In your head, zombie zombie zombie....

No, this is not a homage to The Cranberries, even though that would have been cool.

I am just going to break some comfortable bubbles instead.

"It is all in your head, you just don't know how big your head is".

a statement by Lon Milo, who aside from being almost obese, useless in real life, with no actual success aside from making his living off his re-hash of Crowley's texts and his own inflation is said to be an Adept. (haha hah)

An accomplished magician some people call him. What exactly is it he is meant to have accomplished? On several meetings with him he is not able to discuss hermeticism or any other type of magick that you actually DO in any depth. His underlying understanding of his idols system is lacking at best and with his nervous ticks and superiority complex added in I have doubts whether he has truly undergone even an individuation process and not just created an antithesis he now inhabits.

"It is all in your head, you just don't know how big your head is"

Popularised by Crowley in his plagiarism of Mathers' Goetia, somehow claiming that demonic (and also angelic, by analogy) entities were aspects of the psyche.

He thought at that point he was the bee's knee's and had found a holy grail that has somehow been lost. "What?" the ancients would say "please enlighten us about the nature of all being held within the mind". That would have made Crowley hard.

We have known, forever, that macrocosmic issues have their correlation in the microcosmos. Nothing new there then.

"You just don't know how big your head is"

Well, claiming that it is all in YOUR head makes it very big indeed. And we all know what is said about people with big heads. They are full of themselves. Ego. Claiming that everything exists inside your own head is quite frankly nothing short of hubris.

Oh, yes, they also mistake the chatter of local gods and godesses trying to give them further understanding of the great mystery as a revelation as they are unable to lay aside their ego. (Cough The- Cough Le - Cough Ma)

"You" is, even psychologically speaking only a tiny fragment of your selfhood. The identification with this is what creates the need for psychological synthesis.

The claim it is all in your head you just don't know how big your head is is probably the instantiation of one of the most dangerous lies that exist in the bullshit outer courts of the western systems.

Belief in this lie will assist you in

1 not getting anywhere except a cumbersome neuro linguistic programming you call magic

2 being one of those larvae who manage not to become butterflies since "everything in that butterfly exists within me already". Get it? God, I hope you do.

Why it is not in Your head:

The mind of the all and you are not the same Being. If you were, you would have attained to what very high levels of alchemy refer to and achieved a mode of understanding that you cannot even conceive of right now. Do you truly deeply consider yourself on par with the mythical Chris(t) or Buddha? Raised anyone from the dead recently? Managed to physically transmute base metals? Been able to fully take over someone elses mind or called upon an entity that people on the street saw and then fled from? No? Then it seems your mind and the mind of the all is not the same thing after all.

Conflating the big world and the smaller world is in its smallest sense, one of the aspects of performing the great work of alchemy. The regeneration of beings into the Adam Kadmon. That you can pretend to be a fish doesn't allow you to breathe under water. That you can, by certain psychological exercises psychologically experience Zen or the great mind of the all doesn't mean that one and the other is actually the same. It means you have managed to imagine it.

Having bought a black belt from the local shop means I will still break all your bones in about 4,7 seconds, not that you are a Master.

So instead of being pleased with oneself and jerking off on sigils to brainwash oneself and playing with the ideas in our heads from a Santa Clause Look alike its time for actually performing work.

Because, in the end, it doesn't matter that magick is not like it is in Harry Potter. Someone can still kill you from a distance, get your loved ones who don't even believe in magick possessed and have them declared clinically insane by western medicine and other fun stuff.

It's a shame that its just in your head. If it wasn't maybe you could get help from the outside or you'd have someone else to blame but yourself.

Renaissance style hermetism

Marsilio Ficino was a great man.

We have him to thank for the western tradition to gain access to "pure" hermetism through his translations of Plato and The Hermetic Corpus.

This does not mean Hermeticism didn't exist in Europe at this stage, it did in its Islamic, Christian and alchemical forms.

The influence of Ficino's ideas on the Medici family was enormous. La primavera for example is commissioned as a massive hermetic talisman. When we look at the beauty of those times, and the ideas and streams of thought that have been passed down, it is hard to think how the hermetic magick they performed in those days is linked to what we do today.

In the renaissance, playing specific scales on the harp whilst singing an Orphic Hymn was seen as one of the heights of magick, and rightly so.

Therefore, without further waste of space, I will offer a Hermetic ritual for understanding the love of oneself. This is a Thaumaturgic ritual utilising the planetary signature of the Rose.

The ritual is self-explanatory and does not need a 777 or other mostly useless books as reference.

Ingredients:

A container of seawater, collected yourself

7 white candles

7 rosebuds, 28 red roses and 49 white roses

Pure beeswax incence and something to burn it on

Honey

White wine mixed with honey, and 7 white peppercorns

A Mirror

A dove, to be eaten. This you should order from a good butcher.

Preparation:

Choose the day of the ritual with as much thought as you would plan a wedding. This is an expensive ritual that you perform for the sake of yourself, to infuse the positive forces of the planet Venus into your very being. The effects will not be permanent, not on their own at least. You will have to work to keep the feeling alive and to incorporate it permanently into your being. However the rite will temporarily sever forces from your being that, among other things cause self-loathing.

If you look in yourself you will realise how many things you do due to the fact that you do not fully truly love yourself. You might treat others as you would want to be treated because you want desperately to be loved, not because you give selflessly, for example. There are many ways this particular archon holds us prisoner.

You fast and refrain from all company for 24 hours and abstain from any form of sexual act for 7 days. You do not read or watch tv, you are only to look upon images of a sensual nature, not sexual mind, sensual, that express love. You may walk in meadows or flowery parks

The ritual proper:

Perform all acts with the understanding that you are immersing yourself fully in the transcending aspects of Venus, that this beneficent planet may help you love yourself.

1 remove all your clothes.

2 You will boil the dove for 5 minutes rapid boil, then simmer it for 20. You take it out and fill the inside cavity where the stuffing would go, with the red rosebuds and honey. Then glaze the bird with honey and in the oven it goes. Say about 40 minutes on 120-150 C. You know your oven the best.

3 You will clear your bed, put on new sheets, or sheets that have been washed recently. Everything has to be perfect.

4 repeat: Venus, holy all-mother fountain of life and love great mother loved by all, who cannot do evil in the world, you turn the wheel of time and give beauty. The tear in the eye, the waters of the life giving ocean, you are the womb from where we all came yet ever virgin. I do not know you, I am a mortal who truly have never experienced you. All I say are words. For what is love? Let me know you. I invite you. Let your influence descend unto this holy altar, please mother, Goddess of love come."

5 Rip off the petals of the 28 red roses and spread them on your bed showering it in petals covering your bed in it.

6 You then arrange the candles on the dining room table and light them. Again, inviting Love to come into your light

7 In your bathtub you run a bath. (aim for a warm, not a hot bath).

Take the container of sea water, hold it up and say:

As the great goddess was born out of the sea she blessed it with her presence. The water is her beginning. Lord of all, that which is beyond all you have blessed this water, as I now pour it into my own waters may I rise from it as Aphrodite herself rose.

Pour in the water

8 Take the white roses and crush their petals into the water. The planetary energies living in the rose will infuse the water.

9 Make a whip of some of the discarded rose-stalks. Now, you may strike yourself seven times. No more. These seven strikes should be everything you hate about yourself. one for every strike. Too fat? Too slim? Ugly? Self-loathing? Addicted? Try to chrystalise the self loathing in seven exclamations (good to think about before).

Lash yourself once per exclamation. This should hurt. there might be blood. It is OK to hate oneself.

10. Take the mirror. Look into it. Look at yourself. Praying to the Forces of Love and venus (do not add syncretic deities of lists of gods here, just the personification of love) ask her to heal you and teach you so you may understand love.

Truly ask her and pray.

11 with the honey cover your genitals until you feel arousal. Continue praying for Venus to come. The moment of arousal, move your hands all over your body. Offer everything you touch to Love. This nipple I offer to Venus so she may transmute it into pure Love, this mole I offer to Venus... etc.

once every part of your body is covered sink into the Bath with the roses in it. Be sensual. Touch yourself, not sexually, just knowingly. You are now in the presence of the Venusian forces that are truly present. Not much more need to be said as you will feel the presence descend into your very being. Drink the goblet of wine and light the incence.

12. step out of the bath, dry yourself and serve yourself the bird. Eat it, placing some on a separate plate as an offering to Venus.

13. In the bed you will now offer thanks to Venus by making love to yourself. Do not think of anyone else, do not use toys. Just your on hands, and the petals. After the climax, stay in bed and have a good nights sleep.

Magick isn't science

This is a comment I wrote over on runesoup.

It is a blog I read; mostly I refrain from commenting, even though I consider most of what Gordon writes to be NLP and not magick. However, there is a very good review on there about the Octavo, Peter Carol's latest inkfarting. I like the book from an elemental-world chaosmagick point of view.

To read Gordon's post see link below

http://runesoup.com/2011/01/the-octavo-a-definitive-review

I have to say that from a CM perspective PJC is one of the best. (or was)

Of course, as with many things I write, there is a "But..."

In this case the but comes from Pete's constant need to place magick within a scientific framework. I do not agree for a second that Crowley was a great Western occultist, it is more like he was the first one to really try and place real experiences into a framework he could cope with and deal with.

Pete does the same thing. I'm deffinitively not saying that science is bollocks. Science is true since as Gordon points out, there are things we can know. The maximum speed of light is 299792458 m / s the weight of a proton is mp = 1.672 621 71(29) × 10−27 kg

etc. This is all nice and good.

But claiming that the only way magick works is through physics that we just don't know of yet... that to me smells very much like Pete's own little delusion he had to create in order to make sense of his own chaos. (And having partied with and hung out with him irl, no offense but I'm quite certain I'm right.)

I also need to point out that I am very good friends with several physics and maths Doctors and profs, the real kind not Americans :=), and they consider Pete's semi-science waffle worth less then the paper it is printed on.

Gordon also writes

"Now, as many of you know, incorporating scientific observation into a magical worldview isn’t unique to chaos magic. Indeed, you could argue that it is the single defining characteristic of western magic since the classical age."

(Argent's Bullshit detector goes beep beep now)

This is simply not true. It might be the single characteristic of anglo-occultism popularised during the last century but it is definitively not a permanent fixture of the field. The single defining characteristic of western magick is not even one single thing.

There are two things that define the twin currents that are the western esoteric system.

One is alchemy and the alchemical process, the other one is a kind of theophanic gnosticism. Both strands have manifested in various ways, existed almost unbroken in oral traditions and both of which fully accept miracles and view magick that does not involve miracles as part of the elemental world.

It is great that Pete is stuck in a mindset he himself would have abhorred 15 years ago. It is great that he has found a way to shield himself from pure chaos by trying to make sense of chaos' manifestation in the elemental world. But that is not all there is to magick and is definitively not what is going on in the western traditions except in their most bastardized plagiarised contemporary versions.

Again, the western esoteric transmission is more then just waving wands in masonic halls and is just as spectacular and miracle filled as in the rest of the world. Bloody anglo-occultism.

-End rant

(ps: hermetic magick (alchemy, theurgy etc can, by deffinition follow the scientific method for results.)