College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@Ash said

"93.

Laertes, what I have found to work best is simply persisting in the face of it and refusing to submit to the laziness.

93, 93/93."

93

This definitely seems like the way to go. Building good habits, learning to enjoy the work!

Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty! AL II.35

Bear in mind that all things are ritual unto Nuit. Being a Thelemite, for me, consists in finding joy in whatever I do. In his comment on AL Crowley speaks of the Thelemite forcing himself by will to find the purity in the quagmire and dung. I'm of course paraphrasing.

Even starting out just doing your daily Resh adorations and LBRP is highly beneficial, and enjoyable! This takes very little time, but the very act of doing it day in and day out not only fortifies you magically, it creates good habits that will help you on the Malkuthian plane as well as later in your magical career.

93 93/93

Sometimes, it's the little things...

Make sure you don't leave any open angles on those Pentagrams. It doesn't do to just etrace a vague, starlike shape in thin air. 😉

Silver sage is also very handy when purification of energies is involved.

ok thanks jim this is very helpful,

for once I think my prior love of Jesus as an evangelical might actually come in handy, I remember being "caught up in the spirit" after reflecting on his love for us and I am sure those same feelings can be applied to other gods/goddesses.

Years ago, I spent a lot of time giving free readings online, which was very interesting and required a kind of apprehension of my intuition that couldn't be faked with visual/aural impressions about the querent or casual prompts for more info. I had to look within to get the reading right. And being online, anonymous and free, it was a fairly no stress environment. I could make mistakes and so what. I had to suck it up and have enough courage to try. I found a voice inside that did the reading for me, and I learned, at least at a rudimentary level, to trust that voice.

These days, I find very helpful posing rather specific questions regarding my own life/development, and carefully documenting in my diary the spread and my interpretation of it. This is particularly illuminating as I look back at the readings weeks or months later. It seems the cards are always more spot on than my interpretation was at the time, and, with the benefit of hindsight, I can apprehend where my readings went askew.

I have long used the Celtic Cross, but am committed to also deploying the spread outlined in Liber Theta, which Temple of Thelema has made available for free. You can get it here: www.thelema.org/publications/. It is a wonderful and authoritative little guide.

And I'll second the suggestion that meditating on the cards without a lot of study or wordy interpretation is invaluable. These are archetypical images, after all. Something about just sitting with the image is both powerful and informative. Another slant on this is, particularly with the major arcana, to put yourself IN the image. Be the Fool, experience his naive vertigo and heady optimism. Be the Magician with the swirling, scintillating implements all about. Be the Chariot, with its whirling grail and forward thrust. Be the Tower, feel its concrete integration crumbling and wrecked. You get the picture (so to speak). Let the imagination of all your senses run with these meditations. Feel the weight of the Emperor's armor, the warmth radiating from above to your left as you sit cross-legged on the throne, smell the musky scent of his rams at your side, let your gaze look right to your beloved Empress. Set the timer, and build up the image as much as you can in that time. Then write down your impressions in your diary, and, over time, you will build up your own lexicon of the cards.

I have bought and read a lot of books on the Thoth deck. They are useful, at some level, but after I started meditating directly on and "in" the cards, all the excess verbiage in these texts became something more of a diversion.

Also, consider this an adventure that will last the rest of your life. Baby steps count. Just be steady. Be diligent. Keep at it regularly. You have to build a pyramid one brick at a time. Be patient and persevere. And have fun!

Happy journeying.

I shall resist the urge to blush.
aummmmmmmmmaummmmmmmmaummmmm
who am I fooling? 😊

thinking bout that, i have my own question. do i have to fabricate a dagger for the A.'.A.'. or can i just keep my old one? i have done many workings with it and to part with it is to castrate myself.

93,

Uh, I wouldn't find a handstand uncomfortable in the least. There's a good chance I would fall out of it immediately, and with my luck injure something 😜 Last time I did hand stands, I wound up messing up my back for a few months. lol. There is a difference between conquering, and messing up horridly.

And no, that's not necessarily an avoidance to do them- due to certain issues, I literally am unable. XD.

The value I see in the "uncomfortableness," of Vajrasana is a very different kind from that, any way. The seat automatically straightens posture [At least for me, it's neigh impossible for my back to slump when I am on my legs, as they are like a chair.

I think part of the issue is that you seem to be attempting to put your own form of attainment onto others- I don't think that would work for me, as I have an almost radically different aesthetic from you- you talk about harmony, while I consider it already done- all elements just need to be forced into the right place, from where they are at any time. XD. With what I know about human evolution, various forms of mysticism seem to have the common ground of forcing us to pull off those millenia of having to adapt all the elements to survival, but without going too far as to become dead. We can make of that what we want, though.

Does your approach work for you? I'm sure it does, but it is far too sentimental for me 😜

93 93/93

@Herr Meow said

"Just my 2 cents - banishing your fear seems like a very bad idea. Where do you think those "banished" fears are going to go? Banishing is not the same thing as resolving.

Another strategy would be to go towards your fear, let it in, surrender to it. If you can sit in the midst of your fear without any attachment or aversion to it, without telling yourself stories about it, without doing anything at all but simply observing it dispassionately, then it will leave of its own accord. Sometimes this has to be repeated numerous times, sometimes the fear goes deep and has several different manifestations, but ultimately I've never seen this technique fail.

It's been said so many times that it sounds like a cliche - courage isn't the absence of fear (that's called psychosis), nor is it the ability to banish (or repress) the fear, but rather the ability to feel the fear fully and still do what you need to do.

HM"

Ya know, every now and again some posts something that is so practical and sensible that it astonishes me! Thank you Herr Meow! 👼

I LOVE Bhakti yoga 😉

93,

thanks guys both of your posts are a big help, I'm excited to try this new ritual tonight, it seems very powerful already and I really like that it's in ancient Greek since i've found little practical application for studying it outside my studies at college.

93 93/93

maybe hang with the "Paranormal State" crowd? 😄

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

Laertes,

My answer in full means to show you my entire journal of that period - but I'll cut it short: You are on the right track.

Yes, Liber Jugerum et al as you said is EXACTLY what I would recommend - an my record would show a very exciting and interesting (and specific) path of that work that you remind me of. Follow Jugerum to the word, do the exercise as described and what I did eventually turned a certain individual in my life to someone I not only didn't use the name of (etc etc et al to the program), this person in the end became invisible to me - not there even when there. It provided a certain evidence of the power of mind and thought.

Have I said too much?

Oh! And the oath you want recommended - a bit tricky but the one I had at that time boiled down simply to "never speak untruth." That, btw, even applies when in passing in a hall (in college for example, as was the time), I answered in truth (and as fully as was right at that time) "hey, how's it going?"

93

Thanks Jim. 😀

L.V.X. x Love x Will = Magnitude.

93 93/93

I am also in a situation when I rarely have privacy for practices. I do Resh silently in any position when people are around and on the rare occasion when I am totally alone I do it completely. My other practices I do on my lunch break at work. I lock my office door and have 45 minutes of solitude to do LBRP, or anything else. I record some things (like Jim's lectures) on my smartphone and listen to them driving - even if others are in the care they can't hear. I did this last week driving with 7 people in a van - they thought I was listening to music. So everyone has some private time I think, unless you are in prison!

Hi All,

This is my first post!

I believe the practice of the LBRP is to develope the 3rd eye among many other things. Through repitition one will develope the technique over time. It just takes time to get it. I've always find it interesting to tabulate how many LBRPS one has performed or will perform in their life. It's the familiarity of the technique, faith, and facts that will make the practice stronger. As far as eyes closed, well I at times perform the Ritual in my imagination (as I'm sure many here do), but that takes some practice for sure at first.

In L.V.X.

Jm