College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@Frater MVKDSh said

"I am not a cult leader. I ask no one to follow me. If you do not know me in real life, it is likely you will never meet me. I will not ask you for favors; I will not control your life. I am just one Voice of a myriad of voices in the wilderness who speak TRUTH.

I ask you not to follow me. You will be left behind. My dust in your mouth."

Wasn't planning on it.

@Frater MVKDSh said

"I ask you not to worship me. No Man knows the TRUE name of the G-d of his brother or sister.

"

Seems like you are trying to come through the back door on that one

@Frater MVKDSh said

"I reveal to you a profound mystery."

You mean: how they get the cream filing in Twinkies?

@Frater MVKDSh said

"None shall see the End Times who worship false Idols.
"

What is a fasle idol? It seems to me that every conception of God or what not eventually turns into as false idol.

Maybe you should have let this post simmer a bit before putting it up.

If some sort of definitive evidence emerged to show that Crowley did not produce the Book of the Law when he claimed, would that change the validity of it's message to you? Would the images contained in his writings: Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, etc., still have importance or validity to you? Would you still consider Crowley to be an authentic "prophet"? How do you think it would affect your practices? your ontology? Do you think that you would still hold in esteem Crowley's other writings: Book4, The Holy Books, The Vision and the Voice?

I'm just a bit curious at the moment and I kind of want to stir up the pot...

For the past couple of months I have tried to embrace a new paradigm out of sheer necessity to see some results. Ceremonial magick simply wasn't bringing about the results I've been looking for unless I was willing to fight with a goetic spirit repeatedly to get what I needed to happen, I knew that something was off I simply didn't know what. I had been flirting with the idea of working with the Voodoo spirits for some time and decided to give it a go.

 In the Afro-based religions of Voodoo, Santeria, and Yoruba the first being that you must make contact with before working with anything else is Papa Legba (as he is know in Voodoo). So, I went about getting everything that I would need to get into contact with Papa Legba. I set an altar by my front door and began to do a ritual to welcome him into my home. I sprayed rum on the walkway leading to my front door, burned lots of tobacco, and blasted Yoruba Music on Pandora, as the ritual went on a presence began to fill the house. I lit some red and candles and let them burn down and as they did the magical feeling became even more intense. The little poppet I made seemed to come alive and a grandfatherly presence settled into the house. 

 Weekly offerings of cassava bread, coffee, rum, and tobacco continually re-enforced my desire to have his presence and power around. One day, it became more than just a "presence" as Papa Legba started to talk to me and began giving me practical advice on my situation and things that needed to happen. I had some serious doubts about this until a friend of mine, who practices Santeria, was talking about what I had been up to to his Godmother and she fell into a trance and related the same information back to him! So, I sent him money to make an offering to their shrine to Legba, and I got a call a couple days later and got a new job! 

 I rearranged my temple, under the instructions given to me in a dream by Papa Legba, and the force increased dramatically. Spirits began to present themselves to me wanting to work with me, and spirits that I was already working with became less troublesome. The obstructions in my life have literally crumbled at my feet in just the last week, and boy, was it surprising to learn what those obstructions were. My emotions are running freely for the first time in several years and my musical ability just keeps growing and growing in literally days (I haven't even picked up my guitar in almost 3 years, now I can put it down!). Not to mention the psychic channels have been opening up after being blocked for too long and an overwhelming force feels like it's pouring from my heart!

  Sorry for the rant, but what I am trying to relate is that these Afro-based religions are absolute powerhouses and deserve some serious investigation by ceremonial magicians. I mean shoot, I spend more time praying now than I ever have before and developing new out-of-the-box rituals to deepen the connections I've created. I wonder if Crowley had been introduced to Santeria or Voodoo properly I wonder how Book 4 would read...

A point that has not been brought up: what is the quality of the Olive Oil menstruum that is being used? Virgin, Extra Virgin, Pharmaceutical Grade? I have a blend that I made with extra virgin olive oil the effects were much less dramatic and probably would become even more tolerable with virgin olive oil.

Also somewhere on the forums a discussion cropped up over the use of calamus over galangal. Recently, as I have been researching African based religions I discovered that calamus is an ingredient in most recipes for Van Van oil which is common dressing oil in most workings.

@AHIH_RVA said

"I believe the product is supposed to have a rather fiery constitution. Some people are more sensitive to the oils, though, I've seen a few people with large red patches left on the skin days after application."

That mainly occurs with very cheap essential oils. Cheap essential oils are, generally speaking, not even essential oils, they are a "fragrance" oil, i.e. synthetic garbage. Quality oils may heat you up but should NEVER burn the skin as described above. I wouldn't put anything on my skin that I would not also be able to ingest (even in a small quantity).

Hi Kwawlian,

Welcome to Heruraha.net where forum members don't suck!

I'm an amateur artist myself here in the States. By demand I recently began to produce Veves and spirit seals on canvas with corresponding herbs/minerals and under appropriate planetary days and hours. It would be excellent to correspond with you, perhaps you could lend some advice?

The Silent1

@Jim Eshelman said

"Furthermore, the word "spirit" is misleading in its use there: It doesn't mean the same thing as the word "spirit" in Qabalistic magick. In the cases you cite, it means the living essence of human beings who have died. But that isn't at all what it means in the Goetia (for example), or in the Qabalistic hierarchies, etc."

I see your point there.

Just a note: generally speaking in the voodoo and Santeria traditions before initiation the candidate must make contact with his/her ancestrial spirits to ask them to aide in their initiation. In fact, in those traditions you cannot approach the loa without prior contact to the ancestor spirits and generally that contact requires oaths of service. I emphasize that the spirits are SUPOSSED to be there to aide in the initiation of the candidate.

@AvshalomBinyamin said

"Just remember that that the raw ingredients each yield different amounts of oil. So, if you mix the essential oils in the same proportions as the raw ingredients, you'll get a very cinnamon-heavy oil that may irritate your skin."

If I'm not mistaken, Crowley suggests using the essential oils.

The best way would be to extract the essential oils yourself, but if you are on a budget you can find the essential oils on the web. Make sure you use high quality oils since you will be putting this on your skin.

I was once anointed with Abramelin Oil made from cheap essential oils and broke out pretty badly.

I measured the recipe amounts in drams, and used pharmaceutical grade olive oil for my base. Once mixed I filtered out the sediments and discarded them. The result was an oil that was reddish gold and extremely potent.

You will need a lot of time to do it right at least an hour and a half.

@The Old Guitaris said

"
Holy (****) (no pun intended) are you serious? What could the health benefits of flossing your intestines possibly be?"

Apparently, Yogis have nothing better to do than pick at their butts.

I don't know about how healthy prolonged retention is. Recent evidence actually points to the contrary. I have noticed that retaining for short periods to build up the "magick force" but I always release and often times consume it as a sacrament while visualizing on a sigil of desire or spirit. The Great Rite is perfect for this. It can only be described as a high that matches no other.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5263250/ns/health-sexual_health

It often seems as if the act of looking for change produces change. It sometimes seems as though our memories of our perceptions have a retroactive effect on our reality. In our desire to find a cause for our current emotional/mental/spiritual/physical status our minds tend to create causes, and then we proceed to attach a sort of meaning to that cause.

Example:

 Today at work I broke a drill (no not really but let us suppose) and I also smashed my finger. My utter frustration causes me to wonder, "why me, why today?" 
 So I look back at the past week and and I begin to look for other unfortunate experiences. Yesterday I ripped my pants, the day before my cat puked on the carpet, before that my credit card got declined etc.. I now begin to look for a cause and I start to think: "well the other day I didn't perform all of my banishing rituals and I didn't do my Resh."
 At this point I really start to fall into error. I have now convinced myself of the calamity of either doing or no doing certain acts and having an undesirable outcome. This, in my opinion, can start me down a path of bad magical thinking which can lead to obsession. With this new conviction I superstitiously avoid leaving my house without LBRPing or saying prayers of protection etc.. In short, I have found the fast track to OCD, whereby, my magick no longer works for me, but against me. 

Actually, I recently identified some certain obsessions that such thinking caused and have spent my free time trying to correct them with mindful in-the-now attitude. A great deal, if not all, that we do magically has purpose and effect in so much in that it causes us to embrace the present moment.

I think the value is in the memorization of the text not that the text itself will "polarize" your reality. Read the text for what it is and don't project your own ideas or fears into it. Just read and don't look for anything to change suddenly. The texts are subtle and sublime allow them to work on you in the same way.

I happen to know that the in latest OTO "initiation" copy of of Liber Al some of the handwritten portions of the text were "shopped" to make them more readable. Never could quite figure out how one of the more fundamentalist thelemic groups would do something like that.

@danica said

"
@TheSilent1 said
"Wow, very interesting choice of words, alrah:
"good servant of the house (or temple)"

After I received the name of my angel, I ran the gematria and re-occurring theme was the word and idea of "storehouse." No matter how I crunched the numbers (greek/hebrew/hebrew finals) the three different sums I found bore a relationship with the word "storehouse," I consulted with a friend well versed in kabbalah and jewish mysticism and he said that the idea of a storehouse was not necessarily about a place of keeping food but also place to educate and feed the poor. Think of the story of Joseph and his brothers."

TheSilent1, I was reading about **Pleiades **on the net (wikipedia) and this post of yours came to mind, because it seems that in many cultures the meaning of the name this star-cluster was something along the lines of "storehouse" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_in_folklore_and_literature).
and this may also be of interest to you (quoted from the above-mentioned source):

"In Indian astrology the Pleiades were known as the asterism (nakshatra) Kṛttikā (which in Sanskrit is translated as "the cutters").[10] The Pleiades are called the star of fire, and their ruling deity is the Vedic god Agni, the god of the sacred fire. It is one of the most prominent of the nakshatras, and is associated with anger and stubbornness."
"

All I can say is: WOW!!! This is amazing Danica THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

@christibrany said

"I was wondering about this sort of thing recently.
Would you consider someone who is still in a Student phase and only doing basic banishings and meditations and only one or two invocations to do a working for a servitor or servant spirit?"

"KNOW THYSELF" and you will know what you can handle.

It doesn't take too much effort to create a simple servant spirit with a temporary life span. Franz Bardon gives a simple method on how to give life to an "elemental." Remember to give the spirit a limited lifespan.

@christibrany said

"
If it IS fine, when you do that kind of work is the spirit ever visible phsyically, like as waves in smoke or other natural environmental manifestations say, or is it almost always just in your minds eye?"

Some sort of sign of manifestation should occur, but that should not govern your success or failure in the operation. You know that your magick is successful when the spirit fulfills the charge you give it.

@christibrany said

"
How about if one is not quite perfected in their astral sight , is it worth giving it a go?"

Practice makes perfect. See Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics for a "simple" method to procure servant spirits without elaborate ceremonies. (If you work the book like a text book you should have no problem "seeing" and "hearing" spirits.)

@christibrany said

"
And is it the kind of entity you can just keep around you and dont have to banish after each in/e/vocation?
thanks!"

Don't banish the spirit after you evoke it. Don't call a plumber over then tell him to leave before he fixes the leak. Rather, thank the spirit for showing up, remind the spirit of the charge you have given it , have it swear an oath of loyalty, bless it in the name of the creator, and send it off to do it's job. After you know the spirit has depart wrap up it's sigil, put it away, and then banish.

@Jim Eshelman said

"
Excuse me... I'm not usually so rude... but that's just plain stupid. I thought so when I first heard this idea 20 years ago, and I still think so. "

Wow, I have to say this remark took me a minute to swallow.

Jim, I respect your work and your opinions, but I can think of several different ways you could have stated your views.

@Fire Giver said

"If it has been burned to ash, then it's a worthless substance and might as well not have been included. This ingredient needs to go in as a live substance and maintain its pranic vitality. The recipe drops to the level of mindless superstition if you kill it first."

Not necessarily true, if you refer to the text:

"24. The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.

25. This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me.

emphasis added by me "

My recipe involves using a blank cake consecrating it then reducing it to ash by repeated calcination. Mind you in spygeric alchemy the feces of the plant must be calcined repeatedly to produce "white ash" which is the salt of the plant.

In fact, the whole process of producing the cake is an Alchemical process. The wine that I use has had the mercury (alcohol) distilled off for other purposes and the sulphur (the gooey stuff that remains) serves as my wine leavings. Next combine the meal and honey and abramelin oil. These ingredients are then combined with the Salt from the prior calcination to produce the Elixar or the Cake of Light. Properly made cakes should be firm and have their own life keep stored in a cool dark place and treated as any other alchemical/magical talisman.

"29. Moreover, be they long kept, it is better; for they swell with my force. All before me."

Colored vinyl tape from your local hardware store looks great. If you work slowly and have a chalk outline you can make a perfect circle with a single piece of tape. I wish I had a picture of my temple to Jupiter where I made an awesome looking circle with blue vinyl tape.