Shadow People

[NobodySpecial268]

The chimney worm is a worm that lives in disused chimneys. It lives in the soot, which is carbon. Like a hollow tube, taking after the form of the soot in the chimney.

How I learned about this shadow critter was when the worm extended itself into the room from the mouth of the slow combustion wood heater. It was summer, and I was sitting in front of the heater dowsing. That is when my mind went very grey. An endless grey that stretched in all directions, and one was utterly alone. The feeling is not being in touch with the world any more. What had happened was the worm engulfed me. So the problem was how to get out. A few hours later the answer came - One was inside the worm, and wanted to be outside the worm, and that is a matter of relative positioning.

So we have a shadow critter living in the soot (carbon) of the chimney with the ability to extend itself into the room, which gives a sense of gloom and detachment if it gets you. Now that is a problem and small children would be at risk. I wonder if a sudden depression in children can be accounted to this, as it was me. We don't want that to happen, so a remedy needed to be worked out. The remedy turned out to be simple - light a fire. That is because the salamanders, as the alchemists call the fire spirits, eat the chimney worm. So a matter of sweeping the chimney and cleaning the firebox. Something that should be done in spring when the weather warms up. If in doubt, one can light a fire even in summer.

So our alchemy has so far fire and carbon. What comes next was something unexpected and as far as I am concerned an accident. So don't think I have studied alchemy.

There is a Vedic practice by the name of Agnihotra. Here is a link to the website of the people who practice it: Agnihotra Australia.

What one does is burn cow dung and ghee at the exact moment of sunrise and sunset in an inverted copper pyramid. The idea is to purify the surrounding environment and oneself. It works as they say on the Agnihotra website. I know because I used it in my garden for quite some time. The difficulty is the practice must be done exactly as they say, every morning and every evening at the exact time. The ash is also used in the garden. Though I must admit that I dispensed with the rice and the Vedic chant. I didn't want the neighbours to hear me doing that. The practice still worked. That suggests that what is absolutely important is the times of days, cow dung and ghee along with the pyramid and fire. The rice was an offering.

Here is an 8 minute video of building the fire. It shows the inverted copper pyramid.



Curiously, here is a photo of another inverted pyramid, one of the step wells from ancient times.


Candi Tikus, a 14th century bathing place and step well in Majapahit empire capital city,
Trowulan Archaeological Park, East Java, Indonesia
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Can you see the similarity with the Agnihotra fire? (Bathing place? Yeah right.)

Anyway, one evening it was raining, and I thought I would light the fire inside the house in the slow combustion heater box to clean the house. Next morning when it was time to do it again I found a small golden snake curled up in the ash in the copper pyramid. Not a physical snake, more of a psychic visual thing. The snake was the transformed chimney worm. So we take the ash and snake into the garden and put it under a large gum tree. Over the summer the snake grew and now has more heads. Now it is not so much a shadow one sees in the peripheral vision, rather a defined presence. It is a girl by the way, and she smiles in a way that is lights up one's mood.

It is winter here now, and I light the (ordinary) fire in the slow combustion heater within the house, and that is where she has taken up residence. She moved from the garden and inside the house. Interestingly, the fire does not harm her now, unlike when she was just a simple chimney worm.

I have the impression that it was the Vedic fire that changed her, "evolved" might be a preferable term. She now reminds me of a Nagi which is a snake god in the temples of India.

In various Asian religious traditions, the Nāgas are a divine, or semi-divine, race of half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala), and can occasionally take human or part-human form, or are so depicted in art. A female nāga is called a Nagin, or a Nagini. According to legend, they are the children of the sage Kashyapa and Kadru. Rituals devoted to these supernatural beings have been taking place throughout South Asia for at least 2,000 years. They are principally depicted in three forms: as entirely human with snakes on the heads and necks, as common serpents, or as half-human, half-snake beings in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Source: Wikipedia Naga

So if we look again at the step well photo above, we can get an appreciation that the ancients built these temples, not just as somewhere to pray to spirits, but rather as practical alchemical devices that may have created gods from shadow creatures. By the way, it was ksihkehe who saw the similarity with copper pyramid and the step well and gave me the heads-up.

So let's take another look at the shadow tube cat:

   

He lives in the shrubs near a bird bath in the garden. Now here it is common practice to clean up fallen leaves and branches by raking them into a pile and setting it alight. Which of course leaves behind ash and charcoal. My feeling is the tube cat has its origin in the coals (carbon) in the same way as the chimney worm grew out of the carbon in my chimney.

Now let's take note of what Rudolf Steiner said of carbon in the Biodynamic Agriculture lectures.

CARBON

Carbon, in effect, is the bearer of all the creatively formative processes in Nature. Whatever in Nature is formed and shaped be it the form of the plant persisting for a comparatively short time, or the eternally changing configuration of the animal body — carbon is everywhere the great plastician”. To build these forms, carbon uses sulphur.

The Carbon Cycle in Man

Man inhales oxygen, “unites” it with carbon, and exhales carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon, taken by Steiner as the source of stiffness, is reduced by respiration. This is what keeps man mobile. Plants, by contrast, are stiff because they have more carbon, taking it in as the exhaled carbon dioxide, keeping the carbon and expelling oxygen. Man excretes some carbon, combined with the oxygen, as carbonic acid.

The Spiritual forces move through the physical world on the paths of carbon.

~ Steiner.

So basically carbon builds the framework of living things, especially in plants such as trees. Carbon also needs sulphur to do this. Both carbon and sulphur are often mentioned in the alchemical texts. The Spiritual forces move through the physical world on the paths of carbon.

The chimney worm is a hollow tube and gets nourishment from the up draft of the chimney. Now I feed the evolved chimney worm (snake) a little bit of powdered sulphur sprinkled lightly on the wood when I light the fire. I get the urge to do this, which is hers. Sulphur according to Steiner is one of the light bearers in the household of nature, Spiritual forces that move on the paths of carbon. Phosphorus, by the way, is another light bearer. Eventually we will see what she grows into, perhaps the end of winter.

That is a small bit of practical alchemy discovered by accident. Perhaps how the ancients created spirit Beings from shadow creatures that arose from carbon. One must keep in mind that carbon can be found in coal deposits. One wonders if this is the source of many shadow beings.

While we are on the subject of ancient Vedic practices, I may as well mention the kundalini. Back on ATS member KPB and I were discussing the kundalini. KPB had actually gone through the proces. We both came to the same conclusion when comparing field notes, and it was KPB who coined the definition of kundalini, he defined it as the installation of a non-standard intellegence in the human body.

Of course the kundalini is said to be a serpent curled up at the base of the spine and which through some means extends upward to the head.

Which in tern reminds me of the Buddah reclining on a seven headed snake. Here is a statue from whikipedia.


Digambara Parshivanatha 24th Jain Digambara Teertankara
Image via Wikimedia Commons

I don't know for sure, but it does make one wonder . . .