RedOwl
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Hi, I've been into various occult things for several years now without pinning anything down.
I've got massive gaps in my understanding, and I also feel a lot of anger towards the presumptuous nature of so many authors who try to apply hard and fast definitions to what "sorcery" or other forms of magick are and they tend to conflict with each other. Then I so frequently see what can only be described as a bastardization of ancient Egyptian culture for few cheap thrills.
I'm not specificly talking about Crowley here, generally speaking he is good enough to rename deities to imply that he has added a personal twist to them in his system, but people like Eliphas Levi and Israel Regardie do this. It really puts me off when some magus starts touting their subjective interpretations as absolute truth.
So I've decided to take a break from the intellectual side of occultism, what I really enjoy is doing a ritual, such as LBRP / Star Ruby / Gnostic Pentagram Ritual, then going into a dark room and sitting in a meditation posture and visualizing myself doing that ritual which I recently did as a gateway to gnosis, then I combine this with a kind of dream-scape astral travel visualization which has enabled me to have powerful visual and kinesthetic experiences. In the future I look forward to combining magick with visualization and lucid dreaming like this, and** I'd really appreciate any books or articles people can recommend on the subject**.
I have recently contacted my local OTO group and got sponsorship, I've never really been involved in group ceremonial magick before and I look forward to what will happen there, when I finally read the book of Abramelon the Mage I should be ready to almost join the AA, but for now I want to put the intellectual stuff aside to focus on the aforementioned practical usage of magick I have enjoyed.
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There is also the fact that Egyptology is a late-developing field. What has been learned since early 20th Century is more than what had been learned up until that time. (BTW, welcome to the forum.)
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Welcome to the forum, RedOwl
@redowl said
"** I'd really appreciate any books or articles people can recommend on the subject**."
Regardie, Israel, Chic Cicero, & Samantha Tabitha Cicero. [www.amazon.com/Garden-Pomegranates-Skrying-Tree-Life/dp/1567181414:q84tbug8]](http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Pomegranates-Skrying-Tree-Life/dp/1567181414:q84tbug8).
"I have recently contacted my local OTO group and got sponsorship, I've never really been involved in group ceremonial magick before and I look forward to what will happen there"
I'm not sure that you'll find group ceremonial magick there. Those who are actual OTO members can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're more likely to find a club of like-minded individuals, chatting about Thelema at monthly meetings and study groups rather than any ceremonial group work.
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Thanks for the welcoming guys. I found out about this forum from this video " A Pathway To Adepthood: The Method of A∴A∴ – James A. Eshelman " www.youtube.com/watch?v=T96_AOYwi.
I'll see what joining the local OTO brings.
All I can say is that I am sick and tired of intellectual occultism. I want experiences, experiences not unlike those I have already had, but to have them more regularly and routinely.
One of the regular spiritual experiences I have had is one like I imagine myself fighting an army and energy is rushing up my spine and spinning around my body, to the point where it is embarrassing if anybody sees me. The experience itself is fantastic and usually brought on by listening to heavy metal in meditation, but the visions are getting a bit old and I want something a little bit less of a warrior experience and more of a relative to my life.
About 10 years ago when I first stumbled across books like the Necronomicon and the Goetia, I would focus on and draw sigils from these books and ask them questions like "what is life?" and "what is the purpose of life". I would practice them in such a way before going to bed that they would interact with my dreams, I would sleep for about an hour and then spring out of bed in shock having had vivid dreams with answers to the questions.
One time I asked "why are we here?" and in my dream I saw a golden sunset ahead of me, and 3 naked childlike figures holding hands in a meditation posture in a triangle form. Then a voice said some thing like "The one God experienced great pain in a static state and divided itself into many pieces, our subjective lives are an anesthetic to the immortal soul." while this was happening the 3 childlike figures holding hands in the shape of a triangle started to spin and rise up into the dark sky, I remember seeing the orange glow of the sunset around them, and as they rose my heart began to pound faster and faster and then I woke up and I was like "WOOOOAAHHHH!!!!!!".
So I think I have something to offer the tradition of magick, I see so many people who want to be magicians staring into scrying mirrors trying to get themselves to believe something is happening, really trance is everything when it comes to the living breathing experience of magick, and it's just not talked about enough in the current books available.