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Or more plausibly I typed something up and it didn't appear. In sum- all of those GD techniques don't add up with the Body of Light to create an immortal subtle body. Which is why Crowley never wrote about it, and he couldn't describe what the transmutation involves. Tha man simply had no awareness, some vague talk about 'immortal osiris' notwithstanding.
I was not claiming that knowledge comes from the GD teachings but the 'extracurricular' recommended . And so , any simple reference to it , should, for anyone that has done the work , refer back to a NUMBER OF teachings and practices you were supposed to develop .
In the system I was involved in, Thelema or any system using it never promised to be a world library of all knowledge , a lot of it is curriculum and reference to works you are supposed to be studying and practices you are supposed to be developing . And I notice that people never that never approached it that way either failed, faded , thought the system useless or complained and thought they were 'above it all ' .
For example ; I might tell a martial arts student , at this stage they should, or it would be very important , or even in some cases essential that they take up A yoga practice .... I am not going to teach them yoga ... but I might suggest THEY find a system and practice it .
See Course 1 - general reading ( this is BEFORE the syllabus ) ;
Hi, I've dabbled over the years in various magical systems and beliefs. However what they ultimately boils down to seems to be achieving (incorrect word) non dual consciousness. Thelema, based on my understanding, expanded by the Baptist's Head trilogy of Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford has the same goal. However it seems overly complicated and verbose. All the qabbalistic correspondences, gematria, the rituals and initiations seem to take a lifetime to go through. So I'm wondering are there among you practitioners that follow thelema and it's current organisations OTO or A.A. as a path towards awakening/ Buddhahood/ Liberation and what insights can you share with us?
The works of thelemites such as James A. Eshelman fascinate me, however I'm a bit of a mess this point in my life and can't seem to figure how to integrate them into my quest for awakening, referred to as the Great Work in these cermonial magical traditions. (Golden Daen, & Thelema). Perheaps I should give up on them altogether for they seem an attachment/distraction for my ego and focus on a more direct contemplative path such as Vajrayana Buddhism, Zazen, Advaita?
I really enjoyed The Baptist's Head but, like you, felt that the 'road to enlightenment' all seemed very complicated!
When I discovered Zen, the simplicity of that approach really appealed to me. If I understand correctly, Zen teaches that enlightenment is not something we attain. We already are enlightened and that Zazen enables us to perceive what is already right in front of us.
That being said, the more I practice Zazen and study Zen, it's become less about seeing reality for what it is (although that would still be nice!) but more about appreciating life and each moment, including the challenging bits. Zen would say that "life is the practice".
The system of A.A is genuinely ingenious. Many adepts such as David Shoemaker, Phyllis Seckler, Karl Germer, etc.
Liber LXV is a poetic masterpiece eloquently symbolizing spiritual states, and Crowleys preliminary analysis on LXV explains the symbolism in detail at a college level.
Hate on crowley all you want, but the book of thoth is a dense and thought provoking essay and thesis on the tarot, qabalah, and more. The amount of texts he wrote is incredible.
No one should worship crowley, spiritual attainment does not mean “objectively moral all around good guy”. Above the abyss those ideas don’t even make sense first of all with non-duality.
BUT, Much of what was said about him is a hit piece and TMZ esque nonsense for being a loud queer person in the victorian era and being anti-fundamentalist. Perdurabo is a good biography that is less biased.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." [
Ending with this lovely quote by Eleanor Rosevelt.
The system of A.A speaks for itself in its genius. If the founder of modern physics had allegations of wrongdoings, I certainly wouldn’t throw away the baby with the bathwater.
Not the end all be all, but decent stuff. That said I think Thelema as a public expression overall needs some overhauling and serious de-Crowelyfiying.
I've found Cath Thompson’s work with the English Qaballa help here.
Warning: This EQ cypher stuff is WAY occult moon-brain nerdy. Even I can only take it for a little bit. Only Thelemites, or people who read too much Crowley should care, imho.
OK, from my notes having spent many years thinking about it. And why me being a ("small "t') thelemic Folk Catholic magician is supported by the Book of the Law. Not that I need it to be. I am me.
See Cath Thompson’s The Magickal Language of the Book of the Law - and Jake Stratton-Kent's Serpent's Tongue for more.
Thelema as expressed by Crowley is NOT a mystical system. Dude did not undertand how myth works, and passes that along everyone downstream from him.
Hear me out.
Thelema, as seen through Crolwey, is a system of individualized action. Cath uses the EQ cipher to dig beneath Crowley's unconscious biases, and help us see better a hidden mythic structure within Liber AL. Crowley himself didn't grasp it;s depth, which I think he knew.
If you read The Book of the Law only y through Crowley’s personall lens and commentary you get a cosmic philosophy that is hyper-individualistic, and an almost Nietzschean manual for the ultimate solar-ego.
Crowley was a product of his era and as obsessed with hierarchy, the "Great Man" theory of history and the triumph of the individual Will. He also viewed the myth of Jesus through the lens of a Victorian rebel breaking free from a suffocating, moralistic church, and coded the entire "Dying God" paradigm as a spiritual disease. He wanted an active, triumphant system, so he built a framework focused almost entirely on the solar hero as the locus of individualized action.
He jettsioned much of the Western Mystical traditon, -- because reasons -- and when you strip away the genuine mysticism of the receptive, unitive state his new system flattens out into a sort of hodgepodge of stolen techniques - a mix of Golden Dawn mechanics, yoga, and Westernized tantra held together by raw will and rebellion. Thelema becomes a system of doing. All good, but also ompletely severed from a deeper, mystical being. EQ makes this visible.
Crowley is very much Horus-focused, the solar hero as psychopath. In Crowley’s writings Horus is the Crowned and Conquering Child and sweeps away the old world with terrifying force, blood, war, and fire.
But mathematically in EQ cypher, the "HORUS" state (45) is the manifestation of the egoic "I AM."
In EQ, the "JESUS" state (68 = Infinite Law/Life/Change) is a boundless, oceanic matrix of universal love and inclusion. It has no boundaries. But a universe of pure, undifferentiated unity is stagnant, so nothing can happen, because there is no friction.
To have a universe of distinct forms, art, and conscious evolution, you need a force that draws a line in the sand and says, "I am THIS and I am not THAT." Horus is that hard boundary. Horus "is" the absolute indifference to anything that compromises his individual sovereignty.
Horus pecks at the "Eyes of Jesus" to shut off his Eternal Universal gaze. The energy is forced to turn inward, solidifying into the localized, self-directed solar ego (45 =I AM).
Crowley often wrote as if the "Ra-Hoor-Khuit" state or phase was the final victory. EQ shows that Horus (45) is just one part of a larger machine driven by 93 (TIME, NATURE, and BEING).
In the EQ cipher, the name JESUS carries the numerical value of 68. The number 6 represents LAW, and the number 8 represents infinity (add sidewasy 8 infinity symbol here). Thehe inherent nature of "Jesus" in this system is literally Infinite Law, or Law Expressed to Infinity.
And JESUS maps directly through highly receptive and maternal archetypes in Liber AL WAR (16), HER (41), WOMAN (46), and VIRGO (63). Jesus is a god comes from the Goddess and expresses Her nature to us.
Jesus, relfectign his mom, is a maternal, preserving force. "He" represents to us the road to the cosmic womb or the "starry matrix of divine love" - a state where pure spirit allows itself to be crucified upon the cross of matter out of unconditional, boundless compassion.
But ecause Jesus represents infinite life, change, and all-embracing love this state of being is ultimately omnipresent and boundaryless.
It is the vast, oceanic soup of existence where everything is connected and included. it lacks the friction required for localized, individual action. It is the ultimate passive, starry gaze looking out into eternity—the infinite potential that requires a force like Horus (45 I AM}) to crash into it, blind it, and force it into concentrated, conscious reality.
The number 68 is also shared by the words LIFE and CHANGE. This reveals that the nature of the "Jesus" state is the law of perpetual renewal. Life cannot exist without constant, fluid change; the mythic sacrifice of Jesus is actually a metaphor for energy continuously giving up its current form to allow the universe to move forward
In English Qaballa, 93 is the value of TIME, NATURE, BEING, UNITY, and DIVIDE. Nature and Time act as the ultimate virgin mother, continuously uniting and dividing reality.
In the Book of the Law, Horus is described as pecking at the eyes of Jesus. Qaballistically, this is not a malicious act but a mechanical necessity. Horus acts as a force of resistance against the boundless mystical love of the "Jesus" state. In physics and magick alike, energy requires a "thrusting block" or resistance to manifest. Horus provides the friction that forces the infinite potential of life into active, conscious reality.
Horus is a temporary, aggressive catalyst required to shatter stagnation. The "psychopathic" solar ego is a necessary engine to drive individuality out of the primordial soup, but it remains bound to the laws of Time and Change (68). A closed loop where Infinite potential requires ruthless focus to manifest, and ruthless focus eventually dissolves back into infinite potential.
But without Jeus, Thelema is just highly localized consiouness uck in matter, layng the game. . And the Neoplagans trying right now into turn Thelema into a materialistic, highly demiurgic (in the worst ways) pagan sect can go jump in the lake.
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Oh!
Speaking only more personally.
I took up the practice of Zen as a teenager, and it made me too universal, too '68 state' See above.
I was losing any interest in this "simulation," dreamed-up reality. Thds is bad for a teenager unless you want to grow up to be a hobo.
So in Bernardo Kastrup’s terms Zen deactivates the local egoic interface, dissolving the dissociative boundary and returning awareness to Mind at Large - that boundless, unsegmented substrate of the cosmos. The left hemisphere of the brain acts as a reality-reducing valve, and its primary mechanism is constriction is language.
The universe is made of words (well the one we can experience). Language builds objective time, space, and the separation of subject and object into "grammar" - rather acts as a linguistic daimon that constructs our rigid, local reality. Zen gets past language entirely, allowing you to see the "Game," the "Big Story," more clearly by shifting from cognitive abstractions back to the "Big Picture. "
But Zen does not give you a way back.
Thelema brought me back, but gave me anger issues from engaging with Uncle Al' "egregore" - as people like to fling around here. Activating the solar hero through the Crowley mind virus requires aggressive friction to hammer a distinct "I AM" out of that undifferentiated universal soup.
With the Grimorium Verum, the daimons of the Goetia gave me tools to play the Game, but also showed me beyond the Game. But rhat is another story.
Just for fun. Do not take this literally!
LUCIFER = 110
= thou hadit,
gods and death,
that he is,
the king,
pure will,
powerful,
stronger,
moon but
is balanced
earth and I
result,
love come
Lucifer, is a spirt in the GV, but we can use him as a symbol for the 110 state - which for me is the force of causality having fulfilled the role of the 45 "Horus" state, united to the 68 "Jesus" state as the individualized consciousness open to Universal Love while being effective in matter, under the Moon.
