SHAMANIC JOURNEYS in SOUTH AMERICA
Including AYAHUASCA SHIVARATRI RITE
ARCANA 23 Rite, 23 Feb, 'Valle de La Luna', Bolivia -Account with spectacular lunar landscape photographs.
Sun, 27 Feb 2000
Tiwanaku Travels...
I've stopped for a day to check out this beautiful city in the Andes mountains before beginning my 4/5 day trek (fasting but for fruit and coca leaves) up to Machu Picchu Incan ruins and nearby lunar temple, hopefully connecting with the ayahuasca shaman up there for the conclusion.
I stopped on the way up at Tiwanaku ruins -gate of the moon, gate of the sun. Interesting stuff, very similar iconography and language (judging from names of places, etc.) to maori and pacific islander cultures.
There are of course big links with the Mayans too, one being the Incan Cross, an inversion of the Etznab Mirror of Illusions/Sword of Truth glyph (see my Black Moon Black Sun Tonina report).
This inversion of a Mirror (as with the astral lunar and egg temples!) I today discovered (buying a jadeite pendant of it in the marketplace) is the 'medicine wheel' (though angular) of the Incans, also kind of like a squared chaostar, with the four elements (yes fire earth air water) being the diagonal 'inbetween' points and the vertical axis being Earth-God/dess and the horizontal one Serpent and Condor (hey this is a kind of vulture isn't it�) The central point is the puma, or 'mundo' -Hail Hrumachis/ Sekhmet/Bast!
And I bought a carved stone puma at Tiwanaku with a head at each end... the double headed feline seems universal...
Macchu Picchu ('old mountain') is the largely-intact 'ruins' of an entire spectacular large Incan city, perched ridiculously high and obliquely on an Andean mountainside surrounded by other mountains of lush jungle, with a raging tumultous river (offshoot of the Amazon) far below.
You can catch a train straight there, or do a 2-day walk or a 4-day walk, with other Incan ruins along the way, to get there. I opted for the 4 day trail, feeling I needed some kind of wilderness trek and self-exploratory purging to ground myself in the midst of all my global travels and trajectories. I certainly got that, and a whole lot more beside...
As I set off from the trainstation on the thin winding path through and up the Andes mountains, it occurred to me that I was embarking on an ordeal of a magnitude I had not before attempted: I had fasted for 4 days (I had a small amount of fruit for the first two days to ease into it) before, but not combined with the massive amount of walking (5-6 hrs a day, much upwards...) the trail entailed. Healthy-looking folks at the hostel in Cusco who had done it warned me of how difficult it was and how tired you got and suggested the 2-day trail -and they had eaten along the way!
So I was set for an ordeal, but I never imagined what the extent of it would be. Yet the resultant and accompanying bliss and pleasure made it more than worthwhile, and even the disastrous conclusion was rectified by a nu moon return and resolution...
The four-day trek wound through terrain of such diverse beauty as I have never seen, walking walking walking up up up winding twisting turning enduring enduring breathing breathing...
The first day was not all that difficult. It was wonderful to be up there in the lush mountains and valleys away from the bustle of towns and markets. Passing an ancient Incan ruin near the beginning of the trek, I admired how integrated with the landscape it was. Soon after, I went through a small Indian village, thatch huts with smoking chimneys in the fog, delighted to see there are still people out there living simply on the land (well for the most part -I ignored the children trying to sell me and other walkers coca cola chocolate and bottled water when there were fresh springs everywhere)...
I chewed a few coca leaves with lakusha, a plant paste which combines well with them. In their unprocessed form these are milder than coffee but good for respiration and circulation thus perfect for long walks -more of a medicinal plant-food than a drug hit...
It rained in dribs and drabs throughout the day but my 3 Sol(app.$2 US) hooded raincoat flapping in the wind kept me dryish. By dusk I was exhausted but absolutely in awe of my environment. After rolling mountainside meadows, gum trees and beautiful flowers and streams, the last few hours of light had been through increasingly-dense and lush jungle alongside the raging river. Tangled mossy thick vines and gnarled orange-barked trees, sudden bursts of unexpected huge majestic red blossoms...
I could not figure out how to put up the little tent I had hired in the encroaching darkness, and after about an hour of mucking about with it (which combined with the decaffeination process caused a brief but ugly tantrum!) I gave up and crawled into my sleeping bag.
DAY II:
It rained moderately much of the night and by dawn I was cold and stiff. It was a massive effort to worm my cold bones out of the still-slightly-dry-on-the-inside sack but once I got packed up, did some cursory creaky yoga stretches and began walking I actually felt somehow quite refreshed. It was a progressively more difficult morning, all up-mountain. The air was thinning with the ever-increasing altitude, and breathing became quite strange, combined with the constant exercise it produced a natural high. I intensified this by deep slow pranic nostril-stomach breathing, finding this while walking slowly helped me avoid the huffing and puffing syndrome for those steep slopes. There are Indians living up there most of the time who make their living from couriering backpacks for some of the walkers on the second (steepest) day. Some of the packs I saw them lugging made me laugh -huge, with pots and pans and stoves strapped to them... The odd fellow-trekker would pass and murmured, 'Hola''s would be exchanged, but for the most part I was alone, enjoying the peaceful moist serenity of the jungle.
The trail itself, made by the Incans, winds beautifully through the landscape, rock steps meticulously placed forming the path... The clouds would drift and shift and lift through the high mountains, often rolling right across the trail. It's strange and rather wonderful breathing and swimming in cloud...
Walking up up in the rain and wind and rain and wind winding up off my head altitude fog enjoying my lack of desire to consume anything, thinking how easy it would be to disappear in the Andes and become a breatharian -the air is sooo fucking tasty up there...
Nevertheless by the final summit of the highest mountain on the journey, reached early afternoon of the second day, my calves were aching, my head was spinning and little sparks of yellow flashing in my vision...
I endured and at the peak cast off my pack and collapsed. The release of the shoulder-straps gave me a rush of returning circulation. I sat in the rain sighing for a while but the cluster of walkers there chatting and smoking (not many smokers on the trail mind you -only a few young ones!) annoyed me a bit so I soon got up and bludgeoned on.
Not far down the other side Inti (the Incan name for the SunGod) peered furtively through the thick clouds at last, so I stopped and began to spread out my soggy sleeping bag and tent across the rocks to dry. The sun disappeared again but there was no rain now and His heat this high up still penetrated somewhat through the fog.
I did the yogic sun-salute then recited the midday call of Crowley's 'Liber Resh vel Helios' (I just begun to practise this verse during the Macchu Picchu journey, intending to write the complementary lunar 'Liber Qoph vel Hecate' towards its end), adding the Incan and other cultural solar Godnames to the Egyptian ones.
He seemed to respond, peering out again for a few minutes of glorious heat. I lay back enjoying the rest immensely, waiting for further little glimmers of warmth. After a while I began to play the panpipes I had bought for a few soles just before the journey. About half the reeds had been crushed in my pack so the melodic possibilities were somewhat limited, but the echoes were incredible, bouncing endlessly through the foggy valleys...
I played a version of the Pan call, summoning the Horned One into myself from this greenest of glades. I was rushing hard from the piping and the altitude, my head full of swirling tingles, and felt the Green One's presence very intensely. The sun had gone again so I cried forth a challenge, assuming/invoking the role of earthy Pan in his mythical musical contest with Helios/Apollo the Greek/Roman Sun God. 'Come,' I cried, 'shine forth your majesty! Can your heavenly radiance match mine earthly echoes throught the vales and mountains! Shine your music of the spheres!' And He did... While my stuff slowly dried I sat in halflotus by a trickling stream and performed my chakra breathing exercises. By Sahasrara I was rushing severely, totally intoxicated on the air; it was such a wonderful place to do it, so high both physically and spiritually. To top it off I chanted the chakra tones up the scale.
Eventually my sleeping bag was mostly dry, it was getting on in the day and Apollo didn't seem to want to play anymore no matter how shrilly I ricocheted my few reed notes off into the endless echoes... no contest really with my limited scale and the Sun retreated til someone with more worthy competition may challenge His Radiance.
I got up and continued on, very glad the Sun had appeared and made me stop for a while, for I now felt totally refreshed and invigorated, walking off at a brisk pace. (The fact that it was now downhill probably helped too!) An hour or so before dark I arrived at an Incan temple high on a mountain-side, Rotupununku (round house). Approaching it the castle-like structure I came upon a small cave just off the path. As my tent was still damp this seemed the perfect place to spend the night, so I left my pack there and continued up to the ruin.
Whereas the several ruins I saw the next day seemed mostly to be dwellings and villages, this one was most obviously a temple. There is a central round stone room with eight gates, each leading to a curved side chamber with altars along the walls, except for the one at the front which opened straight out over the edge of the cliff.
It was a layout obviously related to the eight-point Incan Cross I had been informed about in the Cusco Market a few days ago. I had a stone pendant of it around my neck.
I felt compelled to perform a small rite in the temple to touch the Incan mythos and local spirits, but decided to wait til after dark so there would be no-one wandering in or past.
I returned to the cave and got comfortable. As the evening cold began to drift in I got half in my sleeping bag and began to write in the crack of dusk. I discovered I was incredibly inspired. Words poured out in spontaneous verse, elucidating effortlessly the realizations of the last week or so about the relationship of the Incan culture to the Qabbala, Egyptology and other mythos I had been exploring. I found myself writing verses of 'The Book of Going Back by Night' chapter II, concerning the Incan double-headed puma version of the double-headed lion Hrumachis of Egypt, and the double-headed jaguar of the Lacandon Maya in Mexico. Relationships of the Incan Cross with the Qabbala and even the biblical garden of Eden story formed, inspired by my recent rite and subsequent realizations at Valle de la Luna, Bolivia.
As it darkened I shifted mood, and felt inspirations for Liber Qoph vel Hecate. I lit a thin black candle in the cave and continued, scrawling praises to the different aspects of the moon Goddess ('Kia' in Qechua Incan) in my travel journal/ magickal record.
Four pure white moths began encircling and dive-bombing the candle-flame. What a beautiful omen! The moth is the emissary of Thoth, the Scribe of the Moon who earths the dreaming via His writings...
Nevertheless I didn't want them to die, so I finished up my creative surges and put out the thin black candle, sinking back into the warmth of my sleeping bag in the dark little cavern. I suddenly felt very tired and the idea of crawling out into the cold to go ritualize in the temple seemed rather unappealing. I decided to opt for dawn instead, and drifted off into the lunar dreaming...
DAY 3
I awoke just after dawn to a little hummingbird flying into the cave I was sleeping in, hovering there for a few seconds, then darting off. Having suggested a few days earlier the birdmasks of Maat as a theme for the forthcoming nu moon rites, I was unsurprised but nevertheless delighted to be awoken by this messenger from the sephiroth of Hod (communications) after my semi-chanelled writings (Liber Qoph vel Hecate and The Book of Going Back by Night Chapter II) the night before. I got up slowly, rolled up my sleeping-bag and made my way across to the nearby 8-gate Incan temple, 'Runkuraqay.' I entered dragging one foot, twisting to mark an undulated serpentine form in the dirt along the narrow entrance corridor. Passing through the centre of the circular temple, I placed a macaw feather (sacred to Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan) vertically (stuck in the earth) in the gateway opposite the entrance; which opened out over the edge of the cliff. On the axis crossing the feather and serpent one, I invoked God and Goddess in each gateway. Then in the diagonal gateways I placed my elemental tools: -copper chalice (with springwater) for water, Mayan knife for air, apple for earth (seed-pentacle therein) and DraQyl staff for fire in the eastern gateway, throughwhich the rising (over the mountains) sun was now shining. I stopped here and performed the yogic sun-salute and Liber Resh vel Helios, hailing Him also as H'Yum Kin, and Inti (Mayan and Incan names for the SunGod). His high-altitude heat and morning radiance soaked gloriously into my awakening being.
I went to the centre of the round stone temple and drew there a chaos star in the dirt. I placed my small jadeite Incan cross pendant in its centre, then realizing how naturally their 8-fold forms fitted togethere, drew a larger Incan cross around the chaostar, with eacfh direction angled towards its corresponding gateway. Slowly, ceremonially, I brought each elemental tool into the centre, wherein I placed my small silver sphinx pendenat, to represent the puma central to the Incan cross , and the five elemental powers now gathered to it. Reading the appropriate verses from 'The Book of Going Back by Night' I had written the night before -about the fall of Malkuth from Daath (as 'Knowledge' and the fruit thereof) -I took up the knife and sliced the apple in twain sidewaysm forming two pentacles to represent the ten (Malkuth) powers of Hrumachis as the double lion or two-headed sphinx. Interestingly, this tim e there was only a single seed therein -the Unification of all elements within the centre?
Around this time a group of tourists came into the temple. Ignoring their presence, I completed the rite with the Morning prayer to Hunab K'u (in Yucatec Mayan tongue), packed up and left.
It was a great way to start the day and I felt quite invigorated as I set off up the mountainside. The fasting had begun to take its toll though especially when I was climbing upwards. Slow steady movements and deep pranic breathing still kept me going; fortunately most of the walk that day was descending. After three hours or so I arrived at another Incan ruin, larger and probably residential. It is interesting how much like European castles many of the Incan structures look, with their grey stonework, turrets and beautiful round towers, very different from the Mayan pyramids. After a look around and a rest there, I left 'Sayacmarca' and continued on for another three hours or so through lush ever-changing greenery (shot with yellow wildflowers and large electric-blue butterflies) til I ascended to 'Puyupatamarca', which means 'Castle in the Sky'...
and that it was, indeed! Somehow built perfectly into the green slope of the mountainside, this large complex of round rooms, rectangular chambers with triangular thatched rooves, temples, towers and strangely-curving serpentine outer walls, is straight out of a faery tale, yet planted solidly in Malkuth.
The cloud layer rose up while I was there and the castle sat there in the mist as if floating, with the tops of the surrounding encircling moutains also protruding enigmatically from the dense fog. When the clouds cleared again, I saw a smokey cavern down towards the bottom of the mountainside, where a cluster of travellers were drinking hot tea. I headed down the winding narrow path past them, onwards and away. I was starting to feel pretty tired and, knowing I still had several hours to walk before dusk, I chewed a large bunch of coca leaves with lakush. I hadn't had any the day before and the effect on my increasingly-empty system was now much more obvious: within ten minutes or so I felt quite charged. My mouth went numb and my sinuses felt opened and mentholated, making the pranic breathing easier and more natural. I continued at a faster pace and soon arrived at another ruin, of a less faciful nature but spectacular nonetheless for its sheer altitude and angle. Hundreds of steps up the steep diagonal slope, once-agricultural beds between them and rectangular rooms at the top. There seemed to be some kind of stone throne at the very peak, so I climbed up there and blasted out some shrill warbles on my panpipes, delighting in their nigh-eternal reverberations through the surrounding valleys. The view from this spot was indescribably spectacular, huge mountains, white winding river below, falls and shifting drifting cloudlayers. As if the piping hadn't got me hight enough already, I performed my daily chakra breathing and chanting (wonderful echoes!) exercises on this peak. Head full of prana tingles, I then made way down down down, totally blissed, to the campground far below and the nearby final set of ruins for the day, which were situated behind the camp.
This large Incan town, 'Winawayna', is very majestic, with diamond snake patterns formed by the many many steps leading up to its heights, from where the clouds parted to reveal snow-capped peaks glistening serenely behind the green ones.
In these ruins I met some friendly fellow-travellers and accompanied them back to the campsite. One, a beautiful Chilean girl, tried to court me with chocolate crunchies. She spoke as little English as I Spanish, yet there was some kind of spark in our interactions. Strangely (for me) however, I soon lost interest. I was on too much of a personal inner journey to make that kind of connection, and after some brief meditation (I heard her later complaining to her companions that she wanted, 'Amore, no Vipassana,' which made me laugh) I retreated into my damp little tent which one of the other travellers had thankfully shown me how to assemble properly! Nevertheless it rained so hard all night that it soaked through, and the bottom half of me (jeans and all) was drenched and stiff by the eerie light of the cloudy dawn...
...While those around me fussed with coffee pots and such, I decided that the best way to thaw and dry without consumption was to set off on the final two-hour walk to Macchu Picchu. Though most weary, I wrung out my sleeping bag, packed and began on the trail at a brisk pace. As I began to dry out and limber up, I became excited about reaching the final destination shortly.
After an hour or so there was a pen-ultimate small ruin, very high up, with a spectacular view of the from-there-minute but intricate Incan city of Macchu Picchu on the distant neighbouring slopes...
As I took out my camera the clouds rose up and the city disappeared from view. I decided to do my chakra meditations while waiting for that beautiful shot to return. It didn't, and there were even better overviews later, but I'm glad I stopped there.
Half an hour later, I was still sitting there doing kambukka pranayama, completely off my head. Whenever I periodically opened my eyes, the clouds had enveloped more of the landscape. With eyes closed again, I began to feel immaterial, as if I was floating in space. I opened my eyes, and this is how it also appeared -I was adrift in a sea of white fog, feeling weightless...
...Eventually I rose slowly and set off again, elated... After a final hour or so of walking I emerged on a plateau just above the city, and as the clouds dissolved before me, a spectacular panorama unfolded:
Towers, curved walls, temples, thatched dwellings, multitudinous steps and platforms, layer upon layer of complex structure, all connected in labyrinthine patterns. Huge beautifully-coloured and textured strange-shaped boulders were built into the city rather than moved. The scale of it all was beyond my expectations. Tiny llamas roved the slopes, apparently quite at home in the ruins.
As the clouds, accompanied by a light misty rain, wafted back over the enigmatic vista, I stopped to rest awhile on the rocks, thankful to have the pack off my shoulders at last. I had arrived!
As I rested a part-Indian guard approached, and I took the opportunity to ask him the Qechua (Incan language) names of the 'seven powers' my friend Ra'en's spirit guide Joe had suggested I use in a rite at Macchu Picchu -that of mountain, river, rain, cloud, ocean, wind and Milky Way. He was happy to oblige, and after I had noted them down he urged me to take my pack down to to the entrance check-in point. I was reluctant to do so, hoping to spend the night in the 'mooncave' on neighbouring Huaynu Picchu mountain performing a culminative ritual, an when he wandered off I stashed the pack in the bushes. I soon reconsidered, thinking of possible problems in retrieving it, and took it down to check-in after all.
On the way there a mysterious stranger came up, gave me a small handfull of dried magic mushrooms from a distant locale and promptly disappeared again!
At the check-in I met up with my friends from the night before, who had just arrived. Swapping half of the 'shrooms fro a dos of mescalin they had brewed from local san pedro cactuses along the four-day trail, I then swallowed the other few mushrooms and checked in my backpack. I somehow managed to smuggle in my sleeping-bag in my smaller carry-bag, to my great relief.
The mushrooms seemed to do little; maybe I just couldn't get much higher! I wandered through the ancient Incan city somehow both dazed and tired yet hyper aware, exploring all its wondrous nooks and crannies in utter wonderment.
When I arrived at the Temple of the Sun (left)- a beautiful smooth round tower- Inti miraculously shone radiantly through the dispersing clouds at last, for the first time that foggy day. So I performed Liber Resh and sun salute in the courtyard of the Sun Temple, basking gratefully in His heat and glory. I spread out my sleeping-bag to dry on some nearby rocks, and convinced a Japanese tourist who wandered by to take a picture of me (below), with DraQyl shortstaff planted within copper chalice, in front of the beautiful 'Earth Cave' stonework at the base of the tower.
I eventually moved on, visiting the sacred stone, and Condor Rock with its strange wing-like temple perched diagonally on a boulder at a surreal angle.
I went to the Temple of the Animals (picture at right), then climbed up to the
high structure behind it, which I later discovered was
the Priests' Temple. There, perched on a stone ledge
with an overview of mst of the ruins, I performed the
chakra tones, to the bemusement of several tourists
sprawled on the lawns below, one of whom responded
with a piped reply on a woooden flute. The tones resonated through my body with exceptional power and a very tangible centrification in each of their respective chakra locations.
After a little more exploration, I decided I had better set off up Huaynu Picchu before closing time drew any closer so the guards wouldn't notice, and so as to have the last few hours of daylight to find my way to the Mooncave.
Huaynu Picchu is Macchu Picchu's 'little sister', its name meaning 'young mountain' even as Macchu Picchu means, 'Old Mountain'. Though generally smaller and much narrower, it actually has a higher peak, wher I had been told by a guard sat the 'star cave' or Incan observatory. The 'Lunar Temple' was apparently up a bit then down, on the far side of Huaynu Picchu, which confused me as Ra'en had passed on from Joe for me to go to the 'secret' (before the path had been cleared and reopened a few years ago, obviously) Moon cave to the Spider Goddess, which was apparently, from his longdead but generally reliable Guide's memories, straight UP the mountainside.
Anyway, I headed for what was called the 'Lunar Temple'; after a brief rise the trail there wound down, down, through ever thicker jungle, into tangled mossy depths, and I began to wonder if this was the right place to go?
Unsure what the shelter situation would be at the 'Lunar Temple' I left my sleeping bag in a small cave I found fairly near the beginning of the trail down -very bad move, it later turned out, one that would almost cost me my life...
I arrived at the 'Lunar Temple' just before dark. It was beautiful -very smooth gateways and fine decorative masonry in the back of a large cave. Damn, should've brought my bedding all the way down! Ah well, I would perform my rite of Three Fires then head back up to the other cave (ha! easier thought than done). In the last streaks of light-through-the-foliage, I collected a small amount of firewood, some dryish ferns and the least damp-and-mossy logs and sticks I could find.
With a silent prayer to Arachne, I quoffed the bitter mescalin brew and lay back on the rocks. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, framed in the wiggly serpentine mouth of the cave, it occurred to me at last that if I could see the sunset there, I would not see the moon rise on the far side of the mountain. Strange that it should be a 'lunar temple' then, unless intended for observing Her setting at dawn?
Sure enough, I read in a book about Macchu and Huaynu Picchu days later that it was misnamed, by a Spanish explorer called 'someone-or-other-Luna' and was actually probably a star observatory to the Incans.
Anyway, it was dark moon so I would not have seen Her then anyway. Ra'en's dead friend had also recommended I perform the rite in the moon's first quarter, but the timing of my imminent plane-ticket out of Bolivia had brought me here in the last quarter, although I had already now extended this.
It seemed an apt place for a waning/dark moon rite anyhow, this dark cave at the bottom of the mountain. Ra'en had told me it was, 'a Heavenly rite, not an Underworld rite.' Well when I later returned on nu moon, compelled by the spirits there to go up to the true moon cave and finish my business there, it was indeed heavenly. But in this deep cavern on the waning moon, it was most definitely became an underworld intitiation for me ...and how! ...
It was also a stellar rite, however, for as the mescalin's slow eyeopening effect crept through my empty system, I noticed the twinkling stars ever more. I watched their shapes and patterns, framed by the dark mouth of the cave, with new eyes, hyper aware of their formations twinkling with varied radiance through the evershifting clouds, and it seemed that they were beaming deep subconscious information to me. Many days later I read that the Incan priests of these Andes mountains, the Altomisayoc or P'aqos, used mescaline for exactly this purpose -opening the eyes for observation of the patterns of the stars!
Like the Mayans, they represented the Milky Way as a great serpent, Macha'quay, as it looked to me that night, echoed by the undulating lip of the cave.
Interestingly, from the Incan vantage point in the World, the Milky Way apparently changes form from a snake into a great Condor at the change from rainy to drought season.
Deciding to proceed with the intended rite, I screwed up some small balls of paper and attempted to light the first fire near one of the carven stone altars. This was very difficult, the air and twigs and even the paper so moist. I held the lighter flame on until the damned thing fell apart. Scrabbling for the fallen cog, I attempted to put it back together in the dark, but it was hopeless -and I had no other means of ignition!
So I gave up on the idea of the three fires, and the possibility of tattooing (I had brought ink and hand-needle) and lay back recumbent on the cold stone. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved, as I felt very tired and low-energy, yet also that my epic journey there had not ended with a satisfactorily culminative rite.
The mescalin, a mild dose, made me feel slow, hazy and kind of content with whatever, though slightly nauseous. I felt energy coming up from the stones, and down from the stars, and my abdomen began to undulate involuntarily, slowly spiralling belly and hips, as if makeing sensuous svadisthanic love with Inca Linga, Mother Earth.
Tzeenj had sent me some writings about the Blue God just before my journey, Diany Glas in the Feri tradition or Melek Taus the Peacock Angel to the Yezzidi. As he had suggested, it seemed particularly relevent to my recent adventures and imminent mutations: I had found a small daimondback rattlesnake after tatttooing Spencer's visionserpent on magick mushrooms at Palenque, Mexico; now salted to make into an Orobouros necklace. This was an attribute of the Blue God, as are pubescent breasts which are ever so slowly beginning to form with my continued Eostrogen intake. The seven colours of the peacock angel seemed related to my ongoing work with the chakras or seven powers of Quetzalcoatl, as well as the seven powers of the three fires rite, and I had intended to blend them together in my invocations, also towards the birdmask them of the forthcoming Horus-Maat Lodge nu moon rite.
However my lack of light and lighting facilities made it impossible to read the peacock-angel invocations I had printed, as well as the seven Incan names I had found out just that day!
I lay back, writhing slowly under the glinting stars, contented with the supreme beauty of my journey despite an apparent lack of culminative ritual...
And then the words began to come...
Spontaneous verse in praise and invocation of Melek Taus. In the Yezzidi myth, Melek Taus or Shaitan's lesson is that of duality. The serpent who offered the fruits of knowledge, the descent of spirit into matter... but this as a positive thing, not the Fundamental Christian perversions thereof. For of the eternal and wondrous play of duality is born the game of existence upon the physical plane.
Darkness and light seemed to be the primary manifestations of the peacock angel on this night, not in the sense of good and evil but in the sense of contrast, of stars glinting brilliantly in the velvet blackness of night, and the secret colours therein; and also the importance of waning, destruction and of rest in contrast with waxing, creativity and ambition.
I got up briefly and taking my DraQyl TuskQyl staff in hand, raised it to the ceiling of the cavern, pointing it towards where I felt the waning moon to be in the sky on the other side of the mountain, I energetically 'drew down the dark moon' into this stone womb. DraQyl throbbed slightly in my hands in response. I put the shortstaff down and reclined on the rocks again, staring out at the stars.
Two very bright planets above me seemed to be Mars and Venus. Unfamiliar with astronomical perspective from that part of the world, I have no idea if this was consciously correct, but at the time it seemed relevant to the peacock angel as a lord/lady of contrast -Love and War, Venus and Mars who actually had an affair in Greek mythology. Netzach (Venus) is the abode of the peacock in the birdmasks of Maat, whereas Geburah (Mars) is where the Godform Shaitan is enthroned in the 11* rite, so Melek Taus seems somehow a marriage of these extremes. I later discovered the paths between Geburah and Netzach (intersecting Tiphereth) to be Justice -Maat the harlequin of Adjustment, and Death, one of my trumps in the 11* and relevent to the present waning moon and my imminent ordeals...
Much of what I can remember of my spontaneous words from the stars that night have been incorporated into the Turquoise God/dess poem, along with further inspirations from my nu moon return to Huaynu Picchu. Others have been lost to the night...
After a while I felt cold and weary, though most relaxed still, and decided to take a few photographs of the temple before departing. LO and behold, as I prepared to do so I realized the 'flash ready' light on the camera emitted just enough dim phoshporence to read by if helf very close to a page: so I read the Melek Taus invocations after all, and then chanted the seven names (in Qechua Incan) of the seven elemental powers seven times, which felt really good.
While flipping through my notes I stopped on a photocopy of A.O.Spare's portrait of his Indian guide Black Eagle, whom I have met before in less human shadowform. Remembering that Spare apparently used the actual picture as a medium for contact, I stared into the guide's eyes for a while in the eerie dim orange light. A message came almost immediately, very clear and certain: the Black Eagle, in totemic animal form, was actually the Condor (top of the Incan Cross). Grant has written (in 'Outer Gateways') about 'Black Eagle's' relationship as a stellar conduit to the Vulture, which appears consistently as a link between Spare's Zos Kia Kultus and Maat Magick. The condor, a great black bird of the craggy peaks of South America, looks very much like a vulture, having a pink neck and all, but is actually - a Black Eagle! (A week or so later I scored two beautiful arm-length black condor feathers from the Witches' Market in La Paz just before leaving South America; a wonderful totem withwhich to carry the Incan magick I had learned there with me)
I took some 'blind' flash shots of the lunar temple (which turned out crap), and headed off up the mountainside, feeling quite satisfied and unaware that my initiatory ordeal was only just beginning... ...
In the darkness the passage was very arduous. I could see vague shapes in the shifting starlight, but mostly had to feel my way slowly along the narrow winding stone trail through the jungle.
Then the cloudcover came, and it got even darker, even as the path became more treacherous and obscure.
Several times I would find myself reaching out tentative feet to find only brush or even empty space, dropping away into darkness, and have to backtrack a little to re-find the path of stone steps I had strayed from. Nevertheless I made slow (very slow!) but steady progress up the mountain. I was in awe of the paths the Incans had made. It is almost as if, I thought, they were designed for perople to traverse in the dark by feel on mescalin! Ten to fifteen minutes later after a few particularly steep and bumpy rises over rocks and gnarled roots, I reached out into nothingness or precipices in every direction and realized I had somehow got way off the track, and been off it for quite some time.
I backtracked for a while, thought I found the path and continued on a slightly different angle, until after stumbling on a sudden ridge I almost plunged into a chasm and realized I was still way lost. As I searched around on hands and knees for stable ground, I muttered, 'At least it's not raining...'
Sure enough, five minutes later it began to rain, first lightly then progressively heavier. Soon the rocks were slippery and I was soaked, crab-crawling upsidedown cautiously around in the wet pitch blackness. It took me several hours to find the trail again, during which time it occurred to me for probably the first time in my life that I was in a situation inwhich I could quite possible physically die. I was by this stage totally exhausted, my legs were aching and mouth dry. I had run out of drinking water, and was ready to collapse but knew that I would probably get hyperthermia if I did. Even when I eventually found the path again the danger was not over... the narrow trail wound up along treacherous cliffsides, there were many sudden turns and drops and huge gaps between some of the slippery steps. I dragged my weak body on, inch by inch, motivated only by some primal survival instinct.
At one stage I traversed a trench of kneehigh water, thought I was lost again and backtracked until, finding there was no other way but straight-down-fast, realized that it was actually on the path and had just filled with water in the last few hours of heavy rain. Desperate for energy, I half-filled my waterbottle from this muddy puddle and drank deep.
At least four or five hours after leaving the 'lunar temple' I finally reached the cave where my sleeping bag was. To my relief and almost disbelief it was actually dry, stashed up high on a ledge at the very back of the dripping cavern.
I clumbed up there and ,stripping off my soggy outer layers, crawled thankfully into it and fell into depe deep and dreamless sleep...
DAY 5:
I awoke at about midday to a black centipede as
thick as my little finger and twice the length
crawling rapidly across the ground right next to my
face on hundreds of little red legs.
I arose very slowly and reluctantly, my bones
aching, and spread out my clothes and things in the
sun on the path alongside the cave. As I waited for
the stuff to dry I did chakra breathing and gentle
vipassana meditations, but still felt pretty shocking.
My belly felt strange, gaseous and aching, probably
from the trenchwater, a most miserable fate after four
days of fasting and purification. My whole body was
exhausted, and I knew I still had a few hours' climb
upwards to do in the blasting afternoon sun.
Deciding
to get it over with, I forced myself to pack and began
climbing...
No sooner had I begun than three part-Indian guides
came charging over the hill, calling out to me. Due
to my checked-in bag and lack of collection thereof
they had come looking for me. I managed to explain in
stumbling Espanol-English that I had got lost last
night but was okay and on my way back now.
Presumably because I had mentioned my fasting to
one of them the day before, he produced a whitebread
roll, which I refused to put into my empty system no
matter how desperate for energy. 'Fruta?' I enquired
hopefully, and one of them miraculously produced an
orange, which I devoured with the utmost relish!
Nevertheless, that last hour up was very difficult,
and they had to stop and wait for me several times.
They gave me another orange as we finally emerged
into the Macchu Picchu ruins, and as I felt its
vitality flow through every pore, I was flooded with
relief and thanked them profusely.
At the entrance all they did was ask me for extra
money for my extra day there. 'No dinaro,' I said,
emptying my pockets. They shrugged, laughed and
returned my backpack, sending me off on my way...
I figured I would be able to borrow the trainfare
back to Cusco from some tourist also going there and
pay them back when I got to the ATM machine in Cusco.
There was a bus down the hill to the trainstation, and
as there was little time to get there in teime to
catch the last train, I asked someone boarding this.
He, a tall well-dressed man, apparently from the USA,
said he would be happy to lend me the money, but the
train may be full (he had a reservation) so he was
reluctant to pay for my busfare too in case I could
then not board the train.
So I had to walk down to the nearby town of
Ahuascalinta. 'You've got an hour til the train leaves,
you'll make it,' he assured me, and offered to take my
pack down on the bus. On my last legs, I happily
handed over the heavy burden without a second thought,
thanked him and set off.
After what I'd just been through the walk downhill
without pack was easy enough, but took considerably
longer than an hour. Though I hurried, the train was
well gone by yhe time I arrived in the bustling little
tourist-market town of Ahuascalinta. I assumed he
would have left my pack at the trainstation, but it
was not there. So I enquired at the bus station,
travel agents, and eventually wound up at the police
station, where they had to find a translator to deal
with my problem. I could not believe the pack was gone
-it was still wet from the 4-day trek and smelt quite
mouldy, full of ragged wet clothes, etc. I couldn't
imagine why a well-off looking US tourist would bother
to steal it. I suspect perhaps the bastard just dumped
it somewhere and a poor local scored the contents.
There was only about $200 worth of financial value
therein, inc. the hired tent I had tyo pay for to get
my passport back, but much of irreplaceable personal
value -my DraQyl shortstaff (consecrated as the lunar
tuskqyl of Ekudanta Ganapati, so I guess it was at
least apt that it disappeared on a dark moon), my
chalice, some special patched clothes, my travel
journal/magickal diary (thank God/dess 2/3 of this is
also saved in my email account!) from the last 6 moons
worth of global wanderings, inc. some trance drawings
from the Svadisthana Sabbat, and the greatest loss of
all: my magickal cloak which I had been progressively
patching and energizing for the last 11 years, and had
recently mended with fabrics and trinkets from my
world travels.
There were also the 3 undeveloped films I had shot
during my 4-day journey to Macchu Picchu -I was
delighted to later find the final fourth film, of
Macchu Picchu itself, stashed in my pocket
protectively when the cheap camera (also now gone) got
wet while I was lost in the jungle.
The police were unhelpful and inefficient. Their
phone was broken and it took them a lot of prompting
and several translators to convince them to phone
Cusco from a booth and see if my pack had been handed
in at the other end of the trainline. All to no avail,
all I got from them was a complimentary train ride
back to Cusco the next day (as I had no money) a typed
report in Spanish of my losses which the grumpy train
conductor took and did not return to me. Some kind
people (one of them the primary translator of my
situation to the police) who ran the internet cafe
there fed me and put me up for the long rainy night in
Ahuascalinta.
Needless to say, I arrived back in Cusco rather
depressed. My guts were rumbling (2 days of diarrhoea
and pain) after all that fruitless (well, a little
fruit on the first few days) fasting and
'purification', and I had scant posessions left in
storage at the Cusco hostel.
The next day was Carnavale in Cusco, and I stayed in
the hostel arduously turning my inside-out snakeskin
the right way out while the revellers threw water
balloons at each other out in the confetti-strewn
streets.
I eventually ventured out in scarlet velvet dress and
macaw feathers, but it all seemed to be over so I got
on the internet, slipping easily back into the old
cappucino-and-computer syndrome...
Reading about the imminent birdmask nu moon rites, I
felt I had no energy and inclination to participate.
But after my incredible journey, I was happy somewhere
deep inside just to be alive, and didn't stay down
about their tragic conclusion for very long.
On nu moon night (morning of the 6th) I awoke
strangely at about 3am from lucid dreams. The spirits
of the Andes mountains were calling me strongly. The
feeling that I had unfinished business up there
pervaded my being until I dragged myself up, scribbled
down some birdmask sigils seemingly transmitted from
the Horus-Maat Lodge in my sleep, and began packing to
catch the only daily Cusco to Ahuascalinta train at
7am; part of me disbelieving that I was actually going
back there...
And so it was that I returned to Huaynu Picchu on
the New Moon and in a further plunge
into the depths of the Abyss, let go of not only my
lost material treasures, but stripped away and
recreated many layers of my very being, resolving my
Macchu Picchu journey...
NU MOON SHIVARARTRI AYAHUASCA RITE
-The Spectacular and Surreal Conclusion of my Shamanic Journeys in South America.
7/3/00
From today's entry in my new journal:
It's Mardi Gras Day
Here in Ahuascalinta (town near Macchu Picchu)
Clouds are grey
Market streets are wet and dripping,
Sundry tourists, many trinkets,
Constant drizzling
Yet in my head
A Carnaval of feathered Masks
Is madly spinning and frizzling still
Shimmering colours sizzling and crackling
Licking the skies of their grey shacklings...
When you read my nu moon report you'll see why
My afterglow, as I sat in cafes in the rain Riting all day
Having invoked the GanaTahuti moon Scribe all night
And once again had to fight for life and light
High on Huaynu Picchu on Ayahuasca
On many a precipice treacherous
In sheer ordeal's delight... ...
March Nu Moon/Shivaratri Ayahuasca Rite
6th March 2000
The Rite of No Fire
What a fucking awesomely abbyssmal night,
Oh the eternal fragmentory delight
Of sensuous rapture,
Beautiful and terrible, dark and bright
Nu moon lunations, self-love
Estroerogenous mutations
Delirious Ayahuasca trip
In the stellar cave
High on Huayna Picchu (Macchu Picchu's younger sister mountain)
I've never been so wired into the N'aton matrix.
While yet cavorting with Pacha Mama(Mother Earth)'s elemental spirits,
fireflies and cloudragons, rainghouls windwraiths and strange incongruous
interdimensional travellers with cybernetic headsets, snaps of other lives
and slaps of other times, dishevelled spinning filingcabinet of random
transmissions from the multiverse chaorder hivemind take me...
The RehctawatcheR
Double wanded, Double headed
Puma-Jaguar-Lion-Cat
Titicaca
Is coated thick with honey
And crumbles into Clay
In the cauldron of the Hivemind, Sekhmaat Solves
Et Coagula, pleasurepain
From the Red Earth
Atum shall rise again...
(For those who've just read it, please excuse the introductory reiteration
from the end of Macchu Picchu account. It was necessary to set the
scene)...
After my beautiful waning moon journey to Macchu Picchu wound to its
tragic conclusion, I found myself backpackless, depressed and with severe
diarrhoea in the nearby Peruvian city of Cusco.
After a near-sleepless night on the 4th of March of bellyache and constant
visits to the dysfunctional toilet in the cheap hostel I was staying at, I
eventually got a good rest for most of the following day. It was the first
time in a week or so I slept past 8am, which is very unusual for me with my
usually nocturnal patterns.
I arose mid afternoon and could hear distant music in the main streets as
it was carnaval day there. Hardly feeling celebratory, I sat in the kitchen
for hours sipping cinnamon tea and turning back the right way the small inside-out baby daimondback snakeskin I had had salted in my bag since its
finding at Palenque. After this arduous operation I filled it with tealeaves
and wrapped it back in a large marone leaf to tan, put on my scarlet velvet
dress, three blue and red macaw feathers in my hair and ventured out.
By this time everything was pretty much over (from reports it sounded like
carnaval in Cusco consisted pretty much just of amplified music and people
throwing lots of water balloons at each other anyway. Because of the vague
hope of still locating my missing pack, I had not travelled down to the
'Diablo Dances' fourday masked and costumed Indian carnaval spectacle in
Oruro as originally planned); so I headed for the nearest net cafe and easily slipped back into the comfort of the cappucino and computer syndrome.
Ploughing throught the backlog of email accumulated during my trek
throught the Andes mountains, I was startled to discover that nu moon was
actually that night, not the following as I thought, that it was indeed on
the 6th but just after midnight of the 5th in the USA, which meant at about
3am Peruvian time. Not only that, it was also Shivaratri, the Hindu annual
celebration of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. I had been previously
informed that it was on the previous full moon, and had been excited about
its apparent subconscious synchronicity with the Svadisthana Sabbat that
night. Now I was being informed it was actually tonight, thereby making this
nu moon the first annual anniversary of the HML e-list and recent nu moon
workings also...
While I was feeling a bit better and wanted to participate in the
Horus-Maat Lodge astral rites, I also still felt rather tired, exhausted and
unmotivated. At least I was wearing a trident of feathers in my hair for
Shiva! ...Perhaps I would perform a small rite the next morning, I thought.
Small? Ha! If only I had known what was in store for me in the next 24
hours...
From the SSS site I printed out a copy of the Rite of the Naked Fire which
Aion had expressed intention to perform for the occasion, and retreated back
to the hotel for an early night and a very deep sleep.
I awoke rather suddenly at about 4am with a head full of strange psychic
frequencies. I had been lucid dreaming and, it seemed, receiving messages
from other HML members performing their rites that night. It was only about
an hour after the turning of the lunar cycle into the nu moon...
In semisleep I had been up in the Andes mountains again, and felt somehow
refreshed by the astral experience. It felt as if the spirits of the
mountains were calling me back, to complete business there left unfinished
on the waning moon. I knew I had to return there for a nu moon rite and some
kind of resolution to my strange journeys in South America so, knowing the
only daily train out to Macchu Picchu left at 7pm, decided I should soon
rise.
I was still in trance however and began to slip back into semi-sleep. Strange sigils suddenly flashed before my closed eyelids. I realized with a
vague thread of consciousness that they were in the formation of the Tree of
Life, and this provided the motivation I needed. I got up, found a scrap of
paper and scrawled down an impression of the symbols as they receded.
Looking at the pattern (left) I realized that the top sigil for
Kether, a Shiva trident, combined with the inverse (rooted in matter)
trident of Malkuth, together with the Marassa (sacred twins in voodoo)
united at the Crossroads veve at Tiphereth, collectively formed the N'aton
bindrune the Lodge has been using. The Yod-like seed at Daath, my own throne
in the 11* working, is like the bindu within the bindrune, the gateway of
Arcana 23, reflected below in the chalice-like sigil at Yesod. The Netzach
symbol appears to be a stylized peacock-feather eye (apt as the birdmasks of
Maat was the theme for that nu moon working), the rest remain mysterious to
me.
I stuffed a few belongings into a bag and began the walk across town to
San Pedro trainstation as the sun came up. Emerging into a plaza from a
narrow backstreet, the first thing I really saw with my slowly-awakening
dayvision was a large stone fountain with white swans carved at the top.
This seemed a direct dawn nu moon nu day message from Kether, the swan being
its birdmask and the fountaining Sahasrara its corresponding chakra...
At the trainstation I bought a grapefruit for breakfast then noticed
someone selling small jars of honey. This was an excellent sign as Ra'en's
longdead spirit guide had suggested honey to me as an appropriate sacrament
to the spirits at Macchu Picchu, and I had forgotten to take any on my
previous oddyssey. So I bought some and stowed it for the trip. On the train I thankfully drifted back into sleep and awoke 4 or 5 hours later in the
little tourist town of Ahuascalinta near Macchu Picchu.
Arriving back there seemed like a bit of a nightmare, memories too fresh
of desperately searching for my pack in the rain, cold and hungry. I
realized part of my motivation for returning had perhaps been some vague
hope of still finding it, but a quick visit to the train, bus and police
stations soon dashed those hopes.
So I gave up on the pack and instead looked for Ayahuasca, which my friend
Jim met at Lake Titicaca had told me someone was selling in this town.
Ayahuasca is a South American jungle vine containing the intensely potent psychedelic tryptamine chemicals, which are also used to create DMT. I had
wanted to try some for the rite when at Macchu Picchu on the waning moon,
but as the 4-day walking trail I had taken there bypassed the town I had not
had the opportunity to find it.
This time I located the ayahuasca quite quickly with a few questions in the
right places. The shop where it was being sold 'under the counter' to
genuine seekers only was, funnily enough, full of rather psychedelic
original pen drawings of Shiva, which he said had been drawn by a friend
inspired by Ayahuasca visions... Om Namah Shivayah! Om Namah Parvati!
Securing the sacred potion for the cheapest price possible (which included
a belt I was previously wearing woven in Mexico), I hired a sleeping bag
(mine having been in the stolen pack) from the travel agency and headed off
away from the market-streets.
As soon as I began heading up the mountainside, a great sense of relief
flooded my being. That's right, the space of the mountains, the freshness of
the air, the clouds and the great rolling green slopes of Pacha Mama! This
was life.
After about an hours walk I arrived at the gates of the Macchu Picchu
Incan city ruins only about an hour before dusk. After selling me a ticket
they refused to let me take my small pack in, suspecting that I intended to
sleep somewhere in there. I could not believe it -surely my plans could not
be foiled at this stage!
I had been told by another traveller on my last visit that the Lonely
Planet travel guide says something about night tickets being available, and
kept insisting upon this and how far I travelled that day to be there for
more than just the hour before they closed.
Eventually I talked to the manager about it, a kind man, and he allowed me
to exchange my ticket for a night one, but insisted that I had to return by
10pm or they would 'come looking for me'. Considering that they still
wouldn't let me take in my pack with sleeping bag in it, I grudgingly
consented. This gave me about 5 hours, which is ironically about the amount
of time an ayahuasca trip lasts for, allowing an hour or so extra for the
walk back from Huaynu Picchu, the neighbouring mountain where I intended to
perform my rites.
What I had failed to consider, of course, was that while the journey up
there in the last of the daylight did take just less than an hour, coming
back down in the dark (and, as it turned out, the rain) took at least three
hours...
Anyway, I checked in my pack and set off with just my small shoulderbag. I
moved quickly through the maze of ruins on Macchu Picchu, gazing at them
with admiration but knowing I had not much time to reach my destinatio
before dark. I went through the gate at the other side of the ruins and
began the winding little path down then up the mountainside of Huaynu
Picchu. After half an hour or so of brisk walking I reached the turnoff to
the misnamed 'Templo de la Luna' where I had been lost a few days earlier,
but this time went the other way up towards the true moon cave at the very
top of high Huaynu Picchu.
As I climbed up I realized how strong I had become from my previous fourday walk and fast, it now only really becoming apparent as I was returning to health.
At what I figured was about 20 minutes walk from the peak of the mountain,
I stopped on a ledge and, with an extended invocation of the Blue God Shiva,
the Green Goddess Parvati-Gaia, and their holy Children GanaTahuti and
KrishnaPan, I quoffed the bitter ayahuasca brew in a few hearty gulps. It
was somehow both putrid yet posessed of some kind of strange delighfully aromatic edge.
I reiterated my invocation of the hybrid deity GanaTahuti, Tahuti (Thoth)
being the Ibis-headed Scribe whose totem is the birdmask of my throne of Daath in the HML 11* rite, and Ganapati/Ganesha being the corresponding
scribe of the hindu pantheon, both also related to the re-turn of the crescent moon as 'drawn down' by the scribe, the vision real-ized via word
and symbol. I stuck two macaw feathers from my bag in my plaited hair, and
an Ibis feather between them, forming a Shiva-trident. And I called upon
Kukulcan/Quetzalcoatl (whose Mayan priests wore macaw feathers) and Melek
Taus, the peacock angel of the Yezzidi who also relates to the seven powers.
It occurred to me how drawn to the sphere of Netzach I was lately, that I
was invoking the peacock as much as my official birdmask of the ibis of Daath.
Both have irridescent turqoise plumes, I mused as I continued on up the
mountainside. The abyss of Daath is the black void from which the colour
spectrum (or the kalas of Kali) emanates...
It seems that lately I am always focused in at least two sephiroth, my
throne of Daath and also that or those spheres relating to my global chakra
journeys. At Mt Shasta, Gaia's muladhara, I 'fell to earth' from Daath to
Malkuth, and have since been making the slow ascent back to the void which
is my home, while always also being there already. At and around the time of
the Svadisthana Sabbat I was focused on the lunar dreaming of Yesod and its
relationship with Daath; and now I found myself concentrated also on the
energies of Netzach and also Hod (as made apparent by the hummingbird who
entered my cave of sleep the morning after writing chapter II of The Book of
Going Back by Night), moving up towards the fire of Tiphereth...
I passed through the majestic stone gateway of a small Incan ruin just
before the summit, which it did seem to take about twenty minutes to reach,
but the ayahuasca had still not come on yet as its seller had led me to
anticipate. This was good though as I was thus able to meditate slowly into
the transition, rather than be already tripping upon arrival.
I collected some dryish ferns, bracken and twigs towards the top, aiming
to perform a fire rite to reconciliate my lack thereof on the waning moon. I
also picked a small bunch of beautiful sweetsmelling pink blossoms for the
altar, as they reminded me of Parvati and one of Her devotees I know.
Just before the summit I found a large and most wondrous gnarled chunk of
wood: its twisted grey form had a very apparent face on each end, a wondrous
natural 'double wand.' One face was distinctly feline, like a puma (centre
of the Incan Cross) or lion head, the other end an elephant-like trunked and
tusked visage. Om Ganapati Namah! Io Hrumachis, double-headed sphinx! A
great cat and Ganesha had been the deities presiding over the Svadisthana
Sabbat at Lake Titicaca on the full moon two weeks' preceding...
Although I knew I unfortunately could not keep the gargantuan staff, I
nevertheless lugged it up to the peak to leave on the altar I would create
there for my nu moon rite. I emerged from the path unexpectedly on the *top*
of the moon cave. I peered down into its depths, a cosy if moist little
alcove. Before me on the other side of the opening down into the cavern lay
a great boulder on the edge of the mountain, flat-topped, a natural
platform. I stepped across onto it and looked out and down. A panorama
spectacular even beyond my expectations spread out before me - the city of Macchu Picchu to my right, ahead more mountains and valleys, towering lush
green slopes with the clouds drifting in slow mistique between them; and
below, the raging white water of the wide river winding through. The sky was
aglow with a gentle orange dusk light.
I put down the twisted log behemoth, slipped down into the cave behind,
put down my bag, had a large swig from my waterbottle, then climbed back up
onto that great flat rock. There I sat in halflotus and performed my chakra
breathing meditations. What a beautiful way to transit into the ayahuasca
trip: as I moved up from the first 13 breaths on the Muladhara, normal
physical reality began to shed its veils, one by one with each chakra. As I
moved up to Svadisthana, I felt its watery energies swirl in my belly, slipping into physical-astral double perception. I gazed at the blue-grey
patterns on the surface of the boulder onwhich I sat, and chuckled silently as they began to shift, sliding in kaleidoscopic layers.
Shifting up to Manipura then Anahata, I looked up and found the valleys
below had disappeared in cloud. Still breathing deep down to my perineum, I
turned my head slightly, excitedly, and looked at some spindly tree branches poking out from the thick mist, now silhouetted insectoid-like against the
slowly-darkening bluegrey sky, and skrinkering at me eagerly. Everything was
so very much alive!
With mounting joy I felt the familiar playfulness of the encroaching
tryptamine spirits all around me. Here I am again, I thought, yet knowing I
had never left...
There was a large mass of white cloud just above me, and as I brought the prana gradually up my spine, this mass slowly descended, in the quiet
stillness of the slow semi-dark creeping in; until as I reached the
Sahasrara chakra, it sat just above my head. I stared up at it as the energy
fountained from my crown. I had never been that close to such a dense layer
of cloud. As I stared into its vapourous milky depths various moist wraiths
and other elemental spirits emerged and morphed playfully before me. I
stared transfixed by their wistful dance of rapid transmogrification. The
beautiful thing about tryptamines is that the visions they inspire can be
stared at and even studied in detail directly. Although shifting, they are
everpresent and tangible, unlike the elusive corner-of-the-eye
hallucinations I experience on acid or mushrooms. An elephantine winged
cloud fluidform hovered before me, the palest of bluegrey, then with a touch of wispy tentrils dissipated and reformed as a bow, drawn and then quartered into fourfold mandalas of white fluffy flux.
I sat in silent awed observational bliss for a while, then opened wide my
arms to the expansive heavens above, crying out ecstatically, 'Om Namah
Shivayah!Om Namah Parvati! Sacred be your marriage, and joyous am I to be
your Child!' I stood and stretched out my body in every direction, then slid
back down into the cave to gather my belongings and dissipating wits...
I was by now tripping out of my skull but still prepared to go further
(always!...) so I downed the last third of the bitter brew which as its seller had recommended had been left until the first 2/3 came on.
I sat huddled with my head pressed against the cold stone wall for a
while, my body-as-I-once-knew-it feeling most floppy and distant as the DMT
imps re-invaded my molecules.
I wanted to light a fire, as I had failed to do on the waning moon; to
celebrate Shiva. I wanted to orate Dadaji's Rite of the Naked Fire, linking in
with Aion's synchronous nu moon performance of this. The rite Ra'en and Joe had
originally suggested for a nu moon in this mooncave involved three fires,which I found an interesting synchronicity, the Hebrew fire-and-spirit
letter Shin for Shiva being the 'triple tongue of fire'. The trident stang having been a prominent symbol on the full moon Svadisthana Sabbat two
weeks' prior, this Rite of the 'One Fire' seemed an appropriate condensation
of this to its essence. Where to light the fire? I wondered and looked up at
the rock platform, delighted with the idea. Dare I? It seemed like an absurd
notion, to creat a fire up there, bare before the heavens like my soaring soul -very Promethean somehow...
I huddled there in the cavern, brain beginning to whirl off into myriad
multidimensional tangent tunnels, thinking with my last strands of intention that I really should go up there and light the fire then before it started
getting too dark and damp.
About the third time (time when I considered the concept being an
increasingly-abstract distant notion which was slipping away from my
consciousness in a visual flurry of fluidform drips snd tocks, ticks and
drops... merely one or perhaps several of the many beckoning vortextural
tunnels splaying before my flayed soul...) that it occurred to me I should
move back up onto the rock and light the fire, I actually moved, clambering
up slowly and with some difficulty.
Then I just sat there, seeing and feeling and hearing an increasing array
of sensory abstraction. It seemed I was beginning to receive random
transmissions, all sorts of odd and 'irrelevant' information and static;
like I was a wideopen conduit to the hivemind of humanity, receiving
impressions from various random sources in fragmentory snatches of imagery
and semi-reified thoughtforms.
Eventually I gathered the threads of my unravelling individuated ego
enough to attempt to light that One Fire. I knelt on the hard rock, making
match wigwams then piling on other small twigs and brush as they ignited. It
was a futile attempt.
Three small tongues of flame did I make but though I prayed fervently to
Shiva, ('One Fire!' I cried, 'Just One Fire,') no lasting Fire could I
light. It was so ridiculously moist up there atop the mountain, I doubt if I
would have had much more success even if I had more sensibly opted for the
shelter of the cave below. I had sworn off lighters after my dark moon
misadventure nearby, but now, before I realized they were even running low, I suddenly discovered I was out of matches...
I was simultaneously disappointed yet rather bemused. 'No fire!' I cried
in the silence of the descending night, 'No fire!'
It seemed deliciously ironic in relation to my throne of Daath. I could
feel Aion's distant manifest 'One Fire' as a counterpoint for my own lack
thereof. Echoes in the Void...
...Yet there are No echoes in the Void...
I had incense, candles, invocations to read, tattoo needle, pens and blank
paper, and now no matches. Yet what need had I of any of this parafinalia
anyway? I laughed aloud at the bleak tragicomedy of the Abyss, and reached for my pipes... Ah well, I said, I may as well enjoy the view and play my
pipes while I'm here!
I blew long and languid the four notes of the Pan call, Echo-ing endlessly
from the Syrinx, then released a shrill flurry of purring trills and blurred
arpeggios. They trailed off into the valleys below, absorbed in the mist. My
tunes progressively became more strangely staggered, stuttered with erotic
pause and anticipatory poise of breath then descent of low moaning little
death. I lay back, stretched out. I felt like I was making love with myself
with sound. Its ripples tickled my skin then dashing down the octave gouged
at my insides in a rush of vertiginous passion.
I could feel on this trip most lucidly the transphysical effects of my
recent continued invocations of the lunar Goddess in conjunction with a
gradually-increasing nightly ritual intake of eostrogen. The eight-armed one
glowed within me, laughing her lilting silvery moonwebs in response to Blue
KrishnaPan's probing piping.
There was somehow apparently no physical sensation of sexual arousal
involved in this strange aural-emotional bout of selflove -it was another
level of sensuality again.
After a while I put the pipes aside and sat up quite suddenly, head
burning. 'No fire,' I cried, 'And yet I AM A FIRE.' I sang the last words
and my voice soared up beyond its normally frequencies into a sonorous
treble which resonated strangely in the night air. 'I am a fiiirrrrre...'
The wind begun to curl in, nibbling at my spine and shoulders, but an
unquenchable core -the spark of life, of True Will- refused to perish in the
encroachment of elemental opponents and shattered plans. Aion told me later that this was actually the point of the Rite of the Naked Fire -to realize that the Fire is within oneself. Joe also informed me later via Ra'en that it had been the point of his proposed rite for me too!
My concept of self
fractured into a million shards in a second wave of multidimensional
transmissions. I curled up and lapsed into silence.
People, kind of normal-looking, with cybernetic headsets -earphones and visorscreens of virtual information kept popping into my consciousness,
adjusting their dials as if tuning in to my own psychedelic rewiring. This
struck me as strange, way up there away from civilization amidst the
crickling trees and swirling elementals. The ayahuasca brew I had ingested,
I might add, was composed merely of two complementary plant extracts,
without chemical processing or synthetic components. I wondered if these
hardwired 'invaders' were thoughforms lingering from tourists who had been
up there recently, a result of my own wiring into the virtual wwweb, emmisaries from future or parralel realities, or what..?
They would consistently adjust their dials and as if 'changing channel' blip back out of my reality, usually grinning. It all became quite absurd,
multiple tracks of information overloading my fractured psyche. I began
stuffing things into filing cabinets in an attempt to order the chaos,
actual visual compartments forming to enfold and compress the different
segments of morphing data, but the more chaos I ordered, the more I was
served, and soon I began to laugh and laugh, rolling about on the rock until
I almost rolled off its dramatic edge and dropped off into the physical
abyss below, which startled me halfway back to my (usual sense of) senses.
Eventually I regained enough focus to sit up in halflotus and after some
stabilizing silence and stillness, chanted the chakra tones. I'm very glad I
did so. My voice opened like never before. I could hear subtle nuances of
overtone and undertone rippling through each progressive sound. The low
lunar svadisthana tone was rich with subsonic aquatic bubbles and waves of
deep bliss. The Anahata tone had swirling wind rushing through it like
hollow reeds skimmed with melifluous harmony... The top two chakras
blistered with highpitched warping metatones beyond my normal range of
hearing but now quite apparent. The heavens filled with, and seemed to
respond to, the sounds...
I did not perform the chakra tones for 4 or 5 days after nu moon, and when
I did do so again was delighted to find I could still grasp at least some of what I learnt about sound from the tryptamine elves that night.
I sank from the chanting back into silence and from my brief focus once
more dissipated into shards of random transmissions and/or emmissions.
Eventually I sobered up enough to realize I should really get going back
down the mountain, as I once again had no light, it was a fucking cold dark
and dangerous passage back and I had no real idea how many covoluted hours I
had been up there already. I looked at the very distant-looking lights of
the entrance-complex to Macchu Picchu glowing softly in the fog which was
progressively enveloping more and more of my environment.
After this thought visited me for a third and this time less fleeting
moment, I gathered my things together. I had lost my spine. The 'espina de
cactus', that is, which I had worn in my septum since Mexico. My other spine
seemed to be mostly intact, if unusually malleable.
I felt like performing some kind of resolutionary rite before leaving, and
at this point found the small glass bottle of honey. I tasted some of the
moulten gold, it was a most unusual and delicious flavour. Peruvian bees, it
became apparent, had some rather special-tasting nectar sources!
Upon first climbing up on the rock I had placed a sandstone Incan figurine
upon the naturally altar-like like indentation at the edge of the great flat rock platform, in front of the gargantuan Ganesha-Bast double wand I had
found on the way up. For the statuette was also two-headed, a double puma I
had found -unique amidst countless replicas of the more standard totems- at
an Indian souvenir stall at the Tiwinaku ruins on the way up from Bolivia to
Peru. It seemed like a special totem for me and my continuing journey with
Hrumachis the double-headed lion.
Chanting, 'Sa Sekhem SaHu,' in both adoration of Sekhmaat the feline
honey-moon Goddess and to realign my five different bodies or layers of
being (which felt quite dishevelled!) I poured the thick sweet sacrament in
great gooey strands over both the twoheaded puma figurine and the twoheaded
double wand of gnarled wood behind it. Hexagon hivepatterns swirled out from
my third eye in kaleidoscopic mandalas.
'Inca Linga (Mother Earth), Inca Linga, Inca Linga,' I chanted in
adoration as the honey dripped onto the surrounding stone.
Then I sat with trickling thoughts and images for an eternal little while,
once more gathered my focus and my scant possesions and climbed over the
cave mouth and back onto the path above. The movement made my body spasm and
with a lurch of giddy blackness I heaved up the bitter brew (having made the
most of it in the meantime) in a torrent of acrid vomit.
This made me feel more sober and grounded, but also thus aware that my
body was quite weak and wobbly. As I set off down the mountainside, the new
panpipes (the set I brought to Macchu Picchu last time having been crushed
in my pack) fell out of my bag and down a bottomless well of blackness. I
did not hear them land. Ah well, I thought, they were well worth the small
price I paid for them just for that one estroerogenous mountain tune...
Because I had already done this once recently, I knew I could do it again
and plunged on, enduring the relentless toil through the thickening rain.
Towards the end I dropped a new Indian-woven blanket. Lowering myself onto
my belly to reach down in the direction it had disappeared, I felt sharp thorns then empty space. Oh well, I shrugged rising back to my knees, what more can I lose to the night? After backpack, staff, cloak, usual
perceptions and ego had been progressively stripped away from me by the
mountains and the plants, it seemed like nothing... some more illusory
stitches in the transitory fabric of 'reality'...
The walk-crawl-lope-walk seemed as if endless, but somehow eventually I
got back to the little wooden gate into the back of the Incan ruins and wove
quickly through them to the entrance. The front gate was long abandoned, it
being at least 2 or 3 in the morning I supposed -as if they would've really
come looking for me in the rain and the dark! I thought to myself, bemused.
The gate had been left ajar, as was the subsequent door into the storeroom,
where I retreived my pack and sleepingbag. The idea of walking for another
rainy hour down to the town was absurd to me. I was on my last legs and went back into the Macchu Picchu ruins with my pack. I slept in a thatched Incan
hut on the grassy slopes not far from the gates, next to a window which
looked out onto the now-distant peak of Huaynu Picchu, wreathed with clouds.
It seemed bizarre to think that was where I had been sitting four hours or
so ago...
I awoke after a few hours of cold yet deep due to exhaustion sleep, almost
thawed and dried by the time I rose at first light. I staggered quietly out,
nodding a vague, 'Beunos Dias' at the first gaggle of bus-borne tourists
entering as I left, and set off down the hill.
I arrived in Ahuascalinta wet and frozen, found none of the numerous cafes
and restaurants open yet, stood shivering in alcoves until a little place
opened and a little old lady brought me the best cup of tea I had ever
drank. This was soon followed by the best hot shower (for sinco pesos) I have ever had, in a hostel there. There was no bus til evening that day it
turned out, so I spent the whole day sitting in cafes drinking multiple
coffees at tables arrayed with my various debri and tattered esoteric
parchments spread out to dry, writing and writing with fevered inspiration,
both new material and recollections of Chapter II of The Book of Going Back
by Night and Liber Qoph vel Hecate, both lost with my journal on the waning
moon. The Tuskqyl staff, pennae of Ekudanta Ganapati, which I had also on
dark moon lost my physical analogue of, had returned also it seemed, etched
into my very soul. My invocations of the Scribe, the Ibis of Daath, had
succeeded it seemed. I had traversed the Abyss, belongings and ego and
perceptions dispersing like so much carnaval confetti in the wind; and was now earthing the nu crescent in the pages of a cheap exercise book...
When I emptied my bag to dry things out that morning I discovered that the
two-headed puma from the altar had crumbled as a result of being covered in
honey! There were four larger pieces which formed the two heads, and the
rest was just red dust. I was reminded of Nema's picture in the Abyss
section of 'Maat Magick' of a figure cracking into pieces, with various
icons spilling from its shattered skull...
I laughed. How apt that this totem of mine had been dissolved in honey; it
was the perfect visual metaphor for my experiences. The mountain and the ayahuasca had
crumbled my perceptions of who and what I and everything else is/isn't, and
yet the experience, after the preceding more mundane outer layers of losing
material posessions, had been for the most part a delightfully joyous
release -sweet dissolution in the hivemind...
Blessed Bee!
(Inca Linga Chant):
Wayda
P'ara
Nina
Orco
Mayu
C'ocha
Hanan Pacha
Seven elements
Seven Powers
Chanted Seven Times
Seven Heavens, Seven rhymes
On the Seventh Day
Seven Hours
Seven Powers, Seven wheels spinnning
Seven Reeds, Seven Notes, Seven Heavens singing
Seven Tones, Seven Colours, Seven glimmering Stars,
Seven Sisters, Sayhuas shimmering from afar...
>From putrescence,
Irridescence
Ia, refracted through Kia,
Io Ia
Io Ia
Hail to the Blue God/dess!
(song):
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Lord of the Painted Fan :]
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Winged Serpent
Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Hail El Shaitan
Peacock Angel
Diany Glas
Diany Glas,
Feri Lord and Lady Bright
Lucif�r, Light Bring�r
Illumine Shadows you created
Master-Mistress of duality
Crafter of Reality
You split the Atom, refract the light
From Nigri Solis
Through Kia,
Io Ia, Io Ia,
From Kali cum Kalas
Cauda Pavonis
To the Kingdom of Zos
Through cloudy mirror,
Seven Stars Shimmer
Melek Taus,
Melek Taus,
Iris is the iris of your Peacock Eye withwhich to scry
Double-Chaliced One, She pours starlight into lunar sea
Queen of the Palace in the Sky
Hers the alchymic Art of Temperance
When the Tower crashes
She sifts embers from the Ashes...
Samekh, Samekh,
Reflect, reflect
Refract, Re-prise...
Hail Shiva, Blue Fire
Hail Parvati, True Faith
I am your wild Child-Nath
Krishna-Ganesha-Pan
Blue-Grey Child
Lord of Seven
Stealing Fire from Heaven
But Ravens bear Rain from Chesed
In a flash of bliss
I am Nix's lover...
The darkness envelops, Rainclouds cover,
Yet colours shimmer
From the Abyss
Borne on the irridescent turqoise plumes
Of the Ibis
He pennaes them to the page with pluma
Rites writ in blue
Blue God, Green Goddess
Turqoise Irid-Essence
Hail thy Seven-hued presence
Blue-black God, Thoth-Tahuti
Blue-grey God, Ganapati
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Lord of the Painted Fan
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Hail El Shaitan
Melek Taus
Melek Taus
Wing�d Serpent, Kukulcan
-Orryelle, 7/3/'000
INCA LINGA LINGO
A Nu Moon Poem Glossary:
Wayda -Wind
P'ara -Rain
: Nina -Fire
Orco -Mountain
Mayu -River
C'ocha -Ocean
Hanan Pacha -Milky Way (Hunab K'u)
Inti -SunGod
Kia -MoonGoddess
Ia -Rainbow
Macha'Huay/Amaru -Serpent
Macha'Quay -serpent constellation (milky way) -changes to Condor when the
seasons shift from rains to drought
Altomisayoc/ P'aqos -Andean priest
Sayhuas -Pleiades constellation (Seven Sisters)
Punku -Door