By Embreis23
Note: Athens Area Pagans Inc. is open to all paths, ways, and practices. The following is the author’s opinion and is not intended as a statement of opinion, theology, ideology, or faith on the part of AAP.
Introduction: What follows is the third of a series of attempts to describe and communicate the experiences I have had with entities that I choose to call Goddesses or Gods, and also with other spirits. Sometimes I just call them “Those Ones.” There is a longer version of this introduction attached to the first installment, but please understand:
- These essays reflect my experiences, and are not intended to be taken as dogma, some special revelation, or The Exclusive and Only Truth.
- For this purpose, I’m not really concerned about historical authenticity or claims of cultural property, or scholarly niceties.
- I am not, nor do I aspire to be, a prophet, pope, high priest, anointed
- one, cult leader, epopt, or gatekeeper.
- Although I necessarily use metaphors and poetic imagery in writing about Those Ones, I am not speaking of archetypes, or psychological states, or dwellers in some airless otherworld; I am writing about PHENOMENA, just like stars and stones and your own too solid flesh.
- I assert that, whatever names you call them or stories you tell about them, the real gods are with us, in our blood, in the dirt beneath our feet, and in the stars and in the void. When we come to know them, we must love them because they are beautiful, and graceful, and even terrible. But we are neither their property nor their slaves, although we may sometimes be their prey. To know them and reach them is ecstasy, even if it’s sometimes a painful ecstasy.
II. Nimble Jack
I first met the One I call Nimble Jack early, but under a different name. He originally came to me as a character in a series of short stories I tried to write while I was in college, and I called him Joshua Lucky1. He was a big burly mystery man, with a scarred face and hands. He always wore shabby clothes and big boots, but with medals and pins and feathers in his top hat. His hair was long and wild, black with gray streaks, and he had a bushy black beard. In my stories, the other characters often said that they couldn’t figure out what race he belonged to.
Joshua was a wandering musician. He played different instruments in different imaginings. First, he played the trumpet, then the harmonica, finally – under the influence of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” – I made him a fiddle player. In my stories, wherever he would play, people who heard him would become sick of their mundane lives and set off on adventures.
The stories never worked out. As far as I know, those manuscripts, pounded out on cheap newsprint on a manual typewriter, are lost to time. But Joshua Lucky stayed with me. He sometimes appeared in my dreams, sometimes seemed to whisper things to me when I was awake. Once I had set my feet on the Pagan path, I realized there was more to Joshua than I had thought.
Those Ones, they do this to us sometimes: pick an image out of our heads and make it the mask they use to communicate with us. So be alert if characters you’ve invented or your childhood imaginary friend or some will-o’-the-wisp in your mind suddenly becomes persistently independent of you. There might be something important going on, and you don’t want to miss it.
Jack, nimble Jack, does have a lot in common with Joshua Lucky, but he’s not Joshua lucky. As I began to understand him, I asked him what his name was and he said “I’m a nimble boy, so you can call me Jack.“
Sometimes he looks like Joshua Lucky, but sometimes he’s absolutely goat-footed Pan, and at other times he goes full Baphomet, with horns, wings, and tits. But I’m sure he can look like anything he wants to or anything you need him to look like.2
Jack is like the big brother I never had in a way. He has all the best ideas, but sometimes they are terrifying ideas. He will lead you away on wonderful adventures, but he will not worry much about the consequences when the adventure ends.
Jack wants you to play with the world, to make it your pleasure palace, not your prison. He knows how to draw wealth and joy and whatever he needs to himself and let it pass through without holding him and he will gladly teach you these ways.
His magick is the magick of pure will “unassuaged by lust of result,” moving always forward with certainty and grace, certain that it will work out in the end.
He hates prisons of any sort, chains and bindings of any sort; he is the greatest escape artist. And he hates bullies and bosses most of all. He is the fist in every oppressor’s face.
And he is a musician: his instrument could be a fiddle or a guitar or a harmonica, or any other instrument, but, in the end or at the beginning, he’s the Piper at the Gates of Dawn3.
Jack is one of the primal children of Chaos, and represents those parts of Chaos that most frighten the lovers of control and power. He is the ultimate Chaos surfer, the great dancer in the woods and in the stars. If you master his steps, all the pleasures and goods of the world will flow to you, but none of them will ever master you.
He can be a thief, or a trickster, or sleight-of-hand charlatan, even a liar, when he needs to be. But he only tricks you when deems you need to be shocked out of your maimed and sleepy state.
He is also, always, a seducer: there are lordly sky gods, sovereignty gods, who imagine themselves to be the fathers of heroes, but most of them are deceived. Jack has already been slipping into that bed with their lusty wives. Still, his only true love is She Who Must Be Adored. He is the consort that brings Her to the feast.
If you are in bondage, trapped with no way out, Jack is The One you should call on. He is the breaker of chains and opener of the way. But be warned: he doesn’t necessarily show you an easy or convenient way out, just one that works if you have the nerve and determination. He becomes impatient with the timid and fearful. He derides those who kneel and beg. He doesn’t want your worship or your obedience. He wants to see all those who seek him fly free of all bondage.
He can be frightening, especially to those who come to understand him, because, you see, his secret name is Death. When, inevitably, the body or the being you have fashioned for yourself this time becomes a prison, it is He who takes your hand and leads you home, to face the one judge who can really know you, your own naked self. But there are only two possible judgments: to become nothing, or to go on the next adventure.
This is the third in a series of at least 8 and possibly more aspirationally weekly essays. Next time, Hekate Soteira.
- “Joshua” is the name King James’ translators gave to Yeshiva, the Old Testament character who “fit the battle of Jericho.” “Jesus” is also a version of “Yeshiva,” via Aramaic, to Greek, to Latin, to English. This was intentional. “Lucky,” because my Joshua was, but also a slant rhyme for “Loki.” This was in my atheist phase, when I only admitted to mythical and mystical characters in fiction. ↩︎
- Yes, I realize that Jack might seem to resemble the Christian Devil, or other boogeymen of the monotheisms, and there’s a reason for that. Of all the real Gods, Nimble Jack is most frightening to power-hungry and desperate egregores of the sort hierarchical religion and priestcraft favor. As such, the egregores and their priests must frighten their followers into staying away from him. ↩︎
- “Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
“’Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’
“’Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!’” – Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, chapter title: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. see also Pink Floyd
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