Questions about the abyss????
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That's rubbish to be honest, I think it's making light of the Abyss crossing, confusing a period of dryness with the actual abyss experience.
For example, in my own practice I'm nowhere near crossing the abyss, but I get all of the symptoms that are cited as signs that one is about to cross the abyss.
The first dark night is NOT the crossing of the abyss. It is the traversing of the path of Tau. Which seems to fool many people into thinking that they are in fact about to be cast out into the abyss, when in fact they are only just beginning to climb the tree.
My recommendation, Read St John of the Cross's first chapter about the darknight of the senses, and study the path of Tau in the Qaballah.
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One thing about magick that many will not tell you is that you have to gain a true understanding of these forces- within yourself- not just an intellectual one. Many people have a wonderful intellectual understanding of the works of GD and AC- but no actual experience/real/practical/intuitive with it.
I feel this is why AC wrote 'Theory and Practice'.The whole key is to find these archetypes (and magick in general) within yourself, to perceive them, to intuit them. Any mug can talk and make it sound good- I have known many.
Arche is being very honest with himself and all of us too- good quality. You see how can you attain KCHGA unless you admit you havn't?
I would like to quote Buddha ' Once the light is born shadows will be cast'.
Q
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It is not so much the HGA goes anywhere,
The nature of the relationship changes
You become an Angel of the Uni VerseO wait, I all ready am one!
YAY! I WIN!
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@kasper81 said
"this is a quote from that blog
The HGA: Even though your HGA may seem far away or absent during this period, remember that he is always there. Continue to turn to him for everything, even though you do not experience his presence in the same glorious way you did before. Sheer faith in your HGA and trust in the process will get you safely through.
the HGA stays siklent and remote and in the distance like a parent allowing it's child to go through growing pains?"
This is so true
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If we are in a period as to where we are experiencing these events, how are they not even associated or considered an abyss experience or is it that Crowley has been the only one to make it accross...
Why does it seem so unobtainable, what other criteria must we be mindful of, other than being abandoned and reality tearing us to bits....viciously eating away at everything we thought or believed..... -
Barra- by looking deep into yourself, over time you will notice certain 'changes' to your deep self. You will notice subltle and not so subtle changes - you will notice a subconscious self- a soul- a true self- a magickal self- It is here that you will notice true magickal change.
But before you 'intuit' or 'pick up' on 'the crossing' you should notice the not so subtle 'enlightenment'(other terms often used).Seems to me you have to look deep into yourself and find this 'trueself'- After you have found this these questions will be answered.
The various magickal practices that are promoted on this forum are of serious assistance to those, like you, who seek truth.
Q
No AC is not the only one who made it across.
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@kasper81 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Barrackubus said
"If he brings you to the point where he abandons you, what is he looking for? What brings him back? How long does he stay gone?"This is exactly the kind of mind-entangling question loop that gets people stuck in the Abyss."
if this is the case , take AC as an example. When did AC think his HGA returned to him? When his despair faded after he left China?"
China was years earlier.
Crowley crossed the Abyss during the Visions & Voices working in December 1909. He had been of Babe of the Abyss since the summer solstice, not quite six months earlier. His passage had taken many days, and reached across his specific work with various aethyrs (his particular technique), but it crested at the edge of the Abyss in the 11th Aethyr. At the end of that vision, around 11:30 PM on December 5, 1909, we find the following:
"And I said unto the Angel:
Is there not one appointed as a warden?
And he said:
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani.
Such an ecstasy of anguish racks me that I cannot give it voice, yet I know it is but as the anguish of Gethsemane. And that is the last word of the Æthyr. The outposts are passed, and before the seer extends the outermost Abyss."
The text, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani, are the reputed final words of Christ upon the cross, and are usually translated (and surely were understood by Crowley) as meaning, "My Lord, My Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?" This is the point of the abandonment.
The next afternoon, he undertook the vision of the 10th Aethyr which, for him, was the final confrontation with Choronzon.
Then, on December 7, beginning at 9:30 PM, he began the Vision of the 9th Aethyr. Here is the immediate return of the Angel. - Not that I might be misconstruing; that the angel who greets him might not be the HGA. The tone is all "right," though; still, I might be wrong about that. But I think the time of abandonment was about 2 days or less, just enough time to complete the crossing.
In the worst case, it is Aiwass who dictated the 8th Aethyr vision on December 8. Add another day to the gap if you must.
The usual understanding is the following: The Holy Guardian Angel abandons one on the shore of the Abyss (or, in some cases, earlier: not everyone slides off the sandy slope in one swift kick!). The absence is necessary (for certain technical reasons) before the crossing. I mostly don't want to detail this because the full explanation would mess with people's heads in earlier stages. But here's the key part: The faculty that the Adept previously used to relate to the HGA no longer has any serious reality for the Adept. It's no longer a viable formula. It fails. As in every other grade or stage of transition of any substance, the darkness arises to one who has "known God" (so to speak) because the prior means of the relationship has failed as a consequence of one's progress. What's left is to find the new faculty the new approach, the new relationship. Therefore, it is said that the Angel returns, but in a different fashion and with a different relationship.
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@Q789 said
"One thing about magick that many will not tell you is that you have to gain a true understanding of these forces- within yourself- not just an intellectual one."
This should probably be a topic of its own. I see this dichotomy a lot and it bugs me. "Intellect" is also a "force within."
Nobody understands anything just intellectually. Their presentation may imply that to us, but it's not the case.
It especially bugs me when I share my knoweldge with someone and they drop this, "Well, true knowledge isn't merely intellectual" crap on me.
Like...duhh! Thanks, Captain Obvious.
So, to the OP. The Abyss (in Magick) is probably impossible to describe linguistically (which Crowley admits over and over despite his best efforts to do otherwise), but it very much involves intellectual understanding. Of course, if one wants Wisdom, intellectual understanding had better be "balanced" with, to borrow William James' term "pure experience," but even that might involve the intellect.
I hope that wasn't too intellectual for y'all.
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@kasper81 said
"I hear that the Abyss is basically destruction of ego-identification. Admittedly that makes it sound easy
so he was already technically 8=3. before he started working on the aethyrs in the desert? He just decided not to confer himself 8=3 until after the North African work, which was a reiteration of that crossing but in the Enochian aethyr system? That said , someone could attain 8=3 without even having to deal with Choronzon or work with the Enochian system? For example Zen masters are masters of dhyana, pratyahara, samadhis, they have dealt with ego-identification. They are akin to AC, post North Africa?"
Which Zen masters do you have in mind?
Cf. also, Perdurabo pp. 196-98 (and Confessions, p. 621) for an account of how he understood the crossing as it relates to "ego destruction."
"Destruction" is misleading, as he admits in his description of his Ipsissimus attainment in his diary of 2.24.1924: "I am beginning to realize faintly how many gross deceits I have been cleansed in my ascent into the Sphere of Fire" (Cf. also Perdurabo, pp. 407-09).
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@kasper81 said
"so he was already technically 8=3. before he started working on the aethyrs in the desert?"
No. It had been offered (in the GD, rather than A.'.A.'. sense IMHO) in 1906, but he had refused. Date 8=3 to early 1909.
"He just decided not to confer himself 8=3 until after the North African work, which was a reiteration of that crossing but in the Enochian aethyr system?"
Not a reiteration. He hadn't done it before.
"That said , someone could attain 8=3 without even having to deal with Choronzon or work with the Enochian system?"
Absolutely. (There would be phenomena if the same nature of Choronzon, but the answer to your question as asked is Yes, absolutely.)
"For example Zen masters are masters of dhyana, pratyahara, samadhis, they have dealt with ego-identification. They are akin to AC, post North Africa?"
Don't push the definition too far. You're anchoring it on the one point of "destruction of ego-identification," which is true, but which may not mean what you think it means.
Yes, in theory, this could happen. But I implied "no" because I think my saying "tyes" could lead you into all sorts of ego-satisfying wrong conclusions.
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@kasper81 said
"Ok but there must be a big difference between GD 8=3 and A A 8=3? You think GD version is incomplete? If so why?"
Think of it this way; the general idea is that the GD 5=6 is roughly the A.'.A.'. 1=10
But that's not absolutely perfect understanding, although basically true.
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To put it simply.
In GD the grade of 5=6 opens the initiate up to Yetzirah, because the prior grades are basically elemental.
In AA Yetzirah is attained much earlier at 2=9, the elementary work (If you will) being performed in 1=10. -
IIRC A.'.A.'. 8=3 is a Master and G.D. 8=3 would be just an Adept.
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@kasper81 said
"Ok but there must be a big difference between GD 8=3 and A A 8=3? You think GD version is incomplete? If so why?"
Yes, quite a difference. (I discussed this at some length in the opening chapters of Visions & Voices, since it was critical to understanding what Crowley was going through in late 1909.
Bottom line: Nobody ever attained the grade of 8=3 while in the G.D. What it would have been (that is, the grade after the G.D.'s 7=4, and which crosses a substantial threshold of consciousness) is what the A.'.A.'. currently calls 5=6. That is, a G.D. 8=3 would have been one who fully attained to the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
One cannot say the G.D. 8=3 ritual was "incomplete," since there never was one. (Felkin later added an 8=3 grade to the Smaragda Thalassis.
1906 wasn't Crowley's year of crossing the Abyss. It was his year of completing his Abramelin working, sealing it at the end with a reobligation to Adeptus Minor, and everything that flowed from that.
A.'.A.'. and G.D. are scaled differently. For example, all of the 1900-era G.D. work of 5=6 is included in the A.'.A.'. 1=10 work, and the A.'.A.'. 2=9 initiation is based on the G.D. 5=6 initiation.