That our conscious minds bob about on vast unconscious capacity is both scientifically accepted and intuitively obvious. A widely cited—but probably apocryphal—figure holds that we use less than ten percent of our mental abilities for conscious thought; in fact, the relationship between conscious and unconscious mental capacities is too complex and variable to assess meaningfully with a tool so blunt as a ratio. But it is clear that we have a lot more going on ‘under the hood’ than we generally acknowledge. Consider, for example, an act as simple as a free throw. Factors like gravity, wind, distance, grip, and strength are assessed and synthesized instantly, and a 22-ounce ball is tossed 15 feet and landed in a 18-inch hoop, and some humans can perform this computation constantly and near perfectly. Obviously there is no conscious calculating going on—somehow, an ungoverned savant side of ourselves does all the work, with little useful assistance from ‘us.’

Similarly, some conductor continually orchestrates hormones, enzymes, cells, glands, organs, and the islets of Langerhans to keep most of us in mostly good health most of the time and again, our attempts to consciously assist this process are clumsy and often counterproductive. There is some vast computational agency working always on our behalf—residing, apparently, somewhere inside us—and it jealously excludes consciousness from its realm.

Conversely, the relationship between consciousness and the things outside our head seems relatively straightforward; we collect data with our senses in order to appraise the world around us. But a little thought shows that this relationship, too, is unequal. For example, we see a very small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, hear very little of the range of vibratory frequencies, taste and smell relatively few chemicals and, generally, get by with a picture of the world based on a tiny percentage of the available data. Even in the range of data we are able to apprehend, we fail to consciously observe almost everything. The all-that-is presents several oceans-worth of data, and we sup with a teaspoon. It is as if, in Huxley’s phrase, consciousness works as a “reducing valve” that actively filters out information, so that the world we experience is a product of the data selected for consideration.

I contend that the reducing valve works both ways, that the relationship of consciousness to both outer and inner worlds is one of filtering and exclusion, and that the existence of a conscious mind probably depends on filtering and exclusion.

If this is the case, there is the interesting possibility that the fast and vastly powerful computing savant we house is constantly working with unknowably gigungous amounts of external data, and presumably knows far more about the world than we can consciously access. Reality, in this view, is a choice, not an inevitability. Our conscious and unconscious selection of the data we engage with creates the world we experience.

But let’s drop the faux-scholarship for a bit and consider, instead, a peculiar being that I, and at least some others, work with in order to ease our way through challenging traffic. I refer, of course, to the magickal entity Goflowolfog.

Goflowolfog: traffic management for (some of) the masses

Goflowolfog, according to that useful grimoire known as ‘the internet’, was created during a magickal workshop that took place in London, conducted by noted chaos magickian Phil Hine. He has a describable appearance, a sigil, preferred modes of action, etc. I have found no details concerning the exact method of his creation—magickal types tend to be secretive about such things—but I assume he was created and ‘charged’ in some suitably outré manner. Interestingly, and unusually, he was intentionally created for use by anyone who cares to call on him. His purpose can be derived from his name, which is a forced palindrome of ‘Go Flow’—Goflowolfog lives to keep the traffic flowing.

Goflowolfog is one of those irritating phenomena that produces little in the way of scientifically verifiable evidence forcing one to fall back, instead, on anecdote and direct experience. In my own case, I find that invoking Goflowolfog—just say his name in an invoking manner—yields fast results and that I am often efficiently extricated from seemingly stopped traffic. On the other hand, he isn’t very good at finding parking spaces (try Ganesh for this purpose). As a way of giving back, I like to donate pennies to those little change trays you sometimes see next to cash registers, and I make a point of using those pennies, if available. I reason that Goflowolfog is, presumably, pleased by improved flow of all kinds.

This is nutty of course, but as a gedankenexperiment let’s consider the possibility of an intangible, traffic-manipulating entity in the light of my hypothesis, that is, that our super-potent mental capacities are constantly assessing vast amounts of data beyond our ken. If it’s really true, then we might very well have extensive unconscious knowledge of traffic conditions outside our conscious sensory range. We might have unconscious knowledge—due, say, to the particular play of light on the underside of clouds—of an unobstructed side street. Further, we might also unconsciously possess at least the capacity to affect external matters profoundly; it’s possible, for example, that we can regulate the pace and direction of our driving in ways that subtly cue and control other drivers. It is possible, in other words, that the same subconscious abilities that instantaneously coordinate sports miracles and bodily functions can also be marshaled to direct ourselves and others in ways that reduce the traffic we encounter.

So how does Goflowolg figure into my wacky theory? I posit that ritual, visualization, spell work, affirmation, prayer, and the like are all methods for manipulating symbol, and that symbol is the ‘language’ of the unconscious! So Goflowolfog emerges as a symbolic system well-adapted for communicating my traffic desires to the super-potent unconscious. His dramatic origin, and my conscious investment in the spooky technology that produced him, facilitate conscious direction of abilities that are usually inaccessible to intentional direction.

Viewed this way, my invocation of Goflowolfog is very like the prayer of the faithful, the visualization of those devoted to The Secret, the spell work of Wiccans, and countless other systems, past and present, that promise some uncanny effect in the all-that-is.

Finally, there is a possible weird effect of Goflowolfog knowledge that may cast light on the birth and death of religions. Consider: when almost no one knows about Goflowolfog, it is probably harder to benefit from his powers. One person in a traffic jam, cuing and signaling, will have very little to work with when it comes to easing traffic. On the other hand, if everyone is busily invoking the entity, then their efforts will cancel each other out and nothing will change. Somewhere between the two extremes is a sweet spot, where the devotees of Goflowolfog unknowingly work with each other to ease their individual routes through traffic.

Might not religions have a similar arc? They are born weak, build power as they add followers and thereby generate miracles and then, as they become consensus reality, the dramatic powers they once commanded are vitiated.

So please, will just a few of you, not too many, begin to call on Goflowolfog? It will make my subjective experience of traffic so much nicer.

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Remember, Be Here Now, by Ram Dass

Even on the increasingly rare occasions that Timothy Leary’s LSD-popularizing antics are really discussed, the man known then as Richard Alpert appears as little more than a sidekick—Robin, to Leary’s Dark Knight—and his book, Be Here Now, a mere punch line to a forgotten 60s joke. But in the decades since, with Leary’s needle stuck at ‘groovy’ right up until his relatively early death, Alpert’s fully disclosed spiritual struggles, his open record of extreme growth and change, and of course his transformation into America’s own guru, Ram Dass, have left him, perhaps, the greater figure. By any reckoning, he is a scarred and worthy chronicler of a numinous time, and an interesting living experiment that still unfolds.

I had the good fortune to be handed Be Here Now in the midst of one of my very first acid trips, when I was still convinced that there was meaning beneath all the fireworks. I puzzled over it quite happily for hours, imprinted on it, and it has affected my subsequent spiritual life as surely as childhood religious instruction; and like childhood religious instruction, the influence has not always been positive and shaped me by my resistance at least as much as by my acquiescence. For example I, for far too many years, accorded Hindu-flavored spirituality far more respect than I now feel it deserves.

It is a concise classic of drug writing, a genre that deserves more respect than it gets

Be Here Now is actually three books in one. The introduction is Alpert’s tale of the years with Leary, his travels in India, and the encounters with the fabulous guru, Neem Karoli Baba, that remade Alpert as Ram Dass. It is a concise classic of drug writing, a genre that deserves more respect than it gets. The middle, longest, section is a hand lettered and illuminated attempt to convey, experientially, certain verities of the psychedelic experience. It is strange, strangely powerful, and I am not able to capture it in a net of mere words—take strong hallucinogens (or, if you prefer, entheogens) and read it for yourself. And finally, the book concludes with an adequate primer of the aforementioned Hindu-flavored spirituality—meditation, yoga, veganism, etc.—the efficacy of which is demonstrated by the easy competence with which India governs herself and cares for her people. Am I too cynical? Very well, paw through this section yourself and carry away the bits you find shiny… that’s certainly what I did, and I can’t say I regret it.

Separately, none of these parts is indispensable, but like the disparate, ridiculous books of the Bible (have you ever read the Book of Jonah?) when gathered together (along with an excellent bibliography) they amount to scripture. And, like scripture, they can remake your world to the extent you let them.

Alpert/Dass is, it must be said, a substantial spiritual fuck up, but I will always love him for this book, and for the way he once compared the way he figuratively fell on his face over and over to a man making his way to a holy city by means of continual prostrations—it was too apt a description of my own life to ever forget.

Promethea, by Alan Moore

Alan Moore is a literary titan whose medium happens to be comic books: deal with it. The fact is, Moore is positively Joycean in the way he packs layers of meaning into words and, unlike Joyce—or Pynchon, or Wallace—he has the whole playground of image to play with as well.

The substantial success Moore attained with his scripts for Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta, and other titles—and the substantial disappointments he suffered as those graphic masterpieces were translated to the screen—both allowed him and drove him to focus on more insular, idiosyncratic work… one can almost hear him muttering, ‘make a movie of this you effing bastards,’ as he completed his pornographic masterwork Lost Girls, or the swirl of Cabala, sex magick, metaphysics, and superhero mythology comprising the work I extol here, Promethea.

Available in five volumes that collect the original comics, the spine of Promethea is conventional for the costumed vigilante genre: a young lady, Sophia Bangs (pay attention to those names, reader) finds herself blessed/cursed with the ability to transform herself into the curvaceous superheroine Promethea, who is able to fly, shoot beams of force from her caduceus, and so forth. In coming to terms with her new powers, she meets and beats assorted villains, and ushers in the end of the world.

Wait; what was that last part? End of the world? It’s hardly a spoiler to tell you so—from early on in Book One it’s clear that Promethea’s world faces the end of history.

But not by nuclear annihilation, as in Watchmen, but by Armageddon, Kali Yuga, Ragnarök, or some other name drawn from the end time theologies so often found in human spiritual systems. In her quest to understand her role as Destroyer, Sophie/Promethea thoroughly explores the Western esoteric tradition.

In his personal life, Moore is an accomplished ceremonial magickian and here, like Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials, he uses an exciting, bawdy, page-turning tale to sugarcoat serious philosophical instruction. The attentive reader will come away from Promethea with a useful grounding in tarot, cabala and the tree of life, Crowleyan ritual, and will even get an intriguing and accurate glimpse of Goetic demonology.

More importantly, by reading this book and letting it’s glorious graphics seduce you, you will imbibe a certain mindset and realize at gut level that what we are pleased to call reality is merely an insubstantial scrim imperfectly concealing the actual nature of existence. And as Sophie—and her entire world—are forced to acknowledge, confronting an unveiled all-that-is is both terrifying… and thrilling.

Travels, by Michael Crichton

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but the fact is, I like Michael Crichton’s novels and have read most of them. And of course, I’m not alone in that—Crichton’s books have sold 150 million copies worldwide. But relatively few have read Travels, which makes sense because it’s pretty much the opposite of a ‘Crichton book’. It’s short not long, it’s a memoir not thriller fiction, and it’s written in a graceful, unaffected voice, not the thudding, heart-pounding! thriller prose that Crichton mastered long before writers like Dan Brown or David Baldacci began to hammer readers over the head with it. I think he missed his audience with this one; Travels is not for the average thriller reader.

As you might guess from the title, Crichton is here writing a travel memoir but, crucially, he includes inner journeys as well. Beginning with his experiences as a 6’9” medical student who put himself through medical school writing potboilers—and the The Andromeda Strain—and continuing with multiple world trips, and his experiences meditating, directing movies, learning to see auras, tripping intensely, bending spoons, diving with sharks, etc. etc. His clear exposition of the events experienced and of his own mental state while they unfolded is what makes Travels remarkable. Also, his motivation for writing Travels is unimpeachable; he certainly didn’t need the money, and must have known that this book wouldn’t make him much anyway. Nor would it exactly burnish his reputation… the questing, skeptical-but-believing Michael Crichton on display in Travels is not the Michael Crichton he would want Hollywood agents to negotiate with.

So ultimately, Travels is immensely credible. Crichton tells me that he learned to bend spoons one evening, and I believe him. He tells me that a weekend workshop gave him the gift of seeing auras, and I start looking for such a workshop to attend myself…

And thus is reality undermined.

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

Just to get it out of the way, yes, these are Young Adult novels. And they’re based on Milton’s Paradise Lost… or so I’m told. But so what?—we must take wisdom where we find it, and in the three books of His Dark Materials—The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass—Pullman is not only wise, but brave, taking on, as he does, conventional religious thinking in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Most reviews of His Dark Materials focus on daemons, the animal-guised, familiar-like soul analogues that Pullman brilliantly fishes up from exceedingly deep archetypal waters and, yes, daemons are cool but for my money even more attention should be paid to his frankly anti-church agenda; read at the cusp of adolescence, these books will effectively immunize against excessive religiosity. I read them when I was struggling with my own religious addictions—I’m a recovering fundamentalist—and they were the kick in the ass I needed to actually change.

None of this would matter if Pullman was preachy or didactic, but fortunately—and unlike myself—he is neither. Instead, he couches his serious life lessons in a compulsively readable coming-of-age tale, set against a backdrop of witches, armored bears, dirigibles, and passages between worlds. As you are pulled from page to page, you will also be reordering your views on spiritual expression… so read with care.

My Life With the Spirits, by Lon Milo Duquette

Though I have cast spells, performed sex magick rituals, and worshipped my patron goddess Ostara under a full moon at Summer Solstice, the fact is I am a dilettante, not a practicing magickian. But even an armchair magickian must read astonishing quantities of written material, for surely it is the wordiest of hobbies, with tome after tome devoted to the arcana of divination, cabala, Crowleyan ritual, chaos magick, Enochian scrying, and so forth and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. And in all this vast, mostly fascinating, swamp of literature there is one writer, Lon Milo Duquette, who stands apart because he sees himself with without illusion, and because he writes with exceptional clarity, self-deprecation, and humor.

His Chicken Qabalah is a useful and lucid explication of how and why a non-Jew might explore Cabala for spiritual purposes, Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium is a perfectly acceptable primer for those interested in Western ceremonial magick, and should you decide to flirt with high strangeness and engage the Beast directly, you can have no better Virgil than Duquette in his books, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema, and Aleister Crowley’s Illustrated Goetia: Sexual Evocation.

But before you read any of these (and even if you have no intention to read these, or any, books on magick) read My Life With The Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician. Like three other books on this list, it is a memoir of alternative spirituality. Conventionally autobiographical, My Life With The Spirits follows Duquette from early childhood through delightfully rock-and-roll-and-magick infused hippie years, and into an adulthood as a sober and respected bishop of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Like all my favorite people, Duquette has a zest for direct experience and he exuberantly dives into yoga, communal life, magickal ritual, and whatever else captures his interest. And he writes up his experiences with the brio and humility that I associate with truth telling. His tales of Goetic evocation, for example, are masterpieces of immersion journalism: accurate, frightening, and funny.

Duquette’s writings undermine my grasp on conventional reality because they have the ring of truth. Based on my own (relatively trivial) magickal experimentation and his clear reporting, I am forced to accept that demons (and angels) are real and can act on our plane, that Enochian calls effectively summon visions of another world, and that a dead kitten can, under the influence of the right prana master, be restored to life.

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Duquette’s oeuvre is his attitude of, if you will, ‘dogmatic agnosticism’. He doesn’t insist that you believe him, doesn’t attempt to convert, and freely concedes that everything unusual that he experiences may well be ‘all in his head’. “But,” he continues (a little dogmatically), “you have no idea how big your head is!”

Living With Joy, by Sanaya Roman

I didn’t set out to become a fan of channeled material, and I can’t tell you how I came across Living with Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation, but in the six or so years that have passed since I abandoned fundamentalist Christianity no genre of literature has affected me more profoundly. Seth, I confess, is too intellectual for me, but Abraham and sometimes Kryon move me profoundly. And though he has a relatively small following—bad PR?—the entity who styles himself Oren, channeled by Sanaya Roman, has gradually and completely upended my world view, and Living with Joy is my bedside scripture.

There may be more to this world view than I am able to express, or I may be distorting it—I’ve been forced to admit in recent years that I am able to grasp only a small fraction of the data presented to me—but here is some of what I have gleaned:

• The all-that-is actively engages with individuals, reshaping itself to conform to an individual’s basic beliefs and expectations about reality. The all-that-is is like a nervous new lover, eager to conform to the beloved’s illusions.

• Our basic beliefs and expectations about reality are entirely within our control. Which is to say, the suite of beliefs we use to order and understand the all-that-is are choices, not understandings or deductions or inevitabilities. Likewise, we are free to expect whatever we like. Note: this is not to say that we control the all-that-is. It is more as if the all-that-is is an agreeable maestro, presenting itself in a way that is consonant with the observer’s disposition. But even so, certain verities persist, which is why day-to-day reality does not shift instantly to accommodate our fancies, as in a lucid dream.

• This being the case, it makes sense to deliberately choose our beliefs and shape our expectations so that we gradually create the most enjoyable life possible. We can also, incidentally, change our pasts by deliberately reinterpreting our memories.

• There are myriad techniques that accomplish this restructuring: prayer, spells, visualizations, drugs, ritual, are just a few effective examples. Different entities tend to focus on different techniques.

• You can start now.

By dipping into Living with Joy regularly, my thinking has gradually taken on this world view. I now pay attention to the tenor of my thoughts, state my goals in positive language, assume responsibility for my circumstances, etc., etc. And consequently, reality is now different for me. Delightful synchronicities abound, I live in freedom, experience joy, and no longer feel that I am a victim in a hostile environment. My fundamental belief about the way the world works is that the all-that-is is a wish granting machine, and that it dances with me every day.

Cosmic Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson

I didn’t realize until compiling this list that I have read a lot of spiritual memoirs, and have been largely remade in their image. None have affected me more profoundly than Robert Anton Wilson’s (PBUH) Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati, the essential first volume of his three volume autobiography.

For me it has always been books, not teachers, that appeared when I was ready, and Cosmic Trigger showed up when I first decided in my heart—where it mattered—that I could no longer abide the fundamentalist Christian cult I had faithfully espoused for the first 17 years of my adult life. I knew others who had left what I was then pleased to call, “The Truth.” Some were always sad or bitter, some fairly groveled in their efforts to reinstate themselves, some gave themselves over to unattractive dissipation, and at least one—a smart fellow, like me—was dead of suicide. I didn’t know of any, at the time, who had made a success of their heresy and infidelity, none who had attained the happy, creative heathenism that I so craved.

Cosmic Trigger broke me open like a thunderbolt, like the divine bolt of lightning that is seen in the tarot’s Tower card, redefining an individual existence. It was Wilson’s contention that we all live in “reality tunnels,” self-manufactured existences made up of our beliefs, hopes, and fears about the way things ‘really’ are. Had he said only this, it would have been enough, for just the phrase and his explication gave me a way to understand and work with the morbid eschatology I had lived within for so long.

But Wilson went further, describing his experiments with “rapid brain change.” In his efforts to overcome a “normal” Catholic upbringing (and parenthetically, I have always found it fascinating that so many interesting writers have Catholic school in their past—might the need to assert themselves early against an ancient propaganda set them on the road to literature?) Wilson deliberately made use of the brutal shocks to consciousness available via psychedelic drugs, taboo violation, ceremonial (especially Crowleyan) magick, the books of James Joyce, Sufi exercises, and the like. And by writing constantly and surrounding himself with a good wife and good friends, he managed to integrate the inrush of change that resulted and ended up—at least by his own estimation—a happier and saner man.

I copied him. I ingested LSD and psilocybin and salvia divinorum and lots of pot, I donned ceremonial garb and performed pagan rites, and I attended Sufi dances. And I found my own way, as well; since the cult to which I had formerly been faithful especially reviled tobacco and tarot, I bought myself some fine cigars and learned to smoke them while laying out a Celtic cross, and since I had so repetitiously heard that the Boss of all-that-is hates extramarital sex I made sure to have some ASAP. And I’ve done other things, too, meditations and visualizations, group sex and odd sex, sought out strange places and strange companions, and through it all I wrote constantly and surrounded myself with good friends… the wives came and went. And of course I had the guidance of Wilson himself, via his many books, and I have to say that at the end of it all I am—by my own estimation—a happier and saner man.

Cosmic Trigger is, of course, more than an extreme self help program. Wilson’s thoughts on personas, for example, are revelatory and his insights into the writer’s life remain a guide for me. Most of all, he tells his tales of an interesting life and philosophy in the whiskey-warmed, unpretentious voice of an ideal barstool companion.

Buy it, read it, live it. You have nothing to lose but all your illusions.

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One of the problems with not being a conspiracy theorist is that one has no easy explanations when faced with some of the more glaring oddities of the world around us. It is, for example, passing strange that the dollar bill features an all-seeing eye and pyramid and the fact that it can be explained does not mean that it has been explained, if you follow my drift. Similarly, the non-conspiracy theorist is forced into some fancy mental gymnastics when considering glaringly obvious phenomena, such as the presence of two Skull-and-Bonesmen in the 2004 presidential election (the Bonesmen won either way), the screwy layout of Washington D.C., and the pentagonal shape of the world’s most powerful military headquarters. Mundane explanations exist for all of these, but since they are bizarre facts to begin with, the mind is more comfortable with bizarre explanations involving the Illuminati, aliens, or the occult.

since they are bizarre facts to begin with, the mind is more comfortable with bizarre explanations

My own personal example of this began one morning when I was considering the Public Lands Survey System (PLSS) township layout, the 6×6 boustrephedonic square made up of 36 square mile ‘sections’. ‘Boustrephedonic’, incidentally, is the word for the right-to-left, left-to-right layout of the square – it’s from the Greek, and means ‘as an ox plows’ and in this case describes the descending, switchbacking layout of the square – see the illustration. I’ve always wondered about the township layout; why, for instance, is it boustrephedonic, and why is it 6×6, and not some other number? Idly, I added up the columns and rows, to see if there were any ‘magic square’ properties in the design. The columns all add up to 111 – try it yourself. A little experimentation showed that this is a feature of boustrephedonic squares with even, but not odd, numbered sides, so this is not mysterious. The rows, on the other hand, seemed to yield no pattern of interest… until I took one more step. I ‘reduced’ the numbers numerologically to yield a single digit number. That is, I added together the digits of the multi-digit numbers, and if the result was multi-digit I added again until a one digit number resulted. As seen below, the numerological sum of all the rows is three, and it takes no special flash of insight to see that the numerological sum of 111, the column sum, is also three. Curious.

I should say, here, that I am not much of a numerologist. I don’t work out year numbers, or look for numerological significance in the dates of my life. Still, I did read a book about it once, and took away numerological reduction as a sort of ‘mental fidgeting’. And number mysticism has a history in the West that goes all the way back to Pythagoras and his followers. Many great minds have succumbed, and the results are not always pretty. Isaac Newton, for example, spent at least as much time on numerical Biblical exegesis as he did on scientific work and his writings on those topics strike modern readers as deranged. Many movies, such as Pi and A Beautiful Mind, explore the tendency of the mind to project numerological meaning onto complex phenomena.

Be that as it may and ignoring, for the moment, the possibility that I was succumbing to number mysticism, the undeniable fact remained that the Government Land Office (GLO) township is a numerological magic square. I worked out boustrephedonic squares from 2×2 to 9×9, and only the 6×6 square has this property.

So; now what? Well, not having all that many facts at hand, I immediately began to theorize. Eventually, I came up with rather an elaborate scenario involving Thomas Jefferson, the Illuminati, and aerial photography – it was good for at least 20 minutes of happy hour conversation. But, upon investigation, the hypothesis broke down. Jefferson, for example, preferred a 10×10 square and there is no evidence of Illuminati involvement… but then, there wouldn’t be, would there? So I began to tire of the whole thing; not that I disbelieved my nutty theory, necessarily, but I began to bore even myself.

Kaballah?

It turns out that conventional magic squares are important in Kaballah, and are associated with the planets and astrological magic. The 6×6 square is associated with the sun, and is therefore the most powerful of these. One text of Western Occultism (for which Kaballah is a major source), dating from the 1400s, says of it, “The figure of the Sun is appropriated for kings and princes of this world, and it is square and has a grid of six, and it is the figure of total power.”

early Americans were determined to stamp the ‘figure of the Sun’ across the entire Continent – and nearly succeeded

Now, I only sort of believe in astrological magic, or rather, I’m learning to suspend judgement about the exotic belief systems of others, but it is a fact that humans have apparently always used the progressions of the night sky for mystical purposes, and after 1,000’s of years, astrology very much remains part of our world – something about it is irresistibly seductive to some human minds. And interestingly, amazing feats of engineering have a long association with astronomy and astrology. The Pyramids, of course, and Stonehenge, are just two of the many examples of major ancient accomplishments which are now believed to have been largely motivated by astrological concerns. But considered as a whole, the township system is this planet’s most significant man made feature – it would swallow thousands of Great Walls. It is easily visible from space. Which leads to the rather strange thought that future archaeologists, investigating the wonder that was America, will uncover the whole system of townships and naturally conclude that early Americans were determined to stamp the ‘figure of the Sun’ across the entire Continent – and nearly succeeded.

An Apocalyptic Sum

Here is the key; and anyone who has intelligence may work out the number of the beast. The number represents a man’s name, and the numerical value of its letters is six hundred and sixty-six. –Revelation 13:18, New English Bible

Now What?

Now what is the poor non-conspiracy theorist to do, faced with such a rich source of peculiarity? Probably the best thing to do is to ignore such rabbit holes, but instead I began to wonder about possible motivations. That is, if there were some shadowy group behind all this, what might their motives have been?

Because the GLO square has definitely had a major effect on the United States, quite aside from its impact on surveying. Fly over the United States, or look at aerial photos. You will see a grid, a chessboard; square fields or developed blocks bounded by straight roads. No other sector of the Earth is laid out like this. Fly over any part of Europe, or Asia, or South America, or… anywhere but here, really. You will see roads and fields that follow contours, that give way to hills and mountains, that nestle up to forest edges and creeks. You will see a human landscape that is shaped by the natural world; but in the United States, most of us live in a landscape that is—thanks to ownership lines imposed arbitrarily—imposed upon the natural world, laid over it like graph paper on a map. The township system is part of the structural underpinning of U.S. culture, part of every American’s mental furniture. It may not be, quite, the air we breathe but it is certainly the ground we walk on. It shapes our visible world and it shapes us.

Is it too crazy, too speculative, to say that Americans are a different people as a result of our different environment, that our national culture is partially a product of our national landscape? As a nation, we do tend to ride roughshod, at times, over the natural world. Could our straight roads and square fields be shaping us as much as we shape them?

Now here I speculate wildly, but bear with me. One word for the tendency to impose order on nature is ‘Apollonian’. The sun god, Apollo, has long been associated with classical order, control, discipline and masculinity – as opposed to the Moon Goddess, traditionally associated with wildness, paganism, and femininity. As a nation, the United States is considerably more ‘solar’ than ‘lunar’.

But since the 6×6 square is a solar device, a fascinating (and, yes, nutty and conspiratorial) possibility comes to mind. There is the interesting, unlikely, crazy possibility that some person or group manipulated the choice of GLO township layout in an attempt to cast a Kabbalistic spell over an entire nation… and there is the possibility that it worked.

Of everything I’ve written, the above piece has generated by far the most response. I’m glad. It’s one of those stories that took a couple of years to write, as different puzzle parts fell into place. There were a couple of things I didn’t try to include in the published article (which first appeared in a magazine for land surveyors) or on my radio show. For one, it was really odd how information came to me about this. For example, the occult book mentioned (it is alarmingly titled, Conjuring Spirits) practically jumped out at me from a bookstore shelf and opened in my hands to the Kaballah square that began to tie everything together. Another, weirder, happenstance had to do with my study of a classic ‘master’ conspiracy theory known as the Sirius Mystery, and centering on a book of that title by Robert Temple, and also on an underground bestseller by über conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson titled Cosmic Trigger. The basic idea of the Sirius Mystery is that beings from the Sirius star system visited several ancient civilizations to jumpstart human technology, while also providing the magickal basis for every conspiracy since, from the Knights Templar to the Priory of Sion (don’t ask). Naturally, they are in psychic contact with some humans, and intend to return fairly soon…

Anyway, Wilson’s book mentioned that he and two other writers, Doris Lessing and Phillip K. Dick, all wrote books about aliens from Sirius at more or less the same time, and without having any contact each other. I’d read Dick’s book, and decided to read Lessing’s, Shikasta. It’s a good read, but most notable for me was one of the book’s concluding passages, which described the gridded look of the sectionalized United States and attributed it to the evil ‘Shikasta’ influence! It was an odd moment; two separate conspiracy type thingies that I had been studying and thinking and talking about obsessively for more than a year suddenly and unexpectedly came together with a bang. For a couple of days, the world was a different place for me.

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Do I banish? Do I invoke? Do I evoke spirits? Yes

For those who don’t recognize the name, Lon Milo Duquette is among the most visible and eminent modern ceremonial magicians. He’s an authority on Aleister Crowley and his magical systems, a high ranking member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and a prolific and exceptionally talented author who has published some of the very best and most accessible modern expositions of ancient magical systems such as Enochian and Goetic magick. His writing is marked by grace, humility, and humor, and authority based on extensive research and experience. That he is a member of the Illuminati seems obvious, though he has yet to admit as much in public.

The interview below contains a scoop—the subject and proposed name of Lon’s next book. Enjoy.

• What’s a typical day like for one of the world’s most visible magicians? Do you have a daily magickal practice?

Since I left my 9 to 5 job to become a full-time Lon back in 2003 there hasn’t been a typical day. One thing hasn’t changed, however, and that’s my daily preoccupation with affecting the magical miracle of keeping a roof over our heads and the medical insurance paid.

I travel a lot giving workshops, lectures all over the country and world. I am probably most magically disciplined when I’m on the road. I take full meditative advantage of the hours of unbroken silence as I stand in airport security lines and sit quietly at the gate area. My hotel room becomes my hermit’s cell, where the meager equipment necessary to maintain my life and comfort is neatly bundled into one bag.

Do I banish? Do I invoke? Do I evoke spirits? Yes. Even on the road I do these things, But after decades of performing pentagram and hexagram rituals, Star Rubies, Star Sapphires, etc. my personal banishings, invocations, and evocations have taken on extremely personal dimensions and might not (indeed, SHOULD not) be recognizable or understood by others.

At home a typical day starts between 3:00 and 3:30 AM. Before I get out of bed I do a general ‘getting-off-on-the-right-foot-personal banishing/invocation’ that would take me all day to describe …so I won’t. I then grab a cold bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator and shut myself in my office and start writing. I’m usually working on the next book, but I also have two or three other smaller projects –usually introductions or forewords to other people’s books, or lecture/workshop material that need attention. I’ll work on two or three chapters at the same time. I’ve found that when I get burned out on one train of thought I need only change the subject to feel completely refreshed and energized.

I try to write until around 8:00 AM. By then Constance has been up for awhile and brings me a cup of tea. I continue pecking on the book, but I also start checking my email and getting myself enmeshed in the objective reality of the day. I’ll take a walk around the neighborhood or the nearby parks before coming home to breakfast on the backyard patio. Constance has our tiny backyard garden teeming with flowers (and a few squash, green beans and tomatoes). The roses are insane! So are the humming birds.

We say ‘will’ (a Thelemic affirmation) before all our meals. We also try to recite ‘Resh’ in the morning, noon, sunset, and before retiring.

I stay in the office for most of the day. I get some serious work done, but I have to confess I spend far too much time farting around with my email….LIKE I’M DOING NOW! and working on scheduling my talks, etc. I have my guitar on a stand right behind my chair and I play it to unwind. I probably now play my guitar 2-3 hours a day… more when I have a gig that evening.

I try to catch a nap in the afternoon. Then I get up and take another walk before dinner (or, on nights I have a singing gig, a little snack). I try to get to bed around 11:00PM. Then the whole thing starts over again. Aren’t you sorry you asked?

• Is it reasonable to consider magick done to elevate or refine the self as being different from magick done to ‘get things’—that is, to get a better job, or a place to live, or a creative opportunity? If so, how do you strike a balance between the two?

“Elevating and refining the self” is the reason you do magick “to get things done”.

• Should have asked this first, probably, but: do you prefer ‘magick’ or ‘magic’?

I don’t care anymore. I use “Magick” when the audience as an understanding and appreciation of term, and “Magic” when the audience is so green that the “k” would be just one more bit of confusion, i.e., I title one book “The Magick of Aleister Crowley” and other, “The Key to Solomon’s Key – Secrets of Magic and Masonry”. I don’t however use the word “Magickal.” I don’t know why. It just bugs me.

• In My Life With The Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician you discuss delightful adventures with the Goetia and with Enochian magick; what have been your ongoing experiences with these branches of magick?

Glad you asked! I’ll write a lot more on both those subjects in my new book (should be out in 2010). It’s called (if the publisher allows) “Low Magick”. Until then, I’ll have to ask you to wait.

• How important a figure has Aleister Crowley been in your life?

Very important.

• I noticed you were on the faculty of Maybe Logic Academy: what do you teach, and were you close to Robert Anton Wilson?

I knew Bob, but I can’t honestly say we were real close. Our lodge presented him with our ‘annual’ Illuminati Award. Every year for a few years running the organizers of Pantheacon booked us to share the same hotel room. That was a kick.

So far I’ve taught four classes at Maybe Logic Academy – two each of “Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot” and “Initiation – The Western Magical Tradition”. I’m about to give new class on “Enochian Vision Magick.” Stay tuned!

• If an intelligent young person, interested in magick, asked you for three books to read, what would you suggest?

I have to be shameless and suggest three pairs of books:

Crowley’s Magick: Book 4, Liber Aba and my The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema.

Crowley’s The Book of Thoth and my Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.

[Belief Systems & Other BS note: You'll also want the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck discussed in the above two volumes]

Crowley’s The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis Regis) and my The Key to Solomon’s Key: Secrets of Magic and Masonry.

• Thank you very much.

You’re welcome.

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We performed pagan rites involving sex and magick under her serene gaze

My first pagan altar was a simple bedside affair, presided over by the postcard of a somewhat generic goddess whom I took to be Ostara. I was nearly 40, deliberately learning a new skill after 17 years of Christian fundamentalism, and it struck me that altars had relatively few necessary/sufficient components, to wit:

1) An image of the Divine—you can’t practice idolatry without an idol.
2) A defined area, over which the image presides.
3) Some tokens of the things or changes desired.
4) Offerings to the Divine.

The actual subject of veneration is your choice and there are few rules. Basically, find a pantheon that appeals to you. It might be as elaborate and time-honored as the Hindu cosmology, or as up to date and ephemeral as the Power Puff girls. Just make sure the being chosen speaks to you in some way, or at least gives you a little frisson of naughtiness.

Images and idols aren’t mysterious: they’re among the earliest artifacts of humankind, and have an honorable place in our cultural evolution. Again (and always), you make the rules; if you’re a Star Wars fan, for example, you might like to bow to a bust of Darth Vader—kinky! The idol’s form is not too important—sculpture, painting, photos, clay figures, etc. all seem to ‘work’—though of course it is hard to resist the idea that fancier, more elaborate images invoke the god more effectively. And so, idols have been the focus of considerable skill and capital over the years, from gilt messiahs to 100-foot Buddhas.

My Altar to Ganesha

Likewise, your defined area can certainly be an entire building, or a dedicated room, but it is more likely to be a shelf or window ledge or some other little niche and this is fine. When it comes to idols, ‘don’t spoil the darlings’ I always say. But it is important that the area be circumscribed in space and consigned to the god. You don’t want to be setting coffee down in the god’s precinct, and here’s why: what you are creating is sacred space, a sort of threshold between this plane and the Immateria, and such a space cannot exist unless it is defined and contained; otherwise, material reality might be corrupted… and there are rules against that. And since the definition or boundary of the space is important, it follows that emphasizing the boundary will enhance the positive results you are seeking. So be clear, at least in your mind. The altar should be this shelf or this tabletop or, perhaps, the area surrounded by this chalk line or piece of string. In the terminology of Hakim Bey, definer of temporary autonomous zones (TAZs), you are creating a ‘zone’, an area that is ‘autonomous’ in that ordinary rules don’t apply. The effect is real, so have fun—and be alert.

Never forget that the altar is all about you. An altar (or entire religion, for that matter) that exists solely to placate some ineffable being without addressing the desires of his, her, or its supplicants is not only sad, but perverse—gods and goddesses exist to serve Man, and not vice-versa. So place, on your altar, tokens of your desire. For example, if you would like a new car of a particular model to come into your life, you might find the the same model ‘matchbox’ car to use as a token, or if you desire a nicer home you could place a Monopoly house. In my case, since the end of my time as a believer corresponded roughly with the end of my first marriage, I was after a new relationship. So I found a postcard—hey, they’re cheap—of a couple kissing exuberantly at an outdoor café. The picture captured the essence of the strong, happy love I was looking for, and several weeks after placing it I met the Farm Girl, who eventually became my second wife. Not only was she an exuberant kisser, not only did she slightly resemble the woman depicted, but she had one more interesting characteristic related to the postcard…

Some weeks after meeting the Farm Girl, I took a closer look at the postcard as I removed it from the altar (it had served its purpose) and noticed, for the first time, that there was a dog in the picture, under the café table, on a leash being held by the woman; it seemed like more than coincidence that the Farm Girl was a dog owner. So can you blame me if I now scrutinize my tokens a little more carefully? Because honestly?—the dog was a pain in the ass.

And of course you must please the god or goddess with offerings because otherwise, what’s in it for them? But don’t go overboard; we are talking, after all, about divine beings… surely they can provide for themselves adequately. It really is the thought that counts here… so put some thought into it. Don’t, for example, offer alcohol to Ganesha: he prefers candy. For Ostara, since she is associated with Spring—the word ‘Easter’ is derived from her name—flowers always seemed appropriate, and once I planted a tree and left the receipt for the tree on her altar. In effect you are bribing the incorporeal intelligence of your choice, but since the bribe is symbolic the absolute value of the bribe is unimportant. What matters is the appropriateness of the offering, its taste and style—as one classic manual of idolatry says, “Whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it will not be accepted for you.” – Leviticus 22:20.

In short—and as in so many things, damn it—you have to care; in all their guises, gods are said to read hearts and if your offering is halfhearted you can expect far less than half effort from the Divine.

Letting Go and Moving On
During our brief time together, the Farm Girl and I elevated our worship of Ostara considerably. The farm we bought together was named for Her, we publicly venerated Her at the large solstice parties we threw, and Her altar expanded from the simple bedside affair to a dedicated table presided over by an exquisite and eerily lovely print of the Goddess that occasionally winked at me. We performed pagan rites involving sex and magick under her serene gaze, enjoying ourselves tremendously and, not incidentally, experiencing staggering rushes of synchronistic blessings on our affairs. And this is all as it should be: if your circumstances improve, and if you feel your god has had a hand in the improvement, it only makes sense that the god’s circumstances and rites should also improve.

Still, when my marriage to the Farm Girl collapsed I was happy enough to divorce Ostara as well; the two seemed a set. I drifted godless for a while, making my way in the world with no patron whatsoever, until a series of chance encounters led me to Ganesha, the god of obstacles both removed and imposed. His cheerful, elephantine countenance, His placid potbelly, and the elaborate symbology available to His worshippers make for quite a change from Ostara, PBUH. The essentials, however, are the same. For an idol I have a small sculpted head brought to me from Lhasa by an adventurous friend. His altar space is a former phone nook in the entryway of my apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. The tokens of desire I place are idiosyncratic, but meaningful to me and, apparently, to Him. I offer candies purchased for the purpose from an Indian grocer in my neighborhood. I was advised on this matter by the Indian family who operates my parking garage: the Ganesh altar they keep is considerably more ornate than my own, but they encourage my efforts and are genial fellow devotees. They have given me, for example, the correct incense to burn before the Great Lord.

I pray to the idol, and occasionally prostrate my self before it—it’s kind of fun, and I enjoy the act’s vaguely sexual undercurrents. And yes, Ganesha has been effective in my life. Under His auspices my business improved, travel opportunities came into my life, He oversaw my move to San Francisco, provided transient but satisfying romantic encounters and, when the time came for me to meet the Diva, PBUH, dispelled seemingly insurmountable obstacles to our courtship with a single, trumpeting blast from His mighty trunk. He is, in other words, the Shit.

How Serious Am I?
So how serious am I about all this? Quite serious, in that I do believe my heathen idolatry is at least partially responsible for various and sundry good things in my life, and serious in that I do feel that prayers and requests made to Ostara and Ganesha have been ‘answered’. But when it comes to my explanation for the tangible effects observed, the mechanism that explains the power I am tapping into… maybe not so serious.

Consider this possible continuum of faith: on one end, the ‘low faith’ end, we posit that the practice of idolatry is merely a technology that tames the unconscious, a trick that focuses latent intellectual powers on issues that bedevil us. On the ‘high faith’ end of the continuum we posit that the gods and goddesses, in all their divine glory, actually exist on some plane, actually monitor the few or many altars devoted to them, and decide, based on the quality of devotion, who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, who gets gifts and who gets lice. In this view, it’s all up to the incorporeal intelligence being supplicated, and we are servant to their awful whim.

The low faith end, it should be noted, is not especially controversial. That focusing techniques like visualization, goal setting, and affirmation are effective is believed by much of humanity, and there is ample scientific and anecdotal evidence to support the idea. Basically, the prayers and ritual of idolatry are viewed as another method of harnessing the variety of mental processes that are not under conscious control. The high faith end, I suppose, is a little controversial… except that billions of humans have believed some version of it for thousands of years.

When asked where my beliefs fall on this continuum, I used to hedge a bit and natter on about an intermediate view involving Jungian archetypes, mass thought forms, genetic memory, belief systems, synchronicities, and on and on, ad nauseum. But more recently I’ve realized that the continuum is not a line, it’s a circle, and the two extremes I propose are not opposites… they’re identical.

In other words if, as Alan Moore says, “The one place gods undoubtedly exist is in human minds,” then it’s possible that all our sacrifice and devotion, all our prayer and ritual, all our religion, are but ways to tame the gods between our ears, the vast unconscious forces that shape and sustain us and upon which we are borne as fleas are borne on elephants.

In other other words, those of ceremonial magician Lon Milo Duquette, ‘Yes, it is all in your head… but you have no idea how big your head is!’

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