The focus of this thread is to overlook each of what are called the plane of existence and analyze what can be considered their practical use in magic.

Typically, it's nice to throw in a bit to get the conversation rolling, unless you just have a question.

I categorize planes according to seven layers (not entirely unlike the seven lower spheres of the sephiroth), starting with the gross and moving out into the most subtle, the edge of which, to my conception, leads into a place not unlike Daath.

From 'bottom' to top, the physical, energetic, emotional, mental, astral, spiritual, and causal.

They correspond to seven bodies, in the same order, a gradiation from gross to subtle, each of us having a body on each plane. The planes blend together, so that the physical is connection to the energetic, energetic to mental, etc., and each successive plane 'enveloping' the lower, so that the physical is within the energetic, the energetic within the emotional, etc.

The physical is the point of manifestation, is obvious use in magick being the 'field' on which one half of the magickal work is performed, anchoring the other six bodies to a single context which ultimately results in the relationships between apparently individual contexts - the only reason we do magick in the first place, because we perceive an existence in which there is 'other' to change, evoke, invoke, etc.

The energetic is the layer in which energy is moved from one place to another, and is the level on which the currents of energy therefore take place. Awareness and use of this level grants the magician the ability to move energy.

The emotional plane is the level at which energy receives resonance. Ultimately all energy is emotional in nature because of this setup. Awareness of this level allows the physical context to grasp the nature of the energy in the energetic level, seeing it from a 'top down' sort of way.

The mental plane fulcrum of manifestation, ultimately forming the patterns for energy out of the potential field of possibility located in the next highest plane, the astral. Awareness of this plane, one might term the unconscious or subconscious mind, allows the magician to analyze the patterns around him/her more effectively, being now more aware of the true nature of the origin of emotional resonance.

The Astral plane is the source of all possibility and information that will find organization in the mental plane. Awareness of this plane allows the magician to access greater bandwidths of information, or consciously expand his rapport with foreign concepts, i.e. astral journeying, vision quests, scanning the akasic records, etc. The is also the plane at which the resident subtle body is the least constricted by time and space, these being the realm of the organizing element in the mental plane, and therefore the body able to travel - whereas the mind can only move around within it's own organized 'area' of assimilated information. Most magick takes place by 'bouncing' up through the lower energetic, emotional, and mental levels, into the astral where the relavent possibilities are brought into alignment with those lower planes, creating the cascade effect of manifestation.

However, the next highest plane, the spiritual plane, is the plane on which transcendental magick takes place. Where the astral is good for manifestation, this plane is good for personal transformation, and is the level at which most invocation, evocation, and spiritual magick takes place - the realm of archetypes, those forces that the astral then personifies through an infinite array of symbolic concepts and possibilities for reality. This is the realm of angels, demons, spirits, etc, perhaps even the lower Godforms. Being aware of this plane and body allows the Magician to expand his 'astral' travels upwards into the higher strata of the astral, and to become a far more effective shaman, now able to deal directly with spiritual beings rather than calling them down through the medium of the astral, in which those beings put on the mask of a conceptual being, the reason we perceive a spirit in any conventionally conceivable form.

The highest level at which, as far as I am aware, magick takes place is the causal plane, which is the plane through which the origination of existence is first filtered down into a 'cause/effect' place, and in becoming aware of this plane and body, the magician masters will, typically through alignment of 'individual' will with 'divine' will. This is the realm of Gods, the causal forces of existence, the origins of all concept, consciousness, karma, etc. A mage who has fully realize the causal realm achieves 'true will' and can exercise virtually any change on his context, though he/she is, by nature of the realization, bound to express only within the confines of their true will or, ultimately, their causal purpose in the physical universe.

This is the way I conceived of the planes of existence relative to the magician shortly after getting involved in magick, and hasn't really changed much since then, seven always seemed to be a good number for it. Later on I studied the tree of life, and it seemed close enough to me to reinforce my conviction in it. As of now, i'm working on walking the gates of the necronomicon, and that's bound to evolve the schemata a little more as well.

peace

While that works well I'm finding that I likely may end changing how I care to view the planes.

Is that to say end up changing your view, or putting an end to changing it?

I think that there is an infinite gradient between the physical realm and the source of creation. The division could be 3, 7, 10, 100, or a million, depending on how specific you want to get, and how you want to apply the knowledge. Or, you can just ignore the idea of planes all together, and see one big complicated universe top down, no dividing anything at all, which is also accurate. Creation is paradoxically confined to a single non-dimensional point of being and at the same time spread out into an infinite spectrum of energy in every conceivable state through time, space, and consciousness.

The real value in determining any system of planes or dimensions is expanding your contextual sphere. Given the way I view the planes, I'm able to take various phenomenon and evaluate them on the basis of these points of origin in creation, creating a sort of mystical blueprint of any phenomenon which can then be, by virtue of the 'blueprint', applied to my mystical understanding to fit a new piece of the puzzle into the slowly growing 'whole'. Any other system is the same. In evaluating the usefulness of your system, all you really need to ask is, "Can it offer a blueprint of everything?" Are there any gaps, any phenomenon which are bound to fall outside the paradigm. If so, then the paradigm needs to be expanded or expounded in such a way as to fill in those gaps. Any conception is going to be minimal in the eyes of the divine consciousness, and ultimately an illusion, but it is a means of creating a governing structure within structure that will, for the mage at least, allow a dissection of the universe in such a way as to offer up a way out of conventional structure all together. It's like using the illusion to get beyond the illusion.

These seven planes are a very basic layout, some people like to divide the astral into various layers, some prefer to seperate the energetic into it's component parts, and so on, but ultimately every 'component' is going to be made up of other 'components' so the process will continue ad infinitum. Ultimately, I think it's more useful, personally, to settle on a handful of broad categories within which one can evaluate phenomenon as happening 'within' the category, rather than strictly within it's own specifically narrowed down 'file'.

In any case, while the kabbalistic tree of life is often regarded as a 'perfect' system for this categorization, I don't feel there is any such thing as a perfect system - systems are flawed by nature of the flaw of structure itself, and nothing within a structured universe can be perfect, conceptual or otherwise. So, one should always be willing to update, evolve, expand, etc., their paradigm, as it is the box within which we grow - even a chaos mage has a box, albeit one generally far more readily expanded than those of many others. When you no longer have a box, you're enlightened, i think. But, it's not as easy as just saying "fine, I'll just stop classifying." While at the same time being just as easy as that...

peace

Well at the moment the system that I've come up with is as follows:

The currrent, and chaos. I intend to expand from these these two, but at the moment they fit into what I'm going for.

This post has been edited by Cloud Hex: Apr 24 2007, 10:34 AM

Well my view isn't as simple, though I try to keep it that way. What works for me is to equate the astral planes to 3 levels that correspond to levels of our concsiousness. The first layer is the low plains. It coreisponds to the sub-conscious. The next is the middle plains : consciousness and the high plains : super-consciousness. Then I have another "level" that is below the low plains that I consider the abyss. Really it doesn't count as a layer because this realm doesn't correspond to any level of thinking. I think its impossible for a living being to enter this place and not advisable to do so either.

How I see the planes is not as follows:

The Current, Chaos, and the sea of chaos.

We'd all, I think, love to here some explanation. For instance what distinguishes Chaos from the Sea of Chaos? The current implies movement, where does structure fit in? A consequence of the Current?

Not bustin' your chops, but it is a discussion forum...

peace

How nice chaos and more chaos... its always revolving around this world and the universe at large.

Initally when I begun my so-called "path", I had the notion that the planes were roughly of 3 tiers, the low, mid and high planes. With the knowledge kind of pulled out using instinct and confirmed by one of the entities I spoke with at that time as a suitable way to view things. Though these days, I no longer regard the planes as divided... it is a single plane that exists and does not exist, moving in emptiness and mass... or something like that. Its mere perception that supposedly forms the divide... for example a certain level of entity would not perceive the universe at large like how a human would, they don't use physical senses after all but they can tap in to one's sight to view things if just for a bit.

The current: Things as of now and the energy moving about

chaos:Everything, everywhere, concept that is place and not a place in the sense your not there, but you can always get closer to it then you are now

Sea of chaos: The Current and nothing else taken further.

I think there are litterally an endless number of realms, plains, worlds or whatever. Its all just a matter of perception. For example by the way I interpret Cloud Hex the current corresponds to consiousness since we experience all energy here and now. The chaos part relates to the super consciousness as that is the part of us that allows us to percieve things through hyperrealism. Then the sea of chaos, to me is the sub-consciousness - all that is creativity, desire, energy yet without actual thought or concept, no structure. If we wanted to we could pick apart each of these realms and creat other realms or sub-realms indeffinately.

Now I wouldn't say that, I feel that it's not always a good idea to try to find correspondence with everything, you see it that way but I don't, make of that what you will. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

See, now I think it's not a good idea not to try and find correspondence with everything - if your view holds no correspondence with anything else, how can you be sure it's a valid viewpoint? Even if you take one paradigm and interpret it differently, your perspective can still be valid - but if you just pull something out of thin air, and it doesn't parallel with anything else (and I don't just mean standard views or paradigms) then it's more than likely just an active imagination. Or more specifically, you've probably got an idea, which is being applied incorrectly.

There are a lot of individuals out there doing their very best to come up with unique or new views of how creation is organized. Such a spirit of exploration should certainly be encouraged and appreciated, but one has to keep in mind while they do this, that while there is no limit to the spectrum of perception, that it's all be figured out before, and that ultimately you have to be careful to make sure that instead of coming up with a new perspective, you're not just miring yourself in pointless illusions that really have no fit into the scheme of how it really is. The check, is to find correspondence.

peace

I agree in the sense that finding correspondances to 'everything' is cumbersome and ineffective. I do think that any given paradigm requires some measure of correspondances for it to relate to. Otherwise it wouldn't make any sense or have any practical use. In my mind a paradigm in general is a set of conceptualized correspondances related to one another to represent or serve a purpose or function.