Esoteric Lucubrations

Weird Spiritual Term
Thanks everyone for comments about my report of my rebirthday experience in 1981. If people want to check back and continue discussion, I'd enjoy that. I'm grateful for all comments, including the ones to which I didn't reply because I couldn't figure out how to just blush & grin widely online.

I'm trying to write here regularly, and that entry reminds me of a term in my spiritual and practical lexicon: King Felix Culpa, or fortunate f*ckup.

King Felix is the happy or rightful king, a Christ figure in P. K. Dick's Valis, which this icon is in honor of. I've always liked Felix the Cat (the black & white cartoons were on TV when I was very young), and I love to think of G-d or Christ as a clever, happy cartoon cat with an endless bag of tricks to defeat bad things and help us out.

As you know, Bob, the Felix Culpa is the fortunate Fall: the idea that as it brought Jesus as a redeemer, the Fall in Eden was to that extent a good thing.

The King Felix Culpa, or fortunate f*ckup, is when you make a mistake (usually a ditzy error rather than a considered choice) and it turns out much better than what you'd planned. Often in my life, though not definitionally, coincidence is involved.

A few years after my rebirthday, very tired after a Lunacon, I went to the washroom in an airport. As I tried to exit, I pulled open the wrong door: instead of the door to leave, I opened a closet. Just then, someone in a stall called out that the roll of toilet paper was out--did anyone see any? I looked up, and the entire closet was full of new rolls of toilet paper. "Yes," I said, a little stunned; I handed one into the stall, closed the closet door, found the real door, and left.

King Felix Culpas, however, cannot be counted on. I told this story to eldersib, and she said, "I did that once. A bunch of girl scouts laughed at me."

So true. It's much like the Holy Man and the Shithead in Illuminatus!. I have a button made by Nancy Lebovitz that says, "Sometimes the girls scouts laugh at you, but sometimes you find the toilet paper."

Mood: chatty over early coffee