Speaker 1: You see, you see, something's going to happen. What's going
Speaker 1: to happen?
Speaker 2: Hein what? I Welcome to the Occult Rejects. This episode,
Speaker 2: I got a very very special guest, somebody that was
Speaker 2: very uh impactful in my own magical career, especially in
Speaker 2: the Thelemic style of magic. Somebody who probably even really
Speaker 2: set up how I even did my rituals, like I
Speaker 2: went through the Living Thelema Book in that highly impacted
Speaker 2: the way I practiced and the way I even changed
Speaker 2: my outlook on magic itself. So this is very very
Speaker 2: special for me, and I'm very excited to have doctor
Speaker 2: David Schoemaker on. But before we introduce him, I would
Speaker 2: like to introduce the other rejects and I got Judith
Speaker 2: the Loon with us. What is going on? Judith? How
Speaker 2: are you.
Speaker 1: Hi?
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to
Speaker 3: be here. You could catch me on YouTube and on
Speaker 3: X as the Loon with my weekly brunch and every
Speaker 3: my monthly.
Speaker 1: Buddy check.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you for joining us and my man headless Johan.
Speaker 2: What is going on?
Speaker 1: Sir? How you doing?
Speaker 4: You can find me on Twitter and on YouTube. You
Speaker 4: can check out my trialogue with Ethan Indigo and Ricard
Speaker 4: Calivadio this morning. It was a banger, so yeah, check
Speaker 4: that out.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you very much for making it. And
Speaker 2: my man Brandon Magus in the media, What is going On?
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me again, Nick. I
Speaker 5: love being on this show. I'm so excited to have
Speaker 5: doctor David Shoemaker as you Nick. He also was pivotal
Speaker 5: in my own journey. Read all his books. His voice
Speaker 5: is soothing as well, so it's always when I read
Speaker 5: his books, I have it in my head. Thank you
Speaker 5: for having me Megas in the media, just head on
Speaker 5: over to YouTube x as well as Instagram subscribe, I
Speaker 5: can share. It's all magic, it's all myth, it's all
Speaker 5: meaning here, let's get it done today.
Speaker 2: If you listen to his podcast and then read the book,
Speaker 2: it's like you can literally hear his voice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly.
Speaker 2: And Robbie Marx please the storyteller himself. Thank you very
Speaker 2: much for joining us. What is going on?
Speaker 1: Sir?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was excited for this one. It's good to
Speaker 6: meet you, David. I'm our Marx or Robbie Marx artist illustrator,
Speaker 6: and you can check out all my stuff at my
Speaker 6: link tree which is link tree r M A r
Speaker 6: X and that'll pull up all my miscellaneous things.
Speaker 2: Thanks Nick, of course, no, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: And again, like I said, we do have doctor David
Speaker 2: Schumaker joining us. He is a clinical psychologist, author, and
Speaker 2: longtime teacher and the Thlemic tradition. He's widely known for
Speaker 2: making complex, the limic and initiatory material more practical in
Speaker 2: a roach, especially through his work on ritual meditation, psychology,
Speaker 2: and spiritual development. Doctor Schumaker is the author of Living Thelema,
Speaker 2: The Winds of Wisdom and The Way of the Will,
Speaker 2: and he's also deeply involved in Tholemic training through the
Speaker 2: Temple of the Silver Star, with decades of experience working
Speaker 2: with students in both OTO and AA related practice. David
Speaker 2: Schumaker describes himself as a clinical psychologist in private practice
Speaker 2: with specialization in Youngian and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. On his
Speaker 2: official site, he also identifies himself as a chancellor in
Speaker 2: p prolocutor screwinglet up of the Temple of the Silver
Speaker 2: Star and notes he has been involved with the OTO
Speaker 2: as a student of an end as a student of
Speaker 2: AA since nineteen ninety three. Today we're going to get
Speaker 2: into Thelema Astramargentum's spiritual attainment, practical magic, and how psychology
Speaker 2: and mysticism intersect in real practice. Doctor Schumacher, thank you
Speaker 2: very much for coming on the show and welcome to
Speaker 2: the Occult Rejects. Would you please let everybody know where
Speaker 2: they can find anything about you what you would like
Speaker 2: to plug rabbitas sure.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me so. I have
Speaker 1: a presence on Facebook and Instagram and the Living Thelema
Speaker 1: podcast which still exists. I just do it intermittently. Can
Speaker 1: you can find all that archived over the years at
Speaker 1: Livingthalima dot com. Also there is a Living Thalima dedicated
Speaker 1: YouTube channel that has archives of every Living Kalma episode
Speaker 1: and Organizationally, you can find the organization's administer. The AA
Speaker 1: is at one Star Insight dot org and the Temple
Speaker 1: of the SilverStar is at T O T S S
Speaker 1: dot org.
Speaker 2: Wees. Thank you very much again. Like I do with
Speaker 2: every guest that I have on for this type of topic,
Speaker 2: I normally guess start off with how did you find
Speaker 2: yourself like one day saying like ritual ceremonial magics might
Speaker 2: think like, what got you there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, an interesting story at least for me. But
Speaker 1: I was a graduate student in psychology getting my doctorate
Speaker 1: in Indiana State. This was n ninety three, and I had
Speaker 1: come out of college more or less an atheist, going
Speaker 1: through this sort of generic clinical psychology training. But I
Speaker 1: realized I wanted more than was being offered. I wanted
Speaker 1: something with more depth and mystery to it, really than
Speaker 1: kind of cut and dried cognitive herooral work and so on.
Speaker 1: So I'd always been interested in Carl Jung, and there
Speaker 1: was an influential professor in our department who was also
Speaker 1: interested in Young. So he and I started a book
Speaker 1: club basically to kind of let people who are interested
Speaker 1: get more content around Young. And we did that for
Speaker 1: a few years, and as I got my degree and
Speaker 1: went out into practice, I focused on Young. But in
Speaker 1: the middle of grad schools that was starting up and
Speaker 1: I was I was getting more into Young, I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't I needed something in my personal life that
Speaker 1: was more numinous as Young might have said, that had
Speaker 1: a spiritual quality that had a mystery to it. And
Speaker 1: so I started doing some reading, you know, around the
Speaker 1: vaguely occult and pagan books that were available at the
Speaker 1: time this is pre Internet, of course, and read some
Speaker 1: wicked pagan materials from Llewellen. But what really caught my
Speaker 1: eye within a few months of doing that, well in books,
Speaker 1: what really caught my eye within a few months of
Speaker 1: doing that was that in the back of those wicked
Speaker 1: pagan books were ads for things like The Golden Down
Speaker 1: by Regardi and The Middle Pillar by Regardy, and I thought, actually,
Speaker 1: that sounds was more like what I'm kind of looking for.
Speaker 1: So I read those books, and the really pivotal moment
Speaker 1: was when I got The Middle Pillar by Regardi, where
Speaker 1: he explicitly links cabitalistic psychology with the work of Carl
Speaker 1: Jung and the work Foster Crowley, and that just sort
Speaker 1: of got my head spinning, and I knew it would
Speaker 1: be my life's work. I didn't know how it would
Speaker 1: be my life's work, but I knew it would be.
Speaker 1: So that was nineteen ninety three. That's when I got
Speaker 1: initiated into Oto and into the They brought her tradition
Speaker 1: behind the AA and Temple the SilverStar, and so that
Speaker 1: was that's the origin story.
Speaker 2: Did anybody have anything before? I said, asking questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it kind of helped knowing that you know,
Speaker 4: Wika and the Garden Area tradition really had you know,
Speaker 4: its roots in AA and you know the Golden Dawn,
Speaker 4: and so you know, it was an easy transition. But
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of people get stuck on the aesthetics.
Speaker 4: What about these addicts do you like of Golden Down
Speaker 4: versus the wick of tradition.
Speaker 1: I think there's beautiful ritual work in all traditions that
Speaker 1: we've named here, But for me, there was something about
Speaker 1: I suppose, if I'm completely honest with myself, there's something
Speaker 1: about the complexity of sort of Golden Dawn or the
Speaker 1: Limix style ceremonial that just was inherently I just connected with.
Speaker 1: It felt more like an expression of where I already
Speaker 1: was as a person, and so I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: I was going somewhere else. I felt like I had
Speaker 1: found something that was already home to me in that way.
Speaker 1: That and probably too much reading Order of the Rings
Speaker 1: as a kid, that the Gandalf archetype I was ready
Speaker 1: to connect with. You know, kind of half joking on that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's my best answer for that. What can
Speaker 1: you say? It's an intuitive thing, that something calls to you.
Speaker 2: How is that? I guess you know, I really would
Speaker 2: like to get your take on it for listeners to hear,
Speaker 2: you know, from you people say, at Lima, what does
Speaker 2: that mean to you?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'll take it for the absolute movie here I.
Speaker 1: Thelema is the Greek word for will. Will in the
Speaker 1: sense of divine will more than a want or a
Speaker 1: need or a drive. It's more like the basic nature
Speaker 1: of a person and how they operate in the world.
Speaker 1: How and how how they operate is an extension of
Speaker 1: divine will. That is, we are as individuals here born
Speaker 1: in a certain condition, in a certain place, with certain
Speaker 1: parameters of our strengths and weaknesses and so on, and
Speaker 1: within that we have a way that we are in
Speaker 1: the world. There's something unique about each person that explains
Speaker 1: what they do in this room, in this moment, as
Speaker 1: much as it explains what they do over the course
Speaker 1: of decades in their lives, and it's rooted in their
Speaker 1: essence as an organism. Just like a tree does a
Speaker 1: certain thing, or an animal does a certain thing, or
Speaker 1: a river does a certain thing, each individual does a
Speaker 1: certain thing, and the task of each of us is
Speaker 1: to discover that true will, and once we have some
Speaker 1: conscious awareness of that, we strive to shape a life
Speaker 1: that will give us maximized opportunities to live that out
Speaker 1: without as much conflict with harmony and joy and passion.
Speaker 1: And what we find is that when people connect with
Speaker 1: who and what they really are, that tends to go
Speaker 1: pretty well. You know. We find those who moved through
Speaker 1: life doors open rather than close. We find that we
Speaker 1: feel like we're swimming with the current instead of against it.
Speaker 1: And uh, much of my work, both in in psychology
Speaker 1: and and the organizations that I work with, has been
Speaker 1: to just find the best possible tools to unlock that
Speaker 1: true will awareness and people as efficiently as possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beautifully said, anything else that anybody wants to ask
Speaker 2: before keep going? Keep going on. I guess another one
Speaker 2: that I wasn't thinking about bringing up. And you don't
Speaker 2: want to make it boring here, but I just do
Speaker 2: think it's be interesting for listeners of mind to hear
Speaker 2: your opinion on this stuff. What would like that do withou?
Speaker 2: Wilt that whole slogan? What would that mean to you?
Speaker 2: How do you? What is that? What is that in
Speaker 2: your life?
Speaker 1: Okay? Yeah, so for clarity, do what thou wilt shall be.
Speaker 1: The whole of the law is the basic statement of
Speaker 1: Crowley's law of fu Lima. And that's simply, to me,
Speaker 1: a statement that the way the universe works is that
Speaker 1: the central law of unfolding life is that every everything
Speaker 1: does what it is here to do. Everything proceeds according
Speaker 1: to that basic nature. So it's the whole of the law.
Speaker 1: And what we are here to do in our lifetimes
Speaker 1: is again to strive to discover that and live it out.
Speaker 1: So that's the work I did and continue to do,
Speaker 1: you know, every day, striving to own that down. But basically,
Speaker 1: you know what I was describing what happened with reading
Speaker 1: Middle Pillar and Regardi in that moment, that was a
Speaker 1: lightning bolt of I'm here to do this, you know,
Speaker 1: not like I think it would be cool to do this,
Speaker 1: or I could get rich doing this or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's that this is my nature to do this in
Speaker 1: this world. And the law part of it for me
Speaker 1: is it better be my law to do what I'm
Speaker 1: here to do, you know, otherwise I am going to
Speaker 1: be swimming upstream and I am going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: missing opportunities to two fully actualize myself in the world
Speaker 1: and to help people doing that and so on. So
Speaker 1: do what thou wilt for me is is do what
Speaker 1: you're here to do in every moment you can.
Speaker 2: Thank you have I got anything dead? All right? Okay?
Speaker 2: What do you what would you what would you say?
Speaker 2: At the biggest beginner mistakes do you see in modern
Speaker 2: occultism when people do approach the lima, M I'm trying
Speaker 2: to put you on this body now?
Speaker 1: I think one of them, of course, is relates to
Speaker 1: what we're just talking about, which is that people approach
Speaker 1: the lima thinking, oh, it means do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's the opposite of what it means.
Speaker 1: It means do the specific things that you are suited
Speaker 1: to do, be the certain things you're suited to be,
Speaker 1: and not other stuff, even if you want it, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's actually quite the opposite of do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: And of course that sort of misunderstanding has fueled a
Speaker 1: lot of the public misunderstanding of Croley the whole time
Speaker 1: since he's been alive. Even the tabloids in the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties got on that high horse. So, oh, mistakes, I've
Speaker 1: lost the question. They so One mistake is misapprehending what
Speaker 1: do it though it means. Another is thinking that diving
Speaker 1: right into advanced practices is a quicker way to get
Speaker 1: to the result they want. Because if you get the
Speaker 1: part of the basic training, which is you getting to
Speaker 1: know how to move energy, contain it within yourself, channel
Speaker 1: it where you want to manage your own physical and
Speaker 1: energetic self, you skip all that stuff. No matter what
Speaker 1: you try to do is not going to go as well,
Speaker 1: and so what you end up doing. What those kind
Speaker 1: of people end up doing often is getting to advanced stuff,
Speaker 1: either getting confused or feeling screwed up by it because
Speaker 1: they didn't know themselves very well and didn't know their
Speaker 1: energetic system very well, and then having to say, I
Speaker 1: guess I better go back and learn the basics. I
Speaker 1: kind of liken it to deciding to be a poet
Speaker 1: without knowing the alphabet yet. Sure you can try, you know,
Speaker 1: but I think you know, you get the foundations first.
Speaker 1: And that I say this not in a way that
Speaker 1: it is to be rigid with it, like experimentation is fine.
Speaker 1: You're always going to make mistakes, and we can always
Speaker 1: try stuff that we haven't tried yet, and figure out
Speaker 1: if we were ready. Maybe that's how we discover we weren't.
Speaker 1: But but in general, I think that's a pretty common,
Speaker 1: pretty common misapprehension that it'll be quicker if I head
Speaker 1: right to the sexy stuff, but then it ends up
Speaker 1: being actually slower because they have to circle back and
Speaker 1: learn foundations. I guess in a similar vein, it's that
Speaker 1: sort of it's that old saying about a little knowledge
Speaker 1: being a dangerous thing. But people get a little bit
Speaker 1: of meditative success or a little bit of ritual success,
Speaker 1: or sometimes have the psychedelic experience that convinces them they're
Speaker 1: at the end point to the beginning point, without the
Speaker 1: infrastructure of the non drug related you know, muscles that
Speaker 1: are needed for doing good magic and mystical work. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like early success bringing a false sense
Speaker 1: of attainment and mastery when really it's just like they've
Speaker 1: mastered step one of fifty, but since they haven't mastered
Speaker 1: more than step one, they don't know what step two
Speaker 1: mastery feels like. That's just a quick summary of you
Speaker 1: have a question, Yeah.
Speaker 5: If you mind sure so on that GANE, Then how
Speaker 5: do you find it important to maybe before running into
Speaker 5: the polemic work or the work of the Asterum Argentum.
Speaker 5: Do you find it important to work on the hermetic
Speaker 5: order of the Golden Dawn, lecturers and those things before
Speaker 5: you start into that other stuff or is it do
Speaker 5: you find okay just to skip right ahead or is
Speaker 5: it skipping at all. That's something that always comes to me.
Speaker 5: I always wonder about that, And then when I speak
Speaker 5: to other people who are Theelamites, who have never read
Speaker 5: any of the hermetic ord of the Golden Down, they
Speaker 5: think that it's just gibberish, and so, yeah, I've always
Speaker 5: wondered that, especially listening to your stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. I don't think of that as a
Speaker 1: sequential thing, where it's the Golden don stuff and then
Speaker 1: you move on or move up to that thelemic stuff.
Speaker 1: I think I can imagine a number of reasons why
Speaker 1: that could be the impression. Probably most of them are
Speaker 1: chronological in terms of the Golden Down pre dating thlemic work.
Speaker 1: But what you got to remember is that Crowley's whole
Speaker 1: basic training was in the Golden Down, and it is
Speaker 1: embedded in the systems he was teaching the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. You know, he's teaching the Golden don LBRP
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, three years before he died. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessaryarticularly for people to pursue Golden
Speaker 1: Down style magic in their personal practice or initiatory wise
Speaker 1: before doing Thelemac work. It's the question of what are
Speaker 1: they called to. The other thing that is really important
Speaker 1: here is they go together like there's it's not Golden
Speaker 1: Down or the Lima. The Temple of the Silver Star,
Speaker 1: for example, which I administer, is very explicitly a Golden
Speaker 1: Down patterned order that incorporates the Lima as its basic
Speaker 1: operating principle. So it has woven with Thelema into all
Speaker 1: of not all, but many of the landmarks that we
Speaker 1: might expect from a Golden Down initiatory system, and I
Speaker 1: think strengthens both in the process. So I've answered your
Speaker 1: question and then some but hopefully that that's helpful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Going back to something you were saying earlier, you know,
Speaker 2: even the thing that I haven't found myself that I
Speaker 2: went back, I think it was because of listening to
Speaker 2: you a podcast, and I've quoted it kind of. I'm
Speaker 2: sure I've screwed it up, but I have given you
Speaker 2: the credit that I think you even say you I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was in your book on your
Speaker 2: podcast that I mean not sound glamorous, but honestly, you're
Speaker 2: gonna have to learn how to meditate, like you stressed
Speaker 2: out a lot, like a lot a lot. I think
Speaker 2: like as a beginner thing. And I do think like
Speaker 2: just from my experience, you know, jumping for me meditation
Speaker 2: and getting that down was more important than jumping straight
Speaker 2: into ritual work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I make that point sort of equally
Speaker 1: around relaxation. Even just being able to sit down and
Speaker 1: get your body relaxed and your mind in the moment
Speaker 1: is a foundation for anything that comes after. So yeah, relaxation,
Speaker 1: meditation or another basic beginner error I think is I
Speaker 1: don't need to learn how to do that stuff. I
Speaker 1: want to get right into the But if you're not
Speaker 1: relaxed and you're not kind of present in yourself, it's
Speaker 1: going to hamper your ritual.
Speaker 2: Does anybody have any questions?
Speaker 1: Well I had one.
Speaker 4: So it sounds like the biggest beginner mistake is not
Speaker 4: being able to tap into the authenticity that they're sort
Speaker 4: of you know, trying to tap into. It's sort of
Speaker 4: like leaping to the conclusion, well, this is the answer
Speaker 4: without actually exploring what that means. That seems to be
Speaker 4: a common problem, you know, across this is why people
Speaker 4: go to you know, psychotherapists to begin with. Have you
Speaker 4: found that the Thelema work has really helped you, I guess,
Speaker 4: be a better therapist?
Speaker 1: Certainly. I mean I think I'm a better human because
Speaker 1: of it, and no surprise, better humans make better therapists
Speaker 1: and everything else, probably, but more more your probable specific point.
Speaker 1: I understanding that and really truly believing in my deepest
Speaker 1: art and soul that every human being is divine at
Speaker 1: their core, and anything that gets in the way of
Speaker 1: that is the problem. It's not that their core is
Speaker 1: the problem. The personality and all the things that it
Speaker 1: tries to do to protect itself, all of the expectations
Speaker 1: that get laid on us by family or society or
Speaker 1: eventually ourselves, those are the things that obscure the true
Speaker 1: will and the true kind of star at the center
Speaker 1: of each person. So when I'm working with people in therapy,
Speaker 1: even though we may never say the words true will
Speaker 1: or the lima or anything remotely like that, what I
Speaker 1: have an awareness of in the room is sort of
Speaker 1: my meta model is that we're working on the personality.
Speaker 1: In one example, working on the personality in order to
Speaker 1: clear away those blockages that allow the real self to
Speaker 1: shine through. And so often that might be what would
Speaker 1: look like a conventional therapy session around looking at what
Speaker 1: did your parents kind of want you to be and
Speaker 1: you didn't want to be, and so we end up
Speaker 1: talking about what was really under there, what was trying
Speaker 1: to get out, you know, what was what was the
Speaker 1: impulse that maybe got stifled a little bit. That's just
Speaker 1: one specific kind of example, but it's that that's the
Speaker 1: more common situation where we're not really talking about it
Speaker 1: as a true will kind of process, but we're just
Speaker 1: working on to a fly on the wall. Would appear
Speaker 1: kind of a common therapy session, but you know, more
Speaker 1: and more, because people know my work, they're coming to
Speaker 1: me as a therapist or a life coach because they're
Speaker 1: Theelamites or magicians or cult of some kind, and they
Speaker 1: want a therapist who has a similar language and understanding
Speaker 1: and worldview, much like a devoted Christian might seek out
Speaker 1: a Christian counselor or something like that. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a smaller pool at this point, but increasingly it's it's
Speaker 1: the case that a lot of my therapy sessions might
Speaker 1: include more overt discussion of magical principles or I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to use the language that actually works and is
Speaker 1: alive for the person I'm working with. Does that get
Speaker 1: the question? Yeah? Very much great.
Speaker 2: Did anybody else have anything that they wanted to ask
Speaker 2: before we continue to take away?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was going to kind of want to go
Speaker 6: back to the idea of the whole of the law,
Speaker 6: and then you have the book of the law. You see,
Speaker 6: like within the Hebrew cosmology, they have the Torah being
Speaker 6: the book of the law. As far as the individual
Speaker 6: law of the self within the micro aspect, can you
Speaker 6: expand upon that and how that coordinates and interacts with
Speaker 6: the macro aspect of the law.
Speaker 1: So I think there we're talking about We're still talking
Speaker 1: about universal law. It's just is it expressed through the
Speaker 1: individual or is it expressed in the world at large
Speaker 1: or the universe at large. So I'll come back to
Speaker 1: that idea that you think of any ecosystem you want,
Speaker 1: and you will have all the components of that ecosystem,
Speaker 1: the trees and the animals and the grass and everything
Speaker 1: doing its best to do what it is destined to do.
Speaker 1: You know what is it's programmed to do in a sense,
Speaker 1: and that tends to work just fine. You know that
Speaker 1: the problem is for humans that we get in our
Speaker 1: own way with that, as I was kind of describing
Speaker 1: with the therapy examples. But I think that the macrocosmic
Speaker 1: expression of do what thou wilt is really just looking
Speaker 1: around and seeing that. Of course the universe is doing
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do. It's it's evident that that's
Speaker 1: the case because it is doing it. You know, things
Speaker 1: work a certain way, and that's not a different kind
Speaker 1: of law than what we can work with as an individual.
Speaker 1: It's simply we we determine what our role in that
Speaker 1: is when it's our microcosmic part in the greater work?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Nice? Yeah, good question?
Speaker 2: Anybody else out anything?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I do too. Before you move on, nick I,
Speaker 5: I keep asking a bunch of a bunch of people
Speaker 5: in the ol cult, magicians in the different spheres, but
Speaker 5: what do you think of the term self initiate, especially
Speaker 5: for those who can't reach say inn a school like yourself,
Speaker 5: or an OTO or a golden dawn, because it seems
Speaker 5: like there's such a hatred and I know, self initiation
Speaker 5: the term itself may even be a rough one, but
Speaker 5: there seems to be like a closed system where some
Speaker 5: think you can only ever go to a place and
Speaker 5: do it, and then there's those of us who maybe
Speaker 5: don't have that ability. So I just kind of would
Speaker 5: love to hear your take on those things.
Speaker 1: Great, Well, one thing that is self evident is that
Speaker 1: people across history have attained without a system, without finding
Speaker 1: a system of initiation, they they do it somehow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's get that off the table. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: possible to have great gains in self understanding and in
Speaker 1: initiatory experience and power through one's own work without formal
Speaker 1: initiation in a group. That said, some people will thrive
Speaker 1: more in a formal, structured setting that has kind of
Speaker 1: a not just a lineage, but also is what we
Speaker 1: might call a contacted order, that there are interplane contacts
Speaker 1: that actually, in my experience, quite literally move through the
Speaker 1: work we do and make it a specific kind of
Speaker 1: initiatory experience or its members. You're not going to possibly
Speaker 1: get that without contact with that organization. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: any given organization is the right one, you know, But
Speaker 1: for a specific person it might be the right one,
Speaker 1: and for another person it might be the absolute wrong one,
Speaker 1: and they need to do it themselves in order to
Speaker 1: get the maximum gains, or they need a different organization,
Speaker 1: a different tradition, or whatever. So I think the efficacy
Speaker 1: of self initiation depends a lot on the specific person
Speaker 1: doing it and what they're what they're cut out for,
Speaker 1: what their prior experience is, what their innate skills are,
Speaker 1: or you know, what their innate blind spots are. The
Speaker 1: success of that kind of endeavor is really going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of those variables involved. But there may
Speaker 1: be other angles on this that you wanted to hear about.
Speaker 1: But that's that's my first thought.
Speaker 5: Nice, No, that's that does it answers my question. I'll
Speaker 5: have more in the future, But that's thank you.
Speaker 1: I guess I would only add briefly that I think
Speaker 1: there is a problem if someone does self initiation with
Speaker 1: let's say you get a self initiation in the Golden
Speaker 1: Dawn book. Okay, it would be a mistake to do that.
Speaker 1: You could have great results, okay, but it would be
Speaker 1: a mistake to do that and think you are getting
Speaker 1: the same experience as a formal in person initiation with
Speaker 1: a goal with down type group. So as long as
Speaker 1: people understand it's not the same, but it could be
Speaker 1: equally powerful for some people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's into my head when you say that, is
Speaker 5: you must be even have even more critical thinking and
Speaker 5: being super objective and maybe kind of hard on yourself
Speaker 5: a little more because nobody is around there to make
Speaker 5: sure that they kind of like the like the kung
Speaker 5: fu teacher with the whip, you got to kind of
Speaker 5: be your own right whip. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the other great dangers there is the
Speaker 1: self deludon that can come from thinking you're doing it
Speaker 1: all right when really you don't have anyone there to say, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, the tradition is a little bit different than that.
Speaker 1: Try it this way, you know, or confirming that you've
Speaker 1: had some kind of milestone mets or you know those things.
Speaker 1: What I'm speaking to you now is really the benefits
Speaker 1: of having a teacher of any kind, someone who's done
Speaker 1: the work already.
Speaker 5: Nice, okay, awesome, thank you.
Speaker 4: Well isn't that the poison bill of a personality that
Speaker 4: is a self starter to begin with? I mean, they
Speaker 4: have very little self reflection, which means, you know, go
Speaker 4: head first into bottle.
Speaker 1: So but is it ready ready? Fire? Aim? Right?
Speaker 2: Anyway, I got anything else before I go on with
Speaker 2: other questions? All right, kind of another basic one. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess not too basic, but I think for my
Speaker 2: listeners would be very good for them to hear you
Speaker 2: take on it. What is the whole idea with the
Speaker 2: Holy Guardian Angel and when it comes to ceremonial magic?
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you if you check out the Temple
Speaker 1: of Silver Star YouTube channel, I did an archive talk
Speaker 1: on there on this that I would for long form
Speaker 1: discussion of this, I would direct people to. And of
Speaker 1: course there's a Living Flame, a book, chapter and podcast
Speaker 1: episode on this. Basically, the Holy Guardian Angel is a
Speaker 1: term that presisted curly, but he latched onto that term
Speaker 1: as a way of describing whatever it is that we
Speaker 1: connect with when we attain cosmic consciousness and awareness and
Speaker 1: full conscious awareness of true will. So there's no way
Speaker 1: to talk about this without being reductionistic or using terms
Speaker 1: that may predispose people to think of it in certain ways,
Speaker 1: like cosmic consciousness or whatever. But at some point, well,
Speaker 1: let me start over the central goal of all of
Speaker 1: this training. In both AA Temple is Overstar and Croley's
Speaker 1: conception of what we're here to do on the planet,
Speaker 1: the central goal is to strip away those barriers to
Speaker 1: full conscious awareness of our divine self and of our
Speaker 1: true will. And that awareness, when it comes, typically eventually,
Speaker 1: pretty climactically, is very very often accompanied by the sense
Speaker 1: of presence and connection to a being that is beyond ourselves. Now,
Speaker 1: there are may be some people who connect with this
Speaker 1: as actually, this is just a part of my brain,
Speaker 1: or this is just my higher self or whatever. I
Speaker 1: don't The good news is, once you get there, you
Speaker 1: don't need anyone to tell you what it is because
Speaker 1: you're experiencing it. But the many many people you know
Speaker 1: experience this as a myself included, experience this as a
Speaker 1: as a as a tremendous overturning of the sense of
Speaker 1: who we are and who we have been in relation
Speaker 1: to this Holy Guardian Angel that we encounter. When this
Speaker 1: has occurred, our next task is to work even harder
Speaker 1: to build a life that honors the truth that we've discovered.
Speaker 1: There So, in the AA system, the knowledge and conversation
Speaker 1: of the Holy Guardian Angel that's the term that Curley
Speaker 1: used for that breakthrough colog and conversation in the AA
Speaker 1: system that's attained at this the grade the Indus story
Speaker 1: grade of the fareth in the center of the tree.
Speaker 1: And then the work beyond that is, now, let's make
Speaker 1: a life that lets me live this out with as
Speaker 1: few obstacles as possible and with the greatest deficiency as possible,
Speaker 1: and then we take it from there. So the HDA
Speaker 1: is the power slash entity slash aspect of the universe
Speaker 1: slash personal god whatever that enables all of this to happen.
Speaker 1: You could also think of it as like the I
Speaker 1: had a friend describe this this way to me, which
Speaker 1: is always stuck that the sun is shining, but there
Speaker 1: there's one ray that's aimed right at you, and that's
Speaker 1: the HDA, And so you find that and you tune
Speaker 1: into that like a radio finding that one station, and
Speaker 1: that opens up your path.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. That was great. Anybody got anything
Speaker 2: before I go? I want to add to that, all right.
Speaker 4: It's just very Egyptian symbolism that popped into my head
Speaker 4: with that, with the idea of the raw coming down.
Speaker 4: But there is something like that all throughout history when
Speaker 4: you're talking about the mystery school tradition. Right going back
Speaker 4: to my favorite book, The Golden Ass, at the very
Speaker 4: end he's saved by Isis and then he dedicates his
Speaker 4: life to being a free lawyer for the poor. And
Speaker 4: so the idea is, you move past this point of
Speaker 4: initiation and figure out a way to implement the type
Speaker 4: of love that you felt well connecting to that different
Speaker 4: state of being.
Speaker 1: And in mythology, the whole idea of the hero figure
Speaker 1: going off and discovering the gold or the treasurer or
Speaker 1: getting the magic power whatever is meaningless until they bring
Speaker 1: it back to society and do something with it, you know.
Speaker 1: So it is about do the inner work bring it
Speaker 1: to the world. And Carl Young's an interesting example. I
Speaker 1: don't know who here or watching has looked at his
Speaker 1: Red Book, but those were early, clearly mystical experiences for
Speaker 1: him that were followed by him building an entire career
Speaker 1: based on trying to make sense of those things and
Speaker 1: bringing those truths as best he could to his work
Speaker 1: in the world. So he never termed it a knowledge
Speaker 1: of conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. But that's what
Speaker 1: that looks like. To me, and so we can probably
Speaker 1: find any number of examples like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's almost like the forgotten part of the
Speaker 5: mono myth or the hero's journey is the return aspect.
Speaker 5: So it's like we always think that it's everything until
Speaker 5: and then you're you're just there, and it's like, no,
Speaker 5: you have to bring it back home. And then after
Speaker 5: you bring it back home, you have to return on
Speaker 5: the journey again a changed person.
Speaker 4: That's when the credits are rolling. So we don't need
Speaker 4: to worry about that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: I was going to say, I've heard the ideas of
Speaker 6: the lemma in comparison to the ideas of platonic thinking
Speaker 6: and the ideas of the individual man building himself up
Speaker 6: to make the society as a whole better. Do you
Speaker 6: think that the lemma on some from from the individual
Speaker 6: self exploration and opening up on a higher level? Do
Speaker 6: you think it is aimed at utopian in goal.
Speaker 1: I think that that's true to the extent that we understand.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that the world would then be perceived
Speaker 1: by every person as perfect, right, Okay, that's never going
Speaker 1: to happen because we're always going to have personalities. The
Speaker 1: only thing that likes or dislikes is the human ego,
Speaker 1: and it's very good at it, so it's always trying
Speaker 1: to do it, and so things will always be displeasing
Speaker 1: no matter what. But yeah, I think that the idea
Speaker 1: is as each of us does as much self development
Speaker 1: as we can than the world itself. You know, we
Speaker 1: contribute to the world being a more harmonious place where
Speaker 1: there's less unnecessary conflict and people aren't as blinded by
Speaker 1: their their confusion about who they are and there and
Speaker 1: their projections of negativity, negativity to others, and just all
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes us take the easy way out
Speaker 1: and not grow ourselves. But when we each do that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the world becomes the place that it
Speaker 1: can be. Carl Young was asked to incessantly come back
Speaker 1: to Young but he was asked in an interview around
Speaker 1: the fifties or so if there was Cold War, right,
Speaker 1: so everything was scary. Nothing, it's not scary now, but
Speaker 1: it was scary then too, And he said he was asked,
Speaker 1: is there any hope for humanity? And his answer was
Speaker 1: if enough individuals do their inner work right right, And
Speaker 1: that's that's my operating principle every day of my life right.
Speaker 6: In a certain sense, it kind of ties in with
Speaker 6: this perennialist idea of through the ages, the mystery schools
Speaker 6: coming into even the Catholic Church schenthilemma and kind of
Speaker 6: the whole ultimate angle, you know, like Hinduism with the
Speaker 6: Cali Yugos sinking down and then rising back up into
Speaker 6: that attainment of the sun at the high peak of
Speaker 6: the mountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the perennial linking out of the
Speaker 1: perennial aspect of that, the idea that there is one
Speaker 1: central truth that all paths are meant to are designed
Speaker 1: to kind of strive toward and illuminate. And the mistake
Speaker 1: is to say to someone else doing it a different
Speaker 1: way that they've got it wrong, and then you get
Speaker 1: to have holly wars and things. But it's the more
Speaker 1: we realize we're all aiming at the same thing, and
Speaker 1: you know what, if here's my idea, we get simultaneously
Speaker 1: get everyone in the world to have the awareness that
Speaker 1: what if the actuality is there's no choice but to
Speaker 1: all be worshiping the same God, and that's just the truth.
Speaker 1: And then anything anyone is doing is their best approximation
Speaker 1: of that no one instantly, no one is in disagreement
Speaker 1: about about that. If everyone could just get that it's
Speaker 1: all stories about the one thing, and that we don't
Speaker 1: need to point fingers that who's doing it wrong?
Speaker 6: Right, And that kind of ties into the ideas I
Speaker 6: was trying to kind of poke at with the the
Speaker 6: larger aspects.
Speaker 2: Of the law.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, yeah, I see that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And that almost reminds me of what a
Speaker 5: Naughton was doing with having everyone come back and worshiping
Speaker 5: the sun.
Speaker 1: Right good. Yeah, And of course I'm not advancing the
Speaker 1: idea that there is a like amount of theism in
Speaker 1: the sense of, now here's the doctrine of the one
Speaker 1: true religion, right right?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, for sure, perhaps do what they will,
Speaker 1: because that's just talking about truth. You know that the
Speaker 1: doctrine is truth and the paths are myriad.
Speaker 4: As we say, well, I feel like this is that
Speaker 4: been the downfall of syncretism for so many times over
Speaker 4: the ages, with the Romans invading the Picks and with
Speaker 4: the Christianity invading everybody, is that once you've syncretized enough
Speaker 4: to where you think we've got the philosophical basis for everything,
Speaker 4: all distinctiveness goes away from the people who were once
Speaker 4: not a part of that group, and so it becomes
Speaker 4: a push pull of identity at that point, and you know,
Speaker 4: something better is out there than just you know, because
Speaker 4: Theosophy tried this, and you know, Carley came out of
Speaker 4: the Theosophist movement, and you know, so many other things,
Speaker 4: and it gets blamed for everything because obviously this secretism
Speaker 4: is changing the way people think in a cohesive way
Speaker 4: instead of a you know, dualistic or multipolar way that
Speaker 4: a lot of people would prefer because they want to
Speaker 4: remain distinct. And I think that distinction really hasn't been
Speaker 4: honored by American society in a lot of ways. Across
Speaker 4: the world. It's like everybody is now just individual, replaceable units,
Speaker 4: and we're seeing the rebellion to that right now.
Speaker 6: So it goes really deep crystallization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one question I didn't want to ask. I mean,
Speaker 2: you've pretty spent spent years bridging clinical psychology at the
Speaker 2: limit practice. What kind of first convinced you that these
Speaker 2: two can work together be along together?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, obviously each human has component parts that
Speaker 1: we can label different ways. But the ego, the in
Speaker 1: the psychology, the ruoc, you know, the part of us
Speaker 1: that is that needs to interface with the outer world
Speaker 1: and to have opinions and have goals and plans and
Speaker 1: think of ourselves as an individual that's different from that
Speaker 1: other person over there. All that sort of stuff that's
Speaker 1: not going away. So it's inevitable that we've got to
Speaker 1: make that all of that have some degree of transparency
Speaker 1: so that we can see the light that's behind it.
Speaker 1: So I whether someone works with a therapist to do
Speaker 1: that or just figures it out themselves, they've got to
Speaker 1: do that. Otherwise their magic is going to be their
Speaker 1: whole path is going to be skewed based on their
Speaker 1: blind spots, on their natural predispositions, on their underdeveloped areas
Speaker 1: that aren't ever developed, you know. So that's one reason
Speaker 1: why systemization of the initiatory process is so helpful for
Speaker 1: a lot of people is that it it cultivates all
Speaker 1: the aspects of the self and helps to remove the
Speaker 1: blind spots. So for me, it just seemed inevitable that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was already studying psychologies, but but it's
Speaker 1: like having having arrived at the place where I was
Speaker 1: in the middle of starting a psychology career, but also
Speaker 1: having this huge nuclear blast of awareness about the lima
Speaker 1: and and the opportunities for self development there that it
Speaker 1: just for me personally just became an impossibility that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be working together in my life.
Speaker 2: Thank you? How should how should you? How should practitioners
Speaker 2: think about shadow work and athlemic context without turning it
Speaker 2: into a self obsession.
Speaker 1: Oh, people will be self obsessed anyway, That's inevitable. The
Speaker 1: trick is to do it well. Uh. I think you know,
Speaker 1: shadow is any any unacknowledged aspect of ourselves, and that
Speaker 1: can be positive, that can be negative. I've grown up
Speaker 1: within a system where monitoring is started by philoseculers or
Speaker 1: a Merril my teacher and and and her eyes. She
Speaker 1: put in her training system from the very beginning that we, uh,
Speaker 1: we must be monitoring our psychological projections on a daily
Speaker 1: basis in order to learn about what our shadow projections
Speaker 1: are and what our projections are generally that that we
Speaker 1: bye by watching how we react to things, how we
Speaker 1: get emotional, how we overreact. You know, we can we
Speaker 1: can get the kind of self knowledge that's not available
Speaker 1: if we only look at like we're just navel gazing
Speaker 1: about who am I and what do I like? And
Speaker 1: we don't look at the potential dark sides of that.
Speaker 1: In terms of these projections, we're missing a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of of work that can be so helpful and so
Speaker 1: in our system now, you know, as we teach it
Speaker 1: in Temple of Silver Star, we have people doing part
Speaker 1: of this part of their daily diary work. They monitor
Speaker 1: psychological projections. They are therefore stripping away therefore and thereby
Speaker 1: stripping away those filters and the mud that's all over
Speaker 1: the lens, you know, to use that example again, that
Speaker 1: is blocking them from seeing their truth self more and
Speaker 1: more clearly. But the shadow work is really just one
Speaker 1: example of projection work in many ways, but more broadly
Speaker 1: out of work in terms of understanding of what is
Speaker 1: it we're pushing out of awareness? Like if we live
Speaker 1: if we live in a box you know, called me,
Speaker 1: and we decide we're just going to live in this
Speaker 1: corner of it because we don't want to go in
Speaker 1: that part that makes us uncomfortable, then we're living in
Speaker 1: a tinier world. And so for fullness of self and life,
Speaker 1: we have to accept all of ourselves, even if our
Speaker 1: personality doesn't like it, So that's that's the bigger kind
Speaker 1: of picture of why do shadow work.
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny in the looks MAXI community. I know
Speaker 4: it's kind of become a convenient trope or meme online,
Speaker 4: but they talk about courtosol spiking, right, And so if
Speaker 4: you're out at a club and you're talking to somebody
Speaker 4: and then somebody else mogs you or makes themselves look
Speaker 4: better than you, your court is all is supposed to spike.
Speaker 4: And this is like a convenient way of biologically analyzing
Speaker 4: yourself instead of actually looking at what it is that
Speaker 4: makes you feel that way. Right, So it's replacing embarrassment
Speaker 4: with a biological process.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Interesting, Yeah, but also learning to control that reaction as
Speaker 6: far as how you let things affect you.
Speaker 1: Yep. At the good part of that, the good news
Speaker 1: there is that as we monitor our projections, that tends
Speaker 1: to happen pretty naturally. Like we start to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: every time Joe starts talking and I and I get annoyed,
Speaker 1: it's because I'm insecure about him being smarter than me.
Speaker 1: So now I realize that about myself, and when I'm
Speaker 1: around Joe, I kind of go in the room knowing
Speaker 1: that you know so, and that's kind of an organic
Speaker 1: process where we just it's harder to act stupid when
Speaker 1: we know it's stupid when we've done the work. Not
Speaker 1: that we'll be one hundred percent successful with that for sure,
Speaker 1: as my friends can attest.
Speaker 2: Does anybody have any questions before I ask you another one.
Speaker 3: Before we move on to I actually do, and it goes,
Speaker 3: it goes along the path of is more towards a
Speaker 3: solitary magician. It's it's I can't say it's easy, it's
Speaker 3: it's a little bit easier when you're in a group setting,
Speaker 3: either you're worth dealing with the AA sol Star or
Speaker 3: the Golden Dawn or anything like that. For the solitary
Speaker 3: person working their way up to tiffer Off on the
Speaker 3: tree of life, sometimes what they're trying to strip away,
Speaker 3: what they're trying to face, is too much. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: if they want to go to therapy. You said it
Speaker 3: yourself earlier that the.
Speaker 1: Pool of.
Speaker 3: Ceremony ceremonial magic psychologists that are more familiar with it
Speaker 3: and more accepting with it are hard to find. But
Speaker 3: I do feel that along the lines you probably do
Speaker 3: need to find a therapist to help you alone you
Speaker 3: need help along the way sometimes because sometimes things are
Speaker 3: too burdensome for you to deal with. How would you
Speaker 3: recommend someone approach someone who a therapist that may or
Speaker 3: may not accept their way of belief system despite the
Speaker 3: fact that this is what they're trying to deal with
Speaker 3: at that.
Speaker 1: Time, right, So part of the answer to that is
Speaker 1: that there's probably ninety percent of what needs to be
Speaker 1: done and be done without even mentioning to a therapist
Speaker 1: that we're interested in the occult path. It's just that
Speaker 1: that's just abobout being human. And of course it feels
Speaker 1: better to have a therapist that could actually share a
Speaker 1: language like that and would understand that. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons I'm here working on myself with you, therapist, is
Speaker 1: that I am on a self an initiatory path I
Speaker 1: and I am trying to, you know, take this to
Speaker 1: a more mystical place and so on. But even without that,
Speaker 1: and it's still going to be so valuable to have
Speaker 1: someone sitting in the room with you. Again, even if
Speaker 1: they don't have any idea of an occult path being
Speaker 1: part of your life, it's going to be so useful
Speaker 1: to have another person sitting there reflecting with you on
Speaker 1: your strengths and weaknesses and growth patterns and blind spots
Speaker 1: and shadows stuff and all of that. So I think
Speaker 1: the main thing in seeking out a therapist that would
Speaker 1: be compatible for an occultist is just to at least
Speaker 1: make sure that they're not that they're not going to
Speaker 1: have a worldview that is like antagonistic to alternative spirituality,
Speaker 1: so that if you if it just comes up casually
Speaker 1: that you know you're a pagan or a occultist or
Speaker 1: a gold Dominsian or whatever, that you know, they're not
Speaker 1: going to think that is pathology. And fortunately, in today's world,
Speaker 1: I think most therapists had enough breadth of training and
Speaker 1: life experience to know that there's a lot of paths
Speaker 1: out there. But you know, if someone's advertising themselves explicitly
Speaker 1: as they are a therapist from a particular religion, and
Speaker 1: you think that's not a very good mesh with your
Speaker 1: spiritual beliefs, and maybe that person isn't the best choice
Speaker 1: for this. But someone who says they are young in
Speaker 1: or transpersonal or humanistic or existential or you know, it's
Speaker 1: something that's got to built in the sort of openness
Speaker 1: to the breadth of life you know, I think is
Speaker 1: probably going to be a good choice. Kind of a
Speaker 1: long answer. I hope I hit on the basic question.
Speaker 3: Yes you did, because sometimes people are as a hesitant
Speaker 3: on looking for help for that very reason.
Speaker 1: Sometimes right, right, And it is true. And you know,
Speaker 1: just like in communities, smaller more conservative communities, people still
Speaker 1: have to be careful about, you know, outing themselves as
Speaker 1: being interested in this stuff at all. So you know,
Speaker 1: I get that it's a real issue.
Speaker 2: Another question I had, did I where did you get
Speaker 2: your take on so people have a better understanding maybe,
Speaker 2: and it is just something you do discuss in your
Speaker 2: living with the Lima. What is crossing the abyss? Whats
Speaker 2: it mean to you? What is that?
Speaker 1: So? In the the Limics system of conceiving the overall
Speaker 1: path of the great work, there are two critical ordeals
Speaker 1: for the advancing initiative. Of them is knowledge and conversation
Speaker 1: of the Holy Guardian Angel, which we've discussed, and then
Speaker 1: the next one is crossingly this so think of it
Speaker 1: this way. You've had knowledge of conversation, you have now
Speaker 1: a much more complete conscious understanding of what your true
Speaker 1: will is. So you, as we discussed earlier, take the
Speaker 1: next steps of making your life a place where that
Speaker 1: can happen. You keep doing that, you're very likely to
Speaker 1: be successful at it because by definition, it's what you're
Speaker 1: cut out to do. You've found your dream job, you know,
Speaker 1: except it's not just a job, that's your whole life.
Speaker 1: And if you keep doing that, you're likely to become
Speaker 1: known for doing that. You're likely to be good enough
Speaker 1: at doing that thing that you will bring yourself to
Speaker 1: kind of the culmination of what you can be as
Speaker 1: a human in the normal sense. You'll be self actualized,
Speaker 1: to use a common term for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You've seen these people, they just seem to be so
Speaker 1: good at what they're doing. They're doing it out in
Speaker 1: the world, and they're known for it, and it seems
Speaker 1: like they were just born to do it. And at
Speaker 1: that point, where do you go. If you're going to
Speaker 1: grow more, it can't just stay in the realm of
Speaker 1: I'm going to make me better and better. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll be bigger and bigger and greater and greater. And
Speaker 1: that becomes at a certain point self limiting and destructive,
Speaker 1: because the danger is that the ego takes over and
Speaker 1: is just so happy to be so good at all
Speaker 1: this that it wants to keep doing it and keep
Speaker 1: getting more and more famous for it and all that.
Speaker 1: So at some point the only next step available is
Speaker 1: giving it up and letting go, being willing to let
Speaker 1: go of everything that you've developed, being willing to say
Speaker 1: what's more important is that this is helping the world,
Speaker 1: not that it feels good to me or that it's
Speaker 1: you know, so good for my life, you know. So
Speaker 1: this is where we go from a bit more of
Speaker 1: an individual centric self development model to let's bring it
Speaker 1: back to the world, like the monomouth return phase we
Speaker 1: were talking about two. Now, let me dedicate my entire
Speaker 1: life to service to the universe, whatever that means. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the real crossing of the abyss is being able
Speaker 1: to fully develop oneself and then offer it all out
Speaker 1: to the universe and let go of the individual focus.
Speaker 1: So another angle on this is that there is a
Speaker 1: part of us that has always been living across the abyss.
Speaker 1: This is the abyss of personal versus trans personal or
Speaker 1: individual versus collective consciousness. Okay, Uh, part of us that
Speaker 1: star at our center, you know, has always been there.
Speaker 1: The change is that our ego says, I now recognize
Speaker 1: consciously that the real list me is not the me
Speaker 1: I've thought of myself to be at all, you know,
Speaker 1: And I can give that up because that's like a
Speaker 1: leaf blown in the wind compared to the collective. So
Speaker 1: the real kind of cosmic consciousness attainment at that level
Speaker 1: is is that kind of a shift that we we
Speaker 1: consciously and intently let go of individual centered consciousness and
Speaker 1: embrace the the all really or you know, the non
Speaker 1: dual consciousness at that level. So that's a lot, but
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's not something obviously that is a common
Speaker 1: experience for many people. Although that's one of those danger
Speaker 1: zones where with the right psychedelics, sometimes people who have
Speaker 1: done two banishing rituals in their life decide they've crossed
Speaker 1: the Abyss and now have cosmic consciousness and are finished
Speaker 1: and all set. I couldn't resist that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's good. I have a question to go
Speaker 5: along the lines of crossing the abyss, you know, for
Speaker 5: you know us and the audience, adding the understanding of
Speaker 5: where Cornzon comes into that when crossing the abyss, because
Speaker 5: in you know, Crowley's work, it's like exemplified as so
Speaker 5: extreme that it'll completely erratic. If you bring your ego
Speaker 5: across the abyss, you will be brought into the Great
Speaker 5: Black Brotherhood or into the darkness forever, never able to
Speaker 5: crawl out. So I would love to hear your take like.
Speaker 1: That would be a poor choice, right like it? You
Speaker 1: know you chose poorly, But yeah, kronzm was sort of
Speaker 1: the the demon corns on the sort of Crowley's personification
Speaker 1: of chaotic, dispersed mental functioning that can happen when we
Speaker 1: are trying to hang on to ourselves in a process
Speaker 1: that demands we let go of ourselves. And if you
Speaker 1: you know, if you struggle against that, you can drive
Speaker 1: yourself crazy. It's also a good way of understanding the
Speaker 1: the way that transition of abyss crossing can actually feel.
Speaker 1: It Clely describes this in various places, but it's everything
Speaker 1: becomes fragmented, and formula that have worked for you don't work,
Speaker 1: and nothing makes the sense it used to make, and
Speaker 1: each experience sort of is like a funhouse mirror of
Speaker 1: you know, So if you don't go into that consciously
Speaker 1: and with an awareness of what's happening, it just feels
Speaker 1: like you're going crazy. So Corronzon, I think, is a
Speaker 1: good like character that you know fits that kind of experience.
Speaker 1: And then for context that Cronzen was shows up in
Speaker 1: Croley's series of visions called the Vision that the recorded
Speaker 1: and the vision of the voice for listeners.
Speaker 5: And then maybe a you can or cannot answer this,
Speaker 5: I'm most likely you can, but you can choose not to.
Speaker 5: Is then what is then? Do you think that Crowley
Speaker 5: was so far out of whack? Or do you think
Speaker 5: I wonder about his workings in the desert then with
Speaker 5: what he was doing taking Korn's on in himself actually
Speaker 5: in the evocation, like what do you you know? What
Speaker 5: do you think of that?
Speaker 1: Well? You know, obviously ultimately it worked well for him
Speaker 1: in terms of his overall path. That might not be
Speaker 1: the prescription I would give to someone setting out for
Speaker 1: that work, but hey, you try this. But but you know,
Speaker 1: through another lens, if what we are saying, ultimately, if
Speaker 1: this is what we believe about the universe, that there
Speaker 1: should not be any artificial distinction between this or that,
Speaker 1: then the appropriate approach to kurns And is not stay
Speaker 1: away from me, krons and you're the bad thing I
Speaker 1: can't allow to be in my world. Instead, you just
Speaker 1: embrace it along with everything else. Because it can't harm
Speaker 1: you if we're all one thing, you know, it's all
Speaker 1: one energy. But I imagine there may have been some
Speaker 1: of that kind of intent with with Crowley, that kind
Speaker 1: of I'm going to deal with whatever's here because the
Speaker 1: choice it's here, the choices. Am I admitting that or not?
Speaker 1: You know? Am I Am I pushing against what's real?
Speaker 1: Or Am I going to embrace what's real.
Speaker 6: And to accept it and to know it and tend
Speaker 6: then to be able to move past it.
Speaker 1: Right right, and and orffuse with it? Or you know,
Speaker 1: develop it like a some sort of micro organism that
Speaker 1: just kind of you know, globs around that the next
Speaker 1: cell and gets bigger and is you know, always growing
Speaker 1: instead of fighting against it?
Speaker 5: Did did? Do you think? Is it true? I've read
Speaker 5: so many different takes. Then did Victor Newburgh go crazy
Speaker 5: after those workings?
Speaker 1: I haven't done a whole lot of biographical exploration of
Speaker 1: Victor Neuberg, but you know, he didn't vanish completely after that,
Speaker 1: So you know, I don't have a fully satisfying answer
Speaker 1: to that, but that's I don't think he vaporized.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And it's interesting how a lot of the
Speaker 5: skeptics want to not give these individuals autonomy that like
Speaker 5: Victor Newberg didn't have his own autonomous being as in
Speaker 5: going out there choosing to do this stuff with him,
Speaker 5: you know. And I think that's fascinating, especially for those
Speaker 5: of us who have chosen to take certain entheogenic routes
Speaker 5: in our past and then ourselves felt like we've gone
Speaker 5: crazy and did return. And it's like if anyone were
Speaker 5: to see that from the outside, they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 5: somebody did that to you, and it's like, oh no,
Speaker 5: oh no, that was me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess that this is a good point to
Speaker 1: say that clearly, looking at at Crowley's personality and life
Speaker 1: choices and such, there's no expectation for Telamites to live
Speaker 1: like Crowley lived. This is one of the other probably
Speaker 1: a more misunderstanding more in the mainstream public, I would
Speaker 1: say about this when someone looks at Felima and says, wait,
Speaker 1: Crowley was the head of this religion and he did
Speaker 1: all these things, and he had weird sex and took
Speaker 1: drugs and was sometimes not nice to people and all that,
Speaker 1: So why would anyone be a part of this religion
Speaker 1: that assumes a worldview where religion over the founder of
Speaker 1: religion is a model for behavior. It's the system that
Speaker 1: is the model for behavior, not the human Curly. And
Speaker 1: so here you get into trouble with what we might
Speaker 1: call croleanity, where where it's you know that the idea
Speaker 1: is clearly the human is there a model for behavior,
Speaker 1: which no one I know feels that way, but maybe
Speaker 1: some people on the fringes think of it that way,
Speaker 1: and people encountering fe Lima in the general public might
Speaker 1: be very confused about why anyone would be a part
Speaker 1: of a system that Curly created because undoubtedly, you know,
Speaker 1: you sometimes made bad choices and treated people badly, and
Speaker 1: you know we've all got false.
Speaker 5: Of course, yeah, which is something I will state for myself.
Speaker 5: Who I know that for people to listen to me talk,
Speaker 5: they'd be like, well, obviously you're a Felamite, and and
Speaker 5: internally I'm like, yeah, that's definitely true. I've read and
Speaker 5: practice and done the thing. But then when I see
Speaker 5: the New Age spiritual community out there and a lot
Speaker 5: of the Fellamites that call and pronounce it on all
Speaker 5: their banners, that's when I that's like, it makes my
Speaker 5: nervous system tingle uh and cringe. And so it's really
Speaker 5: hard these days. Do you know what I mean to
Speaker 5: be like, Oh, yeah, I'm a felamite. I'm like no,
Speaker 5: I'm like no, I don't know. I've read Cooley and
Speaker 5: I like his you know. Anyway, so that's kind of
Speaker 5: my own, Like I get really weirded out in those things,
Speaker 5: even though I'm like, yeah, definitely a fellamite, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I do what thou wilt loves the law. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Well, I think one of the big problems is
Speaker 4: that people don't understand that Crowley was an explorer at heart,
Speaker 4: Like this is why he was a mountain climber, this
Speaker 4: is why he did extreme things in general, is because
Speaker 4: he was exploring other things. He's not necessarily a prophet
Speaker 4: on top of the mountain telling every everybody what to do.
Speaker 4: That's a very different perspective. What he's trying to do
Speaker 4: is saying, you know, this is what I have to
Speaker 4: do for me. Reading through seven seven seven, it seems
Speaker 4: like he's intensely self critical, almost as much as he
Speaker 4: is about other people, because he's trying to properly explore
Speaker 4: these things in a way that is very hard to define, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, we're dealing with subjective experiences that are almost
Speaker 4: impossible to nail down, and that's that's something a lot
Speaker 4: of people miss out on with the exploration.
Speaker 2: Good point, thank you, since it's getting into the show.
Speaker 2: I did want to get into it for listeners who
Speaker 2: happen to hear like AA and think of it as
Speaker 2: a secret society. Alista Crowley, could you let people know
Speaker 2: and give people an idea what is the purpose of
Speaker 2: that system?
Speaker 1: Okay, So AA is Crowley's original. We've Curly and George
Speaker 1: Cecil Jones who he was working with. We're both in
Speaker 1: the Golden Down. Curly Earlian Jones worked together pivotally around
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven to start the AA, which was his
Speaker 1: revisioning of a system of initiation coming out of the
Speaker 1: Goldendon that he thought would be kind of a new
Speaker 1: and improved way to do this. So it cut out
Speaker 1: all the group ritual work except for a couple initial
Speaker 1: initiatory experiences and that are like in Temple, but other
Speaker 1: than that, it's a one to one teacher student training
Speaker 1: organization where the structure is always the same and the
Speaker 1: tasks are the same from grade to grade, but you're
Speaker 1: given one teacher. Now a teacher might have many students,
Speaker 1: but each student only has one teacher, and the idea was,
Speaker 1: let's strip away the potential distraction of the social component.
Speaker 1: That Crawley really had a bad taste in his mouth
Speaker 1: coming out of the Goldendon because of the way that
Speaker 1: group was administered specifically, and the AA began to publish
Speaker 1: a lot of the fundamental documents of the Limit tradition
Speaker 1: in the Equinox Journal that Corely edited for a number
Speaker 1: of years, and it has persisted in an unbroken line
Speaker 1: to today. There have been splinterings here and there, but
Speaker 1: it's never stopped, and we administer it today through the
Speaker 1: portal for my work with the AA is, as I said,
Speaker 1: one Star insight dot org. So it's the one to
Speaker 1: one teaching structure temple. The Overstar, in contrast, is in
Speaker 1: service to AA, but has reincorporated a lot of the
Speaker 1: fundamentals and landmarks of the Golden Dawn Temple tradition of
Speaker 1: having group initiations and group ritual meetings that still have
Speaker 1: the component that what everyone goes home to do is
Speaker 1: their individual work in the structure in terms of assignments
Speaker 1: and rituals and meditations and so on. So a lot
Speaker 1: of vibrant growth in both these organizations in the last
Speaker 1: fifteen years or so, and I think the flame is
Speaker 1: burning as bright as it ever was. There's far more
Speaker 1: people involved than ever were in Crowley's time.
Speaker 2: For example, another question I had on that is, how
Speaker 2: do you think this discipline training protects people from like
Speaker 2: fantasy inflation, spiritual burnout?
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. Take burn out first, just because the
Speaker 1: word jumped out at me. And one of the that's
Speaker 1: one of the helpful roles of community that you know,
Speaker 1: you genuinely have people who do care about each other,
Speaker 1: and they're all doing this work, and they're all doing
Speaker 1: their best to bring the best of themselves to their
Speaker 1: interactions with their fellow seekers, you know, so you get
Speaker 1: supported and also you get the judgment in a good way,
Speaker 1: like the practiced judgment of working the system that the
Speaker 1: chiefs of the temple and provide, providing guidance with, you know,
Speaker 1: testing on how a ritual's done, or reviewing a diary
Speaker 1: and kind of talking with the person about what that
Speaker 1: experience meant to them and how it fits into the personal,
Speaker 1: mystical or magical work they're doing. And so you get
Speaker 1: eyes on your work by someone who has literally done
Speaker 1: the same work and been supervised by someone who made
Speaker 1: sure they were doing it the right way and so on,
Speaker 1: and so the opportunity for self delusion is much reduced
Speaker 1: where there's someone to catch it and say no, actually,
Speaker 1: that result you had is expected for stage one and
Speaker 1: not stage four. So you're really you know, keep working
Speaker 1: on stage one. You'll get there. You know, the encouraging,
Speaker 1: but you keep people focused on the steps in front
Speaker 1: of them as stid of letting them get ahead of themselves.
Speaker 1: You are doing You're guiding a person through the work
Speaker 1: in a structured way, and so it's done in a
Speaker 1: stepwise fashion that has proven to be successful, has proven
Speaker 1: to set a good foundation for later work, and so
Speaker 1: in that way, it's it's one of the most efficient
Speaker 1: ways that I know of to train people. And really
Speaker 1: presenting the systems of initiation is one way of understanding
Speaker 1: my own true will in this world. It's clearly something
Speaker 1: that I care deeply about. So I think I got
Speaker 1: your question there.
Speaker 2: Does anybody anybody have any other ones? Before I keep
Speaker 2: going with this, what parts of the A curriculum do
Speaker 2: you think might actually be the most misunderstood by outsiders? Hmm,
Speaker 2: if you think there was.
Speaker 1: Any Well, most people outside the tradition have so many
Speaker 1: misunderstandings about what magic re recult is, the movement is,
Speaker 1: or who Curley was. That God is like large for misunderstandings.
Speaker 1: But in the on the micro level, that's sort of
Speaker 1: the nerd level, I think, hmmm, you know, you could
Speaker 1: point at particular rituals that maybe miss misunderstood or mispracticed. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, Curley writes which is often with
Speaker 1: two or three levels of meaning, and there's what he's
Speaker 1: seen to be saying you're supposed to do, and then
Speaker 1: you realize from reading his commentary somewhere else that what
Speaker 1: he's really meaning is like that's just a metaphor for
Speaker 1: what's going on inside with your visualization. Or he says,
Speaker 1: you know, to to to be doing something that sounds
Speaker 1: rather outlandish, but really it's a it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: metaphor for a certain state of consciousness you're supposed to
Speaker 1: hold during the the performance of the ritual. So a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like that that is just people not
Speaker 1: reading deeply enough or taking it too literally or whatever.
Speaker 1: So that's probably a better answer than trying to drill
Speaker 1: down on a particular ritual practice or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting answer.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: Uh I would assume you'd be able to explain this.
Speaker 2: Uh I do know. Like I think if somebody was
Speaker 2: actually interested in getting involved in one of these things,
Speaker 2: you would have to actually be suggested a certain amount
Speaker 2: of book, certain group of books that you're supposed to
Speaker 2: be read, and then take a test on that before
Speaker 2: you can even become a student. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: And the traditional AA approach to the student curriculum, a
Speaker 1: person writes us for basic information, they're given a list
Speaker 1: of books to collect and study for at least three months.
Speaker 1: Anytime after that three months, well, once they've told us
Speaker 1: they have all the books, then the three month clock starts.
Speaker 1: Then anytime after the three months they can request an
Speaker 1: examination and if they pass that, they're invited to become
Speaker 1: a probationer. So that's the very traditional approach to to
Speaker 1: AA work. For Temple of the Service, Star initiation is
Speaker 1: by application and interview, so there's there's no pre study
Speaker 1: sort of in that approach.
Speaker 2: You want to go a little bit more into that
Speaker 2: one now too. Give people an idea about the difference.
Speaker 1: Maybe sure, yeah. So one of the cardinal differences that
Speaker 1: I've already pointed out is the group versus solo aspect.
Speaker 1: Instead of being just you and your teacher, if you
Speaker 1: live near one of our working groups in Temple of
Speaker 1: the Silver Star, you attend a monthly ritual that is
Speaker 1: an group ritual for energy raising and healing and personal empowerment,
Speaker 1: and then you're with each initiatory degree. It's a trio
Speaker 1: of a life based system, just like the Golden Dawn
Speaker 1: and the AA. You're given a hefty pack of materials
Speaker 1: for reading and study and practice, and that will always
Speaker 1: include some writing and you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: academic leaning kind of learning, but then daily personal, magical
Speaker 1: and mystical practices, and the psychological dimension is addressed through
Speaker 1: things like projection monitoring and other kinds of self awareness practices.
Speaker 1: So this is all done in the context of of
Speaker 1: the framework of a Golden Dawn type organization, but with
Speaker 1: with the Law of Thelema as its core. Like the
Speaker 1: whole point of it is an unfolding awareness of true
Speaker 1: will for the initiative. So there is some overlap in
Speaker 1: terms of the style of practice from the AA and
Speaker 1: Temple the SilverStar. You know, between the two. As you
Speaker 1: can imagine, we're all kind of delmites doing Willy McGuirk.
Speaker 1: But those are some of the key differences, and you know,
Speaker 1: one person may be more suited for one and another
Speaker 1: person for the other. We've got a number of people,
Speaker 1: of course, over the years who've done them simultaneously because
Speaker 1: they're different enough and have different kinds of benefits structure.
Speaker 2: One thing I do want to ask you, go ahead, Britly,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, thanks Nick. My question then, is somebody in
Speaker 5: the occult magical community who has his own school. He
Speaker 5: started at his own thing. He has continued stated how
Speaker 5: the Golden Down does rituals up to a certain point
Speaker 5: and then the AA kind of takes over and then
Speaker 5: has the RITUALI stick up all the way up into
Speaker 5: the epissimus. Is there is there any truth to that?
Speaker 5: It like goes all the way up to the minor
Speaker 5: and then the Golden Down kind of stops itself, and
Speaker 5: then you know, the AA picks up where that left off.
Speaker 5: Does that make any sense to you?
Speaker 1: Well, you know that that's if you look at the
Speaker 1: history of the systems. That's accurate in the sense that
Speaker 1: the original Golden down didn't really conceive of their system
Speaker 1: as taking one all the way to the ABYSS, for example,
Speaker 1: and having initiatory degrees up to that point. That was
Speaker 1: one of Crowley's innovations with the AA. So you can, well,
Speaker 1: I'll speak to the organizations I run. But with Temple
Speaker 1: of SilverStar, our whole system does bring someone to knowledge
Speaker 1: of conversation of the HGA. One could do that in
Speaker 1: the Temple of the Silver Star and never join the
Speaker 1: AA at that point. You know, it's accurate to say
Speaker 1: that if one wanted to take it further, that would
Speaker 1: be in an AA structure, because from getting beyond knowledge
Speaker 1: of conversation into the next steps is really beyond the
Speaker 1: scope of what we could do with some sort of
Speaker 1: group training experience. I mean, think about what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about here in terms of the nature of the
Speaker 1: ABYSS and all of that. How exactly would one, you know,
Speaker 1: do a group ritual and have someone else train you
Speaker 1: in that experience. It's entirely you're you're kind of on
Speaker 1: your own in the in the cosmos at that point.
Speaker 1: But getting up to knowledge and conversation you may need
Speaker 1: human teachers. And so both AA and Temple the Silver
Speaker 1: Star gets you to knowledge and conversation.
Speaker 2: One question I got for you real quick, what does
Speaker 2: AA mean? Somebody's asking that in job.
Speaker 1: It's more or less universal that it is one or
Speaker 1: another version of words and other languages meaning silver star.
Speaker 1: But I prefer publicly to be because there's so much
Speaker 1: debate about it and some degree of silliness around it
Speaker 1: that it's easier just to say AA one way or another.
Speaker 1: You know, it adds up to silver star. I do
Speaker 1: want to clarify that Temple of the Silver Star is
Speaker 1: a group that isn't a A, but you know acknowledges
Speaker 1: that that sort of silver star of the name is
Speaker 1: of course hinting at the fact that we're in service
Speaker 1: to AA. So I just I say that because I
Speaker 1: don't want confusion about the Temple of the SilverStar being AA.
Speaker 5: Is that more of a tholamic group that is like
Speaker 5: a precursor to the AA workings.
Speaker 1: Well, some people do them simultaneously. It's probably more common
Speaker 1: for someone to come through the Temple of the SilverStar
Speaker 1: as a preliminary course of training and then later pursue
Speaker 1: AA work, not because it has to be that way,
Speaker 1: but because the temple work is such a good foundation
Speaker 1: so that when you go off and kind of do
Speaker 1: so much solo work, you've already had a lot of practice.
Speaker 1: You've already had a lot of supervised experience with ritual
Speaker 1: and diary keeping, and you got all that momentum, so
Speaker 1: you hit the ground running with AA as opposed to
Speaker 1: it being quite as much of a sink or swim thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting. One thing I did want to ask you too,
Speaker 2: Maybe you could, you know, let the listeners know. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people get confused with the rituals
Speaker 2: that Cruelly actually wrote. I like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: especially like in other communities like the conspiracy community, I
Speaker 2: think they think like the Pentagram ritual and the Hexagram
Speaker 2: ritual was written by you know, could you let people
Speaker 2: know like the difference between which ones were golden doing
Speaker 2: and which ones was actually Cruelly.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, let's take some of the basics, like
Speaker 1: that the golden non had the lesser ritual of the
Speaker 1: pentagram and the lesser ritual of the hexagram. Crawley presented
Speaker 1: those in more or less their golden non form in
Speaker 1: the early publications of The Equinox, but then he later
Speaker 1: went on to do his own versions of pentagram and
Speaker 1: hexagram rituals which he gave different names to that had
Speaker 1: slightly different purposes. But you know, we're his vision of
Speaker 1: sort of like a new, aon new new the Limic
Speaker 1: world version of some of those traditional rituals, things like
Speaker 1: the Star Ruby and the Star Staff, Roley's penogram and
Speaker 1: hexagram versions. But that that's probably the clearest example of
Speaker 1: things that get confused. Yeah, a lot of the it's
Speaker 1: you can't really overstate how much of Crowley's basic magical
Speaker 1: education was entirely through the filter at the Golden Dawn work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't thank you, and I would I
Speaker 2: would even say, in like his, his even probably full
Speaker 2: in the tree a little bit differently than the other
Speaker 2: ones would.
Speaker 1: Can you restate that.
Speaker 2: Like his his rituals, if you wanted to map them
Speaker 2: on the tree, his would even fall somewhere a little
Speaker 2: bit differently, like I think Star Ruby fools a little
Speaker 2: bit higher up the tree than the Pentagram normally would.
Speaker 1: In the sense certainly in the sense that within the
Speaker 1: ritual itself you are doing certain magical visualizations or actions
Speaker 1: that correspond to you know, sphere on the tree above
Speaker 1: to fareth and really going all the way up to
Speaker 1: the abyss there, so you're kind of plugging yourself in
Speaker 1: at the pentagram level, but also stretching yourself up to
Speaker 1: encompass the whole tree after a fashion, and the traditional
Speaker 1: golden down style lesser pentagrammatol doesn't do that. So that
Speaker 1: is a good example.
Speaker 2: The one thing I did want to ask you about
Speaker 2: you and your hexagram ritual not to put you on
Speaker 2: the spot. I do think, if I remember correctly, in
Speaker 2: living the Lima, you actually do change a little bit
Speaker 2: compared to how it was. I think the wording for
Speaker 2: like a pophus and maybe even something with isis I
Speaker 2: think you might have changed it up. Could you tell
Speaker 2: us why?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So when Crowley published his When Crowley published The
Speaker 1: Equinox and he published the traditional Golden Don versions of
Speaker 1: the pentagram and hexagram rituals, this was before he had
Speaker 1: fully embraced what the law of Felima was going to
Speaker 1: be in his life and how he wanted to teach
Speaker 1: that and what that what the implications would be for
Speaker 1: rituals or doctrines or whatever, so and what he what
Speaker 1: he eventually did with the star Sapphire as a hexa
Speaker 1: gram ritual doesn't really replace the function of the traditional
Speaker 1: ritual of the Hexagram in terms of being able to
Speaker 1: invoke or banish specific planets or zodiacal regions and things
Speaker 1: like that. So so what I felt, I and of
Speaker 1: course double the Silver Star. We have private different versions
Speaker 1: that accomplished the same thing. But what I did in
Speaker 1: Living Thalma was I wanted to talk about the x
Speaker 1: Gram Ritual. I didn't want to just represent an old,
Speaker 1: aon so to speak, version from Crowley's early days before
Speaker 1: he really had time to think it through more. And
Speaker 1: so I tried to come up with like a Thlemic
Speaker 1: era version of the hex Grammatual that would let go
Speaker 1: of some of the vaguely Christianized symbolism that was left
Speaker 1: over in the Golden Dawn terms of the Dying God
Speaker 1: formula as we know it, that sort of christ formula,
Speaker 1: and make it more Selenic. So I changed some of
Speaker 1: the terminology and intention behind the work there. But the
Speaker 1: other thing is when Crowley published the hex Gram Ritual,
Speaker 1: this is really nerdy, and I apologize, but for those
Speaker 1: doing a deep dive, the original publication of the hex
Speaker 1: Gram Ritual by Croley described how the hex Gram Ritual
Speaker 1: would have been done within the vault of the Golden Dawn,
Speaker 1: the second order vault, where the attributions to the quarters
Speaker 1: are different. And so what I presented in leming Thalma
Speaker 1: was how someone approaching this work as an aspirant not
Speaker 1: in the presumably not in the in the in the
Speaker 1: golden non second order vault, would would do it with
Speaker 1: the elements in the quarters just the same as they
Speaker 1: are in the pentagram control. But that was another important
Speaker 1: part of the way I presented it. That's different from
Speaker 1: some other published sources.
Speaker 2: I forgot about that, I do, Yeah, I do think
Speaker 2: I remember there could be a difference where it be
Speaker 2: like either air or fire. You're starting off within the east, right,
Speaker 2: depending on how I could be wrong on.
Speaker 1: It, right, Yeah, that so you know, like in a
Speaker 1: pentagramm ntrol, you've got air in the east and then
Speaker 1: coming around and in the So that's the way I
Speaker 1: can form the hexagramm ritual to be as well. And
Speaker 1: it's not that I did it, it's that the tradition
Speaker 1: had always done it and it just hadn't been published
Speaker 1: correctly that way with an identification of why.
Speaker 2: Nice, Yeah, I forgot all about that. Yeah, I used
Speaker 2: to see people, I guess, argue over which direction you're
Speaker 2: supposed to be starting over, which element you're starting off with,
Speaker 2: depending on I'm sure you've seen how people can mind
Speaker 2: fuck the lima on the Internet or traditional like magical use.
Speaker 2: I mean, people argue about anything sometimes, but I do
Speaker 2: get it there is there's a difference depending on the situation.
Speaker 1: And if we are arguing.
Speaker 4: Right, people are still arguing over the thought that in
Speaker 4: what Crowley did there, So yeah, he laid out of
Speaker 4: his reasons pretty well, so you know, I kind of
Speaker 4: agree with him a little bit more. But what are
Speaker 4: your thoughts on that, the changes to the thought that
Speaker 4: versus the right of way?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean primarily the the the Hazoti switch in
Speaker 1: terms of the the Emperor and the and the priestess.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the Star and the priests, the Star and
Speaker 1: the Emperor, I get this right, being swapped in their
Speaker 1: places on the tree or the attributions to them and so.
Speaker 1: And I've grown up up with the thought deck, so
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to feel it the old way,
Speaker 1: you know, and say, you know, here's the different vibe,
Speaker 1: because it never really lived with with the the the
Speaker 1: pre crole version. But certainly there's there's a lot of debate.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm the last person who's gonna come in here
Speaker 1: and say there's one correct tarro or something like that.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's pretty evident from our discussion here
Speaker 1: that there's lots of ways to get effective work done,
Speaker 1: and arguing just delays our progress.
Speaker 5: Do you do you think that Book four is still
Speaker 5: one of the greatest homes to read for somebody who
Speaker 5: not only wants to be a beginner, but also somebody
Speaker 5: who is an advanced practitioner.
Speaker 1: Well, if you have aspirations to to work in a
Speaker 1: the limit context, that's indispensable. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the big Blue Book for the big which contains the
Speaker 1: Little Book for which used to be the only thing
Speaker 1: out there. I'll Book four. But yeah, it is such
Speaker 1: a compendium of important stuff and a pretty impressive editorial
Speaker 1: apparatus as well, which weaves it all together. It's probably
Speaker 1: not the best book for a beginner to pick up
Speaker 1: and say, let me get into Crowley, unless you're really
Speaker 1: going to start at the beginning and of the book
Speaker 1: and focus on some of those preliminary materials first. But
Speaker 1: I think that things like you didn't ask this question,
Speaker 1: but I think things like eight lectures on yoga, maybe
Speaker 1: Magic without Tears in terms of ely stuff that might
Speaker 1: be more approachable for a beginner. And then you know,
Speaker 1: there is some good modern stuff out there, and obviously
Speaker 1: my books, but Alan Duquet does great tacts that are
Speaker 1: good for beginners too, and so we continue to grow.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. My first two were Book of Thoth
Speaker 5: and twenty years ago and at the same time, the
Speaker 5: Big Blue Brick and I haven't looked back since.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And what's beautiful about those things is that they
Speaker 5: like unveil themselves, you know. So it's like it was
Speaker 5: meaning Like the Book of Thoth was so meaningless and
Speaker 5: yet had so much meaning at the same time where
Speaker 5: I'm all like, oh my lord, I knowed this means something.
Speaker 5: I need to figure out what is going on with
Speaker 5: this because you get little little gems and stars as
Speaker 5: you're reading it, and then you can read it a year, five, ten,
Speaker 5: twenty years later you're like, now it's it's unfolding, like
Speaker 5: a hyper sigil or like a great diagram.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. I mean it's kind of a universal experience.
Speaker 1: I think of people are approaching this work that whenever
Speaker 1: you read anything, you realized you needed to read ten
Speaker 1: other things first, and so then you read those things,
Speaker 1: and then that leads to the next hundred books.
Speaker 2: You know, keep going backwards. Yeah, other directions. Yep, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: that's possibly I think part of the game, right, A
Speaker 2: part of the fun of it. Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it's part of the journey.
Speaker 1: It's a fun rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did anybody have any other questions before we wrap
Speaker 2: it up? No, everybody should, Okay, David, was there anything
Speaker 2: that you would like to say or like leave us with,
Speaker 2: either about like you know, the lima a still just
Speaker 2: though I'll promote yourself. What would you like to leave
Speaker 2: us with?
Speaker 1: I guess, well, I've thrown out enough I think r
Speaker 1: ls and things, but I I'll kind of close on
Speaker 1: what I What I often try to do with people
Speaker 1: is encourage them that if you're interested in this work,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of avenues of solid training and or
Speaker 1: you know, resources for your personal work and personal study.
Speaker 1: But the main thing is to just persist. You know,
Speaker 1: you're going to have dry times, you're going to have
Speaker 1: dark times, You're going to feel disillusioned and that's just
Speaker 1: going to happen no matter what path you're on, and
Speaker 1: know no matter how you're doing it, but don't give
Speaker 1: it up. Don't stop. Do the work even if you
Speaker 1: don't feel like it on certain days, and trust that
Speaker 1: at your core it's making a difference and keep persisting
Speaker 1: and aspiring.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, doctor David Shoemaker. Before we wrap
Speaker 2: it up, let me have everybody real quick. Let everybody
Speaker 2: know where they can find out the other rejects, Judith,
Speaker 2: how are you? What's going on? Let everybody know where
Speaker 2: they can find your stuff.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 3: Thank you doctor doctor David Huemaker for sharing your knowledge
Speaker 3: with us today. It was very enlightening and encouraging at
Speaker 3: the same time. It's nice to be on the panel.
Speaker 3: Everybody else is the same too, And you can find
Speaker 3: me on YouTube and on Twitter. I'm sorry, on X
Speaker 3: as the Loom, thank you, thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you for making it. And my man Headless join.
Speaker 1: How you doing?
Speaker 4: You can find me on x and on YouTube. Tonight
Speaker 4: We're doing more rust at Gods with jewels, so I'll
Speaker 4: tell you when I find out, but checked my Twitter
Speaker 4: to see that time's lots.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you very much, and my man Brandon
Speaker 2: the Maggis.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you so much. Nick, this was fantastic. Thank
Speaker 5: you doctor David Shoemaker. I've been again. Your work has
Speaker 5: been indispensable in our fields. And I was just like
Speaker 5: a giddy little school girl and Nick told us all
Speaker 5: that you were going to be coming on. So this
Speaker 5: was fantastic. Everyone, come check me out. So I'm going
Speaker 5: to be doing a lot dropping a lot of different
Speaker 5: videos coming up with my live streams with I have
Speaker 5: doctor Heatherlin coming on. I've got all kind I got
Speaker 5: American Esoteric, we got all kinds of stuff going on.
Speaker 5: To go over to a YouTube Magas in the Media
Speaker 5: X Magas in the Media on Instagram. Thank you again,
Speaker 5: Thank you Brad.
Speaker 2: And Robbie Marx.
Speaker 6: Yes, this was great, Thank you doctor Shoemaker. It was
Speaker 6: great to meet you and talk to you. And I
Speaker 6: appreciate your time that you spent with us as far
Speaker 6: as myself R Marx Robbie Marx artist illustrator. You can
Speaker 6: check out all my stuff on my link tree at
Speaker 6: link tree r M A r X and that'll pull
Speaker 6: up everything for you. And thanks again Nick.
Speaker 2: No, thank you, I appreciate it. And again doctor David Chumakan,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on. It was really
Speaker 2: a pleasure. Again, like I mean, you really hugely shaped
Speaker 2: my outlook on magic. There was a time where I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure about it anymore, and looking at the way
Speaker 2: you did it was really what kept me in it,
Speaker 2: and I do believe is what helped me have the
Speaker 2: experiences they did. So again it you're just a very
Speaker 2: influential person and I can't thank you for coming on
Speaker 2: the show. This is totally blowing my mind and it
Speaker 2: was really a selfish treat for myself to even have
Speaker 2: a conversation with you. But I do think you left
Speaker 2: the listeners with a lot of great information as well, so.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. It's been delightful and enjoyed meeting you
Speaker 1: all and great great questions and discussions. So thank you
Speaker 1: very much.
Speaker 2: Of course, no, thank you, and thank you everybody in
Speaker 2: the chat that's where we go live. Thank you for
Speaker 2: the questions and the comments. And until the next one,
Speaker 2: everybody be well. Lena