June 9, 2004

• Whoo, boy…. where do I start?

  Recently I answered some questions asked by CamelJoe. 
  Rachel had wanted to know things like where I live and how I get people
  to read and comment on my site.  She thanked me for my answers and
  reminded me that I hadn’t answered all of the questions.  There’s
  this, too:

  “O
  yeah and also, Like what kind of stuff are you into? I mean are u into
  magic or something? Mind reading? Explain that to me too.”

  I could send her HERE
  and tell her to track down her own answers–God knows I spent enough
  time building that site and putting most of my metaphysical savvy into
  it.  But where’s the fun in that?  Besides, she wouldn’t do
  it.  Anyone unwilling to do the math to find out how old I am
  given that I was born in 1944, or to read where it says in my profile
  that I live, isn’t going to do that much research, is
  she?

  Before I can begin to answer her questions, however, I must figure out
  what she wants to know.  Does she really want to know what I am
  “into”?  Or does she want me to elucidate on what the word
  “psychic” means?  I mean, she asks what I’m into, but then she
  goes on and brings up shit like magic and mind reading.  Ah well,
  I’ll do the best I can with what I have to go on.

  I am into (keenly interested in, and/or moderately-to-extremely well-informed about or actively practicing):

  In no particular order–geology, mineralogy, volcanology, psychology,
  parapsychology, metaphysics, physics, tectonics, electronics, cybernetics, astronomy, astrology,
  photography, terpsichore; craftwork with leather, wire,
  stones and beads;
  culinary arts, horticulture, botany, biology, medicine, healing, neurobiochemistry, herbal
  medicine, shamanism, various methods of divination, puzzles and games
  of all sorts (particularly video RPGs and logic puzzles), reading, writing, communication, semantics,
  semiotic, out-of-body experiences, non-Euclidian geometry,
  non-Chronological time, the Urantia Book,
  recalling past lives (I don’t believe in reincarnation; I remember
  having lived and died before), causality, acausality, anarchy, history
  (and also the past, which is not necessarily the same thing), paleontology, archaeology, the Work
  (work on self as defined by E.J. Gold),
  truth, fact, fiction, service, gnosis, self-hypnosis, altered
  states of consciousness, alternate universes, other dimensions,
  n-space, Chronoldeks and Frandalanks, fnords, chaos, order,
  attention (the power of my focused attention, not
  other people paying attention to me), intelligence, consciousness,
  higher consciousness, “genius” (whatever that is), mind,
  bodymind, bodymindspirit, paradox (especially the metamorphosis
  interface paradox), the transition from Earth-Air-Fire-Water to
  matter-energy-space-time-void, space-time, reality, *
  *list subject to change without notice–if any of you notice anything I’ve left out, let me know

  Magic
  and mindreading–did anyone notice that neither of those things was in
  my list?  Well, I do have some mild interest in the
  prestidigitation and illusionism practiced by those such as David
  Copperfield, but I certainly have no talent for it or skill at
  it.  I’m fascinated by whatever it is that David Blaine
  does, and I’m not really sure that any one word in our current lexicon
  would cover all of that, although I do have some skill at some of the
  things I’ve seen him do.  Nor am I sure that I have words that can
  adequately convey what Greyfox and I do at KaiOaty and the other venues, on this plane, the psychic plane, and in the shamanic Otherworld, where we practice our professions.

  KaiOaty’s FAQ on shamanism
  is a good introduction to shamanic altered-state work.  Greyfox
  and I both do our work in Theta, the shamanic state of
  consciousness.  But that doesn’t say much about WHAT that work is.

  The words commonly used in connection with my work are loaded with multiple meanings and emotional triggers for most people.
   
  “Psychic,” to some Xian fundies, is anathema, the devil’s work. 
  To other misguided morons, it is a synonym for “omniscient.” 
  We’ve only had the noun-form, “a psychic” for a medium or psychic
  practitioner, for about a century.  Before that the word was an
  adjective, meaning “of or pertaining to the soul.”  And I have
  lost count of how many poor spellers have written to me for physic
  readings.

  “Channelling” would be an acceptable word to me, since what I do is
  open-channeling, entering the Theta state and opening my awareness to
  the mind of my client, or to his or her spirit guides, or to the
  collective consciousness, the Akashic Records, whatever.  Do you
  begin to see the difficulty I have with words, here?  Channelling,
  though, in its primary sense, refers to mediumship of the Spiritualist
  sort , bringing forth dear departed ghosts of the clients’ friends and
  relations. (Incidentally, Dr. John Dee, according to oral family
  history, is one of Greyfox’s ancestors.  His mother’s middle name
  is Dee)  Only rarely have I ever channeled an identifiable dead
  person.  One notable that I did channel a few times was Edgar
  Cayce.  What a sweet, courtly, chivalrous man!

  Some of my respected colleagues call themselves “sensitives” or “intuitives”.  That’s vague enough, maybe too vague.

  The word I like best, the one I put on my business card is,
  “oracle”.   “Mouthpiece of the gods” was its original sense,
  but it has evolved.  The tools of my profession, things such as
  runes and Tarot cards, are now commonly referred to as “oracles”
  although I think they are more properly the oracle’s tools.

  I had a leg up, a bit of a head start so to speak, when I got into the
  12-step programs a year ago.  They go through all those steps
  trying to gain and maintain a “conscious contact with God” (as they
  understand Him).  I’ve spent over thirty years, more than half of
  my lifetime, remaining open at all times to incoming messages from
  Spirit and from time to time deliberately seeking out Spirit’s guidance
  on behalf of myself and my clients.

  In The Firebrand,
  Marion Zimmer Bradley tells the story of Troy from the viewpoint of
  Apollo’s Oracle, Cassandra.  When Cassandra explains what she does
  as an oracle, it comes as close as any description I’ve ever found to
  what I do.  She says that when her own common sense does not
  supply an answer to a query, she consults the god.  That works for
  me.

  By the way, life is really interesting for me right now,
  intense.   When I was born, Uranus, the planet that rules
  Aquarius and the New Age, that shakes things up and shifts them around
  suddenly and shockingly, was stationary in the same area of the zodiac
  where the recent Sun/Venus parallel/conjunction occured. 
  Additionally, Venus made a retrograde station last month square my
  natal Sun/Chiron conjunction and opposite my Ascendant.  Around
  the end of this month, she makes a direct station conjunct that
  stationary natal Uranus, trine my natal Mars-Moon-Midheaven
  conjunction, and square my natal Mercury-Jupiter-Ceres conjunction.

  I have blogged about what I call my curse-blessing pattern
  but I seldom think about it in terms of curses and blessings.  I
  use that terminology to communicate with the majority of ordinary
  people, the ones who see the Tao as a yin/yang symbol.  It’s the
  Tao to me, and the life I experience through that multitude of
  astrolgical aspects that may appear to be a bunch of ups and downs is
  just intense to me.

  • 10:31 pm
  • 5 Comments