• Spiritual Musings

    Spiritual Bypassing of “you should be HEALED”

    Deep ingrained trauma never goes away, it is like a scar.

    One can heal by changing reactions to stimuli that would normally trigger us into an old pattern. Using cognitive therapy by various means and through personal alchemy, we can change how we feel and react to these events that would normally cause us to relive the trauma or act in a way that is not conforming to our will. That is work, but the psychological trauma is never HEALED. We learn to avoid it and work towards a better life that doesn’t negatively affect us. Some people cannot leave environmental realities. These psychological scars wear at us emotionally, cause physical fatigue and a daily onslaught of negativity can wear away what protections we put in place.

    Privileged people in spiritual bypassing can overlook someone’s conditions by being safe in the environment they are now in. They have a spiritual ego without the awareness and empathy of those who are inundated by negative things in someone else’s world.

    In those circumstances, is there spiritual progress? Yes. The discipline of altering how we act over and over improves our lives, our spirit and our soul. Physically we may not escape where we are at, at the moment; however we can work on how it affects us. When the worst of days come, the abuse comes from many sources, when I am physically and emotionally tired, the triggering of traumas and my old reactions to it comes in the same terrifying waves of experience. Getting 2 to 5 minutes of meditative breathing, I can stop the reaction, instead of it lasting days or weeks. Some jobs and situations, I even had to take anti-depressants for some time. Using meditation and internal alchemy I could improve my mind and emotions. Changing the job helped most. Obligations kept me from doing so for a long time. I understand it is difficult.

    Not living in a monastic environment where we can avoid emotions, I’ve learned that each emotion has a positive and negative side. It is about how energy is used.

    Anger helps us focus, being mad one loses control and energy.

    Sorrow, we learn to accept loss, being morose, one clings to what is lost and loses energy to the past.

    Joy, we embrace our life, giddiness we fritter away our energy with infatuation.

    Pensive is where we take energy and store it with an action, versus worry where we run energy out with no prepared action.

    Respect, we see the world as it is, and act accordingly, versus fear where it drains of energy, response and rationality.

    When we choose to change the energetic way emotions work, we can conserve our emotional, physical and spiritual energy. Is it easy? No. Does it take time and rehearsal? Yes. Eventually we improve our lives and reactions to past traumas. In our mind and emotional reactions we avoid the triggered traumas of the past.

    There are parts of the brain changed from traumas. The brain cells feed off of glutamates and permanently wire memories, actions and reactions. This is where traumas effectively create sensitive scars. The idea that you should be HEALED bypasses this physical fact and how people struggle with it every day. regardless of how much spiritual growth they have. Trust in your growth. Meditative detachment and moving into the script and behaviors we have programmed for our selves to keep us from triggering those parts of the brain is what we do. People selling that their spiritual processes will heal you, and infer there is something wrong with you when it doesn’t work, they either haven’t been there or are abusive themselves, looking for followers and sycophants. This spiritual bypassing is toxic.

    The work you have done to make your life better and how you react to life, I am proud of you. When you work to get a balance after all those triggers have been pushed, I am proud of you. I carry my scars proudly, even my mental ones. I have stopped the abuse cycle from affecting my family. I don’t mirror the abuse patterns to other people. I love myself for doing the best I can with what I have been dealt. LOL, sometimes I eat too much or the wrong things, or wallow in hypervigilance, and other counter-dependent behaviors. When this happens, I breathe and focus on my day to day. It is the practice and discipline. In the end and into the next life, the disciplines and alignment will carry over, the rest I’ll shed with this body. Know I am proud of you, no matter how you feel and/or if you are being overwhelmed today. Each step in a new way of being, no matter how much that old life haunts you, is an act of a worthy warrior, creating a better self and world around you. I’ll be proud of you.

    Most importantly, Be Proud of Yourself!

  • Uncategorized

    Out of Darkness, Trials and Ordeals

    Trials and Ordeals, Even as a Man in a relationship to the world and the Abrahamic gods, inflict that on each. True, privilege afforded males in this culture is sickening. More sickening when the not men males go unpunished for their offenses. Men, who fight for what is right, their sanity, to push for a good fight, unapplauded, unappreciated, abused and forgotten, being used only for what they can bring to the table, communty, corporations and family, trudge forward. Women as well as men, trudge forward holding on to what is nugget of gold of self, the soul, the essence of self, through all the initiations, trials and ordeals, regardless of the world dragging us through, down all the filth, thorns and scorns. As a man, we are required to do it silently.

    I as a fool of a 14 year old, fasted over 40 days , prayed and asked god for wisdom of Solomon. I got a manifestation, an answer, and told I’d be released in 32 years. The list of small and large calamities I endured, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, I have forgotten most of it and who cares. I liken it to a millstone around my neck thrown into the middle of the ocean swarming with monsters, between leviathan like and swarms of flesh and spirit eating beings, and told to survive.

    In Sumerian lore, heroes who dared to use magic, had to endure drowning in the river of Huber, a death or initiation.

    Survival and attainment was not the objective of this god, My death and oblivion was its goal for millenia. And yet, under its’ own geas, my prayers must be answered and fulfilled, as its own promise in its own make up of being a god.

    Thirtytwo years later, I survived, my life achieved a degree of normalcy. The normal hell and damnation that humans suffer, was enjoyed for its normalcy. And then I was able to find and know the actual name, nature and history of this god. A god that sacrifices his own children, his father, and all others in a sadistic theatre of sacrifice more potent than mere human’s worship. Yet still demanding it while setting the patterns of evil abuse in every walk of life of a human to feed even more from. Usurping gods’ names their philosophies and religions with a demon lawyer, and revisionist history worse than any demon can devise.

    I survived. I have kyphosis, scoliosis from that teenage fast, and have pictures to show that I am indeed twisted.

    In that dark nightmare of life, and all of its metaphorical and literal hells that exist while living, prepare us for the beyond. In the absolute darkness and at the edge of oblivion, there, that star, our soul, shines from the beauty of its relationship to the universe that beautiful in every aspect. In that darkness our light and the universe, is the hammer and anvil where we forge our souls. In the cauldron we are purified and poured back into the abyss over and over again. Yet here we are, survivors of trials and ordeals. Then we knowing ourselves and this truth, we see the stars of illumination of other survivors, who become gods, both large and small.

    Women’s trials and ordeals, or anyone’s elses, we were made to feel isolated, alone, and naked against the encroaching dark. When we fail to be blinded by it all, we just have to look into the eyes and the heart of those who are marked by the same initiations from the perspectives of the other side of the universe, to feel the love, admiration and awe of our sisters and brothers born out of this darkness only to carry our own light, and to each admire the light in others. Like Hecate, let us be like torch bearers. All other bringers of light, we shall see them for their truths. One way or another we are all covered in pain and blood.

  • Uncategorized

    Evolve Ye We Gods!

    Eternal husks of stardust,

    All dancing on the pinhead

    of planes all woven on it

    known as earth.

    Oh our womb of Earth,

    Oh father of chaos and the heavens,

    by love, and honest sharing,

    of all spirit, bound in the weaving,

    count and retell our tales,

    even to our selves.

    Our hymns and hagiographies

    weave a new reality,

    worship our evolutions.

    Oh Gods be not ossified with countless prayers of slaves.

    Be Gods ever evolving, walking with each other,

    in the Ether, or incarnate.

    Draw the breath of air and astral,

    Forge our souls, over and over,

    create astral edifices that live and breath and evolve.

    Lest we too, hold to what was and anchor it in the ends of the hells of our own making.

    Be not trapped in artifacts of space and time.

    Stretch forth forward dance new dances, embrace new patterns, evolve a living egregore that tests and stretches us.

    Eat or be eaten,

    Sacrifice and Offering, accepted and given.

    Demand evolution, and we all can ride that wave.

    Worship our process, and it will worship us, them, us all.

    May we evolve.

  • BLOG

    What role does surrender play in your practice

    What role does surrender play in your practice, if at all? If you are a magic user, where is the balance between accepting the will of the Divine and asserting your own will?

    What is your relationship with the Divine and Reality? Is it a relationship of submission? Are you friends with a much more powerful being? Or are you their tool? What of your power and your agency, and what does that deity think about that? In a religion where one chooses to be submissive to a deity, and accept the fate and reality of life by that faith, that is your last of act of will. Or are you looking for an excuse for not making decisions or taking ownership of your life, your decisions and the consequences?

    What is up with all the questions? That is part of my practice. Free will, implies an active and engaged consciousness. Taking a knee to survive is not the same as rolling on your back and say do as you will even my death. Deities, good, bad and indifferent each have a personality, agendas, and where do you fit in that?

    I had accepted the boon of one God. It was trials and ordeals for 32 years. No negotiations, no consensual interactions, it is what it was. Would I ever do that again, never. And I hope I am not that stupid the next life and hope that there is a support system for me then. Surrender, as in wanting to die, no not enough. Death is only temporary. Oblivion is forever. My soul like many others are adamantine, not a god nor the universe can hurt it. Only ourselves. Was that surrender nope. It was a will, yet the universe showed me the truth of it. Accept truth and reality is always a magical act. It is a spiritual and evolutionary act. So that is what I choose.

    My will inspite of a god wanting to destroy me. My will inspite of another god wanting to manipulate me. The answer is no. Living according to the project path, true or no, prevarication or no, with honest relationship with me, no.

    Will I work with a deity? Certainly, as long as, they are honest and forthright with what they want and need, and if it works for me as well. How many will do that? The only beings who are not gods but cultural ancestors, are about as honest and forthright with what they need to work with you for whatever X is. Yet you own it the decison and repercussions. That is magic.

    Magic always require an understanding of what it takes to achieve the goal. Do you rely on gods for your magic? Great, is it an honest interaction? You do magic without gods? Great, what is your relationship to the world around you as you are altering it? It is all about honest relationship with everything. Can you do magic without a fully disclosed of the hows and whys? With deities that happens often, as often as you buy a product today with out knowing the ethics and sourcing of materials and labor. Did you surrender your attention and responsibility so that you can take for granted that exchange? Many do. AT what cost? Is it free will or is it a surrendering to the Zietgiest of reality, Sitting quietly on the wheel of Samsara, being the plaything of Maya, et all?

    Magic is a tool and process, as much as, filling up your gas tank, honing your art, or construction or whatever work life craft you have. To get better you discipline yourself to the techniques and practices, is not a surrender. Acting through what comes naturally is taking for granted all that you have done, to be that competent, as it is any relationship, active or passive with human, place, deity or things. Magic doesn’t have to be a spiritual act. For many they think it is, when it is a religious act. Taking for granted your behaviors is surrendering your awareness and spirituality. Many do it without thinking, context or pretext. I won’t.

    Even great Yogis warn even with all the siddhis, one should still pursue that spiritual development, enlightenment to an ever higher state. Even Gods are trapped on the wheel of Samsara. I choose not to be trapped.

    No surrender for me. Now learning that the human body, memory, faculties and ego are a temporary construct is it surrendering it, or more to the point it is a fact of temporary physical existence. It is my disciplines, temperament and relationship to the truth that gets imprinted on my soul. Seeing and accepting the truth as it is, is not a surrender. It is the starting place of having an honest relationship with what is so you can make choices of what will be. Be it your will or the will of the world around you. You have to play to make any change whatsoever. No will, accepting the will of everything else, is that surrendering to fate, or the actions of others and the gods. So many people do so even those who do magic, because they are not in full control of the mind, emotion and body, the very tool that we use interact with reality, which can be programmed by everything except your self. Feeling good about our ego’s acceptance of playing the programmed beliefs, may feel like free will, but it isn’t. They fight to keep that programming. The ego is not you but one acts like a slave to keep it alive as long as possible even without personal control of programming it for ones own spiritual benefits.

    I may be buffeted by the storm, but I choose to steer, how much sail to loose and catch what wind. I choose the shore and havens I sail to. I refuse to be flotsam and jetsum, they carry no cargo. I do. I carry my future, the keys to other’s freedom and empowerment, the means to improve my boat, which is just a tool. I will be friends with sea and wind, in all of its faces. I will not lay down and surrender to its whims. And yet it will remember me, and embrace me, when I return.

    Waxed poetical in the last here. I hope it makes sense.
    Archonstone

  • Spiritual Musings

    Liberation or Kundalini

    The question:

    Thank you David:

    I think one of the reasons that concepts like ‘Liberation’ don’t get a lot of air time, focus or deliberation, is because most people simply can’t conceive the implications of such a state and so give little consideration to skillful means to attain the same. How is it that Kundalini then is the more attractive attachment? It’s that damned snake, isn’t it…

    My Answer:

    Conception of liberation, versus a constant interactive reality, which people are used to.

    Kundalini in the most esoteric sense, and the tantric detachment is a good spiritual tool for this and the next lifetime. Granted the secular conception of kundalini is still all about now. Bliss for now, versus the bliss in consciousness with the all, which is easier to attain.

    While living attainment of liberation, is it bliss or awaiting the last detachment? Kundalini, good or bad, is a practice and a habit that the ego can assess some sort of achievement. As opposed to the attainment of nothing.

    In liberation, is it a nothing, or is it absorption? It can be either. Both states are equally unfathomable, and the repercussions of living in a world where not fed at a monastery, is severe. Then as ever it becomes a philosophy of living in these constructs. Teachers and gurus are helpful here. Yet, then there is an attachment of teacher, and maybe a community.

    Moments with liberation from different attitudes and directions, yet, what and how do I do here? Kriyas, yoga, fine tuning our energetic relationship through the physical tool of this incarnation, why? You can add to your spiritual being. Does this help absorption, no, it creates spiritual identity and ego and or karma. Does it help Liberation, then to what end. The Hidden land tradition, they have not achieve liberation although it is described as such. What overworld in nature, that is unscathed by human spirit and consciousness, only achieves spiritual hermitage, yes? Escape Maya, where one has agency in their placement in life? And, Kundalini is helpful there, is that escape, no not really.

    One can rip their soul from reality, yet the universe and lifetimes of interactions reflect it’s attachment to you. I was in horror, and the ownership of that destiny and choice less of a horror, but it was a truth to live with. The circumstances of my existence was not bliss. Being flown in life as flotsam and jetsam, lends no credability nor comfort, unless you are born a prince, and given defference even as poor mendicant ascetic. The mortal incarnation caught in the eddies of existence, does it make more tolerable, no. Does it give you more agency, a little bit. Is there comfort in observation on that edge Citta and shakti, consciousness and manifestation, a little. Dance between Shakti and Maya, there is little wiggle room. Attitude, and temprement, can help you improve your outlook, find wiggle room here and there. There Kundalini and the Siddhis redefine your being to give you better leverage now and in the hereafter. Liberation you get the big picture, and you choose what to work for, with the energetic work for your soul.

    Like anything it is never one or the other, it is always both and everything, there is the lever and the fulcrum, without one the other is useless. AS the caveman philosopher asked what is better, stick or stone, he that evolved said both.

  • Poem - Spiritual Musings

    The mirror that is not.

    Oh, how the horrors we seduce.

    With flame lips lies that reel in a reality

    that burns the last vestiges of the mind.

    The lips sing of flame and lies, dancing

    in ecstatic cinders.

    The mirror to the world,

    all that is seen is these seductions.

    Each in to dance and play with demons,

    of their own making.

    The daemons of old, Shemayaziqim,

    the iggigi, who sided with people,

    knew too well the seeds were not theirs.

    They knew,

    The father of lies were not among them.

  • Uncategorized

    GOD? , from where universe started, how humans are created , what is end and purpose of human life?

    Response to a forum with the above question:

    The universe as having been started or a posited end, I tend to disagree with. The quantum loop gravity theory, statistically and mathematically indicates a red shift, not necessarily from the idea of universal expansion. We from our own point of view with that and gravitational lensing, the universe is likely more shaped like a klein bottle, and from each vector and observer POV at least from a solar system observation the klein bottle depends on the space and the observer.
    That said its beginning requires more information. The source of creation can be itself. zero can be the sum of all functions.
    How humans are created. Homo sapiens and those that make a fair representation of the species, very few in my estimation have achieved the status of human.
    Leigh’s book on the Bicameral brain makes a good point that consciousness itself and the likely the illusion of it, is quite possible.
    As a species just like any other its purpose is to live. Its failure is extinction. Many other species have done the same.
    As humans, where as a homo sapiens species we have the capacity to be self aware is to develop that awareness. That awareness depends on the ability to reflect. The spiritual expressions is the ability to reflect from other points of view.

    It astonishes me that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which has that as part of the underlying arc, I have yet to meet a reader to see this understood by any other.
    Deep Thought’s answer to life universe and everything is 42.
    The answer to what is the ultimate question to life universe and everything, it suggests creating a bigger computer than it. Earth. Okay much hijinks and humor ensues. In the end Arthur Dent by accident of time in our primitive world from a scrabble board, pulls out the answer what is 6 x 9. Which is 54. Casually Ford Prefect says it is 42 in base 13. I get crickets. All This from a computer that has created a Point Of View Ray gun weapons in its basement. A Point of View. That computer is one hell of a guru.
    The point of this is lost even after I explain it to them.
    Is this the purpose of the universe? No.
    It is the purpose of human existence and its reflection and apprehension of all that the universe can be.
    The concept of the heat death of the universe and its entropy, may be the reflection of the universe in every facet of its existence gets mirrored by multiple apprehensions of it.

    The bandying about of the existence of God and its meaning…. Is it the omnipotent creator of the universe? no. It is only its collection of observations and apprehension of its comprehension of the limited universe as world, and those that apprehend it with its own set of egos. The process is the same just on a limited scope. Albeit way beyond most people’s understanding.

    As to the unseen, if gods and all the paranormal beings that are ubiquitously observed in every culture and have patterns similar in apprehension, are either a statement of, how as a species, this reflection of self into the world is the same,or there is something there. If it is a reflection and other see it, the likely hood of its existence is fairly high.

    Ok where is the scientific plausibility of that? I have in my writings studies showing the body uses collagen fibers as a liquid crystal. It moves hydrogen ions from one water molecule to another. That is likely to generate changes in organs and the body generates telemetry of metabolic changes through the autonomic nervous systems. This creates feelings. Feelings are the underlying component of where we can access memory and our programming (numerous articles and talks from Dr Chandran neurophysiologist). Our Egos are very much keen on having known feelings or metabolic baselines to maintain our normal thought processing. When sick or addicted and we have a changed metabolism our ego fights back to reach homeostasis. (Studies on state dependent behavior, also)
    Every magical or spiritual process I know of is designed to step out of Egos control and observe outside of those parameters. And to hijack egos control so that we can develop more control of the body. The movement of protons can not be measured by voltmeters. The movement of mass and charge would generate electro-weak forces between electromagnetic forces and weak nuclear forces. As described by Dr. Feynman decades ago. There are 4 effects observed; one allows insects and geckos to walk on ceilings. Electro weak forces are poorly understood and vastly under studied.
    Were that not all. Water stacked in fibers where orientation of the legs of hydrogen molecules and the length of legs can predict EMF frequencies that can be emitted and absorbed. (Lamilar stacked water) There it is how the body can observe the unseen. This can explain why it takes so long for the mind to develop sensible mechanisms to interpret it and why traditions exist to assist in this process. And like any other human endeavor, the inability of understanding that without those experiences is impossible, like childbirth, serving the military or other initiations.

    Whether Gods or any other beings exist, they too would be in the same boat to make sense of their experiences.

    So here we are, doing exactly that.

    Purpose:

    If you are able to be a self reflecting, self examining, real authentic human being, exercising your being beyond the inexorable wheel of time and cause and effect, then you have the ability to generate the will to do something other than what has happened randomly setting the stage for your existence to just be. You can choose your own purpose, large or small. Then you become god or participate in a process of God, which is its own wheel of time of cause and effect. And outward this expansion reflects back into the universe.

    I have observed paranormal and supernatural happenings. Observation really depends on the observer or the collective mind of observers. A few events in my life others saw the exact same thing I did. I in my understanding choose to live at least in spirit or in the next life time. I am working to have some control of that. And that wholly depends on having an honest relationship with the universe and other beings that are damn near immortal.

    In words, simply, to be conscious reflections of the universe and have the universe do the same of us, with our own purpose or chosen collective purpose, or both.

    In one expression: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will.

    In my maxim based on my principles of immortality: Live absolutely honestly with absolutely everything, yourself, others, community, the world, the divine and, if not, the universe.

    Together, I have infinite expectations of myself and the universe.

    How will you live? How in life do you will?

  • BLOG

    In response to a lament of the loss of Elders

    The Rantin Raven : This is why we can’t have nice things. “On Patheos: Agora”

    I saw Elders being pushed to the side over 25 years ago. And others going solitary.
    I see some elders being respected in some communities.
    It depends on the type of community and the personality of the groups of people drawn to each.
    People noted the various influxes of Pagan/Wiccans that have joined the community. Some may choose a good initiatory tradition and stick with it, respecting and Elder.
    Many that are taught a one true way ( and I have heard it called “The Wicca”) don’t leave room for those who see the basic Wiccan ritual format as a training mechanism. And those who take it as a religion versus those who pursue the magical spirituality of it.
    This country in the mainstream and many of those who have joined suffer from the mainstream discrimination of ageism. And like others have said join a movement that helps them justify their lifestyle without a true type of morality and ethics.
    And since the burgeoning of Wicca from the 60’s feminist empowerment era, and the 60’s in general, authority, organization and hope of respect of those of whom paved the way gets diminished when that attitude and culture is still present when they get “there” and represent that which was thrown out with the bath water.
    Couple this with the fact that there are parasites and sociopaths, both “so-called” leaders and coveners, that are bane to the Traditionalists or any serious seeker.
    I, a male from NY from  those Female only times and places, through having had my own experiences that simulate what an initiatory tradition could have provided but then I could not culturally fit, for one reason or another. I had to go solitary. It is only after decades, and going where reputable long standing elders show up, do I get any type of recognition. The true ” The Wicca” and those religious and make stuff up as they go, to stroke their ego types, (sociopaths that have their enablers attack you) do every thing they can to keep you out their section of the community. Then I watch what larger community re-fragment.
    When you see it coming, and people are conditioned to isolate themselves, sociopaths and narcissists take full advantage of that. Groups can’t get as big as they used to because of this influx and conditioning to respond to these types of people.
    I haven’t seen one group in 20 years that teaches meditation anymore. The last Elder (now Past- Lady Amethyst) that taught anything about energy, vibration, and the reason for ritual adherence. Nor have I seen anyone speak to building an astral framework and ritual space except for Thorn Coyle.
    I just listened to an Ifa traditionalists where the one Baba wanted to get people back to talk about the magical and spiritual work that the various paths of the Oriesha have versus the surface rituals and practices that people do. It is endemic to the spirituality of many traditions.
    And it is part of the mainstream culture. No one trusts anyone, no group, no leader and wouldn’t know who to trust, to say that is a leader and for these reasons. People don’t waste time to listen to reasons, history, or exercise their own brain and abilities to think it through for themselves. People follow what gives them those feels, with no idea what or where it comes from, or who is manipulating it and how.
    The Elders who try to teach any of these truly empowering things are shown the door with some sort of social kick in the pants.
    There are few,  who have good solid working traditions and people earnestly supporting them, If what you say is true makes you and yours rare of what and whom I know.
    Here is the by-word, community, and by that diversity and leadership. Who do you trust, and how do you cultivate leaders? A tribe has those and multiple societies with different religious and spiritual traditions, along with a warrior, women’s, men’s and other practical day in and day out societies. That is what my group is working on. And yes we get next to zero interest. They don’t see a value in it. They want to see what’s in it for them.
    And the Elders that say they are retiring from Wicca and going to more traditional witchcraft, being a witch, wizard, is the continuing study of self, lore and magical practices, and extending their relationship with the divine and nature, without being impeded by those who have made Wicca an altogether stultifying but small organized religion, managed by many, by many standards, who couldn’t earn a traditional third degree. Those who see the Gods and the spirits know.
    And nowadays, vampires, the added extra bonus of spiritual environment and sociopaths, do what I want versus in perfect love and trust. Every larger meetup or gathering I go to, I and my group have to protect people from them. Witch by definition is what you do for yourself. Wicca is a religion and a framework, for some these magical training traditions. Shamans learn to serve a tribe. No Tribe, no community, no reliance on wisdom of elders, but the self serving of each little group manipulating each other. Yes many of us have had to survive, recuperate from burnout, or just be a victim of abuse.

    Those of you have survived with a cadre of an honest tradition. I salute you.
    I have seen Elders from various traditions manage to work together for a time here and there. The underlying lack of structure, and that thing that is a hypocritical stone stuck in my throat, working by consensus, that develops only the most skilled of the emotional manipulating leaders, that drive the core founders and workers away, no there won’t be a coherent community honoring Elders.
    Again I am doing what I can to teach. Many are concerned with who I trained under, what traditions and how successful I’ve been without any context or understanding of what I know. The paucity of capable people who have had any adept experiences are few and the rest fake it, while flaunting a more marketable feel good group. People will get what they get.
    Now that I put myself out here, I expect to be hammered. Have at it.
    Most of those who have responded to this post what you say is true and good, and from your sets of experiences, I have seen also. I just hope the one thing in pagan communities are not interested in is community and leadership and culture is the very thing that they need. And now without any good culture to be based off of, one must be created to be a model not only for ourselves, but for the world.
    Archonstone

    peopleembrachingchange.com

  • PEC Biographies

    A Pagan Teacher that I am

    And that I aim to be.

    A local leader in our greater Atlanta community came up with some great questions seekers should ask prospective teachers.   I will narrate the answers as best as I can.

    I look at a western Pagan culture that is steeped and colored by Wicca that took its roots in the United States  with the Feminist movement of the late 1960’s.  The idea of god being female and a religious group leader being female was a strong incentive in our country that is steeped in misogyny and a patriarchal  cultural paradigm.        Since then there  has been a lot of reconstruction of pre-Christian pagan beliefs and practices.     Some of it is well researched, and much of it poorly researched.  A lot of it is purely made up with poetic license.         Natural born witches, people of personal power and ability, and groups  had been hunted down wholesale, and whole villages of other schisms were put to the fire, the noose or sword.      Others went underground, in secret societies, and family traditions, keeping in the mainstream, mostly working for society with what talents they could.   They couldn’t advertise and share.  They didn’t have conventions, newspapers or mail lists.  Each was dangerous.    Wicca, by Gerald Gardner, the Sanders,   Richard Buckland and Stewart & Janet Farrar brought Wicca out in its format.   Leland  brought a light of Italian witchcraft.  Sybil Leek brought to light a family tradition, and others added bit by bit.         Where people couldn’t get first hand teaching, they learned by books.  Few lead by spirit.  Many lead by Ego, seduced by the idea of personal empowerment.

    I was born 1958 in Saratoga, NY.   I lived at the edge of the Battlefield until I was 7.    I went out as a child to wander in woods, the bog, the streams, enjoying the world as it was.    I would sing to the birds in glossolalia and to the convocation of murders of crows.     There was one woman that was a friend of my mother who told me not to speak such words until I was much older.      My mother took me to her house once, and I asked about the peacock feather.  My mother told me not to ask about such things.    She told me I could ask anytime I wanted.       Many years later i found out it was an outward symbol of witches for people who were “in the know”.      I never did get an opportunity to talk to her.

    In 1965, my father, grandfather and uncle all died within months of each other.    Two weeks after my grandfather’s passing,  I was sleeping in the room next to his, and woke up early.   I went downstairs, and heard more activity in that section of the house.  My grandfather came walking down stairs.     The world did a tilt out of 45 degrees and back.  My grandfather said, “So long Sonny.”  He stepped off to the side of the stairs,  and proceeded in becoming transparent,  then there was dust, and settled in a pile and it too disappeared.   He was already buried for a while.      As long as I lived in that house, there were these werewolf like things with red eyes that would visit me in spirit form.

    This wasn’t my first spiritual experience.   I was having one  since my first memories when I was around two.    In my sleep and day dreaming I would see two orbs swirling  with a separate center and swirling around it like a golden orb with thousands of points of liquid sand.  The other orb was swirling  in its own sets of centers, each moving.  I have seen it mentioned twice. Once in an obscure reference by a yoga teacher, and in a book by the author of Falun Dafa, inferring it was a protection or an oversight by a spiritual being.    My teacher taught me really what it was, how to create one and why.

    My father and grandfather, went to spiritualist’s meetings in their day.  My mother’s mother read cards and palms, and  taught my mother the basics of palm reading.   After reading a friend’s passing that was a few weeks in the future, she gave it up.    Thirty-five years later I found out those red eyed werewolves were fae, the English called them noggins, that inhabit marshy forests, just like the one across the street from our house.

    How long have I been Pagan?      How long could  I be a Christian when I am dealing with psychic and paranormal phenomena without a lot of ostracization and discrimination?    Many Pagans and Wiccans I know of pursued these beliefs from a need of self-empowerment.   They come from dysfunctional families, cultures  and were bullied by their peers for any number of reasons.  Many faced the misogyny  of the culture.  Being a person of color, or large size (fat or big), smart,  with a control of one’s own thinking and not blindly following “what everybody else does”, gets one scrutinized and abused accordingly.   As a Baptist, I was narrowly accepted.  Were I in the mountains, I’d be one where the hand of fellowship would be “withdrawn”.

    I wasn’t aware of all the cultural shake ups and the exploration others were doing in the 60’s.  I was surrounded by old, conservative, albeit a family of Liberal party members in upstate NY.  My mother was a depression era parent, yet liberal for her day and age.  She knew what condoms were and was popular.  As if that secret could be kept.     Two books changed my life.   I received a copy of “Stranger in a Strange Land”, by Robert Heinlein.  I purchased a book named ” Tibetan Yoga, Secret Doctrines” by Dr. Evans Wentz.    I taught myself meditation and started getting a handle on lucid dreaming, plane walking (took years to understand that), and refined my intuitive and psychic awareness.    I was 14, in 1972, . Due to a lack of any social outlet, I joined a Baptist church.     When you are so out of step from the insanity of illogical people rarely, anything, including adults, made sense.   When your parents and their parents are all closed lip and kept things close to their vests, along with self absorbed neurotic burying of core traumatic events, rarely do you get an honest dialog with anyone.  The neighborhood my mother moved to was an exit community.  People coming out of the city, with all the dregs and hangers on trying to drag them back down, and all those, who no matter what they did, their own impulses drug them and their families back down to the lower rungs of society.     The most social order was the drug gangs and their comradery.   I was not part of any group.          I was an outsider with a unique perspective looking in.  With an IQ of 180 at that time, I had skipped 5th grade.  I was one or two years younger than my peers and had nothing in common with those my own age.   I was 5’10” 180 lbs, when I was 13.

    As a Christian, and as my only known source for any type of supernatural intervention and support, I called upon the only God I was familiar with.  I asked for the wisdom of Solomon, a.k.a. the wisdom of God, and after prayer and a progressive fast of 40 days, I had a vision.   I found the name of God I called and a got a response from was ‘El”.  Years later I learned about the large Canaanite Pantheon, all the predecessor cultures and evolution of this God’s names over the previous 3000 years.     I was told I would be released in 32 years.       I was exposed to more and more things.   I had to learn how to deal with them., not unlike Siberian or Tuvan Shaman learn to deal with spirits.  Here they are, deal.   Most people are familiar with the White Shaman traditions that deal mostly with spirits  and are initiated with a Shaman’s sickness.  The Black Shaman learn.        A lot of learning and experiences happened when I was in the Marine Corps.      I had to deal with a Satanist that had invoked demons,    performed an exorcism and two “soul retrievals”, along with being attacked by demons a dozen times in two weeks.    I got external verification of what I saw and felt by other people with talents.     I learned to do what I had to do.    Otherwise, I think I would be severely messed up.   The basic  exercises in the Tibetan Yoga book, the discipline, the meditation and cultivation of energy helped me to a great degree.  At the end of the two week period  of being attacked,  several of us observed a being that called itself Ashura.   (Japanese war god, and Hindu Asuras (jealous gods)).    The situation that presented itself was that there was either , I accepted this as God’s will,  God was  messing with me (yes he was) or there was a much bigger supernatural and paranormal world out there (Oh yes, very much so).     I was 21 and Pagan was a label that  I had to slowly assimilate into.

    As a seeker, trying to get an education with an essentially dismantled GI bill, going to work, and finding anything and anyone that I could learn more from, was difficult.  The few groups in the area were women only.    We had Marcia Pickands  who was adopting the Sangreal Sodality ceremonial magic methodologies for William Gray’s  version of Kabbalah.     The particular problem she saw with me was that my experiences had already outstripped any of the initiatory processes that ceremonial initiations  had to serve.   My experiences and my processing of them would not mesh with those of that group or for that matter many others.    She suggested I start teaching myself.  This is 30 years ago.    Traditions and revelatory initiations provide a context for spiritual development, just as do school and other rites of passage.     In those cultures each of those have a context.       Shamans have that opportunity.  In Siberia, Altai and other areas, the spirits work directly with individuals.  If they are lucky they have another shaman to help them develop their role in society.  Other types of shaman develop their skills on their own or teach individuals that have the skill, but it is a one to one mentor-protege type of relationship.               I spent a considerable amount of personal effort to understand different spiritual methodologies and experiences from many different viewpoints.    My personal teacher, who I found at age 50, had teachers  from his own family that were Native American, but not on a tribal list and was also  trained by teachers who adopted him in NE California and Nevada, as well as others  in the 4 corners area.    He was taught by a teacher in Korea.     Some of it was traditional, much of it was from a group of practitioners who shared their knowledge.    This wasn’t something typical either.       My experiences and takes on them meshed with his and his experiences, and he decided to teach me more.    I was taught some non-traditional methodologies and practices and most of the common practices I had pretty much knew or had learned.   It is nice to get some confirmation after all those years.

    687 books listed http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Archonstone   Most of which I have read.  Many are resource books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.     Some of the books are on anthropology, psychology, philosophy, religion, practices and other assorted and related topics.

    Books I’m reading  currently, Ba Gua Circle Walking Nei Gong 2012, Kriya Secrets Revealed 2013, Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu 2015, Meditations by Aurelius 1997.

    I am sure I have read other books along the way, some lost, some pilfered by others, and many skimming through at libraries.  And no, I don’t remember all the book details.  I do try to make sure they are valid,  academic, or at least  supported by traditions, and some hermeneutic scrutiny can be made on the contents of the books.

    I supported CUUPs briefly at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Schenectady, NY in 1990.  I led a couple of the Sabbats, with a third degree individual as a mentor.  He was satisfied that it generated the type of space and energy that third degrees would do.  (With this out of context and not in a traditional setting, it is what it is.  I was glad that the participants found the ritual useful and transformative. )  The UU  got a new minister and the congregation changed its focus to more conservative Christian focuses.

    In the late 80’s,  I supported a group called Heathens on the Hudson.  This ended up being a drumming group, with one woman who was a multiple addict, got into Reiki, and had issues that took control of that group.  The group disintegrated.  I left before it fully degenerated.

    I ran a computer Bulletin Board Service (BBS)  called the Wizard’s Workshop.  It was designed to help people explore what their path may be.   Most needed to know they were not a freak and other people have talents.  No, they aren’t evil, wrong, and no, they don’t have to follow the first  “so called” expert that comes along.  Use critical thinking,  question what these people are about.  Guard their sense of selves, they don’t have to bow down to anyone, ask questions,  and not to feed the vampires.   There were a lot of predatory types in the upstate NY and capital district area during that time.

    One reason why I may have difficulty with people?  My hard life and personal history don’t make me relatable.    I don’t deal with people who lie and take advantage of other people.    It is exceptionally difficult to be in a position to help others, when a sociopath sees that you have good intentions and targets you with their cultivated enablers.        When you are targeted for being male, large, too intelligent, geek, nerd, experiences that no one can relate to,  too young and now too old,  too conservative, too liberal or whatever leverage du jour that  has little to do with what I know and what I can show people.    Lastly, I have gotten to the point where I value my time and energy, and won’t give of myself indiscriminately, to be used over and over by people won’t value what I have to offer beyond what they can take advantage of.

    If you are a seeker, what might be there about you that you shouldn’t use me as a teacher?    If you are looking for an excuse to live without ethics or morals.    Personally, I am an ethical hedonist.  People who look for justifications for bad behavior, don’t waste your time.    If you are looking for power over people.   I am not good at that and even if I were I wouldn’t teach you.  How do you serve the people?      If  you believe magic doesn’t require work.     To progress, work must be done.  There are practices that need to be done more or less daily.  The practices build on each other.   If you can’t do that, then you will not progress and won’t have the experiences where I can help you with a new set of exercises to discover for yourself.    At one  point I become a guide.  Not a teacher.    Once you have experiences that we can relate to, then we will have a common frame of reference to talk about it.    Until then, there is no talking or teaching that will get you there.    And it will be evident that you haven’t done the work.   T. Coyle’s book infers this in her own teaching from the Feri tradition.     As part of a tribe and a community, there has to be a desire to work to some sort of service.

    What type of person won’t fit into People Embracing Change (PEC), the tribe?  Anyone that fails with the above.       Magical traditions and methods can vary.  The ultimate spiritual goals can be vastly different.    What cannot be different, is that we have to sophisticatedly work with each other as family, society, community and tribe.     If you have no respect for people who have been there, and cause drama to tear apart any structure, method, or tradition, then you won’t develop the skills and understanding to be respected enough to actually help the tribe to evolve.     People who think they know, when they are just there for themselves, will destroy a group very shortly.

    As long as there is an interest in the group, I will be giving about 6 hours a week to the group.  Some of that is prep time for the classes, or focus on organizational issues.   The rest of the time is divided between work and family.

    PEC  is still just starting.      Several starts of classes   have been on and off for the past 8 years.      There were two starts of classes where we had self-serving  people come in  and try to prey on others.  This again is in that fragile beginning.   Enablers won’t be supported.  They will be asked to leave with the sociopaths.     There was one group where we had an open, eclectic, social  sabbat group.   There were different people with their own agenda’s all vying to make and hold the group to their influence. It started disintegrating.  Trying to expand the group and functions, the vying to control each aspect and squash what couldn’t be controlled,  caused the group to explode.    The details are only important to describe human behavior.  I have learned my lesson.  I for one wanted to see that type of Sabbat keep going as a social and community event.        I and a few others wanted to add classes and other type of spiritual groups and practices.

    PEC has its organizational outline, it is inclusive with ethical guidelines.   It allows people to have multiple  paths, of study, and development.  In the end, community, family and developing a sophisticated and healthy supportive culture is more important.  One’s spiritual path can’t be devoid of having a meaning in a context with the world and community.  The last time anything like this has been done, is when tribes  have hived off to create new tribes.  From my studies, this hasn’t been done in more than 400 years,  and the last places may have been by Native Americans or West Africa.    So, we are doing this with no current precedence.

    • We are currently planning 4 – 6 hours a month in classes and lectures.
    • Sabbats are run by Elders currently until there are enough trained individuals or society groups, that have been formed have taken it on as a service, rotated with other society groups.
    • Number of books for each level of training.     There are no levels, except what is respected in one’s work and development.    The books to read will be suggested.  There will be no deep teaching unless people put in the work to study.  Depending on the individual’s temperament, direction of study, we will make recommendations.
    • Each spiritual group, whether it is Wicca, Heathen, lodge work, will have their own internal organizational methodologies.
    • As part of the tribe, each member must be belong to some spiritual society for personal development.       Council members must be a leader  from one of these groups, to represent the group.   To become an elder,  they need to experience and develop an ecumenical skill set with different groups.  Show a deep understanding of the group, the people and a sophisticated  skill set to develop leaders and encourage the tribe to grow and work toward resolutions.      Elders’ focus is the growth and transformation of the tribe.  They will cultivate leaders and a culture that can be cherished, transmitted, and evolve to meet the needs of the people.     This is no small task.  They will need to develop respect from each of the Elders and all of the council members, and a trust from Tribal members.  Without it, there is no leadership.  Elders coach others to develop their leadership abilities, to help build respect and on how to work with each other, along with developing conflict resolution.
    • We are looking at some sort of recognition ritual and methodology.  Some of it needs to be managed from each magical society, others by service.  We have ideas, but they won’t make a difference until we all start working together, to make it a working cultural idiom.
    • The structure of the public classes will be based on the published curriculum.    This is to help individuals to understand the basics of psychic development and the different levels of magic so they can decide their own path, and have the basis to understand individual groups,  methods and objectives and see if it matches their own.   As it develops, there will be more advanced classes added to the schedule.
    • All material I have is published online.    My bibliography is listed online.   Classes may shift depending on the individuals’ needs and the questions that are asked to help with individuals’ growth at the time.  As I write, I will keep adding it to the web site.  Other material will be in books, to be read on site.      Individuals will need to invest in themselves, and groups into each other.
    • People can hang out and learn.  If individuals become disruptive to other students they will be asked to leave.
    • Societies that have their own initiatory traditions or revealed traditions, if they desire to be part of the community can close  various levels of training to the tribe and or their particular group.
    • We do not allow illegal use of drugs.   We have respectable jobs and  do not wish to lose our careers nor endanger others careers with illicit behaviors.
    • Alcohol may be available to post-ritual feasts.  In general  this is a bad habit to get into.  We will not encourage it.
    • The Elders and I support polyamory and other lifestyle choices, as long as the choices are about honest and ethical relationships.      Until we start having larger celebrations, we expect people to retire to their own homes.
    • All individuals are to hold each other’s dignity and safety a priority.  Sexual predatory behavior will not be allowed.  Such behavior will be a reason to dismiss people from the tribe.    Adult flirting and other type of behavior as long as it is consensual and not making each other uncomfortable, we are not against this.   Common sense is needed, respect for people checking in each other.  No means no.   We prefer that people use explicit consent.

    What type of leader am I?

    Honestly I don’t know.    It really depends on the people who share the dream.  How I can facilitate that dream?  What other leaders and individuals are there who want to build something greater than themselves?

    I hope I can teach.  I hope I create a passion for developing spiritually.  I hope I inspire people to study magic,  people, society, others, and most importantly to love, each other, the community and a country that needs a better way than what it is doing to itself now.

    If I can’t build a better world with one model at a time, I hope I can find at least one person that I can teach all that I know.     I don’t want all that I have learned to be lost.

    Archonstone.     What is this nickname moniker that I have chosen?  Archon is by a Greek definition an elected leader.    As a Gnostic term, it is a being that heralds a new age.   A stone is a worked rock.   A stone is used as middle eastern metaphor for a person’s skull and sometimes a seed, from a fruit or a grain.       The root letters are similar and can be used as a spiritually laden pun.        I want to be a seed for something that is worthy to be grown and cultivated in the future.   A stepping stone,  for a new eon of human evolution. Or at least a new age.         My original  Pagan name was Witan.  It was a handle I used in the  BBS days of the late 80’s before the internet.      I ran a BBS called Wizard’s Workshop that was dedicated to  magick, philosophy, and religion.      Like any BBS of the day it was targeted by hackers and I lost a lot of my investment from them  destroying my computers from that activity.  The Wizard’s Workshop  was held every other Sunday afternoon.  It helped people with psychic talents recognize that they were normal,  not some bedeviled, possessed individual.  That there were many paths out there.  Maybe not in that area.  There were books and precedents for many things they experienced.    We did some spiritualist exercises that helped hone our skills and gave each other feedback on what was being done.   When the internet  replaced the BBS and there IRC chat rooms,  Witan was a common moniker used by different people, and some very vocal rabid individuals that devolved that social media into another quagmire of drama and mediocrity, and who claimed  I wasn’t who I was.  I chose this moniker for its complex, rich and challenging meanings for me to grow into.  I am still working on that.