Descriptions:
Video Description
This lesson sounds less like a lecture and more like a kind confession from someone who watched old friends change overnight. Lyam Christopher begins in the halls of high school, where some students got swept into the adulting game, politics, posture, good looks, while others, the nerds and the hermetic dreamers, quietly put that phase on hold. The problem, he says, is that the delayed phase has a way of returning later and catching the self-initiate by surprise.
The trap is named plainly: Venus awakens, delivering irresistible highs of love, luxury, and parties, while Mars arrives with action and conquest. These are real forces, not weaknesses, but for the Golden Dawn student they can shatter the daily discipline that has carried them forward. He speaks of Netzach, the sphere of Venus, and the current of light the work cultivates. The task is not to despise the beauty or the fire but to recognize the pattern before it takes the wheel.
The ending refuses to moralize. You may still chase the success club and the optimizer’s game, he says, and that is your road to take. But the one who makes it through to the Adeptus Minor discovers something larger than performance: a place with no pressure left, where there is nothing forced to prove. The video becomes a gentle call to survive the glitter, keep the practice, and let the real transformation finish what it started.
Full Video Transcript
there’s something that happens to people when they grow up or when they reach puberty and you
might have noticed this in high school when you had some friends but then some of them became
total bitches or total assholes pretty much upon hitting puberty it’s as though they got sucked
into the the adulting game and started taking it all very seriously the politics you know
know the the posturing the the good looks and so on and I think that culture has very much taken
over in regards to you know the narcissism of our time even the younger kids are trying to get on
board with the adulting thing going on or what we refer to as adulting so there’s something that
comes over people when they reach puberty that I think many people in on the hermetic path or who
practice magic they were very much immune to this thing when it first struck so like say when you
enter puberty maybe you were one of those people like me who didn’t buy into this adulting game
and start you know politicking and being bitchy and being competitive and stuff like that right
and so that could be a problem for you as it was for me because that phase that people go through
seems to be important okay and so some people in your high school let’s say were going through
that phase before you and for you it was put on hold okay so that sort of adulting phase
was put on hold and you might have stayed like me you might have stayed in the nerd mode like
pretty much stayed in like I’m a really good student I learn about things I know all kinds
of facts I’m a geek right I play Dungeons and Dragons I read comic books you know that kind
of thing um and that sets you up really well to go into onto a path like magic because it’s more
study study intensive reading old books and scrolls and there’s a fantasy aspect to it and
there’s an imagination aspect to it and the whole world of adulting is kind of profane it’s what the
muggles do right uh and lo and behold you’re basically putting that off because eventually
in your development you’re going to have to face that phase and what happens a lot with people in
on the path to become like a mastering magic let’s say they’ll come across this thing and it
usually knocks on their door in the form of venus so once they do their venus initiation this is
like you know kind of like when a girl becomes a woman it’s kind of a venus initiation where
where she suddenly realizes that she wants to be attractive to men let’s say uh for for most women
that is and uh and when men start to get posturing and start to be competitive so they can show off
for women and then you know set up a nest have children procreate all this kind of stuff be
successful uh so there is a part of the path on the hermetic path where those forces of the
pretty much venus needs to be assimilated into the personality and that is where things can fall
apart so this is a warning actually because you go down the path and many people do the like the
golden dawn initiation path to become an adept somebody who can do magic and once they get to
the venus stage they will sometimes stop and they’ll say oh i’m good and then they go off and
they they’ve optimized a lot they’ve they’ve they’ve changed a lot uh and they’ve optimized
a lot of their personality and then they can go on into this adulting world and do pretty well
for themselves and not really um pursue magic any further and it’s perfectly normal for that to
happen uh in fact it might happen to you uh so um i want to point out um some of the issues with
that i’ve already talked about that a little bit okay so it’s kind of like coming across this whole
love thing can derail everything right and very often when somebody’s a teenager it strikes when
they start to have feelings for somebody that they don’t understand and then that whole adulting
thing starts to kick in all these strange nesting instincts start to come in to play all these I
need to be beautiful or I need to be competitive urges start to flare up oh yeah and so lo and
behold you have children that were so sweet at one time and then suddenly they become these
bitchy competitive monsters who are all into petty politics and and she said this about me
and then i said that and i didn’t mean it and that whatever and so uh what you’ll notice is that
this is a phase that everybody has to face okay i remember in when i was in college
had numerous roommates when i was going through college and these were young men who would
normally set up their own bedroom a sort of palatial setup and they didn’t seem to realize
what was happening they were creating this sort of love nest like a sort of fuck pad you know that
that was just some kind of fantasy about they could have the bed was so big they could have
multiple women on it you know things like that and i didn’t point it out but i kind of noticed
it it was like this is a fantasy that’s driving them and i don’t think they’re even aware of
they’re doing 100 you know that they’re starting to build this sort of love nest you know and of
course the the whole thing about getting a certain type of powerful car that the kind that grumbles
like a monster right um to display your prowess in front of your potential mates uh these things
start to take over and so this whole idea of adulting begins to set in and it can start with
venus when pretty much when you start to fall for somebody you have feelings for somebody then the
the tendency to want to build a nest and to maintain it kicks in and then you have all these
behaviors kicking in as well trying to look good trying to be competitive trying to make enough
money so i can rear my offspring and procreate and you have these whole um groups of people like
there’s there’s a success club vibe to them they’re all into performance optimization
maximize your productivity right uh they there’s a very strong worldliness to them a success thing
at all costs in fact there’s um it’s a hustle culture can build up around them so whatever it
takes i don’t need to have integrity i just need to get ahead so i can have my house with my wife
and my kids and whatever and procreate and then be discarded by by evolution pretty much at that
point you know uh they’re they’re kind of ending up a tool this whole adulting thing is kind of
ending up a tool to become like um somebody who’s capable of rearing offspring and then being
discarded you know pretty much um as the human race continues this is karma and it usually strikes
with some kind of love sickness and it doesn’t mean that um somebody would when you fall in love
with somebody it doesn’t have to be a literal person um for many adolescents they will go
watch a film and they’ll get lovesick because there was a love relationship in the film
and they wanted that. So, falling in love is really a very painful experience when the love
is not returned. And so, many teenagers will get lovesick watching a romance on the TV or in a
movie and then they’ll enter this phase of oh i need to get i need to get a larger bed i i need
to to have a career i need to provide so i can provide for somebody else in my life who whom i
don’t have yet right and what this amounts to in terms of magic and the mysteries the mystery
traditions is that we are looking for happiness in the wrong place and many of you have probably
already noticed that you you know you’re watching a television show or something like that and the
characters say oh this is my shot at happiness like in other words they meet somebody and it
looks like it could be a good love relationship and then they regard that as their shot at
happiness i i very often find that hilarious because many people i know who are married or
in relationships are not happy. And the source of the unhappiness largely has a lot to do with
the relationship. Yeah. So, that means primarily that happens because they’re looking for their
happiness in the relationship. Whereas if somebody is on a spiritual path, it’s okay to be married
and have relationships. You know, there are rabbis who have wives and things like that.
and there are tibetan masters who are householders who have spouses or lovers many lovers right
and it’s not that big a deal because it’s just simply a part of the life they’re not putting
all their eggs in that basket okay so the romance is just something that goes on in their life it’s
not something that they rely upon to be their source for happiness and of course very miserable
thing to do to somebody to try to make them into your source of happiness because they will not
be able to provide that for you. What this amounts to is looking for happiness in the wrong place.
And so there’s this old joke about a drunk man who stands under a streetlight. He’s searching
the pavement for something and a policeman comes by and asks, did you lose something, sir? Yes,
he replies, I dropped my car keys somewhere across the street. Then of course the officer is like,
what like then why are you looking for them here and he said well the light’s better here it’s
under the street light right so the the the idea here is that he has lost his keys in a dark place
and he doesn’t want to go into the dark to try to find them so instead of going into the dark
he stays under the street lights to look for them so you can see how this relates to looking for
happiness in the wrong place okay so it’s a bit of subtle allegory i guess right uh and so it’s
a helpful image though because a lot of times you’ll catch yourself looking for fulfillment
in a particular place or in a particular astrological house maybe right and um you’ll
notice that well maybe i keep looking in the same place where actually is that fulfillment oh maybe
it’s not in any place at all and of course very often finding fulfillment involves shadow work
going into the dark going into the unexplored aspects of yourself and exploring them
helping them acclimate helping them cultivate themselves helping them evolve that’s where the
fulfillment comes from uh shadow work more or less right and of course what does true magic help us
with most of all it is of course shadow work now in the golden dawn one of the problems with the
golden dawn is if you’ve got lots of students in the hermetic tradition who are nerds they’re geeks
they play dungeons and dragons they they used to read comic books and probably still do
and they watch superhero movies you know things like that they’re really big into sci-fi and
fantasy um think about um in a family unit you have the older sister and younger brother let’s
say right and the older sister hates the younger brother it’s like you you sit around and read
comic books all day and you play dungeons and dragons don’t you know none of that’s real
and then he can’t stand her because she’s always
primping her hair and trying to look good
for her boyfriend and
fussing about her clothes and
playing sad
romance music all the time
and he just seems like a
silly teenage girl to him
who has ditched
all of her intellectual interests because
she’s completely
possessed or taken over by Venus at this point
trying to become the ideal
mate so all that
you know learning she did in high school is kind of pushed to the side that’s all hermetic stuff
that’s all mercury she’s in venus mode now all right so um a lot of people who go into
magic are like hermetic magic are people who have um were not interested in going through this venus
stage and unfortunately what happens though as they develop themselves so they’re really doing
the work they’re going to have to face venus sooner or later yes and it’ll it’ll very likely
come later in life and this is why the number four here on the tree that is the fourth grade
of the inner order that is the grade of venus and that can be a major stumbling block and that is
where many people will stop they’ll just go off and do fabulous things with their careers at that
point and they won’t make it to grade number five which is um adeptus minor where the ego
supposedly supposedly gets sacrificed and you gain the knowledge and conversation of your holy
guardian angel and all that really cool stuff that gives you magical powers supposedly they
stop short because all of the stuff they’ve been doing in their on their medic path is like geek
stuff it’s imaginary it’s not real i need to go after something real let’s start being an adult
for once and they go off and live you know this life of spouses and careers and children and cars
and mortgages and taxes and all whatnot and that that’s that sort of takes them over too like now
an adept is somebody who manages all these things just fine but the venus aspect of their life is
just one aspect of it so somehow they’ve learned to get through the venus stage without being
completely taken over by the adulting. Okay, and so as we go through the grades, we start with
Zolotar in number one there, and then we go up to number two, which is Theoricus, and number three
is Practicus, and number four is Philosophus, right? And then number five is Adeptus Minor Grade.
The goal is to get to five, and we start in the neophyte grade, which is like outside the tree,
and then we go to grade one, two, three, four, and hopefully make it to five. Most people will
not make it to five, by the way. And one of the main reasons for that is that the Venus is lying
in wait to ambush you and drag you off into the realm of adulting. All right, so yes, we start in
the Zolotar grade. See that red circle at the bottom there? That’s a fairly simple grade. We’re
mainly just working with Earth. No planets are involved yet. Then we get to grade number two,
with the oracus that’s where we’re working with air and the moon okay but when we work with the
moon we will also get some of the sort of opposite traits coming in bleeding in okay so it’s important
during the oracus that we invoke a little bit of the moon every monday the student invokes and
banishes the moon and every saturday the student invokes and banishes saturn okay these are sort
of opposites if you think of the moon is sort of like the fertility goddess she is the mother
goddess she is all about maintaining the nest egg this is part of adulting okay maintaining the
household um taking care of the children having babies making babies right uh and everybody has
a fairly anybody who can maintain a pretty good house has a fairly good um lunar aspect moon
aspect okay and then of course the opposite of that is the the bitter um sterile mother or father
time you know which is he’s old he’s not fertile at all he’s been he has all kinds of traditions
and strict rules and things like that right and these are both important um to uh you get a little
bit of exposure to the planets in the elemental grades okay but of course the elemental grades
are mostly about the elements so in grade number two where there’s the moon it’s mostly about air
every single day you invoke and banish air then we go to grade three which is practicus and this
is the grade of water you can see along with water there’s a little bit of invocation and
banishing of mercury now mercury is the nerd uh the geek uh of the of all the gods right he’s
messenger of the gods he’s all about learning and systems and statistics um if a kid is really
caught up in getting all the stats of his football players famous football players let’s say or the
stats of superheroes or playing dungeons and dragons and say oh my my fifth level fighter
so powerful right um so uh that’s all mercury type stuff um very systematic very um not yet
adulting it’s just playing at being the some of with these adult systems in a very um overly
intellectual way and hyper very imaginative too it’s a good phase i think um uh it’s a it’s a
shame that um a majority of people don’t seem to develop um mercury enough and then of course with
mercury the opposite of that is like jupiter how is jupiter the opposite of mercury you want to
think of it like the mercury is like the eternal student like the teacher’s pet and jupiter is like
the professor of higher learning who’s is the mentor the teacher kind of a father figure to
the sun essentially okay a very benevolent you know a teacher father figure type in that
relationship yeah mercury tends to be very particularly focused and scattered that way
and jupiter tends to be very broad expansively focused everything focused right okay you’ll
notice the sun is included in that okay and so throughout all the grades um tifareth or that
sphere number five there the golden sphere that’s that’s the goal you’re trying to get there no
matter what it’s always the trying to get to that grade of the sun in the center of the tree of life
is sort of the goal and uh we don’t do any invocations or banishings in regard to that
but the sun it pretty much represents the position of the ego and the ego is the thing that you are
coming to terms with as you explore all of its facets all of its aspects so you might see that
the mars the jupiter the venus and the mercury and the moon those are all facets of the ego okay
and of course the ego sits there right at the sun the sphere of the sun is the sphere of pride and
hubris uh so and of course ego the ego is essentially prideful and full of hubris right
and of course at that station of the sun if the student is successful at uh the golden dawn system
of magic um he or she will be able to sacrifice the ego destroy the ego essentially it’ll die
okay or it’ll die and come back and die and come back and it’s sort of a shake and bake process
okay i’ve talked about that in other videos and now here comes the trip step eventually students
get to the philosophist grade grade number four and that’s where venus rears her beautiful head
and so and along with venus comes mars and you can see how venus and mars are the primary culprits
in this whole adulting world the world of power politics the world of sex the epstein class
all of this stuff when like when you don’t have anybody at the helm at station number five there
when there’s nobody in charge when when it when venus and mars have no king in the center um then
you get um psychopaths and sociopaths who are basically attempting to seize power uh run the
country and of course have pedophile rings and all kinds of things or just have lots of women
lots of debauchery and things like that that and debauchery politics power games
with no real compassion or anything going on there okay so venus and mars without that sun
in the center and without jupiter mercury also these tend to be the psychopaths and the sociopaths
the narcissists and surprise surprise they gravitate into positions of power because
that’s really all that they respect power and sex maybe right and so when we enter this grade it’s
it can be really difficult because it uh you’re now invoking venus along with mars
and you’re invoking fire it’s a fire element okay so if you didn’t deal with this adulting phase
before now you’re forced to deal with it and usually well not usually often what happens is
people just get completely taken over by it and they go off and start adulting and they leave all
this childish magic stuff behind it’s not real right it’s just imagination it’s just psychological
and then of course um the the adept the their teacher will will cry in private but the but
they’ll they’ll say it’s perfectly fine you go off and do that um there’s nothing really wrong
with that uh but of course um the teacher very often was very eager to meet the student once
they had dropped the ego to see what they were like it’s like a sort of a suspense thing when
somebody finally begins to the ego begins to fall away and you get to meet them it’s like
there you are this is what you had to show me i saw it all along but it was you weren’t letting
it out now here it is so good to meet you for the first time you know uh and unfortunately you know
people won’t make it there they’ll go off and they’ll continue to live this world of the false
persona with the wife and the kids and the picket fence and the mortgage and things like that fine
and then eventually we get to the portal grade which is not really into farath is the uh the
aspirant in the portal grade is you could see him as knocking on the door standing in front of that
golden sphere there and trying to get in like knocking on the door there trying to get will
let me in like um and then of course uh has to the price for entry into that sphere is ego death and
if you see the path right above that uh that blue path that rises right above that it goes straight
together and one way of looking at that is um since it’s the portal grade like it’s the door
grade right you want to go through the door um it’s kind of like a trap door because you do the
supreme invoking ritual and stuff like that and eventually um what might happen is the ego will
collapse and then you fall through the trapdoor and then you’ll slide all the way down into
kether you’ll have a blast you know like the ego drops for a second and then you’ll come back as
the persona back down into sphere number five there where it’s the golden sun right and then
the real virtue of the sun comes out okay so the um at first where the sun was a symbol of pride
or hubris it now becomes a symbol of kingship or true sovereignty which is now capable of juggling
all the other spheroth mars jupiter venus mercury moon saturn it can juggle them all and give them
all fair voice allowing them all to speak or and making sure none of them are repressed
so as you can see for those of us who think we can ignore the venus initiation because
she’s such a bitch right and mars is so so evil and power hungry uh and destructive uh that we’re
glad we avoided that wow but i’m sorry these phases are required okay and that’s why in the
philosopher’s grade grade number four the grade of venus one of the required readings is how to
win friends and influence people sounds like a very evil title right but of course it goes right
into that adulting game with the politics and the charisma and the charm and of course how to avoid
fighting, how to avoid power games or how to play the real power game that doesn’t really involve
arguments or conflicts. So, if you find yourself, the problem with entering into the Venus phase
is that it completely seems to take you over. So, you think this is my whole world now. It’s
kind of like being in love everything’s about that other person or the person that um that you need
in your life everything’s about attracting that right mate right even if you’re lovesick with no
particular if you’re lovesick and you have no particular partner that you’re looking for
you just want somebody because you saw that romance movie right um that lovesickness is
very much the same as being just in love with a particular person when that takes you over the
whole world gets colored by that and so venus is now just kind of dropped on top of you and or has
arisen as you and what you what you’re not noticing yet you’re not the adept yet is that you’ve been
taken over by venus possessed okay and one of the ways to see yourself clear of that it’s not like
we’re trying to get away from it it’s more like we’re trying to not be automatically taken over
and see that as our only option okay venus is very important in fact when you reach a depth
ship you probably spend most of your time hanging out in the sphere of venus it’s just a wonderful
place once you get over this all this adulting shit so one of the best ways to see yourself
clear of being caught in this venus trap your venus fly trap is to see it as a sacred space
that is sort of like a spirit trap it’s a temenos a temenos is a sacred space that is designed to
contain a particular type of activity a sacred activity and to exclude other types of activity
and so venus’s space excludes everything except for venus things like beauty beauty love
love or love like love type things right um luxury parties um pleasure comfort all these venus things
that are just wonderful and yet we get so obsessed with them because we’ve been taken over by venus
okay and so if you if this is happening you you can see yourself as entering a sort of sacred
venus space it’s like well i’m simply in a venus um enclosure right now i’m not going to be here
forever it’s kind of like um when you come down with the flu the whole world looks really crappy
and you just have to remind yourself that this is just the flu talking eventually i’ll get out
of the flu and things will look better again you know so because the flu can make you depressed
all right so um this idea of temen temeno so you feel you you can feel that oh i’ve entered into a
zone that doesn’t mean that this is my life now if you keep that in mind you can keep going with
the work you can keep doing the rituals okay even though it’ll be difficult because it’s a period of
dryness that takes over you’re pursuing your career you’re trying to get your mate you’ve
installed a king-size bed because you’re really into this whole mating ritual thing and trying
to get a partner and a nest egg and all these things right and yet you’re still doing the
hermetic work all this nerdy stuff that you don’t believe in anymore to some degree right and so it
becomes more difficult to do the work because oh i got to do this way i’m drawing pentagrams in the
air like i’m a harry potter or something like that this is so childish i can’t believe i’m doing this
but you do it you push through and eventually you will emerge out of that venus temenos that
venus space you’ll get out of natsaka and then lo and behold all these other spheroth on the
tree of life are also available to you and then venus rather than rather than becoming your
overlord she becomes your friend and you can hang out with her whenever you want and you will
probably choose to hang out with her a lot because she’s just so fabulous she or he venus is not
always uh female adonis right so not that sock can be seen as a spirit trap okay now spirit traps are
very interesting they’re actually were devices they’re basically distraction zones for spiritual
beings. And you could even say that when we were discarnate and our souls were floating around in
the astral, if you want to picture it that way, there’s some kind of fractal pattern that came
along and enchanted us, distracted us, and we went into it and suddenly, oops, I’m incarnate.
I’m in a spirit trap. And that’s the way many of the traditions, the mystery traditions,
see our predicament right now. It’s like, oh, we’ve fallen for it. We’ve fallen into the world
of matter because we fell for some kind of illusory pattern karmic pattern right that attracted us
and the interesting thing is that um some people say that well the the way that that form looks
that this sort of fractal form that attract us into an incarnated existence that fractal form
is the pentagram perhaps because the pentagram is sort of like a looks like a creature with
two arms and two legs, right? And a head, right? And it has all kinds of ratios to it that have to
do with manifestations of life, like the leaves in a tree and the DNA spiral. There’s very strange
stuff going on with the pentagram in that regard. Anyway, that’s just a theory anyway, but something
drew us into this life supposedly and now we’re sucked in and we’re in a spirit trap. We won’t be
here forever and so but everything looks a particular way because we’re being um held by
the various forces that are that exist here and compelled to see in their terms and of course as
we do the work the magical work we learn to see um the the universe free of those compelling forces
or those possessing forces that have taken us over right or grabbed hold of us and now we right
so we develop perception that goes beyond the forces that are attempting to rule our existence
here let’s say right and spirit traps i don’t know if this is legitimate this is a but it’s
a spirit trap that you can buy online but you can see these are like various types of geometric
patterns and designs that essentially just fascinate a particular type of spirit and
supposedly hold them there for a while and you can see all magical sigils this way okay and the
pentagram is particularly interesting because it seems if that’s an incarnation sigil or spirit
trap um it’s a powerful one and what you notice is that we’re using it to actually incarnate and
disincarnate various forces we’re actually using it to do that uh invoking and banishing is
incarnating and disincarnating the this is where it becomes important and the reason that people
get stuck in that Venus-Mars axis, the reason people get stuck in all these Epstein-class
games, power politics and sex orgies and underground sex clubs and blah, blah, blah,
right? It’s mainly because they’re psychopaths or sociopaths or classic narcissists, which means
they lack empathy if you lack empathy once you step into the venus trap the venus mars trap
you won’t be able to get out of it okay because in order to get out of it you have to identify
with the various let’s say demonic forces that are attempting to take you over and if you cannot
sympathize with them as what they want like why do i suddenly have this urge to build a big nest
for like a love nest for some partner i don’t even have yet what’s going on here
oh it’s this thing it’s an instinct that’s arising and it wants to do this of course it does why
wouldn’t it that’s how humans have procreated that’s it this is you empathizing with that
particular spiritual force it’s a spirit force right uh it’s we we normally call that mundane
but it’s basically just one of the planetary type powers so the ability to recognize these things as
they’re trying to take us over requires that empathy requires imagination so that we imagine
what it’s like to be them and how it is how has it how have they evolved to be this way then we
begin to speculate and as we do that we separate from them it’s like oh these particular urges to
build the nest egg and to attract the perfect mate and to have a high-ranking position with
a corner office and all these things, these aren’t real. These are spiritual forces that
are karmic. They’re trying to accomplish something through me. They’re taking me over so that
something can be accomplished. I don’t have to allow that. I can just observe them and I can
use them and I can cultivate them in different ways, but I don’t have to do precisely what they
are demanding of me i certainly don’t have to um just go to sleep and let them take me over and
make me do things okay and so the magician is somebody who can now recognize these things as
they arise and simply decline the offer to be possessed by them but to use the energy of them
to do other things or or to do the the very things that those forces have been evolved to do even
better nothing wrong with pursuing the perfect wife and the picket fence and all these things
why not if that’s something uh you want and you can pursue it without getting uh trapped in a life
of unconsciousness why not so this is the importance of empathy sympathy compassion and
imagination if you don’t have these things you’re going to end up trapped forever and it is probably
a type of hellish existence I would think to end up like these people in the Epstein class
who are basically psychopaths who just live entirely in their heads and play power games
all day long and that’s all there is to their lives you know I mean I’m exaggerating and here
we come to the idea of love versus love so Venus is the goddess of love but it’s kind of important
to say that Tifereth, the very center of the tree of life, okay, that’s probably a better
sphere for love because that’s the Christ center. That’s where your ego gets crucified. So,
that is the Jesus center on the tree of life, let’s say, right? Where the ego gets crucified
and then sacrificed so that the true self can emerge. So, and that sacrifice is the ultimate
act of love, that type of sacrifice. Getting rid of all my own personal unconscious self-interest
so that I can now embody my higher self, whatever that is, whatever it wants. Now that’s a loving
act, right? So in that regard, Venus, she’s not on the center of the tree. We go through Venus
before we get to the sun level or to the Tifarth level, okay? So before we get to that Christ
consciousness, we go through the sphere of Venus. And Venus can be seen as the outer court of love.
So, love is like the burning heart. And then for Venus, love is more affection, the expression of
love, the beauty of love, or the flirting games that seem to look like love, you know, the
adornments of love. Not necessarily love itself, okay? But the people in the Golden Dawn put Venus
in very high regard regardless even though she’s not necessarily the sphere of true love
she’s more the sphere of affection okay the outer expression of love let’s say right
or the pretend expression of love um she’s more the outsides of it right um even so the people
in the golden dawn they would superimpose the symbol of venus as sort of a meditation a little
intellectual meditation here, and say that Venus touches upon all the spheroth on the tree of life,
all the way up to the very top, the monad. In other words, the entire universe is love.
God is love sort of thing, right? So, what this kind of indicates then is that this whole act
of affection, of reaching out to somebody to show them that you love them, permeates every aspect
of the universe okay so we do have this idea of love versus love this is luv right um the outer
expression of love which is more the pornography you know or the flirtation or um looking pretty
to attract somebody but also um just stroking somebody um to comfort them okay so um a lot of
times those kinds of actions like hugging somebody are very needy they’re not necessarily the true
love but they’re they’re starting to get at it to some degree right most of the people you meet when
they hug you are clinging to you there’s maybe a little bit of recognition that what they’re
actually doing is affirming their oneness with you okay when you hug the adept supposedly they are
when they hug you it’s more like um i’m just affirming that you and i are the one and the
hugging isn’t even necessary just something that we do because you can see hugging each other is
kind of a clingy thing to do actually and it be so eventually we graduate from that we still hug
people but then it becomes more of an affirmation of universal oneness now universal inclusivity
and as you can see here we have mercury on the tree of life and mercury does not touch upon all
the severe oath touches upon all the severe oath except for kether at the very top the very essence
of creation is not touched by mercury so mercury you remember is the sort of nerd phase that we go
through with the comic books and the role-playing games and the superheroes you know and being a
good student and all these things and uh what they’re saying that’s a very profound thing to
say that the knowledge that we gain as we’re a good student it’ll get us almost all the way there
but not quite it’s not enough and what’s really required is that ultimate act of pure perfection
not just love in its essence but the expression of love coming from the the the core of the
universe coming an authentic expression of affection which is you know love love coming
out to express itself which is also known as light in extension okay so for those of you
been studying the neophyte ritual you’ll know that’s very important and so what you guys are
doing if you guys are doing like a regular ritual practice where you’re casting a circle or you’re
doing the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram every day you might wonder what spirit trap is
this okay the way we look at this circle that we’re drawing here it’s like well so i’m inviting
various forces to to take over my world view here right and this is a particular type of spirit trap
i’m creating for myself that means i’m not really seeing the universe purely uh the way it is right
i’m seeing it in terms of magic yeah that’s true but basically what what the goal of this is it’s
a sort of a meta temenos in other words you want to get rid of all you want to push out all the
other types or ways of seeing all the other spheroth are being pushed out to the sides
and you’re supposedly supposedly clearing a space that’s free of all of them but that is its own
kind of temenos okay and this is the world of the magician who is capable of entering any temenos
he wants to at will okay and that’s why we spend so much time banishing because we want to get free
of all these things we don’t want to get stuck in adulting mode forever uh we want to be able to
do the adulting thing when it’s appropriate which is really not that often called for you know so
being an adult is um is very childish actually because uh what do children try to do all the
time they’re they’re obsessed with becoming adults they’re always imitating adults all
their games are adult type games they’re pretending to be adults you know and once
we reach adulthood we’re like oh just first of all this isn’t so hard right and then the second
is um that oh this isn’t what i thought it would be and it’s just something i do when i go out in
public and i pretend to be a responsible citizen who’s you know doing the right thing all the time
and i pretend to be 100 in control of my actions which is impossible of course but yeah this it’s
one of those masks that we put on which is perfectly fine as long as you don’t get caught
in it all right so that is the story of how love not really love but um nitsakh or venus or mars
and venus can come along and sabotage your magical progress possibly as it does for so many
people even at the level of high school and it ruins their life from that point on as far as
i’m concerned like it seems to uh so i could say don’t let this happen to you but of course you
know it might happen and then you’d be like no i want to do this i want to be in the success club
i want to be an optimizer i want to maximize my performance fine this is what you’ll go off and
do then and of course the magician if you make it into adeptus minor is so much more than that
so much more and there’s no pressure anymore either there’s nothing
you don’t have to do anything very nice all right until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher