Goddess Murder, 33: From the Letter to Theophilus; Avalon 3

XXXVI. From the Letter to Theophilus

We believe in the sacredness and sanctity of our sexuality, and we initiate those who are worthy into our mysteries. With our initiates, we form a sacred and secret society, keeping each other company in our pursuit of knowledge, for the Hebrew daath signifies both knowledge and sexual union.

The full initiates of our tradition practice sacred sexuality and equality between men and women as Joshua taught. We are all husbands and wives of each other; none of us own another, for Joshua said, “When you rid yourselves of jealousy, then you will be in the kingdom.”

Many a woman has escaped from a loveless and brutal marriage to be with us, for we accord women the equality and honor that Joshua taught us God intended women to have.

Some of our initiates, fully trained and empowered, have gone out to proclaim the truth and have initiated many, thus enlarging our community of the faithful. Lately initiates of our community have been teaching and initiating in the valley of the Rhone, whither our Queen came for refuge in her flight from those who were persecuting her and would have slain her.

All of creation was engendered by our Father and Mother as they celebrated the sacred mysteries of sexuality, for our pleasure in our sexuality is but a pale reflection of the infinite ecstasy that blazes in the hearts of the divine. The union of man and woman is thus derived from the divine emanation of heaven above.

We know that our sexual conjunction is a sacred mystery that will bring us to the Kingdom of God. We must always celebrate the sacred mysteries, our pathway to everlasting blessedness, for whoever in this world does not so love a woman as to gain her for the truth is not of the truth and shall not attain to the truth. Grace is our own; it descends upon us from above as we celebrate our sacred mysteries in the bridal chamber.

The heretics blaspheme our mysteries, calling them immoral and defilement. They have forgotten what Joshua said, “What goes into your mouth will not defile you. Rather, it is what comes out of your mouth that will defile you.” They have fallen so far away from the truth that they may never awaken. Sometimes the heretics have kidnapped our initiates and compelled them to recant the truth and to submit again to their heresies that blaspheme and reject the true sacred mysteries passed down to us by the Prophet and his Queen.

XXXVII. Avalon 3

Andy continued, “As we see it, humans live in a state of delusion, in believing that our little individual consciousnesses are the one and only reality. Jung discovered that the Deep Mind contains archetypes and knowledge that don’t come from the personal mind. In the 1930s he talked a lot with Wolfgang Pauli, who gave him the concept of synchronicity. Jung realized that Pauli’s Exclusion Principle implied that our having two minds is neither accidental nor arbitrary, but instead rises out of the nature of physical reality. Our ordinary consciousness, our personality, which we think is fundamental, is an artifact created by the Deep Mind. Our personalities exist like bubbles on the huge sphere that is the Deep Mind.”

“So we have our priorities backwards?” I asked. “The Deep Mind is far more important than the ordinary mind?”

“Yes, our ordinary minds couldn’t exist without the Deep Mind. Have you ever thought about why we sleep, why we dream?” she asked.

“Ah, not much.”

“You have to sleep because the Deep Mind can’t keep your ordinary consciousness functioning continuously. Creating your ordinary consciousness is a tour de force, and it is so fragile that it will break down completely if you are deprived of sleep for about three days. When you wake in the morning, the island of your consciousness rises up out of the sea. All day you believe that you are the top of a solid mountain, resting on bedrock. You are instead a floating island, much like a ship. When you fall asleep at night, your island sinks down below the water, and the Deep Mind does maintenance on it. Imagine that mermaids swim through your corridors, repairing damage, refilling your fuel tanks. Your dreams are the songs the mermaids sing to one another.”

“I like that analogy. It rings true.”

“Blake knew that the state of delusion is maintained by the social restraints that virtually destroy enjoyment of sex for many people. He knew that we must achieve sexual freedom in order to break out of the delusion. As he said, ‘Each Man is in his Specter’s power / Untill the arrival of that hour / When his Humanity awake / And cast his own Spectre into the Lake.’ That’s why I find his writings so congenial; he had independently discovered the innermost teachings of our religion. He was a true Witch, although he didn’t know to use that term for himself. Blake was unique. If he had died in infancy, no one else would ever have written what he wrote.”

“On our drive up here, you said something about the Deep Mind guiding the forces of history? What did you mean by that? Is that Witch belief?”

“No, it’s depth psychology,” she said, grinning. “Most social scientists spin their wheels trying to use statistical concepts to explain how billions of isolated separate consciousnesses can produce the patterns of society and history. Kroeber’s Anthropology sets forth his discovery that culture is controlled by unconscious processes. For example, he found correlations between changes in women’s fashions and the outbreak of major wars that continued on for centuries. However, the unconscious processes that guide culture are controlled, not by the personal unconscious in each individual, but by the Deep Mind, which has access to all the knowledge in each individual mind. We are not ten billion separate, isolated individuals. We are a single immortal being that is housed in ten billion bodies, the being that Blake called the Giant Albion.’

“Has anyone carried on Kroeber’s thinking about this?”

“Not that I’ve discovered. His concepts are terrifying to almost all people. Perhaps that’s why no one has dared to continue his work. When Blake talked about the Poetic Genius that is the true man, as opposed to mere reasoning power, he was making the same distinction that I do, between our ordinary consciousness and the Deep Mind.

“Once someone pointed at a tree and asked Blake what he saw. He replied that he saw an angel of God pouring grace down upon the Earth.

“His interlocutor responded, ‘Mr. Blake, surely you must know that the angel is not really there!’

“He responded, ‘Of course I know that. What you do not understand is that the tree is not really there either.’

“That is, he was the first person to deduce that our ordinary perception is eidetic imagery. That’s what he meant by ‘This life’s dim windows of the soul / Distort the heavens from pole to pole / And leads you to believe a lie / When we see with, not through, the eye.’”

“Why can’t the eidetic imagery just be an additional talent?” I asked. “Oh, wait. Occam’s Razor.”

“Right. If some perception operates by eidetic imagery, why should we have another, entirely different perceptual system? It is more parsimonious to believe that all perception is eidetic.”

“If ordinary perception is a projection outward of eidetic images, why do people all see the same things?”

“Because the process is unconscious. The Deep Mind coordinates it among the ordinary minds. There is reality out there, of course, but the Deep Mind chooses how much and what of it is accessed by the eidetic process. It all takes place backstage.”

“How does the Deep Mind in one person communicate with the other Deep Minds?”

“Doesn’t have to. There is just one Deep Mind. It’s not subject to the same limits as our ordinary consciousness. Time and separation in space are part of the virtual reality created for the ordinary mind by the Deep Mind, not part of fundamental reality. Current physicists have discovered that time drops out of the equations when you get deep enough in the description of reality.

“The Deep Mind also controls the ‘powers of the Witch.’ We can read someone else’s mind because it is ultimately all the same consciousness thinking. We can know what is happening at a distance if any others know it. Much of our traditional training aims to increase our sensitivity and access to the Deep Mind and to gain control of the eidetic imagery.”

“So your Deep Mind concept provides a scientific, or at least nonmetaphysical, explanation for psychic phenomena, correct?”

“Yes, it does. However, I think I’ve done enough explaining for now.”

Something about her tone raised a question. “You don’t explain all this to many people, do you?”

“No, I don’t. You are already farther along the path than you realize. I knew that the first night we met, because I analyzed your aura, as you did mine.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You weren’t conscious of that talent. You learn about people mainly by feel. Your aura sent out long fingers that caressed mine. Every time I moved, or thought, ‘Boo!’ they’d pull back, then reach out to me again. It was rather cute, like a puppy sniffing my fingers. You always do that with new women. Like, at circle, you were very attracted by Athena.”

“God, you can read my mind! This is almost scary.”

“Not your mind, your aura. Nothing metaphysical about it. Enough. I don’t want to talk philosophy all night. Are you rested enough, Eddie?”

“I think so.”

With her help, I reached another astonishing orgasm, though it wasn’t the beatific vision of the first one. Afterward, I lay beside her on the bed. We were gently caressing each other. I felt utterly at peace, utterly safe. I was in the right place with the right person, in a world in which nothing significant could ever go wrong. I had been tormented by self-doubts, by the againbite of inwit, all my life. Now I felt healed, reprieved, even (why do I so hesitate to name it?) blessed.

“It’s still hard for me to believe that you wanted me.”

“You doubt yourself too much, Eddie. To interest me a man has to be attractive, intelligent, creative, and considerate.”

“Do I qualify along those lines?”

“Yes, you do. None of my boyfriends were men I would consider marrying. None of them were on the path, or even anywhere near it. My standards for what I want in a life partner are higher than and different from what most women would be concerned about.”

“Are you saying that you might conceivably be interested in marrying me?”

“Let’s not push it that far. I wouldn’t want to scare you away. It wouldn’t be your typical Bourgeois marriage anyway.”

“Right now the idea of any sort of marriage doesn’t scare me at all. I’ve been feeling since Janet left that no woman would ever want me again.”

“At the very least I can help heal that wound. But I don’t want us to be a one-night stand. I’d like us to explore our possibilities. And I think your ex-wife was a damned fool.”

She flung herself on top of me and began aggressively kissing and caressing me, pinning me to the bed and taking total control of our lovemaking. It was many hours before we finally dropped off to sleep.