albionspeak 2: the gates of dis (15.3)
SESSION 85: 3RD NIGHT, 8/6/03
Another day which included “titling,” a review of the previous night’s session through subtitling for reference & continuity, but also included work on our fifth element. Interestingly, [Scribe] and I wholly forgot to discuss measure. The day’s highlight carried over into the evening’s entertainment: We had fifteen friends for kiddie horse rides, gazpacho, and an enchilada dinner, followed by another poetry & trumpet hour, [Scribe] & [A.O.] doing “Turkish Jazz.” All went exceptionally well.
Our invocation: “A slumber did my spirit seal” by Wordsworth.
11:20 PM (feeling strong, considering the events)
1. Q: [Guide], are you there?
A: I AM IN FLIGHT ABOVE OUR CIRKLE
A A
◊
C C
We decided to jump right into our riddle work, focusing on a suspected quincunx arrangement (butterfly x-shaped, shown above), as well as noticing the first letter of each of the four words. At first, while discussing this arrangement in the early afternoon, [Scribe] and I thought “butterfly” itself might be the missing word. It stood out as the quincunx center, just as [Guide], our own butterfly, lies in our “cirkle’s” center, and it also begins with the letter “B”. Soon, however, we steered away from “butterfly,” feeling somehow that it really was a kind of red herring -- both too easy to find, as well as adding nothing new to our understanding. We had no definitive guess yet, but felt good about our progress. (cf. 03:86.23)
2. Q: [Guide], our butterfly -- Don’s list suggests a butterfly arrangement (chiastic), i.e., Absence, Cost, ……, Cricket, Aliah or A, C, …, C, A.
Are we on the right track?
A: DON’S SUGGESTIONS ALWAYS INCLUDE AN ELEMENT OF PLAY
[THE] LETTERS [THE]MSELVES MAKE A DIFFERENCE [YES]
3. Q: A follow-up. We hope to “punctuate” “ac…ca” by finding an element in the middle. Comment?
A: [THE] MIDDLE IS MISSNG [YES] [not sic]
WINGS WITH NOTHING AMIDMOST
“Is amidmost a word?” I asked [Scribe]. Again [Scribe] didn’t know, although unlike repunctuation here there was no “error”: my OED confirmed the next day that it is indeed a word (interestingly of modern coinage).
Note the missing “I” in, of all words, “missng.” Recall also the one letter on our board that stands for an absence: “I” which symbolizes our fallen friend. This “missng ‘I’” returns on subsequent nights.
4. Q: You need not respond to this. But today we pondered variations on a quincunx arrangement. Suddenly (just now) a line [arrangement] ac…ca seems just as probable. Comment?
A: STAY ALONG THIS LINE
From [Guide]’s offhand confirmation, [Scribe] and I assumed that our quincunx idea was itself a false path. Despite this belief (which still appears to be correct), we at no point felt like we’d wasted time barking up the wrong tree. This was a necessary false path, explored and rejected.
5. Q: Thank you, [Guide]. Is there an E[xercise]?
A: SIMPLY REPEAT [THE] PUZZLE TO YOURSELVES & LET TRIPOD STIR
We weren’t sure which puzzle or meditation [Guide] referred to. Our first exercise, illustrated in Response #9 of our first night’s session, concerned meditating on the “medium of discontinuity,” while our “puzzle” could only be the “riddle” (ac…ca) we’d just been working on.
6. Q: Do you mean: 1, 9 [cf. 83.9] or Don’s AC…CA?
A: [THE] EARLIER PLEASE
PONDER ENERGIES IN MEDIUM OF D[iscontinuity]
7. Q: We begin now.
A: I JOSEF AM HERE & ADDRESS YOUR ENERGIES
The reader will note that what follows, like these 2003 sessions in general, is atypical for our ouija discussions. Generally at this time – whilst speaking with our dreammaster, foremost in the karass, [Scribe]’s personal teacher -- we each address our separate concerns. [Scribe], for instance, usually consults with Josef on lucid dreaming and some of the weird physical manifestations (the “motor,” “dread,” “shuddering”) that arise from trying to merge the worlds of night (dreaming) and day. Then I connect with Josef over my own issues, generally my lack of progress. But this year was different. [Scribe] was still between “gates” of dreaming; nothing particularly new had confronted him in the last year, whereas I seemed utterly frozen, unable to remember my dreams at all, unable to complete any k-task as soon as it was assigned. (This inability was only partly a matter of inertia; really it had shaped up to a serious pathology, my version of the tiger, which, when examined carefully, had/has frightening implications.) Since Josef couldn’t really offer any new advice in his normal field of expertise, he continued the metaphysical curriculum at hand.
Approaches to Continuity
8. Q: Greetings, Josef. We sense this is not so much a session of “our concerns” as an interval of contemplation. Help us.
A: [THE] TWO ARE NOT UNLINKD ALTHOUGH IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME TO SEE WHY
9. Q: Is it like joining the ways of night & day?
A: [YES] VERY MUCH SO
Dreaming & waking seem to exhaust, and thus complete, the realms of human potential. Our personal tasks, it seems, present but one side of the total coin; the other side is the wider perspective (I hesitate to say overview). Since our movement through discontinuity must be volitional to be transformative (as opposed to incidental, accidental), then an understanding of how the process is supposed to work within the abstract is necessary to the process itself (almost as a kind of self-awareness).
10. Q ([Scribe]): To join waking & dreaming is to (attempt to) find a vital continuity.
A: EXACTLY SEE [THE] WHOLE CIRCLE OR DISC OF MY PORT
Josef’s port is represented by an indigo circle. (The reader may recall my almost comic inability to visualize a shape so simple.)
11. Q ([Scribe]): Waking & dreaming form the whole circle/cycle of consciousness.
A: TO REFORM [THE] CIRCLE IS THUS TO APPR…
12. APPROACH CONTINUITY
13. Q: We think of Borges’s “circular sight” apprehending both sides of the Zahir at once.
A: A NIGHTMARE PROVIDING A CLUE
DON’S STRENGTH
Perhaps my favorite Borges story: A man receives a horrible, eternal object -- in his case, a simple coin among change -- which has the power to overwhelm the memory & mind with its image. By the story’s end the man can see little else and overlaps both faces of the coin simultaneously in his mind.
14. Q: Another “two-sided” question. For years, our instruction has been so practical: now we return to the contemplative. Why?
A: DO YOU EACH KNOW WHAT YOU MUST UNDERTAKE?
OR DO YOU AT LEAST SENSE IT?
Yes, we do know what we must do. From what [Scribe] has told me, I suspect he just needs more time & practice at his current step. In my case the knowledge is more like knowing I must, let’s say, quit smoking. The knowledge alone does not mean I feel such a step is fully within my grasp.
During our lengthy phone call of 8/29/03, [Scribe] dictated what passed through his mind at this point in the session. From my point of view nothing happened; in hindsight, however, this marks a pivotal shift in the evening’s conversation:
"Although I had an elaborate itinerary planned, once the session began I realized that the conversation with Josef was to follow the model of that night’s [poetry & trumpet] performance. The key was not to propose an independent agenda, but to listen closely to the tenor and structure of the evening(s) as they evolved. What had appeared to be merely improvisatory had in fact a deeper structure behind it. Once I acknowledge this, the rest follows.” [present tense intended]
15. Q ([Scribe]): Josef, my concerns are not new on this night & your advice has been clear. I know what direction to take. I cannot know what I will find.
A: IT IS WELL -
FOLLOW YOUR INTENT WITH MY BLESSING & OUR CIRKLE AIDS YOU
In a single gesture [Scribe] tosses aside his planned questions -- a year in the forming. My turn; I needed a little more, but not the usual half session.
16. Q (Duncan): I realize, Josef, that the more a task (or step) is placed before me the more I am likely to fail at it.
A: THEN I MAY NOT AID YOU BY PLACING A NEW TASK BEFORE YOU
DO YOU AGREE?
17. Q (Duncan): So it follows, though I have had some success with tasks not explicitly assigned. For one as direct & straightforward as myself this seems most odd.
A: A MISTAKE MY DEAR SON
THERE IS NOTHING AT ALL STRAIGHTFORWARD
18. ABOUT YOU
YOU ARE FAR MORE COMPLICATED EVEN CONVOLUTED THAN YOU DARE BELEVE [sic (another “missng ‘I’”?)]
I think I can count a minor breakthrough here in that I feel I have reached a deeper understanding of just how screwed up I am. It’s not fun to realize that as an upright, honest, & moral citizen of the world, as a good man, I deceive myself so deeply.
I suspect Josef is also sending me an explicit clue, a warning. The missing “I,” I think, indicates that this continued course of self-deception could lead me eventually down the same road as I, our fallen Albion. I am far from safe, such a strange mix of competence & failure, imperturbability & despair!
19. Q (Duncan): Is simplicity (as opposed to “complicated”) something I should strive for, or should I try to accept & understand my own twists & turns?
A: STRIVE FOR CONTINUITY NOT SIMPLICITY AS SUCH
BUT YOU MUST LEARN
20. Q: [Learn] your own medium?
A: [YES] BUT IT IS PERILOUS
LEARN IT BUT DO NOT BE CHARMD BY IT AND…
21. ACCEPT IT AS UNALTERABLE
[Scribe] and I got completely opposite readings from Josef’s second clause, another punctuation pun, a designed ambiguity. [Scribe]: “Do not be charmed by it, and [do not] accept it as unalterable.” Duncan: “Do not be charmed by it, and [learn to] accept it as unalterable.” When I first read the exact transcription, I was disturbed by it, noting dissonance, even contradiction & paradox, in its implications. I felt [Scribe] was probably right, but we had to be sure. Needless to say, Josef’s ambiguity sparked intense discussion between [Scribe] & me: I’m sure this was the intended effect.
22. Q: Clarification: “Do not accept your medium as unalterable?”
A: CORRECT
What is Our Medium?
23. Q: Tell us about our medium. One sense: a craftsman’s materials: clay etc. (what is shaped). Relevant?
A: [YES] LEARN WHAT YOU ARE SHAPING
The word shaping returns in these sessions, as does a related word that has a very different usage: shape.
24. Q: Another sense -- what is traveled through. “Waves propagate through a medium.” Relevant?
A: [YES] YOUR MINDS TRAVEL THROUGH YOUR MINDS PONDER THIS MEASURE DEEPLY
I have my own preferred way to read the above response, but clearly Josef intends several valid readings (on several deepening levels) by omitting (of course) the punctuation. Thus I include only the spaces [Scribe] chose in the originals.
25. Q: We take your use of the (new) key word measure as a signal to use it as an aid to contemplation & a clue.
A: DISCUSS IT & TELL US WHAT YOU HAVE TAKEN FROM IT
26. Q: Tell us more of the peril (in learning one’s own medium).
A: IT HAS TO DO WITH YOUR SENSE THAT IF A THING IS SUFFIC…
27. …[sufficiently] ELABORATE THEN IT CANNOT BE ALTERED ONLY ACCEPTED
28. Q: How does charm enter this process?
A: ENCHANTMENT COLLABORATION COLLUSION WITH ONES OWN INERTIA
29. Q: Is this a species of “love of the abyss”?
A: [YES] IT CAN COME TO THAT - NOT IMMEDIATELY
“Love of the abyss” is not a subject we’d really dealt with before, although I think both [Scribe] & I intuit the attraction. Was this the form of I’s damnation?
30. Q: Did I love the abyss?
A: I LOVED I
This provides some explanation of what befell I, and it also echoes the famous response we received in our very first ouija session, “I KILLED I.”
31. Q: Can the cricket in time become a tiger?
A: IF UNCHECKED FINALLY [YES]
That is, the beast of doubt & reason can, “if unchecked,” become a beast of one’s own power capable of overwhelming the nascent flyer.
32. Q ([Scribe]): Because both are finally destructive of the fabric of the mind.
Q ([Albion]): Discontinuities so enlarged that that is what one finally becomes.
A: [THE] MEDIUM IS EATEN AWAY OR SWALLOWD UP
33. Q: That’s very sad to think about, Josef.
A: [YES] BUT WE ARE HERE TO POINT TO ANOTHER PATH
I JOSEF BID YOU FOLLOW IT & BE WHOLE MY SONS
1:26 AM