College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@Uni_Verse said

"ADDEDNUM:

You mention it not being published(but obviously, you read it) ; where did you read it (curiosity)?"

93,

My understanding is that it was never published in his lifetime, and has been, until recently, difficult to find.

It's fairly easy to find online. The version I read was at Eidolons of Ash, here:
<!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ashami.com/eidolons/The_Djeridensis_Working">www.ashami.com/eidolons/The_Djeridensis_Working</a><!-- w -->

Love=Law

93,

As another mentions, compassion is tied up with the notion of pity. compassion comes from compatio which literally means to suffer (patio) with (com)...

"Essentially, sorrow, pain, regret, fear, and one other psychological phenomenon – pity – are all signals of “failure” to perform an act of “love under will” properly – that is, assimilate an experience in a harmonious way.

In regards to pity, in the second chapter of Liber AL vel Legis it is written,“Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler”[7] and also in the third chapter it is written, “Mercy let be off; damn them who pity!”[8] Crowley comments on this saying, “It is several times shewn in this Book that 'falling' is in truth impossible. ‘All is ever as it was.’ To sympathize with the illusion is not only absurd, but tends to perpetuate the false idea. It is a mistake to 'spoil' a child, or humour a malade imaginaire. One must, on the contrary, chase away the shadows by lighting a fire, which fire is: Do what thou wilt!” Crowley asserts that pitying another is akin to “sympathiz* with the illusion,” for it is said in Liber AL that “Existence is pure joy,” and “all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains."[9] One can only pity someone that is in a situation that one perceives to be “unfortunate,” but if one truly understands the dictum of “Existence is pure joy,” they know that even this pity is based on a false perception of things and therefore “sympathyz* with the illusion.” This echoes the sentiments that Friedrich Nietzsche expressed when discussing Christianity as a religion of pity. He writes,

“Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy--a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause.” [10]

Nietzsche also identifies pity as the “contagious source” of even more of “that drain upon strength” than what normally is experienced from suffering or sorrow “multiplied a thousand fold.” He continues,

“Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue… Let me repeat: this depressing and contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the role of protector of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of decadence--pity persuades to extinction… Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative… Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity.” [11]

Pity not only causes more identification with the “shadows” of suffering, but it “preserves whatever is ripe for destruction” because it is a “contagious instinct [that] stands against all those instincts which for the preservation and enhancement of life” – something that one obviously should have to maintain physiological and psychological health.

Aside from these appearances of sorrow, pain, regret, fear, and pity being treated as signs of maladjustment – or “love” being performed not “under will” – there are also the considerations of sin and reason that are mentioned in previous chapters. The thought of oneself as sinful is obviously a misperception in Thelema, and reason must be kept in its rightful place as interpreter and helper of the Will, which must be performed with tireless energy, without regard to purpose, and unattached to any lust of result. Any diversion from this necessarily restricts the Will, and not only is “the word of Sin… Restriction,”[12] but “thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.”[13]" -Psychological Commentary on Liber AL: Psychological model of failure

IAO131

You will not get Zen like results from LBRP.

Its not really like a mechanical operation that must be performed in a certain way. Ritual are more like learning dance steps, at first it seems mechanical and difficult, but eventually you just do it without being conscious of each step. One does not dance in order to do the steps right, if one has to ask "am I doing it right" in the middle of dancing, one is assuredly not dancing correctly.

Rather, when dancing one looses oneself in the activity, stops worrying, it becomes organic and fluid.

Dancing is a way of "catching the beat of the music" likewise the rituals of magick are a means of catching the "current" or the spirit of whatever the ritual is designed to harmonize with.

Try to do LBRP as if it where a dance, learn the steps, then forget the steps and try to hear the music.

In magick the music is not sound, the LBRP the result is a sort of clearing of an inner space, an opening of the mind. The more it is performed the clearer the mind space gets. The nature of each pentagram determines the nature of the space, one can banish or invoke any element combination of elements into that space.

In zen you may practice focus on a single idea of object. LBRP, clears a space in which to hold that object of focus. Even nothingness, needs a place to manifest in the mind. The circle on the ground is linked to the space in the mind. What is done in one space reflects the other.

A full invocation of a God-form clears out the ego from the I space, and replaces it with another persona or God-form. Generally though you will start with banishing accidental or non-essential aspects, rather than the whole ego. Generally its the conceptual of visual imagination that one works with at first, not directly on the ego as a whole, until working with the Rose and Cross, uniting the SOL of the hexagram ritual with the Spirit point on the pentagram.

@ThatNarrowFellow said

"In general, do people think this is a waste of time, or do you wish we could replace the old civil calendar with the new one?"

I enjoy all kinds of calendric fun, but I always come back to Crowley's Djeridensis comment on the Book of the Law, II:42-43 (the "feast every day" and "feast every night" lines). A commemorative calendar can grow and grow to the point where every moment is inflamed with reminders of our path, such that we stop discriminating between "sacred days" and "profane days." All time is holy! 😄

But the stops along the journey to that point are fun, too. For an overview of secular calendar reform, wikipedia ain't too bad. I'm a fan of the ancient Romans, so I kind of enjoy the clunky, idiosyncratic aspects of the calendar we inherited from them.

For the devotional aspects of Thelema, I needn't point you to Jim's Thelemic Tephilah (just see the Meditation of the Day sub-forum here). Richard Kaczynski has an alternate version, which I'm pretty sure I posted about here (but couldn't find with Google just now). For the EGC, Matthew Rogers put up a list of Gnostic Saints days, and Asad al-Haqq created a much lengthier version.

And all this without even mentioning astrology! 😱

Steve

Most important practice: if I have to pick only one, I would have to concur with most in this discussion, and say the Diary. For mine, I record events as they occur, specifying not only the rituals/practices used, but exactly how each was interpreted, results, time of performance, and so forth. I take especial pains to either a) avoid poetic language, or b) provide as precise a definition as possible for poetic phrases which I find to be of particularly good use in a particular circumstance. Not but three days ago, I wrote out a definition of my meaning for "Holiness" in reference to my twice daily ritual work.

I guess the best way to put it, as to my approach to the diary, is to write it as if you intend somebody else to read it and understand it, even get some use out of it. Thus kept, it should come out clear, specific and detailed. Of course, keeping oneself honest is of prime importance.

I also do not think that it can be overstressed as to just how important it is to record the results of any working immediately after ending the work, if not during. (I keep a digital voice recorder handy when doing astral work, so that it can serve as a "scribe" during my visions.)