Zhongyongdaoist

Yes, but it is boring with a purpose. Though I must add that in comparison to Rudolf Steiner who was such a powerful soporific that a few minutes would get me ready for bed, Levi was really, really interesting!

Dullness is in the droopy eyelids of the beholder. Little Eddie grew up to be a master prose stylist, even today almost fifty years after I first bought Magick in Theory and Practice, when I reread sections of it I still marvel at how well written it is, but for all that, Crowley remained a prisoner of his childhood. Stripped of its pretension to science and mysticism, Thelema's formal structure mirror's that of the evangelical Protestantism of Crowley's youth with a couple of strategic inversions thrown in for rebelliousness sake. I am glad that Levi worked for you. I would read sections of it for years and thought about adapting it to practice, but my first experiences were derived from other sources and for the theory of Continental "Hermeticism", I much preferred Mouni Sadhu's The Tarot. It had more than enough coagula to solve (Rats! no grave accent, maybe it is undead.) to keep me entertained for some time.

I started reading it back in summer or fall of 1967. I found it so dull I never finished it. I read it because Crowley in Magick in Theory and Practice went on about it and about how he was Levi reincarnation. If that is so, then death certainly improved Levi. Though life did not improve little Eddie Alexander.

Judging by some later posts it looks like you have at least gone a little beyond this: Dismissing the whole of Warring States and Han religious, philosophical and mystical thought as "folk religion" is a more than a bit presumptuous. There are a lot of issues that you have raised since then and dealing with all of them in a satisfactory way would be rather time consuming. As a start I will point out that walking around the rim of the worlds wheel, all the spokes seem very different and it is hard to imagine how they all lead to the same hub. From the hub the view is very different. Empty your mind of vague beliefs masquerading as knowledge, grasp the one and never let go. Then you can begin to understand chapters 10 and 11 and how they relate to chapter 39. If I have time I may come back to address this topic and other topics in more detail.

You didn't go far enough to look at the pretty picture: Does that help?

Seth I didn't understand what you were looking for from your first post. My interest since high school has been in the application of modern mathematics to ancient philosophy and I recommended Ouspensky's treatment of four dimensional space for that reason. Aside from that I don't care that much for Ouspensky either and have sometimes both regretted that he met Gurdjieff and wondered what he might otherwise have achieved. In the early eighties two works stimulated an interest in ancient arithmetic, one pythagoreanfulllotus has mentioned and that is McClain's The Pythagorean Plato and and the other Oscar Marcel Hinze's Tantra Vidya. McClain has a website where PDFs of his two fundamental works, the aforementioned Pythagorean Plato and The Myth of Invariance can be downloaded. It is here: http://www.ernestmcclain.net/ To my surprise Tantra Vidya is still available: http://www.amazon.com/Tantra-Vidya-Oscar-Marcel-Hinze/dp/8120805240 I also found Greek Mathematical Philosophy by Edward A. Maziarz and Thomas Greenwood a useful supplement. It is more academic in its orientation, but fills in some interesting details. These are just some of the books that I read at the time. Unfortunately I am not familiar with a single book. The above books would be a good, stimulating beginning. This is in a sense an indirect reply to pythagoreanfulllotus' gleeful taunt: I already have, thirty or so years ago. Perhaps if pythagoreanfulllotus could give us more information on what exactly lead hm to this conclusion: It might be easier to understand him.

as a person who has read both a lot of Plato and the Neoplatonists and also Peter Kingsley Have you read his actual Ph.D? I am not prone to making idle or unsupportable claims, of course I have read Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic, his Phd thesis, and two other books, Reality and In the Dark Places of Wisdom. I have also read all the Platonic dialogues, except The Laws, of which I have read sections. How many of the Platonic dialogues have you read? serious deep level of mind control res ipsa loquitur A point which is not really satifactorally addressed by: Of course expertise in the PreSocratics requires expertise on Socratic philosophy Of course it doesn't, it requires only enough familiarity to be able to convincingly quote from and comment on secondary sources and their opinions about Plato. Socratic philosophy which is from Plato Plato learned from Socrates, how can Socratic philosophy be from Plato? Xenophon, Euclid of Megara and others made claims to represent Socratic philosophy, but I am sure you know all about that, it must have just slipped your mind for a moment. Maybe you want to provide some evidence of your claim against Kingsley being superficial? Please go back to what I said: Kingsley's critique of Plato is superficial and based on misunderstandings First of all I found many interesting and deeply researched ideas on the Pre-Socrates, but I found his criticism of Plato to be superficial and biased. It is Kingsley's critique of Plato which I found superficial, not his discussion of the Pre-Socratics. Maybe you want to provide some evidence of your claim against Kingsley being superficial I am not going to go back through his whole book to find examples of misunderstanding. I have chosen one since I think it will prove exemplary, but since it will require a somewhat longer discussion, added to this already long post, I will postpone it (yes a pun of sorts was intended) for another time. It is on page 80 of Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic and is part of discussion of myth and logos. The core is "...the positive certainty arrived at by reasoned arguement.", but this will require a little time of which I have already spent more than I care to on this matter. My discussion will appear in a few days. I suspect that most people who are impressed by Kingsly's, or for that matter Derrida's critique have not read much Plato, nor thought deeply about what little they have read I will close for now by asking again, how many of Plato's dialogues have you actually read?

I am sorry that I don't have much time to contribute to this thread now, but I will try to address a few issues quickly. I have been interested in the application of mathematics to mysticism and magic since I was a teenager in the late sixties. Thinking about Godel's Theorem was one of the reasons I decided to accept the Daodejing as a fundamental text. At the time I found Ouspensky's Tertium Organum very useful, at least in the early parts where he outlines the analogies between two dimensional space and three dimensional space and how the can help us to understand four dimensional space. I didn't find the rest as interesting from the mathematical perspective. With all due respect to pythagoreanfulllotus, as a person who has read both a lot of Plato and the Neoplatonists and also Peter Kingsley, I have to say that Kingsley's critique of Plato is superficial and based on misunderstandings of what Plato is really talking about. I suspect that most people who are impressed by Kingsly's, or for that matter Derrida's critique have not read much Plato, nor thought deeply about what little they have read. In the late seventies I embarked on a major study of the Platonic tradition, solely because I considered its important to understanding Western Magic as represented in Agrippa. My Previous experience with Plato left me with a negative impression, but after several years of study I came to the conclusion that aside from historical value of understanding the worldview of Agrippa, there was considerable value to Plato himself and the school of thought that derives from him. Among other things, unless you actually have read the dialogues, Plotinus will seem nothing but a confused, rambling geezer who can't make up his mind, but once you have some background in Aristotle, the Stoics and yes, Plato, it becomes clear that he is recounting and then refuting the positions of other schools and then defending and explicating the doctrines which are implied by the dialogues. I wish that I had more time to address these issues now, but I don't, maybe another time. ZYD

I have only had one such encounter recently, perhaps because I have lived in very hermitlike social isolation for a while now, but the fellow was without a doubt one of the rudest louts I have met in my life. Had he not been the son of a dear woman present at the dinner table, a longtime friend of the hostess, of this otherwise high class soiree, I would have intellectually vivisected him on the spot. As it was I could not get a polite word in edgewise. If I had wished to simply be as rude as he was, I would have started with something like this, "Look you dim witted troll, what you are saying is soooooooo Nineteenth Century as to be laughable, the least you can do is step into the first half of the twentieth Century and realize that even Special Relatively has made any position based on naive realism such as the materialist reductionism which you are mindlessly blathering about questionable to say the very least...." and continued from there through all the Philosophy, mathematics and physics that makes such a position look ridiculous and ending with with, "... all of which goes to show that your materialism doesn't know a 'Ding' about its 'an sich'". A charming bi-lingual pun involving a catch phrase of Kant. I don't think he would have gotten it. Right now I don't have time now to fill in between the ellipsis above, but I will try to squeeze in some time to create a reading list that will suitable and rigorously challenge the unexamined presuppositions of all reductive materialists and recommend some strategies for dealing with their kind. About theism and atheism, I don't care, I am an agnostic and have been since I first examined the matter when I was ten or twelve or somewhere in there, but materialism is both incorrect and pernicious and I do care about it and especially its false claim that it is somehow a "rational" position and that anyone who does not accept it is being "irrational". If I do something I will post it in contributed articles to keep it from being lost in a pile of posts and post a link here. Sorry to be so short, but as it is, this has taken up more time than I really could put into it now.

where does it say in the TTC that the TTC is the only knowledge worth living by? it might, but i never got that out of it personally... Funny neither did I. I'm sorry if you, or any one else, missed my attempt at sardonic wit, but I was attempting to lampoon the "Taoist" fundamentalism that I sometimes see here on the Tao Bums. I have actually seen that question posed in at least one post and sentiments that possess a rough equivalence to it expressed more often than I would care to. Personally, I don't even refer to the Daodejing as the TTC, but that's just me.

Well at least you are moving in the right direction. Karl Marx transformed the the dandified reductionism of French Encylopedie and the shambles that was the French Revolution into the most successful "Aggressive Evangelical Atheism" in history. Modern "Secular Humanism" is its smiley face version. The spirit of B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity lives on, hiding behind that smiley face, if not the outmoded behaviorist psychological model. These are all the descendants of Pierre Gassendi's 17th Century revival of Epicureanism combined with the Anti-clericalism of the 18th Century, non of which should be confused with reason or rationality as their "fundamentalist" followers would maintain. I would love to agree that "Fundamentalist anything is bad", but where does it say that in the TTC?

Thank you for the kindness of your post. Your words are as wise as they are discrete. At http://en.daoinfo.org/wiki/The_Five_Supreme_Commanders_of_the_Thunder_Agency It speaks of "Five Supreme Commanders" under the Heavenly Lord Puhua: And continues about: May I ask, is this the "God Deng" to whom you are referring? Other sources describe his appearance in a way similar to what you describe. I have also seen paintings that would indicate they are the same.

The Heavenly Lord Puhua aka, Thunder Patriarch, is probably meant, among other things the Thunder Bureau has 81 floors, the other fellow is a pre-Daoist nature deity with roots in popular religion, he could probably help with weather magic and maybe arrange introductions, but Thunder Magic is high level Daoist Military magic and not something to be taken lightly. Edit, corrected typo Puahua to Puhua.

Well, since you asked, to a person like myself with decades of study and experience with astrology "East and West", unless your have unwittingly misrepresented him, he sounds ignorant and pretentious. Ignorant because he didn't know that Western astrology has had subdivisions of the signs since the Hellenistic period and all he did was "reinvent the wheel". Call then decans, decanates, faces or whatever, such a ten degree subdivision of each sign has been in use for a long time in the West. It is usually thought to be an adaptation of the Egyptian calendar system. As for Western signs being off by 23 degrees, this is a difference that arises between what is usually called the Tropical and the Sidereal Zodiacs. Western Astrology is based on the Tropical Zodiac which is defined by the relation between the Earth's equator and the ecliptic. The ecliptic is defined by the tilt of the Earth's axis and is what determines the season. The ecliptic is the Sun's apparent path during the year. Spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun passes over the Earth's equator going from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern one. This exact day is called the Vernal Equinox because the day and night are of equal duration, and is the beginning of the sign of Aries in the Western or Tropical Zodiac. Thus the Western Zodiac is based on fundamental relations of space and time which determine the seasons and also the cycle of eclipses, which, by the way, is why the ecliptic is called the ecliptic. Whenever the sun and moon are both "on the ecliptic", new or full moons are eclipses. Seems like a long time ago someone noticed that the bright star Spica was setting at sunrise around the Vernal Equinox. So the setting of the Spica became a marker of the beginning of Spring. That pesky precession of the Equinoxes changed all that though and now the setting of Spica no longer corresponds to the Vernal Equinox. Oh well, things change I guess. However, the opposite point to Spica is the beginning of the ancient Indian Mansion's of the Moon and thus the Indian Sidereal Zodiac. So the question is, what is more important, that Spica happened to be setting on the Vernal Equinox for a couple of Centuries two thousand or so years ago or a basic pattern derived from the relation between the Sun and the Earth that determines the seasons? As a curious aside, I will note that Spica is important to the Chinese Lunar Mansions also, but it seems to be quit independent of Indian usages. By the way there is a common misconception that Western Astrologers were ignorant of the precession of the Equinoxes and the Sidereal Zodiac. Far from it, both were known from Hellenistic times. The precession of the Equinoxes was termed the motion of the eighth Sphere and is mentioned in the Middle Ages in Sacrobosco's De Sphaera, the standard astronomical text from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries. Agrippa mentions the motion of the Eighth Sphere in both his Vanity of Arts and Sciences and in his Occult Philosophy, where he mentions the difference between the two Zodiacs and says that for purposes of working with the Arabic Lunar Mansions in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac. Somewhere between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the Precession and the Sidereal Zodiac where lost to Western astrologers, but in terms of astrological practice it wasn't much of a loss. The Sidereal Zodiac was reintroduced to Western Astrology by Cyril Fagan in the mid Twentieth Century and has enjoyed a certain vogue among people who think it is more "scientific", of course a modern astronomer is going to consider either zodiac laughable and the notion that any astrology could be "scientific", ridiculous. As a final note, I will mention that the oldest surviving work in Sanskrit dealing with astrology is called the Yavanajataka and is an account of Western Hellenistic Astrology, yavana being Sanskrit for the Greeks, and is the practical basis for all subsequent Indian astrology. The only native aspect that survives is the Nakshatra's or Mansions of the Moon. which probably explains why the Indians astrologers continued to uses the Sidereal Zodiac long after astronomy had left them behind. I have tried to condense the above as much as possible, there is much more that could be said, but I don't have time now to enter into any extended discussion of these matters. I hope that you and others find the above interesting and useful.

Oh, it was already way ridiculous. If I hadn't watched this movie: http://www.musicboxfilms.com/oss-117--cairo--nest-of-spies-movies-32.php?page_id=17 on Netflix last night, I couldn't have made my suggestion. Why did I watch this movie? My uncle was in the OSS and worked with The Resistance in France. The family even has pictures of Charles DeGaulle pinning the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'honneur on him. After WWII he joined the CIA and was assigned to the Mediterranean office. He used to have lunch with King Farouk, who supposed niece plays a part in this film. So he would have known the whole "nest of spies", that was Cairo. So because of a "weird" personal connection, I watched a movie that gave me an answer to your question, the night you ask it.... Ha! That's Ridiculous. As a side note, even with subtitles the film is hilarious. It's also kind of ridiculous that, "his wife Josette Bruce (signing as "J.Bruce") wrote 143 OSS 117 novels before retiring in 1985. Starting in 1987, Bruce's daughter Martine and her husband François wrote 23 more OSS 117 books."

Try this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_117 There has been a resurgence of interest in this character, well know in French pop culture and one of the the possible sources of inspiration for 007, of worldwide fame.

As much as I like humor, there is good humor and bad, by which I mean there is humor that opens the mind and humor that closes it. Stove's work seems to be the rallying flag of a dying way of thinking, one which is scientifically obsolete and for which really there never was much in the way of scientific proof so much as the fossilization of 17th Century fashions in thought. I don't have time to say much more than that now, but I will provide the following references. First the Wikipedia page of Henry Stapp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stapp Whose papers archived at the at the Lawrence Berkely Laboratory where he works, can be found here: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html I recommend reading: Quantum Theory of Mind: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/QTM.doc and Quantum theory in neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind/brain interaction: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/PTRS.pdf as good starting points. Good luck, good reading, goodbye for now.

I hope to wind this up soon, if not with this post, then only one more. Aside from the late dating of most of the manuscripts of the Lemegeton, there is another reason to argue for it being a relatively late collection and that is the fact that all of the its constituent books are mentioned elsewhere, but never as part of a larger work. Also important are the people who mention them. In his Vanity of Arts and Sciences, Agrippa mentions both the Pauline Art and Almadel and if I recall correctly the Ars Notoria in a section on theurgy, and his chapter on black magic is called Goecia (Goetia). His student Wier (Latinized as Wierus) gives most of the hierarchy that eventually appears in the Lemegeton's Goetia, in his own account, the Pseudo-Monarchia Daemonorum, which Wierus says is from a much older work, a De Officium Spiritum, which as I recall in my original, I cite a reference in E. M. Butler's Ritual Magic placing this work in the middle of the 13th Century. However by the time the time that the Goetia emerges, Wierus list of 69 spirits has changed a little and grown to 72, a number of some importance. Finally the spirit hierarchy of the Theurgia-Goetia is taken from Agrippa's principle teacher, the Abbot Trithemius. All of which indicates that every element that became part of the Lemegeton was known by people closely related by teacher student relationships. I proposed in my 1980 article that a group either started by Agrippa or students of his, put these texts together in order to have a workbook for magic within an Agirppan framework. I also speculated that since Agrippa died in France (some of the Lemegeton manuscripts are in French) this group might have originated there and may have ended out in England because they were Protestants and during most of the 16ht and 17th Centuries the situation for Protestants in France was unpredictable and ever changing to say the least. In order to demonstrate the point I was trying to make, I made the following equations: Almadel = Sigillum Dei Aemuth as and approach to the super celestial wold Pauline Art = Tabalu Bonorum/Heptarchia Mystica as an approach to Planetary Magic. Theurgia-Goetia = 30 Aires as an approach to the magic of the medium between Heaven and Earth. Goetia = the Evil spirits drawn from the lower parts of the Lesser Angles of the Four Watchtowers. What is missing is a book of elemental magic, why that would be is not clear, but at the least the above equations point strongly in the direction of an attempt to create a magical workbook, that may have originated in a Protestant branch of Agrippa's French students who emigrated to England to escape the religious turmoil that existed in their native France. In the article I also solved some problems which the original author to whom I was replying left unanswered, such as why the example seals which were given in the Lemegeton's Pauline Art, spoke of the tenth of March as the day that the Sun entered Aries. As a well read astrologer interested in the intricacies of astrological calculation, even writing programs for my own hand held calculators, marvels of the time, but a modern cell phone was more computing power, I was familiar with the history of the Calendar and knew that the discrepancy could be explained by the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar being sponsored by the Pope and adopted universally in Catholic countries in 1583, and was naturally suspect among Protestants. Protestant England did not adopt it until 1752. The Pauline Art also requires that one know the sign on the cusp of the 12th house of a chart, but there are several systems for calculating this and the main one used by English speaking astrologers since the 19th Century, that of Placidus, was not even created until the mid 17th Century and only introduced to England in the Late 17th Century. So one of the earlier systems had to have been used. I figured out from the examples which sign had to be on the 12th house cusp and then compared the 12th houses cusps for several systems at the longitude of London and arrived at the conclusion that it was probably the system of Regiomontanus. I also pointed out that the origin of the seals of the Zodiac that are given in the second part of the Pauline Art is probably the Archidoxes of Magic of Paracelsus, another interesting point. Well that is about as good an account as I can give from memory now, almost 33 years later. I hope this account is reasonable satisfactory to BaquaKicksAss, whose query set it in motion. Obviously to some people not familiar with the some of the technical language some of this series of posts must seem confusing. I am sorry for that, but as I mentioned at the beginning I am summarizing almost 30 pages and I cannot take the time to address all questions that these posts might generate. While working on these posts, I have had some other ideas which I may add as a postscript to these posts to summarize and point in some new directions.

Goku is Sun Wukong a great hero of Chinese literature. Whatever his origin in Chinese folklore, and his popularization in the Dragon Ball Z series, if he did not have a life of his own before, he has now. Check out the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong

I have always approached divination creatively. The oracle/fortunetelling distinction is a relatively early result, circa 1970. I started applying information theory to improve divination, both in theory and practice circa 1980. This lead to changes in the way that I used the Tarot as well as Western Geomancy, which I have taken so for outside of the bare bones that one learned in the books of the period that most people who fancy they know it would be astonished. It is an amazing system, especially if you bear in mind what I have said regarding using divination systems as magical systems. In any case, I liked what you said.

Excellent post OldGreen. In my early twenties I worked on a system of self analysis based on one's astrological chart. It was part of my early exploration of astrological magic, which I approached through images drawn, literally and figuratively from ones chart. They were literally drawn because this was one of my first forays into art and magic and of course figuratively because the idea drew (there is that literal and figurative and again!) on the long standing Western tradition of creating images based on the symbolism of ones chart. The images were to be used much like tarot cards have been, as doorways for visionary exploration, in this case of oneself. Like the tarot the language of astrology is richer than Bardon's elemental analysis, but because of the elemental attributes of the signs and planets could be related to that also, so that one could use Bardon as a starting point. What I particularly like about your suggestions is the use of the tarot as an Oracle and not as a mere fortunetelling tool. Long ago I made a distinction between an Oracle and fortunetelling. The distinction arose because of my thinking about the difference between the Tarot and the Yi Jing. Generally speaking the Tarot is used to forecast future events, but the Yi Jing provides advice for behaving in a way that will produce good results, it is advice based upon an analysis of a core structure of the Cosmos with a view to "proper" behavior, but "proper" behavior in this sense always means behavior that produces good results. Your suggestion lifts the Tarot up to this level and also because of the astrological attributes of the Tarot cards it could also be used in conjunction with an astrological chart, a possibility which, like virtue may have its own rewards. However, after all of my years of study, practice and reflection, I think that one of the most valuable exercises in self-knowledge is the systematic analysis of ones beliefs. Most people confuse opinion/beliefs with knowledge. Every schoolboy and girl "knows", that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo. This "knowledge" however is just a belief, very likely what Plato would call a "true" belief, but a belief nonetheless. The same is true about beliefs about science, Buddhism, the Dao and even what a lot of people, especially here on the Tao Bums, believe to most sacrosanct, ones own experience, because to say, "I have experienced it, therefore it is true", tells us a lot about one's beliefs about the veracity of one's experiences, but nothing about the truth of the experience itself, while asserting an infallibility that would make the Pope blush.

Do you mean like Aleister Crowley and Choronzon?

I am sorry for the delay in getting this post up, this last weekend was much more hectic than I thought and gave me little time to work on or think about these posts. Being pressed for time I forgot to mention in my last post as a matter of comparison to what BaquoKicksAss mentioned about how much she and her friends had paid a decade or so ago, that circa 1977 or 78 my friend paid about $100.00 for the British Library microfilms that were to prove so interesting. So let's look at the parts of Enochian Magic and see how they relate to the structure of the cosmos as conceived of in the Renaissance. The highest level is represented by Dee's Sigillum Dei Aemuth, which as you may recall from a previous post probably corresponds to the Seal of God that is used to achieve the vision of the God in the Sworn Book of Honorius. It is largely formed from names of the Angels of the seven planets, which in turn yield other names, etc. This corresponds to the divine hierarchy and to the Super Celestial world. Next is the Tabula Bonorum (Table of the Good) and its forty-nine spirits which are assigned the days of the week and represents the powers of the planets as they relate to and affect the earth. This would be where one would to practical Astrological Magic, it corresponds to the astrological magic of the Sworn Book, which is similar to the Magical Elements attributed to Peter D'Abano. Next is the Four Watchtowers and the Fifth Table of Union. The Watchtowers are interpreted two ways, if they are read one way the yield the names of the ninety-one Governors of the Thirty Aires, which are each seven letters long and are arranged into a pattern which is the seal that calls them. They are attributed to the signs of the Zodiac and here we have a type of magic which deals with the distribution of the planetary energies throughout the world, through power of the Zodiac. Interpret the tables another way as a series of crosses which define squares or lesser angles within the watchtowers and you have the names of a large number of spirits who rule the elements. The Heptangle Books edition of the Sworn Book did start to introduce an account of Elemental Spirits and the rites for summoning them, but the manuscripts from which it was compiled and translated did not have that section complete, so the editor added some invocations and Conjurations from other sources. Finally are a number of evil spirits whose names can be derived from the lowest division of the Watchtowers themselves. Each of them are made up from two of the four letters that define the names of the good spirits of who are beneath the Cross in each lesser angle. I am sorry that the above must seem confusing to someone not familiar with the material and without illustrations. Off hand I don't know of any web sites that have a more detailed account of this material and as I am pressed for time I am not going to go look for one. My only intent here is to outline the big picture as it were, and show how perfectly it corresponds to the Renaissance worldview. The above hardly does justice to the intricate way in which the various parts of the system interlock. If you have been paying attention you will see that the Enochian System has some overlaps with aspects of the Sworn Book of Honorius. This in itself is interesting because the Sworn Book is definitely a Medieval system. So it was to this Enochian System onto which I chose to map the books of the Lemegeton to show how the four or in some manuscripts, five books of the Lemegeton could have been chosen by Renaissance magicians to meet their needs in practicing the various disciplines of magic as conceived of in the Renaissance. That will have to wait until next time though, when I hope to draw this account of my article to a close.

Overall a fine post Seth. It is similar to my own experience/understanding, and generally well said. If I had chosen to post a such a guide it would have been very similar. I would have probably added some meta-level context and cross-cultural comparison, but otherwise I would have said about the same thing.

I am a little pressed for time, but will attempt to address some of the issues raised. The Western tradition is not responsible for the type of idiots attracted to it. Regrettably for these types of people there is no "magical thinking" in Magic, just hard work, study and discipline. When I was teaching, my public lectures attracted much more intelligent students then the average, still I stopped teaching magic because of general mentality of the "aspirant". A better title for your original thread might have been "Stupidity in potential students of the the Western Tradition?". With all due respect Viator, Crowley is a poor choice in the sense that he does not represent the "tradition”, he may be the most influential person on the magical revival of the 20th century, but he is an example of East/West syncretism, not the tradition. By his own account his introduction to mental discipline was from an experience with the famed mountain climber Oscar Eckenstein, and he continued his studies with Allen Bennett, his mentor in the Golden Dawn, after Bennett had decamped to Ceylon and converted to Buddhism. The Hindu/Buddhist type of mental discipline which Crowley learned is not the same as what would have been emphasized in the Western Tradition, since the Indian traditions take as their starting point a position similar to that of Parmenides, usually refered to as "mind only" or the atomism of Democritus, usually called "the doctrine of aggregates". In the West these were superceded by the Platonic Contemplative tradition originally described in Plato's Symposium as the “ascent to the Vision of the Beautiful”. The idea of which is to turn the mind to the source “ideas” which are the generative principles both of our mental experience and of the world which we experience through sense. The result is a transformative experience which connects us a co-creators with the creative power behind the Cosmos. I could cite a lot of passages from Agrippa, the late Platonists and the Hermetica to support this, but I don't have time now. On a practical level one should investigate the “art of memory” a technique that was used by rhetoricians in the Hellenistic period to remember the topics of speeches, but since magical invocations and conjurations can be conceived of as a type of as a type of Rhetoric, and by the way, Plato makes the reverse comparison, seeing rhetoric as a type of spell or enchantment, the ancient practitioners would have been sure to adopt such techniques. The chief tool of the Art of Memory, the memory palace, had a big revival in the Renaissance among Hermetic and Neo-Platonic thinkers. The most famous of which was probably Giordano Bruno. For an interesting read see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory. I also found Jonathan Spence's study of Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit missionary to enter China, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, a fascinating read in itself, as well as a good discussion of the theory and practice of memory palaces, though much indebted to Yates. My own “Feng Shui Meditation” which I developed for Inner Sage Tao, is just a memory palace based on the feng shui compass. I hope this information is interesting and useful.