After the Djed Pole was stripped & Slag had painted a few coats of a sealant on it, IwoJima lovingly tap, tap, tapped a copper crown on the Pillar. We call the cedar a Djed Pole - a term, like Alchemy, which originates with the Egyptians. Raising a Djed Pole in the small villages of the Nile Delta was part of the social glue which reinforced a group identity and bonded the individual to his village as well as the cosmos. Osiris was the Djed Pole. He was the Rising God and responsible for the male's contribution to the fertility of the world. So raising the pole in the female delta was an Alchemical Action - it was man adding his hand sympathetically to the magic. Relics of this mythology are still present in Maypole celebrations all over the world. We also think of the pole as a Menhir, remembering that Europe as well as other places on earth, was once covered with thousands of them. A Menhir is a large standing stone which was homeopathically placed and erected for the purpose of channeling the forces which animate all life. They marked places of power where the life-forces pooled. Spots in time and space where god has stopped.

An Axis Mundi both divides and unites Heaven & Earth, the Sacred and the Profane. It is a pooling point for the mixing of opposites. Both Omphalos & Phallus, the Pillar symbolizes stability & endurance. In Taoism a Pillar represents the Tao itself: the Way. Raising a Djed was seen as the Resurrection of Osiris & the drama began with the ritual act of placing the "sacrum" - the backbone of the Greenman himself - on a cut stump & facing it towards the sun.

IwoJima has his own reasons for marrying the triangular form of the Crown to the circular of the Cedar. He reminds us that the finished piece is composed of a Point, a Line, a Spiral, a Circle, a Triangle & a Square.

The next part of the Mission was to festoon the Djed with appropriate temporary gris-gris and then manually pull the Djed from a starting point at a friend's barn a mile or so back to Kenny's Atelier where the Djed was created. The "Pillar Pull" would be accomplished in a Processional Medium - like Jesus winding up Golgotha or the Bataan Death March - a medium which could also function as a Narrative, telling a story as the voyage is parsed. When we got to the Atelier the plan was to party wildly and tell each other lies. Note the Slow-Moving-Vehicle sign which here substitutes for permission.

This Pillar stands in front of the Sé (Cathedral) in the city of Porto in Portugal. The church is a pinch of Gothic with a Romanesque Rose Window and a general belabored Baroque. The Pillar is classic Portuguese Manueline - a style named after the King under whom the style flourished. Twisted columns, spiral pillars, overwrought with details. Manueline is embellishment run amok. Skippy calls it the "Glory Shot," and by that he means the cumshot in a porno film - it's the peak of the wealth so to speak. Manueline flourished as long as there were treasure ships from the Americas returning to Iberia with their holds exploding in gold & silver & precious gems. Even though elsewhere in Europe the tradition of the Pillar is spotty, in Spain & Portugal the Pole is nearly always a part of the architecture. There is something deeply Christian about a Pillory. Besides the Ecce Homo. They are desexed Herms & boundary markers for worldly passions.

"At the Pole lies the heart of Mercury, which is the true fire." Every Pole, in its placement, finds a mystic center or "unvarying mean." A "fixed point" or Punto Fijo around which a system revolves. The I-Ching shows that the continuous metamophoses of the material world are fathered by the Great Pole which is a Oneness beyond Duality & Opposites - the unmoving mover whose still dance fashions the illusions we call the World.

After the festooning the Pillar Pull began. Bruno led for most of the trip, his scars glistening in the summer sun like badges & awards. Slag had run a PsyOps campaign on the Village of Northport and the locals were properly motivated & in the Spirit of things. Which is the Point.

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