Anthem Anathema: Know Who You Are

I’ve long loved this haunting and beautiful Sherman Brothers song. Perhaps it always was that it would always be a personal anthem for both a past and future self whose whole I’d yet to recognize amidst an ever-constantly expanding coalescence of pasts and futures which I’d come to believe was the present.

This is the root of all information security. Which is truly the root of all civilization, society, culture… whatever you want to call it. It is trust. It’s not the hollow “trust but verify” notion we’ve come to be conditioned to believe. It is the trust one must have in themselves; without which all other trust is impossible. And without trust there truly can be no Love.

In information security, hacking, IT, magick… again whatever You choose to call it, you must never, ever lose sight of who it is you are deep down inside your souls’ chimney. When things get sticky, you’re all you’ve got to rely on in there. And if you don’t trust yourself you’ll never make it out. Certainly not with your sanity.

It sounds so simple, yet it can be the most difficult thing in the world. But I assure you it is possible. And you wouldn’t be reading this right now if you were not capable of doing it. Look inside yourself, you will find the good shepherd you are meant to be. He or she is already there, waiting for you to awaken them.

In other traditions this has been called the chemical wedding. Call it whatever you will, it doesn’t matter. You’ll know it when you get there, that much is certain. It’s certain because you will undeniably understand what it truly means to be alive.

If your work is any kind of intelligence or security there can be no greater goal professionally than achieving this. With it, you are the Pearl of Great Price, the indispensable element.

Without it, you exist only as another utterly replaceable, nondescript point in an ever fluctuating spectrum of the usefulness-to-liability equation. Your vanity and self-importance will always betray you, as they always have. Which is why it’s impossible for most to consider who the chimney sweep might truly be. If they understood, well, perhaps they’d see how important it is to be in “glad company” after all.

Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-ee
A sweep is as lucky
As lucky can be

Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-oo
Good luck will rub off when
I shakes hands with you
Or blow me a kiss
And that’s lucky too

Now as the ladder of life
Has been strung
You may think a sweep’s
On the bottommost rung

Though I spends me time
In the ashes and smoke
In this ‘ole wide world
There’s no happier bloke

Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-ee
A sweep is as lucky
As lucky can be

Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-oo
Good luck will rub off when
I shakes hands with you

I choose me bristles
With pride, yes, I do
A broom for the shaft
And a brush for the flue

Up where the smoke
Is all billered and curled
‘Tween pavement and stars
Is the chimney sweep world

When there’s hardly no day
Nor hardly no night
There’s things half in shadow
And halfway in light
On the rooftops of London
……Coo, what a sight

Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-ee
When you’re with a sweep
You’re in glad company

Nowhere is there
A more happier crew
Than them wot sings
“Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo”