THE CARNIVAL OF LENG

2015, Sean Woodward

seanwoodward.com
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I
"Don't be afraid, draw a card!"
It was dark inside the caravan, as if all the dust which covered the world outside had seeped inside
little by little over the years. I still didn't know what had brought me to this place. I should have kept
walking past the carnival entrance, on towards the next town where maybe some kind of work
awaited me. The further west I traveled from the Bayou, the hotter and drier the world became.
"Sit down then, you've come this far" she said, her voice a little softer this time. As my eyes
adjusted to the gloom I could just make out her hooded face. It seemed as if her skin bore the
traces of some pox, marked in an almost geometric regularity. It was too dim to be a tattoo, unless
an old one that had been part of her previous life in the show.
"Never mind the past" she whispered, as if understanding my thoughts. All around the small table
an assortment of objects filled bending shelves. Frogs everywhere, porcelain, metal, wooden.
Above the faded tablecloth she held out a pile of fanned cards. Stupidly I had thought they might
show me a change in circumstance. A change for the better I hoped. I drew a card.
"The Magus!" she exclaimed in a rasp breath. The figure's face in the drawing was wrapped in the
same patterns of joined dots that I had seen hinted at in her own visage. Only these were bright,
distinct.
"The journey to bring you here has been long. Like a hobo you've traveled with nothing save a bag
over your back and dogs at your feet. But now, now you are to find the tools which will bring your
salvation."
I didn't know what she meant. The only tools I'd ever seen were those of my grandfather and they
were no use to me. The days when he could grow vegetables, fruit and herbs on his land were long
gone with the departure of the rains.
"What tools?" I asked.
She picked up the card I'd laid face up on the table and slotted it into the pile of cards and then
held them out to me.
"Take them! Seek the Priestess, she will show you how to use them" she insisted.
I took the cards, looking at their gold patterned backs and started to walk out of the caravan. As I
did so the scene became blurred, as if the dust bowls were spinning before me, obliterating all
vision.
I breathed deep, waiting for the acrid taste to fill my lungs.

The bitterness never came. Instead I watched a white spiders web cover my clothes as they
changed to a single bodysuit, wrapped in the lines and tinged with hair.

II
Within the sanctuary the book lay at my side, the dark bodysuit gone, the candles burned down a
little more than when I began the ritual. I opened it and re-read the pages that I had marked.
"Immediately the forces begin to come in from the other side of the veil of manifestation. You will
make contact with them by means of will, mind and imagination, so that as the forces come into the
mandalum, a perfect eight armed spider system is formed."
Voudon Gnostic Workbook, Michael Bertiaux
This describes the trance state I had experienced within the sanctum. In these moments there is
an unlocking of bodies, a jumping between, a flow of communications from the different aspects of
being which are different Angels in Vodou. Our senses are enhanced by the activation of the
mandalum, of the eight directional magical computer that enables the suit to jump through space
and time, from the 21st Century to the dustbowl years of the Great Depression.
The Magus is a creature of shadow and light. He is wrapped in Aiwaz-Physics, N-Physics and the
Gnostic mysteries. The potentials of oracular and cosmic power are dancing about him. Though his
talents are many, they are in a state of becoming, for his journey has been a long one and the road
ahead even longer. In the Pilgrimage of the Tarot, he has only just set out on the road to the
mystical city of Ifa, but already he has discarded the appearance of the migrant. seek an oracle,
some a priest. He will become all these and more as he undertakes his journey around the sun of
his Gros-Bon-Ange.
To the Magus are given four aspects, to travel in each of the elemental worlds. The Dark Man of
the Sabbat is the visage he takes upon himself when entering into the principalities of Disks. In the
world of Wands he is the Sorceror of Leng. In that of Cups he becomes the Chalice Knight and in
that of Swords, he wears the Silver Suit of the Gholem. These aspects are portrayed on alternative
cards in the first and limited Glastonbury editions of the deck.
It has taken many years to come to the point of creating this tarot and it is then only by wearing this
auric Spider Suit that one is able to engage the visionary eye, to see the vistas and expanses
across space and time which inform the deck. Other, more complex magical methods, such as that
of the Voltigeur Formula were also used to make the jumps into the chambers of Universe-B, to
slide between the sides of the Tree of Life, to cross the webs that span the Pylons of Daath and
Maat, to cross the dusty wastes of the American 1930s.
Its a long way from answering a few questions about a person's future, but it shows the complexity
of tarot when utilised by the magician as a magical machine. Whilst the tarot alluded to in the
teachings of the Monastery of the Seven Rays, of Racine and Padern has been manifested as the
Carrefour Tarot it does not follow the standard scheme of 78 cards. The Tarot of the Emissary
follows this familiar form but taps into the vibrant channels of the current and transports its user.
Often referred to as Atu, this echoes the Atua or spirit house of the Voudon Gnostic and reflects
the dynamic, evolving nature of tarot.
Within the logics of the Spider Suit is contained a Daath Singularity. This is the key to the portal of
Choronzon, woven into the web logics of the suit, creating a portable containment of the cosmic
energy of Choronzon, enabling instant traversal of the dimensions. This energy is alluded to by
Michael Bertiaux when he says:

Steffi Engert 19/5/15 22:38

Comment [1]: Is this correct? It looks to
me as something missing.

"You have woven your web by meeting with your own magical force each of the eight
sources of cosmic energy. Thus, cosmic energy is met by god-energy"
The Hecate-Frog of the Voltigueurs and the Spider totems are vital not just as masks or the outer
patterns of the suit but as methods for understanding the Universe-B they resonate with. Kenneth
Grant writes:
"The spider's web is the network of tunnels that leads to other dimensions, for what appear
as mere interstices on a flat plane when the spider has emerged from it's hole are - in the depths of
the earth - intra-spatial voids and dream-spanning gulfs of cosmic immensity.'

Buried within these descriptions of the time-traveling magician and the nature of the aeon he
inhabits is the legacy of the Shadow Tekton and their home, the Monastery of Leng on the
abominable Plateau of Leng in the far star system of Leng. They can be seen in the Magus card
and in that of Temperance, for they are ancient metaphysical alchemists who have imparted their
knowledge down the ages, first in their Atlantean and Lemurian outposts and later in the rites of
Memphis-Misraim and the occult orders such La Couleuvre Noir, originating in Haiti in the 1920s.
The importance of the Leng system and the energies which emanate from it is demonstrated by
Kenneth Grant in Outside the Circles of Time, where he says:
"Leng has the value of 88, the number of Khabs, the 'Star' in the Khu, or Magical Power.
Worship of the Khu releases a down-shower of the Light of Aiwass."
Michael Bertiaux relates this double 8 to the Aeon of Aiwaz when he states on page 86 of the
Voudon Gnostic Workbook that:
"The number of Aiwass is 8, which is also the number of Zothyrius. There are eight alchemical
components used to provide the basis for Aiwaz in the materialisation of the absolute"
This shows how the source of the Magical Power, the fuel of the Spider Suit, is contained within the
extra-dimensional, Zothyrian energies of Aiwass. It also takes us back to the eight legged spider of
the mandalum and the means of crossing the worlds.
These magicks originate in the Trans-Yuggothian Priesthood of Zom, the spiritual guardians of the
Zothyrians. At the heart of this activity is the utilisation of the Zom Consciousness as delivered by
praeter-human entities such as Aiwass and Amalantrah to power the Spider Suit. It was following
Aleister Crowley's Amalanthra Working that the portrait of Lam was manifested, thus the Aeon of
Horus is therefore better described as the Aeon of AIWAZ-Zothyrius.
Grant also refers to Lam, as the Lama of Leng, which is a further suggestion that the praeterhuman intelligences with which Crowley trafficked were emanating from the Zothyrian Empire of
Universe-B. These links are further expressed in Outer Gateways, where Grant says:
"There is also an equation with QBRIM (352), 'grave-vaults', which indicates a further
connection with the necromantic formula of Leng. These grave-vaults are the same vaults
encountered in my visionary work, Dreamwalkers of Leng and hint of the Zombi rites of the Zobop.
"The priest carried the Qube Maker to the monastery vaults. They we empty now, their kind
long gone. Some travellers believed that they were now the cannibals, roaming the plateau and
devouring any who fell into their pits. It had always seemed strange that the pits were located so
close to the monastery walls and their chains seemed newer than those embedded in the snow
touched walls. Perhaps the stories were true. Perhaps something they had discovered had warped
their minds; turned them to devourers of flesh."

The Tarot of the Emissary is derived from this diverse and eclectic mix of threads within the
Voudon Gnostic tradition of Michael Bertiaux combined with my own spiritist and visionary
experience whilst working as an initiate within the orders of the OTOA and LCN, engaging the
Spider Suit, the Mandalum and the ways of the Voltigeur.
All of this is a heady mix for anyone not familiar with traditional voodoo, let alone the expanded
world of Esoteric Voudon. This is a gnosis which whilst rooted in the mysteries of Haiti
encompasses far more. It is for this reason that I am able to incorporate the Leng Mythos revealed
in the visionary work of the artist-magician into the body of this tarot. This is the rich diversity of the
tarot, that not only do they offer a mechanism for divination, but a means of transporting one's
consciousness beyond.
This tarot though is not content to merely depict that range contained within the Voudon Gnostic
Workbook, for it seeks to draw upon the energies encountered whilst working with that grimoire, to
reach back, back in time from the burning fires in the Haiti countryside and menacing motor zobops
that prowled the back lanes of Port au Prince, to the heart of the Afro-Atlantean tradition that
informed them.
To understand the full breadth of the elements of Esoteric Voudon we need to go back further still,
to the places where the original Titans migrated from, to the influences of the Star Walkers, the
Abyss Walkers and the Dream Walkers of Leng, of the galactic Trans-Yuggothian empires and the
Rites of Zom, of the Spider Sorcerers and those magicians that crossed the cold - between worlds
and ages.
These are the histories and characters that infuse this tarot. In the Magus card we have seen the
face of the Shadow Architect, covered in a lattice of lines. These are the creators of advanced
technology, manifesting as Magick in this card. We find their struggle with the Ancient architects or
Tektons of Orion and Sirius and their fallen brothers, the shadow Tekton. They allied themselves
with the monstrous Archons and thus instigated their exile to the Leng system and its infamous
monastery, which is detailed in my Leng Mythos cycle. These histories are preserved in the
Gnostic spaces and in the Atlantean temples that were moved to places able to bridge the outer
and inner worlds, becoming shimmering gateways left in deep space and the deep gnostic spaces
within the Ontic Sphere, only opened by the Spirit guides of the Cultus.
Across the major arcana this history of ancient stellar empires and archetypal powers is portrayed.
Each card becomes a portal into those realms, a window on those histories. Each card enables us
to step between, to jump as a Voltigeur into the night.

III

Once more the dust swirls before me, obscuring the land from sight. Before me a vision unfolds, of
a spherical flying machine and pyramids on the horizon. The years are turning in the winds. The
view shifts and I see the Ferris Wheel, hear the creaking shake of its seats as it turns in the
howling wind, getting faster, in danger if shaking itself apart with every rotation.
The old hooded woman appears at my side.
"Here is the door between the worlds. No longer are you constrained to this time, to this life. It is
the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another. Take the green environment suit of the Hoo
for this world is dying and a new one awakes. When you return you will forget all of this, but you
will retain the longing, the knowledge that your treasure house remains still. Seek the source of that
longing and you will return here."

"Why?" I ask, having come so far to this place only to lose everything.
"It is the way of the Wheel. That all worlds should turn, that all should return, that all should learn."
Tumbleweeds are picked up by the spinning winds and the scene begins to blur as I see I am
wrapped in the emerald suit and I fall deep into the sleep of incarnation, about to awake once more
before burned out candles.

Sean Woodward is the British representative of OTOA-LCN. The Tarot of the Emissary and
Carrefour Tarot are available from seanwoodward.com