Chapter 1 Lucifer
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. - Pablo Picasso
This book is a portrait of instinct and emotion, and how civilization has corrupted what we feel. Mythology is used, because myth is the language of emotion. Through myth we can learn how people feel about culture, history and the world. This is not a historical book about myth. The stories have been modified to fit my own point of view. Some details differ considerably from the older stories. I feel that the purpose of mythology is to invent the myths and not simply retell ancient stories. A myth is alive when the story is rewritten. You can adopt other people's ideas, but a myth is more powerful if you create it yourself. If you want to learn about myths from the ancient writers I recommend Ovid and Homer.
Back in school I had one of those new-age teachers. He asked everyone to draw a circle and draw what they considered important in it. One guy drew a peace sign and gave an explanation about peace on Earth, which pleased the hippie teacher. The peace sign means nothing to me, so I drew a dollar sign. The hippie teacher said that I was not creative and that I had too much negative sarcasm. Who cares what he thinks? My circle is now much more sophisticated than his will ever be. I have been places he will never go and done things he will never do.
Some people ask me why I do not take a more moderate path. They think that civilization and nature could work together. I refuse to compromise. Do you want a lawyer who only half defends your case or a security guard who lets the thieves take half your stuff? Philosophies that follow the middle path such as Taoism, Buddhism and Platonism can be used to justify civilized insanity since they compromise common sense. Compromise is a kind of surrender. It replaces resistance with excuses. Civilization advances by forcing nature to compromise. Slowly nature will be compromised away to nothing. It is time to take the extreme point of view. Earth First!
I envy a human who comes from a tribe that lives as part of Nature. He can feel Nature the way humans are made to feel it. He can climb a hill and see that the world, the animals, the environment, the people, his tribe, and himself all fit together. The world makes sense to him and has meaning. He can feel the meaning and portray this meaning in his visions. No one really knows if such a person ever existed. I will assume he it did and will continue to do so throughout the rest of this book. I cannot feel the meaning, because I do not live as part of Nature. I live in a civilized world. The ideas in the vision do not fit together in civilization. I must attempt to show what went wrong and how we can fix the problem. lem.
Let us invent a religion that celebrates Nature. I mean, real wild Nature of the wilderness. This kind of religion was once practiced before civilization, when people lived as part of Nature and knew that they were part of it. Civilized people are detached from Nature. They have forgotten the way of Nature. Civilized religion is Nature-hating, and seeks salvation by separating from the world, to join some God or concept that is detached from the world.
Some things really exist, and would exist, whether we believed in them or not. Some things only exist because people think they do. An example is money. Money only has value because people believe it has value. Today, so many people think money has value that even those who reject money feel its effects. Money has become a God. You might think it is good or bad, depending on how it makes you feel and what you believe. What we think and what we do and what we really get are all parts of life. Many forces surround us. I like to call them Gods. If you do not like to call them Gods, call them something else. They still exist; at least some of them do. These forces affect our world view because they create our point of view.
Everyone has a different point of view. The Gods that one person sees are different from what another person sees. I construct my own mythological language using numbers, colors, directions and sacred word, but this language should not be considered absolute truth. There really just metaphors and I hope that you look beyond the words and see deeper than I have. I hope that you construct a mythological system that is better than mine. Please feel free to use my ideas and make any changes you want.
We can design our temple in a way that imitates Nature. I will attempt to construct a system, which represents events in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. A person in a different environment could change the concepts to fit his conditions. Actually, anyone can change the concepts around to fit the way he likes it. A Pagan temple should be a place that people can share their myths and use each other's ideas to develop new myths or perhaps rediscover old forgotten Gods. We should always strive to make our temple better attuned to Nature’s harmony. Were not just going to pray to what we think nature looks like. Were going to try making our temple a proper representation of nature. You might say that such is impossible, because we all filter our visions through our delusions. I believe that if we keep observing nature our delusions will become less deluded. We have to start somewhere. We have to start somehow. So let it begin.
The Temple
The temple is the Great Goddess. We can discover many facts about this Goddess by looking around. Standing at the center of the universe on top of a hill, the world appears to be a brown disk that circles around me. The brown circle shall be my temple. Our temple is a calendar that clocks the movement of the Sun. Our temple will be an Earth Solar temple. We should keep our temple clockwise, because the Sun appears to be moving clockwise each day when viewed from the Northern Hemisphere while looking south. Each morning, the Sun rises in the east. If we keep moving clockwise, the day would be south. Each evening, the Sun sets in the west. The night is north.
The south, where we look to see the Sun, is up and is the direction of spirit and fire. On the body of the temple it would be the head. The west, the direction of water, is the left hand, the hand closest to your heart. The north is the direction of matter and Earth. The east, the direction of air, is the right hand.
A red line connects the north and the south. This line is the soul that will unite spirit and matter and separate the left from the right. The soul unites the creator Saturn with Mother Nature. The soul is the will to touch. By choosing to touch, we separate the left from the right. The left represents choosing to touch. The right represents denying the will to touch. The left is west and passion. The right is east and reason. A black line connects the east and west. This line unites passion and reason, separating up from down, becoming the horizon. We have divided the temple into four parts that will represent the four seasons.
Each year the Sun appears to circle clockwise around the North Star through the Zodiac. The Sun reaches its most northerly point during the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and life is in full bloom. The Sun reaches its most southerly point during the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year. Vegetation has become dormant, and this is also the time when the Sun again begins its trip north. It is the end of the old year and the beginning of the New Year and is where our calendar of festivals should begin.
There are eight festivals called Sabbaths, represented in our temple calendar by an eight-pointed star in the center of the temple. Each point should indicate the proper direction and time. The star is called the North Star of Aphrodite, if this star is hung on the north wall, the north points should be pointing up.
The first festival during the winter solstice is Yule. Life has become dormant in the Northern Hemisphere and everything looks dead. Only the spirit remains. On this day, the Goddess of animate Nature, called Mother Nature, the daughter of Mother Earth, unites with the Son of Heaven, the God of spirit and time. They conceive a son who will be born during the spring. This is the time of fire, spirit and south. The God of this festival is the Creator, Father Spirit, and is called Saturn. His number is "3" and his direction is South. His color is red for fire. The sacred name of the God is "Yod-He-Vau-He Sabaoth," which means, "I am who am the creator." This is also the time of the north wind, which has purified the Earth.
The second festival is Candlemass that takes place in the middle of winter. This is the festival of inner preparation and self-sacrifice, to prepare for the coming of spring. The God of this festival is Lucifer, the Ascetic God of pure inner light, identified with the Morning Star. This is a time for a little asceticism too much would be deadly. The Color is orange, the number is "1," the sacred name is "Ain."
The third festival is Easter, the spring equinox. Life has begun to grow back. The seasonal God is born. It is the time to respect the east wind, which gives life. The east wind is fire, but the festival is water. This is the festival of the west. The west is water, passion, youth and fun. The color of the season is blue, but it is not sad. Blue is the background color. Brighter colors look good on blue. Red is the color of the east wind. The sacred name of the season is "EVO." His symbol is a yellow, six-pointed star on a blue background. The number is "4" for Dionysus, the God of Passion.
The fourth festival is Mayday, which takes place in the middle of spring when life is growing. Spirit has become animate matter, called Maya. Mayday means Maya’s day, but Maya is not yet mature. This is the festival of growing and learning. The Youth is learning about the world and himself. He is beginning to learn how the two are intertwined. The sacred name of this festival is "Shin," which means learning. The God of the festival is Mercury, the son of Maya. He is the God of Knowledge. This is the festival of knowledge and also of Hermetic priests, who are supposed to know the system of knowledge that the temple is using and should be able to teach it. The number is "8." The color is gray.
The fifth festival is Litha, the summer solstice, identified with the north, because the Sun has reached its most northerly point. Life is in full bloom. The seasonal God is now mature. The south wind of the Sun is now a life-preserver. This is the time of matter, the body; the element is Earth. We are material animals. This is the time of Aphrodite, the Goddess of midsummer. The sacred name of the Nature Goddess is Maya. Maya means mother, or Mother Nature. The number is "7" and the color is green. The letter of the festival is "U," the letter of maturity.
The sixth festival is Lammas. The number is "9". It is the festival of the lunar virgin. The sacred name is "Nem." She is what we cannot touch, a fact of life we must understand.
The seventh festival is Modron, the autumn equinox. The west wind, Jove, the counter-clockwise destructor and black wind, taking away the seasonal God. He will die and life will become dormant. This is the time for thanksgiving for the gifts we have received during the year. This is the festival of plenty. Fall is the time of reason and preparation for winter. The name of reason is "OM." The God is Apollo. The color is yellow. The number is "6." The direction is east. The element is air.
The eighth festival is Halloween, which takes place in the middle of fall. Life is becoming dormant. All that will be left are the skeletons of the trees. The Zodiac is the background of everything. Its number is "2" and its color is purple. Its sacred name is "Candar," which is the long version of the name "Anu," who is Heaven. This is the festival of death, but it is not a final death. Life will grow back. The old year will pass and a New Year will begin. The son will become father, and the daughter will become mother. All souls are recognized on Halloween.
Add the number of each festival to the number of the festival opposite it and you will get ten, which is the number of completion. At the center of ten is five, which represents Mars and humanity. Mars is placed at the center of the temple this represents us in the balance of opposing points. The sacred name of humanity is "Yesvo."
At the center of the universe is the world. At the center of the world is the temple. At the center of the temple is the North Star of Aphrodite. At the center of the North Star is Man. At the center of Man is the universe.
When wearing a symbol, the south point should point toward your head. When the symbol is lying on the ground, the south point should point south, right to east, left to west and bottom to north. When hung in any direction the point of that direction on the symbol should point up; for example, if a symbol is hung in the west, its west end should be up. During a ceremony a symbol should be lifted and moved with its points aimed in the correct direction.
During a ritual various tools can be used to represent the elements: A cup for water and passions, a disk for Earth. The wand represents fire and is the phallic symbol of the creator father God, divided into the seven days of creation. The dagger is the tool of air and represents killing, death, reason, brutality, fall, discipline and many other ideas. The handle is black for death, with some yellow trim for air and reason. A red rose on the handle represents killing.
There are ten basic concepts. The first is nothing. The next eight are identified with astrological bodies. The second is the Zodiac, which is the background of everything. The next seven are identified with the seven planets and are ordered and numbered according to how fast they move through the Zodiac. The final concept is identified with Earth and represents the completion around which all other concepts revolve. This picture is meant to be mythological and not scientific.
The concepts should be represented by colors. These are used to decorate the temple. For visual effect any symbol can be drawn on a color that makes the added color flash. Blue flashes with orange and red flashes with green. Yellow flashes with purple and black. It is hard to find a color that flashes with brown. A gray background should have black symbols on it. A white background can have black or gray symbols. These colors look good if you get just the right shades.
The Ten Concepts
1. AIN Lucifer Orange Lion
2. ANU Zodiac Purple Crab
3. YEUO Saturn Black Crow Saturday Evergreen Lead
4. JOVE Jupiter Blue Bull Thursday Oak Steel
5. YESVO Mars Red Ram Tuesday Elm Iron
6. OM Apollo Yellow Fish Sunday Maple Gold
7. MAYA Venus Green Cow Friday Apple Copper
8. ESHU Mercury Gray Goat Wednesday Ash Mercury
9. NEM Moon White Cat Monday Fern Silver
10. GAIA Brown Earth Insect
Sometimes when I talk about this mythology, people who don't understand what I am doing keep asking me how I know this stuff. I just tell them to shut up. I learnt this stuff by listening. I think I should make a few definitions clear. When I say matter, I mean the prime material plain, the world around you, that includes matter, energy, information, structure and activity. Nature is the structure of the material plain. This structure is dynamic, active, and changing. Nature is the course of this change. our place in nature is an activity in the course of nature, but not just any activity. We only belongs in certain activities.
Light
The first concept is orange, called Ain, which means "Nothing." Pure purity is nothing and lifeless. Ain is also the pure spiritual divine light called Lucifer, who is the light-bringer, identified with the Morning Star. It is also called Nirvana, which means "blow out," extinction of the soul.
There are many reasons why a person may choose to reject his own life. Perhaps something went wrong and he did not get the necessities of life. He feels uncomfortable, and might blame the world and himself and just want to end it all. Some ascetics wish to stop existing and consider Nirvana their goal. They don't just want to die, they want to stop reincarnating. We are born because the soul chooses to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh in the material world. Ascetics are often pessimistic and believe that these pleasures don't exist. They make themselves suffer, to convince their souls that life is sorrow, so their soul will stop wanting to be born and just cancel itself. Asceticism is a hatred of existence. Asceticism self torture to achive purity.
Asceticism means training to become something you are dedicated to. Whether this something is good or not depends on what you dedicate yourself to and the results of your action. Many people who believe themselves imperfect want to fix themselves with some higher divine goal. Usually, they deny their material bodies and search for an inner light hidden inside themselves. They believe our divine self is trapped in the material world. Their life becomes a search for this inner light. If they're really fanatical, they might think they must force everyone else to practice what they do. Some people believe that divine light power must rule over everything.
No one has ever found this inner light, I do not believe it exists. I believe the world is perfect the way it is, and the so-called inner light is just an illusion of a disturbed mind. Generally, an ascetic will think of an aspect of Nature as a Demon, particularly aspects such as Natural instincts and passions. The ascetic might not be aware that what he called a Demon is an aspect of Nature. He could have an ascetic doctrine, which he follows and be unaware of what the doctrine really means. Many religions are divine light religions, which spend most of their time trying to correct human behavior.
Kings like to hold the sign of the Lion as a sign of power. A king might think that the divine light power is the crown that he wears. The king is symbolic of a divine ruler inside yourself. The sign of Leo is suppose to scare Demons into submission. Usually, the only Demons ascetics scare are themselves. There are other forms of Demons who are not part of Nature's balance. Most ascetics would not know how to recognize or handle these Demons. Some unnatural Demons could easily fool an ascetic into worshipping them, since the Demons would do exactly what the ascetic wants his Gods to do.
I tend to think that life can be happy if we just give it a chance and actually try to live a natural life. Most civilized people have no idea how to live a natural life. An ascetic might consider his unnatural devotion to be natural. Perhaps his definition of Nature is not the same as mine. Many people argue with me over the proper definitions of natural and unnatural. I don't care what definition you use; the truth is that asceticism leaves an empty hole in the soul. All unnatural technologies use but give nothing back, so the soul stays empty forever. We should not be in conflict with the forces that surround us. We should not be in conflict with the forces within us. If you live as part of Nature, the Demons that frighten ascetics will be your friends. There is no need for Lucifer to rule over your world. True Nature is a rewarding experience, which fills your soul. You can get natural power by living a natural life. Your best defense against unnatural power is the natural power of the Sacred Grove.
Astrologers who observe the stars over long periods of time have noticed that the Morning Star appears furthest from the sun five times every eight years; these are the five points of the Morning Star known as periods of destruction. It is a five-pointed star with blue points and an orange center. The blue represents destruction of the self, for those who choose Nirvana. For those who want to accept life, the blue can represent destruction of Nirvana.
