In the Dreamtime, everything is possible: by gazing at one's thumb illumined by the Moon, we come to see a fantastic reflection of our shadow-self.

The Shadow Tarot

 

"By her spells she invoked the Scarab, the Lord Kheph-Ra, so that the waters were cloven and the illusion of the towers was destroyed."

Aleister Crowley, Liber CCXXXI

"Tunnel 29 is under the influence of the moon and is the haunt of the witch typified by Hekt, the frog-headed goddess and Lady of Transformation. Qulielfi is the sentinel; her number is 266 and her name should be intoned in the key of 'B' . . . "

Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden

 

excerpted from . . .

The Shadow Tarot 

© Linda Falorio, 1995

The reification of the tunnel of Qulielfi exists in twilight at the borderland of sleep and waking, at the threshold of the astral world where elementals, lurkers at the threshold of the personal subconscious, lie in wait. Terrifying, alternately seducing, fantastic dreams and visions arise according to the dreamer's temperament. The solitary witch-priestess indulging manual magick during the dark phase of her moon spins hypnagogic phantoms as a spider throwing silk from spinnerets, condensing her illusions into materiality upon the surface of the magick mirror. This, her moon magick has brought forth an astral werewolf, a type of Goetic demon with gryphon's wings and serpent's tail, a demon-lover, shadow-self, climbing into space-time to partner her thence to go forth at her bidding.

The sigil of Qulielfi is drawn with slug-slime, slugs whose iridescent bodies thriving in moist night expire when exposed to daylight, then are cannibalized by their fellows when the Sun again goes down into Amenta. This sigil is traced on limestone of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, pale as the shining Moon herself. While the towers of the dayside tarot path of The Moon have transmogrified into the spread legs of the priestess grown into twisted mangroves guarding the gate of the Black Abyss. A deadly coral snake whose single bite brings rapid death crawls menacingly between them, eager to partake of the poisonous moon-juice she distills, and which brings "dissolution . . . in the kisses of Nu": forced entry to Universe B via the brink of the Black Abyss of Death.

In the foreground we see the Peruvian, "Key" lily, abundant in these mangrove swamps, blooming as the Moon rises in Autumn at the Equinox, its heady night-perfume an opiate. Batrachian voltigeurs leap from limb to limb across the dark abyss from Earth Moon of Yesod, Svadisthana chakra, toward the Dark Moon of Daath, Visuddha chakra, their croaking heralding the emergence from non-being denizens of the dream-time, Universe B. These amphibious beings, the Moa, progenitors of the People of the Sea, black of hair, dark of skin, plying their seal skin coracles, are remote ancestors of Pacific Islanders, Australian Aboriginals, the Esquimau.

 

MEDITATION:

The need to work with the energies of Qulielfi may be signaled when for no reason we find we are requiring little sleep, or, we may find instead a simple lack of dreams. There may be discomfort with uncertainty and shadow, coupled with lack of imagination; there may be an excess of superstition, of nightmares, and of fear; there may be an abject horror of the preternatural, as expressed in the writing of Lovecraft, et al; and even an irrational dislike of everyday domestic cats.

On the other side, the powers of this tunnel include enhanced imagination, the ability to astral travel, as well as power to affect subtle levels, as in casting spells, and bewitchment. Here is affinity with the Moon, with water, crystals, and natural tides. Here resides prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, and artistic vision which see magick as neither white nor black, but colorful.

Here too, we access the dark body sorceries of ancient Egypt, Khem, the Black Land, here is access to the fertile radiations of the dark goddess, Black Isis, Nu-Isis, and the forbidden power-zone of Amenta. Here we are given power to enter the "storehouse of dreams," the akashic records, the storehouse of racial and genetic memory, recapitulating the evolutionary past via the cerebellum, the back brain, Qoph, the back of the head. Thus falling backward out of time from Universe A into the dreamtime of Universe B everything is possible. Austin Osman Spare suggests gazing at one's thumb illumined by the Moon until the eyes go out of focus, when the thumb becomes an opalescent, fantastic reflection of Oneself.

The danger is addiction to practices and substances that keep one perpetually glamoured by the Mauve Zone's sinister delights.