College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

93, and thank you for your time.

"I really think you need to take a specific example and focus on it alone."

The difference is that I was not asking someone else for an answer to what a given thing means for me. Only I can come up with that, I assume. And that is likely what would have been the response had I done that. I gave a couple things as examples only.

I was asking for a pointer to one or more "systems of evaluation" within the larger (huge) field of those, for cerebral/academic review of this kind of stuff, in particular how to attribute color 'scale' and dealing with names provided me (or translated by me internally at the time) in english letters.

I can get information 'from inside' of course, but I have an intellectual mind for a reason and I'd like to start using it more in conjunction with my esoteric line of inquiry. My question isn't mystical, it's practical.

"If you are having a word or idea that sticks in your head like "Oliphant or ACKRCK" I consider these souveniers. Because they come from a higher vibratory nature they, of course, cannot parallel language."

I agree they contain more. But if an entity specifically gives me this AS a name (and a 'role' in the first case), then it functions in that way for me, since they've sometimes made it clear they're giving it to me in my letters to be sure I know and remember it.

Hmmn. Maybe I have simply overestimated occult magick, it occurs to me. I thought this was a straightforward question, though it might have a more complex answer, because it seems to me that magick is filled with learning "the names of things", from entities to aethyrs, "in order to understand more about them."

The overall topic of magick and its various roots is gigantic and would take lifetimes. There must be some halfway intelligent system of research that allows one to take something like "a name provided *" or "a color" and evaluate it intellectually according to one or more systems.

I am asking for a pointer to (a) those systems and (b) how to put it in context in those systems (eg how to know which color 'scale' would be applicable).

"Angels can impregnante One word with more values and meanings than can be contained in any book ever written."

Yeah, that's a given. Fortunately I'm not asking to be given all possible knowledge about a personal symbol in a forum post.

"Really, it is your job to validate it and discern how it really affects your life. Choose your framework as you will. "

Thank you. For the record, that sounds pretty and it's a handy answer for so much, but it was inapplicable to the question I asked.

I did not ask for others to validate, nor discern, how something personally affects my life. And of course everything is my own choice.

My question is more along the lines of how to use the existing library or toolset, and less along the lines of how to find enlightenment.

I can handle the internal stuff just fine; it's the mundane intellectual stuff I have kept myself away from until now, and would like to pursue a little more of. Not as a primary form of inquiry because this is based on something more integral for me, but as an auxilliary to my practices.

But, perhaps this is the wrong venue for the question. Thank you, though.

93 93/93,
RC

93 and hello,

I work with a lot of... "identities." Most those I meditate with consciously also work with me in dreams.

Much of the time I strain to clearly-grok or to 'translate' a name into english. There are 'depths' of language or sound that english sucks for. (Maybe all languages do. It feels more 3D than sound can cover.)

But sometimes I am given a name that is really IS in english letters, and is totally clear so I know I'm not screwing it up.

I am not a QBL ist, and I generally have avoided intellectual study about much of my inner work so far. This is for two powerful reasons:

First, I'm too much left-brain so to speak, and have a difficult time validating myself and allowing the suspension of disbelief necessary to let most of this happen in the first place (or remember it more than 20 seconds later). I doubt myself, the information, the entities, I find my mind filters it, distorts it, and is fully screwed up by expectations. Ignorance really is bliss in my case since it allows "spontaneous" information that I validate because I know it's not just something subconsciously regurgitated or made up as self-entertainment based on what I expect.

Second, my brain LOVES intellectualism. Gematria, being a form of math, I immediately realized in 1994 would (and did) suck me completely into a world where rather than 'feeling' and 'being' and 'living' and 'experiencing', I was in the armchair 'thinking about' doing those things and counting and multiplying and so on. I admire the hell out of people that can really focus on all this stuff and keep it in balanced moderation. I don't have much in the way of 'middle-ground' in some areas of my life and apparently this (and sex, LOL) is one of them.

So on the bright side, totally abandoning my early, barely-begun intellectual study of QBL topics allowed me a path I could not have followed otherwise.

On the down side though, now I am beginning to feel like, for the things I am working on -- only those, not "the entire topic", just for whatever comes up naturally -- it would sure be nice to have a CLUE.

Well it isn't just that. I feel like it's getting to the point where I really need to be a lot more organized about all this, bring some structure to my magickal journaling and start a sort of... correspondence table you might say, of official-symbols (I mean of the sort of things you would find in 777, as opposed to more fluid dream symbols that might be more unique to the individual).

For example, in what I call 'the Four' (I am one of four elements of soul that creates a larger single identity. I think the other 3 are related to the top spheres on the tree of life, but I don't know much about that.), there are various symbols. The Senior is in black and red and rectangle. I googled that but didn't learn a good deal.

Sometimes I see symbols that I can't find in any of the more obvious alphabets, runes, etc. What I call 'the Aeons' (there are 12 elements of soul that compose me) have some of this as well. And the occasional offbeat out of the blue identity tends to as well. It's like they have a language and I have one but we don't really meet in the middle. When all else fails they just shower me with numbers.

(I call everything an 'identity' -- as it has no bias toward the type of entity or source of energy or intent.)

I feel if I'm working with identity X and they make it clear that a certain color, shape, symbol, number, animal(etc.), or group of letters in a name, is what they are representing, I feel as part of my respect and honor for their work with me, I should make a little effort to use that information to understand them better.

Well and I sometimes get the feeling from my mate/twin (3rd of 4) that I need to quit whining and expecting everything handed me by the Four just for asking, and work a little harder on fathoming things myself, and bringing recognition of that into my reality (eg surrounding myself with symbols that are of the energy I want to focus on).

So just recently I have begun googling a few things in response to that (that is how I found this forum). Trying to maintain a middle ground of sincerely trying to better understand 'someone I meet' internally, but not just falling face-first into the gigantic topic of "everything QBL" isn't easy.

So far -- early into this effort -- I find three problems:

1. Gematria is based in hebrew and I get english letters. I do see hebrew sometimes esp. in dreams but so far I'm not getting names in it. I am not sure if there is english form that is legitimate compared to hebrew. Is there any way to evaluate a set of english letters for "insight" of the cerebral kind?

Here's a couple examples:

OLIPHANT (that is a 'role' not just a name by the way)
ACKRCK (yes I know. Missing a few vowels in that one! lol)

Is it possible (for the 2nd one) that chakras as identities may have names?

2. In terms of gematria, I can look up a given number I am given for something, but every number has so many different meanings all over the map, how does this not get relegated to the world of newspaper astrology I wonder, it seems like one could find anything in any number. ("All numbers are infinite" takes on new less-cosmic meaning there...)

3. Trying to find stuff about some symbols, like colors, is just brain numbing. I mean any given color has a zillion diff alleged meanings depending on which "scale" it's in. How the heck do you know which scale you should be looking in?! Not to mention there are other categories of colors apparently. I know some colors based on years of work with them for "what they mean to me" as symbols (colors that represent certain types of fear, certain types of energetic repression, certain chakras esp. the fierce cobalt, etc.). But a little like the numbers issue, it seems there is such a ridiculous array of meaning that every one of them is assigned to, that researching it seems pointless.

For people who have been doing this kind of 'correspondences' study, do you have any feedback on the above points? I'd appreciate any advice or insight you may have.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

By chance, I stumbled on this simplified (but nice for just that reason) site with some general how-to for energy work, for those interested:
www.chioshealing.com
It does have 'attunement' from a healer involved and an associated book but the website has a variety of brief straightforward pages of info. Particularly in the instructions for working on yourself, running energy etc., anybody could use that to explore energy work for themselves.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"Asking a forum how to handle your own personal little affairs is not the Thelemic "thing to do". "

Why not?

(Can I say "I'm playing devil's advocate" on a magick board without it having a completely different meaning, I wonder?...)

At one point in my life I realized that the primary source of manifestation came to me through other people. I'd been so often frustrated that it worked this way, I didn't want to feel obligated or whatever. But realizing that and allowing it changed a bit how I felt about people and relationships (and learning to 'accept').

Why not ask others for advice on a forum? Is it different than asking in someone's living room? Or is it just a moratorium about asking for advice, ideas or guidance?

I'm not attacking you here, they're serious questions, I'm just interested in the reasoning.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

@modernPrimitive said

"To me, The holographic Principle it is the most thelemic scientific principle I've ever come across."

Like most truly psi things this is hard to believe, but the amount of "convenient coincidence and synchronicity" in my life is amping up to the point of near astronomical improbability and growing by the day.

In keeping with the fact that nearly everything I even think too hard about I find more info on, a key source to, a person or object or writing about, within about 4-36 hours, tonight -- as part of about 9 other "synchronous information finds" -- I chanced on this really old book buried for many years at the back of a shelf where I had some writings from the early 2000's.

There were two poems in it. One actually goes well with both the hologram and 'star identity' stuff. I was cracking up finding it and thinking, "Well, if I post a poem, that will probably be the closest thing to matching the rest of the forum content you've posted so far." So, it may not be brilliant but I seemed to really mean it at the time, here you go.

August 22, 2002

The Deja Vu of Home

I am a child of chaos.
The tangled fractals clang
in my cells
and look for resolution.
My body breathes
the serenity
of identity
and soothes the inside-out
with its ignorant bliss.

I am colored outside the lines.
The casually messy beliefs chatter
in my psyche
and refuse to march in time.
My mind, it dreams
of consequence
and evidence
and structures life from the outside-in
with its prejudiced loves.

I am the One.
The soul's intent and body in tension
negotiate
so something will get done.
My destiny allows
the precision
of decision
and waits patiently for orders
which all of me agrees on.

I am the mother of my cosmos.
The stars blaze within me when
it is darkest
inside my big idea incarnate.
My creation allows
day or night
wrong or right
with classrooms of explanation
around every inner corner.

I am octaves of invisible color.
The glowing lines of spirit pulse
in my reality
and redeem messy chaos with light.
My soul longs for the
complete I AM
of the hologram
and impels me forward on shadowed paths
with the deja vu of home.

I AM.

.PJG aka RC 08/22/02

93,

Hmmn. I consider myself fundamentally Thelemic. Not because I intellectualized it and decided to glue-stick that label to myself. Simply because I realized at one point that was my nature. It's less a decision than a recognition.

Honestly some days I wish the whole of Thelema was a lot less weird and obscure. Then again I wish that about a good deal of my inner life a good deal of the time.

I do not necessarily consider Liber al vel Legis a doctrine I must follow or believe the words = Truth. In Crowley's reality it might have been. Whether that is my Truth is a different question. I feel that I and probably a zillion people contain some part of the energy that used to be AC but his/our/their writing, that was then. This is my life now and I have a distinct path. He lived his own life, I get to live mine. Edited to add: I actually do consider the book profound and I'm sure there's much more I'll get when I understand more. My point is that I think if I choose to accept this it is about my acceptance and understanding, and it is a conscious choice, not a 'morally obligatory' responsibility to 'recite doctrine' just because someone else tells me it's required I believe a certain thing.

I've had a lot of esoteric experiences related to Liber al. When I first encountered it, after awhile I had a lot of incredible draw to it, heart-chakra intensity, like I loved it so much it hurt, I slept with it (!) holding it against my chest, waking up in the middle of the night with lines of it running through my tranced-out head and geometries inside me spelling out fundamental meanings of Truth in it that had only bare relationship to anything words could possibly say.

I concluded the more Truth there was underlying it, the more everything it said on the surface was de facto a lie. A collection of flotsam arrow-pointers to Something Else, but that collection could be constructed in many ways. I don't feel morally or otherwise obliged to use that collection as that part is a bit arbitrary and individual to AC.

The Truth fundamental that it points to is the real point of it all. That part I accept to the best of my personal allowance, which is the whole path of me and what I work on ever-expanding.

The one thing I do consider fundamental to Thelema is that the idea of having to accept anybody else's doctrine is ridiculous. You know what, I think all that stuff about Mary in III ought to be applied just as much to every other Officialized Doctrinal Deity. Replacing one book doctrine with another is, like much of the occult, just as much a uniform as that which it allegedly rejects. (Then again, that reptilian part of my brain really LIKES uniforms, drum corps marching bands, etc. ;-))

I accept that Liber al represents one (of possibly many) inspired version(s) of "a pointer toward a greater Truth -- and a path for all of mankind and the individual toward it." Whether that matches what others call Thelemic is just their word-definition test for their filter on reality. It doesn't relate to my own spiritual ISness, you might say.

All that being said, I "conveniently" quote it now and then in small pieces I like best as surface words, and I often consider deeper meanings in it I had not previously thought about. I do see it as an insightful tool and I respect that people choose to study this as their doctrine. I simply consider the entire concept of "doctrine about Truth and genuine spiritual Freedom" to be, fundamentally, an oxymoron.

93 93/93.
RC

93,

I perceive this differently. (Everything is 'IMO only' of course.)

We lack English words for a lot of needed things, and must use the same word for many different meanings. Truth has more than one fundamental meaning, but our culture only knows the second, surface meaning.

The first meaning probably needs a new word. Truth (with a capital T) is a powerful energy. It doesn't involve accuracy/inaccuracy. It simply IS. Real Truth isn't the accuracy of a thing, it is the ISness of a thing.

The more you 'feel' this the less there is to say about it until only silence remains. Words can't touch it.

Although creativity (including that involving words) can carry some lesser degree of the energy 'through' it, which tends to make the creative product a lot more powerful.

The second meaning is the one we use. Our surface world is like flotsam and trivia floating about. Accuracy is the determinor there. One can question whether something is accurate or not and that determines its truth.

Although in a more primal sense it hardly matters since nothing at that level is fundamentally real anyway. In a daily life sense it obviously does matter though and much of what we need/want to discuss is "operating at that level" so that's just how it must be done.

One of the lessons I've had is that the farther I got from the feel of Truth, the more intellectual I got, and eventually downright technical. It was not any more True in the first ISness meaning; rather, it was 'leaning harder' on the second accuracy meaning, in greater compensation for lacking the first.

Another way of putting this, might be to say, that the more you can talk about a given thing, the less Truth the talk contains.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"For me, it was especially the bit about the constellations and us being more "literally" stars than might make sense in language of the left-brain. "Constellated consciousnesses" might work better, to spin a word from Jung."

I feel like, during the cycle-points when I am really proactive and working on awareness, I get a molecule closer to understanding this each day. Now, if I can live to be about 617, I might get halfway there.

"For me, though, it was as if all sorts of information had been stuffed down in my unconscious and sealed up tight. When it all finally came out, technically speaking, ...I went nuts for a while"

I understand. I had a kundalini experience in the early 90s, and spent quite some time trying to pretend I was normal so I could keep my respectable job and not end up in a straightjacket. It had a never-ending list of side effects as various chakras kinda went bezerk especially my crown and occasionally heart, though all of 'em on occasion. Thank god a buddy talked me into reading a Seth/Jane Roberts book during that era (I was hugely prejudiced against channeling at the time), because that gave me a logical framework and a vocabularly that made it 'odd but interesting' instead of 'go get medication'. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for pretty much saving my sanity.

Humorously that K experience apparently stemmed from a really obsessive period of pranic work where I was constantly, intensely, praying "to evolve." The result, frankly, made me think it was an analogy to Lily Tomlin's great joke: "When I was a little girl, I always said that someday, I'd grow up to BE somebody! . . . but now I see, I should have been more specific." That's it!--I should have been more specific. Some part of me probably thinks losing a limb would be a maturing experience. Now I always include "in a positive way!" every time I ask for anything akin to evolution, just to be sure...

"but I couldn't stand to see you put all that out there and not have anyone respond."

Thanks for that. I figured I'd post on whatever I could relate to for a few weeks and see if everyone continued ignoring me, and if so I would move along.

separate reply, 93:

"If science is your thing you might want to look at something called the "holographic principle" - and you mention the term "holographic" - I'm not sure if that is your intuitive description or whether you've been reading science textbooks recently! To me, The holographic Principle it is the most thelemic scientific principle I've ever come across."

Science as a model of thinking and process are big with me. That's what I liked about the general magickal approach was that done well, it was an intelligent course of self-development, not just a hang-ten zen. (Nothing against that which I now do more than the former, just that at that time, I respected careful intelligent working.)

Aside from psi research, and the last year or so, a little nutrition research I only read 'about' from researchers and MDs who review that, I don't know much about any field of science alas. Most my education is self-education and not in that area. But I've read at least a few books on quantum physics going back to the late 80s, including 'The Holographic Universe' (Talbot) long ago. I certainly didn't come up with the universe as a hologram on my own probably, but I perceive it as a great model both experientially and intellectually.

Trivia: I once had a truly mind blowing experience (far too multi-part and complex to get into here) and was later 'shown' what it was/how it was done. Much later, I was in a bookstore just walking past the math/science section and had a sudden obession to suck it all into my brain so that my brain would be capable of putting out information on those topics it had but couldn't get through due to my limits. I grabbed a few books and some other part of me managed to get my body to physically run and buy them and run out the door lest I max out my visa buying every book in the section, I was a little nuts for about 10 minutes. While browsing whatever I'd bought, one book was on fractals. I didn't even know there was more than one kind, I'd only seen Mandelbrot like on screen savers.

I saw this one that was just like what I was 'shown' relating to that experience: string-beams of a laser-intense light+color+sound each a "primary," come out from the heart area (they form a square inside a circular shape) and their frequency increased as they got 'vibrato' and then exponentially went up the scale until they were all just seeming "chaos", and then like with tuning a guitar, they hit a high point and all vibrato stopped and they suddenly wrapped around in a vortex and went "through"... something. I had no idea what the heck that was or meant. Anyway looking at this picture, the Narrator (as I call him -- the voice that narrates, doesn't everybody have that? --I think it's probably a specific inorganic as Casteneda called them, which we are symbiotes with on some level) told me that it wasn't really a "messy random spirograph" as I was thinking, but that the motion was a dance, and that the pattern "would eventually resolve into oneness" just like how I'd been shown previously. I found that fascinating. The diff was there was 3 strings in the pic, not 4 as I'd experienced. The book called them "Serpienski Points" and apparently it is some part of physics string theory. I know absolutely nothing about that subject except that THAT particular thing has the makings of a helluva technology, whether spiritually or physically applied.

"The implication is that the way we think of space as being these fixed sized unit of matter is incorrect, rather we should see it as a projection from the boundary of an arbitrary area of space inward to the centre. Nuit and Hadit! The perceived and the perceiver!"

Interesting. That sounds like a great insight. I hadn't thought of this Nuit/Hadit connection.

I've had a few direct experiences with space and it being as completely arbitrary in perception as time. (Actually I think that they are both perceptual aspects of the same thing related to intensity of energy, like the wave/particle sides haha. I didn't think of this, Seth said time was perceptual translation of energy intensity or something like that, but I think it applies to space as well, and I've seen this happen a couple times. It's enough to break your brain. Somehow time distortions don't hurt the belief system nearly as much as space distortions, not sure why.) I wonder if the 'units' stay the same in number but the 'size of the unit' varies.

"On the mystical side, do some research into Crowley's vision of "the Star Sponge""

I haven't read that in so long I don't remember it! I should read it again. I once had a vision which, some time later when I stumbled on AC's "Star Sponge," reminded me a little of it. I dimly recall that I could not say WHY it reminded me of it, only that once I'd read it, it rather did. But it does relate a little to our topic sorta, so since it is not long, I'll dig it out and bore you with it. This is an excerpt from a case study I did eons ago is why I have it to copy and even remember the connection at all:

"{April 1994} I'm shown something that seems like a book. Then I realize it's not a book but is actually part of a screen, like a computer screen, I just had the mental "impression" of book, as if someone were communicating that to me. I looked at the surface, which was some medium-dark color, and there were these rows of vertical long ovals... hard to describe... they each seemed about the size and width of my little finger. The ovals themselves are dark, like black, and they're filled with all these little white dots.

Well I'm looking at these things and I have no clue what they are. Then I realize, Oh, it's like a language or something! I could tell I was supposed to "read" it, that was why I had the book concept. I studied them closely and went in various directions of looking at them, but frankly, all the ovals looked the same to me, just a bunch of white dots. I tried to count the dots, but there were too many, too small, too indefinite. I tried reading each one, like to see if there was some pattern from the top of the oval to the bottom or whatever, some slight difference in shape between them. Nothing. Then I looked real closely at them, and suddenly fell inward -- and I was inside one of them -- I was rushing toward the "center of everything" -- then I "was" at the center of everything -- and I realized that all those white dots, now surrounding me and part of me, were stars.

I just "existed" there, and realized that it told a story: the relationship between the stars, between the space, between everything; everything was a geometry; the geometry was a language. And I thought to myself, Whoa... this must be what astrology is supposed to explain. Then I realized that it told more than just a "story" or explanation. It was an entire conceptual universe. It was as if I knew all about everything, the concepts behind every creature, planet, everything, based on the relationship of the stars and space to each other. I don't mean I knew the life story of every entity; just that I understood the "structure" of that universe. Every universe, I realized, was literally an idea incarnate.

The geometry was just like the {internal-geometry} language someone {an entity, usually but not always in my sleep} had been teaching me. I realized that I had a "grokking" of it, so to speak; I could find my way around the universe I'd been shown with my eyes closed. I "knew" internally where everything was, the stars, the space, even the things that technically should have been "behind" me and out of my view, I could "feel" them like I was all of the geometry of the relationship between us, like the entire geometric form of all of it was inside me physically.

Then:

{August 1994} I read Crowley's description of his "star sponge" experience in Book 4, and I'm wondering if this was some alternate version of my "learning to read." Although in my case I felt I was being taught to read/"grok" (in a fuller form), he mentions no such thing, in fact really doesn't mention anything like I experienced except the stars part... but who knows, somehow it reminded me. The star thing reminds me of the geometric conceptual language thing too, as if somehow it's all the same thing, now I've taken to calling that star-geometry."

I wish more people published their personal experiences and visions. I've gotten a lot of feedback about my old case study over the years and it's fascinating to see how even people with completely different models and experiences, have a sort of "core" of things in common.

93 93/93,
RC

93, I'm sorry, I don't remember, it was something I had come across at the time ('94 I believe) when I was reading a great deal of his work. (At least at the time I recalled it as something recently read from him.) I am prone to remember 'impactive concepts' from what I read and sometimes author, but not titles or great deal of info. Apologies. There are people here super familiar with his work who probably have some idea. (P.S. But really, my fave AC line is, "I will spear thee, my little grey gods!" I always wondered if this related to aliens and that Aiwass looks suspiciously like... ah, never mind.) 93 93/93 RC

93,

Speaking of comparative orders. Maybe someone can give me a pointer. From what I gather from this thread, the associations between degree numbers are (the same? different?) from OTO's.

Much of my experience comes in dreams and visions, not official doctrine, so I'm often really an idiot about stuff everyone else knows. I sometimes have 'magick dreams' as I call them. One example is when (over a dozen years ago) I was -- well here is an edited excerpt from my journal of the time (3/95):

"I had a dream that seemed to last all night. It was about "2 in 8" and "8 in 2" and why they were the Same (and Not [as in Nuit]) and for some reason I was wearing a dark red robe and wandered in and out of rituals held by magickian type people (mostly in dark red robes), all of whom I didn't know... the grafting of 8 onto 2 was incredibly powerful, like it was some cosmic lesson, and I had the specific sense that I had been initiated into both levels simultaneously, as if they were somehow reflections of each other. (This doesn't work though... those two degrees are not the ones associated together in the OTO.) The end result is sort of a feeling of... belonging? with the group involved that I haven't had before. As if I really did participate in many rituals on some level and bonded with tons of people whom I don't even know. But also a feeling of... now understanding (again not consciously, but on some level) the "framework" of all this, and some of the meanings behind the symbolism. The dream made me feel as if I have accepted something major, almost as if I have made some tremendous commitment that has an equal commitment/ relationship with me, and it's to something way bigger than me or what I currently know as "me;" not the Order, not the people, not the degrees (those are included, but as very small components) but to some larger, more overriding energy, like maybe the overall purpose behind the Order, behind everything. It's vast."

Given that I was introduced to the OTO in a dream in '94 (thank goodness I keep a journal or I wouldn't remember any of this stuff!), I've sometimes wondered if somewhere out there is another magickal order I haven't yet encountered, that I am already enmeshed with and might actually benefit from meeting. Does anybody know of an order that has this different degree association/coloring? I'd be really delighted if I could actually find them. A lot of my stuff usually ends up eventually turning out to exist outside me, I just don't know it at the time, so I have hope. I've considered visiting all kinds of magickal groups in quiet looking for them -- R+C, whatever -- but it's not like anyone introduces you to private ritual when you're a newb so that probably wouldn't help.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"O.T.O. encourages it's membership to pursue the Great Work however they see fit."

One of the last times I was physically around other order members, one was as close to buddhist as you get without the title, one was from wicca, I was talking at length about Jung with another, some other guy was muttering about satan, lots of others were pretty ordinary magickians and metaphysical sorts, and I was doing the rosary. [Probably in small part in defiance of what I see as a lot of taking the black-clad-power thing way too seriously. I get a lot more drawn to Archangel Michael in particular every time I am around fraters -- hard to figure -- something in that energy must spark it.] When they say it's up to you, it really IS.

On the other hand, there is more "academic information" in Regardie's book on the Golden Dawn then I can imagine ever getting a fraction of from most the few OTO groups I've heard of (I am not present with an active lodge though so I am probably not fit to comment there). I think people who really want "education" might consider a different order, as OTO's strength in allowing you to be-your-own-man (or woman) is also a little bit of 'left to tread water' if you don't live near a lodge (and/or of people you relate to).

Unless you really are DRAWN to OTO. I'd never heard of it until I dreamed it and I was completely freaked out by the fact it existed at all let alone was... uh, weird. Some things come from the inside as "givens already", not external ideas. So maybe you should pray about it, for guidance on that.

"While O.T.O. doesn't take particular notice about it's members involvement with other groups or Order, some Orders don't consider membership in O.T.O. compatible with them, so you may want to inquire to other Orders you want to be involved with as to their particular policies regarding O.T.O. As far as I know, the only groups O.T.O. finds in conflict with O.T.O. are spurious groups that claim to be the O.T.O. when in fact they aren't"

I am a member of two churches. One is a woman-centric Marian-centered catholic-metaphysical church of energy-healers. (Insert ridiculous amounts of "love and light" here.) One is the OTO which is -- uh, probably the polar opposite of that (at least in practice). I may be spiritually schizophrenic but I don't have any trouble reconciling these. I asked my Bishop in OTO before being ordained in the latter via my personal shamanic teacher for some years, and it was pretty much, well any church that doesn't have a problem or requirement contrary to the order, is up to you.

I mean it's YOUR vow; your will, your path. Muck it up or don't, but either way the result is yours.

I humbly suggest that whatever group someone chooses to associate with, you don't enter it with "hello I really want to be elsewhere but you were the only thing around instead". There really isn't any need for you to announce your eventual plans to every person you meet or do ritual with, unless you just want to. I don't tell the Lutherans who think I sing a lovely alto that I do a lot of solo sex magick or talk to all kinds of entities/identities "in my head." I did once attempt to share with some sisters in church B something Crowley wrote about treating women like dogs (how it totally pissed me off for about 10 minutes and then I concluded he might be right and it MADE ME CRY dammit). They didn't have nearly the appreciation for this insight [go figure] and it was a good lesson that some separate lines of inquiry are best kept separate.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"Except... that question presumes that the zodiac is of terrestrial origin. I don't think so at all - it can't be. It's inherently celestial. I think it most likely that this "twelving" would be observed on any planet in the universe, or in open space, and has nothing inherently to do with humanity, earth, this solar system, etc."

I find that very interesting.

Recently I got kinda fed up with the last 15 years of my personal experience being so uniquely weird (I feel like I'm the lone ranger), and decided to actually google a variety of number combinations and terms that my inner world can't shut up about. I thought maybe I would find some other equally loony soul who might also think they were alone. I found a bunch of info instead on 'gnosticism'. Now this is funny because although I knew nothing of that really until a few days ago (and my info is limited to wiki), I'm technically part of a gnostic order/church, but apparently whatever I thought gnostic meant (if I ever gave this thought beyond "one who knows, allegedly") isn't what I thought.

One of the unique weirdnesses I mentioned of my inner world is that after a dozen years of working (not very proactively) with what I call "the Four", where I am 4th of 4 that make up some larger identity, a few years ago they insisted I start integrating with this group of others. I was very threatened by it so it took me 3 years instead of 3 months. I came to understand they "composed me". Whereas the four of us had combined, chakras lit up and connected and branched out that Tree of Life thing in 3D, these were different; they showed me that each of them had a different small pattern of lights, like a constellation inside them. When I realized they weren't guides, and asked what to call them, they told me "Aeons." I thought this was retarded, it's a time-word and seemed inapplicable, plus IMO it sounds like some woo-woo thing made up to sound more occultish. So I ignored this, until I got it for about the 10th time, then finally apologized and started using that term.

Well it turns out that thanks to google and wiki, I just recently find that this old gnosticism sect (I assume it's long dead) has some similar model of inner-cosmology. What they are describing is just what I've been experiencing. Yet they describe it as if only 'the christ' or whatever is of this nature (4/12)--obviously if even a proletarian like me is of this nature then surely all humans are. Their doctrine is something like, there are the 4 Aeons of Light, and 12 Aeons 'compose' one. I found it kind of astounding. Apparently there's even something in there about one of the four 'hiding' so some kind of entities they call Archons wouldn't know about him--which is also interesting since I've had that exact scenario in a powerful dream about my mate/twin in the Four. (Although in theory as we are 2 and 2 on first merge, then 1, we are also 7.) I look back now on the mid-90s and I understand, thanks to better educated friends explaining it to me, that my experiences were predictable, when to me I was clueless so they were just bizarre and confusing. I think maybe I'm still kind of in that mode. I guess I kinda wish I'd known sooner, it would have felt validating. On the other hand it might also have created expectations I could do without.

Anyway, to me it is really beginning to seem like maybe that whole concept of "every man and every woman is a star" might be a great deal more ... ah, literal, than seems possible to my logical mind, at least outside meditative states. I was thinking it was just me, but after seeing this stuff is actually recorded from some time ago, now I'm wondering if maybe there is something to that and it really does relate to what you might call the larger, more complex structure of souls, group souls, whatever. Maybe my Aeons really ARE constellations on some level, and I'm the solar star. The meditations I've had that drop me into some kind of space are sometimes very powerful. I had one experience where I understood that a universe was "an idea incarnate." We're part of that so maybe it's all based on the same core idea (number/fractal/pattern).

So what I'm (finally) getting to is this: maybe it's all sort of holographic. Maybe we are created in 12 somewhat fluid... er, pieces, although that's SO the wrong word, I know... and maybe our galaxy has 12 constellations because we do as well, and the "as above, so below" thing just gets taken to a literal extreme that you have to be seriously altered state to... take seriously, maybe.

"Seeing that she was a Virgo-Aries was enough."

Funny. I don't know much about astrology. I have a friend serious about it for many decades who did my natal chart once. I have four planets including sun and mercury in virgo; both venus and mars in scorpio; aries rising; taurus moon. So far all I've gotten out of that is that it's probably good for blaming something on.

I'm hoping to address a lot more of astrology in archetype work but the last Tarot card I did kicked my ass and took me six months to get fully through (Knight of Wands) -- that's what I get for letting my inner guide suggest one, she probably picked the hardest one in the deck or something LOL -- so at this rate I'm going to need to live for several centuries to cover even half the topics I'd like!

93 93/93
RC

93. I've been involved in 'esoteria' for about 18 years now, and officially affiliated with a magickal order for about 16, but I am not active within it in terms of participation (...and I don't live anywhere near an outpost). I'm not involved with the dress-up/group ceremonial magick anymore... am primarily a loner meditative mystic sort for now.

My guidance/direction comes from internal sources... my inner world is a whole cosmology of its own it appears. I have an old penchant for over-thinking things, so for a long time I've worked hard to go the opposite direction to make myself 'live' and not just 'think'. That gives me experience but not always a 'shared context' with others to talk about, particularly since so much of the topic is so cerebral at least 'when discussed'.

I got to AC's stuff and kinship through spontaneous experiences and profound dreams, and I've found my own way, which is not necessarily the same as his. I don't really have any opinions on things I sometimes see covered in Thelemic areas like true source of Liber al... I really don't care. Information is what it is; its value IMO is in what the individual is capable of getting out it, via surface or insight, regardless of source.

I've read some Thelemic works but many years ago, and while some of AC's stuff really moved me, and I still have Israel's massive GD tome, I haven't really been interested in pursuing the more academic side of it all. When I find something interesting it is nearly always because it resonates with some experience or insight I've had. (I see some of the QBL brainiacs on this forum and I have to physically restrain myself from writing them asking, "Oh puhleeeeeeze tell me what this meeeeeans!")

Part of this might be because I've been a single mom the last 13 years which has pretty much consumed all the spare time, money and energy in my life, and that is just starting to mellow a little. I'm in my 40s, live in the midwest, do IT-related work, am a pretty normal person on the outside last time I checked, though a little weird inside.

Glad to be here.

93 93/93
PJ
aka RC

93,

I nearly joined in the dogpiling but that would be too easy. (But really, they are correct.)

I see it's actually too late to be useful. But for posterity I'll be as brief as I can with a suggestion.

Sit down and do some serious imaginative visual meditations. Best to get in a state altered enough to be more allowing and dreamy, but awake enough that you're not going to fall asleep or 'lose traction' mentally. Imagine a loving 'inner guide' to help. (I am hugely condensing this process...)

Come up with at least four different major issues in the situation, and ask your guide to give you a conscious "dream symbol" of that energy. Also do at least two where you let the guide make up 'whatever is best'. So you'll have six total. There is no time limit or restriction.

Ask the guide for the dream-symbol. Allow yourself to perceive it. You will promptly think, "I'm just imagining this." Imagination is the tool and media here so of course you are; but you are allowing your (subconscious, so to speak) to use that tool, this is the "interface", so you can interact with deeper parts of yourself. Don't create-on-purpose, dont withhold-creative-energy; it might take a little adjustment but learn to hold the middle ground and 'let it be'; hold loosely.

When you see the symbol of your first meditation, it might be anything. It won't look like a person (if that is what you're choosing; I suggest instead you choose things like "victimization" and "unfairness" and "threat to my safety" as concepts). It could be a creature, an object/machine/structure, anything. Your imagination is the limit (literally). Given your relationship with this at the moment it's going to have some problem. It might be hard to see initially ('tune' yourself to it. Literally imagine star-trek dials or something on your head). You might never see it real clearly (or it will be TOO clear) but go with it, you should 'sense' it at least somewhat.

It is likely to be injured or bizarre, or monstrous and hostile, whatever. Tell it hello, you honor it, thanks for its attention. Then pray, or imagine, whichever is strongest for you, that a 'rain of love' is falling on you both, and then a 'light of love' (did you see the 5th element? You know the end of that movie? Like that, but from above). Wind of love. Whatever you can come up with it. This should somewhat improve its situation.

Then do whatever is needed. Put it on a medical table, you're a magickal doctor, and heal it. Remove anything hurting it, rearrange its parts if needed, put your palms above it and breathe deeply and imagine sending loving energy into its problem areas. If the whole thing is a problem area (e.g. a giant fanged bug -- definitely a sign of a problem lol) then just imagine sending loving energy through your heart chakra into its very-core until it finally overflows and it will change.

When you've finally got it to a good state (whatever that takes), ask permission and see if you can 'merge' with it. If it works, you'll feel enough body-rush to let you know something's happening. If it doesn't work or it refuses, ask for something to put on or in your body and you provide something to them, to begin better integration. Officially ask the symbol and guide to work with you in this intensely in both sleep and wakening, and make it clear your first intent is to resolve your outer situation that is a threat.

Work on doing at least two a day. Really focus and put some altered state and 'emotional' effort into them. I've had my reality change radically and rapidly way too many times to doubt it. Your intent and allowance of it is really the only criteria.

It sounds simple; it is, though it takes learning to let it happen. If you're interested in astrology or tarot or more serious Jungian-style 'active imagination' work, get 'The Inner Guide Meditation' by Edwin Steinbrecher (foreword by Israel Regardie).

Best,
93 93/93,
RC

93,

"Our way is no more TRUE than his way, but when 99% of available material uses a certain attribution, not to mention the millions of adepts who have "built" these correspondences on the "astral" plane, or in the "collective unconscious"(however you choose to see it) it behooves us to take advantage of the labor of others. "

This is a great quote.

I've been doing archetype (active meditation) work for about 17 years now, and one thing that quickly becomes apparent is that even repetition on your own "builds the thought form" that makes things better perceived, not only in inner-senses, but in terms of seeming to have 'more power'. (Not sure this is a reality, might be as much a perceptual variation as time and space and direction, in that state.)

IMO the universe is infinitely divisible and indivisible. The Tree of Life and the Tarot and Astrology (and probably i Ching and whatever else) are different ways of "broadly categorizing the universe" of energy, but since it's the same universe (internally) they have correlations. (I am zero expert on any of those btw.) I have found that using archetypes that have a great deal more thought-form history (I love the Thoth deck) have a power (or perceived power) that is experientially different from other archetypes, even those which are uniquely personal and powerful to me for my own reasons.

Over time I've come to consider it a sort of secondary thing. I think one could look at the constellations for example, and they are archetypes you can work with internally, but those stars could just as easily be worked into completely different patterns, some left out and others now unused included. There is only 'tradition' that it must be the way it's been laid out (and the tradition varies by culture, though I will caveat here that 'insight' is probably involved in the choices at some point). But I think that the historical thoughtform on a given pattern (e.g. Knight of Wands; or, Aries) creates a sort of extra-effect running through the human experience of it. I'm trying to say that I'm not sure the effect is 'real' as concerns primal energy (for lack of a less retarded sounding term), I just think that it is genuinely-experienced (meaning it may be something more about human experience of the universe, than the universe, if this makes any sense at all).

Anyway, I think using existing, traditional archetypes is a good thing for this reason. They are no more or less real than the infinite alternatives. And I'm all for being creative and letting your inner divine and guides, aeons and soul-siblings and so on guide you into creative and unique things if that's where it leads. But there is something else I don't have a word for, that "traditional" forms provide just as a result of being the oft-used familiar of our species.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"I don't like the idea of leaving a part of me behind. I understand, at least very simply, the idea of transcending the ego when crossing the Abyss. But it strikes me that if one were to cross the Abyss and surrender, that all those elements of you that are below, would be left without Life. They truly would be shells."

Honestly, at least in my own experience, it is nowhere near that "cerebral." I mean this is armchair theory to talk about it. But up close the level of decision isn't 'surface' stuff, it's pretty profoundly deep.

On the bright side, I don't think most people run into this until it's possible for them anyway. I think if a person went into that experience and couldn't continue they would be left insane in varying degrees; too far in without completion I think they'd die. That was my overwhelming feeling upon reflection after it, in any case (I am certainly no expert on these topics).

Anyway my point is I don't think there is any need to worry about it, because I don't think there is any kind of conscious decision or intellectualization you could come up with now, in planning, that can begin to touch the deeper parts of you at that point.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

"this could explain the idea of a “spiritual language“."

There is a language of 'geometry'. It feels like it's all inside you somehow. (Although once in an experience I [to abbreviate] realized I was in the middle of a solar system and could 'feel' everything, every relationship, the space as a thing too, and that a Universe was literally "an Idea incarnate.") I don't know how that relates to verbal languages though.

I often have had a problem with english, particularly when I'm feeling "in the center" as I call it (in spirit, some might say). It's like sound has a geometric shape underlying it, and the shapes have meaning (maybe from the above, not sure). And the meanings that english means 'in sound' is completely not what it means in 'truth' (the geometries). Obviously, this is a little difficult to explain.

Often I've needed a sound that I can feel inside me, in working with ... energy, but I can't find a consonant to make it work. I go through the whole alphabet. It feels like a couple of them combined plus part of another. It sounds so impossible when put in words like this.

Sometimes in my inner-world work, I am given something like a name, and I can feel that a given sound has 'depth'. Like in vowels, as if it is twice the "amount" of that sound somehow, but deep not 'wide' (wide as in stretched out 'in time' as holding or doubling the vowel would be in ordinary language).

It's almost as if, in a certain state of reception, language becomes 3D-plus, but the actual body of it in our reality is ever a flatlander.

I haven't the vaguest idea how this might related to birds. It's simply a response to the part about what might be a spiritual language.

93 93/93,
RC

93,

Since I have nothing to argue about I guess I'm taking this thread offtopic.

Many years ago (...about 16 or so) I took up studying with a quiet asian woman who had got my attention. I was a major 'skeptic' about, well, everything at the time, except that years of self-hypnosis work, and study of PLR's, had kind of cracked my mind open just a little. I was watching this video she was in as part of documentation I was doing for a researcher I was studying with (far less woo-woo things); he had invited her to present at some point in the previous few years so one of the vids had her in it. I was half ignoring it, playing guitar, when suddenly it felt like some thick energy reached through my whole skull and back of neck with warm-fuzzies. I gasped and looked up at the screen (by coincidence, I was in front of it) and she had just put her hands over the head of someone, doing what she called "a healing". This kept on until she stopped. I watched the video six times, feeling it each time though a little less each time. I was completely blown away, spending the first three watches arguing with myself about how I HAD to be imagining it.

Finally I got her address and sent her a letter saying, what can I do for you, to get you to teach me whatever the hell it is you're doing in that video? We met at her house and she did some "energy work" on me. I could SEE gold sparkly energy pouring into my forehead through her hands, I was so amazed. At that particular time period I was temporarily poor, but she said, the universe brought you to me, apparently you're my project--just show up. (The poverty resolved, in great part thanks to massive archetype work I did with her, that radically changed my life in so many ways.) I studied with her for ~1.5+ years and we became close friends, I lived with her six months at one point. We did mostly archetype meditations (ref Steinbrecher style, a Jungian/shamanic thing) and hands-on energy work.

She didn't do Reiki, or Sirius, or... whatever. I guess we were motley mutts with no lineage. Although we worked with color (and sometimes spontaneous visions or... communications with others internally... would provide certain shapes or concepts for us to channel energy "through"), for the most part it was pretty straightforward. It took a lot of constant daily work on all my chakras before I could really feel them and feel subtleties in them though. I thought I was making it all up for awhile.

I never was quite like the few others we worked with; my archetypes were very offbeat comparatively. And when I did energy work on people I almost never had any sense of whatever event or emotional cause was behind something. Maybe it's because I came in a skeptic and not the most emotionally flowing person in the world. (Virgo x4 and both Venus and Mars in Scorpio, Aries rising, Taurus moon -- I was surrounded by Aquarians, Pisces and Libras, fortunately, who more than made up for my lack of gushing woo-woo ness.) Or maybe it's because both then and now I really don't care.

I see it kind of like a mechanic; yes, my reality is my symbolic creation based on inner energetic relationships, sure; if my car breaks, it has a deeper meaning; but my mechanic just uses a wrench and fixes it. He doesn't need to care what caused the trauma, he just needs to know how to fix it. I see healing like that. I don't really want to get into people's personal dramas, although if they're with me in person I will listen while I work. I feel the shapes and hooks and blocks and such that are not righteous and I work on fixing them, with prayer and energy pulled through the crown (and sometimes hands) and output usually via the chakras particularly heart and a few other details.

It didn't seem like rocket science, though it was often powerful and moving and certainly affected me as much as the people; on the best days, I was hardly there, and it was really 'holy'. It took awhile of healing everything and everyone every waking hour (I experimented on the seagulls. If I could get one to come down, land by me, and walk around for a few minutes, just by focusing on him, I figured whatever I was doing was working) to get there though.

Given the amount of Officially Cosmic Experts I've seen go on about this topic (including the Reiki vs. ___ -- a debate I've seen elsewhere), I guess I must have missed something important though. I don't think I ever had an Officially-Official-Initiation. Unless all the weird stuff counts. Not from people and in this reality anyway.

For me it's mostly just a shape+feel thing in practice. I sense geometries, usually, feels rather like the IS-ness language that is felt inside. The only personal info I ever got about people I was working on is the intuitively obvious stuff. (Eg if there is a large barbed metal-feeling hook in someone's 2nd chakra, it doesn't take a genius to know that sexual abuse is in there, or violence if in the first chakra, or manipulatory guilt in the heart -- I didn't even know much about what the chakras meant back then, but that much felt obvious and proved itself true enough times for feedback. By the time I learned something about the chakras intellectually it was like, "duh."). So I think I might be a little retarded on that point since others I've known get a lot of emotional info I don't.

The rapport work when you do stuff with someone at a distance is good practice and feeds well into remote viewing and other psychic work for people into that. That's about the only good it did me later when away from it.

But my life changed drastically after several years of mindblowing weirdness (bewilderness.com), much of which I probably would have dealt with better if I'd had a clue. Later, QBL friends explained how most of my experiences were textbook, both in context and sequence. It's like studying psychology and discovering your seemingly uniquely dysfunctional family is no-brainer predictable and there's your secrets right there in chapter 15... kinda disconcerting.

I've been focused on the single-mom thing for the last 13 years, but now that my kid has reached teen I'm starting to get my "sense of self" back a lot more (started a few years ago, very slowly). I miss hands-on energy work more than anything else. Miss it like a piece of me missing. I'm hoping that by late next year I can find at least a person, if not a group, in the larger city near me, to work with on this.

I'm not sure about paying to train in some official method. Maybe I should look for one? I'm not against paying, or against official methods. It's just that I've met a lot of people who were Official Experts(tm) at this stuff and I never really had the impression they truly were. My teacher, you could be working on her and get distracted for 2 seconds and she'd nail you for it. You could use the wrong color and she'd know. She could project so much energy (delta I suspect) she could knock a house full of hyper people unconscious in about 10-15 minutes if she wanted (when I got decent at energy work and maintaining consciousness while also have some really deep brainwave stuff going on, I became a lot more aware of that kind of thing). I guess my expectation of what constitutes an expert, and she was modest and never claimed to be one, is just different than someone who "paid their money and got their certificate." I wonder what kind of testing these schools have?

Since then I've come in contact with several people who were healers. Some have been impressive. (Not as impressive as the guy who reached through my skin into my guts, but that is a totally different art!) I've never been able to discern "what lineage" someone came from though without their volunteering it. Reiki always struck me like Wicca -- magick "lite" -- (oh boy, someone is going to get me now!) though that might be more based on the people than the art (in both cases) and of course, if my reality reflects me, maybe the people I've met have been more about my belief systems than anything objective.

But the primary two people on this thread both seem quite sincere and serious about it, albeit the wearing stripes on the sleeve thing. I think the hands-on energy work I did was probably the most butt-kicking stuff I did during that period (and is likely responsible for a kundalini experience, seriously over-doing the crown chakra, some of the worst experiences of my life, and years of high weirdness). I think it's probably one of the best exercises a person who wants to "effect change in reality according to one's will" could do.

93 93/93,
RC

In the right state of mind, I perceive them as "polarities that are the same thing". In my normal state of mind though, it's hard to wrap my brain around. RC

93, Thanks for posting that. Coincidentally just the last week I was reminded of it again, and remembered I'd wanted to buy it, as my primary focus is inner archetype work, some of which is similar to some of what Jung wrote about. I used to mourn that I didn't read German, as not all his works are translated. This seems like a great book. 93 93/93 RC