Liber Resh vel Helios sub figura CCXX

666 remarked that advanced practitioners could use this ritual to draw on the spiritual power of the sun. In my experience, this ritual properly performed has the further effect of converting the power of the physical rotation of the earth--which produces the effect of the motion of the sun--into the practitioner's spiritual aspiration to (or communion with) his or her star, i.e. personal genius. It effectively induces a current through the continual observation of the circular motion of the outer world, propelling the ritualist on a linear path of interior initiation. "O my darling, I also wait for the brilliance of the hour ineffable, when the universe shall be like a girdle for the midst of the ray of our love, extending beyond the permitted end of the endless One." --Liber LXV, IV:64

The key to all this success can be found in the oft-neglected points 5 & 6 of the ritual.

The practice rests on the work of 666 in practical comparative religion, applying the most potent techniques of the religions of the Old Aeon to the Work of the New. Let us thus witness to the power of our Father the Sun openly in the marketplaces and secretly in the chambers of our houses.

For crying out loud, what took this so long? I know a three-page federal policy directive isn't like writing a book review, but it's a simple, humane, cost-saving reform that the Obama DOJ could implement all on its own in a straightforward command hierarchy.

Well, it's some good news anyhow.

The stages of vegetation pronounced by the Priest on the first step of the dais in the Ceremony of the Introit constitute a specific formula of magick that could be applied to nearly any human enterprise, since “Every willed act is a magical act.” But the text of Liber XV directs our attention particularly toward its use in the invocation of Love as an image of the divine. We might profitably consider what Liber Nu calls the “first practice of Intelligence”: the appreciation of the rim of the Stele of Revealing as described in the stanza of Liber Legis I:14.

Above, the gemmed azure is
The naked splendour of Nuit;
She bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.

Not all the filth of London is thick enough to hide me from the Eye of God: & by that Ray I live.

--Aleister Crowley

scarletstar777

lammassu

Occult America by Mitch Horowitz is engaging, entertaining, and educational. It is not, however--despite the assertion of its subtitle--"the secret history of how mysticism shaped our nation." For one thing, it is not a single history; it is a bricolage of tangentially-related sketches and investigations regarding a topic that Horowitz never manages to subject to any theoretical treatment, nor to encompass with a larger narrative. (An earlier attempt that did succeed in this regard is Catherine Albanese's A Republic of Mind and Spirit.) The closest he comes to answering his own initial question "What is the occult?" is to propose that it comprehends all those techniques and teachings that purport to put people in communication with an "unseen world." But surely many of the most common and non-"occult" of spiritual traditions do so as well.

( read the rest of the review )

LaBerge's highly readable treatment of this interesting topic rightly gives it much greater significance than it is generally accorded. My 1986 mass paperback copy promises on the back cover a "systematic, step-by-step program" to cultivate lucid dreaming, but that's not a fair characterization of the contents. While LaBerge does insist that lucid dreaming is trainable, and he details a couple of the most useful procedures for that purpose, the book's scope is really much broader. The author provides a full summary of the state of research on the topic up to and including his own. At least one full chapter of the book is devoted to explanations of the function and meaning of ordinary dreams, and his conclusions on these lines are both flexible and well-reasoned. The information offered is founded in sleep lab research of the late 20th century, but the presentation draws on and discusses traditional lore such as Tibetan dream yoga and Sufi teaching stories.

I did find it surprising that a researcher addressing non-ordinary states of consciousness would take the sort of pre-Ericksonian view of "hypnotizability" that LaBerge does, when insisting that hypnosis will facilitate lucidity training for only a small minority of subjects. (172) But this quibble paled beside the quantity of good sense and healthy encouragement to be found in the volume. Another surprise was the final pages' appeal for funding and participants in LaBerge's "Lucidity Project," that gave the book a faint aftertaste of old-fashioned occultist organizing and self-promotion.

( read the rest of the review )

An ongoing project of terrestrial Thelemites: World Wide Resh, thanks to the industry of lammassu.

We've generated footage for three of our four Chicago Resh videos, and probably a good out-takes segment besides. Each time we shoot, we get curiosity from bystanders. (Or, conversely, the woman so intent on her cell phone that she has to walk through the middle of the shot, and reacts with unthinking hostility when someone tries to warn her away.)

After doing noon, we were approached by a fellow in a t-shirt that proclaimed him a devout Christian. I think he was a youth pastor or something of the sort. He asked what we were about, and I happily answered him that we were Thelemites enacting a ceremony prescribed by Aleister Crowley for daily devotion to the Sun.

"Do you think it hears you?" inquired the man.

"What? Uh, of course not!" I said. Had I been in cruel godstomping mode, I would have continued: "Oh, wait--you think Jesus hears you, right? Hahahahaha." But I was in friendly promulgating mode, so I explained to him that since we're residents of the Solar System, the Sun is He in whom we live and move and have our being. That the planets are sort of like sensory organs of a grand cosmic beast with the Sun at its heart. And that we are like the eyelashes of that god. We pause four times daily to reconnect with the solar center.

"So, you don't believe in the Bible," he ventured.

"What's not to believe in? I have a shelf of Bibles at home! I probably read the Bible a lot differently than you do, is all." I mean, whoever heard of somebody saying they "don't believe in" the Odyssey, or Blake's Jerusalem?

As he walked away, he assured us: "See, I wasn't afraid to talk to you!" That seemed rather a misconstrual of our motives.

Irwin weaves a terrific tale of the "Summer of Love Under Will": a hippy college student in London gets into more occultism than he bargains for. The story is enchanting, revolting, hilarious, nostalgic, riveting, and pathetic by turns, and the magick, the drugs and the weird sex are all pretty credible--even as outre as they become.

The entire book is written as a diary, initially undertaken as a magical record in obedience to the "Black Book Lodge," a persistent old schism (of Irwin's invention) from Crowley's A.'.A.'. The journal format is not merely an homage to or evocation of classic horror fiction like Stoker's Dracula, it is a faithful representation of the sort of document that modern magical practice actually generates. It repeatedly inspired me with envy; would that my own diary were as witty and perceptive as that of Irwin's protagonist! In that sense, it can serve as a goad for working occultists today.

The author's 1967 photo portrait on the back inside jacket (also in the background of the paperback cover) provides further evidence for the idea--which must occur to any informed reader--that he drew significantly on personal experience in constructing this delectable yarn.

Persian language

...has no grammatical gender, not even "natural" gender,

...comprehends Farsi (Iran), Tajiki (Tajikistan), and Dari (Afghanistan) among its principal dialects,

...is an Indo-European language most often written in Arabic characters (with four bonus letters not found in Arabic),

...is written in a modified Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan, and

...is called Fingilish or Penglish when written in Latin characters.

The 1001 Nights was based on a prior collection in Persian, and only became "Arabian" in the 9th century e.v. (The Scheherezade frame-narrative seems to date from the 14th century.)

When medieval Persia fell under the rule of the Ummayad and Abbasid caliphates, Persian was banned in favor of Arabic, but Islam remained an elite religion of the rulers. Only after the revival of Persian language and literature in the 9th and 10th centuries e.v. ("Persianization") did Islam become a popular religion throughout the region.

Use of the unique Persian alphabet, or Old Persian cuneiform, did not survive Islamicization. Old Persian was a much more inflected language, with extensive grammatical gender and eight different cases.

Iranaeus describes Gnostic biblical interpretation as "dismembering the body of truth," implying that Scripture is like a "body" encompassing the totality of truth (soma tes aletheias). By their heretical, perverse mode of reading, the Gnostics "dismember," as it were, truth.

--Guy G. Strousma (2005),
Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and
the Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 115

Casanova's exploits as a Freemason, faux(?)-Rosicrucian, alchemist and magical confidence-man all rest within a larger context, where the freethinker and libertine seems to have enjoyed a genuine conviction of the reality of his personal daimonic genius. Writing of his first hardships as a prisoner, Casanova reflects, "My Genius diverted himself in this fashion in order to give me the pleasure of making comparisons." The name of this Guardian Angel was
P A R A L I S.

Casanova reflects on the Mysteries.

(promoted from a comment made in another journal)

Once in a while, I note that some people think our ceremony of confirmation in the Gnostic Catholic Church is superfluous or oxymoronic. As best as I understand it, the argument goes that since we don't inflict involuntary infant baptism on our members, they don't need to be "confirmed." I disagree with this critique, and not only (or even mostly) because of the tradition of confirmation as a cardinal sacrament of both apostolic Christian and Neognostic churches.

In primitive Christianity, adult converts went through a ceremony that included an initial exposure to the creed (and in which they also typically received bread and salt sacramentally), to inaugurate a catechumenal period in which they would prepare for full membership through baptism.

In EGC, our "baptism" takes the place of such a catechumenal ceremony, while our "confirmation" serves the role of the antique baptism, at least with respect to communal ties and individual status. It makes sense that we who are directed to "worship...with fire and blood" should have a solar and martial confirmation ceremony as the real admission to lay membership, while the watery and lunar baptism is a preliminary. (Of course, the old Piscean agenda would place the emphasis on water.)

sphinxie and I are flogging the Law and our Order on the front page of Reality Sandwich.

GLORIA PATRI RA
The lord and giver of life
Beams forth the world's nourishment
Ever-present, ever-radiant;
It is we who travel through Amenti
At nine hundred miles per hour.

GLORIA FILIO HOOR
With blood-stained spear and brilliant crown
The Child issues the decree:
Do What Thou Wilt!
The Law of the Battle of Conquest
Is a curse to be desired.

GLORIA SPIRITUI SANCTO KHUIT
The cooing of the dove
Opens the gates of Hell:
From deep within sounds the serpent's hiss,
Summoning us to joyful worship.
Our orison: HRILIU!

AUM HA

Unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his will!

The Greeks, and all the Celtic nations, accordingly, burned the bodies of the dead, as the Gentoos do at this day; while the Egyptians, among whom fuel was extremely scarce, placed them in pyramidal monuments, which were the symbols of fire; hence come those prodigious structures which still adorn that country. The soul which was to be emancipated was the divine emanation, the vital spark of heavenly flame, the principle of reason and perception, which was personified into the familiar daemon, or genius, supposed to have the direction of each individual, and to dispose him to good or evil, wisdom or folly, and all their consequences of prosperity and adversity.

(Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, ch. XI, pp. 191-2)

Wow!
Wow?
Wow.

Swinburne died ninety years ago today, at the age of 72. He had nigh slain himself in the fervor of his devotion to Our Lady during his early forties, but lingered respectably upon Mispec Moor long enough to be still living when bits of Atalanta in Calydon were hijacked for the Caxton Hall Rites of Eleusis, and when 666 sainted him in the writing and earliest publication of the Gnostic Mass.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

(ll. 89-96)

I have a nice, large (2" or so) rose-cross pin that I wear on the lapel of my overcoat these days. For some reason, this insignia prompts strangers to blithely interrogate me about my religious status--usually while I'm preoccupied with, say, grocery shopping. Such conversations have become gradually more blunt as the exercise has been repeated, reaching a point of near-perfection on the train this afternoon.

Q. (out of the blue, without the merest hello) Are you a chaplain?

A. (flatly) No, I'm a bishop.

Q. A Lutheran bishop?

A. (with careful diction) No, a bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church.

Q. Agnostic Catholic? That sounds like an oxymoron to me.

A. No, not Agnostic, Gnostic.

Q. Never heard of it. What's the difference?

A. (gravely) Historians typically consider Gnosticism to be the oldest and most terrible of Christian heresies.

Q. Um.

A. Good-bye! (The train has reached my stop.)