College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Oh Im really glad!

I'd just thought of something historically relevant . When I was taking driving lessons I basically coasted from lesson 10 to lesson 17. I didn't get better no matter how often I was in the drivers seat. I started feeling that he'd never put me in for the test, that it was a scam, that I wasn't going to learn anything new. Maybe I should go for compressed driving lessons? A new instructor?
And then one night before the next lesson while cursing everything I thought. 'Why don't you put some bloody effort in?'
Next day after the lesson he put me in for the test.
IAO.
I get the feeling I've missed that lesson a lot 😕

Gotcha. Thanks!

@Gnosomai Emauton said

"Hey GG, thanks for swinging by. I've always enjoyed running across your posts in the archives. Your introduction of "body off" awhile back on some other thread was a game-changer for me. Good to see you in the digital-flesh, as it were.

I've managed to find a new rabbit hole to fall down on this topic thanks to some of the suggestions above and it's proving to be very fruitful so I don't really want to reset myself back to the square one at which I started the thread, but your post does seem to take as read a few of the things that are causing me to get hung up on this issue. Mainly, in your last paragraph, you seem to hinge it all on an individual's choice but that sort of personal volition is what I'm having trouble getting to jive with my understanding of natural law. So as not to leave anything out, what I'm working through now is pushing me toward a realization that choice is somehow part of that law, thus making it both necessary and voluntary at the same time. But no Aha! moments yet.

Any thoughts on that? Do we really have volitional ability to change the direction of cause-effect? Or is there another angle to look at it that helps to break down the resistance my mind is giving me?"

Hey there, sorry I didn't reply to this earlier.

Of course it's the old philosophical problem of Free Will. I think the correct answer is always going to be some kind of Compatibilism. The solution is ditching the pompous philosophical notion of a Free Will that could be free of causation, and understanding that the only kind of free will (no caps) worth wanting is perfectly compatible with determinism, and in fact depends on determinism to function.

It's the same kind of free will a sophisticated robot would have, which makes sense as we are basically "moist robots" - IOW, a deterministic mechanism requires deterministic methods to negotiate a deterministic world, but, for the simple reason that it lacks total information about the state of the deterministic world, it still needs to make decisions and choices (on the basis of that limited information) about what to do next (therefore concomitantly, what options are thereby foregone) and it can make wrong and right decisions.

Which leaves determinism as the "free will" of the Universe at large - i.e. just the way the Fool happens to wander. But we, as mechanisms embedded in that wandering, don't have that kind of free will. Even though we can attain a sort of consciousness of that state of God's free wandering.

UNLESS the internal magickal theory is correct and there are ways, as-yet-uncanvassed-by-science, but known as a rough and ready art by magicians, to influence or alter determinism as we know it. As I'm in a rationalist phase, I doubt the possibility of that, but even if it were the case, I don't see how that wouldn't be just a deeper understanding of determinism really, still some kind of law-governed flowing of stuff, those "laws" being as above said, a description of the stuff's free wandering (looked at from a higher point of view).

@Jim Eshelman said

"The shifts in those cards is a red herring."

Possibly. But as far as I can tell Gunther's explanation does factor in a switch of elemental attribution between the Eagle and Man Kerubs. (Although these are re-named the 'Eagle-Dragon'(Air) and the 'Woman'(Water) respectively.) And all of this is linked back to what he calls the 'functional opposition' between the signs of N.O.X. as presented in Liber V vel Reguli, and reveals the Woman Satisfied.

A discovery from yesterday, perhaps may be of some use to the thread:
in Latin, the Smooth Point may be rendered as *Punctum Lenis * = 149
the same value as Rosa Media Noctis

@Middleman said

"This thread just MELTED MY MIND. Thank you."

😀

Gnosomai Emauton,

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

@Gnosomai Emauton said

"So what's your take? What does Agape mean to you? And how does it differ from "Love" (if at all)?"

I know love... when I love my neighbor with all of my heart; when I look upon him with the same eyes as a mother looking upon her new born child; when I feel my fellow man to be mine brother despite apparent differences between us such as being: political-, philosophical- and religious views, social class, and personal preferences of taste of whatever kind etc.

This is my personal feeling towards that which you are talking about.

Love is the law, love under will.

Peace

As anything living it must crumble or grow.
We are also in a new era 😄

They have been doing this in China for years.

Also, I should have mentioned - on your enormous compliment about copy editing, it's hopefully obvious that this is a team effort. The people mentioned in the Acknowledgements and (in this case) especially David Stanton and Kelly Garey, were just amazing in their attentiveness and insight on things large and small. There comes a time (after, say, the 20th or 30th pass) when I just can't look at a line or paragraph or page and actually see what's typed there. It takes a new, fresh eye that isn't inside my own head.

These guys (and, in different ways, everyone mentioned in the Acknowledgements) were amazing.

@Gnosomai Emauton said

"
@Frater 639 said
"Funny how the more reptilian parts of the brain is the snake that needs to be tamed? The Nechesh is also the Messiach! (358). Isn't the so-called Kundalini a serpent as well? 😉

From Liber HHH...

"These are the watery reflexions of the three enthusiasms; those of Apollo, Dionysus, and Aphrodite. The whole star is Nechesh and Messiach, the name "AHIH" joined with "YHVH"."

AHY(I)HVH = 32
32+61=93

What is 61? 😉

And once these chemicals can be controlled, we can dose ourselves with norepinephrine (and other neurotransmitters) in conjunction with USEFUL thoughtforms (a chosen aspect of Nuit) at will. Willed neuroplasticity or brain change via chemicals."

Great thoughts for future meditation.

Also, the paper that soz posted offered some really good/clear insights into the parallels between "normal" brain function and the functions created by the addition of specific psychedelic/narcotic substances (i.e. specifically which receptor sites are affected and which natural brain chemicals they relate to). I knew that the tryptamines were cognates to typical neurotransmitters but it was a surprise to me to find that our brains produce an opiod that is naturally found working the neural pathways. My quick google search to teach myself what acetylcholine is pointed out that it works the same receptor sites as deadly nightshade and amanita muscaria.

I haven't yet acquired a copy of 776 1/2 but, if there isn't yet a column for naturally occurring neurotransmitters... it looks like one might be building itself here."

Yes. There isn't one yet. We can definitely take brain waves and apply the elements to them as well. I think Crowley would have been all over it. Part of my research involves subtle energy fields (using a method not unlike the study here) and correlating brain states using an EEG. I then experiment with invocation and chart the brain and subsequent energy fields.

I saw this article and thought of you since you seem interested in remote communication. In the following journal's context, the "communication" is healing. This study is very well researched and is credible enough to be referenced in many medical studies.

Enjoy! 😀

www.cihs.edu/whatsnew/Reconnective%20Healing%20research_ISSSEEM%20Journal%20Vol%2021%202.pdf

Very useful. I don't have the hard copies myself or I'd offer em up or scan em.

Just to clarify my own initial question, I'm not thoroughly convinced that "new" is actually the word in question here. The qabalistic gymnastics above allowed for some insight into the pun of the title, perhaps, but the line that Takamba used for evidence doesn't, for me, mean what he seems to suggest it means.

To wit:

"Call it a new religion, then, if it so please your Gracious Majesty; but I confess that I fail to see what you will have gained by so doing, and I feel bound to add that you might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief.

The word does not occur in The Book of the Law."

From his previous post, Takamba discounts that second statement as "mischievous". I would submit that the tone of the entire letter is "mischievous". However, this sentence structure clearly pins it as a clarification of his previous statement. That is: "I confess that I fail to see what you will have gained by doing so, and I feel bound to add that you might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief" by calling it [Thelema] the word that does not occur in The Book of the Law [religion].

The wording is precise. He is not saying here that Thelema is not a religion but that Cara Soror might "cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief" by calling it one. Consequently, he "fail[s] to see what you will have gained by so doing."

Which brings us back to the questions posed in the OP:

@Gnosomai Emauton said

"How should this be dealt with in the real world? Is it important to call Thelema a religion in order to reclaim the word from its generally accepted (and etymologically incorrect) connotation, regardless of the misunderstandings that will cause? Or is it more beneficial to acknowledge that the current understanding of the word is not going to change and call Thelema something else (spiritual philosophy?) in order to highlight its different nature?"

Just re-checked into the forum and saw this. Synchronicity, I guess.

Nice sitting next to you last night.