(Trailer)

New podcast. Available from the usual places. Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, editors of a forthcoming collection of Aleister Crowley's magical writings, discuss the true meaning of Crowley's legacy and thought.

NEW PODCAST: Passport Through Hades

The Nineteenth Enochian Call; the relevance of its description of the Earth to current events; suspicion of its description; implications of governance of a whole by its parts; how one part can never be an answer to the condition of the world; the truth of the world reveals itself in times of discord; the possibility of two different worlds; the nature of these different worlds; the rearrangement of the dominant way of understanding the world; the importance of naming things and of the refusal to name them; naming as a conduit into social and cultural drama; disadvantages of not naming; discrimination as the virtue of Malkuth; withdrawal and reserve as components of discrimination; nothing within the world offers escape from the nature of the world; our inner knowing of the nature of the world; leaning into the world diminishes the opportunity for something other; preoccupation with reputation as a substitute for humanity; the morality of the gutter; a cultural drama driven purely by a concern for personal reputation rather than a true contact of horror with the soul; reputation as a substitute for lack of control; doubling down and damnation; moving in the direction of loss of humanity; Buddhism and the Nineteenth Enochian Call; “It repenteth me I made Man”; the sorrow of the divine at the choices of humankind; how sorrow and compassion suggest an alternative path; warnings from God; a vision and its qualities; “being grabbed”; the destruction of a city; allowing the vision to disclose its nature; an event in reality that seemed to match the vision; contrasts and similarities with precognition and synchronicity; how prophecy is neither an instruction nor a message; “you know it when you see it”; the city in the vision was revealed as New York; prediction versus prophecy; the instructions embedded in the Call and addressed to the First Aethyr; scrying the aethyrs as remote viewing; Crowley’s approach to the aethyrs; consistency in the experience of scrying the aethyrs; the power of creation handed to the created; magick as the providence of God; the way out is through the world as it is; going first to the highest and the highest governing the parts is the way to turn things the right way up; conscious participation in the process of division; magick as the way out from darkness; the experience of scrying the First Aethyr; finding one world through the other as a complete image of creation; the point of the vision as an expression of divine sorrow; its fulfilment an indication of the reality of the divine. Duncan Barford (2022). HIEROPHANY #02 Discrimination, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/37fp8zwm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/37fp8zwm</a> (acast.com). Accessed November 2023. Maa-kheru, ed. (2023). The forty-eight calls or keys in the Enochian language, Crowley's phonetic, and Dee's English, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/6p8s96c8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/6p8s96c8</a> (hermetic.com). Accessed November 2023. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

010 The Call

A tale of receiving cash from a demon; the result of the working having the same character as the working; a tale of summoning Lucifer; the danger of nothing seeming to have happened; the urge to teach Lucifer a lesson; appreciating the multiple facets of manifestation, including the experience of self; the contrast with the manifestation of the divine; the dilemma of leaning into the demonic; total manifestation and the redundancy of magick; warnings against demon magick; breaking free from the loop of repeated mistakes; exiting the occult; demonic bondage; a tale of trying to liberate a demon; the naivety of this; the torturous flavour of the results; the impossibility of liberating something with a nature opposed to liberation; a tale of demonic possession; the problematic but compelling nature of ritual amnesia; amnesia as a possible sign of trauma (or false transmission); the nature of trauma in relation to the demonic; similar dynamics in non-magical contexts; malevolence and its nature; evil and the denial of evil; speaking with a demon; the baffling refusal of the possessed to be free from possession; the dynamics of addiction; possession as a slow process with a long history; the accumulation of small violations of conscience; how a further false transmission results in a lost soul; malevolence as that which reacts to good as an existential threat; malevolence as a conscious choice; everything as an encounter with the demonic or the divine; the ubiquity and subtlety of malevolence; how demons erode conscience and lure us into destroying ourselves; examples of choosing a different course; all demons as one entity that uses our good intentions to destroy ourselves; humans and demons as malevolent in different ways; demons as the endpoint of malevolence; luring others into hating the good; a tale of roasting a demon in the fire; intentional malevolence manifesting as a demon; Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley on magical combat; how awakening is a fire and demons are drawn to extinguish awakening; spiritual reality and astral imagery; how demons say yes to annihilation. Aleister Crowley (2010). Moonchild. San Francisco, CA: Red Wheel / Weiser. (Chapter 5.) Dion Fortune (2020). Psychic Self Defense: The Definitive Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack. Newburyport, MA: Weiser. Some of the material in this episode is covered from a different angle in OEITH #106 Tales of the Goetia. You can listen to this at <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2t6zwb5x" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2t6zwb5x</a> or read a transcript at <a href="https://tinyurl.com/mr2ykek4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/mr2ykek4</a>. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

009 Demons Are Demonic (Part Two)

Different types of discarnate entities; the nature of the entity defined by our relationship to it; distinguishing between different types of entities and relationships to them; elementals; the dead; demons; the pros and cons of experimentalism; “helpful elementals” and the problem of psychologization; two types of psychologization; power animals; ancestral spirits; the relationship to higher entities; how the divine demands everything; techniques of connection to higher powers; attention and the lower powers; the reciprocal nature of the relationship; the demonic sustainment of identity; relationship rather than appearance as the nature of the entity; the divine as self-evident; paying attention to internal states; how the lower realms might be helpful or necessary; the suitability of the contactee or devotee; working with the dead; attention to our own assumptions and motivations; “spirit-trafficking”; magick versus taking things seriously; a story about “demonic splashback”; issues concerning respect; demons as demonic; the story of “Marvin” and the dead cat; the engineering of circumstances by demonic entities. Some of the material in this episode is covered from a different angle in OEITH #106 Tales of the Goetia. You can listen to this at <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2t6zwb5x" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2t6zwb5x</a> or read a transcript at <a href="https://tinyurl.com/mr2ykek4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/mr2ykek4</a>. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

008 Demons Are Demonic (Part One)

Our recent podcast hiatus; the relevance of reputation to magick; the use of reputation by spiritual teachers (Crowley, Gurdjieff, Milarepa); the indispensability of dissuasion; contrasts between this and modern spirituality; warnings against reputational damage; reputational contagion; why and how reputation will not survive the Great Work; the reputational disaster of The Baptist’s Head material; why we might want to stand by this regardless; the antidote to these problems in Magia; following the thread versus reputation and preference; the destruction of the teacher’s reputation; bad reputation differentiated from inappropriate conduct; following the thread regardless of revulsion; the impossibility of gatekeeping; how disgraced teachers are often overly preoccupied with reputation; dissuasive teachers we have known and loved; trust for the truth rather than for the teacher; how, if even the teacher may not know what they are following, then neither will the student; why non-abuse is so easy; “Boomer magick” and its impact on contemporary spirituality; the Gen X perspective; the opportunity presented by the passing of the Boomers; the current prevalence of “the Phenomenon” in podcasts; the suspicious absence of faeries from our experience; the annoyance of crappy little spirits; the possible relevance of this to classic faerie encounters; misdirection, deviation, fakery and fictionality; the relationship of faerie and UFO encounters to awakening; getting stuck in the “outer threshold” of spiritual realisation; how most work with spirits might be a distraction; the contrast of this perspective with animism and spiritism; why the mystery of the Phenomenon is actually not mysterious; the delusion of collective awakening; the problem with “the other of the other”; the Phenomenon as a manifestation of the Many; the importance of engaging with particulars; encounters with birds and the contrast of these to faerie encounters; birds and angels; the paranormal as a possibility for initiation; discriminating between spirits by their relationship to the human; the Phenomenon as a parody of initiation. John A. Keel (1970). Operation Trojan Horse. New York: Putnam. Karl Pfeiffer, director (2019). Hellier. Planet Weird. Georgina Rose (2023). The Postmodern Iconoclast: Magical Lineages Explained, Featuring Alan Chapman, https://tinyurl.com/4svmvkhu (spotify.com). Accessed April 2023. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

007 Disreputable Faeries

Leaving the occult; the growing popularity of orthodox Christianity; what orthodoxy offers: not a lecture but participation in a ritual; symbolism and literalism; finding a spiritual orientation without institutional support; overcoming relativism as a first step; the dismissal of truth by postmodernism; a story about someone finding their direction in the Jehovah’s Witnesses; recklessness encouraged by our culture; the allure of occultism described by a convert to orthodox Christianity; strange parallels between occultism and Christianity; genuine initiation versus false initiation; the process of becoming a lost soul; occultists who do not actually believe in what they evoke; entities as existing beings versus entities as types of relationships; the shared nature of humans and discarnate beings; the nature of demons revealed through their manifestation; the machinations of the nameless god; spiritual LARPing; the absence of a guiding framework and the presence of a harmful framework; what the divine wants for us: sacrificing the self to the self; idolatry and deification; the lack of magick in Christianity; the drawbacks of magick versus its experiential value; the Abramelin ritual and the embedding of magick in a religious tradition; the pitfalls of superstition in Christianity; an instance of an exorcism gone wrong; the nature of superstition; saying yes or no to demons versus attempting to expel demons from others; possible future trends. Rod Dreher (2023). On Leaving the Occult, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/5n6j8tnn" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/5n6j8tnn</a> (theamericanconservative.com). Accessed January 2023. Conner Habib (2022). Against Everyone with Conner Habib Episode 202: The Problem with Magic (part one) with Phil Ford &amp; J.F. Martel, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/586n69vc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/586n69vc</a> (patreon.com). Accessed January 2023. Danya Issawi (2022). What to Know About the Balenciaga Ad Scandal, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/ym6fybhv" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/ym6fybhv</a> (thecut.com). Accessed January 2023. George Kapsanis (2005).&nbsp;Theosis: <a href="http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_contents.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Deification as the Purpose of Man's Life</a>, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2p94p55s" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2p94p55s</a> (greekorthodoxchurch.org). Accessed January 2023. Mitchell B. Liester (2000). Hesychasm: A Christian Path of Transcendence, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/24ktnd5a" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/24ktnd5a</a> (theosophical.org). Accessed January 2023. Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1976). The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. Wellingborough: Thorsons. Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1995). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Boston, MA: Red Wheel Weiser. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

006 Eating Cheese Sandwiches with Orthodox Demons

The presence of a stalker; previous experiences of stalkers from our Open Enlightenment project; well-intentioned stalkers and stalkers with a malevolent intention; confrontation with the current stalker; this person’s tactics: fake accounts, on-line harassment, smears, and misattribution; the assumption of good faith; the actual indifference of the stalker to the ideas they pretend to care about; the stalker’s participation in a magical working to contact the Third Order / Great White Brotherhood; our experience of these beings from the Tempe workings; the mistakes we made and the necessity of learning from mistakes in magick; the nature of these beings and of the prophecies they provide; the mistakes made in the working to contact the Third Order and its embarrassing results; the implications for the stalker of being told “f**k you!” by the Third Order; the ethical conduct of the stalker during this working and its effects; the prophecies made during the working; on the warpath against the Third Order and the Arcanum Arcanorum; criticisms of the lineage of the Arcanum Arcanorum; the current tendency to depose the prophets; the possible motivations of post-Crowleyism; the way back from mistakes in magick; how mastery in magick depends upon the recognition of delusion and the willingness to confront it; the warpath prophecy; binding practice and its difference from “binding” in the sense of enchantment; the working to contact the Third Order as an origin scene explaining the role of the stalker and the constant humiliation in which it results; how the stalker says no to the practice yet is continuously attracted to it; a personal example of attraction to something in order to try to negate it; the line between criticism and harassment; the process of initiation as turning the right way up what is fallen; the ill-will of the stalker; the analogy of the bees, butterflies, and spiders in Magia; the spider and the narcissist; the use of narcissism as an insult and its difference from true self-love; narcissism and control; the difference between narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder; the challenge of changing narcissistic behaviour; the inner void from which the narcissist is hiding; the fire of awakening as an illumination of the void; questioning the notion of narcissism as a block to awakening; the examples of Andrew Cohen and Jiddu Krishnamurti; the importance of personal responsibility in the face of cultural delusion; the contemporary discourse around the divine and magick, which both entail confrontation with the inner void; cultural narcissism; a personal example of the horror of the inner void; how our culture pretends it is the goal of history and that the prophets and the divine never existed. The livestream of the working to contact the Third Order mentioned in this episode has recently been withdrawn from public access. However, for anyone interested, a written transcript (with commentary) entitled "The Demonstration" is available at: https://tinyurl.com/2cym69eb. (Direct link to PDF file: https://tinyurl.com/5zwfhnt4.) BBC Select (2021). Was Andrew Cohen's EnlightenNext group a cult? https://tinyurl.com/2p9dfmhm (youtube.com). Accessed December 2022. Stephen LaBerge (2009). Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.The Open University (2022). Charles W. Leadbeater, https://tinyurl.com/2jtnj55e (open.ac.uk). Accessed December 2022. Richard Whittaker (2011). Interview with Peter Kingsley: Remembering what we have forgotten, https://tinyurl.com/mr2wmsc7 (conversations.org). Accessed December 2022. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

005 The Warpath Prophecy

Worrying trends in world affairs; how magick and spirituality offers no refuge; the Knights of Chaos versus Vladimir Putin; the likely fate of contemporary occultism in times of crisis; why magick inevitably deserts us; "nothing is asked of you"; the delusion of needing to do something; the nature and drama of sacrifice; fear and loneliness; self-sacrifice as an escape route; the sacrifice of the self to the self; self-sacrifice distinguished from self-sacrifice to the herd; the nature and dynamics of the herd; reaching the point where existing ideology fails; a preponderance of herds and doubling down; following the silent knowing; the function of the herd; the wild horse versus the herd; finding the others; faith as a form of listening; accelerationism as a phenomenon rather than an ideology; following the thread and avoiding speculation; Occulture Conference, Berlin 2022; a malign spirit; debasement and traumatisation in contemporary occultism; transgression as a parody of liberation and self-sacrifice; transgression versus the principle of balance; the image of the nameless god; similarities with and differences from Baphomet; the nameless god is unnatural, malevolent, and covert; how it demands self-destruction; recognising the nameless god as a descent into Hell; relying on the thread. Malcolm W. Browne (1990). Nuclear winter theorists pull back, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/urxn3w5t" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/urxn3w5t</a> (nytimes.com). Accessed November 2022. Peter J. Carroll (2022). Special release: announcement from Knights of Chaos, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2p9dc5rm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2p9dc5rm</a> (chaosmagick.com). Accessed November 2022. Sarah Knapton (2022). Crisis as excess deaths soar to levels higher than during Covid pandemic, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/ms54xhvw" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/ms54xhvw</a> (telegraph.co.uk). Accessed November 2022. Rajan Menon &amp; Daniel R. DePetris (2022). Those desiring regime change in Russia should be careful what they wish for, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/ykdr38n2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/ykdr38n2</a> (theguardian.com). Accessed November 2022. @officialitalycountryball (2022). Hexing Putin, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/46fyepcw" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/46fyepcw</a> (tiktok.com). Accessed November 2022. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

004 Trauma For Your Own Good

Magick as a spiritual tradition in its own right; all wisdom traditions as inseparable from magick; all that is needed to understand Aleister Crowley is The Book of the Law (TBOTL) and one’s own comprehension; Crowley in the role of a prophet and what this entails; the origin and form of TBOTL; the redundancy of commentaries on TBOTL; TBOTL without commentary or interpretation; the revelations of Nuit, Hadit, and Ra Hoor Khuit; divinity and the relationship of human beings to it; how the prophet reveals the nature of reality and gives a Law that can be followed, with a description of the consequences if it is not followed; Law and reality; the nature of Divine Law and morality; the meaning of “do what thou wilt”; True Will as the real meaning of “do what thou wilt”; if the Law is not taken as divinely revealed then it is merely a secular philosophy; the absurdity of this misapprehension of True Will; the obscuration by contemporary culture of the nature of True Will; the promises of Nuit and the requirement of devotion to her; how True Will is orientation towards the Divine; renunciation of the world and appearance versus union with the divine; being raised up versus being righteous; different expressions of True Will and how this is reflected in the work of union with the Holy Guardian Angel; the difference of True Will from roles and personality traits; realisation of something greater than oneself; magickal results beyond conception or expectations; recognising True Will as the free expression of one’s nature without conflict; “false will” as that informed by a false understanding of our nature; going beyond identity and becoming a person; True Will versus vocation; angels and the question of free will; why human beings are not free; the experience of union with the Divine and the falling back into the human; how all awakenings and spiritual experiences are appearances; the absolute freedom of the Divine; the contrast with exoteric ideas of the Divine; the sacrifice of the self as always necessarily ideal, whereas acting from the self leads to conflict; True Will as the former; not doing True Will as conflict with others; Ra Hoor Khuit as god of war and vengeance; the consequence of not doing True Will; the current times as manifesting the effects of extracting value from others and not accepting them for who they are; the significance of attraction to Crowley despite misgivings; cultivation of the truth without gatekeepers; repugnance towards the teachings; how the gates are always open; sin as the restriction of one’s divine nature; negative feelings that this can provoke in opposition to love, compassion, and mercy; online opposition to the Order; suspicion of Magia; insinuations of racism; paranoia, fear, shame, and scapegoating as characteristic of contemporary occult discourse; the dangers and potential harmfulness of this mindset; “objectionable views” and privilege; fear of unintentional sin; the allegory of drowning and how to avoid getting into the water with those who are drowning; seeking higher ground through exercising True Will; sinking into or rising from the deluge; the Order and the Magia teachings as means to avoid drowning; how True Will cannot mitigate challenges and outcomes but does provide a means to escape drowning; how True Will provides a positive feedback loop of virtue. Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.

003 Do What Thou Wilt

Observe our pitiful condition at the moment. We, you and I, know the truth but have no way to bring it to the world. With the station we will have a way... -- Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion.

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