The A.'.A.'. path from Neophyte to Adeptus Minor is a long slog. The amount of time, dedication and study required, the tests needing to be sat, the diaries written and submitted, and the plethora of other ancillary tasks to be completed is truly daunting, and many people seem to just get stuck chugging away at one or another grade for years at a time, never mind the ordeals. However, what people fail to realise is that all of this is preparatory and should probably take no more than five or six years.
Now, I enjoyed my Outer College years immensely. Never in my life had I so systematically studied and practiced the magical and mystical arts. However, once you get to the Inner College you realise that this was all just practice and preparation, essential groundwork but still only preliminary. The Outer College curriculum is designed on one hand to begin working on breaking down mental, emotional and physical limitations, and to give the individual a full suite of techniques to meet any circumstances, a veritable Swiss army knife of occult knowledge, on the other. It has to be like this since as the aspirant has not yet attained knowledge and conversation he has no real idea of what he is and what he should be doing, and so he is trained as comprehensively as possible in all of the classes of methods of attainment.
It all changes at the Adeptus Minor grade (without). While as an adept in the A.'.A.'. he must be armed at all points, he will now be in a position to select the most suitable tools for his particular job. At the same time his knowledge puts him in a position to teach others. This is essential because one key component of A.'.A.'. membership is the will to teach. Even if, of all the tools available, he himself only requires one or two fine tuned to his own needs, he still has to be able to offer instruction and testing in the full curriculum of the Holy Order if he is to authentically claim his grade.
The Adeptus Minor (within), having attained to the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and newly awake to briatic consciousness, has received his marching orders so to speak. A new sense of purpose awakens in him, and although he may not know the ultimate goal of his orders, he knows where to start and intuitively begins the necessary adjustments. If the Outer College is like the private soldier receiving his basic training (an extremely thorough training I might add), and the Adeptus Minor (without) is his commission, this next stage (5=6 within) is akin to his receiving orders from high command (K&C), via the path of Gimel. He may not know the overall strategic mechanism in play and can only guess at his ultimate role in the operation, but he at least knows what to do next and has the necessary tools and training to do so.
While 5=6 may entail a period of repose, it typically shifts gear quite quickly. It is this switch from knowledge to action that constitutes the shift from 5=6 to 6=5. Without trying to cover every detail of either grade, the Adeptus Major not only has his orders, but is actively implementing them, even though he may not know the full meaning of his acts. This is what is meant when it says (One star in sight) that the 6=5 has full magical power, but without comprehension. If will stops and asks why, etc.....he does not need to ask, but he must act, he must follow his orders, the will of his angel.
The Adeptus Exemptus is a much more complete individual. Having learned to discern the will of his angel (5=6), he was given command and told to act (6=5), the act complete and, as is often the case, understanding his role in hindsight, he then comes to understand the deeper strategy, not just what the Angel requires, but what it means (7=4), he knows more fully who he is and what his place in the overall scheme of things is. The adept at this stage is one who has come into his own in life, the captain of his ship, the professor in his college, he then formulates his attainment in his thesis, and only then can he, understanding his role in the action, be in a position to firstly, accept the curse of the next step, and willingly walk into the abyss. He can only offer all that he is to the cup of Babalon if he knows what that all consists of. Further than this, it is not just knowing what one has to offer, but the work and awareness attained in getting to this stage make the next step the only conceivable action when one's life is seen in its proper context in relation to the universal life. I would hazard to say (I'm not a 7=4), that anyone who cannot easily and definitely take this next step has not really attained to the maturity of this grade. If you are ready it's not a jump, but a step, a natural progression. If you are not ready nothing at all can force the issue and failure, possibly even insanity await those who presume to do so. The risk is not that the abyss is inherently dangerous, only that in failing to understand oneself the unprepared adept will not be able to make the jump, and if he insists that he has done so when he hasn't then all of his acts and words will be based on a false premise. This is by definition insanity.
We can see then that the Outer College grades are really preparatory for the step taken at 5=6, and of these the most important is probably the step up from 1=10 to 2=9, the step at which most people stop, unable to attain a genuine interior awareness they remain mere 'occultists', rather than magicians in any real sense. They may bring with them shifts of awareness that seem amazing to the magician traversing these grades for the first time. He will be tempted to hang around and enjoy the view, and this is fine in itself, each to their own. But the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation is only the first real step. The Inner College grades are where the True Will of the Adept is carried out, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. While success of any given 1=10 is anybody's guess, I would recommend, that each aspirant of the first yetziratic triad (2=9, 3=8, 4=7) makes every effort to complete their Outer College grade work as quickly as possible, without skipping any steps or skimming over anything, but not spending too much time procrastinating and trying to get everything perfect (since you are not an adept, how can you know what 'good enough' is, let along perfect?). Even once these things are done the operation to invoke the Holy Guardian Angel is still ahead, and beyond that, the Great Work awaits.
Love is the law, love under will.
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