Satan ... key to the Great Work?
-
@sasha said
"What fears? Fear of being seen as Satanists? "
My fears of possibly being duped. Of course, if Jim has Satan inside him, I suppose I'm a real dummy because I'd obviously be asking the wrong guy, huh?!
Maybe this method of inquiry makes no sense, I don't know.I should rephrase that. I don't know WHAT to be afraid of. I'm just trying to make sense of (A) the Qabalah and (B) the Bible, written by Qabalists.
-
@Redd Fezz said
"You did say you gravitated toward Satanism as a young man"
Not true. I spoke of the very positive effect LeVey's writings had on me. Big difference. Satanism has never been my religion. You have to be either a Christian or a Jew to be a Satanist.
"so perhaps you're just not particularly concerned about this issue"
I'm not - and my point was that unless one had some a priori basis for the issue, it's not clear how the issue could ever rise. One has to already have bought into some piece of the Christian post-mortem model and the existence of some sort of devil who has a place in that picture before there's a reason for any fear to arise about it.
"I am aware that not everything in the above quote rings true, even to me, but you have not addressed the one part which I bolded to show importance regarding the ability of demons to trick you."
I couldn't even bring myself to read most of it - especially given a busy day at work and only a few minutes to spare here and there. Mostly, though, it was going off into directions that would take hours to address because (IMO) the initial premises were so flawed and the whole superstructure built on top of it were just increasingly complex weavings of cotton candy.
Demons can't fool you unless you are fooling yourself. The specific training of the 1=10 Grade of A.'.A.'. - the same place that access to those worlds is pointedly given - trains one to know the difference. The core of what one needs to know is given in the first couple of sections of Liber O (to tip a hat to another thread going on here at the same time), but experience in the actual work provides the actual capacity - the growing truth sense - to progressively learn to discern the difference.
"Simply because you've said "malarky" does not disprove the author's claims."
Agreed. Nor do I have any need to prove anything. I'm not in this to debate, just to educate. When it enters debate, I'll usually just disappear.
"In fact, the author would probably just use circular logic on you"
Which would only have an effect on me if I entered into the game, of course.
"We just have two opinions. How does your "malarky" actually refute this claim?"
I'm not in this to debate, just to educate.
"How do you know if you're being tricked?"
That's been the core of my training for the last 30 years - knowing the difference.
"Do you judge your HGA simply by the fact that it acts like a friend? Feels like a friend?"
No - rather, by direct perception of truth. (In the early stages, there were some mind-boggling tests, but the very nature of the K&C of the HGA includes the characteristic of certainty-beyond-reason.)
-
OK, thanks Jim. I appreciate you sticking with me that far.
And with that, I will conclude my public doubting.
Someone sent me this link that just happened to make me feel better for some inexplicable reason.
I do suppose you're right, actually, about the fear thing. I'm not terribly concerned with being right or wrong muslim or buddhist ideas.
-
@Redd Fezz said
"I don't know WHAT to be afraid of. I'm just trying to make sense of (A) the Qabalah and (B) the Bible, written by Qabalists."
You know what it boils down to? I want to understand the Qabalist interpretation of the Bible. AC identified with 666 the Beast and Babalon and the Harlot and all that... clearly the Bible indicates this is the opposing side of God and the side that LOSES.
-
HA HA HA HA, WILL COINCIDENCES NEVER CEASE?!
(not that I'd like them to, mind you)
So, after work today, I get on the train and of course the first thing I read in "Anatomy of the Psyche" (where I had left off before I was so rudely interrupted by work today):
"Sulphur represents the active substance of the sun or, in the psychological language, the motive factor in consciousness: on the one hand the will, which can best be regarded as a dynamism subordinated to consciousness, and on the other hand compulsion, an involuntary motivation or impulse ranging from mere interest to possession proper. The unconscious dynamism would correspond to sulphur, for compulsion is the great mystery of human life. It is the thwarting of our conscious will and of our reason by an inflammable element within us, appearing now as a consuming fire and now as a life-giving warmth.
It is paradoxical. 'As the corrupter it has affinity with the devil, while on the other hand it appears as a parallel of Christ.'"
For whatever reason, after the compilation of information I received today from UNRELATED sources, opening up straight to this solidified these thoughts coherently and so completely 'coincidentally' as to be blatantly significant.
I know this is exactly what Jim was trying to tell me, but it wasn't clicking somehow.
EDIT: and this is my post #111, which apparently turns me into a stone of precious water.
EDIT #2: Welcome to bizarro land where just now I pulled ONE card from the Thoth deck, as I do once in a while, (still not ready to attempt a real reading) and plucked Atu VIII Adjustment. I'd say that's pretty relevent, wouldn't you? It was also the first time I realized the number replaces Strength in the BOTA Tarot, which shows a woman controlling the Red Lion, which refers on one level to "Satan" and "Christ" I do believe (serpent power?)... But, what I noticed about the significance of plucking Atu VIII at precisely THIS moment is that it is the counterpart of the Fool and AL, it is LA. Attention drawn to the fact that Strength has been replaced, not with Lust as I'd noted before, but with Adjustment. The female companion of the Fool. Nuit and Hadit? Naught or Not... Well, I don't know. I'm open to opinions.
-
@Redd Fezz said
"I want to understand the Qabalist interpretation of the Bible."
With great uncertainty...
I thought The Bible, both Old and New Testaments - but at least the Old, came out well before Qabalah.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by Qabalah. The classic Qabalistic, excuse me... Kabbalistic texts didn't appear until at least 1000 AD.
I can easily see that the writers of the Bible used gematria deliberately in their writing. According to Gershom Scholem's book on the history of Kabbalah, Jews probably learned Gematria from Babylonians during the captivity. But it seems that this use of gematria long predates Qabalah, perhaps by 1500 years.
-
JAE said, "Try this (crude, fast try): There is something within each of us, known to us, sought by us - usually unconsciously at first, and increasingly consciously as we pursue our spiritual path - of the nature of the Sun and fire, of the substance of the reproductive energies, saturating subconsciousness and filling the atmosphere of the intellect and inherently the devouring and vivifying flame of superconsciousness. Every one of us comes to know it differently, based on our own natures, and - when our knowledged of it and openness to it and responsiveness to it hits a certain critical threshold, it unites with us in the most ecstatic fusion, an inner event that is more REAL-feeling than the entirety of the rest of our life before that time.
And, once that Truth of Self, that informing lover-teacher-flame has filled us and owned us - an event that nearly always will have (among other things) caused us tojourney into our own personal Hells along the way - we then have that most shining of lights to escort us into the depths of our deepest Hell where each thing found, one after another, is seen and known and named and pledged in its entirety to the service of this lover-teacher-fire-light, and to that Will, or Voice of the Angel, which is the whole momentum of our being.
Work?"
Works for me. Beautifully written.
Can we read what you have written about Revaltions so far?
I know it is an imposition, but it will be valued.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
@Chris Hanlon said
"Can we read what you have written about Revaltions so far? I know it is an imposition, but it will be valued."
It would be a LOT of work to put it in a form suitable for this forum - and would amunt to a dozens of 8 1/2 x 11 small type pages. Since I'm working around the clock working on a project with an upcoming deadline, I really can't think of this AT LEAST for a couple of months. Sorry. (And it would only be an early draft, nothing polished.)
-
Sorry to continue this conversation at a lower grade than until now, but I'd like to get confirmed my personal view of the dilemma of Satan. Here it is:
The power presented by Satan is too strong for most to handle without hurting themselves so therefore it's important to learn how to handle it. Thusly it's been veiled in most theologies throughout the years under an evil symbolism so the profane will stay away.
I think like this mainly because of what Thelema seems like from my point of view (which is for its members to possess godhood themselves instead of worshipping something external) and secondly because of a theory I read about saying that the god presented in the first testament of the Bible is a mad god; the creator god whose universe is irrational and from whom we must be saved into rationality. The thing that got me with that theory is that symbolism is not designed to be materialized and the mad god I've interpreted as a materializing god, so thusly...Any of this have any bearing of correctness mayhap?
-
@Malaclypse said
"The power presented by Satan is too strong for most to handle without hurting themselves so therefore it's important to learn how to handle it. Thusly it's been veiled in most theologies throughout the years under an evil symbolism so the profane will stay away."
I think you're on to something - because this is close to my thoughts on it
But I put a different spin on it.It appears to me that the Four Great Princes of the Evil of the World (so-called) - Lucifer, Satan, Leviathan, and Belial - are the four Archangels of the Elements of a much earlier stage of the human race's evolution. They aren't "evil" so much as they are mismatched to the archetecture of our psyches. We can realign our psyches to respond to them, but that requires truly stepping back to an extremely primitive evolutionary state - which passes (rather reasonably) for "degeneration" etc.
In this sense, they truly are inimical to the normal human condition. But, having attained the K&C of the HGA, they become accessible on different terms, and consistent with a developmental state which appropriately and safely will begin exploring (among other things) its own distantly primitive roots (the Root Consciousness of Geburah, etc.).
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"We can realign our psyches to respond to them, but that requires truly stepping back to an extremely primitive evolutionary state - which passes (rather reasonably) for "degeneration" etc.
In this sense, they truly are inimical to the normal human condition. But, having attained the K&C of the HGA, they become accessible on different terms, and consistent with a developmental state which appropriately and safely will begin exploring (among other things) its own distantly primitive roots (the Root Consciousness of Geburah, etc.)."
Aha, interesting. But is that in agreement with the theory that the presently worshipped god/s and arhangels are products of an insane (non functioning, that causes unnecessary suffering etc) mind then? This may be obvious from what I said in the last post, but I mean of course that a system begun in error must be abolished, that what manifests will always be on the wrong track. The god who said "thou shall have no other gods before me" was, according to the aforementioned theory, egomaniacal in doing so, since the universe needs two main principles to continue to exist (Yin/Yang fluctuation).
And furthermore, I would be more than interested to get some explanation as to how this madness or error occurred with the god presently worshipped in Christianity. The source I found this theory in didn't say anything very extensively.
Another question: it's said that Parmenides got in contact with something he termed "the goddess" who revealed to him that the universe isn't really dividing into bits, but always stays the same (which would seem to contradict what the god in Genesis seems to be about - material divination). Who was the goddess in terms of magick and was she also trying to save us from the fall (damn, just come up with more questions as I write, but: is the fall as 'the fall into material divination' a good explanation?)?
-
I don't buy the "mad God" theory in that sense. Anything that can truly be called "God" is Atziluthic - and is "mad" only in the sense that human reason is incapable of surviving in its direct presence. That is, we may be mad in its presence - if we try to hold reason - but nothing Atziluthic is, itself, mad.
-
I see, so would you agree more if I said that balance between the two opposites (as e.g. translated to our logical and abstract cerebral hemispheres) are what gives most benefit?
Let me get another thing straight too. The Abramelin ritual. Is that what it means to bring up the forces of hell and control them under the Will of the HGA? In that case the person itself should be in the middle of heaven and hell in the highest manifestation of the two possible, right? -
The way this conversation has turned seems to be in line with something I recently posted elsewhere regarding the Gnostics (someone had asked what the "Demiurge" is):
In some Gnostic traditions, YHVH is God of creation that could see no
God but himself, so he came to think of himself as the only God. He is
responsible for creating matter, which is associated with Saturn and
Satan, Maya and the Devil, interestingly enough.However, without Reality, ideas are abstractions of no consequence.
The Soul, to be Real, is "chained to matter." This is why certain
things are "bound to happen" (as the people are bound to the throne of
the Devil in Key 15) and why some ideas just "don't matter" (they are
"immaterial.") in the long run.In my humble opinion, it is best to take all creation myths NOT at
face value and NOT with a grain of salt, but to analyze them and
scrutinize them intensely. It was only yesterday that I discovered
that Sulphur, associated with the stench of hell and the Devil, is
also the color of the Sun. If I remember correctly, it also burns
leaving "white earth" (ash) or "purified earth" rather than "black
earth". The symbolism here represents a paradox: the flame of dynamism
(life power) that is controlled by the will ...OR... the flame of
passions that overwhelm the will and turn into "possession." In this
sense, the twin flame is a representation of both Satan and Christ.To reply to myself, I forgot to mention one thing in this line of
thought: there is a history of solar gods being nailed or chained to
matter, as Jesus was nailed to the cross. Nail = Vav (6). Vav is
represented by the Man in Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (Lion-Eagle-Man-Bull) and
Yod, the Flame, represented by the Lion. What else has been associated
with the Lion? Fire and the Serpent. Yod is the primary shape from
which all the other Hebrew letter forms were made. This is why it is
sometimes refered to as the "flame alphabet." -
@Redd Fezz said
"However, without Reality, ideas are abstractions of no consequence.
The Soul, to be Real, is "chained to matter." This is why certain
things are "bound to happen" (as the people are bound to the throne of
the Devil in Key 15) and why some ideas just "don't matter" (they are
"immaterial.") in the long run."Thanks for this explanation! (Even if it's of use to others as well I'm still grateful, not just egocentric. =))
But how does matter have a bearing on a subject's continuity?@Redd Fezz said
"In my humble opinion, it is best to take all creation myths NOT at
face value and NOT with a grain of salt, but to analyze them and
scrutinize them intensely. It was only yesterday that I discovered
that Sulphur, associated with the stench of hell and the Devil, is"But wouldn't the best way to approach anything be inside a balance of critical analyzis and an open mind? There are ways to see coherent patterns in just about anything ime.
Could anyone answer my most important question about Satan, please? Why worship Satan instead of something presently considered "good"? Why do Thelemites do it? Why is it inevitable not to according to Crowley? I didn't understand the things said about it in Book 4 because of my lacking symbol skills.
-
@Malaclypse said
"Could anyone answer my most important question about Satan, please? Why worship Satan instead of something presently considered "good"? Why do Thelemites do it?"
Thelemites don't worship Satan.
Individual Thelemites (like individual Christians, Jews, or whatever) may worship Satan, but Thelemites per se don't worship Satan.
-
Ah, my bad, of course. But what is the point of doing it then? All I know is Crowley mentioned something about something being impossible to achieve without either making use of him or worship of him.
-
@Malaclypse said
"But what is the point of doing it then?"
You'd have to find someone who does it.
"All I know is Crowley mentioned something about something being impossible to achieve without either making use of him or worship of him."
Nope. No such statement known to me.
Also, Crowley's statements about Satan here and there should be put in the same perspective as his other statements that he was a profoundly committed Christian.
-
@Malaclypse said
"
But how does matter have a bearing on a subject's continuity?"The best way I can explain it is the idea of the "fall from heaven" from a psychological perspective. As an idea becomes focused, it congeals from abstract formlessness to "earth." Time and space are qualities of earth. From a loftier perspective, you can see more, but you are further removed and it is less "real"... especially without a corporeal body to sense, feel and relate to.
Just watching the news is somewhat of an example: though it is not exactly a "view from above," it does exist more in the mental plane for the viewer in many cases moreso than physical reality. The news is real life, but unless it's the local news and you actually care what goes on in your town, it is easy to ignore and sometimes even difficult to relate to, even if it is "real." Hearing of a war in Iraq might affect us mentally, but in many cases, we can ignore the reality of it. BEING in the war in Iraq is a completely different reality.
Speaking of examples, analogies themselves are examples. Until abstract ideas are related to in TERMS WE CAN UNDERSTAND, they remain abstract. Analogies are real-life situations we can relate to which have a similarity to the concept being expressed. These real-life situations are grounded in earth; it is a way to bring the abstract "down to earth," as they say.
-
"But in the first we came to a mighty throne of gray granite, shaped like the sweetest pussy cat you ever saw, and set up on a desolate heath. It was midnight, and the Devil came down and sat in the midst; but my Fairy Prince whispered: "Hush! It is a great secret, but his name is Yeheswah, and he is the Saviour of the World." And that was very funny, because the girl next me thought it was Jesus Christ, till another Fairy Prince (my Prince's brother) whispered as he kissed her: "Hush, tell nobody ever, that is Satan, and he is the Saviour of the World."
We were a very great company, and I can't tell you of all the strange things we did and said, or of the song we sang as we danced face outwards in a great circle ever closing in on the Devil on the throne. But whenever I saw a toad or a bat, or some horrid insect, my Fairy Prince always whispered: "It is the Saviour of the World," and I saw that it was so. We did all the most beautiful wicked things you can imagine, and yet all the time knew they were good and right, and must be done if ever we were to get to the House of Gold. So we enjoyed ourselves very much and ate the most extraordinary supper you can think of. There were babies roasted whole and stuffed with pork sausages and olives; and some of the girls cut off chops and steaks from their own bodies, and gave them to a beautiful white cook at a silver grill, that was lighted with the gas of dead bodies and marshes; and he cooked them splendidly, and we all enjoyed it immensely. Then there was a tame goat with a gold collar, that went about laughing with everyone; and he was all shaved in patches like a poodle. We kissed him and petted him, and it was lovely. You must remember that I never let go of my Fairy Prince for a single instant, or of course I should have been turned into a horrid black toad.
Konx Om Pax ~ Aleister Crowley. "