Saturday, November 23, 2013

On Aimless Wandering

Let us wander without aim. We’ll wander long and deep into the night and we’ll find many wondrous things therein.

Aimless wandering is a purely intuitive art. There exists a hidden cartography, an orientation of the irrational, by which the wanderer follows the trace of destiny through places both familiar and unknown. All known routes are surrendered at the outset of the journey, the stated objective of which is to attain to flavors as yet untasted by the soul. To the wanderer, every place is the destination, every moment as a wine distilled purely for their indulgence, a wine of a particular fragrance heretofore unknown and never to be known again. The rarest and most hidden treasures are to be found by accident, given only to those without clear aim, who have set out on a route inscrutable. To sin is to miss the mark – but how can one miss is aim is never taken? In wandering, one is wholly without sin. It is the last of the purely innocent arts.

It has been told that if you wander its streets and byways at every hour of the day and night, explore its hidden passageways, allows its secret voice to reverberate deep within your soul as you submerse yourself into its Mysteries, you will at length come to discern the Kabbalistic heart of the city. There you will find the terrible and the sublime. Allow the essence of this hidden heart into your own and you will come to know the heart of every city, from Detroit to Golgonooza.

In ritual, one must orient oneself in accordance with the winds, with the cardinal points, with the rotation of the planet relative the sun and moon and with the stars. Aimless wandering and symbolic orientation are as the Aleph and the Tau of the lost art, while Mem is the tongue of balance between them. Taken all together, we have the word AMeTh – “truth”. This is the word that the golem of Prague bore upon its forehead. If the capacity for aimless wandering is removed, the result is MeTh – “death”. I would suggest that we keep this well in mind. 

Some thoughts on the corresponding art of orientation may be found here

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