Theories? Damn. Well, that's just some ignorant , low-information shit-talking, if I ever heard any.
We don't do theories here, son. We do living poetry that becomes reality.
I will say the same thing I was telling someone else here who is grasping at straws with grubby fingers. You can't come into a Western magic forum without reading the anything about the spiritual, philosophical. and theological grounding you are coming into. Right now you're stuck in an intellectualist sand trap using the wrong tools-for-thinking.
Without more of a background in the foundational material you will keep misinterpreting pretty much 100% of Western understandings of the Divine Mind (which is often shortened to just 'mind' by our atheists) until you learn more of Neoplatonism and Theurgy, the foundation of pretty much everything we do.
So please, go read Plato:
Timaeus,
Parmenides, and
Phaedrus. Go read
On the Hieratic Art by Proclus.
On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis) by Iamblichus. And Porphyry 's
On Images. In additon to Harpurs excellent elucidation of Neoplatonic thought I'd add Gary Lachman's for more info the Hermetic line of transmission:
The Quest For Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World, and his
The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.
You will be tested on all this later.
My friend, I believe I am a bit too old for you to call me 'son'; we are likely close in age, so let us stick to 'my friend'—it is more fitting for a table of intellectual equals.
You cite Hermes (Thoth), but the truth is that Western Hermeticism is nothing more than a faint echo of Eastern wisdom. The concept of the 'Universal Mind' we have long surpassed with the First Creator—the Originator, Exalted be He, and Sanctified are His Names. I sincerely invite you to read Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani or Ibn Arabi; you will realize that the Plato you revere did not even dare to swim near the shores of the dimensions these masters pierced. They did not merely explain the 'Divine Mind'; they dismantled 'Non-existence' (Nothingness) itself.
As someone well-versed, I find that Iamblichus' rituals, which you call 'Theurgy,' are primitive attempts to beseech the powers of angels, extinct spirits, and perished bodies. In our schools, Sovereignty belongs to Khater (The Direct Will) and the innate power that requires neither sacrifices nor obsolete mediators. The writings of Plato and Hermes were grand in their time, but today they have been surpassed by 'Modern Spiritual Alchemy' by light-years. In our Eastern schools, we agreed on the Oneness of the Deity, even if schools differed on 'Annihilation' (Fana) as a term. Even the Pythagorean school of numbers predates yours, and Aristotle’s Peripatetic school—the Master himself—ended with him, despite his deep philosophy, reportedly drowning in an attempt to understand the nature and mover of the waves, as the myths say, though I believe he died of an intestinal ailment.
I say quite simply: humans have no right to invent personal deities and project their own self-awareness onto them. In actual practice, you find them resorting to asking from Satan or his children—and mark the word 'children,' for beneath it, in closed rooms, the Truth shines. Magick is, in large part, the projection of a psychological motor through mediators.
Let me tell you something: there is a rhymed prose (Saj’) used by women in our folk magick. One says: 'I slept on the nape of my neck, from my longing and my love; I have bound your sleep, O [Name], son of [Mother's Name], with a knot that neither man nor woman, nor Jinn, can untie, except by my powerful hand; and you shall come from outside yearning, seeking my counsel.' These are psychological projections for the manifestation of magickal powers without the need for all those philosophies, theories, and words—without complex rituals or booby-trapped sacrifices. It is a spiritual transmission we call 'Prose Saj’.'
Where are the 'Universal Mind' and the 'Personal Daemon'? They exist in our knowledge, but we call them the 'Perfect Nature' (Al-Tiba’ al-Tamm). They are four names mentioned in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah that summarized all the nonsense of ancient Roman ideas. In actual work, you find no poetry; only the four spirits and their manifestation in the form of your 'Perfect Nature,' the four entities summarizing human thought in the manifestation of the four temperaments, or what we call the 'Ifrits of the Ethereal Sphere.'
Please, do not draw me into the space of philosophies and poetry to prove the unproven. Lucifer is merely an idea born from a belief that individuals projected onto religious words. Neither Plato nor Iamblichus knew anything of 'Lucifer.' His definition is simply a manifestation of an idea serving a 'Satanic' purpose—and by 'Satanic,' I do not mean something scary from Hell; that is a Western myth. It is 'Satan' in the Eastern definition. To save you the research, I’ll give it to you 'on a peeled egg' (simply): He is anyone who demands that humans worship him and offer sacrifices to him in exchange for material or moral benefit. We call this the 'Religion of Interest'... and Interest has its own laws.
