Sacred Autobiography

the so-called soul's code

When I was 19 years old (using Earth’s solar calendar), we spent a whole afternoon watching the failure of a television. No cable. No satellite. No internet. Just shifting static, blurry pixels, and the occasional momentary bleed through of distorted images from local broadcasting stations.

And who where “we” ?

These friends were a small cabal of 1990s surrealist-occultists, pataphysicians & poets who called ourselves: Vau. Mostly male. Mostly subversive intellectuals. You will not be shocked to learn that we published an occult ‘zine called Don’t Fool Yourself, Girl.

That title — like so many things we did back then — was a synchronicity-inspired Cabbalistic joke. Or Cabbalistic trans-joke. Many things manifest better when you think you are “just pretending.”

One of our many experiments was to spend an entire day watching a television set that did not receive any clear broadcast channels. Liminal, psychoactive television. Sitting together, hour after hour, we slid into willful delirium. Persuaded by our own trances, we collaboratively imagined hidden signals in the noise. Naturally, our conversation began to reflect upon the “magical act of viewing.”

Were we also a blurry channel for another nebulous audience? Was God watching us? If so, what kind of shows did s/He prefer? What would it be like to live as though our moral and existential duty was to entertain the Great Viewer? And why am I mentioning this in an article about sacred autobiography?

Personal stories, with embedded fragments of wisdom lore, are very pertinent. Our fluid autobiography is the central symbolic junction that can organize our inner and outer multiplicity of forces. It not only serves to integrate and refine our sense of self but it also acts as the underlying medium of all our communication.

Anciently, autobiographical storytelling was the primary setting for transmission among magical bodies. For the longest period of human history, we lacked all books and recordings. Instead, tribal depth-intelligence passed from elders to peers and apprentices through repeated, songs & life-stories at the fireside.