A Mass in Chaos (Z)

The opening of the Rite:

(Celebrant kneeling in prayer or in other submissive posture):

(Celebrant rises with assertiveness on last line.)

Banishing
(Celebrant or acolyte)

(the 'Apo Pantos')
Yo! You Demons! Hush up and be quiet! I'm tryin' to work here!

(the cross, conversationally, with the usual QBL cross motions)
I wish I could always be my higher self
But this body gets hungry and it has to poop now and then
But I have the power to make changes in my world
And enough sense to take credit only where it's due
As I move through time.
Yeah.

(The quarters, charged as the Celebrant or Acolyte deems appropriate. The following is one possibility:)

Xaos (A vortex)
Nuit (the arching mother)
Eros (a lingam/yoni)
Psyche (the brain}

(Loudly, and by the "boy howdy!" it should be shouted.)
Before me the raging seas
Behind me the rising cliffs
At my right the tongues of flame
At my left the howling winds

For around me are symbols of the All
and in the middle I am wet, and muddy,
and singed, and my hair is all tangled
But, boy howdy! it feels good to be alive!

So remember, demons, be quiet. We're workin' here.

Consecration

Celebrant crosses arms over chest and looks down.
Acolytes one and two stand on either side of hir (1 to the right, 2 to the left).

Acolyte 1: Who are you?

Celebrant: (answers as appropriate for them) [I'm just a Girl.]

Acolyte 2: By what right do you lead these mysteries?

Celebrant: By no right than that which you have given me, in this moment, and in this place.

Acolyte 1 takes Celebrants arm and stretches it out, palm upward:
In one palm is the line of your life to come.

Acolyte 2 does same with other arm:
In one palm is the line of your memory.

Celebrant bends down, left hand under the feet, right on the top of the head:
All between palm and palm I give to this moment.

Acolyte 1: You are here?

Acolyte 2: Now?

Celebrant stands: I am here. Now.

Acolytes return to their seats.

Collect and Prayer

Celebrant: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the frog

All: Do what thou wilt is the hole in the dog

Acolyte 3: Master, does even this simple cow have Buddha nature?

All: Mooooooooo!

[pause]

All:
Great God of Comedy,
You who fling custard pies in the Demon's face,
You who set whoopee cushion upon the Throne of Heaven,
To You I pray;
Grant that I may see the humor
And find the joke
Where others see only sadness and sorrow.
Grant that I may never take myself
Or my situation seriously.
And let me laugh the Laugh That will crack the sky
And shake Heaven and Earth.
This we ask in the name of all that is funny. (2)

Amen

(The following is lifted from the Firesign theater, and requires good comedic timing. (3))

Acolyte 1: Ahmet? I know Ahmet. He used to pray to the divinitines, chanting a stream of ancient Egyptian hirograms.

Acolyte 2: No. Diaphragms.

Acolyte 3: Diaphragms? I once knew a girl --

Acolyte 1: (Interrupting) Hieroglyphs! That's it. Do you know any?

Celebrant (pacing a circle or doing whatever invoking movements seem appropriate):
It was a jackel-headed woman with her eyes akimbo
and a king sitting sideways on his throne,
adrip with gold,chipped nose uplifted thusly
All engraved upon the pyramids of Massasai
with the body of a lion, pause that refreshes,
a tale told by an idiot and the head of a fox

Acolyte 1: The pyramid is opening!

Acolyte 2: Which one?

Acolyte 3: (in "this is so obvious" tones) The one with ever-widening hole in it.

Celebrant: I'm going in! Are you coming with me?

Acolyte 1: (timidly) It's dark in there.

Celebrant: I'm going in. Are you coming with me?

Acolyte 2: (admonishingly) There might be spiders.

Celebrant: I am going in. I am going in. I am. I am.

[All join, chanting/whispering "I am" -- four counts in on the "I", four counts out on the "am" until the celebrant deems ready.]

The Invocation of the Deity:

As all are chanting "I am" the Celebrant May wish to garb hirself as appropriate. A flimsy burnoose is recommended.

The celebrant should read this from any comfortable seat or stance. It may be read as dramatically or story-book-like as one wishes, but the humor and the message seem to go over best if Hassan is given a 'voice' different from the celebrant's.

I didn't invent Crazy Hassan. He was created by Derek Robb, Doctor of the Universe, who included the signature line at the end of his posts:

Nothing is True, EVERYTHING MUST GO!!
at Crazy Hassan's Clearinghouse of Delights

This is a take-off, of course, on Hassan i Sabbah and his Garden of Delights, and the saying attributed to him: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.

Crazy Hassan sprang to life while Lauranz was doing a spell. Suddenly she found herself in the Clearninghouse of Delights. I do not mean that she was hallucinating and seeing things out there. Rather, she was seeing in her mind's eye. "I was in the real world doing my spell," she said, "and at the same time, in my mind, I was in the Clearinghouse. Crazy Hassan is running around his huge store, hustling his customers and selling as enthusiastically as he can."

"Ho Ho Ho, Everything Must Go Go Go!!!!"

As you look around his Clearinghouse you can see a phangasmagoric jumble everywhere, baubles and trinkets, sparkling goodies and hideous horrors. "Everything must go! Fantastic bargains, prices slashed! Anything you could possibly want is here in my Clearinghouse of Delights!!"

Crazy Hassan is running past, his turban cockeyed and his robe flapping. Ancient secrets and modern fabrications dance beside sunsets and tv dinners. The wind blows through the trees, snow falls, and warm ocean waves crash on tropical shores as women fight over ceremonial robes on the bargain basement table. Jewels and gold and silver baubles dangle from wires together with the moon, planets, and the stars. Ancient pyramids, hanging gardens, flush toilets and indoor plumbing are piled up on top of boxes of sigils and piano music as the oboe sings and the flute answers.

"It's gotta go, everything must go", crows Crazy Hassan as he flies past on a threadbare oriental carpet.

The Clearinghouse of Delights is a metaphor. "Metaphors are on special today. Gotta get rid of them, prices are low low low, gotta go go go. And try our similes as well, we have the best", says Crazy Hassan as he runs over to haggle with a fat lady in a feather boa over the price of the square root of minus one.

"Languages for sale in the Clearninghouse of Delights!! Languages to say anything! Tools to invent anything!! Means to create anything and everything in the Clearhinghouse of Delights! Anything goes, Everything goes, Everything must go!!!"

The Clearinghouse represents Totality, All and Everything, the Multiverse in all its entirety and complexity. "Multiverses for sale!! Universes, Duoverses, Triverses, Verses of all kinds, sonnets, villanelles, freeverse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, you name it, we have it all here in the Clearinghouse of Delights!!!"

Crazy Hassan materializes from behind a stack of oriental rugs. He runs around the Clearninghouse shouting, "Big Sale Today in the Clearninghouse of Delights!!", leering and grinning, peddling one miraculous ware after another. A shoplifter stuffs a university full of professors under his coat. "I never worry about shoplifers," says Crazy Hassan. "There's nowhere for them to go. They can never leave the Clearinghouse. There's nowhere else for them to be."

Crazy Hassan is an antidote for the serious. "Seriousness for sale, and serials, and cereal. What will it be, Little Ladies and Gents? Froot Loops or Cheerios? Everything must go!!" Crazy Hassan is winking at a group of dazed tourists who bumbled in by accident as wind chimes tinkle and colored lights flash. Some people do seriousness well, but he doesn't. And dogma confines.

"Dogmas and Catmas for sale, get 'em while they're hot, they have to go! Pet snakemas and hamstermas and gerbilmas, pet parakeetmas! Points of View!! Absolute Truths!!! Rights and Wrongs, two for the price of one!! 'Things' for sale!! Ten Thousand 'Things'!!! You make 'em, you create 'em, you buy 'em and take 'em home!!! No 'truths' exist!!! Everything must go, go, go, at every moment, things go go go, from nanosecond to nanosecond!!!! Come to the Clearinghouse of Delights and get yours!! Everyone can have as much as they want!!! Buy now at totally affordable prices!! Everything is for sale, prices are low low low, 'cause everything's gotta go go go!!"

Seriousness is the opposite of light and enlightenment, and mires you down in your own ego. "Egos gotta go! Deconstruction tools can be found in the hardware department!!! Check our prices, none lower anywhere!!!

"Impermanence! Impermanent waves, Ladies. Come to our hair salon here in the Clearinghouse of Delights for your impermanent wave!" Crazy Hassan goes by on a unicycle. "Nothing lasts, everything passes away. No permanence anywhere. You really can't keep anything, it will slip out through your fingers, and finally even your fingers will go."

"Wine, women, and song, and men and children and goats and pigs and geese and cows!! We've chopped our prices, we've slashed our prices, we've cut, mauled, hacked, sliced, diced, and julienned our prices for quick sales!!!" He hurries off to meet the jeweler who is bringing his smiley face chaostars. "Joys and horrors, all of them must go, they come and go, beauty and delight, agony and terror, ho ho ho, everything must go!"

And the stars whirl around in the vast indigo sea, chaostars, pentagrams, unicursal septagrams, six point stars, spinning and dancing, wilder and wilder. Crazy Hassan's voice booms throughtout the Clearinghouse, "Go go go", as phantasmagorical horrors arise. Concentration camps, witch burnings, tortures, armies overrunning the land as terrified civilians plead for mercy. The Benighted States Army, the Prussian Army, the Russian Army, the army of Gengis Khan, the army of Hannibal, Alexander the Great's army, the Roman Army comes marching, marching, marching, carrying the golden eagle, and as Respighi's "Pines of Rome" comes clattering and tumbling to its bumptious conclusion, the musician, sawing away at his cello, blows his mind and dissolves into that VanGoghStarryNight sea of stars.

"Man's inhumanity to man can be found over in that aisle, next to ignorance and duplicity. Prices cut! Move it out, everything must go!", Crazy Hassan is singing. Indians, Black people, Asians, minorities are brought into court on trumped-up charges. The lawyer, a chaos magician in an alternative personality, waving a huge sword, steps up to the bench and addresses the judge, "Your Honor, this is a travesty of justice, this is a violation of human rights!!" as Crazy Hassan howls, "Human rights violations are in the next aisle, beside the gas chambers and cattle cars. Prices are cut to the bone, everyone can have some!! Everyone can be both oppressed and an oppressor, nobody need be left out!!! Ho ho ho, this, too, must go!!"

Night falls in the Clearinghouse, followed by morning in a circling yin/yang. On the wooded hillside the waterfalls sparkle. Fall drifts in quietly, followed by winter. "Drifts for sale, if you get my drift!! Everything must go, nothing ever lasts!" Yule passes, and the sun comes dancing in joyfully. Crazy Hassan catches the sun up in his hands and dances with it, faster and faster. The sky swirls, day sky, night sky, morning and evening skies. "Nothing is True!! No truth anywhere!!," sings Crazy Hassan joyfully. The jewels sparkle in the clearinghouse; integers, cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers do the jitterbug; earthworms, monkeys and parrots march in stately procession; chairs and tables join in. "Everything is for sale! There's nothing you can't afford! Cash, check, credit card, and if you haven't any money, then you can shoplift it, because it's already yours!!! But you can't keep it, because Everything Always Goes."

Mountains sing in their deep, rumbling voices, while oceans answer in harmony. Planets spin like tops. Crazy Hassan, riding a broomstick, flies through the star-bedazzled sky. "You can never leave the Clearinghouse of Delights!! There is no place else to go!! Ho ho ho!! Everything Must Go!!" The Clearinghouse spins with the stars, faster, faster. Fireworks blaze, stars explode with joy, the Clearinghouse shifts and sparkles like a crystal chandelier. Forms begin to shimmer and melt and morph.

Everything disintegrates as Nibelungen Troglodytes mine molecules. The molecules crackle and split into atoms flying everywhere. Atoms dissolve into electrons, into particles, particles into quarks. And then everything explodes! Space dust forms suns. Suns and planets form solar systems, solar systems form galaxies, galaxies form countless multiverses which flood the whirling fabric of spacetime as Crazy Hassan's laughter roars joyfully throughout. Everything spins faster and faster, faster-faster fasterfaster, a dizzying, dazzling kaleidoscope,

and then

EXPLODES

and dissolves

into the

Clear

White

Light

of

the

Void

[When the end is reached, stretch out the "white.....light.....of.....the......void." and then wait a few moments for it to sink in.]

The Banishing and Dismissal:

The celebrant tells a good joke, and tells it well. The 'Pope Joke' is a good option.

Notes:

(1) Poem by Bill Whitcomb
(2) Found on Shawn's Occultism and Religion Resources page, attributed to Count Cagliostro, Lord High Show Gun, El-Kabong Cabal, Knights of Malto Dextera, Grand Disorient Lodge, Order of the Rose and Columns, but it might be by Alan Watts.
(3) From the album "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All."
(4) Crazy Hassan is by way of Lauranz. Her original essay is here.

Printable booklets for this Mass are available in LaTeX format. There's a version for the celebrant, one for the acolytes, and one for the congregation. Contact the Small Denominational Order of Loose Change if you want the files.

This Mass was first performed with the Knights Templar Oasis of the OTO. Our oasis master did me the favor of being Acolyte 3.

To begin, I put my hands behind my back, one wrist in the other hand, and knelt forward in the position of a sub for the opening poem. I sat up on the line, "To hell with this," rose, turned, and did the banishing, starting in the East (My North is Where I Will). By the 'Boy howdy!' I was rather loud. Then the "Yo, Demons, we're workin' here" was done in bad Brooklynese.

The acolytes for the consecration sat in the North and South. Acolyte 3 sat opposite me in the East (behind me for the consecration and the collect and prayer). I walked around my tools with the 'Jackle-headed woman speech' then as they were chanting 'I am', put on my 'flimsy burnoose' (Firesign reference) before sitting to read Crazy Hassan. Hassan got my best salesman-y voice.

The Pope Joke guaranteed the banishment with laughter.

This mass was first performed in the smoking room of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Masonic Lodge, because the Temple had been double booked with us and a Reiki group that wouldn't move. I think that it worked better in the long run, since the smoking room is decorated with many a Shriner's Fez, a mannequin in initiation garb (complete with noose), and interesting little things on the wall. Of the latter was the 30's-ish photo of a woman reaching around to hug a leering Mason with a pipe, captioned, "I love to love a Mason, 'cause Mason never tells."

The second performance of the Mass was at Nutmeg 2000 in a generic conference room in Providence RI. He who was Derek Robb Doctor of the Universe, Sighris Raven Borg, and Bookwyrm were the acolytes.

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