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    SPINNING MY WHEELS

                                  ~ Shade Oroboros


   Ever since Madame Blavatsky created the Theosophical Society Asian traditions have been infiltrating the Western world, with some vast surges during the Beat Generation and the Flower Power revolutions. Ever since Kenneth Grant and Soror Nema clarified the concept of Thelema as Tantra the union of yogic practice with qabalistic symbolism begun by Crowley has, like an unfolding series of psychedelic neon lotuses, blossomed.
   The human organism is often thought to consist of a variety of levels beyond the physical; most importantly, of an energy body which may form the matrix upon which bone and flesh are formed, a pulsating presence which extends beyond our basic outline in the aura discerned by psychics and captured by Kirlian photography. This energy field fuels the forces employed in spiritual healings, concentrates the prana absorbed by yogic breathing exercises, and can be projected outwards in the form of magical thunderbolts, or as the chi or ki of highly trained martial artists. The energy body is in some ways seen as pre-existing the physical, and perhaps even surviving it: out-of-body experiences happen and the phantom sensations or ghost pains experienced by amputees have often been confirmed by Kirlian photos showing the limb still present, harkening back to the notion that existence is somehow formulated as an ideal or archetype on other planes prior to the material.
   Eastern thought has created many systems of concentrating inner forces. In Hindu tantra the fire serpent of Kundalini rises through the chakras (“wheels”) of the spinal column after years of training and special breathing exercises designed to prepare various subtle channels. Taoist teaching includes systems of circulating sexual or spiritual energies internally, by the power of breath and the visualization of various vessels and furnaces, again with the goal of the alchemical transformation of the body and the pursuit of immortality. Physical exercises such as Tai Chi use similar forces for health and vitality. This strengthening of the body of light seems a key to life after death in many traditions, including perhaps the ancient Egyptians with their funerary obsessions. Essentially, one is evolving the Body of Light that enables astral travel and eventual immortality.
   There are many varying versions of the chakras in the human body, although western magicians in general appear to be quite comfortable with the Hindu tantrik model. Other correspondences to these centers might connect the spectrum of color, or alternatively the planetary metals linked to the alchemical process or the forms of the Tattvas:
Crown Ultra-violet Gold/Sun Space radiance
3rdEye Purple Silver/Moon Star eye/bindu
Throat Blue Quicksilver/Mercury Spirit egg
Heart Green Copper/Venus Air circle
Navel Yellow Iron/Mars Fire triangle
Genital Orange Tin/Jupiter Water crescent
Root Red Lead/Saturn Earth square


   Returning for a moment to the notion that the macrocosm corresponds to the microcosm, most arcane cosmological maps also include essential correspondences to the human form. The trigrams of the I Ching and the signs of the zodiac have well-established rulership over parts of the body, and the qabalistic Tree is also the image of a divine human: on the Middle Pillar Kether is head, Daath is throat, Tiphareth heart, Yesod genitals, and Malkuth the feet, for example.
   Over the years I have evolved my own mantras and visualizations for charging my centers with the energies of Thelemic god-forms. The practice works for me, so I thought I might describe it. While I almost always ascend as in the Middle Pillar ritual, I do swing both ways and I thought description flowed better here as coming from above. But when opening a ritual I usually raise the power upwards, seating the deities in their thrones by chanting the names. I contract and expand, rise and fall, go in and out, circulating the light with Prana/Breath. I may continue to other Gnostic mantras. I almost always do this as I go to sleep at night.
   When I am really focused on this as an invocation, as opposed to using it as a quick means to raise energy while opening a ritual, I usually vibrate each name at least three times or chant them repeatedly while visualizing the forces as manifesting variously or simultaneously: first expanded in the outer macrocosmic universe, then as an assumption of the godform in my own body/aura, and finally as microcosmic reflection in the chakra itself, more or less framed in a holographic version of the tattvic elemental symbols. I often use a set of ting-sha bells. This is an attempt at expressing some of the mutating variations as they merge and shift, activate and transform.
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           Crown: NU - NUIT - NUITH.
   In the Thousand-petaled lotus above my head I invoke the three forms of the Star Goddess in the Book of the Law, and I ascribe them to Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur or to the KIA.

NU: eyes closed, I sense the infinite space of primordial darkness and emptiness, and the transparency of the universal void prior to and still permeating all created things.  
NUIT: I assume the form of the woman clothed with stars, a dark silhouette spangled with the atomic fires of the whirling galaxies.
NUITH: Her energies circulating through my body become a coruscating fountain of jewels pouring from my head, coiling around and reabsorbed into my body and spinal column. I am a dragon in the womb of night.

           Third Eye: THOTH – HADIT – ABRASAX
   In the Third Eye are the Supernal Spheres, and three key godforms of the currents I most often inhabit. Vision & Voice.

THOTH: I become the creation of the cosmos as Logos or Word of Magick, the Ibis-god as the Bennu or Phoenix, the great bird of the universe, lord of the Tarot.
HADIT: the core/spark/central star of consciousness, imaged as a winged globe with serpents on my brow, my body a brilliantly bright silhouette emitted from its golden light.
ABRAXAS: I focus in microscopically on this eye, past the point where the serpents become the code of DNA, down to the minutest atomic point of the undivided original being as Self.

           Throat: HOOR-PAR-KRAAT
       Horus the Child or Babe of the Abyss corresponding to Daath.

HOOR: various cosmic images of galaxies and nebulae form a swirling embryonic infant (like Clarke & Kubrick’s star-child from 2001) or of the World as alchemical Egg, or the scarab-beetle of the midnight sun in the otherworld of Amenta.
PAR: I assume the form of the Egyptian child-god Horus, making the sign of silence (finger to mouth), enthroned in a lotus on the waters of time/space and surrounded by an invulnerable protective egg of blue light.
KRAAT: I visualize this egg concentrating the god-form into a tattvic black egg of spirit in my throat and bestowing the powers of magical speech and invisibility.

           Heart: SHAITAN – AIWASS – N’ATON
   Transforming avatars of the liberating zeitgeist or spirit of humanity, the bodhisattvas in the past, present, and future aeons. I usually spend more time in this chakra, pumping up my pranayama and meditating on the Cosmic Will of Universal Love. “Turning one heart to all faces, seeing one face in all hearts.” Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth. Shadow, Anima, Self.

SHAITAN: I assume the form of a dark horned shadow with moonlight in my heart.
AIWASS: I illuminate into the form of a bright angel with sunlight in my heart.
N’ATON: I merge as the form of N’Aton, androgyne, half in light and half in night, a black star blazing with white flames in the circular sphere of my heart. Lutis Nitra, Black Flame.

           Solar Plexus: RA-HOOR-KHU
   Horus as the Hawk-headed Lord of the Aeon, force of Love & Will. Tiphareth, Netzach, Hod.

RA: the universe as Horus the Hawk, the High One of heaven, whose eyes are the moon and sun, whose claws hold this globe, whose breath is Life, surrounds me.
HOOR: this hawk soars down, overshadowing me with wings of fire, merging with me, and I take the form of a god-king with the head of a hawk and crowned with the solar disk (there is an old statue of the Pharaoh enthroned with the Horus-hawk perched behind his head and touching his shoulders with his wings).
KHU: In my belly where magick is stored a phoenix of flame burns in a pyramidal pyre, the cauldron of Chi, the container of power.

           Yoni-lingam: BABALON-MAAT
   The astral light, the genetic wonderland, magick mirror, Yesod. Power of transformation, manifestation, illusion and Lust.

BABALON: I embrace the universe as this fiery energy that connects all life. As it vibrates and shimmers and descends and coils like serpents about me my aura takes on the form of the Great Harlot who rides upon the Beast, the Anima Mundi, Maha-Shakti.
MAAT: I achieve equilibrium and this energy centers itself in my loins. I envision the Daughter as a melusine (mermaid with a bifurcated tail, like serpents for legs, as in an old alchemical woodcut) frolicking in the pool of a tattvic silver moon-crescent.

           Root: BAPHOMET – PAN – THERION
   Primal Chaos. The force of matter, Malkuth, dark earth. The ZOS.

BAPHOMET: The waters of light from above and below and all sides, from beyond space, form a swirling spiraling recoiling vortex of chaos circulating, vibrating.
PAN: I take the form of a rampant satyr in the forests upon the earth.
THERION: at the base of my spine is a tattvic cube containing the classic image of Levi’s Baphomet (the man/woman angel/devil god/beast, winged and horned, with breasts and phallus). Or else, the Siva-lingam entwined with Kundalini-serpents and full of fire.