Lesson Three: Hoodoo Methods for Mind-Power Development by Michael Bertiaux

It has been proven many times before and will be proven for centuries to come that if you serve the Hoodoo Spirits faithfully, they will develop your mind. Now please understand it is the spirits who do this work for you, for if you did not need them or could do this development of mind -power on your own, or if the secrets and methods of this development were known to mankind already they would be taught in the schools, or your power would be there already or else you would have no need of Lucky Hoodoo. But because this is not so and because only the spirits can give what is spiritual — and mind-power development is spiritual -- then we must come to terms with the wonderful spirits of Hoodoo in order to build ourselves up as mental magicians.

There are a number of methods for mind-power development which are favored by the Spirits of Lucky Hoodoo. These are methods which are based on the ways in which the spirits have directed the development of human mind power in the past. All of the powerful minds in the past have been able to get their mind- -development from the spirits, because they made a contract with the spirits and lived up to the terms of that contract. In Lucky Hoodoo the spirits expect you to live up to the terms of your contract and this is the basis of their serving you with good luck and favors.

In mind-development what happens is that the mind is given some more power from the Hoodoo Spirits. In other words, they come in and give to the students an additional gift of power of mind-substance. This mind-power or mental energy or substance comes from the world of the spirits where everything is mind. The whole world there is one of mind. This is a powerful world and this is where our minds and souls and spirits go to after death. Nothing in that world is physical because everything is completely mind and mind-energy. That is where the mind-power comes from that helps our minds to become more developed and more powerful. Mind is to that world what sunlight and fresh air and water are to our world. Here we have many things to help the physical body develop and be strong, but in that world of mind all that is needed is mind-energy because mind is the only being in that world.

So the spirits bring to us this power or mind-energy and this helps us to develop and become more able to work with them, communicate with them and to understand them. This is what mind-power development is actually.

Now there are four methods which we accept here in Lucky Hoodoo for the development of mind-power. These are all successful methods and can be used by each student of Lucky Hoodoo.

The methods are very simple and have been made very clear for your use. The methods are called:

1. The drearn-power method of mind development
2. The method of Hoodoo spiritual prayer for mind development
3. The method of the Holy House for mind development
4. The shadow-stuff method of mind-power development

For effectiveness it is important to combine methods and to use all four of these wonderful methods on a regular basis. For example, in Voudoo and Hoodoo temple schools, such as my own, we teach the young, students to make use of all four methods of development each day. There are certain times for doing each method, we say, and they should take advantage of these times. The dream-power method is used at night while the student is sleeping, but before he goes to bed, he will make use of the shadow-stuff method, in a dark room, with only a black or blue light bulb giving some kind of shadow and dark mixture. This is when he will use deep meditation, which is really the type of meditation which leads to sleep and which is done when the body is freed of all care and ready for spiritual development. The prayer method can be used during the day for it possible to receive mind energy by prayer at any time and in any place. The method of the Holy House is a mind-projection where you will send your mind to the place of the spirits at any time and while you are anywhere, this is a method for developing the sense of the spirits' presence in telepathy and mental mediumship. For this reason it is a very practical method.

All of these methods are used by me each day. They are so simple and so clear that anyone can make use of them to the fullest sense of results. In Lucky Hoodoo it is important for us to understand that the spirits have made it as easy as possible for you to develop your mind-power. They have gone out of their way in order to make mind-power development as wonderful and as convenient as possible. Because in Lucky Hoodoo the emphasis is upon results and upon success. That is why we try to do everything as completely and as simply as we can, so that the spirits can come to you and help you and you can benefit quickly and easily.

We will now discuss the ways in which to make use of these four methods which are designed by the spirits to help you develop mind-power so that you can know more and do more with the spirits. First I will want to say something about the method of prayer and the method of the Holy House. This is the method which is suited to the active person who might want to take a five-minute break here or there during the working day in order to build up his mind-power contacts. These two methods are very simple and they are concerned with ways in which we can keep in touch easily with the spirits all day long. Actually the spirits are just near as our fingertips and we can make contact quickly and easily.

PRAYER AND THE HOLY HOUSE OF HOODOO SPIRITS

Up to now we have been going over what I will call a form of ritual prayer in the exercises at the end of Lessons One and Two. Now I want to say that the Prayer Method of Mind-Power Development is very simple and it is just this; You will take time off from what you are doing or you will do something that is automatic and does not require mental attention. Then you will focus your mind through attention upon the spirits and you will talk to them in silent thought and attune your mind to how they will respond. To attune your mind means simply to listen to what comes from them after you have made contact through silent thought. This is the basis of all prayers in every one of the world religions. However, because it is so simple, many persons do not want to do it. On the other hand, many persons are always making contact with the spirits through silent thought and live in a positive state of attunement all of the time or at least most of the time. This is so simple, for it only means that you keep your attention mostly directed towards the spirits and the gods, which are the major spirits, of Lucky Hoodoo. In this sense, then, the student is always able to get back from the spirits mind-energy, because he is attuned to them always. This wonderful method is really practical for the everyday working person or even someone who does a lot of mental work. On the other hand, the big strong blacks who did heavy physical labor on the plantations of the French in Old Louisiana used to occupy their minds entirely with this method and thus developed telepathy and mental mediumship, because they were obliged to do purely physical work and their minds were free for the easy development of these powers through the use of silent thought.

In the prayer method you have only to address yourself to the spirits in thought, on the other hand the method of the Holy House is different in a sense because it is more complicated. It makes use of the power of the mind and imagination to travel to the home of the spirits in the world of mind. There the
mind is fed and clothed and housed and taught by the spirits. In order for the mind to get there the imagination is used to help the mind by means of visualizing or seeing with the mind's eye the inner worlds and what they are like. In Lucky Hoodoo it is important to make use of the mind and imagination together. In all types of Voudoo you have to visualize the scene on the inner planes where things are happening. This means that you have to do a lot of daydreaming and use the mind in creative imagination. When you go to the Holy House of the Spirits what happens is that they inject into your soul and spirit the mind-energy of their world. This means that they will be able to give you more and more and as often as you come to visit them. Sometimes this method is used exclusively and is known as the method of making spiritual visits. It can be used just like the prayer method if the person is developed enough. I myself make use of this method during the day with the prayer method. If I have a lot of free time, I use the Holy House Visit method; if my time is limited I use the prayer method instead.

The next method is a combination of two methods. One method prepares for the other method just as the prayer method can be used to prepare for the method of visiting the Holy House of Spirits. These two methods now to be discussed are very powerful and very esoteric and should be used only by a person who feels he is strong enough in Lucky Hoodoo to handle the powers which come to him, from beyond.

DREAM POWER AND SHADOW STUFF

The method of mind development known as dream power is very simple, also. It means that when you are asleep the Hoodoo spirits come to you and take you in your dreams to their schools and temples and then they teach you to be able to recall what happened to you and what you learned. You may take a while to do this, so that the Hoodoo student usually does a deep meditation or a light mentation, or silent thought, exercise to recall what happened and what was learned. Then the student will make up notes of what he learned and use this as the basis for future studies.

The Hoodoo student tries to go to his dream power class every night, if he can. For this reason sleep is a very important matter for the student of Lucky Hoodoo. This is the simple method of dream power. The next method can be understood as a preparation for it.

Shadow stuff is an old Hoodoo idea which goes all the way back to the man in the caves. At that time man became fascinated with his shadow and its magickal power. Shadow stuff is the substance of shadows and it is highly magickal and can be used to develop mind-power. This is the way in which it works. You will place yourself inn a room where you are burning either one candle or a blue light or a black light.

This is to create a lot of shadow stuff. Now, the student will remove all of his clothing and having taken a bath in water he will give himself a shadow bath. This means that with your fingers you will pass your hands all over your body as close to the surface of the skin as you can without touching the skin. You will "wash" the body with the power of the shadow-stuff and while you are doing this you will be having the spirits give you more and more power. For they will be standing by and feeding mind energy into the shadow-stuff that you make use of.

It is sort of like when you want to take a bath and someone will stand by in order to hold the bar or cake of soap. The spirits are holding the mind-energy for you and because of this you are becoming more and more powerful. With every stroke of the hands, they feed into the shadow-stuff between your fingers more and more mind-energy power. This is important and it is good for us to understand that this process is useful also in healing because we are working with vital energies from the spiritual world of mind and the vital energy is becoming more and more a part of our own growing health.

In the Creole countries and parts of the world, everyone takes a bath before going to bed and one in the morning while getting up. This is to protect the health of the body from bad influences and impurities. The Creole Hoodooists who are really serious about their magickal and mental development do this. They give themselves a good bath with shadow-stuff each evening before going to bed where they will make use of the dream power method of development. Thus, the bath with shadow-stuff is really the preparation for the dream power method of learning more and more about the spirits and their wonderful world of wisdom and esoteric knowledge.

It is important to make use of these methods so that the student can increase his mental development and mind-energy. The spirits have given us these wonderful methods of improvement and we are asked by them simply to give them a try and then we will become more and more convinced that this is a terrific way to advance in the world of spiritual knowledge, power, and wisdom because this is the spirit's own way of development. You will learn to do more and more things with these simple methods. The spirits want you to build onto these methods and to increase your skills in Lucky Hoodoo. These four methods are, therefore, the basis for a lot of other techniques which we will teach to you. But these are the basics as taught to us directly by the Voudoo gods and Hoodoo spirits. This is the method which we call the way of the spirits and it is their way from start to finish. Why don't you try it, so that you can become a big Lucky Hoodoo.

Lesson Two: How the Hoodoo Spirits Help You to Get Exactly What You Want by Michael Bertiaux

Everyone who comes to Hoodoo wants to have something done for them. The reason why they come to Hoodoo is because they have tried everything else and they have not been successful. That is why they are willing to try the power of the spirits which we call Lucky Hoodoo. But you, dear student, are different, because you are now on the road to becoming a Hoodoo practitioner, someone who will be able to help others because he has been so successful and powerful in his Hoodoo work with the spirits.

Generally speaking, the Hoodoo spirits are asked to do one of four major kinds of things for those who come to them for help. Sometimes we will find a person who has a lot of needs, but they are usually variations of the basic four These needs are usually:

1. The desire to have good health and be free of illness.
2. The wish to have more money or a better job or boss.
3. The wish to know more about the spirits for betterment.
4. The wish to have a new or better lover for romance and sex.

All of these needs are valid and very good for the person to seek. There is no reason why anyone should feel ashamed to want to have these goals. They are the aims of everyone who is in a right frame of mind. Now, we have to see what the Hoodoo Spirits think about these goals for gain. All of these aims are based on the need to gain something more. So there must be something or somebody in the spirit world who is willing to help us to get what we want. The answer is that there are many spirits who have as their purpose the helping of mankind to gain what it needs. These spirits come in order to make up for the lack of something which is the basis of need. We are seeking the help of the spirits in order to gain what we do not now have. Fortunately, there are many spirits who are quite willing to help us out. In fact they are often more willing to help us than we are ready or able to let them help us. In other words, many persons are not yet ready to make contact with the spirits in order to have the spirits help them with their plans. But once a person has made contact with spirits, then it is quite simple to ask them to help you with a particular project, which will bring you
exactly what you are seeking.

Your own case would be an example of a person who is already on the road to successful communion with the spirits, for you have done the ritual of dedication to the Hoodoo spirits, which was given in the first lesson of this series of documents.

Now, we will begin from where we left off in the last lesson, in order to see just how it is that the spirits are able to bring to a person who is seeking something what that person wants.

In the world of the spirits there is a particular group of Spirits who are concerned with doing special projects. These are called the "Work Loa," and they are to be found among both the Hoo-Spirit.s and among the Doo-Spirits. These working gods are very helpful to mankind, for they are the powers that enable mankind to get exactly what he wants at any time. They are powerful helpers to mankind, because they are paid by mankind in turn in response to what they have done for him. The "Work Loa" are very wonderful gods in the sense that they have infinite powers, because they are pure spirit and not tied down to this world of earth. Therefore, they are able to be everywhere at all times and to do everything that needs to be done. However, it is necessary to approach these gods by means of special rituals, for like all of the Hoodoo Spirits, these beings are very much in sympathy with
ceremonies and rites.

Many persons are of the opinion that the Voudoo gods can be contacted simply by directing the mind in the way of their being and thus attunement with the Spirits is achieved by pure and silent thought. This may be true for those Big Shots who can build Mental Temples with their minds and imaginations but it is not true for those who are just beginning. Such novices in Hoodoo must make use of ceremonial work and ritual to summon the Spirits, for if a person wishes to summon the spirits, it is done either with a Mental Temple that is built up in the mind or else it is done with a ceremony done in the very room where the person is. But in either case it is done making use of some kind of magick. That is the important factor. It is necessary to make use of powerful magick in order to summon the Hoodoo Spirits at any time. For they respond only to magick, whether or not it is mental or physical it does not matter except to the student or practitioner. They will come quicker through a good magician using physical methods than through a careless student making use of mental methods, only. And it is important to understand this point, for they are not too interested in how you call them to your aid. They are only interested in that you do call upon them to help you.

On the other side and in the world of the spirits, the "Work Loa" can easily recognize a call for help because of the astral colors that it sends along with itself. The call carries with it the secret colors of true petition if it is a sincere call for help. If it isn't, then the colors will be absent and other colors which indicate deception will be present. Pity the poor fool who tries to trick the spirits, for they know everything and that is why they know you and what you want from thern. So be perfectly honest with them for they can tell intuitively when you are sincere and when you are not sincere. Even if a person sought to attract them by means of a Mental Temple, and still was insincere, he would not be successful. They can tell even when the person is working in the world of Mind. For the colors of the Mental Temple will apear to be those where insincerity is present and they will not come, except to punish the wrongoder. Therefore be perfectly honest with them and you will be helped.

Another thing to understand is that with them the morals of the human world are without meaning. Moral codes were invented by certain political and religious groups to keep the majority of human beings in chains. There is only one law of morality in the spirit world and that is to tell the truth to the spirits. So if a person desires to make love to another person and the world of human morality would say this is wrong, or even the Bible would say this is wrong, we must understand that to seek the spirits this is not wrong, as long as the seeker is truly seeking that person as his lover. For that reason you must not feel any shyness about speaking to the wonderful spirits, for if you are honest with yourself, you are honest with them. If you are to be honest with them, then they can come to your aid and help you out.

There is a very simple ritual which you can do in order to get the Hoodoo Spirits to come to your aid. This is a simple request ritual, and it can he done at any time, once you have done the dedication ritual and therefore should be done at least one day later in order to give your own astral body a rest. However, it is the basic ritual for getting in touch with the spirits and letting them know just what it
is that you want them to do.

THE BASIC RITUAL FOR GAINING FROM THE HOODOO SPIRITS

Part 1. In a quiet place, you will sit at your table upon which you have now placed four candles at the corners and a black candle in the center. You will place a yellow candle in the north, a blue candle in the west (same as before), a green candle in the south, and a red candle in the east. Place your black candle from the previous ritual in the center and between the black candle and the blue candle you will place a glass of water. You will write out on a small piece of paper or index card what you wish to gain and place this request between the red candle and the black candle.

Part 2. Now, you will say the following prayer to the Hoodoo Spirits in order to make known to them by ritual your request for their help and presence. You will begin the prayer to the Hoodoo Spirits by lighting the candles in the following order:

First, you will light the yellow candle and say:
"Holy Spirit of the Northern Cross of Light come forth."

Second, you will light the blue candle and say:
"Holy Spirit of the Western Cross of Light come forth."

Third, you will light the green candle and say:
"Holy Spirit of the Southern Cross of Light come forth."

Fourth, you will light the red candle and say:
"Holy Spirit of the Eastern Cross of Light come forth."

Lastly, you will light the black candle and say:
"Holy Spirits of Lucky Hoodoo come to my help and hear me."

Next, you will touch the glass of water and say:
"MEDIUM OF HOLY SPIRITS OF THE WATERS BELOW
AND BENEATH ALL WORLDS THE HOLY SPIRITS OF
THE DEAD AND THE SEAS J AM HERE TO SERVE YOU."

Then, you will look intensely upon your request card and say:
"0 LIGHT THERE IS NO DARKNESS. O LIGHT WE ARE
IN THE PRESENCE OF ENDLESS LIGHT."

Part 3. Then you will begin to say the following very short prayer of request for gain to the Spirits either in a soft voice or silently to show that you mean real business.

"Dear Spirits of Lucky Hoodoo. You are my friends. What I wish to receive from you is written on the card (paper) which I have written out as a special request. Please help me to gain this that I wish so much. I know that you can help me. Here is my gift to you, dear Spirits of Lucky Hoodoo."

Part 4. Then you will offer power to the Spirits by rubbing your hands together for a couple of minutes and then holding your hands towards the altar with the palms open and extending the fingers upwards, so that the altar will receive the power as it flows out of the palms of your hands and to the Spirit world. This is your gift to the Spirits, the power of life or vitality which will be used by them in healing or in some other work.

Part 5. You will now close your eyes and begin to think about the Hoodoo Spirits and how they will come to you and what you wish them to do for your request. They are present everywhere and perhaps they will indicate that they are there by the flickering of a candle or some other sign. You will then be silent for a few minutes afterwards. You will take the glass of water and drink it, for it has spirit-power in it. You will then silently put out the candles in the following order: first the black, then the red, green, blue, and lastly the yellow candle. You will feel relaxed and peaceful in love with all of the spirits and ready to serve them and obey all the Holy Spirits of Lucky Hoodoo. You will then clap your hands together quickly so that a sound is made and you will say, either softly or silently:

"AND IT IS DONE HOLY SPIRITS OF LUCKY HOODOO."

Put your candles away if you store them and keep the request written out on card or paper to think about each day. You may do this ritual as often as you like. Be sure of good luck, for you are a Hoodoo.

Lesson One: Who Can Be & Big Lucky Hoodoo? by Michael Bertiaux

Anyone can become a big lucky Hoodoo once they make contact with the spirits behind Voudoo. I will teach you the very simple method of making contact with the spirits. The spirits are easy to meet, in Fact they are very eager to meet you, that is why they led you to take this course. They want you to learn their power secrets, so that they can have an influence over other people. This gives the spirits more and more power to help you.

The spirits want to meet you and they want to get into your life. They have a lot of things to tell you and these things will help you become more and more lucky. You will be able to do what you want with their help, because you will be able to pay them off with things that they like, but which they can't get now. They can't get the gifts of food and candles that they wish to have until they do their work for you, and then you will pay them off and both of you — you, the lucky Hoodoo and they, the spirits — will be getting exactly what you want. That is what it is all about in Voudoo power secrets.

We know who and what we are here in this world. We know all about ourselves as far as what we want and what we are going to get. This means that we know just what we want out of life. We know what is basic to life and what is extra to life. We want both and we are going to be able to get both through lucky Hoodoo, because lucky Hoodoo works where everything else doesn't work. In the long run, only lucky Hoodoo can do what you really want it to do for you.

Then we have the spirits. The spirits are the powers that can't be seen except with second sight. They can't be heard except with second hearing. They can't be touched except with the second touch. These second senses are powers we all have and use without even knowing about it. Some people become very successful through the use of the second senses. They call themselves readers and advisors of spiritual truth. Lucky Hoodoo can make you into one of these if you want to do that also. But it is all done by the spirits working with you and for you. That is why Voudoo power secrets depend upon the spirits. Let me tell you more about these spirits. Long ago there was a big island between Africa and Haiti called "Atlantis" and because of many earthquakes, it sank under the ocean called the "Atlantic." One time there was a big school of magick on the island of this same Atlantis and the magicians were very powerful. What they didn't know when they were alive they soon learned after they died. The island, as we said, just sank under the ocean and the magicians went down with it. But they didn't die, they just became spirits with fish-like bodies and frog-like bodies, and snake-like bodies. They did this so they could continue their work under the ocean, in their big temple down at the bottom of the sea. They are still down there, but they are also spirits and as spirits they are able to do a lot of things. In fact they know how to do more things now than they knew a long time ago. The older they get the more powerful they get.

Now, under the sea there is a great forest with all kinds of sea-trees and seabushes, and sea-plants growing in it. This is the great woods of the old island of Atlantis. There is an old king who is a very powerful spirit-magician and he is the "Master of the Words on the Island Under the Sea." We call him "Maitre" or "Ma-Trn for short. He is the king of the spirits on his island and he is a very powerful god of Voudoo. He has given to me a group of His spirits to help those who are making use of this course to become powerful. I call His spirits the "Hoo-Spirits," because they make up one half of the team of spirits in lucky Hoodoo.

On the other hand, in the world of the Dead, there is another great king who is called "Papa Nibbho." He is the king of the spirits of the Dead, and they have the name of Ghuedhe, or "the Gay-Days." They are the subjects of old Papa Nibbho, who is the king of time and eternity and who always was and who always will be. His spirits look like ghosts or like walking bones, and skeletons and often have the faces of those who have passed on. But they are all subjects of the king of the spirits of the dead, or Papa Nibbho. I call these spirits the "Doo-Spirits," for they make up the second group of spirits in lucky Hoodoo, or the second half of our team. They do not look like Turtles, Fish, Frogs, and Snakes — that is the way in which the Hoospirits look. The Doo-Spirits look like dead people.

Now these two groups of spirits come together and make our system of lucky Hoodoo very powerful, because they represent the most powerful elemental forces in the universe for practical magick. The spirits of the dead come from the north angle of the spirit world and are from the element of earth, upon which everything must be built. The spirits of the sea-magicians come from the west angle of the spirit world and are from the element of water. Everything must depend upon water if it is to live and grow, so it is with the spirits and their projects. We want things to be practical and we want them to be successful. That is why we work with these two wonderful families of spirits.

Now there are many other spirits who will be able to work with you and we will talk about them as we move along in our study. The important fact is that we work with the spirits and that the spirits are quite wonderful and helpful for us.

Actually, if you treat them well you will find that they are more willing to help you than often you are ready to have them. That is because people are not ready for the help of the spirits and so they are not ready to show the spirits that thay want to make use of them. The spirits only wish for you to have something for them to do and also they expect that you will be able to pay them off for their service. This is only fair for they do everything and can do anything, and they ask only something very small in the way of payment.

Now to become a lucky Hoodoo it is first of all necessary for you to do a little Voudoo ritual and say the following prayer to the spirits. This will show them that you are ready to work with them for what you want. This will show them you really mean business and that you are serious in seeking favors and objects of desire through their powers. This prayer will show them that you are ready to dedicate yourself to them so that they might gain influence over more and more human beings and thus bring back the old golden age of peace and plenty. This ritual will serve as your self-initiation into the system of lucky Hoodoo, which is a religious belief as ancient as the islands below the oceans.

DEDICATION TO THE HOODOO SPIRITS
Part 1. In a quiet place, you will sit at a table upon which you have placed two candles. A black candle has been placed in the north and a blue candle has been placed in the west. You will face east or in the eastern direction. You will have a glass of water placed in the south, directly opposite the black candle.
Part 2. You will now say the following prayer to the Hoodoo spirits in order to make
your dedication to their powers and existence. First, you will light the black candle
and say,

"0 LIGHT THERE IS NO DARKNESS IN THE
POWERS OF THE DEAD"

Then you will light the blue candle and say,

"0 LIGHT I AM A CHILD OF THE LIGHT OF
THE GREAT MASTER UNDER THE SEA"

Then you will touch the glass of water with your right hand, because it is nearest to your right hand and you will say,

"MEDIUM OF HOLY SPIRITS, THE WATERS BELOW
AND BENEATH ALL WORLDS THE HOLY SPIRITS OF
THE DEAD AND THE SEAS I AM HERE TO SERVE YOU."

Part 3. Then you will begin to say the following prayer of dedication to the spirits in a quiet voice or silently to show them that you mean real business.

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE SERVICE OF THE SPIRITS,
TO THE WONDERFUL SPIRITS OF THOSE DEAD ONES WHO
SEEK TO HELP ME, AND TO THOSE WONDERFUL SPIRITS
OF WISE MAGICIANS FROM UNDER THE SEA WHO COME IN
STRANGE FORMS.
"I ASK THE HELP AND PRESENCE OF THE HOODOO SPIRITS
AND I CALL UPON ALL BEINGS OF HOODOO TO AID AND
ASSIST ME.
"I OFFER MYSELF TO THE SERVICE OF THE GREAT KING
OF THE DEAD WHO RULES OVER THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.
I OFFER MYSELF TO THE SERVICE OF THE GREAT MASTER
OF THE MAGICIAN SPIRITS WHO ARE WORKING UNDER THE
INVISIBLE SEAS. I HONOR ALL OF THE SPIRITS AND
ESPECIALLY THOSE OF HOODOO SCIENCE. THESE I SEEK
ESPECIALLY TO WORK WITH NOW AND FOREVER,

Part 4. You will now close you eyes and begin to think about the spirits and how they will come to you and what you wish for them to do for you. You will then be silent for a few minutes afterwards, you will first take the glass of water and drink it, for it has the spirit-power in it. You will then silently put out the blue and then the black candle. You will feel relaxed and peaceful, in love with all spirits and ready to obey them. Be sure of good luck, for you are becoming a Hoodoo.

Various Artists - LALYLAL: A Journey Into Obscure Ambient

From uncomfortable to beautiful, this mix is sure to stir some feelings (I hope).  It is not intended as a mix that you sit down and listen to but more as a background experience.  Do not try and take the music, instead let the music take you.

I had previously made a Gorish compilation but since this blog has taken yet another incarnation I thought it appropriate to make another one.

Enjoy the trip.

Tracklist:
01. Ain Soph - Decimus Gradus
02. Five Thousand Spirits - Limahians
03. Sola Translatio - The Gate
04. Subheim - Hush
04. Coil - 4-Indolol,3-[2-(Dimethylamino)Ethyl],Phosphate Ester: (Psilocybin)
06. Coil - Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)
07. Coil - Montecute
08. Coil - Magnetic North
09. Radio Amor - I'm Transmitting Tonight
10. Five Thousand Spirits - Lais
11. Sangre Cavallum - Barbara Carmina d.C.

Download:
http://www.adrive.com/public/ftUbQP/LALYLAL.zip

The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit by Robert Anton Wilson

Few of our ancestors were perfect ladies or gentlemen; the majority of them were not even mammals.

Any multi-cellular organism must, if it is to survive, contain a hard-wired bio-survival circuit, which very simply programs an either-or choice: GO FORWARD to the nourishing, the protective, or GO BACK, away from the threatening, the predatory.

Any mammal hooks the bio-survival circuit to the first imprinted bio-survival object: the teat. Bio-survival and orality are deeply blended in all mammals, including domesticated primates (humans). This is why, despite the Cancer Terror, an estimated 30,000,000 Americans still smoke cigarettes... Others chew gum (spearmint, juicy fruit, even sugar-free: something for every taste), bite their fingernails, gnaw their knuckles, scrunch pencil stubs, eat more than they need (Potato chips, anyone? a Mars bar maybe? pretzels, peanuts, cashews, do you want the cheese and crackers with your beer, Mac? And do try the canapes, Mrs. Miller). Some chew their lips, gobble tranks and uppers, even munch their mustaches. What goes on in the bedroom is known to the Kinsey Institute and anyone who has seen a porn film.

How important is this oral imprinting? We read of a baby giraffe whose mother was accidentally killed by a jeep immediately after birth. The neonate, following hard-wired genetic programs, "imprinted" the first object that roughly fit the giraffe archetype—the jeep itself. He followed the machine around, vocalized to it, attempted to suckle from it, and, when adult, tried to mate with it. Similarly, Konrad Lorenz tells of a gosling who accidentally imprinted a ping-pong ball and spent his adult life, indifferent to female geese, attempting to sexually mount ping-pong balls.

As Charles Darwin noted:

In our maturer years, when an object of vision is presented to
us which bears any similitude to the form of the female
bosom...we feel a general glow of delight which seems to
influence all of our senses...

The ancients pictured the great mother goddess Diana of Ephesus with literally dozens of breasts and St. Paul reports hearing her worshippers chanting rapturously "Great is Diana!" There is virtually no great artist who has not left us a portrait, or many portraits, of the nude female form, especially the breasts; and even in non-human scenes, curves are introduced wherever possible. Architects break the Euclidean straight line to introduce such curves at the slightest pretext—arches, Moorish domes, etc.

The curves of the suspension bridge are necessitated by Newton's laws ("Gravity's rainbow," in Pynchon's phrase) but, still, these double catenary curves are esthetically pleasing for the reasons Darwin suggests. As for music—where did we first hear it, who sang or hummed to us, and against what part of her body were we held?

Mountain climbers are reduced, like Mallory, to saying "Because it's there," when trying to explain their compulsion to ascend those conic peaks.

Our eating utensils (oral gratification tools) tend to be or curved. Square plates or saucers look "campy" or strange.

UFOs come in a variety of shapes, but the most popular are the oval and conic.

Freudians suggest that opiate addiction is an attempt to return to the womb. In keeping with our theory, it is more likely that opium and its derivatives return us to the "safe space" on the bio-survival circuit, the warm, snug place of bio-security; opiates may trigger neuro-transmitters characteristic of breast-feeding.

In summary: the bio-survival circuit is DNA-programmed to seek a comfort-safety zone around a mothering organism. If a mother isn't present, the closet substitute in the environment will be imprinted. For the orphan giraffe, a four-wheeled jeep was chosen to stand in for the four-legged mother. The gosling who could not find the round, white body of the mother-goose fixated a round, white ping-pong ball.

The "wiring" of this circuit, in primitive form, occurred in the first organisms, between three and four billion years ago. In the modern human, this structure remains in the brain stem and in the autonomic ( "involuntary ") nervous system, where it is interconnected with the endocrine and other life-support systems.

This is why disturbances on this circuit act "all over the body at once" and generally take the form of physical symptoms rather than "mental" symptoms and usually get referred to the M.D. instead of the psychiatrist.

It must be stressed that we are still in a primitive stage of evolution and conditions on this planet are quite brutal. Radical pediatricians insist, with good evidence, that childbirth by conventional means in a conventional hospital is almost always traumatic for the newborn—creates a bad imprint, in our language. Our child-rearing methods are far from ideal also, adding bad conditioning on top of bad imprinting. And the general violence of our societies to date—including wars, revolutions, civil wars and the "undeclared civil war" of the predatory criminal class in every "civilized" nation—keeps the first circuit of most people in an emergency state far too much of the time.

In 1968, a U.S. Public Health survey showed that 85% of the population had one or more symptoms that we would call bad first-circuit imprinting or conditioning. These symptoms included dizzy spells, heart palpitations, wet palms and frequent nightmares.

This means that 85 out of the next 100 people you meet should be regarded as, more or less, "the Walking Wounded."

This is the first level of meaning in our brutal, cynical proposition that most people are almost as mechanical as sci-fi robots. A man or woman entering a new situation with the anxiety chemicals of a frightened infant coursing through the brain stem is not going to be able to observe, judge or decide anything very accurately.

And this is why Gurdjieff said, in his own jargon, that people are asleep and having nightmares.

"FAIRNESS? DECENCY? HOW CAN YOU EXPECT FAIRNESS OR DECENCY ON A PLANET OF SLEEPING PEOPLE?" — G.I. Gurdjieff

This was the viewpoint of the earliest Christians, later condemned as heretics (Gnostics) by the Roman bureaucrats. The Gospel of Truth, first century, says bluntly that history is a nightmare:

... as if (mankind) were sunk in sleep and found themselves in
disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place to which they are
fleeing...or they are involved in striking blows, or they are
receiving blows themselves... sometimes it is as if people were
murdering them...or they themselves are killing their
neighbors...

To these first Christians, as to the Buddhists, awakening literally meant coming out of this nightmare of terrifying fantasies. In our terminology, it means correcting the editing that cause us to behave and perceive like very badly (inappropriately) wired robots and suddenly seeing the unedited world.

It must be emphasized that this circuit, being the oldest in evolutionary development, is the most mechanical, and the most rapid. One is not conscious of time at all on the bio-survival circuit. Observe the speed of your dog's reaction at the first sound of an intruder: the threatening bark, and the movement of the whole body to alert status, is automatic. Then the dog starts taking in other cues, to determine how this particular intruder should be treated.

As Robert Ardrey reports the remarks of primatologist Ray Carpenter, to understand this part of your brain...

Imagine that you are a monkey and you're running along a
path past a rock and unexpectedly meet face to face another
animal. Now, before you know whether to attack it, to flee it,
or to ignore it, you must make a series of decisions. Is it
monkey or non-monkey? If non-monkey, is it pro-monkey or
anti-monkey? If monkey, is it male or female? If female, is she
interested? If male, is it adult or juvenile? If adult, is it of my
group or some other?... You have about one fifth of a second
to make all these decisions, or you could be attacked.

The bio-survival program first attaches to the safe space around the mother (oral imprint), and then with age moves further and further out, exploring what is safe and what is not. Without hard-wired genetic programs (i.e., automatic programs) this second stage would be impossible, and no mammal would ever leave the teat. The hard-wired programs act automatically (UNCONSCIOUSLY) because if you had to stop and think out each situation, you would be eaten by the first predator.

Of course, the imprint is made by chance — by the circumstances at the moment of imprint vulnerability. (Recall the gosling who imprinted the ping-pong ball.) Some imprint bravery, inquisitiveness and the exploratory drive; others imprint timidity, info-phobia (fear of the unpredictable) and withdrawal, of which the extreme case is the sad imprint called autism or childhood schizophrenia.

All of which is robotic, until one learns how to reprogram and re-imprint one's own brain circuits. In most cases, such meta-programming skill is never acquired. It all goes by in a flash, on mechanical auto-pilot, in zero time. "I just found myself doing it," says the soldier as he is being court-martialled for cowardice or decorated for bravery.

Of course, on top of the hard-wired imprinting of the bio-survival circuit comes "softer" conditioning. This allows the safe-space perimeter to be generalized outward from the mother's body to the pack or tribe—the "extended family."

Every social animal has, in addition to the Darwinian "instinct" (genetic program) of self-preservation, a similar "instinct" to protect the gene-pool. This is the basis of altruism, and social animals could not survive without it. Wild dogs (and wolves) bark to warn the rest of the pack that an intruder is coming. Your domesticated dog identifies you as a pack-leader; he barks to warn you that an intruder is coming. (He also barks, of course, to warn the intruder that he is ready to fight
for his territory.)

As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely diagnosed "anomie" or "alienation" or "existential anguish" about which so many social critics have written so eloquently. What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we call "money".

Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn't look for biosurvival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. "You can't live without money," as the Living Theatre troop used to cry out in anguish. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety appears at once.

Imagine, as vividly as possible, what you would feel, and what you would do, if all your sources to bio-survival tickets (money) were cut off tomorrow. This is precisely what tribal men and women feel if cut off from the tribe; it is why exile, or even ostracism, were sufficient punishments to enforce tribal conformity throughout most of human history. As recently as Shakespeare's day the threat of exile was an acute terror signal ("Banished!" cries Romeo, "the damned use that word in Hell!")

In traditional society, belonging to the tribe was bio-security; exile was terror, and real threat of death. In modern society, having the tickets (money) is bio-security; having the tickets withdrawn is terror.

Welfare-ism, socialism, totalitarianism, etc. represent attempts, in varying degrees of rationality and hysteria, to re-create the tribal bond by making the State stand-in for the gene-pool.

Conservatives who claim that no form of Welfare is tolerable to them are asking that people live with total bio-survival anxiety and anomie combined with terror. The conservatives, of course, vaguely recognize this and ask for "local charity" to replace State Welfare — i.e., they ask for the gene-pool to be restored by magic, among people (denizens of a typical city) who are not genetically related at all.

On the other hand, the State is not a gene-pool or a tribe, and cannot really play the bio-survival unit convincingly. Everybody on Welfare becomes paranoid, because they are continually worrying that they are going to get cut off ("exiled") for some minor infraction of the increasingly incomprehensible bureaucratic rules. And in real totalitarianism, in which the bogus identification of the State with the tribe is carried to the point of a new mysticism, the paranoia becomes total.

Real bonding can only occur in face-to-face groups of reasonable size. Hence, the perpetual attempt (however implausible in industrial circumstances) to decentralize, to go back to the tribal ethos, to replace the State with syndicates (as in anarchism) or affinity-groups (Reich's "Consciousness III"). Recall the hippie crash-pad of the sixties, which lives on in many rural communes. Back in the real world, the tickets called "money" are the bio-survival bond for most people.

Anti-Semitism is a complex aberration, of many facets and causes, but in its classic form (the "Jewish Bankers' Conspiracy") it simply holds that a hostile gene-pool controls the tickets for bio-security. Such paranoia is inevitable in a money economy; junkies have similar myths about who controls the supply of heroin. Thus, as anti-Semitism has declined in America, the "Bankers' Conspiracy" lives on in a new form. Now the villains are old New England WASP families, the "Yankee Establishment." Some Leftists will even show you charts of the genealogies of these WASP bankers, the way anti-Semites used to show Rothschild genealogies.

C.H. Douglas, the engineer and economist, once made up a chart, which he showed to the MacMillan Commission in 1932 when they were discussing money and credit regulation. The chart graphed the rise and fall of interest rates from the defeat of Napoleon in 1812 to the date the Commission met in 1932, and on the same scale, the rise and fall of the suicide rate in that one twenty-year period.

The two curves were virtually identical. Every time the interest rate went up, so did the suicide rate; when interest went down, so did suicide. This can hardly be "coincidence." When interest rises, a certain number of businessmen go bankrupt, a certain number of workers are thrown out of their jobs, and everybody's bio-survival anxiety generally increases.

Marxists and other radicals are urgently aware of such factors in "mental health" and hence scornful of all types of academic psychology which ignore these bio-survival issues. Unfortunately, the Marxist remedy—making everybody dependent for bio-survival on the whims of a State bureaucracy—is a cure worse than the disease.

Bio-survival anxiety will only permanently disappear when world-wide wealth has reached a level, and a distribution, where, without totalitarianism, everyone has enough tickets. The Hunger Project, the idea of the Guaranteed Annual Income, Douglas' National Dividend plan, etc. represent groping toward that goal. The ideal can only be achieved in a technology of abundance.

Extreme cases—persons who take their heaviest imprint on the first (oral) circuit—tend to be viscerotonic, because this imprint determines lifelong endocrine and glandular processes. Thus, in extreme they are "baby-faced" in adult life, never lose their "baby-fat," are plump and round and gentle, etc. They are easily "hurt" (threatened: terrified) by disapproval of any sort, because in the baby-circuit of the brain, disapproval suggests extinction by loss of the food supply.

We all have this circuit and need to exercize it periodically. Cuddling, sucking, hugging etc. and daily playing with (a) one's own body (b) another's body and (c) the environment, are perpetually necessary to neurosomatic-endocrine health. Those who deny such primordial functions because of rigid imprinting on the Third (rationalistic) or Fourth (moralistic) circuit tend to become "dried up," "prune-faced," unattractive, "cold," and muscularly rigid.

The baby-functions of playing with one's own body, another's body and the environment continue throughout life in all animals. This "playfulness" is a marked characteristic of all conspicuously healthy individuals of the sort Maslow calls "selfactualizers." If this initial imprint is negative—if the universe in general and other humans in particular are imprinted as dangerous, hostile and frightening—the Prover will go on throughout life adjusting all perceptions to fit this map. This is what is known as the "Injustice Collector" syndrome (in the language of Dr. Edmund Bergler). The female members of this imprint goup become Radical Feminists; the male members are less organized and can be found in fringe groups of the extreme Left and extreme Right.

Such a pattern is unconscious in three ways. It is unconscious because automatic: it happens without thought, as a robot program. It is also unconscious because it began before the infant had language and hence it is pre-verbal, inarticulate, felt rather than considered. And it is unconscious because it is all-over-thebody-at-once. Specifically, it is characterized by the Respiratory Block first noted by Wilhelm Reich: a chronic muscular armoring that prevents proper, relaxed breathing. Popular speech recognizes this state as "being up-tight."

All of the most successful reimprinting techniques (therapies) for this kind of chronic anxiety work on the body first, not on the "mind." The Reichians, Rolfers, Primal Scream therapists, Orr's "rebirthers," Gesaltists, etc. all know, whatever specialized jargons they may use, that a bad bio-survival imprint can only be corrected by working on the biological being itself, the body that feels perpetually vulnerable and under attack. Even Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) begins by inducing the patient to relax and breathe easily.

As Gregory Bateson has pointed out. Konrad Lorenz acquired his marvelous insights into the imprinting process—for which he won the Nobel prize—by consciously imitating the body movements of the animals he was studying. Watching Lorenz lecture, one could "see" each animal he discussed, because Lorenz would dramatize or "become" that animal, in the manner of a Method Actor.

Even earlier, Wilhelm Reich discovered that he could understand his patients with remarkable clarity by imitating their characteristic body movements and postures. The bio-survival imprints, especially traumatic ones, are all-over-the-body, frozen (in Reich's metaphor) in chronic muscle and gland mechanisms.

If you can't understand somebody's "irrational" behavior, start by observing their breathing. You will very quickly get an idea of what is bothering them. This is why all schools of yoga—Buddhist, Hindu or Sufi—place such emphasis on restoring natural breathing before trying to move the student on to higher circuits and wider consciousness.

This is of more than "psychological" import. Every study of the psychosomatic aspects of cancer and asthma, for instance, finds this pattern of chronic muscular contraction (subjectively felt as anxiety) among the predisposing factors. What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. People are strangling their inner organs every day because they are afraid.

Mary Baker Eddy may have been exaggerating slightly when she said, "All illness is manifested fear;" but holistic medicine more and more recognizes that if that damned word "all" is replaced by a more tentative "most," Mrs. Eddy was close to the facts.

Even old-fangled M.D.s who won't consider holistic ideas for a minute, admit that some persons are mysteriously "more susceptible" to disease than other persons. What is this metaphysical "susceptibility"? Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has collected numerous statistics on children who were deprived of maternal love at the crucial point of imprint vulnerability in infancy. They not only died younger than the national average, but were sicklier all their lives and even grew up to be several inches shorter than the average adult height for their sex.

What makes for "susceptibility" (aside from possible geneticfactors) can only be such an anxiety imprint (muscle tension) on the first circuit. Christian Science—or any other religion that dogmatically insists that "God" wants us to be happy and successful—can cure such conditions "miraculously." What the Thinker thinks the Prover proves. Absolute faith that "God" is supporting you, beamed out from the brain all day long, day after day, signals the muscles to relax, and natural buoyancy and health returns.

Throughout human life, when the bio-survival circuit senses danger, all other mental activity ceases. All other circuits shut down until the bio-survival problem is "solved," realistically or symbolically. This is of crucial importance in mind-washing and brain-programming.

To create a new imprint, first reduce the subject to the state of infancy, i.e., bio-survival vulnerability. In pre-neurological terms, the bio-survival circuit is what we usually call "consciousness," per se. It is the sense of being herenow, in this vulnerable body, subject to the raw energies and forces of the physical universe. When we are "unconscious," the bio-survival circuit is turned off and doctors may cut us up without our attempting to flee or even crying out.