- Preface - 

For all the varied and vast centuries of man and their cultures, has there been the great artists and writers among them. The philosophers and poets who transmuted the mysteries of the soul into the touchable and tangible for our eyes to see and minds to explore. We are a creative breed, our very nature is restless and yearns for more than to be confined to this reality alone. Our world is an ocean of books spanning the rise and fall of empires, down to which every individual is an island of their own life story. 

The truth is that we have been at this for a very long time, and because of that there is yet another truth we must be willing to see. Whatever feelings we have cultivated, whatever creative endeavor or desire we have come to know, it has been felt before. It has been done. The masters have had their lectures on it. The poets have had their plays. The writers have written their books. The artists have painted it. All that has needed to be said, has been said.   

So to that I now say: Let it be written, let it be said again. Let no song nor art be stifled in compare for it must be drawn, and it must be sung. If not by another, then it must be by our will and grace ourselves to breathe life into it again. The human spirit needn't be so concise as to deny itself a reminder, for brevity is not always the soul of wit, but the denial of the heart's voice in all its detail.  

Thus you can now be certain I mean of two things here. One is that we are far more alike than unalike in the ways that matter most. Our stories while unique, will always find a commonality so we are never truly alone in this world. Two is that what I have to say is not the beginning of something, but part of a long line of that which yearns to be known again. It is a set of contemplations as much as it is of contradictions. A gallery of rumination as much diablerie. Here there are spirits, there are devils and gods, and most importantly...there is us.

The thoughts and musings I present here are not simply mechanisms of my own creation, but are an amalgam of views cast from those I have considered my teachers in life. They may never have known one another, nor lived in the same lifetimes, but each chose their separate paths, and it is destiny that all paths shall cross sooner or later.       

So if you come to find there is much or little said here that you agree with, then that is good. Some people do not want to know certain things, and some things do not want to be known by certain people. The profound for one can easily take on the appearance of the profane for another.  

The beginnings of any wisdom however is first to question, and true wisdom is for those willing after to understand.

If anything written here is considered nonsense or wisdom to you then you owe it to yourself above all to search for the reasons why. Reason is the unique gift of man and is not merely logical but emotional. It is prone to bias, both rational and irrational at any given time. If you feel strongly then explore those feelings for in doing so you may learn more about yourself than anything you could possibly read here. Above all, take from this whatever that would please you.

Take of these words as a rat might take of the crumbs, for it is the majestic and meek rat that has inspired this discourse. The devoted knows deeply. The cherry picker knows variety. Both are needed for a meaningful life.

Hail to the spirits and gods who at times follow and guide us in action and growth through the most subtle of ways. 

Hail to the divine which is found in both animal and nature that man ( for better or worse ) is too a part of.  

Hail to yourself for action makes all dreams and hopes possible. Especially your will.

This is not doctrine. This is the tome of the rat tail. 
  
- The rat tail stirs -

“Those who understand others are intelligent. Those who understand themselves are enlightened. " - Lao Tzu, Tao te ching 

I rose to this world with an empty stomach that yearned for what life had to offer. It had much. Every benefit was given to me: A functioning family with many siblings, a proper education, Christian church on Sunday mornings, cartoon violence on television in the afternoon. The gift of good health and a family doctor. Computers and technology were expanding and accelerating. With each expansion came some new way to simplify every aspect of my days. My studies, my connections, my work, and my life. This for all intents was a privilege the modern age afforded me...and yet given all that time I felt no less filled in this world. 

I even began to feel starved. I was not and still am not the only one who feels this way.

What was it then? What could possibly have been missing in an otherwise privileged life? 

We have lived in-between the walls of this world. Between the borders of the miraculous and mundane, but in safety. We have crept along the woodworks of society quietly, fed upon the seeds of knowledge, both what we could find and what was given. If things outside our understanding would motion, we would take this as a sign of danger and scurry away back deeper into the nest where all things are so safe and sure. And yet...we do not stay there. 

We are to creep along again, ever so aware towards the places where the walls appear weak. We stare through holes into the veil of the unknown, the nebulous spaces beyond the very boundaries of the known and certain we have grown to rely upon. We will arrive here throughout our lives, drawn to it again and again. What drives us to this? what could possibly compel us so? Is it in our appetites to tempt the fates when we could do well enough to leave it alone? Are we drawn towards knowledge, towards power, towards answers from the sciences or the spirits and deities to reveal our purpose? Is it that we are starved for something more than what we have been given? 

In the heart of man is the immortal detail of being a scavenger. We seek, for that is part of our nature to survive. Survival of the body with nutrition. Survival of the mind with variety. Survival of the heart with purpose. Our very nature cries out for nourishment of many kinds, some of which can be met most plentifully while others cannot be so abundant. That is to say we seek out both the tangible (The physical possessions of this world. Shelter, food, money, etc.) and intangible. (The vapors of the human condition. Happiness, hope, love, etc.)  

There is for each and every creature of this world a habitat or design that is to them their paradise. The human, at times the most clever creature of all, is not adverse to this design. Nor does their cleverness prevent them from misinterpreting the paths and tools they use towards it as being the paradise itself.

The intangible desires of our nature can sometimes be shadowed by the pursuit of the tangible. The thought becomes that possession of the physical will therefor equate to possession of the metaphysical. That peace and happiness, honor and virtue can all be purchased or exchanged as a currency. Harmony and purpose by that faith can only be found in the wealth of abundance. This is a half truth that has lead man to determine the quality of their life not by its quality but by its quantity. Time is money, and money is power. Power is freedom. These are the dreams of those in a society.

What then does any of this have to do with one feeling unfulfilled in their life? By all means if man can find their happiness in any item or thing, then surely we should be drowning in inescapable bliss each and every moment of the day. We should feel fulfilled at every avenue of a pay raise, or a job opportunity leading closer to financial success. For a time we do! One cannot help but feel they are expanding their horizons whenever something new in their favor begins. That they are "going places" that will lead to something more but of what? More job opportunities, more money or toys however advanced they are to simply distract us? More time to enjoy ourselves and feel happy again? Why are we so desperate to begin with?  

Why in this age of potential technology and knowledge is it that we feel far more ignorant? Why is it that in an age where we are most able to connect, we instead feel far more isolated and alone? Why is it that even with all these opportunities for monetary prosperity, and the promise of more and more do we still find ourselves further lacking or starved of something we desperately need? That when we do have that time we crave, we often spend it staring silently at the screens of our televisions and phones to look at images or videos of things, and watch shows ravenously for possible hours on end? Why do we work so hard to chase these dreams and yet once the day of that freedom arrives we find ourselves without any joy or motivation to fulfill them?

We are lost, and we are starved. We hunger for pleasures, we hunger for joys. We hunger for something more than the tangible and physical. Perhaps it is that we hunger for the nourishment of the emotional and spiritual again. Not because we are ungrateful, that we have denied all these luxuries and supposed miracles we are surrounded by each and every day, but that we have begun to give more and more for those luxuries to which they give less and less. They have become our vice, and through our lives have less become a distraction and more a need for diversion as our stomach pains grow. So we seek and we keep on seeking for whatever will give us a shadow of validation or true happiness which we ourselves have grown a dull sense of even remembering. We will continue forward with more things to be offered and less capacity to enjoy any of it. Is all this then, this profound mechanism seemingly created, our divine purpose in the age of industrialism, of progress...of man?

- The rat tail in the age of gods -

"Life is a chance at Evolution. Overcome yourself and Become." - Luis Marques , Book of Orion

In considering some sides of the divine nature in man (Which there are many,) I want us to look towards its past, for there is a commonality in that if one has their past, they can inherit their now and continue wandering towards their future. 

From the primordial chaos of this blackened universe was early man seemingly born. They would inherit this world and all that came with it. Danger lurked in all places and in many forms. Pain of death arrived in disease and pestilence, hunger and starvation. Even the skies and nature itself seemed composed to destroy with the freezing winters, the drought of summers, and terrible storms that could wipe a man away. One can only imagine the terror they must have felt upon such a great world that not only appeared to threaten their existence, but actively did so.

Yet if you believe in destinies as some very well do, then perhaps it was that man did not find their destiny by themselves but beside themselves. In separation one can exist for which all forms naturally do so and are fleeting towards death. In communion one can survive for which survival promises a prolonging and possible evolution. In reconciling our most primal instinctual fears, that which cares only in the preservation of the self, were we able to embrace community and develop the awareness of peace, the preservation of many. Through peace could we further cultivate our understanding of this world and ourselves. We joined, we adapted, we evolved. 

All living things inherit a mind for themselves. They experience the physical sensations of this world through taste, touch, sight, sound, and scent. They also inherit the need for existence, and ours is a kind that yearns deeply for existence for we are not only aware of our surroundings but of ourselves. We obsess in this yearning to the point at times we are shackled by it even. There is a native anxiety in us to abhor the knowledge of death which is the end of all things that yearn and seek meaning. It is also in our instincts to run away from whatever form of it we see and deem a part of it. It is to many an act of supreme cruelty that one can be here a moment and then gone the next; never to return to this world as we know it. So we motion for more and we seek, for that is in our nature to survive in this world. But there is still the great weight of knowledge in death that no matter how much we gather or that we achieve, that however close we are together, alone are we buried and alone shall we enter the void from which we came. Some would even find this loneliness already in their waking lives. Too scared to live, too afraid to die as it were.  

But in their attempts to reconcile this separation from the world, life, death, and each other, the spirits were discovered in everything around early man, even inside themselves. It was as if a great knot had been undone and the line which connected humanity to nature, and nature to the gods was finally linked. No longer could one find themselves alone, for together man either embraced the forces of this Earth or unified against its dangers. The strange and mythical things they had feared and seen yet did not fully understand were now something to be sought and learned from in a world that was beginning to reveal its treasures and secrets.

They began to transform in their physical and mental values through this awareness. The knowledge of the spirits and gods unraveled the hidden mysteries and purposes of the divine which gave man the sense they too were not without purpose. No longer was man unlinked from one another for they were from the same beginnings and shared a destiny in the end. No longer was there the threat to the self alone but a threat to a society, and the balance of the known world. No longer was there death without hope, for it was another step in the great evolution of the spirit traveling some place else or returning to that which gave it life. The Demiurge: mothers and fathers, the goddesses and gods of our genesis who have come in many stories and many forms. They demanded to be known, and so they became.

We speak of them with many meanings: awe, reverence, skepticism, fear, gratitude, love, amusement, anger, even hate. There is not one way we can look upon them alone for as you may find there is not only one written beginning, nor is there only one god. Yet theirs is a profound existence which captivates the imagination and ignites the soul in many directions both of the faithful and skeptic. They have shaped entire societies whose learnings and teachings reach even into today from the crumbled past.  

Our world is said to have had many beginnings, some believing that it was through a great ignition or explosion, others believing it was in essence an unconscious act or a mistake bred from chaos. For a time it was largely thought to be made so by elusive figures of grand force. We know these things as the Demiurge or gods. The invisible who have had a hand in all persons and things, and for each and every one there has been a unique impartment for the individual culture that has both risen their visages and worshiped them.

Why do we honor, why do we worship, why do we revere and sacrifice all for them and their kin? Why have we done this for so long? Perhaps it is because of that same immortal detail, that need to seek, that we beseech them so. It is not always clear the motives of the gods nor our meaning to them as a whole. Why are we here then, why do we exist? The great and profound existential question for which we desire to know in many acts, many places, many people, and the gods themselves for answers. So we look for an origin for as you may remember, those who know their past can claim their now and inherit their future. 

In one Christian origin, the primeval event that began our creation was the fall of man, or the original sin. The Abrahamic myths of Adam and Eve portray a tale of the first man and woman who at that time are the closest humanity will ever be to God. Devised in God's own image, they are seen as stewards of the grand creation which is all things and are to nurture and protect of these creations while finding delights and birthing mankind.

Within the garden of Eden, one paradise of God, they know no concept of troubles nor pain. It is here they are told there is only one such boundary to their will, and that is not to eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Though forbidden and warned, it is inevitable that both Adam and Eve in their temptation of curiosity eat the fruit and inherit the knowledge of the God and thus become god-like. They are banished from the paradise for should they stay, they would too be further tempted to eat of the second tree, the Tree of Life and thus live eternally with that knowledge, thus becoming fully gods.

In this interpretation the very reasoning for man's existence now in all its ignorance and frailty can be seen as punishment for the olden sin, the original sin committed by both Adam and Eve in their disobedience. 

In the Babylonian origin, the great watery serpent Goddess Tiamat dwells in the corrosive, chaotic depths of the great universal abyss with her mate, Abzu (The symbolic act of mixing fresh and salt water) to which all things are born of. From them are also born the lesser Deities (Lahmu and Lahamu) who from them are born the even lesser deities (Kishar and Anshar) who bear the god Anu, who eventually births Nudimmud, the greatest of gods.

The gods are now many in this world, many more than spoken here. In their great commotions and rumblings the younger gods stir Abzu who plots to destroy them. Tiamat then warns of this plot to Nudimmud to prevent death. It is however Nudimmud who slays Abzu and creates an abode from his body. This enrages Tiamat who is eventual to wage war on her children alongside her new mate, Kingu, and those of the lesser gods who have joined her. Great and terrifying monsters are made from Tiamat in her anger and despair which serve alongside Kingu in this war. Kingu is also bestowed the tablets of destiny by Tiamat as an emblem of supreme authority over the universe. 

In the end however it is that Tiamat, Kingu, and all their children as well creations that sided with them, are fated to fall against the champion of the younger gods, the youngest Marduk. Born from Nudimmud the greatest of gods, they are even greater than him. It is from the body of Tiamat that is split which we have earth and sky. It is the blood of Kingu however that is mixed together with Earth by Nudimmud which creates mankind.         

In this interpretation the purpose of man's creation then is to be helpers of the gods and to shoulder the burdens of the eternal task that is maintaining worldly order while keeping the rise of chaos at bay, for Tiamat will otherwise rise again and swallow the world whole someday.

Lastly, in the Greek origin, it is that in the empty blackness of chaos rose the spirits of Gaia (Earth, home of the gods) and Eros (Love) and it was that many gods were then birthed from Chaos to mate and complete the whole of creation. Many more gods were birthed then from these unions, and it was both Gaia and Uranus (Earth and Heaven) who became the first rulers. The twelve titans, giants of a golden-will and life rose from their union. 

There are many reason, though none truly certain why, but Uranus out of fear, out of hate or even jealousy decides to imprison the titans through various means. Gaia sides with the titans however who through revenge overthrow Uranus. It is one of these titans, Cronus who is then ascended as leader of the titans. He is given a prophecy however by both Gaia and Uranus that one of his own children will inevitably overcome him in rebellion as he did his own father.

Joined to the titaness Rhea, the first Olympian children are born. Brooding on the prophecy and determined to thwart it, Cronus swallows each child of Rhea. Seeing the grief of Rhea, Gaia takes pity and rescues one of the children, Zeus (sky and thunder), who is hidden away while a stone is fed to Cronus in deceit instead. It is Zeus who is to return and rebel against his father. It is Zues who frees his brothers and sisters from the stomach of Cronus and wages war on the titans as well their children who side with them.

It is Zeus and the Olympian gods as well those who aided in them that overthrow Cronus and imprison him along with the other titans to Tartarus, the deep abyss. It is not however Zeus who creates humans. Establishing their new rule, Zeus is reigned as the leader of the gods to which they set about furnishing and completing the world. Gaia remarks however that the world shall forever be incomplete without human or animal. Prometheus and Epimetheus, two children of the titans spared from the imprisonment in Tartarus, are tasked then with creating animal, man, and the gifts they possess.

Prometheus was the creator of humanity. It is said he loved the humans more than the gods themselves. Epimetheus had no gifts left to give them, and so Prometheus gave them the ability to stand upright. It was also Prometheus who gave them the first fire (for which he stole) and rose their ambition. Lastly, it was Prometheus who taught them the ability to scheme and outwit even Zeus who came to hate, and perhaps fear the creation of men. Prometheus would go on to be imprisoned and punished for his doings, one day to inevitably be freed. 

Humanity was punished however by the creation of Pandora and the box she kept that would inevitably be opened in curiosity to unleash all manner of dark aspects in life: illness, toil, war, and death. A final means to a separation between humans and the gods. The only thing left then is hope.

In this interpretation the purpose of man's creation is out of the prophecy or wishes of Earth itself for which man eventually defines its own purpose.

What then does all of this come down to? Are these three stories and the many more like them remarks of our ignorance, our undoing, our punishment? Is the moral of this that our meaning is to be found in repentance towards the gods who either hate us, enslave us, or have grown indifferent to our existence? There is a commonality to these stories and tales and it is this: We are of this world, and we are children of the gods. Whether it is their breath of life in our lungs, their blood in our veins, or even their tools in our hands, we are their kin, and kin to each other. We are the stewards and arbitrators of this world, and the bedrock between divinity and chaos.

We are the bridge, the only bridge that connects us to greatness and ruin, divine mercy and wicked retribution whatever it may be. In our hands we possess the strength of the gods. In our minds we possess the knowledge of the gods. In our hearts we possess the passion of the gods. This is all to say we are god-like in whatever frailty, fault or form that we take. Unshackled by our fears, and the illusions of avarice for the self and only the self, we can unite and grow capable of being more than destroyers and instead be creators. 

What then is your answer to this? Do you agree, do you disbelieve? Do you find it impossible, or humoring, foolish even? Reflect on those feelings, reflect on those thoughts. What do you want out of this life? What truth do you believe in? Will it confine you or will it set you free? Will it curtail the quality of life for others or will it unite us? 

You do not need my counsel on this, nor my own answer. All that matters and should matter right now is how you feel about this..what do you believe? Does it make you happy, does it bring you peace? Does it anger and frighten you? What do you believe?   
 
- The rat tail in the age of man - 

“there is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep forever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? " - Utnapishtim, Epic of Gilgamesh 

Many religions and spiritual movements have come and gone throughout the ages. Rising and falling is the natural order of things in this world, such is the way of the meaning to age, no matter how greatly we have tried to unnaturally prevent or deny it. A thing is born, risen in strength to endure until it grows feeble and weak, thus then sleeps final. Our persistence to grab and not let go is an admirable trait, one that outlives empires, but it too can be the very reason for the same empires falling. We have a penchant in seeking the static, for the stable and unmoving is oftentimes familiar, safe even. It delivers us alluring lies that we can defy the death of our ideals, our kingdoms, and our bodies.  

And in that safety, inevitably is there ambition bred from an old fear or dissatisfaction one has of their life and the fleeting there of. We are a noble breed but we do not act always with noble intention. Yet we none the less seek lordships, titles, rule, and power not only over ourselves but others and the lives they too possess. Some yearn to live and outlive in greatness which they define not as harmony in community but rule in monarchy. So it is that the images of gods are turned so terrible and great. So it is that tomes are written that no other shall come before them. So it is that the divine becomes inescapably entangled in fear, war, lordship, and the ignorant reach of man's lust for dominion and to live forever.

We imbue the gods with our greatest fears and desires. We translate and interpret our grand wants as their reward to us in obeying. We warn their punishment will be far worse than anything we can imagine if we disobey. The rewards are numerous, the greatest of all being that of eternal life for which the gods supposedly live. It is no longer a sacred act of preserving society or the nature of the world, but to seek the favor and riches of the heavenly for the self, and the self alone. To serve and be served for which all chains are made and placed on us, a tribute to the undying grip of the lords and their stewards we are to endure in servitude. The gods never change in this light. They live forever in their domain, unwavering, static, preserved. We begin to see this interpretation of eternity as grace beyond any death we fear, and the gods demand sacrifice for a chance at this, for which all is given: Wealth, land, blood. 

...And yet men and women still die and the empires still fall. The great gods who supposedly demanded and promised so much, instead vanish into whispers on the wind. We begin to see their rise and fall again and again through revision and reinterpretation yet seemingly delivered by the hands of similar minds with similar ambitions that ultimately fail themselves and us. Is it any wonder then why in this day and age after so long have we grown weary of the spiritual and religious? 

Why is it that for all the oblivion we were promised for our transgressions, are we still here? Why is it that these same gods who demanded sacrifice without end are now things to be studied in a text book or worshiped quietly in isolation? Some would say they were devils, weak and meant to mislead. Others would say they were lies, a creation and tool of mankind that did not exist at all in the end. Could it be however that it has not been the spirits which have motivated us for some time, but our coveting the rewards they might offer? Could it be that we have grown so dissatisfied and starved of meaning or purpose that we have begun to worship acquisition than supposed salvation? Is it that we...mislead ourselves and one another about our purpose and use that for furthering our supposedly meaningless ends? Have we been unfaithful and not known it?

Faith and religion have become synonymous with ignorance and superstition. The figures who have overseen both the church and order of various religions have been revealed as guilty of the same sins they condemned of, and so we have grown to viscerally denounce it. The word of spirits have been weakened by those who used the curtains of their faith as a shroud for their desires and prejudices. Was it then that these same flawed figures were not true in their devotions, that they were faithless to begin with, or was it that the religion itself was so corruptive an influence?

We have had many answers to this. The days of persecution set out by the churches of Catholicism, Christianity, and those of their way, have long since seen their sun's set as their influence became locked away from any higher institutions. They have tried both to reclaim the origins of their faith, and to incorporate the values we instill today in society and ourselves. Yet these actions have still furthered many away from ever embracing them as they once were. They are often reflected on as being contradictory and straying from the roots of their original teachings. They are ridiculed for either standing beside the origins of their words, or attempting to reinterpret them for a new age. In this sense, one cannot inherit nor adapt their faith without contempt in either direction. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. 

We have seen the ever growing rise of Atheism throughout these many long years because of it, the rejection of belief in any god. The damage which has been done by various men and women by various means in the name of religion has turned countless individuals even towards the doors of Nihilism, a belief which is to say all life, morals, and self are meaningless within the universe. We have grown to rebel against the meaning of divinity and worship, even life itself. We have rejected the gods, their teachings, those who would spread their word, and any belief we are their kin. Our societies have changed, and we too have changed within them as we've continued this advance towards science and society of the new while the written words of the old by comparison have been shunned as olden and stagnated, ignorant and to thus be forgotten. 

Man then has recently attempted to reconcile their place in the known world once more. Some have turned to new-age philosophies to feed their starved egos while others have rejected anything of the spiritual by defining the world through the sciences and studies of the acceptable for their intellect. Others have even began their own devotional movements which establishes the premise they themselves are the gods for which this world is their only domain. We understand one of the stronger recent forms of these new movements to be the Laveyan sects of Satanism which prescribes a Darwinian view on humanity, that of predator and prey for which only the strong shall survive.   

We have strived in this new age to set ourselves apart from the divine roots of our heritage, or to reject it altogether in favor of the new laws and idealisms we choose to accept as valid instead. We have entered the age of man, an age of the self to explore and create a new foundation of our identity. The boundaries of what we are capable of have been expanded as has our determination of unraveling the truth of our species, yes. Yet in doing this we have also welcomed a modern monotony into our lives. Our eyes have turned away from any sacredness we once saw in the land or one another. In essence we have developed a new bias that encourages the premise "If it is unseen, it cannot exist." and we have begun to leave less room in our hearts for the belief within the unnatural, the impossible, the mythic even. We deny what is beyond our view.

Despite whatever progress we claim a foothold of, we are still faced with the same age old dilemmas, the same primordial fears and needs that hunger for answers: why we endure, why do we exist? For all this progression we have somehow returned to the olden age once more, only this time man has grown further to isolate from each other in this era of distrust and divisiveness. We...are alone now more than we have ever been, surrounded by one another and growing further despondent to any form of repair or redemption. Our existence has grown to be measured by our contributions to the great mechanisms of a society, our value, our worth, our identities have become intrinsically linked to a bracket of numbers as a disposable resource.

It bleeds into our mentality, this thing of numbers and resource in the name of progression. It tints how we perceive this world, what morals and ethics we value, and what wisdom we shall let flourish, or bound out of sight and out of mind. Starves us of the emotional, irrational, imaginative, abstracts derived of philosophies and discourses outside the social chain of "order". It grows an apathetic distance in us from ourselves and others as well our collective actions...delivers a loss of self worth to which our answer becomes to submit in despair or to inflict a similar harm on others to vainly claim any sense of power. 

Our reward for this is empty hedonism, cultures of short self-sightedness, arrogance, and violence. A duality has begun to form around us individually in this age; an omnipresent and suffocating drive of aggressive self entitlement, driven by a removed sense of any true worth or agency one has in their environment let alone life. We have begun to feel that we are not in control or that we have even truly been living, and so we begin to believe we have been robbed of something unnatural and necessary by a system that has grown faceless to us and therefor unstoppable. We see then to remove ourselves of our morals, our empathy, our boundaries and values for they have not been respected enough to be deemed necessary in a world so cruel. We begin to emulate the supposed system we have despised, and define quality in accumulation whatever the form.  Love and compassion to us become a commodity of limited use or practicality.

Emptied of the heart and ignorant of the mind, this is how a man and woman grows small. Smaller than a rat, smaller than the dust beneath their feet. Dismissive of the divine, the world is a mundane place of limited opportunity and resource for which small things as us tire and toil to possess what can never truly be possessed. We act decisively for our small lives, taking as we please with small regard to any other, man or beast. we grovel and fight for small things, and screech to the heavens that we do not believe in with our small voices, demanding more. Alone in the universe and awaiting death sooner or later are we. Just as quietly as we came, we leave..unheard and meaningless. This existence I speak of is not a reward, it is a punishment of our creation. It is not reality, it is just another flawed and biased perception of our creation.   

We are powerful things. Powerful enough to harm more than the face of this world, and each other. To have that harm shape an entire worldly view in turn. Creative enough to excuse ourselves of any responsibility in our actions however great or small, for we are above accountability or are so robbed of any worth, we believe our actions have little affect at all. The ends justify the means under this perception. It matters not what we do, what we take, or who we harm, only that we reach a supposed destination, finding more and more clever ways to stave our consciouses. We are passionate, and yet that same passion is spent on denial of embracing our endless capacity for togetherness, for salvation, for patience and compassion. It is unfortunate to say some of us expel the energy of the fabled gods inside our very breath and blood for cruel whims and fleeting gains. Such is the warping power of an olden fear from a world long ago, seeping once more into heavenly creatures. 

In our hands we have the power to destroy ourselves, each and every one of us. This world with all its beauty and ills can be turned to dust, and all concept of life can be erased without pity or remorse. There is a truth that must be acknowledged especially in this age of man, and it is that we have always been this powerful. We ourselves are inheritors of divinity, of chaos, of the universe made manifest in an ancient race. We are the children, the stewards, the arbitrators of the universe and whatever lore it has. We have a responsibility to acknowledge this power in us that even through small whims and acts, our motions lead to all consequences. 

If the gods exist then can we be so arrogant and complacent to ignore our bridge to creation in favor of avarice and material conquest above animal, man, and this world? If we ourselves are the gods and the only gods of this realm, then will we deny us capable of performing miracles and instead enact curse after curse upon others for sake of momentary gains or pleasures? If we believe in nothing, if we see life as mundane, that all which awaits us is death...then will we turn our backs on living a kind and gentle life when we only have a single life that is be lived? We have a responsibility to seek understanding, to seek happiness, to seek life not only in ourselves but in each other. To seek it in the highest heavens of thought, and the deepest abyss of our hearts. Divided, we see little, hear little, and act little. Together we live, we expand, we evolve, and enable blessings beyond comprehension.

If we can acknowledge this responsibility and restore our faith in our having a power, a presence of divinity, then we can acknowledge too our ability to nurture and create. That we can be capable of any and all things of creation and destruction for we have a choice always, the ability to choose. Such is the power of free will, of godliness. We can begin to heal our path once more towards nature and each other with the understanding we are capable of anything. To escape from our self placed shackles of selfish desires and endless repeating torments. The age of man has been in motion, set in stone...but it does not mean we have embraced our destiny yet. 

- Ritual magic, faith and curses in the initiation of the Rat Tail -  

“...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.” - Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography