"Black Iron Prison" is the term you'll hear used by the modern Gnosis seeker. It's a reference to the Archonic Construction of the Universe, a theory that multi-dimensional intelligences are preventing us from realizing our full spiritual and cognitive potential by locking our minds in these psychic prisons.

There are a number of analogous mythological scenarios strewn throughout history, so as a cosmological definition, the Archonic Construction of the Universe is as good as any. It benefits from being connected to Philip K. Dick's paranoid visions, which any competent oneironaut appreciates.

Modern culture suffers from a lack of decent mythological canon. We should make our own because, really, we are children of the 3rd millennium. It's time we believed in our own gods.

Which brings me back to the concept of cages. We continue to be trapped by 2nd-millennial constructs. Hell, even the apocalyptic terror of the end of the 1st millennium still pervades our psyches. We're still too busy looking over our shoulders to realize the first apocalypse of the 3rd millennium is rapidly approaching.

That's another story. I'll get to it later.

Cages. No man can ever be imprisoned against his Will. Crowley knew this once, though he forgot it shortly after the other initiates and adepts started fawning over his "transmission from the desert." Yes, you can cage the flesh and you can even lock the mind into a cell, but the Will is unbreakable.

Jung gave it a different name—"individuation"—but didn't allow himself the freedom to imbue it with any lasting power. Freud (the last black magician of the 20th century) had managed to bind Jung tightly enough that the Swiss psychologist never truly realized he had been . . .