Drive-Through Loki
Exhaustion leads to strange places. It breeds strange searches for comfort and nurturance, more often than not in self-destruction in Western nations.
I was heading home after a day full of small cuts and defeats, and on Broad Street, heading toward City Hall, I felt the urge to grab some form of comfort food. I wrestled with my morals: Go to Whole Foods and buy some organic chips or go to MacDonalds and get the most horrible, greasy disgusting food possible? The whole concept was to seek irrational security, and I had already been endulging on chips. So, I decided to make a ritual out of this conundrum.
This was to be an invocation of Loki, the gluttonous god of change and vice. I made my way to MacDonald’s, and went for the most endulgent thing on the menu, a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Extra Value Meal. Full of chemicals, death, overprocessing, MSG, plastic cheese, hydrogenated oils, and sodium. It’s gross.
The next step was to enter the state of ravenous consumption. Stripping down to my boxers, I found the back cushion that I normally use for gaming, and threw it up against my door, right next to my altar. I sank down into a full Al Bundy slouch, and let myself disappear, leaving my urge for food, my urge to cram myself full of the worst food around. It’s a weird, shadowy meditative state. The mental house cleared out, and the consumerist fool remained. I perceived a raspy voice, like the lead singer from MLWTTKK, giving me directions on how to proceed.
Then, by the fistful, I crammed the fries into my mouth and chugged the soda, feeling every lukewarm fry slide down. I savaged the burger, the cold cylinders of unrecognizable dead thing, just lost in a frenzy of eating.
Eventually, I made contact. The deity came in the form of a grinning black horse’s head, surrounded by green flame. This has a lot of importance, since one of the major mythological stories of Loki is his shapeshifting into a mare to distract a giant’s work-horse by mating with it, and subsequently giving birth to Odin’s eight-legged steed Sleipnir. The image had arms, but no discernable end, yet gouts of green flame would spew forth at random. Loki spoke, mostly of becoming unclean to persevere, and that to be pure was to become wholly devoid of life and change. He discussed passions, acceptance of consequences, and the moving in between of the ideologically-based Aesir and the passion-based Jotnarr, where being caught between a person can find the truth of existence. I can’t straight up remember all of it, but I do remember enough to know that I’ve been a whole sight different after performing.
The process of this can be repeated through the recognition of a source of guilt, and in a ritual setting, diving into the vice, if it be fast food, drugs, porn, what have you. Food is the only one I’ve done so far. Follow your impulses, be mannerless and gross, and follow each turn through the process. Just feel out what to do, and do it without restraint. The important thing about this is that it be done in private, so that any social mechanisms don’t inadvertently kick in and take you out of the effect. The goal is to get over embarassment of wanting, and often that same guilt fuels its own existence. This allows the participant to use the energy trapped by ideas of guilt to move forward in more transformative ventures. Internal censors afterward seem to become minimalized, and acceptance of desires become actualized. We’ll see what the long-ranging effects are.
The Radiating Eyes of the Peacock’s Tail
Time’s heavy with symbolism. On one of my many, many internet radio stations, a track from Tool’s Aenima, “Eulogy,” came on after years of the album having been lost to financial destitution. Call me cliche, but Tool has a special place in my heart, and amidst the vortices of life going on, it seems a comfort to hear (for as violent and bitter of a song as it is.)
I’ve been trying to utilize altered states as best as I can, lately, with mixed results. In some, I’ve been overcome with jealousy, paranoia, and rage, coming out of the state feeling remorse for my actions while not in my nominal state. In others, I’ve had enough perspective to divorce myself from my neuroses to begin to dissect them and understand why they’re there, and what to do about them. Good or bad, whether a gruesome beast snarls from the depths or an Alchemical genius manifests in sleepless ramblings, that knowledge is fuel. That knowledge is a tool to become something else, something greater.
The key on an altered state is that it’s an alteration, not a primary mode of consciousness. We kid ourselves, but that morning cup of coffee is already sending you on a drug-induced journey of increased mental activity. That beer in the afternoon is undoing locks on muscles, mind, and mouth, albeit on a small scale. Having a base state is dreadfully important, as without it, our minds fly into delusions, into extremes, and the fundamental pain endemic to existence becomes frightening, just as it was when we first popped out from that nurturing womb and into separation. Use sparingly, as they say. Water and sleep are your friends.
I spoke to divinity, but they couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
I have a bear of a time talking to any figures that I see in trance states. Thus far the bird hasn’t had much “Help”(heavy innuendo) when in this area, but plenty of people haven’t really needed it.
As it stands, I was feelin’ kind of lonely one night, so I lit a candle (apple) and some wild rose incense, and konked out, just letting my senses do what they wanted in the semi-dark. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and the week had been taxing, so I had no problem getting into the twilight state. Almost right when that starts, after the muscles started releasing (Yeah, it’s okay to get up and pee when doing these. I had to come to terms with this when I was beginning) I went into the trance.
It’s different with everyone, and with the stimuli involved with it. I had the vision of being on a dirt plane at night, with a distinctly female figure. Her face was an iron mask, sealed off with a Jack Kirby-like design on it. She had long, straw-like hair and a burlap cloak. She was hunched over, and everything about her seemed old, yet not feeble. I kept trying to ask her questions, but any time I would find something like an answer, it never would pan out. Something wouldn’t feel authentic. I’m guessing the lesson is to shut up and wait, which is damned hard for a lad of the ’80s.
Black Tar Tarot, white lines of Runes.
The old bird’s been out of the game for a while. Sometimes life creeps up on a dude. What’s funny about divination is how pulling certain items or getting a particular response seems to impart very personal meanings the more a person gets used to it.
Every night, I pull a rune that sort of encapsulates the following day, and ones that can seem negative tend to have useful results, and ones that seem benign can indicate frustration or disappointment. I guess a part of that is how the person feels about the subject matter. I pull the rune representing humanity, and I get the idea that somehow I’m going to be let down or let someone down, for better or worse. I pull the rune for hail and storms, and often the day points to some measure of adaptivity and joy in the randomness, but I have a tendency to get caught up in the weather. Maybe this just says that I’m a misanthrope who would do better sitting in a freezer with a high-powered fan.
The other thing is that divination’s like gambling: it can get addictive, where a lack of acceptance or surety can have a person pulling one more card, or doing a reading over again, to get the desired result, while wasting away precious daylight shufflig or noodling around in a bag. The stuff pulled doesn’t really dictate action as much as it points to where things could most likely go at that particular time.
But, sometimes the best way to get around that is to quit cold turkey for a few months. It’s sometimes more helpful to be without externalized decision-making processes and to trust in your gut, not your fear. Shit will go wrong at some point, but that isn’t always a bad thing. It’s hard to take the blame when something’s always at hand to be the scapegoat, or act as a tool for such. “Well, I did what the cards said.” “I expected this to happen from this astrological aspect today, and it didn’t, so I can blame the stars.” All the planets did was move in their orbit, and all the cards did was get shuffled while presenting an image. All of the interpretation was done by the diviner, and the blame soundly rests on the person when things go wrong. That’s the tough lesson at the end of any sort of fortune telling: The individual interprets and makes the decision based on that data, and thus the repercussions are on the individual rather than the environment. You only have yourself to blame when your life’s great. You’re the only one making your life suck. Responsibility is the most freeing burden that exists.
Mercury’s in the Shop for 28 Days
Thanks to the spin of the world, and where exactly a planet is in its “year,” and all of that manner of trivia, people on Earth perceive said planets as going in reverse, an effect called “retrograde.” “Retrograde” kind of obviously translates into “moving backward” (retro+gredire). Mercury’s the planet that seems to most often fly into retrograde motion, as its year goes by very fast. But, what does that action represent? Let’s give you an account of a typical, and true Mercury Retrograde moment and work from there.
So, I’m sick, with a dried up caked inside of the head and fevers coming on and off like a pouncing cat. Seeing as I was to be bed-ridden for an entire day, I decided to venture out into the perilously hot, thick, wretched Crock Pot weather. With me, I took the game Final Fantasy 12, which I was looking to trade in for being a pretty, yet ultimately boring game. I see that the sequel to one of my favorite childhood video games, Secret of Mana, had come out. I’m not sure that I can describe to you in full the effect that SoM had on me at that age, but beyond even then, it was a damned fine game. So, I go in for the sequel, and the person behind the counter mentions that they have a used one; I take it, and trade in FF12 for it. Well, I get back home, happy as a clam, and start playing. The game mechanics are terrible, simplistic, and the control is awful, but the game is pretty. So, I traded in the previous game for a game that had exactly the same problem, lost $35 in the process, and can’t return it because it’s a used game.
Now, I should have done my research and checked on the elements of gameplay before buying it, but I didn’t because I was so wrapped up in the memory of the original. Now, the Retrograde thing symbolizes things that “return” in the psyche, in terms of memories, like songs that get stuck in your head. Mercury resetting like this also symbolizes the functions of language (and thus motor skill; The two parts are connected in the brain) and logic, so a person’s ability to move and communicate is beginning to re-evaluate itself. In short, a lot of people do stupid things because of their memories of things that came before, and often end up making really stupid choices when it comes to commercial ventures, too. It’s not a great time to make a decision without a plan, or without research, especially since our usual immediate skeptical responses aren’t as sharp. Bird out.
High Suns, Cardinal Waters.
Hey, it’s the Bird. The Summer Solstice popped up a few days ago. In Philly, the weather’s been uncharacteristically breezy and cool. I mean, I’m not complainin’ or anything. The thing is, the weather in Philadelphia tends towards extremes of Crock Pot and Freezer Burn. Either way, it leaves most everyone feeling like old turkey leftovers.But that’s all just talk. The deal is, the Peacock just got some stones and some incense, finished writing a treatment for a comic, and began this blog all within a really short while of the Solstice. Some of these seem to be indicative of the solar event, yet the stones and incense seem to be a biiiit more cued into the beginning of the month of the Lunar-ruled Cancer.Cancer’s mundane rulership of the Moon, and with Neptune ruling both its esoteric and hierarchic spheres, lends the sign towards matters that are more towards essences of inactivity. Its associations with home are tied into the concept of where someone or something seems at its most inactive state, or what Einstein described as the zero-point energy state. The zero-point energy state is when a system is at the lowest point of energy in which it can sustain itself. Any lower, and the system dissipates. We can see this as sleep, on a total scale, and we can see it in the diffusive consciousness states where an individual works on tasks that don’t require much intense thought, such as household chores, meditation, listening to music, or just relaxing. This is the height of the childhood summer, when school isn’t much of a consideration, and the weather’s just warm enough that basking like lizards isn’t a bad idea.
That said, what goes along with that state are all of the thoughts and feelings that don’t always rise to awareness when we’re active. Not all of them are big gleaming grins, or Hallmark card, The Secret-esque wisdom. Sometimes, things like secret emotional wounds, soul-longings, and painful realizations creep up on us while in this state. It’s why some people seem so tense all of the time, or unable to relax; when it’s not clinical mania, the person’s just afraid of what comes out during that period of inactivity.As ugly as it is, that state’s where consciousness gets all of its juice. The better that it learns how to calm down and listen to those weird whale-songs that hum in the deep, secret lobes and folds in the cerebrum, the better equipped it is to understanding itself in totality, to move forward with a clearer sense of its own actions.I can’t say how that state’s going to affect any single person in particular. I’m not going to say “Cancers are this or that.” As far as I know, cancer can be benign or malignant, and start anywhere. A person is a person, just as any other, who happens to have been born when the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and stars happened to be in a particular position. So, I’d recommend just taking a look at that whole idea of getting to a zero-point state, and if it’s tough, perhaps asking yourself why, what’s making you itchy, and what’s do damn scary about yourself? You’ve been there the whole time.
BEHOLD! A Bird on Fire!
Squawk! Hey! Keep posted for the sometimes poetically forlorn, sometimes juicy and fleshy dithers about magick, runes, tarot, astrology, and deep eldritch livings from this blue feathered jerk right here. Stay Frosty.
