The Emperor's New Groove

Integrating the Hermekatean and Hexorian Magical Currents

Good morning, everyone—and Happy Friday!

Yesterday was an interesting day, and on the Dark Twins Facebook page, I announced that Dark Twins would be taking a hiatus while I put everything back behind the paywall and this time, spend a lot more time editing posts and making other adjustments. Then, a series of events unfolded this morning that obligated me to eat my words and write this post today instead. This post is to rectify all sorts of matters that have been left unresolved ever since I founded this site. In fact, this site has its roots in them.

I’m going to try to make it as brief as possible, although the various issues involved are complex in nature.

My very second post here (originally published on the now-defunct Wordpress site Gogo Bordello’s World of Ruin) was Book Review: '#OpGrimoire: The Hexorian Field Guide to Urban Witchcraft' by Agent M. As I’ve admitted in separate posts scattered throughout the life of Dark Twins, there are some ways in which this entire site is a reaction to that current.

A good primer on the Hexorian current can be found here at the DKMU’s website, but in short, it’s a magical current that is all about cities. On a deeper level, it’s all about community. These two concepts are deeply related in ways I’ve already written about, but to make a long story short, I feel very strongly that the Hexorian current is basically the same “thing” that Aleister Crowley saw and called “The City of the Pyramids.” However, while Aleister Crowley saw the City of the Pyramids as a concept completely restricted to the Abyss, I feel that the Hexorian current is its way of manifesting physically.

This parallels various other “plot threads” covered here, which approaches similar matters under terms such as “the rending of the Veil” (being the Veil between the physical and spirit worlds), or conversely as the merging of the light and dark sides of the Tree of Life.

The Ma’aat current, also known as “the Twin Current” or “the Double Current,” couches this same concept in the form of the emergence of N’Aton.

Each of these is a separate facet of the phenomenon, but know this: The over-arching phenomenon is of one essence. It’s all one big thing.

Hexorian Resonance

I felt an immediate and unspoken connection with the Hexorian current when I first found my way to it. It’s hard to describe the feeling; it was more than mere recognition. It was urgency.

One of the main Hexorian practices is called a “Hexorian Drift,” where, generally speaking, the practitioner uses an app that sets a random destination in their city, goes on a walk to get there which ideally involves entering a magical trance, and then being open to whatever unfolds. Almost invariably, Hexorians find that meaningful things happen to them on these journeys.

One reason I felt such a connection with this current is because I had been doing that since I was 13. I also had all sorts of the same ideas about cities and their magical nature that these cats seemed to have.

Here’s the problem, and I’m going to enter some territory that’s going to honestly be pretty humbling for me:

I had written an entire post here, once upon a time, about the banner design for the site. Since then, I have updated the design twice—but I have kept the same design elements. Here is the newest version:

The background is an overlay of two different “domes.” One is the Tiffany glass dome at the Chicago Cultural Center. It has been featured in every version of the banner here. The same basic design, which combined that Tiffany dome with the inside of a Gazebo at Lumphini Park in Bangkok, has been used ever since about version 3 of Hermekate, this site’s predecessor.

The number 8 is central to the Hexorian current, especially its central deity, Hexorius.

I took that image—along with a whole bunch of others that were also relevant to the Hexorian movement—on 8/8/2010, just before I left the U.S. for Norway.

If you read The Origin of Hexorius and the Hexorian Movement from the link above, you’ll see that the current was discovered by Yahve Alexander, originally from Mexico City. He was awakened to the current in 2020.

I saw this movement and felt such a deep connection with it so immediately that it was very difficult for me to hold myself back once I joined the associated Facebook group. I felt a personal sense of responsibility for the current, too.

This was a problem because there was an entire movement and community set up around it now, with clearly-established mores and customs even as this group of pioneering magicians continues to weave the picture into being. But I knew I had tapped this same current long before 2020. I knew it.

And I could smell this current’s energy, too…and it smelled familiar.

I knew what I knew.

But I couldn’t just swoop in and take over. That would be wrong. That would be a major dick move.

The movement is very open, eagerly inviting all members to share their thoughts about emerging deities, sigils, tools, and such. It’s all one big co-creation. But I felt like it would be wrong for me to contribute as much as I wanted to. I felt that if I didn’t hold myself back, I could easily become an important, valuable, and perhaps even indispensable member of this community.

I had deeply mixed feelings about that.

I swept in anyway, and made several posts about how I really think my work is connected with theirs. I wrote about the Word of Hermekate and the concept of Songs, and how I thought the Hexorian movement was a perfect concrete example of a Song unfolding right before our very eyes.

I shared these thoughts, and people listened. I think some of them were impressed with me.

There’s a pattern in the movement despite the deeply cooperative element of the current’s culture:

Each main deity is strongly associated with one magician in particular. It’s almost like the way each Power Ranger is paired with their respective Zord (or whatever they’re called); so there’s a give-and-take here, where the magician is sort of the “emissary” for a deity, but the community very much puts its heads together in terms of integrating the deity and shaping practices surrounding it.

As an experienced magician, it strikes me that this shows keen insight into the nature of magic, and how certain work (including the Assumption of Godforms) can inflate the ego. It’s almost like this whole system was designed with that in mind.

I brought my “VSigil” to the group, too…and while no one confronted me directly about it, there was…a vibe. A vibe of mistrust. It’s understandable, since the VSigil kind of looks like a swastika, and since there’s a war currently going on in the world of the occult, and that war falls mostly along political lines.

Over time, comments made (both in the group and one-on-one by other members) seemed to be subtly saying things to me, without just coming out and saying them. Some seemed subtly accusatory to me. It’s like I was low-key being called out, and also told (again, without being told) that while some of my ideas were seen as promising and beneficial to the community, some of my…”delivery”…was disturbing. Upsetting.

That’s fine; I’ve always been something of a specialist when it comes to destructive magic. The Hexorian current was, metaphorically and on the spirit planes, shaping up into something resembling a magical “city-state.” Well, in the real world, no city-state ever lasted long without one crucial ingredient:

Civil defense.

And I saw a lot of potential to be helpful to the group in that department, as there appeared to be a “vacuum” of sorts where such a thing would fit right in.

The city needed a hero.

It was simply very unfortunate that, no matter how hard these cats tried to welcome me while also making sure I would actually be a good fit for their working group, I couldn’t see it that way. All I felt was shame.

They would pay me compliments, and I only heard them as back-handed. They were saying good things about me, and I felt like I was being trolled.

Trauma did this to me. This is also what my Borderline Personality Disorder does to me.

I recognized this problem as it was all happening, and I tried my best to hang on while working through the negative appearances of things. I was invited to write at The Loresraat, and I was promising my new Hexorian friends a lot of big things: There’s gonna be a podcast, a whole platform that I was building, and I was going to use it to elevate the Hexorian current. One might say this was a bit arrogant (and maybe so), but it also seemed like just what my new friends wanted. They seemed excited.

But I couldn’t write anything for the site because of those inner insecurities about myself and my connections to others. I also felt like an inferior magician because I do things so differently and have been able to bypass a lot of the practices that many people do in order to cultivate certain abilities that frankly, I was born with.

I could have appreciated my uniqueness and seen this as a potential asset to the group, but instead I allowed my negative self-image to destroy everything.

This all came to a head with the emergence of Maakari. You can read Paolo Scarpelli’s article about Maakari’s emergence at that link, but to summarize, Maakari is the Hexorian deity of connection.

I just sat and watched, because again: I smelled something familiar.

Redemption?

In the recent post Easy Come, Easy Go, I opened up in new ways about my “non-human” identity, or my xenogender: That of a “destroyer.” I also have other posts on this site that discuss them, but the post Following The Fire Chapter Three: Don't Worry, I Already Had My Messianic Delusion lays most of it out in one place. To make an long and incredible story short, I met someone in a chat room claiming to be a goddess incarnate, who said I was her son, and that I would become the next “Shiva,” which was more like a title or “mantle” than a name. She said my father would be training me to take his place.

I ran for various reasons, but one was that I just couldn’t believe that shit anymore.

Over the course of many years, I would find that it was all far more true than I had ever expected or wanted it to be, and that my destiny would not allow me to escape, either. However, as my understanding of magic developed, I also came to understand—in ways that I am positive Tilly could not see for herself—that it wasn’t literal. It was all metaphorical. These metaphors can manifest in ways so direct and striking that, for all intents and purposes, the only way to manage the resulting outcomes effectively is to step into the role as if it were literal, and to act accordingly—in which case, yes, it’s all very real.

It’s still not absolutely real, though…and confusion over this kind of distinction is how people lose their sanity in the deeper waters of magic.

Even I knew that.

But as the “destroyer current” attached to Tilly kept surfacing in my life, I realized I’d have to carry it one way or the other. And I did not have it under control at the time.

When I say the Hexorian current “smells familiar,” one thing I mean is that I think it’s possible some of the same people were hanging out in both Tilly’s little world and in the Hexorian group.

That was the vibe, anyway, the feel: I couldn’t shake the feeling that these cats were acquainted with Tilly, and that perhaps she had been “too much” for them (she would be “too much” for most people), and that her brand of myth was perhaps unwelcome in a community so committed to peace.

And, in one sense, I say: Good for them. That’s the idea; because I think Tilly’s version of the current was marred by her trauma, and in the Gnostic sense, is also a bit too polluted with the influence of the Demiurge.

So, as I read Paolo’s description of the characteristic of Maakari, I mostly saw reflections of myself. Every single piece of the Maakari symbolism is something I can translate into an element of Tilly’s myth.

Except it emphasizes connection and uplifting the community over the whole “destroyers are here to end humans if they don’t shape up” vibe. It’s more functional, and more hopeful. More conducive to healing, even for me.

I couldn’t help but feel that Maakari was being offered up as a new “form” for the same “Shiva” that Tilly saw in me…just a much more benevolent one.

Then, community members started chiming in, saying how they see Maakari as being related, say, to people with autism, and trans people; some of the most marginalized members of the community were named. And it just so happens that most of these traits offered up in the comments were also representative of parts of myself that I had been uncovering, parts of myself that offered better explanations for things than Tilly tended to. Like:

“Oh, you have all these sensory issues going on? That’s your destroyer blood.”

As opposed to:

“Oh, that’s your autism.”

I felt like the group was hinting to me that I would be welcome if I would be willing to take up the mantle of Maakari; and if that’s what was going on, I felt extremely touched.

I felt loved and accepted.

And my psyche could not cope with that. It just didn’t compute for me. My mind instead said, “God, you’re such a vain, arrogant motherfucker for even thinking that.”

Maakari came with a dark side…more specifically, a “dark twin.” I saw a familiar parallel: Maakari was connection, its dark twin was separation. Maakari was light, the dark twin was…well…darkness.

Maakari was “Right Hand Path” and its dark twin was “Left Hand Path.” I was firmly rooted in my Left Hand Path work at the time, and this in combination with my low self-worth both conspired to see me flee from my new friends in sheer disbelief.

Part of it was terror at actually being accepted by a community, and at the responsibilities to others that would result.

Part of it was a genuine feeling that I needed to protect my new friends from me.

I still don’t know how aware of that they are.

What Gives?

There are two sides to what happened with Maakari and the Hexorian current. On the one hand, it was a fear response—yes indeed.

On the other hand, I also knew, deep inside my heart, that the “dark twin” aspect of Maakari also needed to be developed because it does serve a purpose. I saw the dark twin being painted by certain leaders of the current as inherently negative and specifically to be avoided, and I am going to call him out:

That, too, is Shadow projection. That’s his baggage. It doesn’t belong in the group any more than my own negative attitude did.

I also knew that, given my Left Hand Path orientation, I am the best person to develop a more balanced and wise understanding of the dark twin.

So I came here on my own, named my entire body of work after Maakari’s dark twin, and set to work embodying it.

I think I’ve done a marvelous job, but now it’s time to come back, claim my mantle, and start keeping those promises.

Enter Maakari

In the post Broken Homes Build Towers, I lay out a whole bunch of the connections between the Hexorian current and other branches of my own work. It’s a really big and complex picture that is emerging here, and without sounding like an arrogant jerk, I just want to say that I think I am uniquely qualified to help the group make more sense out of it all.

One major element of that post is the ruined house I found out in the middle of the woods near my home, which has striking parallels with the way Yahve Alexander discovered this current. The post describes a “drift” that I went on in order to get a brick, which I was going to use for symbolic purposes. One of those purposes was to serve as my Hexorian altar.

However, there were two problems when I arrived:

1. There happened to be a silver minivan parked right in front of the house for some reason.

2. There was a very nice stone—quality, hewn stone and not just some brick—near the house, and it was even conspicuous in that it was literally wrapped to the bottom of a tree trunk with barbed wire, almost like it had been intentionally put there. There’s a photo of it in Broken Homes.

I ended up chickening out and not taking that stone which I knew was there for me. Instead, I came back at a later date, and still didn’t take that one. I settled for a tiny one I grabbed from the rubble of the house.

I treated that brick well and even took it down to Texas with me when I moved…but I never did anything with it. Why?

Because, deep down, I knew: I had settled for less than my due. I couldn’t use that piddly little piece of junk as an altar; it was smaller than the palm of my hand! I mean, technically, yes, you can work with that. But that wasn’t the plan, and I knew it.

If I’m going to be the emissary of Maakari, I need a more solid foundation.

I spent a big chunk of the day yesterday hard at work on my contribution to the city, custom-designed with Maakari’s traits in mind.

All of them.

I’m bringing the city’s A.A. meeting!

Yes, it is my pleasure to announce the establishment of Freak Flag Recovery, an alternative to more traditional, 12-step recovery groups. We will be welcoming anyone who wants to work on issues including addiction, mental illness, trauma, gender identity, and neurodivergence all in a holistic way that doesn’t cut people up into separate “vices” or struggles and expect them to stick to that script. These problems are complex, and psychologists recognize better now than they ever have before that they all feed into one another.

I also want individual members to be able to set the terms of their own recovery, meaning if you struggle with alcohol abuse and also smoke weed, no one’s going to give you shit for choosing harm reduction just because it’s not “pure sobriety.” Fuck that noise.

There are groups that have a similar appreciation for such a holistic view, but they also tend to eschew and even discourage spiritual (and especially magical) worldviews.

I’ve seen support and recovery groups for pagans and other magical people, but the tradeoff for me is that they still adhere strictly to the 12 steps.

My kind of people need more room to breathe, friendo.

Here is Freak Flag Recovery’s (FF for short) banner; avid readers of this site will recognize many of its elements. I’m particularly proud of this synthesis and I’m not ashamed to say it:

There is already a Facebook page serving as FF’s online headquarters, but of course, we will be expanding. I’m in search of volunteers who might be interested in being part of the committee that establishes early guidelines and such. Reach out to me on Facebook or Bluesky if you’re interested.

With that being taken care of, there was just one last little T to cross:

I needed that stone.

So last night (really, yesterday afternoon) near sunset, I set out down 39th St. from home with my trowel in my backpack. I moved at a swift, determined pace until I found myself facing the stone.

I dug and dug and dug at that thing. That was the major obstacle to overcome, was the inner feeling of awkwardness and also of “trespassing". I don’t know what I was actually worried about, because I really couldn’t imagine anything terrible happening. As I pressed through the feeling of being “out-of-place” and continued chipping at the frozen soil encasing the stone, I just imagined what I would do if anyone even bothered to try stopping me:

I’d tell them, “Sorry, but this isn’t harming you and it’s calling to me. If you don’t want me to take it, you’re going to have to physically prevent it.”

And I would stand my ground.

It’s funny, just before leaving for Texas—on my final drift before heading south—I lost my left earbud in the brush trying to take a photo. Here it is:

I also lost my left earbud while trying to dig the stone out. I just kept going, because I felt it fall down into my hood anyway.

Alternating between chiseling under the stone with the trowel and pulling at the barbed wire with my bare hands, I kept at it for about 7 minutes.

Finally, with enough barbed wire cleared, I got a nice, solid stance and planted my hands firmly against the back face of the stone. Thinking briefly, for some reason, of the local Riverside Masonic lodge, the stone came loose.

I snapped my victory photo, put the stone in my bag, and carried it home.

We have great work to do.