The Curse, the Blessing and the Cunning

Poison supports medicine and resistance forges what is good to take a clear shape, light comes from darkness and the river of Dão is constantly flowing with and against to maintain the greater cosmic harmony of flux and movement. As our hand of restraint set limits in our life – either for ourselves or for others – and our right hand gives and bless in abundance, in such way we replicate the cosmic experience and its flux it be daybreak or full moon, new moon or the sojourn of the Sun to the Halls of Death. The exhalation is life and it is supported by the inhalation and death. Contrast is the cosmic experience and this also takes place in our lives – the problematic issue is when we get too obsessed with defining qualities to what emerges in the experience of being. Recognition of blessings is good – but so is the recognition of antagonism because this supports our blessings. In this lies mystery upon mystery.

 If we accept this dynamic we will also become aware of God’s signposts as we are triggering our own self disclosure and becomes the signposts... We will realize that the master and the misguider, the friend and the enemy are solely appearances in the field of experience that forges your good and blessed self to emerge in the splendor of light – or perish in the night of forgetfulness….

All this and more is encoded in the saying; “May the Blessing, Curse and Cunning be…"  

With this I want to quote an Adura Ifá collected and beautifully translated by Baba Awo Fa’alokun Fatumbi into a reminder of who we are – if we allow our true self to shine as beacons and torches in the world:

Emi Baba Rere
I am the Soul of the Father of Goodness
Emi Baba ‘jala
I am the Soul of the Father of the Dogs of Light (Warriors)
Emi Baba ‘gbon
I am the Soul of the Father of Wisdom
Emi Baba ‘kin
I am the Soul of the Father of Courage
Emi Baba’wo
I am the Soul of the Father of Abundance
Emi Baba’lo
I am the Soul of the Father of Spirit
Emi Baba’la
I am the Soul of the Father of Light
Emi Baba’ile
I am the Soul of the Father of the World
Ope ni fun Olorun
My blessings come from the Creator
Ire lona Iponri atiwo Orun
Place me on the path of my higher self and bring me the blessings of Heaven

Resistance, antagonism, enmity are powers that support al haqq, the truth – and it is also the darker strains in the field of experience that gives us the opportunity to make qualitative judgments of the experiences we have in life – this is known as contrast – and this contrast can be subject for a host of judgments, ill as well as good. These judgments are rooted in our unique experience and our level of awareness of cosmic waymarks…  

I have for years been taken in with Ibn Al Arabi’s disclosure of wujud, that something appears qualified in existence - and the cosmic experience of being and his discourse about ‘waymarks’ mirrored against the 28 letters and lunar mansions. In his Meccan Revelations it is especially one passage (22:32) where the Shaykh speaks of how we can magnifies God’s waymarks on the horizon by we ourselves signifying God’s knowledge. In this we find the importance of being weary of this fact or not. He speaks of Self-Disclosure and this is presented in a dialectic of a hermeneutic nature that lead to one of the more provocative tenants in Ibn Al Arabi’s thinking, namely how Iblis is the divine potency of limitations and restraint that affirms the divine. In this field, we find pure experience of being – and in this we find obstacles and signposts that affirms or challenge al-Haqq, the truth in its play upon wujud.

This is a cosmic truth found in this that are represented by tamasic left hand and the rajasic right hand that supports equilibrium, like the serpents on the caduceus of Hermes and Asclepius. 

The Mysterious Addictions

Two matters have simultaneously caught my attention the last days, one is concerning the relationship between negative vibrations and truth and the other is concerning addictions. For this I thank my elders that relentlessly educate me and help me seeing the beauty in this world I perhaps too often find too hopeless, macabre, rotten and absurd.

It is quite wicked how this our mysterious world of formation and manifestation works on us, caught in matter our inner light gets as dim as the light of stars. It is like the distance to our starry soul is as enormous as the light-years between Tellus and Spica. This is not so, because distance is ultimately a question of perception.

I rarely participate in discussions with people, because so many of us do not like the dialogue a discussion implies – rather it is exercises in soliloquy aiming to convince the speaker and not the opponent - - but I digress – in one of these forums, I read a commentary about a person feeling attacked and he stated that he felt a negative light was thrown over his sublime reputation in his profession and stated that he was ‘a speaker of the truth.  It really doesn’t matter who said or where, my point is related to what one of my elders spoke to me about recently, namely addictions. He told me that we are prone to “addictions like drugs, smoking, food, complaining and negative vibrations of all kinds.” I have been working with addictions in capacity as a therapist for a decade – but the light of truth blazed through me and I realized that yes, indeed – this African Sage spoke the truth. Because truth is not about facts, it is about a perception of the facts that sees the colours of light for what it is – and calls a duck a duck and a fool a fool – without passing judgments or being infested with any form of negative vibration. I asked myself – to what extent can we speak the truth if we see only with the sinister - or dexter eye? And to what extent can we say that we are free from addiction to subtle forms of negativity as quarreling, drama, condemnation, complaining and so forth when we have negative responses to our being in the world? These forms of addictions here that are on the emotional continuum always unleashes in anger, passive or direct – and self loathing projected upon the world where we desperately search out scapegoats.

It is easy for us modern men and woman to be overcome by negativity. We need constant reminders that we are all stars, that we are all blessed and that the world is good - if we let it be good - as Ifá says in one of the verses in Eji Ogbe:

Orunmila says we should measure the length

And measure the breadth of things

The hand reaches much higher than the head

And the young palm fronds extend much higher

Than the old palm fronds

But no forest is so dense that the Iroko tree

Cannot be seen

And no celebration is so loud that the gong cannot

be heard

I mean, when we feel attacked, when we feel the world is absurd, if we feel we are living in a threatening world of evil and antagonism – can we really perceive truth and thus speak of it? Are you addicted to negative vibrations – if so, what it does with your perception of the truth? 

May Our eyes be opened so we see The Light of Goodness

May Our heart be vibrant so we can feel the Love in the lands and Heavens

May We supersede our own expectations

May We not fear any enemy, within or without

May We cast the brightest Light on the darkest Shadows

May Our light be cast in the darkest cavern

May Our Light blaze in Love’s victory throughout all Lands

Infernal, Celestial and Temporal

Amen!

Poisonous Stars

Recently ConjureMan Ali presented some observations concerning friendliness with spirits that you can read in full by a click here.

I think his observations are immensely sound and valuable and he is highlighting some issues of grave importance here. First it is the hermetic axiom, as above so below – but such axioms are often repeated so often that we lose the message behind the axiom. The heavens mirror itself on earth and like a planet can go retrograde and enter malefic aspects with planets and stars so can the human actors in society – as well as the invisible world of spirits.

The world is supported by restrain and giving, by the protection and the blessing – this is the basic idea in the Etz Chaim – or Tree of Life as much as in the metaphysics of odu in Ifá.

We find this dual polarity expressed also in the Godhood it be the face of vengeance of the God in the Holy Bible or beautiful names such as al-Mumit, ‘the taker of life’ and Al-Qahhar, the Crusher’ in the Quran. In a ritual dedicated to Saturn in Ibn Wahshiyya’s ‘The Book of Poisons’  we find the first line of the summoning stating the following: “O God, the great, the violent, the powerful, the luminous, the killer of all who have been killed, and who brought all the dead their deaths.”

Saturn and Mars are traditionally referred to as the Greater and Lesser Malefica – and in this capacity they are also responsible for the transformation of the malefic into poison. Personally I believe it is important for all to contemplate the issue of malefic, evil and poison in all three levels of being. I conceive of the poison as a latent potential within what is malefic. Hence we have an experience of ‘evil’ on the basis of strength, restraint, Saturn and Mars – it is a form of ‘not-Giving’.

We see the states of poison played out most visible in the material world because the material world is a place of distance in all six directions. Between some souls there are a natural animosity, we find this amongst plants, as amongst humans, social groups – and also amongst spirits. We find spell workings in the Munich handbook of Necromancy where the sorcerer in order to generate hostility on the physical plane invokes spirits hostile with one another in order to generate this spiritual antimony amongst human actors. In the same vein we find by analyzing a birth chart using traditional techniques what stellar influences that bring blessing to the native and which brings restraint. Indeed, as above – so below, but profoundly so.

We are all unique souls made unique by the gathering of star and spirit accompanying our birth and becoming which gives various inclinations towards giving and restraint – and so it is with spirits, save the moral dimension which is quite unique for the human realm.

It is in this field we will do well in contemplating who we invite to our home and life. The world is a cosmic mirror and we mirror each other as spirits mirror us. This also implies that what we attract and what we are attracted by on both sides of the mirror can gravitate towards each other for good or for ill – because Eros, the divine vinculum itself – sees only attraction and is not concerned with directions. Hence his symbol is the heart struck by an arrow…

The Victory of the Heart

There is an Ifá proverb that says: “The One who have conquered the enemy within will not fear the enemies from the outside”.  This proverb states that we ourselves are always our own worst enemy – the greatest obstacle to reach abundance and happiness usually rest in our pride and resistance towards change.

Confronted with offence – offence is often what is returned – but this is like trying to stop a fire by throwing oil and candles upon it…often, in attempts of wiping out undesired energies in our lives we end up rushing to the heart of the undesired energy and generate more of what we do not want.

Like when we feel wronged, for many the first instinct is to attack – for others to run away – but for those who feel wronged the tendency is to grow in a distorted sense of justice where we expand the field of lawful and righteous negative action we can bestow upon the offender.

In these instances, when someone wrongs us we need to take some time to think if we might deserved the offence – or if the offense in question is related to us or not. Often an offense is the result of envy and self-hatred and you have been found the target for such projections not because you deserved – but because you were an unwilling mirror….sometimes the issue is quite different. Every offense gives us opportunity to honest introspection… because in all honesty, he who is without blame should cast the first stone and if we actually forgave ourselves our trespasses maybe we would forgive others trespassing in a greater spirit – namely the spirit of Love…

There is a tendency to never reflect upon this, but rather to stretch to ones weapons to defend ones honor, name or whatever – rarely people give thought to the simple mechanics of action and reaction, of simple polarities that takes place in meetings between men in a great variety of forms.

Quite often when people jump the gun and scream for justice when confronted with personal opinions, even when they take the shape of slander and lies, must question the issue of èké, dishonesty and falsehood.

I believe that we are all born good and blessed – but the world is a market, and at times it moves too fast, so fast that we at times act before we think. We get lost in the opportunities in the market, its thief’s and lost chances…When we get lost and sidetracked it is helpful if we are remembering this primordial good condition we carry within the web of our soul and allow it to take shape into love and kindness.

Inspired by love and kindness we will be humble in the face of the spirits and gods – and we will be Masters of our Fate… by displaying a good and honest character…in this we find the secrets of immortality, purpose and joy

In this scope I find the message in the odú Ifá  Ògúndaretè to be worthy to contemplate:

Ògúndaretè

Kúkúndùkún a b’ewé gerugeru dábi

Oògùn l’agbára

Òpò oògùn a gun’mo gàlègàlè

Súgbón bi ó ba l’ópò oógún

Bí ó ba l’ekèé

Èké ó níí jê ó jê

Dandan inúrere jê ewé lo

Dífá fún Oòni Alànàk’èsùú

Èyítí kò gbódò kò oro Ifá sílè

Translation:

Sweet potato with fresh leaves might seem

Like a powerful potion

And an abundance of the magical medicine tends

To intoxicate the possessor

But even if you have a multitude of powerful

Potions,

If you are dishonest,

Your dishonesty will undermine their

Effectiveness

Surely, kindness will be more effective that

Such potions

This was the teaching of Ifá for

King Alanak’ esuu

One who dared not reject the advice of Ifá

Mandragorits Mandragon

You, dragon man of milk and blood

I see you in the shades and caverns of night

I see you in my hands and veins

You are child - dragon

And I am you - man

I walk the night

My veins hanging loose

You stretch up

To unite within & beyond earth

I hear serpent song and

I hear you

My friend and foe

My distant memory of light

That fell to earth

I take you, my child

My dragon, my master

I know your veins stretch into the flesh of earth

As my blood stretch to my heart

Whenever I see you see I see my last breath

And you are that and is

The breath itself

Stillness and stance beneath

My feet

You my dragon friend

My Dragon fiend

My whisper through the earth

My Brother

And my woman shredding her skin

To reveal the purple within

Open the roads and open the eyes

I am earth

And I am the silence whispering soothing spells

Upon my root

I am you and you are me

As we are he and we are she

They told me you were woman and you are

Beloved by Venus and Moon

But you are mine

Spine and 77 vertebras

This you are

In my transfiguration

Between mole and dirt

I clasp to your veins

And to your blood

And let myself sink in this night of nerves

Where you ride me, as he or she

And there I am – as You.

Your Wolf and your Flower

I am the rider of the dark forest

I am the scales of your body

The root of wisdom

As it paints the world in nerves and borders

I am yours – and we are here at the fig garden

At the end of the worlds

Where I hand down my sickle and

Ask night….

And there you are

I have seen you before

So many times

Brother

Daughter

Friend

Enemy

The root of Saturn himself

Searching the Lovely Lady

Making night itself your playground

And in this night I see

I am not brother, nor friend

But playground and

Garden,

& with this

The night is at peace

In

Poison…

…and Shades of

Amen!