ADVENTURES in the NETHERLANDS DEC 1999 / JAN 2000:
Including NU MILLENIUM TOWER of BABEL RITE
Thu, 16 Dec 1999
Aankomst
good place to land (if you could call it that)
Travellings timemit unravellings and solstice greets...
Additional Spectacular Photographs of this Tower of Babel, inside and out, can be found on the BALLOON Co. Website
The strange thing for me is how this tower and the imminent rituals involved on nu year synchronize perfectly with my own work -I am thus going to become involved with them -there are 7 levels so I hope to get Chakra Chanting happening for the dragon-headed-chains-of-people doing a double helix up and down the spiral stairs just before the tower burns.
I wanted to create an Animated Digital Chaos Clock for nu year but have had no time or computer access so I decided to create it later and send it back to nu year. It seems to have worked/ is going to work in unexpected ways! -often I create on the internet plane (between astral and physical) something which later manifests in Malkuth (the physical plane). The process this emit however seems to be working sdrawkcab as 'predicted'/conjured!:
There are 12 fires to be lit around the tower like a giant clock. I realized this makes the tower itself burning (ritual vindication on industry which has cleared the local woods to dump toxic waste in the middle of the village) the 13th fire, and am thus bringing in elements of the 13th tribe, lunar astrology, Mayan cosmology etc.
?selppir sdrowkcaB from the 13th-tribe weaving (global Anahata ritual) which is to be performed in the next few years??
The local theatrical ritualists are very receptive to my input! Wonderful gypsy clan... This is perhaps the end of this village so I must be there for nu year rite, although I may go down to Spain for a few days first.
I jump ahead... bountiful Solstice tomorrow night all! I am continuing my 5-year tradition of experimenting with strange new drugs and time-warping on winter solstice, even though it is my second winter solstice for this year (due to hemispherical relocation)!:
-Salvia Divinorum concentrate this time -an intense psychoactive which when smoked is reputed to take one to another dimension for 10 minutes or so of 'normal time', although for the voyager it can seem like much longer, if time even remains at all relevant...
The patron saint of the church the Balloon co. are squatting is St Gertrude, depicted in the statue in front of the Tower in the picture above. She has been traced back to Hel/Hella in pre-christian Norse paganism -as guardian of the Underworld/judge of the dead I would consider her the Norse equivalent of the Egyptian Maat.
Have a long goodest night of the year folkses...
Solstice Report
IAO indeed! I didn't have the salvia but I had a very long dark night of the soul. Having got through the extended Apophis phase, I feel reborn now -off to the chemist after this hopefully to get some estrogen!
On the night between the 21st and the 22nd I went to a solstice gathering at another church squat, in Breda on the border of Belgium. Funny, this thing of pagans reclaiming the sacred sites the christians built their churches on! At this huge and magnificent cathedral Sunday Xtian mass still happens in one corner, coexisting with the squatters who have decorated the place with immaculate wraggle-taggle gypsy regalia in contrast with yet enhancing the beautiful architecture. Only in the Netherlands!
Well at midnight a wax mandala was ceremonially lit
-I spun out (and in) when I saw it- eight arrows with a central spiral -basically the sigil of the Order ov ChAos (animated at left) which several of us activated last nu moon, now reified on full moon!
Someone handed me a candle during the lighting ritual so I lit the outermost/first and innermost/last wick in the mandala while others lit the arrows and other points along the spiral...
Methinks this bodes well for the chaos clock on nu year too. Apparently the individual candles all merged into one huge collective blaze later in the night...
On the following night between the 22nd and 23rd I went to the Tower with the woman who was to be my minder for the salvia journey �a beautiful gypsy with tousled tangled red hair, and fucking crazy. She's one of the main reasons I didn't go to Spain.
Anyway after lots of dilly-dallying about set and setting, warmth and comfort etc., I eventually discovered I had lost the Salvia! I searched all my belongings thoroughly thrice and it was gone. Intense disappointment.
We retreated to the comfort of her house nearby and then went through an intense 16 hours or so of sheer Hel. We were both coming down with intense sicknesses, some kind of devastating fluish atrocity (no doubt further fucked up by the vast amounts of skunk I had been consuming since arrival in 'the Dam') which twisted our bodies and souls, in combination with the solstice energies. We went thru a lot of emotional shit.
Seems it was ultimately purgative though. After a *loooong* rest last night and having stopped smoking pot again, I now feel really good and am getting reinspired about the whole nu year tower ritual again...
And I thank whatever benevolent guides took the salvia from me -imagine how much worse the sickness would have been if I had indulged at that time!
Off in search of Estrogen...
Tower and Tiamat
Tiamat as the primal chaos dragon was *divided* into sections -hours, weeks, months, years by the solar hero Marduk -the cycles of the sun and linear logic -his sword. As Fenwick pointed out to me, our 12-division timekeeping actually comes from the Babylonians.
So the burning of his temple (symbolized by the Tower of Babel Structure at Ruigoord, to be lit on Nu Year's Eve) signifies a return of the lunar spiral dreamtime of 13 moons, the tower being the 13th fire, throughwhich the purging kundalini of The Midgard Rainbow Feathered Serpent (rising towards the 'end of time') flows as the firebreathing Dragon is carried (by 108 people) spiralling up the stairwell of civilization -Tiamat restored to fluid wholeness...
There was an intense gale the other night and the big tents just put up for the festival were uprooted and torn. Helping clean up the next day, I saw a thick metal pole which had been snapped in half. The tower shook mightily (I got little sleep!) but stood fast...
Another aspect I just found out about: a strange huge grublike creature is to be burned in the tower on Nu Year's Eve -the ' Millenium Bug!' (pictured at right); and a butterfly unfolds...
Tyger many thanks for the timezone info -we now have most of the cultural representatives ready to light their symbolic fires ritually in costume. For those who want to synchronise, we are lighting the first fire at 1pm, the 12th at Midnight, and the Tower of Babel at about 13 0'clock.
Interior of the Tower looking down from the top
Tower T(he)-i-am-at Timemit
Re: the Timezones and the Twelve Tribes, it's more complicated than I thought, as we are only lighting twelve fires (one each hour), and there are 24 timezones, therefore we would only be covering half the world... unless we fold time back on itself and double them somehow?...
TOWER of BABEL NU MILLENIUM RITE
Dec 31st 1999- Jan 1st 2000
A couple of days before new year�s eve I met a
large
black goat, rubbing his great horns on the roof of
his
pen in a field in a grassy sidestreet of Ruigoord.
I went and scritched behind his hears. He was the
biggest goat I have had contact with, the tips of
his
horns almost as tall as me. Meeting him then seemed
like a message from Baphomet, the nu-aeon hermaphroditic Horned God/dess whose energy I had
been
invoking over the week leading to new year.
On the morning of the 31st everyone in the
Ruigoord
community was busy with the last preparations for
the
festival around the great Tower of Babel
they had
constructed out of wooden pallets. 
Right: Inside of the Tower looking up from below
The huge circus tent for the techno party after the
burning was being decorated, makeshift bars
installed
inside it etc. When I saw the big cloth and wood
mechanical butterfly/moth
that had unfolded from its cocoon on the Amsterdam
pre-party (28th) hung up in there, it seemed obvious
why the original big tent had shredded in the gale.
The high ceiling of the new one was covered with
stars, the perfect backdrop for the insect�s wings
which were painted one with the moon and one with
the
sun. It reminded me of the moth-form of Thoth,
bringing back Atum�s eyes (the sun and the moon).
Fueling myself with coffee and joints (�when in
Rome...�) I helped out with various jobs while
talking
to people about the 12 Tribes aspect I had brought
into the ritual lighting of the 12 Fires around the
Tower. We had found most of the people (or they had
found us) to represent these tribes or source
cultures
of humanity only in the last few days, and were
still
recruiting people as they arrived for the
festivities.
The first ritual fire was lit at 1pm local
Netherlands time, corresponding with the global
timezone which was celebrating the turning of the
millenium at midnight by their time. Thus the
cultural
group was Islanders - Pacific, Maori etc.
Most people were still busy with preparations for
the night, so only 4 people gathered for this
initial
ritual. The cultural representative appeared in
skins
with facepaint suggesting Maori mukka facial
tattoos.
As he lit the fire we stood around and did the
Bes-Kali mudramantra, it�s pose being akin to the
Tiki
postures of the Islanders with tongue out and arms
and
legs bent. As usual this mudra reduced me to a
primordial state. It seemed like we were lighting a
first fire at the dawn of time.
Then we danced around the growing fire doing a Maori tribal chant and dance that Sara showed us. Then I made a makeshift sign saying �Happy nu millenium Islanders� and propped it between the fire and the woodpile.
We dispersed to various other activities and met
again just before 2pm. A burning log was carried
ritually to the next site marked around the tower
and
the next fire lit, representing the Arctic peoples.
Cleo danced around in furs and leathers with a
reindeer-antler head-dress.
I painted another sign, we dispersed and returned for the 3rd fire at 3pm.
By this time people had
begun
to gather around the initial two fires to warm
themselves against the considerable cold, and
watched
our ceremony of carrying the flame to the third,
the Australian fire. Sarah (a fellow Australian, who has spent considerable time with Aboriginal tribes) danced painted in
ochre
while Tamara played didgeridoo. Others inc. myself
joined in with makeshift clapsticks chanting and
tribal dancing.
And so it progressed... Each fire carried on the energies from the previous ones, and the intensity and number of participants grew each time. Rather than just a seperate individual doing the ceremony for each fire as I had envisioned, the cultural representatives from the previous fires and others also came and joined in with each new ritual. It was a wonderful gradual progression. The atmosphere and energy around each fire was unique and different, and remained so all night even when those who initiated them were gone.
Tamara ritually lights the North American Fire
I started getting quite high from all the chanting, dancing and general buildup of energy. I felt tangible links with the represented cultures, finding myself doing movements and sounds which felt right for cultures I didn�t consciously know much about. Others expressed the same feelings. N�aton (a name for Groupmind used in Maat Magick) global consciousness was very evident as the twelve tribes linked towards midnight...
People arranged the artefacts and tools they used for the cultural ceremonies on altars next to the fires and signs, and I noticed extra pieces had been added to some of these later in the night.
Torches were being lit by people on the Tower in patterns, so that it glowed with a soft expectant warmth in the dark night.
As more people began trickling in and setting up camps in the surrounding muddy plains (once forest decimated for the new harbor and toxic waste dump), people turned up to fill the last few missing places of cultural representatives.
A strange character
with
winged staff twice as high as he called Bert was
planning to make a San Pedro and Ayahuasca brew for
the party, so we recruited him to perform this
ritual
with the lighting of the South American fire,
as these sacred plants come from that part of the
world and were used magickally by the shamans of
their
indigenous cultures. The energies around that fire seemed
particularly intense and attractive to me, and I
found
myself drawn back to that fire repeatedly throughout
the entire night. Appropriate as I am going to
Central
and South America very soon! 
I became very aware of the links between the different cultures. As we were taking most of them back to their primal roots in our ceremonies, it became very evident how we all came from a common source, branching out and individuating culturally as civilations divided and progressed. And to this common source we are re-turning: the 13th Tribe, N�aton incarnate...
After the 9pm fire was lit I climbed up the Tower
of
Babel with my camera. Security had already been said
up with a barrier on the bridge across the moat
between the Tower and the encircling fires and
camps.
I had to attain the necessary authorisation to
convince the guards to let me in.
As I spiralled around the dark narrow precarious
stairs around and up the tower, I teetered a bit,
and
realized how out there I was from the ritual
activity
all afternoon and the mounting energy of
anticipation.
As I neared the top, feeling quite giddy and
excited,
I looked down and around - what a beautiful sight,
the
fires encircling the moat encircling the tower, each
now with at least 20-30 people around them, warming
and conversing, playing music and communing, little
specks of vibrant life glowing in the dark from my
heightened perspective, in a spectacular solar
mandala
of life. 
Left: Middle Eastern Fire
The great horizontal clock was almost
complete, with the 9pm fire forming the
three-quarter
point. Midnight approached...
And beyond this circle and the flatlands were the
surrounding lights of the Amsterdam and harbours
across the bay, forming a larger circle which
branched
beyond in an intricate web of celebratory
activity...
I took a series of photos -two or three of the
fires
below in each shot- which should have joined together into
a
mandalic map from the central Tower of Babel,
traditionally the temple of the solar hero Marduk,
who
divided Tiamat (ordered Chaos) and thus established
our Babylonian 12:60 time-system.
(At left is the only of these photos worth presenting�)
I descended the Tower in time for the lighting of
the
10th fire (African), then kicked back for a while and prepared
for the 11th (11pm), for which I was the cultural
representative. Synchronized with the celebration of
new millenium in the timezone centred on London, I
represented the Celtic peoples (England, Ireland,
Scotland...) where my blood ancestry lies.
In costume and cloak I carried a burning log from
the
10th fire to the 2nd-last position in the circle. I
played some ancient Celtic violin, chanted and
danced.
By this stage there were thousands of people
everywhere, not just around the fires but walking
about excitedly, milling between them and thronging
around the moat. I heard the next day there were an
estimated 5 or 6 thousand present at midnight.
After I had done my acoustic voice and violin
thing
for a while the Rinky Dink pedal-powered PA and its
travelling band who had come from England for the
celebrations, pedalled over from the African fire
where they had been broadcasting some reggae, and
set
up around me. I plugged in and joined them for a
celtic folky jam thing, as their mates home in
England
hollered in midnight...
By the time the twelve o�clock fire was to be lit
it
was a barely noticeable activity, as there were now
people everywhere, filling all the space between the
fires as well as around them, and crowding around
the
moat in expectation. Nevertheless we carried the
fire
to the final position and closed the great circle.
There was no one particular cultural representative
as
the timezone was 12:oo midnight Meditteranean Europe
including Netherlands, ie Here and Now! So it was
apt
that the gathering was decentralized from the fire,
spreading across the whole scene...
I poured the last of the lamp oil on the 12th fire
and it blazed as the first fireworks went off. I had
not been expecting the amount of spectacle the
Balloon
Co. had quietly invested in this aspect of the
celebrations. From 12 til about 1am there were
fireworks galore, of a great variety, and exploding
all around us from every possible angle. As it got
later they were mostly coming from the Tower,
shooting
up from it into the stars and smaller ones crackling
brightly across its looming structure, drawing
everyone�s focus onto this axis mundi. People were
drumming and screaming and dancing. The energy was
very high.
As the fireworks continued the barrier was removed
so the guards could allow thru a special wide cart
which had been made with large wooden wheels. This
went in with crew and with some strain the large
ancient black stone carved with a spiral which had
been at the centre of the tower was hauled onto it
with ropes and carted out. It had been at the edge
of
the tower since the night before, when it had been
removed from the centre and the time capsules
beneath
dug up.
A while later in went the Dragon, fire spouting
from
its nostrils - Fritjof�s (the Mastermind behind the
whole Tower project) creation, a great painted sculpted
head
and white cloth body borne by 9 people beneath it in
the Chinese parade tradition. There was also a tail,
long strips of white cloth which 100 people were
supposed to carry up the Tower in the body�s wake.
This got hopelessly tangled in the partying throngs
however and was abandoned.
Nevertheless the Dragon looked spectacular as it
weaved in over the moat. The Rinky Dink crew and
their
bizzarre pedalled PA contraption followed them over
the bridge. I was on the bike, pedalling like mad.
We
circled around the Tower as the Dragon went up, and
I chanted the chakra tones through a microphone as the
great Serpent ascended, a note of the octave for
each
level of the Tower as the Serpent reached it.
Oddly, Tamara who was in the body of the dragon
said
it sounded to her like the chakra tones were coming
from the centre of the Tower, even though the small
speakers were facing outwards...
With the cheering and drumming of the masses, the
kundalini of the Thirteenth Tribe purged
civilization
in a DNA doublehelix up then down the Tower. As it
returned to earth 4 friends gathered around me and
shared the microphone, adding power to the final low
Base Chakra tone of manifestation.
Then out went Dragon and Rinky Dink PA-mobile, the
area was checked for any stragglers and the bridge
was
sealed so the Tower stood alone on its island.
Fireworks began to bristle and pop across its
surface
again.
I ran around to the 7pm South America fire and
recieved some San Pedro cactus brew from Bert as the
crowd surged to the banks of the moat. Bert stood up
on a mound and pounded furiosly on a wide flat
shaman�s drum. As the first faint flames began to
crackle inside the Tower I downed my bitter brew and
sat back in the sand to watch the inferno.
It was of course incredibly spectacular!
(My photos of the Tower actually burning were taken on someone else's camera, as I only had a crap disposable one. When I re-establish contact with them I will hopefully be able to eventually add these pictures to this page)
I felt elated as I and thousands of others watched
this looming symbol of humankind�s inherent
arrogance
and of miscommunications - the historical Tower of
Babel crumbled because people living on the higher
levels stopped communicating with those below them-
was destroyed in glorious flames!
And we were all united as one, the panglobal
mongrel
hybrid crosscultural diversity of the Thirteenth
Tribe, returning to the Dreamtime as Marduk�s Temple
toppled, and the stress and pressures of
anticipation
and preparation for the moment of midnight year 2000
Gregorian calendar went up in smoke.
What a huge fucking inferno. The heat it gave off
was intense. Once the blaze picked up people were
recoiling from the edge of the moat with roasted
faces.
The flames roared stronger on one side, and we
watched the structure crumble and topple piece by
piece quite slowly and gracefully. I knelt on the
sandy banks of the moat, caduceus-dancing with my
arms
(apparently I was on Dutch national news doing so),
following the flickering dance of the leaping
firesnakes.
As the blaze eventually simmered to a pile of
glowering embers, still with 4 blackened framework
pillars reaching up from their midst, the crowd
began
to disperse. Many headed for the big tent as the
bassy
thump of techno began to pound out under the hiss
crackle and pop of the last stray fireworks. Others
wandered aimlessly but elatedly or gathered around
the
fires. I moved widdershins around the great
clock-mandala, going back in timemit. 
I found Hanuman/ White
Ape still at the Asian fire he had so beautifully
lit
in Mongolian regalia (right), and smoked a joint with him.
Then continued back, into the Aboriginal Dreamtime
at
3 o�clock... Of course when I got back to the
beginning of the mandala I had returned to the end,
for time is truly a spiral not a circle.
The
mescalin
hadn�t seemed to have made any noticeable change to
my
state, perhaps too mild a dose, or just no way I
could
top my state from the previous events, only maintain
a
level...
When I got back to the 12 o�clock fire I went
across
the now-cleared bridge opposite it. There were
several
rings of people gathered around the huge circular
sprawl of embers and ruins, flames still flickering
here and there. I ran around and around and around
the
pyre on the inside of the rest of the crowd, also
spinning around like a planet in orbit so as not to
burn my face by exposing one side of it continuously
to the intense heat, gradually picking up speed
until
I was a cloaked blur of ecstatic emotion.
I eventually spun out from the crowd (some had
deck
chairs by the fire!) and took this momentum over to
the big TOP and had a good dance for a while,
releasing all that PMT (pre-millenial tension), then
came out and wandered aimlessly sdrawkcab and
forwards
through time and space some more, until the sun rose
and, feeling a bit tired and crusty, I crept away to
sleep in the back of a van.
I awoke just after dusk and crept out. A few remnant
camps glowed on the muddy puddle-dotted plains but
most had gone. I wandered about in the dark and
cold,
and headed over to the tower ruins at the centre of
the wastelands.
There were still patches of embers here and there
amidst the great circle of ashes but as it had> rained
lightly in the day most of it could now be walked on
with shoes. Another stray soul was rummaging through
the wreckage. I quietly awaited his departure then
began my final nu millenium rite.
From the edge of the moat I spiralled deosil into
the centre of the ruins. As I entered the charcoal
circle I scooped up embers with a twisted piece of
metal wreckage and scattered them in my wake,
forming
a glowing spiral mandala into the centre. There was
a
hole there where the spiral stone had been and the
time capsules had been dug up from beneath it. Over
this hole I laid two of the great charcoal poles
which
had been central beams of the Tower, forming a
Crossroads. Over the Crossroads I laid out a veve (voodoo invocation symbol) of
the Marassa (sacred twins in Voodoo) representing
the
aeonic double current of Horus (force and fire) and
Maat (truth and balance). This combination of
Marassa
and Crossroads glyphs, suggested by Louis Martinie,
was used in Metamorphic Ritual Theatre�s April �99
A HREF="lab.htm"> Labyrinth installation and rituals to empower the
buried head of the final aeonic Minotaur with the
energies of Elegua and Baphomet, the hermaphroditic
union of the Twins.
Unable to find a fallen pole for the last line of
the huge veve, I went over to the last standing one
and gave it a gentle push. Down it went. While the
very base had remained buried, the flames had eaten
a
hole just above it, and this had formed a curvaceous
lipped cave of bright hot red embers, shaped just
like
a burning mouth or vagina. As I laid it down to
complete the oversized sigil, a final tongue of
flame
leapt out.
I murmured some soft words of prayer for the
encroaching PanDaemonAeon, offered a charged
sigil-paper from the 29th Dec to the fire, and
spiralled back out widdershins, following the fading
ember trail I had created on the way in as it
glimmered back into the darkness in the light
rain...
...and went in search of breakfast...
CODA:
On the 3rd of January 2000 I was refused entry thru
British customs and ended up in France and now Spain.
While initially frustrating, it now becomes apparent
that this was a result of the above working. I have
finally scored some Estrogen (female hormones to be used in the Baphometic process of becoming Hermaphroditic) in Barcelona and doubt I
would�ve been able to in my intended destination of London. I began taking it a few nights ago
with another intense Baphomet ritual. I should have
noticeable breasts in time for the global Svadisthana
Sabbat February full moon...
Blessed Bee!
Text and photographs copyright � 2000 Orryelle Defenestrate.
'WhatthefuckamIdoinginFrqnce�?�!'
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