Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. – Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth ch. 4, 1988)
Section 1: Her
10
You might wonder why anyone would use a framework of symbols to organize ideas. Does the structure keep the mind from floating away into pure nonsense, or does it worsen the nonsense? Structures create difficulty, which forces people to search for the truth. There are worse ways to look for the truth. But what exactly is it that I am trying to see? I am trying to see Her. Throughout the ages, people have gazed into the fire while thinking. Since starting a fire from scratch is hard, you should carry a tool. A small piece of flint will do. The tool represents the ability to set up a home anywhere, and the ancient Romans referred to it as Vesta. You never know when you need her.
Sometimes, the events in a dream seem to last longer than the time outside the dream. That happens because the mind constructs images before the experience of having the idea. There is a bunch of stuff going on in your head. The Old Testament prophets took the voices in their head seriously.
“But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” (Isaiah 1:20)
I prefer to play with the details. How you interpret a symbol means more than what you see. This interpretation can come hours or years later. Insights don’t always give valid information. How do you know the gods are not lying to you? They might find your beliefs funny, and perhaps visionaries lie to themselves. You can learn from lies, and even knowing you saw nothing helps improve your analysis.
The designers of early virtual reality tried to block out the real world, and their visors felt like uncomfortable scuba masks. Blocking out the world was unnecessary since most people are comfortable experiencing more than one reality. Being able to see both real and fake is fun.
Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, and Carlos Castaneda used psychoactive drugs to experience an alternate reality. Some of the stronger hallucinogenic drugs can convince people that they are experiencing God or the Universe. I do not think people need drugs to get these insights because the stories we tell ourselves make the insights seem real. Although drugs are not necessary for visions, some plants allow incredible experiences. I went on an Ayahuasca retreat, which was amazing. Other than that, nearly all my zone trips were done without drugs. A psychological experience can be used to celebrate a way of seeing the universe; however, I do not equate the experience with the universe itself. What if God is not a psychological experience?
One day, four years past my 18th birthday, while driving in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, something allowed the visions to make sense. Kentucky has caves with fossils of creatures born on the Earth, lived on the Earth, and returned to the Earth. All that happened millions of years ago. You might ask, Why live if you die? We are a rare kind of stuff; we have the privilege of being alive. The fossils once experienced life. Was their life worth living? Did this creature have a mind that could ask such questions? The nervous system of one of these worms probably did not allow a rich philosophical view of life. They might have been able to think if they acted together as a group. If they wondered about life, did they find any answers?
John Muir saw giant Oaks in Kentucky (Muir, 1916 Ch. 1) before those old forests were cut down. Now, the trees look skinny, and Kentucky has open spaces with small towns where friendly people come up to talk to strangers. These small towns will not last forever. Eventually, industrial culture will replace small family farms. These people will move to cities where everyone ignores strangers. Growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, few lived on my side of the wall. Millions lived in slums on the other side of the wall, crowded into small areas, and those on the cleaner side ignored them. We only see them working for us as servants. Walls happen when cities get too big.
Hills shaped like cones called knobs surround the Bluegrass Region. Near these hills, on large open fields, cattle graze. Crows were eating a dead bull while a few vultures rested in a tree nearby. I got out of the car to wonder what this image could teach and saw a hill rising from a flat plane. The setting Sun shining behind the peak activated a desire to climb the hill. The climb will be easy since hardly any snow lies on the ground. Venus appeared as an evening star, and Jupiter seemed close to Venus. The first unusual sight happened when a white vulture passed overhead and flew behind the peak. Normally, Kentucky has no white vultures.
Sitting on top of the hill, yet saw no visions. Instead, I remembered an old one at school during a study hall class. A giant woolly bull appeared. Visions usually start with jaguars or wolves. This time, the guardian angel appeared as a living person, saying, “Life is meant to have fun. Some people can’t understand that.” My muse appeared as a beautiful blonde lady with light gray eyes and asked, “Do you believe what the angel said?” In this case, the word yes unlocked many mysteries.
In a black room, nothing happened for a long time. A new door opened to the world outside. A lady with silver eyes, dressed in a black robe, walked in, holding a bundle wrapped in black cloth, and said, “We come from the father who has chosen this event. I am the daughter of the son when it destroys.” When the bundle opened, the lady became three young girls: one with red hair, one with black hair, and one with blonde hair. The redhead sank into the floor to become the Earth. The brunette became a darkened forest full of life. The blond girl became a bright light and said, “We guided those before you. We will guide those after you.” The girl disappeared, yet the light inside everything remained. Sitting alone inside the darkened forest, wearing the black robe, the door opened. Outside was a quiet street in a busy town. The Muse walked along for a while and said that the great vision would come to pass. Suddenly, snapping out of the vision, back in school, the others in the class seemed unaware that anything had happened.
The great vision eventually happened each day, over several weeks, in the same study hall at the school. In this vision, life prospers once again in a world after civilization. This apparition became the foundation of all future visions. Usually, vision quests don’t produce fresh visions. Instead, I get memories of old visions, which may or may not have happened. Five years had passed since the study hall, and after assembling my ideas, the time had come to spread the word of the Sacred Grove. I began to write this book.
Section 2: The Comfy Chair
11
At nine years old, living in Brazil, my family would visit recreational camps outside the city. I was more interested in a field southeast of Paiol Grande, where farmers would leave the heads of cows. Burning piles of animal parts covered the hillside where vultures gathered, and new skulls were full of beetles. The nuns said no one belonged on the hill and wanted all the kids with the other kids. The way flesh gets eaten quickly in the tropics seemed more important than anything the nuns were saying.
While watching the Vultures, two pyramids appeared, turned over on their sides, and moved till their points touched. Then, the pyramids inserted these points into each other, and at the place where the pyramids merged, a space formed. Inside the space was a horrible thing bobbing above the surface of a sea where minds sink. The everyday world lives out there. The horrors live here. With fair warning, we could avoid this fate. Too late now; someone set the course a long time ago. I stood at the door between the real and the unreal, where reality was distorted.
The image within the area where the two pyramids merged was that of a bitter, angry, lonely person. The prophecy came true by the age of seventeen, and the pyramids came together again. This time, inside the area, a boy had wandered off into the forest and was bitten by a poisonous snake. The boy refused to return to civilization for help and took great pride in being able to survive without the aid of medical technology. A black Jaguar walked near, and the boy sensed it. This snake bite never happened. Actually, wild mammals were absent from the area around the camp. The vision revealed what my mind did.
In another instance, at a very young age, I took a walk through a place with tiny, crumbling houses where people lived in extreme poverty. The school uniform made me look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. There was a wooden box full of rice, and playing with the rice was fun until one of the local kids said I shouldn’t do that since people eat the rice. The kid disturbed my fun. Suddenly, the poverty became more noticeable, producing a feeling of uselessness since there seemed to be no way to change the situation.
The kid, who was only a little older than I, acted as the boyfriend of the maids who worked for my parents. The maids all had the same boyfriend, twenty years younger than they were, who would come over to the house to collect money from the maids. One day, the kid saw my plastic model of an ocean liner and was amazed by the small details. The cheap plastic imitation seemed to make the kid happy. The rich don’t appreciate these toys; we grew up surrounded by this stuff. Someone in a privileged environment could spend the rest of their life playing video games in a comfy chair. We do not need to collect money from the maids.
I come from the tribe of the rich and beautiful, yet I make no useful contribution to anything. No awards sit on my wall, no congratulatory certificates, no accomplishments to display. Perhaps those who turn against civilization failed in life, which could be true of me. Life seemed pointless. We live in a time when visions fail to fit rather than in an age when we were accepted. The muse said, “This time needs you.”
An old man said, “Those people are about to destroy themselves. I stopped them, and so will you. I’m you in the future, the greatest prophet to ever live. People in the year 3027 fear speaking our name. Virgins sacrifice themselves on altars with animated images of us. A page of our original sloppy handwriting became a holy relic hidden atop a mountain. Christianity went out of business, though in the Vatican, a Pope spends the whole day praising our name. The guardians of the Sacred Grove consider us the greatest prophet who ever lived. Mystics search their entire lives for a vision of us. We guided the Last Caesar.”
What delusions of grandeur I invented to cheer myself up. Some people like to imagine Morgan Freeman narrating their lives. It makes them feel like every move they make has great importance. I gave the plastic ocean liner to the kid. We are surrounded by people who consider themselves superior to others. They would love to punish the kid for being a pimp. They do not really care about what the kid did. They need to hurt someone to make themselves seem big. The world is run by lesser men. We need better men.
In the book Les Misérables (Hugo, 1862), you can read about revolutionaries who pretend to fight for the poor. In the book, the rich kids are portrayed as heroes. The truth was not heroic. Back then, spoiled rich kids would get working people to kill other working people. Today, socialists are no different. They think they can sit around issuing orders while the less fortunate do all the work.
On television, Hillary Clinton stood on stage dressed like a princess, while the crowd cheered. This person supervised drone strikes and torture through email. So that is who the Socialist bureaucracy wants you to cheer for, and the brainwashed drones in the audience clap. Some of you might think that a world leader needs to do what Clinton did. Or do such things only seem necessary because politicians do such things? So, if the world does not need revolutionaries or princesses, what kind of better person does the world need, and how can we be that person?
I tried to become a better person by becoming an environmentalist. Unfortunately, a lot of wealthy environmentalists think that we can just let working people suffer to save the environment. When I was younger, I was also just as arrogant. Now I realize that working people might actually be the solution, not the problem, because they know how to do things.
Section 3: The Woods
11
An older version of me went on another vision quest, and this time, I realized the world did not need me because there was no grand purpose set up for me. Thinking the cosmos will give you a purpose is the way needy people believe. All these years, I had misinterpreted my visions. Instead, there was a better message, and I should have been paying attention to it.
My parents traveled a lot. From an airplane, the Amazon forest looked like a carpet of green stretching from the horizon to the horizon. We flew over the green for a long time until the forest ended, where bulldozers had cleared a large section. The view from the airplane in the movie Iracema (1974) was almost identical to what I had seen. There were areas where red clay was exposed, which resembled blood, as if the Earth were bleeding.
The nuns at the school told the students to admire the manager of a logging company. The nuns believed that Jesus manifested in the world through progress, which requires your contribution. Moreover, the nuns thought the owner who cut down the trees did the work of Jesus, and they wanted to turn the kids into that person. The forest had been there for thousands of years; people once lived in the woods, and no one had to cut it down. I told one of the mothers that I saw the Earth Bleed, and the matriarch said that I was an idiot who was wasting everyone’s time. The lumber company committed evil, and the nuns were enemies of life. The nuns assumed that surrendering oneself to progress brings success. Instead, we can look for the good in the trees the nuns wanted us to destroy. Long ago, the natives transformed the soil into a garden that supported millions of people (Clement, 2015), and they did so without destroying the surrounding forest.
The forest evokes the feeling of both the conditions that create the trees and the truth revealed by the woods. The feeling says the Earth has a living personality. Life makes the presence grow. This thought opened an eye inside of me. Creatures in the wild grow strong while the civilized turn into pathetic weaklings. Mountains, rivers, and rocks all have brutality, aggression, and intensity. The dark side will make you feel almost as if you were real. Feel your primal instinct and enjoy it. This is truly sacred. Okay, so maybe this paragraph exaggerates a little. I sought hope since civilization seemed wrong; something primal must be better. The feeling in the jungle began as a fascination, which later developed into an obsession, and the obsession made it seem more real. Others have felt it; John Muir, who lived during the Wild West era, had a range of religious ideas about Nature. Listen to Nature and hear the imminent living principle in life.
Seeing the forest cut down bothered me. Even wars are insignificant compared to the Earth’s bleeding. Looking down from Heaven, you cannot see fifty million people die, but fifty million trees being cut down will leave a visible hole. Which event concerns the Gods? The manager of the logging company wanted economic development for the Amazon region, so even the jungle contributed to civilization. Years ago, large sections of the Amazon forest remained, and the skies over the jungle were clear. Now, smoke from the burning jungle clouds the sky. One species has no right to turn the world into a wasteland. After all, the creator did not give us the land just so we would destroy it. There has to be another way.
A few weeks later, another camp was near a hill with a statue of Christ. The statue was similar to the one in Rio, with arms outstretched as if trying to embrace the town below. I tried to climb the hill to see the statue up close, but the hill was too steep and required me to hold onto the tree roots to keep from falling. A large bull water buffalo lived inside a fence near the hill. I sat on a termite mound, watched a blackbird crawl around the bull’s back, and then noticed a trail behind the bull. The fastest way to get to the statue was through the bullpen. Jumping the fence, running across the yard, jumping the fence on the other side, the bull never followed me.
Near the statue’s base was a smaller statue. A chalk line divided the two statues as if these gods were meant to remain separate. The smaller statue resembled a mermaid. This great Brazilian Mother has many names. Some names originate from Africa, while others come from the Americas. I only know a few of these names.
I recall a story about when the African Mother came to America, but I don’t remember where I heard it. The African Mother asked permission from the native Mother of the river to let people practice a cult in South America. The native Mother gave the African Mother permission as long as the Amazon remained untouched. Meanwhile, rude Christians never asked for permission when their cult invaded the land. Those Christians had no respect for other religions and were part of a civilization that built the Transamazonas Highway. This cut through the forest, allowing settlers to move in. This sinful act violated the Earth. The Catholic nuns never understood how evil their rude religion was.
A string of Roman Catholic rosary beads lay over the statue of The Mother. A feeling said the beads did not belong on The Mother; the beads represent Catholic authority. Then I realized the beads and the Mother could combine the good of both. Millions of people around the world mix Catholic symbols and other traditions. I should be more respectful. I was wrong to think only of the bad. I should have looked for more options. I turned around and saw what it was.
Few see the ultimate mind of the universe, though the ultimate mind of the universe sits right next to you. Open your eyes to see it. Unfortunately, every idiot assumes that the grand architect of the universe guides every word coming out of their mouths. Walking around telling everyone how their rebirth was a great experience, sounding like art fans who make art sound like something with a great purpose, yet they never seem to explain that purpose. These fans bluff us into believing art does something. Of course, we all have great expectations; yet, the great vision amounts to nothing, although it enhances the experience of being alive.
Prophets have one thing in common: they feel a purpose or law hidden in every sacred object. The sacred exists in every object. Cultures come and go, the Earth and the Sun live much longer, and essential truths never die. After describing how the Dakota people got the Sacred Pipe, Black Elk commented.
“This they tell, and whether it happened so or not I do not know; but if you think about it, you can see that it is true” (Neihardt, 1932 Ch. 1)
Section 4: The Guardians
(Portrayal) 11 e1
A step is an area to step on, in addition to the act of stepping. When someone breaks instructions down into separate steps, each step becomes a piece of information. To plan correctly, we need to consider the area where the step occurred and the process used during the step. A portrait of instruction, area, and process gives us three levels in our cosmology: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The four steps at the father level represent instructions. You might want to believe the universe has a guide to tell us what steps to take, yet no such guide exists. Living in a world of holy anarchy leaves us free to make up our religion as we go along.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the Supreme Lord identifies with more than one god. The Derveni papyrus, from an ancient Greek religion called Orphism, suggests that all gods originate from one God. In Christian myth, Angels, who are less than God, resemble the emanations. Furthermore, the Old Testament uses the plural word Elohim as a name for God, which seems strange since the Jews only have one God. The plural word originated from the children of El in the Canaanite pantheon of gods. The Old Testament accuses the Canaanites of being Idol worshipers.
“The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therin: for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.” (Deuteronomy 7:25)
The Jews also referred to their God as El. The Hebrew word for eternity is ‘Olam’ (Strong’s 5769), and ‘El Olam’ means ‘eternal God’. Imagine eternity as a serpent that exists simultaneously in the past, present, and future. The ancient Greeks called the serpent Ophion, a name that the Palestinian historian Eusebius believed originated from the Canaanites (Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10). I skimmed through a few old books and then combined ideas to reconstruct ancient cosmology. However, the imagination connects dots in mistaken ways, so Ophion could have nothing to do with Olam unless I got the connection right.
The guardians of eternity appear in visions of four complex symbols, each associated with one of the four Archangels and corresponding to the solstice and equinox points on the Zodiac. Archangels are too like God for us to fully comprehend, and we can only visualize their creatures, which we call Cherubim. When the ages change, the signs in the cardinal points change, and each Archangel gets a Cherub and a letter for the step of the sign. Coincidentally, in our time, the four animals of the Cherubim resemble the faces depicted in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel.
The Archangel Michael, an authoritarian figure, resides in the east and rules over the fall equinox. In our age, Leo occupies the east. This lion feels the influence of the Fire step, where the Morning Star has become the Y Cherub. War pretends to be a horseman called The Ministry of Peace.
The Archangel Uriel, the ancient being, resides in the south and rules over the Winter solstice. In our age, Scorpio occupies the south. This vulture feels the influence of the Water step and the planet Earth. This E Cherub tends to stay near a high peak. The Vulture pretends to be a horseman called The Ministry of Plenty.
The Archangel Gabriel, the messenger, lives in the West and rules over the Spring equinox. In our age, Aquarius occupies the west, becoming the O Cherub. This messenger feels the influence of Venus and the Air step, symbolizing the inner reality of the future self, a picture of destiny. It can be any person, the Guardian Angel, or yourself. The Man pretends to be the horseman called The Ministry of Truth.
The Archangel Raphael, a life force, lives in the North and rules over the summer solstice. In our age, Taurus occupies the north, becoming the U Cherub. This bull feels the influence of the steps of Earth and Jupiter. Great Expectations pretends to be a horseman called The Ministry of Love.
The early Christian writer Irenaeus compared these creatures to the four writers of the Gospels (Heresies bk. 3 ch. 11). A person, a bull, a jaguar, and a vulture commonly appear in my visions. These guardians are guides who portray the way a mind protects its beliefs. Beware, the mind protects false beliefs and unconscious bad habits. While examining these concepts, avoid selectively picking information that confirms what you want to believe; the ultimate truth might be beyond what you see now. Remember, the horsemen are lies.
Additionally, many people attempt to dictate what God does. Augustine equated God with unchangeable perfection.
“With all my heart I believed you to be incorruptible, immune from injury, and unchangeable.” (Confessions bk. 7)
I prefer an imperfect God who does change. Ancient people had lots of imaginative ways of looking at the universe. Having more than one god allows people to view the world in various ways. Angels are nothing more than different angles from which to see the cosmos. Today, Christians, Jews, and Muslims claim to have only one God. The transition from polytheism to monotheism did not occur at any specific historical time. Instead, both perspectives grew up together. In the book of Hosea, the transition from polytheism to monotheism is equated with Yahweh becoming the husband of Israel.
“For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more.” (Hosea 2:17)
Does monotheism prevent us from seeing God’s multifaceted Nature, or does it give us a better perspective? Initially, the temple design would be part of a much more complicated design. Though it would have multiple layers, each part was equivalent to the whole, and each part was a seed pattern that would grow into the whole, which would somehow use the Fibonacci sequence. The design would provide a mystical answer to everything, which would be explained in the Seventeenth chapter called “The Star.” I got bored and realized it was a dumb idea. Sometimes, coincidence provides new insights, but spending too much time looking for coincidences in the shapes of symbols can distract a person from the original meaning of symbols. But, if you insist on wasting time with this, consider how each verse in Exodus 14:19-21 has 72 letters. These letters combine to form 72 names of Angels, who could be the sons of God.
“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” (Psalm 82:6)
These are the names of the watchers, the guardians of ideas. Consider how people get defensive when someone challenges their assumptions. People often support politicians without fully understanding all the consequences. Consider how Joseph Stalin purged comrades who put Stalin in charge (Jones, 1997). From Stalin’s point of view, those idiots were useful. We are all guardians of bad ideas. We are useful idiots for a nonexistent God. A spiral can represent continuous development. LGBTQ people keep adding more letters to the name, and the rest of society is getting annoyed. In Plato’s time, people engaged in similar annoying behaviors. Plato didn’t want people to change the truth forever, so the dialogue Theaetetus follows a spiral pattern that concludes at seventeen steps. The Star is not hope. The spiral can serve as a framework to support a progressive agenda. It is a script that crazy people read. I am glad to stop reading it.
Section 5: Ritual
9
I took a few business classes to see what the greedy do. The teachers encouraged everyone to discuss how positive thinking leads to a better world. It was like a weird cult. I guess happy talk is necessary for business meetings. These trained cultists are in high demand; talkative executives make ten times more money than workers who use their hands. Successful businesses hired talkative executives, though, at the same time, failed businesses also hired these talkers. The business schools are not actually teaching positivity. They are teaching the students to be confident in every step they take. Their whole life becomes a ritual that encourages what they do. What they do is not always positive.
Nonetheless, confident thinking can help us get results. So we should have our own rituals that supports what we believe. Stand in the middle of the temple with your left arm to the west and your right arm to the east. Touch your head and then say, “I am.” Touch your body and say, “The Kingdom.” Touch your left shoulder and say, “The Power.” Touch your right shoulder and say, “The Glory.” Put your hands together and say, “Everlasting EUOI.”
People experience more than regular water in celebrations. Both the water of life and the water of death can extend the intent of a ceremony. The water of death needs to come from a civilized source. Since the water of death is used to purify, avoid the water of death. Instead, use the water of life in all rituals. It gets sprinkled with your wand to represent the events that make us. This water comes from a natural source. Although praying for people may seem like the water of life, prayer can also become the artificial water of death. Be careful if you include such idealist acts in your temple. You do not want to become civilized.
The water of life has the avatars Venus, EVO, and Helios. Store the water of life in the western part of the temple in a vase marked with the sign of Aquarius. The Water of Death has the avatars Lucifer, Zeus, and Apollo. Place the symbol of Leo on anything holding the water of death. Never sprinkle anything on any tool or talisman dedicated to the Moon. Remember, the Moon’s perspective remains untouched.
Tell your personal gods about the tools used in your rituals. You might be talking to a higher power, or you might be talking to yourself. You become the first tool. The first ritual takes place in a private place. Try to feel as much of the world around you. Honesty is essential at this stage, so try to be as honest with yourself as possible. Then, go up to a hill to tell God about yourself, and when ready to be God’s representative on Earth, say, “I am who am, the creator.”
Then prepare an oil; any oil that looks like semen will do. Catholics use olive oil. Ask God to allow this oil to become God’s animating influence. Place a little dab of this oil on each of your tools to consecrate them. Remember the danger of the dagger. It is an instrument of air and reason used to purify. Apollonians use the dagger to threaten demons into submission. People who are too rational sometimes want too much control over emotions. They risk turning their magic circle into a filtered barrier where nothing naturally enters. Such a person lives a pathetic, paranoid life. Instead, use the wand; it signifies a phallic symbol and the fire of creation. After consecrating the tools, bury the oil in the Earth on the hill. Then place your palms together and say, “Heaven and Earth become balanced in me. My body is the temple.” Make your temple a proper representation of yourself, then place your altar in the direction that is appropriate for each ritual. West marks emotion. East marks reason. The father lives in the South. The Earth lives in the North.
A ceremony seems official when a priest ministers the rituals. The temple belongs to the people it serves; the people choose their priests. We could also establish a tradition where a bishop ordains the priest, and if you do not like a particular bishop, you can ask a different bishop. Parishioners are allowed to disagree with their bishops, and no one person or interest group can claim to represent the opinions of the whole church. We will have no central organization and no Pope. The Church of Holy Anarchy should be anarchy.
The priest opens the temple by identifying with the four directions. In a clockwise direction, we sprinkle the water of life. Beginning with the South, the priest says, “Heh Vau Heh,” to each direction. After completing the circle, the priest says, “It is a good day to be alive.” After breaking bread, the celebrant receives a piece, and the priest says, “Hoc est corpus,” which means, “This is the body.” The bread embodies you, your temple, the Earth, and the church of celebrants. Each celebrant can interpret this in their own way. A discussion of religious subjects will occur after the bread gets passed. The ritual closes when the priest says, “Everyone may leave. Mass has ended.”
You might think only a hippie would perform these lame rituals. Wiccans seem like friendly people, though their ceremonial psychological introspection makes them look ridiculous; however, these Emo Goth kids are not trying to force their religion on everyone else. The Catholic nuns would expect everyone to go to church and like it, and the nuns would try to make the kids feel guilty for not liking the Roman Catholic ritual. This intrusion made me hate the nuns and their magic act. Children should never have to make choices they might regret later in life. The nuns said their way was God’s way, and everyone must accept the church or lose God, so I said, “Goodbye,” and then looked into what other faiths had to offer. Even after reading about dozens of different religions, my rituals still resemble Catholic Mass because such ceremonies are the only kind I know how to do. Someone who knows more could make better rituals.
Rituals can turn water into the water of death, even if your intentions are good, so don’t let your plans fool you. Nature does not need rituals to decorate your mind. Living as part of Nature makes you a part of Nature worth protecting. Only then will you be the Sacred Grove. Since building a temple spoils the experience of Nature, the best temple would be no temple. I wrote this book about a temple we don’t need because we had to build it to knock it down.
Section 6: Faith
11
Do you think we need a God to guide us? Do you need a God to dictate your morals, agree with your opinions, support your fantasies, and manipulate the universe for you? Did you invent a God who thinks the same way you do, and then you claim to do what God wants? Muslims, who blow themselves up, have mastered the art of faith.
Suppose a politician says, “I am not a crook.” I don’t believe that politician. Suppose a preacher claims to have the word of God. What makes a preacher more believable than a politician? Is faith a solution or a problem? Imagine asking two people for directions. One thought, faith showed the right way. The other had no faith and checked a map. The faithful person says maps can be wrong and is sure that only the one actual truth will show you the right way. Trust the person with the map.
In the Phaedrus, Plato asserts that valid understanding arises from discovering the truth within the soul. I have no idea what Plato expected to find inside us. We fool ourselves too easily. Most of us have a mixture of doubts and beliefs, which may have begun in the unconscious, yet no one knows what our unconscious mind does. What if the unconscious has sexual voices hiding behind every thought and every agenda? What if the inability to deal with sexual desires makes us angry, hateful, and fearful? What if we invent moral codes to suppress desire, which creates a neurotic culture full of neurotic people? People try to fit into roles that society expects, while the mind convinces us we are right for the role. I am not saying that all codes are wrong. We probably need structure in our lives.
The eye of providence portrays a God watching over the world. If this God does not care about us, we must care for our world with our own hands. The two hands mirror each other and contain various tools. The thumb represents Venus. The index finger signifies Jupiter. The middle finger signifies Saturn, the father. The ring finger indicates the Sun. The small finger signifies Mercury.
In sacred names, use the five vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. This is because the English alphabet developed from various cultures. Y and I are the same vowel in sacred names. U, V, and W are also the same vowel. In the temple, we label Venus with a “U.” On the one hand, Venus gets an “A,” and Mercury receives a “U.” Switching the letters of Venus and Mercury portrays the problem of distinguishing reality from ideas.
The left hand has an impressed image of the Body Star, and the right hand has an impressed image of the Morning Star. In most rituals, the Body Star gets hung on a wall where the “I” point would hang down on the north or west walls. The Morning Star gets hung on a wall where the “I” point would point up on the east or the south wall. The Morning Star has five points of destruction to map five times every eight years when the Morning Star seems farthest from the Sun. The lines connecting the points represent the path of the Morning Star every eight years, and point “A,” at angle IAO, marks the time when the cycle changes, which occurs when a point of destruction approaches May Day.
Place your left palm in the center of the temple with all the fingers pointing in their proper direction, or hold the right palm up for the fingers to portray the points of destruction. You choose which tool you use. Place your palms together to represent the union of Heaven and Earth. People find purpose and morality by living as earthlings, though faith might be helpful in some situations. Just don’t blow yourself up over it or burn people at the stake. Let us strive to understand ourselves, others, and the land around us.
This book was intended to conclude with a section on how to approach religion. In that section, I intended to imitate the Catholic Church. Then I noticed that even the Catholics do not understand the purpose of their own religion. Pope Ratzinger thought we were supposed to fit a bunch of theological words. Pope Francis wants us to be communists. You would think that after two thousand years, Catholics would have figured out what their religion was for.
In this chapter, I have explored the concept of belief and learned nothing new, so I might as well state my beliefs. Though the universe has multiple levels of evil for the lawful to choose from, do not accept any law as a necessary evil. Look for a better solution. There is an alternative to civilization. Find a Sacred Grove to protect. No laws other than the laws of Nature happen in the Sacred Grove. The police have no authority in the Sacred Grove. Remove anyone who tries to enforce civilized laws in our grove; they want to destroy our barbarian way of life. Politely ask them to stop. You must protect your Sacred Grove to build your temple.
A close friend once said that I was not really searching for the truth. According to this friend, I think like a lawyer who manipulates the rules to avoid the truth. This friend knows me well, and perhaps they are right. Please do not have faith in this book. Reject all the silly fairy tales in this book. Really reject it. My visions might be just a bunch of delusions. The nuns might be right, and I might be wasting time. However, the Sacred Grove religion is something worth pursuing, even if the individual who conceived the idea is wrong about everything else. All talk about visions, voices, rituals, and symbols is just decoration. You do not need those decorations if you know what your religion is for.
“For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.” (Kimmerer, 2013)
So far, I have told you about three orders of elements: The Body, The Winds, and The Guardians. What about the fourth level of elements, where we make uncontaminated choices? There is nothing on the fourth level because all thoughts depend on other thoughts. I am not trying to create a religion that searches for faraway alternatives. You might notice that I do not mention the fifth element, which is called Ether. Ether is a point of view that can move if someone redefines the essence of the elements. For Example, suppose you don’t want Earth to be the Mother. Making such a change goes against traditional stories about Mother Earth, but in the Ether, anything is allowed. You are free to create your visions however you see fit.
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Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
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