Gone Wandering

Yes. We have gone completely to COLD ALBION now.

Join us there for more of the same, and yet more - stories, poems and essays.

You are very welcome.

Root & Branch: A foretaste of COLD ALBION

I am writing this for no reason. There is no purpose, no end goal, just an extrusion, an extension, a growth; words upwelling, evoking and recalling: I remember staring at a tree yesterday from a distance as its branches swayed in the warm summer breeze and the leaves stirred, whispering in their sussurating voices.

Imagine then, if you will, the warmth of summer on skin; the heat that seems to thicken the air and enrich it with a variety of scents excited by the sun. The smell of hair and flesh and the subtle perfumes of the worlds, all woven together; city, town and countryside all rising to meet the sky, that azure blue dome that kisses the cold velvet lips of the void.

If this were Ancient Egypt, that arched back, that slow and infinite curve, would be Nut, the goddess arched above the black land of Elder Khem; the red land of blazing heat and liquid tongue. If this were the land of pyramid and stellar river, of solar barque and Seven Gates, then my shape might be different, my voice might be different.

I might be a black-faced Pharaoh, the serpent springing from my brow; the snake all silvered gold with eyes of glittering lapis lazuli, bluer than blue and brighter than fire. Or, if that doesn't come easy, brought to mind double quick and strong as stone...then I could come to you as a dog-faced god, dark of muzzle and white of teeth.

Kin to the wolf-lords of far distant lands I would be, with lolling, laughing tongue and lazy loping gait as I fill your mouth and slip the words of Opening behind your teeth and bury them like the bones of knowledge, hidden deep within your tongue.

Still again and yet to come, I might stand with sceptre in hand, bright as blood and red as earth, lord of storms and stranger ways, hawk's-head kin with bright spear and roaring strength, to drive the serpent back in the night-black Nile of the Deep-Below; lend the gods my arm so that the sun might rise anew.

All of these could I be, were this that land of magic, all of these allowed by ancient pact, lit by moon, etched by the hand of curved-beak and unwinking eye. Those oh-so potent words written by a smiling ibis-head in an ink made of blood, spit and semen and drawn from between the stars – those words, these words which would bind and set you free to dream so strongly, to summon up ancient wisdoms and deep roots untouched by time!

By those dreams, rich and strange would I sit before you and smile, raise a hand and bid you welcome! By that mystery that stirs within your heart, though it may be long forgotten, I might rise from the hiding place, the secret and impregnable fortress which rests amidst the seas of wild and inexorable, unstoppable imagination.

By all these things, by the reading of these words, their evocation and conjuring within your mind, and by your very attention to the same, could a great change come upon you, might the scales fall from your eyes and you may allow yourself to see truly once more.

Would that this were that land where all these things are possible, would that I might invite you to sup with me at the source...

Alas, this is a different land, this land of summer, where I stared at a tree amidst the green. So green it was that you would forget the sand and silence of Khem, the black earth rendered fertile by the Nile. So green and pleasant that you might forget the perfumed incenses and the glyphs and the spells and the ancient temples, the hymns of praise raised to gods of old, the multitude of wonders lying there in your memory.

So soft were those whisperings of leaves, there in that yesterday. Softer than the silks and satins adorning smooth bodies in service to ancient understandings. Softer even than the suppleness of flesh, gleaming in torchlight as rites were performed to blend deity and humankind into a thing of wonder and strangeness.

Forget all these then, I beg you, though they may rise to mind as you drift to sleep, or set your mind loose while the flesh is busy. Forget them, for they are not what we are about, here and now. Here and now, we are about the green and the whisper of the wind, about the summer sun and long nights beneath a sky of endless twilight.

Here then, the words that bind and twist and shiver and set images to dance in the mind and inflame the soul; these words are carved in wood, painted on rock, breathed to life and risted by blood. Runes they are, and Mysteries too, just as the glyphs in that far southern land of sand and wonder held keys long etched in stone.

For as I stared yesterday, I saw those leaves anew. I watched them unfold, uncurl as you might uncurl your fingers, might stretch your back and circle your head to loosen the tension, ease the restriction in your muscles even now, or sometime yet.

The ease of the movement, the flow of it, like a cat sprawled on a windowsill; all lazy yawn and purring pleasure at touch and warmth and life – this I saw, this I beheld, this I knew inside myself.

Do you know, have you seen such ease all about you in times past? Or perhaps you have forgotten it. Perhaps it lies sleeping, waiting to be wakened at the proper, perfect time.

Whichever, be it sleeping, or awake and aware, nestled within, the truth of it is shown in what I saw, revealed to me in that stare, in that frozen moment of epiphany in summer's light. For you it may be different, whoever you are, and that is right and good.

I am, after all, all I ever was. No matter which land I may have dwelt within, no matter what earth I called my home, whether that be the black or the red of Egypt, or the rocky shores and roaring spume of the Island-in-the-Sea. If I laid my head on granite or swam beneath storm-tossed lakes and walked over ground carved by glaciers countless years before, it did not, and does not matter still.

I spoke and sang, I brought forth the Mysteries, I pulled aside the curtain, rent the veil and opened the door. So as I sat before that tree, and became aware of the uncompromising beauty of each leaf, the merciless fractal relationships of growth and vitality; as it whispered to me of leaf and branch and questing root seeking the sweet waters of the Deep Below in spite of stone and pavement and works of man; as all this came upon me do you know how I felt, can you imagine how the shock of it bubbled up within me like a boiling cauldron?

Even now, as I write this, I am transported to that very threshold, to that very sense of climactic tension, the awareness rising like a wave, moving like sap within that very same tree; as each letter follows its fellow, syllables making words, making phrases, making sentences, making sense!

The words find a way, weird though it is; the trees grow, the leaves unfurl. From seed to shoot, to root and branch, stretching high and seeking low, onward wyrd shall ever flow! And by the noun and by the verb, by the plant and by the herb, by the ever lasting word...we find our road, our journey right, and so we live and wax in might!

Stronger now than ever before, the words reveal unwritten law, reveal to us the hidden shore that lies beneath the world of men. So now we see the path before us bright, merciless and unyielding in the light of dawn and dusk; the in-between, that hour most blue,when all seems strange and new.

Thus we stand as trees upon the beach, the depths of the earth at our feet and the stars within our reach, our fingertips brushing heavens, yet capable of stooping down to hells. Here we drink of freezing wells, the waters crystal clear and burning like fire, visions of your life appear; from birth to death, from womb to pyre – all are carried on desire!

For death is not the issue here, nor life at all, but that which quickens the seed and sets the tree to be tall! That which gives nourishment to ravens despite their feeding on the dead, perching there on fleshless head with unending smile; that which is the memory of mortality, the burning of the world's fire until only black ash remains!

What is it that burns, what is it that drives; what invisible concatenation of events; what confluence of contact, what coming together of circumstances gives rise to the terrible fury of existence?

Unassuaged of purpose, unyielding and cold beyond cold, seemingly insatiable, there is within, a terror. A terror which is never still, which is ever moving, uncaring of obstacle or barrier, that seeks no goal for it is complete in and of itself.

This is stone medicine, storm medicine; smoke on the wind made of rime and frost that nurtures and preserves, recalls survival and disrupts the notion of stasis. Have you ever become aware of your own breathing and found yourself suddenly gasping for air as the rhythm ceases, as stillness occurs?

Now, in that disruption we find a truth, harsh and uncaring though it may be. Severe in its focus, the tree grows, the glacier moves and the fire burns. Would you know more of it, allow yourself to open that door, and in doing so run a risk that you will never be able to return? Or perhaps you would rather board up the the door and pretend it does not exist, wall it up and attempt to forget the howl of the wind in the night that means the wildness is unleashed, despite your attempts to convince yourself otherwise.

Maybe you will not notice the way that same wind sounds eerily like voices as it rattles your windows, or the way there is an invisible presence behind the roar and rumble of the storm; a silent voice speaking in a way that bypasses hearing and language, reaching inside you and setting you to shiver in spite of your walls and roof and sanity.

Such things are not held by locked doors, not swayed by disbelief or rationality; a million years of evolution tells you this is true, the reflexes and responses that kept your ancestors alive and surviving have no truck with such things. You recognize this, even if you are not yet fully aware of it.

It keeps you awake at night, trickles into your dreams and manifests as strangeness, sets you to loop along old paths to reinforce the urgency. You must survive, you are not safe, never safe completely.

Perhaps you might start at shadows; those times when something flickers at the corner of your eye, or a familiar shape is somehow infused with menace.

An angle, a building, a particular arrangement of lines; these can become unnerving; a cold shiver up your spine as you recall a disturbing memory, a snatch of everyday speech suddenly becomes meaningless babble, then reconstitutes itself and twists into a message from somewhere deep and dark, the buried bones gone yellow and rotten with sublimation and age.

In cities it bleeds through architecture, the hollow spaces contrast with the thrumming hive – the solid with the void, the flies on garbage in crooked alleyways that the civilized would rather ignore. The world behind the world; the world behind the wallpaper that is no world at all, no place of safety and peace.

There is a fierceness there, an awful joy which does not care for your concerns, beyond boundaries and restrictions and within them also. The walls may melt, may breathe, may give ground to your shadows, site your terrors and bring the inexorable nature of it home to you.

Can you imagine what that would be like, to have it seize you, until your fastness becomes your prison? Are you capable of entertaining such a notion, playing with it now, as if you were a child, as utterly single-minded in your play as you were back then, in defiance of apparent rationality?

Because if you are, then you are on that crooked path already. All that remains is the choice, and you are presented with that choice every day, and now that you have read, now that you have tasted and seen these words, the threshold can reveal itself, visible everywhere you look, lurking behind your sight and around every corner.

It is fine to be afraid, whether it strikes suddenly, or slowly as a nagging unease. Equally, you may find yourself exhilarated by it, your heart racing and the blood pumping as the excitement rises.

Both of these are valid ways, and whichever occurs to you, and whenever it begins, believe me when I say that what lies over that threshold is way beyond the ordinary. It is in fact - and grammar, and spell, in truth and faith – an extra-ordinary thing.

For beyond that that threshold lies the the Other world, whose denizens are Otherworldly by definition. The nourishment found there is unlike anything else, its sights are endless in permutation and possibility, its movements near endless in configuration.

Already it has reached to you, in songs and stories, old tales and patterns you did not notice because they were ancient and ubiquitous. Consider then, all those things you have heard, that slipped silently inside your mind to work with subtle influence upon your life; recall those icons and narratives which you have had passed down to you, their nature cloaked and hidden – truly occult.

As you consider them, as you brush the dust from them to peer at their faded colours anew, as you feel the heaviness and richness of their worth, you can taste their heady mix.

Embrace the intoxication then, as you wish, and feel the crooked grins spreading across inhuman faces as they welcome you across the threshold.

“Hello. It's nice to see you again.”

Carfax

Ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum, Thunaer ende Uuöden ende Saxnote ende allum them unholdum the hira genötas sint

(I renounce all the words and works of the devil, Thunear, Wōden and Saxnōt, and all those fiends that are their associates.)

- Old Saxon Baptismal Vow, circa 8-9th century


Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Nail the Devil to the post,
Thrice I strike with holy crook,
One for God, one for Wod, And one for Lok!
-Lincolnshire charm

The English crossroads are a crooked place to work; for though a millennium of Christianity stands on this rocky isle, sending desert roots into dark soil and green fields thick with the memory of wildwood, the old gods are never far away.

Buried in the names of places, they wait, hiding in plain sight. If the colonists of the New World razed the serpent mounds and pulled down the temples of peoples who spoke in a language like rain, then surely they learned their lessons from those first missionaries so very long ago.

Indeed, perhaps they were better at it it than their ancestors, or perhaps this isle is more accustomed to the invasion of peoples from across the sea. Even the Romans marked this as the edge of their world, this Ghostland of barrows and windswept stone circles and rocky coasts. Underneath it all, beneath even the faded dreams of a lost Empire and concrete, the land remembers. There are places you can go, stepping sideways, tasting old magic on the wind – and though they be few and far between, they still remain.

There is a strangeness then, an enchantment if you will, in ubiquity. I have leaned against stones erected five thousand years ago and eaten my lunch at a latitude farther north than the usual limits of the United States. Here, though the old ways were forsworn, they remained, almost as if playing dead.

Yet the Old Saxon Baptism vow shows clearly that they were seen as the work of the Devil Himself – fiends and spirits leading mankind down the crooked path to Hell; while the Lincolnshire Charm hedges its bets and calls on the Trinity, Wod(en) and Lok(i), seemingly as equals!

If the New World was adept at syncretism, what of the Old? Is this simply a difference between religion and magic, or something deeper? Do the ways of the folk hint at subtler, hidden things – perhaps the Bondye of Voudoun is not the only God who seems unreachable to His people?

If Hoodoo runs strong in North America, what runs here, upon this island, with its weight of legend and magic; what arises, for those who would be called bokor in lands far away? To whom are our pacts made at the crossroads, we who have ancestors that walked in colder lands; what of our mighty dead?

As Master Valentine elucidated in the previous post, at the Hoodoo Factory, the Devil at the Crossroads, the Black Man – these are Kalfou, Carrefour – Legba's shadowy twin. It is no accident that Carfax is the name the author has taken in this work, no accident indeed, since Carfax is an anglicization of Carrefour.

Standing at the centre of the four wentz ways, we too have a dark figure or two that men call the Devil.

II

There is power in many things, in walking backward and transgression being the simplest. We walk backwards, not in terms of direction, but in terms of movement. In this sense, we may look like a man, but what man moves backward while walking forward, what creature faces unflinchingly the strange and terrible atavisms buried in our ancestry?

A sorcerer has eyes in the back of its head. There is a Mystery in that, for those who wish to contemplate such things - the Roman god Janus was said to have two faces; this god of doors, beginnings and endings.

Just as Legba must be called upon before every service as Opener of the Ways, hidden in the clothing of St Peter with his cross-keys, so must it be done here. By cross-keys and black cock – the latter symbolizing the denial of Christ in the night hours -we arrive at a symbolic retroversion powered by Christianity itself.

Just as Jesus warned Peter of his denial, yet according to Roman Catholicism, granted him the authority of first Pope with the keys to Heaven, we recognise the apostasy of Peter as doorway to the realms of sorcery. Such apostasy by definition renders one in opposition to those forces seeking conversion – and by this denial we are cast amongst the ranks of those who would oppose the rightful order, a 'black' Pope as it were.

Here it must be recalled that those who converted the heathen peoples of this island, and even their Celtic Christian brothers, were Roman Catholics. Many saints have their roots in old gods also, lurking underneath their pristine skins. We touch these hermenuetics precisely because the ways backward are already there, ready to spring to life.

Thus, as the Pope is seen as God's representative on Earth, the 'black' Pope becomes representative of the Opposer. Yet the sorcerer proceeds further, beyond simple representation, beyond simple anti-popery; it is not enough to become a functionary or mere hierophant. Here is where we see the daimonic reality underneath the religiosity – the keys given to the sorcerer are not the Keys to Heaven, but the Keys to Hell.

Yet this is not the Hell of the Christians. No, this Hell is the Underworld, the realm of the Dead and Mighty Spirits. This is the grave, which is both womb and tomb; the Keys open a door to the Abyss itself, to the Labyrinth and the road to Hel.

And there, upon the crossroads, what was once a man dies. There the cold creeps into his bones and the shadows thicken. There his light dims and winks out, until darkness pulses in his heart, burning bright and blackly. There yawns the mouth of an ever hungry wolf, the grin of a skull.

But in that death, he becomes as the dead-themselves – and they come to welcome him. It is hubris to imagine an isolate nature which is not transmissible; that sorcerers are not made but born is something of a mistake, as it is in the in-between of birth and death that they are made.

Just as the Graeco-Roman magicians sought to become sons of gods, so sorcerers are admitted to a Family, a bloodline if you will. This is the secret of the witch-blood, boldly revealed yet dismissed by those lacking in understanding.

With a grim smile, we too are with them, with Thunaer ende Uuöden ende Saxnote ende allum them unholdum the hira genötas sint. What others call fiends, we call brothers and kin. What others call ghosts, we call ancestors and Mighty Dead.

I, [who has been] Joshua Carfax bear this name, for I am of the line of the dweller at the crossroads, the unhallowed wandering dead.

I am of them, and they are of me. My blood is their blood, without them, I could not be; my ancestry is a thing of mist and bone, of cries in the night and frost in blood. Old gods come calling, and it is I that remember them.

How is this so, this thing of strangeness? Am I not a thousand years removed from the wild wood, from the clear stars, howling wind and blood on snow?

Time means nothing to sorcery; this must be understood as truth. It is not an article of faith, but rather one of fact. It is in violation of the world. So it is perhaps understandable when one begins to discuss the Familae Carfax that certain things must remain obscure. For this reason I am limited in what I may discuss publicly – not out of fear of revelation, but rather of lack of comprehension.

III

The Familae Carfax is a band of wights of the in-between. By band, it is meant quite simply that with one come all – they are inextricably linked. Thus, if one is to converse with one, one can be said to have conversed with all, though despite this, they are individuals.

One may say that there are certain qualities present in all members – these qualities are the essence of Carfax expressed in unique ways through the personality of the individual, indeed it is the essential Carfaxian nature that vitalizes that personality and gives it its power.

As with certain families of lwa, the spirits in question are presided over by twin individuals – Grandfather and Mother Carfax. These two are both sole members of the clan and progenitors of numberless children.

It is said that Grandfather Carfax sits atop his high seat, immovable as a mountain and drinks without ever being drunk. From his mouth proceed half the children, who range about the worlds as his eyes and ears – when a Carfax speaks with a drink in their hand and says words over the cup, such words come from the mouth of their Grandfather. It is also said that they often return to him to be consumed, the wisdom they have gained boiling in his belly until he spits them up and sends them walking again.

Mother Carfax is at once punishingly beautiful and terribly, awfully old. Her half of the children emerge from her voluminous skirts of skins and clamber all over her as she spins upon a giant loom. Her Daughters share her love of blood and sharp wit, and they are beautiful, cunning and as hungry as their father. Woe betide a man who seeks such a Daughter, for they shall be brought home to Mother and disappear amidst her bloody skirts, and a new fold appears.

It is said that the only way to win a Daughter is to become one yourself, the removal of manhood necessitating other powers mighty enough to claim Mother's Daughter as a wife.

In previous articles, the author has spoken of the dual principle of Black Sun and Red Moon, conjunctions between heavenly bodies which reveal Mysteries of the twin current. These themselves are inextricably linked with the aforementioned band of crossroads spirits. An examination of the sigil of the Familae Carfax will reveal certain similarities between the veve for the lwa Kalfou, and also other, older symbols, such as the swastika.

Initial contact with these spirits was made, and upon request for a sigil to aid a deeper connection, the presented glyph resembled a version of the mosaic on the floor of Wewelsburg castle known as the Schwarzesonne. After 'explaining' certain connotations, the current sigil was presented, though not without some reservation.

It is here that we must examine the nature of ancestry once again – both physical and spiritual – for as a Northern European the weight of history and the backward way must, by definition, accept that certain resurgent symbols and atavisms were misused solely for the power they provide in times past. Certainly, while the author considers this work part of a cultus connected intimately to the lands and dreams in which he dwells, it has little to do with the political and nationalistic aims of a dictator driven mad by neuroses and hatred.

In fact, the sorcerer has no use for society at large, being as it is largely populated with those who are content with comfortable mediocrity – these are the same folk who submit to rote-ritual and vicarious salvation, be they members of the Nazi party, or those who decry the old ways as somehow 'evil'.

However, the mystery surrounding so-called Nazi occultism speaks volumes – that such things still incite dark wonderment beyond your average foolish racist should be noted.

Central to the symbolism of the Black Sun is its inward, Tellurian nature – the notion of a Hollow Earth – that is to say a source of great power within, as opposed to external to, the earthly sphere. Qabbalistic lore states that the man-god occurs at the sixth sphere on the Tree of Life – the sephiroth known as Tiphareth. Often associated with the Unconquered Sun, and Christ, Tiphareth is the point at which the powers of the Supernal meet with the sephira of the lower Tree, providing a manifestation of Kether capable of revealing the true nature of Malkuth.

Whereas the Yellow Sun radiates, so the Black Sun draws inward. As such, the power already exists within the flesh and blood of the sorcerer. Ceasing to reach outward and upward to Heaven, he draws inward and backward to achieve his ends.

In the darkness of the underworld, he is presented as the descending figure. Lucifer has turned his back on Heaven, and reigns in Hell, so the story goes. Yet in truth the sorcerer is more like a tree, drawing nourishment from the deep below, by root and branch and darkened earth.

The truth of Kalfou and Carfax is that their roads, being the journeys undertaken, are at angles to the simple geometric formula of the crossroads – the cross is not the way for those who work with both hands; rather it serves as simple reference point, a tool which is used indirectly. If the cross were not there, a tool would be found, drawn from the blood and breath and song of the one who sits out in the middle of the night.

For one thing is certain – there were sorcerers before there was a Devil.

Dispatches from the Hoodoo Factory

'Some anthropologists have made the claim that this is the sole of origin the emphasis of the crossroads rituals in hoodoo but this seems unlikely given the importance of these locations in African folklore. It is not surprising however, that this location retained its importance since the hoodoo tradition is a syncretization of African, Irish, German and English folk-magic and that in each of these traditions the crossroads was where the magic happened.

It is however quite likely that this perspective contributed greatly to the duality in western hoodoo of the more traditional expression of this figure in the form of Papa Legba and a new and darker form, his brother Gran Kalfou (Creole for the continental French term carrefour or ‘crossroads’, which is another name by which this figure is known). Kalfou or Carrefour in the New Orleans Vodou canon is a Petro Lwa and is an expression of this nature much more in keeping with the St. Simon Judas/Maam figures of Guatemala (perhaps this bears witness to the influence of Christianity in nurturing this expression into being). The Haitian and New Orleans expressions of Vodou still define the Lwa through the dialectic relationship between the Rada (a peaceful and passive array of spirits) and the Petro (a wrathful and active array of spirits), Papa Legba and Gran Carrefour occupying the same role respectively in each array.

In the folklore surrounding these figures in American hoodoo, we find several commonalities and a few interesting distinctions. The rituals practiced at the crossroads are always done at night, between the hour of midnight and morning twilight, depending on the end sought by the bokor. The rituals are most usually done over the course of nine days, three days or a single day, depending on the end sought by the bokor. The nature of the crossroad itself, namely a fork, an even cross or an uneven cross, depending on the end sought by the bokor. The figure met at the terminus of the ritual cycle is either a dark man (the form most traditionally equated to Papa Legba) or the fearsome rider (the form most traditionally equated to Gran Carrefour), once again depending on the end sought by the bokor. There is in fact a system of recognizable sympathies at work in these variations which will determine the success or failure of the bokor in such an undertaking. '

A most intriguing post passed to me by a good friend. I shall expand upon the Carfax legacy on this side of the pond in a later post. Click the title of this for more from the Hoodoo Factory article.

Sigil of the Familae Carfax

The Waking Dream

'Dead But Dreaming.'

This is the state of the Great Old One known as Cthulhu, priest to the inhuman Outer Gods in the fiction of pulp horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. A chimeric entity, it is described as a thing that:

'[Y]ielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings.'

It is a fusional creature, plastic and metamorphic, well summing up the phantasmal nature of dreams. This lack of fixedness is often held to be the acid test between dream and reality - the dreaming state is one which cannot be trusted, relied upon or seen as anything other than mental decompression or nocturnal entertainment.

But to many indigenous Australians, the very Dream is responsible for all that is - what is often misnamed as the Dreamtime, when the great spirits moved across the landscape and gave rise to its features. Properly however, it is the Dreaming; for the process is not limited to a particular time, but is rather continual. A better translation of the original term is The-All-At-Once - a state wherein the spirits and the Now are not separated.

Man exists within the Dreaming - indeed, many of the rites and practices are grouped under the notion of 'Looking After Country'. These rites, far from being reactive, are affective - they maintain the world itself.

But what has this to do with us? I, Mr. Carfax, am no Aborigine; I dwell on a small island in the middle of the North Atlantic. I reluctantly use the internet to sometimes write analyses such as these. The world will not fall apart without me performing certain rites, will it?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But what concerns us is the nature of the Dreaming; for Lovecraft and the Aborigines knew an important fact - even the dead have dreams. For most, dreams occur in sleep, but for the sorcerer this is not true.

Any grasp of hypnosis will inform us that humans shift from one state of trance to another regularly - watching television, or driving, for example. This is important, for it indicates that your average individual has no realization that they are dreaming while awake.

Contrastingly, the sorcerer is more than aware of such things, understanding that if they be dreaming, then the dead be dreaming also. Thus, both living and dead are joined inextricably together by the active process. Time, such as is held by the ordinary world, hence ceases to be a demarcation or division.

Co-existence is the name of the game. In dreams the mythic is accepted, yet not in waking - the sorcerer recognises this as merely a defence mechanism: If dreams be where dragons lie, then such things cannot be upon waking!

In the experience of this member of the Old Firm, such distinctions may be easily demonstrated as foolish - experiment with sleep deprivation and you will soon discover that dreams will not be denied. They will come, whether you be awake or asleep; and though we do not advocate such extremity as anything other than experiment, it is nonetheless useful for the purposes of gaining ammunition against the limitations of humanity.

If therefore, the dreams are an integral part of existence, arising from the Dreaming itself, assuming forms which are pregnant with deep meaning, is it not wise to pay them attention? Is it not a tenet of sorcery that there is, by definition, no difference between sorcerer and the stuff of sorcery itself?

Thusly, one may argue that the sorcerer is born of the Dreaming -a living dream, as plastic and quixotic as that substance which men do not trust outside of their nocturnal escapades! He is, by definition, of that same quality which gives rise to the mythic, made of dragon-stuff, as it were.

So, this accepted, what now?

If such be the case, then one must acknowledge a simple fact; that the ever-changing nature of the Dreaming means there is no certainty, no bedrock. But by following the dreams back to the source, one finds the nameless thing which spawns so many forms in the mind as an attempt to grasp it.

That same namelessness is the sorcerer's birthright.

Once this is discovered, the way becomes open; the dual principle of opposition becomes a trinity, though one more blasphemous than the Christian triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A hypostasis occurs; the recognition of a potential essence outside of existence - a kind of gnostic agnosticism.

Liberated from the value judgement of dream vs. reality, the sorcerer may hence take advantage of the freedom therein - he may dream as he will, and the world will accept it as easily as his breathing.