Be Good To Yourself – That Which is Above,Is Below
Be good to yourself.
If your goals are to get rich or wield power over others then you will have no true success in Hermetics. Start thinking of your reasons for taking this on.
The person we most often lie to is ourselves, please be prepared to be brutally honest with yourself while you go through this book…it is extremely important. Admitting to ourselves what our weaknesses are is the first step in making ourselves stronger. Bardon spends a good deal of time having the student examine themselves. It is the only way to recognize what the individual needs to work on. Denying you have any weakness or not fully admitting those weaknesses to oneself will only defeat the purpose. And good luck. 
Here we go
Initiation I – Theory
“That which is above is also that which is below”, Hermes Trismegistus
**We hear this often these days. Especially in the wake of the creation of Wicca. Though it may modernly be treated as a new thought, it obviously is not. Remember that this is not just about god/goddess…it is about everything that is… from the astral plane to the physical to the mental. That which has a place at the top of things, is a reflection of what is below.
Example: Consciousness is “above” the subconscious…they are reflections of each other. Subconscious thought manifests in our conscious life, however not always as we may think. How you behave in waking life is an affect of the driving force of our subconscious and our past. In order to break out of habits in daily life, we must reconcile what is in the subconscious. Changing the subconscious then changes the conscious.
Someone mentioned higher consciousness to me yesterday. I commented that it is a fancy way of saying talking to oneself. As above so below. If a person has something to aspire to, higher consciousness, then you can only tap into that resource by changing your consciousness…which is only changed by changing your subconscious. If you start to understand things in a dual process…even if the processes become more and more complex…if you just break them down into the above/below thing… you will find it easier to understand how things work according to Bardon. Reading U.S Andersen may also help.
People try to take the above/below concept and apply it to say…angels and demons….but we must remember that between the realms of angels and demons there are other realms…one is not directly below the other. So you cannot get closer to angels by changing your relationship with demons. Angels are considered “above” the material plane…demons are considered below the material plane. Which would mean that below angels is you…and above demons is you. By changing your relationship to demons, you are changing your relationship to the earth, which then changes your relationship to the angels.
Sure, some may say that what I describe has no significance because by changing the relationship to demons you are changing your relationship to angels…true..but if you forget the middle step…it will leave holes in your greater understandings.
Elementals are in a realm sort of with us… they are in that space also between angels and demons. The relevance here is…when you change your relationship with demons, you change your relationship with the earth…which changes your relationship with the elementals as well as any other higher dimensional “being”…like angels. If you have a poor balance with the universe/earth/elementals…you will have a poor time associating with any religious stuff like angels and demons. You are not grounded in the universal pulls that exist here…this is how people get possessed.
And you can be possessed by an angel, just as well as you can be possessed by a demon, elemental, another person or even an idea.
I’ll throw in here that I am not religious, but I do not throw away angels and demons because they don’t “fit into” Hermetics. For me, the nature of them absolutely fits in…though the dogma does not. I do not carry a dogmatic understanding of angels and demons. If it were up to me I would come up with two other terms…but it’s not up to me.
Bardon does not really talk so much about angels and demons, though like I said, I believe they fit in.
So now, I have gone on and on so far with about 700 words explaining just one sentence….and Bardon did not even write it lol.
Remember as you go through the book (Initiation into Hermetics)…there is deeper meaning and a deeper significance to just about everything in it.
Hermetic Musings
You will find the Hermetic Arts in many places. You will find parts of it and its theories and philosophy and practice in all religions, philosophies and belief systems. It is not, like some may have you believe, because Hermes “stole” from all religions…it is because the basic precepts of Hermetics is what all religious systems are based on. In one form or another, in some way or another.
This is the main reason I actually study Hermetics. I was searching for the root of it all, of all belief systems, the core of Universal thought, creation and etc. And so far…Hermetics is where I am at, in/around the Zorastrian/Babylonian type period. …possibly older than that…but I am not sure. Some of the next texts I need to read are not found online and I cannot afford to get my hands on a copy or afford the trips to go to the libraries I need to go. Though that will be changing in the near future.
Anyway that all is somewhat besides the point I was going to make here. That point being is that magic is actually much different than the New Age feel good versions of “universal law”. I have been told many times (by New Agers) that what they do is the same as magic. I do not find this to be altogether correct and especially not across the board.
Self help new age spiritualism if it is even that, may help some people feel good and make everything nice and easy for them and even some of the magic/mystic concepts and philosophy may be present to some degree. But the depth of that degree is quite shallow compared to genuine magic and mysticism. To say that what they do and what I do are the same, is frankly an insult to me and it’s not because I have a large ego…it is because they don’t fully understand magical potential.
Actually, I think a lot of people that say they practice magic really have no idea of the depths they can get to with it..though they may have a tiny inkling.
The differences between New Age, “Think it and you will have it” types of concepts (the law of attraction schtuff) are:
The amount and “type” of energy or essence, power (depth/breadth) of concentration and the application of these two from a spiritual level.
Most Ceremonial Magic requires you place your request in akasha (assuming a spiritual being/joining to god, sending energy/request to a specific being)
Which sounds very similar…since that is the way it is expressed or explained simply.
What a magician does actually though in those “simple” steps is:
Concentrate on the operation until it has weight independent of your mind so that it may flow with force towards its objective on all planes, a magician also can see or comprehend every force, situation, resistance and obstacle that blocks the operation and can direct the force around those obstacles by also again see/comprehend all possible outcomes, giving the operation more strength and weight for its manifestation. This actually makes it so your operation is from wisdom and results in harmony (magical equilibrium)
A magician does not just wish and hope and pretend they have something they want, the direct it.
So we will address the three major differences:
Amount of energy: A wish is not power. A wish is a wish. I wish I were rich, I need money. A wish is actually a negative term. It is not something tangible. It is not an action. It has no input…it’s not a container, it is simply a hope. Hopes do not manifest, desire through energetic intent, concentration and a spiritual understanding….A SOLID spiritual understanding (or you may read: synthesis) does manifest.
By spiritual I do not necessarily mean religious. I’m not a religious person. Spiritual in Hermetics it is most often the universal understandings of flow and force, some describe it as knowledge of the hierarchy, or divine inspiration..divine knowledge. Some simply call it power.
I talk to angels. They listen to me. I have talked to entire legions at a time and they have always done what I asked. Why? Because at those moments I have the proper equilibrium of energy, concentration and divine weight or we can say I am in the correct spiritual alignment to do so.
So does this mean I just pick up the cosmic phone and dial up Remeil and people start spontaneously healing and a butt-load of cash is dumped on my front porch? Hardly. But things do get accomplished and it’s not a rare occurrence. People have been doing this and similar for eons.
Linus reminded me of something. He related a story about .. oh sure now I forget the guys name. But the idea is the same. One man could expel demons out of possessed people by uttering simple words, “Leave in the name of Christ” (or something like that). So another exorcist tried to use those simple words and the demon turned to him and says, “I know who Christ is, I know who the other guy is, but who are you?” And with that the demon possessed the man.
Perfect example of what I am trying to talk about here. If you are not in the correct state of balance with what you are working with, it not only will not work it actually could be dangerous. Possibly you would not be possessed, but any number of not great things could happen to a person because of the “backfire”.
Reminds me of a favorite phrase of mine, “Do not mettle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”
Type of energy: Here I’m not getting into magnetic and electrical fluid and flows nor am I talking negative positive stuff here. I’m talking about raw primal energy. The stuff that creates. Dynamic, powerful, explosive and intense. Sovereign divine power seeking absolute control. The stuff that does not just hope around obstacles, it is the dynamic will and expansive power, with implacable dedication and electrifying conviction.
You could say that independence, strength, courage, conviction, faith, will, determination, dedication, self-reliance, self-mastery, uprightness, clarity, order, adaptability, practicality, planning, productivity, excitement, exhilaration, creativity, and vision are qualities that are present when this operates successfully.
Fantastic claims? Yes they are…but truer words could not be spoken.
This is where people will get all wiggly on me and start blasting away at how I must be an ego-maniac to be going on about power and control. Nej, quite the opposite. I’m just describing what it is and it is what it is and that is what it is. However, those who are ego driven and those who really are out for control and manipulation of others hardly ever get to this place. Though, there are some that have, I have met a few. They are no more powerful or influential as anyone else can be……but they do have harming intentions.
If ever in your life, you have glimpsed even for just one brief moment of a second the power of the divine…even the power of God…it is what I am describing. I’m not saying you are god or anything..I’m just saying…it’s some of that ultimate stuff that is there to learn how to touch and when you do…well…if you haven’t touched that yet…I’ll leave you to it.
Though.. in the hermetic art there is something you don’t always hear about in other systems…and that is this extenuating consciousness factor. We can say that black magicians have found a way around this and I’ll leave them out of the discussion.
What the ECF is is the forces of the universe…the fluids, that place you and your will in a sort of check. Again this is where the magical equilibrium comes into play.
The question the electrical fluid will ask you in terms of your faith and conviction is “Are you willing to work without using magic to attain what you want if we set a clear path before you?” You want money? Are you willing to work for it? Here is a job. Do you want love? Are you willing to first give the love you want to others? You want to succeed in life? Are you willing to prepare yourself so that you will be ready to seize the opportunity when it comes to you? The electrical likes to check up on just how much you really want what you are asking for.
Think of it as universal checks and balances. I know it sounds a little trite and to some probably sounds a bit “new agey”…but here is my experience summed up nicely:
Hermetics is the art of attaining a constant and consistent magic. One that you will not have to necessarily always do ceremony for, one that you will not always have to do supplication or prayer/meditation for. Once you get so far into Hermetics, it opens up ways of life that you do not have to take special time to do magic…it’s all magic. As the sentence above states, are you willing to work for what you want if we set a clear path.
When your path is cleared through your magic, any human work becomes easy, all the tasks to take you where you want to go are nothing. The Universe opens up for you. And…the best part, those around you are also affected similarly.
However this may sound…and feel free to comment on any of this…most of it I am just rambling anyway, as I feed my need for communication…but truly…when Hermetics is grasped, and understood as completely as possible by an individual…after they have gone through what it takes to be as balanced as possible…there opens a type of life that …as close as I can describe it..is completely divine.
I have had that life….I got sidetracked. And thank you to a special person I am back onto that life. The effects since I have become better and gotten back to my Hermetic life are quite remarkable. It is still a long road ahead, but the point is…there is now a road and it’s not as rough as it was.
Concentration
Some interesting things:
Billy Graham used to say “Don’t pray for more than a minute at a time.” Well that is Protestant Christianity.
I have also been chastised by Tibetan monks for practices in meditation lasting more than ten minutes. When I first started going through IIH I would find myself in meditation for hours at a time.
Even longer when I started working the spheres and vibrating elemental sigils. Six hours has been the longest I’ve spent with an elemental in the astral plane and that was with an Undine.
This is not about bragging…it is about concentration and hand in hand with that is patience. I have noticed something rather peculiar about the New Agers I have met. They are all extremely impatient and uptight people…oddly enough. Sure, a lot of them on the surface show this calm, peaceful demeanor…but underneath and if you spend a large amount of time with a good number of them…they are a pretty rowdy bunch as far as this type of stuff is concerned. It surprised me…and I do not surprise often.
Bardon teaches you how to hone your concentration skills in IIH…it’s extremely important for successful work. It also very much does take self strength and discipline and dedication. You learn a lot about yourself on the way.
And even if you don’t plan on toning spheres or spending time communing with elementals…it is still a good quality to have.
I often smile when I find a person who is so concentrative, so into what they are doing you can tell the entire world has disappeared for them except for what they are currently involved in. If they aren’t a magician…they would make a rather exceptional one, since that concentration comes so naturally.
Children naturally have good concentration skills. Watch one once, while they are playing…especially if they are investigating something. It’s wonderful to watch. Magical even.
This type of concentration is much different from those employed in the “think it, be it” crowd. They are still wishing, shallowly concentrating on that wish, pretending on that wish. Some might even be successful to a certain degree…but then what do they do if they get their wish? They stop thinking about it, stop concentrating on it.
Reminds me of sympathetic magic. Tie some knots in a green string while you repeat a get rich now mantra then bury it under a full moon with a piece of silver as an offering and you will probably find $50.00 in a few days. But then what? What happens when that stops working?
Sympathetic magic is well and fine and it does work…but really that is all the “think it, be it” crowd is doing. There is no depth here…they do not feel it in the core of their being, they do not know it, they hope it.
With Bardon you train your concentration on your five senses. Again, all five are important. Training all five senses enables you to use more of your brain when you concentrate. You learn to sit at least for ten minutes concentrating on each sense by itself without any distraction. It takes time. It takes motivation. This is quality control. You get the training you need and then it is much easier to do the work.
A friend of mine wrote:
“Why is concentration important? After all, there is a lot of energy in the universe. All you need to do is tap into it. Just open your heart with faith, say what you want, and imagine yourself as having it. It will come to you. What is with this magical training crap?
If you want justice, there are people who have made a life long commitment to injustice. If you want wealth, there are people who will try their hardest to steal and corrupt your soul as they offer you wealth. If you have good energy to give, there are negative people who devour good energy. They take it and turn it into something horrible. And if your thoughts are positive there are people who specialize in taking positive thoughts and turning them into discord.
Concentration enables your good energy and good intentions to cut through negativity the way a laser cuts through metal. Thought is like light that falls on your skin. It gives warmth and lights your way in the dark. Synchronize the wave lengths of light and you can create temperatures that cause nuclear fusion. It becomes a power of creation. You concentrate your thoughts and they overcome what opposes them.
Athletes know how to concentrate. Martial artists know how to concentrate. Actors know how to concentrate. They can cry just by thinking a thought.
I have met masters in the business world who takes years of experience and concentrate all that knowledge into one moment when they are looking for an answer to a problem. Nothing else in the world exists but the problem they are concentrating on. Their brains are that focused.”
Last thing.. the spiritual difference. The authority with which you ask.
“I know who Christ is, I know who the other guy is, but who are you?”
Of course, a simple prayer to God puts you in touch with the divine, right??
Prayer does not assume the stance of a spiritual being that initiates new things and takes full responsibility for his actions. Prayer does not enter a spiritual plane of awareness. It does not join itself to divinity. It does not incorporate the skills of someone who labors within the “Divine Workshop.” Heh.. I almost feel like Santa right about now.
The spiritual plane for Bardon is akasha. It is a timeless and spaceless state of awareness. Akasha is the plane of causes. It is from this level that everything that exists has been created and it is here that the world is supervised and maintained. This is where you place things with great will and intent and the other three planes do what is necessary to manifest it.
The new agers have developed that law of attraction movie…
You can send out great and wonderful energy to others and to your wish. You can visualize it. Dream it. Imagine real right now. But the world may exhibit incredible inertia and massive resistance to your wish. You make a wish but laid out before you is an emotional and mental tsunami, a tornado, a pyroclastic flow. It picks you up, it picks a car up, it picks a house up and tosses them around as if they are nothing at all.
Akasha is the first key and the gateway to all the mysteries–to relax so, to be calm, to open from within, to be so still, you reflect easily within yourself the being and the life of all that exists.
The akashic plane supersedes or suspends the laws of physics and law of attraction. In other words, you can create and place causes here that do not exist on the three lower planes. On the akashic plane you can create something out of nothing. There is no equal and opposite reaction on this level of creation. With skill, training, and inspiration you can create causes that nothing can oppose.
Newton in his physics did not know about akasha. Steven Hawking does know about it and puzzles over it finding it hard to comprehend.
For Bardon, entering akasha is simply practicing a combination of concentrations.
If you do the combination of concentrations, you are within everything, you are a part of everything, you are the source of everything, and you know the original purpose behind everything that exists. And so consequently you are sovereign over everything.
Tada!
With that, I leave you for now with a small poem written by my buddy Bill:
There is no vice I can not twist or bend
And make again into its opposite virtue
There is no compulsion or obsession I can not
So fill with light it becomes kind and bright
There is no ill will or malice I can not
Convert into chivalry or true nobility
There is no crunch or karmic bind, no evil intent or design
I can not refine within my mind
Into contentment and absolute satisfaction
Transpersonal Dialoguing II
Recently I made the mistake of asking if something was indeed there or if I was manifesting it myself…and consequently I physically choked on my answer. Which…I should have noticed, without interaction, that the item I was seeing/experiencing was, in fact, operating in its own sphere of responsibility, independent of my contact with it.
Simply I had forgotten something that I knew/know…which is…
when there is an encounter in a meditation/dialogue.. it is best to stand back in silence and let the spirit/being come to you
…which in my case it did do after I was silent…I received a phrase in my head which clearly indicated that it or they did not have time for me. Because this/these spirits/entities were around the goal of my meditation…instead of heeding them…I pressed on…again because I forgot the nature of this exercise…and when I made an inquiry…I received my answer.. choking…too big for you…move on,,,move on.
It is very clear to me now that these items were indeed not my own manifestation, they were the spirits/entities the subject of my meditation was working with (with or without their knowledge) at the time…and they were all busy.
Another way to check if indeed it is something you are encountering in spirit or if it is a manifestation of your own making is to evaluate the quality of the experience.
If you are getting the feeling of power, intense feelings or magifyed sensations….BUT you do not feel as if you are becoming whole within yourself….this is when you need to take a step back and focus on what you are experiencing rather than relating it to a specific being.
Basically…feel it…don’t be or become it…don’t let it engulf you… when you are not in wholeness…erm….well when you feel overpowered or like you may “lose it”… you are not focusing on the experience…you are focusing on what it is doing to you…when the experience reconciles with you…(if it ever does) and you begin to feel the sense of being whole or fulfiled…you are one step further into the I/Thou experience of it. Though you cannot get through this if you are not properly centered within yourself. We hope that at the very worst in an attempt to do this without being centered that simple feelings of drowning or being overloaded with rampant energies would be the outcome. Though one can never be too careful.
I would suggest anyone’s first dialoguing attempt be with something quiet and simple…as with a flower or a blade of grass. Although things found in nature can be brutally overpowering…I have yet to be overwhelmed by small plants…however…this does not mean that it is not an awesome nor unfulfilling experience. The heights and depths a blooming tulip can take you to is actually quite astounding…and may leave you speechless the first times it is successfully accomplished.
In the third-eye chakra, one aspect is that a person can be able to be separate – detached and objective…all the while being completely one with it and still percieve all connections to other things.
“Achieving the art of detachment beyond “small mindedness” is accomplished through developing impersonal intuitive reasoning. It is through an open brow chakra that visual images are received.” – About.com
In dialoguing this psychic quality moves freely…feelings, senses, meditations..through clarity though the oneness or wholeness is never lost. In the sense that energies are ever flowing/changing/moving… never will you have the same experience twice…and never will you learn everything there is to know…as what there is to know…changes with time.
A lot of the time my dialogues will come out in a poem or short story…but more often than not it comes in a string of phrases and images. Some of these results will mean one thing to me, while it may mean something totally different to another. This usually has to do with my intent in the dialogue. If I am using the dialogue to expand my awareness of personal situations (though unlikely I will share publicly)..more often it will have a totally different meaning to another. However, if I am simply dialoguing to feel…say the spirit of water…or an Undine specifically…then I have what I have at (usually) the behest of the spirit. I may ask questions..what I recieve as an answer may be an image, may be inspiration for a poem..may actually be a poem..several times it is too much to put into words…such as my encounters with certain Undines in the past..of which I usually just end up crying for a few hours on the beauty and love I have witnessed and fail miserably when I try to put it all down in writing.
This is really nothing new…people from many traditions over many centuries have done this in one form or another. I was introduced to it with a personal (human and physical) guide, who was nice enough to talk me through it almost every step of the way…but really…for anyone practiced in meditation…it just takes a tweaking of the energies..then removing yourself long enough to attune your energies to the object of your dialogue. Sometimes it works best if you can touch it…or feel it. Say…you want to commune with water..you may sit by or in the ocean..or you may just have a bowl of water. I remember in my practice..once I was able to attune to something…the direct contact with it was not always a necessity.
The Abraxas Epic Part IV – The Symbol
So earlier I mentioned the symbol and orignially when we were discussing this on EM, I had figured no one would be interested in it…and possibly no one is…but I believe the relation of how this came about…although very long…and will probably carry to subsequent parts…has some value to some people out there.
It started a while ago when I was pretty young. I used to see this…erm…being. I am not very sure now if it was in dreams or if I was awake when I saw it the first few times but it always presented itself very benignly and the fact that it didn’t have a face really didn’t seem to put me off. I was a child then and looking back on it I would think a child would be scared of a thing with no face…but apparently not. I sort of assumed this thing was watching over me and started calling it the watcher. My watcher.
When I was about 13 I had a birthday party and some girls were sleeping over. One brought a talking board. First experience I had ever had with one. After they left I decided to make one (talking board) with a shot glass and a piece of paper and started using it for divination almost every night. It was all very fun and very silly-girl stuff until one night I was up in my room and the glass started swirling around and around. It had done that when we used it as a group but had not done that when I was alone. I was curious. So…playing a game, right. I asked it who I was and it spelled out “U R MAGI”…I didn’t know what that word meant at the time. So then I asked it, who it was and it spelled out “JYXD”. So…I didn’t know what that meant either, of course it was just a letter jumble. So then I asked it who it was really and it said, “I AM WHO WATCHES YOU.” Which then totally freaked me out and I didn’t use a board for a few years after that.
Hindsight and experience tell me that that statement isn’t necessarily something to get all freaked about. I mean it could be referencing a guardian angel and etc. But at the time I was plagued with nightmares and kept seeing the shadow of a man in my window on the second story of the house right before I would go to sleep. And of course my family didn’t believe me so..you know, big freak out. But that is how it is sometimes.
Shortly after that I read all I could get my hands on about religion and occultism. Which wasn’t much compared to what is out and about today. My search was to find out what was going on with me. Why I kept experiencing things that everyone else said they couldn’t see…why this thing called me a magi (looked it up) and what JYXD could mean.
When I was about 16 I was minding my own business home alone on a Saturday afternoon and went into the bathroom. When I came out it was standing in front of me. The thing I had come to call the watcher. I had not seen it or “seen” it for a long time, as with the talking board scare I tried to put all that and seeing things out of my mind so I could be “normal” and stop angering my parents. So it was more than surprising to see it right there. And I still cannot tell you if I saw it in my head, if it was physically there, if it was a “spirit” or what. All I can say is the thing I kept seeing when I was little in what I expect were dreams was standing in my kitchen. About 7 or 8 feet tall. Still without a face, still represented in the same garb as when I was small. What happened? First I got all goosepimply and then I said hello…not sure if that was spoken or not…and then it appeared to poke it’s finger into my forehead and I heard (from somewhere) “I am JYXD”. And then it was gone.
My reaction first was WTF was that and should I go back into the bathroom…in case I suddenly peed. Silly but it was my first thought. I didn’t really know what to make of it. Except that it supposedly was the thing I “talked” to on the board a few years earlier. At the time I tried to find correlations with guardian angels and other spirits but found nothing that really fit. Still haven’t so much…seems there are some things similar but not quite.
When I got into Hermetics when I was 18, things really got rolling with the watcher/JYXD. On a regular basis he appeared in visions and dreams and my astral practices. Although I’m not very good at astral practices even now. Nothing of significance really happened. He has not appeared again in what seems a physical form…and never said anything until several years later (2007…we’ll get to that).
But back to Abraxas and the symbol. The symbol that this entity (Abraxas) referred to as “the symbol closest to you” would be the sigil I ended up making in 2006 for JYXD. I had made this sigil with the idea that I was going to conjure him up to speak with him as I had found out I could channel a bit. Or seemed so anyway. Thing was that I made the sigil and put it in a box and basically forgot about it until this experience. So I got the sigil out and went on a week long Google to see if anything was remotely similar. And that is when I found the Chi Rho. It was extremely similar to my JYXD sigil and funnily enough, extremely similar to the symbol they use/used to depict Abraxas.
I have had dozens and dozens of strange/odd/beautiful/mysterious/scary experiences in my life. I have heard car crashes in my head only to find out someone I know was in one a day or two later. I have had “demonic voices” plague me during workings, I have had experiences with Undines that have lead me to places and information that I would never have seen/known otherwise. Meditations to where it is as if I can hear people have conversations in other places…and find out it was correct. It takes a lot anymore to really impress me (in the way of my own experience). And this, somehow did. My first reaction was…you mean all this time there might be an explanation? And I get the idea that there is…but there isn’t. Meaning there is an explanation but it is individual not universal. Although you never know…but probably not likely.
License to Depart – Necessary?
An interesting conversation sparked up on my Facebook this morning and I thought it important enough to touch on it and also relate some of my experiences. As this site is mainly about my experiences it helps give me a little more content and puts into context some of my relations here.
David Rankine made a note this morning about the necessity of the License to Depart when within a traditional grimoire paradigm. And I find that correct within the traditional paradigm. It makes sense. When you are practicing ritual you are in effect, opening a gateway or you could say putting yourself into direct contact with whatever “stuff” is out there that can be reached, in the vein of energy/entity/spirit/etc. So it makes sense that if you open a door you should then shut it. If your paradigm goes upon the idea that there are actual entites/beings/creatures that you summon up and invite them in…and if those beings are considered “good”, “indifferent”, “happy”, “evil”, “mischevious” or “malicious” then it, again, makes good sense when you are done to say…alright, I invited you in now I am going to tell you to leave.
He also touched on something I find very important. And that is you do not ask. There is no, “please asmodeus, leave if you would like.” It’s more like, “I’m done with this conversation now, so get the hell out.” Possibly not that rude but the idea is that you don’t ASK, you are a magician, a director and conduit of magic (whatever you percieve that magic to be). As a director you are in charge of your mind, body, spirit and surroundings.
In any case my response was yes but also that I am not convinced that a license to depart is necessary in all instances all of the time. To be sure, if a novice or beginner or dabbler is garbing up to do ritual, decides to conjure up Amy (Goetia) and doesn’t put some sort of limit to their request/demand/requirements and also does not do something that closes the direct connection (leaving only an indirect connection), any amount of things can occur that have nastiness written all over it.
In Joseph Lisiewski’s book Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation he mentions personal experiences of things like toilets exploding, knocks on walls, things shaking, lights flickering during an operation. I am of the opinion that in these cases not issuing a license to depart is a bit idiotic. Obviously something very strong is going on and intends for you to break down and not finish…which in the magical world we are in means they get let loose…upon you. You could say haunted in a way. After all you were the one that called them up.
I have been in situations where I have issued a license to depart. I end up doing operations for people. Not often but I have done it…and in that respect because I like to bring in elements of the other person’s belief system so that 1) They are more in tune with the ritual and 2) It seems to make sense to try to work within their paradigm as it relates to mine…in my experience the results seem better.
In any case one such operation I did do was one of very few experiences where I did feel there was a struggle between what I was working on getting rid of and myself. Things did keep happening to try to break me out of what I was doing, to break my focus/concentration. Those things were voices, physical sensations, knocks on walls and blinding lights while my eyes were closed. For this operation the goal was to actually get rid of something in the first place and I’ll be the first to say it really didn’t want to go..but finally did. I very much did do a license to depart…a few of them and other things.
You will see that I have started to relate my experiences with something that exposed itself as Abraxas to me. When I first did the conjuration of Ghob and “he” (self described Abraxas) showed up…and after my initial conversation, I did close the ceremony/ritual, however I did not do a license to depart. My reasoning on that was not that it seemed like a benign spirit/entity/manifestation…it just seemed not needed. And I think you get this instinct the more you practice.
I think that the more balanced you are emotionally/mentally/physically/spiritually/magically that issuing a departation may not be necessary all of the time. However, I still suggest people new to the Art do so when invoking/evoking entities.
Someone a little bit ago in the conversation on Facebook also posted something I agree with as being lacking. They mentioned attending rituals/operations where people don’t even bother doing a closing, they just sort of wander out of the circle…or worse (I think) saying something like “leave if it is your will”. That I disagree with wholeheartedly. But the whole thing of just sort of disintigrating a magical operation by trailing off without a closing doesn’t seem right and doesn’t seem very wise. I happen to delineate closing a ceremony with a license to depart. In a sense it is like when a person of Christian faith prays to God. They pray and then after they say Amen. Amen is basically the closing of the operation. But they aren’t all like, “Dear God (conjuration), please help me get through today and protect me and my loved ones.(request) Amen.(closing) Because thou hast-diligently answered unto my, demands, and hast been very ready and willing to come at my call, I do here license thee to depart unto thy proper place; without causing harm or danger unto man or beast. ”
Although…really…traditional grimoire peeps use God and angels typically for protection as their companion in controlling spirits that are not of God…and this and such. Which I have lots of opinions on anyway…and find it most interesting. To me God and angels are yet another entity to conjure as are the Goetia and etc. So..is Amen God’s license to depart or as I originally see it, simply a closing…an end to a request…a thanks…verily,verily…truly…sincerely. Amen is I’m sure another topic for another post. 
Don’t get me wrong though, I do not mean to bag on anyone’s beliefs. Everyone is free to believe what they would like. I just work from a different way I guess.
The Abraxas Epic Part III
To be sure, this contact with “Abraxas” has been extremely significant to me in many ways. Not simply the way it all just showed up…but just about everything imparted so far …has been exactly what I have been looking/working/waiting for. Which, while it is not unusual…it’s just not so typical for me. Nto unusual because it has happened before…but atypical because there is just so damned much of it. And it seems to correlate/relate to things I have been through my entire life. For a while I had thought that this was my HGA (or something similar), I am not throwing the idea out, however, the HGA being something that is subjective and not having a specific or “hard” definition I may never really know for sure unless I just decide it is so.
I have had feelings of being watched by..erm..the “powdered man” at work and at home several times, especially when reading occult and religious related materials. Which…I know makes me sound carried away with it…but things have been interesting to say the least since the contact.
Martialis wrote (on Evocationmagic.com):From your post Magiwen it seems that a simple call might suffice for your own working as the entity seems to have come of its own volition. Also the fact that it showed up of its own volition and showing a particular affinity with yourself, Magiwen, may signify the direction your work might take (or not, cause it’s kinda fishy that Abraxas just showed up)
Right. At work last one evening I had a slow period and used my pendulum a little bit about this. Sometimes I am not sure why I even use it, I mean, I still have a bit of skepticism of the answers I get and I been using the thing for over ten years. I asked simple stuff. Was the Abraxas that showed up a part of myself? No. Has this Abraxas ever been a living human? No (ruling out spirits of my ancestors was the intention there). Is this manifestation of Abraxas something I projected? No. Is this the Abraxas of lore also known as Mithra and other higher deities? Yes.
Realizing this is not necessarily that reliable….if it is all a manifestation of my subconscious it’s fully there ready to fool me…and in that case I still think it is important even if it is all my own subconscious or superunconscious’ doing. The fact that I am seeing the “powdered man” in waking states and now for several nights in a row dragged into astral situations that seem related, tells me that no matter if it was contact with an external Abraxas energy or my own manifestation, that I have stuff to work on.
I think you are right in expressing caution for others. I may not actually be dealing with an Abraxas anyone may evoke. What would be very interesting though is if someone did manage to do it and recieved information from it that I have so far withheld from my relating of events (and probably will continue to withhold) THAT would lean my experience more toward the external at that point, I think.
Quote:
“Martialis wrote:(especially since he said that bit about ‘the symbol closest to you’)?”
Right. That in itself is a story..about how it became something of a personal symbol for me, though the historical meaning is not the full meaning it has to myself. I don’t mind sharing that but the story would probably be way too long and boring…and generally meaningless to anyone else. The symbol turns out to be a chi rho with an additional ‘anchor’ and a circle around it and also additional lines and letters. Something interesting other than it is a personal symbol of mine is that in pre-christian days a variation of it was attributed to solar deities. I do not remember before this experience ever reading of Abraxas. (more about the symbol and my history with it in upcoming Part IV)
I must have at some point at least seen the name though. Firstly it is in a lot of texts in one form or another, so I easily could have stored it away in memory and subconscious. But that is not a definite thing either. The information I got from the experience has basically been confirmed for the most part in what I have found so far about the name itself. Though there is more yet I still need to find.
Anyway, it will be fun and hopefully ‘enlightening’ doing the searches and having the experiences.
EDIT: Got carried away in my explanations and forgot an important correlation…the REASON the symbol thing is significant is that if you look at early forms of the Abraxas talismans or “abraxas stones” the symbol on a lot of them, if you break it down into simple lines instead of figures, greatly resembles my version of the chi rho…that is close and important to me because of some other things that have happened in the past.
The Abraxas Epic Part II – The Experience
After the extremely brief history, I’ll move onto the experience.
A new journey for me started last August. To be sure the journey started long ago, it may be more apt to say that yet another leg on the trip was instigated. Something interesting happened and there are some people who have been asking me what came of it, as I have been being quite tight-lipped about it.
This whole thing is within a much larger picture of my life so while most of this is of no significance to anyone or anything but myself, it is my hope it will inspire others to start or keep going on their personal path or within their system.
Back in August 2008, as a part of another forum (EM), I participated in a “group” evocation of the elemental king Ghob. This was not a working to be done all at the same time although that would have been ideal..but schedules did not allow that. So we had decided to evoke the same being within the same period and simply report results. I, as often is the case, was the odd magician out.
I did do an evocation of Ghob, and actually did it much like many others that participated. However, what I got was not Ghob. What I got was something that identified itself as Abraxas. I will quickly go through a summary of the experience.
I performed pre-ritual cleansing as usual, set up, as usual, started the evocation, as usual. My “setup” for this evocation was a personalized version of what some refer to as the LBRP, candles of specific colors and opium incense.
Then, very much NOT usual, I had a figure outside my circle. When I concentrated on this figure I got an image of a monkish looking person…a man in a robe that wasn’t white but wasn’t dark, he was bald and was covered in white powder. He stood in front of a long wooden counter or sort of worktable and was with his back to me going over something. He seemed to be reading and had a pen and was writing in something on the table (possibly in a book or on a paper). This is very much NOT like any elemental experience I have had so I knew at this moment something was amiss.
I had a short conversation with this and he/it identified itself as Abraxas. At the time the name was familiar however I couldn’t think of who/what it meant. So I asked and basically got the answer that I would remember one day. Whatever that meant.
Since August I have seen the powdered man several times, there have been several “conversations” which I will get to in subsequent posts. We also mulled over meanings and who/what Abraxas was and wasn’t on the forum.
In a preliminary search on Google for white powder + ritual… these are some of the things I found:
A site covering some African tribe(s) in Zambia had this to say:
To approach any of these spirits one has to visit the “Ampemba”, the white powder-smearing site at “Chizabingo”. This is 7 kilometres south of Sun Hotels. The ritual warriors and those taking part in the Lwiindi Ceremony smear white powder known as “mpemba”. The white powder symbolizes purity of the performers as they come in the presence of the spirits.
This struck me as funny…not about the powder…but I have two friends…both of which are with people from Zambia.
This quote is from some site trying to sell “white powder gold” so I am not too sure of how reliable this one is but anyway:
King Solomon was very well known as an alchemist and a magician being involved in ritual magic. He too had the knowledge of making White Powder Gold. (alchemy)
Though I so far don’t remember the grimoires talking about powdering oneself..but then again…I haven’t read all of them either.
From Wiki on Rituals of the Ayyavazhi
The people of Ayyavazhi wore a vertical white mark on the forehead in the shape of a flame, starting from the central point between the eyebrows, going straight up near the top edge of the forehead.
The flame shape represents Aanma Jyothi or Atman. Which in turn means that, Atman is considered sacred and as the name of God. Zealous devotees smeared it on the exterior of the upper arms and over the chest. This white mark was unlike the one worn by a Hindu of Vaishnavism tradition who wore it on the forehead in the shape of ‘U’, or of Saivism tradition who wore it horizontally as three parallel lines. The white powder used for this mark was made from coarse white soil, found at lower layer of the earth.
Interesting.. then suddenly I’m reading about ORMUS water…so that ended that search.
Bluefirephoenix (on Evocationmagic.com) wrote: Since the name comes from a Greek exorcism rite maybe we should look at Greek mythology for answers
My reply:
Good Point. So far I have only come up with this as what seems like the closest “official” etymology of ‘abraxas’ = Grecised form of Ha-Brachah = “The Blessing”
Vrischika wrote (on Evocationmagic.com):Of course evoking something as pompous as him is like evoking EHNB or something, way over my present “status” as a magician, but as you said it’s too tempting to avoid so if we choose him I’m in.
My reply:
Huh. I never got the impression the entity was pompous. Funny you say that. Either way seems like from what I have found abraxas and EHNB could be one in the same (cept this pompous part – not sure where that comes from), or at the very least they may be functioning from the same “zone” or energetic source.
The Abraxas Epic -Part I
I performed an evocation of Ghob several months ago as a sort of experiment with some of the folks over at www.evocationmagic.com …and got Abraxas instead. This is the relation of the experience along with some of what I posted on that forum regarding historical references and some other etc. Most of Part I here are some historical references…more of the experiences will come later in MANY parts. I think I have over thirty pages written so far…it is seemingly a neverending epic.
Ancient mythologists placed Abraxas among the Egyptian gods. Abraxas was also the Persian sun god, and in Syria he was a form of Iao (aspect or name for Yahveh, Yahweh, or Jehovah). It is said that the name was created to replace the unmentionable name of the Supreme Being.
Abraxas is known from the Gnostic writings of Simon Magus, father of the Gnostics and Basilides of Egypt.
The Gnostics, a sect of the 2nd century, claimed Abraxas as their supreme god, and said that Jesus Christ was only a phantom sent to earth by him. They believed that his name contained great mysteries, as it was composed of the seven Greek letters that formed the number 365, which is also number of days in a year. Abraxas, they thought, had under his command 365 gods, to whom they attributed 365 virtues, one for each day.
From the Tertullian:
‘Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. He affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas, by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he calls Nous; that thence sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, in honor of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number. Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world, he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God, but affirms to be an angel.
To Him, he says, was allotted the seed of Abraham, and accordingly he it was who transferred the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human blood. Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured.
The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies.
What I find most interesting so far is this…
The Basilideans. Basilides claimed to have been taught his doctrines by Glaucus, a disciple of St Peter. The sect had three grades – material, intellectual and spiritual.
From the Wiki:
The fundamental theme of the Basilidian speculation is the question concerning the origin of evil and how to overcome it. The answer is given entirely in the forms of Oriental gnosis, evidently influenced by Parseeism. There are two principles, untreated and self-existent, light and darkness, originally separated and without knowledge of each other. At the head of the “kingdom of light” stands “the uncreated, unnamable God.” From him divine life unfolds in successive steps. Seven such revelations form the first ogdoad[1], from which issued the rest of the spirit-world, till three hundred and sixty-five spirit-realms had originated. These are comprised under the mystic name Abrasax, whose numerical value answers to the number of the heavens and days.
