14 80 JAN FRIES: NIGHTSHADES

are luckv, we happen to agree about a few. Sure, you have your answers. Let’s
hope that you’ll cotne upon better ones as you go along.

Losing Your Head for Good

In the North Indian Tantric systems, one of the most popular deities is
Chinnamasta, the Lady of Wisdom. One fine day Siva and Chinnamasta were
happily in bed together and had much fun with each other. Afterwards, Chinna
got up to have a bath down in the river. Her girlfriends Yogini and DakinI
accompanied her. The three splashed around in the water and scared the gulls,
egrets and hariisa birds, who flew squawking and wobbling to the other shore.

Then Yogini said: “I’m sooo hungry!”

DakinI agreed. “Haven’t we got something to eat?”

When Chinna returned to Siva, the Lord of Ascetics was surprised.

“Why are you so pale all of a sudden?” he enquired.

Chinnamasta smiled happily. “The two were hungry and so was 1.1 cut off my
head. Three fountains of blood spurted from my neck and we drank from
them.”

So much for wisdom. It’s nourishing and colourful, and tastes better when you
take off your head before feeding.

Every head reaches a point where it becomes a burden.

Every system of initiation reaches a point where it becomes a superfluous

absurdity.

Every personality, no matter how beautiful, clever and wise, eventually becomes
an obstacle.

The identity that can be named is bound and limited.

And what exactly constitutes wisdom is easy to know once you’ve gone beyond
your own point of view.
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Journey to the West

The qabalistic Tree of Life, a creation of some brilliant medieval Jews in central
Europe, is one of the most refined maps of mind-body-spirit interaction. A
gorgeous model with plenty of extras. A roadmap for your journey to Heaven.

You have booked a trip to enlightenment? Come on and get out. Here is a
rough guide to practical initiation along contemporary magicko-quabalistic lines.

Let us begin with Malkuth, the Kingdom, the world you be-live. We explore
body, learn about discipline, daily life, responsibility, obligations, regular exercise,
and purify the means we need to make a living.

The next stop is Yesod. Welcome to the inner world, the dream theatre of
visions, imagination and hallucinations. It’s a lunar realm, changeful, confusing,
alluring and frequently unpredictable. Magical exercises in this realm include
training the imagination, lucid dreaming, astral projection and playing around
with the sensual sub-modalities. You can find much about them in the works of
Richard Bandler, who was the first pioneer who systematically explored them.
If we project the shape of a human being on the Tree of Life, Yesod corresponds
with the genitals. Hence, this is a wonderful opportunity to refine your capability
for lust, pleasure sharing, giving and taking, and consider in what way you wish
to procreate.

In the mercurial realm of Hod we craft models to describe our experience. We

do interior decoration with thought concepts, hypothesis, theories, semantic
structures, read loads of books, make symbols jump through hoops, practise
divination, try to define what sort of world we’re in and play with what we think
that we are thinking, if we were, which isn’t entirely certain nor really
recommended unless we enjoy it thoroughly and do it now.

Netzach, the realm of Venus, opens us to embrace whatever seems OTHER at

the moment. We refine our dedication, love, longing, hope, sympathy, our
emotionality and our passion for it all. This is the realm to contact others:
friends, lovers, gods, spirits, reflections of the self, manifestations of the all-self.