Just Loving this Vortex of Weirdness

Spokane, Washington, is a vortex of weirdness.

I know. I live in Spokane.

It's a glorious city. I'm not being ironic when I say this. Part of what makes it a glorious city is the perception that it is one of the point blank strangest, oddest, most surreal places in the US. I say surreal and I mean it in the way the original French surrealist poets and painters meant it. Read a few Surrealist manifestos, you'll understand. Here in Spokane the weirdness tends to Dada like levels. Read a few Dada manifestos, you'll understand.

Here is a perfectly good lite example of Spokane weirdness.

On April 30, 2018 this billboard appeared downtown, and immediately afterwards it began to make the rounds on the internet as a meme:

[None of these memes are original to me. All were found on the Spokane Memes FB page.]

Apparently no one on the design team, the team responsible for putting up the billboard, the City Council, or any other group encountering the bears for that matter, thought that placing the two bears next to each other might seem... I don't know... odd.

There was plenty of space to separate the bears, maybe even have the standing bear waving to us. I can almost guarantee the design team discussed that, "Don't have the  bears waving, they don't do that in the wild, Merle. And put the bears closer together, we need 'THE GREAT PNW' to take up more than half the billboard's real estate."

What the leaders and designers missed, Spokaloo Sally saw immediately. The result?

Wow, that was fast.

Then the internet responded.

There were a lot more than this one. There has been an online petition to bring the bears back.

I just heard that the bears will be made into a tee shirt. This is Spokane.

Your Old Pal,
Devilhead

Random Thoughts

I stated in my last post that once I discovered that the gods talk back it was game on. I guess this feeling tends to separate magicians from non-magicians. Over the years I've discovered that the only people who really want to communicate with [what exactly?] and have returned again, and again, to repeat the experience(s) are magicians. In saying this I'm not denigrating other ways of approaching the truth, just that it takes a particular type of person who chooses magick as a spiritual discipline. And it is a discipline.

I've discovered over nearly 40 years of practicing some form of ceremonial or chaos magick, that normal people are terrified of it. I mean really terrified. When people find out you practice magick, they tend to be terrified of you. There is a reason that silence is a principle of magick.

All of this is to say that of late, I've been working with Thoth, ibis-headed god of wisdom. (Gods tend to be very stable forces, and when I approach them correctly I get very good results.) Specifically, I began this working in August. The impetus was the recognition that literally everything in our world is broken. No, really, everything.

Government, business, health care, religion (both exoteric and esoteric), education, and on and on it goes. It doesn't matter where one looks, everything -- every institution that people have relied upon for years is broken, really seriously broken. Smashed. Shattered.

A perfect example is main stream media news. To claim it is a joke is its only point. We don't have news anymore. We have corporate propaganda. [This is legal because it is not governmental propaganda.]

Politics is a fucking joke. The system is broken. Some believe that the various interlocking systems can be fixed. Others, myself included, think it's time for a clean sweep. The old aeon is dying, all of its institutions are smashed and broken beyond recognition, the new is becoming. Although others may disagree, I see the Aeon of Horus as a cleansing aeon. Part of that cleansing is to dismantle, destroy and remove the debris of everything.

The Book of the Law was received by Aleister Crowley in 1904. It is written in three relatively short chapters. Each is addressed by a different god. The third chapter is from Horus, in his guise of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a war god. The third chapter has upset some. Others have made peace with it. I read it immediately after performing The Supreme Ritual which is an invocation of Horus, and was positively fried with Horus' energy, and I "got it." I can't explain it, nor will I be a centre of pestilence, not now anyway. Long story short; the third chapter of the Book of the Law is my favorite chapter.

My relationship with Ra-Hoor-Khuit is a good one a very powerful one. I tend not to formally invoke Ra-Hoor-Khuit often, having only done it a few times, because the energy tends to knock me right on my ass. During one of those times, I asked to see through Horus' eyes. Having seen, I get it, but can't explain it; it all has to go. Completely.

The Aeon of Horus, the age of the Crowned and Conquering Child, is an age of almost pure destruction. It is not an age of rebuilding. It is an age of razing. Just imagine the Crowned and Conquering Child toddling through everything: playing with, randomly breaking, stepping on, tripping over, everything. Until nothing is left. Then we have to deal with truth. The Aeon of Ma'at, which is that of truth is prophesied to follow.

And that is why I've been working with Thoth. Thoth is a god of wisdom. I have invoked Thoth on a near daily basis for one thing and one thing only, to know the truth of everything.

Let's just say be careful of what you seek.

Your Ol' Pal,
Devilhead

Hiatus is Over

Devilhead here.

I'm most notable for a blog called Unitarian Universalist Nightmares, since taken down -- not for the reasons you may think. Turns out the blog had quite a few fans; a fact I discovered today when I checked my email. After two months of not looking at it at all, there were a sizable number of emails asking where I've been, and if I'm alright.

I am alright. Just prior to taking down the Unitarian Universalist Nightmares  blog I began treatment for PTSD. I've spent a decade doing talking therapy -- didn't work at all, just tended to wind me up. And for the most part I've been dealing with chronic depression, which was my primary focus of treatment. Currently I'm doing EMDR treatments. Holy shit... the rage is gone! And the decade-long depression is dissolving.

The rage, anger and pain are gone. At the same time, my opinion of the Unitarian Universalists hasn't changed. If anything my contempt for them has grown.

I asked my therapist about it and his reply was enlightening. He informed me that EMDR will remove the toxic feelings associated with my experiences in the church, but it won't change reality, it won't change my opinions, thoughts, or the experience itself.

While this blog will comment upon the withering and death of the Unitarian Universalist Association, it will not be the sole focus on this blog. My life is bigger than that.

For example:

I reside in Spokane, Washington. I moved out here fourteen years ago to serve a Unitarian Universalist church. A few years later I left the church, and Unitarian Universalism, but I stayed in Spokane. I love Spokane primarily because it is the absolutely weirdest place I've ever lived.

I never said that to the search committee who called me, but it's completely true that I loved the area because it's a vortex of weirdness. Little known fact: the movie Blue Velvet is about Spokane. Seriously, watch the movie and then hang around here for a while. Weird as shit. And there are many people in Spokane who truly groove on the weird.

But it's a weirdness that is cloaked in the straitjacket of normality - desperate normality.

And the city has been cursed, twice. The curse is still very much in effect. Any and all locals will be more than happy to tell you about the curse. The weirdos love living in a cursed city. I know I do.

For example:

My current spiritual path is a form of Gnosticism called Thelema. I got into the ministry after I encountered the divine. [There's a whole, long, long, long story here which may be told at some time.] Long story short though, I prayed and it was answered. The encounter was profound. I've never been the same. I also haven't had a drop of alcohol in thirty years. And it has never been an issue. I've never had cravings. I consider myself recovered, not "recovering." Thirty years with no struggle whatsoever, yeah I'm recovered.

Once one discovers that the gods talk back, it's game on -- let's talk!

I got into Ceremonial Magick for precisely that reason. and have had some success with Goetic, Enochian and Thelemic magick. The latter being almost entirely devoted to self-improvement, the rituals and exercises have proven to be very transformative. Later I got into Chaos Magick, which is the set of practices that I use most often. I'm also into radionics. All of this will be covered in this blog.

And to that end, I can finally confess that Unitarian Universalist Nightmares was my first experiment with hypersigilization. I learned a lot. I learned it works, and how to make it work.

This blog is a hypersigil as well. Fans will only benefit.

For example:

I'm dealing with the concept of disgust as a philosophical state of being. Not ennui, disgust. Disgust is a bigger issue than we may think. It helps to explain much of what's going on in our world. The whole MGTOW thing (which I completely support) is the end result of deep disgust. And no MGTOW is not interested in changing things, just getting out. Much like the Gnostic path itself, the whole point is to get out and leave the bullshit behind. Let the bullshit take care of itself.

Over the years I've discovered by both hard personal experience and observation, that the single most threatening thing to do is think for oneself and state one's opinions.

That shit will get you killed. Not that they haven't tried. Good luck with that.

Your Old Pal,
Devilhead