College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

I think it's something in the air. My own internal "feelers" and trustworthy spiritual friends have been warning about intense psychic currents in December, and for me it has been much the same this whole month - screws tightening, ordeal after ordeal, etc. All my non-spiritual contacts have been experiencing it as well - tons of shit being thrown into people's faces, general malaise - a wringing out of the spiritual washcloth so to speak.

January is supposed to bring with it a vast "wave" of some sort - a wave of newness and creation and service.

Sincere condolences during this compressing, contracting time. I don't think its a spiritual attack so much as something petrifying and purifying in the air - something stripping away, leading us to the next level.

The best thing I think is to stay absolutely focused on your own health, maintaining your own internal currents. You're being tested now - the training wheels are off and it's time to see how you do disconnected from comfort and safety. Ride it out, it's almost over. We're all here for you and rest assured that many are expericing the same types of things.

Most heartfelt wishes to you, your wife, and your Mom.

Do you feel that the HGA could be trying to lead you into taking more conscious control of your energy balance? Sometimes we can focus way too hard on building up energy without having an outlet for it. So then it will come back and hit our bodies too hard. Not sure of the official A.'.A.'. instructions for dealing with this, but it sounds like the best strategy might be to give yourself a little break, go into nature, be gentle on yourself and recover, like an energy hangover.

Then, once you feel it building up again, there are all kinds of visualizations you can do to let it out of you if it's too much. It feels like your system might be learning how to balance itself, and it can really be difficult.

EDIT: I think we're all on the same page on this, and hastily wrote it before fully reading all the responses, so apologies.

The content of this quote does seem to be true, but it seems to miss the spiritual elephant in the room that Context Is Everything.

We're all on the same page that you're given a basic set of characteristics within each incarnation that can then be developed and trained to a certain extent.

The one thing that isn't acknowledged here, that can totally alter one's perspective, that can take years of work to figure out, is that the horoscope is merely a vehicle that can, once we learn how it works, take us all the way up, using those very limitations themselves.
The symbol system of astrology, when mapped onto the sheer complexity and unpredictability and magnitude of daily life becomes not a limitation, but rather the lens and system through which we can experience and channel the infinite.

For every limitation in one's life and character and situation, for every obstacle, there is (I would very nearly say Always) a compensating energy in the psyche that it turns out has been ignored and is actually the perfect tool to deal with a particular problem.

Once that full internal energy system of masculine and feminine, of the astrological chart, has been unearthed and you learn how to use all these new pathways, that is the moment you're ready to be a vessel for LVX. Once you've learned how the energy system of your incarnation functions, you can use it like water skis, compensating when necessary, finding karma yoga work that is best suited, etc.

The concept of the True Will shows that once we're on that thin line and know how to use our "water skis", the possibilities are literally endless. The whole idea of IQ and, indeed the whole sentiment of Motta's quote, reeks of competition, ordering, entitlement, "better than" to me.

There is always a way to manipulate your variables to do what you need to do. It's like statistics or writing a scientific study - you can make it say anything. This is where true intelligence comes out and true spiritual knowledge.

Just a short example - in my genetic makeup I'm prone to addiction, depression, and mild OCD. Turns out that this is the perfect cocktail for me to obssessively engage with the spiritual life and learn how to care about details, which in turn led me to obssessively examine the depression until I found the root causes (both individual and ancestral), and then finally reroute and unbind those energetic ties into healthy pathways.
Within the process of genetic expression there lies such a huge ocean of possibilities in the unfolding of one's world, that there is no reason other than a masochistic one to look at a genetic predisposition as a weakness.

But to me, and this is preaching to the choir obviously, the perspective of which we look at such concepts matters so greatly that it's almost more important than the materialist truth itself. It's in our limitations that our true Infinite potential can come out.

And let's not forget that our bodies are nothing more than prana manifesting in the material realm. Sure it may take a while to biologically play out, but once we've cleaned out our nervous system and can control our prana, we really can reformulate our body to be whatever we need it to be, using genetics as a tool.

This is very close to what I've been going through, and I believe the answer depends on your path and the soul makeup of your incarnation.

The A.'.A.'. is a specific method of attainment that works in a very specific way for a specific type of person. People come to spirituality expressing different qualities, with each path possessing a specific character that resonates or doesn't resonate. The egoic part of ourselves needs nourishment and Answers, even if the underlying process of transformation has no inherent need for one intellectually comprehensible outward expression.

What you've said seems to be very true - once you realize that the path of Magick, at its core, is a journey toward mastering the art of vibration, there is no real need to rigorously follow one map - your HGA, or true self, can appear and resonate in anything (and obviously everything, eventually). (Unless your deepest Will wishes to express itself through one map - I think it depends on your Work and what the universe requires of you. If your Work in this incarnation is something like death work, or interacting shamanically with specific Powers in the unseen world, there is value to "looking under the hood" of the kundalini and meditation process, connecting with a specific tradition.)

There are inherent advantages to the Thelema, its inner planes egregore and outward available support systems being two of the most notable.

I've wrestled with the same thing as you for years now. Crowley's system is amazing. In fact, to me, any legit magickal school (such as the newly inaugurated Quareia) is amazing. I found myself last year within days of submitting a student exam to an A.'.A.'. lineage. But something has always held me back from affiliating officially. I love its philosophy and methods, but my subconscious has always resisted the symbolism of the Tarot. That felt weird. I can do basic divination, but the symbols themselves haven't made themselves alive inside me (at least in their outward forms). Every time I do A.'.A.'. practices, it feels as if I'm forcing myself on my Beloved, who wants to express itself in a different way.

I practiced yoga for years, and even that way of meditation has been mostly closed off to me. At this stage, with the slightest pranayama I often go into a terrible, spiritually congested depression. This is my nervous system telling me I have to purify things in a different way.

Learning how to vibrate seems to me to be the centerpiece of all Magick. My personal symbol system is turning out to be musical composition, with certain facets of Kabbalah as signposts. It is hugely inspired by Crowley, yoga, and other streams (check out the writings of Omraam Mikhail Aivanhov for a slightly less antinomian blending of Kabbalah, Yoga, and Magic), with its own inner connections. It's been a terrifying, confused, lonely ride, but I believe worth it.

See if there is some aspect of your life that you can use in the same way as ritual magic - drawing divinity into the world with your whole being.

The central tenet that's helped me navigate has been Crowley's Brotherhood of Light. This seems to be core to all (at least many) of the Western systems worth their salt - each legit school seems to be an outward manifestation of this inner fellowship. And it appears that they can work without outward affiliation. The thing to watch out for if you are doing any magic is to make sure you know which beings you contact. I tried to go at it from the standpoint of generic, depersonalized Divinity, and found myself overrun with parasites all the time. For me I needed an element of naive, Sunday School-like faith, as well as specific Names to assist me in the unfolding process (faces of the HGA). This could change but is definitely the case now.

I apologize for this rambling post. Regardless, I offer sincere wishes that your unfoldment leads to the perfection of your Love and your Will, as well as assurance that you aren't alone in your questioning.

Many thanks to you both for your words of advice. I agree that the path through this seems to be a more active approach to love. AoD, this is all very helpful - you are dead on that relief comes chiefly through the present moment, and also with the earth correspondences/security/mooladhara chakra issues. And Rocky, I shall experiment with the ancestral practices and see where they lead! Denying of my family roots has definitely been an issue for me.

Apologies to the more philosophically-minded among you; this is a down and dirty in-the-trenches kick-demon-ass sort of post.

I'm writing this seeking advice on an issue I've dealt with since childhood. Lately it's expanded into a new plane.
The conclusion seems close; I don't know what to do.

Let's start with the cool stuff. I've been gaining some measure of lucidity and freedom on the etheric plane, in the hypnagogic state before dropping into more abstract dream environments; the plane where your bedroom looks like it does in real life, only you can leave your body and see entities and deities and stuff. This feels like a sort of training ground - I can't get completely out of my body yet, but am more and more able to relax into gaining some degree of levitation. It usually feels as if I'm wading through molasses, trying to make my sleeping body get up somehow.

The main thing is that I'm not sure exactly what to do about the various entities I encounter in this state. Sometimes they seem neutral; I offer them metta/compassion, and they go away; this worked with what seemed to be a ghost as well. Other times I've been able to banish more malevolent ones with pentagrams.

The problem is that 1. I'm always so excited to gain consciousness in this state that I tend to rush, thinking it will slip and I will wake up. 2. I feel utterly clueless as to how to interact with these entities. So any general advice or stories on conducting oneself in this sphere, how to get out of the body, where to go, what to do would be quite helpful.

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I've been dealing with irrational feelings of abandonment and worthlessness ever since childhood, linked with issues tied to sexuality. The deeper I've gone into meditation and magick, the more faces of this issue I've been able to see. I've done Jungian active imagination with it; I've stared at it in the face as it projected onto people in my external environment; I've offered it acceptance, compassion, fed it LVX/prana, performed Yesod rituals, even ignored it completely, seeing it as nothing more than a thought/feeling/body sensation complex in the present moment. Any number of things.

It became clear last night that this aspect of my subconsciousness is a shadow/demon thing that's been appearing in my dreams since childhood. It's obvious that the above practices have weakened it - it appeared last night on the etheric plane as little more than a malevolent slug that still was attacking me, holding me down, etc.

I don't know what to do. Intellectually I know exactly what it is; in most moments I feel empowered enough to offer it freedom and compassion. Last night in the hypnagogic state I tried all manner of things - vibrating God names at it, drawing pentagrams, staring it in the face and offering it acceptance, blessing it. It just kept attacking me and eventually disappeared. Today it came back out externally in irrational projections that felt utterly debilitating, even as I kept doing the various astral and compassion practices mentioned above, and even with a certain degree of meditative detachment/observation.

Any advice on this multi-tiered approach to psychological healing would be most appreciated. This issue has been wrecking my relationships for decades and I'm ready to shed it and divert the energy into something else. On the one hand it feels pretty cool to have your life start to resemble an episode of Supernatural; on the other it's really difficult not knowing what to do. Many thanks in advance.

I guess a more general title for this would be "Technical Ways of Confronting the Shadow in a Magickal Operation."

Ah, cool. You're right exactly, I was thinking astrologically, equating the planets with the sephiroth on a 1:1 basis. I might give this a try with Binah/Saturn first and then experiment with Mem. The ritual worked amazingly well with Tiphareth.

Thanks Jim!

Are there any guidelines for working with the energies of the outer planets in this ritual? I'm wanting to do some work with Neptune and am unsure how to proceed.

"As far as I know I haven't achieved the KCHGA, ...."

"I'd love to hear from you how you came to such an evaluation. are you aware of signals, signs, indicators, for which you can watch and you haven't seen them? I'm convinced that this kind of thing is imperative to 'condition achievements', and, while it is obvious that people can be mistaken about their own process, we definitely can become aware of how others perceive us and get a sort of 'peer review' from those without apparent bias, if we have dedication to the task."

Good question, and this self perception is definitely conditioned by reading other people's accounts, hints from this forum, etc. Currently I have no personal ties to a teacher or anyone I would trust to make this valuation. I've had experiences involving communication, visions, sex, etc. that jibe with certain accounts reported by people here (and much of the time Jim Eshelman will helpfully correlate where on the tree of life such experiences might fall). One thing that's difficult, especially from the viewpoint of not being initiated into a community, is sorting out personal hallucinations from "the Voice." One mode of communication will for a time provide answers and indications of the future well above the threshold of chance, then will dry up; my understanding will change; a new model will gradually appear. It's definitely more difficult from a self-initiation perspective, although I can sense things are progressing somehow, just from new life conditions, magickal development, uncovering a more specific sense of purpose, etc. It's my understanding (mostly from posts here) that the KCHGA is an event that forever alters one's perspective of who one is, and, although I feel hints of what is True (none of these words, haha) in meditation & pranayama & ceremony, it doesn't feel quite as if that is the perspective from which I live out my life.

"how did you confirm that Brother Proserpinus has achieved it?"

Good question again - I just took it at face value as an account from an organization that has grafted this label onto a particular experience and has, within its own framework, criteria for evaluating whether its own members have achieved it. Much like Crowley's account. ("If we define the KCHGA as this particular thing, with these particular factors, then, using those premises, X has or has not achieved it.") My method for extrapolating it to my own experience has been to tie it to signposts from other traditions - particularly the path model of Theravada Buddhism, along with my relationship to the inner teacher.

"have you studied with Zen monks or engaged in zazen or been part of a sangha? I'm watching for signs of equivalency, lists of symptoms of success of some time, etc., and hoping you might have more insight into it. "

I wish I did. All of my practice has been hermetically sealed, haha, although, like anyone, the deeper one gets into the path, the more one comes in contact with people working at a particular psychic level who "know what you're talking about," sometimes in their own terms. I'm guessing most have experienced this before - it's like a 6th sense, as if you recognize something in the other person and they recognize something in you. There have been people where, within seconds of meeting them, something inside just knows, and more often than not we're talking about mysticism or magick within 5 minutes. It's like gaydar for occultists, haha.

I'm definitely getting the premonition that I could be attaching to a more formal community in perhaps the near future as I feel life pulling me towards relocation, but am being patient, as I feel my HGA is giving me plenty to chew on currently.

"I'm somewhat reactionary, especially to dualistic condemnation and suppositions in the negative about certain processes, beings, etc., and so encountering these i'm likely (compare Fr. Achad, i suppose, inverting the Tree of Life, much as i later did in a different way) to attempt to come up with an explanation for why someone might be achieving success in a way that looks like failure to those who have insufficient experience or who have a limited litmus so as not to be able to assimilate LHP modalities for achievement. this doesn't say anything about positive indicators, of course, but i'm merely broadening the conversation a bit with regard to systems of advance and the protocols for evaluation."

Very interesting, and the way that you've worked with traditional symbolism is quite intriguing, although I can see how people could find it threatening or confusing.

"while the engine that's powering it, breaking us open bit by bit, is insight practice - the HGA - an incomprehensible, contentless entity guiding and manifesting those comprehensible forms."

"I'm curious why you call it these things. Crowley at points associated it with the augoeides, a tutelary spirit, and i'm unsure where it acquired all these superordinary qualities. Socrates is known to have had one, for example, though i wonder if these more restrictive understandings would in any way qualify for what you're talking about."

These descriptions are definitely how it manifests in life, which I can verify from personal experience. But the face continually shifts, and its totality is definitely beyond any particular manifestation. The particular above conception is based on correlating accounts of the KCHGA with Buddhist insight meditation, which, as I said is the engine that has personally gotten me the furthest on the path, including introducing me to the HGA's outward forms.

"these were written more than a decade ago, and i'd love to hear your reflection on the contents of either."

Very cool, and I've had experiences quite close to this, although, not being part of the OTO, my meeting of the entity came about directly, visually, (later audibly), and it's only lately that I've been opening up to the hermetic/tarot symbolism. There have definitely been pitfalls to this approach, as far as criteria for what constitutes actually teaching and what constitutes delusion. More recently I've been opening up to lucid dreaming and have been instructed by various guises of the entity on this plane, as well as being instructed about the astral sheaths of the body during ritual practice.

"if it is so basic, how is it done? what do you do when you practice it?"

So simple. You start out with verbal mental notes. ('feeling the texture of the keyboard.' 'thinking.' 'seeing.' 'hearing.' 'remembering.') Be patient, and after a while, you become conscious of the sensations themselves without needing to mentally keep track. That's when you become perceptive of these grains of reality speeding up or slowing down in cycles, eventually seeing the feeling of self flickering in and out of existence - no more real than any other sense impression. I've found that doing this during magick practice/scrying greatly enhances their vividness and effect.

"the first time i ran into this phrase it was in relation to St. John of the Cross and his mystical writing, with the experience of the absence of the highly desired God. I'm guessing that you're talking about being 'off-point' or 'disoriented' of attention, not tracking, and easily distracted."

Yep. The thing that insight practice helped with most was assigning this as a technical term, without the emotional connotations. Even thought the emotional content of feeling cut off is still there, it feels easier to deal with when it's seen as insight cycles slowing down, and more importantly, the basic practice of noting has the effect of drawing a person out of it into the next stage.

"do you have a URL for that chart? with a bit of poking around i did not see it."

Check out the bottom of:

*(http://integrateddaniel.info/book/)

It's a two-page pdf, listing the points in the cycle, the vibratory speed, and even Tree of Life correlations. There is also a file with basic insight meditation instructions. His whole book there on the site is probably the best exploration of meditation and spirituality I've ever seen.

"As the outward notion of the HGA has developed in my life, insight practice has taken on more and more of a bhaktic nature."

"intriguing! deity gazing seems conducive to it."

I could definitely see deity gazing and trataka as great practices for integrating concentration, insight, and bhakti.

"The sensations are the internal lover and the process's relationship to kundalini and sex (even sex magick) becomes clearer and clearer...."

"the former i can understand, but the latter (in relation to kundalini) aren't immediately apparent to me or easily understood simply by your mention here. I also don't understand the (presumably humorous) mention of porn music."

I agree, and it was kind of odd for me to just drop those references without explaining them. Basically, for me a large part of dealing with the HGA lately has involved sex - the polarities of internal gender, the sensing of chakras during sex, polarities of giving/receiving, etc. It all ties in to the insight cycles and kundalini - the entity teaching you this stuff also happens to comprise all those sensations you note during meditation. The notion of who you are and what you are seeking in life starts to change drastically with this degree of spiritual intimacy. I wasn't trying to reference porn at all actually - to the contrary, a large portion of this training has involved cleansing the psyche of old and damaging notions of sex (including a 5-month period of celibacy) and also learning to be as present and conscious as possible during it, even cognizant of what a particular sex act's purpose might be at the moment of orgasm (which is why i referenced sex magick).

"while i can understand the attraction, i also want to connect what i call idolatry to it in a sense of exteriorizing and idealizing the god, and noticing how this affects one's relationship with one's devotional focus. I think there's a kind of 'porn of the bhakta' that can affect one's worship in questionable manners"

Agreed. So many traps, although I definitely find myself agreeing with the idea of the object of worship not being important (other than personally) so much as the worship itself.

"thanks for all your ideas and expression here. very inspiring!"

Thanks! and thank you for the responses and conversation - inspiring as well. Although the guy in that video creeps me out, haha.

@nigris said

"fascinating. where do you conceive that this (K&CofHGA) 'takes place'? as a literalist and Neo-tantric i'd kinda interpreted that knowledge had varying forms including congress, sexual tryst, or heiros gamos, and that conversation might be direct and audible. I'd love to learn how you understand this differently."

Oh unquestionably, and I've experienced much of the above as well. What I meant is that all of this is weaving with and tying into a very simple process of becoming conscious of the speed of individual moments - the raw material that comprises our consciousness. When it moves quickly (and we're watching it) - that's what brings K openings and peak experiences - as well as our ability to create our lives by directing the formulation of the raw material into astral thoughtforms, external events, etc. When it moves slowly, that's when we're in the Dark Night of the Soul - we can't perceive the individual moments and have a tendency to be sucked in unconsciously to our karma.

To me the outward manifestations of the HGA - the voices, the sexual congress, the synchronicities, visions, internal alchemy etc. are this abstract, universal process's way of communicating with our egos/bodies. When the event itself happens, the actual content leading up to it, especially for someone on the tantric or hermetic path would assuredly take on those forms.

As far as I know I haven't achieved the KCHGA, but can abstract a (rough, intellectualized) idea of its nature having experienced the ups and downs of the insight cycle (you might turn to someone who has achieved it to talk about the aftermath, etc. Check out "The Magical Record of Brother Proserpinus" in Black Pearl Vol. 1 No. 6). It's something that even a Zen Buddhist would experience, although they would explain it in different terms (perhaps kensho?) That's why I have a feeling that your working with Satan, etc. isn't becoming a Black Brother, but rather the guise that your HGA has taken on. The only difference is the symbolism. (Obviously this is presumptuous and I don't want to speak for you...)

I think the main thing that might be helpful to take away from this is a separation of one's experience of reality into various components. Magick, visions, tantra - the Yetzirac content of our lives - would be akin to Buddhist training in concentration (the jhanas, etc. - a rough, probably wrongheaded and culturally insensitive comparison I know...), while the engine that's powering it, breaking us open bit by bit, is insight practice - the HGA - an incomprehensible, contentless entity guiding and manifesting those comprehensible forms.

It's always been helpful for me in that when I get stalled somehow in my life either externally or spiritually (not that there is much of a boundary any more), I can enter into insight meditation - the most basic practice imagineable - and watch how fast individual sensations are progressing. More often than not I'll find myself buried in content, with the moments progressing at a snail's pace - the Dark Night of the Soul phase. Many times all it will take is sitting through a few more cycles to get back on track. (If you look at Daniel Ingram's site at interactivebuddha.com, he actually has a chart with approximations of the speed of sensations at each step of the cycle). As the outward notion of the HGA has developed in my life, insight practice has taken on more and more of a bhaktic nature. The sensations are the internal lover and the process's relationship to kundalini and sex (even sex magick) becomes clearer and clearer cue porn music.

Checked out catherine's site - very cool resource, thanks for sharing!

Hey nigris - First of all, I'm highly appreciative of your taking the time to write all of these explanations of your practice and mode of thinking. I'm not well enough versed in the symbolism to engage in a hardcore Thelemic conversation with you, but let me offer a couple of thoughts from a syncretic point of view.

I was talking about Kali residing above the abyss based on comments posted in various threads here equating her with Binah, which is why I thought she'd want to get you above the Abyss to be with her, haha.

In studying the phenomenon of the KCHGA and living out various phases leading up to it, I'm thinking that a lot of what you're talking about is in essence the same as the so-called right hand path and that the difference is merely a matter of terminology - it seems that regardless of the content that you and Kali weave in Yetzirah and Assiah, whether you see it as selecting one path over another, celebrating earthly life, whatever, it's still going to lead to the experience labelled by some as the KCHGA.

The reason for this is that the phenomenon itself is beyond content. The purest description I've found of it, almost stripped of religious symbolism entirely, has been in Theravada Buddhist insight meditation. You note a certain amount of sensations, whether it be sitting, doing the dishes, or a totally unhinged orgiastic sexcapade between five invoked godforms, and, bam, the nature of reality is revealed to you in a singularity. It's almost like a video game - the sensations speed up or slow down in a cyclical way (kundalini activity alternated with dark nights of the soul), and on top of this process your awareness of other planes, the details of your life and thought, magick, mysticism, whatever, grows and gets directed into your path.

So what I'm trying to formulate is that the KCHGA at its core is a dispassionate, matter of fact event much like the flowing of a river or swinging of a pendulum. We can weave whatever meaning we want into it (even saying we want to explicitly avoid it), but it's an inevitability just through the nature of who we are as a species. Since it's beyond content (happening in Briah), any content whatsoever (Yetzirah) will play a part in leading to it.

Hope at least a little of that made sense. It's difficult to express this stuff rationally, and I'm hoping someone more experienced than me will chime in and correct whatever misconceptions are in my thinking.

Check out the work of Alan Chapman, Duncan Barford, and Daniel Ingram for more on this.

nigris, many thanks for your post.

As someone who sees parallels with your path, I was wondering if you might comment more on your relationship to your guru/wife - particularly how you were able to navigate the line between your mental projection/romantic attachment and the actual spiritual partnership that came about (or whether you'd already dealt with the "ordeal of the siren" previously).

Also, having not been initiated into an actual tantric cult, what are some of the resources (other than allowing nature herself to teach and initiate you) that have given inspiration in defining your path, dealing with kundalini, etc? Particular books? (I've personally been hugely inspired by the Aghora trilogy by Robert Svoboda)

It seems this lifestyle, particularly the magickal and sexual aspects, has a lot to do with making tamasic emotions rajasic and living them out as consciously as possible. However, I would think Kali herself, as an entity abiding above the Abyss, would have issues with your use of the technical term Black Brother, other than for its antinomian connotations - to me your path seems like Kali's gonna take you all the way, haha.

One last question - what role, if any, does Qabalah play in your current practices?

Sorry to be vague - was talking about mapping the elements to the physical chakra locations and the senses, linking this to the divine mother (Shakti, HGA) in really simple puja, learning how to direct intention and let go, etc. All of this had a direct bearing on ceremonial work, making it much more profound internally and energetically, like an expansion of the puja.

One could definitely learn the same subject matter elsewhere. I responded to it because it was highly structured and the exercises do a clear job of tying the practical experiences to terminology. It's also surprisingly dense - the lessons can be skimmed and come off like new age-y bullshit, but if you read them meditatively it has a tendency of making deep conceptual connections about the technicalities of prana, the koshas, etc. I mean if someone's already done in-depth work with kundalini and can psychically navigate the chakras and layers of being skillfully, it'll come off as elementary. But I found it of great help in the later stages of emotional purification, dealing with karma, projections, and blockages (especially of the lower chakras), sensing the chakras and energy pathways at different levels of manifestation in myself, in others, and nature, and moving to the next steps.

It's also had tremendous impact on my ceremonial work, unlocking much more practical control and understanding over the technicalities of what happens energetically (a more tangible feel for astral geography for instance), and even the purposes of ritual, the polarity between effort and letting go, etc. This could be a natural ripening but it's definitely coincided with doing these particular exercises...

I'd recommend it, particularly to people on the solo path, as it seems to fill in some gaps that initiation into an order would provide.

Kaspar's dead on regarding blocked chakras. If you want a seriously effective regimen for learning to work with prana, chakra balancing, even the devotional, biological roots of ceremonial magick and element work, check out Tantra Yoga Secrets by Mukunda Stiles - despite its kitschy name, this is the real stuff, based on the yoga sutras, tantras, etc. (His teacher was Muktananda).

Another good one for raising kundalini is Kundalini Tantra by Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar school. And his massive text on kriya yoga is probably the best way to progress working solo.

Not trying to hawk these guys, haha; they've both seriously impacted my life and practice.

In essence I agree with you. But from time to time I get the urge to look over and see what others have done and how we compare. It's a bit intellectualized and masturbatory, but.....

I'm starting to get the feeling that no matter which system/techniques an aspirant employs (whether it be ceremonial magick, insight meditation, perhaps even shamanism), everyone who sets out on the mystical path is going to experience a universal series of markers. That is, the underlying nature of experiences like the KCHGA, crossing the Abyss, etc. is going to be the same for everyone, (something tied to the spiritual "biology" of our species) while the actual content of those experiences will vary based on models, cultural background, interests, teachers, True Wills, etc.

I'm wondering if people who have spent time with different systems or orders feel the same way?

As much love as I have for the A.A. and the work that its members have contributed to humanity, it feels as though personal practice is pulling in a slightly different direction. Yet the mapping of initiation experiences onto the Tree of Life seems as though it has a certain universality, that one could hypothetically identify progress within any set of practices according to this map.

The problem is that, working outside of a formal lodge, it's a bit difficult to figure out what goes where. I'm immensely appreciative of posts that have given hints at the A.A. views on this, but was wondering if there is a book or something that goes really in depth into the mystical experiences correlated to each path/sephira. Obviously Jim's writings are enormously helpful, but the MMSAA's purpose is to explore the paths from the view of practices, rather what is actually going on in the psyche while traveling each path.

I wonder if it's helpful for people to talk about different experiences they've had and which sephira they might represent, from the viewpoint of a linear initiation process?

I'll take a stab. These are all results from Zen/yoga meditation practices:

"Student" - learning meditation practices to replace getting high, haha. for me this was about 2 years.

"Probationer" - intensified study, first "supernatural" results/manifesting. Possibly a mini trek up the entire tree. Naive enlightenment - "hey this shit really works," lasted about 10 months.

Malkuth - grounding in physical reality. psychological gunk emerges forcefully. it feels as though the alchemical process has begun.

• • the etheric plane "materializes" as a permanent shimmering visual gloss over material reality = Yesod/Malkuth?

• Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel - I had an initial one of these that possibly corresponded to Malkuth/Malkuth (Tiphareth/Malkuth/Malkuth?). later, there was a weeklong fasting retreat where it was perceptible to the senses most of the time and started to communicate - Tiphareth/Malkuth?
• period of ferocious, active self improvement/physical fitness = Geburah/Malkuth?
• feeling of crossing the abyss - waves of despair/dark night experience, losing the entire personality = Binah/Malkuth
• emergence; experience of utter bliss, feeling of dissolving into unity, awareness feeling as if it's migrating permanently to the "rate of change" between moments rather than the content of the moments themselves. seeing the holy nothingness of the Veil. an insatiable thirst/bhakti. = Kether/Malkuth

For me this took about 17 months.

At this point I got a definite feeling that my consciousness had been placed into a new plane (levelling up, haha). Astral vision took on a reality, persistence, and near-tangibility that it hadn't had before. visualization of interior knots of karma. "seeing" thoughts and emotions arise and pass, sometimes with abstract geometric shapes. entrance into Yesod/Yetzirah?

Malkuth/Yesod - "grounding" in this new world. Seeing moment to moment the utter flimsiness/bullshittitude of conscious thoughts, both positive and negative, with a feeling of rootedness.
transition period to Yesod/Yesod (mini path of Tav) - despair reasserts itself, in a somehow more abstract way. The conditioned knots of the Nephesh are suddenly all that are there; the only weapon is awareness and observation.

I'd assume the next step will be to explore the "upper" portion of the astral plane, above the Nephesh, probably with more archetypal/informative/"spiritual" imagery. I increasingly get the feeling that the path is happening by itself, like the HGA is moving awareness through these different planes of consciousness almost in a formulaic way.

Wondering how this lines up with the experiences of others?

And my brain is swimming with questions -

• • are these experiences happening in this fashion because of a personal mini-egregore developed out of reading lots of books?

• is there a huge variance in the amount of time it takes to traverse the fractal mini-sephiroth of each grade?
• if one were to take out the tree of life/a.a. viewpoint entirely and just look at the path from the standpoint of the Four Worlds (or something like the Buddhist four path model), is it possible to be going through multiple sephiroth at the same time (i.e. just going straight up the middle pillar?)
• are the skills that the A.A. aspirant is supposed to cultivate for each path going to naturally come to people using just Zen/Insight meditation (i.e. control of the astral plane, etc.)
• what's the deepest number of Tree layers people have used to label experiences?
• from a selfish perspective, do i get to look forward to the utter hell of a mini abyss-crossing within each grade like what happened in Malkuth? this actually felt like it was happening while traversing malkuth's interior sephiroth - the depressing feeling kept coming up that literally every thought was wrong and terrible.

And finally, I hope it's not tedious to read a kind of syncretic, non-A.A. viewpoint here. You all just seem so experienced and accommodating. As stated earlier, I have an indecent amount of respect for you all who are in the order "for real."

Hey Jim - Very curious about this class - is this material similar to that in your A.A. book, or does it go into more detail about the signposts and experiences (physical and spiritual) linked to each path/sephira?

Hi David -

(Diluvium, you beat me by a few seconds with that link haha)

I'm sure this is a gross oversimplification that would offend someone deeply entrenched in the movement but basically Chaos Magick is a postmodern (i.e. 1970's ) paradigm that tries to get to the heart of how magick works by subscribing to total relativism - training one to adopt or disprove any belief system at will. The techniques of evocation, invocation, etc. are still used, but one is free to work with whichever entity one desires, such as invoking Mr. Spock or other pop culture characters. To me the main innovation here is the codification of Austin Spare's technique of sigilization, a practice simple enough that one can do quick and dirty magick at any time, but also elegant enough for one to do fairly advanced work with them. Other techniques taken from Spare include automatic writing and drawing and the creation of one's own alphabet of desire. Probably the two foundation texts are Liber Null/Psychonaut by Peter Carroll and Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine.

Of course, saying you are not a movement and that everything is relative automatically makes you another movement, and to me chaos magick has a very definite postmodern-era (i.e. the literature and art movement) "feel" about it, with its own orders (the IOT) and kind of a punk/goth image, with the newer strains incorporating lots of techniques from NLP.

It's hard to talk about where we are now, but most current DIY magick definitely has the influence of the Chaos movement. I really like Jan Fries' "Visual Magick," which isn't chaos per se but has techniques inspired by it (he strikes me as kind of a Werner Herzog of the occult world). Also good is "Stealing the Fire from Heaven" by Stephen Mace, about creating one's own magick system. Other interesting stuff is Patrick Dunn's "Postmodern Magic" and Philip Farber's Meta Magick.

Diluvium - thanks for your insights. I definitely agree about the dangers of labeling oneself, and it's only been in the past few weeks that my ego has gotten fluid enough to realize that "where you are" on a certain map may conflict with other maps or interpretations, and that the universe/one's perceptions will conform to whichever belief you hold at a certain moment.

I'm of the opinion that metaphysical theorizing and maps of this kind are really just to give the rational side of ourselves something to do while the evolutions in biology/consciousness are happening. Not to belittle rationality - if we didn't at least try to conceptualize this stuff it would be almost impossible to stay intelligible to each other, both to other practitioners and to the public at large. Especially at the higher levels, it seems that communication can only happen through a system like Qabbalah or Crowley's mythological imagery, which is a fantastic perk of the A.A. system that obviously confuses anyone who hasn't internalized that particular language. See Kenneth Grant, lol. And at a certain point communication does break down entirely.

There do seem to be marked stages that people go through just because of the way we are put together as humans. To me the innovative thing about the A.A. system is that it combines beautiful, complex syncretic mystical imagery with the biological stages that we go through. For example, if a fully enlightened Zen monk were to meet an A. A. member who has crossed the abyss, they would probably be able to sense each other's degree of attainment; the A.A. adept could probably place the Zen monk somewhere on the tree of life, as meaningless (and perhaps pointless) as that would be to the monk. The monk also would have had an experience exactly equivalent to the KCHGA, without using that terminology or even a conception of an entity. You could also draw interesting connections between Zen koans and the process of gematria, which both use rational means to allow the irrational mind to develop.

From my own practice it seems that meditation is the main catalyst that sets things in motion. But this is from the perspective of my own biases, which were to discount imagination and psychic experiences. For someone more, whatever, whimsical?, explorations on the astral plane could lead them to ceremonial work at a much younger age.

But regardless, someone who meditates, even in Zen style, is eventually going to have the same kind of supernatural experiences/astral explorations that a magician would have, and the energies and images they encounter will be infused with what their subconscious has picked up from their culture and life experiences. The choices they make about how to apply these experiences to their lives are what leads to the kind of artificial mysticism/magick divide so many people write about. I've been getting a lot out of the G.D./A.A. curriculum I've been studying, but possibly the most important thing has been being able to approximate where I am on a given map (the tree of life) and linking it to life objectives, then watching the two play off of each other in beautiful and supernatural ways.

To me, yoga practices are like Zen with a little turbo juice added (wow not to generalize or anything hahaha ), and more suited to my everyday life, using concepts such as the ishta that one can infuse with evolving conceptions of God, the HGA, whatever. Regardless of the flavor of the path, eventually this stuff is going to bring up literally every speck of darkness from the depths of one's psyche, as well as their inverses, and bury one's face in them repeatedly until they are acknowledged and processed. To me magick is a way of integrating these experiences of meditation with everyday life, with non attachment to the supernatural "scenery" a requirement.

Sorry to keep rambling on - it just feels therapeutic to write about this stuff . I really recommend checking out the writings of Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford - they used to update a site called www.thebaptistshead.co.uk . They write from a kind of freeform perspective, but mostly about connecting the A.A. grades with attainments in the Therevada Buddhist map of enlightenment. Also interesting (and for me, essential) is the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, available for free at www.interactivebuddha.com , which lays out the process and map of awakening from the Pali Canon and gives tips for attaining the jhanas (states of consciousness possibly related to the Enochian Aethyrs?). This was the first place I ever heard of magick.

Anyone else been attacking this from a free-form perspective? Insights? Disagreements? I think the largest challenge for someone not connected to a magical order is figuring out which concepts, maps, imagery, etc. have a meaning for everyday life. Choosing the flavors and particular textures of one's path has always been intimidating to me (the confusion itself being a texture/entity...)