Photo by COPPERTIST WU via pexels.com
by Christopher Penczak, edited by Tina Whittle
In the heart of the mysteries, we discover that we are both the lover and the beloved. We are the hunter and the hunted. We are the seeker and that which is sought, realizing Tat Tvam Asi, the Hindu aphorism often translated as “Thou Art That,” a concept made more famous in the West due to the work of Joseph Campbell. Different traditions use different stories and symbols, but it is in the union of paradox we find that mystery.
Life feeds life in the Wheel of the Year. Death is about another form of life, the power to regenerate and renew and return. A central mystery symbol in many traditions, Witches and Christians alike, is the sacrament, consuming something sacred and integrating it. You are what you eat. And when you eat something that has gone through its own alchemical process, like bread dying to rise again with yeast or wine where grapes are buried in a casket and give rise to a spirit, you integrate a level of alchemical wisdom. This is a key to alchemical or magickal medicines. You consume the magickal process as well as the substance.
In the Egyptian Pyramid texts, which are divided into sections referred to as “utterances,” the Cannibal Hymn utterance is a fascinating portion of the magick of the journey of death and initiation. In it, the king on this journey of transformation eats the gods themselves, their hearts, bones, marrow, lungs, magick, and spirit. Many have interpreted this as an ancient cannibalism of predynastic Egypt, enshrined in this vision, though most today believe it to be allegorical. He eats of the red and the green, which can be the flesh and vegetation, or the two kingdoms of Egypt, unifying upper and lower Egypt. To all of us, it is also the unification of the material and spiritual realms. The magick of consumption, ritually or in vision, has always been a part of magick.
Today we consume much more. We are in a consumer culture, devouring ceaselessly, but not always food. Our diet also includes art, music, poetry. We feast with our eyes, ears, noses, and hands as well as our tongues. We describe non-organic systems interfacing with organic beings, such as social media and the internet, as media ecosystems and environments. We consume content generated by others. We often feel compelled to create our own content for others to consume, with a wide range of motives, both conscious and unconscious. There is a certain reciprocity. Much of the content (though monetized by some in the form of commercials) is seemingly offered for free, but the most popular is often a regurgitation of others’ ideas, and while mildly entertaining, is most often simple distraction. Content that purports wisdom is available, but muddled with a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding, as it often reaches us not directly from the source of the wisdom, but instead third, fourth, and fifth hand, cut up into attractive bite-sized pieces without context. If we are what we eat, what are we becoming?
In this cycle, we become the devourer, mindlessly scrolling, yet taking in all manner of information. While gems in the rough exist, we sometimes mistake the consumption for some manner of accomplishment. When we produce content, often with very little expertise or context and from un-lived experience, we become the devoured, and feel good when we are wanted by others, acknowledged and appreciated, but feeling the pressure to always do more and more, as the appreciation—and satisfaction—is fleeting. If we can rise above it, we can find we are in a pattern that is ultimately feeding large parasitical corporations that are not really making much of value to the world, but have somehow convinced us to make commercials of our lives, fodder of our lives, for them to use to sell us things. And this has grown in a dominant pattern of our culture. If you don’t participate, you are disconnected from family, friends, peers and the culture around, out of the loops of language and cultural context.
What does this mean to the occultist, the Witch, the magician? Our challenge is, as ever, to return to the sacred. Those seeking will dabble and play with magick, with mixed results due to this mixed quality of information. Some will parse out what works and what doesn’t, then find better sources. They’ll consume more, but will perhaps move from online posts to books with a fuller context, and then older books with a proven history, and then mentors, courses, and groups. They might even find in-person community. Some then take a little knowledge and success and build their own brand, developing a sense of self through the eyes of others, and use their experience to help others. Some for good reasons, others with less pure, and often unconscious, motivation. Some may make actual contact with higher, deeper, wiser forces, and become consumed themselves, not by the masses for likes and shares of a post, but consumed by other powers.
Some of those powers are harmful. On a higher level, occult traditions talk about predatory and adversarial spirits. Gurdjieff was famous for warning people that we are “food for the Moon” and need to break our conditioning to no longer be consumed by the Moon. Yet when we are continually participating in cycles online of creation and consumption, we forget that we are feeding larger corporations who ultimately benefit from the commercials we make of our lives. These corporations provide the space, but do not really add to the creativity, the actual content, or the advancement of ideas and arts. They are parasitical upon us all, yet somewhat invisible in our day-to-day use. When we boast about being more conscious or having our values in alignment with our actions in the world, we often forget these invisibles forces. Beyond the corporations, there are naturally parasitical entities that feed upon fear, anger, jealousy. They are not evil, but they are as detrimental as parasites in the home or physical body.
Many face this by becoming something the world cannot consume. They refuse to be content. In the media world, they disengage. On a spiritual level, they might become insular. Often this is the archetype of the Witch. How many say (ironically on social media) that they wish nothing more than a Witch’s hut in the woods and to remove themselves from all civilization. Few do, however. Though I applaud the initial impulse, isolation from all can result in closing down to healthy inner world contacts. Or it might be the exact thing necessary to open the door and invite them in, the proverbial forty days in the desert. At some point, though, the wandering prophet must return from the wild and engage with their people.
Some of those powers are helpful. They are emissaries of a higher plane, and ultimately aid you in the integration of the ego, as you embody more of the higher self. The work becomes transpersonal, the online presence a helpful tool at times, but not an identity. A process that is infinite is revealed, and you enter into the greater mysteries of initiation.
Visio Smaragdina in his X (Twitter) post on Sep 23, 2024 wrote:
“You start to dabble in ancient magic, casting spells for your personal benefit. You start to get some results…and have many failures (but you don’t talk about those). You begin to think you know what you’re doing. You voraciously consume the content of courses, books, online ‘communities’. You posture and pontificate, reveling in your new-found knowledge, lording it over the newbies. You could repeat this process unto death.
“However, if you are one of the lucky ones, you receive an esoteric transmission, a spiritual wake up call. In an instant you receive a ‘download’, and you know for the rest of your life, that you’ll be absorbing, decoding and unfolding what that means. You stop being a Consumer because you’ve become the Consumed; an integral part of something bigger, more expansive and infinitely mysterious. Everything you now do is an act of spiritual service, because the real spiritual work is not about us at all.” — @SmaragdinaVisio
Often these forces are frightening at first. Dragons, whales, and serpents in the deep, devouring you. Psychologically described as the unconscious. Magickally described as the forces of the Underworld, of hell. The monster is often revealed to be the Ourobouros, the serpent devouring its own tail. Is this the ultimate symbol of the eternal mystery, or the sign of the vicious unending circle that leaves you trapped?
Philosophical entertainer Alan Watts said in The Wisdom of Insecurity:
“We shall then have a war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. The war must be utterly futile and frustrating—a vicious circle—because it is a conflict between two parts of the same thing. It must lead thought and action into circles which go nowhere faster and faster. For when we fail to see that life is change, we set ourselves against ourselves and become like Ourobouros, the misguided snake, who tries to eat his own tail.”
Like all things, it depends on your perspective, your consciousness, when you approach it. In the Egyptian traditions, we see the Mehen Serpent in the 12th Hour of the Duat, before dawn, cycling regeneration of the Sun and restoration of fertility and creativity. The Ourobouros can be found in the tomb of King Tut, among others. It became part of the alchemical tradition, starting with Zosimos of Panopolis, and from there developed a complex system of symbols, sometimes involving a winged and non-winged dragon chasing each other. We see the twin serpents in the staff of Hermes, the Caduceus, another alchemical symbol of polarity and union. A serpent was used as a rope to turn the cosmic axis and churn the oceans of milk that yield treasures, poisons, and the goddess Lakshmi in Hindu myth. Dragons are seen in the lines of force of the Earth, but also in places of disaster and earthquake. Serpents are both symbols of wisdom, and later symbols of evil and deception, as in the more conservative interpretations of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
When you pick a side, head or tail, you enter into a vicious circle than one cannot win. When you realize it’s one thing—hunter and hunted, lover and beloved, seeker and sought—you integrate its wisdom.
In this seemingly vicious cycle of consumption, can we become more conscious? The initiate uses whatever tools are available and works in whatever environment is present. The key is to not be controlled by the tools, the external, and to instead connect with the internal and inner world contacts of spirit. The artificial cycle of media might be framed as electric, the hallmark of an Aquarian Age. While not the exchange of breath between the animal and plant world, carbon dioxide and oxygen, there is exchange. When I look at the rapid changes of the world, I think of a wisdom teaching shared with me by a past teacher: “Everything serves the Goddess.” My teachers often added, “Everything serves the Goddess, whether it knows it or not.”
There are no spare parts in the universe. Everything has a function in the greater whole. Some function better than others, but everything is part of a greater unfolding pattern. For Qabalists, this is sometimes described as the vision of Yesod, the Vision of the Machinery of the Universe. How do these current changes serve the vision, and how can we use them in the most conscious expression as magicians? Time will tell. For now, be as conscious as you can when devouring, and as careful as you can when you allow yourself to be devoured. Live and integrate it. Use each in the quest of the mysteries.
Note: Special thanks to the inspiration from Visio Smaragdina and various posts by others involving Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell tidbits on the dragon/whale for inspiring this article. Social media can be helpful, thoughtful, and inspiring!