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vortex (vôr´tèks´)
noun
plural vortexes or vortices (-tî-sêz´)
1. A spiral motion of fluid within
a limited area, especially a whirling mass of water
or air that sucks everything near it toward its center.
2. A place or situation regarded
as drawing into its center all that surrounds it: "As happened with so many
theater actors, he was swept up in the vortex of Hollywood" (New York Times).
[Latin vortex, vortic-, variant of
vertex, from vertere, to turn.]
The power of the world always works in circles, the sky is round, and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down in a circle, the moon does the same. And both always come back to where they were. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood. And so it is in everything where power moves."
- Black Elk Speaks
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In _True Hallucinations_, Terence McKenna describes his journey with his brother, Dennis, and several others to the Amazon basin, where they conduct an experiment in consciousness expansion using indigenous psychoactive mushrooms. 24 hours after their key experiment, during the night, Dennis went on a wild ramble in the surrounding jungle; or at least he believed that he did-nobody saw him go or return. Whatever the reality-status of the experience, he had wandered into the jungle and found an especially tall tree.
On impulse, he had climbed
it, aware as he did that the ascent of the world tree is the central motif
of the Siberian shamanic
journey.
As he climbed the tree, he felt the flickering polarities of many archetypes,
and as he reached the highest point of his ascent, something that he called
"the vortex" opened ahead of him-a swirling, enormous doorway into time.
He could see the Cyclopean megaliths of Stonehenge
and
beyond them, revolving at a different speed and at a higher plane, the
outlines of the pyramids,
gleaming and marble-faceted as they have not been since the days of pharaonic Egypt.
And yet further into the turbulent mass of the vortex he saw mysteries
that were ancient long before the advent of man-titanic archetypal forms
on worlds unimagined by us, the arcane machineries of sentient agencies
that swept through this part of the galaxy when our planet was young and
its surface barely cooled. This machinery, these gibbering abysses, touched
with the cold of interstellar space and aeon-consuming time, rushed down
upon him. He fainted, and time (who can say how much time) passed by him.
my life is patterned after vortexes.
not intentionally
of course... i feel calm while chaos
swirls around me. yet i'm in the center of it all... i have to be, since
i am the perceiver.
and because i perceive, i create. there is no getting around that.
i seem to be harnessing the most natural form of raw energy. yet i do
nothing. - @Om* 7/20/98
intro to the tv show _The Twilight Zone_
The Oregon Vortex
near Gold-Hill, Grants Pass, Oregon,
USA.
Vortex Campaign/Coil/New Blockaders:
DOLBIED
x
CS 1984 VC
BE
CS 198? RRRecords
US
Notes:
The tracks have no titles
and are each credited to one of the three involved groups. Two tracks are
credited to Coil.
The initial release was a
limited edition of 50 copies packaged in a cloth bag with cards of
visuals by Vortex Campaign. The re-release is a bootleg.
_The Simpsons Halloween Special (AKA: Treehouse of Horror)_ [Aired October 25, 1990] Season 2/Episode 4
_Finnegans Wake_ by James Joyce - p. 293