XIV - TEMPERANCE
For a few days I couldn’t stand up without losing my balance or speak without a slur. Karina began calling incessantly after I didn’t return her calls and when I finally did call her back she immediately noticed the slurred speech and insisted on coming over to see me. I sat in my art deco armchair and stared into space while she played the hysterical mother making soup, changing sheets and airing out the apartment.
She would discuss her boyfriends and financial problems while giving me acupuncture treatments as we began to see each almost every day. She forced me to send Harry Scott reports and updates and once I could speak clearly again, to call him regularly. My routine became working for a few hours then going to Karina’s house with groceries and talking with her while she made dinner. I got back in touch with Wild Bill and would go to the occasional AA meeting with him and I finally got started on a new article for the blog.
Before I knew it December had arrived and I’d been off the booze for three weeks but the longer I went without drinking, the less appetite I had for work; it became a chore without intrigue. All my energy went into the esoteric studies and writing. The money from Bernstein kept flowing and Harry Scott was making very big returns on the work I did and kept the contact to a minimum which suited me fine. I had all his campaigns set up and the account executives from the media sources, most of whom I’d known for many years, were doing most of the heavy lifting. I was worried about my total lack of interest and I could see the correlation between drinking and working; they seemed to go hand in hand. Once the booze was out of the picture so was my interest making money.
Sitting comfortably in Larissa’s waiting room I realized how little I had been thinking of Irina. She was finally gone and I almost never thought about her and when I did, I just heard her screaming about calling the police. I found Larissa intriguing; she had the right amount of distance, complication, difficulty and ambiguousness to truly interest me. Her birthday had been that weekend and I brought her three roses and Eliade’s, The Myth of Eternal Return. She wore a grey suit, the skirt knee length and black, high heeled boots. She smiled and thanked me. “Arthur, now that you are back on your feet and seem coherent, let’s talk a bit about what happened to you those few days before you took the pills.”
“Well, things just began to get very black. Of course I was drinking and doing some dope, a lot actually. I think what happened is all the alcohol and drugs broke down my defenses and the whole Irina thing came at me with a fury. Finally, as I told you, the phone call with her finally sent me off the edge.”
“Why didn’t you come see me if you were feeling so bad? You need to learn to reach out to people and look for ways to talk things over. You can call me if you are feeling very badly, don’t worry, I’m used to it.” I didn’t enjoy her seeing me as one of her patients.
“Sure, next time things get really bad I will call you. I promise.”
“You scared me. When I first heard your voice you seemed very groggy and even on your first visit here you were quite dazed. That was very dangerous what you did. Arthur, I understand this Irina very well- she is just a little Russian tart and not worth all of this. I assure you that one day you will understand.” It rang true and it was a good place to leave Irina and move on. “So, what have you been doing?” She asked and I was happy to change the subject.
“Really delving into the Tarot cards and astrology. You know, I think as a psychologist the astrological natal chart could really help your patients to see themselves as a coherent whole, instead of being pulled apart by different sides of themselves. You know Jung used to make charts for all his patients.”
“Very interesting, maybe you will make mine?”
“I would love to.” She gave me her exact birth information and I looked forward to giving her a reading. “One thing that is worrying me, the more time goes by that I don’t drink, the more I’m interested in the occult and the less in work. Do you think it’s just compulsivity finding a new outlet or do you think it’s a true path?” I was interested in the answer both for what it could mean for me and what it would say about her.
“You’ll have to find that out for yourself. You’ve read the letters between Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, and Jung. Maybe this is your way of getting in touch with the spiritual side that AA says in necessary, though I’m not sure you’re such a good fit for AA. For me it’s Zen, but everyone has their own path.”
She continued. “As for compulsivity, all successful people are somewhat compulsive; you don’t become proficient at something without compulsivity.” I liked they way she spoke as well as what she said. “Maybe your writing along with the esoteric topics could be something interesting for you to pursue. You understand media and the internet, maybe you could combine them, like what you are doing with your blog.”
“I like that idea.” And from there the conversation turned to alchemy and I left her office feeling like I had spent time with a close friend. I walked uptown passed a few bars but their appeal was fading and I realized that I had spent enough of my life talking to bartenders.
I went to Karina’s that night with my tarot cards and it was the first time I’d ever done a reading for someone. The cards seemed to jump out of my hands and their meaning was clear to me as I wove the narrative from the reading. Both Karina and Galya were very surprised at the correlations between the readings and their questions and when we finished they seemed to look at me in a differently; something had changed between us and within me. I couldn’t explain how the cards worked or why but I was sure not only of the synchronicity between the cards and the questions, but also between the cards and myself. Ever since I began exploring the Tarot my esoteric interests had expanded into astrology, Kabbalah, alchemy and Gnosticism but the first key to turn in my quest to reach the beyond was the Tarot.
After a long hiatus I met up with Wild Bill and it was a great joy to encounter his warmth and complete lack of self consciousness. We went to an AA meeting together on a Friday and afterwards we walked along the street talking about what was going on in the world. He wore a big leather jacket over a Mets tee-shirt and a strange pair of new fangled jeans with an old pair of boots.
“Arthur, what are you doing tonight? Why don’t you come up to my place, we’ll order a pizza pie, maybe two, better two, and you can sleep on the couch?” I had been planning to go home and do some reading and writing but the idea of spending the night at the Wild Man’s was like being a kid again.
“Great idea Billy Boy, just what the doctor ordered.” We took the subway to his apartment in a quite neighborhood in Queens. He ordered two massive pizzas with just about everything known to man on them, plus two enormous bottles of Coke. The apartment was comfortable, lived in and as welcoming and unpretentious as the man. He sat with his feet up in an old school reclining chair and I lounged on the couch.
“Arthur, you gotta watch this movie. I got it on CD, unfuckingbelievable. You’ll never see this kind of stuff in the movie theatre. Zeitgeist, you will love this.” He was all exclamation points. We inhaled the pizza, drank enormous amounts of Coke and both watched the film attentively. I had never seen anything quite like it. All of the hype regarding new media that I had been hearing for a decade finally came together for me in that film.
“Bill, this is amazing!” I exclaimed “A lot of what this guy says is right on and no one can stop him. This is out there and is going to light more than a few fires. And look how cheaply he made it, probably a few thousand bucks and it looks fine. Times are changing but I just hope they can change fast enough. You know, this world is killing me, killing all of us; it’s a slow grinding death. Look at all these folks in the AA meetings, they’re there because of the booze, of course, but what really put them there is something else, something much bigger. These guys who pull the strings; they’ve left us with nothing but toys and debts.”
“Yeah, exactly, I know what you mean. You loo
k at people walking down the street, a bunch of zombies, all of them. I deal with all kinds of fucked up people on the cops, completely fucked up people, but it’s just like you say; they’re like the folks in AA, something is missing. You know, AA promises a miracle and I was waiting for a hell of a long time but now I think the miracle is waking up to this shit and seeing through it. But the question is, what’s there apart from all this stuff?”
I jumped in, “I’ve been getting into a lot of esoteric stuff, the Tarot cards, for example. They’ve really given me a way to see through all this, see that there’s something else. A lot of people think that the inner world, the non-material world, is as immense as the physical universe. The problem is we’re always looking out but never in. When you start to look in it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Look, I’m not there yet. No way, very far away from really seeing it but I have gotten a few glimpses and I know there’s something there.”
“What do you think of Fatima, Our Lady of Fatima? I know you’re not Catholic like us, shit, I’m not really a Catholic anymore either, but you know what I mean. Us being Irish and all, well, you too, at least half of you. So what do you think of that? It always gave me the shivers, like it was real.”
“I believe it. Our Lady of Fatima broke through, broke through the barrier. She appeared as the Virgin because Portugal is a Catholic country. If she appeared today in California she would probably appear as an alien. I was in Fatima once, very scary place, really powerful. Something definitely happened there. And the miracle the Virgin performed, the way she made the sun wobble then come racing towards the earth; thousands saw it and many of them thought it was the end of the world. That can’t be explained away as some kind of hallucination even if they try. They want us fully locked into their corporate worlds and borrowing their monopoly money that we pay back with work. I think the Virgin was breaking through and telling people that they needed to wake up, but it isn’t so easy. Think about Hollywood, when was the last time you saw a film or TV program that had the characters living a life focused on the transcendental, not the material? And I don’t mean helping people and being a do-gooder, I mean living for something beyond? ”
“I know what you mean, always the same bullshit about loving other cultures, helping poor people and all that shit. I can’t stand that politically correct propaganda; it drives me crazy with all the rules and holier than thou bullshit.”
“Exactly, it’s just pure materialism and when they couch it in religion it simply becomes spiritual materialism. The end result is all about the money, people, power, sex, politics and the like. In the end, everything they want you to worry about is meaningless social control. The one thing they don’t want you to realize is that you can get in touch with the transcendental from right here. You don’t need their toys and funny money because the freedom they talk of is just modern slavery.”
“Arthur, I like talking to you, you have some good ideas.”
“I like talking to you too cuz, you’re the shit, as the kids say.” We stayed up till very late, slept in and the next day Wild Bill cooked up an enormous breakfast and we had another long conversation. I left refreshed and charged with the kind of energy I could only get from one of my own.
Misha, who I’d been very anxious to see, called to say he was coming through New York. Nothing was ever said between us about communicating but I understood intuitively that he would always be the one to initiate contact. I invited him to my apartment for dinner and since we had always drunk together, I bought a few bottles of wine and a very good bottle of whiskey not wanting to impose my abstinence on him. He arrived with an old leather brief case and a tweed sport coat and gave me a hug that let me know he was truly glad to see me. He carefully looked at my prints and the furniture and made the kind of comments that showed me he was impressed then sat down in the deco armchair and removed a package and a bottle of very good vintage Bordeaux from the leather case. I put the bottle on the table that had been set already with foie and a very good Spanish ham. The package was wrapped in plain brown paper with a cord and there was newspaper inside which I removed from around an icon of the Sacred Sophia. He explained that there had been a Gnostic movement in the Russian Orthodox Church during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th and that this icon was from that period. She had red hair, a red dress and wings. I immediately saw that she would fit perfectly on the column that rose right before the entrance to my bedroom. Without thinking, I poured wine for both of us and we drank and ate pasta with artichokes followed by veal Marsala.
I served whiskey after coffee and he leaned back and began to discuss what had happened with Irina. “I think you confused this girl with something she wasn’t. You were looking for spiritual union but it got confused with the carnal. You can’t mix those two Arthur, you must keep them separate. Sure, it’s possible to find a relationship that has both, but even then there’s a time and a place for each. This young lady was probably just looking for some fun and you were looking for something very profound. You were saying one thing and she was hearing another. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have that side to her; it just means she wasn’t ready to share it with you. Take your time, center yourself, and continue the good progress you’re making on the esoteric side and someone will appear, just don’t force it. The fact that you fell so hard for her reveals how much you need the spiritual element in your life and how repressed it is. Your soul is what connects you to the transcendent, only through your soul can you find the gods, and for a man the soul is a feminine. But she was hidden very deep inside you, completely cloaked, and that’s why the projection onto this young lady was so strong. Something in her triggered your soul to leap out on her. Look at the grail myth, the women are the guides and the keepers of the grail. The heartbreak is also coming to terms with your soul. She’s there and you feel whole and then suddenly she’s gone and you feel like you want to die. That shows you how much you need to connect to what’s deep inside you and when you don’t, it gets projected outward and usually ends badly.” I lit his cigarette and began to speak.
“It’s been very difficult, but like you say, I have made a lot of progress. But there were moments that truly felt like death.”
“And that’s the way it has to feel. In alchemy, mortificatio or death comes after conjuctio or the union of opposites, love if you like. In the Rosaruim Philosphorum, which is a famous alchemic text, after the king and queen make love they die together. The material side dies and the spiritual is born. That’s an important theme in Gnosticism too. In Gnosticism Sophia was considered a very high being and of course her name means wisdom, but she was more than that, she represented the spirit lost in the world. In the Gnostic myths she creates the god of the Old Testament, Yahweh, almost by accident. He, Yahweh, doesn’t know that his mother is Sophia and that there are gods above him; he believes he’s the only god. He’s the demiurge, the half creator. After her mistaken creation, Sophia loses contact with the original source, the true essence of everything but eventually after being immersed in the material world she remembers who her father is and she calls out to him. The myth differs in the various versions, but, for example, Simon Magus finds Sophia in a brothel. She remembers, Pistis Sophia, faithful Sophia, and her father takes her back. What you are looking for is her and when you find her you must bring her out of the brothel that is this world and together find transcendence.”
He continued, “This is the key to alchemy, out of the negredo, the black material or massa confusa, the alchemist works his art from which he extracts Sophia, the spirit. Remember, ‘many are called, but few are chosen’. Many hear faint noises, they note the wind blowing, but they go no further. It’s not an easy journey but you’re on it. However it ends, whatever may occur, you’re on the path. Just be careful of the occasional inflation. I mean, there will be times when you think you’ve got it and in those moments your ego literally inflates and you feel
‘chosen’. Just note, as soon as you feel it, that something will soon bring you back to earth and sometimes not so gently. There are many demons to exorcize but they won’t stop harassing you until you finally welcome them and realize the demon is nothing more than the unconscious side of you.” He reached into the bag from which he had taken the icon and removed a book. “I would like you to read this. The Red Lion, by Maria Szepes. I had the good fortune of meeting her once; she was a friend of Emese, our host in Martha’s Vineyard. I think you’ll see more clearly the alchemic stages as she describes them in fictional form.”
“Thank you so much, I’ll start it tomorrow. I was just thinking about what you said regarding inflation; it happened to me with the Ali Mohammed article.”
“Ah yes, I read that one, very well done. You have a nice writing style and the ideas came together nicely. I clearly understood your point and it’s one we haven’t seen in the mainstream media.”
“Thank you. It was a strange feeling that came as I was writing it. I crossed a line. I was afraid but once I crossed it I did have an inflation, as you call it. I’d never really considered Al Qaeda to be a homegrown operation but there came a moment while writing that I knew there was some connection, a clear connection. And when I wrote that part I had a strange rush and I went downstairs to take a walk and smoke a cigarette and felt something really big come over me; it was sublime. It was like I had been given a vision few others had seen but not too long afterwards I did have a big letdown. As the layers get peeled off each one seems to give more and more clarity. It’s not just an alternate version; it’s that I begin to see that the whole thing is upside down. Almost everything we were told was white is really black. Not only historically, with everything, but it does seem easier, at least for me, to see it in the historical perspective.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it.” He was sitting up in his chair. “I could even feel that energy in the piece. What are you writing now?”
“Now I’m writing on the monetary system. Of course much has been written about it and I’m not uncovering anything new but finally figuring out how it really worked was a major eye opener and I want to put that sense of discovery into the piece. It might take awhile to write because there are parts that I’m still confused about, but I will take my time and get it right because understanding the monetary system is the key to seeing the matrix; nothing else reveals it so clearly. It’s truly amazing to finally understand how the money is made and where all this debt comes from because it comes from nowhere; they cook it up in their computers and give it to governments and the people who pay it back with interest through work. Fractional reserve banking is the most incredible scam in history and it’s dangerous because the bankers really prefer that all governments carry large debt and nothing creates debt quicker than war. I really think that once people understand this they’ll wake up because, let’s face it, money hits home. Everyone cares about it.”
“Yes, that is an excellent way to nudge people towards reality. Just be careful because the real path moves far beyond politics and revolutions. Remember, in politics both sides are playing roles but there really isn’t any difference between them. As long as you are inside the politics you’re part of it and of the culture and you can’t move beyond it. As Terence McKenna said, ‘Culture’s not your friend’. It’s really just a means of social control and it works up to a point for all of us, but there comes a moment, usually after midlife, when it stops working and you must move beyond it. That’s why the esoteric traditions are by nature so secretive because mainstream culture can’t deal with the real nature of things; they have to reduce everything to some scientific theory and if they can’t, they ignore it. Take Egypt and the pyramids for example; there’s so much pointing to a civilization that existed much before anyone in academia will recognize but it’s unacceptable to the mainstream. The Hermetic tradition comes from a mysterious place somewhere back long before any historian will ever admit there were civilizations with advanced learning. It’s hushed up and swept under the rug because academia cannot accept the fact that while technology advances, civilization and culture are actually in decline. This is not possible for them; it’s beyond their conceptual powers to recognize.”
“Do you think that alchemy, for example, comes from that far back?”
“No one knows. All we do know is that Hermeticism as it was understood in the Ptolemaic period in Alexandria was the offshoot of the ancient Egyptian mysteries. Some even think the Tarot cards come from deep in that tradition but most of the theories about that lost epoch are just conjecture and intuition. But don’t discard it just because it’s only intuitive. When many people have similar intuitions it’s probably pointing to something profound.”
We decided to take walk and as we strolled in silence I remembered how Misha had come into my life and how his arrival coincided with so many important moments for me. I’d never really had a mentor and my personality probably pushed them away, but his brilliance and pedigree combined with his relationship to my father opened the door and what a difference he made. It was around midnight and we were in front of a bar.
“A night cap?” Misha asked and I agreed. It was strange to sit with him at a bar but his whole demeanor changed and he appeared like a regular. I had the feeling there was something he wanted to tell me.
“Arthur, I sent your website project off to some people in London that I know. They got back to me. They really liked it and think it could have a future but they don’t have the resources right now to go ahead with it, and, well, they feel like we might be hitting a bump in the road soon. They seem to think there are some deep financial problems in the world right now and they are hunkering down to weather the storm. Maybe in a few years when they see some better times ahead they might be willing to take it on. It’s a very interesting project and we spent a lot of time discussing it so it could happen, but down the road.”
“Thanks so much for showing it to them. I know what you mean about the markets. I’m seeing some strange things in my campaigns. The results are slowing down a lot. I’m still making money for my clients but something is changing for the worse, the numbers don’t lie.”
“You know Arthur, there are forces, big forces, starting to come together. The next five to ten years could be very tumultuous. The important thing is the spiritual life, the connection to the transcendental; all the rest is ephemeral. It comes and goes, and eventually, it all goes. But there is something that stays and that’s what you have to pursue. Pursue that part, hunt it down, cry out for it, and you’ll find it. I have had many patients lamenting lost love and money but I’ve never had a patient crying to know God, I mean really know him. How you suffered for Irina; I understand it. I have been there. But remember, when you can feel like that about Sophia, then you are on the right track.”