Hello, I want my book. Bonjour, je veux mon livre.
If I have one regret about my magickal career: I didn’t start journaling sooner, and didn’t really know what I was doing with my journal for the first few years. The earliest magickal diary of mine that I can find is from 2006. I’m sure I kept records earlier than that, but maybe not. If not it boggles me that I waited so long to start. I know I recorded individual events from earlier on, but nothing complete.
A handful of my diaries
Recently I’ve been rereading my magickal diaries as part of climbing trees for apples instead of grabbing fallen ones from about the field (Dear HGA: Be a grown-up spirit and use your words). What I have found has been so very insightful, and surprising, and it reminds me, this is one of the many reasons to keep journals.
I found conversations with gods and spirits I had forgotten, sometimes their lessons had been integrated into my life and my Work, other times I reread what they told me, and realize eight years later I’m still making the same mistakes because I forgot and moved on.
Some things surprise me, like dreams of Tubal-Qayin eight years ago, when I wasn’t even working on that Path yet, or patterns/symbols/figures showing up long before they became consciously part of my life. (Oh ye gods, so many peacocks…) Or a Vision of Mother giving me Kalagni, years before I picked it up as a pseudonym, and I had forgotten.
I found techniques I’ve forgotten, but records show were effective.
Perhaps more importantly I’ve found things that were ineffective, or areas I’ve always had difficulty with. Money magick, I’ve had a knack for shifting things to get what I need when needed. Sex and romance magick, excellent results. Job magick on the other has routinely been hit-or-miss, with more on the miss side. I find that interesting, and while I don’t know the reason (bad strategies, money is more open-ended, there just aren’t enough jobs and magick only does so much, whatever) it’s something for me to consider. It’s also something I can take solace in as I’m job hunting right now, and even with magick my results have been less than encouraging.
This is something I talked to a friend about recently though. He’s more of the fly by the seat of his pants energy focused magickian, so journal keeping seems alien to him. In the time I’ve known him I’ve seen him pull a few rabbits out of his hat, I’ve also seen a few situations that have me feeling like Rocky the Squirrel. The thing is, his opinion is “I don’t need to record my stuff, I want, I work, I get what I want.” He completely glazes over his failures. He might not be doing it on purpose or in an disingenuous way. Think of intuition, if you suddenly think of someone, and run into them, why that’s something you’ll note and remember, but if you think of them and don’t run into them, then you forget the next day. You’re not trying to be dishonest about your intuition, it’s just you’re not going to remember a non-event generally.
Still looking for this book
Magickal failures, unless they’re spectacular blow outs (like frying your first laptop, flooding your basement…twice), are not going to be remembered as easily as the successes. Not because we try to forget, but when cause doesn’t have an effect our mind doesn’t link the event (magick working) and the non-event (failure) and so we forget all about it. Obviously we shouldn’t dwell on our failures, but we really should be aware of them. It teaches us where our magick is weakest, be it a realm of magick (like Martial magick or job work or healing) or if it is a specific technique (scrying or invocation) and this opens up two options. It lets us see where we need to improve or perhaps shift things around to get them to work, or maybe it tells us not to focus somewhere and that be the area we ask for help in. It’s come up before, but not every occultist can or will be good at everything, and while I think we should work on some degree of proficiency, we should also know when it’s better to turn to someone more skilled than we are.
Your journal doesn’t have to be supercomplicated, I had a period of six months were mine was, it wasn’t worth it, but make sure it’s complete. Record your dreams, record your practice, record anything out of the ordinary, if a ritual feels weak or weird or powerful, record your visions. More importantly though, don’t record and forget the magickal diary, come back to it. I reread my Abramelin journals every year just before my anniversary, and I love it, and now that I’ve reread all my journals for the last 8 years I have a lot to think on, and arguably I learned more from rereading them, then I’d learn from any other magickal text you’d give me.
ver on Conjure Gnosis Balthazar recently posted a tarot spread based on The Sphinx Gate from The Neverending Story. I highly recommend you check it out. Considering how important The Neverending Story is to my occult cosmology I can’t believe I had not thought of a tarot spread based on it, though I have worked out all the Majors as characters and events. (Seriously, I have 28 pages of notes on how it’s actually a mystical/occult text, I reread it ever year, and have an AURYN pocketwatch, based on the movie design, because that’s the only thing better about the movie.) Anyways Balthazar did a great job, with one fatal flaw…he used the dreaded movie! I know I know, everyone born in the late 70s and 80s loves the movie, and as a standalone movie it’s pretty damn good…but if you read the book you realize how horrible the movie is. The movie only tells half the story, and worse still it tells the setting, it paints the picture for the real story which takes place after Bastian renames The Childlike Empress, after the movie ends. I’m digressing. Anyways, I like what Balthazar did, and the inclusion of Gmork and Falkor cards is a great idea, but I’m a book purest in this regard, and the Gates are different in the book than the movie, the movie removed one of them even, so I thought I would alter his spread to be in line with the book. Inspired by his work, I shifted the meaning of some of the cards, and added in the No-Key Gate, the hardest gate to pass through. *********[G]*********** *****[5]******[4]****** *********[3]*********** *********[2]*********** *********[1]*********** *********[F]*********** verything Atreyu did was for his a quest to stop the Nothingness, which leads him to the Southern Oracle. This spread is for when we’re on our own quests, when we have goals to reach. My few experiments have shown it is more insightful for quests regarding our inner self, than external world, but that could just have been me with my readings. So think of your quest, and deal down the cards, 1-5, and then F and G. The F card is Falkor and the G card is Gmork, they’re extra cards and only one may be used in the spread. Card 1: The Great Riddle Gate: What do I have to answer before proceeding on my quest? The Great Riddle Gate is very abstract, that’s why the simplified it in the movie. The sphinxes stare at each other, sending out riddles, all the riddles of the universe. Anyone caught in the stare of the sphinxes is frozen to the spot, unable to move until they have solved every riddle in the universe. Obviously no one ever does, so they perish. Only if the sphinxes close their eyes can you pass. So the first card asks “What do I have to answer before proceeding on my quest?” The sphinxes aren’t giving you all the riddles, but if they’re going to close your eyes you have to know the answer to this one. These often seems to be about motivation or preparation. Question why do you want this quest, are you ready for it? Card 2: The Magic Mirror Gate: Who am I really? “When you stand before it, you see yourself. But not as you would in an ordinary mirror. You don’t see your outward appearance; what you see is your real innermost nature. If you want to go through, you have to – in a manner of speaking – go into yourself…I’ve known travelers who considered themselves absolutely blameless to yelp with horror and run away at the sight of the monster grinning out of the mirror at them…What some saw was not so frightening, but it still cost everyone one of them an inner struggle.” Who are you, really? The result is somewhat quest dependant too, so what is this quest showing you about your true self, what aspect is it highlighting. Is it something that terrifies you, makes you uncomfortable, surprises, disappoints, or delights you? If this card is very negative, this is when you flip over the Falkor card. I will quote Balthazar directly here
“Falkor is Atreyu’s luck dragon and always believes in Atreyu because he knows his true potential – as such he represents what the Greeks called the Agatha Daimon (the good guardian angel). The Falkor card in the spread represents your ideal self, your highest potential – what you CAN become. This card should ALWAYS be interpreted its most empowering light. If the truth revealed by either gate is disheartening allow the Falkor card to balance your vision of yourself, so you can integrate the knowledge of your total being and thus grow stronger in your quest.”
(I would also point out that his assessment as Falkor as the Agathd Daimon is spot on. “From now on you’ll succeed in everything you attempt. Because I’m a luck dragon.” He is Atreyu, and Bastian’s Supernatural Assistant however you want to parse that. All the more telling because Atreyu meets his suspended over an Abyss, and has to get past Ygramul, the Many, who is quite clearly Choronzon.) f on the other hand Card 2, the True Self is very positive, it is time to flip over Gmork.
“Gmork is the agent of the Nothing bent on destroying Fantasia (your dreams). The Gmork card shows you where you could potentially stumble in your quest, your weaknesses or your blind spot. It represents what the Greeks called the Caco, or Evil, Daimon – this is the shadow self. The parts which are hidden, denied or toxic. By bringing any positive revelation given by the gates into balance with the message of the Gmork card you can achieve greater balance and personal power.”
Gmork, as an agent of the Nothing, spreads hopelessness with him, but is in understanding his nature that Atreyu actually regains his hope. Read the Gmork card as negatively, that which interferes inside of you, what you overlook, what takes away your will, your hope, but understand that you need to recognize that to overcome it. Falkor reminds us what is great about us when we feel lost and worthless. Gmork reminds us what is still unbalanced, misdirected, and negative inside of us. Card 3: The No-Key Gate: What do you have to give up to complete the quest? “The No-Key Gate is closed. Simple closed. And that’s that! There’s no handle and no doorknob and no keyhole. Nothing. My theory is that this single, hermetically closed door is made of Fantastican selenium. You may know that there is now way of destroying, bending, or dissolving Fantastican selenium. It’s absolutely indestructible. Fantastican selenium reacts to our will. It’s our will that makes it unyielding. But if someone succeeds in forgetting all purpose, in wanting nothing at all- to him the gate will open of its own accord.” In order to pass through the No-Key Gate Atreyu had to forget everything, who he was, why he was on a quest, and even that he wanted to pass through the gate. It was only through his connection with Bastian that he was able to make that final journey. What do you have to give up to complete the quest? What is holding you back? It might be something negative, but it could even be something that seems positive, but doesn’t fit this situation. Atreyu remembered everything when he passed through the gate, so whatever you give up can be something reclaimed, but what has to be put aside for you to finish the quest? Cards 4 and 5: The Southern Oracle: The secret to completing your quest, and the actions to take. Here you meet Uyulala, the Voice of Silence, the Southern Oracle. The Oracle provides you with an answer, and it comes in two parts. The first is the fourth card, what is the secret to completing your quest, what do you have to do? The fifth card the concrete action to do now. The fifth card can also manifest as the next step in a smaller quest to finish to finish this greater one. Don’t be surprised though, no quest was ever completed just by knowing the path, the hard part is to walk it. (For those comparing spreads I put Falkor and Gmork in different positions. I put Falkor beneath or before the Great Riddle Gate, because Atreyu encounters him before the gate in the web of Ygramul and it’s their interaction that gets him to the gates. Gmork on the other hand is found in the Spook City, which occurs after, so I thought I’d put them linearly.) Also, if you’ve never read the book do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. It is on my list of books all occultists should read.
This is a sadhana I was requested to write for my lama. A sadhana is a Buddhist ritual, over-simplified but true. Depending on the type of sadhana there is a set formula they follow, like any ritual tradition, and the methodology and cosmology behind them isn’t exclusively Buddhist. My lama believes that the Western Mystery Traditions are like yoga for Westerns, and that the tarot contains all the archetypes you need for spiritual realization. So what he wanted to do was to combine Tarot imagery with Buddhist sadhana structure, to use Buddhist technology with images and archetypes that are more familiar and acceptable/accessible to the average person in the Western world. So I wrote him this.
This is a basic self-generation sadhana, which in Western lingo would basically be an invocation. Normally you’d be given an empowerment by a lama, some explanation, and some training to do a ritual in a Buddhist context. In the empowerment the lama would “implant” the energy or Seed of the being into you, so that you can then call on them. Alas, most lamas don’t have High Priestess empowerments so it’s not an option. So this script serves as a visualization for generating and embodying the nature and force of the High Priestess, it might lack the “punch” of a proper sadhana due to the lack of initiation involved, but if you work with it you can build that connection on your own without the empowerment. (And from there offer it to others, which actually was discussed at one point)
One of the hardest parts in creating this was coming up with syllables for Creation, and the mantra. In Buddhist ritual every time you create something major in the visualization there is a syllable that accompanies it, from a PAM appears a lotus, from a RAM a sun disk. We didn’t want to lift those syllables, and they wouldn’t work (what tarot card has a sun disk or skull cup?) and they don’t come with mantras. They do come with their own Seed Syllable though, the Hebrew letter. So what we decided on was breaking down the letter, into all the letters needed to spell it, and rearrange them to make the syllables. (Gimel is Gimel Mem Lamed, so the syllables and mantras are different combinations of G, M, and L in this case) It’s not perfect, and I want to rework it, but it works for now. Also some of the descriptions and wording is very Buddhist, it’s hard to shake the tone, but I think it is still clear without a background in Buddhism what is meant and intended. You should know what a Gimel looks like as you’ll visualize a few of them.
My lama prefers the BOTA deck, so the image was taken from it, it’s almost the exact same as the Smith-Rider-Waite tarot. The point of this is to clear your mind, draw the High Priestess into you, abide in her mindstate, take into yourself her gifts, and with experience wield the power of her archetype when embodying it. Oddly enough my lama prefers the BOTA deck and has all the books about it, but isn’t a member of the BOTA. I on the other hand was a member, but don’t have all the books, so we balanced out. The meaning of the High Priestess is also drawn from Case’s understanding of her.
-=- Begin by performing some basic mindfulness meditation to clear, slow, and focus your thoughts and ready yourself for the visualization. See everything in the room melt into light and fade away.
From empty space a Gimel appears, deep blue in colour, it radiates outwards becoming a tranquil ocean.
From the sound GAM appears a yellow square resting motionless on the surface of the ocean. From the sound MAL a grey cube arises in the centre of the square. And from a GAL appears two pillars on either side, one white and one black each topped with a lotus sculpture. Between them drapes a curtain decorated with pomegranate fruits and leaves.
Above the cube rests your consciousness in the form of a Gimel, deep blue in colour. From it light shines out, carrying with it a calming wisdom to all sentient beings. The light is drawn in again, and the Gimel, you, become the High Priestess sitting on the cube. Behind you stretches the curtain, to your left is the white pillar, and to the right is the black pillar and you rest between them as a point of balance. You wear an inner robe of pure white, over which appears a deep blue cloak resting on your shoulders and flowing down past your feet, transforming into water, connecting you to the ocean. You are the ocean, and the ocean is you, you are but a ripple on the surface. In your right hand rests a rolled up scroll marked with the word TORA, the Law, and your left hand rests peacefully in your lap. A white veil hangs from the sides of your head, which is topped by a silver crown in the shape of two horns with a sphere resting between them.
On the centre of your chest appears an equal-armed cross, glowing with the radiant white light of a full moon, and at its center appears another blue Gimel. Around the Gimel see three blue spheres of light representing the syllables of her mantra LAM LAG MAG. Repeat her mantra and let it bring about a state of equipoise and stabilize the image. LAM LAG MAG.
These lights shine out of the Gimel activating the cross, which then bathes the ocean in the cold white of a full moon. The light dispels confusion, forgetfulness, and ignorance, leaving the surface of the ocean perfectly calm and clear to the depths. In turn the ocean reflects the light out into the Cosmos clearing away the confusion, forgetfulness, and ignorance of all sentient beings, illuminating them and guiding them back to their personal wisdom, to the store house of knowledge in their unconsciousness.
The light is drawn in again, dissolving the ocean as it goes. The ocean dissolves into the yellow square. The curtain behind you dissolves into the pillars, which in turn dissolve into yellow square. The square dissolves up into the cube upon which you sit, which in turn dissolves into the water flowing from your robes. The scroll and the crown melt into light and pour into you, your entire being glows with their light and then melts into the moon white cross on your chest. The cross dissolves into the blue Gimel at its heart which glows with the light of the ocean and the moon. Finally the Gimel dissolves into Nothingness.
Rest in meditation until your thoughts naturally emerge.
Last week I talked about how most of the time it’s the practitioner and the practice, not the tradition that makes for a good occultist. I’d like to build on that now, with part of what makes a good occultist, dealing with the plateaus and moving beyond. Hrafn from the Weaving Wyrd (who needs to post more) wrote a good piece on The Okay plateau and the Occult. Now I recommend you read what they wrote, but I’ll give you the Abyss Notes Version.
With any skill -physical, mental, or magickal- we practice and train up until a certain point, and then we tend to slow down or slack off. We often think that we’ve gone as fair as we can, that we can’t improve, but really there are a lot of factors to why we stopped improving.
Anyone who has been doing magick for several years probably knows this feeling. You feel like you aren’t progressing, or you can’t progress. Maybe you feel like there is nothing else to learn. Perhaps it has become so normal in your life that you’re no longer enamoured with your Arte. We go through the routine daily practices, but go nowhere.
Hrafn suggests four great ways of dealing with it
• Keep a Journal
• Back to the Basics
• Attend a Periodic Workshop
• Find a Group
I would give a resounding yes to all of them.
I’m writing this because I feel I’ve been at an Okay Plateau for several months, and it’s only in the last month that I’ve gotten through it. (Dread Lords of the Abyss have I gotten through it…)
So without trying to copy Hrafn’s plan, I did all of the above. During my Saturn Retrograde hell I stopped journaling. Journaling is tedious, and boring, but it’s also magickal accountability. Any magick that didn’t work during the months I didn’t journal, I don’t remember, so I can pretend everything went awesome. Now that I’m journaling if something doesn’t work, I can’t forget it, the record exists. This forces me to face it, reevaluate it, and figure out why it didn’t work, and thus improve. (Also, reread your magickal journals every once and a while, you’d be amazed as the wisdom you’ve forgotten.)
Under orders from my HGA I’m not allowed to buy new books (something about apples and fields and trees) so I’ve been rereading old books, like Magus of Strovolos and Hands of Light, and it’s refreshing to touch base with old important books, much like your journals seeing the wisdom and skills you’ve forgotten.
I attended and presented at the same occult convention Hrafn mentions, took great classes, and spent a weekend talking shop with great occultists and experimenting.
I found some nifty new occultists online to talk to. Personally I’d rather a group in Toronto to work with, but I’ll take what I can get.
That all said, there are a few things additional ideas I’d like to suggest for the Okay Plateau.
• Different directions/model
• Work a system/book
• Combine systems
• 110
This model needs to change…
First off: Switch your Model. If you’re unfamiliar with the Models of Magick proposed by Frater U∴D∴ you can read this article on Spiral Nature (A more complete explaination is in his book High Magic which I recommend, but isn’t necessary for this post). Basically all forms of magick can be framed through four different lenses. (And it’s become vogue to bash his system by people who haven’t even read the works, advanced or simple on the models, and don’t know know what they’re talking about) Chances are your practice or world view focuses on one of them, switch it up. That can mean either including new practices, or reframing what you do. If you do pure energy work, try using a spell format for what you want to do instead, make an incantation and use physical material in your work. If you do conjurations try interpreting what you do via the information model or calling the spirit by drawing/attracting their energy. If your work is psychological magick, switch the process/interpretation to energy work. Do this for a week, a month ideally. The intent isn’t to convert you, but more broaden your perspective a bit, and even if you go right back to what you were doing before, you very well might find that period has pushed you forward when you thought you were stalled.
When I was working on my physical fitness I plateaued at being able to do 120 pushups, just couldn’t break that point. So what I did was I started changing my hand positions, sometimes I did pushups with my hands touching, or father apart, or unevenly spaced with one farther up than the other. These new pushups sucked! I couldn’t do nearly as many, because they were hitting a lot of different, but related/connected muscles, that I didn’t use. After a few weeks of toying around like that, I went back to normal pushups and beat 120. In some ways the models are like that, and when we shift our model work, just for a while, you work magickal muscles you rarely use, which in turn strengthen and support the muscles you have, letting you break your plateau. Work a new/old system or a book. The rational here is pretty much the same as the above. Pick a book, or a system, old or new, the less related/connected to your system the better, and work through it. I recently did this with Christopher Penczak’s Inner Temple of Witchcraft. That book is frankly and politely not my style in the slightest. But I read it, and performed every exercise in the book, albeit in a shortened period of a week and a half when he suggests a year and a day. So I tried all his meditations, called the Goddess, did some candle magick, wrote petitions, practiced basic energyballs. It’s a 101 book for his version of witchcraft, completely different from what I do, and what I like* so it was perfect. It forced me to do new things, different things, and the basics and while there may be only one thing in the book that I go back to (which was ironically one of my first energy techniques I stopped using), I found it useful to work through it. It flexed my muscles in new ways, and over that week and a half I felt my daily routine pick up steam it hadn’t in a long time. Or if you’re a tarot reader for instance grab all those little white books that you hate that came with your deck. Most decks have a unique/cheesy theme spread, work your way through all of them, use the book to re-reference the meanings, see how that goes.
*I find it odd, most interviews with Christopher I adore his stuff, and he’s a friend of a friend, and the friend vouches for what he can do and what he knows, but his books just don’t cut it for me.
Not all combinations are good, but at least you learn.
Combine systems and practices. More of same rational, do something old in a new way. Plateaued? Combine two of your practices. Ceremonialist who reads tarot? Summon the spirit of a card they way you would an Angel. Rootworker and Mindfulness practitioner? Sit on the cushion with an herb, breathing it in and out, see what it does. Maybe you’ll find something awesome to teach and share, maybe you’ll feel like an idiot for the attempts, but it both flexes though related muscles, and has you experiment, the best way to do magick. Mix traditions, mix practices, meditate on the Name of your patron god, invoke an herb spirit, use your kitchen witch baking for divination, whatever. 110%. So obvious, so cliché, so true. We plateau because we think we’ve hit the limit, shift the limit. It’s easier with some practices than others, but you can always push harder. If you pray for 10 minutes a day, make it 15. If you meditate for 20 make it 25. If you perform offerings for your spirits include something new on top of the usual. If you say 400 mantras a day, make it 500. Whatever you do, just do it a little bit more. It has to be enough that you notice (10 minutes of meditation becoming 11 does nothing, 15 is noticeable) and it pushes you. Again, you don’t have to stay this way, just do it for a week or month and it will help things come into place. (Also, yes, those are not literal 110%, the point is increasing your effort)
Having just broken through an Okay Plateau, I know they’re one of the most frustrating periods you’ll go through as a magickian, but it happens to us all. The key is as a good and wise practitioner, we know this, and we know how to break through. Keep going, Work harder, Work smarter, Work more, and you’ll break through the plateau, and oh from there the places you’ll see.
“It is folly to suppose that the Black or the White Mass is of greater importance, it is but the Power enslaved in them that must be freed –the Power of their Belief that must be utilized and aligned unto Our Path.” ~Chumbley
Came across this quote again, and it resonated with something I’ve been thinking about off and on lately. Another potentially controversial statement: Your tradition isn’t better than mine.
Okay, not too controversial depending on how you read it. By which I mean to say what I feel is fairly obvious, and mostly true; that magickal systems in and of themselves aren’t superior to one another. Most of the time it’s the person working the system that makes the difference, not the system itself.
TLDR: Good sorcerers, not traditions.
I got thinking about this for a few reasons, but most evidently when watching a friend, who recently converted magickal traditions, talking about how amazing their new system was, that it was far superior than the last one they were a part of (or the one before that, as the middle tradition was superior to the first) and just worked so much better. She might be right, but to an outsider it doesn’t look like it. Why? She’s always been good at what she does, and even if the first two traditions she studied in were shitty, she made them work for her. I say in this case it isn’t so much her new tradition or initiation did anything, it’s the fact that she is a wise person (with her blind spots like us all) with great focus and discipline. It wouldn’t matter if she was studying Neo-Wicca, Khemetic Reconstructionism, Santeria, Buddhism, or whatever. As long as she is in a system that has room for magick and flexing willpower, I think she would be a good sorcerer.
Now, don’t get me wrong, some traditions have different advantages and niches. Want to evocate a spirit, I think Ceremonialism is the route, want to invocate a spirit, I think Buddhism has that down, want to be ridden by a spirit, get thee to a Santero’s house. The thing is these advantages are only there for people who have the capacity to use them, some hypothetical good sorcerer. Just because you work with the grimoires doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get spirits appearing, just because you have an empowerment doesn’t mean Vajrayogini is going to come dance in your mind, just cause you made Ocha doesn’t mean Oya is going to take your body for a spin. All systems have the potential for training and growth and magick, but it’s the person that does the work, not the system. Though again caveated some systems are better suited for different people and bringing out the desired traits. The second thing that got me thinking about this was seeing someone automatically assuming that someone from a certain tradition couldn’t hurt them magickally because it was an inferior system. Two things can happen here, either your disbelief works wonders on your personal magick and deflects stuff, or more likely, you’ll leave yourself open because you assume that Goetic spirits or animal fetchs have nothing on your protective angel/spirit/Chihuahua and get your etheric ass handed to you. Again, some traditions have different advantages, some might have better offence, others better defence, but that is no reason to discount them. As much disdain as I might drip on the newage movement, if think a whitelight newager can’t curse you, you haven’t crossed many of them, cause some of them wield the most potent hateful energy you’ll ever encounter. I see with pagans a lot of disregarding Christians and their prayer/magick, but I know a Catholic priest who works as an exorcist. He’s the sweetest man, but magickally he is a force to be reckoned with. He’s nearly thrown a friend of mine out of body (and said friend is well trained and not exactly “fragile”) and I had him bless an object for me so I’d remember this lesson, and when he blessed it I felt like someone was crushing my heart in a vice, just from the pressure and type of force/energy he called upon.
Granted most of the time this isn’t an issue in the occult community, we get along for the most part. I’m a Buddhist ceremonialist and my closest friends and my magickal allies are everything from newage neo-Native shamans, to vampires, to strict Solomonic practicitioners, to Santeros, to atheists (they can do magick too), Cambodian shamans, witches, and whatever else I’m not thinking of. We learn to talk across the differences, and learn from each other, but the thing is, the traditions we follow, the techniques we learn, they’re not what make us good sorcerers. It’s the fact that we’re people of devotion, intelligence, focus, and drive.
The flip side of this is look at yourself and your practice. Is your magick not what it should be, do you not get the results you need or want? Is the problem the system you’re studying, does it lack the technology for the result you want? Or could it be the fact that you don’t have the Strength/Wisdom/Compassion to wield it? You might be better off working on your discipline and focus, redoubling your effort than adding in another tradition or technique. Crowley said “About 90 % of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline” (Magick without Tears, Chapter 70) but I think much the same applies for all magick. Magick, techniques, spells, and visualizations, they’re tools, and can be phenomenal, but if you don’t have the skill to wield them, then the world’s best written conjuration won’t really change that.
I’m not saying don’t try new things, I’m not sayin learning techniques from other traditions is useless or bad. I’m just saying that no matter how many spells you know, no matter how many meditations you’ve been taught, how many magickal techniques you have, or how many initiations you’ve taken, you’re the sorcerer not these tools. If you don’t have the focus, discipline, and drive, if you don’t have the Strength, Wisdom, Compassion to utilize these tools, then they’ll never be truly effective.
“Sorcery uses Will, Desire and Belief with such precision as is permitted by the talents of the Individual Practitioner.” -Chumbley
Come gather around children, and hear the tale of how twins, angels, Orion, and peacocks are out to drive Kalagni batty. People who follow me on facebook or twitter have seen part of this ongoing battle, but I thought I would share it here, unfortunately my journaling has sucked since March, so I might miss parts.
It started about a month ago, I started getting information hints, some were from my HGA, some were from Me, and some were from something/someone else. It was suggesting a connection between twins, Orion, and angels. I couldn’t piece together the entire thing, but there was something, some link between these concepts, and it was tugging at my spirit to solve the problem. During this time my Beloved bought me a beautiful necklace made of 200+ year old glass, and just the feel of it, I knew I had to do something magickal with it, but I didn’t know what. Then when I was looking at it in the sun light I realized the light was highlighting some bubbles in the glass. It’s over 200 years old, I’m not surprised there were bubbles in the glass from back then. Three big bubbles in a row, almost, a crooked row…like Orion’s belt. As soon as I realized that I looked closer, and there were bubbles for the shoulders, and the shield, and one of the feet. By some messed up chance in making the glass, the image of Orion was almost perfectly preserved in my necklace. I was mildly freaked, I also noticed that the colour and pattern of the necklace reminded me of peacocks, a very dangerous observation for me.
Then I was discussing an astrology based magickal technique with Polyphanes, and he recommended the use of the Syzygy and at first I didn’t like the idea. Anyways, I woke up the next morning with my Holy Guardian Angel telling me that I should use the Syzygy. In the abstract multimodal way my HGA often communicates I was told to “accept the Twin” which was accompanied by a vision of the Sun, Full Moon, and Earth. I knew this meant the Syzygy, which in Jungian terms is about paired opposites, and in general it means something in Union, which was how I linked it to twins, and from the placement of the bodies in the vision I could tell what it meant.
So then I looked at where my Syzygy is in my chart. Oh look, Gemini, the Twins. Oh look, more specifically it’s Conjunct Rigel, Orion’s Foot…oh look, Rigel is a binary (twin) star. Twins, Orion, Twins. Then I checked the time I woke up (when you wake up when family dies like I do, you habitually note when you wake up unusually) and drew the astrological chart, and conjunct the ascendant when my Angel woke me up? Rigel. The twin star in Orion…
As I played with these synchronicities peacocks started appearing to me more and more. First they started showing up peripherally in vision work, and then they appeared quite clearly when a spirit was seeking to contact me (speaking in Latin, because, screw me). Now, peacocks have been “chasing” me for about eight years, I don’t want to deal with them as a symbol. But I started to entertain this now, what connection was there between twins, angels, Orion, and peacocks? I still don’t have a solid answer. (I know of links between Orion and a specific angel, and between peacocks and angels, but not all of them together) I felt inspired one day to clean my front porch, the downside to living in a large house on your own, is your family occasionally uses your place as storage. Anyways while cleaning up I came across a picture I had not seen before. I’ve since found out it was a gift to my father and he had it hanging in his office for years before he switched careers, then he packed it up and put it on the porch. Would anyone in the studio audience like to guess what it is a picture of? Two peacocks, you could say, twin peacocks even. I believe my scream/laugh/cry when I unpacked it was audible for many kilometres. I decided to dive away from Western stuff and focus on Buddhism, that would help me escape these things, right? Until I found a reference to my Yidam as “the Peacock Bodhisattva.” So I decided to give in, I’d make space for the peacock entity in my life, I hung up the picture, and then doing some trance work I was given a set of three Seals for the “Angel” who was trying to contact me
Over the course of a week I decided to consecrate the necklace to this Angel, as a transvocation point, a nexus where our two realities touch, making communication and skrying easier. Then, as I was still getting to know the spirit, I invited them into my dreams, because while I suck at dream magick, it is one of the few places where contact with spirits will be largely unfiltered. So every night before bed I opened space over my bed, and called down the peacock spirit to visit me, so we might talk in my dreams, and for seven nights nothing happened. Through this process though I felt compelled to contact an Angel in Orion, but I knew it had to wait until I had better contact with the first angel. After the week was up I conjured the angel, it was faint, but the connection was established. It had the feel of an initiation, that I have to work through things in order to gain greater access. Then, I felt an odd inspiration to good clean my room, and I mean good clean, including the storage under my bed which I never touch. I found my old sleeping bag in a vacuum sealed storage bag under my bed, but there was something odd and blue-green in with it. It was under the far corner of my bed (it’s a queen bed in a corner, so that corner storage never gets touched) and I had to crawl under with a staff to get it out. I open up the bag, unfurl the blue-green blanket, and fall onto my bed laughing, wondering for a moment if I might have actually lost my mind, because suddenly I had a peacock blanket I had never seen before. No, let me correct that, a blanket with two peacocks, you could say twin peacocks even. No idea how (mundanely) such a blanket could have been vacuum sealed with my sleeping bag, and shoved into the farthest reaches of my bedroom, without me knowing.
Finally on Friday, I went to the Bluffs an hour before dawn, when Rigel and Alnilam were on the horizon rising, and conjured the Angel in Orion.
Who knows where this bizarre madness will take me…though I have a nagging suspicion it will involve summoning a lot of spirits.
Last time I talked about the purpose of Taking Refuge, and the Triple Gem, now I want to go a bit farther. In Vajrayana Buddhism Refuge often includes four, or six figures, rather than the three I introduced last time. No matter what happens those three will always be present, but because Vajrayana Buddhism is a lineage-focused initiation tradition you will often Take Refuge in your personal guru, your teacher. Now if you don’t have a teacher, or don’t feel that your teacher is worthy of Refuge (admittedly a dicey idea in Vajrayana, usually it’s better to understand they are inherently Enlightened and that is the part you Take Refuge in) you can use one of the major historical gurus, such as Padmasambhava or Lama Tsongkapa, I’ve also seen it suggested people use Vajradhara or Kuntuzangpo in this position, but have not been told that through my lineage. In Vajrayana the guru is of the utmost importance, in fact it’s often said that your guru is more important than the Buddha, because it is your guru who introduces you to Buddhism, without the guru you couldn’t encounter the Buddha. If you’re Taking Refuge and including the guru you just Take Refuge in them first, so it becomes “I Take Refuge in the Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.”
Now the more complicated Refuge involves six figures, the Triple Gem, and the Triple Root. The Triple Gem is the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, as covered before. The Triple Root is the Lama/Guru, the Yidam, and the Dakinis. Your lama or guru is the teacher who initiates you and guides your practice. Your Yidam is your personal meditation tutelary deity. The Dakinis are…complicated, but they’re fierce female spirits who help bring on enlightenment, perhaps by any means necessary. When Refuge includes all six it tends to be broken into two parts, Gem then Root. “I Take Refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, the Lama, the Yidam, and the Dakinis.”
If you’re using Refuge in another system your guru, would obviously be your teacher, or a great teacher of your tradition, again much like the Buddha last time, you can visual an idealized teacher rather than a specific one. For the Yidam think about your practice, if you’re an occultist you might have a Patron/Matron deity of some sort, that’s the person you’d use as the Yidam to Refuge. Now if your personal deity is also the transcendent deity you use as a Buddha (as mentioned last post) that’s fine, see them in their different forms. Kali as Yidam could be the Wrathful Mother dancing on Shiva, while Kali as Buddha is the Force and Fabric that makes up the Universe and the Fire on the Edge of Time. For Dakinis you can use helpful and sacred spirits. While I’m not majorly found of the comparison sometimes the easiest way to explain Dakinis is to say “Buddhist Angels,” it’s not right, but it’s close enough that you get an idea. So picture here the angels or messengers or sacred helper spirits of your Path.
The Three Roots and Three Gems are reflections of each other. You can parallel the Buddha and the Lama, they’re both the teacher and guide. You can parallel the Dharma and the Yidam, the Yidam is your main practice, and Dharma is your practice, the Yidam is the focus of your teachings. Lastly the Sangha and the Dakinis are paralleled; they’re the community that is working on supporting you and uplifting you to Enlightenment.
You would be the central blue figure on this Tree
Now in Varjayana it’s taught that when you Take Refuge you visualize/generate a Refuge Tree. This is a visual representation of the Three Roots and Three Gems. Depending on the practice, and the sect and tradition they’re laid out in different ways, but they’ll always contain the Buddha, and Lamas or the lineage, a variety of Yidams, generally a text is hidden in the image (the Dharma), and then dakinis, dharma protectors and people. You visualize this in front of you when you Take Refuge.
My lama has taught me to do it differently, instead of projecting the Tree in front of yourself you build it around yourself, so rather than having the Tree as something separate you’re making yourself a part of it, in fact, you are the Tree itself. I really like this method, Vajrayana practices take the external work of other systems and make it internal, instead of summoning a figure outside of yourself, you Become them, so why should the Tree be different? I also like it because many traditions around the world have something where you connect yourself to the Tree of the World, the Axis Mundi, and this slight change makes a Buddhist version of just that, with you as the Axis.
I’ll give a simplified English version of the practice first, and include the Tibetan after. I’ve never done it in English so I have to think through it as I go. Sitting in a meditative posture know that you are the Centre of Reality, the World as you know it revolves around you.
With your right hand in the position of preparing to snap touch the Crown of your head. “To the glorious Lama I go for Refuge.” As you say this move your hand so it is pointing upwards visualizing the lama springing from your head into the space above you. When you say “Refuge” snap your fingers and see that snap Creating the image of the guru, making it solid and real, not just your imagination.
With your right hand in the position of preparing to snap touch your Third Eye. “To the glorious mandala of the Yidam I go for Refuge.” As you say this move your hand so it is pointing forward a foot from your face visualizing the Yidam springing from your Third Eye and standing in front of you. Again when you say “Refuge” snap your finger and solidify the image.
With your hand in the preparing to snap position touch your right temple. “To the Buddha I go for Refuge.” As you say this move your hand so it is pointing to the right while seeing the image of the Buddha leaving your temple to float off to your right, again when you say “Refuge” snap your finger and make the Buddha real.
With your hand in the snap position touch the back of your head, that bump on the other side of your skull from your eyes. “To all the sacred Dharma I go for Refuge.” Saying this move your hand to point backwards seeing a collection of Holy Texts flowing from your skull and piling up to become a solid foundation you can lean against. Again with saying “Refuge” snap to make it solid.
Touch your left temple in the same hand position. “To the great Sangha I go for Refuge” Saying this move your hand out to point to the left, seeing a collection of Bodhisattvas springing from your left temple to stand to your left, and again while saying “Refuge” snap to make the image solid.
With your hand in the position of preparing to snap, with your pointer finger pointing up say the following while moving your hand in a clockwise circle in front of your body, so that when you finish your hand is back where it started. “To all the Dakinis, Guardians, and Dharma Protectors I go for Refuge.” As you’re saying this and moving your hand see a collection of Dakinis, and Guardian figures leaving your heart to stand in a circle around you, to protect you, and your efforts, then when you say “Refuge” snap and make them solid.
This entire process should be done three times, when you get used to it the entire thing can take 45 seconds, though obviously it can take more depending on how much you want to put into it.
Take a moment to reaffirm the presence of all of them, I personally like to reconnect to all of them, so I see ethereal threads flowing from each of them back to the place that they emerged from. Don’t worry about holding the image the entire time you’re practicing, you’re just to make them clear and solid at the beginning to connect with the current, also these are not figures you banish, just leave them be and they will fade back into Emptiness and your Mind.
-=-=-=-=-=-
This is the Tibetan, the phrasing is a bit more complex. You’d do it the same way, except “Chio” is when you would snap each time.
Palden Lama Dampa Namla Chap Sou Chio
Yidam Chilkor Gyi Lhatsog Namla Chap Sou Chio
Sangye Chomdende Namla Chap Sou Chio
Dampe Cho Namla Chap Sou Chio
Phape Gendun Namla Chap Sou Chio
Pawo Kandro Cho Kyong Srungme Tsog Yeshe Khi Chyen Dang Denpa Namla Chap Sou Chio
For no reason when leaving temple last I thought it be amusing to see Epic Rap Battles of History for famous folks in the occult.
If you’ve never seen Epic Rap Battles of History it’s a youtube show that pits two famous people from history (and occasionally fiction) in a rap battle. They’re usually very clever and amusing.
Einstein vs. Hawking.
Anyways I thought up a few ones for occult folks, I was posting them, and Ocean Delano from Turning the Magic Around chimed in with a few of his own, which will be marked with an * on the list. Epic Rap Battles of History Presents:
Aleister Crowley versus Madame Blavatsky!
Edward Kelley versus L. Ron Hubbard!
King Solomon versus Padmasambhava!
*Gerald Gardner vs The Witch Of Endor.
*Merlin vs. Oberon Zell-Ravenheart!
*Abra-Melin vs Socrates!
Marie Laveau versus Circe!
Imhotep versus Milarepa!
*Cornelius Agrippa versus Francis Barrett
(Barrett would just rap Agrippa’s lines back at him, but say half of them wrong.)
E. A. Koetting versus J. Z. Knight!
Paracelsus versus Ibn Sina!
Medea versus The Witches of Eastwick!
The Secret Chiefs versus the Ascended Masters!
Melchizedek versus St. Germain!
*Deepak Chopra versus Confucius
Victor and Cora Anderson versus Peter Carroll and Phil Hine
Anton LeVay versus Doreen Virtue!
John Dee versus Sylvia Brown!
Alright, who do you think would be the best match? Or any funny magickal matches that we didn’t think of?
Taking Refuge is probably one of the most common Buddhist practices there is. Arguably it should be the most common practice, but we all know not everyone lives by the book. I say it should be the most common because it is done before pretty much everything in Buddhism. Doing a meditation, Take Refuge first, going to give offerings, Take Refuge first, going to perform a ritual, Take Refuge first, going to do Buddhist mantras in calligraphy, Take Refuge first. So what is Taking Refuge? On the simplest level if is a recitation of a simple phrase/idea, there are hundreds of variations, one of the most basic is “I go for Refuge in the Triple Gem” but more clearly, listing the Gems it would be “I go for refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.” Who the Buddha is should be somewhat obvious, Dharma refers to the teachings of the Buddha (simplistically), and the Sangha refers to the spiritual community, to the temple, to other Buddhists. But why Refuge?
Well, Refuge means a couple of things; first and foremost we could understand it as aligning yourself with the Buddhist current. Just as many other traditions have some form of opening prayer or such that refocuses the person on the tradition, this is what Refuge is, you say this is what I am doing, this is the Path, and I am connecting myself to it. “This is the teacher, this is the teaching, this is the tradition, I am a part of it.”
Along with the alignment, it is a request for help, support, and encouragement, either from the figures and forces involved or the current itself. “I ask for assistance from the Buddha, I ask for assistance from the Dharma, I ask for assistance from the Sangha, I am on the Path and seek aid.”
Tied to the notion alignment, it’s also a recognition, in some forms of Buddhism it’s understood that we’re inherently Pure and Interdependent, and the act of becoming Enlightened is recognizing and revealing that, so Refuge is a reminder in that case. “I am Buddha, I am Dharma, I am Sangha, I am Primordially Pure.”
It’s also a declaration of intent. “I aspire to become like the Buddha, I aspire to follow the Dharma, I aspire to support the Sangha, I will become Enlightened.”
While not discussed nearly as much, it’s also a form of protective magick. When you reconnect to the Purity, or Align yourself with a tradition, you tap into the strength of it, and that gives you a form of protection and authority. That is why in chöd (a specific school of practice within Vajrayana Buddhism) originally you did not go for Refuge, because the point of the practice was to be open and be willing to give up your attachment to everything, and asking for protection is an attachment to the status quo in that ritual context. (Sometime into the 14th century or so it looks like Refuge became part of chöd as it was incorporated into the monastic scene more)
Now just because Taking Refuge is a Buddhist practice, doesn’t mean it isn’t something that could be used by someone of another tradition. The first two things that come to mind are Sam Webster’s Tantric Thelema, where he gives ways of giving Refuge that are more “generic” and more Thelemic, as well as the magickal order I owe a lot of my initial training too, for we had Refuge inspired by Buddhism, but not in a strictly Buddhist way.
Our Refuge was more inspired by Crowley’s understanding of Refuge back when he was a Buddhist, before receiving the Liber AL vel Legis. In 1903 he wrote Science and Buddhism and explained Refuge as such:
I take my refuge in the Buddha. That there was once a man who found the Way is my encouragement.
I take my refuge in the Dhamma. The Law under-lying phenomena and its unchanging certainty; the Law given by the Buddha to show us the Way, the inevitable tendency to Persistence in Motion or Rest—and
Persistence, even in Motion, negates change in consciousness—these observed orders of fact are our bases.
I take my refuge in the Sangha. These are not isolated efforts on my part; although in one sense isolation is eternally perfect and can never be overcome, in another sense associates are possible and desirable.
For us we took Refuge in the Three Spheres, which in this case translated as the teacher, reality, and community, essentially the same as Buddhism, but without Buddha directly. The teacher was any great sage, any gnostic saint, any wise person who is Enlightened (however your tradition understands that), so it could be Buddha, it could be Jesus or St. Francis, it could be Crowley, or Lao Tzu. Whoever saw the Beauty Beyond could be the teacher, we also believed in an idealized teacher, not necessarily a real or objective person, but a symbolic person, Wisdom made Manifest. For Dharma, we focused less on direct teachings, and more Reality itself, which is actually how Refuge is understood occasionally in Tantra. Like Crowley it was the “Law under-lying phenomena,” the Universe works a certain way, and we took Refuge in that, not to fight or impose a misguided understanding, but accept Reality. Lastly the community, this was our order, but it was also any person in the current of wisdom and enlightenment, anyone who is trying to Become, this can be the great sages of the past, but the ones who didn’t quite make it. John Dee for instance, a brilliant man, but I might argue not on the same spiritual level as someone like Lao Tzu. (For a completely mixed cultural example)
So in reality you can Take Refuge regardless of tradition, you just need to figure out who and what the Three Jewels would be for you. Also, when you look at what Refuge is for, it’s not a bad little ritual to include as a way of centring and connecting to tradition or current before you begin your work.
Who is the enlightened teacher that inspires you? This can be a real person, a founder of your tradition if they’re understood to be enlightened, or it could be a god within the tradition. I recommend it not be a person you know physically, unless they’re recognized as Enlightened. Earthly personal teachers, are people too, and flawed, and you don’t want to take Refuge in someone like that. (Though more on that idea later)
What are the teachings of the tradition? Do you have a set of rules to obey that you dedicate yourself to, or do you dedicate yourself to the Laws of the Cosmos?
Who is the community? The saints, the protectors, those who work with you, and walk with you? Physical people, deceased people, spirits and angels.
Not sure if I’d Take Refuge or not from him.
While a strict Buddhist might argue against Taking Refuge in a god, that is one way to do it. (Arguably even within Buddhism it depends on what type of god, as there are gods in Samsara, reality as we understand it, and gods who are Enlightened, the latter being acceptable sources of Refuge.) If you’re considering Taking Refuge in a god, consider a few things, like enlightenment and scope. With the model of Taking Refuge the Object of Refuge can never take you beyond themselves, so if you use a deity in this way they are the best you can aspire to. Now, becoming a god sounds pretty sweet (*Insert a lazy Koetting joke here?*), but think about the mythologies, some gods are almost always wise and noble, Jesus and Krishna, other gods can be petty and foolish, Zeus and Set, and whomever you Take Refuge in, you work towards. Along with that is the idea of scope, some gods are small in scope and scale, and that isn’t a judgment against them, but ideally when going for Refuge you want to approach a deity who is transcendent, and many gods are both. In the Greek tradition Hekate is both a personal deity, and in some forms a transcendent deity, in some forms of Hinduism Kali is both personal and transcendent underlying all reality. Those transcendent deities are the best focus for this.
Some quick examples I have come across are in my training and work with the order:
I go for Refuge in Kali
I go for Refuge in Dharma and Karma
I go for Refuge in all who are Returning
I go for Refuge in Nut
I go for Refuge in Ma’at
I go for Refuge in the Priesthood
I go for Refuge in Our Lady of Darkness
I go for Refuge in the Nameless Path
I go for Refuge in the Mighty Dead
The advantage of using a system where you have “simplified” the naming conventions is it allows a group to work together, without conflict. So if everyone says Teacher, Teaching, Community, they can do it together, but have their own understanding of it. (The group I was in phrased it as Sun, Pluto, and Moon)
So you can see how people have intelligently (we hope) replaced the Triple Gem with appropriate equivalent for their system. Admittedly this only works with some of the simpler understandings of Refuge, to take Refuge Vows for instance is a big thing, and this is nothing like it.
Whelp, this post was actually supposed to be about how my specific Buddhist lineage does Refuge a bit differently, but the explanation of Refuge became its own post. Join me later this week when I expand on Refuge beyond Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and talk about how to invoke and evoke them.
Though I would be curious who and what others make Take Refuge in? If folks want to share I’d be interested in hearing.
If you missed the first and second part of this discussion/rant you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
I have looked over what I’ve written several times, and sadly I can’t find anywhere to divide this post, regardless of trying to make it two, three, or four sections, the ideas are just all too connected on the final point. So my apologies for a long post, the TLDR version is “If everyone who did it one way gets one set of results, and everyone who didn’t doesn’t have the same results, then maybe they’re not achieving the same thing.”
So having discussed some of the reasons on why I think we should entertain the possibility that HGA may be a system specific term and some of the reasons why it might matter I want to cover one more reason why it might matter, but it’s less supported hence separating from the others. Not necessarily what I believe, I’m agnostic on this point, but just giving another piece of the puzzle perhaps.
People ask “Why does it matter?” and specifically frame it in the terms of “Well they’re not hurting anyone, and if they’re wrong then they’ll find out eventually.” Here I jokingly hear in my head Helen Lovejoy screaming “Won’t someone please think of the Abyss?”
Now this idea comes not from the Abramelin text, and I don’t know if it really came up in the later writings on the HGA (that I don’t remember currently) but it did come up in some of my earlier magickal training, and while I haven’t had any revelation from my Angel to say if it is right or wrong, it is something I’ve pondered on. If we were to frame the HGA and K&C in Qabalistic terms we can say perhaps that the HGA resides in Tiphareth, or at least our connection to them does, more likely they’re something of Kether (I also use a Jacob’s Ladder Tree, so this sometimes conflicts with other systems), and to achieve K&C we have to travel the Third Path to Kether, but what’s along that Third Path? Everyone’s favourite dumping ground the Abyss of Da’ath. If you go from Tiphareth to Kether you must pass over(around/under/through/whatever) the Abyss.
No, not this Spirit of the Abyss.
Now in the system I came from I was taught two things in this regard, first off people that fail to get Knowledge and Conversation with their Holy Guardian Angel end up communicating with a spirit of the Abyss, who claims they are the HGA, acts as them, and lives with the person, while they never see they’re being subtly misled. The second thing is that apparently people who get trapped in the Abyss are stuck there for this incarnation. The second part I have more trouble believing, but I can’t say for sure. If these are both the case, then to me that’s another reason why the way people discuss K&C and the HGA should be reconsidered, but as said, I don’t know what I think about them, and my Angel didn’t give me anything about that idea one way or the other.
Moving on I’d also like to touch on a good point from Polyphanes (he is full of them); it’s hard in many ways to generalize about Knowledge and Conversation. Yet on the other hand I feel the phrase/understanding of Knowledge and Conversation is becoming so generalized as to be useless (oddly makes me think of copyright saturation). I’m not generalizing here based on my experience, I’m drawing on it most definitely, but I’m also drawing on conversations with other people who have done the Abramelin, or written works by such people. So while I can’t generalize, there are patterns that have shown up in the lives of these people and myself, but I see nothing similar from the majority of people claiming Knowledge and Conversation through non-Abramelin means. The revelations will always be different, mine was heavily focused on the marvels of the physical universe. The encounters will always be different, I don’t know anyone else whose HGA decided to play “Moses on the Mount” with them and gave them vitiligo to prove their existence after badgering. (You know what would be better proof? Giving me my pigment back.) But when patterns show up for everyone who did it one way, and they don’t show up when being done another way it makes me question if we’re really talking about the same thing. To go back to the analogy from my earlier post about taking a trip to the beach, if everyone who follows the directions gets to the beach and describes a beautiful sunset, and a person who took a different set of directions say the sunset was nice but the trees were in the way, and no one else mentions the trees, then why would they assume they reached the same point on the beach?
The Abramelin ritual is not just about establishing contact with a specific spirit, it’s about Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. (Yes, I know the phrase Knowledge and Conversation was termed by Crowley, but Abraham didn’t give a term for the entire operation. I’ll end up using some of Crowley’s language for a lot of this because he did create a good lexicon for discussing the entirety of it. Even though he himself failed to do the ritual.) What’s the difference? Contact with your Holy Guardian Angel is easy. I was in contact with mine in the first trimester of the ritual, and Abraham says in the text itself that you may even have contact with the HGA before starting the ritual as it “will secretly stand by your side and place suggestions in your heart on how you should organize your life and how to follow everything that is written in this book.”
So what is Knowledge and Conversation then? That’s the result of the entire ritual, it’s not just about chatting, it’s about transformation, and not superficial transformation, not life hiccough transformations, it’s about shaking the very foundation of your identity, core, and understanding. “The Guardian Angel will remind you what he has done for you and how you have insulted him in the past. He will tell you how you please him in the future. He will also explain to you about what is the true wisdom, where it comes from, if-and how- you fail in your work, what you lack, how you should behave to control the unredeemed spirits, and how to achieve all you desire.”
“How you have insulted him in the past.” This is a great example of how Knowledge and Conversation differs from simply contact. I have never or heard anyone who achieved Knowledge and Conversation through Samekh (for instance, but insert any non-Abramelin form of supposed K&C here) talk about this. Sure, they may discuss confessions and humbling themselves, but there is a difference between confession and being told every time you have insulted your HGA. While I don’t want to personalize this with my experiences, I feel it’s the only way to make some points. During my Abramelin experience I ended up reliving times I lied before I even started school and having to apologize for those. Confessions and visionary experiences guided for months with hours poured into them a day, and you’re going to experience pretty much every time you failed. I had done confessions and humbling with Mother for years daily before the Abramelin, but they were nothing like what the Angel led me through over that period. This is something I don’t see mentioned by any other method, and I can’t see how you could have the depth of this upheaval and confession in something that takes less time (either per day or in terms of months and years). This isn’t about contact, this is about coming to terms with your nature, your failures, and past. This is showing you the ground from which you grew and where the transformation will be born from.
To turn more Thelemic in language looking at the last part of the quote, Knowledge and Conversation is about having your True Will revealed for you. Now obviously True Will is a really complicated concept, to say it’s what you are to do in the world is an oversimplification. True Will is about being in your perfect place, your Orbit within the Cosmos. This isn’t just about what you do, in terms of a job, this is about everything: your outlook on life, your view of the world, your understanding of cosmology, your ethics and your relationship with external morality, your connection and interaction with other people, your habits, your True Will is everything in your life and all parts of you.
When many people say they’ve achieved Knowledge and Conversation, it’s amazing how little has changed, in fact this observation is what inspired this rant, not a desire for dogmatic adherence to a strange German text. Again being a bit Thelemic about this, I was listening to an episode of Thelema Coast to Coast, when Keith418 was discussing magick as escapism and people being unwilling to do the hard work of transforming the self, and he said something to the effect of “If your HGA isn’t transgressive to your life you probably don’t know them.” This was a moment that if I were in a workshop with Keith418, I might have clapped. Sure most people talk about disruptions that happen as they work towards meeting their HGA, but these are superficial issues that come and go quicker than a Mercury Retrograde. External disruptions are nothing, they often occur with any major Solar working, and any initiation. In fact, while not as widely observed, I’d argue that the Abramelin working tends to cause more internal disruptions than external.
If your HGA isn’t disrupting you to the core, I think it might be questionable, at best. My experience, and essentially every record of the Abramelin I’ve read, talks about this. So when someone says they performed Samekh twice a day for two months, got the same result, and lost a job at the same time, I can’t help but think “Uh…no.” Heck, I magicked myself out of my job by summoning the Angel of Earth. That’s not a major disruption. (In fact, that tends to be a cliche in magick) Remember the HGA brings true wisdom, how you fail, and how to act. These aren’t simple things, remember that list? Your outlook on life, your view of the world, your understanding of cosmology, your ethics and your relationship with external morality, your connection and interaction with other people, your habits, it’s everything. For this ritual not to shake you to the core, to not destroy you and remake it requires one or two things. First, that our modern culture has all of this right, and second, that whatever isn’t right you’ve already worked out for yourself.
I would explain the Abramelin ritual as a massive undertaking in Social De-conditioning. Your outlook on life, as much as you want to think you decided on it with free will, you didn’t, you were given it piece by piece through every TV show you’ve ever watched, every book you’ve read, every song you listened to, everything your parents told you. You took all this, and you incorporated it, you rejected it, you negotiated with it, you synthesized it, you made it into something new and you weren’t aware of it, it’s all unconscious. Think of all the times you say or do something and suddenly realize “Oh my gods, I’m my mother/father” but really most of our thoughts and personalities are shaped by our social conditioning and what we slowly accept and reject over our lives. Now I will not claim I have overcome this, not by a long shot, but my Angel showed me how much of this is there, and has been giving me tools to work on this. Years after the ritual was complete and my Angel is still making me do things to change this world view.
Now I would also like to point out that if you’re thinking “Oh, that makes sense, but I have already dealt with that, noticed it, and my world view is my own” I would like to point out the third-person effect which states that people always think that these things apply to other people but not them, and generally (but here, not always) the people who are more sure that it doesn’t apply to them are actually more likely to be victims of it. So maybe you, or these people actually have actually dealt with this stuff, but never underestimate the human mind’s ability to deceive itself, and this is something I keep right in the front of my mind whenever I think about this stuff. (Actually that’s a good thing to always keep in mind with magick in general)
Okay, maybe this got close.
This goes for everything. Your ethics, they’re made up of everything you’ve seen, done, experienced, and if you think the Angel is going to reveal that you won the jackpot and just by chance those 80s/90s (or whenever) cartoons actually instilled the perfect balance of compassion and wisdom and strength into your personality, again, I’m going to doubt it. Your magickal world view, your mundane worldview, your personality is constructed (or shaped) by all of these things. This is what the ritual begins to break down, especially in the last trimester. This is the metamorphosis of the ritual, this is the point, not having a voice/presence stuck with you for the rest of your life, or until it fades away.
These are the types of things I’ve never seen addressed by people who have “achieved Knowledge and Conversation” by another means. Their disruptions are losing jobs, lovers, moving, periods of bad luck, illness, etc., and while all of these can be part of the Abramelin experience, they’re the window dressing to what is going on inside the ritualist. In fact, now that I typed it, everyone I know who lost a job or lover, or had to move, it wasn’t due to external factors, but internal ones. They realized they couldn’t work in that field anymore, they realized they didn’t love their partner, they realized they were attached to the wrong place and had to move, all of these disruptions were due to the internal upheavals. There are major internal upheavals as you go through it, I joked in a surreal way that the soundtrack of the Abramelin should be “Everything you know is wrong” by Weird Al. (Everything you know is wrong / Black is white, up is down and short is long / And everything you thought was just so important doesn’t matter) In my case my HGA challenged everything from my view on alcohol (I think I’m the only person who was told by their Angel to start drinking), to money and the poor, to how reincarnation operates, to how I treat my literal neighbours, to the very words I would use to define myself, those little labels we all think of as “Me.” Years later and I’m still unpacking all of this, years later and I’m still given whispers on things to do to break all these socially conditioned ideas and habits and attitudes so that my “true wisdom” as Abraham calls it, and how I am to succeed shine through. To use a phrase Polyphanes brought up in our discussion, these changes might be sunrise slow at times, but their triggers that break that self are as bright as stepping from Plato’s Cave. To use an unfortunate parallel it’s like being in a car accident while drinking, that incident shows you that you have a problem, but it will take you months, if not years, to come to terms with your alcohol issues.
Now granted, some people might be closer when they start to being in their Orbit, following their True Will, achieving Knowledge and Conversation, so maybe they won’t need as much work, or have to experience the same type of disruptions. Well, as above that’s exceedingly unlikely. Now if I were to completely interject my personal understanding on what Knowledge and Conversation is and does to you, if you came into this life in such a way that Knowledge and Conversation was not a challenge to achieve, and it didn’t or barely disrupted your life or your self, then you came into this life in your Orbit in the way that I would suspect only Bodhisattva/Enlightened figures do, and that just adds again to the unlikeliness to me. (Note: I do not conflate Enlightenment with Knowledge and Conversation, Enlightenment is something far beyond it. What I mean is that for a person to be able to reach their Orbit so easily that K&C isn’t disruptive is something on the level of mythic in my framing, though I admit that might be bias.)
So to bring this all back. I want to reiterate, when I say the Holy Guardian Angel and other potentially similar spirits are different, it’s not a value judgment it’s just a statement. Zomp isn’t better than seafoam (okay, the name is better) it’s just different. I also don’t think that people who have contacted their tutelary spirit aren’t undergoing interesting and great spiritual and personal revelations, I know I went through great things and upheavals when Mother came to me. Though (and here is where the egotism comes into it a bit) I don’t think most of these experiences compare to Knowledge and Conversation based upon the comparisons of these experience. It doesn’t mean they’re not great, but they’re definitely not the same and shouldn’t be labelled as such.
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I decided to dive away from Western stuff and focus on Buddhism, that would help me escape these things, right? Until I found a reference to my Yidam as “the Peacock Bodhisattva.” So I decided to give in, I’d make space for the peacock entity in my life, I hung up the picture, and then doing some trance work I was given a set of three Seals for the “Angel” who was trying to contact me
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Epic Rap Battles of History Presents:![three-jewels[1]](http://blueflamemagick.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/three-jewels1.jpg)
