‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…’
What, truly, is the divide from believers and non-believers? The heaven bound and the damned? I should think it is something more significant than mere belief in an otherworldly God—one that isn’t here, one that speaks without words and yet isn’t silent.
The foundation for any ritual or ceremony is silence. Why is this? Think of a pianist, who sits, their back an arrow upward with pliable wrists and demanding fingers, resting just so above the keys, before their performance besides an awaiting audience. The audience waits on the pianist and the pianist waits on… what, exactly? A feeling, a stirring, a whisper, a shade of color to emerge in his exhalation, suddenly, before he erupts into the piece?
In every magickal system worth studying, the first lesson, the principle upon which the height of one’s powers rests upon, is his aptitude for stillness. This is often called meditation, but this summons images of austere, legs-crossed, stoic-faced abandonment of action. Not quite what the great mysteries mean by stillness, is it, when we consider some Eastern apprehensions of mastery—Wu Wei, effortless action, flow state. We see that athletes understand their bodies and their movements well, in fact being an athlete is nothing but a great understanding of how their body moves, with certain contexts, constraints, and limitations both internal and external. There certainly is a genius, for example, that translates between how a ballerina dances and how she acts, in the rest of her life—which is the height of grace; a meritocratic nobility that appears alongside inherited nobility but isn’t quite the same thing.
So we need to ask ourselves—what is faith? I will tell you, the ballerina and the pious monk are kindred spirits. One moves and the other does not, yet they share a complete submission to… what, exactly? In biblical terms, to the commandments. In dance terms, to technique. In musical terms, to form.
But where is this grace, this piety, this virtuoso located? Is it in the commandments? The technique? The form? Not quite. The spirit of the monk, the ballerina, and the virtuoso all express themselves through their submission to an external structure which allows static energy to become kinetic without tail-spinning into degradation, decadence, or futility. The monk learns to speak by virtue of scripture; the dancer learns to dance by virtue of rhythm and lines; the virtuoso learns to play by virtue of musical form (rhythm, melody, harmony, et al). Recall—first, silence. Then, rule-set. Next, and finally, perhaps, mastery—which moves without thought and is the height of grace, beauty, piety (goodness).
‘It is grief that develops the powers of the mind…’
After a heartbreak, it is a ritual we perform, for some of us, to retreat, withdraw, let us return to being nothing but a memory for other people, and no longer a presence. Perhaps we sit and think—of things past and things never to come. Of love lost and a heaven that could never be ours. This is natural and perhaps even necessary, for a time, but this too is a thing we need to abandon in order to return to presence. For what, for why, for who? This is not quite ours to know. We have those things but we don’t know their name. They appear alongside and within us but, were you to ask an old man, for instance, the meaning of life, he still might tell you, hey, kid, I don’t know. This isn’t a sort of ignorance on his part, and he certainly does not lack experience. He has loved, he has lost. He has given, and he has taken. He has destroyed, abandoned, forgotten. He has been destroyed, abandoned, and forgotten. Yet, still, he remains, and when you ask him, again, for the meaning of life, it is not with words he shares the truth with you.
Does the old man cry? Perhaps, but not in front of anyone else. Does the old man laugh? Indeed, and with and for you.
How do people dance? The girl appears on a stage and stands, in wait, for the song—the catalyst, the opening of rhythm, the ignition, and she suddenly plunges like a knife into a beating heart, and her beauty into you, into a movement. This is the result of repetition, and imitation of technique, until it marks her soul, and then allows any expression thereafter to be, yes, Wu Wei, effortless action, flow state…
How does the pianist play? Muscular wrists and fingers and straight back, in lived-out remembrance of years of practice, and then, at once, again, for you.
How does the monk pray? In silence, in wait, in solitude. Knees bare to floor, eyes closed, head bent. In Catholic churches, I always found it funny that the bits of wood that emerge as a place for your knees to rest upon during prayer was typically padded. It seems to me that it would be much more honest if the pads were removed, and the prayer returned to its rightful state—one demanding your submission, your pain, your observance, your pain…
My friends!
Do you see? Do you know?
Take your time for heartbreak, for prayer, for technique. But you must remember to return yourself to what you once were, in remembrance, and in wait, for that song which has never stopped playing. If you pause your dance, you must do so as nature does, in Winter, in remembrance and anticipation of summer. A man who is pale in the Summer as an oath to Winter is a strange man indeed, and not one who is in accordance with World.
The surfer is perhaps the wisest man of all, alongside the ballerina. Motion, flux, rhythm is alive, and the man who travels it is lit afire, even as he cannot name, constrain, or possess this movement—he submits to it, he remembers it, he anticipates it…
And what do we call this? Faith…
What do I ask of you (and nothing more)? Keep your fire alive.
Spring is a time of renewal, and Summer a time of having been returned. Perhaps this is your time to return to what you once were. You pay homage to others, yes, but what about yourself? If one’s fire spreads thin, perhaps it is not wise to spread it any further, but instead to gather it close, so it might bellow again. By means of this, who knows what may come our way, again? I always thought the French phrase for climax was funny—la petite mort… little death. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that this is the means by which life begins?