The Oath of the Abyss

[Triple Zero]

Not really challenging anything, I have some questions,

If you consider the Kabbalah from the GD/Thelemic perspective you have the Source at the top (Kether), could be pure energy, God, the thing that makes everything.

"pure" energy ... is it not more like the malloc() just before the instantiation of a new datastructure?

Since the Ipsiss level of attainment is basically the Pure Self... some interpret this metaphor to mean that the Magician is the Source, ala "Who is the great Magician that makes the grass green?".  Kether spills out its light/power (Kether is also related to the Crown Chakra) into Chokhmah, the 'Potential of What Is'. This is tied to the right side of the brain, as well as the Hebrew belief that God worked through 'The Word' or 'The Firstborn of All Creation' to create everything else. Kether The Father, Chokhmah, the Father's Force being crafted into Potential. This then crosses to Binah, Mother/Womb/Reciever and Creator. These three Spheres sit on the top of the Kabbalistic tree on the 'other side' of the Void. So the Source flows into the Potential which then impregnates Binah with this potential and Binah thus gives birth to that which is below, the Intent/Potential made manifest. You could interpret it as the Egyptian trinity of the Father, Son, Mother, or the Christian Father, Son, Holy Ghost...

ah I love this sort of--pardon me--occult wanking

no seriously. I read "the mystical qabalah", which was full of this sort of shit and it brought me great joy and framework.

but hey, isn't the Magician between Kether and Binah? A shortcut skipping Chokmah [Wisdom]?

The symbols and Props are all still a part of the system. Crossing the Void is the removal of interpretation, or assigning labels to 'whatever' Kether 'really is'. Interestingly, Crowley taught that there were three paths to ascend the Tree of Life. The Right Hand Path, The Left Hand Path, or a Path that intersects all of the Spheres. The Right Hand Path means understanding the Spheres on the Right side (ascending the Tree of Life through only the Spheres on the Right) and the Left Hand Path is obviously the opposite.

From which point of view is this Left/Right? (it depends cause from the personal point, and afaik in the Tarot, the Tree is mirrored?)

So is the Left Hand Path the feminine, Pillar of Severity, or is it the masculine, Pillar of Mercy?

Now, depending on how one interprets Crowley's intent, we might see 'crossing the veil' as realizing the Self of the Magician. That is Kether becomes the Will of the Magician, Chokhmah becomes the Intent to Manifest the Will and Binah becomes the act of Creation by the Magician.

What is the difference between the Will, and the Intent to Manifest?

in my knowledge of English, Will and Intent sort of mean the same thing?

EDIT: The observant Magician will also realize that the Three Spheres at the top appear to have a strong sexual connotation. Kether, The Man and Binah, The Woman joined through Chokhmah the Act of Potential... making the whole thing also a metaphor for human reproduction... cause magical systems are ridiculously layered like that

Um, isn't it Chokmah that represents the Man? As the force/explosion/ejaculation? And Binah that represents the Woman, as the recepticle/womb/shaper?

So Kether-Chokmah-Binah would be more like God-Adam-Eve ?

At least that's the way I always took the symbols.

[Captain Utopia]

Strange, despite being explained in the context or ritual madjick, the oath seems to involve moving towards viewing things UN influenced by interpretation, framework, or explanation.  Almost want to say it's cultivating a "Prop-less" view.  What do you all think?

So, it's more like scaffolding.

Scaffolding is there to enable an individual building design to take shape.  My problem with ritual magic, why I walked away when introduced to it years ago, is that it looked to be more of a template - a scaffolding that forces all buildings to look similar.

I was promised all sorts "uncommunicable truths" and the like, but I couldn't figure out how you could ever separate that objectively from past ritual experiences, especially if they come from interconnected ritual.  Once you take a big step to believe in a god or demon - that has to have a profound effect on your psyche - can you later fully separate that by a simple choice when you are trying to perceive with as few influences as possible?  I don't know, but I erred on the side of caution then, and would make the same decision now.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Not really challenging anything, I have some questions,

If you consider the Kabbalah from the GD/Thelemic perspective you have the Source at the top (Kether), could be pure energy, God, the thing that makes everything.

"pure" energy ... is it not more like the malloc() just before the instantiation of a new datastructure?

Hrmmm, possibly.. If we consider the allocation of memory to be the stuff that the application uses to create...

If we think of E=MC² ie energy converts to matter... thats a bit more like what they're driving at.... if you deconstruct physical reality to its most basic core that is Kether... If you want to tie it to science, you could almost consider it like the singularity that spawned the Big Bang. Of course, this is all metaphysical since the Magician is trying to 'get to' Kether and they obviously can't get to the singularity.

Since the Ipsiss level of attainment is basically the Pure Self... some interpret this metaphor to mean that the Magician is the Source, ala "Who is the great Magician that makes the grass green?".  Kether spills out its light/power (Kether is also related to the Crown Chakra) into Chokhmah, the 'Potential of What Is'. This is tied to the right side of the brain, as well as the Hebrew belief that God worked through 'The Word' or 'The Firstborn of All Creation' to create everything else. Kether The Father, Chokhmah, the Father's Force being crafted into Potential. This then crosses to Binah, Mother/Womb/Reciever and Creator. These three Spheres sit on the top of the Kabbalistic tree on the 'other side' of the Void. So the Source flows into the Potential which then impregnates Binah with this potential and Binah thus gives birth to that which is below, the Intent/Potential made manifest. You could interpret it as the Egyptian trinity of the Father, Son, Mother, or the Christian Father, Son, Holy Ghost...

ah I love this sort of--pardon me--occult wanking

no seriously. I read "the mystical qabalah", which was full of this sort of shit and it brought me great joy and framework.

but hey, isn't the Magician between Kether and Binah? A shortcut skipping Chokmah [Wisdom]?

Yep, mystical wankery at its best


The interpretation of the Qabalah depends greatly on the system (Jewish vs Thelemic vs GD vs *other western traditions*). Crowley felt it was necessary to pass through all of the spheres to achieve Kether, Wisdom being one of those.

The symbols and Props are all still a part of the system. Crossing the Void is the removal of interpretation, or assigning labels to 'whatever' Kether 'really is'. Interestingly, Crowley taught that there were three paths to ascend the Tree of Life. The Right Hand Path, The Left Hand Path, or a Path that intersects all of the Spheres. The Right Hand Path means understanding the Spheres on the Right side (ascending the Tree of Life through only the Spheres on the Right) and the Left Hand Path is obviously the opposite.

From which point of view is this Left/Right? (it depends cause from the personal point, and afaik in the Tarot, the Tree is mirrored?)

So is the Left Hand Path the feminine, Pillar of Severity, or is it the masculine, Pillar of Mercy?

Again, it depends... The Theosophists used the term as a 'Good Magic/Bad Magic' kind of duality. Crowley's intent, I believe was to stress the necessity of crossing all of the spheres. In Thelemic Magic there are 22 possible paths or ways to ascend the tree. Only the paths that cross all Pillars will allow the Magician to cast aside the ego and survive his dive into the Void.

So in his system, we have the Pillar of Severity (Boaz), The Pillar of Balance (Middle Pillar) and The Pillar of Mercy (Jachin).

Those who follow the Left Hand Path try to climb the Pillar of Severity, its associated with quick access to power, but it feeds the ego, rather than allowing it to be cast off... so when the Magician dives into the Void, he is washed up on the shore as a Black Brother. Those who follow the Right Hand Path climb only the Pillar of Mercy and suffer as well... though Crowley doesn't really go as hard on them as he does on the Left.

Liber 777 which covers a lot of the Correspondences also represents lightning
7
7
  7

Like that... of course it also represents the zig-zag path crossing each of the pillars.

Now, depending on how one interprets Crowley's intent, we might see 'crossing the veil' as realizing the Self of the Magician. That is Kether becomes the Will of the Magician, Chokhmah becomes the Intent to Manifest the Will and Binah becomes the act of Creation by the Magician.

What is the difference between the Will, and the Intent to Manifest?

in my knowledge of English, Will and Intent sort of mean the same thing?

Kinda. Certainly in modern English they are nearly analogous.  For Crowley though 'Will' was more esoteric. It was not simply intent, but the quality that produces conscious and intended actions. Your 'True Will' didn't simply mean 'your intentions', but the intentions that you are truly meant to have... So when he says 'Do as thou Will' he is saying that the Law is to do your True Will, the conscious, intended action that is in line with the Universe.

Peter Carroll explained it like Surfing. You cannot surf against the current, but if you're skilled you can surf with or across the current/waves. If we consider the Universe as the ocean, moving in a specific, unstoppable direction... the Magician with his True Will is like the surfer with his surfboard... he can make conscious/intended actions that are in line with the direction of the universe.

So its quite philosophical... somewhere between Free Will and Destiny... if you are skilled you can choose your actions to some extent. You could even say its your Will that allows you to remodel your Black Iron Prison Cell.

EDIT: The observant Magician will also realize that the Three Spheres at the top appear to have a strong sexual connotation. Kether, The Man and Binah, The Woman joined through Chokhmah the Act of Potential... making the whole thing also a metaphor for human reproduction... cause magical systems are ridiculously layered like that

Um, isn't it Chokmah that represents the Man? As the force/explosion/ejaculation? And Binah that represents the Woman, as the recepticle/womb/shaper?

So Kether-Chokmah-Binah would be more like God-Adam-Eve ?

At least that's the way I always took the symbols.

It can be interpreted that way. This stuff is layered and it depends on which books you read

Kether can be the Source/God/Where it all came from and Chokmah can be the Intent, with Binah as the womb/mother/manifestation.

It can all represent three aspects of the magician True Will -> Intent - > Action
It can represent God -> Adam -> Eve in a Jewish interpretation
It can represent The Trinity ->YHVH->Virgin Mary in Christian theology
Ptah ->thoth->Isis in Egyptian
Man ->act of Sex->Woman in the Rosicrucian interpretation 
etc etc etc... In fact Liber 777 tries to correlate all of the different religious symbols to aspects of the Tree of Life. Crowley kind of saw his Tree of Life as the basis from which religion built its theology. Kind of like the most simple metaphor, upon which lots of stuff was added.

But the overall idea is that WHATEVER your creation concept is... it likely involves those three spheres. There's Something, it gives power to a Something with intent which impregnates a Something that can create Form from the Intent.

Remember, Crowley considered his 'magical system' to be scientific in nature*. So he saw this as the scientific distillation of religion... all of the metaphors of different religions (in his eyes) corresponded with each other and his Tree of Life was the output of that correspondence.  In the beginning of Book 4 he argues that there exists in history a repeating pattern... Some dude disappears into the wilderness, weird shit happens and POP he comes back, has talked to God and becomes a revolutionary spiritual figure. Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, etc. For Crowley, that meant that SOMETHING happened/could happen, and it would be interpreted by the person it happened to, to fit with their existing world view. His aim was to scientifically explain that process though correspondence and deconstruction. The Tree of Life was an output of that study.

Strange, despite being explained in the context or ritual madjick, the oath seems to involve moving towards viewing things UN influenced by interpretation, framework, or explanation.  Almost want to say it's cultivating a "Prop-less" view.  What do you all think?

So, it's more like scaffolding.

Scaffolding is there to enable an individual building design to take shape.  My problem with ritual magic, why I walked away when introduced to it years ago, is that it looked to be more of a template - a scaffolding that forces all buildings to look similar.

I was promised all sorts "uncommunicable truths" and the like, but I couldn't figure out how you could ever separate that objectively from past ritual experiences, especially if they come from interconnected ritual.  Once you take a big step to believe in a god or demon - that has to have a profound effect on your psyche - can you later fully separate that by a simple choice when you are trying to perceive with as few influences as possible?  I don't know, but I erred on the side of caution then, and would make the same decision now.

Meh, systems that make promises often seem too caught up in their own metaphors. I tried a few of them and abandoned them for the same reasons you state (including Thelema). However, thats why I found Chaos Magic to be a far better system for me to play with. They begin with the assumption that demons, gods, etc are all metaphors for stuff that can't be easily processed on its own. If Crowley were alive today, based on his writings, it seems likely that he would be closer to Chaos Magic than Thelema, simply because Thelema takes Crowley/Regardie's work as verbatim... whereas Chaos Magic prefers to continue the deconstruction process.

Some of my friends that practice Chaos Magic use metaphors that are, on their face ridiculous.  I have been part of rituals that call on superheroes rather than Guardian Angels... and for some people it becomes much easier to see Batman, Superman, Iron Man etc. as metaphors  rather than Raphael, Michael, Gabriel etc.

CM also heavily encourages either using meaningless metaphors (ie. terms that don't already have baggage) or switching metaphors regularly. Peter Carroll talks a lot about using dice to figure out which system you're going to use for that week/month.

In the end though, I don't regularly practice any system... I did for awhile, I learned a lot about what I thought was happening and that sort of satisfied me. Occasionally, though I still create and engage in ritual, particularly if its a special occasion or if I've got some specific goal in mind. If nothing else, the process of creating the ritual and the metaphors cause you to deconstruct your intent... kind of like working out an upcoming project on a Gantt chart. Maybe that's a bad metaphor...







* We place no reliance on Virgin or Pigeon, our method is Science, our aim is Religion.