Descriptions:
Video Description
What happens when a magician tries to make magic make sense before practicing it? Lyam Christopher warns that this is one of the sneakiest ways to stay stuck. Magic offers an outer meaning we can study and an inner meaning we can only experience, and reaching for the dictionary or a tidy diagram too early keeps us safely outside. The intellect is not the enemy, but when it insists on fixing everything first, it can quietly defend us against the very change we came to find.
He uses the pentagram as the perfect example. From the outside, the Golden Dawn system looks inconsistent, even irrational. Why does the invoking water pentagram look the same as the banishing air pentagram? The reasonable mind wants to repair it, and some schools have. But the apparent contradiction is a doorway, not a bug. A blue pentagram of water and a yellow pentagram of air are different living experiences, even when the lines are drawn the same way. To file them into one neat rule is to flatten the magic until it cannot wake anyone up.
The deeper lesson unfolds like the difference between a meandering river and one that has been straightened for efficiency. The rationalized version is smoother but somehow soulless, and the attempt to fix it can damage the very life it was meant to serve. He invites the student to leave the system alone, do the daily work, and let the inner meaning surface in its own time. That patient curriculum is laid out in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, and the quiet reward is a magic that changes you from the inside, rather than one you merely understand in your head.
Full Video Transcript
All right this week we are talking about the pentagrams as promised last week. Mainly we’re
using the pentagram invoking banishment system here as an example of the error of intellectualizing.
All right so the the hermetic path that of the Kabbalah magic book and the golden dawn
is already a fairly intellectual path it’s really is a path for you know nerds people who resonate
very strongly with the planet mercury or the god hermes people who tend to be very intellectual
very imaginative who read a lot and so it is a means of using the mind to some extent to reach
enlightenment and to gain magical powers but it is ultimately a way of going beyond the mind
and one of the problems with magic is that many people who get into it never seem to get out of
their heads and that’s one of the traps of hermetic magic is that a lot of the outward symbolism and
the outward meanings are intellectual in nature they’re even somewhat scientific looking in nature
And that can lead you to believe that, oh, it’s all about the science or it’s all about studying and reading and drawing abstract diagrams and exerting the mind to control the forces of nature and life, etc., etc.
No, not really. That’s more science.
So let’s talk about the error of taking magic intellectually.
so in in magic there is a common principle pretty much one of the most common principles involved
in ceremonial magic is invocation and banishment okay many people think they know what this is and
how to do it well there’s an sort of an outer interpretation of invoking and banishment and
there’s an inner interpretation and it has to do with the sort of confusion that arises between
invoking and evoking and I have to say that as you advance through let’s say the outer order
of the golden dawn you start to get some some inklings of what you know reality actually is
like beneath the surface you what happens to you is you begin to notice that there doesn’t seem to
be much of a difference between invoking and evoking between invoking and evoking what’s the
difference. Sometimes you’re looking at it and it’s like, I don’t quite see how, okay, is this,
am I evoking something or invoking something? And even the standard definition of invocation
and evocation, those two definitions, those definitions still don’t seem to help because
experientially you’re starting to see that there’s not much of a difference. And we’re going to get
into that. Okay. So the standard definition of to invoke something is to bring something inside of
you. And the standard definition of evoking is to conjure something outside of you, outside your
magic circle. Okay, so if you want something to sort of possess you from the inside to come into
you, that’s invoking. And if you want to conjure something to visual appearance, like a spirit,
then that’s evoking. The problem is that when we do magic, a lot of times when
evocation happens it’s happening in the imagination okay so it’s not necessarily
materializing as a smoky entity outside the circle it’s happening as a perception of an image
in the mind that’s out there you know like a hallucination or something like that and then
what it seems what seems to be happening is that well that’s in me isn’t it it’s not out there
And there’s this whole confusion between inside me and outside me starts to happen.
And that’s good because that is the dualistic worldview beginning to unravel.
And so the confusion between invoking and evoking, that’s usually a good sign.
Okay. And so we’re going to go into the difference between invoking and banishing and invoking and evoking to show that there’s a deeper sort of inner order meaning behind these concepts.
Okay. And the problem is if you just approach them in terms of their different, their dictionary definitions in your mind, in your head, you’re just going to intellectualize all over them.
And you really haven’t experienced them yet. You really don’t know what invoking and evoking is.
You’re just kind of pretending, faking, faking it till you make it sort of thing.
And that is the difference between an initiate and a non-initiate.
So most of the books you read on Western magic are written by non-initiates.
They’re usually in terms of the outer definitions of these concepts.
It’s kind of what we talked about with blinds.
Most people who write about magic or speak about magic have fallen for the outer meanings of things.
And those are the meanings that they’re now bringing to talk about, as though these are the true meanings.
Okay, so the outward meanings are more the illusions that we fall for as we get into magic, okay?
And then the inner meanings start to come out, okay?
I talked about this at length in terms of the double entendre and the bait and switch that happens in literature and in magic, okay, in the last video, okay?
What that was basically talking about was the two meanings that we confront as we deal with magic.
there’s the outward meaning and then the inward meaning and most people are stuck on the outsides
of things okay that’s why i think this channel resonates with a lot of people because um i’m
kind of i’m continuously delving into the the inner meanings behind things speaking
supposedly as an initiate somebody who has experienced the insides of these rituals or
symbols or you know the astral world and you know things like that okay you know somebody who has a
lot of experience with magic and who hasn’t spent a lot of who hasn’t spent a lot of time not very
much time wasted in pursuing the external definitions okay anyway so the problem with
fixing things so we go into magic and we say well this doesn’t make any sense i know how to we can
make this look a lot better let’s okay the golden dawn taught it this way that’s all hogwash it’s
not so irrational why don’t we just fix it first we’ll fix it first right okay now it makes sense
now let’s practice all right you can see the problem with that because the outer appearance
of things is something that you have fallen for and now you’re fixing the outer appearance of
those things so that those outer appearances can no longer initiate you to the inner meaning anymore
so you’re tampering with a system that could potentially maybe bring you to the inner order
but you’re tampering with it so that it can no longer do that because you’re fixing it so that
it meets your own rational intellectual expectations yeah and you’re usually doing
that in terms of your own conditioning well this is what i’ve taught makes sense so i’m going to
make this make sense before i make sense of it all right you can tell the message already is to leave
the damn system alone and do the work so that you can experience the inner meaning uh now when it
comes to revising systems of magic i really like some of the revisions or some of the alternative
takes and it certainly means that i highly value having a flexible mind the ability to see in terms
of other perspectives other systems other configurations okay other constellations of
the psyche that other systems use okay however if you start referring to those alternative
variations before you break through using the one system you know that’s coherent supposedly
then you’re just going to be stuck on the outsides of things forever okay he’s jumping from one
system to the next because oh this this seems to make sense now no i got tired of that let’s go
over to this system this seems to work oh let’s combine these two systems no no no no no okay um
In order for a system to work, it has to have its own internal integrity.
It has to have its own checks and balances, its own coherent system.
And if you combine two systems of magic together, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then you can just meddle the whole thing up.
And this is what most people are doing.
It’s like, well, I take a little bit of Golden Dawn.
I take a little bit of Wicca.
I take a little bit of Taoism.
And I put these all together.
Oh, and this is what works for me.
Now, beware that. Beware when people say, everyone’s different, so that works for you, but I’m going to do it this way because this works for me.
Very often, when an initiate hears somebody say that, what they’re hearing is the manner in which I am perpetuating my suffering now, I can continue to perpetuate that by using the system.
and that makes me feel pretty good in other words the the clinging to my own self-importance that
I’m doing now this system helps me do that and that makes me feel good about myself and so there’s
no progress made as you can hear so you you start to if you if you create your own system of magic
based on all these pieces and parts you’re basically most likely constructing something
based on your own ignorance based on your own misguidedness and you’re going to construct
something that perpetuates the unenlightened state that you came into this whole thing with
to begin with all right i hope that makes sense all right so we talk about this is the um the
golden dawn system of the pentagrams and how to draw them in ritual so that they invoke and banish
each of the elements. Pretty straightforward system. It tends to be that when you look at the
pentagram, I guess logically speaking, that the topmost point of the pentagram represents spirit
and then the other four points of the pentagram, each one of those represents one of the four
elements. Okay, many of you know this of course. And so the principle is that if you banish air,
you start at the air angle and you draw away from it and you just complete the pentagram from there
and if you are invoking air you draw towards the air angle and you complete the pentagram from that
point okay and the same thing goes for all the other elements except for spirit because there’s
something special about spirit which we’ll get to i don’t want to spoil that now there have been
attempts to fix this so we have the aurum solus system of magic which is pretty cool by the way
I’ve got a couple of their guides.
There’s The Sword and the Serpent, and there’s Mysteria Magica, I believe.
The Sword and the Serpent and Mysteria Magica.
Those are two books by the Magical Order of the Aurum Solus.
Those are two books that I have from those guys.
And they have a rationalized and repaired system.
So they looked at the pentagrams.
They’re like, no, no, no, no, let’s do it this way.
All right, so these pentagrams make a lot more sense than the Golden Dawn system.
I don’t really need to go into it just a little bit.
They just assume that when I am invoking something, that I will draw the pentagram clockwise.
And when I banish something, I draw the pentagram counterclockwise.
And I still, you know, respect, I pretty much favor the same point.
I pretty much start at the same point as the element that I’m, you know, invoking or banishing,
okay? And that’s it. That’s how they do it, including spirit. So in other words, they invoke
and they invoke spirit from the spirit angle from up above, okay? The golden dawn doesn’t do that,
which means that a golden dawn doesn’t make any sense, right? And in the golden dawn system,
if I go back, if I can go back, you can see that the invoking water pentagram is the same as the
vanishing air pentagram okay so that’s why many people say that doesn’t make sense they try to
make sense they try to rationalize it in strange ways but it still doesn’t make sense to them
so eventually they see this other pentagram system by the oram solos and they say oh this makes a lot
more sense now okay that’s much more rational somebody fixed it thank god right all right well
let’s take a look at the the booby trap here but somebody here has fallen for the outer
appearances of things, okay? And it mainly has to do with that clockwise and counterclockwise
principle. Oh, I’m going to get in a lot of trouble for this video, I think. Okay, but let’s talk
about, first of all, let’s talk about why we go into magical systems and we feel like we can’t
leave well enough alone and we have to fix them before we use them to fix ourselves, okay?
Presumably we’re doing magic, you know, to make our lives better, to become enlightened. One of
the outward trappings of magic of course is that we want power and control over our lives because
we’re out of control and i don’t know um and we want control we want um i don’t know self-respect
and um power charisma wealth sure why not uh and oh yeah we want to be happy too um and we want to
be enlightened at least we think we do anyway we think we want to be enlightened and um one of the
problems is that we come to this whole spiritual path and we think that well it’s spirituality is
an intellectual pursuit it’s all like in your head it’s all in your it’s all in your brain right it’s
all in your head magic is all inside your head and all these spirits you’re conjuring they’re
just inside your head okay and I think we come to magic with that belief even though we won’t
admit it to ourselves the belief is still back there running the show okay that it’s we come to
this and say, well, I’m going to tweak my thoughts and my behaviors so that I’ve become more
successful or, you know, something like that. All right. So why is the brain so stupid? Okay. So
in Western culture, particularly, we idolize the brain, don’t we? Let’s talk about how the brain
evolved. Just, you know, basically, the human organism is basically a highly advanced feeding
tube. Okay, so, you know, the first life forms, the first animal like life forms evolved as an
intestinal tract with a mouth and an anus, and a tube in between. And then the, the organism would
feed on various things, and then pass those products through its digestive system and then
excrete them out the other end, sort of automatically, it would do that. Okay. Now, in order
to do that, though, it wasn’t necessarily good at finding things, of course, unless it had some
kind of apparatus to seek out things to eat, things to digest, things to attack even, right?
And so it developed a nervous system and a sort of attack system, okay? So to go after prey and
eat it, whether it’s plants or other animals, okay? And in order to do that, this nervous system
had to become increasingly sophisticated
because other life forms out there
were also developing nervous systems
that were also becoming more sophisticated
to evade them.
So they had to become clever enough to catch them.
And so we have this sort of escalating thing going on
how both sides are escalating.
The predators are getting smarter,
but the prey is also getting smarter.
And so that makes creatures more and more and more intelligent, at least when it comes to evading predators or finding prey.
So in other words, the brain mostly evolved so that we could find food and stay away from trouble.
And as you know, people who are preoccupied primarily with just finding food and shelter and avoiding trouble, that’s not really that smart.
That doesn’t really show much of an appreciation for art and literature and deeper meanings in life and spirituality, things like that.
how did we so we tend to assume that the more sophisticated the brain gets the better we are
able to experience uh deeper forces of of life let’s say right that’s kind of true but remember
that the brain evolved to basically just find things to eat or to run away from predators
obviously i’m oversimplifying that okay and somehow in the process of all this it also
evolved the ability to appreciate things how interesting uh mostly in us okay other other
mammals apparently have the ability to do two and birds and um maybe octopuses maybe um uh once the
nervous system becomes sophisticated enough other pursuits become possible you can even learn to
appreciate opera maybe no not me maybe led zeppelin so let’s do let’s look at examples of
of the brain being not being too smart okay so the brain goes in and tries to fix things
so if we’re trapped inside our heads we’re like we get all rational and say well this needs to
be more efficient that way if everything’s more efficient then i can find food better i can have
shelter reliable shelter i can find a mate and produce offspring i can evade predators that’s
smart right getting wealthy getting rich you know um and so yeah we we come up with more and more
efficient ways of doing things okay so one example of that is the metric system we have a um in in
the united states still we use the old english system primarily except in science okay which
makes a lot of sense by the way um uh the english system of measurement which is like um you know
inches and feet and miles uh it’s it’s kind of unwieldy because the calculations you have to do
to um to translate one unit of measure into others is uh difficult to remember it’s complicated
for instance um in the metric system one kilometer is 1 000 meters that’s easy right
and one um anyway so um and one meter is 100 centimeters or a thousand millimeters okay so
um so everything’s in units of 10 essentially everything’s divisible by 10 which makes
calculations easy wow so we fixed the whole system of measurement okay that also goes for
measuring temperature like fahrenheit and celsius and stuff like that so celsius is the metric
system i i assume and um fahrenheit is the old the old system okay um but as it turns out though
the the systems of uh the english system of measurement and the fahrenheit system of
temperature these things sort of evolved naturally based on our experience of the world
based on a culture based on the way we were our our human cultures were um were evolving at the
time and continue to evolve now. Okay. And so those systems have
a very organic feel to them. They’re this sort of a they
have a soul to them. Whereas the the metric system feels kind of
soulless. It’s very rational, very controlled, very simplified,
very easy to use. Okay, somebody. So somebody essentially
has come along and simplified things. This is what the what
the brain tends to do it will apply abstraction on top of the world to fix it and to simplify it
to oversimplify it and sometimes that oversimplification ends up killing it okay so
snuffing out the life or the soul of whatever it’s trying to measure or control i’m not saying
that the metric system does that. But it does have a sort of soulless feel to it. And those who
didn’t grow up with the English system might not even understand that. They don’t know what it’s
like. They don’t know what that feels like. And they just look at it and say, you’re just being
irrational. It’s like, yeah, I am being irrational, aren’t I? Yeah. So in other words, to value things
like soul uh soulfulness is not necessarily a rational thing now is it another example of
trying to fix things and ruining them um is uh the army corps of engineers uh one example here
well they’ll go they’ll go to they find these meandering rivers and they’ll say wow that’s so
inefficient let’s straighten that river that’ll be much better for our boats you know so let’s
straighten that river and deepen it and so one of the examples here in florida where i live is the
river uh the army corps of engineers came in and just straightened it but okay now it’s like
straight from this lake all the way to the sea or something like that right uh and in the process
they ended up destroying the um the ecosystem for miles and miles and miles around killed the land
essentially and uh eventually they realized that you know it’s like oh i think we just destroyed
nature and the whole area and i think one of the funny things is that you know after they had done
that this is really kind of funny um of course nature is is adapting it’s like well okay the
river’s gone so let’s the nature starts to create new types of habitats gradually you know as it’s
as it recovers right but then of course the army corps of engineers now goes back in and then
forces the river to be winding again now that’s probably also going to destroy all everything
that nature’s tried to do to um you know to to establish uh life moving into that area again
it’s it’s really funny because um uh they went in and straightened the river killed everything
life started to grow back and so they said oh my god we made a mistake and they go in and then
they unstraighten the river kill everything and then life has to come back anyway it’s kind of
ironic. Another example of trying to simplify things, okay, so you can superimpose a very simple
abstract system on top of the world and sort of kill it, right? Well, you can also superimpose
morality upon the world and in the process end up damaging life, okay? For instance,
veganism okay so veganism means eating only vegetables and fungi no animal products okay
yeah no animal products except maybe the phytoplankton that grow on seaweed accidentally
eat those oops right so well in the process of doing that what we find is that many plants
they have the nutrients but we can’t seem to get out those nutrients because the plants contain
anti-nutrients that keep us from digesting them. And a more efficient means of getting the nutrients
is through getting some meat in the diet and eggs and dairy, if you can handle it, and fish and
things like that, animal products. But in the effort to superimpose a sort of moral system of
don’t kill any animals upon the human diet people end up hurting themselves um and they get sicker
and sicker over a year it takes years you know pretty much like you can if you if you adopt
veganism now you’re probably going to feel really good for a while okay well depends unless you have
food intolerances for um certain um uh vegetables and fruits which many people are developing now
but um yeah but you can feel really good for a while but eventually it’s you get weaker and
weaker because you have you know vitamin a deficiency and vitamin b12 deficiency uh things
like that um veganism is actually really quite it’s really quite possible though um as long as
you incorporate a few ways of cheating in there maybe shellfish or something like that or eggs or
just cheat in in a couple of different ways and mostly you can you can do mostly uh vegetarian
yeah vegetarian diet is pretty good as long as you have some you know animal products and they’re
like eggs and fish and things like that anyway that’s an example of the mind the intelligent
brain trying to fix things uh and in this case imposing morality upon the world in an attempt
to fix it because it’s so nature is so red in tooth and claw and we need to eliminate all the
murder from nature this happens in education a lot so um an example of the brain getting full
of itself thinking well if i have the information that’s all i need okay and this happens a lot in
education where they’re like the students the students getting the information right good
they’ve learned next it’s like well acquiring information isn’t learning and this is especially
true in magic initiation means change it means a new way of life has begun so in other words
what you to really learn something is to change not to acquire information okay so
acquiring information about how pentagrams might work or could work or some rational system of how
they could work, that information is not the same thing as the deep transformation that’s possible
behind those systems, okay? So the intellectual knowledge that we come into the work with
is not necessarily going to help us. It’s possibly going to screw everything up, okay? Because we
don’t realize the living nature, the soulful nature of the system that we’re getting into.
We intellectualize all over it
It’s almost like you go into it and say
Wow, this system is really irrational
And it’s all touchy-feely
And it doesn’t make any sense
Let’s rationalize it
Let’s fix it
Let’s make it all make sense first
And then let’s jump in and do it
Now it should work, right?
Another example of a person who lives in his head
Eventually in magic, yes
You will become your own teacher for the most part, okay?
or you will you know you won’t need a guru anymore or you won’t need to follow a curriculum anymore
you’ll start making your own curriculum okay but the big mistake that people make is that
when they first jump in they say I can make my own curriculum now yeah I don’t need to listen
to anybody I can do what I want right so well that might work but usually not no yeah because
if you you’re trying to achieve a change the nature of which you don’t even understand and so
why would you tamper with a system when you know you don’t understand how it works
don’t try to make it make sense before you even understand the damn thing eventually yes you can
become your own teacher even then you’re going to reach points where you’re stuck okay and that’s
why we live out in the world because somebody’s going to come along and nudge you and give you
a hint like oh i think i know okay i think i know how i was screw how i was screwing up okay
back on track again yeah and those people aren’t necessarily teachers anymore everyone becomes your
teacher and every circumstance becomes your teacher another example of the the brain consciousness
screwing everything up by simplifying everything okay and this should really be a no-brainer
when you go into magic and you have all these various god names and names of archangels and
angels and things like that there’s a tendency to assume that when you see a word like Raphael
which is the name for the archangel of air let’s say in the golden dawn system right
but it’s also the name for the archangel of or let’s say it’s the name for the angel
of mercury okay the archangel of mercury is mikhail uh-oh but wait a minute mikhail is the
archangel of fire oh you’re so you’re saying the archangel of fire is also the archangel of mercury
no it is possible for two people in the world to share the same name there are other liams in the
world there are there are even other liams in the world with a y l y a m okay um so no brainer there
just remember like if you see the word Raphael it’s like it doesn’t mean you’re dealing with
the archangel of air you could also be dealing with the archangel of or the angel of mercury
yeah now kabbalistically the angel of mercury and the archangel of air they do share the same name
so there is some power supposedly in that name so there is a connection between those two angels
or they draw upon a similar power source, maybe in the Hebrew letters, something like that, right?
Yes, but they are two different entities, okay? Don’t, your brain is going to go in and try to
super simplify everything. Okay, Raphael is only one Raphael. So in other words, if that name shows
up here, it’s the same entity that appears over here. No, you’re oversimplifying things, okay?
All right, so the same thing goes for the pentagrams. It’s like, well, to assume there’s
only one pentagram, so if the invoking water is the same as the banishing air, it’s not, okay? The
invoking air pentagram is yellow, and the banishing air pentagram is yellow. The invoking water
pentagram is blue, and the banishing water pentagram is blue. Those are different pentagrams.
This is not rocket science, okay? So if they’re being drawn in a similar way, it doesn’t
mean they’re the same pentagram hmm shouldn’t be a problem with that really okay but somehow the
mind doesn’t like that oh it’s like it’s almost like the mind you you think oh this stuff really
doesn’t work anyway so i might as well just tweak it to make it more rational for myself i don’t
know what’s going on there exactly and of course what’s happening is that when you do this you’re
following for the outward meanings of things anyway okay so if i if i know that clockwise
is invoking and counterclockwise is banishing, then I can apply the clockwise counterclockwise
system to the pentagrams and I should be just fine. It’s not that simple. Don’t fall for the
outward meanings of things because things are a little bit more complex on the inside once you
experience them initiation is not intellectual intellect initiation is getting out of your head
so that the intellect and all of the other bodily functions have been subsumed under the higher self
or the deeper self the holy guardian angel okay that’s really kind of funny too because we
go into magic and we take charge of it and try to make it work for us even though we know
what’s eventually required is submitting to the higher self something like that okay and what
that means is that initiation is not in your head another problem with trying to fix the pentagram
system okay so in the arm solace system if you want to invoke spirit you simply draw a
you draw an angle towards the spirit the spirit angle or something like that and away from to
banish away from the spirit angle it’s a little more complicated than that there’s active and
passive. But if you’re doing something with spirit, you’re using that spirit point. The
golden dawn doesn’t do that. That should be a clue. It’s really unusual that the golden dawn
would not even do that. So here are the golden dawn invoking pentagrams for spirit. Notice how
they don’t even really have anything to do with that topmost point. If that’s happening in the
golden dawn system that should be cause for investigation not a cause for saying oh this
doesn’t make sense let’s fix it huh amazing that people would actually do that okay so we have the
invoking active and passive forms of the spirit pentagram how interesting remember that spirit
is not an element okay i know that in the wiccan tradition they might say that oh the secret fifth
element is spirit there are five elements right there’s air earth fire water and spirit no that
is not true okay uh spirit is the essence of them all and one way of looking at it is if you look at
the standard egyptian pyramid with the four sides on the top each of each face of the pyramid is one
the elements and the inward substance of that pyramid is spirit so in other words there really
aren’t any elements those are just the outward appearances of the spirit okay what that means
is no matter where you look you’re looking at spirit not only are you looking at spirit but
you’re looking with spirit and you’re looking through spirit okay so you cannot really invoke
spirit by pointing at it or by drawing an angle away from it or whatever where would you point
it’s everywhere okay that’s kind of the principle at work here um and so you can see that the um
there’s some kind of principle that’s being hinted at uh if you know anything about the
ark of the covenant the the presence of god would manifest between the two angels atop that ark okay
i don’t know if you guys know that you might have seen um raiders of the lost ark okay supposedly
the presence of god could be experienced in the empty space between the two angels okay the same
way in the golden dawn temple the spirit of god or the shekinah manifests between the two pillars
of the temple and you can see there’s two pillars there as well all right so um uh so the spirit is
not a thing that you can point at it simply manifests i don’t know among things between
things, as the Celts would say, betwixt and between. It’s not something you can really
point at. All right, so now we come to this idea of banishing counterclockwise and invoking
clockwise. On the surface of things, this makes a lot of sense, okay? But this is the outward
appearance of invoking and banishing, okay? The principle of this is really simple, okay? And this
is for people who have ancestry in the northern hemisphere all right in the northern hemisphere
the sun goes around us in a clockwise fashion okay it rises in the east and then goes overhead
but it drifts to the south okay so it goes to the south and then it goes down behind us let’s say in
the west and then as it’s under the earth it goes to the north and then it comes up in the east
again and then drifts to the south and goes to the west and drifts to the north and then comes up
again in the east okay so it’s always going around us clockwise no matter what season it is because
we’re in the northern hemisphere okay and the ancients recognized this because they lived a lot
in the outdoors right and so wow all of the and all of the planets follow that same route okay
all you know mercury venus saturn all the visible planets were following that same
route around the earth uh clockwise and it was the idea was that these swirling currents around
the earth are causing things to appear on the earth they’re causing things to manifest that’s
the principle of astrology okay and so um to draw a circle um clockwise means you’re making something
appear okay so that makes sense it’s like i’m invoking it right so i’m causing it to appear
oh but wait a second to cause something to appear that’s evocation uh-oh what’s invocation
so invocating invocation is calling causing something to arise not really no all right so
clockwise and counterclockwise you’ve also probably if you’re reading magical books you’re like what
are these weird terms sunwise is clockwise naturally because the the sun goes around us
in a clockwise fashion in the northern hemisphere and widdershins is counterclockwise okay i think
these are old celtic words or even gaelic words right or deosil and widdershins i think those
are the gaelic words old english words for clockwise and counterclockwise right and so
in you know in magical ritual we tend to mostly circumambulate walk around in a circle we tend
to circumambulate clockwise because we’re going with the sun and we are manifesting things to go
against the sun is to go against the current of manifestation ouch ouch yeah so that’s we kind of
want to go with the currents of nature uh that way everything is sort of easy in other words we take
advantage of the of the currents that are around us and we’re going with things we’re going with
manifestation okay to go against that um doesn’t mean you are trying to reverse that okay um yeah
because you you have to understand what um if you if you walk counterclockwise or if you draw a
circle counterclockwise it’s not that you’re trying to go against nature or against the you
know manifesting power of the sun all right so let’s take a look at some examples from other
traditions you can see the swastika uh obviously before it became an evil nazi symbol it was used
in all kinds of cultures like native americans and also in buddhism um it’s basically a sun wheel and
it shows the the whirling motion of life created by the path of the sun around the earth it’s that
whirling and in the nordic condition it was called the hammer of thor the world he throws his hammer
and it goes like like that right and so um that power of life manifesting things creating things
OK, you can see the on the Buddha’s chest there, it is going clockwise, which indicates manifesting things, making things.
It’s good luck. It’s like causing things to happen, causing good things to happen, bringing abundance, you know, creating abundance, creating things, not destroying things and making them go away.
okay so naturally if it goes in the other direction counterclockwise it’s kind of like
oh it’s now just now it’s unmaking things it’s destroying things okay well not exactly now very
often in these eastern traditions the swastika is drawn counterclockwise on the head or on even the
top of the head it’s like tattooed or i don’t know inked there or something like that and this
indicates that um it doesn’t indicate that the buddha here is is now against nature it simply
means he is unmaking himself he’s going to the root of himself he’s going back um functionally
back to the root of himself to see how he arises he’s going to the origin of himself to see where
he’s coming from right now so the mind sinks into meditation and goes behind the manifestation
process okay so like it’s going back to its origin okay so it’s going it’s not going against
the flow necessarily it’s simply exploring itself back to its roots okay and in a sense that is
that involves unmaking himself because he’s seeing that he doesn’t really exist okay he’s like he’s
seeing through this illusion of manifestation this thingness he’s he’s seeing through the
illusion of his separateness and that involves sort of unmaking himself it’s not a difficult
concept really because if you see like the flow of a river when you meditate it’s not like you’re
swimming against the current of that river when you meditate it’s more like you are the the sun
reflected in the water and that reflection of the sun on the water is now traveling upstream
the river still flows but there’s no resistance you’re simply exploring up to the source of the
river now. You’re going upstream to see where it comes from, okay? There’s no resistance. There’s
no swimming against the current, none of that, okay? It’s simply shining a beam of light looking
for where the river comes from, trying to find the spring boil or where it comes from or something
like that, right? Trying to find the source. And so that’s the way reverse circumambulation can be
seen. So if you draw circles that are counterclockwise or if you walk counterclockwise
in your magical space, that’s not you necessarily swimming against the current. It’s simply you
dissolving your perception of everything around you and seeing through the manifestation process.
Okay. It can be seen as sort of dissipating a force, but not going against nature. Okay.
All right. So the outer meaning of the clockwise direction is to invoke and the outer meaning of
counterclockwise is banish okay because if you are going clockwise you are creating new things
so it makes sense seems like you’re invoking right because you’re bringing things into your life
right and counterclockwise you are banishing they’re making them go away well this is not
true actually like this when you go clockwise you make things that’s pretty much established right
because as the sun goes around the earth things grow things come into being things keep coming
keep coming keep coming right uh and go to counterclockwise if you go against that it’s
more like unmaking them or seeing them before they you know what what they were before they
existed okay and what this means is that clockwise if you’re making something you’re also banishing
it we know this to be true if we really do magic okay if you do the lesser banishing ritual the
pentagram on a regular basis, those demons don’t go away. They get pushed out to the periphery of
your circle and become stronger. You’re helping, you’re creating them actually. This is why we
walk clockwise when we do the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. And this is also why
counterclockwise and clockwise don’t really matter for invoking and banishing. Uh-oh, but I’m going
have to clarify some things in regard to that. Okay. But keep in mind, so when you banish
something, you are intensifying the separation between yourself and it out there, which makes
you stronger in here, at least in your perception. And the illusion of that thing out there also
becomes stronger. So you’re helping it come into existence, banishing it pushes out it out into a
more solid form. Okay. If you don’t do that, it’s less tangible, and it’s capable of taking you over.
okay the cool thing about vanishing though is that you push it out into that more recognizable form
so you can see it as it pops up and it can’t take you over anymore how cool is that it still
is annoying though and your life can get worse before it gets better when you’re doing vanishing
okay but when you banish things you kind of make them come out stronger okay this is not that
difficult to understand because if you try to banish a thought from your mind what happens
it gets stronger okay that’s how banishing tends to work does banishing protect you from negative
influences not quite uh it makes you better able to see them out there so that you can stop them
in their tracks it’s like i see you you were trying to take me over nasty little demon and
it’s like oh you see me and it freezes because now you it can’t take you over if you notice it
okay and of course then it’s going to persist out there and eventually it’s going to dissolve
because it can’t do anything anymore right so yes banishing does work but it doesn’t work in the way
you think it does it doesn’t work according to the outer meaning or definition of it the experiential
aspects of banishing are quite different all right counterclockwise means invoking so in order to
to invoke something you draw counterclockwise well if you if you go counterclockwise you’re
essentially unmaking yourself you’re pretty much seeing through the illusion of your separateness
okay that means dissolving the circle that you have drawn around yourself it kind of dissipates
and you become one with everything if that happens all of the potential forces out there
are just kind of gone now but they exist only as pure potentiality which means they now exist
inside you and can take you over that’s why yeah that’s why um invoking and the counterclockwise
direction go together better okay this does cause some problems though okay but i can clarify
so to invoke is to kind of undo your defenses to drop your defenses and let that powerful force
take you over okay you only want to do that with super spiritual forces not you know demons or or
lesser spirits or anything like that okay because you want to do it with forces that are all
pervasive pretty much you draw you you drop your boundaries against them so that they come in and
now can take you over okay and with that when you do that the whole universe becomes uh visible
through the eyes of that particular entity okay i’m going to clarify this a little bit more okay
all right so um many people argue that well in the golden dawn teachings it basically says when
you want to invoke a force you draw a clockwise circle or let’s like for a talisman let’s say
right you’re consecrating a talisman you want to invoke something into that talisman you don’t draw
the invoking circle okay and if you want to banish something out of the talisman then you draw the
counterclockwise banishing circle um no they’re still using the external um terminology for that
this is really tricky okay so essentially when you have a talisman out here and you want to
draw a force into it um they call that invoking okay but it’s actually evoking remember when you
evoke it’s the same as the banishing direction so you don’t want to draw that sunwise circle around
it because what you’re really doing is you’re causing something to crystallize it’s actually
evoking because it’s happening out there in the talisman if the um if the talisman itself
were doing the ritual it would do an invocation right but you’re not doing that okay you’re
causing this the force to go into that to materialize in the talisman okay uh so yeah
can be kind of confusing uh if you want to bring a force into yourself let’s say um you know an
archangelic force or something like that then fine you would actually you would you would invoke but
that to do that you could actually dissolve the circle around yourself and just unite to the power
of that angel okay which is tricky okay um all right so anyway consecrating oneself consecrating
enticement all right so um and you can still use the same terminology okay the invoking circle it’s
not really an invoking circle it’s really an evoking circle anyway so anybody who’s doing the
kabbalah magic work you’re starting to get a blueprint for how an actual magical operation
works okay and uh this is kind of backwards from how most of us tend to look at it so you begin by
banishing okay so you’re removing forces from your circle and putting them out there
okay then you invoke something and that’s um can be done through the middle pillar or something
like that right uh and then to invoke something is to essentially dissolve the boundaries between you
and it so it now just permeates your whole being okay you might not necessarily feel anything okay
um you might okay but to the the point is just now see the universe through the eyes of that
being okay so and you actually enter you just become one let’s say you’re invoking mercury so
you you become with one with the mercury universe the way the universe appears to mercury okay so
that’s just everything is now mercury mercury mercury everything all around you everything’s
seen in terms of mercury okay and that that gives you the authority supposedly to to produce various
manifestations of mercury out there through evocation okay and then towards the end of the
magical operation then you can then um banish those forces of mercury so that they’re no longer
inside you anymore they’re back out in the world okay um really interesting too because after the
magical operation happens you’re going to get more powerful manifestations of your magical work out
there in the world because you’ve now banished them back out there okay which means that the
results of your work really appear to be more outside your circle than more pronounced afterwards
they get stronger when most people think that oh well now when i do my magical work i just forget
about it and nothing really happens but that’s not the experience that many magicians have it’s like
they go through the world and it’s like wow i’m getting all kinds of results from my work but
it’s not happening inside my magic circle it’s happening at other times when i’m not doing my
work so um when you invoke something you might not really feel very or see very much it’s when
when you banish it back out into the world again that you start to see it because then the results
are now pushed out there and forced to manifest between you and it okay yeah okay this might
explain why you know magic works the way it does and this is why i can often tell you know people
would tell me about oh during ritual i had all these amazing experiences i’m like it’s really
more about what happens outside of the temple really that determines you know whether the
the magic is working this doesn’t mean you can’t experience amazing things especially in regard to
invocation okay but that’s mainly in regard to no dissolving dissolving the barrier between
yourself and this other universe out there and having it fill you up you can have some amazing
experiences that way okay but the really cool stuff happens and after the banishing is done
and everything’s pushed back out into the world again then you begin to notice oh these are the
results of my work. How cool. Okay. Now, does this mean you need to revise the way you’re doing
magic because of all the stuff I just told you? No, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do
that. In this video, I’ve just given you a taste of what happens between the outer experience of
the meaning of something that, you know, textbook definition of something and then the inner
experience of how things actually work that’s quite different all right um so this is just a
glimpse of what is possible on the inside okay like as the adept starts to experience things
okay now the adept will still uh speak in terms of you know i well i draw a clockwise circle to
invoke but then they kind of think about it’s like i think i mean i think i’m actually evoking aren’t
whatever like um because the actual inner experience is quite different of you know
what you’re actually doing okay uh so remember don’t just fall for the outer definitions of
things just keep going keep doing the work and eventually you’ll start to notice how things
really work and this is why you know when people talk about their experiences of magic and they
try to portray themselves as an adept the adept can very often tell that oh that’s not that’s not
it um because um many of the definitions um of various magical concepts are backwards when viewed
from the inside from like the inner order okay this is why you know magicians are said to live
backwards everything’s everything’s upside down and backwards in um in the inner order okay hmm
i’m kind of tempted not to read any any of the comments on this video because i’m sure i’m going
to get an earful of confusion and backlash but remember this is just a taste of the kind of
stuff that can happen and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to revise your magical system the
way that i’m talking about it means you need to start tuning in to the real stuff that happens
in magic on the inside of these how these energies actually tend to work okay start looking for the
real interpretation your own interpretation and eventually you’ll make your own system that will
be revised but it’s going to be based on initiation and inner experience not just what you think is
rational in your head okay and one more thing if you’re like me uh i’m a gemini son uh uh very
very intellectual very thinky it’s difficult to get out of the head right to become an initiate
and not think in terms of only brain consciousness one of the easiest ways to get out of your head
is to what you could say meditate many people make a intellectual mental thing out of that anyway
and they can’t do it it become a romantic with a capital r okay so in other words they’re
Romantic literary movement. Maybe I’ll talk about this sometime. The Romantics pretty much rebelled against the very dry intellectual scientism of the 17th century, 17th and 18th century, they rebelled against the hyper rationalism and the hyper empiricism. And they they asserted that it’s not the brain consciousness that
is lord and king of everything it’s actually something else and they would even say it’s the
heart that is the king well but that does come as a remedy so if you become a romantic and you
you read romantic poetry romantic literature things like that i can recommend a few authors
for you okay and then that can come as a remedy so you can get out of your head and stop trying
to fix everything and simplify everything and rationalize stop trying to make everything make
sense. Let it be irrational. Let it be organic. Let it be alive. Let it have soul. Let it have
its complexity. All right, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher