Wholeness

That’s true. But it’s true paradoxically. The serpent within you is unknown–the unconscious. The serpent is ultimately the dragon of chaos, the ouroboros the self-consuming serpent who represents the union of matter and spirit, being-in-itself and nothingness, tohu and bohu, the pleroma and the possibility of transformation. It’s where everything comes from and where everything returns. To know that is to know the unknowable. Or so it seems to me.

duplicate

I like that answer.

It connects to what I was going to write first, lazily, to your first claim, namely that Crowley would disagree, and refer you to the concept of Ipsissimus.
Now you created an actually viable content for me to do that, by this evocative phrase; “to know the unknowable”.

So here’s the concept, or one take on it:

tarrdaniel.com/documents/The … simus.html

In this tradition, being is seen to emerge from the boundless no-thingness, and the Ipsissimus has acquired access to that source and dwells there with a consciousness that is no longer strictly “his” - presenting all manner of paradox, of course, as enlightenment would to the not-yet-enlightened.

I do not mean for this to sway about the argument, but to point you to an interesting pocket of theory on the Self and its development. You may know Crowley as “the Beast” and related titles but really he was the closest to a prophet we’ve had in recent centuries, I find. He covers large parts of the field that Jung does not - where Jung only points towards, as Jung must remain scientist, whereas Crowley’s task was, in a sense, to simply go where no man had gone before, regardless of consequence. Jung was very conscientious, otherwise his work would have been valueless. For Crowley its the opposite, he needed to be completely rueckstichtlos. He stumbles around a great deal but also burst through seemingly solid walls and he gets truly inside the core of the psyche. Where, of course, it is rather chaotic, for lack of a better term; and what term is better than the delicious word Chaos?

Anyway. Good answer.

PS
I will link you to one of his most Chaotic book, “The Book of Lies”; You can see how he required to make such a tremendous mess of the mind, in order to cross over to the being of that Ouroboros.
sacred-texts.com/oto/lib333.htm

Don’t know much about Crowley. I have always seen him as an unattractive buffoon. Shrug. Doubtless he identified with chaos and wished to portray himself as pure malevolence. He succeeded in repulsing me. Lol.

Ipsissimus= Lao Tsu-the archetypal Tao master. In the latter piece you shared Crowley goes ontological.

Jung himself has a trickster/shyster side. His theory connecting the mandala to wholeness is most relevant to this thread. Yet, I still find his mandala/UFO hypothesis ludicrous.

Here is Jung as Basilides the Gnostic at his most ontological for comparison:

Hm okay.

I will spare you more unattractive buffoonery.

Aww. Sorry. I did not intend to offend you. I took a superficial look into Crowley 50 years ago and decided he wasn’t my cup of meat to borrow a phrase from Dylan. How thoroughly malevolent was he? Is it true he tortured a cat when he was in his early teens? Psychopath? Anyway I don’t hold my opinions to be sacrosanct. I understand he became benign in his latter years. Judge not lest ye be judged, somebody said.

What shall we do with our shadow? What do you think of the proposition that the way to set the world straight is by restraining the malevolence in our own hearts?

Cup of meat or cup of mead?

I recommend you read a writer before you judge him Felix. Ive never in my life judged a writer based on what other writers say about him, and frankly I think that is only sane.
Yes, it offends me when people judge someone based on gossip.

I gave you a massively valuable resource to address your questions but you choose the silly gossipy ladies over the work of philosophy. :angry:

Oh fucking well, eh?

:sunglasses:

But really. A waste not to read him, an absolute, colossal waste. Crowley’s only sin was that he wasn’t a spiritual slave. He knew people would judge him as evil for not being a spiritual slave. so he pre-emptively called himself “the most wicked man alive”.
In the meantime, Christians were torturing people all over the planet. You don’t care about that though. No christian ever takes responsibility for his faith. That is what Christianity is; absolution from responsibility. Big monotheistic sects are built that way, as is a certain currently popular race-ideologist subsect of slave-morality.
People want their happiness to be handed to them buy God, or The Man, or The Government.
Crowley was no such lazy bastard.
He was the noblest man of his time without any question.
Perhaps that is a good reason to stay away from him; your faith might not be able to withstand such display of integrity.

Okay you’ve got my attention and I am looking into your links. So what was with Crowley’s claims to be the Beast and 666? It seems like that began as an oppositional defiant reaction against his childhood Plymouth Brethren indoctrination.

Good, think he will be worth your while. He gathered many paths to many treasure troves into his writings.

The story Ive heard is that his mother called him the Beast when he was small.

You could somewhat compare his stance on the Beast with Blake’s stance on Satan, though obviously they’re both too complex to take that very far. Both authors I mean.

Whatever else, Crowley stands at the threshold of a vast ancient world which comes to us mainly through him and the people around him - English aristocrats that spent their fortunes on gathering ancient magical knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. Much was gained. For true understanding of his background, look into the Order of the Golden Dawn. The works of Israel Regardie are excellent. There is also a work by Regardie on his time spent with Crowley which Ive yet to read.

In any case I very much doubt there will ever be anyone who understands the Shadow aspect better than Crowley did - serving as it does in his work always the purpose of attaining the immaculate light.

Humanity does not live on bread alone, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but also on the body of existential propositions and beliefs it gleans from the mythological universe in which it is embedded.

I am looking into your recommendations.

Blessings.jpg

When I came to this image of Horus, the all-seeing eye of consciousness, on the thread, an owl outside my window hooted in the broad daylight of the afternoon.

Yes!!

Greetings to the owl, and to your, as they say “Holy Guardian Angel”.

“The ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know.” Tao 65

The abyss of not-knowing is infinite.

It is represented by the Uroboros the dragon of chaos.

It is the circle prior to the separation of Yin and Yang.

The one who separates is called the Logos or the Tao.

This is consciousness, the Light.

“For the benefit of the roses, we water the thorns too.”

Part of an I Ching reading I just did:
The I Ching is a superior divination method, far more consistent than tarot. Online, oracles based on random picks work perhaps even better than physically.

onlineclarity.co.uk/reading … e-i-ching/
cafeausoul.com/oracles/iching

A very dense philosophical tradition presents itself in the literary subtleties of the readings. Both my own experience and that of experienced magicians say that this is very reliable if you really need some insight into a situation. It is quite objective, and repeated readings within a short timeframe will be consistent with each other, if the concentration is held during the draw.

So much to learn, so little time.

youtu.be/Ow-_G26lpOk

youtu.be/oXkO3YjQmN8

I am spellbound by the presence of my own being.

Gobsmacked … as they say.