Today, on April 18th (I am just now realizing that makes it 4/18, the number of the word “Abrahadabra,” which is intrinsically tied with The Chariot card. Long-time readers know how “auspicious” that is. Newer readers will get sick of hearing about it).
When I originally read this post, I knew it was an inspired text as soon as I read it. It hit me like a breath in the face. Like it wanted to eff me.
There is one line in particular that really stands out as being sent like a bolt of redeeming thunder from the heavens. It echoes in, and then back out.
Can you spot it?
I present the original Flying Blind in its unaltered form. Even the part with the strikethrough is meant to be rendered the way it is.
To see how everything on Dark Twins eventually came full circle back to this post, please do skip ahead to Song of Twilight. I meant to link to Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution Week 24, so I guess Song of Twilight was a Freudian slip?
It’s a joy to read.
EDIT 3:54am (4/18 still): About mistakes happening for a reason:
I kept having to look this post up to edit it again, and when I enter its title into the search bar right now, I get 42 results. This stood out because I had to edit the most recent post on the Stack, and had an issue with a post that simply was not appearing for a while there. Anyway, I also found in the process of looking up the post I was actually trying to link to above when I dropped Song of Twilight on y’all that when I enter “Chapter 24” into the search bar, I get 72 results.
Both auspicious numbers.
Taking Off
There is a matter I would like to address regarding much of my activity in life—past, present, and particularly recent. It could explain a lot to a number of people who may or may not have their eye on me, but I know it will mean a lot to generations of people who explore the wild and wondrous realm of magic(k).
Speaking of which, I would also like to introduce the above as a new symbolic naming convention for magic/magick, and I will explain its meaning at a later time. Not “magic,” and not “magick,” but “magic(k).” Okay, here is the later time, because I suddenly thought of a succinct way of putting it.
In a book I was reading recently (I think I know which one, but I can’t remember; I have it here and I checked the index to cite this, but the word I need wasn’t in it, and I am just too tired right now to scour the book for the reference, so take this with a grain of salt), How to Become a Modern Magus by Don Webb, I came across the suggestion that the “k” in the word “magick” as spelled by Aleister Crowley symbolizes the word κύσθος, which translates to a naughty word for a beautiful and sacred thing. Sigh. Students of a certain understanding get the joke there and, even if they cringe at it, they understand that formally, that is kind of how this stuff goes. It was an example of “antinomianism,” or the breaking of a cultural taboo intentionally for the sake of personal self-liberation. The problem in this case is that many people of a different, perhaps more vicious understanding, can take those words as license to do some very harmful things. And having that out in the open has done real harm to society.
Anyway, I think I remember reading in another book by the same author (this one being Overthrowing the Old Gods) that it can also be taken to stand in for the rune “Kenaz,” and I would say that based on my understanding, this fits equally well. It’s another interesting layer, from another culture, to this onion...and it does look like a whole onion. It looks like it’s all “one thing” (shameless Emerald Tablets plug).
We must acknowledge a certain Western conceit in even thinking it before we’ve done a lot of thorough study and probably practice as well, but it also reminds me of another cultural “K:” Kundalini.
So, while Crowley said that the spelling was to distinguish stage magic from “real magick,” I am pretty sure the real meaning was hidden behind that single letter. I have said this before, as a veiled reference to the truth to which I’m alluding: That K, amirite?
I can see a few new layers to this scheme that I would not have appreciated had I sat down to write this post 3 years ago.
I will now run through the three examples above and give some reasons for the new spelling. Think of the parentheses as a “vessel” for the K. OK? OK.
Magic(k)
As practitioners who have a certain level of familiarity with one or more of the above systems/cultures will be aware, one way of understanding the difference here is that “magic” is simply “going through the motions,” whereas “magick” is doing it “with the current switched on.” This is typically accomplished by visualizing a colored flame.
Κύσθος is a profane Greek word for a woman’s vagina. When it comes to magic(k), placing the “k” inside the parentheses is symbolically shielding this sacred vessel from intrusion without permission.
In the context of Kenaz, placing the “k” inside the parentheses is a way of symbolically “shielding” a torch’s flame from being blown out entirely by the wind, or protecting it from rain. It can also symbolize extinguishing this fire safely by grinding embers into the earth. It suggests the way the other three elements relate to that of fire, typically considered closest to the gods.
In the context of Kundalini, well. Anyone who has read much about it has also read some horror stories. Some pretty incredible ones. And they may also be tantalized by the promise of the powers (siddhis) these books talk about, even if they pretend they aren’t in hopes that some wise man will hand over the goods, willy-nilly. I am here to tell you: All the stories are true. And I know this because I am here to tell them. Thus, we put the K in a cage for the safety and well-being of ourselves and others.
This is the way.
Now, a few words about how I know this.
I was born into an interesting home, with a former Catholic Priest-turned-top-secret-scientist for a father and a mother who worked for The Colorado Department of Labor and Unemployment and who read her fortune with playing cards every morning before work as she sipped Earl Grey tea with milk and a little bit of sugar. As I type this, she is making her morning tea upstairs even though she wasn’t even awake when I started writing this. This is how things go for me nowadays, but we will get to that in due time.
Seeing Time-Life books on our bookshelf—there’s a black, hard-bound series on the paranormal that was very popular back then—is literally one of my earliest memories, along with the Bob Dylan song, “Like A Rolling Stone” (which is foreshadowing, on several levels, of the rest of my life). I remember reading that book and wishing desperately to be able to do that. Something about it felt almost necessary to me. I had to learn this skill, and I have spent a lifetime trying to no avail. The closest I’ve gotten (that I can recall upon waking, that is) is a few lucid dreams. Nah, after discussing it with a friend of mine, it turns out I’ve been astrally projecting like a champ for years. Good to know.
Those who have followed my antics over the years know that I have a proclivity for making big claims about magical systems, attainments and the like while also demonstrating an obstinate lack of actual familiarity with the source material. It makes me look like such a horse’s ass. It turns out, there are two sides to this, but put together, they will explain why it is the way it is.
A little later on in life, when I was 15 or so, I was spontaneously “contacted” by two “spirit guides.” Later still, I met a third. All of them began telling me a story that I later seemed to see confirmed in various books on my spirited searches for knowledge and wisdom as a boy. They said I am here for a very important purpose. In a seeming paradox that has taken me a lifetime to accept (understanding is one thing and accepting is another), they implied that I am here to do work similar to that of Aleister Crowley. They said that they couldn’t say what it was but they gave obvious hints. The problem is that those hints are also on all the lists in spiritual schools of signs that your ego is getting inflated, and so, like a good student, I would ignore and deny them. And yet, the spirits would keep the heat on, insisting it was truer and more literal than the world’s teachers had ever let on was possible. So, at first I disbelieved it because I didn’t want to get carried away, but very soon, I started disbelieving it and averting my eyes because I couldn’t really deny it anymore, and it scared me. I have lived with that fear since I was 15 or so, and first connected the dots:
I’m here to become an Ipsissimus, and do what an Ipsissimus does. To what end, it is not yet time to reveal here.
The fear has kept me from following dozens of leads over the years, but as it happens, that is a good thing which played right into the hands of my Spirit Guides, because they say that’s part of the recipe. They say that my “pulling rabbits out of hats” like that will be one of the main ways that I grab the attention of certain people.
And as I studied occultism further, I learned that that’s typically how it’s happened with many esoteric orders; someone comes along with literal clairvoyant insight into what some secret cabal is doing, and suddenly, it’s “Come Join Us.” Maybe there are even some ominous threats attached to the memo.
And so, to be honest, I have been leaning into that. And watching the results. And it has been fun sometimes, sometimes a horror show, and sometimes a shitshow, as one who has actually done their homework might expect.
I have been flying blind, my guides shuffling me around in my long Initiation.
It reminds me of a certain ritual, about which I am sworn to secrecy.
But now that I have reached this point, the rest of the work involves doing that study to learn for myself how the dots of my life connect to the greater esoteric currents that run through the world, and then present my findings. That’s one part.
The part I will likely be more concerned with here is telling all the war stories.