Sunday, December 24, 2017

Evidence - Contact/Communication





Doubt.
Doubt Thyself.
Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.
Doubt all.
Doubt even if thou doubtest all.

Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies - 51

Bearing in mind the various ways our attempts at communication with ''spirits''  can fail, if they are indeed happening at all, what do successes look like in our community and can they be discounted as evidence of genuine spirit contact?  The following list only includes those forms of success in communication/contact that I have personal and considerable experience of and can therefore analyze, although I do think its fairly exhaustive and general as well.


Physical Manifestation


Changes in the physical world such as temperature change, smells, or the appearance of ''faces'' in smoke, flame or the arrangement of things cannot be considered true physical manifestation (in this definition) as they could be happening only in the minds of the magicians performing the working.  This does not mean they are not successes persay but they fall under a different criteria.  Forms of true physical manifestation could be sudden weather effects - storm, rain, fog, etc - in the sudden appearance of animals (not pets) - birds, insects, etc - which behave in very perculiar ways in  electrical and telekinetic effects - power surges, things switching themselves on, objects moving, static electricity and in boons - material rewards of one form or another.  Although these could be discounted as coincidence when they stack up coincidence is a shrinkingly likely explanation.  What cannot be discounted is that this is psychic activity unknowingly generated by the magician themselves and falsely attributed to a spirit.

Emotional

Intense changes in emotional states - moving from placidity/calm to mania (overwhelming energy, love, laughter and joy), hysteria (profound grief, sadness), etc.  The problem with these experiences as evidence is that while entirely rewarding in and of themselves they could easily be the product of an excited imagination and emotional body and not necessarily as a direct result of the ''spirit'' itself.

Sense Perception


Sensing any change - temperature, light level, seeing flickers of movement, sulfurous smells or otherwise, feelings of being touched.  Since these all occur within the sensory cortex of the magician they might not be happening physically and ultimately be self-induced.

Visions/Speaking in Tongues/Possession



Sudden intense visions where you feel like you are literally seeing into another world or otherwise spontaneous astral projection.  Speaking in a different voice and possessing knowledge that the person otherwise shouldn't.  Taking on the mannerisms/behaviour of the entity conjured.  Again in the excited enough mind it is possible that these could all happen through trance itself and be self-induced without any direct intercession of a spirit. If the person starts speaking in fluent Aramaic or Enochian you would have to stretch ''talking to yourself'' to include rememberance of languages from past or future lives - which would easily fit into temporal entanglement.


Dreams

Dreams are often considered to be evidence of contact, if you do the work and then the spirit comes to you in a dream then bingo!  This surely is the easiest one to dismiss as verifiable contact with a spirit.  Generally the dream is only included as evidence if it has an astral quality to it - highly vivid and containing evidence from the intelligible category.  In a previous post on evidence I talked about your own dreams being potentially produced from other points in time where they are seen differently when observed from that point.

Intelligible

This is when an idea forms unbidden in the mind - spoken into your mind, or a sudden flash of intuition during the ritual.  Supporting evidence for genuine contact comes when the information you have recieved is something you could not possibly know.  Yet I don't know everything that I do actually know so it would be rich of me to decide what I couldn't know.  I could have come into contact with information and then forgotten it only to be triggered from memory by the intense ritual work.  Alternatively the outer or higher mind could have this information and I have used the ritual as a means of accessing something personal even though the setup makes it feel like it has happened as the result of something external (spirit from ritual).  Again this could be you talking to yourself at an advanced level.

Conclusion

If the success is not dismissed by the above logic (that I am somehow talking to myself) then that needs to be explained within the temporal entanglement theory i.e. can the communication/contact be more accurately explained by two entities intertwining through time as opposed to through a veil separating us from an ''otherworld'' where spirits ''live''.  Entangling with some thing from the ancient future/past could cover most extremely bizarre entities encountered, and when we think about talking to yourself we mustn't discount entangling with yourself across time after all, which would be an accurate definition of spirit or soul anyway - what will ''I'' look like in a thousand years and what kind of information about ''now'' will I have access to?

It seems sometimes as if beneath all conscious doubt there lay some deepest certainty.
O kill it, slay the snake!
The horn of the doubt goat be exalted!
Dive ever deeper into the abyss of mind, until thou unearth the fox THAT.
On hounds!  Yoicks!  Tally-ho!  Bring THAT to bay!
Then wind the Mort!

 Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies - 51

Friday, December 22, 2017

Evidence - Failure to Communicate


You can call if you want but there's no one home,
And you're not gonna reach my telephone,
Because I'm out in the club, sipping that bub,
And you're not gonna reach my telephone!

Telephone, Lady Gaga

If occultists rarely talk about their experiences, prefering to conflate magick with extraneous topics, they next to never talk about the failures.  Lets hear about all those times you attempted magick and... diddly squat... and find reasons why things went wrong.  Well-recorded failures are evidence, a failure is a success to the diligent scientist.  From time to time its good to review the standards of how we measure success and enjoy a little campfire Qabalah.


In this post I want to talk specifically about failures in communication and in the following post  what successes look like in my experience.  For a laugh, we'll look at it through the lyrics of Lady Gaga's Telephone:

  • I can't hear a thing, I have no service in the club, you see - Sometimes spirit communication fails because no service/broken lines/crossed lines, equivalent of getting no communication, partial communication or wrong communication, we should strive to be honest about the quality of the communication itself - space weather, time weather?
  • I'm Kinda Busy - the spirit is busy with something else and will get to you later, maybe, the equivalent of being on hold - how long did you wait?
  • You Should Have Made Plans when you knew I was free/No-one home - failures regarding astrological timing, experienced esotericists know that ''when'' is a key question when it comes to all magic, if communication was unsuccessful did you call when you knew they would be out?
  • Now you won't stop calling me, I am sick and tired of my phone ringing - Hassle spirits, and they stop taking your calls
  • Stop Calling, Stop Calling I don't want to think anymore - lack of interest in your questions, concerns, are you badgering the spirit, is this only go to work if you force the spirit to answer?  What does that make you?  Desperate, obsessive, or just really really keen?  What does that look like?  Should we strive, above all else, to be cool?  There is an element of timing involved in texting etiquette isn't there?
  •  Sometimes you just don't have their number
If you go to the lengths of ''making a call'' you are heavily invested in success and emotionally excited enough to the point where you can make yourself see, hear or feel things that are not genuine and whilst your mind is the portal through which successful spirit communications have to occur (as it has to be) it is also the source of all potential delusion.  By census, the esoteric arts don't always invite the ''cold, impersonal investigator'' to the party, and highly emotional, fantasy prone individuals with rich and fertile imaginations could just be talking to themselves.  On the other end of the spectrum the nominally more rational members of our community are normally also paranoid (I include myself), which in my understanding is a form of evolved, useful on the tribal scale, Shamanic, ratio ad absurdum, and therefore equally likely to jump at shadows.   By increasing our sensitivity in any way we are also increasing the chance of self-delusion. This is further complicated by, as I explored in Out of the Corner of My Eye, spirits actually using ''the shadows'' to communicate and in testing those Jungian outer reaches of our imagination are we are then not also testing those Jungian outer reaches of the universe and/or universal mind?  After all, our perception is suspended in the rest of our mind, conscious and subconscious,  before it is ever suspended in a physical reality.

The psychogeography of the lunatic fringe, like Nature herself, is a bitch to navigate.
Boy the way you blowin' up my phone make me leave no faster,
Put my coat on faster, leave my girls no faster,
I should've left my phone at home cause this is a disaster,
Phonin' like a collector, sorry I cannot answer!

Telephone, Lady Gaga

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Evidence - Out of the Corner of My Eye

Here I am talking to you, excited and delighted, yet never do I forget for one moment there is an unfinished story waiting for me indoors.  I see a cloud shaped like a grand piano.  I think: I must mention in a story somewhere that a cloud went by shaped like a grand piano.  I smell heliotrope.  I say to myself: sickly smell, mourning shade, must be mentioned in describing a summer evening.  I lie in wait for each phrase, for each work that falls from my lips or yours and hasten to lock all these words and phrases away in my literary storeroom.  They may come in handy one day.

Trigorin, The Seagull, Anton Chekhov

We see faces in everything - in clouds, in rocks, in trees, in buildings.  We have evolved to see faces in things: those of us who could made out the leopard amongst the leaves; those of us who couldn’t didn’t make it this far. We see faces and we see spirits.  More rigorous occultists will dismiss such inanities as Jesus in a Taco, yet those self-same occultists might congratulate themselves on conjuring to full appearance when they see a face in the smoke of their incense?  To what extent should we use pareidolia to dismiss or justify esoteric experiences; how do we determine when seeing a face constitutes evidence of a spirit?

There’s an exercise bike in my bedroom that has curved handlebars that look exactly like the horns of some baleful demon when seen from the corner of my eye.  I should move it, why haven’t I moved it, why do I let it linger and haunt my dreams?!  Sometimes I move my head, or blink and catch some sign of movement and turning closely to examine I see that it is only some reflection on the floor or door that moves when I move my neck – optics and not spirits at work, I reassure myself.  Sometimes the juxtaposition of objects in 3d space reveals a haunting image when glanced at as 2d and my mind is more than capable of filling in for a presence as well, if the space lacked one of its own.

A long time ago, in an English village far away, I found myself in a freezing haunted attic staring at the bloody imprint of a face in the wall.  The house was haunted, legend had it that the master had raped and murdered a maid in the attic, and, so it goes, this face-like red-brown smudge on the wall was evidence of his/her presence.  True, people had tried to paint over the smudge several times, but the face always returned – insidious damp or vengeful spirit?  Not one to be wary of such things in those days I attempted a banishing (of sorts) with my friends.  We played the Beatles to the spirit and beamed limitless love and forgiveness into it, then wished it farewell with a rousing chorus of Strawberry Fields Forever.  The face faded, over a few weeks, but it did fade.  Successful banishing or the meeting of hearsay, hysteria, early winter, pareidolia and mould cycles?

In spite of these doubts and concerns I am not ‘’debunking’’ this form of manifestation, I am attempting to review evidence of spirits like this in order to explore the temporal entanglement model.  Spirit work generates all kinds of associated phenomena that we will review and at times pareidolia is a legitimate form/recognition of interaction.  Sure, I can randomly see a dragon in the clouds, light streaming through it, but I can also see a dragon in the clouds after summoning a draconian entity.  Coincidence, forcing myself to see something that isn’t there, or genuine manifestation?  Or, conversely, was that random dragon all that random in the first place?  Was a draconian entity, somewhen, summoning me?

I have a feeling that one of the effects of temporal entanglement is the imprint of one time on another time and these imprints show up in the arrangement of things.  For instance lets suppose an impressively head dressed magician conjures me from somewhere in the past – they may remote view my room from there (and it would seem alien), they may rifle through my mind learning things that they couldn’t have known, the future for example, and my dream self, my cloud self could send them back all kinds of visions, communications that little [dog name ego] me is blissfully unaware of and all I may see on this end of the temporal spectrum, evidence of his imprint, is that demonic exercise bike – just taunting me.  

Beyond life, there are – his face grew ashen with terror - things that I cannot distinguish.  They move slowly through angles.  They have no bodies and they move slowly through outrageous angles… God they are breaking through!  They are breaking through!  Smoke is pouring in from the corners of the wall.  Their tongues… - ahhh!

The Hounds of Tindalos, Frank Belknap Long

Monday, December 4, 2017

The Life Magickal - Aims and Intentions


Hello, hello, baby
You called, I can't hear a thing.
I have got no service
In the club, you see, see
Wha-wha-what did you say?
Oh, you're breaking up on me
Sorry I cannot hear you,
I'm kinda busy.

Telephone, Lady Gaga

I have long been dissatisfied with the abundance of hazy terminology to denote different classes of spiritual entities (elementals, kings, angels, demons, daimones, archons, fae, saints, djinn, aliens, background people, time cops, etc) - these may all have great names that help to keep the wheels of publishing grinding but they are contained in a painfully weak zoology. Similarly I dislike the notions of a ''spiritual'' ''otherworld'' behind some kind of membrane where we talk to spirits like convicts behind plexiglass on prison phones and I think there are other ways to rationalise and describe these and other experiences. Occultists have surrendered attempts at unification, embraced woolliness and the scientific spirit that once animated us feels like it is dying or dead. Can we construct a unifying theosophy which is a little more robust?

In the aftermath of the 231 Gates Project, Raziel's information on time travel has ''decentralised'' magic for me by removing the magician as the active cause [presentism] and asking me to look at all phenomena as being entangled through time [eternalism].  He introduced me to such ideas as: a determined sandbox pocket universe; pinch-points;  an ''astral past''; the time traveller swarm; daughter universes; genetic dimensions; that most of infinity is uninhabitable.  In Fourteen Minotaurs he introduced me to a new way of viewing synchronicities and the navigation thereof changing my perception of magic forever.  In Some General Theory I outlined a new way of classifying spiritual entities and this kind of thinking will lay the groundwork for an esoteric worldview where we only have entities of one type across time, that humans are the same [spiritual] species as the others and all share ''DNA'' - an esoteric genetics, if you like.    In One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia I looked at the idea of the astral plane as a place of shared memories versus a stream of shared memories that are actually our conscious experience going back through time [or history...], a reversiverse - and I will continue to explore the structure/mechanics of the astral plane in this new project.

What am I doing? I'm talking to a blank telephone because there is a dead man on the other end of this fucking line.

Neil McCauley, Heat

Moving forward requires consolidating all the work on time travel into one coherent testable hypothesis which unifies all spirit(s) through time. The hard form of this hypothesis will try to explain all spiritual communication as direct conscious temporal entanglement with an entity at a different point in time, the soft form will allow for communication to be occurring between them via  interaction on a subconscious/superconscious ''dream'' level.  For example when I conjure Osiris and he gives me information a) the hard form would see him near consciously providing answers as if on the other side of a telephone - my act of ''magic'' is directly entangled with his and instead of one being a god and one being a mortal in two different worlds/planes we are simply two magicians interacting across time (or rather, within history)  or b) the soft form that I would be entangling with his dreams (or other parts of his mind) and the provision of information is happening without his conscious knowledge, similarly other entities may tap into my dreams or subconscious and tap my ''wisdom''* - learning things they ''couldn't possibly have known'' and feeling like it has come from a ''spirit''.  Raziel has dismissed the ideas that spirits do magic which ''cause'' things to happen but the [potential] energy/information exchange from entanglement could provide the ''oomph'' which causes universes to diverge at ''robust branching moments'', these points already established in the/our ''surviving histories'' i.e. within the finite set of variant selves which have ended up in ''coherent'' universes.

  • During my Tower work I communicated with Edward Kelley using the Time Phone and also streamed the Enochian Calls back to him from the future - from my perspective Edward Kelley would seem to be a ghost, but from his perspective was I a ghost or even an Angel?  At times conversations felt direct and at other times they felt like we were interacting through dreams - what is the true nature of the separating membrane?
  • The role of language in the efficacy of communication particularly with ancient spirits and ''elementals'' - how do you ''talk'' to a hatchet fish in an ancient ocean?  Do my interactions with Sumerian deities improve if I speak Sumerian?
  • The role of visions/dreams in communication with spirits and whether symbolic or emotional communication skips the need for shared language - this seems to support the soft form?
  • The role of the ''HGA'' as the trans-temporal spirit and whether other spirits could be classed as trans-temporal (hypercosmic? Gods)?
  • Are ''aliens'' interstellar, inter-dimensional or trans-temporal?  Although space appears to be ''out there'' is it in anyway actually playable or simply the background art of a much smaller pocket universe both in time and space?
  • Are Angels A.I.?
These and more questions will be generated, discussed and practically investigated and I will give myself a time table of one year to present some kind of metathesis on this.  I will summarize key points from the extant work with Raziel and provide one document to my readers at the end.  If anybody would like to get involved I will provide a monthly update specifically relating to this along the way and if people want to test the same theories via experiment I would be pleased to hear from you.  Before the New Year I will have condensed the above into some kind of more or less coherent hypothesis (which can of course be tested and revised) and as discussed/established in the previous post I will work closely with Raziel, Enlil and Inanna, communicating with the former monthly and propitiating the latter weekly - in this we will assume/see Enlil and Inanna as the actual people the Gods were based on [intra-temporal] and Raziel as the effective HGA [trans-temporal].  Other spirits will be contacted as necessary.

Stop callin', stop callin',
I don't wanna think anymore,
I left my head and my heart on the dance floor
Stop callin', stop callin'
I don't wanna think anymore,
I left my head and my heart on the dance floor. 

Telephone, Lady Gaga


*There was an experience of this in the ''Mantis contact?'', a sense of being rifled through - how much of that is going on constantly?

Thursday, November 30, 2017

The Life Magickal - Gods


In The Life Magickal I talked about how my metaphysical adventures were always superior when I was under the auspices of one of the two Gods that I have devoted myself to and I want to reflect on some specifics about their influences and consider the possibility of new partnerships as I renew the aim and spirit of my work. 

Looking through the Blogos I think you would consider me a disciple of Thoth or Hermes but my experiences with the Gods have been, at first glance, quite out of that character. After I finished university I returned home to the Midlands as I had nowhere else to go, my girlfriend at the time, who was Spanish, returned to Madrid.  Our relationship could not last the long distance and the breakup devastated me.  In the aftermath I took a long hard look at where I was in the grand scheme of ''initiation'', felt that I was ''in Hod'' and accepted that I still had a lot to learn.  In the thinking of that time I opened the ''Sphere of Netzach'' with an evocation of Aphrodite and began what was to become seven years of work with her, where she was the only deity in my life.*  I've discussed the details of these experiences before but, to reiterate, one of the most important lessons I learned was how to devote - it was this devotion that allowed me to complete my 5 year study of the Sefer Yetzirah and not flake out.  Its a lesson that I have applied to many areas of my life since then and the perfect remedy for ''Mercurial'' procrastination - she teaches you to love, to desire, to obsess, to be present, to commit, to serve and to control - all of these capacities Aphrodite brought into my life, whilst purging me of jealousy, and bound them to the arts magickal.  When I began working with her, she appeared in very classical form but as I got to know her and saw past my preconceptions, she was revealed to be much more ancient and more alien than I first imagined.  Now seeing her as the daughter of Cronos' assault on Uranus her impact on the direction of my work in time travel can't be understated - why do you have to castrate block time in order to create linear time?   What does it mean to be the personification of that castration?  During the 231 Gates Project one of the (Venus) rituals involved opening a conduit through time to return/restore a ''lost love'' but unfortunately the details of these rituals had to removed from the blog for safety**.''The Venus Current'', if you like, has been psychically clamouring for more attention and currently I am torn between deities - Hathor and Inanna - or perhaps she is torn between forms (? - if the fanatics in my audience will excuse my soft polytheism), but regardless, the choice will be important as I move on, whoever has to finally make it.

Enlil, on the other hand, chose me.  I had been invited to join the group Gentlemen for Jupiter, a set of magicians who were all working prosperity magic together, the so-called ''Jupiter Current'', and after my first ritual toast I decided to astrally project to scout things out on that giant gas planet.  I found myself heading towards the great storm on Jupiter and was sucked into the eye whereupon I passed out.  When I woke a voice in my head was saying ''Kish, Kish, Kish...'' and then once ''Sargon.'' This started some research that lead me to Enlil and his direction of the Jupiter current (as opposed to other members who were more involved with Jupiter/Zeus) has had a huge impact on my life.  Considering how his qualities dovetail with a renewed aim and purpose, he is the Master of the Tablets of Destiny, whose commands are unalterable and therefore his assistance in understanding myself as a time traveller within block time is probably going to be highly advantageous.

Together the ''currents'' of Venus and Jupiter under the stewardship of Aphrodite and Enlil and their corresponding influence on my magic (devotion and prosperity) have bound me to what used to be known as the Right Hand Path or the Pillar of Mercy in QBL - the forces of expansion, bliss, abundance and expression.  We can understand both of them in the way they relate to Cronos - Aphrodite as the product of his assault on Uranus, Zeus as Cronos' own conqueror. I began this post, or at least the thinking behind it, assuming that moving forward would automatically necessitate a relationship with a God of Magic or a God of Time but as I air these thoughts and dwell on how much pressure I have been under from ''Venus'' I begin to doubt this necessity.  Perhaps, with Love and Lightning, I have all the allies I need.

I know, I alone,
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law,
Nor melody nor thought.
Only I, only I
And none of this can I say,
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.

I know, I alone, Fernando Pessoa



*I worked extensively with Angels (therefore of Enlil, Ellil, El, etc - so technically the other God was involved already) and letter-spirits.
**The love that I had known in the Tower was restored though, the ritual suceeded.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Stranger Things 2 - Hermes/Mercury


Like Twin Peaks - The Return, Stranger Things 2 is also saturated by very specific obvious esoteric references and is using an identical method of execution i.e. painting by numbers.  As the Secret Sun blog pointed out the whole show is dripping in orange (backdrops, costumes, lighting design, our new Max character, etc) which to me immediately suggests the number 8 (in Ep. 1 we meet a character marked as Eight), Hod (in Ep. 7 a giant orange 8 appears) and the God Hermes/Mercury.


Watching fairly closely the entire show is a ritual to Hermes/ Mercury - alchemically speaking the quicksilver will be extracted from its orange ore.  Hermes/Mercury is the Patron of athletes, boysherdsmen, hospitality, thieves, tricksters, gamescommunicationscientists, doctors, magicians and although we see all of these themes explored in the show the primary focus is on his role as the Guardian of the Soul through the Underworld, Crossroads, Thresholds/Boundaries and the Promethean aspects of Fire.  Scenes which may have seemed extraneous to the less Qabalistically inclined are there to feather the God and are used in the same way that someone might put Mercurial related objects on a Mercurial altar.

MERCURY OXIDE

Below is a list of specific examples of where we see these features:

  • Athletics - there are a number of athletic scenes, the basketball playing and the shower room scene
  • Hospitality - we see the theme of hospitality twice a) the motel room and b) the conspiracy theorist's house
  • Theft - Explored in the faintly ridiculous punk robbers ensemble; stealing money from sister to play arcade games; stealing car of older brother
  • Trickery - When Nancy and Jonathan use their guile to trick the head doctor to revealing himself on tape
  • Games - the arcade scenes
  • Communication - the endless use of walkie talkies
  • Magic - in the psychic powers of Eight and Eleven
  • Herdsmen - the way in which Dustin attempts/suceeds to train/domesticate Dart
  • Science - in the laboratory scenes
  • Medicine - all the doctor scenes
  • Underworld - Will's journey into the underworld through his psychic link with the shadow monster, the way he locates Hopper in the underworld facilitating his rescue
  • Crossroads - the various branches and intersections of the vine system of the shadow monster that are mapped on the walls of Will's house 
  • Fire - fire is used repeatedly as a means of controlling the shadow monster by pretty much everyone


The show essentially concludes the ritual to conjure Mercury from the ore with the kids making their way through a field of broken orange vessels (the pumpkins) to perform a fire ritual at a crossroads on the threshold between the underworld and the world of the living.  Their final escape is secured by our ''herdsman'' Dustin.  The orange veil is then lifted from the show and we are drenched in blue, silver and white symbolising the loving kindness of Chesed or perhaps more likely the quicksilver metal acquired from the oxide.  If you are going to understand how they paint by numbers, you kind of have to understand the numbers. 

Qabalah is the New Black.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Cabbages and Kings II - Stoics

Diane - What did you say your name was again?
Tammy - Tammy.
Diane - Fuck you Tammy.

Twin Peaks the Return, Lynch and Frost

The Stoics believed that the universe was a single pantheistic material God and that the soul must be corporeal otherwise it would have no real existence.  Logos operates within the material substance therefore it is better to understand that material as pure mind and that various chunks of matter are thoughts (words of the word) - the soul then, fine and subtle as it is, is also of this mental material.  In this interpretation I can see no reason why the soul cannot literally be DNA - a time travelling reincarnating information spiral which probably stores all memory of that particular branch of the Tree of unfolding Life.  Within our tradition there are some nebulous definitions of terms like soul and spirit, but for me the soul is the genetic material incarnation (not the physical body persay which is the ''Guph'') and spirit is the time-traveller consciousness (logos being a kind of superconscious spark that permeates the mental material) that can become aware of its various ''incarnations''.  This spirit finds it easier to travel along soul lines (back through the history of your current incarnation) that are connected but with more difficulty you can go down one line of DNA, change at various junctions in the Tree of Life, and spring out in another person's perception. Just for clarity in my back and forth with Io, the soul as I define it is similar, a playground of time and anti-time that allows spirit to manifest in the first place.  The interplay of spirit (Neschamah) and soul (Nephesch) are what we experience as consciousness (Ruach).


After discovering the Astrogenetic associations back in 2001 I have oscillated between explaining astrological synchronicity as either the action of remote spatial influences on the subtle genetic material via gravity or light (reflected or otherwise and ultimately forms of this mental material) or whether they are markers for various positions in the cell cycle and have no direct physical influence simply mirroring each other.  When Kabbalists talk about scales and fractals like we do with terms/concepts like Hod of Netzach or Tifereth of Tifereth we can do so in such a way that diminishes various levels, a kind of ''top down'' view of Kabbalah a la primum mobile that champions the fixed stars and then the central galactic black holes as the crown of the hierarchy - but to my mind we ''descend'' to the Merkavah (Yordei Merkabah), Atziluth is not ''up'' it is within, i.e. the mathematics that underwrites reality which you can find the same in cell or star - the number one as the true primum mobile.

When we see the whole of the galaxy as an organism, similar to our own but on a much greater scale, it makes sense that there would be guardians set against us for different celestial levels, in the same way there are all kinds of immune functions that are targeted against our own cells - the body kills a lot of its own cells and defends against them getting lary.  When I am teaching astral projection I talk about how your own Outer Mind (Neschamah) has to guard against the action of your Inner Mind (Ruach) because it is not responsible to manage such things as sweating, blinking, peristalsis and so on and will therefore block the entry of yourself into yourself - if we are not responsible enough to manage our own sweating then we are clearly not responsible enough to mess around with the gravity settings of distant stars!  ''Refining'' the Ruach allows it greater glimpses of spirit - the Neschamah which experiences such things as simultaneous multiple incarnation across time (and where magick really happens), etc - the less ''refined'' the Ruach the more likely your experience is to be only in line with the DNA of your current incarnation.   I feel like refined is the wrong term implying too much judgement for my liking,(it lends itself to top down thinking) but being close to one's initial* soul is a different experience than that of leaving or distancing oneself from it and it seems that being close is the default and the other requires more work - like swimming against the current.  Unlike the Gnostic (closer to spirit) or the ''Sorceror'' (closer to soul), the Kabbalist attempts to walk the middle path.  In my own work these two competing drives have often been reflected by two different ''animas'' blonde and brunette - Alice for the Gnostic, and Red Riding Hood for the Soul** - with the third way some unspecified redhead, which for now can be Agent Tammy Preston.

Gordon Cole - Agent Tammy Preston has the stuff Denise.

Twin Peaks the Return, Lynch/Frost
*All souls are initial from the perspective of the Neschamah which experiences simultaneous incarnation.  Accessing that simultaneity from within the confines of a specific incarnation can be disorientating.
**Blondes are not confined to metaphysics nor are brunettes confined to the cthonic.  Beth Gibbons is a great example of a Blonde Red Riding Hood.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Cabbages and Kings - Letters, Powers and Time

The time has come the Walrus said
To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

It is my understanding that the relationship between a letter and its kingship (the domain it governs) is like the relationship between genotype and phenotype i.e. that the letter contains the information which is then expressed into its characteristic form.  I don't see a duality at work here they are both of the same ''materia'' but one is internal code and the other external expression.  This materia as I see it is not ''matter'' persay but Flux, a composite of time and anti-time (consciousness) - the letters are ''anti-time'' the expression of them are ''time''.  Anti-time is not different to time other than that it is reversing.

I am re-reading some of the Flying Rolls of the Golden Dawn regarding astral projection and crystallising some of my objections to their method.  In Ritual Magic of the Golden Dawn there is an account of a Russian dilettante (Natalia) who used an I Ching hexagram as a gate to project through and then, after describing a snowy wilderness, transformed into a wolf and began howling, barking and attacked someone in the room. Although they originally put this down to ''the race fantasies of a hysterical Slav'' upon later analysis they discovered that the hexagram she had been using talked about the ''superior man transforming into a panther or tiger'' something Natalia could not herself have known.


In a bizarre inversion of this approach the standard (Qabalistic) Golden Dawn practice is to memorise the formal (Golden Dawn approved) symbolism of a letter or Tarot card and then project into it and see the symbols you are ''meant'' to see as opposed to something more free-form like letting the letter speak for itself.  Since so much of the Golden Dawn symbol structure is obviously wrong this begs the question as to whether during this type of astral projection they are only seeing what they want to see as opposed to what is really there.  Besides the accounts of the Flying Rolls there are other examples of this forced astral distortion by authors such as DMK who after evoking the letter Tav, appeared to be having a vision of Luna (in my opinion the correct symbolism) and then who, through force of will, made himself see Saturn (this example is from the section in Modern Magick on Pathworking).


Natalia's story dovetails with my own experiences of astral projection through letters as gates which are now fairly extensive.  During the 5 year study of the SY it became clear in the early phases of research that there were fundamental problems with Golden Dawn/Thelemic symbolism especially the Double Letter to Planet associations.  This, coupled with a message from Raziel that said ''Abandon the Tarot, Focus on the Letters'', prompted most of us to conduct more free-form research into letters projecting in to, and from them, without preconceived ideas - the ''Natalia'' approach, if you like - then compared and contrasted with a mixture of different sources (including the Tao Te Jing). We found that our results were much more in line with earlier versions of the SY as opposed to later corruptions of it such as that found in the Golden Dawn qabalistic materials.  This speaks to an inherent power and presence, a kingliness, of the letter that can be papered over or diluted by a convinced enough, if deluded, will.  Taking this on board we used the symbol as a gate, saw into the mysteries of the letter and re-discovered them through open-ended inquiry.



The 5 year study of individual letters and their kingships culminated in two alternative arrangements - the ''Saadia'' version of the Tree of Life, a kind of default setting which shows a logical classical arrangement of the letters according to the rule of 3, 7 and 12 (sans G.D. baggage) and the Tree of Gates which is effectively each Sefira reimagined as the 231 Gates, where each Sefira can be rotated producing different letter-pairs as the paths between them.  Using the 231 Gates in astral projection (a mesh of interconnected letters on the astral membrane - the ispaklariot shown in the title image for the Hermetic Lessons) produced extraordinarily high quality astral experiences that almost always feel/felt like time travel - moving into a different time period and interacting with people there before being ''discovered'' and ''kicked off'' by (mostly) insectoid entities.  This astral work, amongst other things, led to the invention of the Time Phone, an astrological globe with three rotating rings inside that can be ''calibrated'' to different times, ostensibly as a means of communicating with the past or the future.  It is my opinion that the golem (GLM) is SY ''bird language'' for time traveller or ''prophet'' as the idea of time in the SY is expressed as gilgalim (GLGLM) circles* - through the Golem (and the letters of anti-time) we can slow down, stall, reverse (the effects of) and ultimately transcend time. Direct experiences that followed have convinced me that the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the Universal Medicine and Eternal Youth are so married to the notions of time and entropy that it is impossible that the geniuses of yesteryear would have missed it.

To come full circle one reading of the King sections of the SY, in response and addition to Io, is that it is directly referring to this ''cellular consciousness''esque approach to the SY, the Teli (Bola/Dragon) in the Universe are the genes in the nucleus (the king on his throne), the cycle of the year refers to the cell-cycle and therefore events in the cytoplasm (the king in his province) and finally the heart in the soul refers to how the cells interact/differentiate to form a realised body, the culmination of the genotype as the phenotype.  The letters are quite literally a force of anti-time since everyone of us can trace them within us to the dawn of life itself.  The 231 Gates arrangement itself sheds even more light on earlier and later verses.

O oysters, said the carpenter
You've had a pleasant run
Shall we be trotting home again?
But answer there came none,
And this was scarcely odd
Because they'd eaten every one.

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

*CERN is a time machine.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Anti-Time Clones and the Blessing of Yesterdays


Last night I had another one of those David Lynch dreams.  He (Raziel?) was explaining to me the concept of time travel specifically the relationship between time and anti-time (consciousness).  I was confused by the idea that anti-time runs against the flow of time (remembering past lives, predicting, analysing or otherwise side-stepping, prophesising the future, etc) as any point of contact between the two wouldn't form a realisable perception because the two perceptual faces couldn't be resolved into a single experience as you would be facing both ways.  He explained to me that although anti-time runs against the flow of time it does so as if it were a car reversing so the face of time and anti-time always face the same way.

Imagine two (infinite?) queues of clones - a realisable perception of the moment would only occur at a point of contact between two clones in the parallel lines since both time and anti-time are necessary for that to happen.   The line of anti-time clones are walking backwards, the line of time clones forwards so the clones don't move in pairs but are always changing partners.  ''You'' are not a time-clone on a journey through - the sense of ''you'' emerges as a contact between the opposing parallel clones - a time spark (Yechidah/Chiah?).  Since they are clones however the memories of past and future are shared, so by accelerating one line you can bring a different contact between a time clone and an anti-time clone at some point in the future or past.

This dream was caused by a thought experiment about a spell I call ''The Blessing of Yesterdays'' a time spell whereby at the end of each day you bless the day before.  After getting into the habit of this your future self will theoretically bless today from tomorrow.  This dream message seemed to be explaining some of the mechanism for how that works - a theory of assymetric trans-temporal magic challenging the inherent presentism of mainstream occulture.

This has not however stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of hyper-mathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed professor of neo-mathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his special and general theories of Disaster Area tax returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is, in fact, totally bent.

Disaster Area, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Monday, October 9, 2017

Should non Jews practice the Kabbalah?

So the other day I chanced upon a comment from an associate of mine which said that you should not practice the Jewish Kabbalah if you are not Jewish.  My first reaction was, of course, how could I ever possibly un-practice and un-direct experience those years of my life spent in transgression or whether I am completely beyond saving?  Then, taking a moment to quell my rising panic, I began to reflect on the implications of this latest edict as a great portion of the Western Mystery Tradition from the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been the study and practice of the Jewish Kabbalah - be it Gematria or working with Hebrew angels.  If you are not Jewish surely you can't practice Christian Cabala instead - a much bastardised and culturally appropriated form of the system - that would only add insult to injury?  Hermetic Qabalah is possibly even more criminal. The only solution would be to completely amputate the Kabbalah and all related subjects from the canon of the WMT so no one would ever run the risk of even accidentally breaching this edict.  You see how dangerous this line of thinking rapidly becomes?

The truth is that the Jews, like all races and religions do not exist in a vaccuum, there is/was considerable cultural mingling with everyone around them in ''the beginning'' (if there is such a clear date in historical reality) and in the diaspora afterwards.  The Kabbalah, in the sense of that understanding of a universal system begun in the 11th century (which itself is clearly influenced by Catharism and accompanying beliefs, Catharism itself a migrating system from the East) has its roots in the cosmopolitan culture of the Levant and Mesopotamia in the early parts of the 1st millenium (Sefer Yetzirah, etc) and many more influences which extend back into the dawn of civilization (Egyptian letter magic, Babylonian astrology, Zoroastrian Angels, Greek philosophy and mathematics, etc).  While the Jews made contributions and produced a fusion of the ideas that was all their own, there are a variety of similar works in letter magic all over the world.  The position is, of course, absurd, full of contradictions and ill-considered consequences.  If upheld the logical conclusion would be that no person who is not of a race or religion should practice that culture - what does this do to Paganism in the larger setting?  Can only people who prove they are authentically Greek (whatever that means considering the Slavic influence) work with the Greek Pantheon etc etc?   What about Egyptian magic?  Is Josephine McCarthy, for example, authentically an ancient Egyptian? If I am "English'' does that mean I can only work with the English Cabala instead? Spare me this madness at least!

This brings us back to the subject of reincarnation and that it is a widely held belief in the esoteric community that few seem to genuinely embrace.  Have I only been reincarnated from within my DNA's own timeline?  Can I only investigate something I have ''physical'' genetic roots in?  We must have a racially secure and culturally homogenous esoteric experience!  What??? - this is creepy.  Having been an animal, or a differently coloured, differently abled human in past lives, (and an angel in future lives), our experience creates compassion for animals, differently coloured, differently abled people and angels - leading to a more tolerant personality and a kindness towards all life-forms.  When we tap into that trans-temporal self we enable kindness, forgiveness, curiosity and wonder towards all life and consciousness.  On the other hand what I see continuing to rise, in comments from within our community like the above, is conservatism, judgement, constriction, boundaries and division.  I think the root of it might be a lack of creativity in certain quarters and a corresponding desire to shut down wonder and imagination - who knows?

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Empty-headed II - Testicle Head, Kidney Head

Although we have been trained to believe that thoughts are trapped in our brains because we believe ourselves to be the physical body we appear to be, as explained in Empty-headed our [sensation of our] head is in fact empty.   In truth our entire [sensation of our] body is created by the mind and the head is in itself empty; our thoughts cloud about the face and occupy the seemingly physical objects in the world around us and beyond as well as all over our mental homunculus of our self.


In One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia we encountered the testicle-headed or ovary-headed personification of Yesod known as the Many Mannered Mind Man.  In the ''physiognomy'' laid out in the Hermetic Lessons we know that people with high testosterone are more likely to act in certain ways than others - for instance aggressive tendencies, lack of restraint, and paraphilias are much more common - and in describing their behaviour we could say they are thinking [and acting] with their testicles.  Similarly the other personifications are related to other glands and groups of hormones that produce physical changes in the body alongside altering the mood of the various individuals who express them in lower or higher concentrations than ''normal'' - those personifications could be said to be thinking with these other glands.

In confronting our bias towards facial-cranial centrism in this way we have to ask where is our head actually at? When we are talking to other people we generally talk to their faces but the whole body of the person you are talking to is a construction of their mind - why not talk to their feet, their belly, their nipples or their butt - as if it were their face?  What if that person is thinking with their testicles shouldn't you be directing your attention and intention that way as if their testicles are their head? Even deeper than this every nucleus of every cell is in fact a ''centre'' of mind - talk to the whole being as if it were all head and all mind, imagine your own body as all mind, that is, after all, what it is.

My ''natural grade'' is the kidney (particularly the adrenal cortex), I am ''kidney headed'' and therefore, fundamentally, a cleaner. Many doctors, assassins and even actors are cleaners (that's why we say ''polish'' the work, and we provide catharsis, a kind of purging of blood-spirits for the audience) - a toilet cleaner or over zealous housekeeper is effectively working in preventative medicine!  The more kidney headed I let myself become the more ''OCD'' I get, the more focused I am on polishing the form and the more capable I am of multi-tasking - if one is disciplined these special powers of the cleaner can be applied in a great variety of areas. 

Over the last few weeks, however, I have been actively investigating moving my ''head'' or centre into other parts of my being and re-imagining my own head (and others') as if it were, say, a tail.  This can be quite amusing as different thoughts/emotions/responses are immediatly generated by this experiment.  Allow your ''head'' to drift into the back of your knees, live as if the back of your knees were your head for a few hours or a whole day, more importantly diminish the role of the head/face give them the same level of consideration you would normally give to your heel, or your tailbone.

Monday, September 25, 2017

One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia



The Many Mannered Mind Man was one of the characters in a vision of the Tree of Life I recieved when I was younger, a memory palace created in a previous life to pass my knowledge on to myself.   Encountered by ''the Genius'' on the shore of the Great White Sea, later I came to understand that this Mind Man is a Partzuf of Yesod - a personification that allows me to engage in dialogue with this aspect of the Tree of Life and understand/remember the related ''physiognomy''.  Like the other characters, the Many Mannered Mind Man had his own chapter in The Book of Fantastic Lies - the book of the vision - called One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia.
 

Looking at the image we see:

- The skeleton confronting the symbol of its death/infinity on the shore
- The Mind Man's head is replaced with a Yin Yang to symbolise the phases of the Moon
- The tube attached to the helmet makes it appear like a testicle or ovary
- The tube goes down into the ''White Sea'' which is shown to be a mucus, or sexual fluid
- Within the white sea are perfect egg-pearls which represent individual moments




Why trivia?   As I have got to know the astral plane I have discovered that it is an ocean of ''our'' memory most of which is banal or trivial.  Trivia can aggregate into more significant encounters/beings (the icebergs in our vision) but the prima materia is the trivial.  As forms of head injury can produce perfect memory recall of banal things e.g. what day it was on a particular date, etc so we store all such things in memory but thankfully cannot access the vast majority of it.  The astral plane consists of  all memories, all trivia, every possible timeline all scrambled together - the Akashic Records.

Situated as we are in the Depth of the Past we live our life experiences in the aftermath of the moment, ever catching up with ourselves - am I already dead or dying and is my life actually my life flashing before me?  If we imagine our perception to lie just behind the moment we could imagine the next step ahead would be the moment itself but our perceptions/sensations of the history of our reality are contained within the outer mind which may then be finally contained in a physical body directly experiencing the ''now'' of physical reality.  Therefore we have to navigate this entire structure of the Inner and Outer Mind in order to apprehend reality itself, to get to ''now'' be it death or not - the Depth of the Past does not lead into the ''Depth of Now'' but the Depth of the West, the Depth of Memory.  If in the Metabolism of Time the Depth of the West represents the place the day goes to die, where digestion is completed - what does this say about the Depth of the Past?  Excreta?  Only when we understand that this life is itself but one memory can we begin to understand memory itself.


Since all time is history - including the future - our own timelines in the form of our DNA can guide each of us back into the veritable oceans of our ancestry.  Like the tube of an old diving suit these ''astral threads'' can breathe ancient past memories and ancient future memories.  The Many Mannered Mind Man, a higher dimensional being, freescales through these timelines, a Librarian of Babel, inspecting each moment to guarantee it is perfect - and perfectly trivial.  Confronting infinity reduces you [and all meaning] to the trivia that you are but however little importance your trivia has it still has some [ 0.0 recurring].  Only by confronting the vision of the infinite can we discard the baggage of extraneous meaning, our excreta, that prevents us ''becoming'' the Many Mannered Mind Man - and taking another step on the journey to discovering our true selves amidst the pearls of the infinite.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Hermetic Lessons - Practical Work Discussion I

As they continue to do the work the students are now leaving the Depth of the Past and moving along the Path of the Moon towards the Depth of the West.  As they acquire their first spiritual ally (their chosen Lunar deity), learn to hone the will through Raja Yoga and continue to attempt astral projection, they will gain perspective on the ''past'' that they are leaving behind.

As much as our experience of life and ourselves is fundamentally mental it is also fundamentally historical. We very literally live in the past - signals take time to get from [assumed] physical reality through our sense organs until they are organized and transformed into the representation of reality that we experience in our minds.  Being behind the moment in this way makes it really difficult to tell how far behind the moment we exactly are:

- did this already happen and are we in a loop?
- is this mental experience of reality happening in a dying mind, are we literally ''catching up'' with our own death?
- mindfulness only allows you to connect with this mental impression of ''now'' what I call the immediate past, it allows you to catch up with your ''catching up''
- consciousness as anti-time a) the idea of reverie being a shallow experience of highlights of this life but building into a honed, sustained reverie that can take you back through your own geneline b) the idea of prediction and anticipation being a form of future reverie which we can again hone and sustain to see the future (which is also history)




I set the students a series of tasks to complete between now and December when the course will continue with a further three lectures/practical workshops.  They have to:

- form a connection with a lunar deity of their choice
- follow the instructions and attempt to get results on the astral plane or fail gloriously
- succeed in one restriction/observance
- acquire knowledge of basic astrology

I think that although teaching styles are a problem within the WMT they are ultimately regulated by market forces, i.e. the less able teachers are finding that students are not interested in their work and don't want to pay for tickets, venues, lessons, etc.  The more able/flexible teachers will find themselves overbooked and will have to create co-teachers etc.  The more pressing problem regarding teaching at the moment is the notion that teaching = leading and this is probably why the community is treading water.  More on that later but right now I want to explain/explore/justify some of these choices from the perspective of the teacher and also discuss some of the issues the students are having and how I will address them as we proceed -  transparency about the teaching/learning process makes a big difference to the quality of the lesson. 

As we move into the world of dreams and illusion* that is the Astral Plane (beginning in the Depth of the West) the students must have acquired spiritual allies - these allies are for their own protection and will allow them to sustain a vision for longer than they would normally and reduces the chances of being kicked off. Although there are a variety of possibilities here lunar deities are a good place to start as the Moon is the traditional guardian to the entrance to this realm and we are going to need relationships with all 7 sacred planets. As outlined in the Seshat working one of the students made very rapid progress regarding astral experiences after they engaged in a small ceremonial magic ritual to their chosen Lunar deity, then used the prayer as a mantra during gazing.  Although this student chose an Egyptian deity my general advice was to pick a deity that your ancestors might have worshipped.  Another of Irish/Welsh descent is making good progress and has just selected their deity - Rhiannon. I consulted a scholar friend of mine who put this together for her, along with an audio so she can perfect the working in the (closest) language to the deity:


O Rhiannon sydd yn fwy hynafol na hanes y tir
Eich ceffyl yn gyflymach na syniad ac yn ysgafnach na'r gwynt
O Rhiannon yn sefyll ar y twmpath gyda golau lleuad
Rwyf yn eich addoli
Rhiannon doeth, Rhiannon deg Dduwies gwirionedd amyneddgar

The other two seem a bit confused and overwhelmed by the choice but they will make it in the end I'm sure. One is mainly interested in the history of alchemy and has Italian ancestry so I am thinking of directly referring them to Luna/Diana as opposed to another Lunar deity - if you have any other suggestions please advise in comments.  The remaining student is being very cryptic so we will see what emerges.

In addition to attempts on the astral students are also working on lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis.  Sleep Paralysis, an experience I recommend new students attempt to have, has the equivalent horror factor of the midnight ritual in the graveyard (when it comes to developing the astral body) and some students crave that kind of intense experience to ''jump-start'' their work.  Ignoring the roll-over signal is an incredibly easy way of inducing sleep paralysis and after a few failed/aborted attempts students seem to be making ''progress'' there.  Its a kind of cheap, dirty trick to have an OBE quickly and get the conversation on ''what is the self?'' moving outside of the confines of the [sensation of] the physical body - it starts a very different kind of conversation than lucid dreaming does (which is a more common experience although not one that is commonly mastered).  We can also discuss the way in which the outer mind protects itself from the activities of the inner mind.

Certainly having to teach is making me reflect on my own experiences and knowledge and how I structure the transmission - in many ways I am adapting an AA style approach but with the Saadia Tree of Life.  I think the systematic development of different faculties is important and in some ways we are ''climbing the tree'' while maintaining an emphasis on unification and ''grounding''.

1) Depth of Past - Question physical reality and embrace truth of mental reality
2) Depth of West - Memory
3) Depth of Down - Remembering
4) Depth of Up - Forgetting
5) Depth of East - Inner Mind

As we learn about the properties of memory in the next set of lessons, we will be learning more than microcosmic tricks for enhanced reflexes, referencing, learning to think with the spine, or recovering from trauma more rapidly etc but also to ''remember into existence'' and ''forget from existence'', we will also be learning about how the faculties of remembering and forgetting correlate with synchronicities and de-synchronicities.  Ultimately we will be moving through physical, psychological, informational, ''spirit'' and mind-only models to our final destination the time-dependent or temporal entanglement model.

*Like spheres this is an introductory explanation for the Astral Plane, my own understanding is different to this but its a way in.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Hermetic Lessons - Light




- Importance of reflex and memory, learning to think with your spine, ''catching the ball'' and the problems with ''lust for result''.  Effectively this is about staying ''in the moment'' but in a reflexive way like when you catch a ball without thinking about it.  Later on this becomes important because all mental processes and knowledge need to be accessed in the moment and reflexively because you can't google stuff about the spirits while you are in astral contact.  I find that students generally have a great problem with memorizing the basic concepts - what the planets do, which one rules which signs, etc.  It is work and it has to be done.



- Hyperspheres, 3-spheres, when discussing spheres of consciousness i.e. physical reach/touch, sense perception and thought we have to be aware that what our 5D ''cell'' really is is ''blobby'' as opposed to spherical, the membrane shifting constantly, and that their sphere is not only in apparent motion constantly through the various rotations of the earth but also our own movements.

- Thought is more like fluid; although in creating the sensation of perception we appear to be surrounded by the atmosphere and other physical objects since all these senses are actually constructed out of ''thought'' the true nature of our surroundings is more like a viscous fluid - this will probably occur on astral at some point

- Lucid Dreaming - when talking about lucid dreaming this is background work that will help facilitate astral travel later.  Various hints and tips about how to lucid dream will be shared, such as tapping the doorframe every time you pass through and asking ''am I dreaming?''

- Sleep Paralysis - although sleep paralysis is a terrifying experience I think it is essential to seek it out in the early phases as it cements important questions about the conscious experience of things and if it happens unexpectedly it can be really frightening.  We will discuss the rollover signal featured in this series of videos and talk about hypnagogic hallunications resulting from sleep paralysis versus hypnopompic hallucinations.

- Use of ''physical'' lights - here we will discuss that all light one sees is seen as mental light created as a result of the stimulus of physical light, one never sees physical light persay.  Therefore the use of candles or the rising sun as a means of stimulating the vision, while highly appropriate and effective, needs to be employed in the knowledge that one is looking at mental light.

- Astral Bodies - when teaching astral projection I will not be teaching students to imagine their astral bodies rising out of their physical bodies, this is flawed for two reasons, firstly it comes from the delusion that we are in 3d bodies with thoughts inside our heads and secondly by throwing ones perspective outside of themself it often confounds attempts to get on the astral.  Since we are already in our ''astral body'' as has been established by the prior lessons in cellular consciousness/magical anatomy we are going to start looking straight at the astral.  In this sense we have to start looking through the perceptual membrane

- Gazing, as I teach actors one can hold ones eyes in various ways states to project different states to the audience i.e. looking, seeing, remembering, reliving all involve a different position of the eyes.  One of the most important steps for effective use of the astral plane is the manner in which you should set your eyes - you have to gaze.  Practical activity: hold the eyes in the ways outlined above go through looking, seeing, remembering, reliving and then gaze.  Once everyone gets gazing then we have to close the eyes but continue to gaze, which will take another moment to adjust to.  When one closes one eyes one blots out the appearance of the physical world and is left looking at ones perceptual field from somewhere else ''inside the head''.  This often appears to be a flickering, pixelated field.  We are going to gaze at this.

- Astral Projection Lesson

 -Problems
*Egoic babble - the first stage of resistance to astral planing is egoic babble - anxiety, etc, the eyes tend to fall down in the socket and must be brought back up.  Focusing on maintaining the gazing is sufficient in itself to cut down noise
*Physical discomfort - rollover signals if trying at night, itches, back pains, etc resisting these takes a few mins of breathing and focusing on the eyes, if you ''break'' for whatever reason you adjust and try again
*Astral larvae - early phantasms as you approach the astral often taking insectoid, or snake like forms, can be filled with incredible menace - they can be ''broken'' into pixels by staring ''into'' them
*Unchecked personal distortions - seeing what you want to see, I find that in genuine astral experience beyond the gravity well of the self the visions will be crystal clear and vivid and contain some sort of discovery.  The quality of visions when you are seeing what you want to see is also much lower. 


-Successes (for the sake of these primer lessons)
*Tesselating, possibly intelligent fields of colour emerging from ''blobs''
*Visions
*Contact with entities

During the 3 month break there will be a number of tasks to complete:

a) Astrological memorization, be highly familiar with the basics of astrology/astrological symbolism
b) Actively succeed in both a restriction and an observance
c) Attempt astral projection and ''succeed'' once
d) Select Lunar deity, learn prayer to Lunar deity in as close to as possible their language
e) Use moon app and always keep eye on the moon phase

The next set of three lessons will begin with calls to the various lunar deities and be focused on memory, time and archetypes (uses thereof)

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Hermetic Lessons - Mind

  •  Magical Anatomy of the Self


  • Hologram of physical self in centre of perceptual cell, internal feelings - digestion, heart, etc
  • ''Clock-body'': head in future predicting, anticipating; torso in centre, heart, lungs, beating, breathing ''in the moment'; abdomen in past, dealing with the decisions of the moment, digesting, cleaning the blood, genitals preserving ''memory of the past''
  • Molecular developmental biology - as embryo divides it takes on characteristics of front/back, top/bottom, etc who (how is it?) decides which cell gets to be the ass? 
  • Each cell in the body contains this pefect copy of the DNA physical self in each nucleus, although cells only express some of this info and are thereby differentiated



  • Physical sensations and [sense of] physical reach is the first sphere of cellular consciousness, the ''nucleus'' which encloses the [sensation of] the physical self
  • When you feel the table, you feel the feeling of the table, this sphere of [the sense of] physical ''feeling'' is limited by the physical reach
  • [the sense of] ''Smell'' is the bridge between touch and the other senses, it is concentrated in the first sphere but can extend beyond it
  • Discuss psychometry



  • All sense objects are mental artefacts arising from [assumed] physical objects in a physical world
  • They are composed of mental light - light bulb exercise i) look into lightbulb ii) observe blob of light on retina iii) observe how it moves iv) observe how all objects are in the mind and composed of mental light v) make a general theory for what must follow
  • There is no size - [the sense of] the sense-objects are derived from one undifferentiated field of thought in the mind
  • Cytoplasm which surrounds the cell is a ''mental-fluid'' and which is occupied by ''organelles'' in the form of the sense-objects
  • Liken the sensed space to the structure of the biological cell - pointing out features of typical rooms- lighting, heat, information sources etc
  • There is no movement a) ''hamster-ball model'' the sensation of physical movement can be reversed, since the cell is fixed in the mental sphere instead of the physical body entering different physical events, in truth mental events enter the sphere of the mind b) ''fishbowl model'' instead of a current of events entering the cell, events arise from the natural currents and fluctuations within the fishbowl - a) and b) are the way in which this ''mental fluid'' of sense-experience is linked to the outer mental fluid of the larger consciousness in ''the bloodstream of time'' and the action of the ''mental fluid'' or cytoplasm within the cell
  • Discuss how this may interact with psychic powers like clairaudience, clairvoyance

  • All sense experience (the mental fluid) is contained with the larger sphere of the outermind and is ''membrane bound'' - discuss membrane of physical sensation, the reach of our senses, not being able to see through walls, the limits of senses when staring into space, extensions of those senses through telescopes, microscopes, etc
  • Our physical, egoic and sense experience of our self is occuring within the subconscious and is in fact held imobile within the subconsicous
  • Discuss implications for dreams, prophecy
Practices of Raja Yoga build up this awareness of magical anatomy starting from the sensation of the physical self and the physical will at the nucleus and build up into the fact that all being is held within the sphere of the mind.  To begin, the will is developed by a series of restrictions and observances.  This will is converted into poise through the asanas.  This poise is ''energized'' and harmonized/regularized by pranayama or right breathing/breath control.  [Apparently] external sense objects are then contemplated as mental artefacts and senses are withdrawn and trained by will.  Since physical objects are mental objects all is one in the sphere of the mind.  Experience bliss.
  • Restriction (stop yourself from doing certain things - i.e. eating meat, lying, playing)
  • Observance (make yourself do things - i.e.  keeping clean/organized, studying)
  • Poise (diet + fitness + yoga practice = poise)
  • Breathe (breath control, nervous cleaning)
  • Sense Objects + Mind (observe world as sense objects not physical objects)
  • Meditation (observe how you own mind infuses all sense objects)
  • All Mind
  • Bliss
n.b. The use of spheres here will be corrected here and in subsequent lessons as spheres represent a misconception.  The correct term is hyperspheres - 4spheres, or 5 spheres/ ''glomes''. Spheres are only a way into hyperspheres.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Hermetic Lessons - Maps



I am teaching a three part course at the moment - three 45min lessons for a small group of relative beginners on a) maps b) mind and c) light.  The practical sides of the course are a) qabalah b) raja yoga and c) astral projection.  My students are all intellectual, have had some spiritual experiences and have a shared complaint about the difficulties of making any headway due to the sheer amount of information on these mixed subjects and the impossibility of making choices.  In describing the lesson I will be as succinct as possible and if you want to use this plan feel free to adapt.

(5mins) Draw map of the earth free hand
 
(5 mins) Draw timemap of human civilization 

(5mins) Discuss results.  Point out eurocentrism of the maps that students have drawn.  Use globe to show that effectively half of the planet is blue so they have only drawn half the planet.  Point out terra centrism. 



(5 mins) Using the results discuss usefulness and limitations of map(s) and shared language.

(20 mins) Dimensions - lecture and Q/A, elicit answers where possible

- Discuss physical and connotative meanings for the 5 dimensions

  • East - Sunrise, hope, rebirth, awaking
  • West - Sunset, end of things, dreams, sleeping
  • North - cold, contract
  • South - warmth, expand

- If we continue north in a straight line and not follow the curvature of the earth we would head into space.  At what point do the spatial directions lose their meaning in infinity?  If the universe is finite what happens to that line?  If the universe is infinite what happens to that line?

- Point out the usefulness of a certain kind of ''geocentrism'' that puts you in the middle of the dimensions.

- What does it mean if someone is ''warm'' or ''cold''?  The connotative meanings are important and will make sense of the Tree of Life as you look at it later for it is not only a map of space/time but it also a map of the psyche.* 

- Magnetite - studies have shown humans have magnetite in their brain in the same way other animals do who use it to navigate.  What would be the effect of calibrating the organism by spending some time in the north-south, east-west position meditating?  What ''powers'' could we have from the magnetite that animals have that our egoes drown out with their incessant noise about shoe shopping, etc?  If such powers are working unconsciously anyway then would our calibration have the effect of helping us to hear them?

- Use the location of the Pacific ocean to make points about the cultures of California and Japan.  If we suggest that the Pacific Ocean is like the unconscious mind of the Earth what does this say about those two places?  Do other parts of the world fill roles like this or not?  What does this say about the dimensions?  How useful is this idea what are the limitations/dangers?

  • Up - out, rise, lift, ascent, superior
  • Down - in, falling, descent, drop, inferior
- There is no such thing as a precise up and down they are more like in and out from our position in space.

- Why is the ''Fall'' bad, why is ''Down'' bad?  Side discussion on why down would be considered bad from the view point of evolutionary ancestors - down would indicate a journey to the jungle/forest floor with all the predators etc that this involves, falling would be bad in case the monkey breaks a limb.  Ask students to think about other evolutionarily built-in responses to dimensions as they continue to reflect.

- Point out that science as a rule tends to ''look down'' on things and break them into smaller parts in order to understand and that art/architecture as a rule tends to ''build up'' from smaller things to make larger creative structures.**

  • Good - nutrition, excellence/virtue
  • Evil  - poison, ineptitude/lack of skill 
  • Past - birth
  • Future - death

- Move students away from purely ethical understanding of the terms good and evil by asking them to think about what good and evil mean in art and what good and evil mean to a bacteria - think about our own instinctive reponses to eating vomit.  What is bad art? In general terms discuss at what point all dimensions either reverse in their meaning i.e. when does too much nutrition become ''bad'', when does too much warmth become ''bad''?



- (5 mins) Introduce students to sphere of the mind.  Ask students to meditate on the dimensions and insist that this should be pushed to the point where it becomes disorientating.


 
H/W - learn traditional order for elements, planets and zodiac signs

Notes for next lesson - discuss dangers of spheres in thinking

*For instance our Sefirah of Love and Compassion would be Warm and our Sefirah of Judgement/Fear/Strength would be Cold.
**This ties into an understanding of Hod and Netzach later on.