thelonious wrote: › I discovered lashtal.com yesterday, and have found it to be an amazing resource! Thanks to all involved for building the body of knowledge and process here.
I graduated from college with a B.A. in English in the mid 90s from a small university in the American south, and proceeded to work subsistence jobs while working through the grades as my own form of graduate school. I took pride in it and tried to do it correctly; I spent a year as a probationer, kept a notebook, read the full AC canon and all the other material that I determined I needed to study, and performed the exercises and rituals as prescribed. I was able to get an HGA to appear as a functioning personality construct of Aleister Crowley, who interacted with me as a teacher, and got the idea in my head that I was the next incarnation in a line as Aiwaz as Levi etc. --> Crowley --> Me. Around 2000 I took the oath of the abyss. This coincided with working to sharpen my computer skills to get a better job and deciding that my whole grade-working enterprise was a huge mind-ego construct that I had created and which I had allowed to enslave myself away from true self-expression, to make myself feel better about being marginalized as a cook who lived in a tiny apartment in a depressing small town. So, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on to other things.
In 2006 I had been living in NYC for a few years and owned a software company with a partner named Alexander. (My first name is Edward.) My new best friend Alex was also a Crowley and Hermetics enthusiast, and I started re-reading The Confessions. I had just moved into a top-floor corner loft in Brooklyn with the corner facing north, and the northwest wall of windows facing directly toward Central Park so that I could pinpoint the area in the sky directly above the 3d focal point of the Amalantrah working.
I frequented the Chelsea flea market, and bought an infant-sized crystal skull from a Chinese vendor there. The skull was supposedly a neolithic piece from the Hongshan culture, but it was so cheap I assumed it was a fake. But, a very nice fake that looked like it had been recently dug up from a grave, with dirt and shovel marks. Then similar skulls started appearing at the flea market and on Ebay in a wave, and pretty soon I had 13 of them set up in a 12 around 1 arrangement on an altar in my living room with the center skull gazing out into the portal of LAM. At the time I had an interest in working with Golems as prescribed by the Sefer Yetzirah, and saw working with the skulls as a way to facilitate this.
Then I bought an huge, larger-than-life-sized modern crystal skull, named him "AL," set him up with a Stele, portrait of Crowley, etc. etc. Alex, myself, and the fellow from whom I had bought the skull did a 3-in-1 working to invoke the spirit of Crowley as realized in our 3 physical bodies.
The communication I received from all this was very austere, to the point of having a certain nihilistic vulgarity to it that I resisted. The dimensions were being cleared, there was no more Qabala, chakras, ascended masters; the "white light" was an enslavement program created by what I understood as "the Annunaki" and was no longer relevant and was the equivalent of a cardboard cut-out that had been placed in front of beings when they crossed over to the dimensions at death.
All that was left to do was stop thought and clear all mind-systems, feelings, and emotions out of my own "consciousness," insofar as it was a construct of mind.
Then I was left with self-expression and direction as one and equal with all things, which I understood as Samadhi, but the concept of "Samadhi" was ripped away from me as a lie of separation.
The portal was shown to be part of a new way that opened up for dimensional beings to collaborate with "aggregates of protoplasm" that explained the meaning of Liber AL vel Legis in a very direct manner.
So recently I had the thought "hmmm... have I just landed on Binah as a Master of the Temple? Should I take up grade-working again? Or am I, in the face of these stark realizations, reaching for the solace of a quaint metaphysical system and aesthetic that is loaded with all the wonderful experiences of my youth?"
So now I find myself on this forum, exploring my reactions to the material, and learning from people who obviously have much more depth of scholarship than I.
Thanks again for this resource!
93,
Ed