engaged in an apocalyptic, though humorous, battle. Historically, the angels of our major religions have a tendency to favor the later.
“Every generation gets its own apocalypse.” Jason Louv’s John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World portrays a realm of angels who are intent on driving human history toward the great apocalypse found in The Revelation of John. Louv’s ouroboros view of human history demands we take the alchemical “black pilgrimage” in hopes to experience the divine gold; the eternal elixir that resides deep within us all. “The true Revelation is that we have never left the Garden at all…we’ve just head tripped ourselves into thinking we have. Revelation means the lifting of the veil—the veil of our own mind that obscures Eden.” Louv’s Eden is the experience of enlightenment, the liberated mind, seeing God “face-to-face,” a state of consciousness humanity has known from the beginning but been taught otherwise by those same religions that think angels smell like fresh baked cookies.
The controversial, but often forgotten figure of John Dee (1527-1608) is the central character in Louv’s historical drama. Dee most likely paved the wave for the emerging scientific mind to evolve in 16th century England. At one time, his personal library exceeded that of the collected volumes of all the royalty, the monasteries, and the universities in the country. Depending on whose history you read, John Dee was either a spiritually wise sage or a genius madman—or both. Such the reasons that Queen Elizabeth I, kept Dee close to her left hand while pushing him with her right. His political and military acumen could be brilliant at times and disastrously miscalculated at others. Dee’s mystical spirituality and alchemical knowledge were to be equally coveted and feared. So convoluted was Dee’s life that historians have done their best to either downgrade his importance or deny his role in global history. Louv, however, provides a disparate interpretation of Dee’s legacy; that of master communicator with angels and an apocalyptic provocateur.
John Dee and the Empire of Angels is appropriately divided into the three sections, which Louv calls “Books”: The Magus, The Angelic Conversations, and the Antichrist. The title of each book is a foretelling. The Magus is a well written biography of Dee. The second book is an excruciatingly detailed journal of Dee’s encounters with angels. And book three exposes the results of the wizard’s work; a connection to the twenty-first century most readers would never imagine.
In Book One, The Magus, Louv does his best to provide the background necessary to decipher Dee’s (and the medieval Renaissance) theology of biblical Hermeticism. Not a philosophy most twenty-first century American Christians might find themselves comfortable in recognizing as their roots, particularly Evangelical Christians. Dee, educated and trained by the best Catholic minds, was unwillingly drafted into the dangers of Reformation’s murky milieu. Between the Inquisition’s torture rack and witch burnings, the theological storms were brewing perpetual destruction.
In Book Two, The Angelic Conversations, Louv takes us deep into Dee’s mental and spiritual world; the Christian of the twenty-first century should be forewarned—this glimpse is not for the religiously naïve. Through personal journals, Louv provides with us the minutia of details that allows Dee to encounter the realm of angels, their language, and their irascible nature. One should never forget that the God of Genesis created both the “Tree of Life” and the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” and both are on glorious and painful display in this story. Dee’s narrative is the child born of the mystical marriage of the dark and light of both the Old and New Testament.
In Book Three, Antichrist, Louv reveals the antichrist’s identity. Don’t think of one individual as the antichrist. Louv takes us through the modern occult world of Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, and L. Ron Hubbard to just name a few of the characters. Louv brings the story to a most timely and pertinent conclusion.
My best recommendation for John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World is to read the final chapter before starting through Louv’s labyrinthine work. Unless you have deep interest in John Dee, communicating with angels (Enochian Magic), alchemy, and the esoteric arts you might not make it through the introduction. Without the readers keen curiosity on the topics he presents, Louv provides only obscure hints and eclipsed clues that might not be enough to move the reader through the first forty-two pages. For the uninitiated, reading the final chapter first, “The Last Jerusalem,” will be more than enough motivation to hang on for the magical ride.
Jason Louv’s book is written with the precision of a journalist, the detail research of a historian, and the spiritual experience of well-traveled pilgrim. While I have studied the topics Louv covered I was not disappointed with the time I invested in this book; in fact, I learned a great deal. This is a beautiful book filled with lovely and important art. Inner Traditions did a wonderful publishing this book.
But the best thing about John Dee and the Empire of Angels is that I imagine both ends of the spiritual spectrum might hate it; most Christians will be shocked and confused while New Age magicians will be disgusted that their roots are so intertwined with the Christian story. Have fun.
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