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"This is part 3 of the three part history of the Qabbalah. I hope that you enjoyed it."
5. Classical Qabbalism. From the 11th through the 17th centuries C.E. This period saw a four phase migration that witnessed periods of intellectual blossoming in Provence, Moorish and Christian Spain, Safed in Palestine, and finally, returning to Europe at the advent of the Renaissance. During this period there were also some calamities that afflicted various Jewish cultural centers, such as the Albigensian Crusade (1209 - 1229), the sack of Baghdad by Ikhanate Mongol forces in 1258, and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.
Despite the calamities that forced the Jewish peoples to relocate from one place to another, the study and spread of Qabbalah became much more wide-ranging than at any other time. It was also a period that saw an extensive development and evolution of ideas, when the Qabbalah started to become a solidified discipline, acquiring many of the features that occultists today would recognize. During this period, the study of Qabbalah supplanted previous forms of Jewish theology, and for a time, completely dominated Jewish religious thought. However, even as the Qabbalah became more accessible to Jewish lay scholars (and even Christian academics), it was still the provenance of a select few, even though that exclusivity began to evaporate by the beginning of the 16th century.
Provence: It was in this location that the classical Qabbalah had its true birth. Various writings, speculations and insights assembled from sources in the East (Baghdad) and from Germany (Worms) were used to write the first true Qabbalistic work, called the Sefer ha-Bahir, which was ostensibly an occult form of the Midrash, consisting of various commentaries on verses from the Torah, particularly those of a decided mystical or mythical nature. Many of the various speculations begun in the geonic period are given a greater development in the book of Bahir, particularly, the concept of the Shekinah as a distinct entity. Provence was where rabbinic culture achieved a high state of development, and many pagan philosophical works were translated, most notably by Judah ibn Tibben, and many of these translated works were from neoplatonic sources. It is here that gnostic speculation was fully wedded with neoplatonic philosophy within a Jewish religious framework. Qabbalistic practices focused on an emphasis of seeking communion with the Deity through meditation on the sephiroth and their occult analogues. Also, the concept of the Ain-Soph was developed as a way to explain the manifestation of the finite material world through the agency of an infinite and unmanifest Godhead. From Provence, the Qabblah spread to Spain via Catalonia.
Gerona, Toledo and Castile - Spanish Qabbalah: It was in Spain that the Qabbalah acquired its more modern qualities, and it was here that the Qabbalah split into three distinct schools, and where some of the scholars sought to bridge that split. Gerona was the first location to flower, establishing the basic structure and tenets that became the Classical Qabbalah. It was in Gerona that ecstatic tendencies were renewed and propagated. From this foundational school, two other opposing perspectives began to dominate the practice and teachings of Classical Qabbalah. On the one side presided what could be called the rational school of Qabbalah (Isaac ibn Latif), where its adherents sought to describe it through a more philosophical and mystical interpretation, removing the more occult elements and seeking to use a system of devotion and contemplation to realize the various tenets. They taught that the adherent should contemplate on the sacred names and letters to produce mystical states resulting in prophecy. The other side (Isaac ha-Kohen) was characterized by a school declaring the opposite perspective, that of gnostic theosophy, occult speculation and the deliberate practice of theurgy. It is from this more occult school that the speculations of a Tree of Evil (demonic emanations) began to be developed, which included the developing of a more systematic hierarchy of angelic and demonic spirits, as well as equating the Logos (as found in Greek philosophy) with a new angel called Metatron.
Zohar: this was the first successful attempt at producing a Qabbalistic Midrash. Moses de Leon wrote this monumental work in around 1281 as an attempt to mediate these three different schools into a single unified one, producing a work that merged rational philosophy with gnostic and occult insights and tenets. This work consisted of a vast multi volume set of homiletics on the Torah, the books of Song of Songs, Ruth and Lamentations. These were not comprehensive commentaries, but instead focused on strategic passages. The Zohar had the effect of producing a kind of uniquely Jewish theology, (even though it was wedded to tenets that were particularly uncanonical), and this helped to bring it into the mainstream of Jewish thought.
Safed: When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, many of them found their way to Safed in Palestine, and also Italy. It was in Safed that Qabbalah acquired its messianic and apocalyptic qualities, and these were wedded to the core of its beliefs and tenets. It was also here that the Qabbalah found its greatest teacher and intellectual exponent (Isaac Luria) and began its powerful and compelling spread throughout the Jewish diaspora.
Isaac Luria Ashkenazi - the "Ari" Lion - (1534 - 1572): It was Luria who brought all of the various strains of Spanish Qabbalah together to synthesize it into a powerful modern religious system. Many of the idiosyncracies and philosophical problems in the Qabbalah were brilliantly and completely resolved by the writings and teachings of Luria. It was Luria who developed the concept of the sephiroth as divine personas, arranged them into three pillars (creating a cosmogonic dialectic) and saw them as the dynamically changing and evolving manifestation of the will and mind of the Deity. He also developed the notion of the four qabbalistic worlds, and resolved the issue of how the infinite unmanifest Godhead was able to create a finite material world through the mysterious artifice of contraction, concealment and veilings - the generation of a vacuum of empty space before creation.
Luria also developed the speculation that became the qliphoth, discussed the shattering of the six lower sephiroth above Malkuth (allowing for the incursion of evil), and the attribution of a mythic and psychological drama associated with the redemption of spiritual "sparks" of the individual human entity, now divided into four specific parts of the soul. His teachings had a powerful messianic quality, where he predicted that the messiah was immanent, and that event would also begin the ending of the world as the messiah recollected all of the spirits of humanity and delivered them up to the Deity. After his death, Luria's teachings, for a time, eclipsed all other teachings and became part of the Jewish mainstream. The messianic tensions found in his teachings, along with his various vague apocalyptic pronouncements, ultimately produced the heresies of the aborted Shabbatai Zevi messianic crusade (b. 1670 - d. 1730).
6. Period of Transference. From the 15th through 18th centuries. There are many indicators that Christians and occultists had been distilling the Jewish Qabbalah beginning from the time that it had emerged into Europe during the middle ages. An examination of Agrippa's work, the "Occult Philosophy," demonstrates that by 1531, the entire corpus of the Qabbalah (particularly the practical and occult practices) had already been thoroughly translated and dispersed by academics throughout most of Europe. This would lead one to conclude that various contents of the Zohar and the writings of Luria had been leaked or deliberately shared with sympathetic Christian scholars and occultists. It is also likely that various Jewish magical practices and techniques had also been appropriated by individuals in Christian circles. How and exactly when this occurred is unknown, but it was likely the impetus for the development of the Solomonic system of ceremonial magick. However, it was not until the year 1671 that Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth translated and published four books of the voluminous Zohar in Latin, making it available to nearly anyone who had at least a rudimentary education. Additionally, Rosenroth also published other translated Qabbalistic writings, and these included works by Luria. It's also likely that the spread of the Qabbalah within the Christian community also facilitated the spread of Qabbalah within the European Jewish community.
Decline of Jewish Qabbalah: After the failed messianism of Shabbatai Zevi, the Jewish Qabbalah began to slowly decline in the 18th century. It would seem that the harsh lesson of Shabbatai Zevi, and the obvious heterodoxic nature of the Qabbalah, caused it to become increasingly rejected by various orthodox groups, with the exception of the Hasidic Jews, where it continued to be practiced through the 19th century and even later.
7. The Modern Occult Qabbalah. From 19th to 20th centuries. In the mid 19th century, the scholarship of Eliphaz Levi, Papus and MacGregor Mathers determined the current structure of the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, and attributed the Tarot Trumps to the 22 Letters associated with the Pathways. MacGregor Mathers reintroduced the discipline of the practical Qabbalah, and translated the works of Von Rosenroth into English. Mathers was also responsible for either publishing or translating the Lesser and Greater Key of Solomon, the Grimmoire of Armadel, the Enochian magical system of Dr. John Dee, and the Sacred Book of Abramelin the Mage. The teachings of the Magickal Fraternity that he established (Golden Dawn) has influenced many subsequent students of the Qabbalah, including Aleister Crowley, W. E. Butler, Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune, William Grey, Gareth Knight and Kenneth Grant.
Mather's ground breaking work was taken up and developed by other occultists, who thereby brought it into the mainstream of occult beliefs and practices in the 20th and 21st centuries. Most notable for their contributions was Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune and Israel Regardie, who distilled and advanced the basic Qabbalistic knowledge of the Golden Dawn so that it became more of a meta-system than a repository of Jewish gnostic and theosophic speculation. Like Mathers, these individuals intrinsically wedded the Qabbalah to the practice of Western Magic. Aleister Crowley was the first to publish the Golden Dawn Qabbalistic writings on gematria, tables of correspondence as well as his own writings and interpretations, and expounded on the Tarot as an adjunct to the Qabbalah, producing his own Tarot deck (Book of Thoth).
Dion Fortune blended many extensive theosophical speculations into the Qabbalah, and Paul Foster Case blended the Tarot with the Qabbalah, so that the Tarot was defined and given its meaning solely through Qabbalistic symbolism. W. E. Butler and Gareth Knight, who were both students of Dion Fortune, produced a correspondence course on the Qabbalah, and Knight later wrote a ground breaking text book (Practical Qabalistic Symbolism), one that most modern occultists have read and studied. William Grey wrote a concise work (Ladder of Lights) and established himself as one of the truly gifted occultists of the 20th century. He went on to write many more books about ceremonial magick and the Qabbalah. Israel Regardie developed and refined the Golden Dawn teachings of the Qabbalah, first put forward by Mathers and his associate, Westcott. Kenneth Grant sought to develop and integrate the qliphoth with the sephiroth, referring to it as the backside of the Tree of Life, and thus show the integral relativity of both the lefthand and right-hand occult paths.
RECAP OF THE OVERALL EVOLUTION OF THE QABBALAH
The first stage of the evolution of the Qabbalah concerned itself with various attempts to depict and conceptualize the powers and majesty of the Deity. It was not an idle process, since it was meant to allow for greater access and individual conscious assumption of the mysterious Hebrew Godhead. These intentions were hidden within mysticism, but early Judaism contended with the doctrine of an invisible and unknowable Deity amidst a plethora of highly represented pagan deities, both gods and goddesses. The concept of Elohim (gods) as one of the representations of this Deity clearly shows the probable amalgamation of many deities into the one, ultimately called Yahweh. The Hebrew nation did not become truly monotheistic until later in their history (possibly 6th or even 5th century B.C.E), and so there was always a tendency for polytheism inherent in Judaism. When the orthodox doctrine of monotheism (there is only one God) finally became enforced, the tendency to polytheism found other avenues, particularly in the areas of mysticism and the illicit practice of ritual and ceremonial magick. Access to the powers and glories of a monotheistic Deity was expressly forbidden by the cannon of the law and established traditions, but the Merkabah and Heikhalot systems of mysticism and magick certainly allowed speculation and practices that were essentially heretical in nature.
The impact of Greek philosophy and Gnosticism on Jewish thought has been little noted in Jewish mystical circles, particularly in regards to the origins of the Qabbalah. While it is certainly true that Jewish writers such as Philo were later discredited and ignored by the scholars of the Talmudic period, non Jewish systems of theosophy and theurgy continued to invade the fringes of Jewish thought. The core doctrines and beliefs of the Qabbalah were developed long after similar speculation had already been written down and established in philosophical and gnostic circles. Still, the Qabbalah was a very tight synthesis of traditional Jewish thought and Greek philosophy; but it remained on the fringes of scholastic writings and the established traditions and liturgies of the rabbinic culture until the late Renaissance. It was almost as if one had to be both a Jew and a Qabbalist, since they were not synonymous. The middle ages saw great Qabbalistic works written, such as the Zohar, but there were other works created, like the Sword of Solomon, the Sepher ha-Ratziel, and the Book of Abramelin, which represented the magickal practices of the Qabbalah. These magickal works, or grimoires, and their associated theosophical and occult speculation represented a problem with the emergence of the Qabbalah as a system of Jewish theology. It was due largely to these and other excesses that Judaism narrowed its accepted practices, which lead to the eventual abandonment of the Qabbalah as a Jewish religious tradition. The Jewish Qabbalah was just too prone to uncanonical practices and heresy, and seemed to advocate highly unacceptable religious speculation.
During the late middle ages, the doctrines and beliefs of the Qabbalah began to filter into the scholarly world of Christian Europe, and by the 19th century, it had been completely taken over and made into an occult doctrine. The greatest contributions to the works of the Qabbalah were made in the middle to late 19th century, and these were made by individuals who were not practitioners of Judaism. Certainly, the evolution and derivation of the Qabbalah from its Hebrew source did not allow it to be easily reintegrated into Jewish religious doctrine, and so there are now at least two versions of the Qabbalah, since the resurgence of its study in the present age was promoted first by adherents of the Hasadim, and then by others, which caused some orthodox and reformed Jews to return to and expand on the earlier writings of Isaac Luria, and many others.
Modern occultists are divided as to whether the Qabbalah should be used for meditation and contemplation only, or with the inclusion of ritual and ceremonial magick. Certainly Mathers and Crowley proposed the full incorporation of the Qabbalah when they wrote their books, formulated their rituals and ceremonies, and taught these practices to their students; but others have moved away from the practice of magick as being too controversial and prone to heretical practices and derivations. Still, for practicing ritual magicians, the Qabbalah is of critical importance. I would therefore recommend that it should be studied and mastered by all occult students, used in meditation, contemplation and employed to construct magickal rituals and ceremonies. I am recommending such an extensive use so that the various symbolic archetypes and spiritual hierarchy might become internally available to the seeker to experience and fully realize in a very direct and immediate fashion. In this manner, the Qabbalah becomes a real and living process that illuminates the spiritual and allegorical domains, and reveals the various qualities of the Deity and the fate of humankind. Therefore as a practice, it will lead to the highest possible states of spiritual illumination.
I hope this brief historical analysis has assisted you in realizing that the Qabbalah is an ever evolving discipline that has undergone a considerable amount of change and revision over the centuries. However, formulations of a kind of gnostic inspired theosophy as well as the continued use of the Qabbalah in various methods and techniques of ritual and ceremonial magick have been a constant factor in the evolution of this discipline. Anyone who seeks to divorce the heterodoxic nature of the Qabbalah, or to refute its use and application in forms of theurgy are promoting an egregious falsehood that belies its history, essential nature and practical use.
Frater Barrabbas
People who have been practicing magick for more than a little while will often say that the practice of magick is a lifestyle. Sure, there are folks out there for whom magick is just a hobby of sorts - we tend to equate them to Sunday Christians (those who only practice when it's convenient for them rather than every day). The best practitioners live and breathe magick at every moment of every day, or at least try to. Every action you perform can be imbued with intent and mindfulness that makes it magick. This is as true for Shadow practitioner as it is for anyone else, and is perhaps even more important.
Shadow Magick is serious work. It requires the practitioner to be absolutely honest with themselves: to pay attention to what they do and why, to examine their own motivations and feelings, and to own up to the consequences of their actions. Shadow Magick doesn't work if you do a ritual with absolute honesty and intent and then bugger off and start lying to yourself and others. Shadow Magick is designed to change the way you look at and interact with the world. You "have" to integrate it in your everyday life for it to work properly. Shadow practice is always going to be more effective when integrated into your life than otherwise. The bulk of Shadow Magick's formal practice is made of rituals and exercises to recognize our shadow selves, to see ourselves and our world more clearly, to integrate our shadows, and to transform ourselves. These practices need to be supported by our everyday actions, but it isn't easy.
Living shadow every day means being very, very self aware. Self-destructive habits, meaningless routines, and self-deception can all kill shadow work. You need to be able to step back out of the every day and look at what you're doing and why, and whether or not your actions are really supporting you. Too many of us are trapped in routines and habits that just take up time for no real benefit or, even worse, that actually send us backwards. Living shadow means looking critically at every action you take and asking yourself if it gives you a benefit. Your actions can help you earn a living, gratify your senses, make you feel good, help you improve yourself, help someone else, etc. Are there things that you do that don't actually benefit you? Why do you do them? ("Because you always have" is not a sufficient answer.) If you can't answer that, then it's time to stop doing it. Living shadow means acting mindfully.
Even more difficult than being aware of what you do is being aware of what you think and feel. Yes, living shadow means looking at your feelings under a microscope. It's not exactly a comfy process, but it's necessary. Are your thoughts and feelings based on truth, or are you twisting the facts to fit the way you want them to? Are you angry at your friend because she actually wronged you or just because she did something totally benign that made you feel threatened or did you just misinterpret what she did? Look at the facts of a situation objectively before you make decisions. Get an outside objective opinion if you need one (someone who has their own experience of the situation, not just your [probably biased] description). This examination is most important when you find yourself thinking negative thoughts or experiencing negative emotions because they have such tremendous power to color your entire experience. What a waste to spend all day angry because of a simple misunderstanding. Even worse, how are you supposed to do magick to see yourself more clearly when you've spend eight hours in self-delusion - that's energetic moment that will ruin the most carefully planned working. Being mindful of our thoughts and actions helps us to sustain the magickal momentum we begin in our workings and makes it more effective.
Of course, being mindful of our emotions does not mean we don't feel them. We all have moments when we feel things that we'd rather not or that seem counterproductive to our plans. There's nothing wrong with that - we're just regular human beings not bodhisattvas. The trick is to experience our emotions and then let them go, rather than hanging on to them and stewing in our own juices. For example, when I get cut off in traffic I get furious and that anger will stay with me for a while, depending on just how close the bastard got to hitting me. When I step back from the situation I realize that I get angry because someone has endangered me for no good reason and forced me to modify my behaviour unexpectedly. What I'm really feeling is a flash of fear and panic, and being forced to feel those negative emotions makes me angry. Knowing that my anger is really caused by fear will allow that anger to dissipate once I'm secure in my physical safety. My anger is a defense mechanism that fills me with adrenaline so that I can deal with danger. It's a useful emotion that serves a purpose, but it can be destructive if I don't truly understand it. I'm not actually angry with the other driver, I'm afraid for myself - that's a big distinction. Shouting at the other driver or getting road rage, while oddly satisfying, does nothing to satisfy my need for safety and thus won't actually help deflate my anger. I can feel the fear and anger, recognize them for what they are, and then let them go. Unfortunately, it's hard to step back when we're in the midst of strong emotions and if you can't do it at first that's ok. When you've calmed down a little take some time to examine what you were feeling and try to identify the root causes. Once you learn to do this after having strong feelings it will become easier to do so while you're feeling them. Much of the practice of meditation is designed to help people do just this, and for many people it can take a lifetime.
Living shadow means being mindful in your everyday life and making choices that continue the energetic momentum of your workings. Having the courage to be truly honest with yourself during your everyday life and not just in circle is difficult. In circle we know we're in a safe space and we usually have the time to take care of ourselves if we have disturbing realizations, in our workaday lives we rarely have this luxury. Make this level of awareness a goal and work towards it slowly. Allow yourself to progress at whatever pace you need and just see what happens.
A few resources that I found helpful:
Suggested ebooks:
Sirona Knight - The Cyber Spellbook Magick In The Virtual World
Joseph Ennemoser - The History Of Magic Vol 1
Anonymous - The Basics Of Magick
I have been carefully studying a recent transmission from the spokesperson for the secret chiefs of the HOGD faction of the Golden Dawn, translated and edited by David Griffin for the benefit of everyone. This transmission is entitled "Traditional Initiatic Meaning of the Three Grades of the R.R. et A.C.," and was written by Lux Et Tenebris. You can find the article here. I managed to copy the text into a word-processing file so I could print it out and truly study it. I don't often bother doing that with the blogs that I read, but this one merited a more careful study. What was being transmitted was truly remarkable, and it was obviously far beyond anything else that I have read on the same subject. The only problem that I had with this writing is that is was prompted by the never ending conflict in the GD community, and the need to distinguish a true revelation from one that is contrived or "reconstructed." The constant conflict is a sad reminder about how polarized and fragmented the GD community is in these dark Typhonian times.
Most of the Golden Dawn organizations seem quite unable to write about anything substantive when it comes to the degrees beyond Adeptus Minor. I would suppose that it might have something to do with the fact that the Golden Dawn material which is in the public domain only goes that far, and the various degrees and lore beyond that point have been, at least up until to now, merely suppositional. Some might say that the higher degrees of the second order (5th, 6th and 7th) are too secret and mysterious to talk about, or that those who could talk about them are oath bound and constrained to be silent. Of course, that hasn't stopped some in the Golden Dawn community from writing and talking about nearly everything in a public forum, so I suspect that it mostly has to do with the fact that the higher degrees are essentially undiscovered country for most GD organizations.
Yet in this specially transmitted document are the definitions of the initiatic degrees of the vaunted second order of the Ruby Rose and Golden Cross, written by someone who is the gate-keeper for the third order. You should expect that such a revelation would be quite remarkable if it were indeed a communication from the secret chiefs. Such a communique would have to walk a very fine line between being revelatory, and revealing confidential and oath bound information. I have carefully read over this transmission and I have found it to be profoundly revealing and truly amazing. Here was the blue-print to the second order of adepts written out for all to read and ponder, and little or nothing was remarked on it in the blog-sphere by other GD organizations.
I have shared this transmitted document with my peers, and they all agree that it is remarkable and quite amazing. I have seen nothing like it in the various Golden Dawn material that I have in my possession or have ever read about. It is deep, profound, and also, quite insightful. I found myself saying, "Of course, it was all so obvious!" at various points while I was reading it. If anything could convince me that the various claims made by David Griffin of being in contact with secret chiefs were true, this brief transmission should prove it beyond dispute. So I was that impressed by what I read, yet I saw immediately that there were some distinct differences between the second order as defined by Frater Lux Et Tenebris, and the way that the second order is defined in the Order of the Gnostic Star. They are analogous, but also different.
The second order initiations and ordeals of the Order of the Gnostic Star were developed by me over a long period of time - in fact over thirty years. I had an initial vision and plan that I was following, but I also discovered that it could be determined by the Sephiroth and Pathways of Tiphareth, Geburah and Chesed. There would also be a crossing of the lesser abyss that separates the lower sephiroth from the higher, but that would also be covered by the various ordeals associated with first four elemental degrees. There is indeed a theme of death and resurrection involved in the transition from 4th through 5th degree, and it reaches a climax in 5th degree. But beyond that point, the other themes associated with the second and inner order of the Gnostic Star are quite different.
Once the soul is challenged and mortality truly realized in an integral manner, then life itself becomes sacred, reaching its summit when an initiate undergoes the rites of the Sanctum Regnum and masters the Seven Rays of the Hierophant. If fifth degree is that of the sacred magician-priest, then the sixth degree is the sacred kingship (or queenship) and the seventh, that of the master of the initiatic temple as hierophant or magician-bishop. Each of these three adept degrees requires a mastery of a whole new level of being, and are quite distinct from each other. The three degrees of the adept in the Order of the Gnostic Star represent the resolution of three very important aspects of life itself, these are self-mastery, mastery of one's world, and mastery of the double gateway of the spiritual source. Let me briefly discuss each of these initiatory grades and their associated ordeals, although I will not be able to reveal the actual details, such as the ritual workings and how they might be deployed. That information is, of course, still confidential and keyed to obligatory oaths.
As I said, these three degrees are based on the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life, as are all the degrees of the Order. The Tree of Life is the map for achieving the ultimate states of illumination and spiritual mastery. Magickal ordeals that can encapsulate the Sephiroth and associated Pathways will likely emulate the actual internal processes that powerfully transform and spiritually evolve a person, from individual consciousness to cosmic consciousness and at-one-ment with the Godhead. The essential theme for the second order for the E.S.S.G. is that of the Tetra-sacramentary and the Stellar Rites of Gnosis. The four sacramental systems are associated with the four essential gnostic systems of initiation and magickal transformation. These systems are called Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, and they represent the transformative powers of the True-Will, Love, Death and Desire, which join together to formulate what is known as the Star of Individuation, or Astris. The Star symbolizes what is known as the Stellar Gnosis, or where the individual reaches a maximum state of spiritual autonomy and self-determination, and only then is brought into union with the presiding and internal Godhead. In this manner, the Atman is awakened and made ready for the next series of ordeals, which are begun with the abysmal crossing.
If we look at the Sephiroth of these three degrees, we can determine the logic and wisdom of the initiatory ordeals and understand the ascension of the adept into the high adept.
TIPHARETH - This is the fifth degree, known as the Adeptus Minor in the GD, and it represents the process whereby the initiate has overcome the obstacles of the four elements, and now is able to constitute the quintessence, which is pure Spirit. The initiation ordeal is where the candidate undergoes the spiritual knighthood of Sol Invictus and the Osirian mystery of Death and Resurrection. There is also an ordination and elevation to the sublime station of magician-priest, and there is the first attempt at the Bornless One Invocation Rite. The candidate also begins the long process of performing the first in a series of the Transdimensional Gate Vortex workings, where he or she enters into the domain of one of the eighteen triangular shapes found in the lattice structure of the Tree of Life. (Still, the key to this degree is the complete mastery of the self.)
GEBURAH - The sixth degree, known as the Adeptus Major in the GD, is where the initiate must master the very processes of life itself and the world that he or she lives in. This is a process of distillation, purification and the elimination of the irrelevant. The initiation ordeal is that of the Sacred King or Queen, and the establishment of the Sanctum Regnum. The ordeal is where the initiate has successfully constituted the four complete temples of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, including their avatars, sacramental relics and spiritual hierarchies. Mastery of the Tetra-sacramentary is absolutely necessary before this ordeal can be considered fully accomplished. Often, it is also important for the initiate to complete all of life's tasks in regards to establishing a material basis for life, building a home, bonding with a mate, raising a family and becoming an important functionary in one's community. Some of these accomplishments are more important than others, and they are relative to the life path of the initiate.
CHESED - The seventh degree, known as the Adeptus Exemptus in the GD, is where the initiate must take the manifested Tetra-sacramentary and forge it into the fifth sacrament, which is the Star, or Stellar Gnosis. From this fusion emerges the true mystical and spiritual power of the Seven Rays and the underlying pattern Undecigram. The sacred pattern of the eleven consists of the seven spiritual virtues of the Goddess merged with the four powers of the God. I can only give these hints to you without much details, thereby showing that these mysteries are fully developed in the lore of the Order. At this stage, the initiate also performs the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal and fully manifests and merges with his or her higher self, in preparation for the ultimate abysmal crossing. The initiate of the seventh degree is also consecrated as a magician-bishop (hierophant) and learns to master the seven rays system, which is based on the planetary attributes (and deeper correspondences) of the seven Sephiroth of the Qabbalah. A successful resolution of these tasks and ordeals will help the initiate acquire the mastery of the double gateway of the Absolute Source (as the Supernal Triad).
What I have communicated here may seem somewhat opaque or full of symbolic jargon, but they can represent actual accomplishments in the material world, analogous to the highest achievements of a truly gifted mastery of life. The three degrees can be thought of then as representing the ordeals and achievements of self, community and one's ultimate legacy, but within a completely occult context. To become an adept is to become spiritually wise. Looking at these achievements in this simplified manner should make them appear to be quite transparent, despite the magickal context of the Order and its symbology. An adept level of initiation is then a mastery of one's life; and what lies beyond the life cycle of a mortal human being consists of the mysteries of the higher adept and the Supernal Triad of the Tree of Life.
Frater Barrabbas
WOMEN VS. MEN
By: Michelle Hass (in conversation with Scott Szakonyi
"Ok folks, Loki and I have been chatting, and we're ready to raise a ruckus that might go on for months."
Chiniginish and I relish the challenge...with Coyote looking over Our shoulders and chuckling...
"Here's the question: Are women superior to men, and if so, why? I THINK that women are superior to men in the modern world because evolution is lagging society. Most of the evolution of the human race (about 60 million yrs) took place in hunter/gatherer tribes, where aggressive behavior on the part of the male hunters was a survival trait, and relating/caring behavior was a survival trait for females. Now, in the 20 thousand or so years since we have become agrarian, the need for male hunter aggressiveness has gone the way of the Dodo, while the need for relating/caring behavior has become primary. Where does this leave us?
"Well, as I see it, women are almost ideally suited to the overcrowded, communication intensive environment that we call modern society. Men, on the other hand, are like people with no arms playing handball. It's not that we're bad folk, it's just that we were designed by evolution for an environment that hasn't existed for 20 THOUSAND YEARS, which is a real drop in the bucket in terms of evolution. Evolution isn't going to be giving us any help for at least a few million years; maybe never since we are constantly screwing up the gene pool with our wars that leave the genetically defective to breed and send the genetically preferable off to evolutionary dead ends. So all we men can do is try to better ourselves and ask for patience on the part of women, who must feel like the entire male sex has completely missed the boat. "
Well, you've got a nice point, but it assumes something that I believe 'taint necessarily so. Is male aggressiveness part of nature or nurture? The jury seems to be coming back from a long period of deliberation, and it looks like the verdict is NURTURE.
This very nicely dovetails with my own theory of what thelemites refer to as the
"procession of the aeons". In Crowley's notorious Liber Al vel Legis, we are said to be passing from an aeon of belief in suffering male gods and patriarchy to an aeon of belief in the value of Self and of partnership between the sexes.
Crowley called the old aeon the "Aeon of Osiris" and the new the "Aeon of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child." The enthroned Child is not masculine or feminine, but androgynous/gynandrous. The aeon before the Osirian was that of Isis, an aeon of Great Mother Goddesses and matriarchy.
My chronology is a little different than that which Crowley attributed to these three epochs of human history so far. Crowley declared that the Aeon of Horus began with the Spring Equinox of 1904+ Common, just before the writing of the Book of the Law. I maintain that the change is still taking place, and had its roots in the 1700s+ Common. The writings of the philosopher Locke were some of the first to make a very important quantum jump, and provided ideological impetus for the vital changes that have and are taking place.
What Locke asserted was that government did not rest on Divine Right, but on the consent of the governed. Human beings were not born to different castes, some fated to serve while others were fated to rule by the grace of the gods. Human beings were born equal, and had certain rights as a birthright: Life, Liberty, the right to pursue Happiness, and the right to security of private property.
This assertion shows up in Liber Al as these statements:
"Every Man and Every Woman is a Star. "
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law. "
"Love Is The Law, Love Under Will. "
"Thou hast no right but to do thy Will. "
In a little less arcane language, these statements run thusly:
Every Individual matters.
Every Individual has the right to live, be free and pursue Happiness (harmony with one's life's purpose, or True Will) as they Will.
These rights stop at the boundary of the Wills of others. Live your life as you see fit, but mind your own business and above all, HARM NOBODY. This includes yourself in a very conditional way. You *do* have the right to self destruction, but if you truly believe that you matter, why would you want to?
These assertions are usually encountered firstly in a Locke-inspired document that has passed into the history of this country, the Declaration of Independence. If there is any one document that is a trigger point for the New Aeon, it's that one. The American Revolution was the first time monarchy was cast aside in favor of democracy of a representative sort.
Democracy was tried before, but never quite this way. And despite several course corrections that needed to be made, (the abolishment of Slavery, the giving of Women, Blacks and Amerinds the right to vote) and some that still need to be made (the granting of total equality for all races and sexes, a shift to a more direct method of participation, i.e. Cyber-democracy) the democratic experiment in the United States is the most enduring of all.
Before the 1700s, government was imposed from above, not thought of as flowing from the consent of the governed. Individuals were not accorded rights as a birthright, but were granted rights by the king, usually on a class-by-class basis. Human beings were dealt with as masses and classes, on a Collective basis.
Coincidental with these developments was a surfacing of hermetic thought in a more widespread way then ever before in history. The Rosicrucian and Freemason movements brought hermeticism to a wide audience. Within the ranks of Freemasonry were both common and noble, and often commoners would be lodgemasters in lodges frequented by those of noble birth. Hermetic orders ennobled not by birth, but by level of knowledge and initiation and (hopefully)
by level of spiritual attainment.
Now, this was fine in theory, but unfortunately in practice things weren't so swift. It was only until the mid-1800s and groups like the original Golden Dawn that women had the possibility of initiation. Even now, in Masonic lodges that have lost their occult focus and are now little more than men's clubs, men are ritually strip-searched to assure the initiator that the candidate is indeed male and not a disguised female.
The baggage of the old days of sexism and classism remain in a lot of hermetic orders even today. Crowley himself had serious problems accepting women as equals: he had a rather low opinion of them and was quite cruel to them in numerous cases. But very explicit in the message of the New Aeon is that people are to be dealt with, not by sex or race or social strata but by their inborn, inalienable rights as individuals...as Stars, to use a thelemic term.
The Neo-pagan movement was a definite evolutionary step in defining a New Aeon mode of spirituality. Unlike the traditional hermetic order, Wicca and other forms of Neo-paganism do not have a multiplicity of ranks and a chain of command. Some have three degrees, some two, some only one, that of initiate.
Initiation is not a bestowal of rank, but more a purpose-oriented process. As magickal orders continue to evolve, they will either need to emulate more and more the informality and non-hierarchical non-structure of Neo-paganism or choke on their bloated hierarchies. It is funny when one considers that there is much evidence to suggest that Neo-paganism evolved from the Astrum Argentum and the OTO, and that much of Gardner's groundbreaking work in reconstructing the old pre-Osirian Druidic religion was helped along with the research help of Uncle Al himself.
Perhaps, as the knightly orders of the past were meant as guardians of the Christian Church, there will become a symbiotic connection between Neo-paganism and Magickal orders, especially among those whose non-structure mimics that of the coven. Arguably this symbiosis exists now, and hell, I'm living proof of this.
So what the deuce does this have to do with the sexes? You'll see as I wrap this up. Ok...remember I mentioned that before the Osirian epoch and the patriarchy, which seems to have come in with the rise of the big cities and the transformation from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one (methinks you have placed the transformation a little too far into the past) there was the Isian epoch and the matriarchy? Well, before patriarchal philosophy displaced matriarchalism, women pretty much ran things. They didn't hunt because to place women, who were the living image of the Goddess and the ex-nihilo creatrixes of the next generation, in bodily jeopardy was literally blasphemy. Women were the intermediaries for men to the Goddess, who was unapproachable otherwise. The men had their hunting cults, but they were as insignificant in reality as the Victorian-era anthropologists misread the ancient religion of the Goddess as merely an inferior "fertility cult."
When the transition came to the cities and to patriarchy sometime around 10,000- to 7,500- Common, the long-suppressed males took by force what the Goddesses of the Isian era denied them by their divine decree...power. Male warrior deities replaced female mother deities. The priestesses of the old religions were destroyed. (The Book of Joshua in the Old Testament is a vivid account of one triumph of Osiris over Isis.) And the new order began. But the old matriarchal religions survived for several thousands of years after the turn of the aeon, and it is painfully obvious that the old patriarchal ways will haunt us for thousands of years into the future, even as new ways take hold and new philosophies become more accepted. But it really is nurture rather than nature that makes men aggressive and women passive. Men can learn to be nurturing and loving, and women can learn to be assertive and empowered. In order that we can truly enter this new aeon where all are leaders and all are Stars, we each have to cultivate the "other side" of our Selves. No, women are not superior to men, nor is it the other way around. Every Individual matters. Everyone has the potential to be a King, in the thelemic sense of the word. We need to learn to treat all with dignity, be they material successes or abject material failures.
We need to treat even those still enslaved by the old with as
much dignity as those who have declared their secession from them and their embracing of the New Law.
The evolution is really and truly in our own hands.
Beauty and balance, Will and Love,
Michelle.
The coven that I've been working with in Denver begins its cup blessing by a dialogue between the Priest and the Priestess. Both have a hand each on the athame and the chalice:
Priest: "Be it known that a man is not greater than a woman.
Priestess: "Nor yet is a woman greater than a man"
Priest: "For what one lacks"
Priestess: "The other can provide"
Priest: "As the Athame is to the male"
Priestess: So is the cup to the female.
Both: And when conjoined together, they become one in truth, for there is no greater magick in all the world than that of love.
BB Rowan
Suggested ebooks:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Green Meadow
Michael Sharp - The Great Awakening
The ancient art of using Power Chants comes to us from the mystical lands of India and Tibet. The Secret of the Power in Chants is that they enable you to bypass your doubting mind and allow you to reach the Miracle Powerhouse within: your sub-conscious mind. You possess within this Marvelous Inner Mind a tremendous mental and spiritual Power with which you can literally perform miracles in your own life. This remarkable Inner Power is what the Great Master Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, called the "Kingdom Within" He taught that you must first find this "Kingdom Within" and then All Other Things would be added onto you.
There are many ways of finding this "Kingdom Within" and one of them is by Repeating an Affirmation Chant over and over until the message of the chant is imprinted upon the Inner mind. Repeating an affirmation, though chanting, will lead the inner mind to the State of Consciousness where it Accepts as True that which you wish it to Believe. When this is accomplished the Powerful Inner Mind will cause to appear as a Reality in your life the things for which you asked in your Chant.
Your desires will appear as a Reality in your life without fail if you do not set up doubts in your Consciousness mind by Not Believing in the power of your Chant. You must be careful not to say aloud or to even think to yourself that your chant has no power or it will not work for you. Repeat your chants - Believing - morning and night, on a regular schedule and then relax in a state of anticipation. Do not worry about How your Good is to come to you. Just rest assured that your Power Inner Mind will answer your request in the Best Possible way for You.
MAGICK CHANT FOR MONEY:
"I invoke the Powerful Cosmic Guardians of all Worldly Goods and Abundance. I now identify myself with the Infinite Source Of Supply. I am One with the Abundance of the Universe. My "Inner" voice leads and guides me in my quest for Wealth and Prosperity. I am successful in all my undertakings and I am well Rewarded for all my efforts. I Declare that what is Mine will Claim me, Know me, Rush to me. I always have an Abundance of Money. There is a continuous movement toward me of Money. My Mystical Cone of Prosperity is Full and Runneth Over. I now Magnetize my Inner Mind with the thought that Money and Supply - All that I need - are now Mine"
"So Mote It BE"
Source: MysticMan
Suggested ebooks:
Aubrey Bell - The Magic Of Spain
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Music Of Erich Zann
