The Lust for Result By Haramullah Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. La ilaha illa 'Llah. Assalam alaikum, my kin. Are the Four Powers of the Sphinx: to Know, to Will, to Dare and to DO? I've noticed, in my socializing with magicians in various realms, a veritable lust for action. So many are aching for a chance to 'get behind the wand', so to speak, that few take the time to really prepare themselves adequately. Desperate to become the Demiurgos, seldom do aspirants slow down enough to cover the basics. By 'the basics' I do not mean 'the basic rituals' or even 'the basic invocations', but the exploration, experience and discipline which the Master Therion has emphasized quite clearly. Too often do we come to equate 'mastery' with absolute control or perfection, rather than with deep and broad understanding through exposure. Too often do we pass up the preparations and thus spoil the Work on account of our haste. No doubt the lust for result is born in the ideology of Progress, of Evolution, of 'movement TO' rather than 'enjoyment OF'. The typical narrative focusses on the DOer, moving through a life, rather than on a place through which a few may pass. Being under the thumb of dictatorial parents, we long to overthrow God and become the very fulcrum of Creation, that powerful Magus who directs the forces of Universe, to whose will the cosmos respond in concerted enthusiasm, as to the wand of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. The preoccupation with accomplishment became evident to me as I repeatedly heard recommendations to "perform banishings" and "do the LBRP!", even while the Master exhorted "Exceed!" and "Invoke often!" My fear of performance and dislike of choreographed rite kept me far away from such things, and that characterization of "banishing disruptive energy" led me to evade them still further as my path is one of Love under Will. Until and unless I find such actions necessary, I shall not indulge the exercise of coercive power. Yet when I spoke further with these advice-giving magicians, I discovered a dearth of comprehension, a rote specialization and a distinct lack of PRESENCE. These people hadn't done their yoga! So wrapped up in fantastic stories of intrigue and power, so taken in by the romantic notion of magical or mystical achievement, they seemed to have completely overlooked the abject warnings of their prophet and best teacher. Now I realize that all students are not alike, and while some have an aptitude for one sphere, others must wrestle with this same as if a sisyphusian boulder. Indeed, my own lacking in the areas of ceremony, while in some ways quite prophylactic, also serves as an obstacle in regards both practice and instruction. While I can carry the teachings through to ground quite well, I find, I haven't yet had the courage to bring them to a social, symbolic level, likely due to ridicule in my youth. This places me in a fairly awkward position relative to those around me, yet it also forces a kind of humility supposedly required by the Elders of Tradition. Rumor (history?) has it that those who maintained the tradition once required very strict standards of those who came to them for instruction. This sometimes extended to gender and age; a male of maturing years was favored. The roles of society being what they were, gender was more obviously relevant than it is today, and those beyond a certain age would likely be more serious about their interests (enough to devote time and diligence to practice). Not only this last, but those of greater age were more likely to have come to terms with the world, and were probably not simply shifting from arena to arena (e.g. from social to mystical) in an effort to escape themselves. It is worth repeating that the prime directive in magick is to 'know thyself', and to this end the first power of the Sphinx includes and may initiate the rest. People learn in a variety of ways, however, and my own style leans rather heavily on precursory rational analysis. It was no accident that my best essays have been birthed while sitting post as a martial guard, reflecting deeply as I meditated on my charge. I needed time to absorb, analyze and synthesize, allowing that intellectual bubble to rise to the surface in a surprising gestalt. Yet these were not simply the products of intellectual absorption, cogitation and regurgitation. I found ways to *apply* all the principles of which I read, concretizing them, when possible, to the most basic element of experience. Within previous occupations in my energetic, administrative juggling and whirling, I was continually handed new projects. Dancing between the powers of initiation and negation, I tested out the attitudes, approaches, tactics, strategems and disciplines of which I'd read and written. Often did I faulter, yet gradually I began to understand the energy of a moving dynamo, even while, day after day, though I sought to maintain my focus upon my self, my center, I would wobble and drift, disoriented before 'quitting time'. Though I bound my will tightly to the passion of my resolve, each day I would be taken by the faces of need, requirement and reward, led astray by the temptations of entertainment and escape. Gradually I came to see that while my inner balance could be maintained to a great degree, the intensity and volume of activity was just too much for me, always pushing me past my limits in frenzy or boredom. Thus it was that, given incentive from a changing management, I decided to move my practice into another dimension - one more integrated though no less challenging: the monastic. Still I did not take up the ceremonial wand and acknowledge myself in these realms. Rather, as the pen was my Wand, the water glass was my Cup, the kitchen knife was my Sword and pocket change became my Disk. I DID, however, don the robes of the mage-monk, and even to this day do I wear them in public. Yet always, always do I hear the charge from others regarding 'High Magick', and 'the Ritual of the Hexagram', etc. etc. Now admittedly I have involved myself with an Order that tends to stress the ceremonial aspects of practice, yet even when I investigated Gardnerian Wicca (among other forms of magick I reviewed), the emphasis was on 'getting in there and doing it', sometimes, much to the dismay of some of my friends and myself, omitting all else! Now of course my caution was dual: both to secure myself from faulty programming and to avoid the horrors of performance for which I was not ready. I balked not only at the substance but the METHOD of instruction. It was a veritable nightmare, a bequeathing of high-powered tools to the unwary, the uninstructed, the unlearned and the undisciplined. How strange to see so many people without question or discussion, given the ODDness of what was being taught! Witchcraft indeed! Had all of them bought this power-lure of 'controlling nature' and abandoned their love for Mother Earth as well as their reason? I cannot say, yet to this day I feel that many people involve themselves in magick as a sort of social game from which they gain very little. By itself this is not problematic, yet when I think of the time, the effort involved by those teachers and students; when I consider the potential benefit to those truly interested in learning a method of reflection and, ultimately, consummation, I'm astonished by the lack of serious attention in an all-consuming desire to do, do, DO! I've of course considered that this is all a matter of 'difference of learning styles' and that I've waded into a 'doer's trade', a kind of 'activity discipline', like ballet or martial arts, in which I'm dawdling in a small pool, practicing my fishy-rithmetic while all the while the rest of my 'school' has begun their lessons in fly-catching and hook- banishing. Yet isn't it kind of dangerous to play with laser-surgery tools before we know 1) how they work, what they can do, etc., and 2) what we wish to do with them? Are we so malleable that 'getting in and doing it' is more like rollerskating than auto-brain-surgery? Will our flubs, the limitations of the system, our teachers, etc. be washed away like so much butt-smacking-pavement slips from which a light-hearted pillow may protect us? I'm unsure of this, especially when I've seen very many individuals who appeared, to my limited perceptions, to be digging their own grave with a magical shovel, or downloading the worst aspects of my society directly into their psycho-spiritual data-centers. No doubt there are freaks drawn to such a discipline as the arcane, but where, as V.H. says, are our success-stories? Are all successful mages hidden within the folds of society under some cloaking-device, forever obscured by their perfect humility? Or is the present system corrupted by those of little understanding yet forceful effect, urging today's aspirants, like lemmings, over the cliffs of their will and into an ocean of slavery, despair and self-destruction, all in response to that interminable, fervent, LUST FOR RESULT? Haramullah rasulu 'Llah. Alaikum assalam, my kin. Love is the law, love under will. (C) 2000 Haramullah nagasiva@luckymojo.com ArkaotikA 6632 Covey Road Forestville, CA 95436