A guy in a group I belonged to asked me what angelic grimoire I used. The only ones I really know of are the Ars Almadel, the Ars Paulina, and, if you stretch the idea a bit, the Art of drawing spirits into Crystals. The Shemhamephoresh angels I really don't understand, the Enochian system is a complete system, not really a grimoire per se, and the Ophanim system based on Jacob's Wheel is way over my head.
So I'm thinking, you know, most of these grimoires are considered hard to understand. They're written in Middle English, at best, and have strange requirements, and somewhat confusing directions. You have to flip around to different resources to get the images you need. There's no single resource available that you can just open and have a complete grimoire, a manual of contacting the angels in easy to read and follow steps.
So, I've decided to write one. I'll have to research the copyright issues, and talk to the webmasters of the sources I'd be using, but I think I'll be able to throw together a decent Modern Angelic Grimoire. Writing user guides is what I do, after all.
If you're interested in a copy, let me know.
frredactumopus@gmail.com
Head for the Red: The ongoing adventures and insights of a magician's attempts to accomplish the Great Work.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Dealing with the Guf - Reclaiming Moments of Horror
The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word "guf" is the source of the English word "goofy," so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.
I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I'm falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I'm not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn't really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.
The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled "CEASE FIRE!!!!" at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn't get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I'm standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.
What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I've tried to "reclaim" that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I've tried rationalizing that I'd never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn't shoot me... but nothing's worked. It's always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.
My friend suggested that we can't forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur's egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we're pack animals, and it's required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized... but that's stretching it a bit.
So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus' Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:
"A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First."
"Reclaimed" jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on...
"There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other."
So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus' idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.
Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the "need for respect from others," (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn't too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren't really that important.
Teaching the Soul its race and worth though... How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?
I don't have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I'll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.
I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I'm falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I'm not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn't really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.
The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled "CEASE FIRE!!!!" at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn't get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I'm standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.
What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I've tried to "reclaim" that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I've tried rationalizing that I'd never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn't shoot me... but nothing's worked. It's always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.
My friend suggested that we can't forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur's egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we're pack animals, and it's required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized... but that's stretching it a bit.
So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus' Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:
"A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First."
"Reclaimed" jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on...
"There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other."
So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus' idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.
Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the "need for respect from others," (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn't too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren't really that important.
Teaching the Soul its race and worth though... How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?
I don't have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I'll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Research in the Occult
Well, it's been a while since I've posted here. Apologies to my adoring fans. ;)
Recent conversations on occult lists have got me thinking about research in the occult. It is extremely important to know where the material you're using in your practices came from, and how it integrates into your system of performing magick, but at the same time, the fact is that much of the material available is limited.
I've seen people argue incessantly about recent Egyptian archaeological evidence impacting Golden Dawn rituals. I've seen people make various claims about the Goetia because of the similarity of the names of the spirits to ancient gods from other cultures. I've seen the Hermetic QBL totally gutted by some people's research into the traditional Kabbalah in the context of Hasidism.
Research is a valuable tool, but at a certain point in our research we must apply the knife. Take the Goetia, for example. The names in the list include Ashtoreth, and lots of people say its a demonized version of Ishtar-Isis. The argument is that the system of Goetic magic can't be trusted because it casts entities from a particular culture in a role that they didn't have originally. The Goetic "Ashtoreth" is a perversion of Isis, so if you summon Isis using the Goetia, you'll piss her off and have an angry spirit to deal with.
However valid this idea might sound, in practice Ashtoreth is a friendly entity. It must be understood that when the Goetia was compiled, it drew from all kinds of resources and cast the spirits into the context in which they are presented in the text. At that point, they ceased being the entities of the previous system they were adapted from, and became new manifestations of the properties they embody. Ashtoreth may or may not have been Isis to some people at some point in history, but Ashtoreth summoned through the rites of the Goetia is not Isis. It's Ashtoreth.
Applying the model of the four worlds of hermetic QBL, Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah, the Goetia is an Assiahtic (material) representation of the Yetziratic (symbolic) interpretation of the Briahtic (conceptual) spirits that revealed themselves from the Assiatic (archetypal) realm to the compiler(s) of the Goetia.
Modern research can track back the sources of the system presented in the Goetia up to the limit of the Briahtic stage. We can see the forms that were used to symbolize the spirits in the Yetziratic stage, and we can make a scientific wild-ass guess about where these symbols came from, but we cannot know what was going on in the Briahtic or Atziluthic stages of its creation.
Knowing where our realm of knowledge ends and conjecture begins gives us a guide for where to apply the knife. When your practice begins to trespass into realms of speculation, you must cut off the absolute authority of your knowledge and return to the realm of theory, and approach your conclusions the way a scientist approaches experimentation.
Recent conversations on occult lists have got me thinking about research in the occult. It is extremely important to know where the material you're using in your practices came from, and how it integrates into your system of performing magick, but at the same time, the fact is that much of the material available is limited.
I've seen people argue incessantly about recent Egyptian archaeological evidence impacting Golden Dawn rituals. I've seen people make various claims about the Goetia because of the similarity of the names of the spirits to ancient gods from other cultures. I've seen the Hermetic QBL totally gutted by some people's research into the traditional Kabbalah in the context of Hasidism.
Research is a valuable tool, but at a certain point in our research we must apply the knife. Take the Goetia, for example. The names in the list include Ashtoreth, and lots of people say its a demonized version of Ishtar-Isis. The argument is that the system of Goetic magic can't be trusted because it casts entities from a particular culture in a role that they didn't have originally. The Goetic "Ashtoreth" is a perversion of Isis, so if you summon Isis using the Goetia, you'll piss her off and have an angry spirit to deal with.
However valid this idea might sound, in practice Ashtoreth is a friendly entity. It must be understood that when the Goetia was compiled, it drew from all kinds of resources and cast the spirits into the context in which they are presented in the text. At that point, they ceased being the entities of the previous system they were adapted from, and became new manifestations of the properties they embody. Ashtoreth may or may not have been Isis to some people at some point in history, but Ashtoreth summoned through the rites of the Goetia is not Isis. It's Ashtoreth.
Applying the model of the four worlds of hermetic QBL, Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah, the Goetia is an Assiahtic (material) representation of the Yetziratic (symbolic) interpretation of the Briahtic (conceptual) spirits that revealed themselves from the Assiatic (archetypal) realm to the compiler(s) of the Goetia.
Modern research can track back the sources of the system presented in the Goetia up to the limit of the Briahtic stage. We can see the forms that were used to symbolize the spirits in the Yetziratic stage, and we can make a scientific wild-ass guess about where these symbols came from, but we cannot know what was going on in the Briahtic or Atziluthic stages of its creation.
Knowing where our realm of knowledge ends and conjecture begins gives us a guide for where to apply the knife. When your practice begins to trespass into realms of speculation, you must cut off the absolute authority of your knowledge and return to the realm of theory, and approach your conclusions the way a scientist approaches experimentation.