Granny Wolf

08:36 pm: The Astral Light and the Magical Link
In his Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi describes the phenomena of the astral light. This idea is crucial to any practical understanding of ceremonial magick. Its laws are the laws that govern our effort as magicians, because it is the force that we employ to create change in conformity with our Will. The astral light is, in a sense, the gravity of causality. Magical acts, words, and rituals set this force in motion, and when it comes into contact with the material plane by means of the Magical Link, it makes an impression that can only be filled by the Willed result. The astral light is the medium of cause and effect in the same sense that gravity is the medium of matter and energy.

I submit that the astral light is beyond Good and Evil…

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics, ngbmii

10:03 pm: No God But Man- Identity and Religion
Our identities are important. Not just to us emotionally, but to the project of doing our Wills and expressing our individual essences. A carefully constructed identity serves as a medium between Being and Society, guiding our conduct and helping us remember why we are what we are and do what we do. A poorly constructed identity restricts Being in unnatural ways, deforming it, causing fear, shame, and neurosis. With the exception of religious identity, healthy links of identity are formed by authentic self-recognition. We see a symbolic category and find that it helps us to realize something true about ourselves. These bonds are forged because the symbolic category, whatever it is, has increased our self-awareness.

Unhealthy links of identity are formed, for the most part, for two major reasons, which are kind of the same reason. Either the subject suffers from social pressure to appear to be something that he or she is not, or they are trying to blend into a group to avoid social predators, hence these protective identities have been called herd mentality. These bonds are not forged because of authentic self-recognition. They are actually self-obfuscation. Whether there are socially unacceptable aspects to one’s character, or one merely lacks the courage to stand alone as an individual, the subject is trying to hide themselves in their identity, not express him or herself with it.

But what about religious identity? Religious identity has been so thoroughly co-opted by herd mentality, that people almost forget that authentic religious identities exist. Suppose for a moment that someone does not practice a religion to be thought of as “good” and therefore protected from criticism, but rather, out of sincere commitment?

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Tags: ngbmii

04:57 pm: Appendix to Lilith
Here are two short additional pieces on Lilith and Samael, to clarify certain points raised in the previous essay that may confuse readers who have studied this subject.

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii, sexual revolution

04:24 pm: Lilith: Queen of the Night
“The Book of the Law emphasizes the importance of these considerations. The act of love must be spontaneous, in absolute freedom. The man must be true to himself. Romeo must not be thrust on Rosaline for family, social, or financial reasons. Desdemona must not be barred from Othello for reasons of race or religion. The homosexual must not blaspheme his nature and commit spiritual suicide by suppressing love or attempting to pervert it, as ignorance and fear, shame and weakness, so often induce him to do. Whatever the act which expresses the soul, that act and no other is right.
But, on the other hand, whatever the act may be it is always a sacrament; and, however profaned, it is always efficient. To profane it is only to turn food into poison. The act must be pure and passionate. It must be held as the union with God in the heart of the Holy of Holies.”

-Aleister Crowley, Comment on AL I:52

5. Beautiful wast thou, O Lilith, thou serpent-woman!
6. Thou wast lithe and delicious to the taste, and thy
perfume was of musk mingled with ambergris.
7. Close did thou cling with thy coils unto the heart, and
it was as the joy of all the spring.
8. But I beheld in thee a certain taint, even in that
wherein I delighted.
9. I beheld in thee the taint of thy father the ape, of thy
grandsire the Blind Worm of Slime.
10. I gazed upon the Crystal of the Future, and I saw the
horror of the End of thee.

-Liber LXV cap. III

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii, sexual revolution

07:41 pm: The Key of the Mysteries: The Book of Genesis
“The Bible is not a history, it is a collection of poems, a book of allegories and images.
Adam and Eve are only the primitive types of humanity; the tempter serpent is time which tests; the Tree of Knowledge is 'right'; the expiation by toil is duty. Cain and Abel represent the flesh and the spirit, force and intelligence, violence and harmony.”

-Eliphas Levi, Key of the Mysteries p. 20

For the modern reader, the first line of this quotation should leap off of the page. We live in a secular culture that conditions its citizens to view the words “religious” and “nut” as virtually synonymous. Aside from obviously contributing to a nihilistic, self-destructive culture incapable of conceiving of any goal higher than the satisfaction of its vain appetites, enforcing this culture has made it necessary to create a number of myths about religion and the Bible, some of which are taken as reality by religious people as well. The most important myth for secular culture is the idea that religious texts are to be read as history, the same way that we would read a newspaper article. Approached in this way, these books are impossible to accept by any but the most stupid and credulous. This idea, narrative without interpretation, has never historically been an important part of real religion. Scriptural literalism, in both Christianity and Islam, is a fairly recent phenomenon. It is true that in medieval times European people widely held beliefs like this, but they had no access to religious texts, nor would they have been able to read them if they did. People simply bought into the clergy’s mythology (often very different from the actual content of scripture) in precisely the same way that the “enlightened” modern thinker buys into secular culture’s mythology.

This post looks at some of the Biblical exegesis in the Key of the Mysteries. There is really only one passage that deeply concerns us, and we will use the tools in our Thelemic toolbox to unpack it. We stick to the book of Genesis, covering what is left of Cain and Abel, a little more on Eve and the Serpent, the reinterpretation of the story of Noah’s sons, the tower of Babel, and the story of Joseph. We will also look at how these stories pertain to the revelation of the Vision and the Voice.

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This series will continue! And I promise that the next post will be all about sex…

Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

11:52 pm: The Key of the Mysteries: Satan
“Satan is only so incoherent and so formless because he is made up of all the rags of ancient theogonies. He is the sphinx without a secret, the riddle without an answer, the mystery without truth, the absolute without reality and without light”

-Eliphas Levi, The Key of the Mysteries, p. 14

A mystery without truth? That sounds familiar.

As Gnostics, the Truth is what we seek to know. The clearest interpretation of that truth is relative to our individual essences, and always relates to our True Will, effortless the performance of which being the highest state of Being we can achieve in existence. Our True Will is the way that we realize Truth-in-Being, and as such come into ourselves as powerful authentic subjects. In this project, confusion, dispersion, and deception are our most frequently encountered obstacles.

In a certain respect Satan is a purely negative conception of divinity, attributed to moral evil, but really nothing more than the equilibrating destruction to God’s creation. In this sense, Satan’s interaction with human beings is to bring out their tendency toward perversion, that is to say, to use a thing toward improper ends. This is in keeping with Crowley’s depiction of good and evil. Good, he tells us denotes what is fit and proper to its conditions. (i.e. scuba gear is good in the ocean, but cumbersome, and therefore evil, in the desert) Good has an existence independent of conditions in the form of truth and beauty, which is basically the same sense in which numbers exist independent of conditions. Truth and beauty can both be expressed in mathematics, so this makes sense to me. Crowley thought of evil as failure or unfit-ness in a particular sense, relating to particular cases having no conceivable existence independent of conditions.

This post takes a look at some of these ideas in Key of the Mysteries.

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

02:30 pm: Key of the Mysteries: Islam, Sexuality, and the New Aeon
“THE Quinary is the number of religion, for it is the number of God united to that of woman.
Faith is not the stupid credulity of an awestruck ignorance.
Faith is the consciousness and the confidence of Love.
Faith is the cry of reason, which persists in denying the absurd, even in the presence of the unknown.
Faith is a sentiment necessary to the soul, just as breathing is to life; it is the dignity of courage, and the reality of enthusiasm.”

-Eliphas Levi, Key of the Mysteries, p 17 

I’ll take certainty any day, but there is much food for thought here. Crowley thought that this was an incredibly important paper, and translated it to satisfy the 7=4 requirement that one must “prepare a thesis setting forth his knowledge of the universe, and his proposals for its welfare and progress.” I’d say that makes it a significant text. It is certainly an interesting one. I began writing this as a letter to a friend, but it progressed.

This post looks at some of the ideas expressed about women and sexuality in Eliphas Levi’s “Key of the Mysteries.” In the process, we will look particularly at the treatment of Islam and its prophet by Levi and Crowley. In Magick Without Tears Crowley calls Islam “the White School’s best effort to date” (paraphrased) so the fact that he brings it up in connection with the role of women and sexuality in religion seems significant.

Enjoy!

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

06:11 pm: No God But Man: Scarecrow
 The sacrifice of Jesus is still widely understood, in some form or another, as an act of penal substitution by which a single divine individual suffers for the wide and varied crimes of humanity.  Although this is technically different from viewing the crucifixion as a “ransom paid to the devil,” the difference is minor and circumstantial.  In both of these cases, Jesus suffers in order to “save” the world.

But save the world from what?  

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

06:19 am: No God But Man: Let the Earth Be Vexed in Her Parts
This is an examination of the parable of the Addar from A True and Faithful Relation, in the context of the reception of the Watchtowers and the morality put forth by the angels. This parable is particularly meaningful because of the timing of the working in which it occurs. It is, in a sense, the beginning of the end for Dee and Kelley. It also contains a lesson of great value to all magicians…

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Tags: ethics, ngbmii

12:51 am: Sovereignty and the Swan
“Every event is a uniting of some one monad with one of the experiences possible to it.”

“Duty consists in determining to experience the right event from one moment of consciousness to another.”

-Aleister Crowley, intro to Liber AL


It is my opinion that Crowley’s writings seem to indicate that Right Event is *sovereign.* In other words, it is complete and in command of itself. This is another way of saying that it is worth doing or experiencing for its own sake, but even so, it also fits perfectly into the *continuous* unfolding teleology of the individual essence experiencing it. This combination is the definitive quality of Right Event. While it moves toward the individual end, it still has complete meaning in itself. Even if the event is “terrible,” one sees the fitness of it and derives some sense of joy thereby.

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Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

12:47 pm: With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power
Crowley had it figured out.  If you take on essential responsibilities, the universe confers great essential power upon you.  Thelema, the Will of Being in the sense of the self-creating sub-stance (expressed symbolically by the Holy Spirit, Baphomet) is a directional device for one’s life.  If one is serving one’s intended essential purpose, we are told, no force in the universe can restrict or interfere.

There was a time that I thought of True Will as a single definite thing, which could not really become any more or less than what it was.  I have since discovered otherwise.  One’s True Will is, in a sense, individual, but that individual Will is dependant on the overall divine plan, which has numerous aims and projects to fulfil.  There’s no shortage of work to do, and when one ceremonially makes it clear to these occult forces that one is Willing to do it, they will provide the power to see these goals realized.  This idea is not alien to spiritual thought, although I would argue that those who have advanced notions like this in the past have been either intellectually unable or simply unwilling to see God and the universe as they are.  Most people judge aspects of God and God’s creation to be good or evil according to whether or not they are pleased or displeased by them.  Because of this, the project of aligning oneself with the essential force of the universe becomes virtually impossible.   

Unfortunately, because of the prevalence of slave morality, it is difficult for people to conceive of moral goodness in a positive sense.  Being Good isn’t about what you DO, it’s about what you DON’T do.  By avoiding the forbidden acts, the slaves receive approval from their daemon idol.  I cannot ascribe to this view.  I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t really care how I spend my free time as long as I’m doing my part in creation and honouring the essence of which I am an expression...

....which sort of explains how I keep getting away with this...

Tags: aleister crowley, ngbmii

04:01 pm: Childhood
“I will discuss later the evidence supporting the view that childhood is disappearing, but I want to note here that of all such evidence none is more suggestive than the fact that the history of childhood has become a major industry among scholars. As if to confirm Marshall McLuhan’s observation that when a social artifact becomes obsolete, it is turned into an object of nostalgia and contemplation, historians and social critics have produced, within the last two decades, scores of major works on childhood’s history, whereas very few were written between, say, 1800 and 1960. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Philippe Aries’s Centuries of Childhood, published in 1962, created the field and started the rush. Why now? At the very least we may say that the best histories of anything are produced when an event is completed, when a period is waning, when it is unlikely that a new and more robust phase will occur. Historians usually come not to praise but to bury. In any event, they find autopsies easier to do than progress reports.”

-Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

Ka-blam!

I often hear people say that children should be treated like adults. This is insanity, of course, as we can see when we observe the result. I have been greatly provoked by this book, particularly in light of Postman’s observation that the quality of childhood was ambiguous in Greek language and culture, which has given me cause to closely examine Matthew 18:3 and the Epistle of John, in which the distinction between “paidia” and “tekvia” becomes crucial. I expect that there will be a post about that after I do some more research. There’s a lot to think about in this book.

I wonder if we might detect an isomorphism between the phenomenon that Postman describes in the above quote and the tendency of “occultists” to gravitate toward academia?

I think we might

Tags: ngbmii

11:09 pm: No God But Man
“Another dimension of Antichrist rhetoric during this period [fifteenth century] also began by applying the Antichrist legend to the current situation of the Church, especially in relation to the papacy.  This form, however, focused not so much on a colorful legendary agenda, typical of the Joachites, but on the core significance of the use of Antichrist rhetoric against the papacy - the sense that no one was a more obvious member of Antichrist, or even possibly the Final Enemy himself, than an immoral occupant of Christendom’s supreme spiritual office.  In the development of this tradition, however, the notion of what constituted the essence of ‘Antichristianity’ came to center more on the office itself and less on individual evil popes.”

-Bernard McGrinn, Antichrist, p. 181



Tags: ngbmii

08:44 pm: No God But Man: The Four Great Devils
In the cry of ZON, the angel identifies four Great Devils that trouble mankind by assuming the identity (and, one would presume, imagery and iconography) of four great religious figures.  I’d like to look at some of the implications of that in the No God But Man thread.  Specifically, we’ll start with Jesus.  We are told by the angel of ZON that there is a Great Devil called Satan who disguises himself as Jesus to secure human worship.  This is consistent with the prophecy of the Antichrist...

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Tags: ngbmii

03:22 pm: The taste of the tail
Creation is the absolute reference point.  It is the heart around which solar-phallic gnosticism winds itself, in which all essential power is grounded.  Creation is the common ground that all existence has.  Even if the world is an illusion, that illusion was created.  Even if everything we know is wrong, our experiences are still somehow created.  Creation transcends possible doubt, because to doubt, one must have something to be doubtful about. 

As far as material existence is concerned, causality is what creates our reality.  Even those of us who are independantly acting, self-motivated go-getters, the circumstances of our birth and upbringing coupled with the genetic circumstances of our particuar bodies play a crucial role in making us capable of the things we are capable of.  This is why it has been so important in metaphysics and theology to establish God’s relationship to causality.  Spinoza’s conclusion, the one that I happen to agree with, is that God is self-caused.  This is more or less consistent with Crowley’s views on reincarnation.

Tags: ngbmii, s.a.i.s

10:27 pm: No God But Man- Man bites God, film at 11
Expect a few of these in the next little while...

Sephir Sephiot provides us with two entries for the Hebrew word for “man.”  The first, Aleph-Daleth-Mem, recalls the sometimes patriarch of humanity, a man that was good with names.  The other is Aleph-Yod-Shin, which occurs in Genesis 32:5, to describe the figure that wrestles with Jacob all night, and although no one wins, the Man eventually knocks his hip out of its socket.  At dawn, the Man tries to leave, but Jacob refuses to let go without first receiving his blessing.  The figure says, “since you have contended with God (ALHIM) and with men (ANShIN) and prevailed your name shall be Israel.”  I think that a quick examination of this story with gemetria is helpful in illustrating the adept’s quest for the Holy Guardian Angel.  Jacob names the place (or the figure?) Peniel, Peh-Nun-Yod-Aleph-Lamed, which is roughly “the face of God.”



Tags: ngbmii

02:51 am: No God But Man: Here is Wisdom
In the No God but Man thread I’ve talked quite a bit about the idea from Liber 418 that adepts are the children of Eve and the Serpent, and not Eve and Adam. This analysis has focused on the fathership of the serpent far more than the mother, Eve. This post will look more closely at Eve, and study her role in the practice of true Gnosticism.



Tags: ngbmii

03:03 pm: No God But Man: The Four Horsemen
The four horsemen are a microcosmic image of the larger process of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelations, which mirrors the procession from Serpent, to Savior, to Conqueror, the formula fulfilled by and integrated into Thelema. Fortunately for us, some of the spiritual concepts that are intrinsically tied to the Greek language can make this relationship a little more clear.  This post examines the magical formula indicated by the four horseman of the apocalypse.



Tags: ngbmii

06:11 pm: No God But Man: Will and Grace

Aquinas’ God is rational and intelligible.  The ontology is sound, so it is rational, and it is intelligible because, at the fundamental level, God and Man are separate entities in Aquinas.  Spinoza’s God is rational and unintelligible.  There is no separation between God and Man in Spinoza, and therefore no subject- object division from which to establish a point-of-view.  Only by Grace, the beneficent Will of God, can human intellect be uplifted to the point where knowledge of the divine essence is possible in Aquinas’ system.  In Spinoza’s system, however, self-knowledge reveals the One Sub-stance which is the divine essence, and which is fully present in all Being.  The former requires the Will of a higher being to carry one to the goal, the latter requires the Will of the knower to turn its gaze toward the power of one’s own essential being to act, and to create change.

This post uses citations from the Summa Theologica, and Ethics demonstrated in a geometric order to compare the Gods described in the philosophical systems of Aquinas and Spinoza.  For the student of philosophy, it should prove instructive to separating the dynamic God that represents individual human freedom from the static God that imposes a law to which we must conform.  For everyone else, it will be an excellent remedy for insomnia.



Tags: ethics, ngbmii

05:56 pm: Death, Laughter, and the Subject of the Sub-Stance

In The Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel explains that Truth must be understood, not just as substance, but as subject.  As I observed Bataille’s discussion of this in an essay on Hegel and Death, I noticed that Hegel’s view could be seen as an application of Kantian metaphysics (which acknowledge the role of perception as the focal point of reason without denying the possibility of Pure Reason) to the God of Spinoza.  Spinoza’s sub-stance is necessary to a rational ontology of creation, but not intelligible as such, because it is necessarily present in all things.  There can be no subject-object separation for this substance from which we can gain perspective on it. 

Recognizing this separation, and the inability of reason to access the thing-in-itself, was crucial to understanding the role of the senses in Kantian philosophy, and to Hegel’s master/ slave dialectic.  In the former case, Kant was able to adequately define reason’s role in thinking and experience (a very general characterization, but my Kant is rusty, and he is not a man that you want to play fast and loose with) and in the latter case, the master overcomes the various objects of nature at the risk of his own life, thus gaining power over both his environment, and other human beings who fear to take that same risk.  Truth, as the subject, requires a radical separation between the substance that Spinoza describes, the self-creating, all-pervasive God, and the self.  Because this substance is fully and completely present in all Being, it can only be apprehended from a perspective of non-Being.  This is the dissolution into nothingness, or in more practical terms, the presence of death.

This presence, as Crowley points out in his “Dangers of Mysticism” essay, can inflate the ego severely... and thank God for that!  For, without inflated egos, where would Laughter be?  For there is no difference between a joke and an insight....



Tags: aleister crowley, joking, ngbmii