Seeking Recommendation Essential Left Hand Path texts?

[William66]

Thomas Karlsson - Qabalah, Qlippoth and Goetic Magick.
Ford (?) - Beginning Luciferian Magic

Haha that Thomas Karlsson is so defensive.

Lets nobody in in his group, only his close friends. Where i live many wanted to join but Can't.
What is Karlsson up to?
We live in the same country and actually he is not so far away.
Would be nice to sit with him for a cup of coffee and talk .

 

[Pyrokar]

Wintruz, you are armed to the teeth mate. Your list looks definitive enough for me.

I didn't even have to read it. My approach to the thread was just to see what will people name drop because i caught on to how
strictly people take left/right paths as if they were not the same thing.
In his first line bro went "that depends how "Left Hand Path" is defined. Increasingly and especially on the internet-"
And i was like "oh yeah he gets it." knew a banger was coming
Notice the Nietzhe - Kreia similarity

 

[Vandheer]

I didn't even have to read it. My approach to the thread was just to see what will people name drop because i caught on to how
strictly people take left/right paths as if they were not the same thing.
In his first line bro went "that depends how "Left Hand Path" is defined. Increasingly and especially on the internet-"
And i was like "oh yeah he gets it." knew a banger was coming
Notice the Nietzhe - Kreia similarity

LOL I agree. Also Ride the Tiger was recommended me from someone I respect a long, long time ago.

Kreia? She wants force gone right? Imma be honest I don't know much about him. I am more of a Darth Sidious fan especially in Dark Empire.

 

[Pyrokar]

That someone certainly respected you as well to recommend it specifically.

Yes sir, it doesn't matter above the fact that she is inspired by Nietzche, left hand af
"It is such a quiet thing... to fall. Yet it is much more terrible to admit it"
"To believe in an ideal is to be willing to betray it"

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

I greatly appreciate what information and assertions you provided @Wintruz ...

That depends how "Left Hand Path" is defined. Increasingly and especially on the internet, practices which really have no substance behind them are called "Left Hand Path" because the practitioners just like the sound of those words and the history behind them. When the symbols are stripped away, what is usually going on is something that is closer to the RHP or else a kind of fantasy game without a clear objective driving it (usually a lot of immature drama and "rivalries" though).

Exactly my point ... Many new people on LHP forums were not necessarily demonolaters, but wanted to appear strong and scary. Even myself, I can admit when I went with a good intent but bad decision regarding another party, I was (and still am) powerless and weak. Weak in general, uneducated, and not terribly good with maintaining a decent conversation exchange; powerless over life circumstances, which is why I briefly turned to the dark side. Yet still despite my LHP strivings am and was RHP.

This has happened because, in the last twenty years, the term "Left Hand Path" has become unmoored from the Eastern tantrism and Western Satanism with which it was once associated. In those contexts, it had internally coherent definitions; the Left Hand Path was about reversing the flow of universal energy in the Eastern approach and it was about individuation to the point of self-sovereignty in the Western approach. There is some crossover between these approaches.

Which is why we seek power, to become an individual, particularly with aspects of a certain amount of unusual power. To be a king/queen in our life and world.

Nothing replaces experience and a living encounter with someone further down the road so that certain qualities can be apprehended in a way which empowers those same qualities within the initiate. With that caveat, these are the books which I would say give the best overview of what's really going on in the Western Left Hand Path:

Which qualities to be apprehended? Curious and inquiring minds want to know...

• Lords of the Left-Hand Path: A History of Spiritual Dissent by Stephen E. Flowers
• The Basic Writings of Nietzsche and The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. by Walter Kauffmann) and Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity by Karl Jaspers
• The Gurdjieff Work by Kathleen Riordan Speeth
• The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution by Peter D. Ouspensky
• Living Thelema by David Shoemaker
• Energy Magick of the Vampyre by Don Webb
• Aletheia (3 vols.) by Tapio Kotkavuori

Nietzsche is the key to everything. The distinction between the unblinking cosmos and the Master's psyche, and What the Master's psyche can transform into through self-overcoming, is the philosophical basis of the entire Western Left Hand Path. Crowley translated the "Prophet" Nietzsche ("Prophet" wasn't a title Crowley threw around lightly) through the lens of Victorian magic and orientalism. The best introduction to Thelema is Shoemaker's book. Gurdjieff recognised that "day-to-day" consciousness is the product of external environment and that war had to be declared on this robotic thinking if the Master were to surface. Ouspensky's short book is the best introduction to Gurdjieff and Speeth's book directly applies the Work. Flowers is good for an overview of the Left Hand Path by looking at the way it's surfaced in history. Vampyre is Webb's best book and shows how the Words of the Temple of Set are keys to power in one's own life. It could be substituted with the ONA's NAOS (original only, not one of the bastardised versions) if preferred. Aletheia is a memoir of a life spent inside one Left Hand Path school. It shows the relationship between theory and reality.

I'd also suggest two novels and one film. One is Oscar Wilde's aesthete novel The Picture of Dorian Gray which communicates everything noble in LaVey's movement but with far greater beauty (read Wilde's De Profundis if you want to see where it can all lead without something greater than chasing highs). The second novel is Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End which depicts the racial memory of a being that empowers magic in some and madness in others. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the loose film adaptation of this same idea and considers the weirdness of human intelligence and why it should have arisen at all.

After all of that, if you want further reading, these are cultural specific lenses and other areas of investigation:

• Northern Magic by Edred Thorsson
• Aghora: At the Left Hand of God by Robert E. Svoboda
• The Yoga of Power by Julius Evola
• Metapolitics by Peter Viereck
• The Magick of Aleister Crowley by Lon Milo Duquette
• Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom by Erynn Rowan Laurie
• On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun
• A Secret History of Consciousness by Gary Lachman

Much reading to seek out and digest, thank you for the list Wintruz and all.

 

[Vandheer]

Honestly I am not even sure how Demonolatry folk can call themselves LHP since most of them just rejected JCI but now they worhship demons. Thats basically chaging one master to another, and seems like missing the point (of what I think would be LHP, at least).

Wintruz' first paragraph hits home close, I have been in those situations and even one of those, admittedly.

 

[HoldAll]

If you want to educate yourself about those people:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DemonolatryPractices/comments/13d463l

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

In keeping with the general trend of the LHP, demonolatry seems like taking the 'bad guys' of a given mythology and worshipping them as the 'actual good ones' because you just have to worship someone as a good religious person - and such submissive behaviour doesn't jibe with the whole LHP self-deification thing, IMHO.

In a way, the LHP has won because we now (arguably) live in an age of extreme individualism. Nobody wants to meld with the godhead anymore, which is allegedly the main defining feature of the RHP according to the LHP guys. Almost every RHP practioner wants their own personal self-customized Path (although there still seems to be a market for cults and magical orders), I know that I do - which supposedly is another LHP thing. As for the antinomian thing... short of violating the law, there is not much left which you can perpetrate to shock the burgeois.

Demonolatry feels like an ersatz religion, you're right - there seems to be nothing liberating about it, only more close-mindedness.

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

Not to be close minded, but if and only if an individuals religion of choice is true, everyone else loses. Yes or no? Could reality be binary after all?
I would say go with the recommendations listed in the replies, more than enough reading for any individual.

 

[Wintruz]

Which qualities to be apprehended? Curious and inquiring minds want to know...

This is the part that I generally avoid writing about; not for some mysterious game-playing but because it is genuinely difficult to communicate it in words, especially written words, which don't just make the obfuscation worse. It really does have to be experienced to be understood.

Those who have truly gone some way down the Path are marked by a certain Presence. In my case, my first encounter was with someone exceptionally advanced (a Master in fact) and that Presence was so powerful that simply being exposed to it was life-changing.

This change happened in two-ways. In the first, after meeting endless self-proclaimed adepts, "shamans", Rosicrucians, et al. and finding people often a good deal less divine than their hard-working, muggle neighbours, I came to a point of either writing magic off or else, on some level, deluding myself and "joining in" as a means of escapism. Then, with the student ready, I was confronted with a person who was a living embodiment of self-divinisation. Play time was over, divinity was real, intense and whatever it took, I needed it too. And that was the second "key"; encountering that Living Presence in another activates it within ourSelves and this can only happen in person to person transmission. Once it has been activated, we can choose to let it die out as a curiosity or we can choose to fan those embers. This last option is the Left Hand Path.

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

I get it. When the student is ready, the Master (Magus?) appears.

Post automatically merged: Nov 20, 2023

Honestly I am not even sure how Demonolatry folk can call themselves LHP since most of them just rejected JCI but now they worhship demons. Thats basically chaging one master to another, and seems like missing the point (of what I think would be LHP, at least).

Wintruz' first paragraph hits home close, I have been in those situations and even one of those, admittedly.

I never understood how choosing a patron demon on the LHP wasn't trading one owner for another, 8n a way as you put it.
That's why Wintruz has such a fair list of must reads, particularly the Will to Power per Nietsche (sp?). That and Lords of the Left Hand Path, as opposed to Lords of Light by Butler on the RHP. Many Lords of the LHP would seem to become an individual vs one of the masses.

 

[Xenophon]

Honestly I am not even sure how Demonolatry folk can call themselves LHP since most of them just rejected JCI but now they worhship demons. Thats basically chaging one master to another, and seems like missing the point (of what I think would be LHP, at least).

Wintruz' first paragraph hits home close, I have been in those situations and even one of those, admittedly.

Good point, though some of the more astute insist that evoking demons must, in time, give way to exercising newly found and developed personal magickal power. That, indeed, such is the whole point of the LHP.

Post automatically merged: Nov 20, 2023

This is the part that I generally avoid writing about; not for some mysterious game-playing but because it is genuinely difficult to communicate it in words, especially written words, which don't just make the obfuscation worse. It really does have to be experienced to be understood.

Those who have truly gone some way down the Path are marked by a certain Presence. In my case, my first encounter was with someone exceptionally advanced (a Master in fact) and that Presence was so powerful that simply being exposed to it was life-changing.

This change happened in two-ways. In the first, after meeting endless self-proclaimed adepts, "shamans", Rosicrucians, et al. and finding people often a good deal less divine than their hard-working, muggle neighbours, I came to a point of either writing magic off or else, on some level, deluding myself and "joining in" as a means of escapism. Then, with the student ready, I was confronted with a person who was a living embodiment of self-divinisation. Play time was over, divinity was real, intense and whatever it took, I needed it too. And that was the second "key"; encountering that Living Presence in another activates it within ourSelves and this can only happen in person to person transmission. Once it has been activated, we can choose to let it die out as a curiosity or we can choose to fan those embers. This last option is the Left Hand Path.

You are fortunate that way. As best I can figure out, I "let down the side" badly in a previous incarnation. So this go, I have to do things on my own dime, at least so far as actual physically present teachers are concerned (as opposed to books.) I've long preached Hammurabi's Law. So I'll not cavil at taking my own comeuppance.

 

[stratamaster78]

Man you guys are awesome.

I was just about to create a similar thread but found this one first.

I'm interested in adding some LHP works to my studies and really do not know where to start.

I by coincidence found that same Reddit thread linked earlier in my search before checking here.

I'm more interested in studying the true LHP ideology than anything else but I am also interested in practical applications.

These are the books that I tentatively have in my Amazon wishlist at the moment from my preliminary searches:

Don Webb:

Uncle Setnakt's Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path
The Seven Faces of Darkness
Overthrowing the Old Gods: Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law
Mysteries of the Temple of Set (Inner Teachings of the Left Hand Path)
Uncle Setnakt's Night Book
Energy Magick of the Vampyre: Secret Techniques for Personal Power and Manifestation
How to Become a Modern Magus: A Manual for Magicians of all Schools

Dr. Stephen E Flowers:

Lords of the Left Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies
The Fraternitas Saturni: History, Doctrine, and Rituals of the Magical Order of the Brotherhood of Saturn

Toby Chappell:

Infernal Geometry and the Left-Hand Path: The Magical System of the Nine Angles



To this I am adding suggestions from the thread that I didn't have my eyes on yet.

Julius Evola:

Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul - Per @Pyrokar
The Path of A Cinnabar - Per @Xenophon

Nimrod de Rosario:

Gnostic Fragments - Per @Xenophon


Per @Wintruz:

The Basic Writings of Nietzsche and The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. by Walter Kauffmann)
Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity by Karl Jaspers
The Gurdjieff Work by Kathleen Riordan Speeth
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution by Peter D. Ouspensky
Living Thelema by David Shoemaker
Aletheia (3 vols.) by Tapio Kotkavuori

ONA's NAOS (Original Version)

Northern Magic by Edred Thorsson
Aghora: At the Left Hand of God by Robert E. Svoboda
The Yoga of Power by Julius Evola
Metapolitics by Peter Viereck
The Magick of Aleister Crowley by Lon Milo Duquette
Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom by Erynn Rowan Laurie
On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun
A Secret History of Consciousness by Gary Lachman


A question for anyone - Do you see anything that I should remove or do you have any further suggestions that I should add since the time this thread was originally created?

Thoughts and Questions for @Wintruz specifically but anyone else feel free to give thoughts on as well - I admit a bit of surprise to see recommendations for Thelema and Crowley via DuQuette and Shoemaker. I've read both of those books and am a pretty big fan of Both Authors and of their books and Podcasts but I never read or saw their works through a LHP lens so to speak.

Would you say that Crowley and his religion of Thelema and systems of the AA/OTO are LHP? I've always seen the OTO, AA, Crowley and Thelema as RHP wrapped in LHP aesthetics. I guess I've always viewed them as maybe a bit Ambidextrous to a point but that once one is at The Abyss, a final decision of a Path must be made and that Crowley himself viewed choosing the LHP and becoming a 'Black Brother' to be considered a failure of sorts.

 

[Xenophon]

Man you guys are awesome.

I was just about to create a similar thread but found this one first.

I'm interested in adding some LHP works to my studies and really do not know where to start.

I by coincidence found that same Reddit thread linked earlier in my search before checking here.

I'm more interested in studying the true LHP ideology than anything else but I am also interested in practical applications.

These are the books that I tentatively have in my Amazon wishlist at the moment from my preliminary searches:

Don Webb:

Uncle Setnakt's Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path
The Seven Faces of Darkness
Overthrowing the Old Gods: Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law
Mysteries of the Temple of Set (Inner Teachings of the Left Hand Path)
Uncle Setnakt's Night Book
Energy Magick of the Vampyre: Secret Techniques for Personal Power and Manifestation
How to Become a Modern Magus: A Manual for Magicians of all Schools

Dr. Stephen E Flowers:

Lords of the Left Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies
The Fraternitas Saturni: History, Doctrine, and Rituals of the Magical Order of the Brotherhood of Saturn

Toby Chappell:

Infernal Geometry and the Left-Hand Path: The Magical System of the Nine Angles



To this I am adding suggestions from the thread that I didn't have my eyes on yet.

Julius Evola:

Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul - Per @Pyrokar
The Path of A Cinnabar - Per @Xenophon

Nimrod de Rosario:

Gnostic Fragments - Per @Xenophon


Per @Wintruz:

The Basic Writings of Nietzsche and The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. by Walter Kauffmann)
Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity by Karl Jaspers
The Gurdjieff Work by Kathleen Riordan Speeth
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution by Peter D. Ouspensky
Living Thelema by David Shoemaker
Aletheia (3 vols.) by Tapio Kotkavuori

ONA's NAOS (Original Version)

Northern Magic by Edred Thorsson
Aghora: At the Left Hand of God by Robert E. Svoboda
The Yoga of Power by Julius Evola
Metapolitics by Peter Viereck
The Magick of Aleister Crowley by Lon Milo Duquette
Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom by Erynn Rowan Laurie
On Becoming an Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun
A Secret History of Consciousness by Gary Lachman


A question for anyone - Do you see anything that I should remove or do you have any further suggestions that I should add since the time this thread was originally created?

Thoughts and Questions for @Wintruz specifically but anyone else feel free to give thoughts on as well - I admit a bit of surprise to see recommendations for Thelema and Crowley via DuQuette and Shoemaker. I've read both of those books and am a pretty big fan of Both Authors and of their books and Podcasts but I never read or saw their works through a LHP lens so to speak.

Would you say that Crowley and his religion of Thelema and systems of the AA/OTO are LHP? I've always seen the OTO, AA, Crowley and Thelema as RHP wrapped in LHP aesthetics. I guess I've always viewed them as maybe a bit Ambidextrous to a point but that once one is at The Abyss, a final decision of a Path must be made and that Crowley himself viewed choosing the LHP and becoming a 'Black Brother' to be considered a failure of sorts.

The Mystery of Belicena Villca by Nimrod de Rosario, a novel setting out his sometimes obtruse ideas. Elements of Hyperborean Wisdom by the same author (his lengthy and sometimes obtruse cosmology.)

 

[Wintruz]

Thoughts and Questions for @Wintruz specifically but anyone else feel free to give thoughts on as well - I admit a bit of surprise to see recommendations for Thelema and Crowley via DuQuette and Shoemaker. I've read both of those books and am a pretty big fan of Both Authors and of their books and Podcasts but I never read or saw their works through a LHP lens so to speak.

Would you say that Crowley and his religion of Thelema and systems of the AA/OTO are LHP? I've always seen the OTO, AA, Crowley and Thelema as RHP wrapped in LHP aesthetics. I guess I've always viewed them as maybe a bit Ambidextrous to a point but that once one is at The Abyss, a final decision of a Path must be made and that Crowley himself viewed choosing the LHP and becoming a 'Black Brother' to be considered a failure of sorts.

Thelema inherited two major concepts which are integral to the Left Hand Path.

The first was from Rabelais via Baudelaire, Wilde and the aesthetes of 666's Victorian youth. This, I think, is best summarised in "The word of Sin is Restriction" (Liber AL I:41). This means a kind of boundlessness in the development of one's soul and, as part of that, the revolutionary re-evaluation of matter and pleasure in the spiritual life. In a certain sense, it could be argued that this is what distinguishes the Left Hand Path from the Right Hand Path. One has traditionally sought to limit the influence of matter on the senses and the illusory, deceptive pleasure that comes from consummation between the soul and matter. The other, instead, suggests that immersion in the material world and the body, with its evolutionary drives, is a Good, though this too must be tempered (even LaVey extolled "Indulgence, not compulsion"). In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde beautifully captures a sophisticated understanding of Left Hand Path spirituality when he writes:

that is one of the great secrets of life... to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.

This valuation of matter and action in this world also accounts for LHPers' preoccupation with life-immersive systems, such as Germanic paganisms and sex magic.

The second pertinent concept which 666 inherited and refined was from a wide variety of mystical sources but particularly Eastern tantra and Western chivalry. This was the idea of the soul/Hadit (cast as male) as lover of the universe/Nuit (cast as female). Although Nuit takes pleasure in our pleasure, this love affair involves the soul working on itself, making itself worthy of the universe. In other words, initiation. The soul which maximises its capacity for wisdom, virtue, power and spiritual elevation, maximises the universe's pleasure in those capacities. The Left Hand Path has no issue with this; we are all subject to the scientific laws of nature. The point of departure comes when the soul is dissolved in the universe. While most Right Hand Path systems recommend starting this dissolution early ("I am one with the All" or "I am submissive to the will of Allah"), 666 actually postpones it until the end of one's work. There's an argument that Crossing the Abyss is in fact physical death, where the remnants of being are recycled into the universe and thereby oneness with Nuit is achieved. The idea of not wanting this, of straining to maintain individuality, belongs to the "Black Brothers" (it's worth noting that 666 attributed this title to Christians - many of which believe in retaining personal identity in the afterlife). Taken as a psychological experience, this dissolution is the antithesis of the Left Hand Path.

However, because dissolution comes at the end of Thelema's map, it becomes a point of departure at a very, very late stage. So late in fact that, not only is Thelema identical to the Left Hand Path up until that point of departure, but that even talking about that point of departure itself is abstract until we're faced with it. Gurdjieff is a counterpoint to 666 in this respect. Gurdjieff's Fourth Way explicitly attempts to create an essence which can survive the "shock of death". There are many parallels with Vampyrism there.

 

[stratamaster78]

Thelema inherited two major concepts which are integral to the Left Hand Path.

The first was from Rabelais via Baudelaire, Wilde and the aesthetes of 666's Victorian youth. This, I think, is best summarised in "The word of Sin is Restriction" (Liber AL I:41). This means a kind of boundlessness in the development of one's soul and, as part of that, the revolutionary re-evaluation of matter and pleasure in the spiritual life. In a certain sense, it could be argued that this is what distinguishes the Left Hand Path from the Right Hand Path. One has traditionally sought to limit the influence of matter on the senses and the illusory, deceptive pleasure that comes from consummation between the soul and matter. The other, instead, suggests that immersion in the material world and the body, with its evolutionary drives, is a Good, though this too must be tempered (even LaVey extolled "Indulgence, not compulsion"). In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde beautifully captures a sophisticated understanding of Left Hand Path spirituality when he writes:

This valuation of matter and action in this world also accounts for LHPers' preoccupation with life-immersive systems, such as Germanic paganisms and sex magic.

The second pertinent concept which 666 inherited and refined was from a wide variety of mystical sources but particularly Eastern tantra and Western chivalry. This was the idea of the soul/Hadit (cast as male) as lover of the universe/Nuit (cast as female). Although Nuit takes pleasure in our pleasure, this love affair involves the soul working on itself, making itself worthy of the universe. In other words, initiation. The soul which maximises its capacity for wisdom, virtue, power and spiritual elevation, maximises the universe's pleasure in those capacities. The Left Hand Path has no issue with this; we are all subject to the scientific laws of nature. The point of departure comes when the soul is dissolved in the universe. While most Right Hand Path systems recommend starting this dissolution early ("I am one with the All" or "I am submissive to the will of Allah"), 666 actually postpones it until the end of one's work. There's an argument that Crossing the Abyss is in fact physical death, where the remnants of being are recycled into the universe and thereby oneness with Nuit is achieved. The idea of not wanting this, of straining to maintain individuality, belongs to the "Black Brothers" (it's worth noting that 666 attributed this title to Christians - many of which believe in retaining personal identity in the afterlife). Taken as a psychological experience, this dissolution is the antithesis of the Left Hand Path.

However, because dissolution comes at the end of Thelema's map, it becomes a point of departure at a very, very late stage. So late in fact that, not only is Thelema identical to the Left Hand Path up until that point of departure, but that even talking about that point of departure itself is abstract until we're faced with it. Gurdjieff is a counterpoint to 666 in this respect. Gurdjieff's Fourth Way explicitly attempts to create an essence which can survive the "shock of death". There are many parallels with Vampyrism there.

Fascinating and I have to admit this kind of sets my views of Thelema and Crowley on it's ear. I believe I have been a bit guilty of bending (in places) both in such a way that they fit what I wanted them to be instead of perhaps what they have been from a non-biased view. I have particularly glossed over and/or hand waved away the Tantric/Sex Magick practices and Energy Work elements.

I believe I need to re-visit both 'Living Thelema' and 'The Magick of Aleister Crowley' again with a fresh set of eyes and approach them as LHP works for LHP practitioners and see what bubbles to the surface that I've missed before in past readings.

I'm in a process of change right now as it is and for the time being self-demoting myself to the Student/Probationer level. It feels like my studies and practices to this point have been incomplete and that I have left a lot of gaps in my foundational studies of various ideologies and systems.

However, revisiting Shoemaker and DuQuette's writings in particular are no form of punishment because I enjoy both authors greatly.

I appreciate you taking time to respond as well as the LHP recommendations earlier in this thread. I've spent a good part of my free time in the last couple days tracking down scans of everyone's suggestions and adding them to my Reading Tablet. Studies will begin in earnest tonight.

 

[Wintruz]

I believe I need to re-visit both 'Living Thelema' and 'The Magick of Aleister Crowley' again with a fresh set of eyes and approach them as LHP works for LHP practitioners and see what bubbles to the surface that I've missed before in past readings.

If you're interested in reassessing Thelema, I would say yes to Living Thelema. I would follow that up with Don Webb's Overthrowing the Old Gods and then a slow, meticulous study of 666's commentaries on Liber AL.

I'm in a process of change right now as it is and for the time being self-demoting myself to the Student/Probationer level. It feels like my studies and practices to this point have been incomplete and that I have left a lot of gaps in my foundational studies of various ideologies and systems.

Every truly wise magician I have ever met has, more than once, undergone a process of eschewing all that they've learnt and started again from the beginning. In fact I would say that that process is the spiritual life; an ever upward spiral where we commence working on ourselves, maintain that work and then surrender it all to the fire, knowing that we'll reassemble ourselves from the ashes and will start again. Each time we go through this process we're refining ourselves.

 

[stratamaster78]

If you're interested in reassessing Thelema, I would say yes to Living Thelema. I would follow that up with Don Webb's Overthrowing the Old Gods and then a slow, meticulous study of 666's commentaries on Liber AL.

Every truly wise magician I have ever met has, more than once, undergone a process of eschewing all that they've learnt and started again from the beginning. In fact I would say that that process is the spiritual life; an ever upward spiral where we commence working on ourselves, maintain that work and then surrender it all to the fire, knowing that we'll reassemble ourselves from the ashes and will start again. Each time we go through this process we're refining ourselves.

I've felt a gnawing from a thought in the back of my mind for weeks and months that I just haven't been able to shake. I can't remember where I first heard it but it basically amounts to 'Those best suited for the LHP are often pursuing the RHP as a form of rebellion against their darker natures and desires'.

It has created an unshakable doubt. A 'What if I'm denying myself something I could have an affinity for.... a disposition...a Talent.'

It has finally halted me dead in my tracks.

I just have a feeling that I'm going to have to step into the unknown (to me) of the LHP to begin moving forward again towards further growth and knowledge and yes...refinement.

 

[Sabbatius]

I've felt a gnawing from a thought in the back of my mind for weeks and months that I just haven't been able to shake. I can't remember where I first heard it but it basically amounts to 'Those best suited for the LHP are often pursuing the RHP as a form of rebellion against their darker natures and desires'.

It has created an unshakable doubt. A 'What if I'm denying myself something I could have an affinity for.... a disposition...a Talent.'

It has finally halted me dead in my tracks.

...is this sensation similar to the Dance of Shiva?

 

[stratamaster78]

...is this sensation similar to the Dance of Shiva?

Possibly because it feels a bit like a call to emancipation and evolution away from the RHP.

But maybe it’s even more in tone like Parvati’s Lasya because of it’s graceful and seductive maybe even erotic nature.

 

[Xenophon]

I've felt a gnawing from a thought in the back of my mind for weeks and months that I just haven't been able to shake. I can't remember where I first heard it but it basically amounts to 'Those best suited for the LHP are often pursuing the RHP as a form of rebellion against their darker natures and desires'.

It has created an unshakable doubt. A 'What if I'm denying myself something I could have an affinity for.... a disposition...a Talent.'

It has finally halted me dead in my tracks.

I just have a feeling that I'm going to have to step into the unknown (to me) of the LHP to begin moving forward again towards further growth and knowledge and yes...refinement.

It might be worth a look. The LHP, I mean. For a good number of folks, "I am a compassioning bodhisattva en embryo" is just the screen's default setting; the operative algorithms often dictate otherwise.