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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

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12:46 / 23.08.07

Live, hope you are feeling better today and I can only second what the others have said for advice on these sorts of pains other than massaging your tummy can help as well although it may bring on a heavier flow.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:47 / 23.08.07

I am, thanks. And thanks to everyone for all your help.

20:19 / 23.08.07

For INKLET/XK (or anyone else who is interested):

So, in looking for my favourite book on tantra to share with you, I came across a video by the author, Lama Thubten Yeshe - An Introduction to Tantra. The book has the same name, as well. The writing is superb. Tears steamed down my face as I read the book for the first time. Although, the video of Lama Yeshe is incredibly delightful, heartwarming and funny. I hope you enjoy it.

If someone wants to start a Deity yoga thread, please go ahead. I will most definitely join in. If there isn't one in week or so, I guess I can start one myself.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:19 / 24.08.07

Hey, you know that technique where you repeatedly tap your forehead over your third eye to open it? Anyone know what tradition that comes from?

19:53 / 24.08.07

That was a great video Medulla thank you.
It did a nice job of answering some of my questions.

20:03 / 24.08.07

That technique sounds like a wonderful quick fix.
I've never heard of it, what's the catch?

20:45 / 24.08.07

I'd guess the catch is that it doesn't work.

(At least by itself.)

Try it and see.

21:00 / 24.08.07

So far, I have a headache.
I might give it a miss.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:44 / 24.08.07

Theoretically: The catch is that you can open yr 3rd eye before you are ready for THE TRUTHS.

In my personal experience: The catch is that you get bored and forget to do it anymore, a bit like that Scott Adams thing where you write your affirmation out 15 times a day.

11:07 / 25.08.07

That was a great video Medulla thank you.
It did a nice job of answering some of my questions.

I am glad you liked it, Inkwitch. I just adore Lama Yeshe. If you would like the book, which rather explains deity generation in a most succinct manner, I can lend you my copy, no problem. Let me know.

Hey, you know that technique where you repeatedly tap your forehead over your third eye to open it? Anyone know what tradition that comes from?

I am guessing, but I think that technique is Hindu, but I have seen it used TBists. Ev is right of course, it does nothing by itself. Except, as Princess realized, it can give one a headache! (You crack me up, Princess!) But, I think I have seen it used by yogins to help keep focused if their awareness becomes dull or worldly when they are supposed to be meditating. It will also mildly stimulate the glands in that area which, I think, are the pineal and pituitary glands.

Alternatively, I found a reflexology technique where stimulating your brow chakra through applying pressure to the joint between the first and second bones of the big toe on your right foot. Massage this point for 10-20 seconds with a rotating movement in a clockwise direction. Now repeat on your left foot.

18:54 / 25.08.07

TOPY? Anyone have any experience with them? I've been pouring their website into my brain and find myself more and more intrigued. Could be the industrial music I've been listening to for days,too.

I'm probably going to contact them, but I wanted to hear what the 'lith had to say on the subject.

09:36 / 26.08.07

I used to be in TOPY, many, many years ago, and it was great. I met some great people, several of whom I'm still in touch with. YMMV, I think I was in the right place at the right time - this was just after Gen's house got raided in the wake of the Dispatches programme on Channel 4, and I think the people involved in the London Access Point (as it was known) were self-consciously defining themselves with their own interests and projects, rather than Gen's obsessions or the TOPY stereotypes (shaved heads/piercings/Manson/Crowley/Industrial Music). I remember "Fred Carter" ripping the piss out of this TOPY stereotype at a Talking Stick meet.

The actual magical programme - 23 monthly sigils - was a bit to loose and diffuse for me at that time, I never finished it (and ended up contacting another group a few years later for a more formal "programme of work".) Again, YMMV. More than anything else, it was a way of connecting, in the flesh, with some like-minded people. I was lucky with the people I met, as there were no arseholes, though this might vary from group to group. There was some nasty fallings out later on, when I'd moved out the area, but I kinda think this is inevitable with groups.

That's my experience, I imagine TOPY via the website and the USA will be very different from how it used to be, but I'm sure you'll meet some sound people. Go for it.

06:20 / 29.08.07

So barbeloids, whats the scoop on Pan? I've been rooting around for info about invoking him and the internet is a little lacking. The general idea I've gotten so far is just pretend really hard and he'll show up like an acid flashback.

08:06 / 29.08.07

Drive or get on a bus to a big, wild place out in the open - somewhere you have never been before, where nobody knows you and you have no support networks. A place within nature where anything might happen. Get yourself totally lost in that place. Spend the night there by yourself. When you start to get freaked out for no good reason by the enormity of nature in the middle of the night, then that is the Night of Pan right there. Go with it and see what happens.

trouser the trouserian

08:11 / 29.08.07

You could try declaiming Crowley's Hymn to Pan

Unconditional Love

09:25 / 29.08.07

Pan Great god of nature by Leo Vinci is sat on my shelf yet to be read, but it looks like a great book, only skimmed it thou, but it certainly looks like a detailed study.

trouser the trouserian

09:47 / 29.08.07

Philippe Borgeuad's The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece gets my vote.

12:22 / 29.08.07

along with GL's suggestion I'd throw in mountain hiking alone up on the peaks. Please be aware that people do get Panicked and fall off mountains and have heart attacks so it's best to really prepare yourself that this is an encounter you are seeking. doing ritual offerings before you set out and studying up will help get you in a hopefully flexible attititude.

Also suss out if you're looking for Pan/Faunus or Dionysious/Bacchus. I've found that a large number of folks tend to get confused over these Deities.

13:29 / 29.08.07

Pan is on the the streets of London, Pan is on the streets of Birmingham, I wonder to myself could life ever be sane again?

Sorry. I'll get my coat.

13:37 / 29.08.07

I dunno Quants, I think you may have a point there... Pan should be able to be found in the city as well as the outlands.

trouser the trouserian

14:18 / 29.08.07

Pan should be able to be found in the city as well as the outlands.

Well there were several temples dedicated to Pan in various Greek cities and towns - notably Athens (established after the battle of Marathon).

14:27 / 29.08.07

I'm sure I'm being overly romantic, but I really love the idea of living somewhere full of Temples dedicated to numerous Deities/Powerz.

I've taken to visiting the holy images/sculptures/statues in shops/parks in my town and hanging with them for a bit. funny what we sell to decorate our homes with but not outright worship these days.

Oddly it's also making me miss London...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:16 / 29.08.07

Nother stupid question: didn't Pan start as more of a fieldsy sort of Deity? How did He end up in the Wild Wood? Or am I wrong...

21:41 / 29.08.07

According to the Homeric Hymn:

Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long- haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:51 / 29.08.07

Ok. So He's a shepherd God, just not from a culture that kept all its sheep in nice handy pens down in the flat bits. Check.

22:14 / 29.08.07

Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god.

That's really cool.

22:23 / 29.08.07

It sounds like they're using "Shepherd" in the generic sense. Wasn't He at least as much a Goatherd?

Also: The image immediately in my mind is that there's a correlation between Pan's goat legs and feet, and His ability to go just about anywhere, including up the sides of mountains, as goats do.

--Ember--

06:35 / 30.08.07

Barbelith's search function really is turd on a stick otherwise this would have come up a lot quicker: Evoking Pan

11:59 / 30.08.07

Lots of good stuff in that earlier thread.

But I really like GL's current suggestion that, to truly grasp Pan, one should seek out the elemental sense of Panic, panikon deima, sudden fear in lonely places.

Risky, of course, but Pan isn't exactly sunlight on roses.

12:50 / 30.08.07

I'm sure I'm being overly romantic, but I really love the idea of living somewhere full of Temples dedicated to numerous Deities/Powerz.

How about this place?

From here

13:47 / 30.08.07

I'm sure I'm being overly romantic, but I really love the idea of living somewhere full of Temples dedicated to numerous Deities/Powerz.

It's not really my thing, but don't we all already do that?

True, I work in New York and live in a diverse part of New Jersey, but there are temples dedicated to the Jewish, Christian, Moslem, and Hindu gods all around me, from St. Patrick's Cathedral and Temple Emanuel to the small shrines on the dashboards of local cabdrivers.

(Personally, I like going to the South Asian sculpture section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see how many visitors have left coins on the statue of Ganesha.)

There also are temples dedicated to commerce (banks, businesses), knowledge (libraries, museums, and bookstores), sensuality (night clubs, salons, bars), and nature (parks) -- and the gods associated with those qualities -- all around us, if we just look.

14:02 / 30.08.07

It's not really my thing, but don't we all already do that?

You are right, Ev. We do! Good point. Some places more so than others, I suppose. Personally, I feel like some modern churches have lost something in the way of reverence for their God, traded for architectural marvel or structural convenience. Montreal is full of worship and deification in temples,churches and idolatry. Not so much where I am now, though.

When I read what Inklet wrote though, it immediately brought the Damanhur community to mind for me, and their Human Temples. I thought I should share it.

trouser the trouserian

14:20 / 30.08.07

Wasn't He at least as much a Goatherd?

Some of the earliest representations of Pan (early 5th century BC) - a bronze from Arcadia (his homeland, according to the Greeks) and an Athenian vase painting - depict Pan as an upright goat.

Get yourself totally lost in that place. Spend the night there by yourself. When you start to get freaked out for no good reason by the enormity of nature in the middle of the night, then that is the Night of Pan right there.

The earliest account of panic fear is in the Rhesus (attributed to Euripides) which gives an account of sentries in a Trojan camp being worried by strange noises and disturbing the camp. Hector berates them: Your message is partly terror to the ear, partly reassurance, and nothing plain. Do you feel fear under the dreadful lash of Pan, the son of Cronus? For the Greeks, Pan's panic was particularly associated with noise and confused disturbances which threw encamped soldiers into disarray. Menander, in the Dyscolus says that when humans, for no particular reason, become disturbed and noisy, it is because Pan approaches them. Cornutus explains the "panic confusions" that can overtake armies in comparison with what happens to flocks of goats in wild places becoming excited by wilderness noises. There are numerous instances of Pan inspiring panic in invading armies, leading to victory for the Greeks.

14:42 / 30.08.07

It's not really my thing, but don't we all already do that?

My town is pretty small and light on the religious outlets. The vulva church being the big exception of course.

I was craving a big ass city full of Temples/Churches/shrines.

15:00 / 30.08.07

Vulva church?

Applies to pretty much any church with a representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

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