From the Diary of Emile Belasco (10)

Transformation is important.

Human beings are creatures of patterns. Spirits are even more so. But, humans are what I'm talking about. We fall into ruts. We get caught up in the day-to-day routine of things, until twenty years gets by us and we look around and say, "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife." Or, something very like it. We change more between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six than at any other time in our lives. We are quite literally at our most dynamic in those young adult years, and yet even then the sort of changes in our own lives come on slow. Human beings hate and fear change. It's usually traumatic, even if it brings good things in its wake. But it is in changes, the breaks from stasis, that we are most malleable, that we are most able to create changes within ourselves. 

Think about it. Isn't it usually easier to reinvent ourselves on the first day of a new school, or after the house has burned down, or after a huge loss in the stock market? What if you could literally change something within you as easily as willing it? What would you turn yourself into? Would you teach yourself to be more physically active? Would you teach yourself to concentrate better or meditate? Would you re-order your mind to make it more efficient? Sadly, it doesn't work like that. At least, I've never been able to make it work like that. There are a few tricks, but they rarely last long. 

So we come back to transformation. It is a path that is as old as Magick. There is a theory that Lazarus's resurrection was part of an Eleusinian mystery initiation. Supposedly, he and Mary Magdalene served as a bridge between Essenes Judaica and the much older mystical paths. It is interesting because, in the story, Lazarus, who is supposedly Jesus's best friend "dies" while Christ is on his ministry. Hearing the news of his "Death", Christ then does not hasten to his grave. "These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." (John 11, 11)

Of course, when Jesus arrive he calls to Lazarus to come forth from his tomb, he does. And, this is the interesting bit: After Lazarus returns from "death", this remarkable man, Jesus' best friend, completely disappears from the Bible. A man named, or perhaps re-named, John seems to take his place.

I believe that Shamanic practice has a great deal of wisdom wrapped up in it. They have a concept called "Recapitulation", the basic idea, as near as I understand it, is that our past binds us and it binds our energy. The practice then is to erase our past, both good things and bad things, to free up our energy. What is it Tyler Durden says? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." He's echoing shamanic ideas in this. I've only known two people who I felt had good reasons for having tattoos. One was a shamanic practitioner. Each time he had reached a new level in his practice, he would take on a new mark to signify his new understanding. The other was a stripper who would get a new mark each time she would get shut of a love affair that wasn't working as a visual reminder of what NOT to do next time. 

Both of these things made sense to me. Indeed, taking on a tattoo is a sort of self-transformation. It's not quite irrevocable, at least not anymore, but one must make a decision about the sort of mark one takes for oneself, as removal is neither easy nor cheap. It is to my mind the highest sort of folly to mark one's body without deeper spiritual meaning. I confess, I will never understand the "tramp stamp" that some young ladies are so enamored of.

The spiritual Death and Resurrection cycle is an oft-used method of self-transformation and is the means of John's transformation. You'll note he took a new name, a not-uncommon practice. However, it is far from the only way that one can create meaningful change in the psyche. There is usually only one criterion for that sort of transformation.

It has to be hard to come back from.

Take the vision-quest for example. A brave, reaching the age of his majority goes out into the wilderness to wait until he's half starved enough to start hallucinating, and once he's received his "Vision" he returns. Some don't make it of course, but those who do return changed. And, that is the whole point. It is only through fire that we can be re-forged.