The Labyrinth from Above 001: The Stars of Ancient Ur
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The terminology I will use here: when we’re speaking simply, I divide the world in two: there’s the normal part, which I call N, and the part which mystics and magicians have long tried to tell us about, which I call M. And I use N and M as both nouns and adjectives. Just as you have an N self that lives N life in N World, so you have an M self that lives M life in M World. Now, this is an extremely simplified model—don’t take it as some sort of definitive description of reality. But it’ll do for my purposes here.
The framework I will use here: my model is that M is a layer of reality, a layer of Physics, if you will, that is more fundamental than anything present-day Physics currently studies. And it is from the M layer that derive all the phenomena we currently classify under Religion, Enlightenment, Mysticism, Magic, Animism, Divination, the Occult and so on (as well as all the phenomena present-day Physics studies that have nothing to do with those subjects—but that’s for another time). It’s all just M. Now, don’t take this model as “True”—it’s just a model. In scientific terms, it’s just an untested hypothesis. But until we’ve finally gotten a science of M up and running, untested hypotheses are what we’re stuck with. It’s frustrating, but since it’s all we’ve got, we just have to do the best we can.
I fret about M beginners. I remember how utterly lost I was when I started (nearly 60 years ago).
You know, I came to this part of the world where people were seemingly devoted to M (through books, I mean—there was no internet back in 1970, no online communities like this and I didn’t know anyone else in the world outside of those I found inside books who was interested in M), and I assumed that the way they said it in the books was “the way it is.”
It ain’t.
But it took me decades to figure that out. And I’m childish enough to still be pretty mad about it (mad at the authors, that is, because I feel like I was misled and wasted decades of my life as a result). But I’ve written books myself by now, and I’ve found that though they’re over 10,000 pages in all, they’re still way too simple and shallow to convey all that needs to be said.
The problem from my point of view is this: I would like to lay it all out for beginners so they could take a good long look at the territory, at the Labyrinth from Above, before going back down and entering it, but M itself involves concepts that so sharply violate our animal instincts and our old Aeon-tainted cultures that it would take something on the order of a year-long college course in Philosophy to really articulate it—and you can’t do that for beginners.
I want to make it sophisticated but for beginners it has to be simple. Sophisticated comes later.
You have to give beginners something simple that’s just a baby step from where they’re starting. And then once they’ve assimilated that, you give them another baby step, and then another and another and another. And once they’ve made some progress, then you can go back and talk about that first baby step in a way that’s more complex—they’ll be able to handle it by then. If you’d started out with that complex and sophisticated approach right from the start, most of them would just be bewildered.
Right? With children you teach them that 1 + 1 = 2 and 2 + 2 = 4. And when they’ve got a handle on that, math teacher comes into class one day and says, “Good morning boys and girls and others! Today we’re going to learn about ‘bases.’” And the children look at each other and say, “What in the world is that?” And then they walk to the chalkboard and write, 1 + 1 = 10. Shock! Horror! Everybody knows that 1 + 1 = 2! “Have you gotten senile or something? Missed your medication?”
But you don’t teach a beginner that 1 + 1 = 2 in base 10 but 10 in base 2. They’re just not ready; it won’t sink in; they’ll feel confused, overwhelmed, and probably just give up. “I can’t handle this stuff!”
So that’s the conundrum. You want to make it sophisticated, but you can’t. And so beginners get the idea that the simple explanation they’re given is the whole explanation and don’t realize that no, that’s just for toddlers. Catch-22! AAARGH! Frustrating. But I’m a fool, and so I want to try and see if I can’t find a way to get around the Catch-22. Since M folk have been trying and failing for thousands of years, I have to assume I’m just wasting my breath—who am I compared to all those giants of the past, after all? I’m nobody. But I can’t help it—something in me insists on trying. And I want to try to give beginners at least a little glimpse of the Labyrinth from Above.
So the first thing I want to tell beginners is that nobody in the M field knows what they’re talking about (me included). And to try to explain what I mean, I wrote a little fairy tale in A Simple Model of M which I’ll reproduce here.
THE STARS OF ANCIENT UR
Once upon a time . . .
There lived in Ur a girl named Ursula (“Sky-Gazer of Ur”).
And Ursula loved the stars.
She learned all she could from her elders about the stars, both the wandering stars and the fixed stars, the names of the wandering stars and their temperaments, the names of the constellations and their stories, and how to calculate the months and the years, the Solstices and the Equinoxes.
And then, one night, having studied the sky for hours, she had an epiphany: “I see! Neutron stars! Black holes! Gravitational waves!”
¡Y colorín, colorado, este cuento se ha acabado!
Of course, that never happened. That never could have happened.
Before Humankind was able to learn about neutron stars, black holes and gravitational waves, Physics had to advance enormously, Mathematics had to advance enormously, and we had to collect a vast amount of data.
One thing that sticks in my mind about the revolution in astronomy in the early modern era (Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Newton) was that by that time they had a great deal of data to test their theories. (One amusing aspect is that historians of Science have gone back and examined their data and found it contained errors! But they got the right answers anyway. ¡The scientific method!)
Even so, to this day, I can hardly turn around without coming upon yet another article saying that astrophysicists have been taken by surprise by some new data. No rest for the weary!
Weary astrophysicists or no, we need to start amassing M data if we’re ever to get past the Ursula stage.
And so with M.
I, and all the M people before me, have just been Ursula.
Just as with Ursula in astronomy, so in M we have no Science and little data. In M, we’re still at the beginning, still back in ancient Ur.
And so, as Ursula was making all sorts of what we would consider mistakes today—unaware of the difference between planets, moons and stars, unaware that Earth rotated on its axis and went around the Sun—you should assume that I, and all the M people before me, have also made all sorts of mistakes about M, and this will continue to be the case until the science of M advances enormously and we amass sufficient data.
M is every bit as difficult, complex and baffling as any other subject studied by Science. The idea that mere Ursulas could figure it all out just by thinking real hard is LUDICROUS!
There are two important differences between Ursula and me:
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She was looking up at the N sky while I’m looking up at the M “sky,” and
-
I know I’m Ursula.
That is, I can see the difference between what Ursula thought and modern astronomers think, and so I can extrapolate from that to the difference between what I think about M and what future scientists will think, and I can bear that difference in mind.
So yes, in M, we’re still stuck at the Ursula stage; all the M sages we hear from are Ursulas. They may be able to calculate the Solstices and Equinoxes with great precision, so to speak, but they don’t know the Earth goes around the Sun.
As I say, if they are genuine M folk, they know things if we’re talking simply. You know, your Grandma and Grandpa have been through life, so of course they know more than you and your kindergarten classmates about what people are like and how the world works. And there’s no reason to ignore that.
But no matter how much they know, they can’t tell you how to live your life. They’re not you. No one down here in N can know you well enough to take on a question that profound. And when it comes to M, those are the stakes—the issues in M life are so staggering they exceed the mental capacity of our little animal brains. If you want guidance there, you have to go talk to the advanced beings way up high in M.
So, sure, if you want to ask your grandparents about some things to think about before buying your first house, they may be able to help you. And if you have a genuine M instructor and want to ask them about, say, how to get started in pranayama, they can probably help you with that—but they can’t tell you whether you should even bother with pranayama. That’s beyond their ken. They may be working in some M organization which has rigid rules and so they might tell you you must do pranayama, but that’s not a rule of M. That’s just a rule in that particular organization.
Again, we’re still stuck back in ancient Ur. Nobody knows what they’re talking about (in more than a shallow way). Everybody’s just groping in the dark, guessing and gambling about what works. Particular systems will have their regimens, but those aren’t M. A regimen is just one particular approach to M that happened to work for somebody long ago and they went and made the typical, eye-rolling, sapiens mistake of thinking, “Everybody is just like me, so what worked for me will work for everybody else!”
Oh, brother. You know, I have a really bad temper, and I can’t even type that without wanting to go slap somebody to the carpet.
So let me say this: to succeed at M, you don’t need a teacher in N. You don’t need to read anybody’s book. There ain’t anyone in N who knows what’s right just for you. The most they can know is what seems to have worked pretty well for other people. There is no necessary practice needed to succeed at M. You can go to the top of the mountain without spending even a moment in meditation or waving a wand around in a consecrated circle. You can get to the top of the mountain without doing anything that even looks like a traditional M practice.
You know what are the two most powerful practices that I’ve found that work for me? 1) Writing. 2) Sitting in front of my computer and saying to the advanced M beings, “Please give me some guidance,” and then writing down what they say. Period. Boy are they powerful! But that’s just for me! Do you think there’s an M teacher in the world who ever would have told me that was the best way for me to go?
Again, don’t imagine I’m saying that M teachers are worthless. I’m just saying you’ll do yourself a favor if you understand their limitations. Grandma and Grandpa have plenty of good advice, but when it comes to how to live your N life, only you can decide that. And so with your M life.
So let’s go back to the way all the old authors talk about M and give the impression that “this is the way it is.”
Here’s my suggestion for consideration now that we’re in the New Aeon and all the old rules are “Abrogate!” (L i 49) and we have to purge all the old ways (L ii 5).
-
Let’s make the First Rule of M, “You can’t tell anyone how to think about M.”
-
Let’s keep front and center that M is different for everyone.
-
Let’s be frank that until a science of M gets up to speed, nobody knows what they’re talking about (except in a relatively shallow way), that we’re still stuck at the Ursula stage in our understanding of M while all the other sciences have raced ahead with all their fancy math, huge datasets, and whiz-bang technologies and left us in the dust. In M, we’re still sitting at the children’s table! Let’s not pretend otherwise.
-
Let authors couch their guidance in a framework that signifies, one way or another, “I don’t claim to know, but here’s a model/approach/practice that I’ve found to be helpful, and I pass it on in the hopes it may be helpful to someone else. But, of course, you’re not just like me, so what worked for me may not work for you.”
That is a way of treating other human beings with respect. That is a way of looking after their interests and not just a desire to be acclaimed One Who Knows, much less to proceed like the old religions and burn alive or stone to death anyone who dares to differ.
Hope this helps!
Best,
D.
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The terminology I will use here: when we’re speaking simply, I divide the world in two: there’s the normal part, which I call N, and the part which mystics and magicians have long tried to tell us about, which I call M. And I use N and M as both nouns and adjectives. Just as you have an N self that lives N life in N World, so you have an M self that lives M life in M World. Now, this is an extremely simplified model—don’t take it as some sort of definitive description of reality. But it’ll do for my purposes here.
The framework I will use here: my model is that M is a layer of reality, a layer of Physics, if you will, that is more fundamental than anything present-day Physics currently studies. And it is from the M layer that derive all the phenomena we currently classify under Religion, Enlightenment, Mysticism, Magic, Animism, Divination, the Occult and so on (as well as all the phenomena present-day Physics studies that have nothing to do with those subjects—but that’s for another time). It’s all just M. Now, don’t take this model as “True”—it’s just a model. In scientific terms, it’s just an untested hypothesis. But until we’ve finally gotten a science of M up and running, untested hypotheses are what we’re stuck with. It’s frustrating, but since it’s all we’ve got, we just have to do the best we can.
I fret about M beginners. I remember how utterly lost I was when I started (nearly 60 years ago).
You know, I came to this part of the world where people were seemingly devoted to M (through books, I mean—there was no internet back in 1970, no online communities like this and I didn’t know anyone else in the world outside of those I found inside books who was interested in M), and I assumed that the way they said it in the books was “the way it is.”
It ain’t.
But it took me decades to figure that out. And I’m childish enough to still be pretty mad about it (mad at the authors, that is, because I feel like I was misled and wasted decades of my life as a result). But I’ve written books myself by now, and I’ve found that though they’re over 10,000 pages in all, they’re still way too simple and shallow to convey all that needs to be said.
The problem from my point of view is this: I would like to lay it all out for beginners so they could take a good long look at the territory, at the Labyrinth from Above, before going back down and entering it, but M itself involves concepts that so sharply violate our animal instincts and our old Aeon-tainted cultures that it would take something on the order of a year-long college course in Philosophy to really articulate it—and you can’t do that for beginners.
I want to make it sophisticated but for beginners it has to be simple. Sophisticated comes later.
You have to give beginners something simple that’s just a baby step from where they’re starting. And then once they’ve assimilated that, you give them another baby step, and then another and another and another. And once they’ve made some progress, then you can go back and talk about that first baby step in a way that’s more complex—they’ll be able to handle it by then. If you’d started out with that complex and sophisticated approach right from the start, most of them would just be bewildered.
Right? With children you teach them that 1 + 1 = 2 and 2 + 2 = 4. And when they’ve got a handle on that, math teacher comes into class one day and says, “Good morning boys and girls and others! Today we’re going to learn about ‘bases.’” And the children look at each other and say, “What in the world is that?” And then they walk to the chalkboard and write, 1 + 1 = 10. Shock! Horror! Everybody knows that 1 + 1 = 2! “Have you gotten senile or something? Missed your medication?”
But you don’t teach a beginner that 1 + 1 = 2 in base 10 but 10 in base 2. They’re just not ready; it won’t sink in; they’ll feel confused, overwhelmed, and probably just give up. “I can’t handle this stuff!”
So that’s the conundrum. You want to make it sophisticated, but you can’t. And so beginners get the idea that the simple explanation they’re given is the whole explanation and don’t realize that no, that’s just for toddlers. Catch-22! AAARGH! Frustrating. But I’m a fool, and so I want to try and see if I can’t find a way to get around the Catch-22. Since M folk have been trying and failing for thousands of years, I have to assume I’m just wasting my breath—who am I compared to all those giants of the past, after all? I’m nobody. But I can’t help it—something in me insists on trying. And I want to try to give beginners at least a little glimpse of the Labyrinth from Above.
So the first thing I want to tell beginners is that nobody in the M field knows what they’re talking about (me included). And to try to explain what I mean, I wrote a little fairy tale in A Simple Model of M which I’ll reproduce here.
THE STARS OF ANCIENT UR
Once upon a time . . .
There lived in Ur a girl named Ursula (“Sky-Gazer of Ur”).
And Ursula loved the stars.
She learned all she could from her elders about the stars, both the wandering stars and the fixed stars, the names of the wandering stars and their temperaments, the names of the constellations and their stories, and how to calculate the months and the years, the Solstices and the Equinoxes.
And then, one night, having studied the sky for hours, she had an epiphany: “I see! Neutron stars! Black holes! Gravitational waves!”
¡Y colorín, colorado, este cuento se ha acabado!
Of course, that never happened. That never could have happened.
Before Humankind was able to learn about neutron stars, black holes and gravitational waves, Physics had to advance enormously, Mathematics had to advance enormously, and we had to collect a vast amount of data.
One thing that sticks in my mind about the revolution in astronomy in the early modern era (Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Newton) was that by that time they had a great deal of data to test their theories. (One amusing aspect is that historians of Science have gone back and examined their data and found it contained errors! But they got the right answers anyway. ¡The scientific method!)
Even so, to this day, I can hardly turn around without coming upon yet another article saying that astrophysicists have been taken by surprise by some new data. No rest for the weary!
Weary astrophysicists or no, we need to start amassing M data if we’re ever to get past the Ursula stage.
And so with M.
I, and all the M people before me, have just been Ursula.
Just as with Ursula in astronomy, so in M we have no Science and little data. In M, we’re still at the beginning, still back in ancient Ur.
And so, as Ursula was making all sorts of what we would consider mistakes today—unaware of the difference between planets, moons and stars, unaware that Earth rotated on its axis and went around the Sun—you should assume that I, and all the M people before me, have also made all sorts of mistakes about M, and this will continue to be the case until the science of M advances enormously and we amass sufficient data.
M is every bit as difficult, complex and baffling as any other subject studied by Science. The idea that mere Ursulas could figure it all out just by thinking real hard is LUDICROUS!
There are two important differences between Ursula and me:
-
She was looking up at the N sky while I’m looking up at the M “sky,” and
-
I know I’m Ursula.
That is, I can see the difference between what Ursula thought and modern astronomers think, and so I can extrapolate from that to the difference between what I think about M and what future scientists will think, and I can bear that difference in mind.
So yes, in M, we’re still stuck at the Ursula stage; all the M sages we hear from are Ursulas. They may be able to calculate the Solstices and Equinoxes with great precision, so to speak, but they don’t know the Earth goes around the Sun.
As I say, if they are genuine M folk, they know things if we’re talking simply. You know, your Grandma and Grandpa have been through life, so of course they know more than you and your kindergarten classmates about what people are like and how the world works. And there’s no reason to ignore that.
But no matter how much they know, they can’t tell you how to live your life. They’re not you. No one down here in N can know you well enough to take on a question that profound. And when it comes to M, those are the stakes—the issues in M life are so staggering they exceed the mental capacity of our little animal brains. If you want guidance there, you have to go talk to the advanced beings way up high in M.
So, sure, if you want to ask your grandparents about some things to think about before buying your first house, they may be able to help you. And if you have a genuine M instructor and want to ask them about, say, how to get started in pranayama, they can probably help you with that—but they can’t tell you whether you should even bother with pranayama. That’s beyond their ken. They may be working in some M organization which has rigid rules and so they might tell you you must do pranayama, but that’s not a rule of M. That’s just a rule in that particular organization.
Again, we’re still stuck back in ancient Ur. Nobody knows what they’re talking about (in more than a shallow way). Everybody’s just groping in the dark, guessing and gambling about what works. Particular systems will have their regimens, but those aren’t M. A regimen is just one particular approach to M that happened to work for somebody long ago and they went and made the typical, eye-rolling, sapiens mistake of thinking, “Everybody is just like me, so what worked for me will work for everybody else!”
Oh, brother. You know, I have a really bad temper, and I can’t even type that without wanting to go slap somebody to the carpet.
So let me say this: to succeed at M, you don’t need a teacher in N. You don’t need to read anybody’s book. There ain’t anyone in N who knows what’s right just for you. The most they can know is what seems to have worked pretty well for other people. There is no necessary practice needed to succeed at M. You can go to the top of the mountain without spending even a moment in meditation or waving a wand around in a consecrated circle. You can get to the top of the mountain without doing anything that even looks like a traditional M practice.
You know what are the two most powerful practices that I’ve found that work for me? 1) Writing. 2) Sitting in front of my computer and saying to the advanced M beings, “Please give me some guidance,” and then writing down what they say. Period. Boy are they powerful! But that’s just for me! Do you think there’s an M teacher in the world who ever would have told me that was the best way for me to go?
Again, don’t imagine I’m saying that M teachers are worthless. I’m just saying you’ll do yourself a favor if you understand their limitations. Grandma and Grandpa have plenty of good advice, but when it comes to how to live your N life, only you can decide that. And so with your M life.
So let’s go back to the way all the old authors talk about M and give the impression that “this is the way it is.”
Here’s my suggestion for consideration now that we’re in the New Aeon and all the old rules are “Abrogate!” (L i 49) and we have to purge all the old ways (L ii 5).
-
Let’s make the First Rule of M, “You can’t tell anyone how to think about M.”
-
Let’s keep front and center that M is different for everyone.
-
Let’s be frank that until a science of M gets up to speed, nobody knows what they’re talking about (except in a relatively shallow way), that we’re still stuck at the Ursula stage in our understanding of M while all the other sciences have raced ahead with all their fancy math, huge datasets, and whiz-bang technologies and left us in the dust. In M, we’re still sitting at the children’s table! Let’s not pretend otherwise.
-
Let authors couch their guidance in a framework that signifies, one way or another, “I don’t claim to know, but here’s a model/approach/practice that I’ve found to be helpful, and I pass it on in the hopes it may be helpful to someone else. But, of course, you’re not just like me, so what worked for me may not work for you.”
That is a way of treating other human beings with respect. That is a way of looking after their interests and not just a desire to be acclaimed One Who Knows, much less to proceed like the old religions and burn alive or stone to death anyone who dares to differ.
Hope this helps!
Best,
D.
@d.b.stone I agree with your four suggestions. My favorite authors seem to follow these suggestions already, thankfully.
Specifically, I'm thinking of Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson. Crowley is pretty adamant that only you can decide your True Will for yourself. Considering so much of the True Will manifests Magick (and vice versa), I would venture to guess Crowley wouldn't force his perception of Magick on anyone else. In fact, I think his writings do reflect this when he says to learn by experience, not because he told you so. While Crowley does provide a pretty specific method and training regimen to attain to his states of consciousness, Crowley also states that your own crude rituals will be better than anything he can give you. I don't believe he wrote this to undermine his own ideas. Instead, he was emphasizing that you are the ultimate authority when it comes to your own path. Hence, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law. Love under Will.
Robert Anton Wilson wrote an excellent book called Quantum Psychology (that we are currently in the middle of reading for our Book Club!) dealing precisely with these issues. RAW explicitly talks about how we can not know the totality of anything, no matter what Science claims. He explores how linguistic traps can lead us to mistake the map for the territory. He has a few chapters even devoted to the nature of using scientific instruments to measure snapshots of time, and how ultimately those instruments are simply extensions of the human nervous system. This inherently removes objectivity from scientific instruments or measurements because the person collecting that measurement is still using subjective perception.
When I find an author who claims to know all, I can't help but wonder what they are trying to sell me. I think this is a good rule of thumb in most avenues of life, but like you mentioned, it took me a long time to develop enough critical thinking to recognize this. Living in an economy where companies actively use social psychology to sell more products, it's no wonder so many of these kinds of books sell. When someone claims to know the best way for everyone, run away!
I noticed you repped your book! I will have to give that a read. Assuming that it is the book written for beginners since this discussion was about books for beginners, do you feel pretty confident that someone who knows nothing about Magick might discover the value of Magick through your book?
I ask because I like to keep up with the latest and greatest beginner textbooks on Magick. The elementary work never disappears, and I like to know what to recommend to those who express curiosity in Magick. Of course, the book I started practicing Magick with isn't the book I'd expect others to practice Magick with. So I suppose in the light of our conversation, it's good to have multiple books as multiple entry points to match the candidate in question.
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@d.b.stone I agree with your four suggestions. My favorite authors seem to follow these suggestions already, thankfully.
Specifically, I'm thinking of Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson. Crowley is pretty adamant that only you can decide your True Will for yourself. Considering so much of the True Will manifests Magick (and vice versa), I would venture to guess Crowley wouldn't force his perception of Magick on anyone else. In fact, I think his writings do reflect this when he says to learn by experience, not because he told you so. While Crowley does provide a pretty specific method and training regimen to attain to his states of consciousness, Crowley also states that your own crude rituals will be better than anything he can give you. I don't believe he wrote this to undermine his own ideas. Instead, he was emphasizing that you are the ultimate authority when it comes to your own path. Hence, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law. Love under Will.
Robert Anton Wilson wrote an excellent book called Quantum Psychology (that we are currently in the middle of reading for our Book Club!) dealing precisely with these issues. RAW explicitly talks about how we can not know the totality of anything, no matter what Science claims. He explores how linguistic traps can lead us to mistake the map for the territory. He has a few chapters even devoted to the nature of using scientific instruments to measure snapshots of time, and how ultimately those instruments are simply extensions of the human nervous system. This inherently removes objectivity from scientific instruments or measurements because the person collecting that measurement is still using subjective perception.
When I find an author who claims to know all, I can't help but wonder what they are trying to sell me. I think this is a good rule of thumb in most avenues of life, but like you mentioned, it took me a long time to develop enough critical thinking to recognize this. Living in an economy where companies actively use social psychology to sell more products, it's no wonder so many of these kinds of books sell. When someone claims to know the best way for everyone, run away!
I noticed you repped your book! I will have to give that a read. Assuming that it is the book written for beginners since this discussion was about books for beginners, do you feel pretty confident that someone who knows nothing about Magick might discover the value of Magick through your book?
I ask because I like to keep up with the latest and greatest beginner textbooks on Magick. The elementary work never disappears, and I like to know what to recommend to those who express curiosity in Magick. Of course, the book I started practicing Magick with isn't the book I'd expect others to practice Magick with. So I suppose in the light of our conversation, it's good to have multiple books as multiple entry points to match the candidate in question.
My goodness—I seem to have stumbled onto an oasis! I am in my 70’s, but I’ve never encountered anyone who talks about M with your level of intellectual sophistication. I shouldn’t gush—I’m a silly old man. I better stop or I’ll make you nervous.
Thank you so much for your note.
As for my books—here I’m going to show why I flunked out of marketing school. Just between you and me and the internet, I don’t think hardly anyone is going to read them. I read them and feel like there’s nothing else like them in the world. But I’m pretty sure almost everyone else is going to find them an awful bore. They’re long (4 books, 14 volumes, 10,000 pages) and expensive and they don’t treat the subject in the usual way. They’re only for the hardest of the hardcore, and I’ve only met one such person in my life—Marcelo Motta. So perhaps if he reincarnates, he’ll read them.
Beyond that, I have no idea precisely what you mean by “Magick.” People have vastly different notions, approaches, frameworks for the subject. I call the subject M, and my approach to it is vastly more encompassing than anything I’ve encountered on the internet so far (of course, I don’t get out much). So I don’t feel I can give you any simple answer to your question. Hence the free samples.
A Simple Model of M
New Aeon Qabalah
the pillars of the world
M for BeginnersEach has either 100 or 200 pages of text from the first volume in each series (there’s 600 pages in all) and complete tables of contents for all the volumes in the series. So without spending any money, you can get a good idea if they might be helpful to you.
As for beginners, of course I wrote “M for Beginners” for them. But they have to read “A Simple Model of M” first because that’s where I set out all my terminology and basic frameworks, and then they have to read “New Aeon Qabalah” because I don’t use the Bennett-Crowley Qabalah (for the most part) but one I’ve constructed from Liber L and L ii 76—and that’s 5,000 pages before they even crack open M for Beginners (3,000 pages).
“the pillars of the world” was written to try to get a conversation going about how to reconstruct Civilization across a wide range of sectors to be in better accord with the New Aeon. I think it would be of value to a hardcore beginner because, again, I think the subject of M has been treated way too narrowly so far and it will clue them in to the idea that no, M is, ultimately, about how to bring along the entire world and all of its species (M and N both) along the path of M development—it’s taking on the task of Atlas (or Prometheus, if you like, or the Mother Goddess). But, of course, most people have no interest in “ultimately.” A beginner who is just looking for how to properly construct an M circle or do pranayama and so forth is going to be bored out of their minds.
So, like I say, I don’t think hardly anyone is going to read them. But I just wanted to make sure they were out there for the rare souls for whom they might be suited. Plus one other person: while they’re published as four different books, in practical terms they’re really just one—the book I wish someone had given me when I was 15 and first found out about M. But it didn’t exist, so I had to write it myself, and to do that I had to spend a lifetime learning what I needed to write. Now here I am close to the exit door, and so my hope is that when I come back next time, someone will give it to me for my 15th birthday. M power allows you to make wishes every bit as “RIDICULOUS!” as that come true.
Best,
D.
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Haha I appreciate your flattery! I'd hardly measure my intellectual wanderings as sophisticated, nonetheless, I will not tell you that you're wrong
As far as defining Magick goes, I generally point to Crowley's definition: "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will". Volumes upon volumes have been written by others much smarter than me about what that might mean. For simplicity, I will specify that I am referring to a process of applying symbolic knowledge to subconscious patterning in order to align multiple levels of being. With these levels acting in alignment, there are more powers available to the individual to realize their goal. Given that Consciousness/Divinity/Source/Orgone/Astral Light (etc.) requires some type of symbol to interface and interact with the practitioner, Crowley's definition could be interpreted as the Art of manipulating Symbols to induce a change in Consciousness. Ideally, these changes in Consciousness have a greater purpose (perhaps attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel) that they are working towards.
I must say it is quite impressive that you met Motta, as well as have written 10,000 pages on such a subject. Assuming that we are referring to the same idea when I say Magick and you say M, I must say that I am jealous of such an accomplishment. I have not been so lucky to find the time to write 10,000 pages.
That being said, I must apologize. I'm not sure if I am the intended audience, simply because I am not of the level of Motta, and I do not have enough free time to give your work the attention it needs. Nonetheless, these sound like valuable ideas, and I am intrigued. You seem well read, and I appreciate that you've put so much thought into your ideas. As I'm sure you know, there's an abundance of half-baked on the internet and finding someone who is genuinely interested in discussing these subjects can be quite difficult.
I think Crowley would agree that the goal of spiritually enlightened beings should be to liberate the rest of the species. Crowley pretty explicitly claims that the Law is for All. He's also written an essay called "Duty" that expresses Crowley's vision on how to realize a Thelemic society. One of my personal favorites is De Lege Libellum, in which Crowley describes the four core Thelemic values. In my opinion, if someone truly takes this paper to heart, then they are actively working for the greater good of the human race.
For clarification, I'm not sure that I use Bennett-Crowley Qabalah either. I suppose that a more accurate description would be Crowley-Eshelman Qabalah. I primarily reference Jim Eshelman's writings (specifically 776 1/2) for Qabalistic information. I will admit that because Eshelman built off what Crowley wrote, perhaps Bennett (I assume Alan Bennett) is linked to this. However, Jim has done excellent work to clarify and strengthen 776 1/2's dialect of Qabalah. It is certainly not what Crowley was using in his day
Even in the Qabalah, the primary doctrine is that of marrying the Daughter to the Son so that they can become the Queen and the King. The Daughter is often used as a term to describe the material world. Earlier Kabbalistic doctrine said that the Daughter was in exile, must be redeemed, and that the messiah will not come until that very Daughter is redeemed. This doctrine seems to imply that "saving the world" is the goal of it all, though we certainly can't do it on our own. Instead, I view the "messiah" as the world consciousness that will arise from a society in right relation with Nature and the Divine. Furthermore, Nuit states that it is our duty to conquer the Hierophantic task as that will heal the world (verses 50-53 of Chapter 1).
Sounds like we're in pretty strong agreement with each other!