The Spiritual Con

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The spiritual game is like a burglar robbing a building. When the police enter the front door, he goes up to the first floor. When they go up to the first, he goes up to the second and so on, until theoretically at least he must presumably get up to the roof. Our qabalistic system reflects this, our goal is always the next grade up. If I am a Neophyte, I want to become a Zelator. If a Zelator I want to become a Practicus and so on. The presumed spiritual self, the core of one's being, is the robber, always one floor up. The initiate is the police sent to root out the robber, who always seems just out of reach, whenever you make it onto the next floor, there you are, and no robber in sight, he's gone up a level! 

We play this endless game with ourselves, and granted, we find some interesting things on each floor, some have fantastic views. Occasionally we think we get a glimpse of the robber as he disappears up the stairs. He may even leave a note, “you can’t catch me, but keep trying, just a little further”. For the most part, this game is an internalisation of the games we usually play in the world. The spiritual game is largely a sublimation, rather than a new activity.

If we look in other areas of life, we can see that we are always trying to play the robber to somebody else, we are always trying to get something. For some the prize is a new car, a high level job, fame and fortune, for others the prize is something hard to pin down but still just another prize; the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, enlightenment, siddhis, and so on. However, if we conduct our inner life as if we were out to get something then this is just an elaborate way of moving in circles. We don't really want to grow beyond ourselves, we just want to expand our idea of ourselves, make ourselves more real by adding a sublimated dimension, which we call our spiritual practice.

In social life, and the day-to-day life of business and work, this need to get ahead is always there. Except that there is more than one cop after the robber, we always want to be ahead of the other guy, to get the prize that he is too slow to get, we want to be the one that's 'got it'. Sometimes we behave as a competitor, sometimes a teacher, posing as guide or sage, demonstrating our wisdom or power, as one who inhabits the next floor up from others and therefore entitled to be listened to and respected. As somebody who has in the past had ‘students’ in the A\A\, I became aware of this tendency in myself and others; the need to always be one step ahead, just a bit more enlightened, a bit wiser than the student, have a closer link to the founder of the order, and thus superior, closer to getting the robber than they, always just ahead.

In the moral realm the same thing happens and is often mixed in with spirituality. Are liberal Christians better than conservative? My church is more accepting than yours, or more traditional, more 'old school', or closer to the original gospel, are common examples. In my foray's into the Catholic faith I noticed a strong tendency for self identified 'traditional Catholics' to criticize more liberal 'cafeteria Catholics' as being half baked and probably going to hell, while in turn being criticized for being hidebound by tradition and removed from the gospel. In Buddhism it is well known that each sect regards itself as superior for having a certain view. Mahayana is criticized by Hinayana adherents for its use of teachings other than those of the first Buddha, and Hinayana is often viewed negatively by Mahayana proponents with their sophisticated developments of the basic doctrine. Within our own system similar things happen: my lineage is purer than yours, has a more direct line to Aleister Crowley, or more 'orthodox', or conversely, my lineage might not have a clear paper trail, but we are the more accepting, the more liberal, less judgmental, or closer to the original ideals of the Great White Brotherhood. Claims to greater orthodoxy, greater originality, greater progressiveness, or more stringent examinations and testing criteria, or simply of being more serious Thelemites, all are really just ways of 'getting ahead' of the others, it's a con that we play on each other, and on ourselves. 

There is also the 'purity of aspiration' trap: as a purely ‘spiritual’ practitioner am I really any better than the guy who tries to use magic for material gain? In reality I and the guy using magic for material ends are really playing the same game in different arenas, trying in our way, to get ahead of the competition, to win prizes. We are always trying to be better, in some way, than the other guy.

While we often don't like to admit it, we think we are better than non practitioners because we play a spiritual game rather than a material one, we criticize materialists and those whose primary concerns are comfort in life. We have tried to go one floor up, like robbers, from Assiah to Yetzirah, from Yetzirah to Briah and so on. Really we are just playing the same old game of one-upmanship.

How then to undo this? I don’t think you can really, if you try to then you are liable to fall into yet another trap, the trap of being the most down to earth, grounded, rational and non-game-playing, then you start saying all sorts of terrible things about those who still appear to be playing the game of cops and robbers, and are therefore still inferior to you. It seems like a clever strategy, but once you've seen the robber in the mirror, it's hard to un-see it, and you realise that you can neither advance or retreat, and standing still isn't a possibility either. Deliberately remaining aloof from the game can also be no more than another game if we do it deliberately so as to not play the game, that is to say, if we do it with the objective of improving ourselves in our own or the eyes of others. The movement must be spontaneous, something that you can't get by trying.

 Having been 'on the path' now for while I am more than familiar with all of the tricks. I’ve used a good many of them myself, and probably still do. Even my pointing out how we are all hopelessly lost in this game could simply be another attempt to one-up the competition with my apparent self-awareness. There does seem to be a gap, a way out, action that is non-action, what Castaneda called 'not-doing', and the Taoists call 'Wu wei'. But how to practice this? Paradoxically, there are methods, or habits to acquire. I am still very much a beginner in this myself, but I hope to write a little about it in future posts.

Love is the law, love under will.

Intellectual and Mystical Approaches to Practice

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

One thing that marks out Thelema and related occult 'scenes' these days is the heavy slant towards a sort of intellectualism, where the mystical or spiritual aspects of practice get replaced by a sort of sophistry around unprovable ideas and dogmas, or else, in the case of thelema for example, endless speculation about this or that aspect of Aleister Crowley's life and writings. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not anti-intellectual by any stretch, I'm a scientist by training and know the value of concise and clear thinking. What does bother me is how the intellectual aspect of esoteric systems is expressed as a pissing contest and the mystical and devotional aspects of the spiritual path are forgotten about and the it becomes a combative pseudo-academic exercise largely derived from people arguing about which theory of magick is correct, which is ridiculous since they are all pretty much arbitrary, even the most antiquated and venerable, subject only to internal validation and unprovable one way or another.

These days my own practice is largely experiential, a direct confrontation with things as they are rather than as I would like them to be. Not rationalising or trying to fit my experience into a known system in an attempt to tame it and somehow cut it down to size, as if I could make life more digestible if I cut it into chunks and mixed it with a little salt to improve the taste. Over the last few years I have become more inclined to accept that some things don't necessarily fit into my view of the world, and it's not these things that need to change, but my mind that needs to expand to fit them. Magickal theory, of whatever stripe, has largely been discarded, quite simply because these models don't describe the universe accurately. How do I know this? Simple, when I act as if they were true I get no results, which is the same as when I act as if they are not true, so I have no sound reason to accept them. If one's practice is based on sound theory then the described results follow. I strongly feel that good intentions or wishful thinking are not sufficient to win over the laws of the universe. As Crowley put it, drinking sulfuric acid will kill you no matter how hard you believe it is water. Out of this mindset has arisen a sort of marriage of the mystical and the scientific attitude in my practice.

I can't help but feel that things would be a lot better in the world if we were more prepared to experience things directly, rather than through our preconceptions, not only in religious circles but in the realms of politics, society, and pretty much any other area of activity. I am currently working on using various computer models to describe ecological systems around soil-atmosphere carbon cycles, and fitting these to empirical data and assessing their accuracy gets me to thinking. My understanding is that while we use various theories and models to map what is happening in a system of process, these are only approximate, and though some are very accurate they only describe the process and there are always a great number of variables that we simply can't account for: factors infinite and unknown, if you will. The job of the modeler is to account for as many of these factors as possible to get the best fit for the model, so that the unknown factors have negligible influence. This requires a systematic approach that I enjoy, although I confess it also baffles me sometimes. But still, in the words of Monty Python; "it's only a model". 

Life is not compartmentalized, and these habits of thought leak into other areas. With the inner life something similar occurs, models are evaluated on how closely they fit the observed data, and those that do not fit get discarded. As I have already said, these metaphysical models are less subject to the validation which is an essential part of modelling physical and chemical systems such as those involved in climate change which are subject to replication and validation. We must however test our models empirically whenever possible, but often the unknown factors are not only external things, but internal to the observer. The tools are often, mis-calibrated, so to speak, and this can lead to all sorts of errors, from the functionally inconsequential to the drastically consequential. Therefore it is important that we have tools for periodic calibration of the mind and its perceptions, that, in short, we develop a reflective capacity, to develop a mind which, as the saying goes, "reflects the moon and a flying bird", while itself remaining unmoved.

In the spiritual life there is little peer review except (in the case of A.'.A.'.) your supervisor, and people can go for years adhering to a set of ideas that have no basis in reality, or by contrast, may float from idea to idea, never settling down to anything but shifting around. Getting more scattered and not really attaining anything, like a mystical bumble bee undecided on which flower to settle on, never gathering nectar as a result and in fact unable to discern good flowers from weeds. This flitting about is nearly as bad as obsessing over a false model, except that they are more liable to get no result than a bad result, and are likely to end up chucking the whole thing out without ever having committed to the path sufficiently to obtain even superficial results. Further, while A.'.A.'. aspirants have a supervisor, that individual should not be relied on as they will have their own bias and point of view. A good supervisor I think will want their students to learn how to think, not what to think.

Most of the things we make so much noise about, technical differences between different interpretations of the pentagram rituals for example, or insistence on this or that interpretation of the doctrine of the abyss are are orthodox, hilarious given the unknowable quality of the subject matter, are all too common. One branch of Thelema seeking a sort of orthodoxy has gone so far as to try to define the abyss in symbols and sypher, the joke having apparently been lost on them. It is no better than the catholic churches insistence on a specific interpretation of its own doctrines that serve only to alienate and sow division rather than unite, insisting that god is this and he isn't that, and that such and such an interpretation is erroneous on no more than the testimony of old books thrice translated, overcomplicating a message that should be luminously simple. Real spirituality I feel must move between these two frauds of rigid dogmatism on the one hand (that is, opinion based on the strength of the assertion in lieu of robust evidence), and a sort of wooly headed anything goes spirituality embracing any and every obscure and convoluted theory. Quite often it also seems, these two meet at their extremes and one mans bonkers theory becomes the basis on a religion and enshrined in an unassailable vault on no more merit than the absolute belief of the adherents. I have to be honest, this orthodox wing of thelema scares me, it is a sort of fundamentalism lite.  

When I first encountered the A.'.A.'. system, what attracted me to it was the slogan: "The method of science, the aim of religion". I realise now of course that this is not really the method of science at all, but the method of empiricism, which is to say trial and error. "Try all, and hold fast to that which is good", experiment, see what works and what doesn't. Understand theories, listen to people and read widely and deeply, try things, but always be ruthlessly honest about the process and be prepared to cast off even one's pet ideas if they should be demonstrated as unsound. All well and good, but easier said than done, many of us are not really well equipped with critical thinking skills at the outset and mistake the trappings of a scholarly approach for a genuinely empirical attitude, as if barking like a dog makes you a dog.

One really good and scientific way of approaching this problem is a method based on Bayes theorem, which was used by Alan Turing to crack the enigma code, applied to thinking. This method is one of probability, and essential for sound critical thinking, addressing ones biases and obtaining a more realistic view of things. We use probabilities because, as anybody knows, "only the Sith think in absolutes", that is to say, all or nothing, rigid terms, often associated with personality disorders. In Bayesian thinking, the first thing to be aware of is that this method is not black and white, we never actually have absolute certainty, which is as true of mathematical models as it is of life itself, there is always room for error, we must always admit the possibility of the factor infinite and unknown. We always weight the evidence, adjusted to account for previous knowledge of a situation, and critically, should new evidence arise we adjust our assumptions accordingly. To make an example:

Say you have a child, normally well behaved who is accused to stealing cookies from the cookie jar. When asked the child swears she didn't do it and it must have been her brother. As the parent, you know the child well enough that she likely didn't do it, yet nobody else was in the house at the time.

H stands for the hypothesis of innocence, this is possible but not very likely. Prior knowledge of the childs character and that of her brother, a known cookie lover, are the only evidence to support it and the excuse is rather cliché after all. These priors give weight to the hypothesis but not by much given the evidence, i.e., empty cookie jar and no other person around.

N stands for the null hypothesis, that is, the child did in fact steal the cookies and is covering her trail by blaming her brother. You think this is likely, but the evidence points towards the opposite hypothesis.

Which is more probably, H or N? For now we might say that N outweighs H in the scales of justice, so we must see N as being more probable. We might say that observable evidence outweigh the theoretical (H) which is based only on our priors, so we say that in all likelihood she did in fact steal the cookies. 

However, supposing later that day you call both children in for dinner, and the brother is uncharacteristically not hungry while the sister is famished as would be expected if H were true. Whilst you cannot prove anything categorically, this suggests that the brother has already eaten and that the sister is in fact telling the truth. While slight, this new evidence combined with our prior (that the sister doesn't usually steal cookies and the boy is a known cookie lover), must be taken into account. Not incontrovertible, but this does adjust the scales somewhat in her favour.

Take it another step: on doing the laundry later that night after the kids have gone to bed, you find cookie crumbs in the pockets of the brothers jeans, or even a crumpled packet, then this swings the scales back towards H. You then go back and update your probabilities accordingly. Note that this does not mean that N is impossible (she could have planted the evidence, but given her character this is unlikely), only that the evidence is now stacked in favour of the opposite hypothesis. In this situation it would seem much more reasonable to ground the brother and let the sister off the hook and we could respond with a much higher degree of certainty.

We can use this method of reasoning in daily life, we continually adjust, adapt, remember our priors, and remember that we are dealing with probabilities rather than absolutes. In magical and spiritual circles this type of thinking is often cast aside in favour of biased modes of cognition, our priors become what we previously believed (anchoring bias), backed up by what we would like to be true based on the model of reality we are superimposing over things, and these given undue weight. Anchoring bias is like holding down one side of the scales to simulate the weight of evidence where none in fact exists. If these methods were used more regularly and rigorously by occultists then there would be much lower prevalence of outlandish beliefs and the 'method of science' might actually start to be worthy of the name.

But what has this to do with mysticism? Everything. My own belief is that science and mysticism are twin pillars of the temple, not contraries. Mysticism based on bad science is empty speculation at best, fundamentalism, fanaticism and insanity at worst. Science without the broader, deeper view of mysticism, the implicit appreciation of the unity of all things, is mechanistic, utilitarian, the manipulation of dead things. On the other hand, all factors, known and unknown are part of the one equation, even the observer is part of the observed model and can change the outcome by the act of observation itself. Without a rigourous, scientific approach, mysticism tends to head in unverifiable directions and loose contact with the ground of reality, becoming truly an opiate of sorts, a way of avoiding reality and making real unity impossible. As an aikido practitioner I see this danger, people forget the martial aspect of the art (it has to work if it is to have meaning), and it becomes empty movement, a sort of choreographed dance. Or the opposite can happen and the art becomes a rather inefficient for or self defense based solely on faith that it will somehow work if needed, despite never being tested, and with none of the internal work and understanding of why the movements are as they are that really gives aikido life and meaning. In many instances it has ceased to be a budo in any real sense, and at the same time cannot really be called a form of self defense. 

As an A.'.A.'. aspirant, I see the same danger in initiates. Too many are hooked on conspiracy theories and abstract speculations for which the evidence is circumstantial at best and often so wildly unlikely that one wonders how anybody in their right mind can hold such beliefs. Of course it's not right to discount such things as occult knowledge and conspiracy theories out of hand however improbably they might seem (we know that real conspiracies do exist), but you can only go with the weight of evidence, scanty as it often is in areas deliberately concealed from view. I recently conducted a fairly thorough investigation of the origins of some of the more popular theories, they all seem to be related to the Montuak Project, ideas of ancient baby eating alien reptilians for example, all based on the testimony of one person, whose story has actually changed over the years, indicating a lack of consistency at best. These ideas have caught on and have been further developed by other more recent pundits all saying similar things and drawing on a wide variety of media and circumstantial ideas to demonstrate the point, I see it as the mental equivalent of pareidolia, a sort of Rorschach test that may reveal more about the holder of such beliefs than about the validity of the ideas themselves, plugging into our fears and fantasies in ways that trick the mind. It becomes a sort of mental parasite that restructures the thinking in a self-referential loop from which not many seem to emerge. Again we see how the inability to assess the value of information means that anything is allowed to take up residence in the mind, becoming in its turn a sort of fanaticism, which explains the extreme defensiveness common to both religious fanatics and conspiracy theorists. 

A more balanced way is possible, and essential for a healthy mental, emotional and spiritual life, we must learn to properly curate our minds if they are to become the book of Thoth rather than some Necronomicon of crazed ideas. I might for example, believe that I was Napoleon in a past life. This is fine, a datum that I enter into my logs as I might a vivid dream or recurring feeling, but if I wanted to verify it I would need to know things that only Napoleon would know, or produce some other evidence if I expect to be believed. In the absence of evidence I would be wiser to regard the feeling of being Napoleon as only a feeling, possibly meaningful but not likely to be actually true. If we are firm believers in reincarnation we might have a preexisting belief that sways our thinking, in that we already readily accept that such things happen all the time, but this itself may be biased thinking and we would need to examine this prior. Is it based on knowledge of on belief? Why do we believe it? Are we culturally or socially obliged to hold this belief? What would the world look like if it was true? What would the world look like if it was untrue?

The mystical aspect of all of this is then direct experience, authentic communion with the unknown, an unrelenting attitude of aiming to see the universe as it is, not as we would like it to be. This is an austere way of living, and not easy, but in my estimation is the only real way to address reality on her own terms and come to appreciate the magnificent simplicity of living in this world fully conscious, fully participating in the dance of life unconditionally and without reservation. Thus it is that over the years my practice has been stripped down to essentials, with many things cast by the wayside as not providing accurate models of reality, failing under the scrutiny of analysis. Each is a veil of Isis, beautiful in their own ways but essentially veils, meant to intoxicate and seduce, but otherwise a sideshow. Beyond this, the ground of being, Isis unveiled, the face of God which No Man can look upon and live, the Holy of Holies lies silent within the empty tabernacle. 

Love is the law, love under will.

Spring Equinox 2021

Woke up early this morning as usual, the clear pre-dawn air still chilly. I had planned to head out for a morning of Aikido, only to check what todays class schedule was and find that there was no class for some reason. 

I could have meditated, read some liturgy or gone for an early morning walk. Instead I had a coffee, applied for two jobs and had a chat with a couple of friends back in the UK.

Some days, like today, I don't feel in the least bit like observing the mind, engaging in spiritual discipline, or anything related to it, and instead the mind turns naturally towards practical issues like how I will feed and house myself, and the enforced salesmanship of a competitive job market saturated with graduates all vying for position. A distasteful but necessary chore that plugs in to the survival circuits and overrides other considerations in the hierarchy of needs.

What has this to do with the way? Everything. Lots of us are unemployed or soon to be, even highly qualified people. Great patience and perseverance is required. I've found the experience a lot like fishing; you cast the hook, occasionally get a bite, it looks good and you start to reel, and it gets away, and you cast the hook again, perhaps adjusting the bait or picking a better looking spot. The thing is, you can't force it, but have no choice but to wait patiently, with no sense of certainty.

This I think is quite an important life lesson, the lack of certainty. Life is continuous change and flux, even when things appear to be in balance, much like the procession of the seasons that we mark today at the vernal Equinox. Nothing stands still but is in constant motion, flux and reflux, rising and falling on the infinite ocean. So, casting off expectations or any sense of entitlement that may reside in the heart settles the heart and cools the mind. Just watching, seeing what comes up, and aspiring only to move in harmony with the seasons of the year and the greater seasons of life, listening as ever to the silent guide whose invisible hand guides you along the way. Patience, perseverance, humility.

Whatever will come, let it come. I am already given over to the forces that govern life, and will lead me eventually to my death. No reason to despond, nothing to fear, the way of the universe is wide and clear and one tiny life can only see part of it, as a boat on a river does not appreciate the whole, but only the current strait, much less the eternal ocean beyond.

  

Keng's Disciple

The disciple: "When I don't know people treat me like a fool.
When I do know, the knowledge gets me into trouble.
When I fail to do good. I hurt others.
When I do good, I hurt myself.
If I avoid my duty, I am remiss,
But if I do it, I am ruined.
How can I get out of these contradictions?
This is what I came to ask you."

". . . .You are trying to sound
The middle of the ocean
With a six-foot pole.
You have got lost and are trying
To find your way back
To your own true self.
You find nothing
But illegible signposts
Pointing in all directions.
I pity you."

The disciple asked for admittance,
Took a cell, and there
Meditated,
Trying to cultivate qualities
He thought desirable
And get rid of others
Which he disliked.
Ten days of that!
Despair!

". . . Do not try
To hold on to Tao -
Just hope that Tao
Will keep hold of you!"

". . . You want the first elements?
The infant has them.
Free from care, unaware of self,
He acts without reflection,
Stays where he is put, does not know why,
Does not figure things out,
Just goes along with them,
Is part of the current.
These are the first elements!"

The disciple asked:
Is this perfection?

Lao replied: "Not at all.
It is only the beginning.
This melts the ice.

This enables you
To unlearn,
So that you can be led by Tao,
Be a child of Tao

If you persist in trying
To attain what is never attained
(It is Tao's gift!)
If you persist in making effort
To obtain what effort cannot get;
If you persist in reasoning
About what cannot be understood,
You will be destroyed
By the very thing you seek.

To know when to stop to know
When you can get no further
By your own action,
This is the right beginning!”

― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

The Value of Divination (in my opinion)

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I first picked up a deck of tarot cards when I was about 12 years old, a friend of my mothers had the Rider Waite pack which I was shown one night and it entranced me immediately. I subsequently borrowed books on the subject from the local library and even clumsily painted my own deck, since I had no money to buy one. I would say that this was my introduction to the occult, and more importantly, to the qaballah. 

Following from this, I explored other areas of divination, the runes and various other types of throwing stones, dice, the sticks and coins of the I-ching, geomancy, probably other things as well. Scrying came a little later when I was exploring witchcraft and experimenting with magical circles and other accoutrements of the craft.

Of all of these methods, the only one that I retain and always have to hand is a deck of tarot cards. I use the same rather worn Thoth pack that I received for Christmas at some point in the early 1990's, which was really my introduction to the depths of qaballah and Crowley's system even before reading any of his books. After about 28 years of experimentation I have reached some conclusions about the tarot and divination, based purely on my own experience, which I would like to set out here.

My first observation: 

Divination doesn't work.

That is quite a bald statement, and seemingly at odds with my claim to still use the tarot. Let me clarify: objectively, my predictions made using the tarot over all of that time, both for myself and others, have never been significantly different to what I could have guessed, either about another person or about a situation in my own life about which I might consult the tarot, without simply sitting back and paying attention. Others will disagree, and some might even foam at the mouth at the heresy, but that doesn't matter. I've yet to see evidence of consistent and accurate divination results, at least in myself or those I have worked with, so pending further data I classify predictions using tarot or other methods as inconclusive at best.

So, if it doesn't work, why do it? Simple, the training of the mind, or perhaps the taming of the mind puts it better. Students practicing divination are classified as walking on the path of Qoph, that is the realm of the subconscious mind, which is open partly for the Neophyte, but brought to a higher pitch later in the grade work and so of increasing importance as we progress. 

Swimming in that sea of images, thoughts, feelings, the lower astral, often touching the shells, we need to learn how to navigate. Five minutes of meditation will show a shower of images. Astral and etheric work multiplies this, opening the floodgates, and learning to navigate these straits is critical. Divination teaches how to define images, recognise structures and complexes of imagery and emotion which are the very stuff of the mind at this level. In addition to this, tarot provides a useful filing system, making it the most valuable of the various options in my opinion, we are able to use it to classify and analyze the images that arise. 

But experience and the words of the sages throughout the ages tell us not to accept any of these images as 'true'. I know I've made that mistake a few times. Others have and will continue to accept personal revelations based on astral imagery, visions, and 'spiritual experiences' as true, ignoring the warnings of the Chaldean oracles:

Stoop not down, therefore,

Unto the Darkly-Splendid World,

Wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth

And Hades wrapped in clouds,

Delighting in unintelligible images

Precipitous, winding,

A black, ever-rolling Abyss

Ever espousing a Body unluminous

Formless

And Void.

 This warning cannot be stressed enough I think. Not that one should be terrified of the subconscious, or the astral, on the contrary, fear only feeds fear. But we must train the mind, the intuition. It should never be forgotten that the goal of the Outer College is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, not the entertainment of the ego or hanging around in the lower astral like a young man about town. Without a sharp intuition and a clear sense of purpose this is impossible, and instead ones own dark images and phantoms will happily take the place of the Angel, and lead you along their own paths. The same can be said of astral work, which really approaches the same area in a different manner. The aim is not divination, or astral travel for its own sake, the aim is always the Angel, the unification of mind and body, self and other, one and all.

The practice of divination serves as training for the greater divination, that of understanding one's own life and the path one is on, that is, the name and form of the Angel. These known, all that is necessary is known. These unknown, the initiate is a blind animal groping in the darkness, prey to every whim and passing amusement. The path is not a matter of speculation and logical reductionism, but nor is it a flight into fantasy and following ones bliss.

(Other spokesmen of Thelema, the occult, and the A.'.A.'. have championed "following your bliss". I respectfully but strongly disagree). 

It is a matter of accurately seeing both the world and oneself as they are, unvarnished, the very person you are in yourself, and your life, as it is, with its potentials and possibilities, in the clear light of day, not the darkling light of fantasy. Divination can be a dangerous tool, since if taken incorrectly it can actually make matters worse, one starts to believe ones delusions, and rather than obtaining the result, we end up getting sucked into the moonlit worlds of our own delusions, following the will'o the wisps of imagination, calling that True Will, never realising the mistake, we end up mistaking the first 'entity' that presents itself as an angel of light.

The correct method, I feel, is to practice divination as a sort of game, let the method itself lead you along storylines, allow the intuition to make connections and weave narratives, not judging them but also not attaching much importance to them. While we must always keep the central purpose in mind, to seek too ardently for an answer, accepting any that comes along in our divinations or early magical work, as universally valid is a good way to get entrapped in our own delusions. There is always the danger in divination, astral and magical work, and in life as a whole of mistaking ones own ideas for objective reality, so the correct method of divination can be a real help in overcoming this, an important part of the Great Work and the most common stumbling block on the path.

I would always advocate that initiates persist in the work in a systematic manner, just as a researcher, however pleasing the preliminary results may look, will nonetheless continue his research to its end and await the whole dataset before reaching a conclusion. So the initiate should, all the while enjoying the ride, abstain from concluding anything until the work is complete. 

Love is the law, love under will.

Prisms and Filters

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Recently I came across the concepts of prisms and filters in daily practice. The concept comes from the Zen teacher Dainin Katagiri. He talked about how in our practice of zazen meditation we have to pass through a sort of filter, but what we really want to do is pass through a sort of prism, which is much more interesting and fun, and therefore addictive, but ultimately take us away from reality as it is in itself. This comes from a Buddhist perspective, and personally I feel it has a lot of merit, but I would like to think about it in terms of A\A\ practice.

Within the A\A\there are ultimately two main paths recognised, that of the magician and that of the mystic. The magician is one who analyses, takes apart, extracts information, goes on astral journeys through the practices of rising on the planes and so on. This to me is like using the mind as a prism. Learning the correspondences of the tarot and the tree of life is a way of breaking the whole into manageable parts, we can then isolate these and explore them separately, and this is a great thing to do. It is particularly important in the early grades, especially up to Practicus, where this analysis is brought to high degree. By passing through this prism of the mind we need to learn not just to break things apart and extract meaning, but to understand the whole, and how the integrity of the whole depends on the integrity of the parts. If I am running a scientific enquiry, I have to make certain assumptions, I have to theorize, and the accuracy of my results and the conclusions I make about them will be affected by the accuracy of my assumptions. We might see this process as one of “making a difference between things”. Useful, but not the final goal. In daily life, most of us spend a good pat of our time life this, in our interactions with others, endless talking about this or that concept whether or not it is relevant to our lives, making fine shades of distinction, categorising, and criticizing. Truth be told, it’s a lot of fun.

So, we have to pass through this prism, which is the mind, but it is not enough to simply separate out all of the colours and enjoy the rainbow effect. The process should teach us something about the mind, about the prism itself. It is easy and all too common to get caught up with one or another colour, lost in a maze of circular logic or obsessed with a particular thought pattern, and failing to understand that it's just a prism. I mean here more than just intellectual assent; this is not enough. What is needed is real understanding, properly digested. Only in this way can the understanding of the prism be integrated into our lives. Until then it remains just a theory.

As for filters. This is much more difficult. Katagiri says that when we sit in zazen, the aim is to just be a filter. What does this mean? In the practice of zazen, yoga, meditation, we just sit. If one’s meditation brings visions and interesting ideas, then it's really just a sort of prism, so we need to be careful. Anyone who has meditated for a while will understand that sometimes meditation is very boring. This is because we are used to the prism, we want distraction, conversation, the excitement of passing through the prism, the medley of colour and form. However, this filter of meditation is very important. By using the mind as a filter, we filter out all that is not essential to us. Sit quietly, count the breath, let the thoughts come and go, this is the filtering process. Sometimes when we sit in meditation, we may have the idea that we should sit in some ancient temple, or by a waterfall, or that by assuming this posture we are becoming more holy. This is all just prism, separating one thing from other things, it is not real meditation. This is ok, the filtering process includes these things. When you filter water, some tiny particles that you didn't notice before can get stuck in the filter itself, making it clog up. This is ok, we can just clean the filter out and continue to filter water. When the eyes are closed, thoughts come up, this morning I noticed my filter caught images of a film I saw last night. It could easily be other things, I just return to the breath, open my eyes, realise where I am, continue to filter.

Although it might seem that way, I would not say that filter is more important than the prism. Both are necessary, yet they serve different ends, and in terms of practice they fulfil different roles that within our system play complimentary parts. I feel that passing through the filter is more direct but more difficult, more austere, while the prism is more interesting, more practically useful, but more prone to distraction and deviation. In A\A\we practice both, some aspirants focus more on one or another, others are more balanced between the two. This is ok, we all follow our predilections in the path, sometimes analyzing and exploring, sometimes reflecting and filtering. The same goes for daily life as well as our practice, we take active and passive roles at different times. The thing I think, is to recognise the difference, to be aware of it and not to worry about it, then our whole lives become like a big filter and it becomes apparent that even those times when we seem to be involved in the prism, this too is a sort of filtering.  

Love is the law, love under will.

On the expectations of students

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

These days I have little contact with the occult community, and don’t personally take on students. That is to say, I am not in a position to choose or allocate from a pool of prospective students. That job is left to a more capable person and I have little input in the matter, except perhaps as a sort of consultant. This is probably just as well, since I have proved incapable of holding on to students for any length of time, all of those who have signed their Probationer oaths in my presence have since resigned. Some of these I roundly accept, were probably through my own fault, although the majority simply found the work impossible for a variety of reasons. These latter I can’t do much about except to accept that for most people, the Great Work will be a passing thing, a source of diversion left to one side as soon as life gets complicated. Those for whom it really gets under the skin are relatively few and far between.

Of those who left the Order because of me, I have had a lot of time to reflect on what went wrong, a sometimes uncomfortable process but a necessary one I think. What I notice is that they usually resign because of personality clashes, they can’t help but put a supervisor on a pedestal, and when they get to know the person, and realise that he is human, has his failings and quirks of personality, and even, (the horror) disagrees with them, they feel that they can no longer work under the supervision of such a person and must therefore resign. The unvarnished truth of it is that they just don’t like or respect me enough to consider me a teacher, and so go off in search of somebody who fits the mold better, or else return to solitary practice. They are correct of course, I'm no guru, I realise that much, so I don't try to be, but instead confine myself to administering the syllabus as it was presented to me.

For me, this repeated process of aspirant post-mortem has been an exercise in humility. Nobody likes rejection, especially on the spiritual plane where one’s deepest predilections and sense of what it is to be, are exposed. It is not without some discomfort that I put this in writing, but I know it must be done for the analysis to be complete. However, I do feel that those who have resigned because of me miss an important point, that so long as the syllabus is adhered to, ones personal beliefs are of little import. 

If one’s supervisor insists on practices or activities that are not part of the core curriculum of the A\A\,, or is manipulative, then one should indeed depart. If s/he insists that you agree to a given point of view, for instance theism or atheism, or flat-eartherism, or anything else not part of the core A\A\ curriculum, then one should probably walk away. I would assert strongly though that if one's supervisor agrees with you on every point, tells you how great you are and never challenges your views then you are unlikely to grow except in your own conceit. If on the other hand, you feel compelled to walk away because of a difference of opinions that is in no way insisted upon and does not affect your path, then walking away is a sign of being influenced at a much lower level than that of the spirit, instead one is operating and basing their decision of the sphere of the personality. In such instances I feel that the Great Work devolves into a sort of tea party, a social exercise only. That is not what the A\A\ is for. For this reason it becomes clearer with every year that associations with other initiates should be relatively distant, even with those one regards as friends. Crowley said as much somewhere, that an initiate should go into fits of horror if he catches a glimpse of another initiate through a telescope, or words to that effect. In practice, I find that I need to be careful when engaging students and other initiates, not to get too involved at the level of the personality, an incredibly difficult maneuver and one that I am still learning, and a key reason why I don't associate with initiates or the occult 'scene' in general. 

As an  A\A\supervisor sometimes these things can't be easily avoided and engagement is necessary. I may challenge the opinions and viewpoints of an aspirant, if they seem to be influencing his or her path. Not so much to refute them as to expose them. The A\A\path is first and foremost a path of scepticism, and that scepticism must extend even, especially in fact, to ones deeply held beliefs. The deepest splinters are not felt, but slowly infect the flesh, and must be excised with the scalpel of analysis if the flesh is to heal. Being a solitary path, this is intensely introspective, but we must be careful that it doesn't become an exercise in naval gazing, or else caught in the mirror of self reflection, we end up worse off than we were before we started. Nor is the process over at any particular grade, but continues day after day, year after year, forever. 

When a supervisor offers sceptical response to a students expressed certainties, this is likely to be not so much a refutation, but an invitation to look more closely. While of course he may disagree with a point of view, he should be open to persuasion if presented with verifiable facts, but unprovable opinions don't deserve that sort of respect, they remain opinions only, and to insist on such without providing valid evidence is the opposite of the method of science. Immature students may receive this as a personal attack, insofar as they are incapable of separating themselves from their opinions. Our opinions are ours, we identify with them, they may come to define us, thus becoming a source of separateness, which is really alienation, yet we cling to it. I feel now that those students with whom I have clashed have largely done so on the matter of opinions when I offered a sceptical response (irrespective of my own opinions on the matter), and unwilling to compromise, or thinking that differing opinions imply fundamental incompatibility. 

In any case, I suspect I never really find out the real reasons for student departures, I can only go by what the student tells me and that may not be the whole truth of a thing.

They are probably correct as far as their needs go, so despite disappointment on my part, I have to accept that they probably made the right decision for them. I am unlikely to pat a person on the head and tell them they are a good boy. I am quite saturnine by nature, and if I see a person doing well, I am likely to expect more of them, test them further, exactly as I do myself. I don’t coddle or sooth, at least not those I consider to be adults, although I do have compassion, and challenges to ones thinking are of course optional insofar as they are not directly covered in the syllabus. Life has a way of presenting its own ordeals, there is no need for me to invent more. 

Finally, while I am genuinely sorry for those students who felt that they could not continue to work with me, I can only applaud their decision to do so and look on with a sort of grim pride at those ex-students who took True Will at face value and acted on theirs. This is the first and last lesson. After all, if you meet Buddha in the road, you must kill him.

Love is the law, love under will.