Revision of Geomantic Elementals

(Newly made geomantic sticks)

This article is taken from a new book that I am writing about Geomantic Elementals. I decided to share it with my readers to get some feedback about this new way of approaching Geomancy that is very different than what is considered traditional. I am often accused of taking traditional material and profoundly changing it, but I believe that I usually have practical reasons for doing this. Here is my story about how I am approaching Geomancy, and how I intend to repackage it so that it is analogous to other systems of divination and magic. You may disagree with what I am proposing to do, but I hope that I have stated my intentions clearly enough so that you might realize the implications of what I have discovered about this venerable and antique system of divination. 


Introduction

When I was just 18 years old, so many years ago, I had a vision of a system of divination that was based on but differed profoundly from the traditional divination system known as Geomancy. I had been playing around with Geomancy ever since I first got a copy of the book “Mastering Witchcraft” by Paul Huson. I also found it later in the book “The Magus” and Regardie’s “The Golden Dawn,” and since I had made myself some nice geomantic sticks out of ebony in my highschool jewelry class a couple of years previously, I wanted to make use of them. (I still have those same geomantic sticks today, even after nearly four decades of time and use.)

However, for whatever reason, I found the system of single and double dots and the limitation of having just 16 permutations for performing a reading awkward and much too sparse. In order to perform a rigorous and in-depth reading you had to cast enough characters to fill the twelve houses of the old-style astrological square houses diagram, or work with the overly complicated shield chart with 15 place settings. This was done no matter what kind of reading was deployed, whether highly detailed and long term, or just short term and brief. You could also just throw a single character or two, or three to answer a question, but even that was just not enough.

I found this methodology paradoxically a bit too complex on one hand and too limiting on the other. Since I also had recourse to other systems of divination that were easier to use and could produce a deeper and more meaningful reading, I felt that Geomancy wasn’t as useful or as readily available to me. I was, however, particularly impressed with the I-Ching that I had just recently learned, and I was disappointed that Geomancy wasn’t as powerful as that system. Certainly all of the attributes were there in Geomancy as compared to the I-Ching, but they just weren’t arranged in a manner to take full advantage of having the most amount of attributes for a divinatory system. I found myself relying on the Tarot and the I-Ching for my divination needs, and I only used the geomantic sticks to answer yes or no questions, which they seemed pretty good at doing.

Just for my own amusement back in those early days, I had decided to try to approach Geomancy in the same manner as the ancient sages did when assembling and composing the I-Ching. How I did that was to take the instances of two dots or one dot for each of the four levels of the Geomantic character and make them into solid bars and broken bars, just like in the I-Ching.

Once I did that it dramatically and completely changed the Geomantic characters into something much more eloquent and powerful, at least in my opinion. A solid bar consists of two dots and its polarity is masculine and it represents “yes” when performing a simple oracle. A broken bar consists of one dot and its polarity is feminine and it represents “no” in a simple oracle. Two solid masculine bars represents the element Fire and two broken feminine bars represents the element Water. Because the element Air is masculine, it has a solid bar on top and broken bar below it, and the element Earth, which is feminine, has a broken bar on top and a solid bar below. Thus I was able to determine the four elements through the use of two positions of either solid or broken bars, or a combination.

That’s all well and good, but the next thing that I did turned out to be quite surprising. Looking at the sixteen Geomantic characters in their new form of solid and broken bars, I was able to determine for each the combination of elements that they contained within their structure by using the key definition for each element. The use of solid and broken bars made these Geomatic characters look more like I-Ching trigrams, except these were specifically elemental quadragrams, consisting of an element qualifier and an element base. Just like in the I-Ching, I found that the new structure lent itself to combining these quadragrams to formulate octagrams. Now instead of just sixteen Geomantic figures, there were 256 octagrams representing a complete oracular system, just like the 8 trigrams producing 64 hexagrams in the I-Ching. 

(Example of the Elementals of Water)

Not only that, but I had also determined that with just four throws of my geomantic sticks, I could build up an octagram and also determine if any of the eight lines were changing from broken bars to solid, or solid to broken. This new attribute of changing lines gave me a total of 2,048 total attributes. Therefore, using this methodology that worked so well in the I-Ching, I had produced the potential of a massive, powerful and completely comprehensive system of divination. What was required, of course, was to produce a “Book of Changes” where all of these attributes would be covered at least enough to actually perform readings. On that last task I faltered, since it would have required too much time and a steady discipline to complete. However, now decades later, I feel that I should revisit this system and produce a Geomantic Elemental Book of Changes and bring Geomancy divination into the post-modern age.

Now most people who know anything about Geomancy would probably ask why I would  do this and therefore, radically change an already existing and perfectly vetted traditional system of divination? Who was I to change something that had been effectively used for centuries before the Tarot became popular and replaced it? There are a number of occultists who are attempting to bring the age-old practice of Geomancy back into vogue, and I believe that those who have a fondness for antiquarian occult practices would find my rather radical and creative approach to the subject of Geomancy nothing short of disrespectful, presumptuous and even disgraceful. 

Add to that the obvious fact that what I have derived has little in common with the traditional meanings of the Geomantic characters. Anyone who is knowledgeable will be able to quickly determine that what I have proposed is a radical departure from what is traditional and accepted. At that point I will likely be pilloried by my critics for messing with established tradition and they will undoubtedly say that I was “hoisted on my own petard” because I had produced such a monstrosity.  I can hear them yelling for the tar and feathers, too. However, allow me to continue to describe my approach and maybe I can postpone the immanent demise of my reputation.

My approach to Geomancy is first and foremost based on the sixteen Elementals, which we can also find in the sixteen court cards of the Tarot and also subtly represented in the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching. There are sixteen Geomantic characters, so why wouldn’t they be applicable to the sixteen Elementals? What I have found is that the Geomantic characters aren’t at all the same as Elementals and that means that Geomancy is a separate and distinct system that doesn’t relate (except very obliquely) to any of the other systems of divination. 

I found this discontinuity to be strange, but it’s really a matter of either accepting and maintaining what is traditional or looking at an old system with completely new eyes. I chose to do the latter because I wanted a system of elemental divination that was directly related to other elemental systems of correspondence. Perhaps the reason why I had abandoned Geomancy so many years ago was because it didn’t relate to any of the other systems that I was using. A stand-alone system is a lot weaker than one that can be integrated into a larger network of correspondences - or at least that is my opinion.

What I am proposing is analogous to those other systems of divination, but it is also unique, in-depth and comprehensive. Why would someone use my proposed system of Geomantic Elementals when they could use the Tarot or the I-Ching? I believe the answer to that question is to be found in the large number of attributes that Geomantic Elementals contain. If you want an in-depth oracular reading then your oracle better have a lot of attributes in it in order to be comprehensive and thereby to duplicate, in some manner, the vast diversity of the material world.

I believe that the traditional system of Geomancy doesn’t have the kind of depth which is needed in order for it to be a comprehensive oracle, so I proposed adding new levels and dimensions to it so that it could be comprehensive. I also believe that Geomancy became unpopular because it was unwieldy, unrelated to other divination systems and because it was far too thin to be a comprehensive system. Even though I am proposing a radical departure from traditional Geomancy, I believe that it incorporates the best features of the Tarot and the I-Ching. Even so, I will call this new system Geomatic Elementals instead of Geomancy, just so no one confuses what I have written compared to what is traditionally accepted as Geomancy.

Additionally, Geomantic Elementals can be used to perform passive oracular readings or active magical workings. An Octagram consists of two Elementals, so it functions as a hybrid binary or dual Elemental force, which should allow for a lot of magical possibilities and outcomes. In fact such a deep system would be able to respond to any kind of need for a material manifestation, which Elementals are quite effective at producing. Now that we have the hybrid system of dual Elementals, there is the ability to generate a precise magical power that is much more versatile, efficient and effective.

Since I have equated the Geomantic characters to the sixteen Elementals, I can also use the Elemental Enochian Calls to summon them. The method of invoking a dual Elemental would be to use Elemental Pylons set to the four Watchtowers and four Angles, thereby drawing them into the center of the circle at the Ultra-point and Infra-point and thereby generating a fusion at the heart of the center of the magic circle. So, a Geomantic Octagram consisting of a dual Elemental is both a divinatory oracle and a precise magical power. What I am talking about here is a complete system of magic as well as a deep system of divination.

Frater Barrabbas

Passing of Another Giant

I meant to get this article out in a more timely manner, but life has intervened and it remained unpublished until now. Many apologies for that tardy action on my part.

***

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”

“Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,

His private arbours and new-planted orchards,

On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,

And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures,

To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.

Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?”

Julius Caesar, Act II, William Shakespeare

Another founder has passed from our ranks, and we are left a little bit less than we were. So it is with the death of Donald Michael Kraig (March 17, 2014), as it was with the death of Isaac Bonewitz just a few years previous, and our ranks have thinned ever more. The works and contributions of Donald Michael Kraig were significant because he was one of earlier writers and proponents of Golden Dawn magic and also of a form of western Tantra and sex magick. Like Isaac, Don will be missed and what he might have contributed to the movement that he helped to build will forever be lost to the occult community.

I didn’t know Don very well. I met him at a few gatherings in the past and we probably had a couple of exchanges. He was a friendly man with a great sense of humor, and a wry wit, which I had come to know more from his blog articles and comments than actually talking with him. Don’s two large literary achievements will far outlast his shortened life and he will soon become more of a paragon of positive achievements and respectable annotations than the positive or negative sentiments of those who actually knew him. This is the process of becoming a legend and a venerable spiritual ancestor, a transitional stage that wipes the slate clean of any critical or negative opinions. Don is now well on the road to becoming a spiritual ancestor to all of those who continue to read his books and follow his teachings.

It is never good to speak ill of the dead, and it is also, more or less, pointless. However, Donald Michael Kraig was successful because he was generally loved and admired by many occultists, not to mention his overall good reputation within the community. He will be greatly missed because of what he might have accomplished had he been able to live another 20 or more years. The same is also true about Isaac Bonewitz. Both of these giants will leave large gaps in the productive and accumulative knowledge of paganism and magick, and it will probably take several individuals a number of years to finally contribute what these two great individuals would have contributed had they lived longer lives.

This brings me to the whole point of my article, and that is that the most productive and insightful periods of life occur (in my opinion) during the golden years, which occur on and just after one’s retirement. It isn’t a time when individuals take a vacation from all aspects of life, in fact, it’s just the opposite. As long as one retains a certain amount of good health and has the material means to survive and live a long and productive life, then the period of the 60's through the 80's should represent the achievements of one’s final and greatest works. Mr. Kraig was only 4 years older than me, so we are both part of the same generation. Yet at my current age and level of experience, I can already see how so many things that I have worked on, researched and developed over the last decades are connected in amazing ways, and how they might be improved and given a final formulation if I am granted the time to do so. I have, therefore, achieved a certain breadth of vision and a perspective consisting of many years of experience that will allow me (hopefully) to complete the work that I started when I was a nascent teenager.

It is my hope that all of my various occult and magical projects will be able to be completed and resolved to the highest level of elegance and efficiency that I can make them. Since I am a Capricorn by birth, being able to finish everything in life is an important higher objective for me. I have already gotten to the point where I can perceive how things are connected together, and also how they might be developed to a final level of completion. It’s helpful to have many years of experience to be able to gain insights into one’s own work, to step back and see it from a greater perspective. I must admit that when I was a lot younger I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and my work often seemed to be disjointed and not at all connected. Now I can finally see the connections, so I have learned to see the “forest” of my occult work from a greater perspective than each individual “tree.” My only hope is that I be granted enough time to do something about this wonderful vision.

Will I finally get to that point of completion which is in my nature to seek? It is my fervent hope, but how I live my life now (and take care of myself physically) will determine whether or not I will survive into my 80's, although genetics does have a hand in longevity. I only wish that both Donald and Isaac could have lived well into their 80's because I believe that this same process of reflection, insight and experience would have made their final achievements so much greater than what their shortened lives have bequeathed to us who remain.

Even so, I am grateful for the work that they did and I look forward to the decades ahead when others will come forward and push their work to the next level. I also hope that our remaining elders live much longer, prosper, and help the pagan and magical community achieve its ultimate goals of legitimacy and profound depth.

May we all live in the blessings of good health, wealth and life regenerated. 

Frater Barrabbas

Magick and Crossed Aspirations

When I attended a lecture that Ivo Dominguez Jr. gave on “Karma” at Paganicon, he touched briefly on a condition or situation where the goal that someone is seeking to realize can be rendered impossible simply because they are at crossed purposes. This condition of being crossed could occur because someone close to the one who is seeking that objective is secretly working against it, that the objective is desired by others and there is competition, or that one’s own mind or desires are at cross-purposes with one’s external objective. Ivo compared this situation to a wagon being pulled by different people in different directions, and in some cases the handle that one person is pulling would have more than one branch attached to it, and each branch was getting tugged in still another direction by forces within. The net result is either that the wagon is stubbornly stationary or it can go in a direction that we consciously don’t want it to. Regardless, the outcome is not what is expected nor desired, and the reason is called being at cross-purposes, or being “crossed.”

In the lore of Hoodoo magic this is a typical malady that a conjure man or woman has to deal with in order to help a client. Usually, it takes the form that someone has jinxed or even cursed another person so that their luck and good fortune evaporates. From that moment on, everything that they do or try is thwarted by some unseen or unknown adversary. Such a person has been cursed and crossed so that they will remain locked in a downward spiral of bad luck, missed opportunities and the constant occurrence of maladies, catastrophes and suffering. The conjure man or woman has to break the jinx or curse afflicting their client, reverse its affects and then clear and open the way for forward progress, so that their client might retrieve the accumulation of blessings denied them. It is a rigorous process and it typically assumes that clients so afflicted are being crossed by someone outside of themselves, whether that individual is close to them or not. Therefore, one who is crossed has been jinxed or cursed deliberately or even unwittingly by someone who is envious or covetous, thereby ensuring that the source of misfortune is always external to the victim.

The Hoodoo world is full of negative and positive magic wielded by conjure men and women or unsuspecting spiteful individuals, all of them warring against each other for the sake of third party clients, and that anyone’s hold of good fortune and luck is highly precarious. In the privileged world of the ritual or ceremonial magician, such drama is usually absent. As a ritual magician and religious celebrant I have had very few opportunities to counter curses or jinxes cast by other people. This means that most of time I am free to work magic on any objective I desire and should expect a reasonable return for my work. Thus I live in a world that is peaceful, free of the dynamic exchanges of negative and positive forces, and placid with the boring expectations and occurrences of a happy mundane existence. I have no recourse to blame outsiders for anything that might happen to me. Whatever happens is either my responsibility or accidental and totally beyond my control.

Even so, crossed aspirations can and do happen even if no one is behind them except our own hidden selves. We often see ourselves as singular unified beings with typically singular aspirations, but this, of course, is an illusion. We are actually a conglomeration of different and even conflicting personal desires, self-images, identities, and each of these different personalities has a somewhat different and distinct set of aspirations, emotions and desires. If we seem to be acting as a single being with a single purpose, then that is just the mask that we wear at the moment. We are multiple beings where perhaps one or two attributes rule over the rest, but those dominate traits can and do change over time. When someone that we haven’t seen in a long time tells us (whether pleasantly or as an insult) that we haven’t changed a bit, they are obviously and completely wrong. Different people might actually see different masks on the same person and think that they are actually seeing that person for who they are. Yet human nature is very complex, and people are of more than one mind, opinion or feelings about nearly everything. We work hard to create a mental fiction of ourselves so that we are somehow singular and unified in purpose, but it is in fact a fiction. If you don’t believe what I am saying, then just examine your own Astrological natal chart and you will see how internally conflicted and contradictory you truly are. And all of us are so collectively blessed and cursed by this malady.

With this little and disturbing fact in mind, you can see how easy it is for anyone to be at cross-purposes with themselves. In fact, when the magic fails to produce the outcome that we expect it should, or that the opposite occurs, or perhaps even something catastrophic happens, then we should use our expertise with divinatory tools to determine if we are at cross-purposes with ourselves. Such divination may reveal that the performing of magic had little or no bearing on the issue, or that the probability was so small that a slight bending would make no difference. It could be that the magician failed to perform the most important corresponding mundane actions or that the target was faulty or lacked clarity. As Chief Dan George famously said in the movie “Little Big Man,” to his adopted son, “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Still, if a magician has been attempting to achieve a specific goal and has failed to do so over a period of time, even when it appeared that the odds were very much in her favor, then it’s time to look at the possibility of crossed purposes. When a magician is crossed regarding a specific material objective, whether it is money, a good job, a stable home or a relationship partner, then any attempt to achieve that objective will fail.

How do we know when we are being crossed? What are the indicators? The key to discovering this situation is a combination of divination and meditation. Divination will show you if your objective can be achieved in a reasonable amount of time. A big clue that one is crossed is if the divination that the magician has performed results in a confusing or inconclusive reading. For instance, if you do a Tarot card reading on the desired objective and it shows no conclusive outcome or produces a reading that makes little sense, then you should consider the possibility that you are crossed. Further Tarot card readings might help to identify what is crossing you or give you additional information; but it can just as easily continue to show you nothing.

At this stage, the magician uses a combination of contemplation and meditation to perform a process that I call “self-scan.” This is done by emptying the mind of everything, especially that specific issue that is vexing one, and then over a period of time when the mind is at rest, begin to ask questions about the nature of the objective. What I have discovered is that the outcome from performing a self-scan can reveal if one has conflicting desires that render the overall objective null and void. That’s when questions such as “Do I really want this outcome?” or “Do I want to assume the responsibility for following this path?” should be asked, and the answers carefully examined. The revelations produced from a self-scan session can be used to spearhead further divination on the subject matter. Over time, the magician will find out what is really going on inside of him and whether or not the objective is worth pursuing.

If the magician decides to pursue the objective even though he or she is not fully aligned internally in order to make it possible then a process of uncrossing must be engaged. Here is where the Hoodoo conjure folk can show ritual or ceremonial magicians a thing or two about overcoming obstacles and achieving goals regardless of adversity.

Much to my regret I can say without embarrassment that I experienced just such a crossed purposes situation that lasted for decades. I just couldn’t figure out what was going on and whatever divination or magical ritual workings that attempted to perform just never seemed to produce any results. Had I known about this potential issue of crossing that plagues nearly everyone at some time then I would have been able to resolve it much more quickly than I did. As it turns out, I fumbled along for many years until I intuitively determined what was going on and managed to rectify it. What was that crossed purposes situation that bedeviled me? It had to do with successfully finding a lover and lifetime partner for a long term relationship. Allow me to briefly describe what I went through.

Many years ago I fell in love with a woman that despite all my desires, intentions and attempts otherwise was never meant to be successful. We all have had these kinds of thwarted desires and deflected amorous objectives, and most of us get over them and continue to successfully find that one person who does love us and want to form a long term relationship. However, for me it was an unhealthy obsession that lasted far longer than it should have. I am not completely at fault here, but I should have been able to see the wisdom of the moment and disengage myself from this woman to look elsewhere.

Even when I had completely resigned myself to the true futility of such an objective, my obsession had created an internal process that had a life of its own. While I sought for the companionship of other women around me, part of me was still pining for this woman even though I knew she was impossible to achieve. I had unwittingly created for myself a powerful crossed-purposes type situation, and this marred and handicapped me completely regarding finding a relationship. The obsession had to be starved over a long period of time before I had any luck at finding a potential mate. Whatever magic I worked to resolve this situation did nothing to alleviate it, and in fact there were plenty of clues written in my magical diaries from that time, both from a magical and divinatory perspective, that I had compromised myself. I was in a trap of my own making, so it required me to understand this fact before I could find an exit.

Only after a long period of time did I finally realize what had happened to me, and only then, was I able to resolve my issue. Still, I could have resolved it so many years ago had I understood the pernicious nature of being at crossed purposes, and that uncrossing is an important tool and technique even for the practitioner of high magick. 

Hoodoo techniques for uncrossing vary considerably amongst different conjuring doctors and their various traditions, mentors and personal tastes. However, an archetypal Hoodoo methodology for uncrossing consists of the following steps, although there are many variations.

1. Divination to identify nature and source of crossing.

2. Bathing, foot washing, blue baths (Reckitts Crown Blue), vigil candles, prayers and psalms

3. Curse/Jynx Reversing - reverse candle burnt upside down, enemy binding, mirror magic (reflecting and returning the curse), mirror box/coffin with charged and bound enemy doll, further bathing and cleansing (removing jynx/curse).

4. Road Opening - vigil lights (road opening candles), use of Van-van or road opening oils for final cleansing and preparation to retrieve lost blessings. Prayers, psalm reading, receiving blessings from root doctor or church, or both.

5. Lucky spells to activate and achieve lost/stolen/blocked objective.

A magician could, if they have a facility for Hoodoo, develop their own low magic technique using the above five steps. Still, what can the ritual or ceremonial magician do to counter a situation where they are at crossed purposes with themselves? How can they use the tools already at their disposal? I feel that I can apply the knowledge that I have of high magic and Hoodoo uncrossing and therefore propose a series of steps and magical actions that magicians can use to uncross themselves.

The following nine steps can be performed if magicians suspect that they (or their clients) are at crossed purposes with themselves. These nine steps can be grouped into three major magical workings, to be performed at different times but in close proximity to each other.

1. Self-scan - determine through a combination of divination and meditation sessions the nature of the crossed-purpose issue. Meditation should consist of emptying the mind (contemplation) and then focusing on specific questions about the nature of the problem. The results from this step are used to assist and facilitate the next step. The magician can also discover if there really is a crossed purpose issue producing a blockage or thwarted objective. (1 step combined/alternating)

2. Cross-roads divination session: During the dark of the moon, the magician will, in her temple, erect a cross-roads tying together the four circle angles within sacred space. In the center where the four angular directions meet, the magician will use a black mirror (peering through an image darkly) to retrieve an image, name and phrase associated with the specifically identified obstruction found in step 1. Once this image and name/phrase is discovered, the magician will produce a sigil symbolizing that obstruction on parchment with the pen and ink of the art, and then consecrate and charge it. (3 steps)

3. Validate crossed-roads divination results with another self-scan session. Make certain that the charged sigil resonates with the energy of the obstruction. It is possible that more than one obstruction may exist, and the magician may have only identified the dominate one. It might be necessary to repeat step 2 if other issues are uncovered in this step. Once all of the issues are identified and symbolized by blessed and charged sigils, then the magician may continue with the next step, which will be performed just before the moon is full. (1 step combined/alternating)

4. Perform cleansing exercises, a meditation vigil and a ritual bath prior to performing the main rite for Opening the Way, which is to be done that evening. (1 step)

5. Cross-roads Opening the Way rite: Magician erects a cross-roads tying together the four circle angles within sacred space. A small cauldron is placed in the center of the circle, and the magician takes the sigil(s) in hand and focuses intently on them, discussing and reviewing the nature of the crossing associated with each one, tearing up the sigil, and then when all of the pieces are in the cauldron, burning them together. Take the resultant ashes and use them draw an equal arm cross on the forehead with the left index finger (sign of the Lenten abnegation), then proceed to the Northern Watchtower and perform the “opening of the portal gesture” therein. Proceed into the Northern Watchtower and turn to face the south, reading off a series of affirmations and intended objectives that are now free to be acquired. Then seal all of the nodes and the working is done. As an additional empowerment, the magician can place one or more (metal) talismans for the appropriate planetary intelligence or godhead in the Northern Watchtower prior to the working in order to facilitate and charge the affirmations at the end. (These should be touched and focused on when entering in the Northern Watchtower. (3 overall steps)

Once the above workings are completed, and after the moon has passed full, the magician should perform some divination to check on the efficacy of the working. He should notice a profound alteration in consciousness and feel completely resolved as if the obstruction was overcome and nothing further can thwart his intentions and objectives in this matter.

Five of the most dramatic parts of this overall uncrossing working are the black mirror scrying, the blessing and charging of the sigil, and the burning of the sigil, wearing the ashes on the forehead and then performing the opening portal in the North, representing the opening of the place of darkness to the light of one’s renewed aspirations. These five ritual actions will symbolically destroy the sigil of the blockage, mark one’s self for their passing, and then open the gateway of material achievement and thereby remove the obscuring darkness of the crossed purpose that has been blocking the desired achievement. The magician can also perform specific workings after a successful uncrossing to assist in the acquisition of the objective, and this time there won’t be a possibility for crossed purposes blocking the outcome. 

Variations on this working can be performed without altering its overall impact, but I believe that this high magic technique of uncrossing should give the ritual or ceremonial magician the mechanism to remove and eliminate obstructions. May you always be uncrossed and unobstructed when pursing your objectives, but if not, then you can uncross yourself. 

Frater Barrabbas