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Video Description
What if the old mystics were not trying to become better people, but something more than people? In this rich lesson, Lyam Christopher sets two worldviews side by side. The Renaissance humanists said that the human being is the measure of all things. The ancient theurgists quietly disagreed. For them, the transformation of high magic was not about becoming more truly human; it was about becoming an embodiment of the divine.
He traces the flickering Greek terms through time, including photagogia, a word rooted in light, and the teaching of Iamblichus that the soul is a small reflection of the one great soul of the universe. The phrase may sound strange, but the idea lands with force: each of us is a microcosm, a little world, learning to mirror the larger one. To embody divine principles sounds less exciting than becoming a living god, he admits, but it is exactly where the real power waits.
Then he grounds it in practice rather than theory. When a ritual says to visualize white light, he prefers a simpler word: see it. The distinction is small but important, because theurgy is not about imagining a desired life onto the screen of the mind. It is about recognizing the light already present and letting it become the eyes through which one looks. The entire structure appears in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, where the old techniques are preserved whole, like a living current carried into modern ceremony.
Full Video Transcript
okay we are back finally this video is going to be about this idea of the theurgists versus the
humanists in the time of the renaissance something developed called humanism and uh it’s it’s best
exemplified by the phrase man is the measure of all things and it was a resurgence of the
importance of the human being in the cosmos and that primarily resulted supposedly from the
introduction of hermetic principles back into europe they came back pretty much from the
muslim lands from the from the middle east and they were rediscovered out there anyway
so when people practice high magic or ceremonial magic they tend to regard the transformation
as becoming more truly human very often if they have a humanistic mindset where
well our goal is really to become more truly who we are which is human right and yet what we find
in the high magic tradition of theurgy from like the third century and also from the mystery
traditions is that the transformation that happens is that we become more than human in other words
we transform from a human being into a god and you’ve probably seen some really crazy book titles
out there about how to become a living god or something like that right so um when we talk
about theurgy it is the practice of transforming oneself into a deity let’s say but really what
that means is the ability to embody divine principles in one’s life doesn’t sound as
exciting, does it? But the ability to do that is for real. And I think a lot of people know that
they just kind of don’t want to own up to it, or they spend their lives sort of hiding from it,
because it’s a big obligation to realize that you have this tremendous potential inside you
to become something capable of conveying divine qualities. It would be maybe too much hubris to
say you actually literally become a god. There’s no need to do that, really, because you kind of
already are one anyway. But theurgists would say, well, not really. You’re not really a god yet.
You do need to transform, and there’s some difficulty there. So primarily what I’m going
to assert is that when you do theurgy in the Golden Dawn system of magic, because the Golden
system of magic properly utilized is theurgy or high magic which is the art of transforming
oneself into a living god or being able to channel divine qualities let’s say did i just
use the word channel the um the the ability to divine to to embody divine qualities how’s that
all right so the true nature of theurgic transformation i’m promising a lot there
right? So the idea that the student of magic then is becoming more than human can be a little bit
of an affront to some people, okay? But the experience of the practice of theurgy does
bear this out, that we become something not quite human anymore. But that’s mainly because
the typical biological motivations of a human being are now surrendered and taken over by a
different kind of motivation, let’s say, or a different kind of functioning. So the transformation
is radical, and yet it’s not something that many people would notice directly, okay? But everything
that the um adept does is now completely turned upside down you could say and it’s an inside out
and backwards okay and yet nothing really seems to be that different they’re still doing the same
things they were they wear ordinary clothes in public they don’t run around in public with their
you know rose cross lamens and things like that right so um so uh they are quite content to appear
as ordinary people because on one level they are still quite ordinary but the transformation
actually has an energetic component so even the biology and the the energetic way of of
experiencing people is different not necessarily noticeable unless you are another adept or if
you’re studying magic you begin to pick up on it it magnetizes you and you can also become a good
i don’t know teacher or um teacher’s not the right right word exactly it’s more like when you show up
in a particular place things change because you’re there that makes any sense and that can make you a
good teacher let’s say um or even a good leader or manager possibly if it’s your thing or a good
artist or even a good scientist much better scientist than a typical career scientist my god
yes all right so theurgy um is as a study is i have to i have to apologize i know that some of
the people who are following me on the patreon site actually speak greek and some of you guys
are even philosophers with philosophy majors and you know a lot of you actually know ancient greek
and stuff like that so be merciful on me in the comments okay so i don’t know how to pronounce
ancient Greek. But I’m taking these words right out of the study of Theurgy. This is a pretty
good scholarly work. I’m not much of a scholar myself. I’m more of a practitioner, okay? But
Theurgy and the Soul is a study of Iamblichus, and it’s by Gregory Shaw. Excellent book. Not an
easy read, though. The reason I’ve been kind of absent is because I’ve been struggling with this
and talking to a lot of you guys um and of course the the source itself which is um the primary
source we have from iamblichus iamblichus is considered the father of theurgy the one who
pretty much um rescued magic from becoming mere sorcery he kind of brought magic back into the
practice of magic uh rescuing it from superstition things like that supposedly if you believe in this
stuff. It’s not a matter of belief, okay? The kind of magic people practice as sorcery
doesn’t really work the way that the sorcerers claim it does. If it works, it’s normally hit or
miss, and it works according to the principles of theurgy, which is high magic, okay? I hate to
hold up a book and say, this is the answer. No, no. It’s just that iamblichus is pretty much a
total rock star when it comes to the practice of high magic. He’s kind of the source material.
And if you read him and study him, he’s really hard to argue with. He always seems to have
a very clear point and message to bring to bear to the practice of magic and to the practice of
or study of philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom. So when you study theology, that would essentially
be the study of a kind of soteriologia. Sorry, my pronunciation is not so good, right? So that’s a
study of how to be saved. So it’s the study of the soul’s restoration to divine unity. The assumption
being that the soul, whatever that is, has fallen down into matter and now become corrupted and
needs to be saved and sort of what scooped up and raised back up into heaven okay so um and this is
the idea in the christian traditions you’ll find that the christian traditions borrow tons of stuff
from the pagan traditions and from magic and as we talk about these these things you might begin
to notice parallels between theurgist ideas and some of the practices that exist in christianity
even though the true, you know, function and magic behind those practices has now been
essentially lost. They just kind of exist as, you know, remnants, pretty much. So the idea that you
can be saved, of course, and of course, the idea that you can just say, I accept Jesus, blah, blah,
blah, and now you’re saved, that’s quite absurd from the perspective of theurgy, okay? Theurgy is
work. As many of you know, if you’re practicing high magic, it is work. It’s not terribly hard
work. It does require discipline, though, and a lifestyle. All right, this is the granddaddy
concept of them all in regard to golden dawn magic. Synthamata, another Greek word. These are
the magical symbols, the signs, the tokens, the divine signatures. So the idea is that when the
divine, or the gods, created the universe, they implanted signs of their own activity within the
world that they were creating. And when they interact with the world, they are capable of
resonating or recognizing their own signatures in their own creation. Now, this is the way that
they’re able to see into the, let’s say, material world, let’s say. First of all, they really are
part of the material world. The world is full of gods, let’s say, right? They’re not up there
in some detached realm. Not really, anyway. Maybe we should talk about that in a bit, okay?
But they don’t have eyes and ears like we do. So how do they, I don’t know, see in the world?
They see through the resonance of synthamata. And it’s a very strange concept I’m trying to
understand, and that is the concept of ontological resonance, okay? Basically, that there are
sort of patterns and harmonies and shapes and qualities scattered throughout the universe
that are in harmonious sympathy with the gods who put them there, okay? So the whole universe is
of this harmonious field in which that you could say like as above so below in hermetic principles
that the um the principles the things you see happening on earth are
harmonious emanations or reflections of the things that are happening in the realm of the gods
but they are much more they’re different they’re more external they’re more dense they’re more
more broken up they’re sort of mixed up and confused okay and this is the world we supposedly
live in where we’re wondering what’s going on we can’t see the gods where are they you know
according to the ancient greeks we can’t see them because we are the soul has become sort of
extended or even descended into this material realm for whatever reason okay and is now
experiencing a sort of broken up state of existence in which is wondering what to do with all this
Okay, part of that broken up state of existence seems to involve some kind of divine amnesia, where your original identity as a sort of angelic or spiritual being has been sort of left behind or temporarily forgotten, so that you can operate in this world in a state of sort of amnesia, in which case you are now looking around and trying to recover or remember, remember who you truly are.
and part of this is accomplished through divine signatures or symbols and the magical symbols
of occult work such as pentagrams and hexagrams are these synthamata okay but also everything in
the world is a synthamata of something divine everything there’s nothing in the world that is
inherently evil or demonic or anything like that the only thing about the material world that would
be evil or demonic is the manner in which we perceive it. If our ignorance compels us to see
it as a prison or an oppressive place or something like that, then that mistaken appearance is
demonic, evil, whatever. But in essence, that’s not really what’s happening. The ignorance and
the evil kind of go hand in hand. Anyway, so in order to recover from that confusion or loss of
our memory of who we actually are, we can use signs, tokens, and divine signatures,
because when we employ these in ritual and in study, let’s say, the gods or the divine forces
recognize themselves in those symbols. And the weird thing is they don’t recognize themselves
necessarily through your eyes and ears, though they can do that apparently, but they actually
operate through the intentions that you have while you’re creating those symbols and if you
like you draw a pentagram on a talisman or something like that and then you walk away
from it you’re not looking at it that the talisman retains the presence of the deity
in some way or the power of the deity within this the the synthema the symbol that you put on it
that because the intention was to embody the power of the god within the
synthema or the symbol then the god will be there
even if you’re not looking at it okay and this is so
this is the idea that uh that’s why your temple space or your ritual space can
take on a sort of magical charge or certain atmosphere
um this is the idea that you can actually charge
up you know talismans and things like that okay um and now syntha synthamata are also
objects from the physical world like gemstones which sort of have a resonance to different
qualities okay i like to use gemstones a lot for for that and you you could just say that the the
the um ontological resonance or the harmony that these various objects have with their divine
counterparts is a kind of aesthetic resonance we don’t have to be clever about and say it’s
an electromagnetic resonance or scientific blah blah blah you could say it’s just basically an
aesthetic field it’s an artsy correspondence because within the experience of art is an
energy field itself we don’t need to make it scientific and electromagnetic and energy waves
beaming out of your head or anything like that. All you really need to do is go to a live play
with live actors and experience the energia, the presence of formless virtues within the
performance, provided the actors are talented and they can convey that. But it’s also, it exists
within the audience as well because the audience and the actors and the actual stage props and the
whole production carries the presence of formless divine or aesthetic principles which you can
actually feel that’s why we go to rock concerts and you know and uh and live performances okay
and we can actually experience it through by watching you know youtube or the movies and
things like that, too, to a lesser degree. It’s also there. All right. The principle of mimesis.
Mimesis? Mimesis? Okay. So the principle of imitation. Now, this is a tricky concept
because people would say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s sympathetic magic. So if I make a little
doll in the likeness of my neighbor and then I stab it with pins, then my neighbor will get
some kind of ailment and suffer, right? No, no, no, no, no. So mimesis is where you are capable of
imitating formless qualities in the world of form. You’re not imitating the form of your neighbor so
you can put a curse on him or something like that. That is a horizontal imitation of one form
imitating another form. Mimesis is an imitation of something formless within the realm of form.
Sounds like a strange concept, because how can a form imitate something formless?
Funny thing is, if you’ve ever been to a really good rock concert, you can see very often the
lead singer is doing exactly that, somehow embodying some kind of formless principle,
if he’s if he’s very talented or if she’s very talented he’s able to do that through the voice
through the gesture through the whatever it is you’re doing right um and very often the the lead
singer if they have no instrument carries the burden of conveying most of that power but all
the the whole thing the whole production altogether feeds into that including the various
synthamata that they put on the projection screen and the various symbols and things like that they
they use you know so so expressing higher realities through imitation of them in the world of form
let me give you a really sort of vulgar example of that i was once watching a lizard crawl across
the patio in a place where i once lived in orlando lots of lizards in florida and i saw it was a male
lizard and it had that little pouch in the neck that stuck out and because it was basically horny
it was obviously signaling for a mate and the little pouch was coming out but it also had this
sort of um back and forth motion which i was looking at that going oh that’s like that that’s
like that piston engine most motion that’s a very masculine or male energy like you know sort of the
fucking energy um of a piston engine let’s say right um which is kind of the jerky energy i guess
that’s why only men can be jerks, right? Women can’t be jerks. The back and forth energy of
the masculine archetype. So there’s that actual sort of a profound, divine, penetrating, thrusting
energy that is now evident in the motion of a lizard, of the male lizard. So the motion of the
lizard is a synthema, and it’s a mimesis of the deeper quality of some kind of pure version of
masculinity, almost like it’s a geometric form of some kind that’s being imitated.
So that’s a very basic example. So in some way, we are able to, through drama and movement and
voice and vibration and eye contact and who knows what else, right? Being able to draw pictures,
to be able to do sculpture. We’re able to encode divine presences into physical form somehow.
And the idea of theurgy is that the objects themselves do literally become consecrated
with the presence of the divine entities in some fashion or another, okay? Possibly through
an intermediate entity, which we would call a daimon, which is sort of a form aspect of the
deity. But anyway, we’re getting too technical there. That doesn’t mean if you call down the
presence of a god into a statue, it’s going to start moving and walking around. No. But some
interesting phenomena will happen possibly around the statue sometimes when people are near it or
something like that. There’s something unusual. Some unusual things might happen or not. I’m
to try to pronounce this homoiosis theo oh my gosh uh so assimilation into the likeness of a god
assimilation is a scary word now because of the board from star trek right so there’s this idea
of assimilation being a um broken down mechanical process which is truly frightening because you’re
kind of being ground up in a hamburger and then being installed in shredded pieces into a machine
or something like that right right um so assimilation into the presence of the gods
is different where your soul as it was descended into matter experiences that sort of meat grinder
aspect of where it gets kind of like stuck and enmeshed in matter and here and there and
and jutting out in all kinds of weird deformed ways right um supposedly the soul was round in
in um in greek philosophy and in greek old ancient greek religion the soul was originally around
and then of course when it descends into matter it takes on a more human form okay or gets stuck
in in various um behavior patterns which are materially conditioned corrupted okay it’s no
longer round and assimilating the soul back into the divine is kind of extracting it from matter
so that it can assume its more rounded shape again.
And not surprisingly, in the Golden Dawn,
the shape of the aura is pretty much the approximation
or the imitation of that perfected divine form.
And in so doing, you’re assimilating yourself into the likeness of a god.
As you guys are doing the Golden Dawn curriculum,
what you’ll notice is that the work with the body of light,
the body of light is visualized in different ways first it starts out material or even
crystalline in nature and then it turns into sort of a subtle body which is in the shape of the
human body and as you as you get into a higher grade it turns into the ovoid or the the oh the
oval shape of the aura okay which is like that that sort of the version of the soul that is
supposedly now uncorrupted and then uh at the highest level it assumes the form of the tree
of life mainly because at the highest level we can’t visualize that that anymore so we just sort
of um substitute the tree of life to represent that highest form of the spirit body what we’re
pointing out here is that all the aspects of golden dawn magic are theologic it’s kind of like
the original uh whoever it is that created the golden dawn system westcott mathers and who knows
who else um maybe even before them uh they it’s almost like they were going through iamblichus’s
book on the mysteries and we’re checking all the boxes of what theurgy is because what you’ll
notice is that everything iamblichus talks about in regards to what theurgy is is what the golden
and dawn does. Surprise, surprise. Okay, this idea of anagogy. So this idea of the upward
ascent of the soul. This is a problematic idea, okay? But Iamblichus and Theodosius will talk
about achieving a higher state of being, okay? When they say higher, they don’t literally mean
higher this is it can be a big problem because when people aspire to a higher grade of initiation
or when they aspire to enter a higher state of being then they think they’re going up they’re
transcending this world and leaving the things in the world behind no iamblichus is firm about that
he says that is not what happens in theology okay when you transcend when you transcend the world
you also include the world so transcending the world means that you expand beyond it you’re no
longer contained by it or or constricted or trapped by it not that you were ever trapped
to begin with but your identification with it has now been relinquished so that you are no longer
bound by the principles of a material or conditioned entity okay so the upward ascent
of the soul really means uh to you’re also widening and deepening in your uh perception
of the world let’s say it means your horizons are widening are much wider bigger okay and you
could view that as you know what if you if you climb upward higher and higher and higher into
a building then you can see more and more of the land around you that’s kind of what that means
so the ascent of the soul is really the liberation of it from a confined space and matter or like
end to wall, big and round and beautiful, right? Okay. This does not mean ego inflation though,
okay? Just simply because the soul becomes wider, deeper, higher, broader does not mean the ego is
being inflated. Of course, that could happen to you. Epistrophe. Hopefully I’m saying that
correctly. I’m probably using anglicized pronunciations here. The return of the soul
to its source okay this is also a problematic idea so the theurgists and the neoplatonists
the philosophers of the time around the third century and even earlier regarded the soul as
as not really truly descended into matter some of them and then others said well yes it is truly
descended into matter and needs to get out of matter again or something like that right
iamblichus said well they’re both true but iamblichus says that it’s very important to regard
the descent of the soul into matter as though it is real because our our experience of being stuck
in matter is profoundly consequential to us okay so if it feels like you’ve fallen from a higher
state of being and now you’re in this world going what the what the hell is going on right
then um then that experience in itself is real even though fundamentally it is not what’s happening
it’s sort of an illusion okay but iamblichus says that that experience has profound
implications for us because it affects us very dramatically and very energetically the way that
our energy functions and the way that our vitality functions in our body is now corrupted and and
and struggling okay so this idea of doing magic in which you return to the source in other words um
like yoga where you return to unity with the divine let’s say right um then um that needs
to be taken seriously as though it’s actually happening as though you’re returning back to
where you came from okay even though ultimately what’s really happening ultimately is that you
you are recognizing that you’re already connected to the divine okay but what that will feel like
is like you’re traveling you know upwards through the higher levels of the tree of life and things
like that and which is fine as long as you realize that that upward descent is not really an upward
descent it’s simply a matter of um um an analogous imitation of the order of divinity okay it’s not
precisely the way that things are happening in the universe, but we can’t truly visualize the
way things are happening in the universe with our limited perception. So we use these sort of
analogs of the tree of life and various more concentric spheres, or the system of astrology
and things like that, in an attempt to map out what has happened and what is happening with the
soul and to be clear this idea that each human being has a soul is also a bit of an illusion
the main truth supposedly at the at the most deepest fundamental level of being is that the
entire universe has a soul and yet each of us is sort of like a macro a microcosm reflection of
that macrocosm right so the the idea so in other words when we experience our soul as separate from
the rest of the universe, it feels that way. And Iamblichus says that it’s important to regard
that as if it’s real, as if you have a soul, which is part of that larger soul in some strange way,
separate from it, but linked to it in some deep way. Photagogia. Photagogia? I don’t know.
Very often the third syllable is emphasized, I think, in Greek. I’m not sure why.
but you can see a lot of these words really inform how english came about photo being meaning light i
believe it right and and um i don’t know goji means probably something to do with knowledge
or something like that so um this is very important to the golden dawn system of magic okay and also
to the theurgy of the ancient uh greeks and the ancient theorists that is um you would think it
means the visualization of light okay not exactly okay so listen to this very carefully all right so
of course in the golden dawn rituals we see ourselves as surrounded by divine light as
penetrated by you know white light as circulating the light the white light of the you know middle
pillar and the circulation of the body of light and various um subtle body tricks like that so
The idea of photogogia is that the light of the gods, according to Iamblichus and the Thurgists, is present all around us already, though not recognized.
So what the ancient Thurgists would say is that it’s not up to you to visualize it into existence.
It’s already there.
But for most of us, we’re walking around not recognizing it.
Okay. So we go into ritual and then the ritual says, visualize a white light, right? So you
might notice that in the Kabbalah magic book, I say, well, I don’t like to use the word visualize
that sometimes I’ll say, you just see it, see the white light. Okay. So it’s something like that.
So what’s required actually in the visualization process is that you proceed as if the light is
simply there. You don’t project it out of your mind or out of your forehead or something like
that. No, no, no, no. And this is why when people visualize, they literally get a headache, okay?
Now, the way you do that is you regard the images that you are supposedly visualizing as already
there, not as generated by you. You’re simply recognizing, oh, there they are. Hello. It’s not
that you’re beaming them out of your head, okay? So that’s really important. Now, the types of
things that we visualize in ritual, it’s almost as though they are sort of, I don’t know, arbitrary,
right? The interesting thing about that is that the presences of the divine, let’s say,
the whole world is supposedly full of gods, according to the theodists. So these gods can
take many different forms, okay? And each of those forms that they can take are the sintamata,
right? The various symbols, signatures of those god powers within manifestation.
So there are many, many different forms that any particular spiritual power or intelligence can
inhabit. Now, supposedly, the ones that are tried and true with the golden dawn
are capable of capturing, inviting some of these forces to basically participate
more fully in your life, let’s say, in your temple space, whatever that is.
Okay, so what that means is when you’re visualizing images and the light itself,
you’re regarding the light or the images as already there and this comes to the rescue for
a lot of you guys who have trouble visualizing because you the idea is that you think you’re
trying to create it a whole cloth right out of your imagination when in fact you just simply
regard the images as there it’s quite easy to do that actually if you think about it sounds
irrational but if i say you know a green elephant you’re going to see a green elephant pretty
clearly almost right before your eyes there for a second so it’s not really it doesn’t really take
that much energy the the idea of trying really hard to produce these images is somehow a um
a misunderstanding of how the world of imagination actually is okay i just want to point that out to
you okay so the the when you’re visualizing light and circulating light these are representations
of what is already happening. You’re not making it happen. You can’t do that. All you’re really
doing is putting, is you’re regarding the forces in your life as being in sync with what is already
there. And I hope that makes it easier for you, by the way. Catharsis. This is a word from the
English language, which is borrowed from the Greeks, right? I think we spell it with a C in
English. Catharsis is extremely important. And normally when people talk about catharsis,
like you go to a play and you experience catharsis. Oh, that was amazing. Now, people have
lost the idea. They don’t really know what catharsis is anymore. They just say, well,
it kind of purifies you of painful emotions or something like that. No, it doesn’t really do
that. So catharsis sets you free from various roles that you’ve been compelled to play. For
example, if you see a play that is about the tension between justice and vengeance, okay,
at first the people in the play are trying to achieve revenge. Vengeance is their principle,
but of course the revenge is driving them into separate camps. And when one person is trying to
get revenge on the other, and when he does that, he’s going to feel really good about himself,
stuck in the form of the winner, this is not catharsis. Justice would pretty much dissolve
the entire scenario or transcend it so that each of the parties involved is no longer stuck in that
role anymore compulsively. It doesn’t mean that role goes away. It simply means that they are not
bound up in those forms anymore. So justice is something that is the virtuous aspect of that
divine force which would which would enact itself through drama and then set us free from these
conflicting forms right um that doesn’t mean the forms go away they might still fight okay
but that we are no longer bound or compelled to occupy those forms okay and it’s the compulsion
that we get purified of in other words the identification or the imprisonment within
in a particular form, that is what gets purified, not negative emotion, whatever that is, right?
So, and you’ll find that really the negative aspects of emotion primarily have to do with
being stuck in an identification with some thing that you think you are that must be so in this
particular drama, okay? Such as believing you really are a physical object that can be kicked
around by life, okay? And catharsis would cure you of that. Sure, you still have a body, but then you
regard yourself as much more than the body. You’re not just a thing that can be kicked around by life
anymore. You’re much more interesting than that, actually, okay? And that’s a very profound state
to be in, by the way, and that would be the initiation of the adept is realizing your own
formless nature as no longer just a body or a form. Apotheosis. This is also an English word
taken from the Greek. The divinization of the soul. I find it interesting that this idea exists
within Christianity. I’m not sure how. Maybe in the Orthodox faiths. I’m not sure. Because
according to many Christians, the idea of apotheosis would be heresy. The idea that you
could become God. You could become divine. You could become like Jesus through imitation. As
many people say that’s sacrilege or, I don’t know, how dare you assume that you could become
Jesus or something like that, right? The interesting thing is that if you really
read stuff that Jesus is saying in the Bible and in other gospels, he pretty much is saying,
yes, you can become just like what I am. This is not special. Divinization of the soul. In other
words, that’s theurgy. Once again, this idea that you can reach apotheosis or sort of a godlike
status but once again we want to be humble about this and say you simply develop the ability to
embody divine principles what this means is that there’s something that you accumulate as you
practice magic okay it’s like your bank account is going up you’re accumulating merit okay you’re
not really accumulating anything but what what seems to be accumulating is a familiarity with
divine principles and this is a very interesting relationship many of you are already experiencing
this and the outer order grades of the golden dawn curriculum that’s that’s in the kabbalah
magic book right so um because if you um falter in your discipline and you miss ritual for a couple
of days and then get back to it you very often can experience that it’s not like oh i really
miss doing ritual it’s not like that it’s like the ritual really missed you it’s like where have
you been we missed you or like like you know there’s something there that is now familiar with
you so this strange familiarity between the divine forces and you it’s not like you’re learning to
trust them to just let them come into your life whatever that is right or um or they are also sort
of developing a relationship with you it’s like is this a fit vehicle or receptacle for embodying
my principle in the world you know they’re kind of looking at you from you know askance you know
those are wondering whether that you are really um conditioning your body and your mind to actually
become a receptacle for divine manifestation okay what this means is that um you will if you
continue with mastering golden dawn magic you will probably be doing theologic or magical rituals
every day for the rest of your life to continue that relationship relationship with with these
divine forces okay that relationship is not literal as in one person talking to another
it’s more like a relationship between something formless and form okay completely different from
two people talking to each other but it but it can very often feel like two people talking to
each other because that’s the way our nervous system works kind of translates it that way for
you and so we have this experience of the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel
as if the guardian angel is going to appear next to you and and talk to you hello like um no not
really that could happen though but that’s we don’t need to go into that but it’s mainly just
um the formless present your the presence aspect of your being which is not limited by a form
uh is now experienced all the time as though it is following you around like like a companion
but it doesn’t occupy a form so it doesn’t really it’s not limited by space it’s everywhere
okay but now it feels like it’s following you around which is that’s an amazing feeling of
a personal relationship you know with the divine it could be various entities like all of the seven
planetary gods or something like that and of course the elemental spirits as well all manifestations
of the one, of course, according to theurgy. Henosis, union with the divine, a state in which
the soul’s will and activity are perfectly joined with the divine realm. Another Greek term. It’s
all about union with the divine, right? I’m not going to try to pronounce that one.
This is an interesting idea. It’s the exchange of the mortal life for divine life. And I wonder,
This is where the sort of vulgar idea comes about in the Christian tradition that you can sell your soul to, I don’t know, evil pagan gods or something like that, or the devil, right?
So what’s really happening here is what we’re talking about here is the initiation that happens at the Veil of Periketh.
so in other words when people finish the outer order grades of the golden dawn system of magic
they begin to experience um the veil of parakeeth okay they were probably already experiencing it
anyway and that’s what led them to magic i’m working with about four or five of you now who
are in the portal grade who really feel it now it’s such a pleasure to work with you at this
stage because it’s very intense. And I really feel for you guys how painful or how the desire
to embody divine or formless principles in your life is now taking over everything and how
extraordinarily, I don’t want to call it painful, it’s a passion experience, the passion of the
Christ, something like that. So it’s such a privilege to see you going through that process
now coming up against this veil of Periketh. And what happens then is that the old desires for
ordinary things of the world, forms in the world, will now drop away. They’re not going to disappear,
but they’re going to completely take a backseat to the new desire of simply to embody formless
principles in the realm of form. That’s it. There’s nothing really else in the universe
worth having other than to embody formless principles in the realm of form and of course
when you’re able to do that all kinds of crazy stuff can happen unpredictable amazing adventures
who knows what you might have a clark kent existence and yet extraordinary things are
happening in the background or you might have a rather crazy existence and be rather ordinary
when you’re sitting at home i don’t know just all kinds of amazing stuff can happen
um not much to say about that really um but it’s very nice to see that people are making progress
with all this this new setup with the um forbidden realms um patreon site and participating in that
and doing the work and you’re able to um have regular conversations with me through the keyboard
um back and forth and also do consultations with me um and hopefully i’m of some assistance in
helping you cross the veil of paraketh you don’t need to go through a you know adeptus minor
initiation for that you’ve already developed the momentum yourselves to know what theory is about
you can initiate yourself okay especially if you have the presence of people who have been through
that initiation to sort of i don’t know act as a catalyst to yell at you at the appropriate times
you know things like that ecstasis thea mania so but you can see thea thea mania is like god
craziness right and ecstasy ecstasy and crazy divinity right so this is an important idea
because um there’s a difference between psychosis and divine ecstasy i spelled ecstasy wrong there
oops so um so um psychosis is this i this is a displacement of yourself so you actually feel
like you might be outside of yourself so when people are being tortured or raped or things
like that then there’s often or sometimes an experience of well i don’t know it was like i
was outside my body, I could hear myself screaming, but it was like, it wasn’t even me. I don’t,
it was like, I recognized my voice and everything, but it was like, I was not even in my body anymore
while it was happening, you know, strange stuff like that. Right. So psychosis is kind of like
that. And some people experience psychosis just from smoking marijuana. If you’re prone to that,
obviously you would stay from marijuana, away from marijuana. But, but psychosis is not necessarily,
it was something like that. If it’s something that comes over you compulsively or through a
substance it’s usually not a good thing okay but psychosis is really a form of astral projection
okay not particularly helpful the now the difference between divine ecstasy and psychosis
is quite simple and that one principle is that you are beside yourself as though you’re sort of
outside your body in another zone right and then the divine ecstasy is where you have transcended
yourself you are no longer contained inside the body anymore you’re simply not um regarding
yourself as this body thing okay and that’s that can be quite an ordinary state of being it’s
nothing particularly special about that okay but it can be um profoundly moving whatever there’s
all kinds of you know crazy stuff that can happen you can completely blank out and enter samadhi or
things like that so but um the idea of divine ecstasy is that the consciousness is now
sort of temporary liberate temporarily liberated from the body and no longer confined to poor
little me inside here okay and psychosis is simply trapped in another entity which is also limited
and that’s not particularly helpful okay um it is a form of projection actually astral projection
let’s say, but not to say that astral projection is bad. Astral projection is a means of exploring
how divine ecstasy might be possible in the realm of sleep, even, let’s say, okay, or even in the
realm between waking and sleep. Ultimately, what we learn when we learn dream yoga is not how to
fly around astrally and they go on astral adventures um not really it’s more about
seeing through the appearances of the dream world to recognize the presence of divine ecstasy or the
presence of the possibility of union with divine okay anybody wants to if anybody wants to set up
a dream yoga practice it’s pretty cool because it’s not there’s not a lot of ritual involved
most of the work is done at night and there are there are induction techniques and there’s some
nutrition involved okay i can set you up with that there are books you can get and i can of
course give you some pointers about what seems to work and what seems not to work mantike no
mantiki i don’t know uh the interesting thing is that like geomancy or cartomancy or you know
things like that, these forms of divination, pyromancy, divination by fire, right? The ansi
is the part that means sort of divination, okay? It’s interesting that fortune-telling would be
referred to as divination. Why do we call it divination? Divination seems to be a shortened
version of divinization, okay? And in the Golden Dawn, you know, papers and teachings, it’s quite
clear that divination is not really for fortune telling okay and the funny thing is when i was
working with tarot it simply never became that exactly it’s not like you can’t anticipate what’s
coming in the future but what you’re more tuning into are the potentialities that are primarily
concerned with your personal transformation into your apotheosis and your personal transformation
into a divine being let’s say how are you doing what’s next or what what seems to be looming on
the horizon for you what have you already achieved in that regard let’s say right okay um that’s
primarily what divination is zooming in on okay and very often when you’re even if you’re doing
it for a client let’s say which i don’t do but when you’re when you’re doing that for a client
it will come across to you that way too they’ll want to see what’s in the future but you’re
looking at what’s potential for them or what’s what’s next in their development and if you work
with a really good you know psychic whatever you can tell it’s always going to come across that
way they’re always interested in your personal evolution or your personal unfoldment of of your
destiny which was really your potentiality as it comes out your potentiality become to become
divinized not to become you know happily married and and have a certain type of car and a certain
type of house. No, that’s all part of it, but of course, has really very little to do with
your potential to become an embodiment of divine forces. This is a good one. I plucked these off
of the pages of the Iamblichus book, Kubernetes. I’m hoping I’m saying that right. I’m sure I’m
going to get an earful about my pronunciation here. So I think this comes out of Plato’s
Timaeus, if I’m not mistaken, but the description of the helmsman, the divine helmsman of the soul,
okay, what we often regard as the higher self or the holy guardian angel is not necessarily the
holy guardian angel, okay? So there’s this entity supposedly that accompanies us into this life,
which is then assigned to us to hold us to our destiny okay to sort of hold the soul down into
matter and make sure that it is at least given the opportunity to experience the unfolding of
its own potential okay and this force this daimon this this um this natal daimon um can seem quite
harsh. If you resist what is happening in the world, and if you resist your own destiny, let’s
say, if you resist your own potential as a divine being, then the experience of this supposed natal
daemon, which is holding your soul down into matter, is going to be experienced harshly,
forcing you to look at your destiny. If you willingly look at your destiny and try to
facilitate its unfoldment then the diamond will ease off and not be very difficult on you okay
it’s an interesting idea but that’s just the spirit that supposedly follows you through this
life okay the kubernetes is the higher self which supposedly supervises you from life to life to
life to life okay this helmsman is really quite simple it’s the presence aspect of your being
each of us has a material aspect a form aspect a presence aspect and a pure potentiality aspect
and these correspond to the four worlds of the kabbalah okay you have a material body you have
a subtle body which is the form body and then you have the formless presence body and then you have
the formless pure potentiality body which isn’t really much of a body okay so um so um the the
formless realms, that’s where the kubernities supposedly exist. So your formless aspect of
yourself, let’s say, it’s quite simple. If you experience, let’s say, a divine flash of
enlightenment from meditation or from ritual or from contemplation or from prayer, then very often
that recognition of your own formless nature is a big aha for you because it’s like oh my god it’s
always been there i’ve always felt this there it is and there it is again it’s still there
so the then the experience of this formless aspect of your being which does not require space or time
doesn’t move it doesn’t have to it’s always there it appears to follow you around okay so this is
the experience of the higher self the kubernities and it can be experienced as a sort of helms
and because it helps you i don’t know pivot in some kind of divine realm of destiny right very
interesting idea because as you do theology you become more and more familiar with the formless
aspect of your being which supposedly you will really zoom in on when you get to the practicist
grade when you start to work with the level of berea berea represents the first level of your
formless nature your the presence aspect of your being okay which is like the pure substance of
the mind with no forms in it. Once you’re at that level, then that is where your formless aspect,
your formless intelligence exists there. And that’s the higher self, supposedly. At least
that’s how it feels. Atheos and Nir, the status of a mortal who is capable of acting with divine
power. Notice how this description of somebody, this is the realized adept, perhaps the adeptus
major okay um who is now able to act with divine power okay it doesn’t mean he wields divine power
like a hammer it means he simply is now completely flowing with it okay remember when we do ritual
we are simply operating along with what’s already there there’s no need to create magic around you
it’s already there you are learning to see it in some kind of um imitative form to encourage it to
now reveal itself right through the imagined forms but there’s no need for you to create
magic for yourself that’s absurd you can’t do that only the divine entities or whatever it is
the elohim only the elohim can do that or only god himself can do that right so um but the ability
to operate in acting with divine power along with those forces is very profound then. It would seem
like you’re wielding them like tools to people who don’t know what’s going on, but that’s not
what’s happening. Katochi? I don’t know. Katoche? No. Possession, the indwelling of a divine force.
Uh-oh. All right, so there are two types of possession. The kind that we are most familiar
with are the kind where we have unresolved dualities from our traumatic evolutionary past,
let’s say, right? These are the demons that are now haunting us. So there are stories that we
have lived through, either in this form or in previous evolutionary states, or maybe in past
lives, I don’t know, that since the stories were not allowed to finish, they sink into the
subconscious and wait there and haunt you from there they are waiting to be triggered to come
out again so that they can finish their stories finish themselves off resolve themselves okay
as these entities lurk they’re waiting to be triggered and of course you know you can
experience this all the time right people say oh trigger warning in other words there’s a common
trigger that will trigger somebody’s unresolved um story let’s say to now spring into action
possess them take them over and compulsively act out its story so that it can finish itself
okay this is this is why we suffer because we have a lot of these lurking stories let’s say
okay we call them demons because they have scary um forms within them characters within them
the most important of those demons let’s say it’s not the trigger entity let’s say for instance if
i see that i got a call from the irs on my phone the body starts to go into panic why do i tune in
the tune into the imagery there it feels like i’m being stalked by some kind of large bear like
creature or something like that right so in other words what’s happening is that this abstract
threat of the irs is being um has become confused with some kind of embedded unresolved story from
my deep evolutionary past fear of predators fear of being stalked and eaten by something big right
so and then of course naturally when we can see that when we can see that the irs is not a bear
then the reaction changes okay it’s not like the irs isn’t going to stress you out anymore but the
the irrational stress is no longer going to be like that of basically being attacked by a giant
predator or hunted by a giant predator like that okay that’s just one example of that so we are
possessed by these lesser entities which are simply unresolved shadow entities or semi-autonomous
complexes that exist in the subconscious right um kind of they’re kind of like ghosts actually
because they keep trying to live out their story until they can resolve it and then disappear or
whatever to go go back to heaven something like that then um we can also be possessed
by the larger divine forces okay which can be dangerous because if we are not purified of the
demonic forces which are those little unresolved stories the divine forces are um are in charge of
the lesser forces as well. In other words, the various demonic forces that are troubling us
are extensions of the divine forces. So if you call upon divine powers to manifest through you,
what’s going to happen most likely is that the impure elements of those divine forces
are going to become inflated. And so all of the unresolved stories in your subconscious that are
related to a particular god let’s say are going to become inflated like if you conjure if you try
to bring in the power of mars into your life then all of these images of spilled blood and severed
limbs and battlefields and violence and harsh discipline are going explosions whatever are
going are going to now um if any of those are haunting you are going to be triggered to start
coming out into the open, obscuring the true and divine nature of Mars. This is why shadow work
is important. Before you are capable of embodying divine principles, you must deal with the shadow
entities that are going to be excited and inflated by the presence of these divine entities. I hope
I made that clear. But of course, magic is not all about shadow work. Eventually, you learn how
these shadow entities operate and then it becomes safer and safer for you to invoke divine forces
and embody them energetically literally energetically okay but mostly the the benefits
let’s say benefits are simply they simply surface in you living your ordinary life there’s no need
to do a magical ritual to become more mars-like necessarily except in your daily activities where
you’re simply becoming more familiar with various divine aspects. I don’t know if I made that clear
or not. So we can kick out the idea of possession because it’s not even something you need to worry
about. The main issue is that many of us are already possessed almost moment to moment by
little entities that are trying to work out their unresolved conflicts. If you’re easily triggered
by stress, that means you are haunted by a lot, lots of these little unresolved stories.
Enthusiasm. You can see there are different types of enthusiasm. Apparently the original type of
enthusiasm supposedly was enthusiasmos, acting as a vessel of divine force. I would just call
this inspiration maybe. I don’t know. So let’s not go into that one. That’s just one of those
Greek terms that is brought up in theurgy. Impassivity and tranquility, symptoms of the
divine eyes theogist. This idea of impassivity and tranquility is sort of like equanimity and
maybe in the eastern traditions they might call it one taste where no matter what happens,
it’s all the same. Whether it’s good or bad, it’s fine. It also implies that you are immune
to praise or blame. This is very real. So if somebody insults you, it simply doesn’t hurt
anymore it can’t it’s not that you’re not concerned about why they’re doing that okay but the the
principle behind that is very simple okay if you no longer if you no longer identify with your form
aspect then when somebody tries to pin a label on you it doesn’t stick because you’re not really
identified with the form that can have a label pinned on it if that makes any sense okay i cannot
emphasize how important that transformation is. When you’ve relinquished your identification with
a particular appearance or form, when somebody criticizes that form, it no longer bothers you.
It’s a very nice kind of freedom to have. It is the ultimate in confidence. It’s not a kind of
confidence that you have to fake or to try to make yourself tough or anything like that. It’s
completely beyond that. There’s nothing to be hurt anymore, okay? And that, of course, leads to a
state of tranquility where nothing seems to bother you anymore, right? This doesn’t mean you don’t
feel things. You feel things more intensely than ever before because very intense feelings don’t
cause you to suffer really anymore. It’s not that you don’t feel pain, but pain is not the same
anymore, okay? I don’t have time to go into that, but if anybody wants to do a consultation with me,
we can do a little exercise where we can focus in on what it’s like to be immune to pain.
That’s a big promise, isn’t it? And liberation and salvation. This is just visiting these
concepts again. The idea of liberating yourself from matter does not mean that you are now free
of the body and you’re never going to come back again. No, okay? To be free of the body is to be
free of identification with the body it does apparently mean and i don’t know this for sure
like but it doesn’t mean it does mean that after death you continue to survive in some kind of
coherent uh formless presence aspect which can participate in i don’t know the governance of
the universe, or something like that. And it can voluntarily incarnate again, possibly in many
different forms at once, or something like that, okay? This is something that the theurgists
believed, and I would propose that they even didn’t necessarily believe it, but became aware
that it’s a very likely possibility that this is what happens. One of the things about theurgy is
that it proposed as the ancient egyptians did that if you had not become properly divinized
let’s say or transformed into the likeness of a deity then the soul would be broken up and
recycled and go through a sort of hell state and be sort of ground up and then recycled and then
eventually make it back into another life form or various life forms again and if you’re lucky you
might even end up in a human form where you can now try to experience divinization and apotheosis
again, something like that. So not that hell is eternal, but there’s this sort of
really meat grinder aspect of the afterlife. It’s kind of scary. If you look at the legends of the
the hall of truth for the the judgment hall of osiris the soul of the deceased was weighed
against the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of truth the feather of
and if the heart weighed more than the feather then it was thrown to the crocodile god which was
pretty much in the under the floor waiting to eat the heart grind it up and then turn it into
of mulch and then eventually has a chance to turn back into a soul again after a lot of grinding up
and horrifying situations who knows um i don’t know um but um some of this seems to be somewhat
real because i it’s um some people some people who do ayahuasca which essentially seems to produce
a near-death experience experience a health state and from what i’ve gathered people who have a lot
of accumulated karma let’s say a lot of accumulated unresolved stories in their psyches they tend to
go through these hell states when they’re in that near-death experience and this could really be
what’s waiting for them after they die a sort of random meaningless suffering grinding up and being
assimilated and re-assimilated and maybe eventually sort of a purgatory type thing very interesting
um yeah is it real i don’t know it’s very interesting though uh so the idea is that
when you transcend the body that does not mean you’re leaving it behind okay you the rising on
the planes is not leaving the lower planes behind the the planes that are above the lower planes
include the lower planes within them so to rise on the planes is to get larger and larger and
bigger and bigger and of course the material world is really small inside of all that and then you
the like the material world the astral world the mental world and then the spiritual world something
like that you have these rings of concentric you know order all right okay this is just to show
that um any of you doing golden dawn magic or going through the course in kabbalah magic in
the kabbalah magic book you can see for yourself that these principles are there all of these
things are going on in the rituals okay all right uh so this is a this is a restored system of
theurgy obviously there are forms of golden dawn magic that are are in the hands of people who
don’t know what it is and they’re of course they’re not teaching it very well let’s say
they’re practicing it as a sort of you know sorcery in order to get what you want that
kind of stuff right because they don’t quite understand what the um the principle of
the very simple principle of simply becoming an embodiment of divine powers or principles that’s
it all right probably a long video wasn’t it so anyway those that’s what’s happening in the golden
dawn magic um i would be interested to see what you guys think of this in the comments and um
and if any of you guys speak greek you can now go after me in the comments and say oh my god liam
give it up already so that’s fine all right until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher