Welcome to LAShTAL.COM, xtransitx.

Regards
Hecate

Thank you very much.

I hope to read and learn from the insights on this forum.

Best regards.

Welcome to Lashtal.com!

Welcome...

Welcome to LAShTAL, xtransitx. Looking forward to your participation.

Best wishes,

Michael.

Welcome aboard!

Sorita D'Este just wrote a very good book on Hekate, it's in print and in paperback.

Kenneth Grant's "Zos Speaks" is a very good introduction to Spare's magickal universe. Unfortunately, it's out of print, and I see Amazon has a good used copy listed for $180.00, the cheapest price I can find anywhere. Me, I lucked out and bought a used edition with a slight coffee stain while the book was still in print for half of its original cover price.

For "Thelema" in general you might want to start with either "Gems From The Equinox" or "Magick/Book Four/Liber ABA". The original 1st Llewellyn Edition of "Gems" in the faux red leatherette binding is the best edition and you can find copies of that in very good condition starting for $50.00, The newest Weiser edition is almost as good, but it's currently selling starting at $85.00. You might wish to avoid the glossy black cover New Falcon edition (there were 4 or 5 printings of it) as the glued spine is not Smythe-sewn and is notorious for splitting-- however I see Amazon has used copies of this edition listed for under $25, so if price is an issue for you (as it is for many students) this might be the edition for you.

Every edition of "Magick/Book Four/Liber ABA" is a little different. The 1st Edition (sometimes called "The Big Blue Brick") was originally a few inches shorter and narrower than the 2nd Edition. The type is a little smaller and more difficult to read. It has different footnotes from the 2nd Edition. The 2nd Edition is a bit larger than the 1st Edition, larger type, and has, as I mentioned, different footnoting than the 1st Edition, Whereas the 2nd Revised Edition corrects the proofreading and textual errors missed in the first printing of the 2nd Edition. However, I see good copies of the 2nd Edition starting at $34.00 while copies of the Revised 2nd Edition, used OR new, start at $56.00, so again, consider your wallet. There was a leather-bound subscription-only limited edition copy of the 1st Edition, I think there were 250 made? Expect to pay $400+ for a copy, I've only seen one for sale on any list or auction since it was printed in 1992.

Dear Walterfive,

Soita D'Este...never heard of....i will check that one out!

The 'Zos Speaks' book, i have it in my humble collection! I also have the 'From the inferno to Zos' Volume I, II & III.

Books i'm currently reading are:

Aleister Crowley 'Magick' Guild publishing
Kenneth Grant 'The magical revival' Skoob
Jake Stratton-Kent 'The true grimoire' Scarlet Imprint
Jake Stratton-Kent 'Geosophia' I & II Scarlet Imprint
James A. Eshelman 'Vision & Voices' College of Thelema

I can honestly tell that the books from James Eshelman help alot! The thing is, Crowley's '777'....it doesn't grasp or work for me at all.
I guess i'm a person who needs to experience the emotions for real. Works by OAS appeal to me because it is very practical and 'easier' to relate to.

Sorita D'Este is David Rankine's wife and Priestess, and is quite a gifted occultist, witch and writer in her own right. Mr. Rankine you may already be familiar with, since 2003 he has been working with Stephen Skinner, co-writing and producing the highly acclaimed Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic Series.

I must have missed Eshelmen's newest-- I still have my spiral-bound 2nd edition of his The Mystical and Magical System of the A .'. A .'. that I must have gotten 15+ years ago. But I've never seen a sub-standard book or magazine come out of the College of Thelema, I *think* I still have several issues of their old magazine "In The Continuum" somewhere in my stacks, because for a while there, they had some fairly important material in that magazine that wasn't in print anywhere else. Liber 777 was a bit confusing to me too at first; I found that using it with Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia made figuring the Hebrew spellings and enumerations quite a bit easier. Some people feel that Liber 777 has been eclipsed by Skinner's "Complete Magician's Tables," and that it is much easier to use. Perhaps, as far as the tables themselves are concerned, that is true, but I've found that now that I'm finally *used* to using 777, I'll only consult Skinner's book when I rarely need a table that Crowley didn't include in 777. For years I had a plasti-bound xerox of Dr. Richard Kazynski's "777 Additions" that was pirated by the Abyss Bookstore in the late '80's, that I used for the same purpose.

So what do you think of "The Magical Revival"?

'The Magical Revival': yes, likewise to AOS's wrintings, i'm a fan! Grant and AOS style of writing and explanations are awesome.

The Chapter 'The death posture and the new sexuality'. Quote:"The death posture: 'a simulation of death by the utter negation of thought, i.e. the prevention of desire from believe, and the functioning of all consiousness through the sexuality'

How i understand it, is this: The simulation of death, is actually making numb clear thinking. By doing so, you ascend above the 'material' plane. Some sort of yoga maybe?

I hope i don't offend anyone by my statements, because... i sometimes understand or relate Thelemic, Crowley and AOS's writings to the things i have learned in Hare Krishna.
to explain you what i believe:
1. I believe that the spiritual entity/plane/soul is feminine and is the core energy of life and is the 'i'. The 'Will' is an expantion of the soul.
2. I believe that the material entity is masculine. The body is the shell or vehicle of the soul. And is only temporary. Material= illusion.
3. Through 'bhakti' yoga or call it 'Death posture' procedure, we learn to see the real self: the soul. Free from superficial believe or thought. And than we see past the 'illusion' which covers our spiritual self.

Liber 777.

I guess i need to study it more to really get used to it, and understand it fully. It is very complicated to me.

As with all Thelemic theory and practise: you need proper guidance to get results out of it.

True that, Xtransitx. I learned more in three months hanging out with Thelemites than I learned in over a decade of individual study; but there weren't *nearly* as many books available on the subject, and you certainly couldn't find them on the shelves of your local bookstore or Library.

Back when I was doing prison ministry, I've seen this in Prisoners who started studying Crowley in the joint. They don't know how to properly pronounce the words that they've learned to read, not knowing, for example, that the "g" is silent in Gnostic...

But not in Greek, so in a sense, since the word is originally Greek, they are right!

I don't want to piss anyone but English is a weird language with a chaotic structure and rules and it does nasty things to some nice words and names, so I sometimes have to say: "I don't know how to mispronounce this in English" when using foreign words and names. In particular, what drives me nuts is the tendency to approach every other language as if it were French. A recent example is "cakra." Meant to be pronounced as "chakra" ("ch" as in church) and nowadays almost everyone says "shakra." Argh..... #@!@&^* No god damn it! Its CHakra. Or, they say Maharazha, cause it sounds more French, while it's meant to be Maharaja. "J" as in James. There is no "zh" in either Sanskrit or Hindi, it's not the damn French!

So you are right, Walterfive, "g" in gnostic is meant to be silent in English, but the damn English mispronounces the damn Greek word!

Please treat this generously and humorously, in the spirit of April 1st! Didn't mean to offend anyone. Just had to vent it out. Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

93 xtransitx,

777 is used in great part as a reference source.

See Crowley's ASTARTE vel Liber BERYLLI sub figurâ CLXXV - Item 5, as an example of its application in a form of 'Bhakti Yoga' that you may be able to relate to from your past practices:

http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib175.html

Iskander-- you are correct: American English is a bastard tongue of Old English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic, Yiddish, and slang.

And to be honest? When I started studying this stuff I was a 15-year-old Sophmore in High School, who had 3rd Year College Reading Comprehension according to the advanced placement tests, and I was STILL trying to decrypt the Castle Press edition of "Magick In Theory & Practice." The Greek font they used is a little archiac, and there's no translations for it anywhere in the book! And for many years after, I *still* encountered a lot of words that I never heard pronounced, so trust me, I completely understood when one prisoner who was getting Baptised in the EGC, was reciting The Gnostic Creed and spoke of the "Miracle of Incarceration" instead of the "Miracle of Incarnation."

Thanks for being good-humoured about this Walterfive. And of course, we all make mistakes, God yes, absolutely. My favourite blunder was when I asked for apple-hangover instead of apple-turnover. And, to bring it to Crowleyana and thus not to draw the ire of our Paul, I loved it when my friend, who also does not speak English as his first language, concluded the saying of the Will before a meal with "Fall through"! To err is to be a human.

Yes, nowadays there are far more resources, than let's say 30 years ago.

Although i sometimes worry about the possible fact that the true meaning of Crowley's writings on Thelemic topics, might water down over the years. This due to much later interpetations of nowadays 'specialist'.

The other day i was reading the 'Ordines Descendens' by Dr. Jon Dee, with a foreword by Peter Mills. He also concludes that there are significant differances between original writings of Dr. John Dee, and how 'Enochian Magic' is understood today. This because of later published adaptions and study over the time.

Thanks, very interesting stuff!

🙂

Welcome aboard, Johan.
N

By the way,

Was Swami Vivekananda an initiate of AA? Did he had any relation to Crowley in any way?

Or did Crowley only used Swami Vivikananda's writings as a referance for probationers?

I think that Crowley was simply referencing his works.

Best wishes,

Michael.

I got the hardback of "Ordines Descendens" last year. While I (like many others) are rather suspicious of its provenance, whoever wrote it had a very good grasp of Dee's Enochian Magick. There *are* significant differences in the way The SRIA, the Golden Dawn (and by extension Uncle Al and the O.T.O.) ritualize Dr. Dee's Enochian Magick and the way that Dee seems to have done it; this is because not all of Dr. Dee's material was known at the time-- some were hidden, some were allegedly purchased by private collectors whose heirs have held them for centuries. That Crowley and others were still successful in their Enochian Workings only goes to show the flexibility of Dee's system of Enochian Magick.

A very mysterious book attributed to Edward Kelly surfaced a couple years ago "A Facsimile Rosicrucian Alchemical Manuscript : On the Philosophers Stone. Containing the Three Magisteriums of the Art. Attributed to Edward Kelley 1592-97, the companion and skryer to Dr. Dee." Very interesting, if you're of an Alchemical bent. You can see it here:
http://www.hellfireclubbooks.co.uk/alchemy.html

From an unpublished handwritten notebook circa 1860 which reflects the secret alchemical traditions of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia
and the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn.

93,

Wow, it's been a long time since i've visited this website.

In the meantime i travelled from Amsterdam to Brighton to attend Scarlet Imprint's 'Summer Of Love' event, there i met a few very nice people.

A few days ago i received the book: 'Grimoire of Aleister Crowley' and finished reading Scarlet Imprint's 'Crossed Keys'.

Also in the works: i'm setting up an independant occult & esoteric book publisher called Aeon Sophia Press. If you are interested, please check my Facebook site. If everything goes as planned, i will be publishing in the next 2/3 months 2 books.... Which will be my first projects to be published!

At this point i'll use my personal and business Facebook as the main site to promote the books.

I'm looking forward to travel to UK alot more in the coming months, to attend more events or book launches or whatever and ofcourse to expand my network and meet more nice people who are active in esoteric/thelema/occult 'scene'.

Oh yeah, i have received the limited deluxe 2011 version of Austin Osman Spare 'book of pleasure'! 🙂

All the best, Johan.

Welcome Johan

Man, I envy you these coffee shops 😀

Do you still practice Mahamantra?

Hmm, those coffee shops are not for me: i do not use drugs, no alcohol, don't smoke. 🙂

I rarely pray the Mahamantra. I used to do that alot, but that is more than 10 years ago.

All the best, Johan.

Dear friends,

I'm happy to announce that my occult book publishing company is up and running!! 🙂

The first book is available now. For more info check: www.aeonsophiapress.com or my Facebook page: Aeon Sophia Press

Best regards, Johan.

Ps.
Looking for distribution in USA. Contact me for info and terms. aeonsophiapress@gmail.com

So you are right, Walterfive, "g" in gnostic is meant to be silent in English, but the damn English mispronounces the damn Greek word!

Hi, here we say gnostic, whit G ,as in "good", most simple.
And gnostic history and tradition here is present from ancient times.

A.C in his books, that I have used to read , explains many things in an almost orthodox gnostic fashion.

93