Thursday 15 July 2010

GOETIC TRANSFORMATIONS : BAELA SHAMANKA BY MARK DUNN;COMMENTARY BY TOYIN ADEPOJU



The first principal spirit is called Bael, Baeli or Baela, a great queen principally ruling in the Far East over the North-Central Asian Steppe into Siberia.

She manifests as a most ancient crone, a wizened female shaman, on account of which she is found bedecked in cat furs wearing a skirt of amphibious reptile skins. As a female shaman she formulates into vision living in a yurt, which appears to be alive, walking about on chicken legs, and which also flies like an interdimensional-time-travelling vehicle akin to a discoid mushroom.

Baela sometimes appears as a sexually inclined Russian parapsychologist of feline predatory orientation versed in anthropology and having deep insights into psychology, which she relates within vivid erotic dreams after making love to her.

One will notice that she will sometimes sport the Communist Red-Star badge, which is really that of the ancient 'Fire-Star', which the ancient Mongolians and Chinese know represents the planet Mars. The hammer will thence represent the shaman-smith’s power over explicate-ordered material form (alchemy) enabling mastery over fire (bio-photon) while the sickle symbolises the moon realm of implicate-ordered quantum dreaming. She will communicate that she is a professor at St Petersburg University, conducting experiments into metapsychic abilities, enabling her to be able bestow such powers.

Her nature is seductively feline, empowered by a wisdom intimately related to the Olkhon Rune jewel at the midst of the toad's head. She speaks with a deep seductive Russian accent but her original language is ancient Mongolian.


RED QUEEN BAELA OF ‘THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS’ STARGATE

One could imaginatively associate Baela with the characters the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s fantasy classic Alice in Wonderland and the Red Queen in Caroll's Through the Looking Glass. One can then fuse both characters in the different books in terms of a shamanic union.

In Through the Looking-Glass the Red Queen demonstrates the symbolic motif of the game of chess which itself represents the game of life.

As a Chess-Queen she can move in any direction she desires, which in regards to Baella means she can walk worlds, for the chessboard represents the mathematical symbol of the marked-unmarked state operator, which allows one’s consciousness to traverse microcosmic hyperspace via mini ‘Looking-Glass’ wormholes.

In both American McGee’s popular computer game of Alice and Tim Burton’s film adaptation of the Alice books the Queens are also combined, leading thereby to further popular misconceptions. As for American McGee's Alice it does lead one to the trilogy of Matrix films and that of a theory that one’s very existence is merely that of a quantum computer simulation wherefore one is living within a holographic universe amidst many others in a multiverse. However, one will discover that the 'Wonderlands' of the quantum dream are very much like 'virtual-realities', which are the informing 'informational' fractal templates underlying ones 'physical' existence.

The evolutionary concept of the Red Queen’s hypothesis originates from her statement about the Red Queen’s race: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Her hypothesis has shamanic overtones for when ones consciousness trance-travels internally within the implicate-order of the quantum dream one is travelling without moving when utilising the theorem of the marked-unmarked-state operator for one is travelling faster than the speed of light.

As for the mirror that gives it names to Through the Looking-Glass one can equate its 'wormhole' function with the science fiction film Stargate. The Red Queen of a Mongolian shamaness Baela could thence be construed as being very much of an inspiring muse for a chess playing Red King of an 'Odqan' Chinngis Khan in order to thence become invincible in his military strategy, especially when conquering his own self to go quantum.

PRIMARY SOURCE IN CLASSICAL GOETIA

Of the seventy-two infernal spirits evoked and constrained by King Salomon



BAEL.--The First Principal Spirit is a King ruling in the East, called Bael. He maketh thee to go Invisible. He ruleth over 66 Legions of Infernal Spirits. He appeareth in divers shapes, sometimes like a Cat, sometimes like a Toad, and sometimes like a Man, and sometimes all these forms at once. He speaketh hoarsely.

This is his character which is used to be worn as a Lamen before him who calleth him forth, or else he will not do thee homage.

Rank: King
Degree: 1 - 10
Zodiac sign: Aries (day March 21 - March 30)
Tarot: Two of Wands
Alchemical sign: Sol - Gold

Bael is the First Principle Spirit, and a King ruling in the East. He can make the Magician invisible. He rules over 66 Legions of Infernal Spirits. At various times he appears in various forms such as a cat, a toad, a man, or all forms instantaneously. He speaks hoarsely. A.G.H.






Baal was the first full-length play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht.[1] It concerns a wastrel youth who becomes involved in several sexual affairs and at least one murder. It was written in 1918, when Brecht was a 20-year-old student at Munich University, in response to the expressionist drama The Loner (Der Einsame) by the soon-to-become-Nazi dramatist Hanns Johst.[2]

The play is written in a form of heightened prose and includes four songs and an introductory choral hymn ("Hymn of Baal the Great"), set to melodies composed by Brecht himself.[1] Brecht wrote it prior to developing the dramaturgical techniques of epic theatre that characterize his later work, although he did re-work the play in 1926.

Wikipedia

BAAL by Bertolt Brecht Opens Yale School of Drama 2007-08 Season


"Those Days of Sixties"
photo by Jan Saudek

Director, Snehal Desai
photo by Erik Pearson
OCTOBER 29-NOVEMBER 3

Bertolt Brecht’s Baal opens the 2007-2008 Yale School of Drama series (James Bundy, Dean; Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean) October 29 through November 3, 2007.

Brecht’s first play (1918), Baal is the story of a poet’s unquenchable sexual desire, unspeakable violence, and unmatched lyricism. Baal’s journey of desire and self-destruction begins in his favorite watering hole where he attracts and repels patrons, friends, and lovers.

As directed by Snehal Desai, this visceral and raucous production includes drag performances, live music, and full dance numbers. The New Haven band The Simple Pleasure (thesimplepleasure.com) has filled in the long lost gaps between Brecht’s written ballads and his music with electrifying synth-pop rock numbers. The audience will be seated amid the spectacle, on stage, at cabaret tables, and on bar stools at a bar.

http://drama.yale.edu/news/baal.html



the imaginative originality of the Alice in Wonderland and the Through the Looking Glass metaphors.This metaphor both introduces and sums up a central aspect of the ideational and visual world developed in the Dakini Daemonicon: the idea of the universe as a vast,dynamic structure of multiple,co-existent possibilities navigated through awareness of these possibilities and with the aid of congress with the Goetic daemons,among other options;the chess game of the Alice book being seen as metaphorical for this dynamic structure and the looking glass being evocative of the doorways of consciousness and opportunity that enable the awareness of and the appropriation of such multiple possibilities of existence.This idea is also summed up in the image of the Ouroboros,where the snake swallowing its own tail comes to symbolise time as dynamic in a non-linear sense rather than linear,thereby transposing the Ouroboros image from the central symbol of Goetic invocation in terms of an imaginative reinterpretation that includes and goes beyond the traditional conception.

The value of opening the Dakini Daemonicon with the Alice metaphors is reinforced by the fact that the metaphor unifies the Dakini Daemonicon in terms of the recurrence of the Alice texts as well as the presence of young girls at various points in the Daemonicon,girls identifiable with the image of Alice.



effort to present a unified picture of aspects of Western esotericism,in terms of its links with pre-historic (?) spiritualities of the East as it borders Europe.Am I correct in this assessment?

I also note here that the figure of Odin,his hanging on the Yggdrasil for wisdom (correct?) and Sleipnir, his eight legged horse are motifs that recur throughout your work,leading to a range of interpretations,one of which is the transposition of moving through various worlds with Sleipnir's aid in terms of spaceships,wormholes,starg
ates,dream portals,amomg others.

Description of structure and purpose of essay above

a presentation of Mark Dunn's development of the Goetic figures in terms of voluptuous women.His argument,as I have been able to understand it,is that the Goetic spirits, being non-physical entities, assume what forms we want them to assume.He goes ahead,therefore,to develop associations between classical Goetia,which is how I describe the Solomonic text as a predecessor  to modern interpretations,and a broad range of cultures.He then uses the personifications he develops from that point as his central means of evocation.

The evocation proceeds through his drawing the image and integrating the sigil into the image,the entire image being replete with the associations he has evoked.While contemplating the image,he  chants the spirit's name, doing that to a point of exhaustion.Then he goes to sleep.

He states that the spirits  appear to him in lucid dreams and that his relationship with them is related to synchronicities in his life.

This might be  a more linear description than his actual method but this is what  I have gleaned from his site and his letters to me which are so rich in ideas I am in the process of blogging them ( http://dunntoyinmail.blogspot.com/ ) and will publish them as a book.

If the rules of this group allow,I will forward your mail to him  and  send any response he makes to the group.

My own experiences with his method has come from studying them for an academic project,as well as experimenting with meditating on the sigil of Astaroth without an intention of evocation,while also reflecting on Dunn's intriguing Astaroth images in which he not only becomes a  variety of  beautiful women,from Marilyn Monroe to actors in the science fiction film Battlestar Galactica, the   animal he is traditionally shown as riding on is transformed into a spacecraft.

My experience has been that my engagement with Dunn's work,although largely for academic purposes, almost always results in some mental experience beyond my daily  range of mental experiences.Examples are entry into  sudden but vivid trances ,as on the day I performed the Astaroth sigil meditation for about half of the day,making sure I visualised the sigil while I went about my daily activities but taking care not to reflect on the spirit or its visualisations so as not to invoke it.This exercise is likely to be what led to my suddenly finding myself in trance,resembling a dream,as I sat upright on the edge of my bed after having dressed to go out.

 I have also had vivid dreams with similar contents,all involving young women but nothing erotic.The dreams and the trances involved a learning context, involving the scribal culture of books,libraries and classrooms,these being the contexts in terms of which I am studying Dunn's adaptation of Goetia.In all these encounters,the figures are normal human forms and are friendly and accommodating.The last dream experience I had,however,which occurred after my  contemplation of Dunn's visualisation of Bael,the one I posted here,involved my finding myself at the back of classroom watching a teacher teaching in front of the class.He broke off from his teaching to sit beside me at the back of the class and tells me " I will not share knowledge with you, young man".


All these experiences emerge in the context of no particular aspiration to make contact with the spirits.I have largely been trying to find a point of entry into the academic study of Dunn's work but  I am sensitive to its relationships with modulations of consciousness. Meditating on images has also been central to my spiritual and magical practice as well as my academic work,the academic and the spiritual work being two sides of the same discipline for me.

My presentation of approaches to Bael  was an effort to present parallels between various strata  of ideas and images that relate to the Goetic figure.I first present Dunn's visualisation and verbal  description of how he imagines  the spirit and possibly how it might have  or has appeared to him(not sure of the difference in terms of his experiences)  in relation to his distinctive visualisation of the figure.I then juxtapose this with other examples of such visualisations by presenting first the classical text and image,then   an image of the Semic god Baal whose name is similar to that of the Goetic form and might be part of if not  a central inspiration for the Goetic characterisation.I then continue with descriptions of a play by Bertolt Brecht named after the deity  in order to suggest the penetration of the Baal  concept into general culture.I   conclude with an analysis of the imaginative qualities of Dunn's visual and verbal characterisation of the Goetic figure  as integrating various cultural strands. 

I posted my presentation  here beceause I see both Dunn's effort and my presentation of it as suggesting ways of interpreting and contextualising   magical forms.Magical forms are often constructed  in terms of imaginative forms   whatever one might think of the literal reality of the spirits  being related with.People often relate with conceptions of spirit  through imaginative vehicles and this is a  presentation of a range of such possibilities in relation to the Goetic spirit  Bael.