Frater Kephri
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First off, Welcome!
Questions 1&2 I don't have good answers to so I'll leave them to those with more experience.
Question 3: There are about as many answers to that question as there are individuals who ask it. From my own experience, I could suggest a reading list of foundational books to help focus your mind in the right direction. Or a series of training exercises to get your concentration and will power working in the right direction. Or a series of meditations to guide your intuition in the right direction. Or, more likely, all three. But the real question is: Where are you coming from? What have you already done? And where are you trying to go?
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I'm guessing that your questions arise out a specific book or other reading you've been reading, and your answers may best be found in the particular things you were reading.
Nonetheless, I'll give it a try.
@Frater Kephri said
"1. I am unclear about what sexual transmutation is exactly? I can only find vague references online, but Im not clear about what to do or what to expect."
This is the best example of what I said above. The term is basically meaningless outside of a particular context; that is, it doesn't have a fixed meaning, and can have entirely opposite meanings in some situations. (It also can certainly be used by people who don't actually know what they're talking about. It seems, for instance, that the writer you were reading didn't define the term.) If you could give a little more context, we might be able to help you with this.
"2. Ive been including in my practice rituals like Liber Resh for example, but while I invoke or visualize the Godforms, what is the difference between these and Egregores?"
There is some difference in how different people use the term 'egregore,' so possibly the way you have read about it has a similar meaning to these god-forms. As most often used, and especially as used in the traditions that feed Temple of Thelema, there is no similarity in the terms.
An egregore isn't an image. That's the easy part. It's a living essence.
Most commonly it is identical to what is called a Group Mind, an autonomous composite consciousness that embodies the "whole that is greater than the sum of its parts" of a committed group sharing a common Mystery. It serves as the receptacle embracing and being nourished by and connected to the archetypal (Briatic) actuality behind the group. It is the vehicle of the "contact" of a contacted group.
More broadly it can be a similar type of (let's call it) Informing Actuality so, if we stretch it just a bit, the term could be used to mean that which informs the well-built god-images that you create while doing Liber Reysh.
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In the sexual transmutation part: Ive been listening to Lectures from the Gnostic tradition and they talk about Tantra, and use words like Azoth and Kundalini to describe sexual energy, and describe practices like mental Chastity, pranayama to develop it. Then I hear about the transmutation of this energy and I dont know what it means I suppose. Sorry for the vagueness.
(EDIT) I have been reading stuff online and listening to these lectures, some books (apparently real Tantra is hard to come by) and looking for references online to have a better understanding of what is meant by this term, the rising of kundalini, to compare it with experience but everything I find is obscure at best. Is there anywhere I could start that is reliable that you know of?And So, I think I understand the first part: So "Group Mind" is Autonomous, with a composite consciousness, Im assuming the group's, and it is nourished by the group keeping it alive by being conscious of it, right?
But I didnt understand this:
"More broadly it can be a similar type of (let's call it) Informing Actuality"
What do you mean?
And, are you saying that an Egregore is this?
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I was also under the impression that mystery schools with the initiatic tradition, held mysteries that were only disclosed as you ascended through the grades, and Im guessing the mere experience of these rituals must have some impact and value, but if Im cut off from this, what then?
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@Frater Kephri said
"In the sexual transmutation part: Ive been listening to Lectures from the Gnostic tradition and they talk about Tantra, and use words like Azoth and Kundalini to describe sexual energy, and describe practices like mental Chastity, pranayama to develop it. Then I hear about the transmutation of this energy and I dont know what it means I suppose. Sorry for the vagueness.
(EDIT) I have been reading stuff online and listening to these lectures, some books (apparently real Tantra is hard to come by) and looking for references online to have a better understanding of what is meant by this term, the rising of kundalini, to compare it with experience but everything I find is obscure at best. Is there anywhere I could start that is reliable that you know of?"Read Gopi Krishna's autobiography. It won't address the sexual aspect directly, but will give you the best insider's discussion of kundalini unfolding you can find in print.
Then, after you have that level of knowledge on the subject, you might want to move to Elisabeth Hatch's book, Sexual Energy & Yoga. A little obscure, but way better than most.
And, all along this journey, be careful not to confuse sexual morality with sexual energy dynamics; and be sensitive to others who are writing in ways based on religious morality. You might want to sensitize your mind to the difference by reading Crowley's essay "Energized Enthusiasm," especially the earliest sections.
"And So, I think I understand the first part: So "Group Mind" is Autonomous, with a composite consciousness, Im assuming the group's, and it is nourished by the group keeping it alive by being conscious of it, right?"
It actually doesn't require being conscious of it - a group mind will be formed regardless by any group of people sharing a certain threshold of common language, thoughts, feelings, images, etc. The groups leaders are responsible for maintaining the linkage.
"But I didnt understand this:
"More broadly it can be a similar type of (let's call it) Informing Actuality"
What do you mean?"
Understanding this may require advanced experience. I'll stick with my words for now.
Ah, wait, maybe there is a principle here that you don't know, so let's try that: Successively denser planes are (effectively experienced as) external to more interior levels. Framing this in the Qabbalistic "four worlds," for example, Yetzirah is external to Brian. When you work with (say) archangel in the Pentagram Ritual, you are not actually seeing the archangels because they are Briatic, and there are no images in Brian. However, a Briatic being resonates compatibly with corresponding imagery on a lower plane. So what you are doing is composing a Yetziratic image compatible with the nature of an archangel and then creating conditions compatible with the Briatic consciousness "occupying" the image. - Other image work operates on similar principles.
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@Frater Kephri said
"I was also under the impression that mystery schools with the initiatic tradition, held mysteries that were only disclosed as you ascended through the grades, and Im guessing the mere experience of these rituals must have some impact and value, but if Im cut off from this, what then?"
Do what you can at the moment. Be sincere and let the inner worlds know that you are ready, that you offer yourselves to their service, and that you desire help. You'll get it one way or another.
This is a long-term undertaking, not a brief hobby. It may be that your conditions change immediately, or they may change in 50 years (or there may be some reason you are keeping this distant from yourself in this whole incarnation). I really don't know. But what we have all done is whatever we can in the moment, and sincere offering of ourselves to something immeasurably greater and wiser than ourselves... and then stuff happen!
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As a quick, of the moment recommendation, check out Dion Fortune's "Esoteric Orders and Their Work". I just finished it and it's a really solid overview of what mystery schools do (at least as much as she was able to say without violating oaths). If you take everything she writes at face value, you should get a pretty good idea of what goes on behind closed doors and the specifics in your own work that you can focus on until you find a legitimate door to knock on. Also... it's relatively short and to the point so you don't have to worry about sifting through extraneous language to distill out her meaning. She says exactly what she means throughout and, when she can't say something, she tells you that she's stopping at the threshold of her oath.
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Frater Kephri
Just a commentary that I hope can help.
Those “gnostic” you are probably reading are the followers of Samael Aun Weor. He is infamous (not in the good way) around South America for teaching some highly neurotic combination of heavy christian morality and orgasm-phobia (that he calls sexual alchemy) and translating to Spanish some well know esoteric authors and publish their books with his name as author back in the 70 & 80ths.In that last nine years the number of his followers have decreased rapidly in Brazil but it seems that he is starting to migrate to the Anglophonic world.
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@Frater Kephri said
" Then I hear about the transmutation of this energy and I dont know what it means I suppose. "
This could be a reference to the expression of sexual energies by means not normally considered sexual in nature.
Thus, instead of releasing sexual energies through sexual intercourse, one might instead dance, write a poem, say a prayer.
It is something that takes practice.