Magick

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Rest assured, Techstep, I'm reading it all.

I was also interested in your Tarot thread and remarks in the unusual religious experiences thread. I appreciate your efforts.

I am not sure what you mean by inversionary.

My understanding is that Crowley came from an intensely religious family, whose zeal for their version of the faith resulted in harsh, abusive treatment of the child. I came away from reading about that with the impression that he chose to embrace anti- symbols out of rage angainst that childhood, combined with anger at the need to repress his sexual drives.

But he was calling himself the Beast out of a personal context in which that meant the Christian "enemy" no matter what other, more sophisticated understandings he may have been working with. It doesn't make sense to claim that isn't part of it, surely.

To be clear about where I am coming from. I believe in the natural, but feel emotionally connected to ideas of religion and esoteric experience. The Christian fantasies about the pervasive, wicked luciferian conspiracy mostly seems amusing and wrongheaded to me, but kind of a fun mental game to play. Likewise, these magical people seem to be engaged in nonsense, but quite interesting nonsense that also involves fun mental games.

I recognize that these sometimes goofy, often weird systems may afford practitioners novel and personally enlightening experiences and find that fascinating.

Have replayed it several times. The camera makes quick cuts between the two of them so you cant really ever see her actually "make the gesture".

Okay. He says "Good lord". The camera cuts to her for a nanosecond, and it catches her with the palm of her left hand is over her left eye (while she continues to hold that big tea cup with her right hand). And then it cuts back to him.

What I am supposed to see?

Could be pushing hair out of her eye. Could be adjusting that big corsage thing in her hair. Could be a nervous gesture-maybe from realizing that she said something she should not have (that thing about love making).

But lets say it was this specific gesture you're talking about. What does it mean? Why would she make it?

Inversion would be taking a salvific system, like Christianity, and taking the antagonist standpoint. It's about the only thing IMHO that properly constitutes Satanism. I'm note sure if anyone actually does that, about the only organization out there who makes claims in that direction is the somewhat notorious ONA.


A couple pieces to that a) apparently his mother called him the Beast, that part was him walking it out b) he saw the number 666 as a number of distinct solar value - which is correct according to the tradition of planetary number squares (Agrippa being a well known source). The square of the Sun is 6x6 (the way the size of the squares works - the side lengths are the number of that particular sephira on the Tree of Life, Tiphareth, the sphere of the sun, is associated with the number 6 and is the sixth sephira on the Tree of Life - often considered the Christ center). The numbers in the Sun square, like all the other squares fill up the overall square counting upward from 1, such as the Saturn square being 3x3, fills 1-9, adding up to 45. The Sun square fills 1-36 and all of those numbers summed together = 666. Magicians would use these squares as templates for tracing sigils, usually by some kind of numeric rule, and they'd likely adorn that sigil with herbs of that planet, attempt to make that sigil on that planets day (eg. Sunday in this case) on a Solar hour if possible which is a time that can be mathematically derived by a sort of arbitrary rule of dividing the daylight hours by 12 and nighttime hours by 12, first/eighth hours of daylight and third/tenth hours of night.

Pretty much all of his jokes revolved around various aspects of kabbalah, the Book of the Law is just one example where almost everything he's saying is either referencing specific tarot cards most transparently in the speech of Nuit, is a qabalism of some type (which most people will be out in the dark on if they aren't already fairly familiar with qabalah/kabbalah), or is a hyperbolic metaphor and the rest of his books are loaded with that as well - ie. verbal puzzles that people could spend years wading through.

Socially he really was this much of a horses arse and a prankster, in that sense he seems to have a little bit in common with Gurdjieff and they both picked up the initiatory pranking habit from Sufism albeit I think Crowley ran quite far with it because it fit his personality like a glove. There are places where you can check up on that further, particular a couple renditions of exegesis on Book of the Law both by Crowley himself and then Marcelo Motta doing an exegesis on both Book of the Law and Crowley's exegesis.

As for his particular brand of qabalah - it's as salvational, or really oriented (on the 'Great Work' reincarnational mode) to to what's commonly called the Path of Return; pretty close to the esoteric Buddhist ideas.



I'm not sure if I want to bring up his name because I'd hate to see his name get associated as being occult-friendly but the particular professor who did the video I posted a little bit ago (the New Years message) was someone who I was really excited to see actually come out in favor of Jungian interpretations of religion, including Christianity, and putting that as well as social cohesion in context with evolutionary psychology. I think his Youtube lectures and courses really nail a lot of what I've come to think about this stuff and what territory it's digging into.

As far as the supernatural I think that side of it's gotten so bad in terms of public controversy that it's not worth haggling over - people will either consider there being enough evidence or possibly no evidence at all, depending where they're at.

Obviously I think one thing everyone agrees on - there's no Harry Potter outside of fiction. Almost all of these esoteric systems ultimately aim toward internal alchemy because, to suggest there is anything to it, would be such a weak effect that it would barely be enough to do anything aside from a person trying to lift themselves up and out of the system they live in (and I think one of the most telling success stories in that regard was Vivikenanda - who died at 39 and showed the world that you don't get to take it with you).

I'm really not 100% sure what I'll find but I'd agree with you that whether it's meditation, tai chi/qi gong, or ceremony, it seems to be about honing faculties, brain-games, and a lot of NLP that seems to pay off well whether there's an 'other' component to the path or not.

If I'm thinking of the right video, the professor seemed to be under intense emotional and psychological pressure. He gave the impression of someone who was about to have some kind of break or psychological disintegration.

At times he seemed so overcome with internal forces that he could barely verbalize a thought in a coherent sentence. He also mentioned that he had prepared the talk with the help of his son.

I felt that someone should check up on him, perhaps get him some emergency psychiatric care.

Yeah, that particular video was strained and I wasn't sure why. His interview with Gad Saad was good and apparently he'll be on Waking up with Sam Harris in a couple weeks (my guess - remembering Sam's small debate with Douglas Murray over Anglicanism the interview will probably more focus on their political agreements, particularly considering Sam's Spirituality Without Religion they'll probably have a lot less dispute there than some of Sam's viewers might think).

Something else I saw on the American Statistical Association chair that Dean Radin brought up. He was correct in quoting her I think although I did see an article where he padded one of his results heavily from a metastudy where the authors had shaved off the top and bottom 5% results and he took the study at gross. I think the article said that the gross value of that meta-anlysis was a .02, the buffered version a .012.

If anything I've hated how insidious this debate's been in the public sphere and, if the effect under discussion is real, it's so squirrely and marginal that it's been making everyone involved look like liars on both sides. Jessica I think does a good job in illustrating how down-to-the-wire that analysis is.

http://ww2.amstat.org/publications/jse/ ... manint.pdf

The miracle either happened or didn't.

I once saw a man pull a rabbit out of his hat.

Can you?

Much preferable to pulling a hat out of rabbit.

I was thinking about the relationship between math, science and the hermetic tradition while falling asleep last night and had some very interesting dreams. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about Newton, Leibniz and symbolic systems. These remarkable polymaths each independently pulled the rabbit of calculus out of their hats, along with great contributions to optics and various other branches of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and various applied sciences. Remarkably, given their reputations as personifications of rationalist, empiricist materialism, the Hermetic tradition and magick seems to have been very much a contributor to the intellectual processes of both men.

Newton was an alchemist and numerologist. My impression is that he drew heavily on kabbalistic gematria for his bibliomancy, despite making many hostile and derisive statements about Kabbalah. Perhaps this opposition was a necessary public ruse, like his public observance of Trinitarian C. of E. forms, despite his own deep unitarian convictions.

Voltaire propagandized Newton as the ultimate rational empiricist and ridiculed Leibniz with the caricature of his subtle and difficult monadology and "best of all possible worlds" in the form of the idiotically optimistic Dr. Pangloss. In the end, there is not much substantive difference between Voltaire's "tend your own garden" and Leibniz' " We find in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that it is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us if we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be happy in it if we wish to be."

Newton did use empirical data in a beautiful way to support his theoretical exploration, but that wasn't even close to the whole story. He kept and frequently used a Latin translation of the Zohar and his dedication to alchemy, not just as proto-chemistry but as a magick process for gaining insight into the deeper nature of things is now well documented.

A considerable body of evidence has emerged showing the influence of the Lurianic Kabbalah on Leibniz and his strong connection with the leading figures of contemporary Christian Kabbalah and Hermeticism, . Platonic and Pansophic ideas permeate his critiques of Aristotelian entelechies, as he developed a metaphysics based in ideal forms. There is much to look into there, but the hermetic connection is evident.

It's interesting to see that the rabbit of modern rationalism was pulled out of a hat woven from mysticism, hermetic and occult sources.

The thought that came in my dreams last night was that the habit of developing and using symbolic systems like the TOL may have contributed to the development of scientific abstraction and mathematics as a language for exploring patterns and describing their working in reality.

It would make sense, ie. abstract symbols need some type of keyword, buzzword, or symbol accurately dedicated to them to circumscribe their identity and manipulate them. It seems like symbol is probably one of the best coat-racks for advanced and subtle concepts whether external or internal.

No.

Magic, with or without the k, is make believe and only exists in the fairy tales. It pains me to think there are adults in this day and age who not only think it exists, but that it's pure evil. Just today I saw a video about made for JW about a little boy who was given a toy wizard action figure from a friend at school. When he comes home happily playing with it his mother reacts almost as if he was waving around a dead frog he just killed, and then she reminds him that magic is evil and that it makes Jehovah "sad". So he and his mom throw the toy away, because he doesn't want Jehovah to be "sad" at him.

So even though it's only a plastic toy wizard and not really magical, make believing that it is will send you straight to hell. That is the most stupid thing ever, do these JW's still think it's the Middle Ages? I'd like to see a continuation of that cartoon where the boy goes back to school to secretly pray for his horrible evil Satan-worshiping friend who so generously gave him that toy.

You just don't understand what is at stake!

The plastic wizard could lead to that most pernicious occult initiation hidden in the form of a so-called "role playing" game, "Dungeons & Dragons" -- or Pokemon, the hidden Shinto gods and demonic rituals game -- possibly even the ritual activity and clandestine cult hidden behind "Magic: the Gathering."

When enough young dupes have been suckered into commanding pocket monsters, or casting spells, or planeswalking by the Devil's wiles, the seventh seal will be opened and a variety of spectacular and rather psychedelic bad things will occur!

But don't take my word for it: here the terrifying truth, straight from the horse's orifice:
https://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/pokemon5-99.html

I think the biggest elephant in the room is the word magic/k itself.

When that word comes out it seems like curiosity or even desire to clarify definitions wanes with most people. It's been the byword for bronze-age stupidity and superstition for the last couple hundred years and continues to be, therefore even using it in most cases runs the risk of self-pejoritizing.

I am hopeful of at least one thing - in the next few hundred years and maybe even over the next one hundred years, a lot of the really sloppy and arbitrary bucket categories we still have for a lot of things will disappear as will ham-handed wholesale dismissals of anything placed in these buckets. Brain-mysticism for example, where any theist or any antitheist can project almost any physical capacity or lack thereof on the brain that they please will be long gone. Similarly the 'occult' will likely no longer exist as a phrase - you'll just have vetted and debunked components of what was previously in that container. The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution blackout on researching and ripping apart the components of anything seemingly mystical or 'woo' will likely be depleted to the point that serious research will separate both baby and bathwater properly. Similarly, and I see this happening a lot sooner, the category of 'drugs' - in the full 1970's and 80's sense - will be a barbaric curiosity of a time when it seemed like no one could tell an entheogen or a mind-exploratory substance from a cannabid from a dissociative, nor had the capacity to understand their medical and psychotherapeutic list. The best laugh will be thoughts that some of them were legalized based on interracial relations and not far behind it will be the churlish notion that all these substances were good for was kids being naughty or rebelling. Also I think the grand stupid political -isms that dominated the 20th century and are dying again in a much more granular form in the early 21st century will likely be on their way out for good; we could see a constant renaming and repackaging of this crap but it'll be increasingly tougher to get away with.

I think a lot of this goes to show just how much superstition our culture still seems to have, you can count the number of these superstitions by the number of political third-rails and no-go zones, and how much further the human condition can be unpacked and clarified for the betterment of us all.