Qliphothic Thoughts of Others

Frater Barrabbas offered some interesting thoughts on the Qliphoth as well a few years ago. These can be found here.

Practical Thoughts about the Tunnels of Set: The Method of Qliphothic Inversion

Working with the Qliphoth can be difficult for a practical minded magician. The challenge is that the Nightside of the Tree of Life generally represents the negative side of reality, not dark or evil elements in any positive sense but rather the realms of non-being. As such their main positive manifestation in our daily world is in terms of a dissolution, disruption and destruction that resists all control and channeling. They don’t represent, then, a positive power of destruction that can be used or channeled. Any such use or channeling is as likely to destroy the will and work of the magician as the intended target. While walking the Tunnels of Set offers a treasure of mystical insight their practical promise is exceptionally difficult to work out. It is a bit like trying to use an acid that immediately devours any container we might temporarily use to hold it or any path we might attempt to guide it down in order to achieve some end. The energy entailed precisely resists any form the magician might give it. The tunnel of Raflifu and its connection with the Nightside Qliphoth corresponding to Yesod offer, I feel, a break in this difficulty and I would like to say something of how this is so.

The Sigilization of Desire as Signification and De-Signification

 In a previous post dedicated to asking "What is magic(k)?" I had offered some very brief considerations of the manner in which successful magical actions always change the self:
 

"my every action is necessitated by some previous set of concerns, needs and motivations. These define me, for the moment, and so my action is only free in certain limited senses. But the truly magical action, in expanding the boundary of the world and my sense of self, frees me as well from the structures which previously defined me.

4. Every achievement of will is the discovery that my will was other than I thought."

Here I would like to consider, or rather expand, those considerations through a discussion of the occult practice, particularly popular within various forms of Chaos Magic, of the Sigilization of Desire. 

Freemasonry and Sirius: A Quote

What is Magic(k)?

1. "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."
 Aleister Crowley Liber Aba

Logomachy Seven: Strange Forms of the Self, Ineffable Experience, and Language

by A. O. Spare

“Thrice did I slip backwards into strange forms of myself, and thrice did my Soul save me.”

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Logomachy Six: Time, Space, Desire and Belief

This is installment six of an ongoing engagement with Austin Osman Spare's  enigmatic book the Logomachy of Zos. These explorations select quotations from the Logomachy, and often other texts by Spare, and either offer them alone for my readers to consider and hopefully share interpretations of, or hazard some thoughts on the topic of my own. Please feel free to join in. The Logomachy of Zos can be easily found online, or you can just use the texts I have provided as a starting point.

by A. O. Spare

“Any fact or fiction has no difficulty in finding relatables as supporting evidence because everything has a 'point of connection' and a period of reality when instantly and simultaneous to time and place. Our difficulty is to re-evoke 'as now': so we accept semblance of (i.e. make-belief, religion or faith) as substitute of real belief (which needs no other reality than its own): what you cannot conceive as yourself is yourself (as another reality).”

Esoteric Qabalistic Considerations: The Shattering and the Abyss

The shell we know best is ourselves, trapped in the seas of restriction.

An Afternoon with Sekhmet: Sirius Weirdness and a Visit from Vega

I found myself, unexpectedly, with an afternoon free. On a random street in Manhattan, as I realized I had nothing to do, I looked up to discover this poster immediately in front of me:

  

Logomachy Five: The Mocking Ape and Smiling God

This is part five of an ongoing interpretation of A. O. Spare's Logomachy of Zos. If you are just joining us, check out the earlier explorations as well. The full text of the Logomachy of Zos can be found here.

By A. O. Spare

Esoteric Qabalistic Fragments

Man Ray and Duchamp, Dust Breeding

Magick, a Definition

Magick is the art of making the impossible possible, in so doing we redeem reality from the shells of restriction.

Castaneda, Crowley and The Trick of Turning Luck

Most of the posts I have shared thus far have been rather heavy or heady, but I would also like this blog to be about more concrete considerations and applications. As a first stab in that direction, here are some thoughts on how to turn your luck around or get over writer's block from the view point of Carlos Castaneda and Aleister Crowley.

Voudon-Gnostic Time Travel

I would like to take some time to consider the conception of occult time-travel offered in Michael Bertiaux's The Voudon Gnostic Workbook. I suppose, if my considerations are successful, I wont have taken anything of value at all.

'As if' and Ecstacy, Logomachy Four

This continues an ongoing investigation of A. O. Spare's Logomachy of Zos. A copy of the work can be found at the Hermetic Library here. Check it out. In general I have been selecting epigrams which seem particularly important or interesting. In many cases I select ones that build on insights considered previously. 

by A. O. Spare

Who are Zos and Kia in the work of A. O. Spare? Logomachy Three

by A. O. Spare

The Thelemic Wisdom of Heraclitus

“The way of writing is straight and crooked.” (Fragment 59)

Logomachy Two

(Ongoing fragments from a previous attempt to interpret Austin Osmar Spare's Logomachy of Zos.)

by Austin Osman Spare

Logomachy One

by Austin Osman Spare

 (Below are the beginnings of a study of Spare's Logomachy of Zos I worked on rather a while ago. I will be revisiting it here from time to time and extending the study of the book itself as well.)

Dog Days, Sirius and Vega

HRUMACHIS (Medium -Pen, blood.) (c) 2001 Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule

The Dog Days have always been a time of heavy occult work for me. It may be that I am partially inspired by Robert Anton Wilson in this, since he spent years receiving unusual occult teachings and experiences during the Dog Days. Check out a sampling of Wilson's writings on the Dog Days and the star Sirius, as well as texts he found useful on the subject, here. I have chosen these, the Dog Days of 2013, to begin this blog.