29. TEMPLE TRANSMISSIONS OF AN AUDITORY NATURE

     "One of these days you are going to have a visitation."
                  -- Ken Kesey

     "I had learned to rise at will. Indeed, it was becoming addictive - the feeling of lightness, the great swooshing ascent! The lovely ease of passing through walls and ceilings; and then the sudden and shocking return. There was a deep throbbing pleasure to it, pure and shining, like an eroticism of the mind." 
                  -- Anne Rice, Tale of the Body Thief

     An account of a sacred fluke, likening to the mystical epiphany experienced by science fiction writer extraordinaire, Philip K. Dick, on 2-3-74,

when gazing at a woman's necklace, bearing the Christian Gnostic sign of the Vesica Piscis, triggered his realization we are re-living the cruel dominion of the Holy Roman Empire, in a temporal feedback loop confined to the years following Christ's crucifixion. My experience is initiated by an auditory hallucination, though I am mindful of the negative connotations of the word "hallucination", especially in the lame, standard-dictionary sense : "an illusion of seeing objects or hearing sounds not actually present"  or "to wander mentally".

     In distinct contrast, I believe "hallucinated" sights and sounds to be wholly real (due to released control of the binary computer (the left brain) and stimulated perceptions of the quantum computer (the right brain)), resulting in sonic, subconscious, and stereo-enhanced versions of Reality. Fear not, equilibrium will be restored, so GO WITH IT! while you're ON! My definition of hallucination screams "GLORY HALLEUIAH! CONTACT! VISITATION RIGHTS!", implying one's predilection "to get in touch with, connect, become one with, and commune with beings and places, above and beyond the normal realm of the senses", in effect, a Sacred Journey to the Twilight Zone, the territory of the Shaman, Medium, and Psychic. Aleister Crowley's definitive work, The Vision and The Voice (my bedside reading at the time), describes dead-on reckonings with thee RECOGNITION  involved, in this sensory overload /  Oracular Possession.

     Conjuring up background details......I am living with the enigmatic M, in a second story apartment / hermitage, on a corner of Saint Laurent Street, in Montréal's Italian / Portuguese neighborhood, past the empanada place, near the butcher shop, with the tattered, wings-stretched-over-the-deli, taxidermied vulture. With Fall ceding itself over to Winter, hibernation's set in mind, and to this end we're perfect homebodies, dutifully immersing ourselves in an indulgence of speedballs (forgive me, I know, Sigh, more transgressive behavior) i.e. heady cocktails of cocaine and heroin. We prefer to mix higher proportions of C to H,  which leads to having-to-deal-with, coming-down-wise, the exposure of raw nerves to the unpleasantly jarring noise of mundane reality, seeping in through the walls, reminding us there is no external peace (from human, cat, and rat fights, blaring traffic, radio and television blather). Acute debilitating hyperaesthesia.

     By pure necessity, we invent a method of easing the comedown, 
which consists of sitting in the bathtub, with a metal bucket on our heads. We got the idea from the Ether, or from incessantly listening to the song, "Rajneesh", about the Mystic Guru / Omniscent Wild One / controversial cult leader, by The Inner City Unit (an offshoot of the cyber-psychedelic band Hawkwind) (the chorus in the song is the mantra "they wear a bucket on their heads"). We suspected the seductive, velvet-smooth, Atman, of initiating his disciples by the bucket-technique (Montréal in the Eighties was crawling with his catharis-jacked, sex-amped, burgundy-clad, devotees, wearing His Likeness strung on telephone-cords dangling from their necks, or was that the "Raelians"? - followers of the "angelic alien" Rael, who believe in neither God nor the Soul, proclaiming (in a scandalous press release) their successful, first-ever, cloning of a human as the only True Immortality.

     The Art of Becoming a Buckethead (with due respect, our adaptation differs from masked, sonic-guitar-hero Buckethead's trademark KFC head gear), i.e. the occulted wearing of a metal bucket to block / stop unwanted, myriad impressions, psychic and otherwise, from driving one insane, has a long and colorful history. Originally used ornamentally, with horns and slits, as shock tactics in warfare and hand-to-hand combat, it later rose to popularity on the jousting circuit, and as Medieval dungeon torture (attested to by The Man in the Iron Mask). 
     When listening to the exquisite music of rain falling (in a super-vulnerable, coming-down-from-a-speedball condition) provokes a gap in the flow of a previously flawless high, things tend to rapidly disintegrate, giving rise to impostor, demonic voices, tempting already latent, nagging, suicidal tendencies. The bucket functions as a cheap, protective device, sanctuary in a friggin' helmet, o.k.? Sensory deprivation, without the tank, that is, the bucket is the tank, only just for your head....the metal lobotomy stops the vibrations deadcold from entering, and instigating their mischievous mayhem (the bathtub's a second bucket-body back-up).

     Wilhelm Reich's lifework centered on the discovery of an omnipresent, free energy source : "Orgone", which, he claimed, "accounts for such things as the color of the sky, gravity, galaxies, the failure of most political revolutions, and a good orgasm". He tapped this God-essence in an "Orgone Accumulator"1, a box, or chamber, of calculated, ingenious design, which one sat inside of, and....accumulated...Orgone. Of course! Grokking his saintly and rebellious wisdom (author of The Sexual Revolution and The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Reich conveniently "martyred" in prison, in 1957), we extrapolated the brain could be isolated from the psychic jet-stream with a barrier of steel, iron, copper, bronze (or a gold or sterling silver pisspot, if you're Napoleon or Josephine). Throw in a few layers of lambswool as conducive insulation, et voilá! ethereal comfort / re-entry zone, instant peace of mind.
     There, but for the Grace of the Bucket, Go We! - encased, experiencing the fully intertwined benefits / drawbacks of the speedball, i.e. calmly and pleasurably hurtling through the Galaxy, at the Speed of Light, realizing the space your body is currently holding is nothing    but     truly     sublime    emptiness  (WHOA! BRAKE! VACUUM-SUCKING / BLACK HOLE / ELECTRICAL PLASMA DISCHARGE) thereby enabling detached observation in  non-separation land (the home address of Ultimate Reality), whilst receiving soothingly-wise channellings from the Interstellar Beings inside oneself, in the form of AUMing universes (truthfully? - mostly undecipherable, garbled, sucking sounds, womb-like pulsations, and literal psychobabble jargon from the Tower) which, however important and God-like it makes you feel, eventually collapses into crazed, chipmunk chatter.......believe me, it's better in the bucket.

     In our explorations, I pick-up the name Psychick, streaking alongside my constant traveling companion, the Alluring and Immortal Temple cat, Tsze-Tsze Budderfly. Fully living up to her fly-ing name (haha!), she proved quite the tease, charming, on several occasions, more than one human out of his candy, not to mention holding the entire neighborhood's population of tomcats at bay ("Under Her Paw"2). She possessed the enigmatic guiles of a geisha, all she needed was a fan. She'd grant her retinue a provocatively coy gaze, Mona-Lisa sly, spectrally sphinx-wise. When she teased, her fur shone, gleaming black 'n white patterns, revealing  sacred cow / cat hieroglyphics. Glowing eyes in an infinity mirror, she had a ghastly habit of walking through doors, or limbo-ing under them, like a contortionist. I, her devoted understudy, fondly recall our chamber mini-coven : M and myself, Tsze-Tsze, her midnight-black consort, Bonzo, numerous renditions of "Bell, Book, and Candle"3, magic mirrors, and........the bucket! 

                                                  Bell, Book, and Candle (1958) 
      We were on a roll of fanatically attending our Church's bell-ringing sessions. The rush came upon injection, as a warm, undulating, penetrating snake slid vernacularly up the spine, and flowed languidly through the veins, culminating in a spectacular, brain-tingling, head-banging, bell-ringing of the body temple. Sonic voodoo and an inner ear massage. The ringing, which in Wikipedia's stock description of cocaine use, "relates to one's surging bloodflow", boils, pulses, and rocks the cerebellum, like the grandest Liberty Bell (which, one surmises, would more than suffice as a communal, mind-shield bucket).
     On the fateful night in question, not invoking anything in particular, perfectly enjoying the sacramental threshing, the ringing took-on a spookily-animated, added-quality of clairaudience. A sonorous voice, lusciously airy and sensuous, filled me with longing, wisdom, and desire. A fiery breath baited my reflex consciousness, like a shot of pure jack, or smack, speaking one's name. My initial reaction was one of shocking wonder. Possessed by an inner genii / femme fatale (who could only be myself?) sated in soulful embrace, THE VOICE, and HER NAME, AS ONE, lovingly and seductively implanted HER PURPOSE within me........

                        *******  "ASTARTE"  *******

.......long and drawn, epiphany-in-drag, drowning in a deep well, stereo, sensurround, CLAIRAUDIO. To my Knowledge, I'd never heard this name or word before, yet SHE came unto me, ALIVE, strong, and Womanifest. A significant Revelation - the Key to the Door, and the Way through the Fire (having been burned before). An authenticating, archetypal embodiment of the Great Mystery.....RE-INCARNATED! I felt as if knighted by the stars in the heavens themselves, or, shall I say (kneeling, head-bowed), by HERSELF......       

1 Hawkwind, "Orgone Accumulator"
2 Rolling Stones, "Under Her Thumb"
3 Quine, Richard, Bell, Book, and Candle