As magicians we roam the forest of truths with the firm intention of never settling down. More than that, we create our path in this forest not searching for even more, even larger, or even more magnificent trees, but searching for those presences that move among them.
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None of us can be Lucifer and Enoch at once. Their routes of travel are diametrically opposed: The former travelling from divinity into individuality, and the latter the reversed route. Unconstrained freedom and unconditional service are the two poles between which we are all meant to follow the narrow path of our life.
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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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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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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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Holding a firm opinion is not at all the sign of an educated mind. In fact, mostly it is the reverse: Only once we have delved deep enough into a subject we begin to see its paradoxes, entanglements, and inconsistencies. But there is no way to ‘delve deep’ into any subject unless we proactively loosen our mind’s ties to what we think we know already.
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[…] After all, the biggest obstacle to becoming the kind of grown-up, who isn’t a constant burden on others, is to responsibly satisfy our own needs whenever it is time to do so. In approaching every day in such a manner, we can become quite okay with the simple but harsh truth that life really owes us nothing.
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Nothing stops you short from growing beyond your own wildest dreams, like the desire to hold on to a clear identity. By definition, having a clear answer to the question who you are - both to yourself and the world - means you have stepped out of the process of becoming.
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They say ‘common enemies unite’. In the same vein, a good enemy can make us grow quicker and taller than we would have ever attempted to do without them. So here is to all the things foreign and forbidding - and to us knowing how to treat them with respect.
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Carl von Eckartshausen book ‘Prudence combined with Virtue’ from 1790 is a stark reminder of why turning into a wolf when living amongst wolves simply isn't good enough. Here we are exploring some of his key thoughts and provide an updated 2019 remix of the voluminous 400+ page tome.
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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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(…) Ma'at was not an abstract parameter or concept; it was the horizon of success for all things mundane as well as divine. How should you live? How should you love? How should you be remembered? 'Doing Ma'at' requires mastery just like any other skill we like to learn. In fact, 'doing Ma'at' is the ultimate human skill worthwhile living for.
Read MoreAnything 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.
Read More(...) 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.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreAs mages we are known to stand at crossroads. That's where we perform our best work - at that liminal place where two worlds, two forces, two beings intersect. In this post we will be exploring such a crossroad: the one where magic and modern artificial intelligence research intersect.
Read MoreIf you ever make it to Florence (Italy) the odds are high you'll be leaving without even having heard about this magical place. And yet walking along all the famous sights of this beautiful ancient city, you are never really more than a mile apart from this hidden gem.
Read MoreFearless 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.
Read MoreWhere 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. (...)
Read MoreOnce 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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