On Astral Companions

This is an issue to consider in sexual terms. When dealing with entities, the interaction between the two always is an interaction of give/take, of presence and absence, yin and yang. Such is the reason behind daoist gender divisions being as they are, with the genders being formed at a conceptual level by their interactions with each other, the receiver and the giver, female and male. From this, when considering a relationship of two, the individual and their spiritual companion, the relationship is one of the same, in the terms of gender and sexuality from a foundational level. This is not to say these are immutable or mutually exclusive across different times/events, but rather that these are the beings inhabited when performing one or the other side of any relationship.

In Ps 91:11-12, the purpose of angels is written as being guardians and assistants along a journey, helpers sent from on high in order to bring one smoothly along whatever path they follow in the course of their life. Life here imagined as a path, with the attendant obstacles and difficulties a linear journey entails, has its way temporal way smoothed out by the higher intelligence guiding subject along it. This guiding function appears again and again in holy instructions, guardian angels or patron saints are sought after in order to bring one through the travails of life’s path. For the soul, such fulfills the function of providing a narrative. Women, as emptiness, are narrative in itself, the labyrinthine passages the soul wanders in, searching for the sublime core. These guardians, in being feminine if not female, perform this same function, inspiring love in order to lead one along inside them. Love being the core guiding-force behind all of this is the essential way in which the feminine spirit-guardian works, inspiring the single force of attraction deeper within her in order to be led to her ends. Such appears as well in less traditional spirit guardians. Succubi and tulpae appear as manifestations of love, a more romantic desire, in the same way that the sublime maiden in the castle functions, the woman from whom the narrative blooms. It’s often said that the goal of these entities is sucking-away, vampirism. While this demonstrates their form, it remains ignorant to their true nature, moralizing one into nothingness and remaining blind to the same function elsewhere. The woman here is always sublime, herself being empty as all women are, “the journey as the destination” holding true to the benefits conferred by moving within her.

In her “Master” letters, Emily Dickinson writes of filling, of being within, of accepting and receiving a love great and terrible. She speaks of vessels filled to breaking point and of offering herself, exclusive right of passage within herself to the subject of the letters. Just as presence is pulling, desiring for an absence in which to insert itself, absence is yearning, desiring for a presence to fill it, a sucking force as opposed to a seeking force. Mishima desired for the ecstasy of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom, his hollowness pierced and filled with the anonymous force of the crowd as they slung their arrows into his form. He looks towards the sky in ecstasy, made complete by the pain of fulfillment. While the guardians yang are just that, guardians, advisors, helpers, an emptiness bringing-along, those of the yin are husbands, leaders, fathers. Only a virgin is capable of vibrating on the frequencies of a unicorn, a spectral creature yet to be made-real by interaction with the brute physicality of the sexual experience. The function of the present is providing that which is missing, the orienting force of a hollow being, an opaque signifier to fill the dark void at the center of orbit, around which the chaos of emptiness can be whirled.

Against both of these is a fear, a fear at the core of the composition of the individuals in question. For the male, the fear is isolation, his soul like a rock, a core at his deepest layer left to rot, decaying without contact, without direction, stagnant until it becomes ash. For the female, the fear is disintegration, no axial center of orientation leading to a scattering, like dust left over and blown away, lost to tidal currents of the endless nothing. The desire for these companions is a desire for the missing piece, that which is left empty in the need of their being to become something greater than the mere consciousness it was born as - the something that will facilitate creation of the ego. Succubus lore speaks of becoming like the devil-woman more as the relationship progresses, a woman takes her husband’s last name. The companion completes what was hollow and the two unify, forming the immortal being at the end of alchymical marriage.