Tag Archives: Spiritual Technology

Esoteric Foundations, Workings

Spirit Bridge Foundations 1 – Animism

At the core of spirit bridge technology is the awareness that awareness is not unitary. Consciousness is complicated, made of many moving parts, each of which is also conscious on some level.

This is the “physics” behind Frazer’s “sympathetic magic“, not just the “law of contagion” but also the “law of similarity”. It is worth noting that the concepts are far more ancient than The Golden Bough, being noted in folklore as far back as we have records of said folklore.

Parallels can be found in the Bhagavad-gita’s “atomic soul”, though interpretations of this seem to frequently fall into the traps of Monism and a unitary human soul. Rather, it is important for us to come to grips with a world in which everyone and everything is a gestalt consciousness.

Similar to the biological concept of a holobiont, our singular “soul” is a holonoont– a whole comprised of many different consciousnesses that express themselves as one spiritlife “organism”. Just as we practice symbiosis, we (and all things) exercise symnoesis.

The grand irony here is that the term “symnoesis” was coined by the atheist Richard Dawkins as part of his meme hypothesis– an idea that cannot be tested by modern science. The very refusal of mainstream scientists to entertain non-materialistic explanations makes it impossible to understand why and how memetics works. Rather, it is only those scientists who’ve gone “through the looking glass” while searching for the seat of consciousness who are on the right track.

By this I mean the recently-rediscovered field of panpsychism, which is what guys who want to sound important call animism once they accidentally stumble on it. Put simply, panpsychism is animism with a varnish of upper-class snootiness applied.

Why is all this important?

Because if the universe is conscious “all the way down”, that means that some parts of our soul exist in places where spacetime begins to behave very weirdly. Am I talking about quantum physics? Yes… and no.

Quantum physics is the best our primitive science can do to explain the weirdness that happens as one approaches the Planck length. Divorced from the resolutions provided by animism, concepts like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle break the brains of our smartest physicists.

Similarly, New Age “gurus” latch onto the comparatively rare phenomenon of quantum entanglement in an attempt to explain how we are all “ONE” or some nonsense like that.

So no, I’m not going to try to use quantum mechanics to explain why animism is important to esoteric practice- whether or not you choose to believe in it. Rather, I will note that quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain various phenomena- it is a map, not the territory. Animism is simply the acceptance that these phenomena, specifically the exercise of choice at the smallest observable scales, are real and that the pattern holds “all the way up”.

In other words, if we accept that the tiniest fractions of reality have some measure of awareness and free will, then as we add size and complexity, choice and consciousness will be found at all scales of size and complexity.

Therefore, rocks, trees, humans, birds, insects, mountains, rivers… all embody complex consciousnesses. They all have (and are) souls and can therefore be interacted with on more than a purely physical level. Indeed, human experience has long noted the existence of both embodied and disembodied spiritlife.

The acceptance of disembodied spiritlife can easily be explained by other concepts that physicists are still struggling to integrate into materialism and determinism– namely alocality and atemporality. One of the reasons that quantum entanglement freaks people out is that it defies our understanding of the limits of spacetime by seeming to ignore both time and distance constraints.

Yet, humans have long known that many Powers exercise some degree of alocality by being able to manifest Their presence in multiple places at the same time. Similarly, many also evidence some degree of atemporality by being aware of future events or at least future possibilities.

I find it interesting that some physicists have even postulated that space and time are products of consciousness instead of being inherent qualities of energy and matter. Of course, once we accept that consciousness is an inherent quality of energy and matter, the whole heap turns on its head.

It seems therefore that at the smallest levels, our universe is aware, but doesn’t fully comprehend time and space. At the Newtonian levels (what we think of as objective reality), matter and energy are organized into units large enough to comprehend a shared concept of time and space, but are deeply limited by it. At a more divine level of complexity, the Gods and other Powers both perceive our shared spacetime and are also aware that it is not truly binding- space and time are somewhat malleable to sufficiently complex and powerful consciousnesses.

The important takeaway for us as landworkers building spirit bridges is the recognition that our environment is itself comprised of many potential allies and that we and they (and They) are not entirely bound by spacetime.

More on the practical expressions of that next time.

– In Deos Confidimus

 

Community-Building, Land Health, Landwork, Workings

Spirit Bridges (and Death Stranding)

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There is a pretty popular video game named Death Stranding that centers around the concept of tying places together via a “Chiral Network” that routes information through the Otherworld. While the game is fiction, the core esoteric concept is not.

Starting in the early 2010s, a good chunk of my landwork involved “spirit bridges”. These are point-to-point connections constructed using an exchange of materials, usually stone.

Originally, my spirit bridges were tiny, no more than a few hundred yards- usually much less. The rationale was to permit spiritlife to move more freely around their environment, unhampered by humanmade obstacles.

For example, connecting two sides of a road for the benefit of very small entities who previously had unfettered access to each other. The idea is analogous to “wildlife crossings“- tunnels or bridges erected to help biological wildlife move from place to place.

Then, in 2012, a friend and I set out to address a blockage in Vermont that was inhibiting the attempts of healthy spiritlife from the Lake Champlain watershed to help heal some of “The Sick” that was infecting the Connecticut River watershed.

While the physical crossing was small, and should have been easy to bridge, the entire area was under the control of a hostile, unidentified Power that drove us off. Clearly said Being did not want the traffic running through Their territory and was likely the cause of the break in the first place. While I’m now fairly certain of the Entity’s identity, there wasn’t much I could do about His decisions.

This led me to start working on longer-range spirit bridges, ones that were more complicated to erect and maintain. These were built on the same esoteric foundations, but would be consecrated to and mediated by Holy Powers for safety reasons.

Between 2013 and 2014, I erected four spirit bridge cairns:

A map showing four completed spirit bridge cairns and numerous candidate sites.

By the end of 2015, between life stresses, vandals, and just plain entropy the strain of maintaining just the Austin cairn by myself became too much. I convinced myself that the system wasn’t actually working and stopped.

At the end of 2015, Hideo Kojima began work on Death Stranding.

Do I think certain Gods made Kojima make this game so I’d realize the system wasn’t a failure?

No.

But I am more and more convinced that Someone(s) wove meaning into it, something Holy Powers have been doing for centuries. And I don’t think I’m the sole target audience.

Remember, one of the big problems that led me to abandon the Spirit Bridges Program (ooh, now it sounds important!) was the strain of doing it myself. This is in part my own shortcomings. I’ve always been a solo operative and struggle to involve others in my work. However, part of it was also an operational security fear.

As mentioned elsewhere, landwork has been both a tool of conquest and of resistance. Being more open about the spirit bridge technology meant increasing the risk of sabotage. It also increased the potential that it could be hijacked by faiths hostile to our attempts to heal our environment and restore right relations with our spiritlife neighbors.

On the sabotage front, I was clearly overly concerned with secrecy. In vain it turns out, since the Austin cairn kept getting destroyed even without anyone knowing what it was. Had I assistance with maintaining it, perhaps it would still be there. Instead, afraid of sabotage, I tried to do it all myself and it wound up destroyed anyway.

Of course, the esoteric connection is still there, but it’s much weaker without regular maintenance.

While the plot of Death Stranding focuses on expanding the Chiral Network (technobabble spirit bridges), the actual “core loop” involves strengthening interpersonal connections. This is done explicitly- as you help people, they give you more access to resources, and the like. However, it is also implicit in the game- the more you connect, the more you see evidence of other players in the game world.

For instance, the first time you pass through an area, you might see a ladder or a rope left behind by another player that helps you climb a cliff. The second time, you might see more ladders and a postbox. Each time you cross a section of map you might see more and more features, bridges, charging stations, watchtowers… All of these are structures built by other players to make it easier for them (and you) to traverse the map.

You never see the other players, only their work.

I suspect that this was the point that certain Gods were trying to get across by nudging Kojima’s team throughout the making of Death Stranding:

We are not alone. There are others doing the work.

And we need to connect.

– In Deos Confidimus

 

Landwork

Casting Aspersions… Wholesale

Well, I’d been planning to write a little thing about Santa Claus and piety over at America Divine, but then I saw that a Roman Catholic priest had esoterically napalmed a town in rural Louisiana.
A satirical image of a cropduster shouting "Bless You!" as it incinerates the land.

Cropdusting an entire town with holy water is a massive re-escalation of Catholic colonialism and it is inviting imitation. I’m sure a number of parishes are already considering something similar.

Unfortunately, many in our society think that holy water is simply a form of well-wishing. They think of “blessing” in the same sense as someone saying “bless you” after a person sneezes. While asking that someone be blessed certainly has a benevolent aspect, blessing has some very specific esoteric functions. Namely, it is a form of sanctification, though much less total than consecration.

The process of sanctification involves asking a Holy Power to bring someone or something closer to Them. Much of what humans do in this regard involves prayer, contemplation, ritual, offerings, and works that align the person mentally, emotionally, and spiritually towards that Divinity so as to invite Their grace. Blessing is the act of requesting that sanctification on behalf of a third party, for example a priest asking blessings upon a parishioner.

Holy water is a fungible means of storing such a blessing and is a used in a number of different faiths worldwide, not just in Catholic Christianity. The exact liturgical process differs but the esoteric foundation is usually similar. Such blessed water is typically used for ritual purification and to bring the faithful closer to their Gods.

Here’s the thing- holy water is NOT generic. Holy water blessed by Asklepios is, on a fundamental level, closer to Him and His nature. Holy water of Yah is closer to Him. Holy water of Isis is closer to Her. Some Gods might be favorably inclined towards those aspersed with water blessed by a colleague, but it’s still an individual consideration. It’s Their choice, not ours.

The spiritual technologies of sanctification and blessing exist only because of the inherent diversity of the Gods and therefore, of Creation. If there was only one God, humans would have no need for holy water- everyone would naturally flow towards That One.

But we do need it. Whichever Gods blessed the holy water are the Gods towards whom the recipients will be drawn. Similarly, holy water can attract spiritlife friendly to or in alignment with those Divinities. It also tends to repel spiritlife inimical to those Gods and their ways.

That repulsion isn’t an absolute, though. The stronger the spiritlife in question, the more likely it is to simply piss them off. Given how angry much of Louisiana’s spiritlife seems, this is probably not a good idea.

Old-school perfume counters were infamous for randomly blasting passers-by with their scents. I don’t remember the film or TV show, but there was a comedy many years ago in which a man goes to a department store to get a gift for his wife and gets sprayed. His wife then suspects him of infidelity because he smells like some other woman’s perfume.

It’s a crude analogy, but holy water is a bit like that- it identifies those blessed with it as aligned with, or even the property of, the God(s) in question.

Thus, blasting a whole area with holy water is a deliberate offensive. It lays claim to that land and everything in it- all of its spiritlife (including humans). It’s quite literally an act of spiritual warfare- a term that proponents of this kind of atrocity are fond of.

I don’t know if modern Roman Catholic priests are taught this aspect of their spiritual tech, but any competent priest should know it. Indeed, much of history involved a great deal of deliberately leveraging spiritual technology for purposes of conquest. Missions, especially the big Spanish ones, served not simply to convert the populace, but to exert esoteric influence over the land itself and the spiritlife thereon.

That’s not to say that a priest blessing his parishioners is bad. My objection is to the indiscriminate nature of the spraying and the willful ignorance of those who think it was an innocent act of kindness. It was not.

It was an act of war and we are caught in the crossfire.

-In Deos Confidimus

 

 

Landwork, Workings

Hamilton Pool

I made it to Hamilton Pool yesterday.

Aside from a stone I’d planned to offer disappearing in under a minute, I can’t report any clearly supernatural anything.

Which is par for the course.

I’d hoped the cold weather and overcast would thin the tourism. It might have, but I was still sharing the area with 100 people or so. Many of them chattering away like humans should not in such places.

A panoramic photo of Hamilton Pool from inside the grotto.

The photo above shows a panorama, but of course the aspect ratio is a bit weird. You have to imagine the far left and right edges almost meeting behind you.

Two dominant features of the site are a waterfall near the left side of the opening and a moss-covered area near the right. There is a wavering line of drips from above that forms an arc between the two.

I say dominant because after walking all around the site, those were the two places that most drew my attention. The Texas Problem was still in evidence here. Though intellectually I could tell this was a place of power, between the other humans and the “cloak” I was barely picking up much of anything.

The first couple of hours was spent meditating in different spots, trying to do basic centering and grounding. This was a bit easier here than in the city, but not by much because there were still so many humans making disruptive noises.

I had fasted since the night before, not long, but enough to feel the drag of it. My hope was that it would sharpen my focus, which sometimes it does. I’m not sure if it helped, hindered, or neither.

After slowly making circumnavigating from the waterfall side to the beach (washed out in the center of the picture), I decided that the mossy area and the waterfall were the focal points where I needed to make offerings.

While the tourists thinned out, I sat on the beach and used a tiny rock with sharp edges as a burin to etch a horned serpent into a small cobble.

Once all but 30 or so tourists had departed, I made my way from the beach to the mossy area. From certain angles, it bears a resemblance to a large, sunken skull overgrown with moss. It also appeared to host a spring or seep that was coming from deeper than the water falling from above.

Still dodging tourists and park rangers (they often try to interrupt offerings), I first presented tobacco:

I offer you this tobacco, in honor and gratitude.

Then I offered a handful of toasted corn:

I offer you this corn, in honor and gratitude. Thank you for allowing me to visit this place.

Then, I had more people show up from out of nowhere, so I got flustered as I was packing up the corn. Somewhere around this point, I lost track of the etched rock. I may have left it on a post nearby or stuck it in my backpack and lost it in there.

I next moved clockwise around the inner section of the grotto, stopping periodically to meditate again. At one point, I noticed that the drips from above formed a pretty clear horned serpent motif- but only from that angle.

From another angle, I noticed several very faint, sinuous ripples on the surface, like invisible snakes 40′ long or more with their heads in the waterfall and their tails very slowly swishing back and forth to maintain position. I had not noticed them from that same vantage point earlier.

The waterfall was also flowing stronger than earlier for no reason I could discern. It was not raining in the area, nor anywhere upstream that I was aware of.

By this point, I was down to less than a dozen tourists, and I clambered down to the base of the waterfall. There, a massive red stone, like a huge egg some ten or twenty feet across, emerges from the pool and is drummed upon by one branch of the waterfall.

Here I readied four offerings:

  • The rest of my tobacco.
  • More toasted corn.
  • A red stone from Lake Champlain, triangular in shape and flat.
  • A smaller stone from a cenote in New Mexico, which I set atop the red stone.

These I carefully arranged on a flat-topped boulder nearby.

I turned, stood directly next to the waterfall with my hands and arms wide and invoked my hosts.

O, Great Serpents of Central Texas- you who dwell in this sacred place, your kindred, your ancestors, and all of your kind who call this region home…

While I was primarily trying to get the attention of the immediate locals, I wanted to make sure I was indicating an attempt to show respect to and communicate with the large “body politic”- for lack of a better term.

I am Keith, son of Michael, son of Eugene, of the line of Cormac.

This bit served multiple purposes:

  • Firstly, placing me in a context of lineage not only asks my own ancestors for help, but gives my hosts something longer-lasting than me to wrap their minds around. As humans, our individual lives are short compared to much of the spiritlife we are dealing with.
  • Secondly,  the overly formal recitation establishes gravitas and that my purpose for being there was diplomatic, not simply a friendly “how-do-you-do” visit.
  • Thirdly, that last bit is significant in its own right. While the “Cormac” in question is not necessarily Cormac mac Airt (probably isn’t), the name establishes a longer ancestral tie back to Europe and invites said blood ancestor(s) and said High King of Ireland emeritus to step in if they want to.

It’s worth noting that none of the genders are important. The wording feels right to me, but others may want to name their lineage differently or by tradition instead of blood relations. The important thing is to outline a lineage of strength.

I come to you humbly and to apologize. My people have not been respectful of you, nor of the land. Most of my people’s ancestors came from across the sea to the east. We live here now.

Once, my people knew better- they knew how to show respect and to live with the inhabitants of the land. But they were deceived by a new god, who led them astray, who blinded them to you. I wish to help my people learn again.

I turned back to the boulder, took up the tobacco, and placed it with both hands into the waterfall.

I offer you this tobacco, in honor of you and in gratitude.

I turned back to get the corn, and its lid had blown off (I’d loosened it already). The cenote stone was also gone.

Just… Gone.

I took up as much corn as I could hold, and with both hands placed it in the waterfall.

I offer you this corn, in honor of you and in gratitude.

I turned back to look for the cenote stone, which weighed about half a pound (not a pebble). It wasn’t on the ground around the boulder, and it certainly wasn’t atop the several-pound red stone, where I’d left it!

I took up the red stone instead and with both hands placed it atop the large red stone at the base of the waterfall.

I offer you this red stone from Lake Champlain, the land of Odzihozo, that you might have this as a connection to Him and to his land. I also brought a stone from a cenote in New Mexico, for the same reason, but now I cannot find it. I hope that you already have it.

I stepped back, now sopping wet despite my duster and wide-brimmed hat.

I ask that you help my people to see you, to hear you, to recognize you, to learn respect for you. Help them understand what their ancestors once knew. Let them see the land as it is, as it should be, that they may be good neighbors to you and to the land.

I waited.

I thank you for allowing me to come here and for listening.

Sensing no particular response, I packed my things and began huffing and puffing my way back up the trail from the floor of the canyon. I stopped at one point to offer the rest of the corn to the other inhabitants of the area after eating two pieces to demonstrate that it was safe.

I also picked up some trash here and there while exploring and on the way back. There wasn’t much- the rangers do a really good job policing rubbish.

Once back in my car, I thanked Hermes and Hekate for guiding me in and out of that liminal zone.

Then I ate the meat stick and candy bar I’d left in the car for post-working food. If you’re not in the habit of setting food and drink aside ahead of time, you should be. It’s a good safety precaution.

That’s about it.

So far, no further indications of anything.

-In Deos Confidimus

Landwork, Research

Help From Across The Pond?

In relation to this project, as inspired by a surprise presence, I’ve been reading through some of the Irish quasi-historical narratives. I say quasi-historical, as they are generally older oral narratives that were later recorded (and changed) by persons holding a colonized, Abrahamic worldview.

I’m studying these texts, despite their questionable provenance, because the UPG I received suggested that the ancient Irish possessed a form of the spiritual technology necessary to address (or at least begin to address) the Texas Problem.

Furthermore, I got the impression that this method was pretty darn fast-acting and that echoes of it had survived in “the lore” even beyond the depredations of Patrick and Cromwell.

To that end, I’m looking for examples of ceremonial actions related to the establishment of working relationships between a group of invaders and the local land deities (and by extension, spirits). We have lots of partial records of Gaulish, Irish, and Welsh kingmaking ceremonies (the Wiccan “Great Rite” is based on these), but I’m pretty darn sure that’s not what I’m looking for. Similarly, there are other purported rituals that I’m certain I can discount- these display their authors’ obvious biases and are typically wildly impractical and/or highly illegal.

On the other hand, there are hints of other rituals that are less well recorded and which were likely no longer in use well before these stories were recorded. While the kingmaking ceremonies were in use in historical times and occasionally commented on by outside observers, the techniques I’m looking for would have been used very early in the Celtic conquest of an area.

That’s the key difference, in my mind. The later kingmaking ceremonies appear to have been undertaken after an area was settled- i.e., by generations following the conquest. By contrast, when the Celts first entered an area, they had to establish diplomatic relations with the local land deity (or deities) and spirits. Doing that of course required establishing a mode of communications- which is normally a job for shamans (which is to say, not me).

But in the case of conquest, it meant doing so over the objections of (and esoteric sabotage by) the indigenous people. It meant esoterically “blowing up” or “burning down” those other peoples’ connection to the land and figuratively sticking a giant “this is mine” flag into the crater.

Yeah, that sounds pretty brutal.

My modern, Westernized mind recoils from it, but it’s clear that humans worldwide seem to have known how to do this from ancient times. By the early Middle Ages, though, Europeans appear to have lost this knowledge- at least on a conscious level.

By the 1800s, European-Americans in Texas almost certainly did not even know they needed that capability, let alone have the knowledge of how to do it. Why are certain parts of the United States more “awake” than Texas, despite Anglos’ lack of land-bonding technology? I have a theory about that, but it’s much too long to deal with here.

Back to the Irish.

Here is an example of the sort of thing I’m looking for, in this case from the Lebor Gabála Érenn (“The Book of the Takings of Ireland” – Book of Leinster version) as translated by R. A. S. Macalister:

§74. As he set his right foot upon Ireland, Amorgen Glúingel s. Míl spoke this poem—

I am Wind on Sea,
I am Ocean-wave,
I am Roar of Sea,
I am Bull of Seven Fights,
I am Vulture on Cliff,
I am Dewdrop,
I am Fairest of Flowers,
I am Boar for Boldness,
I am Salmon in Pool,
I am Lake on Plain,
I am a Mountain in a Man,
I am a Word of Skill,
I am the Point of a Weapon (that poureth forth combat),
I am God who fashioneth Fire for a Head.
Who smootheth the ruggedness of a mountain?
Who is He who announceth the ages of the Moon?
And who, the place where falleth the sunset?
Who calleth the cattle from the House of Tethys?
On whom do the cattle of Tethys smile?
Who is the troop, who the god who fashioneth edges
in a fortress of gangrene?
Enchantments about a spear? Enchantments of Wind?

This is implied by the text to be a powerful, ritual poem related in some way to the Milesians laying claim to Ireland. It’s essentially a fancy and esoterically potent version of “We claim this land for Spain”. Side note- the Milesians are said to have been Iberocelts (or Celtiberians)… Celts from Spain.

Clearly, the translation is corrupted. The name “Tethys”, for instance, refers to the Hellenic titan Goddess of fresh water- not an Irish deity at all. It’s possible that this is the result of a poor transcription of the translation, or a messy translation. Either way, it’s unclear.

Going back to the Irish, we see:

Ic tabairt a choisse dessi i nHerind asbert Amairgen Glúngel mac Miled in laídseo sís.

Am gáeth i mmuir. ar domni.

Am tond trethan i tír.
Am fúaim mara.
Am dam secht ndírend.
Am séig i n-aill.
Am dér gréne.g

Am caín.
Am torc ar gail.
Am hé i llind.
Am loch i mmaig
Am briandai.

Am bri danae.
Am gai i fodb. feras feochtu.
Am dé delbas do chind codnu.
Coiche nod gleith clochur slébe.
Cia on cotagair aesa éscai

Cia dú i llaig funiud grene.
Cia beir búar o thig Temrach.
Cia buar Tethrach. tibi.
Cia dain.
Cia dé delbas faebru. a ndind ailsiu.

Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.

Here, the same name is written as “Temrach” or “Tethrach”. While neither of these terms has an easy translation provided by Dr. Google, there are a couple of interesting hints.

Firstly, Temrach appears to be a poetic reference to Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland- a central point of esoteric significance. Tethrach, on the other hand, appears to be a possessive or adjectival form of words that can mean “crow”, “champion”, or “sea”. In some versions I’ve found, “Tethrach” appears on both lines.

In other words, either way, we are likely dealing with a poetic name for Someone or someone. In all likelihood, many of the lines refer to a specific deity, person, or entity.

On the surface this appears to be part of an invocation to the ruling deities of Ireland, the Túatha Dé Danann. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the account deals with Amorgen and the Milesians fighting the Túatha Dé Danann for control of the island. So, is this an invocation in pursuit of a blessing, or a mockery intended to provoke conflict?

Is the source even useful to my search, or am I chasing down the rabbit hole of a cargo cult? The entire story could be purely a medieval fantasy with no ancient basis at all.

There is a lot more to go through, and it is not exactly stimulating reading.

-In Deos Confidimus