How do you inflame yourself?
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Good start, then.
For a broader look at the four core methods, see Crowley's essay Energized Enthusiasm (it's in Gems, among other places).
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Hi Jim - can you recommend concrete techniques/tips for the solo practitioner to inflame himself? For example, when preparing a talisman, I have become unexpectedly very "hot" when pronouncing the names of the entities inscribed on the outside cirlce of talisman as a practise run, but when it came to actually charging the talisman during the operation, the energetic effect was nil. Possibly this was because I had run through the operation so many times beforehand and was physically tired...
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@he atlas itch said
"Hi Jim - can you recommend concrete techniques/tips for the solo practitioner to inflame himself?"
Only broad pointers. The nature of concrete techniques is that the concrete doesn't enflame. You have to find your mojo and it's dynamic.
But the recommendation of Energized Enthusiasm - and the four categories of techniques (be sure you find all four) - should be a major help. I doubt anyone can do much better than that essay.
"For example, when preparing a talisman, I have become unexpectedly very "hot" when pronouncing the names of the entities inscribed on the outside cirlce of talisman as a practise run, but when it came to actually charging the talisman during the operation, the energetic effect was nil. Possibly this was because I had run through the operation so many times beforehand and was physically tired..."
Compare this to sex. (Pretty much always use sex as the analogy.) Do you get ready for a hot date by "practicing" on yourself repeatedly just before?
I never practice rituals of that sort - never! And if I did, it wouldn't come out the same way in the performance as it did in the rehearsal. It has to be live and dynamic. It originates in me as it comes out. (And rehearsals, if you have them, are best done "with the batteries out," i.e., as totally mechanical.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
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I never practice rituals of that sort - never! And if I did, it wouldn't come out the same way in the performance as it did in the rehearsal. It has to be live and dynamic. It originates in me as it comes out. (And rehearsals, if you have them, are best done "with the batteries out," i.e., as totally mechanical.)"Another Jewel. Absolutely confirming! Thankx Jim.
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@Takamba said
"Jim Eshelman wrote:
I never practice rituals of that sort - never! And if I did, it wouldn't come out the same way in the performance as it did in the rehearsal. It has to be live and dynamic. It originates in me as it comes out. (And rehearsals, if you have them, are best done "with the batteries out," i.e., as totally mechanical.)-- Another Jewel. Absolutely confirming! Thankx Jim."
I totally agree! Also, performances definitely have to be regular, as the capability of "feeling" the energized enthusiasm is cumulative (based on many performances). As the technicalities of the rituals become "second nature", the 'live and dynamic' aspects get better and better.
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Can anyone please tell me what Crowley is referring to below? What is this "certain secretion"?
*The divine consciousness which is reflected and refracted in the works of Genius feeds upon a certain secretion, as I believe. This secretion is analogous to semen, but not identical with it. There are but few men and fewer women, those women being invariably androgyne, who possess it at any time in any quantity. *
- Energized Enthusiasm
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It doesn't have a standard name (or, rather, there are many names of things sorta kinda close to it).
It's a byproduct of kundalini flow.
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That "androgynous women" hint suggests Crowley is referring to female ejaculation aka amrita or ambrosia...
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@he atlas itch said
"Can anyone please tell me what Crowley is referring to below? What is this "certain secretion"?
*The divine consciousness which is reflected and refracted in the works of Genius feeds upon a certain secretion, as I believe. This secretion is analogous to semen, but not identical with it. There are but few men and fewer women, those women being invariably androgyne, who possess it at any time in any quantity. *
- Energized Enthusiasm"
When I read that I inferred that he was speaking about.a Biochemical state of being that a person will be in when they have transmuted themselves, became whole, and balanced. I thought that the reason it was less likely found in women is that women are on the whole, less balanced then men, and less focused,intent. At least back in the day....
Inspired people, people in love, one track minds, creative, and empowered give off a very different vibe, and I think it is this physical secretion.
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Thanks Veronica. Need to think about that one...
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Lol, oh come now. You know what I am getting at.....
Men are being constantly flooded with sex hormones,
While us gals have this beautiful cyclic nature,
So that our biochemical makeup is constantly ebbing and flowing
Like a fun roller coaster ride isn't it.....Back in the day, it must have been very challenging for our sisters to have sanity in this civilized world. Let alone this elusive juiciness....
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@he atlas itch said
"Can anyone please tell me what Crowley is referring to below? What is this "certain secretion"?
*The divine consciousness which is reflected and refracted in the works of Genius feeds upon a certain secretion, as I believe. This secretion is analogous to semen, but not identical with it. There are but few men and fewer women, those women being invariably androgyne, who possess it at any time in any quantity. *
- Energized Enthusiasm"
I think Crowley explained what that "secretion" is (or at last a part of it, in the result of the same) in Eight Lectures on Yoga. I think that if you read Swinburne, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Baudelaire or similar you can begin to understand what that secretion is capable of.
*All expressions of the real thing must partake of the character of that thing, and therefore only that language is permissible which is itself released from the canon of ordinary speech, exactly as the trance is unfettered by the laws of ordinary consciousness. In other words, the only proper translation is in poetry, art and music.
- If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the sky!' True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.
With music this thesis is so obvious as hardly to need stating. Music has no expressed intellectual content whatever, and the sole test of music is its power to exalt the soul. It is then evident that the composer is himself attempting to express in sensible form some such sublimities as are attained by those who practise Magick and Yoga as they should.
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The same is true of plastic art, but evidently in much less degree; and all those who really know and love art are well aware that classical painting and sculpture are rarely capable of producing these transcendent orgasms of ecstasy, as in the case of the higher arts. One is bound to the impressions of the eye; one is drawn back to the contemplation of a static object. And this fact has been so well understood in modern times by painters that they have endeavoured to create an art within an art; and this is the true explanation of such movements as 'surrealisme.' I want to impress upon you that the artist is in truth a very much superior being to the Yogi or the Magician. He can reply as St. Paul replied to the centurion who boasted of his Roman citizenship 'With a great sum obtained I this freedom'; and Paul, fingering the Old School Tie, sneered: 'But I was free born.'
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It is not for us here to enquire as to how it should happen that certain human beings possess from birth this right of intimacy with the highest reality, but Blavatsky was of this same opinion that the natural gift marks the acquisition of the rank in the spiritual hierarchy to which the student of Magick and Yoga aspires. He is, so to speak, an artist in the making; and it is perhaps not likely that his gifts will have become sufficiently automatic in his present incarnation to produce the fruits of his attainment. Yet, undoubtedly, there have been such cases, and that within my own experience.
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I could quote you the case of a man-a very inferior and wishy-washy poet-who undertook for a time very strenuously the prescribed magical practices. He was very fortunate, and attained admirable results. No sooner had he done so that his poetry itself became flooded with supernal light and energy. He produced masterpieces. And then he gave up his Magick because the task of further progress appalled him. The result was that his poetry fell completely away to the standard of wet blotting paper.
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Let me tell you also of one man almost illiterate, a Lancashire man who had worked in a mill from the age of nine years. He had studied for years with the Toshophists with no results. Then he corresponded with me for some time; he had still no results. He came to stay with me in Sicily. One day as we went down to bathe we stood for a moment on the brink of the cliff which led down to the little rocky cove with its beach of marvellous smooth sand.
I said something quite casually-I have never been able to remember what it was-nor could he ever remember-but he suddenly dashed down the steep little path like a mountain goat, threw off his cloak and plunged into the sea. When he came back, his very body had become luminous. I saw that he needed to be alone for a week to complete his experience, so I fixed him up in an Alpine tent in a quiet dell under broad-spreading trees at the edge of a stream. From time to time he sent me his magical record, vision after vision of amazing depth and splendour. I was so gratified with his attainment that I showed these records to a distinguished literary critic who was staying with me at the time. A couple of hours later, when I returned to the Abbey, he burst out upon me a flame of excitement. 'Do you know what this is?' he cried. I answered casually that it was a lot of very good visions. 'Bother your visions,' he exclaimed, 'didn't you notice the style? It's pure John Bunyan!' It was.*
But anyway also in Energized Enthusiasm he explains this "secretion" better later. However if it is really a secretion, in the literal sense, or not, I don't know (and neither mind then).
In the words of Rimbaud (in his personal way to arrive there):
I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed â and the great learned one! â among men. â For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul â which was rich to begin with â more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed! -
@Veronica said
"That was a truly awesome piece.
I am assuming that it is an except from the aforementioned piece on Yoga?"Yes, it is in Part 8 (Yoga for Yellowbellies, fourth lecture). Actually all that article it is a masterpiece; there are so many great points in there and it also explains what Yoga is even better than Part I of Book IV.
You can find the article here:
hermetic.com/crowley/eight-lectures-on-yoga@Veronica said
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Thank you for sharing it, I don't feel like such a nerd now with my huge collection of poetry."I guess nobody would ever consider Jim Morrison a nerd also if he did have an huge collection of poetry, isn't it?
And anway, better to be considered "nerd" than having (and in reality) an IQ on par with one of an aomeba.
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@Dar said
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@Lavir said
"And anway, better to be considered "nerd" than having (and in reality) an IQ on par with one of an aomeba."Sure...
However - as a single cell Paramecium can swim around, avoid obstacles and predators, find food, learn, find a mate and have sex, then you have to wonder why nerds have such a problem with the latter.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXFFbxoHp3"
Primarily because intelligence and genius gives an innate higher sense of "sentimentality" (feeling the nature of pain etc.) in itself, that could bring someone to being shy and not function properly in the "outside world" etc.
Secondarily because intelligence makes you question yourself and criticize yourself a lot more, and this (if done in a partial way) can bring poor self-esteem.
Naturallly one with the IQ of an Aomeba is "fine" in every situation. He doesn't mind at all about his IQ, nor he minds or feel the nature of pain in things. As Bukowsky said: "lucky you that you are so idiot as to neither being able to find something to cry for". He doesn't question anything, accept everything at face value and he is fine with everything and naturally he functions quite well in a world of like-minded.
But, better "to be burnt out" or "never having being in flame at all"?
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@MMe said
"Are there specific techniques about it?
Or how do you usually do?"Soak yourself in gasoline and light a match.
No seriously, whatever gets you going is considered "inflammatory," i.e. sex, drugs, rock n' roll, etc. In this sense it refers to "charging your enthusiasm"--along those lines.
"That "androgynous women" hint suggests Crowley is referring to female ejaculation aka amrita or ambrosia..."
I was always skeptical about that "female ejaculation" thing, until I witnessed it first-hand (or should I say, all over my hand.)
It's quite spectacular, or at least as performed by the individual I was working with. Distance and accuracy.
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@he itch said
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Hi Jim - can you recommend concrete techniques/tips for the solo practitioner to inflame himself? For example, when preparing a talisman, I have become unexpectedly very "hot" when pronouncing the names of the entities inscribed on the outside cirlce of talisman as a practise run, but when it came to actually charging the talisman during the operation, the energetic effect was nil. Possibly this was because I had run through the operation so many times beforehand and was physically tired...
"There is also the idea that the energies are being directed into a talisman.
If one were to take the theory that the body is working as conductor, heat would imply resistance derived from the energies bleeding off, lacking a proper channel.