Watch Your Steps!

Even today, were you to be walking along a path in a German meadow, and you came upon a dilapidated wooden sign with a skull and crossbones in the middle and the words "Achtung Minen!" at top and bottom, respectively, I venture that you would steer well clear of the entire area.

Likewise there are minefields along the path that leads into the so-called paranormal, such that I sympathize with those who choose not to step onto the path at all.  As I have said before, once you are on it there is no natural place to step off, even as things get weirder and also often more sinister.

One dark spur on the path leads to the "secret societies," including the Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn, the Skull & Bones, the Freemasons, the Theosophists, and those guys with the hoods and masks who scared the bejesus out of the Tom Cruise character in Stanley Kubrick's last film, the frustratingly enigmatic "Eyes Wide Shut."

And so if I should start referring to myself as "Frater Luminotrious" or some such, you have my permission to break my spell by hitting me in the face with a banana cream pie.

To my point, another frater has just instructed me via his podcast how to "cross the abyss" -- a spiritual journey not unlike C.J. Jung's, but inspired more directly by the philosophy that underlies the Kabbalah.  Specifically, in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life there are ten "sephirot" or emanations of the Divine.  In our spiritual development, we move from contact with the lower emanations to contact with the higher.  To reach the Top Three, which are capped by the Ultimate Godhead Itself, we must first cross the abyss between Lower Seven and Top Three, which entails utter ego dissolution.  The good frater avers that for everyone, it also entails a symbolic detachment from one's corrupt and disposable body; that detachment is acted out, within a separate reality that is more real than this one, as being torn apart by a swarm of crocodiles, to which swarm we voluntarily submit because it is the universal and mandatory path forward.

Baptisms of fire.  Violent ayahuasca vomiting fits.  Walking over burning coals.  Why is it that we cannot make our way to the Godhead in a Barcalounger that is attached to a cheery yellow conveyor belt?  Please do not reply "it is what it is."