once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

so Tattooedjen and i just finished making an awesome salad for our upcoming meeting with iliketiedye and her man, occurring on the morrow.  jen's relaxing in the living room and i'm feeling a desire to post a passage from my own personal bible, the illuminatus trilogy.  i've been thinking about tarot and some other similar spiritual (though not necessarily religious) belief structures and that always draws me back to this most odd novel.  the passage that follows is one that helps remind me that there are many ways of observing the world and that each is valid in it's own right but that it takes a wise man to understand and apply this practice in reality.

    "The chapter was brief; it was in "The Book of Republicans and Sinners," and said:

    5               Vau                 The Hierophant                                They Nailed Love
                    (nail)                                                                         to a Cross
                                                                                                    Symbolic of their
                                                                                                    Might
                                                                                                    But Love was
                                                                                                    undefeated
                                                                                                    It simply didn't
                                                                                                    fight.


       Five stoned men were in a courtyard when an elephant entered.
       The first man was stoned on sleep, and he saw not the elephant but dreamed instead of things unreal to         those awake. 
       The second man was stoned on nicotine, caffeine, DDT, carbohydrate excess, protein deficiency, and other chemicals in the diet which the Illuminati have enforced upon the half-awake to keep them from fully waking.  "Hey," he said, "there's a big, smelly beast in our courtyard."
       The third man was stoned on grass, and he said, "No dads, thats the Ghostly Old Party in it's true nature, the Dark Nix on the Soul," and he giggled in a silly way.
       The fourth stoned man was tripping on peyote and he said, "You see not the mystery, for the elephant is a poem written in tons instead of words," and his eyes danced.
       The fifth stoned man was on acid, and he said nothing, merely worshiping the elephant in silence as the Father of Buddha.
       And then the Hierophant entered and drove a nail of mystery into all their hearts, saying, "You are all elephants!"
       Nobody understood him.