Hexagram 13: "THRONGSMEN"

Ruling the 13th Degree (12:01 to 12:59) of any Sign of the Zodiac.

THE 13TH YEAR OF ANY LIFE.. from the 12th to 13th Birthday.

ESSENE THOU COMMENTARY: Thirteen MEANS 'a group of peers, in a rural setting, drawn together by mutual interests and spiritual similarity.' In the language of the Celts of Europe, this is pronounced 'Coven.' This is also the Thirteen Original Christians, the Thirteen Original COlonies of America and the Thirteen Original Rosicrucians of the First Lodge in Germany.

A Coven is (ideally) Thirteen 'Witches' or Magicians, welded-together (in the rural or 'pagan' environment.. for 'pagan' MEANS nothing more than 'of the countryside'..) who pass through the six levels of transformation mentioned in this Hexagram, until they become a 'Gestalt' or Group Life so unified and disciplined that they can literally function as a 'new' type of Life-form. That life-form which is a Coven (or LODGE, in non-Wiccan terms) has super- personal (or ALMOST Super-Ego-like or 'godlike') 'Creative Powers' which can literally RULE a country. Indeed, for the thousands of years before forced into hiding by the conquering Roman 'Christians,' pagan Covens DID rule all of Celtic and Germanic Europe.

This they did (as pagans do again today, since their release from secrecy by modern laws protecting them from persecution) by 'Fellowship out in the open meadows.' pagans gather by preference (sometimes ritually naked, to prove their 'conquering of privacy-needs') in natural forest glades or open meadows.. usually at night, when their Totemic Symbol, THE MOON governs the sky.

But had you thought this was not about YOU? It IS!.. for you, too, have gathered at night out in the countryside for 'pagan' celebrations in which a new form of group-identity was formed, even if only for a night. During those Moon Rites, which are often experienced in our thirteenth year of life, we merge our personal Libidos (see Hexagram 4) into a "Super-Libido" made up of a group of others with similar Libidinal needs and natures.. and (for a while at least) we, too, rule our country through magical forces released by our Collective Union. When we wish to re-form our society, it is to just such a Throng that we return by the light of the Moon, and a Lodge forms of it's own accord.. and revolution occurs 'by magic' in the world around us.