My dear old long suffering Mr S was born under the Hierpohant and he is frequently prone to delivering unsolicited sermons unto me…
Sometimes he is boomingly preachy and I bite my lip (mostly :D) rather than signpost him to go straight to hell… for instance… he’s not taken too well to the way I’ve chosen to ride out the school summer holidays this year… He likes routine! order! discipline!
He’s been bitterly disappointed… I’ve had a few other things on my mind and have been setting up new projects and dusting off old ones and basically of the opinion that the kids are more than old enough to take some responsibility for themselves…
So… I installed 3 basic rules…
1. Don’t kill anybody…
2. Don’t burn the house down…
3. Pick up your own mess…
Beyond that, pretty much anything goes…
So that was MY routine! order! discipline!
Mr S considered it to be way below required standards… and just to hammer the point home… He started THE LIST…
Everyday, he came home from work, he took his LIST and took a tour of the house and logged everything that was not acceptable to his world order…
The LIST… soon became The List of CHAOS…
It’s the best entertainment we’ve ever had 😀 The kids went to great lengths to compete and see who could score most entries and myself… I succumbed to forging his handwriting and slipping in details of his personal habits that I find hugely irritating…
So he would do his tour and stand in the middle of the room and BOOM!
Half a biscuit left on bookshelf! Who’s guilty?!
And I would see a little face behind him… eyes bursting with glee whilst trying to hold in laughter…
Empty crisp packet pushed under chair! Who’s guilty?!
And another little face fit to burst…
Always expects the whole house to fall into silence so he can watch yet another bloody star trek episode… HEY!!! That’s not my writing!! Who wrote that?!
ME!!! I’M SPARTACUS!!! 😀 😀 😀
And he turns to me and says – so I suppose you think you’re funny… Do you think it’s normal to live like this?
Why yes sweety I do! And what I find funny is that your Routine! Order! Discipline! Has become a R.O.D. for your own back…
But then on other days… His sermons roll forth in ways that are sublimely and sweetly divine and I am easily seduced to sit and listen to him while away the time with his easy chat, rolling out like a red carpet to my ears…
And this happened yesterday… I came downstairs and I found him walking around the kitchen, but the List of Chaos is long gone and now in its place resides a huge gnarly branch of hazel… and he walks towards me and waves it around and circles me in merry dance and tells me that he is making a staff… He holds it aloft and tells me he will anoint it and call it Great Sage, Equal of All Heaven…
So I sit with him and I smile and I know he expects me to be sarcastic but again I disappoint him by saying… Good… I like that… I like that a lot…
He says… Oh… you think you’ve got the monopoly on being a loon don’t you?
I says.. Noooo…. though I think I’ve got a very good start… I actually consider myself to be The Keeper of The Loon… I’ve been holding it for you whilst you’ve been on sabbatical… I’ve been waiting over 20 years for you to come out of retirement…
And we slide into talk of Tarot and the Ace of Wands and the Hermit and then he goes off onto a lengthy monologue that covers most of the globe and talks its way through thousands of years of history and he tries and fails to educate me yet again on Thoth… then he notices that I am looking out of the window…
Hey! He says… What card am I?
I turn around and he is sat in the chair and he has his staff across his shoulders like a yoke and his arms are stretched out and twined around the length of the hazel and his legs are in the pose of the yoga Tree…
I bored sigh… The Hanged Man…
He says – Damn! You’re good…
I say – How did you get from Hermit to Hanged Man?
He says – I didn’t… It aligned itself with me… It shall be my card of the day… Now bring me The Thoth…
I said – I think you may mean The Hermetic…
He says – I think you may be right… I like that deck much better… Bring forth The Hermetic… and deliver unto me The Hanged Man…
So it is duly delivered into his hands… and he starts to talk again… and again… I drift away…
Until he says… Look at the branch that he hangs from… It is the same shape as my staff… My staff is not a staff at all is it? What is it? What is it called when it runs that way… As if to fully support my whole weight while I hang calmly without falling down…?
I said- It’s a RSJ…
He laughs…yeah… A bit like that but not like that…
I said… A Reinforced Spiritual Joist…?
He says… Yeah… That’ll do nicely…
I laugh… and I think to myself… Yeah if you’re going to have a staff… much better to use it as a RSJ rather than a ROD…
And then I look at those two cards the Thoth HM and the Hermetic HM… and I see many things in there that have been circling around and around me lately… and I think that I must think further… and I look at the them and I look… and I think… This calls for a bit of scuba diving… But I can’t think straight with these naked men around! If I have to go plunging into deep pools, then I’d much rather swim in Mystereum… and explore the depths with maybe a sharpie and a few runes to shine some light into dark places…
But more on that next time… For now… I’m going to leave you hanging… 😉
(c) 2010 Jordan Hoggard
The pure and blessed way 
Sermons afloat in clarity.
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He’s a pretty rockin’ old goat my Hierophant… though I like him much better when he ditches the old school V and sits with Mystereum V…
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I live in wonderful unconventionality with my musical Teenager, but sometimes I turn into my own ROD with a list of What Is Wrong and What Needs Putting Right. It doesn’t usually take long for the list to end up lost under one of the piles of paper (writing for me, music for the Teenager) and never to be seen again….
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I’m not fond of lists as well… I have a diary! But every so often, maybe twice a year I will write a to do list as my head will get so full that it can’t decide where to start so I use it to let the noise out then toss it into my circle of chaos (or piles of crap as Mr S calls it…) I never lose them… I don’t look at them but they work their way upto the surface and when they reappear I read them and always when they return, I have completed all my tasks… I find that useful as I never really realise that I am getting stuff done as I always have several things on the go at once and am always very present in the task at hand but instantly forget it when I move on to the next… E.g. I got asked to do some stand up at an event and at the time I was asked I was quite full on in some art work… I said – what made you ask me that? What makes me think I do stand up? She said -Karen!! You were on stage about 4 weeks ago!! Oh!! Yeah… I’ve slept since then… I forgot!! 😀 OK! I’ll do it! 😀
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