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-
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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?