Aspects of Chaosophy
by Frater Harpo Ben Ishmael Bey
(notes)
The man in motley as the archetype: the divine fool, green man- in real
life, the Sufi mystic, poet-philosopher, whose tales function on many
levels... the artist as initiate-by-intuition. Shaman and Sufi are the
root-forms... the "black" in black arts did not originally refer to any
association with any prince of darkness, but to the whole complex of
spiritual and magical traditions with roots in ancient Africa and Egypt...
necessity of secrecy limits groups to small gatherings, inspires in-group
signs, code-words, hand- shakes, intimate communion of shared mindspace
largely absent from majority culture... a vigilant attention, awareness of
true presence in the present, etc... to choose consciousness over
consensus is always regarded with suspicion by the majority - the very
definition of madness in totalitarian states... and yet, by some sort of
Lemarckian evolution, the conspiratorial heart of active imagining has
been hard-wired into "mind," a major tool of consciousness, never "meant"
to be used once or twice and discarded, its value is as continuous aid to
navigation through the chaosea of possibility. The prophet as shining
beacon is the symbol of the collective's amplification and projection of
its members inner lights... or should be. To each his or her own taproot
to the underground source... we all contain the chaosufic circuit, only
most of us are too damaged, dazzled and brutalized by the demands of
post-modern life and all of our mechanical and electronic masters to ever
really hear the song of our own being, let alone sing it, let alone to
hear and harmonize with the essential songs of our fellow creatures. The
true poets of our time are virtually unknown and largely unheeded, but are
nevertheless of the greatest importance. Their invisible influence
embraces the whole world.