Cakes of Light
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93
Yes, I definately recognize the sacredness. I also recognize that many diseases can be transfered via blood contact! I also think that injesting blood would be a strong magical act and I wonder about the skillfullness of injesting the blood of another human being...what are the magical implications of that?
It was explained to me that we can bring our own cakes...and we will. What I wonder about is why would we use or injest the blood of someone else as part of the eucharist?
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@bdsvictory23 said
"I am interested to know what people here think about Cakes of Light. I went to my first Gnostic Mass a couple of weeks ago and was quite suprised that people actually use the Cakes of Light recipe involving human blood or semen. I can see this in the early 1900's but in 2011? I understand that the substances have been burned to ash and thus are not likely to contain possible pathogens but there is a big part of me that has a problem with the idea of consuming blood from another person...it just seem healthy."
If it has been burned to ash, then it's a worthless substance and might as well not have been included. This ingredient needs to go in as a live substance and maintain its pranic vitality. The recipe drops to the level of mindless superstition if you kill it first.
At the same time, precautions have to be taken regarding health. You're right, that there are different concerns now than a hundred years ago. The point, though, should be to take responsibility for the source of the product. Personally I think that this should come from extracting the product from someone who is a confirmed safe source - someone, for example, who has had recent HIV testing and not indulged in risky behavior (for HIV or other things) in the interim. If this can't be reasonably assured, then one of the alternative substances should be used, such as some blood from hamburger.
I like that you're distressed at your disgust. That's healthy. This could open your mind a bit. Most women (and many men) swallow semen quite often, and you boys seem to enjoy that quite a bit. We don't require you to burn it to ash first! (And there are more than a few men, and a number of women, who delight in eating out a woman especially during one particular time of the month.)
"What I wonder about is why would we use or injest the blood of someone else as part of the eucharist?"
These are among the most sacred of physical substances, from very ancient times through the present. They are carriers of life itself. This isn't metaphorical.
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@Fire Giver said
"If it has been burned to ash, then it's a worthless substance and might as well not have been included. This ingredient needs to go in as a live substance and maintain its pranic vitality. The recipe drops to the level of mindless superstition if you kill it first."
Not necessarily true, if you refer to the text:
"24. The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.
- This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me.
emphasis added by me "
My recipe involves using a blank cake consecrating it then reducing it to ash by repeated calcination. Mind you in spygeric alchemy the feces of the plant must be calcined repeatedly to produce "white ash" which is the salt of the plant.
In fact, the whole process of producing the cake is an Alchemical process. The wine that I use has had the mercury (alcohol) distilled off for other purposes and the sulphur (the gooey stuff that remains) serves as my wine leavings. Next combine the meal and honey and abramelin oil. These ingredients are then combined with the Salt from the prior calcination to produce the Elixar or the Cake of Light. Properly made cakes should be firm and have their own life keep stored in a cool dark place and treated as any other alchemical/magical talisman.
"29. Moreover, be they long kept, it is better; for they swell with my force. All before me."
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@TheSilent1 said
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@Fire Giver said
"If it has been burned to ash, then it's a worthless substance and might as well not have been included. This ingredient needs to go in as a live substance and maintain its pranic vitality. The recipe drops to the level of mindless superstition if you kill it first."Not necessarily true, if you refer to the text:
"24. The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.
- This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me.
emphasis added by me "
"Excuse me... I'm not usually so rude... but that's just plain stupid. I thought so when I first heard this idea 20 years ago, and I still think so.
"This burn" means that the recipe is to be used as an incense. A second optional use is given, that it can be turned into cakes also.
That aside, I have to agree in particular with the idea that this must be a LIVE substance. Otherwise, there's no reason for it to be there. Strip it's vitality and chemical integrity away and use it as an ingredient? You might as well flick the ash off a cigarette into the batter.
"My recipe involves using a blank cake consecrating it then reducing it to ash by repeated calcination. Mind you in spygeric alchemy the feces of the plant must be calcined repeatedly to produce "white ash" which is the salt of the plant."
I think this is a valuable and insightful alchemical experiment. I would argue that this is a different product, and not the cake of light as intended by the instructions in Liber Legis.
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@TheSilent1 said
"In fact, the whole process of producing the cake is an Alchemical process. The wine that I use has had the mercury (alcohol) distilled off for other purposes and the sulphur (the gooey stuff that remains) serves as my wine leavings."
You might be interested in this little article about the wine leavings.
hermetic.com/kimbell/essays/buzz-about-beeswing.html
Crowley commented about the leavings: "leavings: the “beeswing” of port should be good"
The beeswing of is the crystalline crust of tartar that builds in old bottles of port. It was the original source of cream of tartar, a leavening agent.(the other interpretation of "wine leavings" as the "dregs" or "lees" of wine - the sediment in unfiltered wine - contains some yeast, and also fulfills the role of leavening the cakes)
The gooey stuff that remains when you boil down wine, is a reduction, not leavings.
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93,
Very good point regarding burning a living, vital substance to ash...that had not occured to me. When I originally raised the question of hygene to the Lodge members it was explained that since the substances were reduced to ash they would be medically safe. It seems that might be magically "safe" and inactive as well!
My wife and I consume our substances as part of our magical life...but we are not that keen on sharing subtances of this nature with people that we are not intimate with. The easy solution is that we will make our own Cakes of Light to take to Mass with us.
I am still curious though about why one would consume these substances from someone they are not intimate with. For example, a new person, showing up for their first Mass, would they want to consume the bood of a Lodge member that they do not really know or share a deep bond with? What kind of link or bond would or could be created by consuming the blood (or other substance) of another human being?
Ofcourse if people want to do these things it is entirely up to them. I am not attempting or intending to pass some sort of moral judgement...just curious.
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@bdsvictory23 said
"I am still curious though about why one would consume these substances from someone they are not intimate with. For example, a new person, showing up for their first Mass, would they want to consume the bood of a Lodge member that they do not really know or share a deep bond with? What kind of link or bond would or could be created by consuming the blood (or other substance) of another human being?"
The traditional "magick power" of a priest - whether Roman Catholic, or in many other traditions modern and ancient - is the power to create an efficacious eucharist.
To create an efficacious eucharist, one must have an appropriate initial substance, and then consecrate it in a way that builds on the inherent life substance to infuse it with intense spiritual force. It is generally considered part of the magick power of hte Priest and Priestess of a mass, or of the spiritual community they serve, to create such an efficacious eucharist in both of these respects.
The sharing of the specific "secret ingredient" isn't any more or less "the point of it all" than the sharing of the wheat. It's the recipe overall that makes the cake. Leaving out any part of it invalidates the formula. (It may make another equally valid formula, but it invalidates this specific one.)
There is another piece of it. Normally the sharing of a eucharist is linked, as well, with incorporating someone thereby into the corporate life of the church (or whatever). Many Christian churches, as well as many primitive cultures, have excluded "outsiders" from partaking of the eucharist at all. (Whether blood itself is used, the symbolism makes one a "blood brother," so to speak.) Crowley, in his "Gnostic Mass," explicitly said that nobody should be present unless they plan to consume it - that's the whole reason for being there, and therefore direct incorporation into that specific spiritual community is a specific purpose of attending the mass. (It's not a spectator sport.) This can be looked at, first, as not withholding what others might withhold - the transmission of the vehicle of Light independent of whether or not one is an "outsider" or "insider." - But there is another aspect of this, which some would regard as being a shadow aspect, and others would regard as a positive expression: It is a kind of spiritual "recruitment" in the sense that everyone who attends does become a permanent part of that particular church by the partaking of common "blood" (literal or metaphorical).
Where Crowley's "Gnostic Mass" fully expresses the expectation that nobody is there unless they are partaking of the eucharist, Temple of Thelema's "Thelemic Mass" softened that a bit. (The word "generally" was added: "generally, none other should be present.") This balance of words was selected to express both that we, too, don't consider the mass a "spectator sport," yet we recognize that there may be occassions and personal considerations that would warrant the courtesy of hospitality without creating a sense of infringement.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Excuse me... I'm not usually so rude... but that's just plain stupid. I thought so when I first heard this idea 20 years ago, and I still think so. "Wow, I have to say this remark took me a minute to swallow.
Jim, I respect your work and your opinions, but I can think of several different ways you could have stated your views.
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@TheSilent1 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Excuse me... I'm not usually so rude... but that's just plain stupid. I thought so when I first heard this idea 20 years ago, and I still think so. "Wow, I have to say this remark took me a minute to swallow.
Jim, I respect your work and your opinions, but I can think of several different ways you could have stated your views.
""That's dumb." "That's not intelligent." "That doesn't make sense." How else would he have stated it? He could have avoided that statement altogether, but he obviously wanted to make that one.
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@TheSilent1 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Excuse me... I'm not usually so rude... but that's just plain stupid. I thought so when I first heard this idea 20 years ago, and I still think so. "Wow, I have to say this remark took me a minute to swallow.
Jim, I respect your work and your opinions, but I can think of several different ways you could have stated your views.
"I acknowledged at the time that it was rude. Also, I didn't say that you are stupid, just the statement.
There are a few patent idiocies have a life of their own and continue to pop up, year after year. Thinks like "dropping of the hosts of heaven means bird droppings" or "George W. Bush was the greatest President ever." The idea under discussion belongs on that list.
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@bdsvictory23 said
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I am interested to know what people here think about Cakes of Light. I went to my first Gnostic Mass a couple of weeks ago and was quite suprised that people actually use the Cakes of Light recipe involving human blood or semen.
What are your thoughts?
Love is the law, love under will
-B"I must have missed this thread, originally...
My original thought......
OMG- I AM A VIRGIN!
as I have never, ever, in Ritual, eaten a Cake.
My second thought was......
I would never, ever eat a Cake that was not made from My Priest and Priestess.
what would be the point?
But I have no Priest (heavy Sigh), and I have to make do with my own little ways of Communion and Union.
I am reminded of a joke I like to tell...
"what is the difference between love and lust?"
Spit or swollow.....In the Book Animism: the Divine King.....this idea of bodily fluids and the rites (superstitions??) that arose around our fluids and such is presented in a very interesting way.
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Additional question:
Since i dont have access to one half of ingrediant x at the moment. Would it still be usefull to make the cakes with only my half or with out the fluids altogether, or does that defeat the whole purpose? -
@armedwithlunchboxes said
"Since i dont have access to one half of ingrediant x at the moment. Would it still be usefull to make the cakes with only my half or with out the fluids altogether, or does that defeat the whole purpose?"
You have many options: "The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what."
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@armedwithlunchboxes said
"Since i dont have access to one half of ingrediant x at the moment. Would it still be usefull to make the cakes with only my half or with out the fluids altogether, or does that defeat the whole purpose?"You have many options: "The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.""
haha gotcha, ill study these verses more intimately.
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Here's something basic, that I don't think I've seen mentioned before - but it massively simplifies one of the usual complexities of making the cakes.
"Thick leavings of red wine" - Crowley's reference to this as the beeswing of port - is readily available in the spice section of most grocery stores. It's creme of tarter. It's the same thing!
If there's any chemical basis to the formula, the wine itself doesn't matter a whit. Just use creme of tartar (which is also a basic ingredient of baking powder) in the baking.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Here's something basic, that I don't think I've seen mentioned before - but it massively simplifies one of the usual complexities of making the cakes.
"Thick leavings of red wine" - Crowley's reference to this as the beeswing of port - is readily available in the spice section of most grocery stores. It's creme of tartar. It's the same thing!
"Interesting... Crowley mentions this somewhere?
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@Metzareph said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Here's something basic, that I don't think I've seen mentioned before - but it massively simplifies one of the usual complexities of making the cakes."Thick leavings of red wine" - Crowley's reference to this as the beeswing of port - is readily available in the spice section of most grocery stores. It's creme of tarter. It's the same thing!
"Interesting... Crowley mentions this somewhere?"
Which, the beeswing matter? Yes, I think it's in the commentaries. Yes, it's in the first line of the New Comment for Cap. III, vv. 23-25.
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@Metzareph said
"Which, the beeswing matter? Yes, I think it's in the commentaries. Yes, it's in the first line of the New Comment for Cap. III, vv. 23-25."
Oh cool! Thanks!
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93
As a professional winemaker, I am hoping to set the record straight on perhaps the most mysterious and controversial Cake of Light ingredient ... and no we are not talking about blood. Blood certainly is the most complex liquid matrix on the planet, but I would like to focus on the second most complex. That is, wine. Liber AL vel Legis (III:23) states:
For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften & smooth down with rich fresh blood.
In The Law is for All, Crowley did say in the New Comment that "... leavings: the “beeswing” of port should be good..." to use in the making of Cakes of Light. Many have been mostly correct to point out that beeswing is actually cream of tartar, or in other words a bitartrate salt, specifically potassium bitartrate. Tartaric acid and its salts occur naturally in wine grapes, although winemakers will add the acid to the fermenting juice if the pH is too high. In fact, grapes are the largest natural source of tartrates.
To get this ingredient some people have used cooked down ruby port, some others cream of tartar from the grocery store, some people have even suggested the lees from winemaking. If you really want wine leavings, and you are using Crowley's suggestion of beeswing, you will not use any of the substances mentioned. First of all, cooking down port makes a reduction, good for some delicious sauces, but probably not containing much in the way of bitartrates (more on this later). I believe the cream of tartar in the store is derived from grapes, but am not 100% positive. Whether or not this is the case, it will go through an isolation and purification process that will take the product far away from "thick leavings of red wine". Sure, wine lees can contain some bitartrate salts, but again this is not the actual ingredient suggested by Crowley. Lees contain mainly dead yeast hulls and cell wall constituents, usually some grape solids, a mixture of salts, and other things.
The true and best wine leavings by this definition are from a process that winemakers use called "cold stabilization". In the usual process, you chill your newly vinted wine that has been racked or filtered off the lees until enough bitartrate precipitates out that the wine will pass a cold stabilization test, meaning that the consumer will generally not see bitartrate crystals in their wine even if they chill it in the fridge. This practice is done in reaction to consumers who freak out when they see bitartrate crystals, thinking they are glass shards (even though they could dissolve them in hot water if they wanted to test that theory … I have yet to find glass that is water soluble). As potassium bitartrate crystallizes out of wine, it can capture various constituents of the wine like anthocyanins (color molecules), other polyphenols like tannins, polysaccharides, proteins, and many other wine-related chemical compounds. In general, the faster the precipitation process, the more "dirty" the bitartrates will be with these other wine constituents, although even the cleanest crystals almost always have some of the smaller molecules, e.g. anthocyanins. This, therefore, makes bitartrates crystallized from wine different from the purified cream of tartar that you find in the store.
My suggestions to you to get authentic wine leavings for your Cakes of Light:
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Find a cool winemaker like me and do nice things for them until they give you more wine bitartrates than you'll know what to do with.
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I guess you could "cheat" by dissolving as much cream of tartar in warm wine as you can, chill (or even freeze then warm in the fridge) said wine, let sit chilled for as long as it takes to form potassium bitartrate crystals, and then filter the wine to retrieve your wine leavings. This process is rather close to the cold stabilization process mentioned above. If you can get the temperature of the wine to 29F , you are doing well. Wine generally won't freeze at this temperature due to the ethanol content, but supersaturated potassium bitartrate should crash out of solution readily. I would suggest the following wines to give you the best chance for "dirty" beeswing (roughly from best to not as good): cheap Ruby Port, any dark red wine that claims to be made "unfined and unfiltered", Petite Sirah, the darkest cheap wine you can find of any other variety, inexpensive tawny Port.
Of course, this is only if you buy into Crowley's interpretation of wine leavings. Another reasonably sound interpretation of The Book of the Law is to use the lees. I personally am not completely convinced that he was fully fluent in the fine art of enology and so perhaps he didn't differentiate between lees and tartrates. After all, he did come from a brewing family!
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EricPS I would start your experiments with a small amount of wine and a large amount of cream of tartar. You can add in wine until the powder just dissolves. If you start with a whole bottle of wine, it might take more cream of tartar than you would initially suspect!
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