Lighting Temple

My housemate Amoration (Evonne Heyning) and her husband Brent are working on a big project for a portable interactive performance space called the Lightning Temple. It's multidisciplinary, involving alternative energy, music, holistic elements, you name it. It's also based on merkabah mysticism, a practice in esoteric Judaism that activates the lightbody vehicle of human consciousness as a mechanism for the mystical experience of ascending a celestial ladder and coming before the throne of God. They have been having meetings with a variety of talented folks for months to plan this thing, which they hope to build shortly and take around for bookings on the festival circuit this summer. I recently came across a new book, Stairway to Heaven by Peter Levenda, which covers this form of mysticism and outlines parallels in spiritual practices as diverse as tantra, Voudun, Chinese alchemy and nineteenth century European Hermetic societies. The process is based around an activation of the chakra system by coordinating it with its cosmic analogue in the heavens, symbolized by either the seven planetary bodies of the ancient world or more commonly by the stars of the northern sky, the Big Dipper and the Pole Star, which comprise the axis mundi that I talk about all the time. This is right on target with my own work in Parsifal, about which I can't really say more without giving away important plot points, but suffice it to say, the emergence of this shared archetypal pattern in the art of my housemates and in the book I've been working on feverishly since I moved in has really got me going. It's also explained a lot about my own interests in mysticism - the Levenda book is very well-written and researched, and shows a clear connection between various esoteric things I have been interested in for a long time.

EvoAmo told me today that she has a session coming up on April 21st to discuss the merkabah and the spiritual aspects of this project, and asked me to give a brief presentation on the material covered by this book. I am so there. The book has been pivotal for me and has probably saved me years in independent research around these topics. Levenda has an esoteric pedigree going all the way back to the Magickal Childe in NYC in the late seventies and his work in this volume has impressed me immensely. I think it will help crystallize the project for everyone involved to know that there is a higher dimension to what they are doing than just making some cool art toy. It's really very deep, and I am excited to see what is going to come of it.