Initiotation [sic]
This was my submission for the first Green Mushroom Zine: Fuck Around and Find Out (offerings of magical sovereignty) titled Initiotation [sic]
I'm reposting it here to present a taste of the sort of thing I make and the sort of people I make it with!
The Green Mushroom Folks are a bunch of people I do cool spooky stuff with. Check us out! Maybe we're your flavor.
Here's the link to the Fuck Around and Find Out Zine if you would rather read it in its original formatting, or to check out the rest of the cool cats I get the incredible opportunity to do magic with!
Gratitude to everyone who contributed, and to Joy for making the publication possible! Printed versions to come!
Initiotation is a call and response to the Poimandres so-to-speak. Careful readers will note some direct quotations from the original document.
This is not intended to be a sequel or revision of the Poimandres. Instead, it is my personal relationship with that text manifested in an initiatory dialogue.
Initiotation [sic]
Without further ado, here is Initiotation in its entirety:
.
.
.
By E.K. Menw
The core teaching of Hermes is that the individual is ultimately no different from the supreme. This realization is gnosis.
The following is an initiation. It does not have to be read as such, the reader can do as they will. The following essay is also written in the second person. If you do not want to read it this way, it is perfectly acceptable to be someone else for a time.
Once, when your mind had become intent on things which are, and your understanding was raised to a great height, and your body was withdrawn as in sleep, as when people are weighed down by too much food or by the fatigue of the body, you saw the end of the world.
It was not an especially spectacular end.
You had so far had a great many birthdays, and seen much of the space in-between. Endings were no longer such a surprise to you, there had already been a number of them. It was who was waiting at the end which surprised you
“Who are you?” you asked.
He said, “I am Hermes Trismegistus. I once sat and beheld great wisdom. I am here to share the same for you now, if I’m able.”
“Why here?”
“At the end of the world? It’s the only place anything can be held to account. Everything else changes.”
You looked around you. His words made sense, echoing off the blackness of infinity. There was certainly nothing here to challenge them. You yourselves were alone. The thrice greatest Hermes was a speck of light, all else was blackness, and the cold dead rock under your feet. The sun was extinguished, the light was turned off. God had hung his keys on the hook and shut the door behind him.
“I am here because nothing matters,” you said. “The end of the world has come and all my earthly endeavors have striven to resemble it.”
“Incorrect,” says Hermes. “You are here because of a potential possessed by all beings, one you have not claimed. If you ask, I will show you.”
“Show me, Thrice Greatest. Show me that I might see what is mine to claim, and in so doing become myself.”
With those words, the absence around you exploded into brilliant light. The light swirled into a circle, which revolved around you. It was perpetual in its revolution, and so long it circled that you feared it might never stop. Then, suddenly, a single drop of water formed in the space in front of you. The water fell, and just for a moment, you could see the image of yourself reflected on its surface. Onto the circle it dropped, breaking the loop. With the fall of the droplet the circle splintered into fractal patterns that extended outwards into the black infinity, emanating from the contact of that single point.
“Do you understand what you have seen,” the watchful Hermes asked as the light faded from view.
“I shall come to know.”
“The light which has revolved around you is the light of life. It is infinite and unflappable in its motion. It will remain as it is if undeterred.”
“But the cycle was halted by a single drop of water!”
“Yes,” said Hermes, smiling. “So you see. The light of life is one of perpetual motion, it has no beginning and no end, origins may only beget other origins. But behold! That single drop is gnosis. The capacity with which men may break their bondage and seek freedom lies in that drop.”
“How can this be so?” you asked of Hermes.
“Look unto my face and you will know.”
Long you look into the eyes of Hermes Trismegistus. There in those eyes you see the beak of an ibis, and the twining serpents of the caduceus, and they are as distinct as they are the same.
“Life as it was seemed unending,” you said at last. “Origins begat origins. All that moved required a mover. It was the drop of gnosis which begat change.”
“Yes!” said Hermes.
“If all things are predicated on something else, then change must be predicated on knowledge. Only with knowledge, then, do I have choice.”
“This you have seen and this you now know. What then is knowledge predicated on?”
You thought for a minute on this wisdom, or perhaps it was a century, they felt the same.
“If all objects require a mover, and it is knowledge that begats choice, then choice can only be predicated on that which is bodiless.”
“If all these things which you have said are true, then that which is bodiless must be divinity.”
“But what is divinity,” you asked of Hermes.
“Did you not see? In the reflection of the drop of water!”
“I did see!” you said. “And it was myself.”
You stopped then, as you felt a cool drop of water land lightly on your forehead. Then there was another. And soon, here at the end of the world, it was raining.
“I see,” you said calmly, feeling the rivulets of water wash down your face, baptized in the freedom of gnosis. “I see that I am the likeness of the divine. That in me there is the freedom to break the cycle of life and death, because I am myself. Because I am in command of my own actions and desires. I am a seeker of knowledge and victim to nothing.”
Hermes smiled. A warm smile that looked the same as all the many stars painted across the sky. It had their light, and their endless patience.
“What will you do then, when you wake?”
“I will go forth and spread my knowledge so that others might break their chains. I will tell them that hopelessness is a fraud perpetrated by the body, and that the only victory of suffering is the acceptance of it. But Hermes, I fear they will say ‘my suffering is all I am’.”
Hermes Trismegistus shook his head. “They may refuse your knowledge, they are free to do so. It is always easier to take an identity provided for us, rather than to build our own. We did not choose our suffering, but it can feel comforting to wear it like a cloak so our divinity might never find us. And when the cloak has grown so comfortable, it is easy work to sew one for another. But you have nothing to fear. You know your divinity. You know there is always light.”
At those words, the fractal shards of light reappeared. They spread from and connected to every single raindrop at the end of the world. But the largest and brightest shards came from you. They spread, pulling the end of the world apart as if it were shattered glass you were punching through.
And then, finally, you woke up.