BOC: Imaginos, part 1 - "Invisibles"

Jean Lansford lansford at VNET.NET
Sun Sep 24 10:12:46 EDT 2000


On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, Johnny Firic wrote:

>WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT: THE CONCEPT OF "IMAGINOS"

Ah, one of my favorite sports. Wish I had time to go over this entire
text in depth, but....

[snip]

>The "world axis" is the 0th meridian.

Given the other occult references in the saga, a simpler
interpretation is that this is the axis mundi of voudoun and alchemy,
which points to the Pole Star. In alchemy, the axis mundi is guarded
by the Seven Sisters, the seven bright stars of Ursa Major.

This tradition of seven priestesses or female guardians goes back to
the Egyptian Seven Hathors (who aided the dead through the seven
spheres of the afterlife) and the seven Greek Oracles. The Arabians
called them the Seven Sages.

Ursa Major was also known, in Eastern Europe and Asia, as the throne
of the Queen of Heaven.

>On it lays the city of London, and in
>it is "the Empress", Elizabeth I. The remainder of the first two verses plus
>the chorus (the lines "Seven sleepers" to "Samedi and Petre, in Alchemy")

Albert has said this line should be "Samedi the black man in alchemy."

Baron Samedi, or Baron Cemetery, wears a dark tailcoat and tall hat.
Those possessed by the Baron tell lewd jokes, wear dark glasses, smoke
cigarettes or cigars, eat voraciously and drink copious amounts of
alcohol. Samedi governs the preservation and renewal of life and
protects the children. (Harper's Dictionary of Mystical and Paranormal
Experience)

Also known as Baron Saturday (which I'm told was a working title of RU
Ready to Rock), his symbols are coffins and phalluses. The latter
association reappears in Blue Oyster Cult's mention of Luxor, home of
the ithyphallic god Min.

>is all about occult stuff, pagan rituals etc.; topics such as these were rather
>popular all over western Europe at the time

As well as throughout the 1800s, the century which gave us the Order
Rosae Crucis (Rosicrucians) and the Order of the Golden Dawn. The OGD,
in turn, gave us the majority of prominent early modern occultists,
including A. E. Waite (designer of the best-known Tarot deck), Israel
Regardie, Aleister Crowley and W. B. Yeats.

The period between WWI and WWII saw the publication of what may be the
first book to include reports of out-of-body experiences witnessed by
reliable people. During the period of 1919-1936, Betty White channeled
a group of spirits she called "the Invisibles," and her husband
published his records of her experiences in 1937.

> - cf. Shakespeare's "Midsummer
>night's dream" (Shakespeare was a contemporary of Elizabeth I). As for the
>3rd verse, the "Four Quarters" probably means the four 'elements' (Earth,
>Air - or Wind-, Fire, Water), a concept present in (and essential for) many
>occult rituals. "Twinned in the mirror" could mean two things: a) that the
>events foreseen by Dee &co. in the mirror actually started happening in the
>'real world', or b) that they were the agents of this - what they learned
>from looking into the mirror, they put into practice: so, the actual events
>could later be said to have been 'twinned in the mirror'.

Mirrors also trapped the souls of the dead, making it possible for
gods like Samedi and Morrigan to facilitate the soul's rebirth.


Jean Lansford
lansford at vnet.net



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