Blogs I am reading 28 August 2010

In no particular order, here are some of the blog posts that I have recently read on the blogosphere.

Alex Sumner Oaths of Secrecy

Ok, let's be honest I love Alex's sense of humor. I love his description of the lodge gathering; it is what people would like to believe about the lodges. Instead, the truth is more like "We met in the basement of ABC. Several stays-of-dues requests were submitted, reviewed and voted on; half of the lodge's membership is unemployed still. Gossiped for a half hour about the latest insane blog post by GHF. Did an improto working to charge a hex sign (Pennslyvania Dutch folk magic) for EIJ."

Now, given his thoughts about secrecy, this is what a lot of people believe about the whole subject of secrecy. If you were not up to no good, why do you need to keep secrets? I am a bigger cynic, as most of my readers know; often I think that secrecy is merely to keep it a secret that someone is trying to fleece the public---oh, wait, that is Freemasonry I am thinking of, isn't it?

But yeah, if I was an evil magician, I would want a heavy oath of secrecy from the membership. It is not the reason that my lodge has an oath of secrecy...but the last two paragraphs of Alex's blog post sum up it up pretty well in my opinion.

S.R. Conversations with a Master Alchemist on the Creation of the Solar Body of Light

Ok, when Anonymous posted his comment to the original LES translated statement from Master RC, I just laughed and moved on. Honestly, I am not sure if Anonymous' comments even deserved the dignity of a response. Despite what he said, I doubted that he was as well read as he claimed to be.

In my case, I would point to certain parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (which is partially why it got brought back into the tradition when it was translated in the 1800's and 1900's) and the Hermetica. And as SR periodically have noted, Paul Foster Case sure seemed to know something. And I agree that one needs the eyes to see the information when one stumbles across it.

The statement by Master RC reminds me of the statement I read in a book about astral projection; it is only real provided that you can consciously remember doing it. (And no, I do not remember the author of the astral projection book.)

Frater Baba The Ego

I have mixed feelings about both killing (or weakening) and building up the ego. There are pros and cons to both goals, especially if you actually succeed. I do know that my ego has became stronger though the course of study that I have been doing...but some would point out that it may be causing more mischief in my life than it is worth.

I have noticed that there seems to be two settings where killing the ego is emphasized: harsh physical envirnoments which led to the idea that life is a test, and service oriented organizations.

I do agree that for a magician both a strong ego (self-esteem) and a strong spirit (love) is necessary. As Baba noted, balance is the key to success.

The Truth about the Secret Order GBG

I have a copy of the original Complete Magick Curriclum of the Secret Order GBG. I am looking forward to reading the expanded edition. The best part of this review by Donald Michael Kraig is the following:

Today, I have seen an increasing trend of people who seem to want everything, including spirituality and magickal abilities, without changing themselves in any way. If there is something about a particular spiritual system, especially Wicca, that they don’t like, rather than doing the introspection necessary to discover why they don’t like it, they simply leave the system and look for another or invent something that allows them to remain exactly as they are. If spirituality doesn’t change you, what good is it?

Amen to that one, brother, Amen.

Frater AIT Golden Dawn as a school of magic

I have touched the Z operations in my Inner Order course work, but I figure it is going to be at least another decade before I can reasonably say that I understand them. I would go one step further and say that a lot of Golden Dawn members do not understand the initiation ritual (Neophyte) that the Z operations are built upon. As for my best work, I use bits and pieces of the Z operation, but I find the examples given in Regardie to be long and tedious. And at the moment, I am combining hex signs (Pennslvania Dutch hexology, a form of folk magic) with Golden Dawn ritual techniques; I will post results after I get a large enough sample to examine.

GH Frater PDR (Robert Zink) Masculine and Feminine energies of angels

Given the fact that angels (in theory) are sexless, but that we think in terms of gender, it is natural for the angels to slip back and forth between being male and female. It is an experience that seems to have been around for a long time given the literature. Zink's post gives reasons for Auriel and Metatron to manifest as both male and female. I wish that he would have used Michael as an example (a personal experience that I would love someone to explain).

Anyways, those are some of the blog posts that I have been readin lately. Have a good day.