METAMORPHIC RITUAL THEATRE
At EarthCore Festival New Year 2000-2001
ELECTRIC EGGSTATIC EGG
Our installation and interactive performancy at the Nu Year Earthcore Festival became a more powerful initiatory vessel than expected. While a lot of the magickal symbolism would have been lost on the average punter, the underlying effects and meanings became evident to us and were felt if not fully understood by those who experienced the ordeals we prepared.
We created a beautiful atmospheric space weaving webs around an old black bark acacia tree.
This tree called us upon arrival to the site, and it was a while before we registered that this genus is the most potent Australian source of tryptamine, the active ingredient of the psychoactive DMT.
These 3-dimensional geometric webs around the tree and enclosing the entire space we set up glowed eerily in UV lights and dim coloured spotlights. Amordios set up his wondrous Gobblyn camp and a lavishly decorated stage under the annex from his old bus.
Strange skulls of all manner of beast hung throughout the camp, some mutated by the GobblynSmyth himself, and various arachnean and harlequinesque dolls, feathers and other adornments. I created a splendorous altar with peacock feathers, elemental tools, animal skins and gnarled pieces of wood we found in the surrounding bush.
Where wires wove through the treewebs, I created a small birdlike being of old computer parts in a nest of coloured wires, fromwhich strands reached out into the web and circuitboards which they patched into.
The webs reached from the Tree across to our central installation -the
electric Eggstatic Egg: The metal cage built for the Beltaine performance
at Wolfgang's Palace was set up as an electrified Mutation Parlour. Most of
the time it was half-covered with hessian and red velvet so that people
could only look in the cracks, sometimes this 'shell' would be pulled back
to reveal further the strange activities within.
Amordios had made a pentagram of wooden planks which formed the floor of
the cage, and I filled the spaces between these planks with pieces of
mirror, so that only the planks could be walked on. As intended, the top of
the domed cage was reflected in the mirrors giving the effect of an entire
egg form with half below the surface of the ground, but an additional vital
symbolism also became apparent:
There were six bars of the cage's skeleton, so these formed a hexagram at
the apex of the dome. The hexagram, traditionally represent ing the cosmos
or macrocosm, was reflected in the pentagram -traditionally representing the
earth or microcosm: As above, So below.
The two main positions victims (excuse me -initiates) to the parlour could
be tied up in for electrification were to the edge of the cage with arms
spread out so that their bodies formed another pentagram reflected in the
floor before them, or arms stretched out above them on a metal hook to the
top of the cage, legs straddling the centre of the pentagram below. For this
second position the metal pegs holding the planks of the pentagram together
were used as the earthing for the electrical current through the initiate.
'Earthing the current' has never been more literally expressed!
We opened the space with a circle inside the Egg. 11 of us sat around its
inner periphery (just fitting) and chanted the chakra tones with the rising techno
from the nearby mainfloor providing a pounding backbeat. Then we all stood
and at the end of each arm of the pentagram was placed a corresponding
elemental tool as I performed Nema's 6-fold aeonic invocations. The tool for
Harpocrat was the Egg itself, the Spirit or Akasha containing the rest, and
Bes was invoked in the Pentagram's centre for the direction of below. Thus
was the space opened.
We jammed live music or Evan spun strange eggclectic records as punters
wandered in sporadically. Some were too spun out by the intensity or
strangeness of the space and hurriedly left again, others dallied curiously
and after some time we began upon enquiry to find victims for our Electric
Egg Mutation Parlour.
Those willing would be ushered in by the Gatekeeper, a bizzarrely costumed
and cloaked 'Shugal' who would lift the skull-and feather spike to pull back
the chains and allow the victim to enter on hands and knees through the
small aperture in the cloth shell. They would emerge into the dimly-lit
inscense-thick interior which was plush with fur and velvet. Various wired
and unwired tools and devices hung from a wooden bar along one curved side
of the parlour.
We would begin with non-electrified whipping to warm up the body and
inflict mild pain to adjust the initiate to the severity of the oncoming
ordeal. Relief and sensorial contrast were provided with soft strokes of
ostrich and peacock feathers. Then the electrified whips (wired to a welder
to which the cage was also earthed) were introduced, giving the victim mild
shocks as the lashes swept over the back or stomach.
Much more precise was the electric feather. The wire jutted from the spine only at a specific point so that the rest of the feather could be used to stroke the skin with soft caresses. Then shocks (slightly stronger than those applied with the lashes) could be applied to specific locales. Most effective seemed to be the solar plexus (transmitter to/fro Hunab Ku) and base of the spine, which sent a shock straight up the spine much like an artificially induced kundalini rush.
The ladies with the whips looked splendid in leather, lace and latex. I had added
a touch of digital paraphernalia to my own scaly emu-foot leather tunic and
webbing for that electric edge, latexing chunks of circuitry to my forearm
so they seemed to be under my skin. It was a rush job and the latex was
bubbly and rough, like some kind of skin-and-computer virus. From one of
these circuit boards electrical wires in the shamanic colours of black red
and yellow ran up through my septum piercing as if into my brain.
I had already helped the other bondage mistresses dish out some of this
treatment to several punters before I experienced it myself, Jfred having
been the initial guineapig from our own crew.
When I did experience the electric egg myself I was shocked (yes literally
of course) and delighted with the intensity of the experience. The voltage
was at a good level (80 watts, though we turned it down to 50 for most
people we didn't know) to create an intense jolt still more on the side of
pleasure than pain.
When eventually released I was sent off through the tactile texture tunnel
sculpted by Jfred. He had spent days arranging various mundane objects
(sponges, balloons, feather dusters, cellophane, hairbrushes...) in boxes to
induce a sensorama for the fingers and toes and faces of those crawling
through the stretchy fabric tunnel we had retained from our Labyrinth
installations. In the dark, even though I knew what most of the textures
were from watching the construction, it was a mysteriously profound journey,
especially the tight sphincters which had to be squeezed through. After the
electrification, this tactile journey was somehow reminiscent of DMT
experiences I have had -interestind considering the entire installation
reached out from a tryptamine-rich acacia tree as our axis mundi.
By this stage I was beginning to refine my initiation techniques. While
the first night's sessions had been pretty much wham pow sensationalism and
absurdity, I began to enter a more shamanic state with it all on the last
night. Kestral Evan and Amordios were playing some wonderful music as I
demonstrated various devices to a couple of friends who had entered the
chamber with the expressed desire to be tortured by each other as well as
myself. At first frustrated that I could not join the jam, I then realized I
could chant along with tbe music and that this would be heard and felt by
the initiates in the cage. I soon became inspired to also shake maracas
around their blindfold heads. Amidst our crew the parlour provided a wondrous outlet for various
emotions and frustrations. It felt like a purgative device, an arena for
venting intensity on willing victims, and thus release without the cause of
harm. I certainly felt dramatically transformed by my experiences in the
egg, both as receiver and giver.
Eventually I emerged from the tunnel into the Pit of Because, a trench we
had dug and filled full of soft and fluffy things. Kestral and I had dubbed
this the Pit of Because in a state of stoned absurdity while setting up the
space, and the name had stuck. Taken from Crowley's Book of the Law, the
title is a reference to the Abyss as the sephiroth of Knowledge. What was
profoundly hilarious was dominatrix Belle turning up days later with the
idea of having Jfred (with a silent J) on a leash. Thus he became one of
the, 'Dogs of Reason' associated with this Pit of Because in Liber Al. Thus
the full implications of the space as a reification of Daath began to dawn
on us: the Pit of Because, The Tunnel (of Set?) and the Egg of Harpocrat,
the Babe of the Abyss; The 6 of the cage structure and the 5 of the
pentagram adding to 11, the number of Daath. Ironically, no specific
Knowledge or information was offered to initiates, merely intense sensorial
experiences so they were left to ponder their own reasons (or Not) that they
were as declared being sent off 'to the Pit of Because' after being
electrified.
Jfred was the only one game to test out the idea of electrified piercing as
well. We turned it down to 50 watts and once the wire-clipped piercing rod
was through his navel, he touched the metal of the cage and lurched,
experiencing 5 minutes or so of intense visual hallucinations!
After being set up for a few days we began to notice that the local
spiders of various shape and size had begun to interweave their own fine
webs with ours. At some points where we had used gossamer strands it was
even difficult to distinguish which threads were synthetic.
On the second night of being open the beetles came. Hundreds of whirring
irridescent green, purple and golden bugs, like some Australian equivalent
of Scarabs, filled the air. They were attracted to the black lights, forming
whirring clusters in the trenches of the wood encasing the fluorescent UV
tubes. To me this was indicative of Khepera, the Beetle who pushes the
Midnight Sun across the sky, they being so attracted to the *black light* of
nigri solis.
Some tripper who wandered in and freaked out on all the bugs asked why we
put them in the lights!
I was suddenly inspired on the last night to transfer handfuls of these
beautiful scarabs into the egg, and placed some on our next blindfold
victim's shoulders. Upon enquiry afterwards, he said he hadn't known they
were beetles, had thought they were some kind of new bristly pincher
devices.
One of my mirror pyramid portals had also been introduced for the last few
victims, being the first thing they looked into when unveiled.
The hexagonal one was used, presenting a kaleidoscope of fractal mandalas
of the initiates eye within triangles. This strange world was then seemingly
entered as the initiate was ushered into the dark tactile tunnel. The other mirrorbox was set into the shell of the egg when it was covered, only its eyehole visible from outside with a sign above enticing 'PeepShow'. The prospective Voyeur if peering in through this portal would have his own eye refracted back at him in infinite triangulated fractals!
There was of course a distinct lack of subtlety about the whole endeavour,
and this was keeping with the general gist of festivals such as Earthcore.
People go there to get off their heads on drugs and dance to pounding bass
which you can feel as much as hear. We parodied this extremity by
intensifying it further -if people want to get off on electric power, we
figured we may as well be as direct about it as possible!
Nevertheless, the space we created did also provide an alternative in
terms of its more atmospheric aesthetics, magickal architecture and esoteric
undercurrents. It provided an interactive venture for people to face their
fears and a subsequent release therefrom. The full power and potential of
the magickal space we created only really struck me afterwards, and I can
see now how such effects could be used even more effectively for more specific
magickal initiations in the future.
A culminative performance was enacted at dawn on the last day (2nd Jan
2001), inwhich the egg was sundered and the Peacock Angel released. Click on the Image below to read account and see more photos from this spectacular Birth.
Words and Images (c)2001 Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule
MUTATION PARLOUR HOMEPAGE