Though having lived as a pagan bush turkey for ages, when by the end of 1994  the outstandingly designed, wildly coloured ’Wired Magazine’ reaches our shores – still resonating with an article from a previous issue on the ‘Zippies’, dreadlocked, tipi dwelling, laptop toting nomads – it becomes clear that it is the cyber sphere where my writings will have to go. Going to get wired and getting on line is next. The appearance of a Maitreya – someone ‘speaking over world media in all tongues simultaneously’ – an outrageous if not wacky prophesy in the early Eighties, has now become perfectly possible. 

My paganism had chucked out the television a long time ago and as for a telephone:

“They know where I live.”

But the idea of becoming a ‘Net God’ charms my pants off. The Silicon Dawn is here. In fact it’s almost afternoon. Better get the phone on. 

It’s not until 1997 that we get our local ISP. Needless to say that my first net search is for Crowley stuff. Discover his essay on hashish, ‘The Herb Dangerous’. There is something extremely poignant about his voice coming from cyberspace. As if it’s coming from beyond. 

Written in 1908 at 33 years of age, he sounds very modest, lovable and astute in his observations:

“If not for this herb, who will roll away the stone?”

Never knew about his aspirations to be a builder. My own attempt at building had seemed one of my least Crowleyan activities. How encouraging to hear him speak of his wish to build himself a house one day for the purpose of deep, deep meditation. Until such time this drug was to be a short-cut. My efforts to recreate our Abbey in the Rainbow Region sure looks like fulfilling this wish for him, although at this stage for me the herb is still rolling away the stone. The sensation of being in contact with my former self is as strong as ever. Soul and cyberspace merge into one: The web made up of links linking anything to anywhere, linking the mind of one of the more interesting gents from the height of the British Empire, to that of an uprooted Amsterdammer in Oz. My life as the hardware that plays our soul’s software with which to mouse-click our way through the reincarnational chain. Have a distinct sense of evolutionary progress. Leary was right. Establishing oneself in the cyber realm is a plausible next step towards immortality.

*

The ISP in Mullumbimby offers a course in html. The web teacher is broke and he is willing to create the pages for the Trumps of my Odyssea in the comfort of his own home for a very modest fee. It takes us about half a dozen sessions to get it all together. When being introduced to the possibility of using background images it doesn’t take long to realise that not only would the Crowley cards be perfect for that but the effect of looking through those spiritually charged lead-light windows would make the reading of it like a visit to a church. 

It is Halloween when Moonchild’s electrons are crystallised in a composition that is ready to travel into the global mind: An image of the medieval Waag in Amsterdam with a crow on one of its spires against a full moon, in a Gothic glow over which one can scroll across the twenty-two clickable Trumps.

Browsing the cyberscape for links to substantiate my story with is somewhat of a religious experience as well: Provo material from Amsterdam, Leary, Wilson, Castaneda, the Tree of Life, a virtual tour through the Bardo Thodol, a tapestry of jewels. By hanging myself in this web of pearls, my story reflected by the others, it is not just my story anymore. 

The question is no longer: ‘Are you the reborn Aleister Crowley?’ but ‘Are we?’ 

Am merely one of those ‘immersed in Crowley’s uniform’. Go ahead, ask me questions, sharpen our mind.

My html guide reckons it’s a good read:

“It’s cyber literature. There is an illustrious audience for your work.”

*

Establishing contact with the ‘Secret Chiefs’ was what made Aleister feel entitled to take over The Golden Dawn and to be the ‘Representative of the Silver Star’. Although my communion with the Enigmatic Masters is pretty constant, the communion with my fellow humans leaves much to be desired. Finding a conjugal Tantrika isn’t easy. Unlike Aleister who performed his sex magick quite happily without informing his partners about his inner world, my stubborn ‘purity’ has kept me looking for someone to share my reality, with little success. Am becoming more and more of a recluse. The bliss of self absorption comes for a price: Solitude. The top degree in the A.:.A.:. may be exalted but it’s bloody lonely.

One of the tools to stave off moments of desperation is dancing around with my twirling stick. A present day ceremony. Double wanded fire dagger. Magick Wand gone inter-dimensional. Feral Ritual. The Consecrated Phallus in a whirl. 

My gender transformation is accelerating. William Burroughs was right: The end of the century is seeing a torrent of gender blending. Byron Bay’s own drag queen Sass Barella is putting up a show: ‘The Beauty is the Beast’. About self love. Don’t mind coming out of the woods for that. My Nimbin ex-beloved is designing costumes for the show. We decide to team up for the occasion. 

Charge up at her place. She has assembled a fine entourage: an old friend up from Melbourne, the girl that works in her shop, a new courtier. 

Topic of the evening being self love, our conversation inexorably drifts to the recent exit of the singer of Aussie top band INXS. Could the rumours of erotic self asphyxiation be true or was it, as reported, a suicide after a blue with the father of his daughter’s half siblings?

It’s hard to buy the suicide rap, angry at a world that prefers depression to a sexual self chastise in excess.

“If we can handle our extended family, don’t you think they can?”

We wander over to the venue for a marvelous evening. Philosophy in drag.

After the show Sass Barella comes back for an encore. Just her on acoustic guitar. The intensity with which she sings seems to stem from a telepathic if not erotic communion between us. Only in my own head of course but nevertheless thoroughly thrilling.

Back in my own abode reminiscing on the gorgeous Beastette, get seriously aroused and a little in love.

*

Solstice in Capricorn. Proclamation Day. My web mate tries to make me feel good about it:

“You may become a famous writer.”

This is not the launch of a writer. This is a cosmic investigator trying to prove that our lives are pervaded by extraterrestrial presence every nanosecond of the day. 

When mouse-clicking it over to the A.:.A.:.,  O.T.O.,  Order of The Golden Dawn, am actually trembling: “This is like reporting it to the police.”

We haven’t got all day. No time to think. Throw myself with a “Happy Solstice” to the newsgroups alt.magick, alt.paganism, alt.religion, alt.wicca, all at once. Never felt more like doing Castaneda’s ‘Carlos and Pablito jump’. There’s two of us after all. Although we use my handle ‘moonkid’, it is from his PC.

As for fear of the ‘Illuminati’, no doubt there are super spiders that scour the web – the most advanced technology keeping Its Eye open – but with my recent insights into the human condition, rather have my pearls before masters than before swine.

Except that it is cast before masters and swine alike. On the way home stop at the liquor store for something to calm the nerves. Jumping back in the car with a six-pack, bang my head on the doorway so hard it almost knocks me out. Drive on, head thumping. With my very self caught in a structure of electronic impulses – sitting on the server like a head on a plate – my physical self has become more or less obsolete.

Death is stalking me. Am terrified, afraid to never make it home.

The car finally parked at the shed, a beer and a toke later, filled with ambrosia, fear turns into bliss. A fine day to die.

It is a special sunset with staggering colours, moving across the worn timber walls of my shed. With the images of the site still buzzing in my mind – the pinks, oranges, violets of the cards – it feels as if these colours are emanating from my lead-light Trumps in cyber heaven. Real and Virtual Reality blend into one. Wherever my gaze settles in the old shack there is another Dutch master. Walk around in them, nursing this great big lump on my head.

To be presenting my take on Monster Master to the world, better be on good terms with death. Crowley + Technology = Beast@. Do you want it, baby? 

Too late now. Am going where no one has gone before.

Solitary practitioner celebrating by himself. Twirling my stick, swinging my lungied hips to the ABC’s Tripple J, adoring my candle-lit reflection in the window:

“Happy Solstice.”

*

The days that follow bring the realisation that to have chucked my heart and soul to the wolves without having the equipment to keep track of it, isn’t making me feel very good. My Powerbook 100 with its 4 Mb of Ram doesn’t even load Netscape 1.0.  Moonchild is out in the cyber sky like a kite without a string. 

Am dreadfully drained by my exposure, the way Oscar Wilde’s ‘Portrait of Dorian Grey’, as it is taking shape, is sucking the life force out from within him.

Thankfully our friendly grassroots Mullumbimby ISP lets me use my account’s internet hours on one of their machines and a weekly session over the first months of ‘98 gets me to actually have a look at the blindly picked links that adorn my site; and their links, and theirs. Plenty of Tantra sites, AvatarSearch, Thelema zone, html-files as precise as ‘Crowleymas’ from R.A.W.’s Cosmic Trigger. Hit on a site of Amado Crowley, a son raised on the occult, emphasising his dad’s role in ‘Intelligence’.

Having come to terms with Aleister’s sexuality, will now have to deal with his politics.

The service provider is trialling some new software, ‘Webtrends’. It traces the number and origin of visitors. A print out of the first month of Moonchild’s orbit shows that a majority of our guests are from the U.S., with the state most active being Virginia. The webmaster:

“Probably the C.I.A. That’s where its headquarters is.”

Gee, can’t say they’re not doing their job.

Not as worried anymore as when running around in South America in ’78, sharing most every other paranoid’s fear of being about to be either killed or recruited by the All-seeing Eye in the bushes. Times have changed. So has the cloak and dagger game. These days, with a consciousness raising website out there, one is automatically a pawn on the board of the Intelligence Game. 

Something between Leary’s ‘Intelligence Agent’ and R.A.W.’s ‘Useful Idiot’.

*

The nips are getting bigger, blot myself out on a daily basis. Not being connected with my cyber presence is bad enough but not having a resolution for my story makes me feel very vulnerable indeed. The still Unanswered Question now magnified a millionfold in the cyber mind is screaming for an answer harder than ever.

In Byron Shire’s ‘Echo’ the resident poet informs us that it is the Year of the Beast, since 1998 equals 3 x 666.

Got to get a move on. My solar powered ramshackle has great romantic value but for staking a cyber claim it would be better to live on the grid, live in more cosmopolitan surroundings. With a growing need to check on my roots it may as well be Amsterdam. Also, Holland is well known for its reputation to be able to discuss just about anything. As free and easy-going as Australia is, there is a bit of a taboo on talking too deeply, too intimately. Keep it light, please! The Beast urging us to be true to our will is one thing but his publication of the ‘secrets’ of sex magick and his public practice of the art is another. Do people really want to hear that giving your woman head before fucking her may make you a good boy but that eating her out afterwards is what makes you a man? That as long as a man shoots his load into or over a woman without the willingness to lap it back up he is not respecting her or himself. That sucking someone off without feasting on its essence is manipulation and a blasphemy. To bring a message like this is bound to stir some shit. You’d have to be A.C.’s reincarnation to even want to think of it. Shocking as it was in his days, it still is. Would he be trying to sell his sperm cookies these days? 

Not that the Zeitgeist isn’t with me. The year’s first issue of 21.C Magazine is ‘From the Belly of the Beast’. The wicked blend of decadence and intelligence reports on a show in San Francisco, ‘sodomy as performance art’. Another article is on an orgy of people going deeper and deeper into lust, lapping up each others blood. An interview with Kathy Acker writing with a vibrator up her cunt. In his editorial, R.U. Sirius calls it:

“Both a warning and a celebration. Last time the world was this mad was during the Weimar Republic.”

Disinfo.com’s Richard Metzger’s article on Jack Parsons – ‘Anti-Christ Superstar’ – tells us that a Thelemic Messiah is still being expected. He even quotes the Book of the Law:

“Expect him not from the East nor from the West for from no expected house cometh that child.”

Cyberspace hadn’t been envisioned yet.

The mag is copyrighted in Amsterdam.

*

When searching the cyber wilds for a link to my old time hero Robert Jasper Grootveld – larrikin of Amsterdam’s Provo revolution – a recent interview he did with one of the Dutch weeklies in honour of his 65th birthday appears on my Aussie desktop. He still expects the coming of his ‘Klaas’, and not only put a date to it -1998 – but has resumed his activities around ‘Het Lieverdje’. 

With the role he plays in my mad cosmology, this is big news, another reason to go over. Maybe there is a part for me in his mad cosmology. Apparently he does public readings from a book on prophesies on the end of time. Klaas will have to come soon because according to Nostradamus 1999 will be the end of the world as we know it.

The ambience of the interview testifies to that Dutch tolerance which is so attractive: During the conversation with his interviewer he lights up his pipe – is still smoking the weed – and goes off on an elaborate monologue after which he apologises for his smoke induced verbosity. Only in Dutch media is there that level of discussion around getting high.

My worries about broadcasting from Oz have turned out not to be unfounded. My friendly, family friendly I.S.P. has received some complaints about the drug use in my story. Tell them of my plans to go back to Holland, that it is fine with me if they want to take it down.

Verbosity is not the only worry when in the clutches of the devil’s weed. It is especially after toking up that the mad reality of identifying with Crowley to the point of being his new incarnation is strongest. Other, more sober selves, reckon they are merely possessed by the bugger. Still others see him as the teacher he would be for anyone who is catapulted onto the Left Hand Path. There is also the perspective that identifying with God or Demi-God has been a time honoured vehicle for initiation, the Master Therion being not such an unlikely choice for these drug infested times. 

Is there something like a ‘real self’?

*

There’s the job of finding someone who can look after my witchy abode and appreciate the aesthetic living conditions: cobwebbed windows, precarious balance between black ants keeping white ants at bay, huntsmen spiders chasing the cockies at night, bats flying in and out, the carpet snake that behaves as if it owns the place, a shit can for facilities. You’d have to be a stoned-out pagan freak to want to live here.

With a bit of serendipity the right people do turn up and see it for what it is: An ecological shangri-la.

Next is selling the car, buying a ticket, getting a decent travel bag, some city gear to wear: classic Aussie ‘red back’ boots, camouflage pants, a cap to tuck in my tribal locks, leaving the shaven sides exposed to give the urban look when required.

A last goodbye to my Nimbin Muse provides me with the baggy home boys pants of her son and a perfectly fitting long sleeved black hemp t-shirt.

Time to pack up. Make a fire to burn old bills, letters, early drafts, getting lighter and lighter. 

Ready for the airways.

My seat turns out to be next to a very attractive woman, not least because of her straightforwardness:

“Do you like alcohol? For me it’s the only way to handle a plane ride and get some sleep.”

Has the steward around her little finger already and made him promise to keep the drinks coming. Settle in for what looks like a pleasant flight.

It is. She is Hungarian, kind of gothic looking. Fascinating for a Dutchie who left Europe before the Iron Curtain came down. Naturally, our conversation is pretty animated and we are pretty sloshed for the stopover in Singapore. Our enchanted steward adds a warning to our last drink before the landing:

“Be careful. In some ways this country is not so tolerant.”

We do make it through without being locked up. When back in the air it is time for a snooze. After telling me she feels a herpes coming up on her lips, she puts her head on my shoulder and falls asleep.

When waking up the Netherlands are in sight. She has a connecting flight to Budapest which is good, otherwise it would be her arrival instead of my own.

Early summer, but Schiphol Airport is hulled in a grey soup. Apparently the Sun hasn’t been seen for many months. 

Too early to bother anyone. Put my luggage in a locker and take the train into town. 

* 

Far out to be walking those familiar streets again after all that time. The hours pass easily, enjoying some Dutch treats and of course a visit to the coffee shop for some weed. 

What strikes me as the city’s biggest development is the proliferation of ‘smart shops’ that have sprung up like mushrooms. That’s what they sell, magic mushrooms and other psychedelics, as well as information on the psychotropics: Leary texts, Castaneda and other shamanic journeys, to guide the aspirant into the Great Beyond. This is a level up from the coffee shop: Initiation Industry. 

In the late afternoon, gravitate towards my favourite part of town, the ‘Jordaan’. Sit down on a bench, roll up, get inspired and take out my notebook. 

The clouds break and the Sun comes out. At the same time it dawns on me where to go next. The only one of my old acquaintances to have run into today is also a good friend of Niké and he has told me where she lives these days. 

Ring her door bell around dusk. She opens her third floor window and when recognising me she bursts out in the Robert Jasper Grootveld chant:

“Hi-ha-happening.”

Wonderful to see each other. Her plan to become a mother has not become reality. She is living with a lover but offers me her studio in the attic for a few days. 

Not only do we share our affinity with Robert Jasper, we also share our shamanism. On the news is an item that is of significance to both of us: The passing away of Carlos Castaneda. Although it is Crowley who took my soul away and got me on the fast lane to chapel perilous, it was Castaneda’s affiliation with the crow that got me on the rocky road of the spiritual warrior to begin with. With the recent demise of Timothy Leary, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, the elders of the mind bend revolution are vacating their seats, edging on the new guard.

We spend a glorious few days catching up. She lends me her bicycle to go and explore. The bicycle rules here, its traffic regulations hardly enforced in this Mecca of tolerance. On or off the pavement, through red lights, forbidden alleyways. Get anywhere in no time. 

Am quickly drawn to the old ‘Magies Centrum’, home of ‘Het Lieverdje’. 

The medieval cobblestones have been replaced with a smooth modern pavement. Also the surrounding pubs and bistros, including its patrons, have been greatly gentrified and fully infused with Consumer Culture. It is hard to see how the rugged aura of R.J.G. could have the same effect on the mob as it had in the 1960s. 

Moreover the town is in the fever of World Champion Soccer which isn’t doing much for the cultural content of the beer swilling crowds either. How could Robert Jasper possibly be doing his dancing and chanting around here. He could probably do with some support. 

To one of my dear old pubs which hasn’t changed much, still quiet, a good place to go through the newspapers. Catch an article on another one of Amsterdam’s elders, world renowned poet laureate Simon Vinkenoog who celebrated his 70-th birthday the other day, the day of my arrival. It mentions the very moment when taking out my note book:

“Summer started this year on Friday 4 o’clock when finally the Sun came out for the first time this year, the very moment that S.V. walked down the steps to greet his guests, etc.” 

Incredible how certain synchronicities can have such a manifold of links, are synchronous between a multitude of events.

Sometimes synchronicity can be just too much for someone: The one girlfriend that has stayed in touch with me by sending a yearly card to wish me well for the Chinese New Year is Patti. Give her a ring to let her know of my arrival. She is absolutely flabbergasted. Her boyfriend – the one with the John Lilly ketamine connection – has left last night for the South of Spain on a two month sky dive teaching assignment. She is so bewildered she can’t get herself to welcome the occasion:

“Give me some time.”

How many so called coincidences can one pack in one day?

Back to Niké. Watching the soccer with her lover boy.

*

We go and visit her mother where she keeps the painting which she did of me on my last visit almost a decade ago: A classical young Adonis in the nude, a tribal giant with a great big hard-on behind me, his face covered by an initiation mask. It had been totally obscure to me at the time but having since been expanding the scope of my sexuality somewhat, it has now become very much to the point. The hard-on behind the initiation mask obviously represents Crowley being excited by the inspiration of his Magikcal Child. It is strikingly expressive of what is going on in my life and would make a good book cover for my Opus.

Her mother is still eccentric in her old age and our meeting fills me in on our mutual friend Robert Jasper whom she was living with at the time of his performance around the statue down the street. He had indeed resumed his activities around Het Lieverdje this year but without the effect it had back then, he had given up:

“He needs attention.”

It turns out that he used to be a bit of an exhibitionist. He apparently loved to don women’s clothes and walk around on high heels. What a revelation. Have always seen him as the symbol of revolutionary purity. Oh, well. Makes him all the more real and lovable. 

“He was pretty good with the kids.”

On the way home we walk along the ‘Overtoom’. Having grown up around here it hits me that from an Aboriginal perspective this is my old stomping ground. It puts me in a wildly jolly mood, jumping up and down:

“This is my Overtoom, this is my Overtoom. This is where my roots are, have walked along this road a million times.”

She points up to a window on the second floor:

“That’s where my brother lives. Let’s go and check him out.”

He is out of town for a few months. His apartment is empty. A few phone calls later the keys are in my pocket. My own place for a token rent in my very own part of town. 

*

And my own bed. Celebrate this magickal event with a self love session so intense it is almost frightening. Keep flooding my body with ripples of life giving pleasure, mingling delight with light Asana for more than an hour, orgasm at a safe distance. Then from the depth of consciousness, awareness of the actual location of the pleasure generator that sets one off, gradually arises from the nether regions. It’s as if an uncontrollable dragon is waking up. Just lay there, don’t touch, don’t move, hardly breathe, but some biological electrics take over and from far away, ever so slowly but inexorably orgasm has started on its course. It takes quite a few moments, long enough for the perception of the possible danger of this game, the current being of such voltage that it is about to blow a fuse.

Is that why Sex Magick is supposed to be practised under a guru and kept secret?

The back of the house has a balcony which looks out on the tree tops of the Vondelpark, through which it is the most lovely way to walk into the heart of town. 

Wonderful days of leisurely strolls, breathing in through my roots. 

Thoroughly enjoy the richness of city life, the beauty of the architecture, the spectacle of the crowds, but the years as a contemplating bush turkey make me gravitate to relatively secluded spots, walk along quiet streets, sit on benches away from the main drag, or stay in the park altogether. With a tinny and a spliff. 

The comfort of doing so without being illegal.

Patti is ready to have me for dinner. At the start of the relationship with her boyfriend she had bargained to always have a spot for me, her favourite ex. She is still very sweet but her radicalism has softened. Prefers to remain faithful. She is happy with her job, a yearly holiday, the Daila Lama for inspiration. Her passion is Astrology. Gives a brilliant yarn on the role of Leo in the age of Aquarius which sounds a bit like the role of Horus in the peace process. Is relieved to hear about me having found a place to live. It absolves her from having to look after me, caring woman that she is.

* 

Though Niké has no idea why she did the painting the way she did, she has always been aware of my Crowley obsession. Reckons it would be better for me to drop it:

“Direct your powers to the Brahma Chumaris meditation.”

That is her outfit at the moment – a spiritual organisation with women in charge – and she feels better than ever:

“The years on smack did make the magick disappear but it is back now.”

We have wonderful meditation sessions together, sitting cross legged opposite each other which she likens to ‘a little love-making session’.

She is actually not so much into sex anymore. The sexualisation of society – porno on T.V., breakthrough of the S&M scene – actually gets her back up:

”I’m over it. Sex is not such a big deal. Those who go on about it probably didn’t get enough.”

She has a point. But when is enough enough?

As for my own attitude, treating sex as a magickal act and seeing the bodily fluids as a sacrament has my desires take off in all sorts of directions, my lifelong heterosexuality seemingly in shambles. Have arrived at a stage where it is possible to imagine a partner of either sex, and any combination thereof. It’s all about the intention with which to engage, the degree of licentiousness, intensity of lust, respect for the act. 

One of the smart shops is called ‘Thelema’. Go check it out and score some mushrooms. Nice guy. English. Has A.C.’s phallic symbol tattood on his hand between thumb and forefinger so when shaking his hand you are shaking Aleister’s cock. Marvelous!

Hold on to his hand, to admire it. My recognition surprises him:

“Not many people do. You are the first one around here.”

Like most Thelemites he is out there on his own. Attended a recent Thelema gathering in England but doesn’t think much of it. Is not much interested in Crowley himself either:

“Old Aeon.”

It’s just that the Law of Thelema works for him. Is organising a rave party for the Millennium at the Egyptian pyramids. He is obviously fully queer. 

Amsterdam is soon to host the Gay Games ’98. The media are hurray-ing it from the rooftops. Perfect occasion to measure the extent of my queerness.

*

Start of the Gay Games with a boat parade through the canals. Though in need of some coffee to really wake up, am awake enough to not leave the pad poorly dressed for the occasion: The Aussie army pants of course and the Aussie boots. The black hemp t-shirt over which a red hemp shawl. 

The whole town turned gay overnight. As one of the few straights passing by remarks: 

“Ik wist niet dat er zoveel flikkers waren.” – “Didn’t know there were so many poofters.”

Masses of men all endowed with the same flash haircut and the smell of indulgence, flown in for the occasion from all over the affluent world. Birds of many colours. 

Bike my way along the Amstel across Town Hall from where a couple of dressed-up gents in turquoise silks waving from a balcony covered in flowers are livening up the spirits of the passers by. Still embarrassed to see gay men eye to eye, have no trouble in smiling at the women. Oh, to be a lesbian! On bicycle is the way to go. Follow the go-go-ing boat parade along the canals at leisure, which at some of the more quiet parts of the concourse seems to be gyrating just for me, auto eroticus.

Wasn’t wrong about my camouflage pants having a gay touch. They are everywhere. Even on one of the boats in the parade the guys are wearing them. Don’t feel too comfortable in them anymore. Same goes for the real or imagined poofter inside me. Now that gay is suddenly the majority, am finding pride in still being a minority.

In the dark of night, make the most of the pants by donning my half-torn fishnet singlet thinly veiling the charm of the monkey cock. An old brown leather jacket. Dam Square is packed with a rocking and cheering crowd. Close-ups of the performing Abba look-alikes projected onto the palace behind them produces lots of cheer for queer. Also by the non queer. Especially by the girls, many of whom are obviously going to drag their boyfriends to bed with a vengeance tonight. 

Keep my bike between me and the world.

On the way to my liar, pass by the same remark of earlier today:

“Have seen so many homos today.” 

No doubt this was today’s most thought thought amongst the dazzled citizenry.

The hormonal charge of the town hasn’t left me unaffected. At home, in the dim light that comes in from the street, adore myself in the mirror. The leather off my shoulders, the amulets on my chest, pants around my thighs, cock in hand. The mirror is glued against the wall. Press myself against the glass. The bewitchment is so complete, my double comes alive. Come all over the mirror.

*

The deliberations about dress code continue. In hetero land dress may indicate wealth, good taste, a certain character. In gay land it thoroughly defines your role in the culture and the relationships that come with it. The pants hint at an aptitude for slavery, so does the leather, but the little else in my travel bag is too straight. Remind myself that the pants are fair dinkum Aussie army, the leather isn’t black and extremely worn, and change boots for sneakers. 

Still not comfortable enough to get off my bicycle. Observe from the corner of my eyes, disconnecting the occasional eye contact immediately. The hard looks from the leather boys obviously consider me to be one of them. More poetic ones seem to tell me my sweet self is too gentle for my pants. Smiles from girls in love with one another could only be for my tribal locks, weaving my way through the revelers, proud of my biking style. Firmly in the saddle. Vanity, vanity, vanity.

Wizz around among the revelers for most of the day but the spirit fails to move me. Resort to the purchase of a bottle of tequila. To the pad for a few shots and to put on the garments that feel most comfortable after all: The baggy homeboys’ pants on sneakers and the old leprechaun t-shirt, the torn face pinned back up with a safety pin. The sarong as a shawl with which to either veil or expose the big eared grin of the little devil. The hemp t-shirt coyly around the waist, being on foot tonight. 

High as a kite by now. It’s not been just a few shots, with beer chasers as well. 

My walkabout cuts swiftly through the high density gay areas to the relative neutrality of the Spui and take a seat on a bench facing ‘Het Lieverdje’. Soak in its presence and the significance of the place and reflect on its great inspirator Robert Jasper. Having just found out about his predilection for wearing women’s clothes, am quite tickled by the idea that the exhibitionism in his performances that set in motion the tide of change that helped make Amsterdam the haven for ‘freedom’ which is making all this possible, had a sexual undertone.

At night do nothing wilder than attending the open air film festival on Nieuwmarkt. Lots of couples in love, kissing and fondling. Can see how love often is a crucial element in the affair, which explains my predicament: Too much involved with myself.  

Am probably not the only one here who is frustrated with the lack of homosexual experience but just not gay enough to get some.  

The movie on show is ‘Stonewall’. Am completely bewitched by the gorgeous drag queen with lines, like: “The highest for a man is to ever strife toward the feminine.” 

My location is grand: Leaning against the ‘Waag’ – the cover of the Moonchild homepage – facing the screen as well as the building behind it, the ‘Flesseman’, my home before departing for Oz. The squat that was the place for my many conversations with Robert Jasper, making me feel strongly connected with everything that is going on, proud of still being very much an original Amsterdammer.

The movie over, alcohol worn off, there’s nothing but to crawl back into my nest.

* 

First day since my return from Oz the sky is seriously blue. Bicycle to the outskirts of town where the banks of the Amstel are still green, for a quiet smoke. 

As always, marvel at the change of brain focus a first smoke of the day always induces. Grasp the pen not to let the burst of creative thoughts dissolve into nothingness. There is happiness in the grasp even if it is a game of solitaire. As it says in the ‘Daily Friendship’, the official gay games newspaper for the duration of the games:

“It is better to be a good person than trying to find one.” 

Visit some old friends who are rich in technology and willing to help me digitise my old movie ‘Scarab’ into a clip for the Moonchild site. Another friend of theirs drops in, obviously not too happy with the fairy invasion. Tease him how good he’d look in a pink tutu with his big hairy chest. Thunder clouds his face:

“You won’t look too good in a minute.”

Gives the ‘it’s unnatural’ bit:

“What about procreation?”

With everybody around me homo the other day, it had indeed seemed to be a way of leaving the planet. Homosexuality may actually be something that is not for everybody. Like drugs. Like witchcraft.

In the evening, park myself on the top bench of the amphitheater in Vondelpark with a joint and a tinny from the tinnies bar. The stage area is open for whatever is going: some Salsa dancing, a circle of jugglers keeping a little ball up in the air with their feet and a bunch of roller skaters. There is a particularly pretty red headed girl swirling her patterns on the pavement from whom it is impossible to draw my eyes away. She changes between partners ever so gracefully, anyone she can learn a new move from: cocky young things mostly who are not shy of expressing their own grace either. This is bigger than Gay Games, beyond sexual politics. It is about what you are good at and showing it. There is no particular focus. The ballplayers, the dancers, the skaters, all form a mosaic of beauty.  

Sway my torso to the swirl of good vibes and cool music, bum on seat. Am one of the few spectators: Tonight it is the seated that are on show.

Apparently the Salsa dance is inspired by the Suriname gay scene. Some of them join me on the stands and smoke induced communication is very smooth. There’s the obvious possibility of more music, but still shy, find it necessary to leave the groove. 

The excuse is a long day tomorrow but the bike knows better: The front wheel is playing up so severely, it is about to drop off.

*

Slow and lazy morning with the idea of attending tonight’s closing party and let it rip. 

In the afternoon yet again to Nieuwmarkt to see the art exhibition of what has been produced in the containers that have been placed there as studios during the week. 

Run into an old time beatnik pal. Another quintessential Amsterdammer. Almost a stranger in his own town, used to having become outnumbered by the great influx over the years. Sees the Gay Games as a commercial affair, gay community as a political elite:

“For who else would you see the fire brigade put up the lighting or would have the complete police force on side?”

The outrageous entry fees to most events have been criticised by press and public alike. It is a bit ‘too establishment’ for his liking:

“Whatever problem have we ever had with gays, anyway?”

We remember the gay icons from our youth: certain club owners, notorious speed dealers, the  young ‘schandknaapjes’, hanging out around the pissoirs trying to make a buck. Our most famous writer marrying his boyfriend in church on television back in the 1970s. 

He’s not impressed:

“Once again we are sold to the highest bidder.”

Congratulate him for always having been part of that Amsterdam tolerance.

My tech friends who live near the Amdock across the harbour where the closing party is to be held have expressed a desire to attend as well, so in the early evening we charge up for the event at their place.

However instead of going first and then taking the psychotropics from the smart shop, we take it before we go. With their abundant technology – the recent Berlin Love Parade on the video, an erotic clip looped on their PC, house music collection – the party quickly arrives in the living room. No reason to go anywhere, a blissful pleasure rippling through the atmosphere.

At five in the morning we get it together to go to the party. 

Get out of the car to see if the stiff fee is still in place.

The hard vibes at the entrance necessary for the control of a crowd of that magnitude are too hard for my psychoactive sensitivities. When poking my head in to have a look, the giant sub- or superhuman bouncer of over 7 feet squarely pokes his sub- or superhuman finger into the leprechaun on my chest:

“Ticket!”

That’ll do.

“Could you please drop me off at the ferry?”

Solo but poetic boat ride back into town, rising Sun slowly fading out the fullness of the Moon.

*

Come away unscathed, my virginity in tact. Not getting any on the hetero front either. Sexual orientation totally in disarray. Lesbian more than anything. Too much cosmically preoccupied to be firing up the loins. Time to go and see R.J.G., the role model that helped set me on my course that eventually made me end up in Aleister’s lap.

Flog the bike to his studio at the Eastern outskirts of town. 

Stopping at a shop to buy some Aussie wine for the occasion, am hackled by a homeless person to buy the ‘homeless paper’. Interestingly there is an article on Simon Vinkenoog’s recent birthday and his views on ‘Magies Amsterdam’ in the Sixties. Simon doesn’t forget to praise Robert Jasper as the magician of the day. What a great present to bring along!

His studio is no longer there. The urban sprawl has reached all the way to his former domain. Ask someone on a nearby houseboat, who happens to know him and his whereabouts.

“How is he?”

“In great shape. Just bumping into the yup.”

Wasn’t wrong about the yuppification around Het Lieverdje preventing his announcement of the Coming of Klaas from being too popular.

He moved a little further out into the sticks. A huge barn along the outer harbour with his famous floats moored in front of it. Amidst big blocks of his beloved styrofoam – his mission over the last few decades has been to have all Dutchies purchase two of those blocks for if the dykes break and The Wave comes in, to be tied together and set the Netherlands afloat – is my beloved hero. White haired and big bellied but with the same naughty smile, the compassion, heart on his sleeve. 

Bring him up to date with my writing adventure and his place in it, show him the Moonchild piece. We smoke up while he reads out chapter one, ‘The Magus’, in his heavily accented English. A declamation in his own inimitable way. 

He puts on a video, a documentary on the Sixties featuring his performance around Het Lieverdje. What a great clip for the site!

Tell him about my chat with his former mistress, Niké’s mother, and ask him whether there had indeed been an exhibitionistic streak in his acts.

“Very much so. It is exhibitionism that drives my creativity.”

His lady Thea arrives. Grand, royal, strong and kind. Takes me for a stroll, shows me around in the floating garden where we sit down and talk about magickal things.

Evidently Robert Jasper, churchless as he is, is very much aware of the enigmatic presence just outside our 3-D perception. As she puts it, nodding in his direction:

“Yes, Klaas exists and he is his prophet.”

Being both prophets to a similar presence makes sense of having given our relationship the Trump card The Aeon: Lord of the Double Wand of Power.

Time to open the Aussie wine and tell our tales. 

When we get to check out the ‘homeless paper’ we discover that Simon Vinkenoog makes an anagram of Amsterdam: Madmaster.

What a lightning bolt! The word makes sense of everything. What a revelation! How can one word say so much. My journey back home has found its treasure, reached its goal, my roots, my Dreamtime. Am here to find answers and this is just so spot on. Amsterdam as the Mad Master that brought me up, intertwining with Mad Master Aleister giving me a double dose. Also me taking on the mantle of that Mad Master and the long hard road of Mastering the Madness in doing so. Master of Mad. Receiving this revelation in the company of this here Mad Prophet of St. Nicholas makes it all the more perfect. 

Try and get a little of my madness across. 

Leave them the manuscript.

*

Give them some time before visiting them again. He hasn’t read it yet:

“Want her to read it first.”

His English isn’t really up to it. The old timer has grown up before the 1970s intergalactic jet set invaded the town and Dutch was still enough. Thea is more educated.

He had actually prophesised the invasion in the early Sixties. In a dilapidated Speakers Corner, sharing the stage with a transvestite from ‘Madame Arthur’ and the well-known Christian miracle worker, ‘Lou de Palingboer’. His father had been in the audience: 

“I looked out over the heads of the people not knowing what I was going to say. My gaze fell on the light that was shimmering on the canal outside and out of the blue I started to declare that Amsterdam was about to become the magical centre of the world. People would come to the Vondelpark from all over the globe.”

Later he was embarrassed about that ‘Vondelpark’ since in those days it was so bourgeois. He relocated ‘Het Magies Centrum’ to ‘Het Spui’ with its ‘Lieverdje’ and started his Klaas invocations. Funny enough, from the Seventies onwards, it was indeed the Vondelpark that the multitudes came flocking to.

He is not only a prophet and an exhibitionist but also manic depressive. When the waves which he created in his mania peaked in the riots that rocked the city, he went walkabout to far away places like Switzerland or Sicily. Contemplation on the Klaas figure has had him preoccupied with St.Nicholas ever since. He and Thea had gone to Bari where the remains of the Saint are buried, with the idea of making a documentary. Their video camera had been stolen, on which they comment with a chuckle:

“The Old Nick is not only patron of sailors, gamblers and harlots, but also of thieves.”

“And what is this business about him being Patron of Trade?” 

 He doesn’t mind giving a history lesson:

“In the time of the ‘Moving of the Tribes’, the Vandals, Goths, etc., were marauding bands roaming the land, warring and raiding. The walled cities that gave protection were the result of pacts. Negotiation and Trade were the Art of the Day and evolved into banking, the creation of wealth and the high regard for good luck. Nicholas was its Idol. Imagine Amsterdam when it was not bigger than what is now the red light district, and the cost for this first handful of merchants to have built their St. Nicholas church right in the middle of it.”

Actually, St.Nick stands for the transactions made all the time between each and every one of us, so trade itself should be treated as sacred. More relevant than ever in these days of Economic Rationalism. ‘Klaas komt’ is profound indeed. Peace based on reason rather than on moral or emotional grounds.

A commitment to justice is indeed one of Jasper’s main traits. We cycle to Thea’s place for dinner. Stopping in in the ‘coffee shop’ on the way she remarks:

“The man who first promoted home grown ‘Nederwiet’ has to buy his weed in the coffee shop.”

“Good I never got rich. People would have said ‘over the back of our children’.” 

*

When next seeing them they are weeding the floating garden. Am quick to take over the hack knife and show off my bush skills. 

The job done we are rewarded by a beautiful rainbow. Just coincidence of course but can’t help taking it a little personal, having lived in the ‘rainbow region’ for so long: A Nimbin rainbow bridge. 

After standing there for a while watching it, he breaks it up with:

“Are we in church? How long do we have to be silent for?”

As ever the irreverent change agent.

She has read most of Moonchild’s Odyssea and enjoyed the read:

“You’re a pleasure ape.”

Jasper has run into Niké and brings up the time with her mother who apparently in the bohemian Fifties was one of the most exciting women in town:

“She taught me how to fuck.”

St. Nick has quite a bit to do with sexuality as well. Since the Middle Ages there has been a yearly pilgrimage in his honour. Men from all over Holland gathered in Amsterdam for the ‘Stille Omgang’ – ‘silent walk’ – to carry a candle through the night. Which for many ended with a visit to the red light district:

“It was mostly a sanctioned whore bash.”

Give them a little more of my cosmology: The spiritual lineage in the Western Tradition. The connection between us in my ‘Double Wand Of Power’. 

Tell them about the Aboriginal woman who urged me to go find my own Dreamtime.

He reckons my paganism is only possible by having moved to the other side of the world, away from a crowd that has grown cynical:

“We have lost. Consumerism has everybody packed in. All that people want is a nice house, a car, comfort.”

“What is it that actually got them hooked in?”

“Computers. Everyone wants one.”

That’s exactly right! More and more of our lives will be lived online. Soon we won’t be able to be without one. This requires adequate housing with solid electricity which requires a steady income which requires a job.

He himself is pretty fond of television.

Since it is on computers that my Santa Claus is supposed to turn up, propose to show him my site on my next visit.

*

It is the 5th of December, the day on which the Dutch celebrate their Sinterklaas. If Klaas would come, surely it would be today. To present him with my Moonchild today could make him see it as a present from the ‘Sint’ himself, and give me a role in his mad cosmology in the same way that he has in mine: Klaas is Coming indeed. 

He is impressed with the colours and that, but as he says:

“It is way above my hat.”

And not only technologically. People like Leary and Crowley are too complex for his liking. He is more susceptible to the predictions of Nostradamus and has shifted his focus to 1999 already. 

He doesn’t go much for the Sorcerer – Apprentice relationship either but he brings up the old custom in the local tribes of an Elder adopting a younger man to help him prepare for his death and look after his legacy. Nice to know that giving him his role in my life’s work is definitely doing its bit in honouring his legacy for posterity.

And for the predicament concerning my other inter-dimensional Elder: To be looking after the legacy of the Big Daddy of Magick is indeed cooler than considering myself to be his new incarnation. To see my own preoccupations with a user friendly interpretation of his work as my care for a tribal elder, sits actually quite nicely. 

Enlightening as the return to my home town is, the idea of launching Moonchild from here is petering out. It was about coming out in my own culture but what is my own culture? Sure, the atmosphere is still a fairly tolerant one but its long praised and well used freedoms have created such an abundance of sex shops, ‘coffee shops’ and smart shops – all catering to the tourist industry – it feels like being in somewhat of a tinsel town. Few of the local characters seem to have survived. They are either dead or working. With the demolition of the many squats, the wide pool of cheerfully unemployed, artists and student dropouts has disappeared. Robert Jasper is right: Everybody is packed in.

Also, not only do the Dutchies as a member of the ever strengthening European Union have to compromise with their partners, Dutch drug policy is under heavy fire from the American Foreign Office. In our globalised world national borders don’t mean that much anymore. It doesn’t matter from where you face the music. Ironically, with my deliberations about spilling my sex secrets, Newsweek, that embodiment of mass media, sums up the year as the Year of Sexual Explicity. 

At the end of the year, the entertainment section of the local rag speaks of a Golem high: Tuschinski Theatre is showing a movie from the Twenties, ‘Der Golem’. Also there is ‘Een Golem’, the musical. And my favourite Dutch author Harry Mulish’s new novel is on the Golem as well. The Golem of course being the statue of clay made by the medieval kabbalist, rabbi and alchemist from Prague, who devoted his life to making it come alive. It says:

“To go in the footsteps of the Almighty one studies the Tree of Life, the key to creation. Who with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet creates the right formula, will be able to bring clay to life.”

If this isn’t my journey through the Tarot Trumps! With ‘Crowley’s Moonchild’  a Golem has been created. It is a matter of setting up cybershop and breathing it into life.

*

Then it is 1999, the year that we’re supposed to party ’till we drop. Have an interesting encounter with Ruud Kraamwinkel, one of the notorious Sixties characters who is still around: Free love advocate, sexual reformer, organiser of orgies, defender of everything deviant. Ask him his opinion on fellow sex fiend A.C.

Ruud sees sex as eat and drink and reckons that ‘anything goes’, but mixing it with religion he finds perverse. This makes kind of sense in light of one of our ‘national characteristics’. There is a kind of Dutch sobriety that may well have a problem with some of Aleister’s ways. It probably did indeed take the makings of an English gent to house the pomposities of the Beast. And come to think of it, it is actually quite Aussie to fling something as direct as my own preoccupations into the face of humanity.

Am getting a little nostalgic for Down Under.

R.J.G. turns out to have been a frequent patron of the sex guru’s orgies, often showing up in drag. Apparently, before provo and hippy, it were the trannies who stirred up the town’s subculture.

A last session with Robert Jasper gets me to camcorder his Sixties performance off his video screen to put up on my site. His royal lady agrees that going public in Oz is the go:

“You did write it there.”

Before my departure a visit to ‘Au Bout du Monde’ is in order. A new Crowley biography ‘The Beast Demystified’ is on display in the shop window. Still the same shopkeeper from when this shop changed my life. Tell him of the enormous impact from picking up the ‘Book of Wisdom or Folly’ 24 years ago.

Being a bit of a scholar himself he respects Crowley very much:

“Imagine the time and effort it would have taken in those days to translate the Tao Teh King.”

Our chat is a nice way of rounding up the visit to my past and gives another boost to my confidence to continue on the path. Hop on the plane back to Oz.

*

The shed has been well looked after. Unpack my stored books and arrange them on the shelves. Not a lot of books and a little biased towards things magickal but it’s a funky little library, giving colour and culture. Bring in the cycad and bamboo palm, drape a sarong with Egyptian motif along the wall, get the brass vase from the ‘Abbey’ and pick some flowers. Revel in the rustic aesthetics of the place. Back in love with my quirky abode.

Good to be back in my paradise but am pretty much broke. My I.S.P. is in the process of setting up e-commerce facilities though, and it seems feasible to add the more radical bits to the site while keeping them under lock and key, only to be opened by credit card holders. However ‘next month’ becomes several months and then ‘beginning of next financial year’. Maybe the idea to guide the world from a shonky I.S.P. and the odd visit to an internet cafe is a little flimsy.

Better get on my own feet even if it is with worn out batteries and an ancient solar panel. Dust off the old phone, put it on its own little table next to the designated spot for a laptop, take off the monkey cock, hang it on the pole along which the phone line comes down from the ceiling and ring Telecom to get reconnected.

It is the 11^th of August, the day of the most publicised Nostradamus prediction: The solar eclipse that will bring ‘fire from the skies’, a tidal wave in its wake. The end of the world as we know it. Totally unexpected and a week early, the Telecom operator arrives to connect the phone. On top of that, today has been heralded as Global Ascension Day. Not a bad term for getting hooked into the Telecom conglomerate. Fire from the skies indeed except it is potentially a two-way street.

Then it is time for the next, even more advertised apocalyptic hurdle. It is not so much a prophesy as an expected techno glitch. The worry about the world not being able to sail through the 2KY transition unharmed is quite a rational one. Even the C.I.A. brings out a warning concerning the digital black hole when the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the year. As long as Moonchild is up there in her new outfit before then.

*

The need to publish my filth often feels like it’s somewhat of a curse. Not just because of fear of a bad reputation but it is bound to be spinning some people out. No matter how impressed with his brilliance, we can all agree that Crowley was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. May have mastered my own madness but for many he is still a dangerous man. Not only because of the sex and drugs. To bring opposites together is perilous to anyone who needs to see things in duality for their own sanity.

Astonishingly, towards the end of the year, as the only country in the civilised world, the Australian government passes internet censorship legislation. From 1-1-2000, I.S.P.s will have to screen the content of the sites they host. Don’t really want to embarrass my friendly hosts, so keep Sex Magick on my own machine and replace the order form for credit card holders with a colourful banner:

“Only for the acolyte in exchange for a comprehensive response to the story so far.”

The cyber trip is about connecting with the like-minded and discuss things after all.

Am glad there wont be a commercial aspect to the affair. It feels much better this way. Brother Achad, considered in his days to be the ‘One that cometh after him’ had his downfall, according to Aleister, not only by failure to completely annihilate his personality before taking the Oath of a ‘Master of the Temple’, but also by charging money for his service in the spiritual advancement of humanity.

In some things Uncle Al could be quite pure.

*

The December Solstice is approaching. Stack up on internet hours to finally, at last, from the comfort of my own shack, have a good solid cruise through my links and replace the dead ones. Every few hours the ritual of turning the swivel that holds the solar panel towards the sun, with the intensity of prayer.

The search for fresh links is certainly a thrill. Enchanted surf along webring 93, finding a funky and lighthearted branch of the O.T.O., the pleasant scarletwoman lodge; discussions on the difficulties of finding ‘sacred sex fiends’; on AvatarSearch a multimedia version of the Book of the Law; snippets from the ‘Book of Wisdom or Folly’ even: 

“Oh, son of my bowels...”

Thelema is alive alright!

And the wider community of consciousness raisers: R.A.W.’s ‘Sites to visit while stoned’, the wicked ‘disinformation’ and also hit on the bawdy C.O.P., ‘centre of pestilence’, tackling topics close to my own: Secrecy in the occult and the secrets of the O.T.O. in particular. It has a delightful warning: ‘Explicit sexuality and irony at Crowley’, suggesting that he did his best work before his discovery of sex magick and that afterwards his health and general affairs went downhill. How interesting!

Find the lovely witchvox.com, a real hobnob. It informs us that the impending Solstice is very special: Besides it being a once-in-a-lifetime-full moon, she’ll also be very close to earth. The moment to put up Moonchild’s new version and tell the world about its existence has arrived.

First is adding it to witchvox’s extensive link list. Introduce it with a quote from ‘The Moon’:

“If humanity is at the brink of piercing the veil that separates the subsequent lives in a reincarnational chain, first chance would have to be for the individual that has made most antics to attract the challenge. With Crowley’s idea of creating a Moonchild – consciously arranging an incarnation – it is no wonder that some of his acolytes have entertained the notion that they are the ‘One’. This one makes a pretty solid case. What do you reckon?”

Next is bringing it into the AvatarSearch engine:

“What if a reborn A.C. would be around today, could he look something like this?”

One more message: To the nearest branch of the O.T.O. because of a most intriguing bit of information on its site: Apparently, w-w-w spells cabalistically as vau-vau-vau, or 6-6-6:

“We know that the feeling of being Aleister Crowley’s new incarnation has taken several travelers on the left hand path on a roller coaster ride. Check this one out. You are sure to be impressed with the method to the madness.”

It is done. My Moon is full.

***