Full of Wrath

A Covenant of Consciousness with Hekate

At midday today (in the United States), the New Moon will energize the sign of Capricorn with its regenerative, quickening influence—making today an auspicious day to rededicate myself to Hekate by way of entering into an agreement with Her regarding the way I care for myself. I truly sympathize with any newer readers just jumping in now, because most of the meaning in this occasion is drawn from the story I’ve been telling here at Dark Twins since December of 2022 (when the Sun was in Capricorn). As always, I apologize to my longer-term readers for the tedium of all of the backtracking I will need to do in order to draw all relevant threads into the tapestry I’m weaving. Those who patiently follow them will be rewarded with an intriguing vision.

It is at once humbling, instructive, and oddly inspiring to read The Cunning Farmer’s reflections upon this lunation since I’ve been writing my Substack for about the same amount of time as him, and I feel richly blessed with my readership of 72. It’s ironic because I know that my message is ultimately of relevance to a great many people on this planet who would appreciate it deeply, provided they could meet the dual conditions of knowing about it and having the time to dedicate to understanding it.

Because it’s far more important that all of this be done carefully rather than quickly, I don’t mind the discrepancy.

The “bookending” of my project between today’s Capricorn Moon and the “Sea-goat Sun” of yesteryear is particularly meaningful in light of my developing understanding that the face of Hekate appears to be obscuring that of “the Devil” in the very same way that the Moon can neatly eclipse the Sun, and that this wicked entity has a big task for me just as it did for Michael Aquino and, according to him, Anton LaVey. According to this understanding, LaVey’s Church of Satan can be viewed as a “thesis” of the modern Left Hand Path, with Aquino’s Temple of Set serving as antithesis, with the newly-emerging Temple of the Dark Twin, which I am co-founding, performing what I am given to understand will be widely regarded as the formal synthesis of the two philosophies. The post below would be a good starting point if you’re interested in how all of that came about.

The relationship between Church of Satan and Temple of Set is conveniently understood in terms of the Cancer-Capricorn Axis (let’s get tropical, bay-bee!), which is ironic since both Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino ruthlessly panned astrology. LaVeyan Satanism is an eminently Capricornian philosophy (I prefer that term over “religion” even though the latter is the one officially used by the relevant organization) rooted in a deep emphasis on practical, tangible, and mostly physical efforts. According to the most common understanding, Anton LaVey was an atheist, and lampooning the pretense and the excesses of religious belief itself was one of the Church’s chief methods of chiseling out a path of carnal liberation for a certain brand of hard-nosed individualist who also revels in the pleasures of the flesh.

By contrast, Temple of Set was literally founded on the North Solstice in 1975, when the Sun is at its peak in the midst of the opposing sign of Cancer. This was symbolically perfect, since the very thing being declared by the Enochian working performed by Michael Aquino on that night was the real, transcendental existence of the being Anton LaVey appeared to regard as a mere symbol.

It was a similar reversal (though in this case, I would describe it more as a “turning inside-out”) of symbol logic that informed the working I documented in the post Set Flame to the Night, which just may go down in history as “The South Solstice Working.”

When you’re being groomed by the Queen of the Witches to take the wheel of an organization like the one Temple of the Dark Twin is shaping up to be, it behooves you not to drive drunk.

I’ve documented my latest exploits more reliably on TDT’s YouTube channel than I have here, so it might be worth your while to catch up with some of that if you haven’t seen any of that material yet. That’s where you’ll find the most relevant context for the ritual I’ll be documenting here. The rest of this post will consist of a reflective account of the occasion, with copious links to other posts that flesh out the details of many of the objects and symbolic elements included in the ritual.

I do encourage any readers who feel so inspired to take whatever pointers from this ritual that they’d like to use themselves, with my warmest blessings. Solidarity is important among those who suffer from addiction. IYKYK.

Morning of the Magicians

I knew upon going to sleep last night that I’d be getting up in the wee hours to do this ritual in the “liminal space” between yesterday’s Dark Moon and today’s official New Moon, but I wasn’t completely clear on all of the details. Nonetheless, true to the vision, I was up and setting up the altar by the time 3:33am rolled around. I kicked off proceedings by starting the album, “The Dry Land” by Hunstmen. It’s a band I was tipped off to the very night I began treatment for alcoholism at Presence St. Joseph’s Hospital’s Professionals Program. Track #1? “This, Our Gospel.” Happy Sunday.

Next, I took my time setting up the altar. Of course, I performed the ritual at the chthonic altar recognizable to my readers from various posts, as well as the background in all of my YouTube videos. I recently added three bricks to its setup: To the right and left of the altar, respectively, I set down bricks pilfered from recent construction along Route 66. Before the altar, I placed the large stone I stole from under a tree at a nearby power spot as documented in the post The Emperor’s New Groove. On top of that stone, I set down three hand-picked sobriety coins that were absolutely loaded with symbolism. In addition to Hekate’s own tripartite nature, the three coins allude somewhat to the way I’ve taken to opening my rituals lately—namely, by ringing a chime nine times. This opening is an evolution introduced by Don Webb in his book How to Become A Modern Magus to the similar opening popularized by Anton LaVey, where a bell (often silver) is used instead.

Once upon a time, I did this with nine evenly-spaced rings of the chime; in recent weeks, I’ve taken to extending the pauses between the middle three rings of the chime, such that the ritual now spells out “S.O.S.” in Morse code (get it?).

This morning, after lighting the tea lights and using the fire from the right tea light to light my incense, I noticed it was 3:44am my time, or 2:44am Keeli’s time—with 244 being the value of the Word of Hermekate in Hebrew Gematria. I definitely took the opportunity to text her a photo of the altar at the auspicious moment, since she’s my High Priestess and all (lately, we have learned that “Liege” is a gender-neutral term, and have played around with calling one another that).

As is visible in the photo, I placed the bowl from a few of my posts (such as The Wordless Aeon and The Limitations of Labels Part II) into “the Graal,” a large bowl-shaped pillar candle holder with a Triquetra engraved on the front that takes center stage most of the time on the altar. Inside the bowl, I placed the small crystal ball and triple rabbit stand featured in the photo for the post When They Talk Back. This has two meanings, both of which sort of dovetail.

With the ceremonial bowl representing the “bowl” of a human skull (the allusion here to a kapala is intentional), the setting of the crystal ball down into the center symbolizes the location of the pineal gland, thought by many to be the physical seat of the “third eye” through which we receive visions and other psychic transmissions. As such, this act ritually represents the intention, in abstaining from alcohol, to care for this part of my body so that it faithfully shows me what I need to see.

In concrete terms, I will one day use this very sphere in my own Enochian workings, and this ritual is my means of consecrating it for that purpose.

The three coins I laid out were carefully-selected for their meaning, both separately and taken as a trio. From left to right, I set down the coins from largest to smallest. First and largest is my graduation coin from the Professionals program at Presence St. Joseph’s hospital on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago (where land, sea, and sky all meet). It’s one of the best programs of its kind. This coin serves as my foundation, for the sake of all I learned in that program, which armed me with the knowledge I needed to formulate my own salvation outside of the regimen of medication that was recommended to me there.

In other words, I used the program’s own gospel against itself (frankly, a muthafuckin’ G move).

The second coin is a 24-hour chip from Alcoholics Anonymous. After the theoretical foundation of the program comes the tangible cornerstone: A day. While modern physics and philosophy recognize time as a fluid whole which we artificially “chop up” with mental constructs, there is something real and tangible about the passage of a 24-hour period on earth, marking as it does the setting and rising of the sun. There’s something there to count on. Just as a cornerstone represents one’s toil in the world (this is so Masonic), the 24-hour chip represents the step where we do sobriety by actually abstaining.

Lastly, the Hekate coin I got a few years back, sitting up on the surface, places the symbolic stamp of purpose on the intention being set here. Crucially, despite the language I just employed above, this is not at all about “rejecting” or “renouncing” alcohol in negative terms, but is instead about the positive act of self-care. As such, I am definitely thinking of this stack of coins as a “sandwich,” suggesting that it is desirable that we consume that which we require for sustenance or entheos, for our benefit and increase, rather than for decrease, such as aversion to suffering or a blotting out of painful memories.

More specifically, it’s a “burger,” which is simultaneously a nod to my first job at White Castle (since this is all part of my “job” now), as well as a reference to the first song I posted on the Freak Flag Recovery Facebook Page.

The entire thing is a tripartite reminder of why I am doing this, and it just so happens that each coin nestles quite snugly into the outline formed by the coin just beneath it.

Hail Hekate

Next came the “meat and potatoes” of the ritual: The prayer portion, where I actually make the sandwich. I’ve recently composed (and shared on social media) a version of the Hail Mary that expresses the nature of my work for and with Hekate. I produce it here on the Substack for the first time:

Hail Hekate
Full of Wrath
The Horde is with thee
Mighty art thou amongst Titans
and mighty are the scores of thy kin, angels
Infernal Hekate,
Mother of the Moon,
Aid us sinners
Now and eternally after our deaths
Nema!

I’ve been saying this prayer in the mornings lately, keeping count with a set of 108 prayer beads sent to me by Keeli. As a detail, the beads are divided into three even sections, each parted by a sequence of clear beads with spacers in between them. Upon reaching the first partition, I set the 24-hour coin into the “socket” formed by the Presence coin. At the second threshold, I added the Hekate coin to the top. At the third, I placed the “sandwich” into the small cauldron on the altar.

As far as my covenant with Hekate, the entire thing has been designed under a fluid, “fuzzy,” lunar paradigm that stands in defiance of the fixity and rigidity of solar symbolism; for one, I will no longer observe my sobriety date on a fixed solar date, but will instead observe the occasion on the Capricorn New Moon whenever it falls.

Second, I refuse to set a standard of perfect abstinence, which completely misses the point of this ceremony. This is about self-care and affirmation, remember, and not negation. In modifying this behavior, it is my goal to bring expansion and increase to the ties of community and connection that bind me to this work. As such, the agreement I made with Hekate is that I will not drink when I am alone, or to avoid negative feelings. However, if the appropriate occasion presents itself, I will drink socially and I will let Keeli know about it if she isn’t there. By setting this boundary, I am affirming both community and Anton LaVey’s Word of Indulgence while simultaneously upholding Michael Aquino’s Word of Xeper, and acting to fortify connections instead of to erode them—in keeping with the Word of Hermekate. If I do drink, it will be within due bounds and for the right reasons.

As usual, upon finishing my prayer beads, I raised my fingers in the “Go Coogs!” salute I appropriated from University of Houston and made the threefold gesture of devotion to Hekate that I came up with, where I press my palms together before my third eye, throat, and heart chakras, respectively.

In closing, I symbolically laid down a tarot cloth I’ve been hanging onto for a while atop the bowl; suffused with the symbolism of solar-lunar union, it also just so happens that the ring of moons surrounding the center of the image printed on the cloth fits the rim of the bowl perfectly.

Forward

The “cleanup” portion of the ceremony was also deeply interwoven with symbolism, in this case carrying us from the more individual and spiritual interests of the ceremony proper to issues concerning society at large. Over the past year, when drinking, I have taken to hiding my empty cans and bottles in a locked footlocker under my desk. There are intentional resonances here with the trunks at the feet of beds in military barracks, as my battle with alcohol has been an inner war, one which reflects the symbolic “war” that has constituted my experience of family relations for my entire life. Addressing this behavior and healing my trauma is about ending that war.

Speaking of “lockers,” I also fit this footlocker with a decorative plaque that was originally meant as a Donor Recognition vehicle for my former job at Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center; this one turned out to be a dud and the donors went with a different donation opportunity, but this plaque had originally been meant to adorn one of the school lockers in the Harvey Miller Youth Exhibition.

As a Zionist institution, the Illinois Holocaust Museum is a testament to collective trauma and the impacts that reverberate across the planet when a people’s trauma propels them to become the abuser themselves. I remember the great sympathy for the project of Israel that my time working at the Museum opened me up to; prior to that, my main point of reference for the State of Israel was the relationships I held with the Palestinians with whom I worked at Kvikk Vask og Rens in Mo i Rana, Norway.

While the exhibit did make me sympathize more than I previously had, I simply cannot condone what Israel is doing and I don’t think the horrors of history are any justification. I can relate to the visceral forces driving this phenomenon—cortisol is real, as is its epigenetic effect on future generations—but if anything, this is only a reminder to me of the fact that no matter how bad my childhood may have been, I don’t get a free pass for unleashing my trauma upon society; if hurt someone, I go to jail just like anyone else.

In this sense, current events in that region of the world form a poignant reflection of the isolation and destruction from which I seek to step forth; and I forgive and empathize with Zionists every bit as much as I have to forgive and empathize with myself, for the path to recovery is the same in both instances:

To heal and integrate the wound, not to resist it and thus perpetuate the wounding.

This is a reminder, to me, of the inseparability of the political from the cold, hard facts of individual and collective trauma. It is a reminder that, yes, actually, recovery is political, and our path to recovery matters.

Temple of the Dark Twin, through its “basement” project, Freak Flag Recovery, is about turning things around in a truly comprehensive way: By putting the finishing touches on a program of recovery that fully balances the prerogatives of the individual and the collective in a holistic way.

Io Hekate!