On Love and Holy Scripture:

On Love and Holy Scripture:

The divine feminine manifests as the Other, she is the universe, as the god Hadit is the Self. Every aspect of objective reality is the Goddess. She especially shows herself to us as divine within certain traditions such as the occult tradition, which by extension the poetic and philosophic traditions form part. We call her the Great Mother, as she by her nature symbolizes that part which we were one with during the pre-Oedipal stage. Union with her manifests in a loss of self that is symbolically represented as Hadit falling into the body of the Goddess and becoming one with pure-undifferentiated consciousness, thus, in psychoanalytic terms, this experience relieves the sense of separateness first experienced during the mirror stage.

Devotion and love are the ways by which our relationship with her is cultivated. As a symbol of tradition, she becomes the vehicle whereinto the Soul is born to be immortalized through its actualization. This is called Gnosis and entails the fully realized self and the congealed Soul having become aware of its True Will to work its magick and affect change in the world.

The Holy Books of Thelema are symbolic of the Goddess, as they are expressions of our tradition that through their constant study one draws down the Shekinah systematically unlocking the mysteries of our tradition. This is a form of Sex Magick, and the Holy Books are symbolic of a woman, and this practice is our first exploration of the Alchemical Wedding.

Those who have devoted their lives to this unfolding of self into Being are tasked to memorize certain Holy Books at certain junctures along the path and to recite them constantly throughout the grades. This recitation serves to bridge the gap between the conscious and the unconscious establishing these symbols within the very Soul of the magician, wherefrom having taken root serve to fuel the fire of his passion in love of the Goddess. This union is Qabalistically presented on the Tree of Life in the relationship between Tiphareth and Yesod, that are the spheres of the intellect and the astral respectively, that at the very beginning of the journey this relationship begins to be cultivated with the aim of complete union.

From this it is inferred that the grades of the Outer Order form the ritual for attaining Knowledge and Conversation with one’s Holy Guardian Angel and are not as disparate as one might think, but instead could be likened to the furnishings of a temple and the fumigations being prepared for the supreme ritual of attaining Knowledge and Conversation. The supreme ritual in this sense is uniting the Pentagram with the Hexagram. The Hexagram is thus the Goddess and the Pentagram is the God that from their union perfection is attained.

Although as far as sex is concerned, the phallus is active and the kteis is receptive, and the masculine intellect is receptive as the feminine is active. This difference in polarity is what generates the bioelectrical current that leads to ecstasy, not just orgasm, but the ecstasy of love itself as being in love tends to awaken within us a higher sense of purpose and vitality. Therefore, these poles may be attributed to the intellect and the emotions, even the instincts, and it is love and its effect on the heart that turns this union into a transcendent force, which corresponds to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life. Love is thus a union between the senses the instincts and the intellect leading to a dissolving of the ego in ecstasy of the experience, which effectively serves to bridge the gap between the unconscious and the conscious minds, (these parts of the body, or the head, the heart and reproductive organs, are referred to in Daoism as the three gates). By exploring these parts of the psyche, an initiate is slowly dissolving the separation between Self and the Other, which, by means of the relationship between these two aspects of being that is constantly confronted in the work, these natures are proven to be an illusion.

Firstly, in the beginning the magician is concerned with perfecting him her herself by the formulation of the Pentagram, entailing that on a microcosmic level, all these masculine and feminine elements are already present. Thus, Yesod and the sub-conscious and the unconscious are easily seen as attributed to the feminine, and the intellect and the passion are masculine, (the elements mentioned here are limited in their scope and the act of defining the masculine and feminine parts of the Soul may be explored indefinitely). There is a difficulty in this though, with Malkuth’s role obscured from the sight of the magician when involved in the work of these higher sephiroth. The reason for this is that the Kingdom has inherent all the elements worked on during the Outer grades, that via the process of the Soul’s congealing and the realization of the True Will, these elements, that were seen as heterogenous, are now crystalized in Malkuth at the birth of the Christ. Thus, hell is raised to be equilibrated again, as was also necessary at the beginning of the journey.

Therefore, allegorically, the Royal Marriage may be seen in the myth of Dionysus and his consort Demeter, both of whom first espousing their love on Earth before they are united again eternally; a love expressed upon Mount Olympus. Hence this initial union, in Malkuth, is of such a nature, that the sincerity of it must sustain the magician through the following ordeal. It is as if by way of his commitment to the Goddess, he has also committed himself to proving his worthiness of her love by accepting all the trials in which he will be engaged until their reunion in Tiphareth. An apt allegory for expressing the gravity of the Great Work, and the need for sincerity, is Heracles and all the monsters he faced and defeated for his immortalization. Of course, the Hero’s journey is thus an appropriate metaphor for the magick of alchemy: especially in the way given to us by the poets and prophets of the Romantic era.

The Holy Books are thus, not merely expressions of the Goddess, but are symbolic of her expressed femininity; that which we were initially attracted to as the masculine counterparts (Hadit-Nuit) of this relationship. Now, when separating this nature into its various elements and when considering their effect upon the Soul of an aspirant, we will see how this becomes an act of Sex Magick of the highest order.

Although there are other means of strengthening one’s association to the Goddess, whether in a positive or negative capacity, they are not of the same quality as anagogical prose. The traditions of imbibing, sex, fasting and animal sacrifice, for example, merely strengthen one’s connection to tradition by altering one’s state of mind, wherein self-consciousness falls away and the deeper mysteries of our tradition may be perceived. Keep in mind, that all these aspects of theurgy are forms of Sex Magick, although of a lesser grade than discussed in this essay and that Sex Magick refers to practices that are meant to bring about a new perception in a controlled manner by way of union, from whence a certain mastery over nature is developed.

This practice directly unites the lower with the higher, as it is a symbol of the Goddess in her entirety, and by embodying the elements of a woman she serves to open the three gates mentioned earlier. The symbols accordingly speak to the head which in Daoism is attributed to Spirit, thus this archetypal character enflames Spirit, then the practice of studying, of devoting oneself wholly to her mystery, the memorization and the recitation of these texts correspond to the reproductive organ, and an appropriate phrase for the result of this practice is to enflame one’s heart with prayer. It is the heart thusly enflamed that in love connects the higher to the lower.

Hereby the spirit of our tradition is enflamed within the heart of an aspirant to enliven his passion. Any other mode of union is of a lesser quality, that for example the art of imbibing may lead to ecstasy and even insights into the mysteries, but only in as far as it is done within the framework here discussed. What this means is, that this practice of devotion is compared to that which kindles the fire of passion within the heart, which through these various other modes release is facilitated. There needs to be an outlet for this pressure, as it is none other than the fire upon the altar that burns away the dross, and this burning away is what leads a magician to his ordeal of transformation but always born again into our tradition as owing to the character of his work and insights. Therefore, the aim of the practice, is that the fire must be heated to such a degree, that the slightest stimulus, such as love in the form of a man and a woman, or imbibing, or cocaine or all of these elements employed at once, may serve to plunge the aspirant violently into the sphere corresponding to his grade.