Reverence Thy Body

It should be clear from the previous posts that my body is the primary sensor in seership.  The full visual manifestation that is the goal of some workers is not quite so important to me.  It’s wonderful and amazing, of course, but using that as the main or only goal dismisses a lot of other very interesting and informative “data.”

That reminder having been issued, I wanted to bring a up topic that has been on my mind.  I have recently received an injunction to “hold myself chaste and reverent toward my body.”  It’s important to note up front that the origin of this requirement is not a Christian one, it’s Thelemic.  Hint: it doesn’t mean “no sex.”

It also doesn’t have the sense of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

It absolutely does not mirror John’s writing:, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

And then there’s a section of Romans: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

This is one origin of our attitudes regarding our physical bodies in the modern world.  As we live in a largely Christian society, we have received the message in the womb that in the best case, your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, but it’s not yours.  In the worst case the body is a bad thing, something to be lived in temporarily until we can arrive in Heaven.  It is possible that this alone is reason McDonald's exists.

My mentor and I discussed this a little bit, and worked up the definition that it was advantageous to control and focus of the mind (and therefore any magickal workings) to have the body be in proper functioning order, so as not to be distracting (at least).  He pointed out that the origin of the word “ascetic” doesn’t imply self-denial, but rather rigorous discipline (Greek askētikós  subject to rigorous exercise, hardworking).  So, for this context, revering the body and holding oneself chaste is to have developed a physical system, including healthy sexuality, that is AT THE VERY LEAST not in the way of your spiritual (pun, get it?) pursuits.  If your body is full of pain and discomfort, reaching into yourself for the relaxation necessary to meet with the unincarnated will be more difficult.

Chastity is another word that carries lots of baggage.  Etymologically, this word may have it’s origins in the Latin castitatem, which means pure (N.B. not everyone agrees with me on that assignment).  Pure is the state of being uncontaminated.

Crowley says this in “Chastity,” one of the “Little Essays Toward Truth: "Chastity may thus be defined as the strict observance of the Magical Oath; that is, in the Light of the Law of Thelema, absolute and perfected devotion to the Holy Guardian Angel and exclusive pursuit of the Way of the True Will.”[1]

Of course, that is the least of it.  Your body is a juicy device that can lead to the most intense raptures, allowing you to meld with God and gods.  It all is made so much easier with a body that is as healthy as you can make it.

So, then.  I give you the same advice that was given to me.  Revere your lovely and delicious body and aim it in the same direction as your mind and power, with all your might.  Next time, I'll talk more about the application of all this to seership.

Blessed Be Thou

[1]  http://hermetic.com/crowley/little-essays-towards-truth/chastity.html

Preparatio

By now, most of you have read RO’s description of the technology behind the rites we do, broken down into planning, preparatory, conjuration, communication and dismissal pieces.  If you need a reminder, here's the address of his post: http://headforred.blogspot.com/2013/04/working-with-seer-tech-basics.html.  The planning stage obviously involves us both, normally at similar levels of effort.  However, while the conjuror’s preparatory actions are pretty simple, involving holy water and self-annointing with Abramelin oil, my activities here are usually pretty substantial.

My ordinary reality is very linear.  My mind is also pretty linear.  Therefore, before I try to do any trance work, I have to spend a little time getting non-linear.  What I mean specifically by this is that  before I fall into the “seeing” state, the edges of reality have to soften a little, helping to minimize the constant  judgment of things that float through my mind and senses.

Those of you who have done astral and trance work will immediately recognize that when the phrase “this isn’t real” goes through your mind, it’s hard to get back on track. Sometimes, after this sensation, it’s all over.  Therefore the preparations are meant to quiet that part of your mind just a little bit.  It’s a totally new way to control your mind and sense of reality, but at its basis, it is self control.  It's self control without any rigid tie to your mundane expectations about how things work.

Recognizing that my mind is intimately associated with my physical being, much of what I’m about to say involves full relaxation of various body parts.  The muscles in my sacral spine, hips and butt are tightly linked to my emotional state, use of imagination and ability to go into trance.  Tension in this region can actually be interpreted as light anxiety, if I am not paying attention.  I have spoken to a handful of people about this, and full relaxation of this part of their bodies leads to an open feeling, one tinged with gratitude. 

I generally do this exercise in a warm bath that has been consecrated to the purpose with hyssop (either tea or oil) and salts.  When I have them, I put in about a cup each of table salt, baking soda and Epsom salts.  Often, I darken the bathroom, using only candles of appropriate ritual colors as illumination.  When every muscle between the bottom of my rib cage and my knees is completely empty of tension, I move to the next step.

Once I am feeling “open,” I want to fill myself with a feeling of the sacred.  I have some chants I use to do this, but strangely, one of my favorites is the Te Deum Laudamus from the old red Lutheran hymnal.  I like it because of the way it weaves major and minor keys.  It’s also something I have known for a long time, and it ties the very young religious me to who I am now.  I sing this in the darkness of the bathroom, always nerdily happy with the wonderful acoustics, until I start to talk to the Universe (meaning not to any being in particular) about being clean and open and ready to reach past my ordinary experience.  This part of the preparations varies extensively, is ecstatic and normally ends up with me chanting and singing and talking to myself/ me as creator god until the bath water is cold, which is the only thing that normally ejects me from the bathtub.

At this point, I wrap my wet hair in a white towel, put my robe on and go into the temple, where typically RO is waiting for me.

In one of the following posts, RO and/or I will discuss the next step, the anointing with oils.  This gets into the relationship between conjuror and seer, as we consecrate each other to the Work in the temple.

Be thou blessed.

Seership: One Possible Recipe

I’ll talk more about the spirit-in-the-crystal-ball stuff soon, but this post will be a bit of a personal retrospective about how my seership came to be.  

I had a rough childhood, and probably developed some dissociative tendencies at that time.  That will serve to partially explain why it’s relatively easy to get myself out of the way to permit occupation by gods and angels, which is how this all started for me.  

The witchcraft community that I was part of for many years calls this “aspecting.” However, it didn't start there.  

When I was a kid, I loved church.  I loved to sing, I loved the candles, the high ceiling, the feeling and sense of sacredness.  It seemed natural to me that I was Mary at the Christmas pageant for a couple years running starting when I was about 10 years old.

I present this event in particular because it may have been when I first aspected a deity.  When I played Mary in the children’s Christmas pageant, I WAS Mary.  Mary was in me.  People commented upon the strangeness of the thing.  Looking back, that in itself was sort of weird.  Means that those Lutherans actually could sense the presence of the sacred… Who would’ve thought?

So fast-forward through my years as one of the first female “altar-attendants”, my terrifying visionary experiences in church when I felt guilty about teenage problems, the time the pastor decided that he would save my soul… the end result being my apostasy from all things Christian.

Many years later, I much more purposefully learned how to contain and present the gods in public ritual when I was a priestess in the Reclaiming community.  It came naturally – making my own personality quiet so that something else could enter.  In those early days, I held Erishkegal, Psyche, Hekate, Inanna, and many others.  With some help from my teachers, especially Shen-Tat at Coven of the Witches, I learned how to let myself go AND re-establish myself when I was finished.  The last time I aspected publicly was at a pagan festival near Denver, where I was filled by Quakoralina, the Faery Star Goddess.

Often, when aspecting is done in wiccan/pagan/faery ceremony, the deity/spirit who is to be housed in the witch performing the aspecting is subject to an invitation by other celebrants (typical those who are organizing the ceremony).  The idea is for the aspecting individual to open themselves to the deity in the safety of sacred space, moderated by others who are monitoring the process.  

The personality of the individual is quieted during this operation, such that the deity can participate in the rite or even address the celebrants.  It perhaps a form of hypnotism.  This is analogous in many ways to being “ridden” in Voudou.  In many cases when I was performing this purpose in ritual, I literally have no recollection of what transpired, emphasizing the point that moderators are very important.

All this is different from seership, where the personality of the seer must be close enough to the surface to be able to utilize the senses (both physical and astral) to sense and interpret the message of the disincarnate being called in the rite.  There are important things in common, however:  a safe environment is required, the “personality” and body must be relaxed in such a way that sensual data can be used to feel the presence of a non-corporeal entity.  Interestingly, many of the basic preparations for the two things are the same, and that is what I’ll address in the next post.

Be thou blessed.

["Cleopatra" J.W. Waterhouse]

Allergy symptoms and spirit manifestation?

The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for me to discuss my adventures in spirit, of course. The historical background is important to me, to create context, to present technology the way that some other people have utilized it. Ultimately, though, the creation of a link between whatever spirit is and my consciousness is a pretty personal matter. Whenever I am talking about that, it's all me. I want to describe my experiences in a way that I hope will arouse interest in doing this kind of work, and also in a manner that will facilitate others' entrance into it. With all that in mind, here we go.

I awakened this morning with allergy symptoms. I have recently moved to the Florida panhandle, and having grown up in a place with different flora, as well as much less humidity, amount of pollen in the air is a completely new thing. I have gone from the person who says "nope, I'm not allergic to anything" to "pass the Benadryl."

I bring this up because the physical state brought on by the allergies is not dissimilar to what I feel when am acting as a seer. My head feels a little bit of pressure, my neck and upper back are wearing some tension. I feel isolated and insulated in my body. There are times when I experience a ringing in my ears. All of these factors come together to amplify any sensory experience that occurs during the rite. This is important because a significant amount of the "raw data" I acquire during the rite is actually neither visual nor auditory.

The issue of physical state when opening oneself up to what might be sensed only by being very quiet of mind and additionally very still of body will be discussed (probably ad nauseum) whilst I'm describing my role in the current rites that RO and I are doing. We're going to be doing tag-team discussions about the relationship between seer and conjuror in the near future, and much about how this all seems to work will be illuminated.

This will all begin in the next few days with (from my side) a discussion of how seership differs from "aspecting" and how my personal past has contributed to my occult abilities, preparations that I follow prior to mediumship, leading up to my actual experiences during the rites. RO will be writing about topics that more or less mirror these, but I'll leave that for him to expose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the game is afoot.

On the Use of Crystal Balls for Scrying, Part II

Recall, gentle reader, that we were in the midst of a discussion about Celestial Spheres, with the intimation that they would somehow be related to the use of crystal balls as a scrying medium.  In this post, the saga continues...

Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, added more spheres to the Celestial model to correct for observations of the outer planets, and postulates that the spheres themselves are made of an unchanging fifth element, the aether.  According to Aristotle, the motion of each sphere is motivated by its own god, who inspires the movement simple by being loved by it.

"The final cause, then, produces motion by being loved, but all other things move by being moved." [1]

Possible links between the model of the heavens and the use of a crystal globe for scrying may well originate in Persia.  The first use of the Ptolemaic system to calculate the distances between planets was undertaken by al-Farghani, who was also involved in making one of the first calculations of the diameter of the Earth.  During the years of al-Farghani’s life, philosophers were developing a more spiritual take on the nature and purpose of the celestial spheres.  Like Plotinus, it is documented that Persian philosophers al-Farabi and Avicenna (8^th BCE) envisioned the movers of the planets coming into being through a series of emanations of God.  Each sphere moved continually by virtue of its soul, which was attempting to attain to the perfection of the intelligence, because the intelligences were the direct emanation, and the soul the secondary one.  The idea of the Empyrean heaven was later added by Christian and Muslim philosophers as the dwelling place of god.  An outer sphere, wherein dwelt the angels, was added in some cases. 

All this history has been presented  for the sole fact that it supports the idea of the sphere as being the perfect solid, and also a type of early philosophical orrery, in that it could serve as a model to explain the actions of God upon the Universe.  Later orreries were complicated machines that described the motions of the planetary bodies, of course.  The model of the Celestial Spheres describes more about their origin and God’s impact on humanity.  The sphere could have been the way for the scryer to essentially take the observational place of God in the system.  This notion is supported by the description of a medieval Islamic scrying tool, the Cup of Jamshid, which was purportedly filled with an elixir of Immortality.  Historians have stated that the seven heavens of the universe could be observed by looking into it.  Others have said that the whole world was reflected within.  At least one English translation of the text describing it refers to the Cup as a crystal globe. [2]

Of course, it is a matter of common knowledge that the ancients were fond of scrying with water.  Early Greeks considered crystals to be condensed water, so instead of my elaborate argument here regarding the history of crystal gazing, you could come to the conclusion that some Greek diviner thought, “Oh, look! Water that I can put in my pocket!  How convenient!”

Keeping in mind that the Lemegeton advocates the use of a circle for the protection of the magician and a triangle for the holding of spirits called, to me, the most interesting aspect of the question “why a crystal” is the use of this material for the attraction and interaction of spirits.  The first use of the crystal to actually contain a spirit may have been described by pseudo-Trithemius (that is “Trithemius of Spanheim” reported in Francis Barrett’s, “The Magus” 1801).  In this document, the use of a small crystal (“the size of a small orange,” maybe 1.5” in diameter) covered with a plate of gold to make a hemispherical mirror and embedded in a paddle of ebony wood or ivory.  A ritual for calling an archangel is then documented:

"In the name of the blessed and holy Trinity, I do desire thee, thou strong and mighty angel, Michæl (or any other spirit or angel), that if it be the divine will of him who is called Tetragrammaton, &c. the Holy God, the Father, that thou take upon thee some shape as best becometh thy celestial nature, and appear to us visibly here in this crystal…” [3]

This document also broaches a subject of intense interest to me: that of the seer’s preparations prior to the attempt to aid a magician in the contact and conversation with a spirit.  As a teaser for the next post: “It is necessary therefore that the invocant religiously dispose himself for the space of many days to such a mystery, and to conserve himself during the time chaste, abstinent, and to abstract himself as much as he can from all manner of foreign and secular business; likewise he should observe fasting, as much as shall seem convenient to him, and let him daily, between sun-rising and setting, being clothed in pure white linen, seven times call upon God, and make a deprecation to the angels to be called and invocated, according to the rule which we have before taught. Now the number of days of fasting and preparation is commonly one month, i. e. the time of a whole lunation. Now, in the Cabala, we generally prepare ourselves forty days before.” [4]

N.B.  I am grateful for many discussions about this material with R.O., my love, my brother and my magus.

Be thou blessed.

[1] Aristotle Metaphysics 1072b4.

[2]  (http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/shahnameh/13bijan_manijeh.php)

[3] http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/ma251.htm

[4] http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/ma241.htm

Graphics are J. W. Waterhouse's "Circe Invidiosa" and "The Crystal Ball."  The orrery is housed at the Mariner's Museum, Newport News, VA.

On the Use of Crystal Balls for Scrying, Part I: Some Necessary Background

Before the solar system was realized to be made up of discrete masses traveling in elliptical orbits, before the space between the planets was realized to be a hard vacuum, before the Universe was understood to be infinite (or nearly infinite) in size, a much more complicated system was required to explain the motion of the Heavens.  This model, developed by Greeks starting in the 6^th Century B.C.E., portrayed all planets, and the Earth’s moon, as orbiting the Earth.   Initially, this model was composed of concentric rings, but Plato’s student Eudoxus developed a model that explained the apparent lateral motions of some bodies.  This model was composed of concentric shells.  It was, naturally, geocentric.  Because one of the initial versions of this model was discussed by Ptolemy, it is frequently referred to as the Ptolemaic model.  This model was utilized in the search for facts that we would consider today to be of scientific import, such as the distances between the planets.  Roger Bacon used the basic theory to calculate, for example, the time necessary to walk from the Earth to the Moon.

Arranged outward from the Earth, lay the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Philosophers added to these seven spheres an eighth and ninth.  These outer shells were variously populated by God (Prima Mobile) and the angels.  The furthest sphere from the Earth was called the Empyrean sphere, or in Christian literature, the Highest Heaven.  It may sound strange to our ears that this sphere was also seen as the Firmament, the dwelling place of God.  That’s right.  The outside boundary of the Universe, essentially, was the solid dwelling place of God.  In the books of Job and Isaiah, the Firmament is described as a ceiling of crystalline material.  

On a note that may be more pertinent to historians of science than to occultists, when Copernicus and Galileo developed better, solar-centric theories which more completely explained various astronomical observables, this basic explanation of solar system’s geometry was altered only with a replacement of the central body.  It remained for Johannes Kepler to demolish the attempted use of the spherical shell model in a rigorously scientific context.

Returning to how this plays into the question at hand, notice firstly that the Universe, according to these models, is spherical and essentially bounded by God.  Deep inside, at the juicy center, is all that mortal humans know.  More next time...      Be thou blessed.

She who listens

The Pythia was the name given to the generations of oracular priestesses of Apollo at Delphi.  When the priestess intended to provide prophesy, she sat on a three-legged stool in a cave under Mount Parnassus over a hole in the floor of a cave, the Adyton, holding a bowl of water and laurel leaves.  From the fissure in the floor the sacred pneuma were emitted, hypothesized by some archaeologists to be a gaseous entheogen that caused the priestess to have visions.  The information given by the Oracle was used by all classes of society to help make decisions ranging from whether to go to war to selecting a mate.

These priestesses were granted liberties that were unusual for Greek women of their time; they could own property, attend public events, were paid and housed by the state and were free from taxation.  Their importance in Greek society is clear from this exulted status. 

The name of this blog honors the long tradition of seers who speak to the gods and who listen constantly for their voices.