Duality and Thelema
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
Not speaking for Sardonyx, but giving answers from my p.o.v. "over here" ...
@Dar es Alrah said
"How do you appreciate bhakti practice as 'passive'?"
Great question. Bhakti is inherently affirmative, "active," passionate. OTOH I think there are... more nuanced answers here than this off-the-cuff.
On any matters of love, and especially of sexuality, I think we have to keep in mind that both the pitcher and the catcher are on the same baseball team; that both pitching and catching are essential functions; and that, despite their names, both the pitcher AND the catcher throw the ball and catch it.
"
"
"Or help you in your relationship with your mother or HGA? "Absolutely."
Curious! In what way?"
One of Phyllis' favorite passages to quote instructively, from Liber VII, Chapter 5:
*46. Nor by memory, nor by imagination, nor by prayer, nor by fasting, nor by scourging, nor by drugs, nor by ritual, nor by meditation; only by passive love shall he avail.
47. He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke. * -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
"I cannot see that it's of any use to women, and it seems a little unfair to your partners if you project the idea of 'passive' onto them so that you can 'take the next step'. I know you say that you don't do that anymore, but I think that perhaps intellectually a man can become comfortable with the idea that there is both masculine/active and feminine/passive forces in him and in the woman, while still operating on an unconscious fundamental dualistic level - projecting out what he expects his 'passive' and agreeable anima onto the woman and then blaming her for not being the illusionary abstraction he wanted. "
See, this is it right here. This is why you get so pissed. You cannot believe that we are not deluding ourselves. This is the projection that continues this argument without end. This is the reason you can't hear what I am really saying. It's all knotted up for you: system of instruction AND belittling abuse.
Regarding the belittling abuse of considering women passive... I forget that this exists. I forget that A.C. said some really antiquated stuff about this. I simply ignore it. I don't know what else to tell you. My wife is Sun in Leo/Moon in Aries, and at times I wonder if there is a passive bone in her body. Where you find this error, stamp it out.
But regarding the system of instruction, with active and passive, male and female all over the tarot, as well as the presentation of Hadit and Nuit as a divine male/female pair, I'm for leaving it as it is. The psyche doesn't begin as whole. It begins with separated concepts. It's not the instruction that teaches this. These are archetypes so deeply present in the human consciousness that they may well be described as universal. It is from the human depths that these separated, unintegrated symbols arise. It is the Work that unifies and integrates, but not without working through the aspirants psychological associations to mommy and daddy, male and female, action and passivity.
The first thing that has to happen to create a happy, healthy magician, (at least how I was taught) is that they must do the personality work of the tarot. The Emperor is going to work pretty hard on people who have negative associations with male power and the abuse of strength. The concept of male power itself arises naturally in the symbolism of the unconscious. It is the baby talk of the unconscious. Likewise, the Empress is going to work pretty hard on people who have negative associations with feminine love. You were asking "how" above. I'm trying to explain. The first thing that needs to happen is that consciousness needs to focus on the energies represented as the Emperor and the Empress in their most psychologically beneficial and healthy light.
It is very natural for humans to associate these energies with mommy and daddy and their personifications as Empress and Emperor. Step One is to bring order to the chaos of negative male and female associations - associations that already exist as masculine and feminine in the unconscious, but in a chaos of positive and negative associations. This is how these concepts help with relationships and sexuality - they provide order and psychologically postive images for the more chaotic naturally arising associations, and once this is achieved, many blocks arising from negative projections are cleared.
It's not that after you reach a certain level, they tell you to forget everything you learned before. It's that the initial work, the groundwork, lies in untangling psychological knots that do have pre-existing associations with male and female.
After the knots are cleared, and the energy begins to flow again, then a person can begin to understand the energy itself more clearly and recognize the projected maleness or femaleness is exactly that - a projection. But not until you clear the psychological blocks that keep the energy from flowing.
The reason that I react to your suggestion that we remove all the male and female stuff is that then we are left with no tools to work with the psyche's own language. You do away with the ability to make the association itself, and thus remove the ability to work with individual's gender-based psychological energy blocks. I absolutely think it all goes back to mommy and daddy and brothers and sisters. And as long as an individual's magical worldview is tainted with negative associations for male and female, they can't get any closer to seeing things as they really are.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Dar es Alrah said
"
What is 'passive love'?There is love that is given. There is love that is received. I have no idea what passive love is, Jim!"
"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passive
1a (2) : **receptive **to outside impressions or influences
3a : **receiving **or enduring without resistance" -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Dar es Alrah said
"What is 'passive love'?"
I would say: In stillness, to be unresistingly, vacuously receptive.
"There is love that is given. There is love that is received. I have no idea what passive love is, Jim!"
Though I'm not at all convinced that such a thing exists in human relationships (see my prior remarks about pitchers and catchers), in the meditative-mystical sense it would be utter receptiveness without assertion.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
"But that's only going to work if you could recognise passive in mam and active in dad, otherwise there won't be associations in your unconscious to make those connections to. Right? "
Actually, that's inconsistent with Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. While our own mothers and fathers influence the archetype's interactions in our indvidual dream lives, the archetypes themselves are considered to be built up in the human species from millenia of stronger, taller, more aggressive males and weaker, smaller, more nurturing females. It's considered to be the imprint of the evolutionary memory of the species.
And at this point, I've pretty much exhausted my knowledge and theories on the topic. You can choose the disagree with Jung about the nature of the archetypes, but for me personally, it's counterproductive. It just moves me backward into the direction of psychic disorder and chaos.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Dar es Alrah said
"Utter receptiveness would be regarded as an active process rather than a passive one."
I suppose you could define it that way, but it isn't how most people relate to the word.
I just now decided to check a dictionary - and dictionary.com was all I had at hand here at work. It's interesting to me that they don't define passive so much in terms of REAL inactivity, but of apparent inactivity. Various definitions include phrases like "not reacting visibly," "not participating readily," "not involving visible reaction," or in any fashion being the object rather than the subject of the action. (And the latter is perfectly consistent with the grammatical usage.)
Personally, I like more rigorous, literal usage and would tend to prefer a usage state where passive=inactive; but I see that this isn't conventional usage, as recorded by dictionaries (which tend to focus on how people actually use language).
I do think you're making a sound point here, and that "passive" is too frequently used for atavistic reasons when "receptive" is the more accurate descriptor.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
I love you guys
Intellectually, I can't keep up, as I'm only 17 and have lots of brain yet to develop.
But emotionally, I follow you all more than I can express and seeing you all battle each other with such honor truly helps my own battles, while giving me many directions to follow all along.
I wish I could be up there with you all! One day, one day... -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Dar es Alrah said
"
I must say - you're a very well read young man. I'm not sure I'd heard of the Eleusinian Mysteries when I was your age, never mind looked into them.
I find myself being continually impressed by just how educated young people are these days about a broad range of topics. I assume that's down to the internet, with innate intelligence and curiosity making the most of the these avenues open to it. In short - you seem quite 'up there' to me. "I have my moments
I've felt a draw to mythology since I was five or six years old, so it's always been something I could sit down and talk about. It frustrated me when I was younger that no one else seemed to realize the fact that all the religions everyone seemed so worked up about were just cultural redundancies of older and far more sublime mythologies. Zeus and Hermes made a much better Christianity in my eyes than the Father and Son of my mother's leaning. Ending up in Thelema was just the natural progression of that kind of thinking.And I can tell you that my education(and that of my peers) had absolutely nothing to do with my schooling. In fact, I dropped out last October. The sheer insanity of the school system in this country(the U.S. of course) nearly drove me over the edge. Tainted history, outdated science, taught by people with no handle on their egos whatsoever is not the kind of institution to look for psychological progression. No learning, only superficial memorization of information. Even though I got A's on all of my tests, I was considered a delinquent by the powers-that-be. Then, once I was opened up to Crowley(and all of the Karmic madness that surrounds such an occurrence!), I had my alternative path and out the door I went.
It's like this for so many young people here. We look to our parents, our trusted elders, and we see them even more lost, scared, and confused than we are. Just egos self-destructing in the face of all the chaos. All we can try to do is get out of the way and hope they don't make too big of a mess of the Earth we all hoped to inherit. But I can also tell you that there is a phenomenon altogether unique and magical occurring in the minds of the young. There is an Indigo fire burning behind their eyes; the children readily await the coming of the Hierophant, to be taught something REAL by a teacher that deserves our attention, and to unleash our true creative capabilities.
So, again, thank you for showing me that there actually are adults in the world that are still setting an example and foundation for true evolutionary progression. Warms my heart
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
@Dar es Alrah said
"I was watching a couple of Ted talks by Sir Ken Robinson about **(http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_148916&feature=iv&src_vid=iG9CE55wbtY&v=r9LelXa3U_I:fnlpg5ne)."
Neat, I watched those same talks myself a while back, and I agree with much of what he says. He is certainly a noteworthy contemporary in my book.
By the way, my own understanding of "passive" has rarely been rendered as "intert/incapable" in the framework of my own mind. Although I have come across that in my readings, I more often understand it better as "recieving," which I have always understood to be an action in its own right. "Observation" also comes to mind as an appropriate example.
Activity is no less apparent to a silent mind. In fact, a silent mind would seem to me to be even more aware of any action taking place. By my take, Nuit is all-embracing of Hadit's lordship, even as maintaining the peace of perfect stillness is in itself a call to action. Indeed, how can any of us hope to "achieve Hadit" without the embrace of Nuit? This, of course, implies a reciprocal of equal importance, and I think this thread could use a good dose of 0=2, whether the reality of either of the two parties on the right half of the equation are being imagined or Not (see Liber NV and Liber HAD).
I hadn't realized definitions like "inert" which, to me, imply such underpinnings as "incapability," had become in anyway predominate to people's understanding the concept of "passive." While that emphasis may be important in certain situations or circumstances, it in no way relates to how I commonly understand the term, and I felt a need to come back here and clarify that.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Dar, that etymological analysis was enlightening; thank you for sharing that.
It is now absolutely clear to me that there are indeed important distinctions between "passive" and "receptive" that beg to be clarified for all intents and purposes.
I have to agree the "giving/recieving" terminology is a much more accurate discriptor than "active/passive" for multiple reasons, many of which have already been enumerated.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
I personally think that the word passive is not inappropriate at all, and now that the origin was shared I think so even more.
I don't recall what the gland is called, but women have an extra gland in our body. This glands sole purpose is to make a woman forget the pain and suffeing of childbirth.
My own body it seems is working against me, for the sake of the species.
Sure wished it worked on wiping out other memories.....
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Dar es Alrah said
"
I declare... I just don't understand how us watery and earthy females manage to get up in the morning without the the stimulation of you men... and obviously there has to be a man somewhere behind me pulling my strings and putting words into my mouth too - as my intellect is so obviously inferior to you lot.. oh my wise Lords and Masters of Magick! Please, please - rouse me from my static, latent forces and insert your dynamic potency into my latency! Oh hang on... that was too enthusiastic wasn't it...? pretends to be passive once more so as not to upset the men."
It seems someone wandered out of the kitchen.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
@Middleman said
"
@Dar es Alrah said
"I declare... I just don't understand how us watery and earthy females manage to get up in the morning without the the stimulation of you men... and obviously there has to be a man somewhere behind me pulling my strings and putting words into my mouth too - as my intellect is so obviously inferior to you lot.. oh my wise Lords and Masters of Magick! Please, please - rouse me from my static, latent forces and insert your dynamic potency into my latency! Oh hang on... that was too enthusiastic wasn't it...? pretends to be passive once more so as not to upset the men."
It seems someone wandered out of the kitchen."
Priceless.
Although it may end up being your last post, tact is a vital skill my friend, learn it.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As the title of this thread suggests, this is an enormous subject that I expect will foster little more than vague, far-reaching statements (which I rather like, actually). I'm curious as to people's experience in encountering "Pairs of Opposites," specifically in esoteric study.
One of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life was in a dream I had some years back. At this point in my life, I was absolutely obsessed with Gender, and why manifested existence has taken the forms it has; why two sexes? why ten fingers, ten toes, etc? But I always found myself coming back to Gender. The dream climaxed in a Union with a "Knowledge-Bearing Light," who bestowed a communication upon me that answered all my seeking and offered me much much more, which I promptly partook of. What happened next is something I can hardly describe, but "peace unutterable" would be the closest attempt I could make.
An obvious consideration in the context of Gender is Nuit and Hadit. However, at present, I find myself deeply concerned with 666, Lion-Serpents, and Solar-Phallic imagery in general. To me, while this is all cognate with sunlight and semen (and thus seemingly opens up a whole world of mythological allegory between sexual conception and the sun's light upon the earth), it would paradoxically seem to be a marriage between Lunar and Solar imagery: it is a composite of the Lunar Serpent, who sheds it's skin as the moon sheds it's shadow, and the Solar Lion, with its powerful transmissive roar and round solar face.
I suppose there are always multiple ways of reading the same thing: one could easily attribute the sun to the serpent, as the serpent never closes its eyes, while the sun never gives up its light; it takes it's light with it, and it is we who are left in the darkness of night. However, as I've almost exclusively seen the Lion-Serpent presented in a Solar-Phallic context, its left me to wonder if there is a corresponding Lunar-Ovic (so to speak) image that I am missing. Or maybe the appropriate context for the Lion-Serpent imagery does lie in a Lunar-Solar Union, and therefore may be symbolic of the Child principle itself. But this comes at odds with the Chokmah attributions I have heavily considered, as the Lion-Serpent is "The Beast," in my understanding
Qabalistically, I've also noticed that one can take the Paths in Pairs. Starting from the Bottom of the Tree, or the Tail of Nechushtan, its starts off wonderfully: The Universe and The Aeon (Spirit), The Sun and The Moon, and The Emperor and The Tower all seem to fit well together as pairs. Has anyone had much experience with studying the Paths in this context?
Also Qabalistically, every one of the Three Gates is rendered by two horizontally oriented Sephiroth. I can't help but believe there is incredible significance to this, and I'm hoping someone here can embellish on this regard.
The Father & Mother and Son & Daughter of Tetragrammaton can also be read in pairs, Macrocosm and Microcosm respectively.
Some really huge ones for me lately have been Hate & Love and Relationship & Identity. I actually intend to write an essay on Relationship & Identity soon. These two ideas represent to me the two fundamental approaches to Deity: any given religion will either encourage a relationship to deity or an identity with deity. While I typically have always held identity as superior, recent experiences have begun to reveal to me that Identity is actually created by Relationship, and perhaps even vice-versa.
On Hate & Love: somethings that have always stuck with me (and I believe this is all from the first part of Eight Lectures on Yoga) in my studies have been Crowley's convictions that it is infinitely more fruitful to scrap the rules and make your own, and also the idea that the mind hates routine. This, of course, is all my attempt to convey his statements in my own terms, and not necessarily a direct quotation. While this has typically left me almost completely dismissive of the very system I am aspiring to, I am reminded of how very near hate is to love itself, and perhaps one must do what one hates daily, even as one does what one loves daily, in order to achieve Balance.
This is getting really long, and I do wish to hear what anyone has to say about this, so I will reel it in and bring it to a close here. I hope all of this isn't too terribly disjointed.
Love is the law, love under will.
