Honesty in Ritual
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Brothers and Sisters,
THELEMA
Since my spiritual process was initiated, I have very slowly come to feel that honesty is a major key to effectively obeying the law of Thelema. Honesty is key, but it is by no means as easy as I thought it would be. By honesty, I mean "trueness" (to yourself and to the world) in thought, word, and deed. By "trueness", I don't mean chivalric boyscout standards of never outwardly telling a lie. I believe there is a difference between an honest lie (one which reveals truth) and a dishonest lie (one intended to conceal truth). By "true", I more prefer the analogy of a wheel spinning true; or an arrow, true, hitting the target; or the trueness (fidelity) of the proper boulder under your foot as you ascend a cliff-face. What is true = what works (effectiveness). This is why I equate Honesty with "Love under Will".
I often TRY to be honest, but more often than not, I find the subtleties of more complete honesty is the RESULT of practice, and doesn't always come when called by me. I often forget, and fade for a while back into what feels like falsity. But when it does come, it can come in many different ways. Honesty can manifest in the way my body physically moves, the way I eat my food, the way I breathe, the internal conversations I have with myself, the information (verbal and nonverbal) which I communicate to another person through conversation, and so on.
My first real conscious troubles with honesty, about a year and a half ago, involved ritual magick. I had decided to more seriously devote myself to finding out whether or not ritual magick was the right tool for me. I told myself to perform Liber Resh for 40 days straight, whether I liked it or not. It didn't take long before I encountered a big problem: I discovered I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and whenever I performed Resh, I felt like I was being dishonest. That is, I felt like I was standing around playing make-believe: shouting valiantly at the sun as if I were some kind of Awesome Thelemic Warrior Man- A Magician! Proud Faced and Keen! Of course, if anyone were to so much as walk in on me performing the ritual, my little heart would immediately go "THUMP THUMP OH SHIT, KEEP PRETENDING, KEEP PRETENDING!"
Since then, I've gone through various phases of feeling honest and dishonest during ritual. Right now, I've been feeling a little dishonest in ritual, and I'm curious about how other people choose to approach ritual. Taking Liber Resh as an example (though I am speaking about ritual mindset in general), I tend to slowly go through a specific "honesty cycle" over the course of many months.
First, I approach the ritual in a very theatrical way, speaking loudly and vibrantly, putting aside Bryan's personality preferences, and taking up the mannerisms of a God speaking to its Source. But it doesn't take long for me to feel like this approach is inappropriate as a method of adoration towards That which is the <b>essentially</b> personal and True. That is, I start to feel like I'm just pretending, play acting, compensating for my lack of understanding with loudness and boldness.
Then, in an effort to try to get more in touch with That which is essentially personal and True, I have in the past opted towards what feels like simplicity and honesty in mindset and delivery of Adoration. Jewel sings "What's simple is true". Parker J Palmer, in his book "Let Your Life Speak" (which I picked up after seeing Jim's recommendation of it) speaks of the efficacy of simplicity in prayer.
@Parker J. Palmer said
The soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well merge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.
Taking this to heart, I then decide to approach the ritual as if I, personally, were saying the words of adoration, honestly, to that which I love. From this method often comes the more notable emotional effects.
But from the simple, honest-feeling, emotional approach, tends to emerge a feeling that I'm still not being honest enough. I keep wanting to continue simplifying and personalizing the adoration until it soon feels inappropriate to even be reciting a pre-written adoration in the first place. I want instead to throw all the godforms and words aside and just sit silently in Love under Will, feeling the dance of stillness. But this comes to the point where I am no longer performing ritual magick at all.
What I am saying is that I have trouble with deep honesty in ritual because formal, theatrical ritual is not how my personality wants to adore my beloved. Bryan would not stand on a stage and formally recite a Shakespeare sonnet in order to express his love to a woman. He would hold her face in his hands and look into her eyes and say with his heart "I love you."
But from what I understand, ritual magick is not about giving the personality what it wants.
What are your experiences with honesty in ritual? Do you ever get repulsed by feelings of play-acting and disingenuousness during ritual? How do you equilibriate the obviously theatrical nature of ritual honest action? What role does your personality and its preferences play in ritual?
AGAPE
Bryan
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You do not have to shout or speak it loudly. Using Resh as an example, sometimes I scream out the words. Other times it is a soft whisper and there are instances where I do not say anything at all. I stand there in silence, straight as an arrow.
It appears to me that you are concentrating too much on the ritual itself and not on what it is meant to express. Also, take into consideration this:
Though Crowley may have written Resh, you make it your own in the way you perform it. You are undergoing a process of taking something outside of you, bringing it inward and transmuteing it into part of your self. An expression of Love under Will.
Blah, that last part did not come out as I wanted it to.
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I'll take a shot at your question from another perspective... as much as I understand it...
Because of my background, I spent a whole lot of time reading and thinking and meditating - but not doing ritual. The godforms and symbols intimidated me, and I wanted nothing to do with them until I understood exactly what was going on and what their purpose was.
I never understood the *why * until *after *I had some really crazy imbalanced experiences from my seriously long, one-sided approach. All that stuff about "volatilizing the fixed" is completely real and physiological. I had absolutely no way to categorize, understand, or control the quickly shifting emotions nor all the changes in thought and level of consciousness that were occurring. At about 3 o'clock in the morning on my third night of being completely wide awake, friends took me both to the hospital, thinking I'd had a stroke, and then the behavioral clinic after the MRI turned out okay.
The godforms and rituals create categories for understanding and techniques for stimulation and balanced control. There is a time for mystical devotion, and there is a time for practicing discipline of emotion.
In other words, it's not all about experiencing love. Sometimes it's about controlling and restraining it, shaping it, focusing it in the desired manner: Love *under *Will.
My recommendation - press on. Do both: impress those forms and symbols on your subconscious AND seek authenticity.
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Thanks. For whatever reason, I believe that somehow I must have used power unwisely and dangerously. Each time I do ritual work, my life falls apart,and I can't continue. Some crisis occurs that uses up all my time, attention, money, etc.
So, glad to hear about your theory of balance. My totem animal is the tortoise. Slow, awkward, timid, but persevering.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
Uni-Verse, actually, that last part was was the more helpful. It makes sense to me. Thank you.
@Frater LR said
"The godforms and rituals create categories for understanding and techniques for stimulation and balanced control. There is a time for mystical devotion, and there is a time for practicing discipline of emotion.
In other words, it's not all about experiencing love. Sometimes it's about controlling and restraining it, shaping it, focusing it in the desired manner: Love *under *Will.
My recommendation - press on. Do both: impress those forms and symbols on your subconscious AND seek authenticity."
Thanks for the reminder and the advice. I suspect that I am not doing enough mystical devotion- or getting enough LOVE- these days, so I seem to naturally be wanting to express it in my daily rituals, which I guess is not exactly what they are meant for. I feel much more inclined toward things like taking long pastoral walks in the forest right now than ritual.
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"Thanks. For whatever reason, I believe that somehow I must have used power unwisely and dangerously. Each time I do ritual work, my life falls apart,and I can't continue. Some crisis occurs that uses up all my time, attention, money, etc.
So, glad to hear about your theory of balance. My totem animal is the tortoise. Slow, awkward, timid, but persevering. "Ehhh... you remind me of the other side of that too, I guess.
The rituals stimulate and activate the subconscious as well. But, I guess I'd have to say that as long as we're going to be poking around in the depths of our minds, the best way to do it is in a fashion that ultimately leads to balance and control. I wasn't even ever performing a banishing ritual when all that went down.
A wise lady from the B.O.T.A. once told me that doing the work can be like getting your spine adjusted at a chiropractor. Adjusting it can inflame the joints and hurt at first, especially if it's really out of whack, but ultimately it leads to greater comfort and a return to the maximum range of motion.
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Thanks. That was helpful. Yet, Thelema says to go to the furthest reaches of everything to find that balance. Like the Tree of Life, you only find the middle path, when you really know where the two opposites are. I find it remarkable the depths to which Thelemites go to delve to find bottom. Does it have to do with the lack of fear, as Froclown said?
In L.V.X.,
chrys333
About Balance:
"And it was a man, a Chinese man, and he was stacking these things, not with glue, not with anything. And I asked him how is it possible to do this? And he said, well, I guess with everything in life, there's a place of balance." Amy Tam, TED talks.
www.ted.com/talks/amy_tan_on_creativity.html -
@Chris Hanlon said
"Thanks. That was helpful. Yet, Thelema says to go to the furthest reaches of everything to find that balance. Like the Tree of Life, you only find the middle path, when you really know where the two opposites are. I find it remarkable the depths to which Thelemites go to delve to find bottom. Does it have to do with the lack of fear, as Froclown said?"
Well, I hope this is considered to be at the level of a discussion because I'm still figuring all this out as well. The sincerity and depth of your questions makes me nervous about my ability to answer. This is my take...
Regarding finding balance, I simply mean that no aspects of the psyche can be left unaccounted for without later discovering the necessity of their inclusion. I have always been taught to be one of those "mercy is the only answer" types. When all that repressed psychic material came up, it was ugly, vicious, and cruel. I believe you were around when some of that spilled over onto this forum. If nothing else, I have discovered that (at least on the psychological level) the characters of the rituals give archetypes for understanding all those forces within my own psyche and their relationship to one another. Before, I had only Jesus and the devil, so there was only "nice" vs "evil" as opposed to Chesed balanced by Geburah.
Me personally? I don't have the desire to experience extreme everything. Must I really experience extreme drug addiction and conquer it? No thanks. Cigarettes were/are difficult enough. Must I really contort my temperament to have every sexual experience imaginable? No thanks. I just don't care to. I look at it as if none of these experiences are barred to me, and I may experience any extreme I wish to experience so long as I am willing to bear the karma.
According to Regardie in his biography of Crowley, when Regardie showed up on Crowley's door, Crowley's first instruction to him was to go out and have every sexual experience imaginable - to let nothing hinder him. Regardie promptly did no such thing. I think he turned out okay anyway.
But if Regardie had been the kind of man either who had secretly wanted to fulfill such desires (but had never yet given in) or if he had been the kind of man who was so sexually repressed as to believe that he actually needed to (in order to remove the mysterious power it had in his psyche), then I'm sure he would have. Maybe we could say that he would have "needed" to do so, and, yes, it would probably require courage.For some people, I think they have a desire to be able to say, "I have experienced and conquered ALL," and they put themselves in extreme situations in order to do so. Crowley was the mountain-climbing type, after all - "Because it's there!" But I don't think that's everyone's path.
Personally, I'd just like to be healthy and strong enough to find my One Thing and do it freely and with power. Toward that end, I'll try to resolve and correct my imbalances, but I won't force myself into situations otherwise completely foreign to my nature.
Does that make sense?
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93 Bryan,
The very first time I made the circle, and did some basic work, I had no doubt about the 'reality' of it. The universe becomes a very different place. There was never a doubt for me that these rituals work or that I was playing games, not because I 'believe' they 'work' or anything about honesty, but because they are tied directly to the structure of the universe/reality via symbolic correspondences of motions, signs, symbols, and vibrations. Do the work, and the results will happen. To quote a tangentially related scene from the Matrix - Commander Lock: Not everyone believes what you do Morpheus. Morpheus: My beliefs do not require them to. Similiar sentiments are echoed in Liber O - do the work, the results will follow, personal beliefs aside. I know there are blinds in the published material which I am trying to fill, but the fundamental frameworks seem to be there for the most part.
There have been instances of practice, where I know I messed up a sign or forgot a procedure, but instead of throwing in the towel and ending, a little voice urges me to carry it through, which I always do. Essentially, I have never had a problem with 'honesty in ritual', or ever for a moment doubted whether or not it was 'real'.
If you sit down and really analyze the elements of say LBRP - where the operator is situated on the intersection of the paths on the tree, the relation of the compass directions and Sephiroth, the symbols and vibrations, follow the chain of correspondences to their Qabalistic roots, the linkage with the structure of how this universe is architected and the ritual becomes startlingly clear, all the way back to the source. Maybe such an analysis will help you.
93 93/93
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Frater LR,
I appreciate your viewpoint and your ability to articulate it. Yes, if it needs to be experienced, it should be. That is when listening to your HGA is really important. Only he/she knows what is important for you to do on your own unique path. It takes courage to make any change. Momentum seems to be a greater force than anything else.
Thanks,
chrys333 -
Here's quote from the glossary of Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections just for funzies:
""Mandalas . . . usually appear in situations of psychic confusion and perplexity. The archetype thereby constellated represents a pattern of order which, like a psychological "view-finder" marked with a cross or circle divided into four, is superimposed on the psychic chaos so that each content falls into place and the weltering confusion is held together by the protective circle . . . At the same time they are yantras, instruments with whose help the order is brought into being." (originally from Jung, Civilization in Transition)"
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@Bryan said
"What are your experiences with honesty in ritual? Do you ever get repulsed by feelings of play-acting and disingenuousness during ritual? How do you equilibriate the obviously theatrical nature of ritual honest action? What role does your personality and its preferences play in ritual?
AGAPE
Bryan"
"Dismissal before investigation is the height of ignorance" Gandhi. Brace yourself for the opinion of a heretic!
Did you ever consider that even as a "Thelemite" Ceremonial Magick may not be ideally suited to your personality type? Personality plays a big role in ritual as it is intrinsic to every single action we do, directly proportionally to it's complexity. 
Life experience predisposes us towards one methodology over another, as Uni-verse would say "There is only one verse sung in infinite ways"