Deus Ex Machina

[Deus Ex Machina]

I have lurked and observed for a few months now, but finally just now decided to register and make the introduction. I quite like the community here and felt that this is something I wanted to be a part of. I'm sure I will benefit from the association (alas I already have, so I come in debt) and hopefully I will offer something interesting back in turn.

The Beginning

It is very hard for me to trace a specific point in time when my interest in the occult or spirituality began. I have always loved stories and myths, even as a kid when my treasured possession was an encyclopedic book of old fables. For a long time though they were just curious stories with evocative names filling my head and not really something that spoke about things that I could experience around me.

However, in my twenties (I am in my mid thirties now) there was a time when things started opening up. I was enjoying an interest in all things oriental with a group of close friends and the spirituality just clicked after some choice advice in meditation practice (from the Tibetan Book of Life and Death by Sogyal Rinpoche). It was indeed the theory rather than the practice that begun all of it, combined with having a group of friends to unravel things with, but something truly started shifting and tentative practice would soon follow. While I was coming to grips with that, there too was an experience with psychedelics added to the mixture a little afterwards and what resulted was a few weeks of utter strangeness as the doors of perception were blasted open (the experience may have been brief, but coming to terms with it took some time).

Those things cemented in me a feeling that there was something to all these things and to spirituality at large. I started consuming literature and spiritual knowledge. Wherever I looked, I saw the same themes repeated. I could see the myriad religions of the world all talking about the same experiential ground. Ground that I had now trod on, if only fleetingly.

In the beginning, I was quite focused on the Far East, especially Zen. This was largely due to being very much involved in martial arts back then. For a twenty something, the allure of the orient was undeniable and it was easier to be humble in the face of foreign teachings. Had they been western ones, I would have been too busy snubbing them or feeling intellectually superior. That sort of went away with time as I saw the same wisdom repeated in all corners of the world.

Heavy Metal Crowley

My studies inevitably brought me to Aleister Crowley at some point. Of course, I had heard of him a long time before and his reputation - dark and mysterious - was known to me. I had also met countless kids, involved more or less (probably less) in the western occult tradition, to whom Crowley was some kind of poorly understood messiah. It was all about wearing pentagrams, heavy metal music and despising Christianity. I can't say I had much respect for them.

I read a few random texts from him and couldn't frankly penetrate the writing. Not until I read Magick in Theory and Practice that is, which in its beginning pages basically re-iterated what I had come to understand myself about spirituality and religions, but written in Crowley's particular wit. I was surprised to see Crowley in this light and speaking of the very same experiences. I had mistakenly misjudged him based on his fandom - the same which could be said of Christianity and most organized, exoteric religions, really. But I was relieved and surprised, yet ultimately put him aside. I was going places on my own path and couldn't readily see how he could be of help - how he differed from all the other revelations. I figured his so called adherents had none of the understanding and perhaps to my misfortune never met anyone to prove me wrong.

2012

It was only much later - this year - that I truly got back to looking at Thelema. I had perhaps shed the last vestiges of my orientalism. Not that there is anything at all wrong with the religions, spirituality and philosophy of the East, but I had become more and more interested in what lay in my own cultural home, Europe. I could appreciate the nuances being more readily apparent to me and not every term being distorted by cognitive dissonance coming from cultural differences, some understood and some not.

I had lapsed in my spiritual practices, as I had lapsed in my physical training. I was hoping to change both when a few interesting astrological events happened in early summer. I was never that deep into astrology, but because what I had learned over the years of my own chart all seemed so incisively accurate I had harbored a chuckling, light-hearted interest in the topic without ever really deciding whether I believed in it or not. I'm still pretty much at that place, though much more curious, but this time around I had learned to adopt a mindset that would make astrology useful, instead of expecting it to magically solve things for me. I would approach it as if it were relevant, whether or not it truly was that being inconsequential.

In philosophy, the battle rages between the viewpoints of subjectivism vs objectivism. I'm not interested so much in that struggle, but in what both a subjective view of the world and an objective view of the world can do for me. So, I have learned to slip from one to the other as I look at things. I now looked at astrology from an objective viewpoint. As if the stars were signs speaking to the one consciousness of the world. In that viewpoint there is only an 'I' and all other personalities around me are just facets of that. Supreme hubris were one to conduct oneself in that manner in every occasion of life, but occasionally a useful shift of perception.

So, on the 20th of May there was a solar eclipse, followed by a transit of Venus across the sun on the 5th of June. A few days after the eclipse, I was back in form and keeping a magickal journal. Thelema and the system of the A.'.A.'. were looking profoundly interesting to me, my interest in them sprung up as if from nowhere, so I began exploring them. I picked up the books for the student phase, figuring they'd be a good introduction into the western occult tradition if nothing else.

I tried analyzing the eclipse and the transit with my amateur astrology and the exploration opened up a lot of questions as I was plunged into the symbology of these traditions. I'm not sure what I unearthed, but these large astrologically significant events going on at the same time as I was re-initiating an interest in spirituality certainly added something to the experience.

A few months later I told a good friend of mine that I felt I was in a place where I was rearranging myself, my values and priorities. I embraced the experience whole-heartedly. I was a beginner again, staring into an uncertain future, but guided by a good feeling about the paths I was about to explore.

...

That's my long-winded way of saying 'hello' and introducing myself. Since I make references to astrology, here's my natal chart if somebody wants to have a peek at the jumbles inside. I'll gladly discuss any thoughts any of this brings up, but if not, I'll see you on the other side!

93!

[Corvinae]

Ba humbug to This notion of being in Debt.

Anything posted here, is posted free of charge, (and I hope the TOT and COT) do not accure debt or compounded interest.

Welcome,
Did see your post before, or I may have said something earilier.