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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The promiscuous mingling of church and state left me slightly nauseated

On a recent visit to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, I happened across the Washington Memorial Chapel, which looks very like a small cathedral, except that larded in with the pulpit, pews, baptismal font and other trappings of ritualized Yahweh worship one also finds heroic statues, state seals, bad poetry and other elaborate encrustations more often associated with city halls, capitol buildings, and other excretions of Governmentlandia. The promiscuous mingling of church and state left me slightly nauseated and even a little shocked, for usually the two principalities have the decency to partially veil their incestuous intercourse. Not that they ever really take a break: the intertwining of spiritual and temporal urges dates at least to the days that popes crowned kings and though there have been spats down through the centuries the relationship is still passionate. And like any relationship that stands the test of time, the attraction is not merely physical—there are numerous practical benefits. Churches benefit when the state mandates, or at least encourages, religious observance and prohibits the use of psychedelics and other alternative spirituality. And governments are always happy to have their subjects sedated by the opiate of the masses and made ready for war or servitude, as the need arises. In business terms—and what other terms could possible apply?—the synergies maximize profit.

But whether we puny humans, struggling to achieve a bit of happiness in this vale of sorrow, also benefit is certainly debatable. It’s difficult, after all, to see institutionalized religion as anything but an expensive inconvenience and the best thing one can say for most governments is that they do a good job tidying up our corpses after we die in the wars they inflict on us. So reducing the reach and influence of these predators is greatly to be desired, and prohibiting their immoral congress is a good place to start.

Because I have a large brain, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, ‘Hey, here in the United States we do separate church and state’ but the separation I have in mind would be considerably more separate. Public officials would not be sworn in on the Bible or any other holy book, they would not be allowed to publicly express religious beliefs—ideally they’d be atheists, or at least agnostic—there’d be no such job as senate chaplain, and in every other way conceivable the two lovers would be thoroughly segregated, or at least adequately chaperoned.

I find it curious that believers are so eager to get in bed with politicians, and a little hypocritical as well. After all, if there is anything at all to this God they keep nattering on about, He is presumably able to take care of Himself, and even promote His preferred agenda, without the aid of government programs, pogroms, or other manifestations of politicized religiosity. And certainly His followers are able to cause more than enough trouble without the benefit of State support.

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It occurred to me, recently, that all religion is at least mildly insulting to the divine. For think about it: religions, of all flavors, always assume that humans are somehow wanting, are incomplete or imperfect or unhappy, are somehow in need of help from a pastor or guru, or faith or doctrine or special diet, or something. And so religions put themselves in the position of perfecting God’s creation… and that, I assert, is a little insulting: for why would the God or Goddess, or however you style the divine, need human help to get things right? Shouldn’t we assume that He or She knew what they were doing? Wouldn’t the genuinely faithful have a little, well, faith that everything is just precisely as it should be, including our own miserable, sniveling selves?

So Christianity is pretty bad, but the other religions are hardly better

Christianity is the worst in this regard assuming, as it does, that all men, and even women, are not only born fatally flawed, but will be tortured and/or destroyed by the divine unless they submit to a bizarre and highly variable set of rules and contort their reasoning powers to accept evidence free propositions, for example that the all-that-is was created a few thousand years ago by their preferred theocrat in a literal six days, or that said theocrat, once upon a time, flooded the entire Earth in a fit of pique. And in most versions of this cheerful belief system, even rigorous adherence to such inanities is not enough to guarantee salvation; worshipers are still subject to divine whim. So the Creator, in their view, is an inscrutable, capricious, murderous jerk, and I know I don’t like it when people say that about me.

So Christianity is pretty bad, but the other religions are hardly better. Hinduism seems to describe a snakes and ladders game of reincarnation, with the Divine as a martinet taskmaster, demoting those who slip up in some manner. Per Islam, God is a bit of a narcissistic authoritarian requiring an almost fetishistic obedience. And even Buddhism, which usually gets a free ride from us godless liberals, asserts that we are born to suffering and must discipline ourselves stringently if we are ever to escape this wheel of misery. But really, religion has to posit that humans are somehow lacking, for otherwise there would be no need for religion; and from a religion’s point of view, where’s the fun in that?

My own belief, and a core tenet of my faith, the Church of Universal Love and Truth, is that we humans, in all our profane excess, are perfect just as we are, by divine grace, and that the Divine One is a kind and jovial being, chiefly concerned with fulfilling all our desires and being amused by our picaresque antics. In fact God, as I conceive Him, lets only one thing occasionally get under His skin, and that happens… when humans insist on being rude.

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it’s more like looking for a needle in a haystack in a minefield while being fired upon, while also staying alert for exploding needles

Touch a person where they hurt, and they will fairly often scream, “religion”. So much of our pain derives from out attempts to be right with God that it seems like nations should consider imposing strict controls on the practice, much as they license and regulate driving, drugs, guns and other activities too dangerous for children and idiots.

But what am I saying? Of course nations regulate religion and other belief systems, and the Chinese Government’s attempts to co-opt Tibetan Buddhism are not essentially different from Saudi Arabia’s promotion of its preferred flavor of Islamic Fundamentalism or the nexus of money, false piety, and guaranteed votes that we in America are pleased to call the “Religious Right”. In these cases, and in all such cases, the irreducible formula is always the same; the sincere eternal aspirations of the many are made to serve the temporal ambitions of the cynical few.

That being the case—and who am I to dispute the entire corpus of human history?—one is tempted to suggest that as a general rule legitimate religion must always be out of favor with the State, must always be found among a society’s persecuted minorities. So societal disapproval can be seen as a necessary prerequisite of genuine spiritual intrusion, but necessary is not necessarily sufficient; mere persecution does not make a Christ of a Koresh and execution by the State, though a promising start, is not in every case the seal of God’s anointed. Sometimes the slaughter of innocents is simply a case of mistaken identity, or overly broad application of a common lead based pesticide.

So for the seeker of Truth or God or Spirit or some other Capitalized Noun the situation is somewhat more difficult than looking for a needle in a haystack; it’s more like looking for a needle in a haystack in a minefield while being fired upon, while also staying alert for exploding needles. Forced to search in society’s lunatic fringe by the nature of power, but impelled back to the center by the mandates of love, the sincere spiritual aspirant is fairly often paranoid, manic, frantic and exhausted, and not the kind of person who automatically inspires trust. He or she might even be impoverished, the certain mark of a pariah in our culture.

But here’s the thing; these hopelessly marginalized individuals seem to inspire inordinate dread in the halls of power. Their living room meetings are spied on, their leaders are assassinated by useful idiots with tenuous military connections, their movements are discredited by vicious propaganda… in some ways, they are the ones who seem to have power, while governments are reduced to the bullying tactics of the weak. It’s a puzzling situation, and I don’t know what to make of it. But the next time I happen across some lunatic explaining the evils of fluoride, or a UFO cult member, or a didgeridoo playing swami… well, I may not sign up for whatever program she’s offering, but I’ll probably give her a listen.

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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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God, if he exists, is more liberal than any of his followers, and he doesn’t play favorites

Luminiferous aether is a scientific concept (a belief system, if you will) that consumed the energies of physicists from 1704, when Isaac Newton published Opticks, until 1887 when Albert Michelson and Edward Morley constructed an elaborate scientific apparatus on a massive slab of marble, floated the slab in a pool of mercury, and failed to find the evidence for aether that they were expecting—the Michelson-Morley experiment is said to be the most significant null result in the history of science, and Michelson was later awarded a Nobel Prize.

Aether was thought to be the medium through which light propagates, and for most of the 200 years that it preoccupied science, experimenters assumed that it was so fine, so ethereal, that it eluded detection even by sophisticated instruments. But when Michelson and Morley built the most sensitive measuring device ever conceived, and still found nothing, scientists accepted the lack of evidence for aether as evidence for lack of aether. This is cool, because lack of evidence more often makes believers dig in and look harder.

Take religion. Please. Humans have been experimenting with the technology of divine supplication for lo! these many millennia and yet, still there is no real evidence that the all-that-is cares who is doing the supplicating or how it’s being done. In other words, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, whatever: if one of these was better than the others, more favored by the Divine, you’d think that it would have ‘won’ by now, that its followers would be obviously healthier, happier and more prosperous than those of other religions, that the lands where it held sway would be more peaceful, that it would be, in other words, an advantage to be an adherent. But such is not the case. It’s been a few hundred thousand years and I think it’s safe to say that no particular religion has emerged as measurably effective at delivering a better life; humans everywhere seem to have roughly the same proportions of bliss and misery, regardless of church affiliation, or lack thereof.

Perhaps what is needed is a really good experiment. I’m thinking a reality TV show. We select, say, 50 babies for each of the top 20 religions, making sure that they’re from families that are roughly equal in socioeconomic status. And then we follow these babies for a lifetime, maybe checking in with them quarterly, and at 80 years or so we compare their measurable statistics, things like net worth, obesity, amount of anti-depressants consumed, and so forth. If there are any religions that are outstandingly—and measurably—better off than a control group of godless heathens then fine, everyone alive converts.

Oh, who am I kidding? This will never happen—for one thing, the ratings would suck. But also, this experiment has already been done, with millions of humans over thousands of years, and the results are pretty clear—God, if he exists, is more liberal than any of his followers, and he doesn’t play favorites.

But apparently, when it comes to religion, it’s not results that matter.

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…ultimately gematria seems no more insane than the mystic theology of any religion

The ancient and voluminous Hebrew mystic methodology known as ‘cabala’ contains many wonders and can even be stretched to contain, just barely, the ignorant maunderings of Madonna and others of her celebrity ilk. But the aspect of cabala that typically captures the interest of Western mathematicians, ceremonial magicians, theologians and other librarians of the invisible is gematria, the alphanumeric system used to investigate and catalog the nature of God as revealed in language and number. Those who practice gematria rejoice in the seemingly more than coincidental associations between aspects of reality that one expects to be completely unrelated. As an example, gematria delights in the fact that there are exactly 22 solid figures that can be composed from regular polygons. This mathematical trivia is then considered alongside the fact that there are exactly 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and exactly 22 pathways on the cabalistic Tree of Life and from there the cabalist can spend days, months or years deciding which solids should be assigned to which pathway. At first blush, gematria can seem obsessive and at second blush, very obsessive, but more study reveals profound beauty in the lengthy chains of association and ultimately gematria seems no more insane than the mystic theology of any religion and a fairly reliable technology for demonstrating to the adherent that, in fact, everything is connected to everything else and that our feelings of separateness are illusory.

Cabalists traditionally had a strained relationship with conventional Jewish religion and were generally viewed as odd intellectuals pursuing unlikely coincidences with little meaning in the ‘real world’, whatever that might be. In this respect they are very like today’s conspiracy theorists, who also sift language obsessively, looking for the connections between worldly phenomena that appear, on the surface, to be completely unrelated. And, like cabalists, as we conspiracy theorists progress in our studies, we also find that, indeed, everything is connected to everything so that, for example, the annual hijinks at the Bohemian Grove can be traced back to Egyptian initiatory ritual and forward from there to Freemasonry and the JFK assassination and from there sideways to Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons whose Amalantrah and Babalon workings invoked the entity Lam and ripped a void in the etheric planes that opened the way for the modern UFO phenomenon and the military industrial complex which—by constructing the High-frequency Active Aural Research Project, HAARP—have brought about most of the modern weather disasters and earthquakes not to mention 9/11 which has numerological associations linking it to the star Sirius and the Secret Chiefs and… well, let’s not even get started on ritual child abuse, MK-ULTRA, Project Paperclip and chemtrails. In fact, lets not only not get started let’s not even acknowledge that we had this conversation because, after all, since we conspiracists believe these things, you don’t have to.

But where Cabala’s interlinked meanings are said to gradually lead the devotee to a beatific vision of God illuminating everything, the face of Maya seems darker to the modern mind and the twisted trails of conspiracy theory end in unsettling revelations, though Illuminati may be involved. And this grimmer vision, sadly, seems considerably more in tune with the world we now find ourselves inhabiting.

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Does your religion frown on certain information? This is a bad sign

My experiences with organized worship have left me stone paranoid regarding the entire concept, and my preferred form of divine propitiation is a melange of paganism, channeled material, freeform idolatry and a host of other spiritual technologies with no hierarchies, no headquarters, no uniforms and no other trappings of modern corporate religion. I suppose I am just a bitter heathen but in fact I don’t absolutely despise every manifestation of organized religion and I am even willing to admit that the big clumsy bureaucracies are occasionally able to do somewhat less harm than good. But it does seem to me that the adherents of corporate spirituality too rarely exercise their god given rights as consumers in a capitalist society to quit a religion that isn’t providing as much utility and pleasure as it should. To encourage a more discriminating approach to religious choice, I here present Part 1 of the Belief Systems and Other BS Field Guide to Bad Religion.

Guideline 1: Does your religion frown on certain information? This is a bad sign. Some religions consider it a sin, for example to read the holy books of other peoples, or to share in alien rituals and ceremonies. But in the marketplace of ideas, truth must surely be at a distinct advantage, and to believe that knowledge of other paths will lure the flock away from the preferred faith can only be seen as cowardice; and though I am spleenless, partially blind, and drool when I sleep, I do know enough of the divine to state definitely that it has no truck with fear. Perhaps it is time to change your spiritual provider.

Guideline 2: Does your religion take a lot of time? Mmm. Keep in mind that whatever eternal mystery excreted humanity also created the plant and animal kingdoms, the trillions on trillions of stars and their attendant planets, whale songs and the myriad other glorious manifestations of the material world. The Goddess, in other words, is quite busy and she can’t be expected to spend several nights a week monitoring the whiny histrionics of followers who could be spending more time exploring her creation and blessing her creatures. Maybe you should get out more.

Guideline 3: Does your religion frown on pleasure? Isn’t that a little… ungrateful? After all, to suppose that humans were brought into this world with the capacity to enjoy sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll and are then to be punished for doing so is to suppose that God is an evil, fiendish trickster and to worship such a being is either perverse or masochistic. Lighten up. We know not from whence we came, or to where we go next, but while we inhabit this lovely planet, these fascinating physical vessels, to enjoy ourselves extravagantly is surely a divine imperative.

Well I could easily list a dozen such guidelines and talk for hours on each, especially at my favorite service, Koko Cocktail’s happy hour. But for now, let me leave you with a final thought: when it comes to religion, you gotta shop around.

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…the novels of Tom Robbins, for example, have been at least as rewarding as my Bible fixation

Wilkie Collins’ 1868 novel, The Moonstone, in addition to creating the ‘thriller’ genre, includes a sly commentary on the nature of scripture in the form of a minor character named Gabriel Betteredge, an eccentric who practices a form of bibliomancy with the novel Robinson Crusoe—essentially treating it as a combination of Bible and I Ching. Betteredge—get it, better edge?—cites Robinson Crusoe by chapter and page number, treats some passages as parables and, generally, looks to the novel for insight into the future and spiritual guidance in daily life.

When I first read The Moonstone I found this amusing and even slightly scandalous for I firmly believed, at the time, that the Bible was uniquely and divinely inspired. But in retrospect, I wonder if Collins was doing something rather daring for his time; for Betteredge’s use of Robinson Crusoe is rather effective, and the ‘verses’ he cites are pithy, wise, and occasionally clairvoyant. The implicit comparison is to the Bible, and frankly, considered as a whole, Robinson Crusoe is considerably better plotted and its overarching theme of survival in a hostile environment is more practical, at least for those stranded on a desert island.

So an interesting question is posed; can humans make a book scripture simply by treating it as such? And have we done so with the books generally acknowledged to be inspired, such as the Koran or the Bible?

The example of scripture that seized my mind was the Bible, and during the several years I struggled to weaken its hold on me I was eventually forced to conclude that yes, I was making scripture of a fairly ordinary set of documents, mainly by approaching them with exuberantly circular reasoning. Since I began with the assumption that the Bible was inspired, I further assumed that all its many logical flaws, inconsistencies, and historical and scientific errors were resolvable. And when, by dint of religiously fervent research and mental restructuring I was able to resolve flaws, I viewed my inventive resolutions as yet more proof that the Bible was inspired.

But here’s the thing: a similarly reverent approach to just about any sufficiently complex book will yield similar results. My own experiments with the novels of Tom Robbins, for example, have been at least as rewarding as my Bible fixation. Whether a similar approach would work with the books of Harold or Anthony Robbins is an experiment I’ll leave to readers.

This probably sounds like I’m attacking religion, again, but in fact I have no beef with those who look to holy writ for spiritual guidance, and will even concede that the world’s various bibles are inspired. But all art is inspired. And to blindly insist on the primacy of some books over others, without acknowledging the role that humans play in the creation of sanctity, is the opposite of enlightenment.

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