Journal Lifeforce

[Xenophon]

3 September---new moon. Time to start on the Thelema section.

 

[Xenophon]

Next month's book, Jan Fries' Kali Kaula, looks to be heady stuff. I'm just a few pages in and have perused the TOC to see what's the plan. Fittingly the syllabus pairs this with Crowley's Thelema. Perhaps in a spirit of what the Beast shoulda been?

Webb's Thelema chapter has the useful exercise of mentally evoking one's "better self" throughout the day. He suggests leaving aside notions like "Higher Self" etc. Personally, I emended "better self" into something plagiarized from ol' Goethe. Because rhetoric matter.

 

[Wintruz]

Webb's Thelema chapter has the useful exercise of mentally evoking one's "better self" throughout the day. He suggests leaving aside notions like "Higher Self" etc. Personally, I emended "better self" into something plagiarized from ol' Goethe. Because rhetoric matter.

I've found this to be one of the most powerful exercises in the book and I still use it frequently, especially when uncertain or in states of heightened emotion. Like you, I've adapted the language a little ("I call upon the guidance of the Secret/Hidden part of mySelf. Abrahadabra!"). This kind of personalisation is a good thing to do as the curriculum progresses. Yes, the training wheels of another's script is useful if one is absolutely new to the terrain but that move in favour of what's personally meaningful is a transition from Neophyte to Initiate.

 

[Xenophon]

Jan Fries' Kaula Kali has a number of interesting exercises interspersed throughout the text. One is visualizing a sacrifice from the point of view of the person sponsoring the sacrifice, the animal, and the god sacrificed to. (Though Fries seems a bit too unicorns and balloons smiley-faced when it comes to how humane sacrifices in India are. I mean, yes, one can cut a throat neatly and cleanly. But it's still getting one's throat cut from the goat's POV.) In any event, the exercise is worth going through in visualization.