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Suba wrote:Firstly, I was wondering if anyone has worked/experimented with the Pentagram ritual, be it banishing or invoking, while ascribing different elemental correspondences to each of the points? In other words, having fire in one point to see what happens and then at a different point to compare and contrast the differences in energies. If so, what kinds of experiences, insights, emotional/mental arising, and energies formations to you witness?

That's the whole point of the Pentagram Rituals. Look up the Lesser and Greater Banishing and Invoking rituals of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn.

They are rituals designed to initiate you into the Basic Forces (which were named Elements by Plato, but existed before him). First you work through the Banishing rituals for each element, and this "cleanses" that element inside you - it banishes the toxic aspects of that element from your soul and lets a more healthy form of that element replace it. It's like going through an energetic detox diet. When you're done with this, you perform the Invoking Rituals, and this builds upon your proverbial "detox" to cultivate the elements to a even more pure state while simultaneously increasing the quantity you are capable of commanding. Like doing energetic pushups.

Franz Bardon has training in Initiation Into Hermetics that does the same thing, but without the ceremony. Bardon uses meditation and breathing exercises to achieve initiation into and equipoise of the Four Forces.

Suba wrote:My second question is to see if anyone has had any experience working with the intersections (line crossings of the Pentagram) between two energies 72 degrees apart?

...

Does anyone else have any experience working with the intersections?

I wasn't taught to work with these forces through that point of view, specifically. Rather, each of the Four Forces interact with each other and can blend or even transmute into each other all the time. It's something that's constantly going on, like how the sun is a constant nuclear reaction and the earth is always spinning. When you account for these mixtures, you end up with a total of 16 Forces instead of Four. The original Four Forces, in their pure states, and twelve mixtures of them. For example, you can have pure Fire, Air of Fire, Water of Fire, and Earth of Fire. Repeat for each other Force.

And if you're wondering about Spirit, it doesn't mix in the same way because it's a different thing. Spirit is the One from whence the Four Forces were born, and it is therefore the most subtle force which exists both within and separate from all of the others.

The Pentagram is a good general advertising logo for this thing (and what is an advertising logo, if not a hieroglyph?), but there is also a lot that a single image can't say.



~:Shin:~

Suba wrote:As for who first called the elements, elements, I do not believe Plato is the one that coined that word. I do know that while many of the Pre-Socratic philosophers discussed which of the four elements were the original, it was Empedocles who first brought them together into one system – though he called them Roots rather than elements.

Empedocles is the earliest written record of the concept (except for some Babylonian sources we're still arguing about), but as you said yourself, he called them Roots. Plato is the first to write the word "stoicheion," which we translate to "elements." Later on, when Modern Chemistry was growing and the Periodic Table was being invented, some of us started using the term Elementary to refer to these forces and the spirits of them. This is often misunderstood as being a direct twisting of the English word "element," but Elementary Forces and Elementary Spirits instead means "basic" in the same way that Elementary School is "basic education." Then with the Occult Revival, most people switched back to "elements" and "elemental," again translating that Platonic word "stoicheion."

Practically speaking, it doesn't really matter what you call them. As a wise man once said, a rose by any other name...

Suba wrote:Has anyone switched the elements around on the pentagram, and if so, what was your experience while invoking or banishing the energies?

I've worked with the Chinese Pentagram, but those are a completely different set of energies.

Suba wrote:Let me share one of my experiences to start the conversation off.

The above configuration I gave has fire at lower right, earth lower left, air upper left, and water upper right. This configuration of the elements seems to be a prevailing arrangement many use. It was the first one I used long ago. The problem is, I did not find it balanced or fluid. Rather than have the energies move from the most aetherical to the densest, as when we move down from Spirit to air on lower right, to fire on upper left, to water upper right, to earth at lower left and then back up. I used this configuration for a while. My experience with it was of a gradual refinement of the energies in one way, and grounding on the other: it all depends on which way we invoke the energies.

I think you have been misinformed on certain aspects of these forces, and this is what's causing problems in regards to balance and fluidity.

Aether is the most subtle force. Fire is next, followed by Air, Water, and then Earth as the densest. To understand this, you have to learn the Mysteries of Creation regarding these forces. Fire is the first force that came into existence. This is recorded in scripture, where you can read "let there be light" as the first divine order in Judeo-Christian stories. Or in more recent cosmology, you can say that Fire was the initial spark of the big bang. After the creation of Fire, there was Water. When Fire and Water met, their son, Air, came into being. And when they all mixed together and descended, Earth was formed from them. Qabalistically, this is also YHVH. Yod is Fire, the Father; the First Heh is Water, the Mother; Vau is Air, the Son; and the Second Heh is Earth, the Daughter. In the physical States of Matter, they are Solid (Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), and Plasma (Fire). There is a ton of history and cosmology here, much of it being the foundation upon which contemporary Elemental Magick was built. Learning at least some of this stuff is important.

Speaking on the Pentagram specifically, this means that you start with Spirit, move to Fire in the lower right, up to Air in the upper left, across to Water in the upper right, and down to Earth in the lower left, then back up to Spirit which is the beginning and end of everything else. This arrangement of the Pentagram is perfectly fluid and balanced.

And speaking on the Pentagram Rituals specifically, this means that you start with the Banishing Pentagram of Earth. When you have completed that initiation, you practice the Banishing Pentagram of Water. And so on, moving backwards until you refine yourself, and Spirit becomes accessible. Having achieved this initial purification, then you go back and do the same with the Invoking Pentagram of Earth, then Water, and so on, until you strengthen each force unto a greater refinement. The point of all this being, very simply, the complete purification of the basic energies of your soul (the elements). This leads to a side effect, Elementary or "Elemental" Equipoise, which is the refinement and harmonization of these Four Forces inside you until they fall into perfect balance with each other - this does not mean equal quantity, but rather it means that everyone is working together and there is no energetic conflicts inside you, everything is at peace and harmonized. This initiation is important, whether it happens intentionally or not, because it is the foundation upon which you can safely practice more advanced magick like working with the Planetary and Zodiacal forces. Bardon talks about it a lot more clearly than most other sources, so perhaps you should read the IIH if you haven't already. It's a very good book.

Suba wrote:Another formation I use is the Balanced Star, which has fire at lower right, water upper left, air upper right, and earth lower left. I found that this one actually banishes the energies better in that we are moving from one element to its opposite. So when we banish fire we are actually moving towards water, and vice versa. This also has the masculine energies to the right and the feminine energies to the left. In addition, the heavy element of the masculine and feminine energies is on the bottom while the lighter aspects are on top. This creates a very balanced and stable configuration to work with.

This is an interesting and useful arrangement if you are using the Pentagram as a Power Symbol independent of other work, but that is not how the Hermetic, GD based Pentagram Rituals work. When you banish Fire, you are not moving towards Water. You are banishing the toxic Fire, and letting fresh Fire replace it. It's a refinement process, not a direct balancing process. When you work with energies directly, and you are only trying to establish an Equipoise, then yes: fire balances water and vice versa, air balances earth and vice versa, while spirit rules them all. That's how it works when the energies are actually in motion in nature, inside and outside of you. But the Pentagram Rituals were not designed to work on that. They were designed to purify and refine each force independently, one at a time, with the end goal being a sort of spiritual growth. Doing the Pentagram Rituals properly will sort of develop balance, after you have developed each force with all of the Pentagram Rituals one at a time, but with the GD that's kind of a side effect rather than the direct goal of purification.

Also, I think you're relying on the image of the Pentagram too much. The Pentagram Rituals are only a means of achieving initiation or "detoxing" these energies. Once you're actually initiated into these Forces, they are a part of you. I don't use the Pentagram to work with these energies, because moving them is no different than moving my arm or wiggling my toes. I can fill myself with Fire and become so physically hot that I turn red and other people think I'm about to fall over with fever, I can fill myself with Air and become so light on my feet that I can run faster and jump further than I am otherwise capable of. "Elemental Magick" is a lot more than the logo which represents it or a set of rituals designed to introduce you to it.

The Pentagram is a powerful symbol and the Pentagram Rituals are a neat way to introduce yourself to these forces when the rituals are done correctly. But, it's just the very first step. Don't get stuck on it because the Pentagram is neat. Trust me, there's a lot more neat things waiting down the road.



~:Shin:~

Suba wrote:As to working with the Chinese Pentagram, what configuration did you use and what was your experience? I agree it is not the same, in that, they have a five elemental system, even so, I would love to here about your experiences. Was it different than your Golden Dawn experience? I know one of their configurations has Wood – Air at the top, Earth bottom right, water top left, fire top right, and metal bottom left. This fits with the heavier elements being on the bottom and the lightest elements on top: (air/wood) being the lightest. And of course, just like air feeding fire, so does wood.

With the Wu Xing, the position on the pentagram is entirely irrelevant. You can place them anywhere on the points, as long as you place them in a certain cycle. That is their nature, cyclic and interdependent aspects of nature that are constantly reacting to each other in different ways. The pentagram representation of them is more of a modern accident than a traditional teaching. The symbol is useful to demonstrate their relationships though, since you can just draw lines and reveal a lot of information in a single picture.

As for experience, well, yeah, it's entirely different from Western experience. GD or otherwise. They are not the same forces as the Greek Roots, and trying to build a correspondence between them is a mistake. They are different energies, viewed and used in different ways. For starters, there is no hierarchy between them like Hermetics tries to create for the West. Their nature has nothing to do with density, or which element is superior to another, or things like that. Ideally, and in nature, they are five equal forces that have unequal reactions when put together in certain ways.

The configuration I use is the traditional one, which is a series of Cycles. The most important is the Creation Cycle, which usually starts with Wood. This isn't Air, but actual Wood, or "Plant Life." Everything is dependent upon Plant Life, on the initial and general spark of Life, and nothing else would exist without it. We all eat plants or fruit, and even if you eat only meat, what do you think the animals ate? That's why Wood is the start of the Creation Cycle.

And when you move from there, you get Fire. This is because without Wood, you cannot build a Fire. You can have as much Air as you want, and you can even combust the air if you do it a certain way, but without fuel, some Wood of some kind, you will have no sustained Fire. The existence of Fire is absolutely dependent on Wood.

Then, after Fire has run its course and the Wood has burned, you have Ash left behind. Dust, dirt. This is the Earth, from which all things grow. From the Earth, we get Metal. All you have to do is dig a little to find some kind of Metal, and we know there are many kinds. When you sit out Metal in certain natural circumstances, you can observe Condensation, moisture accumulating on its surface. Thus, the Ancient Chinese observed, Metal creates Water, which as we all know is one of the most important forces for life in the universe, and so we get back to Wood - because Water feeds plant life, and thus Wood grows.

This is the Creation Cycle: Wood makes Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth makes Metal, Metal makes Water, and Water makes Wood. It's an endless cycle, but there is more than one of these Cycles, because these five forces have more than one relationship. There is also the Destruction, or the "Controlling" Cycle, and more than one of those actually. The most common one is this: Wood destroys Earth, because too much plant life consumes all the nutrients in the soil, and thus the Earth is weakened; Fire destroys Metal, because, well, Metal melts; Earth destroys Water, because it sucks up the rain; Metal destroys Wood, and we've all seen an axe or a chainsaw; and Water destroys Fire. Then there are the Exaggeration and Insulting Cycles.

The conclusion of these Daoist observations is that, ideally, the Five Phases (Wu Xing) should be in complete harmony with each other, and therefore great things can happen. If even one force is out of balance, the whole cycle falls out of balance.

For example, suppose that someone has excess Fire energy. This extra Fire will cause several problems. First, Wood will be weakened, because it is the fuel for Fire. Too much Fire means that it is consuming all the Wood to grow strong. Second, too much Fire also means that there will be extra Earth, because the Fire is burning everything up and thus leaving behind more ash. Then, of course, Fire destroys Metal, so all of the Metal Energy will be greatly weakened. And lastly, because there is extra Earth as a result of the excess Fire, Water is also weakened. When there is less Water, then there is a weaker Wood, which means it falls into even more trouble than it's already in because of the excess Fire.

One little imbalance, a little extra Fire, causes a chain reaction that throws the whole system off balance, which is a disharmony that in turn causes a disease. This is why the Chinese don't view the Wu Xing in hierarchical ways like Westerners try to, and why the practice of Elemental Magic in the East revolves almost entirely around developing a perfect harmony between these energies. It's completely different from the standard Western train of thought, whether you're GD or a Bardonite or whatever.

As for the other things you said, I agree that there's no reason to argue. As long as you understand that my points are not rooted in cosmological beliefs, they're from personal experience and direct observation of the basic forces moving and interacting both internally and externally. I'm just a man with opinions, of course. But my opinions are based on how I directly experience the things I am talking about.

Just one thing, though, which the chemist in me can't stop.

Suba wrote:There are different ways to look at it. I prefer the really simple and easy way of looking at things. From the perspective of clarity, which of the elements is easier to see through? I propose air, fire, water, and then earth?

Going by visibility, sure, but given the weaknesses of human senses I'm not sure that's a wise measure. Certainly not an objective one.

The simple and easy way of looking at it is, for me, the traditional way, which is based on which is actually more subtle in measurable ways and not which is less visible. Going by that measure, a blind man would be quite confused. And going by my own experience, physical fire is measurably lighter than air:

"For most “everyday” fires, the density of the gas in the flame will be about 1/4 the density of air. So, since air (at sea level) weighs about 1.3 kg per cubic meter (1.3 grams per liter), fire weighs about 0.3 kg per cubic meter." - Link.

As above, so below, hm? [gz]



~:Shin:~

Heh. Anyone who believes something hard enough will eventually find someone, somewhere, who agrees with them. Seeing what you want to see in research is called Confirmation Bias.

Personally, I have quite a lot of criticisms for most of the Ancient Texts I have read. And it is important to read them critically, because for all the good things in them there is just as often incorrect things, or things that can be more efficiently or more effectively approached after centuries and generations of development and refinement in both ideology and methodology.

So I stand by my previously offered evidence: physical fire is measurably more subtle than physical air; as below, so above.

If you think that isn't true enough, well. Wizards First Rule. [wink2]



~:Shin:~

No frustration was involved in the making of my last post. I simply didn't censor myself, and I can come across as intense sometimes. [wink2]

As I said many posts ago, practically speaking, it doesn't really matter. I can utilize Fire as the most subtle force, you can utilize Air as the most subtle force, and we can both exercise very beautiful and effective workings. This is a minor issue of philosophy that is irrelevant to most practical application. Besides, from the very start, all those thousands of years ago, there has been debate and disagreement about little things like this. Back to Plato and Aristotle disagreeing on the importance of Aether, and further back still. That's why we have so many different schools of thought, different Orders, and so on. Different people find different ways of working this stuff.

My Initiations included Fire being the most subtle force, with the further teaching that all of Forces exist on all four Planes anyway, in varying stages of purity. I stand by this because every experiment and study I have done reinforces it. Without Fire and Water interacting, Air would not exist. You've been taught differently, and if that works for you in practical exercise, so be it. I have no animosity or frustration here, just a disagreement born from a different background.

I genuinely wish you much Luck in your work, Suba. I hope you don't let this spoil our future interactions. [smile2]



~:Shin:~