College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@bdsvictory23 said

"I am interested to know what people here think about Cakes of Light. I went to my first Gnostic Mass a couple of weeks ago and was quite suprised that people actually use the Cakes of Light recipe involving human blood or semen. I can see this in the early 1900's but in 2011? I understand that the substances have been burned to ash and thus are not likely to contain possible pathogens but there is a big part of me that has a problem with the idea of consuming blood from another person...it just seem healthy."

If it has been burned to ash, then it's a worthless substance and might as well not have been included. This ingredient needs to go in as a live substance and maintain its pranic vitality. The recipe drops to the level of mindless superstition if you kill it first.

At the same time, precautions have to be taken regarding health. You're right, that there are different concerns now than a hundred years ago. The point, though, should be to take responsibility for the source of the product. Personally I think that this should come from extracting the product from someone who is a confirmed safe source - someone, for example, who has had recent HIV testing and not indulged in risky behavior (for HIV or other things) in the interim. If this can't be reasonably assured, then one of the alternative substances should be used, such as some blood from hamburger.

I like that you're distressed at your disgust. That's healthy. This could open your mind a bit. Most women (and many men) swallow semen quite often, and you boys seem to enjoy that quite a bit. We don't require you to burn it to ash first! (And there are more than a few men, and a number of women, who delight in eating out a woman especially during one particular time of the month.)

"What I wonder about is why would we use or injest the blood of someone else as part of the eucharist?"

These are among the most sacred of physical substances, from very ancient times through the present. They are carriers of life itself. This isn't metaphorical.

@veritas_in_nox said

"
@Fire Giver said
"Isn't the better question... "Why have two unless they are substantially different from each other?" "

True, but why are they different to the extent that a casual observer (or just me) assumes them to be from separate lineages?"

I think that would be you, then.

After all, you seem very interested in sorting out who's who. I don't think those who are responsible for those pages care too much about the personality angle.

@veritas_in_nox said

"Why does it have two websites, one of which is substantially different than the other?"

Isn't the better question... "Why have two unless they are substantially different from each other?"

An off-the-cuff attempt, a little crude, not double-checking everything (but it's mostly straightforward):

740. [Afterwards in His body extended into two thighs,] and within this were contained two kidneys, two male testicles.

741. For, every oil and dignity and masculine power from out of the whole body is in there gathered; for every assembly [army?], which they have brought forth from that, every thing was brought forth and impeded {?} in the opening of the phallus.

[742. And therefore are they called Tzabaoth, the Armies; and they are Netzach and Hod. For Tiphereth is Tetragrammaton, but Netzach and Hod are the armies, hence cometh that name, Tetragrammaton Tzabaoth.]

743. The phallus is [at] the complete end of the body, and is called Yesod, Foundation, and this is that which soothes the feminine. For every desire of the Male is toward the female.

744. Through this Foundation, that [i.e., the phallus] entered into the feminine in the place that is called Zion and Jerusalem. For this is the protected place of the feminine, and in the wife is called the womb.

@Aum418 said

"
"Yes, brain functions are impaired by brain damage just as your ability to drive can be impaired by car damage."

No, your cognitive functions are impaired by brain damage. Of course your brain is damaged by brain damage - thats a tautology. Why not read up on the 100+ year old literature on this subject before you act like you what you're talking about?"

Are you referring to medical (mostly neurological) literature? That's hardly a sufficiently broad literature. Their model will be wholly physical and biological; in other words, unnecessarily narrow and limiting.

If we take a diictionary definition of "cognition" as "that which is known" (Webster) or "the mental process of knowing, including awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment" (American Heritage), most of these also exist independent of a specific biology.

Consciousness isn't biological. It inhabits the biological, but isn't simply a side-effect of electrochemical processes as medical science sometimes claims.

"
"Consciousness isn't constrained to its temporary organic housing."

By any remotely scientific understanding it is."

By most (but not all) definitions of physical science, you're right. But are you entirely excluding spiritual science (which is the proper domain for studying the phenomenology of consciousness?).

"
"Unless you are defining "cognitive functions" like a neurologist, your claim is easily dismissed by anyone with any extensive actual spiritual experience."

I have 'actual' spiritual experience"

There isn't any evidence of it in any of your posts that I've seen. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt (your universe, your reality and so forth), but this would require less faith if there were actually some objective hint that your eyelids open past the perimeter of your own ego and intellect.

@Aum418 said

"Your cognitive functions depend on your brain functioning as can seen by any simple study of lesions or something like Alzheimers, the effects of which are known to just about everybody."

That's just plain silly.

Yes, brain functions are impaired by brain damage just as your ability to drive can be impaired by car damage. That doesn't stop you, though, from getting out of the car and strolling down the street.

Consciousness isn't constrained to its temporary organic housing. Unless you are defining "cognitive functions" like a neurologist, your claim is easily dismissed by anyone with any extensive actual spiritual experience.

@Aum418 said

"How one could gather that these have separate meanings is beyond me."

Yes, apparently it is.

OK, nobody else is going to answer this, so I'll be the one to ask:

Huh?

The only (so-called) 49th call known to me is Silence.

@Redd Fezz said

"I follow this with the Tarot meditation (take in a Key for 5 minutes, close eyes and "listen" ** for another 5 [the "answers" seem to come out during my everyday interactions, rather than while I'm actively listening]). Then, I do a 5 minute creative visualization. All in all, it takes quite a bit of time and is kind of a nuissance to avoid my girlfriend in our small apartment. I generally do the LBRP/MPR in the kitchen and then go through a period of waiting for her to get the **** out of my way! "

What a great technique. I bet if you persist in that kind of banishing with sufficient regularity, you can banish her all the way out of your life in no time flat!

Welcome, Andie.

There isn't a standard and there is a great deal of flexibility of opinion.

I know 776 1/2 tried to pin these down for specifically theurgic purposes, and gives explanations for each assignment. It's one approach.

Nuit is usually taken as higher than the Supernals - the Zero of Ain &c. - but attributions are contextual. A Nuit-Hadit relationship, for example, could be 0 and 1 (point in the circle, Ain and Kether), or Binah-Chokmah as basic Mom-Dad polarity, or even Malkuth-Kether as the manifest vs. potental polarity of Tao and Yi Ching, etc.

@Redd Fezz said

"This whole thing reminds me of this web article I once read in which the author believed Qabalah Gnosis was a trap: "The Light" was actually no higher than Da'ath"

That's true by definition. L.V.X. ("light") is especially related to the solar level of illumination. It is especially a Tiphereth idea. Binah admits to N.O.X. ("night"). What confuses many students at the beginning is that N.O.X. is "more L.V.X.," the Light having reached a different threshold of intensity so that it shoots past the "visible spectrum" range of consciusness. (That's a metaphor.) It's the negation of L.V.X. only in the sense that it's the completion of L.V.X. I also enjoy the metaphor that L.V.X. is the Light propagated through an atmosphere, air, intellect-ego, whereas N.O.X. is the Light propagated through space.

The main thing to remember is that N.O.X. is not infernal darkness but, rather, is supernal darkness exceeding what we call L.V.X. It is "the light higher than eyesight" (CCXX II:51).

Of course, Kether is the highest symbol of LIGHT among the Sephiroth. N.O.X. is a higher kind of LIGHT than L.V.X. But if your writer meant "L.V.X." by "The Light," then he was technically correct.

"and any aspirant was reabsorbed into the demiurge or, um, false god..."

Oh, no, that's backwards! We're absorbed into the Demiurge / False God before crossing the Abyss, not after. It's the ego. The Demiurge (Jehovah or what have you) is always placed at Chesed, the "top" of the Ruach.

"How would we ever really know if we ever really got past Da'ath, anyway?"

That's the difference between knowing and Knowing. You couldn't know - otherwise, you'd still be enswathed by Da'ath. Instead, you'd have to Know.

@whitewolf said

"The problem comes up when I remember my studies of genetics, sexual biology and anthropology. On a personal level I don't want my women to be whores, in fact, it goes against my very nature. As a reproducing male I need to prevent any promiscous behaviour from my woman for my genes to pass on. I can't leave it to chance; I might end up getting cuckolded.

So.. how do we reconcile our biological, DNA programming with this new Thelemic concept? How do we accept our Whore?"

Birth control?