Setemheb

The bare bones of the Vortex Rite, with minimal commentary on the meaning or interpretation. That will follow. Words in caps are in Ouranian Barbaric with definition following.

Cry out HUT (meaning “start”)

Point in front of you with both hands, index fingers together. Say XIQUAL UDINBAK (Manifest Chaos)

Separate the fingers so that you draw a vertical line before you. Say XIQUAL UZARFE, D’KYENG. (Manifest Aethyr, Planck’s Constant).

Bring the index fingers back together Draw a line with the fingertips perpendicular to the first line, saying XIQUAL KUDEX, EACHT (Manifest Darkness and Light).

Bring the index fingers together. Draw another line at a 45-degree angle to the first two. Say XIQUAL ASHARA, DIJOW (Manifest Fire/Energy, Air/Space) – roughly, manifest fire and air (they also mean energy and time, respectively).

Bring your index fingers together. Draw another line perpendicular to the one in step 5, with the phrase XIQUAL THALDOMA,NOBO (Manifest Water/Time, Earth/Mass

Say XIQUAL ONGATHAWAS (manifest the vortex), and set the drawn chaosphere in motion with a gesture of your left hand.

Visualize the Chaos spinning faster and faster, using your breath to speed up the initial spin. With each inhalation and exhalation, make the whirl go faster and faster.

When you feel that the chaosphere is spinning fast enough to open as a vortex shout out 

XIQUAL CHOYOFAQUE (manifest the work of chaos)

Go about the Body of your Work or Working for this session.

To close the vortex put out your left hand in a fist. Open the index finger and ask ANGBIX? (How? ). Next open your your middle finger and ask POHUTH? (Why )? Finally open your thumb with the question WOKAC? (What? ). These should create a tringle with your index finger acting as the apex. Now turn your wrist counterclockwise, like you were turning a setting nob, so that your index and thumb are now at the top and say AEPALIZAGE (immanentize the eschaton).

The first line, or I-pole, drawn creates a polarity between UZARFE and D’KYENG.

UZARFE tends to get translated as “Aethyr” however the use of the Greek Psi to represent it tells you of its real character. In quantum equations, Psi is used to represent the wave function. The wave function is a means of expressing all of the possibility of a given incident without giving a fixed position of momentum. Instead, it is the grand total of all that could be occurring in the given circumstances.

D’KYENG in turn represents the absolute smalled unit of action in the manifest cosmos. In physics this is a measurement known as Planck’s Constant, however, the h with a bar image represents something called “the reduced Planck’s Constant” related to angular wavenumber which has to do with the smallest unit possible in space. Note: Tzimon mistook the h-bar character for the traditional Astrological sign for Saturn. Understandable but erroneous, breaking the symmetry of the I-pole. This error has been repeated for 30 years in the independent Chaos Magic scene.

The I-pole sets the boundary conditions for manifest reality. One end of the I-pole is all possibilities, the other the smallest contraction. In terms of the esoteric cosmologies, some may be familiar with this most closely resonates with the Germanic notion of the primordial potential of reality coalescing into a pole of “Fire” at one end and “Ice” at the other.

Orthogonal to the I-Pole, the II-Pole phases into manifest reality as a simple binary of KUDEX and EACHT, or darkness and light. Perhaps a better way to understand these two things that allow for manifest reality to phase into existence is as a primary binary like the “0” and “1” used in computation. Things are either “off” or “on,” but the patterns generated by this binary can be infinite and varied. In fact, it is the interplay of this “off” and “on” that allows for the mutlivaried aspects of manifest reality.

A brief introduction to binary and how it impacts computation, and perhaps the cosmos we inhabit.

You’d also be surprised by the level of complexity that can come out of “0” and “1” systems via simple rules.

II-Pole represents “reality,” which proceeds through a 90° phase shift from the I-Pole. The I-pole and the II-pole are not an x and y-axis in a Cartesian plane but orthogonal phases. The II-pole will form the basis for the next dimensional structures to come, a bit like being the paper on which the set of the axes are drawn.

The III-Pole and IV-Pole become the x-axis and y-axis being drawn on the paper created by KUDEX and EACHT. These represent the physical universe as we experience it on an Elemental level.

ASHARA represents energy in the physical sense as well as “fire” in the Classical Elements. It is associated with ideas of assertiveness and passion, as well as destruction and desolation if left undirected. Later Hermeticism associated it with Will

DIJOW represents space in the physical sense as well as “air” in the Classical Elements. It is associated with ideas of penetration and pervasiveness, as well as disconnection and detachment. Later Hermeticism associates it with Intellect.

THALDOMA represents time in the physical sense as well as “water” in the Classical Elements. It is associated with ideas of emotions and intuition, cycles and reflection, as well as stagnation and overwhelm if not allowed to circulate. Later Hermeticism would associate it with Understanding.

NOBO represents matter in the physial sense as well as “earth” in the Classical Elements. It is associated with ideas of stability and strength, as well as stuborness and refusal of change. Later Hermeticism would associate it with Valor.

Once the cosmogony is reiterated and set in place, the period between XIQUAL ONGATHAWAS and XIQUAL CHOYOFAQUE acts as a period of energization of perception. Breathwork is the primary means of doing this, as outlined.

If you look at stable molecules at, say, room temperature, you will find powerful bonds maintaining their structures in place. To make changes to those molecules, you have to affect the energy applied to them through temperature, pressure, etc. Depending on the outcomes you are trying to create, you may want to add energy to or draw energy from the molecules to change them.

In terms of yourself and your subjective universe, a similar condition of “stable at room temperature” exists. The structures within yourself are stable and have defenses aimed at helping you withstanding stress. To make changes to this stability, you have to engage in things similar to the energetic changes to molecules, adding or subtracting “energy,” changing the pressure being exerted on yourself, etc.

One of the reasons regular narrow-internal focused sitting meditation is recommended as a tool for Work is because it creates short, consistent changes to your perception’s “temperature.” You are fairly rigid when you first start, like a hunk of new, cold, modeling clay. By doing daily practice, you start to condition that clay to be more pliable and responsive to your designs. Meditation does a similar thing to the self-complex and does it slowly.

What rapid breathing does is energies the self-complex in a rapid but safe fashion. While the specifics of breath-to-brainwaves are dubious, rapid breathing seems to correlate with increased overall activity and alteration of accessible oxygen flow through the bloodstream. The area where these methods have been most highly developed is in the field of Kundalini Yoga. This is a discipline worth exploring if you are interested, though I would suggest avoiding direct involvement with the 3HO foundation due to their history of behavior towards adherents and supporters.

Simultaneously, this act of breathing and spinning the drawn cosmogony represents an attempt to energize it as well, making it pliable to your Will as a Magician. Ideally, you are trying to energize it enough to draw from the primal “charged void” of infinite possibilities (UDINBAK, though also the First Angle) to influence the outcomes within the fixed parameters of your context. This condition of reshaping reality towards increased potentials and outcomes manifests through your Will is what CHOYOFAQUE represents.

Once the Vortex is established, you have a place to do the Work and/or Working you have planned. A fairly simple approach that combined mindfulness, metamorphosis, and magic would be to layer together awareness training, an affirmation, and a sigil launch or divinatory action. What you do here is up to you, but it should be guided to your Visions and the steps you need to achieve them.

When this is done, you try to reconnect with the whirling vortex you originally set in motion.

A minor digression into Peter J. Carroll’s Aeonics will be necessary to understand how the Vortex is sealed.

Carroll interprets human history as phases of time where three major paradigms for understanding reality are at play. One of them is the materialistic paradigm, which can be reduced to the simple question, “How?” The next is the transcendent paradigm, which can be reduced to the question “Why?” And the final is the magical paradigm, which can be reduced to the question “What?” Human history arises as an iteration of these three paradigms moving along waves of prominence for a culture and combining different ways to explain the overarching paradigm of a given period.

Carroll’s Aeonics has shifted across his career; however, the model in this graphic, taken from Liber Kaos, represents his sense of things at the time the Vortex Rite was created.

The pattern of questions being asked to seal the Vortex represents each of the paradigms. The specific triangle you are creating with your fingers is tied to the Nihilist sub-aeon of Rationalism, which Carroll felt was the center of gravity for late 20th Century “Western Culture”: materialism rules the day with both the transcendent and magical being denigrated. The counterclockwise turn of the fingers orients the paradigms to that of the emerging Chaoist sub-aeon of the “PandemonAeon” Carroll felt we were headed towards, with the paradigms of materialism and magic coming together with a general disregard for the transcendent.

AEPALIZAGE, ore more its meaning as “Immanentize the Eschaton” is probably the more curious term in the Vortex Rite for those who are fairly new to Chaos Magic. Some of you may recognize it as a term used in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy. If not it is on the Temple’s Reading List and is worth the time if you are into sprawling tales of sex, magic, and conspiracies.

What many do not know is the genealogy of the phrase. Eric Voegelin, a political philosopher who had some fairly novel senses of the role of Gnostic doctrine in politics. In particular Voegelin saw the Gnostic attempt to bring about the promised “New Heaven and New Jerusalem” of the Christian Apocalypse in the here and now as being reflected in the various strains of Idealism in European politics that gave rise to Hegal, Marx, Nazism and Communism. Voegelin saw in these movements aspects of Manichaeism and Valentinianism as well as the doctrines of Joachim de Fiore as radical transformations of the social order towards what were ultimately spiritual ends.

William F. Buckley, publisher of “The National Review” and notable vulgar displayer of vocabulary, adored Voegelin’s summation in The New Science of Politics that, “The problem of an eidos in history, hence, arises only when a Christian transcendental fulfillment becomes immanentized. Such an immanentist hypostasis of the eschaton, however, is a theoretical fallacy.” The folks at “The National Review” turned this into the much simpler catchphrase “Don’t immanentize the eschaton!” complete with bumper stickers.

Smug Intellectualism used to be a hallmark of the American Right as well as the Left. Alas ’tis no longer the case.

Robert Anton Wilson, a libertarian by orientation and small-time editor who regularly read “The National Review” found the catchphrase amusing, but thought it made a much better slogan in reverse. With no indication that the “New Heaven and the New Jerusalem” were showing up any time soon, nor did there seem to be a God capable of delivering it, why not make every human effort to bring reality as close to utopia as possible?

R. Buckminster Fuller’s notion that human beings were at a point where material wealth was widely available and capable of improving lives planet wide yet were also on the path to their own self-induced destruction was a major preoccupation for Wilson. This suggested that without a conscious effort to “Immanentize the Eschaton” we might just blow ourselves up and miss the chances that were for the first time in front of it. He would spread this idea within the Discordian movement begun by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley who included it among various slogans.

For someone like Carroll this Immanentization was two-fold: 1. the old human orderings that existed now hamper the potentials of a self-realizing humanity must be done away with and 2. new models capable of addressing the life conditions that were emerging as a result of humanity’s impact upon the cosmos was needed immediately if not sooner. Indeed, if there was a meta-goal to Carroll’s Work beyond any given Chaoists own expansion and enjoyment, it was this.