The Way of Abrahadabra Interview by Itumeleng Maranda
To celebrate the seventh anniversary of The Way of Abrahadabra we are releasing this conceptual interview by Itumeleng Maranda, one of its long lasting practitioners.
When Divine Providence created Man, It placed him in a paradise. Where the river of life flowed in four directions. Tempted by his reptilian logic and forming reason, man lost his place of alignment, having partaken of the fruit of duality. Exiled from paradise, Man would be fated to make his return one day – this time consciously realigned with what he had ‘fell’ from. We start this interview there, by the end… by where it all began. Returned Man, back in…
The Garden.
1. Now that this interview has been completed… and always a living reality somewhere in time-space, and as the Adept who wrote and practiced all that is contained in it, concerning Will, Time and Spirit and Matter, this wild and certainly alive book, and looking already back at those who will have and had the courage to walk its path and connect to its animistic current, what are your pursuits Now and to which aims… what seeds have remained in this Moment from TWA? With honour and respect, this particular question is open-ended…
I was raking barefeet on the wet soil at my mother’s house when the question came to me
Answer: To tell you the truth, if I’m looking back at those entangled within this process, my advice would be that my pursuits and aims need not be their own, and will likely not be their own. Now, while the methods within the Way of Abrahadabra offer plenty of novelty, the things by them unlocked have been, for the most part, offered elsewhere throughout the history of magic and occultism. Since then my aims have been, most of the time, set upon magical research, and I mean by this not academic research on magic, but laboratorial research via magic set upon new discoveries. I have been able to offer such breakthroughs in The Path of Ipsos, The Inner Gateways of LAM, A Guide to Sphere Quabbalah and A Guide to Stellar Magic & Astrological Mysticism. I cannot, however, look at the stars above and forget the stars around me, the reason why I teach, connect, and still write about the foundational and more basilar notions and technologies.
2. Here in this Edenic garden that you live, in mind, in soul and in body… free as a beast that drinks continually from the waters of true vitality and wisdom, and at night you are met with the moonlight and sounds of its mercies and graces, how do you tend and nurture to it?.. and what manner of beings and creatures pass here, by invitation or of their own accord, and how do you guide them along their way?
I ponder this question at the forefront of my mind, but at the back, I am feeling as if one about to embark on a journey, and it will, absolutely and obviously, require that I become transformed at the core of my being, a journey that will certainly require me to tame and liberate my own inner beasts
Answer: Who is to judge the amount of wisdom and true vitality I have, or you? The important thing is actually inhabiting this garden, not for ourselves but for it. This means one must always tend to the wisdom and Edenic vitality out of service for the beauty and modus operandi of these very things, which eclipse our own identity. This is also the mercy and grace of the moon you evoke. The creatures that pass here are all passions. All the beasts of Circe that Giordano Bruno lists in Cantus Circaeus come to drink with me, and we dine in peace, and we share the wisdom of the garden and the love therein, and often then they pass and I remain.
– The following question is one I first and foremost have wondered about, myself… I had read a lot of the ‘ new age’, Abraham Hicks channeled messages and material and even the Kybalion, esoteric and even mystic-scientific and others related to basically suggesting that we human beings can manifest our imagined and emoted desires and intents… Believing, yet always somehow wanting that last piece to the mechanism that would make me yield it completely at will –
3. TWA , To Create as We Speak…What an incredible thing to write. To be a true reflection and son of Divine Providence… If the next breaths were to be your last breaths… o dear Adept… Speak !
Answer: Were these my last moments, I would but finally listen.
– I wrote the following question , starring up at the ceiling, my body warmer than usual , with a strong burning desire to live ! , To wait no more and accomplish my souls longings ! For later or tomorrow is not within my control , I want to live !-
4. The Adept, a being that I believe, even today, causes many and much to wonder, in all realms. Some have described him thus, others have described him such…
But here in the psyconautic jungle and base station to all of creation within the travelers capacity to take… What are you !? And What made you!?
Answer: In all truth I am you. You made me. I pay it homage by honoring you. I am everywhere.
The Great Work is just that… a work and an art form. It is the duty of Man now to reclaim his higher self and find his place in society and the world. He, himself, is his first project, which affects all other projects… which include earning his keep and relating to his fellow man, all the while not losing sight of his objective – fuller integration and an aware reunification with the Divine within and without.
This creative workshop, we call :
The City.
– My nieces arrived, and there is drizzling rain out. I’m reminded of the responsibilities that come with family, community, and being a citizen of the world. I contemplate how the best paths serve only to aid one in becoming a better functioning human, it is this thought in the background of the question that comes next –
5. To me, the initial aspects of the training are a process one can liken to being reborn. Or rather, learning to awaken the man that sleeps within. His senses have become somewhat dormant, and with the aid of the practices of TWA, we are learning to see, walk, and hear with his senses all over again. We are cleansing and strengthening his centres; exercising his bodies; it is this inner man we are nourishing and enlivening…
What are some of the expected stages in our progress from one starting TWA and all the way up to being Adept?
What are some of the common challenges you see trainees face along these various pivotal stages, and what are some places they miss employing enough imaginal power or the grit of technicality?
Answer: You are right about the Grade of the Pentagram, and this extends even to the Grade of the Hexagram and so, it kind of spans beyond half of the book. The Grade of the Pentagram awakens the inner man/woman, the Grade of the Hexagram has them taking its first steps into the cosmic expanse. Then, after the Grade of the Eye and the Sea there can be no doubt the Adept is such, as there has been a thorough test. The following grade, the Grade of the Night of Pan is not about Adepthood. I guess most would tell it is about Godhood in a way, but truly it is about Humanhood, for in its return you realize your place as a human being in the cosmos, and that it was not enough for the inner human to have been awoken, it still needed to find its place and function in the big scheme of things. That sensation of being the tiniest drop in the cosmic ocean lends you, paradoxically, the very cosmic quality.
As for the second question (or couple of questions), the most common challenges seem to be:
1 In the Grade of the Pentagram when one goes out into the inner planes to meet their own traumas and vices and, possibly, astral larvae, one has the mission to know them very well, not be deceived by them, and then transform them into relatable beasts that become allies, paving the way to the sublimation of virtue out of vice and healing out of trauma. This alchemical step is essential for balance before new challenges that may disrupt the trainee’s structure of reality. Often, the greater the pressure coming from these animic forces, the greater will be the tendency for the trainee to rush the process, use imagination out of rhythm, and project a transformation that is phased out from reality and hasn’t occurred but on an imaginal surface.
2 There is a practice in The Grade of the Pentagram where you must lie inside the anointed circle for eight hours and stay there without leaving. You would be surprised how much this weighs on the practitioner, as if the whole pressure of the rushing world is literally crushing them by going in the opposite direction. However, once the practitioner finds the right key, the eight hours pass almost unnoticed.
3 In the Grade of the Hexagram some people begin to have a hard time transporting to the outer senses what their inner senses have developed, and must practice repeatedly for a longer period. On the other hand, this seems to come pretty naturally to others and success is immediately achieved as something the very body was intensely anticipating.
4 In the Grade of the Eye and the Sea there are problems with actually planting and tending rosebushes, depending on where one lives. There are alternatives to this that must be given by private correspondence.
5 In the Grade of the Night of Pan some people might have issues transferring their consciousness into a star, although entering should have been solved much earlier in training. Then, trouble leaving the star as is intended. You are to leave the star through the star, not simply to abandon it. In other words, you are exploring implosive tunnels inside it that lead to the different circles of NOX. What is more, some people do not know if they have to perform the whole journey in a row or in various takes, and it really depends on each person how to proceed in this regard. If one can undertake this in a single take, my Babalith’s album Circles of NOX is intended for that purpose. My personal recommendation is that you take as much time as needed, and use the sounds only later as fluid condensers that transport you to the personal gnosis achieved in prolonged work.
Regarding technicality, sometimes readers do not know how to read what is actually indicated, a problem that comes, I wouldn’t exactly say from lack of literature studies in basic school, but lack of philosophy disciplines in it. They make up their own instructions based on the original ones, and it more often than not gets in the way. This may not be the case if they have considerable previous magical experience. Then you are talking of specialized adaptation and this is encouraged.
Finally, about imaginal power, the main issue is understanding imagination to start with. Most people think that imagination is like vaguely divining shapes in the clouds. However, imagination means to live things “in the flesh” that you, however, are not exactly engaging with via the material plane, and it always contains this sort of cosmic lust, this power of attraction that enchants all things (including you) and gives them transcendental life and intelligence.
– These two following questions came to mind on December 21st… I’m back home from church. It happens to be Solstice day here in my region of the globe. –
6. I find the work with the 8 inner masters to be very intriguing, a place where all the developed skills evolve until that junction where all come into play. I am marveled at how my interactions with them affect me and my inspired actions, which leads to certain life events that change me by direction of the road they open by the tasks given, tasks that the masters convey in their own manner of communications, but I am also intrigued by the fact that the doors and centres to reach them have been inside of me all this time throughout my life waiting to be investigated…
How did you come about, formulate, and design this exercise?
And to what heights can it be taken by the creative and diligent mind?
Answer: Part of the system deposed in The Way of Abrahadabra is an individual adaptation to that of an old order I co-founded, of the secret kind, and that is apparently extinct. Our group temple would be formed by two squares: one representing the four elements in their solar or active positions, and the lunar square representing the four elements in their passive state. After we had activated the current and nourished it, connecting it to the Secret Chiefs and offering it an old monastery as a material base, we meditated in each corner of these squares, awaiting the tutelary deities of the order. It goes without saying that this double-squared wheel of eight also represents the wheel of the year. And this answers half of the question of where the creative and diligent mind can take this exercise. For once, the structure can be used to contact intermediary deities and easily align with the pagan traditions that celebrate eight festivals, it matters little if you only engage with the four active poles (solstices and equinoxes) and let the other four work in the background, as some do to gain enough time to complete the tasks assigned by the masters. In the Christian cults that accept saints, there is the possibility of integration. After you become proficient with your own guides, being prepared by them, you can as easily sit with say Morrighan, the Oak King, Brighid, Danu, Belenus, Aine, Lugh and Mabon ap Modron as with St. Jude, St. Nicholas, St. Brigid, St. Sarah, St. Walpurga, St. John the Baptist, St. Mary, and St. Matthew. This would still instruct you on a personal level but also initiate you into the mysteries of one tradition or another.
The higher octave here undoubtedly takes place with the Ogodad, and preparation is given towards the final chapters of The Path of Ipsos vol II, in the Wordless Aeon portion. The Ogdoad are generative forces that create gods; however, communication with them cannot occur through standard means without corrupting the process, so unusual methods must be used.
Now, the genesis of the practice, as presented in The Way of Abrahadabra, comes from the neo-shamanic work that we, in this old order, were undertaking in parallel. Here, we were taught by an external mentor to ride our power animal up to the polar star and find within it our guide in the Upper World. Later, by my own volition, I tried the other stars in Ursa Minor and found they corresponded to celestial regions I had discovered by extrasensory ability, detecting the major centers of activity in my body and following them into the subtle regions, finding gateways to certain planes of astral and mental nature. These were the centers and corresponding regions of memory, cognition, reason, intuition, emotion, meaning, instinct, and light (it being that light, in terms of the Ursa Minor, corresponds to the constellation itself).
With Giordano Bruno, his “Frenzies of Love” and “Cantus Circaeus”, coupled with an instinctive understanding of Austin Osman Spare’s sorcery and my training in shamanism (modern or traditional), I had come to realize, in theory and practice, how certain animals can be made to contain the highest entities and virtues. At the same time, simultaneously, the most brute and base forces seek relief in animal expression. This forms a highway for the transmutation of Hermetic tormentors, which is why we, in The Way of Abrahadabra, search our torments in the inner planes, magnetize them into suitable animal shape, and transmute antagonism into loyal alliance and wise cunning. These eight animals, then, lead us to the highest virtue from which they emanate or descend, that is, to our very “Council of Eight”, the chamber of masters from the upper world.
I might not have made this circuit as naturally as I did if I hadn’t attempted the very journey described in Popul Vuh, specifically the epopee of the twins. There are, in it, three rivers, one of murk, one of blood, and one of scorpions, corresponding to the gross material appetites, the passions of the soul, and dualistic cognition looping within the vicissitudes of thought. Then you face crossroads with different voices (remaining elementary thought forms and elemental impulses from all four elements), and you can survive them when you understand that meaning precedes cognition, working in the center and region of meaning. It is never what I see but what it means. Meaning is central; it operates from the depth-point and cares little for crossroads.
You enter the House of Darkness and work at the center and region of memory, for darkness is a lack of reference and representational memory, but the essence of memory is not figurative; it is the ontological structure of continuity and can be enacted rather than recalled.
You enter the House of Razors and work the cognition center. It must be stripped of an endlessly multiplying divisionary motion to unveil the orientation of intelligence itself as a unified force of differentiation. This differentiation must not be understood as continuously making a difference between objects of perception, but continuously differentiating awareness from perception itself.
The next is the House of Cold, where you work the emotion center: you survive here by making emotion generative rather than reactive. In the House of Jaguars, you work the instinct center, and can pass only if instinct has been made clear by the intrinsic and built-in temperance with which it was made to exist. Instinct cannot here be indulged nor repressed, not feared nor dominated nor annihilated; it simply must be satisfied and fed correctly.
In the House of Fire, you are working in the center of reason, and they take away your deliberation, your detachment, and time for reflection. When you stop clinging to conclusions, your reason starts to illuminate rather than consume.
In turn, the House of Bats managed to cleanse my center of intuition by forcing me to lose all sense of predictability, leading me to a timing without foresight, resulting in immediate knowing. Intuition cannot be trusted without surrender. As long as a sense of the survival of the self isn’t sacrificed, there is distortion; you will be fed just enough light to be deceived. Because intuition is only complete through sacrifice (why sacrifices used to precede divination), passage through this house requires the death of identity: the seer must not blind their own sight with self-image.
Finally, you get to the Chamber of the Lords and the so-called Xibalba Mannequins, that is, the journey is made by a man and his double, and the Lords (deities) too have mannequin doubles. What we see here is that the Lords are absent and their authority or power is represented. Here, if you still think of light as a crown, you are done, because light is meant to expose and not to crown. In other words, travestying passage through the House of Bats and bearing failure in the real initiations of intuition, the fatal result in this chamber is that the light will feed an image-based belief that will consume the believer, while, on the other hand, accurate intuition will reveal the illusion of idolatry.
Now, the Lords in the Thrones are eight, although five of them exist as pairs and the one of light is absent from the seat. If meaning clings to doctrine instead of polyphony, you greet a mannequin and are slaughtered; If you lose continuity or memory for tradition, distinction or cognition for analysis, emotion or affective circulation for affective identity, vitality or instinct for your nature, reason for rule, intuition for its prophet, you are slain for idolatry. This all makes it so the twins here conquer and crumble Xibalba, the dead star, not by defeating death, but by refusing the image of mastery offered to them.
Obviously, the whole experience at the moment wasn’t as clear and sublimated as it later became during processing. It required dense astral travel instead of mental wandering, leaving me with a week of fever and temporary anemia. You can listen to how it felt in my music album Xibalba Mannequins. And, obviously, as necessary, I failed, which was likely my success. And the animal spirits proved to be as successful in my ascent from that underworld as in my ascent to the upper world. In my magical diary lies this entry:
“One Death and Seven Death took my head (17). I can still hear and glimpse, but not with the organs of the head. I always thought that if my head were separated from my body, my consciousness would cling above all to the head. This was a lie. Headless, however, I could command all the animals that exist in the Great Tree of Worlds. I asked each of them to bring their food and lay it beside my living carcass. I think One Death and Seven Death were laughing, and I think the other Lords were grave and afraid.
At last, I found what I sought when I saw my own body through the Horned head of a Wolf, which was being carried in the mouth of a female Coyote. Behold—if it is not Lucifer, the Heart of Heaven, who descends, himself, to ignite these eyes. An angel among the bats. For four days, the sky filled with mud, and the earth grew dark. At last, the angel must have set fire to the dung, giving light to the world and opening the sky to the blue of the Sun.
By this time, the wolf’s head and its horns were firmly set upon my shoulders. I see myself in this preparation, and seeing myself thus prepared, I see myself with the body of a wolf and a human head.
Thus, I recognize I am the Ascended and the Descended twins. All the Lords laugh and celebrate. As we have always been the counselor of the Court Below the Surface, I command that my self be seated upon the burning throne and then cast into the river. What remains are ashes. These ashes will create the first fish at the surface, and one day they will be men and women, to rule with all the subterranean powers.”
This passage isn’t here by chance, for it will also open the way for how I came up with the preparatory descent into the chamber of the Council of Eight (please do not mistake this place of communion for the chamber of the Lords, because even there being a transversal connection, this is not what I have prepared for you).
In The Way of Abrahadabra you descend seventeen steps, 17 being the number of Lucifer as the Light Bearer and living bridge between microcosm and macrocosm, both and God. This is not the Lucifer that was called Satan. 17 is unity in expression, the magician (1) in his or her chariot (7), the star in its proper route (see Atu: The Star), the God (1) in the Spheres (7), and its sum is eight (see Atu Adjustment), as eight are the centers and the thrones within the council. So, you descend through the spiral steps and see from the windows the earth turn into a sun, then a moon. At the bottom, you find a chalice in which burns a double star, drink from it, and the room of the council is brought to life, revealing the vesica on the floor and the eight thrones.
Within the same occult order mentioned before in this very reply, we would sit in a circle, cultivate the Sekhem, raise the Djed, position the Uraeus, and form the Ankh by transfiguration and liberation: by looking from the Uraeus eyes, we would imagine in our midst a cup containing our transfigured consciousness (the life of wisdom), over the Earth, having it flip downward to pour onto the Earth, it melting into a Sun, the Sun into a crystalized Moon or Lunar Salt, and the Moon melting into its very inextinguishable secret and depth-central fire-point, a star whose gravity reference is its own core. By such means we were transfiguring the very ritual chamber by penetrating layer after layer into its depth point and preparing it from the infinitesimal center to accommodate the strange angles of magical operations. We were to operate in the liminal spaces between a star’s implosion and explosion, finally expanding this depth-point into the very surroundings via the sign-pressure of the vesica. Et voila, the double-square was now the rotating space for the living spheres, and they were ten, because the Sunsphere was at the center of the solar square and the Moonsphere at the center of the lunar square. And eleven, for the conjunction where the eclipse takes place and the star is hidden and, in the act, revealed.
Now, you see, while the preparation I give you in the book only goes so far, unlocking the peripheral council of eight per se after interaction with the cup, I finished with yet another clue of what the creative and diligent mind can make of this.
7. Do you think that there are any religions, cultural beliefs, or spiritual practices that might not mix so well with those in TWA? Where are the particular frictions, and does that leave the practitioner at a crossroads of decision?
Answer: Part of my aim in The Way of Abrahadabra was to strip Thelema of its religious aspects and bring it back to the universality of hermeticism from whence it came. In a way, while Aleister Crowley used to say “the method of science, the aim of religion”, this book can be said to be more the other way around, in which we make use of mystical methods to understand and operate universal laws not only by deduction, but also by induction, meaning these methods produce the same essential results by repeatability and reproducibility, and would be useless otherwise. For us, these laws are enough wisdom, teaching in and of themselves the nature of the perceivable Universe and our relation to it. We are not attempting to create a new religion or reform old ones, as Crowley did, nor are we addressing morality in this instance, nor are we abiding by any artificial code of conduct. Therefore, The Way of Abrahadabra does not oppose any religion, culture, or spiritual tradition. It is not the business of The Way of Abrahadabra to do so.
– I had just finished my 8 inner masters exercise, I’m pleasantly glad at the immediate ‘response’. It has brought clarity, and more will unfold as I fulfill the rest. Here, by way of question, we will pause and realize something essential: Magick is real… So real that it bears effects and consequences.
8. Here I pause and congratulate the reader of this interview, because of the book they found, TWA, might be the answer to what you’ve always wondered about as a child, ‘Could magic be real?’ … Beyond doubt. Yes it is.
Can you describe, as abstractly or concisely as you wish, what magic is, and why it feels rather extra – ordinary, or super… natural to the beginner in the exercises?
Answer: We have become used to living in a mechanical world, mechanical in all senses. We see nature as a void mechanism that is grinding at things, things grinding at things grinding at things. The same with human relations, economy, politics and so on. Everything spinning senselessly and lifelessly while we hang on and try to make some sense of life through the love we have to give and receive. We then find there is magic in this love. Right? During Christmas, when we are children, and even a little while grown-ups, there might be a certain magic in the air, as more than usual seems to be possible. Even the prospect of wrapped gifts containing a mystery that translates into a new experience is found to contain magic. So, magic is, firstly, anything that transcends either entropy or apathy. It is a necessary tool to understand the world, for if we fail to grasp the inner life of a mechanism, we fail to know the engine altogether.
However, when we understand the life, the consciousness of any engine, the event becomes epidemic and spreads exponentially: we end up perceiving the life of the cosmos, we understand that Magic in itself is an entity: the so-called Divine Providence, and that all in relation with us is It and yet transcendental still, unique in the multiplicity of its indivisible multiplication of events. The ultimate effect is that you gradually come to perceive that, instead of acting via automatism, the transcendental begins to act through you: the things you see and witness are witnessed by the Divine, the actions that come through you are God’s doing, and inspiration prevails everlastingly.
– It’s Monday. On and off throughout the day I’m thinking about how people, often like blind sheep , are dragged along the waves of the ocean called mass society and civilization. I wonder what forces pull them about, whether it be emotions and other tides. I think about the moon, a moonlit night and lush grass under the trees, like the scenes found in fables and I also think about the astral… maybe the modern masses are but luna-tics floating about and being drifted along –
8. On page 70, concerning the initial exercises of the Grade of the Hexagram…
In the footnotes, you mention the Lumen Naturae.
Can you speak more about this fabric and substance and how it behaves in reaction to the individual, but also to humanity as a collective?
Does modern technology and city life cause any interference that has only arisen in recent decades?
Answer: The Lumen Naturae or Astral Light can be perceived as a sort of nervous system of the world, in which all nervous systems of all three kingdoms (mineral, vegetable and animal) and all three bodies (mental, astral and physical) play a key, and all the sensory organs, gross or subtle, of the concrete world or of the abstract mind, find common expression by means of the imagination. In other words, it intermediates between all material centers and all psychic centers. It has shape, not so much through density as through light, in which light imitates density through its hypnotic effect and the blurring between planes and cognitive channels. It is by this intermediary, also called the Soul of the World, that one can practice all sorts of enchantments and work oneself in the path of personal evolution through means of magic. That is, the astral light is receptive to the impregnations of will and welcomes fertilization. However, the astral light is also the means for phenomena of mass hysteria and so on, for its hypnotic refulgence, when igniting one, it inflames the other. Many of the witch hunts that took place in the past, with all sorts of bizarre wonders being attested to and leading to the condemnation of the witch, collected nothing but the innocent.
The omens were produced by a collective impregnation of the astral light, starting in gossip and ending in mass hysteria and collective hallucinations, in which we mean by hallucination the ceasing of our capacity to distinguish between the subtle and the gross planes by an abnormal excitement of the nervous system. The manifestations were real, but nonetheless deceitful.
Technology has taken hold of the astral light with unprecedented power ,especially via mass communication. The first famous manifestation of this phenomenon took place with Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party. Taking hold of industrialism and a technology turned to mass production, his movies hypnotized Germany into believing Jews were, literally, as rats, or much less, for you do not go on torturing rats. At the same time, to ease consciousness, Germany believed by means of these movies that the concentration camps were meant to protect these very Jews from mob violence, all the while the Jews were being subject to some of the cruelest human experiments and treatments in history. It was but mesmerism created from the extraction of the light into the tape, creating new cohesions alienated from material linearity, controlling from there on the unfolding of this very linearity.
Another example is with the USA and its capitalist empire, a system of enslavement installed through endless commercials in which we become proud of being slaves and fight for our own enslavement. Before, you could easily put a carrot in front of the donkey’s muzzle and the donkey would follow. However, you needed one carrot per donkey. Today, a single carrot moves all donkeys forward. Everything can become systemic in the blink of an eye and technology controls the inputs and even outputs of the astral light, of this transversal nervous system that affects everyone.
This is so to such an extent that the millionaires and the supposed owners of capitalism are still never more than slaves to the astral deification of money, as the deity sits upon the pyramids of all cities of the so-called Invisible Empire.
On an individual basis, as an arts teacher for children, I can tell you that children nowadays have lost the knowledge of how to imagine. Before, children took up much of their image and sensory making directly from the Lumen Naturae. Still, today they have become used to technology for this effect, such as the cellphone screens, Google, and YouTube, with AI joining in recently. When told to imagine a character, scenario, or anything related to world-building, they will search for images and descriptions and will only be able to see with their eyes closed after being taught, through guided meditation, how to access this faculty that used to be the very essence of childhood. It is not that imagination is gone; it is that the astral light has found new tunnels and channels of expression.
9. The man or woman who has exercised enough of the antinomian spark, will have much of their reasoning, intuition and emotions balanced. So not much is directly said concerning how one ought to live their daily lives…
But is there perhaps advice we can give the young man or woman as far as how their romantic partner and social circles can be managed in a way that only adds to their practices?
Answer: If we followed such a prescription strictly, it would depend entirely on the practices, so that multiple answers would be called for, there being as many practices. Then, we must dilute the answer to refer to the overall practice that is the practice of TWA and its mode of accomplishing the Great Work. This dilution will make the explanation imprecise and overly generic. That being said, creativity in one’s matrimony and social life seems to be required as much as in anything else, but so is enough silence to stand still while the very Earth spins. We care little for the creative who uses creativity in a way that destroys the efficiency of continuity and flexibility.
For instance, people idolize Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson as a couple. I think of Jim Morrison as a great seer and visionary. However, at TWA we require the blind to become the seer as much as the seer to become the sage. While Jim could turn reason into vision and experience into intuition, he could not make prophecy marry philosophy, and could not marry trance and study, dream and introspection. His skillful revealing of the truth provided little guidance. The relationship between Jim and Pamela shows exactly why Jim never became the sage and was likely far removed from it.
In a couple, our partner (or rather the couple itself) corresponds to the letter Beth, the House. This is the internal house of wisdom, inviolable, and a peaceful sanctuary where we can find ourselves and the laws of the universe unfolding. In the couple’s love, all knowledge gestates and is birthed into conscious awareness. Violate this house and be aborted in all others.
As for social circles, you must enter religion, university, associations, clubs and societies, that is, tradition as organization, as a hermit, and as a hermit remain within. This is because of all the group elements your job is to stand as the authentic one and the last bearer of meaning.
– I am reminded that this book is one of dense and rich practice, and in all honesty, every 5 lines of it could make its own interview. More so with the theory that is added onto TWA Second Edition. By the way, dear reader, do look carefully at all the footnotes, they are pure gold. Their added theory, intended to satisfy the intellectually expansive, is added to enrich and deepen the practices, acting as a guide.
10. Now, Babalith, I shall go through an exercise (I’m yet to complete it with sufficient competence) that is found in the Grade of the Hexagram, and where you see fit, your valued input would be highly appreciated.
I set up my mat and my doll head with its mixture of roots and stone eye and set it within the triangle (…What are some other materials we can use here in place of obsidian?)
I arrange all the ‘equipment’
I light the candles and I produce the inner volts and then fix my gaze at the doll head.
After a few minutes it fades into what I can only describe now as a starry blackness with no starry-ness but just the blackness… What is this blackness?
Now I am to project the image I have memorized unto this openness, and here is where at times difficulty comes with holding the image…
Answer: Starting with the first question, stick with the obsidian. The first (magic) mirrors in the world were taken from volcanoes and used by the Sumerians, and they were made of obsidian. The mirrors gave birth to civilization by allowing celestial intelligence into the human world and the angels to appear in human form. The mirror is the beginning of technology and civilization because it is the beginning of evocation. If you really cannot find an obsidian sphere (crystal ball), try onyx, with which the Sumerians made their cylinder seals, a ritual mark of this very civilization and a magical stone that will cleanse and ground the process. Otherwise, use any dark reflecting surface, preferably opaque.
Second question: this blackness is called the negative light. Before you traverse this, everything in the astral light is a projection of the material world, no matter the meaning. When you cross through the blackness or create via the blackness, you enter a dimension whose structure is based on meaning, no matter the substance.
Regarding your last observation, I realize I may have misled you when we touched on the subject earlier. You should not attempt to engage with the blackness as you would with the light. When we are working with the light, we engage all our faculties in a kind of hypervigilant focus, concentrating willpower on an image that the astral light is moved to project. A sort of fierce disposition adopts this. However, with the blackness, what we are doing is sensing shapes in the darkness, tuning into them, and, instead of moving the light into an image, we are to move our inner selves to meet the shape that is there and see it plainly. Our focus, then, is to stay in this state and stabilize ourselves in it so the image wavers not. This should feel hazy, as if we are dreaming half asleep, and magnetized.
– Art… it is what gives life more juice, isn’t it? I’ve been listening to music and pondering how we all have different musical tastes… and at different times. Art is a marvelous thing, a way to make that which is unseen, seen –
11. Babalith, though the book does not say so directly, one cannot help but think of its current as one that is wild and full of creativity, one that in the background continually has the songs of fae and the flute of Pan, as one would find in the arts. Magic is an art, the Adepts of old have said in many places.
Now, as an artist and magus;
Can you write a short poetic or prose piece on the Dao (one entirely original for this interview) and how it will inevitably manifest and express in the practitioner of TWA, as a form of magic in their own art, providing an artistic touch to their magic?
Answer:
Not of themselves
leaves are borne by wind.
Not of its own
wind is drawn by Sun.
It burns not alone,
Sun fed by atoms.
Not of themselves
atoms bend to gravity.
Not of itself
gravity is energy.
Not of itself
the Dao or eternity.
The work of the Adept is to make magic effortless and natural, like the weather. He is not so much the prodigious flute player at a concert, he is more like the flute that has been put just in the right place at the peak of the mountain, to catch the four winds and allow them to play the flute’s own original music. Some may think this surrender makes one tame, while in truth, it describes complete wildness. Some think, then, that wildness means lack of control, but truly, the wind is vacant and moves to where there is vacancy, and when it stops, the wind still blows. Nothing is to obstruct it, nothing is to distort it, nothing has greater mastery. This is also what separates the prodigious flute player, a virtuous technician, from the true artist.
Use the poem above with each first line being said during inhalation and each second line during exhalation. Circle back and repeat the whole sequence at least 9 times, until you lose sense of its beginning and end. This will help before starting to practice both magic and art, and balancing after finishing.
– Last night my dog gave birth to three pups… We don’t know who the father is… she managed to sneak out the gate into the neighborhood a few nights.
Today I was up earlier and ‘hustled’ in the sun, we have summer Christmas Eve’s here in South Africa, and everyone is still very much on the Go! Go ! Go! Everyone trying to earn a living and make a life for themselves here in this old mining city. Everyone wanting to start or fend for their families and themselves.
Much needed is Dao’ist like practices and those related to learning to relax and flow with nature’s drum that is beating to our natural home; things to do with Water –
12. We’re on the Grade of Hexagram, it’s the Fifth Step , and once one completes the exercise detailed therein, which we can in gist of it basically in street lexicon metaphorically compare to having ravenous sex with the world’s soul and then becoming one with it,
There is a pearl of a reward you mention, that from then:
‘This method will allow the magician to master the water element on the outside, and its invisible plane should become very obedient to him’.
In my hungry curiosities I, too, used to love reading the writings of a certain respected author, William Mistele, and his explorations of the water element.
And we understand that today’s whole busy-fiery-industry world is dramatically opposed to the mastery of water in most of its aspects…
What exactly do you mean by such a tremendous statement?
And what examples, as receipt, can you give to back it up?
Can we create a river that is hidden, protected and ever flowing, that when we surrender to it, no matter where we are settled, will carry us back to the Sanctuary?
In the step that follows, you mention a reward even wilder… the practitioner finding his True Will; then… having mastery of his incarnation itself!
Can you say something about such astounding inspirational success?
Answer: Let me start by addressing the statement that ‘today’s whole busy-fiery-industry world is dramatically opposed to the mastery of water’. Although this is correct, it sometimes makes it seem as if water doesn’t play a role in our society, or that, on the other hand, we have mastered fire. For once, every time a kid (or adult) spends three hours in a row mindlessly scrolling on social media, they are subdued by the water element and its hypnotic current. The same with TV screens. Surely, this is not the same as any kind of mastery over this element, as the person is idle.
Most people like to chit-chat all day, but they end up spending the whole time not really saying anything substantial. This is the same, but concerning the air element and being idle within it. Conscious vacancy becomes unbearable. Now, surely, William Mistele paints a picture of a fiery society that is true; however, it has nothing to do with mastery over the fire element. We are a society of slaves, from the top of the hierarchy to the lowest rank. Fire is willpower and independence, not the blind rush and panic of scarcity. I think William Mistele may have failed to grasp that what is going on is that we are being dominated by the negative aspects of fire, air and water combined, and that the industrialist age is meant to keep us busy on the negative earth element and productive in an industrial sense down to our grave. Again, this tells nothing of mastery over the earth element. Conscious silence becomes almost impossible.
The imbalance on this planet is general and cannot be solved by the water alone. This is a fundamental mistake no magician should make. That is not to say the intense awareness William Mistele offers to the water element is not necessary, quite the opposite. However, it is essential to note that we must also bring this intensity to the positive side of the remaining elements, which William Mistele has managed to do as well, though he seems to be less noticed for it. Mastery of each element individually culminates in full liberation, would it not be for the way in which the remaining elements, unmastered, sink in to corrupt and twist this liberation. There is no other way, then, to genuine liberation, than freeing all four elements.
That said, the ‘tremendous statement’ means we finally understand what the positive side of water really is. We have been used to facing emotions with melancholy; even happiness makes us sad. But true and purified water is the very principle of ecstasy, and the ecstatic states are the highest level of free creativity. In the fifth step, you manage by way of sexual magic and not only to perceive the world around you as an amalgamate of ecstatic principles and manifestations, but you also join the “orgy”, becoming an indistinguishable part of its indistinguishable intermingled elements. All water elementals obey ecstasy, since it is how Divine Providence manifests directly in the water element; thus, you master the element outside by recognizing and interacting with it as continuous ecstasy, and its ‘invisible’ inhabitants by becoming ecstatic yourself. In the next step, you turn your attention towards yourself and sense yourself (all three bodies) as you have sensed the world. You realize, then, the very essence of yourself and everything that has built around it (your structures) are fueled by ecstasy, operable by ecstatic states, and functional through creativity. When your seat of awareness finds this root, all you can do is according to divine creativity. Since this means you are acting through divine expression, it translates into mastery over one’s incarnation. Then, this ‘astounding inspirational success’ is really all about inspiration itself.
– To purify and nurture oneself, and to drink of the milk of the Universe before one embarks on exploration. Bread; Eucharist; Ritual. Here Man is nested, in a docking station, his home away from his true Home… but like all birthing, soon one ought to learn to soar and climb to the skies. For the Forest, its days filled with the joy of the fae and its luminescent nights; its music; its streams and its orchard calls… Magic & Mystery and all fantastic creatures and skill of the awakened Being await… the one who heeds and adventures out of…
The Village.
– A nose to smell; eyes to observe; skin to feel; a mouth to speak and ears to hear… there is so much beauty in this world when we manage to tune out the noises –
13. Are you quite fond of the stars? Which of them brings you the most precious memories and makes you lovingly look up at the night sky from time to time?
Answer: So many of them. I am pretty fond of astronomy in itself and also its connection with astrology, and over time, I have developed a connection with many stars. It’s hard not to when you also love mythology, since most of it comes from the moving starry map. You may notice this at A Guide to Stellar Magic & Astrological Mysticism, a book that is quite encyclopedic in all of these venues.
When I was in my early teen years and flooded with visions I had a repeated one with someone I called Olghan. In it, there was an alien creature who would reveal scriptures in a black egg-like machine written with what seemed to be starry light, and I would perceive them within my skin and soul, and there would be blank nights with this happening all night long. As well, his skin could glow ever more intensely with exactly the light of Venus, and an extraordinary and familiar song would be exhaled in what can be called stellar quabbalah. When I looked at Venus, it felt the same. This figure was experienced as a fatherly one, as a father who communicates telepathically and shares memories with you that are not of this world, not of this language, not of this cognitive current, nor of this kind of organic life. Looking at Venus, I would try to reach him, symbolically speaking.
Then, ignorant of this, when I had my first girlfriend and she was foreseeing her own death, she told me to look at Venus and address it to speak to her if one day she went missing. This was actually our last talk. So, for a while, there was also this, although I did not wish to connect it to Venus.
There was a time also when I went to sleep when Jupiter was exactly below me, on the other side of the globe. This was part of an operation to really get a better life, and it worked. So, in a way, all I have today I am gratefully reminded of when I look at Jupiter.
Sirius was and is very important in my magical path, and it is the star with which I made my initiation (as, Sothis, it is also very important to all things streaming down within The Way of Abrahadabra). The “hood” that starts in Miram (top of the Perseus constellation) bears likely the most elevated esoteric connection I have when it comes to the transmission of initiatory currents, and it is one of the reasons why I suggested the name Perseus to Perseus Arcane Academy.
Orion had a critical part to play in the transmission of The Inner Gateways of LAM and Andromeda in all my Ma’atian work. And just last summer, while in Albufeira do Pego do Altar, I realized I could use the summer triangle (Vega, Deneb, and Altair) to evoke beings across the whole globe, literally, which, by way of correspondence, shifts this very world into a different version of itself. We have talked in this same interview about the Little Dipper, which, since I moved, I keep seeing right on the horizon when the night is set here in Alentejo, and that I often use as a ladder to climb into the starry sea. These are but a few examples.
– It’s Christmas, and what I’m picking up is the green… green… everywhere green… why would a season most commonly associated with winter be imbued with such plenty green themes? I’m reminded of the exercise where we inhale in emerald light… –
14. After we inhale the emerald color, we ought to imagine it to be an embodiment of a woman/the feminine, then we vitalize it with red and gold vitality, after which we transpose the form of a woman unto our astral bodies, who then in turn gives forth the rainbow milk by which a rainbow heart is born and merged with your sexual region…
Can you further explain both the psychological and magical impregnations and meanings going on in the background of such a technique? What are some hurdles men might likely face with it, and even more interestingly, how do woman respond to it?
And is there any correlation between Pan and Yule?
Answer: This describes both Zivug, when the male part Upper One (ZA, or Tipheret) passes the Light as pleasure to the female part lower one (Malkhut), both remaining selfless, and Panim be Panim, when the Zachar or Aba passes the Ohr Hochma, the Light as Wisdom, to Ima, the female Sefira. That is, when we inhale the emerald color we are formulating the divine desire in Keter to bestow delight upon us as Malchut; when we imagine it as a female figure this now is the pleasure itself, as a living being, that the divine wishes to bestow; when we vitalize it we are passing this Light to Za (from the wisdom of being to individual expression) and when we transpose the form to our astral bodies this is Za passing the pleasure to Malchut after accepting it. The rainbow milk is called the ZON (the mutual reception of light by Za and Malchut), for now it is Malchut that invites Za to receive the light from Bina, and Malchut and Za merge in form via their equivalence of desires (it being that desire shapes form). This form is the very rainbow milk, and represents the stepping from egoism to altruism.
Now, to receive the light of Za is to receive the light of Bina that was passed to Za, the light of Hochma that was passed to Bina, and the light of Keter that was passed to Hochma, that is, it is passed in four parts, and the fifth is the heart of them all, the rainbow heart. It is through this heart that the lower one ascends to the position of the upper one, and why the heart is merged with the sexual region.
Now, Za himself, is the primordial Adam, and has two divine faces, male and female, connected back to back, so it is through pleasure that these faces can meet, that is, through the merging between heart and sex that takes place via the merging of Za and Malchut. The place of this union or Zivug is called Yesod, life, the region of pure forces, and the sphere of the astral plane and light by excellence. The ultimate response from men and women should be exactly the same, and to miss this is to miss the whole premise. We leave the state of fragmented egoism and, by doing so, are allowed to re-unite with the sublimest regions once again, perceive them, and emanate them. If one has followed The Grade of the Pentagram thoroughly, there should be no hurdles at all, and all seeds should have been seeded in the most fertilized ground.
As for Pan and Yule, during Midwinter Pan still inhabits the caves and helps with survival. In terms of Greek gods, one should be looking more at Dionysos, who, after retreating into the roots, becomes active and ferments underground. It is interesting that this god is dismembered by the Titans and resurrected via his Heart, a theme discussed above.
– From the bottom rung, to position oneself favourably; then to traverse, navigate and climb the ladder in ascent with wisdom up until attaining the pinnacle. This is the way of the bright and willful –
15. What are the benefits of seeking a ‘facilitator’ when practicing TWA, and what are the benefits of going the road alone?
What encouragement can we give to one who has not much ‘natural ability’ or previous experience in magic, who seeks to complete this journey and all of its steps?
Answer: So far the facilitator would be me. The Way of Abrahadabra takes its time to complete in practice, even for the experienced magician, and nobody else I know has yet reached its conclusion. That being said, in The School of Visionary Hermeticism, I have been training adepts who are meant to specialize in teaching. There is some essential training in TWA, as well as the essence of all my other Sirius Limited Esoterica books published so far, plus critical elements of Wisdom for a Unified Humanity, with extracurricular courses on the way. All in all, those who complete the three semesters and grade positively will be more than capable of guiding through The Way of Abrahadabra itself, even without having practiced the book as it stands.
That being said, I always answer this question, no matter which book of mine the question refers to, by saying the practitioner is always alone. These are self-initiation books. From there on, having the advice of the author or others who have completed the path, is always a bonus.
Regarding encouragement, it should be clear that this book is one of those that initiates into magic itself and is suitable for the beginner who wants to start and follow all the way to Adepthood. If someone has gone far enough to find and acquire TWA, something has surely called them in. It’s not like the book is everywhere around the corner and you can buy it by accident. This tells me the person will have a natural ability, even if it has not yet been found. By understanding the search for magic and the Great Work and dissecting it, one will realize the wrong motives that stand in the way and the right motives that will build an impeccable source of inspiration. One should position oneself correctly, at the point of least resistance, and, in this aspect, this work is like martial arts.
– I remind the reader this book of TWA contains so much wealth of practice, knowledge and revelation that each page could easily warrant its own extensive interview. There is much this interview hasn’t touched upon and it will be the delight of the book’s reader to discover. The one who acquires this book will be more than richly rewarded for the small price they pay. What they will receive from the book, in all honesty, is a million fold more. Fortunate is he, who will attain this book –
16. On page 169, it reads that “…after the study and definition of one’s own name is accomplished, the magician is to find a duty that is connected to it.”
Can you explain why this is absolutely crucial at that point of the journey?
And is there possibly, in the vein of the previous explorations, a charade of the Earth?
Answer: After this work is accomplished, we pass from The Grade of the Hexagram to The Grade of the Eye and the Sea, in which the practitioner is tested by Saturn against the Qliphoth. Without connecting all the magical training and developed willpower so far to the correct mission on this Earth, that is, without aligning actively microcosm and macrocosm to the line or continuity of time, the magician will be fighting on quicksand and should things go wrong, suffer truly grave blows to their own survival or capacity for survival. I have taken precautions, and softened the process, but still severe consequences can take place. If the magician has nothing to fight for, the guardians will very easily swallow them onto a nihilistic loop that will end in despair and possibly oblivion, whilst if the magician has already become firm in their task and proficient in their craft they will but harden the Work as a sword in the forge of fire. Firm in the mission and exposed to the qliphotic waves that corrode all decorative aspects of essence, the end result to the exposition to meaninglessness, instead of senseless nihilism, is Wu Wei (effortless action), that is, pure will delivered from the lust of result, a dynamic flow where action is impossible to corrupt and the Adept becomes a trustworthy envoy of Divine Providence.
As for the charade of the Earth, this is exposed in the text itself. I cite:
After the study and definition of one’s own name is accomplished, the magician is to find a duty connected to it. He should find a verb to which all other verbs should connect easily, for the more isolated his verb stands, the harder it will make the magician’s job. Nonetheless, he should not choose a helping verb like the verb to be, do, or have.
He should also find an adjective to describe how he will be doing the verb chosen. For instance, «To dream out loud», the magician’s duty, or his word as a Magus, would then be to dream out loud. Every other verb can be preceded by this verb. i.e. «To dream out loud of flying».
Some words may be ambiguous, so the magician is to describe what he means by dreaming with three other expressions. What does he personally mean by dreaming: on a rational basis, on an emotional basis, and as a practical activity? He should also use this method on the adjective and form three other sentences based on it.
For instance:
«To elaborate with precision»
«To hope with passion»
«To create with intensity»
So the following is now his manifesto:
«To dream out loud,
To elaborate with precision,
To hope with passion,
and to create with intensity»
In the original sentence, he should have added his objective.
«To dream out loud in order to inspire those around me.» The objective is to define the balance of his duty, and the four elements should define that balance. Inspiration needs determination on the fire element, freedom on the element of air, a celebrative spirit on the water element and thoroughness on the element of earth. Whatever the objective of the magician, he is to find the proper elemental associations and practice their balance.
So, you see? Each person has their own charade of the Earth, and it is found by the means described above. In this example, it would be:
«To dream out loud with determination,
To freely elaborate with precision,
To celebrate hope with passion,
To thoroughly create with intensity
And inspire those around me.»
That being said, the planets to which I assigned charades are to be met with the practitioner’s own charades. I am teaching the method and, in the case of these other spheres, providing reproducible live and lived examples. The picture is not the same for Earth in all its dualistic multiplicity. There is no reliable reproducibility, and what works for one does not for the other. The example above becomes a charade when its numbers match with:
«Sons to the stars, God be with Ye,
I am the prophet. Listen, head anointed with oil and
Starfire, you of hidden hand: draw a line in the sand
And I’m born in this body a chaotic moon, a voice of wailing,
A sun gate and King of Creation.» It works magically because the second formula evokes the God of the first, but it is not universal within the context of how the Earth expresses itself to you. Qualitatively, the planet presents differently for each one, and quantitatively, we already deal with the Earth through the elements and elementals within the Way of Abrahadabra.
– To Love , and to have the Power , Wisdom and Life to do so… that is ideal of the human. Know ye child of the Universe and the Earth, what an amazing being you are. If magic ought to bring it you remembrance, look not only at the Universe and its many beings out there with awe only, but remember that the Human being is a beautiful; marvelous multifaceted and magical creature, capable of great feats as Divine Providence created him to be –
17. My Friend and my Brother… You are loved and highly appreciated, and certainly will go down in history as one of the best and Herculean magicians of our modern times. Thank you!
Now we are bringing this interview to a close,
Write to the reader from your heart to theirs… and end off with a question that the book and yourself would like to pose…
What conclusions may one draw at the end of The Way of Abrahadabra, and how does it connect to The Path of Ipsos?
I think at the end of The Way of Abrahadabra (or at least its first round), one will have witnessed such wonders and strange things that nothing much, conceptually, will pose a surprise. This allows one a kind of detachment that permits direct engagement with things as they present themselves immediately. For someone who thinks conceptually, it may seem that a lack of surprise makes things seem lesser and less engaging, but what we are talking about is the return of life and all its components to an absolute state. After seeing two stars collide to create universes, beings so tall they pierce the stratosphere of the cosmos, and whatnot, the simple gesture of a child blinking eyes, the page of a book turning, the sound of lips parting, the shadow of a tree, the silhouette of a stone, all become big bangs of even larger proportion. This is what it means when they say Kether is a return to the starting point, but different, redeemed from the false dualism of ontological expectation into the Agape and enthusiasm of Presence.
Now, The Way of Abrahadabra explores a universal method of operating within the so-called Aeon of Horus (Aeon of the Son), that is, within our age, or the age that is settling within the Aeon of Osiris to make it turn. It is all about linear time, progressing from the past to the present, and staying at maximum creative productivity within the present to open the gates of the future. They call it the age of the Crowned and Conquering Child, because individualism is a childlike thing, not good nor bad, amoral in nature when thought of traditionally but having its own kind of creative morals, that is, principles that harmoniously must necessarily set us on our own effortless route of permanent creation, making of life an art form or, as called, the Great Work. This is also why I refused the thelemic religion itself within the Way of Abrahadabra: religion is all about verticality and the Aeon of Horus is horizontal: one must understand one’s faculties, the universe one is dealing with, and apply the first to the second, the second to the first, to Do and keep within the flow of Doing.
The fallacy that any one Aeon or age is better than the other can only make sense from the standpoint of the Aeon of Horus, in which we exoterically observe the universe as something that progresses from one stage to the other and describes itself and its own reason for existing by these very means. Such concerns, for instance, paint certain aspects of the Aeon of Osiris (Aeon of the Father) as corrupting it: the idea that we must do good deeds to go to Heaven is an exoteric progressive concept from the Aeon of Horus. Absent corruption, the total verticality of the Aeon of Osiris affirms everything is guaranteed, eternal, and not subject to progression because time is an impartial element of eternity. Similar corruptive elements from The Aeon of Osiris corrupt this very Aeon as it yet matures, such as the idea that we must serve capitalism so that by doing it, technology will emerge to save us from it. This shows progressive ideas while keeping the fatherly or authoritarian figures from the Aeon of Osiris that may yet come to save us from ourselves.
It may be said the esoteric path of The Aeon of the Son is the Way of Abrahadabra (I am not constraining myself to this book), the exoteric is Thelema as a religion. In The Way of Abrahadabra, we care only to follow our bliss, that is, to exercise the functions of our very actual being, flowing ever linearly but over the wheels of the ever-present now.
Alchemically speaking, then, it is understood that every Aeon must be seen entirely from its own center to purge any impurities, and also from the esoteric standpoint, only later being formulated into a mode of Panaeonic Magic(k).
The Path of Ipsos is divided into two volumes and preceded by TWA (not mandatory). IPSOS is reserved for the second volume, but because it flows back from the Future Aeon to permeate all Aeons, the first volume is also rightly called Ipsos. In other words, the first volume initiates the Adept from The Way of Abrahadabra (or any other competent system of this age) into the magic of past ages or aeons. It applies the same universalization methods as seen in TWA.
In the Aeon of Osiris time is, again, just an expression of timeless verticality, and of it are all hierarchical sciences among principles. Think of its exoteric expression as appearing in most patriarchal empires. Esoterically, we are not worried with social ranks but with the hierarchy of principles.
In the Aeon of Isis (Aeon of the Mother), time is circular and moves in cycles; this is the magic of agriculture, necromancy, fertility, matriarchy, stellar cults, and all things related. From this perspective, if (the Aeon of) Horus is the child of (the Aeon of) Isis and (the Aeon of) Osiris, Horus is also the great-grandfather of Isis and Osiris. Here, there can be no distinction between exoteric and esoteric, because, qualitatively, one is the other by means of mysticism.
In the Aeon of Bes (or Nameless Aeon), time is seen as a non-linear pattern, as creative chaos, and we deal with it through trance states and shamanic methodologies. The esoteric and exoteric blur equally, because quantitatively this time, one is the other, that is, the measure is magical power.
From the evolutionary view of the Aeon of Horus, the Aeon of Bes (or Nameless Aeon) is the starting point of human consciousness as something humanely articulated. We can, however, move forward from the Aeon of Horus to the Aeon of Maat (the future Aeon, Aeon of the Daughter) in which magic is collective and time moves as prophetic inspiration from the future backwards, the future generating the present by an immeasurable and clean source of creativity, and, from the present, changing the perception of the past. It is this Aeon whose formula is IPSOS, just as the formula of the Aeon of Horus is Abrahadabra. To unlock it, one must understand and, at once, reunite with and become immune to horizontality, verticality, cyclicity, and non-linearity. This is why we offer TWA and The Path of Ipsos vol I before The Path of Ipsos vol II. Now, paradoxically, TWA precedes The Path of Ipsos vol I because the Son is the seed of the parents, and from it thus grow the parents, and this power of Abrahadabra is by virtue of Ipsos.
From the standpoint of linearity, after the Aeon of Maat, when our individuality consciously and organically intersects with collectivity, and our collective unconscious becomes conscious, words eventually stop being necessary intermediaries. At this point, all things we haven’t been able to articulate even to ourselves will be laid bare, and this opens the Wordless Aeon, one in which time is formless and the clay that gives shape to all form (including all forms of time that any of the parameters mentioned cannot imagine). From the point of view of the cyclical and circular, even via the Nameless Aeon and its atavistic and ecstatic trances, we can push back and circle back directly to the Wordless Aeon. This is the so-called magic of the Ogdoad and also full interstellar integration. The Wordless Aeon is briefly dealt with in The Path of Ipsos vol II, but truly expanded upon in The Inner Gateways of Lam (which makes the fourth book in the series). All of this is promised with some amount of ease to the Adept who truly completes TWA’s system.
Finally, Itumeleng, thank you for this kind courtesy, which I know to be much truer than mere courtesy. It has been an immense privilege to know and witness you. You shine like a warming Sun.
