Prayer of Cleansing Under the Full Moon

I stand under the silver glow of the Wesak Moon

In the cool luminosity of the soul's darkest night:

All one and alone, heart heavy yet light,

Half out of the human cocoon,

Open, beseeching.

Angels and devas and faeries and elves,

Gnomes and goblins and pixies and nymphs,

Dragons and witches and sorcerers and saints,

Mages and sages, paradise birds in cages,

Jugglers and lyrists and fiddlers and pipers,

Drummers and bummers and hummers and humans,

Princesses and debutantes and celebrity queens,

Unicorns and tadpoles and wombats and moles,

Mushrooms and toadstools by mossy banked pools,

Ladies and gentlemen, philosophers and fools!

May the soft splendor of the Wesak Full Moon

Bless us with understanding and insight

And remembrance of this sacred night:

When butterfly and baboon,

When joy and sorrow,

When the magic and the tragic

United to birth a brand-new tomorrow.

May all those happy with the world and those hurt in love,

May those with children and those who are children themselves,

May masters and mistresses meet in the Mystery of Mysteries,

And make merry around the campfire of herstory and history.

May the music take wing and uplift our souls,

May the fountain of youth and the horn of plenty

And the grail of truth lead us home to Amenti.

Behold! The Moon's silver now turns to gold!

Welcome, all ye lunatics with biographies untold!

Come forth, shy maidens, come sing songs of old;

Let's kiss, pretty miss, oh let our passion be bold!

Give us a big hug, Pheona, Ellie, Marina and Troll!

Hey, Brian and Woy and Adi and Pati and Bets!

Have you seen Kate D and Diny and Sophie and Bernadette?

Where's Grant and Patricia and Ananda (how can we forget)?

Oh, there's Elf in the pool, no wonder she's wet!

Who's that sari-clad beauty out of a Bollywood set?

How did she get here? Hand her an epithet!

Her name is Manjula and she's a real dragon cat -

But that doesn't rhyme with the other lines, oh drat!

Hello, Dr Peebles! Nice to see you here too!

Ha! There's Terence McKenna and his magic kazoo!

Bob Wilson, Tim Leary, Lord Greystoke, and Fu Manchu,

Long time no see, Inanna and Enki, how do you do?

Enough patter already, have some of this brew...

When you feel your head spin

Let the moon madness begin:

Form a circle, feel your body sway,

Dance, beloved, as the Photon Band plays!

~ The Lizard Wizard Himself ~

19 May 2000

[First posted 12 April 2025]

Mr Bagus and the American Rightwing ~ excerpts from a virtual debate on might-as-right and the military solution (repost)

I started the Magick River Network on 22 June 2001 after a free e-bulletin service I had been using decided to charge an annual fee. With their permission I migrated all members on my mailing list to Yahoogroups - and I'm grateful to Yahoo for hosting so many virtual forums as part of its service to the web community.

After 13 years, I'm astonished that none of the original members has resigned from the forum, even though it has fallen silent ever since facebook appeared on the digital horizon. Indeed, as of today, we still have 143 members (144, if you count Mr God as an honorary member). As virtual forums go, the Magick River Network was blessed with a great variety of acute and articulate minds - all endowed with expansive and loving hearts - even the few with obnoxious opinions!

The intense discussions that ensued on every imaginable subject are now archived in the message folder - and a few have been retrieved from crashed hard drives, like my response to Mr Bagus - nickname for a dear friend of mine from 1969 - when he was posted to Batu Pahat as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Paul's 22nd birthday in Batu Pahat

When I first met Paul Herzenberg, he reminded me of the actor Elliot Gould, with his trendy sideburns and long, wavy curls. Paul was a practicing hedonist - fond of good food, pretty girls, big bikes, waterbeds and loco weed. He became a close family friend and later married a beauty named Peggy Liew from Kulai, Johor. When their first and only child was born, Paul suggested naming him "Kit Chen" - in my honor and as a nod to his family business, called "Kitchens by Herzenberg." Peggy snatched the pen from her hubby and formally recorded her boy's name as "David."

David Herzenberg turned 24 and decided to go backpacking around Asia. His dad insisted he look in on me. David stayed a total of 9 days at the newly constructed Bamboo Palace and when he got back to the U.S., sent me an invitation to join him on facebook. And that's how I became, quite possibly, the first Malaysian facebooker in mid-2005.

Handsome son of a gun: David Herzenberg

Anyway, much to my surprise, Paul Herzenberg joined the Magick River Network and, before long, began stirring up controversy with his hard-headed rightwing views (this was around the time of 9/11 and George W. Bush's fraudulent war on terror). There was a lot of heated discussion around the Neo-Con White House and its criminal invasion of Afghanistan, then Iraq. Paul, posting as "Mr Bagus," defended the U.S. plan to bomb Baghdad and "take out" Saddam Hussein...

From Bagus2@xxx.com
Date Friday, January 31, 2003 8:33 am
To magickriver@yahoogroups.com
Subject Re: [magickriver] America is screwed! / PAUL'S RANT

Hey Ant and everyone................. [snip] You know; Like.... Here is an ass hole [Saddam] who is going to do his best to take us out... and Now is the time to get him away from the seat of power he has stolen from his people and also to add an element of stability in the world oil market which benefits every single country and especially the poorest citizens on the planet. Faham tak?

My friend, what I "faham" is this:

Nothing extraordinary or unusual about your worldview. Fact is, a good 85% or the human race thinks along those lines, including most of my blood relatives. It's weirdos like me who are out of sync with the COLD FACTS OF LIFE, with our hippie notions of universal love and abundance for all, including the roaches and the vipers and the sandflies and those poor misguided fundamentalist-types who have been oppressed for so many generations they only know how to blow themselves up along with as many others as they can take with them. Only difference is, my uncles & aunties aren't on the Internet - not to mention being on this list - but YOU are, and you're self-confident and honest enough to charge right in and tell us what goes on in your head at the end of a long day and you have trouble sleeping.

David R. Hawkins
(author of Power vs Force)

Well, Mr Bagus-Bagus, let me tell you something that might be of interest to you: according to David R. Hawkins (Power vs Force) that same 85% of the human race doesn't even know what INTEGRITY actually means - they can't tell falsehood from truth and are thus easily manipulated by the newspapers, magazines, and TV programs they subscribe to. What Hawkins says is that to date 15% of the human race calibrates spiritually at 200 and above. At 400+ you value scientific precision above all else and at 500+ you begin to experience universal compassion and Christ consciousness. At 600+ you're a master of your own destiny and beyond 800 you're a living saint. Fortunately the tiny minority who calibrate above 600 exert such a powerful influence on the electromagnetic grid, they compensate for the rest of us who are still floundering in false beliefs and reactive programming.

Neo-Nazi Bush

I'd say you calibrate around 166 at this point in time, not too far from the level of Integrity. The more open we are to new notions and possibilities, the more likely we are to attain ever increasing calibrations. And once you make it past the crucial 200 mark, it's relatively easy to make huge jumps in no time at all. However, the spiritual consciousness of Nazi Germany calibrated at 177 - the level of intense ego arrogance on a national scale, and certainly nowhere near a love-thy-neighbor state.

It's remarkable that George W. Bush, Jr - the self-anointed leader of "The Free World" - calibrates at only 52, way below the level of integrity. In fact, 52 indicates that on the soul level, the entity is undergoing torment in hell - while his physical vehicle has been hijacked by a non-human program controlled by hidden hands. Those of you who practice kinesiology may want to check my readings independently. I'd love to hear what you come up with.

Is free enterprise really free? Or has it been a rigged game all along?

Marlon Brando as The Godfather

Life is great, business is good, there is an endless supply of condoms at the drug store, food is everywhere and there is the occasional smoke which we used to enjoy so much. All made possible and plentiful by the beautiful American system of free enterprise with appropriate rules and regulations. I'll tell you, it's a pleasure to pay my taxes. In America: Business is the religion of the country. We can, all of us Jew/Moslem and Christian and/or Buddhist or whatever, participate together in the religion of business. This is a religion that does not lie and have bullshit fairy tales; it is one that sustains us and by doing so allows us to love each other. When you go home at the end of the day you are free to go to the Mosque or Church and fool yourself any way you wish. But the true religion of America is business and we are getting better and better at getting along and taking advantage of it.

First we make you very sick, then we sell you the patented cure... on a lifetime plan

Just takin' care of Bizniz. Nuttin' poisonal... BANG BANG YOU'RE DEAD! Scene right out of some mobster movie I once saw (with Angelica Huston as the Capo's daughter). Well, the God of Business is also called MAMMON - and her psychotic brother AMEN (or MOLOCH) is armor-plated and armed to the teeth. And terrified of Death, hence his vampiric tendency to extend his life at others' expense... just like any corporation or state. 

Don't get me wrong - trade itself is an ancient activity by which means tribes were brought into mutually beneficial interaction. However, with the onset of gunboat diplomacy and piracy on the high seas, the equation became lopsided. It was no longer "fair exchange" but outright exploitation - rape, plunder, pillage. No doubt it was all part of Empire Building, the Father-Knows-Best syndrome, look at the size of his cannon! Put those giant toothpicks you call spears away...

A nobler level of intertribal intercourse would be cross-cultural collaboration. I could never have accessed the Iranian or Japanese psyche - except through literature, music, or films produced by sensitive Iranian and Japanese artists. These days, the overall trend of "global" business is homogenization - what social philosophers call Coca-Colonization.

Nicolas Cage in Lord of War: "If I don't sell them guns, someone else will do it."

As such, the game has fallen into the hands of the Big Players - and the local grocery has been taken over by a predatory global franchise. In effect, your Religion of Business is a 19th century carryover which no longer applies in the 21st century - if only because there was never any real soul in the rough game of money-grubbing where Darwinian beliefs made it okay for the strong to bully the weak - instead of helping them.

It's the best example the rest of the world can have. Create common interests and create scenarios whereby strangers can be in close proximity and work together. Forget the false love shit - be friends first and the rest will take care of itself.

Peter Finch as newscaster Howard Beale (1976)

Did you ever see the movie Network (starring Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway)? You sound just like the CEO of the TV Corporation who called Finch in and converted him from Corporate Critic to Corporate Apologist.

Push them buttons all you want but the truth, if you live long enough to see it, will be there for all to see........... The good guys are going to win over the religious fanatics.

A fanatic is a fanatic, regardless of ideology. Takes one to know one. There are no good or bad fanatics - only rampant or reformed ones. BTW, Paul, you're not the only American friend from the Good Old Days (1960s/70s) who's taken refuge in comforting rightwing beliefs in their late middle age. My best friend from West Essex High School recently found my email on a search engine and we were delighted to once again be in contact. But 4 or 5 emails down the line, I discover he's considering a job with the NSA (National Security Agency) - the ultra-secret office that supervises all covert operations.

George Herbert Walker Bush: his father Prescott
co-founded the Skull & Bones Society

THAT is the saddest outcome of what has transpired on this planet since Daddy Bush inaugurated the New World Order in 1990.

Incidentally, I'm re-reading a first novel by Daniel Blair Stewart called AKHUNATON: The Extraterrestrial King (Frog Ltd, 1995). I'm truly impressed with Stewart's acute insights and research which he skilfully combines into a monumentally significant allegory for the New Millennium. The final chapter is chillingly prophetic of what's happening right now within the Pentagon: fundamentalist Christian hawks taking over from the old war god Amen whose high priests demanded human sacrifice... just as they do today, never mind if they're Iraqi children or brainwashed American conscripts. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING AT THIS TIME!

It's a funny world. It's a beautiful world with almost infinite possibilities...

Paul, that's the mellowest thought you've contributed to the discussion so far and I was touched by your use of the phrase "infinite possibilities" - because that's my definition of "heaven on earth."

Seed by Richard Sarson

A world of Infinite Possibilities allows for a total change of heart that will stay the hand of a would-be hunter or sniper or defense secretary. It allows for spontaneous understanding and sudden enlightenment and the effortless reconciliation of antagonistic viewpoints. It allows for the miraculous realization that separation is really an illusion, that there is a profoundly beautiful coherence waiting to be experienced as an unexpected epiphany.

As a species we can only evolve as swiftly as the slowest, most fearful, most aggressively resistant family member. Your opinions serve a great purpose, in that those of us who do not share your views are forced to be more compassionate and patient in the way we look at earthbound humans.

We have to adjust to the psychodynamics of apparently conflicting perspectives without giving up on communication and sharing. Even if occasionally we unleash a harsh or unkind response, it's a case of "sticks and stones will break my bones but words can never really harm me." Hurling the worst manner of invective at our foes - whether Al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi or George Bush or Dick Cheney or Squinty Rumsfeld - is okay, even if it gets us hot under the collar. But launching bombs and depleted uranium missiles is NOT okay. And I hold this truth to be self-evident.

Speaking softly is optional...

Herein lies the crux of the issue: the moment we give up on gentle persuasion and resort to the big stick, we have lost moral ground. In the case of geopolitics, if we cannot win hearts and minds over through the power of all-embracing love and understanding - and are compelled to use brute force - then our self-righteousness becomes hollow and hypocritical. And this disqualifies us from any claim to moral leadership in the game of planetary futures. We become "fair game" - and will be 'taken out" even as we plot and scheme ways to "take out" those we accuse of malice and wrongdoing.

Sending you a blast of tropical warmth,
Antares
~^@^~


[Excerpts from the Magick River Network forum, January-March 2003. First posted 4 July 2012, reposted 8 August 2014]

Starting 2008 with a BANG!

Just passed the 40,000 mark! Thank YOU for being a vital part of my blogging pleasure, folks. Here's to another exciting, fulfilling, and AMAZING year :-)

CHEERS!!!

OCTOBER MANIFESTO (2002)

Photos courtesy of Sha'Tara

[This is a 1,700 word essay from 2002, originally posted to the Magick River Network, an interactive forum that has since been superseded by Facebook.]

I've been saving posts onto a floppy at the cybercafe and reading them offline at home. It's really frustrating not being able to shoot off articulate responses because time really goes three times faster when you're on a modem connection and paying for it by the half-hour. So I'm writing this “manifesto” in the comfort of my new study with a view to copy & paste when I next visit the cybercafe (it's true I've been going there every day and it's almost like a beer habit - except no beer belly!).

But since my old pal Paul H subbed in and initiated a new thread on the list, I haven't said very much about anything. Partly because I haven't anything to say that makes complete sense to myself, so much is shifting around us, there are so many ways of interpreting reality, my equilibrium changes from moment to moment; and partly because in recent weeks I've had to spend a good third of my precious online time deleting junk emails and virus attacks (the latest is called the W32Bugbear and the removal tool is downloadable at symantec.com, useful to keep on the hard drive just in case).

It's really tiresome that even the internet has been taken over by virtual rowdies who are either trying to sell you some dadfangled new species of snake oil or crash your hard drive and all its valuable contents. Doesn't that sound pretty much like what's going on in the "actual" world? Our public spaces are being invaded by pushy pedlars and heavily armed street gangs fighting over 3D turf. And they're all either on some corporate payroll or puppets in a hologram play scripted by our own darkest fears.

Well, this is as good a time as any to remind ourselves what the Magick River Network is all about. On the MRN homepage at Yahoogroups there is a statement to the effect that this list is for anyone who shares the vision and mission of co-creating heaven on earth.

I define heaven as limitless abundance and infinite possibilities for all beings - which is why I accept all viewpoints and terminologies without feeling the need to intervene or censor. Paul H has done us a big favor by speaking his truth - which is the same pragmatic truth espoused by a great many of my old schoolchums and rich cousins, uncles and aunts who are comfortably established in their own businesses or professions. They believe in the foundational principles of our so-called civilization: ACQUIRE (make money) & PROTECT (invest in insurance, security systems, secret police, and well-equipped fighting forces). If a bug flies into the room, spray it. To prevent bugs from flying into the room, cut down the jungle and fumigate the area with radioactive substances.

I fully appreciate the active participation of Sha'Tara whose crystalline intelligence, unique multidimensional experience, and amazing eloquence never fail to astound, no matter what she's ranting about. Even her emotional farts are distinctive and worth discussing at length, and I relish the stark images of the Hope River she sometimes posts.

Yes, I love the intense interplay of ideas that occasionally erupts on this list, and the fact that the membership has stayed more or less constant since we became an interactive list is heartwarming. I'm also grateful to have the incomparable Kate Daniels on board with her level-headed, open-hearted, straight-talking - and, of course, Bamboo Soo's sophisticated musings are always educational and provocative; while the Raven's caustic cawing sometimes raises a suspicion that the shade of Edgar Allan Poe may well be perched on a comfy rock on the riverbank.

Like everyone else, I've been watching the dramatic intensification of the Frequency Controls installed in the electromagnetosphere by powerful Cosmic Warlocks operating as the "powers and principalities" spoken of in arcane writings and sometimes fearfully referred to as "the Archons of Destiny." Recently I received a report stating that there are 72 of these Archons - and that 50 of them are Anunnaki operating on a secret agenda from the planet Nibiru. (Are these the creeps behind the New World Order scam? It’s hard to keep tabs on so many players in such a bewildering plethora of dimensional realities, it’s like playing hide and seek at a masked ball!)

For centuries we have called the Archons of Destiny "the Fates" or "the gods" - but never till very recently has enough information about them been revealed to give us a clearer picture of the true circumstances of our 3D existence. The science-fictionish ideas expressed in The Matrix only hint at the mind-boggling truth that our species has never really had a shot at "free will" - apart from a few scattered individuals who have broken through the invisible prison bars of their own primal fears and learnt to thumb their noses at the Fates. Such an “Orwellian” scenario has been hinted at from Plato’s allegory of the cave to C.S. Lewis’ Perelendra trilogy, Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series, and Philip K. Dick’s inspired hallucinations in Valis.

One-third of humanity constitute what Drunvalo calls "the moderns" - a mutation of the Adamic human especially in the last 500 years into skin-encapsulated, ego-driven "individuals" with acute cosmological myopia and an insatiable lust for the trappings of material success. These are the anthropocentric apologists and defenders of the status quo, who have internalized Darwinian them-or-us notions of survival, and haven't yet released primordial trauma loops or scarcity conditioning in their genetic encoding. But they'll get "there" - sooner or later. Everyone does, eventually. There are no "losers" in the cosmic dance of eternal transmutation. Each of us is Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu all rolled into one. (And we’re all Buddha and Jesus too ☺)

Nevertheless, most of us monitoring the quickening of planetary awakening and ascension, are understandably outraged by the cruelty and destructiveness of "the military solution" planned by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Pentagonian hawks.

Our personal pain and suffering cease the instant we shake ourselves awake from "the nightmare of history" and attain a transpersonal perspective. However, savaging physical reality and human decency with greed-propelled ruthlessness CAN and MUST be stopped. It's the Final Test of our readiness to move onto a new evolutionary octave. But when I ask myself HOW to stop these dangerous fools, I must admit the answer has been elusive. A few years ago, it seemed so clear that the Light had won through and tipped the scales - but in August 1998, the "Dark Side" upped the empt, so to speak, and since then it seems to be getting harder to wake up and stay awake. One of my psychic friends, Selina Niedermeyer, reports that she has sensed thousands of sinister metallic ships hovering overhead, blocking us from direct contact with Source. Perhaps that’s how she visualizes what Susan Ferguson calls the Frequency Control Grid. Many of us are experiencing physical aches and pains, especially in the neck and chest areas, because our bodies are transmuting on the atomic and cellular levels in response to the increasing Schumann Resonance Frequency of the Earth and the intensity of the Coronal Mass Ejections from our Sun.

Recent messages from emissary of light, James Twyman, indicate that some immensely gifted psychic children are already in our midst, helping us transit from one evolutionary octave to another. So it’s not all bad news. Indeed, right where I am, I feel I’m already living heaven on earth (except when Anoora throws one of her famous jealous tantrums or Ahau wets the bed!)

Drunvalo has spoken at length about the Christ Consciousness Grid installed by Thoth (and other Ascended Beings) about 13,000 years ago with the Giza Pyramid Complex as its main anchor point. I have no problem with the idea of a mass awakening into Christ consciousness on a planetary level - but whether that will happen only AFTER a massive human and ecological disaster (triggered by mutually ruinous warfare on an unprecedented scale) as predicted by some - or BEFORE such a worst-case scenario is allowed to unfold, is beyond my power to predict. (A two-part summary of Drunvalo’s ‘Flower of Life’ teachings can be accessed here and here.)

I am flabbergasted by the hawkish sentiments of intelligent and ordinarily good-natured folks like Paul H and many of my old friends in the US - just as I'm stymied by the cynical pragmatism of many knowledgeable Malaysians who continue to endorse Mahathir as "the best leader we've ever had" - so what if he continues to imprison dissenters and oppositionists with his corrupt police and judiciary, destroy what's left of our precious rainforests, and poison the land with highly toxic industries to bail out an incompetent and greedy corporate elite? The only difference between the Bush, Blair & Co and Mahathir’s Mob is that they operate on different concepts of “turf” – America’s New Rome ambitions have taken on more than planetary proportions, while Mahathir is content, for the moment, to be Capo of the local Cosa Nostra.

In my own experience, when things are working out fine for me and I'm feeling competent and secure, I tend to gravitate to the right in my perceptions about those who are moaning and groaning and finding it hard to make ends meet. It's when I find myself furiously peddling water just to keep my chin above the raging waters that I feel a great deal more empathy with the oppressed and underprivileged of the earth. At such times, I am heartened by spontaneous displays of civil disobedience and non-compliance such as when thousands take to the streets to protest warmongering, megacorporatism, human rights abuses, and the WTO agenda.

Over the past decades I have learnt to accept occasional bouts of depression and spiritual paralysis as a way of compensating for my arrogant and megalomanic tendencies during periods when I'm functioning at peak. I'm glad to report that in the last 10 years or so I've been able to minimize my downtime to no more than a few minutes - or a few hours under extreme circumstances - whenever that ancient sense of futility rears its world-weary head and threatens to derail me from fulfilling my true destiny and potential – which is to reclaim the throne of my personal Ithaca by drawing the magical bow of Odysseus or the Pendragon’s sword from the stone, thereby restoring the balance and harmony of all worlds.

In the words of mythologist Joe Campbell, we are each of us “the hero with a thousand faces,” braver than Bond, tougher than Tarzan, handsomer than Han Solo (or, if you prefer, braver than Barbarella, tougher than Tina Turner, and sexier than Sade)!