Charles_Odinforce wrote:Crowley hints at it in his works, focusing very heavily on personal energy using techniques such as Yoga, though I'd be hard pressed to remember every piece of writing that he hits on it. He used an open-eyed meditation exercise in which one focuses on both feeling and the awareness of the energy around you. That is if I'm recalling this correctly, it may be a student of his who wrote on his works after (It's been over 15 years since I was read that).
Jason Miller, a more modern contemporary, hits a lot on the need to build personal energy before any work.
As for methods that work JUST through personal power alone, most still have formalized ritual (or the framework to use it) a look into QiGong and Shinto Mysticism hits on that more without the framework though. Likewise different Shamanic Journey practices focus on the rawness of power in the practitioner, but that's a scattered system.
So if you mean an example of JUST using that, its harder to find, but most QiGong practitioners can do it. I don't know that it's something they are as trained to do, as it is more the natural "I have a really powerful presence, and I know how to direct the energy of it" so it comes naturally after the training.
The most successful methods I've seen incorporate something like Qi in their foundation practices. The least successful simply focus on the explanation of a theory of energy. Personally, I'd prefer a beginner pick up the basics and not have an "explanation" that is dubious/biased at best than to have them inundated into dogma without core skills.
Many of these methods, such as Shamanism, also fall outside of western systemization where people learn more from an individual teacher and generally from hard training. Westernized mysticism is more concerned with building a good dogmatic foundation, focusing the idea that belief is power, and doesn't focus on harnessing raw power/energy/lifeforce or whatever you might want to call it.
The Hermetic Principals while a wonderful explanation to distract the mind from creating questions, and doubts, which break the student's attention is also still a very modern and western invention. Its principals are a mish-mash of scientific terminology meant to lend credence rather than experience initially. I find Hermetic Principals functional in my own work, but for the purposes of banishing indoctrination to a dogma should be secondary to building foundational energy.
Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Kundalini/Chakra oriented methods for building power in that way. Many of these systems operate on the understanding that if your energy is high, possession becomes impossible anyway, or banishing for another becomes a simple task of having greater power and authority at that moment.
Much of Western Mysticism works on the idea of "the appeal to the higher power" which is fine if that higher power happens to favor you. If they did though, would YOU need to call upon them for banishing? Would you need a full ritual? If you did need to call upon them, surely it would be only once.
I hope that answers the question fully because it is one of those loaded questions where "there is a lot of information on it, but its scattered across a lot of sources."
So this is a load of writing, but as I'm about to be relatively out of pocket for the next few days, I'm feeling comprehensive.
I think the benefit to a beginner of not starting out with a rigidly systemic approach is threefold.
First, it gets them to work right away. In some ways, spiritual and magickal exploration are like language acquisition or playing an instrument. You may need some instruction, but the real work and learning is done in practice, and deferring that practice defers progress and increases the probability of attrition. Second, it leaves a student open to determining a path that is a good fit for them. Not every system works for every student, and that’s okay. For instance, however correct you may find the principle of gender to be, that principle is not necessarily one that a trans or non-binary person can use. It’s not accessible at a minimum and traumatizing at worst. Third, the more absolute rules you give a beginner, the more they will be afraid of getting it wrong. The fear of getting things wrong is not just a bar to trying magick, it is also a direct bar to magick’s efficacy.
To use your gym metaphor
There is a group of people out there that if what they need is to learn how to go jogging and how to do some planks is absolutely never going to take even the first step if their introduction to working out is a detailed tour of the weight machines followed by instruction in perfect form. And that group of people is a significant portion of the population. The whole thing feels insurmountable, and that is just the end of it. Or they may greatly delay doing any physical activity that would improve their health. They may not realize that yoga is really their jam. This whole approach just sets a good size of potential students and practitioners up for failure or limits their personal growth or fulfillment.
On top of all that, the seven principles are not like a weight room introduction. They are more analogous to teaching the science of anatomy and physiology, and that kind of knowledge is simply not required to work out well and become healthy. In fact, many gyms don't teach their clients or members any of the biological or physiological science to how exercise works. They teach them the exercises. They say, "see how I'm squatting--try it just like that." The clients do the exercise. They get stronger. You say that people need to understand the 7 laws so they can cleanse themselves and their spaces. An intellectual knowledge of hermeticism will not do this, any more than reading an anatomy textbook will make you a powerlifter. It is practice that does this. Breath work, meditation, energy work. An ignorant weight lifter can still be fit. A beginner who doesn't know the laws but has several practices or skills they can rely on can still cleanse their space. At the same time, someone who has studied hermeticism but has never meditated may not be able to clear their mind and calm their spirit.
A dogged devotion to a set of unchanging principles also discourages critical thought.
A classic example of this is the Catholic church’s historic treatment of heliocentrism as heretical. Even without the legal implications for heliocentrists, shutting down that line of inquiry for so long held people back. The rigid contemporary spiritual framework of the literal truth of scientific fact in the ancient Hebrew scriptures was not fair game for critical thought. Many people would not even consider the thought because it was automatically wrong, despite the suppressed empirical data. Many people saw that data and opted to disregard it because they thought they had The Truth and therefore knew better. Just because it’s a thought system you happen to like, that doesn’t change the dangers of holding its principles too rigidly. That rigidity is not a healthy starting point for a beginner in magick any more than any other narrow-minded spiritual tradition, unquestioningly followed, is the healthiest option for a child to be raised with.
And the fact is that many different systems do work for different people!
"Understanding these principles and learning to apply them to these practices is very potent in my experience." -- We are not contesting this. It is fantastic that this has been potent for you. Is it possible that someone else would NOT have the same experience? Is it possible that someone could diligently study the seven principles and never be able to fully understand them, because they're not wired to think philosophically? And then should that person not be allowed to engage on a spiritual level? How many people would NEVER engage in spiritual activity if they had to learn philosophical laws before they were allowed to experience something simple. Would it not be better to have them experience spiritual energy through practices or exercises and then they can go back and understand the laws?
In a funny way, Hermeticism itself demonstrates this well. It is deliberately syncretistic and borrows from many traditions. It wouldn’t have borrowed things that its earliest practitioners didn’t think would work. And it would not have kept practices that proved not to work.
Hermeticism has drawn extensively from Kemeticism and made significant alterations to what is already a historically varied tradition. It did so because it worked, and the Hermetics found that *some* of it worked for Hermetics. Full-blown ancient Egyptian religious and magick practices worked for its practitioners and developed over time to correct things that didn’t work or that stopped working. And that ancient Kemeticism was very practical in its nature. Life and magick and the spiritual were all inseparable, although there were limits based on who you were. Professional intermediaries were not only tolerated, they were considered necessary and fully correct. And that worked so well for that society that it lasted a very, very long time. Its practicality has served it even through Kemeticism’s various modern incarnations. And none of that required a prevalent mystic tradition. None of that required formal training in these seven principles to work. And the Hermetic approach does not require the totality of Kemeticism in order to work either.
Both chaos magick and, to a lesser extent, kitchen witchcraft are excellent examples of places where the seven principles are not needed to achieve results in magick and would even impede its optimal functioning.
And even assuming that a single system might yield truth for every learner, the fact still remains that learners do not always learn well in the same way.
Some people learn by reading about something, say the seven principles of Hermeticism. Others learn by doing, say, through meditation. Just because he has learned these laws intellectually and now applies them to his spiritual practice does not mean that others can do the same. At the same time, others might have an auditory, visual, kinesthetic or otherwise instinctive experience of these laws that he cannot fathom. It doesn't mean that either person doesn't understand. It means you understand the same "truth" differently.
Accessible banishing using self-power
On a very practical front, the Headspace meditation app is an excellent tool. Not only does it teach meditation in a very accessible, pleasant and practical way, but it also has a depression series that happens to provide an excellent self-powered banishing technique. It doesn’t call it “banishing,” of course. But the technique is complete, accessible and effective without further instruction.
Yes, understanding your anatomy is actually really important especially when you’re doing things that involve heavy weights which can easily kill you by snapping your bones and squishing your flimsy little organs.
Yes understanding the seven hermetic principles (Not laws will HELP them with things like cleansing. you still need a technique though
An ignorant weightlifter will probably pay a visit to the hospital soon LOL
Why would a person study these principles and not apply them?
These principles do not discourage critical thought. A person still needs to study them and learn to apply them.
They can HELP you understand banishing but techniques are still required. This does not replace that.
In my gym you are required to have an understanding of your physiology. You are required to understand all of the limitations of your muscles. You are required to understand all of the related subject of anatomy that apply . You are required to have a full understanding of your skeletal structure and how to properly transmit force through it for example .
A trans person still has both masculine and feminine energy. These energies don’t just include sexual oryantation.
These principles need to be applied in order to be fully understood. One does not simply study them.
These principles might not be for everyone and yes I view them as objective and plan to teach how to apply them. I don’t expect them to work for everyone.
I knew from the moment that I wrote this post that it would attract those who like it and those who don’t. That’s how polarity works.
You don't mind if I play Loki's Advocate here I hope.
So how would you compare a system like the Hermetic Principals to more traditional forms of magick found in Paganism? Things involving what we, these days, call sympathetic magicks?
I don’t think it’s any different. It will work for some and not others, and learning how to walk will help you get wherever you want when you decide where you want to go, if anywhere.
I think the admission that they are principles with limitations that won’t work for everyone is an excellent addition to the entire approach. That’s the at the heart of what I’ve been saying across both threads.
Because they *are* excellent as principles/tools, and that Initiation into Hermetics by Bardon *is* an excellent practical resource. And I am thrilled they work for you.
Charles_Odinforce wrote:You don't mind if I play Loki's Advocate here I hope.
So how would you compare a system like the Hermetic Principals to more traditional forms of magick found in Paganism? Things involving what we, these days, call sympathetic magicks?
I can’t compare this to a system I don’t have experience with. I’m sorry.
