Chapter Four ::: The Guide
"The knower of truth should go about the world outwardly
stupid like a child, a madman or a fool." - The Mahavakya Ratnamala
Had I not met my mentor I too may well have looked at life in
the same light as Thomas Hobbes; a rather unpleasant occurrence whose main
attributes appeared "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". Yet I knew, even from that young age, that
there was something more, that life was some type of unfoldment and that any
attachment to nihilism merely reflected entrapment in a specific trance.
We surely are all trapped between two mysterious worlds; one of
outer 'normality' and another of inner feelings, torments, joys and
emotions. Both of these 'realities' feed
on each other and both are locked in a kind of continuous struggle. Nobody ever quite adjusts properly to this
two-world existence. People wear masks
that cry out 'I am adjusted', 'I am happy', 'I am normal', but just beneath the
mask there is always that turmoil of uncertainty.
Religion has kept its appeal because it helps to alleviate the
uncertainty of existence. Religion has
never truly centered itself on truth but rather on fear, and even today it
maintains its merit with vapid words like 'hope' and 'faith'. The more the fear the more the believer
believes. Given the right circumstance
and the appropriate amount of fear, the deeply religious (fearful) will meet
doubt with guns and mockery with knives.
To the fearful, killing over cartoons is as pleasing as bowing
for a prescribed number of times a day to keep the deity from punishing (or
forgetting). Punishment and fear, murder
and intolerance; as natural and predictable as dogma and genocide.
It's difficult territory to travail, this mysterious path to
awakening, and the more one consults the masters and guides that have gone
before the more they seem to suggest a hidden and skewed path. As one moves
closer to the mystery indeed one also becomes increasingly filled with doubt,
and yet this 'lost' stage appears not only important but in fact signals a kind
of breakthrough. In the Apophthegmata of the Desert Fathers we
hear and can well understand the voice of a fourth-century monk when he tells
us, "Truly, Abbot Joseph has found the way, because he has said: 'I do not
know.'"
I had to know.
I first met my guide in a book.
I cannot remember the title now but it was one of those typical 'Great
Mysteries of the World' type volumes.
Big foot was there and UFO's, and the usual chapters on strange rains of
fish, Jack the Ripper and ghosts. But
none of these Fortean curiosities really interested me. They were fascinating topics to be sure, but
once you have read one of these types of books you have read them all.
There was one chapter however that did catch me and its subject
was occultism and 'magick'. At that
young age it was the first time I had seen the word magick with its peculiar
spelling. A black and white photograph
jumped out at me, it depicted a man dressed in a robe, in front of him on a
table were placed a sword, a mysterious looking book, what looked like a
crystal ball, a small vial of oil, and a large old-looking Egyptian stele. The man held a wand and his head was crowned
with a snake motif and upon his chest lay a necklace depicting some sort of
cross.
I looked closely at the photograph and read the inscription
beneath. 'Aleister Crowley', that was
the man's name, and the book referred to him as a 'ritual magician'. I had no real understanding what any of this
meant but a peculiar feeling told me that this person was to play a crucial
role in my life.
I knew then and there that I had to make a decision. Something was pulling me towards this man and
a choice had to be made: close the book, walk away and forget I had ever seen
this strange character or find out everything I could about him. Had I taken the first choice then you, my
dear reader, would most certainly not be reading this book. But I chose the second option and from that
moment I knew that this figure would act as some type of strange attractor
forever leading me deeper into initiation.
I had to find out everything I could about this person and so I
began to read. I visited every library,
sat hidden in every bookshop that would allow me hours of undisturbed reading,
poured over every detail about this man.
The basics were easy enough, born Edward Alexander Crowley on Tuesday,
October 12th, 1875 between the hours of 11 p.m. and midnight. His parents were members of the Plymouth
Brethren, an ultra conservative Christian sect famous for its strict adherence
to a literal interpretation of scripture and its harsh dishing out of physical
discipline and punishment. This ensured
Crowley's early life would be punctuated with beatings for even the mildest of
misdeeds.
He suffered through a difficult upbringing until at last, in
1893, at the young age of eighteen, he declared himself not only a magician but
promised to raise Magick from its then current fallen state and into a
legitimate science. Right from the
beginning he referred to this ancient science using the old English word 'magick'
and his choice for doing so he tells us was "in order to distinguish the
Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits."
It did not take long for Crowley to first encounter doubt and
this 'lost' stage thrust itself upon him with great force. In his masterpiece
recounting of Crowley's life and spiritual achievement titled Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God,
Kenneth Grant documents Crowley's quick rise and his struggle with the trance
of futility:
"Within a year of his initiation into the Order of the Golden Dawn,
Crowley's advance had been so swift that he attained the highest grade, and
according to an unpublished autobiographical note (1924, by the year 1903,
Crowley was the most advanced Adept (as distinct from Master) in the world. But as at Cambridge, when he had undergone
the Buddhist Trance of Sorrow and realized the futility of earthly ambition and
achievement, so now, when almost at the summit of mystical attainment, he was
overwhelmed by a similar sense of futility.
It was so acute that he abandoned the Great Work itself."
This trance of doubt and futility scared me greatly when I first
read of it and yet I knew that such a trance was already familiar to me. It had been thrust upon me on that road, by
that van, by that girl, by her death.
In the 16th century a Spanish Roman Catholic mystic commonly
named Saint John of the Cross titled his famous poem The Dark Night of the Soul (La Noche Oscura Del Alma), in it he
details a tumultuous process as the soul ascends from its bodily form and unto
God. Was I ready for the dark night? Are
any of us ever truly ready?
