Results may vary...
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Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
Thank you Jim for the clarification.
It's true I was not doing the work of the DL at that particular junction, but I was curious because I had friend in the AA that went through many Ordeal before becoming 5=6. We fell out of correspondence around the time in my life being described for various reasons. I am certainly not claiming any grade whatsoever. The methods of the AA are somewhat contradictory to the tradition I follow, but the system does provide an excellent map.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Legis said
"... I've heard of HGA's manifesting in a people's lives in several different forms: alien, angel, Arab, old white guy, and now Lwa."
Probably the same phenomenon in differing masks.
Different internal symbolic representation, according to personal frame of reference; and different external representation, according to cultural frame of reference.
For the Yoruba culture, most of the Orishas have the same qualities as "Angels" would have had to western medieval scholars.
In my opinion, if the "Loa version" is comparable to the "HGA version" could only be decided upon a deeper analysis of the phenomena experienced and their (empirically observable) consequences, and not via correspondence tables or sequences of training which can and will differ between different traditions. That would be confusing the map with the territory, imo.
Cheers.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
"Possession shall be nine-tenths of the Loa."
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Jim Eshelman said
""Possession shall be nine-tenths of the Loa.""
Well ... you can easily interpret the HGA experience as a possession, and it might first be experienced as such, no? The own deep self so alien to the cultural mask one has identified with that the "true" self appears as an alien entity at first ...
Self-possession, sure, but possession still. Possession of the personal and prespersonal selves by the transpersonal self.
Am I overlooking something? The Yoruba high priest of Shango, for example, is the Orisha Shango, by his own experience. And the process how he got there sounds a lot like the HGA experience and subsequent realisation to me.
This is how I arrived at the above conclusion, as far as the Orishas as potential HGAs are concerned.
Edit: Just noticed that this is a version of a proverb I wasn't aware of existed, english isn't my mother tongue. Doesn't change my point, though.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Simon Iff said
"
@Legis said
"... I've heard of HGA's manifesting in a people's lives in several different forms: alien, angel, Arab, old white guy, and now Lwa."Different internal symbolic representation, according to personal frame of reference; and different external representation, according to cultural frame of reference."
While I find validity in this statement, to be perfectly clear: I had no prior exposure to the Haitian or Yoruba culture. If anything the Yoruba culture is more present in very subtle ways where I live, but the Haitian culture is very subverted and secretive.
"Am I overlooking something? The Yoruba high priest of Shango, for example, is the Orisha Shango, by his own experience. And the process how he got there sounds a lot like the HGA experience and subsequent realisation to me."
This is the understanding that I have concluded through personal experience with friends that are Yoruba Priests and Priestesses. A good friend of mine, who is a priestess of Oshun said that when she dies she will become a "camino" or "path" of Oshun. I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
Give the man a cigar. (A good cigar.)
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Jim Eshelman said
"Give the man a cigar. (A good cigar.)"
That's funny you should say that. I was doing a house cleansing for a friend of the Lucumi faith today, and I had lit a cheap cigar (it was sort of on the fly and none of the stores had any decent cigars). When the spirit suddenly possessed my friend he immediately complained about the quality of the tobacco.
I guess it's off to the liquor and tobacco store!
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
Very nice to read, thanks for sharing.
@HounganRocky said
" Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day."
That rocks man !
Looking forward to read some introduction to voodoo if you will. Cheers.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
"Looking forward to read some introduction to voodoo if you will. Cheers."
Here is your introduction to Voodoo:
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@HounganRocky said
"
"Looking forward to read some introduction to voodoo if you will. Cheers."Here is your introduction to Voodoo:
www.heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13119"
Thanks !
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@HounganRocky said
"I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings."
I've never heard of anything like that before.
But I find that it fits as a puzzle-piece connecting about 6 seemingly separate things I've been pondering for a good while.
If you were close, I'd buy you that cigar myself.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@HounganRocky said
"A good friend of mine, who is a priestess of Oshun said that when she dies she will become a "camino" or "path" of Oshun. I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings."
As someone who works a lot with this, is it your impression that the Orishas might be a sort of hive minds? I am curious about that.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Simon Iff said
"
@HounganRocky said
"A good friend of mine, who is a priestess of Oshun said that when she dies she will become a "camino" or "path" of Oshun. I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings."As someone who works a lot with this, is it your impression that the Orishas might be a sort of hive minds? I am curious about that."
Hmm, I don't think the term "hive mind" is what I'd use, but to some extent it seems to fit and isn't that the case with all (most) divinities (and what happens with the Orishas here happens with all of them)?
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@Simon Iff said
"
@HounganRocky said
"A good friend of mine, who is a priestess of Oshun said that when she dies she will become a "camino" or "path" of Oshun. I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings."As someone who works a lot with this, is it your impression that the Orishas might be a sort of hive minds? I am curious about that."
"Hive minds" is far from the truth. The Orishas themselves are Briatic Beings. The Caminos of the Orishas are in fact Yetizratic beings that build the link between the initiate and the Orisha. Generally, the Yetziratic Camino helps the initiate by pointing out potential problems along the way. When the Orishas possess properly, they are in fact Briatic and keep Yetziratic entities away.
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
@HounganRocky said
""Hive minds" is far from the truth."
So the Orishas are very distinct and separate, individualistic, beings in your experience?
@HounganRocky said
"The Orishas themselves are Briatic Beings. The Caminos of the Orishas are in fact Yetizratic beings that build the link between the initiate and the Orisha. Generally, the Yetziratic Camino helps the initiate by pointing out potential problems along the way."
Are you saying that the Caminos and the Orishas are different beings here? That happen to work together, but are not fused?
@Deus Ex Machina said
"Hmm, I don't think the term "hive mind" is what I'd use, but to some extent it seems to fit and isn't that the case with all (most) divinities (and what happens with the Orishas here happens with all of them)?"
@HounganRocky said
"When the Orishas possess properly, they are in fact Briatic and keep Yetziratic entities away."
I agree with the former, so I would ask, why shouldn't an entity be briatic and a hive mind?
-
Before I became an Houngan, I was a devote Thelemite pursuing the path of my True Will. My days were filled with Resh, LBRPs, Star Rubies, Mass of the Pheonix, Meditation... the list goes on. For the last three of my ten years of pursuing Ceremonial Magic, I can say that I had devoted the majority of my day to my practice.
One day I awoke with strange energies coursing through my body, my visualizations suddenly took on a life of their own. The God-forms I visualized became animated and seemed less like images and more like living beings. Everything around me breathed with life. Even my dreams were more lucid and clear than I had ever experienced before. My conscious experience became one unbroken current moving from state to state with total awareness.
At this juncture, I took it upon myself to start performing Liber Samekh. Every morning and evening was marked by vibrations of barbarous names and intonations of the Gods. I began to have dreams of the various paths of the Tree, marking connections between Tipereth and it's surrounding Sephiroth. I persisted and persisted, being pushed with a greater intensity each day.
One night I dreamed I was going to a party with a Haitian man I worked with. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by strange and exotic people, each one quite distinct and they introduced themselves to me and told me I had to return to my hometown. A few days later I woke in the middle of the night to see an old man robed in white telling me that I had to return to my home town and become initiated into the mysteries of Guinea. When I addressed the man and began to question him he vanished.
Shortly after this happened, I lost my job and found out that my grandparents were dying of cancer. A lawsuit that had taken 5 years to settle gave me enough money to pack my things and move. I found myself for the first time homeless and penniless. My girlfriend of four years left me and I felt lost in a sea of turbulence. I visited an houngan that I had met several years earlier and he confirmed the dreams I had been having, and told me that it would be in my best interested to become initiated into Voodoo. He did some work on my behalf and in a couple of days I had a new home, a car, money in my pocket, and a new job.
By this time, I had already been trying to work with these very persistent entities, as I could tell they were not going to go away. Don't get me wrong, I had done a great deal of Goetic evocation and could more or less banish those beings at will. The Lwa (the voodoo gods) were not so easily rattled. They would wake me from my sleep to tell me about the things that were going to take place in my life (everything would come true).
I consulted with the houngan on these very disturbing phenomena, as I still had a difficult time accepting the advice of spirits since I was your typical "it's all in your head magician." I didn't enjoy being told what to do and didn't want to just given in. He read my hands and did multiple divinations, and he determined that my Head Spirit or Met Tet, was in fact, a Lwa. Had I not practiced magic I more than likely would have lived a life with almost no crisis, but I had awakened the ancestral spirits of my bloodline and they were in need of satisfaction.
My HGA was a Lwa! This seemed absurd! My mother's family was mostly Italian Catholics, but my father's side came from a hodgepodge of various Caribbean backgrounds. The more I meditated on this information the more correct it felt.
Time passed and I eventually became initiated, and my problems began to clear up. Magic became so easy. The act of lighting a candle became more important than long and laborious rituals. A few words and results began to manifest almost immediately. The inner guide was at one with the voices that were speaking to me. Peace and Unity within myself took over. I realized that my Zeal in magic was a great imbalance, and I began to work to embrace the day to day world.
Perhaps, if I had been in the AA when this took place I would have had better guidance, and not struggle to such a degree. So many ordeals manifested that I avoided even touching on as it would have lead to a rather lengthy paper.
I leave this experience with advice: Magic is real. The ceremonies have more than just some psychological purpose. There are multiple worlds both within and without and within those worlds are living being with power and knowledge beyond imagination. There is more than just a "true self" there is an Other, but in order to meet that Other you must wake up to the True Self. Don't allow yourself to be misguided by unhappy people that seek to ensnare you with their fearful philosophies. To embrace the Angel you must have spirit, anything else is certain death.
Love, Honor, Respect.
Rocky
"
So the Orishas are very distinct and separate, individualistic, beings in your experience?"Yes. Absolutely distinct and individual. They may work together, but they are individual and are approached as individuals.
"Are you saying that the Caminos and the Orishas are different beings here? That happen to work together, but are not fused?"
Each Orisha is it's own territory. The Yetziratic Caminos are separate and distinct within the realm of each Orisha, acting as envoys. The Caminos have their own likes and dislikes and can operate independently from the Orisha itself.
"I agree with the former, so I would ask, why shouldn't an entity be briatic and a hive mind?"
A hive mind is a lower Yetziractic quality, and the Orishas themselves are purely Briatic by their manifestation. Even the caminos are not worker bees, they have their own distinct personalities that one must experience in order to understand. Ultimately, the camino will behave in accordance to the Orisha, but they may communicate and be more sympathetic to an initiate than the particular Orisha.
