Does each tattwa dominate for 24 minutes, period, the end, regardless of location or time of year?
If the cycle always starts at sunrise and is rigidly 24 minutes each until the next sunrise, then the final Prithivi is gonna get shortened a bit each night when the days are getting longer (earlier sunrise), and there should be a little "bonus" Akasha after the last Prithivi when the days are getting shorter (later sunrise). Is that the case?
I shouldn't say "can you banish the HGA" per se. That would be ... weird and problematic, one feels. I meant more of the accumulation of energy over time in the operation, the transmutation of the Adept.
Crowley argues (of rituals in general) that one should banish to get rid of whatever energy was not absorbed in the ritual, lest it degenerate and become evil. In that light I think it probably is quite reasonable. And as you note, Hermes, practicing the essentials never hurts. Jim has noted elsewhere in these forums how LRP is a very useful ritual and not just for banishment.
Thanks for bouncing thoughts back at me. I think I have the answer I sought. 
I can't recall if this has been asked before (even by me!) but some searching suggests it has not. Sorry if I missed an instance.
It's natural that one would banish the Temple in which one is doing the HGA invocation at the beginning of the overall Operation, but does it make sense to banish at the beginning/ending of every individual session? Would not we want the force to accumulate as the Operation progresses? Isn't it enough for the Magician to purify herself before each session in whatever way she is Guided to do?
Or do we feel that the HGA is in some sense "unbanishable" and thus doing a banishing ritual has no real effect on the Adept/Angel bond as it forms, just cleansing the space of undesired crud which is inevitably going to get in?
Or am I being silly for even asking the question since every single HGA opus is different?
I feel that if one's HGA always stepped in to prevent even spiritual harm (at least, the sort of spiritual harm that affects an entire incarnation), no one would ever fail at crossing the Abyss, right? The Angel would keep you from jumping. And yet it happens.
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Also:
@Jim Eshelman said
"PS - I think you asked about my dagger (or was that somebody else's recent conversation?). FWIW, here's a picture."
Your Word to represent the Universe was cheth, as in the letter, "a wall, fence, or enclosure" ? Good one (and 418, of course).
@Jim Eshelman said
"You surely noticed that I pointed out in Pearls that the classic temple floor plan in Book IV is the 671 floor plan
"
Years of studying Thelemic magick, albeit solitary and without good guidance, and I'm still surprised by things like how universally the Formula of the Neophyte can be applied.
Having recently read through and did my best at Liber Pyramidos, that makes total sense, but I never thought of 4 pt. 2 as a handbook for it. The more you know!
And sword = Mars makes sense; of course the GD handled the distinction that way. (Which is why I wondered why Crowley had temporarily gone the other way.)
That dagger of yours has quite a "pedigree", then. I bet it works well 
And thanks as always.
Edit: "handbook for T'raa", I'm sure, not Pyramidos, but the triad is in Pyramidos and that's where I know it.
By the by, has there been a discussion here, or do you have some insights, about why Crowley changed the Air weapon from a sword in Book Four part 2 to the dagger of Armorum? In 4 pt. 2 he has the dagger representing Mercury, as part of the triad with the scourge and chain, but I've not seen an explanation for why the switch.
@Jim Eshelman said
"PS - I think you asked about my dagger (or was that somebody else's recent conversation?)."
May have been somebody else, but, thanks for sharing! That's beautiful. Armorum says the hilt should be gilt; is that gold leafed or painted yellow (the luster is a bit hard to say for sure, but it looks like yellow).
Did you make it yourself or you found an artisan, as with your Wand?
Jim (and friends!),
Following up in reverse order on my question about the Cup design, I ask a couple small points about the Dagger:
Let the Zelator take a piece of pure steel, and beat it, grind it, sharpen it, and polish it, according to the art of the swordsmith.
Let him further take a piece of oak wood, and carve a hilt. The length shall be eight inches.
I read this as the overall length of the dagger should be 8", as opposed to the blade or the hilt separately, but am I missing anything in thinking so? So an 8" piece of steel would be a full-tang dagger, so we're really more into "boot knife" territory than what is usually labeled a "dagger" today, correct?
There's one little subtlety in the Wand's description which throws me a bit:
Let the Philosophus take a rod of copper, of length eight inches and diameter half an inch.
Let him fashion about the top a triple flame of gold.
Note here that the rod is 8" and then we fashion a triple flame of gold, which might well add a bit to the length, whereas the 8" is mentioned after the dagger's hilt (and implicitly the tang).
Here's a good one:
The purification "asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor" (sprinkle me with hyssop, Lord, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow) = 635 = ××× × ××× (Adonai Melekh), "My Lord (the) King" (using the final Kaph value).
(edit to add: Counting the letter U as V, as you would in Latin: MVNDABOR, SVPER)
I'm skimming and skipping around a bit, after reading the first couple chapters to get the gist of what's going on.
May I say, it would be worth paying for just for the observation about Tunguska?
Seriously, this is intriguing stuff.
Whoops. I didn't even think about space I was taking up on Jim's servers when I uploaded my homemade Zelator and Practicus "hood ornaments" a while back. I'll go back and point my post at my own server. Sorry about that!
@Jim Eshelman said
"Also, people who don't have major brewery family inheritances can afford it."
"I think in all of these implements that the physical electrical characteristics are among the most important in the traditional descriptions."
... I'd never thought of that. WOW. I had for the wand (the GD practice of having a conductor down the length of the Fire wand) but not the other tools. Huh.
"I don't know for sure what these are for pewter (if it's tin and copper, it should be good conductivity), but pewter always feels to me leaden, more inert, heavy - always feels like a Saturn metal to me."
Well, nowadays because of lead poisoning, etc. food-safe pewters are made without it. Wikipedia tells me it's mostly tin, plus copper and stuff like antimony or bismuth. But your point is taken.
Appreciate that, Jim. Armorum says to take silver and fashion it therefrom, but you feel silverplate is reasonable for mages of more modest means?
What of other "silvery" metals such as pewter? Pewter being largely tin and copper, that would be a lot of Jupiter and Venus in the mix, but those don't strike me as terrible for a Cup as planetary influences go ...
Jim (and anyone else who'd care to chime in),
You posted a picture of your triple-flame Wand a while back. Is there a picture you're willing to share of your Cup? I'm wondering what sort of "design" for a cup would fit Armorum.
One could apparently just make an 8" tall by 3" diameter highball glass out of silver and call it a Cup and still be doing it by the letter of Liber A vel Armorum, but I wonder if folks have more elegant designs.
"On particulars, I was particularly thrown by the suggestion that Chesed's inherent expression is Karma Yoga, which I find to be almost the whole of the work of G'vurah. There's an article on that topic in Pearls."
Oops. I see that my formatting above was unclear. I should have put in more linefeeds; then you would have seen:
i.e.
to teach a school of thought -> Chesed,
to do karma yoga -> Geburah,
to do creative/Yetziratic things -> Yesod,
etc.?
"There's also the persistent doubt (at least in AC's mind at the time) of whether Achad actually crossed the Abyss - he was only formally a 2=9 when he undertook it so, as well, Malkuth was the last sphere in which we have confirmation that he perfected the Work."
I've always had a strong interest in Achad and trying to learn from his mistakes.
"But, to make up examples not particularly rooted in any knowledge of his life, it could have been a mission to bring teachings related to the body, or specifically to accomplish something in the field of action - a lower octave of Karma Yoga - or to do personal work and bring teaching related to the phenomena of forming components and integrating them, of being divided for love's sake to set up the coagula - or all sorts of other things."
Mmm, okay, that makes sense. Thanks for being patient with my line of questioning.
@Jim Eshelman said
"
@sk4p said
"Second, I question the whole idea of "motive" here. The Master doesn't do it "because" X or Y. "
"
More accurate, then, to say "this is simply how it works in nature", that a Master is cast forth, rather than through any particular "choice"?
"The Master is not without ego, but more truly "has" ego in the way that he has a warm winter coat or a pet or a car."
Yeah, almost as soon as I clicked submit on the "no Ego" bit, I thought "way to oversimplify, Shawn."
But in general, is it reasonably accurate simply to say that the cast-forth sphere is just the manifestation of the Master's True Will (i.e. to teach a school of thought -> Chesed, to do karma yoga -> Geburah, to do creative/Yetziratic things -> Yesod), etc.?
If so, I'm still confused what Achad's "sphere of the elements" would be; that would be Malkuth, and every incarnate being is operating in that sphere already, no? I'm not sure how that would be distinct from any other incarnate Master. (We can argue that Achad became a Black Brother and thus wasn't actually cast forth as a Star at all, but at the time OSIS was written, I'm trying to figure out what A.C. had in mind.)
Crowley in One Star In Sight mentions that he was cast forth from the Abyss into the sphere of Jupiter, and that Achad was cast forth into the sphere of the Elements. And Jim in the Proserpinus record mentions that he was told by his Angel which sphere he would be cast into (and despite curiosity, I won't ask, because I assume he wouldn't have redacted the sphere if he wanted us to know
Things I wonder about this, which I welcome discussion on:
I've seen one recent writer refer to this as basically the Boddhisattva vow, returning to the world to help mankind. That seems to make sense. Any disagreement?
The character of the sphere in question would seem to indicate the Master's "role" now that he lacks Ego. Jupiter would be Exempt Adept, leader of a school of thought, and that would certainly seem to fit Crowley, yes. But what about the sphere of the Elements for Achad? OSIS was written in An xvii (about 1921), so the split hadn't fully manifested yet, if at all. So I don't think this is some veiled reference to Achad being a Black Brother; yet the sphere of the Elements is in some sense where we all live, so I'm confused by it.
Given the nature of being a Boddhisattva, I would think an awful lot of the forth-cast stars would wind up in Jupiter as Crowley did, no? I guess most of the other spheres would be people working without ego, without attachment, and thus probably much more "behind the scenes" and not being noticed. Any thoughts?
I ask since I'm about to come back from the Abyss myself and want to know where to land huge wink No, I'm thankfully nowhere near those concerns yet; just learning.
Speaking of which: Jim, do you claim any copyright or legal "ownership" of the letter/value table of LQS, or merely the text of your presentations thereof in your various publications? (Is such a thing even possible to copyright/patent? I don't honestly know.)
If you don't have an issue with it, I'll add LQS as an option to my online calculator and start putting entries in my DB as I find them.