In the magical experiment of which this book is a channeling exchange, the first “new” form of play to be drawn from the veil of sex was “eroplay”. Eroplay extends well into the everyday communication exchange between you and the rest of the world. This is the real meaning when somebody says everything you do, every communication, is sexual. But this real meaning is hidden the second it is revealed, by using the word “sexual”, herding us back into the accepted, life-denying, controlled channels of relating. Instead, we should say everything you do is cherotic. Eroplay is for communicating, for getting to know, to reveal, to exchange, to be vulnerable, to play, to enjoy, to explore. For this reason, eroplay, even at its most intense naked physical play can be done with anybody you like and enjoy ... can be done in clarity in even social situations once it has been clearly and purposefully taken out of the usual sexual context. Romantic monogamy, celibacy, and sexual sex all hide this primal channel of satisfying successfully these needs of play, exploring, and communicating ... hide by misdirecting these needs into channels which are not capable of satisfying, or even holding, these types of living needs. The result of this is frustration, isolation, and draining the energy of creation away from the personal level along with personal responsibility. In short, the result is life-denial being created by the dimension of power.
But eroplay is only one of the states of physical trance long hidden within sex by the life-denial of power. Each state has its own aspects, nature and effects. Each state is complete within itself, although one state may contain the other states within its special context. For example, sex contains eroplay as foreplay within it. But there is not a linear ladder. That is, eroplay should not be seen as a step towards sex, something less than sex. If you look at eroplay and sex in this way, the true qualities of both will be hidden from you.
We have said orgasm as the physical sensation can be located in each of the body centers, including the skin. Each center has its own special effect. So where an orgasm occurs has its own magical effect and context. Moreover, when we realize it is possible to feel an orgasm in different centers, or even in all of the centers at the same time, we begin to see that even orgasmic sex is a much more rich and complex experience. This is not the place to go into these orgasmic sexual states in detail. But it should be again pointed out that genital orgasmic sex, especially when it includes intercourse, is suited only for long-term living relationships when done within the normal social and cultural frame. This is because of the bonding pattern this sets off in the brain.
Ontonse is the fairly regular level of implosion of cherotic energy into the body during physical trances such as eroplay. Cherotic energy is the nonlinear stream of the subatomic packets which our body breathes in and out through every center of the body. Ontonse can be physically as intense as an orgasm. But because it is a level implosion of chero, rather than a peak explosion as the orgasm is, it can last much longer than the orgasm. Its effects are different than orgasm. Ontonse can arc between two eroplaying bodies, creating a united body during the trance time without genital intercourse. When ontonse occurs on a regular basis, eroplay has been transformed into “tanplay”. Since you can not work linearly toward having an ontonse as you can to some degree work toward having an orgasm in sex, you can only enter the tanplay state by enjoying play for itself, enjoying being with the other person just for being with that person. Then the state of tanplay will settle in. Tanplay is a state of close friends ... warm, slow and gentle ... willing to go anywhere the tanplay takes you. Because the ontonse arcs into the body, it can effect people not physically within the tanplay.
A lot of the formal cherotic magic takes place within this tanplay trance. Tanplay is serious folly.
The student should enter the following two physical trances only at the direct bidding and direction of the shaman, the teacher. The shaman within these two trances may use the student’s body as his own to accomplish things he can’t in his own body. The student might be playing both for/as herself and for/as the shaman.
In one of these states, “tansex”, orgasm has not the linear goal peak quality it has in sex. In tansex, both orgasm and ontonse are just two of the many possible ports that the play may carry the ritual into. Tansex, although it can be intense, has a magical evenness to it. Everything has an equal value. If there appears a linear goal such as to have an orgasm, this transforms tansex into some other trance state with different effects. Tansex has a nonlinear relaxed floating quality of things just happening, following the playing without forcing or trying. As in the other physical trance play forms (other than sex) that we have been talking about, there is no genital intercourse within tansex. The effect of tansex in the normal reality is to express and to explore the depth of a long existing friendship. Because of this, it only makes sense to be in tansex only within a friendship which has lasted for two years. This is within the normal western cultural reality. During the apprenticeship, however, the student should regard tansex as a ritual to be performed only upon the direct instruction of the shaman. In this magical ritual, the student is acting both as herself and as the shaman.
But within the magical work of apprenticeship, as in all magical work, another reality is working under the surface. Within this Cave of Lila, the shaman works with these altered states of physical trance, without the limits of morals, for different magical nonlinear change, in a totally different nonindividualistic context than the normal cultural context. We will call this context “tanpan”. Within tanpan, all of the aspects of this physical play/trance, including that of intercourse, are drained of both their normal and hidden meanings and qualities, so that they can be used by the magic through the shaman to effect both local and nonlocal changes. During the apprenticeship, both tansex and tanpan must be kept within the disciplined ritualistic context of controlled folly within the Cave of Lila. By doing this, the tanpanic relationship between the student and the shaman will not conflict with, threaten or weaken the student’s relationships in the normal cultural frame. This is because this tanpanic relationship exists and is contained within the different, special, magical reality. However, this does not deny the fact that entering any magical experience often will shake to and beyond the breaking point any relationship that is not solidly based. But magical work can only strengthen a relationship that is solid.
We have just examined some of the channels of cherotic breathing which have been hidden from us within the so-called sexual level. It is the same on all of the levels of living. We have been led to believe that there are at most only a few ways to experience instinct, to physically communicate, to love and feel and speak and listen and think, to be spiritual, to breathe with the whole web of ultimate reality. By being denied the awareness of these other ways, our erour, our vulnerable strength, is taken away from us. We are funneled down into a narrow existence, most of which is abstract.
These many ways, many channels of cherotic breathing are in reality fragmentary parts of the whole tanpanic experience, direct experience of reality, the primal experience. This total experience is deep love. Within the apprenticeship, the shaman guides the student back into this primal direct experience to perform magical work. For this to be successful, the student has to willingly put up every aspect of herself to be used in the magical work, has to willingly let go of all old comfortable ways and forms of knowledge.
This reality of total direct experiencing is the reality at the point where self-awareness, the awareness of personal responsibility enters the evolution. Within this experience, the primal human related to everything in his environment as himself, as within himself. He was the rocks, the land, the plants, the animals, the others in the tribal grouping, and the gods and demons. And they were him. Because of this, he took responsibility for them, could communicate with them, could effect change in them. He saw the animals he killed for food as parts of the same body as he was. In this context, killing and eating was circulation of transforming forms within the environmental body. This experiencing the other as yourself is what is meant by deep love. This is not an abstraction. When the buffalo was killed off, the Indian, who was in magical relationship with the buffalo, also in a very real sense died. This is not because the buffalo was the food source, but because the Indian was the buffalo. Kill off the plants, the land, the tribe, or the reality of gods and demons, and you kill off the primal person, his personal context of being. This concept of deep love is very hard to grasp in our reality of helping, sharing with, learning from, conquering, making love with, leaving, coming together with, etc., another as two separate, isolated entities.
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