XXVIII
A Yoga Instructor at the club downtown was sort of low hanging fruit for the Mason Chronicles. “Mason is a fantastic spirit,” he said. “I wish he would take care of himself a bit more and come see us more often because he’s got such a great practice. He has the dexterity and strength of an athlete but he says he never played sports. Too bad. But he could be a great yogi. His focus is good and his commitment to the pose is really determined. For a sort of advanced intermediate yogi he’s impressive, but you know, he is one of those students who drive you crazy. He could be so much better but only practices, you know, a couple times a month, if that. But, I know, he’s busy.”
Some of my more… occult-y friends, people I’d met in my research in Pasadena, had put me on to a so-called Black Magick Master — who I proceeded to question forthwith about Mason. “As a black magician,” he said, “Mason could only be considered a novice but as a syncretist, as a scholar, he is rather impressive. We met at the Unified Fields workshop at the Aspen Institute with Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison. We were all on a Chaos Magick panel and really hit it off. After the sort of formal thing we, Mason, Grant and I, went to Woody Creek Tavern and just talked and talked and talked. Grant wanted to go eat psilocybin so we went out to this camp in the mountains, had our little fungi and chanted in the sunrise. There’s this great little story I just told at the Omega Institute in town here about that day. We were all sort of tumbling through these interstellar dimensions and morphing into various beings. At one point we lost Mason as he was stuck in between forms, in between planes. When we went back to find him he was partly a raven and partly a human form he’d once inhabited in another time. Grant was able to guide him through the becoming and he fully achieved the raven form. And at that very moment we all heard and felt a giant thunderclap. The seams between the dimensions sort of snapped and we were all presently returned to our human corporeality in the present tense. We were later to discover that there had been a minor earthquake epicentered a few miles north of Aspen, right where we’d been camping. This is really bizarre as there is no serious fault line anywhere around there and obviously no tectonic activity. Somehow Mason’s transformation had broken the interplane sound barrier, if you will. I’d never experienced anything like it but Grant, who frequently travels between the twelve or so dimensions, said it is not uncommon when one achieves the Krishna-state. In achieving the crow form and then snapping us all back, Mason had wobbled time and space so that it all literally trembled. I think we were all very lucky to return to our loci intact.”
A Yaqui Shaman I’d found through the anthropology department at UCLA submitted to my queries re the Mason Chronicles. “Yes,” he wrote, “Mason came to me seeking a meeting with Mescalito. He had read books, I suppose, about my friend Don Juan and wished to have the experience himself. I did not take him at first. His mind was mixed up and too busy. I did not want Mescalito to meet the young man and tear the pieces apart. So we waited. Very long. Maybe two years. Finally he found enough strong ground to sit on inside and he seemed ready to go. We drove down to our place in the desert where we could have the meeting. Many of my friends helped prepare for the ceremony. There was a good group of people at the house and we sat down to eat the sacred plant. At first Mason seemed very afraid but the chanting and the support of the others helped him to relax. I was not sure Mescalito would come to him in his first time. But after a few hours Mason stood up and was guided out of the house into a clearing in the chaparral. He was very sick of course and shivering but in the sand he sat down and became strong again and healthy. He is a very ancient soul, Mason. He is like the carvings in stone of so many ancient peoples. As he sat in the sand he became like those sculptures. He is old like stone but changing like Coyote. He became so many different animals in his meeting with Mescalito. I had been wrong about him. His mind was not so busy because of confusion but because he carries inside of him all of Coyote’s different lives, all of his ways. He was more comfortable than I expected and Mescalito spoke to him like an old friend. They have known each other for many many years. Mason is much older than me or Don Juan. He comes from the beginning when Mescalito and Crow and Coyote were young. He told me that Mescalito warned him about his appetite. The old are like the very young, like children, and they do not always do what is right for themselves. Mescalito told Mason that he must become old and young at the same time, to use his wisdom and to still play like a child. He has a great responsibility, Mason. He is a guide into the Other world and he must take his role very seriously. Mescalito told him he would give him strength to be a great traveler between worlds, to go back and forth. It is very hard to always be taking people from one place to another and Mason was growing weak, too weak to do as he should. Mescalito gave him a great amount of energy to travel more, to go between the worlds as he must. Mason became Coyote once again and then he went to sleep. When he woke up we drove back to my home and Mason returned to begin his traveling again, taking people to the Other world.”
Anouk’s letter began, “Most pre-Christian mythologies have a tradition of the trickster figure. For the first nations of the Southwest region he’s Old Man Coyote, a devious, shapeshifting little fucker. But like the Raven or Crow of the Pacific Northwest, Hermes of the Greeks or Mercury of the Romans, no definitive moral value — either good or evil — is ascribed to him. He is a fringe character, a border guard between the mundane and the divine. Hermes’s name is derived from the cairn markers along the ancient pathways for which he served as both metaphor and guardian. Mercury hot-foots it down from Sol to bring us God’s gazette. Coyote and the crow confound us with their cryptic riddles — the Sonoran equivalent of a Zen koan — by way of initiation into The Know.
“It is the function of these unpredictable characters to usher us into a new, higher state of consciousness. Through riddle or comedy they challenge us and draw us onto a higher plane. They help us evolve. In fact I’ve always attributed our fear of their comic cousin the clown to a fear of death, the death that comes in transformation, in change, the death that comes with rebirth, with enlightenment. It is not by accident, nor just Hitchcock, that ravens and crows are to this day thought to symbolize death, transmogrification.
“But there is another aspect to these characters that has always fascinated me. Aside from their mercurial and hermetic qualities, these figures are often enough creators of the known universe, of humanity, identity. Old Man Crow made man out of mud. Grandfather Raven coaxed man out of a clam shell. For that border, between existence and its opposite, is simply another border of which they are the guardians. They tricked us out into this plane and they will usher us out when we’re ready. Rather fitting I find.”
A Numerologist, reading Mason’s chart according to the 18 March 1973, 17:44 Rome local time birth given me by Angelini (He was born on the same day as Edgar Cayce, George Plimpton and Ernest Gallo): “Your friend has a life path number 5. This is for adventurers, the bold and versatile. He has returned to this life to experience everything, to go on adventure, to see everything in life. It is very dynamic but it is very very hard. He is very smart and has to be strong, to defend his freedom which will always be threatened. He must become free and not be glued to past or future because he is all in the present. He must always change. There will be many opportunities, many chances for nourishment. It helps him to be curious and lively in his mind. He is not organized or structured. He should do something always changing like languages, travel, publicity, sports, leisure. In order not to veer off the good course of this path 5, you must be capable of distinguishing between the useful and un-useful. Above all he must find how to do things in moderation. He will always want the wild-times but he must avoid temptation to be indulgent, to live too much. He will probably have many great successes but he will try to always avoid boredom. He lives so much. He must be free and not weak to temptation. In his past life he was very wild, irresponsible and destructive. He was not caring about others or even the outcome of his actions. Very crazy with sex and living too much. In this life he must be careful not to repeat this behavior. This life is about nourishing himself. There is much fulfillment available. There is much variety and lessons to learn and lots of change and freedom. It will be difficult to be always changing. If he can become good with adapting he will have a great deal of success in this life. He is also easily bored. He will have had in his early life been trapped and ruled by a powerful man. But he always needs freedom and he will have to fight against becoming trapped all along. He is not a leader because he must be alone but he has the highest confidence and sense of self. He will not be so compassionate and think of other people up front but what he is doing in his life, the whole purpose of his life is to help people, to show them how to make their life better. He will seem cruel but is really charitable.”
