Electronic Gnostic

To voyage beyond the map…

That I always dreamed of,

A young lad lying on his back

In the grass, growing an angel’s wings…


The conjuror’s smile:

Pick a card.

Here I am,

A hermenaut,

A spook.

My labour

Is the opus contra naturum.


Humming and groaning

With mystical ecstasies

And erotic frenzy

My computer

Burns its incense…

(Electricity:

Ethereal fire of the Rosicrucians,

Elixir of the World Soul...)

Mother always said

Never dabble in the occult

Yet here I am, sending out mischievous embassies of spirits

Into the wishful air.


Hephaestus limps round his smithy,

Hammering out the great bronze shield for Achilles,

Aided by comely handmaids of hammered gold

Resembling real living girls.

Skilfully, he adorns the work

With intricate scenes of battle, harvest and celebration

That magically come to life in the mind…



Crafty Hermes, be my guide,

Induct me into your mysteries,

Meet me at the crossroads,

Where I traffic in dreams,

Teach me new tricks.

Con man, inventor, merchant, magus, thief,

Wielding the caduceus’s double helix,

Happening on lucky finds

With exquisite serendipity.


O, Alexandria,

Your patron god Sarapis

A syncretic eclectic hybrid;

City where Heron built divine engines,

Singing statues, automata, and gadgets.

His magic theatre

That rolled out before the audience,

Executed a miniature three-dimensional performance

Of a Dionysian mystery rite-

Flames leapt, thunder crashed,

And tiny Bacchantes whirled

In frenzy round the god, -

Then exited under its own steam.

For the temples Heron

Made mechanical singing birds,

Invisible trumpet blasts,

Mirrors that conjured spooks,

Magical doors.


Ah, memory theatre,

Carnival of spirits,

Masquerade of ghosts!

Hieroglyphs, bring down the heavens,

Bring down the heavens here!

By ciphers, signs and sigils

I invoke the angels,

Jealous of their algorithmic powers.



What allegory am I now living out,

Unconscious of the meanings,

Barely glimpsing the symbols

That point my next move?



Trithemius of Würzburg,

That prodigious scholar,

Who took over the monastery of Sponheim

At the age of twenty-three,

And built upon a magnificent library,

Full of occult texts,

And wrote his Steganographia,

Revealed to him in a dream...

Beneath the spells' compendium

Are cryptographic miracles,

And a complex system of astrological magic,

Using numerology, wax images and esoteric alphabets

To invoke and communicate with astral intelligences;

A means to acquire universal knowledge,

To “know everything happening in the world.”



I roll my soul’s dice

In the game of chance.

What say the archons?

Electromagnetic romance:

I fornicate with phantoms,

Stormed by succubi.

What is this quickening

That dizzies my being,

This blur of transformations?

Will I attain the Heavenly City

Or tumble into the Abyss?