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Jim Keating
Tradition: Cult of Ecstasy (loosley) Essence: Dynamic Nature: Dreamer Demeanor: Artist Mentor: John Kurayama Appearance:Short, thoroughly unstyled brown locks. Unremarkably average medium build. Differentiated eye colour; one icy blue, one earthy hazel. Rectangular horn-rimmed reading glasses. Usually wearing bemused eyebrows or vacant scowl, both served with chewed lip and tugged goatee, flashing transient wide-eyed enthusiasm. Wears a loose-fitting selection of Oxfam shirts, faded grey jeans, scuffed sneakers, a battered charcoal lecturer's jacket with a crimson heart patch sown onto the sleeve - holding a variety of pens, notebooks, boxes of matches, loose change, chunky waterproof graf pens, stash tin, hip flask, bus tickets, etc.. Wears an old Glastonbury festival fabric wristband. Ink-stained fingers. Followed by the musty scent of marijuana. Carries a patched up satchel-rucksack painted with a small CoE sigil, holding a further ramshackle collection of an artist's cornucopia. Though Keating's Tarot signifier has been difficult to pin down, it most commonly veers between Luna and the Page of Dynamism (the Gibberer). Attributes
HistoryAwakening: Jim Awoke at a festival mid-performance of a piece called Cork-for-Brains detailing the sensation of the ebb and flow of Time, actually feeling the very things he had only glimpsed whilst thoroughly stoned and writing the piece. Brief History: Such narcotic-induced chronomancy, not to mention the dynamic lucidity of his words, impressed a group of literary Ecstatics passing through on pilgrimage to an Akashic yogi's 6 month course on haiku-craft as an aid to meditiation and mastery of Mind. Jim excelled under this tutoring, though his anarchic attitude towards construction of forms, and a desire to speak the words that the master insisted must be written ("to focus the heart-mind not the ear") earned him frequent chastisement. He eventually left on good terms with yogi John Kurayama - who realised such a frenzied mess of feelings and words would benefit more from exhausting himself in these pursuits than being continually berated. Jim left to study briefly "under" an Ecstatic poet-mage who shared an interest in Pound and Ginsberg, though left after their passionate love affair dwindled mainly from Jim's itchy feet and her realisation of the irredeemable differences between the two. During this time however Jim developed a focused vocalisation magick based on elements of free verse and rap. Soon after, he fell in with a group of neo-beatniks and anarchist-academics from the looser fringes of the Dissonance Society after they blagged their way into a two-week Hermetic conference on Enochian incantation. Jim and the group "liberated" several photocopies of protected ancient literature, both prose and poems. Following the spread of rumour that Keating had little regard for the literary secrets of the Traditions, and the increasing unwillingness of many chantries to house such politically-delicate material, Jim eventually set up a library with fellows of similar attitudes from the Dissonance Society and promptly went on holiday to a Verbena festival. At some stage in the weekend (elevated to a blurry collage of mushroom visions and disembodied sensation), Keating's Avatar manifested during one of his performances as a dancing child bearing a mesmerising music-box, leaving listeners with an intense sense of an infinite curiosity of and for life. Told by a witch acquaintance he had made, Rose Cambrook, that such a Dynamic Avatar (combined with Jim's occasional bouts of manic-depression) was both a blessing and a curse, Keating returned to Kurayama to hone his insight and calm his spirit He was however, still unable to quell his eagerness for over-thinking. The haiku-master hoped to allow the fruition of Mushin ("no-mind") within his mentally hyperactive student through the teaching of Do kata. Thus Jim, one of the most unlikely students of the Akashic paradigm, was able to glimpse the beginning of the techniques that make up The Way. These kata, closely related to the movements and philosophy of aikido, did help Jim focus: nevertheless occasional magickal displays continued to occur around Keating's butterfly mind-attention, particularly tied to mood-swings, as his understanding and communion with his Avatar. As his poetry reflected this, the almost vulgar influence of such unstable mood pieces (moving rapidly through a myriad emotional mindscape) began manifesting in a minor but dogged Dynamic Resonance and general background weirdness. Present situation: Itchy feet again draw Jim between the Dissonant library and his current home, a dingy bed-sit in Dearlcastle. There is a pull in these lands, a compulsion to attend to the countryside of this region. It both mystifies and delights Jim. Foci:
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