Sexual alchemy is a specific type of work with the sexual energy, but it does not necessarily involve sex. That begs the question, what is sexual energy without sex?

Since Freud, we have tended to assume that sex is at the bottom of many or all of our motivations. But, actually, a study of Freud’s work shows that even he believed our sexual force must be shaped and molded culturally in order to produce the set of behaviors and expectations we usually refer to as sex.

For example, on Freud’s theory, everyone begins life in a state of sexual chaos, which he called polymorphous perversity. In that stage, our libidinous desires move in every direction, to objects and animals and people of all genders more or less equally.  Later, says Freud, a boy develops an unconscious desire to kill his father and possess his mother. He called this the Oedipus Complex. Through the course of his development, the boy is supposed to resolve this complex by coming to identify with his father. Freud said that for girls, the same situation happens in reverse, with the Electra Complex.

Freud blamed many things he considered psychological and societal ills on the failure of a family to correctly mold the child so that he or she could grow up to engage in “normal,” marital sex.  In other words, even according to Freud, sex is not at the bottom of sex. Sex as we know it is not a given. Rather, sexual energy is at the bottom of sex! Sexual energy is the force behind all our passions and actions.

Sexual alchemy is concerned with the channeling of sexual energy in such a way as to break the human being free of hypnotism by mass forces. Sexual alchemy in particular involves the channeling of sexual energy inward and upward and with accessing, balancing, and marrying the male and the female parts of ourselves.

Each person of any sex or gender has male and female within them. Indeed, this is true on every level: physical, emotional, mental, energetically, and on up the scale of vibration. To learn to see these varying aspects of ourselves, to tap into them, and to use them to direct that force that moves and vivifies, not just our own bodies, but that of everything under the Sun, is the aim of sexual alchemy.

Notice that there is nothing in the description of sexual alchemy about sexual activity per se. Sex is a gateway to sexual alchemy, not the other way around. And sex is not the only gateway. Any mindful practice may be a gateway to sexual alchemy if undertaken correctly.

Adapted from a May 2011 Interview of Koyote the Blind on Chicano Highlights by KUCR Radio Personality Roberto “The Beto Man” Tijerina. Full audio of the interview may be found through the links above this article. Our thanks to East LA Revue Radio for providing the audio files.

Once you feel something that is intrinsically part of you is your enemy, and that it is shameful, and that it can only be exercised with permission of the elite, then they got you. Then they got you. Especially when you internalize this belief, when you make it your own, and when you yourself begin to censor your expression, censor your force. Then everything that you do is already controlled.

Every native culture sees no essential difference between what we do, what animals do, what trees do, what the wind does, what the volcano does. It’s all an expression of power, all an expression of life, all an expression of death.

We need to really know ourselves, really know the powers that we have. Instead of allowing this power to destroy and consume us, we need to be able to know it, contain it, and direct it. That is would be our salvation when it comes to sex, drugs, and power.

The title of an important book, the Popol Vuh, means the voice of the people. And it says there that the gods, after creating the world, were looking to complete their creation, and that to complete their creation they had to create a being who was capable of singing the sacred songs and of saying the names of the gods, because only then could the consciousness of the gods be invoked into creation. Only then would creation be complete.

Now, they say that in the process of the gods doing this, a demigod called Seven Macaw got an inflated ego and wanted to pose as the creator god, as the only god. He wanted to enslave humanity instead of allowing the humans to become what they were meant to be. He wanted to make them his personal slaves, and so he lied to them. He told them, “I am your god. I am the only god. Every other god is a demon.” And he told them, “You were created to multiply, to walk about the face of the Earth, to toil the soil, to build great houses, to build great empires, and to serve me, your god.” Now that sounds very much like the god of the Old Testament, the jealous god, the god who denies the existence of the other gods.

The Popol Vuh tells us that its function of the sexual force is not just to multiply, it is to be able to awaken, to play the divine game of the gods, to invoke the names of the gods, to dance the sacred dances. But when we’re told to use it only for reproduction, and that reproduction and the enjoyment of sex can only happen between a man and a woman, and in fact it can only happen with a man and a woman that have been sanctioned by the church, that’s a recipe for slavery.

There is something that I believe deeply, deeply in my heart, in my actions, in my thoughts and it’s that every person, every human being, has the intrinsic right to live as they will to live, to find out that which they came here to do, and to do that, and that means with their sexual force too. There are no restrictions that are given a priori. There is nothing on the face of the Earth that is by itself evil.

If a man loves a man that’s just as good and as sacred as a man loving a woman or a person deciding to not share their sexuality with anyone else, to dedicate it to the service of their own divinity and not reproduce, that’s perfectly acceptable. There is nothing wrong with not reproducing, nothing wrong with reproducing, nothing wrong with one partner, two partners, nothing wrong as long as everything is under the will of everyone participating. I am not going to condemn any of that. If you want to use your sexuality for your own evolution, for the higher purpose, that’s fine. And if you don’t want that for yourself, that is fine too. If all you want is to have children, have children. If you just want to pleasure yourself, just pleasure yourself. There is nothing wrong with that.

There is a scene in the movie The Crime of Father Amaro where this Catholic priest is having sex with one of the young women that came to the church. At one point of the movie he dresses her as the Virgin Mary, and she looks beautiful. They look into each others’ eyes, and they are in love, and they make love like that. I saw many people getting up and leaving the theatre at that moment because that was too much. Seeing a priest making love to an image of his divinity is too much, but how natural that is for the Hindu who loves his goddess and unites with her in orgasmic Samadhi.

We have been taught that sex is debased and evil. We have been taught that the Divine is sexless. Yet all the mystery schools and all the ancient religions tell us otherwise: that the God and the Goddess, that the Universe itself, is highly charged sexually speaking. Life is sexual. Nothing happens without that force. The Sun every second is exploding in orgasmic giving of life and light. The moon moves and swells and vanishes in sensual rhythms. Everything around us is Divine. Everything is sexual. It is the religious thought that makes it evil, debased. I challenge you to make Love to your Divinity, to find whatever is Divine and dedicate your orgasm to it, to him, to her, and you will see that nothing happens to you, that no Divinity will get mad at you.

There is a book that survived the European decimation of the Americas: the Popol Vuh. The book illustrates the mythological creation of the world and the ascension of humans towards divinity. It speaks of how to remember our own divine origin and what to do to take our place in the cosmic game of the gods. The Popol Vuh is the sacred story told by the Maya Quiche (from the Mayans residing south of Guatemala and Central America), and it means “The Book of the People.”

Curiously, this “book” was not a book at all when Father Ximenes encountered it among the Indians. It was not a written record at all, but passed on by the Maya Quiche as an exact oral tradition, pretty much the way in which Homer would recite the Iliad as he had memorized it, word for word in exact intonation and evocation of mood. Ximenes tried to preserve this important cultural gem by translating it into Spanish and recording it in written form.

Why is it called “the book of the people” when it’s not a book? The answer is in the Toltec origin of the mythology. The story can be traced back to the time of the Toltecs in Mexico. They claimed to have a “book” even though there is no evidence to support written records in that civilization. The book, however, was not an ordinary one. It was a table of astrological and mathematical vastness which contained the keys to time. They claimed to be able, with knowledge and this tool, to look into any event of the past, the present, or the future. This book, the Popol Vuh, is credited with the development of the Mayan calendar. The high priest would look at the Book and narrate an interpretation. This manner of usage explains the style of the written Popol Vuh, which starts by signaling the time before creation: “There it is, the empty vastness…” So the priest would point to the cluster of sacred symbols in the Book and begin the timeless narrative, the account of creation and how we came to be. So we hear about our divine origin and the destiny of our people among the heavens. Later, the poets and heralds would repeat the story word for word, and thus the Popol Vuh is created as we know it now. It is the book of the people, but the book is lost in antiquity. Only the voice remains, the voice that tells the story shown by the Book.

One of the puzzles of the ancient Toltec world lies in the fact that such an advanced civilization—reaching astonishing achievements in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, art, architecture, spirituality, etc.—managed to be the center and origin of two other empires (Maya and Aztec) all without having a written language!

Before the arrival of the Aztecs to Lake Texcoco, Teotihuacan was flourishing as a city that served, not only as the commercial, spiritual, and scientific center of the ancient world, but also as a functional architectonic representation of the cosmos. It was said that, by walking through the city in a certain order and in a certain mood and speed, a spiritual seeker could attune her body and mind to the cosmic truths embedded in the buildings and streets of Teotihuacan. They believed in the principle of resonance. If the city and its buildings were aligned to a higher cosmic geometry and architecture, then the human body would also align itself to that cosmic geometry (since the body itself is a small representation of the universe) and therefore achieve a vibrational resonance with the highest. It is quite easy to imagine, therefore, these master builders imbuing their buildings and roads with esoteric principles and spiritual correspondences. What is hard to understand is how they managed to pass on this information, rule a city with vast reaches and influence, run a sophisticated teaching institution which hosted peoples from different lands and cultures, and subsist as the most powerful and complex economy of its continent without ever keeping written records, books, or official documents.

This situation is quite uncommon, especially among pyramid-builder civilizations. The Egyptians, for example, whose pyramids are dimensionally and functionally very similar to the Toltecs’, were exacting and fastidious record keepers; so were the Incas, Mayas, and Aztecs. Only the Toltecs stand alone with their stone works and devoid of paper, papyri, or even hieroglyph carvings.

This puzzle is far from solved, yet it offers an interesting entry to the exploration of the nature of the Toltec world. Let’s look at some of the mundane and obvious possibilities. In the first place, most illiterate cultures have remained primitive and simple, albeit spiritually advanced in many cases, when it comes to their scientific and administrative attainment. They do not build cities and empires, nor do they develop complex maps of the universe that inform both their science and mythology. The first possibility to consider is that the Toltecs indeed had a written language which remains undiscovered. A written language is easier to find if it is engraved in cuneiform style on the tombs of kings and pillars of stately buildings. With time, these remain while the decomposing papers tend to vanish without a trace.

This possibility brings a joke to mind:

It is said that the Italians announced a monumental discovery: an underground network of copper wires under Roman roads, suggesting the possibility that indeed the mighty Roman empire had at one time used a telephone system that kept Caesar in touch with his soldiers and vassals. After this discovery was made public, the Germans did not want to lag behind and immediately released their own findings: tracings of optic fiber material, which clearly suggested that the ancient Teutonic civilizations had attained not only telephone capabilities but also video and data, making it clear that the ancestors of Germany had attained television and telephone technologies. The Mexicans, not wanting to lag behind dug and dug and dug under their pyramids. They dug everywhere without finding anything at all—not a trace of copper wires, optic fiber, or any other artificially made conductor of electronic data. Happily, they immediately released these results and presented them as unquestionable proof that the ancient Toltecs had achieved wireless phones and satellite technology.

Could it be, as the joke suggests, that the Toltecs indeed had a form of written communication that has not survived? Or perhaps they took it intentionally into obscurity? If indeed there was a written language, its fate is perhaps connected to the fate of the population of Teotihuacan itself.

When the Aztecs founded the city of Tenochtitlan in the 13th century, Teotihuacan was already in ruins and deserted. When the Aztecs encountered that deserted city, they were so amazed by its beauty and glory that they dubbed it “teotihuacan” or “the place where gods are forged.” Indeed, the city had been designed to evolve humans into gods. The cultural remnants of the Toltecs had survived, and they infiltrated Aztec and Mayan culture and religion, but the actual Toltec cities of Tula and Teotihuacan had been long deserted. Some of the stories say they had transcended this world and successfully attained a passage to somewhere else, beyond the confines of this material existence. Others, finding evidence of fire in many buildings suspect their end was not quite so transcendent. Toltec descendants tell tales of masters going to their death in fiery explosions of light or in luminous glows that quietly take the being to the next stage of evolution. Similar speculations abound for a city that the Mayas constructed and then abandoned as soon as it was over. Was it transcendence, plague, war, or exodus? We will explore these possibilities in future articles. In them, we will explore the possibility of a written language that could have disappeared as a casualty of human disaster or perhaps even have been concealed intentionally. After that, we’ll explore the possibility of other forms of record keeping the Toltec might have used.

In the ancient days, the Toltec priests would Talk. They would Tell of that which they Saw. According to legend, the priests of that time possessed an instrument of special vision, the Popol Vuh, Voice of the People.

This book, called Popol Vuh, after which the written classic Popol Vuh is named, is not a book that can be seen. However, it is said that through the Popol Vuh, a priest would peer and See. And he would Talk about what he saw, expounding on the chosen element through a special form of story-telling.

For instance, there is a story of the Tooth of Seven Macaw. Seven Macaw lived as a lord, on account of his tooth made of jade and other magnificent adornments. This grand one was of fiery scarlet feathers and of yellow-green feathers that were sleek as a snake’s skin, with a mouth of glittering jewels, and eyes of gold and silver. The hiss of his feathers as he flew through the air could madden an ordinary person.

The people were weak at that time; they could not easily see the real Sun or Moon. There had been a veil placed between them and the true Crown of Heaven. Seven Macaw took advantage, pretending to the people that he had made the world. He told the people that he was the Sun; that he was the Moon. He accounted himself a god on his lordly looks. He ordered the people to worship him.

A set of hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, vowed to strike down the usurper Seven Macaw. They shot him with a blowgun as he perched atop a tree of yellow fruit, taking out one of his teeth. Seven Macaw was injured and pained. The twins brought him down to earth later by disguising themselves and successfully scheming to replace the tooth with a kernel of maize-corn. Once Seven Macaw loses his jewels, his gold, and his silver, he no longer commands the people’s awe.

The Toltec artist Koyote the Blind has compared the Toltec priests’ ancient “instrument of vision” with the Aleph in The Aleph, the Kabbalistic short story of Jorge Luis Borges. The Aleph, though only perhaps an inch in diameter, allows the viewer to see all things at once. It, too, is an instrument of vision. Interestingly, Borges’ narrator distinguishes between a “false Aleph,” something like a scrying or gazing stone, a “mere optical instrument,” and the true Aleph, something else not named of which those instruments are facsimiles and substitutes.

Those hero twins who act in unison as embodied messengers of the gods, bringing fire to humanity by knocking out the tooth of an overwhelming tyrant, also demonstrate the replacement of a true Kabbalistic principle by a more tangible substitute.
The alleged fact that the priests made use of an instrument that cannot be seen makes it difficult to shed light on a scientific and artistic story-weaving practice when we ourselves live in a cocoon of images. The pompous Carlos Argentino of Borges’ story describes “the modern man” in this way: “‘I view him,’ he said with a certain unaccountable excitement, ‘in his inner sanctum, as though in his castle tower, supplied with telephones, telegraphs, phonographs, wireless sets, motion-picture screens, slide projectors, glossaries, timetables, handbooks, bulletins…’ He remarked that for a man so equipped, actual travel was superfluous.” Might it be that “actual travel” refers to the voyages of the priest who employs the true Aleph or the invisible Popul Vuh, as opposed to images such as those presented as real by the usurper Seven Macaw? And if so, what is the Popol Vuh?

Deep consideration of the findings of modern neuroscience and psychology reveal that what passes for reality is constructed by our nervous system. The Toltecs discuss the assemblage point, that lens of consciousness that filters from the totality of energy a particular, narrow band of frequencies. The assemblage point is a tuner that dials a particular version of “reality”. In all cases, however, the selection is artificial—or artful, if made with intent. Something we call self chooses a set of impressions, but those impressions, those phenomena are never reality. For Self is beyond any particular selection and therefore provides the foundation of the world.

The Toltec priests perfected the art of selection and Telling, of dialing in one or more of the basic principles of world-construction and of expounding upon its nature. They knew how to harness desire and bring fire from the gods.

Magick may be understood as the art and science of recovering and fulfilling one’s original intent for this lifetime. To practice magick, thus understood, is to deviate from the ordinary current of human life. It is to refuse to be pushed along by the tide of familial and societal pressures toward customary goals, to refuse to be lured into regularly releasing the pressure through periodic escapism, whether through sex, sports, ice cream, or some combination of the three. Instead, to practice magick is to realize, through sustained and unremitting effort, a deeper, more difficult, and more alive way of being.

To practice magick is to pursue a long journey of researching one’s own body, mind, heart, and sexuality; of uncovering clues to the mystery of one’s own forgotten intent; of mastering and unifying all parts of oneself in fulfilling that intent. Magick is a highly intentional engagement with all of life.

An online, interactive magickal theory study group and lecture course is underway. It is free of charge, though donations are welcome. If you are interested, email messenger@koyotetheblind.com.

The Lifetime as Seen By the Daemon (Audio)

The day my body was conceived I condensed around it like a suffocating cloud. No one saw anything. My wings made distant mumbling like an unwatched television set in the kitchen.

Night after night I floated on my side in the interstices between the frames, a worm in an uneaten apple.

The blue-white light of the television in another dimension flickered–my eyelids. Canned laughter and white-black storm of static between the channels are my voice.

Nothing is a coincidence. The chance panning out and in, the closeups, the flash of a new scene, the commercial break–all of those unnoticed, background televents that while away time when no one is paying attention–these are my movements and my mischief.

My breath is the black beetle who overhears the family noises from inside the wall and cares not at all.

Dim, sleepy streetlights suddenly turning off or on on a backwater, suburban street where everyone watches the same television programs inside their huddling houses shimmers as my magnificent skin.

The airplanes over head? There is no word for that.

The mop-headed, sandy-haired, side-parted, big-mustached weatherman with the wide-lapelled, double-breasted tan corduroy jacket is my oracle, but only at that moment that the spotlight fades and they go to commercial. He’s only thinking about a beer with the new secretary.

The diffuse cloud of boxelder beetles fly my fingernails.

Deep in the daydream woods by the meaningless creek behind the house, I stare back dispassionately, refusing to speak. The German Shepherd in the cage barks madly at me. His owners yell at him to shut up.

The Art of the Warrior (Audio)

We live in a world filled with movement, life, death, joy, pain—an intense chaos. The forces of nature are profound and powerful. The societies we have been born into, the ones we re-create moment by moment, drive us, push us, and pull us. We make every attempt to secure a sense of order, of peace, of harmony in the midst of the chaos. We attempt this by devising and exercising mechanisms of control. We build personalities over time, ways of being in the world, ways of dealing with the intensity of the fluctuations. We fight desperately to survive, to understand, to gain stability, in this game we call life. After enough practice, we become experts at dealing with this seemingly chaotic reality. We maneuver through it like machines, desensitized to the underlying reality, conflicted, divided.

The mind is infinitely adjusting, constantly seeking to dissect and digest the intense vibrations of everything and nothing—so much so that we begin to live in the mind. The mind takes notice of every movement. It fills in the gaps of the reality we perceive. The mind, if allowed to dominate, taints our perceptions with meaning, with categories, with expectations.

We live, however, in a reality that is changing, shifting much too rapidly for our mental constructions to endure. Sooner or later we come to a moment when we encounter that which is far too unsettling. We are faced with a reality that disarms us, that wakes us up even if only for a split second. We suddenly feel the intensity of all the chaos falling upon us like a wave that drowns and destroys everything in its path. We can no longer understand or dissect or construct. We are naked in those moments, vulnerable, beautiful. Momentarily experiencing the burning of an inexplicable reality, we are overwhelmed by a transcending emotion. We can either choose to be alive in that small death, to bathe in the beauty of the floodgates, to expand in every direction and allow the flooding fire to burn deeply or we can choose to desperately hold on to what we’ve built. We can die a horrible death this way, never perceiving the beauty of such a moment.

When this momentary death occurs, when the world begins to fall apart before us, when the chaos becomes too overwhelming, there is an opportunity to penetrate the underlying unified stream, the ever-present force, the unwavering clarity that penetrates all.

But how can you adjust to these new bursts, to these new pathways being formed? When the edges of the world become thin, when the backdrops of a familiar world slowly disintegrate, how can you keep moving? How can you allow yourself to feel deeply and be unmoved? Can the intense fear disappear? Or can you simply learn to move in awareness with it, walking towards the bright emptiness with fear on the side as a shadow?

There is a formula, a formula that can be shared but never given. It is already within. The formula, the method, involves a deep stillness that comes only from within. As the world, as the mind swims in the chaos, the powerful force knows exactly how to direct itself. This inner knowledge is never easily accessible, for it has been perceived as lost, almost non-existent, incoherent. But you can come to feel its force as all the elements within begin to unify. This force lies in the heart, in the very center of the being. It is the stream that connects and communicates through higher emotions. When you can see the fears of the mind and its attempts as simple background noise; the divisions and categories as illusions; and the chaos as penetrable, that force within becomes clearer. When you can hold true to intent and never deviate, you begin to strengthen an inner order, to create an inner unification, and through this inner clarity you can walk through the world with deep intensity and unmoving lucidity.

The Sun Dreamer (Audio)

In the same day the voices of the eastern dreamers echo, “Birth to the sun,” and the voices of the western dreamers echo, “Death to the sun.” This cycle of existence reveals birth, growth, death, unknown darkness, and rebirth. Yet, the one who dreams the dreamer sees there is no birth, no change, and no death–she only sees the sun’s consciousness as continuous.

We, like the sun, never die, never change, and are never born. We continue our voyage through each day from the heart of the Great Spirit emanating from the sun. This is the one current and element covering everything that we see, and out of this current is where the one who dreams the dreamer takes her shape and form.

Archetype is the collection of forces, of forms, of symbols, which rule, not only the subconscious, but the workings of the human organs: life and death; day and night. And all the life of this conscious monkey is being operated behind the scenes by these powerful ancient symbols–archetypes. The archetypes are not known directly in an intellectual way. They are encountered through dreaming, through religious experiences, and through the cultural life of people.

During my childhood years, I realized at one point that every day of my existence there was always a volcano somewhere around me. And without me thinking of volcanoes at all, I had to see one every day, just as there is always a sky, there is always a sun, somewhere in your day-to-day experience. There is always a night, always loud noises, always fear, always an unknown, always a refuge. There are always those forces around us which we do not control, which we do not understand. They’re simply a constant presence, a certain and unknown influence.

Those, in the life of the psyche, are archetypes. Those hidden forces which are the language of the subconscious: those are archetypes. The emotional responses we feel and act out are definitely being shaped by archetypes. It is no secret, for example, that I consciously use movies in their treatment of archetypal language to shape my own consciousness as a magician. The magician invokes gods, goddesses, forces, eternal forces of nature–not because you have to believe in them in a naive way, but because they are ways in which our consciousness gives shape and direction to those unfathomable forces around us.

Joseph Campbell describes how to learn a story of The Hero’s Journey provides a blueprint to the life of an individual. Like Luke Skywalker, this simple son of a farmer who dreams with exploring the universe. One day he discovers that he is not the son of a farmer, that he is a Skywalker, that he is the son of a Jedi master, and this brings him to a new level of understanding of himself.

And that’s part of The Heroes Journey.  He goes through his training, mastery of self, and comes to confront his own shadow. He sees that his nemesis, his enemy, his devil, is himself. And in confronting himself, he has to decide, just as any of us have to decide, whether he will now allow the fear to rule, and that means giving in to the dark force. It is fear that my family will be destroyed, that I will be harmed, that leads me to arm myself and wage war against all the enemies. Or, is he going to listen to the voice of the wise ones and embrace the Force, transcending fear and becoming a Jedi?

So the story is told in many ways. It is the same story of the twin Mayan sorcerers who discover they are not farmers, that they are ball players, and therefore are meant to embody this ritual, this doing of the Gods, to bring together the lords of Xibalba against the lords of the Sky and pitch them in the battle of the game of ball, and in this sense, return the universe to the way it’s supposed to be-to defeat the lords of evil and then play ball with their heads. There are different ideas of what is good. Nonetheless, The Hero’s Journey is the same. It’s the same.

And once you understand that Hero’s Journey as an archetype, you recognize it in stories of Krishna, Jesus, Moses, Dionysus, Luke Skywalker, Bill and Ted, Ferris Bueller (you know him: all the bikers and the gangsters and sluts and jocks, they all think he’s a righteous dude).

The Hero’s Journey, then, is an archetype. It doesn’t matter which story we learn from which culture; there would be the same type of messages that we can use to bring and understand into our own actions, and to face our life in that mythical way. And what is it that the magician does if not that, if not come to embody in his own actions, his words, decisions, day to day, embrace and embody the Magician, Magus, this Man or Woman of Will?

The archetypes are not just external beings independent of me. They exist in me. They are part of the makeup of my psyche. My psyche and body are the same, so they’re part of the makeup of my body, my organs, my life.

But the archetypes also exist outside of me. They are not just subjective psychological features. They exist as part of the biosphere of the life of the planet. The sun is the sun inside my body and outside, not just for me, but for the planet itself–planetary consciousness sharing this archetype with its microorganisms: us.

As above, so below.

To learn the language of the archetypes can be done through the sacred telling of stories, the sacred theater, sacred cinema, the dances, the movements, or it can be done through the rituals of magick, through the songs of the shaman. The archetypes can be used to adapt and harmonize yourself to your culture, your tribe, or they can be used to take that other journey.

That’s the thing, the same force that you may use to transform yourself also shapes your consciousness to make you into a member of the tribe, that brainwashing that happens after you’re born. They put all these fears, all these concerns, all these ways to conform—programs—into you, so that you stay with the tribe, so that you’re safe. Because if you don’t learn to stay with the tribe, you’ll go into the jungle and be eaten by me or any other jungle animal. They imprint those in you so that you belong to the tribe. Any time you want to deviate yourself from that, there is hell to pay. And you’re riddled with fears of the afterlife and fear of the Gods, and you have to do your little rituals when there’s a storm and when you masturbate and when you have evil thoughts–usually about someone masturbating during a storm.

Whereas all of us are programmed into the tribe, a magician takes the same elements of programming and applies it with intent. The mind has to be programmed. The question is, do you program it according to intent of the tribe, or do you program it with your own intent?

You can’t escape the brain washing. It’s either going to be done by the tribe, whatever the tribe is, or by you as a magician. The tribe can be your church, school, spiritual group, or political faction. It doesn’t matter. It could be your cheerleading friends. It doesn’t really matter. All of those are applying the same techniques, the same expressions.

Now, a magician is one that takes all these forces and distributes them in accordance to intent.

Most of the archetypes we encounter and most formulas are designed to keep you in the tribe, to keep you safe. That’s one path that you can take. And most of us take this path.

There’s also the other path, which is away from the tribe to the jungle, into the desert, up the mountain, down the volcano, turn left at the grocery store. There you are. There is the other journey which is not of the tribe, and that has its own archetypes.

All are archetypes, language of the subconscious. To learn to take that journey, that’s taboo. That’s taboo.

Starfleet Captain Koyote the Blind

Koyote the Blind is an Hablador (Master Storyteller) in the 10th-century Toltec tradition. He is also a Thelemic Magician, head of the Ox and None Clerkhouse within the McMurtry / Cornelius line of the A.’.A.’.