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Vessel of the Oc Cult
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The essence of the magical method
was and is
to learn these secrets of nature,
their modes of influence,
names and associated images,
and as it were turn the tables on nature,
compelling its assistance
by magical means.
- Hymenaeus Beta
Editor’s Foreward
The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King
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The Brew D'Agon raced ahead of the storm, her sails billowing and whipping about as the gale gained force. The crew scampered down the hempen ladders, hurriedly abandoning the ship’s rigging, seeking shelter below deck before the full strength of the storm was upon them. Halfway down the mainmast, Seaman Stan looked down between his legs at his oldest and dearest friend, One-eyed Willy who had paused his descent and was staring off into the storm, his head cocked to the side as if listening to (or for) something.
“Ya ‘ear dat, Willy? Does ya 'ear dat dread chantey?”
“Aye!”
One-Eyed Willy was not deaf. Of course he heard the blasphemous sounding words raining down from the crow's nest above them. What the words meant or even what language they were in was what perplexed Willy.
"Da crazy blind man be performin' one o' dem witchy spells tonight. I ain't 'avin' no part in dat. So ya best step lively, broekie, 'fore yer 'ead axdently ends up neck deep in me arsehole."
One-Eyed Willy fancied himself an explorer. There were few places on this Earth that One-Eyed Willy did not wish to see but, based on the stench that oft wafted from within, the inside of Stan’s ass was just such a place. One-Eyed Willy grunted as he flew down the ropes in an effort to escape that fate.
“Aye!”
Seaman Stan was barely a half step behind. Despite their haste, the duo were the last of the crew into the hold. On a royal naval frigate, this would have resulted in a flogging. On this ship, on this night, Boson Crane merely scowled after the tardy pair as his partner, the quartermaster, wordlessly closed the hatch and laid the battens in place to prevent the foul weather from seeping into the hold. Only after the hatch was secure above them did Stan dare whisper to Willie.
"Didya 'ave a look-see at da flash robes dem two be wearin'? Da Bosun’s were sharkskin, maybe eel – 'tweren't dolphin; ya knows I knows dolphin. Har! And sumtin' snakey or lizardy on Big Arthur. Ya seen dat, right, Willy? I always knews dem two fishy gits be part o' da captain's witchy cult; all dem officers be. Don’t get me wrong, mate. Dey don't be seemin' an evil lot, but ya won’t be ketchin’ me takin’ part in der...."
Ahead of them, muffled voices cried out. Stan stopped mid-sentence and cocked his head to the side, like a dog hearing a far off whistle. One-Eyed Willy froze mid-step; he heard the sounds as well. The moaning and groaning emanated from the crew’s quarters, as if the entire crew inside was writhing in the throes of death. The two kindred minds jumped to the exact same conclusion – they were sheep being led to the slaughter –, but the sounds quickly proved far too familiar to Seaman Stan and One-Eyed Willy to deceive them for more than a few moments. A knowing smile spread across the Seaman’s face. He looked down at his One-Eyed mate.
"Oi! Ya 'ear dat? ‘Avin’ a right fine debauchery, ain't dey? And damned if I ain't gots an itchin’ in me loins dat be needin' a good scratchin'. Cum on, mate. Let’s join dat merry-makin'. Some body gonna milk da bull.”
One-eyed Willy grinned lecherously and stroked the crotch of his own pantaloons.
"Aye."
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And the wind began to howl
- Jimi Hendrix
All Along the Watchtower
As far back as Babylonia,
most demons were mixtures of human and animal,
or purely theriomorphic, as they are still.
This is nowhere better illustrated than in the Goetia,
which is basically a catalogue of astrological spirits.
Goetia derives from the Greek word
for sorcery or witchcraft (γοητεία),
and a related word γοητής means “a wailer”
(closer to Crowley’s etymology, “howling”),
suggestive of the “barbarous names of evocation”
referred to in The Chaldaean Oracles,
which exhorts the magician to “never change barbarous names.”
- Hymenaeus Beta
Editor’s Foreward
The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King
Call my name / Through the cream
And I’ll hear you
/ Scream again
- Soundgarden
Black Hole Sun
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Seaman Stan and One-Eyed Willie had been best friends for a long time, but not forever. Once upon a time, nearly a decade ago, a sodden One-Eyed Willy had chanced upon an equally inebriated Seaman Stan splashing around, half-drowned, in a shallow Tortugan lagoon. Seaman Stan, like so many sailors of his day, could not swim. One-Eyed Willy, born on a barge, the son of a Thames riverman, could swim (and drink) like a fish. Without a second thought, Willie dove to Stan’s rescue. Lying on the sand in a pool of regurgitated seawater and grog, Stan had mumbled an indignant explanation for his odd behavior.
“Don’t be passin' judgment on me. Ya knows ya done been tempted affer months at sea. Damn yer pitying eyes, dey be callin' it a blowhole ain't dey? And I swear to ya, dat flirty dolphin bitch kept winkin' at me."
One-Eyed Willy chuckled knowingly as he replied.
"Aye."
The pair bonded instantly; a sea-wolf pack of two was born, then and there.
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The wolf has long been associated with certain anti-social behaviors:
lack of decency, overwhelming sexual and other appetite,
digging up graves (no sense of propriety),
turning on brother wolf (no ability to honor an oath).
So it’s no wonder that the werewolf
and the heinous criminal are bound in association.
Perhaps there was a common thread
in Indo-European tribal law
associating criminals with wolves
and other things “out there in the night.”
- www.etymonline.com/wolf.php
Some ancient Greek associations between gods and wolves
might have sprung from confusion of lykos “wolf”
and words derived from the disused word lyke “light.”
- www.etymonline.com/wolf.php
A roman view of the wolf
may be reflected in the Latin lupa, literally “she-wolf,”
which was a term for “prostitute,”
and has yielded words for “whore”
in some Romance languages
(cf. Spanish loba, Italian lupa, French louve).
- www.etymonline.com/wolf.php
The wolf, it seems, earned esteem for its ferocity and courage.
From ancient times people cross-bred their dogs with wolves.
The Louvre in Paris is said to be so named
because its builder, Philip Augustus, intended it as a wolf-kennel. ).
- www.etymonline.com/wolf.php
Such is my Art.
- Dan Brown
The Lost Symbol
It celebrated that which was outside civilized society
and a return to primordial nature—
which would later assume mystical overtones.
It also involved escape from the socialized personality and ego
into an ecstatic, deified state or the primal herd (sometimes both).
In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within,
or the unconscious mind of modern psychology.
Such activity has been interpreted as fertilizing,
invigorating, cathartic, liberating and transformative,
so it is not surprising that many devotees of Dionysus were
those on the margins of society:
women, slaves, outlaws and "foreigners"
(non-citizens, in Greek democracy).
All were equal
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysian_Mysteries
such was the sorrow
and of such the joy of these Mysteries
- A. E. Waite,
New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.
When one trains one’s conscience,
it kisses one while it bites.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
there’s a cure comes with a kiss
the bite that binds
the gift that gives
- TV on the Radio
Wolf Like Me
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Inside the crew’s quarters, the orgy intensified. In the exact center of the fornicating mass, Jacque sat in a lotus position wearing a black-furred goat mask and horned crown. Stefanie sat naked in his lap, gyrating on her husband's erect penile shaft, her face hidden behind a white-feathered owl mask. Despite being surrounded by ecstatic copulation, the two lovers were aware of nothing but their own oneness. Black Jacque’s breath became heavier as his thrusts intensified. They grunted together like a rutting animals, which on one level is exactly what they were. Humans are animals after all. Are we not?
A tangible sense of purity spread amongst the participants in the orgiastic rite even as they acted out their "sinful" sexual fantasies. In fact, the very shedding of the concept of “sin” caused the supernatural purity to intensify and become visible to the naked eye. This was the sole source of illumination in the otherwise dark quarters. The supernatural light cast no shadows. It appeared to come out of the darkness, or was revealed as the darkness which concealed it withdrew. Hidden electro-magickal channels funneled the energy into containment reservoirs in the hold's bulkheads. These shielded reservoirs acted as transformers, safely regulating the power flowing to a vast network of alloy wires embedded throughout the wooden infrastructure of The Brew D'Agon.
Weird words, unintelligible to most living humans, resonated within the cranial cavities of the crew of The Brew D'Agon. A throbbing, thrumming drumming arose from the oceanic depths of their subconscious and began to weave through the rhythm of the subconscious chantey, warping their consensual reality into pulsating particular waves. Points in space and time froze, or shifted in no apparent pattern. Perspective lost relevance. Souls merged, expanded exponentially, and/or crystallized in non-Newtonian fractals. All happened simultaneously. Everything changed. Nothing stayed the same. All was all. All was perfect.
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“Shift the helm,” I said in a low voice
- Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer
And the shadowship started to emerge from its shadow.
And there was ever so tiny time distortion.
And reality twisted...
- A.E. Van Vogt
Earth Factor X
... He felt a slight shift
- Frank Herbert
The Dosadi Experiment
I felt her heartbeat against my chest,
throbbing as if it were an engine that made the planet turn,
she and I bound together forcefully as distant words
- Simon Buxton
The Shamanic Way of the Bee
her body gyrated, faster and faster,
and he rotated in rhythm with her,
his penis going round and round
along with the supple vessel encompassing it.
“My God,” he whispered, “oh, my God,
my dearest -”
- I. Wallace
The Word
A bell tolled, a choir sang hosannas,
the machine lighted
- Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
a dream for me
Hell bent on inventing
A new species
Bust my britches
Bless my soul
I’m a freak of nature
Walking totem pole
Look and see
I think you’ll agree
- Red Hot Chili Peppers
Nobody Weird Like Me
“Thou art God,” he said happily and discorporated.
- R.A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
I am you and you are me
- Lenny Kravitz
Believe
Shifts happen.
- Mission Control
E.T. 101
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Gaseous bubbles languidly drift to the surface of the amber liquid that nearly filled the Think Tank. Their source is not the mouth nor nostrils of the severed head resting on the bottom of the massive glass cylinder. The bubbling is caused by an alchemical reaction within the cylinder's solution as it interacts with the magickal energies flowing through it. The submerged head's eyes are wide open, but he sees nothing of his immediate surroundings. The eyes’ of The Head see only the Current.
The alloy wires leading from and to the complex machinery forming the base of the Think Tank emit an otherworldly, bluish phosphorescence. Through proper application of meta-physical formulae, utilizing the focused spirit-energy of the sex-magick ritual, The Brew D'Agon has become the material body of The Head. Its timbers are his flesh; its sails, his lungs. The alloy wires serve as his nervous system, his arteries and veins. Jung the Elder’s lips mouth bubble-less words that resonate soundlessly throughout the occult vessel. On this night, the entire crew can hear The Head's unspoken song, but only a select few realize they are hearing The Head's voice reciting pages from The Book.
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The Yaminahua shamans call this “twisted language.”
The songs are intended, with their imagery, to create
the clarity of visionary experience.
The shaman says that normal words would make him
“crash into things.”
- Colin Wilson
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals
“to sing, to intone the powerful chant rhythms,
to carefully thread together verbal images
couched in the abstruse metaphorical
language of shamanic song,
and follow them. A song is a path –
you make it
straight and clean
and then you walk along it.”
- Colin Wilson
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav’nly Muse
to venture down
The dark descent
- John Milton
Paradise Lost
The path is always lonely and demanding
for those called to shamanism,
and doubly so for those who must
contend with Western culture’s refusal to accept
the overwhelming reality of the disturbing realms
of vision and torment in which shamans dwell.
Along with having to endure the loss of ego stability,
hence the frightening blurring of outer and inner realities
- www.incaglossary.org/s.html
The invasion of the ego by archetypal forces
transforms the individual
profoundly and irreversibly;
no one who has endured such a crisis can
confine the expanded horizons of their consciousness
to the tame boundaries of cultural norms.
The difference between a mystical experience
and a psychological crack-up is:
the one who cracks-up is drowning in the water
in which the mystic swims.
- www.incaglossary.org/s.html
he does not “choose” to become a shaman;
he is chosen by the spirits
and if he refuses, may suffer death.
- Colin Wilson
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthal
This is especially important for understanding
the initiation of shamans,
whose body is often described in the literature
as having been torn apart only to be reassembled
after the newly recognized shaman assumed the role
of intermediary between the community and the spirits
(Eliade 1964: 35 – 7).
- James Cox
The Invention of God in Indigenous Societies
Through their initiatory ordeals,
shamans gradually obtained and eventually perfected their vision,
which extended beyond ordinary human perception
to an invisible world inhabited by various spirits.
- James Cox
The Invention of God in Indigenous Societies
Transcendence entails the “death”
of his isolated and separate self-sense.
The subject can find the prior whole
only by letting go of the boundary
between subject and object –
that is,
- Ken Wilbur
The Atman Project
the god is reassembled and reborn.
- www.artic.edu/~llivin/research/greeks_egyptian_gods/index.html
The boundaries which divide Life from Death
are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where the one ends,
and where the other begins?
- Edgar Allen Poe
The Premature Burial
The Shadow knows
- The Shadow Radio Show
the shadow ship started to emerge
from its shadow.
- A.E. Von Vogt
Earth Factor X
the wind began to howl
- Jimi Hendrix
All Along the Watchtower
In a boy’s dream
In a boy’s dream
I’ve gone overboard
- DMB
Crash Into You
in the water
in which
the mystic swims.
- www.incaglossary.org/s.html
"Never get off the boat."
Absolutely goddamn right!
Unless you were goin' all the way…
- Captain Benjamin L. Willard
in Apocalypse Now
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