The Moon

Convenience Stories: Chapter 6

It was near the end of my shift—I was working until 8:00 p.m. Christmas week—and I was sitting in my van, eating a hot dog from the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe. After this, I would clear a printer jam at Rite Aid and call it a day. Someone on a podcast was talking about how, at age fifty, when you look in the mirror you see everything that you’ll ever be. I was 48 at the time. This thought was seriously depressing. Hit a little too close to home.

Scanning the parking lot while I ate, I spotted Carole’s daughter Jubilee enter the Redstone Tavern.

I finished my food then I went into the Rite Aid and showed the manager, for the millionth time (really the third time) how to retract the blades in the printer that prints the lottery tickets. Then I went into my van and clocked out for the day on the app on my work phone. I thought for a minute: maybe I should go into the bar and see if Jubilee is still there? I consulted my tarot cards. I was doing that a lot those days:

• The Tower: Chaos, sudden upheaval, a breakdown in communication

• The Moon: Deception, confusion, illusion

• Five of Cups: Loss and disappointment

Things did not look good, but what else was I going to do on a Monday night?

I took off my lottery badge and my brown lottery uniform polo shirt, revealing the white t-shirt underneath. I put my jacket back on, straightened my hair out in the mirror, and locked my van up. Then I walked into the bar. Karaoke night was just beginning.

I wasn’t scared off by the tarot reading. If anything, I was almost eager to rush into a situation aligned with the chaotic and uncertain energies of the Moon. I had been thinking about the luminary ever since I first cracked open Edwin Steinbrecher’s The Inner Guide Meditation. 

At that point, I was no longer a journalist—just depressed and bored—and Steinbrecher offered a chance to do something about my sorry state, astrologically-speaking.

Dr. Stephen Skinner has done as much as anybody to increase our understanding of Western magic. He defines it as “the art of causing change through the agency of spiritual creatures rather than via directly observable physical means.” (Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic). Probably the most popular definition of magic comes from Aleister Crowley’s magnum opus, Book 4: “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” The two are not mutually exclusive, and if I were the editor of the dictionary (or dictionary.com), I’d include both, and add my own besides: “Techniques for accessing the reality that lies beyond our senses and scientific instruments; once that reality is accessed, operations may be conducted that cause change in observable reality.” What I’m trying to say is that, the mere fact that magic works doesn’t explain how or why it works. But if you’re able to use magic to get you want, that’s already pretty wild.

The concept of correspondences is central to Western Magic. The relationships and connections between various elements of the universe are not arbitrary. By knowing (and understanding why) certain planets are associated with certain colors, herbs, stones, or astrological signs, magicians tap into the underlying language of reality, the interconnectivity of all things.

Steinbrecher’s system uses the tarot cards corresponding to your horoscope to create a schematic, a diagram of your personality. You imagine yourself communicating with the various archetypes in a self-directed, occult psychoanalysis. The “inner guide” in Steinbrecher’s meditation is a sort of fixer, an intermediary between you and the cards. This acts as a buffer between your psyche and the Jungian archetypes or “energies” represented by the cards. Steinbrecher decided that direct contact with the archetypes was dangerous after an imaginary (or visionary) encounter with the Devil scared the shit out of him:

[A]n image of Old Pan or Devil appeared, unsummoned and unwanted. It was a classic Christian devil with an emanation of “evil” as real as the beneficence I had felt when interacting with the archetype of the Sun. I tried to end the experience by opening my eyes, but I discovered that I was unable to move or perform this simple feat. I was paralyzed. I began to panic. I seemed to be frozen in the chair. The Old Pan entity became even more menacing than before, placing himself in my inner world between me and the stairway to the outer world and safety. The panic finally subsided (although not the fear), and I further tried to maneuver to the stairway around the figure, but to no avail. This entity of the inner world blocked my every move whenever I attempted the stairs. He did not advance toward me, but remained as a moving barrier to any possible exit. It even crossed my mind that I might be discovered by someone in the outer world who might think I had become catatonic, who might take me off to the nearest psychiatric hospital. (The Inner Guide Meditation, pp. 31-2)

Steinbrecher also cautions the reader on the possible dangers of awakening their “kundalini,” a form of energy believed to reside at the base of the spine, often symbolized as a coiled serpent; when awakened through spiritual practices, it is said to rise through the chakras, leading to spiritual enlightenment and a profound transformation of consciousness:

As the force awakens and travels up the central tube, it encounters and must penetrate each of the interior centers. If any of these have blockages of any kind (marijuana is one of the greatest culprits in chakra blockage) symptoms occur in one of the four bodies as the kundalini seeks to dissolve the blockages. Most of the heart attacks, skin problems, muscle spasms, nervous disorders, strokes, mental diseases, flus and epidemics are the results of kundalini awakening in imbalanced systems. In a person who is totally blocked, rigid and full of fear, paranoia and negative judgment, the accidental arousal of kundalini can produce the phenomenon called “spontaneous human combustion,” a peculiar kind of fire which can totally consume a human body, leaving only ashes, but leaving the clothing the person was wearing unsinged. This is the most extreme, and most rare, of all kundalini effects. (The Inner Guide Meditation, p. 11) (emphasis mine)

It will come as news to most people that adult-onset acne, Covid, and spontaneous human combustion might be the result of a thwarted spiritual awakening. One suspects that Steinbrecher, who died in Los Angeles of emphysema at the age of 71, was somewhat superstitious.