I seem to be circling around again, revisiting past topics. Reason: the assignment this month for my class was reading and meditating about protective shields and talismans, and making charms. I’m required to make a charm and infuse it with intent, which brought me back to the issue of beneficial, protective and wonderful spirits being laden with the false label of “demon” because,
(1) Renaissance-era christians didn’t translate the Greek designation “daemon” (i.e., spirit) properly – the rise of humanism during the Renaissance was inspired by the translation of ancient Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, near eastern etc., documents and papyri, and
(2) the sadistic viciousness of the Vatican and their inquisitors prevented anything other than circumspection and secrecy; magi from this time period – one eye fixed nervously on the fate of men such as Giordano Bruno - needed to easily defend their works if needed, and what better way than to point at their continued use of the wrong translation of the Greek word for spirit as proof of their genuine piety. (“See? I’m on YOUR side!”)
My perfect example has always been Enoch’s so-called “fallen angels” and the incubus/succubus who, I’ll be the first to admit, may include spiritual beings whose readings on the “Morality-O-Meter” may be a negative number, but you can’t assume that this is true of all of them, or even the vast majority of them. If you read the lists of things these beings are known for, rarely do you find mention of murder and mayhem. Primarily it’s answering questions and teaching … or helping you with love issues. Hardly the sort to send you running for the nearest fire alarm.
It turns out that most of those are cheerful, friendly, loving, lusty spirits whose only interest is to make you happy. REALLY happy. Dancing-in-the-rain singing “On The Street Where You Live” happy. Bad guys? Hardly. In fact, they’re better to have around than many human beings, when you think about it. But because some christian heard the word sex and lost his or her marbles in prurient, squealing horror, they’re all painted with the same brush.
I truly believe that is the job of THIS generation to un-paint them, so to speak. Most of them deserve to be revisited, with an open mind.
The sad part is that, following in the heels of these sexually repressed and thus sadly perverted christians are the (see my previous posts on this) wiccan twinkies with pursed lips (or as I like to call them, the church ladies with pointy hats) squealing “Witches shalt NOT do this and that!” and the guys (they always seem to be nerdy guys) who thought they’d rebel against mommy and daddy by reading Anton LaVey in the basement, not realizing that the only thing they’re accomplishing is reinforcing the christian rule-book in their creation of opposites. In other words, they buy into the christian list of “demons” by invoking and worshiping them as demons. None of them stop and question the judeo-christian point of view at all. But then – as I said – they’re all in dark basements, sulking and whining and pretending to be bad boys. Sad, really.
The same may be true of the retelling of the King Solomon mythology: he obviously was quite familiar with magick and the use of invocation, and the story of him invoking all sorts of beings to help him build his temple is well known. So, many of us are familiar with faux Solomon’s grimoire, chock full of beings with the word “demon” and “hell” written after them, whether or not they deserve such designations. I personally think the vast of a lot of them don’t, because there is no indication that any of them ever did anything to deserve the label.
I mean, think about it: we pre-christians (pagans, witches, streghone, whathaveyou) have no use for “satan”, “demons” and “hell”, although christians seem to enjoy wildly tossing the concepts about. They should – they invented them and their emotional discards (the Anton LaVey crowd) continue to perpetuate them. After all, it’s what they use to keep their followers in line, shaking pitifully in their boots and swooning at the theater unspooling of “The Exorcist”. Extremely useful, true or not, when you’re in the business of scaring the crap out of people and then telling you their deity is “full of love”. May be, but you’d never know it, listening to their apocalyptic banshee wailing, would you?
So. Back to charms and talismans. Protection. I already have the cimaruta – so shiny and beautiful I love it! – so I’m not sure why I need to make another one. Perhaps to prove that I know how. Okay.
I sat around this weekend thinking about Sekhmet and Enki and Zepar and how to represent them on charms and talismans. I have never figured out why Zepar in particular wound up with that label. After all, HE never firebombed entire cities just because some creep behind its walls pissed him off, and the christian deity sure did. HE never initiated and perpetuated the Spanish Inquisition, probably one of the more horrific and sadistic acts in christian history. HE never ordered the Trail of Tears. HE never did anything remotely as awful as christians have done, and he got the big “D” label? Hypocrisy, anyone? As far as I’m concerned, he isn’t one.
There is another reason I think that. And that is because not that long ago I saw him turn his head and look at me. Astonishing and unexpected mini-vision in the midst of a daydream about something else entirely.
He was sitting somewhere, leaning forward with his forearms arms resting on the tops of his thighs, listening intently to someone who was speaking to him. I thought, “What the … who is that?” and then inhaled in shock and thought, “Why, that’s Zepar!” At that, his head whipped to the right and I was absolutely rooted to the ground, immobilized by the intensity of his eyes. He looked at me for about five seconds (during which time I felt as though I’d been scanned to the core and whatever secrets I thought I had inside of me were laid bare and trembling. I didn’t know what to do). Then – his eyes softened ever so slightly … and the corner of his mouth twitched as though he wanted to express amusement – but he didn’t – and then he turned his head back and the vision was gone. I was as big a wreck after that unexpected moment as I was when that invisible someone closed his hand over my ankle. Same someone?
No, he didn’t strike me as the type to stay invisible and grab women’s ankles for his own entertainment. He struck me as … POWER. Coiled, exquisitely controlled, lion-esque power. Not easily distracted but easily bored. I also think he’s confident and perhaps even arrogant enough to send someone else – one of the men under his command for example – in his place, when he has no use for the conjuror. He only allows himself to be summoned when HE wants to be summoned, for reasons all his own.
Embarrassingly enough, I panted for a good ten minutes after that happened, tingling from head to toe and back again. Oh my goodness, what a good looking man!!
By the way, it wasn’t as though I had some image of him in my head before I saw him – I didn’t. Only afterwards I went into Google and looked up “images of Zepar”, hoping someone else with artistic talent had seen him and managed to capture him: not a single image in that mess of nonsense looked anything like him. Not even REMOTELY. Animae? Hardly. Everything in there came out of the minds of wide-eyed animae sketch artists and (as I said) pimply little boys with christian demons still lodged in their tighty whities. Made me want to seriously apologize to him for the abject stupidity of the human race. I recognized the red breastplate (which he did have), but the rest of that utter nonsense in Google images? Not him. Not the being who transfixed me with his gaze. He’s awesome and wonderful and powerful. Even if I never see him again, I will always remember the sensation. Unbelievable.
Oh – and it just occurred to me that if some conjuror had one of those appalling images in their head when they summoned him – just, as I said, for his own amusement – I could see him saying, “OK, if that’s what you really want.” and showing up like that, just to scare the scrap out of them. And then having a hearty brewski and riotous laugh-fest with the spirits under his command later, roaring his ass off at their panicked expressions.
Nope. Those images aren’t the Zepar I saw. None of them. I almost want to say that his eyes are … or maybe they were reflecting something else I couldn’t see? Dark purple-ish black? Almost the color that an eggplant has – aubergine? Except they had lights in them. I do remember seeing infinitely deep purple-ish starry lights in them – yet another reason I was awed. But they go right through you like a laser. He can just root you to the ground with them.
I can’t tell you anything about his voice, because he never spoke – I’ve read somewhere that he has an unearthly voice, or an unusual voice. But he didn’t speak, so I can’t confirm.
Needless to say, that – his sigil - was one of the ideas I immediately thought of, when we were asked to come up with protective talismans. Will definitely try to sketch one – when I can get my hands to stop trembling.
[Addendum: no, I haven’t seen him since I wrote that, and no, I haven’t heard his voice either. But he did give me something of a revelation, by way of a question posed to me when I was thinking about him this morning. The question wasn’t posed to me in words, so I’ll have to give my own voice to it; it basically appeared within me as though I’d had my crown opened, and the question poured in, full-blown, like watery light. Basically it was this: “WE ARE ALL ONE. You KNOW we are all one. How could I be something outside of that one unity?” [*blink!*] Eureka. Answer was: he couldn’t. Wasn’t possible. THAT’s why all of those Google images were so wrong, and so sad. They were drawn by artists who still didn’t realize that WE ARE ALL ONE. The Zepar they drew couldn’t look like the hideous, ugly or pitiable monsters they were drawing, because we would all look like that, if he did.
He may have a [far] more evolved skill set than I do – true – but ultimately he is cut from the same cloth of stardust and divine intent. I experienced such a surge of joy when I realized that.
The occasional ones you find in grimoires with unpleasant skill sets are no different than the dumb criminals you see every day on reality TV – those boringly moronic nitwits who always get caught because they’re so mindlessly stupid.
Judeo-christian-islam adherents, of course, don’t believe that – they believe in a narrow patriarchal hierarchy and a divisiveness – their deity is outside of them, because they believe themselves to be full of “sin” or something outside of the “one unity”; they can’t see themselves as godlike. (I would almost feel bad for them, if they weren’t so bent and determined to exterminate me). Ah well.
Looping back into Lupercalia and Imbolc. I don’t celebrate either one, Imbolc because I’m not Celtic, and although I’d be be more likely to celebrate Lupercalia, the Romans (pause while I ka-pooey on their collective memory, at least on this topic) sacrificed a dog and a goat for Lupercalia. And I feel the same way about that awful stunt as I do about the judeo-christian insistence that they are superior to all animal life and therefore perfectly justified in killing them with machine guns. Personally, I’d rather sacrifice a weekend hunter, his John Deere cap AND his cooler of Budweiser than an animal, I don’t care what anybody says. Really. No loss. Just sacrifice the bleep and leave his severed head in the middle of the woods - like the Blair Witch project! – to scare the wits out of any other hunter that wanders by. Heck, it would be worth it just to watch the lot of them run screaming out of the woods, weeping hysterically after spying that severed head in its John Deere cap, tripping drunkenly over their rifles and shooting themselves in the nuts.
Ooooh ... having a crabby day, are we???
Well .... yeah. Sorta. But it would still be funny. In any event, this is historically the day when everyone celebrated the return of the Sun – the light – because now is about the time one is eminently aware that the days are getting longer. Heck, I notice it just taking the commuter rail home at night. The sun has returned!! So one celebrates joyously. The christians – as always – unable to pull together an original thought in their heads at all, swiped this one from us pagans and strega as well and called it Candlemas. This is yet another stolen holiday, but most christians today are either too stupid to know it, or too vicious to care.
The other talisman I considered was Enki’s. Zecharia Sitchin aside, I really like Ea/Enki as a protector God. So, given the christian habit of announcing that every deity or spirit but theirs is demonic, I went and pulled a .pdf copy of The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, by Reginald Campbell Thompson of the British Museum (1904). Semi-interesting, if you can ignore his ironic references to indigenous cultures as “savages”. I say “ironic” because while he finds the “words of power” used by Assyrian or Babylonian “priests” perfectly acceptable, the same words of power used by others, is termed, “the customs of many savage tribes”. At some point, you struggle against the urge to also call him a “moronic pinhead” and stop reading. Ahhh, the joyful and incessantly clueless stupidity of 1904. I wonder if I can find a spell to resurrect him just to slap him senseless. Hmmm.
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