 |
| First Hour of Day of Mercury, Wednesday, During Waxing of the Moon. |
Hypocrisy has enchained my consciousness. With the infectious-gravity of habit, with the inflaming of desire for flesh and food and all things that tap on the dopamine-drip, thus I kneel in chained defeat. The Celestial Intelligentsia depart, halting their benign vibrations, as I close myself off from higher echelons of magical progress. I used to think I could manage my habits and still carry on the work of a neophyte in the Solomonic Magical tradition, but more and more I am seeing that this is impossible for a Hermetic Mage. I offer just a few pieces of evidence:
"But first thou must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear,—the web of ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption’s chain, the carapace of darkness, the living death, sensation’s corpse, the tomb thou carriest with thee, the robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth, hateth thee, and through the things he hateth, bears thee malice...
For that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou may’st not hear about the things that thou should’st hear, nor see the things that thou should’st see."
-Corpus Hermeticum, book VII.
I'm realizing Hermetic magic isn't about *denying* the body's cravings or lower energies, locking them in a bottle of self-hatred and "sin". That's the domain of organized mega-church religious groups. Instead, Hermetic magic is about *harmonizing* lower energies (lust, desire, cravings, bodily stimulation) under the domain of the higher consciousness, The Holy Mind, the only Good, God. For me, this harmonization takes the form of daily meditation, hymns and inner songs that induce a trance-like state of light-ecstasy, and constant praise of God (the Light, the Good), and incorporating that into myself.
But, that's where hypocrisy snakes it's way into my actions. I am notorious for paying lip service to all of these noble lightworkings, but fail in consistently "keeping the light" in praise, meditation and thankfulness. And it's this hypocrisy that keeps us down, that denies us, as the Corpus Hermeticum tells us, from seeing and hearing what we must hear and see (i.e., the truth of our own divinity).
This concept of waging spiritual war against hypocrisy is also articulated in a 17th century document involving Dr Thomas Rudd, a well-known angelic magician who continued research into holy invocations. In this relation, Rudd and Sir John Heydon encounter spiritual beings, and relate various effects that these 'Good Genii' have on a man. But the end of this document sums up the Path to Theurgy perfectly:
"It is lawful to pray to God for such a good genius or Angel. And to purge the mind from pride and hypocrisy which is one reason that all men are not capable of Consociation with these good Genii, for faith and desire aught to be full sail to make such voyages prosperous, and our end and purpose pure and sincere; but if pride & conceitedness or affection of some peculiar privilege above other mortals spur a man up to so bold and enterprise, his Devotion will no more move wither God or the good Genii than the whining voice of the counterfeit will stir the affection of the discretely charitable. Nay, this presumption may invite some real friends to deceive him & be his destruction.
But the safest wisdom is the sincere consecrating [of] Man's Soul to God, and the aspiring to nothing but to a profound pitch of humility, as not to be conscious to our selves of being at all touched with the praise and applause of men; and to such a free and universal sense of charity as to be delighted with the welfare of another as much as our own; they that only have their eye upon these will find coming in what ever their heart can desire; but they that put forth their hand to catch at high things as they fancy & neglect these, prove at last but a plague to themselves and a laughing stock to the world."
Or, as the American Rap Music Artist Marshall Mathers articulates: "There be no such thing as half-way crooks."
Frater Ashen Chassan, a modern Hermetic magician, author and researcher into the occult arts of Celestial Invocations mentions in his book "Gateways Through Stone and Circle", that a wise man once said the most powerful thing we humans can say to ourselves is "No". To choose. To never straddle the fence, but rather, to plunge headlong into the pools of light and divinity, consecrating our consciousness to all things holy and One. To be sincere. Sincerity is the paddle from which we can cut through the waters of hypocrisy and exhausted, low-energy, and make sail to the Port of Light, to Honesty and Magic and Humility.
Praise and Bless You, Oh God, oh Thoth, or All Mind, Universal Brimmer Of Consciousness and Light! Please help me as I seek to always praise Thee, harmonize my lower passions to sing in union the song of your Light.
*In the 400s and 500s we start hearing stories in medieval Europe about people allegedly selling their soul to the devil to either get, say a woman fall in love with them, riches, or to gain power. Guiley tells us there was one such man, Theophilus, the treasurer of the church of Adana in 538 who sold his soul to the devil to become a bishop. Guiley tells us that that last example also helped provide the basis of the legend of Dr. Faust, (pic) the learned but arrogant man who made a pact with the devil to experience all forms of lust, and mental ecstasy in return for giving up his soul.
Enter the Inquisition: That bloody, tortuous period where the Church, in a seemingly paranoid and reactionary manner….brought the full weight of its suspicion of the Other down upon the heads of so-called witches, pagans, and people who practice Solomonic Magick...people who engage in ritualistic grimoiric tradition...many of whom were in the priestly class itself within the Church! Again mentioned in the Goetia of Dr. Rudd 
