2021 - The Year of Gamaliel, Alarum

White swan in the river,
the eye of cathedrals,
false dawn in the leaves,
am I. They cannot hide!
Who can escape? Who sobs
in the valley’s tangle?
The moon leaves a knife
behind in the air,
a lead-coloured trap
that seeks blood’s cry.
Let me in! I come frozen
through walls and windows!
Open roofs and breasts
where I can be warmed!
I’m chilled! My ashes
of somnolent metals
seek the crown of the fire
among streets and mountains.

 

The Moon, Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca

ALARUM

In 2020, I set myself a number of alarms on my phone that persisted with me throughout the year and reminded me to stay focused on a number of things.  I'm clearing my cupboards at the moment so bare with me as I figure out what alarms to set for 2021.

BUCHENWALD ALARM

In this Alarm, the Red Army Choir rouses us to action in honour of the fallen of  Buchenwald, ressurects them into an army of the dead and allies them to the International Columns fighting Fascism.  I admit I always played as the USSR in Axis and Allies.  The Alarm sat on my phone as both a constant reminder of the horror of eugenics, anti-Semitism and racism and a constant reminder to speak out against them.  The Alarm calls to a world energized by crisis, of an ocean groaning with terror, and an agony of the Earth that becomes a nuclear hurricane.  It exhorts us, forcefully, to be very careful, to preserve the peace and to be kind to the planet. This one had to be there. Listen to the words.

MALACHITE SKY ALARM

The Malachite Sky alarm was a personal reference to a short analysis I wrote on the 2016 (Netzach) movie 10 Cloverfield Lane.  Originally I was using the words in the title of this Alarm to remind me to focus on the skies as in March/April I had serious concerns about the environmental whiplash that was likely to be caused by a reduction in global dimming due to the grounding of the planes.  I saw many different cloudless blue skies from on top of a deserted hill where I live and as the cloudless days passed I became increasingly convinced that it was going to be a terrible year.  2020 was tied for the hottest year on record.  The other year was 2016.  The Malachite Skies came in the end, during the Green Phase, when large swathes of our planet were flooded.

But there was more to the Malachite Sky than this and now I see my ultra-conscious self was pointing more broadly towards the nature of the year.  10 Cloverfield Lane is about a person in lockdown, it's a quarantine drama effectively, and now I can see myself in all of those characters as I endured my shadows.  Maybe even the alien at the end...  Say what you like about Raziel, but he is concise.

GHOST TOWN ALARM

I've never been a ghost-botherer, I prefer the company of angels to that of the old souls. I've occasionally had a problem with ghosts bothering me but that is the risk you take when you walk haunted paths.  I generally walk moonbeams, it's quicker, and I am not a Millennial sentimentalist.  Ghost Town was an alarm that came in early, to keep me focused on the emotional impact of  being in a quarantine for aeons and the disturbing sights of an emptying city.  Inevitably, we all became physical ghosts but some fought more successfully than others against the hollowing.  Others lost their mental selves in screens and, unfortunately, the ones who went in weren't always the same ones who came out.

I knew Lilith had been released at the beginning of the Year as the Unifying Colour Theory predicted it perfectly.  But what I did not know was that there would be quite so many literal demons on the streets and in the air.  Boris Johnson described Lilifluenza as like being assaulted by an invisible mugger but many people have felt her embrace them with bloody talons and squeeze the life right out of them.  You notice the smell was lost?  The taste obscured?  When she hunts she hides her scent.  You could taste her like gravel in the wind.  This was the Black Wind.  The other winds brought other demons.  Rain.  Gale.  Hurricane.  The Ghost Town Alarm also worked on two levels.   Like the Buchenwald Alarm... it raised an army of spirits.

Do you remember the good ol' days before the Ghost Town?  Remember.  You may have been exposed to severe trauma.  Your cortisol levels may have risen.  Your neural architecture may have been damaged.  You may be repeating yourself.  When did you last take your Vitamin D?  You may be fading away.  Remember.  You must remember.  Or you're a ghost in a shell.  I told myself.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND ALARM

When I've taught the lessons I would tell my students if you want to really crack the initiations of Yesod ultimately you have to transform the Prima Materia.  Someone on the level of Malkuth only sees the world in material terms and often explains their magic through physical (and some ''psychical'') language like energy, force, power, etc and often has some kind of pseudo-scientific explanation for how it all works.  Whereas on the level of Yesod, one comes to see the Prima Materia as dreams and the world is better understood through dream logic.  The practical keys to this are found in astral practices and ''lucid dreaming'' and one of the ways to improve your abilities in this arena is by knocking every doorframe that you walk through in what you consider your waking life and ask yourself - am I dreaming?  Eventually the worlds will blur.  I advise an alarm on the phone, an Alice in Wonderland alarm whose sole purpose is to get you to ask that question.  Am I dreaming? Set it for whatever time works best for you...  2019 was a brutal year for me and made me reflect on how much luck, or whatever you would prefer to call it, I had enjoyed up until that point.  I felt like I had fallen into a different universe and I wanted to remind myself that I came from a different world.  That I could hang on to myself.  But, more importantly, it prepared me for 2020.

Now I no longer need an alarm to wake up.  I need an alarm to remind me to sleep. 

NO ALARMS AND NO SURPRISES

There is a sentimental satisfaction in keeping old alarms - fond memories of that time that that, whatever that was, mattered somehow.  But one must not hoard old alarms.  On the other hand, my ex-girlfriend used to regularly throw things out to the point where she could have been diagnosed with temporariness syndrome or whatever.  You have to be consistent and allow the alarms to acquire meaning before ridding yourself of them.  Stay lean.  Limit yourself to 3 or 4.  Keep your spirits concise.

I've started and finished this post with a sinister speech of the Moon from the play Blood Wedding by my old buddy Federico Garcia Lorca.  I'm letting the words percolate. I've got to get my eye on that evil Moon and I'll set an alarm to remind myself to look. 

A... lunalarum.

    But I bring the snow
to their shoulders of jasper,
and I flood, cold and harsh,
the depths of the lakes.
But this night my cheeks
will be stained with red blood,
and the reeds clustered
in wide swathes of air.
I have no shadow,
nowhere they can hide!
Let me enter a breast
where I can be warmed!
A heart of my own!
Burning! Spilling itself
on the hills of my breast;
Let me come in! Oh, let me! (To the branches)
No shadow. My rays
must shine everywhere,
and in dark of the trees
spread a rumour of dawn,
so my cheeks this night
will be stained with red blood,
and the reeds clustered
in wide swathes of air.
Who’s that hiding! Speak out!
No! There’s no escape!
I’ll make the horse gleam
with a fever of diamond.

The Moon, Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca