If all is Magnum Opus ... what next do I DO? This is the essential question for the Magician to answer as the second process of attainment necessary along the Way.
Essentially, the question asked is "Who Am I"? In fact this alone done as a discipline and a practice is enough to find the essential Truth the second operation of magick is designed to unfold. To Find The True Self is to attain to the first fundamental liberation in Magickal attainment.
The Self of Pure Consciousness, the Self of Pure Being, and the Self of Pure Bliss. The Magician must find some sort of means (any means) in effecting an awakening to this True Self, in any one of these aspects. While the awakening is only a beginning, it is this first experience that alone can insure for the Magician a necessary precedent in his seeking.
Matter, Life, and Mind are inferior instruments in this path. They can of course be turned into superior instruments for the use of the True Self's becoming in the Universal Play, but these are miraculous occurrences spontaneously liberated by the magickal path. The moment the Magician is impressed, fascinated (a polite word for obsession), or seeks after these effects of meta-normal development, they stop being developed and a regression or step backwards occurs.
That is not to say in the least that a Magician will be denied much enjoyment of these powers. But the enjoyment will come as an impersonal and universal peace, bliss, and delight.
These ideals however are only partially realized after many stumblings of the same old ignorance that we have been born into, being tied down to Matter, Life and Mind. This is why the first awakening of the Magician to the True Self is essential. Without this recognition of something Divine and impersonal (or Supra-personal), beyond, above and supporting the egoic and ignorant aspects of our being, the ego's progress will be a continued stumbling and half-progression, slow, painful, and frustrated.
Once the fundamental reality is realized, the Magician, even coming back into the knot of ego and ignorance for long or short times, no longer has anything to fear. The True Self is the worker, the lover, and the knower of the entire experience. Once the awakening has occured, no matter how it occurs (one does not NEED to do that myth drenched operation known as "The Knowledge and Conversation"), the Magician can consider himself sanctioned and from this point would do well to remember that he is an ignorant knot of Body, Life, Mind and a Sense of I that is going to fight it tooth and nail until finally the Knot is Undone, and a true liberation can be consummated.
In the beginning, the ego continues to stumble, and we continue lost in ignorance for a time. This is to be expected, and the more passionately and fervently the Magician sacrifices all Deeds, Emotions, and Thoughts to the best conception of Magnum Opus possible, will correspond exactly to the speed of progress on the path. No steps can be skipped, but they can be walked faster or slower depending on the factors Nature has programmed into our Body, Life, Mind and Ego from our experience of being born into a body.
Seeking an Angel is itself an act of Ego, for a seeking of something is implying a division. Eventually, the continued flashes of insight into the Presence of The Angel will unfold into a complete Union with it. Then will the realization of True Self begin to operate directly on the remoulding and disciplining of the Matter, Life and Mind. These lower elements are freely offered up as components to the manifestation of the Divine Angel, the True Soul Personality.
Invoke Often.
Showing posts with label Magnum Opus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Magnum Opus. Show all posts
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
First Things First
How does one become, or even decide to become a Magician?
Even though Magicians can do things like 'cast spells' or 'enchantments', create 'talismans' and explore other worlds in the 'body of light' ... this is not what being a magician is about. Those things are properly titled 'sorcery', and even though a Magician may utilize such techniques, this comes from cross-pollination, and has no bearing on what is really important to the Magician.
A Magician is concerned with one thing, and one thing only. This is called the 'Magnum Opus', or 'The Great Work'. The Magnum Opus is a process of self-perfection. While it can be stated that all human beings are experiencing this self-perfection through the natural evolutionary current of Nature herself, a Magician applies his or her energies to the most rapid completion of this work possible. In Western Alchemy around the time of the Modern Enlightenment, this was known as turning Lead (or 'first matter') into Gold.
If we look at the generally accepted definition of Yoga from Swami Vivekananda (who informed the great Aurobindo through dream transmissions while Aurobindo was imprisoned), we find that Yoga is "a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life, or a few years, or even a few months of bodily existence." There is no better way to define the Magnum Opus than this, which also happens to be the truest definition of the Eastern Practice of Yoga.
This is very important and requires careful attention. There are many would be Mages out there who get so involved in watered down and incredibly primitive Western Paradigms, who have no real understanding that the aims of Magicians and the Ancient Vedantics and Yogins and Taoists and Buddhists and thereby Martial Artists, are absolutely and precisely the same thing. Many Magicians will disagree and debate me on this point, and as much as I respect their opinions and perspectives as true, I also recognize them as partial and therefor wrong in terms of an Integral Interpretation of Magick ... but I digress ...
The first thing a True Magician finds himself doing, is devoting himself to his own self-perfection or God-Realization. Being a Magician in the West is therefor no different than being a Yogin in the East. This was Aleister Crowley's fundamental gift to the paradigm and culture of Western Magick. By basing his system of Magick on the success of meditation (samadhi), he shewed without a doubt that these currents, while wildly different in expression (as East and West usually are), are fundamentally searching for the same source and summit of attainment.
Coming across Magicians who are concerned with nothing further than evoking demons or angels, or using Magick to attack others or somehow meta-physically gain material benefits in their life, one should simply laugh and move on. Its not that these things aren't possible; in fact all of the above is easily accomplished for a Magician; its just that these kinds of sorcery are rarely needed, if at all, in the life and times of a True Magician involved in the Magnum Opus.
I was in my early twenties when I completed my first Magickal Operation. Devotion or realization of the Magnum Opus is always the first successful act of Magick for a Magician. It marks the moment of true adulthood in life. It also marks the moment when Magick took over my life. Raped me as it were, and demanded that I walk the path I was put on this earth to walk. Everything that has happened and continues to happen after that is easily seen as occurring within the limitless and ever-present scope of the Magnum Opus. Many Magicians will consider this as false and self-limiting ... however this is actually a reflection of their own false and self-limiting paradigms ... a fundamental misunderstanding of the ever-present nature of the Magnum Opus.
The Magnum Opus by nature is beyond ego. The Ego, or self, is a component to the Magnum Opus, and the Magnum Opus is that; from the perspective of the self; which is living you right now. You, as an ego or self, are being lived by the Magnum Opus right now. Being a Magician is about accepting this, and cultivating the Genius through evolution which can recognize and participate in the Magnum Opus.
The moment I devoted myself to the Magnum Opus was the moment the adventure of my life truly began. The cycles and spirals of time and evolution ceased to be as rigid as I had grown up believing, and the feeling of destiny I had lived with for so long, while remaining real, became squarely my responsibility.
That is what the Magnum Opus essentially is; the acceptance of responsibility for one's deeper purpose, and the offering of the gifts that are essential to the fulfillment of one's life. Beyond the clench of your fear, beyond the practical considerations of one's life, the Magnum Opus and the realization of it, is the one underlying current of the life of the Magician. All else is play.
Even though Magicians can do things like 'cast spells' or 'enchantments', create 'talismans' and explore other worlds in the 'body of light' ... this is not what being a magician is about. Those things are properly titled 'sorcery', and even though a Magician may utilize such techniques, this comes from cross-pollination, and has no bearing on what is really important to the Magician.
A Magician is concerned with one thing, and one thing only. This is called the 'Magnum Opus', or 'The Great Work'. The Magnum Opus is a process of self-perfection. While it can be stated that all human beings are experiencing this self-perfection through the natural evolutionary current of Nature herself, a Magician applies his or her energies to the most rapid completion of this work possible. In Western Alchemy around the time of the Modern Enlightenment, this was known as turning Lead (or 'first matter') into Gold.
If we look at the generally accepted definition of Yoga from Swami Vivekananda (who informed the great Aurobindo through dream transmissions while Aurobindo was imprisoned), we find that Yoga is "a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life, or a few years, or even a few months of bodily existence." There is no better way to define the Magnum Opus than this, which also happens to be the truest definition of the Eastern Practice of Yoga.
This is very important and requires careful attention. There are many would be Mages out there who get so involved in watered down and incredibly primitive Western Paradigms, who have no real understanding that the aims of Magicians and the Ancient Vedantics and Yogins and Taoists and Buddhists and thereby Martial Artists, are absolutely and precisely the same thing. Many Magicians will disagree and debate me on this point, and as much as I respect their opinions and perspectives as true, I also recognize them as partial and therefor wrong in terms of an Integral Interpretation of Magick ... but I digress ...
The first thing a True Magician finds himself doing, is devoting himself to his own self-perfection or God-Realization. Being a Magician in the West is therefor no different than being a Yogin in the East. This was Aleister Crowley's fundamental gift to the paradigm and culture of Western Magick. By basing his system of Magick on the success of meditation (samadhi), he shewed without a doubt that these currents, while wildly different in expression (as East and West usually are), are fundamentally searching for the same source and summit of attainment.
Coming across Magicians who are concerned with nothing further than evoking demons or angels, or using Magick to attack others or somehow meta-physically gain material benefits in their life, one should simply laugh and move on. Its not that these things aren't possible; in fact all of the above is easily accomplished for a Magician; its just that these kinds of sorcery are rarely needed, if at all, in the life and times of a True Magician involved in the Magnum Opus.
I was in my early twenties when I completed my first Magickal Operation. Devotion or realization of the Magnum Opus is always the first successful act of Magick for a Magician. It marks the moment of true adulthood in life. It also marks the moment when Magick took over my life. Raped me as it were, and demanded that I walk the path I was put on this earth to walk. Everything that has happened and continues to happen after that is easily seen as occurring within the limitless and ever-present scope of the Magnum Opus. Many Magicians will consider this as false and self-limiting ... however this is actually a reflection of their own false and self-limiting paradigms ... a fundamental misunderstanding of the ever-present nature of the Magnum Opus.
The Magnum Opus by nature is beyond ego. The Ego, or self, is a component to the Magnum Opus, and the Magnum Opus is that; from the perspective of the self; which is living you right now. You, as an ego or self, are being lived by the Magnum Opus right now. Being a Magician is about accepting this, and cultivating the Genius through evolution which can recognize and participate in the Magnum Opus.
The moment I devoted myself to the Magnum Opus was the moment the adventure of my life truly began. The cycles and spirals of time and evolution ceased to be as rigid as I had grown up believing, and the feeling of destiny I had lived with for so long, while remaining real, became squarely my responsibility.
That is what the Magnum Opus essentially is; the acceptance of responsibility for one's deeper purpose, and the offering of the gifts that are essential to the fulfillment of one's life. Beyond the clench of your fear, beyond the practical considerations of one's life, the Magnum Opus and the realization of it, is the one underlying current of the life of the Magician. All else is play.
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