College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Recommendations..

I like

"Because of Khoor's* volition
I am a manifestation of infinite worth."

But that's all that really came to me.

@Jim Eshelman said

"*There is a large collection of gods or redemptive heroes whose names begin with the sounds KR or ChR. One obvious example is Christ. The earliest spellings of the name "Horus" are with two hieroglyphs making exactly these sounds, as Khoor. We can add other names like Krishna and Chiram (Hiram). Other H- variants are linguistically close and may include the likes of Hermes. In some very fundamental ways, these are all the same essential idea, diversified in individual expression.

www.heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?p=25901&sid=bb67bbef3ff5e13c200000f29014e2f6
"

Intuitively i'd say High Priestess... for me, currently 😆

What i'd suggest to find out for youself is just look at each arcana one after the other, in meditative state, focusing on each image as a whole. You should feel which is the right one.

As for the bodily thing, just an idea: maybe there is a physical reason as well, related to true will. Sometimes for one's life purpose it may require specific body "mutation" that only great "irradiation" can provide. One may be surprised sometimes, after years of thinking a bodypart is ill or weakening, to discover what was actually happening. For that bodypart may have become very strong in the process, without anyone noticing it. 👹

Use urine to take the pain away. Use it like a mouthwash. Hold it in your mouth for a few minutes. Works for me. 🍸

@Alias55A said

"
I get what you're saying, I just get confused and ask if im doing it right and what not imagining that way, flopping between 1st and 3rd person view. Also could I imagine myself as Pan? like me with horns and goat features? I think I could pull off being a young pan, with black long hair... Or should I pick a classical image?
At # 14 in Liber Astarte, stating:Yet also he may deliberately practise cruelties, where the particular Deity manifests His Love in that manner, as in the case of Kali, and of Pan. And therefore, before the beginning of his period of devotion, let him practise according to the rules of Liber Jugorum.
@ Silent1. Wondering if you did this also, and if you could expand on it, and no I havent peaked into Liber Jugorum. Yet.

24. Concerning the Mantram or Continuous Prayer or for Pan, chi-alpha-iota-rho-epsilon Sigma-omega-tau-eta-rho kappa-omicron-sigma-mu-omicron-upsilon, Iota-omega Pi-alpha-nu, Iota-omega Pi-alpha-nu; I tried to find a translator for this, but I cant find out what it means."

It sounds as if you are on the right track. As for the Mantram I simply used IO Pan Pan IO IO Pan Pan IO. Worked great for me. Get around to memorizing Crowley's Hymn. I made it a part of my devotion to recite the hymn often. As for cruelties... I did practice some mild flagellation and "alternative" sexual practices. The cruelty of Pan is out of childlike insanity: the little boy trampling the flowers for the heck of it.

@sethur said

"Asana should be comfortable and requiring minimal effort - but just enough effort to keep the mind alert (rather than going to sleep)."

The first time you begin your practice of asana, you should be completely rigid and focused on your posture. You aren't yet learning prana or mantra - your yoga is currently only about asana. You needn't strain to do this either (but you can if you like, testing each of your muscles and ligiments in their various capacities is fun for a time), but you must be firm.

The second day you practice you will be all of the above but a little more comforted with confidence in your ability to sit straight and still. The third day you practice you will yet again become more of something and less of something else... and so on and so on until at first you were firm and focused, later you will be relaxed and undisturbed - to your mind you may believe these are two distinctly different postures on asana but they are not. The yogi who is sitting correctly in his half-lotus position telling his student to "act naturally" is not remembering that what has become "natural and relaxed" after years of practice for the yogi is not natural for the chela and will require training of a firm hand and mind to guide.

If you are first beginning your practice, your asana will have the necessity of being firm and straight in its geometries. One could discuss all the mystical line theories and chakras as a reason behind this, but I like to just keep it simple and explain that it is simply a way to prove that the mind can train the not-mind to do a thing correctly. Or to use someone's vehicle metaphor for example, I bring out The Chariot of the Tarot and explain that what we will be learning is to take the mind and body and command them by Will to get us to our journey's road.

To begin, it is your oath "To prosecute the Great Work: which is, to obtain control of the nature and powers of my own being." In short, don't sit how your body wants you to sit, sit with Will.

@Alias55A said

"I was at a thrift store today and came across a wee little charm of this feller..."
That could be the one I lost!

@TheSilent1 said

"That would work great with a person who is lactose intolerant. If you can time it right you can cause explosive diarrhea during a date or a business meeting! 😀"

I would just bathe mine in a pool of hash oil.

Come to think of which, I just had an inspiration to fuse Ambramelin oil with cannabis! Aha!

Astrolog has been around for quite some years. It doesn't have any fancy built in interpretation/chart building functions but it has a robust calculation engine with lots of functions, including working in sidereal and it's free 😄

@Ash said

"Jim, would you recommend more or less lighting for something like the Lesser Pentagram Rituals?"

Especially whle learning, avoid fully bright light. Go with about half-lighting.

@Alias55A said

"I have to point out something, you said "it's practically an initiation writing it. I'm not trying to pry, for that might mean something confidential or all together person you dont want to share. Any case, would this have to do with a grade? Like some of the books and other writings that came from initiates completing a higher grade?"

It's not a writing for a specific (outward) completion of a grade assignment, no. (Thanks for your delicacy in asking.) It does, however, appear (subjectively) to be taking me much deeper into fulfillment of the primary tasks of my current grade, yes. - Sometimes specific (universal) tasks take particular (individual) forms as part of working through them.

My personal formula has always flourished best in the course of teaching. In abstract terms, my Will is intiamtely connected to teaching; more concretely, I simply don't stop and ask myself the scope or depth of questions others ask me (or that I ask in anticipation of their needs). When I had to select my Probationer motto way back at the beginning, I asked myself, "OK, so who are you and what do you do?" I realized that "what I do" is "I learn shit, and then teach it to someone else," so I picked Disco et Instruo ("I Learn & I Teach") as my Probationer motto. That changed and evolved over time, of course, but it's noticeable how many successor mottoes have expressed substantially the same theme. (I also was rather taken with the initials, D.E.I., Latin for "Unto God." It was decades before I realized that this was not only the motto at the beginning of my current incarnation's Work, but was the "next logical successor" to the motto I last bore in my last incarnation.)

So... using writing as a way of "pulling stuff through" has long been central to my method.

"Oh and thank you for the tips on the subject, and you should write a book about it. I think the only way you could trully accomplish the writing would be to put an eclectic view with lots of options pointing to a general initiatory kind of system kinda thingy 😀 . Just an idea, 👽"

Thanks for the encouragement. I doubt that I'll get to that in this life, but one never knows. No plans for it at the present.

@Jim Eshelman said

"And...?

I'm not seeing the confusion."

Israel Regardie went on to say that it didnt originate from christian sources. My confusions is Regardie spoke of it opposite in comparison to what you have described. Not to mention since you said

"that it keys you into the Christian archetypes and the block of Christian mass-mind that is associated therewith.
"

Then why associate it with the pentagram? Regardie attributes yod-fire, heh primal-water, shin-spirit, vav-air, and heh final-earth.

To make is easier to understand my confusion, I have a picture in my head of the 'christian' current you associated with it and the pentagram with a question mark? So is it something that is dual in nature? holding 2 currents?
Also I dont know why he would associate Heh primal to water, or Vav to air, since Vav is a 'phallic symbol' associated with 'the wand'.

@Alias55A said

"
the Root of 'wicca-wicca' etymologicaly speaking has its root in the scandinavian word 'Vikti', meaning 'cunning-man', 'magician', and what not. Quite a few wicca terms, and terms in general comes from germanic decent. /quote]

Sorry, but this is not quite right. The Scandinavian influence on English is later than terms such as wicce and wicca. Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian do have a common Germanic root, but by the time these words entered the old English tongue certain changes had already occurred. Apart from the "ch" sound for a final "c" or double "cc" there was also the rather odd habit of pronouncing the germanic "g" as "y". This is found in old spellings such as Geman for Yeoman, and both are present in the old spelling for the county town of Suffolk (the south folk) - Gippeswic, which is now spelled Ipswich and was once "yippeswich".

Above all though, the root meaning of the "Vik/Wic" - this means "twist", not wise, and refers to those who can twist the web of weird/wyrd. The idea that witchcraft meant "craft of the wise" first appeared in a late 1940s novel called "The Silver Bowl" that was pure historical fantasy with little research behind it, but which was published at just the right time - just as The White Goddess was published and just as Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols were discussing the new earth-based religion. This means that all "traditions" appearing after that date that stae that witchcraft means "craft of the wise" do indeed come from after that date - or, more importantly, did not call themselves "witches" until Gardner made the term popular rather than derogatory.

I once found a copy of The Silver Bowl and the "witches" in it are not really sympathetic characters. It was one of a slew of proto-pagan fiction that caught the zeitgeist of the post-WWII world in much the same way that John Hargrave's novels did the same after WWI - but that's another story - even if people influenced by him did end up in the New Forest, naked, worshipping a Horned God and a Moon Goddess (using Crowley's Hymn To Pan) after calling in the four quarters - in 1923-1928.

So why isn't that pre-WWII movement mentioned in Wiccan history? Perhaps because the movement(s) originated in the Scouts.................

"Fire rises from below to above
Water falls from above to below
Air is always above
Earth is always below"
very easy to understand, thnx

"This is why, in Thelemic Druidry, we swap the usual attribution of air and fire, linking them to the actions of the sun."
Thelemic Druidry? relating to the celts in what way? So fire is also always above, and air also rises from below to above. right? is this a metaphor to describe the certain actions of these properties?(spiritually I guess?).

@The Old Guitaris said

"
Holy (****) (no pun intended) are you serious? What could the health benefits of flossing your intestines possibly be?"

Apparently, Yogis have nothing better to do than pick at their butts.

Very Very Cool!
I never heard that before, but it makes perfect sence.
Fascinating to think about.

I recall reading a lament to the sword, and how no one really uses a sword any longer. Guns just are not eqivitable. the author saw how that the pen (or word processor?) is now the tool in which struggles are fought.

thanks for sharing. 😀

"Always read your books from cover to cover, especially if they are instructional books (which this is not) because you may need to have learned one thing first before other things will make sense"

That is very true in the case of learning Hermes Hermetics with Quabalah, 2 yrs ago when i started studying the subject i was jumping left and right reading all these other texts to get a clue of what one of them were saying lmao 😆 I will probly get to the preface in time, i just skip most introduction unless i realy dont know what the book is about or who the author is. With reading occult books for half a decade prefaces and introductions have almost become predictable, but it doesnt stop me from reading a new book from cover to cover 😀

billheidrick.com/works/hgemat.htm

Very useful.

@danica said

"

when dealing with thoughts and assotiations and other mind-samskaras (vrtti), it's good to at first just watch them, without trying to ''push them away''; and the attitude during this observation is of utter importance: it is useful to observe them as they are - a play of impressions, moving and circulating all the time; to just watch them, without attaching to any of them. (in time, you'll see that they all disappear and that ''there is that which remains''
"

This sounds nearly word-for-word what I wrote in a guide I typed recently to help my friend who is beginning to delve into meditation.
(The guide was more of a "here's broadly how to do it, and here's things you might see along the way, and here are some issues you may have and my advice on how to tackle them" than anything else.)

Edit: "word-for-word" is misleading, what I meant was "it was along a nearly identical train of thought and end conclusion."

For those looking for serious examinations of entheogenic plants in light of psychology, mythology, history, & magick I recommend the following studies:

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence McKenna
www.amazon.com/Food-Gods-Original-Knowledge-Evolution/dp/0553371304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271617850&sr=8-1

*Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers *by Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, & Christian Rätsch
www.amazon.com/Plants-Gods-Sacred-Healing-Hallucinogenic/dp/0892819790/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271617901&sr=1-1

*Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature *by Ralph Metzner Ph.D.
www.amazon.com/Ayahuasca-Human-Consciousness-Spirits-Nature/dp/1560251603/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271618030&sr=1-9

729

EDIT: MAPS' free library is a great resource as well:
www.maps.org/freebooks.html

Well, I did say it was acceptable for Probationers - which is way past beginners!

And I said that for beginners I didn't see it causing serious harm. Hardly a ringing endorsement, though I see your point 😉