Ok I just want to start off my venting-session with an obvious statement...Magicians make for very difficult friends. We are all very opinionated and passionate, which makes it difficult to avoid step on some toes or follow the general rules of politeness. And well, then there is the competitive nature that is ever present in our conversations with each other. I really hate the latter.
Moving on..
When I was a qabbalistic magician my day was full of small Golden Dawn based rituals which I really enjoyed doing, but there was hardly any practical work I did. Now as a Neo-platonic/grimoiric magician I do mostly practical work and absolutely no daily rituals. I miss the daily rituals of my former magical career.
I have tried to create however, a few rituals that incorporate Neo-platonic concepts rather than qabbalistic formulas, but they either fall flat or I resort to filling in the gaps with qabbalistic formulas again. Sigh, I really do miss the daily rituals though, so I will keep trying to construct them.
The Great Work Through: Grimoires, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Occultism, Magic, Astrology, Spirits, Conjurations, Evocations, and etc.
Heh, I totally understand what you mean here. When you're doing mostly specific and practical work out of grimoires within the Neo-Platonic/Hermetic framework based on initiation into the spheres, ascension, spirit conjure, etc, there's really no framework for daily rituals.
ReplyDeleteBut ya know what? Consider this, the Golden Dawn as an outer order was never a magickal order in the sense of "practicality", so the ritual focus was mostly theurgical (is that a word?) and focused on strengthening and cleansing/balancing the sphere of the magician, and the practical work is mostly in the inner order, R.R. et A.C.
RO would kill me for this, or just laugh, but I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to continue using those rituals. Like you, I have a need for daily ritual work. And I honestly believe basic things like the LBRP, LBRH, MP, etc are great for centering and keeping me connected.
Unless you are averse to those rituals nowadays, I see no reason why you can't still use them. The Qabalah and Neo-Platonic philosophy have enough in common.
Yeah, I could theoretically still use those rituals.
ReplyDeleteBut I would really prefer new ones which didn't rely on the qabbala or the egregore of the Golden Dawn, AA/OTO. I'm not against the wider concepts of those rituals, just the specific elements of them which are qabbalistic. I'm not even against qabbala as I have spent many many years under that paradigm, I am just trying to be a little bit more consistent in my practice as I have chosen to go down the route of neoplatonism instead.
On a side note I have read that a lot of grimoiric mages have dumped the theurgic-visualization rituals of the Golden Dawn, claiming that the visualizations are just a form of mental masturbation and have little or nothing to do with real spirit conjuration.
It may not directly, but Agrippa states something like the phantasies(visualizations/imagination) stir the passions of the mind and thus acts upon the soul and produces effects. Of course those aren't the exact words. I would have to locate that later..So dropping visualization based rituals is a mistake in my opinion as it is a tool of a magician. And really isn't receiving visions psychically just the passive or opposite of the active role of visualization? It seems to me that building up the talent of one should help the other, which is just a matter of letting go or switching from active to passive.
But I digress.
So I have been trying to formulate visualization-theurgic styled mini rituals to do daily between big ceremonial productions.
My Qabbalistic-Cross alternative:
Light is definitely a constant theme in neoplatonism as a symbol of the emanation from the one. So that symbol or visualization can remain. But instead of drawing the light to the feet and or touching the shoulders which is to formulate the tree of life onto the body, I have been touching with my wand my brow , my chest, and my groin. I am pulled these spots from Agrippa's scale of Three in which he wrote the following: "The head in which the intellect grows, answering to the intellectual world. The breast where is the heart, the seat of life, answering to the celestial world. The belly, where the faculty of generation is, and the genital members, answering to elemental world."
Now I don't see these as psychic centers so to speak, but symbolic representations of the great hypostasis of neoplatonism reflected on a microcosmic level of man.
Then I end it with Mathew 6:13, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and glory forever." Again I am not stressing the sephiroth of the tree of life, just that God is in the formula of man when exalted.
Eventually I will add a few more things in there.
Its simple and easy as not much had to change to make it a tad more neoplatonic. But it is just a skeleton at the moment. Somehow I plan on grafting on the elements and the directions with the angels ruling over them as an opening and closing ceremony.
We shall see : /