THE CLOSET MYSTIC

Consider, for a moment, how the mind-body-spirit connection relates to the power of breath work. 

Why does breath work, well, work? To explain it in one particular way:

Different states of consciousness and emotional wellbeing (or the lack thereof) have correspondences with different paces, depths, and qualities of breath. The typical flow downstream is that one quality of mind will create a related quality of breath. When our emotional self experiences anxiety, the breath reflects that. When the emotional self experiences joy, or calm, or deep wellbeing, the breath reflects that. It is Hermetically so how the outer reflects the inner. 

So, then, breath work is about consciously wielding this process to our desired benefit, in an act that I would consider alchemical transmutation. Even if our emotional state is, for example, tense and stressed, we control the breath, and breathe as if we were experiencing calm and deep wellbeing. Eventually, the emotional self reflects what the breath is telling it that it is. 

We breathe how we desire to feel. 

How does the power of symbols relate to this? 

With the example of breath work, we discuss how different states of breath have what we can deem sympathies to different states of mind. Across different levels of reality, one energy or quality can express itself. By altering one level of reality, we create its likeness across the other levels. We can choose positive thoughts to alter our emotional state; we can choose calming breath to alter our emotional state — but do you see how affecting one of reality’s “levels” incurs changes in the others? 

(This, by the way, is how astrology works — one level of reality, the macrocosm, affecting another, the microcosm. As above, so below. Consider magic, then, to be reflected in the caduceus: the many different loops of the intertwined serpents reflect different levels of reality. The serpents are the vibratory strings across existence. Plucking the string, and creating a specific vibration, at one location, will cause alterations at the different locations or “knots” of the caduceus, or reality. This is Hermetics.)

So, as for symbol: like states of breath and emotions, symbols have sympathies with varying “configurations” of the Spirit. A symbol is a natural key for a higher spiritual essence/archetype. By altering the physical realm via symbol, we alter the spiritual realm in a way that has sympathy with that symbol, just like altering our breath can change our emotional state. 

This is talisman usage. This is magick. 

The ancient term for these symbols or talismans is sunthemata. They are tokens that have correspondences to certain divinities. 

The ancient term reflecting this system of correspondences between varying levels of reality is sumpatheia — or sympathies. 

There is really no limit to how far you can take this. The principle of sympathies means that we will absorb our environment. The people and energies we surround ourselves with. Choosing to be in nature — our spirit will adopt the qualities of the elements that surround. This is our natural-born creative power. The world is our sandbox, and it is truly turtles all the way up.

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Though I learned about sunthemata and sumpatheia from Liz Greene’s Jung’s Studies in Astrology, here are some other resources on the topics for those interested:

• http://www.dictionaryofspiritualterms.com/public/Glossaries/terms.aspx?ID=352
• https://www.medievalastrologyguide.com/theurgy

how oh how oh how can I communicate the ineffable

can I give clues,

can my poetry be a treasure map,

each line,

every stanza,

a puzzle piece?

can I give the reader a scent to follow,

can I lead the reader to the same epiphany,

found independently?

can my poetry be a formula,

a recipe,

ingredients listed,

but up to you

to combine?

can I lead you to the water?

will you drink?

what if I told you that the water

was the center of your being?

what if I told you the water of life

resides in your heart?

how can I communicate

this bliss

that simply is…

that in my heart,

ever-available,

is a paradise

is a love of all loves,

that I am in love with the whole of creation,

that I want to buy flowers for every human being,

that I want to write a love song for every creature,

every soul,

every beating heart,

that ever was

is

or will be

how can I explain that

I have truly fallen in love

Enamored

by creation itself

that my daily rendezvous

with my secret lover

is digging my feet into the sand

hands in the dirt

sunbathing

moon-gazing

small talk with a cashier

how can I explain the butterflies

of watching the sun set

…

I have a crush on existence itself

Do you think she likes me back?

about posting the tale of my spiritual awakening on this website in a mini-series

it’s coming!!

He broods,

He broods,

A dark intensity 

seethes — 

What is that 

Lurking under the surface?

It is venom —

It is complementary

To creation’s power — 

Creation and destruction alike

Work in tandem.

I choose to wed this energy,

For an eternity,

To love — 

To truth — 

To betterment — 

To healing — 

To forgiveness,

To virtue.

What is it that I choose to destroy?

It is myself. 

It is the barriers I’ve placed

Between love and I

Between truth and I

Between goodness and I. 

I choose to annihilate 

The ways I’ve limited myself.

I choose to destroy

The chains of the past. 

I choose to destroy

The familial burdens

Wielding the caduceus 

of epigenetics

Do I transcend the ancestral mesh.

Generational baggage 

ending here,

Burnt 

In the alchemical flame. 

I destroy,

To clear the way

For the mustard seed.

That wildfire

Can take it all 

Can take the lies

Can take the pain

I give away the falsehood

In grand surrender

I forfeit.

Let it all be taken,

I care not.

For from the ashes,

Will new life be born.

And it is the sweetness

Of the Morningstar,

That light in my heart.

I exist both on the frontlines

Leading the charge,

Shield and spear forward,

And I luxuriate

As the princess

The crown jewel

For, 

Make no mistake,

There is a war being fought. 

I see wrong in the world,

I see wrong in my life,

I see wrong in myself. 

The wrongness

Is where we’ve missed the mark

Where I’ve missed the mark

In loving. 

But,

Sacred goddess — 

Your purity,

Your grace,

Is my reason why. 

You are my lifeblood,

You are the nectar that gives birth

To the rage of the berserker 

You are both

Ambrosia 

Rendering me invulnerable

In the battle,

And 

That which could drop me to my knees

With the snap of your fingers,

With the flick of a wrist,

By the blink of an eye

This is what love does to me

There is no greater strength

Nor any greater weakness.

A beginning and an end

Intertwined.

The way of the fish 

is the way of the vagabond.

The whole of the sea is my home. I trust the currents — 

I trust the etheric currents 

of all that is

The pull of the tide is the pull of time

The wise fish does not fight the current

But learns to trust and swim with her pull

Opening, opening, opening its sphere of consciousness

Its sense of self

To merge with the current

To make its will one with the tide

To listen to its wisdom — 

To trust.

I am remote.

I feel remote. 

My heart is pulled by something far greater than I

And my mortal mind struggles to make sense of it

But see?

It is this — 

Why fight, why struggle? 

Wisdom is in learning

That even riptides

Need us to swim with them. 

Fight it, fight it, fight it

You will drown.

I care not where your life is taking you

Nor where it has taken you

Nor what it has taken from you

Swim with the current, and trust. 

For, 

I promise you,

You will be led home.

Teach me, teach me, teach me, Lord, of gentleness. Teach me, soften me. Let my arms be home to the gentlest of all creatures. Let me find my own home in the arms of the gentlest of all creatures. Let me be a lighthouse, a bastion of safety in chaotic seas. Let me make people feel warm, feel safe, feel understood. Let me be solace in this world that can be anything but forgiving. Let me be the forgiveness this world is not. Forgive me the times I wasn’t. This is what I want. 

Please, please, please teach me how to love. 

How can I better meet these astrological signatures within myself?

That Sagittarian restlessness has long operated within the shadows of my consciousness. How can I meet you better? 

Tell me, tell me, tell me where the line between the pursuit of betterment and deep dissatisfaction is? Where is the line between a creative desire to improve the world, and the inability to love the world for what it is? 

Those wild horses need me, need me, need me to exhaust them. To run, run, run, run, run great expanses and distances. They need wide horizons. They need wide philosophical and mental horizons; they need wide literal horizons of travel and adventure. It is a stirring and tingling of stardust ever present in my spine, full of laughter, jovian, queer, restless, restless, restless, that little centaur who could not sit still in the classroom, who felt evermore estranged and felt “bad” for simply being what he is: an adventurer by nature, chained with the rest of his generation to a seat. 

So, his “inattentive” ADHD was his coping mechanism — if he could not travel physically, he’d travel mentally. So far away did his bones wish to run — the energy could not be created or destroyed, but could change form. So instead of expressing itself kinetically, it expressed itself mentally. That’s why he was distant mentally, that’s why I was far away mentally. 

But how do I meet him? How do I love him? He isn’t bad by nature. Perhaps he needs to be tamed, perhaps he needs to be trained, perhaps his energies need to be better channeled with wisdom. But no, he isn’t bad. He is optimistic, he is loving, and he can be a fool, but out of none but the jovian spirit of eagerness who sees so much right that he forgets to consider what can go wrong. 

It plagued me, it chased me, it haunted me, and yet, it eluded and evaded me. 

Come, oh Prudence — Come, oh Reason — Come, Temperance — Come, Kindness — Come and chase away the Tyrants, those Horsemen that have taken your rightful place in the thrones of the hearts of man — 

Overrun are we! Overrun, are we not? Overrun are we by bombardment of the senses, any and everything to distract from what’s within — 

I meditate to break free of the cycle — I meditate to break free of the imprisonment. Conditioned have we become to need, need, need — no — always want, want, want, for more. 

An entire civilization built on the backs of suffering third world countries that I am complicit in. I am an accomplice, I am part of the problem. What am I to do? What am I to do? What am I to do in knowing that the clothes on my back were forged by impoverished hunched over backs, and so was the coffee in my cup, and so was the cup? What am I to do in knowing that I am the sky that the Atlas that third-world children are support? What am I to do? 

I know not. What I do know is this:

It still plagues me, it still chases me, it still haunts me, and yet, it no longer need elude and evade me. 

That vision of my youth. That vision of truth. 

Of simple living. Of wanting and needing being, at last, reconciled in sacred marriage. That alchemical conjunction of two things that should not be opposites, at last meeting in centre again. 

There is so much that needs to be chopped from my life. Is that Saturn’s scythe coming for the chaff I’ve gladly munched on and hoarded? I only need a few morsels of wheat, but have clung for more, more, more. 

I meditate as a gradual step. I meditate to make the statement that for, at least 20 minutes, I don’t need to be stimulated. I don’t need to be consuming. 

To live simply is to simply live. 

I want less. I want to be happy with less. I want to expel the sickness of this country, the spirit of Manifest Destiny never having left our bellies, needing ever-more. We are an imperialist civilization through and through, taking and conquering more than we need through consumerism.

If I learn to be okay with having less, the infinite abundance of my spirit and heart will pour fourth, all that I need to be happy residing therein. 

I have found that the pure of heart have some sort of “fixedness” about them, at times bordering on, or entirely meaning, a certain mental rigidity.

I do believe that, in order to maintain a purity of heart in a world so awash with outside influences that could lead one astray, perhaps such a rooted disposition of character is necessary. Perhaps it allows one’s innermost, truest center to remain, making one less easily influenced/generally susceptible to the environment in which they find themselves. 

I have, of course, also found this character to be utterly in need of release, of generally “letting go.” Sometimes, I’ve observed it to be existing almost entirely in the mind, forgetting to put its feet in the proverbial — or, quite honestly, literal — grass, and just be, in the beautiful simplicity of life.

It does appear to have correlations with OCD. The fixation on purity, when without the tempering force of surrender (Virgo-Pisces axis), has inevitably appeared to lead to neurosis — and what is neurosis but a reflection of the brain’s inability to deal with the natural forces that are? An unintegrated psyche is one that cannot meet certain essential truths and demands of all that is. Life demands our surrender — chaos is an essential fact of life. A mind so stuck on perfection, order, and the pursuit of some ideal of purity and “rightness” will always meet the challenges of life’s essential inability to be controlled. The less the mind can cope with this fact, the deeper the neurosis will be. 

Balance, as always, is the way. We must be versatile and adaptable enough to be both a tree with our roots planted in the goodness our hearts are ever in pursuit of, while also being the bird who can both perch upon that tree and embrace life’s ever-changing — and at times chaotic — winds. We venture safely away from that center to experience the wild beauty of life and its infinite variety of potential experiences, while always returning home at the day’s end, perching once again.

Virgo remains virgin through the ability to say “no,” of course. Virgo is a lover of none but herself, and perhaps the immaterial Spirit. However, Pisces is a lover of all, who says yes to all, somehow also having a purity of heart so great that the whole of mankind can be loved and totally embraced.

Both are pure. One gives themself away freely and gladly to all as one — Pisces — and one withholds themself from all but one or none — Virgo.

nourish my mind

nourish my heart

nourish my soul

no,

never shall I live by bread alone

bodily nutrition says nothing

about what your spirit is fed

can I put song

into calories?

do my pill bottles

contain inspiration?

can I eat love,

can I drink literature?

my hands have needs

greater

than my stomach and blood.

infinite are their needs.

proportionate

are the consequences

of them being unmet.

my hands need

to hold other hands.

my hands need pencils

the energy channel

between heart and fingers

opened

oh, potency

oh, potency

this pencil is my sword

sharp,

sharp.

e’ry hero needs his weapon

let graphite spilled

be like bloodstains

marking where I’ve conquered.

…

feed me

I want to feel saltwater threatening to drown me

I want to dig my fingernails into dirt

I want to shovel it into my mouth

Let me taste the Earth

let me

let me

let me..

feel

I want sensation

Let me scratch at myself

This vessel was meant for challenges

Let me punish myself

not out of self hatred

but out of great self love

I am the soil being broken

toiled

I am the Earth being worked

I am

potential unfolding

These fists clenched

life force energy reverberates through me

I want to kiss

I want to fight

I want to live

no more

no more

no more of these chains

I want to use this voice of mine

I want to deafen myself with the passion it carries

let me see what this body

this mind

these hands

are capable of

I want to love intensely

I want to fight for those I love