College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Zodiak forces?

@Barrackubus said

"With all the previous discussions on the abyss crossing versus the dark night of the soul....wht is the difference between the two in so how then are they different from each other?"

My attempt at an (short, probably too short) answer would be:

Both are processes which close a gap in personal evolution.

The dark night of the soul closes the gap between the personal and the transpersonal self (or, also, difference between the social role still mostly thought of as "me" at that point and the HGA).

The abyss-crossing closes the gap between the transpersonal and the holistic self (or, also, difference between the consciousness of someone already closely entangled with their HGA and living that and the total potential wholeness of their being - the union of prepersonal (beastly), personal (human) and transpersonal selves).

The hell-ish aspects of both phenomena stem from the immense cognitive dissonances being worked through while going through the two stages.

Hope that helps and curious if others tend to agree/disagree with my statement.

@kasper81 said

"I agree though that a lack of 1) politeness, 2) gentility, 3)civility, 4) self-discipline and 5) "respect for others" are worthy of withdrawal of affection."

@Archaeus said

"I think what he meant was don't be a jerk, I doubt that changes much over time."

Exactly.

@kasper81 said

"That's the issue each individual must as themselves. Can we genuinely live without human affection? Do we need it and from whom?"

Yes. No! Yes, from people relevant to us. What is relevant can be defined in relation to one's authentic intentions, called true will around these parts.

At least that was what I meant.

@amunra said

"
@Los said
"
Show me some demonstrable effect of these supposed superpowers that you're so eager to hold out hope for.
Show me someone who can somehow access the random word plucked out of the dictionary next door and keep doing it.
"

Hey listen there foolish child. SHOW YOURSELF! thats the dictum! either do it or don't but seriously whats your deal? can you be honest about that? you're a nettling imp. ill sqaush you like a bug. you haven't even acumen in physics but you are an authority on thelema?
You are like a flailing fart in the wind your words like ripe decaying matter. the death of the intellect will be hard in this one! nay he shall forever be lost to the voids of Because!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! foolish imp. NEVER temp Magicians to show you there power! Your pissant little 'theories'! Please go fallate dennet or dawkins on their own personal websites. There is alot of doubt about things thelemic on this sight or this imp would have been roundly gainsayed long ago. those such as you have no help to offer us except to weed out those whom you can snag on that gnarled rotting stump you call knowledge. I only read this to find you and snub you out. now begone with this bull."

While it's none of my business, this possibly doesn't, you know, help. Anyone. Manners?

Just passing through.

I am deadly afraid of getting myself into this merry-go-round again.

But, if you guys are to continue anywhere, you will have to define the term "Objective Standard of Detectability" and find a consensus on that definition, or you will be doing a merry-go-round around the axis of that undefined or not consensuated (is that a word?) definition.

@Los said

"Call me when you can actually demonstrate your claims with anything more than bald assertion."

Seriously now, Los. You never demonstrate your own claims. They turn out to be things you personally find good or bad underlaid with ontology from the 19th century.

While you conveniently ignore any facts or arguments to the contrary of your favourite ideas, such as that the existence of psychic micro-phenomena has been proven in all meta-studies here to date by a factor of a thousand billion billion bigger than the existence of the much-celebrated Higgs boson.

Talking to you, if done long enough, is like a merry-go-round. One always arrives at the same place afterwards, as do you.

It's not good kung-fu.

@Frater 639 said

"Simon, always a pleasure. I mean that sincerely.

Now, I'm afraid we're way OT...PM me if you want...or we can play dueling banjos all night (I'm pretty sure we both know the "not that!" game ). But, it won't change my opinion of you; which, for the record, is one of very high-esteem. Again, I mean that sincerely. Always enjoy your posts..."

Hey, no hard feelings, I did mention tongue-in-cheek at the end

Cheers to you too, I am actually a confrontative person, have had to learn (with difficulty) to get along with people who have a need for harmony, and can be felt to come down harsher as intended due to me rarely saying "imo" - this goes without saying.

But, seeing as Los is a confrontative person too, he should be able to take it, and I actually value people's ability to confront (including Los's). If people play social games or do the silence act, I can much less with this than the other way around (I don't mean you, btw!) The latter shows hidden insecurity and hidden weakness to me. Los seems to be, at least, brutally honest as far as I mean to "get" him, if misguided in my eyes, and that is a rare quality in people.

Well, end of self-experiential session contribution.

Tongue-whereever-you-want-it,

Simon

Hi,

Can only answer for my own motivation ...

@Frater 639 said

"Come on, everybody posts for attention, no? Jesus. We're human. If we don't want responses, we can go write in a journal.

Attention is a basic biological and psychological need -- I'm glad the ubermensch (that doesn't need any attention) can let me know that oxytocin and vasopressin are terrible things...talk about a gaping hole in lack of self-realization AND epistemology rooted in materialism."

I did not mention critically that he wants attention and responses (I want that too or wouldn't, for example, post here ), but that he doesn't seem to be aware of his own motivations. Don't know if you have to be superhuman to observe something like that.

@Frater 639 said

"Attention-seeking seems to have negative connotations, when it is part of what makes us alive, human, animal, lovely, motivated, etc. Its value is probably best judged by the person seeking the emotional connection, if they care to examine themselves, and see what they take away from it and the effects it has on them. Also, it takes two to tango (sometimes more) - especially on the forum!"

Actually, agreed.

@Frater 639 said

"Whatever Los' motivations are, he's willing to put on that hat because some people find his brand of controversial opining extremely appealing. It's not like everybody is ignoring him..."

I found his reasoning interesting, even fascinating, though not entertaining, at first, until he began to turn himself into knots and his answers started to seem a copy-and-paste job from the sceptic's manual to me ...

@Frater 639 said

"Just look at the last three OT posts. They are leveled at Los' motivations...so it definitely seems like his posts are entertaining...so much that we see offerings aimed at his psychological and physiological constitution. To me, it's just as disturbing that people choose to profile someone's motivations with self-righteousness and extremely limited information."

So you have now taken it upon yourself to profile the profilers based on self-righteousness and extremely limited information, that'll teach them?

@Frater 639 said

"THAT BOYS GOTTA DEMON I TELL YOU LETS GET EM."

Nah. I at least never did want a witchhunt on Los. Even defended him when some people suggested he was just trolling. And, reaction begets counter-reaction, and when Los gives, he will have to be ready to take some, too, no?

@Frater 639 said

"Probably best to keep any psychological and physiological assessments about a given person confined to a clinical setting, and not just based on posts aimed at entertaining via the use of sensationalism and (sometimes) logical fallacies. I think Los' posts are wildly entertaining from a rhetorician's standpoint -- but, then again, I don't take rhetoric/semantic gymnastics personally or seriously."

Well, it's not as if he would have gotten a DSM diagnosis by his critics now. Though, as said, I am getting a whiff of Aspergers. Which does not have to be a bad thing at all. Did you know Einstein has been suspected to have been one due to his brain structure (analysed when dead) and personal mannerisms (when alive)? So.

@Frater 639 said

"I think it's amazingly funny -- Los only seems to take the extreme divergent viewpoint when somebody else is just as passionate in the other direction. The world needs the skeptic as well as the idealist IMHO -- preferably in the same body..."

He just doesn't argue his point of view very well when looked under the hood. Perhaps I would want to be entertained better.

@Frater 639 said

"Anyway, I apologize for the (mostly) OT post."

Apology graziously accepted.

@Frater 639 said

"I just abhor witchhunts -- probably has something to do with my opinion about Christist attitudes."

Concerning the witchhunts, agreed, but no one is starting any as far as I can see.

I have not often in my life been accused (?) / been attributed (!) "Christist attitudes". Actually, that's a first Well, OK, if it sticks ...

Regards,

Tongue-in-cheek Simon

@HounganRocky said

""Hive minds" is far from the truth."

So the Orishas are very distinct and separate, individualistic, beings in your experience?

@HounganRocky said

"The Orishas themselves are Briatic Beings. The Caminos of the Orishas are in fact Yetizratic beings that build the link between the initiate and the Orisha. Generally, the Yetziratic Camino helps the initiate by pointing out potential problems along the way."

Are you saying that the Caminos and the Orishas are different beings here? That happen to work together, but are not fused?

@Deus Ex Machina said

"Hmm, I don't think the term "hive mind" is what I'd use, but to some extent it seems to fit and isn't that the case with all (most) divinities (and what happens with the Orishas here happens with all of them)?"

@HounganRocky said

"When the Orishas possess properly, they are in fact Briatic and keep Yetziratic entities away."

I agree with the former, so I would ask, why shouldn't an entity be briatic and a hive mind?

In my opinion Los has a blind spot the size of the Himalayas as to his own intention of being here.

What can be said for him is that he seems to be honestly convinced that he has found "the truth" about ontological materialism and the philosophy of thelema - while, again imo, he has not understood either perspective beyond some very basic and superficial foundations.

I get the picture of someone who is very lonely - even when in a crowd - and have found myself asking if he has Aspergers (nothing against people who have it, but it would fit his style) when looking at his copy-and-paste way of debating issues.

Concerning the passive-agressive attention seeking, I guess that is his intention. Subconsciously.

Regards,

Sychological Simon

@HounganRocky said

"A good friend of mine, who is a priestess of Oshun said that when she dies she will become a "camino" or "path" of Oshun. I concluded that the purified Ruach of the deceased priest or priestess becomes part of the Yetziratic "trappings" of the Briatic beings."

As someone who works a lot with this, is it your impression that the Orishas might be a sort of hive minds? I am curious about that.

@Jim Eshelman said

""Possession shall be nine-tenths of the Loa.""

Well ... you can easily interpret the HGA experience as a possession, and it might first be experienced as such, no? The own deep self so alien to the cultural mask one has identified with that the "true" self appears as an alien entity at first ...

Self-possession, sure, but possession still. Possession of the personal and prespersonal selves by the transpersonal self.

Am I overlooking something? The Yoruba high priest of Shango, for example, is the Orisha Shango, by his own experience. And the process how he got there sounds a lot like the HGA experience and subsequent realisation to me.

This is how I arrived at the above conclusion, as far as the Orishas as potential HGAs are concerned.

Edit: Just noticed that this is a version of a proverb I wasn't aware of existed, english isn't my mother tongue. Doesn't change my point, though.

@Legis said

"... I've heard of HGA's manifesting in a people's lives in several different forms: alien, angel, Arab, old white guy, and now Lwa."

Probably the same phenomenon in differing masks.

Different internal symbolic representation, according to personal frame of reference; and different external representation, according to cultural frame of reference.

For the Yoruba culture, most of the Orishas have the same qualities as "Angels" would have had to western medieval scholars.

In my opinion, if the "Loa version" is comparable to the "HGA version" could only be decided upon a deeper analysis of the phenomena experienced and their (empirically observable) consequences, and not via correspondence tables or sequences of training which can and will differ between different traditions. That would be confusing the map with the territory, imo.

Cheers.

Thanks for the very interesting account of your experiences!

Fascinating read.

@kasper81 said

"... I always wondered why he chose the mantle, "black brothers" and not just "black brothers and sisters". Seems a bit sexist"

When Crowley coined the term, sexism had not yet been invented.

Generally, have a look in about a 20km radius around Hallstatt.

Being sensitive, one can find lots of interesting places, of power and holy ones, with eyes open. Be sure to visit the waterfalls of the "Waldbach Strub", the little quasi-christian steles in Hallstatt itself and the "Koppenwinkel Lacke".

Hallstatt may by the way be the oldest still inhabited village on the planet. Earliest finds place the earliest settlement there at 7000BC, so the place is 9000 years old as a settlement. That and its unique position alone - it is built from a lake shore up into a mountainside - make it a place of power.

Regards

Alpine Simon

@Los said

"So I'll ask you the same question that Simon ran away from: what convinced you that these "Secret Chiefs" actually exist?"

You have missed me!

I didn't run away, I noticed a tad too late that I was getting into the same loop as usual with you and decided to spare both of us and the rest of the forum another go on that loop.

@Los said

"As was the case with Simon, I suspect that you've been convinced for crappy reasons, but I'm willing to be shown otherwise."

That's nice of you, dear

Amused Simon

@danica said

"http://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_09.html"

Re-reading that, I have nothing to add. Including to Los: You'll find your answer to the question you asked me in there.

Also, the secrecy of the Ipsissimus grade, plus what Crowley has to say about OIVZ in there, plus your (Los') discussion about the contradiction between OIVZ being his HGA and a sumerian man, resolves the contradiction, does it not.

Regards

Simon

@kasper81 said

"i see what you mean but are they really Thelemic Crowleyan references or homages? . If he respected Liber Al and Crowley then he would've come out and admitted openly the influence that the latter had upon him
Why didn't he? That was my point

True will-power? That isn't true will"

Isn't this point of view a bit dogmatic?

@Los said

"And what makes you think that Secret Chiefs are "out there"?"

Sadly, nothing that would convince you.

Just keep your eyes open.