A Moment's Notice
Revisiting the demon Vine as symbol of Patriarchy
"Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures."
~ Emil Cioran
I’ve been seeing this quote make the rounds lately, so I know a lot of people are feelin’ it. This quote is popular enough that it’s hard to tell where any given person first encountered it. I can tell you where I first encountered it. It was a place where, I am sure, many of my readers have also seen it: Peter J. Carroll’s Liber Null & Psychonaut, where it was attributed simply to an “ancient Chinese curse.” It’s hard to tell whether or not a character like Peter Carroll knew that there is no evidence of the phrase’s Chinese origin. Sometimes I wonder if he wrote it that way on purpose, as some kind of, like…chaos magic joke?
[EDIT:] Yes, I did replace the quote above without editing the text beneath it. Oh well. I bet you can still guess the original!
It’s good to be writing as Dan de Lyons again, and the purpose of this post is, in large part, to catch my readers up to developments related to the Word of Hermekate as it has been reflected on three fronts:
The Word of Hermekate itself
My Initiatory work
Current events
My most recent post was written on “Anton Wilson Day” or “Cosmic Trigger Day,” and I left things there with a tone of ambivalence before going on a conscious hiatus. One of my final lines at the time almost looks ominous from where I now sit:
This is going to be my last post here at Dark Twins for quite a while as I work to integrate this new path and shed my skins as appropriate.
It makes me think of the opening line to a short article I was recently re-reading, which said, “It is not uncommon for there to be remarkable outcomes when a Magus makes what seems like a minor comment.”
I’ve been going through a lot of change indeed since first writing that post, and I’m not really going to belabor the vast majority of it—but there will be a few salient points, some of which are also illustrative of the above quote regarding seemingly “minor comments.”
I can’t remember exactly how the inspiration came about, but eventually, within the space I had created with the intentional pause I had set up, I began to realize I could be further developing the “mask’ of Gogo Bordello by expanding my work within the scope of Gogo’s World of Ruin, and as my readers can see, that’s what I’ve done in the interim. The idea since then has been to get more intentional about my work here by focusing on two goals that each move in somewhat opposing directions, but in so doing, sort of lean up against one another to hold each other up:
Working to further distinguish the masks of Gogo Bordello and Dan de Lyons by striving to keep each within their own respective “lanes” and writing each in their own unique voice.
Working to make the connections between the various aspects of my work more clear and cohesive, because the reality is that the work of Gogo Bordello is really a manifestation or subset of the greater Word of Hermekate.
I would go so far as to say that, in the sense that I have described Hermekate as a “Word/Song,” the work of Dan de Lyons emphasizes the Word/Logos aspect of things, while Gogo Bordello’s work emphasizes the Song/Eros side of things. Basically, it’s become clear that I can make my work here much more useful to others insofar as Dan de Lyons and Gogo Bordello can coordinate their respective efforts more consistently.
So, to review, I was finally inspired to share The Hylian Banishing Ritual, which came with positive and unexpected results: This made me realize that it really was time to make good on past promises to write a review of High Magic: Theory & Practice by Frater U.D. Writing that review as Gogo was a tribute, because that book was the single most influential source in the coming-into-being of Gogo and the World of Ruin.
That post has since become my most successful post yet. As of July, I had commented that my review of Maat Magick by Nema was my most popular post; the review of High Magick has done twice as well. Many thanks to Ralph Tegtmeier for sharing it!
As my regular readers know because I’ve made it an incessant theme, I’ve had problems with self-doubt, and the above developments had a positive effect on that, inspiring me to take this work more seriously still and get even more stubborn about believing in myself. So one other change I’m making is that I’m not going to be giving those issues as much attention in my writing anymore because that honestly just further empowers them with the “oomph” of my speech. Why do that? I’m just going to be a lion instead and project confidence, because I deserve to and the world deserves the version of me who does so.
Since then, there have been two additional posts as Gogo, opening a new category in World of Ruin based on the game Final Fantasy VI. Those posts have made it clear that there will be strong anti-fascist undertones to the series War of the Magi, and the reasons I was motivated to make that a priority probably don’t need to be pointed out.
I’m going to be getting more intentionally anti-fascist in my own work as Dan de Lyons, as well—and at that, the best way to explain the ongoing shift would be to make an abrupt segue to the more personal aspects of my life since July 23.
“Current” Events
Yesterday marked an anniversary for me: The two-year anniversary of a working that I performed at the John Hancock Tower. I wrote about this working in the post Turning Things Around: Week 18, but to summarize: I learned from someone once that apparently, Anton LaVey strongly identified with the John Hancock Tower, even claiming that he had been conceived on the site of its construction or something to that effect. His reverence for the building relates to his reverence for photographer William Mortensen and his theories from the book The Command to Look, which became prominent elements of his system of Satanism. It is also not merely incidental, I think, that his inner circle was called The Order of the Trapezoid, and the John Hancock Tower is a giant, elongated trapezoid.
“The Hancock Working,” as I arrogantly call it, was meant to simultaneously claim a resonance with the more positive aspects of Anton LaVey’s legacy—mainly, the fact that that his work led to the founding of Temple of Set and every positive influence that has had on my personal path—while also taking responsibility for “cleaning up” some of the mess that he left behind.
Magus-to-Magus, this is simply a part of our shared work: As Don Webb wrote in Overthrowing the Old Gods, the Word of a Magus both creates and destroys, and very often, the Word of one Magus fixes imbalances introduced by the Word of another.
As the Week 18 post describing the working explains, the motivation behind the working was a podcast episode about a member of the group Order of Nine Angles who was being charged with terrorist activity, which reflects the overall Nazi problem that taints the Left Hand Path. This is one of the specific imbalances that the Word of Hermekate is meant to address.
That post also mentions my impending move, at the time, to Texas; and if you read between the lines, you may possibly detect some of the underlying tension in my relationship with my partner, because I was not fully on-board with how the move played out. I didn’t get into it because honestly, my mind was pretty much made up at the time, but the situation did present me with a difficult choice to make; I wasn’t totally sure about even going to Texas. I had considered letting that be a natural end to the relationship. However, my “inner compass” said I should go down there and play my hand out to the best of my ability.
I have since returned to Chicago, and while it’s not all sunshine and roses, I have no regrets about the result. Not to sound too much like a superstitious magician hanging on signs, but when I learned that the lot number of our mobile home down in Conroe was 244—which matches the value of the Word of Hermekate in gematria—I knew I had made the right decision and that even if I didn’t end up staying, I would be glad I went down there.
There’s more meaning to that synchronicity than the mere coincidence of numbers; the house is an intriguing symbol, especially Initiatorily. On one level, it is a symbol for the self, and the process of Initiation is akin to a substantive remodeling of “the house of the Self.” Secondly, as it pertains to the Initiatory work of a Magus in particular, one’s Word is, in many very real ways, one’s “house,” especially insofar as other Initiates are drawn to it.
On the positive side of my time in Texas, I had a nice, quiet environment most of the time that afforded a great deal of progress on my esoteric work and writing, and things had grown promising; the recent positive steps I highlighted above are proof enough of that.
One interesting thing that I said I would write about was this, and I do so for a good reason, not just to brag. In part, yes, it is to bring a bit of attention to the continuing synchronicity pertaining to the ways in which my work connects to the work of others, but the reason is to highlight the legitimacy and, to some degree, the relative collective import, of the work. It also raises a somewhat tangential issue to which I’ll be returning later in the post.
While the general level of synchronicity in my life is pretty high most of the time, it is also true that certain sources of it are much more consistent than others. There are certain people, for example, whose every move seems also meaningful to me in symbolic terms. One of those people is Lon Milo DuQuette. It is phenomena like these which lead me to generally accept the concept of “the Invisible College.” Totally a thing.
Anyway, soon after publishing my review of High Magic, I made a prediction that I would be getting a sign soon regarding some statements I had made in the review about my Self-Initiatory working inspired by the book. I even went so far as to guess, “Watch, it’ll come to you through Lon Milo.”
The concern voiced in the review was that there are many elements of that Self-Initiation ceremony that I feel self-conscious about. I wrote about the ceremony in the post Ten Years Gone for those interested in the details. Basically, though, the issue is that as I look back some 12 years later, I see that ceremony as roughly analogous to my “Portal” ceremony or my invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The reason I feel so self-conscious about it is that it is also clear from the very written records I shared about it that I wasn’t so very clear about that at the time I was planning or even conducting the ceremony. In other words, I cannot really say that as some sort of well-disciplined and informed magician, that ceremony was an intentional Initiatory act, because I hadn’t really articulated my statement of intent in those specific terms. So it’s like I have always questioned whether or not it “counts.” Every single time I write another post that draws attention to that ceremony, I cringe.
Well, here’s the video Lon Milo DuQuette recorded the day after I published that review:
In the video, DuQuette goes over some written instructions of Crowley’s for a ritual to summon the Holy Guardian Angel, and one of the things I most appreciated about it was the way he continually made it a point to pause and point out just how “thrown-together” any one magician’s performance of the ceremony would end up being, even if they closely followed Crowley’s instructions; there’s plenty of room for improvisation and creativity and that’s taken as a given. Every time he did this, he even stopped to look up at the camera, and I tell you, my subjective experience of it was like he was speaking directly to my own insecurities in particular, and looking up to make eye contact with me as he said what he said, by way of indicating: “Pay attention, now.” I felt his eye contact as if he were sitting in the room with me, addressing me personally.
I even have ambivalent feelings about needing this kind of reassurance. Really, if you read Maat Magick and any number of other books, there are many magicians out there who are affirming the validity of Self-initiation, so it’s not like my work is actually that novel in that sense. This means I really don’t have as much to be self-conscious about as I have typically felt and it also means I can relax a bit about the stakes of my work.
Nonetheless: There are stakes. It’s still important, I think, for anyone who can to add their own voice in affirmation of Self-Initiatory principles. We don’t all need to reinvent the wheel or, conversely, feel pressured to discover something new and innovative, but there’s still a lot of worth in sharing our work. For one, there are many “institutional” voices out there speaking against the validity of Self-Initiatory principles, insisting that people follow this dogma or that, and it just so happens that there is overlap between the type of person who does that and the type of person whose occultism tends to side with oppressive movements and currents.
As such, I have a sincere conviction that one of the best ways to fight authoritarianism and oppression is to promote and defend the principles of Self-Initiation. Point blank, I believe that if everyone in the world busied themselves more with Initiatory work, the world would be a better place because Initiation moves us to outgrow so many senselessly destructive behaviors and tendencies. A world of people who have integrated their Shadows is a world of people who are most likely not engaging in bigotry, hate, and oppression. Will we ever actually live in that world? I don’t know, but I do know it will never happen if we don’t do something to bring that world about. As such, aside from my own personal hangups, this little “message from the universe” in the form of the video by DuQuette is not only personally affirming: It’s reminding me, “This is important for reasons far beyond you. There are people depending on you to complete your work successfully, and in order to do that, you will need to believe in yourself.”
I pass this story on, in large part, to encourage any of my readers who may be facing similar doubts of their own. Keep going. Things look dark right now, but there’s purpose and potential behind all of this. Have hope.
Dead On The Vine
Anyhow, I don’t want to get too deep into the nitty-gritty details of it, but my time down in Texas was not entirely peaceful, with an ever-escalating tenor to the conflict that saw me sitting down more and more often to look at plane tickets home. Once or twice, I booked them, even pressing past the point of being able to get a refund on one occasion, so that I had enough flight credit that my ticket home this month cost me $1.25.
As it happens, we had another fight on November 5th—U.S. election day—and I had finally had enough that I packed a bag, made a call to my mother, and booked a ticket to fly the next day. Given past experiences, I knew that I needed to fly immediately, because part of the reason things had carried on as long as they had was that every time I had to wait a few days to leave, I would lose my nerve because the looming anxiety would just kill me. I needed to do it like a band-aid and just rip it off quick and clean.
My bag was packed as I lay on the sofa, watching the election results roll in; watching, for the second time, a nightmare coming true. As it became clearer and clearer as the evening wore on that Trump really was going to cinch the election, I found myself reflecting on some of the deeper esoteric meaning behind developing events; the ramifications on the future of my esoteric work of my impending move back home were…intriguing. If Trump was going to win, it seemed just as well to be back in Chicago, in a large Democratic city, connected with more resources, than out in an isolated mobile home community in Conroe, TX where we’d occasionally seen Proud Boy banners being flown from coal-rolling F-150s on the way to Wal-Mart.
It seemed like the writing was on the wall. It was dark kairos, but it was kairos nonetheless.
Going back to the Week 18 post and yesterday’s anniversary of The Hancock Working: The post also documents some pretty cool synchronicities that tie the anniversary to my work with the demon Vine. That also becomes highly relevant to the timing of all of this.
I document my work with Vine in the post My Cousin Vine; in that post, I explain how, to me, or in my Subjective Universe—Vine as a demon is a symbol of patriarchy and every ill associated with it, including war, imperialism and authoritarianism, overt violence as a ready means of advancing goals, etc. I also associate him with gangsters, and with historical Chicago gangster Frank Nitto in particular. Also alcoholism, misogyny, etc.
I also mention how, for me, my “encounter” with Vine corresponded chronologically with the rise of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Vine even corresponds with such an occurrence in that his number is 45, as Donald Trump’s first term was as 45th President.
I also mention how, due to some undesired consequences of the “irregular” way in which I approached Vine magically, I had also rendered him somewhat a “genius locus” (though I accidentally mixed the plural and singular forms of the respective terms). That is, in my magical experience, Vine goes hand in hand with certain “territories” around here, especially this particular area: In his association with Frank Nitto, I have linked Vine magically to Nitto’s house in Riverside, IL.
So, Vine is linked magically with Trump, on some very deep and fundamental, even archetypal levels. And he’s linked with the location of Riverside, IL (roughly). And Trump won the election, and the very next day, I moved back to Berwyn.
“Uh oh,” I know some my of my magic(k)ally-seasoned readers are probably thinking right about now.
And all I have to say is, “Yup.”
So, just a couple days after I get back, the Internet suddenly erupts with a new controversial catch-phrase fueling rampant vitriol:
“Your body, my choice.”
The phrase is absolutely emblematic of the current Zeitgeist, now serving as a rallying cry for many on the right who support the expected impending assault on women’s rights, which…is right up Vine’s, uh…alley.
Who started it?
As lots and lots of people know, it’s attributed to one Nick Fuentes—of Berwyn, IL. Since he’s been doxxed, we have an exact address:
That’s, uh…that’s close.
To put it in perspective:
It’s about 9 blocks away from the house I lived in that burned down in the events I recount in When They Talk Back.
It’s about 3 blocks away from the apartment my mother and I moved into next, which I have been dreaming about lately.
It’s even closer to the spot where Frank Nitto committed suicide—now in the parking lot at North Riverside Park Mall—than it is to my house in the first bullet point.
Like, ZAP!
There are a couple of ways of looking at this.
One the one hand, it’s a pretty clear confirmatory sign that I’m in the right place, for I have work to do.
The view on the other hand is a bit more complicated.
Speaking of “Cleaning Up Messes…”
There is one last reason to refer back to the Week 18 post and yesterday’s anniversary: My “sloppy” methodology with Vine thus far, and what appear to be some of its negative consequences.
I had initially employed Vine in a magic(k)al “war” of sorts—a very personal one. The particular beef was anything but superficial, to be sure, but my methods were not what a sober version of me would call “ethically excusable",” and I have always been acutely aware of that.
I have already referred to how my methods resulted in Vine being linked to this geographical area—primarily by my leaving a blood-stained disc with his sigil burned onto it at a nearby “power spot”—but there’s more to the picture.
The Week 18 post makes reference to another post—entitled War Magick—references which were once active links. The post in question, which went into considerable detail about some pretty nasty magic(k)al work—has since been deleted because there’s just not a lot of good to be had from that information being so readily available.
Basically, while Vine was causing definite “turbulence” in my life (or so I had concluded at the time), he was also guiding me in said War Magic(k). He was my mentor, and so one could even say that he was its chief architect. Magic(k)ally speaking, of course.
Those techniques involved the creation of hostile “tulpas,” and part of the problem is the symbolism involved: They took the form of Star Destroyers. Entire fleets of them.
Yes, in a certain way, the whole notion and sensibility is embarrassingly incel-coded, for sure. I’m going to own that. But yeah, as a serious chaos magician, I had summoned a demon to help me build a fleet of offensive tulpas based on space fascism, and my method of employing them involved the symbolism of “invasion,” in the form of magic(k)al workings in which I had used this “fleet” to “conquer” various other power spots, or areas I wanted to “control” in my “war.”
I will say this: It’s not like I didn’t get the kind of results I was looking for, that’s all I’m really going to say.
However, I have very often asked myself the question: “Why did you default to the space fascist symbolism for that working? Like, was that necessary? And could that indicate deeper problems? Could associating your work with such currents at all have unintended consequences such as, say, manifesting totalitarianism? No joke.
I think we have our answer, don’t we?
Well, shit—now what?
Well, among other things, as I’ve already emphasized, proper action is well underway—the War of the Magi series about Final Fantasy VI is a concerted part of my response to all of this. I am putting more energy into intentionally siding with “The Returners” of the situation currently facing the United States.
All this mention of Frank Nitto and his connection to this area via the place where he died has me thinking that it is important to remember this, though: The Magus both creates and destroys, and there were positive consequences to all of this.
With a tinge of bittersweetness do I recall that it was on one of our many trips as a couple to dine at Olive Garden that the Word of Hermekate was formally “born” (does that make it the moment of its “utterance?” I wonder.)
It had been an odd and Initiatorily stressful day for me. I had been very preoccupied with various kernels of gnosis floating around in my psyche, feeling strongly that they needed to be attended to somehow, that they fit together somehow, but as they circled round and round, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it all. But it was basically an obsession, and I wasn’t all that present with Veronica except insofar as I was able to talk through the ideas that had taken hold of me.
Then, suddenly, it all just clicked together at once. The philosophical physics changed, undergoing a sudden and spontaneous “phase shift;” I completely let go of and subsequently forgot about the train of thought I had previously been following to fit the pieces together. It’s like they had formed a “nebula,” and finally the density of this building cloud of ideas reached a critical mass and finally swirled into a disc, accreting into a nice, perfectly-ordered, spherical star:
The concept of Song of Hermekate emerged in my head, wholesale. The Song had been born.
The restaurant can’t be but a couple of hundred feet from where Nitto died.
A gangster dies…
…a song is born.
At any rate, my friends, I was going to write this post last night so that it would fall on the appropriate date, but I was tired and I obeyed my body’s pleas for rest. Alas, there’s work to do. I need to find a way to magically address the mess I made with Vine. I had once employed him recklessly for a personal war and there has been blowback. There must be some way to rein this in, or at least make it right—right?
Before going to bed, I checked YouTube; what did Lon Milo DuQuette have to talk about on the anniversary of The Hancock Working?