Robert Monroe interviewed on WPIX San Francisco for his publication of Journey’s Out of the Body.

http://www.monroeinstitute.org

With a background that includes time at Dartmouth College studying under experimental composer and musical theorist Larry Polansky, and at Cal Arts with the minimalist pioneer James Tenney studying music and cognition, much of his live performance has been focused on creating participatory installation works that use biofeedback to create a direct interaction with the audience. Biofeedback, for Lindley, has become a tool for focusing on the listening experience to better understand composition.

It also changes the way that he experiences music. Through Biofeedback Lindley is able to tap in to a deeper understanding of how harmonic elements come into play in changing and enhancing emotional responses. It gives him a direct look at how the listener is being physically affected by the experience they are having.

While building one of the devices he uses in his installation pieces, a friend of Lindley’s helped him test the GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) sensor by using it to monitor their meditation. These direct applications show the potential for those willing to explore a wider understanding of the creative process to have a deeper relationship with sound and art.

Has your experience with biofeedback changed or augmented the way that you compose?

I think so—there are some very direct ways that I’ve been thinking about integrating biofeedback , or more audience interaction or control, into the more song-like music, where audience members could affect the processing on the voice or instruments live; but I haven’t really put much of that into practice yet.

But in other, more subtle ways, I’ve been thinking about how people actually physically react, and form less literal feedback during performances, where before I think I was more preoccupied with my own, kind of isolated experience on stage, with little bits and pieces of interaction.

Now it’s more holistic—the full social interaction that happens in a performance, and how the initial composition can affect that (though structuring songs for more of a traceable, act-like structure that creates a more unified moment for listeners, for instance). But again, I would like to figure out ways to more literally incorporate biofeedback… we’ll see.

Do you think techniques like this can be used by the artist to guide the listener/reader/etc.? Does it change the way you personally listen to music?

Absolutely. I had another project I was thinking about doing, which was kind of like machine learning, where the audience would be hooked up to the GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) sensor, and the machine would play through passages that had various random patterns of different parameters, all the time reading the audience response. The idea would be that when the machine got a response it wanted, it would go for more sounds that utilized those parameters, and learn what the audience wanted to listen to at any given time.

I guess this is more like the opposite of the technique guiding the listener, but in some ways, as the piece would evolve, and the things the audience wanted would change, the machine would learn what they wanted, and be guided by them. At the same time, it would be instructive to me, ideally, as to how I could structure things to guide particular audiences…. But yes, in general, I think that regarding these biological processes is huge to understanding how the listener will react, and how to structure things.

For instance, our chemistry just can’t change back and forth between certain moods as we may want it to for big, dramatic passages, and research shows that even men and women differ in the rate at which emotions dissipate in their bodies, depending on the particular emotion—so you could even structure music tailored to particular body chemistries…. And this definitely affects how I think about my listening experience with regard to my body chemistry, cognition, and
understanding of my place in a larger social structure determined by these processes and musics.

In terms of realizing an idea for the composition is there an advantage for the composer in being able to create an instrument (circuit bending, etc.)?

Definitely. I think that humans react to a lot of different things about music, but a big part of that is a certain Neophilia (something a mentor of mine, Larry Polansky would talk about a lot). Not everything new is engaging, of course, but oftentimes blatantly “new” things—whether they’re completely revolutionary or just new to a particular listener—resonate really directly with an emotion or idea that it can become new and fresh and a symbolic shorthand for this idea. In this way, it becomes, for a short time, a really powerful device. Of course, these symbols eventually become ingrained and stale in music, or simply the object of the symbol becomes less relevant to people, so it’s unusable.

That’s where new sounds and methods come in, to make another musical shorthand, or “word” for an idea. For instance, trains in folk songs from eras where trains were new were framed as new, fearful technology, and represented technology as a whole, as well as potentially government control, industrial isolation, etc, but as trains became more and more common, then obsolete, and have eventually become representative of a bygone era, a folksong about a train now speaks more to a kind of romanticized vision of the old west or even a cheap shorthand for the days of yore, rather than the really emotionally resonant thing it once was (though I think there are still wonderful possibilities for revitalizing the train as a symbol, and people are doing that even through twists on folk idioms these days). It’s was the same with sounds like the Theremin, or even entire musical styles, like certain types of punk or blues or I suppose anything that was once meaningful.

I feel like, though it’s days are numbered, like anything beautiful, circuit bending became a really powerful way to represent political, anti-consumerist, ad hoc, sincere ideas about modern experience. It’s still really powerful, and there are beautiful things that are being done with it, as there are with any new way of using material—and that’s what composition is all about: finding new vocabularies to understand and represent experience, and new instruments are a huge
part of that.

How does your composition change when working with theatre, puppetry, etc.?

It’s a very different process, particularly because it requires me to work with other people. My music tends to be very personal and a little hard for me to get the same depth and risk in my own feelings when I’m tailoring it for collaboration with someone else. Because of that it’s been hard for me to find good collaborators, but in the end I have.

But it’s a different process, still: I have to be able to articulate what I’m working on in more of a formative stage, and check in with the collaborator to make sure that we’re headed in a similar direction. It’s helped me think of more large-scale form, but it does really affect a kind of categorization that my music has to fit in if I need to articulate it. I like the process, and it pushes me, but it’s definitely different.

How closely connected are your compositions to the creation of the puppets?

That’s interesting to think about—I’ve worked mostly with Katie Shook doing puppetry/music shows, and I haven’t actually seen her create the puppets, but I imagine there’s a similar sense of teetering on the edge of suspension of disbelief.

I had another friend remark that, as an animator, a lot of her job was to reinforce the suspension of disbelief, and pull the viewer in as much as possible to the world being created, to actually believe that they are seeing something “real” unfold in front of them, but a lot of the puppetry I’ve been involved with, though that is important, is often just as much about puncturing those moments by letting the audience in on the illusion, by showing little (or big) cracks.

Katie has a beautiful way of moving her puppets, which is very magical and fluid and strange, and the puppets and environments are cleverly and meaningfully constructed. However, though I’m not sure we’ve talked about it, I think we share the feeling that in order to get certain ideas across, you have to break the illusion at some points, in a kind of Brechtian, alienating way.

I think my animator friend feels the same way, but she does it in different, stylistic ways, rather than directly letting the illusion fall and rise at key points—and of course, I don’t feel like either approach is inherent to animation or puppetry, but more something that these particular people are pursuing.

Is collaborating across disciplines similar to playing with other musicians?

I think so. There’s more translation necessary, and the cultures and concerns are often very different across disciplines, as I’ve mentioned a little bit above, but ultimately it’s been more freeing for me to work with other non-musicians, because it means there’s a big field of “Music” for me to work in, where I can control the entire world of sound.

When you’re working with other musicians, you have to be more aware of your socio-musical niche in the soundscape, so while it can be very productive and very fun, I love the feeling of an open field that can be in dialog with the visual or narrative aspects of what other people are doing, rather than being somewhat confined by immediate stylistic tendencies of other musicians.

Of course, I love working with other musicians as well, but the initial sniffing-out of similarities and inclinations sets up more confined roles.

How does your experience across disciplines affect your focus during composition?

I think a lot more about musical metaphors for visual ideas, or for narrative flow in music, or for dramatic arc, for physical-visceral experience, or even ways that a song can be shaped like a meal or a particularly delicious dish of food.

It sounds a little disingenuous and even cliche to say that, I think, but I also really believe that everyone is really working with the same constraints of human perception, cognition, body chemistry, and social/national roles, with minor differences between how the information actually gets there: through the ears, mouth, nose, skin, or eyes.

Of course, there’s a big difference between time-based art like a play or a song, where you would have to devote an inhuman amount of attention to each millisecond of information to “see” it all, and something like painting, where you can basically look at every inch of the painting, and back up, and feel like you “see” it—though, I have to admit that saying that may just reveal some of my ignorance about static visual art, which though I love and have tried to do, I don’t really consider myself an artist in that way.

How do you view the artist’s position in society? What is the role of the artist for you?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Right now I’m up at a residency with a bunch of artists in different disciplines, and it’s amazing to see the diversity, but it’s also interesting to see that we’re all more or less scraping by, either living off our art, or getting supplemental teaching jobs.

I think that there are a lot of different artists, and that all of their roles are valuable, from people like Matthew Barney, who do incredibly beautiful things with inconceivable amounts of money—something I am completely in awe of, and would never want him to stop, because it reveals things to me about my own ways of thinking and feeling that are important to me, but also seems horrifying in a world where (I don’t know where his studio is), but there are probably people who are destitute that pass just feet away from its walls—to the little communities of artists I met in grad school—who make beautiful things for fairly small communities, even just for themselves, and have teaching and other types of jobs—to commercial artists like Thomas Kinkade—who, if I am really honest, I think of as more of a businessman, but assert that his art makes a lot of people very happy, even if I suspect that it’s more the happiness of acquisition than of art-appreciation.

So, there are a lot of roles, way more than I’ve mentioned, and I think they’re all valid, but personally I’m at a point in my life where I love what I do artwise, and I feel like I am making some amount of difference, but I’m extremely conflicted when I think that—and I know this to be the roughly the amount—I could send a child to four years of high school in Malawi, essentially changing the course of their life for the better (though of course that’s debatable) for the price of a single guitar.

Has literature affected the way you look at music? How integrated is your approach across disciplines?

Absolutely—I mentioned this before, but I think about narrative arc and different kinds of metaphor in more depth because of literature—and because of some of my linguistics study. I was actually talking about this with my partner, Heather, who is a writer, the other day: we were talking about what is and isn’t permissible in writing versus music (more on this below), and what is and isn’t possible, but I think that with music you can really accelerate dramatic moments because of the kind of ineffable shorthand of certain musical conventions, or musical innovations that just make sense, and bypass rational judgment in a way that writing can’t always do, or takes longer to do.

That is, you can set up a beat in music really quickly, or strings can swell, or a wall of glitched-out noise can just come out of the speakers, and you’ll need a couple seconds to get your bearing, but you can follow it pretty quickly, but it takes a bit more time to understand the voice of the prose or the logic of the poetics that a writer is using. I think that my approach is very integrated across disciplines, but it takes things like this into account, and like I said before, also makes me think about how I can take the effect or properties of one discipline and carry it over into another.

Do you ever use William S, Burroughs’ cut up techniques? Or the alchemical techniques he outlines in Electronic Revolution?

I actually haven’t, and I haven’t read Electronic Revolution, but I’m interested in the process. Writing words is an extremely sensitive process for me, because it teeters on a very delicate edge. Whereas I feel you can write a lot of things on the page and not come off as pretentious, and you can try a lot of strange, cut-up or stream-of-consciousness, or other techniques that mirror cognition or experience in writing or in sound-art, when it comes to songs, the setting for most is not such that those things come off naturally or enjoyably (at least not yet, in my hands—I’m willing to bet that people out there are doing and have done brilliant, beautiful things that I just haven’t seen yet).

Do you think artists can affect social change through their creativity? If so, does cross discipline collaboration aid in this?

I do—and though I did mention that I’m a little bit wary or self-critical when trying to measure my impact in the world for the better versus the amount of resources I take up and the amount of enjoyment I get out of the world by making music and art and doing other things that I enjoy, I really do think art can “change hearts and minds” in a very positive—emphatically non-propagandist—way.

There are those artists who have a kind of “brand” that is political, but don’t do a lot to actually change the political landscape for the better or help anyone but themselves get more money, and there are also those artists who revolutionize ideas and in so doing ripple through and cause major paradigm changes in the way people think that change the social world for the better, as well as artists who happen to be political, and do a lot of good in both areas.

Ultimately, though, I do think there are some tricky aspects, though not a conflict, between art and politics. I’ve heard people say that they can’t mix, because (and I think this is half-true) art is less direct, more personal, and addresses things on a level that is simply incompatible with political effort, which must be blunt and mechanistic to be effective.

However, I feel like a lot of people, including both overtly political artists like U2 or Guy Debord , as well as self-described “non-political” artists like John Cage have done a lot to integrate their artistic and political lives and goals.

What are the idea seeds that you enjoy working with? Do the themes that shape your electronic publication [out of nothing] come into your music as well?

I think with songs or short dramatic or written pieces I like working with little ideas, like palindromes, or playful/meaningful uses of the words “some” or “might”, but with larger form work, like a full album, or a novel (which I’m working on right now for the first time), I like using big ideas, like different examples of uneven power dynamics on small-to-large scales, or the tensions between practical decision-making versus reification of ideas or objects… Really, anything that strikes a chord and makes me excited to work.

[out of nothing] is an interesting project, because I feel like it integrates a lot of my interests, as well as the interests of the other editors, Janice Lee and Joe Milazzo, but it’s more of a curation, and so depends largely on the work that is submitted. Of course we get a lot of amazing things, and we pick someone we respect in the field to frame each issue, but beyond planting the initial seed, which we editors do in really fun, excited conversations before each issue, it is really left up to fate what’s going to happen.

But absolutely, especially the conflicted ideas I have about reification, as well as my love for effusive, messy, beautiful things framed in humorous, somewhat abject ways, is a real running theme through [out of nothing]—which informed the title, which was taken from one of my writing pieces—as well as my music.

Eric Lindley’s Bio:

The mastermind behind New York City’s Careful is sleepy-eyed polymath Eric Lindley.

Though he is a published writer, orchestral composer, visual artist, and part time builder-of-robots, his first and fiercest love is making a blend of intimate songwriting, esoteric theory, and delicate electronics.

Lindley self-produced Oh Light, his second full length effort, recording and mixing the album over the course of a month in a closet in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Oh Light is being released by Sounds Super Recordings, it is also available as a digital release.

Connections:

www.ericlindley.com
www.carefulmusic.com
Eric Lindley on Myspace Music

Within this there is still the subtle relationship that exists between the true artist and their art. For all of the throwaways created with the speed of today’s mass culture there are still those who spend time with the more delicate aspects of their craft. James Blackshaw has emerged as a guitarist of considerable dexterity and intimacy; coming from punk rock roots he has turned his musical aptitude towards longer, more meditative modes with great success.

Thinking about what is necessary to bring the power of art into the creation of a more sustainable society we must come to understand the craftsmanship that underlies true expression. Blackshaw is part of a growing circle of artists whose appreciation for this relationship is bringing a brighter light to the creative scene and providing hope that the darkness on the horizon can give way to the sublimity of a well played song.

How would you describe the transformative effect of music, in your experience? How does music transform the way that you think?

I think for me it’s something that I can’t describe. I think that’s actually one of the amazing things about playing or listening to music. Is its subconscious effect that happens that I can’t describe.

I think for me it’s probably the closest I get to a meditative state. There’s a couple of things at play, to actually play these pieces and for me it’s very blank, rather than it being particularly conducive to feeling one way or another, or about some kind of imagery or having some kind of narrative at play. It’s a kind of state of nothingness, I think that word would have for a lot of people a kind of negative connotation, whereas for me that’s quite a peaceful thing. It’s rare in our lives that we kind of shut out things to enter into that kind of state.

I’ve always found it incredibly cathartic; having to concentrate, it’s not always easy to do. Going through a process and reaching the other side of that. The best songs are quite lengthy.

Have the texts that you’ve referenced in your album titles and songs, like your album Cloud of Unknowing, influenced your understanding?

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always found an interest in texts. I’m not particularly religiously inclined, although I’ve used quite a lot of, or you know…abused, ideas from different sort of quasi religious texts. I think that’s the thing, the Cloud of Unknowing is really something that a lot of people to some degree could benefit from reading.

I remember years ago I was, and really still am, interested in Zen Buddhism where its action through in-action. And the ideas in the Cloud of Unknowing is kind of reaching the divine or being close to God in the least proactive way I suppose. You know, Rather than being scholarly, or you know so many other things. I just really appreciated those ideas and I think they hold some kind of relevance. In choosing those sort of titles I think in a kind of abstract way I feel like it goes beyond denominations or religions.

Robbie Basho and John Fahey are mentioned as some of your influences, Basho at least was playing with sort of Zen Buddhist ideas, has this affected your playing?

It’s changed over the years actually. I think when I initially approached the guitar, this will sound dumb, but I was approaching the guitar like a guitar player. I was listening to a lot of stuff like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, that kind of lead me into a lot of ethnic music. I really enjoy Gamelan, and Japanese Koto music, and Indian music, especially the Carnatic music from Southern India.

Through that I started to get into a lot of minimalism. People like Lamont Young, Philip Glass and Steve Reich have had a lot of influence. This idea of long form playing, and sustained drones, and the kind of transcendental experience that comes through that music you know. I think all of that stuff for me really connected, and in turn I think that stuff is in the guitar. Particularly Basho’s playing.

It’s all kind of connected, and I still really like that stuff. Especially Indian music, that has really changed the way Western composers think of music. It’s in other music; it does exist in early Western music too. That stuff is definitely quite interesting and quite important for me.

Debussy used eastern inspirations to great effect; there is also the aspect of alternate tunings available in those traditions. Have you experimented with these?

Someone like Debussy, as far as I know, didn’t really experiment with different tunings, but the way he played music was definitely colored by Gamelan. I’m definitely fascinated by different Western composers who played around with that like Lamont Young and Harry Parch. I’ve never actually really played around with anything but the Western standard chromatic tuning. In a different system you can get kind of odd effects that can be really physically effective.

What is your experience of the physicality of music?

I think, for example, playing live there’s always going to be a lot of variables affecting the music. That frame of mind, it’s kind of strange to be static on the stage and just kind of playing guitar. I can feel the notes coming through the body of the guitar, and I can feel the vibrations of sound coming through the speakers and I respond with a kind of trance like state. It’s always kind of funny, I think it sounds more; I think that’s the great thing about music, to experience that you don’t need any kind of special… It’s still as much an immediate interaction.

Do you think the audience experiences this sense of meditation?

I think to some degree, I don’t think it needs to be complex anyway. I think you do sort of need to be in the right frame of mind, or sort of come at it in such a way that you’re open to that. People sort of come up and say I felt a certain way. It really varies from person to person, they’ll say I had an image in my head, or it made me think of someone I know, or it made me feel really sad or really happy, or I was almost falling asleep. I don’t mean that to be an insult, and they don’t. They said they have trouble sleeping and I got so into it

I don’t take it as an insult. I don’t mind what people take away from what I’m doing. I’m just sort of happy when people get something out of it. I think that most people, a lot of people, do experience similar things and that’s amazing.

Does this meditation change in a band setting

It varies actually, I mean I play with a regular group of musicians. A from the shows with them and the shows I play with Current 93 I still play most of my shows solo. I think to a degree I sort of become half aware of what other people are doing, I can’t say that detracts necessarily from that feeling, but it becomes less of an insular personal experience.

You have to be a little bit more aware of what’s going on, it doesn’t fall down entirely to you and there’s nothing, that’s actually one of my most favorite experience is kind of hearing . In a funny sort of way you can get in other peoples way, I have to stop myself from shutting out people. I need to concentrate and play things right, if I make a little mistake it can throw the rest of the band completely out.

Do the people that you work with have a similar meditative experience?

I can’t speak for everybody. David Tibet is a friend of mine and I think he feels it, and I know he get’s quite sort of feverish. I think it’s a similar experience. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a long conversation with them about that.

Has working with different people lead to more formalized composition?

For the new album, All is Falling, I’ve played around with arranging other instruments on previous albums, but the main difference is they were always sort of seeds of ideas before I’d record the guitar parts. They’re not improvised per se, but they were quite spontaneous.

All is Falling kind of allowed me to play around with compositions for strings or wind instruments. I could write a part either on the guitar or piano and transpose it for cello. Also having the line up for the groups that I play with has been stable now for the past year and a half or something. I didn’t actually have

In the past the additional instruments were definitely more just textural and a way to emphasis certain parts. Now it’s much more integral.

They’re all really great players. We’ve all really different sensibilities, the vast majority is stuff that I’ve written, but I’m not averse to working in parts improvised by other players. It’s been a lot of fun, but also more hasty to record.

It was really important to get the other stuff right or the whole thing wouldn’t work. Recording strings is not the easiest thing. We didn’t do it the way they record classical, miced live and played all at once. We did everything individually and separately, it gave us a little bit more control when we got around to editing it.

I went in and basically recorded all my guitar and the other players came in. We tried to have them play 2 at a time to have someone to play against, but other parts we recorded individually. It definitely has it’s pros and cons. It meant things were easier to manipulate and work with.

I think if you can all be in the same room and record something it would be amazing. We didn’t really have time to do that. It’s going to be fun when we have our first live show and we’ll be playing for the first time to play the whole thing together. I’ve never played any of the material out live at all. It’s kind of trial by fire, we’re going and doing the whole 45 minutes in one long piece.

Was it composed as one long idea?

I never when I started writing, it wasn’t necessarily my idea from the outset to make one big long piece. As I was writing more and more I would write one little part of something and that hit an emotion or feeling.

Working with this sense of a beginning, a resolution to have these conventions of making a song, it can be a bit of a trap. It was quite nice to have the freedom to find something that felt really good and immediate and make a kind of chain of those ideas.

After I finished I was uncertain, I don’t think it’s going to be as immediate for people. A lot of it won’t make a lot of sense unless you sit through the entire 45 minutes straight. I’m not a crazy facist against downloading from iTunes or something, but I think there is a danger of things becoming available to quickly and I do think there is a danger of developing impatience.

We can’t wait to order a record anymore, or queue in a line to wait for something; we can’t sit through 5 minutes of music without some kind of payoff or watch a movie where you’re not bombarded. It wasn’t a deliberate reaction to that, but I think subconsciously I thought “Well you have to sit down and listen to this…”

Do you think that a longer form album like this changes the relationhip to the music?

Absolutely. It’s funny, I’m a really big Jim O’Rourke fan, he’s done recordings that wasn’t broken down into individual tracks. You can’t download any of his stuff from iTunes. I admire that.

David Tibet of Current 93 personalizes and does original artwork. I think it’s important to make that connection. It’s amazing the internet it really has changed things for everyone. It’s kind of inescapable now. Something physical right now is a really great thing.

In many ways I don’t know if I’d be doing what I’m doing if it wasn’t for the internet. It’s made things much easier, whereas a while ago especially in music things were very regionalized. Now it’s not like that at all. A lot of my best friends are in America or Germany. I think that’s the plus side of the internet, it outweighs the other. It is a little nerve wracking when you think wheres this going.

Do you think it’s the artist’s job to help people question the status quo?

I think there’s really no sense in bitching and complaining about stuff. For a lot of people I know making music right now, to gently challenge people’s perceptions. The people born now are inundated with media, growing up we experienced the shift so I think it’s important to maybe bring their experience of technology into question for people.

With so much technology do you think we’re moving back to an appreciation of acoustic and more organic music?

If you think, for example, I know I do it too, but a lot of people will listen to music on their lap top speakers. There’s a loss in quality, and people are paying attention to that. For music that has more sort of pure drones, or has that kind of quality to it. There’s a danger that people aren’t experience the music in the right way. If you take that away it get’s reduced to the most mechanistic part of it.

Music can create worlds for the listener. What sense of setting do you try to evoke your music?

I’m not sure, that’s an interesting question. I’ve never sort of really intended to, maybe by default. It’s very noticeable with some people, having this kind of extra layer that you maybe interpret the music in a certain way. I try to portray this feeling of nothingness in the music, so I think it some ways it’s very different than what say David Tibet does with Current 93. I think that’s wonderful, but I think that I’ve almost gotten to the point where I don’t want to do that at all, or do the opposite, where I don’t want to give anybody anything to latch onto.

Doing the artwork, the album is called All is Falling, which I kind of think is a pretty ambiguous phrase and there’s no individual track titles, and when it came to doing the artwork I decided to use a color field. I think color is very suggestive, but not necessarily in an obvious way. I don’t want anything that’s very suggestive on the cover.

When I got the album artwork back a friend came over and was like “oh what’s that” so I guess it actually really did, by not suggesting it suggested. I guess that goes back to the Cloud of Unknowing, action in inaction and all that stuff. It’s difficult not to have an agenda

Connections:

James Blackshaw Myspace Music

James Blackshaw Last.fm

“I one day got the advance pages of Wolfshead which was about to be published. Reading it over I was so depressed and discouraged that I went and got a job jerking soda in a drug-store.”

- Robert E. Howard in a letter discussing his first story published in Weird Tales

Kenneth Grant made the observation that the work of H.P. Lovecraft was an unconscious form of communication with extra-dimensional entities.  Many have looked askance at this idea, considering Lovecraft’s atheism and his well documented rejection of the supernatural it seems odd to think that he would be some sort of unknowing psychic medium. However, this is assuming that what we call the paranormal, supernatural, or preternatural is actually outside of the normal course of events.

It’s important to understand that at the core of any anomalous phenomenon is very simply an experience, and that these experiences are codified through the cultural discourse to bring out some kind of linear meaning within the social narrative.

An orb in your house is a ghost, an orb in the forest is an elemental, fairy or Will o’ Wisp, and an orb in the sky is a UFO. Is there really any difference in the phenomenon itself? Or are these differences merely narrative devices that have grown out of a heavily mediated understanding of the event.

What is the difference between visualization techniques used by authors and artists and the visualization techniques used by someone trained in remote viewing?

During the tests at Stanford there were instances where remote viewers claimed to be able to see events on Mars, or to see UFO’s, through the application of their skills. Can this be separated from the work of an author like William S. Burroughs who remarked that the best writers are merely observers of an internal film, and that the more successful authors are the ones who are better able to capture and guide in words the narrative structure of what they see?

“Let no man read here who lives only in the world about him. To these leaves, let no man stoop to whom Yesterday is as a closed book with iron hasps, to whom Tomorrow is the unborn twin of Today. Here let no man seek the trend of reality, nor any plan or plot running like a silver cord through the fire-limned portraits here envisioned.

But I have dreamed as men have dreamed and as my dreams have leaped into my brain full-grown, without beginning and without end, so have I, with gold and sapphire tools, etched them in topaz and opal against a curtain of ivory.”

- from the introduction to Etchings in Ivory, by Robert E. Howard

When we go back and read accounts of mediumship from the late 19th and early 20th century, such as From India to the Planet Mars, Theodore Flournoy’s study of the psychic Helene Smith, we find that there really is little difference between her accounts and the science fiction of the time. Flournoy even makes a point of this, demonstrating how many of Smith’s ideas seem to have emerged from speculative scientific writing on the nature of alien worlds.

“While, on the whole, therefore, it is probable that its roots extend back as far as the childhood of Mlle. Smith, it is nevertheless with the Martian romance, as well as with the others, not a mere question of the simple cryptomnesiac return of facts of a remote past, or of an exhumation of fossil residua brought to light again by the aid of somnambulism.

It is a very active process, and one in full course of evolution, nourished, undoubtedly, by elements belonging to the past, but which have been recombined and moulded in a very original fashion, until it amounts finally, among other things, to the creation of an unknown language. It will be interesting to follow step by step the phases of this elaboration: but since it always, unfortunately, hides itself in the obscurity of the subconsciousness, we are only cognizant of it by its occasional appearances, and all the rest of that subterranean work must be inferred, in a manner somewhat hypothetical, from those supraliminal eruptions and the scanty data which we have concerning the outward influences which have exerted a stimulating influence upon the subliminal part of Hélène.”

- from From India to the Planet Mars, by Theodore Flournoy (1900 – Trans. Daniel B. Vermilye)

Smith, according to Flournoy, was viewing narratives played out in her mind that were shaped by her reading, but brought alive by her unconscious emotional and mental activity. In other words her visionary states were filtered through her social narrative.

Authors such as Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and W.B. Yeats were well versed in occult philosophy and actively pursued this process. Their writing is informed not only by occult narratives, but in many cases come out of experiment and practice in visionary techniques.

The difference between the errant psychic medium and the established author is their ability to maintain a socially acceptable narrative for their own life. It is their ability to control this process, or at least their awareness of it’s basic nature, that allows them to maintain a stable personality while tapping in to the same forces that turn someone like Smith into a curiosity of science. Blackwood and Yeats were also firmly entrenched in the establishment, were eccentricity is mitigated by family standing and wealth, most psychic mediums are not so fortunate.

When looking at American fiction, which has so distinctly separated the “pulp” narrative from a respectable place in the canon, we find a similar dynamic. What marks “pulp” fiction is the fact that it’s authors are a part of, or are willing to write for, the general public, they are also less tied to technical devices.  The raw emotional undertones of their writing is rarely concealed, it breaks forth unbidden, often against their attempts at controlling it through genre constraints.

Establishment novelists are marked by their staid prose, and formulaic attention to structure. Heavily schooled, their writing technique sits on the surface, barely concealed by brief flights of inspiration. Even at its best establishment literature has a sense of something dead, those who break this mold often find themselves on the margins, or have their breakthroughs when faced with losing their social standing.

Statistics show that while belief in the paranormal is equally distributed across society, experience of the paranormal (at least as reported during surveys) has a higher percentage of occurrence in marginalized groups. So where better to look than marginalized literature to find a much less hidden use of mediumship in the creative process.

While reading Jocelyn Godwin’s recent work, Atlantis and the Cycles of Time, I was struck by how familiar the concepts of Hyperborean civilizations were to me.  I’ve never had much of an interest in that realm of speculation, so it was odd that it’s concepts would be so recognizable. It took me a few days to realize that this was because much of the narrative had already been put into my consciousness by a youth spent reading the works of Robert E. Howard.

After doing a bit of research I found that Howard’s interest in history, which gave his historical fiction an air of reality, was paralleled by an equally deep interest in the occult. His initial letters to Lovecraft contain inquiries into the esoteric truths behind the Cthulhu Mythos. As one of the founding writers of the “Sword and Sorcery” genre, Howard’s Hyperborean heroes Conan, Kull, and Bran Mac Morn all travel through worlds enlivened by Theosophical and speculative archaeological theories of prehistoric civilizations.

Going back to his work it became apparent that this interest also lead to his use of visionary techniques to induce creativity, and in his mind to actually see these prehistoric narratives play out before his mind’s eye.  As he puts it  “dreams have leaped into my brain full-grown.”  Through the use of the creative imagination Howard felt that he was actually viewing scenes from past lives, and his fragmentary writings, outside of his published work, are written as memories rather than fictional narratives.

These visions formed a part of Howard’s escape from the reality of his life. As the opening quote shows, even after being published he was still pursuing marginal jobs. This is not to discount his experiences, but the motivation to pursue them, and the ability to more openly explore their meaning, was an allowance afforded him by living on the fringes of society.  If he was willing to take a job at a soda fountain, he certainly was less likely to be afraid to open himself to the unknown and unproven.

Howard never claimed to know the veracity of these visions, so couched in fiction he brought them forward as questions and misty scenes from the realms outside “the trend of reality.” If we consider the fact that the line between psychic medium and talented creative is a very thin, and perhaps non-existant, line we can see how Grant’s statement about Lovecraft’s mediumship might not be so far off.  It’s not that Lovecraft wasn’t a medium, it’s that to him lucid dreaming and visionary states were perfectly normal, the word “supernatural” didn’t fit into his narrative.

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For more on the relationship between art and mediumship, the speculative fiction author Matt Cardin has a fascinating series called A Course in Demonic Creativity: http://www.demonmuse.com/

“All the stars are on the inside…”

- Blue Oyster Cult, Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Shortly after writing a piece for Modern Mythology on the somewhat obscured psychical basis of Napoleon Hill’s famous 1937 work on the philosophy of success, Think and Grow Rich, I noticed that he had written another book the following year which was held from publication until 2011.  Whatever surprise I may have had at the contents of Think and Grow Rich was minuscule compared to my surprise at finding his follow up book contained nothing less than a sustained dialogue with an entity that he identified as the Devil.

You can imagine why this might have been considered a bit controversial in 1938, and why his family withheld the publication of Outwitting the Devil, even after his death, until the book could be properly framed to avoid too much shock.  The books contents are a fascinating look at the depth and social conscience of Hill’s philosophy, which often get’s shoved into the self help category, but I must save any reflections on that topic for another article.

My inquiries into the reception of Hill’s philosophy within the business world lead to a fortuitous connection to Matthew Joyce, who was kind enough to respond to a HARO request that I sent out, and our conversations via email and over the phone opened up an entirely different understanding of the nature of intuition and the mind.

“The nature of consciosness is to explore itself.”

- Matthew Joyce, Higher Self Guides

Along with his wife, Janet, Joyce runs a Boulder based consultancy, Higher Self Guides, that focuses on practical applications of advanced mental work, as he puts it “Divine spirituality isn’t just for mystics,” it has practical, every day applications that many people are completely unaware of.  As a certified outreach facilitator for the Monroe Institute, Joyce presents seminars on developing a greater awareness of the mind’s potential.

The Monroe Institute was founded by Robert Monroe, an influential Virginian responsible for starting the first cable television company in the state. He created the institute after having a series of out of body experiences that lead to questions regarding the nature of mind and reality. A similar, spontaneous, out of body experience at the age of 18 lead Joyce to search for answers, and sparked his initial interest in Monroe’s work.

Reading his father’s copy of Monroe’s book in the late 1980′s, Joyce found that the exercises didn’t help him as much as he’d hoped, and it wasn’t until a decade later, in 2000, that he was reminded of Monroe by a television show which mentioned his consciousness experiments.  When Joyce finally attended the Monroe Institute seminars he was already well experienced on his own, and his training at TMI served to provide additional tools for applying his understanding.

One of the tools developed by the Monroe Institute is their Hemi-Sync technology, which uses binaural harmonics to alter consciousness through stimulating specific wave patterns in the brain.

Here’s an example of a 7hz binaural tone:

Joyce’s work with TMI is just one part of his spiritual practice, but he sees their technology as a valuable training tool, and a way to demonstrate altered states of consciousness to those eager to learn without going through years of arduous training. According to him, the Hemi-Sync is useful for introducing, and familiarizing, the altered states of consciousness necessary to achieve advanced results, but it is in learning to induce these states unaided where their true value comes in.

Joyce doesn’t hide the fact that this kind of experimentation can have it’s negative aspects. Robert Bruce, whose work Astral Dynamics provides an in depth look at the practical foundations of consciousness exploration, is very open about his experiences with negative entities, or thought forms, while exploring the farther reaches of the mind. For Joyce, however, this is a problem that is easily fixed.

First, by avoiding areas that host this negativity, as he put it “I used to live near Washington D.C. and I didn’t go to the Southeast side, why would I go to a similar place with my mind?” And second, by being aware that “you can’t hurt Light,” the fundamental basis for all reality, and that there are higher levels of non-dual, or unified, consciousness that exist above the differentiated areas where negativity exists.

This philosophy also plays a part in Joyce’s Ghost Greet seminars, which use the Hemi-Sync technology as an aid in spiritualist work.  He’s very clear that “there are a lot  more bad drivers on the road than there are malicious ghosts.“

Using the Hermetic maxim like attracts like, he makes sure that his thoughts match the frequency of what he wants to attract. We experience what we expect to experience. Negative thoughts can lead to attracting negative entities, according to Joyce, so by focusing on more positive thought forms he can avoid any negative encounters.

With his varied background and deep experience, it was interesting to see how Hill’s work played a part in Joyce’s understanding of consciousness and it’s applications to every day life, and to get a deeper idea about his own practical philosophy of mind.

How has Napoleon Hill’s philosophy affected your practice?

I am a spiritual teacher and explorer, but I am also a business person specializing in marketing strategy and tactics. I often use what Napoleon Hill calls the sixth sense, or the creative imagination, although I don’t often tell my clients that I am doing so. You never know who might be skeptical or challenged by such ideas. Fortunately no one seems to challenge the positive results of the process.

My method is a slightly different from Hill’s since I developed it prior to reading his ideas about sexual sublimation/transmutation. To me the real gist of that chapter is that “The creative imagination functions best when the mind is vibrating (due to some form of mind stimulation) at an exceedingly high rate.“

The actual sexual urges, or desires to channel the creative impulse into procreation, are of relatively little account in my method, but I think Hill made some good points about them. To me the primary focus is shifting the mind to the higher rate of functioning which gives me access to information beyond that available from my physical senses or my conscious mind.

When I work I shift my awareness into a higher state of consciousness with an activating thought. I’ve been doing it so long now that it only takes a single breath to make the switch in consciousness. Moreover, I now maintain a dual awareness of normal consciousness while engaging my higher creative imagination. This means that I switch back and forth while on the phone with the client or in meetings without them noticing.

Where I go in consciousness and what I do after that shift depends upon the circumstances. Sometimes I use it solve problems, posing the question and then reaching out for the answer which appears from the ether. Other times I use it to access new creative ideas for products or strategies or to glance into the future for scenario planning.

It’s also helpful when I am not sure what to say next. In those cases I open myself up and just allow the ideas to flow. The right thing to say always seems to emerge, be they questions to ask the client, comments about the present situation, or even impromptu speeches I need to give.

You mentioned that you developed your technique prior to reading Hill, was this under the direction of a specific spiritual discipline?

No. I have always been driven by my own curiosity and the belief that experience is the best teacher.

What are the main influences of your practice?

My spiritual practice began when I was a child so the list of influences is long, yet none stand out as being significantly more influential than others. When some people go out to eat, they order from the menu. Others want to go to the buffet so they can try a bit of everything. I’m a buffet type when it comes to learning about and exploring consciousness.

I started reading spiritual books when I was 11. My first spiritual book was Illusions by Richard Bach. By the time I’d finished reading it I knew my spiritual path. From there I began to read the Seth material and from there I moved on to all sorts of things from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita. Within a few years I’d read scores of books, practiced the I Ching regularly, learned to tarot cards, and more. My parents taught at Esalen Institute and we had a regular list of psychics, mystics, and body workers coming through my house as a kid. All of them influenced me.

My eclectic practice continued for years, incorporating Buddhism, Kashmir Shavism, Sufism, Native American shamanic studies, Joseph Campbell, the Monroe Institute, quantum physics, psychology, etc. But I never found one practice that worked for me. Instead I looked beyond the dogma to the practical advice and strove to find out how to use the ideas and techniques to explore for myself. I let experience be my guide.

Do you practice any Eastern forms of meditation or yoga?

While I have studied numerous forms of mediation and both physical and spiritual yoga I don’t adhere to any particular spiritual discipline. I regard my mind and body as tools for my use and decide how to use them as each occasion arises. Sometimes a particular visualization or mental clearing technique is helpful. Other times certain types of breathing can be useful. I don’t limit myself to any one practice.

Have you had any “land fall” successes or coincidences that lead to success that seemed surprising at the time?

Because I started so early in life I have a difficult time remembering the early successes, but I do recall a few along the way.

The first time I manifested something I had just finished reading Illusions at age 11. I decided I wanted a motorcycle and my parents would not let me have one. There was no point in discussing it for 5 years until I was old enough to drive. So I set about manifesting one instead. I never mentioned it to them again. I just trusted the process. It took a number of weeks and then my grandfather showed up at our house. He was a car dealer and he had just purchased a truck for resale. The truck came with a kid size Honda motorcycle. He gave it to me without even asking my parents. They were not happy. But I was. That was when I knew this stuff really worked.

The first time I recall accessing guidance for advice I was also 11 years old and my parents were divorced. I needed to decide which parent to live with. A very mature inner voice spoke to me and helped me make the decision. The sense of comfort and trust were remarkable. I still hear that voice on a regular basis. It knows many things that I have no access to as a limited physical being.

I first started using the cast the question into the ether technique when I was in high school and I needed to get my homework done. I studied hard and was an A student, but sometimes the grind-it-out method was less than convenient. In those cases, I’d simply tell myself I knew the answer to a test question and the answer would be there. Or when I needed to come up with an idea to write about, the concept would arise fully formed for me to write it down. At the time I never considered this to be remarkable and I never really made a system out of it. That didn’t come until I was older and bit more seasoned.

I recall the first time I tried remote viewing. I was trying to locate a pair of missing sunglasses. I projected my awareness beyond my body and saw a pair of sunglasses and a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes on the dashboard of a car. They were obviously not mine.

I moved on and saw my sunglasses sitting on a table where I had left them. I was ready to dismiss the event as simply remembering where I had put them, but then I walked out into the parking lot and saw the sunglasses and Pall Mall cigarettes on the car’s dashboard. I definitely did not know they were there before. In fact, I had never seen the car before.

Could you elaborate a bit more on your technique? Where do you think these ideas come from?

I see the field of my awareness as existing in a constant state of here and now. Most of the time I project onto that awareness my thoughts and emotions, as well as the perceptions from my five physical senses which provide me feedback about my world. But I don’t limit myself to them. I know that using my active imagination I can access anything anywhere at anytime. Bringing it into my awareness is a matter of believing it is possible and learning to shift my awareness from the physical world to the nonphysical world beyond space and time. Once there I think of what I want and send my awareness to it (or more accurately call it upon the field of my awareness). My successes have been enough that I trust the process. Aside from the sunglasses, I have found other missing objects, learned “unknown” information from dead people and ghosts, remote viewed people and events, astral traveled to visit people, healed people with energy, etc. But I consider these skills to be byproducts of my practices. I don’t seek to be a professional psychic, remote viewer, etc. And in the normal world of business I would never mention any of this.

Have you ever encounter individual, recurring, personalities during your sessions?

I connect with and access other personalities all the time. I access my own guides, nonphysical friends and teachers, angels, ghosts, beings on other planets and in other realms beyond the physical, etc. There are many worlds besides this one and I can visit them at will.

But when I am doing business client work, such as marketing strategy or copywriting, those types of access are rarely applicable. In those cases I often mentally ask a question or seek an idea and in my imagination I cast my request into the ether. The response comes back to me moments later. Many times in words. Sometimes in images. Occasionally as a knowing or a feeling.

Over the years I have come to trust this process  and I can “channel” ideas in a meeting with no advance knowledge of what I will say next, although I know it will be on topic. No external personalities seem to be involved in that process.

However, I also do spiritual guidance counseling, and in those cases I often hear from the client’s spirit guides or loved ones who have messages they want conveyed. In those cases I hear ideas with my nonphysical ears (the equivalent of the nonphysical eyes you use to see in your imagination or in a dream) and translate those ideas into English words that are meaningful to the client. In those instances I feel less like a channel and more like an interpreter converting from one language to another.

Could you elaborate a bit more on the concept of mental vibrations?

Napolean Hill talks about mental vibrations. For me it’s really more about frequency. I consider physical reality to exist on a range of frequencies that can be perceived with our physical senses. Our physical eyes pick up certain wavelengths of light.

Our ears hear certain wavelengths of sound. Touch perceives still others. Those frequencies or vibrations that exist beyond the range of our physical perception are like stations on the radio that we can’t hear. But if we learn to shift our perception then we can perceive new frequencies. This is what I do using the power of my active imagination. I reach out and perceive other frequencies that are not available to normal senses.

I think it worth noting that many people give imagination a bad rap. They say “It’s not real. You’re just making that up.” My response is, where do you think your imagination got it from? I think the confusion arises because people confuse the creative function of imagination with the perceptive function of imagination. In perception mode, imagination is the way that you can perceive things beyond your physical body.

Napolean Hill’s techniques for accessing active imagination as as valid as any other. But I don’t see them as necessary. If you know how to access your imagination you can use it actively. It is really a matter of opening yourself up and trying it.

Have you read any other success literature from the early 20th century?

I was introduced to Ernest Holmes by my grandmother when I was 11. (It was a pivotal year for me.) She was a Science of Mind practioner and she had a definite influence on my life outlook. Later I read quite a bit of Neville Goddard, although you might characterize him as mid-century. I also read a number of Science of Mind authors such as Dan Custer and Frederick Bailes. I’d heard of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich for years, but I never got around to reading the book until a few years ago. I’m not sure why, except it never made it to the top of the reading list.

For more information on Matthew Joyce and Higher Self Guides you can visit his website at: www.higherselfguides.com

And see his article:  How to Explore Inner Worlds with Active and Passive Arising

For more information on The Monroe Institute you can visit their website at: www.themonroeinstitute.com

Out of mere mischief and mockery grew evil, even as Loki from playing boyish tricks became the devil. To do evil is one thing, to study and understand it is another, but in all ages men have confused the two.

‘TWAS on a Syrian summer afternoon, therefore a warm one, that Flaxius sat in the silent solitude of a ruined city of most ancient days, in Midian, a place wherein the satyr has not even yet met the English tourist, nor the Egipani, or demons of the lonely wildnesses, been called to stand and deliver statistics to the German savant.

He sat on a wedge-inscripted stone, about a young bird’s flight from what had been of yore a purplelined palace of sweet sin, but so tremendous in its majesty, even in decay and decency, that the sternest Puritan who ever iconoclasted a cathedral would have thought twice ere ravishing this House of Baal.

‘Beauty,’ said Flaxius, ‘may be its own excuse for being—very naughty—but grandeur, even when touching in its old decay, is more than an excuse; it is a vindication for the sins, however great, of all who are possessed of it. And they were great in glory and splendour! How great the men were who dwelt here in the olden golden time! and how little idea has any man on earth in this age of small things, of what it was to live in greatness, though it were in great delusions.’

As he said this—’twas in the first dimness of twilight—a breeze began to stir the palms and he heard the hoot of an owl, which was re-echoed far and far away by the monotonous and much more unmusical song of some Arab peasant at his plough.

‘I would like to know,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘whether the song of the owl portends the death of that peasant, or the song of the peasant the death of the owl? Methinks the owl has the worst of it, for the ploughman hoots fifty per cent. more horribly. Now, of the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine divinations invented by Kai Umarat, the first of the Magi, and first born of Adam, can I not find one here at hand to settle the weighty question?’

As he said this, while idly digging in the sand with his staff, he struck something hard, which shining, seemed to be of bronze. The sage picked it up and found he had unearthed an axe of the richest and deepest green patina.

‘Just the thing,’ thought Flaxius. ‘Thou comest, as Germans say, “unto the call.” It was by Axiomancy or the balanced axe that the ancients were wont to decide a question—halfpence to toss not having been then invented; and I can bear Pliny out in his assertion that the game was extremely fashionable. In neolithic days they drew a circle, bisected it with a line, put the kelt in the middle, and made it spin, inferring from the way it pointed when at rest whether Yes or No had been vouchsafed. The thing still exists as a little game among American Red Indians. They spun on their axes, unde nomen derivatur. The Romans hung the hatchet with a cord; and if I remember aright, Francesco della Torre Biana1 declares that the fallof Jerusalem was thus predicted. I wonder who predicted it?’

Whether it was from the ground, or the tombs, or the ruins, or the great palm-tree was not apparent, but there was heard a hollow sound like no earthly voice, but a sound as of wings. There was a mocking tone in it which said:

‘I with that axe which thou holdest in thy hand.’

‘And who in the name of Desolation art thou who dwellest here in solitude?’ inquired Flaxius.

And the voice replied:

‘Aschmodai.’

‘What! Asmodeus, the Devil on two Sticks! Well, old friend, I was a fool to put the question, for I now remember (and Wierus has said it) that thou art the demon of all games and gambling. I would fain see thee again. What ho, Chammadai! Sidonai! Aschmodai, appear! In the name of thy master Am-oimon!’

‘Thou forgettest,’replied the Voice,more mockingly than before, ‘that according to the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, he who invokes Asmodeus must stand firmly on his legs and call loudly.’

‘Well,’ replied the Magian, ‘I am seated firmly sur mon seant, which will do just as well, sans cermonie among old friends, and since thou hearest me it is loud enough. Come forth, I say!’

And, lo! there came forth from the doorway of the ruined temple an unearthly form, in appearance awful and appalling, but so strangely mingled with the grotesque, a demon with the laughing nightmare, that the wisdom of this our age,  and all its art of pen or pencil would have failed to depict it.

It paused in silence, seeming like a statue, and when the Magian himself spoke, it was not in words but with Thought to the arch-demon of delusion and of mockery:

‘I see thee as thou art, O Spirit, who wert once mighty to impose on man in so many forms, O stupendous scarecrow of the past, and its jester withal, for the day is wellnigh gone by when mankind at large can grasp thy paradoxes! Yea, they are rapidly becoming a vexation, or a bore, or a trifle, as the idol of the past becomes the nursery toy of the present.

‘Truly, there was a time when Dante and Milton and many more were, to every word, living truths for all who read them, and the form was animated with the idea. Now, the Inferno burns no more, Pandemonium and Theism and Satan are all mere senile fables. What remains is the art of the poet—nothing more—a beautiful, petrified figure—very beautiful —but—dead. And thy spirit, O Daemon, in its best meaning, still lives in Aristophanes and Shakespeare and Chaucer, and Rabelais and Villon; but the comprehension of it is dying—dying fast, O Daemon !— and ere long they too will be petrifactions, wearing indeed the outward semblance of what they were, but from them life will be gone. Men think that they still enjoy the poet in spirit and in truth, but what they really enjoy is only their own criticisms and sense of vain intelligence—and with that the signs of death begin. For where intelligence and selfknowledge awaken, feeling for that which is without us ceases. It was never meant that man should enjoy at once the two extremes of pleasure—even as the Catholic moral casuist determined that man could not combine the extreme of passionate love with the holy sweetness of relationship. Yes, the humour and absurdity, and wild contrast which was the deepest problem in human nature, become before criticism a poor shadowy thing. And thus endeth the first lesson. Let me look a while longer into thy eyes, O Daemon, and find a second.’

And yet anon to Flaxius, as he gazed on the form, it was as if he were looking through some wondrous arch into a Vanity fairy-land, and, advancing, saw at every step newer and stranger arches, richly and wildly adorned; through which, as in a marvellous vista, he beheld Infernos, Paradises, Fiddler’s Greens, Edens, Tom Tiddler’s grounds, convents. These he knew were lupanars, witch-burnings at which holy men sang hymns to God, martyrdoms for smoke, or the toss of a farthing, millions killed in battles for quarrels about things which had no existence, men and women tortured to death for not believing in nothing but a farce—ages following ages, all mad with lies against Nature. And busy in it all was the spirit Aschmodai or Asmodeus, whose business it is on earth to turn chance to mischief, to inspire all the manias and follies and delusions which make men fools in every way, and awaken in them vanity and error. And it was no wonder that, as he beheld him, something like a vision or a song swept through the soul of Flaxius. For this was He

‘Who grappled once with mighty Solomon,
And cast him from his throne, and then in turn
Was fettered heavily and made to work
On the great temple of Jerusalem,
To which he gave its last magnificence

Beyond the monarch’s hope, yet jeered at all;

Yea, at his chains as at his victory;

And who, as he was borne in fetters thus,

When all men deemed him sunk in deep despair,

Burst out a-laughing. “Wherefore art thou glad?”

Inquired a sage. He answered, ” Lo, I laughed,

Because I saw a conjurer in the street,

Who promised unto all his dupes to tell

Where buried treasure lay, yet never knew

That such a treasure lay beneath his feet,

Even as he spoke during his conjuring.”

He too it was of old who tempted Job:

Nay, there are Rabbis who maintain to-day

‘Twas he who as the Serpent tempted Eve,

Not out of evil but from mockery,

Deeming the Tree and all a mighty joke,

The farce primaeval, out of which has grown

A thousand-farced series which men call

The History of Man—which were indeed

A mighty jest to devils, as the frogs

Were to the boys of old—and might be too

Unto the baratrachians, were not

The pebbles which are cast, so sharp and large,

Yes, in a thousand times ten thousand forms,

As mocking devil, or as god supreme,

Asmodeus is known unto the world.’

‘Do not forget,’ said Asmodeus, ‘ my last—albeit my weakest and most stagey and shallow incarnation—the Mephistopheles of Goethe. Yet he made me say one good thing, when I call myself, “der Geist der stets verneint.” Do you know what verneint means?—for if you do, you know more than most folk.’

‘I opine,’ said Flaxius,’ that it means “denies.”‘ ‘That, and something more,’ laughed Asmodeus. ‘Verneinen meant, of yore, also to enchant, conjure, bewitch, or humbug. C’est mon metier, I cast a spell on every work of man, and make thereof in time a mockery—all mockery is denial in the end— denial is the bringing all to naught.’

‘Truly, from thy point of view thou hast seen rare jests in thy time, Aschmodai,’ said Flaxius. ‘A history of the world, written by thee, with comments, would be amusing reading—as would the review thereof in the Presbyterian—and I could find it in my heart to wish a plague on ye both, did I not know that there are some grains of truth between ye.’

‘Ay, I should catch it hot beyond a doubt,1 replied Asmodeus, ‘for the less intellect a man has the more he believes in it, and is therefore the more furious with those who mock the sublime wisdom in whose army he is a corporal. But what thinkest thou, Flaxius, of Thought?’

‘I read not long ago,’ replied the Sage,’ an essay by a she-philosopher, who said that as we ever deeper go into the subtlest mystery of things, the more impossible it still becomes not to perceive an action as of mind, working co-relative with natural law. The good girl left out of sight the small fact that thought and natural law maybe one in Nirvana. It is a marvellous, apparent law that man is not allowed to solve the problem as yet; could he do so he would settle down into superstition or atheism —both unprogressive.’

‘Ay,’ quoth Asmodeus, ‘ thought and natural law now carry one another alternately. See the boys in Florence when they play at scaricabarile. One boy, back to back with a rival, locks arms with him, and so they lift each other up and down.  ‘Tis a game much resembling polemics, because in it both of the combatants—whether lifting or lifted—appear by turns ridiculous.’

‘Ah, well,’ replied Flaxius,’ it is a vigorous game, and developes muscle, as does all struggling. Out of peaceful parthenogenesis and idleness, starvation, and the struggle for life, evolve energy and male strength, intellect, and will. But, Aschmodai, what thinkst thou more of Thought.’

‘Though I was one of the very first thoughts ever thought, if not the first itself, as many think,’ replied the Spirit,’ the answer to that question is still unto me a mystery. Yet as we see that in life the crystal precedes the flower, or organic growth, monsters come before man, Egyptian pyramids before Greek and Gothic grace, barbarism before enlightenment, so do I deem that natural law preceded thought and involuntary action will, which was first, creatingness or a creator. With the first motion in matter came the first act, in the unorganic the organic was born ;—but how this was it knew not, nor do we know, O my Flaxius, for truly there is an immense amount of things which it would be better for man to look after before he afflicts his small soul with the problem of the egg and the hen. But so long as man shall make a fool of himself, either as atheist, theist, or agnostic waiting to see how the fight will turn, so that he, the Mugwump of faith, may join the conqueror—even so long shall I, Aschmodai, live in glory and triumph. This trinity has been my very life, even as alchemy drew from the spirit of the three its elixir vitce. And mighty have been the mockeries and many the jests which I

refundere dicimus: E/anno a scaricabarili. Inter hoc autem et illud de quo supra: Fan a scaricalasino, ea est differentia quod hoc significat alterum in alterum culpam suam rejicere; illud ver6 simpliciter alicujus criminis culpam a se dimoverc.’—Angeli Monosinii Floris Italica Lingua Libri Novem, A.D. 1604.

have drawn from it, nor is the merriment as yet quite o’er—albeit I know that I am perishing—and passing with the Triad fast away. Oh, it was glorious to behold the Jew—the original inventor of man’s vilest vanity, Chauvinism or national pride, who first created religious oppression, and believed with Rabbi Jochanan that, ” as the best of serpents deserves to have its head crushed, so the best of Gentiles ought to be killed “—’tis sweet, I say, to live to hear him raise the martyr’s cry, even as the Pope is now raising it—” the po-oo-r Pope “—as a prisoner in the Vatican! Then were the discoverers of the art of Martyrdom avenged by seeing the humblest among them made the gods of the oppressors; and so Men all rolled on into time, burning and torturing millions, especially old women, for the love of Him whose one great doctrine was mercy, charity, love, and sweetness. Then there were revolts of the oppressed, and peasants’ wars and gladiators’ revolts, and French Revolutions—alternate black and white —and in it all hell throve, and I laughed.’ ‘But thou art dying.’

‘Well, my Flaxius, I have had a call. Thou rememberest the tale of the Three Warnings, or how Death promised a man that he should be signalled thrice ere called away. So he became lame and deaf and blind—these were the three.’

‘And when was thy first warning?’

‘When Christ preached unconditional altruism unto mankind—cosmopolitanism and equality. That lamed me.’

‘And the second?’

‘When a Hindu set up a religion on the word Sikh. It means, “seek!” What goes beyond faith,unbelief, or uncertainty is to inquire and search and seek for truth. So I was deafened by that awful cry.’ ‘And the third?’

‘Aristotle, Friar Bacon, Francis Bacon, Darwin, Induction, Evolution. That will soon finish me. But the first blow was the worst, and I knew it. I bore up well, and made a gallant fight, but I am dying. Vicisti, GaliUee/’

As he spoke, the full golden Syrian moon shone o’er their heads in an unclouded sky, a gentle breeze was wantoning in the palms, yet from afar there came a jackal’s cry, and then the booming of a lion’s roar.

‘I shall pass away, my Flaxius, but I shall live again in some form; evil or good, my spirit cannot die. For there is a good in me—a good of strength —and while matter casts a shadow, or contrasts and paradoxes exist, I shall be. All in a softened form I well previse. As the sun which set is followed by yonder moon, so shall I be softer, and yet as eternal. When God shall assume a higher form, I shall inherit the old throne and sceptre.’

‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it well may be. Shelley and sundry other inspired lunatics had that idea; ’twas known to the Greeks, not without thy aid, O Aschmodai! For thou hast always thrown doubt and a fine frenzy and confusion over all great truths.’

‘Recte dixisti, thou speakest truly,’ answered Aschmodai. ‘Had all been all at once, nothing had ever been.’ Son Flaxius, thou too art a moon, and thou art my son; but thou wouldst fain enjoy the paradox without the pain. As the old hard-griping peasant grows rich, unheeding of what misery he makes, while his cultured heir grows gentle and amiable, so wilt thou, and the world which has been enriched by the past, grow milder. Le diable est mort—vive le diable!

‘Hcecfabula docet,’ penned the sage,’ that men, with all their wisdom, do not train their wondrous power of putting numbers together to make sums, or the faculty of deduction, by means of which stupendous results of prophecy may be attained. This might be increased to a degree which would seem to us miraculous. Edgar A. Poe had strange intuitions of what might be in his theory that he who observes all antecedents and possible combinations may surely foresee consequences.

‘And, as his name reminds me, Poe mentions that at Palaechosi, in Sparta, there is existent on a stone an inscription L.A.S.M., which is probably a part of GELASMA or Laughter, indicating a shrine to the merry god. Apropos of which M. Marcel Schwob remarks that laughter is destined to die away with advancing culture. “It is,” he declares, “a mere tic, a gross physical manifestation of the perception of disharmony in the world, which will vanish before complete scepticism, absolute science, general pity, or intolerance of suffering and respect for all things.” This idea should assuredly please Anglo-Americans, among whom, while a sense of humour increases, the laugh diminishes, till we generally find in their greatest jesters men who never laugh at all.

‘But M. Schwob errs in his Essai de Paradoxe sur le Hire, when he declares that this species of contraction of the zygomatic muscles is peculiar to man, it having been an indication of his feeble intelligence and the conviction of his own superiority. The Newfoundland dog laughs at times, and that with an expression which is completely human. I had heard of this several times before I witnessed it, and also heard that the expression, though droll, was so uncanny in a dog as to awaken something like awe, as I, indeed, experienced. These dogs have a keen sense of humour, entering with intelligence into the games and romps of boys. But the error of M. Schwob, as well as that of Matthew Arnold, is to believe that seriousness or mere gravity is essential to genius. The French writer is of opinion that laughter expresses only sneers, sarcasms, vanity, and short-witted scepticism. It means far more than this to greater minds. As the Schwobian view is diabolical, so is there, on the other hand, a divine humour, a sweet and sacred gelasma, which we only do not associate with sacred things and grandeur, simply because we know nothing about their true inner nature and are not at home there. There is a sweet laughter of innocence, purity and youth, in which a smile always irradiates the face, lighting it to higher beauty. Is not a smile divine? Is not all beauty as the smile of God in nature? And there is also a bitter smile —a sardonic laugh—the very life of Aschmodai, and the meaning of this chapter is that this laugh is vanishing in the world, and with it the brutal bray and idiotic ‘yawp’ and silly snigger of the vulgar mind; but that the merry musical laugh of the gentle heart, and the smile divine which thrills the heart of love like wine, will remain to man, after asinine seriousness shall have vanished for ever.

F

Tis a delicate thing to draw the lines which divide the gold from the dross, and show how the harsh humour will be neglected in Shakespeare and Rabelais, as theology is dropped from our admiration of Dante, but all of them will live in so far as the angelic smile beams in them.

Note that had this world been without variableness or the shadow of turning, darkness and light, or night and day, rise and fall, it had not been at all; and that, while there shall be change and contrast and evolution, or nature itself, there will be humour, which is the soul and life of laughter, and though it has been easily checked in this priggish fin de Stecle (when dolts have wellnigh got the upper hand, and dismal dulness shadows all the land) yet with the great coming Renaissance of Nature, which is just beginning to show under the aid of science, as the morning redness comes with the rising sun, men will laugh merrily once more, not in bitterness, but in love.

FLAXIUS IN FLORENCE

OR, THE GOBLIN OF THE TOWER DELLA
TRINITA, BY THE PORTA SAN NICCOLO.

‘They do not speak as mortals speak,
Nor sing as others sing:
Their words are gleams of starry light,
Their songs the glow of sunset bright:
Or meteors on the wing.1

The following story belongs to this book ‘in good faith of all sorts,’ be it salted, pickled or sugared; since it was originally the first ever recorded of the great and good Flaxius. But as it was of Florence, Florentiny, so, following the saying, ‘first come, first served,’ and being engaged on The Legends of Florence1—in which book the lovers of romance and the occult will find many a rare treat, showing how all Florence is a charmingly haunted city— therefore did I first introduce the sage in it to the world.

And in the introduction I said that the legend is of great antiquity, since there is a hint of it in an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben Mozel-toff, or the learned Rev Gedauler Chamar, besides being found in poetic form in my own great work The Music Lesson of Confucius ; also in a marvellous cabalistic manuscript which I bought in sight of Santa.

“If the land is being poisoned witchcraft must respond…”

- from an interview with Peter Grey & Alkistis Dimech of Scarlet Imprint

“Few mysteries are as misunderstood as those of the night…”

- from Craft of the Untamed by Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold

***

The Eyeless Owl presents…

St. Joseph’s Waltz – A Silent Tale of Nigromancy

A Screen Test from a Non-Existent Film

Music -

‘Lydia’s Circle’ by J. Stockinger & D. Metcalfe

Puppet/Set Design/Production -

D. Metcalfe

Marsh’s exploration of the ‘aether’ is interesting for it’s experimental nature. Rather than rush in with a head full of New Age jargon, he’s open in his introduction with the fact that he is consciously writing in an authoritative voice to facilitate the work (and because it’s almost impossible to resist after getting a taste for the style while reading 19th and early 20th century initiatory and mind science publications.)

Being subject to the same questions of authenticity, and reality, that anyone is when honestly approaching liminal phenomenon, he requests that those experimenting with the suggestions in his book contact him with their results, questions and reports. In light of this open sense of inquiry into the unknown potentials of human existence I hereby present my own initial report, a day after purchasing the book, and in a situation where the experiment was quite unintentional…

Location: Dunkin Donuts

Time: 3pm CST

Weather conditions: Partly cloudy, but still sunny, approx. 70 degrees.

Emotional/Mental conditions: Feeling of anxiety, mind semi-focused on getting back to the apartment to start writing, and also remembering the type of doughnuts my roommate said she wanted. By the time I reached the shop I was pretty mentally blank. It was the last stop on an errand run that included about 3/4 of a mile walking.

Exercise33 – The Unspoken Message: While standing in line I noticed that the clerk on shift was one who had, in the past, shown confusion while filling orders. With this in mind I was focusing on speaking clearly, listing the doughnuts I wanted in the order that they were organized on the shelf so he’d understand, using body language (casual pointing and eye contact with my desired doughnuts) to enhance communication, and not ordering anything extra that might complicate the order. 

I had the three doughnuts in mind that my roommate wanted, as well as the three doughnuts that I wanted. There was one customer ahead of me in line, and as I waited I assessed the positions of the doughnuts on the racks so I could list them in order. In the process I noticed the blueberry glazed doughnuts, which I had been thinking about before leaving on my errands, and thought about switching my order. I decided against it.

When I got to the counter I went through my order making sure my body language, eyes and clear intonation indicated what I wanted. This may seem a bit pathological, but I got stuck for over 30 minutes one time while this clerk struggled with orders.  I didn’t want to make his life any more difficult, or end up having to ask him multiple times for the right doughnuts.

We got through the order with no glitches…until the last doughnut. I said “Bavarian Creme” nodding towards their position on the bottom shelf, middle rack, and was surprised when the clerk walked to the next rack over,  reached up towards the top shelf, and put a Blueberry Glazed in the box.

Since I was the one who wanted the Bavarian Creme, and not my roommate, I didn’t argue. It’s my habit to accept what I’m given at a restaurant or fast food place because I prefer fresh foods, and I don’t go in expecting much from what I get. In this instance, however, I was reminded of reading Excercise33, which is based on sending messages without speaking, on the train, and thinking about it earlier in the afternoon prior to going out for errands. This made reflecting on his mistake a bit more interesting.

Results: Inconclusive

Bavarian, Blueberry, both words that start with B, so it could be a simple mistake. My gesturing and focus on getting the order across makes this less likely, but still a definite possibility. The positions of the doughnuts also makes it unlikely that he misread my body language, although my initial interest in the blueberry doughnuts may have carried over into some unconscious indication of them.

While it is not certain how the outcome occurred, what is interesting is that I wasn’t thinking about putting into practice Exercise 33.  This aetheric insinuation into the everyday happened without forethought, or planning, and would have gone unnoticed if not framed within the narrative that had been building since purchasing the book yesterday from The Occult Bookstore.

Narratives defining the interpretation of events which themselves define the narrative. That’s just how it is when you’re enmeshed in the ever spinning ouroboros of psychical investigation, or if we’re honest, how it goes just living day to day.

- from Scribners Monthly, Vol. 2 (1871), pg. 333