Pagan

Descent, Incubation, Resurrection

by Oracle Hekataios

Incubation
Votive relief of Asclepius healing a dreamer, from the Asklepieion of Piraeus. 4th century.
Source: Archaeological Museum, Piraeus, Greece.

Dreams. Many cultures throughout the world – both ancient and contemporary – have given rise to the belief that the Dreaming is another world. A separate entity, bordering our own. Perhaps its own nexus of Reality. In the Odyssey, a woman by the name of Penelope (the husband of Odysseus) speaks of two different dreams. Homer writes of what she says:

“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfillment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfillment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.”(1)

Deception and Fulfillment. What doesn’t come to pass and what does come to pass. Both are the points on either side of a spectrum of possibilities. And when we Dream, the possibilities are endless. Why am I writing about dreams? Because my journey into where I am at now began with a Dream.

The Dream 
At the Spring Equinox in 2010, I had a dream about Alex Sanders. This is the first time I am writing about it publicly. I feared for a long time to even pen this because I didn’t want to be looked at funny. I did not want to receive any ire from the Alexandrian Community, and I certainly did not want to offend anyone. In 2010 I knew nothing about the Alexandrian Tradition. That’s not true: I knew it was a British Traditional Wiccan Tradition began by a man who was called “King of the Witches.” But my immersion at the time was in Stregheria, and in the ways of Graeco-Roman-Egyptian magick (Alexandrian Hermeticism I might call it). I was also very interested in Gardnerian Wicca, and I felt that it was that specific Tradition to which I was called to. I wanted to be a Gardnerian. That’s another story. Right now let’s focus on this Reality. This Dream. A dream within a Dream. Spirals and circles. They all meet together, coalescing and separating. Like Love and Strife. Aphrodite and Ares. Even Hephaistos. All have a hand or two in this perpetual dance.

Here was the dream (vision?) that I had of Alex:

I found myself sitting in a cozy chair by a fireplace. Between myself and Alex was a small table with some tea & snacks. He started telling me, “Do you know what it means to be King of the Witches?” I replied that I didn’t. He began explaining to me the significance of the Sacred King, the sacrifice, the Mask of the Horned One that the Priest must wear as his (in Alex’s words) “Vicar on earth.” Alex told me his life was a mask that he himself didn’t fully understand until he was close to death, and his struggle with his “identity” came from separating the Holy Mask from his human ones. The Sacred King, he told me, was something which came from the Holy Isle of Atlantis (mind you, I don’t believe in Atlantis, but apparently Alex did…or does.) He was not only a representative of the God, he WAS the God. He was the Lord of the tribes, and it was his energy which fertilized the land. Alex told me that it wasn’t so much the blood, but the occult nature within it which sustained the egregore of which the Sacred King was entrusted with. For those of you who do not know, an egregore is an occult term for what some psychologists might call the Group Mind, or the Hive Mind. It is the gestalt: the cohesion of both consciousness and subconsciousness within the spectrum of a social intelligence. It is the energy pooled by every person within an occult group, which is why screenings, secrecy, and privacy are so innate in Mystery Traditions. The Group Mind must be protected at all costs, and it is the job of a High Priest and/or High Priestess together who work to do just that.

Alex was lecturing me…no, he wasn’t. He was just talking to me. I was sitting and he was happy to share what he knew. What he was learning is more precise. Alex was considering himself a spiritual adventurer, tapping into the limitless potential of occultism. This was all he was telling me. He also told me that, as a Protector of the Tribe, he had to give his best. Alex told me he had been abused and used during his tenure as the Sacrificed King, and his time was coming to a close. There would continue to be questions about his role, but the Tradition needed, he felt, a new Sacrificed King. Someone to bear the burden of the Alexandrian Egregore, and guide it always.

To Awaken
In the Dream Temples of old, one was bathed and purified before entering the sacred. This purification might have gone on days or weeks, while sacred drink was given to you. There might have been some hallucinogen in the substance, but it was to prepare your imagination to be receptive to the Other. The veil of your Mind needs to be thin, and then both worlds can meet. Where both worlds meet in the consciousness, ecstasy occurs. Magick happens.

Since my last major post on this blog, I have incubated. I have spiritually slept, taking things in. My Temple disbanded, because people moved to different areas and interests changed. The Goddess Selene spoke and told another to start their own journey in an oracle given by me. I’m not upset. This is the way of things: cycles, spirals, change. In our Mythos, Nyx was reborn at the end of one multiverse cycle and the beginning of a new one. At the precipice is when She began to stir. I felt like Nyx: a precipice had come, and I was given the opportunity to continue or stay asleep. Instead, I took the opportunity to continue and breathe new life in my spiritual walk.

At the same time that my Temple began to come to an end, my journey found me contacting an Alexandrian coven. It would be a few months more that my Temple met and before Selene spoke, but I felt Alex’s pull. He inspired me to reach out. Perhaps it was the Magick of the coven as well, who called out for new members (unbeknownst to me). They too, had a Dream. They, too, walked in spirals. They too, had incubated for some time. Now it was time for the sleeper to awaken!

Resurrection
Awakening and Resurrection are two different things. To awake, one must be sleeping. To resurrect, one must be dead. Dead to yourself. Dead to everything. No pulse. No life. No quickening. The Flow has stopped, and Entropy has ensued. This is when the Dance stops: Aphrodite has united the elements, only for them to stagnate. They are ready for Strife: for the Axe of Areia and the blow of Hephaistos. They are ready for new life.

Sometimes we walk in peace, and wonder why still things don’t seem to be at their best within us. Sometimes the calm can be deafening, and the silence frightening. Sometimes “safe” should not be in our vocabulary. How can we live and break out, if safe is what we keep? Entropy. It is time to rise from the dead, and touch the energies of the Mother again. It is time to be back in the cycles, the spirals of the Dreaming, where Reality and Reality meet. You are there. You are the Nexus. All of it comes down to you and your choices. The decisions you make can break out into the multiverse into endless possibilities, but only YOU have the mind to make the decision that affects you and will, in turn, affect those around you. That Snowball Effect we will delve into in a later blog post. For now, let us return to my own journey, one in which I needed to resurrect.

I was dead inside. My relationships changed. My Temple was gone. My writing stilted. I separated myself, and compartmentalized everything where I tried to be the hero of my own problems. I caused so many of them upon me and everyone I loved dearly. Have you ever felt that way? Where you mess up, and you become the negative influence Facebook memes warned others about? I was that person. I won’t go into what I did, but I needed to find my Voice again.

…and I did.

Here I am. I am writing. My spirituality is awakened. Resurrected, actually. I am alive. And I only have more to give. My religious practices are integral, because they give me something to stand on. They grant me a passion to dance with life and cavort with death. I am an initiate of the Alexandrian Tradition. But my question continues: why me? I know I am an oracle. That much is certain about my calling. But why Alex visited me 7 years ago during the Spring Equinox is beyond me. Why he gave me that message is certainly beyond me. And, furthermore, why he visited me again is very much beyond my comprehension. Yes Alex Sanders made a couple of more visits to me. I don’t know if I should share them yet though. I’ll find out what Spirit says, and follow from there. For now, I encourage you to be content that in Dreaming lies your adventure. It is in the power of the Imagination that possibilities are born. And it is in the awakening and resurrection of yourself that you find the strength, courage, and power to come forth and speak your Truth to the world. Your Voice. And once you find it, do not let it go silent.

Eirene kai Hugieia!
(Peace and Health!)

~Oracle~

NB: Although in the vision Alex felt that a new Sacrificed King was needed, I encourage anyone who is Alexandrian who might read this to not think I have an agenda. I wrote a dream/vision. That is all. I have no agenda. Nothing. My goal is simply to share here what I felt Spirit wanted me to share. That is all. Thank you and blessings.

 

1) Homer, “The Iliad and the Odyssey.”

Ecstasy

by Oracle Hekataios
Ecstasy
Ecstasy

I have been asked “What path do you follow?” I answered “Love.” I have been asked “What rituals do you do?” I answered “The ritual of ecstasy and Oneness.” In my life of following rigid teachings and the proper way to conduct rituals, I have come to encounter that all of these forms are devoid of soul. They cannot replace the Love that exists in my heart for the Goddess. To expect an empty ritual or a certain teaching to bring you Gnosis is like expecting an empty plate to fill itself with the food of your desire and satiate you. Put aside the trappings, and fall in love with the Divine. Only then can your heart be filled with forgiveness, healing, and compassion.

Maintaining Memory

by Oracle Hekataios
Ancestral Altar
                               Ancestral Altar

If my family got together and spoke to me once a year and walked away thinking I’m all better for it, they better think again. How do your ancestors feel? Samhain/Shadowfest/Feast of the Dead shouldn’t be the only time we commune with our beloved Dead. They have a right to commune with you, to be fed and honored.
Honor your past so that your present has meaning and your future is blessed.

It’s That Time of Year
This time of year is interesting in the NeoPagan world, because many of the people and groups influenced by Traditional Craft and are DIY Wiccans honor their ancestors on Samhain. By the by, DIY Wiccans is now my term of preference rather than “eclectic Pagans” and “NeoWiccans.” Feel free to use it. Anyway, Samhain is an important part of the NeoPagan Wheel of the Year. If you pick up any 101 book, it’s a night of sorrow and joy to feast with the departed. Many will even state that it’s a wonderful night to divine, and mediumship is popular. Black robes, lit candles, and processional chants with shrines hallowed for passed loved ones (including animals) are the highlight of the festivities. Some folks incorporate what’s known as a “Dumb Supper,” a silent meal shared by the community in honor of the beloved dead.

My quote above is not to go against the Wheel of the Year and be disrespectful towards this sacred day or the people who celebrate it. It is special and very important because it connects the community with the realization of Memory. But if the dead are so powerful and existent, why not continue to celebrate them beyond Samhain/Shadowfest/Feast of the Dead? They subsist as you and I do, but in a different reality than what many of us are used to. In this blog I won’t go into hauntings and my personal take on them. I don’t want to lose the focus here, which is that many modern communities, for the most part, have severed themselves from the living well of Memory. To many the dead aren’t as interactive and alive, or if they are they are not fed to maintain their egregore with the family unit.

The Wellspring of Memory
An abundant stream of consciousness that finds its source in the Underworld cauldron of wells and trees, the Wellspring of Memory is the most powerful contact that a people have with their lineage. It is something within our very DNA that births and links generations upon generations with their past, so that they might carry on the continued work of their ancestors. We honor the past by being alive, by overcoming the odds and becoming more than what we are on a daily basis. Each time we grow into self actualization, we are culminating into the peak of what our ancestors have fought and conquered so much for. Memory is a living fabric connected to the strings of Ananke, of Fate: a golden thread which connects all people. But in a family unit, a specific clan within a tribe within a nation, the clan is banded together with their own stories and songs which may be similar or different than the tribe and nation they belong to. And these stories and songs of the ancestors were passed down to succeeding generations at one time. People were proud of their heritage, and some still are. My own family is just discovering our lineage through mementos and photographs. We are informing one another, thanks to my mom who set the whole thing up, about our family histories. Knowing these informs me of my own spiritual practices. Why? Because I believe that blood and bone never die.

The Body of Memory
The immense information held deep within the blood and bones of who we are, the Body of Memory is the vessel that is evidence of the past succeeding into the present. It is the caricature of triumph held within our very flesh. Like I said above, if my family all spoke with me once a year and thought that was okay, they better think again. Many of us hate to be disconnected and feel alone. Loneliness is the requiem of companionship, and humans are nothing if not social creatures. We evolved that way. It’s how we’ve been able to thrive for hundreds of millennia. It’s not enough to know you meet someone and you have similar tastes in music, art, films, drinks, food, etc. It’s not enough to simply have a family or even friends around us, because loneliness is a disassociation of the soul: the soul has forgotten why the connection to the living exists in the first place. It has forgotten the message of Memory, the stream of consciousness connected to Ananke that underlies all of us. There is no clan, no Mythos, no tribe, no rites of passage to pass on the past to the present and give us hope for the future. We have forgotten that our bodies are a living testimony.

The Shrine of Memory
As the living are lonely, so are the dead. They aren’t frightening, just sad. Many folks have a shelf or several in their homes that has photos of the their departed loved ones. They frequently look at them and smile, saying, “Happy birthday dad” or “I miss you brother.” Today lots of folks also have Facebook pages up to memorialize the deceased. This is commendable, because it demonstrates that within our very being we are desiring to acknowledge that our bodies are the central whirlpools of energy within the stream of Memory: in other words, we are desperate to remember and keep something alive within us. The only way to be truly alive is to maintain the shrine of Memory. A shrine is a shelf or flat surface that acts as a house. This “house” has photographs and mementos of the beloved dead. Candles may be lit and offering bowls may be present. This shrine is the external manifestation of the internal stream. This is the central point that our inner energies are connected to. The building and maintaining of a shrine to the dead is not only ancient, but it is where we actually weave the strings of Memory and Ananke to tie us always to the spirits. We establish the foundation for an egregore. After that, it is up to us to continue to remember the dead not just by being alive, but by helping them to not be lonely. We need to acknowledge them all of the time. We need to feed them, care for them, and speak with them. They are desperate to speak and help us. Many, myself included, are learning or have learned to ask them for assistance rather than a Deity because the ancestors are closer to us. In my temple, we honor the dead before we call on the Gods, because it was our ancestors who taught us the stories of the people. They revealed the spirits and Gods. They contacted the Old Ones and shared these so that we might be able to have an identity and be a part of something greater than ourselves: to bring honor to them. Honoring ourselves is honoring them.

Random Commentary on Karma

by Oracle Hekataios

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I wrote a little bit about karma here. I touched on it briefly while attempting to communicate what I believe, based on the given research I had studied and continue to study, about the 3fold law. I have not backtracked from my commentary on the 3fold law in any way. However, karma is a different thing altogether, and here you will read that I have had to amend some things.

Late last year I began to study karma as it pertained to various sects of Buddhism and Sanatana Dharma (what many Westerners erroneously refer to as Hinduism). The sources are located at the end of this article, but I started with “The Vedic Origins of Karma” by H. W. Tull. Afterwards anything on Vedic Hinduism and from thence Buddhism drew my attention. What I came to realize (and am continuing to do so) is that there is an attempt at taking a borrowed word from a different religious mindframe and plug it into the English vernacular so it can be a justified term to skeptics. “Oh but karma is scientific and real: it just means action.” I’m guilty of this mistake.

Karma is moral causation. The actions and intents of those activities are at a precise level of propriety that dictates not only do our deeds affect others (which I still cling to: see the link above for the part on the “ripple effect”), but suddenly there is a morality clause. If I go out of my way to give some money to a homeless man, then that principled behavior ricochets good unto me, either in this life or the one to come. It is not enough to be kind, but the kindness itself has divine currency stamped onto it to ensure my virtuous account has positive transactions. Looking back over my life and examining it more thoroughly, however, here is my current thesis:

It’s bullshit. 

I don’t believe in karmic cycles because, honestly, the philosophy (in whatever school of thought) deals with the consequences of one’s actions which are rooted in both intent and behavior. But is it that simple? Does good make good and bad make bad? What if a person who has good intentions sets out to do a good deed, but it’s met with disastrous results? Or a person who has bad intentions and sets out to commit a societal wrong yet due to variables becomes successful in their venture at the expense of another? In my opinion, the underlying variables which are responsible for defining just what karma does and how it works cause the entire notion to be moot.

I know many folks who have attempted to redefine the word “karma” and make it part of Newton’s Third Law which is always summed up simply as:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I have a brain injury but I’m ready to give myself another one when righteousness – not ethics – is trying to infiltrate science. That’s the same kind of nonsensical trappings which the Religious Right are attempting – and rather successfully in some parts of the States I might add – to subvert science curriculums by having intelligent design added. It’s rubbish.

Karma has little to do with questions of right and wrong and causality in the human experience, and it certainly has no equivalency to Newton’s Third Law. The mechanics of pushing a chair won’t determine you will become rewarded with winning the lottery. My coined phrase of “slingshot morality” is a form of narcissism in which our egocentrism demands to be given attention by the cosmos. In a universe where billions of planets and stars are being extinguished every hour (some perhaps with life on them) it makes no sense in the grand scheme of things. Barring factors which may influence our full capacity to execute behavior and personal ethical comprehension such as culture, mental illness, etc., the one fact remains that we are truly indeed responsible for ourselves. But we must keep in mind that bad things do happen to good people and vice versa.

The link above directs you to an article where I have used the imagery of a pond with ripples in an attempt to communicate the poetic essence of the number 3 in the 3fold law. If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to look back on that post first before continuing so you have a better grasp of where I am going.

Or just keep reading. That’s fine too.

The ripples magnify, but they also thin as they spread out further away from the source. So while my behaviors may have a more immediate impact on those close to me, it will begin having a negligible effect beyond my immediate circle. Which makes sense.

And then there are the unfortunate times when our personal choices are taken away from us: H.H. Holmes made decisions for dozens of women who wanted nothing better than to improve their lives. (Yes I am using serial killers and will be using third world countries as example:  let’s keep it real). Those women did not deserve their suffering. Neither did the victims of John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Hitler or Stalin. Rwandan women and children hacked alive have nothing to do with karma or the moral and ethical necessity of bringing their killers to justice. And no one deserves to lose their pensions or jobs because of corpotate greed at the top.

The natural world and karma are antithetical. It is not the karma of the deer to be kind to the wolf so that it can be spared. A wolf is a wolf and they make no apologies for their behavior. Our own actions are better predicated on the fact that we are evolved social primates with a larger stake within our smaller communities. It’s natural human behavior, and we should start calling it what it is, rather than falsely extrapolating a word to become a synonym in our vernacular and lose the attachments which originally and continue to define this word in a specific context for millions of people. This as opposed to some invisible thread that ties our decisions to have a cup of coffee on the morning after having a raunchy Dionysian orgy with a sex worker and worried that this will impact whether we get a Bentley or not. (And, for the record, that sounds like a good morning). Quantum interconnectedness is one thing (wyrd, ananke, etc), but moral absolutism in there is not gospel.

Supporters of karmic doctrine attempt to say that we have past lives that affect us, or that we all have lessons to learn. Really? Because I have enough problems in this life to concern myself about. The past is the past. It’s gone. Attempting to find the source for my love of chocolate from 5 lives ago as a Spanish monarch is ludicrous. Why can’t I just love chocolate? Why can’t I just have problems and learn to deal with them? That’s taking responsibility for my behavior through and through. For example, what lessons did Nepal and the people who live there need to learn? What past life sins did they commit? Has not that area and the people suffered enough under totalitarian regimes, poverty, famine, disease, war, and human trafficking.

I often wonder if karma – as defined by New Agers and other Westerners – is still a remnant of Christian ideology for a reward system based on behavior, like we desperately need for people to see us and pat our head to reassure us. Oy.

Eirene kai Hugieia!

(Peace and Health!)

~Oracle~

 

Sources:

Tull, H.W. (1989). The Vedic Origins of Karma: Cosmos as Man in Ancient Indian Myth and Ritual.

Egge, J. (2013). Religious Giving and the Invention of Karma in Theravada Buddhism. 

Richman, P.H. (2010). Karma and the Rise of Buddhism in the West. 

Doniger, W. (1980). Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions.