Thursday, June 12, 2008

It's been a while but I'm back...

... shit, burning the fucking candle at both ends lately with all these blogs. It's cool though - more writing is a good thing. Didn't want to neglect my original too long though, so I'll start with some interesting things that have been occupying the interior of my melon of late...

It's funny. I go through these boughts where I pay next to no attention to the study of anything scientific or occult, then something triggers my interest again and I'm off - and once that happens there is no room for anything else. I'm still struggling through the last bit of Mervyn Peake's Gromenghast trilogy, 'Titus Alone' and I bought that new H.P. Lovecraft tome I mentioned on CHUD, and I started Stephen King's 'On Writing' for inspiration through my writer's block, but now all that is on hold as I've fallen 'Down the Rabbit Hole' again. What sparked it off this time is stress. Work for a major chain book retailer has been enough to make me a crotchety old bastard, and I've been manifesting some pretty freaky headaches, so I finally decided I needed to do something about it or develop a tumor. Breathing was the first thing to come to mind and on that path lay the inclintion to break out my old ass British Edition of Aleister Crowley's 'Magick in Theory and Practice' in search of the specifics on performing what is known as 'The Greater and Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram'. These are invoking/banishing rituals that consist largely of moving energy around through the body and into/out of the lungs, perfect for energizing and cleansing the residues stress leaves clinging in all kinds of areas in the body.

Once I open that book, the trigger is activated and I'm rifling through book after book, shunting down avenues of forgotten knowledge and looking for ways to take a little bit more charge of my short and tempetuous time on this beautiful old mudball of ours. The first place I usually land is the book that, after Grant Morrison's 'Invisibles', is Terence and Dennis McKenna's 'Invisible Landscape'. This is a book I have never been able to finish, as usually I only make it so far before I am forced to seek out accompanying texts on Quantum Physics and the like in order to be able to go back and understand what it was the McKennas were writing about.*

The funny thing is as I start reading and thinking about this stuff synchronicities and other strange things begin to arise in the rest of my life. For one I almost always start dreaming heavy again. Normally I do not remember my dreams, but once into this stuff again they become ludicriously dense and symbolic. This then goes hand in hand with daytime bouts of my special deja vu, where I begin to have episodes where I'm sure whatever it is I'm doing I've already experienced. Kind of like bending the time antenna backwards from the future.

Then there's things like how the same day I began reading the Crawley I discovered a friend of mine at work who I've known for almost two years now is well versed in the study of aspects such as the Masons and Templars, Rennes-le-Chateau** and the like. Never come up before and then out of the blue we have a hour-long conversation about everything from the Templars to Quantum Mechanics. This of course only served to fuel my own fire and its been escalating ever since.

Now this time I am going to try to stick with Invisible Landscape for the entire book. I'm hoping this in and of itself will act as a catalyst to drive up the frequency on novelty and synchronicity to points that will help me reach certain goals I have recently been lazy and angst-ridden about following.

We'll see.
...........

*This is where we get into what I call 'Wiki-vertigo' - When you're on wikipedia reading about one thing and before you know it you've followed so many of the links interlaced throughout the original article you no longer remember where you began.

**I'll definitely have to post a more in-depth on Rennes, but in the meantime you can go here:

http://www.toolband.com/index_frames.html

for a pretty good introduction (and yes, that is the band Tool's website - another reason why they're just so damn cool)

1 comment:

Missi Schmid said...

Shawn--It almost sounds like you're doing what i do, with meditation & dreams. If the dreams are that deep, & you're remembering them, perhaps you can "drive" them. When you're doing the deep breathing thing, direct your thoughts to where you want to go in your mind, right before you slip away into "dreamland". You might just get there, & then be free to wander & explore.

You can use this when you're stuck with your writing too--my dreams often show me what is next in our project, & others too--but ours especially.

take care & sweet dreams!