I have been enjoying Alan Watts, from his days as an Episcopal bishop, and look forward to watching the character of his writing expand over other books.
The suggestion of which book to look for next came from Father Tau Palamas, a dear friend with an affinity for Western Esoterica his entire adult life, while living a laudably normal life with family and the public where he can touch their lives with his magic without forcing others to confront the remarkable mysteries he loves best. If the term Western Esoterica doesn't mean much to you, what I simply mean is the experience of discovering the secret life of the energy that flows all through each of us and all we know.
He delivered a humble, funny, awe-filled homily during an ordination service held on Arabia Mountain (just like the title of the album by the Black Lips), and by his permission I will share it along with some personal thoughts.
http://m.livejournal.com/read/user/tausirhasirim/135183
INITIAL HOMILY PREPARED FOR CONSECRATION TO THE ASSEMBLED FREE ILLUMINISTS FROM CONSECRATION ROCK, ARABIA MOUNTAIN, APRIL 29, 2012
April 29th, 2012 Arabia Mtn., Lithonia Ga
Episcopal Consecration Homily
By Father Palamas
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Mother and of the Holy Spirit.
I am so overwhelmed and full of joy at this gathering. It is truly an auspicious event. This year marks the eleventh year of my formal involvement in the Western Mystery Tradition, beginning on the night of 9-11-01, when I became an Entered Apprentice Freemason the very same day that the Twin Towers fell in New York City. It was a night full of mystery and it was the culmination of much “head work” on my part-study and research, that lead me to the Temple of Masonry. Eleven is certainly an important number in the world of Magick. I recall that night very well. We were sitting in the Fellowship Hall finishing dinner before ascending the steps to the preparation room and Lodge room proper, when the Worshipful Master stood up and brought us all to attention with the clinging of his fork with his glass of sweet tea, saying, “Many of you called me today to ask if we would still meet tonight after the horrible events in our country today. My response to you then and to all of you present is that we most certainly will and more especially because of today’s events. We will join in Freedom and Solidarity to welcome a new brother into the Temple of Liberty.” And now, here we are meeting in Free Communion-eleven years after, continuing the search for Light and the work of Service to Others.
Often I am asked by friends what I’m currently working on, as I am usually involved in some study or practice that seems exotic to them. Once such friend, who is now an Episcopal Priest, Fr. Josh, would always ask questions that were leading towards, “…so what’s the point?” I call this approach, the “So What? Test.” There are many reasons and causes that have led me here today but I want to focus on one in particular that most fully expounds upon my answer to the “So What? Test”.
One day, my friend Mike caught me doing something odd with my fingertips at Gardunos restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was around 15 years ago on a camping trip across America after graduating from college. He was use to my craziness and simply said, “Whatcha doing with your fingers there?” And so, I showed him-when you take your thumb and index finger and get them extremely close together, yet not quite touching, you can sense an electrical charge or pulse, like in Reiki. You can imagine how this Civil Engineer out of Ga. Tech responded to this, yet I was in earnest and steadfast in my conviction that there was something to it.
Several years later, after my Masonic endeavors began, I found myself blindfolded and on my knees at the home of Chic and Tabby Cicero! Have I piqued your imaginative curiosity yet? I was experiencing/receiving the Neophyte Grade of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. At the apogee, the zenith moment of that degree, where the officers are raising their vibratory rate to a fever pitch and the whole temple is about to burst into a spiritual orgasm of light, while the Hierophant brings down that light into the Aspirant’s sphere-I felt a surge that began as a hair standing tingle on the scalp and descended into a cascading current down my neck and spine that caused me to loose my balance a bit! Chic’s response to the description later on was a knowing smile. 
Spring Flowers
A couple of years later, I was beginning a Graduate program @ Naropa University, a Buddhist College in Boulder CO. It was an intensive summer program in Contemplative Education that included meditation 2-3 times a day, yoga, tai chi and various Dharma Arts. This particular day, I was taking the introductory Qi Gong class from an elderly Mandarin gentleman who was reportedly one of the first to bring Tai Chi and Qi Gong to the United States. He was a lovely man, gentle and joyous to be around. After holding animal postures as long as possible we took a break and I approached him with a singular question-“Why are my feet on fire!” He smiled and put his arm around me, while I rubbed on my feet that genuinely felt hot. He gestured to the man next to me and said, “This man here has been in training with me for the past 8 years and has not felt this yet and here you get it in the 1st lesson!” He put me in a headlock and ruffled my hair continuing, “Oh, but don’t you get the big head about it, everyone has this-you just got lucky and were receptive today!” “What is it?” I asked incredulously. “Qi, Chi, Ruach, Spirit…whatever you need to call it”.
A few years later, back at the Ciceros, I was asking Chic for some personal instructions with the Middle Pillar exercise as I wasn’t really getting that much out of it outside of frightening my ex-wife with weird vibratory sounds. He suggested that the problem lie in my failure to strongly visualize the descent of light. So, a few weeks after this instruction I tried it again with his suggestions on a lonely stretch of beach in Florida that bordered a preserve. It was a full moon and I was completely alone. The practice clicked!. As I drew the light back up my spine, towards the end of the practice, aligning my breathing with my visualization until the light reached my head-suddenly the light burst from my crown into a shower of electricity and chills covering my body like a poncho. It brought tears to my eyes…they were healing tears. I was in a failed marriage and the light began the break out of it.
There are many other points in between where this has occurred as well, but these experiences have had their culmination more recently in a practice that my new wife and I have developed. Our love for each other is explosive and contagious. Once we got together my wife quickly identified two power spots on our property, one we call the vortex, where we place our hands-one up and one down over each others-within a circle, and charge each other up like the positive and negative poles of a battery. Then we bring that energy to a third party-a friend or someone in need who comes to visit us and let the energy flow to them. The results have ranged from absolute peace in one man who can be rather type A-he immediately went to the couch and silently slipped into a peaceful sleep-to streams of tears from a woman who has suffered through an abusive relationship. She fell to her knees and bathed in the light for quite a few moments.
And so this brings me to the “So What? Test”. What is all of this about? Is it simply to feel the heebie jeebies running up and down my spine? Is it only for self knowledge? Are all of these initiations and ordinations and today’s consecrations about fortifying the fortress of the Self? The answer is self-evident. This light-this creative, healing and consecrating reservoir of energy is meant to be given freely to others. Like the Paschal Candle at Easter that lights all of the other candles of the parishioners attending-the source of this light is not in the least bit diminished by the spreading and sharing of itself. So today I fully receive this Light and Consecration in Free Communion so that I may turn around and freely give it to others.
+++Gloria Patri, et Matri, et Spiritus et Sanctus, Amen
First, what a wonderful opening, setting a beatific mood. Another reason to start my day with it.
For another, the conclusion: I relate to that giving of light, and think, just as I seek to find a way to get my creations out, it's urgent for us to consider how we feed the well in ourselves from which we offer drink to all. While I wish things could be made well with my old friends, I found myself wishing my "idle" musings to contain, not only the stories I write, but the wonders that lie further on the pathway of magic. I feel so much is there for the asking. I consider that we are also being asked for much in return, though that burden is borne more truthfully when born lightly, and not with unnecessary suffering for suffering's sake. Even the sometimes befuddling obscurity of where to take successful next steps, I believe, is a service for those who need to believe in me in the sense that they need dreamers who will sacrifice all else to find their dreams (or even search!). I also think the path need not seem so perplexing...occasionally, with ritual meditation and focus inward, the next right action will occur to us. Now, ASKING in a given way just may be advisable...I just know I may not see a given pathway in the reflection of my will, but there IS always some next way forward, to develop things sometimes far outside any obvious consideration of financial survival----to conduct spiritual renumeration.
I think the identification of those two nexus made a massive difference, and while there are places that give me rest, and sometimes power, I marvel that very definitive points may be identified and wonder how they might occur to us. We always feel great points of ambiance, I guess you could say, but a nexus or portal seems even more definitive. The universe comes to us from everywhere with whatever power we allow ourselves, but undeniable places of focus and consecration, in which to deliberately step free of mundane thoughts and worries, is a worthwhile magical objective.
These points leaped out at me, and this is at least something, while the entirety of the homily has not yet been mined for reflections. One thing I like is that the homily will always have something to say any time it's read.
It may very well become the ideal place, once I begin sincerely editing this again into a book, to end the first Be Chill, Cease Ill book, as the body of the next seems already beginning.
(
Imagine the epistles of the New Testament written as blog posts, just for a minute. :-D)
INITIAL HOMILY PREPARED FOR CONSECRATION TO THE ASSEMBLED FREE ILLUMINISTS FROM CONSECRATION ROCK, ARABIA MOUNTAIN, APRIL 29, 2012
April 29th, 2012 Arabia Mtn., Lithonia Ga
Episcopal Consecration Homily
By Father Palamas
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Mother and of the Holy Spirit.
I am so overwhelmed and full of joy at this gathering. It is truly an auspicious event. This year marks the eleventh year of my formal involvement in the Western Mystery Tradition, beginning on the night of 9-11-01, when I became an Entered Apprentice Freemason the very same day that the Twin Towers fell in New York City. It was a night full of mystery and it was the culmination of much “head work” on my part-study and research, that lead me to the Temple of Masonry. Eleven is certainly an important number in the world of Magick. I recall that night very well. We were sitting in the Fellowship Hall finishing dinner before ascending the steps to the preparation room and Lodge room proper, when the Worshipful Master stood up and brought us all to attention with the clinging of his fork with his glass of sweet tea, saying, “Many of you called me today to ask if we would still meet tonight after the horrible events in our country today. My response to you then and to all of you present is that we most certainly will and more especially because of today’s events. We will join in Freedom and Solidarity to welcome a new brother into the Temple of Liberty.” And now, here we are meeting in Free Communion-eleven years after, continuing the search for Light and the work of Service to Others.
Often I am asked by friends what I’m currently working on, as I am usually involved in some study or practice that seems exotic to them. Once such friend, who is now an Episcopal Priest, Fr. Josh, would always ask questions that were leading towards, “…so what’s the point?” I call this approach, the “So What? Test.” There are many reasons and causes that have led me here today but I want to focus on one in particular that most fully expounds upon my answer to the “So What? Test”.
One day, my friend Mike caught me doing something odd with my fingertips at Gardunos restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was around 15 years ago on a camping trip across America after graduating from college. He was use to my craziness and simply said, “Whatcha doing with your fingers there?” And so, I showed him-when you take your thumb and index finger and get them extremely close together, yet not quite touching, you can sense an electrical charge or pulse, like in Reiki. You can imagine how this Civil Engineer out of Ga. Tech responded to this, yet I was in earnest and steadfast in my conviction that there was something to it.
Several years later, after my Masonic endeavors began, I found myself blindfolded and on my knees at the home of Chic and Tabby Cicero! Have I piqued your imaginative curiosity yet? I was experiencing/receiving the Neophyte Grade of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. At the apogee, the zenith moment of that degree, where the officers are raising their vibratory rate to a fever pitch and the whole temple is about to burst into a spiritual orgasm of light, while the Hierophant brings down that light into the Aspirant’s sphere-I felt a surge that began as a hair standing tingle on the scalp and descended into a cascading current down my neck and spine that caused me to loose my balance a bit! Chic’s response to the description later on was a knowing smile. 
Spring Flowers
A couple of years later, I was beginning a Graduate program @ Naropa University, a Buddhist College in Boulder CO. It was an intensive summer program in Contemplative Education that included meditation 2-3 times a day, yoga, tai chi and various Dharma Arts. This particular day, I was taking the introductory Qi Gong class from an elderly Mandarin gentleman who was reportedly one of the first to bring Tai Chi and Qi Gong to the United States. He was a lovely man, gentle and joyous to be around. After holding animal postures as long as possible we took a break and I approached him with a singular question-“Why are my feet on fire!” He smiled and put his arm around me, while I rubbed on my feet that genuinely felt hot. He gestured to the man next to me and said, “This man here has been in training with me for the past 8 years and has not felt this yet and here you get it in the 1st lesson!” He put me in a headlock and ruffled my hair continuing, “Oh, but don’t you get the big head about it, everyone has this-you just got lucky and were receptive today!” “What is it?” I asked incredulously. “Qi, Chi, Ruach, Spirit…whatever you need to call it”.
A few years later, back at the Ciceros, I was asking Chic for some personal instructions with the Middle Pillar exercise as I wasn’t really getting that much out of it outside of frightening my ex-wife with weird vibratory sounds. He suggested that the problem lie in my failure to strongly visualize the descent of light. So, a few weeks after this instruction I tried it again with his suggestions on a lonely stretch of beach in Florida that bordered a preserve. It was a full moon and I was completely alone. The practice clicked!. As I drew the light back up my spine, towards the end of the practice, aligning my breathing with my visualization until the light reached my head-suddenly the light burst from my crown into a shower of electricity and chills covering my body like a poncho. It brought tears to my eyes…they were healing tears. I was in a failed marriage and the light began the break out of it.
There are many other points in between where this has occurred as well, but these experiences have had their culmination more recently in a practice that my new wife and I have developed. Our love for each other is explosive and contagious. Once we got together my wife quickly identified two power spots on our property, one we call the vortex, where we place our hands-one up and one down over each others-within a circle, and charge each other up like the positive and negative poles of a battery. Then we bring that energy to a third party-a friend or someone in need who comes to visit us and let the energy flow to them. The results have ranged from absolute peace in one man who can be rather type A-he immediately went to the couch and silently slipped into a peaceful sleep-to streams of tears from a woman who has suffered through an abusive relationship. She fell to her knees and bathed in the light for quite a few moments.
And so this brings me to the “So What? Test”. What is all of this about? Is it simply to feel the heebie jeebies running up and down my spine? Is it only for self knowledge? Are all of these initiations and ordinations and today’s consecrations about fortifying the fortress of the Self? The answer is self-evident. This light-this creative, healing and consecrating reservoir of energy is meant to be given freely to others. Like the Paschal Candle at Easter that lights all of the other candles of the parishioners attending-the source of this light is not in the least bit diminished by the spreading and sharing of itself. So today I fully receive this Light and Consecration in Free Communion so that I may turn around and freely give it to others.
+++Gloria Patri, et Matri, et Spiritus et Sanctus, Amen
First, what a wonderful opening, setting a beatific mood. Another reason to start my day with it.
For another, the conclusion: I relate to that giving of light, and think, just as I seek to find a way to get my creations out, it's urgent for us to consider how we feed the well in ourselves from which we offer drink to all. While I wish things could be made well with my old friends, I found myself wishing my "idle" musings to contain, not only the stories I write, but the wonders that lie further on the pathway of magic. I feel so much is there for the asking. I consider that we are also being asked for much in return, though that burden is borne more truthfully when born lightly, and not with unnecessary suffering for suffering's sake. Even the sometimes befuddling obscurity of where to take successful next steps, I believe, is a service for those who need to believe in me in the sense that they need dreamers who will sacrifice all else to find their dreams (or even search!). I also think the path need not seem so perplexing...occasionally, with ritual meditation and focus inward, the next right action will occur to us. Now, ASKING in a given way just may be advisable...I just know I may not see a given pathway in the reflection of my will, but there IS always some next way forward, to develop things sometimes far outside any obvious consideration of financial survival----to conduct spiritual renumeration.
I think the identification of those two nexus made a massive difference, and while there are places that give me rest, and sometimes power, I marvel that very definitive points may be identified and wonder how they might occur to us. We always feel great points of ambiance, I guess you could say, but a nexus or portal seems even more definitive. The universe comes to us from everywhere with whatever power we allow ourselves, but undeniable places of focus and consecration, in which to deliberately step free of mundane thoughts and worries, is a worthwhile magical objective.
These points leaped out at me, and this is at least something, while the entirety of the homily has not yet been mined for reflections. One thing I like is that the homily will always have something to say any time it's read.
It may very well become the ideal place, once I begin sincerely editing this again into a book, to end the first Be Chill, Cease Ill book, as the body of the next seems already beginning.
(Imagine the epistles of the New Testament written as blog posts, just for a minute. :-D)
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