ELECTRONOMICON

Two!

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:19:49 GMT

Happy Birthday, Kids!

Happy Birthday!

Tue, 11 May 2010 22:38:18 GMT

Happy Birthday, Kids!

Born to us this day...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:29:23 GMT

In the photo above :

Gage Nikkal Caigan to the left, and Tuli Viatrix Caigan on the right.

Planetary Hours, part two

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:03:02 GMT

Dan writes : Even if the calculation of the planetary hours is a technique requiring some calculation, doesn't that pale in comparison with the requirements to draw up an astrological chart for a given time and place?

Khem responds : Ever hear that old chestnut, "The life so short; the craft so long to learn" ?

Asking any craftsperson or artist if what they do is difficult is to miss the point altogether.

Of course it is difficult - the point is that it satisfies the soul.

I also suggest that you try asking some of the astrologers at a SCA tournament how they cast their charts all day long - like as not, they'll tell you that it's all about the training and the tables.

As James Evans writes in his History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy, "The tedium involved in a strict calculation can be reduced with the aid of planetary tables."

A handful of astrologers still employ astrolabes or some other tool for taking a sight, for the same reason that some navigators still use a sextant (or even an astrolabe) instead of GPS - pride of craft.

Here is an example of what I mean :

The Tools of the Trade:
An Astronomer's Notebook
http://tinyurl.com/63smsj

And here is a link to an article about a table with some stone markers that could be moved around on it to cast horoscopes for clients that was used by itinerant astrologers working the streets many centuries ago :

James Evans - The astrologer's apparatus: a picture of professional practice in Greco-Roman Egypt
in : Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 35, Part 1, No. 118, pages 1 - 44, 2004.
http://tinyurl.com/58g3oz

Note the resemblance to the game of Astrological Chess described by Alfonso X in his Liber Acedrex :

http://tinyurl.com/6m5hxo

And here is a link to a page that has a better diagram of such a table :

Medieval Cosmology
http://tinyurl.com/6ptdna

Anyway, to return to your question :

The same procedures that generate the planetary hours for a given day of the year and for a given degree of latitude also provide a way to slice the local horizon into Houses.

Dividing the local horizon into Houses is a necessary step in casting the chart, so generating the planetary hours, or lifting them from a 'Handy Table' for your area, brings you that much closer to completing a chart.

It might be more difficult for an operator to cast a chart if they were working in a complete social vacuum, but this was never the case for the periods in question - there was a community of artisans to draw upon that shared their astronomical concerns and technologies.

The Almagest and the Handy Tables, for example, provided templates for the spawning of local Almanacs and Ephemerides, even for those not living in coastal towns with their ready access to nautical tables ( the overlap of astronomical and nautical concerns go hand-in-hand ).

Dan : The discussion here begins with planetary hours, then moves to houses. Speculations about Ptolemy aside, however, Placidus' system for calculating the houses post-dates the planetary hours by centuries (the discussion in the Hygromanteia being a key example), so it's uncertain how much his system validates planetary hours.

Khem : You have it the other-way round, Dan - it is the procedures for deriving the planetary hours that lend validity, as well as an historical precedent, to the Placidus Houses - as well as providing the scheme for the names of the days of the week in the first place.

See Chapters 19-21 of Paul of Alexandria's Introduction, or Eisagogika, (c.378CEV) for his explanation of how to calculate the day of the week and the planetary hour.

See also :

Solomon Gandz - The Origin of the Planetary Week or The Planetary Week in Hebrew Literature
in : Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Vol. 18, (1948 - 1949), pages 213-254.

Solomon Gandz - The Division of the Hour in Hebrew Literature
in : Osiris, Vol. 10, 1952, pages 10-34.

Dan : Besides, the chief problem with the planetary hours is not that someone is dividing up the day and night, but in the attributions of those periods to planets that have no relation to their position in the sky. Would it be possible to expand upon this aspect of the system?

Khem : The problem, if there is one, is the ongoing problem of non-practitioners misunderstanding the procedures or deliberately distorting them for purposes of their polemic.

A planet's rulership of an hour is just one of the factors to be considered when examining a chart, along with its rulership of a sign, its place of exaltation, its face or decan, and its term.

The Lord of the Hour is not necessarily the Lord of the Ascendant, for example.

And the horological utility of this system derives from its ability to adjust the 12 planetary hours of the Day and Night across the Seasons, additionally enabling one to correct a Table with supplemental direct observations of celestial bodies (Sol/Luna/Planets/Stars) in order to better determine Where and When the observer/operator is.

Here are a few texts that I recommend :

James Evans - The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy.
Stephen McCluskey - Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe.
John Heilbron - The Sun in the Church : Cathedrals as Solar Observatories.
James Holden - A History of Horoscopic Astrology.
Ralph Holden - The Elements of House Division.
Dona Marie Lorenz - Tools of Astrology : Houses.
Hewitt Schlereth - Celestial Navigation in a Nutshell.
Dennis Fisher - Latitude Hooks and Azimuth Rings : How to Build and Use 18 Traditional Navigational Instruments.

And here are a few more references :

A Treatise on Planetary Hours
including
How to cast Judgment in Horary Questions
by the relationship between the Lord of the Hour
and the Radical Ascendant
by Andrew J. Bevan, QHP, DMS Astrol. (c) 1994
http://tinyurl.com/62rovg

"The Significations of the Planetary Hours are very Ancient...and may be of good use, though they are not of such Efficacy as well-grounded Elections, from an apt posture of the Heavens..." ~ Henry Coley, Clavis Astrologiae Elimata, 1676,
page 273.

Henry Coley's Key to the Whole Art of Astrology is freely available for download as a .PDF from Paulo Alexandre Silva's Astrologia Medieval site :
http://tinyurl.com/2ylzvz

See also the section on the astronomical day in the entry for the Calendar at Britannica Online :
http://tinyurl.com/6jt9rg

- the section on 'counting hours' and 'Babylonian' hours on Answers.com :
http://tinyurl.com/62jggf

- and the entry for hours at 'Sundials on the Internet' :
http://tinyurl.com/5yvrn

There is also a very nice specimen of an astrolabe that incorporates the planetary hours and the zodiacal signs here :
http://tinyurl.com/69s2l8

And an example of a water clock that measures the unequal hours here :
http://tinyurl.com/5jrhmg

The Astrolabe
An instrument with a past and a future
http://tinyurl.com/6xjoxp

Calculating Planetary Hours
Liorah Chanah
http://tinyurl.com/69qjom

Calculating Halachic Hours
Liorah Chanah
http://tinyurl.com/5c4gzj

And here are some links to related freeware :

ChronosXP
Free Planetary Hours Software for Windows
http://tinyurl.com/5z72ll

Halachic Times Calculator
http://tinyurl.com/5s4pvd

The Mystical Kabbalah of Abraham Elim : Planetary Hours

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:38:00 GMT

I am having a lot of trouble with Dan Harms' blogware - for some reason, my responses to his posts keep getting discarded.

So I am going to continue posting my remarks on his essays here, and hope that his comments are better received on LiveJournal.

All interested parties can see the original post here :

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, Part 6
http://tinyurl.com/67txxx

Dan Harms writes :

" The planetary hours are a sort of poor man's astrology, perhaps conceived of as an early effort to integrate planetary influences into magic practiced by people with no astrological training themselves.

The idea is pretty simple; each day and night is divided into twelve hours each, and each hour is attributed to a particular planet. The first hour of each day is attributed to the planet, or the corresponding deity, for which the day is named. "

The author of the *Mystical Kabbalah* argues that the planets do not necessarily appear anywhere in the local sky during their respective planetary hours.

Although he may feel that this is a legitimate grievance against the system of the planetary hours, and although this same argument turns up again and again in the writings of practitioners and scholars of magic ( perhaps with no astrological training themselves(?)), the argument is a 'red herring' that has nothing whatsoever to do with the practice of astrological magic.

Far from being a " poor man's astrology ", the procedure for deriving the planetary hours is a remarkably sophisticated way of dividing the local horizon into astrological Houses at the practitioner's own Latitude and during a given Season, based on the appearance of the Sun upon the horizon in the East, and the amount of time the Sun takes to traverse the local sky and disappear in the West.

Planetary hours are not the 'artificial hours' of sixty minutes that we commonly employ; they vary with the changing length of night and day as we oscillate between the Solstices and the Equinoxes of the year.

Here is a bit more on the subject from an article by Deborah Houlding over on Skyscript :

" The Placidus system is purely time-based and thus offers perfect harmony with the use of planetary hours, adding credence to the claim that this could have been an original method of house division, based upon the two-hourly 'watches' of ancient astrologers, who numbered the constellations in the order that the stars within them rose to the ascendant during the twelve watches of the 24-hour period.

There seems little doubt that the symbolism attached to the interpretative use of the houses has been greatly influenced from their use as 'time-markers', in which the movement of the planets' passage through the heavens, following the diurnal arc, is recognized.

Each of the houses represents two planetary hours, the first starting at dawn with the ascendant.

The area between the ascendant and the 12th house cusp represents the first two planetary hours, that between the 12th and the 11th the 3rd and 4th hour, and so on.

The MC represents the end of the 6th daytime planetary hour, while the descendant corresponds to sunset.

The 6th house is made up of the first two nocturnal hours, and so on round to the Ascendant.

The division between the two planetary hours in any house is found by dividing the house exactly in two. "

~ from :

The Problems of House Division
by Deborah Houlding
Part 4: Time Based Solutions
http://tinyurl.com/3pkmpp

See also :

The Houses: Temples of the Sky
by Deborah Houlding
Projected Divisions :
the focus on time
page 103 - 105.
http://tinyurl.com/6xblcw

Pretty clearly, the system of the planetary hours as described by the author of the *Mystical Kabbalah* is a misrepresentation on his part and not, as he would have it, an 'Error of the Astrologers'.

I often read accounts arguing for the rarity, or even the nonexistence, of practitioners of astrological magic in antiquity.

To test these theories, a few years back I ran the planetary hours given by the author of the Pauline Art as found in the Lemegeton of Sloane 3825 against those I calculated myself, setting the location for London (figuring that the Latitude and Longitude would be somewhere 'in the ballpark').

I also corrected the date from Gregorian to Julian reckoning, which made March 10th, 1641 a Wednesday (Mercury), instead of a Monday (Moon).

My results tallied in every case with those found in Sloane 3825 - so that author, at least, must have been one of the 'rare birds'.

And while we are discussing the *Mystical Kabbalah*, which relates a procedure for contacting your guardian angel, it seems appropriate to mention that the Lemegeton, in particular the second part of the Ars Paulina, also includes a procedure for identifying and contacting your guardian angel :

Lesser Key of Solomon :
Book 3 : Ars Paulina
http://tinyurl.com/d58se

Sumer Is Icumen In

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:45:27 GMT

On pages 134 -135 of The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind Lovecraft's Legend, by Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce <http://tinyurl.com/3zwqa3>, there is some discussion about the author's attempts at locating the source of a quote cited in the Simonomicon that supposedly originates with Aleister Crowley, to wit :

" Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition. "

They tried asking Peter Levenda, aka Simon, where the quote came from.

'Simon Peter' was unable to supply a clear citation, but he did tell them that the quote in question could be found in one of Kenneth Grant's early books.

Dan and John were able to find two references to Sumer in Crowley's work - one in The Cephaloedium Working < available here : http://tinyurl.com/67aolo >, where Crowley writes that his "Holy Angel his Guardian is Aiwaz 93, the God first dawning upon Man in the Land of Sumer.", and another in Liber Aleph CXI : The Book of Wisdom or Folly, where Crowley writes of " Sumer, where Man knew himself Man. "

But the quote in question still eluded them.

Since Dan and John failed to find it during the course of what they felt was a fairly exhaustive reading of Crowley, they suggested the possibility that the quote might come from Crowley's unpublished writings.

There are two more references to Sumer available in Crowley's corpus that I know of, and these are cited in Magick: Liber ABA by Aleister Crowley, Mary Desti, Leila Waddell, and Hymenaeus Beta, published in 1997 by Weiser.

On page lxv, there is an excerpt from Part IV of Book 4, where Crowley writes :

" I now incline to believe that Aiwass is not only God or Demon or Devil once held holy in Sumer, and mine own Guardian Angel, but also a man as I am, insofar as he uses a human body to make His magical link with Mankind, whom He loves, and that he is an Ipsissimus, the Head of the A:.A:.. "

This quote is also available here :

Aiwass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwass

And here :

The Equinox of the Gods
Chapter 7
http://tinyurl.com/45klxa

And there is another one of Crowley's references to Sumer cited on page lxv :

" LXXVIII. The number of Aiwass, the Intelligence who communicated this Book.... Aiwaz is not ( as I had supposed ) a mere formula, like many angelic names, but is the most ancient name of the God of the Yezidis, and thus returns to the highest Antiquity.

Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition. "

Obscure quote? No longer.

And I will leave it to you to decide if Peter Levenda is "deliberately exaggerating" the importance of the quotation, as Harms/Gonce contend, or not.

Loudly sing Cuckoo.

Watching Paint Dry...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:03:36 GMT

Our house is getting on in years, and the outside of it has never been painted. Here is a photo that Emily took this past Winter :

The garage to the right is new, and it clearly hasn't been painted, either.

Now that Summer is here, I have begun painting the house, starting with the Deck. Below you can see me mixing up a batch of linseed oil and turpentine, to give the bone-dry wood a good drink and fatten it up before I paint it :

The ratio I am using is three linseed to one turps.

And here is an image of the deck, sans impediminutiae :

Now if it would just stop raining long enough...

The Visitor

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:13:39 GMT

We are *still* unpacking, but we are now very happily at home in our new digs across from the Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskill Park of New York State.

I was moving crates of equipment between our house and the garage, and caught something bright out of the corner of my eye :

Looks like we have salamanders in our new neighborhood!

Ready to Rock

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 05:43:44 GMT

I just returned from a workshop given this past weekend in Brooklyn, New York by a Master in the art of preparing and then applying Natural Pigments:

Michael Price.

Beginning early Saturday morning at his studio on 68 Jay Street in DUMBO and ending early Sunday evening, Michael took our group - Irvin, Jock, and myself - through all the steps of preparing a natural pigment - in this case, a chunk of the mineral Azurite - for use in tempera and oil.

Michael spent the last seven years developing his protocol, which he shared with us in every detail.

If you have ever tried to paint with crushed gemstone before, you were probably quite dismayed as your brilliantly colored mineral matter was slowly transformed under your ministrations into a greyish mud, that no addition of oil or any of our modern synthetic mediums could render luminous.

Below is a photo of the worktable with an array of mineral specimens in the foreground, and with bowls for washing the crushed stone to the rear:

Below is another shot showing the right side of the worktable. At the lower left of the table, you see warm gold and red chunks of Ochre, a mixture of Iron oxides that is often found in sandy clay strata.

Here is a close-up of the Ochre:

Above the Ochre, you can just make out a glowing green powder in a group of tiny jars.

This is powdered Malachite, found in Nature as a mixture of Copper and calcium carbonates, and here shown with the impurities removed.

To the immediate right of the Malachite, you see a glistening chunk of purplish-red Cinnabar, mercury sulfide.

When this has been cleansed of its impurities and 'locked up' by means of the self-same casein bath used to wash it, you will have the warmest and most radiant reds [ and oranges, depending upon the particle size ] that anyone has ever laid eyes upon.

Here is a close-up of the Cinnabar:

To the right of the Ochre and Malachite, you see a shiny yellow material with glassy orange-red streaks running through it. This is Realgar,arsenic sulfide, affording us some of the most brilliant yellows and oranges on our Natural palette.

Here is a close-up of the Realgar:

Though it has proven to be a fugitive pigment in the hands of some painters, Michael's process of washing the crushed mineral with casein is once again the Key to 'locking up' the colour and securing it for the long term.

Just above the Realgar you see a couple of pieces of Orpiment, yet another form of arsenic sulfide and, as you can see, it is a brilliant golden yellow pigment.

Here is a close-up of the orpiment:

Just above the Orpiment you see a few pieces of Stibnite, antimony sulfide. Stibnite gives us a deep glossy black.

Here is a close-up of the Stibnite:

Above and to the right of the Stibnite, you see a piece of Galena, lead sulfide, another glossy grey-black pigment and source for the original lead pencils ( Graphite does look a bit like Galena ).

Here is a close-up of the Galena:

I am not sure just what the rocks to the right and just below the Galena are - Quartz and Ochre, at a guess.

Here's a close-up, maybe you will be able to identify it:

Just below this box you see a few crystals of Pyrites, iron disulphide, also known as Fool's Gold.

Used in a more coarsely ground form, the shiny golden color remains intact for purposes of painting.

Here is a close-up of the Pyrites:

Immediately below the Pyrites are some crystals of Lapis Lazuli, also known as Ultramarine, sodium sulfosilicate, and the source of the most profound blue on the Natural Palette.

Here is a close-up of the Ultramarine:

Here is a shot of the left-hand side of our worktable:

On the lower left, you see a few crystals of Lapis Lazuli embedded in their matrix of Sodalite.

Here is a close-up of the Lapis:

To the right of the topmost piece of Lapis you see what looks like a shard of bright blue glass.

This is a sliver of Egyptian Blue, calcium copper silicate.

Here is a close-up of the Egyptian Blue, also known as Frit:

Just below, and to the right of the Egyptian Blue, are a couple of boxes containing specimens of Azurite, copper carbonate.

When this has been prepared, it gives us a blue very nearly as deep as that of Ultramarine.

Here is a close-up of the Azurite:

To the right of the Azurite, you see a mottled purple chunk of Vivianite, cobalt arsenate.

Here is a close-up of the Vivianite:

And just above the Vivianite are a couple of brilliant green chunks of Malachite, another form of copper carbonate.

Here is a close-up of the Malachite:

In my next entry, we'll see how rough gemstones like the specimens shewn above are turned into pigment.

Oiling Out

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:02:01 GMT

Time to start putting out the
next year's batch of olive oil.

Here is a photo that shows
some of last year's oil, which
looks bright yellow, beside
some of the new oil, which
looks quite green.

In the foreground are a
couple of bottles of walnut
oil that I have been
bleaching out in the sun
for three months.

When I first put them out,
they were very nearly as
yellow [ greenish-yellow,
actually ] as the olive oil
behind them.

The funny hats are caps
made from old plastic
prescription bottles.

They keep rainwater
from wicking in to the
bottles.

Come next June, I'll bring
the walnut oil inside and
begin washing it.

I like painting with walnut
oil, and find that the
commercial offerings are
even more objectionable
than the linseed oils of
trade.

Pastina Lente

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:32:13 GMT

I made up a batch of Library
Paste the other day.

I don't suppose that this stuff
is much good for anything
other than putting up notices
or for mailings, but it is the
first step in preparing an
old pasteboard formula that
I am trying to duplicate.

Ingredients:

* 1 cup flour
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 tsp. alum
* 4 cups water
* 30 drops Oil of
Wintergreen

First, I stirred one cup of sugar
and one teaspoon of alum into
one cup of water in the top
of a double boiler until they
had dissolved.

Then I stirred a cup of white
flour into the sugar and alum
water until the mixture was
smooth and creamy.

Then I stirred in the remaining
three cups of water, and began
heating it over a medium flame.

I continued heating until it was
smooth and clear, stirring the
mixture occasionally.

I let this cool for a couple of
hours.

Then I poured this off into a
blender and processed it up
on high to work out any
lumps, while blending in the
Essential Oil of Wintergreen.

Some recipes call for thirty
drops; I added the contents of
the entire bottle: half an ounce
/ fifteen milliliters.

Then I poured it all off into a
quart-size Ball jar.

Stored in a tightly capped jar,
it will keep for at least a
year, unrefrigerated.

It will gel in the bottle after
a few days; just warm the
jar in hot water before use.

It dries transparent.

Digestive Systems

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:43:00 GMT

I referred to a 'Digester' in passing in my
Levigated Goo post. Figure now is as good
a time as any to share with y'all how I
go about making one of these things.

First, I head over to the Mall in Kingston
and pick up a Styrofoam Icechest from
Wal-Mart:

Then I pick up a bag of fine white
Aquarium Sand from PetCo:

I glue some Aluminum Foil to the
bottom of the Styrofoam Chest:

This Foil will reflect even more heat
back up into the Sand.

I cover the Foil with an old piece of
Cloth for some added
protection:

I spread a thin layer of Sand over
the Cloth:

After cutting a tiny Panel from the
side of the Styrofoam Chest, I
place the Heating Pad on top of
the Sand and run the Cord out
through the side of the Chest.

After I Duct-Tape the Panel back in
place, I cover the Heating Pad with
an inch of Aquarium Sand, tamp it
down, pour the rest of the Sand into
the Chest, and plug it in.

Here is a picture of some Tinctures
being macerated in a Digester:

And here is a picture of some
Frankincense and Myrrh I am
macerating in Spirits of Gum
Turpentine:

I mixed a bit of sand with the powdered
resins to keep them from clumping up,
in order to maximize their exposure to
the Turps.

The Witches' Voice

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:28:53 GMT

I listed my blog in the WitchVox directory today.

American Magus / Harry Smith: A Modern Alchemist

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:50:35 GMT

The following interview is taken
with the permission of the editor
from:
American Magus / Harry Smith :
A MODERN ALCHEMIST,
Edited by Paola Igliori,
New York:
INANOUT PRESS,
1996, ISBN 0-9625119-9-4.

Khem Caigan
November 1, 1995 e.v.

Paola: It's strange, this is the first time we meet, so I don't really know how to angle the conversation. All I know is that you were a really good friend of Harry and you spent a lot of time with him, and also I was thinking of these notes that caught my attention this morning and I couldn't find any further explanation. They said that Harry was working on a system of equating the Enochian system to the Scottish Highland tartan patterns. And on the way over here I thought maybe I can ask Khem about it and now after five minutes with you, you bring out this book on the Enochian system, so I think that's how we should start.

Khem: I started by bringing books out because there is no end to bringing books out. But the business about the Enochian system and the tartans is one of those things, like a half-facetious thing for Harry. One of the fellows that was largely responsible for the Golden Dawn system and for elaborating the Enochian Chess system was Samuel Liddell Mathers, who additionally took the name MacGregor Mathers, and the MacGregors are a Highland clan, and they have one of the older tartans around.

It was one of those "clang" associations, because you look at the tartan setts and you can see this sort of checkerboard grid system emerging from it. It's only natural to link the two of them, especially when you've been wired for any length of time, because everything becomes significant and any sort of resemblance just challenges you to make it significant. So it's one of those things he had fun with.

I don't know anything about the Enochian system, but you were telling me that it's based on the Four Elements: Water, Fire, Air, and Earth...

John Dee and Edward Kelly, to take their story at face value, were approached by angels of the Presence, and they were set the task of recording the elements of this language, and it's referred to as the Enochian language simply because it's the language that biblical patriarch Enoch spoke with Yahweh and the angels at some time in the past. It was at a time when angels and humans and deities were communicating after this fashion - and it was only afterwards that various misunderstandings crept in. So this was like the original, the primordial tongue. The first language.

And you were saying that they had different multiple degrees - like Air/Air would be the purest and the most near to the ideal-

-- on the tables, yeah. And it's a lovely language, the poetry is just incredible. So if for no other reason than that it's aesthetically pleasing, it's a lot of fun to research.

And Earth would be the most gross Element?

- more material, like something you can bonk on (hits the floor). In that way of dividing the Elements on the four tables, you had one particular quarter of the table that was assigned to the Element at its most pure.

Fire Table

For instance, in the Fire table you had Fire of Fire, but you would also have admixtures of some of the other elements that modified it, and it's those particular mixtures that rendered them a bit more tangible. You would have Earth of Fire, which would be the most dense; and then you would have Water of Fire and Air of Fire in between.

So, starting out at the very bottom of the scale, you would have Earth of Earth, which would be absolutely as dense and passive and inert as you could possibly get, and then at the top of the scale you would have Fire of Fire, which would be as tenuous and active and dynamic as you could possibly get.

Sure. So for example, relating it to that correlation that Harry was kind of half-facetiously and half-seriously trying to make between the Highland tartan patterns and the Enochian system, then these crosses of colors that are the Highland tartan patterns could correspond to some of these crosses of the system and could in a way say with what energies the clan vibrates - could be like a secret name of the clan...

Absolutely. Especially in those particular setts or tartans where you see the complementary colors - where you have for instance blue and orange, which flash over each other. Or red and green, which again clash off of each other. It really stands out.

Wow. And what is the book you and Harry were working together on?

A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Some YearsBetween Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits [Meric Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Some Years between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits (London, 1659, reprinted New York: Magickal Child, 1992)]
This is a facsimile edition - we had one that was much like it, and we went through the text and set up these charts showing the frequency with which certain words and letters would turn up. The idea being to see... to sort out the Enochian language, to see which languages it was most clearly related to. As far as the internal evidence goes, it's pretty close to English - in so far as the way it's spoken. It's safest to say that it's Indo-European, which pretty much covers a multitude of things. And the script itself is Amharic, which is an earlier form of Aramaic or Syriac script.

Is that the earliest form of script?

I don't know that it's the earliest one, but that particular area coincides with the Coptic - Abyssinian stuff. Also the Nabataeans had a very similar script - they are the ones that built Petra.

Oh I see - you were mentioning that in Mahagonny Harry was doing something similar.

With regard to Enochian Chess, yeah. He was trying to pull off something very much like that with Mahagonny. He had the imagery parsed in a certain way where you would have - let's see, it was:

People/Portraits,
Animation,
Scenes/Symbols, and
Nature.

And there was a palindrome that I remember learning so that I would be able to go through and sort out all of these slips of paper that described the different image sequences that had to be spliced, one after the other, in order for the film to be assembled. And after the cards had been sorted out, we transferred each series to long scrolls of paper.

One of these scrolls was the timeline for the image sequences appearing on each of the four main screens.

There were another four scrolls in addition to the scroll that served as the timeline for the four main screens, and each of those four scrolls in their turn listed all the colors, slides and film sequences that were supposed to be shown on the smaller screens surrounding each one of the four main screens.

Just thinking about the job of the poor soul that was going to do the editing on this thing; whew, that task would be formidable. I don't know if it ever did make it into the can, all that work, but I know that I had a pretty tough time with it, just with sorting out all those little slips of paper and making up the scrolls.

The palindrome went like this:

< -PASAP-ASNAP-A-S-A-PANSA-PASAP-N- >

As you can see, the whole thing hinges on Nature.

The breakdown was:

10	Animations
6	People/Portraits
5	Scenes/Symbols
3	Nature
24

What is a palindrome?

A palindrome is a word or a phrase that reads the same in either direction, like the phrase 'Madam, I'm Adam', or 'Evil did I dwell, lewd I did live'.

But how did you use it, in order to keep track of which piles were the animations, the people...?

It was the order that I discovered in the layout that he had assigned me, and that was the way I could keep track of which grouping came next in the series. I just happened to discover, or discern, that palindrome as I went along, and it helped me put the image sequences back in order when things got up-ended. So I would go through a particular sequence and then I would start all over again with all these little slips of paper that I had color-coded, and that was the way these images were categorized. So you just start over with the next batch, working your way through each image string front to back - and we had stacks of shoe boxes stuffed full of these things. In fact I still have some of the old back-up stacks we used for error-checking in storage - and it was the same technique we used for going through the word counts for the Enochian language.

Yeah, it's always finding a system within ... and it's strange, like you said, he had an almost maniacal attention to detail, at least in a certain period of his life, but it's always out of this chaos that he created these systems and at times it almost seemed there was an opening to apparent randomness in his things.

Harry understood the nature of obsession, and in fact he made studies of obsessive systems, of systems of madness. And there was the Phrenomnemotechnic Dictionary [ see also, Fauvel-Gouraud's Phrenomnemotechnic Principles, Houel and Macon, NY, 1844 ], which he pointed out to me a few times at the library, suggesting that I take a look at it.

It's a fairly recent book in the history of what used to be called the Art of Memory or the Ars Memoria. It goes back at least to Aristotle's time as far as we know, where you actually construct what was called a Palace of Memory and in all the Places in this strucure, you put different Objects that signify certain Ideas, and you can just find yourself wandering around... if you're delivering a lecture, for instance, and without reading from your notes, you're actually able to reproduce something like The Iliad from memory, simply by wandering down the halls of your Memory Palace. Everything speaks to you and loans you back these ideas. But everything that you look at also enables you to project certain feelings that can be felt by your audience as well, so it was also a very magical system - understandably it was condemned by the church because it was considered sorcerous and therefore damned.

This dictionary is recent?

It's sort of the same idea, the idea that you're actually able to assemble ideas with certain associative structures that you hold in your mind and you can recall anything you want. When most people think of something like this, they think of that autistic character in Rain Man who could simply reel off tables of precipitation in different geographical locations -

Or think of Harry - the incredible amount of knowledge! - so maybe he practiced this!

- aspiring to the autistic state! And let's see, there was Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness - all kinds of material...

You were telling me Harry told you about many books that really got you started in different directions-

I was bookish to begin with. I have entire notebooks filled with bibliographies that I compiled while I was at the library - CATNYP is nice, that computer system they've got - but I really miss those file cards. Those really nice, buttery-colored wooden cabinets where you slide the drawers out and flip through the little cards. I like the smell - I like the smell of old paper. And every book would lead into something else again.

How did you meet Harry?

I was introduced to him while I was living at Samuel Weiser's old warehouse in Manhattan. That's where I met Jim Wasserman and Bill Breeze and a lot of people. I think it was on one of the first occasions we met, I showed Harry this bed of nails that I had brought with me from Florida. It was a bed of nails that I inherited from this fellow that I worked with at the International House of Pancakes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This guy used to sit on this bed of nails without breaking his skin, and the nails weren't that closely spaced either, but there's a trick to it: you just sort of evenly place your weight on it when you sit down, and Bob's your uncle. It looks pretty impressive.

Was that in the 70s?

I guess it was. I would go and visit him over at the Chelsea, at first with Jim Wasserman, and then pretty much on my own. I'd bop by; give him a ring from the lobby. We'd talk, or I'd accompany him on his walks. I remember that it was incredible how often we'd be walking along and we would find paper airplanes. It was almost like somebody would see us coming, and they'd fold up some paper and leave it on the ground for us to find. Paper airplanes made out of band notices - all sorts of things.

And when did you start working on the John Dee?

The frequency tables for words and such? I don't remember exactly when it was. It was an ongoing thing.

But in the 70s?

Yeah - some nights that would be what we were doing, some nights we would just listen to Kurt Weill's Mahagonny - Lotte Lenya... wailing away.

Bill Breeze was telling me to ask you about the concordances you worked out for the Enochian system.

The Concordances? We actually recorded the number of times a word would occur in the entire manuscript. And we also kept a record of the pages and the paragraph numbers for just where you could find each word on each and every page -

And the word was given as it is and reversed he told me. What was the reason?

That was the way they were received by the angels - or rather the way the angels transmitted them, through Kelly to Dee. And then they had to transcribe it. The idea being that these words were so powerful -

So they were reversed to deactivate them in a way.

Yes, but it was even more complicated than that because there's an entire book of just page after page of letters and numbers in grids, Liber Loagaeth, and Kelly would see these grids in the shew-stone and the angels would be -

In the what?

In the shew-stone. It was either a ball of rock crystal, about the size of an orange I guess, that had been delivered by the angels - (Gustav Meyrink wrote a novel on this: The Angel at the Western Window) - or occasionally they used a black obsidian mirror, very well polished, that had come from the New World. They probably got it from Maximilian II. It was passed on along with a manuscript - the Laud Codex - a hieroglyphic text that had come from the New World, before Columbus "discovered" it!

But to go back to the manuscript - Kelly would see one of these little guys come marching in, just like on the Elizabethan stage, a Shakespeare play.There would be a table on the stage, and they would pick up a little wand or pointer and begin pointing to individual letters on these grids. And Kelly would say something like "the forty-first down, seventy-first over." Dee would have to scan through his version of the table and he would make note of the letter in the grid - he would assemble these texts. If you can imagine somebody chopping up all the individual letters and numbers in the New York Yellow Pages and throwing them all over the floor, and then have, you know, Brion Gysin and William Burroughs come wandering in wired up with amphetamine and splicing things together according to rules of dice and who knows what all - it's kind of on a par with that.

Wow!

I showed you some of the pieces that they transcribed out.

Yeah. So each one of the words would have such power that they gave it in reverse to kind of deactivate it. But did they tell them exactly what the word referred to, what its power was?

They also translated the words for them, sure. There would be beings like "Nalvage" and "Ave" and "Madimi"- some of them would be very playful and some very stern - and they would all come in and relate different aspects of the mystery insofar as it would be given to them. 'Cause they were all assigned certain tasks and they would be able to relate information that had to do with their particular subjects, but they didn't have any one comprehensive Being that could explain the whole scheme to them. There wasn't any one Being they could refer to when they had a particular question that none of the others could answer.

Wow, that's great. So that book that you showed me is the one with which you and Harry worked on the system.

This is a facsimile. It's still in print. And then there's an excellent book by Geoffrey James dealing with the entire working: The Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee. It was published by Heptangle Books, and I think it has been released again by some other publisher as a paperback now. More or less at the same time, Athanasius Kircher was having a go at translating the Egyptian hieroglyphs - unsuccessfully I might add -

Did you work on other projects with Harry?

Yes. There was Mahagonny -- I told you about the different color-coded scenes and the palindrome... I read somewhere this morning that Mahagonny is still intact, so they're going to show it somewhere.

I think so.

That's great - unless it gets struck by lightning or is spontaneously combusted (laughing).
[ note: Harry's Mahagonny has suffered a fate far worse than mere immolation, at the hands of people employed by the Getty Foundation to "restore" the film. ]

Talking about natural disasters - Jonas Mekas told me that once, in a tantrum Harry destroyed a really rare book Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier -- did Harry and you ever discuss Atlantis? And do you think it makes sense that there could have been a very advanced antediluvian world?

I recall that Harry and I did discuss Henriette Mertz's book Atlantis in America. I think that most people involved in the magical arts would agree that the disasters themselves simply submerged the information, rather than obliterating it. It's still shared among people that take the time to enlighten themselves. It always has been.

When you talk about naturally-occurring disasters, one of the things I find is that people are constantly being barraged with disasters they have created for themselves. One of the reasons we can't really speak with any authority about the depth of so many ancient civilizations is because one of the first things that you find with certain people coming to power in any given region is that they go out and they locate the nearest repository of written and/or oral knowledge and torch it to the ground! The Library of Alexandria - they fed the furnaces of the bathhouses with books to keep people in hot water; the Library of Bangor in ancient Wales - ditto - every time a new dynasty came into ascent, you had histories being destroyed and rewritten.

Yeah - either through genocide or through destroying the artifacts and the literature - absolutely. So history is always written by the winners and there are only fragments and traces that we can piece together -- you're right, it's a very important consideration.

To go back to the Chelsea - the Chelsea was a wild place then, wasn't it?

Oh, yeah! There wasn't a single fire axe left on the walls. Everybody pretty much copped them and kept them in their apartments for when they wanted to visit their neighbors - to smash their way through their doors. Harry told me about rumors of there being bodies buried in the basement, bodies found on the roof...

You told me something about sucking on a - getting amphetamine on a -

When Harry was all wired up, he was absolutely intolerant of the idea that you might have to go home and get some rest, so he taught me the fine art of using little bits of amphetamines so that I would be able to keep up with him. But just so that you would be able to keep yourself awake.

Put it on a matrix, you were saying?

That is pretty much the way that the tablets themselves were made. [ This was the pharmaceutical amphetamine Desoxyn ] You had an inert matrix, almost like rubber cement, that the powder was embedded in. You just put it in your mouth and suck on it for a while and then take it out. That way you don't go into palpitations or something.

Then you were saying you could go down the hall, knock on doors and borrow half a cup of-

- half a cup of whatever the drug of the week was. Yeah, there were all kinds of drugs going around.

Tell me what was most inspiring to you about Harry. I know that Harry was encompassing so many different things, but your specific connection.

We were kindred spirits and we were able to keep up with each other, because we could discuss widely varying subjects, and there was always a pretty good chance that on any particular landscape, that we'd been through much of the same territory before.

Harry showed me so many things! He also showed me how to take posters down from walls. Like, he would be interested in drawings that people had made on posters or band notices or something. We would return to these same sites several times over a period of days, and there was this whole elaborate thing of wetting them down with different substances. Then there was always the chance that somebody else would trash it before you got there, but if it was still there, you'd just very gently peel it off the wall. And then he'd take these things home and they would disappear into his archives. I still have a whole collection of posters and things from that period - all tucked away in some boxes. I've got quite a mess for that matter.

You were telling me about Harry showing you this Eskimo music...

Yeah, it was the first time I heard anything like that! They would actually sing into each others mouths and you would get these harmonic overtones that would arise off of their individual vocal cords so that you had these other sounds that would be produced from the combination. So you actually had three or more voices going on, in a sense, while two people were singing. That's why I brought over the Harmonic Choir tape for you, 'cause I can't lay hands on the Eskimo material.

But did you actually listen to it with Harry?

Oh, sure. We played music like that at all hours - that was just one of the ways we annoyed our neighbors. In fact there were a few times that I came in and the door had been smacked down by people with fire axes. People would come in and swipe his Ukrainian Easter eggs - I still have some of the eggs that he taught me to make, where you just set them aside and let them dry. You can hold it against your ear and rattle it and hear the yolk inside.

Oh yeah? I thought that you would pierce it with a needle and let the egg come out before you painted it instead of boiling it. How do you dry it?

You just let them sit over a period of a year or so, and the egg yolk itself just contracts into a pebble inside and becomes very hard and dry. And if it doesn't explode on you, it's ready to go, and you start painting. There were a lot of eggs that he painted too, as well as the Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Are there any of the ones he painted still around?

Most of those were stolen.

Oh they were. So much of his stuff was stolen or bartered or sold or given. Well there's still an enormous amount left to sort of detect the flow charts of his enquiries! I know that you're an active alchemist, not only a mental alchemist but an herbal alchemist as well. Did Harry do some alchemy too?

Well, he pointed me in the direction of a few journals that dealt with it: a periodical named Isis, and another periodical called Ambix, and they were just full of all kinds of information. That stuff wasn't just alchemical, it was paleochemical; early metallurgy and such. And Harry did talk about having a forge and other tools and such given him by his dad, and making all kinds of instruments as a kid. I don't know if his dad was being facetious or not, but he told him to try to turn lead into gold. And I don't know if he ever did that sort of work, but he certainly encouraged me to go ahead and try it and explore it. There really is a lot of material now that's been made available in print dealing with early chemistry. I mostly work with herbal tinctures and essential oils and such.

Going back to the subject of the Phrenomnemotechnic Dictionary, I just realized in my little experience that we can access memory in our body and a universal source of memory that has mainly visual and archetypal images. I think that we can also access genetic memories, species memories - I mean I'm very visual so sometimes I have these images, like once it was images of creation and I guess it was like molecules splitting getting together and rolling and growing in a ball and then with the inertia of its own movement becoming little beings and growing in all shapes of animals and plants. That's species memory, maybe.

They used to call it Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, and it is just like the blood moving in our veins, or the air that we breathe. It is a part of all life - in the same way that the air moves, so does this primordial consciousness. When people talk about the Akashic Records as a storehouse of ideas, the memory systems of the past, they pretty much take that metaphor of a building within the mind that is constellated of images and ideas. Where you have this building and all these places, and you distribute all of these different furnishings and such, paintings and trees and what-not. Everything that you see around you, just where it is in relation to all the other objects, it contributes to the sort of museum that you're building of ideas - all those treasures.

You were also saying that in each molecule we have it all!

I was referring to Lewis Thomas' notion in his book Lives of the Cell, where he was talking about coming to an understanding of all the different organisms in our bodies, an awareness that all the cells are conscious. All the molecules, all the constituents of the cells are conscious. He felt that this was actually the collective unconscious of all life - that it could be found on the cellular and sub-cellular level. Then there was that biologist and chemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi - I recall that he got a Nobel Prize, but he didn't get much recognition for this really neat book - the title was Introduction to a Submolecular Biology. At the time that was considered somewhat heretical, because he pretty much wiped out the distinction between what chemists think of as organic and inorganic, since he was talking about a submolecular biology, which already presupposes that there are life processes going on at the atomic level. I don't think that people liked the fact that he was blurring the lines there. Again.

Going back to the idea that the cells contain the whole memory--like the Akashic Record is in each one of our cells - I found in my experiences that there are certain places in the body in which different memories are stored - like our own family genetic memories, species memories and soul memories about different lives maybe and archetypal knowingness. Sometimes I access things, and an archetypal store of images comes up at times as answers to questions I ask and it seems to me that they're connected to different energy centers in our body. I'm sure you can access everything from everywhere, but different energy centers retain different memories. And it's as if we live in multiple universes, and we can access many things.

Sure. When people use the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, or in Taoist Yoga, where you have the different cauldrons, stacked one on top of the other, or in Hindu Yoga, where you've got the chakras. Certainly people experience this, though it's folky, and it doesn't seem they're always distributed in the same places. It's like there are a lot of different maps or different kinds of maps that people can apply to the landscape, but it ain't the landscape.

Yeah, and I guess that whatever system works for you if you connect to it so it's just a question of connecting I guess. In a way Harry was always creating these systems out of randomness and cyclical correspondences etc. etc. etc .... and he was always categorizing, detecting, creating.

He was never boring! There was this image in Herman Hesse's Demian, where Pistorius was speaking about Abraxas - one of the Gnostic deities. Abraxas is sort of a rebus figure, not necessarily male or female, just a transcendent entity. Anyway, Pistorius says that if you become boring, Abraxas no longer uses you for his cooking pot.

"...Our god's name is Abraxes and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxes does not take exception to any of your thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to cook his thoughts."

- Herman Hesse, Demian

Reposting old interview

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:44:03 GMT

Just finished wrangling with the html of an old interview, and will be posting it forthwith. Thanks to Philip Smith and Emily for some good-spirited nudging.

Levigated Goo

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:15:53 GMT

I saw some cheap day-glo paints at our local
pharmacy a few weeks ago.

The wrapper claimed that it was totally kid-safe,
non-toxic, washable, yadda-yadda.

Since the company that markets these paints is
affiliated with Elmer's glue, I figured that the
binder for the pigment would be some glue or other
that might rinse out if I diluted it with enough
water and let it settle for a while.

When I got it back home and opened it up, it turned
out I was mostly right - a quick sniff told me it
was a fish-glue binder, but there was also some sort
of plastic resin stench.

I grabbed a few Ball jars and scooped the paint
into them, topped them off with distilled water,
capped them, and gave each jar a good shaking up.

After a few days the pigment started settling
on the bottom, and in about a week’s time the liquid
above the sediment was pretty clear.

I poured off the diluted glue solution, added some
more distilled water, shook the jars up some more,
and set them aside to settle again - just to make
sure there was no more glue or resin remaining with
the pigment.

After this batch had settled, I poured off the water,
added a little more water, shook the pigment back
into solution, and poured the liquid off into some
baby food jars. Then I set all the jars in my
'Digester' to dry the pigment sludge to powder.

My 'Digester' is a Styrofoam ice chest with a heating
pad on the bottom covered with fine white play sand.
I use it to tincture the herbs that we pick while we
are out hiking around our way.

I usually set all of my jars on top of the sand and
put the lid back on, letting the gentle warmth of the
pad under the sand coax all the goodness out of the
herbs.

In this case, I just left the jars open and the lid
off, and after all the moisture had evaporated away
there was about a half-teaspoon of powder on the
bottom of each jar.

I picked up a few more packages of the day-glo paint
the other day, and as I write this another batch
is settling in its row of Ball jars.

This time I gave each jar an eye-dropper-full of ox
gall before shaking it up - might help the pigment
settle down a bit faster, we will just have to wait and
see.

Better Run Through the Ganjah

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 02:17:42 GMT

I came across this account the other day:

" Such, then, is the way in which the Arabians obtain
their frankincense; their manner of collecting the
cassia is the following:

- They cover all their body and their face with the
hides of oxen and other skins, leaving only holes for
the eyes, and thus protected go in search of the cassia,
which grows in a lake of no great depth.

All round the shores and in the lake itself there dwell
a number of winged animals, much resembling bats, which
screech horribly, and are very valiant.

These creatures they must keep from their eyes all the
while that they gather the cassia. "

~ from *THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS*
by Herodotus circa 440 BCE
Translated by George Rawlinson in 1858-1860
The Third Book, Entitled THALIA

http://tinyurl.com/qvsok

I spend a lot of time trying to suss out what cobbers
like Herodotus and Pliny might have had on their minds
when they go on about stuff like this. Occasionally it
pays off - as, for example, when Pliny set me off on a
tangent regarding the manufacture of gems.

This image of folks swathing themselves in leather
gear before going out to harvest cassia put me in mind
of another passage from William Brooke O'Shaughnessy's
*ON THE PREPARATIONS OF THE INDIAN HEMP*:

" In Central India and the Saugor territory, and in Nipal,
churrus < or *charas* > is collected during the hot season,
in the following singular manner:

-- Men clad in *leathern dresses* run through the Hemp
fields, brushing through the plant with all possible
violence; the soft resin adheres to the leather, is
subsequently scraped off, and kneaded into balls, which
sell from five to six rupees the seer.

A still finer kind, the momeea or waxen churrus, is
collected by the hand in Nipal and sells for nearly
double the price of the ordinary kind.

In Nipal, Dr. McKinnon informs me, the leathern attire
is dispensed with, and the resin is gathered on the skins
of naked coolies.

In Persia, it is stated by Mirza Abdool Rhazes that the
churrus is prepared by pressing the resinous plants on
coarse cloths, and then scraping it from these, and
melting it in a pot with a little warm water.

He considers the churrus of Herat as the best and most
powerful of all the varieties of the drug. "

~ from *ON THE PREPARATIONS OF THE INDIAN HEMP*,
OR GUNJAH (CANNABIS INDICA); THEIR EFFECTS ON
THE ANIMAL SYSTEM IN HEALTH, AND THEIR UTILITY
IN THE TREATMENT OF TETANUS AND OTHER CONVULSIVE
DISEASES
By W. B. O'Shaughnessy, M.D.,
Assistant-Surgeon, and Professor of Chemistry, &c.
In the Medical College of Calcutta.
Presented October, 1839.

http://tinyurl.com/mjw5j

O'Shaughnessy's narrative turns up here nearly 100
years later:

" Sometimes men dressed in leather suits or jackets
pass through the fields of cannabis sativa rubbing
and crushing roughly against the plants early in the
morning just after sunrise and when a fall of dew has
taken place. The resinous material which sticks on is
then scraped off their jackets and forms the charas
resin of commerce. "

~ from *Indigenous Drugs of India*,
by Ramnath Chopra, 1933, p. 78.

http://tinyurl.com/neasm

And nearly 40 years later, it turns up here:

" Harvesting hashish is a more delicate and time-consuming
operation than harvesting simple marijuana. It is done by
one of a variety of methods. In earlier times, the pollen
was scraped off the sweaty bodies of laborers who had run
through a cannabis field for this very purpose. Later,
leather aprons were employed. "

~ from *The Marijuana Smokers*,
by Erich Goode, 1970.
Chapter 1 — Overview

http://tinyurl.com/lbyxw

Eleven < or 161 > years later, Dominik Wujastyk's citation
goes back to the source:

" O'Shaughnessy's account is full of lively anecdote and
observation. Allow your imagination, for a moment, to follow
O’Shaughnessy’s description of the collection of cannabis
resin during the hot season in central India and Nepal
(1839a: 6)k:

" Men clad in leathern dresses run through the hemp-fields,
brushing through the plant with all possible violence; the
soft resin adheres to the leather, is subsequently scraped
off, and kneaded into balls, which sell from five to six
rupees the seer [ca. 2lbs]. . . . In Nipal, Dr. McKinnon
informs me, the leathern attire is dispensed with, and the
resin is gathered on the skins of naked coolies. "

What a startling spectacle this might have presented to an
unsuspecting hill-walker! "

~ from *Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine*
by Dominik Wujastyk, 2001.

http://tinyurl.com/mlqbh

Chopra's account is then cited in this document,
from 2002:

" High Potency: Charas (India), Hashish (Arabia and North
America), Hashishi (Syria):

Almost all of the THC is contained in the resin on the
leaves near the flowering tops.

The resin is scraped off of the leaves, pressed into blocks,
and usually smoked. Hashish is about 10 times as powerful as
marijuana and is the only cannabis derivative that has the
capacity to produce hallucinogenic and psychotomimetic
effects with any regularity.

An Indian pharmacologist, Chopra, has described another
method of harvesting charas:

Sometimes men, naked, or dressed in leather suits or
jackets, passed through the fields of cannabis sativa
rubbing and crushing roughly against the plants early in
the morning just after sunrise when a fall of dew has taken
place. The resinous material that sticks on is then scraped
off them and forms the charas resin of commerce. "

~ from *HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL USES OF CANNABIS*
AND THE CANADIAN "MARIJUANA CLASH"
Prepared For The Senate Special Committee
On Illegal Drugs
by Leah Spicer
Law and Government Division
12 April 2002

http://tinyurl.com/llqfe

And this brief [ and apparently undated ] account turns
up in a PDF available from Dr. Steven Miller's homepage:

Marijuana

•Hashish - relatively pure resin
– in Nepal naked men run through fields of flowering female
plants and then scrape off the clinging resin globules.
~ from *Marijuana Neolithic Chinese legend*

http://w3.uwyo.edu/~fungi/Opium.pdf

Strap on those running shoes, kids!

EARLY DIFFUSION AND FOLK USES OF HEMP

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:58:04 GMT

KONOPIE

Here is the original article that re-kindled
all the old arguments about the presence of
cannabis in the Torah / Old Testament when
it was printed in 1975:

EARLY DIFFUSION AND FOLK USES OF HEMP
SULA BENET < -aka- SARA BENETOWA >

[ from *Cannabis and Culture*, Vera Rubin &
Lambros Comitas, (eds.), 1975, pgs. 39-49 ]

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing volume of literature on the subject of
hemp, the historical routes of its diffusion remain obscure
and there is scant reference to its ubiquitous role in folk
ritual, magic and medicine among European peasantry.

The term cannabis, itself, has been considered to be of
Indo-European origin. The paper re-examines the origin of
the term cannabis to demonstrate its derivation from Semitic
languages.

Both the word and its forms of use were borrowed by the
nomadic Scythians from peoples of the Near East and diffused
among the people with whom they came in contact. Ritual and
other folk uses are described.

Hemp, one of the most versatile and important plants
discovered by man and used for millennia, has been long
neglected in scientific literature. Not until society's
recent concern with drug addiction has the existing body of
knowledge about hemp become so readily available. In the
past, such information could be found in pharmacopoeia, in
occasional historical references, or in ritual folkloristic
material.

Although the body of literature concerning hemp has grown
rapidly in the last decade, the exact origin of the plant
has yet to be established; the historical routes of its
diffusion remain obscure, and there is barely any reference
to the role it played in the life of the European peasantry.
The latter should be of special interest in view of the
ubiquitous use of hemp in folk ritual, magic, and medicinal
practices.

A major reason for the obscurity as well as confusion that
becloud the issue is that previously suggested theories of
diffusion have been repeated and elaborated without critical
examination of their historical sources.

For example, the German scientists, Schrader, Hehn, and
Bushan, as well as learned biblical commentaries and modern
botanists, have claimed that ancient Palestine and Egypt did
not know hemp and its uses (Dewey 1913; Moldenke 1952).

In this paper, I propose to reconsider the origin of the
term cannabis to demonstrate that it is derived from Semitic
languages and that both its name and forms of its use were
borrowed by the Scythians from the peoples of the Near East.

We will thus discover that the use of cannabis predates by
at least 1000 years its first mention by Herodotus.

Next, we will examine the diffusion of the plant to Europe
and its continued use in peasant rituals, magic, and medical
practices.

Western scholars have universally considered the term
cannabis to be of Indo-European, specifically Scythian, origin.

This widely-held opinion not only credited the Scythians
with the name for hemp (which Linnaeus categorized as
Cannabis sativa) but also with the initial introduction of
the plant into Europe and Asia.

There was barely any history of cannabis before the Greek
historian Herodotus, in the fifth century B.C., observed
that the Scythians used the plant to purge themselves after
funerals by throwing hemp seeds on heated stones to create a
thick vapour, inhaling the smoke and becoming intoxicated.

"The Scythians howl with joy for the vapour bath"
(Herodotus, IV: 142).

To the Western world, Herodotus' account is the earliest
source of knowledge of the ritual use of cannabis.

Tracing the history of hemp in terms of cultural contacts,
the Old Testament must not be overlooked since it provides
one of the oldest and most important written source materials.

In the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament there are
references to hemp, both as incense, which was an integral
part of religious celebration, and as an intoxicant (Benet
1936) Cannabis as an incense was also used in the temples of
Assyria and Babylon "because its aroma was pleasing to the
Gods." (Meissner 1925 (II): 84).

Both in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament and in
the Aramaic translation, the word 'kaneh' or ' keneh' is
used either alone or linked to the adjective bosm in Hebrew
and busma in Aramaic, meaning aromatic.

It is 'cana' in Sanskrit, 'qunnabu' in Assyrian, 'kenab' in
Persian, 'kannab' in Arabic and 'kanbun' in Chaldean.

In Exodus 30: 23, God directed Moses to make a holy oil
composed of "myrrh, sweet cinnamon, kaneh bosm and kassia."

In many ancient languages, including Hebrew, the root 'kan'
has a double meaning --- both hemp and reed.

In many translations of the Bible's original Hebrew, we find
'kaneh bosm' variously and erroneously translated as
"calamus" and "aromatic reed," a vague term.

Calamus, (Calamus aromaticus) is a fragrant marsh plant.

The error occurred in the oldest Greek translation of the
Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, in the third century B.C., where
the terms 'kaneh, kaneh bosm' were incorrectly translated as
"calamus."

And in the many translations that followed, including Martin
Luther's, the same error was repeated.

In Exodus 30: 23 'kaneh bosm' is translated as "sweet calamus."

In Isaiah 43: 24 'kaneh' is translated as "sweet cane."
although the word "sweet" appears nowhere in the original.

In Jeremiah 6: 20 'kaneh' is translated as "sweet cane."

In Ezekiel 27: 19 'kaneh' is translated as "calamus."

In Song of Songs 4: 14 'kaneh' is translated "calamus."

Another piece of evidence regarding the use of the word
'kaneh' in the sense of hemp rather than reed among the
Hebrews is the religious requirement that the dead be buried
in 'kaneh' shirts.

Centuries later, linen was substituted for hemp (Klein 1908).

In the course of time, the two words 'kaneh' and ‘bos’ were
fused into one, 'kanabos' or 'kannabus,'known to us from
Mishna, the body of traditional Hebrew law. The word bears
an unmistakable similarity to the Scythian "cannabis."

Is it too far-fetched to assume that the Semitic word
'kanbos' and the Scythian word 'cannabis' mean the same thing?

Since the history of cannabis has been tied to the history
of the Scythians, it is of interest to establish their
appearance in the Near East. Again, the Old Testament
provides information testifying to their greater antiquity
than has been previously assumed.

The Scythians participated in both trade and wars alongside
the ancient Semites for at least one millennium before
Herodotus encountered them in the fifth century B.C.

The reason for confusion and the relative obscurity of the
role played by the Scythians in world history is explained
by the fact that they were known to the Greeks as Scythians
but to the Semites as Ashkenaz.

Identification of the Scythian-Ashkenaz as a single people
is convincingly made by Ellis H. Minns (1965) in his
definitive work on Scythians and Greeks.

The earliest reference to the Ashkenaz people appears in the
Bible in Genesis 10: 3, where Ashkenaz, their progenitor, is
named as the son of Gomer, the great-grandson of Noah.

The Ashkenaz of the Bible were both war-like and extremely
mobile. In Jeremiah 51: 27, we read that the kingdoms of
Ararat (known later as Armenia), Minni (Medea), and Ashkenaz
attacked Babylonia. In 612 B.C. Babylonians with the aid of
the Medeans (Medes) and Scythians, coming from the Caucasus,
dealt a deadly blow to Assyria (Durant 1954). Referring the
threat of war, Herodotus reports that Scythians attempted to
invade Egypt by way of Palestine and they withdrew only
after the Pharaoh paid them to retreat.

There is evidence of the presence of the Scythians in Palestine.

The city known as Beizan in modern times was originally
called Bethshan and later renamed Scythopolis by the Greeks
during the Hellenistic period, since many Scythians settled
there during the great invasion of Palestine in the
seventh-century B.C.

The importance of the geographical position of Palestine
cannot be overlooked when considering the trade routes
through which caravans moved, laden with goods and precious
"spices."

Palestine was situated along the two most vital trade routes
of the ancient world. One was between Egypt and Asia and the
other ran west from Arabia to the coastal plain, from there
branching off to Egypt to Syria.

In the original Hebrew of the Bible (Ezekiel 27: 19), in a
description of Tyre, the royal city of the Phoenicians,
famous in antiquity for its far-flung trade, it is noted
that "Vedon and Yavan traded with yarn for thy wares;
massive iron, cassia and kaneh were among thy merchandise."
(The markets of Tyre were frequented by the Jews.

Biblical quotation from "The Holy Scriptures," The Jewish
Publication Society of America.)

King Solomon, a contemporary and friend of King Hiram of
Tyre (960 B.C.), ordered hemp cords among other materials
for building his temples and throne (Salzberger 1912).
Rostovtzeff (1932) describes the caravan trade between
Babylonia, Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Among the goods
there was incense for the "delection of gods and men."

In addition to the caravan trade, the mobile, warlike
Ashkenaz carried their raid to the Caucasus in the north and
westward to Europe, taking with them their knowledge of the
use of hemp as well as their dependence on its intoxicating
qualities. So mobile were the Scythians that there is a good
probability that as they spilled across much of Europe and
Asia; they were the ones to introduce the natives to the
ritual use of the plant and the narcotic pleasures to be
derived from it. The Scythians apparently did not use hemp
for manufactures such as weaving and rope-making. Yet,
despite the plentiful quantity of wild hemp, the Scythians
cultivated the plant in order to increase the amount
available for their use. Apparently their need for it was
great indeed.

Since hemp was originally used in rituals, it may be assumed
that the Scythians spread their custom among the people with
whom they came into contact. The Siberian tribes of Pazaryk
in the Altai region (discovered by the Soviet archaeologist,
S. Rudenko) left burial mounds in which bronze vessels
containing burnt hemp seeds to produce incense vapours were
found.

Rudenko believes that these objects were used for funeral
purification ceremonies similar to those practised by the
Scythians (Emboden 1972: 223).

Another custom connected with the dead in parts of Eastern
Europe is the throwing of a handful of seeds into the fire
as an offering to the dead during the harvesting of hemp ---
similar to the custom of the Scythians and of the Pazaryk
tribes, two-and-a-half thousand years ago.

There is no doubt that some of the practices, such as
funeral customs, were introduced by the Scythians during
their victorious advance into southeast Russia, including
the Caucasus, where they remained for centuries.

Hemp never lost its connection with the cult of the dead.

Even today in Poland and Lithuania, and in former times also
in Russia, on Christmas Eve when it is believed that the
dead visit their families, a soup made of hemp seeds, called
'semieniatka,' is served for the dead souls to savor. In
Latvia and the Ukraine, a dish made of hemp was prepared for
Three Kings Day.

Since the plant was associated with religious ritual and the
power of healing, magical practices were connected with its
cultivation. In Europe, peasants generally believed that
planting hemp should take place on the days of saints who
were known to be tall in order to encourage the plant's
growth. In Germany, long steps are taken while sowing the
seed which is thrown high into the air. In Baden the
planting is done during the "high" hours, between 11:00 a.m.
and noon. Cakes baked to stimulate hemp growth are known as
'hanfeier.'

Following the planting, magical means are applied to make
the hemp grow tall and straight. The custom of dancing or
jumping to promote the growth of the plant is known
throughout Europe. In Poland, married women dance "the hemp
dance" on Shrove Tuesday, leaping high into the air. The
hemp dance ('for hemp's sake') is also danced at weddings by
the young bride with the 'raiko,' the master of ceremonies
(Kolberg 1899). In the wedding rituals of the Southern
Slavs, hemp is a symbol of wealth and a talisman for happiness.

When the bride enters her new home after the wedding
ceremony, she strokes the four walls of her new home with a
bunch of hemp.

She is herself sprinkled with hemp seeds to bring good luck.
In Estonia, the young bride visits her neighbors in the
company of older women asking for gifts of hemp. She is thus
"showered" with hemp.

The odor of European hemp is stimulating enough to produce
euphoria and a desire for sociability and gaiety and
harvesting of hemp has always been accompanied by social
festivities, dancing, and sometimes even erotic playfulness.

Women play a leading role in the festivities. In Poland,
initiation ceremonies are held during the harvest. Young
brides are admitted into the circle of older married women
on payment of a token fee.

Since the Catholic Church never deemed it necessary to
interfere with these festivals, it must have regarded them
as harmless and perhaps even socially benevolent.

In Eastern Europe hemp is evidently not considered addictive
and no case of solitary use among the peasants has been
reported: it is always used in a context of group
participation. In many countries, hemp gathering is an
occasion for socializing. The Swiss call it 'stelg' (Hager
1919). Young men come to the gathering wearing carnival
masks and offer gifts to the girls.

Hemp gathering rituals also reveal the sacred character of
the plant. In certain areas of Poland, at midnight, a chalk
ring is drawn around the plant which is then sprinkled with
holy water. The person collecting the plant hopes that part
of the flower will fall into his boots and bring him good
fortune.

The flower of a hemp plant gathered on St. John's Eve in the
Ukraine is thought to counteract witchcraft and protect farm
animals from the evil eye.

Although it is believed that witches can use the plant to
inflict harm, they are not likely to do so in fact, and hemp
is often used against persons suspected of witchcraft. In
Poland, it is used for divination, especially in connection
with marriage.

The eve of St. Andrews (November 30th) is considered a most
propitious time for divination about future husbands.
Certain magical spells, using hemp, are believed to advance
the date of marriage, perhaps even signal the very day it
will occur. Girls in the Ukraine carry hemp seeds in their
belts, they jump on a heap and call out:

Andrei, Andrei,
I plant the hemp seed on you.
Will god let me know
With whom I will sleep?

The girls then remove their shirts and fill their mouths
with water to sprinkle on the seed to keep the birds from
eating them. Then they run around the house naked three times.

The sacred character of hemp in biblical times is evident
from Exodus 30: 22-33, where Moses was instructed by God to
anoint the meeting tent and all its furnishings with
specially prepared oil, containing hemp.

Anointing set sacred things apart from the secular. The
anointment of sacred objects was an ancient tradition in
Israel: holy oil was not to be used for secular purposes.

And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying,
"This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me, throughout your
generations." (King James Version, Exodus 30:31).

Above all, the anointing oil was used for the installation
rites of all Hebrew kings and priests.

Dr. R. Patai (1947) expresses the opinion that the use of
sacred oil is based on the belief in its nourishing,
conserving and healing powers. Dr. Patai discusses the
spread of this custom from the ancient Near East to most of
Africa where we find the ritual of anointing among other
parallels in the rites of installation of kings.

Almost all ancient peoples considered narcotic and medicinal
plants sacred and incorporated them into their religious or
magical beliefs and practices. In Africa, there were a
number of cults and sects of hemp worship. Pogge and
Wissman, during their explorations of 1881, visited the
Bashilenge, living on the northern borders of the Lundu,
between Sankrua and Balua. They found large plots of land
around the villages used for the cultivation of hemp.
Originally there were small clubs of hemp smokers, bound by
ties of friendship, but these eventually led to the
formation of a religious cult. The Bashilenge called
themselves: Bena:Riamba --- "the sons of hemp,: and their
land Lubuku, meaning friendship. They greeted each other
with the expression "moio," meaning both "hemp" and "life."

Each tribesman was required to participate in the cult of
Riamba and show his devotion by smoking as frequently as
possible. They attributed universal magical powers to hemp,
which was thought to combat all kinds of evil and they took
it when they went to war and when they traveled. There were
initiation rites for new members which usually took place
before a war or long journey. The hemp pipe assumed a
symbolic meaning for the Bashilenge somewhat analogous to
the significance which the peace pipe had for American
Indians. No holiday, no trade agreement, no peace treaty was
transacted without it (Wissman et al. 1888). In the middle
Sahara region, the Senusi sect also cultivated hemp on a
large scale for use in religious ceremonies (Ibid).

USE OF CANNABIS IN FOLK MEDICINE

Hemp, both because of its psychoactive properties and its
mystical significance, became a popular and widely-utilized
plant in the folk medicine of Europe and Asia. Since ancient
times its soothing, tranquilizing action has been known. The
Atharva Veda (1400 B.C.) mentions hemp as a medicinal and
magical plant. In the Zend-Avesta, hemp occupies the first
place in a list of 10,000 medicinal plants given to a doctor
Thrita.

According to Dioscorides (100 A.D.), the resin of fresh hemp
is an excellent treatment for earaches (Dioscorides 1902).
In an old Germanic catalogue of medicinal plants, hemp is
listed as a tranquilizer (Hoffer n.d.).

An edition of Diocletian also mentions the use of cannabis
as a medicament (Bretschneider 1881).

Medieval Arab doctors considered hemp a sacred medicine
which they called 'schahdanach,' 'schadabach' or 'kannab'
(Dragendorff 1898). Syrenius wrote in 1613 that ointment
made from hemp resin is the most effective remedy for burns
(Syrenius 1613) and that diseased joints could be
straightened with the roots of hemp boiled in water.

In Russia and Eastern Europe hemp was widely used in folk
medicine, and references can also be found to its use in
Western Europe. In Germany for example, sprigs of hemp were
placed over the stomach and ankles to prevent convulsions
and difficult childbirth, and in Switzerland hemp was also
used to treat convulsions.

In Poland, Russia and Lithuania, hemp was used to alleviate
toothache by inhaling the vapor from hemp seeds thrown on
hot stones (Biegeleisen 1929). Szyman of Lowic (16th
century) gives the following prescription: "For worms in the
teeth, boil hemp seeds in a new pot and add heated stones.
When this vapor is inhaled the worms will fall out." This
method is varied somewhat in Ukrainian folk medicine, the
fumes of cooked hemp porridge are believed to intoxicate the
worms and cause them to fall out. In Czechoslovakia and
Moravia, as in Poland, hemp was considered an effective
treatment for fevers.

In Poland, a mixture of hemp flowers, wax and olive oil was
used to dress wounds.

Oil from crushed hemp seeds is used as a treatment for
jaundice and rheumatism in Russia. In Serbia, hemp is
considered an aphrodisiac (Tschirch 1911). Hemp is also
thought to increase a man's strength. In the Ukraine there
is a legend of a dragon who lived in Kiev, oppressing the
people and demanding tribute. The dragon was killed and the
city liberated by a man wearing a hemp shirt.

Hemp is also used to treat animals. A cat that eats
mukhomor, a poison mushroom, is kept in a hemp field to eat
the plant until it "comes to its senses." And if chickens
are given hemp seeds on Christmas Eve, they will lay all
year round.

In central Asia, for cure or pleasure, hemp is eaten,
chewed, smoked, rubbed over the body, inhaled and made into
numerous elaborate concoctions.

Since the Soviet Union leads a determined fight against the
use of hashish, the subject is taboo, and the literature on
'nasha,' as hemp is called in central Asia, is virtually
nonexistent. Prof. Antzyferov (1934) wrote a short but most
interesting report on the use of hashish in central Asia.
Hemp has also been used for the cure of chronic alcoholics
in central Asia quite successfully, according to Dr. Antzyferov.

At the time of his report, Prof. Antzyferov was the head of
the State Hospital at Tashkent where he collected among his
patients and their relatives and friends numerous recipes
for 'nasha.' All of his informants believed that a great
deal of fat taken in food counteracts any harmful effect of
'nasha.' Some recipes are family secrets, others are well
known and used for centuries by the general public, native
and European settlers alike.

A mixture of lamb's fat with 'nasha' is recommended for
brides to use on their wedding night to reduce the pain of
defloration. The same mixture works well for headache when
rubbed into the skin; it may also be eaten spread on bread.

A candy called 'guc-kand,' popular among women for a "happy
mood," is made of hemp boiled in water, put through a sieve
with added sugar, saffron and several egg whites. The
ingredients are mashed and formed into small balls and then
dried in the sun.

The candy is given to boys before circumcision to reduce
pain and to children to keep them from crying. An ointment
made by mixing hashish with tobacco is used by some women
to shrink the vagina and prevent 'fluor albus'
( = leucorrhea - vaginal discharge ).

There is also "the happy porridge" made of the following
ingredients:

(1) almond butter mixed with 'nasha' ( Cannabis sativa ),
(2) dried rose leaves,
(3) root of Anacyclus pyrethrum ( Mount Atlas daisy ),
(4) carnation petals ( clove Gilly-flowers ),
(5) crocus ( Crocus sativa, saffron ),
(6) muscat nut ( nutmeg ),
(7) cardamom,
(8) honey, and
(9) sugar.

This mixture is the most expensive of all hashish
preparations. It is eagerly sought by men who consider
it the strongest aphrodisiac.

The use of hemp in Europe and Asia is, of course, much older
than archaeological, historical or linguistic evidence would
indicate. Early man roaming around in search of edible
plants must have easily discovered the seeds and powerful
odor of the ripened tips of the weeds.

There is considerable difference of opinion concerning the
place of origin of the plant and its diffusion,
specifically, its appearance in Eastern Europe, but it is
generally understood that it should be searched where it
grows in the wild. (Editor's note: see article by Schultes
in this volume.)

The Russian botanist, N. Vavilov (1926) considers the region
where the greatest number of varieties of a particular plant
grow is the center of its evolutionary differentiation and
variation. The common mid-European hemp is known as
"Russian" or "German" hemp. This variety is spread over
most of Europe except for the southern part. Hemp belongs
to the group of plants which are self-planting and
self-fertilizing.

Yanishevski observed that it draws to its fatty tissue a
bug, Pirrhocoris apterus L., which clings to the base of
the hemp seeds. The Pirrhocoris and birds contribute to the
dissemination of hemp seeds. The Pirrhocoris and birds
contribute to the dissemination of hemp seeds. De Candolle
(1883), seeing the wild plant in the Black Sea and Aralian
regions, concluded that this was the place of origin. We now
know that hemp is also indigenous to the Russian plains, the
Caucasus, Transcaucasia, the Crimea and the Urals, in fact,
the whole area from China to the Balkan Peninsula (Vavilov
1926).

We must, therefore, conclude that there was not one but
probably several origin sites and that whenever man
discovered hemp he used it for food and probably as a
stimulant. However, the ritual use of hemp as well as the
name, cannabis, in my opinion originated in the Ancient
Near East.

.From there in the middle of the second millennium B.C.
through trade contacts, migrations and wars, the ritual
uses of the plant were carried to Egypt and Africa,
westward to Europe, and eastward to central Asia.

Whether India received the plant from China or central
Asia is not clear.

Hemp, as used originally in religious rituals, temple
activities, and tribal rites, involves groups of people
rather than the solitary individual. The pleasurable
psychoactive effects of hemp were then, as now, communal
experiences.

I believe that the acceptance of tobacco in Europe was
undoubtedly enhanced by European familiarity with smoking
hemp. Tobacco was, in many ways a counterpart to hemp, all
the familiar features were there. Brought to Spain from the
New World as a medicinal plant, it came to be regarded as a
cure-all; the Amerindian ritual use of tobacco may also have
been known, and eventually also its psychoactive qualities.
Even the use of pipes for smoking tobacco in the Near East
was adopted from the water-pipes used for smoking hemp. Like
hemp, tobacco is chewed, sniffed and smoked.

Perhaps the spread of tobacco was so rapid and overwhelming
in the Old World, because a receptive ground had been laid
by the traditional folk uses of hemp.

REFERENCES

ANTZYFEROV, L.V. ~ Hashish in Central Asia. Journal of
Socialist Health Care in Uzbekistan, 1934. Tashkent
[in Russian].

BENET, SULA (BENETOWA) ~ Le chanvre dans les croyances
Et les coutumes populaires. Comtes Rendus de Seances de la
Societe des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie XXVII,
1936.

BIEGELEISEN, H. ~ Lecznictwo ludu Polskiego [Polish folk
medicine]. Cracow, 1929.

BREITSCHNEIDER ~ Gotanicon sinicum. Journal of Northern
China, Branch of the Royal Asia Society I: 569, 1881.

DE CANDOLLE, ALPHONSE LOUIS P.P. ~ Origine des plantes
cultivees. Paris: G. Bailliere, 1883.

DEWEY, L.H. ~ Hemp. Yearbook of the Department of
Agriculture. 289, 1913.

DIOSCORIDES, ANAZARBEUS PEDACIUS ~ Arzneimittellehre
[Pharmacology]. Translated by J. Berendes. Vol. III.
Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1902.

DRAGENDORFF, GEORG ~ Die Heilpflanzen der verschiedenen
Volker und Zeiten [The medical plants of various peoples and
times]. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1898.

DURANT, W. ~ Our oriental heritage. Vol. I. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1954.

EMBODEN , WILLIAM A. ~ "Ritual use of Cannabis sativa L,"
in Flesh of the Gods: the ritual use of hallucinogens.
Edited by Peter T. Furst. New York: Praeger Publishers.
pg. 223, 1972.

HAGER, K ~ Flachs und Hanfund ihre verarbeitung im
Bundner Oberland. Yahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub
pg. 147, 1919.

HOFLER n.d. Altgermanische Heilkunde [Old-Germanic
medicine]. Neubuerger-Pogel's Handbuch I: 466.

KLEIN, SIEGFRIED ~ Tod und Begrabnis in Palistina.
Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1908.

KOLBERG, O. ~ Mazowsze Lud. Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze
V: pg. 206, 1899.

MEISSNER, B. ~ Babylonien und Assyrian. II: 84.
Heidelberg: von W. Foy, 1925.

MINNS, ELLIS H. ~ Scythians and Greeks. Vol. I.
New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965.

MOLDENKE, H., A. Moldenke ~ Plants of the Bible.
Waltham, Massachusetts: Cronica Botanica Co, 1952.

PATAI, R. ~ Hebrew installation rites.
Hebrew Union College Annual XX, 1947.

ROSTOVTZEFF, M. ~ Caravan cities. London: Oxford, 1932.

SALZBERGER, G. ~ Salomons Tempelbau und Thron
[The building of Solomon's temple and throne].
Berlin: Mayer and Muller, 1912.

SYRENIUS, SZ. ~ "Zielnik [Medicinal plants]," in
Typographia Basilii Skalski. Krakow: [in Polish],
1613.

TSCHIRCH, A. ~ Handbuch der Pharmakognosie
[Pharmaceutical handbook]. II.
Leipzig: Verlag von chr. Herm. Tauchnitz, 1912.

VAVILOV, N. ~ Tzentry proiskhozhdenia kulturnksh rastenii
[Centers of origin of domesticated plants]. Trudy no Prile
Bot. I. Sel. XVI: 109 [in Russian], 1926.

WISSMAN, H., et al. ~ Im innern Afrikas [In Inner
Africa]. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1888.

http://tinyurl.com/qj6qh

See also the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1856 entry on cannabis:

In China it is known as ma;
in Sanskrit it is known as goni, sanu or shanapu;
Persic, canna;
Arabic, kannah or kinnub;
Greek, kannabis;
Latin, cannabis;
Italian, canapa;
French, chanvre or chanbre;
Danish kamp or kennep;
Lettish and Lithuanian, kannapes;
Slavonic, konopi;
Erse, canaib;
Scandinavian, hampr;
Swedish, hampa;
German, hanf;
Anglo-Saxon, haenep;
and English hemp.

Other terms for hemp include
Japanese, asa;
Bulgarian, kenevir;
Turkish, nasha;
Syrian, kanabira;
Polish, konopi and penek and
Albanian, canep.

Anointing Oil & Kaneh Bosem

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:33:24 GMT

There was a bit of activity on the Abramelin(sic)
Yahoo!-list the other day, regarding the identity of
keneh bosem, and I have pasted part of my response
below:

-----)O(-----

See the entry "Exodus » Chapter 30", from
'Navigating the BIBLE', on bible.ort.org:

fragrant cane

Keneh bosem in Hebrew. Ancient sources identify
this with the sweet calamus (Septuagint; Rambam on
Kerithoth 1:1; Saadia; Ibn Janach). This is the
sweet flag or flag-root, Acoras calamus which grows
in Europe.

It appears that a similar species grew in the Holy
Land, in the Hula region in ancient times
(Theophrastus, History of Plants 9:7). Other sources
apparently indicate that it was the Indian plant,
Cympopogan martini, which has the form of red straw
(Yad, Kley HaMikdash 1:3).

On the basis of cognate pronunciation and Septuagint
readings, some identify Keneh bosem with the English
and Greek *cannabis*, the hemp plant.

There are, however, some authorities who identify the
'sweet cane' with cinnamon bark (Radak, Sherashim).
Some say that kinman is the wood, and keneh bosem is
the bark (Abarbanel).

http://tinyurl.com/zdq5x

Israeli Gears

Fri, 26 May 2006 04:39:50 GMT

Sol 4° Gemini,
Luna 22° Taurus
Dies Veneris

Tonight Ray and Ron Peterson performed Creem's
"Tales of Brave Ulysses" in Jerusalem:

TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES
by Eric Clapton and Martin Sharp

You thought the leaden winter
would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer
to the violence of the sun.

And the colours of the sea
bind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches
with tales of brave Ulysses,
How his naked ears were tortured
by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you
to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl's brown body
dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow
where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her,
she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples
in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes
run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you
to the heartland of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite
and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her
for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses,
how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes
run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you
to the heartland of the winter.

Consummatum Est.

Crystal Blue Persuasion

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:51:50 GMT

Now playing: Nikhil Banerjee - Bhairavi - Gat in rupak tal

Darren Fox, aka “Brother MOLOCH”, posted an interesting
question to the Hyatt list today, regarding the identity
of the ‘Bluestone’ originally employed in Hoodoo.

Since the currently available Bluestone of the trade that
is found in Botanicas &tc. varies widely in both nature and
quality, it is not a bad idea to see if perhaps the identity
of 'Bluestone' might be resolved, so that an authentic
substance or composition might once again enter into
common usage.

There is some debate about this. I've seen the claim that
the original Bluestone was Copper Sulphate, also known as
Blue Copperas, and as Blue or Roman Vitriol, which requires
some care in handling as it will burn you or anyone it
comes into contact with rather badly.

Copperas as Blue Vitriol < and distinct from Green or Iron
Vitriol > turns up in many dyeing procedures that call for
Indigo < and lime >, as it enhances the action of the Indigo
within the fabric being dyed blue.

Yet another candidate for Bluestone is Azurite, which was
anciently and still is employed as both a pigment and in
the fashioning of jewellery.

Azurite served as the default and more common replacement
for the rare and expensive < quite literally more precious
than Gold > *Lapis Lazuli* < literally 'blue stone' >, or
Ultramarine, obtained 'beyond the sea' from mines in the
Kokcha Valley of Badakshan, now northeast Afghanistan.

In the early 1800s, artificial Ultramarine became widely
and inexpensively available, and the once rare and precious
commodity was pressed into service as common laundry bluing,
along with Prussian Blue < Ferric Ferrocyanide >, which is
a dark blue pigment more commonly associated with
engineering and architectural blueprints - as well as the
smeary and smelly blue mimeographs some of us may recall
from our school years. Prussian Blue is obtained from Green
Copperas, or Iron Vitriol.

Here are a few related links:

Azurite
http://tinyurl.com/rhkqq

Copper Sulphate Crystals
http://tinyurl.com/pcvrl

Ultramarine
http://tinyurl.com/ltkew

Prussian Blue
http://tinyurl.com/lha7t

Milori Blue
http://tinyurl.com/okeag

Bluing(fabric)
http://tinyurl.com/nt8uq

One can purchase synthetic ultramarine pigment in powder
from any fine arts supply house - I recommend Sennelier's
'Ultramarine Deep' Fine Dry Pigment. Less than twenty bucks
for three ounces.

A mixture of equal parts 'Ultramarine Deep', Sodium
Bicarbonate and powdered chalk < calcium carbonate > will
give you a fine laundry-grade, people- and environment-
friendly 'bluestone' powder similar to what my Grandmother
used in her washing.

WordPress Go Boom

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:27:05 GMT

Yep, I just broke the WordPress-driven blog on my homepage. Again. And I'm proud. And hungry.

Elemental and Astrological Magic

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:06:46 GMT

Ave!

I really haven't been paying much attention to my LiveJournal, probably 'cause the interface and code still give me the heebie-jeebies. I intend to sort through some of my old essays and posts that appear elsewhere on various *closed* lists and make them available to the public here.

I am going to begin with this essay on the subject of the Four Elements, since it addresses some common errors in the way that the Four Elements are assigned to the Four Directions these days.

Generally speaking, the *Moderns* - Wiccans, Golden Dawn, &tc. employ the following attributions:

East - Air
South - Fire
West - Water
North - Earth

See the wiki entry for 'Wicca', here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca

And see this entry for the traditional Golden Dawn assignments:

Magickal Order of the Golden Dawn
http://magickalorder.com/00/index.htm

"The usual arrangement is Incense for Air in the East, Candle for Fire in the South, Cup of Water for Water in the West, a Platter of Salt for Earth in the North"

I have been a practicing astrologer and astral magician for 35 years, and can vouch for the tenacity of the attributions given above among the various communities I have been acquainted with in Manhattan and elsewhere [ Wicca, OTO, GD, &tc. ].

These attributions have absolutely nothing to do with my practice, which is based on my study of Ptolemaic astrologies and grimoiric literature, and on my own experience, which arises from my work along the Poison Path that admits onto the Sabbat.

Classical astrology arises primarily from the fact of the turning seasons, and not from astronomical concerns - which is why Ptolemy and Aristotle employ Empedocles' Qualities and Elements when discussing astrology to begin with.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring will always be of Air, and Sanguine. Autumn, Melancholic and Earthy. Summer and Winter will be Fiery/Choleric and Watery/Phlegmatic, respectively. And these facts will obtain regardless of where the constellation of Aries gambols off to. Here are the attributions that I employ:

SEASONAL/HUMORAL/ELEMENTAL/DIRECTIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS:
1.) SPRING / BLOOD / AIR / EAST
2.) SUMMER / CHOLER / FIRE / SOUTH
3.) FALL / MELANCHOLY / EARTH / WEST
4.) WINTER / PHLEGM / WATER / NORTH

These are the attributions found in Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Al-Biruni, Ficino, Agrippa, &tc... Note that each one of the Four Elements is itself composed of a pair of Qualities:

A.) AIR = WARM & LESS MOIST
B.) FIRE = HOTTEST & MOST DRY
C.) EARTH = LESS DRY & COOL
D.) WATER = COLDEST & MOST WET

There is a discussion of the pairs of Qualities in Joe Peterson's online edition of Agrippa, here:
http://tinyurl.com/qne8p

Chap. iii. Of the Four Elements,
their Qualities, and mutuall Mixtions.

"For Fire is hot and dry, the Earth dry and cold, the Water cold and moist, the Aire moist and hot. And so after this manner the Elements, according to two contrary Qualities, are contrary one to the other, as Fire to Water, and Earth to Aire. Moreover, the Elements are upon another account opposite one to the other:

For some are heavy, as Earth and Water, and others are light, as Aire and Fire. Wherefore the Stoicks called the former Passives, but the latter Actives."

Here is a diagram showing the arrangement:

These Elemental attributions (with their Qualities) were first committed to text by the Stoic Philosophers of Ancient Greece, and remained unchanged for over 1500 years as they were employed by the Romans, Arabs, and Europeans of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, until they passed out of popular use in the 1700s.

This particular ordering of the Elements, which assigns the Seasons to the Directions, is based on the 'Rotation of the Elements' - the notion that, as one Season passes to the next, it 'hands off' one Elemental Quality, and 'takes up' another one; for example, Spring leaves off Moisture and becomes Dry on the way to becoming Summer. The model I'm describing has to do with Phases of energy - it is like paper/scissors/stone, or the Pa Kua.

Think about the four seasons, with the 2 solstices and 2 equinoxes, as Stations of the Day. You have the Dusk/Dawn meridian as well as the Midnight/Noon meridian. The Dusk/Dawn meridian corresponds to Fall and Spring, the 'Twilight' times of November Eve and May Eve. And then the Midnight/Noon meridian parallels Winter and Summer. In this model the year resembles a day, Writ Large.

This page sums it up:

Greek Elements
http://tinyurl.com/bg639

Among practitioners of Astral Magic, the attribution of the Directions to the Elements is not thought of as referring to Signs or Planets that are in One Forever Fixed Position; instead, the Directions are assigned according to the 'Window Frame' of your local Horizon.

This 'Frame' is composed of the points of Rising, 'Nooning' [ the 'Medium Coeli' / Middle Sky ], the Setting, and the 'Midnighting' below the horizon - what folks sometimes think of as a point beneath their feet. This 'Window Frame' is what astrologers refer to as the 'Houses'. Since the Houses are based on the local Horizon, the Houses provide the Fixed reference system for observing the Travellers as they move
from Sign to Sign.

One of the reasons that a 'magic circle' comes in so handy, is that it provides for the possibility of marking planetary & stellar positions along the rising/setting arc stretching from East to West as you face South in the Northern Hemisphere.

Of course, you could likewise face in a Northerly direction to 'observe' Planets and Stars located Below the horizon, but Generally one observes Planets at rising, setting, and at the Midheaven - a Planets 'Noon'. That 'Noon' is called it's 'Culmination', when it is as high in the sky as it's likely to get on any particular day.

The Elements turn up in Greek Philosophy as Types of Energy at least as often as they do as 'Elements' in the sense of Types of Atoms. And, as Types of Energy, we're concerned with what they DO - with Function, and with Energetics. If anything, this Elemental stuff is more like a pre-scientific pseudo-physical proto-typical Wave Theory than an Atomic Theory. Polarities suggest a Field, and involve wave-motion through a continuum. That's what al-Kindi was up to, with his 'De Radiis'. Seismographs, magnetic compasses, and tables of the ocean tides all demonstrate a familiarity with the 'field paradigm'. Oscillations of heat and moisture, of light and motion, wind and stone, dispersion and aggregation - these are part of the 'energy language' found in all the varieties of astrology, which 'organizes medicines and diseases according to prime elements, energies and
biological humours' [-David Frawley].

And 'complex position', the idea that some 'thing' is not simply located and bound at a particular point in space, but is distributed among, defined by, and contributes to relationships with every 'thing' else - that a plant or a stone *participates* in events occurring throughout the universe - that's the basis of Astral Magic, of Alchemy, and
Medicine.

Looking through Peirs Vaughan's translation of Robert Ambelain's _Spiritual Alchemy_, we can see that the Martinists, at least, follow the *Traditional* Elemental and Directional assignments I give here, and do not perpetuate the errors of Elemental attribution found in the Golden Dawn:

http://tinyurl.com/mr4ya

And, unlike the Golden Dawn, the Martinists can boast of some remarkable astrologers in their ranks, including Papus. I think that Lee Lehman's translation of Papus' _Astrology for Initiates_, 1996, is a must-read for practitioners of Astrological Magic. I also recommend Dorian Greenbaum's _The Four Temperaments_, 2005.

There is a review of Greenbaum's book on the Skyscript site:

http://tinyurl.com/7jcdq

And here is a link to some excerpts from the book:

http://tinyurl.com/kzm7l

This and other related volumes are available from Astroamerica:

http://www.astroamerica.com/medieval.html#g67

Ambelain's _Spiritual Alchemy_ is also interesting as it examines the Abraham Elim ritual from a Martinist perspective.

I also recommend Earl R. Andersen's _Folk-Taxonomies in Early English_, Rosemont/Associated University Presses, 2003, ISBN 083863916X. Proceeds from colors on through the seasons, geometric shapes, plants, and animals, and confirms the Elemental/ Seasonal/ Directional arrangement that is described in this essay.

See also:

The Hippocratic Corpus
http://tinyurl.com/8rwoz

Healing
http://tinyurl.com/99j62

Adam McLean's Alchemy site:
http://tinyurl.com/2j4vp

Pre-Socratics
http://tinyurl.com/dg5sf

Humoural Pathology
http://tinyurl.com/anwsg

Porta's 'Natural Magick'
http://tinyurl.com/4mo43

Unani Medicine
http://tinyurl.com/9fedq

UNANI MEDICINE
http://tinyurl.com/9zn2p

Four seasons chess
http://tinyurl.com/9mbel

"As its name implies, the game is a competition between four players, each representing one of the seasons. Moreover, each player's colour represents one of the four elements and a humour.

Green represents spring, air, and blood;
Red represents summer, fire, and choler;
Black represents autumn, earth, and melancholy;
White represents winter, water, and phlegm."

Farmer's Chess [four seasons variant]

http://tinyurl.com/azham

The History Of Chess

http://tinyurl.com/9p2nz

List of the works commissioned by Alfonso X, el Sabio

http://tinyurl.com/b2sy3

The Picatrix: Lunar Mansions in Western Astrology

http://tinyurl.com/a6m52

--oO0Oo--

"Heat and moisture are active to generation;
Cold and dryness are passive, in and to each thing;
Fire and air, active by elementation;
Water and earth, passive to generation."

'Of the Division of Chaos'
-Dr. Simon Forman