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Underground > Temple >

Modern Magick - Lesson Two.

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14:58 / 13.08.02

I wound up doing a visualized LBRP last night, mainly because the heat wave here left me unable to move by 8 pm, and yet I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking "oooh, I don't want to skip my evening rituals." It went okay, and I was surprised at the degree to which I could sense the appropriate vibrations, but my visualization still needs a lot of work before I'd be comfortable with this as an on-par alternative to physically doing the ritual. Still, it seems like a useful goal to have in mind, and something I'm going to continue to experiment with in future.

Having the same frustration with my ritual diary, although I've managed to keep it up for the most part. The Tarot contemplations provide a little variety, as does my moods & physical state (and I keep thinking to myself that the weather will change, eventually). The repetitive nature of the diary is inspiring me to think in greater detail about the rituals, and to try experimenting with minor variations of focus during the LBRP.

My silly question for the day - if anyone else wears glasses/contacts, do you generally leave them on or off when doing rituals? I've fallen into the habit of not wearing mine, but am curious to hear what other people do. I feel as though I am able to visualize better without glasses, although that might just be a side effect of the very blurry vision making things look spooky in the dim light.

15:50 / 13.08.02

I leave my glasses on when I'm doing the rituals. I may try to do the LBRP later on this evening without them. It may help me focus a bit more on what I'm doing rather than my surroundings. My eyes won't be drawn to the other objects in the room if I can't see them, right?

August 6 was the last day I wrote anything down. I feel a bit bad about it, but I can catch it up really quick since everything, including emotions and physical condition were the same each and every time.

22:22 / 18.08.02

Okay guys, I'm looking for pronunciations for "Eheieh" and "Agla". Hit me...

22:32 / 18.08.02

Check this site. It has sound files.

Chaos is relative

02:13 / 19.08.02

"Okay guys, I'm looking for pronunciations for "Eheieh" and "Agla". Hit me..."

My old Regardie tapes have him pronouncing them thus;
a(as in pray)- hee- yea and ah-guh-lah.

I hope this helps.

13:22 / 19.08.02

The Hebrew pronunciation of "Eheieh" would be more like "eh-hay-yeh". "AGLA" is notariqon, i.e. an acronym, so any particular pronunciation (within reason, I guess) is arguably ok; this particular one seems to line up with the Golden Dawn's pronunciation of things Enochian, e.g. "IAD" as "ee-ah-dah"...

Any one doing the Middle Pillar consistently at this point? I'm doing the LBRP twice a day most days, throwing in the Star Ruby occasionally (mostly when I can do it loudly), doing the Liber Resh adorations on a fairly inconsistent basis (missing noon and midnight seem to be what I'm most prone to; I also haven't developed the "social and moral courage" to excuse myself in the middle of dinner and go chant to the setting sun). I've done the Middle Pillar on a fairly inconsistent basis (like two or three times a week), but I'd say it's gone well when I've done it...

18:22 / 19.08.02

Man, I'm still on Lesson One and in danger of dropping out.... had no idea so much of my time was held captive.
Yikes!

18:38 / 19.08.02

I've been doing the LBRP at least twice a day. A few days last week I got up to four times. Unfortunately, it's going to have to be twice a day from now on; once when I wake up and once before I go to bed. As for the adorations, I've kind of made some half-assed attempts at them. I'm certainly not going to be able to do the adoration for noon. I'm pretty sure the Personal Nutrition professor would take it amiss if I stood up in the middle of class and started doing it.

18:49 / 19.08.02

On the one hand, I would hope that poeple won't drop out because they're not on the hump of the bell curve in terms of time to devote to this. On the other, I likewise hope that people won't be in such a hurry to press on that they give short shrift to some of the exercises (like the Middle Pillar)...

19:36 / 19.08.02

I'm pretty sure the Personal Nutrition professor would take it amiss if I stood up in the middle of class and started doing it.

Well, of course no one's suggesting that you should do that.

Excuse yourself and do it in the hallway.

19:59 / 19.08.02

"So, why exactly is it you need to be excused?"

Ummm....errr...religious rites?

I'm going to start on the middle pillar ritual tonight and probably spend a week or two on it before moving onto the circulation of the body of light from lesson three (that's the next major ritual, I believe). I'm actually going to skip ahead a bit to lesson three and start on the ritual that you use to attune yourself to the element of Earth tomorrow.

04:34 / 20.08.02

I've been doing the Middle Pillar and Circulation of the Body of Light about twice a week pretty consistently. Those exercises were part of the set of tapes from the couch-surfer, and I've used them as guided meditations even when I wasn't interested in the magickal content.

The adorations I've pretty much skipped entirely... They don't seem to connect to anything else, were very nearly flagged as optional in the text, and, quite frankly, I've got a full plate as it is without having rituals tie me to a clock. (so to speak!) If, later on, it looks like they're more important, I think I can make up for some of the practice I've missed.

16:45 / 22.08.02

I've been managing the LBRP at least once a day, generally twice, and added in the Middle Pillar about a week ago. Missed two days this week due to general overwork and a nasty head cold (mental note: vibrating god names while stuffed up is a good way to induce vertigo...)

I've also been doing the adorations, although I forget about one about every two days, on average. I try not to think of it as connecting to a clock schedule (since there's plenty of that kind of scheduling in my life already) but rather as being aware of natural time passage - when does the sun rise and set, specifically. And I'm not being super-strict about when they happen: just when I get up in the morning, when I have lunch, when it gets dark and before bed. I'm on an "enforced normal" schedule at present, due to my day job, and it'll be interesting to see how this plays out when I'm not punching a 9-5 clock.

17:13 / 29.08.02

I found a really interesting analysis of Crowley's Star Ruby (the Thelemic version of the LBRP) here...

15:20 / 30.08.02

Started the LBRP last night - what fun! Even doing it in a really cluttered space with a small dog, reading the book by candlelight, still, gears in motion.
A bit scary, even, afterwards. Isn't YHVH supposed to, in the Jewish tradition this comes from, be unspeakable?

15:22 / 30.08.02

Question: is anyone else finding this stuff easier/more potent during the waning moon??

23:17 / 31.08.02

I couldn't say. I haven't been keeping track of moon phases. I probably should.

I've been doing the LBRP with the first two fingers of my right hand, but I think I may try it using a weapon of some sort. I picked up a Knight's Templar sword earlier today, it may make a good ritual tool after it's been cleaned up a bit.

06:15 / 01.09.02

Isn't YHVH supposed to, in the Jewish tradition this comes from, be unspeakable?

The Name (Orthodox Jews refer to God as "ha-Shem", which literally means "the Name") according to tradition, was spoken once a year, on Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) in the innermost chamber, the "Holy of Holies", of the Great Temple in Jerusalem, by the High Priest. Before he went inside, the other priests would tie a rope around his waist, just in case it turned out that he hadn't been in a state of sufficient ritual purity: they could drag out whatever was left.

The pronunciation of the Name has been lost over time, so we've been told. It is said that among the various heretical deeds perpetrated by the false Messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi, was the act of uttering the Holy Name aloud. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of chasidism, is supposed to have restored a dead child to life by speaking the Name--"Baal Shem Tov" means "master of the Good Name".

The kabbalist Avraham Abulafia described a practice where one iterated through the consonants of the Name using different vowels; presumably one could stumble across the correct pronunciation in this fashion. Abulafia suggests to the would-be practitioner that, should anything unusual happen, he would be well advised to "fall on his face" and not raise his eyes to whatever appears.

The Name appears, perhaps, to be a sort of combination of several forms of the verb meaning "to be". The word HYH means "is"; the word HVH means "was" and YHYH means "will be". One commentator has suggested that the sounds which make up the name are the sounds of breathing.

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