Thursday, May 31, 2012

Getting Ideas

Everything that is, everything that was, and everything that will be began as an idea.

That's a core premise of Hermetics. To apply Hermetics to our daily lives, we've really got to understand this fundamental core premise. This basic fundamental core premise. I mean, it's so core that it bears redundancy. Hell it bears everything. That's the idea of a base, a fundament, a core.

And a "principle" too, when you think about it.

They come first. Princeps. Before everything else.

Ideas.

Where the fuck do they come from? The Mind of God, the Nous of the Hermetics and their Neoplatonic kin? I picture a darkness so perfect and sublime it has never known the light, even though it is the source of all light. A black pool of pure consciousness without limit.

In the Hermetic mythos, at least, the way I remember it at the moment, this Infinite Dark Consciousness created existence as we know it by contracting itself a bit, by removing itself from a part of itself, while leaving some parts of itself behind. When everything was One Mind, and there was no material realm, that One Mind had to permeate everyfucking thing. Nothing could exist except itself because it was perfectly balanced and unified and  undifferentiated. By removing most of itself from a part of itself, it created the material realm. What we play with in our under-matter-scuba-meat-suits is Infinite Mind without the fullness of the rest of Mind within it.

And this happened because the Mind had an Idea, and that Idea was The Physical Universe.

And then many things came to pass. Governors came into being, each one an Intelligency, a Mind that was the self aware aspect of one of the engines of existence, echoes of Aspects of that Mind. Man came into being, an Idea Spoken, and we took the shape and form and aspect and image of that First Father, Nous, the Mind that Thought, and Spoke.

And we came to Earth, and we had Ideas of our own, and we set about speaking them into being in our own little worlds. And that's Kingdom Management, using the powers of our racial heritage, our divine nature, our birthright-by-right-of-being-God's-Images, to create and maintain our material and spiritual realms.

If the Earth were Down and the Mind of God were Up, the whole projection of Ideas is Downward into Matter from the Mind of God.

Makes sense, we think we're in our heads at the top of our bodies, and we project our thoughts and intents through our bodies, most of which is below us.

I personally think we are awarenesses that exist above and slightly "behind" our brains, but not in the material world, and we use the brain as a steering wheel for the car that is our flesh. Sort of.

Still, we're pushing our Ideas downward.

The path of spiritual attainment is the movement of awareness up this Down-Pointing Process, remembering who we Are, all the way up to the Nous-Source of the Mind.

Ok, if you're still reading, good on ya'. I haven't had time to blog in a while, so I'm feeling rusty, especially in the get-to-the-point department.

When I do my Kingdom Management stuff, I take my Idea for what I want to have happen up through the seven Spheres of the Planets, and past the Pleroma, and deep into the Mind of God, where all is darkness, and "I" only exist as a reflection of an Idea. From there, I express the Idea downwards, rushing like a current downwards, through the spheres, gathering boundaries and blessings, the firm will to exist, igniting in flames and light, from which it is engendered and flows into the details and components that take final shape before passing to the Elemental Kingdom of Earth, a fully formed honest-to-god material thing, or situation, or desired result.

That's what's happening, the high-level process, but I do this by meditating and through prayer, reaching upwards with my awareness to my source, focusing through praise and intent to the highest of realms. I express the Idea through rites and ceremonies in each Planetary Sphere, or Zone.* That's the Way Hermetic Magicians do it.

But think about it for a minute.

Where did this Idea of "mine" come from? It came from the Mind of God, just like I did, and just like everything else did. When I take my idea up to the layer of Mind-awareness and drop it off and slide down through the Planetary Chain of Manifestation Halfpipe like a stoned snowboarder, I'm not taking something of my own up a path, I'm simply tracing it back to its source, and maybe empowering the Idea into being by paying specialized attention to it, making it happen. The inspiration is sourced in the Divine. The decision to make it be is made in the material, and the magician peels back the layers of the Idea that it gained, and then adds more layers on top of that to make it real.

I'm a friggin' yo-yo. Or I'm on some kind of spiritual trampoline, descend, hit-bounce, ascend, descend, hit-bounce higher, ascending, descend, hit, use that to go even higher...

I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it.

This is why I don't focus on the metawoowoo. I'll stick with the metajuju.

Ideas. They come from the Great I AM. We are that. They come from us. They really are "our" ideas. From Ourselves-Made-Perfect.

When we Get Ideas, Ideas that we really want to make happen, it's important that we do so. When you get an inspiration to do something, anyfucking thing, it is vital that you make it happen. It's not just some whim or passing fancy, it's really what you should do, if it appeals to you. When you really want something, that's a good sign that you should do something to get it. It's like God-Mind-Code for "Instructions on what you should be doing with your life right about now."

And really, One cannot go against the Word of God.

* I like the term "Zone." Expect to see it again.

13 comments:

  1. You may not be the source of ideas that you have, (but according to my understanding) you get to chose which idea to ride and which not to.

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  2. "Of the Zonai and their attributes"?

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  3. @Simon, I'm more of a fatalist than that.

    @Jason, I don't recognize that quote.

    I like "Zone" because of this part of the Pymander:

    To the first zone he gives the Energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second [zone], Device of Evils [now] de-energized; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance, [also] de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity, de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandizement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood, de-energized.

    26. And then, with all the energisings of the harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs unto the Eighth, and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father.

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  4. Well, that's annoying, because that means I'm going to have to build a Kavad. Probably several, actually, because the first one is never as good as you want it to be. Hmm.

    I'm thinking little icons of the seven governors, and the four elemental angels, and the four princes... and maybe the four devils, in chains. Do you have any thoughts about that?

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  5. A Kavad sounds awesome! I don't know what annoyed you though. Was that annoyance related to the previous post?

    Your thoughts on it sound good to me. There's so much more you can include, the seals of the angels, symbols of the planets, the constellations and mansions of the Moon. There's a Secret Seal in the Arbatel that would be easy to adapt to show the relation of the mansions and the constellations and the four elemental angels/spirits/demons. And each of the Seven Spheres could be represented so many ways... You could end up building a miniature Vault of Christian Rosencrutz with its seven walls. huh. fascinating.

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  6. Well, I've built a couple of paper mock-ups of various kavad designs. The one I think works best for Hermetics is a double cube — as above, so below. 3"x3"x6" isn't really large enough, so I'm thinking 5"x5"x10", and folding out to reveal ... hmm. Six governors. Except then there could be a seventh panel inside, with Michael of the Sun within. Anyway, photos over at Flickr, and video of the two mock-ups at YouTube, and discussion of what I learned from my two prototypes here on my blog...

    I'm annoyed because I come up with my coolest projects at the times when I'm busiest with the things that I'm doing (or overdoing...) at my job. Not annoyed at you. Just mildly frustrated that the Mind of God reveals cool ideas at exactly the times I shouldn't be trying to wrap my head around how they work...

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  7. One of the best snapshots of emanationist cosmogony I've read. Well done!

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  8. Its a Necronomicon reference man. The Zonei are the zones of the planets, which according to Simon are actually filters of links for the seven stars in the big dipper.

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  9. Ohhhhhh! The Necronomicon!

    The Big Dipper, huh? Interesting. I've followed up rabbit trails into the Seven Sisters and Sirius before, but I've never seen any about the Big Dipper.

    Sometimes I get the impression that various trans-saturnian intelligences like to pop through the spheres and buzz the fringiest of the mystics on a lark. Like they drop in and see who's got their ears on, and give 'em an earful before popping off again.

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  10. Hopefully I don't quite rate up there with "the fringiest" yet, but I can tell you that Regulus loves to pop in, be completely incomprehensible, than then vanish again at random. But then, natally I've got an interesting relationship with him.

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  11. @PR, I don't mind being fringey. The center of society sucks. The fringe is where the occult truths can be found, if you look hard enough and keep your bullshit filters set on high.

    I wouldn't mind being the fringiest of mystics, if I didn't have kids and a wife. I could easily see myself in a desert or on a mountain, looking all Ted Kazinsky, coming down to tell people what Pymander said in my latest trip to the heavens.

    But there's a way to do both, to travel the heavens without going nuts. You just can't forget to shower and shave.

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  12. I think I separate "pretty fringy" from "the fringiest" by one's lack of a bullshit filter. So I think we're on the same page, there =D

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  13. Well... progress on the Kavad idea. It's amazing how thoroughly this has consumed my thought processes just in the last few days...

    It's in part, I think, a reaction to the problem that I don't know of any pagans with temples. We seem to need to remake sacred space all the time, and no idea how to make it familiar and real, as well as new. On the other hand, this is a device that potentially makes anywhere automatically temple-like.... It seems to have a usefulness in this larger community.

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Thanks for your comments, your opinions are valued, even if I disagree with them. Please feel free to criticize my ideas and arguments, question my observations, and push back if you disagree.