THE CLOSET MYSTIC

A fated celestial alignment

Providing the impetus of liberation

To set me free from my confinement

My prison sentence’s cessation

Powerful Promethean planet

Granting a sacred electric current

Catch fire, feed it, fan it,

You’ve been struck — tag, you’re it!

Prepare the vessel

To receive such information

You’ll surely lose the wrestle

And end up an asylum patient

If you do not prepare the mind

To adequately receive

Those truths it may find

Beyond what you now believe

Once the doors are burst open

You’ll find no relief

Those hinges are forever broken

Sanity takes a permanent leave

So the question is

Are you a good dancer?

Give your life a goodbye kiss

And embrace the deathly answer

Is the anger truly blind?

I’m not so sure anymore

We force ourselves to act refined

But such a life is a terrible bore

I wish no longer to waste my time

spirit buried deep towards

Subterranean lines

To the Earth’s core

Human convention

Is equivalent

To the spirit’s detention

Pretty and malevolent

I’m becoming rather certain

That I must lose my mind

Unveil and pull the curtains

If the truth I am to find

Mankind and its inclinations

To cover the bare self

Is a true abomination

Stripping us of natural wealth

We live in a world with its eyes closed

Mine remain open

Longer than I’d like them to

Writing a great act of untangling

Successful act of crocodile wrangling

finally retrieving

That apple of Tartarus that’s dangling

If I don’t write,

I’ve no way to ground

after I take flight

At the speed of sound

It is a great act of banishing

A treasure chest safe to store one’s burdens in

To keep what’s deep in my core

Buried deep miserably stored

Or to release them into the world

To be sneered at or adored

To write is an act of mental decompression

As a matter of fact it cures my depression

Whenever the pen is in session

Pain meets it’s inevitable cessation

Inside exists an unbearable pressure

Greater than any instrument can measure

And the only way I can get it to taper

Is if I make my pencil meet paper

So much inside that needs to be expressed!

I’ve forced myself into a shoe that’s too small

I’ve buried myself alive

I’ve tried so hard to blend in with the humans

But the pressure has reached its pinnacle

It’s fever pitch

A zenith

If I hold it in a second longer I’ll explode

Hopefully taking with it my abode

Those who I blame on my stunted growth

How can one make sense of any of this?

I search for form where there is none

I seek ground but am met with sea

I seek clarity but fog surrounds me

How can the mortal mind bear what I am witness to?

I’m just a boy. What are you doing to me?

How can I make sense of these two worlds?

Above and below? Contrary polarities?

I’ve tried so hard to hold it together. But what if I finally let go?

The truth is my entire life has been for show.

Perhaps of the Truman variety.

But if I stay cramped here,

Underneath their staircase,

My bones will have no room to grow.

Here is the irrefutable fact:

My life is reaching a climax.

I must embrace my need for metamorphosis

Or risk entering a spiritual rigor mortis

This cocoon is just so fucking tight though

My wings have no room to stretch

I have to choose either to uphold the integrity

Of my skeleton and flesh

Or the cocoon

My home, my ancestral mesh

And The pain ceases not

My limbs in pieces rot

Torn apart by her splendor

Her truth triumphs over my falsehood

A life of being misunderstood

shock to the system to experience love this good

To safety I’d like to cling

I’m terribly afraid

But I’m ready for my butterfly wings

To be displayed

What will make this itch

At last subside

Psychological destabilizing

Tyrant king condemned to death

Inner kingdom facing an uprising

I deliver myself my own last breath

I am both the sword

And the neck it teases

Oh, how I’ve pleaded for liberation

I’ve smashed my head against the prison bars

I screamed bloody murder day and night

To at last be set free

And finally

At long last

My prayers were answered

A shrouded figure comes

With a key

And unlocks the cell

Easy as that.

With the door wide open, however,

I’m terrified

I back away

And lean against the wall

I plead for them to close it

But the figure disappears

I keep looking over

To see the cell wide open

Frightened more and more by the sight

I close my eyes and leap into an artificial night

The surety of these walls are all I need! They’re all I need!

The cold ground is preferable to that beating Sun outdoors!

Nothing can hurt me in here

Some eyes aren’t ready

to behold what’s beyond the cave.

Some lives are destined

for obedience, to behave.

Some are satisfied

by what the animal self craves.

The truth is,

it requires incredible bravery,

To liberate oneself,

from our mental slavery.

But know this:

your eyes need time.

glimpse by glimpse,

you’ll adjust to the light.

It’s dangerous,

incomprehensibly bright.

And I do miss

The days I didn’t have to fight

Great Uranus

Granting me second sight

I’ve found bliss

altogether, I’m alright,

But the truth is,

I’m a little scared of heights.

The sky I kiss,

Each and every night,

With clenched fists,

Paralyzed by fright,

Mother Goddess,

Lunar night light,

My one medicine,

holds my hand tight.

she tells me this:

“you’ll be alright,

Take it all in,

Enjoy the flight” –

Loving is dangerous

There exists no sport more extreme

No mountain to summit more treacherous

Surgery without anesthesia

And why must they have

Such depths of disdain and spite

For united halves

Me, the hermaphrodite?

Oh, to them it must be

So terribly scary

To have to witness or see

Something nonbinary

Those who breathe in uranium

Existing in the realm untethered

Must be condemned to mental sanitariums

To be forced to “get better”

Born with an innate insanity

I alone stand distinct

Not quite a member of humanity

I belong to a species extinct

Perhaps the last of my kind

I pray it is not so

I hope I might find

Another one “in the know”

What a burden it is to bear

To hold a precious secret

no one with whom to share

No one that can hear it

But I believe

That at last

I’ve found relief

With one from my past

Another one

So inhumanly strange

Moon to my Sun

And equally deranged

Her hand in mine

Like grabbing millions of balloons

Leaving our atmospheric confines

Going to greet the Moon

Oh, what a woman so luminous

Let’s mix together our blood

Oh, what a love so ruinous

Stirring within inhuman lust

Down before you I cry

Down before you I beg

I think I just might die

Without my face between your legs

I’ve never known greater fire

I’ve never known greater heat

This urge within me is so dire

I’ll collapse here at your feet

Abominable flower

This most sacred underworld

Over me you’ve all the power

Let me watch her unfurl

Her holiest of nectar

Cure to my dehydration

At all costs I’ll protect her

She’s the key to my salvation

I know deep down

There is no other

I want to see in the white gown

Nor to be my children’s mother

You are all that and more

Which I’ve forever sought

You consume me to my core

You inhabit and guide each thought

At last I am free

And these thoughts of suicide

Are so much more appealing

Than letting go of my pride

And what’s under revealing

I cannot forever hide

But if I’m to start healing

Then I must embrace the light

And set free my true feelings

Posted to Reddit, 3/09/22:

I am of the belief that stories and myths are the keys to understanding the journeys of the soul. Authors, writers, storytellers, and artists of all kinds channel the Gods (a fancy name for the universe’s Primordial Archetypal Signatures, which is pretty fancy in and of itself) in their work. There are few more sacred professions than that of the artist and storyteller.

Whether or not they want to, story-and-myth-tellers of all kinds unknowingly channel Spirit in their work. Whether or not they are consciously spiritual, our storytellers tell stories of the soul’s journey and evolution. And every now and then, a story gets told that holds more of the shimmer of Spirit therein.

I believe the Hunger Games is one of those tales.

For the past couple of years, in many of my meditations, one of the many symbols my mind presented me was of Katniss and Peeta uniting at the end of the Hunger Games, refusing to kill each other, forcing the Game Masters to let them both live. At the beginning, in the infancy of my spiritual awakening, I naturally had no conscious awareness of what exactly the story was that my unconscious mind was trying to tell. However, as I have progressed on making conscious the unconscious, mainly through learning about the key allegories and mythological systems for understanding inner spiritual initiation, I have come to realize several things:

First of all, in my understanding of the alchemical hermaphrodite — a basic symbol of the inner consecration of eternal Love through the making One of the polarities — the symbolism there was clear. It was a symbol of internal conjunction. Of Love overcoming Death, as Peeta and Katniss did by uniting.

But then, I decided to have a watch again tonight, as the movie and its many symbols were making rounds through my conscious awareness. I had to see if I was missing anything. And boy, the symbolism is richer than I thought, especially in consideration of the Zodiac.

In evolutionary/esoteric astrology, the soul is said to make its progression from Aries to Pisces throughout many lives. A basic theme is that the lower the number Zodiac sign, the more self-concerned, whereas the higher the number, the more selfless. This is why Aries can be considered brash and inconsiderate; this is why Pisces lets itself get steam-rolled over, is self-sacrificing, is allegorically associated with Jesus, etc. The soul learns the true meaning of Love in its journey through the Zodiac.

Watching the movie, I was reminded of the 1-12 District system, obviously reflecting the twelve signs. (I even remembered that, in the later books, there was a mysterious District 13 whose existence was uncertain. This made me chuckle remembering the controversy over Opiuchus.)

With the idea of the movie’s symbolic spiritual expression already cooking in my mind, the rest fit so easily, like puzzle pieces:

– District 1 (Aries) was home to the Careers. These were those who were raised to fight and succeed in the Hunger Games. Theirs were among the most selfish, and with the least heart, of all of the tributes.

– District 12 (Pisces) was home to our primary and secondary protagonists, Katniss and Peeta. Katniss first of all enters the games by sacrificing herself in lieu of her sister — a Piscean theme — volunteering as tribute. Katniss and Peeta exhibit the most heart throughout the games, with Katniss budding a relationship with District 11’s tribute — a clever girl named Rue. The symbolism is just too good here:

– After Rue from District 11 (Aquarius) tragically dies, we see all of the people of 11 violently rebel and overthrow their Watchers. In District 11, the beginnings of revolution are seen. With Aquarius, zodiac sign number 11, being associated with revolution and freedom, the match is just too perfect.

– Finally, at the end, as covered in the beginning of this post, our District 12ers Katniss and Peeta refuse to murder one another. Despite being told to kill each other, they join hands (cord of the fish/conjunction) when they were the last two left, and put their lives on the line for love of one another. This is the Victory of the Soul in Pisces, and the forging of the Eternal Alchemical Stone (or Rebis/Hermaphrodite). Oneness of opposites is a theme of Pisces with the cord connecting the two opposing fish, symbolic of the Pisces’ basic internal oneness and love/compassion. This is also seen alchemically with the Rebis/Hermaphrodite.

This is all symbolized by Peeta and Katniss becoming one at the end, thus transcending/conquering their deaths. Love won over Fear/Hatred, as it does within in our own inner journey.

The Hunger Games is a wonderful allegory for the victory of the soul, not only eerily matching the archetypal zodiac, but also containing alchemical (and even Gnostic) themes therein.