StreetMagick

Highlight: The Key: Sethian Gnosticism in the Postmodern world

2011-09-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

I am exceedingly busy and will be for the next few weeks before the blog continues.

The problem with equinoxes solstices and other things.

However The Key: Sethian Gnosticism in the postmodern world has now finally been released on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Key-Sethian-Gnosticism-postmodern-world/dp/8299824370/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1316603746&sr=8-2

I read the original when it was still a Norwegian word document and was meant to assist in translating it. There might be 1 or 2 pages in there that I translated as well.

I am extremely happy to see this on Amazon after loving it when I read it 2 years ago. That it is available to the English speaking world is a huge asset!

The book gives an introduction to Sethian Gnosticism in a way that it becomes relevant to people today. It is actually Book 1 of 3 planned ones where the other 2 will focus more on practical matters and also contain some of the hidden and revealed texts.

The book is the result of the work of a practitioner from their Albedo phase through the citrinitas.

I strongly recommend it for anyone who has an interest in gnosticism, would like an overview and thinks in these paths.

I have to highlight that this is not a historic treatise nor is it a book filled with informatio about how you can be a Gnostic, what it does do is that it takes concepts and ideas from Gnosticism that many use yet few understand, and makes it as clear as possible for todays readers.

I hope you enjoy it!

the x-files

2011-08-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

It is said that during the final bits of the Elysian mysteries certain words were said and a basket was shown to the participants, and that made them realise the Mystery of Elysius.

Some say, that the 3rd degree of Masonry used to be enough to propel people into the beginnings of enlightenment. If we believe the research of Bishop Hoeller, the Valentinians used the sacraments as initiations.

There seems to be a lot of things that in times passed meant a lot to people, that were words containing the deepest mysteries. Texts kept away from the profane, because they contained the secrets to ___insert something__ itself!

Most of these things are limited to time. I doubt that it would be useful for anyone to undergo the Elysian mysteries today because we are not in the same mental space. Eating meat fish drinking wine and having sex is also not a massive taboo for most of us and is not going to cause any shocks to the system. Being shown a gurus rose-smelling piss might be a life altering event for a lifelong groupie, but the western reporter is probably just going to think that it is gross.

The question whether there are traditions that still have secrets and whether or not there are papers that are not published is actually not relevant.

Of course there are papers that exist that haven't made their way into the internet.

Are the papers worth anything? NO. Not out of context. That is the whole point. Can you give me the texts for all the rites in the Swedish rite of freemasonry started by Duke Carl in March 1735? No, I doubt you can. Would it make any difference if some random got hold of them?

Nope.

A guy actually emailed me and said "If you have these ancient secret papers, why don't you share them or shut up about them?"

Thats kind of missing the point.

Allow me to demonstrate. Instead of sharing the papers I will play a game.

Let's play the game of "Giving the game away" and see how without the oral traditions, the correct context and being a part of a living tradition the following statements are meaningless, yet are still considered the highest secrets in some regards:

-The Tomb is empty

-Christ is slain Christ is Risen Christ will come again

-Osiris is a black God

-There is no part of me that is not of the Gods

-The dove confirms you are ready

-I am Truth!

-Chew and Swallow

-The god you worship is actually the Devil!

-Iao is short for Ialdabaoth

-There was a fifth nail for Jesus, but a Gypsy stole it.

-Only Loco gives the Asson

The thing is, the papers that haven't been released and are not findable are not what is going to solve an age old mystery. This is not an intellectual academic pursuit of putting a puzzle together. Having "Horus is the mystery" whispered into your ear, or being taken to a church at midnight to have your hair cut and wrist slit into a cup only makes sense, is only revelatory if you have been schooled in the right context.

The western mystery traditions have never, EVER, been about working out something intellectually as they relate to something so specific.

Putting corpse bits into a pot doesn't make you a Tata and until you get circumcised and accepted by a jewish rabbi as his student of Qabalah you are not -really- a kabbalist.

Did you know it is nigh impossible to create a 5 pointed star using a par of compasses and a straightedge unless you know exactly what you are doing? (hint, the wikipedia way is not the way) I will look up the reference when I have time

And if there are schools with mysteries? Mate, if Palo and Santeria has survived after being created in Cuba based on African religious practices, what makes you think there isn't a living tradition of other things?

Maybe some of these things rely on more then paperwork. Maybe the reason you cannot call yourself a Houngan just because you read some books on voudu and worship the Lwa isn't just some odd Exoteric rule, maybe there is a point to it. Maybe some of the grimoires are actually just bullshit made up of people who wanted a fast buck and maybe the corpus hermeticum is as esoteric as the bible, without certain specific empowerments or just a way of working that is meant to be un-locatable no matter how much one searches. the secret words are not qabalistic ennummerations, they are the colour codes of my little ponies.

Certain things will never make it to the public domain, and the moment they do they cannot be used for their intended purpose again.

This is the origin of the Old Alchemists saying:

"It is when we talk the most plainly nobody understands and when we talk in riddles that the people hang on our words".

I would want nothing more for there to be an essay or a book or ANYTHING I could just give out and know that if you just follow that instruction you will get to the end of what the traditions hint at. But it doesn't work like that. Because the moment that would happen the way to Gold would immediately transform into the way of Silver.

living proof: The Book of the Law. From one point of view every word in it is True. But Are you enlightened ujst because you read it? Really? (please please dont say yes, its a trap)

If you answered "No" why do you think that is?

Sometimes you need to be touched on the head by someone or be taken to a specific location or have become a vegan ascetic before being forced to eat a corpse of your own gender you have to copulate with whilst your mentor says chew and swallow...

Ce la vie, eh?

Knowledge

2011-08-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

There are 3 sorts of people out there.

Those who don't care

Those who believe in something

Those who have Gnosis.

Now, someone asked me the following question:

"What is the difference between a Gnostic and a Christian, because it really seems that they both do the same thing, following myths and stuff".

Someone else asked me:

"What is the difference between a magician who claims to be enlightened who can work with spirits and do miracles and a magician who has actually found the stone of the wise, seeing as they both seem to do the same thing, you know, majicka."

I thought about charging sex, money and power for a made up answer, then I realised I'm not a douchebag and can do so for free with the real answer.

Gnosticism

It is all about the attitude. You see, all those holy texts out there, from the bible to the Bhagavad Gita to Liber Al were made up by someone who themselves may or may not have had gnosis. It might be they had gnosis, it might be they mistook a vision for a moment of gnosis or it might be they were complete and utter dicks and just wanted a way to control people.

The attitude needed is to choose to work with a religious myth. Not because you believe in it, not because you were raised in it, but because it happens to resonate with the cultural scheme in yourself and you can make the tools work.

Whilst you do this you are 99% the same as any Psychic, someone who truly believes. Thats the point. But when you start to have mystical experiences that show the bringing on of what in alchemy is often referred to as the albedo phase, you will not ground them in the tradition, running back to a textual or authoritative source, you will work to understand them based on your lived experience thusfar.

Then, when you are truly ready the grace can in some few cases bestow upon you gnosis (See the Life story of Boehme) or you may be lucky enough to be guided by someone else who has gnosis and they can impart this upon you. When this truly happens you will know it.

Because until a Gnostic has Gnosis s/he is merely a psychic who is intellectually drawn towards that which s/he perceives as gnosis, whereas a psychic doesn't even ask the questions intellectually and simply accepts.

But from the view of the one with Gnosis, they are both psychics because they both live either in the world they choose to believe in, or the world they have been made to believe in, not the world that is truly there.

Magic

The same rule applies to a magician as does a gnostic, here however, the mythologem that is referred to is called the Stone of the Wise, that is not a stone.

The books are made up in the same way as above, sometimes by people who know how to make others make use of existing symbolic systems to interface with the mind of the Godworld, some who have no ideas and just wanted to make a buck. Same goes for modern books on magick used for "enlightenment" versus magic made for practical results. Some are shit and others are really good. Compare with the old Alchemical texts where some actually could guide you to Gold others were outright dangerous and some were extremely good chemistry handbooks.

In the same way as it is impossible to get Gnosis by following concrete rules, it is not possible to attain unto the stone within the context of the lower work within magical traditions.

It certainly is possible to become a very effective magician, to have practical results, even to experience magically altered states of consciousness. But tell you what. You are not doing anything different then millions of people in oriental Asia are doing daily. The rituals, the conversation with spirits all that, they do from birth. The pujas, the offerings, the communing with spirits and their ancestors, casting powders on the people next door... this is being done by many more then you could count.

"There are more people practicing magick today then ever before". I'm truly sorry but that is utter bullshit in the context it was said. There are just as many people practicing magick today as there has always been, except in secularised countries like USA and Europe and heavily dogmatised religio-political places where even having a bad non-religious conformist thought will get your face melted with acid. And even so the enormous amount of people born in China and India and the region makes up for our slackness.

Aside from that? No, people still do magick. The same way as people in the desert do and did. The same way as egyptians woke up and fed their housegoods, as Romans bowed slightly before the fire in their house etc. My grandmother refuses to pour out hot water to this day as she doesn't want to hurt the housetomte. A lunar consciousness exists in many places as a matter of fact and has done so as attested by countless academically accepted historical sources such as papyri, lead-tablets and ethnologic research conducted the past 50 or so years attests to. Doing magic and having a living relationship with spirits and being good at magic is not something true and unique for a select few that we have managed to bring back from utter destruction.

It is not magic itself that will raise you to find the stone of the wise, it is a very specific application of mystical and magical techniques that might if you are lucky, bring about the change.

Argent's inane metaphor of the week:

Following recipes will make you a good cook, and if you have any talent whatsoever you may even learn to cook without a recipe. Thats good. Welcome to the club of being a magician. But until you can turn that fucking turnip into a carrot, you do not have the Stone of the Wise.

It is here that it is all brought together. For Gnosis is not non-dual awareness, it is not unio-mystica. the Stone of the Wise is not an initiation, or to wank around with God.

Gnosis and The Stone are the same thing and both can only be bestowed by divine Grace in very exceptional circumstances (Life of Boehme, St.Martin, Jung) but most often it is achieved by the littlest amount of helping push, the yeast given by someone who has some already. The light of the Gnosis within someone, a particle of the Stone.

Until that is in place the magician is a magician without Gnosis. Without the Stone of the Wise.

Is this a bad thing?

Nope. Everyone should do magick. Everyone should learn how to speak to spirits. Everyone should be a psychic and have some form of relationship with the divine.

But should we claim that what in alchemical terms is barely an albedo phase is the end-result?

No.

This tendency started with Crowley and the world around the WW1 when modernism shattered the Western world and brought about the end of the enlightenment era and plummeted us down into a meaningless pit.

We overcompensate. It is not enough to learn how to cook, we want to change parsnips into oranges. And we will use the cookbooks for this end for surely they will have the keys?

It is not enough we recover from the curse of modernism and seek to be in communion with the divine. No, we will use a portion of a religious system, say the bible, and seek complete enlightenment through that, ignoring that within that framework the only people who have all needed to reach the highest possible level whilst alive are really the bishops.

People want the fast way forward without knowing what it is. They don't want to serve the Lwa they want to become a houngan. It is not enough to learn self-defense and get in good shape, no you want to open your own dojo.

I am not saying that it should take 50 years to get Gnosis. I am saying that you can spend 50 years and never get it.

Alchemy has broken down the mystical-magical language to as pure a symbolic system as possible.

Doing religion and doing magick all fit into the earliest forms of having developed a lunar consciousness (think, a mirror) and working with the preparing for Nigredo.

Without having passed through Nigredo there will be no albedo, hence no citrinitas and thus no rubedo.

St. Mother Theresa was seeking for Albedo for over 30 years. Why? because she used the wrong tool for the wrong job.

If you want to be a good magician, if you want to have a relationship with the divine then do it. But don't enter into a process that you don't know how to get out of.

To have the Stone of the Wise or have Gnosis you need to pass into the alchemical Albedo phase and then transmute that into rubedo.

Do you have to be perfect to summon Raphael for a chat? Hell, no. Do you need to fast for 7 days just to jinx someone? Doubt it.

But if you have worked through your nigredo phase and the white-gray mass starts to brighten, then you will not be a bag. You will no longer be tied to outer forms. You will truly have been turned inside out and cleansed. Remember that bad thing you did? Gone.

Only then will you truly be able to say: I am utterly and perfectly happy with myself in every single way all the time. And you will also have performed the traveling into the deepest reaches of the world/beyond the astral/the subconscious (yourself) and there found the centre and that centerpiece will be you.

You will not care about things. You will not be angry or happy. You might experience these things but they will not move you from your center.

This is Albedo, this is where todays living orthodox saints, he none-phoney sadhus and Daoist masters reside in. and you know what? Just as there are little old women who can make a meal to beat any michelin star chef, can hex you to death with a glance no matter how much magick you have done, so there are people who have through very hard work gotten to this point.

If you truly can look into your own eyes in the mirror, away from your friends, away from the internet, away from even the eyes of god and say that this is the case, in everysingle moment, then you have achieved the albedo.

Not only will you have by necessity passed through the Dark Night of the Soul and met your guardian, but if you'd have done so, religion and magick, as performed by others will not be a part of you anymore. You will live and breathe divine contact as the RightHandMan of God, (written for westerners as I'm sure you get it by now).

it is here and only here that What is really meant by the Knowledge and conversation of the HGA can be achieved. That the work to create the alchemical body takes its start because it is the center-sun that is the prima-materia for this work. Not the lead you are now.

Then, and ONLY then can the Rubedo phase start and that work can utterly ruin everything and blemish the white with impurities forever. Any and all ideas you have about the Rubedo are false. Even the projections upon the albedo are as incorrect as a 7 year olds musings about old age are.

And just to pull my dick out: The blog exists partly to help define lines, not to offer theories, none of this is theory.

There, that should have answered the 24 emails I received asking questions.

It must be an angel

2011-08-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

There is a fad among postmodern internet occult celebrities and their students to claim having achieved the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

This operation, which according to a published grimoire takes 6-18 months depending on the specific version of the published versions you read, they accomplish in much less time.

Of course they do. You see, Crowley himself said that the achievement of the HGA is the first step, then we are talking.

And uncle Al is always right, isn't he? Except when he mixes up about 4-5 different concepts, refers to them as one thing and then, keeps changing his mind.

Crowley is, in his published writings unnable to distinguish between his understanding of the mystery of being, the revelation of his (lesser) solar mystery, the beginnings of his Citrinitas phase, his initial contacts with what is a Holy Guardian Angel and Solar consciousness.

This is why he has several completely different methods for attaining unto it (whatever it is at that point he is referring to with the same word :S)

Now, as we know after having read previous posts on this blog, there is more to the western tradition then the Netultists* think.

You see, I happen to have access to a few** manuscripts that are a few hundred years old belonging to various Traditions*** that aim to perform similar things.

It is not impossible to find one of the bastardised versions of the Arcana Arcanorum online. I leaked one myself about 6 years ago that I got from a friend, because the person I know who is one of the people in charge of the masonic currents that hold the keys to the A.A. and thus knows his thing claimed: that A.A. document is about as effective as mixing coke, cola nuts and fizzy water and calling it coca cola. I happen to agree, knowing what I know so I thought it wouldn't hurt.

Anyway, point being even with the bastardised version floating around online you will quickly realise that whoever was meant to receive that document probably worked through the system that it belongs to.

Now, last I checked the A.A. belongs to the Memphis Misraim Rite that only starts to hand out the real deal from the degrees above 50. (not counting some of the cool angelology in the lower scottish rite degrees). So, whoever is receiving the papers should by this point be a Master Mason, with other degrees, manifest those in real life and have quite a few years under his or her belt in the system, living with it day in and day out. THEN you undertake the operation underlined in the A.A. after receiving the initiations**** for it.

Aside from the fact that the books out there do not come with keys and are thus impossible to decypher, these things take time because the process takes time.

I can get you a contact with your angel in 3 hours. You can experience solar consciousness after 3 days of fasting or sleep-deprivation. Hell get some illegal substances and get it in a few minutes. You can experience non-dual awareness by accident. But these things are not the same thing as what happens when you have built yourself a vessel.

A bad example but one worth mentioning anyway is: That when Mathers and co shaped, modernised and innovated and made workable a lot of the raw data out there, because they had the keys to do so, they choose to place the Abramelin work in the 5=6 grade. Now, why would they do that?

It is remarkably easy to have a subpersona masquerade as an entity. To have a random being pretending to be your Holy Guardian Angel. To spend years and years devoting yourself to something you think will free you from the world or make you into something keeeewl.

Truth is, its not gonna work, its fake.

I don't doubt that cool effects come out of this, heck I don't doubt that some of the Netultist stuff has effect. But, it's not the same thing as what is really meant by achieving the Knowledge and conversation with your holy guardian angel.

To get back to the GD version, as that will be the one most people are actually familiar with. This is Crowley's lifetime version:

You spend X time going through from neophyte to juniorus adeptus minor. This would have taken, about 5-6 years, or so. Possibly 3-4 if you push it. So then you undergo certain operations in the Adeptus minor grades to work through certain things.

Then, you'd be ready to perform the Abramelin operation*****, which actually ONLY makes sense in the context of what you have undergone. Hmm. Odd.

* I am making up a new word. Netcultist. it stands for any wannabe magician who has learned their stuff online, from books online, from books only and is too busy reinventing the wheel.

This goes from people reading a few books on Hoodoo calling themselves conjurers, readers of grimoires who think they represent some long dead tradition that needs reviving as if it died, puffers who know about as much about alchemy as I know about airline traffic management followers of 'traditions' that are about 10 years old, any witches who think there has been a surviving cult of anything they have been initiated into (sami-shamans on my mothers side of the family are exceptions) but you know who you are and other wankers who are the magician equivalent of protestant christians but instead of fucking with the Bible are discarding minimum 3000 years of oral teachings and think they can do it better.

In short, New + net + occultists+ cultists

**when I say few, I mean many

***Those things with history that have survived because their bullshit works, not because its popular

**** Initiations are those cool things that actually work by making you a living link in a Tradition that is alive. They also prepare you in various ways and make it possible for you to do certain things that it would be completely impossible to do without the initiation. For the netultists out there, this is the traditional version of getting an internet subscription.

***** You didn't really think that The Abramelin Operation is written by Mr Worms who just accidentally published a holy ancient ritual for the fun of it? You DO know that the Abramelin operation is merely a look-alike-rip of some more secret papers out there?

Ooops. I did it again, didn't I?

Evocation is not (pt 2)

2011-07-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Evocation has gotten a lot of slack from people.

Evoking the entities seems to almost be considered silly, a waste of time, or dickwaving. Why, oh why would anyone want to evoke an entity when you can just contact it using a means of divination or even astral hearing?

This is probably due to the fact that as a chunk of western magick was broken of it and then watered down into an unrecognizable weak mess, (kinda like budweiser compared to real beer) a ton of juveniles, or people who never got beyond that stage, wanted to evoke things as a proof.

Originally, the reason you evoked something was to make sure you actually got what you wanted to be there.

Some of my readers will be familiar with Afro-traditions. You will be aware that in Haitian Voudu the congregation dances together with the priests and thus anyone can become possessed, BUT because anyone could be possessed people are worried that someone might be faking it. Thus the Lwa, when they come down, not only say secret things and give signs, they also do things the person coulnd't do on their own. Sit on machetes, rub peppers on their genitals etc.

Now, from the point of view of the still living tradition that works with these entities, why would you want to evoke them?

Well, lets start by the fact that they are frickin' Demons. They are high up (or down) the specific chain. From the point of view of the tradition, you don't know for sure that you got that specific demon unless that demon shows itself. before that it can be a shade, an elemental or a lesser demon or anything else for that matter.

Just to put things into perspective: To simply communicate with a demon using a pendulum is to the Tradition the same insult as if you would have started to call upon Orisha during your LBRPs and about as effective for the original purpose. Or, lets say visualising yourself astrally as a Lwa and assuming their godforms instead of a full on possession.

Best of all? It can and often is, you.

Also, if I put it mildly, the purpose of evoking a demon somewhere is not to ask to get laid or for some luck gambling. If you get the demon to be somewhere for a reason you better know what to do with it.

Hint: some demons in Lemegeton are hoping to become angels again after a set time. ever wondered why?

Now, when we evoke something (unto visible appearance) one of the requirements is that others should be able to see it and the entity needs to be physically present for example to lift things. The thing is, even this can be explained away using mass-hysteria telepathy telekinesis...

Before you actually know WHY you ought to evoke demons, it might be useful being able to do it. The skill to cause mass-hysteria or the level of divine influx needed, or whatever you want to explain it as, is an indication to whether or not you can do what you need to do when Belsebub comes knocking on your door because some of his best generals suddenly grew wings again.

Evocation is not...

2011-07-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting to see how many ways people manage to use items in ways they were not meant to be used.

Steak-knives as screwdrivers, ice-picks as murder-weapons, and high-heel shoes as hammers, you name it.

If you know what you are doing then it is all good and well. You know that a hammer is better them pumps to get those nails in. You know a rapier works better then an ice-pick. You are well aware that a screwdriver won't mess up your screws the way unscrewing them with a knife does.

There are a lot of people who have experimented using the seals of entities from various grimoires as means of empowering magick.

Now, from many perspectives this is extremely smart magick. Not good, per se, but smart.

The tradition the grimoires come from believes that symbols, seals and names and that which they represent or name is the same thing.

Thus

Bear the word

this photo

and a real bear, they are really all the same thing.

So if we are going to be careful to not perform cultural rape let us not forget that there is a western tradition that even 90% of those who claim to follow it aren't even initiated into.

From the point of view of the tradition that the grimoires belong to this is what happens with the example of the bear.

If you use the symbol to just communicate with the bear you are basically standing at the entrance of its cave shouting things and probably smelling it or seeing its eyes or shadow, but the bear remains in the cave.

If you use the seal to empower magick, say as a chaosmagician you use the seal, or maybe you want to use the seal so you burn it and add it to a bag of talismans. What are you actually doing from the point of view of the Tradition?

Well, let's say your goal is t get the bear to go to a clearing and scare away some pesky dogs hat are disturbing your picnic. (And you forget watching Yogi Bear and don't consider he will steal your pic-a-nic basket)

So, you can sit down with the sigil and communicate

::You shout roughly towards the cave:::

you evoke the bear

::You go to the cave, show it your Bear-paw authority card instruct it in what to do and walk back with it and then see it chase away the dogs, but maybe steal your basket as well::

you do what chaoists, hoodooists and members of the Tradition Grimoires belong to do with a seal

::You sneak into the cave, collect some of the bears hair and shit, maybe grab its paw and then you take all this into the clearing and use it to scare the dogs away with::

Ok, I realise my metaphor is a bit strained. Point is though, using the seals without involving the entity is smart.

1 you don't have to deal with the entity directly, unless it wakes up

2 often you simply just believe more in your own magick and the seal doesn't do squat

3 you get all the benefits from accessing the entity but,hopefully none of the downsides

Why its not really Good magick?

well, firstly, the "Bear" might wake up. He won't like that you shaved him to use his hair. Also, he might actually be friends with the dogs you chased away, and if he would have been woken up and asked nicely he would not have agreed. Guess what happens next time you try and sneak into his cave?

Maybe he really likes what you did and wants you to do more of what you did. Shaving is hard Guess what happens next time you sneak into the cave? Will there always be dogs waiting?

The tradition the grimoires come from has much better, efficient and powerful images that can be used instead of the demonic seals.

The images of the decans, the 28 mansions just to give an example

People often don't know how to properly use the symbols. Guys, in the same way as most of you would not feel comfortable walking into a Voudu peristyle in rural Haiti and then dumping a frozen chicken unto a veve in the middle of a fete, stealing some of the corn for use in rituals and then escaping (doubt you would live through this, but lets pretend, eh?) it might be smart knowing that certain signatures would never, ever have been used on their own.

So if you want to print the seal of varcas on a candle you are burning, if you are creating a talismanic bag with items in it relating to a force and you really think that dumping the sigil of a demonic entity in there is what is needed to enhance the spell, by all means do it.

But be aware that it might be considered rude by the entity.

Oh, and never, ever use the heptameron seals without their angelic supervisors. It is not a safety measure, the entity works in symbiosis. You will not get the result you want because you are trying to use a half of a whole.

I know you can get results but trust me, its better with the whole.

Or you could just print and eat every single one of the 72 goetic seals from lemegeton.

Oh, charge them with a mix of sperm and your blood first then eat them.

Yum.

Religion?

2011-07-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

A being that finds enlightenment will try and share that enlightenment with others.

Depending on the mental makeup of that being, the mystery received through enlightenment can come through in 3 ways.

1 In the purest form. This is referred to as someone who has beheld the mystery and becomes a living link to the mystery.

A being who beholds and becomes a living link to the mystery is free from all cultural notions and can bring others to the realization of the mystery by whatever means that person needs it.

Christian Rozenkreutz and Martinez Pasqually for example both suggested that one should take up the dominant religion of the country wherein one resides. This is so that one may understand enough for the cultural symbols present in the mind of the locals so one may use those symbols and crutches in the guidance of these souls. It is measured work.

2 Strongly coloured by the social cultural, religious and psychological makeup of the individual. These people behold the mystery but are unable to see it in its entirety and interpret it from a point of view they are familiar with. This is naturally a degradation of the mystery as the nature of the mystery is that it is beyond cultural social and religious forms.

These beings sometimes become living links to the mystery and manage to fully understand it in time. Often they spend their life having created a new religion or a new form of an old one since that was the context through which they understood it and trying to help people to behold the mystery but only from the point of view from which they themselves saw it.

Ever wonder why Jesuits who have performed the spiritual exercises of Loyolla are so devoutly certain Catholicism is the way to go?

3 Beings that behold the mystery but have no bloody clue what they experienced. Sometimes they don't even have a cultural context to place it into.

People performing rituals or mystical practices without guidance, who do drugs and experience spiritual peak experiences all fall into this category.

They have seen the outer mystery, or one of the manifestations of the mystery.

These people often become enamoured by the technique or thing that got them there first.

A true spiritual master is a being from the 1th category who is guiding people there.

the 2nd category is most of your prophets and spiritual leaders

the 3rd category is your random practitioners, groupies, druggies and culties.

A fun way to talk about religion is to state that there is someone from the 1th group who sets out trying to teach someone else but for whatever reason the other person is a thick bastard, or the being dies.

So the person being taught thinks that just because the master was using jewish or hindu symbols to try and explain something, or a parable that the metaphor IS the message.

This way you have a traditional school formed where the true message is lost, where a religion, the set of rules, are followed but there is no enlivening spark.

Often the enlivening spark can be reinserted but unless done with enough fervor, the mystery will only come back slightly veiled and the people who behold it will interpret it through the symbols.

More dangerous is it when a being from the 2nd category who are already enmeshed in some socioploitic set of rules (religion) and then experience part of the mystery, don't quite get it and then assign universal validity to their specific interpretation of it.

Christians who through certain exercises become so convinced that Christ is god, not from a universal yeheshua, redeeming force point of view but a personal saviour evangelical point of view that they are happy to say, quote the pope who sent Crusaders against some cities and villages in europe "kill them all, god will know his own."

Crowley did the same when he received liber al. Congrats uncle Al, secret western orders have known for roughly 500 years, that we have historical evidence of, what you think is news in 1904, because you don't listen to one of the most important GD lessons> take everything gods, godesses and other astral crap say to you with a pinch of salt.

If Crowley wasn't in egypt and other astral forces were present and his mind would have been filled with different symbols, he would not haved received liber al the way he did. He would have channeled a tantric text, or a Christano Gnostic one, or maybe even an alchemical treatise, or if he was less full of himself he would have realised that he has a heavily veiled format of the mystery and that he should understand it in its pure form. But hey, not everyone can ttruly be enlightened. Karma and whatnot.

Example: Gnosticism is not Christianity. Gnosticism can be explained using the terms dreamed up around Constantins time. Yet in the middle ages we have neo gnosticism in the form of the Cathars.

When you experience something it needs to be a Universal experience. Your cultural interpretation is irrelevant.

This is why the true sages of old and now can talk to eachother and agree whereas the rabble are fighting over what type of pasta with which sauce the the prophet(ess) actually ordered the monks to eat and whether or not consumption of onions is Krishnaic or not

The house metaphor

2011-06-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Imagine being in a house.

You are surrounded by servants, parents, family and a massive garden.

This is the world. Your parents the butler and everyone here are symbols for various forces.

If you break a vase you might get told off.

When your parents are away maybe the Butler is allowed to punish you by confining you to your room.

The servants the Butler, your parents and the rules you have are simply there to protect you as a child. If you never grow up you will need to follow these rules.

When various steps in your spiritual journey arise you might have various ways of dealing with your situation.

1 You could run away from home. Escape. If you succeed good luck, but if you go back you will be punished. (reincarnation.... )

2 If you fail and you are found out you will be put under closer scrutiny

3 You can make yourself invisible to the staff. This is in a way the mystery of mysticism. You don't bring attention to yourself and can mostly get away with things as long as you don't overstep your boundaries.

4 You could enter various savoury and unsavoury contracts with different members of the staff or possibly bring in staff from the outside that are on your side

4 you can simply, grow up.

as a grown up, you'll realise that the nasty Butler who had the power to punish you will politely nod and bring you tea and cakes when you snap your fingers and the house will be a home you rule as its rightful heir instead of a prison.

I'm sure you can translate the metaphor into spiritual practices for yourself.

(yes, still scheduled posts so comment moderation might be slow)

Of Gods and Men

2011-06-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

Religion and mysticism do not go hand in hand. There is no such thing.

It is not possible to be religious in any sense of the word at all that most people understand by that term and claim that one is following an esoteric mystic tradition.

If you find yourself following a religion you are not allowing the mystery of mysticism to fully unfold.

If you find yourself being "chosen by a deity" which is so popular within neopaganism, then you are not transcending certain forces.

The most important lesson with mysticism is that the religious symbols are there to point you in the true direction of spiritual truths. Not because the outer forms should be the ones worshipped.(1)

(1)This doesn't mean that there are no spiritual entities.

(Posts still pre-scheduled due to busy times.)

If the soup nazi was a gnostic

2011-05-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

It seems there is a confusion between what the difference is between the esoteric and the exoteric strands of Christianity.

If I got a coin everytime someone complains to me that Gnosticism is dualistic or that the myths are difficult to swallow, or the fact that its confusing there are so many different myths, I would probably have enough money to build my own church.

I think I can safely try and not have verbal diarrhea in writing this time around and simply state the obvious.

If you swallow the myth, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim, or any other religion for that matter, then you are following the religion. To believe, accept and follow you need faith.

If you would swallow one of the gnostic myths, as so many, many do, then you are not actually a Gnostic. Following the Christian doctrine and believing in it fully, you are not a Theosopher.

The myths serve a purpose, in the same way as certain Tools or magical processes do. They give you an approximation a way to make sense of the inner processes.

If you believe in any specific gnostic myth in the same way as a fundie believes in the second coming of christ, if you think that any revealed text to be truthful, then you are doing a very very good job. Of being a Psychic, but Gnostic you are not.

(Posts still pre-scheduled due to busy times.)

Tools for the common man

2011-05-21T03:59:00.000-07:00

To avoid having to write the same email over and over again:

Most people do not actually want to learn magick. Most people do not actually want to get knee-deep into western esotericism. What you think you know about the esoteric tradition, what you have read in books, on blogs, that is still exotericism. Even I am not talking openly about many things here as I am not an idiot.

The truth is, most just want to mess about with parts of the system.

I have met many who should just shut up, and fit into society.

I have met many who spend years of their life doing theurgy and hating every moment of it because what they actually WANT is religion. But they have been indoctrinated by the "books claiming to the esoteric" that religion is bad as it is exoteric. That the smart people, the people who understand postmodernism, and "spirituality" who want to get somehewhere in life and with the "work" do not follow exoteric religions.

The exact same goes for people doing mystical work.

Same thing with people using the wrong tools for the job. People who deep down are Christian trying to become Buddhist because they get a mental stiffy out of its projected orientalism and doctrine that makes mental sense. (even though they would pray to god the moment i shove a revolver into their mouths...)

People who try to use practical magick to accomplish spiritual ends, people who think praying to Sophia will make them better people. Psychological issues we try to fix with magick even though there are more effective means.... the list is endless and 9 out of 10 seekers are dead wrong in where they are heading.

If you want to have tools to become a better person, if you want to develop a deeper relationship with the source, if you want the bortherhood. If you want to start the path, by linking yourself one way or another to what is one of the few representatives of the existing western transmission outside Europe, become a Mason.

1 You believe in a higher power and you will develop your relationship to it

2 it will show you what a functioning lodge is

3 you will be forced to work with so many other people with different backgrounds that your bubble will open up

4 the Egregore of the order will have a good influence on you

you will NOT learn magic from them. You will not learn alchemy. No. You will simply become part of a massive brotherhood and you will start to work on yourself and you will receive tools to work with.

For most this will be enough. Magick or mysticism for spiritual purposes is not for everyone and you should never ever feel like you HAVE TO do it. Become a Master Mason. Manifest it fully in your life.

Gnostics usually say that Psychics are doing an excellent job. Keep up the good work :P

Even if you want to learn goety, thaumaturgy or theurgy this will give you a good grounding, and certain things you might be able to find in books and certain things there are groups for.

Read EVERYTHING you can get a hold of from Evola. Enjoy.

If you seek a more spiritual approach: Go to a monastery of your faith for a while. Preferably 2 weeks. Pray. If you do not believe in God because you think she is a silly notion then how the hell do you propose to become a mystic?

If you truly honestly feel that you want to spend your time and energy developing a further relationship with the divine?

Read Theosophia : Wisdoms Children and start to have a practice.

Find out if there is a local Martinist group you may be able to join, seek initiation from one of them accepted by the others, use the tools and be aware that there is no further goal then Universal Reintegration.

If none of this is what you want, if you just want those sixpacks and get laid, then do what the rest of the world does;

Stop bitching about spirits, stop sitting for hours meditating without moving, stop doing rituals for some odd end. Get a haircut. Start to work out. Get an education for the job you want and live and enjoy life fully. With as many pretty pentagrams or crosses for decoration as you may or may not want. The Esoteric tradition is not self help.

For goodness sake.

(Posts are scheduled due to busy times. Comments might take longer to moderate and publish or reply to then usual.)

What do you want?

2011-05-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

Many find magick and the esoteric fascinating.

Some are attracted by the idea of visible effects. Some want to break the code and have more power. Some are loosers who have shit lives and want to escape into a world where they mean something and can do a career out of being initiated into something.

All reasons are equally valid. You can find a nice religion masquerading as something deeply esoteric. Some need that. Others just want to be normalised.

Write down the answers to the following questions:

"What do I believe about the world, its creation its purpose and my place in it."

(Make it into an essay. It is worth it.)

What is my relationship to :

God

Myself

Nature

Other people

(again, essay)

What is it that I am looking for?

(To learn to do 99,9% success love spells? To learn how to dominate people? To have a better relationship with god, myself, others, the world?)

What completely mundane things can I do to accomplish this?

Get a social life, a career, actually swallow my stupid projections about the outer rules of the faith, stop praying to God dressup (cough most neopagans cough) or in Drag (cough goddess centered wicca cough) and actually just go to church?

Once you have written down the above, you have a plan. You might realise this is all very fun and interesting but nothing more then an interest. Thats fine. It is OK to be interested in things and not make it into your life. I like Top Gear and nice cars. I'm not a mechanic. I am interested in natural sciences and read a lot about animal behaviour and I even know a lot of fun trivia about animal life, yet I do not aspire to be the next Sir David Attenborough.

If you just want to be a Darren Brown, thats OK. If you realise you are a social misfit and you were just looking for an alternate reality to share with your friends, that also fine because now you are aware of it. If you realise you want to experience mystical states you finally will start to pray instead of doing magick, and if you want to evoke demons you will know that now you can stop meditating for hours a day and feel bad when you miss your meditation because evocation and meditation are two skillsets with as much in common as I have with a puppy.

(Posts are scheduled due to busy times. Comments might take longer to moderate and publish or reply to then usual.)

With feeling?

2011-05-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have a theory :it could be demons....?

I have a theory :it could be bunnies.

There are 2 sides to ceremonial magick, theurgy and thaumaturgy. If you focus too much on theurgy you become stuck in using magick only to progress on a spiritual path towards enlightenment and refuse to use magick to find a job for example, but you get a cool alchemical process. This also leads to constantly being unsure where the subjective/objective line goes. It might even make you look down upon people who do practical magick, believing that they are deluding themselves. This also leads to the dark side of the force.... Err I mean the psychological model of magick.

If you only do thaumaturgy you become a devout believer in a specific set of rules like Lisewski, Greer or Warnock, very good at manipulating the coincidence, or however practical magick works, but then one is still stuck on this side of the fates and one misstakes the rules and thinks the symbol is the signified not the signifyer. This also leads to the dark side of the force.

Demons, angels, signified or signifiers? Tools for our internal life or separate entities? When we work theurgy do we contact the same spirit as when we do thaumaturgy? The truth of the matter might surprise you.

Its not angels. Its not demons.

Its

Bunnies?

Bunnies!

Do both. Theurgy plus Thaumaturgy= fun. Simple scientifically proven equation.

This way you can work out why they need carrots.

(Posts are scheduled due to busy times. Comments might take longer to moderate and publish or reply to then usual.)

The brain

2011-05-03T04:08:00.000-07:00

I was recently honored to be invited to a reading group where practical spirituality was discussed. The head of the group is a resident fellow, 80 or more years of age. We also had 2 psychologists, a professor of philosophy and a science doctor join us.

The fellow in charge of the group thought we would enjoy discussing the recent headways made in the field of Neuroscience linked with meditative practices.

I will not bore you with the details of the 4 hour talk.

The short version of the story is:

The researchers have found two types of "meditation."

1 Active

2 Passive

Active meditation is characterised by what in academia is referred to as magickal practices. Possession by spirits, exorcism performed by Bon Buddhists, Tantrics removing curses and evangelicals speaking in toungues.

Passive meditation is when the meditator is fully focused inward, whether sat still, performing a tea ceremony or performing the orthodox Jesus prayer.

The scientists found a few interesting things.

In cases of active meditation, the meditators felt themselves to be vessels or conduits of something beyond themselves, their brain halves started to mirror eachother more and the back side of the brain is enlarged and hyper active. The practitioners are very "situated" in where they are and feelings of power are reported though it is power harnessed not owned.

In cases of passive meditation, the area of the brain we usually call the third eye is the only active part, it also grows and the rest of the brain is strangely, FULLY shut down. This removes all aspects of language and we are unable to experience anything but unity as the parts that understand ideas of Space are not in use. Practitioners experience what is referred to as Unio Mystica, divine union with all.

Why is this interesting?

Firstly, practices have a clear physiological effect.

Secondly, no matter how bad you are at one, practice DOES make perfect.

Thirdly, it shows that a varied practice, contemplation and performance will develop your faculties.

Last, it shows that some of us are more drawn biologically to one way of working over another and it does explain why you might feel difficulties with certain inner or outer practices.

Persevere. The brain is elastic, like molten plastic.

(Posts are scheduled due to busy times. Comments might take longer to moderate and publish or reply to then usual.)

2011-04-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

My own research interests when it comes to the western esoteric tradition are very clear and concise.

I do not think we need to worry about reinventing the wheel when it comes to the Royal Art. The Western esoteric tradition is still alive and kicking and there are real living traditions in

-Gnosticism. That can truly give you Gnosis and free you so you may return to the pleroma

-Evocation. Living traditions closely allied with arabic magick that have real effects and is designed to elevate the practitioner and the world.

-Theosophy/Rosicrucianism. How to be a living prophet and parttake of heaven.

-Theurgy/Alchemy. The creation of the stone and the attainment of that which hermetic and alchemical texts speak of.

-Mystical work. Self explanatory really.

-Folk Magick. Hidden in central europe and in the still highly Christianised parts, but it does exist as a living tradition.

But what are we missing? The Western Esoteric Tradition, as the umbrella term, is not that hot with what Agrippa refers to as natural magick. This little tidbit of the Western corpus is all but lost. A lot of it made its way into the USA during the great migrations. A lot mixed with what later became Hoodoo with its southern feel and 90% africna origins (Obeah anyone?).

We have lost most of the Roman work with the local spirits. Angels and Demons is one thing, but what about the actual missunderstood nature spirits? The Exu of Kiumbanda? the Lwa like beings of Haitian Voudu?

Chaosmagick tried and failed in kickstarting the practical aspects of the Western esoteric Tradition as it misstook Theurgy for Goety.

The church is of course to blame for this, the massive dualism created in the 11th century and perpetuated since then by western "science" (Science Deified and Science Defined is an excellent book to start at for those who do not know just how messed up western science is).

We can, however rekindle the flame and link the river of our tradition to some still fresh wells without cultural appropriation.

Examples include:

If you work in a tradition where you work with Godforms, get to know them in a more shamanic way. Get a frickin' statue and set up a shrine for the deity. Learn to write its name in Hieroglyps (veve anyone?) and then offer it some food. heck give it blood if you want what do I care. But read less books and go with what it says sometimes.

Look into hoodoo. Don't try and become a Rootdoctor whilst living in France. But read up on it, understand how and why they use herbs and objects the way they do, then look at the greek magical papyri, look into The Magickal Practices of Roman West. Go to some museums and look at the artefacts. Study Ficino and his books on medicine- See? and already the correspondences will make more sense.

I believe that it is possible to rejuvenate all aspects of the tradition without falling into the trap of cultural appropriation, the need to join all sorts of traditions we are culturally not prepared for or reinventing the wheel badly. (post 60s evocation gives me the creeps).

Approaches to magick

2011-04-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

You can follow the rules of the world.

This is what in the Western tradition is referred to as natural, or magick belonging to the elemental world.

I like to call this magick Goetia, :)

It is the level of work where Hoodoo tricks work. It is spells that work no matter what you believe. It is practical magick where you interact with the forces of this world. The Dead the never living. That stuff. Here is where the real power to affect the world lies. Here is where miracles happen, where you burn a candle and a job will come to you without you lifting a finger. Where an evil eye will make you vomit and shit brown water for days even if you didn't even see the eye.

There is religion in this level, there is magick as well.

(I would also like to point out that outer alchemy fits in rather nicely here too.)

The second level is Thaumaturgy(Theurgy)

This is what is usually called Sublunar magick.

the key here is that Theurgy and Thaumaturgy are the same thing. Thaumaturgy means "Miraclework". The difference is what you use your ceremonial magick for.

Do you ask the gods and spirits of the sky to make it rain? To smite your enemy, or do you ask them to liberate you from the cycle of rebirth?

The more philosophical aspects of this type of magick are often labeled Theurgy and the more effect focused aspects are called Thaumaturgy. They are however sides of the same coin and a true Magician who works with one should work with the other. I would like to add a third part, "using the coin to pay with" ...

It might be worth pointing out that Thaumaturgy, when used from an alchemical/liberatory context takes on a slightly different approach. Then, one should always be aware of the process being undertaken. In this case inner, real effects are taking place that are helped onwards by outer forces whether intelligent or blind. Thus the inner process is linked with outer reality, allowing the microcosm to mirror the idealized version of a restored macrocosm. It is, however important to separate the alchemical process from the outer reality lets one fall into the its all in your head trap. A chinese alchemist performing inner alchemy will reach stage X in their journey and be confronted by a specific golden child. The western inner alchemist, who happens to use theurgy also comes to stage x but s/he will instead experience Mikael... Evola is very clear on this and experience along wth comparative studies show this as well.

Thus Theurgy and Thaumaturgy use the same form, yet have different points of focus, however they work with the same forces and should be mastered on both levels. Like TaiChi or Qi Kung. Both meditation and inner alchemy and a martial art.

These two together is often called "ceremonial magick". Not the stuff you're thinking of, no. I mean magick where religion and pure magickal technology is intertwined. Often today, what people call ceremonial magick is Goety in drag.

The greek magickal papyri, the rituals of the ancient Egypt, Roman and Greek magick, most tantra, Dao shih etc. are clearer images of this style of work.

Thaumaturgy/Theurgy works one step removed from the world. This is godwork. Its main tenet is that you influence divine beings that will then do something for you.

The rules here are not as important as with Goetia as you are working on the level lower then the material. The closer you get to alchemical theurgy the less do the rules count as the symbols become only relevant within context When using the same energies for thaumaturgy, suddenly the rules matter more. However the specifics of this argument will be the subject for a later post.

Goetia is linux. You need to know what you are doing.

Theurgy and Thaumaturgy is like windows or mac. You are working with symbolic representations of the forces, a direct link to the realm of platonic ideals.

Problem is, you are working with the same platonic ideals that want you to stay in their realm...

Goetia and Theurgia are not lower or higher. It is different ways of interacting with ALMOST the same forces.

See it as two highly intersecting circles that only differ in 2% of their overlap.

With a lot of work with Goetia, you start on the path of learning the rules to bend them and make them do what you want. If you do this enough you will still get in harmony as seeing the code all the time will make you more in tune with it.

Goety is the Bottom up approach and Theurgy is the top down approach.

When you work with Alchemical-Theurgy you might still get good at thaumaturgy, but chances are you will not be as good as someone who works with pure Goety when it comes to specific requests, in the same way as a Goet might not be able to do all your cool stuff or that somene who focuses on thaumaturgy might miss out the inner alchemical work that could follow if thye focused on the inner alchemical aspect and did some theurgy.

If you want the company to change the fonts in their letterhead, who is best to ask: walk down to the cafeteria as a cublicle slave to the guy who gives you free coffee in the cafeteria (Goety) or as head of communications tell the CEO that the font is incorrect and then make a press-release that from the 1tyh of next month the font used is helvetica. (Thaumaturgy).

Thaumaturgy will make sure the company is generally more fair, or doesn't move offices or give cheap bikes to its employees, Goety will always get free coffee from the guy in the cafeteria, never have to remember the doorpass as you know the maintenance code the mailman uses and you will get that one ergonomic chair when Sue goes on sick-leave because she will personally find you and let her use her chair for the next 9 months.

Thaumaturgy still has its rules, but the rules of the higher realms.

Magia

Magia is the elusive sum that that is beyond the sum of its parts.

it is Goetia, Thaumaturgy and Theurgia united and made into a unity.

It is where will alone changes the world.

Not setting fire to a car using a molotov cocktail (Erisian magic)

Not by using goetic magick (I'm looking forward to Balthazar's Your car on fire jinx writeup)

Not by offering a nice bloody liver soaked in gasoilne then set fire upon the seal of a fallen seraph commanding it to destroy that car utterly.

No, you simply want it and it happens.

Like Jesus.

Who may or may not have existed.

Lodges and Groups

2011-04-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

My oh my.

This post started out as a single sentence in my head.

"People who believe that lodges are not needed are exactly what has caused the creation of useless orders and people working alone are the biggest fools around infecting others with their crazy ass ideas."

Phew. That needs a lot of unpacking. Even though it really sums up this post.

"People who don't think orders are needed are what has caused the creation of useless orders."

What is the biggest problem in the western esoteric tradition today? It is that the idea "we are all entitled to our opinion" has spread to the most idiotic level. As someone who studies highschool Newtonian physics actually doesn't understand physics as practiced today by real physicists, the same is true for most people studying Western traditions.

Yet highschool students are not allowed to publish academic papers on Physics.

This same rule doesn't apply to Joe "ceremonial magician" who writes books (75% of which has been published a million times).

(the section called the painful truth)

People who "do their own thing" are most often deluding themselves and living in some mass- hallucination they share with their fellow semi-followers of that tradition.

This is what happens when you visit some random smelly member of say, The O.T.O. who thinks he has recreated the true A.A. system as outlined in LIBER ABA and has been working with Enochiania for the past 10 years. you walk into the room and it looks very magicky. Its dark and draped in velvet. But the room doesn't feel like anything. He then picks out a wand and asks you to feeeeeel the power in it.

Do you comply? Well if you think you are the latest incarnation of magick self-creation then you will because you want him to reinforce your own delusion.

The same is true of a "Martial Artist" teaching Chi punches yet can't do it to the interviewer who is trying to find out if its fake or not.

I have had my black belt for 10 years now. I have competed on an international level. I'm friends with an aikido master who is retirenment age and one of the best Europeans at this gig. A few years ago I wanted to try out his Chi talk. I went at him when he touched me I was touched on the inside, like a switch had been pushed. He managed to evade me, several times.

I have also met people who claim all sorts of fun titles in other martial arts, but when asking them for a friendly bout of MMA they get their asses handed to them, bleeding. Why?

Because what they do is not actually working, it is play acting. (University aikido anyone?)

Do I think that a man who has spent his life in Haiti and has been a Houngan for 30 years is in touch with the same spirits that random Chaosmagician woman in London is whose calling herself a Bokor? Of course not. Because if Houngan send his dead after you or asks his Legba to mess you over, trust me you will be living on the streets in no time. If Ms Bokor in London does the same, maybe you'll catch a cold. (oh, noes, echinacea is so expensive).

When singular practitioners, lost in the astral mists try and teach, they give rise to followers. They have created a system that leads no where as it has been something they have been doing instead of working with the actual Western Tradition (the royal art).

Crowley created the A.A. and what a successful system it is (cough cough)

Regardie, that oathbreaking liar, broke his oaths and published the GD system. What did that lead to? Aside from creating a bunch of Orders and Groups whose only claim to the system was that they read from the books and understood even less of the system he did.

I could take the texts from the Swedish System of freemasonry and start to initiate people in my living room. Would that truly make them freemasons?

Chaoites who are chaosmagicians yet were nowhere near the IOT in its heyday.

So what is dangerous about doing your own thing? Why am I so up in arms about it?

To be honest, as long as you have the Gift and you are only doing material or sublunar work then it is fine, no harm done. You have your intuition and as long as you can accomplish objective stuff you should be fine. The spirits will teach you. This is how its done in many, many living traditions today.

If you are great streetfighter and can take down anyone, you might want to codify what you are doing, see if you can teach it (often you can't) and then go with it, or not as the case may be.

What is dangerous is when a Highschool student working from a Newtonian physics point of view is trying to teach quantum theory to University students.

When I was about 10 or so, one of my friends mother was dying from lungcancer. She was such a lovely lady. She learned aromatherapy and was very much into "healing". One day she asked me if I believed in God. "Do you?" was my reply.

She said she didn't have to believe she knew, "I'll show you something"

She then took my hand. I felt like I was spinning. Then she smiled and the spinning sensation changed directions. she did this a few times.

I was not pretending, I was not expecting anything.

That is evidence. Proof. If they can prove their theories then go ahead, start your own school. However when claiming to follow something and then not doing so is simply lying.

Not cool.

To jump back into a metaphor

Inside this Matrix world there are rules, both on the visible level and the coding level.

You can mess around with that either using a system you have been taught or by the inborn gift of being the one (say there are many the ones)

But to undertake work whose sole intention is to unplug you from the matrix so you can be free and then unplug you from your physical body as well so you can exist both inside the matrix and outside it as pure consciousness needs to be done by someone who has done that themselves.

Otherwise you just end up in zion, eat crap and realise that Trinity isn't as hot outside the Matrix as she is inside it. Maybe the world outside the Matrix is also another matrix?

So, everytime someone complains about the evil nasty big orders and lodges what are they actually complaining about?

Is it an organisation started by someone who thought the same thing they did? "I don't need teachers, I can do my own thing?"

Ohyes. or because they are afraid of the truth and realizing that pretending to do magick isn't the same as doing magick.

Right tools for the job

2011-04-11T02:29:00.000-07:00

LBRP - part 3

I have been thinking whether I should post this or not.

On one hand, I think that if you do your work properly you will have realized this yourself. Then, on the other hand, looking at all the utter bollocks published I think "maybe not".

I want to clarify that this is not an opinion or theory based on reading varioys books. This is 14 years of work with the ritual.

Part 1

Dispelling the illusions:

The Lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram is not a ritual of exorcism. It will not cleanse and purify any space whatsoever.

The LBRP, is as Crowley himself writes, the stone of the wise.

When Crowley wrote the star ruby, it was not simply a thelemic way of banishing.

If there really is something haunting you or your house, th LBRP will not get rid of it. Sorry.

If you are cursed by someone who knows what they are doing an LBRP will not get rid of that.

The LBRP is not a magical circle whose purpose is to create an impenetrable circle of protection.

If an asshole 16 year old finds a nice hoodoo charm to f&ck you over with, you can LBRP as much as you want, that curse will work and you are screwed.

Part 2

Wannabee or actual initiate.

The Golden Dawn system is a system of initiations. It is a mystery school. Few will agree with me on this. (As if I care). If you are not an initiate in the Golden Dawn, you will at most get 20% out of the potential of the system. You can read as much Regardie or Cicero crap as you want. You will not be able to work the system fully. You can get as many of your superb actor friends as you want to do a neophyte initiation for you, you will NOT be an initiate and therefor e you will miss out most of the finer points of the system.

Part x (addendum)

The comparison:

You can read as much about Voudu or Santeria as you want. without initiation you are NOT a Vouduisant or a Santero. Why do you have the audacity to think you are free to use something just because its western?

Part 3

A hint

The LBRP is designed to be used in conjunction with the other hexagram and pentagram rituals and the other rituals of the RR et AC and G.D. system. Within that context it is a cog in the clock, a necessary step for what you are using it for.

Part 4

Everything is True Nothing is True

You can use anything for anything and everything for everything. Re-read all chaosmagickal texts you can find.

'This true,, but not. Chaos is true in isolation not in context.

Alright wise-ass. So The LBRP is what then?

The LBRP has one single purpose:

"To create a sphere of no elemental influence, it creates a microcosmic world for you to perform your theurgic operations and experiments in."

That is all it doesn. Nothing else and nothing more. This is one of the Secrets veiled yet clearly stated about the Stone.

How does the LBRP do this? Clearly not by any specific Objective magick that makes it work no matter what or how.

It works by the symbolism of the Kabbalistic cross where you state and stand yourself between the Mystery and the created world. You then push away all elemental influence towards the four corners of the room.

Imagine having 4 different colored papers shredded on your livingroom floor. The pentagram you draw and project is the broom you use to shove them out. The circle you draw is the eternal circle symbolizing eternity and the angels you call on to keep the erected circle in place for you to carry on with your further work.

The LBRP does not "follow you around". You know the feeling you get when properly doing it? that is because you are in a place where nothing is affecting you. It is an Alchemical laboratory, a vessel that you just cleaned and sealed.

If you are still thinking about stuff from your day, you have not done the banishing properly. If you are worried its not working, you haven't done the banishing properly.

Your microcosm is where you can perform the operations of Theurgy (a later post) and theurgy is a way for you to interact with the things beyond the platonic forms of being using symbols that you have decided upon.

Now why doesn't this get rid of the Djab I send after your ass, the jinx your sisters boyfriend who is 16 threw on you or the dead grandma who got raped and killed in your livingroom?

Because you are just in a panic-room. THEY are still out there waiting.

If its simple elememtal beings, Gnomes, small liquids, larvae or general elemental wibes, then yeh, sure they will dissappear by a simple pentagram (that you know means what?) and your intention to keep them out. Anything more complex? May I suggest you have a think to WHY there is a purifying and cleaning with water and fire in the neophyte ritual and why priests sprinkle holy water and why burning sage gets rid of shit your silly LBRP can't?

The LBRP is the gateway to working alchemical Theurgy as practiced by the RR et AC. NOT a tool that keeps away stuff from you.

Purrleaze.

Energy ;)

2011-02-25T02:46:00.000-08:00

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.

The light in the darkness

2011-02-19T23:00:00.000-08:00

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?

Belief isn't a choice

2011-02-18T10:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Judge a book by its cover!

2011-02-03T01:14:00.000-08:00

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.)

In your head, zombie zombie zombie....

2011-01-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

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.)

For safe travelling

2010-12-22T03:54:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-12-09T03:21:00.001-08:00

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)

2010-12-02T05:29:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-30T10:37:00.001-07:00

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)

2010-10-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-05T05:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-12T09:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-03T02:03:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-06-03T02:02:00.000-07:00

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?

What is the point of orders anyway?

2010-05-27T08:55:00.001-07:00

Order - bitching.

Something that really gets my goat is people bitching about how Order’s do not work, that they don’t deliver what they’re meant to and if you really want to be good at magick or need to develop spiritually you can’t rely on them.

This is inane bullshit, and bullshit that is fed by:

1 Those who have no idea what they are on about
2 Those who have belonged to one of the self-help or personal glorification orders (see below) and are right when it comes to those specific orders
3 Those who have a serious problem with any authority.
4 Those who listen to others instead of finding things out on their own.

There are quite a few western orders in existance today that were created by one or two people who schismed away from another order before they grasped anything of the deeper aspects of the teachings. Needless t say their orders is at best a waste of time, at worst actively bad for you.

There is more to the world of “organised” esoteric teaching groups/orders than Crowley derived lines (*cough wicca*) and 70’s revival McOTO orders and orders started by someone who is not in possession of ANY secret teaching, let alone the Royal Secret.

For a start, just look at the various Tibetan tantric lineages, the Indian tantric orders. The Sufi lines. The oral teachings given in some of the western orders. The houses of Vodoun. The magickal families that follow the regla de ocha, all the people scratched in Palo. These are all "orders" as well and they seem to work very well indeed. Then how the f*ck can we have the audacity to believe there is nothing like this in the west? Do we hate our own cylture this much?

But, you cannot find information or representative of every group and order that exists. Not even in the USA and especially not on the world wide web. The orders that do have a large presence are, to be honest, usually those who have strayed far, far, away from the metaphorical source. How many of us have studied, in deep detail the Asiatic Brethren? Ambelains orders? because here in the West we had this fantastic thing called "world war" (Twice, even, yeeey) and before that we had enlightenment, During it modernism, and all this overshadowed first by the tyrannical, at times Holy mother Church, it its political aspect and the Monarchy, and today, politics and SCIENCE.

Did you know that:

-There are lineages and orders that have nothing to do with the post-masonic Anglican/Brittish occultist streams.
-Not every organised order is a masonic derivative, because if they were, then all of them would follow the "blindfold - remove blindfold - give signs and passwords" scheme that Greer seems to think happens inside every magickal lodge.

(I imagine Greer hasn't heard of the "meet your initiator in a catholic church have your hair cut, receive an angellic name delievered to you by your initiator who is in prophetic extasy, a portion of the philosophers stone and bleed upon the altar to link yourself with the saint whose relic is enclosed in the stone" scheme.)

Oh, yes, and most importantly, IF all orders were derived from masonic sources, then they would be *useless* and cheap. They would just be "poor mans lodges", wouldn't they? Cola light doesn't contain sugar. A Masonic derivative order, would, logically, miss out someting that it is the derivative off... and you should just go and be a mason in a nice massive lodge instead of initiating in some crappy derivative, which is never as good as the orignal anyway, because well, compare someones basement or a rented room, with no marble pillars and 17th century furnitue with a proper hall.

Just look at the pomp even in this country style cheap looking hall.

Enough said. If you belong to an order that has masonic pretenses, you are better off actually being a mason. But lo and behold, not everything under the sun is a masonic derivative! There are many orders that hid as so - called high degree systems on top of the masonic system. They are thus not really derivatives, but parasites that use the masonic scene as a hunting ground for potential initiates. To be honest, historically speaking this scheme worked remarkably well 100-300 years ago. Today, I'm not so sure that this is still the way to go because the masonic housing that was keeping the groups safely hidden from the profane and made "the hidden group" easily accessible to those with an esotteric bent who were all maosns anyway, probably scares most people off nowadays in out modernist and post-modern society.

But back on track on this rant. My rant is with people who belittle orders and systems and why they are wrong. Thereby getting my goat. That i was saving for a curry. ;)

As I’ve stated before, any group you work with should have a clearly stated intention that tells you what the Purpose of the initiations and its system is. Then you can look at the people further along the path and the masters of the lineage/order/whatever. If they do not exhibit signs of having attained what the system promises then there is something wrong and you need to flee.

Let me bring this down to real life using my favourite verbal tool. A metaphor.

If you start boxing or a martial art, or even running, you will have an instructor. Even as a beginner you can look at your instructor. If he is profficient in what he himelf is trying to teach, then he is the correct person to teach it. A pudgy wuss who gets beaten up every friday night is not the guy you want to learn Muay Thai from, is it?

In the same way, if you want to learn Aikido, you do not sign up for Iaido. if you want to kick and punch someone you sign up for Muay thai, not for Judo. The two sports look different, teach you different things, have different techniques, beliefs and come from two differet parts of the world.

Behold The kicking action
Behold the throwing action.

In exactly the same way you need to be aware of what the Tradition/order/Lineage claims to give you and then you need to see if it actually does. If not, why not? Is it because of the specific local people you are in touch with? (They could be a fraud or just incompetent teachers). Or is it becasue the system/tradition order simply fails in delivering its claim? have politics arisen that see to it that nobody progresses beyond the first few steps? Is it because the knowlegde has been lost?

Let me give an example, again, this time from an actualy order:

Please read the below point from the old manifesto of the O.T.O. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/lib52.htm)

"4. The aims of the O.T.O. can only be understood fully by its highest initiates; but it may be said openly that it teaches Hermetic Science or Occult Knowledge, the Pure and Holy Magick of Light, the Secrets of Mystic attainment, Yoga of all forms, Gnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakta Yoga and Hatha Yoga, and all other branches of the secret Wisdom of the Ancients.
In its bosom repose the Great Mysteries; its brain has resolved all the problems of philosophy and of life.
It possesses the secret of the Stone of the Wise, of the Elixir of Immortality, and of the Universal Medicine.
Moreover, it possesses a Secret capable of realizing the world-old dream of the Brotherhood of Man."

Compare this mission statement with the current one available on their website (http://www.oto-usa.org/):

"O.T.O. is dedicated to the high purpose of securing the Liberty of the Individual and his or her advancement in Light, Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Power through Beauty, Courage, and Wit, on the Foundation of Universal Brotherhood. "

Now, it seems to me at least, that these two statements are quite different. Something would tell me, even if I didn't know for certain, that "teaches Hermetic Science " is not anylonger the most important aim of the order.

Now, to wrap u my little rant:

Find out what the group/tradition/system/order promises:

This will in actual fact be any one or more of the following

-teaching you a magickal skill with a Goetic, thaumaturgic theurgic or magianic element

(Griffin GD, SRC, Elus Cohen, Houses of Voudoun, Chaosmagick etc )

-Teaching you aspects of a tradition, i.e. Knowledge

(GD as an outer order,)

-Giving you access to Empowerment/lineage/succession, the authority to work with specific things (Minor and major orders with an Apostolic succession in churches with valid succession, Voudoun, tantric and buddhist Lineages)

-Promises Mystical Enlightenment through religion, exo/esoteric, through the aid of physical or mental exercises or simply throgh initiations/ascetic practices

(orders linked to churches, The orthodox jesus prayer, meditative practices and schools and initiations, many magickal orders, inner alchemy etc)

-Self-help / tribe / giving you something to belong to

(Many, many groups are nothing, or at least, not much more then self help groups, working to create more virtue or "balance" in your life, helping Mankind cope with the enlightenment era by replacing the family and tribe with an order or maybe let you get over your alcoholism. The A.A and N.A. being PERFECT examples. Hells angels. Blue lodge masonry falls here as well. I'm sorry, but its true. Quote from the website of the swedish system "The Grand Lodge of Sweden is an organisation, where men from various walks of life meet in a Christian spirit to fully develop their personal maturation potential, and in dignified circumstances to meet fellow men.")

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

Then Be carefull with

1)Charlatans. I will initiate you into palo. for 5000$ .... Riiiiight

2)Groups created by egomaniacs that only exist for their self-gratification. Thelemic Golden dawn, anyone? Or the AA? >:D

3)Groups that do not belong to the mainstream tradition from which they claim descendence Join my druidic kabbalistic hermetico sexmagickal masonic order for Women inside mens bodies of the Godess! I stole these papers and we started a powerfull lodge of Masonic kabbalists! The (real) other masons don't know what the TRUE secrets are!

4) Naive but good willed people who promote one of the above without realising. I come from a long line of witches since before X. Note: These are the poor peeps who end up order hating the most once they realise what they've done

5) groups with good intentions that still misslead. many groups fail to realise they are self-help, because they use magick, or Tribal.

Kenaz Filan makes excellent points these dangers, even though he talks about initiation into Voodoo everything he says about a Godfather/joining a house is true here as well. remmeber this isn't about Orders(TM) but also lineages kabbalah taught by Rabbis etc

In the end, if you are smart you will find "the real deal" whatever you are searching for. If you are aware of the above rules and know, in your heart of hearts what is it you truly want. Screaming at demons does not a balanced person make. Beating your wife is not very Christian, and spending 5000$ on a meditation room is not very ascetic. If you search for brotherhood, friends and to become a better person, you are better of becoming a mason then joining the GD. If you wantt o learn to evoke demons, get a bloody grimoire and get down to business, don't waste years working through D.M. Kraig's Modern Magick.

I hope this has helped at least a biot in shedding light upon the western hidden(=okkult) Tradition.

What is the "Truth"?

2010-05-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking lately on the nature of "Truth" in relation to discussions about paradigms or worldviews. I am not a massive fan of "uncle Al", though he did have some excellent points that he, occasionally, actually managed to convey.

In Liber O vel Manus Saggitae, he writes :

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist.

It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."(bold added by me)

How concise. How well said. If you drop an apple, it will fall. You can exlain that by using quantum mechanics, gravity or by invisible devils putting the apple on the ground, fast. The philosophic validity is meaningless, inconsequential really.

Relativists, especially postmodern relativists claim that, in the end nothing matters because, well, surprise, all is relative.

So, is everything in our heads? Could we place orisha in the LBRP circumference and then ask the blessing of the CareBears(tm) for our rites? Of course not. What you do in a system needs to be internally coherent.

But, you say, but how can people get results, from Enochian which may or may not be a Hoax? How can people get results from Alpha Omega style pyramid enochian magick, or the Simon Necronomicon?!

How come the Chaosmagickians can get results? Shouldn't their system be bullshit, if everything is not in our heads?

My answer to that is, it depends.

You see, as people before me have pointed out, if you do certain things certain things will happen. The problem with pure chaosmagick, not this nonsense you get nowadays but the vision that Pete shared with the rest of the original Leeds cabal, was that it threw the baby out with the bathwater. In the 80s it wasn't easy go get hold of much real esoteric info. Most orders that actually have or had any real access were still hiding under the communist regime or barely recovering from the second world war cullings. The 60s and 70s added their share of bullshit to the mix in the USA and UK. Real teachings were hard to come by. The masons were dying out, and there was no internet. Who cared if a little old russian lady happened to be a Superior Inconnu, a fully reintegrated being who sees God face to face, when she was quiet in Moscow trying not to be killed because she was a Christian? No one.

What was around was what was available in public press. Regardie's oathbreaking book. By the way, he was not present on any other initiation save his own ones so of course no-one shared anything worthwhile with him. Crowleyan stuff. Wiccan stuff. Random chrystal grasping stuff.

People had all these awesome, working models, but that magickal and spiritual technology was hidden away. We only had access to the tip of the iceberg. and that iceberg seemed like the biggest mountain.

The wiccans, thelemites, New O.T.O., random occultists all felt like the world was a big empty place and did not realise they were simply the biggest fish in a tiny-tiny pond. After all, who'd ever heard of sufism, the elu cohen, martinism, brethren of the rosy cross, surviving alpha omega temples, memphis Mizraim, mizraim memphis, memphis, mizraim, scottish rite, rectified scottish rite, Gnostic churches that weren't thelemic, santeria, brujeria, vodoun, candomble, Umbanda etc etc?

Nobody.

You couldn't just go to any library and presto find a thousand books or google everything. We only had what we had, and we were all influenced by this horrid abomination born in the minds of academics: "Postmodernism"

Postmodernism, though useful as a critical theory notion, messes with you because it is the essence of relativism.

Remember Wittgenstein and Russels argument? No?

Check on wikipedia..

In short, one of them states that if you have a box you cannot know, for CERTAIN that there isn't a cat in it. As there is no reality aside from what you perceive. The other one states that, yes there is.

The argument is one about Objectivity versus subjectivity.

Pure, nice old fashioned Chaosmagick states that everything is subjective due to the nature of the cosmos. Therefore, you really only need to convince yourself that something is possible and presto, you can do magick. That is actually the real implication of chaosmagick, Phil's inane humor aside and ignoring Pete's musings and ramblings on providing a scientific explanation as to how magick works.

The WHY is answered by "if you truly believe then it is so because the world YOU live in is fully Subjective."

Ever wonder why Phil is now a Tantric and most founders have gone on to bigger better things?

So, fine, they found the answer to Why magick works, using a postmodern approach. (A christian mystic would say that you can do magick because you are gods image... but hey, lets not be postmodern right now)

But, there was no meaning, no end. Why is the world like this? Well, you cannot know because its subjective. The problem with postmodernism is that it is a dead end. So what did they throw out?

They threw out every spiritual and magickal technology that was not explainable by their postmodern approach. The specific technology I am thinking of, that hurt chaosmagick the most is Language.

Not ouranic-barbaric. Language as a means of communication.

That thing which we signify by a word. If you and me don't mean the same thing, then we are screwed if we are talking about measurements, for example.

By throwing out the notion of the objective real, the possibility to mean the same thing by a signifier vanishes. Because, postmodernism will always rear its uggly head. As long as you work from the point of view that there is no objective reality, we can never agree that you and me actually mean the same thing by any word we say.

My inner academic states that of course that depends which view of things you take, but that is, again the postmodern virus kicking into high gear.

To get back on track.

We know that if you do certain things, certain results follow. We also know that "Why"

this is so can be answered in different ways, and depending on how you answer it, you will end up building a philosophical understanding around it.

What was it Crowley said again?

Oh. Yes, you were warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them (results or experiences)

To understand why this is so, we have to return a bit to language again and postmodernism.

This is because, There IS one truth. One, single perfect Truth. Anyone and everyone who knows this Truth agrees upon it. No matter religion, culture or time, this one single truth has remained. When this truth is what we signify by our words the other knowers of this truth understand what the signified object it. Thus are all great esoteric schools united.

However, we know Chaosmagick works, to a degree. How can we reconcile my above statement, the argument about chaosmagick and this postulated one Truth?

Simple. Postmodernism will help us. It is, all about words.

Because even IF it would be true that reality is fully subjective, it is still possible to, almost accidentally, allow two or more people to share the same subjective reality. This is known as a consensus, or consensual reality.

Put in an easy way: If you and someone else "Experience Something", the nature of that experience and how you subjectively experienced it doesn't matter as long as you can reach a consensus that at a very specific moment in the timeline something did or did not happen.

Or, bluntly: If you and I drop an apple, it will end up on the ground. In both our experiences. We can agree to call this event "the falling of the apple" and as long as we consensually agree to this, I don't care what your subjective experience is of the event, it is enough that we both agree to use the same word or sentence for it because we will signify the same thing.

Following this, academically shaky, argument, it suddenly dawns on us that we actually live in a pretty consensual reality. There is gravity, we are born live and die, if you touch a cat you feel fur.

See? When you just read "touch a cat you feel fur" you knew what I meant. Your subjective experience of what that is like is irrelevant. What I signify with soft might not be the same subjective experience for both of us, but it signifies that specific sensation (whatever that is, seeing as some people see sounds and hear colours) you get when touching a dog or cat.

The result of this is that any system, except a system that claims there can never be a system, will allow you to share a consensus reality, where you end up signifying the same signified object when you speak.

This is why a system needs to be, and usually is, internally coherent and allows people to experience the same results.

Dropping apples work the same way here as in Australia, whether you're a man woman or a tree.

Archangel Michael will have the same thing to tell me as he does to a Philosophus or a spirit conjuror or a Christian monk.

This is because the system of the Christian monk, the conjurer and the G.D. philosophus share the same consensus as to what is meant by Archangel St. Michael.

And as to the annoying question:

How come, then, some people can go years doing LBRP replacing the angels with random, possible made up deities and some people get royally f**ked because they say the name of an afro-american deity?

;)

Maybe it is because what is actually meant by the magickal idea of "intent" can be linguistically read as "signified."

Maybe, the person who uses random names isn't actually signifying those specific deities from africa but is merely using a word some other people use to signify something else with?

Or maybe, just maybe, Postmodernism is bullcrap, and there is an objective reality, in which High Tibetan tantric buddism, chaosmagick and white male middle class western ritual magick are somehow all equally true for some strange obscure reason, without the answer being because its all in your head.

Just a thought.

Refusing to die

2010-05-12T03:26:00.000-07:00

To change. Now, that is scary.

Choosing a different brand, walking down a different street or changing your haircolour or creating a new nickname for yourself. These things are seen as scary by society, your friends, family, loved ones, even enemies. It even scares your Self, 'cause let's face it, most people identify wit their nephesh no matter what.

Theurgy is aimed at changing the initiate. Initiations are aimed at opening doors for them to walk through. Ritually contacting sephirotic planetary angelic beings etc, its all opening doors. But you are the one who has to walk through. In the olden days (TM) if you were caught delivering a lead lamella as a curse into someone’s house you were f*cked. Today people do purifications, baptisms and all sorts of things aimed at changing, but they forget the most important thing. Letting the old die so the new can be born.

Change is good. if you come to me with the clear intention to become "more than man" from a GD perspective, or to Regenerate as a Martinist or to free yourself from the matter as a Gnostic, but then only do your practices in the safety of your own temple and refuse to start to change, well, miracles won't happen. Angels won't manifest over your room and remove your fat, Lightning won't strike to reveal a chest of gold. You need to work and WANT to work for al changes. Initiations give you an opportunity, rituals show you the way and give you the power to do X. But you still need to use your god given right and DO/(which is WILL) that thing. So stop being afraid. you can't change without letting go.

Everyday, die a little. And little by little you will transform. If this is too hard, kill everybody you know, remove all traces of your existence and give yourself permanent amnesia. Oh, right, that’s the insane crazy way. My bad. :)

Here there be Adepts

2010-05-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

What -is- enlightenment and how do we get it? A question that has plagued the minds of sincere and insincere seekers for a long time (since the 18th century or so) and is popping up on the blogosphere nowadays. Many things are easier to describe by what they are not, kind of like god. Enlightenment is not: Walking on water Being able to cause Jesus like miracles David Copperfield magic tricks Darren Brown Mind Tricks Being a Buddha meditating under a tree constantly in short: enlightenment has nothing to do with your current projected idea of what that entails.
The above things are skills, people. Not prerequisites for reaching the highest exaltation possible.
Enlightenment has, in relatively recent years here in the west become either something that we don't speak about since we are oh so postmodern and my experience might not be the same as your experience and everything is equally (un)valid, or we end up expecting previously unheard of proofs for our enlightenment in the form of "powers" or, simply, mythological levels of being. I'm going to let you in on a secret: Bullshit.

Children playing in the Sandbox pretending to go to work like their parents are a good metaphorical comparison. Remember doing that when you were 4-6 years old? Well, that is what most people are doing when they discuss enlightenment.

Also Sod Postmodern thinking. There are very clear levels of the path, no matter system, they can all be linked together and unless my experience is the same as yours there is something wrong with either your or my experience.

-How do we get it- We get enlightenment by accident if we are 1 in a million or by working for it using a system. There is a reason it is called the Great Work. This Working For It" can be done using an exoteric/esoteric religion, philosophy, meditation qi gung or a formal western or eastern mystery school, system of magick or initiatory Masonic body. I am aware that some people follow "their own path". This is usually reinventing the wheel or in the worst case bad scholarship and in the absolutely worst case simply laziness and system-hopping. Like someone doing half a semester of every course in University, but not completing a single one. When following a path, one can often judge its effectiveness by seeing whether or not the path/system delivers what it promises. It is as simple as that. Some systems promise several things that they deliver in stages, whereas other systems only offer one thing that they often, though not always, consider to be the highest achievement. One of the systems that are the easiest for this is laboratory - alchemy, as whatever happens inside the worker is reflected in the lab. (this is a simplistic explanation for the sake of it, people) Thus, if you have managed to make gold you have reached the final stage, and you have the stuff to prove it.

Congrats.

Some systems give what they promise. Others do not. Some systems promise to take you all the way. Other clearly state they will only take you half way there or simply give you better tools to be able to wander the way. But, please stop trying to equate a tool (like being a nice well rounded person) with being enlightened, or one of the stopping points (Tiphareth, extreme religiousness, having a solar helper spirit) with the destination.

Returning to the example of kids playing in the sandbox:
All of us do grow up and most of us can get a job. But what that job is and how we are as persons is individual. The fact that we are working (enlightened) is one thing, how we work, what we do for a job and what we are like is individual.

Now, go out and become adepts instead of speculating like kids and feeling bad that you can't hold down your dad’s job even though you are 6 and a half!

Financial Magick

2010-04-27T01:35:00.000-07:00

How to get rich.
How do I manifest bricks of gold?
How do I get get X?

You work for it.*
I am seriously getting slightly perplexed by the current blogsphere obsession. What is wealth, how to have enough money?

My question is "How lazy are you"

Spend less. Earn more. If you live in the western world, in most cases you have nobody to blame but yourself. Is cooking at home such a chore? Is it simpler ordering food everyday?

One of my co-workers is struggling with money. I don't understand this as we are on exactly the same pay.

Holdon, I can understand it.

She buys breakfast on the way to work.
She buys 2-3 energy drinks.
she buys 1-2 bottles of water instead of using the water dispenser.
She either brings a ready meal from the local supermarket or buys something from the expensive canteen.
Then on the way home from work she buys food in the fastmarket rather than the supermarket that is a bit further away but has cheaper food. (same brand)

On my last count this means that she is 300-400 euro short every month compared to me.

Strange how her choices affect her life.

Some people want a free ride. I know someone who was so busy trying to get off the rat-race that he ended up failing college and dropping out. Now he has sold tiles for the past 5 years. Way to get off the rat-race, huh?

If you want to be self-employed you have to work towards that.
If you want to have a self sufficient farm you need to work to get there and be able to stay there.
Animals don't feed themselves you know.
You have to WORK for whatever you do. Action - consequence.

Your angel is NOT just going to show up. You will not be able to sit down and experience bliss without learning to meditate. You will stay fat unless you eat better and exercise.
You will not meet girls/boys unless you walk out your door and actually meet human beings.

There are ways you can get a ride. But it won't be free. Live off your parents or partner. Unless they are wealthy you are fucking them over. If they're wealthy now you'll be fucked if they die.

A lot of people in the esoteric community are simply unnable to deal with life. Whatever bullshit reasons they have for it... that is what it boils down to.

here are my three magickal secret techniques to help if you feel the world is a harsh place.

1
Learn to deal with life.
-Life tough and sometimes we have to struggle to put food on our table, other times we can buy friends an expensive lunch in a restaurant.

2
Learn to manifest.
-If you want something, do things towards that end!

3
Grow up.
-Nobody will take care of you but yourself.

Once this is done, most magick helping you to get a job, better paid jobs etc will come easier.

(People forget that Karma is real, in a way.
If you spend your money on champagne you won't have money to save up for a winter coat. If you never cook, you are choosing to spend money on restaurants. If you can barely survive, getting a child will be tough. etc)

It is impossible to escape the world and live in it at the same time.
Monks, hermits, etc do not live in the same world as we do. Its great to see the Shaivite eating corpses and havinig no care in the world. Do you really think he wants to hve a wife and an internet connection?

We can contemplate Buddas teachings as much as we want. Especially in our expensive extra room with imported statues designed just for contemplation - then we can have mental breakdowns because our job means we can't spend 2 hours meditating every day (read my sarcasm. feel my sarcasm)

It is fully possible to escape the material world by becominga recluse in an esoteric sense.
Monks/nuns and renounciates exist in all denominations. They can spend all their energy on the divine and usually ignore most of the material.

yey.

But thats not what you want.

You want to have the rockstar lifestyle. But not work for it..... odd.

You figure it out.

*the you in this context is a fictional persona created in order to allow the blog to shift from a lecture to a direct talk to the aspect of the reader that is brainwashed into the western mindset.

Hermetic Gods, Mysteries and magickal syncretism

2010-04-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

In the ancient world magicians would travel to Egypt, or at least claim that they had done so, in order to learn the true mysteries. Most Hellenic-Era magical papyri are mixed with invocations to ADNI, Re, Helios, Apollo and company. Scholars claim that there was an enormous amount of syncretism going on. What was really going on? Were the mages of old so interested that they would have travelled to learn Zoroaster’s mystery or gain initiation into the cult of Re or the Elenusian Mysteries? Were the mages calling upon Ablanathanalba Sohou Phrehelios and Mikal at the same time doing what most modern untrained ceremonialists do (the 777approach) or were they initiates of multiple traditions and knew what they were doing?

Naturally we cannot answer that question. My educated guess would be: "a little bit of both". If you had a Practitioner who was initiated in several systems then of course they could have valid syncretism. In other cases it was probably a misunderstanding leading to the name(s) of a god being misunderstood as a name of a force. Maybe Simon 120 A.D. thought that Ptha was the Egyptian word for "Create" and he wasn't trying to call upon two separate gods at the same time?

The names of ancient gods were often epitaphs, adjectives, synonyms and words used in everyday life as well. Fear was the feeling you got when you were scared it was the word Phobos and the name of the god, son of Ares. our fictional mage Simon 120 A.D. could also have been engaging with Syncretism version 1, 2 or 3 and 4? (explained below)

We cannot know when we study a text whether the practitioner was calling upon one god, and merely listing attributes that happened to be names of other gods as well, if they merely believed that certain gods were given different names in different cultures but were, essentially, the same deity or purposefully syncretised some of them either in nature or for their function. We do know that Rome was a big importer of foreign cults and I have a hunch that Egyptian and Arabic magic would have had the same fascinating "pull" as we westerners felt to Hindu and Buddhist and Tantra related traditions in the 20s and that seems to be the case now with Afro-Caribbean magical systems and religions, Daoism, Tai Chi and so on. Today you will get people trying to mix traditions one of the following ways:

1 Without knowing what they are doing. This is harmless enough as often there is no real magick going on and psychological self induced states are the same no matter the name.

Example: calling upon Venus and Inanna for feminine empowerment

2 Same as 1 above but with actual magick happening by accident or if practitioner taps into something with an “automatized” egregore.

Example: Using the goetia with enochian invocation and charge as per Crowley’s version. Alternatively calling Exu when you want Eshu because you think he is Legba for a rite of a mercurial nature. This can be dangerous in some cases, but is mostly just sloppy magick, or bad mojo.*

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Both above approaches can at times culturally appropriate names and ideas in a manner that is just plain rude. I’m sorry, But you're not a priest of X if you don't have the temple ordination or consecration to back it up, you are merely a Devotee. nothing wrong with that. A bit of an ego bruise but more realistic, no?

Buddhist monks are ordained, protestant priests study at university and shamans serve as healers. Talking to your local genius loci does not make you into a pontifex maximus any more than catholic people are priests just because they have an altar with saints on it in their homes.
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3 Doing Smart and appropriate magickal syncretism as an outsider.

Example: someone picking up the excellent book "Protocols for riding with the Lwa" and then starting to work with their ancestors as it is outlined therein, mixing this with the Greek orthodox veneration of modern canonised saints. If this approach is well researched and done with respect then you can do this even as an unbaptised heathen (*sarcasm* people J)

4 Doing smart magickal syncretism as an insider, someone who has become an initiate of the mysteries/ given licence to work with certain gods/forces/ AND learned some tech that allows you to do the same things as 4 above because you ACTUALLY understand the underlying principle.

Example: material presented in Strategic Sorcery. An initiate of the Golden Dawn tradition who is a catholic and has a tradition of ancestral shrines in their homes can easily understand the TECH behind using veve and interacting with Lwa and apply it to their relationship with the Godforms

And then of course the Ultimate Act of Syncretism

5
Creating a unique synthesis where the result is greater than its constituent part
Example: Mythological source I cannot find: Enlightened dude shows up in Tibet (Buddhist missionary) and converts all the evil spirits (native to local shamanistic religion) so the spirits become bodhisattvas/helpful. Synthesis: Tibetan Buddhism. I apologize for the butchered version of the story and mean no offense.
Example2: Christians mixing pre-Christian Gnostic ideas. Synthesis Christian Gnosticism

Example3: various beliefs from Africa meet in Haiti. Gods from different pantheons are mixed/divided syncretised. Synthesis: Haitian Vodoun.

It seems logical to assume that the ancients engaged in syncretism in the same ways we do today. I am of the persuasion that gods are separate entities. They are complex beings linked to a specific time and paradigm and tradition. If I wish to establish a relationship to a god I will do it on its own terms. I am not advocating reconstructionism or that once a culture is gone its gods are done, but maybe "dead" cultures still had a written language where we can get the "flavour" of the way the gods liked to be worshipped. A god that was constantly worshipped with animal sacrifice during the existence of the culture it belongs to should probably not be approached "through the medium of interpretive dance."

The same rules of syncretism mentioned above regarding gods is also valid for all techniques (tech) and aspects of tradition. As a white European I would be insane to think that following a book on Vodoun is in any way close to going to Vodoun fete every months and being raised in the context. I would be a bigger fool if I started questioning the way a Lwa is described by practitioners and I would be an idiot if I started combining the Veve of two different Lwa in a syncretic approach of Tantric Vooodoooooo (shudder).

However one could spend the time, live in Haiti for 4 months of the year and become Houngan Asogwe if the spirit moves one and still keep ones tantric practice since , lets say, one was also a Tibetan Dzogchen master. If after 10 years of perfecting these approaches one is confident that IT WOULD WORK to combine The veve and then allow possession to happen with the resulting deity and it works, well then, all the more kudos to that person! If this can then be formalised we end up with something on the level 6 of the scale. (awesome)

I believe that syncretistic approach 3-4 are preferable for normal work with 5 being the Holy Grail of Hermetic syncretism. It is for me at least. Personally I think that Syncretism is one of the Defining strengths of The hermetic approach when done on the 4th 5th and 6th levels of my proposed levels of syncretism. (hermeticism as the historical documents would allows us to think about it from Alexandrian times, not the revival of the renaissance)

The hermetic approach must, in a way, by syncretic for it to be alive.

The gods may have been used as simple names of power in some cases but my hunch is that this was in cases of level 1 and level 2 syncretism. There is a devotion present in the texts that has gone missing somewhere along the way. Maybe we need to rekindle the fire of prayer in as modern Hermeticists by injecting some original material into the fold.

Taking the tech of how to treat gods well from Vodoun and Santeria, reinserted into the various hermetic style possessions and spells calling on gods. Let’s look towards The tantric traditions for the ecstatic work. Look at how they work with the Exu and Pomba Gira entities and how this has been syncretised already by the creators of the tradition with the demons from the Grimorum Verum.

Instead of looking up 777 for correspondences for strength look at associations in the general mind and in culture, without it turning into an anything goes approach. There are rules for this. When needing calm you don’t use herbs and spices and incense that remind you of chilli. When you need to get your thumb out, you do not taking cooling baths and contemplate. Its common sense.

The ancients went to the Library of Alexandria. Today the internet is the library. We have libraries. We can buy our books. The ancients who wanted to work with Osiris went off to join his temple for a while. Today, we can read a Tantra formerly untranslated hidden away and shown to initiates only. But we still need to access the egregore the empowerment and the context needed t work it. So fly to Tibet. Find a local wandering Lama.

The ancients engaged in syncretism one way or another. They travelled and the experienced. Or at least they fantasized that they did.

We have the option to walk in their footsteps (real or imagined) so let’s do it.

* I don’t believe there is a "wrong way" of doing anything there is just the stupid way and the slightly less stupid way.

LBRP part two – further Notes

2010-04-19T05:37:00.001-07:00

Why you don’t need to use the LBRP unless you’re an initiate has already been discussed. Let’s look at some understandings of what some opinions are about why you should do it if you ARE an initiate:

Nick Farrell writes in his article (to be found at http://www.auroraaurea.com/?page_id=1988)

First you perform the Cabbalistic Cross. This draws down power from the crown to the feet. It balances and energises the sphere for more important work. It also opens the Tiphareth centre to control the operation.

Next you draw a pentagram between the pillars of the sphere of sensation in front of you. You vibrate the name YHVH, which means “I am what I am” – again aspirational. In other words, you are placing the symbol of the pentagram into your own future and energising it with your own will. In this instance you are looking towards your own portal ceremony where the completed pentagram is unveiled for the first time. The YHVH name is important because you are talking about integrating the elements under the power of spirit.

When we draw the pentagram on the right hand, we are making a statement of who we are ‘now’. The divine name here is Adonai, which means “Lord”. We are saying that we are rulers of ourselves.

Now the operator turns around again and is placing a pentagrams over their past and saying the name associated with YHVH, EHVH. This means “I am what I will be”. The operator is looking at their own past and saying “I am not trapped by my past, I am going to be something better”. You will note that this name is in this position because the operator at that moment has his or her back to the future.

The last pentagram is placed between the pillars of the left hand. This represents the gateway to the North which is connected to the Earth. But again it is also the now. The left hand gateway leads to the ‘now’ of the outside world, the right hand gateway leads to the inner kingdom.The divine name here is Agla (“Mighty art thou Lord of the Earth”).

What is being said here is that the operator is the ruler of the Earth. Not the planet, but our own personal Earth. Notice that the person has their back to the right handed pentagram where they are talking about being Lord of their own Inner Kingdom. Now they are claiming that what they see is a product of their own rulership.*

Well…. It is a very interesting concept and definitively a valid viewpoint. So, what do I think of this?

Well like any hermetic magician worth my weight in salt (or maybe copper, it’s a fucking expensive metal, however based on the price of smoked salt or Himalayan pink salt I think I would like to be paid in salt currency please),
I took this little theory out for a test flight because it was a way of looking at the ritual I hadn’t even considered the past 12 years.

What?!

You heard me, test flight. This is something really useful you can do when you have incorporated the teachings of the myths of ANY mystery school, religion or tradition, and have a subjective synthesis within its worldview/paradigm.

How do I do this?

Simple. Next time someone comes up with some wacky idea or explanation for any concept or ritual you try it out, on the same premises that they have themselves tried it. Swap the angels in LBRP outside in central Europe and see how that feels…. Draw a square instead of a circle after you studied and memorized the lineal figures flying roll.

This is why someone who is working within a specific Tradition will be able to check the validity of anyone claiming a specific effect by replicating the experiment.

--------------
(example(s) If someone claims that Freda has been misunderstood and claims that if you add a particular curl to the veve and then induce possession with Freda she stops saying kekekekekeke and is actually conversing deeply and wishes to be classed as a Rada Lwa instead of a Petwo Lwa….. Well at that point as a Houngan or mambo you yourself try this at the next fete an this is not the case you know the person was full of shit, however if it does work and all over the peristyles Freda starts talking and calms down we know we have something real. Bad example, fully fictional. Would not happen but illustrates my point)

Example two: hitting ctrl + alt +delete on a pc. Now try this on a Mac ;). They reach differently because their language/system paradigm is different but within one of the contexts everyone will get the same effect
---------------

So, I simply studied Nick’s text. I tried to understand it and did. Then I actually performed a LBRP with the understanding that it would be working on my sphere of sensation in the way he describes. I had the Intention, I had the awareness the understanding and visualizations. Having opened the hall of Neophytes enough times as presiding Hierophant I am very bloody well versed in the 5 pillar concept in my own sphere and others spheres. I am also quite good at opening up the poor candidate and using the entire temple space as a symbol and working –within- their spheres of sensation, so, tech wise no probes there.

But, alas, no joy. The LBRP does not do what Nick states.

My problems are these:

My own sphere usually turns wherever I turn. So by placing the pillars out in the corners you “fix” your own sphere. This seems useful for some form of self initiatory work. Fine. And is an awesome concept if you want to blow up your aura and fix parts. Kind of like healing yourself from the inside.

But,

Placing the pentagram in my sphere and saying the divine names, simply has not had the effect described and it did not feel like it should when having this intention. The pentagram just doesn’t mean what he says it does. The pentagram is a mars symbol, and it was thought out like that from the start. 1=10 symbol is the swastika. a symbol you get from the kamea of mars. The concepts were all related. It is a coherent system The classic GD might not be the BEST system but at least its coherent.

This is also baked into the symbolism. The lineal figures of the planet clearly place the pentagram in mars. It is also a symbol of the divine shin descending into the 4 elements. The symbol of the 5th element. Yadda Yadda Yadda. By placing these symbols into my sphere the way Nick describes I am not getting any feeling about my future present or past.

At all. Whatsoever.

This is a shame. It is a very nice theory. It is a workable model if tweaked. But it is not what the LBRP is designed to do and not the effect you get when doing it, not even with Nicks intention and added visualization and understanding of why you would do it like that or why it would have that effect.

The effect I did get was being a ruler of the elemental aspects of myself. Thus placing the pentagrams in my own sphere was a roundabout way of accomplishing what happens anyway during an LBRP. Empowerment through the holy symbol of the pentagram which in turn repelled stuff. Instead of repelling stuff in the first place,

Also, when turning to the south, following Nicks idea I had a white pillar to my left and a black pillar to my right, so when I was drawing the hexagram, aware of the pillars, the Earth pentagram had at its starting point Hod, which is odd.

It seems to me some Hermeticists and GD “scholars” sometimes forget that the hermetic science is not the science of studying man. It’s the science of nature. Not god, nature. Man is seen as partaking of this and God is seen as manifesting in nature. This is why in Ficino’s time they would surround themselves by flowers of natures opposite the forces of Saturn to fight melancholia.

Therefore it is counter intuitive to insert symbols in yourself. They are always already there, you simply stimulate them and awaken them.

Don’t forget the Alchemy, People. The LBRP creates a vessel with a specific nature and by being immersed in that sealed vessel you partake of certain qualities. (Like a ring in a jar with a lizard in it with its tail take off will assume the forces of healing**)

But I digress.

And for the record, I have tried The ritual with Nick’s theory several times but still, no luck. It just doesn’t actually function the way he thinks it does. Sorry.

I have done this with other people’s understandings of LBRP or other rites. In some cases they have been right and their insight or analysis or explanation has allowed me to penetrate into an understanding of the rite. I have in those cases experienced what lead me to state that within the context of this Tradition it is correct. In other cases , like in this one it is simply theoretical astral wanking that doesn’t stand up to in real life tests.

If you work in a tradition you should be able to put metaphysical theories to test within that same tradition. Like this you can have very interesting group workings. I think it was frater J.M. over at strategic sorcery who was using the example of a friend who did the “wrong Saturn hexagrams” but wanting to invoke Jupiter and feeling odd.

The crucifixion and solar consciousness is not something that will come about by working with the archangel of Venus. It’s a solar thing. Rufus opus solar class only works if you take on the Neo-Platonist approach. And within that if someone advanced can help someone newer. Getting Lucifer Michael or Jeheshua when working with the sun is ok. Getting an old man ever living obsessing with rules and laws and constraints that depresses you is NOT.

So try things out. Is the star ruby a banishing? Is it really?! If you put yourself in Crowley’s shoes and have a fully GD brainwashed tradition and then do the Star Ruby let's bet you won't be dong a "thelemic LBRP

Next time someone says something like this, try it out.
If Ghede and Erzulie don’t like to be in the same room and you don’t believe the person who says this, immerse yourself in the tradition so the symbols become alive and then TRY IT. See what happens.

Do Saturn hexagrams with the god name of Jupiter and intention of invoking Jupiter but drawing Saturn hexagrams, once you’ve memorised the god names and have worked with the system for 6 months and see what happens. This is why tradition is so goddamned useful because you can prove or Disprove people by doing exactly what they did. You’ll either get 70% the same results in which case they’re right or you get 70% the wrong result and you’ll know they’re wrong.

There is no such thing as “in my world opinion or subjective experience” when it comes to working in a tradition where you have made the systems alive as you are not working with subjective things you’re working with universal symbols the moment you and someone else agrees on things.

-------------------------------
Example from linguistics:

Fuck OFF means just that if you understand English culture and language. Fish and Chips means the dish and you always say it like fish and chips. You CAN say chips and fish and people will know what you mean, but you will not sound right. If you’re learning English and someone instructs you that Wanker can be used in a friendly way even though it is a demeaning word meaning a masturbator you, as a foreigner won’t actually know this soliloquy until you try it out.
----------------------------------

The moment we are initiated into a set f symbols that we awaken, whether it’s a tradition language or culture, or computer program it becomes internally cohesive. This is the strength of traditions and pre-made symbol systems because you can try things out.***

*as per all academic laws and regulations on copyright its OK to quote this much material as I need it to illustrate my purpose. Please consult for instance the MHRA style guide for further information.

**Agrippa, 3 books, can’t be bothered with edition and page reference

*** of course in the end it still doesn’t prove anything. It just proves that if we both agree that X means I like you and Y means I disliked you then XY will mean (_____fill in the blank and prove my point___ )

;)

review - Postmodern Magic: The Art of Magic in the Information Age

2010-04-16T15:35:00.001-07:00

Postmodern Magic: The Art of Magic in the Information Age (Paperback)

~ Patrick Dunn

I cringed.

I love books. I love well researched books. I even love books that present things I already know, or that contain things that have been published elsewhere as long as they entertain me or seem to serve some purpose, for example dumbing down something that would require the reader to read 10-20 books (yey for pop-psychology and Dissertations turned into books).

When I saw reviews for Postmodern Magic, my heart lit up. a Linguist? Magician? Wow this must be good. Maybe its filled with some Good NLP shit or even offers a new way of dealing with meme's egregore's and magickal langauges... in other words, I really wanted to enjoy this book. I really, really did. However it is a waste of money.

(Oh boy, start of rant)

I haven't bought any KaosMagick books for a long time, as they are, nowadays, mighty boring. This book wasn't an exception. Without insulting the author, (who comes across the pages of the book as a complete noob somewhere in learning the first mysteries of the path of Tav, but should be commended for saying the same thing anyone says after applying intellect to the Art) the book is almost a waste of the poor dead tree it was written on.

Aside from the classical overview of the Kaosmagicians toolbox :

-paradigms (spirit model, energy model, psychological model and holographic model)

-evocation and invocation, a general taxonomy of spirits

-magical tools

-etc and co

It also contains some information about magical groups and a random selection of exercises that, to be honest have been published before and here they are now rewritten from a Holographic paradigm perspective.

I am suprised the publisher even picked this one up. Sorry folks, Kaosmagick has been written to death and this wasn't entertaining enough to warrant a book. Think about it as something like a cross between a rpg supplement, a chaosmagick starter book from a holohgraphic perspective and the seeming personal collection of knowledge of the author, packaged for an audience who thinks that

Liber Kaos

Liber null

Psychonaut

Psychonomicon

by Carrol are tough reading and don't enjoy Phil's inane gay-flavoured lovely insanity.

Oh, Goddess Eris (or someone!). if this is whats out there I wish some of the more hidden and privately circulated Kaosmagick handbooks from the 80-s and 90s would be published.

I know. I'm going to Copy-Paste all Kaosmagick rites and rituals I find on the net and publish it as the Ultimate Postmodern K405M4Gick Grimoire.

(ok, end of rant)

Misunderstood aspects of systems

2010-04-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

A change in the occult community is the move away from the postmodern approach that Kaos Magickians were celebrating, use whatever if it works.

Cultural appropriation and even the appropriation of elements of a Tradition have become frowned upon more and more. My guess is that this is because people are actually becoming members of various traditions. This then shatters illusions
We hear stories of how inappropriate it is to Mix orishas with the LBRP and how one should avoid confusing Erzulie Freda and Kali and Isis.

When people culturally appropriate from Haitian Vodou or Santeria there is immediately a big reaction. However when a thelemite butchers the star ruby and claims that it is a Thelemic banishing ritual or better yet a thelemic LBRP, well... That’s when I get pissed off slightly.

Frater R.O. has an excellent post (http://headforred.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-youre-happy-with-lbrp.html) on the LBRP that I agree with 99%.

Why would anyone do a tradition specific ritual when they are not working in the paradigm?

Coming from a source that works with materials from the original Golden dawn and RR et AC and other orders and traditions predating (SRIA Memphis Mizraim, Gold Und Rozenkreutz Martinis and diverse apostolic) I can say that there is a point in the way the rituals are structured, in a very similar way as Frater R.O. argues I fully agree that doing the ritual outside of the initiatory structure is moronic, UNLESS you spend the time deconstructing the ritual(s) to try and understand what it does and then do them. Something that many of the so called GD adepts themselves have not taken the time to do. When studying the basic outlines of the rituals, diagrams and initiation rituals of for example the Golden Dawn system from a learned perspective for example using deconstruction or other theoretic approaches it becomes obvious that they are built around the idea of bringing the practitioner through to a lunar consciousness ( me <-> divine) where the practitioner works with the Albedo phase, if you will, or the "becoming a reflection of the divine" and then working through their way up through this until the Rubedo phase is reached and there is an identification with the solar consciousness. The Gold und Rozenkreutz the G.D. and its old and new derivatives are thus more akin to a Theurgic Mystery School where the forces used are aspects of the universe and the Rituals are used as an aid to reach a solar consciousness and Initiation into the spheres.

One of the reasons people bitch about the G.D. and other initiation – based or temple based traditions so much is because they have in many cases stopped being Genuine Theurgic Mystery Schools.
Mysteries are not revealed in books and even the initiations are merely initiations into the mysteries.

I bet you that if I got hold of a manual of some form of Tantric initiation series and then tried to perform them, they would not work very well because there is no oral tradition/link to the divine. There is nobody who can expound on the mysteries. If nobody ever tells you to analyse the LBRP, to think what the fuck you are doing when you are saying Unto thee be the kingdom the power and the glory, if you never even consider what your relationship is with the that higher force…then what exactly are you doing? You are no better then the guy next door who has started jerking off unto Kaosmagick rituals and truly believes he is practicing the O.T.O. 9* secret.
Or if I would start to call myself a Houngan Asogwe because I have served the lwa for 5 years and feel entitled to it.

A coherent worldview and an understanding of your relationship to the divine is essential for any work of a mystical, Theurgic or thaumaturgy nature. When done properly working with neophyte formula based Pentagram rituals for the zodiac and elements and then 5=6 (Adepts) formula based Hexagram rituals for the planets one becomes initiated into those levels of consciousness, whether one is working with their angelic aspects, enochian correspondences or the Egyptian Godforms M. Mathers assigned to each and every force.

Remember however that the same thing will happen as when you work through ANY system of initiation into higher spheres, be it using Planetary initiations from an old planetary Grimoire, Frater R.O,'s way of doing things or working through the planets in internal alchemy.

But, of course the purpose of Theurgic Mystery Schools (say the GD) is to bring about a realisation of the lesser and greater mysteries and then prepare you to for the One Mystery using the mythological and paradigmatic tools and symbol sets that you have been working through. In some paths/systems the instruction comes physically, as in laboratory alchemy, in others it is purely a mystical experience (Ignatius Loyola spiritual exercises, usually also leading to stigmata), in others it’s from spiritual guides say Michael. The classic Theurgic mystery schools usually combined these, and because they taught a coherent mystery paradigm that meant that initiate X and Y along with intermediary novice B and teacher P all understood that If the Angel Hanael says all life is Love and the dove is merely her symbol but is not the type of her as the Holy spirit is truly The Dove of Wisdom, they all agreed, and then when the initiate was shown a diagram showing the sun in the centre of all created forces after the initiate has been working in a circle invoking and evoking all forces they would realise that Oh shit I am the sun.
But I digress.
It is strange how people react when you try to work with Lwa or orisha outside of those traditions yet everyone peddles the LBRP as if it was a universal ritual workable by whoever whenever. Things only work if it is within an appropriate WORLDVIEW.
And you do not need the LBRP.
Instead of an L.B.R.P. just draw a circle.
Simple
Effective
Part of 85% of all paradigms available out there. What bro Miller calls "Tech"

The Tech in LBRP is simply the circle and the four angelic guards.
The rest is tradition specific and worldview specific that comes alive by being initiated and/or working through the zodiac elements and planets with the structure above mentioned to bring about the Albedo phase we all love so much.