HOLDING ONTO BELIEF LIGHTLY

The Internet has bought many problems to occult teaching.  Often teaching is dumbed down into a mem or a slogan which may or may not be right but just sounds cool.  Soon people start to believe it and it becomes difficult to shake from people’s mind.

For a few months I have had fun looking at mems people have been posting and typing in the headline and the then the world hoax or debunked into Google.   You will be amazed at how many “facts” online are made up by people who are trying to sell you something – either politics or a belief.  What is even stranger is how angry people get when you tell them that they have been taken in by a hoax.

The occult path is full of people that believe things.  In fact it almost goes with the territory that something in your belief pattern will make someone else go WTF!

But lately I have noticed that there is a certain intransigence about these beliefs particularly those read on the Internet and an almost fundamentalist approach to defending the indefensible.

There has always been a problem with people making connections between different bodies of teaching, particularly the East and the Western systems.  The logic is that because a symbol exists in the East it must have the same meaning as the one in the West.  Often they don’t and more often they mean the opposite.  Take for example the colour red.  In the West it is Mars and action. In China it is good luck and not much to do with Mars at all.

Chakras-in-Lotus
The only way this could be a lotus wand is if the person was standing on their head or the wand was upside down!

Then there is the issue of sex force kundalini, which in the East is represented by a snake.  This term has been popularised by western occultists who often fail to understand its Eastern meanings. So when they see a serpent rising on the Tree of Life they assume that it is this is kundalini. It isn’t.

On Facebook I had a heated discussion with someone who believed that the Golden Dawn lotus wand represented the spinal column and the energy which you invoke through the Lotus is kundalini.  It is true there are points in the eastern system which do correspond to the Zodiac and Israel Regardie, who tended to see kundalini everywhere, also equated the two.  Regardie should have known better.  The colours of the charkras in tantra are fairly specific and the base charkra is always depicted as being read and the highest brow charkra is violet.  If you look at a lotus wand you will see that is the literal opposite of this arrangement and the only way the two could be connected is if the Lotus Wand was held upside down (something Golden Dawn people are forbidden to do).

I am finding that I am having more conversations with people who demand that I accept that black is white or there is something wrong with me.  More over if I point out the wrongness of an argument I am “full of hate” or “negative.”

It is not that I am always right, everyone makes mistakes, but I believe what I am saying.  If I know something is correct I will generally stick to my guns.  So if you insist that there was sex magic in the Golden Dawn, Apple are a super cool company, or  Mathers was a god, then you will find me disagreeing.

This disagreement is a sign that I think an argument is wrong, it is not an indication that I am “not being spiritual”.  In fact it is the opposite.  Immediately after my portal initiation I found that I was unable to bite my tongue, or tell a lie.  It seemed part of my nature to “say it how I saw it.”  This instantly became inconvenient to those who don’t.  It was not as if I was shooting my mouth off, it was that I was telling the truth as best I could. It was a very solar approach.  There was no diplomacy involved and people are easily offended.

But this is a problem.  If you are an occult leader you are supposed to sit there and smile as people talk bollocks at you.  If you don’t there is something wrong with you.  One of my old teachers used to smile at such types in the hope that one of his other students would see him and rescue him.

The problem is that people have a perception of what a spiritual teacher is supposed to be and it is not the sort of person that real occultism generates.  In fact magic should generate someone to does not mess around and tells you what is wrong.  It risks pissing people off but in the entire history of occultism I have only found one occultist who did not managed to piss someone off.  Ernest Butler, the writer of Magician, his training and work, appeared to be a living incarnation of a Christian master.  I mention him because by comparison all the others I have seen had a tendency to flashes of impatience or to undiplomatically tell a student what was wrong with them.

But this is really important.  How is someone going to know that they are on the wrong path if their teacher does not point it out to them?  It is not “telling the student what to do” but simply pointing out where they think they are going wrong and letting the student decide.  It becomes wrong when the teacher tries to control the student, but very often that is not happening.  What I have found in my own path is that the advice I have had from my teachers, which I ignored, was pretty much spot on. It was the stuff I did listen to which did not work

Occultism has to be an extremely flexible art so hanging onto ideas often is a blind.  I have had to give up some really cool occult philosophies in my time because I did not think they worked.  A person that hangs onto ideas, or argues them without understanding them, or refuses to listen, will not make it on this path.

3 Comments

  1. frater nobody

    If you read between the lines of the Gospels, it seems Jesus himself, lost his patience with his disciples quite often and even was indignant with the leper in mark 1:41 according the latest translation work.

  2. Frater EST

    I think the qualities of Patience, Humility, and Charity/Unselfish Love make a good trio that solve a lot of these problems. If achieved or at least aimed at in a balanced fashion they do seem to work together as a set well to create a good learning environment & behaviours.

    I am far from a teacher, but I do like to learn and found the first two provide speed and the last motive when I pore breathed them after the fashion of Bardon, one after the other for a few days.

    If you have Patience with you, it says “I don’t need to know, do, or be everything right now. And I can find and take the steps I need to do as I get to them.” Whereas Humility says “This person may be better than me in some area, or know something I do not. Since I am imperfect it is a given that there are others who are better than me in areas in which I desire to advance. In fact, I am unable to verify that I see the total truth even in the areas of my strength.” The Charity/Unselfish Love are a orientating influence & impetus to obtain and use that learning in the service of God & Humanity.

    I think the three altogether essentially fix the issues you mention directly or indirectly, it works for example on how a person manages their attention relative to their expectations, and also how a person reacts to their expectations. It works that is, assuming the person makes an effort to cultivate these qualities either proactively or remedially. I pore breathed them after the fashion of Bardon, one after the other for a few days. Caveat, I am not a teacher but I felt this line of thought might be of value in some way. 🙂

  3. very busy

    Nick –
    “Golden Dawn lotus wand represented the spinal column”
    For Mathers, almost definitely not.
    That doesn’t mean that people can’t make use of it that way.
    Especially within a supportive context.

    “the energy which you invoke through the Lotus is kundalini.”
    Let’s clarify kundalini. From “The Tantric Body” etc by Flood –
    “The rising of energy in the body that we see in the Netra-tantra is also found in the Kubjikamata-tantra where a serpentine energy is associated with mantra and levels of speech. In many texts this energy is named Kundalini, the coiled one, although the ‘crooked goddess’ Kubjika is earlier and perhaps a precursor. She sleeps in the lowest cakra; once awakened through yogic practice, especially breath control through the two channels of the nostrils that meet the central channel in the muladhara, she rises(sic) the central channel to Siva at the crown. According to White, the earliest occurrence of ‘this indwelling female serpent’ is the Tantrasadbhava-tantra, possibly dated as early as the eighth century CE, where this in-dwelling power is described as kundali, she who is ‘ring shaped’. Ksemaraja cites this text, which would appear to be a visualisation in which Kundalini is unconscious and appears as if poisoned. Once awakened she rises up and so transforms the poison of ignorance into a force of liberation. Abhinavagupta identifies different levels of Kundalini and stresses her cosmological dimension, expanding from bindu, the source of manifestation, and shining in all things in the form of energy (saktikundalka) and in the form of breath (pranakundalika), then up to the extreme point of emission where she is the supreme Kundalini. For Abhinavagupta there are two main forms: an ‘upward’ Kundalini (urdhva) associated with expansion, and a ‘downward’ Kundalini (adha) linked with contraction; she is the systole and diastole of cosmic expansion and contraction. In his commentary on the Paratrisikha, Abhinavagupta links Kundalini with the kaulini sakti, a name for the supreme or highest form of energy, from which the Lord is inseparable. The Paratrisikha identifies kauliki sakti with the supreme power of the Lord called the kulanayika, the Lord of the clan, who resides in the heart. In his commentary Abhinavagupta identifies the goddess with the power that brings into manifestation the body, breath and experiences of pleasure and pain (sarira-prana-sukhadeh), and the energy of a whole circle of deities within the body (Brahmi and others discussed above). This is also the power within the body and the power of sexuality as the source of reproduction. He furthermore links Kundalini to the force of the syllable ha in the mantra and the concept of aham, the supreme subjectivity as the source of all, with a as the initial movement of consciousness and m its final withdrawal. Thus we have an elaborate series of associations, all conveying the central conception of the cosmos as a manifestation of consciousness, of pure subjectivity, with Kundalini understood as the force inseparable from consciousness, who animates creation and who, in her particularised form in the body, causes liberation through her upward, illusion-shattering movement.” etc
    Compare with “The Garden of Eden Before the Fall” from 3=8.

    “The colours of the charkras in tantra are fairly specific and the base charkra is always depicted as being read and the highest brow charkra is violet.”
    The chakra system goes back, I am told, as far as the Upanishads themselves, entirely without specific colour attributions. This rainbow prismatic scheme is sometimes attributed to Sir John Woodroffe’s published translation of the satcakra-nirupana as “The Serpent Power” in the early 20th century, sometimes to another book printed much later in the 1970s. Even in “The Serpent Power” the rainbow scheme applies at most to the chakra petals. The sanskrit syllabics attributed to each petal do not match the scheme, nor do the tattvas, bindus, and associated Hindu godforms associated with each chakra.

    Again from Flood’s book (as convenient) –
    “The body is constrained by text and tradition. Visualising the body as being mapped by these subtle centres is clearly an entextualisation of the body, a mapping of the cosmos and journey of the self to its transcendent source in ways specified within the tradition. Indeed, to seek to understand the cakras outside of this context as if they are intended as extra-textual, ontological structures is incoherent. The rising of sakti within the body, the piercing of the centres along a central axis, and the accompanying mantras are part of the practitioner’s aligning of himself with tradition and part of the construction of his body in tradition-specific ways to attain the tradition-specific goal.”
    There is more to be said about this but I am limited by time constraints.

    “If you look at a lotus wand you will see that is the literal opposite of this arrangement and the only way the two could be connected is if the Lotus Wand was held upside down (something Golden Dawn people are forbidden to do).”
    To be very brief – it is the stimulation of the physiological basis of a certain effect, through directed introspective attention and tradition specific imagery that is important; not which direction the pertinent symbolic spectrum begins or ends vertically (especially when compared with a spectrum from some other distant tradition). There is an underlying semi-discernible medical basis which produces magically / experientially effective results – because the body is the only basis for the modulation of consciousness that we have.

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