Descriptions:
Video Description
Why do occult books sometimes hide their real meaning? Lyam Christopher unpacks the old practice of the blind, a deliberate misdirection placed in a teaching. It is not the cloth that hangs over a window, but a way of showing one meaning to the world while keeping a deeper meaning waiting for the person with the right key. The outward story may be shocking or frightening, while the inner story carries the actual lesson.
The reasons for blinds turn out to be surprisingly human. Old alchemists hid their formulas under Christian words like INRI so they would not be punished for their art. Some writers loved gatekeeping a little too much, and Aleister Crowley would toss in untranslated Greek to keep the unprepared out. But the most beautiful kind of blind is the double meaning, the song that sounds like a love song yet speaks about union with the divine. Once you hear it, you can never unhear it, and that quiet surprise is how the lesson finally lands.
Then he walks through the blinds hiding in plain sight. The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram looks like pure protection, but its inner work is to surface the problems you need to face. Turning lead into gold was never only about metal; it is the soul confused by life being refined into something bright. Even the Abyss, demons, and the whole ladder of grades are gentle blinds, pointing toward the truth that you were never really outside the Garden. The neophyte handshake grasps, misses, and grasps again, a picture of simply trying, failing, and trying once more. That patient path is laid out in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, and its promise is wonderfully simple: keep reaching, and one day the reaching gives way to knowing.
Full Video Transcript
All right, this week we are talking about the incorporation of blinds in occult books or occult literature.
I see a lot of people talking about this, actually, that the magical teachings have deliberate misdirection in them to keep students from really uncovering the true power of the rituals.
And then there have been a number of attempts to fix magic so that it actually works.
Hmm. Wow. So, well, why would anybody do that? Why would somebody incorporate a blind into their occult teachings? There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, we need to describe what a blind is. We’re not talking about the thing that hangs in a window and blocks the sunlight.
A blind is, in this context, is something that we do to the information in occult literature to keep the knowledge from being conveyed accurately.
We are deliberately misrepresenting the magical knowledge, okay?
And possibly we’re presenting it in a way so that only those who have the secret key or the secret code can understand what is being said.
and everybody else be damned so everybody else who reads it they get one interpretation of it
which is usually sensational and shocking and scary right and then there’s the secret meaning
behind it uh and only those who have the key can understand what the secret meaning is okay
that’s a sort of um conspiracy theorist interpretation of what a blind is okay um
So why would we misdirect people when we’re teaching them occult stuff?
Presumably we do it to protect secrets from falling into the wrong hands,
secrets of power from falling into the wrong hands.
I don’t think there’s really a need to do that
because the secrets of power seem to govern themselves.
They seem to keep themselves.
Those who don’t understand magical power,
those who don’t understand it are the ones who are going to most likely attempt to use it and
if they gain an understanding of magical power then they will be less and less likely to abuse
it it’s kind of the way it goes so i don’t think we really need to worry about secrets falling into
the wrong hands making the wrong people powerful okay um i could be wrong about that in some in
some ways mainly in scientific ways in terms of science yeah that could be a possible
possibility. I don’t consider magic to be science. Ultimately, it’s not science. I would consider
science to be a subcategory of magic, actually. Magic is a much bigger category. But anyway,
there is a risk of secrets getting into the wrong hands because then the knowledge gained will be
misused. Not that any damage will be done. Some damage can be done, I suppose, but not in the
way people might think. And so most of what you see in Western occultism is the result of secrets
ending up in the hands of people who do not understand where those secrets came from. And by
the time the secrets made it to them, they were already misinterpreted, mistranslated, and
misrepresented frequently over and over on top of each other, so that the original mystical
teaching and training is lost it’s buried it’s gone pretty much okay and i’ve talked about this
and in terms of what a true grimoire is in previous video what what is an actual grimoire
one other another reason to keep to obscure knowledge or to insert blinds into your magical
teachings is to keep from being persecuted okay so um they were alchemists who were practicing
their secret art which looked very much like magic if they weren’t careful and when they
published the secrets about it supposedly they would encode some of those magical formulas
hiding them underneath more religious looking formulas okay for instance i n r i the christian
abbreviation for Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. It’s the Roman characters that hung over
Christ as he was crucified, I-N-R-I. Those letters supposedly stand for, oh, this here is Jesus of
Nazareth who thought he would be king of the Jews. Now we’re killing him. You know, that sort of
thing right and so the alchemists would attach various formulas to that as a secret code and
then so when they said oh and now you will conduct the formula of formula of i n r i and that would
look like you know supplicating yourself before god and sacrificing yourself or something like
that but in fact um you know there’s one abbreviation i n r i it stands for the latin
words that mean glittering is rarely found in fire what does that mean well supposedly that
would come across as a magical principle or something like that unless you kept it hidden
underneath religious code okay and yeah some of that does seem to be going on in the alchemical
literature which is really difficult to read sometimes unless you understand the essence of
alchemy and then you can kind of sort through all the the mire of it um okay another reason
this is the fun one if you like being made fun of um it’s another reason to incorporate blinds
into your writing is to conduct political gatekeeping to keep the vulgar people out of
your secret club of those who know this happens and um i don’t want to say it’s an evil thing to
do necessarily, because it’s kind of a natural thing to do. Even when you are, you know, not a
nasty person, if you’re relatively decent person, it can be sometimes funny. Like if you’re having
a conversation with somebody and you guys are talking about something you both are very
knowledgeable about, and then somebody who doesn’t have the knowledge overhears and they try to enter
the conversation, it can be very funny. But we needn’t laugh at that person for not being in the
know as can happen uh it’s still it’s still funny but um when when somebody doesn’t understand
it’s a situational comedy right um but somehow that turns into uh oh we are laughing at that
person and now we feel superior to them because we are in the know we know and they they don’t
know do they okay so it’s a natural tendency to have this sort of gatekeeping thing going on okay
and so if you are having a conversation and another person steps in it’s kind of funny that
they don’t understand it why not it’s if it’s funny it’s funny there’s nothing wrong with that
person for not understanding and I think that’s where things break down you know as far as how
when the cruelty begins and funny thing is it’s a very sort of high school kind of politics that
goes on there very immature and if you want a good example of gatekeeping like this just read
Alistair Crowley. He inserts blinds into his writing. Very often he’ll just put very erudite
references into his writing to sort of exclude a person who doesn’t have a classical education.
He might even throw Greek deliberately in there because he apparently knew Greek to some degree,
and he’ll just throw the Greek in there with no translation. So, oh, if you don’t understand
Greek, then that’s too bad for you then, isn’t it? He’s not the only one that did that. That was
kind of done you know pretty much at a time maybe before before he came around that was a very
common thing for scholars to exclude those who don’t know okay and that is kind of normal to do
okay so if you’re writing within your genre let’s say the science or something like that
you want to pick your audience and so many scientific papers are very much unintelligible
to those who are not in the know. But it is no longer really acceptable as a scientist to make
fun of people who don’t understand something you’ve written. It is more of an obligation for
you to make it clear to them if they ask. And to be completely understanding that, well, how could
you possibly know what that terminology means? You’re not in my field. I wouldn’t expect you to
know. And I don’t think of myself as better than you. I just am in this field. That’s all.
um are you an outsider well sort of yeah but there’s there’s nothing excluding you from that
knowledge you know so the sort of um i’m in the club and you’re not in the club that’s where things
get um uh bitchy and alistair crowley has been referred to as a bitch yeah by israel regardi
actually um and not without deserving it either i would say because he yeah he was quite a toxic
individual and so the nice thing is though if you read his writing and you’re aware of this
he was also extremely intelligent and he had an understanding of a lot of these mysteries of magic
that few had in his day and few that few have today actually and we’ll talk about this in a
little bit okay but you always have to be wary about he had some trouble going on with the
empathy. You know, he couldn’t really, he was a very toxic person, mainly because of narcissistic
personality disorder, unfortunately, which really stood against him in the great work. Now, another
powerful thing about misdirecting people or inserting blinds is the double entendre. Okay,
now this is important because this happens a lot in literature where somebody presents something
and there are two levels of meaning to it there is the vulgar meaning for the the uneducated or
not not uneducated the uninitiated but the uninitiated will hear the vulgar meaning and
be all titillated exciting ha ha ha that’s funny or that’s really oh that’s really scary you know
but there’s also a hidden underlying meaning which is spiritual or initiatory or alchemical
Okay, I’m going to give you a couple of examples of that because the double entendre is really important. And it’s very good to acknowledge this because the double entendre is a legitimate way of incorporating blinds into your speaking and into your writing, so that you can teach people a lesson.
okay but not in a mean cruel way it might seem that way at first but you string them along
with one meaning and eventually the hidden meaning might hit them okay and since the hidden meaning
isn’t coming from you it’s coming from their own realization it’s a very powerful a very powerful
lesson okay and so the double entendre is a really cool thing that happens in literature
that will make you see things that you didn’t really want to see but once you see them you
cannot unsee them anymore that’s too late now the author’s got me the author baited me in with the
superficial meaning of something and then he hit me right in the heart with the secret meaning and
if he’s a really good writer it’ll work i now i’ve seen this thing it’s not something i would have
seen left to my own devices but now that he’s baited me into it now i see it and now it’s too
late i cannot unsee that anymore i’m now changed i’m transformed i’m initiated all right so we’re
gonna go through make it easy we’ll go through some song lyrics i’d like to say these are recent
but what’s recent music to me is probably not recent music to a lot of you guys um this comes
from the rock band lifehouse uh i think their first big hit as far as i know was a song called
hanging by a moment and the song if you’re just kind of casually listening on the radio
it comes across as a love song of course it’s a rock song and there’s love lovey-dovey stuff
going on right um well uh if you it doesn’t take much if you really look at the lyrics and really
listen to the lyrics you hear this is not really a song about a love between a man and a woman
yeah and the funny thing is those who already have developed a um a relationship or a quest
like relationship seeking out their higher self or trying to reach god or trying to talk to god
or something like that right they will hear the hidden message of the song okay in this song it’s
not really all that hidden but as you can see um most people will not hear the myth the mystical
spiritual side of the song so it says I’m falling even more in love with you letting go of all I
held on to I’m standing here until you make me move just hanging by a moment here with you
chasing after you it’s kind of like oh yeah he’s got his sights on a girl and he really wants to
impress her and how chivalrous of him that he’s pretty much saying I’m not going to move until you
I until you command me to you know so you might even say that the um the romantic love that
existed between a knight and his lady in the times of the troubadours in the times of chivalry
that wasn’t really necessarily a about the love between a knight and his lady okay that’s that’s
very deep to get into that but uh women were seen as a gateway back to god or they were seen as the
Holy Grail itself. So a knight in quest of the Holy Grail or a knight who put his woman up on a
pedestal, she was basically just an avenue towards a quest for unity with the ultimate, with God
himself. Okay, so if this is new to you, maybe it opens a door then because many, many love songs
do this they have a double meaning to them on the surface it seems to be about a man that you love
or a woman that you love and you’re you know going after them and trying to get them and whatever
but in in another level of meaning it’s really about unity with the divine or the quest for the
higher self which brings in the dimension of sexual tantra and in sexual tantra it’s the same
The love relationship between man and woman, or between two partners, is not really the goal, okay?
It is more the outward manifestation of some other deeper meaning.
All right, Lifehouse is a Christian band, a notoriously Christian band.
And so before anybody says, oh my God, you know, Liam’s all Christian,
like um uh well um having been initiated into the inner order of the golden dawn you anybody who’s
you know initiated into the inner order it’s going to be more christian than any christian
you might meet on the street pretty much um even though they still use the names of pagan deities
and practice magic and stuff like that um because the um inner inner secrets of christianity are
um sometimes quite shocking uh even tantric in nature okay so this these lyrics come from
Nine Inch Nails that’s another rock group not really a rock group I think it’s only one guy
who basically engineers the music and sings um Trent Reznor and his music is full of double
entendres yeah on the surface it’s about sex or or really being screwed up by drugs or really being
kind of insane like really mentally ill and on another level it’s not really about that oh my
goodness so I broke apart my insides I’ve got no soul to sell the only thing that works for me help
help me get away from myself okay in other words the only thing that works is to go back in
so his whole sort of mythology he’s going into in many of his songs is that he’s been
we the ego feels so estranged from the world we’ve been tossed out into this world and we are now
broken apart and looking at all the broken pieces and we don’t know what to do with them
and the only answer is to go back inside to get back in to be initiated to like somehow we’ve been
we’re not in the club anymore we’ve been kicked out of the garden of eden let’s say
and now to get back in it’s an act of penetration of going back inside so anytime even in um so uh
the religion of thelema where there is a woman who sort of sits on the altar is the gateway to god
this is the symbolism okay um it’s not that the woman is inherently sacred that’s another blind
okay the actual truth behind that is that well she’s a symbol of the gateway back to god
is she literally the gateway no no but but we were born from woman into the world so it looks
like she’s a gateway magically speaking when we go back in that’s an act of meditation or
penetration or a surrender of the broken pieces of our life here here are these broken pieces i
don’t know what to do with them here god you take them or here higher self you take them and see
what you can make of them and the song continues part of this is that the um the ego has become
so stilted and so rational that the only way to cut it down a few pegs is to reduce it back to
animal level okay and i want to feel you from the inside and in fact i’m what am i doing here out in
the world on the outsides of things where everything is superficial everything is surface
value only nothing makes sense because I don’t have the inner mystery I don’t have the inner
meaning I need to feel you from the inside and in order to do that I need to relinquish this
screwed up humanity which is sort of insane the civilized version of humanity right
and of course the clencher you get me closer to God so in other words the
penetrating into the woman supposedly is going back into that underworld or back into
underneath the appearance of things back into the way things actually are where we came from
okay and the song has many more gems like this it’s pretty much about that kind of stuff most
of his music is about this yeah spoiler spoiler alert i don’t know with that f word in there i
probably can’t monetize this video can i all right um another reason to incorporate blinds
is to string your reader along to entice them to go into a place that they don’t they wouldn’t
really want to go left to their own devices this is very tricky because you have let’s say two
levels of meaning so you give them a vulgar thing to chase after for instance i want to
fuck you like an animal it’s like oh my god i can’t believe he said that wow and somehow it’s
so profound you know and so you’re titillated about this idea like oh my god he’s such a bad
boy he said something mean he said a naughty word right and and of course being titillated by the
imagery of that too but then as you pursue the imagery further it’s like wait a minute i’m going
someplace sacred what i didn’t want to go here i’m going someplace where my ego is going to be just
eaten up and destroyed what but you know if you pursue um the imagery then the lesson can be
learned it could you can end up listening learning a lesson that you didn’t want to learn that’s the
that’s the art of subverted expectations in other words the author baits you with a superficial
titillating symbolism or description meaning and then the true meaning eventually becomes apparent
to you and then so it’s a bait and switch they baited you in and now the real lesson eventually
pops out and then you learn it okay this happens a lot in literature it is probably the most
powerful trick you can use i’m bringing it up here because uh well a lot of you know that magic
seems to promise you power and control and what happens isn’t really quite that now is it okay so
like the i think the first video i put out on this channel was magic is not what it seems
is it a bait and switch yes it sort of is because what you thought you wanted you eventually
discover that you don’t really want that you’ve never wanted that and for and for a while as you
pursue the magical work you might not even know what that is anymore and then you have a dark
night of the soul so you’ve been baited into this practice you know there’s something there
you eventually see that what you originally wanted isn’t even possible ever it’s not the way the
world works but now what nothing i do is going to give me what i want oh no now and then so
hopefully you keep going and then you can discover the lesson hidden underneath the
the bait and switch of magic yeah if anybody wants to have some more examples of how this
bait and switch works in regard to storytelling and literature just post something in the post
a comment asking for that I’ll provide you some examples maybe of short stories that or even poems
that sort of lead you to draw one conclusion and then they slam you with the real sort of
hidden meaning behind. Okay, anyway. Okay, let’s go over some examples of blinds in magic. Okay,
so I think many of you are studying magic who are tuning into channels like this. So it’s helpful
for me to go over some of the blinds that you might encounter. I’m going to do this in a very
general sort of way i think um i the well the best example of the bait and switch is the lbrp
yeah um it’s funny because um i’m not the one who is teaching this harsh lesson about the lbrp
in other words um there there was a a video i put out uh called the true nature of the lbrp
and what it actually does yeah and so we go into the lbrp thinking that this is something that
will banish evil influences from my life so that I can do some pure magical work within the
protection of my magical circle where demons won’t you know pounce on me and tear me to pieces right
um now there’s some truth to that but in the process of doing that it doesn’t make your life
necessarily better okay so um and it was my teachers who basically even told me that oh yeah
Now, the secret real reason for doing the lesser banishing ritual, the pentagram, the LBRP, was to ferret out the difficult issues in your life so that you can now confront them.
OK, so it’s not me who’s making up this idea.
This is the way that the LBRP actually works.
The funny thing is, this is not even up for debate, really.
We’re talking about the way that tantra works or that magic works.
If you’re trying to use the LBRP according to its outward definition, remember that means you’re trapped inside the superficial outward meaning of it.
You haven’t realized the inner teaching yet.
So if you’re approaching the LBRP as though this is going to keep your house from getting robbed, that is the outward meaning of the LBRP.
The inward meaning is more about pushing out negative influences so that you can now see them more clearly.
It’s possible that it could actually lead to your house being robbed.
If you’re particularly dense and you can’t see things in your mind clearly before they become manifest in your life.
Ultimately, the LBRP can help you see problems before they manifest.
so in the long run yes it will protect you from calamity in your life from negativity whatever
like that but it doesn’t work the way we think it does at least not on the surface level
interpretation of it okay if you need if that if that was really confusing go look at the video
called the true nature of the lbrp which is i guess like the second or third video that i put
out on this channel another blind in uh magic this is this is going to rub some people the wrong way
i think uh transforming lead into gold okay so um it’s easily arguable though that the alchemists
of the renaissance who really tried to make gold um many of the texts that they were using
were actually incorporating blinds and sometimes even deliberately poking fun at them right in
front of their noses and they probably didn’t see it you know those who uh those who know the
meaning behind these words will not read it as actual gold they’ll actually come out and say
this directly and somehow it’s like oh yeah i’ll just no i’m trying to make gold and so um it’s
quite astonishing really i have no doubt that people that there were alchemists or alchemists
or puffers as they called them who learned a great deal about chemistry as they were trying
to make gold using these more spiritual metaphorical processes and they themselves then made
texts that were more science-y whether big proto-science than than mystical yeah I have no
no doubt that was happening anybody with a nose for literature or a sense for mythology
can easily sense this in the alchemical writings that there was there were multiple levels of
meaning going on and that the actual goal in most cases was not to literally make gold from lead
I’m so sorry and I think there are some scholars who even say that well it was Carl Jung who
basically rebranded all of alchemy to try to make it into a spiritual pursuit I really don’t
understand that because many of the alchemical texts themselves say there’s another level of
meaning here that most people will not see and they will be lost trying to make you know actual
vulgar gold when we actually mean the true gold and the true gold is transforming lead into gold
it literally means turning the massive confusion of your soul into an enlightened being transforming
yourself into gold okay so um so the confusion of life and things look chaotic and messy and scary
and riddled with fear and they’re ugly and blah blah blah unpleasantness suffering that can be
all transmuted into gold it’s a very powerful metaphor that transformation because the same
substance that scares the hell out of you is also the most beautiful thing in the world and that
substance of course is the imagination. What’s the most poisonous thing in alchemy? The imagination.
What is the most glorious thing in alchemy? The imagination. They are both the same. The prima
materia is the same thing as the philosopher’s stone. It is simply a matter of seeing it in a
different light. So another blind is that we have to act upon the substance like polish it and do
things to it it’s not really it’s it’s our own perceptions that we now need to sort through
so that we can see what’s happening in our life as golden instead of as dross and lead and heavy
and lugubrious another blind is women are sacred this is a very powerful blind um why do uh so
many latinos get so insulted when you say anything about their mother and they use the word
motherfucker a lot uh which indicates oh yikes there’s mommy issues there right particularly
particularly in that culture but in many cultures um there uh is this unconscious recognition of
the mother as a gateway back to god as sacred okay to the point where um like if you see an
image of the holy grail that kind of represents a woman’s womb and and what do we do we put that up
on a on a pedestal i win a trophy uh in sports this is the same way a knight wins a joust and
he wins a trophy right um holy grail and he puts it up on a pedestal or say i’ve won it now and
now i can worship it i can worship this thing right um so um to idolize that womb or or women
in general as sacred doorways back to god um that’s a blind because women are not literally
get ways back to god if they literally were we would be doing some disturbing things with them
and of course oh my god there are some disturbing things that men do in regard to women aren’t there
compulsive things trying to get back to god the crazier the man is the more likely he is to do
compulsive nasty things in regard to trying to get back to god yeah quite quite terrifying but
also kind of interesting also to see how that impulse is understandable all right so the abyss
there’s a big blind in occult literature it’s presented as oh i’m going to eventually reach
this place on the astral plane where it’s the division between the divine and everything else
and the only way i can get across it is to take a leap of faith or something like that right or
to have some kind of magical technique to do that how is that done it’s a very long distance it’s an
infinite distance I need to cross to get back to God or something like that. No, no, no, no, no.
That’s a blind. Okay. The abyss is the chasm that exists simply between you and anything that you
perceive out there at all. Anything that’s desirable or anything that you’re afraid of.
Okay. Anything that you make an object out of with your mind, the separation between you and that
object. That is the abyss. And I did make a video about Da’at and the abyss, which sort of goes into
that. I don’t know if I revealed this secret about it. So that means the abyss is right here. It is
simply the gap between the subject and the object. And there’s this idea that you need to cross that
gap or to bridge it, to bridge that gap, okay? That’s also a blind, okay? What actually needs
to happen is that you need to see that the gap isn’t even there never was never will be okay and
so in in the act of seeing that it really isn’t there that there is no gap that feels as though
you’re now bridging the gap that is your secret technique for crossing the abyss okay but it’s
simply a matter of you tweaking your own perception so that you can now see that there is no abyss
how marvelous and yet there seems to be and yet there isn’t one spectacular amazing what an amazing
drama this is all right and now what comes rising up out of the abyss the demons right so another
blind in occultism is demons that you can raise demons from hell and if you are playing around
with these spirits then they’re going to be roaming around your house causing mischief and
stuff like that um not literally true okay so demons are really manifestations of trauma okay
As anybody who knows, who has demons from their past that they need to face down, okay?
But demons are very much alive, and we have to remember that the gap between one person
and another isn’t real either.
Remember, the abyss does not exist.
So our demons are shared, okay?
So any demon that I’m working with in myself, and let’s say if it’s a fear of heights or
something like that or it’s a strong need for approval okay what happens is that these demons
tend to take on various forms as scenarios or creatures okay many of them have horns and fangs
and glowing eyes and they might be on fire or things like that because demons are things that
we are afraid of. Okay. There are many things in our cell memory that are evolutionary trauma that
we experienced as in previous life forms and previous generations that are still there. You
know, burned by fire, overwhelmed by a flash flood, raped by an uncle. Okay. Not necessarily
in this life and the previous, the previous generation. Okay. So these things are still
there and many that many of them are saying I’m still here and I’m still causing you trouble
because you you’re afraid to face me and look at me and make sense out of me demons kind of work
that way can you conjure them and put them to work for you sort of but it’s not literally you know
it’s not according to the outer meaning of a demon okay but a lot of the demons that we work with
they do become on friendly terms with us.
Some of them will dissolve forever, never bother us again.
But many of them are so deeply ingrained in human nature
that we simply come to know them and we come to understand them.
So if I have a demon that is a really scary penetration demon,
it’s like a powerful urge to return back to where I came from.
And of course, it’s a sort of a rape demon.
okay this is something i obviously need to come to terms with in other words like
how is it how is this manifesting in my life is it going to make me into a rapist
oh my god well let’s see what this thing how this thing really works okay now because you
separate the inner meaning from the outer the outer apparent meaning this is the way of healing
yourself so you’re not going to become that way you’re not going to be compulsively driven by
this thing. Okay, there’s a lot in there, of course, about how demons work. But the demon
that I conjure in regard to myself, also exists for other people, because we share a common
evolutionary background. And so it’s almost as though one thing that has materialized for me,
or, you know, manifested for me, is also going to be manifesting for the people around me,
because it’s kind of being triggered because i’m you know in their vicinity or whatever so yeah
these things can um they can appear to be literally true sometimes uh but we have to get to know them
on terms of the inner definition or the inner experience of them what they really are are they
alive of course they are yeah but not in the way we think not according to the outer definition
okay so we have there’s an inner definition uh of of uh of demons so to use the word demon is
often a blind because i’ll talk about demon summoning and things like that and if people
don’t know what i’m talking about they’re like oh my god he’s going to conjure a demon
from this fiery pit of hell and uh if he doesn’t draw the magic circle properly it’s going to tear
him to pieces and of course they they would also make fun of me for believing that in a sort of
harry potter version of the demon because once again they still don’t understand uh what the
demon is partially my fault because i’m using such an archaic reference to what’s a psychological
complex but of course psychological complexes doesn’t really do uh service to what a demon
truly is underneath the you know all the appearances of it separation and union have we
really been kicked out of the garden and we need to get back into it okay so this idea of having
to get back into the garden uh that is also a blind okay but we can do the work as though we
are trying to get back into the garden or you know back into paradise or back into heaven something
like that right we’re trying to become we’re trying to move from um samsara to nirvana using
the buddhist terminology right um and of course in the advanced teachings of buddhism you know
there is no separation between samsara and nirvana there there is no separation between
the outer world the earth and um paradise okay so um when the idea of adam and eve being cast
out of the garden is also a blind okay they never went anywhere they just something gradually
happened to them over time where they lost a perception of reality that was their divine
birthright and it still is but somehow they’ve entered into this evolutionary path of seeing
themselves as outside of nature and lo and behold that’s where we find ourselves we feel like we’re
outside of nature almost like we’ve been thrown out and we’ve even hit the ground so hard that
we’ve broken into pieces and now we’re just picking up the pieces going what is all this stuff
I don’t understand how could you cast me out like that and leave me here like this and we could even
blame God for doing this to us and it’s really nobody’s fault you know it’s just something that
has happened. And the real task is not to get back there. There’s no there. But in the process
of restoring our perception, it will seem as though we have journeyed from here back into the
garden again. Okay. But if you think you have to go a distance somewhere literally, then of course
you are falling for that blind. Okay. It doesn’t mean you don’t go on pilgrimage. But what it does
mean is that if you go on pilgrimage that you realize it’s a symbolic act it’s not real not on
the outside anyway but it’s very real on the inside so no doing magical acts in terms of the
blinds can be very powerful as long as you develop the ability to see things non-literally which I’ve
also talked about in the past in a past video and the video is called the power of non-literal
perception. And so this idea of separation and reunion with
the divine, if that is a blind, then the grade system of the
golden dawn is itself a blind. Okay, do you really need to go
through all these grades to get to the very top of the tree of
life? In fact, by the time a person gets to a midway up
there to the five equal sixth grade, which is the middle
sphere of the tree of life. By the time you get there, you
should already begin to see that, oh, this grade system isn’t real. I don’t have to go through
every single step, okay? But for most of us, the ego does learn to let go in stages. So the grade
system is helpful. But one of the most important things about what I’m saying here is that every
time you do ritual, it doesn’t matter what grade you’re in, this is your attempt to become
enlightened become to realize that you are enlightened right now it’s not about trying
to achieve some kind of goal in the future oh yeah after five years of magical work i’ll receive my
inner order initiation and then my knowledge and conversation will come descending upon me
can’t wait till that happens uh the best way to go about magical work is to always invoke the angel
always always try to achieve enlightenment now okay achieve is not the right word either because
that’s a blind um but to always recognize your inherent enlightenment right now okay and that
means to try and fail and try and fail yeah that’s what it means keep trying keep failing
um and if you’ll notice the um if you study the order um golden dawn symbolism in the neophyte
grade this the secret handshake of the neophyte is to grasp at somebody’s hand but miss and then
you second time you grasp and you actually grab their hand that’s beautiful isn’t it because
that’s what it means like every time you do ritual it’s like i’m trying to um i’m trying to realize
my inherent unity with everything and i realize of course that i’m going to fail multiple times
and that’s fine eventually i’ll get it okay now can i realize my enlightenment by grabbing something
no no so that’s i mean the symbolism isn’t perfect there but of course um it’s it’s a nice um
indication of how the various blinds of secret handshakes and secret symbolism can be used
in a way that actually conveys a powerful lesson and so if anything about the golden
non-symbolism there are blinds all over the place but they’re not the kind of blinds that are
misleading or bitchy you know or what do you call it they’re not keeping blinds to try to keep you
out because you’re vulgar or anything like that they’re simply there presenting themselves so that
you can be titillated by the outward appearance of them until you then get the real meaning of it
it’s like oh that really wasn’t about a secret handshake and a secret club it was really trying
to convey what it’s like to keep trying and keep trying and eventually you know achieve
enlightenment pretty much or yeah because by the time you shake the hand of the adept then you’re
now in his circle and now you’re in the club sort of thing right the evil appearances of magic that’s
that’s a really simple one okay and i know that you know people like alistair crowley had a lot
of fun with that i certainly do um and very often if somebody um asks me about um i’m pretty out of
the closet when it comes to being a magician or whatever being an occultist so but if somebody
wants to ask me about it i can you know make a few references just just throw them off the scent
i’m like like um and as you make some you know references to demon summoning or whatever like
that and they’ll often dismiss that as silly and they won’t you know pester you any further
um or um yeah it can be kind of fun to um to use the negative outward appearances of magic
um but the legitimate aspect of frightening images that’s very real that’s very important
to magic obviously because you want to confront the things that scare you okay and also the things
that entice you and these are you know demons demons frighten you and and entice you it’s kind
of what they do right so fear and desire are the things that keep you unenlightened so the
frightening appearances of magic that’s why we use swords and fire and i even encourage people when
they visualize the four elements to see those as frightening natural forces a hurricane wind
a fire that’s threatening to consume you a flash flood and an avalanche yeah right we want to go
after these things because they are the frightening outward appearances of a world in which we are
supposedly mortal and we can be crushed and destroyed instantly apparently that seems to
be possible right yeah but is it the akephalos now there’s a blind i’m just throwing out a greek
word there it’s like oh well if you don’t know what the akephalos is oh well too bad for you
but that’s one of the blinds right um it simply means the headless one the headless spirit okay
and um uh crowley is famous for his um presentation of the bornless ritual find that an interesting
blind because um a cephalos really means um doesn’t mean bornless it means headless the
headless one so in the original manuscript that he got the bornless ritual from it comes from
Alexandria, from the Greek magical papyri. It was an
invocation to some kind of headless entity, a creature
without a head, or a person without a head, right. And that
person is identified more or less with Osiris, they die, the
dead and resurrected God of Egypt, ancient Egypt, right. And
so Crowley turned that into a born less thing, not a headless
thing. It’s a bornless entity, not a headless entity. And that was not much of a stretch because
in astrology, Aries is up here at the top of the head and Pisces is down at the feet, okay? Taurus
is in the neck, Gemini is in the arms, right? You have the whole side, the wheel of the zodiac
progresses through the body. And Aries is the beginning of the year or the beginning of the
cycle, right? And Pisces is the end of the cycle at the, at the feet. So the, so the bornless one
is the beginningless one. Okay. So if I were to say the headless one in older forms of language,
that could also mean the beginning, the beginningless one. Okay. So he turned the headless
one. You can find the bornless ritual easily. Just look it up online. Okay. And he, that’s his,
this is Crowley’s invocation of the higher self, which is, you know, essentially Osiris or a
manifestation of Osiris okay an invocation of the Osiris current and the golden dawn pretty much
um and so this frightening image of invoking a headless entity like a decapitated entity oh my
god um this was really important because uh people who have some exposure to the mysteries recognize
it easily right away as a type of meditation so one type of medication meditation you can do is
visualize yourself without a head and in so doing you are invoking the headless one
okay so because in you invoke invoke when you invoke something you bring it into yourself you
become that thing so when you become the headless the headless one okay you’re visualizing yourself
without a head okay why would we do that so we can confront the trauma of being decapitated
No, no. We have evolved pretty much from the gut upwards. So supposedly our original brain was in
our guts. That’s our root system. So the root system of a plant is its brain. It does have a
bit of a nervous system. Its brain is in its root system. And we are supposedly more evolved,
but we still have that original brain in the gut because our roots are absorbing nutrients in the
gut that’s where our roots are okay we still have a brain down there it’s the first brain
the enteric brain I think it is and then and then we have the cardiac brain which is up higher
our brain cells here too and then there’s the head brain and the cephalic brain I guess it is right
and so as this sort of developed upwards one of the problems with being a civilized
evolved human being is that the brain up here tends to take credit for everything it’s the
only brain there’s nothing else right and the body’s just there to carry the head around from
meeting to meeting um so um and and the problem is as the ego becomes overdeveloped it tends to
identify with everything that’s going on in the head okay so the more the more you end up trapped
inside your head, the less compassionate you get, the less you are in touch with your gut feelings,
okay? The less whole you are, the more separate you are, the more outside of nature you become.
So the more you develop your ego consciousness up here, the more cast out of the garden you’re
going to feel, okay? And the more suffering is going to happen, okay? And so one of the remedies
supposedly is that as you meditate you visualize yourself without a head so it’s more everything
becomes more heart consciousness then kind of forces you to have a heart felt consciousness
or even a gut centered consciousness which is very often a remedy for somebody who’s trapped
inside their head and all they can do is calculate all the time and think all the time i think the
next video is going to be about that because there’s something to talk about in regard to
how people who live mostly up here try to fix the golden dawn system of the magic okay because they
don’t quite get it they think it’s a rational thing that they need to make sense of with their
minds okay yeah which brings me to the four elements the four elements have inward correspondences
so when we invoke and banish fire what is it actually we are invoking and banishing okay
We’d say fire is the element of passion or will or urges, okay?
Water is mostly emotion and instinct and feeling, okay?
Air is the mind, analysis, thinking, visualizing maybe.
And earth is the body and its sort of gross outward systems of feeling
and um defecating and eating and fornicating okay um yeah sort of um so when we work with
the elements they have these inward correspondences of of um aspects of what it means to be a human
or alive does this mean that if we um invoke and banish the elements that we it’s really nothing
about controlling literal fire or literal air, like wind and storms and earth, having control
over earthquakes, things like that, right? Yeah, it kind of means it’s not really about that.
However, as you work with these things, surprising phenomena can result, okay? Because apparently
the things that manifest in the outer world have a lot in common or
correspond to what you’re working with on the inner on the inner planes okay so yes literal
things can happen with fire literal things can happen with water etc etc okay but it’s important
to separate the inner from the outer first to get to understand those better as they say in alchemy
first we separate and then we recombine okay and the recombining means that oh well when i
separated i thought that the fire that i’m invoking really isn’t literal fire oh well
but then when i’m recombining i’m finding that wait a second it actually is very much has a lot
to do with literal fire what so there’s yeah there’s there’s there’s certainly um a lot to
discover in terms of um realizing that the separation between those two levels of meaning
doesn’t really exist oh my yeah there’s a lot to discover there as an adept okay okay all right and
so when it comes to blinds and misunderstandings there are lots of people who try to they look at
the golden dawn and say this doesn’t make any sense when they try to fix it and I watched a
couple of videos of trying to people trying to use reason and logic to restructure the golden
on so it makes more sense and of course if you’ve been paying attention to this video you can see
that oh man there’s an inner meaning they’re not catching here oh my god so we’ll talk about that
and particularly particularly we’ll talk about the the pentagrams okay and the the invoking and
banishing system of pentagrams in the next video we’ll talk about that as people come along and
they try to you know fix it fix the system of invoking and banishing so that it makes rational
sense okay so that will be a subject for the next video all right so until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher