Mystical Thelema Overview Part 3: Ra-Hoor-Khuit

Intro Part 1 Part 2

Dealing with the third chapter of the book of the law is difficult for most of us magic/mystic types. There is a visceral intensity to it that sits uncomfortably within us, if you’re anything like me. That might be understandable, and maybe even wise in times of peace. Yet, as events in my country and others undermine the stability of our societies, Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s rhetoric may become more relevant. Not necessarily to condone violence, but rather to empower us through even the most difficult times.

To get to how we should read the third chapter, we need to place it in the context of the other two. Nuit is the infinite expanse of openness that is all. Hadit is the blazing point of awareness that gives rise to our consciousness and the experience of reality. The central act of Thelemic mysticism is to dissolve the fixed perception of reality, or the consciousness of the self, into pure, open awareness. The Dissolution lays bare the reality of all existence as empty living luminosity, whose nature is synonymous with love.

Nuit declares that Ra-Hoor-Khuit has taken his “Seat in the East” and that he has established the law: Do What Thou Wilt. The Seat in the East, for any not in the know, is masonic/HotGD speech for being the Master of the Lodge/Hierophant. He has become the initiator, or primary deity  in a new mystery tradition. The Law is essentially a declaration of Free Will, the power to choose for one’s self and act accordingly.

Hadit, who can be considered the Eye of Ra, establishes the notion of  Thelema being a religion for the strong, joyous, and proud, calling those who are so called “Kings” or Lords of the Earth. It is in the third chapter that we begin to learn how to realize.

Abrahadabra! The Reward of The Crowned and Conquering Child

As with the preceding two, the mystic interpretation of this chapter, and the figure of Ra-Hoor-Khuit as a whole, is not primarily literal. So what is he then?

He is the Will. The power within us to act, to do, to be. There is no possibility of realization without him. He is the power of our minds to focus awareness, to overthrow the oppression and hopelessness of dualistic thinking. Just as the sun banishes the dark of night, so does Ra-Hoor-Khuit banish the darkness of our own reification. If Nu is En Sof, and Had the light thereof, then Ra-Hoor-Khuit is Adam Kadmon.

The path of the Thelemic Mystic is not one of extreme asceticism. We do not simply give in to the will of the world as passive witnesses, waiting just to die. We are warriors who live in the world and fight for our realization. We do not hide like monks or priests, but live in the world, seeing the sacred and profane as continuous. We face, head on, our own limitations. We confront the error of our habitual thinking and we work to correct it. We choose an island, one single point of focus, and fortify it! We hold it with all our might.

And Ra-Hoor-Khuit holds with us. He expands our arsenal of weapons at our disposal. He gives us vigor in our fatigue. He gives us, in a word, Magick. It’s the agency to choose, and the strength to follow that choice through.

Therefore, we are to strengthen ourselves with discipline and commitment. We are to push past our comfort zones when comfort becomes a cage. We are to fight with tooth and nail, beak and talon. The blood that flows is our own, the solid world of our minds left bleeding its life’s blood. As the world of our illusions dies, we drink its blood and flesh as something new. The wounds of appearance bleed the light of awareness, and the taste is literally divine.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit, as illustrated by Kat Lunoe for Sam Webster’s book, Tantric Thelema

The world of our thinking wants to make us small. Alone and insignificant in a dead, mechanical, unfeeling universe. Nuit has already told that this isn’t the case. That the ultimate reality is Love. Hadit’s presence within us makes it clear that the emptiness at the root of all is not a dead vacuum, but a scintillating expanse of pure divinity.

But for us to realize that for ourselves, we need something more. We need a Hero (or Heru,) something to give us an example, an inspiration that assures us that not only is liberation possible, but that anything is possible. That through the miracle of the Law, infinity itself is endlessly playing out countless possibilities right here, right now.

When it seems like hope is gone, like there is nothing we can do, Ra-Hoor-Khuit is there, ready to lend strength and power. Not to save us, like some kind of Messiah, but to enable us to save ourselves. To give us the vigor to fight on, even in the face of insurmountable enemies. We fight on.

Power like this comes with a responsibility, as any Spider-Man fan can tell you. As it is well said, mercy without strength is weakness. Strength without mercy is cruelty. The wild fire of the sun can burn us as easily as not, yet the key to wielding the fire isn’t to shy from it. We cannot flinch in fear. We must burn it off through trial, through ordeal. We must be refined, because that which can burn was always already fire. Like a flame in a coal, its end imbedded in its beginning.

This is the logic to his incense. The meal itself separated from the chaff, the holy oils which are identical to the alchemical sulfur. The honey is the rarified nectar of the sun itself. It’s the gold in the philosopher’s stone. The leavings of red wine are the alchemical mercury. Finally, in the fresh blood, is life itself.

Just as the sun sits at center of the planets, binding them to its power, so does Ra-Hoor-Khuit bring each and every one of us into his fold. To wield his power raises more power, the power of powers. To find him within is to know Omnipotence.

Therefore should we accumulate power, to fight as brothers! Side by side, arm in arm. Power linked to power, Bonded by the root of the Dissolution. By the force of this love are all obstacles overcome, from the grossest to the most subtle level. We teach and guide each other, learn from one another. In this way do we sharpen our spears and swords to ultimate fineness.

The Iconoclast

To unseat such an enormous weight as our own beliefs, we must be willing to cross the line. Our holiness is the orthodoxy’s heresy. Our freedom is their blasphemy. Our victory is their apocalypse.

In such transcendence we find not destructionor damnation, but love and life, light and liberty.  For them, the shadows are the reality, and so they cling to their fear and death like a cornerstone. To shatter those foundations is our whole purpose. Our bliss, the fruit of our labors, is all the proof we need. We welcome the ones who seek as we do, but never do we permit the traitors to harm us.

Thus is the universe of illusions crushed, and naught remains.

Thus is the soul lifted from its confining structures, its girders.

The Babe in the Egg

The self-slain that stands on the cusp of becoming is the silent child. Wrapped in the womb of Nuit, alive with the light of Hadit. It was always there, and always will be, in the perfect equilibrium of the Void Places of Spirit.

As Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the guardian at the gates of the temple, so is Hoor-Paar-Kraat the stillness in the sanctum. There is no need for a guardian angel, no abyss to cross. The Hawk-headed Mystical Lord of Silence and Strength is with us always.

Aum. Ha.

Overview of Thelemic Mysticism Part 2: Hadit

This is really the third in a series, so I’d recommend checking out the intro & part 1 to get the context behind all of this if you like.

If Nuit is the ultimately open aspect of the divine, then the radiating light of awareness is Hadit. He is the life-force that goes by many names, prana, odic, qi, etc. and as we discussed last time, he is the divine spark within each of us that is a star.

Yet he is not separate from the emptiness that is his consort. Any attempt to describe them as complete unto themselves will miss the mark, and so philosophy will get us almost nowhere in really getting him. Logic and science will really only make the issue worse, by forcing us to conceive in a dualistic manner.

How Hadit describes himself in several ways in his chapter will ultimately give us a picture to recognizing his nature within us. He then goes on explain the implications of realizing the truth of his & Nuits natures. While we won’t go into every detail here, we can explore much of the

The Living Light

The point of awareness has two basic qualities. One is the outwardly radiating aspect, and the other is a kind of inward pulling aspect. The awareness-light shines, and reflects itself as appearance. This is how Hadit, as the Khabs, gives rise to the Khu. How life itself becomes things that are alive in a living world. It never really is accumulated, but the reflections can become so appatently complex that the Khu-selves can completely forget the khabs from which it has arisen.

The Khu then lives a life if its own, and as the arrangement of khabs that made it up, the particular pattern of reflections that is the self breaks apart, the self dies. The Khabs undisturbed completely and kaleidoscopically shifting into its next arrangement.

But all the while, the khu suspects that something is strange about its existence. It feels, deep down, its temporary nature. It knows this as a deep sorrow, a pain that it can never quite rid itself of. And so it develops all kinds of strategies to both figure it out and protect itself from discovering the truth. All in hopes that it can relieve its pain of knowing without somehow coming to the inevitable conclusion that it will die, and worse yet, that it never existed in the first place.

This is why Hadit says that to know him is death. To the khu-self, it is. It was never anything more than a collection of awareness impressions that have no more substance than the awareness itself.

But as big a bummer as that sounds like it might be, it turns out to be the far better perspective to have, because when we face it and look into that awareness, we can fall into the dissolution with Nuit, and thereby discover life and joy in way that far surpasses anything our khu could come up with. Paradoxically, it makes the experience of the khu into a joy unto itself. It turns the world of pain and sorrow on its head, and makes it an adventure of wonder and discovery.

This is why we say that the path is not about escaping the world, but really living in it. The pains still come. But the more we practice, the more we come to know that the pain will end. The suffering will pass us by like a cloud before the sun. The sun shines on.

We therefore don’t run from the pains and difficulties in life, but rather, we are given the courage and fortitude to do what we will. To do that which is worth doing. To live our lives in service to the truest expression of the divine. Love.

The Kings among Kings

The important thing to remember is that there isn’t just one point of awareness. There’s an infinite expanse of them. It is every where. Looking within each beam of light reveals spark after spark.  To look deeply into the light of awareness is to fall into the openness of infinite space, to gaze into the dark is to unveil the scintilatting brightness.

The omnipresence of the point is what we call Keter. It’s the open door to infinity, just like a crown, hollow at its center. This is why opening up the crown of our own is the way to bring the lovers together in Dissolution.

The more we immerse ourselves in it, the more our perception of the interplay of Infinite Space and Infinite Stars become known to us. Our perceptions grow beyond the normal and clarity increases. Our nature changes.

The Silence of Dissolution stays with us and deepens. The crown stays open. The boundary between the various levels of being begin to waver before disappearing completely. The bodies and worlds all become a continuous display of light, throwing off hues and textures in countless combinations.

We come to dwell within the silence.  We begin to really understand what our nature is, and the more that nature is revealed, the closer we come to being men of Earth. For those of us who ultimately attain full awareness, there can never be death, because we have realized our undying nature.

So Death, the undesired light, is most desired and yet can never be. For though the pattern ceaselessly changes, there is that which remains unchanging. Life, without self hood is eternal and endless..We have become as the Gods, Lords of the Earth, self-slain and all conquering.

Blessing & worship to the prophet of the lovely Star!

Overview of Thelemic Mysticism Part 1: Nuit

Until a better name for this thing comes up, I’m using the above to stress the point, or goal, that The Book of the Law is all about. Us magical types can get lost in the weeds of all the exciting concepts, correspondences, techniques, arts & crafts, and so on.

There’s really nothing wrong with all of that stuff. It’s cool. The diagrams and rituals and the experience of Magick is simply amazing. There is something truly spectacular about that moment when the incredibly improbable happens right in front you. Seeing the thinness of the world that felt so solid is an uncanny feeling.

But in the midst of all the above is the core mystic purpose that we are really all seeking. There are hints that a higher magic is possible. That there is a treasure beyond measure just out of reach. So we search for it. We examine the details, explore the weird, abstract and there are wonders… but still the thing that we know is there escapes us. Worse yet, our heroes are always so cryptic about the damn thing!

The Book of the Law, however lays it all out on front street. In fact, it is almost exclusively about the elusive mystical realization that the others only ever hint at. It explores it in detail and connects the ancient past and the heart of all mystical traditions. Full disclaimer: This is like a 10,000-foot Hawk’s-Eye View, so bear that in mind as we go on.

The Endless Goddess

First it reveals Nuit as what is known the world over by many names and is the ultimate reality at the heart of all of them. It has been called the En Sof, Nirvana, Infinty, Shunyata,Heaven, etc. It’s the state of paradox of everything and nothingness, at once everywhere and nowhere. Totally infinte and beyond all conception, yet is imminently at hand and can be realized at any moment.

She reveals her nature in a series of successive layers, beginning by declaring a counterpoint to her own nature, called Hadit. She then goes on to declare that her chapter is the unveiling of the company of heaven, the infinite expanse of space and all the glittering stars thereof, meaning that not only is she totally empty of all nature, but she is also all “things”as well. Things that shine in exactly the same way as the stars in the night sky. Things that, we will eventually realize, don’t actually exist. At least not how we think they do.

There are a pair of particular terms in Kabbalah that refer to this apparently contradictory nature of En Sof. The En, or nothing, and the En Sof Aur, or light of no end. Hermetic Qabalists consider these three “negative veils” beyond the emanations of the Tree of Life, with Keter placed as the highest divinity. It’s this mistake that makes this Book so hard to grasp.

This is coupled by a view of the Sefirot as rungs on a kind of cosmic, neo-platonic ladder, and to reach the divine we have to climb it to the very top where the ultimate unity is achieved. This view kind of maximizes out in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s system of initiation, and is the exact thing that we need to throw out.

The idea is that one raises or expands their consciousness to where they can grasp what’s happening at every level, and this is explained as exploring & correcting the relationships of the different parts of the soul into a kind of vessel that will allow the divine light of Keter to dwell within the magician.

There is, of course much more to this, but let’s keep it as simple as we can.

Imagine instead that all the sefirot & En Sof are all around us, and that we are operating on every level of the tree all of the time, and the only progression needed is to unveil the world as it truly already is. To break the spell of division that keeps us from realizing the inherent divinity within.

This is exactly what Nuit’s chapter is all about.

Infinite Space and the Infinite Stars thereof

This inherent divinity is described as the star. It is exactly the same thing as what Kabbalah calls the Yechidah, or Keter-point. One of the other names for this divine spark is Hadit, and we’ll get more into him later. The Keter point is the light of the Endless Goddess that lives within us, and the modern term for it is awareness. An older way of describing it would be to call it will. Being the divine aspect of this, the greeks would have called it Thelema.

So that’s what Thelema is. It is the word for the divine awareness that is us, and all other things. We are seeking the pure awareness that, when freed of dualistic constraints, is the same light that shines in all of creation. We are not seeking a purpose or destiny of any kind. There is nothing individualistic about it. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. We aren’t trying to escape the harshness of reality in a systematic journey to some remotely serene holy state. We are simply trying to wake ourselves from the dream of division into the waking joy that is the reality of our lives, already right in front of us.

The whole problem is elegantly described in the very beginning of her chapter, where she describes the relationship of the Khabs & the Khu.  The Khabs is is the Star we just described. The Khu is a kind of outer shell or container that hides the Star from view. If we seek the Khabs-star out, then the Khu will fall away in the blazing light. As it turns out, this idea is identical with the Kabbalistic concept of Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world, where the Kabbalists’ main goal is to free the divine light trapped within the Klipot, or shells. Klipot is not a reverse tree-ladder, but the confining thoughts we place on everything we can possibly conceive of. The divine light is reflected by these thoughts and made solid by the Ego or Ruach. This traps us in a world full of things, people, times, places, etc. It turns the open expanse of the Endless Goddess into a hellish prison.

So that is our charge: to free the Khabs and behold the light of Nuit. Easier said than done.

The ruach wants to encapsulate everything it percieves in concepts, and it will fight tooth and nail to maintain its grip. It is terrified of its own death and will stop at nothing to keep us from shedding it. We’ll explore that aspect in more detail later on as well.

Nuit gives us the keys to how it is done, however. She obliterates the concept of quantity, or multiplicity by declaring that all numbers are infinite. She tells us that we should “bind” nothing, because it’s the containing reflex that keeps us from seeing the all encompassing nature of her being.

Why is all of this happening? Why did we turn a paradise into a prison? Nuit says it’s love, pure and simple. We have separated ourselves from the perfection of Nuit so that we may come to rejoin her in the deepest senses. We get to open ourselves to her, and its this activity of complete giving that we call love. The ensuing collapse of the mind into the empty luminosity of pure awareness is called the Dissolution. It is bliss of the highest nature and completely beyond the Ruach, to grasp.

The Dissolution in Love

The dissolution is the supreme goal of practice, and yet we will do it again and again. To achieve it, even once, even for a moment, reveals the certainty that Nuit promises & yet our minds will return again and again to the regular, khu making, ego self. The world doesn’t go anywhere. It comes back seemingly as solid as it ever was. This is the hurdle, and it’s not easy to stabilize the Dissolved state. This is why the main focus is on preparing for death, and Nuit stressing that she is heaven itself. If we can come to dwell in the perfect openness of Death, then paradoxically, we will live forever in pure bliss.

This is why she so emphatically stresses the joy of dissolution in her, in our, true nature. She longs for us to know her again as badly as we do. The drawback is, this places us squarely against every aspect of society’s norms. The whole of human civilization is built on “I am”, and we are seeking to defy that statement on every level. This is a concept that runs throughout the Book of the Law, and will be progressively more important as we go. Nonetheless, we are given a view of the treasures that await us right at the outset.

She expresses the journey as three stages or degrees to show us the way:

As Hermits we leave behind the many and the known to truly discover what the truth is. We wander out into the dark with only our inner light to guide us to the discovery of the Khabs and ultimately, the Dissolution.

The Lovers are what we become once we discover the true joy of Dissolution in the beloved. We plunge into it again and and again, bathing in it over and over to purify the awareness and apprehend the Endless Goddess in the fullness of her infinity, transforming us fundamentally into…

The man of Earth. In complete rapture of the whole world as continuous with the self, and all awareness and appearances equalized as the infinite expression of the divine at play. Dwelling completely in the still, open silence and in the symphony of the world of action at the same time. A Chief of All.

So that’s enough for now. The more I work on developing this to share with my fellow Thelmites, the more I discover about it. There are challenges & revelations ahead in discussing the other chapters, how Babalon and the Beast fit in to all of this as well as Uncle Al & Aunt Rose, and so much more.

Till then,

To Her, To Her!

Edits: minor spelling and grammar fixes.

Introducing Mystical Thelema

I’ve been quietly working on something that has really taken me by surprise, and sent me into a direction that I honestly didn’t expect. To be honest, I had no intention of ever really doing anything on the internet, or on a public level, ever again. I was seeking my own practice, tailored just to me and my interests. The isolation of the past two years or so had changed me, and I was ready to just do my own thing. I had been fighting tooth and nail with depression, anhedonia and a sense of hopelessness.

The biggest thing that I had begun to explore was David Chaim Smith‘s work on Mystical Kabbalah. It spoke to me, so I began to work it. I had the opportunity to talk with him, and with the help of my previous work and his excellent teaching, It started to really work. I felt like I had put a puzzle piece into place. It just wove the exact things I had sought out in my deep dives into the Kabbalah & Alchemy. It’s like he was talking directly to me. The particular text that spoke clearest to me is the Bath of Bright Silence, but I would highly recommend any of his texts.

Bath of Bright Silence

So then, I was happy to just work that for however long it would take me. I was never really interested in being the guy.  I wanted to take an indefinite retrat. In other words, I was playing the Hermit. Content to leave the world behind in pursuit of my own gnosis.

In some ways, I’m not really sure that won’t be where I end up, in a kind of mystical retirement. Regardless, I can only speak to the path that Im currently on.  So here I am, writing into the void of the internet, to the unkown reader. If you’re reading this, Thank you for doing so. I hope it helps in some way.

So there I was (I still do, but I used to, too), working my Kabbalah, but there was all this stuff that kept coming  up. Things related to The Book of the Law, Liber L Vel Legis. It was like that text, which I kind of had pretty much left to the wayside, alongside the rest of my Hermetic stuff, was meaning some completely different things, yet remained the same as it ever was.

I kept getting little pieces of the Book. Statements here and there that had new, profound meaning beyond anything that I had thought of before which would, in turn, propel my Kabbalistic practice. The two were becoming intertwined in a weird, wild way.

Those that know me know that I began with a series of experiences that involved what I now understand to be Heru-Ra-Ha, Nuit & Hadit. I now view those experiences in a very different light than I did then. The Bardon Hermetcis came later, and while I treasure those lessons and experiences, it was really the close frienship that I developed with a few individuals, including Justin B The Magician, Where the gods of Thelema made occasional appearances, that was the highlight of the whole period.

That time ended for me with the reception of a short text, forever lost to time, that boils down to what I would do over the following years, I would study and practice many different things, then break them down to their very foundations and leave them behind, moving on to the next, and then so on… The text then told me I would build something new from those destroyed houses. A temple. I don’t pretend to think that this is a temple for many. I’m not sure what it’ll do, or what form it will ultimately take. If it only serves me, and me alone, so mote it be.

Here’s where I went. I studied Rubaphilos Salfluere’s Alchemical system, but have pretty much left it behind, except for the basic symbolism of the process of alchemy, the idea that initiation is esentially an alchemical procedure applied to the human mind, and the quabalistic focus on the Parts of the Soul.

That then led me to study the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This one took a long time, but I eventually broke that down and left it behind too. The A A and Crowley’s writings came and went. I became a Mason, which turned out to be a rather profound thing for me. The light of Masonry will forever burn in my heart, for I know it to be the mystic light that burns everywhere. But that reached a point that left me unsatisfied. Everyone seemed to get to the edge of the great mystery, but no one could get me over that edge. I knew the direction of it, the flavor of it, so to speak, but something remained lacking.

Enter David Chaim Smith’s work and suddenly a tapestry began to weave itself. I began to make progress, bathing again and again in the the bright silence, when grace allowed. And yet, it was the damned Book of the Law that kept coming back into my mind. It was the poetry of Nuit that seemed to speak to the unspeakble non-experiences that I was having. The early days experiences, which had had such a profound effect, were now seeming more and more like the foreshadowing of what would come a decade and a half later. they would mean so much to me, because I had had a taste, and it would lead my way home. The sense of otherness to those moments were unlike any experience before or after until now, and the word experience itself fails to convey the utter magnitude of it.

Back to Thelema

So I took a look back into the Liber L, and… it opened like a treasure chest, full of wonder and beauty. The riches were not what I had expected. It wove it all together, and I knew, knew this would be it. The Book of the Law is my Holy Book. The rule and guide to my faith and practice. I could see into it in a way that I will never be able to grasp, because it is beyond grasp, yet immanently within reach.

I would recieve teaching upon teaching that was entirely consistent with the Kabbalah that I had discovered, but also had crucial elements from nearly every step of my journey. Had I not done any of these particular practices, studied each tradtion in great detail, the teachings would have been out of reach. I believe this to be my own personal practice, so some of the particulars may be in my own, particular opinion. Yet, I have also noticed things that point to the creation of a working group, a communal practice. You can’t do that stuff all alone, so why does it seem to be a thing that keeps getting more and more fleshed out? Because it’s what the Book says, whether I do it or not. And from what I can see, Thelema needs a community now more than ever. So I’ll give what I have freely, and if there’s interest, maybe we can build something new.

But there would be a challenge to this. It required that I reject nearly all of the nearly universal notions of what Thelema is. I had to be, as has recently been described to me, like Martin Luther, who hung his 99 greivances on the door to the vatican. In my case, it might be more accurate to descirbe it as 93 greivances, haha.

Maybe I’ll write them all out eventually, but for now, I’m still in the early days of this practice, and can only say so much. Many things will be worked out as I go, but there is a solid bedrock. A solid foundation upon which this thing rests. That foundation is the The Book of the Law.

So we come to the present moment, where I try to start unraveling this tangled knot of the non-linear, fundamentally paradoxical thing together. There is a major project in the works that will really expand on this whole thing, but I hope to be able to share this light, bit, by bit, as I go. I have some promises to make first as we end this introduction.

I promise not to hold back on the heart of the mysteries in so far as I can.

I promise not to talk endlessly around the core of it, but never reveal anything without a mandatory donation. The Law, as is said, is for All. Edit: I mean here that I won’t charge to get to real deal, and anything that might cost money is just because stuff costs money to do. Nothing critical will be behind a pay wall here.

I promise not to bog us down with excessive talk about history, philosophy and other peripherial ideas.  (I recognize the irony of this after the long explanation above. I am really doing my best, and trying to include the most important context.)

I endeavor to be as open and clear as possible. The gulf is only in my limited abilities to express the ideas, and the gulf that lies between knowledge and Realization.

Mystical Thelema Overview

Thelema is a religion that has Mysticism at its heart, and utililzes Magick as one of its methods in helping us realize that wisdom. the nature of that wisdom is entirely consistent with the Mystical Kabbalah and many other traditions.

Nuit is identical with the En Sof, and the realization of her essentially empty, or open, infinintely luminous nature, both within and without, is the entire point of the religion of Thelema.

Thelema, or Will, has nothing to do with individualism of any sort, in fact, the entire goal of practice is to undo the fiction that is the self & the world it lives in to realize the Hadit, or luminous awareness, and then understand that nature to be identical with the endless expanse of openness that is Nuit.

True Will is a completly unhelpful concept that should be discarded entirely. Individual iberty is not the focus, but is a kind of downstream effect of the Mystic realization. Social Darwinism and Rugged individuality are fundamentally opposed the nature of the Mystic Path, and come from a surface level reading of the text.

The Book of the Law is fundamentally opposed to the concept of the HGA. Heru-Ra-Ha, Nuit, & Hadit can be appreciated directly, and there is no need for any kind of intermediary. Likewise, there is no need to ascend a heirarchical Tree of Life ladder, as the gods are present, right here and now. Any magical and mystical development are only to train that which was always the case.

The nature of awareness, or will itself is love, and the direct reception of and giving of this love is the treasure beyond treasures upon which the entire religion revolves.

Aleister Crowley was not the Beast, and no woman is Babalon. The Beast and Babalon are deities unto themselves that play a critical role in transforming our views of ourselves, the universe, and reality itself. They are both intimately related to each and every one of us. One cannot be one of these any more than a single human person can be Nuit unto themselves.

The Gods are not archetypes, nor are they individual, personal beings. Their nature is fundamentally ungraspable by the ego of any human whatsoever. That said, the mystic realization exposes their nature utterly and comprises a major part of practice.

The concept of the Aeon of Horus is a fiction. A story to describe the evolving nature of the Esoteric tradition and should not be taken literally. The word Aeon appears only once, and has no bearing on this concept whatsoever. It is more accurate to say that the Book of the Law is the establishment of a new mystical religion called Thelema.

That is all for now. Thanks for reading thus far.

  Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will.

The Secret to Vacancy of Mind

It’s been a while since I felt that I had something substantial to say on this since the podcast episode back in the gap, but this morning I had an insight during my meditation that I thought might help those of us that are struggling with this.

So here’s the secret to the third part of Bardon’s First Spirit training excercise: Taking the right lessons from the first two parts. I know that might sound a bit glib, but when I boil it down, that’s it. The three aren’t totally distinct excercises, but rather they are developing familiarity with various aspects of our mind, then gaining control of each aspect of it.

Let’s start with the first of the three parts, which I’ll refer to as thought observation here. The first thing we learn to do is to watch these thoughts as a separate mental process from our own mind, and that can be difficult to do. In part, it’s because our thoughts really only ever appear because our attention, the observer, is a key part of the thoughts appearing to us the way that they do.

Here’s where my morning meditation came in. I was there, just doing my thing when a thought happened. And not just happened, but I saw it happen in just the same way I remember seeing it for the first time. I saw it as a three part mental process.

This may or may not reflect your own experience, but here’s how it appears to me: First, When I notice a full thought, it’s like a reverse echo that reaches coherence as the thought “articulates” itself to my conscious mind in the form of a sentence, or picture of whatever it is.

Behind this, or perhaps within this echo is a kind of mental movement or “thought-core comet” that streaks like a shooting star somewhere in the mental field. If you can catch this before the thought finishes articulating, you’ll notice two things:

1. The entire thought’s meaning is contained in it, but without the words. It’s an intuitive, experience based mental activity. Memories, imaginings, feelings make up the body of it. It’s our experiences coming together in new ways.

2. If you separate your attention from the streaking thought-core, the articulation echo fades away, and the entirety of the meaning comes through before the articulation vanishes all together.

Once we see that, the process of how these thoughts come to be becomes clear enough.

Movement occurs. Our attention follows & becomes absorbed in the movement. The meeting of these two produces the feedback “echo” by which the attention breaks down the movements into the mind’s preferred language, images, or whatever “form” it likes.

It’s like this… but all the time.

So from there… the process of choosing thoughts becomes as easy as peeling our attention away from the movement, and simply allowing the echo to fade, which is very quick actually.

(Another metaphor that comes to mind is to imagine sitting by a pond and watching the fish within. Its surface is still by nature, but then something underneath moves. It causes the surface to shift. This shifting draws our attention and we thrust our hand in to catch the creature.

This causes all sorts of ripples and disturbances, but we can usually draw out a fish. This the first step. If we watch instead to see what kind of fish it is, or even a specific fish, before deciding whether or not to go in after it is the second. To watch the pond without regard to the fish at all is third)

This is the heart of the second second part of the exercise, and just as the first shows us how to pursue the second, the second paves the way for the third.

We can learn to decipher whether or not a thought-core movement is in line with a chosen direction much faster when we are aware of the way they develop. Even the slightest attention to it will reveal its meaning long before the echoes allow for it to blossom into full articulation. In time, one gets a sense of how the similarities even in the feel of how they move that can tell you if they are related. The thoughts we choose to allow to articulate form links in a chain, threads that form a web. If we become familiar enough, with the movements, we can feel them coming from the same “direction” as if they are drawing from the same space.

We can then choose to ignore whole sections of our mental movements. We do this all the time, and that’s why Bardon has us doing this stage off of the meditation cushion. When we bring that level of awareness to our thinking, something else begins to reveal itself.

That something else is the empty space in the nature of the mental field. Those movements that we don’t allow our attention to grab onto just kind of gently roll, but then disappear. This produces a sense of space. By the time we’re isolating only one thought to be allowed full articulation, we’re almost completely enveloped in that space, and man, are we close to the much vaunted Vacancy of Mind.

Uhhh… guys?? Guess I live here now…

In retrospect, it could definitely seem obvious that the space was always there. And it was. If we’re being honest, we all knew about it. What we didn’t know was how to inhabit it. How to dwell there consciously.

The problem is that we’re so habitually absorbed in constantly following those movements that we don’t even see them behind all the echoing articulation, let alone the infinite space of mind behind even those. For those of us that are “blessed” with being particularly quick witted, the problem might even be worse because we’re really damned good at the whole process. It’s a thing that’s become automatic, and ultimately it’s trapped us.

In fact, I suspect that a fair amount of those of that “can’t meditate” have a deep fear of the space. It’s not easy to face that the thing we have come to identify is really just illusion on thinnest surface level of our real mind.

Luckily, if we’ve been practicing the exercises, we’re becoming more comfortable in the empty space, more aware of it as an aspect of our being. If there is any kind of trick at all to the Vacancy of Mind here, any kind of technique, perhaps it’s that we simply allow all of the “thought-cores” to zip around without ever attaching our attention to them. It is totally absorbed in preserving the space.

There will still be movement in there. Those little cores will always move around, but what we learn is to not be bothered by them. At first, it’s like flowing with a gentle current, or floating underwater. With time, even that disappears into the total silence…. of the void.

It’s like this…. but like all the time.

Tarot Journey of 2020

In our most recent episode, Justin and I had a long, meandering chat about the tarot. While the episode focuses primarily on his considerable experience, I thought it might be fun to share a bit of the Tarot Deck that I recently completed, and share some of the magical bones and innovations that I brought to its creation.

The episode in question: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1aYGWDWUVsI5sd3LHBJYfK?si=nntE3VVnSOSQx1K57Ib1yw

I’ll be the first to admit that my approach here is probably not for most people. The traditional tarot folks will find different meanings and symbols portrayed throughout, and several of the usual features like the names and numbers of the cards are completely absent. It doesn’t really matter to me though. I made this for myself, and if anyone else finds some interest or inspiration in it, I’ll be totally stoked.

The Moon: the ancient source of the magnetic fluid & the revealer of the unconscious. Within its glow, hidden messages become revealed.

The Magic folks might enjoy those features as meditation and magical tools. Indeed the minors are meant to draw out magical correspondences and to serve as gateways to the astral & mental qualities of each sephira.

From L to R: the Ace, Six, & 10 of Wands

Each tool has a form in each of the spheres, and I did my best to tease out what is being brought out in the intersection of Element and Sephiroth. It takes on the form of a kind of journey from the creation of the tree of life by the divine laws (The Tzimzum for you hard-core Kabbalists) to the final manifestation of the physical tools that sit on table of a magician. Conversely, they might serve as inspirations for the dedication of specific tools for each sphere or even just for interesting new tools.

These took the longest to make by far, and taught me a lot about my tools, what they really mean to me, and what the minors are really about to me. I left behind the notion of the decans, which opened up whole new meanings, each one based on a simple equation: Sephira + Element = CARD.

The courts were an interesting development for me as well. The characters here are Elementals, intersected by the YHVH four-worlds pattern. The results were something that represented a kind of shift in my art style and introduced me to some new spirits I had never encountered before, along with a few that were amongst the very first I ever evoked. Each court card may serve as a real image of a spirit and so should be treated with respect, and could be used for evocations or whatever other method of contact a creative magician might come up with. I plan on writing more about these, with names and sigils in future, so if anyone is interested in that, it will be coming.

Top Left: Queen of Cups, Top Right: King of Swords, Bottom Left: Princess of Wands, Bottom Right: Prince of Disks.

My approach here is not the “standard” Hermetic Quabalah that everyone learns when they start out.  I used the GD queen scale for the colors of the spheres. The reason for that has to do with a notion of light & dark, through which all color emerges.

I have some other projects that use this idea since I first received some insights that confirmed, to my mind, the idea that divine nature is light, and it is the substance from which all has been created. In both the Hebrew Kabbalah (Ain Sof Aur) & Hermetic traditions (Consider Hermes’ vision in the Divine Pymander), light is considered the divine substance. Angels are creatures of that light, dispersed throughout creation as the colors emerge from light passing through a prism. This idea of light contained within the sephiroth as color is the fundamental idea to this deck.

Warning: We’re about to deep dive into a bunch of Kabbalah, which can be fun, but also really hard to communicate! Bear with me, Please!

The Tree of Life, which serves as the card back and key to each color correspondence.

Just as fundamental is the concept of the paths, representing the transition of the light from one Sephirah to the next. Here’s another important departure that I made based on years of testing, study, & experiment. It’s probably this idea, more than anything else that made me create this Tarot.

My journey in Kabbalah has been probably the most intensive aspect of my personal path. I started with Bardon, but also the usual characters of Lon Milo Duquette and of course the HOGD, which looms large over the whole world of Hermetic Qabalah.

My work with Justin informs a lot of my foundational views in this area. Though I study & practice on my own, one of the first things that sealed a break from the mainstream was discovering, by a series of accidents, the older assignment of Hebrew letters to the Major Arcana,  1 = א arrangement. This, coupled with a descending planetary attribution of letters created a harmony between the Hermetic and Hebrew Kabbalah.

This lead me to studying Alchemy, as well as more of the Hebrew sources and ideas around Kabbalah, and what I discovered was a much more fluid, in depth and vibrant interpretation of the traditional hermetic “filing cabinet” approach that dominates the conversation in those circles.

In studying texts like the Sefer Yetzirah, I discovered greater consistency with Bardon Kabbalah, Certain alchemical concepts like the parts of the soul, and through authors like David Chaim Smith, an appreciation for the paradigm shifting idea of Ain Soph as the Ground of all phenomena. I discovered that the tree of life was not a static, circuit diagram of the universe, but a living, evolving symbol used to communicate the interrelated categories of experience with the mysteriously paradoxical, infinite nature of being that is the heart of all mysticism.

Armed with the newfound freedom to interpret the Tree in new ways, I discovered some ideas that seemed baked into the bones of the Kabbalah that were not reflected in the Hermetic tree as I learned it.

First, I realized that the diagram itself had a way of communicating its own structure. Three horizontal paths for the mother letters, seven horizontal for the doubles,  and twelve diagonals for the simples or elementals. This arrangement formed a core part of the color symbolism of the cards, and the planetary attributes to the doubles, but we’ll get there eventually.

First, I’ll start with the Mothers: Sefer Yetzirah (SY) speaks over and over again about the relationship of these three letters: there is Shin above, Mem  below and Aleph between them. This follows from creation down to the regions of the human body, from Shin in the Head, Aleph in the chest,, and Mem in abdomen and below…  this idea is sort of a foundational one to the whole Kabbalah concept. So… that’s what I did. SHIN- ש (the Fool) is between  Hokmah & Binah, Aleph א  (The Magician) between Hesed and Gevurah, and Mem מ (Death) between Netzach and Hod.

The Fool, The Magician, and Death

Next, we have the doubles, which SY has some conflicting correspondences depending on which version of the text one is reading. I chose to go with the text itself, which presents the letters in alphabetical order, and the planets in descending order. This was probably the most shocking revelation for me when all the awesomeness of this arrangement is taken together.

The letters here are Beth ב- High Priestess & Saturn , Gimel ג- Empress & Jupiter, Dalet ד- Emperor & Mars, Kaph כ- Strength & the Sun,  Peh פ-  The Star & Venus, Resh ר- Judgment (or Revelation as I have come to call it) & Mercury, and finally Tau ת- The world and the Moon.

As to where to put them on the Tree? I decided on putting each letter on the vertical path above the sefirot that also corresponds to that planet. The only adjustment needed was to place Beth, the high priestess, in the middle pillar-which shifts Kaph, Strength and Tau, The World , Below their respective sefiroth. This bothered me at first, but the result is startling, both in terms of the colors that resulted, and the fact that it creates a hexagram in the tree itself.  I learned a lot developing these, and I tried to incorporate so much symbolism & revelation in these, as a result, I think they’re worthy of some study and reflection.

As they appear in the tree: High Priestess= Keter to Tiferet, Empress= Hockmah to Hesed, Emperor= Binah to Gevurah, Kaph= Tiferet to Yesod.
As they appear on the Tree: Star= Hesed to Netzah, Judgment(Revelation)= Gevurah to Hod, The World= Yesod to Malkuth.

Finally, the simples, or elementals. They occupy the twelve diagonal paths. I decided to go with the Hebrew path structure: notably removing the two that Hermetic trees tend to place on either side of Malkuth, and allowing them to connect Binah with Hesed (allowing for a path that crosses “the abyss”) as well as Hockmah and Gevurah. I then placed each simple in descending order from top to bottom. The result was three sets of four elements each, when the zodiacal elemental attributes are factored in.

So it looks like this:

As on the Tree: Hierophant ה (Aries) = Keter to Hokmah, Lovers ו (Taurus) = Keter to Binah, Chariot ז (Gemini) = Hockmah to Gevurah, Justice ח (Cancer) = Binah to Hesed (the path of crossing the abyss, pictured by the weighing of the heart by Ma’at)
Hermet ט (Leo) = Hockmah to Tiferet, Wheel of Fortune י (Virgo) = Binah to Tiferet, Hanged Man ל (Libra) = Chesed to Tiferet, Temperance נ (Scorpio) = Gevurah to Tiferet.
Devil ס (Sagittarius) = Tiferet to Netzah, Tower ע (Capricorn) = Tiferet to Hod, Moon צ (Aquarius)= Netzah to Yesod, Sun ק (Pisces) = Hod to Yesod

When I look at these three sets, I see the Kabbalistic three-fold soul of Neschamah, Ruach & Nephesch that roughly corresponds to Bardon’s Astral, Mental & Akashic bodies/planes.

I see in the first set, the laying out of the two primary forces, the electric and magnetic from the divine unity that is Keter/Yechida. These form the basis of polarity, from which everything else flows. The fool is up here, note the repetitive symbolism of light dark, and the emergence of color.

The next set shows the Ruach or mental body (more of less), centered in the solar sefirot of Tiferet, and the influence of the higher sefiroth upon it. They can also serve as guides as to how to approach the higher spheres, to gain wisdom and insight. This set is the Magician’s home.

The last elemental phase is the division of the Ruach from the Nephesch. Here we see the Ruach dividing the universe by the very polarity set forth above it, dividing itself into conscious and unsconscious. This is symbolized by the falling of the two figures from the tower of Tiferet into the echo chamber of Hod. We see in the devil card the hiding of these two figures from the light of Tiferet, creating what is essentially the Jungian Shadow. The Death Card in this are shows them chopped up and distributed all around. This divides us and the world into day and night, self and other, consciousnessand unconsciousness.(the divine name Tzabaoth, meaning “of hosts” is added to Elohim and YHVH in Netzah & Hod interestingly, implying a sense of multiplicity). Our astral bodies are part of this division, being the liminal awareness between our consciousness and our unconscious selves. It is understood through temperament, intuition reflection. The moon to our Solar mental/ruach solar awareness.

I could go on and on, which is why I guess that Tarot booklets are a thing, hahaha! Thanks for coming on this tarot journey with me. If you really dug all of this, and this speaks to you as truth, and you want more, I do plan on making this available for purchase at some point this year, along with a book that outlines each card. If nothing else, I hope you find something inspiring here, to take your own Tarot Journey!

The Sun, bringing light, life and warmth to world of splendor and joy.

Intro!

Hi there,

I’m Chris, and I am a magician.

There. Whew. I said it.

The specific kind of magic that I do is based in Franz Bardon’s work, but branches out from there into Kabbalah, some HOGD and Thelema stuff as well. I host a podcast with one of my Best Friends and fellow magician, JustinBtheMagician. Here’s his blog:

https://justinbthemagician.wordpress.com/

Most of my background is covered in my intro podcast episode. If you’re interested, here it is:

So enough about me for now. What’s up with the blog? Glad you asked.

I intend to make this a place for anyone interested in going deeper into the stuff we discuss on the podcast whenever I have more to say. It will hopefully be a space for me to discuss my practice and pass on any wisdom that I may receive on to you, my dear friend and reader. It’s sure to be weird ride, so let’s see where it goes.