I Have No Totem

I am a white man.
If I say I have a totem I steal
someone else's myth. But, in a hard
time, when I walked among spruce
and hemlock down to the alders
on the bank of the Indian River to pray,
a kingfisher chattered at me
from a dead branch above
a clear, green pool.

by Peter Munro, from "A Fisheries Scientist Sights a Large School of Myth Swimming in Shallow Water in Southeast Alaska" from the archives of the Beloit Poetry Journal

Mark this down as a good day.

The Trance may be continued for weeks or months, and the most ardent devotee of Tahuti, searching his Magical Record with the most conscientious acuteness, finds it impossible to indicate the onset of the Vision. In fact, it may be surmised that the Vision arises not from any given action but rather from a subtle suspension of action. The conflict of events has ended happily in a state of serenely perfect balance, in which, though energy continues to manifest, its issues have become without significance....[I]n this vision all conscious magical effort ceases, although the practices are continued with all customary diligence, and the whole of the Adepts's impressions, internal as external, are suffused with the glow of beauty and delight. The state is in many respects closely akin to that sought by the smoker of opium; but it is natural and requires no artificial regulation.

It will appear from the foregoing that nothing could be more absurd than to attempt to give instructions for the attainment of this state.

To aspire to it (still worse, to seek to regain it after it has passed) must appear the climax of bad logic. Nor, delectable and blessed as it is, can one call it actually desirable.

We need not assume that it is in any way deleterious, that it exhausts good Karma, or that it wastes time and damps aspiration. It should be accepted, when it occurs, with calm indifference, enjoyed to the full, and quitted without regret.

from Crowley's Little Essays Toward Truth, "Beatitude"

Today felt like Sunday morning. Not like Sunday mornings now, when I have to get up and drive to work because the busses aren't running that early and then I sit there and drink coffee and distract myself with entertaining novels and the impossibility of the New York Times Sunday crossword; no, today felt like this particular Sunday morning I remember from when I was a child. I couldn't have been more than eight or nine, and all I remember is sitting in my room after church one day (it must have been Easter, I had a nice dress on) with some sort of Sunday School something-or-other and a box of crayons, and it was perfect.

It's something about the light I remember most; the light came through the window in a particular way that I couldn't describe if I tried, but it happens still sometimes when I'm not looking for it. That particular late-morning light, the light of the sun bright behind a bank of very dark clouds, and today, the glow of mid-afternoon snow showers, all seem to hit me in exactly the same way.

When I first came across this passage from Crowley, I thought, Yes, I know that state exactly. When the universe seems to be all okay for a while. Sometimes it lasts for just a couple of minutes, sometimes it lasts all day. (Today it got me through an eight-hour shift when I had to use voice-recognition software with a head cold, for which I am immensely grateful.) Sometimes I wish I could induce it, by seeking out or recreating the right kind of light, but would it be quite so wonderful if you could do it on purpose, instead of it just coming on all unexpected like this?