March 26 (A'AYIN, The Devil, Capricorn) Liber A'ash
-
Recommended practices for today: Evocation. Consecration of talismans.
-
I previously mentioned that Liber Tzaddi is perfect. I find something similar with A'ash, but different in that I don't understand A'ash much, if at all. The symbolism is in part clear, but at the same time complex and magnanimous. But above all it does have beauty and value.
-
I feel similarly and have a hard time commenting.
One part of a verse that stuck out to me:
"All lonely places are sacred unto me; where one man gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap forth in the midst of him."
Upon reading this I want to gloss over "where one man gathereth himself together in my name" because it almost automatically sounds to me like "where men (multiple people) gathereth themselves together...." It is very pointed in its singularity. It is speaking of one person gathering themselves together, uniting the elements within themselves, forging a strain of holding these forces together and the result being that this "god" will rush forth in the midst of him. It may be automatic cause and effect or something purposely invoked - or both and neither. In any case very cool. I get the impression of Hadit many times in this book.
-
Liber A'Ash
0 Gnarled Oak of God
The image of the solitary oak, lightening blasted and alone on a high barren heath, surrounded by lesser scrub, beneath a reddening stormy sky is intense. The fecundity of lightening - begetting the thunder. The Zeus father god striking Gaia. Electricity is a perfect sexual metaphor - in its inductive and conductive qualities -- the reciprocal magnetism--the leaping spark that units in the infinite space between self and other. The oak reaches for the sky--which will bring sweet rain with its fire--and the narrator envisions it striving stretching upward actually seeking the lightening bolt.
Overtly sexual, tantric practice in referenced in "only in the end shalt thou give up thy sap." Akin to: "Hold! Hold! Bear up in thy rapture; fall not in swoon of the excellent kisses!"
The "eruption" occurs only when the great god F.I.A.T. is enthroned on the day of be-with-us. I am uncertain of the abbreviation, but fiat itself is a thing done, also a thing made. A fiat is, in the real world, a kind of going, for in passing through we ever interact, artfully, regardless of how aware we are of the brush strokes. And the sap is shared when that going - the Hadit moving through the world merges, with it completely. It is the magical link. The Be With Us. Also the three mothers -- Be - Tamas / With - Sattva / Us - Rajas (Us being the future, because in time we propagate and multiply -- being with the ALL of US in the largest sense, the elimination of the illusion of separatness that is the unitary aim of time.
7 - For two things are done and one is begun.
This three things refers to the three aeons. The present being the aeon of truth. Truth through, from Liber Tzaddi, the Lord of Initiation - Ra Hoor Khuit, Horus, and at the same time "Harpocrates his twin is hidden with him"
(Silence is like auditory N.O.X.. The blind hawk from Line 0 sees only the darkness of nothing, which is akin to the silence of everything-all-at-once.)
8 - In this is the magical power known.
The "this" is referring back, not forward, which would require different punctuation. The "this" is the springing forth of Horus "thrice armed" from his mother with his silent twin inside. Something about emerging from behind the apron strings of personality.
The analogy and kind of mashup between the tree and the hawk continues. The lightening is nested, the hawk overstretched above - reversing their natural positioning, mingling them metaphorically. Horus - the "magical power" -- is the Oak (and the Hawk), and we are told he "bears up against the storm," he remains confident like a sea captain, despite being weather beaten and worn. And he strains "like a hound in the leash." He has pride and subtly and glee.
Yes! I so identify with this guy! I want the lightening!
12 - Let the magus act thus in his conjuration.
We are taught that in this same kind of striving of the tree for the lightening (we usually think of it the other way around), like a hound pulling at the leash, this is how one is to "draw himself together."
Conjuration here is revealed to be concentration - a solidarity and singularity akin to the Oak again. And the image of the magus swaying and erupting with his Logos - fixing his eye upon the demon (obstacle; ordeal) and proclaiming his Word -- is like the Oak wildly swinging in the rising wind of a storm. A kind of anxious craving in its deeply rooted swaying to be struck.
Man first found fire from the skies. Lightening would be the first place we say this mighty elemental force. Before we had figured out rocks and tinder, we would have seen the holiest sight imaginable - a lightening strike hitting a tree. You can imaging tribes running to the site, racing up the hill to catch the flames gifted them from above.
And even at the moment when the Word is uttered, when the lightening strikes, he is to remain rooted and receptive. The Oak strives for the blast, and does not ever retreat, but absorbs the entire burst. Even if it destroys the trunk, every watt, every amp, every possible volt it can possibly endure passes through it ground.
"The infinite mercy of the Genitor-Genetrix of the Universe, whereof he is the Vessel."
15 - Nor do thou deceive thyself.
This is almost a a joke: "It is easy to tell the life force from the dead matter. It is no easier to tell the live snake from the dead snake." One might think "no easier" suggests that it would difficult to tell the difference--perhaps between a very still living snake and a dead one. But of course it is easy to distinguish them. Touch it if you don't believe me.
16 - Also concerning vows.
I love this part and have long agreed. Having married twice and each time with the full intention behind my vows and yet being now divorced, with those vows left behind long ago, I understand that things change. We are not the same person who made the vow years (or maybe even days) later. "The yielding of the Yoni is one with the lengthening of the Lingam." What a beautiful line. We are ever firm and yet ever yielding and receptive. So even in the most intensely directed penetration, there must be a kind of receptivity too, a sensitivity to the force and direction of things.
Vows are, moreover, temporal, and akin to the rustling of wind--a response in passing by. And that rustling is on Mount Meru, which is the "sacred mountain with five peaks in Hindu, Jain as well as Buddhist cosmology and is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes."
17 - Now shalt thou adore me...
This seems a changing of direction. The "me" here does not refer back to anything from before. The narrator, who has likened the reader to the Blasted Oak and used this analogy to reveal secrets of magick, now introduces himself: He is the "the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of the Spirit, the Lord of Creation.... the Eye in the Triangle, the Silver Star that ye adore. I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated with the Three."
And he resides, definitely, here and "now."
The nature of the intelligence behind this Liber is a great arcana, but I know enough to recognize Baphomet from the A'ayin card - the Devil. The goat. He is the chaotic side of Pan, the wilding god of the Bacchae, and can be worshiped thus: in every act and passion, in all holy and symbolic things, in the goat, duck and the ass, the gazelle and the man, woman and child, in corpses - which rot and decay and disperse -- and in lonely places.
The duck is funny, but something about flying south for the winter - the instinct to migrate and reproduce -- fits. So too does the plodding, reliable, hard working, obstinate ass.
I love the idea of lonely places being sacred. Where the magus can be alone and can "draw [herself] together." And, the promise is that when she does so, "where one man gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap forth in the midst of him." You can go at it alone.
This is obviously in contrast to Matthew 8:20: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
And indeed, I have personally had this experience in a powerful evocation of the Devil and the Heirophant which brought me to T.'.O.'.T.'.
And it was not long after that, about a year or so later, that everything in my life came crashing down, and out emerged the person I am today.
So yeah, I can definitely identify with this book.
-
I am the hideous god; and who mastereth me is uglier than I
-
Whom I love I chastise with many rods.
-
All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me.
-
For there is no holiness where I am not
Again -- pantheistic. But here it turns. We are told that when we gather ourselves in the name of Baphomet, he will "leap forth in the midst" of us. We become him, in effect. And after that, things get really interesting.
- Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm.
Don't be bothered by wild and tempestuous ordeals. All that is what knocks the acorns loose. It is the buffeting, the fury of the storm, that spreads out the seeds, engenders influence and effects. And the storm is not temporal - it is eternity itself.
And this thing, this god within, is Existence itself, in a kind of unitary hermetic oneness. nothing rooted deeply into nothing in the land of nothing. All things indeed.
- Now therefor thou knowest when I am within thee
We can know the god is inside of us "when the hood is spread over thy skull." I believe this refers to the robes of a magician, when one is conjuring - gathering oneself with the might referenced above, referred to here as "more than the penned Indus." This a reference to damming up the Indus river -- a kind of hydrolic force akin to the expansion of a glacier over aeons.
Or perhaps "penned" Indus could be a reference is the Indus Valley civilization - one of the great early civilizations, roughly 5000 BC, with elaborate religious institutions, and a complete system of writing (pens), of which today we have only remnants and don't fully understand. Also, "restless as the Giant Glacier" harkens to the sacredness of the plodding burro.
- For as thou art before a lewd woman in Thy nakedness in the bazaar, sucked up by her slyness and smiles, so art thou wholly and no more in part before the symbol of the beloved, though it be but a Pischa or a Yantra or a Deva
"HINDU DEMON - PISACHA
Fiends, evil spirits, placed by the Vedas as lower than Rakshasas. The vilest and most malignant (order of malevolent beings....
A pisacha is a vampiric spirit often associated with the vetala and the. rakshasa but of a lower order than both of these. They are said to be hideous in appearance and blood thirsty. They haunt charnel grounds and cross-roads. They are blamed as the cause of many illnesses. But, if offered rice at a cross-road by one of his victims in a ceremony that is repeated for days, he might restore his health. The name pisacha is occasionally used in a way that includes all or nearly all the vampiric demons and spirits of India.
Yantra (यन्त्र) is the Sanskrit word for a mystical diagram, especially diagrams or amulets supposed to possess occult powers in astrological or magical benefits in the Tantric traditions of the Indian religions.
A deva (देव Sanskrit and Pāli) in Buddhism is one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, much happier than humans, although none of them are worthy of worship."
I take this passage to mean that that same kind of disarming bewilderment, that feeling of wanting a lewd woman, of feeling exposed and raw and sucked into her charms, of wanting in a lusty sense, is the same whether that lust be directed at a seductrix, or a demon or a benevolent spirit, or a mandala. It is the focusing of attention, the gathering of oneself in the name of the all-god that ignites And by this means, "shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss, and the next link of the Infinite Chain."
36 - end
The rest is about delighting in this chain of from Eternity to Eternity, recognizing that the progression is an illusion, but a necessary -- or at least delightful one -- rapturous in the embrace of Nuit.
So hold oneself up like the Oak, because that's what this god lets us do. Bear up to the storm and be utterly destroyed in the enflaming lightening burst of your Word.
Because, why not? Existence is like the mighty Indus river flowing among the hills and the plains washing into the mighty sea.
yea, into the mighty sea.
-
-
Pan, Pan, IO PAN!
experiences, multitude of Experience – various, the more diverse the better, delight in them and through them;
ecstasy in this Dance of Life, bordering with Madness;
“Hear me, ye people of sighing!
The sorrows of pain and regret
Are left to the dead and the dying,
The folk that not know me as yet.”He transcends Time through experiences of Rapture & Ecstasy, those Moments beyond time, although happening in-time, in these moments He creates myriads of Forms, according to Will.
There is practical Yang formula of sexual magick (on the other side is XIII as complementary, Yin principle – surrendering the ego as the mystical aspect of the formula); it can be dangerous, lead to actual madness, if not essentially directed to K&C of the HGA or to Nuit, depending on the plane one is operating. -
Tarot Meditation – The Devil
In the night the obelisk of light arises piercing through the heavens bringing dawn and light. There is a golden landscape. Little blue flowers are spread everywhere. There are a number of young little goats playing around, butting into each other. On top of the hill a single goat sits overlooking activities of the playful children. The goat has three eyes. It is wisdom itself seated on the nature's throne elevated above the fields. There is a sound coming out of the sky, like some sort of a trumpet or metallic object ringing. It shakes the earth and soon the rain falls. Gentle drops wetting the ground. Each drop contains a divine speck - a seed, and Gaia receives it into her womb planting endless potentialities. In some places water accumulates and fills riverbeds and it flows downward from Upper Egypt into Lower Egypt. And the snakes swim with the current. They mate in Lower Egypt and the new philosophies are born therein to guide the man out of the darkness and into the light. There is a pyramid in Lower Egypt – it’s golden, and the rain polishes its faces so they may glisten in the Sun even more magnificently then before. The pyramid is the house of the goat. Within it is the temple. It is outlined in a rectangular shape with mosaic floor in turquoise stone. There is an altar there for the sacrifice of a pure unstained maiden and for the offering of her unplucked young flower. A jeweled box of precious objects is there - of whispers and vibrations, of pearls – not ordinary pearls, but eggs bearing gold of the ancients in a form of a spoken word that only initiates can behold. Here come beings from different parts of the universe – very tall and exalted beings, who carry with them secrets of humanity.
The phallus of light now begins to diminish concluding this vision and invoking darkness as it retrieves and dissolves into emptiness.
