My Initiation of Air

Warning: This is UPG.

As part of my magical training, I did my Earth degree for around 5 years much of which took me away from magic and I recently moved onto Air. Earth took me to the hard physical reality that you so rarely deal with when practising magic and Air suddenly returned me right to it.

When I went into Earth I was falling apart financially. I was nearly broke and could barely pay my bills. Things were getting worse and money had a power over me. Surprisingly, while earth did eventually sort out my finances and enable me to buy a house and support two other people, my earth initiation’s first action was not to fix this, but to stop money from having a power over me. It stopped me from feeling like a failure, when I had no money. Air is starting by doing something similar.

When beginning my earth initiation, I suddenly met a number of people who happily took on the identity of being “trash”. They were a bunch of furries and while I wasn’t really a furry, I really appreciated them. Most of them were entirely self-accepting despite the fact that many of them were almost entirely incapable of financially supporting themselves. Why couldn’t I accept myself like that. I had a lot to learn from them and mostly I really benefitted from the respect they showed me.

One in particular, who was capable of financially supporting himself stood out to me as someone, who was severely underpaid. He was a carer. People would have died if it wasn’t for his work. He often had to feed people their food and drink, get them out of bed and help them clean themselves. All sorts of health problems would have occurred if it wasn’t for his work and yes, if no-one had done it, people would have died, yet he was one of the least renumerated people I knew. Yet government figureheads were paid 6 figures! Figureheads who did nothing but read other people’s speeches, financially reward their friends with someone taxpayer money and present a good face. People who frankly – in my honest opinion – the country was probably better off without them, they earned 6 figures. So what did that tell me? Well, the system of money was broken. It wasn’t the value determining system I had been raised to believe it was. Money consistently failed to follow value. So I learned, that just because money wasn’t doing well in my life, it wasn’t me that was a failure. The system was the failure; not me. I hadn’t failed the system, it had failed me! Sadly it’s a great and powerful system and I could turn myself around, but turning the system around was something I was powerless to do, but at least, it lost its emotional power over me. When I recently started air an aspect of air lost its power over me.

As I go into my air initiation, I see something very similar happening. Reason has begun to lose its power over me. Reason was always lifted up in my mind to be the great equaliser. The challenger of power and the place where all people can meet and achieve consensus. But sadly, I learned recently that reason does not work that way and my air initiation has begun to remove the power that reason had over me.

I thought that reason was something that could be used to achieve an agreement with everyone. I loved it. I was always equipped to jump into a debate, but the truth is that reason, which used to have such great power over me is losing its grip.

Why did I like reason so much? Well? I am someone who experienced constant disempowerment throughout his life. Physically I’m not very strong. Sexually I am queer, which is only really matches up with 4%, so I’m frequently outnumbered. I am neurally atypical which puts me at 1.85% so again I’m outnumbered.

It is scary to feel disempowered. Well, what happens to power if we agree to be logical? Well if logic and reason guide our actions then so long as I am reasonable, I’m not so disempowered. I can just lead another more powerful person’s actions with reason. The other people need to follow reason as well right? The problem is… no they don’t. See this scene from Prescilla of a dramatised fight, which Stephan Elliott felt was all too commonplace to not include in his movie.

The empowered strong characters with the support of their friends felt no need to act in accordance with reason or logic. Even when one of his friends stood up to him, the friend was about to also become an enemy for no reason. So reason’s place up there to protect us seems so much less hallowed now.

But not following reason isn’t normal right? This was an isolated person in this scene right? Well we just need to watch what is happening all around us to see that normal people don’t follow logic. People voted for Donald Trump to be president of the US. It was a television star famous for saying “you’re fired”. People talk like he was good with money, but he was born into money and even with access to financial advisors, He’s not even great with money. In fact most of his portfolios haven’t grown that much and the value of money has gone down so the amount of bread or gold he could buy with his investments has actually gone down. Yet people voted for him. When they were asked why many people said things like “Hillary Clinton (as if she was the only other option) is raping and eating babies under a secret pizza shop and doing weird things with emails.” What a load of rubbish! People also voted for Brexit after repeated warnings of the potential economic downfall of the country because they felt like they wanted Britain to be a proud lone stander in the world to demonstrate how powerful it is, in doing so the country is SEVERELY disempowered and most of the world is laughing at us. People voted not with logic and not with reason, but with what they wanted. When told not to socialise people didn’t listen to the many logical arguments presented as to why doing so was a bad idea. People don’t obey logic or reason. They do what they want. That’s a problem. But then I can’t hold reason high as this thing that equalizes my power with those around me because frankly. They don’t listen to logic and reason and therefore it doesn’t actually make me empowered.

Why then do I feel compelled to comply with other people’s logic and reason???? I am drawn to the lines in the Book of the Law which I repeatedly struggled with over and over and over.

27. There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason.

28. Now a curse upon Because and his kin!
29. May Because be accursed for ever!
30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.
32. Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise.
33. Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!
34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!

Liber Al vel Legis subfigura 220 Chapter 2

I feel that reason who be cursed for the false promises it gave me of equalisation which really amounted to nothing, but frustration and lost friendships. I am angry about the pedestal I put it on and what I did to myself. Because I could have been doing what I wanted with my life, but instead I spent it always trying to act logically and reasonably. So often my actions were weird to others because my brain is atypical, so I felt the need to justify myself, but frankly I could have just not cared and done what I liked. I sacrificed so much of my power by asking myself “why” and “how can I justify this”. I feel like this is me finally learning the true meaning of lines 28 to 31.

The promise of reason was not only a lie because I assume other people would follow it too, but also a lie because reason needs some common ground to be based on. Often two people see the world so fundamentally differently, that there isn’t enough logic in the world to bridge the gap between them. For example, if people’s values are different then they don’t have anything to base their logic on. While one says this person who I love would die and that is terrible. Another person who doesn’t love or know that person might not find it terrible. There is the fallacy of reason.

Also in our spiritual pursuit so often we hope to rely on reason but the spiritual world doesn’t follow the same rules of reason and physics that we see in the real world. So it has very little success in interpreting gnosis. As the first part of my call to my air initiation I feel called to cease bowing to reason and logic and to begin to realise that I can only rely on the power I have within me and if I constantly squash that by living in accordance with other people’s reason then I crush the only true power I have.

It’s time for me to wake from the slumber that was just following reason and be true to the real me underneath it.