G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 113

The Hanged Man

Another poem from Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul

… this one from the Epilogue. It’s called the Hanged Man.

Above me a point

Below me its reflection in matter

The sun and the moon to either side

I am the centre of a circle

Hanging in space

Here there is no motion

All is timeless and harmony

The centre of a circle but wait

I am slowly rotating

Hanging in space

I have become one

With the all that is and is not

At the centre of the circle of life

Soon I will be upside down

Hanging in space

As the Hanged Man I gain new perspective

The above is now my below

And the below my above

Hanging in space

The Fool’s Journey

The last few weeks have seen me return to thoughts about the Way of the Fool. As if by magic, this has been reinforced as I reread a book called The Zelator which outlines the Way of the Fool extremely well. I will post a review of the book when I am finished with it but I can highly recommend it none the less.

All this thought took me back to Inner Journeys in which the prologue is a poem I wrote about the Fool’s Journey. Here it is….

If you need some answers

Look deep inside your mind

For the inside is the outside

Where all answers you can find

On the Fool’s long journey

You must start right at the end

And walk your way backwards

Imagination – just pretend

Carrying life’s baggage

Walking on the edge of doom

Where the Sun is new and hot

And smiles back at the Moon

The Emperor sits on his throne

But the Empress bears a sign

Parents to all creation

Through all of endless time

The Devil speaks of bondage

You must die to be newborn

Learn the answer to the riddle

Set before the primal dawn

Cast a stone into your mind pool

And watch it ripple through

For the answer to your question

Will be found deep within you

When travelling this journey

You must learn to be the Fool

And look for words of wisdom

In the humble Mason’s tool

For in the Understanding

Of Knowledge lies the key

The Fool was once the prodigal

And I know that Fool is me!

The Humble Magician

I found an interesting Bardon Discussion Group recently and joined it. Posted there over the last few weeks were a number of posts by someone referred to as the humble magician. It made fascinating reading. One of the members has created a website and included this correspondence. It may be found here. The site is in progress but it looks as if it will be a valuable resource in time.

The conversation is fascinating and I would ask anyone who reads it what they make of it…..

Time for Change

Just recently it seems a lot of ordinary people have gotten quite angry. In India, the brutal rape and, let’s call it what it was and say murder, of a young innocent student has caused a backlash of ordinary people demanding the government finally deal with the issue of rape. In the USA, anonymous is making sure that everyone is aware of the repeated rape of a high school girl by the town’s popular high school football team is kept in the news and they are not allowing the town to conveniently sweep the event under the carpet. In Pakistan, a teenage girl shot by the Taliban for defending women’s right to an education has caused a similar outcry. This is good but it’s not enough.

We live in a world where good things are often hijacked by misguided people. Islam is a peaceful and beautiful religion but it has been hijacked for the purpose of hatred, violence and control. High school and college sports should be about teamwork and competitive spirit and for fun. Yet they have been all too often hijacked by those who would rather win at any cost and who reward their athletes with drugs and turn a blind eye to indiscretions and worse. It seems to be the human condition to take something intrinsically good and darken it. To take something that should provide solace to the soul and food for the spirit and sell it down the river in the name of control.

How much hatred is there in this world? One only has to read of an Italian soccer team walking away from a game because of senseless racist chants or better still, read the comments on and CNN story on its website to realize that hatred is endemic. An Argentine President whose country is a shambles and whose people are unhappy last week tries to deflect attention using the Falklands. She tries to inflame people with hatred in order to control and distract them. It’s easy to do. It must be. Hitler did it. Anyone can do it. Money, power, control, greed, sex and corruption are rife.

Yet I see some tentative green shoots early this year that maybe people have had enough. It’s time to take back from what I term the haters. It’s time to break down the system of controls. It’s time to call out hatred and control. There is only one way to do that though and it’s not through violence or creating an alternative set of controls. It’s through tolerance and love. It’s through learning to love yourself and reflecting that love outwards into the external reality that is our/your world. People are different; let’s celebrate those differences but let us not allow others to control us through fear or through forms of bribery. Be yourselves. Tolerate and enjoy our differences but let us call out hatred. Shine the light of love on it and see it wither and run.

Mad Gods and Englishmen by Ian Armer

Every now and then you stumble on a surprising book. Something entertaining that also makes you think. I would characterize Mad Gods and Englishmen by Ian Armer in that category. It is a fast-paced novel that almost from the first page is deliciously off-the-wall and yet takes the form of a familiar detective story set on the west coast of the USA. The hero or more likely, ant-hero, is one Tommy Storm; a down on his luck alcoholic private detective whose brains are more than likely situated in his trousers. He’s a loathsome character if the truth be told. The kind of chap I would go miles to avoid. However, there is his doppleganger, the other Tommy Storm who is the light to the other’s darkness. Right from the off, this is a story with a theme and that theme is the nature of reality. In Armer’s reality, opposite twins had suddenly appeared, and so there are two Tommy Storms; like ying and yang. Armer has some fun with this as you might expect and some rather comedic dialogue ensues as Tommy and himself talk.

On the surface, the story is of a Hollywood movie magnate who hires a private detective to find his daughter who is having an affair with the lead man in his latest movie. As the story progresses however, it becomes a unique view of a reality that is more than tinged with Gnosticism. God is involved, of course, as the title suggests but this is a God that few would recognize and a version of the Universe that puts a unique and interesting spin on the entire story. It makes you think.

Armer’s story telling is fluid and witty but a tad coarse. The dark Tommy is not a nice man and he is constantly threatened by other not very nice men. In a sense, the darkness of the character is also comedic at times as he tries to make sense of a series of bizarre events when actually he would rather be drunk or satiating his sexual energy – or both. The way in which events unfold and entangle Tommy is written with pace – almost staccato and keeps you nose to page until the end.

In the end, Mad Gods and Englishman is an ambitious book and Ian Armer pulls it off very well.

Paperback: 134 pages

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing (January 16, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 184694953X

ISBN-13: 978-1846949531

Amazon.com Widgets

A New Year

Perhaps you are wondering why I have gone so quiet? Maybe not but I havent posted much here for a couple of weeks. The reason is I am hard at work on my new book – a novel – and I cant stop working on it. It has become my obsession and every spare minute I am writing. The book is called The Last Observer and I first thought of the concept about five years ago. I discussed it with my eldest son in a pub in London around that time and he was very taken by the plot…so much so he keeps asking me how it is going….

So here we are in another new year. In reality, its just another day and I have always wondered why folks get so excited by it. Maybe I am just not fun loving or something but it always seemed a pointless holiday to me. We flip over the calendar page 365 times a year and when we get to the end we celebrate and start the cycle all over again. I suppose though it is symbolic of a fresh start, a clean slate. We can for one day make a clean break with the past and start anew. But we can chose to do that anytime and every day when we awake we can make our affirmations for the day knowing its a new day… A new start.

As I read the news today not much has changed. The same stories, the same tragedies, the same hatreds and intolerances cry out from the page. So if individually we are all making a new start how come collectively nothing at all changed?

My hope for the new year is that more of us will start working for a new reality. One in which love is the centerpiece. Its our reality so why let the haters hijack it?

So let us all start our days this new year by spending just a few moments before we get out of bed in the morning imagining a love centered world……lets see what happens if we do shall we?

Happy Christmas

Dad and Magick

I was thinking tonight about the fact that I always had the thought that my Father had something important to tell me. We discussed it a few times but never could come up with anything that seemed significant. Tonight, I was thinking about magick, reality and imagination. Suddenly a thought popped into my head. Driving around and around the block in Brno one night with my Dad sat next to me looking for the elusive parking space Dad said “When I need a parking space I just believe there will be one and you know, there always is.” Blow me down with a feather – my Dad was a magician and in that one innocent statement he described the art. I am sure I heard him chuckle….

Living a Double Life

And now for a small expression of frustration! Actually, this is another take on what is a theme for me I think. You see I seem to be a double act.

On the one hand we have the ordinary me. I can be described as a somewhat cantankerous, somewhat perverse person who is prone to be lazy, probably selfish and always seems to have no time. I am ‘sucked in’ by the sheer pace and complexity of life; big job, lot’s of stress, worried about the kids, worried about the fact that I am worried, scared half shitless when I look in a mirror and realize I have wrinkles, gray hair and a belly and time is running out. Frustrated that I cannot quit smoking and I seem to have all the willpower of an ant. You know what I mean right? I am just a human that sometimes feels like life is just totally out of control.

On the other, on rare occasions I discover another me. This one seems somewhat tuned in, focused on self improvement, content – even happy. He doesn’t want anything in particular but to be happy, pursue a spiritual life and share what he can with those that have any interest. Quite honestly, this person would be happy to live in a one room bedsit and meditate all day. I think this person, feeling connected with the All and Everything is sympathetic, unselfish and actually rather nice. He also takes his magickal studies seriously.

And there is my frustration. I would like person no. 2 above to become the dominant one. The one that was present most of the time but no matter how I try it doesn’t or won’t happen. In fact, I can’t even remember most of the time to follow through with exercises like blessing food and drink, using water to wash away unwanted aspects of myself and so on (see Bardon for details of these exercises). Sometimes, I am so far away from being person No. 2 I wonder if he really exists or I just imagined him.

Life is just too damned charismatic……

Poems for the Little Room

This morning I went down to the post office with a delivery slip. I had hoped it was a shipment of the Mystical Hexagram but in fact it was five copies of my second poetry book from Lulu called Poems for the Little Room. I had never before ordered a copy so it was the first time I had seen it on paper…. Well, I must congratulate Lulu. It is beautifully put together and I am really very happy with it. Having said that, it is rather pricey for a little book but still…. The quality more than makes up for it.

The book contains a bunch of more recent poems combined with photographs taken by my partner and together, it makes for a pleasant experience especially given the quality of the printing and paper used by Lulu.

The book is $17.50 or $5 electronic format.