Iron and Gold: Straight Down and Keenly Through

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This is somewhat of an experiment, so you shall have to forgive me. Forgive me any mistakes, any wrongnesses or distortions – purely because, you see, I am proceeding in darkness.

The knowledge we are seeking with this experiment is found in darkness and rich blood. It\’s found by going back to the roots of logic, in tunneling deep into the soil beneath the constructions of a world bound by the Spirit of separation. Analysis has left us with particulate, quantised realities; striation of number and discrete variable.

Thought, power, form – all channelled into line, canal-ised units bumping up against each other, face to face as the boundaries of our spheres of influence, our envelopes of skin press against each other.

Touch. That\’s what it\’s called. The impact, the weight the force of of it; pressure where one thing senses another. Back and forth, adjusting or overpowering as is decreed by a thousand different conditions.

But in this experiment, this notional extension of the senses – desirously we look to the spaces in-between. The charge that thrums there, the polarity of pulse, the very rhythm of breath; an endless becoming-as and blending with, a subtle dynamism.

The storm rumbles with its iron-black cloud wreathed in lightning, and thunder unfolds, the noise itself evoking the wash of sound; an ocean of experience that engulfs us. Crucified, strapped to the mast, salt-stung on the axis-mundi we are surrounded by mountains a hundred times taller than our humble vessels. They peer down upon us with brine-ridden gaze, piercing skin with salt encrusted nails, opening us to the air.

Down even to the marrow, we are revealed; the rusting revelation borne forth by ocean-spume. Aphrodite\’s foam arises from a dismembered heaven, but take heart! Old Saturn-Kronos has re-emerged from the Caves of Tartarus, Kouros once more – and how brightly he leads this coterie of heroes! Wolves all, these Lords of the Lair, these dreaming singers, Ouliades – son and daughters of sun-bright Apollo Oulis and his endless golden arrows.

Deathbringer. Destroyer. Healer. Helper. Oracle. Prophet.

Annointed, initiated – son and grandson in endless line, bearing in blood and word and song the inner knowledge of gods. In the midst of the storm, so we raise our hands and calm falls upon the earth. The noise of primordial silence falls upon the perception of those who have ears to hear, and so we may walk upon the stilled waters while all about us are deafened by the roar of the everyday.

This is an experiment, dear ones. A following of the thread left for us left in the Labyrinth. Alone we may seem, besieged by echoes of banished images and forms; wreathed in mists, surrounded by the hiss of nested serpents, so we believe we wander unaided. We believe ourselves lost, dear ones. But how can this be we so, we who breathe and hear its whistle betwixt our teeth, who listen to the winds sing through the hollows of cavernous spaces that once seemed so crowded?

We, who stand at the crossroads, who gather up the dismembered trivium into its wholly mystic self. We who hear the syrinx, the piping of unknown and half-forgotten gods, their Images long devolved and stained; we who plunge laughing into the deepest Night in search of the golden immortals?

Listen then:

For we too are carried. We too are guided by the charioteers, the riders, the choosers of the slain. The Daughters of the Very Sun lead us to the gates of Beyond.  Come lately from the Halls of Night, wishing swiftly to return there, so  we are guided to the one who has gnosis – nameless in her beauty.

1.21 the maidens held the chariot and horses on the broad road.
1.22 And the goddess received me kindly, took my right hand in hers,
1.23 and addressed me with these words:
1.24 \’Young man, accompanied by immortal charioteers,
1.25 who reach my house by the horses which bring you,

1.26 welcome – since it was not an evil destiny that sent you forth to travel
1.27 this road (for indeed it is far from the beaten path of humans),
1.28 but Right and justice. There is need for you to learn all things –
1.29 both the unshaken heart of persuasive Truth
1.30 and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance.
1.31 But nevertheless you will learn these too – that the things that appear
1.32 must genuinely be, being always, indeed, all things.

Parmeneides, On Nature. trans Richard D. McKirahan – Philosophy before Socrates, pp. 151 – 157

Far from the beaten paths of men, we are received most kindly; here at the roots of mountains, given access by soft words of maidens, our hand is taken and we are led to most furious inspiration. The glorious madness of existence, vibrant in its rushing, intoxicating glory surrounds us. Like any storm,  as singular in purpose as its sole eye, so we are brought to the mysteries of death. In this, it is the cool hand of the nameless which calms our fractious horses and transmits its wisdom.

For the sun, most vaunted of holy bodies dwells not in light, but in darkness – not in the land of civilisation, but those of the barbarian. Beyond the limits of maps lies the truth – for ever-youthful Apollo held his home far beyond the limits of the North Wind.

This is an experiment, full of Midnight Light and burning skies, of hordes and horses. Of grizzled horse-hair moustaches and thundering mounts. Of ten thousand drum-beats calling black birds to feast on flesh; skull-gleam wink from empty socket. Of a god of ten thousand forms and shapes, inhabiting a billion bodies all at once where time means naught: where the All at Once is contained in a single note droned from an endlessly open throat.

Of iron nails pinning myth and daimon both to the very earth, so that the blood may well up and refresh them endlessly anew. Where a tree supports the Heavens and the Earth in worlds that are thrice on thrice; where the sacrifice of self to the unbegotten pleromatic Self sets us free from our fetters. Where our every wound may be a wellspring that cleanses us from doubt, our every suffering remind us of our mortality, our congress with the Lady in the Mound. Only then will we be able to heal and sing away the agonies of others, to ease their passage and lead them to drink the waters of their own Soul.

Only then may we comprehend Christ with his warband of disciples, Wodan with his harriers and Apollo and Dionysius with their frenzied initiates. Only then may Kronos greet Mahakala in the tent of the Khan. There, Bolverk and Gunnloth lie in the calmness of the afterglow, listening to the whirl of Kali\’s knives as she dances with Shiva, he white as a corpse in the charnel grounds, all dreadlocked and garlanded with serpents.

Only then may we witness the termas given by scorpions, or we dragon-slayers take shelter from the storm beneath the hood of the King of the Nagas. Only then shall the vital, Primal Images  unveil themselves from ten thousand years of dry dust and half an aeon of separation, becoming a blossom of infinite difference and variety.

As Rudra and the Maruts stalk the stormy sky and black dogs pad the corpse paths on soft paws, we plunge down to the very roots of the tradition which was subverted, separated and peeled away by counterfeit self-agrandizing Spirit. We greet ancient Pythagoras as kindred spirits, hail Parmeneidies as brother, and lift our voices to the Aither along with Empdocles. And Heraclitus, he who died beneath the midday sun?

We weep sweet tears of joy to see him rise up once more upon the downward path, mixing our tears in with his at thousands years of seeming loss.

This is an experiment.

Throw yourselves back, back into the arms of heroes! You are whole, you are complete – simply recall your ancestors and you will begin to understand the  truth of this. You have your grandfather\’s eyes, your mother\’s smile, your child\’s laugh. Any and all and many in between!

Listen, learn and watch!

Golden-thighed Pythagoras was visited by Abaris the Hyperborean, arrow bearing healer. Pythagoras, he who recalled many lives, given such recall by Hermes – his soul\’s lineage bore the marks of Hermotimus.

Hermotimus of Clazomenae, whose soul would voyage far and wide while his body lay as dead! Hermotimus, who identified the shield of Menelaus in the temple of Apollo, a feat worthy of any tulku, would you not agree?

Pythagoras and he, one and the same – the name that every child learns, yet does not know. It is everywhere, all about us and invisible to all those who do not have eyes to see.

The Golden Chain is full of nomads – for Abaris was a Scythian, and a wanderer far and wide. Slip into the dreams of in-between and you shall see the steppe and its wide open skies. Further back, amidst the biting cold and snow, fur and iron and eagles, the living wights are revealed, long before Siddartha entered the Lotus. Perhaps even earlier, across the ice and lands now subsumed by seas, beneath the light of the circumpolar stars, there were faces raised with streaming tears of joy in the clear crystal night?

This is an experiment – for we restless ones are entranced. From Black seas to  frozen North, the transmission of in-betweeness spreads like a bloodstain, setting the prisons of iron to rust. A cornucopia of Mysteries emerging from the hollows of the earth. We who are wounded, pierced and nailed in place. This is the nomad secret – those who  move without moving.

Such stillness is only achieved by Being, rather than doing

Be. Seeing. You.