The Dirty Puja
Holy, unholy, it's all the same.
There is no sacred. There is no profane. Of all the teachings I can expound, this is the greatest, the most potent in a time of obfuscation, moral relativism, and indiscriminate self-indulgence. Religions, priests, gurus, “teachers,” and other traditional spiritual leaders insist right and wrong exist, good and evil are absolute, and heaven and hell are real places, whether in a metaphysical cosmology or a psychological landscape.
Yet I argue all these notions, including the notions of any spiritual path called Truth, are subjective, and this newsletter will seek to prove it through myth, philosophy, world scripture, art, and lived experience.
Being the tantrika that I fantasize myself being (more on that later), I’ll likely post a piece each Friday, the day of Venus, of Shukra, the day of art, of the goddess, and the path of seduction. At this point, I’m offering these writings for free. There’s many who rightfully remind me that in a capitalist society, “free” is a synonym for “worthless,” but I don’t care. If you’re someone who needs to pay a fee to believe what I tell you, send me a good book.
And so we begin with a story…
In an ancient kingdom of India, a wandering devotee of Lord Shiva, one of the greatest of Hindu divinities, comes to a temple just as the priest is about to perform a puja on the Shiva lingam. Think of this as a worship service, whereby this particular image of Shiva (a large, erect phallus, boon to size queens everywhere) is bathed in holy water, milk, honey, and blessed with flowers and mantras.
The itinerant devotee walks into the temple and performs the ritual with his own excrement, his urine, his feces. Unsurprisingly, the priest is outraged and throws the devotee into a dungeon.
That night, Lord Shiva appears in the king’s dream and says, “Get up! Release my devotee! He’s one of my favorites!” Bolt upright, the king awakens and rushes with his guards to the dungeon where the holy man is happily chanting to Shiva, and when they release him, he leaves town with the god’s name ever on his lips.
But when dawn breaks, the priest is found dead, killed by Lord Shiva, himself.
The devotee understands that all things are holy. The priest, consumed with notions of righteousness, dies for his ignorance.
Welcome to Profanum. Welcome to the mysteries outside the temple.
Yesssssssssss!!!
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