Downloadable WORD document February 21, 2025
The Broken Mirror, 1972
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Before we begin this chapter, The Broken Mirror, let us return to our epic in concept, as we shall summarize below.
Thank you all.
Andrei Tarkovsky
I shall continue, then as we paint the backdrops and ready the stage for our epic.
During the fourth epoch, Aristotle wrote a treatise entitled The Poetics in which he designed an architectural form for theatrics through which the archetypal human drama could be interpreted on-stage; this form applied to the earth, and the passing sequence of time thereon sealed, which was determined to be one day. The epic was not considered within this structure as it was not played out within the concepts of human time and, therefore, could never be performed in front of a physical audience but rather recounted from within the depths of the silent human unconscious.
Antoine Artaud
And so we are confronted with the question: how shall we create a stage for the epic of the fifth epoch, Thomas? Do we enact the epic, and if so, who shall interpret this epic? And who are the spectators?
Oh, But do not be concerned. We shall answer these questions presently, but let us simplify and say that the epic is the voyage of time into the underworld. And beyond.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
We speak of time as breath and the human lifetime as the summation of the number of breaths allotted by fate.
Each breath within the rhythmic breathing mechanism is transformed into the life-vitality shared by all living beings; this life-vitality is experienced as inner warmth, albeit a warmth that is unrelated to the external temperature, but rather a warmth exuding from the sentient body analogous to the warmth in the blood that comes with a hot shower even if the external temperature be cold.
But what about the breath released from the breathing mechanism as a single drop of etheric awareness rendered independent spiralling upwards through further levels of transformation, with no need to return to the breathing mechanism per se? What could we mean when we speak of independent etheric and eternal awareness in the transformed breath beyond the human experience in time?
We shall understand more deeply the significance behind the answers to these questions, but for now, let us return to what was said in the beginning: time is breath, and we shall add, breath is transformed time.
Thomas Fenn
If I may, I wish to share an image that comes to my attention having listened to your extraordinary discourse.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
You may.
Thomas Fenn
I am huddled at the top of a lighthouse with magical potions ready to be mixed and the elementals reciting incantations, and suddenly, I see a ship rocking upon the wild black ocean, much in distress. I turn the lamp towards the ship when there is a sudden flash, like a camera, and the ship very quickly sinks. I turn around 180 degrees, and then I turn around again to complete the circle, and I find that I am alone. In front of me is a typewriter. I sit in front of the typewriter with a blank stare and I ask myself, am I not the composer, and is the ship not our company in distress alone on the open ocean?
You mention the significance behind the answers, but do those answers apply to the weight of my responsibility towards the unwritten knowledge you impart? And what is the relationship of our work to this inexpressible event of transposition from the fifth to the sixth epoch? In other words, does our work contribute to the external fate of humanity? Or is humanity itself the solitary ship sinking into the oblivion of its isolated and illusory dream of time and that I must return to the typewriter irrespective of it all, with you, my guides, as we journey towards a dimension beyond form?
Antoine Artaud
Please recall these words, Thomas, spoken in an earlier chapter, which will help bring light to the relationship between the epoch, the epic and the role of the epic theatre.
Without the reverberant soul tone, there is no emanating spirit tone. And earth time is squandered and transmutation petrified. From the earth tone, the poet is born. from the moon tone, the muse is born. Shall the earth tone remain in lawful resonance with the moon tone? Or shall that earth tone disperse? And should the earth tone disperse into fragmented slivers of sound, then the sun star must disintegrate into cacophony whilst the great theatre of transformation, the epic, must be buried beneath the creation of Lucifer and his underling, Ahriman. As a consequence humanity would be imprisoned inside an enclosed tomb-like cube frozen in the three dimensions of physicality likened only to a cell in a madhouse.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
The divine feminine illuminates the stage, and her tonal resonance reverberates between the sun and the earth to create a tuned interplay. If the tuning fork is not modulated correctly, the music cannot be played, nor can the poem be sung.
And now let us continue from your point of entry at 2462 California Street, Thomas, as our previous imageries and explanations dissipate into the grand scenographic backdrop.
Thomas Fenn
Yes, I shall continue, and I am most appreciative as I feel to be on stage inside a performance that cannot be contained within the antiquated drama model or the faery tale of the prince and the princess or the voyage to the underworld, whether it be Odysseus or Orpheo. But rather to be within a setting so immeasurably large as to disappear beyond the horizons of this universe and so immeasurably tiny as to fade into invisibility.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
You are welcome.
Thomas Fenn
To continue then:
As I entered 2462 California Street, I sensed a marked silence, like the silence of an auditorium before the conductor arrives. I sat down, looked at the magical book, and opened to the first page. I then placed the opened book, unread, on a table in front of the couch. I reached into my pocket to find a tiny jewel box that contained my secret dosage of the psychotropic LSD.
I had only experienced LSD one other time in my life. The experience was radically different from the mushroom and very scary – terrifying. But I was compelled.
And so I took the little piece of paper on which there was a superimposed drop of LSD. I looked at it one time and asked her to be gentle. Then I placed it in my mouth and swallowed. I then picked up the book and read the first sentence which is quoted below:
If it were possible to accept as proven that consciousness (or, as I should call it now, intelligence) can manifest itself apart from the physical body, many other things could be proved. Only it cannot be taken as proved.
I was immediately transited over the threshold into the consciousness, manifesting apart from the physicality as though this consciousness or intelligence – as cited above – was an enchanted chariot. In retrospect, a new identity within this etheric awareness emerged independent of the other identity lodged in human time.
The words on the page dissolved into printing press letters that melted into my eyes like burning colours, and the sentences were letterpressed onto my memory like the sumptuous print on a first-edition copy.
I continued to read the book. The words just sang to me. I watched the words harness the scampering of my thoughts in their attempt to interpret whilst the dream-self – perhaps astral body – entered more deeply into this separate intelligence or consciousness.
I had the distinct experience of watching myself read the book whilst experiencing this transcendent intelligence who, by her very nature, was the longed-for proof about which the book spoke.
Two hours passed as I read, and still, there was complete silence in the apartment. The surrounding walls and floor beneath my feet began to melt into their internal fluidity – not sub-atomic particles swishing through the quantum dream into two places at once or physicality deconstructed into little protons, neutrons and electrons but instead a continual stream of alternating dark and light openings in the shape of hexagons each one a porthole or an opening behind which unearthly figures draped in streams of blue and red could be discerned like the mist inside a breeze.
These figures, so simple and almost flat like parchment, were compellingly beautiful; however, they provoked a deep nostalgia. My eyes became humid. I wiped the nascent tears away like erasing chalk from a blackboard and looked about.
The apartment, albeit solid in appearance with its intersecting walls, floors and ceiling, was actually breathing. I then looked down at my book, and I realized that this book, although published and readable, was a script written in invisible ink.
I went to our stereo, put on a song, and listened. The name of the song was Backstreet Girl. An accordion in the song provoked the image of the hurdy-gurdy man, and once again I felt a deep nostalgia. The lyrics to the refrain from the song were:
Don’t want you part of my world.
Just you be my backstreet girl.
I viewed the apartment as though through an old viewer with glass slides illuminated by the street lights coming through the misty windows, when through one of the slides, I saw a young girl who spoke to me in French. She told me her name was Lucy, and I needed to meet the magician. As I listened to the song, Backstreet Girl, for the second time and looked outwards through the second glass slide, I viewed the entire apartment dissolving into the opacity of an off-broadway experimental theatre.
The magician then appeared. He carried a kind of wand that looked like a long fluorescent light beaming on and off with an electrical ticking as if the light was at the end of its potency.
The magician was wearing a silk robe with a Chinese dragon embroidered behind, and he was androgynous but also appeared vampiric. His enunciation when he spoke shined like gold through his spoken words, as though he were a prince. He looked at me, and he said the following.
You are my lost daemon. You must return.
I still cannot truly understand the meaning behind these words, and yet I felt we were two characters on the stage reciting in front of a small group of invisible spectators.
Then, in an instant of recall, I visualized Antoine Artaud perhaps as a dateless memory, standing inside a theatre, moon-shadows moving atop wooden structures, and echoey conversation, the aroma of backstage plaster.
Still, I did not possess the educated clairvoyant insight to know unequivocally that this figure illuminating through my astral vision was in fact, Antoine Artaud in astral form.
However, the magician, was decidedly not Antoine. He did not inhabit a withered human form in the way we see Antoine depicted in his cell at Rodez. I also intuited that the magician was a ballet dancer and that his magic wand was a sword as though he was the character Mecurtio in the ballet Romeo and Juliet. I then realized that the mist-like figures from behind the hexagonal portholes upon which I had gazed earlier were, in a manner of speaking, members of a ballet troupe.
The magician then spoke the following words quoting the old man in the mountain who said::
Nothing is real
Everything is permitted
He then said:
The only performance that makes it
that really makes it
Is the performance that achieves madness.
And then he looked me in the eyes and asked:
Am I right?
I blankly nodded affirmatively. And then he instructed me as follows:
I shall now enter your internal dome, your sentient skull. I carry this red velvet box in which there is a golden pistol. I shall lend you this golden pistol and you must point it between my eyes, and pull the trigger. At that point the performance shall begin.
I opened my eyes, not realizing they had been closed for an unknown period. I sensed in opacity the aroma of damp old wood in an attic as the rain poured down but set against the actual apartment and the quiet night. Then I stood up. I knew I was back in 2462 California Street; here was the living room and the couch that used to be the stage. But then I heard a voice that said, in a very definite tone, ‘Ora’!
In that instant, I picked up my typewriter and threw it through a glass window onto the street below, and then I attempted to go outside. I cannot know where I would have gone, but I certainly would have been arrested if I had succeeded in exiting the apartment. George was there, in any case, and he restrained me. I went back inside and fell asleep. My friends returned to bed, and a breezy quiet pervaded the apartment. I had achieved a rite of entry.