Secrets of the Occult - Part 2

Part 2 - "The Scientists" shows the link between the Occult and Science, looking at the work of famous scientists such as Freud, Jung, Newton and Einstein.

Secrets of the Occult - Part 2 "The Scientists"

Secrets of the Occult - Part 1

An interesting series looking at the history of the Occult and also it's relation to Science.

This is Part 1 - "The Magicians"

Music In Ritual - Resources

While trying to find some suitable music to use during a ritual I came across this on the Internet Archive:

Alice In Wonderland

If you haven't got the time or inclination to create something yourself, you may well find something useful here (try doing a search on Crowley to start with too).

Thanks!

RELUM SMIGAN THODYC

.....for charging one of my sigils!

Here's a tip if you are on a dating/personals site and having no luck, add a sigil or two to your profile (with a well though out statement of intent regarding what you want), discretely, a bit of text at the end of your profile, don't let on what it is, what it's really for (you can always say it's a motto or something).  Now every time someone visits your profile, they are charging the sigil!

Warning:  I have tried this, and ended up with more offers than I could cope with!

Fractal Generator Software

Central to Chaos Magic is the Chaos Theory. I don't want to go into all the details here, as I'm no expert and would probably get the details wrong!

However, if you are interested in playing around with fractals, or want to write your own formulas to create them, I have found a very good piece of software called ChaosPro http://www.chaospro.de/.

Download this freeware on to your windows PC and you can create your own fractals, or play around with the formulas already included. I used one of the base formulas to generate the fractal shown to the left.

Timothy Leary - The Man Who Turned On America

Timothy Leary dared to challenge the establishment, the american dream and also did research that no other psychologist at the time dared to do.

 

Aspects of Initiation

To me the purpose of initiation is both an outward sign on the material plain of starting The Great Work, and an inner sign or change also representing this process of actually becoming a Magician.

In an actual order, initiation also serves to symbolise your commitment or even in some cases "marriage" to that particular order, to say that you offer your physical and mental resources to the order, for it's empowerment and defence if needed.

Initiation is something which is often seen in many religions, but not called that directly. For example, baptism of adults in certain christian churches is obviously an initiation ceremony, in which someone is undergoing a physical sign (being immersed in the water in most cases) and an inner change (committing themselves to the work of being a follower of Jesus).  This idea of baptism was not as christian as Christians would like to claim, it does also have pre-christian origins in the mystery cults, the one that springs to my mind straight away is the Egyptian mystery cults of Osiris (see http://www.dwij.org/forum/amarna/8_serapis_and_christianity.htm) and also obviously in certain Jewish sects.

There are also many secular events that can be seen as a form of initiation, for example starting a university degree course, you are committing yourself to the work of attaining a degree in a certain subject or subjects.

What is Magic? Some thoughts.

Crowley defined magic as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will" and people often debate whether it is science or art, whether it is more important to see changes in the material world in the form of paranormal activity or whether it is more important to work on developing yourself to attain enlightenment.

For me, magic is both of these things really.  On the one hand, magic deals with very material results, such as doing a ritual or spell to get a new job, or pay your bills when you are broke.  On the other hand, anyone who just does magic for the perks of the material and physical realm is missing a whole load of other stuff, magic can also be a self transformation process, a sort of psychological alchemy of taking a mind that is pretty rough around the edges, and that can't be controlled, and starting to impose some control.  Also these two aims of magic, can be linked or bound together quite closely, a magician who can't sit still for more than five minutes, is not going to be very good at performing a healing spell or a ritual to bring wealth into their life.  I also see these two types of magic as being different in the length of time they take and the ease of measuring results.  Material spells often have times and measure of results, and the result is more temporary (eg. a ritual to get a new job, will have a measure of success, but the new job is unlikely to last forever).  Self-transforming magic, magic which takes you more down the path of accomplishing "The Great Work" is harder to measure in results, because there is no material basis, and it's also the life's work of the magician.

An Emergency Banishing!

A few weeks ago I had just performed a ritual and found myself in bed, with a feeling of something or someone watching over me.  The only thing I can think is that, there was something still hanging around from the ritual.  I did maybe rush through the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual, and so maybe I hadn't closed everything down successfully (I use the analogy of shutting down a computer system and making sure all the files are closed properly, being an IT person).   Anyway, I was facing towards the wall, and thought, "No I refuse to turn to check there is nothing there, this is all in my mind", and ignored it, the feeling went and I had no more problems and drifted peacefully off to sleep!  I think Frater U.D in his book High Magick: Theory and Practice
describes how for a magician who doesn't believe in the actual presence of spirits, to simply realise that these entities only exist if you allow them to, is the magicians last defence if something goes awry.