Enochophobia
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Case's best friend and dearest mentor died a rather ugly death of cancer. Case came to believe that the Enochian tablets were a possible cause.
Then, based on the biographical details of Dee and Kelly, and particularly the instruction that they share their wives, he concluded that there could not be any sort of holy beings behind the instructions - otherwise, so immoral a recommendation would not have been made, he judged.
And, since he didn't have a way he trusted to Qabalistically analyze the names used on the tablets, he preferred other tablets based on the Hebrew alphabet - at least that way, he concluded, he could confirm to his own satisfaction the nature of any beings contacted.
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JAE, 93,
Thanks for the input. But does this info really explain Case's total aversion to the Enochian system? It surely involved more than Michael Whitty's death.
I've done exercises that didn't work for me - one gave me migraines and I abandoned it at that point. But I didn't go round warning people it was a bad thing in general.
I do sense a basic non-comprehension by Case of something in the system. What, I'm not sure, and the paucity of information on the man's thought processes doesn't help figure that out.
93 93/93
Edward
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@Edward Mason said
"Thanks for the input. But does this info really explain Case's total aversion to the Enochian system? It surely involved more than Michael Whitty's death."
The emotional blow from that was serious enough, perhaps.
But I also take very seriously his moral position on the adultery. He seems to have sincerely believed that if there were disembodied beings advising adultery, they must be demonic. Since they were the beings dictating the entirety of the Enochian system, that conclusion would, in turn, justify the conclusion that the whole system was demonic.
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While there can be no definitive answer to the question it is true that various Adepti have recommended great caution in working with Enochia. An enormous amount of work on Dee's systems was carried out by Frater FFE from the New Zealand Whare Ra Temple of the Stella Matutina. FFE joined the Order in 1914 and remained a member until his death in 1968. He reached the Grade of 9=2. In the 1930s he visited the UK (where he visited the Chiefs of both the AO and SM) and purchased photostats from the British Museum etc., of every piece of Dee's angelic and Enochian work. He produced many papers and in one of these he sternly warns that no member who is not a senior 5=6 member, and preferably 6=5, should experiment with Enochia beyond that recommended in the curriculum. Even this should be done under the supervision of the Chiefs. He cites some extremely unpleasant experiences he had as a result of being insufficiently prepared and advanced. Elsewhere, in another document, he notes his belief that the reason why far more dabblers have not had similar experiences can be attributed solely to their incompetence which has protected them.
Having said this he did not believe in any way that the system was 'demonic' or 'evil', but rather very powerful and potantially capable of unleashing forces destructive to the inexperienced Adept. He did not argue that the system should not be used in the Order. This view was echoed by Frater FL who joined the SM Order in 1936 and remained until the Temple's closure. He reached the Grade of 7=4 and also carried out much work on the Enochian system. He knew Ann Davies from BOTA and considered the objection of Paul Case (which was endorsed by Ann Davies) to be irrational and indicative of a fear of magic. There is much evidence for this view in the sense that, in creating BOTA, Case eliminated or watered down much of the magical system of the AO/GD. Indeed, virtually none of the Second Order curriculum was carried into the BOTA Second Order and which, I understand, hardly has any curriculum at all, magical or otherwise.
Case's objections to Enochia were never really argued by him. Of course the wife swapping incident (which he took from his reading of Casaubon) made for a flimsy basis to reject Dee's work, particularly considering some far more gruesome recommendations found in other sacred texts. Case also argued that the system was not Rosicrucian and that Macgregor Mathers had illegitimately imported this aspect into the rituals. Consistency was never Case's strong point however and he nevertheless introduced Tablets which are almost facsimiles of the Mathers' GD/AO Tablets except that the Angelic forces are Hebrew (some rather bad Hebrew at that) and not Enochian.
Notwithstanding his undoubted ability as a populizer of Kabbala, Gematria and the Tarot, Case's knowledge of ritual magic, including Enochia, was remarkably slim. With only around 2 years in the Second Order before he was expelled, Case had never received the majority of 2nd Order papers. Indeed, the US Temples of the AO complained about this very fact to J.W. Brodie Innes (Mathers' successor) who only began to send further curriculum material at about the point Case was expelled.
The point of this laborious deviation is just to suggest that Case's opinion on Enochia appeared to be based on little more than a hunch and certainly not on any informed acquaintance with the system.
A. Fleming
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@A. Fleming said
"The point of this laborious deviation is just to suggest that Case's opinion on Enochia appeared to be based on little more than a hunch and certainly not on any informed acquaintance with the system."
Thanks.
I didn't take the original question to actually suggest any legitimacy to Case's view on this point, only to question why he took the position that he did.
Welcome to the forum, BTW!
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93,
Yes, my interest was in Case's attitude, not in asking, Are the Tablets nasty or evil or dangerous? Anything sacred has power, and needs to be approached accordingly.
Howewver, I appreciate A. Fleming pointing out that Case had received very little of the magical training of the A.O. That makes sense of his reluctance to tackle a highly technical topic. It also means Mathers or Westcott (presumably) did some pretty daring work in making a version of the Tablets accessible to the G.D.
Gareth Knight takes a different tack. and somewhere refers to the Angels of the Tablets as a form of Elementals. Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki feels the Enochian system is very difficult to manage - www.hermetic.com/stavish/interviews/dolores.html because the vocalization has to be so precise.
I have to wonder if Enochian magick is really only suited to Thelemic magicians, even if the adepti in question don't necessarily recognize or acknowledge themselves as such.
93 93/93,
Edward
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93
I recently revisited PFC's warnings on Enochian.
The Enochian angels’ instructions to wife-swap and commit adultery suggests these entities are none other than the Watchers mentioned in the *Book of Enoch *who fell because they lusted after the daughters of men. Moreover the Enochian angels willingness to teach Dee and Kelley the dangerous Keys and Calls mirrors the nature of the Watchers who taught humanity secret arts and sciences – reinforcing the identification of Enochian = Watchers.
93 93/93
tai -
Dar, that is the kind of post that makes me want to throw caution to the wind and just start evoking like crazy until I see what you're talking about for myself. But, alas, that's never going to happen. One of these days one of you guys should write a book about you're experiences with Enochian angels. Guaranteed best-seller in the occult world. I think in general the experiences sound intense and interesting.
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""Orange Fizz""
You turning yellow on us? <vbg>
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@Dar said
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@Orange Fizz said
"Dar, that is the kind of post that makes me want to throw caution to the wind and just start evoking like crazy until I see what you're talking about for myself. But, alas, that's never going to happen. One of these days one of you guys should write a book about you're experiences with Enochian angels. Guaranteed best-seller in the occult world. I think in general the experiences sound intense and interesting."Maybe you should consider working with another Magician/Exorcist - someone to watch your back if you're a little nervous about solo operations?
"No... when you die, you're always solo and that's going to happen eventually. I already know I'm going to experience something in particular based on a certain empowerment I took; I'd like to keep that as uncomplicated a process as possible since it will likely be intense enough on its own. I'm sure if you create magickal links to Enochian beings (aka "Watchers") they are probably no doubt watching you and waiting and apparently not entirely benevolent. As I said before, at this point I'm only interested in solidifying my relationships with beings dedicated to helping others... I was told by an advanced student: "there are all kinds of beings out there, enormous beings with incredible power, beings out there who will crush you like a bug without a second thought if they happen to notice you and don't like what you're doing. It's better not to draw their attention if you can help it, but it's likely you will eventually draw some attention, so it's best to link up with guardian spirits who have dedicated themselves to protecting people on this path." ...So, you see, it would not make any sense for me to get involved with Enochian, but I am curious about what these beings do and say. It's also just interesting to me, I guess, that it seems like a lot of people involved in WMT and Thelema converse with gods, angels and demons for no apparent reason or very everyday reasons pertaining to their health, work and relationships[1] or just plain curiosity... and I'd love to read about someone's work just to get a better look at it, really. The brief and vague descriptions I've seen from people online often leave me wondering what the point is. Very definitely, many people seem to want to evoke beings just to see if they can do it and then they're like, "Woah! So cool!" (not anyone on these forums, I'm referring to barbelith underground and the old occultforums.com, etc.)
[1] This was not a put-down. I realize the point is to ground your work in Malkuth and I think mastery seems to be about working your will on the earth. The hows and whys of this work is something I'd like to read about, actually, and not a fictional account. The closest I have come is in the work of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Y'see... from my point of view, evolution is not upward-only. That's a very popular notion right now: people took old ideas of reincarnation and mixed it up with Darwinism and came to believe in this ever-upward moving process that makes people both hopeful and careless. I remember in BOTA they taught that if you were human, you'd always reincarnate as at least a human being. I'm not sure where they got that idea from, but it's a fairly new idea. The oldest ideas about reincarnation are most sensible to me, which is that we all have the potential for the highest and lowest at any time based on karma and that the death experience is traumatic and frightening which causes the disembodied mindstream to freak out and look for some sense of security, something to call his own even if it is just the body of a horse as it whizzes past some equine eroticism in an open field. I am told and I truly believe that being born human is extremely fortunate and rare. Once you have the good fortune to become human, it is a very simple matter to screw that up with wrong views and action and exhaust your "good karma," sinking again into less fortunate realms for aeons after only a piddly sum of 70 years or so as a human being. I don't want to waste what I've learned and miss an opportunity here, so I dedicate my time to focusing as much as possible on the main point. There's no end to knowledge... it seems like the Enochian beings would be sharing knowledge with you, if anything, because the main point is very simple.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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""Orange Fizz""You turning yellow on us? <vbg>"
Well done!
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@Dar said
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@Orange Fizz said
"It's also just interesting to me, I guess, that it seems like a lot of people involved in WMT and Thelema converse with gods, angels and demons for no apparent reason or very everyday reasons pertaining to their health, work and relationships[1] or just plain curiosity... "From 'On Duty' by AC:
"B. YOUR DUTY TO OTHER INDIVIDUAL MEN AND WOMEN
- "Love is the law, love under will."
Unite yourself passionately with every other form of
consciousness, thus destroying the sense of
seperateness from the Whole, and creating a new
base-line in the Universe from which to measure it."
The source of all beings is the same source - whether this is another man or woman, a God, an Angel, an Elemental, a Demon, an Animal etc."
I know. But, are you really stable in that realization? If so, there's no real need to do much of anything with anyone unless you just want to help them.
- "Love is the law, love under will."
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Oh, nevermind, I see... it's supposed to be the process / route to that understanding. Interesting. I wonder if it works.
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@Dar said
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@Orange Fizz said
"I know. But, are you really stable in that realization? If so, there's no real need to do much of anything with anyone unless you just want to help them."We've all incarnated into the animal bodies of social and sexual creatures. I find that rather significant. Divided for loves sake..."
It depends on what you think that means. In my view, it is somewhat complicated, but very easy to understand once you get all the details filled in. It's related to Crowley's "star sponge vision" and his explanation of Nuit and Hadit but these concepts leave a lot of detail to be filled in, perhaps by such ritual work, I don't know. In my understanding, what you've just said as an explanation can be read at least 2 ways, one of which is very much off the mark or at least very contradictory to the other interpretation. Here are the two ways I can read your statement: (1) we have all divided intentionally for love's sake and for the sake of union (but for some strange reason we don't remember that, eh?), and (2) "love" has two meanings, one pertaining to desire (incomplete) and one pertaining to compassion (complete)... not realizing the nature of our own minds, we create the world from our desire and lust in the result, still never recognizing our own minds and our real nature. This can go on endlessly through many incarnations. The primal source, empty and cognizant, is ultimately the "compassionate space mother" which allows all. In this way, the projection of our world can be seen as a "ladder of lights" leading back to "heaven," and explains the maxim "nothing is true, everything is permitted" as well as the notion that "all beings have been your mother countless times in the past" since our projections project and intermingle themselves... this is what I was getting at before when I said that magickal work can be like stirring your finger through ink in a bowl of water; one drop clouds the whole bowl. Ink takes a long time to settle to the bottom where we can see the clear nature of the water again. Being social and sexual in itself is no more significant than a schizophrenic talking with the radio and masturbating in the corner, is it? If you don't recognize your own nature, it is all just distraction and masturbation of one sort or the other.
So, anyway, yes, 'divided for love's sake' but depending on your interpretation of that, you can spend an awfully long time suffering in ignorance.
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@Dar said
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"In most experiences of intense Joy I forget myself and exist in the moment…"That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. That is a normal aspect of everyday deluded mind in a forgetful state and not transcendental any more than Alzheimers is transcendental. In my training, I am not shooting for bliss states. At all. That is a very big distraction called a "pleasant obstacle" along the same lines of becoming a great meditator and suddenly finding yourself surrounded by groupies.
@Dar said
"A true nature doesn't belong to 'you'."
Right.
@Dar said
"Our lifes and existance are a sacrament, whether we realise this or not. Therefore - the pain of division and ignorance is as nothing."
"Sacrament" is a suspect word, imo, meaningless conceptual baggage. Everything is as nothing, but to the person who experiences himself suffering through it can be everything, the weight of which is too much to bare. Without recognizing and stabilizing the view of that "inner" essenceless essence we are talking about (or I am talking about at least), all talk about it is just conceptual baggage.
@Dar said
"The ego owns nothing, creates nothing, enjoys nothing, not even itself as it is an illusion,"
Somewhat agree; the ego owns nothing, but it creates and enjoys illusions with the help of the inherently cognizant awareness of the source, which is empty awareness.
@Dar said
"but even this illusion of ourselves as a constant thing is enjoyed by the source of it all."
Right, but "enjoyed" here is a very suspect word and its relation to the source is also suspect. The source itself is not a thing, either, and any aspect of enjoyment comes from a projected ego which then has great difficulty recognizing the source. The source is free from all obstacles and utterly beyond concepts. A realized being may project an 'enjoyment body' but that is not the state we find ourselves in now. Recognition of the source is so subtle it is described as a hair tip, quite easy to miss. But, in missing that hair tip, it is like light projecting through a crystal and endless rainbows appear. Those projections are the natural potential and energy of the source which we get lost in where we find self and other and all the endless thoughts like a chain of friends rising up to support each other. This seems very useful because without logic and compassion of others to support us, we would be utterly lost in confusion... but this is precisely the state of hell beings, ghosts, other types of beings we would call "spirit" beings and dumb animals who are raised in awful conditions just to be slaughtered for our food. These projections are so close to the source it is impossible to separate from the source, but they are also so far removed it is like an infinite chasm.
@Dar said
"Existance is pure joy"
This holy book is up to each person to interpret for himself and those who discuss it should be shunned as sources of pestilence. In other words, I disagree with the following…
@Dar said
"and the source of all is 'getting it on' through you as part of it's universal wank fest when you simply open your eyes every morning, listen to the birds, or have your breakfast."
…or I should clarify that it is only partly true, imo, and can be interpreted a few ways. From what you've said thus far, I am pretty sure you mean something else, but I would only agree insofar as the source is the cognizant awareness in all sentient beings.Though we share a co-created reality, the source isn't an overmind controlling all (no, you didn't say it was, I'm just clarifying my view) and though the source is ultimately what can cognize all manner of physical activity and mental phenomenon (what else could but empty cognizing awareness?), that does not quite equate to all experience as being pure joy, since joy is a limitation and the source is beyond any limitation, not to mention joy has its relative opposite in misery.
The urge to become fulfilled is what draws people on a spiritual path, otherwise nobody would bother. This urge does not express "joy" but rather discontent, ambition not yet satisfied. All joys are like this in the relative world we experience. "Existence is pure joy" is only a phrase that makes sense for those who have gone beyond the relative and I mean REALLY gone beyond, which is what I believe this verse is really referring to, personally.
@Dar said
"You were talking about knowing the real nature of the mind, and out of respect for your Buddhist leanings I'll pop my Zen hat on."
Buddhism is not all the same, but I do appreciate Mahayana and Zen more than Theravada. There is nothing in Dogen's words here I disagree with, but it does not make any point I have not considered, either. I do appreciate Buddhism, all of the methods are good, but what I ultimately believe is not limited to those methods since the great perfection is beyond all conceptual limitations.
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btw, if Jim reads this exchange and says all of my ideas are decidedly NOT in agreement with Thelema's cosmology and view of the source, the ego self, relative existence, etc. then I will have finally gotten my answer as to how compatible all of this is and drop all such discussion in the future!
The reason I've been hanging out here is because I haven't been quite sure since there appears to be some very obvious overlap and I just realized this came out so effortlessly and naturally. I don't think I could have planned it, but this is essentially the heart of the matter for me all summed up in this thread. I was actually studying the Qabalah a bit recently and thinking maybe it really all is compatible... Is Jim Ipsissimus or whatever the highest degree is? Even if not, I am sure he is the best authority on Thelema that I know, so I would be interested if he had anything to say. -
@Dar said
"Is Jim Ipsissimus...?
That's like declaring yourself to be Jesus Christ you know. 
"Just passing through to clarify that this is yours and Big Citrus' (Peach Fuzz's?) discussion, not mine. (Not sure how Jesus got into this, though LOL.)
Fortunately, anyone at all is always saved from ever having to address this question: "[The Ipsissimus] is sworn to accept this Grade in the presence of a witness, and to express its nature in word and deed, but to withdraw Himself at once within the veils of his natural manifestation as a man, and to keep silence during his human life as to the fact of his attainment, even to the other members of the Order." (One Star in Sight)
And no, this is not a back-handed way of saying, "Er, ahum, you, uh, know I can't answer that, y'know?"
Nonetheless, Popeye's mantram serves all of us well, y'know?
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So... Jim is yam... made out of spinach?
Just came back from "Sunday funday" which = 1 bloody marry followed by another bloody marry about an hour later and then I had to order another beer cuz the credit card minimum was $20 and then we got a free drink, so we split another Brooklyn lager... I'm a little unmindful now and don't want to read anything and answer inappropriately. I just opened my browser and this thread popped up, so I wanted to comment... Dar, I appreciate your response, but like I said I'm not as mindful as I'd like to be now, so I skipped it and went on to page 2 to see if Jim responded. He did, but was not what I was hoping for (naturally, he always does that to me except when I don't expect him to and then he over-delivers!)... must be an Ipsissimus thing
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Oh! One thing I realized as soon as we left the house was that I crapped on this thread unintentionally. I don't want to carry on this discussion in here. It's a thread about Enochophobia... sorry about that, OP. Like I said, this all came out quite naturally and without effort on my part at all (thanks, Dar!) and I couldn't have asked these questions better if I tried... but, I did not mean to derail the thread. I will respect that and switch this topic elsewhere if it is to be continued.
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Bloody Mary.
There is only one R. Sorry about before.