From
Hakim Bey's
"T.A.Z."
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Paganism
Constellations by which to steer the barque of the soul.
"If the moslem understood Islam he would become an idol- worshipper." --Mahmud Shabestari
Eleggua, ugly opener of doors with a hook in his head & cowrie shells for eyes, black
santeria cigar & glass of rum- -same as
Ganesh, elephant-head fat boy of Beginnings who rides a mouse. The organ which senses the numinous atrophies with the senses. Those who cannot feel baraka cannot know the caress of the world.
Hermes' Poimandres taught the animation of eidolons, the magic in-dwelling of icons by spirits--but those who cannot perform this rite on themselves & on the whole palpable fabric of material being will inherit only blues, rubbish, decay.
The pagan body becomes a Court of Angels who all perceive this place--this very grove--as paradise ("If there is a paradise, surely it is here!"--inscription on a Mughal garden gate)..
But ontological anarchism is too paleolithic for eschatology- -things are real, sorcery works, bush-spirits one with the Imagination, death an unpleasant vagueness--the plot of Ovid's Metamorphoses--an epic of mutability. The personal mythscape.
Paganism has not yet invented laws--only virtues. No priestcraft, no theology or metaphysics or morality--but a universal shamanism in which no one attains real humanity without a vision.
Food money sex sleep sun sand & sinsemilla--love truth peace freedom & justice. Beauty. Dionysus the drunk boy on a panther--rank adolescent sweat--Pan goatman slogs through the solid earth up to his waist as if it were the sea, his skin crusted with moss & lichen--Eros multiplies himself into a dozen pastoral naked Iowa farm boys with muddy feet & pond-scum on their thighs.
Raven, the potlatch trickster, sometimes a boy, old woman, bird who stole the Moon, pine needles floating on a pond, Heckle/Jeckle totempole-head, chorus-line of crows with silver eyes dancing on the woodpile--same as Semar the hunchback albino hermaphrodite shadow-puppet patron of the Javanese revolution.
Yemaya, bluestar sea-goddess & patroness of queers--same as Tara, bluegrey aspect of Kali, necklace of skulls, dancing on Shiva's stiff lingam, licking monsoon clouds with her yard-long tongue--same as Loro Kidul, jasper-green Javanese sea-goddess who bestows the power of invulnerability on sultans by tantrik intercourse in magic towers & caves.
From one point of view ontological anarchism is extremely bare, stripped of all qualities & possessions, poor as CHAOS itself--but from another point of view it pullulates with baroqueness like the Fucking-Temples of Kathmandu or an alchemical emblem book--it sprawls on its divan eating loukoum & entertaining heretical notions, one hand inside its baggy trousers.
The hulls of its pirate ships are lacquered black, the lateen sails are red, black banners with the device of a winged hourglass.
A South China Sea of the mind, off a jungle-flat coast of palms, rotten gold temples to unknown bestiary gods, island after island, the breeze like wet yellow silk on naked skin, navigating by pantheistic stars, hierophany on hierophany, light upon light against the luminous & chaotic dark.
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