Gnosis Through Crisis (2010)

Gnosis Through Crisis

PAGES FROM A TRANSPERSONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

- Julian West -

APOCALYPSE NOW

Midway through my life’s journey I found myself at a critical impasse. The world that was falling

down all around me was falling down inside of me as well. Old meanings thinned to

disappearance like ancient scrolls, and details of memory long overlooked became revelatory

mysteries. Saturn and his rings had come full circle around the Sun in my natal chart. My

dreaming life had become particularly pregnant with archetypal images and symbolic meanings.

One particularly momentous evening, I dreamed that I was

“… traversing a winding, widening trail blazed through a dark wood. Not knowing my

way forward or through, I lucidly made the conscious decision to follow a man just up

ahead of me who was very easily making his way through these very same woods.

Ahead of us now loomed a shadowy structure – almost like a hole in the night sky. The

man ahead of me leading the way, I stepped into Chapel Perilous. … I then continued to

follow this slender man as he made his way easily through what seemed like an endless

labyrinth of trap doors and movable walls – a wavering, shifting, ever-transforming Sea

of Mazes.

Ultimately there was no destination, no central goal in this endless spiral of doors and

corridors – it was all only a virtual Void brimming over with our own two confused

headstrong wanderings. Two magelike fools, perhaps – for, looking back upon the

gauntlet just traversed, the double-helix we had traced in the dust now threaded

through the dim, cave-like labyrinth like a shining Serpent of Light.”1

The way in was the way out. The end of the world – my world – was not a quest for any

treasure chest or prized goal – but much more like an initiatory ordeal to be endured, a trial to

be survived, surmounted, and overcome.

“Then my Virgil nodded to me in tacit confidence, and briefly waved goodbye as he

stepped into the looming shadows of a darker wood still ahead of us, onward.“ 2

Six months later I beheld a photograph of my lucid dream-guide. As it turned out, my gangly

guru had a face and name in the waking world – Aeolus the Storm-God, ‘Lord of the Winds.’

1 Julian West, journal entry, November 2008

2 Julian West, journal entry, November 2008

STORMY WEATHER

I was already quite familiar with his first publication, The Lucid View: Investigations into

Occultism, Ufology and Paranoid Awareness, when I discovered that avowed occultist Aeolus

Kephas had begun (in 2008) a series of podcasts appropriately entitled ‘Stormy Weather.’

“News from the Front Lines in the End Times” was the show’s catchy tagline, with the Pixies’

equally catchy song “Stormy Weather” as the opening and closing theme. From the first listen I

was hooked; in hour-long weekly installments Aeolus was slowly disseminating further

elucidations of ‘Paranoid Awareness,’3 his hypnotic voice coaxing listeners ever onward toward

a more lucid perspective on the collective Apocalypse currently unfolding all around and inside

each and every one of us.

From time to time Kephas shared anecdotes from his own personal experiences and

periodically read aloud from his second (then forthcoming) publication, Homo Serpiens : A

Secret History of DNA from Eden to Armageddon.

Aeolus: “In a holographic universe, the fragment contains the whole just as the whole

contains the fragment. Human DNA consists of all the information, the records that

make up human history since the beginning, and through countless prehistoric cycles. If

such information is stored inside our own bodies, why wouldn’t it be available to us as

individuals? And, as a living DNA coil in the body of the universe, wouldn’t the human

organism contain all the knowledge accumulated by the universe since the beginning of

time? 4

“It is very difficult to actually come out and say, ‘I am this, I have this potential and now I

intend to fulfill it. Now I will give you a demonstration of this potential. Look how awake

I am; look how activated I am.’ 5

“A human being with total recall is an activated link in a cosmic ring of memories. …

There is nothing besides this ring of memories, this dance of atoms. … Those memories

3 The distinction between being “paranoid” versus “paranoid aware” is as follows. – Paranoia is the belief that one

is being personally plotted against; the paranoid is one who is full of convictions and fanaticisms, an unwitting

victim of his or her own beliefs. Paranoid Awareness is an impartial questioning of consensus reality; the paranoid

aware is one who makes use of beliefs only as tools of participatory exploration of Reality, and practices strict non-

attachment to his or her own beliefs. The experiential goal of the Paranoid Aware person is the ability to collapse

all beliefs, and, as such, “believe in nothing” – all the while remaining completely open and wholly present to

whatever makes itself present in any given time or place. Such a person is akin to an initiate; those who have been

fully initiated into such mysteries may be rightfully regarded as “lucid.” 4 Aeolus Kephas, Homo Serpiens (as read in ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 11)

5 Aeolus Kephas, ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 19

are us. That is all we ever need to be – links in a vast intergalactic multi-cosmic stellar-

powered evolutionary spiral that spirals and winds its way through the vortex of death

to Infinity.” 6

All in all, his incantatory ramblings spanned a total of thirty episodes, ranging from monologues

on shamanism, alien abduction and global conspiracies, to dialogues on occultism, mythology

and postmodern society, and, all along the way, intricately detailed investigations of the day-to-

day struggle endured by the creative individual in navigating an increasingly apocalyptic

environment. 7

I began filling nearly an entire notebook with transcribed extracts of ‘Stormy Weather,’ related

journal and dream entries, and my own hotheaded elaborations on Kephas’ expansive message.

At the same time I was reconciling and recapitulating a rather perilous chapter of my own

autobiography – I had only just recently lost my job, my car and apartment, and had

relinquished ownership of most of my possessions – all amidst the flotsam and jetsam of a

tragically failed ‘romantic relationship.’

Now more lucidly viewing my own personal armageddon through Aeolus’ frontline view of the

unfolding “End Times,” I was able to enact a space of healing in my winter hibernation, sparking

a new-found sense of freedom in my depths, a clearing amidst the post-apocalyptic ruins of my

old, dead, former life.

WEATHERING THE STORM

Aeolus: “I am addressing the Awake; I am not striving to awaken anyone. 8

“Each of you out there listening right now is the sole Center of the Void. 9

“What is the Control System afraid of? What is it most determined to suppress? – Self-

knowledge; Gnosis; awareness of ourselves and our potential, our Divine nature and our

6 Aeolus Kephas, Homo Serpiens (as read in ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 11)

7 http://stormyweather.podomatic.com. “Stormy Weather was a weekly podcast that covered subjects such as

shamanism, alien abduction, global conspiracies, occultism, mythology, DNA, Masonic Sorcery Theater, postmodern society, and the day-to-day struggle of the creative individual to navigate an increasingly apocalyptic environment. The show began on August 22 2008 and ended on March 21st 2009, after 30 episodes and a 7 month run.” 8 Aeolus Kephas, ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 19

9 Aeolus Kephas, ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 24

natural ability to know the Truth – because it is impossible to manipulate and control

those who have Gnosis. 10

“This is what is behind all the deception and the conspiracies and the programming and

the brainwashing – and all the rest of it, all the event manipulation and all the

propaganda. The object is to disconnect us from our power of Knowing – because that’s

the only way that we can be controlled. … When we have a direct link to the Divine, to

the Spirit, there’s nothing anyone can say or do to prevent us from being true to

ourselves and following our path. But if that connection is severed or interfered with –

then we become prey. 11

“This saturation with imagery, propaganda, beliefs, systems of worship – all of this has

been designed to rob us of our power to imagine. … We have to take responsibility for

this knowledge; we have to start using it for our own empowerment, because otherwise

it will continue to be used for our enslavement. 12

“This is far more than moral outrage. This is an attempt to establish a fully-functional

Surrogate Reality in which the elite will be exempt from Divine Law – because the

masses will have surrendered their own divine sovereignty as adepts, initiates and co-

creators of Reality. 13

“If we become sorcerers ourselves, then we reclaim the same power that is being used

against us now. 14

“A sorcerer awakens totality of memory. And he experiences himself as a fourth-

dimensional being – which is a being extended though time, from birth to death. He

becomes, not a fixed object in time, but a flow of energy, a flow of consciousness

through time. 15

“Does it really help to formulate more hypotheses, more opinions, more perspectives,

more theories, more interpretations – systems within systems within systems,

structures upon structures? Underneath it all is the bare essence and the foundation of

what we are – DNA moving, turning, quickening, transforming, mutating, emerging,

exploring, exploding, resonating the frequency.

10

Aeolus Kephas, ‘Red Ice Creations’ interview 11

Aeolus Kephas, ‘Occult of Personality’ interview 12

Aeolus Kephas, ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 16 13



Aeolus Kephas, ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 30

Souls? There are no souls. There is only One Soul. Reincarnation is a lie. We are here for

this moment and That Is It. Then we die … then we die. And into Infinity we go. Ready or

not – Infinity we go.” 16

THE SORCERER’S REVELATION

It was with the airing of the thirtieth and final installment of ‘Stormy Weather,’ “The Sorcerer’s

Revelation,” that I firmly felt called to contact Kephas directly.

Aeolus: “This is a truth that to my knowledge has never been spoken before in the public

realm. But if it is truth, it will surely have been spoken by sorcerers to their apprentices.

It may well be a truth that has been experienced by many people. …. I caution you not

to share this model with other people, or to accept it too quickly. …

16


This world is a world of tulpas – a world of ‘thought-forms’ – in which there are very few

living beings who are actually conscious, ensouled, energetic beings. A very small

number of us are alive today, just as there has always been. The increasing population

has nothing to do with more and more ‘souls’ coming into this ‘plane’ – but everything

to do with the creation of an increasing number of tulpas, in order to create an

increasing amount of noise to flood out the signal of the Universal Vibration, the Divine

Frequency: Galactic Consciousness.

This is the matrix: a world populated by thought-forms, created … using our own psychic

energy. … They only have to control a few thousand of us, or a few hundred-thousand –

however many of us there are, I don’t know. … This keeps us from finding each other; it

keeps us from connecting and forming groups and aligning our intent and overcoming

the hegemony and control. … This keeps us from attaining freedom.

We are essentially lost in a sea of noise … surrounded by a world of thought-forms

composed of our own psychic pollution. … We interact with these tulpas; we have no

idea they are actually fragments of our own psyches, … unruly aspects … of our own

shadows. And so of course they are creating a hell-world that seems to be everything

we are not, a world we would do anything to be rid of. They are parts of ourselves that

we have disowned. And we can never get free of this until we recognize this for what it

is and reclaim it and integrate it back into ourselves. …

As we … awaken to this Truth, we create a vortex of increasing power – a velocity and a

gravitational pull. Our vortices pull others awake, or, alternatively, force those tulpas

deeper into the ego, where they become more aberrational with destruction. This is the

Armageddon narrative, and it must be seen through to the end.”17

My own personal experience of the Sorcerer’s Revelation had occurred only a little more than a month

earlier, following in the wake of some rather intense, extended and transformative experiences in lucid

dreaming. In those lucid moments (such as the one recounted earlier) I had begun to sense the entire

conscious continuum of my life, from birth all the way to death, as entirely present and accessible. I

understood this as precisely what Aeolus described in the final podcast – “a fourth-dimensional being, a

Being extended through time, from birth to death … a tube or tunnel made of Light-Consciousness

extending through Spacetime … made up of memories.” 18

Myself, to Aeolus: “On that fateful spring evening a trusted companion and I had

consumed a particular ‘god-plant’ – psilocybe cubensis – with appropriate reverence

and respect. In the midst of our colorful experiences that night, we found ourselves lying

side by side on the floor, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, gazing unblinkingly, our

17



breathing quickly synchronizing. All sounds in the house and even in the outside world

quickly faded away to silence.

Actually, a more accurate description would be that all sounds save our own slow

coordinated breathing evaporated into a high-pitched vapor somewhat like the clinking

of broken glass, which then crunched in diminutive shatters to absolute silence – a Holy

Silence more still and profound than either of us had ever experienced anywhere,

anytime before.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that everyone in our vicinity (and perhaps all

across the world) were but fragments of our own psyches; and that, in our present act

of alignment, all of them had folded and rolled back up into some implicate order within

us. We tried relaxing our alignment … and our company returned, in similar fashion to a

volume knob being turned up too quickly.

One of our fellow psychonauts ‘popped back’ into the room and began speaking about

something completely inane and distracting. My companion and I giggled softly to one

another and whispered, ‘Let’s make him disappear.’ And we fell once more, eyes-first,

into one another’s gaze. His voice trailed off almost as if quick-frozen. Silence reigned,

and it was just her and I once more. We seemed to be the only two ‘real humans’ in the

vicinity. Everyone else were but fragmentations of us.

Two days after our experience of the Sorcerer’s Revelation, I fell very rapidly and very

intensely ill. The illness eventually prolonged itself for nearly two whole weeks. I was

having an incredibly difficult time integrating what we had experienced. I felt I had no

way of communicating our experience to anyone else, that this was something

incomparably secret and sacred, and perhaps even dangerous. But I also could not deny

its reality.” 19

The lucid view that was catalyzed for me that night (among many other lesser revelations) was

a vision of a world filled to overflowing with completely soulless men, women and children, all

of whom were only fractured, fragmented facets of what we, the chosen few, the most

beloved, really were—God incarnate. Because our band of Angels had forgotten who we really

were, we had become fallen, broken, diseased. Our Genius had become our Demon. Instead of

continuing to evolve in an ever-unfolding cycle of Creation, we found ourselves bound to the

fated movement of the stars, the very day and hour of our birth determining the very minute

and second of our death.

19

Julian West, private correspondence

Yet this Apocalypse also had its Gospel, its Revelation:

Aeolus: “You can’t have the concept of ‘the Kingdom is within you’ and still have an

external God. Because, you know, where is God – if not in His Kingdom? So, if the

Kingdom is within us, then God is within us.” 20

The ego is a ‘false god’ – a mere demiurge, an empty shell! It’s appalling. Yet within that

tomblike chrysalis is the secret, unknown Butterfly.

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS

Hearing Aeolus elucidate the Sorcerer’s Revelation, I was finally able to make some sense out of

my own obscure experiences in nonordinary reality. ‘Stormy Weather’ as a whole had firmly

implanted in me a sense of solidarity, alliance and even allegiance to the Mage who had so

deftly unfolded these most arcane of secrets.

I wrote Kephas immediately, flushed with boyish admiration and bursting with my own

newfound sense of revelation. His quick reply was warm and friendly, even brotherly. He

immediately clued me in to his own personal identity and whereabouts, and summarily invited

me to join the ‘Stormy Weather’ forum connected to the Aeolus Kephas blog.

Aeolus Kephas – the Virgil who had led me through the labyrinth of my dreaming – was a well-

crafted pseudonym for one Jason Horsley, resident of British Columbia. I quickly discovered that

one of his earlier publications, Matrix Warrior: Being the One, was a clear forerunner of many

of the metanarratives dissected in The Lucid View, its rollicking, occasionally poetic prose clearly

written by the same cocksure oracle behind the incantatory ‘Stormy Weather.’ Horsley had

previously self-published earlier drafts of Aeolus’ two occult masterworks (as well as copious

amounts of other essays, stories and poems) under other pseudonyms, such as Jason Wynd,

Jason Kephas and Homoplasmate.

I soon learned that there was already a small select handful of intimate associates who had

assembled around Horsley and gained his trust. Myself now suddenly numbered among them,

we communicated with one another via a secretive sub-circuit of the ‘Stormy Weather’ forum

to which we alone had access. Styling ourselves the “Argonauts,” we soon set sail, with Jason at

the helm, on a new voyage of truly mythic and epic proportions.

20


SPEAK, O HEAL US

Before my own personal Armageddon had erupted, I had suffered for more than 20 years with

a dualistic mindset, subtly instilled from youth by older yet just as unwitting dualists. As I grew

up, I came to see how the dualistic worldview failed in every respect: emotionally, physically,

financially, psychologically, spiritually, socially, politically – the list goes on. Thankfully, when I

grabbed it by its fragile skeleton bones and flung it all aside to smash like glass, an alternate

worldview had presented itself to me.

Now I had somehow found myself in the company of avowed brothers, like-minded fellow

sorcerers all bent on arriving at lucidity – dedicated, in Jason’s words, to putting “the sorcerers

revelation in action: the only working cure to living in a culture of satanic ritual abuse.” 21

Aeolus: “The magickal task is simple: to perfect our individual rings, make them strong

and bright enough to attract other rings equally as strong and bright as ours or more so

– and then, and only then, hook on to dimmer rings to draw them into our rising

momentum. First, we must take care of our own rings. Once we attract other rings to

form a spiral with, the linking together takes care of itself.” 22

I found that I couldn’t help but look up to Kephas as a mentor or role model – even a surrogate

father-figure. Indeed, we Argonauts soon found ourselves adopted almost as sons. Our

consubstantiality with Jason and with each other became “viral” – now collectively assuming

the identity and mantle of Aeolus, Lord of the Winds, each of us began his own magickal

working and initiation, each taking on elementary characteristics of Aeolus as his very own.

Then came our arrangement as a planetary system, modeled appropriately on the astrological

bodies all are familiar with. This was enacted to constellate ourselves as a unitive collective of

proportionally balanced strengths (and weaknesses). It enabled us to keep each other lucidly in

view.

Yet such a working immediately opened itself up to vaster purposes: that of our own little

storm-torn hebdomad exerting gravitational influence upon those participating in the outer

circles of ‘Stormy Weather’s’ “Gnosis Through Crisis” forum. Now under the banner of SWEDA

(the ‘Stormy Weather Existential Detective Agency’), we were also gifted planetary

designations in addition to our own previously-established personal avatars. None but us knew

21

Jason Horsley, SWEDA correspondence 22

Aeolus Kephas, Homo Serpiens (as read in ‘Stormy Weather’ episode 11)

who the “planets” were; yet we fostered ourselves as lords and gods reigning over the

gathering flock in the outer circles nevertheless. With the ready addition of clandestinely

shared avatars (such as the loud-mouthed “Janus,” into whose avatar any of us could log into at

any time) a veritable labyrinth of pseudonyms ensued.

JUPITER REDIVIVUS

I myself adopted the mantle of Jupiter – Zeus – the Airy Giant. Though the determination was

not originally mine, I quickly assimilated Jupiter’s vastness and storm-torn propensity for self-

immolation as my own; or, rather, I came to recognize these same dangerous characteristics in

myself.

Delving deeper into the rich lacquers of mythology surrounding the Jupiter archetype, I was

repeatedly taken aback by how prescient and pertinent my planetary assignment really was.

For example, I had repeatedly been told, throughout my life, that my presence “demands too

much” from others, is in general “too intense” or “ruthless,” and is overall “far too

intimidating.” And, just as Jupiter and Saturn (in the old myths) were always at odds with one

another, so do I find Saturn in my natal chart – opposing my Ascendant. I have always felt the

sheer gravity of this influence quite acutely my entire life.

Jupiter: “I have always been aware of a drastic snag in my relationship to Time,

especially as regards my self-expression. My habitual inability to stand up for my own

passions, needs, wants and commitments stems (I now believe) from an incident in early

childhood, when expression of my nonordinary experiences grieved my mother and

father —caused them ‘pain and suffering.’ How many years have I been keeping silent in

order to spare others pain and suffering? Never taking the reins of Time in hand, so as

to remain focused and clear on what is happening in me or being accomplished through

me? … And so, all the while, Time keeps running past me, slipping away, running out.“23

How could Jason have known?

23

Julian West, journal entry, December 2009

ENTER THE SHADOW

Aeolus, taking a cue from Carl Jung,24 was fond of describing Humanity as “God’s Shadow.”

Aeolus: “So long as we deny the Shadow … it works in the dark, out of sight, secretly

undermining everything we do. And we wonder why we can’t get anything done. We

build with our right hand and dismantle with our left. … So long as we ignore the

Shadow we cannot even observe how it is pulling apart everything we try to put

together. We can only judge the world as we judge ourselves – for the world is a

product of our own consciousness. If not actually creating it, then we are sitting back

and allowing it to happen as such. ... So when the Shadow begins manifesting overtly …

it is because it was oppressed and denied and obscured for too long, and now comes

back to haunt us, to confront us with the truth about ourselves. 25

24

Carl Jung, Answer to Job 25


“We’re like trees – if we want to extend our consciousness upwards into the Light, then

we also have to extend it downwards into the darkness. 26

“As long as we remain passive witnesses, we’re like the audience in a theater – simply

sitting back and watching the show. … Unless we get out of our seats, go outside and

start interacting with Reality, then we are not part of the true mythic narrative: we’re

only spectators to a surrogate of the Real Thing. 27

“When the Dream ends, all but the Dreamer disappears. Unless we align with the

Dream, we must prepare to disappear.”28

CONTRA CHRONOS

Having been duly invited and quickly initiated into the ultimate purpose of SWEDA’s inner

forum – the astrologically-derived alchemical dissolution of one’s petty, personal ego – I

suddenly found myself stalled, unknowing exactly how to move forward with the magickal task

at hand. Delving deeper into my own natal chart, I was simultaneously shocked and relieved to

discover how many of the patterns I'd been playing out for years were detailed right there, all

along, in my own natal “planetary alignment.”

Jupiter: “Transcendental, transliminal and transpersonal experiences have been an

ongoing, almost ordinary affair for me since late childhood at least, if not sooner. My

first satori experience on Friday August 13, 1999, and my later meeting with the ‘Holy

Guardian Angel’ at age 25 … catapulted me into several years of hypnagogic trance and

scribing by ‘angelic dictation,’ culminating in a mind-splitting soul-searing migraine

headache episode in which I could internally feel something like molten shining plasma

gushing up and down my spine—only to be told later by my ‘Angel’ that some manner

of ‘astral working’ had been performed, so as to facilitate my physiology’s adaptation to

some ‘Great Work’ yet to be enacted. Then, at age 28, I awoke to a looping monologue

inside the right hemisphere of my head, overflowing forth its Presence, presentiment

and purpose; and I committed myself to an ongoing surrender to its overtaking of me in

the morning, afternoon or night, transcribing verbatim what It would have me say.

The difference now is that my pursuit down these winding, implicately interconnected

avenues can no longer suffice as an idle pastime hid away from everyone I know: I have

no recourse but to begin to live as I have for so many years longed to, to begin to overtly

practice what I have for so long silently been preaching.

26

Aeolus Kephas, ‘Blue Rose Report’ interview 27



I was all along afraid of whether or not others would believe, or believe me, or believe in

me – because I didn’t know how to believe in myself.” 29

Now that I had fortuitously found (and been found) by a trusted circle of sorcerous

accomplices, I was over-eager to confess all of these paranoid-aware, paranormal and generally

“otherworldly” experiences – my mysticism, my mania, my own magickal undertakings. These

were all core aspects of my self-willed person, stemming from experiences that I had, for too

many years, been reluctant to speak about to anyone. I simply could not wait to unburden

myself of such weighty secrets.

Jason – now, synchronistically enough, appearing under the guise of the masterful Lord of the

Rings, Saturn himself – was less than enthused about this, however. “It's too darn lofty and

abstract and highfalutin,”30 he panned. While, in my own mind, I was shedding years of

megalomaniac, even messianic pretensions, Jason viewed it as egomania of the highest order.

Although occasionally on the verge of handing over the laurels of Aeolus to me alone, he more

often than not seemed genuinely paranoid that I might somehow usurp his newfound throne.

It became abundantly clear that the majority of Argonauts also felt quite ill at ease in the

company of my own “unveiling.” One even remarked that he literally became sick when hearing

my words. How often my fellow accomplices were simply taking cues from Papa Saturn’s own

befuddlement, I have no idea.

Coincidentally with all this, one fellow shipmate and a couple of outer forum neophytes quietly

took a liking to the experiences I had related and the wisdom I had gleaned from them. This

small handful of compatriots and I began communicating with each other outside of the forum

– and for this we were summarily chastised, tarred and feathered.

Jupiter: “What do you do when you've tried your damndest to reach out to people you

genuinely care for with a few choice words of dire urgency? What do you do when

you've extended your hand to help a drowning man, only to have him slap you in the

face? Do you kick him undertow, or just walk away?

Now what do you do when this happens in a public forum amongst well-regarded

peers? When you are trying your damndest to break through all barriers to finally reach

other real living human beings, only to be told repeatedly that you're ‘full of shit’ and its

all ‘nonsense?’

29

SWEDA entry, July 18, 2009 30

Jason Horsley, SWEDA correspondence

The deeper I dig for gold in my heart, I find blacker and blacker oil. … Love and anger are

so tightly intertwined in my consciousness right now that I can't figure how to separate

them, or even if they are separable at all.” 31

Paranoia abounded; the Argo was storm-damaged, taking on water. In her confines there was

little lucidity, let alone solace, to be found.

OPPOSITION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP 32

This is a tale of two planets.

During August of that year (2009), Jupiter was visible throughout the night as a brilliant beacon

sauntering across the heavens. A few hours before sunrise, however, Saturn – rings and all –

could be found looming gloweringly on the other side of the sky, in direct opposition. Such an

opposition is considered by astrology to be indicative of a culmination or climax leading up to a

downward turn of affairs. Seeing this stunning, even breathtaking planetary alignment for

myself in the wee hours one morning, I was able to recognize how Jason’s (“Saturn’s”) growing

“opposition” to me (“Jupiter”) really connoted “true friendship.” Not by platitudes of course –

never – but by challenging me to see above and climb to my own heights.

It appeared as if Saturn – Father Time – had swallowed his children; or at least had attempted

to. Yet Jupiter – true to the mythic archetype – had narrowly escaped going down the gullet.

Papa Saturn had all-too-briefly chewed and then spit me back out, finding me wholly

unpalatable.

Saturn: “This is all very insightful and profound (sometimes confoundingly so), and if

anyone is able to pick up Aeolus' thread and spin new eso-patterns and extend the

mythos of it, it's Julian. (Interesting to note that mythologically, Saturn's rule was

replaced by Jupiter's, which was the end of the ‘Golden Age!’).

Since you are discussing something that already is, what's to discuss? Is it perhaps a way

to hold yourself above and outside the down n' dirty psychological process of personal

muckraking that this gnosis through crisis program is dependent on?

Bear in mind that this kind of occult self-mythologizing that you and I (and all of us here)

have a predilection for is identical to the ways in which a traumatized child, threatened

31

Julian West, private correspondence 32

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by his or her immediate physical/emotional environment, creates imaginal relationships

– with god-forms and faery friends and the like – in order to take refuge therein.

This is the earliest stages of ego inflation, and is the very inverse of grounding.” 33

Jupiter: “Jason, you have several times made deeply disparaging remarks regarding your

own work, especially your work as Aeolus—deeming it (indeed, perhaps damning it) as

unnecessary, of no real value or importance, as, perhaps, too ‘lofty, abstract, self-

serving, ego-inflating.’ …

It seems, perhaps, that you may be in need of hearing that your work, especially your

work as Aeolus, is far from unnecessary; it has immeasurable value and importance. …

It’s one thing to retain humility in the face of admiration; but it’s quite another to ignore

the transformative power of the knowledge and wisdom you enabled yourself to

transmit. No, it’s not about you, your ego, your personal self, be it termed Jake or Jason,

Horsley, Wynd or Kephas—it’s about the selfless service you have openly offered to all

who would listen and see. …

I cannot help but view your relinquishment of that role as a way of denying

responsibility for the great power your life has unfolded to reveal.” 34

Saturn: “I'm faced with the sobering awareness that I have written two whole books

that amount to little more than this same sort of galactic analysis, and that, in the end,

add nothing to the experience of being, only to an interpretation of it. 35

“I'd say quite categorically that Julian's experience … is a case of this – just as my own

‘being the One’ lark was … – an unconsciously created counterfeit experience of

connectivity that (unlike shoelace-tying, mundane relations with one's flesh-and-blood

peers) allows one to retain a sense of one's specialness.

I should add that what makes the experience ‘counterfeit’ is not that it is bogus in itself

– to really work, it should be as authentic as possible – but because it is used in a way

that allows the personal self to invest and take refuge in it, and so becomes

counterfeit.”36

33





DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH

Aeolus: “The only way to change our awareness is to pull the rug out from under our

belief system.” 37

As mentioned before, I was six years old when my mother told me to “stop lying” when I

attempted to share some of my own personal nonordinary experiences of Reality with her and

my father. From then on I resolved to keep just about everything to myself. This reclusiveness,

over the ensuing two decades, had continued to snowball into a divisive tension in my own

psyche; looking into myself I saw a very different person than the personality I exhibited

outwardly to others.

Saturn: “Julian, your case is very specific, because, since you experienced the cognitive

dissonance of having your mother call you a liar regarding your imaginal visions, you

37


would then have felt a profound survival need to reinforce their reality, and yet been

forced into rejecting the Mother to do so. This would have created a split in you. …

Your constructed identity then – as being that which protects you from your

environment either by matching it or opposing it (or both) – would have been built

expressly around the idea that you were privy to special knowledge or visionary

experience that others could not understand. By rejecting the mother for her blindness,

you were rejecting also the world (the child's world begins with his mother). Hence you

experience the world as ignorant and even hostile towards you and your reality, and

experience the corresponding desire to ‘change’ the world – manifesting in a Christ

complex, which is really a desire to rise above/destroy the world.

Your challenge then is to let go of the part of you that is driven by wounds into a Christ

identification (as a child's refuge), and to allow an integration of that messianic

‘delusion’/ Knowing (it's a bit of both) into your mundane life. This depends on allowing

yourself to be as shallow and ordinary as you perceive others to be – and as your

Mother wanted you to be! – while at the same time, allowing intimacy and ordinary,

human connection between yourself and others, specifically here at the forum – where

your Christ complex is actually most at home, but paradoxically, least welcome: because

it is not needed! Here, as elsewhere, it is simply a means for you to avoid the nitty-gritty

interaction that's required, first of all with your own past, and secondly, with the rest of

us present.” 38

REQUIEM FOR THE INNER CHILD

In the midst of all the brotherly squabbles, occasional glimmers of insight and general growing

disenchantment at SWEDA, I now found myself staring into the mirror of my own innermost

abyss. Realizing how much faith I had invested in Jason as a surrogate father, I also began to

come to terms with the reasons why I regarded my own father as a failed role model, and why I

had already spent so many years running as fast and far away as I could from my own familial

upbringing.

Jupiter: “I remember as a child feeling hurt when I felt or perceived that I was not

looked or doted upon by my father as someone ‘special’ or ‘important’ in his life. Who

was my father, really? I don’t know; he never showed me. Believing that he didn’t want

me to know who he was, I resolved not to let him know who I am. I would hide alone in

my room and cry. As I got older, I just got mad instead.” 39

38


SWEDA entry, August 8, 2009

Reexamining the all-too-easily remembered litany of my own willful self-evolvement – now

without the assistance of SWEDA’s inner forum – I came face to face with my own shadow. And

there I discovered just how very little I had actually disowned the conditioning of my despised

childhood.

My mother and father didn’t believe in the phenomenon of Change (or Transformation); or

else, perhaps, wanted to resist Change at all costs. This was evident in hundreds of ways – from

the same daily, weekly and yearly routines; eating the same meals for decades on end; the

dismay and confusion if something was in the least bit altered. I was essentially raised to resist

Change and Transformation– which really entails a resistance of Reality, real emotion, real lucid

living. I was raised to be ineffectual and afraid of everything and to never question anything and

just stay … the same … forever. Nevertheless, I fought against it all the way, and still do to this

day.

At some point in my mid-teens I realized I could not go on like this anymore. During daylight

hours I would imagine that I was someone of great importance, that I should be proud and

confident of my future; but come nightfall I was a frightened animal who could hardly sleep.

I had never felt completely right about being a “human being.” I’d always felt as if my true Self

was a creative dynamo radiating showers of electrostatic ecstasy. I could see now how my

relations with my own father had led me down the path I have taken in life — towards

mysticism, shamanism, sorcery, dreaming, and theophany. And yet, despite my many protests

otherwise, I had unwittingly perpetuated the very same unhealthy psychology I had spent all

my adult life attempting to run away from.

Jupiter: “When will I find home? When will I ever return home? When will I feel at home

again? I’ve been lost looking for home ever since I was 6 years old. 25 years have gone

by … in a slow churning whirlwind. Where am I headed now?

What am I? Am I really a vehicle for revelation? Or just a fucked-up traumatized child?

How could I have experienced what I have experienced? How could I have kept silent

about it all? If it doesn’t have meaning then what does it mean? 40

“This is why I found it necessary to announce all of this to you – not to ‘platform’ myself,

but to pass through, transcend and heal the wound that has led me, for more than 25

years, to live a completely inauthentic existence.” 41

40

Julian West, journal entry, Fall 2009 41

SWEDA entry, July 20, 2009

Saturn: “Since Jupiter energy tends to inflate everything, to the point of even becoming

an inadvertent clown, your own dishonesty [is] especially magnified.

What hidden agenda have you been serving all this time? Is it possible that you only

ever really joined this group because you looked up to me? Do you feel betrayed?

Tricked? Abandoned?

Why has it taken you so long to speak up?”42

Jupiter: “My long-term ‘ego-inflation,’ as I now see it, was the result of me keeping all of

this to myself for so long—thereby participating in self-deception, committing self-

sabotage, keeping all the power and shining to myself and thereby casting a long, dark

shadow – digging a deeper and deeper rut. … So afraid of being abandoned or betrayed,

I never allowed anyone to know who I really am. I’ve lived a life of regrets, never finding

the free space necessary to create a new life for myself. And all the while my parents’

own ‘unlived lives’ were playing puppeteer with the life that I thought was ‘mine.’” 43

Saturn: “What is the issue here is that you need this belief structure to maintain your

own sense of identity. That dependency, that investment, falsifies your impressions

even when they are essentially correct. It's always only a generalization based on your

personal experience, anyway. Just like a victim of child abuse attracts abuse as an adult,

you have attracted people, and even information (e.g., ‘Stormy Weather!’) … to confirm

this idea of ignorance and hostility, and so consolidate your own place in it.” 44

Out of so many broken bits and scattered remnants of memory I had unwittingly constructed

my own Chapel Perilous, and was now hard-pressed to find a way out. The very moment I

began to reject Papa Saturn as a flawed, perhaps even failed mentor was the very same

moment I discovered just how accurate his critical assessments of me had really been. But now

it was much too late to turn back and be swallowed whole, or bow before his scythe to my own

beheading.

I was a “man overboard;” the mutiny on the Argo had definitively broken the trustworthy

bonds by which I had so tightly lashed myself to the mast. I was irretrievably lost at sea.

42




THE HANGED MAN

“Saturn is really more like a teacher than a father - though He can be a father-figure. The

house where He resides in your chart will be the area of your life where your biggest

fears are hidden and the area you will try to avoid at all costs. … The diligence,

perseverance and effort that you will need in order to overcome the obstacles and

restrictions that will confound you are required for you to develop Mastery. For Saturn

there is only one way to do something and that's the Right way. Saturn demands

integrity and will strip you of every impulse to cheat, fudge, short-cut, skip, deflect and

shirk.” 45

True as ever to the Jupiter archetype, I began keeping my distance from Papa Saturn and the

rest of my half-digested planetary brethren.

It was impossible to accurately communicate to anyone the befuddled crisis I now found myself

tormented by. The Gnosis was nowhere to be found, so I sought solitude where and whenever I

could. Disappeared from my own life, I found nothing but a fragile ghost inside the cracked shell

of my ego. It was then and there that I began to distance myself from my own long-held, overly-

cherished beliefs. Now understanding that the only way to change the future was to change the

past, I began to re-write my memories, seeing hints and glimmers of my past in a whole new

light – and darkness.

My world had been turned utterly upside down; so I willfully hung myself upside-down – just as

Jupiter had done (in one example of the “Hanged Man” archetype) to escape the lowering

maw of Saturn – so that I might again begin to see things rightside-up. And there, true to the

myths of old, I discovered a new language, a new alphabet with which to spell myself once

more into manifest being. I saw signs everywhere – numbers, words, shapes, colors, sounds –

all in amalgamating kaleidoscopic conjunctions. I turned again to tried and true wellsprings of

inspiration, and found myself moved and swayed by details of memory I had formerly

overlooked.

In my own depths I beheld a pattern – a great Shadow cast by a before-hidden interior Light. I

realized then that my own true Presence had never before been present in my life!

Jupiter: “Coming to grips with the utter subjectivity of these events has re-awoken me

to the utter subjectivity of my own life as a whole – that sense of open-eyed

‘unknowing,’ the utter open-ended ‘unknowability’ of absolutely everything.” 46

45

Lucinda Horan, SWEDA correspondence 46

Julian West, journal entry, November 2009

I cut myself loose from the World Tree – and fell joyously headlong into the Abyss of Self I had

been so very terrified of all my life long.

NOTHING WORKS BUT SURRENDER

Jupiter: “I’ve now dropped all the way into the Wound, into the Abyss of self – and I find

myself nearly paralyzed by it. This isn't to say that life is miserable; I’m just feeling out

the slow tarry swirling deep within, how it spirals out and out. Yet I am desperate to find

release from this primal gnawing. I want to love the present moment, I want to love the

future before me – why is the past such a brick wall? I try to reason it away, reason

doesn't work ... I try to ignore it, ignoring doesn't work ... I try to choose it, own it, but it

isn’t, of course, what I would choose to own.

I know, I know – the only thing that works is surrender. But what am I surrendering? All

that to me makes life and love sacred? All that I identify as me? ... What would come

after that but laying down in a hole to die?” 47

Stepping across the threshold of the Dark, into the No-Thing of the egoless Void is the only

Knowledge worth living or dying for. Because the pathless path is everywhere, treading this

course is even more difficult than tight-rope walking – every step is a step along the path, but

also potentially a step into labyrinths and blind corridors.

I knew I wanted out of the maze; and I also knew that the only way out was the way in. I cut

loose my umbilical cord to SWEDA and pushed ahead down the birth canal alone.

Jupiter: “Sometimes it feels as if all of you have unknowingly, unwittingly ‘conspired’ to

exacerbate my original Wound, poke it, kick it, re-open it. … I suppose in some ways I

should be thanking you. … For it is here, in the Wound, that I have discovered the germ

of New Life inside the dull covering shell-husk. I crawl out of all this now with one and

only one determination: to bring that germ to life, to real existence, by any means

necessary.” 48

Stormy Weather had helped – by hinting at the Light at the end of the tunnel. Lucid dreaming

had helped – by allowing for ‘practice space,’ or ‘training’ for lucid living. I had believed that

SWEDA would continue this adventure of actively walking through the present, actively creating

the future instead of pacing in circles through the minefield of the past.

Jupiter: “My initial posts here were met with outright indignance by several of you —

you especially, Jason. I was immediately asked to ‘dumb down’ what I was saying, and

began to understand that here at SWEDA we are digging through the dirt to come back

with handfuls of dirt, not buried gold.” 49

This was the exact opposite of why I had reached out to Aeolus in the first place. All throughout

the last few months of my involvement at SWEDA, I experienced intense paralysis, a grave fear

of saying anything at all – because everything I shared seemed to become invariably

misconstrued, picked apart and deconstructed to the point of complete ‘communication

breakdown.’

What I saw was simply endless circular paranoia of self—a conspiracy of self against self, and

each self against all other selves – an exaltation of “non-ego” as the biggest Ego of all.

47

SWEDA entry, September 23, 2009 48

Julian West, journal entry, November 2009 49

Julian West, journal entry, November 2009

Jupiter: “This is why I have participated so little—everything I’ve offered has been

immediately rejected as being too ‘esoteric,’ too ‘dishonest,’ too ‘clever,’ etc. I spend an

inordinate amount of time and energy contemplating how to respond to SWEDA,

choked with the gripping realization that my response will be misconstrued and, as such,

no real benefit, no real movement forward will take place. The complete willingness to

participate coupled with the realization that participation is impossible – that there is so

much to communicate and yet no possible way for communication to take place – I’ve

wrestled with this to the point where this paralysis has invaded the rest of my life as

well. …

It seems I’ve fallen into my old entrapment of wishing to please others or look good in

their eyes, to the detriment and expense and ultimate sacrifice of my own uprightness

and integrity, my own true power and presence. … Like Narcissus: he wants love, he

needs love, but he refuses to share himself with the one he loves. So he ends up all

alone.” 50

IGNITING JUPITER

Somewhere in the mute darkness of my whirling descent, I heard the reassuring voice of Aeolus

once more.

Aeolus: “I dream of traveling through space to Jupiter. … I (Julian?) am part of a

construction/space-faring team who are working on Jupiter or on a space station

orbiting it. Julian has found an area in deep space, near the Planet, that is filled with

these swirling white lights, and he can spend hours just floating there, gazing at the

lights, in total bliss out. I am suspicious, anything that blissful seems likely to be a trap. …

We travel down this structure – to the center of Jupiter? Later … we discovered that the

center of Jupiter is pure gold. ...

So then surely, the gold heart signifies that Jupiter is about to become a Sun? 51

“As befits an expanding gas-planet, you are always focusing on the big stuff. But

surrender is all about going in to what is finer, into the tiniest part of you that knows. …

50

Julian West, journal entry, November 2009 51


Divine consciousness does not need us to make use of it. It makes use of us. The less

thought we give our role in that, the more freely and beautifully it can move through us.

The smaller we can be, the more the vastness can dwell within us.” 52

Aeolus appeared to me now, not as Papa Saturn or the legendary Jason Horsley, nor as any

semblance of the guru, mentor or fatherly role model he was before – but rather as my

deepest, truest, innermost Self.

The Wind that now carried me aloft through the perilous Void was the Spirit that had always

breezed through my depths, the mystic vagabond Voice of my Angel – the Angel who was

always me. It was my Self I had to surrender to, my whole untrammeled Self, my deepest,

highest, innermost Self. Only in the Light of that hotheaded, annihilating blaze could the

Shadow of my old self be illuminated at last.

Aeolus: “We are constantly just throwing stuff into this Void – this psychic, spiritual

emptiness within us. And we’ll do everything we can to fill it. And, of course, nothing

does fill it. … The result – because we never allow this Void in us to just be, because we

are constantly trying to avoid experiencing it – we’re not able to tune in to the Void, and

find out what its there for and what it really wants. If we hold that empty space within

us, and simply allow it to exist, then Something Else will fill it. 53

“The ego is a chrysalis. And the Divine Self is trapped within that chrysalis.” 54

The returned memories of the past flooded the gates of my senses. I was dying – now I was

being reborn. I was no longer fallen; I had regained my throne, my chariot, my wings. I was Me

once more.

I was Me.

52




©2010 Julian West Original artwork: Cary McCoy, “Mind Mine,” 2010. http://www.carymccoy.com

Gnosis Through Crisis (2010)

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Transcript of Gnosis Through Crisis (2010)