Descriptions:
Video Description
What makes a real magician different from a pretender? Not the robes or the titles, this lesson suggests, but a quieter quality called authenticity. Lyam Christopher places that quality at the very center of the Tree of Life, in the golden sphere of Beauty, and names it the mark of the great inner initiation. It is the same theme hidden inside stories like Titanic, where being loved for who you truly are breaks the spell of a world full of masks.
He describes each person as an acorn carrying the shape of the tree it may become. To pretend to be another kind of tree is to wither into something undead, walking around in a borrowed life. We all try on roles when we are young and even later, and that trying-on is not failure but practice. In magic, the same happens with archetypes: you invoke them, test how each one fits, and slowly discover which patterns are truly yours to carry.
The hardest part is named honestly. Waking up to the dream, he says, means facing the theme your life keeps handing you instead of escaping into an easier story. The Last Temptation of Christ becomes his illustration, the story of a man offered a dream life who realizes it would turn him into someone he is not. To run from your own theme is to enter the dark night of the soul, but to face it releases an effortless becoming. The closing wisdom is gentle and freeing: even an old, well-worn story becomes new when you are the one living it for real.
Full Video Transcript
Alright, it is Sunday night, and we are not doing a long video this week, I think. I tend to say that, and then something happens and it goes for a while.
This week we will talk about authenticity. This might not be a very popular video either. Does anybody really care about authenticity? And what is it?
So when students talk about students of magic, when they talk about the five equals six initiation or the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel or the achievement of Tifareth, the sphere of the sun, it’s that middle sphere on the tree of life.
This is the sphere of authenticity or self-actualization.
What is that?
Many people have heard of that.
that’s a psychological term it comes from maslow’s hierarchy of needs uh and um yeah when people
study literature there are many themes discussed okay for instance there’s a theme of revenge
like in the count of monte cristo that’s a great revenge film oh my gosh um and a book i recommend
the movie actually the latest one um there’s a theme of teamwork like in the avengers here at
superhero film um that’s the nature of good and evil can be a lot of fun there like an edgar allen
poe or um maybe i don’t know schindler’s list or things like that there’s the idea there’s a theme
of love setting you free or setting someone free like the movie titanic these are sort of hopefully
that’s not a hidden theme hopefully that theme is pretty obvious when you see the movie titanic
um and there are lesser known themes and one of those lesser known themes in literature or in
movies is authenticity the main character is trying to find his or her own path to be truly
who they are in a world full of pretenders where people are all around them are fake
and you might even think of that as um in the movie titanic rose is caught up in a world where
people are people all around her are trying to be some someone else something else and the nature
of the love that she discovers with the leonardo leonardo dicaprio character is uh um possibly
love loving you for just who you are not who you are pretending to be so when somebody moves up the
tree of life in the initiation process one of the marks of a tifareth initiation or a five equal six
initiation or a an initiation into the sphere of beauty into the sphere of the sun one of the
marks of that initiation is authenticity the person who achieves that initiation really desires to
become him or herself and is starting to do that unapologetically or diplomatically but will do it
nonetheless okay and we’ll also we start to respect other people’s authenticity and help them
achieve becoming who and what they really are and the idea behind this is that
each person is like an acorn they start out as a seed and that seed has the potential of who that
person can become and a lot of times people get caught up in a world where they’re trying to
becomes something else something that’s not in that seed and of course what happens when you do
that you sort of wither and die or you or you achieve this sort of undead existence zombie land
and you become a pretender okay so this theme of authenticity is really important and uh the
someone who is a magician who really has the five equals six initiation and can start doing
you know powerful practical magic in daily life they uh the way you can tell that they have that
initiation is that they value being truly themselves okay now this is a difficult concept
of course i remember being young being shy and awkward and not knowing what to do with myself
and people who were charismatic and you know had it all going on and living a charmed life
they would tend to give advice like oh just be yourself all you have to do is be yourself but
when you’re young and still figuring things out the response to that is well how do i do that
how do i how can you just let go and be yourself if i if i do that i’ll just end up in trouble
right because i’ll just be indulging every whim and you become like a hedonist like pretty much
well i think who i am is simply what i want right now right so i’ll just do whatever i want and
that’s who i am no no so yeah how do you find out who you are when there’s all this other stuff
going on that’s sort of vying to be on top of your persona you know that you have all these
urges and desires that you were born with that sort of percolate through from your evolutionary
background and all these desires and fears are now piled up on on you and they all are vying
for attention and among all this stuff you’re like well who am i amidst all this where am i
okay in the scheme of the tree of life um the who you actually are is best represented by kether
which is a sphere at the top okay but kether is not really the sphere of authenticity okay
because authenticity involves the expression of who you are into the world and so at the level
of kether you’re already withdrawn into the mind of god you’re practically gone you’re really not
even in the world anymore okay so you’re you’re at such a level of potentiality that there’s
nothing happening anymore and the experience of authenticity is that you are you are flowing from
that kether point into the world and so that’s lower on the tree of life that’s that’s the sphere
of tifareth and lower okay so tifareth does not really exist okay um it can only be said to exist
constellated amidst the other spheroth okay and that same same goes for all the other spheroth
okay um they don’t really exist independently they exist in relation to each other okay so if you
take the entire tree the entire tree is probably best represented by tifareth yeah because it’s
at the very center. It’s not really best represented with Kether, even though Kether
contains the potentiality of the whole tree within it, but it doesn’t really have any expression in
it, whereas Tifaroth already has some of that expression going on. Another way of looking at
the tree is that, well, really the best representative of the tree is Malkuth, which
is at the bottom, which is the concretized outward expression of the divine. Yeah, there’s stuff going
on with makuth that’s a bit problematic there okay so uh it’s best to start looking into the
realms of yesod and tifareth for the real expression of authenticity okay because that’s
this is where things are now flowing out and expressing themselves in some kind of authentic
way quite a simple concept because many of us when we’re younger will try to imitate
others around us to see if we would like being that way okay and this happens a lot with younger
people where you know i’m going to try being vegan vegan oh that’s not working i’m going to try um
standing up for a cause that so we shouldn’t club little baby seals that’s a worthy cause but that’s
not really me so i’ll try something else and and the parents will get really frustrated last week
you were doing this and now week you’re doing you’re doing this and now you’re queer cisgender
something or something like that right um so yeah young people tend to try on all these
personas in an effort to figure out what clicks for them yeah uh that is a sort of fake it till
you make it way of trying to achieve authenticity perfectly fine yeah and now in the magical path
we kind of do the same because we are looking at all the various archetypes uh invoking them
calling upon them and then watching how they manifest in our lives and as they manifest
we’re like hmm do i have an affinity for that archetype this is some oh this one this one i
have trouble with okay um this one i don’t have trouble with okay um you so you begin to discover
how your authentic personality is going to be is going is now taking shape um it really does
amount to tuning into the karma that you were born with and then having the courage to face it
as it comes up yeah and some of the karma that people are born with apparently is very difficult
okay others of us not so much depends so we have it’s almost like you came in the world with a
task to do and some of us came into the world with a task that’s really difficult others not so much
this is a bit of an illusion okay because we we come into the world and really the task is we need
to work with a particular theme okay in a particular like um well my life seems to be
largely how to deal with revenge something like that right or um more how love sets people free
okay or you know something like that now the reason the karma can be so difficult is because
we don’t make an effort to be aware that we don’t wake up to it and remember in magic it’s not
important to wake up from a dream. It’s important to wake up to the dream because you are always
dreaming. There’s always a sort of dream world that’s being superimposed upon the physical world.
So even while you’re walking around in your daily life, you are superimposing a sort of dream on top
of it. Are there really good and bad forces in the physical world? No, there are not. Those good and
bad labels are being imposed upon it those villains and victims are being imposed upon
the physical world by your karma it’s kind of automatically doing that right and it’s up to
you to become aware of that to process it make meaning out of it make different meanings out
of it to do something with it awake to wake up to the dream instead of from the dream there is no
from the dream okay uh so yeah the authenticity means having the courage to process things as
they come up so something makes you uncomfortable you face that discomfort you don’t run away from
it and hide in some other life incidentally there’s a great film called the last temptation
of christ it’s also a great novel the film is just fine to watch i would think um if you can
get over judas having a new york accent okay um and jesus i think also has a new york accent
but um but you can also read the book which is uh which is pretty intense it’s pretty
pretty deep the movie might do a better job of conveying the difficulty of living an authentic
life because the um because the jesus character has a particular formula to fulfill uh dying on
the cross and all that and he keeps running away from that destiny and uh and in fact at one point
spoiler alert he is hanging on the cross and he doesn’t want to go through with it he’s even that
far along and he’s still resisting his fate and so he goes off into another life into a dream world
where he’s married and has children i think he has two wives actually um and but eventually he
realizes, oh my God, I’ve entered this life that’s not right for me. This is not the life that was
made for me. I’ve become someone else and I’m avoiding my destiny. And then he finally surrenders
and says, okay, I want to be crucified and rise again. Now, there’s a bit of a problem with that
as well, because most of us have come into this world to experience a theme and make meaning out
of it it doesn’t mean that you need to be literally crucified if it reaches that level
of physical suffering it’s because you’ve been ignoring it and you’ve been hiding from it
usually okay so a lot of uh a lot of karma can be head off you can head it off before it reaches
physical manifestation and people who do that are living the authentic life they’re finding ways to
deal with their karma in all these kind of cool ways that instantaneously processes it so it heads
it off before it reaches physical manifestation and so people who live authentic lives they tend
to also live charmed lives they tend to do pretty well for themselves tend to yeah but there’s no
guarantee of that right all right so um so what is a magician with a tifareth initiation his primary
um that the primary way that you can know he has that initiation is his authenticity he’s so real
he’s just being himself okay or herself and he expects me to do the same he will hold me to that
if you watch uh the old series i can’t believe it’s old now but in um house md that eccentric
character house the diagnostic physician physician he’s a genius and all that and very difficult to
work with because he holds his team to their own standards and so if they do something that was bad
in their medical practice a lot of times he will say it’s i don’t mind that you went against what
i said but you went against your own principles and that means i can’t trust you what a strange
thing to say. You didn’t do what I said, fine, but what you did went against your own principles,
and that means I can’t trust you. Very strange thing to say, but everybody should recognize
that. In other words, he insists on authenticity. You must live according to your standards. In
other words, whatever standards you have percolating up inside you, these are the things
you need to focus on and deal with. And if you’re not doing that, if you’re not making meaning out
of your life as it comes up what are you doing here i have better i have better you know uses
of my time than to tend to be working with somebody who’s a pretender who’s faking it
who’s living an inauthentic life so the magician the magician who has a tifarith and initiation
is very concerned about um manifesting his or her own life from the inside out and and basically to
do that you deal with the stuff that’s percolating to the surface as it comes up not only do you deal
with it but you ask for more you intensify that process and you’re constantly becoming
who you truly are and that will change over time people go through little you know little deaths
and little births as they evolve through life so yeah the magician is really highly focused on the
actualization of potential which means he doesn’t mean he achieves self-actualization that’s a bit
of a misnomer. He is in the process of self-actualizing. And it’s a process that turns
on and doesn’t stop. It keeps going now. And how interesting. It’s a process that turns on. In
other words, it initiates. Oh, he’s initiated. There’s something that is now activated. And now
that it’s happening, I can’t seem to turn it off anymore. I’ve been initiated. Something has
started. Can’t reverse it anymore. Okay. And when that initiation happens, you really can’t go back.
if you try you will suffer like you cannot possibly imagine because you already know that
the things that you try to escape into cannot provide any fulfillment and they will all be
empty husks of their former glory nothing can satisfy you anymore other than your own authenticity
if you run from this if you hide from it you experience the dark night of the soul okay that’s
that’s really all the dark night of the soul is and for some of us it does seem to be necessary
to go through it because we first begin to notice that the inauthentic life cannot provide the
pleasure that it promises but we haven’t discovered the authentic process of becoming who we are yet
and so we’re caught between worlds now we don’t know what to do we i can’t go back to the old
life because i’ve already seen that there’s no satisfaction there no lasting satisfaction
no real satisfaction no no real fulfillment from the inside out okay and since i’ve seen that i
can’t extract any real pleasure from that anymore there’s no hope everything dries up everything’s
dead everything’s a husk of its former self that’s the dark night of the soul a dry period right and
then of course eventually the wellspring starts flowing you delve deeply enough suffer long enough
you let go enough and you discover that becoming who you are is really quite an effortless thing
there’s really all that happens is you drop any efforts to become something other than what you
are okay or if if you start to do that if you start to try to become something that you’re not
you’ll notice immediately but oops and you’re self-correct and you’re back on course again
okay and that’s fine yeah and that’s you then you pretty much made it uh the magician uh who has the
five equals six initiation i’m using a little pad here like i made some notes um he the things that
he fears or that she fears is inauthenticity of going back into that role of being the pretender
so another way that you can tell if somebody has a five equals six initiation is that they are uh
they have an aversion even a strong hatred to things that are inauthentic okay um that will
fade over time it’s like you know because people because the world is full of inauthentic people
people who are pretenders who are trying too hard okay um there are some terms that young people use
these days capping i don’t i’m not even going to pretend to know how to use that in the proper
context but that’s some kind of the act of being inauthentic is referred to as capping uh they
very often refer to inauthentic people as fake and you know in the olden days um when someone
wanted to be king or queen and they attempted to usurp power but they didn’t deserve it so this
idea of kingship is that you really need to be initiated at least like like the five equals six
level something like that um to be the king okay yeah the sphere one of the images of tifareth is
the king okay a king on his throne or the king with a crown something like that the solar the
solar god the solar king so one of the things about so how do you do it how do you discover
your true life’s purpose yeah that’s but what you the way you do that is by noticing the karma that
keeps bubbling up the things that keep coming to the surface in your thoughts in your dreams in
your physical life these things that keep manifesting around you whether in a dream or
in the physical world or in your thoughts uh these things that keep asking for your attention
apparently uh those those things often correspond to some particular theme which you can start to
identify you can use your knowledge of literature and mythology to identify them okay so the various
yeah you might want to start with literature and look at all the various themes that are possible
okay and you can come up with your own theme at one point in my life i realized i really liked
books. And I didn’t know whether it was going to be a big calling for me or not, but I deliberately
went with it. So I decided that my true calling was books. And I went into the book industry and
actually wrote a book. I surrounded myself with books. It’s quite a wonderful thing, yes.
It wasn’t quite on the mark, but it was really close. I don’t really need a lot of books,
though i have a bunch now um the main i eventually can’t settle down that the main theme in my life
was to explore imagination and what better way to do that than to read uh not watching movies so
much okay watching movies and maybe thinking of what if scenarios what if that well what if that
happened how would the movie have turned out then then you’re exploring imagination right
uh and of course reading is a great way to explore imagination uh astral projection is the
road to par excellence of exploring imagination uh and of course doing ritual magic is a great
way to explore imagination doing um tabletop role-playing games is a fantastic way to develop
imagination as well as um stop using google maps okay and don’t have the phone or your navigation
system tell you where to turn left and right actually visual visualize the route before you
drive somewhere or or go somewhere and try to get there without the use of something that’s
telling you where to turn left and right okay it’s always there as in the background the reason i’m
saying that is because it develops your ability to um imagine things um always good for magic of
course but i digress because the theme in your life might not necessarily be that you you want
to explore imagination okay on some level exploring imagination is required of you
okay so in other words that ability to deal with stuff as it percolates to the surface and then
make meaning out of it yeah that’s kind of the exploring with what’s happening and then doing
something with it so yeah you might be catching some of my bias here there might be another type
of theme that’s not quite you know the way i’m describing the way that a magician’s life should
be okay so so how does one discover one’s life purpose there isn’t really a life’s purpose
like you know some angel announces to you it’s like you came to this earth to do so and so
no not really but there is a theme that’s that seems to be that predominates that is demanding
exploration and eventually you discover what that is okay the way you do that is by paying attention
so keep doing the magical journal uh you also another way to do that is to prod the imagination
so that these things come up more and more and that’s the banishing rituals and the middle
pillar work as we’ve discussed in that ritual about in that video about the true nature of the
lbrp and the how the middle pillar ritual works yeah these are fundamental to a magician’s
development at least in the golden dawn tradition and the western esoteric tradition as i know them
so that active engagement with stuff that comes up okay and it doesn’t mean one more thing yeah
there is something that really can get in the way of discovering your true authentic
self and that is the jadedness that voice in the head that says it’s all already been done
there’s nothing new under the sun anymore all of the different types of themes have already been
enacted through various dramas why bother creating anything new or exploring anything new it’s
already been explored for me blah blah blah right and it’s kind of like um why would i bother to
make remake romeo and juliet on a sinking ship which is kind of like titanic right or um why
there why are there so many remakes of um various shakespeare plays but in modern contexts or
different contexts or um uh there’s the film um the count of monte cristo which was kind of redone
again as the shawshank redemption stephen king did that he admittedly you know and he even refers
to the count of monte cristo in that book or in that movie and in the movie um these themes are
rehashed, but it doesn’t mean they’re old and tired. They’re ever fresh, okay? So if your
authentic life happens to take the form of a tried and true archetype, so what? If that’s what’s
coming up fresh and new right here, it’s going to be real. It’s going to be wow. It’s going to be
powerful, okay? And people can recognize when you are embodying a powerful archetype as the real you.
it doesn’t matter if you look like somebody else who’s already doing it or has done it
if it’s what matters to your personal evolution right now then you do it okay and and forget
anybody who comes up and says oh somebody somebody’s already done that you try something
else faker pretender yeah so um i remember yeah somebody once said to lady gaga it’s like well
you seem to be imitating madonna aren’t you and she’s like hell yeah that’s how i operate that’s
that’s my one of my main modus operandi is imitating Madonna and then the words that she
she owned that aspect of it and she still you know pretty much came across her own authentic
life some might say she’s trying too hard maybe trying too hard as part of it too um and well
okay one more thing um another thing about being a faker hmm there’s a famous quote by Oscar Wilde
he would say that, oh gosh, he would say something like, man is worst when he is trying to be
himself. He’s the most dishonest when he’s trying to be himself. Give him a mask and he will tell
the truth. And that’s a nice paradoxical statement for you. And what that really means is that you
need to have these different archetypes and tried and true forms all around you. You need to get to
know these things because you can put them on okay and then as you adopt them and express
through them this is how you demonstrate to the world not that you need to this is but this is how
you become who you truly are by taking off and putting on these various forms okay they and
these things will arise up within you it doesn’t matter if they’ve been done before so one of the
things about being an adept of the golden dawn let’s say is that you you be an adept of the
golden dawn without being an adept of the golden dawn you’re no longer concerned about appearing
a certain way you’re just able to do various things okay so it’s that letting go of trying
to do anything right or according to the proper tradition or something like that all these things
become tools in your toolbox and you are now using them to express who you really are or to become
who you really are and to help others become who they really are at least on the tiff rf level okay
and there’s more to than that there’s stuff beyond that but that for now that is a worthwhile
endeavor. Alright, so I hope this video made sense and I look forward to seeing
you all next week.
Source: Lyam Christopher