Descriptions:
Video Description
Some videos are delivered with a little nervous laughter, and this one earns it. Lyam Christopher nearly kept the material only for his patrons, because it contains his own revisions to Golden Dawn tradition. The subject is the Tree of Life’s list of virtues and vices, the occult powers each sphere is meant to awaken, and his quiet claim that some of those old attributions were written a little too quickly.
The heart of the lesson is a fresh look at a virtue many people take for granted: family values. In the standard system, duty to home and kin sits on the lower levels of the tree, along with its shadow, insularity, the glad shutting-out of everyone else. He suggests the higher balance is not to abandon caring for family but to ride upon that instinct the way a cyclist balances above the wheels, caring for a wider circle without losing the first. That is independence in its truest sense, the central virtue of Tifareth.
Then he opens the door to his own audacity. The original Golden Dawn preferred to withhold some of the real work until the inner order, and he was never fond of that delay. In Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, he chose to let students begin the actual magic sooner, trusting the practice to teach itself. He invites disagreement freely, knowing that a tradition only stays alive when honest people are willing to touch it. The result is a moving picture of a teacher who loves the system enough to question it.
Full Video Transcript
I almost didn’t release this video to the general public.
I was just going to release it to the Patreon site called Forbidden Realms, just to the followers there.
Because the video involves a revision to Golden Dawn tradition or Golden Dawn lore.
That is ceremonial magic as it is taught by the Golden Dawn.
and um but i i think in general it’s important to acknowledge that engaging with the golden
dawn system in this way can be very productive okay so i’m going to leave it up to you to decide
whether or not um my audacity to do this is really a virtue or a vice should i really be making
revisions to the sacred scripture of the golden dawn okay so what it comes down to is that
the types of occult powers, supposedly, that you can develop by practicing high magic.
One of the bases of that, the idea of occult powers, is presented very briefly,
and I think hastily, in the Golden Dawn system. And that is the system of virtues and vices
that are attributed to the sphere of oath on the Tree of Life. In the system of Kabbalah,
as it’s presented by the golden dawn this is the system of virtues and vices each sphere on the
tree of life has a virtue and a vice and supposedly if you become an initiate who can practice high
magic then you are someone who embodies the virtues of those occult powers instead of the
vices of those occult powers right so what is an occult virtue what is an occult vice the the trap
that we fall into is that we fall into the standard uninitiated definition of what a virtue
is. Because most of us, when we think of virtues, we think of good manners and how to behave
in a performative way so that we can get what we want. So the virtue of love is like, well,
we behave in a certain loving manner because then it gets us to love and affection and other things
that we want. So even when we think we’re not doing that, that’s probably what we’re doing.
When we think of the idea of like, you know, good behavior, good manners. So when virtues are merely
performative, they are vices. I’m sorry to say. So all of your good behavior, if it’s just for the
sake of good behavior to get you good results, guess what? It’s a vice. But you can think of
that as a certain magical technology. Like, well, I do these things so I can get results, right?
That’s kind of like magic, right? I do this and then I get that. No, that is not how real magic
works, okay? Or that’s not how high magic works. High magic works in a different dimension of
reality. It’s not a matter of doing something over here so that you can get something over there,
okay? Now, many people come to magic because that’s what they want. And then, you know,
people like me will come along and say, well, you’re, you’re basically engaging in magical
thinking and magical thinking. According to a psychologist, magical thinking is not really how
magic works, unfortunately. All right. So waving a magic wand over here, getting a result to come
out of that waving of the magic wand, getting a result to come out of that over there. That is not
the way it works. So if you’re interested in magic for that regard, in that regard, then
drop it go somewhere else okay so an occult virtue is quite different and it’s quite the the guide we
can use is quite simple i’ve already gone over this in the video on the initiation at parakeeth
okay uh so when when one becomes an adept in the golden dawn tradition or in high magic
one has to pass this initiation in which you surrender your desire of this for that to a
different type of desire. And it’s quite simple because when you live in a world where you think
you are a thing desiring other things, then you are pretty much sleepwalking. You’re living in a
dream world, okay? Because the ultimate reality of it is that you are not a thing. This body that
you think you are walking around needing things and wanting things in order to survive, that is
not truly who you are or what you are. That sounds absurd, of course, to the materialist. But of
course, if you’re walking around in a world thinking that you are merely an object that can
be kicked around by other objects, do you see, can you see how that pretty much puts you in a world
of vices where now all of your good behaviors are simply performative, simply a matter of me
behaving this way as an object so I can get to my objective, that object over there. It’s simply a
matter of this form desiring another form over here. This is horizontal, okay? When I regard
myself as a form desiring another form, me here, that there, or a form afraid of another form,
that level of interaction, nothing wrong with it. We’ve evolved to function this way, okay?
But if that’s the only aspect of your reality that you think is real, then you’re functioning
in the world of vices of objects desiring each other and objects fearing each other the thing
that comes to the rescue is that vertical dimension on the cross that you see here on this beautiful
woman the uh so in other in other words in order to really truly embody a virtue your desire as an
object for another object is now secondary. The primary desire now becomes simply your ability
or your desire as an object to embody something that is not an object, to embody a formless
virtue, a formless principle, a formless aspect of the divine. That is what an occult virtue is.
an aspect of the divine that is beyond form.
And the only thing truly worth having in the world,
according to theurgy and high magic,
is the ability to embody divine virtues within the realm of form.
Any desire you have as a form for another form is perfectly fine,
but it’s not the goal of high magic.
Okay, so that horizontal dimension on the cross of one form desiring another, if that’s all that’s going on, whenever that’s happening, then it’s a vice.
That’s why it’s so sinful for you to simply desire another person as an object of your affection or something like that.
But that doesn’t mean that that horizontal desire is inherently sinful, because if it also includes the vertical dimension, then your desire for the other person, let’s say, for their body, let’s say, can also become an expression of the higher virtue of the ability to express the formless aspect of love in the world of form.
It’s very important. God, that is so important, okay? Because one of the problems with all of
these Western systems of philosophy and religion is that they demonize the horizontal dimension.
And they say, any desire of you as an object for another object is inherently evil. And we need to
get out of our bodies because our bodies are evil or something like that, right?
no no no no no no in theurgy or in high magic the the body and the horizontal dimension and all that
is basically a medium of manifestation a medium of expression of formless divine virtues into the
realm of form i thought this was going to be a brief video it’s turning out to be much longer
as usual all right so now the revisions so i’m making some revisions to the virtues and vices
is a tribute to the sphere oath on the tree of life. These are the traditional virtues. I’m not
sure you can see this. This is kind of small, I guess. I should have thought about this.
So these are the traditional virtues. I take these from Dion Fortune’s Mystical Kabbalah,
which is pretty much the standard for a reflection upon the Golden Dawn system of Kabbalah taught as
high magic within the golden dawn. And what you’ll notice is that each of the spheroth on the tree of
life, each one of them has a virtue. So technically speaking, in terms of high magic, these are
formless principles. They exist on a very high level, let’s say maybe a briatic level of the
tree of life, where there is no form. They are infinite. They’re not things to get, okay? They
are principles that are unlimited in nature, which can not be grabbed upon or grasped or seized upon
and then made to be yours. You can’t go out and get them, but it’s almost like you can tune yourself
like a radio receiver and then be able to express them into the world of form. They exist everywhere,
everywhere at once. They’re available to everyone at all the time, all the time. If you are, let’s
say, pure enough, or you’ve done enough work, shadow work, let’s say, in order to notice them
and then express them into the world. And really, the hallmark of the adept is really nothing other
than the ability to embody these virtues. All right. Now, what you’ll notice is that every
single sphera on the Tree of Life, according to the traditional original Golden Dawn, has a virtue.
and every well and here are the vices the traditional vices associated with each each
sphere and you’ll notice that’s the top two sphere oath kether and hakma do not have vices associated
with them because there’s they are supposedly so pure and so high up that they cannot be in error
okay i would tend to agree with that but the primary reason that happens is because the top
two spheroth on the tree of life those two that don’t have any vices up there um these don’t have
planets or planets attribute attributed to them at least not in the classical system of planets
that the ancients used okay and so it’s really only the um the planets and the earth itself down
below there’s seven planets let’s say and the earth down at the very bottom that have uh vices
attributed to them, okay? In my revision, though, I assign vices to all of the spheros. Talk about
audacity, right? Let’s do this. This table is probably easier to read, I think. Okay, so we
have the very top sphera of the Tree of Life. The virtue is attainment. These are according to
Dion Fortune’s book, The Mystical Kabbalah. Attainment is the topmost virtue. Devotion,
it’s not that easy to understand if you study kabbalah these are not so easy to understand
and i the thing that strikes me is that i think these virtues and vices were somewhat hastily
kind of assigned to the various sphere oath and what they suffer from i think is the idea of
virtues being opposites that’s the main problem so occasionally they get it right and they basically
say that, well, a virtue is something that you can embody as a formless principle in the world of
form. But when you get it wrong, then you are not embodying a formless principle. You’re merely
being performative, and so you’re misapplying that virtue according to something selfish that
you want. Okay, and we can talk about this more in detail once we get down to it in the nitty-gritty.
so you can see that a really good example of that is number eight there the sphere of mercury or
hod truthfulness and dishonesty so if truthfulness becomes a vice it’s not going to become its
opposite necessarily it’s going to be truthfulness misapplied okay not the opposite of lying lying
to people necessarily, okay? So we’re going to talk about that. This is why I’m revising the
various occult powers or the virtues, okay? So my revisions, I probably should just go straight to
the table. So my revisions are based on the fact that virtues are better seen as formless principles
that you can embody within the realm of form, which kind of make life worth living, okay? We
can talk about that in a bit. And then of course, but if you try to grab onto those virtues as
things that you can make, you can make them work for you and get you things, then they become vices
like these. And let’s just go to the table and look at these. I’m glad I made the table actually,
so that’s good. All right, so let’s start at the bottom. Okay, so in the original Golden Dawn,
the virtue attributed to Malkuth, the very bottom sphere of the tree, was discrimination,
which is fine with me but of course discrimination the definition of that has changed
thanks to the emphasis on social justice recently and discrimination now becomes a negative term
unfortunately but we can still you know use another term that sort of captures what they
were trying to get at with that term the reason they just they ascribed discriminating discrimination
to the lowest sphere on the tree of life is that they kind of saw the bottom sphere of the tree of
life number 10 there as sort of the anus of the universe where things are excreted all right so
when you’re working in the material realm there’s a matter of being able to sift the wheat from the
chaff let’s say or is that how you say it wheat the wheat from the chaff and so you make use of
certain things and you discard other things so the ability the ability to discern value and the
ability to see how things are merely outward appearances and can be discarded in terms of
their outward appearances all right so discernment um in the world of material things is your ability
to look beyond form okay and if you can’t do that then you are a materialist in other words the vice
aspect of number 10 is materialism okay you see things merely in terms of their material
as you know if you walk into a forest all you and all you see is lumber then you’re functioning on
in the realm of materialism nothing wrong with that necessarily but at the same time if that’s
all you can see or that’s that’s that’s your habit and you can’t see majestic godlike entities
that are looming over you speaking some kind of secret language that’s a shame okay it doesn’t
mean you don’t cut them down but at the same time if you can’t see that in trees there is
to many people’s minds something something wrong with you because you are now merely in the realm
of materialism or as the native americans might say you suffer from wendigo which is like a
cannibal spirit where you just can’t get enough you just keep consuming consuming consuming which
they say the white man suffered from anyway now number nine the sphere sphere number nine
yesod that’s the sphere of the moon now in the original golden dawn tradition if we go back up
there the virtue was considered independence and the vice was idleness i’m not sure i think i see
how that developed that is not really very much in tune with what’s going on with yesod though
yesod as the sphere of the moon is really much the sphere of family values reproduction taking
care of the house domesticity being a mom so it’s really the virtue of that svera is the is
nurturance being able to take care of your little ones and your husband okay and as a husband the
ability to take care of your wife protect the children patrol the grounds of the house these
are all lunar concerns or yesodic concerns this idea of the virtue of yesod being independence
It might have come somewhat from theurgy, but I think it’s a misunderstanding because
the kind of independence they’re talking about there really occurs in Tifareth. So you have this,
here’s the traditional virtues on the Tree of Life according to the Golden Dawn.
This idea of Yasod, that second sphere up from the bottom, okay, if you look at the sphere above that,
that’s the sphere of tifareth that would be the true sphere of independence when you can rise above
the concerns of taking care of the house taking care of the family and not be so immersed in that
group mindset but to ride upon that mindset and think for yourself that would be more what happens
at a higher level of consciousness okay so the ability to master your soul or the ability to
master that second sphere there, second from the bottom, would be higher up. And I think Dion
Fortune refers to the idea of independence as the ability to ride a bicycle, the ability to balance
on top of those lower forces, which of course, the idea of balance is really a virtue of Tifareth,
which is that sphere, that central circle on the tree of life there. Okay. I hope that makes sense.
To those of you who’ve studied Kabbalah and who are familiar with these things,
then that will probably make a lot of sense to you all right and of course the vice of family
values is insularity in other words i only take care of the people i know closest to me my family
to hell with all everybody else it’s just them that matters right so in other words if that’s
all you do then of course it’s a vice because then you are very um clannish clannishness right
so you’re very very sticking to your family i only take care of the people that are close to me
and anybody these damn foreigners like get them out of my country god damn it you know so that is
that is the vice aspect of the lunar sphere okay so yeah if you see people who are excessively
patriotic you can say you know what you suffer from the vice of your soul and see that would
fix everything wouldn’t it sphere number eight truthfulness so sphere number eight is pretty
cool that’s the sphere of the nerd the scholar the person who thinks a lot the person who reads
a lot, the person who studies, the person who practices hermetic magic, because it’s a lot of
reading and studying and really dry-looking tables like this with correspondences and things like
that. And so obviously the virtue of that is accuracy, might be a better term, the truthfulness
of it. So in other words, if you’re going to use information to convey truth, then it would be
virtuous. But if you use that information for your own selfish ends, that’s not necessarily
lying. It’s better referred to as spin doctrine, or even propaganda, because you’re using truth,
but you’re only using it selectively to further up your own form aspect as this or that person
who’s looking to get something. Okay, remember, virtue is very simple. Virtue frees us from what
we think we are as limited forms. Not that there’s anything wrong with form, but when you
think you really are a particular form, then you’re stuck. And that is truly klepothic or
in a hermetic sense, evil, because then you are stuck in that identification. You are not one
particular thing at any time. You are everything. Okay. The ability to pretend that you are one
particular thing is perfectly fine, but the beguilement or the hypnosis of you buying into
thinking that you really are that thing is a state of imprisonment. It’s klepothic. It’s trapped you
inside a shell. It’s demonic. A virtue is something that sets you free from that shell, and a vice is
something that imprisons you in that shell. So if you’re using truth to reaffirm a particular
thing that you are or that you need to be, you’re using truth to trap yourself in a form. And that
makes it a vice. That was fairly clear, wasn’t it? Hopefully. Number seven, that’s Venus. Love.
I really would rather say that Venus is the sphere of affection. It’s a little bit clearer
because love applies to the entire tree of life let’s say okay but um it’s difficult to say that
because affection can be very sort of limited but it’s like netsakh is really the outward expression
of love the hug and the inclusiveness and all that kind of stuff which is expressed anyway love
and then of course when love is clingy in order for you to affirm your sense of self as who as
being a person who is loved, if you’re loving others so that you can affirm that you yourself
are this thing that is love and loved and included, then you’re trapped. And that is the vice aspect
of it, unfortunately, the attachment. You are this thing that needs to attach to other things,
other people that you regard as things. Kind of creepy, really, if you think about it.
it’s interesting too because when someone who is virtuous hugs you it’s not because they need you
necessarily though that could be going on but the hug is more of an affirmation that we are all one
thing it’s not really i need you and i’m holding on to you it’s more like no no no everybody’s part
of the same thing come come here come here let me show you how everybody is but we’re all we’re all
this together. It’s a completely different kind of love, okay? And you can feel the difference
when somebody hugs you because they need you, okay? Which is kind of creepy, too, because when
a child hugs you, it might be a clingy, needy sort of thing, right? And not always. Yeah,
children have a marvelous capacity to express unconditional love. Sometimes. Rarely. All right,
so number six. I don’t like the word integration. It should be integrity. I think I put that on the
other diagram there yeah i put integrity anyway so yeah number six tephareth is the sphere of
balance and as you can see on the center of the tree of life is that integrity this is very
important the goal of the golden dawn magician is to reach well the golden dawn out of order
the golden dawn outer order student um is trying to reach sphere number six that
sphere of integrity whatever that means it is not really a enclosed entity unto itself
it is more like the expression of all of the sphere oath in a kind of harmony and really i
was very tempted to put harmony as the main virtue there. Okay. And you can see how harmony and
integration, those two words together really capture the idea of Tafarith, which Tafarith
literally means beauty. Okay. So, and when you just, but when you define yourself, let’s say in
new age terms, you say, well, I’m centered within myself and I’m, I’m at the center of the tree of
life now, and this is where I belong, and I am a radiant being filled with light and love, and
blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. That is the vice aspect, then, of Tepharath, and egotism, self-importance,
status, pride, and as you can see, the virtue or the vice in the old, in the original system of
called non the vice was pride for number six which um that’s not always a not always a vice
necessarily but of course in the old tradition of christianity let’s say uh yeah pride was seen
as self-importance that you really think you are this thing like if you are the chief executive
of your company you really think you are the king of the company you really think that is you
that’s a problem. There is no such thing as the chief executive of a company. That’s merely a
formality. I’m sorry to say. So if you’re the chief executive of a company and I’m telling you
you’re not, sorry about that, but that’s actually impossible. You cannot be that.
That’s simply an office. And if you don’t realize that, then you are trapped in self-importance.
This is why it’s a little bit creepy when you go into somebody’s office and they put all their
diplomas on the wall behind them? Yeah. Do you really need to do that? Number five, justice and
vengeance. These are very clear, are they not? Remember that a virtue is something that sets you
free, and a vice is something that traps you. So if you seek to get even, that pretty much
self-aggrandizes you as the one who has won a great victory, and you can pat yourself on the
back and how awesome you are. And I’m the one who is, I’m the righteous one, right? Yay for me.
So when true justice is what will free you from that. In other words, the whole situation
has been now resolved and dissolved. There is no victim and there’s no villain anymore.
All whole thing is gone now. It’s been resolved. If you think you have won the situation and that
you are somehow victorious and that you have been, what do you call it? Vindicated. And now
you’re proud of it. Oops. Then you’ve succumbed to the vice of vengeance, which is now trapping
you inside this position of the righteous one. Okay. That’s a really good one. Justice versus
vengeance. We see that a lot in movies, of course. Okay. Number four, charity and sanctimony. I like
to say generosity is the virtue of Chesed. It’s Jupiter, right? Big, powerful king who is jolly
and bestows all kinds of abundance and favors upon you and loves you and hugs you and squeezes you
so hard he crushes you, right? That sort of thing, right? So that charity, if it is done because
it’s simply something that we do, it’s natural to us, then it becomes a virtue. But if it’s
something that you do to serve yourself and to define yourself as a giver, as a generous person,
then it’s sanctimonious. It’s performative charity so that you can get your name plastered
across the building that you give your money to the college, but under the condition that they
name a building after you. That’s called being sanctimonious, right? Or in other words, being
performative in your charity. If you really wanted to help people, do you really need to have your
name plastered on the building not that there’s anything wrong with that by the way but it depends
on what you’re up to and uh for bina silence sphere number three what was the original one
silence probably too right notice how in the original virtue and vice it’s silence is the
virtue which is a really good one by the way i don’t know if we have time to go into that
and then but the vice is avarice well agreed come on um not sure i understand that one so
once again these revisions that i’m putting here are based on the experiences of these
spheroth through ritual over many years and i think many of you would agree that experiencing
these i don’t know energies personally or these intelligence these intelligences personally
they’re not really um the way that the original golden dawn first cataloged them so what happens
in bina is we have this obscuring nature of the divine sort of the divine light hiding from itself
so that manifestation then can sort of play a game with itself and play hide and seek
uh so when that is happening and it’s being done so that the work of manifestation can really truly
carry itself out in accordance with the divine plan of this amazing game of hide and seek that
seems to be happening god is sort of hiding from himself in the in the world let’s say right
if that game of hide and seek is being done according to plan let’s say then the virtue
of silence or obscurity is actually a good thing so if you are withholding information to keep the
game going the way it should be going if you are a teacher and you’re withholding information
because the student isn’t ready for it yet then that could be interpreted as you being virtuous
in other words you are basically embodying the virtue of silence so that the process of the
hide-and-seek game can proceed in the student naturally. But if you’re deliberately obscuring
things to keep the student from advancing, let’s say, or to keep the student from really,
truly making progress, or if you’re gatekeeping, there’s a good one, right? And if so, in other
words, you’re jealously guarding the secrets, so only you have them, and then you can sort of sell
them, market them, and things like that. That could be construed as then the opaqueness of it.
you are deliberately obscuring reality for your own purposes they’re both kind of the same thing
they’re both withholding information or they’re withholding the ability to see clearly but that
can be done virtuously and that can be done selfishly let’s say then we have the then now
the top two spheroth on the tree of life let’s go back up to the original golden dawn
attributions notice how they don’t have any vices well we have the audacity here right to give them
vices. You’ll see that the number two is this, the virtue is devotion. I’m not sure I understand
that. Maybe somebody can explain that to me. And then of course, the number one is attainment.
That one makes a lot of sense to me anyway. And so what I did is hakma, number two there,
hakma is the ultimate unfolding of creation without restraint, without the silence or the
opaqueness, let’s say. So in other words, when people overshare, when people reveal too much
and it’s inappropriate, then it would be considered a vice, oversharing, okay? So really, you know,
I would have to agree that at that high level in the tree of life, Chokmah is not really capable of
oversharing because it doesn’t really exist in the realm of people who are oversharing about
themselves. But at the lower level, the aspect of Chokmah that would exist as a vice would be that
oversharing, not showing discretion. It’s often very appropriate to not share information with
other people. It’s not like you’re deceiving them. It’s just not simply appropriate to the
situation that’s being discussed. If you are, of course, withholding information and it’s for
selfish reasons, then you would be engaging in opaqueness, which number three there, the vice
of Bina. All right. Anyway, transparency, that’s interesting. In other words, you just completely
open and sharing of the true nature of whatever it is that’s going on with you. Chokmah is
completely transparent, shining the light of Kether right into the heart of Bina, blasting
everything to bits if it needs to right so and um uh so that transparency is absolute within hukmal
and if it’s not properly um executed at least on lower levels of the tree then it becomes the vice
of oversharing and of course kether number one apotheosis simply means becoming a living god
okay so in other words that’s the completion of the great work in which case you achieve unity
with the one, which is kind of silly, really, because you already are united to the one. But
it’s really the ability to recognize that moment to moment to moment within your life that
everything is part of the one. And that is often what people refer to as stabilization within the
enlightenment experience, which probably isn’t really possible while you’re in a body. But I
understand why people would say it is possible, because even when you are momentarily distracted,
it’s not a big deal. You automatically see it as just part of being a human being. Nothing really
can truly dupe you into believing that what’s happening is the way it appears. I don’t know
if that makes any sense. Problem with Kether as a vice? I would have to agree that Kether really
It doesn’t have a vice at the very high levels of the cosmic order, let’s say.
But let’s say Kether as it appears in a lower arc, let’s say Kether in the world of Asiya,
then the vice of Kether is so painfully obvious.
People in the New Age world engage in this vice all the time.
They become spacey and airy-fairy, and they engage in spiritual bypassing.
they think oh i’m already enlightened so i don’t have to do anything i’m already perfect just the
way that’s what my good my guru my guru told me i’m already enlightened so i don’t have to do any
work and everything is just wonderful and peaceful just the way it is and you know kumbaya and all
this stuff right that is the it’s like a disembodied state of existence where they’re just denying you
know what’s going on with the physical body and all of the traumas that the physical body apparently
it carries with it from a traumatic evolutionary past. Oh, these things are not real or they’re
inherently illusory, as though the word illusory means not even real, which is absurd. That’s not
what illusion means. So anyway, to regard yourself as a purely spiritual being with no karmic issues
hovering around and gnawing at you is quite absurd. That’s the vice of disembodiment.
I find that one particularly annoying. But of course, many students, they get these intellectual
insights and then they realize, oh, I’m already, we’re already there. There’s nothing that we need
to do. Yeah. So what you’ll notice here is we got this really cool image up here of the adept who
is embodying the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimensions at the same time okay so
just to be clear that the engaging in the desires of the flesh that is not inherently a vice
so in other words these various vices that we put on these tables are not necessarily a problem
they are only vices truly if they are completely ignorant of their virtuous aspects okay you can
you can see that if you engage in materialism there’s not nothing really necessarily wrong
with that of course unless you show a lack of discernment there’s nothing really wrong with
taking care of your family in fact taking care of your family first really i mean devoting most
most of your attention to your family that’s what we do as healthy human beings okay but if that’s
all i ever care about okay and i simply ignore the needs of everybody else entirely that then
i’m guilty of insularity of just basically chauvinism or whatever you call that just
focusing so narrowly compulsively so narrowly out of fear usually right okay anyway so you can see
how even in sphere number eight, is it wrong to be a spin doctor? No, it’s not. It’s kind of what
we do. But you have to be aware of the truthfulness dimension within that activity. If you spin doctor
and you’re not aware that you’re misleading people, let’s say, then you are truly engaging
in the vice of hode all right and so we have this cool image here of the adapt so i wanted to bring
up this image because the experience of practicing theurgy or high magic the way that the golden dawn
originally meant it to be practiced my my opinion maybe you might say is that um we don’t do it
because we want stuff because i’m a form over here that wants that over there not not entirely no
the primary purpose really is to become an embodiment of formless principles within the
world of form this is the only thing we’re truly worth having it doesn’t mean you don’t chase after
things and try to make more money try to attract a beautiful woman into your life have a fancy car
this is all perfectly fine but if you if you really want those things only to firm up your
sense of self then they become a vice okay so the ability to express these various virtues in your
life what you’re doing is you’re becoming familiar with these formless virtues and they are becoming
familiar with you you are turning yourself or transforming yourself into a suitable vessel
for them to manifest. And so the real practice of theurgy is to do your daily work and then
forget about it. And then you walk around in the world as though you have these seven planetary
virtues just hovering around in your body, expressing themselves without you having to
deliberately do anything. There’s no need to cast a spell to get what you want. You are or you have
become an embodiment of these virtues. That is the goal of the work. And the feeling that it gets
you is a strange sense of dignity, freedom, because being free of any need to justify or
create who you are is fantastic. It’s indescribable to be free of caring about what people think
about you in the eastern traditions they call that immunity to praise or blame it’s all gone
hard to describe that because it happens on at the cellular cellular level that you can walk
around in in public and can be completely immune to what people think of you and when something
happens and when the shit hits the fan you can step into a situation and not be worried about
how you appear, about what people are going to think of you. You can act completely free of any
of these vice aspects of your being, supposedly, okay? Nobody’s perfect. So the goal is to become
an embodiment of these, at least seven of these virtues, right? Of course, there are like 10 of
them. So was it audacious of me to revise the original Golden Dawn teachings? I think what I’m
going to do is in the release of the Kabbalah Magic book, which many of you guys are practicing
from in order to become an embodiment of these occult virtues, let’s say, these occult powers,
right? In the development of that book, people often say that I created that. That’s Liam’s
curriculum. It’s not the original Golden Dawn, which that startles me a little bit, but of course
it shouldn’t surprise me. What people don’t realize is that the Golden Dawn evolved since
it first appeared in the 1800s, and that its curriculums have been evolving since then
in the hands of very accomplished adepts, such as Israel Gardi himself. And so the system of
initiation that I show forth in the Kabbalah Magic Book is very much the way it was handed to me.
It’s not my system, okay? And the adaptations made to that initiation system, I think are
fantastic. They really are fantastic. Because when you adopt that system of self-study and
self-mastery, whatever you call that, then what happens is you’re already doing some of the work
of the adept within the outer order initiation, self-initiation teachings, okay? So the really
cool thing about that is eventually you realize that it’s like oh i’m already doing it in other
words this is theurgy this is the way it’s done because eventually you start to realize after a
lot of travail maybe that the i am becoming an embodiment of these things it’s happening
it’s happening now and even before i really have this you know the sense of fantastic freedom it’s
not here yet but it’s already beginning to happen that’s a great experience that’s the way to do it
as far as I’m concerned. The original Golden Dawn was set up so that you couldn’t really do that
until you reach the inner order, which was, it’s kind of like withholding the real thing until you
get there, which I’ve never been a particular fan of. I think you should start practicing
the magic itself immediately. Okay, anyway, so in that Kabbalah magic book, I did change a few
things myself. Okay. So there were a few things that I changed myself. So I think I’ll do the
next video talking about what’s in the Kabbalah Magic book that my teachers pretty much passed
on to me from Raghardi and others. But also there are a couple of things that I changed
and I’ll disclose what those things are. And then you guys can yell at me for changing them.
All right. So that was Liam being audacious. So I think I’ll do that next video. That should be
some fun anyway. All right. Until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher