College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

I found a deck available at an online company call The Checkmate Group, this was a couple of weeks ago.

@Draco Magnus said

"Porta Lucis inspired by Portae Lucis?"

"Gate of Light" is a common term in Qabalah, whether in English or other language. I don't know that any version of the Hebrew text by Gikatilla was known by him (or available in any form), but the tradition of the title was certainly relevant.

The Gates of Light (plural) is enormously influential on our tradition, though. Aside from being the oldest available work examining the Sephiroth in detail - incorporating many core principles such as the Divine Names and that Y.H.V.H. is the basis of the Tree structure - it also likely is the origin of the X=Y grade structure (e.g., 5=6) since the chapters have titles like "The Fifth Gate - The Sixth Sphere."

Crowley's received work, "The Gate of Light" - note the singular in the title - is named after a traditional title of Malkuth.

If you are interested in Sha'are Orah, its author, and its historical context, you might want to read the Wikipedia article on Rabbi Gikatilla:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gikatilla
To put him in context, he wrote this work about half a century or more before the Zohar, and just a little later than The Book of Contenmplation. He was from the same general Qabalistic community as the latter work, which was the codification of the philosophy and vocabulary that allowed the writing of The 32 Paths of Wisdom, which was probably pretty contemporary to Gikatilla's core work.

I've come to believe that worry is a prayer for something you don't want to happen. But since the universe only gives people what they ask for, it doesn't care if we are asking for good, bad, happy, sad, etc. If we are worrying about something we are concentrating on it and that sounds like 'asking' to me. Like one of the posters before me said, if we concentrate on something we are putting out that energy & it puts a form to it. xoxo

@sasha said

"I need to go back and reread this, but I found it useful at the time I began to study Liber Resh:
www.goldenlotus-oto.org/whoAndWhat.htm"

Nice article; answers many of my questions.

I'm really going to have to start doing Resh regularly... 😊

Steve

Sleight of tongue might keep some chelas around for at least 15 minutes every day for a year. 👿

That particular work has been left on the back burner. Every time I start to finish it, another project takes precedence.

But a discussion of the Four Worlds was included in my Visions & Voices that was published a little over a year ago.

always found it usefull to just time things by how many incense sticks i go through.. common sticks go for about 45-60 minutes in my experience...
generally a good meditation imho..

go for half a stick if your looking to go lighter that session..

@Oliver P said

"This leads to another question; when rituals involve direction (often clearly sun-inspired), how does one work in the Southern Hemisphere? I find it makes sense to consider North as the quarter of Fire and South as Earth; or is it more "correct" to perform any rituals as written (usually for the Northern Hemisphere)?"

93

I would say it depends on the ritual. If the rite in question is Resh, then the directions written in the liber certainly are based on the course of the Sun as it appears from the Northern Hemisphere.

Noon Resh should be at the true "Mid-course of the Sun", i.e. midway through the path of the ecliptic between the horizons. As mentioned elsewhere this is rarely at noon, and will place the Sun to the south in the northern hemisphere and to the north in the southern hemisphere.

So noon Resh in New Zealand would still Fire and Ahathoor, but to the North instead of the South.

For other rituals (especially macrocosmic ones), the distinction between tropical and sidereal astrology will largely determine the nature of any difficulty. But my understanding is that latitude is more likely to change the timing of a ritual than it's format.

93/93

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Almost five years after the above post, we're updating the "introduce yourself" thread based on an idea from a forum member.

Instead of a single thread, we now have an Introduce Yourself forum! If you're new here, start a new thread - put your user name as the Subject line - and let us know something about you.

This approach makes it easier to track answers to your actual post, among other advantages.