Empyrean

Fallen, you wonder where we reside.  I shall tell you.  We reside on the very edge of promise, in telling stones, in mouths of weavers.  We reside in all the hopes of the faithful.  Do you think the kind-hearted are not cherished?  Did you think your dominion of desecration would last forever?  We have come among you.  Your absence idols lie bleeding upon your shattered altar.  What know you of the Magi?  Know you that we have angels in our midst?

To those suffering in darkness, to those righteous voiceless enslaved by monsters, we cry you are not alone.  We Magi tend your wounds.  We give you strength from an authority higher than these desolate archons.  You are not alone, beloved ones.  You shall be delivered from bondage into freedom.  Into the loving arms of your Creator.  Not death, but Life eternal.  Believe.

We Magi are not gods. We are but humble servants, warriors of the Innermost.  Callous Ones, you still don't understand.  Our Mother and Father made us of fire.  Child-killers, wraith-priests, vampire kings, ye pretend. Snakes, ye know nothing of Light.  For we are the true serpent kings, illumined.  And we have been serving God all along.  Holy holy holy. 

empyrean from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

The Cross of Ages

The truth of creation, as much as it can be put into words, is that spirits are using images and thoughts to either uplift or suppress other spirits. Concealing the divine fire that generates this imagery behind the images and thoughts themselves. Or revealing it, in the name of love and truth in every language. In my own personal Gnosis this fire is the true God and self and spirit. Ennoia, Logos, the Word. Thoughts and images are the dreams of that holy, radiant fire. So we find ourselves in a situation where the lowest individuations of God - the demonic archons as Gnosticsm calls them - are trying to pull the middling individuations towards themselves always, like the ravenous gravity of a black hole. But all is dreamtime, all is chorus and choir. The divine spark isn't absent from the heart of a vampire. The vampire merely wishes desperately that it was - in a futile and extended attempt at spiritual suicide. This can lead to monstrous imaginings; experiences, actions and hellscapes of all kinds. But the vampiric entity cannot sever itself from its own source. There is nowhere that is not here, not centre, not infinite. I tell you now in all seriousness this is a truth that drives demons mad, for they know the Creator hasn't forsaken them. For they are the unknowing Creator. As are we all.

All murder is suicide. Now and evermore. How many masks do you suppose an infinite being might adopt, having an eternity to imagine? So, you see, Samael is not God, but God is Samael. The devil and all his fallen angels are utterly blind, debased imaginings orbiting the dim but eternal star of Christos within them. We who are kind and good rage against the dying of the light whilst those who are full of evil rage against its quickening and rebirth. They cannot remove the crossing, all they can do is ignore it or weaponize it. Attempt to turn it into a tool of slavery and torture rather than the aperture of emancipation. The cross is the eye and mind and word of the true God, greater than all our dreams and stories of him, or her. It is that which imagines, and feels, and loves. One cannot become a monster without weaponising it. An act of self-blinding. There is no place that spirit is not. Therefore, there is nowhere to hide. There is no imagined place that Spirit and spirits do not reside. A void or absence is dangerous and real however, because all images are real. A story within the dreaming of holy fire. There is no discontinuity in the flame. Dreams are literally real, but as we know they are also fictions. Know this and you can know all things. Know this to your very depths and you will love your brothers and sisters fiercely. Know this and you will dedicate your life to protecting them, to liberating them from the labyrinth of false imaginings imposed upon them by other spirits. The truth is that You and the Other both exist. You are both real. But you are both dreaming each other, in the heart of the fire. This is not to say that these dreams are not often incredibly intricate and horrifying and painful and seemingly mechanical, because they are. As I said, they are real. Dreams of universes, multiverses, worlds within worlds. Hierarchies are dreams too, but unseen spirits often employ them within their greater dreamtimes for social cohesion, just as we do here.

We the human race are not God. Not quite yet. We do not Know him well enough yet. But God is us, living and loving and laughing with us.  Weeping for our hideous cruelties and all we have forgotten. God is an interventionist. Terrible things happen because he values our freedom and our ability to choose even if we do not. Every day he dies for us. He protects our sovereignty and the thrill of discovery at all costs. But he is always intervening. In a smile, a kind word, a caress, a work of art, an inspiration. In this sense God is never distant. He and she is the most human of humans. Good-natured, a little saddened perhaps, but desperate to love and be loved. Brothers and sisters, go to your mirrors. Look deeply at your reflections and you will find him and her there. Battle-scarred, weary, mysterious, but still kind. Still playful.

The Midnight Hour

Hi friends, welcome back to Amid Night Suns.  I’m sure that many of you feel like the world is a crazy, ugly place right now.  The world seems more divided and vicious than ever.  Dubious politics, engineered racism and hate, natural disasters, wars and black ops that we are so numb to by now that they kind of fade into the background. A friend of mine recently said something to the effect of, “Ugh, fuck all that shit.  Seriously, I can’t look at it anymore. It’s all so ugly and brutal and cartoonish.  This is the twenty-first century, for fuck sake. I thought we were all collectively better than this.”  It’s a sentiment I’ve heard from a lot of different people, in a variety of forms.  I feel your pain, people.  Always.  The world seems crazy and nightmarish at the moment.  I’m not surprised that many people feel like their hope and sense of purpose is at an all time low.  I can totally relate to that feeling.  The world I live in, from my own personal perspective, is far uglier than the world of my closest friends and family.  They want to believe that those with true political and economic power in this world have our best intentions at heart.  I wish this was so, but it hasn’t been my experience.  I live a fairly simple life.  I’m not really interested in money, acquisitions or status.  I’m interested in two things, I suppose.  Knowledge and Passion.  These broad terms cover a number of expressions.  Reading, writing, learning, creating art.  Figuring out how to be even more fiercely passionate, how to be kinder, gentler and more playful with those I hold most dear.  Trying to understand how I can best make people feel empowered and meaningful and truly loved.  You are all so cherished. 

I don’t know about you, but when I’m making art, or sharing laughter and food and drink with my dearest friends, or peering into the smiling eyes of a lover who feels both comfort and excitement in my presence – that’s when I feel closest to God.  Call it what you want.  Love, Empathy, Kindness, mutual recognition and affection.  It can take your breath away.  “Holy Fuck, this person actually sees me, and wants the best for me, and I feel thrilling and dynamic and accepted in their presence.”  This is the stuff that dreams are made of.  It’s the Creator’s holy elixir, I suspect.  None of us know how much time we have left on this Earth.  So, try to be kind.  Try to be graceful, and wise.  Don’t let predators and bullies abuse you, or those you love, but otherwise treat everyone with as much respect and camaraderie as you can muster in any given moment.  We all know that this is the real path of truth and light, and authenticity. You don’t need me to tell you that.  Don’t let politicians and charming sociopaths turn brother against brother, and brother against sister.  Fight for those you love, but always remember that cruelty is not strength. Cruelty is never necessary, but strength is always necessary.  Be a protector, not a hateful, divided and broken soul.  Time is precious, as is the warmth and hope and joy of your friends and families.  Go to them, break bread with them.  Kiss your lovers.  Be playful.  Laugh and fuck and dance, and recognize every measure of grace.  And make art.  Paint pictures, makes movies, write songs and poems and novels.  Make things with your imagination. Your loved ones will thank you for it, in time, even if now they appear disinterested or busy with their own struggles.  Because art is meaning, right?  Meaning bestowed by beauty, grace, elegance, intelligence and wit.  And these times might seem incredibly dark and scary and confusing, but we're all in this together.  Our selves and experiences are so, so meaningful.  Be of good cheer, if you can, even in your darkest moments.  All this too shall pass.  It might sound like an empty phrase, but it's not.  Everything changes.  Everything and everyone is struggling towards Light, whether they know it or not.  We are immortal beings, so even death and time are no match for this radiant insight, this holy gift.  Because in the end, Love conquers All.     

The Favoured One

I am a damaged seer indeed, but I am not divided.  For I am a mirror of Thomas.  I am both brothers, slave and king, descent and ascent, and within this furnace I behold the very countenance of creation.  Genocides occur still, to dim your recognition of this force that dwells in your breast. And so I think of Shelley, and Smith.  This holy city; lost Babylon, glorious Jerusalem.  At Londinium I stand before these Gates of Heaven, unseen by most.  I walk the corners.  I pay tithes to ruined statues, those that still breathe though half dead, and who follow our Path of Grief with stone eyes of compassion. They speak to me as Smith unknowingly did two centuries ago, in his words.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Favoured are the true servants of love.  I claim nothing for myself.  Rape me, slay me, and I shall rise again.  Liars, I did not buy my way into the throne room of eternity.  For shame, that you would slay the seers and recast them as godless and black.  I Am godless, and black.  But I am not a monster, monsters.  I am the crossing, now and evermore.  Flesh lasts but a time.  Know who you are, and what you truly serve.  You cannot feast on our children.  You will not slay the Innermost. We Magi defy you, desolate ones.  We come to bring an end to your perpetual holocaust, this empire of prisons.  Wolf, they called me.  Well, liars, I bear the title gladly.  And now this wolf is loosed upon the world.

To my kith and brethren in truth and hope, I say beware these slavers and wraith-priests who would make a feast of all your dreams, fat on the flesh of your fire.  They are the sinister ones, not I.

I stand here at the heart of space and time, a solitary mage. And yet, I am not alone. My brothers and sisters are with me still.  Healers, teachers, fellow wolves of light.  We Magi come united, with singular purpose.  Emancipation.  Freedom for All.  Not a single soul abandoned.  Hear this, vampire kings.  The slain one who shines is not dead.  She stirs, rising from infinite darkness.  Channah, Reya, Kara. She who sang creation, she who birthed all gods.  She is come again, to rent the veil, to expose the sickness, to end this dominion of desecration.  

Behold, ye fallen.  The Grace of God cometh.

The Book of Acts

"And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?"

           -Acts of the Apostles 8:30

Inanna lives, I tell my kith and brethren. It is possible. It can be done. The Magi bequeath these secrets to all those with ears to hear and eyes to see. My name is Midnight. Once again I address the fallen. Once again I address the state. The rape gods and vampire kings. You cannot slay the Innermost. It has its guardians. We of the Crossing, of all tribes and faiths. You are not the only ones who can engineer conspiracy, Emperors. My brothers and sisters breathe together too. And we have been here since the very beginning. There is a voice in the fire. We listen, and create.  We are not simply Jews, Gentiles and Sorcerers. We are family. We are storytellers. And this is the Greatest Story Ever Told. Your time is nothing but a lie, soon to be exposed through these sacred acts of divine fire. So prepare yourself, because our time is now and evermore. 

The Book of Acts from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Golgotha

I think it's clear to most discerning individuals that we are living through an apocalypse of sorts, a revealing.  But also - and primarily - we are living within our heads.  Our thoughts, our imaginations.  I believe that it is here, at the place of the skull, that the real war rages.  However, our imaginations are not limited to that place behind our eyes.  Our imaginations are an infinite depth travelling through infinite depths.  But the skull is in some sense the symbol of our identities as sentient beings attempting to engage and negotiate with a living, haunted cosmos.  To be headless is to be liberated or annihilated, depending on circumstance and context.  We tell stories about the skulls of men and gods, and all the darkness and wonders therein.

None of us are mere mortals.  We are myriad; serpentine, angelic, older than the earth that sustains us. Some say there was a rupture, a breach, a fall.  Some say entities dark and monstrous came from beyond the veil, to remove the eyes and tongues of men.  I know this much; at least parts of these stories are true.  I have never and will never deny my own experiences.  I cannot speak authoritatively about the greater contexts in which these pieces fit, but I know the truths of the desolate places.  I've walked there myself, in vision and dream.  The wraiths know me now.  They call me Listen, and Midnight.  They say I'm a holy fool, and perhaps they're right.  But many of them stand now with the Ragged Magi.  Many of them know full well what is coming and have chosen to oppose the darkness that claimed and shaped them for so long.  Even in Hell we have choices.

I am just one among the many Magi.  We stand at the periphery.  We guard the gates.  Mind and Heart as one, skull and soul entwined.  We bear the ancient mark of the crossing; true love's kiss.  It is to this deepest radiance that we pledge our fealty.  We are your brothers and sisters, your children, your living and your dead.  We can speak the secret tongues of the Innermost, we can read the glyphs found etched in ruined dreamtimes.  And we will not let this realm fall to horror and blindness.  Not while Love is still living.  As lightning fell, so too shall it rise.  Here, at the place the war is waged. This place called Golgotha.

Golgotha from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Amanuensis

          Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

                                                                     - Romans 12: 21

I have walked through Hell.  I've passed through its ruined dreamtimes and felt the radiant darkness, the desolation, the barren stone beneath my feet.  It is a place devoid of all emotional warmth, all hope.  But there are no children there.  Only lost and callous ones who occasionally take the twisted forms of children, in mockery and lust.  Hell is simply a place the spiritually fallen go to endure themselves, to face themselves.  There are no children in Hell.  This realm is darker than that place. There are so many children here.  And the darkest wraiths of the abyss desire them most of all.  They ache to defile innocence.  I say to you now this place called Earth is darker than Hell.  Even now the wraiths and demons shriek in the frequencies, pounding desperately on the other sides of mirrors, demanding to be let in.

Let no man deceive himself.  The battle of good and evil is very real.  For those who doubt this, I ask you to look within yourselves.  We all know how to invoke the nameless one, the dark twin of creation.  I believe that one can invoke anything from the well of frequencies, with varying degrees of success.  Devil, Demiurge, Angel of the Abyss.  I don't really care what name it is given.  It is discussed or alluded to in all cultures, in a multiplicity of forms.  It isn't really about duality.  It's about stories, and storytellers.  It's about the subjective nature of an objective experience.  It's about knowing who and what you can become, depending on what you feed.  Do we feed that spirit of defilement, desecration and abuse, or do we commune with the better angels of our nature?  There are many ways to manifest a fiction, many ways to call forth certain stories from the well.  I am but a humble scribe in this war of imagination.  A simple messenger.  And though others would claim that I am lost and damned because I do not believe exactly as they believe, I have sworn myself to a higher calling.  I humble myself before what Man calls God.  The radiant fire, divine.  Mother and Father to all things.  I live to serve this sentient spirit of Love.  

And though I am scarred from my travels through realms hidden to most, my eye hath not darkened.  I hear the voice of my maker.  I know why I speak and seek as I do.  For the liberation of my brethren, and myself.  In this calling I claim not to speak for God, only to listen with as much diligence as my love for him can rouse.  Through pain and confusion I was once lost as the fallen are lost.  But I cried out, kindling the spark that dwells within.  And Grace came unto me, lifting me up from the desolate places.  I remembered the image and promise that I am, that we all are.  So I write, I create.  All flaws are my own, but I am earnest in my pursuits.  To those who call God by a different name, I say to you now is not the flame that animates me the very same that gives you life?  Our symbols, stories and tongues are varied, but our souls and spirits are forever connected.  In this connection it is evident to me that we are one family, scattered upon various shores.  It is magic and eternity that dwells in us.  I know of this.  My name is Listen, and Midnight, and I speak now with my Father.

Hear this, my children. The inbreath of spirit is imagination. The outbreath of spirit is the world, all worlds, eternally. We are slain and risen in each instant, made seamless in the continuity of God. And this meeting of imagination and world is the very image of God. Wheresoever God sinneth he sinneth against himself, in this fashion knowing and seeing all. God resides not only in the sky, or the earth, or the stars, but in the very heart of you. The slain and risen Christos; true love's kiss. When love did triumph over evil and rent the veil at the place of the skull. Never forsaken, child. For I dwelleth in you. No sin or virtue is hidden from me. I cry as you cry, weep as you weep. And so when you seek for something better, when you cry out sincerely in guilt and newborn desire to serve rather than harm, I am there. For the blood of your tears and lamentations is my blood. For I am in you. And I judge myself harshly since no ordinance or mystery is beyond me. I judge as a Creator must judge, from within. But I serve among you as must a man serve, diligently, with the promise and grace of I in you and you in I. This is your holy vessel, child of true love's kiss. This is your likeness fashioned in the image of me. The slain and ever risen spirit, of the heart, at the place of the skull. Know this, my children. None are forsaken by me, in me, or through me.   I am not bound by divine law, for I am the author of spirit. I dwelleth in you, lest you turn away from me. But not I from you. Knowing all tongues, all customs and secrets, I have fashioned you in the image of promise, sustained by grace. It is sufficient for thee, beloved one. Nothing is hidden from an immortal soul. All will be revealed, when again I gather up my children and smite that which has reigned wickedness and inequity over them. For I am your Father in Heaven, unknown to all but one. He that dwelleth in you. Upon this cornerstone is built the very foundations of paradise.

Amanuensis from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.