Working with Jesus as a spirit/Deity

[Beyond Everything]

It's an egregore (or series of egregores). You can work with it anyway you like. That is, if you don't put inner freedom as a paramount value.

 

[MorganBlack]

I always thought of "Christ" (not Jesus) as a title again similar to "Buddha" or like an ascended master or something. Mary and sophia being connected here is interesting but i found something you might think is interesting.
This see's hekate as the world soul or "womb"

Love it, yep yep. World Soul. Neoplationism is a pretty great framework for ceremony. Needs updating but can do a lot of heavy lifting

I don't "work with" Hecate, but I like her. Mary, in her manifestation of Queen of Hell, fulfills a similar role for me, but one tied into a specially Catholic mythic structure.

I do not like erasing other people's viewpoints, but maybe they are manifestations of the same principle/consciousness. It gets messy trying to square world mythology. The best I can say is, when in ceremony, take it all very literally - then, when out of it, take it as metaphor. Then we can have these conversations.

I'm not saying we need to revive a monolithic Catholic culture (I like secularism and neoliberalism just fine. Look at the 50 kinds of craft beers you can buy.) But some more sympathy and awareness might help to unpack a lot of magical discipline. For 500 years we had a shared Catholic worldview to provide a mythic framework, where "the usual" in ritual would be pretty obvious and not subject to a bunch of randomization from silly and pointless New Age esoteric speculation.

But even saying "work with" has so many assumptions and uncritical inferences baked in.

Just by saying it, you're implying Hecate is a spirit you can meet. Technically, in a Neoplatonic mode, any theophanic manifestation you can interact with is a daimon that a god, or God, has created for you - but it's pretty rude to call Thor or even Mary a daimon. See?

The Church is actually very flexible here, they call whatever we experience where it matter, on a personal level, "apparitions." It keeps the persona alive while also air-gapping personal gnosis from randomizing the culture and all societal institutions.

(Soapbox warning:
Some randomization is fine, but taking it too far it all fractures and factionalizes into pettym atomized little tribes, making us prey to transnational finance, which is why they fund a lot of smaller and smaller local identities and put them against each other. Anglo Esoteric culture is a perfect example. So much backbiting and fighting among ourselves. That was the plan, I feel.)

About Vodou:

OK there is no such thing as hegemonic Vodou. Everything is at the family level. Many Vodou houses are just as well-read on esotericism, if more French Continental esotericism than British-encoded ones found English-speaking cultures. So I have to be careful because I am an Anglo-Latino American and not Haitian, so this is me translating.

In Vodou, there are different kinds of lwa. Anglo neopagans usually totally misunderstand Vodou, because the lwa are not neopagan gods. They are elevated dead people, which would be called saints. And they are very localized into Haitian culture. There is no way to change the lwa into neopagan gods without destroying legitimate manifestations ('illegitimate' heave meaning torn away from Haitian culture).

So, there are different kinds of lwa - an all-purpose word that I think should be translated as "a spirit." There are wild spirits called djabs, that are not "in the House." There are zombis, which are the shades from the local cemetery who are not elevated, who are called to do work. You need to use names they recognize from when they were alive.

Now this is awkward, because I actually don't believe in ghosts (while having exorcised a few of them), but like I said, you must take it literally when you are in ritual and ceremony. Calling them apparitions, damaions, gods, spirits, lwa, egregores, masks, Offices, or even shdes- none of that ultimately matters, and each is coded to a specific culture's time-and place, and is mostly just our left-hemispheric rationalist brain trying to make sense of The Mystery.

Then there are the Catholic saints.

Jesus Christ fits here as an elevated dead person. He is mostly gone to... and this is my language... providing authority to call the rest. He is not a "work spirt" Some saint like St. Cyprian are teaching spits, and are called to do work, and provide Authority in the quantum 'mythstream' you are in. This is woven into the open prayers of the Priye Ginen, which is a whole litany of Catholic saints called into the opening of the ceremony to come and bless the proceedings, keep out djabs, and form a recognized signal in the spirit world that the party is getting started.

Legba is an elevated dead person who is called to open the gates to the Rada Vodou nation (nachon). There are rulers for each of the nations and they have point in the ceremony where they are "flipped" to.Jesus Christ opens the way to God and grants authority to do this, but he is not standing there as the ritual impresario. Each of the points has a master who rules there. Met Kalfu for instance, is Petwo nachon, and is the opener of the crossroads of night and demons, but he is not Lego, and is Christ. The total "vibe" is very different.

It gets tricky theologically if people are looking to make a Neopagan Platonism, which I do not recommend, trying to fabricate a single Tree of Life to fit everything. For instance, in one Vodou house, King Lucifer rules what they call "the Hebrew spirits," which includes the demons of the grimoires. He is not the Neopagan Lucifer very mcuh, and is much more a manifestation of something far darker. More like Met Kalfu. I hope that helps.

 

[Firetree]

Totally in sympathy here, Firetree! Man, these are DEEP and sacred topics!

That my HGA is very feminine confused me for awhile, until I read more Gnosticism. I guess I'm a cryptic Valentinian Gnostic and see Mary / Sophia as the mother of our Personal Angel (Daimon).

I see it as beyond that , due to my studies in Anthropology , going back as far as I can , this female aspect is in ancient Australian lore * , and all through time . A Sassanian perspective ;

'' The daēnā of the bridge appeared in early Sasanian times in the inscription of Kerdīr at Sar Mašhad (KSM) as Kerdīr’s own dēn, leading his “ideal body” (hangirb “likeness”) over the Činwad bridge. The high priest, in his vision of the hereafter, related “and now comes a maiden, appearing from the east, and I have not seen a nobler woman than she” (KSM 35; Back, p. 452); “he who is righteous his own dēn leads him to paradise, and he who is wicked his own dēn leads him to hell” (KSM 29; Back, p. 445; Gignoux, 1968, ll. 42-43). The story is repeated in the Ardā Wīrāz (q.v.) nāmag (4.11; Gignoux, 1984, pp. 48, 157; Vahman, 1986, pp. 194-95), where the woman is said to be the personification of one’s own dēn and deeds (ān ī xwēš dēn ud ān ī xwēš kunišn), and in the Mēnōg ī Xrad (2.125; Nyberg, Manual, pt. 1, p. 73), where she introduces herself as the just man’s “good deeds.” According to the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (31.5) the dēn, personified as a beautiful woman, takes care of the soul of the righteous person in paradise, teaching it the speech of the spirits. ''

* the earliest story I know starts before the Dreamtime ( I have only ever heard of this one ' before' then ) where the male snake on a barren Earth is vitalized by a female snake 'above and beyond ' ( the dark 'river' running through the Milky Way ) who 'spits some of her water down on ' the Earth .

The historical traditions uphold this view. (Speaking more mystically, I feel one of the reasons we don't meet Jesus Christ very often is becasue we are supposed to be more like him, and to not externalize "him" too much.)

Anyway, back to Mary / Sophia / Nuit. (Yes i know that is alot of overlapping going on, everyone, Please don't yell at me.) Basically according to ancient traditions, found in Plato’s Timaeus and later heavily leaned on by Hermetic and Gnostic texts,

I see them as 'levels' of the one manifestation . In an indogenous (here ) perspective ( and using non-local lingo ) ; I have a physical Mum , but 'over me' is 'big mum ' , who looks after me and the local environment and helps me to act correctly within it . But 'over' her is a 'bigger Mum' for 'the country ( of which there are around 250 in Australia ) and over that ' Star Mother ' - generally - (in one language ) ' Wallenganda' - ' the Milky Way ' . . . or Nuit if one prefers .

before a soul incarnates into the heavy sublunar realm, it passes through the cosmic matrix of the World Soul (Sophia/Mary).

And before that the surrounding angular planetary formations formed the 'natal horoscope ' ... to be embedded and gestated in the 'world soul' .

In the Valentinian Gnostic schools, this was explicitly ritualized. They believed that every human soul has a heavenly, angelic counterpart in the Pleroma. True salvation or Gnosis was viewed as a mystic marriage between the human soul and its personal Angel, as Thelemite would very much be in sympathy with.

As the soul descends through the planetary spheres, it is assigned a Daimon to help it find it way. Because the Anima Mundi (World Soul) is the womb of all individualized consciousness in the cosmos, the personal Daimon is generated from her substance. She is the Mother and Queen of the Angels because the Angel is a localized ray of her own Wisdom, tasked with guarding the human ego while it experince the joy and terrors of this material "simulation" Maya.

(Oh fun fact, As I am sure you know The Personal Daimon = the HGA in the Book of Abramelin - which a German Christian text pretending to be Jewish, that was actually composed in the early 17th century . Heh. )

I had a long conversation with an anti-hermetic Jew about that , claiming it was Judaism ... oh, the antics he went through regarding that - maybe a topic for a different discussion though .

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Oh, just to add a personal note.

In my view, I do feel this model needs to be updated a little with a sort of Neoplatonic Daimonic Idealism.

Henry Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis (the Imaginal) is all we experience. We don't descend really from the Pleroma and we are always "in" the World Soul. "God" is raw consciousness. "Mind" at the abstract "code" level of reality. We are not born, and we do not die. We are eternal. BUT, all of this theurgic stuff we do makes changing states to parts of the World Soul where time flows differently a little easier.

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If you've ever attended a catholic mass and watched the invocation of the holy spirit before the transubstantion of the eucharist I dare you to view that as anything less than invocation of the spirit and evocation of christ.

I have many times when young and in adult life I have done similar myself ( I had been ordained as a Priest in E.G.C. ) . For me it depends on one's definition of the terms ; Invocation means to call IN ( to yourself ) . Evocation means 'calling forth' to appear 'outside' of yourself . In the Mass I would EVOKE the 'essence of the life of the Sun' and the joy of the Earth' into the substance , and then by consuming it , that would be the INvocation .

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I’d like to offer my two cents on this. Someone I respect once said that you could even evoke Santa Claus. What I mean is, if you try to evoke a spirit, something is going to show up eventually. But during an evocation, it might not be the actual spirit itself, but rather its proxy. It’s the exact same thing here.

To EVOKE Santa ; one large pine tree , one glass of milk and paten with three 'cakes of cookies ' .

To INVOKE Santa .... dress up late on Christmas eve and sneak around laying presents.

 

[MorganBlack]

the earliest story I know starts before the Dreamtime

Love it . Yep yep. One quibble.

The Dreamtime isn't a period of time that happened and ended. (Although I prefer the term 'The Imaginal' per Henry Corben or Patrick Harpur’s 'Daimonic Reality.'

The Dreamtime, in one sense, is a parallel, eternal state of reality that coexists with the present. And it is also all that there is. To an indigenous person asking what happened "before" the Dreaming is a nonsense question, because the Dreaming is the baseline of existence itself (and is existence).

In most of the much much older Ingenuous undertaking The World has no beginning and no end. It is the Eternal Now. Always. There is no Ragnarok, and the universe was not created by the murder of Tiamat, or giants, or the Titans. The myths are much more recent mewling baby myths.

And yep yep. The Milky Way as Serpent River is the Celestial Nile the collects the tears of Isis weeps for her murdered husband, Osiris. Thelemites got it going on!