Beginners in the occult

 From: rmr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Richard M. Romanowski)

Subject: Re: G.D. terms and FAQ

Date: 11 Mar 93 00:43:53 GMT

apolinski@FNALO.FNAL.GOV writes:

>>Instead of the theory of

>>magick, we could have mention of a few specifics .... the Emerald tablet,

>>the tarot, black mirrors, blood sacrifice vs. perfumes, goetia, theurgia,

>>Pythagoreanism, Masonry, Qabalah, geomancy, astrology ...

>YES, YES, YES, most of these terms I don't even understand. Please explain 

>more!!!

OK.  One sec:

Everybody who considers themselves a qualified occult scholar,

please read the below recommendations and criticize them if they're

wrong.  The below recommendations are specific and too limited to form a 

new FAQ, but the reading list below might be better for newbies than

our current FAQ.

So if I'm wrong, tell me why.

OK, Mark, here are thumbnail sketches of those terms, and

reading recommendations.

The Emerald Tablet:  A brief document written by Hermes Trismegistus,

(i.e. thrice-greatest, albeit my Greek is so bad I would translate only

'thrice-great' -- I think superlatives should be reserved for -tatos/-tata/

-taton forms) detailing an Operation of the Sun, apparently alchemical in

nature.  Since I am not now and have never been an alchemist, perhaps some

erudite mage will step forth and explain it.  

(I really ought to be able to quote it from memory, but I've been

busy lately, you see...)

The Emerald Tablet is whence we get "as above, so below," which is

to Hermetic magic what Maxwell's Equations are to contemporary electrodynamics.

Note that there have been Einsteins and Feynmans in electrodynamics, and there

have been Paracelsi and Dees and Bennetts in magic, so the original document

may not be perfectly up to date ... then again, maybe it is.  Good topic

for discussion.

Black mirrors:  A popular G.D. way to train clairvoyance.  There's

a lot of funky medieval lit on mirror magic, if you happen to get off on

medievalism.  I do.  But then again, I've been known to read Waite, so if

I ever annoy you, just toss your head and say,"How smart could he be? He

reads *Waite*" in your most superior tone, and everyone will snub me for

weeks.  

Black mirrors are much cheaper and more fun than crystal balls,

bowls of water with a drop of ink in them, and other monochrome surfaces

at which you can stare in order to train clairvoyance.  Butler has a book

on training clairvoyance which is without exception the worst thing he ever

wrote.  All his other books are great.  The clairvoyance one didn't do much

for me.  

Blood sacrifice vs. perfumes:  This is a sticky one, because I don't

want to talk about something I hold very sacred, namely the sort of magic

practiced by my ancestors.  

Great stuff.  Mostly bloody stuff.  Unfortunately ninety percent

of it is oriented towards Iron Age lifestyles, and is ABSOLUTELY USELESS.

Crowley mentions that blood can be replaced by perfumes, since both

give evoked spirits a basis for manifestation.  To what degree this is

psychological and to what degree this is physical I have been unable to

determine.  Physical appearance generally seems to mean something that the

magician sees but does not show up on a photograph BUT

in the early twentieth century many photographs of ectoplasm -- the

substantial part of spirits, ghosts, etc. -- were taken.  I don't know 

if they're real or fake.  Maybe they were all high on lighter fluid.

Maybe not.

Pythagoreanism:

Pythagoras was way cool.

Neo-Pythagoreans did math.  Sometimes they did magic.  We owe them much.

Check the library. ... more on search topics later.

Masonry:  The G.D. was masonic.  Search under mason, freemasonry, etc.

In your friendly local library.

Qabalah:

THIS is important.  The big QBL.

Some years ago I learned to read Hebrew, just to study it.  It is

worth it to learn Hebrew.  Learn the alphabet right away -- you need it to 

work with tarot.  Just 22 letters.  No prob.  You can do it in an evening.

Qabalah is probably the most important part of the whole Western

Tradition.  It is, like many wisdoms, revealed from some kind of higher

consciousness -- that archangel Methraton, what a card.  Life o' d' party.

Where to begin?  It's a huge field.  Aryeh Kaplan is the best

writer I've found on it -- courtesy of Amanda Walker, who mentioned the

name on this very group.  The good GD writers on it are Fortune and ...

well, Fortune wrote well on it, probably the best of any of 'em.

Gareth Knight tried to do a followup, but I'd rather read Dion Fortune any day.

_The_Mystical_Qabalah_ is her book, and it's probably the place to start.

Qabalah includes coding processes for converting Words and Names

into numbers, and it relates math to theology.  (The math is arithmetic.

You don't need to graduate kindergarten to handle it.  Addition, multiplication

-- no calculus.)  It ... is too immense to talk about without explaining

the Tree, which would take me too many hours in ASCII.  With a pad of

paper it would take half an hour to start.

*Some*body must have a good ASCII picture of the Tree.  Please be

kind and post it.  Please.  Thanks.  (People give all kinds of info when

one says 'please' ... there's some kind of idiom to describe this in English,

but my English is bad ... the 'mystical' word?  the 'mantric' word?  the

'mad' word?  I don't know, it's one of those outcroppings of Volkgeist or

Zeitgeist.  They dress so much alike I can't tell them apart....

  The Tree of

Life is the same one featured in Genesis, right next to the Tree of Good and

Evil and those two butt-nekkid kids ... 

The tree of Life is the tree they should have been climbing.  So do

better than Adam and Eve did!  Rebuild the temple!  

The Tree of Life is also a diagram of ten circles and twenty-two

lines.  There are various versions of it ... occultism is not a static 

discipline.  Aryeh has some neat versions, but for now stick to the basic

G.D. version, as seen in Dion Forune's book, and *many* others.

Geomancy: A method of divination using a stylus and sand board,

getting those funky earth spirits to give you an inside line on the racetrack,

etc.  Earth spirits are notoriously mischievous.  Better stick to HRU.

HRU: Who is HRU?  (Too bad Dr. Seuss didn't do a book starting

with that one... the children of America would all know Tarot.  "Fifty fish,

thirteen fish.  Red Death, Blue Scorpio," is basically equivalent to 

"one fish, two fish;  red fish, blue fish" in all ways except scansion.

That (i.e. scansion) is why Ambrose Bierce is immortal and I am posting on

Internet...)

HRU is the presiding angel of the tarot.  Some people claim he is

Heru, a Thelemite kind of angel/god/hawk/cheesewhiz.  I have a sawbuck

riding on the cheesewhiz theory...

What is the Tarot?  The Tarot is your buddy.  The Tarot is your pal.

The tarot is your best teacher;  it is also a deck of 78 cards.  22 of them

are Trumps ... start by checking those out.  The best books are by Paul

Foster Case.  Get anything by him, but start with _Tarot_ and _Book_of_Tokens_

His _Highlights_of_Tarot_ isn't terribly necessary, so go with the first two.

Hmm.  22.  22.  What was it there were 22 of?  Somethin'... it just

*reminds* me of somethin' ... associative memory is important in occultism.

Ask Umberto Eco.  Read Umberto Eco, if you speak Latin.  And have nothing 

else to do.  You might learn a lot, but he's not central to G.D. style

study.  He's kind of like comic relief that you need Latin to understand.

Astrology:

Handy.  Useful.  Sometime necessary ... and that's just the skill

of charting horoscopes.  Everyone should know a little, but it's more 

important for its symbolism and relation to magical categories than it

is to predicting and divination.

Yoga:  If you don't know any, learn some stretches.  Do 'em.

Do some breathing.  Don't strain.

Start with Qabalah and Tarot.  You'll encounter a little yoga ...

do it.  It should crop up in the books I give below.  

Use your library.  You do not have an infinite amount of money to

spend on books.  I would advise reading as much as you can from libraries

and not paying for it.  Way too many people enjoy shopping more than occult

work, and end up doing lots of shopping and little occult work.  But if you

can afford it, get some Dion Fortune, especially _The_Mystical_Qabalah_,

and Paul Foster Case, _Tarot_.

When you've read 'em through at least once, think about getting

a decent tarot deck, and Regardie's _The_Golden_Dawn_.   

Handy hint:  Some books have bibliographies.  Frequently the 

people who compiled them were on dangerous drugs and wrote down useless

titles.  But sometimes you hit paydirt.  Advice:  find 'em in a library

and make sure you can use 'em before you buy.

Good books to have as reference works:

Ernest Wood _Concentration_ (A classic on an essential topic.  Enough yoga

for beginners, plus lots of thought-yoga.)

Paul Foster Case _Tarot_  (The only way to study TARO.)

_The_Book_Of_Tokens_ (Less intellectual, suitable for

meditation/ceremonial use.)

Dion Fortune _The_Mystical_Qabalah_

Israel Regardie _The_Golden_Dawn_

(has nearly all of the G.D. lesson papers.  Essential reference for G.D.

style work... you might want to browse through before deciding to buy it,

but it's worth the purchase price.  If you know everything in it, you

know more than some people who post here and act smug about it.  Myself 

included.  (:  But there is a LOT in it.  You can read it for a long time.)

Those are the essentials.

The advanced stuff:

W.E. Butler _The_Magician:_His_Training_and_Work_  (This has a lot of

keys which are damn useful, and it's readable and doesn't try to trick

the reader.)

_Lords_of_light_, etc.  I don't remember all the titles, but

Butler is clear, helpful, and benevolent.  You may not want to buy all

of his stuff, but read it.

anything by Dion Fortune (She was a *very* good occultist.)

(Read her fiction too.)

Aryeh Kaplan _Sepher_Yetzirah_ (If you're serious about Qabalah.   Hebrew

not required, but the text is beautiful in the

original language.)

NOTE:

I started out with Crowley stuff, because he was the only magician

loud enough to get noticed by the very pedestrian libraries I was working

from.  I therefore worked a lot with his stuff at first ... whatever else

you want to say about him, he wrote very good prose.  

Dion Fortune and her followers are of the opinion that Crowley

was a twisted tippling freak.  A man who has helped my studies a great

deal and who is a zealous Thelemite (i.e. adherent of the religion that

Crowley started) says that "Crowley was an asshole."  The fact that

he was personally scum doesn't mean he didn't know anything.  He knew a

lot.   Mostly he knew about goats, but he knew a lot of other stuff...

If you want to get into Crowley stuff:

Aleister Crowley _Magick_in _Theory_and_Practice_

(has two useful bits.  Lots of ripping prose.  The *form* is witty and

readable.  The content is both good and original, but the good parts 

are not original and the original parts are not good.)

(really not very useful, but a lot of folks think highly of it...

and the man could write wonderfully.  A good read.  When you

realize that he is revealing cosmic mysteries of grandeur, 

recall that it is a cut-and-paste job.  Alan Bennett, his teacher,

was probably much more enlightened than Crowley ever was.)

(Yes, that WAS meant to start a discussion.)

S.L MacGregor Mathers 

_The_Book_of_the_Sacred_Magic_of_Abramelin_the_Mage_

(This was very important to Crowley ... it is of historical interest,

but I wouldn't advise using it.  Unless you really like Crowley stuff)

_The_Kabbalah_Unveiled_  (about as readable as tapioca.  But if you're 

into G.D. history... it's a rip-off from some very good stuff.  Aryeh

Kaplan is better, and easier, and more qualified, and cooler, and

better at particle physics.  But Aryeh kaplan is just a stud,

and that's all there is to it.)

Waite _The_Book_of_Ceremonial_magic_ (for history only.  I like Waite's 

prose in this book.  Which is a sure sign of an organic brain disorder...

or so everyone says.  Ripping on Waite has been fashionable since the

turn of the century.  I actually think this book is more readable than

Mathers' TKU, but some of Waite's other writings are just brick walls.)

So ... that enough for you to work on between now and next Monday,

Mark?  Just tell me if you read all of those books and want some more 

titles.  (:  I realize it'll just take you a day or two... if you get

bored, work with the tarot deck you've bought...