Satan ... key to the Great Work?
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Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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 -
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.)
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Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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?
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Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.).
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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?)?
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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? -
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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." -
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@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.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
"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. "
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Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
@Her said
"
"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. Butwhenever 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. "
"Would you explain what it is you like about this quote? I'm having trouble interpreting it. But, I can see why it seems the study of the occult produces people like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz and Hitler among dozens of other lesser-known screw-ups. It can be argued these people were already "screwed up" before they got into the occult or it can be argued that they weren't "screwed up" at all and that I am just an old fuddy duddy stuck in a silly morality system.
I think I'm pro-Thelema, which to me means I don't believe in murder or cannibalism or lying or manipulation, if at all possible. I believe that it is nobody's True Will to be killed or tortured; instinct overrides self-conscious errors of judgement and the only time instinct kicks in to sacrifice itself is in a split-second decision to save someone ELSE. True Will is self-preservation and preservation of life in relation to oneself: anything we care about and feel sympathy for, we want to preserve. What about self-injurers and S&M people? Errors of self-conscious reasoning, in my opinion.
Sure, Hitler wouldn't have succeeded without a throng of support, but that doesn't mean Hitler was a great guy or that he didn't deliberately manipulate the emotions of the people and, sadly, he found inspiration in works of the occult. Crowley seemed delighted that Hitler was utterly "demonic" and the "enemy of God." I don't understand why.
When creating material designed to educate and indoctrinate others, clear instruction seems the least one could do. Isn't this the basic problem people have with organized religions in the first place; that it contradicts itself and seems to urge people on to violence while promoting peace? Here, in the above quote, we have another sample of Crowley's that's probably tongue-in-cheek, yet possibly mindwarpingly pro-cannibalism. I am reminded of Crowley's diary entry regarding Jack The Ripper which so totally bizarre I can't even attempt to interpret it.
-
Okay, I didn't want to do talk about Satan so much, really. I was hoping to get some helpful tips privately off the main forums, but the "Service To Self, Service To Others" thread eventually turned into a discussion about Satan... and, well, I think we need to talk about Satan.
From Magick In Theory & Practice:
Digamma is the manifested Star. Iota is the secret Life .............. Serpent
--- Light ............. Lamp
--- Love .............. Wand
--- Liberty ........... Wings
--- Silence ........... Cloak
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu "The Hermit".
They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.
Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will. It is also
The Virgin; his essence is inviolate.
Alpha is the Babe "who has formulated his Father, and made fertile
his Mother" --- Harpocrates, etc., as before; but he develops
to
Omicron The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the
formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail.
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. "Good" must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. "East" has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. "Up" is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. "Hard" is the private opinion of our muscles. "True" is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers.
We have therefore no scruple in restoring the "devil-worship" of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of "Gods" whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.
Thus "the Devil" is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.
The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.
He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.
Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world. But he may not appear in this true form; the Vision of Pan would drive men mad with fear. He must conceal Himself in his original guise.
He therefore becomes apparently the man that he was at the beginning; he lives the life of a man; indeed, he is wholly man. But his initiation has made him master of the Event by giving him the understanding that whatever happens to him is the execution of this true will.
It appears Satan is linked with The Devil, Saturn and Shaitan, as I previously suggested. When Crowley refers to Aiwaz as that "god or devil of Sumer," it seems safe to say he is refering to Enki/Set/Shaitan/Satan, since it appears to me that, by the above description, "everyone's H.G.A. is Satan," as a prominent member of this board said recently. He had a qualifier after that statement, but I leave off the qualifier to make a point here, now...
Which is this:
People getting into magick are basically afraid of this one key idea: that magick is something "Satanic". It is typically described as "Devil worship" or "Satan worship" by Christians and the media which caters to a Christian audience. The "prominent member of this board" refered to earlier also said that he somewhat jokingly tells people, "I don't worship Satan. In fact, sometimes, Satan worships me!"
It seems to me that we are going to great lengths to deny what Christians rightly accuse us of. If Satan is the key to the Great Work, whose solar flame we unite with in Tiphareth, after which we call up the demons and the kings of demons and make them submit to us, how can we deny we are cavorting with the Devil himself? Of course, it makes sense now: Satan is the ruler of all the demons! After uniting with our H.G.A. ("Satan"), we call up the demons and demand their obedience. It is as if Satan got a new body and is letting his army know he must be obeyed in this form as a ruler of Earth - so get a good look!
Can anyone word this in such a way that this DOESN'T sound quite so Satanic? Because I know the above quote from Crowley was supposed to make it sound less "Satanic," but it doesn't. It just sounds like an explanation for being Satanic.
Thanks!
I have made a related post on this topic under Jim's review for Elaine Pagels' "The Origin of Satan" book here: heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?t=341
After reading most of Pagels' book, I am confused as to what her ideas have to do with the ideas expressed on this thread. As far as I can tell, there is no overlap.