Descriptions:
Video Description
Most people picture reincarnation as a soul leaving one body and later entering another, life after life. In this full-moon video, Lyam Christopher opens a quieter possibility: the same process may be happening right now, inside the circle a magician draws. He does not claim to know what happens after death, but he says the pattern we call rebirth is something we are already doing every day.
He pictures the magic circle as a spring or fountain where experiences keep arising from the hidden ground of being. The trouble begins, he says, when the mind throws a little stick outside the circle and tries to chase it, grabbing after every drama as if it were the whole of life. The skill of noticing that urge, and sometimes choosing not to chase, becomes the same skill that could choose a next incarnation. In this view, reincarnation is less a punishment than a habit of the heart.
The practice mapped in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation trains that choice through elemental and planetary rituals, one careful step at a time. By learning to watch what rises and decide what to engage, a person is already practicing the freedom the old traditions promised. It is a strange and hopeful idea: the next life, in some real sense, is being chosen right here and now.
Full Video Transcript
Okay. Now this is the second time I’m attempting to make this recording. I had a power outage that corrupted the video. I was almost done too. So we have to do this again. All right. And everything looks kind of golden right now. That’s interesting. All right. So it is a full moon. So maybe I should do these videos every full moon and every new moon twice a month. That’d be nice. Very mysterious.
um this is something that’s been coming up in a lot of consultations uh the idea of the magic
circle as a as somehow related to reincarnation and so eventually i thought i i need to talk about
the secret meaning behind reincarnation okay uh you know what happens after you die i get a lot
of questions about that i don’t really know okay but i have some big inklings about what happens
after we supposedly die okay and and those things that happen supposedly
after we die are happening now so we’re going to talk about the magic circle and
the lesser vanishing ritual the pentagram and how that relates to
reincarnation okay see if I can get this thing to work all right there’s the
standard interpretation of reincarnation and then there is supposedly the secret
meaning of reincarnation okay so what we’re saying is that all the adepts out there supposedly know
that reincarnation isn’t what you think it is it is not you being reborn uh in a new form life
after life after life not exactly okay uh and if if that’s not it then what is it okay so
reincarnation the way we tend to think of it is that once we die we hover around in the spirit
world for a while and eventually get drawn into a new form okay and uh and pretty much among the
in the eastern traditions but alter all ancient traditions actually this process of reincarnation
was compulsive you were kind of driven to continue to to incarnate in various forms
okay and in some traditions it was believed that eventually you could become enlightened and then
you would be able to get some control over that process okay so you could actually choose your
next incarnation or to choose whether or not you reincarnate at all and if that’s possible we’re
going to explore how it’s possible okay and this will not be that difficult to understand i don’t
think okay because reincarnation is not something that happens just after you die it happens
all the time moment to moment while you’re still alive so what really happens okay well to explore
that we explore the magic circle alistair crowley referred to the lesser bandaging ritual of the
pentagram as the medicine of metals okay so this is a very cryptic remark the idea of the medicine
of metals comes from alchemy and the idea was that down in the bowels of the earth we have the seven
metals okay which is lead silver mercury copper tin a gold and gold right and um these metals
would go through a process of evolution or maturation they would start out as lead and
eventually they would transmute and become silver and then they would become what’s the next one
mercury and then copper and that i don’t know um eventually they’d end up as gold okay and
so this idea of all these various metals in the earth um sort of going through chemical processes
torturous processes in order to evolve and eventually become something beautiful and golden
okay and so supposedly um these metals that were down in the earth they are symbolic of qualities
of the soul okay and of course these these qualities of the soul are planetary virtues
or and planetary vices okay so uh for instance copper is the metal of venus and that’s the
planet of love and lust and sexuality and promiscuity lots of good things and bad things
mixed in with that and eventually all of these various planetary vices were aspiring to become
gold golden okay and so um there’s a process by which that that maturation or that evolution
the transmutation of metals into pure gold there’s a process by which that can be um sped up in other
words you can speed up the process of that evolution okay and so when crowley was saying
that the lbrp is the medicine of metals he was saying this can help all of the planetary virtues
and vices within you evolve more quickly into pure gold and you can become an enlightened being
faster all right so the lbrp can do that yeah well it sets the stage for that okay and it simply
involves drawing the magic circle around yourself okay so that that would include the lesser
banishing ritual the pentagram and the lesser banishing ritual or the banishing ritual the
hexagram and of course the invoking rituals too which also involve the magic circle if you go
through the outer order grades in the kabbalah magic book that you will eventually do some
elemental invocations and planetary invocations and banishments okay a lot of people ask me about
that they say um shouldn’t you be invoking in the morning and banishing in the evening it’s like no
no um just if you look at the curriculum later you’ll get to see how the invoking and banishing
actually works okay well that’s a subject for another time so there’s this idea that drawing
the magic circle and doing magical work with that magic circle helps the soul evolve and so here we
have the magic circle let’s say the Ouroboros and in the midst of that circle a beautiful flower is
emerging this is the soul okay and when you draw a magic circle around yourself you’re basically
declaring this is a little universe where things are erupting and happening there’s drama going on
and and all these various forces are attempting to become gold okay but the manner in which they
go about doing that is compulsive and crazy and they don’t know what they’re doing okay there’s
lots of uh blind activity going on lots of creatures chasing their own tails that’s what
the Ouroboros signifies if you are caught up in this manifest universe you are probably chasing
your own tail you you think you know what’s good for you so you chase after that and it’s not good
for you as life shows us right many of the things that we think are good for us are not good for us
we don’t even know what’s good for us for heaven’s sake so the process of becoming enlightened is
finding to find out like what what is this really all about what’s trying to happen and part of that
is the sort of storyline of well i have all these forces erupting in the magic circle that are
attempting to become gold they’re attempting to become enlightened through me and it’s just
happening right okay and somehow i have to get a hold of this process and become a magician so i
can become a conductor of this orchestra of all these crazy forces right well yeah and so you can
see the magic circle um as a like it’s sort of like a flower that you sit upon this is the god
horus in his infant form as the uh harpocrates which is from the golden dawn mythos of course
you can see that he has arisen from the waters of chaos you can see the coils of the snake down
below and uh it’s kind of interesting to see your own magic circle as a sort of flower that you have
emerged from okay and the idea of this is quite simple like when you draw the magic circle that’s
a nice flower form and within that magic circle you are now privy to all the forces in your life
that are attempting to arise as you and they just keep coming okay and there are aspects of yourself
that will evolve and then they will move out to the edges and then they will crumble away wither
away and die okay if you cling to those things as they’re withering away and dying you will suffer
okay so it’s a good idea not to not to um cling to things that you know are not going to be around
forever okay so if you become attached to your body let’s say that’s one of those things right
that’s not going to be around forever okay and supposedly in the center of this flower where
they’re just nothing but empty space is just this continuous arising process this is where
the enlightenment supposedly happens it’s the eternal springtime the eternal sunshine of the
spotless mind happening in the middle of that flower so you want to kind of want to stay there
and not get captivated by something that’s going to crumble away and die okay and all magic circles
can be seen this way okay and here we have oh look the serpent has made an appearance again as
outside the circle there right and there’s another magic circle outside and so anything that you
perceive out there in the world is also in its own magic circle and it is also arising from the
fathomless ground of being just like you are emerging like that okay it exists in its own
magic circle and this is the you know this little diagram right here shows how demon summoning is
done okay now the interesting thing about this demon summoning formula right here is a bit of a
blind okay we’re going to talk about that it’s not really the demon out there that you should
be working with okay i mean somewhat there’s a much more important demon that needs to be dealt
with not just the one out there problem is in our default state of mind we are outward oriented and
we think we need to fix our problems by fixing what’s out there and we compulsively do this
again and again and again and we just can’t seem to learn
that it doesn’t work we continue to suffer because we think that fixing
things out there is going to make us feel better in
here okay can’t seem to learn that lesson because
not how happiness true happiness or true joy is achieved
and all these magical seals and magical circles and
mandalas can be viewed this way as little universes that are erupting into
some kind of form where a drama plays itself out because the drama kind of unfolds there and says
here i am look make meaning out of me appreciate me i’m on display right now anytime you see a
flower the flower is like i’m i’m on display appreciate me okay and if you don’t what a missed
opportunity and from the east this is from tantra buddhism uh these all these various mandalas
function the same way okay am i oversimplifying it no i’m not not really uh this mandala represents
samsara the universe of course samsara is the suffering version of the universe and nirvana
is the version of the universe where there isn’t any suffering and they’re both the same universe
of course right so this is the universe dressed up as suffering i guess that’s mara the demon of
death i suppose who’s devouring everything uh because things once again things arise in the
circle they they they mature and then they work their way out to the edges and they crumble away
wither away and die and the things keep emerging out of the center and keep coming it just keeps
coming the things keep unfolding right events keep unfolding just like flowers that keep
that’s kind of like a flower that blooms forever that’s what the universe sort of is right that’s
That’s what your life sort of is.
And so the idea in the mystery of traditions is that even if the body dies and falls away, that’s really just one of those flower petals withering and dying.
The process of unfolding continues, okay?
But, of course, the problem is we can’t seem to stay in the center of the flower.
There really isn’t a center, by the way.
That’s just a metaphor.
but we can’t seem to stay in the center of the flower where it’s the eternal spring springtime
sunshine springtime um and then you can probably see why the middle pillar becomes important like
the middle pillar ritual okay well anyway that’s another subject and of course a magic circle can
also be seen as a as a spring boil or a fountain where things are constantly erupting they are
arising from the ultimate ground of being or from the unmanifest okay and when you sit in
your magic circle you see other entities arising outside the magic circle too oh they are also
arising and playing out their little dramas and and having their own experiences while i’m over
here having my experience how magical but there’s something very sinister that happens as you’re
sitting in your magic circle your mind will throw a stick out there into beyond the bounds of the
the magic circle and your mind will expect you to leave your magic circle and chase after that stick
and do something to it okay i guess this is where the the crazy uh myth came like if you leave the
magic circle the demon will destroy you or something like that will attack you right
um so whenever the mind throws a stick outside the magic circle you don’t have to chase after it
okay but that’s what we do don’t we let’s do an example here okay so you’re
walking through the woods you’re walking through the park and you see a snake
okay snakes are interesting creatures because they have killed there’s no
animal on earth that has killed more animal that that has killed more humans
than a snake okay snakes are pretty much the top of the list the venomous ones
that is. And so it’s only natural that humans have evolved a healthy fear of snakes. So without even
thinking about it, you just react. You might even go grab a shovel and decapitate it or something
like that. And then after it’s over, you’re like, wow, I don’t know what came over me. I just had
to kill it. You can see this come over people too. A snake appears in the yard and they just go nuts
and they don’t even think twice about killing it something takes them over makes them kill it okay
so the mind throws a stick it throws some kind of negative quality into that snake there are no
negative qualities anywhere out there in the universe okay the snake is not evil but the mind
throws this stick called evil into the snake and now oh yeah bad must kill must destroy must
pulverize right must decapitate and then the mind compels you to do something you
leave the magic circle and then of course what’s happened is now you have
reinforced that automatic reaction and it is more likely to happen again the
next time you see a snake because it’s been now reinforced you didn’t have to
do that so an enlightened being is aware of these forces that are within the
world that are attempting to arise as us, okay? The most important thing is that when you see
something out there that scares you or entices you, you have to catch your mind in the act of
throwing the stick. It’s going to throw some kind of positive trait out there into that object and
then make you go do something. You must go do, must go have, I must have this, right? Or it’s
going to throw a negative quality out there into that thing and I must go out and destroy that
thing or I must run away from it okay and when it throws a stick it expects
you to do something it’s like it’s like you were a well-trained dog the mind
throws a stick and you chase after it ho ho ho ho right and and the mind keeps
doing that keeps throwing sticks and you keep chasing after them and you keep
doing things to that stick or you keep running away from them whatever it is
right and that’s why in the I guess in Vedanta traditions or whatever there’s
the really cool analogy of a human being having a choice you can be a dog or you
can be a lion okay when you throw a stick in front of a dog the dog tastes
is after it every single time right dogs are so adorable if you throw a stick in
front of a lion the lion doesn’t look at the stick the lion looks at you you will
not throw that stick again okay so you should be like that lion when your mind
throws a stick you don’t look at the stick you look at the mind and when you look at the mind
interesting things can happen people will say i can’t look at my mind where would where would i
find it like you’re looking at your mind all the time it’s projecting all kinds of qualities out
there okay so you want to catch it in the act of doing that and of course if you can turn around
and look at try to try to personify whatever it is that’s throwing that stick what does it look like
you can do this it’s possible okay it might just seem like a little bubble entity that’s a worse
little sphere of turbulent darkness or something like that or it could be like this little golem
like creature this is the the mind has a natural tendency to body forth images of itself that are
representative of itself this is why we dream in fact we’re dreaming all the time we never stop
all right so um and that’s that’s why when somebody encounters a snake and the negative
quality gets projected into it they think they’re awake but that’s a dream happening there are no
negative qualities out there in the world period they are simply arising from the mind or from
from these all these various disembodied forces out there who are trying to work themselves out
and this craziness that we call the universe okay so when you see the snake what’s happening is that
you want to catch your your mind in the act of trying to get you to do something okay and that
means taking your attention off of the snake and turning it back turning it around and you want to
look at the mind that is attempting to throw the stick or that has thrown the stick the mind has
just thrown a stick and says you must go do this and you’re like excuse me i don’t have to do
anything and who are you that is attempting to arise as me compelling me to go decapitate that
snake or something like that right it’s like oh i can see how you evolved to become this thing that
you are that sort of arises in my in my meat sack here in my flesh to take me over and make me do
something that’s like wow it’s like you’ve been floating around there disembodied and you’re just
looking for an opportunity to work out some kind of drama by using me to do it how interesting
something was floating around out there in the collective unconscious let’s say right
and it saw an opportunity to play out its own repressed little dramas right and and once that
trigger of the snake out there manifested it’s a it’s a boom it just kind of entered you and said
let’s go do this right and you’re like whoa whoa whoa excuse me you want me to go do something
what are you so something is attempting to arise as you remember it is arising in your flesh it
is becoming flesh it is becoming meat remember carne means meat right so to incarnate is to
become meat so something is becoming you to go and do something you don’t have to do you don’t have
to play along with that okay so when you see it attempting to arise as you you turn around and
look at it now you can do some work with this thing now that’s arising okay because if it just
plays out its trauma it’s going to keep doing that over and over again okay unconsciously compulsively
maybe forever you know so um there’s work that you can do with it as the adept that can really
process it in terms of what it really needs because um there are questions that we ask
when when a demon rises like that and wants you to do something you say what do you think you want
because it thinks it wants something right and then of course you ask what do you really need
okay then because if you can help it um if you can help it play itself out um you can make it
so that it will never bother you again it’ll dissolve forever disappear forever okay or become
something else something useful for a change right um so this is how we work with the demons right
what does this have to do with reincarnation though okay so remember something is attempting
to arise in your meat sack in your flesh in your so it’s attempting to be it’s attempting to become
flesh to incarnate right um you decide whether you play along with that or not okay for most human
beings they just play along with it and they can’t seem to help it because they are hypnotized i
really am this meat sack that runs around and grabs some things and eats them and then runs away from
things that are dangerous and goes and works on the job for you know for for 10 hours a day
because it thinks it has to right i really am this thing no you’re not if you think you are
you’re hypnotized okay so hypnosis is just you playing along with a particular narrative
the interesting thing about when you see the snake and narrative is arising the snake killer is
attempting to incarnate this is this is sort of karmic process that’s embedded in the collective
unconscious that is now erupting and attempting to incarnate and you can decide whether or not
you play along with that okay if you just play along with it and don’t even think about it then
it’s likely just going to keep happening over and over and over again and you’ll kill all kinds of
snakes including the non-men of the venomous ones right uh and but what you could do is say hold on
a second we don’t need to kill this snake it’s it’s one of the many many non-venomous species
out there in fact it would probably harm the environment and us more if we killed it it
performs a function for us and so you can decide whether or not you still go along with killing the
snake okay rather than compulsively doing it and we of course we can look at the tendency to kill
the snake compulsively and understand it we understand how this thing has evolved to be so
compulsive okay but we don’t have to play along with that anymore the interesting thing is that
something is attempting to arise in a narrative and live out a little life for a few minutes
as a snake killer. And you can decide whether you incarnate along with that. Okay. What this means
is that you as pure consciousness are never incarnated. You are not incarnate. Okay. But
the degree to which you are hypnotized and play along with all the narratives that are attempting
to arise then you’re incarnated okay ultimately you’re not in your very essence of your being
you cannot be incarnate okay but you play along with these narratives and it is it is as if you
are these things so when you that’s what it means to be hypnotized so if a stage hypnotist you
wonder how can they get people to click like a chicken it’s like they just get people to
they convince them that they can become a chicken for a while that they are a chicken for a while
some people are very suggestible it’s possible okay we are all very suggestible are you really
a person no you’re not you’ve been hypnotized into thinking that you are okay when you wake
up from that it’s like i don’t know what i am i’m certain i’m not any of this i’m not even sure what
to do anymore what i’m aware of is all these tendencies these compulsions are attempting to
arise as me to get me to do this and that run away from this and chase after that i can see them now
and all my life i’ve been just doing as they told that my mind throws a stick and i run after it
now my mind is throwing sticks and i don’t have to do it anymore now what okay and now you can
work with this these various entities that attempt to get you to become the snake killer let’s say
right and um so that they don’t ever arise again okay or so that they serve you very well and
become familiar spirits okay there are some very deeply ingrained instincts and fears that will
never go away because they’re too deeply ingrained as in our human existence let’s say but the nice
thing is they aren’t really you anyway you are pure awareness okay so you don’t have to work
out all of your karma like no there’s a that’s just count this endless endless karma working
itself out in the universe everywhere but none of that is really who you are what you are as you see
these various karmic entities arising attempting to play out their little dramas you’re like wow
i don’t have to play along with any of these things how interesting okay so that is hypnosis
when you believe that you are something okay and so the idea of being enlightened is to be awake
to snap out of it to snap out of your hypnosis so i you no longer identify as anything okay or
you choose what you play along with and identify with okay you can still do that and this is what
it has to do with reincarnation then because that process of discernment see hypnosis is not really
a nervous system thing it’s an awareness thing awareness is always sort of interested in being
beguiled into falling to identifying with various things it’s like if you try to entice it into
believing that it is something it might just step right in there and say okay yeah that’s what i am
i’m gonna cluck like a chicken on the stage now for a while felt like a good idea at the time i
don’t know why i did it but it seemed like a good idea at the time right and so awareness is very
susceptible to being um to suggestion it’s very susceptible to suggestion uh and so uh but
awareness is like you know pure energy or just consciousness that’s everywhere consciousness is
not a nervous system activity consciousness is in the universe itself constantly attempting to
emerge in various phenomena of the universe consciousness has arisen more or less in you
and is now witness to all these karmic forces that are attempting to play themselves out
for the most part it is beguiled by them and drawn into them against its will i guess right
until it learns to wake up and say wait a minute i don’t have to do any of this and of course it
can become even more and more fun when you can now choose your own adventure do i want to become
the snake killer this time no i don’t think so i think i want to become the snake rescuer that
would be much more interesting maybe even more dangerous right i have a choice okay so you can
see where this is going because this process of pure awareness entering this sort of habit let’s
say of discernment and and wake becoming increasingly awake it doesn’t have to get
drawn into whatever narrative comes along anymore it starts to um hold still and not be sucked out
beyond its own magic circle let’s say right it doesn’t just get drawn it the mind throws a stick
and it’s like oh that’s interesting but i’m not going to do that the mind throws another stick
it’s like nope i’m not going to do that the mind throws a third stick it’s like that looks
interesting you know what i think there’s something to explore there where i can help
other people okay i’m going to go do that so you can see that every time the mind throws a stick
that’s like a little life that you can go live right there this is happening all the time while
you’re alive okay but of course after the body dies this process of discernment supposedly can
continue and you continue whatever it is consciousness continues to select which stick
it chases after and which which one it leaves alone which means that the adept supposedly
after death can choose his or her next incarnation the discernment continues okay and we learn how
to do this basically by watching all of the little demons that arise all the little tendencies that
arise whenever the mind throws a stick you are aware of it and you decide whether or not you’re
going to play along with that narrative okay and so all these little remember the most important
thing is to turn around and look at the mind or whatever is whatever it is that’s arising
attempting to arise as you inside the magic circle what is that not the thing out there
the snake is not the problem okay the problem is most likely has to do with um you allowing this
thing to just take you over and make you do something you don’t have to do that anymore
okay but you can you can decide to do that okay and the difference between you
know playing along with a little mini life that comes to present itself let’s
go do this okay and holding back and say no not no not not this time that
discernment that you develop translates supposedly into your ability to choose
your next incarnation okay so we’re doing it already all the time and that
process simply continues after the body dies keeps going okay and supposedly then it’s possible to
choose to never reincarnate ever again and just stay in a blissed out untroubled state forever
and ever maybe i don’t know okay so i hope that was clear i did a whole run through of this
presentation uh an hour ago and the power glitched and then the the video file became corrupted so i
so I wasn’t able to fix it.
And so now this is the second recording.
Hopefully this is going to work.
All right, so until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher