One clear afternoon early in the fall, I saw the moon, gray-silver in the high western sky and with pure clarity, I realized: The moon is not there.

There is no moon.
There are no planets.
There are no stars.

Outer space is a mistaken conception. Implications of great distance are false. There is no distance. Implications of light-years are false. There is no time.

SUPPOSE . . .

. . . we consider modern man’s popular conception of time. It is something like a long tube which began at the beginning and will continue in a straight line to some point we assume to be the end. And here we are, at this very moment — at any moment — like a weighted ball-bearing marked NOW rolling down the tube from the beginning, racing toward the end, passing distance marks called particular centuries, decades, years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds. Like a yardstick marked is our time-tube, sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour — and so on. So that when the third second of the fifth minute of the seventh hour of the tenth day of July, 1788 AD is passed, never again will the ball-bearing of NOW pass that mark.

But SUPPOSE INSTEAD . . .

. . . time is not that particular tube at all, but another — like a neon tube. And the moment of NOW is not like a ball-bearing at all, but like the impulse of electricity which moves through a neon tube causing entrapped gasses to glow. Electricity enters the tube at one end and moving toward the other, agitates each particle of gas it encounters, causing each particle in turn to illuminate. Yet we do not see the impulse of NOW moving along the length of the tube, lighting first 1500 BC, then 1500 AD. All points along the tube glow. Such is accomplished because impulses of electricity follow one another too quickly to see. NOW is not a single ball-bearing rolling from beginning to end, but a never ending series of NOWS always passing 1500 BC and 1500 AD and forever passing all the marks of our yardstick of time. Therefore, there is no time. Every moment is now; every moment is every moment that ever existed and ever will exist. But because this particular form in which we find ourselves at present can only ride one impulse at once, it seems to us that indeed time is a ball-bearing rolling down a tube past 1960, then 1970. Jump off an impulse; call the jump death. Land upon another; call the landing rebirth.

NOW SUPPOSE . . .

. . . this tube, this neon tube of all eternity, is no straight tube beginning at beginning and ending at end, but is instead the sacred hoop of all time. Winter turns to spring to summer to fall to winter. Morning turns to noon to afternoon to night to morning. Suppose the tube is a hoop and there is neither beginning nor end. And see the hoop not as a flat circle, but as a great figure eight unconnected in the middle (like the figure of infinity which it is); and see it not as rigid, but fluid and moving always — call it flopping — like a giant underinflated bicycle inner-tube, twisting this way and that so part of it (A) touches itself at another point (B) and then flops on to touch somewhere else (C).

Consider that first part (A) to be 1980; consider the first place the 1980 mark touches (B) to be a mark in Victorian times. Certain of us riding the impulse passing 1980 see Victorian ghosts. Those riding through Victorian times see unidentified flying objects. Those passing 1980 would not call the objects unidentified. They would say jet planes.

Unidentified flying objects cannot be from outerspace. There is no outerspace — no dead vacuum of vast distance. Outerspace is the invention of the segmented minds of minor scientists. WE ARE OUTERSPACE. The whole universe is one great, living, pulsating, conscious entity. Minor scientists speak of radio waves emitted from distant stars. Preachers speak of heaven.

PERHAPS . . .

. . . flying saucers and ghosts are from future marks and past upon the sacred hoop of time — and because it is a hoop, then those marks are both past and future and neither. The past is our future as well as our past.

So then would this form we call mankind be trapped forever with no escape, doomed forever to ride a great circle? Is there no real movement? Movement is not of time and distance, but of spirit.

My friend Pie Glenn, the Crow Indian, told me several years ago that he had come to believe in a kind of progressive re-incarnation — that you live one life and progress to another and to another and to another until you progress yourself beyond this form completely. Then you become what the Indians called spirits — what the Christians called angels, perhaps. If one lifetime is the time spent upon one impulse of NOW, then the following upon another and so on, then finally you free yourself entirely from that tube — remove yourself from the illusion of time — and its twin brother, distance — and become . . .

. . . like an angel
freed from distance (by wings)
and freed from time (by life without end)

Christmas Eve night in a little house on the mesquite plain of West Texas, I drank half a fifth of tequila and went outside to piss. A particularly bright star assaulted me and I returned the assault. It stared unblinkingly at me and I stared back. The power of our gazes locked upon each other forced out the light of surrounding, smaller dimmer stars so The Star was the center a great black circle. The Star told me I was an inconsequential speck standing, pissing upon another inconsequential speck of earth lost forever in the void of space. I told The Star I was onto its game. Were it able, it would con me into believing it was really there, gigantic — burning — light-years away. I said:

You can’t con me.
I know you’re not there.

The quick-eyed scientists speak of physics and the sick-eyed preachers tell of heaven. True men of power speak of mystery.

A GREAT MYSTERY

Minor prophets build religions; they betray only the height of their ego and depth of their ignorance. Like any great mystery, The Great Mystery is an accomplished con artist. Like any great con artist, it plays upon ego and ignorance.

Prophets abound always. Some are proven right; some are proven wrong. Most are never proven at all. They tell us we must worship. Worship is not a good word. Acknowledge is better; accept is still better. Receive, perhaps. Probably all three.

The true man of power — the sorcerer — the magician — the true prophet — receives intimations which he must accept and ultimately, if only to himself, he must acknowledge.

Magic is a private thing inside the sorcerer. Ceremonies are stage dressing meant for an audience — even if the only audience is the magician himself. Strange mathematical diagrams and medicine bundles are equally powerless. Real magic rests in the heart and hand of the magician.

TRUE MAGIC IS NO MORE
AND NO LESS
THAN REAL KNOWLEDGE.
TRUE MAGICIANS ARE
NO MORE
AND NO LESS
THAN TRUE ARTISTS.

If Pie Glenn’s ladder of re-incarnation climbing to a higher plane be true, then the scientists and preachers have barely begun to climb. Somewhere in the middle are the mass of poets and painters and makers of decoration. The world they portend to define for us is itself an illusion. Their decorations fill printed pages and galleries. Their art is of appearance. Much closer to the top of enlightenment’s ladder are true artists whose art has left canvas and print (though an image of it may well remain).

TRUE ARTISTS;
TRUE MAGICIANS
GLIMPSE THE OTHER SIDES
(AND THE OUTSIDE)
OF THE TWISTING HOOP OF TIME

SOON THEY WILL BE ANGELS.

This is the first issue of a new publication called Artmagic, written and published by Roxy Gordon of Dallas, Texas. We liked it so much we asked for permission to reprint it, which Roxy has kindly given us. For more information write Roxy Gordon, 6200 Palo Pinto, Dallas, Texas 75214.