None of us can be Lucifer and Enoch at once. Their routes of travel are diametrically opposed: The former travelling from divinity into individuality, and the latter the reversed route. Unconstrained freedom and unconditional service are the two poles between which we are all meant to follow the narrow path of our life.
Read MoreThis note is long overdue. The fact that it requires expression, seems to mark an important shortcoming in my recent books and social media posts. I hope to remedy some of it with this post, and more of it with future publications.
Read MoreThis essay is intended to be a torch thrown into the dark realms of Paracelsus’s genius. My naive hope is that someone might catch this torch and walk on with it. If, however, its flames will die down in full flight, my more realistic hope remains that it might hit some magicians and astrologers as a blunt club to the head. For that is what happens to me, each time I delve deep into Paracelsus’s writings: I see my mind cut, I bleed certainties, only to witness the morning star of new possibilities.
Read MoreIf we were to translate Paracelsus’s explanations on faith in the above quotes and elsewhere into a 21st-century position, we could give it as such: He defines the human capability of having faith in something as the ability to flow into one.
Read More[…] It takes Paracelsus less than two pages to establish a critical foundation for a Western type of shamanism almost entirely forgotten or overlooked today. In sparse words and with the precision of an adept in his field, he gives us the essential outline of the ecosystem of spirits within which the magus operates and orientates themselves.
Read More[…] After all, the biggest obstacle to becoming the kind of grown-up, who isn’t a constant burden on others, is to responsibly satisfy our own needs whenever it is time to do so. In approaching every day in such a manner, we can become quite okay with the simple but harsh truth that life really owes us nothing.
Read More[…] Speaking of Rosicrucian Magic is a folly for many good reasons. It’s best to be avoided to be honest. Most people – scholars and practitioners alike – quickly came to substitute it with terms such as Theosophy, Pansophy, Astronomia Olympi more rarely, or simply adepta philosophia. So if we dare to use these two often romanticised and rarely understood terms here bound into one – Rosicrucian and Magic – it is for one reason alone. Because, if properly understood, nothing describes the essence of the work better than this simple term. The four arms of the cross span the world, they uphold its necessary tides and tensions; the rose is our work.
Read MoreFor centuries Western Magic has turned into the spiritual equivalent of the Crusades or the Spanish Reconquista: man’s feeble attempt to take back a realm they believed to be their birth right. Failing to realise that what lies behind such spiritual warfare is one’s own deep ignorance, the essential inability to understand and appreciate otherness. The ability - for some time at least - to walk through life, with both of one’s hands open.
Read MoreAs mages we are known to stand at crossroads. That's where we perform our best work - at that liminal place where two worlds, two forces, two beings intersect. In this post we will be exploring such a crossroad: the one where magic and modern artificial intelligence research intersect.
Read More(...) What is most striking in this presentation is Dr.Musallam’s continuous emphasis of the social aspects of religion or mystery cults. His measure for any cult is less founded on the volume of magico-mystical secrets revealed to its practitioners, and much more on the social impact it hand on the respective society.
Read More(...) Let’s explore this hypothesis together: The biggest block to leading an ethical life is to fear failure. Actually, to be afraid of failure is a distinctly human invention. Nature never considers failure an option. Had it set out a few millenials ago to achieve evoultion and hat it been afraid of getting it wrong somewhere along that eternal path, where would that have left all of us? None of us would be here. Instead of being afraid of failure, nature embraced the idea of adaptive recovery as its secret design principle for everything it does. Failure thus turned from the worst-case scenario into a necessary trigger for any learning process.
Read MoreMagic was never meant for men. We made it our own. We tore it ouf the earth and pulled it down from the skies. Think of Prometheus as a man who volunteered for a death of fire. Walking up the pyre all by himself, lighting the torch, throwing it down to his feet. Offering himself in the pursuit of what he believed to be withheld unrightfully.
Read MorePublished in 1888 - during the same year as the publication of the opus magnum of the Theosophic Society, Blavatsky's 'Secret Doctrine' as well as the inception of the first temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - Waite wrote this article at the dawn of the currents that would come to define Western magic in the 20th century. It thus allows a glimpse into how one of the GD’s earliest members rationalised and comprehended their own magical tradition - before going on to forge a new link in this chain through their own order. If we allow ourselves to forget the forged letters of Fräulein Sprengel, it’s in this early essay that we can find a lot of the intellectual assumptions as well historic roots the early GD emerged from.
Read MoreNow, in my eyes we are confronted here with an essential consideration about the nature of the Great Work. And that is the question of its pace and speed. People often say ‘You cannot speed up the harvest.’ Often when I hear this I get impatient and think to myself: ‘Right. But you can certainly forget to sow, water and shield your crops.’ (...) So the question that emerges seems to be: How do we marry the virtues of discipline, focus and commitment with their balancing counter-weights of letting go, accepting, experiencing and immersing ourselves into what is offered to us? In short: how do we marry our male and female sides to become one in the Great Work?
Read MoreAt a relatively early stage when we begin to practice magic it is really helpful to develop a proper understanding of the term ‘topography’. Today, especially in the US the term is mainly used to refer to a map with elevation contours. However, its original meaning was much broader and one still can find it being used in its old form in many countries in ‘old Europe’. Topography is made up of the two Greek words ‘place’ (topos) and ‘writing’ (graphia). Thus in its original meaning it signifies an accurate description of a specific place. Such description wasn’t limited to geographic features but could also include an accurate report about the people living in this place, its wildlife, weather and even history.
Read MoreA central aspect of the Western Occult tradition is the correlation between macrocosm and microcosm. The most prominent example of this philosophy is the Hermetic Tabula Smaragdina or Emeral Tablet. What this premise expresses is a worldview in which everything created is at the same time a part and a whole: Everything is a mirror to everything it is surrounded by, yet at the same time a unique expression of this universe.
Read MoreHaving looked into two classical concepts of Self and Self-Transformation, let's take some time to explore a third and more modern version. Also we will be looking into conclusions we can derive from all three - and how they may be defining essential criteria for magical training today.
When striving for transformation of ourselves we tend to work from one of a few numbers of consciously or subconsciously held models of 'Self'. Such models form the basis of how we make sense of ourselves as part of a larger environment of visible and invisible forces as well as a part of a social community or tradition. Inherently they determine essential assumptions about the triggers, direction and aim of such transformation. The following explorations and ideas were initiated by the wonderful anthology 'Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions', edited by David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa.
Read More(...) So I thought about it - all human behavior is goal orientated. Upon pondering about it I began to realise its distortion. I found many examples of great human achievements for which it is inaccurate: people in love may act based upon compassion, soldiers in an army act based upon orders, medical doctors in contaminated areas act upon self-abandonment.
Read MoreNow, this has been on my mind for quite a while. Bringing this finally down to paper feels like giving birth to something that has taken a very long time to come through. I am really grateful for that. I am grateful for the insight that struck me when walking my dog this morning, looking at the snow, the quiet woods, enjoying the silence - and finally realizing how the pieces of the puzzle needed to be arranged.
Read More
