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Video Description
What actually separates a poser from a true adept? In this video, Lyam Christopher offers a way to tell, and it begins with a surprisingly simple test. There is endless occult information online, and most of it is fine as information. But information, he says, is not the same as transformation. Knowing the history of the Golden Dawn or what an old grimoire says is very different from becoming the kind of person the work is meant to build.
The dividing line is called the Veil of Paroketh, a barrier most seekers rarely notice because they are looking at the more famous abyss. On the hidden side of this veil sit the virtues he calls the Moral Triad: magnanimity, charity, compassion, and generosity. A person can imitate these behaviors convincingly for a while, adopting good manners like a costume. But without an animating principle behind them, the imitation eventually shows its edges, because real virtue cannot be performed forever from the outside.
Then he offers a gentle way to see the difference. The poser lives in a world of one form desiring another, wanting things, status, and approval. The paragon can move through that world too, but the deeper pull is vertical: one form desiring to embody something formless. It is not about collecting more esoteric facts, but about crossing toward the divine qualities and letting them become the inside of your life. That is the secret test, subtle, and much closer than it first appears.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, I made these slides quite a while ago, so let’s see if I still remember what I want to talk about here.
There is something about the internet that you guys have been asking me about, and so a lot of times when people contact me, they say there’s so much occult information on the internet, there’s so much out there about magic and how to study it, how to practice it.
how do I make sense of it all? And how do I know what to use and what not to use?
To me, that’s a little puzzling because, quite frankly, I ignore almost all of it.
Not that I don’t see it, but there’s a sort of criteria that you can use to judge for whether
or not it whether whether or not the teaching is worth your time okay now a lot of the stuff
you hear online is is mainly for for information let’s say so many people who work online and
talk about the occult normally give like little encyclopedia articles about this or that
okay so and that’s fine and they’re giving information about you know historical aspects
of the golden dawn or you know what the old grimoires say and what the actual i don’t know
sacred texts say and things like that and that’s all very interesting and pretty cool
like for example this the channel esoterica and angela’s symposium those are great sources for
information um so i i highly encourage people to check out those channels mainly as sources
of information, not necessarily as sources for what to do with the information or how to work
magic, things like that. So yeah, let’s get to the criteria. It’s like, how can you tell whether
the stuff that you’re looking at online is worth your time? And I don’t mean this in a stuck up
sort of way. In other words, like, oh, that’s all garbage or whatever like that. There is a way that
you can tell whether it actually is worth it or not. Okay. And it comes down to you being able
to identify whether somebody you’re working with is an initiate or not. Okay. Or somebody who has
the initiation and they’re actually able to work magic from the inside out. Okay. It’s going to be
a daunting task. I don’t know. So you’ve got this sort of occult internet out there and what you’re
faced with is the outward appearances of magic which so many people are presenting to you
and the daunting task then is well how do i get to the insides of it how do i really you know get
in there and start working it how do i achieve a transformation so that this stuff becomes real
for me okay what i’m going to be pointing out is that you kind of already know how to do this we
just have to point at it, okay? We have to point at what happens. That looks a bit odd there.
And the surprise element here is that one of the symbols that you can use to determine whether
the material you’re looking at is actually going to be helpful or not, whether it’s the real deal,
you can use the symbol of the cross as your guide, okay? And this is not like, uh-oh,
oh, Liam is becoming all Christian, and he’s saying there’s something Christian going on here.
No, not really. But what you might begin to notice is that the inner order of the golden dawn had a
Christian sort of flavor to it. And you’re going to see why in a second, okay? And why the cross
is so important to the golden dawn system of magic, okay? So for those of you who aren’t that
familiar with the golden dawn, there’s an outer order of the golden dawn where you’re learning
magic. And then there’s an inner order of the golden dawn where you’re actually somehow
magically transformed into a person who can actually practice it. And what we’re trying
to ascertain is like, well, how can you tell if somebody is actually inside that, um, whether
somebody is in the inner order and they’re initiated or whether they’re just kind of in
the outer order and they’re just spouting information. Okay. Um, kind of one thing I say
about information that you see or teachers that you see. A lot of people, you know, talk all over
the outsides of things, if that makes any sense. And there’s, so there must be some kind of way
of telling or determining whether somebody is talking from the inside. Okay. Whether somebody
is an initiate, whatever that means. Okay. And so the criteria that we’re going to talk about
has to do with something called the Veil of Periketh, okay? There are two veils on the Tree
of Life, supposedly. Now, the Tree of Life is a system or it’s a glyph that you can see it pretty
much encompasses the grade system of the Golden Dawn. So somebody who’s studying magic in the
Golden Dawn starts out at the bottom at number 10, more or less, and they proceed up to 9 and
then to eight, then to seven, then to six, then to five, then to four. And so the goal of the
outer order student is to get up from number 10 to number six. Okay. And you’ll notice that number
six is behind the veil of Periketh. In other words, there’s some kind of obscuring barrier
there that’s blocking our path or blocking our vision so that we can’t see what’s at the heart
of the universe. So when we’re at the bottom of the tree in the Sphera 10, Sphera 9, Sphera 8,
and Sphera 7, we’re kind of stuck on the outsides of things. And everything we see is a matter of
outward appearances. And this is the world where most people live. And sometimes you meet someone
who has made it to the insides of beyond the world of appearances. And there’s something,
some they seem quite ordinary but then there’s something strange about them they seem to not be
really that concerned with how things look on the outsides okay um and then um also interesting
things happen happen when you’re with them um you find yourself changing when you’re with them
and you begin to also become someone who can see things from beyond the veil of mirror outward
appearances. This sounds all very cryptic, doesn’t it? So maybe I can make this clear, I hope.
So the goal of any student in magic then is to get from that bottom sphere to the very top.
But quite frankly, it’s enough to get to the grade number six there, which is called Tifareth,
which is the world of the adept. So once you get past number seven and get to number six,
supposedly now you are an adept and now you’re capable of doing magic for real it’s just actually
a very um it’s almost like an archetype where you have the idea of the magician as the as a poser or
a charlatan like in other words the magician only pretends to practice magic you might uh you know
go into the market square and sell you trinkets that are talismans that will ward off evil or
attract wealth or whatever, things like that. And that type of magician very often is the
charlatan. You know, that’s somebody who is just taking advantage of the outward appearances of
magic to take advantage of your need for change in your life. And you’re looking for a miracle.
And so somebody magically appears and says, oh, I have a miracle for you and just pay some money.
Right. And so and then you might meet somebody who doesn’t really do that at all.
And just hanging out with them brings about a change, not really miraculous, but suddenly you’re able to disengage from your old mindset and your life begins to take off and changes begin to happen.
Paraketh, what does that mean? It’s a Hebrew word for, it comes from the Temple of Solomon where
there were certain curtains that blocked the view into the Holy of Holies. There were actually two
screens, more or less. There was the outer screen, so when you, before you enter the interior of the
temple, from the courtyard, there was a screen and it were a door, and then once you got inside,
there was the holy place and then there’s the holy of holies and the veil of periketh in that
context was simply called periketh and because periketh means veil essentially and that was
really the only screen that they talked about in the temple in the golden dawn system of kabbalah
there are two veils identified that are pretty much sketched across the tree as we showed in
the diagram there. Okay. That’s the veil. There’s the veil of the abyss and the veil of Periketh.
Okay. The veil of the abyss is often discussed, you know, like when many of you who know something
about magic would say, oh yeah, Aleister Crowley was able to cross the abyss. Right, right. And we
know what happens at the abyss. In other words, the ego is annihilated at the abyss and you achieve,
I don’t know, permanent enlightenment, something like that, where the ego is destroyed. Okay.
uh and that experience is not that hard to achieve by the way um if you adopt a meditation practice
or a tantric practice that’s very intense you can experience you know temporary ego deaths
so experiencing that collapse of the ego at the veil is not that hard to not hard to to reach now
achieving the permanent death of the ego that’s something else and that’s something that people
in the eastern traditions call stabilization in other words you achieve enlightenment and
then that enlightenment is now stable. In other words, you’re always in that state while you’re
walking around in the world. That’s not the veil we’re talking about here. There’s another veil
that is less dramatic, let’s say, or less extreme, less absolute. And that is the veil of Periketh.
Okay. I know the Golden Dawn says the veil of Periketh, which is kind of a strange translation,
because when you translate it, it would just translate into the veil of the veil,
the veil of the curtain. But they made a distinction between one type of veil and
another. And the veil of Parakeeth is very interesting because it’s not as easy to
understand as simply ego death. It is the veil of outward appearances. So when you open your
eyes and look at the world, that sort of what you see is what you get from the senses is not
necessarily what’s happening. Or rather, what we could say is that the version of the world that
your nervous system habitually constructs out of your senses, from your senses, from your sensory
inputs, is not really what’s happening. Okay, that’s an important thing to regard. You could
even look at this, you know, biologically and say, oh, the way that my nervous system is
is um sort of the the default settings of my nervous system that i was born with
are probably set to create a universe that is unpleasant and inherently dissatisfying
okay and this is like this is what it’s like supposedly to be kicked out of the garden of
eden where you’re now out you’re outside of the insides of things when we were in the garden of
Eden. We were on the inside. We were at the soul level of existence. And somehow we got kicked out.
And now we’re looking at everything from the outside. And that’s why we mean when somebody
who’s not an initiate, they are an outsider. And you can tell. And this is kind of the criteria
that we use. In other words, when you’re seeing somebody online talk up a storm about magic and
all this stuff, it’s fairly easy to tell whether they’re an insider or an outsider. Now, almost
all of them are outsiders. Surprise, surprise. So what that means is then is that this is not
much of a challenge, really, once you understand how to detect whether somebody is an insider or
an outsider. It doesn’t mean you ignore everything you see. You just know whether you’re dealing with
an initiate or not okay and it’s very important too because if somebody is not an initiate uh
all of their teaching let’s say is contaminated by the external world um narrative in other words
the they’re basically handing you uh a version of magic that is based on outward appearances
which are of course false okay uh and so once you get the criteria for for um understanding
what the actual inner teachings look like then it’s very easy most of the stuff you see online
you can pretty much ignore except for information purposes because there’s some cool information out
there and so uh when we were kicked out of the garden supposedly in the myth of the garden of
Eden, there were angel guardians placed at the east of the garden to guard the path back into
paradise. And some people say that the flaming sword that the cherubim hold there, or there’s
a flaming sword with them, it traces, it turns every which way to keep us out of the Garden of
Eden, okay? And some people would say, well, it turns every which way because that’s the outward
appearances of matter. The manner in which matter sort of wiggles around in front of us
is an obscuring veil, which keeps us from seeing the inner workings of the universe,
let’s say, or the soulful workings of the universe. And it simply means the way that
the world appears to us is not as it actually is. This is the tree of life diagram again.
and these different levels are the four worlds.
This is kind of important because the bottom most layer
is the world of Asiya or the material world.
The second layer, the yellow there, is the world of Yetzira,
which is the world of formation or the world of forms.
And then the blue layer is the world of Bria,
which is the world of formlessness or it’s one of the worlds of formlessness.
There are no forms there.
there’s just the substance of the mind itself okay and then the topmost world is the world of
pure potentiality which is absolute okay the top two worlds the red one and the blue one are formless
there are no forms there there is simply spirit or mind okay and we could say that the blue level
is just the substance of the mind itself with no forms in it yet and then the substance of the mind
then bodies forth various forms which creates the world of yet zero the world of formation
the world in which forms arise as appearances and separate separate forms okay and then in the world
of the green level below the world of action that’s where material forms arise or actually
where material stuff arises okay and uh when we are when we are looking at forms uh we are then
we are looking directly at reality but if we think that the forms are the basis of our reality
then we are deluded we are uh proceeding in ignorance okay so and that’s usually the
mistake we make. The forms that we see, we think that’s what reality is, when in fact the actual
reality is at that blue level, which is just the substance of the mind itself, not the forms that
arise from that substance. These are the worlds, the four worlds. So you’ll notice that the veil
of Periketh is not really between two worlds. It’s really between the lower layer of Yetzirah
and the upper layer of Yetzirah, okay? So this world of forms has a veil right across the middle
of it, okay? And the job is to sort of, so we’re going into the world of forms, which is really
the world of dreams or the world of imagination, because if you go into imagination, there are
forms there. There are dream images there, okay? And those dream images in the world of imagination,
those are the same images we see when we look out at the world, because remember,
the imagination is creating forms out of the sensory inputs, okay? So the veil of Parakath
is essentially the blinding nature of forms. When we perceive everything around us in terms of forms
only, then we are blind to the true nature of reality, the true substance from which those forms
arise. As you can see here, then, that’s the same tree of life, again, formulated a little bit
differently, into three triangles and one sphere down below, okay? The upper triangle is called
the supernal, the supernal triad. The second triangle with the blue, the gold and the red
is the moral triad. And the lower triangle there is the astral triad. Okay. And the astral triad
is like a world of dreams that has forms floating around in it. Okay. And then at the very bottom,
we have Malkuth or we have Asiya and that is the material world of matter. Okay. And you’ll notice
of the veil of Periketh is the veil of Periketh keeps us from seeing the pure nature of reality
itself, which hovers at the very top of the tree there, and it’s represented by the wheel of spirit
or that radiating sigil of spirit. And what you’ll notice down below, those are the four elements.
And so most of us are pretty much wandering around in the world of the four elements,
fire water air and earth and that’s all we can see the forms that arise within those elements okay
the outward appearances of nature and the outward appearance the outward appearances of nature
are what blind us to what’s on the inside of nature which is symbolized by that wheel of
spirit at the very top and the veil of periketh and the veil of the abyss by the way prevent us
from seeing that pure spirit at the very top.
And so you see on the pentagram there,
those are the elements again.
And as many of you know that, you know,
the pentagram is a symbol of spirit ruling
over the four elements.
And the veil of Parakleth hovers right over the elements there,
making sure that we really can’t see
the true nature of reality.
All we can see is the outward appearances, okay?
And people who only proceed
in terms of the outward appearances,
they they live in a world of endless desire endless suffering endless striving endless
restlessness endless not good enough until they learn to see beyond the veil of pericath at least
of course we really need to see beyond the abyss as well to completely eradicate
suffering and what you’ll notice then on the tree of life there then the veil of pericath
hovers below that moral triad, that triad of the blue, the red, and the gold, okay? And so what
that shows is that between the world of pure spirit and the world of the four elements, let’s
say down below, you have this intermediate zone. Hello, what’s this? So in other words, in order
to connect spirit to matter, there’s some kind of intermediate zone with those three colors there,
right? This is the moral triad. And within the moral triad is where we have occult virtues.
This is the moral triad. And so what you’ll notice then is that the source books of high magic,
such as what we get from Agrippa or from Iamblichus, they insist again and again that
moral virtue is very important and this can be frustrating because usually when we hear about
moral virtue we think about good manners keeping up appearances so we don’t embarrass ourselves
in front of the neighbors how to eat properly at the table so if you have you know good morals
then you’re going to behave very well and be a good citizen and all this stuff okay no no no no
know. So those kinds of good behaviors are the world of the charlatans, okay? The posers. These
are the people who pretend to have moral virtues, let’s say. They ape the appearances of moral
virtues so that they can appear to be refined and special and blah, blah, blah, right? And so
what you might notice also is that you’ve got people online, um, uh, claiming to be initiates,
you know, and then they’ll, we’ll, we’ll put on the appearance of, of having, um, uh, some kind
of, um, uh, spiritual virtues, something like that. Right. Uh, it’s, it’s quite easy to distinguish
between the posers and the real deal. Okay. And we’re still going to get to that. Right. So, um,
The most important thing to take away from this is that the world of the virtues or the moral
principles, it’s important to regard that as actually real. I’m going to go back to that
diagram. So between the world of the elements and between the world of the elements and the
world of spirit, there’s a world of moral virtues or something like that, occult virtues. And if we
pretend that these virtues aren’t really real, you know, they’re merely performative, they’re
merely a matter of looking like you have virtues, but we all know there’s no such thing as a moral
virtue for real. If you adopt that attitude, you begin to resemble someone you probably don’t want
to resemble, the psychopath. Psychopaths are apparently incapable of really feeling, detecting,
and understanding or even recognizing that moral principles are actually quite real and that this
a psychopath is completely in the world of objective outward appearances and they only
function in terms of those appearances and that’s why they will tend to imitate someone who has
moral virtues and they’re quite good at it many of them and can be manipulative manipulative that
way too. But eventually you’ll notice that they cannot do it. And of course, many people attempt
to function just at that level. It’s like, oh, well, I need to pretend to have good virtues by
adopting a system of good behavior, right? And then people will like me and I’ll fit in and then
I can get what I want, right? Yeah. So this is the world that most of us are stuck in. Okay. And so
when you meet somebody on these online worlds who are they pretend to have these virtues they’re
kind of doing that you know pretty much and you can’t blame them because if you can’t see past
the veil of periketh or um or you don’t believe that these moral moral virtues are real then um
then there’s nothing else for you to do but to pretend and fit in and just pretend and um you
adopt these behaviors that pretty much are capable of repressing other people without really
believing that there’s any animating principle behind them, right? That’s the moral triad. And
you can see it consists of these virtues, okay? So we have magnanimity, charity, compassion,
generosity. And of course, these basically consist of creation. So number four there is more that
creation principles or expansion principles right and then the number five is destruction in the
words um disintegration um these are actually virtues in other words if if uh to be able to
um limit things and destroy things when they become um um unuseful or to you know toss them
out or sell or sell them or get rid of them once they’re no longer useful this is the ability to
dissolve things or to destroy things between the forces of creation and the forces of destruction
it’s a balancing act right and then so between those we have harmony or beauty
and this is where we get the idea of poise and elegance and equanimity and we have this ability
to navigate the world of of um the elements with um with special principles what this means then
is that in the astral world, let’s go back here, in the world of Yetzirah, the world of forms,
there’s the veil of Periketh that pretty much divides the astral world or the world of forms
into two parts. Down below, we have the outward appearances of forms, and up above the veil of
Periketh, we have the way those forms move, the dynamics of them. In other words, how they behave
or their manner of movement and from that we can get manners right so in other words there’s
we can pretend to have good manners and then we just pretend we just act in certain ways that we
know that people will hopefully hopefully like us right and yet there are people who are capable of
tuning into the moral virtues and actually animating the world of those good manners with
the real thing. So when they demonstrate moral virtue, it’s not merely performative, it’s real.
And we know this is true, don’t we? Some people fake it, some people make it. All right, so now
in the golden dawn, in order to get from the lower spheres to the higher, remember we start in sphere
10 and then we get to 9 and we go to 8, we go to 7, and then suddenly we’re ready to jump across
the Veil of Perikath and then achieve number six and become the Adeptus Minor, the Minor Adept.
The Adeptus is somebody now who is capable of wielding magic from the inside,
not somebody who’s an outsider anymore, okay? That’s the goal. And so symbolically,
when we undergo the Adeptus Minor initiation, we enter a special chamber called, this chamber
isn’t literally required, but of course it could be constructed. The chamber is called the Vault
of the Adepte. It’s a seven-sided chamber. And by the way, for all you scholars out there,
I know the color scheme that’s presented right here is not correct. Okay. But it’s really cool
looking anyway. Okay. So this is, I guess, I don’t know, this looks like a computer simulation
of the vault that somebody tried to put together. The colors of those squares are not correct. Okay.
but essentially the vault looks like that with different colors for the squares
and the vault is a place that connects the upper world of spirit with the world of matter down
below and you’ll notice that the that triangle above the triangle below is kind of represents
that and between the world of spirit above and the world of matter below there’s all these
beautiful colors and symbols okay so um this is the world of the adept somebody who’s capable
of connecting matter with spirit for real, not pretending. And in order to do that,
they have to be able to embody these moral virtues. When these moral virtues are no longer
performative, but when they become the animating principles of your life, they are no longer
performative. They are basically animating principles. We know what people like this
are like they they come across as authentic they are the real thing okay and in order to embody
you know moral principles we suddenly become a person of honor let’s say integrity um when we
express compassion it’s real it’s no longer me trying to look good so that the neighbors will
like me it’s really it’s the real thing and this is possible if you can get past the veil of
of Perikath. So as people enter, as the candidate for initiation approaches the Adeptus Minor
temple, to get inside the temple, he or she has to pass through the Venus door, okay? That’s
actually quite simple, because on the Tree of Life, you go from Sphera 10 to 9 to 8 to 7 and
into six. Seven is the sphere of Venus. And so we jump from seven to six. In other words,
in order to jump from seven to six, something very special has to happen. And this comprises
the criterion that you use to determine whether somebody is an insider or an outsider. Okay,
so when we pass through the Venus door, there are three curtains. And then the outward curtain is
indigo-colored, which symbolizes the veil of Periketh itself, the dark, outward, mysterious,
occulting nature of the material world that seems to obscure us, to obscure the heart of creation
from us. And then when we pull that curtain aside, the indigo curtain, behind that is a green curtain,
and that green curtain has a pentagram on it a red pentagram and then behind this green curtain
there’s another green curtain which is just a green curtain no pentagram okay so what these
two green curtains symbolize are the lower vibrations of venus and the higher vibrations
of venus okay somebody who’s not an initiate lives in accordance with the lower vibrations of venus
somebody who is a an initiate at least at the adeptus minor level they are they they now
proceed in accordance with the higher vibrations of venus whatever that is right and of course
they proceed in terms of both now the higher and the lower okay so because the higher vibrations
of venus subsume the lower vibrations within okay so anyway um so how do we get to the higher
vibrations of Venus. It’s actually quite simple. We use the cross as a guide, okay? I should point
out, though, that it’s interesting that within the heart of Venus herself, we have this red
pentagram, which is a symbol of Gabbura, which is the symbol of Mars. So within the heart of Venus,
we find Mars. He is protecting the inner sanctuary of Venus. In other words, there’s the lower aspects
of love, and then there’s the higher aspects of love. And he’s acting as a guardian. Thou canst
not pass unless thou canst show me the true nature of love, right? And that’s what these curtains
symbolize. The higher aspect of Venus is quite simple, really. It has to do with the cross.
The cross can serve as your guide here, okay? So we have the kind of desires that people proceed
by when they are not an initiate okay and these are the only types of desires they normally
function under and those are considered horizontal desires the initiate is capable of proceeding
under the guidance of vertical desire okay and this is something that i have repeatedly been
saying to a lot of you guys on the forbidden realm site i do one-on-one consultations and i
also do direct messages between um the my patrons and and myself and um a lot of times i’m referring
to um the difference between horizontal desire and vertical desire and also horizontal causality
and vertical causality so you’re kind of the same thing so um the way that you can tell uh whether
you’re dealing with somebody who’s an initiate at least at the low level of paraketh right um is
whether or not they are proceeding according to the vertical dimension of desire, which is the
higher vibrations of Venus. Let’s see now. I think we can talk about this. So yeah, let’s talk about
what these symbolize. The horizontal level of desire is very simple, okay? We have one thing
desiring another, okay? In other words, when one form desires another form, both of those forms
exist on the same level of existence, pretty much in the dream world, right? So when one human body
desires another body, right, that’s one form desiring another, okay? Or when one human body
desires to live in a house, or have a new house, or to have a new car, or something like that.
Or even somebody says, oh, I would like to have a college degree. These are all things. Things
lusting after things, lusting for results, right? Because the result of what you want exists on the
same level as the object that you think you are. It’s one form desiring another form. Even if that
form is sort of abstract, like conceptual, it’s still become a conceptual form, right? So the
difference then between horizontal desires and vertical desires is quite simple. If you have
a vertical desire you are a form which desires something formless and these moral principles
already don’t they exist beyond form they’re just the principles under which forms move and behave
the manners of those forms right and of course beyond even beyond those moral principles let’s
say these occult virtues um then there’s the highest highest levels of utter formlessness
which we also can desire, if that makes any sense. And of course, it is utterly
dumbfounding for most of us to desire something that has no form. So what that takes the form of
then is in our lives is that if we desire to become embodiments of formless principles.
Okay, so when somebody is interacting with you, and it’s clear that they’re talking about your ability to achieve a state in which you are embodying formless higher principles, then it looks like they probably understand at least the initiation of Paraketh.
In other words, they’re an initiate.
If they are talking to you in terms of one, they think that you are one form desiring another form, and then you can use magic to get there, then they are not necessarily an initiate.
If all they can do is function on the level of one form desiring another, then you can tell they’re not working magic from the inside.
There’s nothing wrong with one form desiring another, by the way.
But the thing that marks a true initiate is that they are capable now of sacrificing that kind of desire activity to a higher type of desire.
And this very often takes the form of like, you could still listen to a beautiful love song about a beautiful woman,
but then you hear within that a love song between a mortal and God, let’s say,
which is the double meaning that is now embedded in that.
And interestingly enough, even romantic relationships now get interpreted differently.
There’s a whole new dimension behind the ability to connect to another person in that way that’s transpersonal.
Okay, a little bit frightening, but of course, somebody who has achieved the initiation at the Veil of Periketh now is primarily desiring the ability to embody some kind of formless occult virtue within their lives to become a channel for it.
I don’t like that. Becoming a channel is really, I don’t know.
remember i want to be a channel and then it’s like oh you’re desiring to be this thing and
that’s that’s still a desire of one form for another okay you can see how we can easily get
trapped um and of course the mind can make a thing or a form out of one of these occult virtues and
so in other words i desire to justice you know and yet the mind will still make a thing out of it
okay um if it’s really a um a vertical aspiration it’s you can tell it’s kind of unmistakable that
somebody is now reaching from beyond the world of mere outward appearances in an attempt to
recognize and embody a higher moral uh principle or an occult virtue and of course you can see
the pentagram is a is very often considered to be a symbol of gebora or mars and the seven-sided
the heptagram the seven the seven-pointed star is a symbol of venus um and between those we have
the six-pointed um star which is the symbol of tifareth and interestingly enough um when we
suffer and when we’re stuck on the outsides of things when when we are living in a world of
external appearances being kicked around by life let’s say because we don’t know there’s an inside
dimension we live only in accordance with fear and desire and desire on the lower lower levels okay
so both venus and mars offer us tests so that’s why mars appears within the heart of venus
seeing if we um he’s pretty much guarding that internal heart from those who aren’t
able to understand it yet. And of course, in order to get to the harmony, that’s where we
want to get, right? Anyway, so what happens then is that if one really has the initiation at
Paraketh, and you don’t need a golden dawn ritual to do that, of course, life just does that to us.
There are many examples of people who have this initiation, many actually, and these are people
we tend to admire. Most people don’t have it. They pretend, and that’s fine, because what else
are we going to do? We’re confronted constantly by outward appearances, just trying to navigate
among them, figure things out. And the ability to sacrifice that kind of existence to higher
moral principles requires courage. And it requires not a death of the ego, but setting the ego aside
so that it gets out of the way
and you can then become an embodiment for the real thing.
The transformation that happens to you
is that you transform from a poser to a paragon.
Paragon is the word, isn’t it?
Now, we probably hear that word paragon from video games, right?
I’ve achieved paragon status.
What does that really mean, right?
You’ve probably heard the term paragon of virtue
or a paragon of justice, somebody who becomes a living embodiment of some kind of moral principle
for real, not a poser, not a pretender, but a paragon. And the way that they do that is by
setting aside their desire for this or that form for something formless. And in order to do that,
they willingly become an embodiment of that principle. They allow that principle to,
um i don’t know flow through them arise and subside within them it comes and goes and uh
this is a frightening person sometimes to deal with because the kind of courage it takes to do
that sometimes it seems as though they don’t care about whether they live or die they’re just going
to do what’s necessary okay and there’s a an element of faith or trust involved in that you
know that the moral principle is just going to do what it has to do with my life okay so um and
these people we know. There are such people in the world, in history, right? These are people
we tend to respect. So we know it’s real, and yet somehow in our habits of perception, we can’t seem
to see past the world of forms and acknowledge these virtues or these occult virtues as real
things, these virtues known as harmony, justice, magnanimity, charity, compassion, etc., etc.
And of course, looking at these historical figures, that’s not as easy to understand
moral principles. So if we have gifted actors, they’re pretty good at showing us what a paragon
looks like, even though they might not be paragons themselves. They can show us maybe
what that looks like, somebody who becomes an embodiment of moral principles and highly
respected because of it. And they tend to have a bit of an ascetic nature to them. In other words,
they will deny themselves certain pleasures from time to time to become, in other words,
to set their desires for various forms aside so that their desire for the formless is the dominant
force in their life. Okay. And that’s why they, they tend to be very, be very disciplined from
time to time. Now the fakers or the posers, uh, or the virtue signals, the signalers, right, will,
uh, will adopt, uh, will, they’ll, they’ll adopt behaviors that, um, chase after virtues as though
they are things that I can grab onto and use to get what I want. You know, in other words,
i use i i pretend to have virtues so that people will like me you know that kind of thing uh and
of course um when you when you’re dealing with a paragon they don’t do that they simply embody
the more the moral principle whether you like them or not a little bit frightening because you
can’t sometimes you can’t figure out what they what they’re doing they no longer seek fun not
really no yeah that still happens you know and um another aspect of the lower aspects of venus is
that people who pretend to have virtues will adopt refined tastes and, you know, they’ll collect
fine art and they’ll have expensive taste in furniture and they’ll even walk through the
house and caress the various objects of their desire. And they’ll think that those refined
tastes, those elements of luxury are the higher virtues. But what you can see happening as they
do that, it’s still the desire of one form for another on the same level of existence. That’s
why it’s horizontal. The actual paragon is someone who might do that, who might collect works of art
or whatever, but they are embodying, even as they do that, they are embodying higher virtues.
And you can even see it in the quality of their homes and in their possessions and in their
conduct. They might look a lot like the posers, but there’s something about them where it’s real.
It’s a real thing. Another example of characters who have this initiation at Periketh. And what
you’ll notice is that this is only the beginning. These types of characters or these types of people
have only the beginnings of a magical lifestyle.
So the initiation at Periketh
is simply entering the world of the minor adept.
And so these people will not claim to have occult powers necessarily,
but what you’ll notice about their lives
is that something is now taken over.
There’s a sense of destiny and purpose that now presides.
and often it seems as though the universe is unfolding a path in front of them with
synchronicities and whatnot and there are different forces at play in their lives already
that set them apart you can tell that they’re now working reality from the inside to some degree
okay and of course when we get to higher and higher levels of the tree we develop the ability
to work even more directly with these occult virtues, these occult powers, which are the
real thing, not the outward appearance of those powers. So when you’re looking at the occult
internet, you can use the cross as your guide. In other words, is the person that I am scrutinizing
right now as a possible source of legitimate teachings? Is this person talking about one
form desiring another, like me getting what I want through magic, then very likely they are
only functioning on the level of horizontal desire, okay? There’s nothing wrong with that
because the world of horizontal desire is part of manifestation. The only thing different about
somebody who has the initiation is that they have activated the vertical dimension, that desire to
embody higher formless principles okay and the world of horizontal desire is now completely
subservient well usually to the to that um deeper dimension of reality and in the in the great of
adeptus minor the oath that’s taken is now it’s like it’s that um all of my you know um uh magical
symbols and my magical techniques are going to be in service of this new desire to embody
higher moral principles the interesting thing about this kind of magic is that when you learn
to embody these higher forces let’s say um there aren’t you don’t have to cast spells you simply
go about your life and the embodiment of the occult power or the occult virtue does the work
and so the the kind of daily magical work you do is continuously working with these occult forces
and then when you go about your day you’re not like exerting powers on with on people or anything
like that the principles that you are the formless principles that you are learning to embody they
just do the work for you and this is what it means when when somebody says that you know the holy
guardian angel comes down and it just goes out and fights my battles for me in other words these
things just kind of happen. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to tell the angel where
to go or anything like that. If I tell the angel to go out there and get something for me, guess
what I’m doing? I’m proceeding in terms of one form desiring another. So the interesting thing
is that when we learn to embody formless principles, we’re not even really doing magic
to get what we want anymore. But what seems to happen then is that the universe begins to unfold
by giving us what we need to continue to embody those virtues or those occult powers so it will
seem like you’re getting what you want through magical spells and whatnot okay now it doesn’t
mean it’s not possible to do that in fact even if you operate only on the level of the horizontal
and do magic you can get results that way hit or miss okay sometimes you do sometimes it sometimes
it works sometimes it doesn’t because that vertical dimension is still being triggered
and stirred up by your external um magical acts right and uh uh very often um very often it
doesn’t work but sometimes it does okay because the vertical dimension is always there it’s not
something that you just you click it on and suddenly it’s there you know it is always there
but we are blind to it. And so when we’re doing like Goetia and lower forms of magic,
yeah, it’s possible that these higher virtues will be activated and maybe instigate some kind
of change in life. Very often, though, what happens is that you will trigger all of the
karma that is associated with that higher virtue, which is not necessarily pleasant.
Okay. And that’s why people end up harming themselves, you know, doing Goetia and things
like that. So I want to give an example of someone who tries to pretend that they have a
virtue. And then I’ll give an example of somebody who actually has one, I think. Let’s see. So
especially in occult circles or in like, say, internet chats, you will see some people,
they develop an attitude that I refer to as flippancy. They are irreverent towards almost
everything. And this also has happened in fantasy fiction. There’s a lot of fantasy writers who
look down their nose at fantasy themes and things like that, and that they make fun of them.
And they might even make fun of some of the really valuable fantasy literature.
They’ll make fun of Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien, for writing in such an erudite, uppity style and talking about honor and principles and truth and blah, blah, blah.
And they just make fun of all that because it sounds so stuffy and so uppity, right?
um and so um that’s important too because um when we make fun of that the primary function of that
is to um distinguish the posers from the paragons so um what so in other words when we let’s see if
you go to the court of the king there’s a court jester let’s say the court jester kind of exists
to make fun of the posers, okay? Or to make fun of the outward behaviors, which are not really
the moral virtues themselves, okay? Now, if the court jester ends up making fun of the occult
virtues themselves, the inner principles, he is being flippant and disrespectful. He is not
embodying the true virtue that he’s supposed to be embodying, which is levity, okay? It’s the
actual virtue that a court jester would adopt is levity, let’s say. And if he’s not aware of
how levity works to distinguish the outward appearances of virtue from the inner soul aspect
of the formless aspect of virtue, then he is being flippant and dismissing everything that sounds
uppity and fancy. He dismisses all of the finer things in life because they all sound intellectual
and silly. What you’ll notice in occult circles is that these people are all over the place. They
love to make fun of everything. And there’s some occult authors that do it too. And the manner in
which they are flippant often shows you that they’re not initiates. In other words, they are
making fun of higher inner principles and they don’t even realize they’re doing it. This is
something that you eventually develop a sense for. So flippancy is the vice. Levity is supposedly
the virtue. That’s just an example. And one more thing. Some of you have heard of something
called imposter syndrome. So when we are not initiates, but when we are good candidates for
initiation, we often experience something called imposter syndrome, where we are living a life
and we feel like we are frauds. In other words, we feel like I have a college degree, I have this
title, I work as a big manager in such and such firm or whatever like that, or I’m a fantastic
artist who has an amazing reputation and I don’t feel like I deserve it. At some point, somebody’s
going to find out that I’m not the real thing. Oh my God. And this terrible fear is lurking there.
Imposter syndrome, many therapists will say that, oh, it’s not real. Don’t worry about it. If you
have a fantastic reputation and you’re making lots of money, everything’s fine. Okay, so what I’d like
to say is that imposter syndrome is actually a guidepost. In other words, if you feel like you’re
not worthy of the reputation you already have, let’s say, it might indicate that you are aware
on some level that you’re not really embodying the inner formless principles or the inner occult
powers or the inner occult virtues of the whatever role it is that you’re good at okay
and there might that might indicate that you are ready to really um sacrifice your horizontal level
of a desiring one form desiring another and just um go ahead and invoke and enter into the world
of higher principles become somebody who’s really capable of embodying higher principles okay
and of course if you if this is happening what you can do is you can look to people who you
already know are examples who are actually pretty obviously paragons okay and look to them as guides
like they’re able to embody these principles for real most of the time anyway right and then how
do they do it? How do they see past the veil of Periketh? How is it that they know that these
moral virtues, these occult powers are real? How is it that they know that? Okay. And keep in mind
that this is only the beginning because beyond these, I don’t know, moral virtues or these
occult powers, these occult virtues, there’s the higher world of spirit, which is pure potentiality,
which is ultimately what we’re connecting to but in order to manifest in the world of the elements
the spirit has to filter down through these dramatic um principles this is a very important
concept in the golden dawn because connecting spirit to matter in turn in terms of several
or numerous virtues is essentially adopting the viewpoint of a polytheistic psyche in other words
spirit manifests through a spectrum or a prism of different colors different personalities
different virtues different experiences not just straight down through the middle as white light
and everything’s sweetness and innocence and blah blah blah right no um there is there are all kinds
of things to deal with. If you really want to fully manifest spirit and matter, then all of
the occult virtues, let’s say, become important. And of course, all of the virtues apparently have
vice aspects. The vice aspects are what people adopt when they’re just pretending to have
virtues. And so when we switch from the vice aspect to the virtuous aspect, then we initiate
ourselves into each of these various virtues. This is something that if for many intellectuals
out there, the flippancy is rampant. In other words, the mind loves to make fun of moral
virtues because the mind loves to point out when a virtue is merely performative,
the mistake we make though is that we think that every manifestation of a virtue then is merely
performative and we make fun of all of them and so what we’re doing then is we’re dismissing
occult virtues as not real and so we’re basically saying that our link to the world of spirit
does not exist and we trap ourselves in the world of outward appearances forever until until we
sacrifice that flippancy and we learn to turn flippancy into levity in other words sometimes
we make fun of things because they’re just performative but other times we know they’re
not performative and we leave them alone we don’t make fun of those because we know it’s the real
thing it should should be interesting too because um what you’ll notice in the group chat on the
forbidden realm site that’s my patreon um there you’ll you’ll see examples of flippancy from time
to time. But you’ll also see examples of levity, okay? And also examples of reverence and things
like that too, okay? I’m just pointing that out, okay? Sometimes when you see reverence being
displayed, it is kind of funny because it’s performative. But of course, sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes it’s the real thing. So I hope that helps. Remember, the world of the poser is the
world of one form desiring another, and that’s all there is, right? The world of the paragon is
somebody who can live in that world just fine, but primarily it’s the vertical dimension of desire,
of one form desiring to embody something formless. All right. Gosh, I hope that’s clear. I always
worry that these things are confusing. All right. Until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher