Athena, Holding Your Hair, Whispering In Your Ear

For me a few are enough, one is enough, none is enough. This is not for the many, but for you. We are audience enough for each other.

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I heard the author speak about this piece at a recent horror fiction convention, in the context of a panel discussing how awe and horror are intermingled in mystical visions. Specifically, the author described having a powerful vision on DMT that he subsequently described to a friend, and which the friend suggested was a vision of the Merkabah (the chariot of god attended by terrifying angels that appeared to Ezekiel in the bible). The author conceded, though, that his vision could just as easily be explained as a vision of an alien abduction, or of Terence McKenna's Machine Elves. The author then described trying to soberly reproduce the vision over twenty days through fasting and "somatic rituals" (not further explained). Ascend Ascend was the result of his attempt to recapitulate the vision.

In essence, the work describes what most ceremonial magicians would immediately recognize as an extended pathworking, although the work does not use that term.¹ The author helpfully provides Qabalistic attributions for the sections of the work, but the author's Qabalah is pretty confused, so the path he actually worked is not certain.² The most likely path based on the attributions he offers is a peculiar one: directly up the middle pillar of the Tree of Life, while also simultaneously ascending through the four Qabalistic worlds of manifestation. As an aside, on the panel, he spoke a bit about how terrifying the experience was, and how dangerous mystical experience can be (telling the parable of the four rabbis who attempted ascension, of whom only one returned unscathed). Seeing that he chose to ignore the conventional path-ordering and skipped the traditionally gradual ascent through the four worlds, and instead chose the absolute fastest, and most fraught, path of ascension, I'm frankly not surprised he found it a bit hair-raising.

Putting aside the "project" of the work, the text itself is loose verse (a bit prosy in places, but certainly poetry even by my admittedly cranky standards), narrating his harrowing ascent from Malkuth in Assiah to Kether in Atziluth. The author's verse style is as sure-handed as his occult scholarship is hamhanded; He's a better poet than he is a sorcerer. The verse is at once visceral, musical, elegant, and penetrating. It's also occasionally very clever, and filled with memorable and disturbing images. My only complaint is that the book is very short (70 pages). While I am generally a fan of brevity, I think the shortness of this particular piece is a weakness--several of the paths/stations get very short shrift.

Fans of mystical or occult literature (and especially fans of occult verse) will find this well worth a read. Sometime psychonauts might also appreciate crawling inside the elegantly expressed vestiges of someone else's trip. I'm not sure I can recommend this to a general audience though, notwithstanding that I enjoyed it enough to read it twice!