Descriptions:
Video Description
“Why chant a sacred word out loud when a quiet internal vibration would do? That is the question this lesson answers with generous, lively conviction. Lyam Christopher starts at the real obstacle: many students live with others, feel shy, and never let the voice out. But part of the test, he says, is daring to be heard. The work asks you not only to disappear into stillness but also to step forward, make sound, and bring things into the world.”
“Vibration, he explains, is the very weave of the universe. The word tantra means the weave, and the Hindu tradition of Kashmir Shaivism calls this pulsing Spanda (स्पन्द), the shimmer between coming forth and dissolving back. He invites you to picture the two ends of a guitar string, bending into the shape of a vesica piscis, the doorway through which everything enters and exits. Even Jesus enthroned in church art echoes that same gateway, and in the same breath it can be seen as the source from which all manifestation flows.”
“Then the practice gets wonderfully physical. Vibrating loudly is not just show; it charges the body like a battery through motion and resonance, and the tradition speaks of kundalini as living static electricity. He offers gentle remedies for the shyness itself: be honest with housemates, take a singing or acting class, or gather with open friends and chant together until the room itself feels electric. The message is warm and boldly practical: the quiet seeker must also learn to roar.”
Full Video Transcript
One of the most common questions I get is about vibration and it involves when a student of magic
lives with other people and essentially that student of magic is shy about doing the ritual
vibrations and incantations so and they will have probably read somewhere oh I heard of this
thing that you can do called the great voice so i can uh simply vibrate internally i don’t have
to vibrate out loud by vibrate i mean chant and drone out a word of power for instance um
not really so complicated uh but to do it loudly which means that somebody in the next room will
be able to hear you now if you live in a situation where that’s going to freak somebody out then
don’t do the magical work do something else okay take up zen or take up the practice of
dream yoga or something like that okay um part of the test of being able to do magic is that you do
magic and that you basically be able to use the full voice that means you you need to be able to
dramatically act things out and we’re going to talk about this. So the topic this week is
vibration. All right and as before in my previous videos we talked about the hexagram ritual and
that the hexagram symbolizes the active and passive forces of creation. Now in terms of
vibration, vibration is like a back and forth thing or in this case with the hexagrams up and
down right to do interesting interesting thing about tantra is that tantra one translation of
the word tantra means weaving or or the weave and there’s a warp and a woof and so if you have a
cloth there’s going to be like threads going this way and their threads going this way the warp and
the woof and kind of what that symbolizes in terms of tantra is that vibration happens in patterns
and overlapping patterns like if you throw uh two stones into a lake right next to each other
they make uh ring patterns right and then those ring patterns spread out those vibrations spread
out and then they overlap and the overlapping of those vibrations creates interesting forms
and patterns now that is a very simplistic way of looking at manifestation so in other words the
the universe and everything around you consists of interweaving vibrations many many interweaving
vibrations on many different levels of of perception or or existence okay on different
planes of existence uh and so the concept of vibration in tantra it’s known as spanda
There’s a great religious text out there called the Spandekaraka, one of my favorite Eastern sacred texts.
It’s from Kashmir Shaivism.
And like I’ve said before, Kashmir Shaivism is one of those traditions that has not had much debasement.
Most of Western occultism has been debased.
it’s been mistranslated and you know marketed and turned into other things uh but originally
it it appears to have arisen from more authentic forms of enlightenment practices okay now um
being able to vibrate your names of power and ritual out loud is important so uh the only
thing I might advise is that like if you’re traveling for instance I had to spend a couple
of nights away from home because they were fumigating my condominium here and so I decided
to stay at one of these I guess with these little houses where you can rent a room so I basically
just packed a bag and then stayed at this house for a couple of nights and while I was there the
first night i had the whole place to myself pretty cool uh the next night there was a woman who
rented the room next to mine and of course i was doing some ritual work uh and so i did uh rather
than rather than freak her out and vibrate with full voice i toned it way down so she probably
probably couldn’t hear it okay uh uh and i consider that fine but most often you want to
vibrate with with full voice if you live with someone that you think it’s going to disturb
do a reality check uh are you simply embarrassed are you ashamed that embarrassment or shame
needs to be worked through i’ve been here before i’ve had roommates okay and uh and you’ll if when
i moved to south florida uh i really couldn’t afford any housing down here it’s very expensive
not for a while anyway and so i had a couple different places where i lived where i was
simply had a room this was years ago but um uh and i was doing the outer order work so i had no
choice i had to vibrate with full voice so before i moved into these places i scoped these people
out and i said i told them i’m a tantric buddhist is that a lie i don’t know um i i resonate very
very nicely with tantric buddhism so it was fine with me uh was i doing tantric buddhist practices
no i was doing the uh the golden dawn practices uh but if i told him i was doing magic that that
might have upset them uh it’s like who is this person but i told him i was doing i you know
chanting as a tantric buddhist practice uh every day and i worked out a time when i could do it
with them so i wouldn’t disturb them but they would they’d be able to hear me and uh they were
always very open-minded um the only obstacle for me was that the first couple of times i did it
back then i did ritual at night the first couple of nights i did it uh i was very self-conscious
it was not a very good performance not a very good ritual because i was you know worried about
they are they gonna come are they gonna come banging on the door or something like that
and it was fine it was fine and i made a point of actually going out and like you know washing
some dishes or something like that after the performance was over to check with them to see
if they were okay they were perfectly fine uh one of them asked me some questions and i
sort of avoided answering the questions i said it’s kind of private the stuff i do but do you
have any concerns about it i asked them you know i turned to put the questions around at them like
whether they have any worries or concerns about it because i know it sounds weird
um just to clear the air you know be very diplomatic um and you can still keep your
magical practice secret you don’t have to tell them what you’re doing you just you know explain
it to them so that it’ll put them at ease okay so these things are not so difficult to deal with
usually if you’re living with somebody who simply can’t tolerate anything weird at all
what are you doing living with them get away if you can’t if you can’t get away like it’s
your husband or your wife um then don’t do this work you’re in a situation that doesn’t allow
for it okay if you can’t vibrate with full voice then don’t do the ritual work and of course the
interlocking triangles are uh the two two different levels of reality um in golden dawn the the upright
red triangle and the down pointing blue triangle are fire and water uh but you know these can be
just seen as all um opposing forces uh the forces that exist at both ends of a spectrum and there’s
is a vibration happening between them. Do those two things exist? Not really. It’s the full-bodied
spectrum that exists, and the upper triangle and the lower triangle simply appear to exist,
but they are simply two ends of a spectrum of vibration, or a continuum, two ends of a continuum.
them. Now, the first time I saw Jews at the Wailing Wall doing something called shuckling,
I recognized immediately what it was, okay? This is my opinion, okay? So, and shuckling is where
they are praying at the wall, and they’re sort of rocking back and forth, maybe like this,
or from side to side, okay? And, you know, there’s many opinions about this. Some rabbis are against
it some some of them don’t mind it many of them are uh say it’s actually a good practice
um but what i notice is that oh this is a vibration okay and when you have two ends of
an extreme to two to two extreme ends of something it sort of helps you triangulate in on the center
okay like many people say uh oh it’s very good to be balanced but what does balance mean i’m
pretty critical of that like in other words if you’re like you should have a balanced diet
well okay but if i’m going to establish some kind of balance where do you want me to put the
fulcrum of that balance where is the center of that balance uh if i want to have a balance between
protein and carbohydrates you know should i do like most people in america most people who
supposedly eat a balanced american diet eat mostly carbs and that’s supposedly balanced you know with
vegetables and fruits and grains and stuff like that they eat mostly carbohydrates i don’t consider
that balanced okay i consider carbohydrates for the most part to be um in large amounts to be
poisonous actually but anyway that’s that’s that’s a topic for another video um so where does that
where does that balance point where is that established and so this sort of shuckling or
vibrating or shaking uh this is the origin behind you know the the quakers and the shakers
the uh the christian shakers and quakers also would but when they’re filled with energy they
start oscillating or vibrating or just doing um and in the extreme end points of that vibration
this is sort of helping them triangulate in on some kind of center okay uh and it’s important
not to take that center so literally okay so like if you’re going to have a balanced diet there’s
many different center points for that balance that you can establish and be healthy okay all
kinds of different diets you can have and all kinds of different states of consciousness that
you can have that could be considered balanced but in order to work your way into that balance
it can help to experience vibration or oscillation okay so shuckling is a really nice graphic example
of that i really should have embedded a little video here so you could see the rocking back and
forth or this guy was going back and forth like this and so with vibration
you have a back and forth motion all right and so when you have sort of a
vibrating syllable going on various images can arise of what that might look
like okay here’s one of them like if you hold a guitar upright and you pluck one
of the strings that string is not just going to stay vertical it’s going to go
back and forth like and of course it’s not it’s going to bow this way and that way it’s going to
do this right it’s going to have these wave patterns this wave pattern going on and so uh
here you have the vesica piscus uh the vesica piscus and so the uh can be seen as two ends of
a vibrating two extremes of a string and vibration okay or two extreme ends of a boundary that’s
vibrating and this is a good image maybe to sort of sink into in your mind when you’re vibrating
like what is vibration why do we vibrate during ritual what is all this okay uh and you could see
this also sort of like your aura yeah and surprise surprise the vesica piscis appears
in religious art of all kinds especially christian art there’s a reason for that uh it is because
the vesica piscis is uh this sort of fish shape piscis means fish um so uh you can see that
here jesus sits enthroned within a vesica piscis now uh this might be quite shocking to orthodox
christians but it’s pretty clear that the vesica pisces represents the vagina it is the doorway
between the interior world and the external world uh this is not rocket science okay um uh we came
out of the world through our mothers out of the vagina most of us okay but even if you came through
caesarean section you kind of came out of this sort of shape right and then when we die we go
back in okay you’ll notice that these shapes appear in religious art all over the place and
not only in christian art but primarily in christian art okay now of course jesus is the
son of god and he came into the world through his mother and here we see the the mother the mother
of god can also be inside this vesica piscis because she is the vesica piscis she is that
embodying forth uh the the embodying fourth aspect of the divine the aspect of the divine
at least in catholicism that will produce an incarnated version of the deity jesus comes
into the world through the vesica piscis through a gateway of vibration hmm and here’s a pagan
version that image is a little bit shocking isn’t it you can see that the um not only does the
male god come forth through the goddess from out of the goddess he also sort of dives back in
uh and goes back into uh the unmanifest through the goddess and uh also uh you might want to
picture that when you’re looking at a flower um that that point in the middle of the vesica
peace keys is that point of silence or the point of stillness okay and that is uh and when you look
whenever you look at a flower the center of the flower uh can also represent that gateway back
into unmanifestation from from out of it things flow and back into it things flow and lo and behold
this is also the flower is also the sexual part of a plant you’re looking at the plant’s vagina here
and for an orchids orchids look a lot like a human vagina so you’ll never look at a rose the same way
again right if this is for the golden dawn and for medieval style um or christian style imagery
of the middle ages the rose was very popular um especially among the troubadours and that
tradition of courtly love that uh briefly appeared i guess around the 1200s or something like that
and of course the rose continues to be a symbol of romantic love and in the midst of that rose you
know if you go to the center of the rose you can never really find anything there the petals just
keep erupting from it from that center but where is the center it’s kind of empty space okay and
so when you’re doing vibration it’s yes it’s a way of triangulating in on the emptiness or the
the unmanifestation or the the place where you came from and the one way of looking at this is
anything that you can see within your perception your physical perception is a flower petal it’s
all flower petals that constantly constantly interrupting where are they coming from but we
really can’t see where they’re coming from can we it’s sort of an empty zone okay now if everything’s
vibration then all we can see in the physical world are the end points of that vibration the
bulging endpoints of that whatever’s in the middle there is invisible and we can intuit this place
and it becomes a sort of gateway where we can sort of go back into the unmanifest but more importantly
for us here in a magical tradition it’s a gateway through which things manifest through which we can
manifest things there’s a rather graphic representation yes we come out of our mothers
and we go back into mother earth we spend a brief time here on earth and it’s all about coming out
of the vagina and going back in again or coming out of out of the midst of this field of vibration
and then going back into it and when we emerge we are nothing but vibration sort of okay and we
always carry some of that middle pillar with us where that’s we always carry that some of that
absolute stillness and silence within us but of course it’s it’s invisible can’t see it can’t hear
it can’t smell it and everything around us is simply the end points of some kind of vibration
going on in the midst of that vibration there’s nothing discernible and so when you are positioned
within the tree of life because when you do your middle pillar work and you visualize the tree of
life around you uh lo and behold the tree of life also is a sort of vesica vesica piscis and you
could look at it like um the middle pillar is like a guitar string like a vertical guitar string
okay and when you vibrate that middle pillar vibrates it goes back and forth okay and the
only things that you can truly see with your physical senses are the um the sides out to the
sides of that the inside of that is pretty much invisible it’s like uh pretty much an empty zone
of silence and stillness into which you can pass to disappear out of creation but it’s also a
doorway through which things pass when they come into manifestation and what you begin to notice
here is that if magic is going to make you a better manifester well then you better damn well
learn how to vibrate with full voice so that you can embody the principles that you are meditating
on okay you can do you know much of magic is mysticism where you disappear back into the
great mother or into unmanifestation or or back into god whatever you want to call it
uh but also you it’s about bringing things forward out of it okay um and one of the really
cool things about being an adept is that you learn how to dissolve old versions of yourself
In other words, have them disappear back into the gateway, into the midst of the vibration.
And then what happens by itself, really, is that a new version of you can then emerge forward out of that again.
This is not unusual.
There are artists out there who are fairly good at this, artists who periodically reinvent themselves.
and so you’ll notice they go through a sort of dissolution and disappearing process and then
they re-emerge in a new form with a new persona new theme okay so more or less they’re doing what
the adept is skillful at doing so when we’re doing magic are we disappearing into non-existence or
are we embodying something forth that is unmanifest okay so it is important to do both
And in order to be able to embody various forces, it’s important that you do things that are perceivable, that you can hear and see and touch.
This is why the magician uses physical tools like wands and swords and chalices.
That’s why a magician does gestures, because a gesture is something you can see.
it’s something uh you want to enter this world you want to move your hand and make a mark
you want to be able to act things out uh for yourself and for others yes uh it might even
help for you to take a singing class so you can really do it really do some vibration okay you
could even learn how to vibrate like the those tibetan adepts where we have sort of two sets
vocal cords kind of um we have the regular ones and we have the growling vocal cords
i can’t do it you have to train yourself but you’ve probably heard some of these tibetan
masters who have trained themselves to vibrate with that i guess you call that guttural that
sort of growling um very very deep uh tone um we have to wonder why do cats purr there’s there
There seems to be some physiological value to the purring that they do.
And there seems to be a value for humans as well for you to vibrate forcefully, loudly, loosely, relaxedly, almost like you’re purring like a cat.
It probably produces a piezoelectric effect in the body where you can actually rev up, charge up your battery.
Your body is a battery, and your body’s ability to contain an electric charge is crucial to your health.
Apparently, through the piezoelectric effect, through motion and through vibration, you can charge up your body, raise that static electric charge.
Kundalini is static electricity, and your body uses static electricity for osmosis.
you would die without it it’s very important to be able to charge up your body and
to have a healthy body that can actually hold that charge instead of it bleeding off
you know into space or whatever as we get older we we tend to lose the ability to hold that
electric charge but you can use vibration to as for one thing to to keep it up keep that charge
going also there’s the triangle and that’s so just just as a reminder it’s like well you can
meditate and then disappear up into the apex where there’s nothing but unmanifestation
that’s kind of required because you kind of want to be able to triangulate triangulate in on
unmanifestation so that you can then conceive of what’s going to come out of it next and so
a magician is really good at pulling things down and so the bottom two points of this triangle
are the two extreme ends of vibration okay so when you vibrate it’s a really powerful
symbolic way of tuning into how to manifest something not only symbolic there’s something
literal to it as well all right so uh you just have to learn this one of the really cool things
you can do if you have friends who are sympathetic to to magic and mysticism and meditation
you can get together with those friends and everybody just lie around in the room
and lie lie on your backs and in unison vibrates uh do that for like 20 minutes 25 minutes with
each other uh pretty amazing you can you feel the electric charge uh build up in the room so if you
want to feel magical energies if it’s if if that’s something you want to be able to experience
rapidly let’s say you’re new to the work and you don’t feel the energies uh you can do that
and get together in a group and vibrate together with full voice not don’t be shy about it uh and
then you can you can feel the atmosphere and your body charging up in the room that you can feel
this energy all right so i hope that’s of some help to you uh it’s important not only to be shy
and disappear back into god and and like evaporate and be a be a mystic you know you also need to come
out and be able to be bold and make noise and make things manifest it’s important to be able to
vibrate with full voice in ritual all right if you live in a situation where this isn’t possible
you might want to make it a goal to get into a situation where it is possible other alternatives
are to adopt other paths which might not be effective as sort of left-handed tantric magical
paths but still effective uh but also take you know an acting class singing class go to your
community college it’s pretty cheap if you um if you stay within the state you know um and learn
how to act things out dramatically and how to sing powerfully. These are important
skills to have. All right, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher