Effective Practice

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blindwake
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Effective Practice

Post by blindwake »

If there's so many different paradigms, which one is correct? Or is it just a matter of going through the motions in order to build skills inherent to all the frameworks?
All paradigms seem to have a lot of fluff, but generally build the same basic skills: patience and dedication.
I'm having trouble figuring out what is useful, and what isn't. I'm basically at a point that if someone mentions "energy", "quantum", etc., I fall into a trance state, and everything washes over my head.
It seems like circle jerk.

Practicing magick often seems to be a case of putting the cart before the horse. If you try to go to fast, you get no where. Perhaps you even end up worse than you started.
I can't fathom doing something on blind faith. I need to understand what I'm doing, so that at the very least I don't hurt myself.
Concepts like "gathering energy", "strengthening the energy body", etc., don't really make sense to me at this point.
What is the definition of this "energy", and if there is this "energy body", why am I performing actions on it when I can't even see what I'm doing?

At best, I understand that I have a mind, that I can think, work on holding thoughts, and can make myself hallucinate things with a lot of effort (visualization, etc.)
I have no idea when the imagination becomes "real", and starts to do stuff like become "energy".

So what's the best indicator of an effective practice? It would seem to me, that there are a few key skills which have to be achieved in order, or else you can't keep track of your own progress, and you're just blindly going through motions:

1) Focus (ability to hold a thought)
2) Mastery over senses (ability to banish and create hallucinations at will)
3) Clairvoyance (a controlled hallucination which is synchronized with actual other worlds)
4) Evocation and Invocation (change in conformity with will)

Is this really all there is to it? At least as a start, before you can actually verify the existence of spirits and such? Are all the complicated paradigms so easily distilled into a simple practice of discipline over focus, while all the extra stuff (rituals, etc.) are just to act as aids? And if this is the case, is it still worth it to use all the aids?

Half the battle seems to be being able to balance practice against losing touch with normal affairs.
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by chowderpope »

You don't know if you believe in vital energy? It is called Chi, Prana, Ki, Astral Light, etc. etc. There's a name for it throughout time, in cultures all over the world.

If you want to feel energy, try rhythmic breathing for 20-40 minutes. The first time I did it, I wasn't used to it, and my body started vibrating in funny ways. It made me euphoric. Now I do it like every day and don't vibrate anymore, I guess I've adjusted to it. Also, try the Middle Pillar exercise. An important part of cultivating vital energy is visualization. When you are working with energy, you may not see it with your naked eye, but you have to see it in your imaginal vision. When you are performing ritual you have to see what you're doing in your imaginal vision. I do not even see the room around me, I see myself in a sort of astral temple.

For many witches, it's common to form a cone shaped "cyclone" of energy, imprint the energy with your desire, then release it. I practice this myself. It's done with imagination, emotion, and willpower. But before I do it, I raise energy and circulate it in my body by doing the Middle Pillar and various qigong exercises.

I would be careful about trying to progress too quickly. It takes time to develop.

It's not all about making the world bend to your will. Self-transformation is the meat and potatoes of ritual magic.
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Re: Effective Practice

Post by Desecrated »

blindwake wrote:If there's so many different paradigms, which one is correct?
None of them are. The magicians "magnum opus"/ Great work is to create their own path. All other paths that exists are possibilities for you, Not to find yours, but to create yours.
Or is it just a matter of going through the motions in order to build skills inherent to all the frameworks?
A little bit yes. Different people do things differently. There are some that are absolutely happy with jumping in at the deep end and just start doing something until something happens.
I want to know how deep the pool is, what is in it and what the hell am I suppose to do and why, before I jump in. So I read and study more then most, because I need a very strong understanding of what I'm suppose to do before I'm doing it.

But there is A LOT of standing in a circle, looking stupid, feeling stupid, repeating stupid shit, until it slowly start to feel less stupid. That is part of the process.
All paradigms seem to have a lot of fluff, but generally build the same basic skills: patience and dedication.
I'm having trouble figuring out what is useful, and what isn't. I'm basically at a point that if someone mentions "energy", "quantum", etc., I fall into a trance state, and everything washes over my head.
It seems like circle jerk.
We use words to communicate with each other. Chakras, Energy, Ki, and so on. They mean different things to different people but we use these words to be able to help each others.
You have to figure out what these words means to you and how to use them.
Practicing magick often seems to be a case of putting the cart before the horse. If you try to go to fast, you get no where. Perhaps you even end up worse than you started.
I can't fathom doing something on blind faith. I need to understand what I'm doing, so that at the very least I don't hurt myself.
Yes. You have to learn how to do it safely first.
Concepts like "gathering energy", "strengthening the energy body", etc., don't really make sense to me at this point.
Think of it like concentrating your consciousness on 1 point.
What is the definition of this "energy", and if there is this "energy body", why am I performing actions on it when I can't even see what I'm doing?
Because you can feel what you're doing.
Sight will only get you so far.
At best, I understand that I have a mind, that I can think, work on holding thoughts, and can make myself hallucinate things with a lot of effort (visualization, etc.)
I have no idea when the imagination becomes "real", and starts to do stuff like become "energy".
You know the difference when you are awake and when you are dreaming. Your brain performs almost the exact same thing but YOU know the difference.
When I started working with the astral it felt like I was wasting my time with daydreaming and visualization exercises, and then one day i had a "real" astral experience. And it felt so different to what I had experience before. Being awake is one state, being in a dream is another, being in deep meditation is one, being in a trance is another, going astral is yet another.

What is the difference between eating hot chili and eating salt. It's the exact same action, with the exact same body and the exact same method. But the result feels different.
When it happens, you will know that it is happening. And if it doesn't happen, keep trying.
So what's the best indicator of an effective practice?
There should feel like there is a potentially for result somewhere down the line.

It would seem to me, that there are a few key skills which have to be achieved in order, or else you can't keep track of your own progress, and you're just blindly going through motions:

1) Focus (ability to hold a thought)
2) Mastery over senses (ability to banish and create hallucinations at will)
3) Clairvoyance (a controlled hallucination which is synchronized with actual other worlds)
4) Evocation and Invocation (change in conformity with will)

Is this really all there is to it? At least as a start, before you can actually verify the existence of spirits and such? Are all the complicated paradigms so easily distilled into a simple practice of discipline over focus, while all the extra stuff (rituals, etc.) are just to act as aids? And if this is the case, is it still worth it to use all the aids?
Is that all... hahahahahah
That is huge. Years of practice to get to there.

You can verify spirits after just a couple of months of practice. But that isn't safe and you won't get very good results. If you want to work with them safely. It takes years.
If you just want to see some weird shit, I recommend drugs. That will get most people in direct contact with something without having to do the work at all. But if you want to climb a mountain and get down again you need both knowledge, training and special equipment.

Yes, the rituals are in the beginning a tool. it's to help you get into a certain state.
However when you actually start evoking. They do not only work as a framework, they work as a contract. All the symbols and circles and hobbajobba is there so that both you and the spirit know how to behave. If you are trying to summon something from the goetia, it's not like your just asking a buddy to come over for lunch.
Half the battle seems to be being able to balance practice against losing touch with normal affairs.
Your job is to try and keep your sanity through all of that. And trust me. Most people don't. Very very few people come out on the other side in 1 piece.

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by blindwake »

chowderpope,

No, I believe in it, I just hate the terminology, because I don't think it's self descriptive. What you're really doing is imagining a thought until it becomes self sustaining.
"Energy" makes me think of woo woo. The moon casts its "energies" on things. Staring at the sun rejuvenates you with it's "energies" (life tip: it actually makes you go blind [thumbup] )
It's an abstract term without a solid definition. It's ambiguous. No one seems to have a clue what they're actually talking about, because they're using poorly defined words.
"Energy" turns something as easy to understand as focus, into some kind of faith game. It's not "energy follows focus". The energy IS the focus. Just call it focus. What you are visualizing IS what the "energy" is.
Now, there very well might be forces associated with the moon and such, but as far as teaching a beginner goes, if they can't detect it by themselves yet, you'd might as well stop telling them about it; that's blind faith.

The only reason I'm still active on this subject is because I proved to myself, beyond reasonable doubt, that it's actually possible to make tangible change on the world using thought alone.

Me and a buddy once did a psionics experiment. We took a three foot square, and divided it into quadrants. One person would try to put an "energy structure" into a random quadrant, while the other would try to figure out which quadrant the "energy structure" was in (then we'd switch roles.) We did this for about five hours straight until my buddy managed to tell me which quadrant I put the structure in, in like two seconds (they we were consistently successful before, with longer scan times). I asked him how he figured it out so fast, and he told me he could physically feel it. I didn't believe him, so I put my hand into the quadrant. Sure enough, I could feel a tangible ball of static floating there. If I can make a static ball that another person can feel, and not even realize I've done it, that shows that there's something more to this subject than subjective hallucinations.

I also felt some kind of static when I made a habit of doing the LBRP. I could never figure out if it was just the mild neuropathy in my hands though.

The problem I have with breathing exercises is that I can never tell if I'm depriving myself of oxygen, thus causing the euphoria, or if it's my focus that's causing the euphoria. For that reason, I prefer to just breathe normally, and try to focus on bringing about euphoria mentally. Otherwise I might just succumb to confirmation bias.

Self transformation IS bending the world to my will. It's amazing how so many people can spend their whole lives without ever changing past their youth years.

Desecrated,
blindwake wrote:
If there's so many different paradigms, which one is correct?


None of them are. The magicians "magnum opus"/ Great work is to create their own path. All other paths that exists are possibilities for you, Not to find yours, but to create yours.
The books are maps. You pick your own path.
But there is A LOT of standing in a circle, looking stupid, feeling stupid, repeating stupid shit, until it slowly start to feel less stupid. That is part of the process.
It's not so much about feeling stupid, it's about not knowing if I'm doing something productive until I waste a bunch of time.
No matter how many times you punch a brick wall, you're going to break your hand, and you're never going to get any closer to moving the wall.
Though, admittedly, if you want to keep getting what you're getting, you've got to keep doing what you're doing. Doing the insane is a very important part of changing what you get.
It does take some faith, like anything.
Think of it like concentrating your consciousness on 1 point.

What is the definition of this "energy", and if there is this "energy body", why am I performing actions on it when I can't even see what I'm doing?


Because you can feel what you're doing.
Sight will only get you so far.
I have done energy work. It feels like a wave of something moving across my flesh. Moving the energy is as simple as moving an arm. It feels like an extension of me.
Same with the visuals. With a bit of effort, I can visualize a shape, as if it were right in front of me. I can make myself hear voices too. All the same, if a song gets stuck in my head, I can banish it easily.
The issue is that I feel like I'm working on a milling machine without any dials, visuals, or anything. I can feel my hands on the controls, and I can spin knobs, but I can never see what my actions are doing.
I only know I'm successful when I am, and I only know I'm doing something wrong when something finally breaks.
For example, I can't manipulate energy off of my body, and know it still exists once I move it from the surface of my skin. It's nearly impossible to target the stuff externally without plastic visualization (which is a work in progress).

However, I can't confirm if I have an energy body, in the sense that I have a physical body. There's so many paradigms with so many different versions of what the metaphysical looks like, that I'm tempted to believe that my astral body is actually whatever the hell I want it to be, and put focus into it being; not that it has some predefined state like a physical body.
You know the difference when you are awake and when you are dreaming. Your brain performs almost the exact same thing but YOU know the difference.
When I started working with the astral it felt like I was wasting my time with daydreaming and visualization exercises, and then one day i had a "real" astral experience. And it felt so different to what I had experience before. Being awake is one state, being in a dream is another, being in deep meditation is one, being in a trance is another, going astral is yet another.

What is the difference between eating hot chili and eating salt. It's the exact same action, with the exact same body and the exact same method. But the result feels different.
When it happens, you will know that it is happening. And if it doesn't happen, keep trying.
That's fair. You can't know until you experience.
Is that all... hahahahahah
That is huge. Years of practice to get to there.
Yes, it's huge, but it's simple, unlike the complex systems of chakras, rituals, etc. It's useful to separate the aids from the actual goal. It helps you keep an eye on what you're actually doing.
You can verify spirits after just a couple of months of practice.
I'm struggling with the concept of that. For example, I've heard that people have had much success in evoking spirits from fake grimoires. I'll have to spend some time trying to define what a "spirit" actually is. I'm not really certain how much objectivity can be applied to spirits, and how much is just a subjective interaction. For example, I could summon pikachu, then someone else could do the same, but are we still talking to the same pikachu? Could I talk to a spirit about its conversations with other people, and then verify with those people, that they in fact had those conversations? Or could there be many DIFFERENT spirits which just look like pikachu. It seems to me that naming a spirit, to get a fix on said unique spirit, could be difficult.
However when you actually start evoking. They do not only work as a framework, they work as a contract. All the symbols and circles and hobbajobba is there so that both you and the spirit know how to behave. If you are trying to summon something from the goetia, it's not like your just asking a buddy to come over for lunch.
A mutually understood language to bind actions.

I don't quite understand why the circle would actually stop the goetic demon from killing me though. It must be more than just the symbol. It seems to me that it would actually have to be some kind of energetic guard, and that the physical circle would basically just be an aid for helping me put a solid shape on the guard. If I remember correctly, I think that Bardon mentions in The Practice of Magickal Evocation that the tools are necessary for the novice, but they can be dispensed with once you have some skill. You can only think of so many things at once, so by having physical reminders, I imagine it'd be a lot easier to spread your focus into many functions.
Half the battle seems to be being able to balance practice against losing touch with normal affairs.


Your job is to try and keep your sanity through all of that. And trust me. Most people don't. Very very few people come out on the other side in 1 piece.
I've been there, and done that (psychosis). I can more or less feel the progression to insanity if I start to think too deeply on something that isn't actually supposed to make sense. It makes it much easier to keep a grip on things. Hopefully that's enough. The real trick though, I find, is to simply never do anything you don't understand. Then you can't blow yourself up.
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by Desecrated »

blindwake wrote: It's not so much about feeling stupid, it's about not knowing if I'm doing something productive until I waste a bunch of time.
No matter how many times you punch a brick wall, you're going to break your hand, and you're never going to get any closer to moving the wall.
Though, admittedly, if you want to keep getting what you're getting, you've got to keep doing what you're doing. Doing the insane is a very important part of changing what you get.
It does take some faith, like anything.
There is a really long argument and different ways of thinking about it. We should probably revisit it in the future. But the short version is that you either need faith or indifference. And if you don't have one, try and adopt the other.

However, I can't confirm if I have an energy body, in the sense that I have a physical body. There's so many paradigms with so many different versions of what the metaphysical looks like, that I'm tempted to believe that my astral body is actually whatever the hell I want it to be, and put focus into it being; not that it has some predefined state like a physical body.
That is correct. You can't prove magic. If you try and apply skepticism to magic it just fails. Either skepticism is too narrow, or magic is false


I'm struggling with the concept of that. For example, I've heard that people have had much success in evoking spirits from fake grimoires. I'll have to spend some time trying to define what a "spirit" actually is. I'm not really certain how much objectivity can be applied to spirits, and how much is just a subjective interaction. For example, I could summon pikachu, then someone else could do the same, but are we still talking to the same pikachu? Could I talk to a spirit about its conversations with other people, and then verify with those people, that they in fact had those conversations? Or could there be many DIFFERENT spirits which just look like pikachu. It seems to me that naming a spirit, to get a fix on said unique spirit, could be difficult.
3 ways of looking at it.

1. Spirits are real.
2. Spirits are something, but our individuality makes us view them differently.
3. There are no spirits, it's all in your head.

Just choose what ever model works best for you.
I don't quite understand why the circle would actually stop the goetic demon from killing me though. It must be more than just the symbol. It seems to me that it would actually have to be some kind of energetic guard, and that the physical circle would basically just be an aid for helping me put a solid shape on the guard. If I remember correctly, I think that Bardon mentions in The Practice of Magickal Evocation that the tools are necessary for the novice, but they can be dispensed with once you have some skill. You can only think of so many things at once, so by having physical reminders, I imagine it'd be a lot easier to spread your focus into many functions.
The circle is a social contract. If they wanted to, they could easily walk into it. But it's a symbol that says; you stay over there, I stay over here, and we respect each other.
Think of a dinner-table. You can just crawl over it and get the salt yourself, but you are a polite being, so you ask your partner to send you the salt instead.

Tools are just like normal tools. I can theoretically chew through a tree with my teeth or break rocks with my hands. Saws and hammers makes it a lot easier.


I've been there, and done that (psychosis). I can more or less feel the progression to insanity if I start to think too deeply on something that isn't actually supposed to make sense. It makes it much easier to keep a grip on things. Hopefully that's enough. The real trick though, I find, is to simply never do anything you don't understand. Then you can't blow yourself up.
That is why we practice meditation. So that we can gain the level of self control needed.

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by chowderpope »

I'm lazy and kinda in a hurry so I'll reply without quoting you, blindwake.

I think that chi is an omnipresent substance, and I think that the mind can manipulate it. The Indians say prana is in the breath, the Chinese say chi is in the breath. There is something to breathing and collecting energy. You do not deprive yourself of breath with rhythmic breathing (or at least, I don't, and wouldn't see the point of that) but you breathe more fully than normally. After a while, it seems the cells of your body begin to resonate sympathetically with the rhythm of your breath. That's how I see it anyway. And Astral Light (or chi, or prana) is a malleable substance that can be shaped by mental force. Maybe I'm way wrong though, gotta leave room for error or you're at risk of being a dumb asshole.
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Re: Effective Practice

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Desecrated,
There is a really long argument and different ways of thinking about it. We should probably revisit it in the future. But the short version is that you either need faith or indifference. And if you don't have one, try and adopt the other.
I've got more than enough apathy to outweigh any possible amount of faith.
That is correct. You can't prove magic. If you try and apply skepticism to magic it just fails. Either skepticism is too narrow, or magic is false
Or all the current knowledge on magick is incomplete.
It's very easy to think that the whole of something is false, just because you can pick out a few errors. Perhaps skeptics are too quick to falsify, and magickians are too quick to believe. They're both partially wrong.
3 ways of looking at it.

1. Spirits are real.
2. Spirits are something, but our individuality makes us view them differently.
3. There are no spirits, it's all in your head.

Just choose what ever model works best for you.
Correct.
Spirits are real. Because anything I can experience is "real".
Each person experiences a different relationship with each spirit. Just as the man I know to be "Bob" the baker, might be "Bob" the hitman to someone else.
Everything is all in my head. Even physical reality is one massive hallucination. Though it is a persistent one.

I like to assume that every individual choice is wrong in some way, so the only good answer is the one that incorporates all of them.
The circle is a social contract. If they wanted to, they could easily walk into it. But it's a symbol that says; you stay over there, I stay over here, and we respect each other.
Think of a dinner-table. You can just crawl over it and get the salt yourself, but you are a polite being, so you ask your partner to send you the salt instead.

Tools are just like normal tools. I can theoretically chew through a tree with my teeth or break rocks with my hands. Saws and hammers makes it a lot easier.
I'd argue that a cage is just as much a social contract as a dinner table. There are some social contracts which you cannot break. Like the social contract between gravity and humans falling from buildings.
I do get it though, and the remark on tools is fair.

chowderpope,

That makes sense. Either way though, we're really just arguing over words. I'll have to try rhythmic breathing then. I thought you were talking about those breathing techniques which tell you to hold for 30secs, then inhale 5secs, etc. If you keep uniform intervals, there's no harm in that. It's basically just focused breathing. IIH has pretty much the same thing. Perhaps rhythmic breathing is the same technique people use to calm down when they are angry.
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by chowderpope »

I put on a metronome every day and breathe, usually starting at 40bpm, inhale four beats, exhale four beats. But then I will sometimes go down to 30 or 25bpm if I am seated and relaxing. It becomes so habitual when I hear a metronome now, sometimes I will breathe so deeply it makes my lungs kinda sore. Yes please try it out, I think you will benefit from it.

And yeah, it basically comes down to semantics when we're talking about metaphysical energy. I just recently caught on to a few details about "astral light" and for me it has illuminated things I was already doing (because people told me to do it, but I didn't really get why, like the cone of power thing)
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Re: Effective Practice

Post by Rin »

Decide what it is you want to be able to do, find a teacher who can do it, go and train under them.

It's simple, if not necessarily easy, and you'll save yourself years of angst and experimentation and doing mental loops while theorizing and attempting to syncretize all of the things you read in different books of wildly different quality from wildly different backgrounds.

You asked "So what's the best indicator of an effective practice?" I'd argue that the best indicator of an effective practice is that it produces individuals who can demonstrate the results of that practice and teach other people to do the same.

You mention "energy" a lot, for example. - If you want to work with "energy" (which is a vague, collective translation of what is actually a fairly precise concept if you go into the relevant paradigms and the cosmology and cultural background they're founded on - but most people/books don't for the sake of brevity, or due to lack of understanding, and it creates immense confusion as a result), hunt around for Qigong/Neigong/Yoga/Tantra/etc teachers, look for one who can give you first hand experience of what "energy" (aka. Qi/Prana/Rlung/Pneuma/Odic Force/Orgone/Kundalini/Shakti/whatever that specific paradigm works with) actually is and does, and then study under them. If they can't give you a first hand experience, move on, they aren't worth studying under.

Books are great, but they simply cannot take the place of a real teacher. Trying to develop an effective spiritual practice with books alone is, I suppose, technically possible, but in the same way that it's technically possible to become an engineer through studying books alone.

I mean maybe one in a thousand could do it, but he'd still have to work 10x harder than the guy who just enrolls in an engineering degree at a good University. And when it comes time to hire someone to build a bridge, people are going to go with the guy who has a degree over the guy who spent 5 years reading text books all day.

Books should be a supplement, not the primary source of knowledge and technique.

This stage of confusion and doubt is perfectly normal in this day and age, when people inclined to spiritual practice tend to reach out to the internet, where they're bombarded with thousands of articles and pdf's and amazon links, many of which seem to contradict all of the other ones, and all of which seem to contradict what the seeker generally believes to be true about the universe at that particular time.

If you want to cut through this fog of confusion and cognitive dissonance, instead of spending years wandering through it like so many people do (and of course risking falling off a cliff in the process, which sadly happens more often than you'd think), the best way to do so is to get offline, put down your ipad and ground your learning and training in the real world through seeking out a live teacher who can immerse you in a living tradition and serve as a tangible example of the results your training will yield.

Good luck.
"The path of the Sage is called
'The Path of Illumination'
he who gives himself to this path
is like a block of wood
that gives itself to the chisel-
cut by cut it is honed to perfection"

- DDJ, Verse 27

"It's still magic even if you know how it's done." - Terry Pratchett

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Re: Effective Practice

Post by Desecrated »

Rin wrote:
Books are great, but they simply cannot take the place of a real teacher. Trying to develop an effective spiritual practice with books alone is, I suppose, technically possible, but in the same way that it's technically possible to become an engineer through studying books alone.

I mean maybe one in a thousand could do it, but he'd still have to work 10x harder than the guy who just enrolls in an engineering degree at a good University. And when it comes time to hire someone to build a bridge, people are going to go with the guy who has a degree over the guy who spent 5 years reading text books all day.
The problem with the occult is that there are no good university. There are apparently some teachers out there, but I've been looking for the last 30 years and I haven't seen one. There are more money scams, pyramid schemes, liars, delusional people with a youtube channels than anywhere else in the world.

There are no acknowledged degrees, diplomas or qualification either.
I've meet soooo many high priest of the green order, thelemites, druids, wandering bishops and other nonsense. And not a single one of them have either been sane or successful.

What you need to do is read the books, then apply the knowledge of the books. Just reading them won't make you a magician.

Read a book about building a bridge, and then try and build a bridge. Then you fail, so you read some more, you build some more, and slowly you need to read less and build more and finally some day you might be able to build a bridge.

Problem is: It's an occult bridge, so nobody can see it, and nobody believes it exist, and really nobody wants it either. So all that time and effort was just for your own benefit. You should have gone to a university and become a computer programmer instead. They make much more money than occultist.

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blindwake
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Re: Effective Practice

Post by blindwake »

Rin,

That seems counter intuitive. It's hard enough to find decent books on the internet, how am I expected to find a teacher in this day and age of hacks, where everyone and their grandma is putting out that they're a spiritual guru. Going offline means that I also suddenly lose the advantage of a social network when trying to find a teacher. Besides, what good teacher is going to help me out without expecting anything in return? I think it's reasonable to expect that a real occult teacher would already expect some sort of natural talent, or a fair amount of work done already. I doubt the real ones are putting out.

My goal: Gain power to the point where reality becomes my plaything, much like a constant dream. Then, purposefully weaken myself once I get bored, so I can do it all again.

Desecrated,

I think I agree. And it's really not that tough to learn from books anyway. Just separate the theory from the practice, distill the practice into simplest form, then develop your own theory that's not full of garbage.
There's not really that much cognitive dissonance and confusion at all in occult books. They pretty much all just have their own fancy way of saying: meditate and train focus.

Computer science is actually very complimentary to this topic. As a beginner, what you need to do is stop trying to be an "occultist" which isn't a really a thing, but more of an ideology, and learn some actual skills which you can apply to your own philosophies.

Instead of following the teachings of delusional people, simply strive to be as intelligent as possible. Suddenly you can make your own theories, and they're much more sound than most books.
It's like how everyone wants to be some uber dark magus, and is fascinated with stuff like the necronomicon and satanic bible. However, the fastest way to progress is to stop following the ideology of "occultist", and just strive to be your own best person.

I think Crowley said it best, magick is change in conformity with will. That means that if you want money, you get a high paying job. If you want sex, you go out and meet people. If you want an empire, you go make a cult. It's not about being harry potter. It's not about the fancy light effects. It's about the goal itself.

If nobody can see your bridge, then you're doing it wrong. The right way to make an "occult bridge", is to just make a normal bridge. The "occult" part is the technique required to pull enough strings to make people build it. Why summon spirits when you can summon people?
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.

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Re: Effective Practice

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blindwake wrote: I think Crowley said it best, magick is change in conformity with will. That means that if you want money, you get a high paying job. If you want sex, you go out and meet people. If you want an empire, you go make a cult. It's not about being harry potter. It's not about the fancy light effects. It's about the goal itself.
In ideal world. In real world you're only allowed to fool around like that for as long as you don't interfere with the work of "others". As long as you keep it low key, small, and just for your own personal gain you might get away without annoying bigger and stronger forces. Unless you start making deals with those d!cks. In other words, it's like human materiel world, gotta play politics to make any kind of decent "career" or acquire large amount of wealth or anything else. Bend your knee to something or somebody.
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Re: Effective Practice

Post by Rin »

blindwake wrote:Rin,

That seems counter intuitive. It's hard enough to find decent books on the internet, how am I expected to find a teacher in this day and age of hacks, where everyone and their grandma is putting out that they're a spiritual guru. Going offline means that I also suddenly lose the advantage of a social network when trying to find a teacher. Besides, what good teacher is going to help me out without expecting anything in return? I think it's reasonable to expect that a real occult teacher would already expect some sort of natural talent, or a fair amount of work done already. I doubt the real ones are putting out.
Seemingly counter intuitive or not, it's how these arts have been preserved since the dawn of civilization - passed down in lineages from master to disciple.

I didn't mean to suggest you should abandon the internet entirely - merely that you shouldn't attempt to use it as your sole source of information and networking. It's a valuable tool, but the point is to find a teacher and then seek them out for one on one instruction, not to download pdf's by the thousands and read forum posts and try and mash all of the disparate information you find into some kind of workable praxis. Network online and in person, yes, but eventually you'll have to take your training into the real world.

As for the hacks and frauds - yes, that's an issue, but the only way you'll know whether someone is genuine or not is to give them a shot (of course, you should research any potential teacher first and see what people who've encountered them are saying). Even then, all but the worst teachers generally have something to teach, even if it's only what to avoid in the future. And of course in the process, you'll meet other people interested in similar pursuits, who can become fellow travelers on the path and help you with networking and exposure to new teachers and schools of thought.

The old adage that the master will appear when the student is ready is true to an extent, but you have to put yourself out there first. If you're waiting for an immortal sage to stroll down from the mountain and knock on your door, or for an owl to drop an invitation to wizard school down your chimney, you'll be waiting a long time. If, on the other hand, you go out there, engage with the world, seek out the teachings available to you, dedicate yourself to mastering them and showing your sincere devotion to your practice, you'll have no lack of opportunities to learn and advance.

As for teachers expecting things in return - of course they do. Money being the most common, simply because we live in a capitalist society and without charging to teach, they would have to work a 9 - 5 job instead of dedicating time to teaching and to their own training. But they also expect dedicated students who will learn and preserve their teachings, use those teachings to the best of society and pass them down to the next generation in time.

It's my experience that most teachers are actually very eager to find students with a genuine passion for and dedication to their training, and when they find these individuals they're generally quite thrilled and willing to go above and beyond to ensure that the knowledge they possess can be passed on to another generation who can use it to make the world a better place.

The truth is, we live in an age of unprecedented access to spiritual and metaphysical teachings. What used to be available to the privileged few born into the right families or accepted as initiates by the right temples or orders are now readily available to anyone with sincere dedication. It has become orders of magnitude easier to access training in these fields than it was even 20 years ago, let alone a century or two. If you have a more or less healthy body and sound mind, then there's really nothing holding you back but yourself.
My goal: Gain power to the point where reality becomes my plaything, much like a constant dream. Then, purposefully weaken myself once I get bored, so I can do it all again.
I think you might be shooting a bit high with that one. Of course all things in the fullness of time, but perhaps worry about developing the fundamentals before shooting for the heights of attainment.
"The path of the Sage is called
'The Path of Illumination'
he who gives himself to this path
is like a block of wood
that gives itself to the chisel-
cut by cut it is honed to perfection"

- DDJ, Verse 27

"It's still magic even if you know how it's done." - Terry Pratchett

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blindwake
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Re: Effective Practice

Post by blindwake »

Rin,
Seemingly counter intuitive or not, it's how these arts have been preserved since the dawn of civilization - passed down in lineages from master to disciple.
Yes, but that's how most knowledge in general has been passed on for so long. Oral teaching came before written language.
It's not counter intuitive because I can't go on the internet, push a button, and instantly find a teacher.
It's counter intuitive because oral teachings are often even harder to verify integrity. Lots of people can easily give a book a bad rep.
However, in person, with oral teachings, people have a tendency to think highly when respect is not deserved.There's a level of herd mentality that come with in person relationships.
This means that there can be a lot of "respected masters" that don't know anything useful. They just have high charisma.
I didn't mean to suggest you should abandon the internet entirely - merely that you shouldn't attempt to use it as your sole source of information and networking. It's a valuable tool, but the point is to find a teacher and then seek them out for one on one instruction, not to download pdf's by the thousands and read forum posts and try and mash all of the disparate information you find into some kind of workable praxis. Network online and in person, yes, but eventually you'll have to take your training into the real world.
It's unnecessary to read thousands of pdfs. Simply pick one as a starting point, take what is correct and invalidate the rest, then search for the information that is needed to fill in the gaps.
Though it may be impossible to find all the gaps so easily filled in text form, if you can fill in large chunks, you can fill in the rest all by yourself with a bit of meditation. I actually rarely read unless I feel I'm stumped on an idea, or I want to try to test the validity of my own understandings against another perspective.
As for the hacks and frauds - yes, that's an issue, but the only way you'll know whether someone is genuine or not is to give them a shot (of course, you should research any potential teacher first and see what people who've encountered them are saying). Even then, all but the worst teachers generally have something to teach, even if it's only what to avoid in the future. And of course in the process, you'll meet other people interested in similar pursuits, who can become fellow travelers on the path and help you with networking and exposure to new teachers and schools of thought.
I agree, anything bad will still be useful. Often if I am faced with a terrible situation, I treat it as a lesson in patience.
As for teachers expecting things in return - of course they do. Money being the most common, simply because we live in a capitalist society and without charging to teach, they would have to work a 9 - 5 job instead of dedicating time to teaching and to their own training. But they also expect dedicated students who will learn and preserve their teachings, use those teachings to the best of society and pass them down to the next generation in time.
I don't have money. I don't want to spend money on teachings. Quite frankly, I don't really respect the "master" and "disciple" relationship. I think that collaboration is key. If I want to learn from a source that won't let me argue with it, I'll go pick up a tome.
My goal: Gain power to the point where reality becomes my plaything, much like a constant dream. Then, purposefully weaken myself once I get bored, so I can do it all again.


I think you might be shooting a bit high with that one. Of course all things in the fullness of time, but perhaps worry about developing the fundamentals before shooting for the heights of attainment.
It's a deliberately high goal. If the goal is effectively impossible, I can't ever achieve it. Therefore, I can never get bored of trying to reach it.

Cerber,
In ideal world. In real world you're only allowed to fool around like that for as long as you don't interfere with the work of "others". As long as you keep it low key, small, and just for your own personal gain you might get away without annoying bigger and stronger forces. Unless you start making deals with those d!cks. In other words, it's like human materiel world, gotta play politics to make any kind of decent "career" or acquire large amount of wealth or anything else. Bend your knee to something or somebody.
The world is never ideal. Making movement always attracts predators. That's half the challenge. Half the strategy. Half the fun.
What's the point in living if it's not difficult? If you had it all, you'd have no reason to be.
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.

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