The function of ritual in High Ritual Magick
Or, why self-induced dementia can be fun, fun, fun...
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I fully expect this article to receive no comments at all. So why am I going to write it and publish it here?
In part, because having an audience of any kind is helpful in clarifying thinking. In part, because to do so gives honor to the gods (the gods that are dead). And in part, because I live in the hope that, one day, someone who does actually understand will read, respond, and begin a conversation with me on these topics. I know there are others who share what might be termed my 'faith' out there - but they're very hard to find.
Let me begin at the beginning. I was once a Christian. Then I became (as a consequence of deep-seated disgust at the cowardice, hypocrisy, and self-seeking slavishness of Christians generally) a 'christian'. I am now, some twenty-odd years after my initial conversion experience, a Christian Heretic.
Let me give you a statement of my faith, as I presently understand it. The man born in Bethlehem, whom Christians worship as an expression of a triune Godhead, was just that - a man. Perhaps a very special man, a man endowed with great spirituality, deep understanding of the human condition, and capacities that to his contemporaries appeared miraculous, but nonetheless, a man as I am a man.
Jesus the man is someone whom I could have respected. Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah come to save Mankind from its sin, is no longer, even remotely, a part of my life. How then can I call myself a Christian Heretic? Read this (Link) and you will see how. It's not my intention to repeat myself here, so for further explication on that head you must read that article also.
I am entirely convinced that God is. I am equally convinced that that this God is the same God misidentified as Jehovah or Yahweh, whose dealings with the Jewish race are recorded in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. I am further convinced that this God may be known, worshipped, served, that his presence may be suffered and enjoyed in the life of those fortunate (and accursed) enough to have discovered the truth of his existence.
Why fortunate? Because the Will of the believer, enacted through ritual Magick, draws his attention. Why accursed? Because the Will of the believer, enacted through ritual Magick, draws his attention.
How do I conceive my God? As an artist. Artists are neither moral nor immoral. They are amoral, serving an aesthetic which encompasses the highest endeavours of the intellect and the most corrupt, degenerate, impulses of the soul. My God is no different. His favourite hobbies are genocide and heroic self-sacrifice. His Church encompasses sexual perverts, serial killers and ascetic, celibate saints. He made the Light and the Darkness, and accepts worshippers who serve him by Day and by Night. Why? Because his purposes, insofar as they can be comprehended at all, are aesthetic. He has no interest in 'salvation' (nor any in 'damnation'). Those things which make for salvation, for damnation, serve his turn equally, in the interest of producing a universe that to him (or her, or it) is 'beautiful'. And if, to certain kinds or types or aspects of that creation, such a universe turns out to be more of hell than heaven, then so what?
Since the finite cannot comprehend the Infinite it cannot judge it.
We may not be able to comprehend, or judge, but we can participate. We can do so knowingly, or in ignorance. What marks the difference is the extent to which we participate in accordance with our conscious Will, on the basis of Desires which are known and understood (rather than instinctive, reactive, and so apparently incomprehensible). And for the knowing, comprehending Soul that has come to terms with its Appetites, that understands that God neither condemns nor approves such Appetites but uses them in the service of a purpose which is not to be known, then ritual (which is neither prayer, nor supplication, nor the bribery of 'worship') is the means by which acquaintance with God (in the Gnostic sense of the term acquaintance) is made manifest.
Ritual can take many forms. There is the High Thelemic form (by which I first became re-acquainted with God, after many years spent in the desolation of not-quite-belief, not-quite-denial); there is the form of Chaos, which expresses Will while eschewing the structures of High Magick; there is the semi-instinctive response of Wicca - which is Magick without understanding; and there are the infinite forms which Magick assumes under the guise of Shamanism, Voodoo, and the practices of the Eastern Yogis, Vedantists, and Mystics generally.
Those who have read this article (Link) will have some insight into my practice as a Magickian. The nature of that practice involves inducing what to many will only be comprehensible as a state of temporary insanity: a temporary state in this world leading to a permanent state of equal or greater insanity in another. And that other place (which in the eschatology of the Christians, and also of other belief systems, would usually be described as Hell) I designate as the Outside of Everything.
Hell, like Heaven, is not a particular place. Hell, like Heaven, is what you make it. And for some, such as myself, my Hell is my Heaven, my Heaven my Hell. As it's written somewhere... In my Father's house are many mansions... where every desire finds its fulfilment. But entry therein has it's price, and that price is paid here, in this life. And what determines the price, and which of these many mansions one eventually finds onself in, is Will, and Desire, and the road one travels to reach that destination is ritual.
Ritual determines nothing, while Will determines all. What ritual does is reconstruct, reintegrate, and refocus the entire personality so that it accords with, is the perfect expression of, the Will which it carries. At the same time, though it determines nothing, ritual also transforms both personality and Will, so that both conform to the hidden purposes of God's aesthetic intention.
Whether that intention is for what is commonly called 'good', or just as commonly called 'evil'.
What you are determines what you Will. What you Will determines what you are - here and hereafter.
In part, because having an audience of any kind is helpful in clarifying thinking. In part, because to do so gives honor to the gods (the gods that are dead). And in part, because I live in the hope that, one day, someone who does actually understand will read, respond, and begin a conversation with me on these topics. I know there are others who share what might be termed my 'faith' out there - but they're very hard to find.
Let me begin at the beginning. I was once a Christian. Then I became (as a consequence of deep-seated disgust at the cowardice, hypocrisy, and self-seeking slavishness of Christians generally) a 'christian'. I am now, some twenty-odd years after my initial conversion experience, a Christian Heretic.
Let me give you a statement of my faith, as I presently understand it. The man born in Bethlehem, whom Christians worship as an expression of a triune Godhead, was just that - a man. Perhaps a very special man, a man endowed with great spirituality, deep understanding of the human condition, and capacities that to his contemporaries appeared miraculous, but nonetheless, a man as I am a man.
Jesus the man is someone whom I could have respected. Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah come to save Mankind from its sin, is no longer, even remotely, a part of my life. How then can I call myself a Christian Heretic? Read this (Link) and you will see how. It's not my intention to repeat myself here, so for further explication on that head you must read that article also.
I am entirely convinced that God is. I am equally convinced that that this God is the same God misidentified as Jehovah or Yahweh, whose dealings with the Jewish race are recorded in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. I am further convinced that this God may be known, worshipped, served, that his presence may be suffered and enjoyed in the life of those fortunate (and accursed) enough to have discovered the truth of his existence.
Why fortunate? Because the Will of the believer, enacted through ritual Magick, draws his attention. Why accursed? Because the Will of the believer, enacted through ritual Magick, draws his attention.
How do I conceive my God? As an artist. Artists are neither moral nor immoral. They are amoral, serving an aesthetic which encompasses the highest endeavours of the intellect and the most corrupt, degenerate, impulses of the soul. My God is no different. His favourite hobbies are genocide and heroic self-sacrifice. His Church encompasses sexual perverts, serial killers and ascetic, celibate saints. He made the Light and the Darkness, and accepts worshippers who serve him by Day and by Night. Why? Because his purposes, insofar as they can be comprehended at all, are aesthetic. He has no interest in 'salvation' (nor any in 'damnation'). Those things which make for salvation, for damnation, serve his turn equally, in the interest of producing a universe that to him (or her, or it) is 'beautiful'. And if, to certain kinds or types or aspects of that creation, such a universe turns out to be more of hell than heaven, then so what?
Since the finite cannot comprehend the Infinite it cannot judge it.
We may not be able to comprehend, or judge, but we can participate. We can do so knowingly, or in ignorance. What marks the difference is the extent to which we participate in accordance with our conscious Will, on the basis of Desires which are known and understood (rather than instinctive, reactive, and so apparently incomprehensible). And for the knowing, comprehending Soul that has come to terms with its Appetites, that understands that God neither condemns nor approves such Appetites but uses them in the service of a purpose which is not to be known, then ritual (which is neither prayer, nor supplication, nor the bribery of 'worship') is the means by which acquaintance with God (in the Gnostic sense of the term acquaintance) is made manifest.
Ritual can take many forms. There is the High Thelemic form (by which I first became re-acquainted with God, after many years spent in the desolation of not-quite-belief, not-quite-denial); there is the form of Chaos, which expresses Will while eschewing the structures of High Magick; there is the semi-instinctive response of Wicca - which is Magick without understanding; and there are the infinite forms which Magick assumes under the guise of Shamanism, Voodoo, and the practices of the Eastern Yogis, Vedantists, and Mystics generally.
Those who have read this article (Link) will have some insight into my practice as a Magickian. The nature of that practice involves inducing what to many will only be comprehensible as a state of temporary insanity: a temporary state in this world leading to a permanent state of equal or greater insanity in another. And that other place (which in the eschatology of the Christians, and also of other belief systems, would usually be described as Hell) I designate as the Outside of Everything.
Hell, like Heaven, is not a particular place. Hell, like Heaven, is what you make it. And for some, such as myself, my Hell is my Heaven, my Heaven my Hell. As it's written somewhere... In my Father's house are many mansions... where every desire finds its fulfilment. But entry therein has it's price, and that price is paid here, in this life. And what determines the price, and which of these many mansions one eventually finds onself in, is Will, and Desire, and the road one travels to reach that destination is ritual.
Ritual determines nothing, while Will determines all. What ritual does is reconstruct, reintegrate, and refocus the entire personality so that it accords with, is the perfect expression of, the Will which it carries. At the same time, though it determines nothing, ritual also transforms both personality and Will, so that both conform to the hidden purposes of God's aesthetic intention.
Whether that intention is for what is commonly called 'good', or just as commonly called 'evil'.
What you are determines what you Will. What you Will determines what you are - here and hereafter.
