A huge task lay before me – I saw its enormous size – and its value and meaning escaped me.  I got into the dark, and I groped along the path.  That path led inward and downward.

I articulate dark     I articulate dark rain forest arachnids     I articulate central park in the dark

Dark experiments articulation and double articulation     Dark articulates anarchy and I interpret this dark in celestial bodies and celestial motion     I interpret the dark as many star clusters vibrating chaos and the celestial spheres speed trapdoor spiders (I adore the trapdoor spider and I attempt to ambush dark using the game methods)

Here in the dark, I pray to the dark a desolate place.  Between dark and dark I pray a desolate place.  The space becomes space entire desert.  The desert an entire function feels out desert an entire path in dark.  Here, the ritual of the dark and the dark path ritual, and this dark transforms body and consciousness.  I revive ritual in the real dark film reel.

I think I have another new years resolution, says Asia.  I want to make more things in my life into ritual.  I like that resolution, I say.  Do you have anything particular in mind?  Mundane things, she says.  My coffee, preparing meals, baths, bedtime.  Maybe we can make rituals at the same time and share them, says Asia.  We can do that, I say.  You know for me writing is an intense ritual, with a complex system of notebooks and fountain pens and reading.  I would love to do rituals and see more holy in the mundane.  Tarot can be a part of that too or witchcraft things.  Ritual is a very large category, I say.  I think it would be fun to turn either tea or coffee or a recipe into a ritual or spell, says Asia.

I got into the dark and I groped along the path     I got into dark and dark dances alchemical phosphors     Alchemy sifts imaginary light and aether, and lights spark elemental sounds     Lights spoke sharp ball lightning and the sound sizzles salt and sulfur     Alchemical sulfur soothsays seer sound and I prophesy sound branches out in multiple directions     I prophesy sound-branches and bodied-light and I see sabbath deer in snow     Snowfall slays sabbath melancholy Sabbatai Sevi     I see sun dark and sun night sabbath melancholy / Saturnine Sabbatai Sevi sabbaths

I sabbath in dark and in dark sabbath.  I sabbath to prepare for the task that lies before me.  I still see sabbath in dark and it shines a superluminary dark: dark burned into dark, and black flame burning black flame.  I still see sabbath in dark winter music and snow mutates into cool medicine, a healing alchemical salt.  Sabbath salts dark snow and I rest in healing cold.

Do you think ritual is related to spirituality? I say.  Kinda, says Asia.  Ritual can bring us into the present, ground us, ask us to be intentional, she says.  When you do witchcraft and sigils, do you consider that ritual or something different?  The reason I ask is because I consider my creative rituals as a kind of prayer and spiritual practice, I say.  I guess it is a ritual, says Asia.  I was thinking of Allen Ginsberg’s Footnote to Howl, I say.  Part of the poem goes like this:  “The world is holy!  The soul is holy!  The skin is holy!  The nose is holy!  The tongue and cock and hand and asshole is holy!  Everything is holy!  Everybody’s holy!”  I feel ritual is a way to realize everything is holy, asshole and all.  I like that, says Asia.

I got into dark and I groped along the path     Anarchic alchemy extinguishes torches and I got into dark     I drip desert dark fluid spiderweb and her silk flows blood rose human blood     (both parent and spore were famous for their aromatic and medicinal qualities)     I drip aromatic oil and fragrant salts and the scents scour dark path /dark path pokes to peephole labyrinth     I drip aromatic dark arts shark anarchic anthropology

Dark paths plays alchemy.  Dark path plays hermetic and occult and alchemy.  I rotate the alchemical wheel of fortune and I interpret world in alchemy.  I work wheel in aromatic dark and the aroma leads to new roses.

Wheel works slowed down laotian mouth organ     Wheel works wing light sight amplified metal     Wheel works slightly amplified metal byzantine jewelry (my clockwork body clangs junk gears crotales)     Wheel work word hammerings on the inside of a piano     Aurora consurgens gear wheel (aurora columns consurgens onyx air)     Aurora column anarchic aether attack antikthon

A huge task lay before me, a great work that requires shadow and dark

I distill oil from the petals of Rosa gallica to produce rose water

I distill inward and downward desert dark spikenard     Oil autumn rubs ochre ochre rave red: red rescues red cave end     Red rescued red oil ovum oil an obvious red     Red rescues red rediscovered red and red reifies odd red rhizomes     Rhizome oil red odd even red cave rhizome

I got into dark and dark distills ritual.  Dark distills red ritual and ritual rare red.  I got into ritual and liturgy of dark.  Red reveals red riverrun memory work and red archive reads colors of dark.  Red reveals red riverrun memory work and red archive reads colors of dark.  Dark distills dusty red and rum red pink beam batwings.  I got into red dark and dark red, and red stains as ritual.  I only see red and I rivet red into the dark.  New red creates new ritual and I perform red in dark fever.  I fever dark red.

I distill inverted dome desert and through the desert depressions, a rapid red heat / deep or dark death valley     I distill deep or dark desert and I reshape like a rose among thorns so is my beloved among maidens (during this process the color gradually changes from red to white)     From red to white, the path leads inward and downward.

Inward towards wayward weird wind body body without organs (organs red and reads red relative rises and falls force horse flirt red rhizomes)   

I flirt rhizome red kisses red catch khora     I flirt keep khora ketamine catechisms (wall electric socket electric eel eyelet)     Eye electrocutes cut spiral catastrophe / eye cut camera electrocutes line watch apocalypse

I contemplate the later works of Elliott Carter, the works he wrote after he turned 80 and then 90: although still challenging and complex works, the orchestration became sparser, less dense, almost streamlined compared to his works before.  Anthony Tomasini wrote of Carter’s Flute Concerto:  “Mr. Carter’s language has lost none of its piercing, atonal bite.  Yet like most of his works from his 90s and later, this score is less densely complex and layered than those from earlier decades.  The enhanced clarity is a welcome turn, making it earlier to hear Mr. Carter’s scintillating sonorities, myriad instrumental colors, and complex rhythmic interplay.”  I have amassed an incredible amount of material, and every time I copy it again, it continues to accumulate additions, an amplified density.  I keep adding to my material instead of reducing it.  Perhaps I need to take the same approach as post-90s Elliott Carter: streamline the process, cut it down and prune it away to reveal crystalline sonorities rather than obscuring it with occult density.

I got into the dark and groped along the path

A four-fold sphere of fire governed this work, a sheen with She, Benjamin twin KRYSXTRYN, burning circles and circles, a crown of thorns surrounding Christ in the desert

This work is word and woman: word begins all and transforms all, word and women woven wilderness (wolf and metals minuets miraculous woman     wolf of metals musics mercurial woman wolf of metals mirrors moon woman)     This work is word and woman: woman begins all and weaves all, Taryn tangled interpenetrating incarnations

When I took the Eucharist today, I couldn’t help but think of that quote you sent me about the word used in John was a word that translates to gnaw, says August.  I thought that as I chewed the host in my mouth and thought about Jacob wrestling with the angel and process theology and how in the church we think of God as a set of beliefs and ideas but God IS relation.  I gnaw on God, I scream at God, I cry with him, I argue with him, I resent him, I celebrate with him, etc.  There are a lot of ideas that people have about God in this weird platonic ideal of like an omnipotent but angry father figure who is distant from you, like a Monty Python stretching the clouds type beat, but God doesn’t actually work like that, I don’t think.  God is something I chew on.  God is love as an emerald is green.  God is the God of Hosts, etc.  People talk about God as if he’s some objective uncaring third party but He listened to Abraham when he begged to save Sodom, Jacob wrestled the angels of blessing.  God isn’t relational, God is relation, says August.

I got into dark and I grope along the path.  I discover the God Woman and Woman God equally from dark.

She cuts thirteen petals inserted in thirteen wounds wound god serpent elohim     She stabs and stitches thirteen petals through thirteen wounds cross-stitch alchemy     The alchemical strata stitch wheel hydra and wheel hydra     Hydra hosts hundreds hundreds others other (God of Hosts God of Emeralds)     Hydra host bolt red hundred radians and I participate in salt circle red     I walk salt red bird work     I wild bird work birds the word awake

That path led inward and downward     Inward I wild abyss: abyss innards hazel word walk     I walk inner product downwards and I salt walk down disc desert (the solar disc and the solar anus)     I descend solar disc left swift salt and I feel its fire (I first feel savage fire and inward flame innards     Inward flame conquers)