The Path Reveals Itself
I turned in my lesson four answers several weeks ago and have been in a bit of a magical holding pattern while I awaited the next step on the road to first degree initiation. I'd had my tarot certification to hold me over in the meantime and I've been doing my meditation and visualization exercises but to say that this shipment's arrival was anticipated is to put it mildly.
Poke sent me an email assuring me that my order was coming and then, as if by pure will, the envelope containing the new materials sat waiting for me on the dining room table. I eagerly tore it open and dumped its contents onto the table. It contained:
One copy of The Seventh Ray, Book II, The Red Ray; The CHS's magical journal, back in print after being out of print for some time.
One copy of Beyond Lemuria, Poke's bonkers b-movie about the legend of Mount Shasta in California, based on the equally bonkers pulp fiction of Richard Shaver.
And, most importantly, Pathworkings of Magick, a DVD that brings the OTA's pathworking rituals and exercises out of the Rivendell hermitage in Silverado and into your home.
There was also a postcard advertising one of Poke's outrageous pulp novels which seems to be a mashup of Hermetic philosophy and Poke's banana-pants brand of pulp adventure. I'll have to get a copy at some point. One look at it and a Call of Cthulhu RPG scenario began to take shape in my head.
The Pathworking DVD is the key to the next step on the path. I'm not sure what lies on the other side of it, but I suspect that entitlement to first degree initiation is on the other side. Which would be nice for reasons other than finally shaking off this neophyte status and taking on a magical name for myself (Frater Pera, the Greek word for Beyond). Earlier materials from the CHS give you a high level overview of the pathworking process but this is it, and it's something that I've been excited about.
I've done some astral projection work in the past. I get down into a meditative state and then, with my eyes closed, I will my astral form to get up from asana and walk around my house, looking at everything, before opening the front door and stepping out into the astral space that I created some time ago while experimenting with chaos magic concepts found in Phil Hine's excellent manual, Condensed Chaos. This space came to me naturally, a full-sensory experience that I've mentioned in previous posts. I was so taken with it that I couldn't help but get up and write it all down after I'd come out of the trance. Pathworkings of Magick will take me into the OTA's sacred astral space and I can't wait. It'll be the first OTA ritual that I perform apart from the basic daily banishings and tratakam.
And now: The first steps on the path.
The first path begins in the element of air. I am guided by the voice of Frater Thabion across a grassy plain in the summer to a trail which leads me to the foot of a stone tower. Along the way, I am battered by strong winds, which threaten to throw me off the path until I emerge at the top, adjacent to the tower, which is headed up by four massive stone heads pointing to the quarters. Each one's cheeks are puffed as they are the source of the intense winds. Against the wall of the tower, I am free of their force, however. I hear a great wailing from above but never see its source. Inside the tower is a spiral staircase wrapping around the inner wall of the tower and it occurs to me that I've been in this place before.
Years ago, I played subject to one of my mother's experiments in music therapy. I was led through a hypnotic process and found myself in the astral, though at the time I didn't realize that it had a name. One of the locations I visited there was a tall empty tower with a spiral staircase which spiraled around its insides leading me to a window which I leapt from and flew to a new location. The mental image of the tower then, however, was different, but being here again felt like exceptionally familiar. The tower then was tall and purple with a golden spiral stripe around the outside, topped by an onion spire like you find on Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
The inside of this tower wasn't as empty, however. Pulsing globes, covered in a thin membrane of skin can be seen at the highest point, seemingly the lungs of the statues. They heave and contract with each powerful gust.
I step outside onto a narrow ledge which stretches around the tower, allowing me to approach each of the stone heads, which appeared to me as a lion, a human, a bird, and a bull. I approached the human and asked for a lift on the wind and am instructed to ask the bird for a ride back when my task is done. Each of these heads has a name but I regret that I have forgotten them. I may need to take this trip again and again until I remember them.
I am lifted up on the wind and thrust out across a plain of clouds, surrounded by towering structures made from cloud, a landscape like a great canyon, carved from the cloud. In the distance I see a shimmering castle made from crystal and from that castle comes a flock of winged beings. They are the childlike sylphs, pretty and bald, kept aloft by insect-like wings. A pair of them approach me and take to either side of me. One of them leans in close and whispers in my right ear, "You are in control here," the other wrinkles her expression and whispers in my left ear, "Don't be a fool. No one is in control here. We drift on the wind."
I am instructed as to how to perform The Sign of Eagle, a gesture that I will need to know when I meet the queen of this place, another name that I have regrettably forgotten. The sylphs leave me and I am delivered on the wind to crystal palace. Inside the throne room, a beautiful woman with alabaster skin and platinum hair which drapes down her back to her waist waits for me on a throne surrounded by a gleaming golden eagle. I approach her and perform The Sign of the Eagle and then kneel before her. She approaches me and takes my left hand, placing a silver ring with a sliver of amethyst down the center on my finger so that I will be recognized in this place when I return. She then bends down to me and delivers a message.
"You are of this place," She tells me, in those exact words, and then returns to her throne.
The Western Wind returns me to the tower and I make my way down and back through the portal to Malkuth and quickly write down everything that I remember. In the moments following the Pathworking I feel nothing but a vague sense of having done it wrong and the dread of knowing that I have forgotten the names of the stone heads. I kept The Queen's name firmly in mind until I began to write only to find that it had faded from memory by the time I got around to it. On the way back to work, however, I am struck with a powerful sadness and an urge to scream. There is a sudden intense loneliness about me. I feel as though the message I received from the queen filled me with an awful longing. As though I'd truly gone home only to be forced to leave again. Something inside of me feels claustrophobic. It's as though my spirit suddenly feels trapped in my body.