A creation of the universe using Egyptian symbolism

Someone asked for a magical worldview which did not incorporate re-incarnation, or Karma and yet did the same sorts of things.   Here is a basic Egyptian one which can be used to find answers to many different questions and also slots in nicely to the Golden Dawn.

There was never a beginning or an end, just darkness.  Well, when I say darkness I mean everything and nothing.  The Ancient Egyptians called it Nun.  Then this being, which until then could only be described by what it was not, decided to be something. It created an idea of a universe. That idea was called by the Ancient Egyptians Thoth – the Mind of the One Thing and he created more ideas, or words.  And the words formed Stories.

The first he created was the world of spirit, which was centred on the idea of light.  That light was called Ra and his light was divided into seven primal energies.  From were formed the Gods, Angels, and spirits.  These forces interacted and reacted within stories and above all they learned and remembered these experiences and thus was the great memory of God created.  And this memory was within and like a kingdom and is remembered as being the Underworld.

Gods were Ideas and were too perfect, too close to Thoth and Nun for either to understand much about itself. And so a new realm was created which was ruled by Osiris and Isis and was born within the underworld.  Ideas from Thoth past through the realms of spirit, into the realm of the otherworld and while this realm was not as perfect, it still did not provide an objective clarity to Nun and Thoth.  

So a final realm was created, that of matter and this was built from the images that were found within the memory of god.  And thus was creation made. Matter crystalised from the underworld to the outer world.  And reflections of the underworld were made solid in creation.

Then Thoth had an idea.  One of the images found within creation would have the ability to understand all the levels.  But for the idea to work, the image would have to learn and study the levels around it and awaken them.  Thus this image would mimic the powers of Thoth himself.

Humanity is Thoth's Baboon.

This idea was called by the Ancient Egyptians, ank, or the spirit of God and it past into the world of spirit where it slept.  But so holy was this sleeping ank, it awoke as a new being, the Ba or soul, which existed in the realm of spirit.  But it was not aware of the ank within. This spirit then moved into the realm of memory, or the underworld where it slept and dreamed itself part of a race of Apes which lived in creation.

Thoth did this countless times until each human had the potential to begin the awakening.  But because each ank passed through each of the levels of creation before they were born, they had dim memories of what they were capable of doing.  Each ank inside them dreamed of a destiny.

Most people experience creation through the realm of the underworld and when they die, they return to the memory of God where they are one with their ancestors.  Others however become aware of their soul and seek the spiritual path of Ra and awaken to that state and live in that God’s kingdom.  Far few realise that that too is only part of the journey.  They must awaken the ank within them and return to Thoth and the borders of Nun and be aware of all things.

All these levels are the same God, all experiences are valid and important.  Then ask why do people suffer?  Why are some lives short and others long?  Why do wicked people succeed?   They are all the One Thing acting out countless stories written by Thoth to give an understanding to itself. 

Suffering is caused when we mistake our masks for the actor behind them. At each level, we have a role, even if that role is to sleep.  But if we chose to awake, then we gradually become aware of our powers to shape our story. A person who is awake in the underworld has mastery over the earth.  A person who dwells in the realm of Ra is a God and he who awakens with Thoth is a God above all.  These are people of whom Thoth has written great stories only when the story began, no one but Thoth was aware of it. Everyone is equal because they are all the one thing. it is just that people have different jobs to do and have different roles in the bigger story.

    

What if you are wrong?

In the 1984 the Wizard of Christchurch taught me a very important esoteric lesson.

People from outside New Zealand might not have heard of the Wizard of Christchurch.  He is a triple doctorate who made it his life’s work to become a “living work of art.”   Practically this meant dressing up as a Wizard and coming out with very funny speeches in Christchurch’s square.

Wizard of Christchurch 

He was never an occultist.  He once told me that he hated occultism because “occult meant secret” and if something was secret there must be something wrong with it.”

But because he called himself a Wizard, that made him the target for born again Christians who did not quite get the joke and thought he was practising black magic.

In 1984 the Wizard turned up at Wellington’s long since demolished Urinal Park (Lambton Quay) and was holding forth in his normal manner when the local born again Christian decided he would make the fatal step of trying to take the Wizard’s audience from him.

The born-again in question was a former heroin addict whose normal patch was Manners Mall, which was some distance away.  It is fairly clear that the drugs had finished what was left of his intelligence and he had turned to Jesus to save what was left.  Needless to say he was no match for the Wizard.

Within minutes the poor born again was reduced to a quivering wreck.  On his knees, he was muttering to himself “the Blood of Jesus protects me from all sin” like a mantra.  Meanwhile the Wizard was standing over him saying “You are a Looney aren't you?”

The Wizard was about to ignore the quivering wreck, when some large American in a white cuddly jumper decided to act as born-again back-up.

“Look,” he drawled at the crowd and pointing to the still muttering born-again drug addict. “This man is offering you eternal life, while this one,” pointing to the Wizard, “is offering you eternal death.”

The Wizard looked at him and said: “But what if you are wrong?”

The chunky jumpered American looked confused. It was as if that question had never been asked before.

The Wizard continued.  “I am quite happy to admit that everything I say is bullshit, but have you ever thought what might happen if you turn out to be completely wrong?”

The audience had moved against chunky jumpered Americans and drug addled loonies and the Wizard continued his lecture.

But the point is extremely valid and it is the question that every magician has to face constantly.  WHAT IF  YOU ARE WRONG?

Sorry Dali Lama you might be a nice chap
but the Christians were right.

In the field of religion it is easy to see.  There are simply too many religions holding conflicting views for them all to be right.  Humanity is also too diverse for many of the religious imperatives in each religion to be right.  How is it fair for any God to send someone to hell when for thousands of years that God could not be bothered making an appearance in that country.  The Golden Dawn said that all of them hold a spark of the divine and so we should hold all religions in reverence.  This is because at heart religion is a fudge for a truly unknowable truth.

But while that is fair enough, you still find people creating system after system of occult wisdom and claiming that it is truth.

Despite what many people will tell you, while magical techniques are incredibly old, the modern version of magic, is recent.  It is a mongrel child made out of many different bits.   Yet you will find an insistence amongst teachers, and students, that these systems must be completely right.

Like me, my first significant teacher was a Leo ascendant.  He tended to give out magical information as if it were completely true.  Unlike me, he believed it and rarely changed his views.  The answer to the question “what if you are wrong?” would be met with “I can’t be wrong”. This is absolutely re-assuring, but fails to understand what magic really is.

It results in doctrine being thrown up as truth, when it is really just the cloak truth wears.  In the case of Magic, technique too often becomes doctrine and is seen in absolutes.  The more magic is forced into religious codes the more absolute it becomes and the magician is forced to act in certain ways, and accept ideas which are unnecessary.  For example, if I use Solomonic ritual I am forced to adopt a world view where I am very small and sinful and God will help me out if I ask him nicely and say enough psalms.  Kabbalistic angels are similar, you can reach a point in studying Cabbalah where you end up starting to think the Torah is a good idea.

Contacts and re-incarnation bring up other strait-jackets for truth that require you to think in particular ways.  Even the Golden Dawn itself has those who believe that the system must be followed exactly and in a particular way.

Yet if you prick this attitude with a question like “But, what if you are wrong,” the result is usually an ego eruption.  I created a stir on Facebook by daring to suggest that the doctrine of re-incarnation did not work and after many years of accepting at a working theory, I could not see the point.  Nor could I see that the need for revenge, which is all the idea of karma is based on, was necessary either.  I put forward this case study.  A completely innocent child is raped by their step father. Since they are young, they cannot have accrued any karma which could justify that act of evil being committed to them.  The answer must be that they committed a crime in a past life which had to be atoned in this one.  One person suggested that the victim should get some past-life counselling to see what they did.

In otherwords do nice things and one day you will have
something nice happen to you

However what if they were wrong?  What if there were no karma and no re-incarnation.  Wouldn’t the rapist have to come to terms with their acts in this life?  Wouldn’t the victim be allowed to be a victim, rather than have an atrocity forced on them because of a past crime?

And let’s extend this to esoteric teaching.  Over the years I have not found a complete magical system which is right.  In some cases I have experimented and mixed and matched bits from one system to cover the holes.  The Golden Dawn does a lot better than some others, but there are points where it is shot to hell. 

If you are placing unquestioning loyalty to a person, or a system, or a religion, or a perception of a teaching, then the universe will eventually kick that to death.   

What if I am wrong? Has to be the question that you ask daily.  Certainty is a demon which will hold you back from understanding what is really going on.

  

   

Apprenticed to Magic

At the end of the 20th century the system of magical training started to break down.  There once was a time that you would be taught by one person who would show you their magical system, which was often worked out over years by experience.  To some measure that changed with the adoption of the Order system.  You would join a group like the Order of the Golden Dawn and that would train you.  What really happened was nothing of the sort.   An order, like the Golden Dawn, would perform some of the magical work on the students sphere of sensation, but actual training was carried out by adepts who knew what they were doing.

But sir, you might know the secrets of the universe,
but you failed to point your Hebrew correctly

 In Whare Ra for example a candidate would be initiated and after a period of assessment they were taken under the wing of an adept who would train them.  Often this was using the Golden Dawn system, but sometimes it was not.  Some of these adepts saw the Golden Dawn as the starting point and would take their students through the same disciplines they had learnt.  In other words the training of a student was an apprenticeship under an adept, the Order provided a backdrop for them to meet and trained them in a common symbolic language.  The thing that was being watched for was not how clever the person was, but what sort of questions they asked.

Now not only ignorance of the Golden Dawn system is common, there more students out there and too few adepts providing them with that specialist type of training. To fill the gap are books, and those who set up groups and orders.  I have moaned before how it is too easy to get into an esoteric group these days and how the competition between the different orders is silly.

But it has created a situation where people think that, for argument’s sake, the Golden Dawn provides the person with training.  All a candidate has to do is complete a system of exams, go through a certain number of rituals and they will be finished.  

The Invisible College needs to go mobile

But the same thing applies to correspondence courses.  The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea has a correspondence course and one of the strangest questions I get is “how long does it last for?”  In other words when does it finish and you get the certificate that you have been trained.  Many are surprised when I say that I have written 17 lessons and so far can’t see how it is going to end.  My point is that the training does not stop; there is an infinite things to learn and only one short lifetime.

In my generation, magical training changed.  Orders became less formal and the central training method became that of the workshop.    It has to be said that these were a special sort of workshop.  The trainer was an experienced magician, who never read from a script and would include a large amount of practical work.  This work was pioneered by Marian Green whose workshops gave students their first crack at what would pass for experience. 

Workshops also provided a small income for the teachers too, although some kept workshop costs down by selling their books at them.   

In many ways this approach was killed off by those who would charge a fortune for sub-par workshops.  Also the cost of getting some teachers into some parts of the globe meant that prices either became too high, or workshop organisers (or the teachers themselves) were exploited.

But Sir, I have read that it is OK to
have a ritual between Set and the Flower Fairies

The increasing prices also made students wary.  There was a feeling that spirituality should be given as a service, ignoring the fact that the high costs in terms of time of providing teaching was prohibitive.  No doubt there were some, with very little to say, who were milking the system.

Now we have a situation which is developing where people are not getting properly trained.  Many teachers out there are presenting “one size fits all” training packages for students that cover the usual rubbish – make a few elemental tools, ask the student to do the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram (sic) and the middle pillar until they are blue in the face.     At the other end of the scale you get kids playing with Solomonic or Goetic magic, often mixed with systems that do not go together.   They also get incredibly childish when you point out things like “this system does not go with that one.” 

The assumption is now that any idiot can be a magician if they apply to the right Order and the right workshop.  There is little respect for any teachers and students feel free to play out their parental projections upon them without consequence.   You have untrained people telling trained people that they are “wrong” and argue about how many angels are on the head of a pin while not actually doing any practical work.

I used to think that the relaxing of systems at the end of the 20^th century and the access to more information thanks to the Internet was a good thing.    I liked the ideas of the autocratic orders which were the bane of my existence had faded.  Now I am not so certain.   In trying to be all things to all people, which is the role of a modern esoteric teacher, I have let students get away with murder.  By not putting my foot down and insisting that something needed to be done in a particular way, there are very few students who have developed in a way that is useful.   I am not saying that it is necessary to be an autocratic arsehole (although it is fair to say that I learnt more under such types) but neither is it possible for a student to learn magic if they are too closed, and trying to run things according to their own egos. 

One think I have noticed is that the Golden Dawn ritual, if performed correctly, does a Stirling job of kicking modern students out of its system.   As the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea came closer to its “contacts” the energy has become less patent with those who are not going to make it.  As a result the period after a 0=0 has been a rough time for MOAA members as the 42 assessors grab students by their pentagram necklaces and give them a good kicking until they sort their lives out.  If they survive, then other experiences are delivered.

But as far as training is concerned, I am thinking that it is better to go back to the old ways, of master and student.  I am beginning to think that new technology can be used for teachers to contact students and create the sort of master apprentice structure which has been lost.  This is the first century were a teacher can be in contact with a student every day or so and, if done correctly, could result in better trained students worldwide.

Time will tell if the Apprenticeship system ends up
being yet another Mickey Mouse training system

This would involve the teacher being connected to the student every one or two days.  Techniques would be given and the teacher and student would interact on the results.  Books would be suggested (after all there is no need to re-invent the wheel) but mostly training would be tailored for each student as much as possible. However the student would not be god.  They would really have to work.  In two days, the teacher will be asking how they are getting on and reviewing work and suggesting new patterns from it.  The teacher could throw out the student who does not work (some would go quite quickly).  Technology could be used to arrange online workshops on specialist subject etc.

The other side of this is that money will have to change hands.  This sort of training would not be for occult tourists and one thing that discourages that sort of behaviour from the student is the fact that they have invested money in it.  It means that the student has to think hard about signing up for it.  It also means that practically the teacher has a good reason for showing up.  Because of the time it takes to train people, there would be a limited number of people who could be trained at a time.  Some training could be skipped by those who know the basics.

I am keen to look at this because it solves some of the frustrations that I have had with training people over the years.  If I go ahead with it, then I will be vetting the students who take part in it very carefully as I would not want to waste their time or mine.  It would not be connected to MOAA, but no doubt would be linked to it.

Temple of the Cosmos

I have been reading Templeof the Cosmos by Jeremy Naydler and he hits some rather important points which some neo-pagans might not like much.

The book looks at what the Ancient Egyptian worldview would have actually been and how this could have led to many of religious ideas.  What Naydler accidently does is put a spanner in the works of would be neo-pagans who wished to create a modern form of Egyptian worship with their worldview.

If Temple of the Cosmos is to be believed to get a real Egyptian religion you would have to short circuit many of the modes of thinking of modern life.  Naydler believes that the world that the Ancient Egyptians had was one where their myth, time and material universe were intertwined.  All actions around you were your interaction with the divine myth.

For example when the Ancient Egyptians built a statue to the gods they were not worshiping an idol that they had made.  Their mind-set was such that the statue really was the God or Goddess.     When they looked up at the sky they saw the eye of Horus looking down on them. Nature mimicked the myth of transmutation and initiation.

This is great stuff.  Sometimes the book gets a bit lost in academic verbiage and its point gets missed because Naydler has fallen into saying something that actually sounds more complex than it actually is.   Practically we see that there are huge problems for people who want to adopt a way of life or magic which mimics the Ancient Egyptian mind-set.  It cannot just be that you like cats and wear tons of Egyptian-style jewellery.  You have to be able to apply Egyptian myth to every aspect of your life and not just that which is fluffy.  It is one thing to look into the night’s sky and see Nut stretched over you, it is quite another to see your boss as Set.

Naydler also makes it clear that much of the real spirituality behind the Ancient Egyptian mind-set was down to the actual movements of nature.  The colours of Osiris, for example, become more meaningful when you know the colours of the Nile when it floods.

Where is your Pharaoh now? 

The Ancient Egyptians regarded their Kings as important parts of their religion.  How can you equate your modern politicians with an incarnate God?  It would be difficult to fit David Cameron or Silvio Berlusconi into any scenario where they would be worthwhile let alone divine.

The problem that modern people have is that they have become disconnected from all forms of myth or any gods.  In the West, we can blame science for this, but we can also see that the Ancient Greeks had a role in rationalising away much of this mind-set.  The Ancient Greeks at the time of Homer certainly still had it.  The odyssey is packed full of myth woven into “fact”.

There are some important points to note for magicians too.  In magic there are a lot of references to the Secret Tradition.  What if this tradition was never really secret at all, but a mind-set which was forgotten. 

Reading through this book you can see that magical technology reflects some of these ideas.  The idea that a priest was not just wearing the mask of a God, but really was that God, is something that many Golden Dawn magicians need to understand.  It might be that we can only duplicate the Ancient Egyptian mind-set within our ritual space, but it is there that we should be doing it.

We should be striving to make sure that whatever we are doing in our ritual space is real, we should not just believe it to be true, but know that myth has overcome any form of “reality” as we know it.  This is closer to the Ancient Egyptian way and could be one of the forgotten secrets.

Anyway I recommend this book for those who, like me, like to root their magic in Ancient Traditions. But it is also useful for those who want to understand the core of magical methods.  Those who think that they have past lives with their cats in Ancient Egypt and put their religion as Ancient Egyptian on the census form might be a little disappointed.

Roman Salt

I have been doing some research into the Roman Goddess Vesta and I found something that might be interesting for those who follow the Western Mystery Tradition. 

Salt usually makes an appearance in magical ritual in connection to the North and it is often linked to the idea of purification of the material nature.

Although this was a traditional
image of Vesta she was more often j
just seen as being fire.

New agers like to write off Vesta as the goddess of the hearth and concentrate on her cooking skills.  This makes her into a paragon of housewives.   But she was a lot more than that. She was a fire goddess and as such was the sacred element that held Rome together.  She was one of the first  Roman Goddesses and when her sanctuary closed Rome fell to bits and was replaced by the more Christianised Byzantine Empire.

Vesta had salt in her rituals, but it was not the same sort of salt we put on the table.  It was called Mola salsa.  This salt was used in most different Roman religions.  It was made by taking Farro wheat and toasting it.  Mixing it with salt and then grinding it to a fine flour.

The making of the salt had to be done with reverence and once something was marked with the flour/salt it would be fit for sacrifice.  Apparently the vestal virgins would make a big batch of it in June.

Making it was an interesting process in itself.  The wheat takes a lot of heat before it turns brown.  It is a process much like Vesta herself.  You can see the fire entering into the Wheat (thanks to the modern grill pan).  She purifies the wheat before it is added into the salt.   

I made a small amount.  Half a cup of wheat to two tablespoons of salt.  The Salt had been pre-consecrated in another ritual and the whole lot was made in a coffee grinder.  The result is a brown salty flour with a smell which is a bit like baking.

As far as we are concerned, the use of this sort of salt merges the bread and salt of the 0=0.  If we were to use it instead (eating it) we would be fusing fire and earth and setting our old selves aside for sacrifice (which is an important part of the 0=0 communion).   Now I am not suggesting replacing the traditional bread balls and salt within the Golden Dawn rite, but all this might give you a clue where the tradition came from.

 

Playing at Magic

There was a time, in the English language, where you could only dabble in the occult. The implication was that no matter how seriously you took your magical path, as far as the real world was concerned you were only mucking about. The idea of “dabbling” mean that if something went wrong in a magical experiment, it was down to you not taking it seriously.

One of the downsides of the modern age is that beginners have access to more information than they used to and this makes “dabbling” much easier than it was before.

As a result you find views being forged which are based on reading books by “new age experts” or “fantasists”. This type of person shows up on web groups saying that the “know nothing” but at the same time often pontificating at great length in vacuous New Age statements. They usually finish their posts with phrases like “my two cents” as if to hint that they are not really sure what the hell they are talking about, but they will say it anyway. They are also fond of trying to take people down a peg or two if they are disagreed with.

Voodoo has become the new black
when it comes to magic

In addition you can usually tell if someone is playing at magic by their tendency to do a lot of different systems, often employing them all at once. They universally have Reiki degrees, often have trained in a form of martial arts, like Chi Gung or Buddhist (usually Zen) techniques. Weird fashionable magical ideas pop up, in the last few years it has been Voodoo.

But not one of them has focused on a training system to be any good at it, and none of them amounts to much when it comes to magic.

On one web group there was a recent discussion about Goetia, which is another hot topic amongst those who do not understand it. They were talking about a technique which involved sticking Goetic demons into spirit pots. This is a voodoo technique and means that you lure the spirit into a pot with a promise and it will do your bidding.

Rock me Asmodeus.

While I get that this might work with weak, terminally stupid, astral demons, or ancestors, I cant see how it would work with Goetic demons. I had an image of some magician asking Asmodeus, King of the Nine Hells, embodiment of the seventh deadly sin of lust willingly going into a bean tin. Think about it, how can you stuff the concept of lust into a peanut butter jar? When someone with a little more experience pointed this out, he was told that such magical techniques were successfully worked in Brazil, so that was the end of the matter. Even if that were true, it does not mean that they have bottled real demons as if they were preserves.

Part of the problem is a literal idea of magic which most people get kicked out of them by experience, but the rest is simply because they do not think about what they are doing. They are playing with what sounds cool, rather than doing real magic.

The number of people out there who say they have had no teachers, but have actually experimented with heavier ceremonial magic techniques is frankly alarming. It shows, amongst other things, a level of arrogance and a belief that they are so important that training within an esoteric school is not necessary for them. They have the answers already because they have read about it. But it is not as if they have really studied, or done regular meditation work to reach that state. After playing around with systems they did not completely master, they have just moved onto something else.

Ways you can tell if someone in a web group is playing at magic

1. They use out-of-date flowery language in web posts.

Today we will teach you how to mix your traditions until they are light and
fluffy and do what you want them to do.

2. They mix traditions and systems.

3. They use esoteric terms without understanding them.

4. They interpret magical teachings literally.

5. They mention UFOs, or conspiracy theories alongside occult teaching.

6. They refer to their “past lives.”

7. They use books and references instead of personal experience.

8. When personal experience is used as a reference, it is usually conventional, literal, and could have been read somewhere.

9. They write long posts with extensive quotes from other people to give their words authority.

10. They use long sentences which contain phrases that they think sound good, but don't actually mean anything.

11. They revise basic magical techniques without understanding what goes on behind them.

12. They say what they think the web group wants to hear, and will attack who they thing the web group wants to attack. Often they will praise the leader of the web group highly.

13. They often complain that they cannot do practical work because their house is too small, or they are disturbed by their children or spouse.

Pah, Christians, Jews or Pagans, they all taste like Chicken

14. They attack other religions, normally Christianity, because they are trying to rebel against their upbringing.

15. They often try to mention science, particularly things like quantum physics so that they can demonstrate their intellect without having to talk about magic which they know nothing about.

16. They admit that they don't belong to a school, or have a teacher, or if they do it was a group that did not last long, or treated them badly.

17. They go into detail about the nature of their contacts with angels, demons, secret chiefs, God etc.

18. They ask for help from the rest of the group to carry out magical operations, under their directions, for the good of humanity.

19. They recount how they are being magically attacked or been psychically vampired by someone.

20. They take personal umbridge when people disagree with their latest theory. Often “telling the person off.”

21. They think this list and article is all about them.