Need Some Feedback, Not actually a book review... yet Options

Hello all,

As many of you may have noticed, I tend to make rather profuse posts on the subjects i'm most interested and/or experienced in.

Well, I've been gathering technique, observing energy during ritual and afterwards, and in the world around me for a while now, since I was seventeen or so, and I've had too many successes to accurately count at this point. So, since I have developed in my journals and on this forum soooooo much literature on these subjects, I'm finally getting around to writing a book. I've got a couple of journals that expound, at great, great length, on the subjects I wrote about here and Here, plus the framework created by writing those articles as a starting point, and about a hundred books for references, examples, etc. Basically, all I really need to do is organize and edit.

However, while all these methods are the basic skeleton of my own development in energy manipulation towards magick, I have very little feedback from actual people on there effectiveness as presented. The only two people to offer any feedback so far are two people who basically grew up with me magickally, and while neither are self-proclaimed magicians of any label, they've applied some of these principles after observing my own work and getting the explanation and my own experience explained litterally step by painstaking step over the past six or seven years, since I was a goth wiccan in high school. This book will not be THAT detailed, although in comparison to these articles it'll be an encyclopedia. Think my usual verbosity, magnified by ten or twenty times. Well, I'll try and keep it maybe a little less academic.

Anyway, what I would be immensely grateful for from as many of you as can bear reading these articles and maybe, just maybe, even attempting to apply some of it to a few experiments, would be your feedback. Especially from some of the more advanced practitioners.

My premise is basically this (restated again and again in the articles, put here for point of reference): The universe is composed of energy, and that energy has a myriad of patterns that it plays out both on the purely subtle level, and in the gross physical manifestation of the universe. If the practitioner can learn to sense and manipulate energy, all magick can be applied directly, and all technique can be learned by mimicking patterns that already exist naturally. Transcending ritual is the goal of my magickal work. From sigils, to the LBRP itself, I firmly believe, and have experienced to a very large extent, that once the energetic pattern of any magickal work is learned, it can be used independently of the ritual atmosphere. Ultimately it comes down to learning to master a state of awareness of energy, mastering the will mechanism, and learning to grasp energy and memorize energetic patterns.

I know that a lot of it isn't beginner stuff, and I still honestly haven't gotten around how the initiate can go directly into this kind of magick without going through ritual first. I started out with meditation, I did my time with the LBRP, and QC rituals (didn't take me quite a year, but...) and then developed into this. But what I really want to know is, does it reflect anyone else's experience, does it seem like something that can be learned, and are the techniques that I've already included in these articles worthwhile? I'm pretty certain they are, but to be completely honest it took me years of trial and error and thinking at things in different angles before I finally got a handle on most of the bare basics, nevermind the stuff I mess with now, and while I'm certain that I covered the basic approach that lead to my initial and current successes, I've never actually known anyone who read it, applied it, and got results - if anyone has benefitted so far, I haven't heard from them. If someone, ideally more than one person, would even take the time to practice some of the methods and experiment, that would be fantastic.

Please be as honest about your thoughts as you care to be - I cannot be offended at this point in my life, and if you want to just read and review, that would be a huge help as well. I realize this is a particular audience here, and some may be biased to hold my track record here in some regard, but so far I have zero feedback, and there is no such thing as negative feedback, so anything is something.

I've got all the material to write a book, but It is against my ethical code to write a book just because I have material to do so, at least in this category of literature (If I spent as much time accruing novel chapters, I'd have already published...) I wouldn't think of publishing a book on this subject unless I'd already seen that someone outside my sphere of specific and broad experience could benefit from it.

Thanks all!

peace

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Feb 26 2007, 03:20 AM

Greetings,

I have read the posts you mentioned and other besides, and would like to offer my opinion.

“But what I really want to know is, does it reflect anyone else's experience, does it seem like something that can be learned, and are the techniques that I've already included in these articles worthwhile?”

With the notable exception of “Zen and the Art of Sorcery” – mostly having to do with my rigid CM stance on magick- the articles you have written, closely match my own philosophical view of the universe. I say philosophical because, though I have accepted it as fact, my work is still bound by the inability to divorce implements form will.

I hesitate to use my own development as a measure the articles’ accessibility, but nonetheless I have found that they are well written, and with a bit of work even the more “advanced” topics can be understood.

Their worth is to be determined by those that read it. I will assume that you are trying to help as many as possible as much as you are able; to this end, I would think that the more ways you explain yourself the better the chance one would understand, and therefore be worth their wile to read. I apologize if I seem to be talking in circles; I have yet to find a way to measure worth objectively.

“Anyway, what I would be immensely grateful for from as many of you as can bear reading these articles and maybe, just maybe, even attempting to apply some of it to a few experiments, would be your feedback."

In my own attempts to apply your teachings, though be it only in an advisory capacity, I have had ample success. (It was the best I could muster.)

“If you want to just read and review, that would be a huge help as well. I realize this is a particular audience here, and some may be biased to hold my track record here in some regard, but so far I have zero feedback, and there is no such thing as negative feedback, so anything is something.”

The articles in the Class Lessons forum may be your chef concern for feedback, but posts on the general forums tend to have more application for certain problems. The generality of the articles leads to confusion of its practical application; a case study would be helpful in this regard. Perhaps an abbreviated version of one of you own experiments, knowing how you went about the experiment would give a point of reference to the reader. The templates and exercises that are in the article now are useful, but are still only theory.

Also one of the main concerns a had with the “Zen and the Art of Sorcery” article was that you made several references to energy, but from what I could tell, only in passing; as something that felt- never how it feels. Coming off CM I was confused about feeling the energy in a “raw” form; it became easer once I started to associate energy with feeling- e.g. pressure, tingling, exc. This may be terribly subjective but the acknowledgment of the ways one often feels while working with energy might ease the transition for others.

Best of luck.
Cheery-Bye

My premise is basically this (restated again and again in the articles, put here for point of reference): The universe is composed of energy, and that energy has a myriad of patterns that it plays out both on the purely subtle level, and in the gross physical manifestation of the universe. If the practitioner can learn to sense and manipulate energy, all magick can be applied directly, and all technique can be learned by mimicking patterns that already exist naturally. Transcending ritual is the goal of my magickal work. From sigils, to the LBRP itself, I firmly believe, and have experienced to a very large extent, that once the energetic pattern of any magickal work is learned, it can be used independently of the ritual atmosphere. Ultimately it comes down to learning to master a state of awareness of energy, mastering the will mechanism, and learning to grasp energy and memorize energetic patterns.

This is pretty good stuff and I would say that it definitely has a sorceric bent to it. In all actuality, 'mastering' the will mechanism is the only thing neccessary to work 'magick' if you catch my drift. I'll go ahead and attempt a thorough reading and gauging of the techniques you've presented. So hopefully I'll be sending you a couple of PMs.

My two bits on writing the book though, take your time. I would seriously consider getting back into ritual again. Say for the next two years, every day, and I mean every day, maybe even twice a day. If you plan on writing a book that details transcendence of ritual I think that it would serve the reader better to know that you spent more than just one year of time in ritualistic mode before transcending it. Plus, it may very well help your book out immensly. Not to mention the benefit you will get from actually using the spoken word. I mean it's not really neccessary, but I think if I was reading your book and you said 'I spent one year doing LBRP, etc etc,' I might feel the slightest bit uneasy with your experience in that field.

Alright, well I'll PM you, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Thank you both very much. I've taken all that you've suggested and started putting together more information.

Oh, and bb3, I practice primarily ritual magick for four years before I started working this way. that was prefaced by closer to 9 month of LBRP practice, but I didn't stop there. Who would? By that time you normally can't wait to start doing more involved and complex rituals.

Lately I've been working on dissecting the process that one goes through in order to evolve to the point that ritual can be easily transcended, so I guess it was a good instinct to follow, so I'll definitely put more work into that.

I understand the value of examples and case studies, as well, I'm just hesitant to put too much of my own experiences down, simply because when I read books about magick in which the author always has a relavent example of something he did, I always sort of feel like it's often a way of touting one's accomplishments. But, I'll try to put together some examples that are simple and easily reproduced by the reader. After a little thought, it would be a good way to get them started on the practice.

I realized after reading all the information I've put together and reordering the papers for editing, that I haven't spent enough time explaining how one gets to the point where this kind of magick is possible. It crossed my mind that it might really be the natural progression from ritual magick - one reads about the development of the astral body and the various 'powers' that development infers, and the development of the astral body is a natural consequence to doing magick. None the less, I believe that this development can occur independent of ritual magick, and that in any case anyone having practiced for a sufficient period should be able to reap the same benefits by doing magick without ritual. However, I also see how these techniques may not be suitable for beginners without the aforementioned development.

Thanks.

greeting son.its curious as many in the magickal path i know start out with simple basic energy magick then the progress to and diide into the various others through the years such as ritualistic and ceremonial and late in their years they revert back to energy magick.just that its alot more advanced then what they started with.its my reasoning that all magickal paths teach you about each other magickal path.god bless.

greeting son.its curious as many in the magickal path i know start out with simple basic energy magick then the progress to and diide into the various others through the years such as ritualistic and ceremonial and late in their years they revert back to energy magick.just that its alot more advanced then what they started with.its my reasoning that all magickal paths teach you about each other magickal path.god bless.

I agree. To some degree, I have come to understand that there are natural benefits of developing the astral body, and that those benefits manifest in the conscious control of normally unconscious mechanisms which magick operates on. However, currently the amount of literature describing those mechanisms, and teaching from scratch how to directly connect to, and utilize those mechanisms, is fairly limited. There is the path of psionic energy work - however, my reasearch and practice with that field has presented some internal inconsistency and self-defeating methodology. I'm fortunate to have developed my connection to the unconscious processes in my mind, to such a degree that i'm now able to observe a bit more directly than I could many years ago, when I first began working with energy aside from ritual magick.

So, the progression from the simplest energy work, towards complex magick, and then towards advanced energy manipulation, is quite natural, and is probably the traditional path - I hesitate to equate my self with 'secret' adepts of the ages, but I believe that the literature on this third 'phase' of magickal growth is limited because it is only practiced by adepts. Like many born to recent generations, I was born with a naturally 'over' developed astral body, and so coming to this point was not as difficult as it can often be. However, that does limit the amount of personal experience I have with 'starting from scratch' as it were, which makes me worry that I may not be able to accurately convey a set of direct techniques, devoid of traditional dogma and mythology, for developing the astral body 'from scratch'. For the vast majority, I have come to decide that this is a critical element.

Research has elucidated the process somewhat, and there are already in place many traditions - such as transcendental meditation, astral projection, yoga, etc. - which exist for that very reason, though this true purpose is not much discussed in and of itself. I'm hesitant to write literature connection those practices to this specific purpose, however, without having seen them work for someone born, for lack of a better term, 'normal'.

So, I'm at a bit of an impasse, but I'm in the midst of an ongoing questinioning process with a number of spirits to discover what the best course of explanation may be in this particular aspect of the endeavor. Certainly there is no 'short' path, however once fully elucidated, I believe that the methods already available for that development will be more effective. I'm working with what I know now, and growing from there. It sets the project back, but in the end will make it all together far more valuable for general practicality. I do not wish to produce a volume that is only really useful to a very select demographic of those who have either already developed on this level, or those born with such a development.

Although, it has crossed my mind that so called, 'new age' children, or 'evolutionary' children, while often very naturally gifted with energy work, may very well benefit from having such literature available as to give form and terminology to what they already understand instinctively, and bring it into light in a more directly conscious way.

Like a living thing, I expect the project will grow on it's own. Fortunately aside from a far less taxing translation/alaysis project on the fifty names of the Nec., it is my only major project at the moment, for once.

peace