Writer's Block: Conversion Rate
Jun. 18th, 2009 05:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knox[Error: unknown template qotd]
I was born into a Catholic household. However, my folks were careful to let us choose our own path once we were old enough to make up our own damned minds.
I got seriously into the deep, metaphysical issues when I was twelve. I drove my folks mad with the witchcraft stuff. Honestly, I was into it even then. I was particularly enamoured of anything to do with Chaos. A flirtation with science followed, but when I was 23, it happened.
I discovered Discordianism.
It began with a chance discovery of The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson, codifying many of the things that became the foundation of my current spiritual belief system. Through that book, I came across references to other things, all of which caught my eye.
Leary's Eight Circuits of Consciousness model particularly got my interest at that time. (It was referred to on CSI recently - a throwaway remark that sent me straight back to look for the old book. It's still in my library, right where I left it).
Somewhat later, I discovered a burgeoning skill with the Tarot, the Psy Cards and the runes. My first set of runes was back in 1986. It was a set somebody else had made, with a blank rune - the rune sets I make don't have a blank rune.
I gradually accreted teachings from a number of sources. I learned of the Sabbats, the layout of a Pagan shrine, the functions of athame, wand, chalice and pantacle. An old Aikido master, mayherestinpeace, taught me to access the chakras. I learned to meditate. I never learned to sit in lotus. My knees and hips won't do it.
In 1991, I came across a book which turned it all around for me, and cemented my occult leanings firmly in their present place.
I found Liber Null & Psychonaut, by Peter J Carroll.
By then, I was pretty much regularly visiting the Manchester Triangle, that lovely building that was later to become Ground Zero in 1996 - a grim anniversary marked earlier this week.
I remember finding The Principia Discordia in Grey & Pink Records in Chester. This was the Steve Jackson version. I didn't get the regular version until some time later, from New Aeon Books in Manchester.
(I don't think you can get a copy of Principia Discordia from there today. It is a shop whose heyday as the Alexandria Library of occult books has come and gone. From being a place of wall to wall occult tomes, it's slowly lost all its shelving, and the rich variety of useful and not so useful books has gradually dwindles to the handful of books it has today. The rest if all given over to the usual trinkets and trappings. A shame. But I digress.)
I can track the changes in my lifestyle as I could track the changes that happened to that store. A glittering spiritual infancy before 1996, a growing independence when the store moved to the premises in Tib Street and became incorporated with The Kallisti Cafe. Then later, when it moved to its premises in Oldham Street - premises from which it has not moved since - a growing maturity and a sense that more of the wilder days of my life lie behind me than before me - but that some wild days do remain yet to be discovered.
I know that some people disparage what is written as "Goldarn book larnin'," but what people read and dismiss as words, I feel and understand in my heart, like someone tinkering with a car with a Haynes manual at his side.
Then along came Nai.
I believe Nai threw up this barrier to keep me from "having my wicked way" with her. She asked me for something, frankly, impossible. I told her that I was not going to embrace her religion, just because doing so would give me access to sex. If I was going to take up her faith, it would be because the stone in my heart needed to be polished into that ruby whose facets reflected the light of God.
And truth is, she really didn't want to try and seduce the pious man that would result from such a procedure. It'd be a waste of her time, and mine.
So here I am. Staring out the window at the trees. Planning another trip up to Manchester. My books are all back on the shelves. I carry the teachings in my heart.
I follow Chaos, and Discord. I am a Chaotician. I am a Discordian. I am a warlock. I aim to die a Chaotician Discordian warlock.
My life was all about about changing my path, until I reached this one. And inside, where it counts, I am now happy.
I was born into a Catholic household. However, my folks were careful to let us choose our own path once we were old enough to make up our own damned minds.
I got seriously into the deep, metaphysical issues when I was twelve. I drove my folks mad with the witchcraft stuff. Honestly, I was into it even then. I was particularly enamoured of anything to do with Chaos. A flirtation with science followed, but when I was 23, it happened.
I discovered Discordianism.
It began with a chance discovery of The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson, codifying many of the things that became the foundation of my current spiritual belief system. Through that book, I came across references to other things, all of which caught my eye.
Leary's Eight Circuits of Consciousness model particularly got my interest at that time. (It was referred to on CSI recently - a throwaway remark that sent me straight back to look for the old book. It's still in my library, right where I left it).
Somewhat later, I discovered a burgeoning skill with the Tarot, the Psy Cards and the runes. My first set of runes was back in 1986. It was a set somebody else had made, with a blank rune - the rune sets I make don't have a blank rune.
I gradually accreted teachings from a number of sources. I learned of the Sabbats, the layout of a Pagan shrine, the functions of athame, wand, chalice and pantacle. An old Aikido master, mayherestinpeace, taught me to access the chakras. I learned to meditate. I never learned to sit in lotus. My knees and hips won't do it.
In 1991, I came across a book which turned it all around for me, and cemented my occult leanings firmly in their present place.
I found Liber Null & Psychonaut, by Peter J Carroll.
By then, I was pretty much regularly visiting the Manchester Triangle, that lovely building that was later to become Ground Zero in 1996 - a grim anniversary marked earlier this week.
I remember finding The Principia Discordia in Grey & Pink Records in Chester. This was the Steve Jackson version. I didn't get the regular version until some time later, from New Aeon Books in Manchester.
(I don't think you can get a copy of Principia Discordia from there today. It is a shop whose heyday as the Alexandria Library of occult books has come and gone. From being a place of wall to wall occult tomes, it's slowly lost all its shelving, and the rich variety of useful and not so useful books has gradually dwindles to the handful of books it has today. The rest if all given over to the usual trinkets and trappings. A shame. But I digress.)
I can track the changes in my lifestyle as I could track the changes that happened to that store. A glittering spiritual infancy before 1996, a growing independence when the store moved to the premises in Tib Street and became incorporated with The Kallisti Cafe. Then later, when it moved to its premises in Oldham Street - premises from which it has not moved since - a growing maturity and a sense that more of the wilder days of my life lie behind me than before me - but that some wild days do remain yet to be discovered.
I know that some people disparage what is written as "Goldarn book larnin'," but what people read and dismiss as words, I feel and understand in my heart, like someone tinkering with a car with a Haynes manual at his side.
Then along came Nai.
I believe Nai threw up this barrier to keep me from "having my wicked way" with her. She asked me for something, frankly, impossible. I told her that I was not going to embrace her religion, just because doing so would give me access to sex. If I was going to take up her faith, it would be because the stone in my heart needed to be polished into that ruby whose facets reflected the light of God.
And truth is, she really didn't want to try and seduce the pious man that would result from such a procedure. It'd be a waste of her time, and mine.
So here I am. Staring out the window at the trees. Planning another trip up to Manchester. My books are all back on the shelves. I carry the teachings in my heart.
I follow Chaos, and Discord. I am a Chaotician. I am a Discordian. I am a warlock. I aim to die a Chaotician Discordian warlock.
My life was all about about changing my path, until I reached this one. And inside, where it counts, I am now happy.
