Cogito Ergot Sum

In January 1945 a palimpsest was discovered beneath the altar of a gnostic nunnery 144 km east of Alexandria. Although only a fragment from the legendary Book of Alzor, it provides a glimpse into the mysteries of the Church of Lillith.

The translation is provided by the reclusive hermetic scholar, Victor Wolf. The fragment begins:

“I Iasos, have eaten the body of god, which some call Manna, others the Prepuce of God, but more correctly the Venom of the Jeweled Serpent. Soon I felt him moving. I allowed all the spirit within to come up and out. I felt an alternating current moving, twitching in my legs; when I closed the eyes, I could see waves of light and dark rapidly alternating. My body was disquieted, vibrating, moving to an emergent rhythm; I twisted counterclockwise, then clockwise. I am restless and pace, stalking like a panther. When I walked it was with a bobbing motion, and I felt myself astride a latent earthquake, like a fremen climbing onto the Sand Worm of Time. My left foot upon its dark side, my right on the light; this my only purpose: to remain standing and balance the two serpentine flows. These serpents are the mother/father of all forms, and I am the Daughter/Son, the Child of Light. I am she-Horus being born(e).

I look into the mirror. The world is invested with my face in the lower Light, it is ugly, and imprisoning. I don’t like it, I want to escape. And then, suddenly...I find am out. I have become my true self, the I AM, stepping in and out of locality, emergent, regressive, the Self which imbues all the little selves. The world is now a tapestry and my threads weave and dive like sinusoidal dolphins. Everywhere I AM at play with myself.

I sit to write a few words so I will remember:

It is 3 bells after the sun has risen.

Now I begin to watch the matrices move. My name is on all of them. I am entering Aula Lucis, the House of Light. Too clear that the mercurial seed and sulphur is I myself. Spinning things within I call progression, or procession, or precession. But I can stop their spinning by “tuning up”, and matching their speed. The spin is a moiré effect produced by a frequencies of self upon another frequency of self, but out of sync. Though I know myself to be the master, yet I hope my vessel will be christed with dignity, and that my daily life in darkness will advance into the Light.

With eyes closed I am in an interior space bright with light. How clear it is watching the light move across the dark recesses of the mind, with eyes closed, that illumination is the heat and arc of the interior torch, the Light that let’s us see our True Nature. The body shakes. Normally we are no so aware of the mindscreen, but now its artifacts are seen. Rhythmic pendulums move the torso, the interior fire itself is that which we seek to reveal in the Hermetic Work. I look out the window and watch a woman passing by, knowing I could have her, as I stand in the Light, and the Light is what all beings hunger for. The intimacy of bodies is opened across all lines but One fears claiming what is One’s own. Be cautious. Remember, they do not live in this world that I now do. Yet, why would someone object if I joined with them in coupling to overlay and enhance the waterflow?

All around me the mother sea substance laps, pooling beauty to sink into. I strive to keep some assemblage point to incrudate with the light. Now jeweled serpents abound, the mother substance matrix, but to hold the light there must be kept a view point for it to solidify around. dissolution and lightdance is all about, the king must take his lustral bath .....so strong is my desire to give in to it. I want to hold and remember this consciousness, to return and create a court of the Sun where others come for healing, standing,… should I continue to try and hold out? no more.. .Midday.... Farewell, I go to climb the interior mount, and lay on my cot to surrender.

Still, I refuse to totally surrender to the melting light; the vining serpents of my being are rooted deep in its abyss, but I do not want to be absorbed into forgetfulness. I want to keep and enhance this form, to layer on burnished Light. The Hero battles against the Dragons. I command that the Light flow into my roots, and dignify my form. I must hold out, so that I may carry the treasure back when I ascend.

I wonder if the Spider Woman will appear; then I hear her. She will not appear and initiate me unless I surrender totally. No, not this time; I Iasos must not cross Lethe, but carry back the Golden Fleece to the upper world.

I realize that my body is continuously moving in a slow copulating serpentine motion. The world is endless genital energy, light penetrating dark penetrating light, in languid embrace, shiva/shakti birthing each other. The Light is the Water, and the Water is the Blood, the Milk of the Mother, and we all want to suckle and couple in the honeyed Light.

It is 6 bells. Orpheus returns from the underworld to the land of the blind. I wish to provide passage back for the others; can I hold the portal open? all are hungry and wanting; they are so empty, so needy, behind the sad social smiles, but there is Such an Abundance of Light, of Mother’s Milk, to feed them all. Why are we all so suffering? What god or gods have so crippled our sight?

The engine of this life is the alteration of light and dark, miscalled a war. Neither side can prevail, as it is their alteration that propels us on, that is the genetrix. Now from this can emerge a new one, a balance position that holds the portal open to the light; it is He that is borne this day. I want to run out and tell the world...there is no need for such pain and suffering. Look, it is right here before you. Let me show you. It is so hard to remember that they can’t see it, they might even punish me (but WHY??) for lifting the last veils of Isis and climbing into her bed, my beautiful fucking harlot of Love and Light.

No...I hold back... I must be silent.

I would be Wise, (W-i-S-e meaning the serpent coilingness of the Womb; see the visual pun? he that is laminated upon himself, layer of coppery light upon light, hammered into the matrix, a reformed psyche of crystalline steadfastness (he holds against the dissolving sea that laps eternal at our feet---) something momentary in crystal salt that balances the two serpents of Light and Dark. they contrive to bring forth their Horus, the funnel of both their loves.

I am returning. My house is pierced with shafts of light like St. Stephan in ecstasy.

While in the aeon, I can watch shiva/shakti interacting, the tectonic mother shapeshifting. Sulphur is form-making, while it twin brother Mercury is form-dissolving.

But they act in unison, and the world in this House of Light is ever morphing.

I observe Unity ever producing formlets, which melt and rebirth into others.

The mind cannot freezeframe this scenario into objects, as each “thing” is the mother/child to another, in a breathing circulation of form.

This was a cognition to me: that you can SEE unity shapeshifting. Of course. To SEE is to UNDERSTAND. To UNDERSTAND is to Stand Under, i.e., behind the curtain of duality.

Victor Wolf adds commentary:

My Templar brothers and sisters and I have often lain in the lap of Baphomet, and found our way back to the land of milk and honey.

This alternation between the red/white sulphur/mercurial poles is admirably expressed in this alchemical illustration of the two philosophers, as what is within comes out, and what is without turns in, in a lissajou circle 8 circulation. I include other examples.

Returning from one such journey, I opened The Houses of the Philosophers to p.425, wherein Fulcanelli is discoursing on a typanum over the one of Jacques Coeur’s doors, showing a palm tree, and fig tree, and a date tree. My beingness was yet suffused with Light, and I knew my mind to be only a knot in the cosmic net. Understanding came easily.

“The date and palm trees, of the same family, were known to the Greeks under the name Phoinix, Phoenix in Latin,

[I know this, I AM he the every resurrecting Phoenix!]

which is our hermetic phoenix; they represent the two Magisteries [the Serpents] and their results, the Red and the White stone, which partake of one and the same nature...As for the fig tree occupying the center of the composition, it indicates the mineral substance [the dried Blood, prison of Light] out of which the philosophers draw the elements of the miraculous rebirth of the Phoenix, and it is the work of rebirth as a whole which constitutes what is commonly referred to as the Great Work.

[and the world, at every moment, at every point, at every atom, it emerges, it emerges, it comes forth]

...The Greek for fig tree is suke, ... a word frequently used for kuthos, from the root kuo, “to carry in the womb...”

[another alchemical pun. Fig, figgen, fuck, follow the genital energy to its matrix, and there find your matter, vile and despised by the world. The Christ is born in the manger in the house of the animals...but my friends have already heard this]

Hidden within the border are letters which make up one of the favorite maxims of Jacques Coeur:

DE.MA.JOIE.DIRE.FAIRE.TAIRE.

ABOUT MY JOY, SAY IT, DO IT, BE SILENT.

A bit further he quotes from Cyrano:

“You are a stranger, whistled the Bird, and have had your birth in a World of which I originally am. Now the secret propensity to mutual Love, that those of the same Country have one for another, is the Instinct which inclines me to inform you of my Life..

[I know this Bird, I am he, and have returned from his world, our world, my brothers, where there is naught but love for each other. ]

The American master Vitvan describes this radiant crystalline energy world in his usual semantically careful turgid manner, before letting out a whoop:

“The lowest aspect of the World-Mother division or state as here given is represented by crystalloidal patterns or forms in the shape of snowflakes, frost patterns on a windowpane, geometrical models which all liquids assume when crystallizing, cellular structures, plant and flower designs, the multiplicity of forms portrayed by creatures of the oceans, the bodies of animals, the figures of men and women, etc., - a world of forms. But, the World-Mother is 'hidden behind' the phenomenal image of these forms. There is a Form 'behind' the form as seen, touched, etc., by sense. The phenomenal form is an image in the psychic-nature which we, generally, identify with the Form. After the First Crossing one sees the Real Form of every 'thing,' a world of radiant beauty. This world of radiantly beautiful Forms represents the outer garment of the Logos, a garment supplied by the World-Mother. It is called Tao in the Orient and artists of every country and age strive to suggest, bring into expression, portray, etc., this beauty which they feel and recollect; for the true artist brings the remembrance with him into earth-life.

The aristotelian earthlings never suspect this radiantly beautiful world which lies so close, in which they really function and by which they are clothed! An aphanitic veil envelops the psyche of these earthlings which prevents or retards the quickening; we say they are asleep or laboring under a semantic blockage from which they must awaken before the World of the Wondrous around them can be seen and otherwise experienced. These beautiful Forms, this radiant world, this outer garment of our Lord, would not be possible if it were not for the overlooked and little understood crystalloid; for it is in the understanding of that state of the World-Mother we describe in terms of crystalloidal tectorialities which represents the entrance into the Gnosis. These difficult to express thoughts were in mind when suggestions for the study of crystalloidal tectonics were formulated into a mental construct. To me it is wholly inadequate as I prefer to sing from the heart with Hermes:

"Let every nature of the World receive the

utterance of my hymn!

Open thou Earth! Let every bolt of the Abyss

be drawn for me. Stir not, ye Trees!

I am about to hymn creation's Lord, both All

and One.

Ye Heavens open, and ye Winds stay still;

[and] let God's deathless Sphere receive my word!

For I will sing the praise of Him who founded

all, who fixed the Earth, and hung up Heaven, and

gave command that Ocean should afford sweet water

[to the Earth], to both those parts that are inhabited

and those that are not, for the support and use of

every man; who made the Fire to shine for gods and men

for every act.

Let us together all give praise to Him, sublime

above the Heavens, of every nature Lord!

'Tis He who is the Eye of Mind; may he accept

the praise of these my Powers!

Ye Powers that are within me, hymn the One and

All; sing with my Will, Powers all that are within me!

O Blessed Gnosis, by thee illumined, hymning

through thee the Light that Mind alone can see, I joy

in Joy of Mind."

- Hymn to the Gnosis

Now the adventure takes another turn. I no longer have any doubt that I have returned from the world of Sulphur and Mercury, from the realm so many alchemical allegories describe. They too have been to this world. Is it possible that there is another component to the Alchemical Stream, the employment of entheogens? Could there be a secret within the Secret?

Initial searches of the web tell us Europeans are and were mycophobic (afraid of mushrooms), and that there is only extensive use of sacred mushrooms in the New World. I knew this couldn’t be right and kept digging. Soon I found that the red cap Amanita Muscaria was known throughout the ancient world, and of which much has been written by Wasson, Allegro, etc. Here is an extensive website on this mushroom and its presence from Siberia down into Egypt, within Buddhism and Vedic lore: http://www.sirius.com/~holy/mushroom.html.

Gordon Wasson has speculated that the sacred drink of the Eleusinian Mysteries was an LSD punch made from ergot mould on the rye. It may be significant that the mythological originator of the Eleusinian mysteries was named Erysibe -- "ergot" (Claviceps purpurea).

Gordon Wasson: “At the heart of the mystery of Eleusis lay a secret. In the surviving texts there are numerous references to the secret, but in none is it revealed.

From the writings of the Greeks, from a fresco in Pompeii, we know that the initiate drank a potion.

Then, in the depths of the night, he beheld a great vision, and the next day he was still so awestruck that he felt he would never be the same man as before.

What the initiate experienced was "new, astonishing, inaccessible to rational cognition."

Robert Graves however, had a another opinion:

"Since revising The Greek Myths in 1958, I have had second thoughts about the drunken god Dionysus, about the Centaurs with their contradictory reputation for wisdom and misdemeanour, and about the nature of divine ambrosia and nectar. These subjects are closely related, because the Centaurs worshipped Dionysus, whose wild autumnal feast was called `the Ambrosia'. I no longer believe that when his Maenads ran raging around the countryside, tearing animals or children in pieces and boasted afterwards of travelling to India and back, they had intoxicated themselves solely on wine or ivy-ale. The evidence, summarized in my What Food the Centaurs Ate (Steps: Cassell & Co., 1958, pp.319-343) suggests that Satyrs (goat-totem tribesemen), Centaurs (horse-totem tribesmen), and their Maenad womenfolk, used these brews to wash down mouthfuls of a far stronger drug: namely a raw mushroom, amanita muscaria, which induces hallucinations, senseless rioting, prophetic sight, erotic energy, and remarkable muscular strength. Some hours of this ecstasy are followed by complete inertia; a phenomenon that would account for the story of how Lycurgus, armed only with an ox-goad, routed Dionysus's drunken army of Maenads and Satyrs after its victorious return from India.

"On an Etruscan mirror the amanita muscaria is engraved at Ixion's feet; he was a Thessalian hero who feasted on ambrosia among the gods. Several myths are consistent with my theory that his descendents, the Centaurs, ate this mushroom; and, according to some historians, it was later employed by the Norse `berserks' to give them reckless power in battle. I now believe that `ambrosia' and `nectar' were intoxicant mushrooms: certainly the amanita muscaria; but perhaps others, too, especially a small, slender dung-mushroom named panaeolus papilionaceus, which induces harmless and most enjoyable hallucinations. A mushroom not unlike it appears on an Attic vase between the hooves of Nessus the Centaur. The `gods' for whom, in the myths, ambrosia and nectar were reserved, will have been sacred queens and kings of the pre-Classical era. King Tantalus's crime was that he broke the taboo by inviting commoners to share his ambrosia.

"Sacred queenships and kingships lapsed in Greece; ambrosia then became, it seems, the secret element of the Eleusinian , Orphic and other Mysteries associated with Dionysus. At all events, the participants swore to keep silence about what they ate or drank, saw unforgettable visions, and were promised immortality. The `ambrosia' awarded to winners of the Olympic footrace when victory no longer conferred the sacred kingship on them was clearly a substitute: a mixture of foods the initial letters of which, as I show in What Foods the Centaurs Ate, spelled out the Greek word for `mushroom'. Recipes quoted by Classical authors for nectar, and for cecyon, the mint-flavored drink taken by Demeter at Eleusis, likewise spell out `mushroom'.

"I have myself eaten the hallucigenic mushroom, psilocybe, a divine ambrosia in immemorial use among the Masatec Indians of Oaxaca Province, Mexico; heard the priestess invoke Tlaloc, the Mushroom-god, and seen transcendental visions. Thus I wholeheartedly agree with R. Gordon Wasson, the American discoverer of this ancient rite, that European ideas of heaven and hell may well have derived from similar mysteries. Tlaloc was engendered by lightning; so was Dionysus; and in Greek folklore, as in Masatec, so are all mushrooms -- proverbially called `food of the gods' in both languages. Tlaloc wore a serpent-crown; so did Dionysus. Tlaloc had an underwater retreat; so had Dionysus. The Maenads' savage custom of tearing off their victims' heads may refer allegorically to tearing off the sacred mushroom's head -- since in Mexico its stalk is never eaten. We read that Perseus, a sacred King of Argos, converted to Dionysus worship, named Mycenae after a toadstool which he found growing on the site, and which gave forth a stream of water. Tlaloc's emblem was a toad, so was that of Argos; and from the mouth of Tlaloc's toad in the Tepentitla fresco issues a stream of water....."

R.G., Deya', Majorca, Spain, 1960.

It also seems significant that the Greeks were wont to refer to mushrooms as "the food of the gods," broma theon, and that Porphyrius is quoted as having called them "nurslings of the gods," Theotrophos.

Clark Heinrich (The Forbidden Fruit) has discovered clues indicating that the Amanita cult could be found in the European Alchemical tradition.

In the center see the fresh Amanita cap, which looks like a radiant marriage between the Sun and the Moon. Next to it an illustration from the Splendor Solis.

Note the “shield” carried by the Hermaphrodite could be this amanita cap; and notice the mushroom shaped object in its left hand.

Still, I wanted more evidence of a direct linkage between entheogens and the western European alchemical tradition. Was there a secretly symbolized use of mushrooms? Was there an initiatory liberation cult? And then I found it. A commonly occurring psilocybin mushroom throughout the British Isles, and northern Europe is called the Liberty Cap.

Immediately I thought of the illustration of the old alchemist in Notre Dame from The Mystery of the Cathedrals.

Fulcanelli tells us of this Liberty Cap:

“This is the alchemist of Notre Dame wearing a Phrygian cap, attribute of the Adept…The Phrygian cap, which was worn by the sans_culottes and acted as a sort of protective talisman in the midst of the revolutionary slaughter, was a distinctive sign of the Initiates. In the analysis, which he made of a work of Lombard (de Langres) entitled Histoire des Jacobins, depuis 1789 jusqu'a ce jour, ou Etat de Europe en novembre 1820 (Paris 1820), the scholar Pierre Dujols writes that for the grade of the Epopt (in the Eleusinian Mysteries) the new member was asked whether he felt in himself the strength, the will and the devotion necessary for him to set his hand to the GREAT WORK. Then a red cap was put on his head, while this formula was pronounced: 'Cover yourself with this cap, it is worth more than a king's crown., Few suspected that this hat, called liberia in the Mithraic rituals and which formerly denoted the freed slaves, was a masonic symbol and the supreme mark of Initiation. It is not therefore surprising to see it represented on our coins and our public monuments.”

It wasn’t too hard to find some old coins with liberty caps on them:

But on some of the coins the cap is not on the head directly, but held on a pole. Why would that be?

That picture on the right is not too clear. Here is the one where it all falls into place:

WHY the Pole? This is an insight I have not read anywhere else. That is the STEM of the Liberty Cap mushroom!

He who is crowned with the Cap of Liberty is freed to travel the realms of the soul.

In the Mutus Liber, the Silent Book, a series of illustrations of alchemical procedures, we find this image on one of the last pages.

Here the husband and wife team point to their mouths, and to what appear to be mushrooms on a planchette, another

indication that entheogens had a place in the visionary aspect of the Work

Likewise, in the illustration by the mystic Jacob Boehme The Testimony of Christ, we find

a mushroom subtly hidden within the Heart on the Tau Cross. Here the initiate displays the occult

nature of Man, the microcosm. As above, a Heart, so below reflected an inverted Heart. The secret

of this is that the lower 3 chakras are mirror images of the upper 3. In truth there is only one chakra,

the Central one, the True Heart, wherein the deity hides in a secret chamber.

The fire of generation below is reflected in the sexual center in the head wherein the sacred

marriage takes place, that is, Ajna, the pineal sphere. You may discern the inner meaning of the

story of Adam and Eve in the Garden here, for the sexes are reflections of each other, halves

of a whole, who come together in love. Moreover, in the center of the garden of Eden there was

a tree, the tree of Knowledge. Now you see this tree bearing its fruit in the upper chamber here,

where the Serpent spills its bliss into the Chalice. And the fruit that sits atop this tree of the nervous

system, atop sushumna, is that fruit that sits in the center of the brain, the pineal gland. Eat of this

fruit says the serpent, and your eyes will be opened, and you shall have Knowledge.

We now know that the pineal gland converts Serotonin into Melatonin, and the latter into Pinoline (Telepathine), an analogue of harmine/harmaline, and DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine), the most potent consciousness accelerant known . These are the active ingredients (this is simplified) in Yage and Ayahuasca. The average human produces such a low amount of harmine/DMT that the most they get is an occasional lucid dream, and they live out their lives without the direct communion with the divine brought about by this interior illumination. Yogis, children, and, it has been reported, those who are dying, have greater amounts found in their cerebrospinal fluid.

As you can see, psilocybin is quite close to DMT in its structure, and thus fits smoothly into the receptors. LSD is sufficiently different, which explains its more alien qualities.

Now I am not saying that all sages and enlightened ones have used entheogens from external sources, but I would not be surprised to find that adepts ingesting the Universal Medicine produced them internally in abundance, while the rest of us suffer from atrophied pineal glands. Why is it that our pineal begins to atrophy as we enter adolescence (and begin to fragment into hormonally controlled robots); does it make sense that we should lose the clarity and joy of childhood?

Once again we return to the paradigm that outside forces have conspired to keep us dumbed down so that they can continue to exploit us.

These same exploiters have engendered world religions filled with insurmountable complexities, hierarchies and ladders of initiation extending into the never attainable future. But I ask you, do you think this explanation of needing to return for thousands of lives to learn our lessons really bears common sense scrutiny? Just how many times do you have to kill or be killed, win and lose in love, hate and forgive, in order to learn those lessons? If it takes thousands of lifetimes, then we are really slow learners.

Even enlightened ones have adopted these models, and laid on us trips about cause and effect, karma this, karma that.

But by their own insight and experience, and teachings, space/time is a mental projection, ALL is in the Here Now, and is an action of the I AM upon ITSELF. If it’s ALL Here Now, then there is no past or future (unless you so consider), ergo, no basis for Cause and Effect. And Who is Doing What to Whom? What does Krishna say to Arjuna?

You are supposed to join the right team in the battle between Light and Dark, hook up with the Brotherhood, but just who is behind this Brotherhood, and why should you buy their package? They want you to slave in their saltmines for livetimes, salivating for your next brownie point goldstar initiates secret decoder ring. But hey, Sanat Kumara Rinpoche Reptilian soul-sucking Samsara selling ‘cyclopedia of Secrets Salesmen: I am already the I AM, there isn’t any war between Light and Dark, and your Ladder of Lights is a con.