Long Gap of Time

 

It’s been several months since I posted any articles to my blog, and maybe a few folks were wondering what happened to me. Well, a lot has happened on numerous fronts. First of all, I have relocated to a new home in Williamsburg, I have been writing a new book, and things have gotten really busy at my day job. The relocation has soaked up around two months of my time, and the fact that I am writing a new book has also taken me away from writing articles. Let me tell you about these interesting new events in my life.

As dismal and upsetting as the Trump 2.0 administration has been, I have tried to limit the amount of time that I would normally take reading the news. There is just far more bad and disturbing things going in our country and in the world today than what anyone other than a rightwing fanatic could stand, and to keep my sanity, I am instead picking and choosing the news that I read, ensuring that I am informed but not made angry and distressed from what I read. In late December I wrote an article that talked about taking a great leap from the year 2024 to 2025, but it seems more like the nation has fallen into the greater abyss, where gothic horrors hobnob with demons and monsters. Because I don’t have a government job, and because AI hasn’t made my work obsolete, I am somewhat insulated from these negative changes. I am witnessing my 401K fluctuate and I will need some luck in selling our old home in Richmond, but otherwise, I should be able to survive these changes, at least I hope.

I am, however, happy to report that I am making great strides working on my latest book project, which is titled “The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary” and contains all of the gnostic mass rites and liturgical ceremonies that have been a part of my magical regimen for decades. This book project will end up producing two volumes, since there is just such a large amount of rituals and ceremonies that I want to give to my reading public. Since I have published the books Liber Nephilim, Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and soon to be published, the two volume set of Liber Artis Archaeomancy, and all of them require mass rites and liturgical ceremonies as an ancillary suite of practices, I felt it important to produce a book that includes all of those rites. 

I also spent time writing about the four gnostic churches that I use in my magical work, my approach to modern gnosticism, the sacred solar and lunar calendar, and how all that integrates into a system of theurgy. The first part of the book comprehensively explains my approach to employing the mass rite and its associated ancillary rites into a magical priestcraft practice. The second part contains the various rituals and ceremonies that I have used to facilitate a functioning public church, with mystery rites based on the sun and moon, the calendric grail cycle, and rites for the life cycle of the congregation, such as naming, handfasting, requiem and other rites and devotional exercises.

Writing this book has been a slow process, at least for the introductory parts, but I will be able to recommence work on this book project and complete it by the fall. There is also the final editing for my two volumes of Liber Artis Archaeomancy, and the republishing of my book on the Qabalah with a new title. While the previous two years have seen several new books being published, the next couple of years will be more modest. I have three more books in the planning stages and they won’t become actual book projects until either late this year or the next year. I believe that they won’t be in print until the following year (2027), so there will only be three book projects that will produce printed books next year. However, there will be two volumes for Liber Artist Archaeomancy, and two volumes for The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary, and one book for my republished Qabalah book, and that adds up to five books altogether.

If you are wondering how I can write all of these books in such a short period of time, then I can reveal that much of the material used in my books has already been written, especially the rituals and ceremonies, and the devotional discipline. While I am writing expositions and explanations to accompany these rituals, and I am revising the rituals and bringing them into compliance with my current writing skills and occult knowledge, much of the work of developing this lore was completed back in the 1980's, 1990's and the early 2000's. I consider it my spiritual obligation to publish these books so that my legacy is assured and my methodologies will be added to the public knowledge of ritual magic and its practices and spiritual obligations. I am fortunate to have a publishing company who is willing to take on these books projects and bring them into printed copies, and I am grateful for that opportunity.

One of events that I am quite happy about is that I have relocated to a new home in Williamsburg that will be able to house a fully functioning temple and possibly an outdoor grove. I have been without a temple and a grove since I moved from Minneapolis back in 2018, before the pandemic. The last major magical working that I performed was for the Summer Solstice of 2017. I am eagerly looking forward to this coming autumn, when the weather cools down and I will start up my magical workings once again. I am so delighted that this opportunity will once again become a staple in my life process. I have deeply missed having a temple in which to work my ordeals, and there is a lot of unfinished work and a number of ordeals that need to be renewed, particularly the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, for one, and some continued experimentation in Spiritual Archaeomancy, engaging with the transdimensional vortex gateway workings. I am really looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with these ordeals, but also just being able to say a votive mass and meditate in sacred space will do my soul a great deal of good.

While I stood on the precipice last December, examining all of the possibilities that confronted me, I hardly knew what was going to happen. I am glad that things are turning out to be fortunate for me so far this year, but I am also saddened and also angry at the political turn of events afflicting our country. Will we survive the malice motivated onslaught of the authoritarian rightwing MAGA-Republican political movement that is seeking to destroy our republic, or will we witness the end of our democratic government and the beginning of an entrenched oligarchy fueled by rightwing fanatics? This year and the next will determine what direction we will ultimately be dragged, and how successful the Trump regime will be in erasing the American aspiration of democracy and representational government. They have another 18 months to get it all done, and if they fail to implement their agenda by the end of next year, then we can look to the Democrats to shift the nation to the left, restore some semblance of democracy and neuter the current administration. That is my hope for the future, so that the American dream of democracy will not fail and be fully restored when a new Democratic president takes office in 2029.

Frater Barrabbas

What We Take For Granted - We can Lose

A Libertarian Paradise

Since this is an election year, I thought that I would write up a political piece stating my opinions on the state of the nation. I believe that our middle class existence is threatened not by outside forces, or minorities, or immigrants, or religious zealots, but by the greedy and ruthless plutocrats who seek to be the sole power and determinant force in this country. Only We, the People, can overturn this terrible crisis put upon us by regressive political forces, and democratically push the political establishment to once again represent all of the people. We are all tied together in an invisible bond of nationalism - we are all Americans. But what many might not understand is that whatever happens to some of us affects all of us. Being divided by race, economic station, ethnic origin, religion, region, gender, or sexual preference will only make us easier to control and manipulate by those who care nothing about our collective fate. Politics does impact Pagans, Witches and magical practitioners. We should never be victimized by our choices, or lack of choices. Therefore, please consider your options and vote in the primaries and the in general election this fall.  

Perhaps one of the biggest issues facing Americans in the early 21st century is the fact that we are living in a time of great inequality and an accelerating contraction of the middle class. Our country is becoming an oligarchy of wealthy patrons who appear to have a greater influence on what passes for governance and legislation than what we have seen since the 1920's. This country was supposedly one that established its government by the people and for the people, but it seems that it is now by the wealthy and for the wealthy. Libertarian altitudes seem to be nothing more than a selfish antisocial desire to freeze the status-quo and eliminate the government sponsored leveled-playing field between businesses and the rest of the 98%. This attitude can be summed up by the simple phrase, “I’ve got mine, and the hell with the rest of you!”

White people who were once part of the privileged middle class are now finding themselves at the whims of powerful forces that they neither comprehend nor control. We are experiencing a kind of underlying unifying integration between races, creeds, and ethnic cultures, but the forces of fear and prejudice have returned to divide us into warring factions. It is a time of economic contraction and decline, where the younger generations are saddled with massive education debt and the forces of automation, labor force reductions and increased productivity have eliminated the prospect of good paying career jobs for all. It has, in effect, produced a situation where the connected and otherwise fortunate are the only ones who are benefiting, the rest are put into a precarious social and economic condition. It is a time when the younger generations will not be able to exceed the ambitions and expectations of their parents or grandparents. It is also a time that I never thought I would live to see - but it is now becoming a reality.

Not all is doom and gloom - there is hope for change and the possibility of a peaceful populist political uprising that will change the status-quo so that the economic inequalities and lack of justice for all can be overturned and replaced with a more sensible and just system. We have the power to make changes and to fashion a better world for everyone, but we also have obstacles to overcome. People’s fears and prejudices are probably the biggest obstacle because they obscure the real problems impacting our lives today.

The reason why all of this is happening now is because over the many years since WWII we became complacent and forgot how the middle class was built in the first place. We have forgotten that our forebears fought terrible social battles so that they could force the corporations and the wealthy elite to give them a livable wage. They fought for a 40 hour workweek, overtime compensation, unemployment benefits, health benefits, workplace safety, paid vacation, paid sick leave and retirement benefits. At the time these seemed like egregious and impossible demands that would destroy our economy, and they were fought tooth and nail by the corporate owners and the financial elites.

Now, after many years of enjoying these benefits, we have grown accustomed to having them, not realizing that they were given to us grudgingly. That if a way could be found to acquire cheaper labor, corporations were bound to discard their contract with the American Middle Class and force them to accept less and less over time. It is not an accident that this has happened, in fact it is the long term plan of a powerful and wealthy cartel who have pushed a regressive counter social revolution.

What built the middle class did not come from the generosity or humanistic tendencies of the corporations and businesses that employ people. It came from many years of social strife and actual bloody battles between labor unions and corporations. Still, the middle class didn’t really find its true foundation until after the end of the most terrible economic calamity that ever befell the world - the Great Depression. It took an economic collapse to force these changes, where the common people found themselves without any means of either sustaining themselves let alone elevating themselves. It was a time when a large percentage of the population either experienced complete abject poverty and unemployment or the contraction of their wages.

The government failed to do much about this calamity, so the people elected a new government that would actively seek to mitigate the problems that the Great Depression had caused. It was the first time that the government allied itself with labor in order to build a more just economic environment for the common people. The new president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Keynesian economic policies that he employed were called the “New Deal.” Some of the programs that he tried failed, but others were successful. Social Security was one of programs that he signed into law that is still popular and relevant today. Yet when it was first proposed it was rejected and denigrated by the upper classes as a policy that would bankrupt the country. (This also happened when Medicare was signed into law.) Now we couldn’t imagine life without it, but it was hotly contested, as were all other progressive policies.

Perhaps the most enduring social contract was that which was fostered between the federal government and labor unions. Whatever criticism one might make against this relationship, or the supposed problematic corruption of powerful labor unions, that relationship was the one force that helped to build the middle class. After WWII, the power of labor unions continued to grow, and their support and influence was courted by politicians from both parties. That lasted through the sixties.

Ironically, this decade of the 1950's was the supposed golden age that many movement conservatives talk about incessantly. Yet they never seem to mention the fact that the immediate post-war era was marked by the power of labor unions who ensured that the workers under their stewardship were properly represented and received the best labor deals that could be achieved. There was a greater sharing of corporate profits between the corporate owners and the workers because the unions held the power of strikes and labor stoppages if the corporate owners didn’t give their employees a fair deal. This threat often had to be backed up with the drama of strikes, but a close examination of the demands that unions raised were typically reasonable and appropriate. They were a powerful counter weight against the inherent greed and avarice of the wealthy power elite.

All of the rights and privileges that we take for granted today were forged during that period, and it created an overall cooperative environment between the forces of the wealthy elite (the owners and bankers) and the common laborers. Government institutions made certain that corporations cooperated with labor unions, and they established laws that enforced a fair working environment free of exploitation. It wasn’t a perfect system, and sometimes there were dramatic fights between organized labor and corporate owners and managers. However, it was considered such an important element of the overall social contract that the U.S. enforced this kind of contract on the defeated enemies of WWII, most notably Japan and what became West Germany. As long as the government maintained a watchful eye and enforced national and local labor laws, the corporations grudgingly fulfilled their social obligation.

Everyone made a living wage, and the top salaries and compensations given to corporate owners and large stock holders were not considerably greater than the humblest worker. Tax rates for the highest earners were steep, but the government used that money to make the country better, such as building the super highway system, investing in the infrastructure, crafting the next generation of technology during the space race, and building up the most powerful military in the world. This was the source of the American Dream, that the government provided the people a level playing field and that labor unions and businesses worked together to ensure social and economic justice for everyone. As the 1960's passed into the 1970's, social and economic justice became something that nearly every person, including and especially minorities, sought to achieve. Naively, it seemed like this was something that we could all achieve, and that everyone was on-board to achieve it.

It wasn’t a perfect system, and in fact, there were many problems and social issues that seemed to boil over during that time. However, there was a powerful sense of hope despite setbacks and retrenchments. America proceeded, steadily but also at times, stumbling, into the future, all with seemingly endless possibilities near at hand.

However, the dream of equity and cooperation between labor and business owners quietly receded sometime during the late 1970's. I recall the president at the time talking about the national malaise during a televised speech. He seemed to be saying that many of the social levels of the people in our country were infected with this malaise. Yet what was really happening, unbeknown to us (and the president), was the institution of a powerful counter movement based on conservative ideals, but truly fueled by greed and the lust for absolute political power.

These conservative politicians and intellectuals had begun the work of reversing everything that had been put into place by progressive policies. They said that the government was too powerful and too intrusive, and that what we really needed was for business to be unfettered and unrestricted. They promised that a new golden age would dawn if these various Libertarian and social conservative policies were put into place. They also vilified the unions and said that they were too powerful, and that they caused businesses to be hamstrung by excessive demands and arbitrary labor stoppages. They claimed that unions were corrupted and tainted by contacts with organized crime, and in some cases they were correct, but all institutions, including corporations, were susceptible to forms of corruption. 

Unions were an integral part of the ability for labor to collectively bargain with corporations, and as they were weakened, it allowed for cheaper non-union labor to take their place. Perhaps a dramatic representation of this process can be found in the construction trades, once the bedrock of the labor union movement. As the power of unions was dissolved and overturned, non-union employees became the norm. Ultimately, construction worker roles, especially unskilled, were filled by migrants and perhaps, even illegal ones. The need for ever cheaper labor drove out the higher paid union workers and replaced them with migrant workers. However, to blame the migrants for this situation is patently ridiculous since it was the desire for cheap labor that allowed it to occur.

Businesses moved their factories to southern states that were more friendly to corporations and hostile to union organizations. As time went on, manufacturing was even off-shored and outsourced completely outside of our nation to other countries. This became a continuous process aided and abetted by the corporately influenced government, which ultimately pulled money out of the country and dissolved much of the manufacturing infrastructure. What fueled it was the ever rapacious need for greater profits, which meant that the labor costs had to be reduced considerably. America became a country of financial and service industries, while the manufacturing sector dwindled to a fraction of what it had once been. There were still jobs, but they had become either poorly paying unskilled service jobs or highly paying professional careers. The only bright spot was the IT industry, but some elements of that industry had to compete worldwide for labor costs, so it, too, was subject to off-shoring.

Then, due to an unprecedented orgy of greed and shady dealings, the Wall Street banks caused a catastrophic economic downturn that nearly collapsed the economy. The government bailed out Wall Street, but was kept from doing much to help the millions of people who lost their investments and savings, as stocks and bonds took a terrible beating. Changes were put into place to try and keep such a perilous misadventure from happening again, but the legislation was flawed, purposely weakened by special interests and it wasn’t able to really address what actually caused the problem. While the economy improved and things seemed to get back on track, millions of people either remained unemployed or took service jobs that didn’t pay as much as the jobs they had previously. Inequality grew even greater, but there were forces already in play that made certain that the government wouldn’t be able to help those who really needed help. The government bailed out Wall Street, but failed to help out Main Street, because the conservative forces were selfishly arrayed against such an effort. Perhaps the most astonishing thing that occurred was the level of contempt, disregard and disrespect given to the president by his political foes. This was fueled more by the inherent racial prejudice that they secretly espoused than because of his moderate policies.  

So, here we are, in the present times. We face many daunting challenges, but there are also many possible opportunities for us as well. There are remarkable inventions and new technologies available to those who can afford them, but our social contract between government, labor and corporations is broken. We face an uncertain future without any government institution or social action organization to fight for our rights as citizens and as laborers. We have mostly lost the unions that would have advocated for us, and the profound and unchecked greed of the 1% seems to have achieved a powerful stranglehold on all aspects of life. The greatest obstacle facing our country is the corrupting influence of the elite wealthy donors who have taken our political system hostage, and who have changed the laws to benefit them at our expense.

What we need to remember is how our grandparents achieved the wonderful benefits of the middle class life. We need to once again focus our attention on political processes and to fight so that the seemingly indelible bond between the wealthy elite and the government is broken before it becomes a permanent feature of our lives. There is much more work that needs to be done. We need to evolve our perceptions so that universal healthcare becomes a right, and that higher education becomes either free or very affordable again. We need to ensure that social and economic justice is equally available to all, and that the playing field for economic opportunity is fair and accessible. We have lost the American Dream for the moment, but we must understand that only progressive policies can build on the dwindling middle class - to enlarge it, preserve it and make it a basic economic right for all citizens of this nation.

What we don’t need now is another oligarch running for president or some movement conservative foisting their bad policies and social conservative ideals upon us. We also don’t need the mendacious Neocons pushing us to start yet another war in the Middle East. The policies, social prejudices and military misadventures of the Republican party is exactly what has gotten us into the political and economic difficulty that we currently face. What we need is a more progressive political approach to reverse the damage that has been inflicted on us, not more Libertarian self-centeredness.

If this sounds like I am in the tank for Bernie Sanders, then so be it. 

Frater Barrabbas

A Tale of Distorted Realities

An election night has come and gone in the U.S., and as usual, there were victories and defeats. This is the nature of politics, and it is the factual reality that everyone who participates (or not) in this hallmark of representational democracy must grasp. Despite the rhetorical differences and the sometimes stark differences between policies, visions and ideologies, the results of an election are, for the most part, an indisputable fact. Barrack Obama has won reelection for another four years, but none of that was surprising, since this victory was amply predicted by a number of pole analyzers, such as the NYT website “Fivethirtyeight.”

Yet what I have seen in this election cycle has given me considerable pause and concern, since it would appear that one side in this ideological dispute has become the proponents of a seemingly artificial reality not at all based on facts. I am, of course, referring to the various right-wing pundits and their puling followers who have maintained factually challenged beliefs and perspectives throughout this election period, and perhaps even previously. A single look at Redstate dot com pretty much shows that there are some citizens in our country who can’t accept any factual point that argues against their passionately held beliefs. Some if not all of these beliefs are profoundly incongruous with reality. Let me list some of these strange beliefs and comment on them, since my point in writing this article is that in order to retain a certain degree of objectivity we must balance scientifically determined facts with our faith and our subjective experiences. We cannot allow our beliefs alone to determine who we are and the nature of the world we live in.

A list of factually challenged political tropes where the opposite is true.

President Barrack Obama wasn’t born in this country and is illegally posing as a citizen and as an elected official. (This is known as the birther conspiracy.) He was also the product of affirmative action and didn’t deserve the honors and accolades that he received while attending various first-rate universities. All of these claims are obviously baseless.

President Barrack Obama is an extreme socialist, Muslim fundamentalist (who is attempting to impose Sharia law on the citizens of the U.S.), a closet dictator, a highly partisan politician who is responsible for the divisiveness in the nation’s electorate, incompetent, lazy, inarticulate, an angry black man who hates white people, hates the U.S., is a world apologist and appeaser, a weak world leader, a secret terrorist, liberal spendthrift, etc. - the list is almost endless and equally ridiculous. All of these accusations are mutually exclusive!

Obama-Care (actually, the AHCA) will institute death panels, cause employers to cut healthcare benefits (due to the associated expense of having to cover everyone) and bankrupt the nation.

The mainstream media is highly liberal and has the power to skew election poles to favor their own interests, as well as constantly show Obama and the Democrats in a positive light. It is a powerful propaganda tool analogous to the old Soviet newspaper Pravda. Needless to say, this tool is wholly responsible for making conservative ideas look bad. (Of course, there is no "liberal" media, since commercial media is owned and operated by large corporations with their inherent interests.)

There is wide spread individual based voter fraud (ala ACORN) that is stealing elections for Democrats. Hundreds of thousands of non-white voters are being bussed to the pols in various localities to skew the election results.

Democrats are wholly responsible for the 16 trillion dollars of U.S. debt, and that they are seeking to fiscally destroy our country with extremely high taxes, too many corporate regulations, too many entitlement programs that coddle the poor at the cost of the middle class.

Gays and lesbians are pushing marriage equality to destroy the moral fabric of our country, since their real purpose is to impose their life styles on the rest of the unwilling country.

Sexual liberalism is also to blame for the moral decay of the nation. Those women who have elected to participate in unsanctioned sexual relations should be punished and forced to give birth to their illicit progeny regardless of their desires or the circumstances of the pregnancy. A woman’s body is not her own to make decisions regarding fertility (i.e., birth-control) or even health. True rape (whatever that is) never produces any progeny and a woman’s health is never compromised by giving birth to a child.

Climate change is a myth being pushed by liberals who want to shackle U.S. industry, and that there is no scientific proof that any climate anomalies are caused by human activities.

Our energy problems can be easily solved by doing more drilling, fracking, and generally using abundantly local fossil fuels. Green energy and using renewable resources are nothing more than a liberal pipe dream that is expensive and will never work.  

All we need to greatly improve our economy is give more tax breaks to the wealthy and allow unfettered capitalism to do its thing.

That 47% of U.S. citizens don’t pay any taxes and are living off of the hard work and labor of the middle class and the wealthy. (They should be forced to pay their fair share.)

The wealthy 1% of Americans are paying far too much in taxes and that the U.S. is becoming a welfare state tyrannizing its wealthy elite like the various socialistic countries in Europe.

America is greatest nation on the planet and excels all other countries in every possible category, and that anyone who disagrees with this statement is an unpatriotic traitor who should be either deported or imprisoned. (This is known as American Exceptionalism, and it might be acceptable perhaps if it didn't also ignore all of the known and verifiable problems, too. Such a view-point disallows for any thoughts or considerations on how to improve the quality of life in our country for the average individual.)

I could go on and on, but this list represents just a small sample of some of the strange rhetoric and passionate beliefs that appear to infect the cadres of the ultra-conservative punditry and followers alike. Watching the FOX news channel for any length of time is like walking into an alternative reality. They are reporting the supposed facts like other media outlets, except many of those facts have no basis in physical reality. It would seem that the FOX news channel celebrates and lionizes the masses of poorly informed and low-information viewers with motivational reasoning and baseless propaganda instead of offering any kind of thoughtful or critical reasoning, and it therefore leaves behind all of those problematic facts that get in the way of ultra-conservative themes.

The one glaring fact that this election has shown us (and conservatives seem to ignore) is that our national electorate is dramatically changing. Soon, we will no longer be a country where white people will hold a commanding majority of the population. We are becoming more and more diverse, and as the “baby-boomers” retire and begin to die off, that diversity will become ever greater. Our president is a man of mixed heritage, and I suspect that future leaders of this country will also be non-white as well. That would mean that the future belongs to the Democrats, since they seem to be more willing to support and embrace diversity. It also means that the Republican party is doomed if it doesn't change its course and alter its beliefs.

Some see this as our greatest strength, while others fear and loath it. It is the reason that some conservative politicians are seeking to disenfranchise voters who are not white instead of adopting and celebrating diversity. Whether we like it or not, the changing demographics of our country are already changing the political dynamics of our nation, and will continue to do so in the near and far future. The fear that many white middle aged folks are experiencing over this impending change is likely what is fueling the delusions of the ultra-right political discourse. It must be overcome, but it probably won’t change until the xenophobic part of our nation’s population either dies off or has an epiphany.  

What we have here is a rejection of scientific fact, rational analysis, critical thinking and even self-doubt. It would seem that there is now little difference between the ultra-conservative creed and the religiously fundamentalist. I find this evolution to be both troubling and alarming because I am not wedded to either the liberal or conservative viewpoint, but at least liberals rely on facts and critical thinking, and they have moments of self-doubt, too.

The reason that I have brought up these points is that this is exactly the kind of totalitarianism of belief over experience that is so dangerous in the practice of applied occultism and magick. I have personally known a few individuals who succumbed to their ardent belief in delusions while practicing magick, and they didn't come out of that trap unscathed or undamaged. While some might dispute my opinion, I do believe that it is possible to make yourself crazy by not using objective measures to reign in delusions and erroneous beliefs about oneself and the greater world. Objectivity is so important that I urge my magical associates to have at their disposal a peer group who can judge their work, especially when that work produces results that seem too good to be true.

What America needs more than anything else right now is some consistent and potent objectivity. A better way to phrase that would be quote the Joker in the first Batman movie: “What this [country] needs is an enema!” It would really help a sizable portion of the population to get past their delusions and baseless fears by merely doubting and questioning their beliefs. Yet I doubt that such a transformation is even possible at this time, so it is likely that a certain part of the population of my country may yet advance to the stage of being certifiably insane.  I hope that I am wrong, but the grueling political polarization that I have witnessed over the last decade has made me somewhat cynical and dubious about the rational capabilities of many of my fellow citizens.

Frater Barrabbas