Grimoire Magicians vs. The Tryhards

[Ohana]

Okay this makes a lot of sense! The only thing though is trusting the spirit your working with.

Since I kind of just grew up around graveyards I could maybe feel spirits. I never fully believed they were there though. Mainly due to maybe depression. I never got diagnosed but I was very sad a lot of the time.

Anyway try Harding too much I think will definitely lead to burnout but not doing it all I don't know.

Some spirits may not have the best intentions so if your willing to take that risk then yeah. But spirits kind of seem like people and they were people I think? People have emotions and long standing grudges.

So like you may be the great great grandson or granddaughter of someone the spirit or something knew that spilled mayo on their favorite dress one time and now they are plotting your downfall. I think it could potentially get petty.

I was in my imagination a lot since I grew up isolated but my imagination got a little. It wasn't the best expierence a lot of time. I saw some things. I just had to get used to it. But stories are really helpful since I think its hard to comprehend. Atleast thats what I think.

 

[MorganBlack]

Right right! I think it was Chaos Magician Gordon White who after studying with a Maya healing tradition said, "You can't self-initiate in a broken culture."

Many of us have bit and bobs of an older unbroken culture in family traditions, me in Mexican-American healing arts/ brujeria. Even while (capital 'M) Magic itself is a broken tradition, the grims are remnants of an unbroken culture (and for almost two thousand years are very consistent and preserved acoss time) - just as is Vodou, indigenous cultures, Thai spirit magic, and much of New World Catholicism. Modern pagan reconstruction is trying to reconnect here.

I think some personal structure is good. Why people refuse to see the grims as that structure they say you need, and prefer this other silly grindfest has more to their own religous trauma and need to crap on their parent's religion , than anything else.

The point being there are many ways, but none them had you doing all this grindy New Age fluff. It was stories, listening, paying attetnion to the ancestor, being sensitive to the land spirts, leaning how to pacify and maybe even form allies with hostile daimons. Then you're off to the races.

 

[Sedim Haba]

I'm not a grimoire guy (everyone knows this lol). But here's what I will say:

If you want Enochian results, you follow the Enochian system. If you want Solomonic results, you follow the Solomonic system. That pattern is consistent for a reason.

I do agree, magick isn’t in the grimoires any more than it is in the wand. It's not the book, it's the contact. Not aimed at you personally @MorganBlack, but the irony here is kinda hilarious: using books to argue that books aren’t necessary. Come on, that’s fucking funny!

Here's my take: the grimoires aren’t just recipes. If they were, every person with a book and a candle would have contact. They don’t. If the mechanical approach worked across the board, we’d see more posts about spirit relationships and less about altar cloth colors and book reports.

I think most people need a scaffolding that they can hold onto without fracturing, especially when they’re trying to do something as insane (and real) as reach through the veil and speak to a spirit. That scaffolding gives them something to believe in while they attempt to believe the impossible. Nothing wrong with that. It’s training wheels for the numinous. I personally think the grimoire should be outgrown at some point. To each their own.

I’ve only met one other practitioner who works like I do, direct contact, no grimoire scaffolding, just the spirit and me. But even then, I respect that others need the grims to access that current. They aren’t lesser for it. It's their door. Again, zero judgement.

So yeah, there’s a middle ground here. Not everything needs to be a hot take. (Stop being so divisive, Morgan sheesh lol )

Quoted for truth. And, because 'You took the words right out of my mouth!' as the saying goes.

Now, you know two practitioners; and honestly I would be absolutely nothing without my Familiar, She does all the heavy lifting.

The only thing I've done even close is Talismans and Amulets, and that back in the day, IDK where my grimoire even is anymore.

I have nothing but respect for people who do magic, with only books and their own mind. So, I salute you all. And, so does She.

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:25 AM

 

[MorganBlack]

The grims are there to open a Star Trek hailing frequency, and get the attention of a specific class of daimons.

I would also not assume just because your daimon has the same name as another they are literally the same person / daimon, or even that they are persons like us humans at all.

Anyway, after contact is made and you have an ally then the real work begins of maintaining the relationship. I was just telling my girlfriend the other day Vodou has it right, and make that job something for the whole community, and not just one very busy magician. Maybe one day.

 

[Van Horne]

That's an interesting topic for sure!

20th-century modern magic is very focused on a spiritual grind

Because modern magic is not the same as traditional sorcery of Antiquity or the Middle Ages.

I would like to quote the great late P.T. Mistlberger, from his awesome book "The Dancing Sorcerer": Throughout most of history mysticism and magic have been distinct domains of learning, dealing in distinctly different matters. Magic has, since ancient times, been predominantly concerned with the matter of manifestation - how to acquire things... Mysticism [and mystery-schools] have been concerned more with the matter of the unio mystica, the joining [...] with the transcendent or divine. Magic was practical, sometimes crude and hostile, other times relatively noble in intent, but rarely concerned with spiritual development. Mysticism was abstract, unconcerned with the practical in all [...] its focus placed entirely on spiritual development and illumination It was only in the late 19th century [...] that this distinctly separate status between magic and mysticism began to break down, and that was with the genesis of the Golden Dawn.

So, if we talk about magic and grimoires, we need to talk about purpose. Do we talk about achieving materialistic results the quick way - or "Faustian" magic as Mistlberger would call it - then the good ol' grimoires are of good use. Do we talk about enlightenment, the unification with the divine - "Solomonian" magic - then those books of result are of no use. Back to the yoga mattress it is!

Personally, the reason for me not to work with grimoires is plain simple: I don't believe in them! I don't believe in drawing complicated lines with chalk and chicken blood makes Lucifuge Rofocale appear, offering me a pot of gold for my soul. To me that's superstition of the worst kind, a chain that has bound humanity for all too long. I don't believe in simple answers and quick solutions with drawn-by-numbers manuals.

The worst thing for me are so-called modern "grimoires", or rather "gringeoires". Horrible written invocations, silly recipes and sigils drawn by school children. I hold it with Austin Osman Spare. Never work the sigils which you haven't developed yourself.

And I hold it with Ernst Schertel (Hitler's favorite author on magic, that's something!!!). Magic consists of three elements: ecstasy, imagination, and body-feeling. That brings us back to the dancing sorcerer - shamanism, the very root of magic, from a time before written words on idle paper, only blood and bones.

 

[MorganBlack]

P.T. Mistlberger, from his awesome book "The Dancing Sorcerer": Throughout most of history mysticism and magic have been distinct domains

Very much in agreement there, Van Horne.

But chicken blood, WTF? Nope, nope.

I did not believe in the grimoires either, and approached them originally in a Chaos Magic mindset early on. The Grimorium Verum is my main grimoire, and so I can't speak to the other grimoires or modern Daemonolatry simplified evocation techniques. I still consider myself intellectually a CM in many ways. Since then, I have come to grudgingly accept many (if not all) of the grim's protocols. Some I told to by the GV daimons. Again, this may not be true using other grims or methods.

I also tried to "Judaize" them early on, and get rid of all the "Christian God talk," which is the real unspoken reason that triggers people to enter these threads. Or make whole new "traditions" of modern magic, all in an effort to get rid of all the "old, stuffy, outdated piety crap" - without even wondering why those might be conserved and be part of an earlier shamanic context. And then they still try to crap on about a practice they never seriously attempted. It's a failure of imagination.

Anyway, I did without a circle for years, but added it later and found it helpful. Why? All I can say is that it creates a liminal space, adding to the effect by creating a local space that is the diplomatic agency in the bigger game of paranormal activity, as George P. Hansen points out in his excellent book The Trickster and the Paranormal. Another book I highly recommend for anyone going this weird, paranormal route of the grimoires. It may help to begin to understand why we have all this weird grimoire stuff, the black-handled knive, baths, ets, that I get makes no sense to anyone else who is working outside of an alive, paranormal ritual context.

Book – EPUB/MOBI - George P. Hansen -The Trickster and the Paranormal (2001)

I looked around this could not be found. About the Book Paranormal and supernatural events have been reported for millennia. They have fostered history’s most important cultural transformations (e.g., via the miracles of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed). Paranormal phenomena are frequently portrayed...

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[BBBB]

Right! Traditions and culture, which shape personal experience. Magical initiation through tradition. Going to the Church fits this perfectly.
You listen to the sermon, you become a part of the story - at the very least you become one of those who stood goggling, while Christ was led to the crucifiction. Everyone has a place in Catholic crowd somewhere. Even "reformed" magicians

This is egregorial technology. An artificial reality created in place of Reality, in which you live and die, fueling the egregore. And another little problem: it doesn't work on people who are not in egregore, it doesn't work outside egregore's coverage. Try practicing Catholic magic in an Islamic country, for example. I know, what will happen. Nothing. (Practice it on another Catholic, and something will happen, because you are a part of the egregore even in a different domain).

Since Catholic grimoires would contain spirits collected from previous "games" and much older "servers", they are not as limited as egregore itself would be, of course, but the limitations are in the magician's mind, as long as he's Catholic. Just like a village sorcerer in rural region would be a)magician b)limited by tropes and their worldview.

Catholicism is not a bigger narrative. All religious narratives are tiny. They only seem big when you look at them from the inside. But
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" and I think there's very little fun in going by trope. A great story contains tropes, can't be avoided. The greatest tropes put together don't make a great story. AI can mix you a story based on tropes and character types, but it always will be surrogate. Because it lacks something key.

Not all modern practitioners are New Age or Theosophy. And when an author presents magical system, they may have all sorts of garbage in there, the question is - does it work for them? (few will ask why?) Would it work for you? Grimoires were somebody's creation too. If somebody's magic gets better because they learn some breathing and visualization techniques, it's a win. And just like you said, maybe it's because those "tryhards" weren't initiated into a corresponding tradition with it's culture and spirits, that's why it's so hard. Maybe it will be as hard for someone from the East to use Catholic grimoirs when they weren't initiated, and Eastern magic would be easy. Something to consider.

And maybe most of the things they teach to "grind" are simply incorrect, weren't meant to be correct, and only mean to mislead people, because magic was, is and always will be guarded, because it provides an advantage.

And the last consideration:

Maybe grimoirs don't mention breathing, visualization, purification and other "grind" because the authors assumed you must know all that before you attempt an operation...

Hmm... Didn't think about it?

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:36 AM

Quoted for truth. And, because 'You took the words right out of my mouth!' as the saying goes.

Now, you know two practitioners; and honestly I would be absolutely nothing without my Familiar, She does all the heavy lifting.

The only thing I've done even close is Talismans and Amulets, and that back in the day, IDK where my grimoire even is anymore.

I have nothing but respect for people who do magic, with only books and their own mind. So, I salute you all. And, so does She.

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:25 AM

The funny thing here is that Wizards study magic that is already there, specifically if this goes from Dungeons&Dragons, magic was put there by one of the gods (Mystra)

 

[Ohana]

But who is magic guarded from? If someone has respect and wants to learn it why not let them.

I get it if they don't have respect for it but money also gives you an advantage. Money is exchanged for labor. Does the same hold true for magic?

Is it not given because something thats spiritual doesn't want to give it? Do they know they won't respect it? Is it due to personal preference?

Even though I didn't fully know what I was doing I kind of had to work for my awareness for any of this. It may not seem like it but I had to come to grips with my imagination. I had to see really terrible things and sit with it.

I was born in a really terrible situation and had to adapt fast to the emotional weight of it all. I would trade it for a normal life and not have as much awareness? I would prefer to have been able to see friends, to have a community and learn awareness of something a lot later in life.

The things I underwent. The conditions I had to bear and things my mind would create were terrifying. It was like looking at h3ll. I don't even want to say the name honestly. I would have preferred normality even if it meant I was less proficient or aware of magic right now.

It was labor. Very painful labor. Even in the imagination way. The passive way. It was still labor just a different type. It wasn't fun and I'm going to be honest its hard to live normally and make friends or work or do anything.

Its hard because I'm just in a different world. When you have to grow up faster become wiser it isolates you from your peers. I miss being more like them than not. And if anyone saw that post I made in the crossing the abyss section the soul ice bucket challenge that wasn't crossing the abyss but was just an ice bucket challenge for the soul.

I'm still shaken by it. My soul/ego/personality whatever you believe in. It feels different. Its shaken. I think its scarred a little I think. It hurts. I still haven't fully recovered. I don't know if there is a predisposition to magic some might just have to learn it to adapt to the world. Or maybe I'm wrong I don't know.

 

[Sedim Haba]

But who is magic guarded from? If someone has respect and wants to learn it why not let them.

I get it if they don't have respect for it but money also gives you an advantage. Money is exchanged for labor. Does the same hold true for magic?

Is it not given because something thats spiritual doesn't want to give it? Do they know they won't respect it? Is it due to personal preference?

Even though I didn't fully know what I was doing I kind of had to work for my awareness for any of this. It may not seem like it but I had to come to grips with my imagination. I had to see really terrible things and sit with it.

I was born in a really terrible situation and had to adapt fast to the emotional weight of it all. I would trade it for a normal life and not have as much awareness? I would prefer to have been able to see friends, to have a community and learn awareness of something a lot later in life.

The things I underwent. The conditions I had to bear and things my mind would create were terrifying. It was like looking at h3ll. I don't even want to say the name honestly. I would have preferred normality even if it meant I was less proficient or aware of magic right now.

It was labor. Very painful labor. Even in the imagination way. The passive way. It was still labor just a different type. It wasn't fun and I'm going to be honest its hard to live normally and make friends or work or do anything.

Its hard because I'm just in a different world. When you have to grow up faster become wiser it isolates you from your peers. I miss being more like them than not. And if anyone saw that post I made in the crossing the abyss section the soul ice bucket challenge that wasn't crossing the abyss but was just an ice bucket challenge for the soul.

I'm still shaken by it. My soul/ego/personality whatever you believe in. It feels different. Its shaken. I think its scarred a little I think. It hurts. I still haven't fully recovered. I don't know if there is a predisposition to magic some might just have to learn it to adapt to the world. Or maybe I'm wrong I don't know.

As an empath, I can't process this much pain fully. It breaks me. I said a prayer, for what that's worth. A blessing.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I'm with @FireBorn and @MorganBlack on this Magic is such that any system you use will work, if your imagination is sufficient to the task. If you think it's going to be hard, it will be. Magic is such a meta-thing that the things you think about it, and the way you think about them, affect it. You don't need to believe in the reality of your system, but you do need to believe that you are a magician. All the magic happens at a non-verbal level, which is one of the reasons that it's difficult to talk about. Luckily, if you are immersed in it, you won't need to talk about it

We need different things to activate that thing in our heads that makes this happen. Books, spirits, personal belief systems, whatever. As @FireBorn said, none of them are innately superior to any other. They are superior for you.

A trap that's easy to fall into, is that because you have experienced great success, the way you experienced that success must be objectively true; i.e. true for everyone. It is true - it happened to you! But other people can have just as much success with an utterly different system. This is why I always talk about magic as the elephant in the old Sufi story about the six blind men and the elephant.

As an example, my own approach asked "how could magic be compatible with the laws of physics?" and I derived a system (or rather an explanation) thereof. I like to horse around, but I'm certainly not going to poo-poo anyone else's system. Unless they start attributing Absolute Truth to it of course "I AM THE SUN GOD RA"

 

[MorganBlack]

they start attributing Absolute Truth to it of course "I AM THE SUN GOD RA"

Fuck, right on. Solar Demiurge time is the best time!

In the end, it all works, in my opinion, because we are all God, or "made in the image of God" (if one is more Christian, but same deal), by default. If you decide you need all that grind, as the resident Demiurge of your own quantum pocket universe, then you certainly do.

About the GV, my only formal "system" of protocols - I'm still about 50/50% Neoplatonist/Animist. I take some issue with hard-line theological interpretations, whether pagan or Christian, while letting people have their own framework interpretations. While the daimons certainly appear to me as totally independent beings - with their own volition, likes, and dislikes, which originally shocked the fuck out of me - I feel there is always an element of story to our interactions with them. Again, Patrick Harpur's writing helps to get a handle on that.

The traditional magical systems were all animistic, and one of the secrets of Chaos Magic is when working a system, you literally become that thing. So if calling Lakshmi, you are a Hindu. The Virgin, you're literally Catholic. Then afterwards, you can re-embrace your discursive intellect to talk about it. It's just that the online conversation has drifted so far into tryhardism, and gottados, that are there to get people "hooked on the process" and avoid doing any magic, I thought we should course correct a little.

Whatever is going on - and again, I don't take anything too literally when "back" in everyday life- the GV "alive" in ways that just saying the names in a phone book are not. At least, it appears to be. I think each system flavors the working, and the nature of your interactions, because it is a language, and has a story that has been externalized in some way into a UI/UX room for you to interact with the Infinite . Again, see the traditional meaning of the word "daimon" as an intermediary.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised how similar in experience and tenor John King's (Imperial Arts) writing of his experience riding along with a GV working aligns surprisingly well with my own.

My only motivation for joining WF is to nudge people a little to trying the GV out. That's it. It catching on again, so that act of magic is done.

I will add, there are magicians I respect who absolutely hate the GV, probably becasue - if they have the manifestations like mine - are particularly solid, dark, and weird. Frankly, making talismans, workign Conjure / witchcraft, and New Thought all work great and are far less of a bother and far less weird. It depends in what flavor of experience in life your interested in having, and who you wish to become.

 

[Ohana]

I'm with @FireBorn and @MorganBlack on this Magic is such that any system you use will work, if your imagination is sufficient to the task. If you think it's going to be hard, it will be. Magic is such a meta-thing that the things you think about it, and the way you think about them, affect it. You don't need to believe in the reality of your system, but you do need to believe that you are a magician. All the magic happens at a non-verbal level, which is one of the reasons that it's difficult to talk about. Luckily, if you are immersed in it, you won't need to talk about it

We need different things to activate that thing in our heads that makes this happen. Books, spirits, personal belief systems, whatever. As @FireBorn said, none of them are innately superior to any other. They are superior for you.

A trap that's easy to fall into, is that because you have experienced great success, the way you experienced that success must be objectively true; i.e. true for everyone. It is true - it happened to you! But other people can have just as much success with an utterly different system. This is why I always talk about magic as the elephant in the old Sufi story about the six blind men and the elephant.

As an example, my own approach asked "how could magic be compatible with the laws of physics?" and I derived a system (or rather an explanation) thereof. I like to horse around, but I'm certainly not going to poo-poo anyone else's system. Unless they start attributing Absolute Truth to it of course "I AM THE SUN GOD RA"

Yeah. I think the hard part is believing that you can do magic in the first place but once that ordeal is done. The rest is just up to you.

If you want to practice imagination or working on imagination. What I do is get a song I like then imagine dancing with it or moving with it. But thats just a recommendation. Thats just what I do though.

Playing an instrument, writing poetry, dancing, and maybe even painting could all help with imagination. Its not work work. Its more like dreaming or processing emotions. So if thats preferred then yeah.

I agree with the absolute Truth thing. What works for you is what works for you. Magic is kind of a personal expierence I think.

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:30 PM

As an empath, I can't process this much pain fully. It breaks me. I said a prayer, for what that's worth. A blessing.

Thank you for the blessing. I am glad that you cannot process that much pain if I am being honest. I can because I lived my life and I'm with me 24/7 but for someone who just stumbles across it.

It would be a lot I'm guessing to process in a minute. Thank you for the blessing though again.

 

[MorganBlack]

Ohana, I very much sympathize with what you're experiencing. But you've come to the right place. WF is a library of excellent learning material and a community of practitioners to learn from

I know it sucks right now , but please allow let me recommend Neville Goddard’s Law of Assumption as a good place to start. That is a system that is all about using your imagination well, and doing less, not layering on more crap. Rather like Zen, it's about getting out of your own way, then working with who you are.

Which I get can be a challenge when suffering, so be kind to yourself.

Find something that helps gives your suffering meaning. Catholicism works here to "parse" suffering, but if more secular, I recommend Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

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I am a big fan of Mitch Horowitz's 30-Day Mental Challenge and consider it core to this School of Doing Less. And I know it seem like more work when you're suffering but just try it for a month. You will be in a much better place, then you can start New Thought with Mitch's Miracle Club book.

Book – EPUB/MOBI - Mitch Horowitz - '30-Day Mental Challenge'

If I had an Esotericism and Occult Top Ten First Books reading list then Mitch Horowitz's '30-Day Mental Challenge' may very well be in the number one spot. https://www.amazon.com/30-Day-Mental-Challenge-ebook/dp/B09Q4GLPMV I do love the demons, but I am pretty much convinced Mitch's '30-Day...

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Author - Mitch Horowitz - 'The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality'

Just a quick shout out to HoldAll for posting this so everyone has an opportunity read it. I wanted to signal boost New Thought techniques as an addition to your usual magical routine. New Thought does wanting things the best...

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And just becasue this is a grimoire thread, later, you might try the GV using a witchcraft / conjure methodology. See the thread below for how that works. There are many entry points into the GV 'system.' And fear not, as we say in Vodou, "The spirits never punish innocence."

JSK Verum: Conjureman Ali - 'Verum Hoodoo Results' (2011)

I'm glad people are interested in the Grimorium Verum again. I was not aware it was on anyone's radar much. I hope this unedited Yahoo Groups post from Conjureman Ali (albertgreat27 ) from 2011 will be useful to those starting to explore the Verum “system” as JSK would sometimes phrase it...

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[Ohana]

Thank you. That is very helpful!