One of the things that took me awhile to grasp is that the main object of spirituality—the base matter you’re working to transubstantiate—is your own sense of spiritual longing. If you think about it, what was there before you encountered spiritual traditions and spiritual practices? There was the sense of something missing, something absent. There…
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The Interior Order
The compiler of The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts [A.E. Waite] is not only the most ponderously platitudinous and priggishly prosaic of pretentiously pompous pork butchers of the language, but the most voluminously voluble. I cannot dig over the dreary deserts of his drivel in search of the passage which made me write…
Nihilism and spirituality
A friend of mine was recently telling me that he did not think beliefs were important to his spirituality. I think he meant that he was doing his best to take his experiences on their own terms without jumping to conclusions about how the world works. Damien Echols recently said something similar on his youtube…
Liber V vel Reguli and the Formula of AHIHVH
I spent some time recently looking closely at Liber V vel Reguli along with the commentary and the early draft notes, and feel like I have come to a few insights which could be of use to others. As I’ve shown before, one of the main themes of Crowley’s spirituality is the movement from speech…
Balance and Imbalance on the Path
There’s this ancient temple in Rome called the Pantheon. It has a giant domed ceiling with a hole right in the center of it. I visited it in my 20s. I think “grand” is the right word to describe it. It’s not easy to capture in a photo. When I think about the relationship between…
Variations on Breathing
Breath work is important in both eastern and western spiritual traditions. Breathing can be manipulated to bring about physical relaxation or excitation or altered states of consciousness. Working with the breath is also considered a means of accessing prana, qi, ki, ruh, ruach, pneuma, anima, or astral light. Here’s a quick summary of some easy…
Visual representation of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram
Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise. —Aleister Crowley, The Palace of the World This is a visual representation of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. In the center…
Is the Holy Guardian Angel part of ourselves or separate?
Is the Holy Guardian Angel part of ourselves? Is it outside of ourselves? Is it outside of ourselves but still part of ourselves? Is it the whole universe? Is it just the higher part of my soul? These sorts of questions come up all the time. In one respect the question is very easy to…
Yoga and eroticism in the Platonic tradition
The Good and the One in Proclus The highest principle in Platonism is the Good. The identity between the Good and the One is established by Proclus in the 13th proposition of his Elements of Theology. All that is good is the unifying principle of its participants, and all union is good, and the Good…
Heliocentrism and Hermetism
One of the ideas Frances Yates explores in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition is the intersection between hermetism and heliocentrism. I said a little while back that the hermetic universe was small and geocentric, which couldn’t be more wrong. Giordano Bruno in particular was really excited by heliocentrism. He felt it marked a spiritual…