Posts in Philosophy
Understanding Belial

The qlippothic demon of the 11th pseudo-Sephira Da’ath (traditionally translated as Knowledge) is called Belial. One translation of this ancient name is The Worthless Ones. Thus, Belial represents the demonic force that turns knowledge to nothing, that evaporates meaning – or applied more personally, that denies someone value. Everything Belial touches becomes worthless, it turns into nothing.

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On Character in Magic

Here is the second, slender volume in the series titled Büchlein Morgenstern. On less than twenty pages it offers an introduction to some of the essential thoughts on character-shaping and character-showing as concisely summarised by Henry Clay Trumbull in his 1889 book of the same title. As it might seem unusual to see his name appear in the context of practical magic, I am sharing my own short introduction and a personal note below.

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How to build & maintain a Magical Library

Libraries are like gardens. Just like plants, books need to be looked after and cared for. They thrive on being seen. Our eyes, roaming over their backs on the shelves, offers them nutrition. And yet, only when we hold them in our hands, consult them, read them, then we allow them to grow. Books grow upon seeding their ideas into our minds. They prosper from merging their words with the substance of our thinking. They turn flesh, when we choose to act upon them.

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Start with the End.

Let's start this journey at its end. Let's start with the moment you step into your grave. I want you to read this paragraph, and then close your eyes. Close your eyes and look at yourself as the person you have become in the last moments of your life. What do you see? Who do you see? Which qualities shine through? Which scars do you hold - and what have you made of them?

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Io Saturnalia!

Anything we learn the hard way follows the same pattern: We learn of its value by NOT achieving it. We learn about the value of a skill by experiencing the discomfort when it is not available and yet dearly needed. In light of this the Saturnalia, the period we are entering each year on the 17th of December is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on power - and what we can learn about it from being powerless. 

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The Vertical Ascent - on Mysticism and Personal Growth - Part 2

(...) Herein lies the crux of vertical development: at first sight it seems like a loosing game. Any time we move forward on our vertical ascent the journey begins with us being proven wrong, with us accepting that part of the reality we had lived in is an illusion. Step by step we discover more subjective filters that ‘have us’ rather than us ‘having’ them. As anybody who has raised kids knows - growing up is a damn hard business. You bleed dreams, phantasies and imagined powers on this path more than you can care to count.

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The Vertical Ascent - on Mysticism and Personal Growth - Part 1

This essay in two chapters is exploring what in Kabbala is often referred to as the 'rainbow path'. A cryptical reference in most books only - referring to a pathway of direct mystical ascent. To begin with, and in order to ground our exploration in everyday life, we'll be looking at the contemporary field of adult learning - and a related philosophy and practice of facilitating deep personal change that emerged from it recently.

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Book Review - Michael Carroll: Fearless at Work

Fearless at Work actually isn't a book about work. It's a book about cowardice. The kind of cowardice most of us comfortably have forgotten about, and to aid that process we conveniantly began to call it everyday life. It's the cowardice that masks itself as numb acceptance or bitter withdrawal, as grudging tolerance or thick-skinned suffering. Fearless at Work is a book about the siege-mentality that most of us have come to live in these days.

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Guest Post - Walter Ogris on Being Awake

Where the neuroscientist sees neuronal networks, the gnostic Hermetical understands such electro-magnetical phenomena as physical manifestations of spirit-cells that form our inner organs (Wesenszellen) - so called ‘elementals’. It is these elementals that form one’s consciousness, mostly without any active involvement of the self. Sunday roast, sex, and other smart or stupid thoughts suppress the self. (...)

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Working the Thread. Loving the Weave.

Once we have spent a considerable amount of time at the edge of Abyss a few things become incredibly clear. They become obvious not like a truth derived from philosophical speculation or from scientific hypothesizing, testing and retetesting. They become obvious like a truth that is part of who we are, of our own being, our very own flesh. We cannot call it faith, because we have seen it with our own eyes.

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