Downloadable WORD document February 18, 2025
Performance, 1972
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Before continuing through our journey, let us turn our eyes upwards in wondrous contemplation and reflect upon the divine feminine beginning with our individuated Psyche. In so doing, we shall recite the song of the epic as we journey through the epoch.
Thomas Fenn
Thank you, my guides, for opening my inner ear to this vast night of contemplation. Beauty lies in the recognition thereof and not in the object that it adorns. So, it remains in my nostalgic imaginings that Psyche is a simple young girl navigating through shifting currents of humanity’s dreams and nightmares – not dissimilar to Alice in her Wonderland.
Andrei Tarkovsky
Yes, Thomas, Psyche in appearance embodies the dreams of humanity, sprinkling stories gleaned from the Hermetic Palace of Unwritten Books; these stories become dateless memories that resume into epic fantasy and fairy tales.
Thomas Fenn
Then, did my intimations and inner vision of the Hermetic Palace of Unwritten Books originate with Psyche? Has she echoed these images into my dreams? And in so doing, does she shed the same dreams from her own intimate awareness and then scamper into a faery tale, leaving behind this image called The Hermetic Palace of the Unwritten Books whose very name in concept, ‘unwritten books’, chimes in minor key with the concept ‘invisible colours’ to which you have previously alluded. In my earthly mind, I cannot comprehend an unwritten book any more than I can perceive an invisible colour.
Andrei Tarkovsky
The Hermetic Palace of the Unwritten Books is not a star-lit palace of endless hallways leading into the celestial night but a spherical form reflecting dimensionalities beyond our six-dimensional vision limited to this galaxy.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Suppose you envisage an architectural or mathematical form as a globe over which twelve silver reflective sheaths are placed, each equidistant from the next and meeting in the middle as in the shape of the dodecagon.
You then visualize this globe divided into two half-globes, each one a cupola that fits one atop the other. We then place ourselves in the middle space of this now spherical cupola and gaze outwards; we find ourselves surrounded by twelve inverted reflective sheaths, six spanning the upper half-globe and six spanning the lower half-globe. Each sheath within each group of six represents a single epoch formed by the upper regions of angelic presence and the lower regions of the whisperer in the form of Lucifer, whose pathways lead to Ahriman.
Now, the spherical cupola begins to spin, and the reflective sheaths rebound in vibratory atonal humming that shimmies downwards through the etheric and astral realms to the sentient ear of the young woman whose voice is thereby lifted to transform this humming into antiquities’ poetic form.
Antoine Artaud
Now, let us return to Psyche within this context.
Psyche is an elemental being who rises beyond the four elements to the realm of the sun and is attended to by the sylphs and fire spirits.
We must remember, however, that Psyche is an initiate within the Oracular Mysteries; she is an individuality who must undergo the trials of her initiation as she ascends to the upper heights to join her sisters within the hidden vaults of the Sistren Mysteries.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Let us continue now, Thomas, to weave in and out of strands of time as we compose.
Thomas Fenn
Thank you, blessed guides, for this wondrous scenography you have painted against the backdrop of our chapter. So many memories and reflections beam from years to follow like a wave returning to the ocean from another shoreline, especially regarding Psyche and Eros and the Oracular Mysteries.
And so it is under your illumination and instruction, if I may, that I return to 2462 California Street.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
You may, Thomas
Thomas Fenn
And so it was: 2462 California Street was the stage setting.
I remember the large living room with a red carpet, the walls painted in bright yellows and reds, and the makeshift couch with tie-dyed sheets wrapped over the big puffy pillows whereupon one could sit.
I would always insist on keeping the apartment in order, partially out of family upbringing but mostly because I could not tolerate chaos. I needed empty spaces and sunshine.
At that time, however, I lived in a tiny room like a cell in a monastery paying fifty dollars a month, which I could afford as I received a special stipend from a family fund. Notwithstanding, I decided to look for a job, and one morning, I left early to go to the warehouse district to apply for a job.
Upon entering for the interview, I realized that it would be impossible for me to go to work there or anywhere else. I was falling into the timelessness of California-Fillmore. It was like walking through a gate into a courtyard, at the back of which would be the secret door and beyond which a grand proscenium.
I was writing every day, and this took precedence. I was grateful to be free from constraints.
I knew that I was gifted not just through the recognition of my poetic talent by others but also through my friendship with George, who was also a writer. George appeared as a magical being from some story or fable whose past disappears into the mystery of earlier epochs. As a testimony to what I say, he very quickly undertook the study of Sanskrit. He later continued with the ancient Iranian language – the mother of Persian, whose phonetics could be heard in the poetics of ancient Sanskrit texts.
In retrospect, and regarding our friendship, I reflect on Hamlet when he and his compatriots come into contact with the invisible world. Through their shared experience, they enter into a common vision from which they make a vow of secrecy to protect what they have seen.
Such was the nature of our friendship with George, a friendship based on continuity in the world of spirit, not in the world of time. Although we were sharing many untranslatable secrets, it was truer that we were connected by our vow to remember.
Andrei Tarkovsky
George, in etheric form, recites an epic role whose origin lies in the Tibetan mystery; his etheric body then awakens in ancient India at the point of convergence with the disappearance of Atlantis, and within his etheric body, he is initiated into the hermetic science of what we may call tonal phonetics which is a bridge to the Atlantean linguistic.
But now, in 1972, George remains your gifted friend with no pretensions, only untellable memories, whilst you, Thomas, would attempt to hurl yourself into the leaping flames of nullification as though Don Chisciotte, catapulting himself into the squeaking blades of the windmills.
Thomas Fenn
Yes, your stunning surmising underlines my then ruthless fearlessness in confronting death as though death was effectively another secret door through which to pass.
And so, I realized as I was returning that evening to 2462 California Street with book in hand that I was participating in an actual mystery play.
A few days before, I had purchased a book on Antoine Artaud, or, more accurately, I found a book on Antoine Artaud that I was compelled to purchase.
I remember looking at the old photographs of Mssr. Artaud. He appeared as a most striking theatric artist; afterwards, I looked at the images of himself in the insane asylum in Rodez, emaciated and aged, and I realized he had indeed surpassed the threshold of individuation and the allurement of the poetic; in other words, he had departed. Notwithstanding, I felt his wavering presence that evening as a ghostly figure in visitation from another time, which I could only have divined to be Antoine.
Antoine Artaud
Your words carry a pale light to that dark cell in Rodez, Thomas. But remember, you were sensing my own ethereal aura as you smelled the perfumes in the air. That was not me, as you know me now, but a messenger from the sylphs of the air through whom I could whisper my greetings to you as well as my assured promise that I would be at the bottom of the cavern after the performance.
Thomas Fenn
Perhaps it was through your assurance then that I had no fear, and yet, I remained in a state of limbo between this physical being walking down the street and another ethereal being walking through endless space.
As I voyage atop these memories upon your guidance, I learn to recognize the difference between the mirror and the reflection therein.
Or else, I am a portrait in a museum gazing outwards towards the observer, which is myself, and you are glowing behind the eyes of the portrait which is myself to whom I am gazing.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Please continue, Thomas, accompanied by our thoughtful recognition of all that you recount.
Thomas Fenn
I shall.
And so, as I departed the City Lights bookstore, I felt a different breath, like an undercurrent inflexion below the breeze. I was suspended in attentiveness but without trepidation. My auditory senses could discriminate between the sound of the wind and the song of the wind.
I was transfixed by this breezy atmosphere, which was slightly humid but without the customary fog, as the seductive perfume of white jasmine diffused through the shiny green leaves of the roadside bushes. I began to sense the presence of invisible spectators as though I were a marionette on strings ready to perform for the puppet show.
I remember walking downtown to the corner of Montgomery and California Street and then proceeding up the wide-open incline of California Street to the corner of Powell, where there is the Grace Cathedral.
I knew that a decision was being made. I entered the cathedral and stood at the back as I listened to the evening mass and contemplated the inner-vision image of Antoine. I was terrified.
I then left the cathedral and continued my walk over the crest of the hill crossing over Van Ness as the headlights of the cars exploded into sprays of jagged white particles and then further down to finally arrive at 2462 California Street.
Antoine Artaud
At that moment, your sentient body was tuned like a violin such that you began to hear the music of the sylphs – the elemental faeries of the air who evolve towards the mysteries of the Sybill who arrive from the Oracle.
But there in 1972, Thomas, you were with the sylphs of the air, and as you entered the apartment, your ears and eyes could breathe through their song. Our Psyche was there, too, in attendance. The candle was lit. You were ready.