31 January 2004: The Inanna Dialogue, Part Two

Welcome to the second installment of The Inanna Dialogue, a public conversation between me and fellow online journaler Lila, author of the "sex and dream blog" Guttergaunt. Note that this installment will make no sense unless you've first read Part One.

Lila doesn't actually appear in this installment. This is just my response to her questions from Part One. So if you’re only bothering to read this dialogue in the hopes that Lila will bust out with another one of those hot bondage stories that her own site is full of, skip this entry and check back next time.

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Dear Lila,

To answer your questions:

1.) There was indeed actual bondage involved in my vision. Looking back at my entry of the 23rd, I realize I neglected to mention it, so I’m glad you brought it up – as I’m sure you are, too, if you’re getting off on the imagery of the whole thing.

My second time through the Inanna side of the ritual – the part where I had my orgasm - I was kneeling down with my head almost to the ground, and part of my vision and physical experience was that my wrists, which were crossed right in front of my face, were tied in that crossed position to a stake that was sticking out of the ground right in front of me.

Knowing how much you enjoy the little technical details of bondage scenes, I’ll point out that it was an unusual hand position for bondage, in that I was face-down but my hands were palm-up. I thought of this when I checked out the updates to your links page a few days ago, and saw the little photo you’ve got at the bottom of it, showing the two hands with bound crossed wrists. At first I thought, wow, what an amazing synchronicity, that’s exactly how my hands were tied in the vision. But then I realized that it wasn’t how my hands were tied in the vision. Whichever one of your hapless victims those hands belong to, she must have been lying face up. The standard arrangement: tied face-up, the hands are also palm-up; tied face-down, the hands are palm-down. But I was face-down with my palms tied facing up. You can tell the difference by the orientation of the thumbs: in the photo on your site, the knuckles at the bases of the thumbs point away from each other; mine were pointing towards each other.

How’s that for little technical details?

2.) Yes, you have that right: making it to Binah involves crossing the Abyss.

And yes, crossing the Abyss is, as you put it, a pretty big fucking deal for us magician types.

Of course, ususally, when one reads about a magician crossing the Abyss, the implication is that, having made said crossing, said magician got all the way to Kether: union with the Godhead, Nirvana, Samadhi, Enlightenment. Which I haven’t done. But still, just making it across at all is very much a “finding the Holy Grail” kind of deal (that’s a joke of sorts: the Grail Quest is western mythology’s prime metaphor for attaining the sephira of Binah).

This would be a good time for me to offer some clarifications and technical Kabbalistic details...

First: the Grail Quest myth specifically refers to reaching Binah via the Chariot path. (That’s the 18th path, by the Kabbalistic numbering system that Alan uses in Promethea. By that system, you can figure out which of the Tarot’s Major Arcana corresponds to a given path by subtracting 11 from the path number. Thus, the 32nd path is card number 21, The Universe; the 11th path is card number 0, The Fool; the 18th path is card number 7, The Chariot.) The Chariot path connects Binah and Geburah. (Look at Alan’s portrayal of Geburah, and his portrayal of Binah, and imagine what a path would be like that connected the two... No wonder our primary mythological reference for it comes from you bloody insane Celts.)

By the way, as if it wasn’t funny enough already, Monty Python and the Holy Grail has some (presumably unintended) secret jokes in it just for Kabbalists. The best one is this: Geburah is sephira number five; Binah is sephira number three. Every time in the movie that the protagonists try to count to three, they mess it up by saying, “One... two... five!”

Second: I actually did make it across the Abyss to Binah once before... via the Chariot path. It was a decade ago, on my 25th birthday, the result of a megadose of psylocybin (I mean that attaining Binah was a result of the psilocybin megadose – the birthday would probably have happened anyway). That time, it was an experience of being in the realm and presence of Goddess (as opposed to encountering/embodying specific goddesses), and of being fucked by Her (which, among other things, involved crackling bolts of energy shooting upward through my spine and exploding out of the crown of my head with such force that the convulsions of my body repeatedly lifted me all the way off of the futon on which I was lying). The full story of that experience is epic (and includes my own harrowing encounter with the qliphoth of Geburah); maybe I’ll relate it some other time.

Anyway, despite that experience, I hadn’t been counting myself as having really crossed the Abyss, because it wasn’t me, it was the massive dose of psilocybin, with me just along for the ride. Saying “I’ve crossed the Abyss” implies certain things about one’s level of attainment, as both a magician and a human being, which at that time – and until the past couple of weeks – just weren’t true of me yet. It would have been like saying “I can fly,” just because I’d once been shot out of a cannon.

I think that for any initiatic experience to “count” on one’s spiritual “resumé” (a bizarre way to put it, I know), one must demonstrate some ability to integrate the experience such that it comes to inform one’s day-to-day consciousness and behavior in a lasting, positive way that makes one a more suitable vessel for divine Grace and a better citizen of the Universe.

Doing the work that leads up to the initiatic experience – work that tends to demand high levels of openness, self-honesty, commitment, diligence, etc. – is what builds one’s capacity to integrate that experience. This, I think, is the big potential pitfall of psychedelic chemicals: they can provide initiatic experience at a level which the day-to-day self, the conscious ego, is not at all equipped to usefully integrate.

Before crossing the Abyss on my 25th birthday psilocybin trip, I was a weak, insecure, belligerent, self-obsessed prick. After I the trip, I was a weak, insecure, belligerent, self-obsessed prick who had firsthand knowledge of Hod, Geburah, Binah, and their resident life forms, had had sex with the Goddess, and had one heck of a story to tell. The only significant changes in my character, apart from the acquisition of interesting new memories, were a permanent increase in the intensity of my orgasms, and (probably as a side effect of the de-armoring that allowed the intensified orgasms) the ability to hit deeper notes when I belch. As far as integration of the experience goes, that just doesn’t quite meet my standards. Thus, in terms of my “resumé” as a magician, I count myself as having crossed the Abyss and received my initiation into Binah on January 23rd, 2004, rather than on my 25th birthday ten-and-a-half years earlier.

Obviously, if I’m counting it this time, it means that this time I am demonstrating a level of integration that meets my standards. More on that in a bit.

Third: Since you’ve now taken Alan Moore’s “Kabbalistic comic-book crash course,” and since you actually seem to be a willing audience for my Kabbalistic analyses of my experience, and since at least a couple of my regular journal readers are interested in my Kabbalistic rantings or at least tolerant of them, I’ll now share with you the basics of my Kabbalistic analysis of my experience in the Initiations lab.

Both to further develop my understanding of the Kabbalah, and to provide myself with a conceptual framework to help me integrate my initiatic experiences, there’s an exercise I like to do, which I call the Kabbalistic Roadmap Exercise.

When I was a kid, and my family would go on road trips to other states (states of the Northeastern U.S., not of consciouness), I used to love looking at maps afterwards, and, with my finger, tracing the route we had traveled, thus develping my understanding of geography. The Kabbalistic Roadmap Exercise works the same way: after any major initiatic and/or mystical experience, one traces one’s route on the Tree of Life, figuring out where one has been.

In Promethea, for instance, the journey that Sophie and Barbara take is the classic “Lightning Bolt” route to the Godhead: starting at Malkuth, they take the Universe path to Yesod; the Sun path to Hod; the Tower path to Netzach; the Death path to Tiphareth; the Justice path to Geburah; the Strength path to Chesed; the big leap into the Abyss, through Daath, to Binah; the Empress path to Chokmah; and the Fool path to Kether.

One reason I figured I should trace my own route for you is because I think I gave the misleading impression that I did that “leap into the Abyss and go right through Daath” trip that takes one from Chesed to Binah. Not so. There are paths across the Abyss that remain intact (like the Chariot path that I took on my psilocybin trip, or the High Priestess path that Crowley is travelling when Sophie and Barbara meet him in Daath). In order to have taken the straight-through-Daath route, my consciousness would have had to have been in Chesed when I stepped into the Inanna/Erishkigal ritual space. But it wasn’t – it was in Tiphareth, which is the state one accesses in a really deep no-form.

So here’s how my route worked: once I got into the swing of the lab, I was able, in most sessions, to travel the Judgment path from Malkuth to Hod, and, from there, to move around the Hod-Yesod-Netzach triangle, via the Sun, Star, and Tower paths, in whatever way the direction of a given session led me to. This triangle, defined by Hod, Yesod, Netzach, and the three paths connecting them, is where most of the paratheatrical ritual work takes place for me – always beginning with accessing Hod via the Judgment path.

The first big breakthrough for me, in terms of accessing higher levels of the Tree, came in the twelfth session, when I did the Personal Polarity of Vanity/Annhilation-of-the-Self-in-No-Form (see my January 9th entry, “Pieces,” for details). This brought me to a point where I could sometimes manage to attain a depth of no-form that brought my consciousness up to Tiphareth, from which I could potentially launch myself higher.

That would be the path traditionally called Temperance, but aptly renamed Art by Crowley, that got me to Tiphareth, by the way.
So, in the Spiral Path ritual in the 15th session (as recounted in the “Chesed” entry), I got myself into that Tiphareth state in my no-form, and then, in the course of walking the Spiral Path into the Core, travelled the Hermit path (which is about accessing the secret seed or core of the Self) into Chesed.

In the Inanna/Erishkigal ritual, in the final session (as recounted in the “Inanna and Erishkigal” entry), I once again got myself into that Tiphareth state in my no-form, and then, from Tiphareth, crossed into Binah via the Lovers path.

So that’s the basic roadmap.

Okay, enough Kabbalah. Back to your questions:

No, I can’t walk through walls now. The laws of the Material World are what they are. On the other hand, I’m now much more at peace with my inability to walk through walls.

Yes, I can do the Jedi Mind Trick – but I’ve been able to do that for years. It’s overrated, alas. Doesn’t help me one bit in my domestic life, since it works only on the weak-minded.

The major effect that I’m noticing so far is that I have a near-constant sense that there’s something infinitely vast, powerful, ancient, wise, and loving that I’m connected to, and that I’m frequently capable of tapping into – and, indeed, that I instinctively, naturally, and effortlessly tap into as appropriate to circumstances. It’s affected my aikido, the way I move in general, and the way I relate to others in all aspects of my life.

I can see it in my own face, and many other people seem to be able to see it as well. I’m getting flirted with and hit on a whole lot more than I’m used to, and people generally seem more responsive to me than I’m used to. People in my classes at school come to me with their questions, as do people at my local YMCA (where I spend a whole lot of time) who don’t even know that I work there. This year’s crop of “New Year’s Resolution” aikido beginners is so far exhibiting a much-lower-than-usual drop-out rate, and a much-higher-than-usual willingness to approach me with questions and self-disclosures.

I’ve had experiences many times before in which I felt like I was tapped into something bigger than me, and often it’s involved some sense of being “charged up” with power and charisma. I tend to actually feel physically larger, or to feel some sort of expansive aura or “tingle” around myself. Eventually the charge burns itself out. If I’m not careful (and I’ve rarely managed to be careful enough), the charge can carry with it some major ego-inflation, with a corresponding letdown when it’s gone.

This time it feels different. I don’t feel charged at all. I don’t feel inflated, or souped-up, or larger-than-life, or like I’ve got a great big crackling aura of power and charisma around me. In fact, I feel very small. Not in a bad way, mind you. I’m not a big guy – I weigh about 155 pounds right now. But even when I’m not charged up, I’ve tended to try to psychically “inflate” myself a bit – to come across as powerful, to try to feel as big as I can. And now I’m not doing that. So I feel smaller than I’m used to feeling, because for once I’m experiencing being Actual Size. I’m just me, 155 pounds of skinny bald beautiful Jewish guy, and I’m absurdly happy and cheerful about it, and about other people, and how they’re all just themselves, and how beautiful each and every one of them is in his or her own way.

My sense is that this isn’t some charge that’s going to burn itself out this time. This is who I am now. It’s not something I’ve been filled with, it’s something that’s intrinsic to me, that was blocked until now. It’s not blocked anymore because whatever was blocking it, I dropped, like Inanna shedding her clothing.

My inflated presence, the aura I tried to project around myself, was a defense, a shell, an obstacle to natural, happy intimacy with the world, with others, with myself. Instead of filling me up with a charge that helped me power that aura, my experiences in the Initiations lab – especially the crossing of the Abyss in the Inanna/Erishkigal ritual – somehow led me to be okay with just dropping it. I just don’t have any sense of needing that psychic armor anymore. I mean, I’ve already been completely exposed and subjugated before the eyes of the Underworld, before the eyes of Erishkigal... and I’ve already been killed by Erishkigal. What the heck do I need those defenses for now?

My experiences, over the years, of tapping into various sephiroth – especially Hod, Geburah, and Chesed - has definitely involved a tendency toward ego-inflation, toward getting high on myself in one way or another. But this experience of Binah was one of benign deflation, of reduction to Actual Size, of becoming more real. The high isn’t a rush, it’s a mild, natural, seemingly quite sustainable joy based in an easy, comfortable, open relationship with myself, other people, and the world.

We’ll see where this goes. It’s been less than two weeks. The initiations, lessons, and transformations of previous labs have generally taken anywhere from one to four years to fully integrate and make themselves known. So this is a heck of a start.

Wow, that was a pretty long-winded answer. But then, that’s part of why I wanted to have this dialogue – because I have so much to process and to tell of, that when it comes to putting it into language I don’t even know where to start, and I figured that it would help to have some questions to get me started. So thank you.

I think this is already the longest journal entry I’ve ever written, even without whatever reply you’ll have for me. And our public awaits. So I’m going to go ahead and post this in my journal right after I send it to you, and your response, whenever you get around to writing it, will be the beginning of our next installment.

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The Inanna Dialogue
will continue as soon as
Lila writes back to me.