[Opinion] The broom

[Romolo]

A while ago, the lady who works at the nursery next doors suddenly started talking to me. We were both swiping in front of our doors. The conversation was about nothing in particular, but I do feel that the broom opened up that conversation, it pushed me behind a curtain, to another side, which in turn led to the following text. Feel free to elaborate, criticize or refine my intuition... I am here to learn and expand my knowledge.

"Swiping the floorboards is something that happens in the background with regards to survival. The swiping is always something that "has been done" (it literally leaves no traces in documented History, the one with capital H). It is the opposite of the sceptre/wand. It puts the witch against the emperor/druid. The broom cleans what the wand creates. The broom fights entropy. It reminds us that entropy exists, and tells us that we can oppose it, always, if we have the will, and that it must be opposed. The healing effects on the mind, on thoughts are obvious to the user. It is a perfect moment to "surrender" your body and its movements to the flow of the cleaning itself. The key scene of Fantasia is the one where Mickey “cleans” the house. In a gentle stroke of irony, the true meaning and power of the broomstick remain hidden to the unitiated, even after the process of symbolization."

 

[Pyrokar]

Nice post.

it was the Yazman who reminded me that everything has it's own occult meaning/purpose
in my case it was mirrors, and in your case you figured it out by yourself
the trick is to apply this "vision" to everything

what's a door?
what's a key?
(rhetorical ofc)

the more of an inventory one has of this sort of mentality, the better.
some are easy, fog equals confusion big deal right?
but others not so much, and again, the ultimate trick is to remember
to even apply the thought process at all.

but to come back to the Broom,
Crowley rightly pointed out a successful ritual feels like a room recently cleaned.
and we also have that old "messy bed, messy brain" type of this

 

[Aeternus]

I love to associate the meanings of the broom as cleaning residues and trash.

When I always do the cleaning, I visualize all that filth both physically and spiritually going away from me, my room, aura and surroundings.

As for other things, they have their occult meaning as well:

Mirrors - ability to view a hidden / intriguing version of yourself, magical aspects included as well

Chairs - depending on what is the form of the chair, both leadership, knowledge acquisition (being the student on a scholarly chair), or Zen relaxation (some chairs like those who allow you to swing a little, while listening to the sounds of crackling wood in the fireplace)

And last but not least,
The bathtub - it allows you to relax, and besides the fact that you wash away spiritual trash residues, you can also fuel yourself with positive energy, meditate on water and, if time and energy allows you, to practice hydrokinesis (water control using chi / mind power)

 

[pixel_fortune]

"Occult Exercises and Practices" by Gareth Knight rehashed a lot of old exercises, but I copied out this one exercise, which was fresh to me. A daily practice of taking an everyday object and analysing it from the "four worlds" (kabbalah) perspective. Cutting out the kabbala part, just going up layers of abstraction

I'm reminded because he used a broom as an example:

• This specific broom
• Brooms in general
• The idea of sweeping and cleansing
• Seed principle: purity
  
  (Knight's analysis, not mine).

You could then try it in reverse: beginning with the seed principle of (say) purity, how many objects spring from that? And then analyse your magical tools in the same way, what is the seed principle of a chalice, is a hole in the ground a type of chalice, or are key qualities missing?

 

[Romolo]

Crowley rightly pointed out a successful ritual feels like a room recently cleaned.

Interesting. It really does. I wonder if Crowley ever cleaned his room himself though…

Another quote comes to mind by Blavatsky (Voice of the Silence): "The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean. To make them clean, a cleaner is required."

"Occult Exercises and Practices" by Gareth Knight rehashed a lot of old exercises, but I copied out this one exercise, which was fresh to me. A daily practice of taking an everyday object and analysing it from the "four worlds" (kabbalah) perspective. Cutting out the kabbala part, just going up layers of abstraction

I'm reminded because he used a broom as an example:

Thanks pixel for this generous lead. Comments like these are exactly what makes this forum such a wonderful place. I started reading Occult Exercises and Practices and the four worlds exercise was exactly the surface I was scratching at, and you saw it. What a great framework! The qabalistic structure on four levels really deepens a metaphor.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Another quote comes to mind by Blavatsky (Voice of the Silence): "The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean. To make them clean, a cleaner is required."

I like the quote. With the second sentence, does she mean God?

(My first interpretation was more like "if you want to be clean, you have to be willing to be a cleaner" - a humble job a lot of 19th century magicians might not have been comfortable stooping to. But she probably means God?)

 

[Taudefindi]

The broom cleans what the wand creates.

Both come from the same source(wood, maybe even the same tree) and serve different purposes.
Talk about duality.

 

[Xenophon]

I like the quote. With the second sentence, does she mean God?

(My first interpretation was more like "if you want to be clean, you have to be willing to be a cleaner" - a humble job a lot of 19th century magicians might not have been comfortable stooping to. But she probably means God?)

My understanding of Blavatsky is that she'd probably say the Cleaner (God) is working through your diligent cleaner self. Yes, to make a truly cleaner Self.

TheosophistSpeak seems to dictate phrasing matters along those lines. To be 100% accurate though, I have been exposed to Madame B. mostly through her critics (though interestingly Kenneth Grant does, at times, go out of his way to alibi her sometime foibles.)

 

[Romolo]

I like the quote. With the second sentence, does she mean God?

(My first interpretation was more like "if you want to be clean, you have to be willing to be a cleaner" - a humble job a lot of 19th century magicians might not have been comfortable stooping to. But she probably means God?)

(Still related to cleaning and the broom, so I expand on that)

Now that I have read Gareth Knight, I am actually not sure anymore if she is merely metaphoric... Look at this other instance of "cleaning" mentioned in The Voice of the Silence, on page 26:

"For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects (6 ). It needs the gentle breezes of Soul Wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions. Seek O Beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul."

Footnote 6 specifies:

"From Shen-hsiu’s Doctrine, who teaches that the human mind is like a mirror which attracts and reflects every atom of dust, and has to be, like that mirror, watched over and dusted every day. Shen-hsiu was the sixth Patriarch of North China who taught the esoteric doctrine of Bodhidharma."

I find it interesting to unpack her metaphors to their original physical place of origin. It feels like you get closer to the original epiphany if you can observe it yourself.

TheosophistSpeak seems to dictate phrasing matters along those lines. To be 100% accurate though, I have been exposed to Madame B. mostly through her critics (though interestingly Kenneth Grant does, at times, go out of his way to alibi her sometime foibles.)

I have uploaded The Voice of the Silence in our library. Enjoy!

Book – PDF - The Voice of the Silence - H. P. Blavatsky

"WITH the writing of her masterworks completed, H. P. Blavatsky turned her attention more particularly to the needs of those who were seriously desirous of serving the cause of human betterment. The result was The Voice of the Silence, a spiritual classic of incomparable beauty and power...

wizardforums.com

 

[pixel_fortune]

I've been thinking about "the door" in this context

Because I think one's first instinct would be to think of its seed principle as something to do with transition, exploration, discovery (what mysterious new thing will we find when we open the door?). Similar to key symbolism.

But that's not what a door is when you really think about it. If the concept of "door" was erased, my bedroom wouldn't be a sealed chamber with no way in or out, because that would be useless. It would have an empty arch.

So a door is about it's variability - it's about the fact that I get to choose whether there is an archway or a wall between me and the living room.

And when I imagine my bedroom with just an archway, what's missing when the door is missing? Privacy.

Not safety, mostly. There are far more internal doors in the world than external ones, and doors of bedrooms and bathrooms often don't have locks - anyone could walk in, but the door blocks line of sight and is a social signal (nothing stops you opening a bathroom door, but you always knock first. That's because of the signal the door sends, not because you're physically stopped).

Even my apartment front door - it's not like my neighbours are always coming past and trying the lock and going "aw dammit we can't get in" - they know it's socially inappropriate to go through a closed door to a private space

So I think it's something to do with privacy and control of privacy - I've heard stories of parents taking the children's doors off as a punishment.

When you take away the entire concept of "broom" you have a dusty floor, so I think the symbolic meaning is true to my real world experience of Broom, but the symbolism of Door does not match my actual daily use and interaction with doors

 

[Romolo]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, pixel. I think you added a few layers to the four world analysis of Gareth Knight!

You inspired me to add one more. The idea of a door as seen from inside the house (from the perspective of a resident) and from outside the house (if you are a homeless person) is extremely different. You could call this level "Figure/Ground". I was reminded of Despina, one of the imaginary cities from Calvino's "Invisible Cities":

"Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red windsocks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, (...) In the coastline's haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel's withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade. (...) Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts." (page 17-18,

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)

So applied to Gareth Knight's Four Worlds, we could add three more:

THE BROOM:

• Fetish: What does this specific broom represent? (material, smell, touch, history)
• Formal: What are the family members of the broom? (from rag to vacuum cleaner)
• Functional: What are the possible functions? (the idea of sweeping and cleansing)
• Spiritual: What seed principle is the object related to (purity)
• Negative: What would happen if brooms did not exist? What does this teach us about the broom?
• Social: How does social class or culture shift perspective on the broom?
• Figure/Ground: How does the broom look "from the other side"?

 

[pixel_fortune]

Another Broom Lesson:

One thing you probably know about brooms is that you have to sweep before you mop. If you try and sweep a wet floor, it goes badly. Mopping without sweeping first also goes badly, you end up with wet grit everywhere.

so, the broom teaches us that order of operations matters.

When cleansing your space, the pentagram rite goes before the hexagram rite.

This also ties into social class because there are things known to someone who actually uses a broom that are not known to someone who only knows that, when you hire a cleaner, they bring a broom with them. Does Prince William know not to try and sweep a wet floor? Has he ever held a broom in his life?

Broom = practical wisdom

 

[Xenophon]

Another Broom Lesson:

One thing you probably know about brooms is that you have to sweep before you mop. If you try and sweep a wet floor, it goes badly. Mopping without sweeping first also goes badly, you end up with wet grit everywhere.

so, the broom teaches us that order of operations matters.

When cleansing your space, the pentagram rite goes before the hexagram rite.

This also ties into social class because there are things known to someone who actually uses a broom that are not known to someone who only knows that, when you hire a cleaner, they bring a broom with them. Does Prince William know not to try and sweep a wet floor? Has he ever held a broom in his life?

Broom = practical wisdom

Has the floor sweeper at NASA ever planned a rocket launch? Can he? Let's find out! "Hey Lou, c'mere a minnit. Drop the broom, pick up a pencil..."

A lot of older folks here in China remember the Cultural Revolution and before. Professors sent to plant rice and semi-literate farmers sent to teach college. Things did not work out so well. Famine for one thing... We ain't all equal and it's collectively suicidal to pretend otherwise. (I've hauled nets, humped a rifle and pack, wielded a paint brush on a wall---this isn't Xeno Silverspoon sipping sherry and sniffing snootily from his salon.) There are things known to persons with theoretical skills that a great many folks are incapable of.

There are two kinds of people who preach equality: 1) the tactically-minded but presently out of power. Pleading for equality is a way to steal a march on those in power. Once achieved, the newly equal turn and rend their "brethren" of a moment ago. 2) the inept but resentful (read up on the Dunning-Kruger Effect---most people overestimate themselves, and the incompetent more so than any other group.) These latter represent the tomorrow's cannon fodder for #1 above's power-play, their aphids the day after tomorrow.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Has the floor sweeper at NASA ever planned a rocket launch? Can he? Let's find out! "Hey Lou, c'mere a minnit. Drop the broom, pick up a pencil..."

A lot of older folks here in China remember the Cultural Revolution and before. Professors sent to plant rice and semi-literate farmers sent to teach college. Things did not work out so well. Famine for one thing... We ain't all equal and it's collectively suicidal to pretend otherwise. (I've hauled nets, humped a rifle and pack, wielded a paint brush on a wall---this isn't Xeno Silverspoon sipping sherry and sniffing snootily from his salon.) There are things known to persons with theoretical skills that a great many folks are incapable of.

There are two kinds of people who preach equality: 1) the tactically-minded but presently out of power. Pleading for equality is a way to steal a march on those in power. Once achieved, the newly equal turn and rend their "brethren" of a moment ago. 2) the inept but resentful (read up on the Dunning-Kruger Effect---most people overestimate themselves, and the incompetent more so than any other group.)

I think you're reading a lot into my post that just isn't there!

We were analysing brooms in a threat titled "the broom", so I was thinking about what a user of a broom knows. If you want to analyse the seed-principle of a mathematical equation, please go ahead! That will naturally have very different elements.

It is a simple fact that someone who has used a broom knows more about brooms than someone who has not used a broom. I didn't say they should be in charge of society or set to work building rocketships. I just said they knew more about brooms. If you reckon someone who HASN'T used a broom knows more about brooms, then my eyebrows are raised but I'm open to hearing the case for it

I said brooms represent practical wisdom. I didn't say that was better than theoretical wisdom. Again, the topic was brooms so I wasn't talking about theory. I don't see theory as being part of the seed-principle of broom-ness.

I used the example of Prince William because it's really hard to think of someone who is well known and who it's a safe-ish gamble hasn't used a broom. It was a pretty much random example (within that criterion) but I'm not sure why he got you thinking about intellectuals and stuff because Prince William didn't become a prince due to his intellectual superiority within a meritocratic system.

This reply is ALSO not an argument about whether equality is good and/or real, it's just an argument about whether my post was preaching equality (it wasn't).

Post automatically merged: Friday at 12:10 PM

Gah too late to edit!! I regret posting so many words in response

tl;dr your post is off-topic - if you want to discuss equality, start a new thread in the Politics section; this thread is for analysing everyday objects for their underlying principles.

I'm sure we could think of an item that represents theoretical wisdom in a way that I feel a broom represents practical wisdom. A pen? A blackboard?

 

[Romolo]

I'm sure we could think of an item that represents theoretical wisdom in a way that I feel a broom represents practical wisdom. A pen? A blackboard?

The pipe? (chuckles)

 

[Robert Ramsay]

The pipe? (chuckles)

 

[Xenophon]

I think you're reading a lot into my post that just isn't there!

We were analysing brooms in a threat titled "the broom", so I was thinking about what a user of a broom knows. If you want to analyse the seed-principle of a mathematical equation, please go ahead! That will naturally have very different elements.

It is a simple fact that someone who has used a broom knows more about brooms than someone who has not used a broom. I didn't say they should be in charge of society or set to work building rocketships. I just said they knew more about brooms. If you reckon someone who HASN'T used a broom knows more about brooms, then my eyebrows are raised but I'm open to hearing the case for it

I said brooms represent practical wisdom. I didn't say that was better than theoretical wisdom. Again, the topic was brooms so I wasn't talking about theory. I don't see theory as being part of the seed-principle of broom-ness.

I used the example of Prince William because it's really hard to think of someone who is well known and who it's a safe-ish gamble hasn't used a broom. It was a pretty much random example (within that criterion) but I'm not sure why he got you thinking about intellectuals and stuff because Prince William didn't become a prince due to his intellectual superiority within a meritocratic system.

This reply is ALSO not an argument about whether equality is good and/or real, it's just an argument about whether my post was preaching equality (it wasn't).

Post automatically merged: Friday at 12:10 PM

Gah too late to edit!! I regret posting so many words in response

tl;dr your post is off-topic - if you want to discuss equality, start a new thread in the Politics section; this thread is for analysing everyday objects for their underlying principles.

I'm sure we could think of an item that represents theoretical wisdom in a way that I feel a broom represents practical wisdom. A pen? A blackboard?

Yeah, we can argue elsewhere. Go with the broom if it works for your point. Pens are dangerous: skill with one tendeth puffeth up the user.

 

[Romolo]

Go with the broom if it works for your point

It is you who fly off on your broomstick and let you be carried away by your own thoughts, Xenophon, smoking a pipe as your rise up in the air. I often notice in your contributions on the forum that they often stir up dust and ashes rather than sweep and clean to arrive, in the last sentence, in a clear position.

Pixel was very clear in this thread and the way they framed my initial post really helped me to understand the spiritual dimension of the broom. It also introduced me to the framework of the Four Worlds, which I find a powerful way to peer into the soul of objects.

 

[Xenophon]

It is you who fly off on your broomstick and let you be carried away by your own thoughts, Xenophon, smoking a pipe as your rise up in the air. I often notice in your contributions on the forum that they often stir up dust and ashes rather than sweep and clean to arrive, in the last sentence, in a clear position.

Pixel was very clear in this thread and the way they framed my initial post really helped me to understand the spiritual dimension of the broom. It also introduced me to the framework of the Four Worlds, which I find a powerful way to peer into the soul of objects.

In her reply, she suggested varying the image of a broom in favor of pen or blackboard. I, in all seriousness and nothing sarcastic, suggested she keep to it if she thought it made her point. It can be used to make her point, and ---for the most part--- she used it well in her earlier post. I took exception there to the reference to "class distinctions" and Prince William that were, I aver, rather beside her point. In the event, she (rightly) hinted we need not pursue that issue. In so doing she showed herself rather more perceptive (and a good deal less cranky than) your petulant poodle-self. If you don't like what I write, you can simply ignore me. There: a win-wimp solution.