For safe travelling

Due to the averse weather conditions I thought I'll share a spell as an early xmas present to you all.

This is for safe travel to make sure you arrive where you need to be.

You need:
Coins,
a road or crossroad

At the start of your journey, when you leave what you consider as your home, either the apartment, your village or whilst waiting for the train:

Take coins in your hand, and breathe the name of Hermes upon them 3 times using the below formula


H
HE
HER
HERM
HERME
HERMES
(repeat 3 times)

then toss the coins unto the road to pay for your safe journey.

Christianity "How to be anal with a crucifix and at the same time play the devils advocate"

If I am going to write a longer article about this, one that is a bit more researched i think I might as well write it on my own
space, to further plug my own crap that I write on here.
So to start:

Christianity "How to be anal with a crucifix and at the same time play the devils advocate"

1 Jesus didn't ever exist. Jesus did exist.
For further references please see:

Doherty, Earl (1999). The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1985) p. 355

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/april/15.22.html

Eddy, Paul R. and Boyd, Gregory A. The Jesus Legend. Baker Academic, 2007, pp. 24–27.

Christopher M. Tuckett, "Sources and Methods" in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p.
124

So what the fuck?

Well, you see even the very existance of a historcial jesus is highly controversial and debated on two sides of an academic fence.. Depending on whether you take a theological stance, trying to find archaeological evidence and real historci evidence to back up your faith that Jesus was wandering about or an atheist stance different things will be found.

Look at this highly interesting tidbit:

White, L. Michael. From Jesus to Christianity. HarperCollins, 2004, pp. 3–4:
"This is one of the problems with the story. We have no writings from the days of Jesus himself. Jesus never wrote anything, nor do we have any contemporary accounts of his life or death. There are no court records, official diaries, or newspaper accounts
that might provide firsthand information. Nor are there any eyewitnesses whose reports were preserved unvarnished. Even though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions, all the Gospels come from later times. Discerning which material is early and which is late becomes an important task. In fact, the earliest writings that survive are the genuine letters of Paul. They
were written some twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus. Yet Paul was not a follower of Jesus during his lifetime; nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus during his ministry."

or how about this one

Rolf Torstendahl professor at Uppsala University, Sweden writes "…the historian in this case, as in so many others, will say neither "The evidence is that he lived there and then" nor "The
evidence is that he did not live there and then". The logical possibility of the existence of Jesus (at the religiously assumed
place and time) cannot be denied, but the evidence seems to be too weak to give such a statement a minimum probability..... "Theologians as Historians the statement by historian Rolf Torstendahl, p 197,retrieved 9/12/10

So, some scholars are saying one thing, and other equally respected scholars are saying something else?

Stanton, Graham. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. xxiii. writes:

"Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically."

Stanton is clearly LYING! why? Because he is a Christian, or for some other reason is only willing to finds proofs for the existance of Jesus.

The others? They are evil atheist pig-dogs who just want to destroy our vauable beliefs!
Did jesus exist? The answer is maybe. good that we got that out of the equation since it is fucking obvious that depending on your agenda, as with ALL social/Philosophical fields (those not based on hard maths) the agenda will influence the outcome, and even if there is no historical evidence thebible wil lways be pointed at, or some random historicist to either provde or disprove
the existence or non-existens of Jay-man

2 John the baptizer did baptize. if he existed.
Simillar arguments as above. *yawn*

3 Christianity as a mystery cultus, A cult of jesus, a social reform, an esoteric teaching or fucking bullshit?

Oh My, this one is hard. Its so hard it gets my dick hard. Why? Because all evidence we have about christianity comes either from its critics or from people who thought it was neat, and the best ting is that the sorces are just as "reliable" and open for debate as the above.
I'll subdivide this into some bits then shall I?

A) early texts talking about Christianity and its forms
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger all write about christianity and the forms it takes. Are they reliable source? Not really, no.

The fun thing is that Christian, xhristi, hristo, Christeus etc usually refers to followers of Christ (the annointed).
We have jewish "sources as well"

Flavius Josephus (c. 37–c. 100), a Jew and Roman citizen who worked under the patronage of the Flavians, wrote the Antiquities of the Jews in 93 AD. In these works, Jesus is mentioned twice, though scholars debate their authenticity. The one directly concerning Jesus has come to be known as the Testimonium Flavianum. In the first passage, called the Testimonium Flavianum, it is written:
About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly
loved him did not cease to follow him, for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.[92]

Concerns have been raised about the authenticity of the passage, and it is widely held by scholars that at least part of the passage has been altered by a later scribe. The Testimonium's authenticity has attracted much scholarly discussion and controversy of interpolation.

Louis H. Feldman counts 87 articles published during the period of 1937–1980, "the overwhelming majority of which question its authenticity in whole or in part."Louis H. Feldman, "Josephus" Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 3, pp. 990–91

B) Gnosticism, Christianity and proto-Christianity and a weird jewish sect

OOpps what is this? Yupp, Christianity as we know it didn't fully come into existence untill around 90-130 A.D.
Most Scholars, again dubiously, claim that the early church was the apostolic church led by jesus' Disciples. Now, as Jesus may or may not even have existed, that means that the disciplies may or may not have existed or may of may not have created the idea of Jesus.

You know to back them up.

So at first we have some odd jews runnig around doing stuff in the name of the anointed king of Judea. A messianic figure. even a curcsory understanding of Judaism will allow you familiarity with the idea of the messiah.
read:
Cohen, Abraham (1995) [1949] (paperback). Everyman's Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages. Neusner, Jacob (paperback
ed.). New York: Schocken Books

Orthodox Judaism claims these 13 beliefs today for instance

The existence of God
God's unity
God's spirituality and incorporeality
God's eternity
God alone should be the object of worship
Revelation through God's prophets
The preeminence of Moses among the prophets
God's law given on Mount Sinai
The immutability of the Torah as God's Law
God's foreknowledge of human actions
Reward of good and retribution of evil
The coming of the Jewish Messiah
The resurrection of the dead

So, right Christianity as a weird jewish sect? Check.

Some people even claim that there was not much difference between Judaism as we know it and this proto Christianity, they were simply different sects in that era

For reference see
"Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism" by Daniel Boyarin in The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 92, No. 3/4 (Jan. - Apr., 2002), pp. 586-588

Shall we add the fact that this Era was extremely mixed and was a frickin' cultural melting pot? Hellenistic influences and Greek magical papyri etc. all show a lovely melting pot. Judaism got its kabbalitsic theories, who knows what Mithraistic Appollonian crap might have entered and either created this proto Christian jewish sect, or perhaps transmuted it. If Jesus existed and if he thus had disciples. Like The rosicrucians maybe having been founded by Christian Rozenkreutz and maybe not.

Next?

C) Proto-Christianity a Cult of the mystery?

When comparing christianity with coexisting things we notice very strong similarities with a mystery cult, see:
"Klauck, Brian; McNeil (2003), The Religious Context of Early Christianity" for further reference

There is one problem however. Mystery Cults were special. not any idiot could join. some were for women or men only, soldiers only etc.

Therefore some wise-ass people claim, based on the above mentioned sources that are highly subjective sorces proto-christianity was not a standard mystery cult.

Seeing as we know NOTHING for certain about proto-christianity lets take this view to
Early christianity:

Early christianity, not the jewish proto stuff but the real deal that we know a bit more about comes form 40+ A.D.
reference Tyndale Bible Dictionary, pp. 266, 828

We know they rejected certain Jewish practices like circumcision and as the religion became formalised more and more things were
turned into dogma. We know for example that to become a jew you used to have to get the skin on your penis chopped off. Dangerous and hygienic in a desert environment, no?

But to be a christian you got baptized, in nice fresh clean water. we do know that baptism, or immersion in water was not something unique to proto/early christianity, it was something they used, as did other sects.

Studying the earliest forms of christian worship we come to some strange conclusions.
See:

Bruce Metzger. The canon of the New Testament. 1997
for some easy to digest references.

The thing is > in order to parttake of the sacrament, depending how that specific church understood the term, issues with which among other things led to the formation of different denominations, you only had to get baptised and accept Christ.
Nifty, huh? water over the head, accept the trinity and presto, you are able to parttake in the body of GOD and thus make yourself godlike.
Sounds like a mystery to me, but hey fuck do I know.

You are what you eat after all. No need for purity and other tasks that require your mind like the other mystery cults. Still, strangely this stillseems like a magical mystery that is being celebrated.

I have not found a single reference that claims that the eucharist was the equivalent of a secret masons handshake, thus it seems that it was a religious / spiritual act.
I rest my case on this one.

D) True teachings of a profound character, or fucking bullshit?

Due to the fact that the early history is shrouded in academic fog and historical crap it is hard to know anything for certain.

We Know that :
there was a hellenic influence.
Gnostic, platonic, greco-egyptian, magickal, roman, sortoff jewish and sortoff Christian movements coexisted. This is historical fact.

The links can be further studied in the below texts aside from what I already mentioned above

Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch römischer Zeit, hrsg. von W.G. Kümmel und H. Lichtenberger, Gütersloh 1973ff.

Gerhard Delling: Die Begegnung zwischen Hellenismus und Judentum, in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Bd. II 20.1
(1987).

The Greek magical Papyri in Translation (The papyri date mostly from the second century B.C. to the fifth century or so A.D.)

We also know that:

Jesus may or may not have existed;
Messinaic cults in Judaism existed;
Proto gnosticism was already in existence as yet another fucked up sect;
Because Jesus may not have existed the apostles didn't exist either , or were just the people who dreamed up the new sect;

We know that
Early - Christianity, when the dogma started to coagulate, celebrated a mystery in the form of an eucharist.This was open to christians only.

What we do not know and can take stabs at based on available sources, yet again this is as much a mater of opinion as whether Jay-man even existed:

1
Early christianity when it started with congregatons and rituals was overseen by someone with a claim to an apostolic link

2 we can guess that people were just as stpid and gullible as they are today, yet somehow wanted to have a reason to choose to be a christian, instead of any of the other available religions

3 based on no 2 above we can guess that there was some form of teaching used for this end > whether proto christian jewish historical or made up doesn't matter

4 once someone accepted to be a christian they were able to be a part of the christian community and celebrations of the mystery in some form.

5 due to this very hastily written essays poi9nts above we can deduce that bishops/priests knew someting that the members did not know or have something that the members did not have allowing them to act with apostolic power. there fore to be a priest required an initiation of a kind.
add a few hundred years to this and you have the council of Nicea. and the appropriation of christianity as the state religion of the Holy Roman Empire, which leads to forced christianisation, further cross-breeding with beliefs and practices and presto you
have christanity, more or less as it is today.

---------------------

So, is christianity a mystery cult as the eleusian mysteries? of course not.is christianity a cult of the mystery?
yes, in its pre institutionalised form.

However all this is dependent on whether you work from the point of view of jay-man existing or not existing, whihc leads to whether you accept the apostolic chruch as a myth or as dogma, whether you believe that something spiritual actually is imparted during the mass or not.

Taken to its extremenes

Christianity could be a massive age old elaborate hoax by a bunch of people who wanted to manipulate people using religious imagery to accomplish some for of social event,
it could also be the gospel truth and jesus was God incarnate yet coexisting as god beyond and the holy spirit here to change the world.

Likely however, it is an amalgamation of proto christian jewsih sect+hellenic mystery magico-mystery traditions+hero cult+brainwashing+dash of true enlightenment and gnosis by some adherents+dogma and church law+roman regulations+decline of civilisation.

Is Christianity today Exoteric?
you bet.

Is there esoteric christianity as well?
You bet.

Does the exoteric element go back to its beginning?
Depending on who you ask. Most likely proto-jewish christianity was just as "enlighetend" as any of the other jewish sects that may or may not have been mixed with the pervading Hellenistic knowlegde base.

Has there always been an esoteric element?
Depending on who you ask. Most likely when the early aspects of the tradition broke
away from the other jewsish sects it soaked up elements from the other hellenic religions that it is undeniable to see the links with and then hopefully managed to grab some true gnosis as well.

However this is all disproven becauseJjesus loves you all and he gave his life for your sins and to save you from having to sacrifice your foreskins to be the chosen people, so lets just accept this all sheall we?

Unless he didn't exist.

The devil will now stop being a lawyer.

The skeleton Key (to books)

It is great that there is an interest for the western Hermetic, Gnostic, Alchemical and Grimoire traditions.

There is an aspect of this that actually worries me.

Gone are the days when ex-potheads who think you should summon goetic demons as a means for self-help psychotherapy write books on magick and people take them seriously. Gone are the days of chaos magick throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (If they would have done it right we would have a Postmodern, English, hoodoo equivalent of pure technique, not Chaosmagic as it is practiced by the rabble who claim to be chaoites today. Oh how I miss the drug and sex and rock and roll fueled pact in its heyday along with the fucked up adepts of the psykick yyyuuuuth. Coyote242 is sorely missed.)

Today there is a true interest in the original traditions and this is commendable as on the positive side it gives rise to scholarly texts that are very well researched. Some are not purely academic but come from the pens of people who actually practice as well. There are discussions and a revival going on.

This is all, nice and good, however it is just as dangerous as the "all in your head, man" crap that came in the wake of reprinting Crowley and the modern occult revival of the past 50 years. Now, the pendulum has swung over to the other side.

Being too sucked in to the letter of the texts is just as bad as complete postmodernism. The Occidental esoteric tradition does have some very unique powerful spiritual technologies that do not exist in other places. And this technology has been the same since hellenic times. But believing that pure re-creation is a valid approach, or even needed is just hubris.

In my traditions we use the metaphor of keys. The key of silver and the key of gold are needed for decyphering and being able to understand certain underlying concepts and truths of the Occidental tradition. Without the keys, errors occur and the Stone cannot be created.

Writing without having the Key(s) is not a new trend among true seekers, historically it has happened before in the tradition. It is most notable in Alchemy where, Puffers, (people who do not actually understand the alchemical texts as they have no master only the texts themselves and then go on and write their own texts interpreting everything physically) are made fun of and looked down on by real alchemists. They also cause enormous amounts of confusion as alchemists today must not only busy themselves with the riddles in the texts they also need to test the text for actual validity.

This "problem" is very much due to the worldly powers (church and or government) repressing things and the fact that we had a massive gap between literacy, times of non literacy and then a booming of literacy and the printing press. But hey, thats for a later rant.

Today the internet and the global village of communication has re-created the same problems

that appeared between the 15th and 17th century texts.

There are 3 main trends among the revivalists- (I will use Alchemy and Grimoire based magic as examples here)

1 Wankers

Wankers have no idea what they are talking about and their material should be avoided like the plague. Wankers are not harmless scholars who misunderstand something, they are so utterly misguided and misunderstand the tradition in such a way that they can completely ruin someone's process. A wanker might have stumbled upon Jung and from that moment on worked alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation process and disregard the Red Book and Jungs 7 sermons as "odd". A wanker may also read a few alchemical treatises and then come to the conclusion that real mercury is called for in laboratory alchemy when the actual treatise is in actual fact about inner alchemy. Then when he is having hallucinations from lead and mercury poisoning he will be even more convinced that the visitations he is receiving are further proof of his enlightenment.

A wanker may not even be aware that inner alchemy always has external aspects and well and all laboratory alchemy mirrors an inner process too.

However a discerning student with or without one of the keys can quickly identify this category because their teachings do not really work. There will be a percentage of those who claim they do but a true student who is willing to, you know, be honest with themselves will quickly realize what the difference is between success and delusions shared with others.

Examples include :

A) Not using a circle when doing evocation, not because they think "its all in your head, man" but because they truly got it into their heads that it is a blind or "not needed".

B) Living in some roleplaying game, fantasy sci-fi inspired cosmogony yet disregarding the existence of real miraculous effects. For example, believing that having succeeded with spirit communication and second sight-hearing is the same thing as actually evoking an entity into physical appearance. BIG misstake.

C) Completely failing to understand the cosmology they claim they are well versed in. Demons are Demons, NOT daimons for goodness sake, would you want to do business with Dr. Hannibal Lector in the middle of the night in a dark alley? No? There are such things as demons. Not all things made of spirit are nice, missunderstood or bullshit like that. You do not need to be "in the right mindset and then realize they are just helpful and dualist ideas are wrong." They are earthbound for a reason. They do not reside in the pleroma nor do they want to.

Examples of wanker texts or texts written by Wankers:

-Crowleys introduction to the Goetia where he explains that the 72 are aspects of the brain.

-Books that include statements about the "real tree of life"

2 Puffers

Puffers mean well, and they are valuable for the work they do. Puffers might compile hundreds of texts that have been previously untranslated and make them available to the general public and the few real practitioners. There may be some misstakes in translation because Puffers do not actually possess the Golden Key and do not actually know how to create the Stone either, but the misstakes are mostly accidental and they mean no harm. The problem with Puffers is that due to their experiences with aspects of the work, for example goetic uses of Grimoires, or ability to create alchemical elixirs are seen as signs of them being on the right path or having understood what they are doing. This is a problem as this means the Stone can never be revealed.

Puffers are dangerous in that they can misslead, by accident, but they serve a good purpose as they can teach certain techniques that you do not need the Golden key for.

You might learn everything you need for true evocation, but you'll not understand the REAL Purpose behind it. If you did you would be in possession of the Golden Key.

Puffers today are re-creating a tradition failing to understand that there is no need to re-create it as the tradition is alive, it is just hiding. The problem is, as I see it, that puffers are becoming numerous and the few puffers who by accident have managed to create the stone wrongly believe that they have the key, when they do not. There is thus isolation and the ex-puffer becomes a sad puffer who has the white stone, just doesn't know what to do with it or how they actually made it and ends up going in eternal circles trying to retrace their steps.

The final position is of course, taken up by the true masters.

3 Masters

On the first glance, the writings of a true master are almost indistinguishable from a text by a Puffer, however there are some telltale signs. Puffers will always be stuck in a research academic mindset, whereas a Master is beyond such things as hir golden key unlocks all doors in all traditions. Also, true masters are able to relate to other texts, fully without their chosen specialist field and agree. This is because the keys allow for translation of terms and words, not just transmutation. Unfortunately, we only have very few real masters on the scene releasing books and texts; there are more puffers and ex-puffers.

Where am I going with this?

Hopefully the pendulum will swing back and stabilize, between the puffer re-enactment and the acidhead psychobabble, if we are lucky and more real masters get out of hiding or the real traditions spreads beyond 50 people this might happen. Otherwise, I fear that we will keep seeing sand-castles being built and in the end the tradition will die out as the puffers will have taken all the prima materia available and the true alchemists wont have anything but dross to work with.

Inane metaphor of the day

I just have to share something I said whilst tutoring.

The alchemical process you undergo can best be described by an everyday alchemical act.

Boiling pasta.

You could put the pasta in cold water overnight and the next day it would be soft.

(this of course refers to lazy-ass practitioners who barely do the required base minimum workd)

You can also boil the pasta and then turn the heat off a bit or not take the pasta out in time making it just a bit too soft.

("I have spent 30 years in this or that masonic--whatever--system. Oh? no of course I still am not enlightened....." RIGHT)

You need to bring the water to a rapid boil, add salt, in with the pasta, and remove it when it is almost soft and then leave it to finish cooking itself, by its own inner latent heat on the plate.

Al dente.

(Pulveris solaris.)

Dogmatic Exoteric Religions for mystics

Someone I know of claimed to be interested in enlightenment (whatever they meant by that term) and magick.

This person went from being Into "some random thing" then the person Joined the OTO and became extremely, religiously Thelemic (the kind of people who actually worship Horus) then when the 7pointed star neklace had just lost its shine, the person became interested in the Temple of Seth, After this there was a period of random magick, then I lost track, then the person, now in late twenties, went back to Uni, and actually, genuinely went to a Catholic priest and confessed and became a Catholic.... now, suddenly not even that is cutting the mustard and the person is now deciding to become a sensual atheist... right.

Needless to say, I saw this coming a mile off. You always can tell. Some folk are looking for something but they don't really know what it is they are looking for. The religions out there are odd, so they turn to something esoteric, but that requires thinking and work, so they make the esoteric teachings into something exoteric, then they go to the exact opposite of where they started, materialisst often trying Buddism and Spiritual people being all, "lets drink and have lots of sex" then, there is the moment of repentance when they return to their roots, and then, finally after years of flitting back and forth they end up doing nothing.

Thats the fun part because if they are lucky they will then continue with doing nothing, if not and they are truly unlucky they will forever feel the pull, but will never act on it and have simply confined their current incarnation to misery, or at least a very expensive and damaging midlife crisis.

There are many people who seek something, but are not sure what they are looking for, which is fine. I believe that if you knock then you shall find, but unless you come knocking to my door I'm not going to evangelize. Coming to this blog means you are interested in my thoughts so this doesn't count.

Also, there is nothing wrong in Exoteric religions, but then you are not a mystic, you are not a Gnostic, you are not searching for an esoteric understanding, then you are just very devout, or missguided. Or possibly wondering how Magick can be reconciled with your current religous practices.

Below follow a few points from an Esoteric point of view. Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with using magick, whether you do it from an esoteric or exoteric point of view, in that case it doesn't matter, this is only relevant if you choose to work in a mystical spiritual manner as well-

1 Organised Religion is created by people who adher to the teachings of an enlighetened master without realising that these teachings are meant to guide you into realisation and not be taken literally. Parables and mystery is just that. You cannot logically or scientifically explain the mystery of the highest realisation.

2 There is no religion that will suit you if you are questioning your current one. You will either end up head over heels and become a scary convert (for a while), or you will find something that is wrong with that religion aswell. Get in line. No religion is perfect if taken literally. Especially if you're seeking things from an Esoteric point of view and then only looking at the Exoteric revelations.

3 As a searcher of truth you should and can ignore the rules of Organised Religion and stop searching for truth upon the map of a map. You cannot be catholic and not accept that the pope is right with everything. You cannot be a jew without being a monolatrist. At least not according to the Organised religious exoteric view. Yet there are so many initiates who parttake of the Exoteric element as part of their esoteric practice. As a good catholic, you are aware that you should not work with Raziel, right? Only Gabe, Raffe and Mike are accepted Saintly angels....

This is why magicians and mystics are outside of the pall of the societal aspects of religion. Try going up to a completeley fanatic Thelemite and expain to them that the book of the Law only applies to Crowley nobody else, he missunderstood a personal revelation as a Universal revelation due to ego issues, and then you will see what I mean...

4 It is possible to find peace in that God is there and loves you and that that is all that is needed.
If you feel the need to convert to Islam or Orthodox Christianity becasue of the way the Nicean creed is phrased then you need to get over yourself. Do you think the Godhead cares?
You need to ask yourself the question whether its a community you want or spirituality.
Do you need a priest to stand between you and your spirituality? Then you have no business being an esoteric/mystic.

Historically in xtian times many mystics were laymen who were harrassed by the organised church and most nuns and monks understandig of the religion was about as far away from the mainstream understanding of the same as vodou is from hoodoo. The priests were the scholared ones, The Monks were the ones who actually sat in a 2X2 cell and prayed day and night.

5 Try and avoid a childish inexperienced understanding of what enlightenment means, based on text based preconceptions and projections. This is a side note, based on several PhD thesis in a library 200m from me where real genuine academics studying theology actually discuss whether the Mass should be a remembrance ala protestantism or a Eucharist ala transfiguration. after reading several I realised that most peoples issues with the religous aspects of an esoteric path is due to identification with the child archetype. *yawn*

6 In case you did not know:
Mystics of all ages and all exoteric denomination state that "God" is not a person, he/she/it is not Jehova, Allah or Horus or Satan. The Godhead IS godhead. I cannot believe that India has had it right for so many thousands of years yet Westerners are stuck...

7 Most importanlty, Faith cannot be forced. Faith is certainty. If you do not have faith then outer systems will never give it to you.

8 If you do have faith, ask yourself whether you have belief in what other people say, or faith. is the bible really the word of God, or is it a small collection of texts from a formerly existing mystery tradition mixed with Mithraism, the cult of Saint Michael, a badly understood jewish influence and the mysteries of Isis and Osiris that were Oh so chic in Rome? One comes from within the other one means accepting someone elses word for it and just hoping that its true. (shaky use of words here but you get what I mean as you are smart)

9 Do never ever start to work with any mystial, or magickal system because you "have to" to or feel you "need it". This shit only works if you want to do it for joy and fun.

----

Now put on Bjork and sing along:

"All is full of love

you will be taken care of

all is full of love"

On Enochian apocalypses (re-posting an old guestpost)

I wrote a comment a few months ago on another blog that turned into a Guest post.
Since I am extremely busy right now, I thought I repost it on my site since I doubt that my readers read the other blog.

The contets are due to the urban legends surrounding the enochian system. If you spend a few minutes googling you will see what I mean.
I am referring to odd ideas that the enochian system is fake, or that it is alien transmissions or that they make you insane when working with them etc etc.

Anyway, enjoy.

-----------------

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I have worked with the Enochian system for over ten years now and I have never -ever- experienced the meltdown effect as described by the internet-urban legends abounding.The way I see it is that systems, aside from their specific entities also have an overarching hive-mind, or, if you will, egregore. (Now, there are systems, 200 years older than kaosmagick that also work with egregores so don't dis the concept out right). Each system's egregore, and all egregores for that matter, will have a specific feeling and behavior. At first, the experience will be a mix between your expectations of the egregore and its true flavor. Then, over time, if the practitioner is a mentally balanced person, the true flavor will emerge and the expectation linked experience will pass. Compare this with an European left-wing person traveling to USA the first time after only seeing American sit-coms and you are on the right track, or the projections people do on their loved ones the first 6-12 months in a relationship.

Enochian has a specific feeling because the egregore IS a form of esoteric Christian amalgamation. Esoteric Christians of all eras have understood the end times to be imminent from a myth perspective, because in a way they are, in the same way as the Logos is ever coming ever redeeming, and not a single reborn Christ. That myth image is just as ingrained in the enochian egregore as duality is in gnostic myths. The truth is we are all Christ, as the emergence of the Christ-consciousness during some initiatory processes shows, but this doesn't mean we have also done the work needed to truly support this Christ consciousness. We can get megalomaniacal, or exhibit messiah syndrome or believe that because we understood the one truth by reading page 75 in playboy magazine collected, volume 2, 1975 whilst drinking cappuccino, then that is how everyone else will see the light and we end up a bit odd.
By communicating with the angels of the enochian egregore, we assume the role of someone with a Christ consciousness, and as we know, by faking it you make it. No matter how unbalanced someone is, they will get that sense. If you combine this with a slightly unusual preconception of the egregore projected unto the angels, then you have what some people call the meltdown effect.

As to the nature of the angels, like many practitioners, myself included, usually say that the enochian “angels” are very strange “angels”. However, if we look at how the enochian angels of the tablets behave, feel like and what their place is in the spiritual hierarchy of the 17th century angel mages, we’ll notice that they are what the universe is made of. In Martinez Pasqually’s system they would be the sentient angels who have entered the time-flow and created matter. Even from a non-dualist non-gnostic perspective this makes sense. If we are all inside the mind of God, hermetically speaking, then everything in The Mind of God is a thought and “living” entities. The Angels are thus the sentient building blocks of our reality, prison, or whatever you want to view the world as. Their job is to oversee the universe and they like to talk to us, because they love us and they want to teach us the things they can. The egregore is contactable stupidly easily. You don’t need more then the calls and a tablet on paper to start getting a very powerful connection.Explore and try and see what’s there instead of what I or anyone else says and makes you expect. But keep the context and mythological setting of the system in mind when doing so.

Love your western traditions.

Sometimes I just get extremely tired of bozos who have no idea what they are talking about bashing various Western orders, groups and the Western system, without knowing what they are bashing and for the completely wrong reasons.

(ohyes, it is rant time)

Are there big orders that claim they do X and Y and in reality are nothing more then reenactments of the real orders? Of course. But there are people in Haiti claiming to be Mambos and Houngans selling tourist voodoo ceremonies and fake Tantrics who'll have sex with you, take your dollar and then say "screw you yank" in hindi as your "holy mantra."

The difference is that in those foreign cases the locals know who's who and whats what and who's fake and who isn't. We in the occident (and with we I don't mean the royal we I mean westerners) are duping ourselves as 90% of the population is, thanks to you, oh Glorius WW2 and postmodernism, a Tourist in its own culture. This is why we are so intimidated by Islam, by cultural traditions that are more than skin deep...

Imagine if all we here in the West knew about tantra were the same ideas that we picked up in the 20s and the bullshit sacred sex bollocks that are advertized in bookstores and in Western tantric groups.

Imagine if Hollywood style voodoo with satanic orgies and snake rape was all you ever would find out about Voudu.

Imagine, if you actually genuinely believed that Gardner was an initiate into something even remotely witchy and that Wicca is the true religion from before Christianity.

Imagine if all the rest of the world knew about Christianity was that we killed off every alternative version of our religion and that we believed in a childgod who got crucified for our sins, who we eat on sundays....

Imagine, if you were stupid enough to believe that 1000 year old eggs are actually a thousand years old, and not just a name for Chinese styled pickled eggs.

Odd huh?

Well, Sherlock, this is what is happening in the west with our own orders and our own traditions.

We don't have to travel outside the reach of the western traditions to get a fucked up view of them. No, its enough if we read stuff written by people claiming they know what they are on about.

You see, apparently, orders are simply in existence because people like reenactment. All magicians are fluff/goth/pagans with no social skills.

How could this be? Is this true?

After all, the Golden Dawn is useless. isn't it? Of course, all orders are useless! there is absolutely no reason for any of the orders or groups that are open about their existence or that exist in silence, to exist. No, its just stupid empty tradition.

-I sincerely hope that my acidic sarcasm is noticeable here.

It seems that the most loud and visible of our so called celebrity magicians are the ones who have the least clue about what is going on here in the west.

These are the fake mambos and houngans, and people whove read books by those initiated by fake mambos and houngans, metaphorically.

it is this legacy from the 20s that we should aim to remove, NOT to throw the bay out with the bathwater.

Guys n gals, for every visible order that you know of or that you think you know something about,there are another 10 groups that you haven't even seen.

In Shaktic Hinduism, ie. tantric hinduism, it is a well known fact that a lot of the formerly occult has become Exoteric. This happens with the best of systems and lineages. At some point some wanker will fail, and get stuck with the map of the map as reality and spread the empty dogma. Welcome to the world of some of the most loud groups in the west that are the tip of the iceberg and are completely the mirror image of what happened to tantra when it came to west.

Instead of our sacred rituals being exported outside of the Occident and there turned into something meek and false, we have managed to do that to ourselves. This is not jujst due to the "normal" exoterization of esoteric teachings. This was due to exploitation, government repression and postmodernisms rejection of science as a saviour and its own kul de sac in philosophical history.

It is as if the american tantra of fucking yourself into enlightenment would have become the biggest tantric order in Mumbai....

Instead of attacking what exists, and thereby showing absolutely no understanding for what is actually present and only focusing on the appearance we should have a more humble attitude.

Humbleness will take us further then aggression. we have spent so much time in the West breaking things down, academically, intellectually.

The church is shit so Im going to destroy it. The golden dawn is useless (based on dropout members from the groups that created their order based on published material written and compiled by someone who never even understood the system or sat as hierophant) so therefore all order are useless. Masonry is just old people shaking hands without any spiritual use. oh, I just base this on wikipedia and Mr Brown.

Come on, People. Is it really so hard to believe in ourselves, to believe that we actually have something truly beautifull and mysterious here in the western mystery traditions?

Is it so hard to be humble and search deeper and understand that maybe everything isn't published or that Ravenbloodvampire's blog about his golden dawn experience is not really....representative?

Jung managed to find, on his own accord the spark of the true tradition just by genuinely studying the texts. People in Europe exist who truly are in possession of the philosophers stone.

It is not harder then to ask and be honest. If you just spend enough time truly understanding what is going on then you will penetrate the veil and the right master will show you the way. But if you're looking in the wrong place you will not find truth.

Tantrics don't go to America for a sacred sex weekend workshop to get empowerment. Alchemists don't as a 9th gade chemistry teacher to help them decipher the tomes.

It is time for these spokespersons who speak as if they knew something to realize that they are spewing the same rubbish about the western mystical traditions as a 10 year old boy who, having managed to jerk himself off last sunday night is telling his mates on monday morning how he had sex with a hot chick he met and what sex really is.

Streamlining and modernization are good. I don't want to talk Latin to my bishop and I don't want to listen to 17th century language in an initiation, but could it be that certain things should stay as they are for a reason?

I guess.

I also have a creepy nagging suspicion that where people who start mickey mouse systems, or believe that they have finally cracked a code that has been uncracked for hundreds of years misstake the process with the actual end result.

If I spend 10 years trying to evoke demons and angels into visible appearance and therefore nowadays do not need to build a circle and all that, I just call and they appear, does that mean that when I teach evocation I should do without the ortodox systems? Hell no.

In the same way as an olympic weighlifter easily lifts 50 Kilo's. a 12 year old kid who weighs 42 Kg probably shouldn't start with that weight.

Spare was very highly initiated before he did his own thing. There is a difference between magickal intuition, ecstasy and understanding together with inspiration and then turning to kaos or doing the same from scratch.

End rant.

The leap of faith - ramblings

I have students coming to me asking for ultimate truths.

As an academic I cannot give them one. Philosophically there is no ultimate truth, and I would probably loose all standing and my job if I did claim there was one.

How about when it comes to something like Gnosticism. Is there an ultimate gnostic myth?


100 years ago, I could have easily pulled out a copy of a codex that nobody had seen outside of the circle of initiates. I could have let my psychic friend read the text. The text would have been a revelation and We could both agree to work with it.


Today that is not possible, as almost all the different Gnostic myths are out there.

Tha various tantras are translated and sutras as well. Sometimes you will have the hidden wisdom of the Qbl be at odds with the hidden wisdom of a theosophic revelation from Boehme that is at odds with the knowledge transmitted within secret groups.



This can be frustrating and leads people to jump systems and to try and find one ultimate system or truth that somehow is beyond or better then the one they have.
Worse, someone with no clue might try and actually create a synthesized worldview trying to fit Qbl, gnosticism and the worldview offered in the grimoires into one whole.
(I am not saying that a synthesized worldview is wrong, per se, I just question the synthesis being done by someone who doesn't truly grasp the worldviews themselves)

It also becomes a bit strange when QBL and Gnosticism are laid ontop one another, considering they have completely different goals and their explanations as to the why and how are completely at odds with eachother.

It gets very tiring in this (post?)modern world when you are trying to lead someone to realisation and you're almost there when the person suddenly says

"dude, you're teaching me how to rise above the archons... but I read in a different gnostic myth then the one we use that there are 7 archons, not 365 as the text we use. However some of the names are assigned to different beings. which text is right?"

*sigh*

What this actually boils down to is the breaking of the hermetic vessel. There is a reason silence is important, there is a reason mystery schools were progressive and did not give you their last initiation first. There is a reason you cannot be an Aghori and a devout Sufi at the same time. and to hell with what chaosmagick says.

It is not possible to change the references when you are working towards something, especially not with mystical, religious traditions. the number 5 cannot be both the number of Satan and jeheshua, Unless the tradition that says so also claims that these two are the same...
philosophical and logical thinking, have, unfortunately, no place in this scheme. You canot and will not be able to solve this riddle by thinking. It doesn't work. thinkers are psychics, not Gnostics. too much mental wanking only leads you astray on the astral in the well-trodden well designed labyrithns of the Archons.

One thing I have noticed is the lack of faith and the need people have for proof. But, mystical work is completely the wrong tradition in that case! There are tons of magickal and ritualmagickal systems that work by A leads to B leads to C, but this is not quite the same in mystical traditions.

You cannot perform the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola if you do not accept the catholic faith. So how do you expect to be able to pray to Sophia if you consider her to be a formula and not an Eon?

To work with mystical traditions the leap of faith is the single most important tool anyone can have. Without which, there can be no progress.

Does this mean that there is an ultimate Gnostic myth?

Yes. There is. Listen carefully. The only one true gnostic myth is the one you can accept and work wit and that INSPIRES you to perform the leap of faith.

All gnostic myths are true especially the ones that are at odds with eachother, but, theyre not true at the same time. entities may have different names, or a larger concept might be broken down into many smaller ones. Some explanations of the pleroma are simple some are more complex. But that does not matter as long as you work within that tradition.

If your guru, bishop, whatever tells you to do x you do it. S/he is there and hase gnosis you are not. They are Shiva incarnated you are not. You are a Hyllic becomin a Psychic searching for Gnosis. If you are told to eat raw flesh as a vegetarian then that probably has a good initiatory reason that would be completely lost and useless to someone who already is a meat eater.

You can only break a taboo if you have the taboo.

Modern gnosticism, has in almost all cases been changed to relfect a gnosis using the Christian myth. But Gnosticism is not Christian per se, it is Gnostic and Gnosticism existed before the inkarnation birth of the one we call Christ.

But, modern Gnosticism, which is the only gnosticism that can be used by a westerner is Christian.

If you already have faith then there is no problem, then you know for a fact that most religious people are so called Hyllics, they need a rulebased religion and are lost to blind faith based on the interpretations of true gnosis with several intermediaries.

As a psychic you feel that there is more to the world, the universe and everything then what they have explained. you question your faiths dietary requirements. or the fact that your society is so secularised, yet yuo don't feel that any Church quite gets what you get because you have a certainty of God, but the outer (Hyllic) explanations don't quite do it for you.

Beware that you don't misstake the forest for the trees, or the tree for the forest, as, with proper guidance from a Gnostic even completely catholic Christianity can be used as a means of scaling the archons and return to the Pleroma.

What myth is used is only and solely dependent on YOU. what plugs fit. But you have to have the leap of faith, you have to choose a myth knowing that it is a choice, knowing that it is about as important as whether your jaguar is red or orange, but once you chose, see it through.

Car metaphor coming up:

Gnosticism is like wanting to drive to the North Pole.

If you Want to get there you will work towards it. You need to Know there is a north pole and you need to believe that it is possible to get there.

A hyllic will not be certain and care about the north pole as a 10 year olf cares about odd quarks.

Your choice of vehicle only matters, (the vehicle being your Bishop/Guru) but the color of it doesn't matter. Every time you swap one 4 wheel drive for another, you are just swapping cars but not getting there. every time you change GPS (myth) things will look different.

Son, purleahse get into the bloody car and just drive.

Folk magick and Saints - Musings

After offering some advice on working with a saint to a friend I started musing. As I have been busy lately, I thought I post this little tidbit.

Orthodox Christianity has a very interesting definition of what a Saint is.

The 3 main things needed for canonisation are

1 Person had to be a pious Christian with knowledge of the mystery of God (gnosis anyone?)

2 Person needs to have perfomed miracles through God / died a martyr and in death or after death a sign should be exhibited

3 After death, there needs to be proof that the person is still around (in heaven) and continues to interceede on the behalf of the faithfull. This includes continuing to heal or causing signs to appear around the relics.

The more theology oriented of you might be aware that there have been revisions in the catholic church about which saints are encouraged to be petitoned, and which ones aren't.

To make a long story short, this is due to the fact that some of the saints popularly venerated were not saints at all. These were sometimes local deities or spirit beings that received a saintly covering by the locals who venerated them, and sometimes they were something else entirely.

For example, St Expedite was a statue of a saint that arrived at a nunnery. On the box it said Expedite, and since usually, statues of saints had the name of the saint written n the box, the nuns believed it to be the name of the saint.

Is Expedite a spiritual entity that took up residence in the statue and was worked with? Probably something along those lines, yes.

In reality a saint can be a

1 canonised ex-human as per the rules of sainthood,

2 an entity that was converted to a saintlyness by the locals who venerated it

3 an entity that took up residence in a consecrated image/statue.

4 a semi-mythical entity that was part of the older religion and still canonised such as the three saints Mikel, Gbriel, Rpal, and, or, entities that were created and have no historical link. The less pious of us might here think of the Madonna or Joseph...

However, all the requirements set out above should still be in effect. The "Saints" are ok with working in some form of christian context, they handle church trappings well, they have to continue to perform miracles/intercede.

No wonder that saints were so popular that the churchfathers were worried that Christianity would, as they said, degenerate into idolatry and saint worship, instead of veneration.

Today we have saints added in the orthodox churches who comply with the rules set out above. we have semi-divine ex-humans, artifically created myth personae, entities from older religions, canonised, entities that have entered folk veneration and accidental, newly created entities.

I don't want to be rude to anyone now, but doesn't this remind you of religion all over the world?

Some Lwa are dead ex-humans. Some have become lwa of the dead. You have egyptian godforms used by ritual magicians, sigils in grimoires written by people who never did a second of ritual magick, yet the sigils have living entities in them.

The reason people use saints is because they WORK. They do what is on the tin. St. Cajetano helps people in unemployment as that is what he did in life and still does, that is why he is a saint. St. Nikolas helps sailors and prostitutes and children.

Working with a saint is really as close to western spirit magick as you can get. It involves aspects of necromancy, angelology, and astral work. However you do not even need any skills whatsoever in order to work with the saints. They have fairly clear likes dislikes, have been worked with for centuries and are reliable to just do what they usually did, for a price.

In hermeticism there is a technique for an immortal body that you can transfer your mind indo once the body is dead. The same concept exists in certain strains of Buddism tantra and even in jewish kabbalah. If you're a man, over 35 and want to learn kabbalah, go to a tomb in a jewish cemetary belonging to a kabbalist and meditate on the tombstone and then note your dreams.

if some saints do not work anymore, does that mean they have passed on or are they just not interested in helping in that specific instance? (as, based on their job description as saints they do need to work)

I think that a saint should do his or her job, and if not suffer the consequences of no poundcakes, no money given to charity and no prayers of the poor! :)

So any saint reading this, thanks for your hard work, please keep it up.

Time

We expect everything to happen immediately, or not happen at all. When someone hasn't developed those sixpack abs in 2 weeks, they stop exercising. You only have black belt? I thought you've been doing this stuff since you were six!

:)

We are used to everything being at the other end of our screens. Today, it is cheaper to fly from Germany to Austria then to take the train. Why? Because its only 45 minutes. Sure the actual flight is 20, then the rest is taxi and circulating due to airflight traffic controll, then we don't even count the check in etc. Still people choose the low-cost flights.

Culture has led us to believe that everything that is worth having is worth having immediately, or to forever aspire too, but never attain.

This is extremely unconstructive, especially for those seeking the solution of the great secret or bettering themselves through the use of magick.

No single ritual will turn you around from an abusive self-centered short tempered asshole into a saint.

Working with a system that has a spiritual purpose will always entail psychological changes as well. Now, these changes will not be as effective as real psychotherapy, because it is not the purpose of any system.

Now, lets assume you work with Venus in its transcendent form. You contemplate the meaning of 'Love', you are in contact with venereal entities like the Archangel Hanael and Hathoor. You call upon the forces of venus mediated by gods, or try and access it through natural magick. I wonder how much you can surround yourself with fresh flowers and imagery suggetsive of love in its carnal and transcendental imagery before you actually succeed. What next?

Will you still be able to hate you neighbour? Will you have a problem with self-sacrifice?

By contemplating what is outside and how the universe works we are to understand and comprehend our own nature. Most people are just incapable of seeing their own errors.

This is why a process takes time. It is meant to take time, but you are always meant to work towards it.

My favourite example is the Abramelin operation. I've heard the most idiotic comments about this Grimoire and its effects.

Most commonly people assume that the purpose of the operation is to get in contact with your Holy guardian angel, then to evoke the demons of hell to bind them to you.

Well....

This is why some people believe that this can be achieved in 2 months. "Hey, I reached my knowledge and conversation in 2 weeks!" and Some people believe that It is impossible, it should come at the end of a lifetime of work.

Both these camps are wrong, mainly because they missunderstand the spirit of the text and have very little to go on except for the written text.

What the Abramelin Operation actually is meant to do that I am allowed to say:

1 To get you permanently changed so you may be a worthy vessel for the contact with an angelic entity

2 To allow the solar consciousness (using the correct terminology here) to manifest as a result of the working and the advice from your Angel

3 To allow contact the most dark "demonic entities" and have them also be apart of your world.

Now, why can't this be done after 2 weeks and Why is this operation (and simillar ones such as the Arcana Arcanorum and the work of the Elus Cohen) at the end of systems instead of the beginning?

A You need to have the correct worldview to actually have whatever symbolism the "abramelin operation" or its other high degree relatives synthesised and made into your Paradigm, in the correct, non Kaos Magick use of the term.

B You need to be a skilled magician (priest, memfis mizraim initiate) enough to be able to pull off the operation and not just delude yourself

C The operation needs you to have a fully evolved Lunar Consciousness present. This takes 5-10 years of work to develop. (Being a deacon in catholic church and attending every mass and living as a Christian fully counts, as do the outer orders)

D You need the time to prepare yourself for this change, the you NEED to fullfill the need for absolute ISOLATION. You CANNOT perform the Abramelin in your house with your significant other. you hae to get away ALONE to be fully and utterlt ALONE and not part of the everyday world. This means you Have to have about a months of vacation away, alone planned in. You cannot CHANGE if you are with the person who know you the most and is constantly expecting you to confirm to their expectations. Sorry.

This also means that you need to have the quality of life where this is doable. If you sincerely need the operations and you have Lunar consciousness then God/the Universe and You will together be able to pull this off.

E There is more to the Knowledge and Conversation then being able to speak to a Solar angelic entity. If you give me 3 days I can give you a contact with your angel and you'll be able to speak to it and it will reply. This is not the K and C of the HGA. This is a contact with the HGA, which I urge EVERYONE to seek as nothing will be able to guide you better and inspire you more then your solar angel. But this is not that of which the Abramelin and other transformative systems speak of.

Let that which takes time take its time. But do not be lazy. Nothing is stopping you from starting to develop a relationship with your Saints, God(s) your angel. You do not need any operation to talk to your angel. You do not need an abramelin operation in 20 years to talk to it NOW. To ask for advice in dreams and just speaking to it.

But Give Caesar what is Ceasars and God what is Gods.

You can be a good fighter but you will not have a black belt, its not quite the same. It shouldn't stop you from competing though.

The Abramelin, the Arcana Arcanorum etc take time. They are meant to. They are also meant to be at the end of a period of the development of the lunar self.

So, think of the difference between John Doe reading the Abramelin 1995 or a Devout orthodox jewish man receiving it after 15 years of being a man and able to lead a prayer and you will bet my point.

Labyrinth like orders and walking in circles

Kenaz Filan has written a lot about "validating initiations". This made my mind spin into validating western initiations. When a white guy runs off to Tibet, India or the Caribean there are worries. Am I being duped? Is this really a valid initiation?

Most people don't think twice when that same tradition is available in their home country. I'm sure this Yoga school will teach me traditional Yoga, I have no reason to doubt that my local Dojo actually teaches Judo.

Of course, if we are a bit critical, we can find out that the local gym isn't actually teaching Yoga, it is basically a Yoga like exercise, but luckily, the local Dojo is approved by the European BUDO Federation, (responsible for the Olympics et all) so therefore if the instructor has a black belt and is instructing I can be fairly certain he know what he is saying.

But, what is the case with more esoteric things? If I am interested in Gnosticism and Google Search : Gnostic Church, or Mass, I will most likely end up on some random Thelemic gnostic Mass site, and be unaware of the fact that there are many more Gnostic churches. Some of these are reconstructionists, others are linked to BishoP Doinell, whilst others are more arcane in nature, as the gnostic lineages that have valid, recognized Russian or Syriac orthodox or even Roman catholic Apostolic successions!

How about the Masons? Sure, most blue lodges create Craft Masons, but how about the fact that there are regular and un-regular groups?

If you become a Master Mason in London you can visit any Memfis Mizraim Lodge, up to their third degree, but if you were initiated in a Memphis Mizraim lodge, then you will not be welcome in a "normal" regular blue lodge.

WTF?

How can we validate a Western Initiation, into what is truly one of the roughly 3 true western Traditions? (through whatever outer order or system they might be known)

In order to validate the initiation we have to be aware what is going on.

I will not reiterate the fact that Western systems fall into different categories and have different goals, I've ranted on that in an older post.

Below are some thoughts on validating the system-order-lineage in a western tradition that claims to teach the Royal Art, whether it be through Alchemy, Sacraments, initiations and Ritual magickal work, or Mystical contemplation.

----

First, I need to point out that there are groups that have no idea what they are doing out there. There are many, many megalomaniacal teachers whose teachings lead nowhere. Often, they are initiates of a system, or some obscure group and think they have the final solution. Then they run off and start their own group. Sometimes they are lone practitioners who have become lost in the astral realms and found something. (Remember the pagan priests of Herculeswotan-omnicron who met their patron god on their first ever drum trip I used as an example a few posts back? Now imagine that 20 year old march off from the Pagan festival to start their own religion based on 5 sourcebooks and their vision in the forest.)

Schools, lineages, sometimes orders, are created as a result of the missguided teachings of these individuals. This is not something unique for our time, but it is more prevalent, due to the accessibility of material previously kept hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated and the cultural soup that the western world has become.

Most of the western hidden tradition has left textual residue. The Hermetic Corpus, Grimoires, Alchemical treatises, Gnostic Gospels. It is very, very seldom that a text can be decyphered without the correct knowledge, given in the form of an empowerment, or at least some form of Oral teaching. Often, the text itself and the myths that are based around it are tools to try and convey that which cannot be communicated. Mr. Black, a very funny Jewish political satirist/stand-up comedian made an excellent point about the fact that "the Old testament, the Torah has been studied for a long time by his people, and they all understand that it is meant to be read as a parable whereas Christians today are still desperate to understand what it literally means."

I think Black makes an excellent point, as it proves just how easy it is to missunderstand the written word from the point of view of the reader.

Where am I going with this post?

It is mostly a pointer to the fact that sometimes the blind leads the blind.

I am a practical person, so why not look at a practical example.

Imagine someone in the States got hold of an illustrated and translated manual of Aikido, without ever having done any Japanese martial art before. So this person then spends the next few years studying it, practicing, reading up on shintoism, zen, japanese history.

Should this person then start a dojo? Would the teachings be as good and should anyone expect to be able to use the techniques in a real situation?

What would happen if someone who actually met O-sensei and trained under him went to this dojo and saw what they were doing? Trying to find physical nerve points to squeeze and dancing around? He would probably end up breaking some arms or legs, by accident as Japanese aikido looks soft but is fucking hard. Also, he would barely recognize the techniques used as he would be more interested in moving about Chi then grabbing you in the correct place instead of the other way around.

This fictional visitor would be even more surprised about the lack of philosophical teachings in the Dojo. Most western martial arts clubs are already a very far cry from how they are linked with their native thoughtflows. You know many western practitioenrs of Muay Thai do you know who are Buddhist?

This is surely not the way to learn Aikido, or any martial art for that matter.

Exactly the same can be said about spiritual and magickal things.

When the blind leads the blind they might both end up in the supermarket. They will surely be able to teach other blind people to get to the supermarket. But the only way they will ever learn that there is another supermarket much closer to them is either by a seeing person telling them, or by a massive fluke when one of them happens to take a wrong turn and ends up in the nearer cheaper supermarket. Will he be able to explain to the other blind people how to get there? Probably not.

A real life example. Uncle Al. Starts his own order, the A .'. A .'. creating a ton of teachings and rituals, all designed to help people "attain" whatever he believed himself to have attained. Nobody, not even during his own lifetime managed to truly go through the system. It was flawed, non-existent. His understanding of meditative practices in a syncretic dressing of his understanding of Western traditions. (cough mediated by the GD lens cough). Does it work? Hell no.

Why not?

Because that is not how he got there. he worked through the outer order. He went to India. he worked with the sex magick of the O.T.O.. If you take the time to truly study his life and his writings and when he wrote what what you will notice the most profound stuff coming out of him towards the end of his life when he basically only engages in the 9th degree work of the O.T.O..

Do we get super thin by eating the magick pills and doing 10 minutes of exercise a day on our Abs master from a commercial TV channel, or is the only way we end up looking as hot and buff as the people demonstrating it by cutting out the crap and actually exercising properly and eating healthily?

I do wonder.

This is directly linked with orders built like labyrinths, people who feel like they are walking around in circles, and those who see no end to what they are doing.

How do we walk around in circles?

The tree of life and ten sefiroth, four worlds, 22 paths. The tree of life is also situated in the three veils of negative existence. Every single sephiroth has another tree of life within it. Traditionally we say that there are 400 all in all, 10 sephiroth times ten sephiroth times the four worlds. However, with knowledge of fractals we should know that there is an infinite amount of worlds out there.

How about a high fantasy sci-fi example?

The below is a very silly example with little to no real link to how things are done, yet the Spirit of the example is completely correct.

Let us pretend that Adam was given the knowledge of traveling the tree of life by God himself. God would then give him 11 secret words. Every word would open a portal from one sephiroth to the next. The only way to get from actual sephiroth to actual sephiroth is to utter these words, visualise them in hebrew characters, then one would pass. The 11th word would allow one to exit the tree back into the three veils of negative existence.

Now, these 11 words, are passed down from Adam to Seth, down the line of the patriarchs unto the Rabbi. God actively tells the Rabbi when the student is ready to receive the new pass-word based on the student living a life that is pleasing to the Lord. When the Student has un-fallen and regenerated and is in the state Adam was in, having travelled beyond Kether, he is allowed to call himself a Rabbi and he can then take on students.

What happens to a student who does not receive more then the first password? That student would be travelling upon the Tree in Malkuth. Deeper and deeper in the fractal world of malkuth. He would travel into Kether of Malkuth, then Malkuth-of-Kether-of-Malkuth. Then Kether of kether of malkuth. This process would be unending, by its very nature.

Now, if the students Rabbi dies, but the students believes himself to have reached Kether, what then? he will take on students on his own, and give them the first password.

This is the Lineage of a labyrintine manner created where a Blind Master leads the Blind Students in a never ending fractal quest. Every time the Master enters deeper into a fractal realm, believing himself to come closer to the source, when he is in fact only exploring existence, he creates another step in the ladder that is his system.

Now, God, in his Wisdom and Mercy might feel sorry for the poor deluded "Master" and give him the gift of Enlightenment one night. But by that point the Master has created a system of 96 degrees. Are these all useless? His students would surely ask him. Instead, what the master ends up doing, in order not to loose his life's work, is to add another secret, inner order, or a secret degree that is beyond all degrees, where the real knowledge is communicated.

----

Do Western lineages hold the key? or is it impossible to validate western systems?

With tongue in cheek I can point out two things.

One, there are people who are holders of the true tradition and if you don't find them, they'll find you and that "If you know what you are looking for then it is really simple to validate them." But, until you know what you are looking for, here are some tips:

1 avoid never ending systems. Any system where you know for a fact that either you will never be able to reach the highest grades as nobody does, or where you know you need to be one of the lucky 33 out of roughly a million members to reach the highest grade.

2 be literal.

If promised the knowledge to physically transmute metals, then don't settle for metaphorical bollocks.

3 Avoid prophets and their systems. Anyone reaching a state on their own, without AMAZING pedagogical skills will be completely useless in guiding you to where they are themselves, instead they will guide you to read what they read, eat what they ate, listen to what they listened to in a quest to re-create the experience they themselves had. However, the Buddha did succeed, if we are to believe the texts. Remember that there is a reason Christian Rozenkreutzes disciples were to follow the religion of the land where they were living. You need to be well versed in the mindflow and symbollic patterns of the one you are to teach.

4 Abuse prophets. Just because someone might be lost in the world of fractals from our above example, doesn't mean they don't have "killer skillz" in navigating that specific stream. They might never have reached the negative veils of existence, and won't either except through the grace of god, in our above example, however they will probably have an extensive knowledge of the experiences one gets from travelling 23 layers deep into the sub-sephiroth of malkuth.

Meditate on the fact that every single Bishop gnostic or otherwise did whatever the fuck they wanted in their church. We have gnostic myths from the same time and only 100 Km from eachother that are fully contradictory, yet the Bishops are in full agreement as to the nature of the Truth they wish to teach. Now how is that possible?

5 Be aware you might have to search for a long time. Just like you shouldn't just jump on a plane and get a Kanzo from a random black dude at the airport in Haiti, you can't expect to find the source immediately.

6 Avoid any and all groups with no links to the traditions they claim to represent.

The people with Valid links to the Western Tradition are still out there, usually in some random Masonic lodge, or as priestesses of some gnostic congregation or as people who spent 20 years in an Ashram in India and now live in a Western Ashram, it is these people you need.

Picking up a Book of Shadows does not make you Wiccan. It is an initiatory religion.

A G.D. group created by people using the black brick as their sole reference is not a G.D. group.

Most of the Western system was still alive and kicking 1500-1700. You would do well to plug into those currents instead of their 1900 and later imitations.

(The caveat being that some of the imitations later got plugged back into the current, as the 1800 century gnostic churches that received valid apostolic succession from Orthodox sources.)

Postmodern Parables and Fables

There was once an alchemist living with his two sons,

Edward and Eric.

The alchemist was old in days and content in his ways. He had attained to human perfection, in mind body and soul. He had worked centuries, traveling the Globe, (oh, yes, the world is indeed a globe) and and learned all human learning. His elixir of life had extended his life so that he had read all that had ever been written, seen all that there is to see and done all that one could do. He had counted every star and every grain of sand. Once his spent millennia contemplating a particular line in a poem written during a civilization long past in a tongue nobody could physically pronounce anymore.

One day, Ea, as he was named, or as he called himself, thought of giving that most precious gift he could to his two sons, Truth. Now, the truth was hard-won and not easy to come by. Ea had long since understood that if he had only found the Truth earlier in his travels then he would have found true happiness sooner as well.

Now, Edward and Eric were not too bright, the lacked the love of knowledge Ea had. They were boys. Ea tried in vain, several times to engage them in discussion to guide their minds out of the darkness and into the light, in vain. He travelled with them and showed them the stars in their motion, yet this too was futile. In the end Ea decided on a drastic measure.

"Erik, Edward!" he called, "Come here I want to share the most valuable thing I have with you."

Edward and Eric, covered in dust and sweat ran to their father.

"Now, boys, can you tell me which metal that is the most precious in this day and age and place?"

Ea asked.

"Gold!" The boys replied.

"And why is that?" Ea asked, smiling at his sons.

"Because ... it is the only metal whose shining never fades away" Eric answered, bashfull.

"Gold is never destroyed by nature or man, simply transmited and changed, it in itself it remains unchanged."

"Would you agree then, that Gold is a good symbol for all that is good? For God the Father, and for perfection?"

"It most be so." Eric said

"Agreed!" Edward replied.

Ea knew he had his sons attention now.

Together, they built a house where Ea was going to show the boys, not just how to make Gold, which they had all agreed upon as a symbol for The highest, he was also going to show them theTruth.

This was the first time Ea was going to perform a Miracle involving transmuting lead into gold, it was also the first time he had tied up someone's entire being with base material, (lead) so that whatever happened to the material would also happen to his sons.

Together they kindled the flame, found the ore and ground it down, subjected it to the different stages of alchemy and watched it transform. As the lead was going through transformations so too the boys did. Hours they spent, the three of them together, watching the alembic, and the newfound perspective the boys had upon the world. Gradually, the Truth was unveiling itself for them.

Towards the end of the process, during a very critical stage, they ran out of firewood. The boys quickly ran into the nearby village to buy some. Erik went to the Down Street and Edward went to Upper Street. In Upper street, next to the supply store, Edward saw a charlatan, subjecting silver to heat without it tarnishing, dipping it into acid, without it dissolving. The charlatan, after a severe beating told Edward his secret. It was not silver, it was Platinum. A metal recently found that was even more unchangeable then Gold according to a mystical tome called the Periodic Table of the Elements.

When they boys returned, the process was almost done. The final stage required enormous amounts of heat. At the end, they each had a piece of Gold. Eric had himself been transformed and his father and him saw eachother with new eyes.

"Now," Ea thought, "Now they will see it."

Then, Edward looked up, with a half smile, "father, shall we start all over again and turn this worthless gold into Platinum, then?"

Silence then, silence, just the sound of 4 tear drops, almost simultaneously falling.

Oh, Ea and Eric tried to reach Edward, but after every operation, there was a new Metal, a new alloy Erik cavoted.

Spirits

Spirits are separate entities. and Magick is not psychology, though it inevitably has some psychological effects.

If anyone ever tries to convince you that the point of magick is to project psychological aspects of yourself into a triangle, then you need to ask yourself why the hell you would need to spend 10+ years perfecting and honing your skills in talking to something that is, essentially a sub-personality, atavistic as it might be.

A good psychologist/therapist/psychiatrist will fix you in roughly 2 years.
Not American, "lets make this person dependable" shrinks but people who are actually Doctors for the soul. Cognitive behaviour therapy is the most effective for the big issues like addiction, behaviours life altering deppression, anxiety and stuff, Assagili for psychosynthesis >>>f actually finding your inner demons and personality issues. etc.

Does going to a therapist allows you to cause visible/fysical manifestations (self induced hallucinations, what have you) to occur with your inner selves? No.

Does working with Demons and binding them make you integrate and overcome the repressed memory from your childhood of having a chicken pox spot on your genitals which memory then developed into insecurity issues in your adult life? No.

Will experiencing altered states of mind, visions sent by angels or the fear you feel the first time you succees in an actual visibe manifestation cause psychological changes? Yes, but so would having sex in public.

Separate that which has been entangled and choose the right path for magickal skill or self-help, respectively.

Magician, heal thyself, but with the right tools.

Scryings - The difficulties we might face

Scrying is one of the simplest things to do and one of the most useful when working in a hermetic paradigm, yet many have issues with it, either not trusting what they see or never getting to the point of scrying.

I, personally do not make a difference between "scrying in the spirit vision" and "travelling in the spirit vision", as defined by several Flying rolls, for example.I see these two things as the same thing, using different spirit senses, vision being the first one to develop and
travelling involving more senses then vision.*

Many of my students struggle because they try to first empty their minds fully, then expect profound, highly abstract experiences to happen as linked with their scrying into the elemental kingdoms or, say, a planetary sphere.Some claim they do not have the visualisation skills, the powers of imagination needed or that they get extremely archetypical pictures, like knights and dragons and angels and faeries. They complain that they are aware of the room whilst
scrying or even travelling.

None of these things is a bad thing!

Firstly, everyone can scry/travel. If you have ever had a dream or a daydream that you remember then you have the skills needed. Since you are not actually leaving your body, you being aware of certain forces that YOUR MIND the TRANSLATES into
symbols you can understand, the fact that it is extremely archetypical or that you aware aware of your surroundings isn't so odd. During some good sessions of course, the sky could be falling down and you wouldn't notice.**

Jung noticed arhetypes for a reason. I bet that if we pick anyone from the same metanarrative, then they will get the same scrying results with very archetypical images. Frogs, witches mickey mouse etc.

Things to avoid when scrying:

1 Do NOT empty your mind. Quickstart the scrying by focusing and geting your mind to work for you on a symbol. a taro-card,
sigil, glyph, chart, colour.
2 Do NOT ignore the physical. You will spend unnecessary energy trying to ignore your scratching and that you can hear the
outside world. Be aware of them.
3 Avoid thinking your are in the process of leaving your body. You are NOT. You are sitting here, now whilst you are
experienceing a traveling in that sphere. Odd, huh?

Things to do when scrying:

1 Link yourself to what you are scrying to. Open the chart, visualise it around you, touch the thing you are trying to travel into.
2 Start by imagining walking somewhere that you know very well. It is easier to "remember" then to build up. For example, walk down your stairs. remember last time you walked down there. Actvate all your senses. Then again, link to the image, say
the taro-card. Then, walk through it.
3 Use a usefull system to test things. If you work in a tradition, use those symbols, this is important. If not, decide on
some symbols, then stay consistent. Say, if you see someting you think is a sexual fantasy and not a scrying into the realms of earth then test the vision with,
say the letter daleth for GD people, or by visualising the cube of earth if you're a mason etc.
4 If visuals are hard for you, talk to yourself, whisper or in your minds eye and tell yourself your story.
"I am waking down my steps and see the symbol of mars at the bottom. I touch it and walk through. The other side I see a
battlefild. very Lord of the ring. I test thios by saying "Lord Mars, strengthen my vision." the Lord of the rings battlefield turns into an ancient roman field of war. I black wolf walks up to me...." etc. You get my point.
5 Use your knowledge of the plane! The more information you give your MIND the easier your own mind will be able to show, in symbols, that which you are experiencing.

Person A might see: a cybernetic warrior angel wielding a large machinegun talking to a Borg queen

Person B might see: A knight in shining armour and a sword talking to beehive/flower

The masks the archetypes wear are different, yet it is quite obvious that what they see is the same thing.***

Thing to be aware of:

Scrying is Lucid daydreaming. Treat it as such and be receptive and have fun. Don't overdo it. Good Scrying is one side of the coin to evocation into crystals and spirit vision.****
Let your dreams gain wings.

*Astrally travelling about and out of body experiences are however something completely different and not something that I will talk about right now.

**For the men out there, if you have ever been a teenager and had some serious masturbation fantasy going on, you'll know what I mean.

***I have scried the same thing with groups of people enough times to have, at least, anectotal evidence.

****There is a massive difference between very very realistic astral scryings and manifestation of an entity. Those who claim otherwise have not experienced the difference for themselves. However, evocation unto manifestation is not necessary for many things, say communication.

We need to understand what we have

IWhy do we not grasp that we have several fully functioning initiatory systems in the west?

Even though I see nothing wrong with eastern systems or diaspora religions and i work in some of them, it does make me flinch when I realise that it is not interest or a leaning that causes people to work with those systems, it is a perceived lack of depth in systems derived from europe.

Are we really this damaged? Is there such a lack of self confidence in the west?
(This is a rhetorcial question. Statistics and experts claim yes. 20 5 of people don't even trust their own sense of smell/taste and pour out milk if the sell-by date has passed)

Without turning this into a hate blog against Englishultism (orders derived from systems in Aaaanglia), I think that english systems are to blame for quite some of this, say 30%, dropouts from real traditions that then set up shop in USA are to blame for the other 30% and the other 40% is that we have lost touch with our roots of hermeticism gnosticism and alchemy and we are mostly unaware of the differences between a gentlemen's club with initiations and the storehouses into the great western mystery traditions that one can gain initiations into.

Thanks holy mother church for dumbing down the west for nearly 2000 years and pretending that serious philosophy was blasphemy.

Save us Sophia from the Demiurge :D

Thanks uncle Al for making everyone think that all secret orders are dead and should be replaced by your oh so functional order. Tell me again, how many people have become adepts using this system again?

May our feet guide us away from thelemic orders into ones that actually teach us that which Uncle Al failed to perceive.

Thanks random A-hole who after getting 1 out of 30 initiations made up the rest and set up mailorder Orders in the States.

I am certain, absolutely certain, that there is one hell reserved for people who claim you can get a black belt-become a priest-understand martinism by paying 50$ and reading an initiation text via a letter.

I just want every sincere seeker out there to know:

Yes, we also have the big guns.
We also have the techniques systems and secrets.
Yupp, you can actually get the same shite here as there.

Nope, you do not have to work with western systems. But you CAN if you WANT TO and there is no reason to look elsewhere because "it doesn't exist in the western system".

Just look under the bloody, brittish, thelemic, theosophic fake tip of the iceberg and see the massive mountain underneath.

-Did I just read a few hundred comments about the west not having access to the same truths and initiations that shamans-tantrikas santeros etc do and how lost we here in europe are?
yes I did and I'm not inpressed.

We've ALSO got the power, people.

Initiation -what the heck is it?

My previous post was about orders. This is an addendum:

Initiation can be into many things.

In order of importance:

1
Into a mystery
-a change in consciousness brought on by someone else not yourself that leads to a new level of being. Might also be the final initiation, as when by laying on of hands a sinner is raised and freed form the cycle-.

2
Into certain mystery schools/egregores
-When it means that you will understand the symbols and how to interpret them
-when you are "allowed" to work with certain things.

3
Into a club
-As when you receive your tattoo into certain brotherhoods or that piece of paper that proves you enrolled in a nice university-
-----
Self initiation usually leaves me with a smile that looks like a cross between a spider, when a juicy fly lands on a web, and the look on a father's face when the child stands on the top of their toy fort screaming "I'm the king of the world".
In order to initiate into a "club" you need the recognotion of the other members of the club. You can't fake it till you make it. No matter how much you hang out in a cop-bar, you don't have a badge. You can buy all the G rings you want with squares and compasses and read the masonic primers, you're still not a mason.

There are, of course exceptions and times when one actually self-initiates, even though unaware self-initiation is more common, then missguided self-initiation.

You can self-initiate into discordianism easily enough. Do the rite, read the book. The grimoires are also designed for self initiation. Creating the tools needed and doing the rituals prescribed in the grammars are sure ways of getting into the current.

You cannot self-initiate into many things: The apostolic succession, linages of tantra, established mystery schools, the mystery-

Someone in posession of the keys to the mysteries must initiate you into a mystery school. You can never guess yourself into this. No matter what any bigshot says, the textual initiatory papers are not where the good shit is.

Initiation into the mystery or a mystery is never something you can do to yourself. It is always a gift. Becoming Asogwe in voudoun is not something you make yourself, you are made it by all the others during your kanzo. You do not make yourself into a bishop no matter how much you go to church. Another bishop gives the lineage to you and raises you a bishop.
---

When receiving an initiation be aware what it actually is that you are receiving and what it purports to be:

If it claims that this is an "initiation into our mysteries" yet all you are actually getting out of it is a membership for social reasons, then the people initiating you are in error-

And be aware that some orders and lineages mix these.

You might first receive an initiation that makes you a member of the club and a part of the cells of the group

the second initiation might be an empowerment so you can work with certain things

the third initiation might be a portion of the philosophers stone, ala the gold und rozenkreutz.

What have you been initiated into that ended up being useless?