Magical Motto
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I have been meditating on which magical motto to chose, and I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice on a direction? I know that it is a personal decision, but I guess what I am looking for is a starting point, some "grounding" in the concept from which to start with.
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The particular system and stage of that system may incline you to pick in one direction rather than another.
For example, an aspiration name represents something that has seeds and roots in the present - in your best understanding of who you are - but is more expressive of that to which you aspire (a future fulfillment).
Other types of mottoes are declarations of where one sees oneself at the present, perhaps as what archetype one sees oneself as incarnating or reflecting at present.
Some names are picked in honoring of a deity to which one is devoted - this is more common in the East than the West.
A magical name as such is the lowest class of all these variations of names, and basically is not much different than a "handle."
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@h3fall3n777 said
"I have been meditating on which magical motto to chose, and I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice on a direction? I know that it is a personal decision, but I guess what I am looking for is a starting point, some "grounding" in the concept from which to start with."
One basic point is to think of it as a verb - a doing word or phrase. "I shall x" or "x will be" or "Let x be" or something like that. Latin is handy for mottos precisely because you can have a one-word verb phrase - like Perdurabo, for instance.
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After thinking about it, I think I feel OK about giving a few personal examples. The following is a massively edited and reduced diary entry from some years back (mentioned in case some of the tenses and time frames etc. seem indecipherable otherwise).
The first serious “magical name” I ever took was Yod. I think in essence I am still simply Frater Yod – that nothing else quite says it all so simply. I am Hermit. The name came from a B.O.T.A. examination at the end of their first Tarot course, where I was asked, “Which Tarot Key appeals the most to you? Why?” I answered The Hermit, and the gist of my answer to “Why” was that it simply felt like an “old friend,” with a great sense of familiarity or recognition. Soon after that, being newly initiated into O.T.O., I was encouraged by peer pressure to take a magical name, and I picked “Yod.” Simple, small, humble. I also noted its Virgo correspondence, and its analog to the first letter of my civil name. There were other small reasons I now do not recall; but Yod was the (pardon the pun) seed of my understanding of my identity.
A few months later, when I became a Probationer, I articulated my aspiration as “I learn and I teach” – encapsulated in the Latin Disco et Instruo. This was my simple understanding of my role in life, of what I do best, etc. It’s “what I do.” And in the intervening years, it has become even more clear that this is not only the avenue of my service, but is a formula of my own growth. As mundane as it was, it was, at least superficially, accurate; and I intentionally hid in it a token of aspiration, its initials D.E.I. being a pun on the Latin Dei, “to God.” (It would be over 20 years before I would remember what my final motto had been in my prior life, and thereby discover that this humble, simple beginning motto was, in fact, also the "next step" of the last motto I'd borne in my last life.)
As my Probation neared its end, I began to formulate that which would be my new, clearer understanding of my aspiration as a Neophyte. I came to understand myself — my thoughts and words at the time — more like “a hollow tube,” one through whom this teaching evolved. That is, I was focussed less on my own doing, and more on my implicit agency as a function. It was very difficult to describe or articulate then; but the inner perception was more of being a vehicle or channel for a thing, and “coming before it,” as a herald or announcer. I expressed this new perception in the new aspiration name Apostalus Lucis, “Apostle of Light.” I was perhaps overly taken with the fact that its initials were A.L.! It was, of course, our old friend The Hermit all over again, though in a somewhat subdued and junior fashion.
Not knowing, at the time, how correctly to enumerate Latin, I treated it as Hebrew and gave it the value of 443. This was Hebrew for Virgo, and the phrase BYTh AL, “House of God” (and also, specifically, the House of El, the A.L. which I had declared myself to be, and Liber Legis, and all the rest). I knew that 443 was also Goliath, which on the one hand foretold a “fall,” but on the other hand encouraged me that I would be slain by nothing less than the STONE of David (lit., “the Beloved”).
I actually passed to Zelator under this aspiration name as well; it is the one that appears on my pledge. But, during this 2=9 Grade, another name came to me, rising out of the initiation and work of that Grade, and which (in retrospect) I regard as being the correct Aspiration Name for my entire period of occupancy of the lowest triad, Zelator through Dominus Liminis. The name was Ankh-af-na-Heru, and was the only one of the set that was actually communicated to me. It was directly given by inner communication, and in a way that I could not have missed it (there's a whole story about events on the day of its 'delivery'); nor could I have failed to equate it to 418, nor to recognize the significance of that at the time. “His Life is in Horus,” I was told; and I eventually accepted this. It was a seeming divergence from the Hermit-Yod themes that had come before. In retrospect I see it as many things, some too personal to write here; but also the interweaving of the other main thread that would be a part of what was to follow.
There have been other names since then, arising out of particular work at the time or the way that my psyche articulated the specific energy of a particular grade. But perhaps these would be enough to serve as some sort of example.
On the other hand, I encourage you not to set out to make your own decisions based on my example
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Personally I have had a few mottoes but they didn't feel right when I had them until I chose Uranus, not the god, but the Astrological implications of the planet and the energies that it represented to the Aquarian Age.
I had three other mottoes though, Pax Ego, or FPE for short, meaning Peace with Myself, in a butchered Latin! At the time I took it I felt like I was constantly struggling with myself having been fighting suicidal depression since I was very young. It always felt awkward on the tongue but I believe it was fulfilled. I also took the motto of Oma Pujo Vls, or Understanding until the End. It didn't stick. LOL. It was shortened to Oma when I moved onto another A.'.A.'. lineage before leaving my first instructor.
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KRVB MMShCh is my motto. Its number, 616, was given me during a Vision of my HGA - I later chose the motto as it matched that number & expressed perfectly the nature of that Vision. KRVB MMShCh is Hebrew for 'Kerub With Outstreatched Wings'. The Kerub is a symbolic representation of the 4 elements...Malkuth, Yesod, Hod, & Netzach of Qabalah. The 'Kerub With Outstreatched Wings' represents a willed transcendence of those elemental forces into Tiphareth, the LVX of Spirit...in short, it signifies my will to commune with my HGA.
616