Visionary Love

At the close of the 1970s, a decade into the journey of Gay Liberation, some queers were probing deep into the roots of gay nature, seeking to uncover forgotten truths about who we are and the roles we fulfil in the human family. Dissatisfied with the conventional, assimilationist direction of the liberation movement, these queers pushed for a spiritual vision that could encompass the fullness, the magnificence, the spirit of queerness. This vision took solid form as the now global Radical Faerie movement, which stands as an example of queers gathering together in non-commercial spaces to build and explore heart-centred, love and compassion focussed community living that embraces caring for the earth, reaching for the stars and communes with the invisible realms of ancestors and spirit.

The vision also appears in some books written in the 1970s – that brief, glorious gay decade when, for those brave enough to face the virulent homophobia of the time and come out, gay men could party without fear of a deadly sexually transmitted disease. These books form a canon of queer sacred texts, that are very different from those produced by religions! Witchcraft and the Gay Counter Culture by Arthur Evans, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Kramer, Men Loving Men: A Gay Sex and Consciousness Book and Visionary Love by Mitch Walker could be said to be our four gospels.

In Visionary Love Gay shamanism is called “work in the mode of death, work with the dying, death of oneself.” Written in the 1970s as the HIV pandemic was brewing in the gay male community, this prescient vision was not really part of the conversation of the 1980s, when fighting for survival became the priority. HIV/AIDS kept the gay community focussed on the exterior struggle, but many of us who lived with AIDS and survived did so because we also took on the inner battle to liberate the Self. My own transformational journey took me over the Rainbow Bridge to a place of vision that completely changed my understanding of life. I died to my false sense of self, and my body survived, so that I might tell the tale. We are not who they say we are. It’s time we all knew it.

“Delightful communal Self realisation is the instantly real resurrection. Sorcerous faggot fighter is a menace to society, is a dangerous flaming phoenix, a glowingly rounded rebirth function, an extra-ordinary healing tool, a Rainbow-bridging eros-tool.”

Mitch felt motivated to write Visionary Love because:

“We gay men are at a key time in the evolution of our gay consciousness. We’ve been struggling to reach a great vision buried in us, which we first sensed only in the vaguest ways. … In the modern Gay Liberation Movement, the history of men’s struggles has been the history of groping towards our vision, sensing it in the values of androgyny, in revolution, in free sexuality. It has led us to Stonewall, to genderfuck, to the birth of a new gay culture.

“But during the past few years, it appeared that our movement ran out of steam; many militant groups faded, as did the brassy colourful rebels and our flagrant joyous celebrations. The seemed to be replaced by a new movement, the vocal gay Normals: fighting in the courts, the churches, the mental health professions, gaining advocate after advocate, victory after victory. It was as if the Homophile Movement for Equal Rights, taking new freedom from our radical flowering, thrust towards its goal of mainstream assimilation leading the mass of gays with them and deflowering our movement, the movement toward our vision.

“The Homophile Movement is a dead thing: dead to the gay vision, anti-magickal, counter-revolutionary. Its spokespeople and theorists shun the roots (the radical, source of nurturance and understanding) in favour of surface values: the social norm, success, integration, acceptance, assimilation. Its shallow reality suffocates the vision in us, co-opting gay people and vitiating the creativity and potential of the Gay Movement.”

Four decades later, in the West at least, gay people have achieved a degree of acceptance and equality that the activists probably never imagined, even marriage is open to us now in many countries. Our situation globally is far from great however, and religiously inspired homophobia continues to darken queer lives. In 11 countries the death penalty for gay sex is still in place. It seems the question of who we are, what we are, why we are as we are, is still not settled. Instead of bewailing assimilation, perhaps we can appreciate that from this stronger base of societal acceptance that it is now time, as a global queer community, to address the roots of our nature and the roots of religious homophobia.

These writers all saw gayness itself as a path to self-knowledge, and queer people as nature people, who, like all indigenous folk, “see life as essentially Spirit-full and essentially good“, and whose destiny is to fulfil the dream of mystics throughout time as we break down the barriers that separate people and “remember we were really SPIRIT all along… then we will assume our responsibilities and complete our tasks in the kosmic scheme of things.”

Visionary Love by Mitch Walker (1980)

I know there exists a gayness, something separate from, and alien to straight modes of being. I know that this gayness excites incredulity, opposition, fear, anger and violence. But I also know that gayness inspires strength, love and profound visions in those who are of it. I can feel these vision in my heart.

I look into my heart and hear messages from beyond, beyond that phoney who-I-thought-I-was, beyond straight society, beyond western culture, beyond time and space. I see an ancient, ancient wise being in my Self, I see new forms of evolving conscious beings, new forms of society, culture, reality. I feel the strong presence of a great wheel turning, the wheel of death/rebirth.

I see visions that the life-source is changing, so that whatever is not of this Changing but is old and prior to it will be cut off, will run out of life and drop into extinction. I see gayness as very much a part of, caused by, leading into and through this Changing. I see gayness as a door, a source, a spirit, a lover, a teacher, or rather as sourcing, enspiriting, loving, teaching. It spirits me away somewhere magickal, strange, profound. I meet teaching wierdness, opening/expanding/dropping me into lights. I feel ecstasy, wonder, delight. I feel SPIRIT.

The sense of gayness as a Spirit path is growing….We discover anarcho-sissydom, life-loving faggotry and more.

Our straight socio-cultural enculturations have blinded us. We must turn to the freer world of our imagination, fantasy, dreams, myths…. Let us build fairy mythologies – gay ways of thinking and doing – to realise and protect our loving soulful brotherhood, to reclaim our Selves, recreate our culture, regain our heritage, remember our fates as beings of Spirit, wisdom, power compassion, truthfulness, light.

This book is myth-building in action… Herein lie fairy tales for reference, example and support in combatting that straight dark maze of manly engulfment… I’m building thoughts of paths to places/lives which do not exist in any straight world, which are simply nowhere. I suppose we could cal this gay theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, physics. But my desire is not to recreate straight academia, but turn you on. My desire is life, not death, freedom, not slavery, for all of us, equally.

I hope we will grow, flow, coagulate, build these loving healing supportive friendships, networks, matricies, homes, communities and non-institutions so vital for our survival. Let’s make living crystal balls, magickal doorways, transformational half-way houses, transmutational fairy cyclotrons. Let’s cross the abyss on silvery wings to new worlds/lost hoes and re/e/emerge with the Great Spirit of all. Let’s have mass migrations.

As we depart from straight realms our thoughts, languages, lifestyles, environments will all change. Periods of confusion and disorientation are inevitable. But keep in mind that, as a gay person, the trip from straight to gay is a healing journey, a journey to wholeness, to health… The prison walls of straight space, straight time will crumble. There are multitudes of dimensions, realities and beings in existence, and much may seem unbelievably or even terribly fantastic at first.

We will change, we will transmute ourselves. Like Native Americans and most all nature peoples we will come to see life as essentially Spirit-full and essentially good. The sun, moon and earth feed us, and we will learn that we are each sun, moon, earth and all else. Then we will be entering our fate to become and be gay. SPIRIT – the intelligent power shaping and sustaining matter, space, time- will bless us, and we’ll remember we were really SPIRIT all along, and then we will assume our responsibilities and complete our tasks in the kosmic scheme of things.

May we be open.

May we be with Harmony and Inspiration.

May we dance and sing our questings, our sorrows and happiness, and taste ecstatic Joy.

May we be healed, and become Whole.

May we be Truth, Compassion and infinite SPIRIT.

A new age, a complete change in all current forms of society, a complete change in what it means to be human…. We gay people have been put in an important place on humanity’s path towards this goal. Edward Carpenter, the great gay visionary, was one of the first to notice this publicly when he wrote in 1919 that gay people “point to a further degree of evolution than usually attained, and a higher order of consciousness.” (Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk)

Being a crazy faggot is part of our radio-reception equipment for the signals across the Bridge. Our norole emptiness provides the tuner to receive the spirits. That’s why we’re called fairies, faerie being the name of the spirit-land in Celtic mythology.

All faggots are feminists, and militant ones at that. To cultivate your woman-energy, your feminism, is to increase your ability to see and walk through the great portal. In fact it’s essential.

“The commitment to ending male dominance as the fundamental psychological, political and cultural reality of earth-lived life is the fundamental revolutionary commitment.” Andrea Dworkin. The commitment of a gay man to ending male dominance within himself is a great and magickal Nightjourney of shamanistic trial and transmutation, a complete and thorough self-alteration, a great and living Round in growing, glowing consciousness, a double-helixed, evolutional Self dancing.

If cocks aren’t used as blunderbusses, they can become fine-tuning knobs on your spiritual tv set.

…have you ever been in love, had any lovers? Every lover contains a spirit. This spirit-being can be a potentially great ally for each of us in our quest. He can become your soul-guide, leading you into yourself.

Imagine that Visionary Love is first seeing, then recognising, and finally joining a vital, mythic, on-going struggle for the universe of free being, for the universe of your true gay being, for worldwide justice for all beings on all levels, a deeply revolutionary com/passionate karmic work with pattern and purpose involving evolution, consciousness, creatures of false and true self, of straightman’s societies and anarcho-communual Spirit utopias, forms of living zombie death and magickal spiralling kozmic ecstasy, reality-forms of a multi-level, multi-sexual political melodrama.

NEW AGE FAGGOT BECOMES SORCERER

At this time and place we have access to much wise knowledge. Sometimes we have to dig for it, sometimes it comes right at us, unbidden. This knowledge is available to aid you on your path. Much of it relates to spirit energies, to enhancing rapport in their realms. … All kinds of fairy tales cultural myths, religious objects such as statues and paintings, are highly symbolic. All spiritual and religious holidays, rituals, dances and orgies are methods to summon the energies. If you see them in this light, they can help you on your way.

This is a time of great transition, and there is much stress…. There is a great Event happening, something vast, right now as I write these words. You won’t read about it in the newspapers, although it’s present in almost every story. It is not political, economic, social or military, yet affects all these aspects of life.

This event is originating at a much deeper level… It includes and permeates our entire planet. It shakes me to our depths. It frightens me. Everyone and everything with eyes, ears and other senses can see, hear, feel and even taste it. It’s Here. It’s coming.

I see her coming. Awe fills me. She carries a scythe, with which she reaps worlds. She is a vast Being. She serves the Great Spirit, which is Herself, and so she strides between the stars towards our planet Earth. She has heard and seen and responded.

RAINBOW BRIDGE

The Rainbow Bridge connects Here (so-called material or mundane reality) with There (the meta reality). There is the hub/source of all realities, all wisdom/energy, also called LOKA, the kosmic starpoint. All things ‘spiritual’ originate There. The heart of gayness exists There. The gift of gayness lies in an increasing ability to see and enter on the Rainbow Bridge. I’ve called the heart and gift of gayness ROIKA. But due to anti-gayness gay men have been defused from ROIKA. Thus they can’t pick up messages coming from There. … Anti-gayness is the technique western society developed to keep gay men from actualising our ROIKA. When gay men actualise ROIKA they become a powerful threat to western society.

To realise ROIKA is to transform ourselves.

Crossing the rainbow bridge is tricky and needs caution

Gayness is the power/potential to cross the Rainbow Bridge, through the Androgyne Door called YAN. Those who do this transform themselves totally, become wise and powerful sorcerers helping others do the same. This is ROIKA, the faggot warrior’s path.

Imagine yourself in a womb-matrix, in a warm, protective, nurturant, free space, a place of renewal, of perfect healing, of soft, calm, quiet, floating, peace. And now imagine yourself as that matrix in which you float. Be gentle. Be strong. Be graceful. Be compassionate. Be she who birthed us all, to whom we all return, infinite warmth, infinite safety, infinite caring, infinite acceptance, infinite love. Be peace. Be silence. Be healing. Be all things, and be healing. Bless all he beings who exist, and send them your love. This is the way of Infinite Warmth, who judges not. She is unending unstoppable healing, gentle as water, yet she wears down mountains of pain, suffering and confusion. Peace, peace to all.

ON FAERIE:

“Fairies everywhere must begin to stand tall and beautiful in the sun. Fairies must begin to throw off the filthy green frog-skin of Hetero-imitation and discover the lovely Gay-Conscious notMAN shining underneath. Fairies must begin creating their new world…” Harry Hay

Let me tell you a story:

About types of beings generically called Fairies, about their characteristic consciousness, their strange awareness, called faerie. Faerie is a see-ing through polarity. In straight consciousness Bi-Polar Thought is king: male and female are opposites, win-or-lose is the game, reality and dream are separate, immutable and contradictory. But there are Fairies, who look on in gentle mocking laughter at such childishness, for they know that everyone is now ‘female’, now ‘male’, that no one ever wins when anybody loses, that reality and dream flip into each other at the flick of a glittering wand.

Fairies see polarities dancing, changing everywhere, constantly. So they know that any pole frozen by itself blocks the flow, becomes a dead weight, an illusion hiding true understanding. So they come to realise that every ‘objective’ thing is but a shadow.

Knowing this, the Fairies can’t take themselves too seriously, either, seeing as they are also an illusion. This creates a marvellous lightness! Fairies are truly blessed, truly free modes of being, for they can laugh at themselves in their deepest places, can transcend their ignorance from moment to moment, gliding out of each limit and restriction even as it manifests, emerging from hir own form like a butterfly or a moth.

This wonderful paradoxical freedom from form, this lightness, enable Fairies to fly. It grants them much deep wisdom.

Once someone came and told me this:

“There is an essence, essence of an eternal, hidden, dark, shining, eerie secret: the simultaneous and continuous creation and annihilation of Form, which is the heartbeat of material existence, which is that beingness, that essential is-ness of all that exists there – trees, people, planets, space, time, matter, energy – all is which is Changing, an infinite Pattern, a total-living weave of beams and streams, eddies, swirls, bursts and flows of is-into-not-is, and not-is-into-is, out of and into an unnameable nothingness-One; that all shapes, forms, are bendings and corners of this flowing-is, this power/nothing, the true behind the false behind the true behind the false in a living, pulsing spiral of All-That-Is.

“And those blessed with faerie can gaze into this essence as it were a crystal ball, and it opens their gaze through swirling shapes and colors deeper and deeper until it becomes unfoldingness itself, and they can see through the earth and out to the stars and beyond, and melt into their gaze and become the point in their Eye and flow into the Crystal itself, passing to its Center, and so become themselves There which then too is Here and All and anything, and thereby they are One from the inside with the bendings and corners of realities, and so they are not yet static things but riders of lightbeams, weightless dancers along the edge – indeed they are the Dancing itself, purposeful, masterless, nothing-points of will; they are the flow, the wind, There at the Source.”

Many Fairies are agents of planet Earth. Their faerie-being gives them telepathic union with nature’s heart, such that they flow with her completely, loving her as they do themselves. In return she gives them her wisdom, her being-ness of and deeply loving respect for the joyful fulfilment of each living creature. Thereby these Fairies become living repositories of all nature, they become planet Earth itself.

In this way Fairies can become other planets as well, other times as well.

Almost all human cultures had myths and stories about faerie lands and astral (star-channelling) planes.

We have been deceived! Caught in a mythological tyranny, in a web of falseself perversions, in a maze of deceptional violence, in a world of twisted words, cut off at the roots by shadows, trapped within spells of the word-masters. We have forgotten. We became thought-slaves.

Visionary Love starts here, in the bowels of falseself bondage.. a book of uppity queer metathought-liberation, of sissy-frying world-slipping survival tactics, of epic reincarnational trueself recovery ploys, of strategic evolutional consciousness flowering fairy tale. We manifest a mutation in consciousness, for which we have been persecuted and exploited. It’s time to stop this stupidity. It’s time to enter our maturity. It’s time.

Darkness grows in falseself lands. This is not a coincidence. Those of us who live there live in a time-bomb, in a monstrously climaxing karmic behemoth, live in a violent dinosaurian genetic fate. Tyrannosaur Rex is a thrashing in ecstatic S&M pain, is the ultra-victim in a self-induced snuff movie involving the entire Earth, enacting his last act and ringing down the curtain on World 4.

Gay shamanism is work in such times, work in the mode of death, work with the dying, death of oneself. Delightful communal Self realisation is the instantly real resurrection. Sorcerous faggot fighter is a menace to society, is a dangerous flaming phoenix, a glowingly rounded rebirth function, an extra-ordinary healing tool, a Rainbow-bridging eros-tool. Gay realisation is sorely needed life-light now. Concentrated eros, focussed will, activated anger, celebrated magick, shared love, are tactics to guard and guide our questing, to trans-form vision, trans-port worlds trans-vest Self.

To be taken by loving Fairies is truly Self-transporting, truly not describable, true Self return, dis-adoptioning, un-orphanising, and real-istically dis-covering, non/sensically re-membering aerotically re-entering faerie family homes. Peace, equanimity, wholeness. Homosexual – gay – faggot – fairy – gone.

Build loving rings of Spirit, astral fairy brothers. Reclaim our heritage! Reunite our Selves.

Circles of light!

Centers of fire!

Spiralling wind!

Rainbow egg!

Let us create, conspire, organise and plot, spread, evolve, manifest our fates. Let us sing our songs, dance the Dance. Let us be/come Fairies!

Heretofore hidden Rainbow Lovers reach out to their seedling brothers and caress them into maturity, into their ageless soulful Rings. Self uncovers itSelf.

Gay spirit is profoundest love and knowing. A magnificent liberation is possible now for those who remember their true nature as reality-channeling as faerie Selves.

Think of Fairy as a symbol, representing or triggering experience of joyful freedom from the myth of One Highest, liberation of be-ings and conscious forms from the bondage of oneself, opening up to the kosmopolitan nature of Self-universe, to the multivarious unitary truth of the matter.

“Fairies must begin creating their new world through fashioning for themselves supportive Families of Conscious Choice, co-joined in the vision of LOVE (which is the granting to any and all others that total space wherein each may grow and soar to his own freely-selected full potential). Let us gather to find new ways to cherish one another, to reach towards spiritually-sustaining and emotionally-supportive Gay Family Collectives, within which we can explore, in the loving security of shared consensus, the bottomless depths and diversities of the newly-revealed subject-SUBJECT inheritances of the Gay Vision.” HARRY HAY

_{Charlie Murphy.}