Gem-Gnosis-Gem

Being the true story of a magic Gem and a luminous Illusion

Chapter 1;
Crown of Creation

You are the Crown of Ceation and you've got no place to go
Soon you attain the stability you strive for
in the only way that it's granted
in a place among the fossils of our time.
Life is change, how it differs frm the rocks
My life is to survive and be alive for you
Crown of Creation----Jefferson Airplane,1968

It was 1969 in Berkeley, California
( Ahh, it was the best of times, It was the worst of times )
I had recently arrived on the Rainbow Coast in a wave
Of young seekers and runaways, people whom only a few years before viewed the world in black and white and gray. Even the red of the blood of our first televised national tragedy in Dallas in 1963 had to be imagined.
In June of 1963, a Bhudhist monk named Thich Quang Duc, sat down in an intersection in Saigon, Viet Nam, and as a protest to religious and political oppression in Viet Nam and around the world, poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire.
In the fiersest gray tones the worlds imagination was seared to a charcoal crisp.
Quang duc did not move or cry out from his meditative position
His heart was found intact and now resides in a monastery in Viet Nam.

Wandering the streets of revolution and revulsion, in a dayglo fog brought on by days and nights of acting as a volunteer in a generational social/drug experiment, I found myself In CODY’s Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue. Amid piles and shelves of all sorts of books and publications, from college textbooks on the technical aspects of the joys of nuclear "power", to assorted copy’s of Zap Comics and the Berkeley Barb with it’s calls for free pschyadelic drugs and mandatory nakedness.
I came across a large and dusty old tome under a pile of books labeled -Occult and Heresy-, called,
"The Secret Teachings of All Ages"
by Manly P. Hall.
As I picked up this book of ancient mysteries, a big beautiful book first published in 1929, a feeling, came over me, like a cross between De Jevu and finding a gem crystal that has worked it's way up to the surface after millennia in the dark heart of the earth,
Had I seen this book before? I leafed thru the pages as if I was brushing the dirt from this crystal that had been formed in the deep unconscious of a living planet to see and reflect the very Sunlight that created it. I saw the word Abraxas and felt on my hand the pull of gravity from a small cemetery in New Jersey. A place I had last seen what seemed lifetimes ago. Sensing the gravity of the situation I raised my hand to my head as if to touch this galaxy of swirling thoughts and emotions, a universe devoid of space and time, and felt the cool touch of jasper and gold on my skin. Then it all came back to me. Well, not all of it……yet.