College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

ANEA,

From the description Shamanism sounds a lot like Magick and I was wondering if Magick isn't the core of all systems soever. I will start studying Shamanism once I finish reading Crowley's Libri as it must have very interesting methodological details.

I already met a South American group who appart from the other details also and especially used ritual drumming - Macumba. I hanged out with them for awhile and although their methodology isn't good I was able to learn great things. As how not to be affected by black magicians (trance of indifference under huge stress, at one point they wanted to rob my soul as I wouldn't participate on their rituals). Their work had a lot to do with the invocation of drunkyards and old people who had forgotten some message on their fridges, and so I left (my HGA must have wicked plans).

Thanks,
Love in Peace

A Lei do Universo é o Amor.

I'm a new member who lives in Portugal and who is interested in learning the most so he can give it back in Love.

Although having only seen this forum now, I have already a thread started on an OBE in the mysticism forum.

Wish you all the best:

Love in Peace

@Aegis55 said

"I'm not an expert in this area by any means, but your experience sounds a bit like a "classic" shamanic experience in that you experienced the death (commonly dismemberment) of your body and awakened to a state of consciousness seemingly beyond it. You'd have to read up on it. From my readings, such chemically induced experiences were common to the initiation and instruction of new shamans."

I've never read about Shamanism but that's what I'll do. The experience I went through must be a bit more universal though as the death was not only a trippy death of the body but an actual death of my anterior personality. The whole of reality melted before my eyes after the experience and everything I read about Magick comes very easily so I'm very much looking forward to knowing what were my anterior lifes like. I wonder if Crowley left any instructions towards this...

@mojorisin44 said

"I think it can be akin to astral travelling and if this is true then there are dangers and misleading things all along the road (or so I hear). For me, reading the "Astral Atlas" in Book 4 is a good area to study and understand some of things not only for that practice, but the psychedelic experience as a whole. I'd like to think of it as a world of discovery within yourself with volume turned up just a bit."

Astral travel is not exactly it as I travel on the astral while sober. The dangers of astral traveling are very much connected with emotions. When people want things to be true and they "see" them as true then they are - for themselves. Delusion is the biggest danger from the astral. Book 4 is excellent. What closest ressembles my experience is Crowley's description of Samadhi on the first part. And I also have the symptoms of Kundalini awakening.

Love in Peace

Thank you so much for your answers. Yes, I had taken mushrooms dozens of times. And LSD had been my psychedelic of choice for some years. I have stopped using drugs though, except for a smoke once in a while, because I want to be thouroughly trained before starting to explore the realms of reality through psychedelics again.

I express myself in poetry and this experience opened up huge possibilities for my Art. The power of the experience isn't so apparent as it changed completely the way I who is not I perceives life. When that I writes, he is the breeze who unfolds the worlds that spring from beneath the places once obscured. Yes, there is no need for psychedelics but I might feel the urge to dance with Babalon under the stars, and if I want to be lifted through the air unto the stars, what other way could I find to make me one with those stars?... It must be a way of Insanity!...

Psychedelics are one of the ways of unveiling yourself before yourself. There's no need for them but there is a place for them. There are people who can unite with, there are people who can unite without, and there are people who choose both ways as the one way.

I ask for opinions so I can better understand the type of experience I went through. I find the classification "classic psychedelic" rather reductive as I see everything as spiritual.

"A Lei do Universo é o Amor."

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Although unconsciously, I've always been inclined towards Magick. Two years ago though, something happened that changed the whole of my human experience. I decided to take 8 grams of magic mushrooms in mint tea. The hours that followed were the most intense hours of my life while I struggled against death and insanity laying on my bed. There was a point though that holding with all my strength to the bed wasn't useful enough as it was a melting bed going from liquid dripping from my fingers, to warm and strange sand, or to a cold metalic texture. I didn't know if my eyes were open or closed. I then died and left my body.
The place where I arrived at was the opposite of the place where I came from. There wasn't any confusion at all, everything was consciousness. I felt like it would be impossible to return as my consciousness had become absorbed in such a high way of life. I use here the word life in lack of better ways of definition. My mother tongue is portuguese. But I could also use the word intelligence. While feeling I couldn't return because of the excess of information, I also felt that the possibility of return would be actual only if I became dressed again. So this happened and I was back to my body. Without believing to be alive. After returning, and while still laying on my bed, everything was calmer but there was a serpent's head in everything I looked to. Like a glass from where I looked at the outside.

For a few months I looked at the outter world as a possibility of my hallucination, questioning the reality in everything. I then started to study Eliphas Levi, and have met a few times with him when I'm almost falling asleep. I then became engaged in the study of various religious works and am now in the process of studying Aleister Crowley.

I write this in the hope that more experienced travellers might help me understand what really happened to me. I am only 25.

Love is the Law. Love under Will.
Alex