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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

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15:29 / 10.05.07

Adonai does in fact mean "Lord." It's usually used in Hebrew prayers as a substitute for YHVH, which is never spoken aloud.

Neither Adonai nor YHVH is even remotely female or feminine in aspect.

Yeah, which makes me wonder how it seemed to work so damned well. Maybe the being is androgynous at it's core and had sympathy on me back then, or the old thing about believing in something so much until it actually works paid off. I know I seemed to have a lot more trust and faith in all things magical at the time, and was in awe of most of it, so that's possibly the answer.

As for the alternate suggestions, thanks, but I'm so steeped in and in love with Taoism at the moment that I can't really see myself working full-on with anything else but the Tao, some Zen, and maybe some Alchemy from here on out. Thanks anyway though.

15:34 / 10.05.07

Don't know if I'm getting obsessive about this whole Hebrew thing, but I'd transliterate Tree of Life in Hebrew as Etz Chaim and pronounce it as "Aytz chai-yim."

17:16 / 10.05.07

Accent on the "yim", right? Chai-YIM?

17:18 / 10.05.07

For example the idea of looking at my Goddess through the lens of either Malkuth or Binah just made me sit up straight and have a nice long think about things I hadn't considered.

Hey, RAWK!

17:33 / 10.05.07

I thought the chai- part was pronounced like hawking as though you were about to spit, really phlegmy like 'Hch'.

19:06 / 10.05.07

Aytz

Ay as in hey or pray.

Tz as in hits or fritz

Chai-yim

Ch as in loch or the German ach

ai as in by or cry

im as in vim or skim.

(Or, if you happen to known someone named Chaim, the way he pronounces his name.)

19:27 / 10.05.07

Oh -- and neither syllable in Chai-yim is heavily accented.

Remember, all of this is modern Sephardic/Israeli pronunciation as filtered through someone who hasn't had a Hebrew lesson in more than 20 years.

Unconditional Love

21:36 / 10.05.07

Disk 8,9 and 10 of this series go into pronunciation by Dr regardie - The Golden Dawn Audio Series very good set of audio recordings plus the complete golden dawn system of magic as pdf at bottom, i am led to believe by the web site that this is a legal distribution of the series, but i am not wholly sure.

If it isnt would a moderator please delete this post.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:41 / 10.05.07

I agree there's something really useful about taking familar pieces and lining them up in new ways according to other systems of belief.

Yeah, it's like the Odin-Mercury connection. A straight equivalence 1:1 would be complete bollocks and people who play that game make me want to drown things, but it can be useful to do a compare and contrast.

Unconditional Love

21:41 / 10.05.07

21:55 / 10.05.07

Note that Regardie uses Ashkenazic (Eastern European) pronunciation rather than the essentially Sephardic modern pronunciation.

Mako is a hungry fish

10:02 / 11.05.07

Stuff about Franz Bardon include...

His complete works online though it's not 100% true to his books, which is kind of important.

A Bardon Companion website based on the books by Rawn Clark, which is rather helpful seeing as how ole Franz was basically "here it is, if you can't work it out than you're not meant to - now go put in some real effort instead of philosophising about it" which makes things a tad difficult, though rewarding.

Franz Bardon Hermetics, Fairy Tales, and Transpersonal Psychology by William Mistele which is rather nifty, especially his essays on "problems in the study of magic" and "basic training in the Franz Bardon system".

Plus my own personal thumbs up, cause all three authors above know their stuff and have helped me to know my own.

Mako is a hungry fish

10:06 / 11.05.07

Oh... and you should probably pay attention when you get to the parts that say "this system is to be followed from beginning to end if you want to get the most out of it - feel free to read ahead, but don't think you're going to get far in a practical sense unless you've put in the effort."

Unconditional Love

11:50 / 11.05.07

Those are really useful links thanks very much.

Unconditional Love

14:39 / 11.05.07

For anybody with an interest - Cult of Angels

Zoroastrian angelology

RELIGION
Cult of Angels

Yazdânism
Cult of Angels

I find all of this really fascinating, i hope somebody else does.

Anybody tried working with Zoroastrian angelology ? How does it differ from say Jewish or Christian workings, Is their somekind of Zoroastrian magical system or is it a largely religious practice? It seems most definitely like it could be magical in nature, i guess i shall find out with further research.

18:49 / 15.05.07

Aside from praying for help and meditation to calm down, what magical/spiritual techniques are good for reducing anxiety? I don't mind references to theory, but I'm more looking for personal experiences on this one.

--Ember--

18:54 / 15.05.07

I find working with trees and big rocks doing energy exchange really helpful. I use Celtic Reiki forms and find a tree or rock that seems amicable to the exchange and start cycling stuff through. I always ask first and wait until I find a partner that seems interested in helping. Not everything is in the right space to use the frantic energy productively.

That and salt water bathing in the tub or the ocean. Salt scrubs in the shower also work very well.

19:01 / 15.05.07

You could try, under controlled circumstances, just letting yourself feel entirely shitty and pissed and frustrated, and so on, for a short concretated burst of anxiety - privately, and preferably somewhere where people aren't going to overhear you, and things breakable are there only to be breakable - and see if that helps.

Also, rather than meditation, an excited focus on - or admission of - all the sensual information-reception of a moment can help reduce anxiety and stress. Literally let yourself experience at once whatever tastes, textures, sounds, smells, electrical currents et cet. you are actually sensing at that moment. All of them. Part of that's the distracting quality, but it also tends to leave me feeling very grounded and part of something in a kind of immutable/belonging way.

The calm/soothing techniques don't seem to work as well for me as deliberately finding a different form of excitation. Sometimes throwing glass jars against a brick wall or trying to focus on how much you really hear of your own blood going through your head all the time is just eventually more calming that trying to sit and focus on being calm.

23:57 / 15.05.07

Bold XK: Reiki! Why didn't I remember the idea of Reiki. Well, to some degree, sitting calmly and energy cycling IS a form of meditation, to me, but it's a form I could probably manage more easily right now, and totally didn't think of. Which, really, is why I asked - I knew I was forgetting a myriad of familiar options because of the stress.

D[$time-$verb-er]: There is definitely wisdom to using the energy instead of just trying to discard it, but I do know that it doesn't seem to help all that much for me to do anything destructive (unless it's a needful thing that I've been putting off until I had the energy). Partially because then I feel bad for it, which makes things worse instead of better, and partially (this part could probably use some work, but not right now) I'm afraid of opening up a whole other can of worms entirely if I cross that particular boundary.

But in the more general sense, you've reminded me that EXERCISE is a major reducer of stress-oriented neurochemicals. And I don't get enough of it, which is probably part of the problem all by itself.

So... THANK YOU both, and I still welcome more reminders and new ideas along these lines, but I've gotten what I most needed.

--Ember--

00:02 / 16.05.07

Someday I'll remember to include everything I meant to say on the first try. *sigh*

What I wanted to add was that when I stop and think about it, I realize that one of the calming techniques I use is sorting aesthetically pleasing things. Sunday evening I sat and sorted out a string of mixed beads I'd bought the day before. Today I sorted out a bunch of image files into their appropriate folders. It's calming for several reasons I can think of off the top of my head. 1) The things I'm dealing with are beautiful to me. 2a) It's meditative, in that it doesn't take much brain power, and is repetative. It gives me something to focus on. 2b) It's introverted, in that it allows me to block out everything else, and be less overwhelmed. 3) I'm accomplishing something, however minor, that I'm happy to have gotten done when it's finished.

--Ember--

Mako is a hungry fish

03:51 / 16.05.07

It also seems like such activites would have an ordering effect on a chaotic mind - I find that when I get anxious, it's because I'm not 'flowing' properly with the world I live in, and that an adjustment is necessary where I take a step back in order to find the rythym, and then step back into it.

Unconditional Love

19:22 / 16.05.07

Heptameron, has anybody worked with this book? i want to start working with god and angels and this and/or enochian seem like a logical place to begin for me, i believe i have read that there is a probable relationship between the two.

I would ideally like to work or correspond with somebody that can teach or guide a student through the enochian tradition, does anybody know of anybody in the u.k?

I am off to search.

Unconditional Love

11:31 / 18.05.07

The Order of the Cubic Stone, does anybody know if this order is still functional and how to contact them?

12:54 / 18.05.07

I echo XK - trees are good. Also, any magical activity that reconnects you with your divine/higher/deep/god-self and the divine in general. That sort of thing really soothes me.

Unconditional Love

14:28 / 18.05.07

Can anybody in this forum teach enochian?

17:32 / 22.05.07

So do we have a thread on magical/ritual abode getting practices?

The spouse and I are finally tired with tiny crooked shack that smells bad, leaks, and is prone to infestations of Beezlebub (lately). It's got some lovely features as well but I'm trying to let go and not think of why it's been the best place evah...le sigh.

Right.
I usually just start asking my Folks for help and centering my attention on the qualities of a new home I'm looking for. I haven't had to do it in seven years so I'm looking at ways of improving the request process.

Safe, spacious, affordable, and well located seems to be what to ask for. We're not after a perm home just yet so I'm hesitant to go full power request, which oddly I'm realizing most of my magical work is BIG THINGS. Not a lot of medium sized requests.

Oh and I'm interested in what rituals people do so their Beloved Dead and Co. get moved/ transition gracefully from the old pad to the new pad.

18:36 / 22.05.07

IME IN UR HOUS EETIN UR FOODZ!

18:47 / 22.05.07

Sorry. I don't have much helpful advice except to double check your working. My mum stopped doing magic in the late 70s because of a house spell, she & my dad asked for a very specific place and then a few days later it appeared, they didn't move in (long story) and shortly afterwards it flooded then fell into a river. She decided not to do teh spellz no more.

18:50 / 22.05.07

...sorry again, my point being they didn't specify 'dry'. Safe, spacious, affordable, well located and with no hidden drawbacks seems to be what to ask for.

18:53 / 22.05.07

Yeah I learned a long time ago not to ask for *that thing, that one, right there, no, over there, with the X on it* and instead ask for something that suits the qualifiers and leave the specifics up to Thems That Know Better.

So:

Safe, Spacious, Clean, Close to Town, Cat Friendly, Affordable, and Happy Home.

What am I forgetting?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:08 / 22.05.07

Deaf neighbours.

19:11 / 22.05.07

ooh would that be Privacy? 'Cause you want them quiet as well as deaf.

19:18 / 22.05.07

I think 'let it work out' is a good thing to shoot for. Trust whomever you're dealing magickally with, at least as far as you trust the flesh and halitosis people you deal with on these things, if not a few ounces more because you've presumably known them longer.

As for the dead, just invite them along. And if you leave out food or smokes or anything, keep doing it at the new place, but maybe a bit heavier. Welcoming gift, or something; formality but it's always nice anyway.

(I'm suggesting to someone leaving heavy-fly-visitation to decorate their place with food they won't eat... there's some things only 'It's religious!' can even approach making sense of.)

19:27 / 22.05.07

Yeah the 'Bubs are due to something moving on to its version of Vahalla and leaving its earthly remains under the kitchen we think. The stench is dwindling and we are now on 'Bub round 3 I believe. It's their precursors, the Undertakers, I can't stand to look at and so far haven't had to. *shudder*

I've stopped actively freaking out about it and now just have a 'no house guests' rule in place. The 'Bubs are actively amusing the catsons so besides opening the windows and making sure the dead thing isn't in the house itself I haven't engaged war mode. I'm a bit blase now coming home to skunk bombs, fly invasions, and the leaking roof.

Earlier I was thinking about 'huh, I haven't considered why this is all going to shit at once' and realized it is the kick to the ass we need to motivate to move out of what's the cheapest nicest apartment within walking distance of our jobs. Like uber nonsensical cheap.

21:39 / 22.05.07

I'll try to come back to this. I did indeed ask TPTB for help finding the house I currently live in with my primary, and dear gods, did they come through - Their fingerprints are frelling EVERYWHERE in this place, and it's downright perfect for us. It's not quite everything we asked for, I think, but the only things it's missing are all things we could add ourselves if it were a priority.

--Ember--

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