I
The Dark Paths:
The student is always his own highest master. He improves his own latent abilities by exploring a fuller understanding of the “human condition”, firstly through symbol which I discussed in Mechanics, and secondly through application which leads to direct experience. It’s a kicker because when you finally experience it you will realise that you had it all along. There’s no difference between the HGA, Christ and the Pantheon of Gods and Goddesses in existence and you, when you connect with them you are reforming yourself to give life to that form, it is your own power reflected as their own.
No system can give an aspirant the deeper meaning they personally need for knowledge to make sense or its application in real world terms. It is told we must receive it in degrees, or that we need some special experience in order to achieve it; however most are looking to wean us off one set of forms to another they can manipulate and control. We do at times need guidance, but that is no reason why we should not achieve and retain complete self mastery.
We can only be manipulated by symbols because most of us lack a full understanding of who we are. We are fathers, salesmen, doctors, etc, but yet we are none of these things. These are things we do, actions that require our attention, they are not our identity. Yet most of us base our identity on our possessions, the trappings of a certain life and we measure success through the continual attainment of these things.
This is not limited to occult circles though the method itself may be occult (hidden). Look at the resources pumped into entertainment & advertising. The Champions of these lifestyles are rewarded with massive riches and so droves of people are distracted pursuing an impossible goal. The inner circle control whom may enter. The outer circle, wanting the goal so badly will even pay for this slavery and seek to bring others into it as well.
If may be in the form of a certain life style, fashion, belief or initiation, they are carrots hung over peoples heads purposely to distract them from actual progress. As long as sides exist they will be played against each other and everyone else will end up getting dragged along. Sides and groups are illusions created and funded by a few that draw in many susceptible people.
I am not saying that we cannot have nice things, or aspire to a better life for us and our families. These are things that enlarge the soul and better us as people but we must never give in to them or any seemingly internal invaders seeking to take control. All lies are built on an element of truth, their rules, why they affect us and how are very real powers we can learn to control for our own use. Magick does indeed exist, just not in the form that most of us want it to.
It’s not the words that have power, it’s not the delusions of charmed or the theatrical Harry Potter-esque orders of today. It is the person mastery of terrible pain that if survived allows us to express a higher percentage of our intelligence and allows us to penetrate natures hidden laws. They are hidden within us, we are not yet familiar with their method of operation or how to call them forth, but they are working within us, automatically, all of the time.
Excuse me for ranting, but this is something we need to be clear on in our own minds. It is not my intention to condemn people who join organisations, but to increase the calibre of initiates contained in each of them. Every vessel, correctly understood can achieve great things for a time, but after a time it must be destroyed and a new one created to contain the knowledge therein. We’re practicing an art; it is only natural that as we develop we will develop better tools for doing the job.
Our beliefs are our tools and with them we build our life.
II
Recognition
There is a central vibration existing within every one of us. Some perceive it as a super-human being capable of all supernatural acts; others perceive it as a single particle from which every other stems. There is a variety description of it, each one mistaking others for something else, each one thinking they alone have found the way.
What we call self is a collection of conflicting and warring parasites taking their life and power from it. They try to claim our life as their own. We are Legion and we are many. Of course since we’re identified with them we are oblivious to their existence and we supplicate them whenever they want. We think it is our own desire. People, even magicians below a certain grade live in a symbiotic state with them, happily giving up a part of themselves thinking they are achieving their own goals or fulfilling their own wants.
Something happens and we’ll react a certain way, we’ll give off a certain emotion that will draw more of that energy to us thereby feeding the form that’s asserted control. What’s worse is we live in a society where we are conditioned from birth to give these wretched creations part of our life. A normal and peaceful life is a comfortable disease, a coma of the true life from which we must wake ourselves.
These elements that combine to form “us” each have their own wants and their own needs. If we do not fulfil these needs we receive something we’ll interpret as pain related to the ‘element’ itself. If the pain becomes great enough sometimes we will break and the element will feed again and become strong. The pain we “feel” is the element being beaten into submission, it will not give up its thrown and crown easily.
It is because of the level of attachment we have to these forms that initiation must be so severe. The shock needs to be so great that for a moment the aspirant completely steps outside of themselves. To fight an enemy we need be able to see it, to sustain the battle we must see its demise as beneficial to us because it will get tough. We can only do that by reaching the light for the first time, even though we are going to crash straight back down.
What happens inside the aspirant at this level is manifested personally using the most powerful forms they created; they must face their own worst demons. The horrific act has temporarily liberated him from his own nature and sent him back to it with the glimmer of something higher. The aspirant is forced to rethink every thing about them and slowly they peel themselves back layer by layer.
Although it is seemingly disastrous the aspirant has been afforded an opportunity to understand this time that it is he who builds himself, he who hands over tiny portions of control again and again until all his power has been lost. The new and more powerful forms that arise and will have to be fought again, however he understands a little more of their creation and knows he can overcome them again.
The legion is an intelligent foe; he understands this game all to well. Desperation is the last and most powerful card it holds; no warrior reveals their most powerful weapons at the start of the battle, rather they hold onto a war chest to appease us in the worst case scenario.
III
Divisions
This is the last card that these forms can play, it was this form of initiation the medieval orders sought to achieve, both the light and the dark. A number of times it was said to me that I shouldn’t mistake a victory for the goal, no matter how great it may seem. So many orders will be based around this as their ultimate goal, proof of the existence of truly divine men.
As a last act of survival the dying legion we’ve dispatched will offer up seemingly unlimited power to the candidate. The candidate thinking this to be the reward of the war lets down his guard and the legion will survive to grow again. A number of known magicians have attained to seemingly great powers only to be destroyed in later and I wonder if this could have attributed to why.
They formed elaborate rituals and numerous ways to bring themselves to breaking points, so they could be briefly illuminated again. It is pointless to chase glimmers when you are the light itself.
That will, they so reverently speak of is the not the fruit of supplication, not to the Gods or any one else, it is a moment of total understanding that we are not the ones who want anything at all. The true will wants for nothing, there is nothing for it to possibly achieve - it is the source after all.
However in order for our normal modes of thought to be transcended we must overload ourselves with the very tools of our enslavement. We must use conflicting forms, moralities and practices so that the seed may be temporarily liberated, it does not mean we need to carry such dark practices into our normal sphere. It means we must play our own internal enemies off each other, creating a diversion if you will, so the commander can get out.
Our intelligence will always exist; it is only a created form that dies. The form wants to be real, to have experiences and life. They grew in us as children and learned to get what they want like we did in our youth and they know when we withdraw our life to go back to the drawing board that they will return until recombined in the future again. They wrap themselves the source of the idea in a form fit to contain it for as long as possible and creates our profound sense of attachment to life.
The physical forms we have now are the result of the compounding and mixing of billions of different physical forms the mental forms we have are a result of the compounding and mixing of dozens of trains of thoughts and the psychic structures we have are created by the same process. Darwinism in this sense enhances instead of conflicting with religion.
So with an understanding of what we’re trying to achieve let’s move on.
