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UPDATE: 10-06-05
"But, bi-polar or not, a brother can't come on here, shit on everyone's parade, then get defensive when people don't like the stink of said shit." -Kevin Smith source
"Please go be a bag of misery elsewhere. I'm tired of it." -Sunnyday source
In responce to my critics, I could easily write a book explaining all of your psychological foibles, but instead, here is a picture to say 1000 words.
-ben
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UPDATE: 10-08-05
well, it's my birthday.
I was born at about 6PM this evening, 28 years ago.
Alot has happened in the past 28 years. The grip over the largest landmass of the world by Internationalist Sovietism was broken by military deténte. Movements to dismantle the social works programmes begun during the Great Depression of the last century were begun under Bill Clinton, the Democratic President of the United States as an attempt at idealogical unification between bi-partisianship, and this movement has successfully continued under the Supreme Court appointed current Republican President, George W. Bush. The conditions in the middle east, which had driven gasoline price per barrel import tariffs up around the year of my birth, have fluctuated wildly between liberal reforms and acts of terrorism, and the current price per gallon of gas is now nearly the same as it was during the '78 oil crisis, adjusted for the continuing devaluation of the dollar value due to inflation of military budget expenditures. The internet, or world wide web, has become a prevalent part in the life of all bourgeoise western and neo-colonial civilisations. It has become a place where, as prophecised by Marshall McLuhan during the psychedelic movement of the 1960's, all forms of media and art that can be converted to binary electrical wavelengths can be distributed freely without cost to the consumer. The space age, with all its hope and optimism for extraterretrial exploration, has given way to the Information Age, a strange cyber-culture combining corporate business interests with counter-cultural hacker strategies. The tenth American Generation (GenX), dominated as it was by post-hippy burnouts and indepentent thinking liberals, has been usurped by the 11th generation, the "echo-boomers," button-punching videogamer young republicans with billions of dollars worth of disposable income buying power, and the same values as the currently ruling regime of Neo-Conservatives, who beef up the military in the name of "family values" and supporting the corporate dominated capitalist economy.
Not much has happened to me in the past 28 years. In most ways I'm still like I was when I was a toddler. I am very dependent on my mother, financially (for food, by way of example) and as an advocate for me on behalf of my mental illness (my inability to socialise, to interact positively for my own benefit, and to be a contributing member of society). The dreams I have had since my early youth, dreams of life-long, if not ever-lasting, monogymous romantic love, of the pursuit amongst like-minded peers of the mysteries of the psyche, the hidden secrets of history, and the greater mysteries of natural physics, have all been squandered and denied, as well as, more often than not, outright punished. The acceptance I long for from those I know personally due to proximity and those I admire who remain yet distant has been likewise defiled not only due to my own actions but due to events that seem arbitrary and random. The things that interest me most do not seem to be shared with those I know, approved of by those I admire, nor my views on them accepted as accurate by those who share interest in them. My emotional state, which has never been up to par, remains less than can rightly be called healthy, although I have not yet had any form of psychotic break from which I am not able to recover. Overall, aside from my writings and investigations into the occult sciences, I have nothing to prove that I have ever even existed, and all in all my life seems wasted, all that it adds up to is in the debit column. The only cheque and balance has been the Law of Irony.
You could say that my life is off course, or that my life isn't going as planned. But you'd be wrong. I follow the course of my True Will, even though this is rarely in line with what I would wish for myself. I keep to the plan of the Great Architect of All Causes. My love, though it has become twisted now in all its relations with His creations, is always of and for the Creator. For His is my destiny, never my own. Though nothing ever goes my way, I know that it goes the way that He who Loves me intends it. It is for the best, for my good guidance, and an oppurtunity for me to learn. Though it seems I am ever in darkness, it is only all the better, for it teaches me to love the Light all the more.
I hope with all my heart all the time that I am alive. Sometimes I glimpse the Light that I know with all my soul does truly await me in the future, and those times my mind explodes with blinding brightness and my heart tears at the bonds of its muscles with overwhelming, overpowering outpouring of affection and empathy. I know that I am blessed for these moments, and they are worth my living for them, even though when they seem so far apart, so few and far between, I feel lost in darkness out of my depth. But I persevere. I will not dishonour those I admire, the living and the dead alike, by making mockery of their own lives' lessons by degrading my own ability to learn from them. Truly the mistakes and the pitfalls of my life are yet like mountainous pinnacles beside the lives of some, and I am blessed that what seems bitter to me is still so incredibly sweet to some.
Life is truly a panopolistic plethora of blessings. Some wear cheap disguises, courage pretending to be cowardice, but all opposites are reconciled, like the two sides of one tree, in the greater Light of the Most High. Even false love is better than True Hate. Yet I am human, and I still slip into the ruts worn into the back of this world by civilisation sometimes, falling backwards into the patterns of erosion that weather away and would destroy all that nature allows to grow and all that we work for, building up in the name of eternal ideals. Sometimes it truly seems that there is no guide, and for those times I repent. I lament that I curse God, and blaspheme the Holy One by thwarting the well-being of His creatures. But I have done terrible things against mankind, and against those whom I love, who have loved me, and against the personages of the Divine, all in the ineffable name of that which even now guides me to write these words, to make confession for the sins of my temptations, for it has all been to the Glory of God, and all part of His Most Holy plan. All the wrongs I have done I have done for the Light of the One Truth, to seek it out through passions past prejudice, to discover it wherever it resides no matter how hidden, and by these wrongs I have wrought many wonders, the tilling of the soil that permits the planting of the seed. I have never doubted in this. Though at times it has been in this alone that I have believed.
The thunderclaps of my self-righteousness have been but the muffled gaveling in of True Justice. I do not fear the Judgment of God, so why should I suffer from the passing follies of the famous, people like Kevin Smith, whose wounded ego would look down its nose at my moralisations over his scoffing at the struggles of the suffering? To offer aid to those afflicted by natural disasters with one hand while mocking and deriding those who would, while not so afflicted, seek to better their stature through their creative endeavors is not the shape and likeness due the flattery of one's Maker. God the Saviour does not pull us up with his hands while holding us down with his feet. Those who believe that believe nothing besides. The True Will of God passes through me, and its inevitable fulfillment is the truth behind the veil of my magick, the manipulations of which the miracle of my life is not but the sleight of His hand.
It is now 6AM. In twelve hours I will be 28. I thank my makers, and the Ultimate Maker before them, for each and every moment of my life, both happy and sad. I will enter this year having fulfilled everything I have longed for, though having no rewards by which to show for it. I pray to the one who has a greater power than myself that I shall fulfill all my promises, and that I may continue in the path towards the True Light for all of my earthly days.
May the True Light, Love and Life be praised. Amen.
-ben
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UPDATE: 10-21-05
Reality is a hallucination induced by God.
I'm feeling old. Associating death with inversion is a strain on the knees.
I'm almost thirty. I can look over my website now and see all the marvels I have beheld thus far in my life. There are many wonders.
On Sunday last Simeon and Mikki got hitched! They held the small, private ceremony at the platform built over the sacred earth at the top of the local native american burial mound. I cast the chart for their special ocassion, and there was a lunar eclipse that night. Truly these are all fortuidous signs, and they fill and uplift my heart greatly. I'm feeding their dog in the mornings now while they honeymoon in the northern smokey mountains region.
Simeon and Mikki are wonderful people. I am truly blessed to know them, they are such wonderful people. Mikki is humble and soft spoken but very funny whenever she opens up. She is a classically trained painter, and particularly a fan of Alex Grey, and by trade she is a hair stylist. Simeon's trade is in the plumbing and electrical business in a prominent local firm, and he holds a position of authority. He is very proud of his tattoos, and had shaved his head bald a week before the wedding. He makes the most difficult drumming progressions appear boring to him, but I rather know Sims as a fellow occultist. As such, I can say I have looked into his eye many times, that I know him, and that I do not doubt him.
I'm equally gifted by having Damien as a firend. I remember the first time I hung out with Damien outside of his skryer's shoppe. It was July fourth, 04. Another Independence Day, earlier in the same year that Farenheit 911 was released, and I was thinking about the bombs over Iraq as I watched our national fireworks display. We stayed up until dawn drinking and talking about the shaman role from ancient to modern times. All in all it was a different night for me, and those were rare at that time in my life.
Damien and Sims are good friends. They are friends with whom I share interests, and with whom I enjoy discussing those interests. I would be proud to consider them at least my peers. It's been many years since I've had any good friends like these. My last two groups of friends pretty much screwed me over, got into my head pretty good and messed around with some wires. For a while I thought that damage was permanent. Now I am beginning to think that maybe it doesn't need to be.
The fact that they take me seriously, that they do not dismiss my input off hand, but that they truly appreciate me when I can be all there with them. Damien even listened to the "Inc." LP, Sims is very interested in observing the progress of my diagrams, and I am comfortable enough with them both that I dispensed half of my printed research materials for the book on the Enochian calendar to each of them (although now I wish I'd kept the material on Soyga). If you compare this with how other people treat me, and even more so, how other people have treated me, you will see why I am so busy singing songs of praises over Damien and Simeon.
It means alot to me that Damien and Simeon and I can discuss matters relating to the occult in especial. My own research has been far more avid than theirs, but they are much younger, and are both very quick on the uptake. Plus, their particular age gives them special benefits in the ways they process information as through situations, the heart of ritual. I lack just this such social skill myself, and its loss has nearly crippled my esteem. But with my age comes the ability to dispense at their pleasure my insights into the many occult mysteries I have studied over my years in solitude. They ask me questions, share interpretations, I ask them questions, we share our insights; we firmly support each other with our gentle guidance. And all of this under the auspices of an "occult" context.
I think this is the ideal form of Order or Rite. One based on casual friendship and commonality of the interest to pursue lines of reasoning unto their end. Nothing so structured and formal as the rigorous memorisation of circumambulating stations. That's great for perserving ideas, a computer-like human memory system to perserve the hidden dispensation, the equivalent of an oral tradition. But for when bouncing an idea off the head of another is necessary, it ought to be considered best to have an actual friendship with that person. Someone who is already more likely to empathise with from where an idea is coming, less likely to misunderstand. This means they may be trusted to offer level judgments, which is more than can be said for most modern orders, rites, and traditionally occult secret societies, where the handshake precedes the conclusion of the transaction rather than coming after and in parting.
Sometimes I think the occult gets its sole reputation for occlusion and obfuscation entirely from its innate formalism. On the other hand, if I had to guess, my own standing on ceremony so often isn't exactly attracting friendly bees to me. I've joined an online organisation known as the Illuminati-Order. I've been accepted on their messageboard to the level of "member" and been adminstered a curiculum. However I fear that the content I have posted and intend to continue posting if so allowed might be considered too far fetched or "out of keeping" (as my mom puts it) with their own set of values. I've been abrasively brazen on the "0=0" level board, particularly with "Galt," whom I thoughtlessly jostled about like a bully child. But I've stated far more egregious opinions anti-thetical to the curriculum in the "level 1" board. It's sophomore behaviour really. The wise can go about dispensing as much information as he can, believing himself to have attained to it all, but all the while ignoring the ongoing experience, only knowing half the story, the fool. Tragically for most it's not even that lucky. I mean, I can afford to mouth off a little, I've just gotten back from a wedding!
-ben
PS. The zohar came!
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this information is all © 2005 Jonathan Barlow Gee
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