From thelema93-l-owner@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Fri Aug 23 12:15:30 1996 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id MAA19610 for ; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:15:29 -0700 Received: from bitsy.hollyfeld.org (bitsy.hollyfeld.org [38.240.235.1]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id MAA29412 for ; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:15:08 -0700 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.7.4/8.7.3) id OAA10280 for thelema93-l-outgoing; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 14:30:16 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: bitsy.hollyfeld.org: majordom set sender to owner-thelema93-l using -f Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.7.4/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA10273 for ; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 14:29:57 -0400 Received: from jobe.shell.portal.com (jobe.shell.portal.com [156.151.3.4]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id MAA28834 for ; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:08:47 -0700 Received: (tyagi@localhost) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) id MAA19177 for thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:08:31 -0700 Message-Id: <199608231908.MAA19177@jobe.shell.portal.com> Subject: Eden, Magical Tools and Emotions To: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:08:31 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: from "J B Bell" at Aug 23, 96 10:51:09 am From: tyagi@HOUSEOFKAOS.ABYSS.COM (xiwangmu) Orientation: House of Kaos, St. Joseph, Kali Fornika, US -- Kali Yuga X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Precedence: bulk reply-to: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Status: RO 49960823 AA1 Hail Satan! Kaos Day!! if 'do what you want' is the whole law, can we ever be sure we've broken it? E6 Mu: #> >#>...the Fall of human arrogance to presume a god beyond terra. Bantik: #> >#...If terra is the only god, then what of the space outside of our little #> >#gravity well? Terra's influence doesn't extend far beyond the moon. Mu: #> >few of us will likely ascend beyond Luna either. Terra is our origin #> >and our Mom. treating Her otherwise strikes me as disrespectful. no #> >more grand a god than She do I desire. J B Bell : #Mu, surely you don't mean to condemn the ambition of moving out of our #home eventually, when we grow up? I don't condemn it, but I don't laud it either. this concept works for some of us and not for others. let those who have the 'get out of it' spirit begone! explore!! raise toads in space! let those of us who find continual gravity-sinking and peaceful nature- worship to the tending of the ailing biosphere (whom we know as deity). 'growing up' is a modern ambition. I like your 'returning to the source' pointers (returning to Eden) and the 'filmy gauze' ideas. strikes me as nearer my own heart. some Easterners suggest that we need not move from the spot we've been planted as the whole cosmos may be found in our back yard. I'm inclined to agree (having lived my 34 years in roughly the same geographical region (a radius of about 10 miles). #I agree that transcendentalism is a disease, but I don't wish to return #to the vegetative cycles of early agrarian societies. Surely there must #be a compromise possible. yes I don't see the value in that either. thus I chant: Asphalta Cementia Metallica Polymera Coyote La Cuckaracha Humana and We're all going to the Compost Whether we are boxed or burned Like a fluidless skiptoad Flung into a landfill #...as far as gods beyond Terra goes, well, if I plan on moving out #from under Mom's wing eventually, assuredly it pays me to make some #contacts for future employment and housing, eh? not condemning it, I just don't think it works for everyone. the One Solution bit doesn't appeal to me. diversity is a key I value. #...I have withdrawn temporarily from the game of creation/destruction, #to hone my Will. precisely. sliding betwixt the Poles, how can I not perceive the Glory? #...I still find the temple preparations Crowley describes to be #hideously baroque. I think an altar is great, but we have dagger, #chain, scourge (of copper with bits o' *lead*--yow!), oil (okay, I #like the oil), sword, cup, pantacle, and wand! Where the hell do #you put all that stuff? most of it can be placed within the altar itself, the blade(s) a possible exception. it strikes me that these are as much metaphors of interior elements as they are exterior and as such may require different levels of manifestation for different aspirants (some benefitting most from the procurement or, better, construction of all of them, some only on the astral or in alternative forms). #...I've chosen to enter into a practice that assuredly most Chaotes #consider stuffy at best, and I'm considering doing a Minerval at the #first opportunity in the O.T.O.--an Order that's so conspicuously Orderly #in most people's minds, that even plenty of Thelemites find it positively #noxious (so to speak). This is out of a simple recognition that I am #tired of fucking about so much, and would like a little discipline, and I #find it easier to discipline myself when I have a curriculum. that is why I entered unto the Order, as a discipline. what better challenge for those of KaOs than to grapple with the Orderlies?! #...perhaps I'll find all those toys are really great, but somehow I do #doubt that. Would others more experienced care to comment? I have made some of these objects, though not often in the forms which the Master specified. example: I have a plastic left-over honeybear container (spout-head) which holds the Oil of Anointment). there have been others which come and go. big altars help. I haven't been moved to construct the dimensionalities and form of the ABBAic Enochialtar, though I have known people who did and found it rather efficacious for the type of workings which ceremonialists are typically prone (I am not). as a form of discipline (a la Eastern martial arts) I would suggest that the most extreme is best (such as metallurgy and the actual pounding of the sword/dagger/etc.), yet not all of us are called to this extreme. then there is the alternative Quest for the Perfect Weapon which takes one about the world for the purposes of location and acquisition (many and varied are the rules which have grown up in tradition surrounding how this should be done also). my own methods have been a jumble, at times constructing wholesale with simple tools (a wand carved out of rosewood, sigilized, consecrated, then in some odd way dedicated to the Spider-Goddess), at times procured at expense (a ring of white gold, carefully designed, functioning first as for my secular, later for my monastic, wedding, occasionally functioning as a tool of patience and grounding). however, in my own unorthodox and intuitive path I find the best tools are those which have deep emotional and/or symbolic significance to me, and in this way being neither very difficult of fabrication (they are often gifts) nor procurement (often very inexpensive). I've often taken to creating new tools out of old for particular workings (using the red felt triangle bequeathed to me in Thelemic initiation as a handle for the stylus with which I signed my Pact with Satan, for example). I have never (as can perhaps be inferred from the above) undertaken the construction or procurement of weapons/tools *as a discipline* (as compared to entering into my Order, another matter, though related), so the best I can offer you here is a fleeting glimpse of its experience. #...hate is a nasty impulse that divides the person against his or her #self. reminds me of "divided for love's sake" #From a pragmatic viewpoint, anger can be helpful, as it may give the #necessary energy for self-defense, but hatred, the dehumanizing of #another human, serves only despots who wish to commit murder without #having to experience it. I'm very very glad to hear someone discern hatred from anger. I have tended to associate them directly in that to me hatred is anger personalized. I may be angry about nothing of which I am aware, but to hate I must have an object of hatred, be it person or event or circumstance. Jambowlsky (sp?) writes that _Love is Letting Go of Fear_, being polar opposites, and I'm inclined to agree. very often that which I hate I am obsessed with just as much as was I in love with it (esp. in this latter term's more popular meanings). more often than not I see *self-hatred*, and it has been of some concern to me -- women's hatred of flesh, men's hatred of homosexuality, people's hatred of the Alien. it seems an extreme to which those who feel repulsed draw near (yes, often via violation) to the object of our loathing (or at least what we take it to be), like two poles of a flexible magnet forced together and struggling with all their force to reject and eliminate the charge of the Other. #Love is altogether a healthier thing, when directed toward the #worthy, though it, too, can destroy if foolishly misdirected. I'm unsure what 'health' is, really. I was reading the other day a text where someone specifically said that the times when we are the most 'healthy' are when we are ill! perhaps they meant that we are finally feeling the out-of-placeness which is forever rampant, or that our limbic system has generated 'health-substances' which rejuvenated, or some other support, I cannot be sure (the latter paves the way for a whole Metaphysics of Medicine whereby our activity -- sex magick, for example -- might be used to generate interior (astral/material) substances as per the Elixir of Immortality). as I have heard there are many kinds of 'love' (the Greeks apparently taxonomized it in a manner reflective of Eskimo's categorization of 'snow'), I'm unsure how we can generalize so easily. I have seen what was called 'love' lead to interminable and horrific suffering, yet also to incomparable joy. it is said that 'worthiness' ought be determined not by who also generates beneficence (compensation) but who does not (need). this seems a Christian masochistic teaching about cheeks and slapping, however. ;> if love is the law, what is the penalty for breaking it? tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com mu