Literalism and Thelema
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"I would also say that I know very few occultists who give as **clear and direct answers **as Jim consistently, to non-initiates like me"
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@sebastian said
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Did I ?What did I get, care to enlighten.
"Yes, you got clear, direct answers to your questions. And your insults were ignored.
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"The right analogy would be, a student learning electrical engineering.
He asks a question, and the lecturer comes out with some bull about oaths he took.
The student would have a right to ask for a refund, and tell the prof to go **** himself for wasting his time."This analogy is incorrect. There are no prohibitive oaths in electrical engineering. There are, however, the necessary degrees and licensing procedures in which the student must demonstrate competency before being allowed to do the actual work.
That would be a better analogy, since the only thing that seems to be able to keep an occult student from performing this particular work without the proper degrees is enforced ignorance, unlike the state's regulation of electrical engineers.
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(In case you didn't know, sebastian was soofi.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"(In case you didn't know, sebastian was soofi.)"
Yes. Certain misspellings and other hints gave that away.
oh, I also see what you did to a certain "sub-thread" within the overall derailment there. I'm not hurt.
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lol
His disappointment at receiving frogs instead of skulls was palpable. I confess a moment of schadenfreude (or Shadow-glee, as I am now calling it).
And yes so appropriate.
Even the lives of trolls are filled with magick.
You'll have to forgive me; I woke up from my nap at exactly 4:18, and am feeling it
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I was traveling, just got back a few hours ago...
A couple of magical curiosities:
The person without a gun—a weapon of any sort, something that is based on inflicting blunt physical trauma—has proved dramatically more powerful, and more effective than a person with a gun. This is a historical fact. Only in the crudest measure of success—dead or alive—is the opposite true (i.e. that guns are a source of power.) (Sorry for the repeated reference to gun ownership, it's just easier to use this as a symbol for being a macho prick—the kind of thing I think Thelema is not about.)
A true individual is the weakest and most ineffective thing imaginable. Individuals only have power by virtue of their ability to identify themselves with and direct much larger currents of energy, generally created by the common interests and shared goals of others. Hence power is only possible to the degree a person stops being an individual. This idea is almost pure Magick in Theory and Prcatice.
Exceptions to the above often involve very wealthy individuals who can create change by forcing or buying the cooperation of others. By contrast, Thelema, and Crowley as well, imagined a class of ‘individual’ who could lead because they commanded love and respect. The wealthy person is the lesser of the two and ultimately subject to catastrophic failure, even if they seem to prosper for a limited period of time—see the doctrine of the Black Brother, and the general, magical problem of making bargains with lesser spirits for limited, short term gains.
Behind all esoteric doctrines, including Thelema, is a "love for the world" framework in which all strategies and teachings must of necessity be understood. In other words, if this base-line desire to heal and generally make things better is not appreciated, and does not form the background for an action, that action is black, and links the person directly to all other persons with guns, or the individual who believes they can simply take what they want for themselves: "I'm not worried about the coming chaos because I have a gun."
EDIT: I was tired when I posted, and most of the post was so badly written I decided I would just delete it, leaving only the not quite as bad parts. I'm aware that what I am saying makes little sense to the general movement of the thread at this point. So it goes...
Love and Will
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I have repeatedly stated that I worked in a library, ran one for the most part...but I am not a librarian.
I am trained, as a professional holistic healthcare practioner.
From the teachings that I have been a part of we examine the three regions, of the Tounge as most all of the human population can experience those three.
But what ever...
Hope you enjoyed your self, as you seemed to pick up on some trivia issue from my original contribution, and nit picked again at me.
I m beginning to wonder why I take the risk of posting and contributing at all any more, seriously. You seem to delight in pointing out what you perceive as errors.
You asked what I found offensive, and I told you..
Glad I have friends in real life.....
The friends I have in real life, if they think I am wrong, or may need correction don't engage me in a public sphere....@Takamba said
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@Veronica said
"Open up and say aahhn,Doctors used to analysis health by looking at your tou ge, a lost art to some, but one I am skilled at.
Actually, no not all human being have five tastes. Most all human beings have three regions of the tounge, some may have two other regions. Salt and sweet share a region. The three regions correspond to the three primary cells in our body, the heart, the brain, and the skin, and the three taste correspond to the three primary components of food, fats, carbohydrates and proteins."
Apparently I wasn't as efficient a librarian as you to have learned to discern a person's health simply by looking at their tongues. My doctor still uses a tongue suppressor and makes me go "aaahhh" but he's not looking at my tongue, he's looking at the back of my throat.
Besides that, let me direct you to a little something called taste: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_bud
I hope you do get to read Jim's article, but in case you don't let me kind of sum it up:
The Scarlet Woman is an officer of Thelema, a "role" played not by everyone but only ONE - and in context of equality with The Beast this role is prototypical in Crowley and Rose and archetypal in general. It isn't to all women these verses apply, but to that One Type of woman (who when she hears them will already feel an affinity to the ideal of it). She is to be the ultimate woman girt with sword (whereas all other women can also be girt with the sword, but not necessarily wed to it as The Scarlet Woman would be)."
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Interesting, and somewhat on topic.
Soofi's original criticism, as Soofi, was about corrupted tradition, etc..
When we got closer to it, it was disgust over rituals that use bodily fluids.
There was strength in his determination to do only what he was comfortable with, but ...how to say it...? He couldn't see himself as an indivdual with a Will to do or not do within the "system." ...?
I think it's common to have that nagging fear in the back of your head. "If I really invest in Thelema and give my heart and mind to it, is it all going to lead to me being coerced into unwanted sex acts and having to eat other people's ...um stuff... all the time."
His fear that all of it is literal isn't lessened by making it metaphorical for other things.
Part of me wants to be able to say something like, "his fear of literal child sacrifice suggests a blockage at such and such a stage of development, and his fear of metaphorical child sacrifice suggests a blockage at this other (or same) stage of development."
I don't know. It just seems like something like that. At the end of the day, it seems a matter of trust, when you have experienced people saying "No, it means this not this, and then only if you want to..." You know? But I don't know that.
And part of this is me too, of course. I worried about a lot of all that before I tested you guys against everything I could think of for, oh, years and found that it really is about a person's Will.
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@Veronica said
"I have repeatedly stated that I worked in a library, ran one for the most part...but I am not a librarian.
I am trained, as a professional holistic healthcare practioner.
From the teachings that I have been a part of we examine the three regions, of the Tounge as most all of the human population can experience those three.
But what ever...
Hope you enjoyed your self, as you seemed to pick up on some trivia issue from my original contribution, and nit picked again at me.
I m beginning to wonder why I take the risk of posting and contributing at all any more, seriously. You seem to delight in pointing out what you perceive as errors.
You asked what I found offensive, and I told you..
Glad I have friends in real life.....
The friends I have in real life, if they think I am wrong, or may need correction don't engage me in a public sphere....@Takamba said
"
@Veronica said
"Open up and say aahhn,Doctors used to analysis health by looking at your tou ge, a lost art to some, but one I am skilled at.
Actually, no not all human being have five tastes. Most all human beings have three regions of the tounge, some may have two other regions. Salt and sweet share a region. The three regions correspond to the three primary cells in our body, the heart, the brain, and the skin, and the three taste correspond to the three primary components of food, fats, carbohydrates and proteins."
Apparently I wasn't as efficient a librarian as you to have learned to discern a person's health simply by looking at their tongues. My doctor still uses a tongue suppressor and makes me go "aaahhh" but he's not looking at my tongue, he's looking at the back of my throat.
Besides that, let me direct you to a little something called taste: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_bud
I hope you do get to read Jim's article, but in case you don't let me kind of sum it up:
The Scarlet Woman is an officer of Thelema, a "role" played not by everyone but only ONE - and in context of equality with The Beast this role is prototypical in Crowley and Rose and archetypal in general. It isn't to all women these verses apply, but to that One Type of woman (who when she hears them will already feel an affinity to the ideal of it). She is to be the ultimate woman girt with sword (whereas all other women can also be girt with the sword, but not necessarily wed to it as The Scarlet Woman would be)."
"If you go back to the root of our conversation it was all about your statement concerning verse III:43 and I mentioned flavors (it was you who corrected me). I was using metaphor to help you, this is not a literal battle.
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This is a quote from a Lon Duquette interview posted here: corlucis.org/?page_id=424 It might need a little shoe horn action, but I think it fits in well with this conversation.
"Crowley was happy to let people be attracted to him for all the wrong reasons and he stated when talking about magick that he didn’t care if someone wanted to learn magick so they could do evil. An example, kill their neighbor. He didn’t care if they wanted to do magick to kill their neighbor because by the time they learned magick well enough, and became a magician and went through the meditations, the purifications, the consecrations, achieved the states of conscientiousness necessary with the power to theoretically to kill their neighbor, that killing their neighbor would be the last thing on their minds."
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Excellent (and accurate) quote.
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