25 februari 2011

Energy ;)

I just love when missguided individuals who believe they understand hermetic magick and the western secret tradition go on and on about things.

Actually, no, I don't.

It is impossible to re-create the hermetic tradition reading the Corpus and Grimoires without being in possession of the key to unlock it. They are not training manuals or complete cosmological maps with google-mapped road descriptions.
You cannot just pick up a grimoire, decide the spirits are not demons but helpful entities and go with it. If you don't get demonic entities when you call them, then you're doing something very wrong and if you're lucky you might have gotten a different class of spirits helping you who are just willing to be called by the names...

I will rant away then.

Hermeticism, in its pure form hasn't existed for thousands of years. The tradition did instead meld with many things, alchemy being one.

We don't have to look to the East regarding the idea of any prana, shakti, or chi. We do not have to blame anyone the last 100-200 years for the idea of 'energy' in the Western tradition. It is not stolen from somewhere else. It has always existed.

Since the arrival of alchemy it has been and is called the secret fire. The alchemists have written about it and used it and depicted it for hundreds of years prior to electricity being found and harnessed. The alchemical flames within and without exist, can be bellowed and do give rise to many interesting objectively noticeable phenomena, such as increased heartrate, very high temperatures and odd flashes visible to the naked, uninitiated eye.

The secret fire, once found is worked upon. Breathing, visualisation, postures, elixirs.

There would not be much point in me catering to a random group of people who happen to read this blog about what exactly the alchemical fire is, as you have either experienced it and been taught how to use it from someone else who knows how to do it, or you haven't. You have either experienced it as a result of certain secret practices, or you haven't.

If you have you will know that the feeling is unmistakable, physical and can be painful, especially as the fire burns away at emotional, spiritual and physical blockages.

I could say that there are four fires who are all summed up in the Green Lion, that the one is the wrath-fire transmited into the love fire and the other one is often the fire from above, through grace, but I might as well say that it is the vitriol that burns away all impurities and solves the gold.
It would therefore not be much help.

Instead: Have you ever started shaking uncontrollably? Had intense emotions resulting in poltergeist fenomena? Has prayer made you sweat? Has your heart beaten so hard you though you were going to die, just because you were concentrating on an energy centre in the body?
Then you might have experienced the lowest manifestations of the lowest fire.

The fires are what is the driving force of the western esoteric tradition. Separately, as the four, rolled into one as the lion or from above as the dove.


I don't get why it can be so hard for intelligent people to realise that maybe, we don't need to borrow, maybe its not syncretism. Maybe (as is the case) there are only a few secret techniques that have focused on one type of work or not and then co-evolved independently from eachother?

There is a reason why Chinese T/Daoism, certain Shinto techniques, western internal alchemy and its outer manifestations such as theurgy all have the same techniques.

Kundalini is not the secret fire. It is a semi-useless sideeffect of it that needs harnessing.
Its there in the blood, so if you suck just bleed on your talisman ;)
(I really would advize against using the other fluid unless you understand WHY it works. Not HOW)


Just look at her face...
There is a reason Crowley expressed it as enflame thyself in prayer, as it is that blissful fire experience that is so umistakeable.

Yet, the techniques that end up kicking you into altered states of consciousness, into sexual bliss are not themselves the fire. They happen because of the fire.

In its purest form, the Fire is of course "life".

So lets call a burning fire a fire. Heat and that very odd thing that differentiates living and non-living. Lets agree that we do have this neat thing that requires to be worked on, not received via random spirits, not borrowed from the East, not created 120 years ago, but something that exists as a timeless technology that different culturally linked, divinely inspired Royal Artists have harnessed preserved and taught, simultaneously in many places.

Remember. Breathe in, breathe out. Like the Elohim whose breath moves upn the face of the water, like the yogi hiding the burning coal in his stomach and like the young alchemist fanning the tiny spark of a flame under the equipment.


19 februari 2011

The light in the darkness

To further elaborate on the previous post using Western terms.

99,9% of all western esoteric traditions postulate the supreme being.

Did the supreme being create the world as the best of worlds?
Then how do you account for SIDS, horribly painful diseases and bad accidents?
If the almighty is responsible for the world, why is there evil?
Is there a Satan figure needed? Are we too ignorant to understand the grand plan?
Do you feel like you belong in this world?

or do you think that the nature of the world is different from the nature of the created world?
Maybe god doesn't intervene because he is not of this world? Do you feel that a god who allows these bad things to happen is a bit of a messed up concept?
Do you feel like this is not the best of worlds? Should the world be different?

The light that shines in the darkness. is the light and the dark coexistent, or is the light shining in the darkness from somewhere else?

18 februari 2011

Belief isn't a choice

It is all nice and good that some claim you can pretend until something works. That certain times it might be important to use something akin to suspension of disbelief. The first time you are draining that turtledove of blood, the first time you are standing waiting to be empowered, the first time you are doing something, it might be good to get over the voice in your head that doubts. It might be useful to ignore western brainwashing that claims the world is based on the ten, or so, pillars of science (which by the way, are not immutable. reading the Royal Society of physics chemistry and biology journals would probably freak out some materialists-atheists).

The problem starts when you think you can choose to believe in something fundamentally different from your true beliefs. The power and weakness of chaosmagick was the notion you could change your beliefs at will. Changing paradigms it was called. Grown up in a strict Catholic family? Experiment with pantheistic beliefs. Do you have a problem with Jesus Christ and the church and you've spent your young adult life dressed in black? Do some hardcore christian magick, start going to masses.

Snort illegal substances on saturday and perform a satanic mass, ripping a bibble apart, then on sunday morning go to a Mass and allow the priest to work on you. Theurgy and Atavism in one, baby.

This, however is not actually a changing of paradigms, or your real worldview. Nothing is true, they say.

The only thing accomplished by doing this is suspension of disbelief and removing mental obstacles you may have to certain sets of symbols and spiritual frameworks. It allows you to have a broader rather then a very narrow reality tunnel.
A narrow tunnel being: all this is psychological. a broad one being that all this works on many levels, one of which is the psychological and physiological changes in the brain.

It doesn't change your actual beliefs. Chaosmagick is a Monistic worldview. All is in reality Chaos, Nothing, Kia or whatever you wish to call its archetypical manifestation. It is this that is permuted changed and interacted with.

The belief that odd mental and physical actions bring about changes in the world and yourself are also constant.

Why is this relevant to this blog or me, at all?
Because I've been asked, whether one can't have several worldviews? Whether one cannot sit on the fence and be a bit of this and a bit of that.

The short answer is: yes, you can if you never want to get anywhere.
Concisely I mean: Hell, no.

The long answer is that age old saying Know Thyself. This saying doesn't mean you need to spend years getting to know yourself in a purely psychological way. You only need to know some of the basics aspects about yourself, and the way to get there is truth.

Truth.

The truth hurts. The truth means we have to face reality. The truth means we have to accept ourselves and others for what they are, not for what we fear, or wish them, to be. You could spend your life dreaming of becoming an actor and yet never get over your fear of speaking in public. How does that work? Do you really want to be an actor or is it something you wanted to be to get back with at the kids who thought you were a nerd in Highschool?

Is dreaming about what should have happened what keeps you from pursuing your current course and never act because you can fall back on the should've would've could've? Then you need to stop lying to yourself.

The same is true for your worldview. Anyone with a serious interest in the esoteric and a serious understanding of its practical and spiritual aspects will at some point come to a very simple crossroads. Dualism versus Monism.

The basic dividing line, the first dividing line, without which spiritual progress doesn't happen. For some, this comes naturally, as they are in tune with their beliefs.
Others spend years never getting over this basic hurdle and thus never quite making it past the first stepping stone. This is, because the choice is already made.

It is at this point we have to be aware that the Tunnel and the underlying paradigm are not the same thing.

To use a Streetmagick(tm) standard bad analogy:
You either have two eyes, or one (paradigm) and then you have many gel-colored lenses glasses and mirrorshades to look upon the world with (reality tunnels).

You can change eyewear as much as you want, however the number of your eyes remains constant.

-Sneaks away from this bad metaphor now-

So. How the heck can I claim that you already have your worldview?
Because there was a point when you had that first hunch. That first spiritual bone in your body twitched. Biologicaly it could only twitch one of two ways.

It could have overstimulated your frontal lobe and completely shut down your spatial awareness centres or done the opposite. This in turn was brought about based on the development of your brain, which we can say is the physical manifestation and hardware that stores things about your beliefs and capabilities.

The first hunch will be there no matter what you later read and what you manage to talk yourself into using logical or emotional arguments. You could claim that there are tantras that seem monistic and there are tantras that seem dualistic, there MUST therefore not really be a difference (ouch monistic belief there) or the case might be that there is a place where you SURPASS both Monism and Dualism, or somehow combine them. I guess that would be some form of halfism or naughtism?

First of all: it doesn't matter what your inner leaning is, whether it is towards a dualistic or monistic view, to anyone else but yourself. For you this is your point in the universe that allows you to move the entire world with a long enough rod.

Once you have found this little gem you will start to be more comfortable with your own cultural symbolset. You will have an easier time expanding your reality tunnels because they will be built upon a solid foundation rather then on shaky ground. It will allows you to understand everything from the point of view of your personal key.

The next step is to incorporate things into your beliefs and enrich them. I have discussed in previous posts why it isn't really the smartest thing for a Cuban man to try and learn tibetan tantra or for a russian housewife to try and become a mambo, so I will not reiterate that discussion.

An example:
Charlie believes that "angels" are a good metaphor for psychological states. (Charlie should spend his money in real therapy if he thinks magick is psychology, but never mind.)

He then starts to experience mystical states and (thank goodness) abandons the purely psychological model and starts to see the angels as agents of God.

Later Charlie has a messed up experience with his grandmothers ghost. A belief in the afterlife sets in, etc.


You should now begin to realise that your innermost belief might not be that sexy.

Ask yourself what is it that I believe? What is my gut feeling when I see children dying of cancer? What is my feeling about what happens after death?
Can you accept cancer, aids, pain and suffering as a necessary part of life, or not?

Don't think about whether you accept any religious dogm. Just think about basic things and go from there.

Is everything one in the Being of God and all is a manifestation of him? Is god and the world forever separate?

I can't give advice how to do this on a blog, but you have the basics now.

Have fun, and don't be surprised if you have the same basic belief that everyone has in the end.

3 februari 2011

Judge a book by its cover!

We have been taught, at an early age, not to judge books by their covers.

Don't judge the little boy with glasses, he might still be a nice friend. Don't judge someone based on their colour, clothing or behaviour.

This is one of the best things our generation has. We have learned the important lesson of equality. No matter how dumb someone is they will have a type of intelligence that normal school's don't usually measure. No matter how smart someone is, you will realise that in certain situations they are completely useless.

Why am I then naming this post (Do) Judge a book by its cover?

Because somewhere along the line we have forgotten certain things about how to judge people in cases where it is needed.
If your martial arts instructor keeps getting beaten up on the streets, something is amiss and if your A.A. chairman is never on the wagon, is he then really the best guy for the job?

There are today 3 worlds of occultism. The real one, the social clubs that pretend, and of course the one on the level of published material and the online community.

We need to re-learn how to judge people in cases where our time, well-being, level of skill or perhaps even our life depends on it.

Why is this in any way relevant? Because there is a large group of people who spend hours and hours doing what they believe is magickal ritual. (whether they do it for practical reasons or to work with their own evolution is here irrelevant)
The same people then are not successful in everyday life.

Well, if you do magick for practical reasons, it should be reasonable to expect practical results that make you more successful in everyday life. If you do magick to evolve yourself you should also become a much better person. Not in an act but in reality.

There are too many people in the online, published and social club occult communities who behave as God's latest gift to the world, without having their own shit together. I take issue with that, in the same way as I would be asking myself why a Massai warrior in full hunting kit is the person lecturing on brain-surgery.

Judging a book by its cover is them simply a question of critical thinking.

Should I buy this tattered penguin edition for €10 or do I buy a nice brand new hardcover first print for €5?

If I have the choice between two presents, and one looks like it has been wrapped by a two handed squid and one that has pretty bows and a wax seal, which one is actually the smarter one to choose?

This is not the place to argue and whine about inner strengths and such bollocks.

I have written about this before regarding joining orders.

Any system, whether it is a course at work, a spiritual technology, magickal skill, a martial art or a cooking class is best judged by its adherents and its leaders. You will immediately see whether it does what it is meant to do.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. If masonry doesn't bring you to the threshold of the royal art, but it doesn't claim to either and most people in the Lodge who take it seriously are nice active members of society truly living up to a masonic ideal that you yourself wish to embody, then it is probably a good thing.

If someone claims to be able to teach you the skills for practical magick and their hut is filled with magicky looking things, yet they still sneak away to poison their enemies then you should ask yourself, is this really magick?

When you have danced in a circle a few hundred times, and managed to ignore the fact your system was created by an englishman with absolutely no understanding of practical magick or theurgic accomplishment, you might want to ask yourself what this is doing aside from allowing you to pretend you belong to a religion?

Therefore, never allow an idol to emerge. Do not project your own expectations on a figure of authority, instead let them prove themselves. I, for one, will take spiritual advice from a Nun praying day and night in a cave in Rumania before I even consider Pope Ratzinger's opinions.

When buying any book or reading the advice or listening to anyone who has become an idol today, Regardie, Crowley, Carrol, Greer, Lon Milo, Fries, Hine, His Holiness the D-lama etc, ask yourself: Is this person, in real life really someone I should listen to? Has this person achieved what he or she is saying? If I did not know who this person was and they told me some of their ideas in a cafe, would I listen? Have these people truly become
A practical magicians par excellence able to raise the dead and animate objects
B created the stone of the wise and transmuted themselves into a higher level of being in a way that is obvious when dealing with them?

No? Then they are just as lost as yourself, clinging to their dualist notions or fake, mentally bellieved monism and the best they can do is offer you advice, the worst they can do is to make you feel good in your failures. You cannot move things with your mind? fret not neither can I as magick is all in the head. You are living a lie and your life is not what you want it to be? No worries, the world is an illusion, you are a godshard manifested in this horrid body and you can stop worrying about this illusion you call life.

Riiiight.

Magick, spiritual or practical, and all systems are designed to bring about an end, and if that end has not manifested in the lives of their practitioners then it is both a comment on the system itself and its practitioners.

-Regardie is one to talk about the elemental initiations being useless, having never sat in a temple his whole life except to pass through a grade,
-Crowley might have needed to consider his sense of Ego and the many warnings of the systems he worked with to "not take the messages of the astral entities without a pinch of salt",
-Buddhists dedicating a whole room to beautiful items imported from Tibet so they can meditate in their London flats might want to consider what is meant by enchantment,
-People who claim adepthood might want to have their shit in order and be christlike instead of bitching about other religions,
-Christians might want to turn the other cheek and actually live in imitation of christ for once,

and any leader of anything who is incapable of living in this world fully instead of some fantasy landscape of having a career within the occult community, or one of its tiny-tiny-teenie islands, should obviously be avoided.


But, I hear you say: anyone can be successful in life even without the use of magick!
(Duh, 99,9999999999999% of the world are.)

Which is why -Just- having your shit together is not a proof of magickal skill or spiritual realisation. That is simply a requisite and a result. The real deal is beyond psychological accomplishment and being able to set your mind to get a job, be socially adept or loose that weight.

Now, off you go to burn your books and destroy your idols. (I always wanted to say that.)