Conversation Between Natasha77 and Phnouthis

Happy holidays. It would be my aol address; so just [email protected].

Ok cool; and if you use AIM, you could reach me at [email protected], but otherwise FB will be fine. I must say again that it is a pleasure conversing with someone who shares an interest in the occult, but has, in addition, a developed critical intellect along with good, old-fashion, common sense. Yeah, I do understand what you mean: The majority of the people on this forum are complete idiots! I realize that by posting here with the intention of actually gaining any other benefit than debating points is a futile dream. Having known my fair share of occultists, and even some of the more "highly respected" representatives of the "community," a part of me persists in a sort of critical self-investigation, searching my motives for some vice that sustains such an interest--some psychological debility, perhaps, that I share with these rather vile people. Nevertheless, I cannot deny my experiences; my model of the universe must accommodate them.

Sorry for the mess, lol. I wrote this big, long letter, and, on being notified that a single post was limited to 1000 characters, I just couldn't scrap it. The natural sequence of the posts is from bottom to top; I am not entirely unsympathetic to the symbolism.

Although such a project would, for me, require that I gained a working proficiency in Middle Egyptian (at least!), I have certain misgivings: I have grown tired of prying into the past; I cannot help but to accept the consensus conclusion from the history of religions that the qualities of the denizens of the various "otherworlds" are colored, largely, by the more "this worldly" features of the respective cultures from which they are projected--no matter how real they might appear in their recognized "paranormal" manifestations within those cultures. Thus a modern might say that, on some level, there is an element of "choice"; ah, but what to choose . . . ? (What was I getting at with all this magic anyway? From where in me did it come?)

The climax of this sequence of events would be another story--primarily a very sorrowful one--and I am wary of straining your patience. In direct relevance to your question, much of my subsequent work consisted of adaptations of Greco-Egyptian or Greco-Syrian ritual and symbolism.

Currently, while I do preserve my meditation schedule with more or less rigor, I am just kind of reorienting myself theoretically (hence, a large part of my participation in this forum)--over the last few years I have done so little magical study; I have been perhaps unhealthily entrenched in a disciplined regimen of ritual practice. Basing my judgment on certain tendencies I presently perceive within me, I think that my attention will soon turn to a rather rigorous study of the Ancient Egyptian understanding of "magically effective language"; if I turn up anything of significance, my practices will be formed in accordance therewith.

That mind would be like this except it would be thus for everything, in every possible relationship to everything else.--it doesn't forget.

When I woke up in the morning, I told my mom about it (she didn't seem very interested); my most memorable statement to her was: "It was as if all things were there, but as they exist in eternity." The following fall, I took a class called "Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire" for which Plotinus' Enneads was assigned reading. Something about Plotinus seemed so familiar, so intimate and consoling, as if he were a close friend with whom I was sharing a fine Scotch around a cozy campfire. In Ennead V.1, he described the Nous or "Divine Intellect" as "all things, but as they exist in eternity"!--other statements such as "all things are everything, and all things are everywhere, and every single thing is, in truth, all things" sealed it for me; this was exactly the experience that I had had the previous winter.

However, within this mind it was as if EVERYTHING were present; every thought entailed every other thought, and there was nothing to think but thoughts. I would think of what I had for dinner, let's say, and it was perfectly clear to me how this event was connected to the fall of the Roman Empire, or the smell of a Manhattan sidewalk on a rainy day. It was as if this mind never forgot anything; imagine taking a ball a ball in your hand, and throwing it up in the air a few times, then bouncing it on the ground, then, in turn, picking it up and looking at it again. In normal consciousness, one would gaze at the ball and this would be just another point in the line of one's experiences with that ball. But imagine looking at the ball and somehow perceiving instantaneously, the whole history of the ball, from the moment you first took it up into your hand, until the conclusion of all the stated actions, when you took it up to look at it.

Probably a few months later, during the holidays, I flew out to New Jersey to spend the holidays with my family. On Christmas Eve I remember feeling hopelessly depressed, negatively critical of every thought or perception that entered my mind. Again, waking up somewhere in my sleep that night, I realized that my cognition was altered. My normal discursive train of though was still present, and in fact, it moved with a clarity and precision hardly attainable in my waking hours. And yet, somehow I was thinking "within" another mind, or maybe more accurately, it was thinking within me.

He made copies of this priceless text and was selling them, so I bought one, no biggie. Reading through, I was inexplicably drawn in to the seamless synthesis of philosophy, mysticism, magic, and mythic imagery of which these fragments are replete. Perhaps a couple of weeks later, having awakend from my sleep, I was startled by the fact that my thoughts were "combining" in such an odd way; not as if pieces were coming together, but more like my most disparate thoughts were unifying according to a "meaning" that pre-existed their separation; so in one sense their unification was a temporal progression, but, in another sense, the state to which they progressed somehow preceded its own actualization through the amalgamation of the separate thoughts. I carried on my study of the Chaldean Oracles, largely by purchasing secondary literature--okay, so that is where is where my interest in classical scholarship begins.

(As a side note: during my "low magic" days I strongly favored runic magic.) Nevertheless, as is probably by now annoyingly obvious, I have been deeply influenced by late antique, Mediterranean esotericism. I know that a lot of people do not like anecdotes--I personally do; having a speculative tendency, I tend to place greater trust in theories grounded in concrete experiences--but here is one that illustrates what I believe is the guidance that I receive for pursuing new vistas for my development:
It was 2002, and I was active with the OTO, Blue Equinox Oasis, in Royal Oak, MI. Dr. Richard Kaczynski (probably best known for his Crowley biography, Perdurabo) led the group, and he had obtained a dual language copy of the Chaldean Oracles on loan from the University of Michigan (my alma mater; it also houses one of the largest collections of Greco-Egyptian magical texts in the world).