Another trip to our power spot in Georgia today, for points work and for three consecrations, of Rev. Indigo, Rev. Aron, and Sr. Michelle, to Bishops Gnostic and Apostolic.

Star of Seshat has a summary of Occult of Personality’s recent podcast interview with David Beth.

I finally re-remembered how to post photos. These are from our January 10, 2009 service, which focused on head washings. It was a wonderful, exhilarating, exhausting, very long day.  We began service to the loa at 1 p.m., and headwashings and spiritual baths at 3 p.m. which continued nonstop until about midnight.  Following that, we did a house cleansing for the hosts of the event who kindly offered their space for the event, and I finally got home at 1:30 a.m.  Yes, folks, that is NINE solid hours of administering headwashings and spiritual baths.  I was very tired, but very grateful to be able to serve, and energized as always by the friends, family, and loa who came to call!

Ayizan has been demanding a lot from me since I began working with her intensely last summer, but for everything she demands I am repaid many times, and I know that it’s for my own good and spiritual growth, even when I don’t always understand exactly why at the moment.  For instance, when I got in touch with Loko in 1995, I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground and had been largely approaching the lwa through ceremonial/qabalistic structures for years prior.  Loko kicked my ass quick and turned my life upside down; it was what I needed and the way I needed it at the time.  It took me until 2008 to “balance the building” and work with Ayizan, and the results were similar in that she turned a lot of what I thought I knew on its head; I’m still sorting it all out. One thing I never really thought of until *after* she came up as the “loa in question” last summer is her relationship to Loko.  I really grok it now.

What I didn’t note as quickly, what I knew but didn’t “grok,” was their relationship to the peristyle.

And until last month I didn’t grok her relatiionship in particular to the lave tete.

Ha ha.  Ok, I get it!
Both of these have become very important in ways I won’t go into here and now, but things are changing, for sure.  It has something to do with points chauds and geography, something to do with genius loci, and something to do with family.  In the midst of lots of other changes and more growth in our local community as well as around the world In Free Communion, the Gnostic and Gnostic Vodoun currents merging here in my little neck of the woods mean that, for me at least, the Work is very much about building and maintaining that community, and about making the space to house it.

Rele Ayizan ye
O lese koule
Kimedevi-ya Sobo
Rele Ayizan-O

Ghuede’s altar at a private event after the lave tete service

Erzulie Dantor’s altar in progress early in the day

+ Naamah ties + Dositheos’ head after a lave tete

Podcast 57 – Congregational Illuminism and Points Chauds

“In this episode, we are joined by our friend Tau Allen Greenfield and two more Gnostic Bishops, Tau Dositheos and Tau Naamah. Our initial focus is the history of the Antient et Primitif Rite of Memphis-Mizraim. We talk about the origins of this branch of esoteric Freemasonry and how it has transmuted into a variety of modern strains, this particular one being ecclesiastical and magical. This is illustrated by the close associations of lodges and Gnostic churches and the necessity for consecration in the Gnostic and Apostolic Succession for those involved in Points Chauds Workings.”

“Our discussion then delves into the subject of Points Chauds.”

“Lastly, we talk about Congregational Illuminism.”

+ Naamah administers points chauds

Points chauds being administered at Ormus Lodge event.

Ok, this has come up a few times and I’m going to try to explain why
our very wonderful image that Crow made and our very informative and frankly invaluable correspondences charts must still be tempered with intuition and “other vision” when it comes to administering (and receiving) points.

The points chauds do NOT map one for one onto acupoints, and the
little red dots you see are NOT “the one true place the point will
always be.”  Let’s take an example by way of illustration.

Let’s take a simple one first to get us used to thinking about how
stuff gets measured in acupoints work.  Let’s take point 4.  Our chart
says Upper Forehead, and our acupoint column says Du 24 at the top of the head on the midline, .5 posterior to the hairline.

This one is pretty damned close to a matchup in an overlay.  If you
are new to acupuncture stuff, .5 posterior in this case means half a
cun below the hairline.  A cun is a unit of measurement that is
derived from the body of the patient herself.  A cun on YOUR body is
considered to be about the width of the bit of your thumb that you
would wear a ring on, or about the distance between the second and
third wrinkle on the inside of your middle finger.  My cun is not your
cun and there is no ruler for this, hence (part of) the importance of
“seeing” or “feeling” the points. Acupoints on the human body are
measured by other landmarks on the human body (I’m oversimplifying measurement in acupuncture work a bit, but this is an attempt at a start – if I have stepped in it anywhere please correct me).

But all in all, the little red dot on the chart gives us a darned good
idea of where to start looking for point chaud number 4.

Now let’s take what we have labeled as point 35, which I am picking
because I have twice experienced it as a very important point in the
body of the recipient, a point that seemed to “connect” or “finish” a
circuit and thus something I took note of.  Our chart tells us point
35 is the second of 2 points on the left thigh.  Our little red dot
suggests we look on the inside of the thigh, some distance below where our leg meets our torso, and probably closer to our genitals than to the front center of our thighs.  Our acupunctcure column groups points chauds 35, 36, and 37 together (but not 34! I’ve been meaning to ask Zeitz about this), and gives us the following correspondences:

Bladder 31
Gall Bladder 32
Bladder 37
Stomach 32
Stomach 33
Stomach 34

Six acupressure points on three different meridians.  In other words,
these are very different things for an acupuncturist doing work on
you.  They are on three different lines of chi in teh body and they
work on three different systems in the body.  Needless to say, none of
them are on teh spot that the red dot is in in the picture.  The
important thing is that these acupoints seem to *correspond to* the
points chauds in the working papers – and in some cases it might be
useful to think of these correspondences as similar to the
correspondences between tarot cards and perfumes in 777.  That they have to do with each other does not mean they are interchangeable.

Now, if you look at an acupuncturist’s model, you will not find ANY of
the above named points in the same spot the dot is in.  In fact, some
of them are nowhere near the dot, nor are they actually very close to
the inner left thigh.  Stomach 34, for instance, is very close to the
knee – is in fact located by measuring 2 cuns from the edge of the
patella.

And then, of course, there are the points chauds that don’t correspond to an acupressure point at all – like at least four of the genital points.

And to top it all of, points move.  Not only are they not in the same
place exactly on every single person, they are also not in precisely
the same spot on every person every time.  Sometimes they even wiggle a little while you’re trying to get at them.

Now PLEASE understand I am not dissing anybody’s work, far far from it.  The chart we have to work with is a great aid and a great
starting point and has in fact led us to some discoveries that we
might not have come upon yet if it weren’t for these guidelines.  But
it’s not dogma, and I encourage everyone to take good notes when they receive points, sketch where the points were given ON YOUR OWN SKETCH rather than just circling the points on the pre-made chart, and see how stuff lines up for you.  Every human vehicle is going to be slightly different, and in fact the “sets” or “connections” – ie, what poitns complete a set or plug something in – may even differ from person to person, depending on a number of factors.

So I hereby encourage everybody to make notes about the points they receive in relation to other places on their bodies instead of just
circling dots – if we’re ever going to really grok this system, we’re
going to have to get away from that chart to a certain extent – or at
least be willing to.

And now that I think about it, we really ought to get ourselves an
experienced seer and adminstrator of points and a willing model, and
actually DRAW points on a human being some time for people to see
(those who can’t see the points).  If we were to begin somehow getting
a better record of where points are on individual people, where they
are almost always the same and where they are almost always different etc, I think it would be a great benefit to our knowledge base as we continue to work with and theorize this material.

Cheers,

+ Naamah

It occurs to me that people who come across this blog without having first met any of us might wonder why we all seem to be up to different things with this Arabia working, the points chauds work, the Congregational Illuminism….. and the last phrase is the key I think.

The points chauds Work is vast, intricate, ongoing.  As it’s emerging, organically I would say, various people and various “organizations” (I use the term loosely) get involved and take an angle and run with it.

Some are researching apostolic succession, as our work is so closely related to the history adn tradition and power of these consecratory lineages.

Some are working with modern neo-shamanic currents involving ecstatic dance and kinetic trancework.

Some are exploring the current from a background or interest in yoga, some taichi and qi gong, some the meridian system, some the marma system, some the chakra system, some the star system of our very own universe (and possibly others). There is so much to be done that a lifetime sometimes seems too short.

Personally, my main interests lie in mapping and grokking the energy matrices of the human body and their relation to power points on the planet; working with Haitian vodoun, New Orleans voodoo, and Gnostic Vodoun angles of the current; and exploring the practical effects of the empowerd and duly consecrated human being on his or her universe.

Eventually (note to self) I wonder if it might be useful to throw up a sort of informal listing *by main research interest or focus* of the various people and groups in free communion, so as to better direct interested parties to the synod in which they will feel most at home?

Is there not a way to backdate these?

I’m busy as hell, but these are notes I need to flesh out later about the points work yesterday and later conversations/observations/thoughts.

feet & TAG’s vision –  [eta: 9/20-21/08] TAG and I had talked a few times over the years about “unmapped” points (ie, those not belonging to the 97 point system we have pretty well mapped, but rather those that fall outside or peripheral to it somehow, and how they are likely to be part of a larger, probably 360 “degree”, system, many of which have been “lost” at least in the Western world).  Before I had formally begun the points work, I had a dream that has ended up having precognitive and symbolic elements that I was unable to recognize at the time; as the points work continues, I keep finding things that connect back to that dream.  In it, my attention was drawn to a point on the outside of my upper calf, and this Arabia trip we decided to go experimental and see what happened when it was activated. I no longer recall (damn my shitty note taking) whether the second point on my leg was something I got/grokked/sensed, or whether it was something TAG saw/sensed, but I think it was the latter.

In any case, he activated those two points on my legs, and then activated “foot” points.  Again, these are unmapped, but I recall activating somebody’s “feet” at the lave tete earlier this year during their headwashing – why I can no longer tell you assuming I even could then.  It was just one of those things.  no reason to think there was a point there, just a feel that I needed to do that.  The same thing happned with + Dositheos, where I activated some points that aren’t on the map shortly after (if I recall correctly) + Heosphoros activated his hand points.  If I recall correctly, I did his wrist points and then some unmapped points on his sides around the waist.  Later, I looked up a map of the meridians and found that those spots do actually lie along a meridian – -one of those that sort of jags, or curves, rather than running in a straight line.

When he was doing the foot points, he said he had a crucifixion-like vision, and could  “see” nails going into my feet.  I also recall him saying something about those and the leg points having a slightly different “feel” or “energy,” though I think that was *before* they were activated; that “difference” may not be there anymore if they were integrated into the channels of my subtle body.  I dunno. TAG?

I had not too long ago gotten an acupuncture chart illustrating the so-called “extraordinary points” (what that means exactly I don’t know – probably that they are somehow “off the beaten path” in acupuncture, not on one of the main meridians).

“saw” something 2.5 times; Blue’s neck, Sh’s head, my leg (not exactly points in most cases) – I don’t “see” the points.  I feel them, and as they often move and wiggle on a living person, sometimes it takes me a  bit to get them by feel.  But anyway, this time, I didn’t see points exactly, but there was something I was seeing a few times.  When I was doing Blue’s neck points and I was “looking” to see if they seemed alright, I ”saw” something that was not a point, and that after a moment I figured must be the “other side” of her activated point on the back of her neck.  I knew I wasn’t seeing a point, probably because I know there’s not a point there in the center where I was seeing it, but there was something there, even though I’m sure I wasn’t seeing the kind of thing TAG sees when he talks about seeing them.  Anyway, that was unusual for me, and I’m noting it.

Also saw something that was not points but was *something” on Sh.  It was like I could just see the energy flowing *around* her body as she was sitting, post-points.  It had a direction to it that I could sort of “see”.  In her case it was moving around a lot, but unusual that I saw anything at all, so notable.

Finally, sort of saw something on my leg when TAG and I were talking about the leg point thing before we’d decided to experiment with them.  No color, as usual, but almost a thickness in the air around the point.

“dragging 5 Gs” – I felt like shit coming down the mountain. I usually feel good coming down, even when I’m totally hosed like I was after the lave tete work which is the only time so far I really felt I’d reached my limits in terms of energy work.  Mountain-descending used to be a “I bet I could fly down” type of feeling, and even when the worst “hyperness” wore off,  I have tended to feel energized, if a little dizzy or disoriented, post-points work.  But this time I was feeling slower and slower, like my legs didnt want to hold me up anymore.  I actaully considered sitting down on the bike path on the way back to the parking area.  I didn’t, I kept going, but I’d never felt like sitting before.  Later, TAG said when he went down the mountain he felt like he was “dragging 5 Gs” behind him, and I wrote that down because it seemed a pretty apt metaphor for what I was feeling too.

erotic aspect/energy (changing senses/reception of energy, people getting all “puddly”)

back pain (gone, then today has moved)

“circuits” versus meridians (the “points” on Bill’s sides)

I finally figured out how to insert pictures…

but I have not figured out how to make wordpress’s new admin pge work for me, so I’m not going to be putting much text tino this poas.  I can’t see what I’m typing half the time. Sucks.

These photos were taking at our most recent gathering on Dec 20, 2008 at Kwan Yin House.