Kitty being stalked by monster (31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 17 Year 3)

Hide, the monster is coming to get you.

Here is a picture that tells a story. Poor kitty hiding from a monster, obviously one of the qlippoth, while its master does nothing to help (seriously, put down the camera and save your cat!). Of course, this is the way my cats used to react to my god-daughter when she used to visit--one of the nicknames for my god-daughter was monster.

(In all fairness, I should probably refer to her as my ex-god-daughter...long story, mostly boring, all you need to know is that I am completely and wholly at fault--which is also the reason that I am now a former elected GD officer, who will never serve in an elected office ever again.)

For more cats dressed up in costumes (monster costumes, that is), check out this post by the Bloggess (her poor kitty).

The poison of God---the Counter Initatic Force

Over on another blog, there has been an explosion of talk about the Counter Initatic Force (or Counter Initiatory Force if you prefer that term). Reading that particular blog, one gets the impression that all the other Golden Dawn Orders, students and members who do not condemn the actions of Nick Farrell, Pat Zalewski, and all their enemies are trapped in the Counter Initatic Force. If you are not with them, stoning their enemies alongside of them (figuritively speaking), then you too are being manipulated by the Counter Initatory Force, having your strings pulled by some giant invisible puppet master who insists that humanity be kept in the dark. After all, they are the only legitimate esoteric Order and the Counter Initiatic Force is determined to stop their progress of bringing people into the eternal Light.

Or at least, that is what it reads like to me. There is nothing like standing in a circle of fire while the dark forces howl outside to bind a group of magicians together.

Now, I will admit that the Counter Initiatory Force exists. It is called the dark side of the sephiroth. It is one of the reasons that the snake and serpent are used as symbols of the process of initiation. One can summon the Light side of a sephiroth without also summoning its Dark side. One cannot gain the power to heal without also gaining the power to harm. The poison comes with the ascension.

But honestly, the whole idea that the Counter Initiatory Force is manifesting primarily as flesh and blood human beings writing lies about them is a little too much. I am not saying it could not happen, but it sounds too much like something out of a fantasy movie or comic book for my personal tastes.

Then again, I live in another universe. I live in an universe where the Counter Initiatory Force arises from within. It is not the outside world that you have to worry about. It is yourself and the darkness that lays deep within oneself. Don't worry about other human beings. Worry about yourself stopping your own initiatory process. Worry about your own vices, such as greed and laziness.

The typical way that I see this manifest is the number of people who undergo initiation, have their world fly to pieces, and then cry that something went wrong---they drop out of the system, and attempt to put the genie back into the bottle.

It is not that something went wrong---it is their life was imbalanced in the first place, and the process of initation started to clean out the dirt and grime. If you have spent your entire life walking on your head, then all of sudden being placed upon your feet is going to feel mightly strange. For most people, comfort and unchanging familiarity is the goal---not the exciting world of change and spiritual struggle.

Yes, there is a Counter Initiatory Force, but its name is not Nick Farrell or Pat Zalewski.

Qlippothic Color Scale

Colors of death, decay and things that go bump in the night.

Recently, I have been taking part in an online conversation about whether there is a color scale for the Qlippoth; and if so, what would the basis of that color scale be. My personal gut reaction is that it would not just be various shades of black or a mixture of the Prince (Vav) and Princess (Heh final) color scales. No, it would be based on things that disgust and make one sick to one's stomach (unless you are into necromancy and zombies---no judgment here, hehe). Rotten meat, slime, the inside of the dead organs, things like that. The photo here is a part of a page (page 28) from Drawing and Painting the Undead by Keith Thompson; this particular chart shows the Color Spectrum of Death. I believe that this little chart illustrates what I am talking about. If it does not, feel free to visit your local funeral home or city morgue. 

Fallen Angel Lore

Last night, I was studying the reading from the literature class that I am taking this semester--John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Ok, maybe I was goofing off. I was looking up the fallen angels names in Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels, and in David Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia. I mention this because Toni (my wife) pointed out that it did not look like I was actually studying.

I don't remember Professor Di Pablo mentioning any particular way that he wanted us to study it, other than he wanted us to have fresh in our minds Book I and II for the next class. And I was curious about these names since my first reading of the text. Being a member of Golden Dawn influences how I study and what I focus on; if it didn't affect us and our outlooks, we probably won't be members.

Toni told me that she didn't care what I was doing, as long as I didn't call any of them. (At this point in time, those people who have made their way though the same ZAM courses as I have will roll their eyes.) I told her I wouldn't. I failed to mention my past experiences in this field.

One of the things that some people do not understand is why the initiates of Golden Dawn were issued papers about the Qlippoth (properly "shells", but can be thought of as the fallen angels). It is not that the Order encourages us to work with them--summoning them up to do our bidding, things like that. It is that we have to work with them, or at least enough to be able to cope with them.

To illustrate what I am saying, let me use the ritual of initiation. One of the common experiences of members who have undergone initiation is that they end up having problems related to the sephiroth that they were just initiationed into. For instance, Zelators tend to have physical illnesses and money problems cope up.

Why? Quite often, the problems were there before; the ritual just brings them out into the open. We are surrounded by adverse forces everyday. Call them Qlippoth, fallen angels, or just bad luck--they are present. And we would be damn poor magicians and human beings if we did not learn to cope with them.

Occasionally, I will admit that the ritual is to blame. The problem is that when you bring into the manifestation the energies of a sephirah, you not only bring into our world the positive aspects of it, but also the negative ones. I would say that more members know that the initition rituals work because of the bad things that occured shortly thereafter than by positive manifestations.

It is not that the ritual intentionally calls down bad things; it is that the initiate has yet to learn to cope with the energies.

A fully trained Adept in the hot seat (quite often the Hierophant) can help ease the process. Which is why the system contains information about the qlippoth (there is also the fact that as inititates, we are getting trained to use the grimmoric tradition, which consists of books like The Key of Solomon).

We learn this material, so that we can cope with these energies when we encounter them in our personal lives. And can you really look around the world, and tell me that they are not there, no matter what you chose to call them. I think not.