So. There are God-Forms, and there are Gods.
God-Forms bring the magician into sympathy with the current of the God, with it's nature. This is very useful in Ceremonial Magic.( See: the entire Golden Dawn system of Magic). It's a bit like clothing yourself in the God's nature, without fully invoking the God itself into your being. This can lead to an affinity with the God, and an understanding of how that God's virtue is manifest materially and immaterially...all to the good. Fantastic technique for magic, tremendously effective when one knows the deep nature of the Gods involved and has a genuine understanding of the goals of the ritual. You certainly don't want to go taking God-Forms on willy-nilly.Ha.
Now, actual worship and communion with Gods is an entirely different deal. It isn't a part-time thing; you cannot be involved just for magical result. The Gods don't exist for our use.
Let's say, for instance, that you regularly invoke the Planetary Gods. Not taking on their forms and coming into sympathy, but full on Invocation and prayer, and communion. Your practice involves regular invocation and worship of these Gods. Let's say, then, a particular God takes a shine to you. Err, a Titan, actually. And then let's say he ....suggests....you take up a certain role, a certain mode of practice. Then, let's say--because you are very, very stupid--you hesitate in taking up that role, and don't follow through with that gentle suggestion, excusing your hesitation by pretending the communication wasn't clear enough, or that you were being presumptuous and feeding your ego.
You will quickly discover that Titans don't generally go around making "suggestions". That you need to get on board the train, or he will Put you on the train, and not so gently. So, yeah.
Shit can go sideways. Quickly. Once you're on board, though....it's glorious. There is a Sea of understanding and power available to you, a veritable Mer de Noms.
Working with the Gods isn't something to be approached casually. They are bigger than us. Much bigger. And they aren't people. This is important to understand. They aren't just super-big People, they are complicated entities with their own Wills. A God isn't simply a personified Idea or a pack of correspondences; people who imply this have never entered into true communion with one of them. Their nature may align with a particular idea, but that doesn't mean the God didn't exist before the idea. That's a bit like saying I am fundamentally a pair of blue jeans, because the jeans I'm wearing fit me very well. A God is a being, not some Human construct.
Nor are they simply Microcosmic. People treat the Planetary Gods as if, because their virtue is reflected into the Microcosm, they are somehow in service to the Microcosm. This is foolishness. Like saying, because our bodies are made of the Solar energy we consume, the Sun serves us, and exists to do so. Madness.
That all being said, they do enjoy communion, and have specific things they wish to accomplish with people and in the world. They are accessible, and oftentimes willing. They aren't, however, necessarily friendly.They're like Angels, in that way. They're not emotional, but their virtue inspires waves of emotion that align with their nature when we interact with them. This is part of subtle communication.
Anyway, when you've told them what you want, be ready to receive it. Because they'll give it to you, and not always in the way you hope. You won't be disappointed in the end, though.
In LVX,
AIT
God-Forms bring the magician into sympathy with the current of the God, with it's nature. This is very useful in Ceremonial Magic.( See: the entire Golden Dawn system of Magic). It's a bit like clothing yourself in the God's nature, without fully invoking the God itself into your being. This can lead to an affinity with the God, and an understanding of how that God's virtue is manifest materially and immaterially...all to the good. Fantastic technique for magic, tremendously effective when one knows the deep nature of the Gods involved and has a genuine understanding of the goals of the ritual. You certainly don't want to go taking God-Forms on willy-nilly.Ha.
Now, actual worship and communion with Gods is an entirely different deal. It isn't a part-time thing; you cannot be involved just for magical result. The Gods don't exist for our use.
Let's say, for instance, that you regularly invoke the Planetary Gods. Not taking on their forms and coming into sympathy, but full on Invocation and prayer, and communion. Your practice involves regular invocation and worship of these Gods. Let's say, then, a particular God takes a shine to you. Err, a Titan, actually. And then let's say he ....suggests....you take up a certain role, a certain mode of practice. Then, let's say--because you are very, very stupid--you hesitate in taking up that role, and don't follow through with that gentle suggestion, excusing your hesitation by pretending the communication wasn't clear enough, or that you were being presumptuous and feeding your ego.
You will quickly discover that Titans don't generally go around making "suggestions". That you need to get on board the train, or he will Put you on the train, and not so gently. So, yeah.
Shit can go sideways. Quickly. Once you're on board, though....it's glorious. There is a Sea of understanding and power available to you, a veritable Mer de Noms.
Working with the Gods isn't something to be approached casually. They are bigger than us. Much bigger. And they aren't people. This is important to understand. They aren't just super-big People, they are complicated entities with their own Wills. A God isn't simply a personified Idea or a pack of correspondences; people who imply this have never entered into true communion with one of them. Their nature may align with a particular idea, but that doesn't mean the God didn't exist before the idea. That's a bit like saying I am fundamentally a pair of blue jeans, because the jeans I'm wearing fit me very well. A God is a being, not some Human construct.
Nor are they simply Microcosmic. People treat the Planetary Gods as if, because their virtue is reflected into the Microcosm, they are somehow in service to the Microcosm. This is foolishness. Like saying, because our bodies are made of the Solar energy we consume, the Sun serves us, and exists to do so. Madness.
That all being said, they do enjoy communion, and have specific things they wish to accomplish with people and in the world. They are accessible, and oftentimes willing. They aren't, however, necessarily friendly.They're like Angels, in that way. They're not emotional, but their virtue inspires waves of emotion that align with their nature when we interact with them. This is part of subtle communication.
Anyway, when you've told them what you want, be ready to receive it. Because they'll give it to you, and not always in the way you hope. You won't be disappointed in the end, though.
In LVX,
AIT
I loved this post. I especially love how you get down to the nitty gritty of magical workings and share your experiences. Thank you for your honest approach to your work and sharing....
ReplyDelete@Susanne,
ReplyDeleteThank you kindly!
Regarding avoiding doing what you've been told: sometimes you skirt by because there can be a sort've "virtual window" between contacts.
ReplyDeleteSometimes they just find you and punch you in the face. Cheaters try to skirt the damage by jumping into something else with hopes that it will protect them. This never works in the long run, as far as I've seen.
Anyhow: might we not say that the Godform is the symbolic mask or shape of the deity, used to create a pathway (or rather, stabilize a pathway in many cases), and that the God is the entity itself?
And the relationship is typically considered symbiotic on some level or another. Even if that freaks some folks out to think about.
I would like to note that there can be stable, single stretch "workings" in which the person deals with the outside structure (say, of the astral planetary bodies, rather than the deities whose name they reflect) in an attempt to harmonize better with it, and then leaves and perhaps never returns. But then, I've found that you always return when you least expect it, anyway.
God. So many different frameworks playing upon one another at once. No wonder half the folks I know are confused about terminology.
@Jack I've never seen anyone dodge that sort of thing either...it's tricky because sometimes you just don't know what you're going to get. It's the surprises that get you. Part of the deal we make to do what we do, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteWe could totally say that about the Godforms; problem is some folk can't help mistaking the symbol for the entity. The Godform is a container we conjure up in hopes the entity will fill it...pathway is a solid way to describe it, most def. It is never actually the God, even if we experience the God through that pathway. Folk overestimate the power of their perceptions sometimes, and mistake what they can perceive for the totality of something.
I used to think that there was a way to work with the Planetary gods in a one-off fashion, but have found it to be untrue in my own experience because of their reflecting into the microcosm. The contact is more mild working with the astral because of the very nature of reflection, and that very mildness makes it possible for us to ignore it. Our awareness may not always be tuned into the workings of an individual planet, but it is working constantly within us nevertheless.
Just my experience, though.
You're dead on about the frameworks...it gets very tricky. Many of us have un-integrated understanding of the structure of the Universe--plenty of folk haven't even bothered to internalize the model for existence of their own system (which I find amazing, honestly. What are you doing, people?!).
Unfortunately, many people's first brush with true reverence doesn't come until a god slaps them across the face. It's an unfortunate side effect of living in Western society that the idea that we're not completely in control of our own destinies is terrifying (as at the very least, we like to think that someday we'll be "evolved" enough to have that sort of control). Even a small brush with a god can shatter that illusion, and once shattered, people will go to extraordinary lengths to crawl back into the comfort of the illusion.
ReplyDeleteThankfully we usually keep getting our asses kicked in the right direction until we finally get it :-)