Magical Challenge

[RiverSnake]

DP

Edited October 31, 2014 by OldChi

[Esteam'd Punk]

That seems 1337! If I had to choose, I'd choose that guy Dantalian from the Goetia.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

OldChi,

I hope that you won't mind if, first I decline your challenge and second I borrow your thread for a moment to talk about:

..that guy Dantalian from the Goetia.

The reason for the first is because of I am of that old school that believes that discretion in these matters is important and as such I limit myself to long, boring, but informative, well least to the patient, posts on history and theory. Well at least I hope that they are informative, to the patient, at least.

How old of an old school it is can be gleaned from the fact that this summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of my making the acquaintance of “that guy Dantalian” aforementioned. Yes, fifty years ago as a lad of twelve I bought A. E. Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic.

Nowadays that might not seem unusual, but in those old pre Harry Potter days it definitely marked one out as rather odd. In those ancient pre internet times you also actually had to go to a bookstore! Yes, a real brick and mortar bookstore, preferably large ones with bookshelves that went high over the head of adults much less kids, such as myself, the heights of which could only be scaled by ladders which could be repositioned along the shelves.

Books like Waite's and Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice, which I bought the next week, always had prices of $10.00 printed on the dust jacket, but in practice were always marked down to $4.95. This seems modest today, but correcting for inflation since 1963, it's more like fifty or more of today's dollars.

So, that's how old school I am. As for the second and Dantalian, all the spirits that taught something were of interest to me and there was something odd about the description of Dantalian who “appears in the form of a man with many faces of men and women.” (Waite op. cit. p. 219)

Which brings us back to our esteemed new member, Esteam'd Punk's interest in Dantalian.

Since she seems a bright young woman, I thought I might introduce her to the work of a bright older woman, Sarah Rappe, who in her essay Self-knowledge and subjectivity in the Enneads in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus has a very interesting discussion on Plotinus' using the image of a sphere as an object of contemplation. It begins on p. 261 and ends on page 262 this way:

Plotinus uses ... a simple illuminated sphere, although at times, this shape can represent an individual head, or a head peering out by means of the faces of all sentient beings.³³ (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

This is a curious presentiment of the appearance of Dantalian isn't it? Her note 33 refers us to VI.7.15.25-26

Which as everyone knows means:
VI Ennead Six, On the Kinds of Being
7 Seventh Chapter, On How the Multitude of Forms came into Being and on the Good
15 is the subsection of Chapter Seven
25-26 are the lines in the original Greek which faces the English from which I will quote at length to give it context:

Whatever it generated, then, was the power of the Good and had the form of good, and Intellect itself is good from [the many] which have the form of good, a good richly varied. And so, if one likens it to a living richly varied sphere or imagines it as a thing all faces, shining with living faces, or as all the pure souls running together into the same place, with no deficiencies but having all that is their own, and universal Intellect seated on their summits so that the region is illuminated by intellectual light—if one imagined it like this one would be seeing it somehow as one sees another from outside; but one must become that, and make oneself the contemplation. (Plotinus, Enneads, Vol 7, p. 137, Loeb Classical Library. Translation, A. H. Armstrong. Emphasis mine, ZYD)

In reponse to Esteam's Punk's request:

Got any topics to recommend?

I recommended my thread "Theurgia-Goetia, on Gods and Demons", from which I will now quote:

The Gods as the Gods cannot be summoned by Goetia, they can only be invoked by the art of Theurgy which through refining our awareness reveals our fundamental kinship with the Gods and allows us to enter into communion with them. What is evoked by Goetia is a dim and distant reflection, powerful perhaps to achieve certain effects, but dangerous as a ravenous tiger. It is only profound achievement in the art of Theurgy which can allow one to successfully and and safely perform Goetic rites...

And now a certain method to my madness may be clear. Obviously Plotinus is not referring to meditation on Dantalian, but rather to divine being itself, Dantalian is just such a “dim and distant reflection” as I mentioned above. The many spirits of the Goetia have appearances that are images of natural things or their supernatural equivalents in the case of spirit 37, Phoenix. Where would such an image as Dantalian come from? Somehow or other I don't think that the authors of the Goetia and the collections which proceeded it had a copy of Plotinus sitting around to inspire them. It is a curious mystery.

To conclude, Plotinus himself concludes saying, “one must become that, and make oneself the contemplation.”

Weeeeeell, I'm just gonna save myself the brain ache and embrace the mystery. Great post, though.

Weeeeeell, Esteam'd Punk, now you have a mystery to embrace, I don't know whether it will save you any brain ache though.

OldChi, I hope you and others find the above interesting enough that it makes up both for its length and its being rather off topic.

 

Edit: I realized when I got up this morning that I had been unwittingly misspelling OldChi's handle as Old Qi, roughly, but not exactly the same. No offense was intended and I hope none was taken.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Zhongyongdaoist

[DragonsNectar69k]

@Zhongyongdaoist,

 

Theurgy (from Greek θεουργία) describes the practice of rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature, performed with the intention of invoking the action or evoking the presence of one or more gods, especially with the goal of uniting with the divine, achieving henosis, and perfecting oneself.

 

What have your expierences been like with the art of Theurgy. Specifically the last part, concerning the perfection of oneself, what does that mean to you?

[theurgy]

OP: I know Andrieh Vitimus personally and while I have great compassion for him, I cannot endorse him as a competent guide in these matters. His New Age approach will lead you nowhere. There is even someone posting in this very thread who could teach you so much more (note: I do not mean myself). Hint: he also goes by the name Donald

[RiverSnake]

OP: I know Andrieh Vitimus personally and while I have great compassion for him, I cannot endorse him as a competent guide in these matters. His New Age approach will lead you nowhere. There is even someone posting in this very thread who could teach you so much more (note: I do not mean myself). Hint: he also goes by the name Donald

I have not practiced any of his methods nor read any of his books as I am not neccesarily a fan of Chaos Magic, I am quite satisfied with my neigong practices. However, I do respect him as an experienced occultist and as someone whom is not an armchair practitioner....but actually does a lot of intensive work, therefore I feel that what he shares is of value.

 

Also, despite the fact that I lean very heavily towards Mysticism (Internal Alchemy) in my work and he leans toward practical magic in his approach, I still think there is a time and place for everything and I can say from listening to his shows I have learned a lot.

 

The people in this Magical Challenge are not confined to using his methods. It is interesting to hear the benefits and experiences they recieve from working with the entity they choose as well as their methodology, definitely worth listening to.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

Edited July 25, 2013 by OldChi

[Zhongyongdaoist]

On 7/23/2013 at 11:45 PM, theurgy said:

OP: I know Andrieh Vitimus personally and while I have great compassion for him, I cannot endorse him as a competent guide in these matters. His New Age approach will lead you nowhere. There is even someone posting in this very thread who could teach you so much more (note: I do not mean myself). Hint: he also goes by the name Donald

I can only assume that this is in reference to myself, though maybe I have missed something and my idol Donald Tyson is now posting among us.

 

If this is intended for me then thank you for your vote of confidence. I don't take compliments well. In person I have a modesty that certainly does not come through in my serious writing, which I believe should be written in a style as authoritative as one can manage. In person I am prone to dismissing complements with a little self deprecating humor, such as my comment about Mr. Chicken.

 

Not knowing how to reply is my only defense for taking so long in acknowledging your generous comment.

 

 

 

 

Edit: Sometime back a person referred to my reference to Donald Tyson as my idol as if had meant it seriously, I was being very facetious, I have elsewhere on the Tao Bums been extremely critical of him, summoning as much politeness as I can, I consider him a pompous, pretension twit.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I have not practiced any of his methods nor read any of his books as I am not neccesarily a fan of Chaos Magic, I am quite satisfied with my neigong practices. However, I do respect him as an experienced occultist and as someone whom is not an armchair practitioner....but actually does a lot of intensive work, therefore I feel that what he shares is of value.

 

Also, despite the fact that I lean very heavily towards Mysticism (Internal Alchemy) in my work and he leans toward practical magic in his approach, I still think there is a time and place for everything and I can say from listening to his shows I have learned a lot.

 

The people in this Magical Challenge are not confined to using his methods. It is interesting to hear the benefits and experiences they recieve from working with the entity they choose as well as their methodology, definitely worth listening to.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

 

OldChi,

 

I don't know what your problem is with an “armchair practitioner”, one could do a great deal of say, Bardonian training and magic in an armchair. I have done some myself, though my present mode is seated in a lotus posture, not in an armchair of course, it is hard to do a lotus in an armchair, with my cute and adorable Chinese style short sword across my knees with the pummel cupped in my right had which forms the sword mudra and the tip of its scabbard cupped in my left hand in such a way that my left thumb is free to trace out star stepping and trigram patterns according to the Houtu or the twelve earthly branches on my fingers according to the Daoist old school single handed mudras. This has been my preferred form for about fifteen years. Though I do others depending on what style I am practicing.

 

Oh, but excuse me, perhaps you meant to type “armchair occultist”! A very pejorative term for a person who is all talk and no action. It's a good thing I am not and never really have considered myself an occultist, otherwise I might think that you intend to characterize me as such and be offended. If I had to describe the odd combination of science nerd and budding magician that I was in my teens, I would have to call myself an occult scientist, because my whole approach was strongly conditioned by the type of dialectic between theory and practice which characterizes the scientific method. As such my research program and the hows and whys of what studies I pursued and practices which I performed were never understood, much less appreciated by my “occultist” friends. There are probably people here who don't and maybe can't understand them either.

 

I have stated elsewhere as part of a long series of posts, that I consider theory and practice inseparable. I choose to post on the Tao Bums almost exclusively on historical and theoretical issues because there are not many people who can do it well and there are important issues of theory and history which are completely misunderstood. I have only so much time to post here and I chose to post on what I consider is most important. On the other had there are is a lot of posting on the internet of the experiences of people who may be fools, madmen and/or just plain liars. I will not pour my experiences into such a polluted stream. Then there are the comments of people who, like the children of the King of Siam, mock their poor English tutor for trying to educate them about ice and snow, until their Father the King enters and allows as how he has seen such things himself, thus settling the issue. Who is to be the King of Siam here? Who will silence the mocking chatter of the children? It is useless to share ones experiences with people who live in their little tiny hermit crab shells and fancy that they know everything that there is to know. I write the way I do, about the things I do, so that anyone can check sources out for themselves. I write in a logical well formed style to demonstrate that these matters can be dealt with reasonably and that my posts are not the incoherent blathering of someone who has not taken their "meds" today. If someone wishes to disregard what I say because they make the mistake of believing that it is not the fruit of hard won experience, as well as deep and profound study, that is their loss, not mine.

[RiverSnake]

OldChi,

I don't know what your problem is with an “armchair practitioner”, one could do a great deal of say, Bardonian training and magic in an armchair. I have done some myself, though my present mode is seated in a lotus posture, not in an armchair of course, it is hard to do a lotus in an armchair, with my cute and adorable Chinese style short sword across my knees with the pummel cupped in my right had which forms the sword mudra and the tip of its scabbard cupped in my left hand in such a way that my left thumb is free to trace out star stepping and trigram patterns according to the Houtu or the twelve earthly branches on my fingers according to the Daoist old school single handed mudras. This has been my preferred form for about fifteen years. Though I do others depending on what style I am practicing.

Oh, but excuse me, perhaps you meant to type “armchair occultist”! A very pejorative term for a person who is all talk and no action. It's a good thing I am not and never really have considered myself an occultist, otherwise I might think that you intend to characterize me as such and be offended. If I had to describe the odd combination of science nerd and budding magician that I was in my teens, I would have to call myself an occult scientist, because my whole approach was strongly conditioned by the type of dialectic between theory and practice which characterizes the scientific method. As such my research program and the hows and whys of what studies I pursued and practices which I performed were never understood, much less appreciated by my “occultist” friends. There are probably people here who don't and maybe can't understand them either.

I have stated elsewhere as part of a long series of posts, that I consider theory and practice inseparable. I choose to post on the Tao Bums almost exclusively on historical and theoretical issues because there are not many people who can do it well and there are important issues of theory and history which are completely misunderstood. I have only so much time to post here and I chose to post on what I consider is most important. On the other had there are is a lot of posting on the internet of the experiences of people who may be fools, madmen and/or just plain liars. I will not pour my experiences into such a polluted stream. Then there are the comments of people who, like the children of the King of Siam, mock their poor English tutor for trying to educate them about ice and snow, until their Father the King enters and allows as how he has seen such things himself, thus settling the issue. Who is to be the King of Siam here? Who will silence the mocking chatter of the children? It is useless to share ones experiences with people who live in their little tiny hermit crab shells and fancy that they know everything that there is to know. I write the way I do, about the things I do, so that anyone can check sources out for themselves. I write in a logical well formed style to demonstrate that these matters can be dealt with reasonably and that my posts are not the incoherent blathering of someone who has not taken their "meds" today. If someone wishes to disregard what I say because they make the mistake of believing that it is not the fruit of hard won experience, as well as deep and profound study, that is their loss, not mine.

Jesus dude, I wasn't even referring to you. I have no idea what you practice. What I mean by armchair practitioner is someone whom just reads books but never gains any real practical experience with whatever they are doing. Those whom are stuck in Hod.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

[Apech]

Jesus dude, I wasn't even referring to you. I have no idea what you practice. What I mean by armchair practitioner is someone whom just reads books but never gains any real practical experience with whatever they are doing. Those whom are stuck in Hod.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

 

 

Stuck in Hod ... I like that phrase and shall use it now

[Zhongyongdaoist]

@Zhongyongdaoist,

 

Theurgy (from Greek θεουργία) describes the practice of rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature, performed with the intention of invoking the action or evoking the presence of one or more gods, especially with the goal of uniting with the divine, achieving henosis, and perfecting oneself.

 

What have your expierences been like with the art of Theurgy. Specifically the last part, concerning the perfection of oneself, what does that mean to you?

 

The definition you offer of Theurgy is not mine, so I am not bound to it, I will however take a little time to address some of the issues which you raise.

 

I find the definition way too pious and it misses part of the sheer hermitic "cheekiness" involved in the term theurgy, which should be viewed in this way: theurgy is the the inverse of demiurgy. Demiurgy is the making of people and refers to the actions which Plato describes in his Timaeus in which the “Demiurge”, literally “people maker”, creates the human soul as part of a class of souls that includes the gods. He then turns over the creation of mortal bodies to the “secondary causes”, so that these bodies can be mortal and destructible and not indestructible and at least relatively immortal like the soul. Theurgy then is "god making", in which the mortal inhabitants of this world, who have been gifted with the art, make the material bodies of the Gods. This is detailed in the Hermetic work Asclepius, or Perfect Sermon, a work named after its principle interlocutor with Hermes. A theurgist is literally a “god maker”, an idea which poor, perhaps overly pious, Asclepius, finds hard to accept.

 

The details can be found here:

 

http://hermetic.com/texts/hermetica/asclepius1.html

 

I could tell you where to find exact passages, but you and other people might benefit from finding them yourselves. In the relevant passages, there are at least two of great importance, where this hermetic author basically turns Xenophanes criticism of the anthropomorphism of the gods on its head and makes it instead a celebration of the kinship between the encosmic gods and man, thus the Hermetic cheekiness of it all.

 

There is more I could say about it, but I am infringing on OldChi's territory as it is. If you read my reply to him you will see why I will not post anything about or comment on my experiences.

 

As for what I consider to be self perfection, I find it best represented in the Mencian branch of Confucianism as interpreted within the context of Zhuxi's “Four Books”. This core and other aspects of Confucian and Daoist thought and practice, is then in turn interpreted within the framework of the Platonic tradition, particularly as explicated by Plotinus, but not neglecting either Iamblichus, for his development of the religious and magical aspects of Platonism, or the profound thought of Proclus, who in many ways brings it all together. For want of a better term I call it Confucian Neo-Platonism. A term which because of the misunderstanding of both of these profound schools of thought is probably more misleading than helpful, but that is the best that I can offer in this small a compass.

 

On a level of practice I have humorously described it as Cornelius Agrippa meets the Golden Dawn in Medieval China, which includes the Daoist magical and alchemical meditative practices which I have integrated into it. It is much less of a hodge-podge then it probably sounds on first hearing, since the Golden Dawn Temple and the Daoist Dan turn out to be complementary formal systems.

 

I hope that you find all of this sufficiently edifying, I don't have time to say much more now.

[RiverSnake]

DP

Edited October 31, 2014 by OldChi

[RiverSnake]

DP

Edited October 31, 2014 by OldChi

[RiverSnake]

I found this to be an excellent podcast on some fundamental tips and safety precautions when pursuing evocation. Very good stuff:

 

http://deeper-down-the-rabbit-hole.com/2014/02/bonus-episode-stephanie-connolly-andrieh-vitimus-talk-safety-magical-30-challenge/

 

My 2 cents, Peace

Edited March 4, 2014 by OldChi

[RiverSnake]

I didn't realize The Magickal Challenge is back on. Andrieh has a new sit and everything as well as a fb group where people are posting. May jump on in. 

 

http://www.magical30.com