____________________________________________________________________________ ____ | | <-----|-----> TEMPLE OV PSYCHICK YOUTH | <---|---> RATI0 ZER0 TRANSMISSION 3.10 | <-----|-----> 23 x 1993 | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- SEND: Submissions, Inquiries & Suggestions to: vajra@u.washington.edu or: TRANSMISSIONS:c/o box 12044:seattle wa:98102 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 1-babble by coyote 131 2-string magick 3-Lady Li: Chuang-tzu, radical skeptic 4-penis/nail vagina/wound religious mania from thee Net 5-"varanasi" by coyote 131 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 1-E have as some ov you know been very busy this last season...planning and participating our "Campout"...travel to sout/souteast asia... shifting priorities..."things to see, people to do, and never enough time" during our Campout we performed various and sundry rites, E have encluded one description ov a rite...also, an excerpt from "The Perfected Person in Radical Chuang-tzu" by Lee Yerley an article in EXPERIMENTAL ESSAYS ON CHUANG-TZU, edited by Victor H. Mair...some sexy aspects to Xianity... and a piece ov prose that E wrote shortly after visiting thee main burning ghat along thee Ganga River at Varanasi [Benares for you honkeys]... a mad l-ov-e from an empty land, coyote 131 ps. our thoughts are with you Bradley... "What good is thee even in Nirvana? Mixing water with water...? See I do not want to BECOME sugar, I want to EAT sugar!" -Ram Prasad, a KALI devotee ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 2-string magick thee RITES ov thee Syckle 22 vii 1993 phase 3 ov ritual cycle 1 during thee campout we invited others to join our circle...c236 led us through a string rite...we first ground our ritual space...by dancing around a fire and chanting...then we each held an object and smelled another...group conhesion via touch and smell...then we moved out onto a dark beach...looking in ourselves for our light...for our BLISS...as E stood "alone" upon that beach then...E thought how good it was to "be here now"...and as E thought this E felt under my foot a stone... E picked up this stone, it flet good between my palms...E carried it back to our circle...humming its frequency...and there, when all had gathered we made an 8-sided star with yarn...holding thee yarn string and totem in same hand...sharing its light and our BLISS with each other across thee FIRE ...across time-&-space... everything becomes emptiness, coyote 131 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 3-Lady Li: Chuang-tzu, radical skeptic Any skeptic lives in a symbiotic relationship with the theory of knowledge current in his time, and we can best begin our brief examination of Chuang-tzu's skepticism by noting the "theory" with which Chuang-tzu lives. Unlike most traditional Western thinkers who argue that immutable truths exist and that people's knowledge can correspond to them -a correspondence theory of truth -most classical Chinese thinkers see knowledge in a different way. For them, to know is to follow out a learned system of naming and evaluating, to be guided by a learned process of construing that we are taught when we learn a language. We learn to apply certain distinctions when our parents or our group teach us a language. For example, we are taught that selfishness is bad and compassion is good. Such learning in turn focuses our desires, engenders our goals, and develops our attitudes. We feel bad when we are selfish and there fore we pursue compassion. Because we think in language, the language we learn causes us to feel, desire, repond, and act in certain ways. Human beings are controlled by the language they use; they depend on what their language allows them to do. To know, then, is to make distinctions that engender attitudes that cause actions. What we seek, what we fear, and what we hope for arise from the language that our culture gives us. No objective truths exist to which one language can correspond; what exists are those ways in which particular groups use a language to divide up the world. This perspective which resembles some sophisticated, modern philosophic movements, argues that meaning is a fabric of sentences, a web of theory-laden sentences. What we say, think, and do depends on the discourse of the particular group or culture we live in. Such a perspective severs any simple correspondence between language and the world, any simple correspondence between language and the world, any simple relationship between things out there and our talk about those things. Working from this theory of truth rather than, say, a correspondence theory, Chuang-tzu assumes that all knowledge and action depend on the perspective a particular discourse gives us. His skepticism arises from the fact that many different discourses are possible and that what is good inside one discourse, form one perspective, may be bad inside another discourse, form another perspective. What to value, what to pursue, what to fear -the answers to these sorts of questions rest on the perspective you have, and that is formed by the discourse you learned. >From another perspective, in another discourse, exactly the reverse judgments may be made. Chuang-tzu's position, then, is not the simple "we know nothing." Rather it is the more complex and subtle "We do not know if we know or if we do not know." Chuang-tzu is even skeptical about his own skepticism. He is just not sure. This point is made nonphilosophically but powerfully and poignantly in a story whose point we will return to later, the story of Lady Li: How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back? Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Chin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? Living in a dirty, barbaric place, Lady Li crys when forced to leave because she judges everything from the perspective she has. Soon, however, a new world of delights opens before her. Attaining this new perspective, she wonders how she could have allowed her old limited perspective to form her ideas, attitudes, and actions. In a typical touch, Chuang-tzu also develops the story's general implications, in a way that speaks to all of us. He asks whether in clinging to life we may not resemble Lady Li's clinging to her original miserable existence. That question is not answered, it is just posed. Indeed, this posing but not resolving of questions is at the heart of Chuang-tzu's skepticism. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 4-penis/nail vagina/wound oH> I don't really have a sucking chest wound. I just wanted to get your oH> attention, hee. Oh but I do have a painful wound. Ouch it hurts. "The Moravian Bretheren are particularly fascinating. Their leader, Count von Zinzendorf, developed the peculiar doctrine that the wounds of Jesus on the Cross could become the foci for erotic magic. He believed that in erotic rapture his followers could visit the hole in Jesus' side caused by the spear of Longinus (referred to as the `Seitenhlchen', or `Little Side Cave'), in the forms of Kreuzluftvglein (`Little Cross Birds of the Air'), Wunderbeinelein (`Little Wonder Bees'), Blutwundenfischlein (`Little Fish of the Bleeding Wound'), Wundertucherlein (`Little Wonder-Divers'), or Wunderwrmlein (`Little Wonder-Worms')! Incredibly enough, the Moravian Bretheren constituted a fully functioning Masonic order as well, forming the nexus of Zinzendorf's Masonic attempts to create the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth." - `The Fire in the Shadows: The Roots And Aims Of Modern Magickal Sexuality' by Timothy O'Neill, from GNOSIS 17 i'm not making any of this up * Origin: we gotta beat it, before he lets loose the MARMOSETS on US! (3:632/103.666) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- 5-"varanasi" by coyote 131 a sweet smoke hangs over the burning grounds dogs locked together fucking logs piled high on boats at ghat "300 kilo of wood to burn a corpse..." feet pointed at river toes curl in final grasp at life intestines coil like snakes at the feet of a god dancing upon funeral pyres "chest of men, hipbone of woman thrown in river" bodies curl turned like & folded fetuses in flames ...red make-up of marriage thrown in with an endless stream of ash... dead dog dragged down to riverside a howling wail cuts through the emptiness of being ...snapping bone! -coyote 131 7 ix 1993 varanasi, india this was composed shortly after my first visit to the main burning ghat in varanasi...while i sat upon the roof of our guesthouse in view of the ganga river which was partially obscured by a cloud rising from said ghat... ____________________________________________________________________________ ____ END TRANSMISSION ---- + ----------------------------------------------------------------- - +++++++ djp@nope.ucsd.edu - - + - - +++++ President, Illuminati (Bavaria) International Biker's Cabal - - + - - +++++++ "The Method of Science - The Aim of Religion" - ---- + -----------------------------------------------------------------