Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 4 - 4/18/23

 

Why try? Why put in any effort? Just cuz Hamlet's dumbass did? How'd that end up for him?

We won scratch on all 3 of these, though, so I guess that's worth something.

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 3 - 4/11/23

 

    In the first few months of 1946, Jack Parsons performed extensive ritual work in the Mojave desert, which he called the BABALON Working. His notes on the process record several physical encounters with unseen forces, as well as auditory phenomenon. At the end of this ritual, he met Marjorie Cameron, whom he identified as the elemental that he was attempting to summon. For her part, Marjorie Cameron seems to not have entirely agreed with Parsons, as she had an entire life prior to their meeting, although her interest in Thelemism did grow during the course of their relationship.

    There is no summoner without the summoned, and no summoned with the summoner. No observer with the observed. Our chosen roles in these relationships crumbling into dust under the slightest scrutiny, as we instead are dragged toward an inevitable future that has already decided its past. The preparations were done before we thought of them. The groundwork laid while we slept. The decisions made before we even arrived at the questions. 

Our present manifesting its past to justify its existence. Our future manifesting this present to the same end. Samsara's grip. The pins know, though.

13. Thou shalt offer all thou art and all thou hast at my altar, witholding nothing. And thou shalt be smitten full sore and thereafter thou shalt be outcast and accursed, a lonely wanderer in abominable places.
14. Ye Dare. I have asked of none other, nor have they asked. Else is vain. But thou hast willed it.
15. Know then that thus I came to thee before, thou a great Lord, and I a maid enrapt. Ah blind folly.
16. And thereafter madness, all in vain. Thus it has been, multi- form. How thou hast burned beyond.
17. I shall come again, in the form thou knowest. Now it shall be thy blood.

 

(from LIBER 49, by Jack Parsons)

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 2 - 4/4/23

 

    The distinction between ghosts and memories is arbitrary and falls apart under a bit of scrutiny. They are both methods in which the "past" extends its influence to the "present." Warnings, lessons, hauntings - all functionally the same things. The precise nature of these communications are similar, too. A memory from my past can be shared if I tell it to you, much like a haunting can be transferred from me to you (or shared, even), if the haunting spirit is capable of doing so. 

    So, when we look at our past and see failures, we can treat it like a ghost and exorcise it from our lives. Some believe that hauntings occur when an entity has left something unaccomplished in this world, and is seeking assistance in its resolution. But what if we treated these hauntings more like the memories they resemble? What if, instead of fearing a haunting and being terrorized by the past's horrors made corporeal, we accepted these terrors as a normal presence in our world? Not in an exploitative way, but in a way where we respect all aspects of life, even those that are no longer alive?

    The memories/ghosts of a losing season will forever be with us. It is important that we use these ghosts to live out a best life. Erasing them cannot change the past's reality. The ghosts of the losing league are us, and we must use this haunting to win in the present.