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.

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 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.