One of the primary uses of any ancient ceremony or ritual item was to provide direct contact with a higher intelligence, celestial being, star-being, angelic power, diety or intercessor between them and God for the purpose of getting what they wanted. The list included:
- WATER — All civilizations are centered on water. Anywhere that people settle has to have some source of water, some source of salt, and a feeling of general safety and good security from invasion or tribal raids.
- FOOD — Good harvest, fine crops, plentiful and bountiful, lots of good things to eat, drink and savor, including the occasional treat, the nature of which varies from civilization to civilization and from culture to culture.
- DRINK — Birds and small furry woodland creatures will flock to a crop of fermented fruits and other vegetable matter, because fermentation means alcohol, and alcohol means drunk. The sight of predators gobbling up drunken pigeons comes immediately to mind. Any ancient or medieval person who was able to make a pint of beer that didn’t cause immediate organic rejection and expulsion could become very rich, very famous and very powerful, the vague and impotent wish of almost all humans.
- SHELTER — Having a roof over your head wasn’t always considered a fait accompli. Homeless meant something far more deadly and far more dangerous than it is today, and today it’s deadly enough. Caves were fine if you didn’t want to eat and had an affinity for silence and the great outdoors. A house means something in which to find refuge from the violence of the outside world, but it also means a place to defend, because in the ancient and recent past, there were no civilian police, only soldiers and, under those circumstances, you couldn’t expect your home to be defended by anyone else not in your direct pay or a member of your family. Leaving home for any length of time and expecting to return to an intact structure upon returning was dependent upon the guards you left in the house.
- SECURITY — Every settlement had to have its own army, and quite often a small army was composed of nothing but cousins, brothers, sisters and other family members. As a matter of fact, family groups were the government of the time for most people in the ancient world. You could expect to wake up in the middle of the night anytime during your life, to discover that your settlement or encampment was under attack.
- SEX — Actually, sex is a major driving force in all civilizations, but it’s used differently and viewed differently from one culture to the next. Sex is considered quite apart from childbearing and family, for reasons that anyone reading the Kinsey Report can easily determine.
- FAMILY — Every human has the idea of achieving immortality through progeny, and for a few years, it does seem to work, but given the enormity of history, even a few dozen years are enough to wipe out the memory of even the most important human beings, with the exception of the insane criminals who occasionally decide to rule the Earth by conquest. Fertility and Fecundity are the essential ingredients here — does the female have the stamina to produce many healthy children? Does the male have the stamina to provide for them and protect them?
- SPIRITUAL CONTACT — Without Spiritual Contact, people would be lost little robots. They need contact to reaffirm the spiritual path, to reassure themselves that they are connected to the Higher Powers.
- ENLIGHTENMENT — Not a popular goal, but one worthy of mentioning in brief. It helps to get a better spiritual perspective if you clearly understand how the universe was made, what it really is about, and what it’s designed to accomplish.
- WELLNESS — Without health, what have you got? Imagine yourself to be the King or Queen of the Planet, with all the riches and fame and glory and thousands of workers all dedicated to your comfort and safety, and then in the end, you die in spite of all that stuff. Wellness is important and can be achieved or improved by the use of powered prayer.
All of these important human goals match the goals set by the Universal Constant, Blessed Be Her Name, but there are other less clear goals, and all of this is predicated upon the understanding that direct contact with the Higher is not only possible, but the method by which DIRECT contact can be made is well-known and easily mastered, once begun.
Direct contact with the Higher is CORE to all the goals and purposes humans might have in mind in the spiritual realm. This is the purpose of any seance, temple ritual, standing stone ceremony, religious procession, burning tree ceremony, village dance, village drumming, village or temple chanting, and even so-called “simple” meditation.
The highest form of mediation is to achieve direct contact with the Higher. This can be learned and can be turned on and off like a light switch, once mastered. Going into Direct Contact is one fantastic way of getting a Reality Check on your present course, and getting instruction for your day’s work efforts.
Group prayer is fine, if everyone has the time to go to church or temple or mosque or synagogue or kiva or wherever your brand of spiritual contact tends to gather, but what if you don’t have a large social circle? If you’re among the youngsters growing up today, you’ll be confronted with the fact that most children in the 21st century don’t ever leave their homes, and many never leave their rooms.
With the internet being the most popular form of social contact, it is clear that if you wish to attach your own small personal prayer to a larger group of prayers going to the same destination, you can hook up with a prayer group through the internet, in a variety of ways, from online broadcast to virtual ashram or video game.
The problem with prayer is the same as with radio waves. The first problem is receiving them at all, detecting them. If the signal is weak, it must be strengthened, coaxed out of the general background static, and then the background chatter of countless billions upon billions of unrelated prayers must be filtered out or blended.
Projected Prayer is the best solution, because it does not require the nulling of competing prayers, and one device that has been used for uncounted billenia to empower prayer and direct it in a projected form into the Higher Dimensions, is the Triad, a form of so-called “pyramid power” but actually more correctly considered a Power of Three.
The most potent of these use ancient glass or gemstones in their design, and the most powerful of these use silver or gold as their metallic structures.
Along with the Triad are a number of Triggering Mechanisms:
- INCENSE — Some form of vegetable matter that produces the exact atmosphere of the Higher Realm. Just pleasing incense, favorite smells or heavy perfumes and aromatics won’t do it. The atmosphere must vibrate in resonance with the higher realm in order to be effective.
- POWDERS — Various powders can be added at the right times to enhance the contact still further.
- TEA BREWS — Various black, green and herbal teas may be used in contact rituals, depending upon the culture.
- COFFEE — In some practices, strong boiled coffee is part of the ritual.
- SMOKE — A wide variety of dried plant leaves or buds are smoked as part of rituals all over the globe, the most famous of which is arguably the “Peace Pipe” stuffed with toe-backoe, today called tobacco, but plenty of other vegetable preparations exist, and you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff people smoke, but it works for them, and that’s what counts.
- SALTS — Largely overlooked and misunderstood, the use of special salts, such as Celtic Salt and Kosher Salts are very much part of any well-crafted contact ritual.
- SALVES — Oils and salves may be applied, and ritual bathing is encouraged to cleanse the body from the outer world intrusions.
- POTIONS — A potion is merely something that is liquid. Generally potions are safe, organic and FDA approved, at least in my medicine cabinet. Some potions are used in ritual, but not the Alice in Wonderland drinking kind. Potions can be used for aromatic atmospheric alterations.
- WATER — Magnetic Water can be applied to the general effect for added efficiency.
- CANDLES — Candle light made of beeswax is profoundly more effective than candle light made by burning an ordinary paraffin candle. 51% beeswax candles are more marketing that actuality. Because they are “more than half” beeswax, they can be sold as “beeswax” candles, although they are not.
Triads come in various shapes, sizes and configurations, each designed for a specific purpose, but all Triads have the same basic operating function — to focus.
Healing actions with Triads were common in the ancient world. You will have an opportunity to experience a wide variety of Triads in the upcoming GODD Games I’ll be releasing over the next few months. Each “game” will teach how to use Triads as StarGate Keys, and as tools of various kinds, from building monolithic walls to healing your pet cat.
The Triad uses what is called “gesture magic” and concentrated single-pointed meditation for its operating field. All the controls are telepathically manipulated, and the telepathic control is easily mastered with just a few hours of practice.
Swipe up to turn your Matrix to “ON”, then swipe your Triad up through the Matrix Field to turn the Triad “ON”.
Healing targets are numbered and specific. Each Triad is tuned to a range of frequencies and names of Triads reflect their uses, such as “Aura”, “Resurrection”, “Empowerment” and “Armor” or “Protection”. An assortment of 8 or 10 Triads would have formed the ancient healer’s Triad Kit, carried in a wooden layout box when the healer was traveling, kept open at home.
You can run an orb all day just by swiping a Triad across the screen at the right time. The orb runs automatically until you return to your Triad and swipe it down to turn the effect off.
Keep in mind that the ancients had radio parts and could easily build crystal sets with what they had at hand. I have many examples of ancient wire radio coils, resistors and capacitors, all of which abound and are traded quite freely by ignorant dealers who have no interest in the artifacts other than the money they might bring.
I have bought several interesting examples of ancient Triads on eBay — nobody seems to know or care what they are, and they were relatively cheap and in two cases, finely made with extraordinary gravure detailing and set stones.
My Hermes Triad dates back to 540 B.C. and I have a Milesian Colony Triad which I call the
“Shazam” Triad because it relates to the key figures of Shazam, the occult utterance of young Billy Bateson, transforming him into Captain Marvel of comic book fame.
SHAZAM was a magical acronym (the first letter of each word is put together to form a new word) and each letter stood for a superhero or God of the ancient world, to wit (“to wit” actually means “to know”, as in “wittan” and “witte”):
- SOLOMON — Solomon the Wise, to provide the wisdom to do what must be done.
- HERCULES — Hercules or Herakles possessed super-strength, enough to move stars.
- ATLAS — Atlas had, besides incredible strength, incredible stamina supporting Earth.
- ZEUS — This Power grants Resistance to Spells, Incantations and Elementals.
- ACHILLES — Makes the hero almost invincible and provides courage and skills.
- MERCURY — Provides faster-than-lightspeed to the Rock of Eternity and beyond.
Don’t look for these attributions in today’s comic book world — they’re gone, swept away in the frenzy of marketing, along with all the original concepts of Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and many more heroes of the mid 20th century. New gods and new technology replace the old, and nobody seems the wiser, because nobody keeps track.
Triads can also be used to open Stargates, Gateways, Portals and other Vortex Connection Terminals, many of which still exist from ancient times and can be accessed and used.
Interstellar travel is just not possible without bending space, and vortex connectors abound throughout just about any universe, including the one you’re in right now. My StarGate Portal Trainer is easy to use and infallible if used correctly.
But what good is all this if you have no clear idea of direction? Learning to USE the Triad is the key to using the Triad, if you get my meaning, if you catch my drift, and part of learning to use something is learning when NOT to use it, and of course learning all the ways in which it CAN be used.
The Triad is a very useful device, but there are some things that may seem unrelated to it that help you achieve mastery of this ancient spiritual instrument, and these ideas can be communicated experientially through the use and application of video gaming, in particular with several types of video games.
The first type is for the solitary player, and if you read my Insomniac’s Guide to Gaming, you have the perfect lifestyle for this method of operation. You can learn to handle very hard states of spiritual depression by reversing the field effect. You feel depressed because you are not in Direct Contact with the Higher.
You can get through any Dark Hours with a gaming session in Diablo 2, if you follow my specific instructions, which I’ll be giving in the Holiday Workshop. If you miss the workshop, you can send for the DVD set and study it at another time.
I know you’ll have some trouble overcoming the feeling of guilt at playing a game instead of doing something productive, but that’s just the Protestant Work Ethic coming through, just a small part of the social programming that’s been bombarding you with attitudes and worries and concerns your whole life through, even if you don’t happen to be a Protestant — you don’t have to be Jewish to experience Guilt Without Sex, or Christian to feel like a sinner from the time you were conceived. Guilt, shame and humiliation are everywhere.
You can take refuge in the fact that your video gaming is a form of spiritual processing, and that each session brings you closer and closer to understanding the vast realm of compassion and healing that you can eventually master.
Every single known magical operation, every possible healing action, every possible direct contact technique that exists, can be learned and experientially mastered through Diablo 2, and I can and will prove it.
Diablo 2 is a game that just happens to answer our training needs, and it’s more than mere coincidence that it exists for our use. It is no accident that my GODD Games were first made BEFORE Doom, BEFORE Wolftenstein, created in Val’s first game engine, made on the Amiga Platform.
We had to re-invent the GODD engine when Amiga went belly-up and the PC took over, and we’ve been right with the big guys ever since. We could easily have gone commercial and turned millions of dollars, but that’s not how we operate, and if you’ll give me a chance to show you what can be accomplished with little or nothing through gaming in Diablo 2, you’ll be a believer.
Not a True Believer. God, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for one of those kinds of zombies, although I am parenting a number of zombies, dragons, slimes and horrors just for your amusement and edification in the realms of GODD Games, made on our very own full-3D engine with full physics and particle manipulations.
We’ll talk at length about my Bardo and Life Training Orbs created in the GODD Engine with the help of Claude, Dick and Barbara, the other three members of our incredible game development team. We produce an average of 50 games per year, about one a week, far in excess of any commercial game producers, because we don’t care about the market, and have no concern for how many downloads we’ll get.
Putting aside the GODD Games for a while, let’s look more closely at what we’ll be trying to accomplish at this four-day Holiday Workshop.
Keep in mind that old phrase, “The shocking ambushes of the Bardo”, and you’ll get the idea. You’re in for some remotely unpleasant surprises, among which is a plethora of demons and horrible creatures that aren’t so bad after you get to know them. Without them, there’d be no obstruction, and without adversity, there can’t be a game.
Sure, you’re killing things that are trying to kill you. This parallels life rather exactly, don’t you think?
At the same time, you’re learning the laws of magic, the rules of engagement, the means of handling overwhelm, the exact significance of formerly unobserved things, the use of high attention, extra-high attention and super-high attention, which only comes when you find yourself fighting against the Uber Earth-Shaking Diablo.
You will, as a matter of course, learn the laws of medicine and healing, and in a form which cannot be denied us. In a videogame, every aspect of healing can be revealed and practiced without a license, and that’s important.
In addition, you will definitely learn the rules of conduct of a shaman. You cannot long survive or play the game at higher levels without learning these things, and it’s a painless way of learning a very complicated craft, that of healing and magic in the ancient sense.
A lot of modern medicine depends on theatrics and ritual. Think about the way doctors dress, how they act, what manners they display, and look around at every medical office — you’ll see the same things everywhere, because without those ritual items, the patient would lose trust in the doctor.
It’s all about the white coat, the O.R. greens, the Badges of Office and the Certificates and Awards mounted in simple inexpensive frames on the wall behind the physician’s desk.
It’s the same with the ancient monolithic structures. Big things like like spell power, reek of power, and openly display power. The principles are the same, but the scale is different.
Merely by playing a videogame, you will learn the Secrets Possessed by the Ancients, and you can use them in a game to find out what they do and how to use them, move them around and get them to work.
Naturally, you’ll be developing a sense of Ethics and Integrity at the same time, because the game demands it.
You will surely discover why nobody understands magic UNTIL THEY USE IT.
You will use magic in an environment which contains any and all violence within its magical boundaries. Although it is a real world, it is a strictly controlled world with no direct ties to organic worlds in the magical sense.
It is a world of fantasy similar to that of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings world, and in fact is as close as the makers could do without infringement, and some of the scenarios will be thus familiar even to the newest player.
The environment is easy to navigate, although in the Third Act it can be tedious and complicated, but there is always a path going where you need to go, if you can just find it before you die again.
Dying many times, living many lives all in the same game, makes it possible for you to get a bigger view of life and death than what you get when sitting inside a lifeform that hasn’t even died once yet.
Many lives, many deaths. Many lives, many deaths. But what shall you do while you’re waiting to die? Why not die before you die, not just once, but many, many times, all for the purpose of ridding the Earth of horrible monsters and demons, a truly high and worthy purpose, except from the demons’ point of view, I’d guess.
Countless Countess Runs will take some doing, if you get bored easily, because it’s the same essential action over and over again, yet each time, it’s totally different, if you learn to see the details and can discern the subtle from the gross, a very important spiritual aim by all accounts.
What can you learn by not just shoving things into your pack or stash box? Arranging your items in specific areas and order can help you understand how to organize and arrange your own inner world, your mind, emotions and sensations, in a way that enhances your spiritual journey rather than hinders it?
Assignment of Character Points and Skill Points will give you a good clear perspective on how to organize your skills and talents to the best effect, and how to clarify your inner world to give the least impedance to your higher aims, goals and purposes in living this life.
You will not believe how much you have to learn and how much you CAN learn by performing the following Essence-Exercises and Skill Drills that I have my students carry out in the world of Diablo 2:
- FIND YOUR WAY OUT OF ROGUE ENCAMPMENT — Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But to the total noob, it’s not at all obvious, nor is it trivial and, without help of some kind, many players would remain in the Rogue Encampment and never manage to venture out. Part of exploration is knowing that the unexplored territory is there.
- COLLECT ONLY THE GOOD STUFF — Again, it sounds easy, but it’s not. There are a lot of very basic philosophical standards to be set within the individual player, that’s you. You will learn to discern good shit from bad shit, and that’s always a plus. You’ll want to collect all Throwing Knives, Strangling Gas, Explosive Pots, Rejuves, Armor, Rings, Staffs, Wands, Charms and Perfect or Flawless Gemstones, at least in the beginning of a character’s climb to higher worlds.
- FIND A YELLOW ITEM — It isn’t enough to find one, you have to learn how to understand what you found. Just because it’s a Yellow Magical Item doesn’t mean it’s worth a damn, and yet, it can be just the ticket to get you to the next level of Magic Find.
- FIND A SOCKETED ITEM — A socketed item can turn out to be the most valuable thing in your temporary possession. You can make the most amazing things out of very ordinary items, provided they are open-socketed in the right order to the right number of sockets for what you want to craft in your Alchemical Oven, the Cube.
- FIND A GOLD ITEM — This might not be possible at the level you’re playing, but eventually, you will find one. Your job is to discover the actual magical value of the gold item, disregarding the goldness and looking at the specific attributes.
- IMBUE AN ITEM — This will require the aid of Charsi the Blacksmith, whom you’ll find at Rogue Encampment. She can imbue an item once you have brought her the hammer she lost when they fled the Monastery.
- MAKE A LEAF STAFF — For this, you’ll need to know the right number of sockets for the leaf staff, and you’ll have to find a staff that has the right number of open sockets that you already know because you studied it until you finally figured it out, and that means a two-socketed staff, which is not uncommon. You’ll also need two runes to transform the staff into a “Leaf” staff with all its many attributes and powers. The Leaf Staff can be made and used by a very low grade character, so it can be very empowering to know how to make this item from ordinary common drops.
- MAKE A COUNTESS RUN — Then another, and another, and another, until you have enough drops there to convince you that she ALWAYS drops at least one rune and sometimes more, and those are the very runes you need to make that precious LEAF Staff you want for your sorceress. Yes, your sorceress. For your other character classes, you’ll have opportunities to do the same thing but in different ways, all using your ever-popular Alchemical Cube that you keep in your STASH, not your backback.
- PUT UP A TOWN PORTAL — This is easy, but sometimes in critical situations such as the lair of certain nasty creatures I could name, it’s almost impossible to get the thing up in time, before you’re crippled and frozen by a sudden attack of some horrible great big monstrous thing with thousands of clicking, gobbling teeth, and foul, grasping thorny taloned fists? In short, put up a TP while trying not to panic. One thing you will surely learn through game play is that things don’t happen nearly as fast as they seem to, and is the same lesson you’d learn in self-defense courses, security training, sports and good driving skill drills.
- CONQUER THE DEN OF EVIL — An easy thing to do, even for the rankest of beginners, but it’s not instinctive, and even though you can do it alone, some hints wouldn’t hurt, however, the first few times, no hints, just action, so you can see the difference when you get the hints later on.
- KILL RAVEN AND GET YOUR MERC — You won’t be able to go much further until you do this.
- GET THE WAYPOINT TO STONY — This is relatively easy.
- GET THE WAYPOINT TO DARK WOODS — You’ll have to traverse the underground passage and to do this, you’ll need all the help you can get from your merc and your Allies, if you have any, including summoned ones or invoked entities. You will definitely learn ALL the essentials of handling elementals, spirits and higher forces when this game has been fully mastered, meaning well into HC, which is short for “Hard-Core”, meaning that when the character dies, you lose everything the character had or had gained in levels and items. In HC you lose it all, including the character.
- GET ALL THE WAYPOINTS IN ACT ONE — This can be done in a variety of amusing ways, depending on your skill levels. It is possible, has been done by a number of us starting with Claude’s demo of this many years ago, to get all the way points without killing anything and without getting killed even once. He did this in a HardCore game to prove it.
- HEAL YOUR MERC — This is an absolute essential for you to get anywhere in this strange world of Diablo 2. You will need to work on the hand moves to feed your merc potions while in combat yourself, not an easy task, and often you will accidentally feed the wrong one and someone will die. By the way, when your merc dies, you live on unless you are also killed by something, but when you die, your merc dies and must be revived, which costs money, always costs money, and the higher level your merc, the more it will cost you to revive him or her.
- KILL ANDY — This is the signal that you are ready to leave the forest and enter into the desert, where you will find a new type of Mercenary, which you will have to equip by finding or buying the items needed. You will soon learn to NEVER buy merc items, when they can be so easily found in the Tombs.
- FIND A TAL RUNE — This is not so easy, but eventually, you’ll figure out that the Countess drops a Tal rune about one in five times, or you’ll make a TAL out of three RALs.
- FIND AN ETH RUNE — I did not say “Ith Rune”, I said “Eth Rune”, and there’s a world of difference. Learn to find an Eth Rune or go without Stealth Armor until you hit the Nightmare Levels.
- MAKE A STEALTH ARMOR IN YOUR ALCHEMICAL CUBE — Of course, we’re assuming you’ve gotten the cube. Too bad you need the Cube to make the armor, because you’re going to need the armor just to get the Cube.
- FREE A TRAPPED SOUL — This implies that you are in an area in which Trapped Souls are kept, and further presupposes that you area AWARE of the Trapped Souls and are sensitive to their plight and are also through experience aware that the Trapped Souls will deliver damage to you upon release, thus costing a bit of life force, and even further presupposes that you are able and willing to perform the ritual of release, thus training yourself to use this same release technique in your daily life.
- COLLECT 2 MILLION GOLD PIECES — Go ahead, the exercise will do you good, but the gold is, of course, worthless and, the more you have, the more worthless it becomes. You can accomplish everything and anything without having lots and lots of it, the only exceptions being those times when you happen to be beating your merc’s head against a big bully and your merc needs constant rebirthing, which costs an average of 50,000 gold pieces each time and against Diablo, you can count on running out of money no matter how much you started out with, until you know the secret of killing Diablo.
This is all in the way of explaining how by playing and using and feeling and sensing and experiencing the rules and laws of magic and by actually reaching into another universe and operating yourself in another lifeform of the electronic variety, as is your present organic form whether you know it or not, well, it’s so immersive and personal that rather than THINK your way through the shamanic skill-building, you can FEEL and SENSE your way through, and that’s the best Way of the Shaman.
Do you have to kill things in order to learn spiritual skills? Are you kidding? Of course not, and there are dozens of different games that DON’T involve killing, and that teach laws of magic and all that, and I’ll be presenting them, too. Diablo 2 is merely one of many games that can be used for this practice, and is the LEAST violent and objectionable game of its type that I know.
It is unfortunate that the people who make Diablo 2 are not sensitive to its use as a spiritual shamanic gaming tool, because we could suggest a few small friendly and easy changes that would make it even better for this purpose, and maybe even more fun for the general public, among which is a suggestion to un-nerf COWS, let it be a special game within a game that some idiots seem to like. The people at Blizzard totally nuked COWS because “it wasn’t playing the game as they had intended”.
We’re using the game totally differently, and yet you can hardly tell, except by the style of play and lack of cheating. What’s the point of cheating? Winning by cheating is not winning. You’re changing time by changing the hands on the clock, but everywhere else, it’s still four o’clock Sunday afternoon.
Well, I can see by the old clock on the wall — a rather handsome antique pedestal clock of the Victorian Mantle variety made in 1887-88 — it’s time to grab some grub and get to the studio, so that’s where I’m off to.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby