Sick of Politics? Try Some Exopolitics, Folks! (repost)

In our bi-polar universe everything occurs in paired opposites, even star systems. Just as we're all aware of the value of balancing our yins and our yangs (our female and male aspects, for those who no spik Chinee; our warps and woofs, for those who speak only Caninese), the entire galaxy - perhaps the Whole Universe - is seeking to align and synchronize its inner and outer workings, particularly at auspicious junctures like NOW - when cycles micro and macro are converging and culminating in what Terence McKenna called "Singularity" (and the rest of us are happy to call plain old Oneness).


Just as every plug seeks a socket, stars too are seeking realignment and reconnection with their polar counterparts: Sirius (M) is beginning to recognize the Pleiades (F) as its stellar spouse. For as long as we can remember Sirius has dominated the Earth's northern hemisphere - the "upper" chakras - while Pleiadian energies have ruled the southern hemisphere - the "lower" chakras). Sirius claims paternity over earthian humanity and is constantly trying to mold us in its own image (that's where the patriarchal Elohim operate from, especially those emanating from IHVH, whose unruly stepchildren, the Anunnaki, colonized the planet and manufactured the Adamic race to perform menial tasks... but the genes mutated out of control!).


The Pleiades is a very complex star alliance comprising a bewildering assortment of evolutionary possibilities - hence, its influence is more "motherly" and not so dogma-bound.

Orion, I think, might be a gay system with a crush on Sirius - hence the close collaboration between these two stars in Egyptian lore. That fancy belt with three flashing rhinestones is a dead giveaway, even though they're supposed to be stargates!


So what about Arcturus? Well, I was greatly chuffed when I got hold of José Argüelles's Surfers of the Zuvuya in which he presents a star map depicted as a kabbalistic Tree of Life, showing Arcturus as the male aspect of Antares. Indeed, José talks about the Arcturus-Antares Midway Station - a sort of conference center serving the Milky Way - where souls assemble to discuss, well, galactic affairs. Many of us, José says, spend some of our sleeping hours "there" trading gossip and catching up on the real news - but have no memory of it when we "wake up."

Indeed, José Argüelles is so sure of his Arcturian origins he updated his calling card to read: "Valum Votan, Arcturian Minister" and his wife, Lloydine, became Bolon Ik (see their website www.tortuga.com). I don't doubt José's claim. If you've read any of his magnificent books, his intuitive grasp of cosmic science and math boggles the more female Lemurian-Pleiadian mind. Maybe Buckminster Fuller was from Arcturus too?

The native Maya - like the majority of indigenous tribes on earth - have a special connection with the Pleiades. So how does Arcturus fit into the Mayan Factor? My take on this is that the Arcturians brought their crystalline intelligence to bear on the Lemurian remnant by incarnating as their gods. So we have all these Pleiadian-seeded tribes worshiping Arcturian god-kings whose grasp of cosmic sciences and higher mathematics produced artifacts like Angkor Wat, the Easter Island heads, Tiahuanaco, Machu Picchu, and the great ziggurats of Central America.

My intuition informs me that Arcturians are incredibly technical intelligences - galactic engineers in charge of grid maintenance and repair. A clairvoyant friend who lives in Sodus, New York, told me (after I sent her a webcam view of Mount Shasta) that she dreamt she was deep within the bowels of Shasta where she witnessed the arrival of an Arcturian technical team, who proceeded to download a vast computer program into the subterranean crystal bank. She felt she was sent there to receive a copy of the program within her cells which she could then take to Magick River and download into the quartz banks below the Mother Fall. She took this mission very seriously and paid her own airfare in 1999 to accomplish the task. From Sodus, New York, to Magick River, Malaysia - just to install some dadfangled Arcturian software in the innards of the heart chakra portal! That's dedication for you. Anyway, her mission was successfully accomplished on April 12th, 1999 (I was there with one other witness). Amyras - that's her spiritual tag - informed me that there were vast numbers of nature spirits and guardians protecting the Mother Fall.

I had already felt that, but it was good to have it confirmed by a "pro." Since then, I've had quite a few psychics turn up who, without any prompting, immediately identified me as the guardian of the interdimensional portal at Magick River. Almost freaky - but, then, being an Antarean, I'm used to funny stuff like that happening.

Now, all this talk about Sirians and Pleiadians and Arcturians and Antareans might sound a tad complicated - but if you look at it as you would a history of North America, with a complex of indigenous tribes apparently overrun and colonized by bearded palefaces from across the sea (or outer space) - each with a different language and culture (Nordic, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, British, German, French, Russian, Jewish, Polish, etc) - then it's fairly obvious that what goes on in the heavens is reflected right here on earth. It's all holograms, folks. So if you're bored with the primate politics of planet Earth, help yourself to a refreshing dose of exopolitics!

[First posted 29 August 2008]

AN EMAIL FROM MOSES (reprise)

It all began on 5 March 2010 with an email from Moses (above, left), who said he got my contact from Jason Rao - a young Malaysian who relocated to New Zealand a few years ago and found himself living with his German girlfriend in an artists' colony. Moses asked if he could come to Magick River "to meet indigenous people, learning from them to make music in their ways, spend good times together, eat, share and come together for a better world and understanding."


I replied: "Sure, you're welcome to spend a few days up here, especially if you smell good and are musical 😁 You may be a bit disappointed if you're hoping to jam with the Orang Asli (the indigenous folks who live here). The women and children are irresistible but the adult males are, for the most part, a lost cause. Anyway, I have a few instruments lying around and we can always have some fun on my scenic veranda. The biggest attraction here is the river. You didn't mention whether you're traveling alone or with friends..."


The Love Bus rolls up at Magick River

Next thing I know, Moses shows up at my doorstep accompanied by nine members of the Love Bus. For a moment I was aghast at his huge entourage, but as they trudged up the steps lugging heavy backpacks and various musical instruments, a quick scan revealed them to be mostly human angels, accompanied by a couple of monks in mufti. So I welcomed them all with a big grin, little realizing that this was the beginning of a new era at Magick River.




As it turned out, Moses is a 31-year-old former theology student from Germany officially named Andreas Moser. He's also a consummate musician and composer with a passionate, theatrical singing style. In Australia he had met up with Mitch Gittoes (a talented rapper and street musician) and a French accordionist named Pierrick Hamonet (who looks like a Merovingian prince).


They began busking together and subsequently were joined by Josh Lee (right) and his sister Tabitha (both inspired singer-songwriters whose Malaysian-born mother works as a policewoman in Brisbane). They talked about buying an old bus and driving around the country making music and generating happy vibes. Someone suggested the name "Love Bus."

The Love Bus traveled to New Zealand where they picked up audio engineer Charlie Baggins (not his real name) and Erin Crowley (a pixie-faced singer-songwriter). By the time they arrived in KL the Love Bus had attracted many more ad hoc members - mostly musicians, but those who couldn't play any instruments just sang and danced and looked incredibly appealing.



They busked at various locations in KL, using a backpacker hostel named Le Village as their base. The owner let them stay for free and they reciprocated by luring more travelers to stay at the guesthouse. Many ended up joining the Love Bus, which is a constantly changing molecular Rainbow Family.

Living outside the 3D Matrix

When we started the Magick River project in 1992, part of the vision was that we would attract a small transient population of musicians, writers, sculptors, dancers, poets, painters - and perhaps a handful of visionary engineers, permaculturists, ethnobotanists, and so on - who would form a self-sustaining, synergetic community of kindred spirits. One thing we would all have in common is an unwavering commitment to co-creating heaven on earth.

Over the last 18 years we have seen many colorful characters pass through the Magick River portal, some staying for weeks or even months, others only a few days - but each one has left an indelible energy imprint or at least a few fond memories. Magick River co-founder Mary Maguire, now my next-door neighbor, was equally receptive to the arrival of the Love Bus. "These are the beings we've been waiting to connect with for a long, long time!" she pronounced.

Most of the rainbow group are considerably younger than Mary and I - so we both feel a bit like surrogate parents. Yet in terms of our shared vision of what life could - and will - be on this planet when we've shed the old skin of reactionary competitiveness and scarcity conditioning, the Love Bus is like a massive shot in arm of pure youthful optimism.



These youngsters from the Love Bus are so open-hearted, clear-headed, receptive and savvy about what's going on in the world - and each one so eager to learn and to spread the Aquarian theme of universal love, reconciliation and redemption - Mary and I could only conclude that the Love Bus was an integral part of Magick River's ongoing evolution.

Who will inherit the earth? Cold-blooded corporations or warm-blooded human beings?

Anyway, since that first email from Moses, more than two months have elapsed. There has been a major political battle fought (and lost) in our neighborhood and a whole lot of murky water has flowed under the bridge. But the Love Bus is still around - though many relocated to Penang during the by-election, trickling back shortly after the dust settled. Now a handful of them have been recruited as extras in a feature film, Hanyut, directed by U-Wei Haji Saari. So they have been commuting between KL and KKB.

Nobody can predict how the story will unfold. Will the energy that brought the Love Bus together begin to dissipate along with the group? Or will their lively, colorful and highly musical presence spontaneously evolve into something as yet unimagined?



The Love Bus is an organic extension of what began in the subtler dimensions as the Earth Ascension project. I can't delve into the full story here but the same evolutionary impetus resurfaced more recently in the 1950s as the Beat Generation - with iconic characters like Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and Richard Fariña setting the tone for their 1960s successors, the Flower Power movement whose credo - Make Love, Not War - is still the soundest advice humanity can possibly follow.

When Big Business and Big Media figured out what was happening, they wasted no time co-opting the revolution and turning it into a fashion statement for weekend hippies. Thus began the materialistic Yuppie Era of the 1980s which appeared to have thwarted any possibility of real transformation within the human psyche. A new incarnation of fascistic totalitarianism began to rear its hideous head, manifesting most prominently as the Bush-Cheney regime in the US.

The real hippies simply moved out of the big cities, found some land to grow vegetables and raise their families. Some formed molecular communities with varying degrees of success. A few of these pioneer communities have lasted nearly 40 years - some fizzled out after six months. Those who found themselves displaced traveled to Asia - disappearing into the complexity and diversity of Mother India where they became known as Rainbow Families.



Many of the "original" hippies - some of whom became celebrities and gurus (like Tim Leary, Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey and Terence McKenna) - are now dead. However, we are witnessing the third generation of this evolutionary impulse to break free of the Greed and Power Matrix of Fear and master the art of co-creating a conscious community of self-reprogramming humans - individuals who can enjoy their own brilliant uniqueness and yet effortlessly merge into a democratic group mind and function intelligently and creatively as One Being.





COMING UP NEXT: THE LOVE BUS @ MAGICK RIVER

Home of Rainbows ~ an excerpt from TANAH TUJUH

ABOUT AN HOUR’S HIKE from where I live there is a sacred waterfall whose virgin waters cascade some 300 feet in three tiers into a womblike cauldron. 

At midday with the Sun directly overhead, I once ventured into the seething cauldron. And there, trembling from the cold and from an overwhelming sense of awe, I found the Home of Rainbows. 

I beheld dozens of baby rainbows - hanging magically in the misty spray - dancing with the sunbeams. A sight such as this transforms one forever. I felt the presence of the goddess Gaia - not as hypothesis, but as a vivid reality.

And when I gazed at the sky beyond the shimmering column of water and the rocky lips of the cauldron, I was struck by a vision of the Vesica piscis: the fish-shaped form of the primeval vulva from which all life issues.

MEANWHILE, in another Dimensional Universe not so far from where the rest of humanity lives, nine Orang Asli of the Jahai tribe from Sungai Manok (about 200 km from Kota Bharu, Kelantan) suddenly found themselves on trial for homicide. On 26 April 1993 they had been embroiled in an ugly struggle over land, which left three Kelantanese Malays dead. They had allegedly been shot with poisoned blowpipe darts. According to some reports, the Malays had shown up in a van one day to inform the Jahai that their land had been sold and that they were to leave their village within 24 hours.

The Jahai called called a tribal council and decided to stand their ground. Violence erupted when the Malays arrived at the village brandishing parangs (machetes) and one of them kicked the batin (headman). A young Jahai who rushed to his chief's defence was slashed.

In court the Jahai were defended by seven of the country's leading lawyers, all of whom donated their services and paid their own expenses. For months, Colin Nicholas of the COAC (Center for Orang Asli Concerns) was kept busy commuting between Subang Jaya and Kota Bharu, helping the Jahai cope with the disruption to their lives and looking after their personal needs. The legal proceedings took on farcical proportions with the prosecution tying itself up in technical knots. So much so the case was eventually thrown out after three years of senseless to-and-froing, without a single essential question being raised.

For instance: how did land reserved for the Orang Asli get “sold” in the first place? Was the Orang Asli Affairs Department completely in the dark? Or were a few officers in the know? Why didn't the Jahai headman report to the authorities immediately? And how do we reconcile the Asli concept of tanah pesaka (ancestral land) with legalistic definitions of real estate and private property?

According to lawyer friends of mine, the Orang Asli have absolutely no land rights as such - and they mutter something about Section 134 of the Aboriginal Act of 1954, which classifies all Orang Asli as “tenants at will of the State.” They explain that the Orang Asli have been occupying areas “approved for gazetting” since the mid-60s - but not formally gazetted yet (even as we enter the new millenium). In the 1960s the official excuse for leaving matters unresolved was “the Communist threat.” In December 1989 the Malayan Communist Party surrendered and dissolved itself. Until the designated areas are constitutionally gazetted as Orang Asli reserves, the only protection the “First Peoples” have against fortune-hunters and land-grabbers is the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli or JHEOA (which later became Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli or JAKOA - although the Orang Asli still call it JOA - “Jual Orang Asli,” they hasten to add,“Orang Asli for Sale.”).

The question is: who can protect the Orang Asli from their own Protectors? The JAKOA officials I've met are hard-core, card-carrying Mahathirites and compulsive enemies of the environment. They charge around in Pajeros and hobnob with prominent loggers and daredevil developers. Orang Asli Affairs are perceived as their personal fiefdom and, in recent years, JAKOA appears to have turned into an extension of JAKIM (the federal government's Islamic Enforcement and Missionary Agency).

Bidar Chik in 1999

I WAS TALKING to Bidar Chik, batin of Kampung Pertak, about the difference between “tenure” and “tenancy.” Of course, our terms of reference were far more concrete.

“Our people have been living in these parts since time began,” Bidar said, “We belong here, but we don't say the land belongs to us.”

“The land belongs to Tuhan,” interjected Bidar's brother-in-law Nadi from the doorway, where he had been quietly listening to our conversation. “All land is God's. We're only the Guardians of this area.”

Nadi Pak Empok had a certain dignity about him and a friendly twinkle in his eye. I was impressed by his sincerity of belief. Bidar took this as a cue to get his wife to serve up some Milo.

Nadi & Lumoh

I told Nadi I was in full agreement wih him. I, too, felt it was my sacred duty to safeguard the wild beauty of the forest and the pure joy of its rivers. Many years ago, when I first “discovered” the invigorating splendor of the Pertak foothills, I had felt a profound sense of homecoming. When in April 1992 I finally moved to the area, I found myself living in a “heavenly hologram” where magic and mystery ruled.

THE VERY FIRST NIGHT I took up residence as Ceremonial Guardian of Magick River the jungle came alive for me. I shall never forget the solemn grandeur of the trees and the invisible assembly of spirits that greeted me as I stood humbly before the timeless power of raw nature.

I heard no voices, no flesh-crawling siren calls. I saw no wraiths, no fairies; only the starry twinkling of festive fireflies. All I felt was a deep reverence for and spiritual kinship with the elven folk, and the elementals, and the animal devas I sensed all around me like a fragrant mist.

The Ceremonial Guardian's official residence in 1992

The next two years of my life were the most idyllic I can recall. And I'm sure the hundreds of people who day-tripped at Magick River or who stayed a week, or a month, or three (so many of whom have since become “family” to me) will happily attest to that. It was during those heady days that I met and befriended the Temuan from the village down the road. So when it came time to shift house, my first choice was Kampung Pertak.

Rasid washing dishes in the river

First I asked Rasid and Indah if they liked the idea. They seemed delighted and honored that I should be so keen to dwell among them. They said they would be happy to build me a hut as long as I paid them for their labor. But there was a snag. There was no one in the village with the authority to welcome me as a resident. Rasid explained that one would normally approach the batin for permission - but the previous one had died the year before and no one had taken over the job. “Perhaps you should get clearance from the District Officer,” he advised me.

The D.O. was fairly easygoing. When I explained my interest in setting up a sort of cultural exchange with the Orang Asli and indicated my desire to live close to them for a while, he shrugged and said he had no problem with that. But I ought to check with the Jabatan Orang Asli first. So I did. The JOA officer in charge of Ulu Selangor heard me out and then declared that he had no objection to my request. However, I would have to seek permission from the D.O.

“I just came from the D.O.'s office,” I said. “He told me he had no objections either.”

The long-suffering “Encik Lah” (not his real name) forced a sigh and stood up to conclude our interview. “Well, er... in that case... er... if you have already spoken with the D.O., then I think... er... it should be all right.” Then he added triumphantly, “But you will have to apply in writing.”

About three hours later I was back in his office with my official application in triplicate. My friend and musical collaborator, Rafique Rashid, had helped me draft and type the letter in impeccable Bahasa Birokrat (Bureaucratese).

“Encik Lah” took my letter and nonchalantly chucked it on his desk. I reminded him that one copy of the letter was for him to “chop” and return to me.

When I asked “Encik Lah” about the letter a few weeks later, all he could manage was: “Huh? What letter?” He rummaged in his files for several minutes before concluding that no such application ever existed. Since I appeared reluctant to leave the matter at that, he suddenly remembered that I was required to report to the Special Branch before moving in with the Orang Asli. I said: “Okay, so who do I talk to?” The police officer he mentioned was on long leave.

By now a firm decision had to be made. The rainy season was approaching and Rasid had asked if work could begin on my hut. His motorbike was undergoing a costly overhaul and he needed a cash advance. I waited another fortnight before making another attempt to speak to the police officer. Couldn't be reached. Tried “Encik Lah” again. Not in the office. Left message. No response. Gone to Shah Alam. A whole month passed without a word from either the Jabatan Orang Asli or the Special Branch. I knew the move was mine to make and nobody else's.

I told Rasid, Utat, Diap, Indah, and Minah that they could start gathering bertam leaves and weaving them for my roof. I had identified what I felt was an ideal spot for my new “official residence” as Ceremonial Guardian. After six months of delays caused by prolonged rains, damaged atap (roofing material), squandered funds and petty bickering among the workforce while I was away for a few weeks, the realization grew that I would have to personally be present at the site or the hut would never be completed.

Finally, after a burst of intense work by Rasid and Utat (the chief architect), my home sweet hut was ready for occupation. Standing nine feet above the ground (which effectively made it a two-story affair), “Jabba the High Hut” turned out to be the grandest looking private residence in the area - and I now had the rare distinction of living in the only thatch-roofed traditional Orang Asli structure in Pertak. Was I in danger of developing an “Aslier-than-thou” attitude?

ABOUT A MONTH after I had become a de facto member of the Orang Asli community in Pertak, Bidar Chik, the newly appointed batin, introduced himself to me at the wanton mee shop. After ascertaining that I was indeed the fellow who had just built a hut near Lubok Pusing (a popular swimming hole and picnic spot), Bidar dropped a bombshell: “Oh, by the way, Encik Lah wants to talk to you about your hut. I think he wants you to demolish it. You should go and see him tomorrow.”

I looked Bidar in the eye and said very diplomatically, “I definitely would have gone to see you first before building a hut in your village. But at the time you weren't the batin. In fact I was told there was no batin. That's why I went to see the D.O. instead. Now that I know who the batin is, I would be grateful for your belated permission to continue living in Pertak Village.” I pressed on: “If you as the batin do not approve of my staying on, I will respect your decision and move out. Your Encik Lah can't tell me what to do.”

Bidar looked mighty pleased to be addressed as batin. He quickly declared that he had no personal objections, but “Encik Lah” had instructed him to pass on this message.

“He has my postal address and my friend's phone number on the letter I left with him. And he's welcome to visit me at the hut anytime. Please tell him that.” Needless to say, “Encik Lah” never did get to meet “Jabba the High Hut.” Pity, really. It would have been appropriate to serve him a cup of teh susu (milky tea) - straight from the river - since he was the key facilitator of so many logging projects in Ulu Selangor’s Orang Asli reserves.

TO BIDAR I must have seemed more than just “a new kid on the block.” Indeed I must have been (and probably still am) a complete mystery to him. Every other “outsider” who bothered to drop in on the batin of Pertak Village was invariably there with yet another tempting business proposition. All I had to offer was a bit of goodwill, genuine interest, and some idle chatter.

I asked Bidar if he had any plans or problems that I might be able to help him implement or resolve. I really did want to be a good citizen of Pertak Village.

“We want to improve our living standard,” Bidar said matter-of-factly. “And for that we need material assistance in the form of tools, vehicles, hardware supplies. We've been waiting for electricity and a telephone line for nearly twenty years, but they keep saying the budget for that hasn't been approved.” Kampung Orang Asli Pertak is about 400 meters from the nearest power and phone lines.

In the 1950s an Asli township - in truth a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire - was built on the edge of Kuala Kubu Bharu "to encourage them to integrate with their more urbanized compatriots." That was the official excuse. The real reason was to stop the Orang Asli from helping the remnants of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (led by Chin Peng) obtain food and other essentials. A few years later, after hundreds of trauma deaths, many Asli chose to return to the jungle, rebuilding their bamboo huts along the banks of clear mountain streams.

A special school was set up for the Asli - but after four decades, the number that can actually read and write is very small. I asked Bidar why this was so. “In the beginning the children are keen to learn. They put on their school uniforms and wait for the bus. But after a few months, or a few years at the most, they get fed up and drop out.”

I wondered if the teaching methods were custom-tailored to the needs of Orang Asli children. Perhaps they were unable to accept regimentation and external discipline, growing up free as birds as they do.

“So why did you stop going to school?” I asked Sembo, a bright and perky 13-year-old from Kampung Gerachi. She grimaced and gave me a graphic account of the difficulties she had encountered with the education system: “The other kids were fond of teasing those of us who were bused to school from distant villages. They would scribble in my exercise book when I wasn't looking and I used to get punished for that. Once the teacher tore a page off my book and stuffed it down my throat!”

It didn't take me very long to notice that a large number of Asli teenagers - some no older than Sembo - are forced by circumstances to stay home and look after younger siblings while both parents are out collecting bamboo or cutting grass with the bushcutter brigades. Asli literacy was hampered by a classic, vicious circle of poverty, exacerbated by inconveniences like not having any light to read by at night apart from kerosene pelita (wick lamps) that produced only a flickering glow. Very cozy, it's true, even romantic. But hardly conducive to reading and writing (unless one has pale green eyes).

None of the Asli homes I visited had any books. Perhaps a few crumpled pages from last week's newspapers, salvaged from the shopping. Was it really all that important for the Orang Asli to acquire literacy, I asked myself. Most people in the cities are literate - and yet the quality of their lives isn't significantly better. More comfortable, perhaps. My Asli hut with its springy bamboo floor and well-ventilated bamboo walls was to me the height of comfort - but definitely not designed for a middle-class lifestyle.

The big difference between my “lifestyle” and that of the Orang Asli was simply that my interest in books and my ability to read gave me almost limitless access to many different levels of the mind. Was that such a great asset, I often wondered, or our greatest liability? If I knew less, would I be happier? And if I spent less time in abstract thought, might I not find myself living more in the here and now?

This seemed to hold true for the Orang Asli. Even with only crackers and sweet black tea for dinner, they could enjoy a good hearty laugh among themselves. And when they struck paydirt - for example, after a bumper durian harvest or when someone caught a wild boar and roasted it on the spot with a sprinkling of salt - their life was closer to heaven than any urbanite could experience. Apparently, the secret ingredient in the Orang Asli recipe for good living was a childlike innocence that even the elderly retained. For the most part, anyhow.


WHENEVER LOGGERS muscle in on the Asli homeground, some of the Guardians' “guardians” make a fortune in unofficial commissions. All they have to do is appoint headmen they can remake in their own image. I watched with a heavy heart as this happened to Bidar Chik.

Ours was an ambiguous relationship, to say the least. He resented the fact that most of his anak buah (kinfolk under his “fatherly protection”) regarded him as bodoh (stupid) and came to me with little problems instead of him. (Perhaps they liked the way I served milky tea with my “post-Mowglian” metaphysics - but more likely they were fed up with the new batin's habit of threatening all and sundry with on-the-spot fines for their “transgressions,” mostly imaginary.)

Bidar certainly wasn't bodoh. Far from it. A bit demented, perhaps. But in view of the untimely death of his teenaged daughter (in a gruesome love triangle murder) the year before his appointment as batin; and the fact that his only son Bidin had grown into a sullen, uncommunicative, and friendless social misfit (people said Bidin was possessed by spirits) - it was difficult not to feel a measure of compassion for the man.

So it didn't surprise me to learn that Bidar no longer believed the land was sacred. He could see no real future for the Orang Asli and therefore became blind to his tribe's past. When he got involved in a scam to log the slopes of Bukit Kutu, I made an attempt to remind him that the future well-being of Kampung Pertak was in his hands. Bidar replied like a true pragmatist: “If I don't take this opportunity to make some money, others will. Why let the Malays and Chinese hog all the logs? Better the Orang Asli themselves get a share of the loot. After all, the way things are going, I believe the world is about to end. So why worry about a small patch of jungle?”

After a while I gave up trying to reason with Bidar. With his share of the logging profits he purchased a spanking new Honda motorbike, keeping the rest in the bank “against the day electricity is installed and we can buy all kinds of appliances.”

His younger brother Sem was very different. It was well known that the sibling rivalry between them had often led to fisticuffs, especially when both had had one drink too many. Sem had no qualms about putting his name to a police report we lodged against his brother's logging company. Nothing came out of it. The police interviewed Sem who said Bidar had breached tribal adat (customary law) by “cheating” his own people. On paper, it appeared that Bidar's sole proprietorship, “K.O.A. Enterprise,” was legitimate, and that his application for a logging permit was more or less in order.

Lawyers informed us that under existing Malaysian law, there was really no way we could win a case against the loggers. The crux of the problem, again, was that the area wasn't officially an Orang Asli reserve; and that even if it was, the headman had the right to “develop” it in any way he saw fit. The question of popular consensus did not arise. Participatory democracy had yet to arrive in these parts, and Kampung Pertak was a perfect microcosm of the entire country.

“Everybody thinks we're stupid,” Sem told me with a craggy grin. “We're not fools, maybe not so aggressive. That's the problem.”

It's true. I've yet to see an Asli parent inflict grievous corporal punishment on a child. Asli kids tend to be all over the place, laughing and joking with the adults, eavesdropping on serious council sessions. Do they stand a chance in the face of the competitiveness and ambition and rapacity that urban economies breed?

Sem said, with a trace of deep hurt in his voice, “Those who scorn and exploit us now will later be brought low. We believe that if the Orang Asli are wiped out, that's the end of the whole world. That's what our ancestors said.”

He could be right. The aboriginal peoples of the planet represent the roots of humanity - the point of deepest contact with the nourishing spirit of the Earth. The younger and more venturesome races - the ones that sailed forth to discover, trade with, and colonize distant lands - represent the branches and leaves. The planetary citizen is the flowering of the human family.

But will we bear the fruit of the Divine Child? The Earth-Star Child whose home is the entire Cosmos? Can the Tree of Life continue growing if its roots wither from neglect and forgetfulness? Must nature's amazing diversity give way to systematic homogenization in the name of Economic Growth? Surely the human imagination can come up with a workable, alternative scenario of “development” that integrates the best of both worlds? This is what spurred my decision to quit the big city and “live close to the land” for a while.

APART FROM finding myself in much more congenial surroundings, I've been through an unsettling spectrum of internal shifts. Initially I was prone to fly off the handle whenever I saw a styrofoam lunchbox or plastic bag in the jungle. I took on the role of eco-policeman, admonishing picnickers about the mess they were leaving and getting terribly worked up at the sight of graffiti. Soon I was an unpaid garbage collector, never venturing into the jungle without emerging with a bag full of litter.

After a while I realized that my getting pissed off with Malaysian “pig-knickers” and “the whole goddamned junk-consuming-junk-producing human race” wasn't really helping the environment at all. Truth is, the Orang Asli themselves are compulsive litterbugs. Their only excuse is that for hundreds of generations, the stuff they chucked on the ground was 100% organic. I regularly found myself sermonizing to them: “Things made by Tuhan (God or Nature) aren't filthy, you can throw them in the river. But things made by the Towkays (factory bosses) become rubbish, so be careful where you dispose of them.” Somewhat simplistic, I admit, but how else could I explain why I would conscientiously hold on to an empty plastic container till I found a garbage skip - while happily hurling rambutan skins and peanut shells into the river?

Another rude awakening: one day I mentioned to Utat the famous pig-hunter that I had spotted a pair of eagles nesting across the river. Utat's only response was, “Are you going to shoot them?”

“What?” I said, thinking I must have heard wrong. “In the first place I don't have a gun. And in the second place, why would anyone want to shoot an eagle?”

“They steal our chickens.”

Well, I don't know if Utat is partial to roast eagle. (When I asked if he would consider an eagle good eating, Utat shook his head: “Hardly any meat, and much too stringy.”) The Asli seem to feed on anything that moves and quite a few things that don't - like mildly putrid bamboo rat. Just as well, I suppose. I'd have monkeys breaking into my hut if the Asli hadn't hunted them all the way to Ulu Klang.

After Anoora and I were engaged, my family-to-be began offering me various delicacies they had trapped. I thought Diap's stewed python was delicious, though a little greasy; and afterwards it made me feel like coiling up and sleeping for a week. They kept the snake's semperu (gall bladder, hempedu in Malay) in a secret niche, waiting for it to dry before soaking it in drinking alcohol. Utat and Rasid assured me that I wouldn't be disappointed with the result. Alas, the precious morsel was spirited away by a household rodent before I could savor its promised delights. I also found the braised jawak (monitor lizard) fairly tasty, though a little too chewy for someone with limited dental equipment. Once I arrived too late to sample Indah's famous landak (porcupine) curry; and at my wedding feast, I pleaded over-excitement to explain why I only tasted a few atoms of the grilled pantim (leaf monkey).

IT HAS TAKEN ME an enormous conscious effort to mitigate my visceral dislike of industrial loggers and fast-buck “devilopers” - and the cynical power elite that fattens itself off their cannibalistic dark rites. So what if “Conquer, Penetrate, and Dominate” is their credo? So what if they are eco-rapists? They're only acting out a millennia-old scenario of anthropocentric self-interest, sanctioned by priesthoods created by the ancient colonizing “gods.” Their only real crime is that they have access to heavier-duty machinery than our grandfathers.

And since most concessions are granted for only three to six months, their eagerness to maximize profits leads to reckless, wholesale destruction of huge tracts of irreplaceable rainforest. (What I find even more disturbing, however, is that many, if not all, loggers are so used to offering “special incentives” to human officials to obtain their concessions and permits, they tend to do the same with the much-feared datuks or spirits of the trees.

In lieu of cash the loggers offer bribes of white chickens' or black goats' blood, which corrupts the elemental kingdom and results in many hapless humans being taken over by drunken and dispossessed datuks on the rampage. I doubt if any study has been done on the psychic after-effects of logging - but I personally am convinced that the physical carnage is invariably accompanied by years, even decades, of negative metaphysical fall-out manifesting as psychological and physiological diseases. The Revenge of the Jungle Spirits, as Utat would call it.)

Transmute that righteous rage into positive action, I kept telling myself for three months, even as I was being rudely awoken every morning (including Sundays) punctually at seven-thirty by the diabolical racket of revving bulldozer engines and the heart-stopping thump-kerumph-whump of logs being stacked up by the mechanical payloader. I confess that the compulsion to sabotage the loggers' machinery was almost too strong to resist. Friends who came to visit - and were greeted by the sight of freshly cut trees piled up like corpses in the loggers' yard near my hut - broke into tears or began to rant and rave. But anger doesn't resolve anything except itself. Indeed it can only divide the world further into Cowboys and Indians, Good Guys and Bad Guys, White Hats and Black Hats. And as far as I was concerned, that sort of dualistic stuff was Old Hat.

(Occasionally, while waiting for their lorries to be loaded with logs destined for the sawmills, a few drivers would wander up the footpath to my hut. I made a point of serving them tea, and most of them seemed at pains to convince me that they disliked helping to destroy the rainforest. “I've been driving log lorries for fifteen years and I have five kids to feed. Tell me, what else can I do?” One driver from Kerling was so keen to demonstrate goodwill he insisted on buying a copy of my book of poems in English - a language he couldn't read. “It's for my wife,” he explained. “She's a school-teacher and enjoys reading English books.”)

It dawned on me that most urbanites have been conditioned to fear nature in the raw. Orang Asli kids seem pretty spooked by the jungle after dusk, but for different reasons. Town-dwellers are fundamentally afraid of snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes, centipedes, and tigers (yes, Virginia, there a few still ranging the foothills of Ulu Selangor and Pahang). Forest-dwellers are more afraid of the bi'hiang - the unseen: hantu (ghosts, spirits, vampires), halus (elves), bunian (fairies), and the penunggu (guardian spirits) of certain power-spots, reputed to manifest as 60-foot tall specters when antagonized.

But their fears aren't paralyzing ones. Many of the older Asli still feel the periodic need to go on solo jungle walkabouts. Sometimes they return spouting gibberish and have to be ritually exorcized by the village dukun (medicine man). Most aboriginal peoples seem to be genetically predisposed to slipping in and out of Dreamtime (the Astral Plane or Fourth Dimension) - but that's probably because their reluctance to deal with written language frees them from the left-brain dominance the rest of us have to unlearn, if we want to fully comprehend the nature of our being.

Me? I'm afraid of fire ants. And the buzzillion other virulent varieties of biting bugs - some microscopic to the point of invisibility - that sometimes make me wish I was back in the permanent poison fog of the Klang Valley. But as I feel that chemical sprays are far more repugnant than insect bites, I've had to devise non-polluting ways of discouraging ants from building highways across my living space. Hot water and flaming newspapers seem to have done the trick. Nothing like a bit of fiery journalism to flush out the creepy-crawlies.

(My geomancer friend and star-sister Soluntra King once suggested I deal with the problem in a more enlightened manner, by reasoning with the devas of the “offending” insect or animal species. In other words, by striking a deal or coming to a special understanding with the gang leaders. Well, this approach appears to have worked with a few varieties of ants, especially the kerengga (weaver ants). The wasps rarely sting except when inadvertently sat upon. However, I've given up trying to be diplomatic with the ruffian rats of Taman Tikus (Rodent Park) who are my immediate neighbors!)

But there's another way of looking at it: perhaps Nature has produced these “irritants” in response to the irritation she must feel when humans burrow and blast and befoul the Earth with their unheeding busyness. Perhaps, as the sages of today would say, the external world is really a hologram projection of our inner states. Or, as the Dalai Lama says: “To live in a peaceful world, you need a peaceful mind.”

BEHIND MY HUT is a series of hills that bear the scars of human intrusion. In the 1900s businessmen logged the area (they used buffaloes to haul the logs in those days) and then proceeded to dynamite a 3-mile-long tunnel through the mountains, ostensibly to mine for tungsten (though I suspect they were after silver or gold). Huge landslips put paid to the mining operations, with tremendous loss of human life. Some say 300 died in the great tunnel collapse of 1907 - which the Temuan of course attribute to the wrath of the Penunggu of Bukit Suir, former residence of the langsuir or jungle sirens of Pertak.

In 1990, when Bidar Chik's father was batin of Kampung Pertak, loggers brought in bulldozers to finish off the surrounding hills. Today the terrain is one enormous scab - laterite baked to a crumbly black crust where only ferns and hardy scrub will grow. True, a scattering of young trees is starting to green out the view, but it could take another thirty years for these poor hills to regain the look of majestic jungle-clad mountains. And probably another three hundred before the magical vitality of the area is fully restored.

A most distressing sight is the proliferation of mud gullies - some nearly 60 feet deep - the result of rainwater rushing down old logging trails and washing tons of red earth into the rivers, which ultimately end up flooding the low-lying districts. So a few chaps get to be instant millionaires and Tan Sris (an honorific title equivalent to knighthood) - but who picks up the tab at the end of the ecocidal debauch? It's one thing to read about the deleterious effects of deforestation. Quite another to feel the desolation and ruin of a once-verdant ridge after humans have violated it.

Some evenings before dusk, I would climb the nearest scabby peak to bask in a panorama of ethereal beauty and serenity. The hill I usually stand upon and the ones adjacent are sad and wounded - but the faraway peaks still look pristine, at least from a distance. Ironic that such a vision of eternal promise can only be enjoyed from the vantage point of grim destruction - for if the brutal logging hadn't denuded the spot, I wouldn't be getting this 360-degree overview of heavenly perfection. Somehow I know that my being there, and feeling moved by the indestructible grandeur of it all, and sending the spirit of the place total love, must have a healing effect.

More and more I've become aware how painful and savage the history of this planet has been. It's reflected in our own lives. How many of us have escaped unscathed by the negative imprints of our parents - and their parents' parents in a sequence of trauma that can be traced all the way back to Adam? Expulsion from the Garden... The so-called Fall... Hurt and humiliation... Rejection...The Extermination Program... Revenge! We shall annihilate God's bloody Garden and replace it with one of our own making: 100% synthetic, air-conditioned, designer-landscaped at budget-boggling expense. And this time... NO SNAKES!

And no one can ever expel us from it - because we hold the title deeds. (Our lawyers have been working on it since Hammurabi established the Legal Code.) Show me your Secret Handshake, Boys. Long live the Plutocracy of Patriarchal Panjandrums!

The longer I live out here in the Wilderness, the more clearly I can see where my Shadow Self has been hiding. Fame and Fortune. Power and Prestige. Don't worry, we have everything under control. The land has been assessed, the property valuated, and soon it will be converted into Real Estate...

ONE SUNNY DAY beneath a clear blue sky, I sat on a rock, feet immersed in the fast-flowing, healing waters of my favorite river. (A rock of some distinction, I might add: a veritable Throne of Stone I had fondly named Le Fauteuil du Diable or Armchair of the Devil, after an obscure landmark in the south of France.) I was particularly receptive that afternoon, thanks to the lovely cup of black tea I had just imbibed. For the record, it was Boh tea - laced with the juice of freshly-picked sacred mushrooms (ritually used by shamans as a catalyst to enhanced awareness).

Soon I could feel my ego membrane dilate and my perceptual range ballooning out to include everything around me. I was now an integral part of the scene, a protean/protein extension of the Devil's Armchair. Indeed, I was the embodiment of the nature deity some call Pan. I became acutely aware of the ferns on the opposite bank of the river. It was like sitting in the center of a natural amphitheater. I nodded in acknowledgement of the ferns, and a gentle breeze rippled through them, making them wave courteously back in greeting.

We began to converse telepathically... and suddenly it wasn't just the ferns that were present. I found myself plugged into Nature's own Etheric Web and participating in a symposium conducted with multiple-channel, multi-dimensional, interactive hook-ups. The experience was sublimely insightful and uplifting, though very difficult to report in logical, linear terms. Let's say it is delightfully liberating not to be trapped in one's “skin-encapsulated ego” (as Alan Watts, my favorite rascal philosopher, once put it).

“Individuality” was the key issue. Neither ferns, nor rocks, nor fish, nor birds, nor worms, nor the wind and water dancing ceaselessly in rainbow spirals through cycles large and small, had any notion of being separate, discretely defined individuals. Only humans were blessed, or cursed, with this strange condition called Me-hood.

As such, we are perceived by Nature as an Ecosystemic Virus. But what exactly is a “virus”? A crystallized thought-form: a restructuring agent with the power to mutate and transmute and permute - in creative as well as destructive modes. Anabolic, catabolic... and now, with access to the 64 codons of the Genetic Code, we could wipe out eons of cellular memory with a mere toss of yarrow stalks, or the click of a mouse, or the flick of a balance sheet...

“No way!” the goddess Gaia spoke, her voice a gentle breeze on my goosebumpy skin. “I need you to plant the kiss of True Love on my lips, to wake me from my evolutionary slumber. You are the reflection of my spirit, the mirror of my beauty. I need you around to admire and adore me, and help me ascend to true Stardom.”

“Me?” I momentarily transformed myself into Robert De Niro (a pretty remarkable shapeshifter himself). “You talking to me?”

“Not you as a manufactured personality, silly. I mean YOU as a species. You, Human, are the completion of my neural circuitry, the quintessence of all kingdoms - mineral, vegetable, animal, angelic, and demonic. When wholly human, you are godlike.”

So what is God like?

IT DOESN’T REQUIRE very much. All we need to do is change our perspective, unify our polarities, shift our paradigms, reverse our priorities.

The untidy bits of plastic and styrofoam and rusty metal we can clear up and recycle in a jiffy. No problem.

Noxious gases and toxic wastes are a measure of the ethical and aesthetical inadequacies of those who produce them. Treatment is available for anyone who seeks it - and it's quite painless. Confidentiality assured. JUST TURN IN YOUR ARMAMENTS AT THE DOOR. No one will be punished.

And we'll introduce you to a bacterium that will devour all the pollutants and die of bliss. Or a new breed of super-yogis and wizards who can stuff industrial gunk in their corncobs and transmute it into multi-colored smoke-rings of divine incense (all the while cracking lewd leprechaun jokes).

Trees we may respectfully remove from the forests according to need (and our need will dramatically decrease when we discover that quality paper products can be obtained from swift-growing species of hemp and other fibrous weeds) - but we shall have to use heavy-duty tweezers, not bulldozers.

And the extraction of non-renewable resources will have to be supervised by independently funded ecoscientists - not the chief minister's sister-in-law (unless, of course, she happens to be a true-blue Greenie).

And the Orang Asli will let us introduce them to the joys of reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic - if we open our hearts to their spontaneous songs of freedom, and their genetic memory of Heaven on Earth... not in the Hereafter.

[Originally published in The SUN Megazine, 28 October 1994; expanded draft published in Men’s Review, April 1996. First posted 4 January 2016, reposted 21 October 2019 & 22 May 2022] 

MAGICKFEST ~ 22 YEARS DOWN THE LINE! (reprise)

MAGICKfestation 2002

December 30, 2001 - January 7, 2002

The 9-Day Magickfest turned into an 11-Day Elohim Portal Activation, Celebration, Releasing Session, Sacred Ceremony, Love-In, Jam Session and for me the Most Fantastic Farty I recall (yes, it was a gas-gas-gas from the word GO!) since Star-Borne Reunion #8 in March 1993. Indeed it was a Monumentally Metatronic Marathon of Music and Mad Joy!

JOY, FREEDOM, and the happy fusion of WORK and PLAY were the keynotes - and something profoundly significant was accomplished that was totally unforeseen and reality shifting beyond our wildest expectations. I don't know if I can find a way of sharing in words what transpired without diminishing its sacredness and significance or appearing to crow about it.

I don't know how I can begin to describe the magickal transformations some of us felt as the Magickfest progressed - or if I even ought to attempt it. So much was going on, on so many levels... at first I felt it may be wiser (and easier on lazy old me) to simply post a very brief and general report on the resounding success of the event. But then I figured that everyone associated with Magick River or who's stayed on the Magick River Network would want to join us in celebrating this epochal event which was witnessed by only a few of us who were directed by Spirit to stay the entire 9 days and not succumb too much to sleep.

I believe that those of us whose physical presence was essential to the process were serendipitously brought together just so that this could happen. (Heiko and Selina, for instance, were drawn to the event through a series of remarkable synchronicities: in 1995 Selina had come to my wedding party and I recall that she had given me a wonderful massage with an egg-shaped stone. Then she vanished from view until a few months ago when she emailed me out of the blue. She later explained that two months earlier while shopping at the Mid-Valley Megamall she had flashed on a vision of that strange man who lived in the hills - but couldn't for the life of her remember my name. Somehow she felt she had to locate me. During a subsequent releasing session, a spirit healer identifying herself as "Lady Elantra" made contact. Curious to know more, Selina ran a Google search on "Lady Elantra" which took her directly to my starsister Soluntra King's website where she found a link to Magick River and me!) Well, I guess a full-length report is in order...

L-R: Ahau, Antares, Anoora, Lia, Lami, Nadia, Emanar, Selina, Heiko, Shane, Sabrina, Freddie, Michelle, Johnny 

DAY 1 (Dec 30): My daughter Belle came up with her family (for the first time in years) and I led a small group of first-timers, including my then son-in-law Marcus, on a pilgrimage to the Mother Fall. Among the party were Heiko, Selina, Robin, Michelle, Ee Ling, Jasmond and Johnny Chewbacca (a shorn wookie and agent of the Ashtar Command who had arrived from Penang the previous night high from Lord of the Rings). The weather was GORGEOUS and stayed gorgeous throughout the Magickfest (the shower that broke on the evening of January 6 was received as a cool and cleansing blessing).

Everyone exulted in the joy of playing in the rejuvenating waters of the River of Life and soaking in the beauty and perfection of Gaia-Terra, the hologram of Heaven on Earth. Sabrina the 5-year-old chatterbox and her mummy Emanar arrived with Freddie (Emanar's Internet friend from Sweden). That night we stayed up till past 4 a.m. joking, jamming, clowning around, and celebrating our soul-family reunion in the glorious glow of the full moon.

DAY 2 (Dec 31): Another day spent relaxing and swimming and eating and horsing around. Ancient and modern friends came up to celebrate and bask in the wonderful magick of the river. Nothing had been planned or scheduled and everything unfolded with spontaneous perfection. In the evening friends (and friends of friends) began arriving for New Year's Eve bringing food and drink and more music. Though we only had Robin's portable CD player (apart from our own musical instruments), those who felt like dancing let their hair down and worked up a sweat (Garry, Mr Banjoman, you'll be happy to hear that Shooglenifty was a smash hit amongst the Magick River ravers).

Just before midnight we assembled down by the river and gazed in silent appreciation at the silvery moonlit scene, listening to the neverending riversong. There was no formal ceremony or ritual but everyone was introspective and receptive to the divinely delicious tingle in the atmosphere. Then someone softly said, "Happy New Year!" and the hugging and kissing began. A few of us jumped joyfully into the river and relished the invigorating sensation of swimming in an ethereal luminosity that evoked elvish memories of Lothlorien and Rivendell. All the dimensions intersected and I felt the subtle shift in the magnetic field as the Elohim Gateway began to activate. We partied till people began dropping off to sleep one by one wherever they could find a spot to curl up in. Some fell asleep on mats watching the stars.

DAYS 3-5 (Jan 1-3): By early afternoon most of the ravers and revelers had departed, leaving a tranquil, dreamy atmosphere in which to recharge our batteries. Heiko, Selina, Robin and Michelle had originally planned on moving out on New Year's Day but after a brief pow-wow announced that they would like to stay the entire week. This was welcome news indeed. I had expected that the Magickfest would be very quiet after the party animals returned to their jobs.

It was good to have a core group holding the frequencies throughout the entire 9-day celebration. As I said, Heiko and Selina are Awakened Starry Ones I reconnected with only a couple of months ago. Robin and Michelle I met through them; over the next few days we released a lot of old programs, remembered our mythical lineages, and emerged as a unified soul-family of love, light and endless laughter. Others holding the frequency were Emanar (a rapidly awakening starpriestess and keeper of the Aquarian codes), Shane (our resident nature mystic and future franchise owner of McDhall Rice), Kaiel Ashtar aka Johnny Chewbacca (who first visited Magick River briefly in 1997), Anoora and Ahau (my hillbilly fambly), and Anubis and Wong (the canine corps). Before retiring to our beds, all of us went down to the river to savor the crisp early morning air and we suddenly noticed that there was a powerful vortex manifesting on the hill overlooking the bungalow.

As our attention focused on a particular point between two peaks we noticed an etheric tetrahedral pyramid forming in the night sky, subtly demarcated by tiny stars. We agreed it was the apex of an immense etheric crystal wand receiving, storing, and transmitting light codes to the Mother Ship, which manifested as a huge circular tube of glowing mist. Heiko had an inner vision of an enormous floating world containing an amazing diversity of galactic human cultures and star nations. I received the message that the "actual" Mother Ship was an etheric pod many times larger than our planet containing the seeds of myriad worlds.

The Ceremonial Guardian of Magick River keeping in the flow

DAY 6 (Jan 4): It became apparent that there would be no visitors today. Heiko and Selina offered to conduct a Releasing Session for everyone present and I arranged for Anoora and Ahau to spend the afternoon at the village (only 3 minutes' drive away) so we wouldn't be disturbed. We began around 5.00 p.m. and finished around 9.00. Everyone felt much lighter, having released key issues embedded in our encoding over the aeons. I was so charged up I didn't sleep for the next 48 hours! Then the Elohim Gateway Activation kicked in and miracles began to unfold...

DAY 7 (Jan 5): Around 1.44 a.m., the generator was turned off, abruptly terminating the Celestial Awakenings cassette Selina was playing just as the "Kodoish, Kodoish, Adonai 'Tsebayoth" chorus ended. I suggested we walk down the steps to the river to check on the vortex. It was still visible, indeed, it had grown since the previous night!

I was prompted by Spirit to show Heiko and Selina the tetrahedral cleft in a nearby rock which had fascinated me since I first spotted it in 1992. I had suspected it was the seal of the Elohim and I had telepathically received the formula, "Elohim Alayu" which I used as a Magick River credo without fully knowing what it meant. Heiko, Selina and I had been discussing J.J. Hurtak's Keys of Enoch and we had discovered archetypal resonances linking us through the Melchizedek-Metatron-Michael trinity as well as through our mythogenetic resonances with the Enki-Enlil-Ninhursag saga.

As we examined the seal by flashlight, everything suddenly clicked: Enoch was the Keeper of the Keys! Perhaps the Enochian frequency was required to open the Elohim Timelock. There was no need to articulate my thought: Heiko was down on his knees moving his hand within the cleft while intoning a formula in the archangelic tongue of the Elohim. I was prompted to chant the few Elohim phrases that came to mind: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh and Elohim Alayu... all four of us (Heiko, Selina, Johnny and I) stood back as what appeared to be a beam of white light shot up from the cleft. I actually felt a forcefield as the beam went up. I looked around at the group and remarked that this was just like a scene out of a Tintin adventure (and true enough, we even had "Captain Haddock" aka Denis Hewitt join us a few hours later!

The rest of the day was spent welcoming new arrivals to the Magickfest, among these a group of 5 young internet witches and wizards led by Simon Soon aka Zenith. Shane led another group to the Mother Fall. It was only around 1.44 a.m. that my energy began to flag and I excused myself to catch up on some sleep. Had to get myself charged up for the birthday/epiphany celebrations the next evening.

Party Time at Magickfest 2002!

DAY 8 (Jan 6): Denis "Captain Haddock" Hewitt celebrated his 61st birthday at the Magickfest by conducting a marathon singalong of rock'n'roll favorites and rugby songs. Later in the evening I picked up a vanload of Temuan friends from the nearby village and brought them up to the Magickfest. Lami the Indonesian caretaker had cooked up a storm and everyone was duly stuffed. Then the tribe commenced their sawai (healing ceremony) and were joined by Heiko, Shane, Robin and me on didjeridoo, bongos, guitar, and assorted flutes and reeds. Low-tech trance music enhanced by shots of Tequila donated by Franny the warmhearted French witch!

Another bout of dancing broke out when we turned on the canned music, and we celebrated the fusion of celestial and terrestrial tribes. Then the Temuan ladies decided they would close the evening with another round of sawai. Anoora's mama Indah offered me a birthday song in Temuan and I was about to jam with the group when a ripple of excitement reached me from the garden where a few had gathered watching the sky, slightly misty after the shower.

I went out and saw geometric lines linking certain stars (they were pulsing like lightships) to form a huge diamond from which emerged a perfect Star of David hologram - it was a gigantic celestial Merkaba created by our combined Merkabas! Emanar pointed excitedly at the etheric Star of David imprinted on my face. "You're the Magickman!" she laughed, stating the obvious.

I drove our Temuan guests back to the village and when I returned was handed a birthday surprise: a diptych in oil crayons and glitter on clay tiles (pinched from a stack in the garage) depicting the starry events that had transpired only moments ago. Heiko, Selina, Emanar, Michelle, Johnny, and Robin (who apparently had sat in meditation all the while) had created the beautiful artwork during the afternoon - only to witness the celestial events manifest magickally several hours later in the night sky. Talk about Magickfestation!!!

Of course, my UFOria was quickly mitigated when Anoora began throwing a fatigue tantrum (she was otherwise enormously loving and kept hugging everyone throughout the 9 days) and we caught a whiff of stinky poo in Ahau's pants. I couldn't help drawing a corollary from this minor bringdown: even as we celebrate the advent of Heaven on Earth, there's still some infantile shit to be attended to.

DAY 9 (Jan 7): Shane drove the young pagans home and the place became serene. No one wanted to leave. We admired the animal forms hidden amidst the rocks and I showed everyone the Galactic Womb on Elephant Rock - a uterus-like opening large enough for someone to enter in fetal position. Then Heiko, Robin and Johnny were initiated into the indescribable pleasure of jumping the Baby Fall (Michelle did her second jump too) and Emanar recorded this transformative event on Robin's videocam. Johnny took ages to jump - but, in the end, jump he did, brave soul!

Johnny decides to catch a ride to KL with Robin and Michelle but Heiko and Selina have been prompted by Spirit to linger on a while. Emanar and Sabrina decide to stay too. The Magickfest is officially over. A few lightworker friends from Singapore have booked the bungalow from Jan 7-10 and they're long overdue. Around 7.30 p.m. they finally show up, having taken the longer route off the highway (they had also been stopping at certain spots to clear clogged energies). Interesting phenomena spontaneously occurred when one of the new arrivals began channelling the Pleiadian Alliance and the Great Goddess Isis - but this isn't the place to discuss what transpired.

The Mother Fall (Lata Chehek) by Aloisio Ferrera

Two days later I led four of our Singaporean friends to the Mother Fall where I became aware of another enormous etheric crystal looming straight up from the Diamond Pool. On the way back we stopped to look at an interesting rockface which I had long ago dubbed "the Lemurian Fort." The spot was completely overgrown with ferns and we had to push back the foliage to see the stack of boulders that looked like the remains of an ancient wall. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the large tetrahedral cleft smack in the middle of the rock formation. But it was hard getting close to the wall without hacking back the ferns. I mentioned this to Heiko later and he immediately felt prompted to check it out. I handed him a machete and off he went. Half an hour later he returned beaming. "It's done!" he said triumphantly. And so it is!

I thank all the gods and goddesses, ancient kings and queens, high elves and low, nymphs, sprites and satyrs, witches and wizards, star commanders, retired dark lords, princes and princesses, fairies and maenads, sylphs and undines, hobbits, gnomes and trolls, mineral, vegetable and animal allies, devas, angels, archangels and ascended masters, and all the plain decent folk (meaning those who feel they don't belong in any of the above categories) who helped boost the frequencies at Magickfest 2002 - simply by being there as your most lovable true selves!

ELOHIM ALAYU!

Conscious Remembrance of Source!

EHYEH ASHER EHYEH!

I Am That I Am!

Infinite Rainbow Blessings,

Antares Star-Zan

12 January 2002

________

EPILOGUE: Having to recalibrate my frequencies to navigate 3D density after such an epiphanous experience is the hardest task now. Re-entry into the Matrix is such a drag I'm tempted to give it up for good! All that sinister and violent shit flying around the airwaves is happening in the artificial reality set up by delinquent souls who worship power as military might and money - instead of beauty, love and truth. It is our sacred duty as Awakened Ones to tune ourselves out of their frequency traps and persevere in our mission of retrieving, redeeming, transmuting and releasing the root traumas that have turned all our dreams into nightmares for too long. Let's help one another Stay Wide Awake! Doubt not that victory is already ours! The "enemy" is ultimately US manifesting our own deepest fears. There is no THEM.

[First posted 21 August 2015, reposted 5 March 2022]