Descriptions:
Video Description
Why are we here, wrapped in flesh and objects rather than floating free as light? Lyam Christopher takes up that question through the unlikely doorway of the goddess Isis. The material world, he suggests, is not simply a mistake or a prison. It can be a throne, a place where experience teaches and prepares a person, and the old mystery symbols begin to feel like instructions for living consciously inside matter.
He offers the image of the Egyptian sisters side by side. Nephthys is read as the binding face of the goddess, the new or waning moon, the force that restrains and teaches hard lessons before a person is ready. Isis is the full moon, the matter that supports and finally presents the seeker as a true king, no longer clamped down by the world but seated freely within it. In the same pattern, Hecate binds while Artemis carries the spirit of independence, and between the two, nature and the moon hold the balance.
The closing warning is both kind and serious. Magic without shadow work, he says, only deepens the immersion in karma, chasing after things and running from monsters alike. The real practice turns matter into a teacher and the circle into a kingly seat rather than a trap. That ongoing work runs through Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, as a path of awakening instead of a scheme for getting a new car. In this telling, matter matters because it is the very ground where the transformation happens.
Full Video Transcript
Recently, I released an article on the Forbidden Realms site, that is the Patreon, and it’s about the goddess Isis.
And of course, whenever I put an article out there, I don’t just give you guys an encyclopedia version of the subject.
I always have to go into something, you know, maybe groundbreaking or esoteric or an internal experience of the topic.
In this case, an internal experience of the goddess Isis.
And, yeah, what it ended up becoming was a sort of a description of what the purpose of matter is, which is such a mystery to us in the mysteries.
So what is matter and does it matter or why does it matter?
It’s kind of like asking, why are we here or how did we end up here in this material state?
And for those of you who are actually doing the outer order work or you’re working with the lesser banishing ritual, the pentagram, the middle pillar, the dynamic that you are setting up there pretty much sets you up to confront the reality of your embodied experience or matter, as it were.
And so we can talk about that.
I just thought it was interesting that it came up in the article about the goddess Isis,
which is available on the Patreon site, of course.
So the experience of being embodied, we could say, might be represented by the Siliano Cephalus,
which is the ancient Roman religion of Mithraism, I think it’s called, the Mithraic religion.
and this particular figure is part of that religion and nobody seems to know what it is
which makes it fair game to speculate about it because when you um when you actually do magic
or you do when you participate in the ancient mystery religions and the symbolism and all that
stuff all this occult symbolism these things begin to come out and speak to you or speak
you know at you uh and you begin to recognize what the ancients might have seen uh in these
figures okay it’s kind of like my teachers used to say they would go to these sites in europe and
they would feel the energies of uh the people who used to let’s say worship there or whatever like
going to the ancient baths and things like that and it doesn’t surprise me because you can actually
get a similar feeling just from looking at the ancient images that are quite a baffling mystery
to the scholars, you know, who are trying to study them. And yet, when you actually work with the
ritual symbolism and the psyche begins to wake up to, when the mind begins to wake up to the reality
of the psyche, the psyche begins to speak in terms of these images. And lo and behold, they come out
again. So we can talk about them in terms of just like looking at them directly. What you might see
here then is this sort of symbolic form of what it feels like to be constrained by matter. In other
words, the serpent coils, the five coils of the serpent in this case. Sometimes in other mystery
cults, the serpent entwines you three times, third time’s the charm maybe. And like for instance in
golden dawn there’s a three-fold cord of binding which represents saturn or the sphere of bina
and but of course sometimes the serpent will wrap around you seven times which indicates all of the
seven um planetary spheres of the ancient system of the of astrology okay and um so uh as the soul
descends down into matter it is wrapped around once by each of the um the celestial planets
let’s say the seven planets of the ancients that is and um and then once it gets down to earth then
it is now completely sort of um bound up in matter and is now it’s now we’re down to business we’re
getting down to business we’re really up it’s it’s nose to the grindstone okay um and so there’s an
interesting thing about matter that we should talk about and this is not just in terms of
isis or the ancient greek mystery traditions it is also in terms of um tantra let’s say um
see uh like zogchen or or you know the tibetan buddhist tantra or the tantra of um
Kashmir Shaivism, they all have the same concept of matter as mother. Where is that? Yeah. Matter
as mother. Okay. And there’s a very important image involved with matter as mother. But let’s
go back to this again. This is the Anocephalus. Okay. Now, interesting thing is that the figure
is often winged, and it has a lion’s head in many cases, and nobody really knows what that seems to
mean. We can speculate, though. It could represent the astrological sign of Leo, and Leo, as if you
know astrology, tends to represent the ego. In other words, if your sun sign is Leo, you tend
to be somewhat egotistical, right? And in other words, it’s all about you. I love Leos. They love
themselves too. And you’ll notice that this idea of the serpent and the lion’s head is attributed
to the ultimate ego force in the universe, which is Yaldabaoth, which the Gnostics, you know,
accused of being the god of the old testament the jealous um fussy egotistical god of the old
testament and they were saying that that was actually an evil force that is now a tyrant of
the universe and all very interesting stuff because we can see that there’s something very
important about this lion head that is emerging from its constrainment within matter the serpent
being involved okay their wings there also are interesting too because it indicates that there’s
a binding going on but there’s also a liberation power that is possible within this form sometimes
the figure is holding keys sometimes it’s holding its staff in a key keys to what exactly okay and
of course yaldabaoth we could say it’s very clear representation of the way the human psyche has
evolved into our bodies and in our embodiment as we have as our consciousness has migrated up into
our heads we had developed the head consciousness which is the control tower ego which thinks it
knows what’s going on when in fact it’s really just a mechanism that’s really clever about
hunting for food and running away from predators and it’s gotten so clever it’s got it’s kind of
gotten out of hand now um but um but also it’s gotten so clever that many amazing things were
possible which are it’s almost like transcending itself anyway uh so this idea of the ego
consciousness emerging within the constraints of matter could be seen as both a good thing
and a bad thing depending on what you make out of it and we have the figure of the baphomet which
you know um if you know anything about the the french culture from when this thing emerged
and still the way the french culture is um there’s a lot of iconoclasm going on there’s a lot of
rebellion there’s a lot of radical avant-garde intellectualism and this figure seemed to be a
deliberate inflammatory depiction of something that was supposed to be like sacred but also
it i think it’s deliberately trying to scare the hell out of people who might look at it
and of course because of that it’s attracted a lot of attention and and because it has stood
the test of time you can see it kind of has the same attributes as the leonocephalus figure
except instead of the lion head of the leo ego it is the goat head of the capricorn career-minded
pragmatist right which is similar and we have the wings still and we have the the serpents which are
the binding influence and matter we also have the um the waxing and the waning moon you see there
and the possibility of liberation there’s the being bound in matter and held to the earth and
and there’s being constrained inside a bestial form subject to bestial passions but also there’s
a chance of somehow achieving liberation with the wings right with their dual forces going on
there’s the waning moon which is binding us down into matter there and then the waxing moon which
is possibly indicating that there’s also an upward current of liberation something uh possible in
matter that seems to involve a descent and then a re-ascent a descent and an ascent um and in the
mysteries there is there is this idea of that we’ve come down into matter let’s say for a reason
And then as we realize whatever that reason is, then we experience some kind of ascent back out of matter again.
This idea is pretty much borne forth in all the advanced forms of spiritual traditions around the world.
Yeah, and in the more corrupted forms of spirituality, these realms of the above and below become much more concretized.
And then there is this idea of eternal hell and eternal heaven.
Everything becomes sort of locked into duality there, which is not really what the mysteries were about.
But the mysteries did certainly play upon that kind of duality.
Because as it turns out, duality is the most important thing about our experience in matter.
Am I correct about that?
Let’s talk about that.
And we have the caduceus, which is a similar symbol there.
again, usually the caduceus is seven spirals, maybe, I don’t know, something like that.
And so you have, you notice how in the earlier figures here, it’s one serpent wrapped around
a central axis, which is a duality of the central axis with the serpent that’s wrapped around it.
Okay. And then, but there’s also the idea of the central axis with two serpents wrapped around it.
okay they both both of those depictions are pretty much still wrestling with the idea of duality
with the axis down the middle then we have this idea of the middle pillar like the middle pillar
in golden dawn ritual practice where um where duality is now experienced from a position of
poise or equipoise or equanimity or equilibrium or balance and this is the idea of also in the
symbol of saul the or the symbol of the magic circle we have the circle with the dot in the
center and this can also represent the magician and standing in the center of his magical circle
very important image for alchemical work and for the work in the kabbalah magic book and
And primarily what we deal with is the magic circle work and Outer Order Golden Dawn magic, ceremonial magic.
And so you could say that the serpents not only represent binding forces, things that are binding us down into matter,
but also somehow when we come to terms with that binding force, it’s also the way back out again too.
Because when you see how you ended up here, you also kind of see the way out again.
That’s a bit misleading because trying to get out of materiality is not how you get out of it.
In theurgy, in advanced ceremonial magic, the way to experience your own divinity is to go along with the creation of the universe, not to try to reverse it and get out of creation.
Anyway, that’s a topic for another video.
So matter and mother, not surprisingly, those two words have the same root, okay?
So our experience of being embodied is quite literally happens through our mothers, really, kind of obviously, right?
We come out of our mothers, and our mother seems to be what has given us our form, quite literally in many ways, right?
And the important image here, the really good takeaway, like why would we talk about all this, right?
the really good takeaway here is that the primary image that you can work with, if you come away
with anything from this video, it would be this image, and that is the struggles in your life
can be represented by the infant sitting in his mother’s lap, okay? That would be the child Horus
sitting in Isis’s lap or the child Jesus sitting in Mary’s lap. But there’s another one, the God
Krishna sitting in his mother’s lap, which is also a very famous icon. Naturally, it’s a universal
archetype. And it’s a universal archetype because of what I’m talking about. When you are going
through a struggle in your life, it’s as though there’s an infant child squirming uncomfortable
in his mother’s lap and if he squirms too much he’s going to go tumbling off and fall off his
mother’s lap and hurt himself something like that right and but his mother restrains him
and of course that the loving restraining hand of the mother is like it’s okay it’s okay settle
down it’s all right you can you can handle this right and um and if she’s not there the the child
is going to squirm and then tumble off into chaos and end up getting hurt or um and in the terms of
the psyche what this represents is the mind spinning off and going off tumbling off into
some kind of nightmare realm somewhere okay now this is what happens when we’re dreaming so in
other words when you’re dreaming at night you don’t have the constraints of the physical body
very much and then we can tumble off into all kinds of nightmare scenarios um or uncomfortable
you know slightly stressful scenarios um and because we don’t have the constraints of matter
right up against us saying no no just hold steady in this particular dense medium okay so when
you’re dreaming at night the medium is not dense at all it is very fluid and you can kind of just
spin off into any kind of vortex okay um now supposedly after you die that’s where you go
you go off into this dream world and everything’s tumbling around like crazy nothing much
can get done. Because when there’s the slightest perturbation, you go tumbling off into a new
nightmare, let’s say, or a new dream sequence. And so what happens then is that the psyche
supposedly has a corrective mechanism. And it becomes increasingly dense as a means of
holding you more and more firmly. In other words, the hand of the loving mother
grasp you more and more firmly the more you squirm okay and so what happens then is that we
eventually will end up in a physical body if we’re if we’re too squirmy okay and so the so the theory
is that we have ended up here because our our psyche is in a very volatile state and it requires
stabilization of a somewhat unpleasant nature and depending on how you look at it but when many
people see that as a loving restraint okay even though the child doesn’t know that the child
is screaming and flailing and kicking and the mother’s just holding him steady it’s like it’s
okay it’s okay all right so um that’s how we can experience matter okay now to me that doesn’t
sound very pleasant i don’t want to be a kicking screaming baby in my mother’s lap for all for all
eternity right well supposedly while we’re being held steady like that it’s kind of like training
wheels we are we are learning how to develop poise so when things come become upsetting we
can simply regard them dispassionately and simply not be phased, not squirm and not tumble off into
these unbalanced scenarios. As the karma arises, we can observe it dispassionately. Okay, and this
is a very important image. Okay, so what we have here is the child sitting in his mother’s lap.
this is the same thing as the king sitting on his throne and what is the word for isis in
egyptian i think it’s a set it is throne and so when horus is sitting on her lap he is sitting
on his future throne so isis herself is the stabilizing medium of matter which is training
him how to develop poise or equipoise or equanimity as a true king someone who cannot be easily
jostled and spun off into a nightmare by any little irritating thing okay and if you think
about it what is a king what is the true king really like somebody who cannot be phased by
every little drama so you you come to the king with your complaints and the king is simply
we are not amused right so um that so if it’s a real you know king they’re not they’re going to
have the the an incredible sense of stability to them where they cannot be dragged off into
little dramas petty little dramas and manipulated and you know hypnotized against their will they
can see right through your charade they cannot be manipulated supposedly people like this really do
exist by the way and it was believed at one point that if you were a king you were one of these
people who could not be jostled by every little drama you could not be hypnotized against your
will okay obviously that appears to be a rare trait nowadays as we as we deal with social media
and people get jostled so easily and drawn into little nightmare paranoid scenarios about culture
and world world war iii and who knows what else surveillance states and all this stuff um then
yeah we we will end up in more dense states of being with more suffering as the hand of the
loving mother clamps down on us even harder and produces a life of more suffering for a while
until we learn stability again and then things become less dense and eventually we don’t need
the constraints of matter as much anymore. So this is a very interesting idea too because people
can achieve this sort of poise or equipoise in which matter is no longer a constraint that is
necessary for them anymore. And the idea here is that supposedly this makes somebody high class
so that they don’t necessarily need the harsh constraints of particular restrictions anymore
or um obviously this can be interpreted poorly where you know oh i’m high class and you know um
but what i’m pointing out is that the idea of being a high class person has an esoteric reality
to it okay do now somebody who calls themselves high class nowadays is probably not going to have
that quality obviously but um i think we all know that there’s a reality to these things okay and of
course there are there are sometimes leader types who deserve to be in leader positions because
they are the type of person who has poise or or equipoise where you come to them with some kind of
ailment or problem and they are not simply jostled and freaked out by it they can actually see it
and then deal with it without being drawn into its drama and you know drawn into its little
nightmare scenario i’m thinking of uh the return of the king with a movie version um where is a
den of denethor is a good example of freaking out as somebody who’s easily hypnotized by the dark
imagery all around him and is not worthy to be the steward of gondor because he cannot um his
paranoia has simply taken over and he’s not worthy to sit on a throne okay in other words um he’s he
is a type of person who needs to be clamped down and restrained, because he’s not capable of leading
from a position of poise. Okay, I’m hoping this makes sense. And of course, this is Isis and Horus
and Mary and Jesus. And of course, Horus represents the true king in ancient Egypt, of course.
And of course, and in Europe, Jesus was considered the one who was bestowing true kingship,
in other words you could only be crowned by the pope which has the blessing of jesus supposedly
all that stuff right or this whole idea of the merovingian kings which is another that’s another
can of worms of course and in the golden dawn um isis or the stabilizing medium of matter can be
represented by the two pillars of the temple which are black the black and white temples
you’ll notice here that the goddess isis is on the left there and neftis there is on the right
i think this would be the other way around though in the temple but anyway um depending on which
way you’re looking at it from uh and you can see that the on isis’s head is the that that glyph
that’s the thing that’s sitting on her head is an actual throne okay and that thing on neftis’s
head nobody really knows what that is it’s a very mysterious like um hieroglyph or something like
that. But these are actually the same goddess. The goddess Isis would be considered, let’s say,
the full moon, and Nephthys would be considered the same moon, but it would be the new moon.
Or maybe Isis could be the waxing moon, and Nephthys could be the waning moon, something
like that, depending on how you look at it. There’s also, Nephthys could be the binding force
of matter the kind that restrains you and teaches you harsh lessons before you’re ready to be king
and then isis might represent the the matter that supports you and then presents you as the true king
who is no longer needs the constraints of matter anymore who’s simply sitting on the throne
without being restrained or clamped down in the throne anymore and of course in the greek
mysteries we have um i was going to say diana artemis and uh hecate all right and so hecate
would be the binding force of the goddess let’s say the waning moon which that would be the aspect
of the goddess who clamps down on you and teaches you harsh lessons in the underworld in life let’s
say um and um artemis is more of a spirit of independence where you are now learning how to
be free of the constraints of matter and between these two you could say that we have maybe the
goddess Demeter nature herself or Selene the goddess of the moon but because Demeter would
be the all aspects of nature that are pretty much supporting you or constraining you so in the idea
of the in um even in the most advanced forms of tantra and buddhism the idea of the physical world
is that we end up in matter because the there’s a quality to our consciousness stream or whatever
you want to call it they wouldn’t call it a soul unfortunately so we can’t use that word
but um the stream of consciousness that you are doesn’t have that um equanimity or that poise
and so when you are easily jostled and spun off into this or that nightmare um you will eventually
end up in a more constrained state that’s going to hold you steadier as you learn how to hold
steady on your own okay and that constrained state is supposedly one of those realms of
being constrained is the physical world that we are we find ourselves in here according to
you know buddhism or zogchen it’s a tantric buddhism okay so um this does mean that um
the realm of the dream world and the realm of the physical world are two different
aspects but they are still both dream worlds just the um the physical world is an aspect of the
dream world that is much denser much much more sluggish and much more up against you uh so the
main challenge with the physical world well the challenge with the dream world is the same too
there’s a lot of againstism going on okay the dream world is a world where we can experience
duality self versus other and if you have poise or equipoise the duality is very subtle because
you can see through it you know it’s not real okay but when you take that duality as real and
you and it easily jostles you and spins you off into this or that nightmare then you will
eventually end up in more dense more constrained aspects of that nightmare realm let’s say and uh
that that more harshly um force you to confront the nature of duality um this can happen to the
point where it becomes like a hell state like it’s so intense that you are being tormented
by your projections okay so um doesn’t mean that there is such a thing as eternal hell fire and all
that stuff but there’s a hell state that’s possible um where you can see it there’s some
people take their the the um the idea of hostility or negativity they believe it’s real and the more
the more you reify the sense of the other in your life the harsher reality becomes for you the
harsher the more real the more dense your physical world seems to become to you and it’s very
interesting because people who learn to see through that they don’t seem to be constrained
as much anymore they tend to be wealthier they tend to be more free they tend to have a more
easygoing lifestyle things don’t beat them up all the time life doesn’t beat them over the head
interesting it’s just karma yoga we’re talking about here and supposedly it’s possible to be so
free that uh after you die you don’t need to reincarnate anymore you don’t need to enter the
dense physical realm now when it comes to doing ceremonial magic or tantra or a very intensive
meditation spiritual practice let’s say um you can reach a state that is so liberated that you
no longer need matter anymore supposedly but you’re still embodied in the lord you’re still
in a body and these are these are what saints are supposedly like somebody who’s a saint where
they no longer need to be here but they still are in a body at least until the body finally gives
out you know and they and supposedly when they die they don’t need to reincarnate and if they do
they don’t do they don’t come back to into the world to experience harsh lessons lessons of
like they don’t need matter to restrain them so that they can learn how to be poised
they come back here simply to teach others how to do that and that’s what we call the
body sattva you know somebody who the ascended master who who deliberately reincarnates not to
experience the lessons of equipoise necessarily but to come back here to teach others the lessons
of how to how to be free of matter and of course this state of being free of matter can be
experienced even while you’re in a physical body some of you are already experiencing aspects of
that and it’s a pleasure to be working with you guys too on the forbidden realm site as you talk
about these things and the experience of doing the lesser banishing ritual the pentagram and
the middle pillar, directly feeds into this sense of duality, this sense of being immersed in a world
of self versus other, a sense of physicality that is now becoming a training ground in which you
can develop this sense of poise, this kingly poise or equipoise, so that you can achieve a state in
which um you don’t need to be in a physical body anymore but you still are it’s still and you so
the so you still experience what other people are experiencing but it’s no longer
that dramatic anymore it’s it’s not really that big a deal other people are freaking out and you’re
just like yeah well you know and feel bad for them and you can try to help them like see through the
drama that’s going on but at the same time it no longer has that effect on you even though your
body can be kicked around still sure but even that’s less likely to happen because you can see
things coming from a mile away you know sometimes so matter for somebody if matter becomes a
stabilizing medium so that you can learn how to be stable without the need of matter anymore
matter becomes a sort of projection screen for the contents of the psyche okay it’s a sluggish
projection screen when you dream at night the projection screen is rapid it it changes
with the slightest little glitch whereas the being immersed in a physical body in the physical world
the uh the physical world is much more sluggish and it holds much more steady much longer for you
so that you can this is the loving hand of isis holding you steady while you squirm in her lap
she’s holding you steady so you can learn how to develop poise or equipoise if you are not embodied
and you’re tumbling around in the dream world it’s really hard to learn that okay eventually
you can learn though and and supposedly i don’t know um the lessons of poise continue even in the
astral realms sure why not it’s something that we learn when you do dream yoga the same lessons
that apply here also apply there it’s really when you learn poise and equipoise those are basically
dream states anyway we could even call them non-states they’re non-dream states and the
and so this is very often how the material world can sometimes feel like your launching pad
because the idea is that if you train in the physical world long enough you don’t necessarily
need to be in the physical world anymore okay this doesn’t mean you you’re going to disengage
from the physical world and disappear or whatever. No. Like I’ve said before, you could reincarnate
again and simply it won’t be a big deal for you. You’re not somebody who’s here because you need
to be held steady anymore. You’re simply here and there’s not really much for you to do except to
teach others how to stabilize. How to stabilize without needing to be stabilized anymore. I dare
say this is almost making sense. So how can you tell if you are somebody who needs to be stabilized
by the loving hand of Isis? Okay. What this means then is that people who have not learned equipoise,
they tend to need a lot of restraint and life becomes more difficult for them, more constraining
for them. Sometimes in literal ways like prison or an arranged marriage or who knows what like
these harsh conditions that we find ourselves in with lots of obligations and things like that
or lots of enemies. When your life consists of many things that you are against, or that seem
to be against you, that is definitely a sign that you are immersed in the kind of reality that
requires a physical body. So the interesting thing is when people do the lesser banishing
ritual, the pentagram for a few months, if they don’t do it properly, and they don’t examine the
contents of their psyche as it unfolds, they become increasingly paranoid. So this world of
againstism gets stronger and stronger. It’s one of the dangers of magic, okay? And that is that if
you don’t really do the shadow work, then the banishing techniques, the metal pillar, the LBRP
are going to make that sense of againstism even stronger, okay? And the occult world is full of
people who are sort of in this paranoid realm you know where the conspiracy theories get stronger
and stronger and even more and more paranoid as they as they supposedly develop as you know as
occultists and if they were really doing the work the that they would be confronting these images
of againstism as they arise in the psyche and learning how to make meaning out of them and see
through them. So the primary work of the outer order student in ceremonial magic is to prod this
sense of againstism to show itself so that you can now learn how to establish equipoise in the
midst of it. So if you’re really doing the work, all of the drama of the world becomes less and
less of an issue for you. And you become, in most cases, more free of it. And even if it’s still
around you in your life it doesn’t bother you anymore uh not nearly as much and maybe not at
all anymore once you once you are free of it because it isn’t even um what you think it is
against ism is not it’s not a thing it’s a fantasy i know that’s that probably sounds
weird now that sounds weird to you that indicates you probably need to be here in a physical world
experiencing things up against you pushing up against you holding oh like kicking you around
etc like um are people out to get you yeah um it might sound strange to many of you if i were to
say nobody’s out to get you that’s crazy i know they are i know like no and i think i think i’m
quoting myself here i think i said this a snare for the wicked a gateway for the wise that’s a
reference to matter okay so in other words if you practice ceremonial magic and you don’t know what
the hell you’re doing you will end up in that hell that you don’t know you’re doing okay so in other
words um the the duality and the againstism flare up and then you don’t do the work of confronting
them and seeing through them you end up in the realm of the wicked which is the paranoid realm
or the world of againstism where everything’s against you and you’re against everything else
and you define yourself by all the things that you’re against all right so that is the hell
realm that you eventually end up in and of course if you are using the physical realm at the way it
should be used as a stabilizing medium so that you can develop equipoise then it becomes a gateway
for you to liberate yourself and then sort of now the the statue has wings right instead of the just
the serpent coils right and so it can be very therapeutic to walk around the physical world
and just put your hand up against things to notice the againstism going on in this realm
the stabilizing medium that is holding you steady like the loving hand of isis teaching you
equipoise there’s this beautiful idea that when the buddha was meditating and he achieved
enlightenment this might be right before he achieved enlightenment um he he reached down
and touched the earth and that’s a funny image too because it’s people would say that oh well
he was just calling upon the earth to bear witness that he has earned the right to be enlightened
that’s all nonsense um think about it like you reaching down for the earth like that he’s
basically touching the earth saying how is this possible that i the sense of i is touching this
thing that is not i and yet it’s all the same thing how fascinating because he would right when
he when he reaches down to touch the earth it’s like he’s noticing that there’s this restraining
medium that he no longer needs anymore and the the most astonishing thing then is that he knows
it’s not real and yet it’s startlingly real because he’s still in a body he’s still in the
in the in the embodied state at that point and yet now that he doesn’t need it anymore he sees
what it is um and then so the the idea of it being there and not being there at the same time
that it seems to be this one thing and it’s not that at all i don’t know if that makes any sense
okay but that’s astonishing the only proper response to that when you reach out and touch
matter like that let’s say it’s matter touching matter really um is just astonishment how can
this be like it seems to be one thing and yet it’s not that at all that’s the non-dual non-dual
and dual at the same time and it’s very nice to walk around in nature like that just to see it
as a loving hand of restraint, that’s teaching the soul equipoise, true kingship, kind of like
there’s a way out of matter through that experience of matter, and yet it doesn’t matter
whether you’re in matter or not, because once you see it for what it is, you are free of it even
while you’re in it. This idea of stability is embodied directly, I’m going to catch some heat
for this one, I’m sure, is embodied directly in Golden Dawn ritual, in ceremonial magical ritual.
The sign of the enter is a neophyte sign, projecting sign, sign of the enter. And that is a
dramatic gesture where you are initiating a fierce identification with something,
or you are setting a karmic process in motion. And that sign of projection is always followed
by the sign of silence. You have to remember that the sign of silence is the sign of Horus,
which is that that’s the baby who sits in mother’s lap, right? In other words, the whole idea
of sitting in your mother’s lap, remember, she’s holding you steady so that you don’t tumble off
into this nightmare or that nightmare, right? And yet, what does the child want to do? He wants to
run after this dream and that dream image, and then she’s holding him steady. It’s like, no,
no no no you’re going to get lost let’s let’s hold steady okay so this idea that we do the sign
of the enter is like let’s go play in that fantasy for a while okay and then you do the sign of
silence again to come back to your mother’s lap and then equipoise okay so this idea this idea
is that you can even see it as when you do the sign of the enter you’re you’re you you start this
wheel of karma that rolls out there like in this so this karmic process gets initiated uh and like
you’re charging a talisman then you the drama between you and the talisman and everything that
has to do with that talisman is now fiercely identified with the whole drama of whatever
i don’t know to talisman for finding love or getting money or something whatever um so um
the whole drama of that um thematic device is now invested in and so you’re kind of like
deliberately tumbling off of the the lap of your mother into this fantasy world and playing in it
for a while and then back to the mother’s lap again be still be silent equipoise okay and so
it’s an interesting idea too that the magician can initiate karmic processes and then immediately
avoid getting caught up within them this is why the sign of the enterer and the sign of silence
always work together in that way so if you’re going to initiate one of these little karmic
vortexes, you immediately follow a sign of silence to indicate, well, I’m creating a dream
sequence, but I’m not getting caught in it. I’m not getting caught up in it. This is a very important
concept. And people are going to say, that’s not in the Golden Dawn textbook. Where’s Liam getting
that? Like, just take it for what it’s worth, face value, okay? And you can tell then that what
happens is, as we learn equipoise, we move from the tyrant ego to the sort of executive who’s
learning how to manage a company let’s say right to an eventual state of kingship where we simply
have achieved so much equipoise that it’s just natural for us to be an example to others somebody
who is not bothered by any form of drama at all anymore such a thing appears to be possible
barely okay and so and you it’s interesting too because in the old ceremonial magic traditions
the the implements of the magician were the wand the sword the dagger the magic circle
and the crown and the sash the sash might represent the serpent power that binds you
okay and then there’s the outer robe of concealment and the inner robe of glory and of course but then
we also had the crown which is a stabilizing influence step but that’s what the lesson that
we supposedly learn from our immersion in matter which is to become more king-like or more poised
what they would call equanimity maybe in buddhism this is why the elemental kings exist they are the
executive powers of the elements and the elemental kings have rulers over them which is that’s more
like the um the executive function that the magician exerts over the elemental king let’s say
the true kingship and the planetary spirits have intelligences which are the same sort of
executive function in other words once the planetary spirits spirit the planetary spirits
are unruly they are sort of clepothic they’re kind of running all over the place freaked out
in fantasy realms of their own and the magician conjures them up and applies the lessons of life
to them so that they learn poise or equipoise and so for the planetary spirits the supposedly the
intelligence is the representation of the um governing kingly principle okay and then um the
ruler is of each element is then represents the executive function then of the um of the element
okay this is complicated stuff um but we have to keep in mind that the the lowest levels of the
spiritual hierarchies are the unruly spirits the the tumbling chaotic unresolved karmic forces
which we are learning how to free ourselves from let’s say which we are learning how to experience
equipoise in the midst of okay and in this sense the rulers and the element and the intelligences
of the planets and elements represent that equipoise or that executive function that
helps us learn the lesson of stability and eventually freedom from matter but remember
that doesn’t mean that we become disembodied it means that even while we’re in matter matter uh
doesn’t i don’t want to say it doesn’t matter matter is no longer necessary as a stabilizing
medium for us to from which to learn equipoise we’ve already established it this is what they
call stabilizing in the enlightened state you can get flashes of enlightenment like
samadhi but you still suffer right but eventually you stabilize in enlightenment in which case you
you’ve you’ve achieved let’s say permanent semi-permanent equanimity and you don’t need
the lessons of matter anymore to like training wheels to hold you stuck you can now do that
without any constraints whatsoever what that amounts to is then a state of mind in which
reincarnation no longer is required okay and that’s i’ve already gone into that reincarnation
happens all the time while we are in this body okay when you tumble off into this identity or
that identity it’s like oh now i’m a teacher oh now i’m a son now i’m a loving father or something
whatever none of these things are inherently real um so when you are aware of all these identities
that you are these entities that are trying to get you to become them you have a choice you don’t
have to become them anymore. And if you can do that, then you are also supposedly free of
compulsive reincarnation. So supposedly, after you literally die, you don’t have to come back
in a physical body that the equipoise would continue. And you cannot be tumbled off into
another physical body again, because you need to learn the lesson of poise. You’ve already got the
poise. So if you do descend into a body, let’s say, it’s for another reason. This kind of poise
gives you absolute confidence in regard to knowledge, because you begin to realize that
all forms of knowledge involve duality and that sort of fantasy realm of constraint or againstism
going on. Hard to describe that. I don’t think I want to go into that. But it makes you indifferent
to your fears because the things that you’re afraid of are not inherently real, that this
whole world of against-ism, of things out to get you, simply is not real. It doesn’t mean things
don’t happen, but they are no longer interpreted as poor me suffering because of that out there.
This makes you fearless. Am I saying that I’m there yet? No, certainly not. But I have experienced
indifference to fear it’s hard to describe that because the body is still afraid but you’re not
if that makes any sense and that doesn’t mean that you’re over here and your body’s over there
it simply means that you are experiencing isis and horus at the same time it means the body’s
freaking out but you are also isis herself saying it’s okay holding the body like this holding the
infant saying it’s okay it’s okay this whole process this whole psyche is you instead of you
you’re not you’re no longer the infant you are both isis and the and her infant that’s kind of
easy to understand isn’t it it also makes you indifferent to desires i don’t need that to feel
okay i’m not i already am okay even though things are just not going well supposedly right now and
the body’s freaking out but that’s that’s okay in other words i don’t require um the body to feel
okay in order for things to be all right, if that makes any sense. Of course, if I’m in a body, I’m
going to accommodate the body. I’m not going to just ignore it. But at the same time, when things
don’t go well for the body, it’s not really that big a deal. We know this is true, don’t we? We
know this is possible. In the Western mystery traditions, this is the star body. And this is
interesting idea because um the agoeities in the star body um that is uh the idea of the star body
is that we used to have when the soul is naturally round when it is disincarnate and when we
incarnate it gets stretched out and stuffed into arms and legs and head arms and legs right so into
a pentagram let’s say they get shoved into the bodily form it’s no longer round anymore it’s
stuffed into the limbs of the body let’s say that’s a quaint way of looking at it and uh this
is in egyptian mythology it’s like the breaking up of the pieces of the body of osiris and now it has
to be gathered together and put back together again and eventually becomes a luminous round
vehicle again and so when we develop poise or equipoise it’s like with we’re withdrawing our
projections our investment in matter is now being pulled back let’s say or just settling down
and we’re no longer strung out by this fantasy or that fantasy
or strung along by this or that fate.
We simply sit on the lap of Isis
without being pulled in all these different directions anymore.
And then we achieve the star body with the luminous round body
instead of the body that’s being stretched in this way or that way
in all these different directions.
What we achieve then is the double life,
which is kind of a weird thing to say because it’s a non-dual experience.
we we are in the world but not of it anymore simply because we don’t need to be restrained
by matter anymore to learn equanimity and so matter looks very different to us then it looks
the same but it looks different because it’s no longer presenting the affrontedness at us anymore
that’s gone and so the the strange thing is that you’re in the world and you can see the world of
drama that other people see which is the relative world but you know it’s not the real it’s not
what’s actually happening and so you’re in that relativistic world where people are freaking out
and running away from things and chasing after things and so are you by the way because the
body still has its karma but none of it’s considered real anymore okay doesn’t mean you
don’t take it seriously it’s just you just know it’s not who and what you truly are and that gives
you an extraordinary sense of peace, even in the midst of freaking out. And of course, this brings
sacramental vision, which is the Catholic word, right? No matter where you go, everything is
full of sacredness. It’s no longer, oh my God, there’s my neighbor, and I’m in a dispute with
my neighbor, and this is all real. This conflict is my life. No. For sacramental vision, the
conflict is going on, but it is only emblematic of something much deeper. In other words, it’s no
longer what it appears to be. You’re no longer being constrained by the conflict, as it means
it’s no longer a karmic lesson for you. It still happens, but the suffering is simply not there in
it anymore. That’s hard to explain, too, because the body still suffers, but that’s not really the
same thing as you suffering or whatever that is. And all this is facilitated simply by casting a
circle because doing the LBRP, which in which you draw a magic circle around yourself and charge it
with magical words of power, pentagrams and whatnot, this is intensifying your relationship
to the objective world out there which is going to intensify your experience of matter
supposedly okay but it also intensifies your experience of the dream world that’s really
what it’s doing but the matter the world of matter becomes much more intense as a world of
otherness for you as a training ground in which you are learning equanimity or equipoise or
kingly poise all that is facilitated by a simple banishing ritual and you must if you’re going to
do a banishing ritual like this you must do your magical journal work you must do your shadow work
so as the difficult situations in your life get prodded to blow up in your face let’s say
you learn to see through them to see them for what they really are otherwise they will get worse and
If you’re not going to do the shadow work, you should not engage in magic of any kind whatsoever.
Even if you try to do supposed like Goetia or low magic, that is directly stimulating the karmic forces of immersion and matter, which are going to teach you harsher and harsher lessons about equipoise unless you recognize what’s happening.
There is no way of doing magic that avoids high magic.
If you attempt to do low magic only, you’re only going to immerse yourself more and more in the karmic realm
in which you’re going to be taught harder and harder lessons about chasing after things and running away from monsters.
It’s just going to get worse.
I hope I’ve demonstrated that.
You can see how that mechanism works now.
sort of a cosmic safety valve you could say all right so that was probably fairly clear to a lot
of you folks especially if you’ve been following me on the forbidden realms site which is the
patreon which you can find a link to or if you’re doing ceremonial magic the way it was meant to be
done as far as a means of achieving enlightenment not as a means of getting a new car or getting a
girlfriend or things like that. Not that these things don’t happen. Until next time.
Source: Lyam Thomas Christopher