It should be noted that I had liminal state visitations as a young child from an entity I called at the time, ‘the Sandman’. One time the Sandman even appeared to me in the sky during a full blown waking visionary experience. He was often accompanied by a companion I referred to as his cat. Now as it turns out, the Red King is also known by the name ‘the Sandman’, and I had wondered if they were one and the same. On day 5 of his week, 663 claimed that Red King was indeed the Sandman of my childhood, and that he himself was the cat. It is also true that we only started the godform cycle because Idris El Senussi recommended we work with the Red King. We decided that if we were to work with a godform other than Ellis, we needed to get to know them all. Hence starting the cycle.
Now here we were, starting our week with Red King, in some ways the entity we set out to evoke in the first place, at least originally. I felt excited and nervous.
Day 1
Dream: I was buying and selling second hand CDs in a warehouse market. A recurring theme in some of my dreams. I was looking at some CDs from an underground artist that made instrumental trance inducing music for various moods. I drop something on the floor, perhaps a CD insert, and bend down to pick it up. As I do so a smartly dressed Japanese woman walks up to the same stall. She makes a statement about me being a pervert for crouching by her feet looking at her legs. She is wearing red semi-high heels and black stockings or tights and a red skirt. This contrasts with the CD cover art, which was all in cool shades of blue and green.
Sighting: Cycling to work in the morning I sight a red squirrel crossing a quiet residential road a few feet in front of me! I had not seen one during my commute before and I haven’t seen one since.
Ritual: We start with a KIAO followed by our customised calling for Red King. I do not manage a visualisation of Red King, but sense his presence and feel him urging me to start an automatic writing. Red King tells me that Dana is driving KIA forwards, whilst my fussing over details whilst ignoring important issues has held KIA back. He tells me I need to open up and collaborate with others more, not just with KIA, but in other projects. He suggests I might need to do an Abramelin style working at some point.
I ask about the red squirrel sighting. He answers evasively, suggesting that perhaps it is a messenger. He refuses to spell out the meaning however, saying I must do so myself.
I ask about my dreams. He tells me to look out for the colour red. He congratulates me for noticing the red shoes but tells me to look out for more…
Film: Limitless (2011). Theme seems strangely relevant to Red King.
Day 2
Dream: Standing on a hill near Foyers with Dana. We have a couple of clear plastic pipes and feel disappointment that these were all that we were provided. Who provided them? The Red King? Were they for Boleskine House?
Sighting: Sitting in my living room having breakfast before work, I witness a beautiful sunrise and watch a large flock of geese fly over in wedge formations.
Sighting 2: In the same spot I saw the squirrel yesterday, today a duck waddles in the road before me. What is going on?
Film: The Lion King.
Ritual: Tonight I feel a compulsion to dress differently for the ritual and wear a red t-shirt and red poncho with bare legs and feet. I got the feeling from Red King that black tracksuit bottoms were not appreciated. This time I find my focus drawn to the triangular ‘heads’ of the sigil, rather than the central ‘Q’. I get the sense of a monkey on the lap of a larger monkey king. As I remember the triangle head of my childhood ‘Sandman’, I receive a visualisation of a snarling black dog. I wondered if Red King was showing it to me. He was.
As I talked to the Red King I began to feel like my life was more and more dream like, like nothing in it had any more or less significance than any dream. My sense of the boundary between dream and waking life has been blurred. My dreams seem more real, and my waking life more dreamlike, as if the two worlds were colliding and I was caught in their meeting place.
Day 3
Film: Phantom Boy
Ritual: Today we drink a tea with sleep inducing herbs, such as valerian. I lay comfortably on a bean bag and Red King gave me an image of bunny rabbits. At first very cartoony. When I enquired about this he replied simply “The Rabbit Kingdom”. I was shown images of rabbits from #eTHErSEC, Alice in Wonderland, DKMU posts and of course Silver Lapiny Coney.
“The Rabbit Kingdom” he repeated, “you are a part of it”.
He reminded me of my love for Watership Down as a child and how I even had pet rabbits. He then showed me the snarling dog from yesterday again. “Recognise it now? It is the one from Watership Down.”
Suddenly I remembered the dog from the film. It all fit together, but I didn’t know the significance yet. He then reminded me that we saw many rabbits during Zalty week in Foyers, and that I also see many of them whilst cycling along the canal. I’d been taking them for granted I see them so often.
I also remember the scene from the beginning of the Watership Down film, where Lord Frith hands out the gifts to all the animals and the rabbit, El-ahrairah, is frightened and hiding so gets blessed on his rear. Red King suggests I need to look to the list of attributes granted by Lord Frith to El-ahrairah and understand them in a magical context.
Day 4
Dream 1: Lionel Snell reads me a story from a book about some Japanese men who find themselves in a train station with free tickets to anywhere. They imagine themselves headed to a house of their own with a cute little name and garden. As Lionel turns the page it reads “like you know only too well”, Looking up from the book Lionel adds “I do, oh I do” with a nostalgic smile.
I tell him I always imagined this book was written by him. He tells me that he is sorry to disappoint. I console him by saying it is okay, and telling him about a couple of authors I came across recently, one which sounds like myself and another that writes like Jaq D Hawkins. I should note that the last time I saw Lionel, I was with Jaq in the British Museum, this being shortly before he moved to South Africa.
Dream 2: I am browsing a social media website when I come across a video. At first it looks like an animation loop but as it breaks the pattern I realise it isn’t. I have the sound down, but suspect they are singing something. I get the impression the song is made up of famous lines from lots of other songs pieced together. It was very artistic and funny and going viral.
There are three rows of six people in the video and I notice Cat Vincent and Damien Williams at opposite ends of the second row. They both hold up a small golden pyramid with black sigils marked on the facing surface. These sigils incorporate the Operation Intruder CE5 sigil in a stylistic way.
I then dream of explaining this video to Dana.
Film: Watership Down. Inspired by yesterdays evocation, we decide to re-watch this classic. We learned that the blessing of Lord Frith was “Very well, I will bless your bottom as it sticks out of the hole. Bottom, be strength and warning and speed forever and save the life of your master. Be it so! El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince With A Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
We were also struck by the realisation that Kehaah was a form of Kia, what with the similarity in name and the gul resembling the vulture used by Austin Osman Spare to symbolise Kia. The gul shifted the emphasis to highlight a more maritime, and hense pirate, nature.
Ritual: We employed whiskey in this ritual and felt we needed to ask the Red King about the coming Conjunctio Gnostic Mass. First I asked for and received an automatic drawing.
Then Red King broke down the structure of the Mass, with the beginning involving the interaction of himself and White Queen, and the finale being the reaching of Conjunctio, amongst other advice. I won’t say too much so as to avoid spoilers.
Day 5
Dream: I construct a makeshift sigil stand from nothing but paper and sticky tape. When I finish I realise I am sitting in an office at one end of a large shared desk. I put the stand away in a pile of papers and start rearranging and tidying the mess of cables and other items around the computer.
I look for a story and as I do so begin talking to other people in the room, perhaps in response to one of them taunting me. I have written a story only to have someone else publish it in their own name. I hadn’t shared it with anyone. They teased me that I must be psychic (having picked up the story of the other author), or were spied upon by a psychic that stole my story. I presented them with the more down to Earth explanation that a hacker had found the story on my machine, liked it, and been in a better connected situation to get it published.
Sigil: This morning I prepared the sigil for White Queen, ready for her week which was to follow from this week with Red King.
Films: We spent some time catching up on a bunch of DKMU youtube videos we hadn’t yet seen.
Ritual: Whilst meditating on the sigil I see it differently than on previous days. I notice it as representing a bird, a hatchling, an egg, and inside the egg a Q representing the sperm uniting with the ovum. The entire life cycle from conception to death. I had seen seen insectoid and alien forms, a squirrel and a monkey, but until today never the birds.
“I can be whatever you want me to be” I heard these words, apparently from the Red King.
“Can you really?” I replied sceptically.
“Do you really imagine that dreams can only be fantastical? Think of all the times you have dreamt of mundane things like school or work. Then think of all the fantastical experiences you have had in your apparently ‘waking’ life. Reality is not much different from a dream when it comes down to it.”
The Red King then reminded me of various dreams and visions I had during childhood, other than the Sandman, that blurred the line between reality and dream.
Day 6
Dream 1: A dream about entering a nightclub late at night. I meet my daughter, Claire, as she leaves the club with her boyfriend. Apparently Dana is still inside. On my way up the stairs I anger a drunken man trying to dance in the stairwell as I try to squeeze by him to reach Dana.
Dream 2: We are sitting around a small circular pond, looking at something green on the bottom. Apparently the pond is connected to an underground river. Suddenly I recognise the green thing as my old raincoat and pull it out. It has hardened into a rigid folded shape. A man behind us warns us that the water is very cold. As we wonder why we notice the sea has come in surrounding us and the pond. We all have wetsuits on and start swimming but the water is cold on our bare arms.
Ritual: We planned to spend Day 7 at a candle workshop with some friends, and I decided to use the opportunity to make a dream candle. Red King gave me a sigil to mark it with. I should apparently use this to aid in pursuing my dreams. I also discussed with him the project I had talked about with Idris, who recommended I work with Red King. Red King told me that the time for that project was not now, and I needed to do some other things first. The time might still come for that project, but later.
Day 7
Making of the Dream Candle: We made candles by placing old wax in jars around a new wick, then melting them in an oven on low heat. I visualised Red Kings sigil as best I could during the making of it.