Monday, September 2, 2013

I didn't expect this kind of Spanish Inquisition.

Mistaking ones preferred occult current for absolute truth is an error I have been encountering more and more as I become involved in the Esoteric community.
I keep seeing people saying "This is wrong!" about very subjective concepts and tools, when saying, "This doesn't mesh very well with this particular school of thought in this particular branch of the western esoteric tradition.”, would be far more accurate.
One of the greatest 'Metatruths' I've ever discovered, regardless of it's original context is, “Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted.”. I take it as a meditation on the nature of the universe, and use it internally as a refutation of the concept of hierarchy. Just as “As above, so below” is not only a statement on how magic functions, but also a statement on the illusionary nature of spiritual hierarchies in general.
I would say that these two ideas should be paired together, and used as a guide when navigating magic, and when dealing with the various entities one encounters in an evocation.

As above, so below.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

How can one cast down other peoples spiritual/magical methods when one has encountered these ideas?
One can make an argument on the effectiveness of certain techniques from a personal perspective, but to say something is “wrong” is to make an appeal to some sort of absolute authority. And if you believe there is an absolute authority and that your preferred magical system/current is the One-True™ system ordained by God, you've descended into fundamentalism. And if you've done that, you have to either pile on the cognitive dissonance necessary to ignore the literally thousands of effective indigenous magical systems and syncretic systems, or you have to declare all those systems as “evil” or “demonic”, and sound just like the worst of the rabid priests of orthodoxy.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

The real secret of the Mystery Cults

It is my opinion/contention that most, if not all, of the grand secrets of the Mystery Cults of the ancient world and even early Hermeticism (Blasphemy!), were actually ceremonies with entheogens as their primary catalyst. You went through initiations to move through the grades, and were tested on your knowledge, all to prepare you to Touch the cosmic. As anyone with a working knowledge of psychedelics will tell you, tripping for the first time by yourself can have disastrous results. Now imagine if your first trip was after you had learned a strong mythological context, with a pre prepared ceremony r ritual to guide you through it? And you thought listening to Dark side of the moon on mushrooms was amazing. I truly feel like this is the keystone to the mysteries. And I feel it's why most of the Modern Mystery schools all seem so hollow. Yes there is still a great deal for the modern Adept to glean from the Esoteric societies, but it is a faint shadow of true communion/revelation.
Having performed the LRBP using Entheogens, I can tell you with some certainty that it is a wholly/Holy different and powerful experience. I would even go so far as to suggest that the reason High magic in the Hermetic tradition is so concerned with sacred geometries is precisely to instill order in the potential chaos of the entheogenic experience.

Also I would hazard a guess, as I haven't done the work on this myself, that Evoking a spirit to visible manifestation would be more likely successful. Almost as if that was how it was originally intended.