I have a lot of ground to cover in this post, which is the post I alluded to at the end of Week 23’s post in The Inner Tarot Revolution, where I said I would be explaining what I’ve been referring to when I speak of “decentralization” in posts like Song of Hermekate or Week 22. I’ll be doing so by way of anecdotes drawn from last Wednesday, July 26th, which will serve as a rich snapshot of what Songs actually look like as they unfold. After that will come a bit of explication that will bring final clarity to the title of this Substack, Dark Twins. Following that will come a section I was not planning to include in this post until sometime last night, and I think I will include some anecdotes of the events that helped shape that unexpected turn of events.
Then, I will wrap this entire Dark Twins project up with a License to Depart.
How Songs Are Sung
The way the word “magic” (or, in Crowley’s terms, “magick”) has been defined over the years has shifted, but there are two or three definitions that have grown to be favored by most occultists, the chief of which might just be Crowley’s "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." Chronologically speaking, the first post on this Stack is my review of Don Webb’s How to Become a Modern Magus: A Manual for Magicians of All Schools,” wherein Webb offers one definition (out of many that he explores) as “managing synchronicity.” At first glance, this might appear to some as similar in meaning to another variant, “the art and science of causing meaningful coincidence,” as part and parcel of some of the occasional phenomena anyone can experience by carrying out just one successful magical operation. However, my emphasis on synchronicities here at Dark Twins illustrates that this rabbit hole goes far deeper than that; at a certain point in one’s development, synchronicity is everywhere. A Carl Jung quote that makes the rounds occasionally goes, “Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.” There is a definite threshold involved here: Having grown up with internet access from a young age, I first read about synchronicity on some New Age web page or another, and I started experiencing it here and there as early as the age of 13. I’d go through some periods where a bunch of synchronicities clustered together. However, at some point a few years back, synchronicity began to come at me like a wall of sound, filling my life to the brim, and it never stopped, and I don’t think it ever will.
This is the state in which Webb’s definition of magic really makes sense, because if you don’t have a way of managing it when it happens to you, you will lose your mind (see The Temple of Madness: A Chapel Perilous Journey). There are various paths to this state of being, and the practice of magic is just one; Jung’s writings about Individuation are talking about the same thing, any number of mystical systems can take you there, art is yet another possible pathway, and some people stumble into it by doing too many drugs. Some of these paths are safer than others, but no matter which path you take, once you pass through those turnstyles, you’re on a one-way street for the rest of your life as far as having such experiences goes. As Impa says to Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild once he accepts her quest to defeat Calamity Ganon:
And, as it turns out, following your heart is the best way to navigate the potentially frightening waters upon which you will find yourself sailing from that day forward. Don Webb himself told me as much when he once wrote me an impromptu Haiku about the tattoo of a phurba I wear (my struggles to understand the meaning of the phurba’s prominent influence in my life were among the topics of the first unsolicited email I sent to him):
Thunderbolt phurba
carry it on your shoulder
use it with your heart
On July 18th, I published Week 22’s post in The Inner Tarot Revolution, where I made a strong statement that I had made an Oath to the same being who was also behind the work of Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, Michael Aquino, and even Don Webb himself—as Link, in that same room with Impa in Breath of the Wild. The feel of that moment to me was analogous to the moment I was duly Initiated into Co-Freemasonry; Impa’s house parallels the room in which the ceremony took place, Impa was like unto the Right Worshipful Master who held the swords and delivered my charge (an older woman), and Link was me, as the newly-constituted Entered Apprentice. Then, at the end of that post, I said I would be spacing out my posting activity in order to catch up and consolidate my knowledge, because among other things, what I had just done in that post was to hint at my self-declaration that I am a Magus.
For most of the series, I had been following a weekly schedule in which I published new chapters every Wednesday, a day chosen for its correspondence, in Hermetic systems, with Mercury, patron god/planet of magicians, and thus of Magi.
Here are the promised anecdotes, which unfolded on Wednesday, July 26th—the day upon which I would have published Chapter 23 if I had stayed on schedule.
The symphony began quite early in the morning. I posted an excerpt from my magic(k)al diary expressing some of my recent insights about Songs, which in turn have crystallized into this post. That excerpt once again emphasized the way Songs are comprehended at the level of the heart, which I also expressed in the initial post Song of Hermekate that first formalized the concept of the Song, juxtaposing it with the similar concept, associated with certain specific Initiatory structures, of the Word. In a nutshell, a Song is kind of like a “meta-Word” that comes through more than one person at the heart level, whereas a Word is the work of an individual. At any rate, making that post was a big step forward in the Utterance of my Word-Song, “Hermekate,” because it had been a long time since I had written and published anything substantial that further developed the meaning of the concept of the Song.
I also accepted a friend request from a new friend, which will factor in here later.
Next, I checked my Facebook feed and saw that a friend of mine had posted her results for that day’s game of Wordle; I don’t play Wordle, but have taken to looking up a given day’s Wordle answer once I see her post her results, because this is a person I vibe with frequently when it comes to these synchronicities. She had mentioned, that day, that the Wordle word had synchronistically played in song lyrics (!) just as she was typing the word out herself.
The Wordle word that day was “HEART.”
I will note here that my friend is of Irish descent and very proud of it, and that exploring her heritage is a big part of her life.
Later that day, I was reading further in the book High Magic: Theory & Practice by Frater U.:.D.:. More specifically, I was reading the chapter Introduction to Ritual Magic V, which covers the topic of magical daggers, including the matter of carefully handling them after the death of the magician (which, of course, had me thinking about phurbas, which as I related above have been a cornerstone of my own work. I inherited my own phurba from the eminent English-speaking Haiku poet J.W. Hackett; this was why Don Webb wrote me a Haiku about it to answer the email I had written him, see?) Anyway, just as I am wrapping up Chapter V, my fiancee, Veronica (whom I call V), comes in to tell me of the passing of Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor. To add to the already-resonant symbolism of the letter V, one of the things she was known for was the time she ripped up a picture of the Pope on live television, and of course, Atu V in the tarot is The Hierophant, AKA the Pope.
As if the above string of synchronicities wasn’t thick enough already, as soon as I finished reading Chapter V of High Magic, I pulled up Facebook on my phone, only to see that the author of the book, Frater U.:D.: himself, AKA Ralph Tegtmeier, had just posted the news of O’Connor’s passing. I was sure to comment to him that I had heard the news from V while reading Chapter V of his book.
After this, I created a post of my own to mark the occasion, dedicating a cover of her song, Nothing Compares To You, to her with a nod to her own iconoclasm:
A while later, the first friend in this string (I just realized I can go with the theme of Songs and coin the term “Verse” to describe a specific string of synchronistic occurrences that are part of a Song)—the one who had posted the Wordle results—posted her own tribute post, and later, Don Webb posted the original version of O’Connor’s song, and both were somber, heartfelt posts. I started to feel bad about the one I posted; I had selected the cover song I did because that band’s songs have been so much a part of my own experiences connected with the concept of the Song, and in particular because I had used one of the songs off of this same album to punctuate an earlier post here. Note the album title: “Take A Break,” which was the main “Note” (a symbolic element used, while singing a Song, to convey an intended synchronistic meaning) when I included the song in Chapter 19’s post, because I announced in that post that I would be taking a break from posting here. It lined up yet again with my current activity here at the time, since in Week 22, I had mentioned that I would be slowing down my pace; since this was all happening on the day I would otherwise have been due to publish Week 23’s post, I was indeed “taking a break” that day.
I started to feel bad about my tribute song, because the truth is, I am not particularly a fan of Sinéad O'Connor; although I do relate to many of her struggles (and the way she was ostracized for her work resonates with my experience, thus far, of Uttering my Word-Song), I was doing this simply because it vibed so well with my Song concept; as all of these synchs were happening, all of the associations I’m describing here were running through my head.
Songs are very rich in symbolism and they happen fast. You have to be “tuned in” a certain way to work consciously with them in real-time.
I felt that people might see through all of this, or at the very least, think I was being kind of an irreverent and flippant jerk, making light of the death of someone so loved by so many people, because just look at that album cover; the dudes are partying down, break dancing and shit.
The next “Note” in this “Verse” was played by Father Nathan Monk, who wrote his own very heartfelt post about O’Connor. He relates a lot with her because he himself is a controversial iconoclast and former Priest who really stands behind the statement she made when she tore up the picture of the Pope. He stands in solidarity with her also because (and I didn’t realize this until he wrote it) O’Connor herself became a Priest to carry on her work; so to him, she was a sibling of the Cloth. I will get into some of the deeper meanings, here, of how this relates to me personally and to the concept of the Song, in the next section. Anyway, there was verbiage in his post about how he felt “broken” by the news, which again reminded me of the break-dancing fellas on the album cover of the song I had so thoughtlessly shared (so that word, “broken,” thus became another “Note” in this “Verse”). I felt tacky after reading that, and made the decision to delete my post with the Me First song.
This led me into a bit of a BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) shame spiral, and I started obsessing for a while about my work, because the way this Verse was shaping up, I was starting to also feel as though the message for me was to keep up the pace. This is another thing I will come back to and revisit in the next section. I began to think maybe I needed to step it up and keep going with my posts, despite what I had written in Week 22 about slowing down.
In my next Facebook session, a couple of posts from one of the Pages I follow, Archetype Music and Arts, came up in my feed: One was an illustration for Paradise Lost, Satan as the Fallen Angel, by Gustave Dore. It made me think of my Oath to The Twilight Princess (my personal term for the being known also as Satan), and I asked myself at that moment, “I wonder if that was a sign from The Princess to keep up with my work?” And at that exact moment, I got a notification of a “Like” on a post of mine from the new friend who had just added me that morning. The post in question was the post where I shared the occasion on the airplane to St. Louis where V told me it was 3:33 just as I was about to read Verse 51 of The Book of the Law (I recount that tale in Week 22 of Inner Tarot Revolution). As it happens, I have been vibing with that same friend this morning while working on this very post.
Given the context of the above, this became a Note confirming my question, and I did indeed take it as a message from The Twilight Princess that, yes, I needed to keep going.
Later that evening, the friend who had posted the Wordle results in the morning shared another tribute to O’Connor, written by Amanda Palmer; in that tribute, Palmer herself said that normally she would wait a day or two to post about it, but that Sinéad O'Connor would have appreciated its rawness and the fact that it came from the heart.
At that point, I pulled my Me First post out of the Trash in my Activity Feed, then switched to the Dark Twins FB page and shared it there, too.
Though I would not actually write and publish it for a couple of days, by this point late Wednesday night, I had formulated the core ideas and the basic approach behind what I would write for Week 23’s post in Inner Tarot Revolution and just needed to let it all gel.
Dark Twins Explained
Just what the hell does “Dark Twins” even mean, anyway? I’ve been saving my explanation of this for the right time, and I think the right time is now.
When the synchronicity really turned up in my life—when I first started “hearing the music,” as it were—it unfolded gradually and at first, it seemed subjectively to revolve around specific people.
The first person was none other than Don Webb himself. As I’ve written elsewhere, both my fiancee Veronica and I began to notice that almost every damn thing he posted had some deeply personal semantic connection to experiences in our own lives, or even to inner subjective experiences that were constrained to the realm of thought. In short, it was almost like he were peering into our lives and our psyches and posting stuff related to what he saw.
He was my first Dark Twin.
Very soon after, these experiences spread to Ralph Tegtmeier/Frater U.:.D.:., and to the friend from the above Verse who had posted her Wordle results (in fact, in the post The Wisdom Eye, she is the friend I think of in relationship to Naydra, the “Wisdom Dragon” in Breath of the Wild). They, too, are Dark Twins. I’ve mentioned in previous posts (with examples) that my work lines up with that of Edward Pandemonium and that we sync a lot together; he’s a Dark Twin of mine.
Here’s where it gets tricky: I have parasocial relationships with all of the above people, and I also have reason to believe all of them have read the book Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path (because one of them, Don Webb, wrote it, and we’re all mutual friends). That’s the book from which I first learned about metacommunication, or the art of communicating on multiple levels at once, such that it is possible to say something to someone else, perhaps in code, without actually saying it. In fact, if you’re crafty enough about it, you can “metacommunicate” multiple different things to multiple different parties in one communique (for example, sharing a meme that you know one person might interpret one way, and another person might interpret yet another way). When this enters the picture, things get complex in terms of attributing intent on the part of the person in question.
Why? Because, not only do I know for a fact that I’m living in a world full of synchronicity (and so that alone could explain pretty much any single instance of this), but I know all of the above people also know all about and experience a lot of synchronicity themselves. We have all of us seen some pretty astronomical coincidences, and appreciated them when we saw them. When that’s going on, too, you can’t draw hasty conclusions about intent.
One single meme makes for the perfect example of what I mean here—it’s one that I saved as soon as I saw it, and will always cherish it. It’s from a post Don Webb shared on December 15, 2022 (I hope he doesn’t mind):
This is probably the single most heavily “Note-laden” meme I’ve ever seen. This meme alone could be considered a “Chord.” Let’s walk through it all:
“I don’t always pose for Christmas pictures”: I don’t remember the exact thrust of this Note the day the meme dropped, but the word “pose” here has a few different meanings that could be applicable, one of which being that there’s a section in a manuscript I’ve sent to Don Webb that dealt with posers in the punk scene; I sent him the manuscript because the whole concept for it was derived from the above mentioned Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path.
Christmas as a general theme, and Christmas trees, with the focus of this post being a cat at the bottom of a tree: All of this is symbolism that found its way into the post What Child Is This? A Merry Zelda Yule. When Don Webb shared this, I had posted a lot of the content that found its way into that post in random Facebook posts of my own; the fact that Don Webb shared this meme ended up being the major “push” that inspired me to write the blog that I eventually ported over to this Stack as the World of Ruin category. In other words, this Substack owes its existence to this one post.
“But when I do, I frickin’ nail it.” Key word here: Nail. Remember that haiku he wrote me about phurbas? A phurba is thought of as a “nail,” as it is used to “nail down” obstacles and such. It was specifically the question of insurmountable obstacles and how I might leverage the phurba against them that I had written to Don Webb about one fateful evening before he wrote that Haiku. In What Child Is This?, I wrote of Christmas trees being Axis Mundi symbols, and so are phurbas; so here we have a double-whammy!
The cat. The cat itself is laden with various meanings when I see it as a symbol, and is kind of a wild card. However, one meaning which I attribute to cats in the context of interpreting Notes in a Verse is this: A black magician (doggos are white magicians). That’s Don Webb for sure!
“Elias Raven” is also multilayered: “Elias” is another form of the name “Ilyas,” the name of a spirit guide or aspect of my Higher Self, whom I introduced in the post When They Talk Back. As for “Raven,” I read that as relating to “the Raven Clan,” which my first magic teacher once said he and I were a part of.
Believe it or not, there is one last tie-in here, between the “Raven Clan” Note and the “phurba” Note: There was a “prophecy” Matt (my first teacher) made that I would build a “weapon” to end the “spiritual war” he sometimes talked about. This was something that stuck with me for many years. It was a prophecy I didn’t necessarily want to come true in a literal sense. When my first wife brought me home my first phurba from a trip to China and I started learning about them, I came to understand that the practice of working with any Yidam deity, such as Vajrakilaya, the deity associated with these daggers, involved “building up” a thought-form of the Yidam deity (in this case, the dagger, a “weapon”) in one’s mind. From that moment on, I decided that I could “fulfill the prophecy” and “build the weapon” by working closely with phurbas and using them to destroy illusion. In so doing, I could safely and peacefully ground the psychic-emotional “charge” I had been carrying as a result of not only Matt’s prophecy, but the predictions of my friends in the Spiritual War chat rooms (see this post if you care about that). The typing of that previous sentence was the final step in that process…”the nail in the coffin.” Now I can say that I have fulfilled both prophecies, without harming anyone or fighting in a real war. The final section of this post will finish that work in a more comprehensive way, and then I’ll be done with it all…and good riddance! I’ve been carrying this baggage around for years.
So, did Don Webb post that meme with me in mind? Did he see all of the same symbolism in it that I do? Technically, all of the information that went into the above analysis was available to him; some of it involved stuff that I know he knew about me. Other parts involved stuff he may or may not have known, but that I had definitely shared online. In other words, it’s totally conceivable that he saw that meme and thought, “Okay, I gotta share this one for Dan.”
The cool thing, though, is that even if he did so, he could not have been responsible for its creation. The convergence of all of that symbolism in one place is, no matter what else is true, a one-in-a-million shot.
You might imagine how it blew my mind when I saw that thing, and now you understand why I saved it right away.
If you note the timestamp, you’ll see that I saw it just a minute after he posted it.
With any of the people I mentioned above, it’s eminently possible at any given time that when I see certain posts from them, they could be thinking of me and sharing the post accordingly; at any rate, I know I’ve shared plenty of posts myself that made me think of one or more of them. For example, the friend who shared the Wordle results definitely knows about my concept of the Song, so it’s certainly not farfetched to think she could have thought of me when she shared that tidbit about hearing the word in a song just as she typed it into Worldle. Then again, maybe she didn’t.
Forgive the pun, but none of us “compare notes” about this stuff. This next section will help to illustrate why (especially since we all know how this synchronicity stuff goes).
Moving out from this inner circle, I have many other Dark Twins who are not Friends of mine on Facebook and don’t have the same access to details about my personal life, but whose nearly every post on Facebook has a sync somewhere. There are still reasons to think it’s at least remotely possible they read my Substack or are aware of me, and thus could be metacommunicating. I’ve mentioned a few over the course of Dark Twins, but I’m going to keep the focus on two of them.
The first is Father Nathan Monk. While Don Webb’s meme above was the major “catalyst” tipping the scales toward my writing World of Ruin on a separate blog, it was posting activity from Father Nathan Monk that inspired me to start this Substack so I could aim for a larger audience. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I also know it’s both possible and even likely that, as closely as his posts have been syncing with mine, it’s not at all intentional on his part; this is true even though, since starting this Stack, I have commented on his Stack and even gotten a “Like” from him on one of those comments, from which it’s possible he followed the link back to my Substack. We’ve had an actual interaction, so it’s not ruled out. What I know is this: Every time I write a post, I see Notes in his posts that appear to reflect elements of my posts, both in posts that he writes on Facebook and even in his weekly column. Sometimes it comes all the way down to fairly direct verbiage.
A good example of this was in his post about Sinéad O'Connor, in which he wrote, “Instead of backing down, she chose to be ordained a priest, continued to fight, but ultimately, the house always wins. At least they do in the short run.”
That line closely reflects a line from Week 22’s Inner Tarot Revolution post, which is itself a quote from Crowley, referencing the Prince of Wands: “He is always fighting against odds, and always wins in the long—the very long—run.” At the time, it was my most recent post here, so if he had read it, it could have been fresh in his memory.
Father Nathan Monk is a popular guy, so it’s not very likely, but if it was aimed at me, why would it be? What would he be saying? Well, some of my work here has been inspired by him, and also lines up with what Sinéad O'Connor was about: Taking down the Patriarchy. The line in question is one I included by way of comparing myself in some ways to Aleister Crowley; so if he meant to do that, maybe it was simply to encourage me to keep it up? A vote of confidence? If not from him, then maybe these are nudges, as I’ve already theorized, from The Twilight Princess.
However, there is one monkey wrench.
I’ve covered another Dark Twin of mine in recent posts, particularly in Week 20’s post, where I made the main subject “Discernment of the Spirits.” In that post, I mentioned another parasocial relationship in which pretty much every post made by a certain Facebook page played Notes in my Song over a period of many months, with other unlikely syncs taking place along the way. I had been wondering if any of it was intentional.
I have since learned that it was not. That page creator didn’t know me from Adam (which was the most likely outcome, despite how much we seemed to be vibing, again, for months)! It was all 100% pure “coincidence,” and she was not visiting me astrally, either (Oops! Imagine how red my face was for a week or so after I asked her about it).
Learning that was a shock, even though I knew to expect it, and planned for it. It revealed to me that no matter what, no matter how closely things seem to align, when you have begun to hear Songs, you simply can’t ever assume conscious agency on the part of your Dark Twin.
Dark Twins don’t have to be aware of each other for the magic to happen.
This, it turns out, is the “proof in the pudding” for the concepts of Dark Twins and Songs both, and it’s even more magical than the idea that any of it was being done intentionally.
I am a Magus. Hermekate is my Word-Song, and Songs are sung by choirs of Dark Twins who may not even be aware of one another. In the end, what matters most of all is that we keep that in mind and learn to simply enjoy the music. Know, then, that the meanings you read into Songs, should you hear them, are meant for you alone.
Summa
It is at this juncture that I will make an announcement: Despite the fact that Inner Tarot Revolution is still ongoing and I’ve made various as-yet unfulfilled statements of intent for future posts, this will be my final post at Dark Twins, and this project is now complete. Before I close, however, I have some “cleanup” to do and smaller doors to shut behind me on my way out the door, here.
The Word “Hermekate” flashed into my mind in the midst of a very unhealthy relationship with a Pagan Priestess that severely traumatized me. By the time it happened, she had sufficiently isolated me that I had almost no significant or salvageable remaining relationships outside of her circle of influence, and I had adopted certain goals as part of that relationship that, looking back, I think I have had a difficult time letting go of.
When I read Mysteries of the Temple of Set by Don Webb not long after that, along with Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies by Stephen Flowers, I knew in my heart that I had a Word and that Hermekate was it. This was only further solidified when I read the chapter covering the Grade of Magus in Webb’s Overthrowing the Old Gods: Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law, that only further convinced me. From that moment on, I prepared my application to join Temple of Set, which was put on hold when The Priestess broke into my email and interfered directly with it. After the year-long waiting period, it was put on hold yet again, that time for 3 years.
While that relationship with The Priestess was still ongoing, I had banked everything on the success of that application because it seemed at the time like the best way to begin breaking free from the hold, both social and financial, that she’d had on me; all of my friends had become her Pagan and occultist friends, and joining a magical group of which she wasn’t a part seemed like a good way to begin building my own sense of identity back, step by step. When the Executive Director learned of my situation and responded by abruptly cutting ties, it was tantamount to severing pretty much the only viable lifeline I had at the time. It was, at least from my perspective, like throwing me overboard to save their ship; I have been fighting for life in the tumultuous seas of a traumatized psyche ever since.
I am not saying it was the obligation of Temple of Set to take me on board; far from it. I know that decision was made for many reasons, some of them holding the Temple’s own health and stability in mind, and some of them (at least ostensibly) with my own safety and well-being in mind; one thing that I have made damned sure my work here illustrates is that doing Initiatory work is not safe for people with certain mental and emotional instabilities. When certain Initiatory doors open, like the ones that open one’s ears to the music of constant synchronicity, they cannot be shut again, and if the Initiate is not on solid footing, they will drown in these waters. So trust that on some level, I get it, and don’t take the decision too personally. In my quest for fairness, I’ve stooped to make myself look like a complete fool, solely for the sake of making that clear. This is because I could see, eventually, that my work would lead to the point I’ve now reached. I’ve read all the warnings myself, and felt heartbroken and excluded. One purpose of my work has been to show that, while it’s appreciated that Initiatory groups err on the side of caution in making these calls, they are often rejecting potentially very strong candidates. I made it this far on my own despite the red flags.
However, I am also fairly certain that aspects of that decision were made based on a biased understanding of gender dynamics. I don’t think the E.D. fully appreciated (and, to be fair, it was never his job to do so) just how much damage The Priestess had done to me, probably assuming that, as the man in that situation, I would just pull myself right together and land on my feet eventually.
And I did so, but only because I met my fiancee, Veronica, as a direct result of my own goddamn magic(k)al work. One of the messages I’ve had to work hard to process has been that I was probably (in some ways) already operating magically at a fairly high level, even if my position was not well-balanced. I probably never needed those cats.
From there, were I a more mentally-well practitioner of the Dark Arts, I could very well have developed my practice independently, without any reference to the work done in the Temple of Set. I could have moved on with my life without insisting on framing it all within the context of ToS’ Initiatory system; however, as anyone who reads and understands Overthrowing the Old Gods can attest, the process of Uttering a Word is not so simple. Once it starts, the Magus is, in some ways, like a mother in labor. Once a Word begins to sound, it consumes the life of the Magus, and the Magus has no choice at that point but to deliver that motherfucker, or die in the process. I did what I had to do.
I have been aware for years now of the aspects in which this process of Uttering the Word of Hermekate has been linked to the traumas I sustained in the midst of it. They made it much harder for me; under other, more stable circumstances, the situation might have been more flexible. There have been many times, in fact, that I have tried to halt this process and return to my “normal” life in case this whole thing was one big trauma response, rather than a genuine Initiatory experience.
My stance now is that it was both, which is only fitting given my analogy above to the process of giving birth, because giving birth is traumatic. Looking back, every man called “Magus” could be viewed, in the Utterance of his Word, as coping with their trauma. As Don Webb himself observes on page 5 of How to Become a Modern Magus, “most people become magicians because of a lack of emotional development.” A Magus is, in this interpretation, someone who has turned a lifetime of trauma into a new vision that heals them, and can then be carried forward to heal the world. The Magus with a Word is one who, having crossed a certain threshold in that process, has opened themselves up to corners of the universe most others never see, and who seeks to return from the darker reaches of that world with medicine in the form of a magic(k)al philosophy.
By the time I began hearing the voices of Rose, Ilyas, and Minora, I fit very squarely into that category; the abuse I took from The Priestess was simply another layer of challenge thrown on top of that. I entered into this Initiatory current because, like Crowley, my “Holy Guardian Angel,” which I now call “Daemon,” pointed the way.
The Priestess took everything she could from me, to include the very core of an independent sense of self. No one could give it back to me even if they tried, I had to find it for myself; but at the time it was taken from me, magic was all I had. I will never apologize for that, no matter how much shame anyone thinks to heap upon me for it.
Most of those who find their way to the world of Ceremonial Magic and into the currents of modern Western occultism will be drawn by those currents to Crowley’s work, and many stop there, thinking, because that man made such a visible impact, that it’s simply “the way to go.” If they press onward, they might find themselves at the doors of the Temple of Set, which, while doing quite a bit to distance itself from Crowley, LaVey, and their ilk, cannot completely sever themselves from those roots because Michael Aquino’s thinking relied so heavily on their legacies anyhow.
Since its founding, the Temple has grown and evolved significantly, having developed practices and protocols that have since carried the group farther away from Crowleyana than is always apparent from the outside, which is something many people only learn by coming into direct contact with its Initiates. They have a word for people who are highly enamored of the current and who steep themselves overmuch in occult practice and framing of their lives: “Occultnik.” There is so much outdated literature out in the world defining the Grade of Magus in a way that leads people to think the object of it all is to branch off and start your own magic(k)al order, living the rest of your life in an occult rabbit hole. One of the things I have always appreciated most about those writings associated with the Temple that I have read is that they shift the emphasis a bit; once certain doors of magical and Initiatory perception are thrown open, the more sensible thing to do was already expressed two thousand years ago: Chop wood, carry water; if you’ve got a magical philosophy, this more evolved attitude goes, then it’s time to get out there into the world and use it to change the world around you.
I have known this for years, but have simply been trying my hardest to actually articulate and formulate my vision such that I could break the patterns of my own traumas and do that.
Dark Twins has been my latest means of doing so since I have been unable to formally join the Temple; and at this juncture, it has been effective. I have grown progressively toward the point where I now stand, first withdrawing my application to join ToS while continuing to develop my Word from within my understanding of its context. I have no regrets about this even though I have always known that the object is to finish Uttering my Word and then live the rest of my life as an actively contributing member of the human race. Of late, that has primarily meant learning how to integrate my newly-Initiated experience of the world so I could come back down to earth.
Nothing I’ve written here at Dark Twins has been especially novel; truly, there is nothing new under the sun. The territory of Initiation has always been the same throughout the ages. Even Thelema wasn’t really “new.” All we have are new ways of relating and conveying Initiatory concepts. That is the Task of the Magus: Putting it into our own Words. The basic story has always been the same.
For all the progress Temple of Set has made in separating the Initiatory wheat from the chaff, streamlining it, and doing much better in terms of dignifying and including women, one core concept of my Word is that in the end, the hierarchical system of Grades used in any such Initiatory School is too inherently Patriarchal (not to mention the fact that it is still subject to internal Temple politics that stem in some part from the Temple’s having weathered traumas of its own; it still carries the bruises left upon it by The Satanic Panic). If you find your Xeper in climbing that ladder, more power to you; but the purpose of the concept of the Song has been to illustrate, by breaking certain LHP taboos and sharing deeply and intimately of my own experiences, that there is a solid enough foundation of esoteric knowledge loosed in the world that you can become a Magus or Maga without ever setting foot in such a school.
From what I have seen, even this is not an especially new insight, and seems to be something most Temple members with whom I’ve interacted all acknowledge and take for granted. However, the membership as a whole still remains highly insular regarding Initiation as a topic, and despite the amazing writing that has come to the public from inside the Temple, the proverbial Initiatory dragon still seems to prefer hiding away in its cave atop its hoard of gold (and these are just my impressions, mind you, so don’t think I actually speak for ToS at all; if I have gotten anything wrong here, you can blame the Curse of the Magus or the Ape of Thoth—it’s not my concern, and is honestly none of my business). As such, I have made tremendous efforts to document corners of the Initiatory life that are still largely kept “private,” even in the writings that have been disseminated. I have done this so that others who find themselves in shoes similar to mine could see, more clearly than I could, that if you don’t fit with the Temple culture, all hope is not lost if you want to see the places the Temple could have taken you. Perhaps some others never need to be told that, and perhaps it only took me so long to learn it myself because I was still healing the wounds The Priestess inflicted on my Soveriegnty.
Not everyone in the Temple works with every single Word uttered from within its walls, either; that’s how this goes. Nonetheless, for those who have ears to hear, this has been the Song of Hermekate. If you don’t hear the Song yourself, or perhaps don’t find it to your liking, keep swimming. I hope you will find your shore eventually.
As for me?
It’s just about Lammas, or the Full Moon in Aquarius, and the concept of the Song is very much of the spirit of Aquarius with its egalitarian ethos and its close resonance with modern communications technology, which is the medium that has made these Notes, Verses, and Songs so audible to me. Last night, planning to write this post, I pulled up the Full Moon forecast for my sign just to see what it said; it fits so well:
It was the Song I sang (whether he knew it or not) with Father Nathan Monk that led me to start this Substack, and I’ve destroyed the illusions that my Dark Twins are singing along with me on purpose; I have one final waveform to collapse before my work is complete: I am going to see Father Nathan Monk’s speaking engagement here in Houston on Friday. With a VIP ticket, I’ll be meeting him personally…and we’ll see what we can see. Either way, as of that date, my last nagging Mystery connected with the Utterance of this Word will be solved….
….and then I plan to live happily ever after.
That K, amirite?
Ciao.
