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Ritual Suicide to Insure a Desired Transition to the Afterlife

  
 
Z. deScathach
06:51 / 29.04.04
In a previous thread on magickal suicide, which can be found here., cusm brings up an intriguing premise.

cusm: Funny, this came up recently in conversation for me. Along the lines of "what would you do if you found out you had only one week to live". My thought was, if my end was neigh inevitable, I would want to take charge of it and do it myself in my own time and manner of choosing. I would do it in a highly ritualized manner, defineing specificly where I intended to send my soul, crafting my afterlife/reincarnation to my choosing and useing the ritual and controlled death to insure I made the transition of consciousness in as complete a manner as possible.

I'm not exactly sure whether I'm violating etiquette here, please feel free to let me know if I am. It just seemed that this was worthy of it's own thread. It is intriguing because it brings up questions in belief in afterlife, as well as the question of what survives, if anything after death. In truth I have seriously thought about this issue myself. I'm not so sure whether I would do this in the context of most terminal illnesses, but I have considered doing it if I had a "mind destroying" disease, such as Alzheimer's, variant CJD, or a brain cancer. I'm not convinced that there is a "higher self" that would survive intact with full consciousness even if my brain melted. Thus I have considered performing ritual suicide in such a case, and ritually programming my reincarnation, which is what I would desire. I haven't really thought about the ritual per se, but I can guarantee you that I would think about it very carefully. As to the manner of death, I would use a huge dose of heroin, due to the fact that it can kill with extraordinary speed, thus minimizing distortion of consciousness. I would probably create several astral weapons to carry over, and would prepare for the possibility of performing magick on the other side.

So the questions: What are your opinions regarding ritual suicide to affect a desired life\death transition, i.e., choosing whether to remain in the afterlife, or affecting reincarnation, as well as insuring minimum distortion of consciousness prior to the "cross-over" Yes, it ultimately comes down to belief, but then, what do you believe? I believe that it is possible to choose re-incarnation, and that the afterlife is what we make of it, but after all, that is just my belief, no more real than any other. If I believed otherwise, I would probably consider different choices. Given the actual situation in front of me, I might well change my beliefs, after all, this is one where one should REALLY have a prerogative to change their mind.
 
 
macrophage
10:27 / 29.04.04
I beleve sometimes that the process of reincarnation exists and the other times that there is no ultimate truth.
As regards to ritual suicide I am reminded of the disasters of Jonestown, Solar Lodge, etc... though they may exist as murders, depends which stance you adopt. Our essence may go back to the collective biogram pool and then may wait for reassimiliation into the flesh pool. What would happen if you did do seppuku/suicide for crossing over and the channels were completely shut - now that would exist as pure 1000% Fuck Up wouldn't it?! Why would you want to exit yer current flesh suit?
 
 
Z. deScathach
12:47 / 29.04.04
If you would read my post you would see that I was not referring to suicide in any cases other than terminal illnesses involving destruction of the brain. In such a situation, remaining in the flesh-suit is NOT an option. The only real decision is whether to leave one's flesh-suit with a melted brain, or leave ritually ahead of time. Leaving a perfectly good body doesn't make any sense to me either. I was not referring to a Heaven's Gate situation or a Jonestown.
 
 
cusm
14:59 / 29.04.04
I really like Carroll's white/red/black rite ideas in the back of Liber Null, and have pondered over applications of them for years. My best idea being use of my personal sigel, which is something I have cultivated for many years into a powerful tool for this sort of self-work magick, as a key to reawakening my priorly gained wisdom in the next incarnation. That is, my next incarnation would be drawn to it, and upon seeing it, would trigger a past life regression where submerged components of my prior life would awaken in the new life, allowing for a more complete transition, or at least allowing for the next guy to make some use of what I've learned this time. I wonder in such a case if the prior me would be hanging around them like a Loa. I think I could deal with that.

I've thought about writing myself detailed notes on how to conjure me up as well, after they find the sigel key. The whole idea of a summoning ritual for myself is a fascination one all its own. And also of locking the lot up into a time capsuel to be opened only when the human race has progressed to the point where physical immortality is a practical reality. I mean really, cause if I'm going to use death as a means to jump forward to a new incarnation to live some more, I'd not only want to do it right, also not have to do it again if I can avoid it. Lets just skip to the end where I want to be, shall we? If it doesn't come in my lifetime, I surely want it to in my next.
 
 
LykeX
18:23 / 29.04.04
If we for a moment accept reincarnation as a fact, it would be logical to assume that you could direct it, at least to a certain extend. The question, then, is how much? How much of yourself can you bring on into the next body? How much of your past selves can you dig up in this life? How much of your future life can you decide? Birth location? Economic situation? Gender?
Imagine your current personality in a child body of the opposite sex. Unless you had already settled such issues, it might fuck you up pretty bad.
Also, at what point do we become ourselves. If you bring your present personality into a new body, will you have to go through the normal stages of childhood development, or would you be you completely in a new born body?
That's an awful lot of questions. I'll see if I can contribute a bit to the answers.

First, we must figure out what the normal mechanism is for reincarnation. Is it mandatory, or dependant on your choice? Does karma play a role?
If reincarnation is the norm, there must be some sort of memory wipe mechanism. This could probably be circumvented, though. After all, we are outrageously powerful magicians, right?
There has been cases of young children allegedly remembering past lives. These were usually very young (6-7 years, IIRC). Thus it would seem that at least part of the usual development of personality and psychology could be bypassed, if a sufficiently stable personality was brought over. The personalities these children exhibit are willful, determined as possess a great deal of memory and emotion related to their former lives. Perhaps the usual development is really more of a recovery. Anyway, it would seem that it could be possible to be conscious and aware at a relatively young age, and to retain a large portion, if not all, of your former self.
Regarding karma, we run into problems. Is it real, for example. If karma does exist, it might be quite a problem. Maybe you could strike some sort of deal with whomever is running the universal racket, but barring that your only option is to be a nice guy (or girl, naturally).
Much more interesting is the possibility that karma is a joke. If this is the case, it would be quite possible to decide all such things as location, gender, economy, parents etc. It would be a matter of discovering the normal mechanism and exploiting it. Perhaps your situation is determined by your thoughts at death, perhaps your general emotional attachments. Either way, it should be possible to tip things in your favour with a dedicated effort.

Regarding the Black Rite, mentioned in Liber Null, do you think it would be possible to occupy another persons body, without giving up your own. For example, you go into a trance, project astrally, invade the other body, do whatever you came there for, leave the body and go back to your old.
Is it really necessary to give up your old body?
 
 
Wanderer
21:07 / 29.04.04
I read an interesting story about this on (I think) Chaosmatrix. The story was basically that the guy who posted had a friend that became obsessed with creating a godform with a cult surrounding said godform, then priming the godform to recieve his intelligence and killing himself, thus effectively making himself into a god. Apparently, the excercise somwhat worked, but with some very disturbing results-the cult members recieved messages from the godform that the guy had become the godform, but was in incredible pain. The godform keeped making statements, sounding progressively more of its (his?) rocker. Eventually, the guy posting did a ritual with some friends to put the thing out of its misery and havent heard from it since. If the story is true (and based on the way it was told, I pretty much belive it) thats some disturbing shit which makes me not want to mess around with the death of self in magic, at leat not biological death.
 
 
Wanderer
21:12 / 29.04.04
Here's the story
 
 
macrophage
21:23 / 29.04.04
Ooops I didn't realise you were on about stuff like CJD, soz about that - typical of me to get the wrong end of the stick, and storm into the china shop. Hmmm yeah, tis the same as the transhumanists attempting to upload conciousness onto hardware or the net. I have to hold my hands up when I first read "Liber Null" it was the Black, White and Red Rites sections which made me scratch my noggin. I haven't looked at the story but I flicked through it before at the Chaos Matrix. Odd.
 
 
Wanderer
00:49 / 30.04.04
another interesting point to consider is that, from the point of view of some Tibetan Buddhism, while it is possible to determine where you will end up and even to put yourself into the form of a god, you are arguably in a worse position than when you are a human. They would argue that humanity affords balance between the physical and spiritual, while godhood is too grounded in spirit and animal-hood too grounded in the body. So, while it may be possible to advance yourself, it's not advantageous. Im not sure what sect this is, I think its Mayahana.
 
  
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