The History of the Rise of Dionysus 9=2, part 1

These episodes or parts are not chronologically arranged but - instead - detail the most important events leading to the birth of DIONYSUS 9=2. The chapter titles are also called "Mountain Tops" because they name the peaks of great moments.

Part I:
Death & Dissolution of the Adept
- or -
The 8=3 Initiation

It was the beginning of Winter in year 100 of the New Aeon (2004 era vulgari), and I had since become - in the eyes of myself, my fellow students, and my various mentors - a particularly strong Adept. I was reading over & over what I, Brother E.I.V. (my 1st Order motto, "Ex Igne Victoria," meaning "Out of Fire, Victory") perceived as my 7=4 thesis, which I had finished 3 years before. I called it ARARITA: The Many Ways to Unity, showing the fundamental nature of the Universe to be a unity. It was done logically in a few ways (showing the absurdity of reason), comparatively (showing the union, pun intended, of theory behind many Traditions), and even physically (matter & energy, for example, being two expressions of one thing unnameable). It was a work of Pantheism, showing the world to be One, God being All of the World, and Man being Part of that World. All of this did not prepare me, the "Great Adept from the South," for an experience that would, in all senses of the world, kill me.

That is, everything I thought I was & had (material object and knowledge) would be destroyed. These words sounds like a horrible utterance, some kind of sickly premonition of dissolution... But that is the View from below the Abyss. Only in my Forging into the Grade of Magus, 9=2, did I come to truly have the Right Wisdom to assess this Initiation into the Grade of Master of the Temple.

I had rented a small cabin in a rural part of New Mexico as a retreat from my normal work in engineering. It is really a desolate place, with flatness on all sides and a few mountains in the distance, standing resolutely as jagged rebuttals to the blankness. This blankness is the ideal setting for completing the task at hand one-pointededly: Five days was the allotted time I had given myself, where I would "seek to meditate and deepen my spiritual Understanding" (from my Diaries at the time). There was no conscious intention to work towards becoming a Master of the Temple, 8=3, when I made these plans.

Upon arriving in my battered, red truck, I tossed my belongings on the floor of the cabin. I had brought food and clothing along with three books and a pad of paper. The books were The Book of the Law, the Bhagavad Gita, and a certain mystical sacred text written by a female Buddhist tantric. In short, I was well-supplied. All one really needs is spiritual nourishment - the immensely volcanic verses in each of these Holy Books served me well for that purpose - and a bit of physical nourishment to tide the body's needs over.

After sitting on the bed for a moment and staring out of the front door, my mind turned to Divine Fantasy. A thought-vision came over me where I envisioned the frame of the cabin I was sitting idly in to be infused with with a dynamic gold current, like the building was a body with fire flashing through its veins. The roof was a Portal to the Infinite Night Sky and the ground became the tiled floor of a Masonic Hall, almost eager for solemn ritual steps to be performed. This reverie announced to me the desire of my God Adonai to establish Relations with myself, the Adept, Fr. E.I.V. 7=4. I stood immediately to perform the Qabalistic Cross...

Upon announcing my God to be the Kingdom & Power & Glory to the Ages (Amen!), I felt a strange urge to shut my eyes... it was less of an urge and more of a completely involuntary action that I could not prevent. Upon closing my eyes, a symbol flashed in bright white light with yellow flecks in no uncertain shape. Now, I had incessantly practiced on and, to an extent, conquered the astral plane in my work in the Order of the G.D. (1=10 through 4=7) but achieving visions in the astral plane always took at least 10 minutes of meditation to "get in the mood." It takes a bit to put on one's "astral goggles," as I like to call it. That is, there is a definite state of mind or way-of-seeing that is activated to "see in the astral" but this shape that appeared before my eyes was bright and clear (and almost as overwhelming as the Sun) and arose nearly immediately upon my eyes closing. I had never seen the image before - it looked somewhat like a sigil and somewhat like something one would see as an alien language in a movie - but simply seeing it made my stomach tighten and my eyes start to tear. It seemed to instantly evoke feelings of awe & beauty tinged with fear (as do all symbols, to different extents, that are not dead husks from lack of connection to & knowledge of it... symbols are not passive objects but fire-infused activity, constrained to visual form!)

The image consisted of five circles arranged horizontally. The middle circle was perfectly round and made of blinding light; it was also the largest of the circles. On either side of this central circle were two smaller circles where half of the circle was illuminated, like the Moon at First or Third Quarter. On either side of these circles were other, smaller circles that were also half-illuminated but opposite to the ones next to them.

The Image [Figure 1.1]

I was granted not a second of reverie before a Great Voice, obviously that of my Lord Adonai, spoke to me & through me: "Follow this Path; at the End is the Beginning of the Pathless." The words rang clear in my head and echoed for a few moments before the image faded out of view. I was then met with the normal darkness of the back of my own eyelids. The message left me utterly bewildered. I had come into contact with my Angel in my 5=6 Initiation as Adeptus Minor, where I established Knowledge & Conversation with my Genius whose tokens of success where Being, Consciousness, and Bliss of a higher order than any material equivalent. Even in those Relations, no message was as clear as this, put so clearly into the words of my language, had been spoken by My God. What was I to do?

The vision and the voice had left me in a strange paradoxical state which mixed excitement with desolate confusion. I fancied myself a Great Adept who knew the backwards-and-forwards of metaphysics & magick but I didn't know how to act in the face of this... Revelation. It was certainly of a different character than the 5=6 Initiation which was, a revaluation of my possibilities in terms of Power, Knowledge, and Bliss... but this was a vision and a voice like a normal astral vision. No - it was even more coherent & concrete than most visions... "Follow this Path" I was counseled, but which path? Being the overly-literal fellow I fancied myself, I took this as a practical encouragement to go for a walk, so I did.

Upon pacing around the flat surroundings of my cabin, I furiously contemplated the message I was given. What could the symbol mean? Was it a simple spiritual counsel, like those found in the Tao Teh Ching...? Or was it definite, practical advice to bring me to my next Initiation? After what seemed like only half an hour to an hour, I gathered myself and looked around. The cabin was so far-off it could not be seen and I had actually come to the foot of one of the small mountain ranges. Knowing that nothing can be accomplished without courage & a sense of adventure, I took to climbing these rocks and crags. Throughout this, there seemed to be very little "choice" in all of my actions... I did not perform my actions through my assent but the actions were simpy performed and I had to assent.

After only about one or two hundred feet of climbing, I came upon a sort of plateau that opened up on the left and right to steep cliffs. In the middle I found three caves and two rocks, amazingly in the formation of the Symbol which I had seen earlier. In the center was a large cave which I could see was quite deep. Opposite to the symbol, where the central circle was composed of blinding white light, the cave was pitch black. On either side of this cave were two small caves where I could see the back on a particular side, creating the appearance of the Half Moon-like circle in the Vision. To the right of each of the half-caves were bolders with shapes approximating half-circles from the Symbol.

I simply could not believe this "synchronicity:" I certainly had no conscious knowledge of these caves, let alone any previous knowledge of the symbol which had been flashed clearly before my eyes only an hour or so before. Could my Angel have access to physical information I had never heard or guessed? My Reason was utterly bewildered before this occurrence, seraching for some "natural" explanation. Again, I was pulled forward into the cave as if I had gained momentum and could not be stopped. I walked into the central cave until my body was encompassed by darkness. I heard absolutely nothing, the blankest nothing one can conceive. The Silence was so thick I could almost feel it bouncing off of the cave walls and making the air heavy.

Immersed in this Silence, I began my meditation practice in accordance with the instructions of My Angel from my 6=5 initiation: "Invoke often!" In particular, this practice is a form of Mantra Yoga, although it is combined with Bhakti. I repeated the Divine Invocation from Liber XV over & over to both hone my concentration and stir the fires of inspiration...

"IO IO IO IAO SABAO! KURIE ABRASAX KURIE MEITHRAS KURIE PHALLE!
IO PAN, IO PAN PAN IO ISXURON, IO ATHANATON IO ABROTON IO IAO!
XAIRE PHALLE KAIRE PANPHAGE KAIRE PANGENETOR!
HAGIOS, HAGIOS, HAGIOS IAO!"

I sat down on a relatively flat surface of the cave and folded my legs into full-lotus position. At first, the repetition of this Divine Invocation seemed a bit forced and cold, but slowly a warmth not from physical heat arose within me, which is always the first signs of a successful Invocation. Again and again, I cried "IO IO IO!" and "HAGIOS HAGIOS HAGIOS!"... enumerating the qualities of My God and singing of his Beauty & Terror.

Slowly, a curious thing happened... The Mantra of the Divine Invocation slowly broke apart. The spaces between words became longer, the syllables seemed disconnected from the ones before and after, and the meanings of the words became obscured and forgotten. At some point, the Mantra stopped completely. Normally, this would be considered a "break" in the practice but this time it was different. If it was a break, it was the break of success. Suddenly, a rapid series of thoughts & images passed over me. I saw myself in business attire, obviously a symbol of my academic & work-related accomplishments (I worked as an engineering consultant to a security company at the time). This image passed over me and I felt no identification with it, it was almost as if my identity was being pulled out of myself. After this, images of my closest three friends and my brother passed across my vision - they seemed like casualties in a war... In a sense I could recognize them, and in another sense they looked like generic people: the strong feeling within myself was that these were arbitrary persons surrounding me out of millions of other people who could potentially have been my friends & family. I felt only the emotion of stillness as these images of what would normally be extreme emotional intensity passed in front of me and then out of my consideration. Next, an image of myself clad in my 5=6 robe flashed before me: Strangely, I did not identify with this image too, even though I had spent years upon years identifying myself with this Adept & his Attainment. This image was specially painful to bear and see dissolve into formlessness - all of my studies in Eastern & Western mystical texts seemed futile. All of these images of my identity did not appear as distinct visions but more of a normal mind's-eye view: I simply knew what these images were and the corresponding emotions seemed to arise without effort... and I could somehow understand that this was a process of revealing and dissolving attachment to all forms of identity.

All of my thoughts seemed to point in circles to each other - language became a self-referential system of arbitrary symbols, used to convey incomplete and inaccurate meanings. My mind strove to put into thought the most simple ideas - I was trying to think simple things like "My breath goes out," "Fire is hot," and "I am now thinking." All my energy was focused on retaining this sense of coherency and stability, yet the energy built up by my Invocations seemed to be the very energy ripping apart attempts of my will to assert itself. It is difficult-bordering-on-impossible to convey the amount of effort and willpower required to formulate these thoughts coherently: my whole consciousness was now infused with a sort of formless energy. It felt like the dynamism & heat of fire, and it felt like the tree-branching energy of electricity. At this point, I had no idea where the parts of my body where, I had no idea where I was at all, I had no idea what time it was, and I had no idea of "I." There was only what could be called, in the language of the Ruach (Reason), "an awareness of an overwhelming force which was identified with the ground of all things." There was no one there in the normal sense, I had become no man... or rather, "I" had died and Nemo had arose.

My normal willpower - my intentionality, my volition, my conscious will - was utterly powerless before this greater energy, yet this energy was more Myself than my own "will" was. This Motion, This Will was more real than "I" was... "I" was just a poor mind's-label for the processes occurring. There arose a strong feeling that it was "wrong" to put a subject before any kind of predicate because there is only One Subject, who has No Name. I perceived the truth of the first line of the Tao Teh King, announcing the Tao spoken of is not the Tao, for the Self spoken of is not the Self. All names constrain! We could call it Self or God or Tao or It but all of these are signs & symbols... does not the Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent counsel us to debate not of the particular Image, but instead say "Beyond! Beyond!"

[to be updated]