New in magick
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I would say theoretically speaking it is better to think of the HGA as something out side of your Self, which is where the differentiation with the Higher Self comes in.
Part of it has to do with the differences between Eastern and Western systems...
In the East you raise your Self up Higher,
In the West you draw the Higher down to your Self;
In Thelema, there is a synthesis,
As one rises up as a Serpent, the HGA descends as a Dove ;
Upon there meeting comes equilibration. -
advice i would give to a newcomer:
put practising goetia (and evocation in general) out of your mind, along with the qliphoth, enochian, and sex magick, for now.
get into regular practice of yoga and meditation. once you have some experience with that (i.e. daily for at the very least a year), you can start looking at the material in liber o.
be prepared to read a lot, expect to have a few different books open in front of you, cross-referencing them.recommended reading:
aleister crowley: magick without tears (a good starting pointing but bear in mind it is basically a "f.a.q." for non-initiate beginners / the curious), magick (book 4 liber aba), book of the law + commentaries, liber lxv + commentary, liber vii + commentary, the book of thoth
james eshelman: 776 1/2, liber t, visions and voices (while the subject of this volume is the record of crowley's experiences with the advanced enochian system, i'm including it as an introductory text as it's introduction contains the clearest and most concise explanation of the qabalistic model that i have read so far)
isreal regardie: the golden dawn (llewellyn edition), how to make and use talismans
ophiel: the art and practice of astral projectiondon't do magical activity that you don't understand (don't dabble - not to say that is dangerous [that only makes things appealing in an adolescent way], but it's pointless)
a working knowledge of the qabalah is essential (this, in my opinion, is the true worth of the tarot, as a collection of talismans to impart qabalistic knowledge - the use of the tarot for divination is totally secondary to this, in my view).
there is a right way to do things, and wrong ways to do them (personal beliefs can be subjective and can be changed, but i don't buy the chaos magick logic of total relativism, especially when it comes to ritual - one needs to know how something actually works before changing it / working outside it. that said, don't go too crazy the other way, a finger can be a perfect wand. if all the physical paraphenalia helps, that's great, but it's not something to get caught up on. magick should not be a totally subjective playing with belief and confirmation bias but neither should it be considered a museum piece - it is a living system).
keep a magical diary / journal.once all this in place, you can start ritual work, beginning with the lesser ritual of the pentagram, and then moving on to the middle pillar and lesser hexagram rituals. start with general banishings first, daily use for at least a year, before moving on to general invocations. leave specific invocations (of elemental or planetary energies) until you have completely mastered and have used them regularly for a significant period of time. liber resh is also very much recommended for regular use for a significant time also.
this might all seem way too slow for you, too lengthy, and too much hard work. it can't really be any other way. there's a lot to be learned, more precisely it is a continuous and living learning. without experience in yoga and meditation, without a working knowledge of the qabalah, without proper knowledge of what you are doing and why you are doing it (and a desire to know both), and without regular, committed and paced practice, hermetic and thelemic magick simply isn't possible. it's called the science and the art. think of science in the sense of a living system of every increasing knowledge through meticulous activity and examination. think of art in the sense of playing a musical instrument and composing a piece of music, it involves practice, and awareness of the principles that govern the system, and then self expression.
magick is best considered as a system of spiritual self-development / self-improvement (to use that rather new-agey term).
newcomers often seem to be fascinated with something like the goetia, i believe this is for a couple of reasons.
one is that it is "dark" and concerned with so-called "demons" (in recent years there is a similar fascination with working with qliphoth, thanks in part to kenneth grant [typhonians of course will disagree with me, but imho the healthiest approach one can take to grant's works is to consider them as occult fiction, possibly entertaining and thought provoking but don't take their contents as fact]), the appeal of the scary. a better approach is to consider these areas of magical activity as unhygienic, like taking a swim in sewage.
the other is the desire to use magick for the fulfilment of mundane wishes, e.g. to get money, to get laid, or to put a curse on someone. there are much easier ways to achieve these things than using solomonic magick, and if these are the goals, the energy is being misdirected. going back to the idea of magick as spiritual self-improvement, as one becomes more congruent and balanced in general, aspects of one's life - be they to do with financial affairs or relationships with others - will fall into place also. for one thing, the increased clarity of the mind, and increased control over one's own thoughts and behaviours, will be of enormous benefit to one's overall wellbeing. -
Subjects of study and practice to be given the highest priority by beginners:
Goetia
Q'lippoth
Enochian
Sex Magick
Crossing the Abyss
Goetic Enochian Sex Magick (as a Q'lippah's Sex Slave)
for the purpose of Crossing the Abyss
All beginers who fail to undertake at least one of these areas of study and practice, and who insist, instead, on persisting with devotion and conscientiousness in patient, open-minded foundation practices (such as those in Liber E and Liber O) will be almost certainly cursed with continued life, mental and emotional health, and success in the Great Work. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"Goetic Enochian Sex Magick (as a Q'lippah's Sex Slave)
for the purpose of Crossing the Abyss"Woo! That last one sounds super sexy... sign me up!
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@Uni_Verse said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
"Goetic Enochian Sex Magick (as a Q'lippah's Sex Slave)
for the purpose of Crossing the Abyss"Woo! That last one sounds super sexy... sign me up!
"Obviously. I mean, who the hell would want to cross the abyss without being the sex slave of a Goetic demon? That's the entire purpose, right?
A serious note though:
When I began Magic, I was abusing sacraments of the Earth that had been bastardized by humans, specifically opiates. Being very young and stupid, I performed various Magic, starting with inverted pentagrams, upside-down bible pages with spells written in blood, and other such false "new-age" "Satanic" BS.
I ended up combining very pure psychedelics with these practices and nearly, (for sure), lost my mind in the process. This "Satanic" interest in the occult, I am sure, is what f|_|cks up beginners and makes them either a) give up Magic, (not good), or b) forces them to undertake clean, organized, HGA-related Magick that brings them back to sanity, with added power over their lives and world.
In jail, I read "diary of a drug fiend", and was totally convinced Aleister Crowley had the answers I was seeking. As soon as I got out, I started Equinox practices, stopped using heroin off of the "street", and totally regained my dignity, morals, sanity, and composure.
Very interesting side-note: Right after I cleaned up from the muckiness, I was introduced to all-nature, completely legal to obtain plants that "instructed me" in how to obtain their pure forms without buying bastardized versions of them on the street. This includes the poppy and coca leaf, two of the drugs, (H and C) I was using before that were ruining my life. As soon as I was able to procure the pure compounds from the plants, I was able to use them without abuse, mainly due to meditation, proper magic including banishing undesirable thought-patterns with pentagram and hexagram rituals.
It is actually very easy to purify alkaloids from plants, including aforementioned, plus cancer-curing psychedelics like DMT from grass and various root-bark. I ended up "removing" a 4-year old lump on my chin, (that I KNEW came from smoking marlboro and camels, quitting smoking as soon as I started real Magick,) with the sacrament of DMT.
(Very important information: I live in an area where I can order any of these plants, but it is completely legal for me to purify and use said alkaloids. I do not recommend doing the same at ALL, unless you are completely one with yourself, and unless they are completely legal where you live, and can use something a few times and leave it alone for a month.)
Bottom line: unorganized participation in various forms of Magic can completely wreck your psyche, physicality, social status, and entire life. It is just as bad as abusing drugs.
Bottom bottom line: as long as one does EVERYTHING by the eight and ninety rules of art, always unto our lady Nuit of the stars, with love and True Will, one can enjoy any of the pleasures of Her and our Divine Creation, including food, sex, sacraments (the drugs were indeed revealed,) and living a life completely free of bondage.
Again: I recommend against using anything illegal, or hurtful to the mind, body our soul.
New to Magic? Start with the Equinox I, issues 1 and 2. Issue 1 has all the needed information about meditation, breathing, control of thought, and the pharmecutical basics of hashish, (cannabis.)
Issue 2 has the only known beginning of proper Magical procedure that will align you with your higher, light body -- instead of a Demon you have no idea the origins of.
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@ThelemicMage said
"Obviously. I mean, who the hell would want to cross the abyss without being the sex slave of a Goetic demon? That's the entire purpose, right?"
Psh, I do not even care about the whole Abyss thing
It just sounds damn kinky and right up my ally!On a somewhat more serious note...
Anything can be used as a tool, as long as one ever recalls it is but a tool.
Opiates, in the right hands, can be a useful one.
Which comes with it inherent danger.
For in does not open up, it closes down.
Cutting away some impressions on the consciousness, freeing it to place more focus on other things. -
@Uni_Verse said
"On a somewhat more serious note...
Anything can be used as a tool, as long as one ever recalls it is but a tool.
Opiates, in the right hands, can be a useful one.
Which comes with it inherent danger.
For in does not open up, it closes down.
Cutting away some impressions on the consciousness, freeing it to place more focus on other things."But you refer only to the active use when a dose is in the bloodstream..
When one has undertaken the possible folly of being even slightly addicted to them, cutting the dose and even coming off of them is completely opposite: it opens everything up. In other words, your brain has learned to use more of itself, in a state of constant comfortableness. When that comfortableness is removed, the entire brain pathways and system of such is revealed to be open.
So open it is almost identical with a psychedelic experience. We must learn to look at the entire picture of this. Junkies do not. Paraphrasing Crowley:
"The addict knows what he wants, and will do it, and by almost any means necessary, attain it."If we are truly men and women of science, we should enjoy the sickness, openness-of mind and emotion, and enjoy a walk into nature with such active consciousness of such things.
As in the book "The Psychedelic Experience", an Englished version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
"We should recognize sickness as consciousness moving around in the body, enjoy it fully, and move on." -
Rationalizing is when your Ruach is a slave to your Nephesh. Mostly, the brain is being employed in coming up with all kinds of convoluted reasons why you should keep doing the thing your Nephesh enjoys. How's the Ruach supposed to serve the HGA, if it takes its orders from Nephesh?
Here's a test: if you're not addicted, and you're in control of it, can you put a restriction on it without struggling? For example, can you go for a month without being the first to bring up opiates in an unrelated thread?
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I happen to think that opiates was one of the huge things that made Crowley stronger, more aware, and intuitive for the rest of his life.
I mean, the man put "The opium smoker" in the FIRST edition of the Equinox, for gods' sakes.
"The drugs were indeed revealed" in a commentary from a book that introduces a whole new level of reality for us, doesn't mean "go ahead and watch sesame street, count simple numbers and recite simple letters, and be sure to stay away from anything slightly dangerous or enlightening."
I think it means that we have been here for way too long making simple, much less evolved versions of the neurotransmitters of nature.
I do not happen to even use these sacraments but once or twice a month when I do something very elaborate.
It happens to be the thing that turned me onto Crowley and Magick in the first place. The subject came up in this thread, so it's hardly unrelated.
I defend this by saying the man wanted to dive into the Goetia right off the bat. How can you not recognize guidance for this lost soul??
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Thats Rich Mr. Eshelman, Very Rich..
Love the rainbow touch too
@Jim Eshelman said
"Subjects of study and practice to be given the highest priority by beginners:
Goetia
Q'lippoth
Enochian
Sex Magick
Crossing the Abyss
Goetic Enochian Sex Magick (as a Q'lippah's Sex Slave)
for the purpose of Crossing the Abyss
All beginers who fail to undertake at least one of these areas of study and practice, and who insist, instead, on persisting with devotion and conscientiousness in patient, open-minded foundation practices (such as those in Liber E and Liber O) will be almost certainly cursed with continued life, mental and emotional health, and success in the Great Work." -
@ThelemicMage said
"But you refer only to the active use when a dose is in the bloodstream.."
When it is in the blood stream it first numbs the body, once that it does it begins to cross the blood brain barrier and causes euphoria.
@ThelemicMage said
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When one has undertaken the possible folly of being even slightly addicted to them, cutting the dose and even coming off of them is completely opposite: it opens everything up. In other words, your brain has learned to use more of itself, in a state of constant comfortableness. When that comfortableness is removed, the entire brain pathways and system of such is revealed to be open.
"Cutting the dose certainly opens you up more...
It opens up what was closed while in the blood stream.
There is nothing new there...
By taking the dose you have point fully or inadvertently cut off or narrowed sensations received through/from the body.
Once the effects ends the only thing that opens up is what you have closed.@ThelemicMage said
"
If we are truly men and women of science, we should enjoy the sickness, openness-of mind and emotion, and enjoy a walk into nature with such active consciousness of such things.
"Enjoy the sickness?
I feel there is so much wrong with that statement I do not quite know where to begin... -
"Cutting the dose certainly opens you up more...
It opens up what was closed while in the blood stream.
There is nothing new there...
By taking the dose you have point fully or inadvertently cut off or narrowed sensations received through/from the body.
Once the effects ends the only thing that opens up is what you have closed."Actually, Uni, you are quite mistaken on this one.
When one has finished puberty, one has a specific number of opiate receptors in the body and brain. When one undertakes the use of opiates, MORE opiate receptors grow in the body, especially in the brain, due to the excess amount of opiates your brain and body haven't learned to use yet.
Cutting the dose, in essence, makes you more aware than you ever have been in your life.
As far as "enjoying" the sickness, you should wake up a little bit a realize that pain is illusion anyways. Nature put the poppy here for just that specific reason. It it not to be shrugged off as another downside to life, but as a gift from the gods waiting in a horrible little wrapped gift box.
Just as certain types of pain completely confound, overtake, and make childhood completely unbearable, those exact specific types of pain end up being required to, and enjoyable after one grows up.
"Grow up, human race. I do not care if you vomit, scream, cry for your mommy, or think you are in pain worse than death. I will throw you these things throughout your history to get you up off of this god-damned softness and into the flight of angels." -M. Nature
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..And learning to enjoy pain and sickness, after realized as just a type of consciousness moving around in the body, is part of the Tibetan model of enlightenment. Something our man Crowley worked with, so did his disciples, so did Leary, Metzner, Huxley, McKenna, and anyone else who had a brain betwixt their ears.
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@ThelemicMage said
"When one has finished puberty, one has a specific number of opiate receptors in the body and brain. When one undertakes the use of opiates, MORE opiate receptors grow in the body, especially in the brain, due to the excess amount of opiates your brain and body haven't learned to use yet. "
Yes, your cells, over time do develop more opiate receptors.
However, this is at the cost of stunting the development of other receptors.
It is not a matter of growth, it is a matter of specialization.@ThelemicMage said
"As far as "enjoying" the sickness, you should wake up a little bit a realize that pain is illusion anyways. Nature put the poppy here for just that specific reason. It it not to be shrugged off as another downside to life, but as a gift from the gods waiting in a horrible little wrapped gift box.
"Sickness is a wake up call that the homeostasis of your body has been distorted.
The "sickness" in particular from opiates is a result of your body no longer naturally producing opiates, or at the very least it is not producing enough to fill all the receptors that have been replaced with ones design to be filled with opiates.@ThelemicMage said
"Just as certain types of pain completely confound, overtake, and make childhood completely unbearable, those exact specific types of pain end up being required to, and enjoyable after one grows up. "
Yes, learning to deal, all most enjoy the pain is part of the process.
With the end result learning to invoke these states of mind without the use of ingested substances.
Filled with the warmth of the divine presence, overtaken by the euphoria of Love.Drugs, mind altering substances, as I stated earlier can be useful tools.
In the end, they are the toys of the children, peepholes through the gates, not keys.
They must be set aside so that the real Work can begin... -
@Dar Es Allrah said
"I don't believe in 'control'.
'Control' is an ego concept that oedipus men and electra women enjoy.
I believe in balance. You don't control and set yourself up out of wack with your disparate parts - you flow and balance with the axis.
"Control is freedom, as they say.
My own thoughts on control, at least in regards to the maintaining of balance, equilibrium:When a person is in control, they are aware of the imbalances which arise from their actions and subsequently take action to restore the balance.
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I feel as if you may have miss understood what I was trying to convey...
I did not meant to infer one could control equilibrium directly, but that you can effect it.
Say, you get sick. You could just throw up your arms and say "Oh well, I am sick... going to have to ride it out!"
Or you can go to the doctor, take supplements or many other actions which may restore balance and health.In some respects, coming to be in control of one self in the purpose of the Great Work.
To gain command over they being in order to perform ones True Will.
After all one Willfully surrenders unto the Beloved ; if you have no control over anything, what have you surrendered?To harken back to an earlier vein of discussion... If there is no control, why are you trying to change the LBRP to something that suits you better? That is assuming you have control and can manipulate things to your liking.
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@Dar es Allarah said
"You're a man. You don't have any problems with calling your angel in the same gender as you are."
Something I haven't interpolated into this discussion so far, where I find myself disagreeing with you, Dar.
First, the place I think we agree: Everybody needs to find the formula of communion with their own angel - and the depths of their own soul in general - and not get stuck in what somebody else says works best; and what a woman needs isn't necessarily the same as what a man needs. (I think you'd put a different balance / emphasis on those statements, but that they broadly are consistent with your thinking.)
Where I disagree (with you are apparently saying) is that I don't at all think this is gender-for-gender predetermined. From what you have said, I have no doubt that your core link to your Angel is in feminine guise, and of course you should go for that! And yes, my Angel is primarily male in identity (and some of the early breakthrough experiences had to do with deep aspects of my own male sexuality); but, mostly, the feeling relationship is gender independent, and she has appeared to me in female guise more than a little. (If you've seen my Liber Amoris, you will have seen how the adoration of the Angel moves back and forth across gender lines as convenient.)
Getting outside of you and me, Phyllis Seckler's experience of her Angel was pretty much always male. She experienced Him as husband to her own bride-identity, fulfilling a cross-gender union. (At the same time, her deeper experience was that it was gender independent. She complained about the cover of Black Pearl No. 6 that the portrayed angel had obvious male genitals and, even though she'd always described her own Angel in masculine terms, she felt that this much gender specificity was all wrong).
And I've known men whose experience of the Angel has been primarily or exclusively female.
I suspect this has to do broadly with what gender-balance issues a particular individual has. Few people are as androgynous in the experience as the reports from Crowley (who readily admitted, repeatedly, that the Angel is male or female as convenience dictates).
Bottom line, I don't think there are any rules on this, and that the generalizations I could conceive are so broad and variable that I'm loathe to place any reliance on them or confuse the issue by expostulation.
On the "identifying HGA with my own gender" side of it, Dar, here is a passage from my 5=6 diary (on the second day of the formal operation) that shows one side of it. I kept getting reminded of this when you would write above about your need for the female expression:
"[Sex] with Sor. C. First since commencing the Operation. I anticipated more effective identification of my partner with the HGA, and this did not occur at all. I noted that fantasies were running, as they have this last week, to very phallic homosexual images. However, it was entirely clear to me that I did not desire such a liaison at all. At the time of my orgasm, the explanation became quite clear, however. The phallic male sexual energy within me, my own orgasmic energy, became very identified with the Sun, and with [the Angel]. This was an unexpected (though theoretically expectable) phenomenon, and a clear foundation of a solar-phallic cult."
As mentioned above, this was only one side of it, though. Here's another entry from a bit more than the half-way point through the operation, and describes something that became pretty routine for the rest of the time:
"[Did the invocation.] The presence was very strong, but not very personal. There was power, and presence, and light, but no great intimacy at the heart. However, the manifestation was intensely sexual, to which I was utterly female without losing my manhood, offering my breasts and vulva hungrily, generously, to Adonai (by which I mean [the Angel]), as well as my phallus and anus. I was eventually subsumed by the God, who spoke the Formulæ of Manifestation, and we settled together into meditation for a little while."
During much of the last half of the whole operation, it was pretty routine that I was simutanously male to the Angel much as an extended cosmic-scope penis fucking the yoni of the infinite heavens while simultaneously taking it up the ass from the Angel's penetration of me. It gave a whole new meaning to, "I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy."
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Thanks. The only place I see us perhaps disagreeing is that I don't think there is any such rule. The psyche goes wherever it needs to for the relationship. There are entire systems (mostly tantric in form) that explicitly teach that the HGA (not necessarily under that name) needs to be visualized counter-gender. (I almost mistyped it as cunter-gender <g>.) Now, that's just method, nothng more, and I would expect (and have seen, here and there) about as many people accepting that as rejecting it.
The Ideal is post-gender or trans-gender. But our relationship to it is a very different thing! And I've enjoyed you stirring things up around here.
PS - Yeah, you're kinda yang in your writing. Probably made it easier for you to survive and thrive on forums that are traditionally male hang-outs. But I really value your presence here specifically because you aren't bringing the same adolescent dickhead perspective <vbseg>. You are such a [4-letter c-word], and I love it!
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I will defend Dar by bringing up an old "Wives Question", (instead of Wives Tale
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? No matter what, the "chicken" always comes first, (well, the female pre-version that gave birth to the actual chicken, if you wish to go the other route.)
Evolution proves this. Before there was an egg to hatch, there was always a reptile or bird that gave birth to it.I will no go the extra mile, despite corniness of reference:
The Son of Man, (no, I am not Christian, I'm a Thelemite,) was born from a divine seed, implanted into a "virgin". (Not a real virgin, but an assumed spiritual virgin that was not given seed from Earthly phallus.)
(My real guess is that a Hermes-like evolution took place, but where he can manifest Himself in a worthy mother whenever he chooses. I cite the hidden work of Osiris and Horus.)
So, Mother always gives birth to the egg or baby, even though the daddy may be far away.
Yes, it goes both ways, but I was trying to match ideas with Dar.
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Thelemicmage, you make a good point about mother and egg, but remember - before the egg was hatched into a chicken, it's mother was a dinosaur - so therefore, which came first; the chicken or the egg? The egg - but at first it thought it was a dinosaur egg.