Obituary for Richard A. Wordless

I've known Captain Wordless for very near my entire life. He had few friends, or so I've been told. Speaking honestly, I don't count myself among that select and privileged few. I hated the man. He was small, petty and consistently depressing. But it seems that the people who knew him better have even less good to say about him and so I've volunteered to write his obituary for the "Barnstable Patriot".

Captain Wordless was born on October 28th, 1929 in the small hamlet of West Barnstable, a foggy speck of land out on the Massachusetts Cape primarily known for its overpriced gift shops and the stony but usually polite demeanor of its denizens. His father, a rich successful banker in Boston, killed himself the day Richard was born. He received only two calls on that day. The first informed him of the birth of his son. The second passed along news regarding a certain decline in the stock market. Realizing his investments had permanently fled south, he walked to the window of his office, adjusted his tie, and took a single step towards the ocean which was several blocks and floors away.

Richard's first crowning achievement was his graduation from high school and flush with this success he quickly joined the Merchant Marines. It was a hard life but in time Richard rose to the top of this august body and soon captained his own vessel, a small river boat named "The Lead Compass". His boat last saw active service during the Civil War and was permanently docked in the Narragansett Bay where it operated as a small museum with a lucrative trade in nautically themed gifts. After several years of undistinguished but tragedy-free service, he was elevated to the captaincy of an ocean going vessel, the U.S.S Broken Rudder. It's better not to talk about the rest of his life. The name "Broken Rudder" was actually granted posthumously after a tragic accident in 1951. Let's end at a high point. God bless.

Mirror, Mirror

Welcome from inside the whale where it's dark, wet and the danger of dissolving into a puddle is an ever present danger. I feel like I've been swallowed by my emotions lately. I never write when I'm happy. To tell you the truth there's a part of me that hates writing. It's like following a candle into the darkness. You feel like you're going some place but you wind up nowhere. And when your problems end and the sun comes up - well, that didn't have a lot to do with candle did it ? But things are pretty bad right now and I'm eager to clutch at any light at all. It's dark in here and getting worse. I had a good winter and I'm not really sure when or why all the trouble began. I think I started to feel this way at the end of March after my daughter's last visit.

It's amazing how disconnected the inside and the outside of me are. My feelings are in full open rebellion but you won't find the reasons for it in the day-to-day happenings that have cluttered my life. I say cluttered because my actions just seem to have fallen into a big heap. Something deep shifted within me at the beginning of spring. I had really been keeping myself busy but after March it was like the wind had fallen out of my sails and I began charting a direct course to the bottom of the sea. If I could hold a mirror up and show my friends a reflection of the interior me, I don't think they would recognize the person there. I radiate unhappiness like some kind of dark star. I've talked with a few people about it but ultimately I sound like a broken record. And the last thing I want to do is pull people into my own unfortunate orbit.

Spring is the worst time for this sort of mood. The cheery sunlight is a direct insult, a thumb in my eye. It really seems to accentuate that what's going on inside of me is a direct contradiction to everything on the outside. My heavy mood lifted ever so briefly this morning as I was walking from my car to my office. I was thinking about driving from California to Austin to see my daughter. Maybe it was the thought of getting into a car and driving as far from my life as I can or possibly the very idea of seeing my daughter cheered me up. In all likelihood a little of each. When I got home I read Book Two of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comic series. Why do they call them comic ? They're not. Mr. Gaiman didn't do much for my mood. And as for that space between the beginning of my day and its end - not a lot happened either. By the stroke of midnight this pumpkin had turned into a carriage and went very far away. But not so far that I couldn't return by morning. Isn't life as a Reverse Cinderella grand ?

The Four Chambers

The human heart has two entrances, two exits and four mysterious chambers. The walls that protect it are thick and windowless. A passage through its corridors is perilous. But the things that flow through the heart take root in a man's bones and reach into his furthest extremities. Because the heart is the mouth of the soul and the best of lives is one where the fork is constantly at your lips. Life rewards the discriminating. The front entrance is wide open at a man's birth but the things that pass through make it narrow. Those who love every piece of flotsam die hungry no matter how much they eat. Love should never be fickle and at times that can mean enduring dry spells and seasons without rain. The first chamber of the heart is a room of treasures and only treasures can find their home here. If the chamber is empty a man hasn't truly lived and if the chamber is full the poor man counts himself among the rich. There are a lucky few who sit like an island in the river of life and the strong currents swirl around them. But for the rest of us life tends to sweep the heart clean and things pass into second chamber and out the exit. The second chamber is like the rear window of a car. The things within it grow smaller over time until they fade into oblivion. The second chamber is cold where the first is warm and dark where the first is bright. Some have called it memory. Like the second stomach of a cow, it exists to extract every last dreg of nourishment from the food of life.

If there were only one entrance to the heart it's unlikely that any of us would last into old age. But the heart also has a back door. The things that pass through it are humble yet they can sustain a man. The front of the heart is ruled by want and the back by need. As the former becomes more narrow the latter becomes more wide and the chamber behind it is the third, a space built to warehouse all the small comforts of life. If this room were a fire it would never get warmer than a comfortable bed. And if this room were a candle it would never be brighter than starlight. Enough to light your path but not enough to illuminate the world. The contents of the third chamber never stay. The river of life washes it clean for even the luckiest of men. And all things flow into the last chamber of the heart where there's no value looking behind and looking ahead is like staring into darkness. When something you want leaves your life, you take notice. But when a need is fulfilled a man just continues on. Day by day. Year by year. Until eventually he doesn't.

In the court of the dead a man's heart is weighed. There are harsh gods here. There is a force intent on consuming man and god save him, if nothing in his life mattered or bore weight. Nature abhors a life wasted and one of the most insubstantial of human pursuits is the quest for knowledge. There are a certain class of learned men known as wizards whom life abhors more than most others. Their hearts are so empty that they have perfected the art of robbing the hearts of others. Old wizards are the most dangerous of thieves.

On The Sorcery of the Aztecs

The following are quotes from Alfredo Lopez Austin's The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas.

The words souls, spirits, animas all lack precision ...

Observation of vital processes, organic liveliness, and the functions of knowledge, inclination, and feeling form the basis for a concept of centers and entities to which is attributed the existence and the regulating of the animistic. An animistic center can be defined as that part of the human organism in which there is a concentration of animistic forces or vital substances and where the basic impulses originate for directing the processes that give life and movement to the organism and permit the fulfillment of psychic functions. In diverse cultural traditions, the centers are conceived of in various ways. They can correspond or not to a particular organ. They can be singular or plural within each organism. In the latter case, they can be differentiated according to function, and they can even be ranked hierarchically.

Animistic energy, which supposedly resides in an animistic center, is often considered to be a structured unit capable of independence, in certain circumstances, from the place in the organism where it is located. This necessitates distinguishing between the normal locus of a force and that of the structural unity of the force as a separate entity.

The attributes of elli, or the liver are concentrated in the areas of vitality and feelings. The energy needed to make a person a spirited, strong, and brave individual comes from this organ. A normal state, presupposing the unification of the liver's components, produced happiness and tranquility; and the integration of the components could result, reciprocally, from recreation. Unification, expressed chiefly in the term cemelli ("happiness, pleasure"), seems to refer to a coordination of feelings and passions, to an elimination of the inner struggles among the different affective forces that produce contradiction and emotional conflicts in an individual and, with them, mental anguish.

Mention is made of an anomaly, expressed in terms of a decrease in the normal function of the organ or its physical growth (and here it is perhaps more correct to interpret this as a multiplication or dispersal of its parts) - an anomaly that brought on affliction and pain. Directing the forces of the elli towards persons or objects provoked desire, which was sometimes manifested in the form of love, sometimes as desire or cupidity. In a parallel fashion, anger and hate were produced in the elli, feelings associated with a swollen state. To possess an abundance of this, to have the liver harden, gave vigor and sprightliness to a person. A decrease in its functioning, to the contrary, made its possessor a lazy person.

Without being, in the strict sense, an organ with attributes of knowledge, its proper functioning gave a person the vigor necessary to work carefully, intelligently, and diligently; as a generator of passions, its malfunction made a person evil and crazy; its cleanliness permitted a person to have normal feelings and to be charitable and sincere. It is quite probable that in this sense it was conceived to have a reciprocal action: sins defiled it; and pollution, caused chiefly by hate, led a human being to a life of evil and insanity. Sins, principally sexual transgressions, radiated impurity, and this harmed innocent people.

The identification of the animistic entity believed to be located in the liver poses as major a difficulty in the case of the ancient Nahuas as it does in that of contemporary Indians. Madsen, who writes about the three souls in whom the present day inhabitants of San Francisco Tecospa believe, gives us the name of the entity, but not within the body, only when it has gone outside: "night air", a malign substance that can attack humans.

At the present time, in Zaragoza and in Oteapan, Veracruz, the Spanish word anima is used in the Nahua language for "liver"; in that region they believe that the life and strength of a man is in his bile. The ancient Nahuas were also said to believe that the appetite, desire, and cupidity emerged from the liver; among the Chortis the strong order of hijillo is associated with those people who can cast an evil eye, an injury, as is well known, that has its origin in a feeling of envy or simply from a strong desire for things, animals, plants, or persons. Anger and hatred are located in the liver and in bile, which Sahagun's informants deescribed as "thick, green, blue, our annoyer, it irritates people, it fills people with rage." Hijillo can emanate from anyone; but it happens when a person is angry emotionally upset, or physically exhausted.

The ihiyotl was thought to be a luminous gas that had qualities of influencing other beings, in particular attracting them toward the person, animal or object from which it flowed. Today Nahuas believe it to be a cold gas during life, and after death it is diffused and formless. The Chortis say that hijillo is like air, but different from ordinary air, since it is so dense it is almost visible. According to the Tojolabales, the gas smells bad, which recalls the fact that the ancient Nahuas also used the word ihiyotl for the odor leaving the body as a fart.

One of the most interesting characteristics of the ihiyotl, from the ancient times, was its nature as a source of energy which, if the supply was adequate, could be used for one's own good or the good of another, although its release without control or with malicious intent could cause damage.

On The Astral Body

At times it can be interesting to trace the ideas that appear in modern occultism to their earliest roots in classical sources. Generally if you dig far enough your trail ends in references to the works of late classical Neoplatonic authors whose ideas and metaphysics deeply influenced Jewish and Christian mystics. Within Neoplatonic literature the astral body isn't some hazy half real counterpart to the physical body that we all possess. Instead the astral body is a great achievement, a near physical embodiment of our divine nature that can act and manifest in ways independent of our conscious volition. I would like to reproduce a quote from Gershom Scholem's "On The Mystical Shape of the Godhead" originally translated from a version of the Zohar:

"We find in the Book of Sorcery of Asmodai that if someone wishes to indulge in the sorcery of the Left Side and immerse himself in it, he should stand in the light of a lamp, or in another place where his own images can be seen, and say the words prescribed by this kind of sorcery, and summon these unclean powers by their unclean names. He should then commit his images on oath to those he has summoned, and say that he is of his own free will prepared to obey their command. Such a man leaves the authority of his Creator and assigns his soul to the power of uncleanness. And with these words of sorcery which he pronounces and with which he adjures the images, two spirits are revealed, and they are embodied in his images in human form, and they give him information both for good and evil purposes for particular occasions. These two spirits that were not comprised within a body are now comprised in these images and are embodied in them."

Public Service Messages From Africa

The Night of the Lamiae

The bar was loud and everyone seemed to be talking at once. Pieces of conversation mixed with the clanking of glasses and in the background a thin watery music played. Rhoda and I sat at a table talking but my attention kept turning to an odd man who sat at the table next to us. He was hunched over a notebook and he was writing away frantically. His hand was gripped around a pen as if someone were about to rip it away. A big muscle bulged just above his thumb and his whole arm seemed to be clenched from the shoulder down. His eyes were glazed over and every few minutes he lifted them to look around furtively. I swear that he was looking at us and it disturbed me. There was something unpleasant about him. Rhoda thought that perhaps he was writing a song. He would write something down and then his hand would move all the way back up the page. There were lines and arrows and crossed out words everywhere. A weird stain covered half the page.

It wasn't a song. I gave Rhoda one of those glances that said I thought she was an idiot but was too polite to say so. I quietly whispered to her that it was a story. To my shock his head snapped up and he looked right at me. I smiled politely. For a long time all he did was stare at my face. I looked down at the ground. I looked back up. I asked him what he was writing and, good lord, he finally stopped staring at me. But he began to chew his lip and I think this was worse. I apologized. "I didn't mean to pry", I said. Watching him chew his lip was unsettling. I turned to Rhoda and I asked, "How was your date with Johnathan ?" I'd been avoiding this question because Rhoda was a slut and I had a weak stomach. But the stranger wasn't finished. He leaned closer to our table and he touched me on the shoulder. "It's true I'm writing a story. It's set in the Middle East.

I lived in the city of Manama close to the old market and there was a beggar there named Farhad Isfahani. The old market was half in ruins. It was filled with collapsed walls and vacant lots. The beggars gathered there to collect alms. There were cripples. And musicians. And then there were the beggars who performed small wonders. Farhad was this last type. His specialty was the kissing of scorpions. Big black ones. Small red ones. He kissed all kinds of scorpions and they never stung him. I would pass Farhad every day while walking to the market and each time he would lift a scorpion to his mouth and kiss it on the head. And every day I ignored him until a cold windy day when I was walking too slow by his little performance. He knew me and raised his hands as I approached. A fat black scorpion rested in his left hand and I asked him, "How do you do that ?" He kissed the scorpion and then held out an open palm. I gave him a few coins. Farhad smiled and I noticed for the first time that there were scars on his lips. They were deep and weltered. He spoke slowly and with a thick Persian accent. "There are things in the desert that push the wind around and rest like a weight on the soul of a man. The emptiest quarters of the desert are thick with them. But I lived with them for my entire life and I didn't know them for what they were until I left this place and accompanied my father to Greece when I was still a young man.

Long ago Greece was the cradle of learning but before that it was the home of witches. Women gathered in every empty corner to worship the gods of madness and wine. They tore cattle apart with their own teeth and bare hands. They called down the moon and revelled in every type of lunacy. The witches were the dark shadow that preceded the age of reason and they were a plague on this earth. Even centuries after their death, the landscape of Greece is bathed in the power of witchcraft.

My family entered the city of Athens aboard a wagon late on a September night. I remember the way that buildings crowded the dark road. Everything was lit by a half light that escaped from shuttered windows. Athens is a difficult place for a young man. The women eat olives and grow beautiful. My family was looking for an empty corner where our wagon could rest for the night. But my eyes were on the women and I was looking for anything but rest. After my family was settled for the night I walked the streets of Athens. Soon I found myself at a wine shop sitting at a table with a drink in my hand. The wine was different from any I'd had before. It had a dry musty taste. The wine was stale and coarse on my palate. But the woman who served it was beautiful beyond my wildest imaginings. On my second glass I touched her hand and asked her name. She was cold and turned her back on me. I left the wineshop well past midnight and walked back to my family. But I was lost and after only a short time I found myself on an unpleasant street where most of the houses lay vacant. The night was late and I decided to sleep in one of the empty houses. I would have an easier time finding my family in the light of day.

I chose the most overgrown house that I could. The last thing that I wanted was to be noticed and I felt safer with the door and windows covered in thick trailing vines. I crawled in through a hole in the wall and the interior was darker than a cave. I curled up in a corner with my jacket pillowed beneath my head. I had only been asleep a few moments when the cry of an infant woke me up and I opened my eyes. But the room I was in lay empty and perhaps I dreamed. The floor was cold tile and my limbs felt stiff. I stared into the blackness and it seemed to me then that a figure sat hunched in the opposite corner of the room. I sat up instantly certain that I wasn't alone. But the figure didn't move and all I could do was stare spellbound at the corner. Within a few hours the sun rose and the room was clearly empty. I left the house and found my family. But I felt now like there was a shadow at my back after that night. People would look at me and then look again twice as if they had missed something the first time. We quickly left Athens but things only became worse. The shadow that accompanied me became bigger and bigger until I felt dwarfed by it. Being among my fellow men was unpleasant but it was better than passing through desolate areas where the shadow came into its own. In dark forgotten places I felt like it carried me on its back and I was the passenger. Over time I no longer considered myself a man and even scorpions loathed to touch me. But I've passed my story onto you and the worst is behind me now."

And the man smiled devilishly when he said that. He clapped Rhoda on the shoulder and he walked away from the bar at a brisk pace leaving behind his beer, his pen and even his notebook. And I never saw him again.