The Major Discordia

of

An Erisian Tarot

"Big weighties"

Here are the descriptions for the Major Discordia, the top 22 philosophical constructs that were too big, too weighty, or just the wrong shape, to fit into the regular, mundaner suits. Have at. ..If you look carefully, you will see a bald eagle eating a small politician.

The Sucker

@c 0 FOOL @section Fool: Legionnaire of Dynamic Discord / Little Deluded Dupe @c Two half-figures playingcard facecard-style @c joined, one with L of D D on the front of his shirt/uniform, and the @c other just now noticing L D D on the back of his, KICK ME -style.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Pogo, Walt Kelly

"The danger is obvious in that the hero generally makes an apparently quite trivial mistake and then must make extraordinary efforts to save himself from the effects of these few trivial errors. One more wrong step and all would have been lost."

Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts, Herbert Silberer

"'Fool' and 'folly' as used in this hexagram should be understood to mean the immaturity of youth and its consequent lack of wisdom, rather than mere stupidity. Parsifal is known as the 'pure fool'..."

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, commentary and translation by Richard Wilhelm (Chinese to German) and Cary Baynes (German to English)

"I never studied Law!"

Bugs Bunny, not following the law of gravity

Young farmhand called to service beats his plowshare into a sword (and, afterward, beats it back). Disorder erupts, and mountains are no longer mountains, never were. But first, at the very breaking of the dawn of the breaking: this. Who the adventure is about to happen to.

*Once we ditch the outdated orderly "Hero" paradigm, how should a tarot deck begin? The hero's-journey myth-structure (innocence, disruption, chute, physical challenge & physical triumph, ladder, trophy, celebration, resumption) developed in historical ages characterized by wars, war-heroes, and a norm of order, and is due for replacement. We should celebrate resolving chaos toward order? Well, hell, the traditional coming-of-age heroine myth puts her to sleep at menarche to be found & crowned by a prince once she's able to cope with kissing the frog. Sounds like a heroin myth.

Come spring, motivated zoners trickle out of the stonework, handing out religious tracts to streetcorner passersby. Another threshold, the first blaze after eclipse totality. Those ecstatics so affected may become the wards of the church or state...

But everybody's getting a little cabin feverish, restless, reckless. Time for spring tonics, spring cleaning, spring-in-one's-step. When the ice breaks: molasses blood thins and flows. Allow it a little longer to reach the brain.

The foolishness could be just a minor blind spot, the unexpected may be well nigh unexpectable.

No shame.

"1) Are ye a human being and not a cabbage or something?
The initiate answers Yes.
2) That's too bad.
3) Are ye willing to become philosophically illuminized?
The initiate answers Yes.
4) Very funny. Will ye dedicate yeself to the Holey Erisian Movement?
The initiate answers Probably.
. . .
Then I do here proclaim ye POEE Disciple (name), Legionnaire of the Legion of Dynamic Discord. Hail Eris! Hail Hail! Hail Yes!"

*Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.

DivMean: Regarding a material question, foolishness (no, really, run-of-the-mill foolishness). Regarding a spiritual question, aspiration. (Another reason not to waste the tarot's time.)

Revd: Delusions of grandeur, e.g. Fool as materia prima, yeahyeah, rahrahrah. You were thinking maybe undyed silk, uncarved block, fashionably rustic? Consider the elemental/excremental shit-and-piss chaos where worlds hatch and howl, terra foetida, rotting compost, an artist's pottagey oil paints, a contemplation so acute in its melancholy as to be redeemed in creation through sheer force of longing -- alchemical putrefactio, nasty enough that it's a bit of a curveball already that anything can be wrought therein?

Which reminds me, there's something to be said for reading the Tarot trumps as a countdown, 21 to 0, the Fool being where one finally loses some of that egregious garbage. "Take off, eh?"

The Goose in the Bottle

The goose breaking out of the bottle John-Dillinger-style with a spoon-carved shoe-polish-blackened soap-bar gun. 4-suits objects in front: soap, shoe, spoon, lid. Wow.

"...how to get George Dorn out of GEORGE DORN without breaking George Dorn."

(I!3)

"Because you can't get a body like this in a bottle -- unless you push real hard!"

Judy Tenuta, Diet Dr. Pepper commercial

"Here is my question. How is it that you can move the illusion of a limited sense of identity, expressed in this belief of a space-time continuum as your 'body,' through the illusion of material restriction that is called a 'wall'?"
"Well done!" he said. "When you ask the question properly it answers itself, doesn't it?"
"No, the question hasn't answered itself. How do you walk through walls?"

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach

"Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

Book of the Law, Aleister Crowley

"An it harm none, do as thou wilt."

the Wiccan rede

"Do as thou wilt shall be the half of the law."

De Materia Chaotica, Agatha "Auntie" Chryste, Chairperson of Pentacles, Di(o)scor(i)dian Illinimenti

"MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with the Will."

Magick in Theory and Practice, Aleister Crowley

"In fact, Chaos Magicians would argue that the universe is in such a state of flux and apparently random movement that only devious techniques such as those of Chaos Magick, which deliberately subvert the conscious, rational mind have any chance of creating change in conformity with the will of the magician."

"Chaos Magick: Magickal Terrorism" by Marik, ZCHRONICLES 1.1
ftp://members.aol.com/marik/ZKron1_2.txt

"On the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like counters before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills."

"I. The Magician," The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination, Arthur Edward Waite

"We've secretly replaced the fine quartz crystals in this medicine-pouch maker's bag with with Folger's Crystals. ...Let's see what happens!"

someone's .sig, I forget whose

What goose is at ease in his bottle? Dial 9 to get OUT.

The goose from the Zen story breaks out of the bottle, John Dillinger -style, with a shoe-polished spoon-carved balsa-wood gun - prisoners taken, no shots fired. In this phallic tradition, intentions are channeled through sticks. So be it (for the moment). Pool cues, laser-pointers, torches. Energy directed, worlds created by the Word of Let's Boogie, of You Go, Girl.. Everything else is supporting characters.

Good old Western (Renaissance) Magic is what you get when you take Mysticism and stir with Will + Imagination + Model + Vehicle, i.e. Lightning Rod + Drinking It In + Mundane Analog Mock-Up + Aether (or some such thing). Hmm, that works out to Sticks, Cups, something and something. Bits of String and Not of This Earth, I s'pose. So: fire (fervor), water (mirroring, receptivity), air (expansion, identification), earth (physical model, material result). Add "You go!" (Law of Fives). To do it right, you need magic wands in all shapes and sizes.

The Mystic experience is passive: pious meditation, at best a trip ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), a yin gnosis; Magical knowledge is carnal, power active and directed on this earth. Magic is accomplishment-oriented, while Mystical knowledge is achieving a kinder, gentler, vanilla oneness: a dubious dualist separation from the physical. The closest compromise may be a desperate giddy invocation of a goddy image into oneself, by which identification one is exalted as much as annihilated.

On the one hand, the goose hatches itself from its bottle when it grows up some is how you get the goose out without breaking the bottle. "Just one psychiatrist, but the light bulb has to want to change!" A few omelet eggs broken, but an airtight alibi for you - no points on your poetic license. For the Discordian, on another hand, another path is open: freak out the goose, weird it out. For a Discordian, that's a perfectly valid component of True Will.* "The Magician is realized in the World as is the Will in SpaceTime" -- and this goose in, um, an ibis (as above, see below).

*"An it feel good, do it!"?

What was it you've been putting off doing? Get it over with: it's draining. Smash a limit, with ceremony or not, as you like. Suddenly one of the walls of the house is missing. What a rush-- not only is the task accomplished but also, order now and get all that byproduct energy as a bonus bamboo steamer.

DivMean: Skills and achievement of this sort. Art and Craft. Powerful, subtle. Except for spelling "magic" wrong and dressing funny. "Quick to anger"?

Revd: the Yin story to Will's Yang: flowing like water instead of channeling and damming (damning) it -- and accomplishing all. Don't forget, what goes around comes around (threefold, by some accounts). "Garbage in, garbage out"? (Do as thou wilt shall be the death of the houseplant). The Sage leads by occupying the deep places others will naturally flow down to (becoming soggy but not hard to light), not sending anything around. Feed that goose (whatever that means).

The Sacred Chao

"Mu."

Joshu's answer to a monk's question, "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?", a pun between the Straight Answer, "Nah!", and the Answerless Answer, "Whatever". The students want to know the nature of the Buddha-nature; "Mu" is a little piece of that heaven, the pure "Regarding that question (well, the one you meant to ask), here's what comes to mind" response of a master in satori as we speak.

"To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder."

"The Curse of Grayface and the Introduction of Negativism," Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.

"Create, destroy, enjoy, IO CHAOS!"

Liber Kaos, Peter J. Carroll (Frater Stokastikos 127, 0 degree Supreme Magus IOT Pact, Our Pestilence Pope Pete I of Chaos)

"Pure, exalted and gracious influence enters the matter. Hence, change, alternation, increase and decrease, fluctuation."

"General Characters of the Trumps as They Appear in Use," II, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

"Well, why not? I thought. The shooting provided a rhythm -- sort of a steady bass-line -- to the high-pitched chaos of the bike scene."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson

Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. An exoteric reading of this symbol reveals the balance and opposition of two distressingly-compound archetypes.* The Sacred Chao unites the following, convolves them, or at least invites them both to tea today because she thinks they'd get along famously:

*In its duality and its layers (jamais deux sans trois, exoteric's schoolyard rival turned creamy center), it is reminiscent of the High Priestess card of a stodgier deck.

1. On the one hand, the rational, architectural, structural, rigid, yang, mountain, light, anal-retentive, authoritarian, church & state, lawnorder, military-industrial, and over-all aneristic is symbolized by the pentagon, the numbly-connected five points that beneath another pen might have produced a star. Here we file (in a brief step out of character) the category of categorization, of folks who would have labelled the six and nine fish male and female, too. The kind of people who divide the world into two kinds of people.

A. The irrational, organic, yin, valley cave, dark, intuitive, anarchic, chaotic, erotic, erratic, and all-around eristic is, on the other paisle, symbolized by the other apple-half, seeds now dots-connected into a star. In a standard rendering (ERIS forbid it should come to that), here would appear the whole golden apple, gods-agitating, addressed "K" or "KALLISTI", to the fairest one, delivered to that Olympian togoid party. It also refers to all other literary fruits and vegetables of appropriate note.*

*E.g. the Eve Mortality-but-Conception Apple, the twelve Hesperides Gardens' Hydra-Guarded Triple-Goddess-Given Nth-Labor-of-Hercules Golden Apples, Idun's Loki-lost and Loki-found Golden Apples of Immortality, the three Hippomenes-thrown Apples of the Marry-Atalanta Race. Ah, and Snow White's Witch-Given Poison Apple. And Apple Island, Arthur's Avalon. And Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Delights" Strawberries. And the Pomegranate Persephone Shouldn't Have Nibbled in Hades (that led to her Grain-Goddess Mama's seasonal strike), and the Hodge'n'Podge-Pillars-Topping Pomegranates installed at Solomon's Temple to placate the fertility-riters. Speaking of whom, the assorted Carmen-Miranda-topping fruits. And then, the I Can't Hear You I've Got a Banana in My Ear! Banana, and even or possibly especially the Is That a Banana in Your Pants or Are You Just Glad to See Me? Banana.

DivMean: Creative or concordant conflict, natural flowing dynamic balance, natura wu-wei-wise naturans, hodge and podge in shifting synthesis, contentious coexistence. Moderation in moderation, with a podge spot subversively on the hodge side and a hodge spot merrily lodged amongst the podge.

Revd: destructive, discordant conflict, attempt on one or both sides to alter the balance. The camel wreaks some havoc following his nose into the yurt. (Trust in ERIS!) Launcheth the Tricycle/Bicycle sequence (guidance is internal): THESIS -> ANTITHESIS -> PARENTHESIS followed by -> CONSTERNATION -> MORAL WARPTITUDE.*

*DOGMA III - HISTORY #6, Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.

Garden

@c 3 EMPRESS

"Mom, I find it hard to function as a primarily magical being when you remind me to brush my teeth."

Revd. M. C. 900 ft. Escher, Chao Tipper

Here's Snow White moved on from Maiden to Mother; a Goddess of Death, Hunt, War, or Inspiration kicked upstairs when the boy-Gods took over (i.e. got rewritten), in a dubious promotion (read hamstringing) to home&hearth virgin-goddess, daddy's-girl-goddess, no-arms codependency-goddess.* Pink fairy-tale furry-tail Good-Witch-Glinda arts-'n'-crafts Mommy Nature: Eden without a Knowledge tree.

*The previous (and neo-previous) division of labor is woven of the same stuff, but with more of the principals self-esteemy. The Sacred Chao fish are (on occasion!) an acceptably useful division because not only are they acknowledged to mutate at will and at random, but also: Discordians only take them seriously once in a while.

Living-room living, where nothing's at stake and the contrived choices have no consequence. Alternatives, those distant places and potential personalities, just ... dissipate. They become hard to even consider, much less consider fondly, like a fourth spatial dimension. You can't get there -- anywhere -- from here. Magic is the intentional acts, levelling a powerful Yes or (equally-powerful) No; squelching the impulse sucks magic away. No Tyger burns bright behind Door Number Three, and the Lady is June Cleaver.

This card is so sappy because it's all birth and no death (one-eyed Jack's a dull card). The Garden brings fainter inspiration at lesser price than, say, Wilderness.* What worthy muse or magical path doesn't ask for the whole hedgehog? Tithe a tenth of your mind every week! (For thou shalt find it after many days -- returned sevenfold?)

*Meaning maybe you bought cheese food but it was on sale? Well, there's that. But when the serpent on the Tree offers you the organic co-op brown rice of Knowledge, keep in mind that's only the first step. Eat it to remember. Then? Wash your bowl.

Garden-living is the milk-toast of magic, the recuperating food a strung-out Chaos Mage might turn to, a bit queasy from the harder stuff. Once your stomach settles, get back on the horse -- before your brain settles and you end up a blissninny neopagan camping out with insufficient equipment. "If Mama's feeling whimsical, ain't nobody happy."

DivMean: Again, there's lovely things about this card, but nothing that rates mystery rites. No veilage, no price on your head. Beauty, fecundity -- even one step metaphorically, e.g. intellectual fertility. Certain unsubtle doorways: birth onto Earth, but not off it. Empress if you must, not the Queen of Heaven.

Revd: Divan bonbons? Shopping Mall or Shopping Channel. Queen of Daytime TV.

The Bureaucrat/Authority

"Truly, 'It is by not believing people that you turn them into liars.'"

Tao Tê Ching, Chapter XVII and XXIII, on government

"Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on."

The Books of Bokonon

"THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A GENUINE AND AUTHORIZED =P O P E= (=M O M E=) So Please Treat Him (Her) Right ...Every man, woman and child on Earth is a genuine and authorized Pope"

distributed by the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric

"Ontological Anarchism tends to disagree only with the Taoists' total quietism. In our world Chaos has been overthrown by younger gods, moralists, phallocrats, banker-priests, fit lords for serfs. If rebellion proves impossible then at least a kind of clandestine spritual jihad might be launched. Let it follow the war-banners of the anarchist black dragon, Tiamat, Hun Tun. Chaos never died."

"Sorcery breaks no law of nature because there is no Natural Law, only the spontaneity of natura naturans, the tao. Sorcery violates laws which seek to chain this flow -- priests, kings, hierophants, mystics, scientists & shopkeepers all brand the sorceror *enemy* for threatening the power of their charade, the tensile strength of their illusory web."

Chaos: Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, Hakim Bey

"ChaoTao to Authority!"

Mummu Platter, Revd. M. C. 900 ft. Escher, Chao Tipper

To some a nightmare in human form*, to others an agent of order. Yes. The illustration is substantially derived from three Rider-Waite Tarot Deck major arcana cards: The Hierophant, The Emperor, and The Devil.

*or corporate form -- if not embodying deadening control, then encorpsing it

This one is the master in the physical plane and the intellectual realm, and has attained a certain small amount of spiritual influence, possibly through bribery. He knows the power words ("two sharpened number two pencils," "form an orderly line," "single file," "remain calm," etc.), owns some of the power materials (lawyers, guns and $$, even land), and controls most of the power habits (THOU SHALT be tidy, remain sheepies, stay out of outlaw territory e.g. jail). He is master of all he surveys (corner office, stunning view). Folks are frighteningly willing to maintain their own scripts (cop-in-yer-head kind of thing), but this evil twin is there to take up any slack.

Describe a polygon on the ground with POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape to keep e.g. the police out. (Or a sign, "No trespassing -- Police take notice!")

Stand facing East; draw a pentagram with your ???; flail purposefully and announce:

Shoo fly; don't bother me.

Walk to the South; draw a telegram with your ???; wrinkle your nose devastatingly and grate:

Piss off, peasant!

Proceed to the West; draw an anagram with your ???; swat vaguely and intone:

That, I say, that was a joke, son. Run along now, son, yer botherin' me.

Continue even unto the North; draw a kilogram with your ???; make the sign of the ??? and chant:

Skiddoo! Skedaddle! Hossenwell, Incorporated!

Return to the East.

Substitutions: "May God Bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us", "I vant to be alone"; at each direction, draw breath, draw blood, draw water, draw a cart, a curtain, conclusions.

DivMean: Conqueror, ruler. Automatically, the attempt to impose order leaves a wake of discord and discontent. There is no way, from the bureaucrat's vantage point, to discover the artificiality engendered by his involvement. It were ever thus. Conquered, ruled. The hierarchy above controls him in the canonical way, and the loerarchy below (nature of the beast) passes inaccurate information back up the line. Big fisherman hooks medium fisherman hooks little fisherman. And, meanwhile, vice versa. Schizophrenia brewing.

Revd: Anarchists work within the system, same as rogue meter-feeders. Anarchism is a political solution, therefore not a solution, insofar as 1. it is not a dissolution and 2. it's so grey, dry, unfestive, the opposite of our utopia, a new regime to enforce, insufficiently different from the enemy bureaucracy. Some people vote to change things; the system is equipped to endure elections its essence unaltered. Some folks protest or bomb; the system is equipped to survive that, too. Nothing is outside the system but that which it doesn't understand (e.g. an intentional overload of what it thinks it wants, innocent whistle...). City Hall understands being voted-out or sat-in, petitioned or burned-down. You could fight City Hall, and that's fine with City Hall: City Hall owns "fight."

Quit quitting! Subvert subversion! Be an anarch, an autarch, not an anythingist. Zenarchy, then: preeminence of the evocative surreal.

Secret Order of the S.:O.:

Woodcut -- cramming for the initiation, something like Take-out of Styro-coffee? Magic square on the wall, filled in: "SATOF AREPN TENEO OPERR."

??

Catch-23, Major Arcana DeCoverly and Ex-AIFC Wintermute

"Synchronicity, Inc. -- 'Your Coincidence is our Conspiracy'"

from .sig of acbul1@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au, Reverend Brother Pope Lee Harvey Oswald Smith, KSC WMD SPAM; Episkopos, John Friedrich Cabal; High Epopt of the Secret and Terrible Rite; Chairperson dei gratia, Flat Earth Society --"In your heart, you know it's flat"

"Have you written a fnord . . . lately?"

"Pining for the Fnords," In Loco Parenthesis

"Nevertheless, as a sort of Masonic sign to initiate readers that the author himself is an initiate, a certain number of passages do allude in a veiled way to the physical technique.... But the esoteric meaning is not intended to convey information. It is merely as it were a greeting to fellow Taoists into whose hands the book might chance to fall."

The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Tê Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought, Arthur Waley

Nailing complaints to the church door (and then being put under surveillance by the secret church police) as opposed to having it out with your god yourself over a few cold ones. Messing around with spiritual matters is weird enough -- when other people get involved, the ground is fertile for all kinds of greening confusion, tender young alliances, and jockeying for position. Moral middle-managers captain the unkindest cut: interposing themselves between you and the most exalted depths of your mind. That's, say the Sufis, like "sending a kiss by messenger." Controlling that, what other infiltration would be beneath or beyond them? What cookie jar contents are safe?

Of course it's rumored that some such covert clusterings actually help select aspirants bridge the gap between the different bits of brain. But what does the great pool of little fish, of supplicants/applicants, of hopeful initiates in search of this connection ever gain except a seductive sense of anticipation and a vague, contented feeling of holy achievement? Only a few odd ducks, you know, are ever siphoned off with whispers and gestures to certain unknown convenings that aren't on the price fixe menu. That quiet one, and the one who gently laughed at almost everything -- and the other one who was laughing, but in a different way. You can smell those stranger incenses seeping subtly into yours, down the hallway or from an earlier meeting not listed in the schedule.

Terrified? Seeing enemies everywhere? Fear not, for by their number shall ye know them. Any plot orchestrated by the true Illuminati will be identified by the otherwise-unaccountable presence of the rare and significant 23, the number of that beast.* Look for it carefully, and suspect also the

*Some folks may be disappointed (or more likely relieved) to find that, in efforts to assemble a traditional Tarot here (or a usably reasonable facsimile thereof), there are only the requisite 22 Major Discordia cards instead of (as, perhaps, part of some adolescent joke) 23. No, any such urge was successfully suppressed -- but lo! In fact, here before us is the "23rd" Key: it is card 5, and 2+3=5. Although in addition (a lie!) 2x3=6 (and 5=6: the Middle Corner of the five-sided Flat Earth, the Lap of the Ankh, where head meets halo), there is no need whatsoever for the querent to look askance at the next card, or indeed at all at that fellow behind the curtain. Or do you know the secret milkshake?

DivMean: Sunday school teacher, Outer Orders. Supernal wisdom, obtained (filtered? purchased?) through an external intermediary (as opposed to, e.g., your own personal pineal gland).

Hey: "Outer Orders" as opposed to what? There is no reason to be concerned. Remain seated. The Illuminati do not exist. They exist, but they hardly have a foothold. Stay in your cars. They control the government, but we already knew we didn't. Disturbing the peace. They control everything, but the Discordians are resisting successfully. For your safety, this transaction is being filmed. They control the Discordians, but they actually are the Discordians. Riot control in the public interest. They are the Discordians, and they don't in the least control the Discordians.

Increasingly triskaicosaphobic, you may see a chain of command/information -- a Greyfacial conspiracy Discordian in both its complexity and its opponents -- but it could easily be a tangled yarn ball of pointless pomp, created in a Greyfarcical effort to shroud the real reason an organization exists: Someone to have coffee with on Friday nights. Then again, it may be forces beyond your ken controlling your every action.

Revd: Forces Beyond Your Ken Controlling Your Every Action!!! Then again, it may be a tangled yarn ball of pointless pomp, created in an effort to shroud to real reason the organization exists: Someone to have coffee with on Saturday nights.

Love

"Who knows how to make love stay?
...3. Wake love up in the middle of the night and tell it that the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Love will be there in the morning."

Still Life with Woodpecker: A Sort of a Love Story, Tom Robbins

"An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life -- may be the ultimate PT [poetic terrorism]."
"Unbridled PLAY: at one & the same time the source of our Art & of all the race's rarest eros."

"CHAOS: THE BROADSHEETS OF ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHISM," The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, Hakim Bey

"Eris, Eros spelled sideways."

I!3

"The White Goddess is anti-domestic; she is the perpetual 'other woman', and her part is difficult for a woman of sensibility to play for more than a few years, because the temptation to commit suicide in simple domesticity lurks in every maenad's and muse's heart."

The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves

...But the desire of one to another is all of sorrow; its birth is hunger, and its death satiety.
The desire of the moth for the star at least saves him satiety.

"Buttons and Rosettes," The Book of Lies, Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley)

"Yes: if what Cloud said were true, then she had taken Smoky in trade -- and what she had traded for him was the living sense that it was they, they themselves, who had led her to him, they who had chosen him for her, they who had plotted the quick glances that had made him hers, the long engagement, the fruitful and snug marriage. So that though she possessed what she had been promised, she had lost in return the sense that it had been promised."

Little, Big, John Crowley

But you run back and forth listening for unusual events,
peering into the faces of travelers.
"Why are you looking at me like a madman?"
I have lost a friend. Please forgive me.

Searching like that does not fail.
There will come a rider who holds you close.
You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say, "He's faking."
How could they know?

"Acts of Helplessness", Rumi (Jelaluddin Balkhi), in The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson, transl.

The subject of this card is Analysis, followed by Synthesis. The first question asked by science is: "Of what are things composed?" This having been answered, the next question is: "How shall we recombine them to our greater advantage?"

VI. THE LOVERS [OR: THE BROTHERS], The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

A hole is when you step in it you go down.

A Hole Is to Dig, by Ruth Krauss

If it's the exploration aspect that makes new love so exciting, what happens when you run out of unmapped territory?

What? Why run out? Who wanted that? Why meditate to achieve peace rather than ecstasy, to be less than the sum of your parts? Why seek the comfortable, the mundane?

Well, holes are for digging. That quest, the journey, is the be-all if not the end-all, the alpha if not the omega: getting there is all the fun. You don't ferret around hoping to finish it off, dreaming of completing a map; you just want to ferret forever.

And yet the well runs dry? Well, you're face to face with inexhaustible intricacy, awe-inspiring. Drought is inconceivable with such a profound fountain around. It's easy to slack-off producing the sparkly stuff yourself. At the same time, the thing is terrifying, incomprehensible; you can't wrap your head all the way around it. Shaken, you get a taste for more and more of that creeping comfort level. Having finally found some purchase, you cling to catch breath, unknot some muscles, pause the seduction. Thirsty, one may well drink. This far into this hell-of-a-ride, it'd be such a comforting change of pace to ottoman a moment your bunny-slippered feet, ease the ache. And it seems to be what is demanded of you -- as your love tries to grasp you -- to relax too... Reveal, jettison, devolve; returns diminish.

Everybody is getting comfortable and turning to mush and strained carrots.* When the universe is undemanding of you, the autopilot kicks on. Eat, sleep. When there is no stone left unseduced, you've spent the first rocketstage -- only the first -- that fueled flirting and poetry, that fired the pheromone-soaked cloak of desire and desirability. Cultivate an aesthetic of discomfort, the troubador trauma of deprivation: acquire a taste for hunger.

* When the previously-mobile sea-squirt [class Ascidiacea] reaches the barnacle-clinging phase of its life-cycle and sticks to some suitable surface, it eats its brain.

Because falling in love just requires bandages (endorphins smooth out the rough bits), but landing wants bed rest and clear broths. Endeavor to fall from such a great height that the bottom isn't an issue, and keep banging off the vertical terrain and snagging on cliff-wall brush all the way.* (Plumb the depths, don't prune them -- not that kind of slash and burn! Aim for a picket fence and privet hedge if you must, but never get there.) "Whichever way one travels, the journey will be pleasant ABSOLUTELY INSANE!"

* Stages: "Lord, use me." "Use me but don't break me." "I don't care if you break me."

On another hand: flow like water, but carve your love a good canyon. New-Years-Resolve to be fantastic, infinite. Tear the last page out of your mystery religion. You can't invoke a Muse who does your laundry -- without balancing your brighter whites with darker rites: less mundane, sunny, tidy. Cross your heart with silver and hope to die before you get old.*

* "And hope to kiss a pig", we used to say, which amounts to the same thing, if you mean Cerridwen, White Sow Goddess of death and mother of Muses.

Sooo... Invoke early, invoke often. Impale yourself on the Beloved; wake before dawn to find a stealthily-delivered flame dagger on the next pillow that could have just as easily... Surround yourself with a seedy coffeehouse of intoxicated gods and their infidel poet-priests, develop a Working relationship with that stunning, bewildering, driving thing of infinite depth, infinite source of mad desire; the world itself whispering you lovely nothings constantly. "Om"? I see. Well, "Thank you for playing; please try again."

How to interact with the Fairest. A Sufi story: Knock knock. Who's there? Me. There isn't room for two in here. Knock knock. Who's there? You. Come in.

But take this as a lesson first in the spiritual realm*, and then use as you will what can be applied with a mundaner lover. ...Why didn't you take a swing at me for saying that?! Aargh. "Sorry, try again."

* What an onion. You wrest and wring the sexual symbolism out of Western occultism, and follow it to its Sufi roots only to find aching love and drunkenness symbolic of total-immersion mysticism... These damned lasts keep becoming firsts.

Become one. Go ahead. Become one fantastic tricky complex evolving thing that you keep feeding together. Don't become one potato.* Moth the flame, then never stop burning. Autoclave away stodginesses and clingings, things that impair and lessen; use them as fuel for the creative fire. Merge all you want: we'll make more. This union is the crashing and the burning, not the splat and ashes. The current of life, not the goal: the goal of love and of life is death (eventually everything winds up here, silting the delta).

* Don't rely on love for all your inspiration. Channel the stuff in both directions: feed this fever, don't starve it cold. Marry yourself to your work (Work), and have a blazing affair with your sweetie on the side.

DivMean: Moving inspiration (passive/mystical), motive force.

Revd: Codependency, domesticity, uncomplicatedly-ever-after. Loving another (badly) in an attempt to divorce the self. Undiscordian love: going steady. Breakfast through newspapers, minding strained p's and q's.

RoadTrip (Map and the Territory)

"The Way that can be followed is not the true Way"
("If you meet the Buddha on The Way, he's in the wrong book.")
("If you meet Bob on the road, Kill Me!")

Tao Tê Ching, Lao Tse

"Once the traveler attains the fortunate 'state', whether by intention or attention or sheer chance, one adventure begins to lead to another -- and each peak experience 'feeds' us with the energy to remain open and attentive -- so that a positive feedback loop is established -- an effortless flow is set in motion -- and we succeed in holding on to the cognitive state of the 'lucky' traveler for longer and longer periods -- till finally an art is born."
"...eventually one can learn to go on for weeks and even months at a time giving attention freely and spontaneously -- never 'coming down'..."

http://www.nirvanet.fr/zenplanet/text-en/lilim/beyfrench33-en.html
"Overcoming Tourism," Hakim Bey

"Unlike the Waite deck, where the chariot is grounded (note the seated sphinxes), the Golden Dawn chariot soars through space."

An Introduction to the Golden Dawn Tarot, Robert Wang

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas."
"No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson

> "How can gnosis most quickly be attained? By surfing in moonlight"
"By surfing *on* moonlight."

?, but reply from "Dave Fischer -<=>- Help Fight Ambient Light! -<=>- dave@cca.org," was dave@gilly.UUCP

"Map is not Territory."

Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics Seminar, 1937, Olivet College

"The map may be studied by lamplight at the fireside, the Path is trodden out in the wind and darkness of the barren places of the soul..."

Esoteric Orders and Their Work, Dion Fortune

"The 'map' is a political abstract grid, a gigantic *con* enforced by the carrot/stick conditioning of the 'Expert' State, until for most of us the map *becomes* the territory -- no longer 'Turtle Island,' but 'the USA.' And yet because the map is an abstraction it cannot cover Earth with 1:1 accuracy. Within the fractal complexities of actual geography the map can see only dimensional grids. Hidden enfolded immensities escape the measuring rod. The map is not accurate; the map *cannot* be accurate.
"So -- Revolution is closed, but insurgency is open...."
"And -- the map is closed [every part claimed by nation-states], but the autonomous zone is open. Metaphorically it unfolds within the fractal dimensions invisible to the cartography of Control...."

"The Psychotopology of Everyday Life," A.O.A.

"England -- I don't believe it!"
"What, just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?"

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

"All that it takes is to stop sucking the finger and go where it POINTS!"

The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, The SubGenius Foundation

(Man has the right to this and that where he will, etc. AC)

A triumph of mind/science/progress rather than of spirit, mostly. Better living through chemistry: internal combustion, long strange sally... Trippy illumination, not a high level of initiation. Banging away, perhaps on the wrong level of reality, at bits of frontier. Partway between Tourist and Pilgrim.

The vehicle-time between Samothrace and Samarkand (if you can't beat the blue highway samsara, join it) can inform an intentional act, used as magical prep-time to separate the two experiences, to fence off the sacred from the secular. Travelling, enter a space where certain everyday expectations no longer hold and there is freedom to more truly exist, to authentically and consciously react to stimuli without some automatic habit or filter interceding, which is to say: to shed a part of the self.*

* Carrying a camera can be a substitute expectation, a shield, a mediator; it makes the tourist "unimmersible", in the same cold way that a car frames the view with the TV-screens of its windows and a motorcycle doesn't. A life-jacket, a press-pass. This can be irrelevant to the real work going on inside the head, but the parasitical aspect of tourism remains to be restrained: the cultural transaction is rarely reciprocal. The vampire is the one wearing sunglasses.

On a certain sort of Road Trip, there is no distant destination. The two are the same, geographically and/or cartographically, and the attempt is to come home, still in the magical mind, back to the same location but a different place. An alternative view takes the trip as end rather than means: the destination is the journey itself, the grail the grail quest itself, rightnow and always: "Be here there now!"

Trance out in, but neither head for a hole in the ground to the Lower World to meet with ally animals nor take a tree into the sky to ask questions of wise ones there. Chanting, rattling, or drumming, enter the spirit-aspect of this world, the one with these buildings and roads and the backyard you grew up in, but acting in the unmundane mind. Road Trip.

(Something about tribal hospitality traditions/transactions -- Bedouin breakfast -- HB: The guest taking shelter with the host is entering a paradigm in a certain well-defined role, and an ad-hoc but lasting family (a relationship of responsibility but also warmth) is created. Your end of the bargain: being gracious and entertaining, allowing them the opportunity to do this fine and generous thing. Their end: doing said fine and generous thing.)

Turning map into territory and back, by incomplete measurement (the only kind). Slowly, by the alchemy of observation, transmuting those circles and stripes into communities (or at least into stick figures and little boxes) and the big white empty patches into big green full patches. Uh, then sorting them, labeling them, and packing them away -- not as an intentional indictment, just to fit them in your human head.

DivMean: Flow like water, drive like rain! Ride 'em, Taoboy! A secular animist finds it a different distance as the crow flies. "Whatever way one goes, the journey will be pleasant." Whatever floats yer boat. Turn your headlights on at the speed of light. Burn incense off the car lighter. "You go!"

Revd: But sometimes you can't get there without sky-hooks, can't find your niche or toehold in the Uncarved Block. Don't, just don't, play the trance-drumming tutorial tape while driving. Success in the battle, no word on the war. Ripping apart society -- e.g. the media -- in ways either meta or metal is important, but it's living on the map. "Society" is at least one level of description up from anywhere the action is. Sometime when you've got mettle fatigue, try to see the Big Picture: the Really Big Picture, i.e. the one that isn't a Picture.

(Baraka? Fortitude? Slack?)

"On the other hand, to tell a lie is impossible because every statement has a reason. That reason is the truth of the statement.... Because [the Sage] knows that everyone is telling him the truth -- if he can only understand it -- he never becomes angry at their lies...."

Taoism: The Parting of the Way, Holmes Welch

"The doctrine here set forth is identical with that of the whole Mystery of Perfection understanding itself through experience of all possible Imperfection"

"LUST: Babalon" (Atu VIII), Appendix, Part II , The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

"President DeGaulle of France, in saying, 'I have baraka,' used it in the sense of personal invulnerability made necessary because of a sense of the need to complete a mission or function."

The Sufis, Idries Shah

"They can't stop us: we're on a mission from God!"

"The Blues Brothers"

"The Neither-Neither principle asserts that there is no truth anywhere that is not balanced by an equally true opposite somewhere, and there is only perspective and circumstance to determine which seems more true at any given time. To apply this principle to conjuring, wait until you are absolutely positive something is true, then search for its opposite. When you find it, oppose it to your 'truth' and let them annihilate one another as well as they may. Any residue should oppose to its opposite, and so on until your truth has been dismembered and the passion converted into undirected energy - free belief. By applying the Neither-Neither we can gut the meaningless convictions that obsess us every day and use the power released to cause the changes we desire."

Stealing the Fire from Heaven, Stephen Mace

("I will prove this through sheer force of charisma!" -Prof. S. Coleman)

(The believer and the prover -- from Prometheus Rising?)

The Habits subdued!

Reflexes and scripts can be efficient, but can only approach being reliable. Wanting to know what's really going on is a defining Discordian desire, and through testing Universal Truths and "known" cause/effect relationships (occasionally finding them wanting), at once one's life becomes increasingly charmed and one's decisions charmingly incomprehensible.

Make a model but don't be seduced by it, comfortable with it; don't grieve at its passing. Take data, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, draw conclusions -- but draw them in pencil. When you use a pattern, it uses you (solidifies, draws strength from belief). If a situation is important or confusing, reassess the trusted assumptions from scratch (or not). Many causes, some obscure, apparently irrelevant, lead to any given event, and each event participates in precipitating many more. There may be repeated feedback between two streams (what do you get if you cross... the same river twice?); reality may appear to eat its own tail; events may not be discrete, sequential, enumerable, alphabetizable.

Recapitulating cerebral phylogeny, why react from the reptile brain - why even stop at homo sapiens? Set aside the fight-or-flight stomachaches, pack-hierarchy neckaches, restricted-vocabulary throat-aches, guilt-trip headaches -- the physical symptoms and the emotions themselves. Suddenly the entire world loves you. To be unmasked, the fnords have no choice -- just a device to note and regret, not something that bites you. They clue you in that The Man meant you to fret about such and such because e.g. they're defending their territory, poor monkey-brain bastards.

There are loads of channels to suck bits off: communication takes place constantly, and fnordish signals turn up outside the print media. People send out all sorts of signals - a potentially agitating or informative subtext more straightforward and sincere than any verbal statements (e.g. where they're coming from re paradigm/hang-ups). This power contains the seeds of its own incorruptibility. Humans love dogs because they don't know their tails wag.

Annihilate opposite ideas against each other. Find the incompatible antithesis for every lazy (habitual) belief and test (destroy) the pair against each other. Father of these brides, now officiate at their shotgun marriage. The solution produced by dissolving the one in the other. 1+1 = 0 or 2, as it will. "Not preferring any one thing over any other thing." Multilevel meanings in Sufi stories, irreconcilable yet true interpretations of Tarot cards.

Rolf your brain! Reverse the brainwashing by testing the waters of every opposite shore: for automatic tendencies you see in yourself (beliefs, behaviors, etc. -- even those of which you've grown fond), intentionally cultivate its antithesis in your thought, speech, actions. What could be more terrifying? "Let no brick remain but exploded against its antibrick." When one alternative has become about as comfortable as the other, ever afterward may you choose between them consciously, at will, rather than stagnating while the robot responds on its own the same way over and over again. Stop that world and get off.

DivMean: Apply comprehension of this interdependence of things. Use and enjoy, don't just trip on it! Don't be of the world, no, but do be in it. The thing this strength allows is connecting more deeply.

Revd: On the other hand, kennings and such are what allow the body to carry on freeing the mind to work on other things -- not deriving the universe from its grain of sand fresh every time, the storyteller on autopilot can spout on about winedark wine and fishcold fish while gauging the audience and working out what tack to take from there. Efficient, in a certain way. Neither can an average audience absorb and assimilate at talking-speed a string of completely unfamiliar concepts, not using 10% of a brain, anyway. And at the same time, that mythy medium enhances the mythy message.

Kooks and Weirdness

Trickster/Tractster

Chinese calligraphic style (bamboo brush ), possibly with an XOXey appropriation-art component. Border of membership cards: pope card, SubGenius card, John Dillinger Died For You Society card, etc cards, Exposed camera film roll of UFO pictures... Weird Religions folx handing out their TRACTS?

"The little gone, the great come."

I Ching Hexagram 11 (T'ai (:::|||)) text

"This Hexagram [T'ai] suggests that "Heaven" is submissive while "Earth" is allowed dominant force and energy -- free play."

The Incredible _I Ching_, Louis T. Culling

"The Free Religions [including the Psychedelic & Discordian currents, non-hierarchical neo-paganism, antinomian heresies, chaos & Kaos Magik, revolutionary HooDoo, "unchurched" & anarchist Christians, Magical Judaism, the Moorish Orthodox Church, Church of the SubGenius, the Faeries, radical Taoists, beer mystics, people of the Herb, etc., etc.] may offer some of the only possible spiritual alternatives to televangelist stormtroopers & pinhead crystal-channelers (not to mention the established religions), & will thus become more & more important, more & more vital in a future where the demand for the eruption of the marvelous into the ordinary will become the most ringing, poignant & tumultuous of all political demands -- a future which will begin (wait a minute, lemme check my clock)...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...NOW."

"FOR A CONGRESS OF WEIRD RELIGIONS," A.O.A., recommending a Free Churches version of the World Council of Churches, "convivial enough to disagree with each other & yet still give great parties -- or conclaves, or ecumenical councils..."

"The Church of the SubGenius, by the way, is the ONLY religion that is NOT tax exempt. Our prophets want profits, and we don't expect heathen unbelievers to subsidize us. Besides, we couldn't get nonprofit status anyway. The IRS thought it was too funny to be of actual HELP to humanity. Odd how their criteria work."

High Weirdness By Mail--A Directory of the Fringe: Mad Prophets, Crackpots, Kooks, and True Visionaries, Rev. Ivan Stang

"You'll pay to know what you really think!"

J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, Church of the SubGenius propaganda

"He told me that the Catholic monks had no problem understanding the Buddhist monks, but that it was the clergy of the two religions who were unable to understand each other."

The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers

"In just one collection of Coyote stories, Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter, Coyote dies of a snake bite, a gunshot, an arrow wound, a broken heart, a rock-fall and a drowning; this resembles nothing so much as a Roadrunner cartoon."

"THE RIDDLE OF THE TRICKSTER: a cross-cultural overview," Thunderspud of Dragonfhain, Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal, Oct. 1986

"Dakinis and coyotes are those people or situations that temporarily embody the purposefully chaotic elements in our environment and give them form."
"Trickster events serve to keep the ego from rigidifying."

Shakti Woman, Vicki Noble

"Bob visits the McHoly Land ('Over 1 billion saved')."

"The Quigmans," Buddy Hickerson

"You have some intriguing ideas. Have you considered naming yourself after a radioactive element?"

Lewis Stiller, quoted in .sig of btshelp@zeus.tamu.edu (Evolve or Perish)

The trickster allows the banned, the taboo, the odd perspective. Telling the Fundamental Denied Truths is acceptable for the designated jester. What more does a Discordian want in a spiritual guide (other than Fundamental Denied Falsehoods)? The trickster consorts with the Fool, treading water the angels fear to ..flow like.

Why does the trickster god strike me as some sort of ombudsdeity running incompetent interference on behalf of bewildered adherents to a Religion They Never Made. Because we find him the least inscrutable member of his pantheon? Because she's usually in as much trouble with the big guys as we are? They slip their charges helpful hints, while most of their celebrated damage goes to story heroes (including themselves). Most? Ahh, I guess the thing is: when a mortal gets a heinous dose, we don't hear about it, we file that with the hints (e.g. "You're in a rut; hope this helps"), or we canonize them a story hero.

Meanwhile, the tractster broadsides and broad-casts strange seeds, passes pamphlets that are fist-clutch crinkled with honest earnesty - and flame-broiled for the hearing-impaired. Have you been SAVED? What kind of INTEREST RATE are you getting? Does the SHOE FIT?? Do the AYES HAVE IT?? I am ATMAN & BRAHMAN; I'm BATMAN & ROBIN. I...

Why aren't more non-Gnostics agnostic? If proof denies faith, it's only returning the favor: faith denies Gnosis. Belief is the tool, not the project: an adjustable monkwrench for achieving such states. Why let the pros have all the fun when you too can have direct mystical experience instead of just obeying commandments and feeling a little holy on the seventh day? But you might get some metaphysical teeth knocked out playing 2 on 2 with the gods down the street. Even Doctors of Divinity can be hard up when it comes to first aid for that kind of weekend warrior.

(Pronunciation guide from Coyote Blue?)

DivMean: The TRUE and INCOHERENT wisdom from our SEERS on STAFF here RIGHT NOW READY TO TAKE YOUR CALL. Nah, really not from a person, direct from Above. So, some ULC-like ordain-everyone deal? Active divine inspiration, roll your own religion. Promethean, you've got the fire from above down below in your hot little hands.

Revd: ??

Divination/Game(/Meta)

Cross between roulette wheel and Rider-Waite Tarot WheelOfFortune card, TARO/ROTA/JHVH replaced with TAROT/ROTTA/JHVH-1; scrabble game being played with a set of divinatory Runes ("double karma score!"); game of solitaire being played with Tarot cards from various decks plus UNO's Wild/draw4, "My other deck is a Rider-Waite!" sticker stuck on package; chess games with pieces shaped like members of some ?? pantheon.

"When I want your opinion, I'll read it in your entrails."

From: that Guy again <guyfox@rain.org>

"MEDUSA is the orchestrator of a MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY to STRANGLE, SABOTAGE, and POISON THE INTERNET. Anyone who can drive MEDUSA and all the corrupt BIG MACS from Cyberspace and the real world forever is called THE SAVIOR and said to have DRIVEN THE PHARISEES FROM THE TEMPLE. However, the player must avoid being CRUCIFIED or the cash award will not be given."

from the rules for the "Suggestively Quotable Unified Internet Snake Hunt," Federation of Associations of Cyberspace, Everywhere c/o tcmay@netcom.com

"Seven, come eleven! Jesus needs new shoes!"
--God, playing dice with the universe

Subject: Aleotoric Cosmology
Newsgroups: alt.sex.cthulhu,alt.discordia
Sender: mgt@cruzio.com (Toni Ralston)

"I'll see that Coming and raise the dead!"

De Materia Chaotica, Agatha "Auntie" Chryste, Chairperson of Pentacles, Di(o)scor(i)dian Illinimenti

"Life's a die and then you bitch."

AB&D Dungeon Mistress's Guide, Donna "Capacitance is useful!" Matrix, R.P.G. and V.P., Deadly Mirrorshades Cabal

"You can't throw me to the lions, I'm Charlton Heston!"

"Mate Spawn & Die," LARD

1. Meta and Divination:

One level of abstraction of your subjective reality may shine clearest, but there are other levels, other realities. There are mirrors within meanings within mirrors an' all that. Analogously, this card is an incarnation of the whole deck instantiated inside the deck, the machine in the little stagegod, the twenty-sevenths of a Menger Sponge that are Menger Sponges, a suspiciously-canine hair-of-the-dog. The medium of this deck is the message of this card, which is to say "Off-the-wall out-of-the-blue suggestions that may be significant, helpful, or at least fun." Nothing but a pack of cards at this -- at any -- level, it doesn't have to hurt.

Intuition and a fresh view from an outsider (e.g. any random or pseudorandom image generator -- tea leaves, coffee grounds, I Ching yarrow stalks, cabbage entrails, dreams, other humans, This Very Tarot Deck, LSD, etc.) can reveal more than slogging through. Even completely irrelevant concepts will at least throw a rod or wrench into the brain's usual channels; the most alien may be the best antidote for what ails you. A hair of a different dog.

On the other hand, what is in the cards is like what is in the world and what is in the world is like what is in the cards. Consult a card-carrying Tarot reader or buy a vowel. ("Prophesy for yourself, schmuck!")

"Wanna play 78-pickup?" Interpret cards in light of their nearest neighbors, including furniture, housepets, and the querent's feet. And the querent's significator, if it lands face-up. "S'pose that one's a ringer or a leaner?" Count the cards afterwards, and give especial divinatory significance to anything that turns up missing (play Klondike -- or hunt longer-- to figure out which those are).

2. Game:

"WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE! ..NirVANA!" Look up "Solitarot" in the Book of the Games of the Dead According to Hoyle. God plays at dice with the world, you play at the world with dice. The sortilege sacrilege. Movement, and stability with respect to it. The Wheel as the n-fingered hand of ERIS. Spoked? Spoken? The danger in denying change. And the one who dies with the best karma, wins.

[GAME OVER] (No blame)

DivMean: Redundant. Fortune, good fortune, on the scale, anyway, of a little five-buck Tarot card reading. The point of deciding to get an occult consult, a departure point. If you get this card, a Tarot reading may be in your future - possibly your present! Seeing your problem and its context arranged and labeled on the table. The mystical atmosphere and style of the person and place.

"The answer of the Tarot is always 'The Great Work.'"

Revd: What is a wheel reversed? Dunno. Might explode. Any which way you slice it, it comes up "Up." The message is a plastic coated piece of paper -- or a stack of them in a little box, I forget which.

Curiosity Killed Schrödinger's Cat

Very like the RW Justice card, only the figure is blindfolded and the sword blade has been unscrewed and removed from the hilt. The scales hold a live cat and an eyes-Xed-out dead cat. Two veils hang between 4 columns, and fuzzily intersect each other (designs on them: 1 roadmap 2 circuitry).

"Well, there's nothing you can test. The whole point of the idea is to think about what happens before you make your observation. You can't know what's going on inside the box without looking, and the very instant you look the wave packet collapses and the probabilities resolve. It's self-defeating. It's completely purposeless."
"But think about this. Supposing you were to introduce a psychic, someone with clairvoyant powers, into the experiment -- someone who is able to divine the what state of health the cat is in without opening the box. Someone who has, perhaps, acertain eerie sympathy with cats. What then? Might that furnish us with an additional insight into the problem of quantum physics?"
"Dirk, this is complete nonsense."

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

"All naming is already murder."

Jacques Lacan

"delta_x delta_p >= h/4pi"

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (hints: delta_x and delta_p are the uncertainty in position and momentum, respectively; h is VERY SMALL)

"CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving."
"PLEASE NOTE: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State."

"A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels," Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky

"Large things are easy to observe. Small things are difficult to observe."

"On the Five Chapters of this Book on Heiho-," The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi

"The Sword is primarily an engine of division. In the intellectual world -- which is the world of the Sword suit -- it represents analysis. [Atu VI, The Lovers] and Atu XIV [Art] together compose the comprehensive alchemical maxim: Solve et coagula."

The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

This card holds (the greatest part of) the obligatory quantum mechanics content of a post-New-Age era Tarot deck (which has been kept as small as is permissible). And it's an analogy, not a derivation. Nor is it a death card, unless you're in that sort of a mood while doing a reading, which is an undertaking of questionable wisdom (Sex and Death, also not a death card, is the death card). It's just a reminder that you'll never know where you're at (a deadening?) unless you look (a deathlet, perhaps).*

* In fact you're not even there -- or at least you're also not-there. If you left the lens cap on, you also never-went to the Grand Canyon.

On closer observation you may find you're somewhere icky, of course. Schrödinger's Cat doesn't die until it's curious enough to measure its state. Only makes it stronger, ornery cuss. The swordless Justice-like figure doesn't measure the cat's state either (nor weigh any testimony); the capacity for analysis is gone. In this particular paradigm, therefore, neither is Justice dispensed nor Karma dispersed, cats herded.

Certainly this is no card of Dogma. Catma: the master doesn't know whether or not to kill the cat because the monks's silence might have constituted their enlightened nonanswer rather than just "duh..." As the kids say, "Heisenberg may have slept here."

Meanwhile, take care selecting the aspect with respect to which you evaluate your situation. You only get one, and after that you're somewhere else: eigenstates of one observable are not necessarily eigenstates of What You Really Wanted To Know About, and measuring a system with respect to one quality perfectly means everything you thought you knew about some of the others may now be shot to hell.* Imagine the parade of dominoes and waterbed wavefunctions that will start fourier-collapsing when you take a matrix element of momentum between you and your lover who were previously in some certain position...

*At this level, mapping -- exploring, measuring-- alters the territory. How do you make a measurement? You look at a thing next to a yardstick. How do you look at it? You bounce photons off it into your eye. What if your object is really little? The photons will knock it about, change its trajectory, its momentum. Yep, you know just where it was when you measured it, but where the hell is it headed now? How do you make a measurement? You ask a question. What if your answerman starts wondering just what you're after? He'll try to probe you by adjusting his response. Where the hell is he headed now?

DivMean: You may react quite differently to being crossed by the Knight of Wands after having thought for a while about being covered by The Tower. "This covers you, this crosses you, this freaks you, this frees you, this amuses you, this peeves you,..." Everything comes to this one place and stops, and there is no more until a measurement changes the universe, cattle-prods it out of catatonia; then silence again. Reminiscent, and, at its least metaphorical, indicative, of juries and the legal process. The world changing for you based on your mundaner decisions.

(I think this was RPDrake's layout in I!3. WHAT are you talking about? he had a tree-of-life reading. ?? Yeah, KtW in Binah, T! in Yesod. Oh.)

Revd: ??

Sex and Death

Androgynous couple in suggestion of a 69 with one unnailing the other's feet from a cross and the other presenting the one's crotch with a rose. border: orobouros the world serpent eating its own tail by proxy -- via a phoenix. Why isn't the snake shedding? Pastels and watercolor.

"For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new alchemy."

"A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, being the shortest day," John Donne

"The phenomenon called the Daughter is ambiguous. It has been explained above as the spiritual ingredient in the result of the marriage of the Father and Mother; but this is only one interpretation."
"So also the formula of continued life is death.... In agricultural terms, this is the fallow earth."

The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

"In every case, without exception, a magical or mystical symbol always refers to one of the very few* variations of the same, very special form of human sacrifice: the 'one eye opening' or 'one hand clapping'; and this sacrifice cannot be partial -- it must culminate in death if it is to be efficacious.

"*Fewer than seventy, according to a classical enumeration."

"Appendix Lamed: The Tactics of Magick," I!3

"They [SubGenii] already KNOW the Big Secret of most Mystery Schools: that 'divine ecstasy' is arrived at just as easily with a backrub, or a good screw, as it is through 20 years of ascetic self-flogging in a cave -- at least, AS LONG AS THERE IS SLACK."

The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, The SubGenius Foundation

"Her age must contain horrors, for most of us cannot understand her or reach beyond the necklace of skulls to the garland of jasmine, knowing in what sense they are *the same*. To go thru CHAOS, to ride it like a tiger, to embrace it (even sexually) & absorb some of its shakti, its life-juice -- this is the Path of Kali Yuga. Creative nihilism."

"Instructions for the Kali Yuga," A.O.A

"Table of Equivalence and Convergence:

The Frugal Alchemist's Necroerotic Cookbook, M c 9billion svd. Donalds

Ouroboros, the World Serpent, is eating its own tail (with a Phoenix intermediary). Bystander freshwater fish (sorely-tempted vegetarians) familiar with archetypal god-resurrection myths lose track of carrots hoping something juicier will come along. Somehow the goddess-wife character manages to conceive before the fish is fed (maybe she's the fish, though that ain't the way I heared it). Come springtime, she bears avenging progeny: the dead god renewed.

Full circle within serpentine circle within The Incredible, Oedipal Egg. Snakes eating eggs, eating their tails, offering apples. To whom else but the scale-shedding symbol of Shakti could the introduction to humans of birth and death (and nakedidity) be entrusted? (What other symbol is phallic and vaginal at the same time, and periodically dies to be reborn?)

Annoyingly, all this is sort of a gender-bound, seasonal, and agricultural rebirth - rather than the explosive, undifferentiated, orgiastic, primal chaos spew Discordianry has come to know and love. Another complaint: knocking off the aging king to renew the land as soon as either starts to show a little wear is pretty disposable/consumerist, not very "make it do or do without."

Still, it's the ultimate rain dance, a great excuse (and format, theme) for a party. The figure pulling the nails out was originally going to be shown hammering them in, in illustration of the equivalent and complementary nature of sex and death. As it is, the prying-out of the nails 0. is equivalent, 1. recalls resurrection-magic, 2. downplays the martyrdom aspect, thereby 3. making for a happier poster for the living room. So moved.

DivMean: Sacrifice of anything beyond one's mind* is overkill in any psychologically stunning energy-releasing endeavor. Sacrifice of anything less is pointless. Only what does kill us can make us stronger! But try drumming, dear, or dancing for a kinder, gentler gnosis. Don't forget: really, any of your Precious Bodily Fluids will do. You can even contribute metaphorical ones to the proceedings: Taoist, flow like water. Atmosphere (a fluid, both magically and mundanely) is all.

* Or two's minds -- smoke 'em if you got 'em!

The participants' visualizations and cries are as follows:

Eros:	A lover, real or imagined	Orgasmic moan
Thanatos:	Robed skeleton with scythe	Scream of death-terror
Chaos:	Both of the above	Some bizarre combination of both followed by ecstatic laughter

*Liber Kaos, Peter J. Carroll (Frater Stokastikos 127, 0 degree Supreme Magus IOT Pact, Our Pestilence Pope Pete I of Chaos)

It takes a firm piece of trauma to convince the subconscious to reimprint over well-worn paths: chemicals are required! For the overly-openminded, the thought "Wow, I'm gonna cast a spell!" (very like "Wow, I'm kissing a girl!") may well be sufficient to produce at least endorphins. But comprehending this (familiarity?) immediately narrows the path, straitens the gate. On the other hand, a lighter note, & a smaller scale: every eventlet, every episode of a life is an antithesis for that life, a microdeath that produces a synthesis meaningfully different from the original thesis.

Revd: Lacking the (indispensible) knack for the figurative.* Mortgaging yourself at the blood bank, on account of not understanding the esoterica and ramifications of your symbols and recipes, may land you deep in karmic debt. Cast not thy blood upon the waters; for thou shalt find sharks rightquick. I.e. careful scratch-'n'-sniffing the pink carnations of immortality; they might turn out to be poppies. Primrose pathology. They'll bloom on any architecture, even trellisless.**

* Speaking of figurative, some folks are celebrating and cultivating their intellectual fertility come springtime -- perception -- which may explain all the contraception.

** Speaking of architecture, check out the steeples and arches (and unsquare arch-apex stones) on any halfway-magnificent church.

Or, for a more positive interpretation of Sex and Death Reversed: sex or death for sex's, death's or art's sake (non-prophet orgasms, tacks exempt).

(Initiation? Reimprinting? Change? Darwin Awards?)

"A card of the death of kings."

"XIII. Death," The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination, Arthur Edward Waite

"...Die daily.
Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life:
behold all opposites as necessary complements,
and rejoice."

"General Characters of the Trumps as They Appear in Use," XIII, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

(death of kings, death of rigid intellectual patterns. Untelevised revolutions, flame@11. "Change that comes unasked -- involuntary -- on the scale of time, ages, aeon."(8: baraka, operating on higher circuits. 16: stupidity, operating on circuits too low. 13: ??, changing from one to the other -- re-imprinting. Nah, this talk goes with the "Tower" picture. The answer of the Death card is never Death.))

The king is dead; long live. Return to chaos for a refreshing rebirthy dose: system crash, gotta reboot, maybe reinstall -- fresh start, all the memory leaks now reclaimed, new efficiency. The Discordian death is a brain re-dis-alignment: new shocks and struts! (Which doesn't mean it won't smart.)

Faced with circumstances so chaotic and incomprehensible that the customary mental processes produce no viable solution, unaccustomed circuits may connect/coalesce. Faced with trauma of epic proportions, at the Hero's Journey nadir when the options are clearly to do or to die, one simply does. (Or does not, of course: "You! Out of the gene pool!") Storm and stress are agitations naturally conducive to lightning and light bulbs.

Once one has survived the last straw, it cannot be that one is still hassled by the hang-up in question: it is no longer an issue. Having come to such a head, in razor-sharp laser-focus, unignoreable, it was resolved one way or another. No shred of it remains to harry you on the next excursion, which will therefore be nothing like the previous one. Clean slate. Throw a New Orleans jazz funeral and leave a beautiful corpse. Compare with the Garden: "I'm going home to Mother!", recuperate blandly, return to old patterns, encounter the same problem next time.

Jung expects the surprise solution to come in symbolic form from the unconscious, but if you (or your committee of initiators) have one (elsewhere) in mind, you can pick your own new program, write your own ticket.

??

*with apologies to Frater Stokastikos

A system needs a dose of Chaos to be healthy, stable. Here lies cavorts one difference between a Chaoist and a textbook Taoist: without some randomness of walk, a yangless flowing downward like water can get one hung up in a high concavity. With a bit of bounce, of unruttability, a side of levity with the gravity, the perk of exploration of the heights: you ultimately attain yinner depths, sailfish the self out of a tidepool & into the ocean.

Excess order (like heartbeat in fibrillation) gets unhealthy, because it limits the spectrum of available responses.

DivMean: Expect some confusing circumstances to arise. Maybe striking enough to unrut you.

Revd: If none are forthcoming, engineer your own.

Elements

105 = 3x5x7 (nah, 114 = 2x3x19, damn it, is the current theoretical limit plateau.) -point star, points labelled with chemical symbols and/or alchemical ones when they exist, made-up ones when they don't (e.g. a circle with a lot of stickey-out hair lines for einsteinium, i guess.) Set up in Illustrator. Maybe some wooden kids's building-blocks with e+, e-, q, q-bar, etc. carved on.

"SWEET BOOM PUNGENT PRICKLE ORANGE"

The Discordian Five Elements (see Principia Discordia)

 
"majic is the act of manipu-    M       |  |  |  |  |  |
lating media, to wrap words,    d
images, sounds, lectures & tv   r  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
into a whirlwind.  to defeat    u
the 'rational' mind and teach   m  mescaline was isolated from pey
and re-educate humanity's       D  only naturally occurring psyche
collective unconscious.  to     R  related drugs.  throughout the
re-introduce ritual, to show    U  philosophers, and psychologists
the path of urban shamanism or  M  but there was no general demand
techno-paganism, to perform the d  adrenaline a few artists with
Great Work,                     r  revolution of the 1960s.  then"

"Drum," rpj (R. Patrick Jones), editor dh644@cleveland.Freenet.Edu

"There are only two operations possible in the Universe, Analysis and Synthesis. To divide, and to unite, Solve et coagula: said the alchemists.
"If anything is to be changed, either one must divide the object into two parts, or add another unit to it. This principle lies at the basis of all scientific thought and work."

The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)

"One day Nasrudin was walking along a deserted road. Night was falling as he spied a troop of horsemen coming toward him. His imagination began to work, and he feared that they might rob him, or impress him into the army. So strong did this fear become that he leaped over a wall and found himself in a graveyard. The other travelers, innocent of any such motive as had been assumed by Nasrudin, became curious and pursued him.
"When they came upon him lying motionles, one said, 'Can we help you -- why are you here in this position?'
"Nasrudin, realizing his mistake, said, 'It is more complicated than you assume. You see, I am here because of you, and you, you are here because of me.'"

The Sufis, Idries Shah

Sort of a TechnoPagan card... earth air fire water ether, earth fire water metal wood, RF LF RH LH Head (yer Pentagram Hokey-Pokey Parts*), mercury sulfur salt, wands cups swords pentacles, Sticks Cups Sharps Discs Bits_of_String (Not of This Earth), order chaos, tree1 tree2 tree3 tree4 tree5.... Ways to break things down, reverse-engineer reality.

*"You put your left brain in, you take your left brain out, you put your left brain in, and you shake it all about..."

This is the solve card; Crowley's was Art. His Lovers[Brothers] card was his coagula card; ours is Love, but mind the Cat.

Reality can be disconstructed in myriad ways -- usually badly, since all physical and biological systems are geometrically and symbiosis-wise fuzzy (fractal) of boundary. Even cause and effect can be surprisingly intertwined; the obvious relationship is rarely the only one contributing to the situation. Don't get lost in the details (you haven't got a .35 Angstrom Rapidograph nib to draw your schematic with), but don't run into trees, either. Physicist: "I've figured out how we can increase your farm's milk production by 150%! First, assume a spherical cow..."

What could more interesting than how things work, what is really going on? Can we find out, is it okay to take it apart to see what's inside? Reevaluate preconceptions (carry a screwdriver and a voltmeter). Use what's available. If that means exotic ethnobotanicals, you go. If you can hack a drum machine to get psychoactive driving frequencies, do that. Scrounge what you need and flow with what you got.

??

DivMean: Try to achieve a comfortable balance between merry cluelessness and total info-immersion* awareness -- read between the lines pixels voxels of tuned-in, turned-on, and dropped-out. Then do something tangible with it, dance to it.

*That almost anagrams (or at least Telephone-Games) into "Into tofu-emulsion"! (It does anagram into "Mime-fool transition" and "iron-Mason leitmotif.")

Revd: Meanwhile, the CKSCat card reminds us that attempts to acquire "total information" may increase unmerry cluelessness. "He can't see the forest or the trees." Don't erase data that doesn't agree with your theory, but disbelieve as long as necessary results that stand in your way. One can only ever consider countably-many qualities if you examine and file them one at a time, even forever -- Achilles never passes the tortoise in a rational-valued reality; the arrow never reaches its target, "and Saint Sebastian died of fright."*

*Jumpers, Tom Stoppard

Trees are beautiful, and a good place to get out of the shade. They also draw lightning (with a synthetic red sable brush -- and they prop your easel): order and disorder are artificial divisions of chaos. And sometimes a tree is just a cigar. Choice is integral, basic: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Either. Choice is real, acidic: dissolve. Other.

Wild(er)ness

Charcoal and penandink, spiral-into-a-center of textures: water rock bark scales feather sky/stars , with moon hole in sky. Overlay in white pastel, coyote/wolf/?? scribble, looks vaguely cavepaintingey/totemic. FYI, same as the logo on http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~haley/fe/foolserrant.html

"The sign of Capricornus is rough, harsh, dark, even blind; the impulse to create takes no account of reason, custom, or foresight. It is divinely unscrupulous, sublimely careless of result."
"The formula of this card is then the complete appreciation of all existing things. He rejoices in the rugged and barren no less than in the smooth and fertile. All things equally exalt him. He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All."

"XV. THE DEVIL", The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)