My heart bursts with gratitude each day of my existence, for every moment, for every joy, for every foe who helps me test myself, for every friend who shares the road with me, for every tear that purifies the soul, and for the very path where no chair survives.
Tomorrow, I’ll say thank you again, as I do every day. And tomorrow I’ll welcome again every joy, every teaching, every tear, and every where.
But not tonight. Tonight, I’ll hide from the pilgrims and the violence of the saints.
I’ve learned to show strength
when there was weakness.
I’ve learned to lure an enemy with weakness
when there was strength.
I’ve been manipulated into someone else’s morality.
It’s the way that they say:
He’s not a tattletale.
He’s honest.
He’s kind.
He’s generous.
He’s a ‘Good Christian’.
He sacrifices for others.
It’s the way that they say anything
to get you to do what they want you to do.
It’s their own lie they plant in you.
People manipulate each other
by praising each other’s weaknesses.
When you buy into these lies
and neglect your higher duty
to not violate the moral control of others
you compromise the things and people around you
that are of that higher obligation
and there to help.
There is only one question:
What is truth?
This truth is your compass,
not the illusion presented before you.
If you know what truth is,
you will act in truth.
And what others do doesn’t matter.
It’s a game
and it’s all happening in a dreamland.
When you can think ahead 10 moves,
you’re getting good.
When you can think ahead 20 moves,
you’re an expert.
The Grandmaster see’s only one move:
the right move.
The right move is truth.
And that is always done from above.
(From a lecture by Koyote The Blind, poetically curated by Season)
Nine years ago, on October 22, 2010, I established the Ox and None Clerk-House dedicated to the service of the sempiternal A.’.A.’. and to the evolution of humanity.
A reader asked, “what exactly is a Clerk House?”
Traditionally, a “clerk house” is a store front or public face of a temple, an abbey, or an esoteric school. It is the administrative center of the operations of the school with the outside world. This is the meaning of the term since the middle ages across different spiritual traditions. From this Clerk-House, the spiritual school and abbey would be coordinating and administering both the dealings with the community and the teaching curriculum for the spiritual aspirants training at the school. The external function of this Clerk-House would be to administer both the business dealings with the community that would allow the school to survive and operate, and the actions performed to serve the outside community. So, it would be in this Clerk-House that all the accounting, inventory, paperwork, and student documents would be kept.
Chapter III, verse 41, of Liber Al vel Legis says: “Establish at thy Kaaba a clerk-house: all must be done well and with business way.”
Crowley often thought of the Kaaba in the religious context of Islam. The word “Kaaba” means “cube”, and it is the center stone around which the temple is built. Crowley wanted Thelemites to think of his house by Loch Ness, Boleskine, their religion’s Kaaba. He wanted Boleskine to be to Thelemites as Mecca is to Islam. However, initiates of the A.’.A.’. understand that vertical initiatory work is internal. In this light, the verse above is interpreted in the context of the first main task of the Order: to raise your kundalini and consciousness to the center of your Ruach, your mind, and from there enter into conscious communication with the Star, which is your true Self and whose orbit is your Will.
In this light, we understand the Kaaba to be the cube at the center of your being, or the sacred magical altar around which you will construct the temple of God out of your own self, your life, your consciousness, and your body. This Kaaba is the most intimate and secret center of every person, and there we build a house where we will pray and commune with God, “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
It is, therefore, in the Lover’s grade that we attempt to balance the forces and powers of the Ruach, reconciling all opposites and putting the ego under control, in order to establish a firm connection with our true Self, and from there engage in conscious communication with our Higher Self of Genius. There, under that guidance, we then proceed to next phase of the Great Work which is the manifestation of your pure will in your life.
In this initiatory blue print, to “Establish at thy Kaaba a Clerk-House”, means to set up an administrative center, a store front, at the center of your sacred cube. This sets the Clerk-House for the Adept with a dual function, as every thing in the Ruach is subject to this duality: one inner, and one outer. The administrative function of the Clerk-House in the inner sense has to do with the ordering, balancing, and administration of the different parts of the Ruach. For the Adept, this means the reconciliation of all opposites and the mastery of all aspects of the mind, constantly endeavoring to bring all the elements of the lower and higher self to a state of balance and under the direction of the center, the Sun in Tiphareth, the True Self. This is the first part of the work of an Adept. It is secret and internal. This is “putting your house in order”, as Gurdjieff put it. With the house in order, the Master of the House comes. This is when we attempt to contact the Holy Guardian Angel in a conscious manner, and then establish the methods and conditions for such a communication to continue, acquiring a trusting and reliable source of teachings, guidance, and communion with the most sacred. This is why, in the Lover’s degree, and Adept who has made this contact no longer needs an external teacher, since she has already established a connection to the true Teacher, the real Guru who is a messenger of the sempiternal A.’.A.’. above the Abyss. From then on, your guidance is internal, and from there you derive your teachings, your gnosis, and your magick.
The second part of the task of an Adept is to establish this Clerk-House in the outer, in the world. This is done under the guidance of the Holy Guardian Angel. If the first part of the task was about finding the laws of your Star and entering into conscious contact with it, the second part is about manifesting those laws in your sphere of influence, in your world. This is part of the meaning behind “thy Kindom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In this phase of the Adept’s work, the task is to manifest the Clerk-House in the world. Each Clerk-House will be different, since each one is a manifestation of the innermost will of the Adept. This part of the task can take many years, or even a life time.
The Ox and None Clerk-House was officially established five years ago, and continues to orbit around the Star which gives its Light, Life, Love, and Liberty from the inner to the outer. As an outer expression of its Kaaba, the Ox and None Clerk-House administers and operates the training of its students, working as an abbey or esoteric school traditionally represented by a beehive. This image illustrates the manner of work and service taught to every student. We research and teach through different traditions from around the world, and many of our students are inheritors and initiates of different traditions, each one contributing to the understanding, the practices, and the technologies employed in our Clerk-House.
To sustain the efforts of the School, we produce works of art, books, street and stage performances, car washes, seminars and workshops.
To service the community, we bring to the community, free of charge, training in arts and craft, the sacred art of The Telling, free weekly lectures and teachings, sweat lodges and vision quests, dream circles, healing, cine forums, and readings for the dying. All of these are given as an offering to everyone. Other ways of service are in the planning stage.
In this time, we have trained hundreds of practitioners on the Aka Dua, and raised four adepts to Level V: Sharla Sanchez of The Dreamers’ Den, Dr. Arlan Cage of the Aka Dua Institute of Energy Healing, Phyllis Douglass of Integrated Mind-Body Therapies, and Pilar Gamboa of Xicoco Shamanic Arts.
One school of Toltec teachings has been established in Mount Shasta, under the leadership of Golden Eagle. One Clerk-Hose has been established in the inner plane, the Silence and Strength Clerk-House (more on this soon).
Finally, the Medicine Wheel is being rebuilt at a permanent site for meditation and prayer, open to everyone.
The training itself is also free, but the student body is at maximum capacity at this time. The training is very engaging, committed, and exacting. At this point, we cannot accept new applicants, but everyone is welcome to participate in our weekly lectures, cine forums, and all the other community events we offer. If you live far from Riverside, our lectures and cine forums are broadcasted live on LiveStream, in the Koyote The Blind channel.
This is a very dynamic community of practitioners and students. It won’t be long until other students will open their own clerk houses and thus open the doors of the teaching to a wider circle, each one attracting very different people because everyone is learning to connect with their own Star and evolve their own life into a unique source of service to humanity.
Much has been accomplished in these first none years of the Clerk House, and in the 11 years of service of the School as the Xicoco Shamanic Arts. Tonight, we drink and celebrate for all my relations, and for the benefit of All Beings Everywhere!
As a child in El Salvador, I would stare at the ocean in this picture, vast and loud.
In El Espino, this almost infinite amount of water expanded from horizon to horizon, flooding the consciousness of the observer. As far as the eye can see, ocean all the way to the sides. Just imagine that vast ocean pulling at your consciousness, stretching your vision as much as it can be stretched.
I sat there just watching, trying to encompass such vastness with my eyes. It pulls on the mind. It pulls with that moving uniformity, always changing and always staying the same. Nothing to break that moving monotony.
Behind me, the jungle. Which is to say, a vast nothingness. Only a hint of something behind me, also watching this ocean. And as the ocean keeps trying to penetrate my consciousness, as it almost drowns me with its almost behemoth presence.
I try to get a little bit bigger than it, to a be able to hold it. But my vision can no longer stretch. That rumbling comes from in front of me at first, but very soon that tremor of sound is encompassing me from all sides until I don’t know what is pulling at me more: the sight or the sound.
After a while there’s no difference. There is just the ocean. Vast. And the little me that was there is subsumed by that roaring waters coming at me through my eyes and ears. Now, every little thought that tried to come up and say something, whisper something, was drowned.
I had been irrevocably swallowed by that monster. Dissolved. Even the sun who was shining harsh, hot, unbelievably hot on me, no longer seems to have a presence. Even the heat itself had become just part of that roar, part of that rumble and rolling of consciousness.
The regular movement of that vibration has by now become every sensation outside of me, and inside.
Era tan solo un destello de luz estelar, la más frágil criatura en existencia.
Bueno, llamarla criatura quizá sea tomarse una latitud irresponsable con el lenguaje. No tenía ni siquiera un cuerpo, no pertenecía a especie o género alguno. Por eso es difícil llamarla criatura. Lo que pasa es que también resulta difícil pretender que no era un ser vivo. Aquí es donde la lengua española nos falla. Es un ente, claro está, pues podríamos decir que estaba dotada de conciencia. Pero bueno, tampoco podemos pretender que esta conclusión resuelve la cuestión, puesto que decir que este destello de luz está dotado de conciencia es como pretender que su simplicidad se ve complicada al añadir cualidades externas. Más bien, tendríamos que tener una palabra en nuestro idioma que a la vez nos dijera que al mismo tiempo ella era luz, destello de luz, consciente, durmiente, sin órganos sensoriales, completa, simple, frágil, e indestructible.
Retomemos el asunto paso a paso. Era tan solo un destello de luz estelar. Estaba consciente, sí, pero no tenía órganos de la percepción. No tenía ojos para ver. No poseía oídos que detectaran sonido, ni un sistema nervioso con que sentir. De echo, no poseía un cerebro con el cual pudiese formar pensamientos ni memorias. Quizás podamos decir que tenía una conciencia dormida, como un estado de auto-reflejo profundo––un dormir sin sueños, sin memorias, sin eventos.
Era a la vez frágil e indestructible. Era tan frágil como un instante. Existía porque viajaba de un momento al otro, sin defensas ni estructuras. Viajaba en el espacio oscuro. Viajaba desde el principio de los tiempos, deslizándose por el vacío infinito. Era invisible porque nadie nunca la había visto. ¿Qué es la luz cuando no es vista? ¿Es acaso oscuridad? Quizás. ¿O será más bien posibilidad y espera? ¿Será un grano de la nada en espera del momento en que dejando de ser se vuelva una visión de su origen?
Vino de una estrella. Y por ser luz de estrella tiene en sí la esencia estelar. Si alguien la ve, verá la estrella.
En el momento en que sea vista, dejará de viajar invisible y se convertirá en estrella en la mente del vidente que la reciba. Se convertirá en poema, compañera del canto de grillos y el palpitar del corazón de amantes. Se convertirá en el conocimiento de sabios astrónomos y profundidades filosóficas.
Tal es su fragilidad que dejará de ser destello de luz en el momento que alguien se vuelva consciente de ella. Y tan indestructible es, que después de eternidades en el infinito, se volverá estrella en el momento de su muerte. Es destello de luz estelar, semilla poética, y esencia de la noche.
O quizás no sea percibida por ser humano alguno. Puede ser que venga a reposar en la hoja del árbol de acacia, y así de luz se vuelva oxígeno. Puede ser que como oxigeno sea partícula vital de innumerables seres, que se convierta en molécula de agua y aire. Que viva en el fulgor del fuego, y en aroma del perfume; que viaje en aliento del cantor; que alimente los cuentos de una soñadora.
Era tan solo destello de luz estelar, la más frágil criatura en existencia, eterna y perenne. Se volvió parte de todas las cosas. Se convirtió en todos los seres. Formó parte de todas las mentes y percibió todas las cosas. Pasó a ser aire y luz, agua y fuego. Se cubrió de todos los cuerpos y presenció todos los pesares––y las alegrías también.
Y así vino esta estrella, proyectándose como luz oculta, a ser parte de todos los seres, partícipe de todos los actos, presente en todos los recuerdos. Dejó su viaje por el infinito para vivir en todas las cosas, hasta que un día se encontró en cuerpo humano––frágil como la vida y eterno como el arte––y por tan solo un momento dejó de ser invisible cuando alguien la vio en su esencia natural de destello estelar, y componiendo el idioma la nombró con su nombre verdadero y oculto, con su nombre de destello de luz estelar. Al escuchar el sonido de su nombre verdadero, el destello se convirtió en momento fugaz, materia prima de la consciencia, y la amiga oculta de todas las cosas.
[Kaira es una escritora española de mucho talento. El libro en la foto es uno de sus libros para niños. Está historia es dedicada a ella]
I have read Martivón Galindo’s Sharing My Inner Space, and I realize now that with every painting and every poem she has been marking a special space in the journey that so many of us undertook back in the 80’s, when the Salvadoran diaspora uprooted us from the place where we wanted to live, love, die, and create. We left because we had to, away from decades of war and oppression, and everywhere we went we kept looking hard inside the most recondite corners of the heart for that something we brought with us, to make a life and create art, and to find ourselves even in places that forever made us feel strangers.
In this book, Martivón gifts us with a tremendous experience through the use of poetry, print, and painting. It is a powerful storm that penetrates your consciousness under the command of an accomplished artist who has dived into the depths of her soul, and confronting the turbulent history of war, exile, emerges in ultimate triumph a master of her perceptions. She takes us through her encounter with exile, an event that shaped an entire generation of Salvadorans, but she does more than make us look at the world, she takes us with her as the seed of her soul emerges from that encounter triumphant, and continues to create and define her artistic world.
Martivón is not content with showing us her skill and creativity. She shares with us that most intimate process of her genius: the process she has gone through as she discovers her true self. We witness this discovery when she manages to put in word and image the creative powers of a soul that is always seeking justice and always burning bright with the wild fire of truth.
Porque lo invisible es el misterio
encerrado en la lágrima de una estrella
Ayer como hace treinta años
busco lo que no está
para encontrar mi luz
mi propia sombra
en el invisible gran universo de lo posible––Martivon (pg. 160)
Every great artist has an inner process through which her silent, intimate center faces the vast expanse of the unknown, and every one of them produce art that touches in us that most intimate abode. Their art awakens somehow our own truth. Martivón’s art does that for us, of course, but she takes a step further. Sharing My Inner Space is a living document showing that invisible inner process through which her genius emerges.
Witnessing this book is a most enjoyable experience. I promise you, the core of your perception will be touched by it, and you will find yourself on a journey through your own inner space. I recommend this book unreservedly.
The undifferentiated silence becomes distinct by the introduction of sound and movement. Having forgotten infinite lifetimes, this new appearance of appearance, grabs the attention.
I begin to forget the eternal emptiness. I hear the laughter. I feel the love of the mother. I touch with my tiny hands, and the touch is joyous in the extreme. I experience searing pain and suffering, and the suffering is like fire innundating all my senses. I laugh. I hope. I experience. I become.
In the becoming I transform myself. I create many me’s from expectation, arrogance, and hopefulness. I create the illusion of suffering. I create the illusion of the importance of my life. I create even the fiction of a spiritual path––the reading of the books, the listening to the teachers. I create an expectation of liberation. I create the fiction of salvation. I create aspirations. And in the creation of aspirations I immerse myself more and more in the illusion that what happens to me is somehow of any importance whatsoever.
And so on I continue with the chain,
the unending chain of life,
enlightenment,
and nothingness.
Nothing is permanent.
Not even the experience of the empty
voidness of the void.
Life runs out.
Death runs out.
Ignorance runs out when I realize
the eternal truth of the eternal empty void.
And the experience of enlightenment
and the dissolution of illusion
also ends with the forgetting of the illusion.
It ends with the stirring of experience.
Unending chain.
A cosmic breath between creation and dissolution.
The long night of Brahma.
The eternal dance of the empty void and her beloved, her lover,
the stirring of the experience.
Today, there is no volcano in my view.
No people.
No path.
No city.
No hum.
Today it’s just the fog
holding and dissolving billions of worlds.
They have become more clear and solid.
They exist within me, and without.
The word showing an external reality is no longer dead.
It’s the gate keeper who is dead.
Who, then, punishes the archangels?
Or do they exist inside me in caravans?
Do they exist in my grandmother’s room,
collecting dust and gathering consciousness of little children?
Does the manticore fly?
Does the unicorn travel on solar paths?
Is the man in the cross still there,
looking at me with those eyes,
asking me if I know that I am there
nailed to the same cross,
to this creation of my mind,
unable to move and going everywhere at once?
I’ve been receiving some wonderful comments about The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor. Here is one that touches the heart with tender fingers.
“After I removed it from the package I headed into my infants son room to take a quick peak. Brett saw your book in my hand and made a hyper-supersonic crawl to the doorway, stood up and reached for your book. I stepped over the child gate and went to sit down with him, book in hand. He climbed all over me for 15 minutes trying everything in his power to hold on to you book. Finally I placed it down on the carpet, and held it securely against the floor, and he spent the next 5 minutes touching it and trying to pick it up, smiling and laughing, overjoyed. I’ve never seen him act in this manner before with such intensity, and unbending intent, and I take that as a wonderful omen 🙂 I’m looking forward to diving in, if Brett will let me have it to myself. He likes me reading to him, so your book is our next read. Cheers!”–Thor Blethyn
I was very young. I must have been about seven years of age or five. I can’t remember right now. I had gone to the zoo with some aunts and cousins. After the zoo, we were going to the bus—this was in El Salvador. I was following my sister and cousin. Both were six years older than me. They were walking in front of me. I noticed they had begun to walk in a different way, to swing their hips more. I thought they were doing that because boys like it. I thought it was part of the human game. See, I didn’t realize then that I kept looking at the adults as someone would look at animals in the zoo: “These are their mating habits. These are the things they do when they lie. These are the things they do when they want to be liked.” Then, the girls turned a corner, and I followed them. On the sidewalk, there were two tables used by street vendors to offer such goodies as sweet breads and drinks. They were still setting up. My sister and cousin walked between the two tables, and I followed. I pulled myself up with my hands on the tables, and I swung myself playfully, and I came down. And when I came down, the people were not there. The street seemed the same, but no one was at the tables, and there was no food on them. All was quiet. There was an absence of smell, and everything had a buzz to it. And I turned around. There were very few people, and I ran to the corner to catch up with my cousins and aunt, but they were not there. There were some very old cars, not the type I used to see. And then I returned to the tables and I tried to do the same thing again; and, no, I was stuck there.
Something in me thought, I’m lost. I’ve gone to another place again. I looked at the street, and it went on and on for a while, and I said to myself, this is the way back home; if I walk down this path, I will get home, if don’t deviate from it.
I started walking on that strange street. Then, I saw a police officer; and when you are in those spaces in that world, uniformed personnel give you directions. He was standing in the middle of the street, but it didn’t seem odd. “Excuse me. I’m lost,” I told him.
He said, “You are not lost; if you were lost, you would be panicking and crying.”
“Well, I’m lost because I don’t know how to get back home.”
“Where is home?” he asked.
I said, “I live with the humans in Colonia Zacamil.”
So he smiled and said, “Come with me.” He took me to a bus; the door of the bus was opened. This bus was like in England, on the wrong side of the street, but I still entered through the right side from the street. He said to the driver, “This boy needs to get back home to the humans. Can you tell him when he’s there?”
He said, “Sure.” He didn’t ask where. He just drove. The scenery began to change. Slowly there was more dirt, sun, and more noise. The smells came back.
He asked, “You know how to get home from here?,” stoping the bus in front of the bus stop down the path to my house.
I said, “Yes, I do,” and I did. That was the first time I got lost, and then I started to get lost very often. I shifted the assemblage point by mistake at first.
When I got home, I told my mom what happened, and then I hid when my aunt showed up. My aunt was pale. She was worried. She reported we were all together, we were crossing the street, and then everyone crossed the street and I was not on the other side. She looked everywhere and couldn’t find me. Eventually she went home and told my mom. As she was telling my mom and my mom was calmly telling her, “Well, I don’t know, but you’re going to have to go back and find him,” and my aunt realized by my mother’s calm and dismissive demeanor that I was actually there and not lost, I sprung from behind the couch and pounced at her happily, hearing the bells of her happy laugh and cuddled in the warmth of her embrace under the all touching love of my mother’s smile.
