Easter: Spiritual Rebirth, Getting Freed from Tombs by Angels, and...

I reread the whole crucifixion and resurrection story to the fam last night, and then we watched The Miracle Maker, perhaps the very best movie about the life of Christ ever. Then we sent them to bed, and this morning they woke to the Easter baskets my spouse put together after they fell asleep. Later we'll have ham and in-laws for dinner, though we'll only be eating one of those things. The other would likely give us indigestion, and if you are what you eat... pleah.

After the resurrection, Jesus hung out on Earth for 40 days and nights before ascending to heaven. In that time hundreds of people saw him. I was thinking about how he just appeared and disappeared after the resurrection, and how cool that initiation was the other day, but really, the shit he did beforehand was pretty cool too. Time and space never had any claim on him.

Anyway, one of the things that popped out of the re-reading was that Angels were all over the place at this time of year in that little dusty town of Jerusalem. While Mary watched, a being who looked like lightning rolled away the tomb to reveal Jesus was already gone. Jesus didn't need to be freed from the tomb by the angel, but Mary did. She was stuck in her head on the tomb and who was inside it, and what that meant for her in her life, her grief, her hope, her pain. The tomb was where she went in her agony, and that symbol of all her pain had to have its power over her broken. The Angel rolls away the stone and shows her he's not there, tells her he's alive. The angel breaks the power of the grave over the living.

You get the idea, right? We conjure angels all the time.

Easter's about rebirth, having the power of death broken, but there's more. One of the things that is really easy to forget is that it's also about Fuckin'. Sex. Gettin' laid. Procreation. Celebration of the return of John Corn with thrust and parry, the old in-out-in-out, penetration and blissful orgasmatronic union with God, or even just plain old cummin'.

So fuck for Christ's sake. Or for your own. Whatever.

Happy Easter.

Hey you bloggity bloggers

There's a new blog ... uh ... I don't know what it is. Community! Sphere? Anyway, a bunch of bloggers got organized. Mostly for promotional purposes. It's over at Tribal Blogs, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works.

I don't know yet how well the fledgling community will respond to occultists, as it's totally mainstream. There are less than a hundred folks on it so far. We shall see.

Chthonic Christ

Jason reminded me that today's Black Friday, the day Jesus was all crucified and stuff. Three days in a tomb, and emerging the risen Christ unbound by time and space. Tradition holds that this is the time that Jesus descended into Hell and took the keys from Satan. At least, the hokey Christianity I grew up in taught that. I'm pretty sure it isn't scriptural.

In yesterday morning's blog reading time, I had a chance to read St. Balthazar's post on his Grimorium Verum dream experiences. They've had a very chthonic theme, and I couldn't help but think about how Christ is also a Chthonic figure when you get down to the bare bones. I mean, yeah, he's the Son of the Sky God, the Epitome of the Solar Sphere and its initiatory process and magical properties (Reconciliation, Exorcism, Attainment of the God Head, etc.), but he's also old John Corn and the Bull of Mithras. Freaking beautiful, when you think about it.

The Crucifiction and Resurrection is the perfect representation of a Chthonic initiation. The death and rebirth cycle of initiation has been done to death in the occult world, so I'll skip it, but I really want to focus on being buried in the Earth to harness the power that makes the seeds become the plants. Where did Christ go, according to the legend my parents taught me? To HELL. Where do we go right after attaining K&CHGA? To HELL. Well, we bring up its kings to us, but still, same thing. Christ went to the Infernal Sphere and returned with the Keys. Now, he didn't need the Keys of Hell to exorcise spirits while in the flesh. Instead, he relied on the power of Prayer, his direct relationship with his Father, and lots of time in what probably looked a lot like meditation.

But after his death and resurrection, he was all over the place. Time and space meant nothing to him. He appeared and disappeared at will. Eventually he even staged the Ascension. Freaking awesome. I totally want to do that one some day, if I can. I promise not to spit on anyone on the way up, no matter how funny I think it would be.

I can't really think of any more parallels. I've got a QA Audit on Monday I have to get ready for, I just wanted to get those thoughts out while they were still fresh in my head. Chthonic Christ. Buried, took the power of Hell, and went to Heaven. That about sums it up.

A Change of the Winds

In Mary Poppins, one of the things that I always thought was pretty cool was that when the wind changed direction Mary Poppins blew into town, and stayed only until it changed directions again. Depending on your magical system's tradition, you can probably narrow down which sublunar spirit she embodied if you figure out which way the wind is blowing.

Heh, that's an idiom too. "I know which way the wind blows" means roughly the same as "I can read the writing on the wall." And Shakespeare's Hamlet was only mad when the wind blew in some directions.

Well, I can feel a shifting of the winds. The times, they are a changin', as the song goes. I'm expecting blue skies after a storm, a cool breeze on a hot day. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

It's nice to be expecting things to get better again.

The Context

Framework. Context.

Jason's response to my post yesterday is good. It has a lot of good points about the benefits of meditation. Meditation is good, it's really gooooood. Nothing will help you understand any of the fundamental mystical things he talks about better than meditation.

In context.

I personally do not think that the goals of magic and meditation are the same. I think they are complimentary, and there is no particular reason not to pursue both. Magic and Meditation can go hand in hand, trouncing down the merry path towards the pit at the end of your life where your body and soul go their separate ways. (Not that they really do, but they appear to... It's a Mystery!)

But they aren't about the same thing. Crowley thought they were, and so did Blatavatavatavatasky, but while there are similarities, the end goals are not the same. It's one of the things that is really disappointing to people who come to magic looking for a Mystical Transcendence. You get something similar, but it's not the point.

Let me see if I can explain this. It's tricky, so bear with me. Meditation is about learning to be your self, consciously, all the time, to the fullest extent possible. (Click that link, it's awesome.) A side effect of this process is that the world around you seems to change to conform with your expectations, because you are consciously aware of what you ought to do in any given circumstance.You become consciously aware of your relative position to all things, and you just know what the right action for the moment happens to be.

Magic, in spite of what you may have learned from various sources and institutions, is about changing the world around you through communion with the entities that are responsible for all manifestation. When you're hanging out with the Intelligences that rule over manifestation, you can see your relative position to the things that manifest under the guidance of the Intelligence you've conjured. You have something like a satori experience in their presence. It's not necessarily caused by them, it's a revelation that is unavoidable when you're standing at their level looking down. Or up, for that matter. They have a different perspective that you share while you're in their presence, and even after you leave their sphere, you will be aware of that perspective, to some degree.

I know there is a lot of information out there that will tell you that the goals of magic and meditation are the same thing, to "know yourself." But when you really take a look at magic across the centuries, as far back as we can track it, the goal of magical rites is to change the world around you. The Greek Magical Papyri are mostly about sex and winning at the local racetrack. The Solomonic stuff is about getting spirits who would otherwise be causing you stress, illness, and grief to build your Temple instead. The more spiritual rites, like exorcisms and the attainment of a Supernatural Assistant or your Holy Guardian Angel are about making your world better, getting the crazed family member back to normal, or having an Inside Man to bring you riches, health, and protection.

Seriously, the Book of Abramelin is a perfect example of this. How many people think the goal of Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel is about preparation for a mystical voyage across an imaginary Abyss that separates the Manifest Realm from the Supernal Triad of Primal Manifestation of God? It's not about that at all. That's a Mystic's interpretation projected on a framework of Christianized Kabbalah that he was trying to use as a series of sign posts to mark the path of the Mystic's progress towards transcendence.

The real goal of the Abramelin Rite is to attain a Supernatural Assistant who will grant you the power to bind the spirits who would cause you harm and set them to working for you instead. As a result of this relationship, you get the ability to protect or blight cattle, influence the outcome of battles, and manifest piles of coinage. The majority of the Book of Abramelin looks a lot more like a receipt book of a Hoodoo practitioner than any mystical text of holy transcendence. It's about doing things to make the world a better place for yourself and your clients, it's not about unifying with the God-Head, or becoming One with Divinity. You may catch glimpses of that truth along the way, but that's not the point at all. It's a side effect, one that brings peace and teaches the magician to do the right action at the right time, but it's still a side effect.

Mystics can and do learn magical techniques. Magicians can and do learn mystical techniques. They are complimentary, and I would even go so far as to say that they are inseparable; you can't do magic for any extended period of time without having mystical experiences, and you can't meditate regularly for any extended period of time without picking up some magical techniques. But the context is different. The framework is different.

It's tempting to say something like, "You're either a Magician who uses Mysticism, or a Mystic you uses Magic," but there's really no reason to be one or the other. At different times you'll be both.

My goal is to accomplish the Great Work. My understanding of that process is not to simply become One with God, or to attain a specific state of consciousness. Those things are helpful, if illusory (it's a Mystery!), in the Work. But to me, it's about rising up and returning to the Earth in power, as described in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. It's about becoming the co-creator of your universe, to be in conscious control of the manifestation of your experiences while in the flesh when it's necessary, and enjoying the show as it unfolds the Rest of the time. (The R is capitalized on purpose. It's a ... Mystery!)

In practical application, the results of the path of the mage and the mystic look pretty much the same from the outside. Things that appear to be miraculous pepper the lives of the ascended mystics and the ascended-and-descended magician alike. The approach is different though. The goals are different. The context is different. And that's ok.

The results of meditation are experienced by the magician, though more briefly, and perhaps to a lesser degree. The results of magic are experienced by the mystic, though more briefly, and perhaps to a lesser degree. The difference, primarily, is in what is most important to you. I'm a magician who does mysticism as needed to aid in my magical path. I hesitate to classify Jason, as I'm not Jason (at least, not consciously... it's a Mystery!), but I can say that to me, as far as this particular exchange goes, he seems to be primarily a mystic who does magic to aid in his mystical path.

It doesn't really matter, though. It's just a different context.