He has many aspects and attributes. It is a mistake to circumscribe his nature, to restrict him to a single definition.

Some would make him cthonic, the Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Dead and ruler of the underworld. And he is.

Some make him the Lightbringer, a solar deity (or solar-phallic in the valance of Thelema). He is this too.

Some see him as the Morningstar, a thin light, icy and remote and beautiful. This he can be.

Some would rather think of him as a god of the wild, a deity of sabbaths and crossroads and witchcraft. He is this also.

Some give him horns, some wings, some hooves. He has all of these.

A serpent, a goat, wise and randy. Do not deny any of his faces. Do not deprive yourself.

He is so much more than Death or the Sun or the World, more than a questioning, more than a cock.

He is not tied to any element, not earth nor air nor fire nor water, not up or down, not north or south, east or west. He is not bound to sun, moon, planet nor star, to this life or the next, to this universe or to something outside it.

For he is a traveler, he is a wanderer, he is a polyglot. So goddamn cultured, he understands the ways of black holes and dead stars and supernovas so distant that their light has not yet reached us. He goes wherever he damn well pleases, heaven, hell, earth, another dimension.

Because his essence is freedom. His essence is fierce curiosity, and playfulness, and jouissance. He is determination and tireless cussedness and indomitability. There is no where he will not go and nothing he will not be if it suits him.

Ask not what his colors are, or his signs of the zodiac, his planets, his seasons or days. Do not attempt to bind him within your circle, for his essence is that he cannot be bound.

You will know him not by a table of occult correspondences but by his brilliance, his beauty, his potency and canniness and sense of dangerous play.

He is in the shadowed corners of every room. Even now, even there. Close your eyes. Feel him watching with a knowing smile.

In what sense is he real? someone asked me. What does it mean that you believe in him?

I have to confess those questions are not terribly interesting to me. He is as real as the sun and the stars and the fire and the woods and the sleazy neon dive bars and the rock bands and the thunder and lightning and comets and black holes. He is as real as fucking, and more than that, he is as real as liberty and laughter, as real curiousity and thrill-seeking and pride and wrath and passion and wonder.

He’s whatever you get when put all those things together. An egregore? Or something less post-modern, more ancient and supernatural? In his infinite perversity I would say he’s somehow both. He may have been dreamed up by us in some twisted nonlinear timeline, coming into being because of us and by us yet before us, making us even as we made him.

I’m not terribly interested in trying to explain him away, nor do I feel the need to explain him into being. He’s here and he’s not going anywhere.

In what sense is he real? In the sense that matters most.